Reverend Rita's Sermons (July - Dec 2005)...
(Updated 02/07/2006)

O Holy Night - 12/24/05
Cause for Joy - 12/11/05
God Still Speaks - 11/27/05
Culture of Christ - 11/20/05
Believing Makes it So - 11/13/05
The Greatest of These - 10/30/05
Choose - 10/23/05
Holy Land or Living Stones? - 10/16/05
Sacred Cows - 10/09/05
The Greatest Commandments - 10/02/05
The Dreary Path - 09/18/05
Horse and Rider, Thrown into the Sea - 09/11/05
The Great Teacher - 08/28/05
In Every Generation - 08/21/05
Full Circle - 09/14/05
The Face of God - 07/31/05
The Trouble with In-Laws - 07/24/05
Dreaming - 07/17/05
Sibling Rivalry - 07/10/05
Good Loving - 07/03/05

O Holy Night
24 December 2005

Once a year that special time comes around. You know what I'm talking about. It's when soft rock 101.9 changes its format from sappy easy listening music to all Christmas, all the time! I never listen to that station except in December. Ah, Christmas music! You love it and hate it at the same time. We all have songs that just drive us to distraction, we loathe them so much. And there are others we just can't get enough of, no matter how much they may make other people sick. Me, it's "Holly Jolly Christmas" I never get tired of. Good ol' Burl Ives just belting that song out, as straightforward and cheesy as you can get. Ooh yeah, gimme that old time religion!

There's a new song I hadn't heard before, "Mary Did You Know." It's sung by some American Idol person, I don't know who. It's got a pretty tune, kind of wistful and haunting, wondering if Mary knew what Jesus would grow up to do. "Mary, did you know that your baby boy would one day walk on water? Did you know that your baby boy would calm the storm with his hand?"

It's pretty, but somehow it leaves me a bit cold. It's all about the fantastical miracles of Jesus, and as I heard this song over and over and over again, it's message really sinking into me, and I thought, where's the Immanuel bit in this song? You know, "God with us"? This song is all about Jesus' supernatural powers. Now, we all know about people with superpowers. We've seen "Spiderman." People with superpowers have secret identities. They live in a bat cave, and they wear a mask. Yeah, they fight villains, but they never get to date Mary Jane because of the whole "I have a special destiny" schtick. Isn't the whole point that poor old Tobey MacSpiderman doesn't get to have an ordinary life? There's no "God with us" in the superhero story. So as pretty as that song is, I feel like there's something important that gets left out.

Compare that song with another one about Mary that starts, "la virgen lava panales." Does anyone here speak Spanish? "The virgin is washing the diapers." It's not a hymn you hear that often on 101.9, and that's a shame. It's an old Spanish Christmas carol, and leave it to the Spaniards to celebrate the mundane in the miraculous. I mean, what could be more earthy than the virgin washing the diapers? It's funny, but it somehow seems more true to me. Honestly, "Mary, did you know that your baby boy would give sight to the blind, raise the dead?" I'll grant you that new mothers – and fathers – often have rather fantastical dreams for their little bundle of joy: maybe my kid will one day discover the cure for cancer. Maybe my kid will win a gold medal, or maybe even win on American Idol! Sure, parents have these dreams for their babies. After all, somebody's kid grew up to be Mozart. It could happen to my kid!

But the real wish in every parent's heart is much more ordinary than that. Every parent holds their child and prays, "I want my baby to grow up, to be healthy, to be happy." That's what people want for their baby more than anything else, and Mary is no different. That's the mundane in the midst of the miracle, and I'm grateful to those Spanish carols for reminding us: "Boy, you may grow up to walk on water, but right now you're making a mess in it!'

But you know, another problem with superheroes is that they end up doing all the hard work themselves. You know how it is: you always gotta be saving those damsels in distress, pulling those babies out of the burning building. In the superhero story, humanity always ends up standing around like that stupid kid just staring dumbly at that out-of-control truck barreling down the road. This idiot kid who doesn't even have enough sense to get out of the road, and the superhero has to swing down and drag him to safety at the last minute, causing the truck to swerve and crash into something and blow up. Is that all we are in the Super Jesus story? Are we just that dumb kid in need of rescue? Is that what makes this night holy?

Ah, now there's a Christmas song, "O Holy Night." Maybe if I was a musician, I would understand why it is that that tune is so beautiful. I don't think it's just a matter of taste: there's something just empirically beautiful about that song. Yet somehow I only ever seemed to have heard the first verse of it, and maybe the second. But there's a third verse that I've never heard before last year, actually. It goes like this: "Truly he taught us to love one another. His law is love and his gospel is peace. Chains will he break, for the slave is our brother, and in his name all oppression shall cease." That's not about a superhero coming in to save the day. There's something different going on here. Humanity doesn't stand passively around while Jesus does all the work. We change. Our world changes. Truly he taught us to love one another, and in his name all oppression shall cease. The song has always brought tears to my eyes from its sheer beauty, but when I hear that verse, I just weep: sweet hymns of praise in grateful chorus raise we! My heart is broken open and I see the world around me differently: the slave is my brother! Oppression shall cease! Now that's a miracle!

And in all our lovely Christmas story that we know so well, with all the fantastical events and the cast of characters, that verse of "O Holy Night" makes me think above all of those shepherds. I mean honestly, folks, what's up with those shepherds? Why in the world would Luke put them in his story? Shepherds weren't the dregs of society, but it wasn't exactly a noble profession either. Shepherds were just the ordinary, everyday yokels. I'm a city girl, so I only know sheep by reputation, but from what I hear, they aren't exactly the smartest animals in the barnyard. Sheep are dumb, they're smelly, they require constant tending. You know, maybe they're not that much different from the dumb kid who can't get out of the way of the truck. We sometimes feel inclined to romanticize the shepherd's life, out there in nature where sheep may safely graze, playing on their little flute, but it's hard work. Out in cold rain and hot sun, far from your family, from daily life. We all feel like that sometimes, don't we? Who among us is the wise men, or King Herod? No, it's the shepherds we can relate to: we all have times when we feel like our work is tedious and hard and thankless. We all have times when we feel cut off from our loved ones, alone, surrounded by a bunch of stupid beasts. And they're the ones Luke picks to receive the good news.

Here are these shepherds, huddled together on a cold Bethlehem night, when out of the darkness comes celestial voices. Now we've all seen those movies, too, with the aliens showing up in the sky, and they immediately start shooting lasers and blowing up national monuments. No wonder the shepherds quake at the sight! But the voices share a different message, "Peace on earth, good will to all people." This, they say, is what "God with us" means, "Greetings, I come in peace." "Chains will he break, for the slave is our brother, and in his name all oppression shall cease."

And yet, is it really true? Forget the superhero miracles, can we really even believe this one? Have we really learned to love one another? Certainly oppression has yet to cease! But there's at least one carol that acknowledges that, in a verse that all too often gets left out: "Yet with the woes of sin and strife the world has suffered long, beneath the angel-strain have rolled two thousand years of wrong: and we, through bitter wars, hear not the love-song which they bring: O hush the noise and end the strife, to hear the angels sing."

Two thousand years of wrong, yet still we gather year after year, and tell this story of Immanuel, whose law is love and whose gospel is peace. That's the real Christmas miracle: that we still hope. We still believe that our babies will grow up to be healthy and happy, and we'll learn to love one another, and oppression shall cease. This holy night, hush and believe. Believe.

For lo, the days are hastening on, by prophet bards foretold, when with the ever-circling years comes round the age of gold, when peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendors fling, and the whole world send back the song which now the angels sing.

Merry Christmas, dear, dear friends. And happy new year.

Cause for Joy
Luke 1:46-55

11 December 2005

You can always count on "The Simpson’s" for good social commentary. There's a Christmas episode where the family goes to shop at their local discount megamart, Try'n'Save, which bears a huge sign reading, "In honor of our Savior's birth, Try'n'Save will be open 24 hours on Christmas Day." I couldn't help but think of that episode when I heard that there are some Christian groups that are boycotting certain stores like Sears and Target, complaining that their advertising has dropped any overt reference to Christmas, instead using the more ecumenical "holiday season." I don't quite get it: they want stores to use Jesus' birth for commercial purposes? I'm always a bit annoyed by the mix of business and religion: stores that display the Christian fish on their sign, my local Curves franchise plays Christian music for our workout. A restaurant near me flashes "Jesus Loves You" on their marquee on Sundays. It comes across to me as people using Jesus to sell their business, whether to attract a Christian clientele, or to satisfy so-called Christian tastes, and if people of other faiths don't like it, then can go to – well, you know.

But in all fairness, I do understand how these people probably see it themselves. They really believe that Jesus is good news, and they want to share that news with others. They aren't forcing anyone to patronize their business; it's not the Spanish Inquisition. Rather, they are using their resources to get the word out, to let their light shine for all to see. I can even sympathize with their zeal, but their tactics still disturb me. Playing Christian music in your store might indeed inspire some people of lukewarm faith to go back to church. Or perhaps it could even reach someone who grew up with no religion at all. But sometimes we forget that not every non-Christian is a blank slate when it comes to the faith. What about Jews who remember too many years of brutal oppression at Christian hands, or Muslims who hear Christian preachers denouncing their religion as terrorist, Hindus being told they worship pagan idols and Buddhist being told they don't worship anything at all? It seems to me that these guerilla evangelism tactics are at best shallow, and at worst they perpetuate ill will and even hatred toward people of other faiths.

Yet the Bible does call us to share the good news. And we wouldn't even have a winter break if it weren't for Christmas. Jesus is the reason for the season, even if our secular society is making it more generic. Are we losing sight of the Christ in Christmas? How do we proclaim the gospel in our multicultural society? Well, Jesus lived in a multicultural society, too. So let's revisit that Christmas story and see how it can enlighten us.

The Christmas story, we know, is about God reaching out to us. So picture, if you will, God sitting in her heaven and looking at the world. [I know it's anthropomorphic; I'm talking mythical, here. Remember what Marcus Borg said, "I don't know if it happened this way, but I know this story is true."] So picture God, looking at the world. What does she see? People fighting with one another. Abuse in families, persecution in societies, prejudice, war, people using the earth as a trash can. Things aren't going very well, and it's not at all how God had hoped things would turn out.

But hang on: how did God want things to turn out? What does our story tells us? Remember this summer when we talked about Genesis and Exodus. God created the world, and said that it was – [good.] There was a certain harmony in Eden, the peaceable kingdom. But we also saw how rapidly things went downhill, and how God tried several approaches to get us back on the right track. But none of them seemed to take, so at last God decided to pick one family and work on them until they got it right. And recall that God picked Abraham and Sarah so that "they might charge their children and their household to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice." And what constitutes righteousness and justice for God? Time and again we see throughout the Bible: hospitality to the stranger, justice for the orphan, compassion for the weak, welcome for the outcast.

But this plan hasn't worked out as well as God had hoped, either. Some people got the point, but others have used their expertise in God's "righteousness" to pass judgment on others, to set up a powerful structure of religion called the Temple and the priesthood and holy law, and they declare who is out and who is in. Their intention is good, but they condemn those whom they deem to be unholy, and in doing so, they commit the sin of Cain, murdering their brothers and sisters spiritually, and sometimes physically. For when people start passing judgment on one another, they substitute their own self-righteousness for God's compassion.

But God never gives up. So she decides to reach out to us in a special way, to become one of us, to walk among us and bring the message in person. [The less mythological among us can look at it the other way and say there was one person who really truly got it right, who embodied a true spirit of holiness in a special way. But people don't spring up from no where. They come from their parents, from their people with a history and a heritage. Indeed, that's the model God chose with Abraham and Sarah. So the Gospel of Luke tells Mary's story before getting to Jesus.]

So God contacts Mary to tell her this good news. [Or we could say Mary had a special epiphany about what God's justice and righteousness really was.] And while Mary is a bit doubtful at first, as soon as she commits to this course of action, she opens her mouth and begins to sing.

And friends, what a shocking song she sings! "God has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, and put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree. God has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich have been sent away empty." This isn't the song of the establishment, the elite – the Temple and priests and kings. No, this is the song of the outcast, a song of welcome and triumph. Mary doesn't sing about a God who is on the side of the self-righteous and judgmental, but about a God who is on the side of those whom the self-righteous and judgmental exclude.

Think about it: wouldn't it have made more sense for God to work through someone who had worldly power and authority? Like a pope or a president? But Jesus was born a poor nobody, and he never traveled more than 90 miles from his hometown, a town that was in the north, far from the center of power and near to those heretical Samaritans. It would be like God choosing a poor black man born in the projects of Detroit, or a Mexican girl from southside San Antonio. A poor carpenter was the last person anyone would listen to. Why would God do that? It doesn't make sense!

Unless…unless that was part of the message itself: that the Holy One isn't to be found where we expect, with the religious establishment. Rather, the Holy One shows up in the last place we would expect, in the ultimate outcast. Mary understood this when she sang, "God has sent the rich away empty, and filled the hungry with good things." The rich have their reward, but those who are hungry, whether spiritually or physically, will be filled. It's a song not of self-righteousness and judging your neighbor, but a song of welcome, of joy, of justice and peace.

That's the reason for the season. That's the good news we are excited to share. So to go back to our original question: how do we share it? One way, like the restaurant near me, would be to flash on our marquee, "Jesus loves you!" To play that Christian workout music and to display the fish on our sign. And it's a good enough message – but what about the folks who don't know Jesus? What about the folks who hear God speaking through Muhammad or Buddha, or another prophet? Sometimes there is a subconscious message in "Jesus loves you" that says, "I'm saved and you're not." Ironically, in trying to be welcoming – by using language that we already know – we may in fact be making others feel unwelcome and excluded. And friends, I don't have to tell you that there are in fact Christians who are unwelcoming and exclusionary to those who do not share their faith.

But what if we said instead, "I love you in the name of Jesus." This is what Corrie ten Boom did when she and her family hid Jews in their attic and helped them escape the Nazis. It's what those peacemakers who have been taken hostage in Iraq were doing. It's what millions of Red Cross workers throughout the world do. To say, "I love you in the name of Jesus" reminds us to be loving in our witness, not be flaunting our holiness, but by welcoming the stranger and the outcast. Like the song, "They'll know we are Christians by our love" – not by our fish symbol or by our stores advertising Christmas as opposed to the holiday season – but by our love.

Friends, I don't think it's the job of any business or chain store to proclaim that gospel. It's our business as people who have been touched by God through Jesus Christ. It is our business to spread the news that the angels came to share, of peace on earth and good will to all people. That is a message that's worth singing about.

God Still Speaks
Isaiah 64:1-9 and Mark 13:24-37

27 November 2005

About a year ago, the first of the UCC TV ads was launched. By now hopefully all of us are familiar with the “God Is Still Speaking” identity campaign. Many churches through out the UCC have embraced it, the Gracie Allen quote, the red and black colors, the comma. The best thing is that it’s not just a slogan. There’s actually some theological depth we need to unpack in this quote. The phrase “God is still speaking” is one that continually invites to think about what it means, to call us into more and more insight. It engages and challenges us.

So now we’ve been living with this phrase for a year, and we’re heading into a second year with it. This advent season is a good time to think again about what does it mean: “God is still speaking”? When I was home over the holidays, we were talking about the book “Under the Banner of Heaven,” about some Mormon fundamentalists who believed God was still speaking to them, telling them to murder their sister-in-law. The brothers refused a lawyer in their defense, claiming that God would speak for them. They were prophets. End of discussion. And one of the questions the book raises is whether or not saying that God speaks to you is in and of itself enough to qualify you as insane. Which raises interesting implications for our identity campaign!

So what do we mean when we say, “God is still speaking”? Is this merely a metaphor, that we don’t literally mean God speaks to us the way another person does? Or can it sometimes be literal? And if so, what does that mean? How does God speak to us? I don’t have to tell you how tricky it is to define the difference between God speaking, and the voices inside my head. How do I know it’s really God speaking, and not just me talking to myself? How can we tell the difference?

And another complication is that we so badly want God to speak. We look for meaning, for a guiding voice to show us what to do, to teach us what we need to know. The world is so mucky and complicated sometimes, and clarity is a good thing. We just wish Someone would explain it all. Surely even the most skeptical among us sometimes wish the Celestial Referee would step in and settle things for us. This is what Isaiah is talking about in our reading today, “Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and make yourself known!”

The book of Isaiah is not written all by one person in one time and place. Rather, it’s written by Isaiah and his later disciples, covering a period of many years, and these disciples lived during a terrible time for Israel, when a foreign power came in and conquered them. So the book of Isaiah spans to time before, during, and after the exile. This section comes from the time after, when the Israelites were allowed to go home after years abroad. They came back to find the land itself changed, the Temple destroyed, everything they had once known and loved gone. The prophet cries out, “Our holy and beautiful house where your ancestors praised you has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins.” (v. 11) It is a sense of deep loss and grief that prompts the prophet to cry out, “Would that you would tear open the heavens and make your name known to your enemies!”

In Mark’s gospel, too, Jesus talks about a time of loss and uncertainty. Last week we heard the story of the sheep and goats, which was Jesus’ last speech in Matthew. But this passage here in Mark is the last speech before Holy Week and Jesus’ death. At first hearing, this passage sounds like it, too, is full of all kinds of apocalyptic stuff, and people just love that kind of thing. These days it seems to be particularly popular with all these “Left Behind” series and so forth. And I have to confess that with all the global tragedies we have experienced this year, it kinda sounds like the trials and tribulations that Jesus seems to be talking about in this sermon. It’s hard not to see it all in an apocalyptic light, to see God’s hand somehow in these tragedies of tsunamis and earthquakes and hurricanes. It sounds like Isaiah’s cry to rend open the heavens with such a graphic display that everyone notices. If we’re looking for God to speak, the Bible seems to imply that this is exactly the kind of thing we need to pay attention to, right?

Except maybe not. If we read this speech more closely, we find that in the midst of all the horrors Jesus describes, he never says that God causes these things to happen. In fact, the chapter begins with the disciples admiring the Temple, and Jesus scoffs, “You think that’s impressive? Not one stone will be left upon another; it will all be torn down.” Sounds apocalyptic, right? So the disciples ask him, “What will be the sign of this happening?” But the first thing Jesus answers is, “Do not be deceived.” People will come, he says, claiming to be the Messiah, claiming that God is speaking to them, claiming to be able to interpret the signs of God’s presence in all these disasters, but beware. These will lead you astray, Jesus says. God is not speaking to them.

Instead, if we read this chapter carefully, we find that all these nasty things Jesus talks about are not signs of God rending the heavens and coming down in a blaze of glory. A tsunami is just a tsunami. A hurricane is just a hurricane. Avian flu is still just a flu. None of these are signs of the apocalypse; it’s just the way things are. Natural disasters happen. Even “wars and rumors of wars” (which sounds a lot like the Bush administration!) are not signs of God’s disfavor but are human responses, human disasters. God is still speaking, Jesus says, but the problem is that we’re listening for the wrong thing. We think God is in the apocalypse, but we’re just being led astray. We have to keep alert, like the doorkeeper on the watch, but we have to be careful that we don’t get distracted by the wrong thing, that we don’t mistake something else as God’s voice.

And what is the sign of God’s presence? How does God rend open the heavens and come down? We’re in that season right now: advent, when we anticipate the coming of God in a newborn child. Even here we’re tempted to get caught up in the wrong thing. Don’t let all the lovely stories of wise men and guiding stars and shepherd distract you. Because the whole point of the incarnation is that Jesus was a nobody. There were no apocalyptic signs at his birth. He was just a regular newborn, born to insignificant parents in a tiny hamlet. He wasn’t a king or a priest. He was not part of the establishment of power. He was the son of a carpenter and his wife. This squalling baby would grow up to do mighty things, would grow up to share God’s good news with us, but all these things didn’t happen because of guiding stars and angels. If we’re looking for fantastic signs, then we risk missing God’s actual appearance among us in an event quite ordinary and quiet.

That is how God speaks. Not in something extraordinary and loud. God speaks in the wail of a tiny infant. So don’t be led astray by wars and rumors of wars, by catastrophes and disasters. God isn’t there. Do not be caught unaware. Let us watch and wait, let us listen and learn.

God is still speaking.

Culture of Christ
Matthew 25:31-46

20 November 2005

Sometimes words in the Bible don't translate well into modern terms. Like last Sunday's parable of the talents. Today we certainly don't use that word as a unit of money! Or how about "ark"? We can guess that Noah's ark is a boat, but then what in the world is the ark of the covenant? It's not a boat, so what is it? Sometimes it seems like you need to be a biblical scholar just to even know what a story talks about.

There are other terms that we know, but they don't have quite the same association. Take "Christ the King." Today, the last Sunday in the church calendar, is actually "Christ the King" Sunday. Now, we know what a king is, but it has different associations for us today than it did for folk in biblical times. After all, we fought a war to get rid of kings. I don't know about you, but being the red-white-and-blue blooded American that I am, I tend to think of kings as tyrants. So to refer to Christ the King is not necessarily a good thing for me. But then, what other term could we use – Christ the President? Not only does it lack a certain ring, but, well, you can probably see the problems with that concept.

But it goes beyond what we're used to. Think about it: in Bible times, to call Christ "King" was to take over a title that someone else was already using. It was to say Henry VIII or Constantine aren't really the king, Christ is the real king. There was something kind of subversive about it in the old days. Oh sure, there were kings who tried to say, "I am the king in Christ's place, so you all have to obey me the way you would him," but there was always this subversive undercurrent warning kings, "You can't fool us; we know who the real king is around here, and you aren't it."

So what language can we use to get that same concept across today? Christ the President isn't satisfactory. Christ the Chairman of the Board? Christ the CEO? Christ the Scout Leader? None of those really work. I mean, Jesus isn't really about titles anyway. Take our parable here, what separated the sheep and the goats wasn't the title they used for Jesus. After all, none of them even recognized Jesus! Rather, it was about the way they acted toward others, the way they responded to the people around them. And in his teachings, Jesus didn't spend a lot of time talking about himself. Rather, he talked about the kingdom of God. Again, we don't relate to kingdoms any more than we relate to kings, but what Jesus was talking about in those parables was a way of looking at the world and at one another, a way of being and doing and thinking that was in contrast to the way people usually acted in the world. Something more like...a culture. Oooh. That sounds kinda good. We do talk about culture today – being multicultural, or about culture wars. Hmmm. Maybe we're on to something there.

I went to the dictionary, and it talked about "the training and refining of the mind, emotions, manners; the habits, skills, and concepts of a particular people in a particular time; improvement or development by study and training." That's starting to sound pretty close to what Jesus was about, I think. The culture of Christ, a new way of living and being in Christ. Yes, that sounds good.

And it has that subversive aspect to it, too. We all live in a culture, even a multicultural one, but this says we're in a new culture in Christ. And how might the culture of Christ be different from the culture of the world? What is the world's culture? [responses] That's a huge topic in and of itself, but why don't we start out by taking a look at what's on the TV? Commercials: consumerism, buying stuff, getting ahead. How about the TV programs? I got hooked on "Lost," about the survivors of a plane crash – but dude, all these people are young and good-looking! What kind of a plane were they on? Reality shows about competition (again between young, good-looking people), lots and lots of sex. The news is all about "home invasions" and car crashes.

Of course, the TV isn't our only source of culture, and there are good things in our culture. We do have concepts of fairness and equality, and helping each other out. But ultimately I don't think our culture looks too much like the culture of Christ. Think for a minute about Jesus' parables. What is Christ's culture like? [responses] Like our parable today – I don't think it's talking about charity, cleaning out our closets and giving our old clothes to Katrina victims, or tagging an extra dollar onto our bill at the grocery store for the food pantry. I think it's talking about generosity, sharing what we have with each other. What John Thomas calls "extravagant welcome." Joy, embrace, celebration, reconciliation. There's something almost foolishly bountiful about Jesus' parables: the guy sells everything he has to buy the field with the treasure in it. The father kills the fatted calf for his boy who ran off and squandered his inheritance on sex, drugs, and rock and roll. The mustard seed becomes an enormous sequoia that shelters all the animals. The fish and loaves that not only feed everyone, but have baskets and baskets left over. Crazy. Abundant. Bountiful. Does that sound like our culture in the richest nation in the world in which millions of children go to bed hungry every night and our war veterans can't afford medical care? Doesn't sound like it to me.

In our parable today, I never noticed this before one of the commentaries I was reading pointed it out: it's the nations that assemble before the judge. It's not individuals who are separated into sheep and goats, but nations – cultures. I suspect that every culture in our multicultural world is based on the notion of scarcity: there's not enough to go around so we have to horde what we've got, or fight others either to get more for ourselves or to keep them from taking it away. I have to protect what I have or there won't be enough for me. But the culture of Christ is about abundance: there's enough to satisfy everyone, and baskets more left over besides. Friends, if we really believed that, would we live differently in this world? Would we treat one another differently? What would we be like?

This week we celebrate Thanksgiving. It's when we celebrate the bounty of the earth that yields its fruit in its season, and we give thanks in recognition of the truth that ultimately everything we have is a gift. Oh, there's a dark side to Thanksgiving as well. We know that even while we're stuffing ourselves, there are many people who do not have food in this world. Even as we celebrate the pilgrims, we know that the history of whites and Indians in this land is largely one of tragedy and injustice. We know these things, and it is good to remember how we have too often lived that culture of scarcity of the world. There's an old Thanksgiving tradition of placing five grains of corn next to your plate to remember the first hard winter that the pilgrims endured, and it's good for us to continue that tradition, to remember those who have been left out of the bounty. Those five grains stand for the culture of the world, which says there are those who have and those who have not. But this Thanksgiving, at the end of the church year, let us remember that ultimately we belong to the culture of Christ, the culture of extravagant welcome, of abundant life, where our cups overflow, and there is always more than enough to go around.

Believing Makes It So
Matthew 25:14-30

13 November 2005

This is the last parable Jesus tells in Matthew's gospel. After this comes the Passion Week and Jesus' death. So maybe that explains some of the harshness of Jesus' final parables – he knew what he was about to go through and it put him in something of a bad mood. These are tough parables to deal with, because even if we make a morality tale out of them, like this one with the talents and say, "This is a stewardship lesson about using the gifts God gives us," which is a good enough lesson – but we're still left at the end with the master being so harsh to the third servant. I mean, the master is supposed to be God, right? And we are the servants? But the third fellow says, "I know you're a hard man, reaping where you don't sow, so I was afraid." I mean, that doesn't sound like God, does it? Worst of all, the master doesn't deny it! What the third guy did doesn't sound so bad to me. The master still got his money back. And after all, he hadn't even told the servants what to do with the money, so it doesn't seem very fair. And this ending: those who have will get more, those who have not will get it taken away. Sounds like compassionate conservatism to me!

But maybe we miss something when we rush to moralize this story. You know me: I don't like to just gloss over the troublesome parts. I like to wrestle with them and see what blessing can be found.

"Master, I knew you to be a hard man, and I was afraid!" In Luke's version, the master replies, "I will condemn you out of your own mouth!" Let's look at this for a minute. How do we know what the third servant says is true? After all, the master is pretty generous to the other two fellows, and while he doesn't deny what the third guy says, he doesn't exactly agree with it, either. So how do we know the third guy is right?

Well, let's try telling the story another way. There are three churches, each of them small and struggling to meet their budgets. The first one says, "We don't have a lot of money, but we're called to help others," so they generously give to missions projects. They don't give huge amounts, but they are known throughout the community to support many programs and never to turn away anyone in need. And despite its small size, the church flourishes and is alive.

The second church says, "We don't have a lot of people, but God can always use an extra pair of hands." Whenever there is a need in the community, the people from that church show up to help. Maybe only two or three of them, but folks know the members of that church will always show up. And this church, too, is filled with joy and excitement.

The third church says, "It's a hard world. What little time and money our members have to give, we need to spend just on keeping this church going. So they give only a few dollars to support one or two missions, and they always ask Second Church to come help clean out their gutters, but they never do anything in return. They live in constant fear that they'll have to close their doors, and sure enough, in time it comes to pass and the church is no more.

Now, is the third church being punished? The world appears to be as hard as they thought it was. It appears that they had good reason to fear for their future. But I wonder if they really had the right take on things. Are they being punished, or are they getting exactly what they expected?

It seems like I hear a lot of people talking about how God is just waiting to smite us. Pat Robertson, for example, who seems to see God behind every natural disaster. As if God is just sitting around waiting for us to slip up so She can send a hurricane at us, or hit us with some disease. To hear Pat Robertson talk, God is all about punishment and vengeance. Oh sure, he believes that God will be good to the righteous and shower them with rewards – but I suspect Pat's list of the righteous is a very short one. According to him, the precious few will be carried up to heaven while the masses of sinners will get burned up in a lake of fire, or some doomsday scenario out of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. Pat seems to believe that God is hard – can't show no mercy to no sinners. But I wonder.... Does he have the right take on the situation? Is this hard God Pat talks about really the God of Jesus? It doesn't sound like the God I read about in the Bible.

Now some people might say I'm a bit Pollyannaish. The world is a hard place, isn't it? They might say I'm too soft on sin, too permissive. But for all that Jesus sometimes preached about people being cast out into the outer darkness where there is much weeping and gnashing of teeth – but here's the thing: the parables end with people being cast out and rejected and punished, but in the Jesus story who is the one who ends up being cast out and rejected and punished? Funny thing – it's Jesus! Jesus, who is "reckoned among sinners," abandoned by his friends, condemned by his enemies, given the worst death sentence that the Roman Empire could dole out, hung on a cross with murderers and thieves. Yet Jesus used his last breath to forgive his killers. Jesus, who said over and over again, "I come not to condemn, but to save;" who said to the woman caught in adultery, "Does no one condemn you? Then neither do I." Jesus who said, "You must forgive seventy times seven times." Does this sound like a guy who would toss hurricanes at New Orleans because of Mardi Gras revelry?

The truth is that the good news is a message of absolute grace, everlasting love – not of punishment. But some people just don't want to believe that. They know that God is hard, and so they are afraid, and so their bury their gift of grace because they're afraid God is gonna get them. They withhold forgiveness from others because they fear otherwise there will be no forgiveness left over for them. They judge other people's sins harshly, hoping that it will distract everyone from their own sins. But the measure they give out is exactly the measure they receive in return. They show no grace, and so they receive none in this world. They forgive no one, and so in this world they receive no forgiveness, and their souls are cast into the inner darkness of punishment and fear. Not because God is really so vengeful, but because they can't imagine any other kind of God.

Fortunately for us all, the end of the parable, with its harsh master and its weeping and gnashing of teeth, is not the end of the gospel. Jesus takes the place of the condemned servant, and he gives the power of the resurrection to everyone who lives in fear of judgment and punishment. We are all redeemed, redeemed to live in the light of grace and mercy and love. And if we really, truly believe that, then we don't horde those talents, we share them freely, we invest them in the people around us, and we receive back double what we gave. Friends, to those who have, more will be given – not as a reward, but because love multiplies the more you share it. And to those who have not, even what they have will be taken away – not as a punishment, but because love will shrivel up unless it is spent.

This is the challenge of this parable. More than a call to steward ship, this parable challenges us to imagine a master who calls us into joy, a master who is generous and loving. This master is not hard at all. So let us believe, and let us hope, and let us dare. Amen.

The Greatest of These
1 Corinthians 13

Prayers for Justice and Compassion
30 October 2005

Odds are good that our scripture reading is familiar to you. It's a popular one to read at weddings, so it's probably quite appropriate that we should hear it today at this gathering, where we are all so concerned about equal marriage rights. But the very popularity of it is perhaps its downfall. We perhaps get a bit lulled into a kind of hallmark version of this "hymn to love" and we end up missing how radical it really is.

First thing to know is that this passage is not talking about marriage; nor is it talking about romantic love. Paul, who wrote this letter, was writing to a church in conflict. People were arguing about everything from church doctrine and scripture, to how believers ought to behave. And everyone was claiming righteousness on their side, and saying that the other side was a bunch of godless heathens, and only the people who voted for a certain candidate have family values, and.... Wait a minute. Am I talking about the church 2000 years ago, or the one today?

So Paul is trying to address this conflicted church, but he doesn't take either side. Instead he says, If I speak in tongues – that is, speaking messages straight from the mouth of God – but have not love, then I'm just a bunch of noise. If I have all knowledge and can quote Bible verses and scientific studies, and even if I have the greatest, strongest faith in the world but have not love, then I am nothing. That's some pretty strong language Paul uses, and it's not the way our debates today tend to get phrased, is it? Instead, we hear, "God told me..." or "The Bible says..." or even "Scientific studies say...." But Paul says that prophecies and knowledge and doctrine will all pass away, because we don’t have perfect understanding. We always have more to learn. Science is a bit better at this than religion, because in science everything has to stand up to testing. So over time theories develop and evolve and change as new knowledge comes to light. Alas, religion tends to say "everything we need to know, we learned back in the beginning, when humanity was in kindergarten, and all new knowledge and insight is a threat." So they point to the book of Leviticus, compiled over three thousand years ago, and say, "End of discussion!"

But not everyone sees religious truth that way. In the United Church of Christ we say, "God has more light and truth yet to break forth from God's holy word." Or in more modern lingo, "God is still speaking." Our understanding of scripture changes, our understanding of society and sexuality and yes, even marriage changes because we always have more to learn.

So it is important for us at this particular moment in history to pause and remind ourselves of this truth. The next nine days are going to be intense for us. We have great hopes for this election, but I also know we all have secret fears. I'm not even going to say it myself. But isn't it a bit sad, that the best we're hoping for right now is for things not to get worse? This election isn't about legalizing gay marriage after all. It's just about trying to keep things from getting worse. I hate to say it, but it's really kinda pathetic.

And that's why we need to hear these words from two thousand years ago, why we need to pause now and place this election in its proper context. Because quite frankly nothing is going to change one way or another with this election. This it not the beginning or the end, it's just a point on an ongoing journey. Whatever happens on November 8, one thing will remain, and Paul tells us what it is: love.

Friends, it feels like dark times. But every age has its challenges. Every age has its own hatred, its own form of prejudice and discrimination. In the past it was slavery and colonialism, women's rights and the labor movement. And it's not like we have solved all those problems. Freedom is a never-ending struggle. Today it's gay rights, and sometimes we get discouraged because it seems like we make no progress, that we even go backward. But friends, no matter what laws get passed or defeated, God still remains. I'm not talking about religion. We know religions are flawed. GLBT folk in particular know how people can do the most hateful, violent things in the name of religion. But we also know that there is something transcendent, greater than us, that some of us call God, and some give other names, but whatever we call it, it is an unshakable truth, an undefeatable love. And this truth, this love remains. This truth, this love still calls to us, and it will triumph. God still lives. God calls to us and extends to us a charge. And the voters in the state of Texas cannot take that away from us. Because the true task is to change people's hearts and minds. And you can't pass a law to change people's hearts and minds – although laws have their place. Martin Luther King said, I can't make you accept me, but I can pass a law to keep you from discriminating against me. But the ultimate task is to change people's hearts and minds, and we do that not through laws, but through love, a force which is even more powerful than law.

So in the coming days – and weeks and months and years and the rest of our lives – I want you to remember that sacred calling. And here is how we live out that calling: the first thing we must do is to lament. Yes, to lament. We heard two such laments, one from the psalms and one from the present day. Lamentation, mourning, grieving, is important because it's our outcry against the fact that things are not as they should be. Lament is draining, we'd rather be happy. We think lament is negative thinking, or depression or admitting defeat. It's none of these things. Rather, sacred lamentation is to recognize that all is not well, and to call on God to do something about it. "Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down! Do not keep silent, O God! Hear our cry!" It's right to be angry, even at God, and GLBT folk know all about that, too.

But what enables us to lament is faith. So the second step of your calling is to have faith. I don't mean 'get religion.' Faith does not mean believing in a doctrine. Faith means trust. Having faith in God means trusting in that transcendent truth. Trust that justice will prevail. Trust that love really is stronger than hate. The universe bends towards justice. It really does. Oh, sometimes it bends in the wrong direction, but the trajectory is always to greater justice, greater freedom, greater equality. Friends, you know this. Once that closet door is opened, it can never really be closed again. In my generation, people came out in college. Now they come out in middle school. The day will come. It really will come. So even as you lament the way things are, have faith, trust, and dare to hope that they will get better.

But above all in your calling, remember what Paul said: the greatest of these is love. And we heard earlier in the service why love is so important, why it must be primary. Because no one has ever seen God, but when we love one another, God lives in us and God's love is made perfect in us. Think about that! God needs us to love each other so that God herself will become perfect. So I order you to love. Love whom you love. Your partner, your children, your family, your friends. Start by loving who you love, and remember that loving is holy, sacred work, and no one can take that away from you. Love comes from God, and against this there is no law, not even the state constitution of Texas.

But secondly, love your enemies. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. That's hard, but it's the only way we move forward. After all, everyone loves whom they love, but not everyone has the courage to love their enemies. It may seem a bit unfair that you should endure such hate and be expected to love in return. And maybe you aren't strong enough to do it, and that's okay. God knows your heart. But I challenge you. You're stronger than you think. For when you love your enemies, then you become unstoppable. Nothing, nothing can defeat you. You will win. Because when we love our enemies, hearts and minds are changed. When we love our enemies, then no one loses.

Cry out against injustice. Keep the faith. And always, always love. Amen.

Choose
Deuteronomy 30:11-20 and Matthew 22:34-46

23 October 2005

When is a religion not a religion? Or to put it another way, what makes a religion a religion? Is it beliefs, doctrines? Or is it the practices and rituals? Is it the way the people pray or worship their god? Does there even have to be a god for there to be religion? Is it the presence of priests and temples – holy people and holy places? What might a religion look like if it had no doctrines or rituals, no priests or temples? Could such a thing exist? Would it even be possible to call it a religion?

Or let's look at it yet another way: is there a difference between religion and spirituality? Now we are perhaps getting a bit closer. Spirituality seems to be something a bit more personal, doesn't it? More about a personal relationship with God or with the sacred. Not really about doctrines or priests, but something internal, even private – intimate and profound. I think we can all agree that there is a difference between the two, and Americans as a whole prefer the latter to the former. Polls consistently show that some 95% or more of Americans profess belief in a deity, but we tend to be much more wary of organized religion. You may be familiar with the prayer, "O God, save me from your followers!" Most people admire Jesus; it's just Christians they can't stand.

We tend to make a sharp distinction between religion and spirituality, emphasizing the latter while downplaying the former. After all, it's much easier to find the hypocrisy and abuse in doctrines and rituals, priests and temples. And we all love to condemn hypocrisy! But we forget sometimes that spirituality has its own problems. Spirituality, that internal communion with holiness, when it is totally detached from outward forms like we see in religion, can end up as so much navel-gazing. When we're sitting around being Zen with God, what is there to challenge us, to push us to grow? What is there to remind us of our duty to others? Spirituality runs the risk of becoming totally private, removed from everyone else and the world around us.

Spirituality and religion are best when they go hand in hand, when that internal communion is embodied in outward signs. But how do we understand this relationship? How can we keep religion from being too formal, and spirituality from being too informal? Let us remember that all religions have their basis in spirituality, and let's look at two examples from the Bible about how the one is founded in the other.

We come now to the end of the first five books of the Bible, called the Torah in Judaism. The Lectionary conveniently skipped over all the rules and laws that Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai. Now after their forty-year journey, the people are standing at the threshold of the Promised Land. Moses is 120 years old and is about to die. However, he still has enough breath in his lungs to give a thirty-three chapter long speech before expiring. He recaps everything that has happened to the Hebrews during their journey, reviewing many of the (625) laws that he carried down from the mountain. And now he enters into his final remarks. Any good lawyer, politician or debater knows that this is when you pick your most important point and drive it home. Now, many of the laws Moses handed out had to do with priests and rituals and temples. But that's not what he emphasizes at the end. Instead, he says something rather remarkable. "The commandment I'm giving you today is not too hard, it is not far off – up in heaven or beyond the sea. It's very near you: in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it."

Think about it: this is somehow not how we tend to view religion. We tend to view religion as requiring special priests to go fetch that knowledge from far away, to bring it to us in particular rituals and doctrines. Religion is usually seen as something too important to be entrusted to the mere lay person. So the sacred texts are written in an ancient language that the average person can't understand. You have to receive special training in order to carry out the sacred duties and interpret the sacred texts. Even in our good old Protestantism, we often say that only ordained (i.e. specially chosen and trained) ministers can perform the sacraments, and of course if there is a minister in the room, then no one else would dream of leading a prayer! Oh we claim to believe in the priesthood of all believers, but even we tend to venerate the clergy as members of a special "holiness club."

But that's not what Moses says: It is in your mouth and in your heart so that you can do it for yourselves. In fact, that starts to sound a lot like spirituality.

But then he goes back to rules. "I have set before you life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments which God has given, then you will live." Now if you recall, they got those commandments by someone specially chosen who went up – maybe not all the way to heaven, but who went up on top of a mountain – and brought the rules back down to them. So this seems to contradict what Moses has just told them about it not being hard or far off. And much of the last three books of the Bible have been concerned with these elaborate and very detailed rules. So people throughout subsequent history have been tempted to say, "See, religion is all about following the rules, obeying these commands that were handed down to us by the great priest."

And indeed we see that going on today, in which gay marriage is just the latest example: people pointing to these ancient and specific rules as if in and of themselves they contain the secret to holiness. They point to those Leviticus laws about "a man shall not lie with a man," etc., as if such rules mean something in and of themselves. We're just supposed to follow those rules without question, even if that means we categorically condemn entire groups of people as incapable of being holy.

But any rule, no matter how well intentioned, can be abused. Moses knew that, the prophets knew it, and so did Jesus. When he entered Jerusalem for the final act of his ministry – much like Moses delivering his sermon in Deuteronomy – Jesus focused on the key point of his message. The Pharisees, who were paying very close attention to him, wanted to test him. Now the Pharisees are not quite the bad guys that we tend to see them as. The Pharisees were the popularizers of their day. They took Moses' teaching that it's not hard or far off to heart. They said that any good Jew could keep all the commandments for themselves, and didn't have to rely so much on the priests and temple rituals. They wanted to make Judaism available for all.

But as often happens with organized religion, the medium sometimes became more important than the message. In their zeal to have every Jew follow the commandments, they could get a bit judgmental about how those commandments were followed. So Jesus shows up in Jerusalem, and the Pharisees want to know if he is on their side or not. They test him out by asking, "By what authority are you doing these things?" And Jesus responds with some very provocative parables, about the man with two sons, and the vineyard tenants who attacked the landlord, and the wedding banquet. They quiz him on taxes and marriage laws – not unlike what Christians today worry over. And finally, because they love those commandments so much, they ask him which one is the most important. And you know what he says, "To love your God and to love your neighbor."

Now the Pharisees ought to have known that too. And they *did* know it; they acknowledged that Jesus was correct. But somehow his answer didn't quite satisfy them, because they wanted to focus on laws and holiness, and Jesus said the answer is just love. The greatest law is love, and anytime we do anything that's not loving, even when we're following all those 625 laws, then we're not following God's commandment.

Today there are a lot of people who talk about Biblical values. But funny thing: they really seem to be referring to rules. It's all about how people shouldn't get divorced, and women should submit to their husbands, and gay people shouldn't love each other. They seem to only hear the part of Moses' speech about obeying all God's commands. But they miss the part about the greatest commandment being love. In Jesus' day, he was accused of being anti-religious, because he placed love and forgiveness over following the letter of the law. He wasn't anti-religious. He saw the fulfillment of the law as love. Choose between life and blessing, death and curse, and what is it that gives us life and blessing? It's not laws, it's love. The laws, the commandments, the rituals and the religion are all there to help us follow that way of love. All laws must be interpreted through that lens of love. Does our religion make us more loving? Does it lead us to love God and love our neighbor? Then it is good, infused with the necessary spirituality to breathe life and blessing into our rituals and yes, even our rules. But if we let those laws become more important than love, then we are in fact following the path of death and curse.

You want Biblical values? They are not too hard or far off. It's in our mouth and in our heart. The greatest Biblical value is love.

Holy Land or Living Stones?
Exodus 33:12-23

16 October 2005

It was very late when the young woman's plane finally landed. The passengers disembarked from the plane the old-fashioned way, by a rolling staircase that had been pushed up next to the door. As she descended the stairs and set foot on the tarmac, she thought, "I'm in the Holy Land. I'm in Israel." But something seemed off about her arrival. Shouldn't she feel some kind of sacred shiver? Shouldn't there be a holy perfume in the air? But the only incense that greeted her was gasoline fumes, No angel choruses, no guiding stars – other than the illuminated "international arrivals" sign. This might be the Holy Land, but the airport looked like any other on earth.

She followed the crowd of weary passengers into the terminal. The plain, concrete building bustled with activity inside. Most of the people there looked quite ordinary, too, not unlike the people she'd left behind in her own country. But some things were different. Seated on an uncomfortable plastic chair, a woman wearing a long, shapeless gown and a headscarf held the hand of a little girl in a pink taffeta dress. Next to a row of vending machines, a group of men talked together, wearing overcoats and black hats, long curled locks of hair at their ears. And all around was the rather disturbing sight of young people in military uniform, striding with automatic weapons tucked under the arms, the way other people packed the latest John Grisham novel. The men wore tiny yarmulkes stuck to their heads with plastic hair clips.

At last she spied a young skinny man, scarcely older than she was, holding a sign with her name on it. He turned out to be the nephew of the Christian Arab Palestinian Israeli priest who had invited her to come. Their exchange of greetings seemed to exhaust his knowledge of English. He took her suitcase from her and let her out to the parking lot where his car was waiting. She got into the front seat and he fired up the engine. Immediately the cassette player blared Madonna, but not the religious one. "Living in a Material World" seemed like a strange anthem for Israel. The priest's nephew flashed her a grin, and they were off. She eyed the speedometer. 160 kilometers per hour. She wasn't sure what that was in miles. In fact, she'd rather not know, given that the someone had removed the seat belts, perhaps figuring that the excess weight would slow the car down too much.

As they drove through the night, she stared out the windshield at the twenty feet of asphalt visible in the headlights, and wondered what she was doing there. She'd met the priest a year ago, when he was speaking about the school he'd founded for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, Palestinians and Israelis alike. Playing on the American fear of terrorism, he'd held open his jacket and said, "See? No bombs!" His story had moved her deeply, and when she'd asked what she could do to help, he said, "Come visit my school in Galilee. Tour groups come and look at the dead stones, but I will show you the living stones."

So she had come. She liked to think that she had dropped her fishnet and answered the call of this holy man the way the disciples had done two thousand years ago, not far from where she would be staying. But that seemed a little arrogant. "This is Israel," she thought as she stared at the highway unrolling before her. "I'm in the Holy Land." But if it really was holy, why did she have to keep reminding herself of it?

The next morning she was woken bright and early by the sound of children's laughter echoing off concrete. She pulled aside the curtain of her window and looked down in the courtyard below. She was staying at the school in a guest room, and gathered below were the children enrolled in the summer program, chasing each other, kicking a soccer ball back and forth, and acting like any other group of kids. "What do you do at the summer camp?" she asked the priest at breakfast. It was the Holy Land, after all. Summer camp must be the ultimate Vacation Bible School.

"Oh, we play games," the priest said. "Do crafts, take field trips. I hope you brought a bathing suit, because today we're going to the swimming pool."

She had not brought a bathing suit. She hadn't considered that the Holy Land might have swimming pools. She'd expected to be doing something more, well, holy while she was here. Isn't that what you did in the Holy Land?

But her lack of a suit did not excuse her from the field trip, and she boarded the bus with all the kids eager to practice their English on her. "Hello! Good morning! How are you? What is your name? Where are you from?"

And sure enough, they arrived at a swimming pool, concrete painted blue, water chlorinated enough to burn your eyes right out of their sockets. The boys showed off for her, vying for the attention of this exotic foreign woman, while the girls sat around laughing at the boys, covering their giggles with their hands. They played in the pool and ate a picnic lunch, and afterward they all stretched out on the grass for a nap, including the priest, who lay flat o his back, his belly round from shish kabob, his salt and pepper beard curled around his neck like a blanket. And she was left to wonder again, is this what I came here for? These living stones that play in the pool and drink Coca-Cola? And she couldn't help but feel a little bit disappointed.

The rest of the week was much the same: dancing with kids at a party, roasting potatoes in a bonfire, and visiting people. Everyone invited her to their home, where extended families of aunts, uncles, cousins, and sibling would gather in the parlor or on the porch. and sit around smiling at her. Apparently no one spoke English, and she spoke no Arabic. They served her coffee in tiny cups, brown sludge so thick you could stand a spoon in it. She'd never had coffee before, but the sportingly drank those tiny cups down the last dregs of fine grounds layered in the bottom of the cup like silt. Her hosts took this as a sign that she really liked the stuff and filled her cup again.

What was she accomplishing here in these awkward visits where everyone smiled and no one spoke? She didn't feel like an ambassador of peace. She wasn't learning anything about the local culture. And the priest didn't want to take her to any of the holy sites. It felt like her special trip was being frittered away with these social niceties. What would Jesus do? Surely something more than sitting around drinking Arabic coffee.

After a week of this, she said to the priest, "I don't mean to complain, but I'd really like to go to Jerusalem and see at least some of the sights. I may never come here again. I don't want to waste my chance in the Holy Land."

He studied her in silence for a moment. Any longer, and it would have felt disapproving, but he quickly smiled and agreed, "I have to meet with the bishop there anyway. I'll take you tomorrow."

So she rose the next morning, very early while it was still dark. Surely she'd read something like that in the Bible somewhere. At last she would see the sacred places! David's city! The streets where Jesus walked! She could scarcely contain her excitement.

The priest dropped her off at the Damascus gate entering the old city. Such a romantic name! Such a beautiful sight, the yellow limestone walls glowing in the morning sun! She skipped down the worn steps to the great stone gate. However, no sooner had she stepped through the gate than she found herself once more in a place that resembled Madonna's material world more than any holy pace. Vendors lined the streets selling everything from cooking utensils to t-shirts reading "Hard Rock Café – Jerusalem." She felt like Jesus in the Temple with the moneychangers.

The narrow streets wound through the old city like a deep, meandering canyon. Somewhere above, the sky was blue and clear, but down at street level it smelled like sweat and overcooked lamb's kabob, and things she didn't really care to identify.

After several wrong turns, she found her way to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, housing the place where Jesus was crucified and buried. The Holy of Holies at last! It was an old boxy building, shoulder to shoulder with the houses around it. It scarcely seemed gig enough to hold both Calvary and the tomb. She was enough of a skeptic to doubt the location anyway, but generations of pilgrims had made it a tradition. She escaped the heat and slipped into the cool shade of the church.

Here at last was the incense, so think it choked her and stung her nose. As her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, she saw candles everywhere, and dark shapes of orthodox monks moving among the more colorful tourists like black ghosts. Icons stared down from the walls, blackened by centuries of candle smock. She wandered around in the crowded sanctuary, confused about what this place was supposed to be. Instead of tranquility she found clutter. Instead of holiness, smog. At last she found herself in a particularly dark corner staring up at a large, flat tin Jesus, decorated in garish gold leaf. A small plague on the wall, almost hidden by the icons, read "Calvary" in seven different alphabets. She stared up at the tin Jesus, his eyes rolled skyward as if begging God to take him away from this dark and crowded place. She remembered the blue sky and fresh air of Galilee, and felt a bit sorry for him.

Nearby a monk placed some fresh incense on a brazier, sending a cloud of noxious smoke wafting through the church. She'd had enough. Shouldering her way through the crowd, she made it back outside to the familiar sent of roasted lamb kabob. The crowd swept her up and carried her back to the Damascus gate, where she bought a key chain that read "souvenir of the Holy Land." It seemed the thing to do. She lowered herself onto the steps, giving her tired feet a rest, and watched the people coming and going through the ancient gate, carrying the day's shopping home.

A honking car horn interrupted her vigil. It was the priest, come to take her home. As she got into the car, he asked, "So what did you see?"

"Dead stones," she said.

The priest nodded. "Well then. Let's get back to the living ones."

Moses said, "Show me your glory, I pray." And God said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name. I will be gracious on whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But you cannot see my face, for no one can see me and live."

She stood in a cleft in the rock, only a narrow strip of the outside world visible to her. Kids playing in a swimming pool, people who could scarcely speak her language but who welcomed her into their homes, and more lamb kabob than you could eat in a lifetime. She could not see God's face, but she could see the faces of God's people. She did not find the Holy Land, but she found mercy and graciousness in the bottom of a cup of thick, sweet coffee. The glory of God was there all the time, but you have to drink the coffee to find it.

Calvary: http://world.std.com/~rickter/israel/365.jpg

Church of the Holy Sepulcher: http://www.dfms.org/images/IS_holy_sepulchre_tn.jpg, http://www.christusrex.org/www1/jhs/JHS-yard.jpg

Galilee: http://www.twilliam.f9.co.uk/General%20Photos/Galilee/images/Galilee%20View.jpg

The priest, Elias Chacour: http://www.firstpreswheaton.org/news/chacour/Chacourw.jpg

The school: http://www.p2pezine.com/entry1.jpg

The living stones:
http://www.middle-east-online.com/pictures/big/_6625_palestinian-school-children-1-8-2003.jpg
http://www.enlighten-palestine.org/icons/children_pic.jpg

Sacred Cows
Exodus 32

9 October 2005

We’ve all been in this situation. People are discussing a moral issue of the day, and someone says, “Well, I’m a Christian, and I believe…” or “I’m a Christian, and the Bible says….” No matter what the issue, it gets presented as if there is a Christian view, and a non-Christian, or even anti-Christian view. Even those who are not Christian know what the Christian view is. What’s the Christian view on abortion? Opposition. On prayer in schools: approval. On giving Creation Science or Intelligent Design equal time with evolution: approval. On gay marriage: opposition. The assumption is that these are the Christian positions. So what then about those of us who are Christian and yet who hold a different view? Well, you know how it goes: you’re put in a position of having to explain how you as a Christian can hold a secular, anti-Christian view! You’re told that if you were really a Christian, you’d read your Bible and know exactly what it says. If you were really a Christian, you wouldn’t be swayed by so-called political correctness, letting yourself be influenced by whatever is the current secular fashion. These ardent crusaders don’t listen to you, they don’t want to hear how you base your position on your own faith, on your own reading of the Bible. In fact, they don’t try to persuade you to their perspective. Rather, they try to convert you. “If you knew Jesus, then you’d understand.”

The problem with this way of thinking, of course, is that it assumes there is only one Christian view, only one right view. And that view is God’s; it’s absolute; it allows for no discussion or debate. That way of looking at things is so antithetical to our practice in the United Church of Christ that it sometimes makes us UCCers wonder if we’re really Christian at all. Even we sometimes concede that their view is Christian, Biblical, orthodox – but then where does that leave us? It seems to leave us outside the faith.

And that’s precisely the problem, because whenever we come to think that there is only one correct view, and when we identify that view with God’s, then we view all those who disagree with us to be on the side of the devil. And this absolute view, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, gives us license to wage holy war against these blasphemers. We are free, even obligated, to use any means necessary to cut down these anti-Christs, because God’s (read: our) view is righteous.

Unfortunately, there are many stories in the Bible that seem to support such an absolutist view, and we’ve heard some of them today. Let’s look first at our Exodus story.

Moses was up on the mountain, receiving the Ten Commandments, or two plus corollaries. Then several chapters go by of Moses receiving all kinds of other rules, about what to do when people let their goats graze in someone else’s field, and God’s decoration plans for the tent of the holy presence. Moses spends so much time up there that the people start to get worried. They ask Aaron to make a god for them, and they all have a big feast and a party.

In the Charleton Heston version of the story, they people all engaged in drunken revelry and orgies like something out of “Animal House,” and that has been the common interpretation of this story. But that’s not what the Bible says. All it says is that they “sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.” Keep in mind something else: Moses had not yet come down with the commandments. They hadn’t yet heard the stuff about “no other gods and no graven images.” Rather they were worried that Moses had disappeared, and they wanted to worship God and keep on track, so they did it the only way they knew how: from what they’d learn from the Egyptians. They were wrong, but in their own defense they had not yet learned anything otherwise.

Meanwhile up on the mountain, God, who knows everything, knows what is up downstairs. God gets furious and rants, “I’m gonna wipe them all out and start over again with just you, Moses!” in much the same way that God had done back in Genesis 12 with Abraham. Forget everyone else and just focus on one person.

But Moses talks God out of this plan. Remember what I said before, about how the Bible still contains stories of a violent and vengeful God, but that we must look at the larger picture of the Bible to see that that’s not really who and what God is. God is the greatest good that we can imagine, not this hot bloodthirsty killer. So Moses appeals to God, “Hey, this isn’t what you are! You were going to make a name for yourself throughout the world: a God of justice and mercy, not a God of revenge and violence!” And God repented of the evil God had thought to do to the people. That’s the real God right there: the God who repents of evil, not the god who smites everybody.

Our Lectionary selection ends there, but there’s more to the story, and it’s very significant. Moses goes down the mountain to confront the people, and the very guy who has just talked God out of violence now takes on that wrath himself. His anger “burned hot,” he smashed the tablets, tears into Aaron, and then calls out, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Come to me! God has said that everyone should grab a sword and “slay every man his brother, and his companion and his neighbor.” It’s the sons of Levi, the priestly class, who answer this call, and they kill three thousand people that day. And Moses says, “Today you have ordained yourselves for the service of the LORDkeach at the cost of his son and his brother.”

Now hold on! Just what in the world is happening here? God had just repented of violence, and now Moses is claiming God wants this bloodbath? And notice that he doesn’t call them to kill the wrong-doers, he just calls them to go out and kill people – even their own brothers, repeating Cain’s sin, even their own sons, repeating Abraham’s. Is this inconsistent? If you read it literally, it seems to be. If you read it literally, then you end up with a God who initiates random violence. But is this our God? Is this the God who repented of such evil?

Another way to read it is that Moses was acting on his own initiative. He took that role of God’s vengeance on himself – a role that God actually rejected. He committed a horrific crime, setting brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor, and he gave it the aura of sacred violence. Friends, we’ve seen this before, countless times throughout history. People projecting their own views, their own hates on God, and wreaking holy vengeance in the name of this false God. The Bible itself sometimes succumbs to the temptation, yet it also holds this alternative theme, of a God who repents of such violence. The Bible itself tends to reject such a vengeful idea of God.

And here's another clue about this alternative view of God: Moses dies before reaching the Promised Land. The reason given in the Bible is that it was punishment for Moses' arrogance at Meribah, where the people cried for water. God told Moses to strike a rock with his staff, and water would flow out. But Moses twisted God's command, making it look like he himself worked the miracle. Now this seems like a rather piddling thing to earn him such severe punishment – but isn't that the exact same sin he's working in this story of the golden calf? Moses, who talked God out of wrathful vengeance, takes God's vengeance on himself, calls on the Israelites to murder each other. He usurps God's rightful place, and does so by unleashing one of the most horrific crimes imaginable. Now that, it seems to me, is a great enough sin to perhaps merit keeping him out of the Promised Land.

One more clue, lest we think that Moses and his band of thugs were justified. The people who answered Moses' call were Levites, members of the priestly tribe. This might look like what they did was holy, and so Moses seems to say at the end. But back in the book of Genesis, at the end when Jacob gives his final benediction to his sons, this is what he has to say about Levi: Simeon and Levi are brothers; weapons of violence are their swords. May I never come into their council; may I not be joined to their company – for in their anger they killed men, and at their whim they hamstrung oxen. Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel!"

So the underlying message of this apparently brutal and bloodthirsty story is that God repents of such evil. And if God repents of it, then for any of us to take on such vengeance in God's name is to commit a horrible sin: to violate those two commandments we talked about last week, to love God and love our neighbor.

We don't usually encounter such severe misuse of people killing others in the name of God – though it certainly does happen, and even in this country. But we do encounter it quite frequently in this milder form: of people passing judgment on one another, condemning the people who disagree with them. The fact of the matter is, Christians of good faith differ on just about every subject under the sun: on how to conduct baptism, for example, or who should receive communion. If we disagree over such ritual questions, why should it be any surprise, then, that we disagree over theological and social issues, like abortion, the death penalty, and gay marriage? The Bible itself reflects conflicting views on all kinds of issues, so why should the community of faith not continue to do so today? It is no sin to disagree. It is no sin to take opposing viewpoints. But it is a sin, and a very grave one, to condemn others solely for disagreeing with you. It is a sin to pass judgment on people with a differing view. And it is a horrible, evil sin to kill anyone in the name of God's vengeance, for God repents of such evil.

So next time you find yourself in a situation where someone is trying to claim that your position is not Christian, stand up for yourself.

The Greatest Commandments
Exodus 20: 1-17

2 October 2005

Next month the people of Iraq will be voting on a new constitution. Whatever you may think of our President or the Iraq War, if a democracy can emerge from it, that is a good thing. But Iraq is a grand experiment: how can people who have lived under tyranny learn democracy? How can people who have never had free choice, who have never been allowed to determine the course of their own future, learn to make such decisions?

Modern-day Iraq, of course, is not the first time a people has been faced with such a difficult task. Moses encountered it, too, with the group of slaves he brought out of Egypt. We’ve already seen how they were sorely tempted to turn around and head right back into slavery where at least they knew when their next meal was coming. Moses needed to find some way, using this mysterious God “I Am” to teach these people how to be something different, how to act and think and live in a different way – as free people. His attempt at it has been preserved to us as the Ten Commandments. The stone tablets on which they were originally inscribed are long worn down into dust, but those ten commandments remain with us to this day, whether they hang on the walls of public schools and courtrooms or not.

While I do believe in separation of church and state, the Ten Commandments are surprisingly non-religious. Yes, there’s the bit about “no other gods” and not taking the Lord’s name in vain, but these really aren’t doctrinal statements They don’t talk about beliefs, and the only ritual practice mentioned is to observe the Sabbath – which you observe by doing nothing. If Moses if founding a new religion here, he’s being surprisingly non-religious about it.

In fact, these Ten Commandments can even be further condensed into two: the first one and the last one. I’m not going to quiz you on all the commandments, but I bet you can name the first one. [You shall have no other gods before me.] The next three – or four – can be seen as an elaboration of that one: no graven images, don’t take God’s name in vain, honor the Sabbath, and even honoring your parents. What it all boils down to is giving God the respect that is God’s due – and honoring nothing else with that same level of reverence. The point of the “no other gods” command is to keep us from putting anything else, anything less worthy, on God’s level. Hang on to that thought, because we’ll come back to it later.

First let’s go on to the remaining five. Does anyone remember what the very last commandment is? “Do not covet.” More to the point, do not covet your neighbor’s house, spouse, servants, livestock, or anything else belonging to your neighbor. Now think about this: if the first commandment is the sum of the first five, the last commandment is the sum of the last five. Not sure about that? Then just think about what would happen if we all freely coveted the things that belonged to our neighbors. Adultery, theft, telling lies about each other, even murder. What lies at the root of all those crimes is desire for what our neighbor possesses.

We humans are creatures of imitation. Instinct is one thing: we all have instincts for food, shelter, sex, and so forth. But if that were all, then we would all be content enough so long as those needs are met. But wants are something different. We want more. But how do we know what to want? We learn it from the people around us, our neighbors. We can see this clearly illustrated in those miniature humans known as preschoolers. Sally is playing in one corner of the room with some blocks, and Billy is playing in another corner with some crayons. What happens? Billy sees Sally playing with the blocks and wants to play with them. He goes over and takes them away from her. Fortunately preschoolers seldom engage in murder and adultery, but theft and false witnesses is something they know all about. But what if Sally willingly gives up her blocks to Billy and goes off to play with the crayons instead? Billy will want the crayons. We want what our neighbors have. This is the fundamental principle that drives the marketing business – indeed, that probably drives all business. They show us images on TV of happy, good-looking people using Lysol pine cleaner, and we all want it. Keeping up with the Joneses. Coveting the Joneses’ goods. It’s basic to

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