Sermon for September 15, 2013

Hot Winds from Barren Heights
with gratitude to Dr. John Holbert at patheos.org for clarifying some of my thoughts on Jeremiah! Much of the language of this sermon belongs to him.
I only had one couple walk out during the sermon this week . . . 

Few confrontations in sports are as personal and dramatic as a batter standing in against a pitcher with a baseball game on the line. The batter adjusts his helmet, tightens his batting gloves, digs into the batter's box and looks toward the mound. The pitcher fingers a rosin bag and drops it, stares at the catcher for a sign, then grips the ball in his glove and begins his windup. If the pitch is a Major League fastball, it will reach the plate in less than half a second.

How do you even begin to think of hitting that ball? I played baseball . . . once. The ball hit me more than I hit it. It turns out, elite MLB hitters have an average visual acuity of 20/12. That means they can see from 20 feet away what I would have to stand at 12 feet away to see. Elite players are born with a higher density of cones in their eyes. If their eyes were like a digital camera, they see with more mega pixels than the average person. For instance, Reggie Jackson said he could see the actual rotation of a pitch coming out of a pitcher's hand by looking at those tiny red threads in the ball. A professional baseball slugger simply sees more than most of us.

Some people see in ways that the average person just can’t. The Prophets of Israel are like that. They do not see as we see. Their sight is deeper. Expanded. Heightened. Sharpened. They observe more profoundly than our overly literal eyes are capable of seeing.  Most of us are like newspaper reporters, asking the straightforward questions: where, when, what, who, just gimme the facts. The prophets help reveal deep structures that affect the ways we need to see and live. Because they see life in all its glory and all its terror, they are able to describe it to us and help us move beyond the obvious, the simple facts of things.

The Prophet Jeremiah calls people to experience life on this deeper level. In some ways, history portrays Jeremiah as a failure. He is best remembered as the sorrowing prophet who mourns the destruction of Jerusalem by the armies of Babylon. Today, I want to remember him as one who sees in ways that we cannot.  Listen for a word from God as told through the Prophet Jeremiah . . .

The time is coming when the LORD will say
    to the people of Jerusalem,
“My dear people, a burning wind is blowing in from the desert,
    and it’s not a gentle breeze useful for winnowing grain.
 It is a roaring blast sent by me!
My people are foolish
    and do not know me,” says the LORD.
“They are stupid children
    who have no understanding.
They are clever enough at doing wrong,
    but they have no idea how to do right!”
 I looked at the earth, and it was empty and formless.
    I looked at the heavens, and there was no light.
I looked at the mountains and hills,
    and they trembled and shook.
I looked, and all the people were gone.
    All the birds of the sky had flown away.
 I looked, and the fertile fields had become a wilderness.
    The towns lay in ruins,
    crushed by the LORD’s fierce anger.
This is what the LORD says:
“The whole land will be ruined,
    but I will not destroy it completely.
The earth will mourn
    and the heavens will be draped in black
because of my decree against my people.
    I have made up my mind and will not change it.”
I will pronounce your destruction!”  Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28

Jeremiah speaks during dark days of Jerusalem's collapsing life. He does much of his writing during the reign of an Israelite King named Jehoiakim. Jehoiakim’s father was a well-loved religious reformer. But the son is a bumbling, self-indulgent novice. Jeremiah can see what’s really going on. He sees the beginning of the end of the people of Israel. The bloodthirsty nation of Assyria has been overthrown by the Babylonians. Egyptian allies in the south are useless against the threat. The Babylonian King threatens to make Israel a vassal state with a puppet ruler. King Jehoiakim seems to be better at building massive palaces than taking care of the real work of a king – like matter of justice and righteousness.

As a result of Jerusalem's foolish leadership, Jeremiah reaches for some dangerous and frightening metaphors to suggest what God is about to do. Jeremiah calls it "A burning wind from the desert . . . a roaring blast.” One translation calls it “A hot wind from barren heights.” It is a tempest straight from God, and its intent is pure destruction.

Why? Why would God destroy the people? This is just playing into the perception that the God of Hebrew Scripture is a prickly and impatient God of wrath. What would provoke God to such an extent? According to Jeremiah, God says, "My people are ridiculous; they do not know me . . .  they have no perception. They are wise in evil-doing, but know nothing of doing good.”  Scorching desert heat is a sign that God's anger burns against a people who have forgotten how to act with justice and loving-kindness. Jeremiah, the prophet with his heightened sense of reality, can see the spin on the baseball, so to speak. He can see the fastball pitch coming. He feels the scorching heat of God’s anger before anyone else. And he calls people to open their eyes to what is coming.

I cannot read the words of Jeremiah without thinking of the hot winds from barren places that blow and burn in our own times. The world is, beyond doubt, getting warmer due to our 150-year love affair with fossil fuels. The atmosphere above us is laden with slightly more than 400 million parts of CO2 gas, insuring a temperature rise over the next decades of somewhere between two to five degrees.  Some see this catastrophe more clearly than the average person and they have sounded the alarm. The earth is in for massive changes. Ice melt. Ocean rise. Coastal flooding and population dispersion will result. That’s the best-case scenario.

Listen again to Jeremiah in the light of that scenario: "I looked on the earth, and look! It was without light. I looked at the mountains, and look! Quaking! And at the hills, reeling and rolling! I looked and look! No one at all! All the birds of the skies had fled! I looked and look! All the cities were smashed before God's awesome anger!" It sounds terrifyingly relevant to our own situation. Prophets calls us to understand. To take responsibility. To change.

Jeremiah uses a Hebrew phrase to describe all this. Tohu wabohu. This phrase is used only two times in Hebrew Scripture. It means “waste and void” or “chaotic and empty,” or “lack of balance and order.” Do you know where else the phrase appears? It’s in opening words of the Bible -- from Genesis 1:2: In the beginning, the earth was tohu wabohu -- formless and empty -- and darkness covered the deep waters. Tohu wabohu. The words sound mysterious and eerie.  In the beginning, the earth is dark and chaotic, with a howling wind roaring over the endless waters of the vast deep. Into that monstrous place, God brings light and the world begins to form.

Tohu wabohu. Jeremiah uses the exact same phrase from the story of creation. The behavior of God’s people is so terrible that the earth is reversing itself and returning to empty chaos. It is a world that does not know God. A world with no light. A world where the skies are only shadows, the birds have disappeared, and human beings are gone. Human sin leads to cosmic cataclysm where the whole earth is compromised.

Jeremiah isn’t talking about the ecological catastrophes of our time, but the implications are the same. Where are the great and eloquent prophets who warn us of the consequences of our wanton actions? Without doubt, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, along with all humans are under threat from the certain heating of the planet. It is time for us to act. We need massive changes in our behaviors if we all are to live on this blue ball of earth. We all need prophets to help us as we sharpen our eyes and find conversion in our hearts. We need people who can help us to the love and serve of our earth, rather than profit from its unimpeded exploitation.

Jeremiah has a prophetic idea that other prophets before him did not see. Jeremiah insists that human action is the way to redeem the world. All is no not hopeless. Now is not the time to wait for some Holy Other to intervene. The message of Jeremiah is as urgent today as it was twenty-six centuries ago. Even when it feels like the opportunity has passed, even when it feels like we are doomed, it’s never too late to act. Do people take action against all that is wrong in today’s world? The answer is mixed at best. The world is still struggling to become compassionate and truly humane. It’s is up to people, it’s up to us, to effect change.

I get restless when I see us offer less than what God intends for the world. It’s not just the environment. It’s about poverty. It’s about racism and exclusion. It’s about just government. It’s about fair economic life. We ask the Spirit of God to expand our vision and transforms our priorities.  We do not eat alone; everyone needs to eat. Empowered by God, we can act, pray, and hope that we can build the sufficient, sustainable world that God wants for people.

Many months ago, I shared this poem by Drew Dellinger, called “hieroglyphic stairway.” I’d like to read it again:

it's 3:23 in the morning
and I'm awake
because my great great grandchildren
won't let me sleep
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the planet was plundered?
what did you do when the earth was unraveling?

surely you did something
when the seasons started failing?

as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying?

did you fill the streets with protest
when democracy was stolen?

what did you do
once
you
knew?

I think God uses the prophets to ask the same questions to us.
What did we do when our economic household was being plundered?
What did we do when our democracy unravelled?
Did we fill the streets when equality was stolen?
What will we tell our great, great grandchildren?
What did we do once we knew?

We can realize a new vision if enough of us join together to make it happen. This new dream foresees a world where hot winds from barren heights are taken over by the cool springs of grace. It’s a world where our love for getting and spending is tempered by the growth of human solidarity and devotion to the public good; a world where the benefits of economic activity are widely and equitably shared; a world where the environment is sustained for current and future generations; a world where the virtues of simple living, community self-reliance, good fellowship, and respect for nature predominate.

Surely we did something when the seasons started failing. Surely we saw the anger of God. Surely we heard the plaintive cry of God’s world. Surely we took some responsibility. Surely we can do some good. Surely we are not made for chaos and emptiness. Surely, God has more light to shine into our chaotic days. Surely it’s never too late to act.

Sources:
http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/was-jeremiah-a-failure
http://m.npr.org/news/Arts+%26+Life/209160709
http://www.patheos.com/Progressive-Christian/Return-Chaos-John-Holbert-09-09-2013
http://people.tribe.net/cefe44e3-67d7-4375-99eb-46638d882eb6/blog/df552535-4ec8-47d6-a01a-a097667683b7

Sermon for September 1, 2013

Good News That Connects: Creating
Acts 17:16-31

Paul slinks into Athens, and he’s in a rotten mood. He’s having a bad week. Earlier in the week, he got himself kicked out of the city Thessalonica by an angry mob of troublemakers. Then he met up with some buddies in the neighboring city of Berea, and all their preaching and Jesus-talk got them kicked evicted from there, too. By the time Paul arrives in Athens, he’s ready to pick a fight. Paul is spitting mad – revolted –  because of all the idols in the ancient city. You could call 1st century Athens the “god capital of the world,” a place so full of deities to worship that the Athenians must have needed something like the Yellow Pages just to keep track of them all. Paul’s first move is to argue. He finds some philosopher types, some Stoics and Epicureans, and he has at them. They are confused, to say the least. They wonder, “What is this babbler saying?” These philosopher types take Paul to a place called The Areopagus, or “Mars Hill.” There are more philosopher types there, and they begin to question Paul, firmly but politely. At this point in the story, the narrator decides to give us a crucial piece of information: “Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.” Athens is the place for philosophers and thinkers. It’s the home of Socrates! And that should ring at least one little bell of caution, because Socrates was put to death for “corrupting Athens with strange new gods”— and that’s precisely what the Athenians think Paul is doing.

Paul calms himself down and begins to speak. But instead of criticizing the Athenians for their many, many shrines to many, many gods, Paul focuses on just one—an altar that bears an inscription, “to an unknown god.”  It’s almost as if Paul realizes that his priority is to share the gospel in a way that allows people to open their hearts to it. He comes to understand that in order to offer Good News that connects, he needs to control his impulse to criticize, fight and focus on differences. He needs to create trust from a place of humility. And I have a feeling that the humility part was hard for Paul.

How do we respond to those whose faith is different from ours? We create trust with humility. Good News that connects must help us deal with the biases we have about people of other faiths. I’m talking about unassuming conversations and open ears when it comes to learning from Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists, and atheists. There’s another group we need to pay listen to. It’s the fastest growing faith affinity group is in America: Those who have no preference. They are called “unaffiliated.” Some call them “Nones.” Let’s call them the “spiritual-but-not-religious group.” Most of these people believe in God, or in a universal spirit, but they are not confined to understanding God through any particular religion’s version of who that God is.  They tend not to get involved in religious institutions. They think we are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in politics.

The spiritual-but-not-religious folks cause some church people very uncomfortable. A fairly well known UCC minister just wrote a book entitled, When Spiritual But Not Religious Is Not Enough. As you can imagine by the title, the author does not think much of this new trend. In a recent interview, she described the spiritual-but-not-religious trend as a “shallow combination of exercise and caffeine, coffee shops as spiritual community, hikes as pilgrimages, The New York Times as sacred text, and sunsets—don’t ever forget the sunsets. These people are always informing you that they find God in the sunsets. Well, excuse me, as if people who go to church didn’t see God in a sunset. You know, my take is that any idiot can find God in the sunset. What is remarkable is finding God in the context of flawed human community.” In her book she asks, “Who are you, God of sunsets and rainbows and bunnies and chain e-mails about sweet friends? Who are you, cheap God of self-satisfaction and isolation? Who are you, God of the beautiful and the physically fit? Who are you, God of the spiritual but not religious . . . Who are you, and are you even worth knowing? Who are you, God whom I invent? Is there, could there be, a more interesting God who invented me?”

Mental note: Whenever someone says words like “These people . . .” or “Those people . . .” it’s the beginning set up for us-versus-them dynamic. As I’ve said before, when we allow ourselves to take part in an us-versus-them system, then we run the risk of denying our participation in brokenness. I’m not necessarily disagreeing with some of the author's points. But in this instance, I don’t think she’s offering the fullness of our Good News in words that can connect – in ways that create trust through humility.

I’m reminded of a story about a cowboy who went to an up-scale church wearing jeans, ragged boots and a worn out old hat. As the cowboy took his seat, people moved away from him. No one welcomed him. As the cowboy was leaving the church, the minister approached him and asked the cowboy to do him a favor. “Before you come back in here again, have a talk with God and ask what God thinks would be appropriate attire for worship.” The old cowboy assured the preacher he would. The next Sunday, he showed back up for the services wearing the same ragged jeans, boots, and hat. Once again he was completely shunned and ignored. The minister approached the man and said, “I thought I asked you to speak to God before you came back to our church.”

“I did,” replied the old cowboy.

“If you spoke to God, what did he tell you the proper attire should be for worshiping in here?” asked the preacher.

“Well, sir, God told me that He didn’t have a clue what I should wear, seeing as He’d never been in this church.”

There are lots of people, both inside and outside the church, who say “I’m a spiritual and moral person. I try to live as well as I can, and do the right thing by others. And yet I’ve been in churches where I feel like a second class citizen because I don’t know the ritual or the lingo or the dress code.” The whole purpose of religion is to bring together. That’s what the word means. Religion comes from the same Latin word as ligament. It’s a connection. Good News – good religion -- connects us with one another, connects us to God and connects us in community. A connecting faith must be the opposite of exclusive and judgmental. Religion’s prime concern must be bringing together head and heart, past and present, beliefs and values, people and neighbors, tribe and nation, spirituality and institution, individual and environment.

Imagine a religious system where we encourage all people to think and explore ideas for themselves. Imagine a religious system where we encourage all people to wake up to the spark of divinity within, as system where we see the spark of God’s delight in others. Imagine a religion where treating people right was more important than being right. Imagine a religion where compassion was more important than creeds and rituals.

Imagine a holy place ringed with stained glass windows. Imagine bright light from outside, through stained-glass windows into the holy place. Sit with that image for a moment . . . In this image, the light is the truth, the windows are religion and the holy place is the world. As light shines from outside through the windows into the holy places of the world, in the same way religions are a medium – a filter -- by which truth comes into the world. Here’s the thing . . . The window is not the light. The window is not the light. And religions need to be distinguished from the truth that they let into the world. The Church is one place into which the light shines, but it’s not the only place. For many people, it doesn’t happen because some of our theology has become so dilapidated, we easily confuse ideas about God with the truth about God.

Here is what I want . . . I want The Apostle Paul and ministers, and churches, and myself to remember: Religion is the window, not the light. We who get angry with those who want to only see God in the sunset – for we who think being spiritual but not religious is a cop-out, I close offer the words of Maya Angelou from her poem “On the Pulse of the Morning.”

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.
They hear the first and last of every Tree
Speak to humankind today. Come to me, here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside the River.
Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveler, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name, you,
Pawnee, Apache, Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of
Other seekers -- desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede, the German, the Eskimo, the Scot,
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought,
Sold, stolen, arriving on the nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am that Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.
I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours -- your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.

In some ways, Acts 17 is about recognizing ourselves as one people -- God’s people. It’s a reminder about how anger can cause us to stumble and fall into judgment and manipulating. When we can calm down, take a few deep breathes, when we become aware of the divine radiance all around us, we can sense God’s deep, abiding hope for us.

Paul understood something on that day on Mars Hill as he swallowed his anger and talked with those philosophizing, spiritual-but-not-religious Athenians. God is not the window. God is the light. God is the One in whom we live and move and have our being. Here on the pulse of this new day, we receive the grace to look up and out and into the eyes of our sister, into the face of our brother, into our crumbling world that cries for the breaking dawn of a new day. We look up and help give birth to new dream of connection – of trust and humility.

Sources:
http://day1.org/2922-young_leaders_series_v_proclaiming_christ_in_the_new_areopagus
http://www.c3exchange.org/archive/what-does-it-mean-to-be-spiritual-but-not-religious/
http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise-religion/
http://magdalenesmusings.blogspot.com/2011/05/hand-made-shrines-sermon-on-acts-1722.html
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2013/01/25/january-25-2013-rev-lillian-daniel-on-spiritual-but-not-religious/14570/
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~oliver/soc220/Lectures220/Angelou.htm
Lillian Daniel, When Spiritual But Not Religious Is Not Enough

Sermon for August 25, 2013

Good News That Connects: Proclaiming

Acts 15 has been called the turning point, the center piece, the watershed and the central hinge on which the book of Acts turns. And biblical scholars say that no chapter in the New Testament is more difficult to translate and understand. It’s a story about growing pains in the early church as Gentiles, non-Jewish believers, begin to share in the promises to Israel. As the gospel moves out in ever widening circles, the young, untried Church has to come to terms with the challenging realities of a more global faith.

Read Acts 15:1-12

Acts 15 opens with a story about a group of powerful, well-educated Judaic-Christians who argue that Gentile males who want to be saved have to be circumcised. They need to wear a physical mark as a sign of inner change. Jewish law is clear about this. Circumcision is a mark of the covenant. And you can’t just set aside some of the rules to accommodate a few people, right? It’s that old slippery slope. If you give way on one part of the law, you risk losing the whole thing.

The Church leaders convene a council in Jerusalem. All the apostles are there, along with James, the brother of Jesus and head of the church in Jerusalem. And they have a good ol’ church fight. Let’s call it a debate. Does God save people because they follow the rules, or does God save people through grace?

Before I tell you what they decided, let’s just stop and acknowledge that churches still have this fight … er, debate  . . . all the time. Can you drink and swear and smoke and be a Christian? What if your body is covered in tattoos and body piercings? What if you struggle with addiction? Can you still be a Christian? Do you have to be conservative or liberal? Catholic or Protestant? What if you are an environmentalist? Or a logger? Do you have to read the Bible literally? Do you have to claim Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior? Do you have to be baptized?  Is there a place for you in the family of God? Do you have to change in order to fit in? Do you have to rewrite your song in order to resonate with someone else’s tone?

Some people struggle with the false belief that we must meet certain standards in order to please God and feel good about ourselves. Consider these laws that people hold themselves to:

• The law of church attendance. Some say to themselves, “If I attend every worship service, and work diligently in the church, then God will be pleased with me. Those who only show up at Christmas and Easter are not as committed to their faith.”
• The law of morality: “If I can just behave well enough I will be acceptable to God and others. Those who don’t behave according to my moral standards must change if they want to join us.”
• The law of perfectionism: “If only I can keep my house spotless, my family looking good, and my social life in order – if only I can keep tight charge over every area of my life, then God will smile upon me and I will be happy.”

We need to be careful. Laws like these create insiders and outsiders. When we use religious rules to exclude others, we put up walls of mutual mistrust. Francisican priest Murry Bodo puts it this way, “we wear God as a mask of respectability that justifies our doing nothing except . . . build protective walls behind which we live the illusion of virtue. We are trying so hard to be safe, we have forgotten how to be human.” Dogma may well design disorder. Creeds can create confusion. Sometimes the church is so concerned with outward appearances and correct beliefs, we forget that God nurtures the heart and changes the inside first.

I have a feeling that Luke, the author of the Acts of the Apostles, tells us the story of the Council of Jerusalem to make a point. There should be no division among the people of Christ. Luke uses a special Greek word get this across: homothumadón. The word is used only 11 times in all of the New Testament, and 10 of those times are by Luke in the Book of Acts. It means “of one accord,” “of one mind and purpose,” “shared commitment,” or “united action stemming from united concern,” “harmony,” “together.”

The Council of Jerusalem realizes there are people out there who do not want this kind of unity. There are some who want to stir up, disturb, unsettle, throw into confusion.

The leaders of the earliest church had a different vision. Homothumadón . Together. That’s what the church was supposed to be. That’s what the church IS supposed to be.  Together.

Like good church people, the Council of Jerusalem writes a letter. And like a good church letter, it has a compromise. Male Gentile converts do not need to be circumcised. But, they do need to let go of the customs associated with idol worship. The Council wants Gentile converts and those who follow the Law of Moses to join together in worship. It’s not about Gentiles becoming Jews, or Jews caving in on their values. Gentile converts get the promise that believing and being baptized will grant them membership in the people of God. Their Jewish sisters and brothers get the reassurance that fellowship with Gentiles will not cause them to drift from their new-found faith in Jesus the Messiah. It’s all about being gracious and vulnerable with one another. It’s about building trust instead of suspicion. Good News connects people. It proclaims faith through loving action.

Think of the racial, economic and social barriers that mark the terrain of our daily lives. Think about those with whom we see, touch and share our lives and those we keep away. Think of the gender barriers between us, how we think and talk about each other; how we relate to one another at work and at home. Think of the way we classify each other at church — the liberals and conservatives, the “old timers” who built the church and the newcomers with their innovations. Think of the boundaries built by ongoing racial tensions as we remember the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington this week. We all build walls, and these walls direct our footsteps -- where we go and where we stop.

What might happen when, instead of ignoring, dismissing, or labeling people because they look or believe differently, we build a space of welcome? What might happen when, instead of offering confusion, we find ways to be unified . . . in one accord . . . together?  Imagine proclaiming a faith that doesn’t try to change people, but allows everyone the freedom and breathing room to change at their own pace in their own way as God leads them.

I’m reminded of a story. There was a man who was well known for his compassion for others. He was not a wealthy man.  He was not a native of the predominately Christian village.  He did not attend the village church. He was never baptized. In fact, he showed little interest in religion. But if a stranger came to the village and needed a place to stay, this man would offer a cot in his little home. If a village family ran out of food, he was the first to offer a loaf of bread or some flour from his own meager supplies. When the occupying army swept the village to collect young men for imprisonment or forced military enlistment, he helped hide the men in the woods outside town. The villagers loved him very much.

The man eventually died from some cause or other. The villagers prepared his body for burial and proceeded to the village church where they asked the priest to perform the burial service in the church cemetery. The priest, knew and loved the man as much as the rest of the villagers. He agreed to conduct the funeral service. However, the priest insisted that he could not bury the man inside the church cemetery because he was not baptized. “I cannot bury him in our cemetery”, the priest said, “It is hallowed ground. He must go where the unbaptized are buried. Those are the rules of the church and I cannot change them.”

The villagers appealed earnestly to the priest. The reminded the priest that the man was a good person and surely loved by God as much as any of the baptized, perhaps even more on account of all the good that he had done. The priest agreed with them about the virtues of the man, but insisted that the rules of the faith were clear and could be not be broken. But he did make one compromise. The priest said, “In recognition of your love for him, and his love for you and all of God’s people in this village, I will bury him on church land, near to those who have gone before. But it will have to be beyond the fence that surrounds the consecrated ground of our cemetery.”

On the appointed day a grave was prepared just outside the fence that surrounded the church cemetery. The villagers brought the man’s body and buried him in his final resting place. That night, something very beautiful happened — something that became apparent when the priest went to the church next morning to conduct morning mass. The fence that surrounded the cemetery had been moved by some of the villagers. It now surrounded the grave in which the man had been buried.

I like to think God is like those villagers. God keeps expanding the boundaries of the sacred to include those who have been excluded by religious rules or polite society. What might happen if we simply said, “God loves you just the way you are. That’s it. Nothing else to add. No pre-qualifications before you’re really welcome. You are welcome right now. Now please tell us your story so we can learn from you.” We can come together in a church to share those beliefs, and also find value in the spirituality of others. We can be a church that leads others without the stigma of guilt or coercion. Now wouldn’t that be something worth proclaiming, in word and in loving action!?

Sources:
http://www.stfrancismagazine.info/ja/images/stories/Salaam-Corniche%28October-2010%29.pdf
Doug Pagitt, Evangelism in the Inventive Age,
Murray Bodo, The Way of St. Francis.

Sermon for August 11, 2013

Good News That Connects: Listening

Acts 10:1-18

Real men will eat anything, right. I remember attending a game dinner many years ago. It must have been a bad year for venison, because the real men ate fowl and skewered pieces of marinated raccoon meat. Yes, I tried it. No, I didn’t have seconds. And no, there was no voice from heaven commanding me to eat it – no booming voice saying, “Matt, do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.” What the most disgusting meat you’ve ever eaten? Does the thought of it turns your stomach?

You’ve heard about dining on insects, right? This is an old news story, but media outlets won’t let it go. A report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says that insects and insect products should do more towards improving the food security of the world. Certain entrepreneurs are picking up on this trend. Like the company Chapul that makes energy bars. They state, “[Our] Bars are delicious, all-natural bars with protein from crickets-one of the planet's most amazing, energy-efficient creatures. No soy. No dairy. Just our innovative flour made entirely from crickets.”

Here is another stomach turner for me. Lab-grown meat. A lab in London grew a hamburger in a Petri dish. Some call it the Frankenburger. The meat, which contained no fat, was fried in a pan with copious amounts of butter by an English chef and presented on a plate with a bun, lettuce and tomato slices. The concept has enormous environmental and ethical benefits. But here’s the problem – who wants to eat a burger grown in a lab from stem cells? It’s kind of cool. And kind of gross. It has definitely has the “yuck factor” for me. On the bright side, it can’t be worse than raccoon.

In the Book of Acts, chapter 10 God shows Peter a vision of a boondocks banquet coming down out of heaven. There’s some snakes and a bunch of reptiles. According to Jewish law, they are all unclean animals. Eating them will defile you. God says, “Go on, Peter, have a bite.” I don’t know if anyone here has ever eaten snake before. The outdoorsmen of the world tell us that snakes, racoons, possum, squirrels -- all that stuff is tasty when it’s prepared correctly. Apparently, Peter was disgusted by it all. Maybe Peter just didn’t have a good recipe.

In the first century, the great question was one of boundaries. Where would the lines be drawn that would determine who should hear the gospel and who would not. It is a question the church has not yet answered. Marcus Borg writes about this in his book Meeting Jesus Again for the Very First Time. He says, "The struggle between compassion and purity goes on in the churches today. In parts of the church there are groups that emphasize holiness and purity as the Christian way of life, and they draw their own sharp social boundaries between the righteous and sinners. It is a sad irony that these groups, many of which are seeking very earnestly to be faithful to Scripture, end up emphasizing those parts of Scripture that Jesus himself challenged and opposed. An interpretation of Scripture faithful to Jesus and the early Christian movement sees the Bible through the lens of compassion, not purity." 

In the earliest church, some Believers assumed that God’s recipe for a good church was limited to those who followed the commandments and rituals of Judaism. The first church members called themselves Jews. They worshiped like Jews. They did not associate with anyone who was not Jewish. It was against Jewish law to be in contact with Gentiles and their traditions. You can imagine how Peter’s horror when God sends Peter to the home of Cornelius – not only an unclean Gentile, but a Roman army officer.

As the author Luke tells the story, Peter visits Cornelius and tells him the story of Jesus. The Holy Spirit immediately fills Cornelius. He and his entire household convert to Christianity. The opportunity comes through listening. Peter listens to God. Peter listens to Cornelius. Peter realizes that God’s love is not defined by social boundaries.  God’s love reaches farther than Peter ever dreamed.

I think we need a reminder of who the church is, and what we are called to do. Since we were kids, someone told us that God loves everyone. The membership rolls of the early church sound more like roll call of a detention camp. The early church attracted people who were seen as low-lifes – religious zealots, the poor and oppressed, helpless charity cases, and foreigners. Rich patrons, working class laborers and those in abject poverty held common property and took care of each other. The church has always been place for people with real pain to hear words of healing and hope.

An inclusive vision of the church means that we restlessly commit ourselves to listening for the ways God wants to expand our horizons. We listen and then we preach and teach the message of God’s extravagant love.

In 1999 a little church in Decatur called Oakhurst Baptist Church was ejected by the Georgia Baptist Convention for a variety of issues having to do with Biblical interpretation and inclusiveness. In the 1960's this congregation took a stand against segregation and had lost two-thirds of its members. In the 1980's the church opened its doors to the homeless, who have been welcomed and have worshiped there ever since. In fact, the pastor tells about the time when he and his young son were visiting another church facility and his son asked, “Dad, where do the homeless live here?” He assumed that you could not have a church without a place for your homeless friends. One day, when the congregation was in the news, a developmentally disabled church member saw a TV camera and hurried over to offer to be on television. The reporter extended his microphone and asked, “Tell me, what do you like about this church?” John grinned and answered, “They love everybody here.”

I’ve been to similar churches. I think of one church in that regularly opens its doors to anyone. I mean ANYONE. On any given Sunday, this church has business professionals, college professors, group-home residents, families with children and homeless street people all worshiping together, praying for one another and celebrating each other’s lives. Another church I know sends out its “Worship Wagon.” The Worship Wagon goes to the homes of homebound members and others who can’t get to church. The worship wagon drives people to the church and brings them home afterwards. Churches like these are trying to live out a belief that we are not fully the body of Christ until everyone is included.

Preaching professor, Fred Craddock, once told about a church he knew. He remembered it as the status church – First Church Downtown, it was called. Everybody who was anybody went to that church when Fred was a boy. Not just anybody could walk in there and join. Income and proper attire was a membership requirement at First Church. People in need were out of the question. People of Color need not apply. As you might imagine, First Church did not receive many new members. Its members simply grew older.
Much later, as an adult, Fred learned that First Church had closed. Too few people of the “right type” existed, he guessed. He had occasion to go back to that town, and he discovered that old First Church was still standing. But now it was a restaurant, a fish restaurant oddly enough. He walked in the big gothic doors and, sure enough, where there had once been pews, now there were tables, and waiters, and diners. He looked down the nave of the old church and where the communion table had once stood, now there was a salad bar. He walked out the front door, back down the steps, muttering to himself, “Now, I guess everybody is welcome to eat at the table.”

There are some questions for us lurking behind today’s text from Acts. Can we allow the Holy Spirit to prod us – to give us ears to hear – to drag if necessary, all the way to the wideness of God’s mercy? Or will we hunker down right here, and limit our listening? Do we opt for safe and secure? Do we keep our limits firmly fixed? Who is today’s equivalent of the gentiles? Who are the one’s we call unclean – the one’s God insists belong?

Maybe the most important question that we need to think about is this: What kind of meal are we going to offer?  A safe one or a risky one? A buffet or a banquet?


Sources:
http://chapul.com/
http://www.npr.org/2013/05/17/184775920/insects-may-be-the-taste-of-the-next-generation-report-says
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/science/a-lab-grown-burger-gets-a-taste-test.html?ref=science
http://revandylittle.com/2009/10/03/buffet-or-banquet-acts-111-8/

Sermon for August 4, 2013

Good News That Connects: Welcoming

Acts 9:1-18

The story of Saul of Tarsus from Acts 9 begins at least two centuries before we ever even hear about him. Our story begins around the 170 years before the birth of Christ. A greedy and desperate king ruled what was known as the Seleucid Empire – one of the subdivisions of the Empire of Alexander the Great. This king needed money to pay tribute to Rome. The king heard gossip that the Temple in Jerusalem overflowed with riches. It served as a bank where the private deposits of widows and orphans were kept secure. Since this king needed money, he sent his treasurer on a journey to raid the holy place. The treasurer’s name was Heliodorus. Heliodorus set off with armed guards to plunder the temple. When the people of Jerusalem heard about it, they began to panic. The priests in the Temple threw themselves on the ground and called to heaven for help. People burst from their houses and gathered in crowds to plead for divine intervention because the temple was about to be dishonored.

As the story goes, when Heliodorus and his spearmen approached the treasury, the God of Israel made an awesome display. Heliodorus saw a vision of a horse with a fearsome rider, decked in gold armor. Two young men also appeared before him—of superb beauty, wearing magnificent robes and unmatched in bodily strength. It turned out to be more than a vision. These beautiful men stood on either side of Heliodorus and beat the tar out of him. Heliodorus fell to the ground unconscious. Some of the warriors from his entourage picked him up and placed him on a stretcher. The bully Heliodorus, who was on his way to rob God’s treasury with a fully armed bodyguard, was carried away helpless – rendered blind and speechless by his visit from heaven.

Some of Heliodorus’ companions rushed to ask the High Priest in the Temple to pray for their boss. The high priest was afraid that the Seleucid king might think the Jews had done something evil to his treasurer. So, with fear and trembling, the High Priest offered a sacrifice for the recovery of Heliodorus. While the high priest was praying, the two beautiful, angelic brutes who had given Heliodorus a heavenly whipping once again appeared by the side of the royal treasurer. The angels said, “You owe the high priest your gratitude. Because of him, the Lord has graciously given life to you. But you who suffered a beating from heaven must proclaim the great power of God to all.” Then they disappeared.

Heliodorus was a new man His sight and voice returned. He returned home, singing the praises of God. He reported to the King, “The one who lives in heaven watches over that place and will strike and destroy anyone coming with evil intent.”

Does this story sound a little familiar? A villainous persecutor with an armed escort is knocked down on the road, blinded, repents, and is healed by a holy albeit reluctant servant of the Divine? Change the names and a few minor details, and we get Luke’s story in the book of Acts -- a dramatic scene in which the risen Jesus knocks Paul off his horse on the road to Damascus. Paul, the would-be killer, is blinded by the light, comes to Jesus, is healed by a reluctant servant and becomes Christ’s spokesperson and defender. I think Luke “borrows” an older story from Jewish history and reworks it for his own narrative. So, either Luke is a really bad historian or he has a different agenda in mind. Given Luke’s tendency to rewrite much of the Greek Old Testament and Apocrypha, I vote for the latter. The story of Heliodorus comes from the book of 2 Maccabees. But the story itself is much older. The basic idea of a persecutor being converted despite himself by direct fiat of the God whose followers he has been abusing appears 500 years earlier, from the ancient Greek play The Bacchae by Euripides. Come on now – you remember it from your college English Lit. class, don’t you?

So, what’s Luke up to? If Luke’s description of Paul’s conversion to Christianity is not historically accurate, then why all the drama? In volume one of his writings, the Gospel According to Luke, we hear the story of Jesus, a Jewish leader who is baptized and anointed with the Spirit, goes about doing good, heals the sick, raises the dead, casts out demons, preaches in synagogues and finally making his way to Jerusalem where, after a uproar at the Temple, he is taken into custody. He is put on trial before the Jewish courts and Roman officials who declare him innocent but execute him to keep the peace.

In volume two, The Acts of the Apostles, Luke tells us about Paul, a Jewish leader who is anointed with the Spirit, goes about doing good, heals the sick, raises the dead, casts out demons, preaches in synagogues and finally making his way to Jerusalem where, after a uproar at the Temple, he is taken into custody. He is put on trial before the Jewish courts and Roman officials who declare him innocent. Luke implies Paul is later executed in order to keep the peace. Paul’s life path mirrors Jesus. Luke is making a point – What Jesus began, Paul fulfills. The movement that Jesus started is best interpreted by Paul.

Some scholars think Paul might not have even been a persecutor of the early church in the first place. It was a legend that was added later. Why? Luke knew there was a movement to discredit Paul. And who would do such a thing? All of the stories seem to point to one person –  a man named James the Just. It seems Paul and James never got along. James led the Church in Jerusalem. Oh yeah, he was also the brother of Jesus, by some accounts. Talk about name dropping, right? This James, the brother of Jesus, was friends with the Apostle Peter. Peter was appointed as the head of the entire church by Jesus. Peter claimed the right to rule with what the church called “apostolic authority.” As Peter and James oversaw the new Jesus movement, it was very Jewish oriented.

When Paul came on the scene, he broadened the message of Jesus to include the Gentile world.  He was so successful, Christianity became more Gentile than Jewish. As Paul's churches grew in number, the traditional leadership in Jerusalem probably felt their influence diminishing. With explosive growth, there was less control.  It couldn’t be expected that everybody, everywhere would believe the same beliefs, sing the same hymns, read the same scriptures and tell the same story. So what did conflicting leaders do? They attacked each other and wrote letters and books to confirm their own version of the story. Paul wrote his first letter to confront his opponents and tell his personal story about how the Jewish law dissolves in the midst of God’s grace and forgiveness. Paul declared stridently, “We are saved by faith, not Jewish law.” James the Just wrote a letter and said, “That’s fine, but faith without the law is dead” (James 2:17). James disputed Paul, expressing the belief that Christians must show their devotion to God by following Jewish law and performing good deeds. We can see this political proof texting in the Gospels. The Gospel According to Matthew is very Jewish-oriented and seeks to make a case for the authority of Peter. Luke Gospel and The Acts of the Apostles are more Greek oriented and ultimately make the case that Paul walks in the footsteps of Jesus and fulfills Christ’s commission to bring the Gospel from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.

We tend to romanticize the beginnings of the early church. We were taught that in the midst of persecution, the church was all of one accord. A closer read of the texts tells a different story: fights and fraction, politics and polemics, popularity contests and power struggles. Some historians and theologians propose that the early church was characterized by “radical diversity.” We can’t speak of a unified “Christianity” during that time. The early church consisted of competing “Christianities.”

The Church eventually found ways to define orthodoxy and tamp down all these opposing versions of Christianity. Christendom created communities of conformity. But that was not the experience of the earliest church. Even though Peter and Paul disagreed, something held the church together. It was not a creed. It was not a droning doctrinal debate. It was a common spirit.

Instead of conformity, I am much more interested in creating communities of welcome. We pray with Jesus that we all may be one. But maybe the job of the church is not to be united in our theology. Maybe the job of the church is to unite around what we do rather than what we believe. Peter and Paul’s theologies of mission conflicted, but they found common ground in creating communities of welcome, communities of radical inclusiveness that redistributed wealth, rejected violence, and invited the “nobodies” to worship elbow-to-elbow with the “somebodies.” Maybe that’s still the job of the Church. We need to get over our tendencies to divide over doctrine as we offer true welcome – even if it means doing God’s work side by side with those whom we disagree.

If anyone can change community of conformity to communities of welcome, it should be the UCC. I typed in the words “unified church with diverse theology” into Google, and guess who came up first? The UCC. As individual members, we are free to believe and act in accordance with our perception of God’s will for our lives. At the same time, we are called to live in loving relationship with one another – gathering in local communities of faith. In the UCC, each congregation or local church is free to act in accordance with the collective decisions of its members, guided by the working of the Spirit in the light of the Scriptures. But each local church also lives in covenantal relationship with other congregations. We find ways to exist in these expanding levels of covenant, even if we don’t always agree with each other. Our ultimate vision is to welcome people – to invite people to enhance our worship life and mission life as full partners:
    Believers and agnostics
    Conventional Christians and questioning skeptics
    Homosexuals and heterosexuals
    Males and females, and those who are discovering or uncovering  their gender  identity
    Those of all races and cultures
    Those of all classes and abilities
    The optimists and the pessimists
    Traditionalists and Progressives
    Those who despair and those who have hope
We think the way we treat one another and other people is more important than the way we express our beliefs. We find more grace in the questions than in the answers. We discover the resources required for our work in the world: striving for justice and peace among all people, bringing hope to those Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers.

We recognize that God’s Good News story includes and welcomes other stories -- more than we can imagine. The stranger, the forgotten, the weak, and the dispossessed – we make certain that there is room for all at the table. We make certain that we practice our belief that it’s more important to be loving than to be right.

Sources:
http://topicalbible.org/h/heliodorus.htm
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Maccabees+3&version=CEB
http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/art_legend_paul_conv.htm
http://www.churchhistory101.com/century1-p6.php
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/diversity.html
http://www.harrington-sites.com/History.htm
The Underground Church by Robin Meyers

Sermon For July 28, 2013

Good News That Connects: Embracing

The community of believers was of one mind and one heart. None of them claimed anything  as their own; rather everything was held in common. The Apostles continued to testify with great power to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and they were all given great respect’ nor was anyone needy among them, for those who owned property or houses would sell them and give the money to the apostles. It was then distributed to any members who might be in need. Acts 4:32-37

Acts 4:32-35 is good stuff. Or maybe it’s scary stuff -- all this talk about sharing resources and holding common property. For some, it is a call to serious Christianity. I know people who live in what they call intentional Christian communities. People of all ages buy a house, or a cluster of houses. They share an evening meal together each day. Each member is expected to share in household chores. They contribute to a common purse from which the community buys food and household supplies, and pays for utilities. Most of the people who go for this are idealists. They see it as a way to do justice and seek peace in a local neighborhood. For others, sharing property and co-mingling money is a dangerous call to a life of socialism.  So, which is it: Christianity at its most demanding or Karl Marx on steroids? Or neither? Or both?

Acts 4:34 offers the clearest reason why the early church found it necessary to hold everything in common. The leaders of the church were concerned that there was no one needy among them. No one who becomes part of this new Jesus movement should be deprived or disadvantaged. In the church, we take care of our people.

Six little verses from Acts hold up a high bar for us. I think what was true for the early church, in this case, is still true today. No one among us should be needy. I know it’s hard to imagine, because our systems work in ways that minimize or exclude the existence of those who have little or nothing. We tell ourselves that people who are deprived or disadvantaged are that way because it’s their own fault. They did not work hard enough or they have the wrong attitude. The practice of exclusion is not a rare event in our homes, our schools, our work places, our politics, and our international relations, and even our churches. We all exclude others. We see it in the headlines of our newspapers almost daily:

“Islamic Brotherhood: Exclusion breeds Radicalism
“Decorated Marine Captain Resigns Commission—Blames Anti- Gay Sentiment”
“Military Rape Survivor Says Decades of Failure to Improve Sexual Assault Policies Re-Victimizes Woman”  
“Local Groups Call On Company To End Racially Discriminatory Hiring Practices”

Exclusion of others is part of the legacy of the human race. In our time, exclusion and it’s twin cousin, violence, have grown into epidemics that threaten the lives of men, women and children both here and in every corner of our globe. I don’t think it well get better. In future decades, as the human race begins to feel the increasing pinch of economic distress, environmental degradation, resource depletion, and population expansion, exclusion and violence will probably get worse. That is, unless we can do something different – until we can transform exclusion into embrace!

And if we take the stories of our spiritual family tree seriously, then we might want to begin to reverse systems of exclusion by embracing those who are poor. Because there should be no one in need. A careful reading of the Bible reveals over 2,000 clear verses specifying that the people of God must care for the poor.  Most theologians will point out that God has a preference for the poor. And if God has a preference for those who are poor, then shouldn’t that preference also be at the heart of the church's mission and ministry?

The Talmud, the compendium of Jewish civil and ceremonial law, outlines a few ways to help the poor.  Out of all of them, the Talmud states that the least desirable way to help is the all-too-typical handout. People will take a handout when they are desperate, but they sometimes resent the givers. I see this with our Deacons Fund. We have a charitable fund in our church – those yellow envelopes in the pew. We use the money to help people in our church and community who need some immediate financial help.  We use it a lot. It is helpful. But it does not help alleviate need. If we are talking about embracing those in need, let’s call our Deacons Fund an entry-level hug – you know – the polite  hug where people act like they’re trying to hug you without touching you. It is usually accompanied by the ‘polite smile’

According to the Talmud, the first and best way to someone who is poor is to find or create  a real job. That way the person can escape poverty with one’s self-respect intact.  If we can’t create jobs, The Talmud says we should give the poor what they need. But there’s a catch. We should give, but see to it that they have no idea who it was that provided for them.  That’s the story behind the project called 52times52. A couple  resolved to give $52 a week to charitable causes for all 52 weeks of the year. The brilliance of 52times52 is captured in story in which they describe how they spontaneously decide that their gift for the week should be a $52 tip to the waitress who had been serving them in the restaurant. The post on the site says that after they wrote the tip on the credit card receipt, they decided to run away without watching their waitress's expression as she opened the leather folio. This couple have their critics.Their point is to learn how to give with the  intent of blessing others while seeking nothing in return -- no recognition, gratitude or praise. It’s a form of embrace.

I would add one thing. What’s most powerful, to me is embracing within relationships. If giving hand outs is the equivalent of a polite hug, now I’m talking about the Bear Hug. You know what I’m talking about. This the real thing; you wrap your arms around each other and hold on tight. What does this mean? We need each other. I adore you. I couldn’t wait to see you. It’s the essence of our Christian message. It’s good news that connects.

When people begin to embrace those who are poor in our communities, it can have disturbing results. I read about a group of students from a college in Pennsylvania who became deeply involved with the homeless population of Philadelphia. At first, they took food and clothing to those who lived in the streets in an all-too-typical middle-class way of helping the poor. They came with the handout. Soon they recognized that their new homeless friends were victimized by police who harassed them. Business owners wanted the homeless away from their shops. The students championed the cause of the homeless against the city's establishment. When the police tried to keep the homeless from sleeping in public places, these students slept out in the streets with them. They were arrested. Some of them dropped out of school so that they could give more time to helping their new friends. Some who were very talented graduates gave up professional careers to live their lives with these socially disinherited street folks. Together, these young people rented a house in one of the most derelict sections of the city, where they live in community and run a non-profit where the homeless can come for help.

Obviously, this kind of counter-cultural behavior stirs criticisms and concerns. I’m sure their parents weren’t thrilled. Religious leaders of the city became upset. Some churches kept their youth groups away from these radical Christians, lest their young people get what they consider to be the "wrong idea" of what Christianity is all about.

Here’s what I think: Deep down, we know Christianity is not about keeping a nice building, listening to a sermon, and going to a church board meeting. Don’t get me wrong, I like all those things (well, maybe not all the meetings), but the essence of Christianity is embrace – making sure that all are included and none are in need.

Francis of Assisi, the beloved 10th-century saint, embraced what he called Lady Poverty. He actually thought of the poor as sacramental, not just objects of pity.  What Francis meant by the term sacramental is that the eternal Christ somehow infuses those who are poor so that, as we meet face to face, we meet not only a poor person, but the very presence of Christ. It’s how, as Christians, we transforming exclusion to embrace.

Tony Campolo, the Evangelical social activist and sociologist tells a story about an embrace with poverty. He was walking down a street in Philadelphia when a homeless man approached him. Tony says he was a dirty, filthy guy, covered with soot from head to toe. You couldn’t believe what a mess he was. The man had a huge beard and there was rotted food stuck in his whiskers. As he approached Tony, he held out a cup of McDonald’s coffee and said, “Hey mister, want some of my coffee?” Tony looked at this dirty, filthy man and said, “Thanks, but that’s okay,” and he walked by him. The minute Tony passed him, he knew he was doing the wrong thing, so he turned around and said, “Excuse me. I would like some of your coffee.” He took some of the coffee and sipped it and gave it back to the man. Then Tony said, “You’re being generous. How come you’re being so generous today?”

The dirty, filthy-looking, coffee drinking man looked at Tony and he said, “Because the coffee was especially delicious today and I think that when God gives you something good, you ought to share it with people." Tony didn’t know how to handle that, so he said, "Can I give you anything?" He thought that the man would hit him up for five bucks.

The man said, “No.” Then, after a pause, the man said, “Actually, Yeah, yeah. I’ve changed my mind. There is something you can give me. You can give me a hug.”

When Tony tells the story he says, “I was hoping for the five dollars! He put his arms around me and I put my arms around him. And as I in my suit and tie and he in his filthy garb hugged each other on the street, I had the strange awareness that I wasn’t hugging a bum, I was hugging Jesus. I found Jesus in that suffering man.”

That’s the bear hug of Christian love. Good news that connects. Good news that embraces. Good news that heals. Good news that says, “The divine in me honors the divine in you. We need each other. I love you. Let there be no one in need among us.”

Sources:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/takeandread/2012/11/a-how-to-for-intentional-christian-community/
http://www.patheos.com/Progressive-Christian/Holding-All-Things-in-Common-John-Holbert-04-09-2012.html
http://www.evergreenuu.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=rlL1uQTrgSA%3D&tabid=198
http://www.ncccusa.org/poverty/sermon-campolo.html
http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/gods-heart-for-the-poor-ken-ritz-sermon-on-poverty-86838.asp?Page=6
http://www.52times52.com/

Sermon for July 21, 2013

Good News That Connects: Including

Peter and John went to the Temple one afternoon to take part in the three o’clock prayer service. As they approached the Temple, a man lame from birth was being carried in. Each day he was put beside the Temple gate, the one called the Beautiful Gate, so he could beg from the people going into the Temple. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for some money. Peter and John looked at him intently, and Peter said, “Look at us!” The lame man looked at them eagerly, expecting some money. But Peter said, “I don’t have any silver or gold for you. But I’ll give you what I have. In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, get up and walk!” Then Peter took the lame man by the right hand and helped him up. And as he did, the man’s feet and ankles were instantly healed and strengthened. He jumped up, stood on his feet, and began to walk! Then, walking, leaping, and praising God, he went into the Temple with them. Acts 3:1-8   

An impaired beggar sits outside the Temple courts in Jerusalem. He’s a regular feature at the Temple Gate called “Beautiful.” Don’t miss the irony. The beggar does not live a beautiful life. Because of his disability, he is forbidden to enter the Temple. His stark condition contrasts with the opulent setting where he is left to do the only thing he can: beg for money. I bet the worshippers going to the 3:00 prayer service view him as an eyesore to the site’s magnificence; a beautiful gate offset by an ugly beggar. Worshippers with their offerings for the Temple treasury hurry past him, or look the other way when he asks for handouts. The Apostle Peter may have been among those who turned away from the beggar. Peter had been in the Temple many times. Just a few months earlier he was at the Temple with Jesus. We have no record that Peter or Jesus did anything to help this man before. Peter arrives at the Temple and he’s about to pass by the beggar again. The panhandler asks for money. Any small amount will help buy food, or pay for shelter, or help him get from here to tomorrow. 

I’ve walked by the beggar a thousand times. He is with us today. He stands at the intersections in Silver Spring with a scrawled piece of cardboard that says homeless, please help.  He makes a bed on a bench on Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C. -- it’s one of the safer places to sleep because of all the security cameras, at least until 5 AM when the police rouse him to move on. Yes, I’ve seen this beggar. She looks me in the eyes and says, “Please help me feed my children” as she collects change in a used coffee cup on MLK drive in Baltimore. What do I do? Look away – don’t make eye contact? Lock my car door? Suddenly have the urge to check my Facebook newsfeed again? Give a buck? Give a sandwich? Start a conversation? There are a lot of possibilities. Each choice either humanizes or dehumanizes the other. And each decision either humanizes or dehumanizes me.

For whatever reason, Peter responds to this man who sits outside the religious and political system that is unwilling help him. Peter takes this beggar by the hand and makes him part of God’s good news story. Notice what Peter does not do. He does not give the man what he asks for. Peter does not give money. All Peter has to offer is Jesus. He says, “Stand up and walk.” The lame man gets up and moves around. He leaps and twirls his way right into the very Temple courts from which he was previously excluded.

The crowd is amazed. Some call it a miracle; a lame man hears the good news and gets healed. I think part of the miracle happens in Peter. Instead of turning away and yet again ignoring the pain around him, Peter stops to listen. He can finally hear the need beyond the words. Peter resonates with the need of this man and the wind of the Divine Spirit who seeks to breathe wholeness into creation. The miracle is a change in perspective – the ability to find out what God is doing in the lives of others. It’s about paying attention and making room for the ways God’s story plays out in the lives of others. Finally, the victim gets heard. Finally, the invisible drifter on the fringe of society is humanized because Peter listens and reaches out.

We know this doesn’t happen often. More often than not, our experience is defined not by empathy and outreach, but by rivalry and desire. At least that’s what a French literary critic and philosopher named René Girard says. Imagine three toddlers who play quietly. A grown-up introduces a new toy into the play room.  As one of the toddlers approaches the toy, suddenly all three toddlers want it.  Seeing the toy’s attraction and its uniqueness, each toddler becomes an instant rival for its possession. According to René Gerard, when the supply of desirable objects is limited, we get conflict. Rivalry and violence are visible at the beginning of all human culture. 

To overcome these twin problems, early societies turned to sacrificial violence.  An individual or group was deemed guilty of starting the rivalry. The larger group, the majority, united to sacrifice the ones supposedly guilty of stirring up the original conflict.  After the sacrifice, anxiety decreased for a while. Eventually, though, conflict arose again and the sacrifice needed to be repeated. Someone must be blamed. Atonement must be made. Society coheres around an individual or group it can despise and blame for all its problems. Girard called this figure “the scapegoat.”  Frightened people produce scapegoats -- people who fear rivals for limited resources; people who want things to stay as they are; people who want to hang onto their power.  An effective scapegoat has to be someone weaker, someone more vulnerable.

Here’s the important catch: The scapegoat is an outsider, but still lives inside the border of society. The victim belongs to the community but has traits that send her or him to the edges of the community. Those in the majority are brilliant at creating outsiders: the difficult person; the odd-one out; the member with the "wrong" skin color or sexual orientation; the incorrect gender or religion; too smart, or too rich or too poor. It's difficult to be the one who stops the scapegoating because through this courageous action he or she immediately becomes the next victim in a circular human activity of destroying those who symbolize challenge to the status quo.

It’s difficult to stop scapegoating, but not impossible. Peter does it. He listens to a beggar, an outsider, a victim. Peter offers the outcast what he really needs. And then, like a good apostle, Peter preaches a sermon.  We did not read his sermon in today’s scripture lesson, so here’s my paraphrase of what Peter preaches to the crowd: “Hey onlookers, why are you amazed? You are the ones who create victims and watch innocent people die. You did it to Jesus, and God raised him from the dead. So the healing of a lame beggar should be no surprise! Turn away from your wicked ways.”

So, here is where we are at. Evangelizing, sharing our good news, has to do with including everyone in God’s story. Inclusiveness begins with awareness and deep listening. And listening means not giving answers until we ask lots of questions. If I want to know someone, I need to tune in to the story he or she is living. And i I want to break the cycle of invisible victimhood, I need to recognize the divine in the scapegoats whom society puts on the periphery.

This past week has given us an opportunity to put this into practice. I’ve been trying to listen and listen hard to the voices around the Zimmerman verdict in the shooting of Trayvon Martin.  There is more to this story than any one of us can know. We need others to join in the conversation and show us what we are missing. One set of the voices I think we need to listen to attentively are those in the African American community.

I do not want to get into the legality of the verdict today. I don’t know whether the jury’s decision was racially biased or not. I don’t know Florida jurisprudence any more than the average media consumer has found out this past week. I never heard about Stand-Your-Ground Laws until this trial. Here’s what I do know: The African American community, by and large, hurts. And grieves. I’ve heard stories of African American children weeping themselves to sleep when the jury announced its verdict. Black parents are pulling their teenagers aside and having The Talk yet again. The Talk is the conversation that African-American parents have with their children—mainly their sons—about what to do when approached by an armed police officer or public official.  As a friend and colleague of mine writes, The Talk goes something like this:

Son, I’m about to tell you something that might keep you out of trouble and that might save your life.  It’s something that our sons have been told for generations.  If you are ever stopped by the police or a public official, make yourself as small and as non-threatening as possible.  Make sure they can see your hands, speak very clearly, and respond to them with yes sir or no sir.  Don’t make any sudden moves, speak with a cheerful voice and most of all smile if you can.

Black parents give The Talk because they know that African-Americans have been among the most convenient, the most hated, and most ill-treated of our scapegoats. Enslaved and abused for centuries, Black people who bear the image of the Divine were kept uneducated, powerless, and impoverished. And yet they were feared. They still are. Young African-American males have been among the most feared and despised. This is not political correctness talking. This is not race-baiting. This is not false victimhood. This is the daily reality with which African Americans live in our country, even in the most progressive of places.

Trayvon Martin has become the face of all these feared and often-nameless young men. Whatever the circumstances of his death, I think Trayvon became a victim of fear, paranoia and the will to power. He became a casualty of our death-dealing love of guns and our inability to think of a different way to confront our differences. I think Trayvon became the latest in a long line of young African Americans to die as a scapegoat. 

Before we proclaim good news to anyone, we need to start paying attention to what kind of good news they need. I think our African American sisters and brothers need to hear some good news from Whites. As a faith community, we can start some difficult conversations about race in order to uncover truths that can lead to powerful change. I know we want to think racism is behind us. My listening over the past week indicates to me that it isn’t. So it’s time for us to listen deeply. To reach out sincerely. To think of creative, non-violent strategies for reconciliation. My favorite non-violent response to the death of Trayvon Martin comes from Tom Crabtree, a football player for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He tweeted, “How cool would it be to live in a world where George Zimmerman offered Trayvon Martin a ride home to get him out of the rain that night.”

René Girard worried that without the scapegoat mechanism, our culture would fall once again into rivalry and violence. Vicious political rifts and intractable racial divisions seem to support his fear. There is only one hope of change and that’s the power of non-violent love. It’s the only way to confront our fears and end our dependence on blood and violence. It’s the only way to heal our scapegoating and defy our will to power. I don’t want to be naïve about this. I know humanity’s adolescent love of violence. I know our juvenile addiction to power, especially the power of the gun. But I also know the redeeming power of God. I know the possibility of repentance and reconciliation. I am not optimistic. But I have hope.

My hope begins with listening for brokenness. Can we offer good news to those who are broken, those who ache and grieve deeply? Speaking very personally – speaking just for me – I cannot until I do the difficult work of listening to my own brokenness in the events I wish to condemn. You see, I know something about myself. I know that when I see somebody else do something wrong, I self-righteously call on God for justice. But when I do something wrong, I self-righteously call on God for grace. How can I ask for justice and also be a grace-filled person? When it comes to awareness of discrimination, as a White person of privilege, the problem is not whether I love people who are different than me. The problem is whether I unknowingly participate in and benefit from systems of racism. I need to admit that I have an inner, self-righteous George Zimmerman who has inherited a whole bunch of stereotypes and fears. When I allow myself to take part in an “us versus them” system, if I insist on justice for wrongdoers and forgiveness for myself, then I run the risk of denying my participation in brokenness. There can be no reconciliation within myself, forget about with other people. If I simply denounce violence instead of using it as a mirror to see inside of myself, I’m just externalizing the problem onto a societal scapegoat.

Christ Congregational Church covenants to be an anti-racist congregation. But here’s the thing: Can I promise that our anti-racism covenant and a willingness to explore touchy conversations about race will solve anything? Not with confidence. But, I can pray for it, work for it, encourage it, and when opportunities come I can be part of a miracle. No matter what, I can at least listen to the grief and pain of our sisters and brothers in our family of faith and respond with humility and repentance.

I’m not just talking about dismantling racism. I’m talking about sharing the kind of good news that includes everyone – EVERYONE – in God’s story. Can I promise a physical cure to all who are ill?  Not with integrity.  But I can pray for it, work for it, encourage it, and when God sees fit to bestow it, I might be part of a miracle. No matter what, I can at least offer the hand of healing, the presence of the Spirit, and the kind of personal care that is only possible to those who see the image of God in the face of the other.

Can I offer good news to those who are spiritually impoverished – to those who want fulfillment without transformation? Not with any honesty.  But I can speak about Christ, and rebirth, forgiveness and radical welcome and the rich life of service to others. I might be surprised when God opens my own ears to hear. And, like the Apostle Peter in the book of Acts, I might be astonished at how the Divine Spirit chooses to transform us when I listen for the presence of God in the margins of life, not just the center.


Sources:
http://additionalmarkings.blogspot.com/2013/07/trayvon-martin-as-scapegoat.html
http://jbyas.com/2012/03/26/trayvon-zimmerman-our-hypocrisy/
http://trivialdevotion.blogspot.com/2012/07/beautiful-gate-acts-32.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arthur-d-colman/evil-and-the-scapegoat_b_2863029.html
http://www2.luthersem.edu/fgaiser/Sermons/acts3.htm
http://ubuntuhappenshere.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-talk.html
http://www.consumerhealthfdn.org/index.php/chf-blog/post/benefit_of_the_doubt/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/early-lead/wp/2013/07/14/george-zimmerman-verdict-draws-emotional-reaction-from-sports-world/
Evangelism in the Inventive Age by Doug Pagitt.