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Handmaiden of the Lord - 12/21/03 The
Handmaiden of the Lord 21 December 2003 We Protestants don’t deal much with Mary. Historically, we’ve been leery of Catholicism’s glorification of her. It starts to sound a bit like deification, so we’ve downplayed her role, which means the only time of year we ever hear much about her at all is at Christmas. But what kind of an image of Mary does that leave us with? Mary with downcast eyes and a demure smile, holding the infant Jesus in her lap. A warm, fuzzy, domestic image to be sure, but one that ignores Mary’s later role in Jesus’ adult life and ministry. At least the Catholics remember that Mary outlived her son. We Protestants forget that before Mary was a mother, she was a disciple. Let’s look closely at her story as Luke tells it, because he gives us the most complete picture we ever have of her in the gospels. Now, the Bible is full of miracle births, but they are overwhelmingly stories of barren women past their child-bearing years who miraculously conceive late in life. Sarah and her son Isaac, Hannah and Samuel, even Elizabeth and John as told in Luke’s gospel. These stories of miracle births have many layers of meanings: God giving life where there was no life, fertility where there was barrenness. Women who would have been scorned for their inability to have children now singled out for God’s special favor, given their heart’s desire of a son, the only way for a woman in those days to achieve status in her society. Those miracle births are about shamed women being raised to honor. Any of these women might well sing those famous words, “My soul magnifies the Lord for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” But they aren’t the ones who sing that song. Mary is. Yet Mary’s story doesn’t fit this typical paradigm of a miraculous birth. What is so miraculous about a recently engaged young woman who becomes pregnant and has a baby? Isn’t that rather, well, normal? Even if the months don’t quite add up, it’s still the kind of thing that we would expect to happen. It certainly has happened countless times throughout the centuries. We moderns may turn up our noses about the notion of a virgin birth, but in truth, it’s Elizabeth who experiences the miracle pregnancy in this story, isn’t it? Indeed, why would Mary sing, “God has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant?” Pregnancy is great news to Elizabeth, but it wouldn’t be for a young woman whom everyone would expect to be fertile, but whom they would not be expecting to be pregnant before she’s actually married. No doubt the family and neighbors greeted the news of Elizabeth’s pregnancy with great celebration, but aren’t they likely to be skeptical of Mary? Isn’t this miraculous event more likely to cause major problems in Mary’s life, as a source of shame rather than honor? Actually when I reread this passage, I was rather surprised to realize that Mary’s famous song of praise does not happen immediately after she receives the good news. Rather, Mary is very subdued and reserved throughout the angel Gabriel’s visit. Remember the story? Gabriel shows up and says, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you!” But Mary is no idiot. She’s just a young peasant girl, hardly worthy of such recognition, and Luke says, “She was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.” When Gabriel tells her of God’s plan for her to conceive and bear a son, she shrewdly asks, “But how can this be, since I am a virgin?” See: we moderns aren’t the only skeptical ones! Even when Mary finally agrees to the plan, her words are still rather passive and unenthusiastic: “Let it be with me according to your word.” No raptures of faith here. No joyful ecstasy. Mary knows she has agreed to something very important. This is God’s messenger after all. But she also knows that her decision could have dire consequences. The fact that she agrees gives testimony to her faith that God will make it all work out somehow, but Mary has to be anxious about her future. She’s read her Bible. She knows that being chosen isn’t necessarily a blessing. It doesn’t always mean things will go well for you. Yet she does agree. And that is why Mary’s significance is not that she was Jesus’ mother, but that she was a faithful disciple. And what was it that made her decide to agree? When she asked the angel how all this was supposed to happen, Gabriel responded by telling her what had happened to her cousin Elizabeth. “She who was called barren is now six months pregnant. For nothing will be impossible with God.” It’s only after Mary hears this that she agrees. Is it because now she believes miracles can happen? Or is it because she learns that someone else has said Yes to God’s plan? The story immediately continues with the selection we read today. Mary no sooner agrees, than she packs up and goes to the hill country to visit Elizabeth. She doesn’t appear to ask permission of anyone to take this trip, neither her parents, nor her fiancé Joseph, who has yet to make a personal appearance in the story. It’s significant that she undertakes this journey alone, for ultimately this pregnancy is Mary’s decision alone. It is a result of her own discipleship, yet she does what all young women who are pregnant for the first time do: she seeks out a maternal figure, a close friend who is also pregnant. Pregnancy is a terrifying time. You’re afraid about what’s happening to your body, what changes this child will mean in your life. You worry about whether the baby will be deformed or ill, or that he will grow up to be a criminal or a thief. You worry that he might one day get killed. Pregnancy is horribly frightening. And in addition to all the usual fears, Mary is also concerned about what people will think of her. Will her fiancé reject her? Will her family cast her out into the street? So it is Elizabeth she visits first, almost like a test run. She goes to the one person who might possibly understand what she is going through, what this decision means. Much depends on how Elizabeth will react. Will she be angry? Will she refuse to believe Mary’s story about an angelic visitor? Will she express concern and reservation? Will she say, “Child, what have you gotten yourself into? Did you think this through? Do you have any idea what trouble you might be getting into?” Mary has made her decision, but has done it alone. She wants someone to confirm this decision for her, to assure her she made the right choice. The way of God is very hard when you have to walk it by yourself. But as it turns out, Mary never gets the chance to tell Elizabeth her news. As soon as Elizabeth hears Mary’s greeting, she knows. She knows, and she shouts with joy – with a loud cry, as Luke notes, so that all the neighbors can hear. “Blessed are you among women! When I heard your voice, the child in my womb leapt for joy!” Mary couldn’t have asked for a better reception than this. She doesn’t have to ponder what sort of greeting this might be. It was the greeting she most wanted to hear, the confirmation she needed, a raucous, “You go, girl!” And it is then – and only then – that Mary opens her mouth and begins to sing, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. For he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” She’s made the right decision. She’s on the right path. This is indeed the work of God. And it is a blessing. Many years later, when he is about to begin his own ministry, Jesus will seek out his cousin John, much as Mary sought out Elizabeth. Perhaps, like Mary, Jesus knows the way will be hard. Perhaps, like Mary, he knows that this task could have disastrous consequences. Perhaps, like Mary, he’s made his decision, but he needs confirmation of it. So he will go to John, and he will be baptized, and the heavens will open up and a voice will say, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.” John in his ministry prepared the way for Jesus, just as Elizabeth prepared the way for Mary. We must each make our own decision to be disciples, but we also need the confirmation of those who come before us. This is the story of Mary, a young woman of Galilee. She is more than a mother. She is a disciple of God. Amen. Do
You See What I See? 7 December 2003 In a small Maori community in New Zealand, a chief anxiously waits as his son’s wife goes into labor to bear the child he hopes will be the leader he has been waiting for. The woman delivers twins, a boy and a girl, but the strain was too great, and the woman and the boy both die. Distraught, the chief’s son runs away, leaving his infant daughter in the care of his parents. The little girl, named Paikea after the legendary founder of her people, grows up in the loving care of her grandparents, but her grandfather, the chief, is disappointed that he has no male heir to lead and save his people. He starts a school to train the boys in the hopes that one of them might have the makings of a leader, but he does not allow Paikea to train with them because she is a girl. Yet Paikea is the very leader he’s been seeking – she knows the traditions of their people and has the strength of character to lead. Over and over again she demonstrates her worthiness to her grandfather, but he is unable to see what she really is. As the grandfather persists in his blind quest, things begin to break down, first in his own family, then in the village, then finally in nature itself, as whales beach themselves on the shore. The whole village turns out to try to help the whales, but the whales seem determined to die, until little Paikea appears and leads them back into the ocean. Only then are her grandfather’s eyes opened. Only then does he realize what was right before him all this time. The recent movie, The Whale Rider, is a tale about how easy it is for us to miss an epiphany when it doesn’t align with our expectations. I sometimes wonder if Jesus had been born a girl, would the world have refused to hear the divine message because the Messiah turned out to be female? Indeed, even though he was born male, the world still might have missed out on the message from an insignificant rural carpenter in a backwater corner of the Roman Empire. But Jesus didn’t quite appear out of nowhere. He had a forerunner, someone who prepared people for what was coming. He had John the Baptist. All four of the gospels tell the story of John. He was certainly an eccentric character: eating locusts and wild honey, dressed in clothes made of camel hair, living in the desert and calling people to be baptized as a sign of their repentance. He had no qualms about pointing out the hypocrisy of the people who came to gawk at him. He rebuked the rich and powerful, including King Herod himself. He certainly fit the bill of a prophet, and people began to think he might even be more than that. Perhaps he might be the Messiah himself! But people’s own expectations deceived them, just as Paikea’s grandfather looked in the wrong places for his leader. Even from conception, John defied expectations. His parents were old and childless. His father Zechariah, a priest in the Temple, was visited one day by an angel who told him that his wife Elizabeth would conceive and bear a son. Zechariah reacted to this news in a rather time-honored way: that is, he didn’t believe it, and for that, the angel struck him mute. He did not regain the power of speech until John was born, when he sang the canticle that we read today. Perhaps it is indeed wise thinking on God’s part to send a forerunner to get everyone ready. Given how easily we mortals miss the point, blinding ourselves by our own misguided expectations, we need some advance preparation. We tend to think that God’s coming will be a great and wonderful event, something that will make everyone stand up and cheer. After all, isn’t God love? Isn’t God about justice and peace? So won’t everyone agree that God’s coming is a good thing? But the prophet Malachi reminds us that the situation is not so simple. “Who can endure the day of God’s coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire, like fuller’s soap.” You may know what a refiner’s fire is: it means subjecting metals to high heat so that the impurities are burned off. That’s pretty hot! But you may be less familiar with the process of fulling cloth. To full cloth means to break down the fibers, making it into something like felt. This requires washing it with caustic soap and beating it until the fibers break down and the cloth is soft and smooth. Both refining and fulling are rather extreme, even violent means of purification. Suddenly God’s coming does sound like such a picnic. John himself is no more gentle in his warnings. “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth.” Sounds good – in theory. It seems to be human nature that we always think we’re the ones who are oppressed and persecuted, that we are the valleys who need to be lifted up. None of us likes to admit that we might need to be the mountains brought low. Nor do we think of ourselves as the crooked or the rough that needs to be, well, subjected to a rigorous fulling. But the changes John proclaims are major undertakings, and are not without significant trouble and pain. Just think for one minute about the endless attempts of our highway system to raise the valleys and lower mountains, to make the crooked straight and the rough smooth. Road repair is a never-ending process that causes plenty of headaches and inconveniences along the way. How would we like that kind of labor applied to our own lives? No, the more honest we are in looking at it, the more we will admit that our illusions are more comfortable. God’s coming seems like too much pain and difficulty, too much trouble. But God doesn’t wait until we’ve made up our minds about it. Malachi warns, “The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.” Indeed, God is acting even now. God’s spirit is moving in the world even at this minute, raising those valleys, leveling those mountains. Do we see it? Can we perceive it? Or are the changes too unnerving, the hardship of refining too difficult? Do we blind ourselves like Paikea’s grandfather? Are we struck mute like Zechariah? We look around the world today and see all kinds of trouble: wars, violence, terrorism, oppression, a new colonialism. Sometimes it seems like whatever advances our society made in the 20th century are being rolled back in the 21st. We feel powerless in the face of these movements. We despair that justice and peace will never prevail. This past summer at the UCC General Synod, I met with a caucus group of people from Just Peace churches. It was a depressing gathering. People shared their frustration and their hopelessness. It seems, they lamented, as if all our efforts for justice and peace are fruitless. What can we possibly do? Why even bother? But two people in the group did not despair. They were from a new church in Florida that is composed almost entirely of Haitians. Maybe you know something about Haiti. Perhaps you know that it is one of the poorest countries in the world. When you talk about troubles, Haiti has received a double dose for its tiny size. If anyone has the right to despair, it should have been those Haitians. But they sat listening to us complain, and then said matter-of-factly, “But Jesus is the Prince of Peace. The church has to be a witness for peace, because that is what God calls us to do.” They don’t despair, because they don’t pin their hopes on results, as we Americans so often do. Instead, their hope rested in God. Their task wasn’t to bring peace into the world, but to be faithful to the mission of peace that is God’s. They wouldn’t give that mission up for anything. They had been beaten down and subjected to fire, but it had only purified their resolve, refined their conviction. They were ready for God’s coming. Luke begins his account of John’s ministry with several verses of unpronounceable names – not in order to trip up the tongues of lay readers, but in order to say: this is real. This isn’t some myth or archetype. “The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come into his temple” -- and did so in specific, concrete ways, in a definite time and place, when certain people were in power. Luke put those names in there to show that anyone can verify the deeds he talks about. God doesn’t hide her work. If we miss it, it’s because we aren’t looking with purified eyes. Look around your world. What do you see? Remembering
the Least 9 November 2003 This scripture about the widow's coins is a well-known one, and it conveniently comes up in the lectionary around the time that many churches, including Spirit of Peace, are doing their annual stewardship campaign. It is therefore very tempting to interpret this story in light of pledging. "Look at this poor widow," I'm supposed to say. "She didn't give out of her abundance. She gave out of what she had; so I'm expecting 30% tithes from all of you this year!" Tempting -- -- but I will forbear. As you know, I'm not satisfied with the obvious. So I went on the Internet to investigate this story, and I found some intriguing insights, not the least of which was what happens when we read this story in its original context. So let's recap what's gone on before in Mark's gospel. We left off in the lectionary with the story of blind Bartimaeus, which as you may recall was the last story before Jesus's entry into Jerusalem, and the beginning of the end. The next two chapters are about Jesus confronting the powers that be, both political and religious. He stages a triumphal entry into Jerusalem, meant to stick it to Rome. Then the first thing he does is attack the moneychangers in the Temple. Remember that they were doing nothing illegal, but Jesus challenged the system as being exploitative. Next, the indignant scribes and Pharisees ask Jesus by what authority he does these things, and he skillfully evades the question. He tells the parable of the vineyard, in which the tenants refuse to pay what is due, and they murder the landlord's son. Then the Pharisees ask him the famous question of whether it is right to pay taxes, prompting Jesus's response, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's." Are you starting to see a pattern here? And it is in this context, then, that Jesus warns his disciples, "Beware of the scribes, who like to go about in long robes, and be greeted in the marketplace, and have the best seats in the synagogues, and a place of honor at feasts, and who devour widows’ houses." And after saying this he sits down opposite the treasury and watches people put in their money. This is not an accident. It is all in a larger context of Jesus's criticism of the greed of the leaders. He watches many rich people put in huge sums, presumably doing so with flair in order to be noticed. But Jesus does not call attention to them. Instead, he calls attention to a poor widow. "This woman," he says, "put in everything she had." Yes, he's praising her, but do we not also detect an underlying criticism of the system? I'm not sure this is a story about stewardship at all, at least not in terms of pledges, but rather it is a story about injustice and exploitation in the name of religion. Does the system devour widows' houses? Does it demand everything of the poorest, while heaping praise on the charity of the rich, whose wealth and privilege protect them? Who is worthy of praise here? Who deserves condemnation? And who are we bold enough to identify with? This story is paired with another story of poor widows: Ruth and Naomi. They had no husbands, and they had no sons, which meant they had no income. Women in those days depended on men for their economic well being. There's a reason why the word "economics" comes from the Greek word for "household." That is why the Bible emphasizes providing for the widow and the orphan, for they were truly "the least of these," having no source of income or protection. It has been said that the true measure of any society is how it treats the poor. If that is so, then society frequently comes under judgment in the Bible. Ruth and Naomi were left on their own. They had to rely on tithes as prescribed in Leviticus, which said that everyone who owned fields had to leave a portion of their harvest for widows and the poor to collect. (Those of us in small group read that very passage a week ago Thursday.) That is how the system was supposed to work, but people being what they are, it didn't always happen that way. When Ruth first appears in Boaz's field to glean the tithe, he has to tell his men not to harass her. The implication is that women were sometimes molested by the workers. But Boaz not only orders that Ruth be respected, he even tells his men to be sure to leave a bit extra for her to collect. Boaz is the women's nearest kinsman, so by law he has an obligation to provide for them. But again, women could not always count on the men folk to do the right thing. Therefore Naomi and Ruth come up with -- shall we say -- a racy plan to entice Boaz into providing for them. Fortunately, Boaz is a good man. He agrees to marry Ruth, and in the end Ruth is able to present Naomi with a son. But the underlying implication is that Boaz would not have provided for women if they had not taken the initiative. The system was supposed to provide for them, but it needed a swift kick in the pants in order to work. Both stories are about "the least of these," the poorest, the most helpless. The stories are about mutuality. Boaz extended his privilege of protection to two poor women in need. The wealthy Temple donors, however, devour widows' houses, while the widows themselves continue to give to the community. If we contrast this widow with the rich young man, the widow knew that there are more important things that money, whereas the rich man placed his wealth above his desire to love God and love his neighbor. The difference, I think, is that sense of community and common destiny. A society is judged by how it treats the poor. Do the wealthy see the poor as slackers, layabouts, people relying on handouts? Or do we recognize that our destiny is bound to theirs? How can any society flourish when there are people left without adequate housing and medical care? Our society emphasizes individualism and the "boot strap" mentality. People should be able to succeed on their own. We encourage charity, but almost more for the sake of the giver than the receiver. If not, then why do we scorn the receivers so much? I’m not saying “we” as individuals, but “we” as a society – and it is our society. We've bought into that "social Darwinism" which trumpets the survival of the fittest. Life is a competition, we say, and you've got to be able to get by on your own. Yet I've been reading a book which says that is not what Darwin discovered at all. Nature and evolution are much more about cooperation than competition. Recently, researchers have returned to the Galapagos Islands that so intrigued Darwin and observed [that] during good times, one population of cactus-eating finches shared a broad niche; they each ate from many parts of the cactus. But following a drought, birds with beaks only one millimeter longer used this slight extra length to drill into cactus fruits. Their shorter-beaked neighbors focused on fallen cactus pads that they could rip and tear. Scarcity moved them to explore more diversified ways of feeding so that they could continue to live together. Similar symbiotic agreements are evident between very different species. If bees are absent, certain birds will seek flower nectar as part of their diet. If bees enter the system, the birds change their dietary needs and no longer look to flowers." (A Simpler Way, p. 43) In other words, far from competing with each other when resources are scarce, different species find ways to cooperate and live together so that all of them improve their chances of surviving. Nature is not about competition, but about cooperation. Even wildly divergent species seem to recognize that their destiny is intimately bound up to the destiny of others around them. This is the same message that Jesus was all about. We need to look out for one another. We need to cooperate, not compete. We are called to help when someone is down, to share when someone prospers. Because none of us lives in this world by ourselves. As in the story of Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz, when we help one another, everyone gains. We’re going to get there together, or we’re not going to get there at all. In
Memoriam 2 November
2003 The story of the raising of Lazarus is a surprisingly emotional one for the Bible. The Bible tends to record actions rather than people's feelings, which makes the emotions of this story stand out all the more clearly. The siblings Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were quite close to Jesus. You remember the sisters squabbling in another story when Martha was doing the dishes while Mary sat at Jesus' feet and listened to his lessons. If Mary scored some bonus points by "choosing the better part" in that story, she loses them by meeting Jesus with an accusation now. "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." Her response might seem rather petty, but it is also very understandable. And she is not the only one to grieve Lazarus's death so deeply. The story also contains the famous shortest verse in the Bible. When a crowd takes Jesus to Lazarus's tomb, verse 35 succinctly notes, "Jesus wept." Two simple but profound words, implying that even the Son of God can mourn the death of a friend. Things have changed a lot in the intervening 2,000 years, especially in our relationship with death. I don't really need to tell you how we have separated ourselves from death. Our ancestors saw death on a regular basis, primarily because of the animals used for food. But we don't live with the animals who become our food, and we certainly don't play any role in killing them. As for our own species, death has been relegated to the realm of hospitals and nursing homes. People seldom die in their homes. Relatives do not prepare the body for burial. Indeed, our rituals around death changed as more and more people choose to be cremated rather than buried. Of all the funerals I conducted at my previous church, only one of them involved the burial of a body. Yet despite all our attempts to sanitize or prevent death, it is still the one thing that none of us can escape. No advances in technology, medicine or science can circumvent this fact of life. Contrary to the popular saying, one can evade taxes, but no one has ever been able to cheat at death. The IRS can be fooled, but not the Grim Reaper. Which raises the question of whether all our efforts to avoid the trappings of death have left us unable to cope with death itself. We're supposed to be modern, advanced people. We know that death happens to everyone. We have psychologists to explain to us the process of grief, and in our own efficient modern world, we may want to treat Kubler-Ross's stages of grief as a checklist. "I went through denial on Tuesday, and bargaining yesterday. It's high time for me to move on to acceptance." But grief doesn't work on a time schedule. And no matter how we try to prepare ourselves for it, the death of a loved one always hurts. Our workplace may allow us a designated number of days off, to be determined by the closeness of our relationship to the deceased, but then we are expected to be able to get back to work -- and we may be tempted to think that means it's time to stop grieving and move on. No wonder, then, we hear these words so often in the Bible, a promise of a time when "God will wipe away every tear and mourning shall be no more." Because sometimes here on earth it seems like those tears will never stop falling. But grief isn't necessarily a bad thing, nor is it something we should try to get over. One of the most profound things I ever heard about grief came from a hospital chaplain when I was doing my hospital internship. He said, "Grief is really thanksgiving." After all, if we didn't love these people, if we weren't grateful to have had them in our lives, then we wouldn't miss them so much when they are gone. It's something to think about, anyway: grief is really thanksgiving. That might not always be true, but it sure helps me understand why almost 15 years after by grandparents' deaths, it still doesn't take too much to set me off crying about them. It's not that they had hard deaths. It's not that they didn't live long and happy lives. It's not that I had any regrets. Their deaths were as "good" as death can ever be. But darn it, I miss them. And that's why I still grieve. Death is the ultimate separation. Whatever we believe about the afterlife, the fact remains that we will never again know our loved ones in this life the way we did before. Hence the pain of grief. It is thanksgiving, but it also means we miss them. Yet just as in our sterilized society we have forgotten how to die, so we have also forgotten how to grieve. And that brings us back to el dia de los muertos. This holiday has its roots in two traditions: the Christian observance of All Souls' Day and the pre-Colombian Mexican observance of "The Day of the Dead." Two years ago, Spirit of Peace Church decided to observe this day as part of our liturgical life. I had heard of the Day of the Dead, but I didn't really know much about it. Yet now I look forward to this day each year. Weeks in advance I start thinking about whose names I need to remember in the service, and each year the list gets longer -- not necessarily because more people have died, but because I think about people that I want to remember. This is the third year that I've brought pictures of my paternal grandparents, but I have become sensitive to the fact that have no pictures of my maternal grandparents and my uncle to bring. I want to have pictures of them, and I want to learn their stories and discover their favorite foods so I can share them here at this observance. And that is why this holiday so important. El dia de los muertos reconnects us to our ancestors, not only to relatives but to friends and colleagues who have died. For all of these people touched our lives and helped make us what we are today. We need to remember them, not only for their sake but for our own. We need to say those precious names, to say them aloud, to say them in church, so those relationships may be reestablished once more. The Bible many times makes the point that God knew our names before we were even born, that God calls us by name in our lifetimes. The promise of the Bible, then, is that God will never forget our names. Even after we die, even after generations pass away and everyone we ever knew is gone, God will still remember us and will still call us by name. Perhaps that is something like what resurrection means: that death does not sever those relationships, that death does not mean separation and absence. The reason why there will be no tears in heaven is because separation will be no more. We will live in union with God and the company of saints and the family of us all. So we remember our dead now, as a prelude to the coming resurrection. I would never venture to say anything concrete or definite about the afterlife. No doubt we all believe different things, and our beliefs are probably murky and ambivalent. I imagine that even the most rational minds among us cringe before the Abyss. Our hope may defy all logic and reason, but we secretly harbor hopes of reunion with our loved ones. The Christian faith promises such a reunion. I don't know how it will happen, but I do believe in it absolutely. If the greatest gift we mortals have is our ability to love one another, then death does not have the power to conquer or destroy that love. God remembers our names. God loves us beyond death. And we should do the same for one another. So let us remember our loved ones who have died, on this special day that exists for them. Let us say our thanks. Let us share those stories. Let us remember and restore. And yes, let us grieve. For to do so now is to practice for the coming day of life, when death shall be no more. 26 October 2003 Our gospel story today ends saying that Bartimaeus regains his sight and follows Jesus on his way. The next chapter tells us that "the way" led to Jerusalem. Indeed, the very next story is that of Palm Sunday. The story of Bartimaeus is the final stop on a journey over several chapters that has been leading to Jesus's final confrontation in Jerusalem. This whole journey to Jerusalem is bookended by two stories of blind men receiving sight. The first, in chapter 8, is that story I loved to tease my evangelical friends about in college, the story they didn't want to believe was in the Bible, because Jesus had to heal the man twice. The first time the man says, "I see people, but they looked like walking trees." And Jesus has to heal him again before the man's sight is truly restored. That incident sets the tone for the next couple of chapters. Jesus is starting to talk about what's going to happen in Jerusalem -- betrayal, desertion, and death -- but the disciples just don't get it. Instead, they argue not once but twice about who is the greatest among them. They scold people for pestering Jesus with their children. They complain when they learn that an unauthorized man is casting out demons in Jesus's name. They are even more annoyed by this because they have been having trouble casting out demons themselves. Jesus keeps talking about death and sacrifice and leaving everything you have to follow the way, but the disciples are filled with dreams of power and prestige. So when that rich young man came forward a couple of weeks ago, no wonder the disciples were upset. "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven," Jesus had said. And the disciples lamented, "Who then can be saved?" It's not that they were rich themselves, but they still desired such things: wealth, position, power. Now they are on their final stop en route to Jerusalem, at Jericho about 15 miles from the Holy City, and here they meet a blind beggar named Bartimaeus. A crowd had gathered around Jesus, as always happen, and the disciples hovered around him like so many bodyguards. Over the bustle of the crowd, far away in the back, they hear a man crying out, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" The people around the man scold him sternly, the bible says. They order him to keep quiet, but he shouts all the more loudly. He's like that kid in school always raising his hand every time, "Oh Teacher, Teacher! Pick me, Teacher, pick me!" Maybe you remember that kid in school. Maybe you were that kid in school, so eager to be noticed, to share your knowledge, to be helpful. The fact of the matter is, Bartimaeus may be blind, but he's the one who truly sees Jesus. "Son of David," he calls him. We don't hear that title often in the gospels. As we talked about in our Christianity 101 class this past week, to call someone "son of" is to ascribe to them the qualities of that person. Bartimaeus is himself a "son of." Timaeus means "honor" in Greek. It is the same root from which we get the name Timothy -- Timotheus, one who honors God. So Bartimaeus, the Son of Honor, calls Jesus the Son of David, recognizing in him the qualities of faithfulness and leadership. It is particularly fitting, since Jesus is about to enter Jerusalem in a manner that will play up that royal theme and ultimately get him crucified as King of the Jews. Jesus hears Bartimaeus call to him, and he answers, calling on Bartimaeus to come forth. I love how Bartimaeus shows no hesitation. "Throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus." It's doubly impressive, considering that he is blind and has to maneuver his way through a thick crowd. Once they're face to face, Jesus asks, "What do you want me to do for you?" And Bartimaeus says, "My Master, let me see again." It's really a selfish request, isn't it? If you meet Jesus, aren't you supposed to be unselfish? Shouldn't he say something nobler sounding, like a beauty contestant who says, "I wish for world peace"? Haven't we just been hearing all these teachings from Jesus about how the last shall be first, and that we should be humble and unselfish? Yet this man selfishly asks for his sight back. We can be lenient toward him. After all, no one wants to be blind. But there's more going on here. In the earlier healing story, the man didn't ask to be healed. His friends brought him forward and asked Jesus to heal him. But Bartimaeus has sought it himself, and done so eagerly, even annoyingly. But more than that, when he comes forward, Bartimaeus addresses Jesus as "my Master." In Aramaic, the word is "Rabbouni." This title is used only one other time in any of the four gospels. Do you know when? Mary Magdalene says it when she recognizes the risen Jesus in the garden on the first Easter. It's based on the title Rabbi, which means "Teacher" or "Master" in the sense of a master of knowledge and wisdom. But Rabbouni is the possessive form: my teacher. And in all these past few chapters, that was the part that has always been missing. Think about it. When Jesus asked, "Who do you say that I am?" the disciples rattled off as many answers as they could think of, figuring they would surely get at least one of them right. The rich young man appeared, calling Jesus "good teacher," and Jesus answered, "Why do you call me good?" But Bartimaeus calls him "my teacher." Not just a general, all-purpose teacher, but mine, setting up a relationship, a commitment between Jesus and Bartimaeus. We in the west have perhaps lost that sense of intimate personal relationship between teacher and student, when we have one teacher for every 20 or 30 or so students, and the relationship is based more on class requirements then on the intimate apprenticeship model of the student committing to learn all the teacher has to this offer. Bartimaeus says, "My teacher, let me see again." And when his sight is restored, Mark says, "He followed Jesus on the way." But he doesn't just mean that Bartimaeus followed Jesus on the way to Jerusalem. "Followers of the way" was a code. It was what the followers of Jesus were first called, before they were called Christian. Bartimaeus, in other words, became a disciple. So his request for restored sight wasn't a selfish one. He made the request so that he could join in God's mission in Jesus. He came forth because he wanted to be a part of this holy movement. But it further occurred to me as I read this story that we at Spirit of Peace are rather like Bartimaeus. We’re small and struggling, and sometimes we really feel like beggars! When Jesus comes to town, will we hang quietly in the back, where the crowd tells us we won’t bother anyone, or will we shout as loudly as we can to be noticed? Do we see ourselves as sons and daughters of honor, worthy to address Jesus? When we are called forth, will we say general, all-purpose fawning things like “good teacher,” or will we state our commitment boldly, and say, “MY teacher?” When we are asked what we want, will we give the standard answer of “world peace?” Or will we say, “We need $35,000 in order to rent a space for worship on Sunday mornings, hire a part-time music director, and buy curriculum and supplies for an all-ages Sunday school.” Will we be bold and “selfish” in asking for what we need in order to do the mission God has planned for us? Because that’s what this story is all about. God is passing through town on a mission, and every person has a role to play, no matter how small or insignificant or powerless they may seem. Will we hover in the background and miss out? Will we answer with canned responses that are really about currying rewards for ourselves? Or will we shout to be heard, crying, “Pick me! Pick me!” Will we ask for what we need? Will we follow on the way? God is in town. So what are we going to do? Church
Architecture 20 July 2003 We may remember the story of the tent of the presence. David wants to build God a permanent Temple, and God says no. God instead talks about doing many nice things for David and his heir. I've preached a sermon before about how the building of the Temple was not necessarily a good thing, implying immutability, petrifaction and so forth. Indeed I have a strong bias in favor of the portable God, a God who is not found in a building but who rather travels around with the people. But glory be to the Bible! There is always more than one way to view the story. I have a friend who is not religious. She and her husband want to start a family, but she told me that she worries how her conservator relatives will want to give her baby Bibles. She doesn't see her spirituality in terms of the church. If anything, she sees the church and organized religion as an evil. We've all heard this before, the view that religion is responsible for wars, oppression, and all the ills of the world. In truth, they have a point. Perhaps God herself agrees with this view, and that's why she was reluctant to let David build her a house to keep her in. I'm supposed to be a minister, a "professional Christian," so I ought to have a good answer for the unchurched. But not so. I usually do better with nominal Christians. I can appeal to a common heritage, however poorly understood. But how do I explain the value of religion, of church, to those who have never been a part of it? Those who view religious people as no better off than them, and perhaps even worse off? Those who feel that they have their own relationship with the holy, and see no need for religion? I don't know how to respond to them, because I don't buy into some of the traditional pick-up for Christians. I don't believe the unchurched are going to hell. I don't think they are unsaved. I'm wary of judgmentalism. Yet I do believe in Christianity, in organized religion, and I think the church can benefit people. Fortunately Paul's letter to the Ephesians can help us here. He is trying to talk about what church means when you have Jews and gentiles together. The conditions for membership in Judaism have changed, even though the benefits now flow to both, and Paul is trying to explain the situation. But before we get into it, we need to define terms. There are three words I've been throwing around here so far: faith, religion, and church. I'm not talking about faith in this sermon. Everyone has faith, and you can certainly have faith without religion or the church. But the term "religion" isn't quite the one I want to use, either. While religion and church overlap, religion seems to me to be more about the theology, about the structures of belief of the church, whereas church in its spiritual sense seems like the whole package, from theology and mission to potlucks and garage sales. A theological scholar always communes with Christian thought, but can be cut off from a local church community. You could write a multi-volume treatise on church dogmatics and not sit in a pew once the whole time. But church means sitting through sermons, the good, the bad, and the ugly; singing hymns even if you're tone deaf; serving on the board of Deacons, teaching Sunday school, all of that. I believe the heart of what Jesus was about was not religion or even faith, but about church: how we all live together as people of faith, living our religion. But I'll talk more on that in a bit. Now that I've defined what I'm talking about, let's take another look at Paul's letter. As I said, Paul is talking about Jews and gentiles here, but in our modern context we might instead say churched Christians and the unchurched. Paul is trying to talk about how they've come together, not theologically, but how they live together in church. The word in Greek, by the way, is ekklesia, which means "called out." For me that is an evocative term that speaks more of action and mission than doctrine, of doing rather than believing. The passage here opens with this verse: "Remember that at one time you gentiles were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world." (Eph. 2:12) This is an interesting way of speaking about the unchurched. Paul does not say that they were going to hell. He is not even saying that they were unsaved. Let's look more at this. First Paul says that they were without Christ. This is certainly true. An unchurched person may not be without the spirit of Christ, which is justice and peace, but they are without the person of Christ, the stories, the teaching, the example. We Christians see Christ as indispensable to the church. Indeed it is through the church that we encounter Christ, in scripture which certainly anyone may read outside church, but also within the church's life: in worship and sacrament, in our common life and work. And that is something you cannot experience outside of the church. Jesus did not give us the Bible to embody him. Rather he gave us baptism and communion. And where else but in the church can you get that? Secondly, Paul says that they were strangers to the covenants of promise. He is speaking of the promise made to the Jews: You will be my people, and I will be your God. It is a covenant relationship between the holy and a community, a marriage that lasts through thick and thin. It is easy to believe in God in the good times. Everyone speaks of feeling closer to the divine when they see natural beauty or the birth of a child. But I'm going to be presumptuous and say that without the church and organized religion, it is hard to see God in the bad times, when that baby suffers or dies or when that natural beauty is torn apart by exploitation or war. Our first point of contact with the divine is in the awe-inspiring realm of creation, but I imagine that awe is very hard to hold onto when we are confronted with sin, with evil, with "brokenness" and tragedy. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think unchurched people must feel very alone in those dark times. It is more than faith that sees us through the bad times, it is also the church: the remembrance of that covenant, You shall be my people and I shall be your God. That is what enables us to endure, to stand firm, to fight and triumph. Think of how many human struggles have been led by church leaders: abolitionism, civil rights, Indian independence, the anti-apartheid movement. That is not a mistake. But I will come back to that. Suffice it to say that this is what I think Paul means when he said the unchurched have no hope and are without God in the world. It is in those bad times when our despair and horror cut us off from God's presence. This, I submit to you, is the condition of the unchurched. Now Christianity is hardly the only solution to this human dilemma. I'm not arguing why Muslims should convert to Christianity. In all honesty, I'd never try to get them to. I would, however, try to connect unchurched people with any religion. I believe it is better to have a religion than not have one. All religions offer their own solution to the basic human problem, and they can all be right. But we are Christian, and Paul next talks about how Jesus offers his solution. I said earlier that I don't think Jesus was trying to give people faith. Time and time again he meets people, unchurched, and comments on the great faith he finds in them. Nor is his purpose to hand out or found a religion. He placed himself solidly within Judaism, and in no way did he desire to get rid of that. He wrote no scriptures and handed down no holy laws. But there is one thing he did do, and Paul says it here: "you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." (v.13) "The blood of Christ" to me translates as the mission of Christ, a mission, which he followed through even to death, a mission that he did not abandon and not end at his death. To me, "the blood of Christ" connotes the entirety of Jesus' life and purpose, and that purpose was to bring near those who were far off. That mission is reconciliation, both with God and with one another. Let me read this passage again: "In Christ Jesus you who were once far off were brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of it two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it." (v.13-16) There are several important things to note here. First, Jesus does not offer judgment but invitation. Our pick-up line to the unchurched should not be, "Do you know where you're going when you die?" or "Have you been saved?" both of which imply judgment. Instead, what is it that Jesus always said? Come and see. Come, follow me. Lay down your fishing nets, take up your cross, and come -- join in -- follow me. Welcome to the banquet! Imagine an unchurched person asking, "What could I get out of the church?" and we reply, "Well, come and see." Invitation, not judgment. Second, Jesus does not offer dogma but communion. Certainly he must have taught his disciples, and we know he preached to crowds. But what he gave us were acts: baptism and communion. Not as conditions of belonging, which many churches today have made of them, but as signs of the covenant, much as circumcision was meant to be. While he never said that beliefs weren't important, he said that the true judgment of our beliefs was in how we treat one another. Most of what he taught was about how we treat one another, how we live together. Communion, not dogma. And finally, Jesus "broke down the dividing wall of hostility" and made as one, thereby making these. Dividing walls of hostility existed along lines of class, nationality, gender, physical ability, and yes, even religion. Jesus offered a vision of the divine, which transcended all this, for in Christ there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free. Finally in this passage Paul discusses the architecture of the church. Remember David wanted to build God a house of cedar to dwell in, but God answered that the Temple was something far more. Paul describes the church this way: "You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God." (v. 19-22) We are no longer strangers and aliens but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. Again this echoes the old days, when the Hebrews were wanderers just passed through the world, with no home of their own. The time came when they wanted a home, to become a nation and build a Temple. Paul chooses this image of citizenship to express the meaning of the church. A citizen may visit other nations, but has roots in one nation. Being a citizen implies not only the benefits of rights and protections, but also of responsibility and duty. We are citizens with the saints and members of God's household. This is archaic language to us, but basically it means that there are no second class citizens in God's realm. We all make up this commonwealth, this church together. And this church, this household (in Greek, oikos, the same word from which we get "economy") is built on a foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ as the cornerstone. This surprised me. In contrast to the hymn we just sang, the foundation is not Christ! The foundation is the prophets and the apostles, in other words the revelation of God as it has been handed down to us and revealed to us in the community. And think about it: the apostles were Jesus' students. So in other words, the foundation is based upon the people who came before and the people who came after Jesus. These people may be ordained leaders of the church, or they may be people whom God has chosen but the church has not recognized. The apostles and prophets are God's spokespeople, and they are the foundation of the church. The foundation is something Jesus himself inherited and in turn passed on to others, but Jesus, Paul says, is the cornerstone. The pressures of the roof and walls focus on the cornerstone, and that stone had better be strong or the whole structure will fall apart. So Jesus for Christians is the point of connection, the touchstone by which we measure everything else, the lens by which we interpret the foundation that has been given to us. The cornerstone is also where information about the building is inscribed. It is what you point out to people when you are introducing them to the building. And finally, last but not at all least, come the bricks: each and every one of us. Now think about this. As we are built into the building, we become a part of it, but we also change it. New wings are added, new hallways, new rooms, new buttresses and roofs and doors and windows. The church is not an unchanging structure. It changes as each of us is added into it. And it is this structure, this church, not a house of cedar or set of doctrines, which is the dwelling place of God. This is what the unchurched lack. Can they live without it? Oh, I'm sure they can. But in what new ways might they encounter God through the cornerstone of Christ? How might the church change if their bricks are added? What good might the church do them, and what good might the unchurched in turn do to the church? Well, come and see. Open
and Affirming 29 June 2003 I swear I'm not the one who picked this week's scripture. It's the God's honest truth that the Revised Common Lectionary, used by a number of different nominations, picked the story of Jonathan and David for Pride Sunday, the anniversary almost to the day of the Stonewall riots and the birth of the gay rights movement. Nor am I responsible for the fact that this past week the Supreme Court handed down a ruling that will perhaps have a bigger impact on gay rights than any other court ruling to date. All these factors coming together make the sermon topic rather obvious. Now of course we can't say that Jonathan and David were gay, any more than we can say they were straight. The concept of sexual orientation is a contemporary one, only around a hundred years old. People reading the Bible with their "gaydar" on, however, have found many hints of possible gay or lesbian people, and none of these is more obvious than Jonathan and David in their deep affection for each other. "The soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." When David laments Jonathan's death, another passage that appears in the lectionary, he says, "I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love for me was wonderful, passing the love of women." In fact the Bible makes a very big deal about their love for each other, and we don't have to read in sexual overtones in order to pick up on the subversiveness of their relationship. As I explained a couple of weeks ago, Jonathan was the heir to the king, whereas David was the one marked by God to be Saul's successor. He was a military success, growing daily in power and respect. Jonathan and David should have been rivals. Indeed, Saul recognized the threat David posed and tried on more than one occasion to kill him. Did any of you do your homework and read 1 and 2 Samuel? The story of Saul, Jonathan, and David is one of love and betrayal, loyalty and tragedy. Saul with his mood swings, one moment loving David like a son, the next so afraid of him he attempts to murder him at dinner. David, growing in power, anxious to protect his life but not wanting to strike out against Saul, the man who had raised him to favor. And Jonathan caught in the middle between loyalty to an increasingly unstable father and affection for a friend who would one day seize the throne and inadvertently cause Jonathan's own death. The drama is very real, the characters recognizable in their humanity. They don't read like fictional characters to me but like real people with conflicting feelings caught in the horrible wheel of fate. It is a powerful story. So why do I have to drag sex into it? I have to, because gay people are God's children, too. That should be obvious to all of us, but those of us who are straight don't always understand what that really means. Ironically straight people who aren't homophobic can almost be something of a problem. Because the issue is not a big deal to us, we can forget that it is a very big deal to most of the rest of the world. Just as white people are the only ones who have the luxury of being colorblind. But our blindness doesn't mean that homophobia isn't real. Even in my own family, which I have always considered to be open, my sister was afraid to come out to us as bisexual. I'd like to think she should have known we'd be accepting, as indeed we all turned out to be. But sadly I know other stories were someone came out to a family they thought would be accepting, and ended up being disinherited. In fact the story of Saul simultaneously loving David and wanting to kill him echoes too strongly the experience of many families when a member comes out as gay. I've been reading a book Tim Brown gave me called, "Coming out Young and Faithful." The importance of God shines strong in these stories, whether these young people were active in a congregation or not. They all knew about the "anti-gay" verses in the Bible. The ones who were condemned by their churches suffered horribly, experiencing a rupture in their spiritual lives. They faced a terrible choice: to be gay or to be Christian. To be who they are, or to be a child of God. They didn't think they could be both. But this is not in either/or question. To be who we are is to be a child God. To be a child of God is to be who we all are. Remember the first chapter of Genesis? God created it, and it was good. Imagine then, when a church tells a person, "You can't be what you are, because what you are is sin." Think of how that wounds a person. Think of the spiritual devastation if someone told you that the only way you could be a child of God, loved and redeemed, is to excise this integral part of yourself. I'm tempted -- sorely -- to offer a few choice words about what I think about such a church or such "Christians." But I will forbear. After all, we're starting from completely different points of logic. Is sexual orientation something that can be changed? I don't claim to understand sexuality at all, but I've known enough people who tried to change their orientation and could not. The saying goes that God doesn't make mistakes. If we believe that, if we believe creation is good, and if we believe that people cannot change their orientation, then it follows that God gives us our sexual orientation. So how can it be a sin to be gay, or straight, or bisexual, or whatever? Sexual behavior -- what we do with it -- that is something else entirely, and the same standard should apply across the board. We are all children of God, complete with our sexual orientation, and that, as I read it, is biblical. The gospel truth. Those of us who believe that have a special calling, one that many people out there are in desperate need of us fulfilling. But as I said, we gay-friendly straight people can be just as unhelpful as colorblind white people. To use a biblical analogy, it is as if we are living as state of grace, and we can't recognize that the rest of the world still lives in desperate need of hearing the gospel of God's love. The result is that we don't live out our full calling. This passage in 2 Corinthians speaks to the challenge we ONA churches face. Of course it's not speaking about the ONA issue. It actually talking about a disaster relief offering that Paul is collecting from churches. The church in Corinth had made a pledge to this offering, but they had yet to deliver on it. Paul demonstrates unusual tact in saying, "It is appropriate for you who began last year not only to do something but even to desire to do something to now finished doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means." Sometimes churches desire to be ONA. They go through the study and discernment process, but it never runs as smoothly as they expect. People get upset. They threaten to leave the church. Members who haven't darkened the church's doors in years show up to cast their vote against it. The ardent activists start throwing the word "homophobia" around, further polarizing the issue, and everyone is too embarrassed to talk about what all this really means. After all, you just don't talk about sex in church. Can't we all just assume we're open? Do we really have to talk about this? We welcome gay people, but do they have to flaunt it by holding hands? It ends up being a very emotional, draining, exhausting process. The vote usually goes through, but someone invariably leaves the church in a spectacular manner. Feelings are hurt, everyone is confused, and oddly enough, the church often goes right back into the closet for while in order to recover. We're ONA now, they say, we can be listed with the UCC Coalition, but for heaven's sake, can we talk about something else now? Let's give it rest! After my church in Houston became ONA, I invited PFLAG to speak at our adult Sunday school. I was shocked to discover that people got upset about it. Our readiness in desiring to be ONA was not matched by our completing it. Indeed, declaring yourself to be ONA is only one step in an ongoing journey. Some churches no doubt get stuck there. They pass the vote, but then they hide their light under a bushel, not wanting to stir up any more hard feelings or resentment among the congregation. It becomes a sort of Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy of the church. But how is a gay person going to feel welcomed, let alone affirmed, if the church refuses to speak of the love that dare not speak its name? Silence, as they say, equals death. It is hard for us to live up to our full calling. Our intentions are good, but we have problems with that follow through. It's hard to truly live out radical grace, like the Jews in the early church who could not quite accept the gentiles. As we talk about in small group is past week, it's hard for us not to expect them somehow to become like us. That is why we need to offer extravagant welcome. Our abundance, as Paul says, should supply their want. Society favors heterosexuals. The Bible itself leans that way. Adam and Eve, you know. Go forth and multiply. Straights accept that they can be both straight and Christian. Gay people need to know that, too. They need to hear that the hymn, "Just As I Am," applies to them, too. They need an extravagant welcome, not a cautious, reserved and underhanded one. What, after all, would Jesus do? Whether or not Jonathan and David were gay, or Ruth and Naomi, or Mary and Martha, the point is that God blessed those relationships. Indeed God points to their love as examples of God's own love. What marked those relationships as holy was not sexual behavior, but what Paul calls the fruits of the spirit: patience, kindness, generosity, self-giving. Can we likewise recognize the blessing, not only in both gay and straight relationships, but also with both partnered people and singles? Is that something we can truly affirm? Heroes
Both Super and Ordinary 15 June 2003 In a time of ancient gods, warlords, and kings, a land in turmoil cried out for hero. He was David, a lowly shepherd boy, called by the Lord Almighty. The power, the passion, the danger. His courage would change the world. Does anyone recognize where that comes from? That's actually a slightly rewritten version of the introduction to Xena: Warrior Princess. Maybe it's the influence of the summer movie lineup with its annual blockbuster spectacles, but all of today's lectionary readings sound like super heroes to me. Even the passage from Paul. Doesn't this sound like a superhero introduction? "Through great endurance, in afflictions, hardship and calamities,... by purity, knowledge, forbearance and the power of God." He's even got the weapons: with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left. You know, of course, but there are Bible superhero action figures. Figures come complete with helmet of salvation and shield of truth. Special "power of God" lasers shoot out of their eyes to quench the flaming darts of the Evil One (Devil action figure sold separately.) There are collector’s cards, too. David is a +10 in faith, but a -5 in moral purity. Pit him against these exciting villains: King Ahab, Leviathan, the Seven Deadly Sins (he doesn't do too well against Lust) and of course -- Goooooliath! Really, a lot of Bible stories read like something straight out of Marvel Comics. Samson with his powerful hair; Joseph and his powers of interpretation, and of course the ultimate superhero, Jesus. Indeed, our gospel story today seems to exist for little other purpose than to show off his super-abilities. "Who is this, that even the wind and sea obey him?" Of course super heroes, for all their spandex and rippling muscles, are just ordinary people in their alter egos, usually quite unnoticeable people. They are honest, just, merciful and kind. They use their powers for good, defending the orphan and the widow, casting down the mighty from their thrones and exalting the meek and lowly. We all had heroes when we were kids: people who had amazing adventures but who also championed the downtrodden and whipped the bad guys. My personal favorite was Robin Hood. He may not have had lasers shooting from his eyes, but he was wicked with a bow and arrow, and he wore a cool green outfit complete with cape. He robbed from the rich and gave to the poor, he uncovered the evil schemes of Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham. I also got into real-life super heroes, especially Joan of Arc. I just couldn't get over the fact that a teenage girl crowned a king and commanded an army. In fact, I used to try to match the descriptions in the hymn "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God" with real-life people. The shepherdess on the green was my Joan. Of course it's easy for us grown-ups to scoff at the mighty powers of super heroes, especially the heroes in the Bible, but my fascination with Joan points out why we need super heroes, especially when we're young. The world is a scary place when you're a kid. Everyone is so much bigger than you, and your body changes rapidly from year to year. Who needs magical powers to change shape and form when your 13? It happens naturally anyway. Adults are so much smarter, and you're still learning things. We all feel like geeky Clark Kent in his awkward glasses who can never impress Lois Lane. When we read about people like us who are heroes, whether they are fictional or real, it can give us the courage to face our own perils. We may have hidden superpowers as well, powers that we can use for the good, to protect downtrodden geeks -- like us. Kids know that all we need is a cape to unleash the superhero within. And we adults perhaps should not let our skepticism rule us. It might not hurt us to listen to kids more. In fact, one of the phrases that I would love to ban from the church is that sanctimonious adage, "Children are the future of the church." I may be wrong, but kids are not "future" people. They are people now. They have gifts to share with the church now. And the story of David and Goliath, in addition to being a great superhero story, illustrates this concept well. Here is the scenario. For many centuries after the Hebrews entered Canaan, they had no king. But they complained about this to God, saying, "We want a king like other nations." So God answered their prayers, proving the old adage that you should be careful which you wish for because you might get it. Saul was the first king of Israel. He was a great warrior and won many battles against Israel's enemies, but he also had problems. The Bible says that "an evil spirit" would come upon him. In fact, modern psychologists might diagnose him as schizophrenic or bipolar. Right before this story, Saul's servants send for a young boy named David to come play the harp for Saul to calm him down when he's having episode. Saul loves David, but problems will soon arise. God his rejected Saul and chosen David to be his successor, instead of his son and heir Jonathan. We'll learn more about the complex relationship among these three in a couple weeks. (By the way, here's some homework for you. Read 1 and 2 Samuel if you can. It's one of my favorite parts of the Bible, a story of real human drama.) Now the Philistines are giving the Israelites a really hard time. Their champion, Goliath, has called out for one of Saul's men to come and fight him. Well, the Israelites are not stupid. This guy is huge, around nine feet tall. No one wants to fight him. You'd have to be nuts to go up against this guy. Only David is crazy enough to do it. I'm not sure how old David is supposed to be here. The guess is between 14 and 17, about high school age these days. Of course they didn't have high school in the Bible, so I don't know what the age equivalent is, but David is young enough that Goliath is insulted to go against him. And really, I don't care what era you're in, David acts like a classic teenager, full of self-righteous bravado and taunting insults. Unlike kids, adults have the disadvantage of experience when it comes to tackling life’s problems. Experience, plus years of advice from seeing other people go through the same problems and telling us how to handle it. So when we confront a problem, we have a considerable amount of baggage that comes with us. But young people are more immediate in their assessment of a problem. A giant is threatening them, and they say, “Somebody’s got to take this guy out!” Their church is agonizing over whether or not to declare themselves open and affirming, and the kids say, “Well, duh, isn’t everyone welcome at our church or not?” Maybe because they are still in school learning math, but they can be amazingly adept at putting two and two together. Some college kids saw that homeless people didn’t have food. They saw that grocery stores threw out stock and produce that they couldn’t sell. So they organized Food Not Bombs and feed meals to homeless people several times a week. Sure, not all of the ideas young people come up with will work. An umbrella is not a parachute, and no matter how many times you jump off the roof with one, you’re still going to fall like a stone. But on the other hand, young people can look at problems with literally fresh eyes, cutting through the – stuff that we grown-ups can get bogged down in. So David steps forward to fight Goliath, and Saul, trying to protect him, says, “You can’t possibly fight this guy; you’re just a kid.” It’s easy for us to dismiss young people, but they can have wisdom and experience of their own. So David argues that he knows all about fighting large brutes because he’s had to protect his flock from predators. He might have been exaggerating a bit when he described all the bears and lions he’s fought, but they do say Davy Crockett killed himself a bear when he was only three! David’s faith is pure, and his task is obvious. “The Lord has rescued me from the claws of lions and bears, and he will keep me safe from the hands of this Philistine.” But Saul, still trying to protect David, dresses the boy up in his own armor, complete with helmet. We adults can be overprotective, and also condescending, weighing young people down with our own expectations and standards. There’s a time and a place for protectiveness, but we can let it interfere with young people’s abilities. David tellingly remarks, “I can’t move with all this stuff on. I’m not used to it.” That armor can protect an adult, but it’s a hindrance to a boy. He needs to address the problem on his own terms, in his own way. So David arms himself in the way that he understands, in the way that he knows he can act. He takes off the armor, gets his sling, fetches some stones, and he’s ready to go. We know how the story ends. David wins. Everyone underestimated him because they judged him by their standards rather than his. If he’s gone out with a grown-up sword, wearing adult armor, he would have been slaughtered. But against all the experienced advice of Saul’s army, he went out on his own and won. I don’t want to do young people the equal disservice of idolizing them. They do need protection, and not all their ideas are great. But there is a reason why there are so many children and young people in the Bible who save the day. We are born into this world in the image of God, super heroes with clear eyes that can penetrate any deception, pure faith that can move mountains, generous hearts that can melt stone. Over time, as we accumulate worldly experience, we can lose some of those superpowers, even as we acquire other powers of wisdom and knowledge. My point is that we are all needed in the church. Young people aren’t the future, any more than older people are the past. We are the present together. We’re like the Power Rangers. We’re all individuals with different abilities, but when we come together as one, then we are formidable. In the early centuries of the church, outsiders would look at these small communities gathered here and there throughout the Roman Empire and say, “They must be Christians, for see how they love one another.” Now that is a super power, indeed. Come,
Holy Spirit, Come 8 June 2003 Today is Pentecost, one of the annual holy days of the church and yet one with which people are not very familiar. We hear the same story every year of the disciples receiving the gift of tongues, a good story, but not as long or as dramatic or important as stories of Christmas and Easter. Pentecost presents a certain challenge for the minister. So I began this sermon by doing research, reviewing my books from seminary about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was kind of a new thing for me in seminary. I did not grow up Unitarian, but in some ways I might as well have. We talked about God and Jesus quite a bit in my home church, but the Holy Spirit was something tacked onto the end of the doxology, which we sang after we collected the offering. I wasn't very familiar with the Holy Spirit other than as an addendum. But by the time I got to seminary, my vision of God, especially as God is talked about in Christianity, had expanded a bit, and I was really interested in this Holy Spirit, which I didn't have much of a concept of. And I must confess that even after taking a class in seminary just on the Holy Spirit, I still don't have a very firm grasp of it. This past week as I reviewed my books from class, I had to keep checking to make sure they were really written in English. Here's a sample: “What may be known and said about God's being may only be known and stated from God's being-for-us. God's being-for-us does not define God's being but certainly God in his being-for-us interprets his being. Interpretation lives from that which is to be interpreted. As relational being God's being-for-us is the reiteration of God's self-relatedness in his being as Father, as Son and as Holy Spirit. In reiteration that which is to be reiterated lets itself be known. In God's being-for-us God's being for himself makes itself known to us as being which grounds and makes possible God's being-for-us.” Did everybody get that? Do I need to repeat it? Tough, because it has nothing to do with my sermon. From an academic point of view, I can understand this, although it helps me if I draw pictures. But from the standpoint of faith, I'm left scratching my head. Not that academic theology is a bad thing -- far from it. But when it comes to preaching a sermon on Pentecost, it -- well, it sounds like a banging gong or clashing cymbal. It sounds like as much verbal gobbledygook as in the days of the Tower of Babel. It's like speaking in tongues with no one to interpret. You reach a point where it all seems made up, all this technical talk about God and the Trinity and the Holy Spirit. I believe in those things, I really do, and all that technical language makes a certain amount of logic in and of itself, but when you step outside of it, it looks rather absurd, like the medieval brain teaser, "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" (Answer: all of them, because angels have no corporeal existence.) But when the Bible talks about the Spirit, it is more clear and yet more vague, but at least it uses language we can understand. Spirit, in Hebrew ruach, means "a movement of air," wind, breath. Our mind can grasp those images in a way that we can't with the theological language. They are vivid images, yet ones that are still vague, which is no doubt why the language gets so convoluted. I mean, let's face it: we know what God is. Yes, yes, ultimately we can't say anything definite about God. Certainly we all mean different things when we talk about God, but we all know generally what we're talking about. We are able to have a conversation about God without having to define all the nuances of the term. And Jesus is easy. Not only do we all know who we are talking about when we talk about Jesus, but we can all recognize a picture of him, even though no one really knows what he looked like. But we have no common conception of the Holy Spirit. We only have a series of images: a dove, wind, fire -- and these images don't even go together. The Holy Spirit is talked about in the Bible, but it is not a personified actor like God and Jesus. So it is hard for us to find language to discuss what we mean by Spirit, a feeling, an experience, a conviction, but not really a knowledge. And the more people try to talk about it, the more elusive that knowledge becomes, as when people talk too much about a metaphor. A metaphor is by definition not factual, not true. That isn't to say it's false or a lie. A metaphor is used to describe something by talking about something that it is not. It is illustrative rather than description. For example, Jesus said, "I am the door." We know he's not really a door, but we understand by analogy. In fact all our talk about God is a metaphor, but we still tend to have a concrete idea or vision in our mind that we think is real. But when we talk about the Spirit, the metaphor is obvious: a dove, the wind, fire. A metaphor breaks down, though, the more we try to capture it in words. Its power lies in its ability to trigger the imagination. A metaphor is elusive, slippery, and the harder we try to grab onto it, the more easily it slips from our grasp, but when we let that metaphor be, it tickles our minds. We start thinking by association, drawing connections and parallels. We seek new understanding by spiraling out. Metaphor is itself an excellent metaphor for God, particularly when we call God the Holy Spirit. Here then is a story. Picture what it was like before the universe was born. There is no mass, no light. There is no sound, because there is no mass through which sound can travel. There is no smell, because odor is a particle. Is everything black? There is no light to see the blackness with. Whatever was before the universe was inert. We remember the law of inertia: bodies that are at rest remain at rest. So there cannot be anything, because being requires movement: sound, smell, light, atoms -- they all require motion. There was nothing to be moving. Our story says, in the beginning the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters. The movement stirred things up, and there were eddies and currents, and things bumped into each other and stuck together and pulled apart, and it was a Big Bang -- and nothing has stopped moving since. The Spirit is in creation and in the maintenance of life. There is another story about something that we cannot see. It has no weight or mass or volume. It has no taste or smell. It is strong. It can pull up trees by the root; it can blow down houses. Why, given enough time, it can carve out a canyon from solid rock, or it can move a mountain, wear it down until nothing is left. It is the wind, it is the power to caress and the power to mold. It is the breath of God. The Spirit is a mighty power, invisible to the eye. There is another story about a boy, the youngest of twelve brothers. He had everything go wrong to him that could possibly go wrong. He was attacked by his brothers, sold into slavery in a foreign land, framed and thrown into prison. But he had a light within him, a depth of understanding and compassion that he never lost, even in his darkest hour. That light inside him helped him understand people's dreams, their deepest fears, their hidden hopes. They say he had the gift of interpretation, but maybe it's just that he knew how to really listen to people -- with a compassionate heart and an open ear. The Spirit is wisdom and understanding. There is another story about a people who had lost their teacher. He was killed, but it didn't stop them. Even after his death they continue to gather together to study and celebrate and sing. Empowered by hope and a burning love, they reached out to everyone across lines of language, religion, culture, nationality. They discovered a new community, a new reality that spread like wildfire throughout the world. No amount of persecution or hatred could stop it. The Spirit is fire. We don't know exactly what it is. We hardly know how to talk about it. But we do know it. We know the stories. We have had these experiences ourselves. These images fill our minds and our hearts, the fire that cannot be extinguished, a wind that blows where it will, insight and wisdom that blossom from within, peace like a dove descending on gentle wings. A God who cannot be contained, a Spirit that we cannot grasp, yet which reaches out to touch us when we wait for it. Come, Holy Spirit, come. That
They May All Be One 1 June 2003 Here in this final speech of Jesus to his disciples, Jesus prays to God "that they may all be one, as you are in me, and I am in you." That prayer, "That they may all be one," is the motto or calling of the UCC. But it's more of a dream than a description of reality. From the very beginning of the church's history, we have not exactly been one. The book of Acts attempts to play down the divisions, but you don't have to read too much between the lines to discover that there were conflicts from the start, even in the very first chapter, when they came up with a successor for Judas. The story sounds rather mild, but you can bet that if there were two candidates, there were two camps. What happened to Barsabbas and his backers? The story conveniently neglects to tell us. Division and discord seem to be inevitable part of the church, and more often than not, the church has split into factions, frequently excommunicating each other. It's a great scandal, both inside the church and out. Imagine, if you will, that you're from a non-Christian country in the 19th century. Missionaries show up on your shores and espouse a new religion called "Christianity." But wait! Some are called Methodists. They initiate you by sprinkling drops of water on your head. But those ones, called Baptists, insist you have to get your whole body wet. Some of them call their gurus ministers, and others called them priests. They eat a funny meal with a little piece of bread and a drop wine, but some do it every week, and others only rarely. They all organize themselves differently, they all sing different songs. Some stand during worship and others sit. They all call themselves Christians, and they all say the others are wrong. And they expect you to join this crazy religion. You tell me: would you convert? It is, then, not surprising to learn that the United Church movement started overseas, as a number of people did convert to Christianity, but decided that all these denominations were more than a little confusing. The first United Church was founded in India in 1908, followed over the succeeding decades by similar movements in China, Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia. It wasn't until 1957 that the United Church of Christ in the United States was finally born. The fervor for unity, though, had been around for over 50 years in the United States. Various denominations had made overtures to each other, some of which actually resulted in union. The Congregational Christian merger took place in 1931, while the German Evangelical and Reformed churches merged two years later. The ink was still drying on their new letterheads when the two denominations started talking about joining together, though it took several more decades before it finally happened. Many mergers in the U.S. tend to be among like-minded denominations, especially among those that split over the Civil War. But the UCC reflected the global United Church movement in bringing together denominations that had vastly disparate traditions, organizations, and even ethnicities. "That they may all be one," may be a very noble goal, but it gets stickier when you realize this means other people are going to be able to get their hands on your endowments. In fact, many Congregational churches actually sued the church leadership in order to prevent the merger. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court and held up the union for several years. Not a very auspicious beginning. And to this day, many churches that existed "pre-merger" contain their heritage in their title: Community Evangelical, Bethany Congregational. In the UCC we have retained the concept of local autonomy, but also adopted the Reformed structure of electing representatives to attend General Synod -- a body which is itself autonomous and can't make anyone else do anything. Congregations can order their lives as they see fit, but it's the associations that recognize ordination and accept churches into membership. Over the first couple of decades of our common life, new "instrumentalities" were created to fulfill various needs at the national level, resulting in an infamous alphabet soup: UCBHM, UCBWM, OCIS, CRJ, and OCLL. No wonder we UCC people have a hard time explaining who we are! It has been argued, and justly so, that in some ways a true merger never really took place, that the Congregational Christians and the Evangelical and Reformed really continued in an uneasy cohabitation. In the late '80s, folks began to say it was time for us to truly get married. The last decade and a half has been a time of self-reflection and reorganization, and I've had the privilege and headache of living through that in a first-hand way, as an intern at the national level, a board member, a Synod delegate, and a member of various new structures and committees. I've been privy to a lot of that soul searching, and I can say that the new structure, while far from perfect, has a much stronger theological grounding than the old alphabet soup version. We started out as the UCC with a clear purpose, “That they may all be one.” We were dedicated to the principle of union, and while that’s not a bad thing, it doesn’t really go very far. Hopefully you will have noticed, even in my very brief description of our history, that our union was problematic. Some people didn’t want it at all. People had reservations and varying concerns, and we glossed over some important theological issues in order to make sure the union would happen at all. We focused on that first part, “that they may all be one,” neglecting that second part, “as you are in me and I am in you.” In the 1980s, folks began to realize that we shouldn’t just be one for the heck of it, just because it seems like a good idea. We should be one because it’s important to our very identity. And what is our identity? What does it mean to be a church? It means a whole lot more than legal structures, endowments, and a constitution. The church, we realized, does not exist for itself alone. The church exists to be a part of God’s mission in the world. We believe that God engaged in a ministry of reconciliation through Jesus, and Jesus in turn has passed that mission on to us. Indeed, that is the entire subject of his long, final speech in John’s gospel. We, then, are called to be the church so that we may continue to act out God’s mission. Now, we can organize ourselves in a variety of ways in order to carry out that mission, and so we find ourselves with a variety of denominations on our hands, but the most important questions that we need to ask ourselves when organizing into a church are: “How will our structure help us to carry out God’s mission? What will our structure say about the good news? How can our unity reflect the unity of God?” Those were the questions the UCC asked in the 80s and 90s as we restructured ourselves into a more United Church of Christ. I want to look briefly at three principles that arose as paramount over the last couple of decades: the principles of collegiality, covenant, and ecumenism. All of these principles existed in the UCC before, but they weren’t well articulated. Indeed, these principles existed in our predecessor churches, and they exist in other churches as well. But we in the UCC have put these together and organized ourselves based on them in a way that is truly unique. First, collegiality. We are not a hierarchical church. But how do you embody that principle in a way that can still get things accomplished? The UCC now has five Executive Ministers, heads of our national agencies as well as the president of the denomination. But rather than these five being organized into some kind of hierarchy, they are a collegium. The five of them work together, share responsibility and accountability. They are in constant contact with one another, go on retreats together several times a year. In the old structure, the heads of the World Board and the Homeland Board seldom knew what each other was doing. They duplicated efforts, and sometimes they blatantly flaunted each other. The stories I could tell you about fights and grandstanding among the instrumentalities! But now the five heads all meet together and share. If an idea for a new program emerges in Justice and Witness Ministries, when they all get together, they may discern that that new program would be better off developed in Wider Church Ministries. It’s been a struggle adjusting to this new model, and conflicts have certainly continued, as they always will. But now there is a sense of mutuality, of common cause, of cooperation. If you think about it, that’s rather what we mean when we talk about the Trinity being three in one, mutually dependent, isn’t it? And the UCC is utterly unique among American denominations in organizing that way. The second principle is that of covenant. When the UCC was formed, people tossed the word “autonomy” around as the most crucial principle. They wanted to ensure that no one else would be able to tell them what to do. They wanted to safeguard their right to live out their lives as they saw fit. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, either. But when autonomy is framed in terms of safeguarding our rights, then the concept of God’s freedom to act through us gets subordinated to a kind of territorialism. Autonomy needs to be understood “not as independence but as responsibility for self-rule in the awareness that in Jesus Christ all are one in body in communion with him and with one another.” (United and Uniting, p. 138) We don’t each do our own thing in our own way despite everyone else. Instead we all have the responsibility to live out God’s mission in the best way we can, but understanding that we do so in communion with others who are also living out God’s mission in the best way they can. This is, of course, very difficult to do. We are all inclined to believe our way is THE right way. But the word “covenant” is penetrating every layer and every aspect of the UCC. Hopefully it will become part of our conscience, reflected in the way we live and work and worship. Finally, ecumenism continues to be an important part of the UCC’s life, as it has always been. We are less focused on merger as we once were, and focus more on cooperation, seeing church union as a way to express the unity of God. I want to give just one example of how we do that. Remember the story of all those missionaries showing up in a non-Christian country? For decades, our World Ministries Board has struggled with all the good and the bad of our missionary legacy. We want to continue to witness to the mission of Jesus in the world, but to do so in a way that respects people of other faiths, and also respects other Christians. So in the early 90s, the World Board created a Common Global Ministries Board. Our missions work is now carried out jointly with another denomination, the Disciples of Christ. Twenty board members are from the UCC and twenty are from the DOC, and they make all decisions together. This is amazing enough that two non-merged denominations should share so completely in a ministry – including the money! – but what makes it almost miraculously unique is that six other people sit on that Board and share in all decision-making – six people representing partner churches from around the world. Partners from the Middle East Council of Churches, the Church of South India, the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, the Huguenot church in France. The missionary work is no longer done by us to them. It is carried out in true partnership. And I’ll tell you: it is something else to sit in a room and hear partners from South Africa, Lebanon, and China tell us, “You know, maybe you all ought to rethink how you do mission. This is how we do it where we come from.” It says something about how we view God, how we view Jesus’ ministry, and how we view our own role in that mission, when we as a church have built into our very structure the principles of collegiality, of covenant, and of ecumenism. We are not perfect. We are not all one. But we can lift up that vision of unity as something that we want to strive for, as we pray that one day we may indeed all be one, as God is one. Amen. Acts 10:44-48; Ps. 98; 1 Jn. 5:1-6; Jn. 15:9-17 25 May 2003 In this passage from 1 John, and several concepts are related together. John is not linear in his thinking, "because A, therefore B." John is more web like, connecting together disparate principles, which is why the author repeats words and phrases so much, as we talked about last week, when the word "love" was used 29 times in the 1 John passage alone. This week the passage draws connections between belief in Jesus as the Christ, obedience to God commandments, and love. But it's not "first A, then B, then C." We tend to read it as, "To believe in Jesus is to obey God's commandments, and the proof of this is love." But that kind of thinking becomes problematic for us. What about people who don't believe in Jesus? What about people who practice other faiths? Are they not also God's children? What does it mean to obey God's commandments? Which commandments? Just the original ten, or others? If I break a commandment, will I be tossed out on my ear? And what does any of this really have to do with love? Haven't we known loving atheists? Haven't we known commandment-obeying Christians who were the meanest, most spiteful, unloving people? But faith is not linear, and it's seldom rational. As the story in Acts illustrates, the wind blows where it will. And what does the A-B-C progression have to do with Paul's conversion? One minute he's running around killing Christians, the next he's knocked on to his backside and struck blind, and then he becomes an international missionary. There's nothing logical about it at all. So maybe there's another way to look at passages like this one in John. For example, let's look at this phrase, "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child." It does not say, "Everyone who has accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and savior is born of God." If we can set aside all the baggage that the word Christ has accumulated over 2000 years of Christian veneration, then what we have here is, "Everyone who believes that God picked Jesus. Everyone who believes that God chose Jesus, spoke through Jesus, acted through Jesus." You don't have to be Christian to recognize that. Gandhi was a great admirer of Jesus and wished Christians would pay more attention to his teachings. Indeed most people, even atheists, respect Jesus, whether they call him Messiah, Prophet, Avatar, or teacher. And most people, though perhaps not atheists, would recognize the hand of the divine in Jesus. So this isn't about some kind of personal savior or testimony, but a recognition of the divine, and the latter part of the sentence shows this: "Everyone who loves the parent loves the child." If we love God, then we will love God's messengers, God's anointed, God's chosen -- Jesus and Moses and Muhammad and Buddha. If we love God, then we rejoice whenever God's spirit is made manifest in the world. When we recognize God in these messiahs, we will learn to recognize God in ourselves and in each other, and we will recognize that we are all children of God. Skipping ahead to the end of our selection here, where it circles back to the subject of Jesus, John says, "This is the one who came by water and blood, not water only, but water and blood." If we're saying that God's hand was on Jesus, then the manner of Jesus' coming will also say something important about God. But what does all this mean, he came by water and by blood? My first thought on hearing these two words together is that old adage, "Blood is thicker than water." It refers to the strength of family ties. But is that what this passage is saying? Is it making some kind of claim about Jesus' bloodline as the Son of God? I doubt it, and I doubt that expression existed in Jesus' time, though it may have. But water and blood are powerful images in Christianity. Water immediately conjures images of baptism. And indeed most New Testament writers thought of Jesus' baptism as the beginning of his ministry, the point at which he became the anointed one, the Christ. But what does it mean he came to us by water? Baptism's most obvious theme is of being washed clean of sin. But that doesn't seem like a very appropriate metaphor for Jesus. The thing that strikes me about Jesus' baptism is the idea that he didn't need it, but that he chose it. And indeed there is always a sense in which baptism is an act of choice, the human response to God's grace. Baptism was Jesus' Yes to God's call. It was an act by which Jesus chose to stand with us, and in our own baptism, we also choose to stand with Jesus, to share his destiny, his life, his call, and his death. So Jesus coming to us by water means coming to us by choice, an act by which we're all adopted as God's children, as opposed to a status we inherit by virtue of our birth. And Jesus came to us by blood. Of course the central image of blood in Christianity is the one in communion, "This is my blood which is poured out for you." Communion is also referred to as the Last Supper, Jesus' final meal before his death. This earthy imagery of the bread and wine as Jesus' body and blood is tied is death, to sacrifice. And our gospel passage reminds us, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends." So Jesus came to us by blood, by the sacrifice or gift of his life. This was no lukewarm affection Jesus felt for us. To say Jesus came to us by water and by blood means that Jesus came to us by choice, and Jesus gave the ultimate sacrifice for us. And if God is present in Jesus, then what we say about Jesus can also be said about God. And so, "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child." The passage goes on to say, "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey God's commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments." In the gospel John says, "This is my commandment, that you love one another." In other words, we've gone right back to where we started. I don't know about you, but by now the linear part of my brain is starting to hurt. Not that I don't agree with it, not that it doesn't make sense, but I don't feel like we've really gone anywhere. But here John ties on another thread: God's commands are not burdensome. The word command means to order, but there is another sense in which it means "to entrust." This stems from its Latin root, "mandare," which literally means to give into someone's hand. So it's not an order, "Love one another, or else!" It's a trust from God. God has given this into our hands, a responsibility, something precious, as if God says, "I'm counting on you to love one another; I trust you with this task." How powerful! Indeed, God's commandments are not burdensome, but a gift. And here another thread is tied on: God's commands are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world. What does it mean by "conquers the world"? Isn't the world itself born of God, and therefore good? But we know that historically when Christians speak of God as opposed to the world, it means good vs. evil. Think of it in terms of the world as conventional wisdom, how you get ahead in the world, the ways of the world: might makes right, greed is good, dog eat dog, survival of the fittest. Turn on the TV and hear stories of violence and war. Whatever is born of God conquers the world. And what is born of God? Compassion, forgiveness, reconciliation, justice, love. These things conquer the world of greed, selfishness, apathy, despair, violence. Whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Our faith that God was present in a first century itinerant rabbi who spoke in parables and preached love. Our faith that this rabbi's message was not invalidated by his violent death. Our faith that to know love is to know God. Faith is not something you have or hold onto. Faith is something you do, something you give away. Faith is hope. Faith is love. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen in this world. What is the victory that conquers the world? It is our faith, confidence, trust. This is God's command: what God has entrusted to us and, what God has given into our hands: "Love one another." Acts 8:26-40; 1 Jn. 4:7-21; Jn. 15:1-8 18 May 2003 The Johannine books contain many beautiful passages, but oh! They scream for an editor. In these two passages alone, the word "abide" appears no less than 14 times in the New Revised Standard Version. The word love and its variations occur 29 times in the 1 John passage alone. Sometimes it's like reading a tongue twister. Despite their wording, I love these passages, as I love the story of the eunuch in the book of Acts. In fact the 1 John selection contains one of my favorite verses. I've already preached at least two sermons on that verse in my lifetime. And that's the dilemma: there are stories I don't understand, and no matter how many times they come up I read them differently each time. But then there are stories where the message seems obvious. Ironically, these are the hard ones to preach on, because you know me, I hate the obvious. It can become tempting to pull out an old sermon and recycle it, and that's not necessarily a bad idea. After all, a good sermon is probably worth hearing again. But I have 30 years of sermons left to preach, so I don't want to recycle them too often! Fortunately I recently picked up a practice that helps me look at familiar passages in a detailed and fresh way. I write out the week's lectionary selections by hand, which sometimes helps me notice things I would miss otherwise. For example it certainly made the number of abides glaringly obvious, but I also picked up on a little sentence in the Acts story. The Spirit sends Philip out to the road from Jerusalem to Gaza. We've heard of Gaza, one of the hotly contested areas in Israel/Palestine. But Acts makes a point of noting that "this is a desert road." In fact this is one of the reasons why Israel is almost willing to concede Gaza to the Palestinians: it's a desert. It fronts the Sinai Peninsula. Water rights are just as contentious as land rights in the Israel/Palestine dispute. So it is true, as the author of Acts says, that the road from Jerusalem to Gaza is a desert road. Yet a few verses later, the Ethiopian says, "Look, here's water! What's to keep me from being baptized?" My question is: where did that water come from? This may seem like a nit-picky detail, but hey -- I have to preach on these passages for 30 more years. I need those details! But seriously, isn't that a pretty amazing coincidence, that suddenly the Ethiopian looks up and sees water? I could preach a sermon on how "the Lord will provide." God will make a way out of no way. We have all heard that sermon before. Heck, I've preached it before, and I'm sure I will again. It's a good sermon, but I want to see if I can get more out of it. For example, I could turn it around and preach the modern message of the power positive thinking -- a nice, biblical message, really: "if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could make water appear in the desert." On the other hand, usually when you see mysterious pools of water in the desert, it's a mirage. But don't want to go there, either. Instead, let us delve into the details of the story and see what we find. Starting at the beginning, we find that it's the Spirit that sends Philip out to this desert road. The recovering Pentecostals among us may resonate with that better, but the stodgy mainliners probably tend to see the Spirit as an addendum to the Trinity. We talk about A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, and What a Friend We Have In Jesus, but what do we do with the Spirit? Jesus says that the Spirit is like the wind, and the wind blows where it will. But that's kind scary to us mainliners. What, do you mean the Spirit may act in violation of the Constitution and bylaws? Well, yes! That's exactly what the Spirit does throughout the book of Acts -- it disregards the Constitution and bylaws. People speak in tongues before they are authorized to do so. People get baptized at the wrong time. It's all so confusing and disorderly, this idea that God might inspire us to do something different, something we've never done before. It makes us nervous, as if we don't quite know what this God will do next. What happened to that Mighty Fortress? So the Spirit sends Philip out on this desert road to meet the Ethiopian. It's interesting that we know so much about this man, but we don't know his name. He's Ethiopian. In other words, he's black. He's a eunuch, in other words he's outside the sexual norm. Now, these don't necessarily mean today what they meant back then. I'm not sure about the history of racism, but I'd be surprised if blackness was looked down upon in that part of the world in those days. Ethiopia was not then the basket case that it is now. It is an ancient and powerful nation. But this man was also eunuch, and the Torah says that eunuchs may never be admitted to the congregation of God's people. Yet elsewhere in the Bible, the promise is made that eunuchs will be admitted to God's congregation, a theme which this story also affirms. Eunuchs were outside the sexual norm, seen as "unnatural," yet in ancient times they frequently were in positions of great power. Indeed the position of royal treasurer was frequently held by a eunuch, such as this one. So by both modern standards and ancient standards, this man was marginalized in one way or another. But was he a Jew? Perhaps. Ethiopia has an ancient Jewish community. In fact, the Ethiopian Coptic Church claims to be in possession of the Ark of the Covenant. Our man, here, is reading the Scriptures, and he's returning from worship in Jerusalem. Maybe he was Jewish, or perhaps he was a righteous gentile. But let's move on to the next detail: he's reading in a chariot. A chariot which is moving, since Philip has to run alongside him. How many of you have ever written in a horse-drawn vehicle? It's not exactly a smooth ride. Think about it: wooden wheels, no shock absorbers or independent suspension systems, not to mention smooth, tarmac covered roads. And this man is reading while riding in his chariot? I'm not saying it can't happen, but he must really have been concentrating hard, focused and intent. He really wanted to be reading those Scriptures! So the Spirit sends Philip to the desert road to chase down the Ethiopian, which is not so hard, given that the chariot must have been moving very slowly in order for the man to be able to read. Philip asks, "Do you understand what you're reading?" And our man says, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" Could Philip have asked for a more perfect cue? Philip explains everything, and our man sees water and says, "What's to keep me from being baptized?" So Philip baptizes him, and then -- get this -- the Spirit carries him away to Azotas, and the Ethiopian doesn't even notice. The Ethiopian apparently finds nothing unusual in Philip's convenient appearance, the miraculous water in the desert, or Philip's vanishing act. Rather, the story says that he went on his way rejoicing. He wants to understand the Scriptures, Philip is there to explain it all. He wants to be baptized, and presto, suddenly there's water. What if the story isn't about miraculous apparitions at all? What if our man's faith is what made it all happen? Here's what I'm thinking: the Ethiopian was ready. He was ready to understand God, to meet God, to have a relationship with God. And because he was ready, it all happened, even though he was in the middle of the desert with no teacher and no water. But the wind blows where it will! Now as I said, I want this to be about more than the Lord will provide or the power of positive thinking, so let's ponder this. The Ethiopian was ready, ready to meet God, and it all happened. And it happened because he abided in God and God abided in him. I bet you thought I'd forgotten all about those John passages! What's that word John repeats over and over? [Abide] And these two phrases always go together: God abides in you and you abide in God. John never says one without the other. But what does that mean, to abide in God and God abide in us? It means to remain, to continue permanently, to live, dwell, to lodge. It means to make our home in God, and God makes a home in us. It means we're open to the movement of the Spirit, open to the wind whenever and wherever it blows. What is that little exchange we make before communion every week? [The Lord be with you, etc.] How does it differ from the traditional phrasing? [Open your hearts, not lift up.] Why was that changed? Partly it was changed to counter the idea that God is "up there." But how does that feel to you, this phrase "open our hearts, we open them to God"? It means we open the door to the dwelling of our heart, we are ready -- ready for the wind whenever and wherever it blows, ready to meet God, ready to abide in God, and have God abide in us. I think that's what happened to our man on the road to Gaza. Whether or not Philip was there, whether or not there was really any water or it was just a mirage, the wind blew where it would, and our man was ready for it. He desired it, and like a magic wish, it happened. That's what it takes -- not a church, not Scriptures, not water, not doctrine. It takes an open heart, and then God happens, a miracle, salvation, abundant life, joy and rejoicing. As our hymn last week said, "born of the Spirit's kiss." For love is of God, and all who love are born of God and know God. And John says that to love God is to love one another. For if you can't love the people you can see, how can you love God whom you can't see? How can you see the water that isn't there? How can you find understanding when there's no teacher? How indeed? Christianity’s
Greatest Shame 11 May 2003 Several weeks ago in one of my Lenten sermons, I preached about the concept of an old covenant and a new covenant, and I said that I was going to leave the subject of the Christian roots of anti-Semitism for another sermon. Well, this is the sermon! This passage in Acts, in which Peter speaks to the Jewish leaders and refers to “Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified,” is a relatively mild one, considering what else we can find in Acts. For example, last week’s passage was much more harsh and vindictive against the Jews, but we were spared hearing it because of our special worship service. But I’m not going to spare you now. When the crowd gawked at a miracle Peter had performed in the name of Jesus, Peter rebuked them, saying, “You Israelites! Why do you wonder at this? The God of our ancestors has glorified Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate. You rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life.” (Acts. 3:12-15) How can we listen to that and not find our teeth set on edge? I cringed when I saw those passages listed in the lectionary, but in the end I’m glad the lectionary forces us to encounter them. I certainly don’t have to tell you all that we don’t have a rosy history when it comes to Christian-Jewish relations. We Christians didn’t actually invent anti-Semitism. The hatred and persecution of Jews has been around for a long time, but the great crime is that Christians embraced it as a cause. Several years ago I did quite a bit of research into this topic, and I learned that the most popular times of the year for Christians to instigate pogroms, or wholesale massacre of Jews, was during the holy days – not theirs, but ours, Christmas and Easter. For example, in the Middle Ages it was customary on Easter to bring a Jew into the church and slap him, spit on him, and abuse him, the way Jesus had been abused by his captors. How can anyone have ever seen that as an appropriate way to celebrate the resurrection of the man of sorrows? This rejection of Jews goes back to Christianity’s earliest roots, as we have seen in those passages from Acts. The earliest great theologians preached sometimes virulent messages against Jews: Cyprian, Origen, Ambrose, Augustine. Constantine, the Emperor who converted to Christianity, forbade Jews from marrying Christians. In 425, Jews were required by law to observe Christian feasts and fasts, and they were further required to listen to sermons designed to convert them to Christianity. Judaism was not recognized as a religion, and Jews were forbidden to observe Passover, or to read in Hebrew from the Torah. In
medieval Europe, the oppression continued. In 1215, Jews were placed
in ghettoes and required to wear explicit dress, including a golden
badge meant to remind them that they had betrayed Jesus for gold.
In 1492, Jews were expelled wholesale from Spain. Martin Luther,
the great reformer, called Jews the Devil, and said, “We are
not at fault in slaying them.” This
is the famous blood guilt passage, the one that many Christians
have interpreted as giving them righteous license to murder Jews.
Imagine my surprise then, when I found that not one of the other
three gospels contains the line, “His blood be on us and on
our children.” The weight of the New Testament witness, therefore,
is against that verse. While
it is true that the religious authorities had a part in Jesus’
execution, they hardly represented the will of the people. The high
priests were in fact handpicked by the Roman authorities in order
to ensure their loyalty. That is the only reason why Jews were allowed
to continue their monotheistic beliefs under Roman rule. But in
the eyes of most Jews, these priests were not legitimate. Furthermore,
the Gospel witness shows that even these religious authorities were
not unanimous in their condemnation of Jesus. As for the Jewish
people as a whole, they did not all reject Jesus. His own twelve
apostles were Jewish, as were the crowds that flocked to hear his
teachings, not to mention the earliest Christians. When
I first read this, there was a lot in it that disturbed me, but
a closer reading reveals something different. First of all, Paul
says that the tree, that is the covenant, is God’s. The tree
still stands, but some branches are broken off, not all Jews, but
those who rejected God’s message in Jesus. Then new branches,
the Gentiles who believe, are grafted on. But those who are grafted
on do not replace the Jews as a whole; they are not a new tree.
In other words, the gospel as Paul preaches it is not that Christians
have replaced Jews, but that through Christ, Gentiles have now been
included in the covenant of the Jews. Because some branches did
not believe, they were broken off to make room for new branches.
But he goes on to say that those Jews who have been cut off will
be restored. The good news is that we can move forward. The good news is that forgiveness does happen. Anti-Semitism is like a bad branch that has been grafted onto the tree of our faith. But if we admit to having that branch, if we search honestly for it, confront it, and cut it off, then we can preserve and cultivate the true message of Jesus, the Jew, whom we call the Messiah. One
in Heart and Soul 27 April 2003 Poor Thomas! Forever preserved in the lectionary for the Sunday after Easter. After all the pomp and glory of the Easter celebrations, Thomas is enshrined as the apostolic party pooper. I'm sure there are millions of sermons preached on this day rebuking Thomas for his lack of faith, lording it over him with the arrogant cry, "Blessed rather are we who have not seen and yet have believed!" Millions of sermons, but not in the UCC. Thomas is sort of our patron saint, isn't he? During Holy Week I did my ritual viewing of Jesus Christ Superstar, which includes the UCC theme song, "Could We Start Again, Please?" I think you made your point, now (the song goes.) You've even gone a bit too far to get the message home. This was unexpected. What do I do now? Could we start again, please?" Actually, that's probably more of a Presbyterian song. They're the ones who like to do things decently and in order. Actually, Judas' closing song is probably more like a UCC theme song. "Did you mean to die like that? Was that a mistake, or did you know your messages would be a record breaker? Who are you? What is your sacrifice? Do you think you're what they say you are?" For that matter, I'm not sure that Thomas is really our patron saint, either. I'm not sure how many UCCers fret that much over the need for physical evidence of the resurrection. Thomas' doubts probably reflect more of a Baptist concern. After all, they are the ones who are so adamant that unless Jesus literally, physically rose from the dead, his whole enterprise is a fraud. But why do we care so much about Thomas, anyway? My Bible hermeneutic is that every story is always first and foremost about us today, not about people who lived thousands of years ago. After all, Thomas and Jesus seem to have worked out their issues just fine. Perhaps there is another factor we should be looking at in the story: the issue of community. Perhaps the point of this story is that Thomas was not subjected to an inquisition to examine his faith. Indeed, he didn't have to make a profession of faith in order to be part of the community at all. A full week passes between Thomas' declaration that he will not believe until he has seen and felt the marks himself -- and when Jesus finally shows up to grant his request. A week goes by, and nothing is said about the other disciples excluding Thomas or even debating with him. Apparently he was still a full member of the community, even before Jesus miraculously appeared to him. What, then, does that say about this passage in Acts: "The whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul"? Or the Psalm, "How good and pleasant it is when kindred live together unity"? Christians have historically placed a lot of emphasis on doctrinal unity. Indeed, agreement on doctrine has probably tended to be the aspect most dwelt upon. The key to Christian community has been whether or not we all believe the same thing. It's not enough for each of us simply to believe. Hence the number of creeds that have been written over the centuries. Hence the majority of denominational splits, as exemplified most concisely in the controversy over transubstantiation versus consubstantiation. Does anyone really understand the distinction today? For that matter, did anyone really understand the distinction back then? Yet disagreement over a prefix continues to divide the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches to this day. Matters of practice also divide churches, especially matters of who gets ordained, how sacraments are administered, and yes, how the money is handled. Oh, it gets phrased in religious language, but it is really about more material matters. Even all the current controversies around sexual orientation. What are the sticking points on the issue? Ordination and marriage. Even though we Protestants don't view marriage as a sacrament, that is how the issue gets phrased: "What God has joined," etc. And why is it not such a big deal in the UCC? While I'd like to say it's because we're more enlightened than our fellow Christians, the reality may have as much to do with the fact that local congregations get to decide issues of ordination and the administration of sacraments, and local churches own their own property. So skipping over what this Acts passage says about the issue of property, what is a juicy enough topic for a sermon on its own, let's go back then to this question: what is the unity of the church based on, if it is not matters of doctrine or faith? Why did Thomas continue to be included in the community in that intervening week, despite his lack of belief in the resurrection? "The whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul." Notice it does not say, "They were of one belief." Rather, those who believed were of "one heart and soul." In the synoptic gospels, when Jesus specifically separates out the twelve disciples, Thomas is always among them. Thomas walked with the others through Galilee. He traveled and studied with Jesus. He no doubt screwed up as much as the rest of them did, and he probably also had some insight or spark within him which led Jesus to name him among the Twelve. He threw his cloak before Jesus at the triumphal entry. He shared bread and wine at the Last Supper. He ran away with the rest of the disciples when Jesus was arrested, but he came back -- just like the rest of them did (all except Judas, who was never actually excommunicated, but rather committed suicide.) Even though Thomas didn't share the same beliefs about the resurrection that the others did, he still saw himself as part of the same movement. Thomas remained a part of the community because they were one in heart and soul. What bound them was a common experience, the experience of traveling around Galilee together, their experience as Jesus' disciples. What bound them was a common purpose, the embodiment of the reign of God as Jesus showed it to them. What bound them was their relationship to this Rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, and their relationship to one another as his disciples. What bound them was their ongoing commitment beyond the man himself. They were not of one mind, but they were of one heart and one soul. What about us at Spirit of Peace Church? Obviously it is not doctrine that binds us! We are Christian, which means that we each have a relationship of some kind with Jesus, but that relationship is not defined in advance. Our only requirement for membership is that one be a follower of Jesus who sincerely desires to be a part of the church. We are bound together by our experience. Even though each of us has a unique story, we have found that we indeed share common themes in how we understand our religious journey. We are bound together by a shared vision of the realm of God based on principles of grace, forgiveness, and reconciliation; on a beloved community that embodies extravagant welcome, liberty of conscience, and a just peace. It is perhaps easier to define a community of faith according to doctrine. But we at Spirit of Peace value unity of heart and soul over unity of dogma or creed. Are we successful in that aim? Or more to the point, do we hold unity of heart and soul as a core value? During this Easter season as we celebrate the new life that is ours, let us contemplate who we are as a church. For it is indeed good and pleasant when kindred live together in unity. Baptism:
For Better or for Worse 13 April 2003 People like fairy tale stories. In fairy tales, the bad guys get punished and the good guys triumph. People find true love at first sight (a tale conveniently preserved by going no farther than the wedding). Those who have all the right virtues -- honesty, humility, generosity, and perseverance -- are always rewarded. There is something immensely satisfying about such stories, all the more so because that is seldom what real life is like. Bad things, of course, do happen to good people. The true lovers separate years later in a bad breakup. The villains get away with it, and more often than not, virtue must indeed be its own reward, because no one else is going to give it any credit. But that is why I do not like fairy tales, except as fluffy escapism. It's the stories that don't have happy endings which I find more satisfying, because they are more helpful in trying to sort out my life. I like stories in which people have to cope with all the pitfalls and troubles of real life, because real life doesn’t have a benevolent author controlling all the elements of the story and directing them toward a happy ending. Then again, many people probably do see God as a benevolent author directing us toward our personal happy ending. Religion, of course, has many fairy tale elements, and it can definitely be a form of escapist entertainment. And how can I really blame anyone for hoping for a happy ending, when so many people's lives are so dreary and oppressive? So people fantasize about heaven as a glorious vacation resort, or how eventually God is going to come down and smite their enemies, the ones who are getting away with their evil deeds. Our Christian faith definitely contains these fairy tale elements, but those elements are not the ones that speak most deeply to me. What I connect with the most in Christianity is its realistic portrayal of how bad the world can be. We know the story of Palm Sunday and how that triumphal entry goes sour during the week. The crowds that welcome Jesus with enthusiasm will turn against him as he appears before Pilate. The disciples who throw their cloaks on the ground before Jesus will desert him when he is arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. Apparent victory gets overturned in the worst possible way as the glorious title "King of Israel" becomes a mocking slogan nailed to the cross. No amount of resurrection stories can fully erase the pain of that realism, the realism of political and religious violence, of lynch mobs and the death of an innocent man. But that story proved to be far too realistic for early Christians. It just didn’t seem right – it still doesn’t seem right – that a good man like Jesus, someone who was seen as God’s anointed one, should suffer such a horrible death. So in an effort to understand what happened to Jesus, early Christians read passages such as this one in Isaiah to show how God must have foreseen the whole bloody story, even planned it. What happened to Jesus, then, becomes less a matter of real world politics than about an ultimate plan of salvation hatched by, well, a benevolent author. But of course we run into problems when Christians read the Old Testament and say, “A-ha! All these people were really talking about Jesus all along!” I do think it is perfectly legitimate for people to try to understand their own times by reading earlier stories in the Bible, and God can speak in new ways to us through the old stories. But when Christians connect the stories of the suffering servant so strongly to Jesus himself, we may come to think that these passages only apply to Jesus. In so doing, we run the risk of turning this realistic story into yet another fairy tale, where Jesus’ suffering is turned into a plot device for saving the human race, and we through our baptism get away unscathed. Indeed, some people seem to believe that if you are a good and faithful Christian, then evil will not befall you. Crucifixion and all that is all very well and good for Jesus, who had the entire human race to save, but God doesn’t intend for bad things like that to happen to us. If we fail in our tasks as spectacularly and violently as Jesus does, then it must be a sign of divine disfavor. Be a good Christian, these people say, and nasty things won’t happen to you. Be a good Christian, and you will be safe. And if that isn’t a fairy tale, I don’t know what is! It is certainly not the lesson of religious history. On the contrary, people who live deeply out of their religious conviction often suffer for it. So let’s not give Jesus exclusive claim to the suffering servant passages. Those passages describe what can happen to any person of faith, not only Jesus. For Jews, the suffering servant is the people of Israel. Remember, the whole idea is that Jews are the chosen people. Well, for God's chosen ones, they have had more than their fair share of hardship over the centuries. As the ancient Jews suffered setback after setback, they came to understand that perhaps they had not been chosen for privilege, but rather for suffering. The assurance in the suffering servant passages is that even the faithful may suffer, but God is still with us and will vindicate us through the ultimate triumph of justice. Passages such as these are meant to give people courage in their struggles. There is indeed something comforting in the idea that we have been chosen to endure hardship in pursuit of a higher calling or purpose. People are willing to make great sacrifices for a noble cause. This sort of suffering servant theology can also be expressed in the adage that God does not give us any burden that is too great for us to bear, or that God will always give us the strength to endure whatever hardships we face. Of course, taken to an extreme, this logic begins to break down. What does it mean to say God will not give us a burden that we cannot bear, when we are talking about a case of gross child abuse? Can we really even say that Jesus himself was able to bear his burden, when supposedly his last words on the cross were, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” And what are we to make of people who do not have the strength to endure, who succumb to self-destructive behavior, such as suicide or drug addiction, or who lash out at others in hatred, abuse, or murder? Is it possible for God to parcel out too much suffering? Or will we imply that these people simply do not have enough faith? And do we perhaps cheapen Jesus’ own suffering when we say it was all foreordained? After all, he was the Son of God. He can take it. That said, stories can in fact help us wrestle with real life. If I apply stories about the suffering servant only to Jesus, then they don’t help me very much, but if I look at Jesus’ story not as something that happened to a super god-man, but as something that happened to a good man, a man of faith, then I can find a way to interpret and understand the suffering that other good people of faith endure. Probably any theology when taken to the extreme will fail, because ultimately that which we call God is beyond our knowing. The idea that to be Christian is to be safe sounds like a fairy tale to me, but I do find strength in passages such as the suffering servant, or the one in Philippians, which looks to Jesus as an example of how Christians are to live their lives, even in times of trial and suffering. When we are baptized, the story of Jesus becomes our own story. His ministry, his joys, his suffering, and yes, his resurrection, all become part of our own lives. We aren’t passive recipients of the benefits Jesus accrued for us on the cross. We enter into his story, and he enters into ours. Baptism is a covenant that we hold on to for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; in life and in death itself. Baptism is a covenant which says that through all that life deals us, we are not alone. Let us remember that as we journey toward Calvary this week. Baptism:
A Lifetime of Learning 6 April 2003 I certainly don't need to tell you how Christianity has historically interpreted this concept of a "new covenant" to mean that the covenant which God made with the Hebrews at Mount Sinai has been replaced by the new covenant in Jesus. That whole concept has been preserved in the way we speak about the Bible: the Old Testament and the New Testament, the "obsolete" covenant, and the "new and improved" one. But I'm going to save the sermon about Christian roots of anti-Semitism for another time. It should be apparent to anyone who reads the Bible with open eyes that the Old Testament itself speaks about old versus new covenants. The problem is not that the old covenant has become obsolete or needs to be updated or is otherwise no good; it's that the people keep breaking it. And certainly Christians have proven no better in keeping the covenant than Jews have! So God has to keep renewing the covenant, starting over afresh, because we humans just can't uphold our end of the deal. In this passage from Jeremiah, you can hear God almost desperately wishing for a covenant that finally we will not violate. "I'll put my law within them and rewrite it in the hearts. No longer will they teach each other, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they will all know me." God sounds like a teacher praying for the day when the kids will finally memorize their multiplication tables. It sounds like God is praying for the kind of student we see in the Psalm: I treasure your word in my heart; with my whole heart I seek you. I delight in your decrees as much as in all riches, I will not forget your word." The distinction between the old and new covenant is not a matter of terms, but a matter of how we relate to it. If we take our baptism seriously, that means we need to take our covenant seriously. Our faith as Christians does not belong to us, as if it is a possession for us to dispose of however we see fit. If all we care about is our personal spirituality, our own spiritual happiness, then why be Christian? We might as well remain unaffiliated, picking and choosing what satisfies and fulfills us from any and all sources, religious or otherwise. But according to our baptism, we are Christians. We are called within the larger family of faith. So our faith is not just about our own fulfillment, but about God's fulfillment as well. Our baptism says that our fulfillment as spiritual beings is linked to God, and God's fulfillment is linked to ours. Indeed, we pledge to seek our fulfillment in and through each other, much the way to people pledge in holy union. I want to say this again, because it's important: God's fulfillment is linked to ours. You can hear it in that passage from Jeremiah. "They won't have to teach each other, 'Know the Lord,' anymore, they will all know me." So what does that mean if our spiritual life doesn't exist for ourselves alone, but is a covenantal relationship we share with God and with one another as Christians? What kind of students will we be of such a covenant? Some students view education as an endless routine of memorization. The language student is only concerned with memorizing the rules of grammar and spelling. The science student memorizes the periodic chart of the elements. And some people approach the covenant in the same way, viewing it as a set of rules for keeping yourself pure so you can go to heaven. Christians don't smoke. Christians don't have sex outside of marriage. Christians don't say the pledge or take any other oath. Christians don't fight in wars. These kind of blanket statements -- all of them, whether good or not -- are essentially about maintaining ones purity. But do you really think God cares that much about rules of conduct? Moses was a murderer. Jacob was a swindler who cheated his father, his brother, and his uncle. Noah was a drunkard. David was an adulterer. You can probably count on one hand the number of people in the Bible who don't break at least one of the Ten Commandments. I'm not saying that how we behave isn't important, but clearly it is not a significant part of how God's spiritual life is fulfilled. And too often, purity codes become ways that we pass judgment on one another, a sin which Christians commit just as happily as any Pharisee. Is this the kind of student God desires, one who memorizes the terms of the covenant but doesn't have the faintest idea of what the covenant actually means? There are other students who think of their education only in terms of what will look good on their resume. They are less concerned with education itself, than they are with collecting all the credentials they need to achieve a certain end. This kind of student of the covenant sees God's precepts as a sort of blueprint toward personal fulfillment, as summed up in the view that calls the beatitudes the "be happy attitudes." This kind of student might emphasize 30 minutes of quiet time every morning, going to church every Sunday, wearing "What Would Jesus Do" jewelry and having a fish on their car, reading Prayers for Busy Mothers. Again, it's not that any of this is bad, but the focus too easily ends up being on ourselves, with the emphasis placed on learning to cope, addressing our felt needs, and worship as a feel-good experience. This is by no means a modern phenomenon. The medieval housewife Margery Kempe took much delight in crying uncontrollably whenever she went to church. Reading her memoirs, one gets the feeling that she rather enjoyed the fact other people were turned off by her spiritual hysteria. Think of the flagellants who walked through the streets whipping themselves, or saints throwing ashes on their food. All this deprivation is actually a perverse form of self-indulgence. How is God's spirituality fulfilled when people wear hair shirts or eat ashes? Is this the kind of student God desires? One who turns God's covenant into a kind of merit badge collection? Imagine a poor 9th grade literature teacher. On the one hand she has students can read a book and name the protagonist, the antagonist, the themes, and major plot points as promptly and accurately as any set of Cliff Notes. On the other hand, she has students who only care whether or not these books are on the reading list for their college of choice. But sometimes the teacher finds a student who just loves to read. This is the kind of student that the teacher delights in, one whose mind is open to the love of discovery and inquiry. This student may get names and dates mixed up, may be a very slow learner and may only have a C average. But a teacher finds joy in such a student. And God is the same. God does not so much desire obedience or memorization as a love of learning. God, too, wants our hearts and minds to be open to discovery. The kind of student God desires is one who sees God's precepts as a wellspring for living fully and faithfully in the world. Such students take the precepts seriously, but not strictly or literally. For them the Bible is something to jump into, to wrestle and argue with, to play with, and to learn from. People who delight in God's precepts find them challenging, engaging, even disturbing. They don't shy away from asking questions or turning things on their head. They are less concerned with knowing what the text is supposed to mean than they are with finding the blessing that comes in studying the text itself. The Bible becomes a way of developing a relationship with God and with one another. Studying God's precepts becomes a way of writing the covenant on our hearts and delighting always in it. Our baptism is an invitation into this kind of learning, to delight in God's ways. Our baptism symbolizes the commitment that we will endeavor to write God's covenant in our hearts. It's not a commitment to memorize the rules or seek our own fulfillment. It is a promise to take our delight in God, to treasure this life-giving word more than riches, to explore our collective Christian faith in the classroom of the world, with each other as fellow students. We do not learn only to satisfy our own needs or to make the grade, but so that we may work together to build the beloved community. As we examine our baptism during this season of Lent, what kind of students do we find ourselves to be? Baptism:
Not to Condemn, but to Save 30 March 2003 John 3:16. The one Bible quote we can cite by chapter and verse. Martin Luther called it the summation of the gospel, and many eager evangelists have seized on it as a bumper sticker way to share their faith. I would probably agree that it's a summation of the gospel -- but I'm not sure what if anything it means to people outside the faith. Unfortunately this verse has been interpreted by some to mean that "Jesus" is the magic code to open the door of the ultimate gated community, heaven. I've never liked that interpretation of Jesus, who himself once said, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven." But for some Christians, the whole point of evangelism is to get people to confess "Jesus as Lord." You know the formula: accept him into your heart and thank him for dying on the cross for your sins. I was reading something recently which made the point that sins could already be forgiven before Jesus came around. It's not as if God never forgave sins before that. This idea got me thinking: what might it really mean if the whole point of Jesus was not the forgiveness of sins? That's a part of it, but what if his purpose was something more? What might that something else be? What might our baptism mean if it's not really about forgiveness of sins -- because the fact of the matter is were going to keep sinning after we're baptized, and God will keep forgiving us. Perhaps the key lies in John 3:17 -- "for God sent the Son not to condemn the world, but to save it." To save it means there is something worth preserving, worth restoring. Some people go junk shopping; they scour garage sales and flea markets looking for those hidden treasurers. They may find a table drenched in several layers of really awful paint jobs. The thing is scuffed, banged up, covered with years of hardened spaghetti sauce and pancakes syrup, but they take it home, carefully strip all layers, and find a beautiful, sturdy, handmade table beneath it all; a treasure of workmanship. "Not to condemn, but to save." It's not that the world is inherently a wretched, evil place, that we humans are basically depraved, but that we've acquired a patina of gunk over the years. There is an inherent goodness in us, something that is worth saving. In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians he explores this concept of salvation, tied inherently to the salvage work of baptism. He even notes at the end of this passage that we are God's workmanship, we are what God has made us. If that isn't worth saving, then what is? But like that poor table, we have collected a bad paint job over the years. Our beauty is buried beneath layers of muck. Paul says, "All of us once lived in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath." Now think about that. We know about the problems of mind-body dualism and the negation of the body and this world. Certainly that is how a passage like this has often been interpreted. But is there not also a basic truth here? For example, San Antonio has been declared the fattest city in the country. Is there anyone here who thinks we don't deserve that title? But it's not just San Antonio; Americans as a whole are overweight. When you travel to other countries and see how other people live, you begin to realize just how incredibly self-indulgent we Americans are. We are spoiled and lazy, with our precious cars, our junk food, and our satellite TVs. We don't even have to exercise or diet to lose weight. We can have liposuction and plastic surgery. I’m speaking in generalizations here, but can you really disagree? Americans are slaves to our appetites. We lack self-discipline. Paul's description fits us with uncanny accuracy: we live in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of the flesh and senses. Is it not then also true what Paul says next, especially given our current situation: we become by nature children of wrath. We don't have to really work to create the things we have. When they are handed to us, we take them for granted, we see them as our right, and heaven forbid anyone should try to take away from us. And the best example of this is that email petition that gets passed around about boycotting gas companies in order to gas prices down. We feel entitled to an endless, cheap supply of gas to fuel all our energy-inefficient cars, rather than go through the difficulty of coming up with new, renewable sources of energy, or investing in public transportation. “Children of wrath,” indeed! Now hold onto that, because we’re going to go back to those fiery serpents in the Old Testament. I never heard this story when I was growing up. The first time I heard it was in adulthood, and I’ve always heard it connected with the image of Jesus on the cross, as in the passage in John. What a brutal picture of God this story paints! The people complain too much, and God sends fiery serpents to bite them so that they die? Is this a God you want to have anything to do with? But let's review. In the chapters before this one, the people complained about the lack of food, and God sent them manna, plenty enough for everyone to every day. Then they complained about eating these heavenly crackers, and got sent quail to round out that diet. In the chapter before this one, they complained about the lack of water, and Moses struck a rock with his staff and made the water gush forth. Now here the people complain once more: "We have no food no water,” they gripe, “only this worthless food." A-ha. It's not they have no food, it's that they don't like what they have. They want Snickers bars and Big Macs and diet cherry cokes. If I were God, I'd want to sic snakes on them, too! But let's remember that in the Bible things were often attributed to God that in fact have a more human source. Remember what Paul said: we live in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath. Here are these masses of people living in the desert. Despite the barren landscape, they have all that they need. Yet they don't have to work for it. They don't have to plant and harvest crops, they don't raise or tend the quail, they don’t even have to dig the well for the water. All of these things have been given to them, as we might say from the hands of a bountiful and generous God. Yet this bounty does not inspire a matching sentiment in the hearts of the people. They take it for granted. They become lazy, selfish, indulgent – and they become by nature children of wrath. They start squabbling with one another. Jealous and argumentative, they accuse and attack one another. Remember the serpent in the Garden of Eden, tempting Adam and Eve with their selfishness. That same serpent strikes again in the wilderness. God didn't send it. It emerged from people's hearts, and that is why they die. And what is the cure? God tells Moses to make a serpent and put it on a pole. If anyone gets bitten, they may look at the bronze serpent and live. The bronze serpent is the image of people’s own selfishness and cruelty. In other words, salvation means to stare your sin in the eye, face-to-face. Baptism, then, is not so much about forgiveness of sin, which we all need all the time and God always bestows on us. It is about something greater. Baptism goes straight to the source, to our nature as children of wrath, and gives us the assurance and courage to face our own sin, our own spoiled, self-indulgent, and poisonous nature. You notice in the story that the bronze serpent is not a preventive measure. It only works after people have been bitten. Baptism, then, means that we recognize our own hearts, we admit our sin and stare it down and emerge alive on the other side. And that brings us back John 3:16. The point of Jesus’ death on the cross is not the forgiveness of sins, but rather the ultimate example of staring down the fiery serpent that springs from the hearts of the children of wrath. What is lifted up on the cross is an example of the worst that humans are capable of. What is lifted up on the cross is murder, judgment, hatred, oppression, all the venom that poisons our hearts and our world. But Jesus came not to condemn the world, but to save it. Jesus shows us that he can face the worst that people dole out, and yet live. And when we look at that cross, when we are able to stare into the face of what our wrathful nature is capable of, then we truly may be saved. For even though we are children of wrath, underneath those stains we are still what God has made us. So during this season of Lent, we continue to reflect on the power given to us in baptism. This Lent, let us acknowledge our nature as children of wrath, let us identify the fiery serpents that spring from our hearts, and let us have the courage to stare them down. If we do so, then we will find eternal life indeed. Baptism:
Remember March 23, 2003
While we may be skeptical of such a view of the spiritual journey, nevertheless surely even the most cynical of people can see the appeal of being given the chance to start over again, especially when we've really made a hash of it the first time. While our lives are rarely so clear cut into before and after, nevertheless there are some remarkable stories of reformation and renewal. You may be familiar with the story of the beloved Saint Francis. He was the son of a wealthy Italian textile merchant, and he was not above enjoying his family’s wealth. Francis was a leader among his town’s exuberant young people. He loved parties and drink and fine clothes. But his zeal for life made him dream of a life of grandeur. At first he sought glory through the military, getting involved in one of medieval Italy’s many inter-city feuds. He was captured and imprisoned for a time, and after his release, military life had lost some of its appeal. He returned to Assisi determined to do well in the business world. But he began to feel called by God, and on February 24, 1208, in a response to a sermon based on Matthew’s gospel, he stripped off all his fine clothes, handed them to his father, and embarked on what would become his life’s work as a missionary to the poor and the very least of God’s creatures. Francis’ life is a classic example of the before and after style of Christian conversion. But this extreme change is different from what is often presented in the Bible, where conversion is less of a total switch than it is a turning back or returning to one's roots, one's true identity, one's covenant with God. The key in biblical stories of conversion is to remember who you really are, to remember what God has gone before, and what we in turn owe to God. We see that theme in this account of the Ten Commandments, which begins with a reminder: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” The commandments are not so much a general, all-purpose system of ethics or rules as they are a covenant based on God's actions in the past. If you read the Bible all the way through -- Genesis to Revelation -- then you discover how coherent the Bible really is. Over and over again, the people return to the original story of how God brought them out of slavery in Egypt. Their repentance is always a return, a remembrance of what God has done before, more than it is a before and after contrast, and people often have to be converted more than once. One of the lesser-known histories, Nehemiah, tells the story of the people’s return from exile. As they undertake the task of rebuilding the city of Jerusalem, the people rediscovered the sacred texts, long forgotten when they were away. They eagerly demand that the priest Ezra read from the Torah so they can remember what has gone before. They want to remember who they are and what their God has done. Throughout the history of the Bible, and up to this very day, Jews keep returning to that same story of salvation, finding comfort and strength through centuries of persecution and hardship. Jesus himself did not seek so much to create a new religion as desire to recall people to their true heritage. In this famous story of Jesus chasing the moneylenders out of the Temple, Jesus does not appeal to a new source of authority to justify his actions. Nor for that matter does he seek to destroy the Temple, despite the parenthetical statement at the end. The disciples themselves, when they see Jesus’ actions, are reminded of the psalm that says, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” Other gospels have Jesus quote the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, rebuking, “My house shall be a house of prayer.” Jesus’ actions in the Temple were a call to remember and return to Israel’s true purpose, and not at all a rejection of the past. We Christians, too, return over and over to a story of remembrance. We celebrate communion, Jesus' Last Supper, as he told us to "in remembrance of him." In the church where I grew up, we celebrated communion only on several select occasions throughout the year. We had a very minimal liturgy that basically consisted of "on the night that he was betrayed...." There were no prayers, nothing fancy; just a retelling of the story, the breaking of the bread and the pouring of the cup. So when it came time for me as a minister to celebrate communion, I knew exactly what to say because I'd been hearing it all my life, even though growing up I didn't celebrate communion weekly or even monthly. We didn't have a class in seminary to teach us the script; we all knew it by heart. In recent years, though, even some of us congregational purists have given a little more thought to the meaning of communion and how we enact it. Now it is common for us not only to remember this meal, but to place it within the larger context of God's saving acts. For example, for our communion service during the season of Lent, we are remembering journeys centered on the number forty. This larger context for communion, places the story of Jesus’ death within the ongoing story of God’s work of salvation. It’s meant to convey that all this has been done before. People have walked down the same path in ages past, and God was with them, even as God is with us now. We humans are proud and egotistical creatures. We like to think that we are special and our age is unique, that our present time is the greatest one in history, that we face challenges and trials unique in the story of humankind. But the truth is, as Ecclesiastes said, that there's nothing new under the sun. This is indeed a good thing for us to remember these days as we head into war. We feel discouraged that humanity has failed yet again to live together in peace. We feel disheartened that our president stops his ears to the pleas of the majority of the earth’s people. We worry about what all of this means for our future on this planet. But the most important thing we can remember is that there have been bad times before, and God has never abandoned us. If we forget that history, it could be easy for us to see the present trials and troubles as signs of divine disfavor, of the ascendance of evil, or however we might phrase it. We might indeed ascribe too much weight to these current trials. But let us not be discouraged. Everyone who has ever struggled for peace and justice has always gone through periods of apparent failure. We need to remember that God is present with us even in the darkest of times, that indeed those dark times may be the ones when we become most aware of God's presence. But we can only be aware of God’s presence if we know what to look for. And to know what to look for in our present, we must know the story of our past. So as we continue to reflect on our baptism this Lent, let us remember that we are not the first people to be baptized. We are not the first people to be loved by God. We are not the first to live through war; not the first to know despair and doubt. God has been down this path with many others, and God will go down this path with us. She brought us out of the house of slavery before; she can do it again. Baptism: Our Name Above All Names 16 March 2003 Names have tremendous meaning. For example, I have a name with a biblical meaning. Rita is short for Margarita, which means “pearl” in Greek. Wilbur is old English for “wild boar,” so my name means “pearls before swine.” Actually, that's not true. The story of my name is much more mundane. My parents picked names for me and my sisters that couldn't be shortened and made into nicknames. I don't really know why. But names long been given much more significance. Many cultures and traditions give people two names. Catholics have their saints’ names, Jews have their Hebrew names. Or names may be changed when something significant happens in a person's life. Look at Malcolm Little. He changed his last name to X when he became a Muslim. The X signified that he didn't know his family name. It has been robbed from him when his ancestors were abducted from Africa and forced into slavery. But he changed his name again to Malik el-Shabbazz in order to embrace more fully his Islamic faith, and he added the name El-Hajj after he completed the pilgrimage to Mecca. In the Bible, names are often significant. Most of the well-known figures have meaningful names: Adam, Eve, Isaac, Moses, and so on. Elizabeth and Mary received angelic messengers telling them what to name their sons. And still others went through name changes as a result of their encounters with God: Abraham and Sarah, Jacob, who became Israel, Simon, whom Jesus called Peter, the rock, and of course Paul, who started out as Saul. The meaning of names, and who it is that does the naming, are matters of great importance in the Bible. In Isaiah, God says, "I have called you by name." But today our names are bestowed without so much weight. At most we may be named for relatives or for a person our parents admired, or even Elvis Presley, or a sister's favorite game, like Picabo Street. We tend to assign names based more on their aesthetic appeal than anything else. Yet names of a different kind are increasingly important in our society. These names are more like categories or classifications. We are defined by our gender, our race, sexual orientation, class, ethnicity, nationality. Even our ages have names now: baby boomers or generation X. Our culture increasingly defines itself in terms of niches, especially on the Internet were you can form your own clique of left-handed, lesbian, Mormon, vegetarian Democrats who own Humvees. These names are seen as meaningful. They certainly seem to tell more about ourselves than our mere names. When I was in college and we were all trying to define ourselves, we often engaged in an illustrative exercise, one that we actually took very seriously: pick only three categories to define yourself, and rank them in order of importance. Which is more central to my identity, my pacifism or my feminism? And where does my Christianity fit into this? You see something similar even in theological books these days, influenced as they have been by the criticisms of liberation theology. It has become the norm for theological authors to identify who they are as speakers, beginning their books with a kind of disclaimer, such as: I am a white female Protestant who lives in North America. And of course, what we call these classifications is very important, too. Is it colored, Negro, black, Afro-American or African-American? Is it Hispanic, Latino, Chicano, or sud- or centro-americano? Are you a feminist, a womanist or a mujerista? You see how it gets so complicated? But there is at least one name we all share which we all have a difficult time with. How many of us would willingly, publicly name ourselves as Christian? I'd be willing to bet that there is something within each and every one of us that clenches at the thought of identifying ourselves as Christian. Not entirely, because obviously we are all here right now. But surely there are times when we would prefer not to be called that particular name because we don't want people to get the wrong idea about us. We don't want people to think we're one of them, one of those Christians. Our concern is perhaps understandable. Yet according to our baptism, the name Christian is our true name. The ritual of baptism is also an act of naming, especially for infants. We ask, "What will this child be called?" I believe it is in baptism that Catholic babies received their saint’s names. But regardless, there is one name we all received when we're baptized: Christian. The act of baptism says that this name above all is the most important one, the one that truly defines us. Not Bob or Mary or Hikaru or Fatima, but Christian. In baptism a new identity is conferred upon us. We are adopted as God's own heirs to. This is an adoption which takes place regardless of all our other names, black, bisexual, female, Libertarian. Regardless of our family or economic status, regardless of our nationality or past history, in baptism we become part of God's family in Christ. Therefore we are called Christian. That becomes our transcendent identity, without losing any of our particularity. As Paul says in that famous passage in Galatians: in Christ there is neither male more female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free. If we truly make the name Christian as the heart of our identity, then all the particulars are put within their proper perspective, and we can recognize how the Christian family has failed when they have made something else the central part of our identity. We failed whenever black people were forced to worship in the balcony, when women were refused ordination, when gay people were refused even membership within the church. Yet despite the freedom and unity we can find in the name "Christian," we cling stubbornly and tenaciously to our particularities. Can we really do it? Can we truly place the name of Christian above all others? Do we even want to? It is not a very easy task. We even seek to put divisions within the Christian family. Are you Protestant or Catholic? Evangelical or mainline? Liberal or conservative? Fundamentalist or progressive? Certainly we all live out our faith in different ways, and sometimes it is hard to figure out how to all live together. But when we seek to deny the name of Christian to others, or when we deny that name for ourselves, what are we really saying? This name has been given to us by God. Should we not perhaps have more of a care when we feel inclined to deny it? As we consider our baptism during this season of Lent, I invite each of us to think carefully about the names we call ourselves and the names others place upon us. And I invite us to think about what it might mean to place the name of Christian as central to our identity. Can we claim that name for our own? Can we manage not to deny it to others with whom we disagree? What might it mean for both John Hagee and us to go by that same name? What might be the common ground that we share? The name Christian means that we're called to be agents of reconciliation and not division.
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