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| Reverend Rita's Sermons (Jul - Dec 2004)...
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Joy - 12/19/04 Choose
Joy 19 December 2004 When I was in my early teens, at that age when belief is very pure, when profound truths can be found in bumper stickers and rock music, there was a Christmas card that had great meaning to me. Every year my mother would string up all the Christmas cards we received, and after the season, the old cards were reused for next year’s Christmas wrapping. But there was one card we got when I was around fifteen that really captured my heart. It was a picture of a small bird sitting on a snow-laden fir branch, and the caption read, “Christmas is the one time of year when, for a moment, peace seems possible after all.” I thought that was a great and profound truth, and I kept that card. I taped it to the mirror on my dresser, and there it stayed all through middle school and high school. I probably took it with me when I went to college. In fact, I might even still have it packed away in a box somewhere along with all the other nuggets of wisdom I used to collect, the way other people collect stamps. “Christmas is the one time of year when, for a moment, peace seems possible after all.” And there is some truth to that, isn’t there? Sure, we all have our inner Scrooge bah-humbugging at all the commercial excess and endless recordings of “White Christmas.” But I’d wager that each of us also has our inner Tiny Tim, waving his crutch aloft and crying, “God bless us, every one!” Or as Burl Ives says in my personal favorite Christmas tune, “It’s the best time of the year!” You get greeting cards from friends and family, some of whom you’ve not seen in years. Many of us will gather with friends and family, sharing good food. And there’s the adrenaline rush of going out and doing a lot of shopping – before the bills arrive next month. Yes, we know that gift giving can be rather crass, but isn’t there something joyful about it as well? Because it’s not just about receiving goodies, it’s also about giving them. I *like* giving presents to my loved ones. And no matter how great the inner Scrooge, can anyone truly drive down a street at night and see those Christmas lights up, and not secretly whisper to himself or herself at least once, “Ooh, how pretty!” But perhaps if Christmas really is the one time of year when, for a moment, peace seems possible after all, it’s due not so much to good will, but to the fact that we’re too dazzled by lights and all the glittering wrapping paper, too busy going to parties and eating specially baked treats, to contemplate wars and rumors of war. And yet the Christmas story itself is so peaceful and beatific. Yes, we know that not every child born into the world is wanted. Not every birth is greeted with great joy – yet still there is something wonderful about a new baby. And that image of the newborn Christ-child, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, with smiling sheep and donkeys and cows gathered all around, and the whole bathed in a warm, golden glow: surely there is a part of us that can never be immune to that peaceful, joyful scene. Indeed, Christmas is the one time of year when, for a moment, peace seems possible after all. And not only peace, but hope and love and joy, as proclaimed on our advent banners. Our inner Tiny Tim salutes them with his crutch. Yet Scrooge endures as well – and more than Scrooge, a cynical realism. For we know that even the Christmas story itself is as much a story about hatred and death and fear, as it is about peace and joy. We know what Mary risked in agreeing to this crazy plan, we know how Joseph planned to cast her away from him. We know how King Herod was so fearful for his power that he ordered the murder of all male children under the age of two. We know that Mary, Joseph and the newborn baby would have to flee for Egypt for their lives. We know that the beatific baby would be murdered at the hands of the state. And more than that, we look back over two thousand years of Christian history and ask ourselves, is the world really a better place for that baby having been born? The sad truth is that Christians are just as likely as anyone else to go to war. They are just as likely to abuse their spouses or their children, just as likely to be prejudiced or hateful, to be petty and cruel. How much difference did that sweet little baby, born among the sheep and the donkeys, really make? Is Christmas truly the one time of year when, for a moment, peace seems possible after all? Or is it the one time of year when we willfully blind ourselves to reality? Where is the joy this Christmas? Our passage in Isaiah, the one whose mistranslation is responsible for the whole “virgin birth” scenario, begins with a fascinating little story. God, speaking through the prophet, says to King Ahaz, “Ask me for a sign, let it be as deep as Sheol or as high as heaven.” That’s kind of a strange thing to say. If God is going to give a sign, wouldn’t God just do it? But the way God says it here, it sounds like my little sister Amanda at the Christmas party last night, “Go ahead, ask me what nine times six is!” Or it sounds like a lover making poetic declarations, “Ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no valley low enough.” Whatever it is, God is eager to share, practically bursting with the news. “Go on! Ask me for a sign!” But Ahaz piously answers, “I will not ask, for I will not put the LORD God to the test.” Now technically, Ahaz gives the right answer. Jesus himself will give that answer during the temptation in the desert: “Thou shalt not put the LORD thy God to the test.” But that’s not the point of the story here. The point isn’t about putting God to the test, it’s about not caring to hear what God has to say. Or perhaps fearing what God has to say. Or perhaps – perhaps for us moderns, looking back over what can look like a very disappointing two thousand years – perhaps we refuse to ask because we’re afraid there’s no one to give us a sign at all. Is any of this Christmas story real, or is it all the result of a mistranslation? An animal feed box, laden with germs and diseases, is no place to lay a newborn babe. Maybe we just send each other pretty cards saying, “Christmas is the one time of year when peace seems possible,” because we’re trying to avoid the truth. Has anything really changed? Is there anyone to give us a sign? Is that why we’re afraid even to ask, even to hope? But even when Ahaz refuses to ask, God gives him a sign anyway: “Behold, a young woman will conceive and bear a child.” Nothing particularly miraculous about that! But that is the sign God gives. Maybe Christmas isn’t about God changing the world. Maybe it’s just about God giving us a sign. Maybe it’s about God eager to share good news with us. That is what “angel” means, after all: messenger, bearer of good news. Angels are like heaven’s newsies, running around, shouting, “Extra! Extra! Read all about it! For unto you a child is born!” The remarkable thing in the Christmas story is how everyone reacts to this good news with fear and skepticism. Out of all the players: Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, King Herod – only the Magi seem excited about the good news, and they’re the foreign gentiles. None of this religious stuff means anything to them at first. They’re just astronomers excited about a new scientific discovery. But even though they don’t really know what it means, the sign is a choice. And when they make the choice to follow the sign, they find joy. That’s what is going on in this Christmas story: a sign, a choice, and the decision people make. An angel appears to a young woman named Mary and says, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and you will conceive and bear a child. Will you agree to this?” And Mary says, “Let it be with me according to your word.” An angel appears to her betrothed, Joseph, and says, “This is what is happening to Mary. You can either put her aside, or you can marry her.” And Joseph says, “I will marry her.” The angels appear to the shepherds and say, “For unto you is born this day a savior in the city of David. You can either huddle here in your fields, or you can go see it.” And they say, “We’ll go see it for ourselves!” But not everyone makes the choice that leads to joy. The angel appears to Herod via the Magi and says, “The new king, God’s anointed one, is born! Will you go and honor him?” But Herod doesn’t. He chooses fear instead. He chooses hatred and murder. God didn’t change the world at Christmas. Instead, we were given a sign. A sign, and a choice. Every year we tell the story of that sign again. And every year we have a choice to make. What will we choose this year: peace, hope, love, and joy? Or will we choose despair, hatred, and violence? My Christmas card was right: Christmas is the one time of year when, for a moment, peace seems possible after all. But what the card neglected to mention is this: that we have to choose it. “Be not afraid. For behold I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be for all people.” This message is a sign: hear, then, the choice the angel offers. God’s
Welcome 5 December 2004 Well! For a church that’s always complaining about how no one knows our name, everybody in the country was sure talking about us this past week. In all the newspapers, on the radio – even on the networks that refused to air the ad. Friends of mine from far and wide who know I’m UCC have been sending me emails about the controversy, but what really got to me was that even folks who didn’t know I was UCC were still talking about it! As they say, you can’t buy this kind of publicity! We in the UCC can take pride that if we have been rejected, it was for all the right reasons. Now, maybe we shouldn’t get too much of a self-righteous martyr complex here, but on the other hand, in the increasingly cynical and bitter climate of this country, it’s a good feeling when everyone is talking about the love that our denomination preaches. But let’s look for a moment at this controversy. Is it really because the commercial implies that UCC churches welcome gays? But here’s the thing: I don’t know of a single denomination that does NOT welcome gays. Maybe there’s an obscure, hateful one out there, like Brother Fred Phelps. But I don’t know of any denomination that does not welcome gays along with everyone else into their church. And indeed this was one of the reasons cited for not airing the commercial, that we were implying that other churches don’t welcome gays. But here’s the difference. The gay people in the commercial are holding hands. Did you notice that? I have to confess I saw the commercial about fifteen times before I caught that. The bouncers rejected those men because they were openly gay. And that’s the trick. All churches will welcome gays, but with conditions: they must either convert to being straight, or they must be celibate. But the message in the commercial is that Jesus would have accepted gays just as they are, without condition, and that’s where the controversy lies. Without condition? Is that really what the gospel is about? Jesus accepts people without any condition at all? Isn’t there something in the Bible about sin and judgment? Doesn’t our passage about John the Baptist imply that there is indeed judgment? “The ax is lying at the root of the tree. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” Doesn’t that make it clear that there is sin and judgment? Oh yes, I would agree, there is sin and judgment. But that has nothing to do with God’s welcome. Jesus came to welcome all people into full membership in the realm of God. Everybody. Without exception and without condition. Sinners, tax collectors, Pharisees, gentiles, prostitutes: everyone is welcome without condition. That basic welcome is a hallmark of the realm of God. That welcome is, I believe, the basis of peace. Peace is about welcoming the other as your brother and sister, completely and fully. And the fruit of peace is justice. Because you deal with another in a spirit of peace, therefore you will be just to one another, in the way prophesied in Isaiah’s vision. It’s not the other way around, that first there is justice and then there is peace. Because justice implies judgment, and that implies condemnation, and that implies exclusion and rejection. Rather, peace is the tree, the core of how we relate to one another, and justice is the fruit that peace bears. The gospel is based on peace, and this message of the UCC in the commercial, this unconditional welcome, springs forth from that tree like a shoot from the tree of Jesse. And here is the difference between unconditional welcome that springs from peace, and an emphasis on judgment first in order to be welcomed. This past summer I received a phone call from two women who wanted to get married. So I arranged to meet with them and started out asking, as I always do, for them to tell me about themselves, how they met and how they decided to get married. One of the women was very involved with her church, a very devout Christian, and as she talked, she began to say how she knew that what they were doing was wrong. Homosexuality, she said, is a sin in the eyes of God. It just is, it’s written in the Bible, and you can’t change that just because it doesn’t suit you. Her love for her partner was wrong. They were wrong to want to get married, because that goes against God’s law. She talked about being a hypocrite, that if people in her church knew, if people in her family knew she was gay, they’d know she’s been living a lie by pretending to be Christian. It went on and on, and I was at a loss as to how to help her. The message she got from her church was not one of welcome, but one of judgment. It was one of the most painful things I’ve ever witnessed, to see this woman’s completely irreconcilable struggle between her love for God and her love for her partner. Now I ask you: where was the good news in her story? In our passage from Romans, Paul says that the scriptures are meant for our instruction, that they are meant to give us hope. All well and good, and this woman pulled out her Bible and showed me the scriptures that condemned her. But I saw no hope in her. The judgment this woman experienced impaired her ability to love God and to love her partner. It impaired even her ability to love herself, because I can tell you, she hated herself. How can the message she heard from her church be deemed “good news”? How did it bring hope? Or – or – is it possible that the message she received, even though she could quote chapter and verse, represented a perversion of the true gospel? What are the criteria we need to use in evaluating scripture and even judging our own behavior? Because as I said, I do believe there is sin and judgment. John the Baptist certainly speaks of judgment, but he preaches it against the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who under the law were quite free from sin, or so it might appear. They kept faithfully to the letter of the law, but John says that’s not the issue. The issue is whether they bear good fruit, fruit of peace, of hope, of justice. This is the test we must apply to scripture. Does it bring hope? Does it give peace? Does it spread justice? There is indeed sin and judgment. We must judge wisely between that which brings peace and hope, and that which brings death and despair. We must act towards one another in love, not in condemnation. Always in love, always in unconditional welcome. And any concern about sin and judgment must be subordinate to that fundamental message. But how does that work? Some people would say that if there is no judgment, no standards, then the peace you have is false, and the welcome only destroys your identity. But think of how a family works, at least in the ideal. Do parents wait to see whether their kids turn out good before welcoming them into the family and affirming their basic worth? If a kid fails to obey the family rules, do the parents kick them out? Even if a child is hurtful to others, do the parents reject the child? No. That’s not how it works. That basic welcome and affirmation comes first and last and everywhere in between. Yes, there is sin and there is judgment. There are children who get into all kinds of bad trouble: drugs, crime, abuse. Sometimes there is even a need for “tough love,” when a child may need to be temporarily removed from the family in order to reduce harm. But it’s the judgment that is conditional, not the welcome. Any judgment takes place within a context of love and welcome. Any child, no matter how great the crime they have committed, will always be loved by their parents. Because that’s the way family works. Now, you and I both know that families are far from perfect and they don’t always live up to those standards. But surely we can all agree that that’s the way a family ought to be. So are we going to say that parents are more loving and accepting than God? Surely we want to say that parents are imperfect mirrors of the unconditional love and welcome of God. Even the Bible itself points out, a mother will forget her child sooner than God will ever forget us. Over and over again in the Bible, the prophets remind us, “God loves us and welcomes us back.” Over and over again in the gospel, Jesus welcomes the outcast, the sinner, the one who is rejected. More than that, Jesus goes out of his way to seek those people out and extend the welcome to them. And he says that’s the way God is: love and welcome without condition. The whole point of the incarnation that we celebrate in this season is the message that God will even come so far as to be born into the guise of a helpless baby in order to welcome us. The whole message of Jesus life and of his death is that nothing, nothing, not even our sin, can ever separate us from the love of God. And we as the church ought then to extend this same welcome to everyone. This is the good news: God loves you. It’s such a simple message. I might say even a harmless message, and yet people have feared it throughout history. Kings feared it, and they killed the prophets. Herod feared it, and he murdered the baby boys because of it. The powers and principalities have always feared it, because they seek to make peace a condition of justice. And yes, some TV networks feared it, too. In the wake of a contentious and hateful election, a message of love and welcome was deemed “too controversial” for network TV. They claimed they wanted to preserve peace, but it was a peace that bore the fruit of injustice. “There won’t be any peace,” the powers always say, “unless everyone is obeying our rules.” But the gospel says it’s the other way around – peace comes first, through how we welcome one another. “Welcome one another,” Paul says, “just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” And when we truly welcome and love one another, then justice is the fruit that we will bear. So while we take justifiable pride in our denomination’s stand through this commercial, and while we revel in the publicity, let’s also retain some humility. Because all of us and some time or another would rather judge than love. All of us at some time or another would rather exclude than welcome. If we are in the spotlight right now, let us remember why, and let us commit to that practice of welcome in all times and places. Let us remember the good news: a message of peace, a message of hope. The message of Christmas. 28 November 2004 This year we chose the parables of Jesus as the theme for our advent meditations. Advent scriptures tend to focus, not surprisingly, on the theme of coming, waiting: advent. Old Testament prophets, therefore, with their message of God’s immanent coming, are very popular, particularly Isaiah, who thoughtfully wrote so many wonderful passages for Handel to use in his famous oratorio, The Messiah. New Testament scriptures likewise focus on the theme of God’s coming, usually through John the Baptist’s “prepare the way” message, as we will hear next week in the Lectionary, or through Jesus’ own teachings about the end times, as in today’s scripture. But we chose the parables as our advent theme, and while there is sometimes a sense of future times in the parables, they are far more often about right now. In the parables, Jesus usually just launches right into a story, or else he says, “The kingdom of God is like this.” He almost never says, “When the kingdom of God comes, then it will look like this.” Rather he says, “This is what it’s like now.” This active tension of the now that we don’t yet perceive is at the core of Jesus’ teaching. It’s more as if the kingdom of God is not something that we await, but something that we enact now, even in this imperfect world. Our gospel reading today is one of the few future teachings of Jesus, where he describes how on the Day of Judgment the sheep will be separated from the goats. The separation will be made on the basis of how people treated Jesus – but the trick is that neither the good sheep nor the bad goats knew they had ever encountered Jesus at all. It’s as if they just did what came naturally to them, and the sheep were the ones who acted as if the kingdom of God were already here. But how do we become like those sheep? How do we practice, when we don’t know exactly how the kingdom is going to be organized and we don’t know exactly how to live it out? Are we supposed to be vegetarians? Should we support stem cell research or not? What national health care plan is more in line with the kingdom of heaven? These are difficult questions that do not have clear Biblical answers. The Bible is not very clear on the specs. But maybe we’re looking at it from the wrong direction, from the end rather than the beginning. And to illustrate that lesson, Jesus told this parable. [Reading – Nov. 29 - from the Spirit of Peace 2004 Advent Booklet - If you haven't gotten yours yet, they are still available before church on Sundays or by mail if you contact Cylia] The emphasis here is not on results but on the beginning, the planting. Spread that seed, and spread it far! Don’t worry so much about how it’s going to grow. This is a very challenging lesson for us, who tend to be very results-oriented. But the parable advises us to act on the kingdom now, and not hesitate for fear that we’re not getting it exactly right. If we don’t sow that seed in the first place, it will never have a chance to grow. So the first thing we have to let go of is our expectations about the results. Secondly, the kingdom now also means keeping ourselves open to any situation. We must be open to the stranger, to the unexpected, ready to act at any moment and in any circumstance. Just as the results of the kingdom are out of our hands, so are the conditions in which we may encounter it. Jesus tells another parable about that theme of keeping ready and alert. [Meditation Dec. 6 - from the Spirit of Peace 2004 Advent Booklet] Jesus seemed to really like weddings, because he used them in his parables a lot. He also seemed to understand how weddings seldom come off as planned, because his parables about them invariably involve a snafu. But maybe that’s a particularly apt metaphor. Sometimes in weddings we focus too much on the wrong details – the flowers, the gowns, the cake – and we lose sight of what’s really important, the pledge of two people to love one another for a life time, the way God loves us. One thing you can say about marriages: they never turn out as planned! But the true test of a marriage is not how closely it adheres to plans, but how it weathers the unexpected. Here is another parable about a wedding. [Meditation Dec. 14 - from the Spirit of Peace 2004 Advent Booklet] We’re letting go of our focus on results, we’re letting go of the conditions and our excuses about when the time is right, and we’re getting closer: to a prayer that asks, “Ready to serve when God calls me.” But there’s one more lesson we need to learn about the kingdom: we don’t make it happen. The kingdom of heaven isn’t about me and my efforts, it’s about us and the community we build together, a community that shares. To use that metaphor of marriage once more, it won’t work if one person does all the giving and the other does all the taking. That isn’t true sharing at all. Rather, the kingdom is based on reciprocity, mutuality, on connection and relationship. Sometimes we are called upon to help others, and we need to be prepared to do so. But sometimes other people may be called upon to help us, and in that case we must be prepared to receive the gift. [Meditation Dec. 20 - from the spirit of Peace 2004 Advent Booklet] The kingdom of heaven is as much something we receive as it is something we do. Because ultimately it’s really God who does it. Christmas is about God’s gift to us, given to us without us having to do anything to make it happen. It is a gift of grace, freely given – a gift that makes all the difference in the world. Perhaps the parable of the sheep and goats is not finally so much about what they did, but about whether or not they lived in that state of grace that Jesus calls the kingdom of God. It is a state that acknowledges that all we have is given to us, and therefore we may in turn freely give it away. It is a state that recognizes that we are loved, and therefore we are free to love others whom we meet, friends, strangers, and enemies alike. It is a state that knows the kingdom of heaven is already here regardless of our efforts, and therefore we may act as if it’s real. 7 November 2004 When I was a little girl, every night I went to sleep under a patchwork quilt. I didn’t know that was what it was. It was just a pretty blue and white blanket with multicolored stars made out of dozens of different kinds of fabric. It wasn’t perfect. The little stitches that held it together weren’t all uniform in size, and their lines were wobbly, and some of the points on the stars were cut off. But I didn’t care. It was a bright, colorful blanket, and it kept me warm. Then I reached a sophisticated age, around 12 or so, and the quilt was no longer good enough for me because I’d been sleeping under it forever, and I had not picked it out myself. So I got big-girl linens that I got to pick myself, not all uneven and full of flaws like the quilt, but fancy and perfect, the way only a machine can make it, with even, identical flowers printed all over it. The quilt went into the closet, and I didn’t miss it. But you always have a use for those old blankets, and every once in a while the quilt would come back out, when we had guests or when I had a slumber party or on a particularly cold winter night. And I continued to grow up until I reached a slightly more observant age, when I noticed that the quilt was imperfect because it had not been made by machine. Someone had made it. The stitches were done by hand. I asked my mother about it, and she told me that my grandmother had made that quilt. This was the first I’d heard of it. Furthermore, all the fabric in the stars were made from pieces of old clothing, my grandma and grandpa’s, even old clothes that had belonged to my mother and aunt and uncles. My mother could look at those patches and remember what article of clothing each of the patches had come from. I continued to grow, and I went away to college, and I took that quilt with me because I wanted something from home, something that was not made by machine, but by someone I knew and loved. It was also while I was in college that I made my first quilt, and I’ve been a quilter ever since. There are many kinds of quilts: picture quilts, art quilts, monochromatic quilts, and quilters love buying special fabric for their new projects. But to this day, my favorite quilt is the scrap, the ones made up of a variety of random fabrics. Because here’s the thing. If you’re making a quilt with only a few kinds of fabric, you have to choose carefully which fabrics to use. The wrong fabric can clash with the others, throwing the whole thing out of artistic balance. An ugly print will ruin it all. But in a scrap quilt, made up of dozens, even hundreds of different kinds of fabric, there’s not such thing as an ugly print. A piece of fabric may look pretty vile on its own. You’d never make a shirt out of it! But when placed within the context of the overall quilt, that ugly fabric suddenly fits. It may blend the other patterns in a pleasing way, or it may provide an exciting contrast. Placing all that jumble of fabrics together brings out the best in each. You can’t go wrong when you make a scrap quilt, because whatever fabrics you choose will end up looking beautiful. And that’s the way God sews together the patchwork quilt that is the church. Fortunately, God likes scrap quilts, too. Let’s be honest, there are some less than aesthetically pleasing fabrics in the church. Not you, of course, but you know whom I’m talking about! You’d never make a shirt out of them! If there were some pre-planned and organized color scheme, perhaps not all of us would make the cut. Some of us would end up on the discard pile. But in the quilt of the church, God gathers all the scraps, even that lurid polyester that no one else can bear to look at, and assembles them all into a beautiful kaleidoscope. Each piece lends harmony to the whole, while at the same time standing out in its own way. The stitches may not be even, and the points may be cut off, but the result is something unique, something handmade, something crafted with God’s own holy love. And in the end, that’s a warmth you can’t buy in a store. Today, All Saints’ Day, is the day when we celebrate all the fabrics that make up the patchwork quilt of the church. All those people who have gone before, some who we remember, but many, many more whose names we never knew. Yet they have been sewn into the living quilt that is the church. They help make up its glory. They keep us warm when we are shivering in doubt and despair. We are the beneficiaries of their legacy, and today we pause to remember them. And on this particular All Saints’ Day, we single out one fabric in particular, a very beautiful and colorful one called Kathryn Morgan, who was sewn into the heavenly quilt last year. I didn’t know Kathryn anywhere near as long as many of you did. She started playing the piano for my church, Spirit of Peace, back when we were first starting up, back when we didn’t even have the name Spirit of Peace yet. She played for us for the first several years of our existence. I’m no musician, I don’t know much about music. I knew she played the piano well, but it took me a long time to begin to understand what a rare gift we had in Kathryn. But it wasn’t only her ability at the piano that made her so precious. Kathryn had a spirit about her. She had a love for God, and a love for this imperfect patchwork quilt that is the church in all its diversity, great and small, magnificent, and the ones with the corners cut off. Music truly was her calling, and it was a way for her to express her love and blessing. She loved my church, as she loved many another. Kathryn Morgan walking into a room was like the sun breaking forth from the clouds, shining down on everything, warming us up and making us blossom. We miss her. But when we sing certain hymns, it’s Kathryn I hear. When Kathryn died, she left her piano to Spirit of Peace Church. She wanted us to know how much she loved us and cared for us. Since we have no place of our own to keep the piano, we are so pleased to have St. Paul use it, so that this instrument can give glory to God the way Kathryn wanted. Even if you did not have the privilege of knowing Kathryn, you may still benefit from her legacy. And especially on this day, as we hear the sounds of this magnificent instrument, may we remember and give thanks for all the legacies of those saints who have gone before us, each of them imperfect, yet each of them shining beautifully in the patchwork quilt that is the church. Amen. 31
October 2004 I’ve really been looking forward to this service this year. It’s not only because of my aunt’s death, but other deaths I’ve been through over the past months: people I knew personally, but also the loved ones of friends of mine. All kinds of deaths: spouses, parents and children. Deaths of young and old. Deaths due to illness, deaths due to sudden and violent accidents or even to war. Some have been what we might call “good” deaths, dying peacefully of old age in one’s sleep, but also deaths that call into question our belief in a good God. Of all these, perhaps cancer seems like the most capricious, the most like a wild card. It can take some people in mere weeks, whereas others will continue for years. It’s not always a death sentence, and it can affect young and old alike. It’s like you just can’t know what will happen when the diagnosis has been made. My friend Ro was declared “cancer free.” One month later she was dead. I remember when Kathryn was dying, she asked me questions about what the actual experience of death would be like. I went to the bookstore and looked at the cancer section, but all the books were about surviving. Maybe there would be one thin chapter at the very end of a book acknowledging that yes, people do die of this disease. But most of the books seemed to just be ignoring that part. I got the feeling that if you died from cancer it was your own fault. You didn’t fight hard enough. It made me very angry. We do seem to have this image in society that you ought to fight against death. It is perhaps most famously expressed in Dylan Thomas’ poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.” A strong manifesto from a guy who drank himself to death before the age of forty. [poem] I’ve been certainly feeling a lot of rage against the dying of the light, myself, this year, but ultimately this is a fight that death is going to win. We all are going to die at some point; we can’t escape it. Even we Christians who profess faith in the resurrection, we still have to pay the death toll before we get there. So what then does death mean to us? John Donne wrote another poem about the matter, more orthodox but no less heartfelt that Thomas’. [poem] Yet this poem seems a bit like a lie, too. I think we can be a bit more sanguine about our own deaths, but it’s the death of those we love that is perhaps the greatest challenge we face in this life. Death is so final. We don’t get to do it over. The death of our loved ones feels like a theft, like robbery. They have been ripped out of our lives. We can never see them or touch them or speak to them again. It’s horrible, this separation that seems in some ways like any other separation. My aunt lived thousands of miles away from me, I hadn’t seen her in several years nor spoken to her on the phone. Logically I ought to be able to deceive myself into thinking that she’s still alive in her little apartment in New York. After all, isn’t it just another form of separation? But it’s not, and I know in my bones that I can’t ever see her again. That is what is so unbearably final about death. I shared earlier this year the comfort I derived from the story of Jesus’ death, knowing that the grief my family has been going through is the same grief that Mary and the disciples experienced on that Friday and Saturday before Easter morning. They, too, knew what it was like to feel robbed of someone they loved. They, too, knew what it is like to feel that soul-crushing grief, even perhaps to rail against God. There was a medieval theologian who said that Jesus had to die an ignominious death on the cross while he was still young, in order to show conclusively that all forms of death were covered by his resurrection. If Jesus had died of old age, then people who died young, or by violence, might be seen as excluded because of their mode of death. Granted, there’s a very twisted sort of medieval logic going on here, but it makes some sense to me. Christianity is the one major world religion whose founder did *not* die peacefully in his bed. Those first Christians *knew* what it is like to lose someone like that. God knows. God knows this grief. God knows this separation. When we are grieving, the greatest comfort we can experience is the sympathy of friends who’ve been through this themselves, the comfort of presence, of companionship in grief. God can say this, “I know what it’s like to feel such grief.” But there is another truth here, just as great as that loss, and that is that death cannot rob us of our love. The loss of our loved ones feels like a great, gaping hole in our hearts, but our love for them does not fade. All the gifts they gave us in their lives are still a part of us. We don’t stop loving them just because they’re gone. In fact, that’s what makes it so painful: our hearts continue to beat out that love, even long after our loved ones have gone. In that sense, death cannot take our loved ones away from us, because they live in the very marrow of our bones. The testimony to the resurrection in part has to do with this truth, that death is final, but it can never stop love. Years and years can go by, yet the slightest little trigger can remind us of our dear ones and set off a storm of fresh tears and grief and love for them. We are afraid of the power of our grief, of its ability to overcome us, of our helplessness before it. One of the ironies I’ve learned this year is how we tend to cry alone. We don’t want to cry in front of others, in front of people who might offer us comfort. We tend to cry alone. Why is that? Perhaps it’s another way that we rage against the dying of the light: we refuse to give in to our grief. Oh, we know it’s expected to cry at the funeral, but after that we expect to get over it. And I’m not just talking about a societal pressure; we pressure ourselves. It’s as if we take the stages of grief as an agenda. “Okay, I’m on stage three now, it’s high time for me to move on to stage four already!” This despite all of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s disclaimers that we don’t necessarily go through the stages in order, and we don’t know how long each stage will take. But we want to get it over and done with. We don’t want to give in to our grief, to admit that feeling of helplessness. But we don’t ever truly get over our loss, because we never get over love. That’s why this day, el dia de los muertos, is so important. It gives us a day out of every year when it’s okay for us to grieve and cry again. It’s okay to feel our loss, a day both to rage against the dying of the light, but also to say, “Death, be not proud.” Here we bear witness to the people whom we have loved, who have loved us. We bear witness to the people who shaped our lives, and whose death still causes us pain. Parts of our service of remembrance come right out of the service for a memorial or funeral, a reminder that death is part of our lives no matter how much we may wish otherwise. We want so much to be in control of our lives, of our grief, even of our death. But on this day we remember that while death comes to all, it can never kill love. Is that a cheap promise in the face of the abyss? Is it mere pretty words? Is it the poem of Dylan Thomas or the one of John Donne that speaks most strongly to you? No doubt for each of us the answer will be a little bit different. Perhaps we don’t even know for sure what our answer is. But our presence here today is a testimony both to our common experience of loss, but also to our common experience of love. In the end, it’s Paul’s words that speak most strongly to me, more than the poems of either Thomas or Donne. His words are not an explanation, and maybe they aren’t even a promise. They are a truth, one that I believe: “If God is for us, who is against us? God who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us (in other words, a God has experienced loss as we have), will God not with him also give us everything else? Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through God who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” God lives forever. Therefore, so does love. Amen. Dylan
Thomas Though
wise men at their end know dark is right, Good
men, the last wave by, crying how bright Wild
men who caught and sang the sun in flight, Grave
men, near death, who see with blinding sight And
you, my father, there on the sad height, John Donne Death
be not proud, though some have called thee 24 October 2004 As I was reading different commentaries about our gospel reading for the day, one person observed that in some ways this story is inappropriate for us today. Self-righteous piety is not a sin that many of us commit. Oh, we may think we have a better understanding of Christianity than some others do, but we don’t generally go around thinking ourselves as being grand for how often we go to church, or how large our tithe is. This commentator suggested that we ought to translate this parable into terms that fit our modern condition, such as economics. The Pharisee in the parable, he said, is like the free-market capitalist, the self-made man who is successful and prays thanks that God has not made him like those welfare moms or high school drop-outs or lazy workers who have made nothing of themselves. In other words, the Pharisee is the one who benefits from the current economic order, who thinks he got himself where he is and has everything he needs, whereas the tax collector is like the person who is disadvantaged by the economic order – the welfare mom, the working poor – who knows that he can’t make it in the system, and who prays for mercy. I thought that was a very interesting interpretation, although I’m still not sure how much it would really fit us. We in this church tend to be bleeding-heart liberals, and I doubt any of us look down on so-called “welfare moms.” But it’s interesting that this commentator saw economic self-righteousness and not pious self-righteousness as the central sin of our modern society. All the more interesting, given the sermon we heard from Doug Greco last week. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been thinking about that sermon all week, and the two cultures Doug presented, and now I’m seeing everything in terms of that market culture. Even the church! Now the problem with any parable is that we want to identify with the one that Jesus favors. Jesus favors the outcast, and so we want to identify with the tax collector. But that is a bit self-righteous. We need to be more honest and admit that we are more like the Pharisee. We need to let ourselves be challenged by the lesson, and not just shored up in some self-aggrandizing perception that we are the favored outcasts of Jesus. Yet if we don’t suffer from the pious self-righteousness of the parable, and we don’t suffer from economic arrogance as in the commentator’s interpretation, how then are we like the Pharisee? The Pharisee’s problem is that he thinks he got himself where he is. While he pays lip service to thanking God for not making him like the wretched tax collector, nevertheless his prayer drips with self-satisfied confidence. He’s praying to God, but really he’s praying about his success and privilege. He’s a self-made man. He sees himself as self-sufficient, and in that I suspect we are like him. For while we in this church recognize some of the inherent injustices in our current economic system, I suspect we nevertheless buy into the myth of self-sufficiency. In our heart of hearts, we do believe we are self-made. We take pride in our accomplishments, and chief among our accomplishments, chief of the goods of our society, is the ability to provide for ourselves and our family. Sure, we don’t look down on welfare recipients (supposedly), but don’t we take pride in our ability to pay our own bills? Don’t we see independence as one of the most important marks of maturity? Think of those milestones: earning your first paycheck, buying your first car, buying a home, achieving something. We don’t want to receive handouts, whether from the government, or from family or friends. If any of us has ever had to borrow money from our parents, do we need feel a certain shame in that? Don’t we seek to pay that loan off as quickly as we can? Oh, we can talk about that culture of relationships that Doug Greco preached about all last week, but we take pride in self-sufficiency, in the belief that we do not have to depend on any one else for anything. One of the questions I really wrestle with as a minister is the challenge posed by my friends who are atheist or agnostic. They seem to get along just fine without God, and I continually ask myself how to talk to them about God – about how perhaps they might need God. For as far as they are concerned, they don’t need God. They look to science to explain how the world works. They look to humanist principles for their ethics. They look to friends and family for love. How, then, do they need God? They are apparently self-sufficient. And if they don’t need God, perhaps I don’t need God either. And let’s be honest with ourselves. Don’t we sometimes, with our image of ourselves as self-made and self-sufficient – don’t we sometimes see God as one more optional luxury in life? Something that is good to have, like a wide screen TV or remodeled kitchen, but as something that isn’t essential? How often do we think of church in terms of what we get out of it? There is frequently a feeling that we ought to get some personal benefit out of church, that we go to get a high from God, or to hear some beneficial message. And let’s be honest: church doesn’t always deliver, does it? Sometimes you go and you’re bored. Sometimes you go and the sermon is lame, or the hymns or ho-hum. So what’s the harm in skipping church every now and again? Believe me, I’m not trying to make this into the church truant officer sermon! But think about how we view the purpose of going to church. After a long week, and a busy weekend, and the weather is lovely, and you’re just too comfortable on the couch, or you really wanted to catch that movie, and why not just skip church this week? After all, we don’t need it. We can experience God on our own. And if we don’t experience God on our own, well really, aren’t we doing pretty well for ourselves? Religion: something that it’s nice to have, but it’s not really essential. Because we make ourselves. We provide for ourselves, and we don’t rely on anything or anyone else for our well-being. Not even God. Maybe, maybe we can recognize a little bit of that Pharisee in ourselves. But let’s go back to the tax collector. Now, he was an outcast yes, but he was not poor. The was the tax system in those days worked was that the government decreed that a certain amount of money needed to be collected from the provinces, and it was up to the tax collectors to literally go around and collect the taxes from people. The tax collectors were expected to collect a little bit extra in order to earn their own living. But the extra amount they collected varied, and I’m not sure whether there was any specific regulation about how much extra they were allowed to collect. So here’s this fellow, doing well for himself financially, but no one likes him or trusts him. The people he collects from know he skims off the top, and they resent him living off of their hard-earned money. The government knows he skims some off, and wonders if he’s living so large, maybe the government can raise the taxes a bit and cut into this guy’s profit margin. From a Jewish perspective, he was considered unclean because he handled worldly money. From a nationalist perspective, he was resented for working for The Man. So here’s this fellow, self-made, well-off, but with no place in society, no friends, none of those relationships that Doug Greco talked about. He knows how lonely that self-sufficiency is, he knows how hollow his prosperity is. So he goes to the Temple, and in a quiet corner prays, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” And that, my friends, is why I believe we go to church. That is the role God plays in our lives. It’s not that we get to be more pious. It’s not that we go to feel good religious feelings. It’s not that we go to be intellectually stimulated by profound thoughts. We go because we are in need of mercy. Yet mercy is the antithesis of self-sufficiency. Mercy is a gift. You cannot earn it. By definition we depend on the kindness of others for mercy. And that is threatening, because we pride ourselves on being self-made, on not being dependent on others. In our lives we are the Pharisee, proud of our self-sufficiency, but in our heart of hearts we know we are the tax collector in need of mercy. I mentioned earlier some of the great accomplishments we achieve in our lives, but I suspect that those are not the real moments that stand out in our lives. Rather, the times that stand out were the times of mercy, that we did nothing to earn. I once led a men’s fellowship meeting, and the topic of discussion was when we had really experienced God in our lives. And they started out with the usual, excuse me, hallmark drivel about “I experience God in nature.” But then one man talked about the birth of his children. You could feel a shiver throughout the entire room, and the tenor of the discussion completely changed. The birth of a child may seem on the surface to be a story of self-sufficiency. You get married and make a baby – or even adopt one. Science tells us the mechanics of how that baby came about, there’s nothing supernatural about it at all. Having a baby can even seem to be an accomplishment. But tell me the truth: when you first held your baby in your arms, you were scared to death! You hold this helpless human being and think, “What in the world have I gotten myself into?” Holding that baby you are so keenly aware of how you are not qualified for this job. You tremble at the infinite number of ways you can screw it up. Oh, science will tell you how that baby came to be in your hands, but all you can think about is, “This is a miracle.” Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh, this baby came from me but is its own being. I have to raise and care for this child but she will never be mine to own. You didn’t earn it and you sure don’t deserve it, but there it is: that is mercy. Or think of marriage. This also seems to be something we do for ourselves: we find our partner, we make the decision, we plan the wedding, we pick out the hors d’oeuvres for the reception. But on that day when you’re standing there looking at your partner, you’re terrified. How will this work out? Will this really last a lifetime? Who can say what will happen? I’m not ready for this! It’ll be a sheer miracle if this works out. Yet despite all those very realistic fears, you go ahead. And if it does all work out, it is indeed only by a miracle. You didn’t earn it and you sure don’t deserve it, but there it is. That is mercy. Or think of grief for someone who has died. We’ve read the self-help books, we know about the stage of grief. We tell ourselves that we need to take the time to grieve, even as we are really thinking that it’s time to get over it and get on with our lives. Because we can’t let grief destroy us. We’re self-made! We don’t want our neighbors to show up with a casserole, because it reminds us of the hole in our lives. We don’t want to cry, because it reminds us of how weak we are. And when people ask us how we are, we smile and say, “Fine.” But then someone insists on bringing that casserole, and when we smile and say, “I’m fine,” they put their hand on our shoulder and say, “I am so sorry for your loss.” And we dissolve into tears, because we aren’t self-sufficient at all. That is mercy. We go to church because we can put up a good front with our friends and family. We can say we’re all right, we can have many accomplishments, we can look self-sufficient. But God knows our bank statement. God knows our cholesterol level. God knows we get bored by the sermon, God knows we want to wring our boss’s neck, and that we don’t know our next-door neighbor’s first name. God knows all our secret shames and fears, above all our fear that we aren’t self-sufficient at all. God knows how lonely and pathetic and inadequate we feel. But God loves us anyway. We didn’t earn it, we sure don’t deserve it, but there it is. That is mercy. Praying in the Temple like the tax collector: that is why we go to church. Not because it’s some extra benefit in our lives, but because we need it: grace and love and mercy. That is the lesson of this parable: that the measure we give out will be the measure we receive. Because we have been shown great mercy, we ought in turn to show mercy to others. Because none of us, whether Pharisee or tax collector, will make it on our own. We are not self-made. We are not self-sufficient. We are forgiven and loved. We didn’t earn it, we sure don’t deserve it, but there it is. That is mercy. Wisdom
to Know the Difference 10 October 2004 The story in today’s gospel reading is another one of those strange healing stories we often get. It’s perhaps easy for us to get distracted by the miracle healing and lose sight of some of the undercurrents going on. Here we have ten lepers being made clean, and only the Samaritan comes back to give thanks. Now, remember that the Torah said that anyone who had leprosy or a similar skin infection was declared unclean and cast out of society. We get a little self-righteous in looking back on Bible-era people for their cruelty, but in the age before antibiotics, this was actually a practical measure. Isolating people with a communicable disease was one of the few ways to control the spread. But of course what was intended as a health measure ends up acquiring a lot of social baggage as well. So lepers were looked down upon, seeing as having earned their disease through sin, and being cut off from family and friends and any place in society. It’s interesting, therefore, that when the lepers see Jesus they don’t actually ask for healing. Instead, they cry out for mercy – for compassion, for some recognition that they, too, are children of God. For his part, Jesus doesn’t answer by immediately healing them. Instead, he simply tells them to go show themselves to the priests at the Temple. This was a leper’s gateway back to society, because according to the Torah, only a priest could declare you clean and therefore reinstate you to society. So the ten lepers trot off, and as they are going they are made clean. But one of them, a Samaritan, turns back and gives praise to God. Now Samaritans, as you recall, were not considered good Jews. They were the ones who remained behind while the other Jews were carted off into exile, and they developed their own ways of worshipping after the Temple had been destroyed. They centered their worship on Mt. Gerizim rather than Jerusalem, and were viewed as unorthodox. So while the Jewish lepers went to the Temple in order to reenter their community, the Samaritan leper would not have been welcomed at the Temple. Instead, he returned to Jesus, recognizing the kingdom of God in Jesus’ ministry, and that was the community that the Samaritan chose to enter. While Jesus praises the man for his faith, I don’t think it follows that the others didn’t praise God in the Temple. In fact, you could see here a version of the split that would happen between Jews and Christians – that the Jews continue to worship in the ways according to the Torah, whereas the Christians admitted “heathens” into worship of God in a new way. We could see in this story a message of tolerance for diversity. What matters is that God is praised, not where or how. With that story in mind, therefore, there was a particular verse in our 2 Timothy passage, which stuck out at me. The author of this letter is counseling church leaders about how to deal with doctrinal disputes. Our passage begins with Paul reminding Timothy what is essential: “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David – that is my gospel.” Period. End of sentence. That is the key point. And later he says, “Avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening.” That really struck me, because it seems like a lot of doctrinal argument in the churches today – and throughout history – has been about wrangling over words. Think of the reformation arguments over transubstantiation and consubstantiation! Today our arguments may not be quite so obscure, but we still have them: over ordination of women, over the place of gays in the church, over abortion, the death penalty, you name it. I don’t think the author is trying to say these arguments are not important, and indeed we know that Paul himself can be quite harsh in dealing with people who teach something different from his own message – but what I’m picking up here is a criticism of arguments that do no good but only ruin those who are listening. This passage says to me that the most important thing we must remember is Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David, and all our other arguments are secondary to that. Indeed, if we fight over those secondary arguments, calling each other heretics or oppressors or whatever, it does no good but only ruins those who are listening. Because this is not the church, the body of Christ, forgiven and reconciling. This is the Church wrangling over words. The author of the letter here seems to be saying, “In essentials unity, in non-essentials diversity, in all things charity.” Again, tolerance for diversity. This theme is reinforced again in our Jeremiah passage. Here the prophet is counseling the people who have been carted off to exile in a foreign land, away from the Temple and the life they had once known. The exiles could have sought to keep themselves completely separate from the alien culture in which they found themselves, to keep themselves pure of defiling influences. But Jeremiah instead urges them to settle down into this alien land. And here is the verse that caught my attention: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” Rather than cutting themselves off from their new community, the exiles are called to once more exercise tolerance for diversity, to see their own welfare as bound to the welfare of those around them, to focus on what they have in common, rather than their differences. Now these values might seem self-evident to us. Don’t we in the United Church of Christ praise ourselves for our open-mindedness and diversity? Yet we, too, sometimes “wrangle over words.” We too sometimes see ourselves as holier than others. When we take our stands on justice or on theological openness, we can be quite condemning of people who do not see eye to eye with us. How do we view those fundamentalists? Or Promise Keepers? Or the Exodus ministry that tries to convert gay people to being straight? Or churches that deny ordination to women? On these and many other issues, don’t we sometimes get self-righteous? Ah, but we’re speaking in the name of justice! We are in the right, and they are wrong! We have a calling to speak truth to power, to be the prophetic voice, to call others to account! This isn’t a matter of wrangling over words; these issues are central to God’s reign of justice! Aren’t they? I don’t want to downplay the significance of our witness, but I think again of those words in 2 Timothy: avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening. When we get so self-righteous, whom are we really speaking for? Who are we shutting out of the community? Are we praising God? Or are we playing judge? This past Thursday I went to hear Mitchell Kattine, who was the lawyer who argued the case before the Supreme Court that resulted in the sodomy laws being struck down. I wore a clerical collar in order to make a statement, but I felt nervous walking in there, fearing that people would see me as the enemy. And sure enough, during the question and answer period, a member of the audience asked Mr. Kattine about how to respond to “religious people” who claim that homosexuality is a sin. And Mr. Kattine had a wonderful answer. He says he doesn’t argue religion with them. He tells them he respects their beliefs, and that as a lawyer he would defend their right to their beliefs in court. But that the United States has separation of church and state, that the laws of our country are not based on religion but on human rights. He knows he can’t argue with some people on the issue of religion; it would just be wrangling over words, doing no good and only ruining those who are listening. So instead he rephrases the issue, finding our common ground as Americans who live in a nation based on civil rights. He ties their welfare to his welfare. He draws a wide circle that includes both him and the people who want to argue with him, and he does it without compromising or denying their differences. I thought it was a brilliant response, and one that is very, very Christian. This can be a hard message for us to hear, because sometimes we believe so strongly that we are right and they are wrong. We are passionate about that prophetic calling to justice, and I am not saying we should not be passionate. But what is the essential news of the gospel? What is the most important? The author of 2 Timothy himself forgets his own advice in wanting to correct those with wrong teaching, and so he quotes this hymn: “If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us.” That last part is the line drawn in the sand, saying who is in the community and who is not, threatening those who disagree with him, who “deny Jesus.” But even as he says it, the author seems to realize that this isn’t quite the gospel, and so the last line of this hymn says, “if we are faithless, he remains faithful – for he cannot deny himself.” For indeed Jesus did not deny those who denied him. Look at Peter, who denied Jesus three times, yet Jesus forgave him. Jesus cannot deny himself – and what he is the messenger of forgiveness and reconciliation. That is the essential. All other issues of justice, of theology, of whatever else, important as they are in their own way – all of these must serve that primary ministry of forgiveness and reconciliation. So what does it matter if the Jewish lepers praise God in the Temple, and the Samaritan leper praises Jesus? The important thing is that God is praised. What does it matter if we live in the Holy City, or in the city of exile – in either place our welfare is bound to the welfare of the people around us. What does it matter if we wrangle over words, so long as we remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David. In essentials unity, in nonessentials diversity, in all things charity. It is a high calling, and one that is very difficult to follow. But when we do follow it, the gospel is indeed proclaimed and God is praised. Amen. Contentment September 30, 2001 This sermon was shaping up to be a tough one. The Lectionary was particularly focused today: the love of money is the root of all evil. That may seem easy. I mean, how much more straightforward can you get? But for me this theme presents the same difficulty as preaching on the Good Samaritan in that we have heard it all before. What new thing can you find to say about a subject everyone already knows so well? It gets boring to always trot out Standard Sermon #3: the evils of money. As much as I love that sermon, I always preach it with a guilty knowledge that we are all living in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and few of the people in the congregation have ever truly experienced anything remotely like poverty. None of us is pure when it comes to the sin of loving money, and I often feel I’m gaining extra days in purgatory for my hypocrisy in preaching the sermon. But
as I was doing some background reading on these texts, I found a
focus on the Timothy reading, and it centered on the word “contentment,”
which proved to be a stumbling block for some folks. To some people,
the word implies comfort, complacency, self-indulgence. How often
have we as ministers been urged to “comfort the afflicted
and afflict the comfortable?” And yet here Paul says, “There
is great gain in godliness combined with contentment.” What
is going on here? This, from the guy who always liked to brag about
the number of times he’d been arrested and flogged by Roman
authorities? But
this story has a certain – dare I say – contentment
in the way we often read it: Lazarus gets his reward and the selfish
rich man is punished. But the parable is darkened by Father Abraham
laughing at the man suffering in Hades, rubbing it in. Where is
the compassion in this story? What happened to “turn the other
cheek and go the extra mile?” The rich man begs Abraham to
send Lazarus to give him some relief from his suffering –
and such a poignantly tiny gesture – to dip his little finger
in the water and cool [his] tongue.” But Father Abraham refuses,
saying, “Between you and us a great chasm has been fixed,
so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do
so.” Even if Lazarus wanted to help, he may not. Isn’t
there something sick about this vision of the afterlife, in which
the blessed are rewarded by seeing the wicked suffer torment? How
is that heavenly at all? How does it sound like anything that Jesus
would condone? Take
Up Your Cross 5 September 2004 A challenging Lectionary selection today! The infamous “unless you hate your mother and father” passage in Luke, which is so hard to preach on because it always sounds like you’re making an excuse for it. “That isn’t really what Jesus meant to say!” I as a preacher don’t like to be so obviously altering Jesus’ words and putting my own words in their place. But this passage has a lot of very challenging images: unless you hate your father and mother, unless you give up all your possessions, unless you take up your cross you cannot be my disciples. It’s a recruitment speech that won’t exactly inspire thousands of people to sign up on the dotted line. It is sorely tempting to water these sayings down, to say either that Jesus was exaggerating and never meant for these standards to apply to every day Christians, or Jesus was somehow not speaking about the real world and real life matters. But maybe teachings like this, as radical and challenging and difficult as they may be, are best illustrated through a story. So I want to look at one of our other passages today, in order to see what light may be shed on this passage. Let’s look at this letter to Philemon. I’m very fond of this letter because it’s one of the shortest books in the bible. It doesn’t even have chapter divisions! But lest you think that’s a superficial reason to like this letter, let me hasten to add that a short letter like this, gives us a more coherent vision of what’s going on than some of the longer letters and books. You know that biblical writers had a tendency to ramble, and it isn’t always clear how the parts of any one book relate to each other. The Bible can be very difficult to read, precisely because it is so unlike any literature of our day. But the short books are more clear and concise, and therefore a bit easier for us to follow what is going on. Philemon is also unique because it is the most personal letter in the Bible. Indeed, it almost seems too personal – Paul writing to one man about a private issue. Philemon owned a slave named Onesimus, who had run away and come to where Paul was in prison. Paul is writing to ask Philemon to forgive Onesimus and receive him back. It’s not really clear why such an intimate, ordinary letter should make it into the Bible at all, although there is a tradition that Onesimus later became a bishop. But for whatever reason it was included, it gives us a glimpse of Paul dealing with what we might call a personal, pastoral matter. I’ve shared before how about one-third of the students of the seminary I attended were black. The subject of this letter came up once, and the black students got very passionate about it. They were horrified that Paul would send a slave back to his master. If women tend to hate Paul for saying, “Let women keep silent in the churches,” blacks tend to hate him for this letter. I’d never quite read this letter that way before, and I could see how it could be abhorrent, especially by our standards today. But Paul’s world was totally different from ours. Slavery was an inescapable part of life, yet it had not become the racially bound institution that we know from our own country’s history. Slavery, classicism, sexism, imperialism – all existed on a monumental scope in Paul’s day, and they were backed by all the might of the Roman Empire. Around the time of Jesus, a gladiator named Spartacus led a slave rebellion in which the Romans ended up crucifying thousands and thousands of slaves. Indeed, the phrase “take up your cross” had real meaning back in those days. But there are all kinds of subtle things going on in this letter to Philemon. While on the surface of it, Paul is sending Onesimus back, while asking Philemon to forgive him, if we read between the lines, we encounter a very different message. Paul starts out by praising Philemon, emphasizing his love and his goodness. “I always thank my God because I heard of your love for all the saints…I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective when you perceive all the good that we may do for Christ.” He uses many terms of endearment, calling Philemon “my dear friend and coworker, my brother.” He’s setting a standard for Philemon, defining him in the highest possible terms of love and generosity, so that he sets the stage for what comes next. “For this reason, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love.” Once more, an appeal based not on authority (though he certainly reminds Philemon of it!) but based on love and relationship. He even stresses his own weakness, calling himself an old man and a prisoner. And then he brings up the matter of Onesimus. “I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become.” Now the he applies that same intimate relationship to Onesimus, twice in the same sentence. This is no mere slave: Onesimus is Paul’s own son. Now there is a pun intricately woven into this letter, because the name Onesimus means “useful” or “helpful,” so Paul says, “Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful both to you and to me.” And now he lays it on thick, “I am sending him that is my own heart back to you. I want to keep him with me in my imprisonment…but I prefer to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced.” This is diplomacy at its highest! He appeals to the very best nature in Philemon, speaking of his reputation for love and good deeds. He speaks of Onesimus in intimate terms, and stresses that it’s up to Philemon to figure out how to do what is right. And what is this “good deed” that Paul wants Philemon to perform? Technically, all he asks is that Philemon take Onesimus back and charge any debt he owes to Paul. But again, listen to how the request is made: “Take him back no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother…. Welcome him as you would welcome me…. I know that you will do even more than what I say.” It’s clear to me at least that Paul wants Philemon to set Onesimus free. In speaking of Onesimus’ debt, Paul notes all that Philemon owes to him. Indeed, the implication is that just as Christ through Paul’s ministry has set Philemon free, so ought Philemon to set Onesimus, a brother in Christ, free. Indeed, it would be very difficult for Philemon now not to free Onesimus, not when Paul has set it up so well. But the outcome is by no means certain. Onesimus has been sent to deliver this letter himself, with no guarantee that Philemon will do what Paul asks, let alone set him free. Think about what it meant for Onesimus to go back to this man. Why had he run away in the first place? Slaves were often treated quite well, sometimes almost like members of the family. So if Onesimus ran away, maybe even stole from his master, the implication to me is that he was not treated well there. Of course we can’t say for certain, but at the very least we know that the law would say that Onesimus had committed a double crime: running away and stealing from his master. The law would not deal kindly with him. Yet at Paul’s bidding, he goes back without any guarantee. With Onesimus’ story in mind, that phrase, “Take up your cross and follow me,” takes on a whole new level of meaning. Even the illustrations from Luke’s parable: which of you intending to build a tower does not first sit down and estimate the cost? Or what king, going out to wage a war, will not sit down first and consider if he has the forces to win? Or which slave, seeking freedom, will first sit down and figure out a plan of escape? These illustrations are just as problematic as the “hate your mother and father” part, but they tend to get overshadowed by the more dramatic attack on so-called family values. But some of the reading I’ve done suggest that the illustrations of the tower (which might be a military defense) and the king going to war and meant to illustrate the way of the world. Many of Jesus’ followers wanted him to wage war against the Roman Empire. But Jesus rejects that plan, saying you need to count the cost first. And the key, perhaps, is in this final statement: “If [the king cannot win the war], then while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” But what possessions? Not only material wealth, but also worldly expectations of conquest and victory. Onesimus dreamed of freedom. He wanted to escape slavery. It was an unjust institution in an unjust age, so he ran away. How could Paul help him? I doubt there was an Underground Railroad in those days. There were no free states. Onesimus would have been a wanted criminal. Paul calculates the cost, studies to see if he has the forces to win this battle. And then he sends a delegation to ask for the terms of peace. But he does not come from a position of weakness, for all that he talks about how old he is, languishing in prison. While apparently giving Philemon all the power to make the decision, Paul sets the terms himself, and the terms he uses are: love, good deeds, faithfulness, brother, son, father, useful, obedience, and “even more than I say.” But the most important thing that happens in this story is not the letter, or Philemon receiving it in the end, or the decision that he makes. Because the one with the real power in this story, the one with the real decision to make is Onesimus. Picture Paul in that dank prison, signing his name to this letter and handing it to Onesimus. “Now is the time, my son,” he says. ”Will you take up your cross?” Because the cross is not a metaphor for hardship or trial. The cross does not mean battling cancer or losing your job or having a hard day. The cross means counting the cost, going out to meet with the enemy that wants to make war on you, confronting the power that will use deadly force in order to preserve its position of privilege, yet going out to meet them in a spirit of reconciliation. That is what it means to take up your cross. That is what it means t |
