Reverend Rita's Sermons (Jan - June 2007)...
(Updated 11/23/07)

sreb

Luke 7:36 - 8:3 - 06/17/07
As One With Authority - 06/10/07
The Late Convert - 05/20/07
Julien of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love - 05/13/07
What Matters: We Are One at Baptism and the Table - 04/01/07
What Matters: We Thank God by Working for a Just World - 03/25/07
What Matters: We Listen for the Still-Speaking God - 03/18/07
What Matters: We Are a People of Covenant - 03/11/07
What Matters: We Belong to Christ - 03/04/07
Adopted by God - 02/18/07
Blessed Are Those Who Hope - 02/11/07
Make Me More Holy - 02/04/07
Luke 4:21-30 - 01/28/07
People of the Book - 01/21/07
New Wine - 01/14/2007
Unquenchable Fire - 01/07/07

Luke 7:36-8:3

17 June 2007

This story is one of my very favorite gospel stories. It's probably one of the ones that the Jesus Seminar would say really happened, because it is rather scandalous. That may be so, but I'm not sure I really care. It's a beautiful story, and one that is very important to me and my beliefs about Jesus and God, so I hope you will bear with me as we go over this tale with a fine-tooth comb to catch all the little treasures within it.

Let's start before the beginning, though, with what leads into it. Right before this story, there's an exchange with John the Baptist. He sends some of his disciples to Jesus and asks, "Are you the one we are waiting for, or is there another?" Jesus doesn't answer the question directly. He just says, "The blind can see, the lame can walk, the poor hear good news. Blessed are those who don't take offense at me." I just love Jesus' answers! That last bit in particular is relevant to our story today, so more on that later.

After this exchange, Jesus praises John to the crowds, maybe as a way of saying that he doesn't take offense at John's question. For, Jesus says, there is no one greater than John. And then there is this little parenthetical aside saying basically that the Pharisees had taken offense at John and refused to be baptized by him. And that's important, because how does our little story today begin? "Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to dinner with him."

This is one of those times when I wish the Bible had more detail! It's as if they're rushing to tell the story, and they leave out all those little tidbits that flesh it all out. Who was this Simon the Pharisee, and why did he invite Jesus to dinner? Was it to check up on him? Or because he was interested in what Jesus had to say? Did he just want to cash in on Jesus' fame, or did he want to keep tabs on him? The Bible doesn't say. But maybe it's good that the Bible doesn't say, because it forces us to ask these questions – to ask them not only of the story itself, but to ask them of ourselves. What do we think, and why do we think it? Do we ascribe good motives to Simon or bad ones, and why do we judge him that way? It's one of those Bible Rorschach test things. Our answers reveal much about ourselves.

So Simon invites Jesus to dinner, and Jesus accepts. Jesus, this guy who is not above dinging with tax collectors and sinners, is also not above dining with Pharisees and the righteous. That's important to know. Jesus doesn't take sides. He doesn't show a preference. I wish all of us could say the same of ourselves!

Then a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town came in. again, the Bible doesn’t' say what her sins were, and again our guesses say more about us than about her. After all, what's the first thing you think when you hear the words "sinful" and "woman" together? Sex! As if women never sin in other ways. Maybe she was an ax murderer. Maybe she was a sheep rustler. After all, we don't leap to the same lurid conclusion when we hear about a "sinful man," do we? Again, the blank spaces in the Bible leave room to take a good look at ourselves.

Another thing to notice is that she lived a sinful life in that town. Towns were small in those days, which meant most likely everyone in the area knew how this woman was a sinner. Think of the gossip she'd had to endure, the eyes following scornfully whenever she passed by. People who refused to do business with her, or who crossed the street to avoid her. Yet here she shows up at the house of a prominent religious leader, crashing his private dinner party.

You have to wonder why Simon didn't kick her out for daring to show her face. But he lets her stay, even lets her accost his guest of honor, washing his feet with her tears and all this business. Maybe the fact that he doesn't evict her says something about his motives for inviting Jesus in the first place. At any rate, he sits there and thinks to himself, "If this fellow really was a prophet, he'd know what kind of woman she was."

Did you catch that detail? He thinks it to himself, yet Jesus answers him. It doesn't have to be that Jesus read the guy's mind. He could have read his face, the scorn he had for this woman, the disdainful curl of his lip, the hardness in his eyes as he watched her. Jesus knows exactly what is going through Simon's mind, and he tells his parable about the debtors in response. At the end when Simon says that the one with the greater debt loved the creditor more, Jesus says, "You have judged correctly."

I like how Jesus phrases that. Again, he's so good with his answers! You might recall in my sermon series last year on progressive Christian values, I talked about the concept of "confronting abuse." It was the phrase we used to describe the justice focus of the UCC. The problem with justice, however, is that it implies judgment, condemnation. And who among us is truly in any position to judge anyone else? We all know what Jesus had to say on the subject, about removing the log from our own eye before trying to remove the speck from anyone else's. But this phrase "confronting abuse," It means that we call people to account for how they use their power. We all have power to use for good or ill, and we as Christians do have an obligation to hold each other accountable for how we use that power. But to "confront abuse" means to leave it in the hands of the one we are confronting, to challenge them to take the higher path, to judge themselves and use their power for good, rather than abuse it for evil.

That's exactly what I think Jesus is doing here with Simon. Notice how in this whole story, Jesus never judges or condemns Simon. When he realizes what Simon is thinking, that he's passing judgment and condemning this woman (and by association, condemning Jesus himself), Jesus doesn't tear into him, any more than he did with John's disciples in the story leading up to this one. Then, as now, he is in effect saying, "See for yourselves and make your own judgment. And blessed are those who take no offense at me."

Simon took offense at the woman. And he took offense at Jesus for allowing the woman to touch him in that way. But Jesus is not offended in response. Rather he tells a parable, and he lets Simon make his own judgment. Then he praises Simon for judging correctly. Very clever of him! And having just praised Simon, he continues with his lesson. "Do you see this woman"? he asks, as if Simon might somehow have missed her. "You did not wash my feet," Jesus tells him, "but she washed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You didn't kiss me, but she has not stopped kissing my feet. You didn't anoint my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore I tell you, her sins have been forgiven, for she has shown much love." There is no condemnation there. Jesus simply points out the facts and leaves Simon and everyone else to draw their own conclusion, to make their own judgment.

But let's get back to the woman. And it doesn’t escape my notice that while the Pharisee gets a name, she doesn't. Now, all this weeping on his feet and kissing them and anointing them with perfume – it seems like a bit much, doesn’t it? What are her motivations? Jesus hasn't forgiven her yet. Presumably they've never even met before, since Simon is sitting around wondering to himself if Jesus knows what kind of woman she is. So if they’ve never met for him to forgive her for anything, why would this woman make such an extravagant display? She doesn't do this in order to get forgiveness from Jesus. She makes no request of him. It seems to be more of a response to Jesus, rather than an attempt to get something from him. But why would she respond this way?

Perhaps the answer lies in that theme of "offense." "Blessed are those who take no offense at me." The word in Greek is "skandalon," literally meaning a stumbling block, something people trip over, something that hinders their path. Today we've turned that word into "scandal," something that shocks and horrifies people, that causes moral outrage. When Simon takes offense at Jesus, when he is scandalized by what the woman does and how Jesus lets her do it, he stumbles. He is hindered in following the path of grace and forgiveness that Jesus wants to lead him to.

But what is the opposite of a stumbling block? It might be a smooth pathway, or a signpost clearly marking the way. An easy journey. The opposite of a scandal or of offense? My thesaurus suggested agreement and courtesy. That's true as far as it goes, but scandal implies something stronger than mere "disagreement" to me. It's opposite would seem to be something more like praise, reverence, even worship. The opposite of taking offense at someone is to give your approval of them, to endorse them, to enthusiastically support them. I think we're getting somewhere here – an intense, positive response, the kind of response that might have you kissing someone's feet and anointing them.

In this story we have two people, both of whom have heard of Jesus and his mission, both of whom pronounce their judgment of him at this dinner party. One is scandalized and takes offense. The other gives her wholehearted approval, even to the point of reverence and worship. I ask you, which one is blessed?

As One with Authority
Galatians 1:11-24

10 June 2007

At first I was going to preach on the gospel text for today – Jesus raising people from the dead and all, it's pretty exciting. But my attention kept getting caught on the Galatians passage instead. At first it doesn't seem as interesting as a "raised from the dead" miracle, but in fact there is something very interesting going on in this passage.

Here's the set-up: Paul was a missionary, traveled around preaching the gospel and setting up churches. Then after they were established, he would move on somewhere else, but stay in touch with those older churches through his letters. The Galatian churches were largely made up of gentile converts to Christianity. In other words, unlike many of the other churches Paul established, these people didn't start out as Jews and become Christians. But after Paul moved on from this church, some Jewish Christian missionaries showed up. As you may recall, the first controversy in the early church was whether Gentile converts needed to observe the Jewish law in order to become good Christians. Paul said no, but these latter missionaries said yes, and when Paul learned of it, he had himself a right old temper tantrum! The commentaries I read said that this is one of the letters that scholars universally agree was actually written by Paul, because it is in his distinctive style. I would say you can tell Paul wrote it because it's so pissy. (Australians would call it "stroppy.") He doesn't even attempt to be polite.

So far that's all within the norm if you know much about Paul. But what really caught my attention in this passage is how Paul makes the argument for his own authority. It actually starts even before this passage, in the very first verse, "Paul an apostle – sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father." Not by human authority, but directly from God.

In our selection that we read today, Paul goes out of his way to distance himself from any human authorities within the new Christianity. He says, for example, that the gospel he preached came to him directly from God, and not from a human teacher. That when he had his conversion on the road to Damascus, he didn't hightail it back to Jerusalem to learn about his new faith from the original apostles, but rather he headed in the opposite direction. After three years, he admits almost reluctantly, he did go to Jerusalem to meet with Peter. But he only stayed there for two weeks, and he didn't meet any other apostles except James. It would be another fourteen years before he would return to the capitol of Christianity.

This struck me as so interesting, because today when there is a controversy in the church, people immediately appeal to authority. They may appeal to the Bible saying, "The Bible says it, I believe it, end of story." Or they may appeal to church hierarchy or religious authorities, saying, "The official doctrine of the church says," or "Such-and-such Pope or Bishop or General Synod says." Sometimes they'll even say, "Modern scientific research says." Nobody comes up with a radical new message and says, "Folks, this gospel is true not because the Bible says it or some church authority says it, but because God told me so directly!" (Only the Pentecostals say anything remotely like that, bless them!)

Yet here's Paul, saying that his authority came directly from God on high. He even, strangely enough, says that if an angel from heaven should proclaim a gospel contrary to what Paul himself preached from the beginning, or if he himself were to change his message, the Galatians shouldn't believe him but stick to the original teaching! Now you could interpret that as Paul being an arrogant cuss who thinks he knows better than everyone else. But I think there's something else going on here. I think Paul believes wholeheartedly and passionately in his message, a message he encountered on that Damascus road. It's not an insight he came up with on his own. It's not his own cleverness or spiritual superiority. That's why he says that if he himself were to change his tune, then the Galatians should not believe him. And what is this message that Paul is so convinced of? To use that old-time religion language, this message that Paul is convicted of? It's the radically inclusive message that he sums up so beautiful in Galatians 3:28: "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."

Paul is saying that in Christianity, there are no longer any divisions. Jesus didn't come to set up a new in-crowd. There's no in and out in Christianity. In Christianity, everyone is in. And that, to be honest, is why he makes such an effort to distance himself from any kind of religious authority. Because as soon as you start saying that some people have more religious authority than others, then you create a new in-crowd. It goes further. Even with the Bible, as soon as you say, "Only these scriptures are revelation, and everything that disagrees is false," then you create an in-crowd.

Now, Paul doesn't reject the authority of Peter or of the Bible. He does meet with Peter, and he argues with him, and he makes his case. He shows respect to Peter, but only insofar as Peter adheres to this gospel of total inclusion. (Later on in this letter he criticizes Peter for being two-faced toward the Gentile Christians and the Jewish ones.) Nor does Paul reject the Bible. He talks quite a bit in this letter about the Law, that is the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. He never, ever rejects the law. But he says the law – the Bible – must be interpreted from the standpoint of this gospel message: there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for all are one in Christ Jesus. That gospel is Paul's authority. It is his absolute conviction. It comes directly from God. And anything that contradicts it cannot possibly be authoritative.

Now what does this say for us today? We may no longer argue about the issues that threatened to tear the early church apart, but heaven knows that Christians throughout history have found no shortage of issues to argue over and excommunicate each other for. And that latter is key, for how often do we claim that those who disagree with us are not real Christians? How often do we end up making Christianity into an exclusive club, of which only some people are "in", and the rest are "out"? That, Paul would say, is not the gospel. It doesn't matter to what authority we appeal: to church doctrine, or the Bible, or even to Paul's own writings – as when, for example, he says that women should keep silent in the churches. Such an authority – even Paul himself! – is not to be trusted.

The existence of the church – that is, the community of faith is based not on any kind of human authority, even the human authority of religion. It is based, rather, solely on the authority of God. The church is the community that God has called, a community that has responded in faith but is not defined by its faith. It is defined by God, and faith is our response.

The Late Convert
Acts 9:1-9, 19b-22

20 May 2007

This past week saw the passing of the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Many people have been lauding him as a great religious leader in our country, but an equal number of people have not been sorry to see him go. While expressing guilt over their happiness that a fellow human being had died, they nevertheless felt tremendous relief. While I in no way want to discount the good he no doubt did in some people's lives, the reality is that he preached a lot of hate for a Christian minister. Hatred of gays, of feminists, and the civil rights movement. Hatred of science and reason. I would even say hatred of some basic American values like freedom of speech, equality and tolerance, and the separation of church and state. In some of his more infamous moments, he blamed lesbians, feminists and liberals for the September 11 attacks, he claimed that a children's television character promoted the gay lifestyle, and he fought to pass laws that curtailed other people's constitutional rights. That is part of his legacy, too.

I have no doubt that his faith was sincere. I'm sure he would say that he didn't preach hatred of anyone, just of sin. He would say that he loved God and loved God's will, and he preached that people would follow that will. He would say that he was zealous for God, and I have no doubt that was true. But when zeal for God leads to hatred and persecution, then it is not a virtue.

There was a man in the Bible who was a lot like Jerry Falwell. He too loved God and was filled with zeal for God's law, and that was Saul. He was a Pharisee of the highest order. He studied with the famous Rabbi Gamaliel, a revered figure in Judaism who is still remembered to this day in the Passover Seder. Saul cared passionately about God's will, and he knew his Bible well. He knew that Deuteronomy said that anyone who hangs on a tree is cursed by God, so when he heard about some Messianic pretender who had been crucified, he knew there could be no tolerance for such blasphemy. Love the sinner, of course, but hate the sin, and this Jesus had led others into sin and error with his teachings. So Saul felt justified in leading a crusade against these wrongdoers. He didn't actively participate in any mob violence. He could argue that his hands were clean. But when a crowd stoned a man named Stephen to death, Saul stood by and watched.

But one day Saul was struck by a vision. A man appeared to him, someone he did know or recognize. "Saul, Saul," the man said, "why do you persecute me?" Saul knew this mysterious visitor had to be from God, but the question confused him. He would never persecute God! He was God's fiercest warrior! "Who are you, Lord?" he asked, and the man replied, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting." And at that moment Saul was struck blind. He thought his vision had been perfectly clear, that he understood God's will. But now he realized he had been blind all along.

Out of all our resurrection stories, Saul, who later became known as Paul, is the only one who never knew the Jesus of history. Paul's letters were written before any of the gospels, yet unlike the gospels he says almost nothing whatsoever of Jesus' life. Instead, Paul's writings are all about Jesus' crucifixion and his resurrection. Why is that? How could he write with such authority and conviction about the meaning of Jesus' death and resurrection? Why did he never discuss Jesus' life or teachings? He knew many of Jesus' inner circle, Peter, James, and others. It's not as if he never heard them tell stories of Jesus' life. But that didn’t seem to concern him.

One of the commentaries I read on this passage pointed out that when the risen Christ appeared to Paul, he didn't ask, "Why don't you believe in me?" He asked, rather, "Why do you persecute me?" And therein lies the answer to our question. Paul spoke about the crucified and risen Christ because he himself had been an active participant in exactly the kind of religious persecution that had sent Jesus to his death. He had believed that Jesus deserved his fate. The Bible itself told him that Jesus was cursed. That belief justified his own persecution of others like Jesus. He believed his violence was justified, mandated even by God. But on that road to Damascus he realized at last that God never, ever authorizes such violence and hatred.

In Jesus' final speech in the gospel of John, he warns the disciples of the persecution they will face in the coming days and years. Indeed, he draws a connection between the persecution he experiences, and the persecution they will undergo. "Anyone who hates me hates my Father. If I had not performed such works among them as no one else has ever done, they would be blameless; but as it is, they have seen all this and still they hate both me and my Father.... They hate me for no reason....I'm telling you this so that your faith will not be shaken. They will expel you from the synagogues, and indeed the hour is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is doing a holy duty for God. But they will do these things because they have never known either the Father or myself." (John 15:23-24, 16:1-3)

"Anyone who hates me hates my Father." In other words, you can't hate Jesus and his mission, and still love God. Jesus' mission is God's. I don't think this is an issue about belief in Jesus, though. This is not to say that anyone who is not a Christian hates God. Rather it's a statement that God is present and at work in Jesus. "If I had not performed such works among them as no one else has ever done" – what works are these? Miracles? I don't think so. What was it about Jesus that scandalized people so much? It was that he forgave sins. He dined with unbelievers. He chatted with prostitutes. "If I had not done such things, they would be blameless." What does that mean? Would they have been justified in their hatred? This is a tough one to interpret. Perhaps it is in line with what Jesus so often said about knowing people by the fruit they bear. Indeed, I think the next verse points to just such an interpretation: But as it is, they have seen all this, that is the things Jesus has done, the ways in which God is at work in the world through him, a mission of forgiveness and grace, of new life and hope. They have seen all this bear fruit in Jesus' ministry, yet still they hated both him, and therefore by extension the God who sent him. In other words, as Jesus says, "They hate me for no reason." No legitimate reason, save solely that they didn't like what he was doing, loving all these undeserving people, going about forgiving sins right and left.

Jesus then goes on to warn how the disciples too will be hated, hounded, and persecuted, and he says tellingly, "Those who kill you will think they are doing a holy duty for God." But the fact that they kill at all is a sign that they have never known Jesus or the God who sent him.

This is what Paul knew. He knew it because he was one of those who thought he was doing a holy duty. He thought that his violence was authorized by God. He though, in essence, that God bore the responsibility for his, Paul's violence and hatred. But on the road to Damascus, he realized that the violence and hatred were his own. You cannot be zealous for God if that zeal leads you to persecute and hate and abuse and kill others, even if you think it is your holy duty. Anyone who commits such violence does not know Jesus or the God who sent him.

And that leads us back to Rev. Falwell and his ilk. Pat Robertson. John Hagee. James Dobson. All of those Christian leaders who preach hate and call it their holy duty. It is not for you or I to pass judgment on anyone's soul, and that is not what I am doing here. I do not question the faith of any of these men. That's between them and God. But I will say that their hateful messages are contrary to the Gospel of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ. Whenever they or any of us persecute anyone in Jesus' name, we crucify Christ all over again, and prove that we do not know him or God at all.

This is what the resurrection means. I don't care about scientific explanations or what have you. What the resurrection means is that God has vindicated Jesus, the victim of mob violence, the victim of religious zeal, the victim of those who persecuted him in the name of holy duty. And with Jesus, all other victims are vindicated to. The question that the risen Christ asked of Paul, of Peter, of all of us even to this very day is not "Why don't you believe in me?" but "Why do you persecute me?" Because lots of people say they believe in him who don’t know him at all.

To quote Paul himself, once his eyes had been opened, "The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but for those who are being saved, it is the power of God.... For the Jews demand signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a scandal to the Jews and folly for the Greeks.... The foolishness of God is wiser than us, and the weakness of God is stronger than us. (I Corinthians 1:18, 22-23, 25)

Julian of Norwich
Revelations of Divine Love

Mother's Day
13 May 2007

I saw the blessed Trinity working. I saw that there were these three attributes: fatherhood, motherhood, and lordship – all in one God. In the almighty Father we have been sustained and blessed with regard to our creation as human beings from before all time. By the skill and wisdom of the Second Person we are sustained, restored, and saved as individuals, for Christ is our Mother, Brother, and Savior. In our good Lord the Holy Spirit we have, after our life and hardship is over, that reward and rest which surpass for ever any and everything we can possibly desire. So when he made us God almighty was our kindly Father, and God all-wise our kindly Mother, and the Holy Spirit their love and goodness; all one God, one Lord. (58)

Jesus Christ...is our real Mother. We owe our being to him – and this is the essence of motherhood! – all the delightful, loving protection which ever follows. God is as really our Mother as he is our Father. All the lovely deeds and tender services that beloved motherhood implies are appropriate to Christ. (59)

A mother's is the most intimate, willing, and dependable of all services, because it is the truest of all.... We know that our own mother bore us to an existence of pain and death, but what does Jesus, our Holy Mother, do? Why, he, All-love, bears us to joy and eternal life! Thus he carries us within himself in love. And he is in labor until the time has fully come for him to suffer the sharpest pangs and most appalling pain possible, and in the end dies. And not even when this is over, and we ourselves have been born to eternal bliss, is his marvelous love completely satisfied.

Christ dies no more, but that does not stop him working, for he needs to feed us. It is an obligation of his dear, motherly love. The human mother will feed her child with her own milk, but our dear beloved Mother Jesus feeds us with himself by means of Holy Communion, the precious food of all true life. The human mother may put her child tenderly to her breast, but our tender Mother Jesus simply leads us into his blessed breast through his open side, and there gives us a glimpse of the Godhead and heavenly joy.

This fine and lovely word Mother is so sweet and so much its own that it cannot properly be used of any but Christ, and of her who is his own true Mother and ours, Mary. In essence motherhood means love and kindness, wisdom, knowledge, goodness.... A kind, loving mother who understands and knows the needs of her child will look after it tenderly just because it is the nature of a mother to do so. As the child grows older she changes her methods, but not her love. Older still, she allows the child to be punished so that its faults are corrected and its virtues and graces developed. This way of doing things, with much else that is right and good, is our Lord at work. (60)

A mother may allow her child sometimes to fall and to learn the hard way for its own good. But because she loves the child she will never allow the situation to become dangerous.... We need to fall, and we need to realize this. If we never fell we should never know how weak and wretched we are in ourselves; nor should we fully appreciate the astonishing love of our Maker. In heaven we shall really and eternally see that we sinned grievously in this life; yet despite all this, we shall also see that it made no difference at all to Christ's love, and we were no less precious in his sight. By the simple fact that we fell, we shall gain a deep and wonderful knowledge of what God's love means. Love that cannot, will not, be broken by sin, is rock-like, and quite astonishing.

Our Mother Christ kindles our understanding, he directs our paths, he eases our consciences, he comforts our soul, he lightens our heart.... he makes us love whatever he loves for love of him, and to find in himself and his works our ample reward. If we fall he catches us lovingly in his gracious embrace and swiftly raises us. Strengthened in this fashion by his working in us, we freely choose to serve him and to love him, by his grace, world without end. The dear, gracious hands of our Mother Jesus are ever about us, and eager to help. (61)

Julian of Norwich was a 14th century recluse who saw visions of God's love. Her book about these visions is one of the first known books written in the English language.

What Matters: We Are One at Baptism and the Table

1 April 2007

Out of all of our statements on "what matters" to the United Church of Christ, our theme today is the one that is the least distinctive, the one most like all other Christians. We are one at baptism and the table. Well, duh! That's pretty obvious. But as I was listening to John Thomas's reflection on these sacraments, it occurred to me that out of all our statements on "what matters," this is the most Christian. People of other faiths would probably agree with all the other statements (albeit substituting their own understanding of God in "We belong to Christ.") But baptism and the table, these are distinctively Christians. Other religions have their own rituals, but these are ours, they mark our identity in a unique way.

As Rev. Thomas alludes to in his reflection, baptism and communion are celebrated in a variety of ways across denominations, and even within our own UCC. Some churches baptize infants, and others only baptize older children and adults. Some sprinkle and some dunk. Some celebrate communion with little pieces of bread and some with a single loaf, some with grape juice and some with wine. Our churches celebrate weekly, or as rarely as once a year, though most of them celebrate monthly as we do at Community Church. There's a huge amount of variety, but here's the thing: no matter all the differences, these rituals are still recognizable as baptism and communion. I daresay even someone who knows nothing at all about Christianity could recognize the common element in these practices.

We are so used to baptism and communion, we take them so much for granted even if we never give much deep thought to them, that we don’t even realize how strange they are. What kind of bath is it where only your forehead gets wet? A pinch of bread and a sip of wine don’t make for much of a meal! Yet these rituals mean so much to us. For me it has probably been my involvement in the wider church outside the local congregation that has made me realize how important communion is. At our conference annual meeting, at General Synod events, at ecumenical church events, we almost always celebrate communion. Of course, in those settings communion will always be different from how we practice it at home, yet all of us Christians gathered there recognize it. We are indeed one at that table. And there's something deeply comforting at being with a bunch of Christians that you may not agree with, Christians who may have strange practices or beliefs, yet we all eat the same bread and drink from the same cup. Whenever I celebrate communion in these settings, I feel a profound connection not only to the people around me, but also to all Christians throughout the world, and throughout history. Communion, and baptism as well, have been celebrated by the church from the very beginning of our history, and they will continue to be celebrated until the end of time. We eat this bread and drink this cup, we are washed by this water, along with all Christians who ever were, are now, or will be. That's pretty powerful!

But sometimes it does take fresh eyes for us to see it. At my church in Houston, the younger children were always dismissed from the congregation after the children's sermon, and the parents expressed an interest in the kids occasionally staying for the whole worship service so they could see what happens. So one month as we were preparing to celebrate communion, we decided to keep the kids in church. I was given the task of creating the worship service for that day, and I sort of created the whole worship service as an extended children's sermon all about communion. I told the kids that communion is like a party that God invites us to, and as we talked about how we need to prepare for a party, we piece by piece got the communion table ready. We laid out a nice white cloth like a picnic blanket, we put out the nice dishes, we got the food ready and so forth. The kids really got into it, and they liked seeing the table all prepared.

There was one precocious five-year-old girl who to this day I remember vividly. This child always had an answer no matter what the question in the children's sermon. She had an answer whether it was the right one or not! And on this day she was sitting in the very front pew. Her family was elsewhere in the church, but this little girl was on her own. She wanted a front row seat! When it came time to serve communion, the usher was confronted with this little girl alone in the pew. He was clearly uncertain whether he ought to even serve her, because her parents weren't around. We had told the parents beforehand that it was up to them whether they wanted their child to participate in communion or not, but since this girl was on her own, the deacon did know what to do, and he finally just bypassed her altogether and went on to the next pew. Since I was sitting at the front of the church, facing the congregation, I was probably the only person who saw this child's expression of disappointment. Here we'd spent all this time talking about the party that God was throwing for us, and she wasn't invited! So I pinched a piece of bread off the loaf that I had broken, and I gave it to her. Her face lit up in an enormous smile.

When it came time for the grape juice (and we didn't use wine in that congregation), I whispered to the deacon, "Be sure and serve Megan as well." The deacon realized he had goofed, and this time he very graciously held the tray out to her, and she very politely took the entire tray and put it on her lap. She didn't know that she was supposed to take just a cup and not the whole thing! But the deacon patiently took one of the little cups and handed it to her, and took the tray back. He whispered to her not to drink it yet, but to wait until everyone drank together. And when I said, "Take and drink," that little girl was so thrilled to be sharing, just like everyone else in church.

It was a real eye-opening experience for me, and I'm sure for the deacon as well. Some people prefer that small children do not receive communion, because they think that kids will somehow profane this ritual because they don't understand it. It's true that kids don't understand it the way grown-ups do, but no one can tell me that little girl profaned communion because of her inexperience. She knew perfectly well that something important was going on, and when she was inadvertently left out, she knew it. Her joy in participating speaks to this profound truth: we are one at baptism and the table.

While very few of us remember our own baptism, whenever we witness a baptism of an infant, we participate once more. We realize that we too were once a tiny wee baby, being held by loving parents. We too once felt the cool water on our foreheads and had those ancient words spoken over us. We too were once presented to a congregation that beamed and smiled to see us. Every baptism, whether of an infant or an adult of any age, every baptism is a new birth. We all go through this ritual where we are born anew, marked as belonging to Christ and being made a part of the entire Christian family, past, present, and future.

These rituals are unique to our faith. We all experience them whether we are young or old, male or female, rich or poor. These rituals unite us, and we share them even with Jesus himself, who was himself baptized, and who sat at the table with his disciples. At baptism and the table we are one, with one another, and with God.

What Matters: We Thank God by Working for a Just and Loving World
Micah 6:6-8; James 1:22-27, 2:14-18

25 March 2007

In our series on "What Matters" to the United Church of Christ, we've talked about how what brings us into the church is that we belong to Christ; that what defines us as a church is our covenant; and that we explore our faith by listening for the still-speaking God. Today is about how we respond to these gifts of God: we thank God by working for a just and loving world.

There are hundreds of scriptures to choose from that express this view. I picked a very famous one in the prophet Micah that strongly echoes our theme today: What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? People in the UCC tend to really like that verse, and quote it a lot. We UCCers aren't always very good at citing chapter and verse, but that was one of the first verses I could quote numerically.

The other passage I chose is from the letter of James. This letter has gained a bad reputation in some circles. Martin Luther, for example, hated it, and if he could have gotten away with it, he would have cut it out of the Bible entirely. It's that troublesome verse, "What good is it if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?" Martin Luther, as you may know, believed that nothing but faith could save you. None of us could earn our salvation through good works, Luther said, because none of us is capable of doing that much good! James's letter doesn't fit into Luther's theology, so he didn't like it. But it is to his credit that Luther left the letter of James in his German translation. He may not have liked it, but in the end he didn't silence the God that was still speaking through it!

James isn't saying, though, that our good deeds save us. That gets it all backward. For James, those good deeds are an expression of our faith; they grow out from our faith. If our faith does not generate such good works, James would say, then it is a poor faith indeed, and I'm not sure that even Martin Luther would really disagree. James echoes Micah and many another Old Testament prophets in saying, "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world."

Ah, but what's this about being unstained? Some Christians have interpreted this to mean that we need to keep ourselves separate and pure from the stains of the world. The world, as they would say, is going to hell in the proverbial hand basket. Christians should take care of the orphans and widows in their own community, but not worry too much about the orphans and widows in the rest of the world. The Amish are one of the most well-known examples of this viewpoint, though they are hardly alone. Many of us admire the Amish for the simplicity and integrity of their lives. We might not want to become Amish ourselves, but we do envy their close-knit, family-centered lives. When that man shot up the children in an Amish school, the rest of the world was deeply moved by the community's love and care for the man's family, and their ability not to hold a grudge for what happened.

But as admirable as the Amish are in many ways, they do keep to themselves. They make no effort to engage with the outside world any more than they have to. If you show up on their doorstep, you will no doubt be treated kindly, but the Amish do not believe in trying to make the world a better place. They just want to keep their corner of it neat and tidy.

The United Church of Christ, though, has always engaged with the world. We thank God by working for a just and loving world. The Amish-types might say that we are presumptuous to think that we know what a just world would be like, that we are arrogant to think it's up to us to do God's justice in the world. And they do have a point. In striving to work for justice, we must always remember that God's ways are not our ways. We must not make the mistake of thinking that our version of justice is God's version. Obviously that's what we're striving for, but our efforts are never going to be perfect, and we must take care not to make ourselves into junior deities.

And yet, we UCCers do work for a just and loving world, and the key is in how this point about "What Matters" is phrased: we thank God by working for a just and loving world. Our purpose here is not to create a just and loving world. Our purpose is to thank God. And we do that by working for a just and loving world. As James puts it, what kind of Christians are we if we ignore the needs of our brothers and sisters who are naked and lack food? And he's not just talking about charity. James also goes on at length and poverty and wealth, and how some people get many favors and privileges because they are rich, while the poor are ignored and left out. Furthermore, the rich are more likely to drag people into court, or to exploit their laborers. James says that when Christians sit down together to share the Lord's Supper, they must show no partiality. Everyone must be treated equally as a valued guest, no matter if they are rich or poor. And that same equality and fairness should extend beyond the communion table to the community and the world at large.

The United Church of Christ has taken that to heart. We have long been committed to actively engaging in the world, to working for justice. But as Paul would remind us, all the justice in the world does us little good if we have not love, and I'm glad to see that included in our point today. We work for a just and loving world. The two must go hand in hand.

What Matters: We Listen for the Still-Speaking God

18 March 2007

Next in our series on what matters to the United Church of Christ is a phrase that's new to our history, but by now is probably familiar to all of us: We are a people who listen for the still-speaking God." It's a great phrase, but what exactly does it mean? After all, most Christians would say God is still speaking, but they differ on how and what that means. Some would say God still speaks to us only through the Bible, that anything from outside of the Bible is not trustworthy. Some people would say that the way the UCC tends to mean that phrase, we really just use it as an excuse to follow current fashionable trends at the expense of the unchanging message of the Bible. I don't think that's a fair accusation about us, and as an example, I want to pick a very controversial issue of the day and explore it a bit. And that issue is, "Thou Shalt Not Kill."

I bet you thought I was going to say something else! The issue of homosexuality, perhaps. Certainly that subject can be very divisive today. But whenever people complain about it, I point out that Christians disagree on pretty much any topic you can name, and the issue of killing is an excellent example of this. After all, homosexuality isn't even mentioned in the Ten Commandments, while "thou shalt not kill" is one of the few that anyone can name. On the face of it, it seems like a pretty straightforward commandment. Literalists ought to rejoice that there's apparently little room for interpretation. Yet Christians of good faith, throughout history and even today, disagree on what exactly this commandment means.

Take Sergeant York for example. You might remember him from the movie starring Gary Cooper, but that film tells the story of a real person. Alvin York came from a poor family in Tennessee. The death of his father in 1911 was a terrible blow to him, and he rejected religion and indulged in the proverbial wild life. A few years later, however, he attended a revival where he experienced the presence of God and converted to a devout faith. He gave up drinking and gambling and all his wild ways, and he also became a pacifist, based on a literal reading of that commandment not to kill. When World War I began, York filed as a conscientious objector. While his status was being determined, York attended basic training, and he began to question his previous stance. He talked with all kinds of people as he tried to listen for the still-speaking God: his mother, his pastor, his commanding officer. He consulted the Bible as well, but went beyond the simple commandment. As the movie depicts it, he finally read the story in which Jesus said to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's." He decided that this meant he ought to serve his country as he had been asked to do, and when Uncle Sam sent him overseas, he went. He became a sharpshooter and saved the lives of many American soldiers. At the end of the war, Alvin York was the most highly decorated soldier in the US Army.

Now compare that story with another veteran of World War I, a man I knew at my church growing up. His name was Tom Greacen, and he too served his country as Alvin York did. But during his experience in the military, he came to see how much brutality and waste of human life the war caused, not only to soldiers, but to civilians caught in the crossfire. That experience caused him to question the beliefs he'd previously held. He too searched in many places for the voice of the still-speaking God, his comrades, mentors, the Bible and his own heart, just as Alvin York did. And in the end, he came to the belief that war does not solve any thing. He became a member of Veterans for Peace, and remained a peace activist for the rest of his life.

Both of these men were devout and sincere in their faith. Both of them wanted to be the best Christians they could. They listened for God's voice in the Bible, but they also listened beyond those pages – to people, to their experience, and to the still, small voice within us that we might call the Holy Spirit, or new revelation. And they ended up on exact opposites of this apparently simple moral question about whether or not it is ever acceptable to kill. They are hardly alone. Christians disagree not only on war, but on capital punishment and abortion of pre-term infants, on whether killing in self-defense is justifiable. Needless to say, you can find Christians of good faith all along the spectrum.

Jesus himself seemed to have a preference for riddles over clear-cut commandments. I think it's telling that Jesus never wrote his teachings down in a book. Rather, he taught solely through the spoken word, engaging actively with whoever was in his audience. On the very few occasions where he ever gave a straight answer, it was in private conferences with his disciples, and even then he didn't always make things clear. Jesus loved to teach through stories, through parables whose meaning cannot possibly be pinned down to a simple teaching. Whenever you think you've worked out the meaning of a parable, you study it again and find that there's more you have yet to learn. In our passage today, it might seem as if Jesus is deliberately trying to confuse people, but that verse, "Their hearts have grown dull, their ears are hard of hearing, and they shut their eyes that they might not see" – that reminds me of when people are so sure of their own views that they stop listening to anything that might contradict or challenge them. Some people might say that when Alvin York and Tom Greacen changed their views, that they were flip-flopping, that this represents how shallow their faith was, how easily they were swayed by outside influences. But what I learn from both Alvin York and Tom Greacen is the importance of always listening and looking, of always remaining open to the possibility that God hasn't finished with you yet. I believe the fact that Jesus taught in parables is itself a parable, that he was saying, "If you want to find truth, you have to continually seek for it, and as soon as you think you've caught it, that's just a sign that you need to seek some more."

What does it mean, then, to say that we listen for the still-speaking God? Some Christians believe this means that we will all always end up in agreement, that the message God proclaims will be clear to everyone, and that we need look no further than Genesis to Revelation. But in the United Church of Christ, we see the matter differently. The preamble to our constitution reads "[The UCC] acknowledges as its sole Head Jesus Christ.... It looks to the Word of God in the Scriptures, and to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit....It claims as its own the faith of the historic Church expressed in the ancient creeds and reclaimed...[by] the Protestant Reformers. It affirms the responsibility of the Church in each generation to make this faith its own in reality of worship, in honesty of thought and expression, and in purity of heart before God." That preamble points to just some of the places where we listen for the still-speaking God. We also look to our own experience, to the insights of science and learning, and we even look to inspiration from people of other faiths or even no faith at all. In the UCC, we believe that God will use any means or medium necessary in order to get the message across, and it is our responsibility – not our right, but our responsibility -- to consider these sources carefully, to weigh them against one another, and in honesty of thought and expression and purity of heart before God, to discern what God is speaking to us today.

In the UCC we do not expect that we will all see things the same way. That is why we are bound by covenant and not by creed. But those diverse views do not necessarily mean conflict and division. Rather in the UCC we would say that no one person or church holds the monopoly on truth. The UCC would say that God spoke through both Alvin York and Tom Greacen, and that God has something important to say through both of them that we would all benefit from listening for.

Can it be possible? Can both the pro-choicer and the pro-lifer have an insight into God's heart? Can both the pacifist and the soldier be hearing God's voice? Can both the gay rights activist and the traditional marriage advocate both have a message from God to share? Some people would say no. Some people would say these are irreconcilable differences. Some people would say that God speaks only to one, and the other is merely "following a popular trend." But in the UCC we would say, "God is still speaking, and if we refuse to listen to certain voices, then we might miss out on what God is trying to say to us."

What Matters:
We Are a People of Covenant, United and Uniting
Genesis 9:8-17; Philippians 2:1-12

11 March 2007

I have a lot of non-religious friends. Some have created their own spirituality as neo-pagans. Some are just apathetic agnostics who can't understand why people would sacrifice their Sunday mornings to go to church, and others who are, shall we say, fundamentalist atheists who are on their own holy crusade against the evils of religion. I love having these friends because the give me an outsider's view of religion, and one view most of them share is that they equate organized religion with a set of beliefs that you have to agree to be a part of it.

I guess I can kind of see their point. There are many churches that do tend to define themselves that way. And maybe I have a somewhat warped view, because I grew up in the UCC. Wait, that didn't quite come out right! What I mean is, in the UCC it's not our religious doctrine that defines us. And this is what our second point in the "What Matters" series says: we are a people of covenant, united and uniting. I think this is one of the hardest things for non-UCCers to understand about us, and one of the things we native UCCers take the most for granted.

In my church when I was growing up, everyone from adults to children were encouraged to work out their own beliefs, or as Paul says it in our reading today, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." As a congregation we were Christian, and we would say the UCC Statement of Faith, but we would always say it as a testimony and not a test of our faith. As a kid I just absorbed al this without really even understanding it. But there was one man in the church who graphically illustrated what it meant to be defined by covenant and not beliefs. His name was Charles Homsey, and he was an atheist. When I tell people this, they always look like, "Say what?" Yes. He was an atheist. He was also a church member, at one time the moderator, and even my Sunday School teacher. Granted, he wasn't such a success at that last role, but it's entirely to his credit that he let me debate theology with him. (I was in elementary school at the time. It was pretty obvious even at that age that I was destined to be a minister.) And it was important to me as a kid to see this atheist member of my church. It really brought home the fact that we are a people of covenant.

But what does covenant mean? I'm not going to go into all the stuff about covenant versus contract and so on. For me as a lifelong church member, a covenant means a promise to stick together through thick and thin. Obviously people do not always live up to that. People do leave the church because they're angry that money was spent on the parking lot as opposed to renovating the bathrooms. Congregations leave the denomination because they don't like how other churches do their business. And I do believe that sometimes divorce is a good thing. But basically covenant means for better or worse, for richer or poorer, 'til death do us part.

Our covenant in the church is rooted in the covenant God has made with us throughout history. So it's related to the principle we discussed last week, about how we belong to Christ. We love because God first loved us. There are many, many stories of covenant in the Bible. In fact, God is continually renewing the covenant over and over again. One of the earliest covenants God makes is after the flood. In the shallowest way you could say this is a mythic story to explain rainbows, but it's about something much deeper, an everlasting promise. And God makes it not just with Noah's family, but with all the animals, a promise to last all time, that God will never destroy the earth. Or to state it more positively, that God will never abandon us, no matter how much we may seem to deserve it! And the rainbow is a reminder of that promise. If you think about it, fear of rainstorms is probably one of the primal human fears: the air suddenly filled with torrents of water, lightning flashing through the sky, thunder rumbling and crashing in our ears. A really ripping thunderstorm can seem like Armageddon. So a rainbow is a gorgeous, unexpected joy that follows this very real and scary event. That's God for you!

But the covenant is not just between God and us. We also share a covenant with one another, and it's the covenant that Paul is talking about in his letter to the Philippians. He talks about being of the same mind and the same love. I don't think that means he thought everyone had to think the same thing. Elsewhere in his letters he makes it clear that people do not all have to think the same way. Paul is a huge fan of diversity: of different spiritual gifts, different roles in the church, even different practices and views. But what holds all this diversity together is “having the same mind as Christ," which he describes here in his famous hymn. Even though Jesus was divine, Paul says, he didn't lord it all over everyone. Instead he chose to use his power through service. So, Paul says, while each of us should look to our own interests – that’s the diversity – we need to look out for each other's interests as well – that's the unity. Or as our E & R tradition would state it centuries later: in essentials unity, in non-essentials diversity in all things charity. And that is covenant.

Now, the UCC isn't the only denomination that defines itself b covenant, but we are perhaps the only denomination that has taken that covenant to the next step, as "united and uniting." We have always sought out partnerships with people who are different, with other denominations, even with other religions. We respect our differences, but come together on what we share so that we can build relationships and work together. In the US, we've always been committed to ecumenism, uniting with other denominations, but you might not know that on the international front, due to our respect for other religions, there are some countries in the world like Nepal and Turkey where the UCC is the only denomination that is allowed to have a missionary presence. Our Common Global Ministries Board even has members representing some of our partner churches around the world. It is the only such denominational board that allows other denominations to be part of their decision making!

Our covenant binds us together as a people of faith, and that commitment keeps us united to one another, and also calls out to continually seek others to unite with, to build bridges across the differences that divide us, to find what we hold in common rather than what makes us different. This, Paul says, was the mind of Christ.

What Matters:We Belong to Christ

4 March 2007

I was listening to a radio program this past week, about how the issue of homosexuality is being dealt with in the Episcopal Church. Some African bishops are criticizing the American Episcopal Church for ordaining openly gay people. It was funny to listen to this program, though, because the show host didn't understand all the nuances of church life. He kept saying things like, "So this controversy might lead to a schism in the church," and the guest, who is a bishop, kept saying, "Well, no. What holds the Episcopal Church together is our worship, not a doctrine. There's no authoritative body that can insist everyone must follow the same practice. If some people or churches choose to leave the denomination, then that's their choice. But 'schism' isn't really how we are organized." I had to laugh, because it sounded like the way our UCC people are always trying to explain the way things work. Outsiders have a hard time understanding this: that a church is not like a business organization. It's not like there's a CEO or President making decisions for everyone. We are bound together by so much more than just our views on various issues of the day. But that's very hard to explain to people who aren't part of a church.

The United Church of Christ has been going through quite a bit of soul-searching and reflection over the past few years. The "God Is Still Speaking" campaign has put us into the public eye in a way that we have not experienced in our entire fifty years of existence! Most of what we do flies well under the media radar. Yet those TV ads suddenly made us a household name, at least for a brief period. That fifteen minutes of fame has caused us to reflect on who we are and values we want to communicate to others. The Congregational Vitality movement grew out of that campaign. As strangers started showing up at our doors, asking, "Hey, you're that bouncer church, aren't you?" We began to reflect on what church growth really means, that it might mean much more than mere numbers on the membership roll. And now the latest fruits of that reflection are a series of statements called "What Matters to Us." These are being offered as the core values or identity of the United Church of Christ. They are: We are a people of extravagant welcome. We belong to Christ. We are a people of covenant, united and uniting. We listen for the still-speaking God. We thank God by working for a just and loving world. And, We are one at baptism and the table.

These aren't necessarily radical or new concepts. They don't have to be. In fact, I'm a bit skeptical of any church that claims to be completely new. If it's so new, then what connection does it have to the two thousand years of church that has gone before? But these statements do say a lot about us, in terms of which values we picked to emphasize and even how we say them. So for this season of Lent, I want to explore these statements and see what meaning they have for us.

Since there aren't enough Sundays in Lent for all these statements, and since I already preached about extravagant welcome last year, I'm going to start with, "We belong to Christ." This is an example of what I'm talking about, how the way it's phrased makes all the difference. How would it have been different if instead we said, "Jesus is our Lord"? That latter one is a faith statement, a doctrinal statement, you might say. We call Jesus "Lord." Other people may call him something different, but we call him "Lord." It places the emphasis on us and our response to Jesus. You could even then say that we know more than other people, or are better than other people, because we call Jesus "Lord."

"We belong to Christ" says essentially the same thing. The use of the title "Christ" instead of "Jesus," implies that we call Jesus "Lord." But here the emphasis is on what Christ does, not what we do. This isn't about our faith statement about Jesus. It's about what Jesus does: we belong to Christ. Why? Nothing is said here about how we belong to Christ because we believe in him, or we have done something, or we are holy. It emphasizes that Christ is the one who chose us. Christ is the one who has a claim on us. We belong to Christ, not because of what we have done, but because of what Christ has done. Now, you could probably still turn that into a negative, "We belong to Christ and you don't, nyah-nyah!" but I don't hear it that way. Especially if you pair this with our value of extravagant welcome, what I hear is, "We belong to Christ, and you know what? Maybe you do too!" It also ties in with a phrase that is used in some of our ads, "No matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, you belong." The ad didn't specifically say to who or what you belong, but this statement makes it clear. "We belong to Christ." We don't own him. He owns us. That's a HUGE difference!

Here's a story that illustrates the difference between those two phrases, "Jesus is our Lord," and "We belong to Christ." I've told this story before, but it bears repeating. When I was in college and going through the obligatory period of doubt and skepticism that pretty much everyone does at that time in their lives, I wasn't sure if I was really a Christian or not. Parts of the Christian message I understood and agreed with, but there were a bunch of other things I wasn't sure about. The Trinity was a big one. I was going through a radical monotheist phase and couldn't comprehend the whole Trinity thing, so I thought I must be Jewish.

Then for whatever reason – perhaps it was Providence! – I pulled out my parents' old record album of "Jesus Christ Superstar," which my sister and I used to listen to all the time when we were kids, but I hadn't listened to in ages. I put it on the record player, and almost as soon as the music began, I started to cry. I felt this irresistible pull on me from the story that was unfolding. It didn't answer all my questions; I still didn't get what the Trinity was all about. But by the end of the record I realized that, whether I understood or not, Jesus had a hold on me that I couldn't deny. It wasn't really about a choice I made, or a belief I had. It was about a relationship, a relationship that Jesus himself initiated. He held on to me and wouldn't let me go, even though I was skeptical about a lot of it. As the record finished playing, I realized, "I am a Christian, because Jesus made that choice for me."

Faith came later. For whatever it's worth, I believe in the Trinity now! But the important thing is that the relationship came first, and Jesus is the one who initiated it. I think that's true of all of us, though we may not have ever thought it that way.

Jose Malayang, the executive of our Local Church Ministries, writes, "'We' means that you are not alone. You are part of a larger 'we' that God has united in this church. 'Belong' is something more than a belief; it is a vital relationship." "To Christ" means that we experience God through the life and work of Jesus. This is what binds us. This is what identifies us. Not something that we have done, but something that God has done for us. No matter who we are, or where we are on life's journey, we belong. We belong to Christ. In the United Church. Of Christ.

Adopted by God
Gal 3:26-4:7

18 February 2007

For this last Sunday before we head into the season of Lent, I thought I'd do the adoption sermon I've had rattling around in my brain for a long time. I actually started thinking of this sermon years ago, long before I finally gave in to my own adoption urge. My church in Houston had a number of adoptive families. I don't know if it was a higher percentage than in the general population, but the number of them got me thinking about adoption from a theological perspective.

You might think of adoption as a modern phenomenon, but in fact it goes way back in history. It's even present in the Bible. Moses and Jesus himself were both adopted, but the earliest reference is to Abraham adopting his kinsman Eliezar because he had no son of his own. In ancient times all the way up to Rome, and even beyond, adoption was not so much about childless couples finding a child to raise as it was about property owners identifying someone to inherit their possessions. That was the case for Abraham. The Bible doesn't use the word "adoption" but rather the term "heir" in describing Eliezar. The practice of adopting an heir, even over one's biological children, was quite common in Roman times. Augustus Caesar, for example, was adopted by his uncle Julius. This doesn't mean he was raised by Julius, but he took Julius's nickname, and when his uncle was murdered on that fateful Ides of March, Augustus took up his mantle and fulfilled Julius's ambition of becoming the first Roman Emperor.

So adoption wasn't really about parenthood, but it came to mean more than just who would inherit your estate. It was also about who would inherit your legacy. Who would you pass on your values to? Who would you groom in your image, to continue your work and your life after you've gone?

Adoption was also a way of circumventing bloodlines and social statue. Slaves were sometimes freed and then adopted by the families they previously served. Roman citizenship could be granted by the Emperor, passed on through bloodlines, or conferred by adoption. Through adoption, a person acquired the qualities and status of the one who adopted them. In this way, someone at the very bottom of the social totem pole could pole-vault all the way to the top.

Now, I'm not telling you all of this as yet more obscure trivia for cocktail parties. This background is important for understanding the theology of Paul, for adoption is central to his understanding of Jesus' mission. He explains it at length in his letter to the Romans. For Paul, Jews as the Chosen People are so to speak the biological children of God. By virtue of their birth they are heirs to all the blessings that God made to Abraham. Among other things, Jews inherit the Law, known as the Torah. Granted, Paul sees that particular blessing as a kind of double-edged sword, but still the law is the birthright and the blessing of Jews.

The question for Paul then becomes: how can Gentiles also receive the blessing of the Jews? Previously the only way they could do this was to become Jews, which for males meant circumcision, a daunting prospect that might even the most ardent convert think twice before going all the way. This is a kind of adoption, but for Paul it was more like the way gentiles became grafted onto the Jewish bloodline. By circumcision, Gentiles became Jews, and so had to keep the law just as all Jews did in order to inherit the blessing.

But in Jesus, Paul saw something else at work. In Jesus, Gentiles become the adopted children of God. They no longer have to be grafted onto the Jewish family tree. We don't receive our blessing through Abraham, but through Jesus himself. As Paul says, "In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith." Instead of being circumcised, we are now baptized, dying and rising to life with Christ. This is something men and women both can experience, a way for us to "put on Christ," as Paul puts it. And since Jesus is also a son of Abraham, we too become Abraham's heirs and heirs to all the blessings that the Jews receive through him. As Paul says, "If you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring and heirs according to the promise." God sent Jesus to the gentiles so that "we might receive adoption as sons and daughters. Now we call God, 'Abba! Father!' we are no longer slaves, but sons and daughters, and if sons and daughters, then we are heirs."

But what does all this have to do with us today? So we have been adopted as heirs. Great. But now what? Think again of what adoption meant in ancient times: it was about passing on a legacy and values. It was about taking on the qualities and the status of the person who adopted you. Paul had this in mind ass well. Having been adopted through Christ, we take on his attributes. This is why he wrote that famous verse: there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

You see, Paul write this letter to a church that was divided by conflict. The Christians in Galatia were arguing about their different interpretations of the gospel. Some emphasized the freedom of grace, others emphasized the importance of living righteously according to Jewish law. They were taking sides against one another, each claiming they were the only ones who were right, and the others were wrong. They made distinctions among themselves, the righteous from the unrighteous. Something that sadly we continue to see in many churches to this day.

So Paul wrote this letter, saying that having been adopted through Christ, we are one, ruled by unity over division. But this doesn't mean sameness. Were there really no men and women, no slaves and free people in the church? Of course not. Those differences continue to exist, but in the church they no longer divide us. In Christ, Paul says, we are all free, so we should not submit again to the yoke of slavery. That is, we should not create a new Law that judges and divides us. This doesn't mean, though, that morality doesn't matter. Rather, Paul gives us a new guideline: Jesus himself. Adopted through Christ, we share his attributes. He calls it "the fruits of the Spirit". Love, joy, peace and patience. Kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against these there is no law. We don’t rules for behavior. Instead, we have Christ and his legacy.

So, friend, let us take our adoption seriously. Let us not pass judgment on others because they were born different from us, for we are all together God's chosen family. Let us receive from God the blessings of grace and freedom and forgiveness. And let us live up to our legacy of peace and joy. Amen.

Blessed Are Those Who Hope
1 Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26

11 February 2007

Luke is usually a warm fuzzy gospel, telling some of the stories we love the most: of the nativity and the twelve-year-old Jesus, of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. But everyone once in a while Luke packs a punch. Today we heard his version of the Beatitudes. It starts out a lot like Matthew's, "Blessed are you poor, blessed are you who hunger." It's all familiar territory. A few edits here and there, but basically it's the same.

Then he turns the tables. Woe to you who are rich. Woe to you are well fed. That isn't anywhere in Matthew's version! Actually it sounds a lot like Mary's song that we heard back in advent: God has filled the hungry with good things, but the rich have been sent empty away. That's some pretty tough love! What is going on here? Good news only for some?

Well, I want to put these Beatitudes on hold for a minute and go look at our letter from Paul. You see, this illustrates why prooftexting is dangerous. That is, isolating a passage or a verse and not looking at it in context. And not just the context of that particular book, but within the context of the entire Bible. People get into so much trouble when they don't look at the whole.

And quite frankly, this passage in First Corinthians is another example. "If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." That seems to be pretty straightforward, doesn't it? The resurrection is essential for Christian faith. When I was in college, those Intervarsity Christian Fellowship types I've mentioned in sermons before – they would tell me, "Well, Rita, if Jesus wasn't bodily resurrected, then none of it means a thing." "None of it?" I would protest. "All his good teachings and good deeds?" "Means nothing," they said. "All lies."

You can see where they're coming from with a verse like that. And ironically in the same way, but for different reasons, modern scientific types interpret it pretty much the same. And because they, begin good modern scientific types, are skeptical about such a highly unusual phenomenon as a corpse hopping up again and eating a fish sandwich, they read this passage and think, "Well then, I guess I can't be a Christian."

But I don't think that is the only way to interpret this passage. In fact, in my view, neither of them are reading it right. And of course I'm right because I'm a minister! (Okay, not really.) Now, I don't want to go into the whole science vs. religion thing today. (Do I need to do that sermon another time?) The Bible isn't about scientific data. It's about spiritual truths. And if you read a little farther along in this passage, you see that the matter is not at all as simple as a corpse getting up and walking around. Paul gets into a long discussion about what kind of body is raised in this way. Is it the same as our existing bodies. Of course not, Paul protests! When you sow a seed, the plant that springs from it is different from the seed. We don't know what that body will be like. We don’t' know how or when it will happen. This isn't a matter for scientific investigation. It is, in short, a mystery, and Paul says so outright in verse 51.

But for the resurrection to be true, some might say, doesn't it have to be scientifically verifiable? To which I say, not all truths can be measured. This is a truth: when I was researching for this sermon, I came across a reference to a study that found that when people are asked when they feel closest to God, it is almost always at a time of deep despair and loneliness and pain in their lives. I've participated in a small group session where we found the same thing: people encounter God in the dark times. This in contrast to the people who skip church claiming that they feel closest to God out in nature! (Translation: the golf course.) As Evelyn Bielke put it at our Women's Guild meeting on Wednesday, when people get to the point where they have nothing but God left, they discover that God is all they need.

I've experienced this in my own life. I reached a point in my life where I was in despair. I felt as if I was at the bottom of a pit, where the air was thin and stale, and almost no light could penetrate. I tried to get out of that pit myself, but there was nothing solid to grab on to, and as I scrabbled at the walls, I could feel the dirt crumbling beneath my fingers. I felt so down that I couldn't even cry out to God for help. There was no escape. I was dead in the bottom of that pit.

Then a hand reached down and pulled me up, pulled me back into life. I did not do this on my own. That hand reaching down saved me. Could any of you tell a similar story? Does this sound familiar to you? Now, was I literally in a pit? No. Did a disembodied hand physically grab me? Not at all. Yet this story is absolutely true. Friends, this is the resurrection. It is real, it is trustworthy, it is true. And it is entirely unmeasurable by science.

This is resurrection: that Jesus came to earth, and the powers and principalities of this world killed him because of his message and mission. Now, if he had just died and stayed dead, then he would have merely been another one in a long list of innocent victims. But he was resurrected. In that moment of horrible despair on Good Friday, in that cold tomb on Saturday, God was present. And on that Easter Sunday, God resurrected the crucified Jesus back to life. And because of that, we have learned that even in the very darkest of times, God never abandons us. This is real; it is trustworthy; it is true. Because of this, we can tell people who are drowning in drugs or alcohol that there is hope. Because of this, we can tell people who are trapped in abuse and prejudice that there is hope. Because of this, we can tell people who are victims of the most horrific violence on earth, of sexual abuse of children, of genocidal murder, of crippling disease and death-dealing despair, that there is hope. That, friends, is why Paul says that if there is no resurrection, then our faith is useless. If there God is not present with us in those times, if God's love is not eternal beyond death, if God's life is not more powerful than death, then our faith is useless. But the resurrection is true. It can't be measured by science, but we know it is true because we have all experienced it. And so we have faith.

Now with this in mind, let us go back to our Beatitudes in Luke. Hear again these words: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you for my sake. Rejoice, for great is your reward in heaven." What does that sound like now? It sounds a lot like resurrection to me! And how about the rest of it? "Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when people speak well of you, for so they spoke of the false prophets." It doesn't sound like a curse to me, so much as a reality that good times won't last. You may be feeling on top of the world right now, but that pit is going to get you sooner or later. But when it does, we will be all right, because God raised Christ from the dead, and our faith is not useless.

"Behold," says Paul, "I tell you a mystery. Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain." And to that I say, Amen!

Make Me More Holy
Isaiah 6:1-8; Luke 5:1-11

4 February 2007

Our two passages today each contain a confession, and I want to give a confession of my own. I have a strange theological quirk, one that not many in Protestant circles seem to share. It has to do with the name of God. So a brief dip into some religious trivia here. You may recall from the story of Moses that God's name is translated roughly as "I AM who I AM." In Hebrew, that's written as the equivalent of our letters, YHWH, which is some kind of variation of the verb "to be." But no one knows exactly how those letters ought to be pronounced, because ancient Hebrew was not written with vowels. So the most people have ever been able to manage was a guess. Jews haven't really worried about that, because they have a strong taboo against ever pronouncing the name of God. In Hebrew Bibles, those letters don’t even appear. Instead there is a little mark placed, which stands in for those sacred letters. They even have a special name, the tetragrammaton, which means "four letters" in Greek.

Orthodox Jews to this day never pronounce the name, and don't even like to use the word "God." Instead, they refer to God as "HaShem," which literally means "the Name," and even when they write the word "God" in English, they put a dash in the place of the "o" so that they avoid blasphemy. Granted, not all Jews go to such extremes to avoid even the word "God," but no Jew would ever go around using God's first name.

Christians, however, have not tended to be so squeamish. The closest we come to respecting that kind of taboo is that our Bibles use the phrase "the LORD God", with capitals, for every place where the tetragrammaton appear. Early on, though, some Christians became fascinated with the idea of pronouncing God's proper name. However, not only did they have the problem of not knowing what vowels to put in, they also had a faulty translation. Their Bible was in Latin, not Hebrew. Latin uses the letter J for Y, and V for W, so instead the letters were written JHVH. As the Middle Ages progressed, and people forgot how to pronounce Latin properly, and they added vowels until they came up with Jehovah. Now you know where that name came from!

In the 19th century, however, religious scholars discovered that we have been pronouncing our Latin wrong all these years, so they returned the letters to their proper original form. However, they were still hung up on the idea that these letters ought to have a pronunciation, and they totally arbitrarily came up with the pronunciation "Yahweh." Nowadays that word is commonly used to refer to God in religious and theological writings. The Irish band U2 even has a song called "Yahweh." And so it is that many people today go around on a first-name basis with God.

Now, what does all this have to do with our scripture stories today? Well, this is where my theological quirk comes in. I hate it when people use the name "Yahweh"! And it's not that I care that the vowels are completely made up. Even if we knew the proper vowels, I don't think we ought to go around pronouncing God's name. I think there is a very good reason for that taboo.

In the Bible, God is a really big deal. God is huge, and while God is loving and like a parent and all that, God is also kind of scary. Almighty and all-powerful. God cuts a very striking appearance whenever he – or she! – shows up for a face-to-face meeting. And people in the Bible universally react to God's presence with humility. Moses takes his shoes off. The prophets declare themselves to be unworthy. Isaiah laments, "I am a man of unclean lips!" Peter cries, "Go away from me, for I am a sinful man!"

Now is it really that Moses and Isaiah and Peter and all the rest were really such horrible people? I don't think so. I doubt they were any better or worse that most of the rest of us. But when they come face to face with the ultimate, with the Most High, Most Holy, with the Creator of the Universe, they react with humble awe. They see how grand God is, beyond anything they can imagine, and they realize how petty and small and puny they are. This isn't an example of low self-esteem. It's an acknowledgment that while we humans tend to think that we are the center of the universe, we are in fact not. There are a lot of things far grander than us in the world, and most especially there is God, who is higher and deeper, greater and smaller, stronger and more tender, more good and more loving, than we can ever, ever hope to be.

That is why in the Bible, we are not supposed to pronounce God's name. Because to do so is to somehow put ourselves on the same level as God. Names are important. When I was growing up, children never addressed adults by their first name. It was always Mrs. or Mr. or Ms. People higher up on the social totem pole than you were addressed by their last name, and people lower on the social totem pole were always referred to by their first name. It was only on the level of friendship, of equals, that people all refer to each other by the first name.

I suppose that's why some people want to be on a first-name basis with God. After all, Jesus himself says he no longer calls us servants, but friends. Friends are equals, and they show that by calling each other by their first name. I can kind of understand that. But here's the thing: we will never be equal to God. I don't think that is to put us down in an unfair way, but rather an acknowledgement of what is real. And if you doubt that, think of what happens when we consider ourselves the equal of God. That means we start thinking we know as much as God. We are as powerful as God. We too, like God, can perfectly know the difference between good and evil. We too, like God, have the right to pass judgment on others. I mean seriously, people, can you see the problems?

Now, I'm all in favor of having an intimate, close relationship with God. But I don't think we need to make the presumption of using God's first name in order to do that. A rabbi was asked this question about using the name of God, and he pointed out that children never use their parents' first names. Instead, children call their parents Mother and Father, or some variation. We're all kind of affronted if children use their parents' names – even when those children are all grown up. Yet the fact that children use these titles instead of names in no way keeps them from having the closest, the most personal, the most loving relationship that can exist between two human beings. Rather, it shows respect for these people who brought you into the world, who raised you and took care of you, a gift that none of us can ever truly repay.

Now it's true that children often grow up to become parents themselves, but that doesn't mean they will ever grow up to replace their own parents. Likewise, we mortals will never grow up to be the equivalent of God. Our society today, in breaking down many of the walls of hostility that have divided people for centuries – walls of hatred and prejudice and violence – I suppose perhaps we want to further break down what we perceive as a wall separating us from God. Maybe that's why some people want to use God's first name; it's another way that we all treat one another equally and fairly.

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