Reverend Rita's Sermons (2003)...

The Handmaiden of the Lord - 12/21/03
Do You See What I See? - 12/07/03
Remembering the Least - 11/09/03
In Memoriam (The Day of the Dead) - 11/02/03
Eager to Follow - 10/26/03
Church Architecture - 07/20/03
Open and Affirming - 06/29/03
Heroes, Both Super and Ordinary - 06/15/03
Come, Holy Spirit, Come - 06/08/03
That They May All Be One - 06/01/03
Acts 10 - 05/25/03
Acts 8 - 05/18/03
Christianity's Greatest Shame - 05/11/03
One in Heart and Soul - 04/27/03
Baptism: For Better or for Worse - 04/13/03
Baptism: A Lifetime of Learning - 04/06/03
Baptism: Not to Condemn, but to Save - 03/30/03
Baptism: Remember - 03/23/03
Baptism: Our Name Above All Names - 03/16/03

The Handmaiden of the Lord
Luke 1:39-55

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?
Mal. 3:1-4; Lk. 1:68-79; Phil. 1:3-11; Lk. 3:1-6

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
Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17; Mark 12:38-44

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
Is 25:6-9; Rev. 21:1-6a; Jn. 11:32-44

2 November 2003
The Day of the Dead

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.

Eager to Follow
Mark 10:46-52

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
2 Sam. 7:1-14a; Eph. 2:11-22

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
1 Sam. 17:57-18:5, 10-16; 2 Cor. 6:1-13

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
1 Sam. 17:1a, 32-49; 2 Cor. 6:1-13; Mk. 4:35-41

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
Acts 2:1-21; Rom. 8:22-27; Jn. 15:26-27, 16:4b-15

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
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; Ps. 1; 1 Jn. 5:9-13; Jn. 17:6-19

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.

Progressive Christianity

Mission & Relief Projects

Study Groups

Church Council Business & Denominational Considerations