Reverend Rita's Sermons (Jan - June 06)...
(Updated 08/05/06)

Pentecost Sunday - 06/04/06
The Church in the World - 05/28/06
Colony of Heaven - 05/21/06
No Longer Strangers - 05/14/06
A New Church Start: Worship - 05/07/06
A New Church: Mission - 04/30/06
Peace be with you - 04/23/06
Lent 5: Transforming Community - 04/02/06
Lent 4: Courageous Witness - 03/26/06
Lent 3: Eternal Love - 03/19/06
Lent 2: Abundant Life - 03/12/06
Lent 1: Extravagant Welcome - 03/05/06
The Perils of Perfection - 02/26/06
Healing What Ails Us - 02/20/06
Free to Serve - 02/05/06
Essential Knowledge - 01/29/06
Another World is Possible - 01/22/06
Seeing in the Dark - 01/15/06
Sacred Stories - 01/01/06

Pentecost Sunday

4 June 2006

Today is Pentecost Sunday, the birthday of the church. But a lot of people don't think that's much to celebrate. While some 90% of Americans say they believe in God, far fewer of them are actually in church on any given Sunday. Nowadays folks say you don't have to go to church to be saved. There's a certain logic to that thought. I bet all of us know some good people who don't go to church, and yet what does it mean to say we don't need the church in order to be saved? What is the church? You all know the song, right? "I am the church, you are the church, we are the church together....The church is not a building. The church is not a steeple. The church is not a resting place. The church is a people." Not a building. Not a doctrine. It's a community of people, all saved together, all loved by God. So I ask again: what does it mean to say we don't need the church, the people, in order to be saved? Does it mean we can be saved alone? All by ourselves, on our own, without anyone else around? That starts to sound like a philosophy of every woman for herself. To heck with the rest of you; I'm looking out for my own skin.

And some people, in all honesty, do see salvation in that way. It's that "personal Lord and Savior" phenomenon again in which we only worry about ourselves, and others are on their own. We persist in believing that some people are undeserving of salvation. Or other people are not our responsibility. Or that if some of them are unfortunately lost, well, it's a sort of cosmic collateral damage. We can't help it; not everyone can be saved! Seems reasonable, right?

But what if we take that attitude to the microcosmic level, to that of the family. You know the old hypothetical scenario: if your house was burning down, what one item would you save. What if we restate it: if your house was burning down, and your family was in that house and you only had time to save one, who would you save? Do you feel how horrific that question is? Who could bear to face such a dilemma? Sadly, there are people who have had to make that choice, but it's the kind of choice you would never really recover from. Surely in families we must all be saved together, or we will all be damned together. The loss of even one member of the family is irreplaceable.

So how do you think God looks at us? Does God see some of us as undeserving of rescue? Are some of us not God's responsibility? Will God see the loss of any of us as collateral damage? Or does God balk at the thought of leaving even one behind? Does God see the loss of even one of us as irreplaceable? And if God sees us that way, then how should we see each other?

Today is Pentecost Sunday, the birthday of the church. But the church isn't a building or a steeple. It's not a doctrine or a set of bylaws. The church is a people, a community, a congregation – that is, a gathering – of people that have been saved, rescued by God. The loss of any one of us is irreplaceable. I ask you, friends, can we be saved alone? Do we need this church in order to be saved? Would you feel lost without these people? And how then should we look at those who are outside the church?

On that first Pentecost Sunday, the Holy Spirit poured out its fire upon the congregation, the people gathered. And they spoke in all the languages of the world. Why? So that they could go out into the world and gather those who had been scattered.

The Church in the World
Acts 13:42-52; Matthew 10:5-20

28 May 2006

During this Easter season I've been preaching a series of sermons on issues that the earliest Christian communities faced, and it's all leading up to Pentecost, the birthday of Christianity, which is next Sunday. Our world today is vastly different from the world in which Christianity first began, and the church is also very different. But I hope this series has been more than a history lesson. I hope it's also provided us with a fresh look at who we are as the church today.

For our last issue in this series, we're going to look at how the church interacted with the world around it. This is extremely important because there are some Christians who have a very definite attitude about how to be at work in the world. It's a hostile view, in which the world is full of evil influences that Christians must do battle against. It's a view in which there can be no compromise, no quarter, and no mercy. It's a view in which the world must be either converted or defeated. Oh, who am I kidding? Can't you already guess what I think about that view?

But that's not where I started with this particular sermon. Instead, I was reading the book of Acts and Paul's hectic schedule of missionary trips, and I was thinking about how it really is amazing how fast Christianity spread. Our religion has always been about evangelism, spreading the good news and converting people to our beliefs. Of the major world religions, only Islam rivals Chianti for this kind of evangelistic zeal. Islam, too, spread like wildfire in the first couple of centuries of its existence. In fact, it spread faster in Muhammad's lifetime than Christianity did in Jesus'. Interesting to note, though: Islam specifically endorses conversion by the sword. This was a technique Christians would also embrace with enthusiasm, sending priests at the head of armies to convert the natives before enslaving and slaughtering them. It is perhaps this history that makes many of us wary of evangelism today. It smacks of force, of deceit, even of bribery, as when today's mega churches use pizza parties to lure unchurched youth into the fold to be preached at.

But given Christianity's admittedly bloody history, it is easy for us to forget that Christianity did not start out using the "conversion by the sword" method. For the first three hundred years, we were a minority religion. Not only did we lack armies to spread our religion, but Christians often refused to serve in armies because of their beliefs. So much for some contemporary Christians' view of the world being a place to do battle! So how did Christianity spread so fast?

You may perhaps be familiar with a verse from one of Paul's letters about how "I have become all things to all people, so that by all means I might win some." The book of Acts shows us that this was literally true! Paul had an amazing ability to speak to people exactly where they were. Rather than insisting they become like him, he would become like them, speaking their own language, applying their own logic, and so present the gospel not by deceit but by relating it directly to people's own culture. To Jews he spoke in the language of Judaism. To gentiles he spoke in the language of their local religion or philosophy.

But he also used this ability to navigate the politics of the world. When he got in trouble with Jews, he'd trot out his Jewish credentials, saying, "Hey, I'm of the tribe of Levi! Heck, I was a Pharisee and studied under Rabbi Gamaliel! No one knows Torah better than me." If he got into trouble with the Romans, he'd present himself as a Roman. He'd say, "You had to buy your citizenship, but I was born a Roman citizen!" Perhaps the more cynical among us might see this as manipulative on his part, but I don't think it was. Rather, this was the way he connected to people, presenting himself not as a stranger, but as one of them.

Our story today gives one example of how Paul worked. The set-up to this story is that Paul shows up in a new town and goes to synagogue like a good Jew. After Torah is read, the local leaders invite Paul to speak. Why would they do that? Perhaps they'd already received a letter of introduction inviting them to listen to this guy. At any rate, Paul gets up and preaches a sermon. And no one knows Torah like Paul! So he makes his argument, solidly backed up with Jewish scripture. And everybody is impressed with his speech, so they invite him to come back the next Sabbath. And next time, more Jews from the area come, and even a few gentiles. And the week after that, everyone in the city shows up to hear what Paul is saying. And some are persuaded, and others are doubtful, and still others don't like what Paul is saying at all. But here's the thing we almost miss: this is an open debate and discussion. Everyone comes out to hear it. They mull it over and debate with each other. And Paul is so persuasive that some people aren't too pleased. So they talk to local leaders (and did you notice that they appealed to the prominent women first?) And when things get too hot, did Paul invite a big confrontation? Did he do mighty battle against his enemies? No. He left town. This, as we see from our Matthew selection, according to Jesus' orders.

There was another story I was tempted to use in which Paul gets in trouble with the Jews in Jerusalem. They succeed in getting the Romans to arrest him, but Paul uses his amazing silver tongue not only to convince the Roman governor not to execute him, but the governor is so impressed that he invites Paul to come and speak privately to him and his wife. Then the governor invites the resident monarch to hear Paul's case, and the king and his wife show up to hear Paul. And they are so impressed, they declare Paul to be innocent. Acts records many of Paul's speeches, and while this is not as accurate as court reporting, nevertheless we see how Paul adapts his message to his audience, making a connection that proves to be extremely persuasive.

And here's where I return to my theme, that this is how the church relates to the world. Not as if we are going to battle against enemies, but rather to approach people as friends, with an argument that they will want to hear. Jesus said to be wise as serpents, yet innocent as doves, and that's exactly what Paul did. He didn't call down heavenly wrath on people. There was no use of force and manipulation. He knew his audience. He approached them as a friend, a colleague. He engaged in open debate and discussion. He invited everyone into the dialogue. And if they didn't like what he had to say, he simply left and went somewhere else where people were interested. How's that for an evangelism strategy?

This in contrast to what some Christians today do, where engagement with the world means condemning it, trying to make the world safe for Christians, to impose their ways on others, whether or not those others like it – and even if those others are fellow Christians with a different view! I suppose one could say that such people employ a kind of persuasion and argument, but its based on division, on how we are different from each other, rather than being based on what we have in common, as Paul did. If he were here today, he'd be going to the gay bars and the PTA meetings. He'd go to the Republican prayer breakfasts and the Democrat caucuses. He's make his arguments from a creationist standpoint and an evolutionist one.

Colony of Heaven
1 Cor. 12:4-13; Jn 15:9-17

21 May 2006

Today when you look at denominations, at the rankings of ministers and church leaders, at the hierarchies and the way denominations make decisions, you might well wonder how we got here from the early church. People often hate church "bizness", as if the purpose of the church, of religion, is to just attend to my personal spirituality, and not to have to mess with all those other people talking about unspiritual things like budgets and insurance and parking lots. As a minister I hear this from people a lot, that my faith is between "me and God" but churches have to ruin everything by organizing and systematizing it. You've no doubt heard people complain against "organized religion." But you know my response to that: unorganized religion is so much better?

But the question remains: how should religion be organized? How should it conduct its business, make decisions, deal with controversy and problems? This is again where the book of Acts is so fascinating, because it shows us this development from the very beginning.

You might be familiar with Stephen, the first Christian martyr who was killed by stoning while Paul looked on. But what you might not know is that Stephen was one of the first deacons. Here's the story: remember how we talked about the holy potluck dinner? This was also the way that food was collected and disturbed to the needy. Widows in particular, who had no man to provide for them, often were cared for by the church community in that way. Well, early on, the Greek Christians felt that the Jewish Christians were shortchanging their widows in the sharing of food. Sounds very theological, doesn't? But it became a real problem. Was everyone getting their fair share? Was there discrimination going on? Who was keeping a record of all this stuff? The twelve apostles were trying to deal with this mess, and they finally said, "We can't focus on evangelizing, because we're spending all our time working out the Meals on Wheels program." (Actually, what they literally said was, "We can't be waiting on tables.") So they identified several key leaders who were respected by everyone, and called them deacons, which in Greek literally means "waiters." Think about that! Our deacons are really waiters! And it's literally true, because deacons are usually the ones charged with setting the communion table and distributing the bread and wine. Waiters. Bet you didn't know that!

It's interesting to look at some of our churchy titles and learn where the words came from. Apostle for example, is based on the verb "to send," and it means messenger. Sort of like ancient e-mail. A messenger boy or girl. A presbyter comes off a little better: it's another kind of messenger or representative, basically someone who sits on a committee. Deacon we talked about. Pastor, which is an English and not a Greek word, means sheep-herder. Yes, I can kind of relate to that. A minister is an attendant or servant – not unlike those deacon waiters. "Priest" is a variation of presbyter. Even the word "Pope" means simply "father." None of these names means anything exalted like "Grand High Exalted Poobah." They all basically mean "waiters." So does that make the church a restaurant? Well, considering that our central ritual is a holy potluck, maybe that's a fairly accurate description!

So all of our church hierarchies and organizations basically arose out of this need to make sure all the widows got their meals on wheels. The book of Acts makes the point several times that everyone in the church contributed of their wealth for the good of all. It's not so much an early form of communism as it is like a household, in which everyone is provided for. And indeed most early churches literally were households. The whole household, which included the family and servants, would be baptized together. They would meet for worship in their house, and everyone's fate was together. This is why they all shared their possessions.

Here's another interesting fact, though. In the ancient world, men were usually the heads of the household. But this wasn't always true. Sometimes the man died, and the woman was left in charge. The New Testament often speaks of such women who not only led their own house, but also led their church. That's more egalitarian than we sometimes think of the early church.

If you think about households today, there is often a division of labor. Sometimes that may fall along traditional gender lines, but not always. However, in any household you will usually find that some people prefer to cook and others prefer to clean up. Some people prefer to do the yard work, and others prefer to do the handy fix-up chores. So everyone in the house has their "job" that they perform for the good of all. Even kids have their chores. (And those of us in single households wish we had someone to share the duties with!) Are any of these jobs more important than the others? What happens if nobody does the dishes? What happens if no one fixes the leaky faucet? I think we can all agree that all of these jobs are important. That's what Paul is saying in his famous chapter on the many gifts of the spirit. There was squabbling in the household, and people were saying that certain jobs were more important than others. Paul goes on with a rather lengthy metaphor about the different parts of the body, a discussion that gets amusingly earthy at some points. But that talk of body parts further underlines how ordinary and mundane the life of the church is. It's not about elaborate church hierarchies and detailed rules and secret societies: it's about hands and feet and ears and other parts that all need each other in order for the body to function. It's an image of mutuality and interdependence and of service for the good of all.

We're certainly familiar with that good New Testament concept that whoever wants to be a leader must be the servant of all, but it doesn't hurt to remind ourselves of it. I bet many a church moderator has felt not only like a servant but like a slave! And yet ironically people can get caught up in out-doing one another in the service department. Sort of like, "Oh yeah? Well, I'm so humble, there's no service that's beneath me!" A glorification of how much we do for the church and how little anyone else appreciates it. And this is where we could also use Jesus' reminder in his farewell speech in the gospel of John that "No longer do I call you servants but friends." In the church, we're not masters lording it over one another. But in the end, neither are we servants, subject to the whims of others. We are friends, bound together by love. Friends look out for one another. Friends help each other when they need it. A friend is someone you can count on when the going gets rough.

No Longer Strangers
3 John

14 May 2006

Last month it was the Gospel of Judas. This month it's the movie version of "The Da Vinci Code." America loves religion. We also love conspiracies. And when it's a religious conspiracy, that's the best of all possible worlds! People love the idea of a corrupt and selfish church hierarchy, suppressing the truth about Jesus' secret marriage to Mary Magdalene. Or hidden gospels long suppressed by murderous monks, revealing what really went on at that last supper. The truth will shock you!

The problem with these conspiracy theories, however, is that in the first couple of centuries, there was no church hierarchy with power to suppress gospels and assassinate heretics. The churches were struggling too hard just to survive. The Da Vinci Code and the Judas gospel are wrong about that, yet they are right about something else. They remind us that from the very beginning, there were competing visions of what Christianity was all about. There were gospels claiming to be written by disciples other than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And yes, there were even gospels attributed to women, including Mrs. Jesus herself, Mary Magdalene. The early church was a babble of different voices, each claiming to be witness to the truth, and the big question was: who do you listen to in all this noise?

It's precisely because there wasn't an established hierarchy with a clearly defined Bible that the early church struggled so much over who and what to believe. The gospel was spread primarily by word-of-mouth through missionaries. But consider: in the day and age before phones, faxes and emails – or criminal background checks – anyone could show up on your doorstep claiming to have been sent by Peter himself from the church in Jerusalem. And the real problem came if this person said you'd gotten everything wrong and tried to correct you. How could the churches know? Were these traveling missionaries truly sent by the apostles, or were they charlatans pushing their own personal agenda? And these gospels and letters being passed around, were they really trustworthy, or were they just Da Vinci code conspiracy theories penned by a second-rate writer?

This issue of trustworthiness and authority comes up quite often in our New Testament, but not in the parts that make it into the lectionary. It's in the little letters that aren't long enough to have chapters, or in the opening and closing greetings in Paul's letters that we tend to skip over, or in the Book of Acts, the parts that don't make a good sermon story. These are the parts of the Bible that seldom get covered in Bible studies, the parts that mention names and cities that we've never heard of. But scholars just love those parts. They do the hard work of finding out who all these people were and where were those cities, and they give us the story that's hidden in plain sight, the story of how the church hashed out this problem of the authority of strangers.

It's even in the gospels themselves, if you know what you're looking for. The gospel of John and the letters of John may not have been written by the same person, but they did come from the same Christian community, one that was a bit off the beaten path of regular missionary routes. Because they were out of the loop, they often had to deal on their own with strangers showing up and wanting to change things. This passage about the good shepherd is traditionally paired with the 23rd Psalm, and you can see why – because of the imagery. But the point here has nothing to do with the Lord is my Shepherd. The point is about false missionaries showing up and sheep-stealing. Listen again to this passage, with that point in mind: "I am the gate for the sheep. Anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but clings in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The sheep will run from a stranger because they do not know his voice, but I know my own and my own know me, and they will listen to my voice." It's an extended metaphor, warning that you can't trust just anyone who shows up in the sheepfold. But how do we know who came in through the gate and who just climbed over the fence?

Our letter of John shows us one way to handle it: through letters of introduction. In fact, the early missionary movement operated as a personal network in which people were vouched for by mutual acquaintances. The Book of Acts depicts new missionaries being paired with older, well-known ones, so that the rest of the churches can get to know them. So the newbie Paul was paired with Barnabas, and after several years, Paul himself took on novices like Timothy and John Mark.

John's letter is written to a local church leader named Gaius, as a letter of introduction for a traveling missionary named Demetrius. If you read carefully, though, you learn that none of these people actually know each other. Instead, the letter constantly refers to mutual acquaintances. The letter opens saying how John came to hear of Gaius, "I rejoiced greatly when some of the brothers [that is, missionaries] arrived and testified to your faithfulness to the truth." So some people he knows vouched for Gaius' trustworthiness. This is good because John had written to another church leader first, Diotrephes, who not only refused to do what John had asked, but refused to acknowledge his authority. Now, John says, Diotrephes is "spreading false charges against us," or as another translation puts it, "prating against me with evil words," and he refuses to host the missionaries John has sent. John urges Gaius not to behave like Diotrephes, but to accept Demetrius, whom John assures "everyone has testified favorably about, and we also testify to him, and you know that our testimony is true."

So this little letter gives us an interesting glimpse of this network of personal relationships. It almost sounds like a school kid's note. "Don't listen to the nasty things Sally's saying about me! Katie and Melissa were there, too, and they know I'm not the one who squealed on you to the principal. It was Brittany! She only pretends to be your friend?" It's not so hard to see why these false missionaries would be labeled wolves. But beyond that, several letters accuse these "wolves" of the sin of Cain. Remember what Cain's sin was? Fratricide. Murdering your brother. Calling people "wolves" is one thing, but the reference to Cain speaks to a deeper, more personal pain of betrayal and broken trust. The Da Vinci Cod glosses over that conflict with its conspiracy theory. The early church wasn't a power struggle with a church hierarchy controlling the rubes in the pew and ruthlessly stamping out heretics. This was about people at the local church level debating and arguing and struggling among themselves, sometimes being torn apart, being torn apart by someone who had come and stayed in your home, being slandered by people you thought were your brothers and sisters in Christ. Have any of you ever experienced anything like that in the church before?

We've known church splits, haven't we? And the media loves to cover it, the controversies that denominations struggle with. It might be tempting for us to label the ones we disagree with as wolves, but I don't think we should take that as our model. The kind of name-calling and labeling we see in early Christian writings is an example of the human and flawed side of our ancestors in the faith. I do not believe that the apostles had all the truth, and the heretics were all wolves. But let's also not forget that there was no powerful hierarchy imposing beliefs on people, either. The doctrine of the church was not imposed from on high, but6 rather arose from this great jumbled mix of introductions and letter exchanges and missionary visits and debate. Paul, for example, comes across as pretty hard-line and hard-headed in his letters, but the Book of Acts shows us that Paul spent a lot of time debating and discussing and listening to others. All of these views: of Gnostics and Arians and Pelagians and all those other "heresies," they were all debated and discussed by local church people. And while the winners of these debates could be pretty nasty to their opponents, it's a mistake to think that these so-called heresies were cruelly and unfairly suppressed. They had the same chance everyone else did to argue their point of view, and they quite simply lost the debate. The general consensus decided against them, so that by the time the Council of Nicea got around to declaring them heretics, most people had already rejected their views anyway.

So how should we today look at conflicts and disagreements and controversies within the church? As I said, I don't think we should label our opponents "wolves." However, I do think that sometimes these controversies are handled in a harmful way, and that's where this issue of personal relationships and the "sin of Cain" can shed some light for us. Churches will have conflicts. Christians will disagree. That's a given. The question is not who is correct in their beliefs and who are the heretics. Rather the question is: are we handling these disagreements in such a way that our brothers and sisters get murdered, or are we handling it in a way that our relationship with one another is preserved? Remember what Jesus said: "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have abundant life." Are we handling our disagreements in a way that nevertheless results in abundant life, or in a way that kills and destroys?

Several years ago I learned a song from our partner church in Zimbabwe that I think points the way for us: "If you believe, and I believe, and we together pray, the Holy Spirit must come down, and we shall all be saved." If you believe and I believe. Notice that it doesn't say we're believing the same thing! But what is the essence of belief? It is faith, trust. Sometimes today we mistake political or moral stances for belief. No, we don't believe in abortion or pro-life. Those are the implications of our beliefs, but they are not our beliefs. We believe in the gospel, and what is the gospel? Trust God! So the song doesn't say we have to take the same stand on political or social issues. It just says we both must believe, trust. And if we both really believe in what we believe, if we both trust God, and what do we do together? We pray! Notice this does not mean, "O God, I pray that my erring sister will see the light and convert to my point of view." No! What is prayer? It is conversation with God. It is summoning God to be among us, lifting up our cares to God, but also listening to what God has to say. And if we together pray, then what happens? The Holy Spirit must come down. I like that word "must." I like that imperative, that the Holy Spirit must come down when we together pray because that's the Spirit's job! That's what the Spirit does! And what is the Spirit? Jesus says it is the Spirit of Truth. Now hear that: when does the truth appear in this song? Not in our beliefs. It's not that one person or one side has the truth. Rather, the Spirit of Truth comes in response to our prayer when we pray together. And can we pray together when we've got the sin of Cain in our hearts? Can we pray together when we don't trust and believe not only in God, but in one another? No, that personal relationship must be preserved by praying together, and the Holy Spirit coming down, and what happens next? Only then, only then, we shall all be saved. It's not that I was already saved because I had the right beliefs, and now at last you shall be saved because you've converted to my views. Nor does it say that now we will see eye to eye on everything! It doesn't say, "The Holy Spirit must come down and we will all agree." It says, "We shall all be saved." Saved by what? By our correct beliefs? No, saved by the God of Truth who is always greater than our understanding.

A New Church Start: Worship

7 May 2006

Why do we do the things we do here at church on Sunday morning? And how does a new religion figure out how to worship? Somewhere in the middle of the 20th century, a new religion came into existence: Wicca, or Neo-Paganism, known more pejoratively as witchcraft. This wasn't warty women with pointy hats, and it claimed not to be new at all, but rather to be based on the beliefs and practices of Europe before Christianity. However, it turns out that their worship services had more in common with contemporary Anglicanism than ancient religions – its founders being dissatisfied with the Church of England. I don't mean to poke fun at them. Some of my best friends are Wiccans and Neo-Pagans, but few of them today claim that their religion is based on ancient practices. And their story illustrates the challenge of worship. After all, if it's too different and new, it doesn't feel like worship!

This, I think, is the challenge that contemporary worship faces. Either it's the same old thing, dressed up with contemporary music, or if the service itself is very avant garde, you don't really feel like you've worshipped. Several years ago, the famed ex-Catholic Matthew Fox went around the country staging these worship raves, modeled on the rave events that the young people these days like to go to (tongue in cheek.) I went to one in Houston. It was definitely different. It was even moving. But it's not really an experience I'd want to repeat every Sunday.

The first Christians were not a new religion at all. They were Jews, and they worshipped as Jews did. So would it surprise you to learn that to this day our worship service follows the same basic outline that first century Christians used, and their Jewish predecessors? While no two-thousand-year-old worship bulletins survive, scholars generally agree that the early church followed an outline adapted from synagogue worship. Psalms and hymns were sung. Scripture was read (for the earliest church, this was what we now called the Old Testament) followed by a teaching on the scripture – not unlike what we read about Jesus' first sermon in Luke 4, except that Christians used this teaching to explore Jewish scripture with Christian eyes – which is what we still do today! Then would come a period of prayer, and perhaps also a time for prophecy and interpretation. Only that last bit hasn’t' survived to modern times except in Pentecostal circles, and it fell out of practice early on in Christian history. And that is the same basic worship service that we follow to this day! What does that say to you: that we're stuck in the mud, or that there's something primal and ancient about our form of worship? Does it make you feel rooted or imprisoned in the past?

But even from the very beginning, Christian worship differed slightly from Jewish worship. For one thing, it happened on Sunday, rather than the Sabbath day, because Jesus rose from the dead on Sunday. And Christians additionally had two practices that originated in Judaism, but which immediately had special significance and meaning to Christianity that made them distinctive from the beginning: baptism and the Lord's Supper.

Jews did practice baptism – look at John the Baptist – and then even practice it today when someone converts to Orthodox Judaism, though they don't call it that. It is mainly seen as a form of spiritual cleansing, which is also a meaning we give it in Christianity, but in Christianity it has come to have layers of many meanings. Some of those meanings acquired more significance over time, but for the earliest Christians, baptism above all meant declaring your allegiance to Jesus. Just as the first creed was "Jesus is Lord," so this ritual was a way of declaring that you follow Christ before Caesar. And whether dipping or sprinkling, as infants or adults, it still basically has that meaning.

The Lord's Supper, what today we call communion, was also part of the church from the beginning, but its form has changed significantly. Certainly they didn't observe it with a pinch of bread and a drop of grape juice (and a quick dip in wine). Originally it was separated from more formal worship, though it was often celebrated just after the service like...well, like a potluck supper. Scholars call it the agape feast, meaning the love feast, in order to distinguish it from what developed into communion or the Eucharist. This agape feast had as much to do with the way Jesus' shared table with all kinds of people, as it did with the Last Supper in particular. Basically, it was just a big meal that everyone contributed to and everyone shared. So you see, the simple church potluck is perhaps one of the original, most distinctively Christian of practices!

But it's also the one that caused the most controversy in the early church. One issue was the manner in which it was practiced: letter of Paul and James both rebuke churches for practicing favoritism at their meals: celebrating the rich, and making the poor sit at the bottom of the table, eating the leftovers. At the Lord's Table, all people should be treated equally.

But even before that was a controversy that almost split the early church: who is even allowed to eat at the table? Jews had survived centuries of persecution by maintaining strict separation between themselves and the larger world. Among other things, they did not dine with sinners, with gentiles, with the uncircumcised. At first, Christians continued this practice of separate dining. But when gentiles started converting, the question arose: can these gentiles, uncircumcised, non-observant Jews, be allowed to dine with circumcised, observant Jewish Christians? In fact, in the beginning they often dined separately – think of that! Yet the same kind of scandal continues even today. Catholics and Orthodox do not recognize each other's communion, and neither recognizes Protestant communion. Some Protestants don't recognize the communion of other denominations.

In fact, that's what Peter's vision was about. We tend to think about it in terms of clean and unclean food, but was really about clean and unclean people. The book of Acts tells the story of how Peter went to visit the church in Antioch that Paul had founded. He shared the agape feast with gentile Christians, but some Jewish Christians criticized him for it. The Book of Acts depicts Peter as standing up to his critics, but this is where close reading of the Bible can come up with interesting stories. Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, says that in fact Peter caved in to his critics, and Paul was the one who stood up to Peter. The conflict had to be resolved in a great meeting in Jerusalem. As the Book of Acts depicts that meeting, Peter presented his vision as a blessing on eating with gentiles. The Book of Acts makes it seem as this resolved the issue, but in fact it continued to haunt the early Christians throughout that first century.

So consider that for our context today. If we take Jesus' table fellowship as the model for our potlucks and communion, then who is allowed to participate and who is not? As I reflected on this, it occurred to me that whereas many churches exclude people from communion, I doubt very many of the exclude anyone from their potlucks. Which meal, then, is truer to Jesus' own practice?

Perhaps our potlucks, our before- or after- church fellowships, are an important form of communion. I'm not saying we should eliminate one practice in favor of the other, but perhaps it is well worth looking at the one in light of the other.

A New Church: Mission
Matthew 28:16-20

30 April 2006

Nobody sets out to start a new religion. (Well, okay: L. Ron Hubbard did.) It's just not the kind of thing one plans. But a movement begins, and people are attracted to it, and soon you have to start organizing, figuring out what you want to do and how you're going to do it. And hopefully the structure that you take will reflect your religious beliefs.

I certainly got some experience with this through Spirit of Peace. Usually a congregation is something you inherit. Other people founded it and wrote the bylaws and made all the initial decisions, and folks have been tinkering ever since. But to be involved from the beginning, to have to decide on a church name, criteria for membership, how you'll make decisions about the budget, what your purpose is: it gives you a glimpse of how complicated it is to start a new enterprise like this. Yet even Spirit of Peace inherited the Christian religion!

The Easter season, the period between Easter and Pentecost, is traditionally a time to read stories from the book of Acts, which doesn't get much notice during the rest of the year. I read it over again quickly, with the idea that I might do a series on that book, but it isn't really very readable. It interweaves long-winded sermons with dry recitals of itineraries, mentioning cities and people that we don’t know today. Oh, I still think it's a fascinating book and well worthy of study, but it's sort of like the Lonely Planet guide to the ancient Mediterranean: a great resource, but not a very entertaining read.

So instead I decided to take a step back and look at what are some of the issues that the very earliest Christians faced. What were the pressing decisions they needed to make? And my aim here is not so much to teach us all ancient history, but to use that history to help us look at our own situation with fresh eyes. Because sometimes we modern churches get distracted by the wrong things, and we even run the danger of losing our focus on what is most important. I hope you don't mind series, but they work well for me!

We talked last week about how the disciples, who had been Jesus' followers during his life, experienced the resurrection; how they realized they had been forgiven for messing it all up and they had a new chance, and the charge Jesus gave them was to forgive others as they had been forgiven. This, I think, is the first thing the disciples had to decide: what do we do next? When Jesus was alive, he called all the shots. He dictated where they would go and how long they would stay, he probably set the schedule of sermons, healings, and general rabble-rousing. But after Easter, he would no longer be around to tell the disciples what to do. Each of the gospels, however, describes Jesus as giving one final command as he left the mission in charge of the disciples. We read John's charge last week: to forgive. Matthew gives us the famous Great Commission: "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." Luke says simply, "You are witnesses of these things; but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high," conveniently setting the stage for his sequel in the book of Acts. Mark gets a bit more exciting: "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation...And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover." Now you know where the Holy Rollers and Snake-Handlers come from!

These commands seem fairly straight-forward. Maybe Jesus did know about mission statements after all, concise and clear and to the point! And the book of Acts gives us a great picture of how the disciples lived out this mission statement. I see three major aspects of the mission and purpose of those first believers, and they are to bear witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ, to heal, and to live together in fellowship and love. Jesus doesn't specifically mention that in his farewell speeches, but it certainly infuses all his teaching. He spends a lot of time on it in his big Last Supper speech in John's gospel, and the book of Acts highlights this as well.

So let's look at each of these, and reflect on how we do or do not continue that mission in our own lives. First is to bear witness to the gospel. You might be gritting your teeth right now: here comes the evangelism speech! We don't really come from a tradition that goes out actively proselytizing. We tend to keep our faith fairly close to the chest. And you might say to yourself that everyone you know is either already a Christian, or is familiar with it. This was what I didn't get with the evangelicals I knew in college. They would talk about how so many people in America didn't know Jesus, but it seemed to me that everyone in this country has heard of Jesus. But we were talking about two different ways of knowing. My evangelical friends meant it as if they were called to personally introduce people to Jesus, who most folks only know by reputation. And that's not a bad way to think about it.

The first Christian creed, the first Christian witness was "Jesus is risen!" This also came to be said as "Jesus is Lord", which in Christian theology really means the same thing. In Ancient Rome, for Christians to say "Jesus is Lord" was to say that they owed their allegiance above all to him, in contrast to the claims of loyalty that Caesar demanded. This may not be language that we are all familiar with, yet surely we too experience many competing demands on our allegiance. Not only our government, but many social pressures seek to claim a place of greater importance in our lives than religion. So perhaps that should be the starting point for us moderns. Rather than fretting too much yet about door-to-door evangelism, we should each pause and reflect: is Jesus, or the way of Jesus, the primary allegiance in our lives? What does that mean? How do we live that out? And how can we articulate that to others?

We'll talk more about how the first Christians bore witness in a future sermon, but for now let me move on to the second aspect of the mission: healing. Right after the story of Pentecost in the book of Acts, Peter and John are walking by the temple and see a crippled man begging for alms. Peter says, "I have no silver and gold, but I give you what I do have: in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, walk." The miracle stories seem far removed from our lives today. Even those of us who are favorably inclined toward the miracles have probably never seen a crippled person get up and walk again just because someone through the name of Jesus at them. Yet Acts really emphasizes this idea that what the disciples had to offer was healing, and they gave it out freely to believers and non-believers alike, and I think we'd better not dismiss that just because we're skeptical of miracles today.

The point, here, is not miracles so much as healing – making whole, restoring. Restoring people in body, as when illnesses are cured, in mind, as when demons are cast out, and in society, as when those previously deemed unworthy are brought into fellowship. More on that last in a moment, but look first at healing in body and mind. Today, of course, we have doctors and psychiatrists, and endocrinologists and other things I can't even pronounce. I don't mean in any way to discredit what these good folk to, but it seems to me that the scientific approach to medicine is more about curing – and so it should be. But doctors will often be the first to admit that healing is a slightly different enterprise. Even counselors and psychiatrists can be more about curing than healing. Because healing is primarily a communal event, not an individual one. People who have been through a traumatic illness – even though their bodies may be cured, they find that their souls have been irrevocably marked. Even though we know now that diseases like cancer are not, for example, sent as a punishment for sin, we still ascribe meaning to the experience, and we in the religion business should not surrender all the responsibility for healing to the medical profession.

So what might it mean if we as a church today took seriously this mission of healing? How might we do that? This could be a good way for us to look at all our mission work, in terms of how it serves to heal people in the world.

And that brings me to the final aspect of mission: living together in fellowship and love. It has sometimes been said that the most important mission work the church can do is to simply be church. And if we mean that in terms of the community that we build, then I think it's right on target. Stanley Hauerwas has described the church as a colony of heaven on earth. Jesus preached that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, and in the church it comes into existence. The book of Acts talks about how the church struggled and fought, but through it all managed to be in fellowship together. It doesn't so much matter what we do, but how we do it. Do we live together in a truly Christian way? So it is possible that even when we argue about what color to paint the bathrooms, we can still be modeling the kingdom of God on earth!

And I'm going to be arrogant enough to say that in this I think smaller churches have an advantage over the larger ones. Because the larger the church, the more likely it will be to run on a corporate model, like a business, with decisions delegated to a few. But the smaller the church, the more everyone is in on every decision, the more everyone knows everyone else's business. This can certainly be a pain! And it means we all get to know each other's warts up close and personal. But I believe it is precisely in that one-on-one-on-one interaction that we best are able to practice the kingdom of God. How then might it change the way we do things in church, if we always asked ourselves how these little actions and decisions reflect God's kingdom? Outsiders ought to be able to come into our congregation and, in the words of the old hymn, "know we are Christians by our love."

This, then, is our mission: to bear witness to the good news, to heal the world, and to live together in fellowship and love. Can we do it? We can, if we will.

Peace Be with You
1 John 1:2:2; John 20:19-23

23 April 2006

I have a confession to make: I don't get what is the big deal about the resurrection. I mean, the whole fuss over Jesus having a physical, bodily resurrection, his corpse being reanimated and walking around. I've known people who pin their entire faith solely on whether or not Jesus was literally, scientifically raised back to life again. Needless to say, there are many scientifically-minded folk who just can't swallow that kind of thing. But what does that mean? Are they totally cut off from the faith? Personally, I’m not so scientific-minded, but I take a more mysterious approach in which what physically, literally happened to Jesus' body is just not that important. So some dead guy comes back to life. My question is: what does that have to do with you and me?

There are in fact hints in the gospels themselves that the getting up and walking around bit wasn't such a big deal either. Keep in mind that in John, the same gospel that gives us the doubting Thomas story, also gives us the raising of Lazarus – which occurs right on the eve of Jesus' own death. So the disciples shouldn't be too surprised to see a resurrected Jesus. And indeed they don't seem that surprised if you read the story closely. Rather, recall what is was that Thomas needed convincing of. He didn't want to just see Jesus or merely touch him. He specifically wanted to touch the marks of his crucifixion. Yet did he need proof that Jesus was crucified? Even though the disciples had fled the scene, surely Jesus' fate was no mystery in Jerusalem.

So let's go back to the story and pay close attention so we can discern what might be going on. And let's not let our modern issues about how these miracle stories can have scientifically happened blind us to the issues that the Bible itself treats as important.

Our gospel story tells us that the disciples were gathered in a room with the doors locked, because they were afraid of the Jews. Now, the first thing we might think is that they were afraid for their lives. After all, if Jesus was killed, his followers might be next. And no doubt that was part of it. But the Jews did not in fact have the power to execute anyone. The Romans liked to reserve the right of murder for themselves. The disciples might have been afraid of mob violence, though, except that the Romans didn't allow anyone else to kill people. They policed the mobs strictly, to keep such lynchings from occurring. So why else might they have been afraid of the Jews?

Well, consider that in that day, messiahs were a dinar a dozen. The Jews were always looking for the Anointed One to come and deliver them. Recall how enthusiastically they had greeted Jesus only one week earlier! They might have been disappointed that Jesus ended up crucified like all the other messiahs.

And yet, death and execution were not necessarily the final word, even to the Jews. Martyrdom, after all, was nothing new. And the Jews were well aware that a willingness to die at the hands of the Roman oppressors could in fact have very dramatic results. Only a few years earlier, when Pontius Pilate had first been appointed governor of Judea, he had outraged the Jews by posting images of Caesar in the city, in violation of the second commandment. For days the Jews had clogged the streets in protest. Pilate finally ordered his troops to attack the crowds if they didn't disperse, whereupon they all – men, women, and children – had thrown themselves onto the ground and bared their throats, offering themselves as willing sacrifices to uphold their laws over against Roman will. Pilate, rather than murder these willing victims, gave in the face of their convictions.

So the crowds might have been expecting the disciples likewise to stand firm. After all, they could have used Jesus' death as a rallying point. They could have sparked a riot or a revolt. But instead they had fled at Jesus' arrest, not even daring to show themselves at the crucifixion, and now they were hiding behind locked doors. Maybe this is why the crowds weren't too pleased: the disciples' loss of faith in their mission.

Perhaps this was their real failure. They had doubted not Jesus' death or even his resurrection, but his mission. They had failed miserably as disciples. The worst betrayals had come from within their own ranks: Judas' betrayal, Peter's denial, and everyone else's desertion. So when the women had told them that morning that Jesus had been resurrected, the very Jesus whom they had betrayed by their lack of faith, perhaps we can see why the disciples might be hiding. The resurrected Jesus would know what they had done, how they had lost faith, how badly they had betrayed him. What guilt they felt! What recrimination! They no doubt blamed themselves for their failure, but they very likely also had begun to blame each other, because that's what we do when we're afraid. Like Adam and Eve in the beginning, when caught, we immediately point at someone else. So a resurrected Jesus didn't sound like such good news to these disciples so consumed with guilt.

Yet when Jesus showed up, he didn't blame or scold or berate them. He said, "Peace be with you." And he showed them his hands and side, not to prove to them who he was, but because these were the marks of his crucifixion, the marks of their betrayal and doubt in his mission. Only then does the gospel tell us the disciples were glad to see him, because he knew what they had done and blessed them anyway. They were forgiven. Now that's good news!

And notice how Jesus repeats his greeting, "Peace be with you," as if they hadn’t' quite believed it the first time. Jesus' response to their fear and guilt is this blessing, "Peace." And then, when they have finally believed that their master whom they had so grievously betrayed would forgive them, that's when Jesus continues with that mission they had lost faith in. "Just as the Father sent me," says Jesus, "so I send you." Jesus' mission, even up to his death, is now the mission of the disciples. He breaths on them, echoing God's breathing life into the clay of Adam, or the dry bones of Ezekiel's vision that did not come alive until God's breath filled them. The disciples, too, are made alive again through this breath, filled with all the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit. Jesus was resurrected? Good for him. But the real point is that the disciples – and we – are resurrected too.

But what is this mission that Jesus now sends them on? "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. But if you do not forgive, they are not forgiven." What's that all about? That latter part sounds harsh. Do the disciples really have the power to deny forgiveness to anyone? There are those today who believe the church should have that right. But remember how much Jesus likes riddles. These disciples, who've been forgiven for betraying Jesus – just what sins are they going to refuse to forgive in anyone else? What can any of us do that's worse than what the disciples did? So perhaps what Jesus is doing here is not a license to condemn, but rather a command to forgive.

The letter of John says, "This is the message that we heard from Jesus and pass on to you: that God is light, and in God there is no darkness." If that is true, and yet we refuse to forgive others, then the very light of God is obscured, and no one has peace. That's the way the mission works. It's not that God does all the forgiving: we are charged with continuing to forgive. Again, that's what Jesus' resurrection means: not that a corpse was resuscitated, but that Jesus passed on his mission to us, and if we don't do it, it won't get done.

But folks today would rather talk about sin than forgiveness. I don't have to tell you this: there are plenty of Christians out there who think that our number one mission is to point about people's sins and take a hard line against them. Can't have no sinners in church, because they'll end up corrupting the good folks! We can't be seen as being soft on sin!

But for all the talk of sin, Jesus' number one message throughout his ministry was not condemnation but forgiveness. And he got killed because the powers that be saw him as a corrupting influence, obscuring God's pure light, a transgressor and yes, a sinner, because he was going around forgiving people who the Powers thought were unforgivable.

Now we all know that once we've been forgiven, we're not supposed to sin again. And yes, that's true. But who among us here is willing to claim we've really got this sinning habit licked? We're not supposed to sin, but we do! Fortunately Jesus had an answer for that: forgive again. Not seven times, but seventy times seven times. And I don't think he meant that we could finally stop forgiving on the seventy times seven plus one time. I think he meant we just keep on forgiving. Because if we do not forgive people, then they won't be forgiven, and God's light will be obscured, and we will all be dead.

Resurrection. It’s not just something that happened to Jesus. It's what happens to us when we forgive and are in turn forgiven. For God set Jesus not to condemn the world, but to save it.

Lent 5
Transforming Community
Exodus 20:1-17; John 13:12-17

2 April 2006

When I was in college, one year I had a roommate who was an atheist. It wasn’t just that she didn’t believe in God, but that she thought religion was responsible for all the evils in the world. This didn’t stop me and our two suitemates from being Christian, or for being active with campus ministries. That spring the three of us attended a weekend retreat with campus ministries. We had a wonderful experience of study, worship, and renewal, and afterward we couldn’t stop talking about it. My roommate listened to all this with surprising tolerance, I thought, and finally she said, “You know, I almost wish I was a Christian, so I could be a part of a community like that.”

Modern American Christianity tends to be very focused on the individual. Jesus died for my sins, so my soul could be saved and go to heaven. Even the phrase “Jesus is my personal Lord and Savior,” sounds privatized and individualistic, not unlike “Jesus is my personal coach and trainer.” We lose sight of the3 fact that Jesus wasn’t so much concerned about individual souls saved so much as a community healed and restored. He didn’t really talk that much about salvation and going to heaven when you die. Instead, he talked about the kingdom of heaven as something we encounter here on earth, a new community that is defined by the kinds of values we’ve talked about during this Lenten season: extravagant welcome and abundant life, eternal love and courageous witness. A community in which we care for one another and bear each other’s burdens. I think it’s significant that Jesus said, “Whenever two or three are gathered, there am I in the midst of them.” Not “whenever any one person calls on me.” There has to be at least two, a community. That’s why it’s the church that we call “the body of Christ,” not an individual, but a group.

So we come to our final value in this series, not final in importance, but perhaps the value that provides the grounding for all the others: transforming community. You might be surprised to learn that our study group had a really hard time finding the language to express this. Our starting point was that phrase Jesus used so often, “the kingdom of heaven.” But as you should be able to tell from my previous sermons, we found this phrase to be too church. Obviously it has deep, powerful meaning in the church, but to outsiders? What is a kingdom, anyway? The United States is a republic, but “Republic of Heaven” doesn’t quite work, either. Not to mention the fact that it conjures up a scary image of theocracy!

But what does Jesus mean when he speaks of the kingdom of heaven? Well, he’s talking about a community in which we are related to each other in a special way. So we next tried variations of the phrase “family of God.” Jesus certainly uses metaphors of family: Call no one “Father” except God, whoever hears and does my word, is my mother, my brother, my sister. And churches often refer to themselves as a family.

Yet this phrase didn’t quite satisfy us, because the word “family” has become so domesticated! In our modern society, “family” often gets sentimentalized. We speak of the nuclear family of mom, dad, and kids, in a way that doesn’t reflect the diversity of families out there. Sometimes even talk as if the family is this little unit threatened by all kinds of problems “out there.” As a result, people often treat their homes like a fortress, complete with locks and alarm systems. Families can become an “us versus them” mentality. And seldom do we publicly acknowledge the many threats people sometimes encounter within the family itself. It’s not that we don’t affirm and support families, but to talk about the church in that way is ultimately a bit limited.

But consider this: the church is the only organization left in our society where people gather across family lines, across lines of age and gender and family configuration. A church is like a family, yes, but it is something more. It brings people together who are not bound by blood, and binds them instead by Jesus’ name into the kingdom of heaven. The church is a community with all kinds of families, broken and whole and reshaped. No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you belong. Yet the church is still more than that. It is a community that transforms.

Churches often lose sight of that primal call. We think the church is our building, or our programming. It’s not. The church is above all a community. That is why even a very small church with no budget or paid staff, a church of just seven people or even two, is still a church. So when we ask ourselves how we can grow, we shouldn’t be thinking about building or programming. Rather, we should be thinking about how we can be a better community, a community of extravagant welcome, of abundant life, of eternal love, and courageous witness. Those are qualities that don’t cost money!

Yet a community can also be one of the worst things in the world when it is a clique, defined by who is in and who is out, a line that is maintained by mockery and disdain, hatred and even violence. Nor is the church a community like Noah’s ark, one that merely gathers us up and shuts us off from the world, keeping us safe but also keeping us the same, while the storm rages outside. The church is not a community of the status quo. It is a community that changes us. We become different people for being a part of it, we are transformed and made new – and in turn we go back out from this community to transform the rest of the world.

A year ago last January, I attended a conference that asked the question why people need the church today. He said we all want salvation, but we seek something beyond just the state of our own souls. We also seek the salvation of the world. We look around us and see what’s wrong. We know that the world can and should be better than this. We want to make a difference, but the problems seem so overwhelming. What can any one person do alone? The answer is: not much at all. But the church offers people a community: of nurture and care, but also of challenge and growth. Church brings us together so that we are stronger than any of us could be on our own.

You know the saying about faith moving mountains. But which of us alone can move so much as a hill? But when we gather in Jesus’ name so that his power is in our midst, then we can truly move mountains. My roommate blamed religion for the evils of the world, and I’ll be the first to admit that religion has done some terrible things in God’s name. But I would counter her claim and say that all great advances in the world, especially the moral and ethical ones, have been wrought by people of faith – and sometimes by only a very few people! The transforming community that is the church should never be underestimated. We can move mountains, we can even change the world itself.

Lent 4
Courageous Witness
2 Samuel 12:1-13; Acts 5:27-40

26 March 2006

In the fourth of our series on values, our small group was trying to find a way to express our commitment to justice. But that's a tricky thing to do without getting into problems of judgmentalism or self-righteousness. Fortunately, we were saved once again by the UCC's General Minister and President, who around that time wrote an article on "evangelical courage." We really liked what he was getting at, but we still had problems with that language. He was talking about evangelism in terms of "good news," for that is exactly what evangel means in Greek. So he meant the good news of the mission of God to us in Jesus Christ. He's trying to reclaim that language, and that's a very noble task, but for the purposes of our group, if ever there was a churchy word that outsiders don't understand, it's "evangelism." Evangelical courage to those outside the church (and to many inside the church as well!) implies "courage to go up and knock on a stranger's door and ask, 'Have you been saved?'" So: good concept, but not exactly the phrasing we needed. Instead, we turned it around slightly and came up with "courageous witness." Really, it means the same thing. After all, what are we bearing witness to so courageously? The good news! I've also mentioned in sermons before that the word for witness in Greek is "martyr." It was the Christians who gave that word "witness" the sense of dying for one's testimony, and certainly that kind of witnessing takes a lot of courage!

But to go back to this question of the good news to which we bear witness. In Jesus' first sermon in Luke, he says, "I have come to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captive, to restore sight to the blind and let the oppressed go free." Christians throughout history have sometimes interpreted this good news in spiritual, metaphorical terms, and sometimes in more earthly, literal terms. Both interpretations have meaning, and to focus on one at the exclusion of the other is to lose sight of the richness of this gospel mission. But that term "witness" reminds us that we are not the source of that good news. It is our job to proclaim it, to give testimony to it, and sometimes that does indeed take a lot of courage! Because there are forces in this world who work against that good news, who want people to remain in prisons both spiritual and literal.

The Bible is full of such stories of courageous witness. Our Old Testament selection tells the story of the prophet Nathan, who bore courageous witness against King David for his adultery and murder. Today we sometimes think that prophets are about predicting the future, but in the Bible prophets were courageous witnesses. To borrow a phrase from the Quakers, the job of the prophet was to "speak truth to power." For the reality is that powerful people have a tendency to believe themselves above the law. This is why we say that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. David was the king - absolute power. But still more than that: he was a very popular king. If he coveted his neighbor's wife, and then offed his neighbor in order to have her, well – isn't that what kings do? Who is going to complain about it? But Nathan did, even at the risk of his own life.

And yet, as I said earlier, when we start thinking that justice is on our side, we run the risk of judging and condemning others. Yet this is not what we are called to do; we are called merely to witness. As our small group struggled to find language for this, we came up with another phrase, one that didn't make it into our final five values, but I think is an important complement, and is well illustrated in this story of Nathan and David, and that is "confronting abuse." This phrase isn't about passing judgment, but about standing up and calling what we see. We all have power which we can use for good or for ill. Evil, if you think about it, is not something different from good: rather it's about the misuse of power that can be used for good. As a king, David had enormous power that he could use for good, but in this case he used it for evil. Nathan confronts him on that, calling David to account, saying, "Use your power for good and not for evil." This way we are not condemning anyone as evil, rather we are calling on their capacity for good, calling them to higher ground. A relationship is implied in this phrase, a connection between the witness and the one receiving the witness. Notice how Nathan handled the situation. He didn't come in a blaze of righteous anger and squawk, "You have sinned!" He simply told a story, so that David himself would recognize the wrong. When David cries, "Who did this horrible thing?" Nathan quietly answers, "You are the man." And David, to his credit, says, "I have sinned against the Lord."

We are often tempted to keep quiet, to not bear witness and speak out against the abuse of power that we may see around us. After all, we don't like controversy and conflict. Yet when we fail to bear witness, we deprive ourselves and others of the opportunity to receive the good news, to be set free, to be called to higher ground. Put it in personal terms: perhaps in your family or in the family of someone you know, there has been a situation of abuse. It might be domestic violence, drug abuse, perhaps struggles with mental illness. It is a frightening thing to think of intervening. Sometimes it seems like it will be easier if we just don't say anything. But if we keep quiet, if we refuse to bear witness, then what will happen? The situation will only get worse, and no one will be saved. It takes courage, but also genuine love, to stand up and say, "This cannot continue. You have the opportunity to do good. I bear this witness to you: you can be set free." That's what God's justice is about, what we are called to do in bearing courageous witness: this sense of community, of restoration and healing, of reconciliation and forgiveness. And that's true at whatever level we bear witness at: whether one-on-one with family, or whether we speak to kings and rulers of nations.

Yet still we hesitate. We may feel like we don't know what to say or how to say it. Our New Testament story explores this dimension of courageous witness. The book of Acts is all about those bumbling disciples, who when they were with Jesus they never seemed to have a clue what he was talking about. Yet throughout the books of Acts, they bear courageous witness. They finally have understood that good news, and they proclaim it far and wide, despite being poor, ignorant fishermen. In this story, Peter and John have healed a crippled man in the name of Jesus. The religious leaders hauled them into court for it. Why should they care that a crippled man was cured? But they were upset because of that name "Jesus." After all, this character had just been executed by the Roman authorities. If the Romans start hearing that name again, they'll go after anyone they consider as his follower. The religious leaders didn't want trouble, so they hauled Peter and John into court. They didn't want them preaching that troublesome name. But the disciples kept at it, saying, "We must obey God rather than any human authority!" The religious leaders are really at their wits' end here, but finally Rabbi Gamaliel spoke up. He said, "Look, if God is not working in these people, then their efforts are doomed to fail. We can let them go and fail on their own without any trouble from us. But if God is working in them, then there is nothing at all we can do to stop it. So it is best if we just let them go, and God will take care of the matter." Very insightful of Rabbi Gamaliel! His argument won the day, and the disciples were allowed to go.

When we bear our courageous witness, we ought to have that same mind in us. For it is true that sometimes we might be mistaken in our witness. But we should proclaim it anyway, with courage but also with humility. If we are wrong, then let us trust that God will grant us greater insight. But let us not allow our fear of failure to keep us from bearing witness in the first place.

Friends, we have a rich heritage in our own denominational history about courageous witness. Our Congregational ancestors fled persecution in England. They came to this land, and many of them became abolitionists, working to end slavery, and to spread education to all people regardless of nationality or race. And our good German Evangelicals have their own heritage as well. They left Germany for a land of more freedom and opportunity, but not long after they arrived here, Texas seceded from the Union in order to side with the slave states. The Germans were horrified. That is not what they had come to America for! So, many of them went north to Kansas so they could find for the Union Army. But some of their fellow Texans didn't want them to go. These Germans faced persecution, had their property confiscated, were thrown in jail, and some were even killed, because they wanted to fight for a country that would truly be free.

This is our heritage. It is our calling. We must learn from the example of our ancestors and bear courageous witness to the good news. Today, very few of us will ever risk death as the early disciples did. All we probably risk is some ridicule – but can we let that stop us? Today, it's often our own fellow Christians that we may need to confront, but still we must speak out. Courageously, but with humility. Bear faithful witness to the good news as God has given it to you. Because if you don't bear witness, then who will ever be set free?

Lent 3
Eternal Love
Isaiah 43:1-7; Lk. 15:11-32

19 March 2006

As I said last week, our values study group did a twist on "eternal life" with "abundant life" and "eternal love." Speaking about abundant life will change the way we view life itself, and the same thing happens with eternal love. I don't think we'll suffer from the same lack of imagination over eternal love that we might for eternal life. We can imagine what eternal love is like, or as the Bible says, "God's steadfast love endures forever." Our society feeds us many stories about love at first sight, true love that conquers all. The romanticized version is something of a fantasy, and yet haven't we indeed known true love in our lives? Whether it's love for a partner, of the love of parents for their children, or siblings for one another, hopefully all of us have experienced how strong and powerful and unbreakable love can be. And if we know love in our families, how much more can we know love from God! The book of Isaiah, written during Israel's darkest time, is basically one long testament to this undying love. God acknowledges the powerful love of family, saying, "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should have no compassion on the child of her womb?" And yet, God attests, "Even these may forget you, yet I will not forget you." Such a bold, powerful statement! I get shivers just thinking about it: "I will never forget you."

One of my religion professors in college said that God is that which will never betray us. I don't remember too much from my college days, but her words have stayed with me to this day. I think she's right – that we have a deep fear of betrayal. In Dante's Inferno, the lowest pit of hell is reserved for those who betray their friends, like Judas. So much in our lives is uncertain, and we need to be able to count on those around us. It's probably an evolutionary trait, that our far distant ancestors couldn't survive on their own. They needed to be able to count on their family members, the others in their tribe. Yet every single one of us here has been betrayed by someone close to us. A lover or spouse, a brother or sister, by our children, yes, even by our mothers. The sad fact is that families all too often are full of betrayal and hurt. But God, as my college professor said, is that which will never betray us. Or as Isaiah said, "Even these may forget you, yet I never will."

Eternal love: love that is steadfast, love that is unconditional, love that never ends. Perhaps this is the deepest yearning in our human hearts. Yet our experience in the real world makes us reluctant to trust it. Surely eternal love is too good to be true!

There was a woman who had a wastrel son, not unlike the son in Luke's parable. He got into drugs and became a thief to support his habit. Finally his wild living caught up with him. He contracted a disease that threatened his life. The woman was desperately worried about him and went to her pastor. "I love my son," she told him, "but the way he's lived, I'm so afraid that when he dies he will go to hell. If anyone deserves it, he does. Yet he's my son, I love him!"

The pastor asked her, "How did you respond when your son came home?" She replied, "Oh, it had been so long since I'd seen him that I'd long ago given up hope that I'd ever see him again. I just threw both my arms around him and held him as tight as I could. I told him how much I love him, and how I would always be there for him. I told him that I knew he would die if he kept on the way he had, but I knew I couldn't make him change. Only he could do that. But I told him that whenever he was ready, I'd be there for him, to support him in any way I could." When she had finished speaking, the pastor paused for a moment. "That," he said at last, "is exactly the way God responds to each and every one of us."

Love, as Paul says in his famous hymn, is patient and kind; it is not jealous or boastful or arrogant or rude. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Sometimes we fear that this total love is weak. What about morality? Love the sinner, but hate the sin, and all that stuff? But when the prodigal son returned to his home, his father didn't ask if he had repented of his wrongdoing. In fact, the son didn't even get close enough to beg for mercy. As soon as his father saw him, he went running out to greet him. He didn't issue any stern lectures or make any demands. Instead, he cried out for joy, "My son who was lost is now found! My son who was dead is alive again!"

This is what eternal love means, and God will never betray that love. It's such a simple truth, yet it is somehow so hard for us to accept. But imagine what would happen if we truly did accept it, if we truly put our trust in God's eternal love. And if we did surrender to that eternal love, then what are the implications for our lives? For as Jesus points out, even sinners love those who love them. This is no stingy, meagerly, non-abundant love that must be doled out sparingly. Eternal love is abundant, which means that there's more than enough for our loved ones. There is also enough for our enemies. And that is what Jesus called us to do. Love our enemies, bless those who persecute us. If we really affirm love as one of our core values, then we will have to consider how to love our enemies. For if we can't do that, then we have to wonder how eternal our love really is.

There was a man who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He lived in a little southern town where most folks knew each other, and there was this elderly Jewish couple that lived in the town. This man would call them up and say horrible, hateful things to them. He called them so often that they got to know him pretty well. But they didn't call the police on him. Rather, they would talk to him. Whenever he called, they would say, "Have a nice day!" When his mother became ill, they would ask about her, and when she died they told him how sorry they were. At last the man became ill with a debilitating disease and he ended up in a wheelchair. The couple came and visited him often in the hospital. By now he had no friends or family left. Anyone who was still living, he had long ago driven away by his hatefulness. So when the hospital released him, the Jewish couple invited him to come live in their home. They never preached at him that he ought to change his ways. They never protested his anti-Semitic comments. They just treated him with all the love and dignity and respect that anyone else would say he didn't deserve. And in the end, their love won out. His heart was softened, and not only did he end up converting to Judaism, but they adopted him as their son.

That is eternal love. Not a treacly sentiment, not a romantic fantasy, but a power that can soften stone and convert an enemy into a friend. Friends, if God has so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

Lent 2
Abundant Life

12 March 2006

The second of the values or principles I want to discuss in "abundant life." This one and the third one of "eternal love" represent a twist on a more conventional Christian topic: eternal life, which is another one of those jargony terms that Christians often go on about. The stereotype of the door-to-door missionary asking, "Do you know where you're going when you die?" for some Christians this seems to be the most important question of all, but I doubt it's foremost on the minds of people outside the church who are probably much more concerned about making it through this life to be worrying about the next.

And what does "eternal life" mean, anyway? While it's been a part of the Christian imagination forever, the facts are few and rare. Scientific-types are especially loath to make any speculation about what might happen to us when we die, and artists have long pointed out the foibles of our imaginings: Mark Twain speculated that an eternity of harp-plucking could wear on one's patience, and George Bernard Shaw envisioned a heaven so boring that most people eventually defected to hell because the company there was more entertaining.

Our values group turned away from this phrase and instead ought another equally Biblical one: abundant life. This comes from the gospel of John, where Jesus describes himself as the Good Shepherd. He says, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." Eternal life is a hard concept for me to wrap my brain around, but abundant life – that's something I can understand. To me it includes what we mean when we speak of eternal life, but it means so much more. For the danger of talking about eternal life is that we may only focus on the next life and see the present one as just biding our time until we get there. Yet to ignore this life is to ignore a very important part of our journey.

Think about it: I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. Even that word "abundant" goes nicely with the word from last week, "extravagant." It sounds like overflowing. Even eternal life sounds kind of boring compared to it. What would an abundant life be like? Well, think of the opposite: a stingy life, a miserly life, a meager life. Don't you ever have times when life seems like drudgery? You toil away at a thankless job, one that doesn't make use of your talents and gifts, your creativity and imagination. No one at work acknowledges or appreciates what you ca really do. You squabble with your friends and family. Home is just an endless list of chores to do: dirty dishes in the sink, windows that need repair. You fix one thing only to have something else break. Your checking account feels like a pass-through. Money goes out to pay bills as soon as it comes in – maybe eve sooner. You go to school only so you can get a good job, you work only so you can pay the bills. What's abundant about that?'

But hear this vision from Isaiah: "Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listed carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live." (Is.55:1-3a) That sounds like a different life. "Delight in rich food!" Now that's a message we don’t' hear very often these days! People in Bible times really did have to scrape for food. No heavy farm equipment like we have, or rarely even an ox to help plow the land. Even our pioneer ancestors lived in luxury compared to folks in Bible times. So it's interesting how often the Bible talks about food and feasting as a metaphor for the good life that God offers. When the elders of the Hebrews communed with God on Mt. Sinai, they held a great feast saying, "Taste and see that the Lord is good!"

Our world today tells us that life is not abundant. We have to work hard and earn our keep. There's not enough to go around, so we'd better get our share and guard it closely. The world is divided into haves and have nots, and it's folly to think that everyone ca have. We deal with limits all the time: limited money, limited resources, limited time, limited energy. Now there's definitely a good side to conserving and saving. The world is indeed finite. Yet the Bible returns again and again to this more generous world-view. If we could really believe that life in god is abundant, it could indeed change the world around us.

The story of the feeding of the five thousand demonstrates this well. The crowds have followed Jesus to a remote place, and all the disciples can see are limits. "Send them away so th

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