Sermon for March 22, 2015 / Lent IV

Begrudging and Forgiving

There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee. After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.” Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

“What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?” Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.”

“How are these things possible?” Nicodemus asked. Jesus replied, “You are a respected Jewish teacher, and yet you don’t understand these things? I assure you, we tell you what we know and have seen, and yet you won’t believe our testimony. But if you don’t believe me when I tell you about earthly things, how can you possibly believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ever gone to heaven and returned. But the Son of Man has come down from heaven. And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him. John 3:1-17 New Living Translation

I’ve been thinking about pits this week; pits, like holes in the ground, not pits like the center of fruit or the pit in NASCAR racing. I’m talking pits as in: money pit, snake pit, The Pit and the Pendulum, tar pit, mosh pit, bottomless pit, pit viper, the pit of depression, the Pit of Despair and “that’s the pits,” in other words, the worst, most despicable example of something. In the verb form, to pit is to set someone or something in conflict or competition with another. The CIA’s torture report from last December mentioned a notorious prison site in Afghanistan known as the Salt Pit, where untrained CIA operatives conducted unauthorized, unsupervised interrogation there. Most pits are not friendly places.  A pit represent a sense of isolation and a lack of connection with one’s community or family. The pit is the place where one feels fear and nervousness.

In spiritual terms, a pit is the abode of evil spirits. In Hebrew scripture, The Pit is a deathly, dreary, dark, disorderly land in the bowels of the earth where dead souls go.  In Greek and Roman thought, we get the image of the realm of Hades, the Abyss, or the bottomless, fiery pit of destruction saved for the devil and his minions. In some cultures, volcanoes are seen as the entry to the afterlife, since gods lived inside the fiery pit.

Pits remind us of hardness. Separation. Isolation. Punishment

There is another “pit” word with negative meaning: The pit of the stomach. Just as you can love someone from the bottom of your heart, you can also experience a sensation of dread and fear in the pit, or bottom, of your stomach.

I had one of those fear-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach-experiences last week. I had worrisome, radiating chest pains and ended up driving myself to the hospital emergency room. I will say this: The medical staff was wonderful. The experience itself was horrible. After an initial EKG, I was eventually ushered into a waiting room inside another waiting room – a pit of sorts – a holding area for patients like me who needed to be observed but for whom there was nowhere else to go. I was in a small room with eight or so chairs full of people getting blood work done, people with IV bags hanging off of wall hooks, people sitting there for hour upon hour having almost zero interaction. People in pain. People with no privacy, some in hospital gowns, sleeping in chairs or staring at the floor. There I was, worrying about what was wrong with me, separated from my family and isolated from any comfort. The longer I sat there, the worse my chest pain seemed to grow. After eight hours of waiting, with some tests thrown in to break up the monotony, doctors admitted me to a windowless observation room to spend the night. Spend the night does not mean sleep. With crashing doors, dissonant alarms, and one bathroom for everyone to share at the end of the hall; with the constant poking and monitoring; with the 6 AM phone call to ask me what I want for breakfast, there is no sleep. It is no wonder many patients are grumpy in the hospital. Patients are sleep deprived. The experience is not made for connection. There is no sense of community. It’s designed to isolate people, and patients can feel disconnection and disorientation.

I’m OK, by the way. I did not have a cardiac event. My heart and lungs are in great shape. My stress level, on the other hand, needs some management. Nothing like 24 hours in the hospital to prompt some soul searching. I’ll save that sermon for another time.

Let’s get back to pits. Imagine a great pit of water, shady and fathomless. The word pit actually comes from an Old English word meaning “water hole,” It’s murky. It’s scary. Primordial chaos. Now imagine the slightest of breezes stirring the water and dispersing its shadows.  Imagine wind blowing over the formless void. It’s an image of creation from the book of Genesis. In the beginning there was darkness. Just a gaping void.  Suddenly, a wind – the breath of the Creator – sweeps over the face of the formless, shadow-shrouded deep. Creation ripples into being under the brooding scrutiny of God's breath. Darkness give way to light. The formless water gives birth.

When I think of Jesus promising heaven, I go back to this image of a gentle wind blowing over a deep pit of water. As I read John 3, I get a sense that hardness and separation give birth to a new creation with some gentle influence. The wind of God stirs our sense of connection and unity.

Sometimes human nature doubts this, in a world where violence and aggression seem to rule the day, not to mention Christian theology. Violence, separation and isolation have been the go-to metaphors used to describe what happens to someone who dies without Jesus. You spend eternity in utter desolation, imprisoned by God in the pit of Hell.  Many of us were taught that God punishes or even tortures those who do not love him. Teachers used Bible verses like John 3:16 to prove it. If you believe in the Son of God, you will be saved, which also means the inverse is true: if you reject the Son of God, then God will reject you.

If our notion of heaven is based on exclusion of another, then it is by definition not heaven. The more we exclude, the more hellish our existence will be. How could anyone enjoy the perfect happiness of any heaven if she knew her loved ones were not there, or were being tortured for all eternity?

I don’t think Jesus is talking about saving us for some future heaven. In ancient times the sense of community and connectedness was seen as holy because of the strength and health it gave to a family and a community. Being saved, or born again, can be about nurturing a growing feeling of unity with others.  For me, this is the essence of John 3:16. For this is how God loved the world: God gave the one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. Connection. Community. Relationship. It’s not so much about an individual sense of righteousness, but the healing and wholeness of the community – a sense of re-connection with life itself.

It’s about the deep listening and faithful emerging of who we truly are as God’s creation.

So, there is nothing like a hospital stay to get one thinking about life. I’ve done A LOT of thinking over the past few days about how temporary life is; how much we take for granted and how short a time we have here on this Earth. I’ve been considering how I spend so much time on trivialities and how often I forget to do things that are really important.  I’m coming to believe that learning to live deeply in this present moment is not only the greatest challenge facing us, but also the grandest place to experience heaven. The more grounded I am in the present, the more aware I am of the presence of God here and now.

I’ve been thinking about how, in the face of death, we need real connections and deep community to save us from formless voids of isolation. How do we, as communities, develop and nurture sacred connections that lead to salvation? I keep coming back to one idea: forgiveness. We must grow our capacity to forgive. Because the pit is not just an external holding tank. Speaking for myself, the pit is all of the experiences and attitudes that lurk in the shadows of my own heart. When I foster anger, bitterness or vengeance in my own life, I am pulled out of relationship with others. I end up isolated, alone, and tempted to think life would be better if all those other jerks weren’t making it so difficult.

Then, a gentle stirring happens – a wind that stirs the dank water of self-deception and reveals new possibilities. Perhaps someone did me wrong. In the opinion of that person I was the offender. It doesn't matter now. Let past bitterness go. With forgiveness lies our hope for healing.  We learn to open our hearts and answer feelings of danger with. Make peace with someone with whom you recently have had strained relations. They might be a little chilly at first, but conditions will quickly ameliorate. Be uncharacteristically good-natured and watch the world give you maximum respect. That’s what it means to be born anew – born of wind and spirit.

We bumble along, focusing on minutiae, worrying and fretting away our days, too often worrying about things which will either never happen, or things over which we have no control.  We worry about petty slights and hurt egos. We take ourselves way to seriously. It’s all a distraction. I don't know about you but it has been my experience that my faith is strongest, I feel most close to God when I participate in community, when I care about others, and when I let go of my certainties and remain open to the guiding of God's Spirit. For me, that’s what it means to be born again – born of wind and spirit.

Sermon for March 8, 2015 / Lent 3

Small Gains

Then Jesus began to tell them that the Son of Man must suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, but three days later he would rise from the dead. As he talked about this openly with his disciples, Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. Jesus turned around and looked at his disciples, then reprimanded Peter. “Get away from me, Satan!” he said. “You all are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.” Then, calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my message in these adulterous and sinful days, the Son of Man will be ashamed of that person when he returns in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. Mark 8:31-38

Is love worth the pain? The quick answer is, “Yes! Of course!” But that answer only comes easily when you are not experiencing the convulsions of loss. Is love worth the pain when you feel like a wounded animal … when each time you get up to do something, you find yourself needing to retreat back to bed, wanting only to roll up into a ball, covers around you, eyes shut, hoping to forget for a while the reality of your pain. The dance of love pulls us close … so tantalizing, so alluring, and yet so painful. It’s a miracle any of us ever go back in for the next round once we have loved and lost. Our hearts will get broken by loss, failure, defeat, betrayal, or death. What happens next depends on HOW our hearts break. In the painful aftermath of lost love, with a heart still raw, regretful and tender, can we choose not to let pain be the cause for a shut down? Will suffering become an excuse to never trust or love again? When all feels lost; can we be startled from our sorrow, can we raise remembering eyes and become blinded by tears of joy instead of sobs of sorrow?

Is love worth the pain? If only we could ask someone like Mother Theresa. Mother Teresa decided it didn’t make a lot of sense to worship God in church while God’s image was dying alone in the streets in bodies of Calcutta’s poor. She believed that it was silly to weep when thinking about Jesus being crucified two thousand years ago, yet not weep while watching Jesus crucified today, on the streets of Calcutta or Haiti or D.C. or in the high school hallway. Mother Teresa saw God in every human being, and when she held a dying leper and dressed his wounds, she did not imagine that she was helping Jesus die with dignity, she really was helping Jesus die with dignity.

Is love worth the pain? The ancient rabbis told a story of when we die and we’re all on our way to heaven, we will look at one another and say one word. When we die and we know fully as we are fully known and are returning to God together, we will look at one another and say, “Oh.” We will say that because we will finally see each other as we really are, scars and all, and know one each other’s full story and fall madly in love.

I’m thinking about love and suffering because of all this talk from Jesus about denying self, turning from our selfish ways, taking up our crosses and following him. We’ve been told from some teachers that Jesus is the example of suffering love. The Savior must suffer and sacrifice his life for others. Jesus stands in for us, suffers God’s wrath on our behalf and opens the way for us to be saved. Christ’s death becomes the final atonement for all sin, past present and future.

I’ve had a problem with this theory for a long time. The fundamental problem, for me, is that it puts God the Parent, co-equal and co-eternal person of the Trinity #1, as the one who cause the suffering and death of an innocent person, namely co-equal and co-eternal person of the Trinity #2. I choose to believe that God is not like that.

What if Jesus did not suffer and die to save us, but to show us how to experience salvation? What if Jesus did not suffer and died FOR sin, but BECAUSE of sin. What if he took up the cross to expose the human potential for corruption and the human tendency to cover our mistakes? What if he died to show us that we can choose to let pain open him so that we can know what it looks like to shine in a world where evil abounds? What if he came to show us how to save ourselves? After all, does Jesus say, “If you give up your life for my sake, I will save it”? No. Listen again: “If you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it.”

In Mark’s Gospel, the call to "take up the cross" is a summons to oppose the powers of evil that oppress people. The kind of powers that would nail a person to a cross.

Mark wants readers to focus on that cross.  Mark wants to show us a stark demonstration of the violence and cruelty of the religious and political powers.  In the face of oppression and marginalization, Jesus suffers because of sin and shows us the face of compassionate love in the twirling tempests of death the world deals. If we follow Jesus, it means we share in the same mission. We speak out against every mean spirit. We feed the hungry and heal the sick. We speak the truth. We touch the untouchable. We forgive the unforgivable and love the unlovable. We march over the Pettus Bridge to face the violence of the Empire if it means holding a mirror up to the cruelty of oppression. We salve the sores of the suffering if it means helping the Savior himself die with dignity. We risk love, even if it rips our heart again. We see each other’s scars and finally realize we are connected by glory, we are connected by pain, and we can fall madly in love with each other again. In other words, we will do God's work in the world, just like Jesus.

When we do that, we have every reason to expect that what happened to him might happen to us. When we love honestly, we also suffer. The two go together.  If God intervened and transformed the misery and evil of the world, if God offered love without suffering, we would have to pay the one price which we cannot pay. We would lose our freedom . . . we would give up the dignity of our humanity. We might be happier, but we would be lower beings. In the Gospels, God sends Jesus to give back dignity to all who have it taken away. As Paul Tillich, the famous theologian from the last century reminded us, “Those who dream of a better life and try to avoid the Cross … and those who hope for a Christ and attempt to exclude the Crucified, have no knowledge of the mystery of God and of [humanity].”

Here’s the question. Is it worth it? Is love worth the pain? When we are broken by loss, failure, defeat, betrayal, and death . . . when we want to retreat to bed, roll up into a ball and shut out the pain of life, take up the cross of suffering and love and follow Jesus?

All I can say is this: Timing is everything. Carrying the cross is not about reaching a destination. It’s more about moving in a direction in which there is no more need to struggle. Carrying the cross is about making small gains towards liberation, step-by-step, in the road of restoration.

Think if a tree grown from a seed, like a maple saplings that roots itself in the untended, leaf-mulched areas in your yard or in the woods. Left alone, a maple grows from that seed, moving around obstacles but persevering. I don’t think a tree thinks much about becoming a giant silver maple while it is still a sapling. All the sapling needs to do is keep growing – surviving day-by-day, season-by season. I think we might learn from the wisdom of the sapling. We grow by how we react to the daily challenges and obstacles we face. We follow Jesus with cautious starts, small gains, one step at a time. Later, we’ll look up and discover where he’s led us.

On the journey of small gains, our hearts will break a thousand times; that alone is enough of a cross to bear. We can watch our hearts break apart, or we can watch them break open. A heart, broken open, allows us to feel the broken heart of others and their sufferings. The small gains of following Christ can be seen in the generosity, in the caring, and in the tenderness we all share, in parting as well as in staying.

Is it worth it? The suffering? The crosses we must bear? Can we stand to gaze into the heart of our loss, the preciousness of what we are losing, and not look away? The greatest gift of love is the gesture of open arms – come what may because we care so much that we are helpless to do anything else. So, we accept the cost, the unavoidable blow to the heart. Better in this life, after all, for the heart to be broken – to take on the rich, the tender vulnerability of being human. We trust that love is a perpetual wound that is always worth taking. It reminds us that love is stronger than fear. Life is stronger than death. Hope is stronger than despair.
 
Sources:
http://www.progressiveinvolvement.com/progressive_involvement/2012/02/lectionary-blogging-mark-8-31-38.html
http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=378&C=82
http://day1.org/690-revising_the_agenda
http://rogerhousden.com/2012/01/08/loving-letting-go/

A Meditation: March 1, 2015 (Lent 3)

I thirst for …

Access to clean, safe, and affordable water is a basic human right essential for a healthy population, environment, and economy. Not everyone gets that right. The Commission for Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ first coined a term to explain why. In 1987, they came out with a report and coined the term, “environmental racism” Environmental discrimination can be defined as corporate and government actions and decisions that result in the unequal exposure of people of color and low-income people to environmental dangers that threaten their physical, social, economic, or environmental health and well-being.

The Commission found a link between a person’s race and one’s likelihood of living near a hazardous waste facility. This ground-breaking report prompted numerous other studies that supported the UCC’s conclusions. Evidence mounted quickly saying that people of color and low-income communities bear a lop-sided share of environmental dangers and thus are victims of environmental racism.  While many are quick to conclude that communities of color are targeted solely because of their generally low-income, many of demonstrate that race is more of a factor than class. In other words, if one were to compare a middle-class community of color to a low-income white community, and look at which community is more likely to have a hazardous waste facility sited there, the middle-class community of color would have a greater chance of being targeted for such a facility. In fact, in some cases, race is a more significant indicator of pollution burdens than income, poverty, childhood poverty, education, employment or home ownership.

For me, this is a faith issues. It is a thirst issue. Are we thirsty for justice? If we are thirsting for God to fill us, mold us and use us, are we also thirsting for all people to experience the same blessings? If others do not receive them, then my faith compels me to do my part to spread God’s love and compassion cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea. And for me, it starts locally. People of faith are called to care for all of our neighbors, regardless of their race, their income level, or their life circumstances. Can we look around us, during these dry and withered times, in our communities, with our neighbors, and say, “We thirst for righteousness, God.” When we say, as a church, that Black Lives matter, it means opening our eyes to these kinds of problems and working for change. If we say we are an anti-racist church, it means we pay attention when American Indian lands are victims of toxic assault. Today, hundreds of Indian Nations are being approached by both the waste disposal industry and the United States Government in search of new dumping grounds for the unwanted toxic, nuclear, medical and solid waste of industrial society. I read a story of Latino students in a school in California who were exposed to chemical pesticides in their schools. Officials knew about it and covered up the health risks. My faith tells me that God’s reign isn’t about supporting systems that make children sick and marginalized communities pay the price for economic progress. My faith tells me that when I thirst for justice, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living.

• I wanted to check all of this out on a local level. So I went online to check the environmental scorecard for pollution in Maryland. Here is what I found:The worst is Hareford County, north of Baltimore to the State line. Hareford County has a lot of non-white, low income, lower-educated people who are exposed to high levels of pollution and toxins.
• Montgomery County is more or less equally dispersed between race and class. If anything, white and high income families and children above poverty in Montgomery County have higher exposure to toxic chemical releases.

Which gets me to one more issue. It’s the difference between equity and justice. Sometimes, governments try to fix social problems by working for equity. In the case of environmental racism, it means that everyone share more equally in the risks. No one group of people should be singled out. So, as numbers show in Montgomery County, everyone gets poisoned more or less equally? That does not make sense to me. We are not talking about environmental equity. We are talking about environmental justice.

There is a fundamental difference between “poisoning people equally” and “stop poisoning people, period!”

Thirsting for justice, thirsting for righteousness means seeing the blessedness in each us. A blessedness that is diverse and wonderful. A blessedness that insists that all lives demand dignity and respect. A blessedness that offers all people a vision of who they are created to be.

If God is the source of our life, so let us worship God by living rightly. If God is the source of love, so let us worship God by loving genuinely. If God is the ground of being, so let us worship God by taking care of the earth that grounds us. If God is just, so let us worship God by thirsting for justice.

SOURCES:
http://www.ejnet.org/ej/ejlaw.pdf
http://www.ejnet.org/ej/principles.pdf
http://www.ucc.org/environmental-ministries_environmental-racism
http://www.umc.org/what-we-believe/environmental-racism
http://scorecard.goodguide.com/community/ejsummary.tcl?fips_county_code=24031&lang=eng#dist

Sermon for February 15, 2015 / Transfiguration Day, National Preach-in On Global Warming

A Vision for a Transfigured Creation

Mark 9:2-9 & Psalm 50:1-6

Mount Katahdin is the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. Seeing it might make you reconsider the old saying that all mountains in the East are just foothills in comparison to those in the West. Mount Katahdin is the most difficult non-technical climb in the East, and many of the trails have a tendency to go straight up. The most spectacular route involves taking the mile-long Knife Edge, which combines 2,000 foot drops on either side of the trail. It's definitely not a trail to get caught on in bad weather.

Many years ago when I was in scouts, troop chose a beautiful day to backpack to the summit of Katahdin. At the foot of the mountain flowers were beginning to bloom and a warm gentle breeze filled us with confidence as we went to tackle the Knife Edge. The trail that meandered through the pine forest eventually gave way to gravelly climbs on steeper slopes. However, once we got past the tree line, it seemed as if the mountain’s fury was not going to let us pass. We put on our raincoats and continued the climb. At one point, climbers need to use iron hand and foot grips to navigate the trail that goes straight up the rock face. As we climbed, the storm worsened. Stinging rain, driven by horizontal winds, began to shred the raincoats from our bodies. We were on our hands and knees, clinging to the side of the mountain and trembling with the anticipation of the unexpected. There was no way to move on. We slowly made our way back down the trail on our hands and knees, never making it to the Knife Edge, but learning to respect the Mountain. Of course, at the base of the mountain, life was beautiful and verdant.

I’m not much of a mountain climber. I’ve never been back to Katahdin. But as I remember this event I think of those who have tried to summit Mount Everest. Some make it. Many do not.  Bill Burke was one of the oldest climbers to summit Everest at age 71. He plans to return. When asked why, Burke said, “I love that mountain and think about it often.  Mt. Everest is beautiful, powerful, awe inspiring, fearsome and benevolent, all at the same time. It is always the same, and it is never the same. When I find myself blessed to be on its flanks, I feel like I am standing on sacred ground.”
Agreed. Mountains can be sacred places. It should be no surprise that mountaintop experiences part of our sacred stories.  As the waters of the great flood subside, Noah’s ark comes to rest in the mountains.  On the mountain of the Lord, Abraham draws his knife to sacrifice Isaac, and on the mountain God provides a substitute offering.  God calls Moses from a burning bush on a mountain. On a mountain, God gives the Law to Moses.  And on that very same mountain, centuries later, the Prophet Elijah hears God in a sound of sheer silence. Jesus delivers his best-known sermon on a mountain. And today, we get the story of a backpacking trip with Jesus up a mountain. On the mountain, Jesus’ shines in dazzling, transforming light.  On the mountain, people they hear the voice of God and see Moses and Elijah.

A lot of people connect with God on mountains. How about you? Where do you connect with God? When I ask this question, a vast majority of people tell me that they sense God most when they are in nature. People tell me about hiking up a mountain and catching the view at the summit, taking a walk in the woods, going to the shore, or working in the garden. Last week, Public Religion Research gave their findings about why Americans are conflicted about climate change. One of the survey questions connected spiritual experience with nature. Public Religion Research asked people how often they feel a deep sense of wonder about the universe, nature and the earth. A majority of the 3000 or so people reported a moderate to very high connection.

I have to wonder, if people feel deep spiritual connections in nature, why don’t we spend more time outside? If we feel a sense of wonder and awe wandering around creation, why don’t we take better care of it? What’s the ambivalence about? Why are we even arguing about the reality of global warming and climate change? The good news is this: 57% of those surveyed by Public Religion Research believe God gave us the responsibility to live with other living creatures and resources on our planet – they are not there just for human benefit. We could call this a “stewardship” mindset. For me, this is a transforming, transfiguring trend. The bad news: many people of faith are stuck in a worn-out way of treating the earth. 37% of those surveyed believe God gave human beings the right to use other living beings and the resources of the planet for human benefit. We could call this a “dominion” mindset.

In spite of the mounting scientific data, global warming continues to be controversial. I don’t think the controversy is over the fact of climate change. Global temperature has increased over the last 50 years. Glaciers are definitely melting. Tundra is thawing. Ocean levels are rising.  There is more CO2 in the atmosphere. The controversy seems to be over the degree to which human activity is responsible for this warming and the extent to which changes in human behavior can stop it. I do not possess the scientific tools to resolve that controversy, although I am convinced that human activities bear much responsibility for greenhouse gases, which contribute to the warming.  I think substantial changes in human behavior would moderate global warming.

My vision of a transfigured creation is not just about buying LED lightbulbs and installing solar power on your house. I love those ideas, but there is some inner-work that needs to be done, first. Before we renew creation, there is some transfiguring change that has to happen in our minds. WHY are we buying the LEDs and solar panels? WHY would be need to make sacrifices to our comfort? Our mindset about global warming is influenced by hundreds of years of assumptions that have come to us from names of those philosophers and scientists you learned about in college: Kant, and Locke, Copernicus and Descartes. Once upon a time, humans and our climate were intimately linked. Humans understood themselves as part of creation and responsible for its care and protection. Now, we humans see ourselves as displaced from the rest of creation, estranged and isolated from a natural world, needing to subdue it and tame it.

For me, a vision of a transfigured creation means that we hear the voice of God, in creation. This is the experience of Psalm writers, who insist that the earth speaks about the glory of God. Listen to these words from Psalm 50:

The mighty God, the Lord, has summoned all humankind from east to west! God’s glory-light shines from the beautiful Temple on Mount Zion. God comes with the noise of thunder, surrounded by devastating fire; a great storm rages round. God has come to judge the people. To heaven and earth God shouts, “Gather together my own people who by their sacrifice upon my altar have promised to obey me.” God will judge them with complete fairness, for all heaven declares that God is just.

Creation is God’s court, summoning us to worship.

In every mountaintop vista, in every ocean wave crashing the shore, in every star in the sky on a clear night, we hear God saying, “This, this is my beloved. Listen to it. Listen.”

If we listen, I think we will hear something disturbing. We will hear creation crying for justice.
Global warming is, like food, housing, and healthcare, a matter of justice. Those most adversely affected by global warming have the least ability to do anything about it.  Those who have the most to gain by staying the course also have the greatest ability to protect themselves from the direst results.  Sure, all will suffer from climate change, but the world’s poor will suffer the most.

I want us to consider that our faith calls us us to love the poor. If we are really listening to the voice of the earth, we will realize that the poor are not just poor people. Nature itself is the new poor. When we talk about God’s preferential option for the poor and oppressed, we must include that natural world within our scope. Respect for the natural world will mean some commitments from those of us who are on the privileged side of the equation. It will mean converting from our consumerist lifestyles, addressing poverty, avoiding war and its devastating ecological effects, promoting education in ecological responsibility, and appreciating the beauty of nature, which summons us to God’s presence. If we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, then the range of neighbors now includes the whale, the monarch butterfly, the ferns growing on the side of the bike path, the entire web of life. If the common good requires solidarity with all who suffer, then our compassion extends to suffering species caught in patterns of extinction.

So here is what I think needs to happen. What I’m about to say is not a solution. It is not a technical fix. Let’s call it an adaptive challenge – in other words, something we need to do to transfigure our minds and our souls. I think we need to reclaim the idea of repentance. I’m not talking about walking around with “repent for the end is near” signs in downtown Silver Spring. I think we need to transpose the idea of repentance – to shift it it from the religious world into the civil world. Repentance needs to become part of our national vocabulary. This may not be as ridiculous as it sounds. Other religious ideas have already made the shift. Like the idea of stewardship. Stewardship started out as a religious term. Now ecologists use it all the time, talking about environmental stewardship. What if the idea of repentance could make the same leap? After all, the world simply means “to turn” – to make a 180 and go the other direction. What might that look like?
First, it would mean learning how to show true remorse for what we have done to the earth as a way of showing respect to that which has been violated.

But we all know remorse is not enough. Another part of civic repentance means making restitution. This could mean financial punishments, sanctions, and civic pressure on businesses that continue to abuse and neglect the earth. Restitution also means restorative justice. In other words, justice to an injured earth requires that we work to restore the victim to wholeness. We need to find ways to listen to the earth’s cries and help those who have hurt the earth have a stake in its repair.
Many times we stop there.  We show remorse and we make amends. But repentance has one more step. Those who are truly repentant must restructure their lives. Guilty parties must show, over a period of time, that we have transformed and transfigured our own lives – that we have new priorities that are sustained over time.

Some people say that we need a moral megalogue on civic repentance. A "moral megalogue" is a dialogue projected onto a larger scale. It is a process by which we identify shared fundamental values that guide our lives.  How could we possible get entire societies to come together to affirm a set of values by means of a moral megalogue? The process occurs by linking millions of local conversations -- between couples, in neighborhood bars and pubs, in coffee houses, next to water coolers at work -- into society-wide networks and shared public focal points.

It has happened before.  Until 1970, the environment was not considered a shared core value in Western societies. Society as a whole paid it little heed to the ecology, and it was not listed among America's core values.  The publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring triggered a nationwide megalogue.  A massive oil spill and the ensuing protests in Santa Barbara, California, and the Three-Mile Island nuclear power plant incident further impressed the subject on the national agenda. Thousands of people gathered in New York City to listen to pro-environment speeches and to pick up garbage along Fifth Avenue. Two hundred thousand people gathered on the Washington Mall in 1970 to demonstrate concern for the environment on Earth Day.  The same process of moral megalogue could strengthen any one country's commitment to repentance, forgiveness, and restoration.
Our God is not merely the God who changes the way we see.  Our God is also the God who changes who we are. So we work for a transfigured creation: 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. A world that calls us to repentance, to restoration. A World that summons us to live in God’s beautiful light.

Sources:
http://www.alanarnette.com/blog/2014/02/05/everest-2014-climb-everest/
http://www.slideshare.net/rjone07/believers-sympathizers-and-skeptics-why-americans-are-conflicted-about-climate-change-environmental-policy-and-science
https://sermons.logos.com/submissions/111189-Global-Warming-The-Transfiguration#content=/submissions/111189
http://earthministrytemp.org/nature-as-the-new-poor/
http://www2.gwu.edu/~ccps/etzioni/A251.html
A Political Theology of Climate Change by John Northcutt

Sermon for February 8, 2015

Revolutionary Healing
February 8, 2015

As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them. That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons. Mark 1:29-29

Ok, so it’s pretty well established that math and I do not get along well. I’ve mentioned it before. That’s why I’m so well qualified to delve into a basic mathematical idea called Set Theory with you this morning. Wait. Don’t go to sleep on me yet. Let’s work with this idea for a minute. Sets are exactly what you might think they are—groups of things. A set is a collection of distinct objects, which when grouped together become an object in its own right. Like the numbers 2,4,6. They are each individual numbers, but we can combine them into a set of even numbers {2,4,6…}. Sets are groups of objects with common characteristics: Prime numbers, unicorns, tofu recipes, whatever ... you can make a set of it. Set Theory is a way of talking about what sets do and how they relate to each other.

One day, a social scientist came along and said, “You know what? We can talk about organizations as sets. When I look at organizations, I can see that they form around common social characteristics. For instance, some organizations are what I’m going to call ‘bounded sets.’” Bounded-set organizations have firm outer boundaries that must be crossed by those who want to belong to the organization. Bounded-set organizations have strict rituals, rules, and language that make it possible for others to know who is in and who is out. We could say that bounded set organizations tend to gravitate towards a certain singular criteria in order to allow people to become members. Churches are pros at this. Churches tend to have coded church language that newcomers don’t always understand. We have rituals during worship, like when we sit and when we stand. We have rules, like how decisions are made and who gets to make those decisions. The boundaries can be confusing to someone who wants to be part but doesn’t understand the characteristics of the congregation that make it come together as a set.

Some bounded-set churches make “belonging” the requirement to become a member: “You must be one of us in order to be accepted.”

Others make “”believing” a qualification for admittance: “If you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior (or affirm the Apostle’s creed, or agree to our statement of faith),you can be one of us.”

Still others require a certain type of “behavior”: “Here is the list of moral and ethical requirements we hold as a church. No drinking, No swearing, No dancing. Follow the 10 commandments. If you obey our behavioral norm, you will be pure and can be part of our group.”

Church consultants tend to settle into one of these areas in order bring renewal to congregations. Some tell us that the renewal of the church will come though working on belief, for instance, reclaiming traditional doctrine. Others emphasize belonging though innovative outreach projects and new member initiatives, new budgets and new buildings. Others may emphasize behaving though social action, creative worship, or liturgical worship. However, each one of these avenues can act like fence that keeps certain members within the perimeter and other people out.

There is another kind of set in organizations. They are called centered sets. Where a bounded-set organization recognizes people in relationship to its boundary, a centered-set organization recognizes people in relationship to the center. If the bounded-set church is like a traditional ranch with high fences to keep the right cattle in, the centered set church is like an Outback ranch with a wellspring at its center. The Outback ranch has no fences, just a watering hole. The rancher has no need to control the livestock. The animals always come back to the center for water. The primary concern of those in this set is to bring others into relationship with the center. Because there are no firm outer boundaries, centered-set of organizations can feel chaotic and disorderly. Let’s be honest. Some people prefer fences. They like a clear line to say who is in and who is out. It can feel better to have some firm guidelines. It is harder to find order in chaos.

I wonder if we could understand God as a centered-set organization. God is like this (throwing arms wide open), forever going out from God’s self, creating out of love, embracing out of love and pulling the creation into the center. Most humans are different. We are more like a bounded set, (hunching over and pulling in arms as if clinging to something). We constrict, protect what we think belongs to us and forming boundaries to keep out those who scare us or who are too different from us. We have all been on the outside of a bounded set. We’ve been told that we lack a certain something for entrance to the get-together: we are too young or too old, too ugly or too pretty, the wrong gender, the wrong sexual identity, the wrong race, the wrong political party. We went to the wrong school or lived in the wrong place. We didn’t have enough money or didn’t belong to the right club or organization. We weren’t smart enough or educated enough. Who’s in and who’s out? Nearly all of us know what it’s like to be out. But the amazing love of God keeps reaches out wide across all lines and boundaries and pulling is into the center to organize us into a new set, a new group – something called the People of God.

I see Jesus doing this in today’s reading from Mark’s Gospel. For the second Sunday in a row, we have a reading about exorcisms – Jesus casting our demons from suffering people. Unlike today when we are unconvinced about exorcisms, it was a different story in Jesus’ day. Possession was a well-known and accepted reality throughout the ancient world. When Jesus walked the earth, there were all kinds of healers who would make money by going from town to town casting out demons for a fee. Traveling exorcists commonly performed before sensation-seeking crowds. So, at first, it probably looked like Jesus was another one of these faith healers.  The crowds watching Jesus would expect to be entertained, astounded and amazed by the wonder-working miracle show of Jesus of Nazareth.

So, notice how Jesus changes the geography of power. Traveling exorcists who heal others for money don’t do it to restore the suffering person. They do it to become wealthier at the expense of another’s pain. They do it to enlarge their own ego. I imagine Jesus could have been tempted by this. He could have given the crowds a good show and become a famous faith healer. But notice how in the midst of the miracles, Jesus steals away to pray alone. In his times of solitude, as he prays, I think Jesus is re-focusing his mission. He has not come to build his own empire. He has come to topple one. Jesus has come to establish a new government – the Reign of God, built on human wholeness, justice, and compassion.

Make no mistake, people in Jesus’ world needed some healing. Roman rule was emotionally and physically destructive to people in Judea. Despite Rome’s earlier tolerance of Jewish religious life, subjection to Roman rule began to require a break with Jewish religious traditions. Jesus comes to re-direct these realities. His healings are not just random acts of charity. Healings are not side show spectacles to make a quick buck.  Healings are his way of showing that God’s demands human well-being, even in the face of death.

Consider the demon-possessed man in our story. The man is an unwilling participant in a social and religious system that labels, excludes and dominates certain classes of people. Jesus chooses to heal this man to provoke conflict. With all eyes on him, Jesus engages in subversive public action -- he restores the demonized man to wholeness. In Mark’s gospel, when Jesus heals it is an act of public protest. In fact, whenever Jesus heals the sick, conflict escalates between Jesus and the religious leaders. When Jesus heals people, he challenges the authority of the religious establishment that works in collusion with the Roman government. Every time he heals, he symbolically calls for an end to a corrupt religious system that segregates, stigmatizes, and oppresses people. Healing is an act of protest.

Jesus comes to heal the world, to heal us, not only of our illnesses to exorcize the demonic lies that uphold oppressive systems. If we want to walk in the steps of the living Christ, then our teaching, our healing, and our spiritual care must challenge the corrupted foundations that people think will keep them steady.

The renewal of the church, the re-making of our communities, the healing of our warring world will come neither through a recovery of doctrine, nor through innovative projects of evangelism, nor social action, nor in creative techniques or liturgical worship, nor in elegant sermons, nor in new budgets, new buildings, and new members.  Healing renewal will not come about by believing, behaving or belonging. Healing renewal will come about by becoming …by becoming a community of compassion rather than a congregation of condemnation;

• by becoming the people who share God’s grace instead of those who think we get to decide who is in and who is outside of God’s love;
• by becoming spiritual beings, living grounded, balanced lives;
•  by becoming the congregation that can expand the circle of our tribe to include not just our family, our friends, our nation, but all people everywhere
• by becoming the protesters, the revolutionaries, the peacemakers, the prophets, the activists, the teachers, the leaders, the holy provocateurs, the healers who refuse to let unjust systems of oppression have the last word.

The renewal of the church will come about by becoming a local community whose common life bears the marks of love. For all of us how know love, we know there is some pain involved. But the pain of love seems to be worth the prize.

A Closing Blessing:
That each ill will
be released from you
and each sorrow
be shed from you
and each pain
be made comfort for you
and each wound
be made whole in you
that joy will
arise in you
and strength will
take hold of you
and hope will
take wing for you
and all be made well.
–Jan Richardson

Sources:
http://paintedprayerbook.com/2015/02/01/epiphany-5-that-all-be-made-well/#sthash.Bo5OBD0u.dpuf
http://www.politicaltheology.com/blog/the-politics-of-healing-mark-129-39/
https://www.regent.edu/acad/global/publications/jbpl/vol2no1/Niewold_Jack_Final.pdf
http://nextreformation.com/?p=5872#sthash.9uQ6fNp1.dpuf
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/loveisanorientation/2011/02/belong-believe-become/#ixzz3RA6w9IDt
http://www.geocities.ws/kidhistory/religiou.htm

A Meditation, February 1, 2105

A Meditation
Mark 1:21-28

Our world is filled with so called “authorities.” They fill the media with their most confident opinions. Health experts. Sporting pundits. Dietitians. Gardening experts. Stock market advisers. Psychologists. Astrologers. Ethical analysts. Political commentators. Automotive experts. Preachers claiming the only true gospel. Authorities are everywhere. They claim to really know what they are talking about. They want to influence us, and in some cases manipulate us for their purposes. The trouble is many of these authorities do not deliver what they promise. The stock market expert accepts no responsibility when his opinion costs you thousands. The automotive expert doesn’t care if you follow his opinion and end up buying a lemon. It doesn’t matter to the TV preacher if you gave your money away on an empty promise.

Today we listen to a different kind of authority. In the town of Capernaum, he taught in the synagogue’s Sabbath service. Those who listened “were astonished at his teaching, for unlike the scribes he taught them with a note of authority.” To tell you where the listeners are coming from, there is a deranged, demon-possessed man running around in their worship space. Jesus addresses the demon in the man, and it screams, and shrieks, and convulses. The people treat it like it’s an ordinary event. “Oh yeah, that’s Harvey. He’s just like that.” But when Jesus heals the man, now the people are more amazed. Hurting, victimized people are commonplace. Healing is not. When Jesus of Nazareth taught, and befriended, and healed people, something from deep within the human soul cried, “Yes! Yes! This is it! This is the real thing.” He awakens an echo of God that lies deep inside us. No matter how far buried under their junk, the sacred resonates in his presence. A forgotten, neglected, or wounded part of our humanity gasps with new hope. Jesus awakens life that seems buried and bleak. Jesus speaks to the core of our being, and that core stirs and starts to come to life. How different his authority is from the counterfeit experts of the age.

Have you ever heard that voice, speaking to the core of your being? If not, then today is a chance to realize that Christ, the one who speaks with God’s authority, has the power to liberate us from all that keeps us from being whole people. Christ shatters the domineering designs that shackle people to lower standards for life than God intends. Jesus stands ready to help us caste aside that which binds and constricts us, the demons that defeat our best and highest purposes. Christ stands ready with the authority of grace, which breaks the power of sin over us.

I know. We don’t like to talk about demons. But I’m not talking about bat-winged creatures that torment you. I’m not talking about the enemies of TV preachers and priests from horror movies. To me, any force that prevents even a single one of us from experiencing the full humanity God intends for all humanity is demonic. I think of possession as an unhealthy way of relating to God, our fellow human beings, and even ourselves. Instead of working in collaboration with communities, the powers of evil manipulate and use others for their own benefit. It’s like those invasive root systems I pull out of my yard every year – you know that vine that grows 15 feet a year and chokes out the tree it twists itself upon to find life? Evil is like that. It needs a host. Those little plant shoots looks innocent enough in the early spring when they pop out of the ground. We don’t recognize the extent of that plant’s root system. Just let those tender shoots grow for a few weeks. It quickly overtakes everything around it. Let it go too long, and drastic measures are needed to make it go away. And like that dreaded vine in my yard, we can’t get rid of evil all together. It keeps coming back. And we keep fighting it. It takes vigilance. It’s hard, work that does not seem to get a lot of long-term benefit.

The deeply-rooted evils of racism, sexism, and homophobia haunt our communities through generations. Poverty enslaves millions around the world, keeping them uneducated, unemployed, homeless, hungry, and hopeless despite an overabundance of resources. Maybe if we close our eyes they will go away. No, that doesn’t work. They grow too quickly for us to just ignore. Maybe we can run from them? But that won’t work either. Those who have tried know that our demons follow us.

A while ago I watched the movie “I Am Legend” with Will Smith playing Dr. Robert Neville, a world-famous epidemiologist. It’s a remake of Omega Man starring Chuck Heston. That movie still haunts me. After a cancer cure mutates into a plague, Dr. Neville finds himself the only person left in New York City, and perhaps in the entire world. Something in his blood grants him immunity from a disease that turns people into sub-human, aggressive, violent killers. Neville’s only protection is his fortified bunker, and the sunlight -- which drives back the demonic hordes until nightfall. He tirelessly works on a cure for this disease, even though he thinks he is the only human left. But why?

At one point in the movie, he meets two more survivors. They are traveling to a survivor’s colony, but Neville won’t go. He says, “The people who are trying to make this world worse are not taking a day off. How can I? Light up the darkness.” I won’t give it all away, but by the end of the movie, Neville lights up the darkness. He doesn’t run and he doesn’t cover his eyes. He touches the evil around him. His actions give the rest of humanity a cure.

If we call ourselves disciples of Jesus, then we are called to touch some of this evil, to light up the darkness, to confront the invasive evil in our own lives and in our communities. We are called to name the powers that bind our lives and the lives of our sisters and brothers. We are called to name the abuse, the addictions, the bigotry, the violence, the poverty, the greed, the apathy, and every other demon that haunts this old world.

As we take communion today, I want us to think about the authority that God gave to Jesus, and the authority that Jesus gives to us. Many of us have demons we are dealing with today. Your job may not be going well or you may have lost it. You may be struggling with illness or are feeling the pain of someone who is. You may be depressed, anxious, nervous, or scared. You may be looking for guidance or struggling to know where God is leading you. . We need to be healed in body, mind, and soul. We need to be raised from the dead and dying places in our lives. We need to be cleansed from every division. We need to be freed from the demonic powers that keep us separated from God and one another. We need help to become the people God created us to be. As you take the bread and the cup, remember the unbounded compassion that moves God to embrace us in all our faults and frailty and love us even more. Don’t be afraid. Light up the darkness.

Sermon for January 11, 2015 / Baptism of Christ

Birth of New Creation

John the Baptizer appeared in the wild, preaching a baptism of life-change that leads to forgiveness of sins. People thronged to him from Judea and Jerusalem and, as they confessed their sins, were baptized by him in the Jordan River into a changed life. John wore a camel-hair habit, tied at the waist with a leather belt. He ate locusts and wild field honey. As he preached he said, “The real action comes next: The star in this drama, to whom I'm a mere stagehand, will change your life. I'm baptizing you here in the river, turning your old life in for a kingdom life. His baptism—a holy baptism by the Holy Spirit—will change you from the inside out.” At this time, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. The moment he came out of the water, he saw the sky split open and God's Spirit, looking like a dove, come down on him. Along with the Spirit, a voice: “You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.” Mark 1:4-11, The Message

Jesus saw the heavens ripped open. The ferocity of Mark’s text doesn’t always come through in most English translation. Most say something like, “He saw the heavens opening and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.” But Mark actually wrote that when Jesus arose from the water, he saw the heavens ripped open and the Spirit descending upon him through that gash in the fabric of the sky.

We’re accustomed to a gentler notion of baptism – like what we celebrated today in the baptism of Benjamin. A child is brought into the community of God’s people. Family members, godparents, and congregants promise to be a part of the community of the baptized child’s life. The moment is filled with warmth. It’s a sign of our togetherness. It’s our way of saying we belong to one another and that we are glad to be on this journey with each another. Hardly anything we do in the church community is more affirming of our life together than our celebration of the sacrament of baptism.

Jesus’ baptism is not like this, at least not in the Gospel of Mark. In Mark’s account, the heavens split open forcefully. The phrase only appears a few times in the Bible. For instance, in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, Abraham splits apart the wood he uses to sacrifice Isaac. Luke and Matthew soften their accounts of the baptism of Jesus and use a word that is more comforting. They say that the heavens were opened or revealed. For them, things are revealed; for Mark the heavens rip.

The only place where Matthew, Mark and Luke all refer to something ripped apart is at the crucifixion. Mark says “Jesus uttered a loud cry, breathed his last, and the veil of the Temple was ripped in two from top to bottom.” Mark wants us to understand something forceful and unsettling about Jesus’ baptism. “Jesus saw the sky split open and God’s Spirit, looking like a dove.” If the heavens split open, one would think that God would appear to everyone. The irony is that the heavens rip apart and no one but Jesus even notices. Jesus sees the heavens split apart and the dove descend. No one else perceives it.

This is the pattern throughout the rest of Mark’s Gospel. People don’t see or hear. They don’t understand. They are not changed. After he is baptized, Jesus goes into the desert where he is tested. Then he begins his ministry of healing. At first, it goes well. People are amazed and his fame spreads. But by the end of Mark chapter one, right at the very beginning of this work, people begin to question Jesus. They ask, “What is this, a new teaching?” By chapter two, just barely into his ministry, after Jesus has done nothing but make people better, the scribes charge him with blasphemy. We haven’t even gotten out of the second chapter of the Mark’s Gospel and a plot is already in place. The end is already arranged. The crucifixion looms in the distance. By chapter six, those in his hometown say he is too big for his britches. By chapter eight Jesus has healed countless illnesses. He has fed five thousand and then another four thousand people on what appear to be scraps. He has forgiven sins. He has calmed storms. The religious authorities cannot accept this perceived challenge to their power. Jesus threatens to reveal their hypocrisy, their pretense, their comfort and their denial. So they do what comes naturally. They do the very thing that Jesus has come to change about human ways. They shut him up — permanently. They nail him to the cross. And as he breaths his last, the heavens split apart. The world seems oblivious to what has just happened, everyone except for one representative of empire and military might – one hardened, battle-trained Roman Centurion who sees it all and says, “Surely this man was the son of God.”

Of course, the story isn’t over. Easter comes. Jesus rises. Love gets the last word. Ultimately, it becomes the basis for the Christian church. But a funny thing happens along the way. The church that grew out of Jesus’ resurrection falls prey to the same human faults that preceded it. In Jesus’ name, war is justified. Wealth and privilege are seen as gifts of God, while poverty and powerlessness are characterized as God’s judgment. Hatred and revenge toward others is attributed to God. We saw this in France over the past week, as craven and murderers justified their craven killings in the name of God, as if God somehow needs human protection with guns.

As blatantly horrible as shootings are, and as much as we ought to unmask and undermine the perpetrators, I wonder what Jesus would say if he joined us here this morning. I wonder whether Jesus would ask us to focus on where our ears might be blocked and our eyes closed. I wonder if Jesus would want us to know how the heavens were split open at our baptisms. I think Jesus would want us to know what difference our baptisms make. I think he would remind us that baptism is the start of something new—the birth of a new creation. Today we heard the opening words from Genesis. In the beginning, out of nothing, God creates. Every time God inspects the creation, God sees it is good. We affirm the same theology about Baptism. God looks at our baptisms and sees something good. Baptism is the beginning of our transformation. The heavens rip open once again. God creates something new. And it is good. It is beautiful. God sees you as part of creation and says in admiration, “Good. Beloved. Beautiful.”

Garrison Keillor tells the story of Larry the Sad Boy.  Larry the Sad Boy was saved twelve times, which is an all-time record in the Lutheran Church. The Lutheran Church has no altar call, no organist playing “Just as I Am,” as people come forward to be born again.  These are Scandinavian Lutherans, and they repent the same way that they sin -- discreetly, tastefully, and at the right time. And they bring a Jell-O-salad for afterwards.  Keillor writes, “Larry Sorenson came forward weeping buckets and crumpled up at the communion rail, to the amazement of the minister, who had just delivered a dry sermon on stewardship, and who now had to put his arm around this limp, saggy individual and pray with him and see if he had a ride home. Twelve times.  Granted, we’re born in original sin and are worthless and vile, but twelve conversions is too many. There comes a point where you should dry your tears, and join the building committee and start grappling with the problems of the church furnace and the church roof and make church coffee and be of use, but Larry just kept on repenting and repenting.”

Keillor reminds us that repentance has a point, and that point is to get about doing God’s work. It begins in baptism. God creates something new and beautiful in order for us to do something new and beautiful.

If Jesus joined us here this morning, I think he would ask us two related sets of questions. First, he would ask, “Do you understand that in this world into which you have been baptized, love replaces hate, humility replaces arrogance, forgiveness replaces retribution, and peace replaces violence? Do you understand that in this world into which you have been baptized, these are not just noble ideals — these are values by which you are to live your life?”

Then he would ask a second set of questions. “Do you realize how difficult it will be to do live out values like love, humility, forgiveness and peace? Do you understand how uncomfortable these values make people when you take them seriously? Are you aware that human beings fear those who expose our tendency for destruction and that the knee-jerk response is to destroy that which would expose us? Do you realize that people may even use the name of God to condemn you for living according to your faith?”

The baptism of Jesus is our baptism, and each one is a heaven-ripping, world-shattering affair. Once the waters of baptism touch you, there is no turning back. In our baptism, in this unmasking of the violence that we justify in our world and justify in ourselves, in this ripping open of the heavens, we can find the dove of peace. Peace within us and between us. Peace that lies far beyond the cycles of violence and retribution we see every day. Peace that comes as the heavens rip apart and we listen for the voice of God. Can you hear it? “Good. Beloved. Beautiful. You are my beloved child -- my new creation. In you I am well pleased.”