Sermon for May 17, 2009

Christians on the Margins
Matthew 28:18-20
May 17, 2009

Marybeth Hicks once wrote a great piece in the Washington Times. Listen to her description of a meal at her house:

The mashed potatoes sit in stiff, icy peaks on the plates, thin moats of beef gravy surrounding their starchy edges. A while ago, the combination of boiled potatoes, butter, sour cream and milk spun on the whirring whisks of the electric mixer, promising the tasty comfort of carbohydrates. But now, the steam long dissipated, dinner mostly consumed, there remain two lumpy mounds of glop — as appetizing as papier-mache, or perhaps wet lint from the dryer. After 15 years of parenting, the dinnertime battle rages on. Besides the mashed potatoes, tonight’s menu is pot roast and a medley of frozen peas and carrots -- a reliable meal, nothing fancy. Earlier, the lingering scent from the crockpot had everybody salivating like Pavlov’s dog, subliminally suggesting a tasty dinner — except that two of my children won’t eat mashed potatoes. This is simply ridiculous. Who doesn't eat mashed potatoes? . . . Tonight I decide to ignore both my pediatrician and conventional wisdom. Tonight I’m force-feeding. “Nobody gets up from this table until all the food on your plate is eaten. Period.” Two heads snap toward me in horror. “All of it?” they ask in unison. “Every bite,” I declare, drawing a line in the mashed potatoes. “But I'm allergic,” my daughter cries as she scratches her arms and fakes a sneeze. “I don't like potatoes,” my son protests, stating the obvious. “Too bad,” I reply in a tone of voice that conveys I’m serious. They pick up their forks and push the spuds around on the plate . . . My picky eaters reluctantly shovel some mashed potatoes onto their utensils and slowly bring the pasty food to their lips, their youthful faces contorting in anguish. Their eyes water. The color drains from their cheeks. They subdue the gag reflex — an obvious effort to gross me out.

Sometimes, we in the church treat the Bible like a great meal that’s spoiled by a cold glob of mashed potatoes. We read the Bible and listen to preachers, or family, or friends talk about their spiritual journeys and we pick and choose which teachings are appetizing and which ones are indigestible. For many people, faith is a little mix of this, and a dash of that. Throw in a little of God’s love, stir in a belief that all people are good to the core and will become angels when they go to heaven, fold in the belief that it doesn’t matter what religious faith you belong to because they all teach the same moral lessons. But leave out the stuff that doesn’t taste good. Don’t even allow thoughts about God’s judgment or human sin to enter the recipe. Maybe foreign missions leave a bad taste in your mouth. And tithing one’s income to God’s work is definitely out. It’s human nature to want pleasure without having to experience sacrifice.

For some, the most tasteless aspect of church life is that dirty little “E” word – evangelism. Evangelism isn’t only a dirty word, it’s confusing. We are not clear on why we should even share our faith with others. Some people ask, “What gives is the right to force our faith on others?” Others insist that all must believe the Christian message or risk eternal punishment without God.

We call the words of Matthew 28 the Great Commission. Christians over the centuries have interpreted these words to mean that God expects us to go out and make converts to Christianity. In 313 C.E., when the Roman Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity, our faith changed from an illegal minority to the established religion of the Roman Empire. Convinced that Christendom owned the right answers to the world’s problems, the Church and the Empire used the Great Commission as marching orders to expand their territory. Conversion of the masses justified any necessary means of persuasion to make it happen. Charlemagne typified the thinking at the time. Before he became the Holy Roman Emperor, he was warring with the Saxons. The goal was conversion of the pagan Saxons to the Christian faith. Because the goal was so worthwhile, Charlemagne approved of any means necessary to make them convert. In the year 755, the Saxons were defeated, and they submitted to mass baptisms over the next two years. Charlemagne wrote, “If there is anyone of the Saxon people lurking among them unbaptized, and if he scorns to come to baptism and he wishes to absent himself and stay a pagan, then let him die.”

This attitude is called triumphalism. Triumphalism refers to the tendency to present our faith as the full and complete account of reality, leaving little room for debate or difference of opinion. Triumphalism expects unflinching loyalty from its subjects. It says, “You can survive and even thrive if you become like us. You can keep your life by giving up your identity. Until you do that, we will call you inferior.” Triumphalism wants to keep one group at the center, single-handedly controlling who’s in and who’s out of the circle, even if it takes violence to keep that control. I'm reminded of a Peanuts cartoon in which Sally tells Linus, "I would have made a good evangelist." Linus asks, "Oh, yeah? How come?" Sally says, "You know that boy who sits behind me in the classroom? I convinced him that my religion was better than his." Linus asks, "How'd you do that?" And Sally says, "I hit him over the head with my lunchbox."

Haven’t we had enough clubbing each other in the name of religion? Can we avoid hitting each other over the head with our cultural, political and religious lunch boxes or calling judgment down on those who are different?

Triumphalism was effective when Christians were on top of the religious dog pile. But we find ourselves in different times. As I have shared over the past weeks, the era of Christendom is fading. In the USA, organized Christian religious practices are shrinking and Christianity has a decreasing social impact. Christian churches, once founded and established to make a difference in the lives of others, now face a time of change and confusion, a time of diminished purpose and vision. In this new religious context, we are becoming one religious tradition among many — a faith on the margins instead of the center.

When it comes to sharing our faith, we face new challenges. On one hand, our Scriptures tell us to go into the world and make disciples. We are called to speak about our faith in compelling and convincing ways. On the other hand, our models of evangelism don’t work for us anymore. Must we find ourselves "telling the old, old story of Jesus" by insisting that others must believe in Jesus as the only son of God and Savior, else they are surely going to hell? Must we thump others over the head with our lunch boxes? We aren't practiced in doing evangelism other than the way our ancestors did. For much of Christian history, believers affirmed that apart from Christ there is no salvation, and they understood this to mean that those who did not have faith in Christ were condemned to eternal torments. This provided powerful incentive to share the gospel with people all around the world. It also led to failure to appreciate the positive contributions of other religious communities.

David Barrett identified 10,000 religions in the 2001 edition of the World Christianity Encyclopedia — 10,000 separate religions that humanity has turned to in its attempt to understand and get closer to the divine. Of those 10,000, 150 of them have one million members or more. Is it reasonable to believe that Jesus is the only way to the only God, and that the other 9,999 religions are false? How do we, as a faith of weakening majority, talk about Jesus Christ in a pluralistic world? How do we approach interfaith situations apart from triumphalism? Where do we draw those lines about some of those other 9,999 religions? What gives us the right to claim that our truth is truer than someone else’s? Who gives us the authority?

One of my majors in college was English. I ended up taking many classes with Dr. Peters — a pompous man who regularly intimidated students. He impressed fear into most of his students. His authority came from his title, his position, and his ability to scare us. In a literature course on the age of classicism, Dr. Peters bellowed, “Braddock! What, according to Alexander Pope, is the requirement for being a British magistrate?” He scowled at me as I sat in stunned silence. “Well, Braddock, what’s your answer?” I would finally stammer a made-up answer. “I think Pope says if a man wants to be a magistrate, he has to have a wife who sells Tupperware.” Dr. Peters shook his head and looked at me in disgust before moving on to the next victim.

I was also a teaching assistant for another English professor, Dr. Paul. One afternoon he handed me a stack of papers to grade. As I went though the pile of freshmen English journals, I was disgusted by how poor the work was. Each passing paper was worse than the one before it, and the marks I gave reflected my loathing for their pasty writing. I delivered the graded papers back to Dr. Paul, shaking my head in disdain. The next day I went to his office, and he had a stack of papers for me to look through. They were actually the journals I had corrected the day before. Dr. Paul had gone through and changed all of the grades to higher marks. When I asked him about it, he simply quoted an OT prophet: “Matt, in wrath, remember mercy.” That lesson has stayed with me. There is no doubt in my mind why Dr. Paul had a very devoted band of students on campus. Dr. Peter’s authority was fed by the fear of his students. Dr. Paul’s authority was rooted in mercy.

I think the same should be true with Christians. If we want to have the authority to speak about our faith, then our words and actions need to be rooted in how we show mercy, not in how we cause others to avoid us. Our message is not about scaring followers into obedience. We follow and believe because we’ve been marked by love. It’s time for the church to jettison ends-justifies-the-means evangelism. It’s time for us to embrace the kind of humility and suffering love that marked the ministry of Jesus.

About a dozen years ago, news outlets reported on an amendment to KY state law that allowed ministers to carry concealed weapons in church buildings. On the Today Show, Maria Shriver interviewed a pastor who played a pivotal role in the new law. The preacher reported that down-and-outers looking for money often visit churches and he suggested that having a gun might provide protection from those who might desire to steal church contributions or hurt employees. Bewildered, Maria Shriver asked the preacher if he understood that his reliance upon a handgun stood at odds with the Christian proclamation of peace and reconciliation. Imagine having the wife of Arnold Schwarzeneggar, the poster boy for violent entertainment, reminding the church that the gospel bids believers to resolve conflict with methods that are different from those that rely upon physical force.

The gun-toting preacher stands in stark contrast to another news account from the University of Southern California Medical School. In August of 1993, a young woman named Sophia White picked up a .38 handgun and went looking for a nurse named Elizabeth Staten. Staten was allegedly cheating with White’s husband. Firing six shots, White hit Staten in the stomach and wrist. When Staten ran into the emergency room, White followed her, firing again. In the ER, with blood on her clothes and a hit pistol in her hand, another nurse, Joan Black, met the attacker. Joan did the unthinkable. She walked calmly to the gun-toting woman – and hugged her. Joan spoke comforting words. The assailant said she didn’t have anything to live for, that Staten had stolen her family. Joan said, “You’re in pain. I’m sorry, but everybody has pain in their life . . . I understand and we can work it out.” As they talked, the hospital invader kept her finder on the trigger. Once she began to lift the gun as if she would shoot herself. Joan just pushed her arm down and continued to hold her. At last, White gave the gun to the nurse. She was disarmed by a hug, by understanding, by compassion. Joan later told an AP reporter, “I saw a sick person and had to take care of her.” Joan loved God by being courageous, friendly and gentle to a dangerous stranger.

Now let me ask, who has the greater authority, the emperor who forces baptisms on pain of death, the minister with the gun, or the nurse who hugs attackers? Before you answer, remember the cross. There hangs Jesus -- unjustly abused, tried and murdered. His dying words are a prayer of forgiveness for those who kill him. Imagine what might have happened if Jesus had lived in KY, and just before they nailed him to the cross he claimed his right as a citizen and pulled out a .38. Jesus Christ gained all authority by stretching out his arms, and disarming the world with the embrace of compassion.

So, how do we share our good news in a multi-faith, pluralistic world. Let me suggest three ways we can begin to do missions and evangelism from the margins:

1. Faith, not sight. Christians do not know, they only trust. We do not own the truth. We bear witness to the living Truth. We must be open to the possibility that another, any other human being, has something to bring to our meeting — the other is not just a mere receptacle for our message. In fact, the other might have positive or corrective insight to bring to me. Faith is about modesty. To have faith in Christ is to be open to wisdom and reality wherever they may be found. It does not involve the claim that we already know all that needs to be known.

2. Hope, not finality. Christians claim to have glimpsed something of the reality of God. We do not present ourselves as a community for which all is finished. We are not a community that has arrived, but one that is under way.

3. Love, not power. How might history have been altered if missions had been done in the spirit of love? Mission from the margins includes humility, contrition, repentance, and honest acknowledgement that the church has not consistently incarnated the gospel.

How can we tell the story of Jesus honestly and sensitively, respecting the spiritual wisdom of people outside the Christian faith? Some Christians say that we can't — we can't accept the possibility that anybody besides us has spiritual truth. But, I have found that if I think of Jesus as a person filled to the brim with God's spirit, then I can hold up Jesus as the hope of the world without disrespecting the faith of others who relate to God by another way. We must keep re-examining and re-expressing our belief that Jesus is alive through the Spirit. We must find ways to explain to modern, skeptical people that Jesus shows the nature of God better than anyone whom the world has ever known; and that following in his way is indeed the hope of the world.


Sources:
· http://www.marybethhicks.com/washtimes.potatoes.html
· Brent Walker, “American Pluralism and Lunchbox Evangelism” (July 9, 2006).
· http://chalicechristian.blogspot.com/2009/05/sermon-sunday-3-may-2009.html
· Douglass John Hall, The Cross in Our Context.
· Stuart Murray, Church After Christendom.
· John B. Cobb, Jr., “The Christian Mission in a Pluralistic World” http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1487
· Edward H. Schroeder, “Pluralism’s Question to Christian Missions: Why Jesus at All? “http://www.crossings.org/archive/ed/Pluralism.pdf
· http://www.bible.ca/global-religion-statistics-world-christian-encyclopedia.htm

Sermon for May 10, 2009

The Watchers
May 10, 2009

“I will take my stand to watch, and station myself on the tower, and look forth to see what God will say to me.” Habbakuk 2:1

People watching is fun. It just is. At least I think it is. My wife gets embarrassed when I watch people, probably because I lack discretion. She was taught to watch people by giving quick, diplomatic glances that won’t embarrass others or draw attention to yourself. Not me. I full on stare at people, like I’m watching TV. Chris will say, “Matt, stop staring at those people.” I’ll say, “What?! I’m not staring. I’m just watching someone else without turning my head or blinking.” There is probably some kind of rule about how long you can look at someone before it becomes staring. I’m sure that I’m straddling the border of propriety, but I learn a lot.

I like to make up stories about people Io watch and then categorize them. For instance, there was the elderly woman I saw who carried a shopping bad of white gloves, riding the T in Boston. Every time she touched something, she removed a glove from her hand, put it in a dirty glove bag, and then put on a clean glove. At the time, I worked at a boat propeller repair shop, and I was the dirtiest man in Boston. And I was smushed right next to this woman at rush hour. This falls into the category I call, “Better than a sitcom.” There are actually a bunch of handwear stories, like the one about a woman pushing a stroller. Instead of a cherubic child, she was pushing a stroller full of mittens through Central Park. Was she practicing for an impending birth? Doing a social experiment? Delivering mittens to her knitting group?

My favorite people to watch are the ones who have those “parent of the year” moments. We’ve all had them: those times when the kids are screaming in public and you hear words coming out of your mouth that sound just like the words your parents said to you and you promised you would never say them to your own kids. Here are some of my favorites, in honor of Mother’s Day:

From the “It must be hard to raise the Buddha” category: A crazed mother slapped her five-year old child and screamed, “Don’t you ever do that again!” The child looked serenely at the mother and said, “Well, are you happy with yourself?”

The “Mommy Dearest” award goes to a mother who pushed her small child in stroller in New York. The child said, “Mommy, why did you wake me up? Don’t wake me up when I’m sleeping!” The Mom answered back, “Fine. I’ll leave you on the train and you can miss your stop and then the rats will get you.”

Airports are great places to watch people. I once heard a kid say “Mom, am I fat?” The mother said, “Yes. Now get in the airplane.” The kid said, “Dad says I’m husky.” Pushing the child along, the mom replied, “ That means fat.”

To be fair, it’s not always the Moms who are mean. Like the mom at a diner who begged her son, “Please eat your dinner.” Her bratty child replied, “Mommy, you’re meaner than God.”

We know about people watchers. But how about culture watchers. Who looks for trends and movements around us and helps us navigate these new times? The church has not always done a good job at this. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been preaching about how churches find themselves in a strange new time. I’m comparing this to the experience of the biblical exile, when the Israelites were taken to Babylon.

• Like the biblical exiles we are being forced to live in a land and a culture that is quite foreign to what we knew years ago. You could call this land post-modern, post-Christian, secular, consumerist, or profane. But it is generally hostile to our faith and our spiritual community. It can be uncomfortable to be a devoted Christian.
• One of our primary feelings is loss. Church memberships are down, worship attendance is down. Churches have lost influence. We have less unity. We just aren’t what we used to be.
• As the biblical exiles were scattered and divided over the ancient Near East, so are we becoming divided and separated from one another. Our theologies, our politics, our language, our worship music … all seem to drive wedges between us.
• Like it was for the exiles this experience is long, and hard, and discouraging. It feels like God has abandoned the church. But, God is not done with us, and as it was in the Bible, we are returning to God and God is returning us to vitality by bringing us to something new a little here and a little there. Signs of growth and the new church are emerging.
  

Today I want us to think about what it means to be watchers during the exile, like Habbakuk. The people of Habakkuk’s time lived in an age of political uncertainty. The power and prestige of Southern Israel wanes, and in a short time the nation will disappear altogether. Injustice is rampant, the righteous are surrounded by the wicked, the law is powerless, and God doesn’t seem to care about the plight of the chosen people. A prophet named Habakkuk speaks to this situation. Listen again to what he says: “I will take my stand to watch, and station myself on the tower, and look forth to see what God will say to me.”

The church needs watchers. During exile, we must look for what God is doing, and how God is using this experience to do something new.

There is another word we use to describe watchers. The word is martyr. It’s not a popular word anymore. When I hear the word martyr, I think of three things. First, I think of prayers to the Holy Martyrs, those Christian women and men who died because of their faith in Christ. You might see a Roman Catholic Church called Holy Martyr. Today, we also hear the word martyr connected to terrorism and religious fundamentalism. I also heard the word when I was growing up. In those moments of teen-aged self-righteousness, when I knew I was right and the whole world was persecuting me for my knowledge of the truth, I would rant about how cosmically unfair I was being treated. My mother would just smile and say, “Life is tough. You’re such a good martyr.” I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I knew she was being sarcastic.

The English word martyr comes from a Greek word that word means, “witness” — a person who testifies about the faith. A witness does two things. First, a witness looks for God. I witness the fact that God is everywhere and in every situation and so my life has nothing to do with my ego, my individual efforts, and my melodramas. Watchers, witnesses, are people watchers, culture watchers, and God watchers.

This is a difficult task today. A few decades ago, when Christianity was the unofficial religion of North America, and when half a dozen mainline denominations were the religious establishment of the country, our faith might have been described as “civic faith.” Churches provided a religious ethos for American culture and society. Supported by the culture, churches returned the favor by playing a useful role in society. Churches were the conscience of the community, standing on the forefront of change and calling the culture to accountability. Churches were the primary instruments of aid to the least fortunate in society. Churches were also the center for community life. This is no longer the case. In our secular and pluralistic society, there are many voices claiming to be the exclusive voice of God. Many organizations are into charity work: banks, schools, sports teams, non-profits. Families and communities no longer have one center. Life is now multi-centered, and the church fits in with people’s multiple loyalties. The church is one center, malls and shopping areas are another, the coffee shop or bookstore another, the sports field yet another. People now reject churches that claim godly character but seldom embody it. Petty squabbles among members, conflicts between clergy and laity, sexual and financial scandals convey that the church is no different than other human institutions

The point is, the church, once founded and established to make a difference in the lives of others, faces a time of change and confusion. It is a time of exile — a time of diminished purpose and vision. Our earlier roles — conscience of the community, instrument of aid, and center of the community — no longer define us. We lost track of where God is and what God wants us to do. No longer sure of our purpose, buffeted by social change, we have circled the wagons and tried to exist just for the sake of survival. Who will be the watchers? Who will be the witnesses? Who will be the new martyrs?

Watchers have a second job. The first is to observe. The second is to let our actions display what we see. With all my gloom and doom talk, it’s actually a great time to be part of the church. When we realize our new context, we realize that our purpose is not to support the state. Our purpose is not to teach good citizenship. Our purpose is not to form a social club or humanitarian aid group. Our purpose is to change lives. In the era of civic faith, people came to church because that’s what one was supposed to do. Today, I find that people come to church because they have questions. “How can I live a spiritual life? How can I get God in my life? How can I be different?” People long for depth, for meaning, for worship and spiritual practices that put them in touch with the sacred. A new kind of living is demanded of exiles. Today is our opportunity to live out our purpose and show others how God transforms us.

Here’s something I’ve noticed about people watching. Every once in a while, you get caught. Or, you realize that someone has been watching you. It’s true about us as well. In fact, we want to get to a place where we are caught. We actually invite people to watch us — to come and see. Come and see if faith can make a difference in your life. Come and see a church family who loves and cares. Come and see people who are committed to the work of change and healing. Come and see a congregation where worship is alive. Come and see people who don’t have all the answers but who search together for God.

The church needs watchers. So be ready to see the world in a new way, and get ready to live your faith in a way that shows others that God changes lives.

Sermon for May 3, 2009

Singing in a Strange Land
May 3, 2009

Psalm 137
By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our harps.
For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
How could we sing the Lord’s song
in a strange land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy.


Last week, I presented the case that the Christian church is entering exile. Many of us grew up in this world of American Christendom, a world where church and culture were interwoven in ways that we were mostly unaware of. For example, many of you can remember times when stores were closed on Sunday. No youth sports, no college sports, no shopping at the Mall. Public schools opened each day with the pledge of allegiance and a prayer – sometimes even a reading from the Bible. These were central ways in which the culture supported the church. These days, the Christian story is much less known and Christians find themselves on the margins of society and competing for the public square. Here is an example of our new America’s relationship with Christianity: According to Professor Stephen Prothero, about 75 percent of adults mistakenly believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” More than 10 percent think that Noah’s wife was Joan of Arc. Only half can name even one of the four Gospels. The American public knows even less about Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism and Hinduism than it does about Christianity and Judaism.

Like the psalmist of old, we find ourselves asking, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in this strange land?”

A new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reports that Americans are changing religious affiliations at a rising rate. We Protestants are no longer the majority religion in the country, and the Roman Catholic Church has experienced the greatest net losses due to affiliation changes. CT ranks fourth in Catholic Church losses, with a 12% decline in 18 years. The Pew survey indicates that the group with the greatest net gain was “unaffiliated.” More than 16 % of American adults say they are not part of any organized faith, which makes the unaffiliated the country’s fourth largest “religious group.”

While traditional churches hemorrhage, we see other faiths growing. CT is the number one state in growth of non-Christian religions. The Islamic Society of North America claims there are between 6 and 8 million Muslims in the United States today. The New York Times placed the number between 2 and 4 million. The Pluralism Project at Harvard University, believes the correct figure is somewhere in between. Islam is one of the country’s top ten largest religious groups, not to mention the second largest religion in the world. And guess who the fastest growing faith group is, in terms of percentage of growth? Wicca, a Neopagan religion sometimes referred to as Witchcraft. Wicca adherents went from 8,000 in 1990 to 134,000 in 2001. Their numbers of believers are doubling about every 30 months.

Like it or not, it is well documented that the United States is the most religiously pluralistic country in the world. In this new ecology of faith, dealing with religious pluralism is not just a politically correct nicety. Religious diversity is now a fact of our existence, whether we fully recognize it or not. And as Christians, we will have to deal with it. Our compelling task is to figure out how we can sing the Lord’s song in this new land. We need to think about what it means to follow the Living God in a culture shares less and less of our religious language and metaphors.

Christendom made the church lazy. When we were on top of the religious dog pile, we did not have to offer compelling reasons for our existence. We did not have to convince the world that we were relevant. We were taught that our citizenship as Americans and as Christians were one in the same. But this has never been the message of the gospel. If you are among those who follow Jesus, your citizenship is in the realm of God. We lost that perspective along the way, and now find ourselves surprised by the reminder that we were always meant to be foreigners and aliens as well as residents of our world.

Psalm 137 was written by foreigners. They were prisoners — Jewish exiles now living and working in Babylon. They remembered how it felt to be masters of their own destinies. they lived far away from the familiarity of home. The warmth of community had all but disappeared. Their harps, probably Levite harps used in the worship of God, were set aside. In their sorrow, they could no longer sing. In their loss, they did not know how to worship God away from the familiar surroundings of the Temple in Jerusalem. Their harps, so useful and so right, their music so well thought out and so fitting in the Temple, could not be sung this foreign environment. And so they asked a serious question of themselves? “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

In effect, this is the question today’s churches need to ask itself: “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” Because, as far as the church is concerned, we do live in a strange land. The religious, cultural, political, economical, sociological landscape has changed. What do we do? Let’s listen some more to the Psalmist.

1. Grieve

The Psalm opens with these words:
By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
We can’t just embrace the new world without grieving the loss of the old. Real grief is part of a process of transformation. Grief is hard. It takes us by surprise. In grief, we learn to let go and to move on and be changed. We grieve for the good old days, and those days weren’t so long ago. Only a generation ago, it was unusual for people not to go to church. Churches were built in neighborhoods for people in the neighborhood. Our church was built with that understanding. We grieve because aligning oneself with Christianity is no longer a popular stance. And if we do not grieve, we will not ask ourselves the tough questions that we need to ask. Maybe when we ask the right questions we will discover that the good old days weren’t very good after all. Maybe from God’s perspective, Christendom wasn’t so Christ-like as we thought it was.

2. Remember

The Psalmist also offers these words:
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy.

As a church, we not only grieve. We remember. This last portion of this psalm speaks defiantly into the darkness that has enveloped the exiles. Taunted by enemies on all sides, seemingly helpless and hopeless, powerless to change their fate, laughed at, ridiculed, rejected, their country devastated, their temple in ruins, the exiles express a passionate, stubborn and resistant faith. Our celebration of communion reminds us to relive and remember our story: that forgiveness and new life is open to all who would embrace it. The simple elements remind us of what kind of life we are called to live: lives of generosity and sacrifice, lives of love and grace, lives of faith and hope, not of power, not of self-centeredness, not of popularity.

3. Engage

What will it mean to practice our faith in a country of religious diversity? I think it means that we will have to learn humility, and invite open dialogue with other faiths, and those who are “unaffiliated.” We will have to resist the temptation to make absolute faith claims. We will have to stand firm against the enticement to make negative judgments on other faith practices. We need to make the effort to get to know others — to learn what they think, what they believe, and what is at the heart of their understanding and commitment to God. Let’s call this stance “pluralism literacy” — becoming knowledgeable about other faiths. The culture is beginning to taking care of this for us. For example, Modesto is known as the Bible belt of California. It has deep conservative roots in farmland and a vocal Evangelical community. Modesto is becoming more religiously diverse. But unlike any other place, religion is a required course in high school here. Modesto is the only public school district in America where students have to study all major religions to graduate. The goal is to create one community where everyone is accepted. It will be essential for us to know how other types of believers and nonbelievers feel and think — the kind of knowledge that requires imagination, empathy or, what college often provides, real encounters.

As Christians, we do not know. We only trust. We do not own the truth, but we bear witness to the living Truth. We engage ourselves with those who belong to other faith traditions with the expectation that the other — another human being — has something vital to bring to our meeting. We want to know what God is doing in the lives of people within other faiths. Christian witness in a pluralistic world means opening our lives to others so that they may understand how we attend to our ultimate concerns, and so that we might listen to how God helps others address their ultimate concerns.

When we can do that, we might be surprised at what we learn. We might be shocked to hear God speaking to us. We might learn to talk intelligently about our own faith instead of assuming that people already know about Christianity. As we share and listen, as we do God’s work, hand-in-hand with people of faith who seek to make the world a better place, we might just become the church God intended us to be in the first place.

Sources:
W. Eugene March, God’s Tapestry (Philadelphia: WMJK, 2008).
http://www.bbchurch.ca/Sermons/272/2006-01-08%20-%20What%20happened%20to%20my%20comfortable%20life.pdf
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2009-03-09-ARIS-faith-survey_N.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_prac2.htm
http://religions.pewforum.org/
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/24/eveningnews/main4206426.shtml
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/01/AR2007030102073.html

Sermon for Sunday, April 26, 2009

The Rise and Fall of Christendom

Isaiah 43:18-21
“But forget all that— it is nothing compared to what I am going to do. For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland. The wild animals in the fields will thank me, the jackals and owls, too, for giving them water in the desert. Yes, I will make rivers in the dry wasteland so my chosen people can be refreshed. I have made Israel for myself, and they will someday honor me before the whole world.

Deuteronomy 31:7-8
Then Moses called for Joshua, and as all Israel watched, he said to him, “Be strong and courageous! For you will lead these people into the land that the LORD swore to their ancestors he would give them. You are the one who will divide it among them as their grants of land. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the LORD will personally go ahead of you. He will be with you; he will neither fail you nor abandon you.”


In a London school, a teenager with no church connections hears the Christmas story for the first time. His teacher tells it well and he is fascinated by this amazing story. When the teacher concludes the story, risking his friends’ mockery, he raises his hand, and thanks her for the story. One thing disturbs him however, so he asks: “Why did they give the baby a swear–word for his name?”

One Sunday in Oxford, a man visits a church building to collect something for his partner who works during the week in a creative arts project at the church. He arrives as the morning congregation is leaving and recognizes the minister, whom he knows. Surprised, he asks, “What are all these people doing here? I didn’t know churches were open on Sundays!”

The stories depict a British culture in which the Christian story is unknown and churches are alien institutions whose rhythms of life don’t intrude on most members of society. A few years ago, neither would have been believable, but today there are numerous signs that the era of Christendom is fading in the West. In his book The Secret Servant, Daniel Silva observes an old stone church in stately Amsterdam. He writes, “It’s a church without faithful in a city without God.” It could be said of many cities in the Great Britain, and Europe. In Great Britain, only 4 percent of the children are involved in church. If the Church of Scotland continues to shrink at the present rate, it will die in 2033 (only 26 years from now!)

But that can’t be the case in America, right? Isn’t he church in America is still a thriving centerpiece of our culture? Consider these chilling statistics. Over the past ten years, the largest mainline denomination, the United Methodist Church, has experienced a net numerical decline of about 400,000 members. The Presbyterian Church (USA) experienced a net decline of about 336,000 members. The UCC lost almost 230,000 members, about 15% of the total.

How about our congregation? Has TCC experienced the same decline? Founded in 1730 by Puritans, our congregation proudly boasts of its multi-century presence in the community. The founding of TCC is the story of resolute men and women making their way in a flourishing but difficult new world. With good sense, steady nerves, and unconquerable resolution, they began a 279-year record of “faith, tolerance, and good works.” In 1730, the Puritan meetinghouse was the center of all religious and civic gatherings. The early residents of Trumbull saw problem with holding town meetings in a place of worship. TCC had power and influence when it was the only church in town and attendance was mandatory. Today, there are at least twenty-seven houses of worship in Trumbull. At one time, TCC was the symbolic center of the town’s spiritual life. Community residents no longer see our congregation as the center of formation and identity. In 1954, our Sunday School attendance of 176 students, including seventy-eight Junior High and High School students and nineteen teachers. The active church membership rolls swelled to 543 members, representing a net gain of 32 from the previous year. Now our church rolls hover at around 225 active members with 100 to 120 people attending worship on Sunday mornings. Committees do more work with fewer volunteers and less funding. Income rarely exceeds expenses. Worship attendance holds steady, while the cost per worshipper has increased.

Forces far beyond our control have forced us into a land that is very different from our past. Many of the things that have been familiar to us are gone or have changed. These things have been with us for so long we can’t imagine living without them. What’s going on here?

In 313 C.E., when Emperor Constantine, the leader of the Roman Empire, legalized Christianity, Christianity changed from an illegal and sometimes persecuted minority to the favored religion of the Roman Empire. The Empire came to be identified with the cause of Christianity. Church officials used the government as an ally to promote Christian orthodoxy. Convinced that Christendom owned the right answers to the world’s problems, the church used the Great Commission as its marching orders to expand the kingdom of God. Conversion of the masses justified any necessary means of persuasion to make it happen. Christianity evolved into what we call Christendom. It literally means “the dominion of Christ,” the established religion of the Empire and the dominant way of understanding our faith up until recent times.

Christendom calls Christians in local congregations to be good citizens and to support both the state and the church in reaching and overcoming those who live outside its bounds. Christendom calls for absolute unity. It gives no space for difference or dissent. One joins the church as a matter of birth, not volition. The laity are expected to be good, law-abiding citizens, pay taxes, and support efforts to enlarge the state. Loyalty and obedience are the primary virtues of Christendom’s inhabitants. The Christendom paradigm calls upon Christians to support the government and their church leaders with their prayers and even their lives, if called upon.

The form of Christendom known best to our congregation came to the New World on the Mayflower and took on a new name: American Christendom. American Christendom was both different from and similar to the European form. Though this country was founded on principles that separated church and state, Christianity was nonetheless the culturally established religion. In New England, the clergy were influential in politics and in the formation of the new nation. These traditions carried on for a long time. The secular culture helped the churches by doing things like teaching prayer in schools and limiting sports on Sundays. In return, the churches helped the culture build hospitals and take care of the poor. Christendom flourished like this until just a half century ago.

Many of us grew up in this world of American Christendom, a world where church and culture were interwoven in ways that we were mostly unaware of. For example, many of you who grew up in the East can remember times when all the stores were closed on Sunday. In fact, not much of anything happened on Sundays, except church. No youth sports, no charity walks or runs, no college sports. Public schools opened the day with the pledge of allegiance and a prayer – sometimes even a reading from the Bible. These were central ways in which the culture supported the church.

Today’s world is much different. Certainly no prayers and Christmas pageants in public schools. Sundays have become a day to get more things done, not a day of worship and rest. We kick around all kinds of terms for our times: post-modern, post-Christian, post-denominational, pluralistic, multi-faith. The simple way of putting it is to say that the world for which we were carefully preparing, the world in which we learned what it meant to be a Christian, is being taken away from us.

I believe that today the church faces a crisis of apostolicity. The term “apostolicity” has the word “apostle” in it. It describes the affirmation that the church is chosen and sent by God into the world to share God’s blessings to others. Apostles are people who bear witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are the apostles of today. We are the ones who bear witness to the resurrection and the teachings of Jesus. This does not mean that we remain stuck in our traditions and comfortable worldviews. It does mean we need to be realistic about our situation. We are not the church at the center of life anymore. We are becoming a church on the margins, and we need to redefine ourselves if we want to faithfully proclaim our faith to the next generations.

We are not the first ones to experience a seismic shift in our religious practice. In the Bible, the people of Israel went through something called the Exile. God’s people were taken over by the armies of Babylon and deported from the Promised Land. Babylon’s armies killed the monarchy and smashed the temple in Jerusalem to the ground. Some Israelites remained in their devastated homeland, but most were forced to live as defeated slaves in Babylon. Everything they relied on to define their spiritual existence was taken from them: the Temple, the religious establishment, the monarchy, their sense of entitlement, their self-assurance of God’s favored blessing. All they had were God’s promises that they were not doomed to extinction. God would not leave them. God would not forsake them. God would not bring them to the Promised Land just to snatch it away. God would make a pathway through the wilderness and lead them home.

It is not so different today. We can’t imagine living without our church buildings, our denominational structure, our preeminent place in the culture, our belief God will favor us and our nation forever. But those things are changing. Our buildings are so expensive that they compromise our witness. Our denomination seems to be fading away. Christianity is no longer the unofficial state religion. Sometimes it feels like God has withdrawn favor toward us. In other words, we are being forced to live in a land and a church that is far different from what it was when most of us grew up.

Many of us are feel is a sense of loss — a grief over what no longer exists, and a sense of discouragement about the church. Our sanctuaries are not as full as they used to be. Some of our neighboring Congregational churches that used to be the bedrock of the town are closing their doors. Denominational identity is unsatisfying. Church programs that once worked are now ineffective. We are being forced into exile. In this time of loss and change, we can feel anxiety, anger, desperation, and a rush for answers or programs or people who will take away our pain and take us back to the time when life was better and easier. We want the one program that will revitalize our church, bring in new members, put money in the offering plate. We want the denomination to do something. But none of them seem able to do what we want or need. We are entering exile.

Of course, great things are still happening. The church is still a meaningful place for us. It’s just that the world around us changed and we didn’t think we had to change with it. The sooner we acknowledge our current experience and fully enter the exile the sooner we will find out why God has put us here and what God offers us while we are here. I say that because, ultimately, it is God who wants us in exile. And for good reasons. God is up to something new. God wants us to embrace our new place on the margins of society so that we can more fully become the church God created us to be in the first place. This is the place where we can learn about the deep value of forgiveness, reconciliation, redemption, the restoration in families, and the power of neighborhood organizations. This is the place where we can rediscover the meaning of spirituality. This is the place where we can learn about worship and recognize that something deeper is needed in our life, a place where in spiritual roots can be nurtured and grow so that we can are anchored in faith in the face of relentless stress in a global community. This is the place where we learn to build a sense of community and break down the loneliness, isolation, and polarization of life in Trumbull. This is the place where we support each other as we experience the demise of culturally supported Christendom and affirm the liberating decision to be a Christian. We don’t have to apologize for our faith, yet in a pluralistic culture we must find creative ways to invite others to join us while being careful not to be intolerant or feel superior to others.

This is our opportunity to become the church that God intended us to be: the caring, creative, counter-cultural, critical, and Christ-following apostles who bear witness to new life. If you are ready for adventure, this is a great time to be a member of the church. We face a wondrously exciting time that can help our congregational enter into our changing times and the new life that comes with it.

Sources
· http://www.pcusa.org/research/reports/denominational_size.pdf

· A “Funeral” for Christendom. Available online at http://www.firstchurchlongmeadow.org/firstchurch/PDFFiles/Sermon%20of%20November%2012%202006%20MSB.pdf

· “It’s Not About You” a sermon preached by Dr. Larry Corbett. Available online at http://www.pinnaclepres.com/sermons/2007/sermon_070812.html

· Loren Mead, The Once and Future Church (Washington D.C.:The Alban Institute, 1991.

· The Trumbull Congregational Church, “Meeting Minutes,” January 18, 1954.

· Christopher Morse, Not Every Spirit: A Dogmatics of Christian Disbelief (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1994).

· Stuart. Murray, Church After Christendom (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2004).

· Stuart. Murray, Post Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2004).

· Dana Lindsley, “Life is Hard in Exile.” Available online at http://www.psne.org/Ref%20D.pdf

· Anthony Robinson, Transforming Congregational Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).

Sermon for April 19, 2009

Dear Matt,

I love April in the Ozarks. Spring seems to come all at once. I’ll wake up one morning and say to myself, “I wasn’t waked up by a salt truck rumbling down my street. I can actually feel my fingers and toes – they don’t feel like cold salt potatoes this morning. I am alive again.” I’ve seen wild crocus blooming in the fields and the redbuds and dogwoods are just aching to come into bud. Sure, the weather can turn on a dime and I’ll be caught off guard, knee-deep in snow, but I choose to think we’re on an upswing. The surest sign of Spring is that your cousin, Daryl Bob Broadfoot, emerges from his trailer at the beginning of April. We have some great truths of life that we count on in the Ozarks: You can’t trust your dog to watch your food. You can’t hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk. You never hold a dustbuster and a cat at the same time. Always drink upstream from the herd. Finally, don’t plant ‘maters ‘till you’ve seen Daryl Bob Broadfoot. People come from all over and set up lawn chairs in front of #52 at the Misty Mountain Acres Trailer Park. Folks talk in hushed murmurs for the yearly event. As regular as custard, Daryl Bob sticks his head outta of his 390 C Travelair luxury park model trailer and greets the Spring. If he comes outta the door with his bloodhound, Mr. Pickles, that means he’s going to the local dawg park to burn off some winter lard. That also means no more snow this April. If Daryl Bob greets Spring by glaring us with angry red eyes as he chews his last piece of pinto bean fudge, that means one more snowstorm’s a-comin’.

What’s he doin’ in that Travelair trailer all Winter? How does he survive? We never knew until this year. The crowds congregated on April 1 to see Daryl Bob Braodfoot appear. When he opened the screen door, he had a crazy look in his eyes. He held fistfuls of computer printouts that had strange headlines on the top, punctuated by exclamation points, food smudges, and coffee mug rings. His printouts said things like: SCIENCE ITEM! France unveils secret images of aliens and their spaceships! SCIENCE ITEM! Dog gives birth to mutant creature that looks like a human being! SCIENCE ITEM! Horrible hairy sea monster cast ashore! SCIENCE ITEM! Fir tree grows inside man’s lungs! SCIENCE ITEM! Global climate change, disproved yet again! He found all of this on Pravda online. What’s Pravda? Turns out, Pravda is Russia’s best source for news and analysis. All Winter long, Daryl Bob was cooped up like a battery hen, reading wingnut science articles from the Russain Internet, eating chicken-fried squirrel and getting hisself all worked up for the end of the world. (Do I kid you? No. I kid you not.) One headline especially agitated the crowds. Pravda says that we’re soon in for an Ice Age. Not global warming. An Ice Age! Gracious! Best grab a scarf! Don’t take the plow off the truck yet. We might be in for that Spring blizzard after all.

Everything I’ve been hearing leads me to some other conviction. It sounds like old Mother Earth is heatin’ up instead of cooling down. Of course, I’m no scientist. I only know what I hear on the evening news and what I read in the newspapers other than Pravda. Us farmers care a lot about the weather. Our lives depend on regular seasons. I recently read that if the temperature keeps rising, it won’t be a safe subject to talk about the weather anymore. The rhythm of the seasons with snow in the winter and rain in the spring might become the distant memory that we only hear about in old country ballads. The new weather will be unpredictable, switching from one shape to another, with storms, and droughts, and floods, and altering the globe more or less at the same time. The climate will change in jerks, jumping from one season to another.

I don’t know how we got to this place. Some blame the Chinese. Some blame city folks. Some think it is our materialistic culture. Some scientists blame my cows, saying they produce more climate-changing methane than any other animal. It’s probably a little of everything. I’m not quite sure how to fix it, even if we can. This isn’t something that can be fixed with bailing wire bubble gum and duct tape. Your Uncle Slim could do anything with bailing wire, by the way. He’d make a wrench holder, a chum tie, a marshmallow rotisserie. He even made a few sculptures before he died. His favorite was a sculpture of Garfield the Cat that he perched on our mailbox. He even painted his favorite Garfield quote underneath it: “If you want to appear smarter, hang around someone stupider.” It’s still there. True story.

Anyways, I’m not the only one worried about the earth. Bea Jimson’s husband Woodchuck often admits that he’s scared as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs whenever he thinks of global warming. He’s afraid he’s gonna die before his time. Just the other day I heard him say, “It scares the Christmas out of me. The thought of dyin’ from a creepin’ sea or a red hot sun and things like that has me plumb terrified to death.” Woodchuck paused for a moment to down him a swig of sugar-free YooHoo, light a fresh filterless Camel cigarette and open a whole box of Devil Dogs. Then he continued, “I can’t believe that human beans would even consider doing something like this to their fellow man and woman. I mean, what kind of monster would do that? Cause our coast lands to sink and our crops to fail?” His wife, Bea Jimson, after listening to his rant for maybe the 200^th time, took in sharp breath, cussed and declared through gritted teeth, “You know Woodchuck, I never met an overweight, chain-smoking, pill-popping, YooHoo-drinking, Devil-dog munching person who ever died yet from global warming.” This was a revelation to Woodchuck. It truly was. He decided, right then and there, that this was a sign to clean up his act so he could properly worry about how he was gonna die.

Woodchuck decided he was gonna go green. And he was gonna start be recycling. Woodchuck’s become quite the scientist. His recycling isn’t about putting cans at the curbside. Instead, he digs through the garbage, trying to find uses for Bea’s throw away household goods. Then he writes them all down and sends his ideas to the newspaper. Did you know you might use a Mr. Coffee filter to cover bowls and dishes in the microwave? You can also use ‘em for cooking. After frying a catfish, strain the oil through a sieve lined with a Mr. Coffee fFilter. A Mr. Coffee filter also makes a good taco holder. He made a back massager by putting some Wilson tennis balls in an old sock. He even painted his barn with Carnation Nonfat Dry Milk and a pair of queen sized pantyhose. I haven’t tried it yet, but Woodchuck swears it works: Mix one and a half-cups Carnation Nonfat Dry Milk and one-half cup water until it is the consistency of paint. Thin the paint by adding more water, thicken the paint by adding more nonfat dry milk. With the pantyhose, brush on the milk as you would any other paint. Woodchuck also uses those pantyhose as produce bags. You can see him down at the Piggly Wiggly, stuffing boxes of fat-free Devil Dogs into Bea’s old pantyhose, shuffling to the checkout line just as happy as a rat with a gold tooth. To me, that’s just a bit too unsanitary and even a little bit creepy.

For my part, I’ve been composting more than I used to. Another way to say that sentence is “I’ve got fruit flies in my house.” I’m fine with a few fruit flies. If that’s the cost of me personally saving the earth that’s a fair trade, but these fruit flies have attitude. I’ll find them in rooms that have nothing to do with fruit. Why are fruit flies in the shower with me? Rarely, and I mean rarely, will I just carve up a pineapple in there. And yet, as I reached for the shampoo the other day, a fruit fly flittered across my field of vision with a look on its face like, “Hey lady. Give me some directions back to the kitchen. Pronto.” (I have really good eyesight.)

Hopefully my church, the Jerico Springs Progressive Church of the Ozarks, will be smarter than I am when it comes to embracing the color “Green.” Going green is a pretty popular thing to do right now, which is great. But I’m not sure we’re doing enough. Sure we’re recycling more and printing less church materials and finding little ways to help the planet, but maybe there are some untapped methods we’ve forgotten to look at. Here are some of my ideas.

Idea #1 — Harness the energy of the Haters. I think that we’re missing a tremendous source of untapped energy—complainers. If we could find a way to harness the grumbling of a sprinkling of people Sunday after Sunday, we could probably power the Mississippi river valley for a few years. Instead of trying to convert haters into nice people, convert them into energy. When they come into church, ask them to wear some sort of backpack battery device. As the service starts and they start grumbling, “I hate the pastor’s sermons. This music is too loud. This music is too soft,” the backpack will capture all that wasted energy.

Idea #2—Make people earn their energy at church.
I’m not sure that every room in the church building deserves to have the lights on and a box fan in the window. We should kick the Sunday School Room decorating wars up a notch by rewarding the people with the best ornamentations. If you paint a real nice Noah’s ark mural, you get yourself a box fan. Oh, looks like this class just taped up a sad little poster that came in a box of Lucky Charms. I’d wear a tank top tomorrow if I were you, because it’s about to get lot hotter in your room.

Idea #3—Stiff-arm the bulletin hander outer.
I usually give my bulletin back at the end of service because I take all my notes in that notebook your kids sent me at Christmas that says “Jesus loves you but I’m his favorite.” Maybe I shouldn’t even take a bulletin. Maybe I should stiff-arm the bulletin hander outer when she tries to give me one. I’ll giver her a look that says, “Why do you hate the planet so much?” And then I can get my own hater backpack and power the youth group room for three weeks with the energy from my grump. Circle of life, Matt. Circle of life.

It’s doubtful any of these will take off and sweep the nation. I hope that you have better ideas. At the end of the day, this is all I know: The dignity of human bein’s and the honor of Mother Earth rests upon seeing everyone and everything as valuable. We need to start seeing everything as good, just like God does. I think folks have lost their focus. We need to put on a new set of spectacles and retrain our eyes to see God everywhere. We know what the Bible says: We are created in the image of God. And Lord, knows, it’s hard enough to look at annoying people and see God when all you want to do is slap ‘em. But what if we open our eyes more and see the face of God everywhere. What if all of creation is part of God’s body, and our job is to realize that we rely on the other parts of the body for our life. Whatever happens to us and to our world happens to God. If we misuse one part, even a tiny part, we harm ourselves. Even worse, we harm God. We could not live a moment without the gifts of God’s body — air, food, water, land, and other varmints. We don’t have to go somewhere special or wait for heaven to meet God. We meet God in the nitty-gritty of our regular lives. As we think of ways to care for the earth, we remember that God is with us.

Some will face the future like Daryl Bob Broadfoot, ignoring problems, choosing to focus on mutant dogs and alien abductions instead of changing their verve. Some folks will panic like Woodchuck, and drown their hope in a can of YooHoo. When despair creeps over me like an unwelcome stranger, I try to remember that God is with us. We are not alone. We never face problems on our own. Since we live and die in God’s world, we live and die in God’s love.

There I go preaching again. I ought to leave it to you professionals, and go back to my simple life. I don’t know where you are with whatever God is asking you to lean into, but I hope you’ll do it even if it feels really small and invisible to the rest of the world. I hope you’ll forever retire the phrase, “This isn’t important,” because we can’t possibly know what God has planned for the tiny things we do. I hope you’ll believe in the beauty of a God who weaves a story through simple decisions, and chatty widows, and devil-dog eating farmers, and sometimes even smug aunts that try to think they’re as clever as a cartload of monkeys. It’s God’s story. It’s God’s body. And even the small things are big when they are in the hands of the Creator.

Hugs to all the little ones,

Aunt Georgia

Sermon for April 12 ,2009 -- Easter Sunday

The Day Everything Changed

Saturday evening, when the Sabbath ended, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome went out and purchased burial spices so they could anoint Jesus’ body. Very early on Sunday morning, just at sunrise, they went to the tomb. On the way they were asking each other, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” But as they arrived, they looked up and saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled aside. When they entered the tomb, they saw a young man clothed in a white robe sitting on the right side. The women were shocked, but the angel said, “Don’t be afraid. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead! Look, this is where they laid his body. Now go and tell his disciples, including Peter, that Jesus is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there, just as he told you before he died.” The women fled from the tomb, trembling and bewildered, and they said nothing to anyone because they were too frightened. — Mark 16:1-8


Remember Junior High romance? I do. There was a girl. And there was a school dance coming up. Not just any dance – our fist middle school semi-formal dance. I was sure this girl would go to the dance with me. I thought she was pretty and fun. But mostly, I knew she would say yes. So, I did what most self-respecting 6th graders do. I got my best friend to ask the girl if she would go to the dance with me. As I saw it, there was only one slight glitch in my plan. My best friend told everyone that he was a Martian who was left on earth in a human kid’s body. In hindsight, putting my romantic future in the hands of an abandoned Martian may not have been a good move. The day had come. We all sat on the bleachers in gym class -- the girl and her friends on one side, my best friend and I on the other. He slid over to her, holding up his hand and giving the Martian sign indicating that he came in peace. Then he said, “The Warlord Matt would be pleased to have the company of a young, green Martian maid at the Dance of Barsoom. May the white apes take us all!” As he said talked, he made sweeping gestures in my direction and smiled. I buried my head in my hands. She looked confused. She apparently did not know any Martian customs. My best friend then leaned over, cupped his hand over his mouth and whispered something in her ear. She nodded and smiled. My friend quickly shuffled back to me, grinning. She said yes.

The day of the dance, I was so nervous I got sick. My mother and I bought a wrist corsage at the hospital flower shop while visiting my great grandmother. As I picked out my only tie, I knew my date would wear the white dress with the little red polka dots. It’s the only one I ever saw her wear. I knew it was going to be a good night. Little did I know, it would be my first date with rejection.

We met at the dance. I gave her the flower and she put the corsage on her wrist. Then we sat on the bleachers in the school gym. And then we sat some more. Then she announced that she needed to visit the girl’s room. That was the last I saw of my first date. Her friends kept coming out of the bathroom to ask me, “What did you do to her? She’s in the bathroom crying, and she won’t come out.” Later on that night, one of her friends came out to announce that my date was breaking up with me. I never found out what the problem was. Obviously, something was wrong. What had I done? Or, what hadn’t I done?

I had my first of many questions about women that day. I would later learn, however, that the problem was not a problem with women. It was, and is, a human problem. It is the problem of expectations. My first date had certain expectations of me. I had expectations of her. And although nothing was ever stated, the perception was there.

The truth of the matter is the world is full of empty promises and unfulfilled expectations. Like the ShamWow. I received my first ShamWow for Christmas this year. I was very excited. I love to watch infomercials, so when I saw the ShamWow on TV, I knew it had to be the real deal. The TV huckster tells me that this revolutionary fabric works wet or dry, acts like a vacuum to soak up spills and holds 20 times its weight in moisture. The machine-washable fabric wicks liquid and air-dries quickly for reuse, saving big bucks on paper towels. Guess what. It did not meet my expectations. It’s a glorified micro-fiber rag that feels like 200 grit sandpaper when you rub it on your body. We watch TV, and the advertisements tell us that we can be happy, sexy, rich, or famous, if we only purchase a certain product. It doesn’t take long before we’ve been fooled enough to know that the world’s promises are full of emptiness.

Expectations can get serious, too. They can block our ways, like stones rolled in front of the tomb. Expectations can be immoveable objects that keep us from living our dreams. They’ve been known to mess up more than a sixth-grade romance. Divorce, job tension, poor self-image, world wars, and embittered friendships — all of these can be caused by the same culprit — unrequited expectations.

What expectations do you have this Easter? More specifically, what expectations do you have of Jesus? Imagine the expectations of the women who approached the tomb on that first Easter morning. It was dark as they arose that Sunday morning. They grabbed their spices and headed out on the dirt road out of the city. As the sun began to rise, the path was lined with dark shadows. But no shadow or darkness could compare with the darkness that hovered over their spirits. As they walked the path towards the tomb, thoughts and sights of the last week ripped through their minds. They were there when Jesus rode a colt in a parade, waving palms and poking fun at the powers of the Empire. Unfortunately, their memories didn’t stop there. They saw Jesus tied to a post as a Roman whip, filled with broken pieces of pottery, glass and bones, ripped across his back. They remembered the purple robe -- the beatings, the cruel mocking and the crown of thorns. These two women were there at the cross. They saw Jesus’ body struggle and wince with every breath that he took. They were there when Jesus cried out, “My God, why have you abandoned me?” They saw his head fall as he cried, “It is finished.” Their Lord was dead. Their hope was gone. So what are they doing up so early on this Sunday morning? Why aren’t they taking a moment of self-indulgent misery? What was it that drove them from their beds before dawn? Someone had to prepare the body for burial. The task they were going to perform was difficult. They would be the ones who would wipe the blood from the brow, from the legs, from the sides. They would be the last ones, to touch his face and close his eyes. As they near the tomb, they think of a sudden a problem — something they hadn’t thought of until now — Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb? As they reach the tomb, they see the stone rolled away, and a young man dressed in white who says, “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He isn’t here! He is raised from the dead!” Talk about blowing away one’s expectations! Honestly, is this any way to run a resurrection? You’d think there would be more fanfare: angel choirs and a marching band, and Jesus bursting from the ground like fireworks and crowds of people pointing in wonder as they say, “Ooooh, aaaaaah!”

Instead, we read that the first witnesses to the resurrection are terrified into stunned silence. But, what did you expect? Imagine spine-tingling fear as they gazed into the empty tomb. Imagine their confusion. Imagine their fear-filled joy. What they had expected to happen had been turned upside down. Here is the promise of Easter: Instead of expectations full of emptiness, on Easter Jesus gave us emptiness that is full of expectation.

What do you expect from Jesus this Easter. I know one thing we can count on. Easter is about love. When we love, we usually love with expectations attached. I love you, but I’ll love you even more if . . . you fill in the blank. Christ’s love has none of this. No strings. No expectations. No hidden agendas. No secrets. His love for us is and is up front and clear. Love is the message of the empty cross and the empty tomb. The expectation is not that we run in fear, but we live into the dawn of a new day when everything changes. We find joy. We have hope that death does not get the final victory. We peer into the dark and empty tombs of this world and we find resurrection.

We have expectations of Jesus. I think Jesus also has some expectations of us. In Wendell Berry’s poem, “The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” he writes these words:

So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest...Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts . . . Practice resurrection

I believe Wendell Berry says it well: “Practice resurrection.” We all know too well the practice of crucifixion. We see it daily in the news, in the tears of friends, and in our own faces, sleepless and worn. But what do we know of resurrection? What do we know about struggling with the issues of the day; reaching out to those who are hungry, poor, and oppressed; healing the sick and broken and breathing life into every moment.

Here’s why crucifixion was so tragic: Jesus didn’t want to die. He didn’t have to die. But he believed that he must die on the cross so that others would have the opportunity to practice resurrection. He hoped that his death would open our hearts to the love of humanity and of God. The empty tomb speaks to a deep place in our souls where we decide who we will be, how we will live, whom we will trust. Jesus Christ is alive. That news should be enough to transform cowards into brave disciples. “Do not be afraid” were the first words spoken to the women at the tomb. Fear not. Fear nothing. Practice resurrection. Or, as Peter Marshall once put it, “Let’s not live another day as if He were dead.”

We practice resurrection whenever we notice beauty and are truly grateful. We practice resurrection whenever we swallow our anger and our pride and start over again with living. We practice resurrection when we ask for forgiveness or forgive someone else; when we find some love that has been buried inside of us; when we say NO to the forces of death in our world and say YES to that which enhances life. We practice resurrection by growing a soul and living a larger life.

Mark’s story is punctuated by the messenger’s closing words, “He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” Yes, Jesus is going ahead of us. Practicing resurrection means walking one step at a time and living one day at a time following the Risen One. It means following Jesus, even when the path is uncertain, trusting that in the very act of walking we will find our way. The empty tomb defies expectations. The future remains surprising, open, and uncertain. But, Jesus is risen and going ahead of us, showing the way we are called to travel and inviting us to rejoice, to sing, to journey and proclaim, “Don’t be afraid.”

Sermon for April 5, 2009 -- Palm Sunday

A Tale of Two Parades
Mark11:1-11
April 5, 2009 / Palm Sunday

Based on “All This Joy, All this Sorrow,” A Sermon Preached by Peter Ilgenfritz and “Which way will be our way?” A sermon by Joe Hoffman

Two parades enter Jerusalem. From the West, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, rides through the city gates on a grand war horse at the head of a majestic procession of imperial soldiers on horseback. From the East, Jesus rides a borrowed donkey down to the city gate from the Mount of Olives. From the West, drowning out all other sound from the markets and streets is the marching of feet, the beating of drums, the creak of leather and the crack of whips. From the East, if we draw enough, we might hear a band of voices singing “Hosanna!” “Save Us!” “Blessed is the one who comes!”

All parades use symbols. The Trumbull Memorial Day parade, for instance, has every volunteer and civic organization in town marching down the road, complete with flags, a military fly over, and street venders overcharging for balloons. Its symbolism is perfect for our area. When I lived in Western New York, the parades were all fire trucks and farm equipment — perfect for a small agriculturally-based village. Pilate’s parade has banners, armor, helmets, weapons, and gold eagles mounted on poles — perfect symbolism for the power, authority, might and wealth of the Roman Empire — a fitting tribute to the Roman Emperor whom they call “Son of God”, “Lord” and “Savior”.

Jesus rides in on a donkey. Those in the crowd who know the scriptures catch the symbolism from the prophet Zechariah, “Tell the daughter of Zion, look, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zechariah 9:9) The rest of Zechariah goes on to say exactly what kind of king he will be: “He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations.” (Zechariah 9:10)

In the West, no one on the street asks who is this. Everyone knows it is Pontius Pilate processing from his palace on the Mediterranean coast to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover. He has not come to Jerusalem out of respect for the religious devotion of his Jewish subjects. He rides to make sure that no trouble breaks out on this holiday when pilgrims swell the city and the Jews remember the story of their liberation from another empire in Egypt.

In the East, a few people stop and ask, “Who is that?” And someone says, “It’s Jesus, whom they call a prophet. He comes from up north in Nazareth in the region of Galilee.”

If you were there on the streets of Jerusalem, which parade would you be drawn to?
Pilate’s parade has huge appeal. It’s noisy. It’s big. It stands for all the things that were valued in society. It is power, strength, authority, and wealth. It is a brawny and dominant symbol of the Empire’s potency. Pilate’s parade offers control, leadership and security. And let’s be honest, it leaves us with our mouths gaping wide. Pilate’s parade is not mentioned in any of the scriptures, but this parade forms the background of Jesus’ Palm Sunday parade. Jesus’ parade only makes sense when we know that Pilate had another parade going at the same time. Jesus’ parade is clearly a caricature of Pilate’s parade. It is laughable. It is ridiculous. A grand leader decked in gold on horseback versus a peasant riding a borrowed donkey? Jesus’ parade wants to make us wake up, to pay attention, to laugh at the Empire, to think about who really is in charge of the land of Israel and the nations of the world.

Much in my life draws me to Pilate’s parade. Big and powerful things have allure. I want to be around people who can make me feel strong and influential. All of us are drawn to that which makes us feel important and admired in the hopes that it might rub off on us. And yet, something keeps calling me back to Jesus’ parade. The past couple of weeks I have been puzzling over what that is. Why do I feel anxious when I drift away from Jesus’ parade to Pilate’s? What is so enticing about Pilate, even when I know in my head his parade does not represent my values? I was puzzling over this when I heard a song. It’s called “Chariot” by a band called Page France. It’s a song with a simple melody and steady, moving beat. I heard this song and thought, “This is it. This is what draws me to Jesus’ parade. Something in this song.” I’m going to play a little bit for you, with the understanding that music is like love. You can’t always explain why you love something. You just do. This song moves me. It makes me feel.

When I listen to a song like this, I remember that Jesus does not ride in order to subdue and punish me. He is does not ride to inspire fear and make me behave. Jesus rides to let me know that he is one of us. He breaks the bread for us and sings. Something about him that makes us want to play a little – to wave some palms and have a giggle in the face of warring madness. Jesus rides so we can become a happy ending.

Pilate’s parade attracts us. It inspires feelings of importance and status. But there’s a cost. We have give up parts of ourselves to be in Pilate’s parade. We need to bring our strength but cannot bring our need. We need to bring our devotion, but we cannot bring our longing, doubting selves. Pilate’s parade offers us status, but to earn this status we have to be willing to march in time with Pilate’s relentless marching beat. We have to become who Pilate wants us to be.

Jesus’ parade is different. Jesus’ parade invites us to hold all parts of our life together. The joy and the sorrow. The promise and the pain. In his parade, we do not march in time with one strict beat. We walk with Jesus. His parade wants us to remember the truth of our humanity. Here is Jesus, confronting a grand parade of status and power, inviting us to walk a very human parade of humility — a parade that proclaims a power that comes not from following God, not human strength and weaponry.

Here is Jesus, riding to the Temple where he will topple the money changers’ tables, calling us to be aware of the practices we take part in without thinking; calling us back from blind materialism, consumption, consumerism, to our true humanity. Jesus rides to the place where people give in to fear and resort to violence to solve their problems. He calls us to reach out in love to those who came to greet us with hatred.

Here is Jesus, riding to on Good Friday and the cross. In a world that denies suffering and death, here is Jesus not denying pain but embracing it, calling us back to our humanity to feel the truth that is pain and suffering. Only in facing it can such pain and suffering be transformed.

Jesus rides to Easter. The Good News of Easter is not that we wait for a leader on a white horse to come into town to save us. The message of Easter is what we will celebrate when we come to the table: “This is my body broken for you.” It is here, in and between us — a broken, longing, hoping people — that Christ rises. Here in this body. In this place and time. Restoring us to life, Spirit and love.

Holy Week is our week to reflect prayerfully and passionately on our faith. It is our time to ask which way of life we will follow. We decide and then we bring all of our heart and soul to living that way.

There were two processions that day. And the people had to decide in which one they would participate. That’s still the decision we all must make. Which world order will we help to bring forth: The domination of the empire that uses violence, coercion and the taking advantage of the poor and marginalized to maintain control and order: to maintain the power structure that benefits a few at the cost of the masses? Or, will we help bring forth the world that embraces each life, that values the power of community in relationship, that trusts in the power of love and the possibility of peace— the one where we can be truly free. Which procession will we participate in?