Beloveds, it is good to be here. Will you pray with me?
Covenant-making God, we give thanks for this time together, for the gift of holy words, and holy truth. Make this preaching moment a sacred time, infusing it with your Spirit, that through your Word, we might remember the way you would have us go, and follow.
May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Several years ago, I was on sabbatical with my daughter, and we spent a few weeks exploring the sights of London together. One of the great joys of that time was the freedom to explore, to find our own way. Unlike many of the museums here in the United States, the great museums of that city were free; we could visit over and over again, without price. By virtue of proximity, we were able to stop into our favorites for an hour or two in the course of a day’s activity, without worrying about how much the visit would cost.
We got to know each other’s ways quite well. Our tastes in art do not generally coordinate. I could wander stained glass galleries for days. I enjoy old illuminated manuscripts, and textiles. It was mostly the Victoria and Albert Museum that had my heart. My daughter – nearly sixteen at the time – had a thing for the Tate Modern.
It’s hard to miss: this art gallery on the south bank of the river Thames, by Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, across the Millennium Bridge from St. Paul’s, a bustling location packed with people, day or evening. Housed in a redesigned power station, with an observation deck and a soaring tower, it’s been called an industrial cathedral. On top of the building, there’s a lighted sign that announces in capital letters: ART CHANGES WE CHANGE.
Showing posts with label sermon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sermon. Show all posts
Sunday, February 25, 2018
Sunday, February 26, 2017
The Meeting Place (A Transfiguration Sermon)
Did you see the trees yesterday? My social media feeds were filled, for a time, with photos and glad remarks from friends who stopped what they were doing and took note. The afternoon sun passing through ice-encased twigs was perhaps the best after-effect of Friday night’s weather. Driving along a country road on Saturday was like driving through a jewelbox, all glittering crystal. I thought it looked like a hymn. My daughter and I debated how you might paint such a marvel. These curves and branches - the shapes had seemed so dull and ordinary, late-February drab fading into the background just a few days before. Yesterday? Glorious.
This is transfiguration: that which surrounds us everyday, elevated, made more beautiful. For a while, holy imagination reigns and we can see the glory.
And then we round the curve into town, and pull into the garage, and somehow it’s all still there waiting for us. There is still homework to be done, a sermon to be finished, dinner to be sorted out, and the cats have an opinion about the state of their litterbox.
There are the times when your holy imagination is filled with sunsets and mountains, crystalline trees and freshly-washed baby, hope and newness and the glory of God. The stuff of life, transfigured. Flesh, milk, water, bark, sunshine, photosynthesis, DNA, …which coexist with diapers, spitup, sweat, dirty litterboxes and the desperate need for sleep.
Jesus took his closest followers up the mountain to pray, and Luke tells us they were so gosh darn tired they were ready to drop. There are the times when human limitations tell holy imagination to stuff it. Aching muscles, tired of paying attention, do we have to do this now?
Yes, now. Even though we are tired, and smelly and messy, just ordinary human beings. He wants to do this now. Right now is the time for glory to meet our footsore, fumbling attempts to follow.
This is transfiguration: that which surrounds us everyday, elevated, made more beautiful. For a while, holy imagination reigns and we can see the glory.
And then we round the curve into town, and pull into the garage, and somehow it’s all still there waiting for us. There is still homework to be done, a sermon to be finished, dinner to be sorted out, and the cats have an opinion about the state of their litterbox.
There are the times when your holy imagination is filled with sunsets and mountains, crystalline trees and freshly-washed baby, hope and newness and the glory of God. The stuff of life, transfigured. Flesh, milk, water, bark, sunshine, photosynthesis, DNA, …which coexist with diapers, spitup, sweat, dirty litterboxes and the desperate need for sleep.
Jesus took his closest followers up the mountain to pray, and Luke tells us they were so gosh darn tired they were ready to drop. There are the times when human limitations tell holy imagination to stuff it. Aching muscles, tired of paying attention, do we have to do this now?
Yes, now. Even though we are tired, and smelly and messy, just ordinary human beings. He wants to do this now. Right now is the time for glory to meet our footsore, fumbling attempts to follow.
Sunday, November 20, 2016
Revised and Expansive: A sermon on the Reign of Christ
What’s a preacher to do when the scripture for the day – several weeks in a row - cuts a little too close to what’s going on in the world? The same thing one does any other Sunday: preach the text. Preach the Gospel. We are people of faith. And if we shy away from our sacred stories because they bear an uncomfortable word, then we are no better than the king who fed a scroll bearing forty years’ worth of prophetic words into the flames.
This is the Word the Spirit has brought to the church this day: a perilous time, when the nation is under threat. The Prophet Jeremiah under house arrest, confined, prevented from gathering with God’s people. God’s word snatched from Baruch’s hand - and in a section we skipped over for length today - God’s prophets had to go into hiding. The scroll with these holy, subversive words taken to the palace and read in private quarters amid the king’s closest advisers, and then deliberately, section by section, consigned to the fire. Burned because the king did not like what he was hearing. Because he wanted to suppress the message being spread by the prophet.
What we have in today’s scripture is tantamount to a book burning. We’re not talking about a single speech here. We are talking about a scroll containing forty years of Jeremiah’s life’s work - his heart and soul, everything God had given him for the good of the nation of Israel, the shining days and the terrible days and everything in between. A masterwork, destroyed.
It would be easy, after such a disaster, to give up. It would be natural — particularly for Jeremiah, who was already prone to depression, and lived in difficult times — to give in to the inner voice of doom. To stand there in judgment, shaking one’s head, saying, “I told you so.” Worse: to entertain fantasies of revenge, as if salvation is to be found there. But the prophet doesn’t give up, although it would have been so easy to do so. Instead, he stayed rooted in his call, offering us a model of faithful resistance to a world that just wants to get back to normal when it’s everything but business as usual:
First, the prophet speaks the word given by God.
Over and over again, the prophet spoke the words. Sometimes it offended people. But he kept going. Then, the prophet passes the word on to others, so they are equipped to share it. When Jeremiah couldn’t go himself, Jeremiah taught Baruch. Baruch wrote it down so it could be shared. And Baruch spoke it in the temple. And then - I love this part - when the powers of this world try to shut down the transmission of God’s word (because when does that ever work, people?) - the prophet steps up again. This is when God germinates the seeds of the Word that are planted in the weary heart of the prophet, and it cracks wide open again. You may think you have seen it all and done it all and by all that is holy you are tired, but the word of the Lord comes to you and here it comes again:
“Write down all the words that were in the first scroll that was burned.”
Write down all of the words...and more. The scroll was burned. The powerful ones shut it down. Has the message been lost? No. Just delayed. Write the revised and expanded edition, God says.[1]
They're not going to like hearing this one any better, but it’s still worth saying. Justice is justice. Write it. Speak it. Send My Word forth, instructs God — so the prophet continues to raise the uncomfortable questions before the nation as a whole, not neglecting to confront the powerful, not neglecting to speak in the public square:
And do you allow room, in your economic life for rest, as God commanded?[6]
And to whom do you give supremacy?
Today is Reign of Christ Sunday, when we remember who rules supreme. When we remember the kingdom - or kindom - to which we belong. We are in the middle of a challenging time in the life of our nation, and a challenging run of texts from the Hebrew Prophets, to be followed by a challenging run of texts about the imminent arrival of Jesus, Emmanuel, God-With-Us. We may come to church looking for comfort. But the comfort in the Gospel is inseparable from its challenge, inseparable from Christ’s claim upon our lives.
Our Christian life leads from font, to table, to cross: We baptized a baby last week, and set her on the road to discipleship. Remember all the things we said about the water: water is washing, and soothing, and slaking thirst, and drowning. It is death and it is life. Remember all the things we say at the communion table: it is a meal, where we nourish our bodies, where we celebrate the great banquet where none are excluded, where there is always enough, and it is also a funeral meal, where we remember that it is a gift offered to those Christ already knows will abandon him before he dies. Even the first resurrection story is filled with challenge, more than comfort.
King Jehoiakim wants to enjoy his comfortable winter chambers by the firepit. The nation would like it very much if things could get back to normal. It’s a lovely dream; but that’s all “normal” ever was, a dream. Because “comfort” was only comfortable for some, and “peace” only “peace” for some. To abandon them for our own comfort is to abandon the Gospel.
Prophets, attend! We have been given a Word for our time. Though there may be those in our nation who say, "Hush! Your Word disturbs our peace," and urge us to quiet ourselves, we are called to proclaim it again, more boldly. For here is the way our God works: never settling for a retread of the past, but going beyond, calling us to speak and work for the revised, expansive vision of human community, a community ruled according to kindness, justice, and righteousness.
Amen.
[1] Jeremiah 36:32 [2] Jeremiah 7:5-6 [3] Jeremiah 9:10 [4] Jeremiah 5:28 [5] Jeremiah 8:10-11
[6] Jeremiah 17:19-24 [7] Jeremiah 10:10 [8] Jeremiah 10:12 [9] Jeremiah 6:16 [10] Jeremiah 9:24
Text: Jeremiah 36:1-8, 21-23, 27-38 then 31:31-34. Preached at McFarland UCC
This is the Word the Spirit has brought to the church this day: a perilous time, when the nation is under threat. The Prophet Jeremiah under house arrest, confined, prevented from gathering with God’s people. God’s word snatched from Baruch’s hand - and in a section we skipped over for length today - God’s prophets had to go into hiding. The scroll with these holy, subversive words taken to the palace and read in private quarters amid the king’s closest advisers, and then deliberately, section by section, consigned to the fire. Burned because the king did not like what he was hearing. Because he wanted to suppress the message being spread by the prophet.
What we have in today’s scripture is tantamount to a book burning. We’re not talking about a single speech here. We are talking about a scroll containing forty years of Jeremiah’s life’s work - his heart and soul, everything God had given him for the good of the nation of Israel, the shining days and the terrible days and everything in between. A masterwork, destroyed.
It would be easy, after such a disaster, to give up. It would be natural — particularly for Jeremiah, who was already prone to depression, and lived in difficult times — to give in to the inner voice of doom. To stand there in judgment, shaking one’s head, saying, “I told you so.” Worse: to entertain fantasies of revenge, as if salvation is to be found there. But the prophet doesn’t give up, although it would have been so easy to do so. Instead, he stayed rooted in his call, offering us a model of faithful resistance to a world that just wants to get back to normal when it’s everything but business as usual:
First, the prophet speaks the word given by God.
Over and over again, the prophet spoke the words. Sometimes it offended people. But he kept going. Then, the prophet passes the word on to others, so they are equipped to share it. When Jeremiah couldn’t go himself, Jeremiah taught Baruch. Baruch wrote it down so it could be shared. And Baruch spoke it in the temple. And then - I love this part - when the powers of this world try to shut down the transmission of God’s word (because when does that ever work, people?) - the prophet steps up again. This is when God germinates the seeds of the Word that are planted in the weary heart of the prophet, and it cracks wide open again. You may think you have seen it all and done it all and by all that is holy you are tired, but the word of the Lord comes to you and here it comes again:
“Write down all the words that were in the first scroll that was burned.”
Write down all of the words...and more. The scroll was burned. The powerful ones shut it down. Has the message been lost? No. Just delayed. Write the revised and expanded edition, God says.[1]
They're not going to like hearing this one any better, but it’s still worth saying. Justice is justice. Write it. Speak it. Send My Word forth, instructs God — so the prophet continues to raise the uncomfortable questions before the nation as a whole, not neglecting to confront the powerful, not neglecting to speak in the public square:
And are you caring for God’s creation?Do you treat each other justly? Do you follow the Lord’s ways? Stop taking advantage of the immigrant, orphan, or widow. Stop shedding the blood of the innocent,… going after other gods to your own ruin…[2]
Are the rich and powerful growing fat and sleek, prospering, indifferent to the plight of the orphan, the rights of the poor?[4]“I will weep and wail for the mountains, and lament for the grazing lands in the wilderness. They are dried up and deserted; no sound of the flocks is heard; no sign of birds or animals is seen; all have vanished.”[3]
Do you treat the worker with justice?From the least to the greatest, all are eager to profit. From prophet to priest, all trade in falsehood. they treat the wound of my people as if were nothing: “All is well, all is well,” they insist, when in fact nothing is well.”[5]
And do you allow room, in your economic life for rest, as God commanded?[6]
And to whom do you give supremacy?
“The Lord is the true God! He’s the living God and the everlasting King!”[7]
“God made the earth by his might; he shaped the world by his wisdom, crafted the skies by his knowledge.”[8]
It is words such as these the prophet carried to the nation, which had him banned from the temple, confined, his words burned, and eventually killed in exile. It is words such as these which Jesus used to confront the powers of his time, words that got him killed.“Stop at the crossroads and look around; ask for the ancient paths. Where is the good way? Then walk in it.”[9]
Today is Reign of Christ Sunday, when we remember who rules supreme. When we remember the kingdom - or kindom - to which we belong. We are in the middle of a challenging time in the life of our nation, and a challenging run of texts from the Hebrew Prophets, to be followed by a challenging run of texts about the imminent arrival of Jesus, Emmanuel, God-With-Us. We may come to church looking for comfort. But the comfort in the Gospel is inseparable from its challenge, inseparable from Christ’s claim upon our lives.
Our Christian life leads from font, to table, to cross: We baptized a baby last week, and set her on the road to discipleship. Remember all the things we said about the water: water is washing, and soothing, and slaking thirst, and drowning. It is death and it is life. Remember all the things we say at the communion table: it is a meal, where we nourish our bodies, where we celebrate the great banquet where none are excluded, where there is always enough, and it is also a funeral meal, where we remember that it is a gift offered to those Christ already knows will abandon him before he dies. Even the first resurrection story is filled with challenge, more than comfort.
King Jehoiakim wants to enjoy his comfortable winter chambers by the firepit. The nation would like it very much if things could get back to normal. It’s a lovely dream; but that’s all “normal” ever was, a dream. Because “comfort” was only comfortable for some, and “peace” only “peace” for some. To abandon them for our own comfort is to abandon the Gospel.
Prophets, attend! We have been given a Word for our time. Though there may be those in our nation who say, "Hush! Your Word disturbs our peace," and urge us to quiet ourselves, we are called to proclaim it again, more boldly. For here is the way our God works: never settling for a retread of the past, but going beyond, calling us to speak and work for the revised, expansive vision of human community, a community ruled according to kindness, justice, and righteousness.
God is writing the revised and expansive edition. It’s gonna take a while. There’s still time to get involved. Prophets, are you in?“I am the Lord who acts with kindness, justice, and righteousness in the world, and I delight in these things, declares the Lord.”[10]
Amen.
[1] Jeremiah 36:32 [2] Jeremiah 7:5-6 [3] Jeremiah 9:10 [4] Jeremiah 5:28 [5] Jeremiah 8:10-11
[6] Jeremiah 17:19-24 [7] Jeremiah 10:10 [8] Jeremiah 10:12 [9] Jeremiah 6:16 [10] Jeremiah 9:24
Text: Jeremiah 36:1-8, 21-23, 27-38 then 31:31-34. Preached at McFarland UCC
Sunday, October 16, 2016
The Power of Memory
How many things do you think we forget in a day? The answers from the professionals range from 4 specific tasks or items - along the lines of charging our phones, picking up the milk or where we placed our keys - to 99% of what we observe to the very scientific answer "a lot."
The continued existence of the Western way of life in our time demands a sort of amnesia[1]. To go about daily life in the way of the average North American suburbanite is to forget -- and so we must be very skilled in the art of forgetting. It is necessary, when I go to the mall, that I must forget about the many pairs of shoes gracing the back of my bedroom door. At the grocery store, faced with aisle after aisle of options, it is necessary that you forget about the lettuce growing limp, the cheese moldering in a drawer in your refrigerator, the person who has one can or none in their cupboard, not ten cans or freezer or fresh to choose from.
The economy's health demands that you forget the person who may or may not be working this Sabbath day to stitch the sweater you will be buying on Black Friday. It is necessary, for the sake of the economy, or empire (pick your E word, they may be one and the same), to forget the first inhabitants of the land over which this newest oil pipeline is intended to run, and its current inhabitants, for that matter.
I remember a little girl who could not go to sleep one night because she was sad about the polar bears, whom she had just learned were losing their habitat due to the melting of the polar ice cap. Truth be told, I had forgotten, and I found myself disconcerted, until I managed to forget again.
We must forget, on a daily basis, the polar bear and the Great Barrier Reef, or we would fail to buy our next car, or take our next business trip, or perhaps offer a prayer of confession with too much earnestness.
"Come, let us forget together," says the voice of Empire. "Let us be at ease together. Go to sleep. Do not think overmuch about past or future."
Forgetting has its gifts; it seems to hold the world's hurt at bay for a while. There are so many hurts that if we were to hold them all tenderly we would be leaving trails of tears all over the sidewalk. The Empire's offer sounds like a reasonable compromise toward daily survival.
So we accept the invitation to live in today, and when fear of tomorrow, or pain of yesterday intrudes, we cushion it with more sensory input, more work, more stuff -- embedding ourselves ever more deeply in the trappings of empire.
This forgetting business is the root of all sorts of brokenness. Contrary to its promise to make things easier, it causes dis-ease. Forgetting steals something of our humanity. It is a spiritual sickness, separating us from God, from creation, from neighbor.
If forgetting is the disease, what is the best remedy? Remembering.
My AP history teacher had a banner printed over his classroom blackboard: those who fail to remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Remembering is good for more than passing a history test or becoming a Jeopardy champion. Remembering, if done properly, is an act of resistance.
In school we do a lot of intellectual remembering - using our brains; remembering from the neck up. This is good, and worthy - and incomplete.
God gave us so much more than our brains. Remembering done properly frees the whole body to remember. We remember with our sense of smell; the scientists tell us that's the sense most closely linked with our memory centers. We remember with our muscles. Muscle memory (athletes? musicians?) comes from hours of practice, somehow knowing the “how” of doing something without even needing to consciously think about it.
Building those patterns is important so we can draw on them in urgently needed moments, when we’re under stress. This is why we are a community of faith, not solitary practitioners. This is why we gather to worship, not try to follow the way of Christ on our own.
Our worship is a practice of freedom – an act of remembering together; an act of resistance against a world that actively urges us to forget. More and more often, we are getting out of our heads and remembering with our whole selves in worship. We are singing freedom in so many musical languages - in traditional hymn, and jazz, and acapella spiritual and African rhythm. That music sometimes inspires our bodies get into the game, and ALLELUIA, freedom is coming - the Holy Spirit is in the house.
Freedom is profoundly unsettling. Worship to equip us for leaving is going to have to rattle the foundations of empire. It might have rattle us, too.
One lesson this thorny passage from Exodus is teaching us is that God knows we are good at forgetting. Even before freeing the people from captivity God sets out instructions for remembering this crucial saving act. God knows we will need it to get us through trouble time and time again.
It's not like we encounter only one Pharaoh throughout all of history. The Empire shows up with different names, in different disguises. It's not like George Lucas came up with Star Wars from nothing! There’s Pharaoh in Egypt, and Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon, Rome under the Caesars, colonial powers of Europe carving up Asia, Africa and the Americas...Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy. Our own country, the United States of America, has had Pharaohs and been Empire. There are places we are doing it now, and we are always at risk of doing it again. There are Pharaohs in our workplaces. You may have survived a Pharaoh in your home, in a personal relationship. Their presence may be uncomfortably close. You may be staring down a drug-or-alcohol or food-based Pharaoh.
They all say the same thing: forget. Forget who and whose you are. You belong to me. Let me decide for you. And for every cry of every one of God’s children facing any Pharaoh, God proclaims FREEDOM with a voice to shatter the night. God says, REMEMBER. You are my child. I will not abandon you.
The instructions for the Passover observance tell the people of God it is not just a good thing, but imperative to remember. Not just with our HEADS but with our whole beings: Body, attitude. Community.
In the face of these domineering Pharaohs, our solitary brains are not gonna be enough to remember with, folks. This is going to have to be a whole-body, whole-community remembering.
Remember what the Lord did for you, when he brought you up out of Egypt? We need to be able to both SAY it and DO it for one another. With one another. Get ready to move, Moses said, God is about to do something big. Put your shoes on. Act as if this is an urgent business.
Remember? You are MY people. I will lead you up and out of this place. Remember this day, body and soul. Remember what I am doing. This is who I am. In the night of chaos and crying I will be with you. You are marked for freedom. You are mine.
Remember.
[1] NIB 787
Preached October 16, 2016 at McFarland UCC. Text, excerpts from Exodus 12 and 13.
The continued existence of the Western way of life in our time demands a sort of amnesia[1]. To go about daily life in the way of the average North American suburbanite is to forget -- and so we must be very skilled in the art of forgetting. It is necessary, when I go to the mall, that I must forget about the many pairs of shoes gracing the back of my bedroom door. At the grocery store, faced with aisle after aisle of options, it is necessary that you forget about the lettuce growing limp, the cheese moldering in a drawer in your refrigerator, the person who has one can or none in their cupboard, not ten cans or freezer or fresh to choose from.
The economy's health demands that you forget the person who may or may not be working this Sabbath day to stitch the sweater you will be buying on Black Friday. It is necessary, for the sake of the economy, or empire (pick your E word, they may be one and the same), to forget the first inhabitants of the land over which this newest oil pipeline is intended to run, and its current inhabitants, for that matter.
I remember a little girl who could not go to sleep one night because she was sad about the polar bears, whom she had just learned were losing their habitat due to the melting of the polar ice cap. Truth be told, I had forgotten, and I found myself disconcerted, until I managed to forget again.
We must forget, on a daily basis, the polar bear and the Great Barrier Reef, or we would fail to buy our next car, or take our next business trip, or perhaps offer a prayer of confession with too much earnestness.
"Come, let us forget together," says the voice of Empire. "Let us be at ease together. Go to sleep. Do not think overmuch about past or future."
Forgetting has its gifts; it seems to hold the world's hurt at bay for a while. There are so many hurts that if we were to hold them all tenderly we would be leaving trails of tears all over the sidewalk. The Empire's offer sounds like a reasonable compromise toward daily survival.
So we accept the invitation to live in today, and when fear of tomorrow, or pain of yesterday intrudes, we cushion it with more sensory input, more work, more stuff -- embedding ourselves ever more deeply in the trappings of empire.
This forgetting business is the root of all sorts of brokenness. Contrary to its promise to make things easier, it causes dis-ease. Forgetting steals something of our humanity. It is a spiritual sickness, separating us from God, from creation, from neighbor.
If forgetting is the disease, what is the best remedy? Remembering.
My AP history teacher had a banner printed over his classroom blackboard: those who fail to remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Remembering is good for more than passing a history test or becoming a Jeopardy champion. Remembering, if done properly, is an act of resistance.
In school we do a lot of intellectual remembering - using our brains; remembering from the neck up. This is good, and worthy - and incomplete.
God gave us so much more than our brains. Remembering done properly frees the whole body to remember. We remember with our sense of smell; the scientists tell us that's the sense most closely linked with our memory centers. We remember with our muscles. Muscle memory (athletes? musicians?) comes from hours of practice, somehow knowing the “how” of doing something without even needing to consciously think about it.
Building those patterns is important so we can draw on them in urgently needed moments, when we’re under stress. This is why we are a community of faith, not solitary practitioners. This is why we gather to worship, not try to follow the way of Christ on our own.
Our worship is a practice of freedom – an act of remembering together; an act of resistance against a world that actively urges us to forget. More and more often, we are getting out of our heads and remembering with our whole selves in worship. We are singing freedom in so many musical languages - in traditional hymn, and jazz, and acapella spiritual and African rhythm. That music sometimes inspires our bodies get into the game, and ALLELUIA, freedom is coming - the Holy Spirit is in the house.
Freedom is profoundly unsettling. Worship to equip us for leaving is going to have to rattle the foundations of empire. It might have rattle us, too.
One lesson this thorny passage from Exodus is teaching us is that God knows we are good at forgetting. Even before freeing the people from captivity God sets out instructions for remembering this crucial saving act. God knows we will need it to get us through trouble time and time again.
It's not like we encounter only one Pharaoh throughout all of history. The Empire shows up with different names, in different disguises. It's not like George Lucas came up with Star Wars from nothing! There’s Pharaoh in Egypt, and Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon, Rome under the Caesars, colonial powers of Europe carving up Asia, Africa and the Americas...Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy. Our own country, the United States of America, has had Pharaohs and been Empire. There are places we are doing it now, and we are always at risk of doing it again. There are Pharaohs in our workplaces. You may have survived a Pharaoh in your home, in a personal relationship. Their presence may be uncomfortably close. You may be staring down a drug-or-alcohol or food-based Pharaoh.
They all say the same thing: forget. Forget who and whose you are. You belong to me. Let me decide for you. And for every cry of every one of God’s children facing any Pharaoh, God proclaims FREEDOM with a voice to shatter the night. God says, REMEMBER. You are my child. I will not abandon you.
The instructions for the Passover observance tell the people of God it is not just a good thing, but imperative to remember. Not just with our HEADS but with our whole beings: Body, attitude. Community.
In the face of these domineering Pharaohs, our solitary brains are not gonna be enough to remember with, folks. This is going to have to be a whole-body, whole-community remembering.
Remember what the Lord did for you, when he brought you up out of Egypt? We need to be able to both SAY it and DO it for one another. With one another. Get ready to move, Moses said, God is about to do something big. Put your shoes on. Act as if this is an urgent business.
Remember? You are MY people. I will lead you up and out of this place. Remember this day, body and soul. Remember what I am doing. This is who I am. In the night of chaos and crying I will be with you. You are marked for freedom. You are mine.
Remember.
[1] NIB 787
Preached October 16, 2016 at McFarland UCC. Text, excerpts from Exodus 12 and 13.
Sunday, September 25, 2016
In the Middle of It All
Look at all this beauty! “You may eat freely,” God said - consume freely, take it all in, make it a part of you -
So you accept this gift of unguardedness, wandering freely. You open your heart to receive the world, using the fullness of your senses; feel the warmth of the sun on the back of your neck, say thank you for the blessed choice of the mosquito to take her meal elsewhere; enjoy the taste of water when you scoop it to your mouth, know the particular scents of the morning and evening, hear another creature’s movements somewhere in the garden, your soul enlarging with each particle of creation -
And then your eye settles on the tree. You remember the word, “except.”
It’s all yours, except for that one tree.
A curious word, except. Here we are, so close to the beginning of Creation, and there is already an “in” and an “out” group, what’s ok and what’s not. “In” and “out” makes the possibilities feel a little more limited.
In the fertile land, the story says, God grew every beautiful tree with edible fruit, and also the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Go about your business. Enjoy the expansiveness of God’s garden. Delight in the diversity of creation. Wander freely and let your senses absorb the richness which surrounds you. Care for all of it. Eat your fill, except – see that one, there, right in the middle of everything? Eat from that one, and it’ll kill you. Have a nice day. Enjoy your freedom. Try not to think about the tree.
Except.
That not-insignificant limit might have been easier to take if the tree were at the edge of the garden instead of right.there.in.the.middle.of.everything. If it took a day trip to get out to the tree; if you had to go out of your way to see it, a bit of thoughtful tourism perhaps, a diversion. Somewhere in the corner, or on one of the side paths you didn’t travel every day, where you could credibly pretend it didn’t exist, now and then, instead of constantly catching glimpses when you were vulnerable and unprepared to deal with it.
Sunday, October 04, 2015
Another Damn Sermon on Gun Violence
We just had our nine hundred and eighty sixth mass shooting since Sandy Hook. That was in 2012, in case you’re keeping count. Two hundred and seventy four days into this year, there have been two hundred and ninety four mass shootings. The satirical news site, The Onion, has taken to simply reposting the same article each time a shooting happens, with updated locations and dates.
I was chatting with a good friend this week and said that I didn’t want to preach one more damn sermon about gun violence. She suggested, why don’t you just say that, bluntly. I replied, "I did. Four gun violence sermons ago." Dear ones, I am tired of this sermon. As (I’m sure) are you. As (I’m sure) is God.
I came home yesterday from presiding at a memorial service, and sat down to begin writing this sermon which I don’t want to be delivering. Naturally, my gift for procrastination took hold. I decided I would turn to my news feed to read a bit of what others were saying; it doesn’t do to compose a sermon while uninformed. At which point, I learned that our military forces – the United States’ – had bombed a hospital run by the international charity Doctors Without Borders. A hospital serving victims in a war zone in Afghanistan, with coordinates made known to both sides.
Words fail.
“Deliver us!,” the people cry out on Facebook, on Twitter, in the coffee shops and cafes. “Deliver us!,” they cry out under their breath while driving to work and hearing the latest death toll. "Deliver us!" while huddled in the corner of a classroom with the lights off. “Deliver us!,” the people cry out as they hug their children to bed at night. “Deliver us,” with the lighting of candles, the sharing of articles and saying of prayers.
While the politicians say, too, “Deliver us!” Deliver us into office. Deliver us into the halls of power, and then beyond, to the halls where the lobbyists and campaign contributors wield their greater power with a higher paycheck and higher stakes.
We stand in the presence of the Holy One. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Deliver us from the temptation to despair. Lead us into prayerful action.
We have been caught up in a repetitive loop of lament, captive to endless news coverage and a dystopian vision that the odds are so overwhelming there is no realistic path to change. It is as if we were still living in the days of the Romans, when the crucified lined the roads as a warning to those who dared challenge the might of an empire. Understand that every death in every mass shooting, every proclamation that nothing can be done, is another cross raised to keep you living in terror. This is all those news stories are designed to achieve: keep the way of death foremost in our hearts.
Is this the way Christ calls us to live? Enslaved, captivated by the power of death? We belong to a different story. The apostle Paul says this of Christians: We do not grieve as others do, who have no hope. We believe there is an end to the cycle of sin and death.
I am the God of the ancestors. I hear the cries of distress. I am aware of the suffering. Now go...for I am sending you to do something about it.
The burning bush is where we are called out. God knows who we are, and how we are tempted to slide back into our comfortable lives of sheep-herding and goat-tending. But at the burning bush, when people are dying and God calls you to act, prayer and refuge in personal holiness are not an acceptable retreat. God knows that Moses is far from perfect. He is a murderer and a coward, and not a very good public speaker, either. There are a multitude of excuses to be offered, but none are sufficient to disqualify him.
With every stammer of Moses, God repeats, “I Am; I Will Be.” And it is there we find our answer. Remember God’s name: I AM. God’s name is existence itself, a declaration of life. Do you really think a God like that will give any ground to the power of death?
If you have seen the flames and know the name of the one who calls you, if you admit this ground is holy, then you have no refuge in excuses. Yours is the voice God will use.
Such is the power of naming.
Followers of Christ’s way: the road does not end with death on a Holy Friday, or with lament on an empty Saturday. The road doesn’t even end with a glorious Sunday on which Resurrection is proclaimed. The road doesn’t end.
One of the earliest names for Christians was “followers of the way.” We are disciples – students; and apostles – messengers. If we are serious about our Christianity, then we proclaim life in the face of death; abundance in the face of scarcity, freedom in the face of enslaving powers that would oppress and impoverish God’s children. We allow ourselves to be broken open and poured out for the sake of the world. We do this, not under our own power, but rooted in the power of the one who sends us. We are given God’s name that we might use it in times of need.
If we believe in these things, then we pray without ceasing, and write without ceasing, and walk and speak without ceasing. We stand alongside the grieving, bearing witness to the temporary dominion of death, and we confront the powerful, demanding to know why human life is being sacrificed for financial gain.
We say to the ones who walk in the halls of power, enough with these damn sermons about gun violence. Deliver us from your excuses and your platitudes. There are solutions and we demand them.
Moses, you have been called to action by a voice from a burning bush. There is nothing about this which will be comfortable.
So make politicians uncomfortable. Moses had to do a lot of badgering of Pharaoh to become more than a joke to the political elite. Show up at campaign rallies and media events and office hours and ask how many people have to die before these policymakers take action.
If we are serious about this Christian thing, maybe we become single issue voters. Refuse to vote for a politician who will not take a stand on this, and let them know. Shift investments away from funds which support the machinery of death -- the guns and the bombs and the drones. Begin the de-funding of war, both domestic and foreign.
If we are serious about this Jesus thing, we bring these issues up in polite conversation. Don’t be timid. Make sure everyone knows your feelings: bring it up with your card club, your book club, your coffee klatsch, your curling and hunting and football-watching buddies. You do not know how many opinions you may sway.
We have been given the name, Christian. We need no longer tolerate a culture of death, the worship of the gun and the sacrifice of untold numbers on the altar of violence.
Dear ones, you want to know how you are being called to use your gifts? It is ever and always to challenge the dominion of death. This is the work of Christ, who came in the name of abundant life. We have not been given a spirit of fear, but of power, and love, and self-control. When we speak on the side of life, the Holy One will be with us. God will give us the words to say.
Amen?
Preached on 10/4/15 at McFarland UCC. Text: Exodus 2:23-25, 3:1-15. Statistics from vox.com and washingtonpost.com. Photo copyright: bennymarty / 123RF Stock Photo
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Dear Leah: A God on Broadway Sermon (Wicked)
The Text from Broadway: “I'm Not That Girl” from the Broadway musical Wicked.
There's a girl I know, he loves her so....I'm not that girl...
The Text from Scripture: Genesis 29
So Jacob went in to Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah...Audio Recording of Scripture & Sermon can be found here.
Dear Leah,
Because our stories are all alike, and a little bit different, I wonder:
Growing up, did you and Rachel argue over what beauty means? Did she wield her good looks like a weapon? Did she taunt you for your bad eyes? What did you think, when your cousin Jacob came to town? When he noticed your sister – like everyone did – and you remained unseen?
All those seven years as Jacob worked – did you know what your father had up his sleeve? Did you try to talk him out of it? Or did you embrace it as an escape, your last, best, chance for finding a partner, for leaving a difficult home?
At the altar, how did you feel? Were you sick inside? Were you silently grateful? And on your wedding night, in the darkness of the tent, knowing that your husband imagined he was touching someone else? Were you able to weep then, or did you hold off until the morning, when a portion of the truth was revealed? Over the days of the honeymoon, did you hope you could come to terms with one another? For the next seven years, how did you hold the pieces of your broken heart together, seeing him work day after day for the love of another?
If we could sit down over a cup of tea, I would ask you these things, and seek to learn from your strength. And then, when you were done saying the things that needed to be said, I would share what I have with you…
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Whatever You Want: A God on Broadway Sermon (Chicago)
The Text from Broadway: “When You’re Good to Mama” from the Broadway musical Chicago.
There's a lot of favors I'm prepared to do - You do one for Mama, she'll do one for you!
The Text from Scripture: Mark 6:14-29
Herod’s daughter came in and danced, thrilling Herod and his dinner guests. The king said to the young woman, “Ask me whatever you wish, and I will give it to you.” Then he swore to her, “Whatever you ask I will give to you, even as much as half of my kingdom.”
Our soloist and I had a little chat when she was in to rehearse the other day, “Are you ok with me vamping it up a little bit?” It happens all the time with this Broadway series – a singer will come and say “are you sure you’re ok with…..” Ab-so-lutely. Nobody could ever honestly slap a G rating on the Bible. If we were to just focus on the nice wholesome bits on a Sunday, there would be a whole range of human experience that would not be reflected in our common worship. Life is not G-rated. So we bring it all to God – heart, soul, mind, strength… hands, feet, and head (whether it’s connected or not).
Let me give you a little window into King Herod’s court: the royal family tree has enough scandal embedded in it to parallel the most sordid reality television. Let me recap just the current generations: Woman marries her uncle. Woman dumps her uncle and marries her other uncle. Great-niece dances for great-uncle and a room full of party guests in a way that’s worth half a kingdom…or the head of a prophet.
Just what kind of a Gospel are we running here? Perhaps it would be best not to invoke Biblical family values too hastily. Herod’s birthday banquet offers an unsettling vision of what it’s like when self-interest is the name of the game, when everybody’s a free agent waiting to be bought off, and every decision is high stakes.
A fabulous birthday party thrown by Herod, for Herod. It’s a great day in Herod’s world– he knows his own tastes, and he’s in charge. Nobody’s going order the anchovy pizza or give him a clunker of a gift. Nothing but the best for Herod. Nobody he doesn’t want there, either. Everybody invited for a reason – someone to impress, someone to intimidate, someone to manipulate. He knows how to throw a razzle-dazzle kind of party.
Sunday, March 08, 2015
Speechless: A Parable
A Sermon on the Parable of the Wedding Party
And each week, instead of hearing a straightforward comparison, a basic lesson in similes and metaphors, we have been unpacking a deeper story. Parables are not Aesop’s fables with a simple moral and life application that will make you a better person; parables mess with your head.
Instead of a direct comparison, they twist our thinking. They help us explore more complicated questions such as, “What are the boundaries of forgiveness?” and “What if our central organizing principle was hospitality?” Today, we receive another kingdom sketch that seems to tear both of these prior lessons to shreds.
Today’s parable comes from the 22nd chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew. In our Bible study this week, we discovered that a similar story is told in Luke and in the Gospel of Thomas. Matthew’s version gives George RR Martin a run for his money. If you’re familiar with his novels, or the HBO series Game of Thrones, the storyline might seem familiar.
Imagine an occasion spun out of control. A scene where the soundtrack grows dissonant, you know something awful is about to happen, and yet you are powerless to leave.
(I ask your forbearance if you have known difficult tables of your own. You already know the agony of which I speak, the terror in the pit of your stomach, the sense of being glued to your chair. Many of us have been seated at difficult tables where our presence seems to be mandatory. The question before us today is, “how do we wrangle a blessing to accompany us in times such as these?”)
Imagine a wedding feast in a kingdom far, far away. The invitations go out by priority courier, to those from all over the kingdom. Both friends and enemies to be present, but an occasion not to be missed. Imagine the complex seating charts, who it would be permissible to seat at table with whom. Imagine the preparations, boxes and bins of food brought in to a buzzing kitchen. The smell of an extravagant meal in the works. Streamers and banners billowing from a high ceiling. No expense spared to make this a memorable occasion.
And imagine that, when this feast was ready, those invited said, no. “No, we cannot come.”
Imagine such an insult to the king’s honor. Imagine the heralds returning, from east and west and north and south with variations on, “no.” Imagine that some of them did not return at all. Imagine that others came back, not hot and dusty from the road, but cold, across the saddle, their lifeless bodies all the answer the king needed to demonstrate his alleged esteem in the eyes of those who had refused him.
Imagine the king’s growing rage. And then, in your mind’s eye, picture fields and cities destroyed at the hand of the king’s soldiers, the skies filled with smoke and scavengers.
Imagine a parody of normalcy, a grim scene in which the banquet takes place after all, and survivors are marched in to eat of what has been prepared. Imagine their terror. Imagine the stark reality that this could be all there is, this kind of king, this kind of banquet among the smoking ruins.
Imagine, too, the stark reality that the food within this hall might be all that is available for some time, the fields now empty, storehouses burned, and winter coming on. Imagine eating this food out of necessity, the opulence of this hall at odds with everything you know is happening outside these doors – one foot in unearned privilege, the other in destruction and terror.
And in comes the king, sweeping up the aisle, when his eye falls on one of these secondary guests. Not you, thank God, not you. But a neighbor, perhaps. Someone across the room. Dressed in their everyday clothes, quaking in terror, failing to celebrate sufficiently the king’s generosity. And for the crime of being merely human, and catching the king’s eye, they are seized by guards, bound hand and foot and cast into the cold, cold night.
A traditional interpretation of this parable has it that God is the King, and Christ is the king’s son, whose wedding the feast celebrates. Those unwilling to recognize or celebrate the occasion are victims of the king’s wrath. And heaven help you if you make light of the occasion by forgetting your fancy clothes – you’ll be cast into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus says, “To what shall I compare the Kingdom of God?” And once again I say, “not this.” Not every parable draws a bright connecting line between the parable and the Kingdom. And while sometimes we do proclaim God as King and Lord – among other titles - not every king in a parable is a figure for the Holy One.
The traditional way of reading Jesus’ banquet story reveals more about humanity than it does about God. What does it say about us that we leap to the idea of a sadistic brutal God?* A ruler we cringe in terror of offending? A ruler whose operating style is at odds with previous teachings on forgiveness and hospitality and grace?
This king sounds more like King Herod, who committed genocide in the interest of maintaining his own power, murdering the children of Israel. This is not a kingdom parable or a kindom parable – it is an anti-king parable. It cuts down the power players, the kings and the elites of this world, who hold the power of life and death in their hands. We are constantly invited – mandated – to attend their banquet.
They know it is not an occasion for peace. I mentioned the series Game of Thrones earlier. There’s an event called The Red Wedding and it is even bloodier and more terrifying than this parable. In that tale, one of the people tricked into coming to the wedding notices, underneath a host’s wedding garment, a glimpse of chain mail. You would not wear armor to a festive occasion unless you knew violence was going to break out.
The way of violence always calls us to violent retribution. And yet, Christians, we are not called to return like for like. There is power in standing witness. On this weekend when our nation commemorates fifty years since the civil rights marches in Selma, on this Madison-area weekend when another community mourns the loss of another black teen, it is good to remember that we do not engage the brutal powers of this world with violence.
Especially on this weekend when we baptize a child in our midst and we say, “you are God’s beloved,” it is good to remember the other garment that we wear. It is not made of metal or lace; it is fit for neither fighting nor parading one’s material wealth. It is a simple garment, a servant’s garment. A baptismal garment.
We wear Christ. The Apostle Paul would say, we “put on Christ.” This is our armor against the violence that eats the soul. This is the finest robe that makes us fit to sit at any of the world’s tables. This is what warms and shields us when surrounded by weeping and gnashing of teeth.
This is a garment available to anyone who desires it and is bold to wear it. There is no shortage. It will not keep us away from bad news or guns or tear gas or grief. But it gives us strength to stand up to corrupt systems and power players who would burn the place down to preserve their privilege.
It is not an easy word we have from Matthew today, a parable of a king who is not God and a kingdom that is not heaven. But it is a piece of a story told by Jesus, and it is a gift that it has been passed on to us by a beloved community.
May we wrestle with it for generations to come. Amen?
Preached for the 3rd Sunday in Lent, for a series on parables. March 8, 2015 at McFarland United Church of Christ
Image copyright: 123RF Stock Photo.
*I am indebted to The Hardest Question for calling my attention to this line of thought.
Sunday, March 01, 2015
Full Availability: A Parable
There were not many jobs to be had. Not many regular jobs, at least. It was a bit easier to find a limited gig that would pay you for three days, or two days, or one day at a time. The economy was based on full availability. If there was a chance to work, and you turned it down…well, you might not get called again.
That’s what happened the time my grandfather took a day job shoveling out a railroad car during the Depression. At that time, you didn’t know when the next job might present itself, so you took a job when offered, and you were grateful for the chance to earn something, when the next guy might get nothing. So he took the job shoveling out the railroad car. He spent a hard day shoveling salt. And by the end of the day, when they dished out the day’s wage? Well, instead of feeding the family, it had to go to buying him a new pair of boots to replace the ones the salt had ruined.
That sort of deal didn’t end with the New Deal. It’s just as prevalent here at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Some call it ‘Working in Retail’. Some call it ‘The Sharing Economy.’ Others call it On-Demand Staffing or 'Flexible Staffing Practices'. Full Availability is a system where it seems the employer has all the rights to organize the employee’s time. It is not uncommon in retail – and increasingly, in other sectors – to receive your schedule shortly before the week begins, and to be notified that you are “on call” in case of an unexpected surge in customers, expected to report on as little as two hours’ notice. All of this for the extravagant wage of $7.25 to $10 an hour.
Of course, with your employer’s needs as your central organizing principle, you have precious little energy to devote to organizing anything else: child care, or a search for a better job, or your fellow employees. It goes beyond paycheck-to-paycheck and ends up being more like hand-to-mouth.
That’s what happened the time my grandfather took a day job shoveling out a railroad car during the Depression. At that time, you didn’t know when the next job might present itself, so you took a job when offered, and you were grateful for the chance to earn something, when the next guy might get nothing. So he took the job shoveling out the railroad car. He spent a hard day shoveling salt. And by the end of the day, when they dished out the day’s wage? Well, instead of feeding the family, it had to go to buying him a new pair of boots to replace the ones the salt had ruined.
That sort of deal didn’t end with the New Deal. It’s just as prevalent here at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Some call it ‘Working in Retail’. Some call it ‘The Sharing Economy.’ Others call it On-Demand Staffing or 'Flexible Staffing Practices'. Full Availability is a system where it seems the employer has all the rights to organize the employee’s time. It is not uncommon in retail – and increasingly, in other sectors – to receive your schedule shortly before the week begins, and to be notified that you are “on call” in case of an unexpected surge in customers, expected to report on as little as two hours’ notice. All of this for the extravagant wage of $7.25 to $10 an hour.
Of course, with your employer’s needs as your central organizing principle, you have precious little energy to devote to organizing anything else: child care, or a search for a better job, or your fellow employees. It goes beyond paycheck-to-paycheck and ends up being more like hand-to-mouth.
Sunday, February 08, 2015
A Word for the Drowning
He was sad. Oh, so sad.
His dear cousin – the one he had met even before they were born – dead.
He had been about his work for so long: calling disciples, mentoring them - telling stories, healing people, instructing them and sending them out to serve. He was becoming an A-list public speaker, the kind people flock to listen to whenever they come to town. His mother and brothers came to visit, and he turned away from them. He said, I haven’t come to bring peace, but a sword.
So full of fire, he was. So busy. John had to send word from prison, asking “Are you the one? The one we’ve been waiting for?” They had been apart since baptism day at the Jordan.
And now he was gone.
The world wouldn’t leave him alone to grieve.
His dear cousin – the one he had met even before they were born – dead.
He had been about his work for so long: calling disciples, mentoring them - telling stories, healing people, instructing them and sending them out to serve. He was becoming an A-list public speaker, the kind people flock to listen to whenever they come to town. His mother and brothers came to visit, and he turned away from them. He said, I haven’t come to bring peace, but a sword.
So full of fire, he was. So busy. John had to send word from prison, asking “Are you the one? The one we’ve been waiting for?” They had been apart since baptism day at the Jordan.
And now he was gone.
The world wouldn’t leave him alone to grieve.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Thou Shalt Not (a sermon on the child refugee crisis)
As I was made more aware of the child refugee crisis at the southern border of the United States, I felt the call to preach on the issue. Although we were in the midst of our summertime 'God on Broadway' series, I found an unexpected parallel in our previously announced selection for the week. As it turns out, Shrek - in both its film and Broadway musical forms - happens to provide an entry point into the issue of refugees fleeing violence. Bear with the first couple of paragraphs that made the contextual link for the people who were in the room, to get to the meat of the message...
Thou Shalt Not (preached on July 20 2014 at McFarland UCC)
Thou Shalt Not (preached on July 20 2014 at McFarland UCC)
The most famous self-help book ever written was – is – “The Power of Positive Thinking.” Since it was published in 1952, a whole industry has grown up around the idea of stopping negative self-talk. Coming from the same stream, we find the “Law of Attraction” and the “Power of Intention,” in which focusing your energy on the positive is supposed to bring all the good things you want in life. It’s in the parenting and teaching and leadership literature, too: “use positive language”. “Please do this”, not “stop, don’t.” (When you hear the question “Can I have a cookie?” at 5 pm, the best answer, according to the latest authorities is not "no," it’s, “you may, after dinner.”)
It would be nice if positive language did it for us all the time. And yet, it's not quite sufficient.
At the opening of Shrek, the Musical, the young ogre’s parents sing him a song, “it’s a big bright beautiful world...but not for you.” At the age of seven, they warn him against men with pitchforks. They let him go out on the road, telling him, “Just keep walking…and you’ll find somewhere to go.” There’s something a bit warped – broken - about a world in which parents have to put those images into their children’s heads, for their own protection. It’s enough to drive you to live in a swamp. By yourself. With a ‘Keep Out’ sign.
There are good reasons to frame things in the positive. But sometimes, for the most compelling reasons, we have to identify ourselves in the negative. In the story of the nation of Israel, a good portion of the law is occupied by statements of, “we are the people who do not ___.”
It would be nice if positive language did it for us all the time. And yet, it's not quite sufficient.
At the opening of Shrek, the Musical, the young ogre’s parents sing him a song, “it’s a big bright beautiful world...but not for you.” At the age of seven, they warn him against men with pitchforks. They let him go out on the road, telling him, “Just keep walking…and you’ll find somewhere to go.” There’s something a bit warped – broken - about a world in which parents have to put those images into their children’s heads, for their own protection. It’s enough to drive you to live in a swamp. By yourself. With a ‘Keep Out’ sign.
There are good reasons to frame things in the positive. But sometimes, for the most compelling reasons, we have to identify ourselves in the negative. In the story of the nation of Israel, a good portion of the law is occupied by statements of, “we are the people who do not ___.”
The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the people of Israel and say to them: I am the LORD your God. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not follow their statutes. My ordinances you shall observe and my statutes you shall keep, following them: I am the LORD your God. You shall keep my statutes and my ordinances; by doing so one shall live: I am the LORD.
- from Leviticus 18
In the story of the Israelites, there is much attention given to identifying as the people who do not - who will not, who shall not. Surrounded by other cultures that worship other gods, cultures which demand sacrifice in the name of cultural stability, it is important to be the people who do not – who never would.
Among all the thou shalt nots, there was a particular kind of sacrifice that was singled out for attention in the law of the Israelites, as given to them by God - child sacrifice:
Among all the thou shalt nots, there was a particular kind of sacrifice that was singled out for attention in the law of the Israelites, as given to them by God - child sacrifice:
You shall not give any of your offspring to sacrifice them to Molech,
and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.
- Leviticus 18:21
Molech was a god worshipped in the region, and in the worship of Molech (those who study such things tell us) the sacrifice of children figured prominently as an act of deepest devotion.
For the nation of Israel – our faith ancestors - child sacrifice was utterly forbidden. And yet, it was apparently common enough that God needed to say it, over, and over again – through the law and through the prophets – with the strongest language imaginable. An abomination, it is called. Something that defiles. Something that cuts you off from the worship of God, from the sacred assembly.
For the nation of Israel – our faith ancestors - child sacrifice was utterly forbidden. And yet, it was apparently common enough that God needed to say it, over, and over again – through the law and through the prophets – with the strongest language imaginable. An abomination, it is called. Something that defiles. Something that cuts you off from the worship of God, from the sacred assembly.
… I myself will set my face against them, and will cut them off from the people, because they have given of their offspring to Molech, defiling my sanctuary and profaning my holy name. And if the people of the land should ever close their eyes to them, when they give of their offspring to Molech…
- Leviticus 20
And yet, despite such dire warnings, the people do not listen. By the 7th chapter of Jeremiah, the prophet is raging against the Israelites themselves, because something has broken in the sacred relationship. The people, while still claiming to worship the Lord, have embraced the sacrifice of children. In a valley outside of Jerusalem – a valley from which we get the image “the valley of the shadow of death” – there, they have built a place of worship to another god. A place where children are turned over to be sacrificed, and the sound of the drums and the tambourines is made loud so the city will not hear the children’s cries.
Never was this commanded by God. Never did it come to God’s mind, the prophet laments. Through Jeremiah’s voice, the Holy One tells us what happens when the children are turned over to the fire:
Never was this commanded by God. Never did it come to God’s mind, the prophet laments. Through Jeremiah’s voice, the Holy One tells us what happens when the children are turned over to the fire:
I will silence in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth,
the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.”
Jeremiah 7:30-34
The horror of this is beyond imagining. We want to turn away. We do not want to imagine this in scripture, we do not want to hear this in worship, something so terrible that it causes God to mourn and simultaneously, to condemn. Might we have some more pleasant scripture, on a week when the news has been unremittingly negative? Yet, in our demands for relief, we are just as guilty as those who turned up the volume on the music so as not to hear the children’s cries. There is no secret chord that can make this go away.
When you present your gifts and offer up your children in fire, you defile yourselves with all your idols to this day. And shall I be inquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I live, declares the Lord God, I will not be inquired of by you.
- Ezekiel 20:31
Hear this: The children come from places with names like, “Little Hell.” El Infiernito. Burning with violence. Read some of their stories.
The Children of the Drug Wars: A Refugee Crisis, Not An Immigrant Crisis, NY Times.
It’s a terrible kind of desperation that would drive a parent to send children that young, hundreds of miles away…or a children that age to leave all they had ever known. It is clear that to send the children back is to send them into likely death. Into the valley of the shadow, the valley of the fire, the place where children are sacrificed to a burning god and we turn up the volume so we don’t have to hear their cries.
The messenger will bear witness against those who thrust aside the alien.
- Malachi 3:5
There is much more to say on the topic of welcoming the stranger, but if we focus on whether we should secure the border or leave it wide open to immigration, we are asking the wrong question. Christ comes to our doorsteps in waves of children. One, two, ten, ten thousand. Christ sleeps on the floor of the detention center, under a donated blanket. Christ comes to free us, knocking at the gates of our hearts. How is it that we turn him away?
Being made a Christian means getting a heart transplant, and a new identity to go with it. We become the ones who clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit the sick and imprisoned. We become the people who do not neglect the stranger.
We are the people who do not turn away the children.
We are the people who do not send children back into the sacrificial fire.
Amen?
Amen.
Being made a Christian means getting a heart transplant, and a new identity to go with it. We become the ones who clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit the sick and imprisoned. We become the people who do not neglect the stranger.
We are the people who do not turn away the children.
We are the people who do not send children back into the sacrificial fire.
Amen?
Amen.
Sunday, June 15, 2014
What I thought I knew....
From the God on Broadway series at McFarland UCC, June 15, 2014
Children are supposed to be safe at school.
The shooting in Newtown, Connecticut would be the beginning of the end of the fight against licensing restrictions on firearms.
I thought I knew that the solution to poor dating prospects generally does not lie in ramping up one’s antisocial behavior. I thought ‘day of retribution’ referred to a dusty, archaic Biblical prophecy…or maybe a new video game…not a YouTube clip full of threats against women.
Speaking of ancient history, I thought I knew that we were done with Wild West showdowns over grazing rights. I thought past due grazing fees in the amount of one million dollars was a pretty good reason for not being able to graze your cattle on federal land. I was pretty sure that it didn’t meet the definition of tyranny to pay a 20-year-past-due tax bill.
I thought I knew that it was a reasonable expectation to go shopping at a Target (no double-entendre intended) or eat at Chili’s without seeing someone carrying long guns. That there was no plausible reason one would need them while buying a grande-nonfat-caramel-ribbon-crunch Frappuccino.
The text from Broadway: "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
----
"I closed my eyes, drew back the curtain,
To see for certain, what I thought I knew.
Far, far away, someone was weeping,
But the world was sleeping. Any dream will do."
Things that I thought I knew:
Children are supposed to be safe at school.
The shooting in Newtown, Connecticut would be the beginning of the end of the fight against licensing restrictions on firearms.
I thought I knew that the solution to poor dating prospects generally does not lie in ramping up one’s antisocial behavior. I thought ‘day of retribution’ referred to a dusty, archaic Biblical prophecy…or maybe a new video game…not a YouTube clip full of threats against women.
Speaking of ancient history, I thought I knew that we were done with Wild West showdowns over grazing rights. I thought past due grazing fees in the amount of one million dollars was a pretty good reason for not being able to graze your cattle on federal land. I was pretty sure that it didn’t meet the definition of tyranny to pay a 20-year-past-due tax bill.
I thought I knew how to kick my sarcasm problem. Apparently not.
I thought I knew that it was a reasonable expectation to go shopping at a Target (no double-entendre intended) or eat at Chili’s without seeing someone carrying long guns. That there was no plausible reason one would need them while buying a grande-nonfat-caramel-ribbon-crunch Frappuccino.
I did not think, when I completed seminary, that I would have developed an entire sermon series on violence and terror – most of it gun violence – in less than five years of ministry.
I checked. I went back and counted. My ninth sermon to this congregation was on the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and others in Arizona, January 9, 2011.
Then, March 24, 2012, following Trayvon Martin’s killing.
I somehow missed the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting in July 2012. I think I was away from the congregation that weekend. The same summer, the Sikh temple right here in Wisconsin. I was away for that one, too. No sermon.
I did preach on December 16, 2012, following Newtown.
April 21, 2013, following the bombings in Boston.
July 14, 2013, in the wake of the George Zimmerman verdict.
And today. In the wake of the UC-Santa Barbara shooting, in the wake of Tuesday’s shooting in the state of Oregon, a foiled plan for a high school mass shooting in Tennessee and countless others that I didn’t have time to read in my news search.
“How long, O Lord!”
Seventy-two incidents of gun violence in schools since Sandy Hook. Forty-one deaths in 62 documented incidents in US schools. Eighty-six people die from bullets in the US on an average day.
Hear these words from the prophet Joel:
Hear this, O elders, give ear, all inhabitants of the land!
Has such a thing happened in your days,
or in the days of your ancestors?
Tell your children of it,
and let your children tell their children,
and their children another generation.
What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten.
What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten,
and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.
Wake up, you drunkards, and weep; and wail, all you wine-drinkers… (Joel 1:2-5a, NRSV)
Joseph says, “far, far away, someone was weeping, but the world was sleeping…
To this sleeping world, the prophet Joel says, “Wake up!”
The shooting in Oregon last Tuesday was the thirty first firearms attack in a US School since the start of the year. Where are we – not even halfway through the year? That’s more than one incident a week.
And the solution we get? One-thousand-dollar-a-piece “Bodyguard Blanket” made of bulletproof material five-sixteenths of an inch thick. For our students.
That's a thing now; there's a company marketing it. To schools where they can’t afford enough textbooks and paper and teachers. What if we spent that $20,000 plus per classroom to provide the support they desperately need so we don’t have more kids growing up to choose the violent solution?
We close our eyes, and we draw the curtain on our national sickness. We treat vulnerable bodies a human shields, arraying them between us and what we do not wish to see, what we do not wish to confront: that our worship of the right to keep and bear arms, the lifting up of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution as a false idol, has led directly to a culture of death.
The prophet Joel, again:
Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near— (Joel 2:1, NRSV)
Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly;
gather the people. Sanctify the congregation; assemble the aged;
gather the children, even infants at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her canopy.
Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep. Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’” (Joel 2:15-17, NRSV)
One mass killing a week. I could be preaching one of these gun violence sermons EVERY WEEK. What if I did? What if all of us did? What if the seventeen percent of the United States that attends to church refused to close its eyes, refused to sleep through this problem? What if we refused to admit defeat? What if we refused to make of our heritage a mockery?
What if we stood on the side of the Risen Christ, the visionary Spirit, the Great Creator who is the source of Life and not Death? What if we didn’t just stand, but spoke, and acted, and insisted– held our government accountable for these deaths, for its failure to act?
What we have had, to date, is a lack of vision.
Remember who we are. We are followers of a visionary who dared to act and speak as if money and military might were not power. We are followers of a visionary – and we walk in footsteps of visionaries – who gave everything for the sake of the work of God.
Remember who you are: You are dust and ashes, and you have the breath of God within you! You have seen death and you have risen. You have seen apparent defeat, and yet here you are, walking and talking and singing Alleluia! Community of Christ, how dare we act as if we had no power?
Peter’s first sermon -- after the arrival of the Holy Spirit set the church aflame -- used this text from Joel as its anchor. Hear it again:
“I will pour out my Spirit
on every kind of people:
Your sons will prophesy,
also your daughters.
Your old ones will dream,
your young ones will see visions.
I’ll even pour out my Spirit on the servants,
men and women both.
I’ll set wonders in the sky above
and signs on the earth below:
Blood and fire and billowing smoke,
the sun turning black and the moon blood-red,
Before the Judgment Day of God,
the Day tremendous and awesome.
Whoever calls, ‘Help, God!’
gets help.
On Mount Zion and in Jerusalem
there will be a great rescue—just as God said.
Included in the survivors
are those that God calls.” (Joel 2:28-32, The Message, adapted for inclusive language)
Community of Christ, you are those whom God calls.
There will be a great rescue. This a great and holy work. The world is waiting.
Amen?
Monday, June 02, 2014
Christian Soul-Origami (a sermon at the end of the Easter season)
Text: Philippians 4:4-13. Preached on the 7th Sunday of Easter. (I write my sermons to be spoken in community, not to be read. Apologies to every English teacher I ever had, who would likely quiver at the sentence fragments herein.)
Have you ever had a letter that you read over and over again, so much that it was falling apart? A real letter, on paper, not made up of cascading electrons? Hand-written, probably, although composed on all kinds of paper – lined paper with frilly edges torn out of a notebook; fine stationery; a scratch pad once kept by a telephone.
You know the sort of thing I mean? A piece of correspondence that’s a treasure. A letter that is more than mere words on a page, but holds something that was once so true for you that it was worth holding onto. Maybe it’s bittersweet, a note from a lost love; encouraging – words of praise from a teacher or mentor, endearing sentiments from a child or your life partner. Maybe it came in an actual envelope, with a stamp on it and a return address – or perhaps it was tucked into your palm at passing time in the hallways. You might come across one in a family Bible, in an estate-sale book from a secondhand bookstore. Maybe you put yours in a special box, or between the pages of a journal. When I was a teenager, you might tuck a note like that under your mattress.
The best ones – the ones really worth saving – don’t stay tucked away for long.
Have you ever had a letter that you read over and over again, so much that it was falling apart? A real letter, on paper, not made up of cascading electrons? Hand-written, probably, although composed on all kinds of paper – lined paper with frilly edges torn out of a notebook; fine stationery; a scratch pad once kept by a telephone.
You know the sort of thing I mean? A piece of correspondence that’s a treasure. A letter that is more than mere words on a page, but holds something that was once so true for you that it was worth holding onto. Maybe it’s bittersweet, a note from a lost love; encouraging – words of praise from a teacher or mentor, endearing sentiments from a child or your life partner. Maybe it came in an actual envelope, with a stamp on it and a return address – or perhaps it was tucked into your palm at passing time in the hallways. You might come across one in a family Bible, in an estate-sale book from a secondhand bookstore. Maybe you put yours in a special box, or between the pages of a journal. When I was a teenager, you might tuck a note like that under your mattress.
The best ones – the ones really worth saving – don’t stay tucked away for long.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
The Whole Story (A Sermon about David, and a whole mess of other stuff)
The text for this sermon was from 1 and 2 Samuel and Psalm 51. In worship, we read the story of Samuel anointing David, from 1 Samuel 16. Those of you who know David's story might remember that it got a little....complicated.
Oh, it started out well. The story begins so beautifully. David has a lovely pedigree: The son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz. A good line, people who made good decisions, wise decisions, people with generous hearts who worshipped the Lord. On the women’s side (they don't make it easy to find, but it's worth knowing...), there was Ruth, the savvy widow who secured a future where there seemed to be no hope. There was Rahab, the woman who welcomed everyone into her apartments (even the spies sent to scope out her city) and who wrangled a promise of protection from them.
Read between the lines. We’re supposed to fall in love with David. Everyone does, in the end. God has an eye on the runt of the litter, a shepherd, at work as the story begins, and unable to join the party. The others were invited in to worship. The others were invited to meet the prophet. But David, the youngest, was left out. And so because God loves the outcasts, we know that good things are in store for David.
Oh, we love the story of this beautiful, ruddy youth, love the youth himself. Love what he represents: tan from his time in the sun, strong and fit from all that wandering after sheep, and a musician, too. What’s not to like? Practically irresistible. Of course God would call him. How could he not be called? (David, the beautiful youth – scripture tells us he was not chosen for his beauty, but the writer takes such pains for us to know just how handsome he was, this king-to-be, hero-to-be…so we know better, don’t we.)
So when Samuel has him kneel – Samuel, the prophet, the one who hears God calling in the night. – when Samuel has him kneel we know the oil is going to pour down and we are witnessing a great day. A GREAT DAY for the nation of Israel. A GREAT DAY for the line of Jesse.
(Mind you, there’s already a king in Israel. It’s probably a good thing he doesn’t know what’s going on yet.)
David doesn’t disappoint. He soothes King Saul’s restless sleep with the strings of his harp. He becomes fast friends with Saul’s son Jonathan (perhaps more than friends, if you’re reading between the lines). He confronts a giant, armed with a sling and a stone, and wins. When the king dies in battle, when his line is extinguished, David is ready. Battle-hardened, and politically savvy, a musician, handsome as all get out. He brings the Holy Ark of God to Jerusalem. God makes a covenant with him, establishes the House of David.
Oh, how we’re supposed to love him.
You know it can’t last, right? Somehow it’s all going to come crashing down. And so it does. There are only so many praise songs one man can write; at some point, things begin to get complicated. The war goes on, David’s cooped up in his palace, and a pretty woman catches his eye. Except that pretty woman, Bathsheba, is actually married to another man. David didn’t let “thou shalt not covet” stop him. He got the woman pregnant, and he had the man killed. And what he had done was evil in the Lord’s sight. The story that began in such promise, went spectacularly off the rails when David saw Bathsheba and made his terrible choice.
And when he was called on it, he wept in anguish:
“Have mercy on me, God, according to your faithful love! Wipe away my wrongdoings according to your great compassion!” (Ps 51:1)This is where the story breaks open. This is where it actually begins to get interesting, where it begins to matter, intensely, to those of us who understand the broken bits. We know David’s desperation. At some point in our life, we have all prayed – or will pray – his prayer:
“Create a clean heart for me, God; put a new, faithful spirit deep inside me!” (Ps 51:10)
David who is anointed, and David who makes both wise and questionable choices, and David who repents with bitter tears – all of these are one person. The handsome shepherd and the beautiful singer, the warrior and the husband, the king and the lover – all of these are one.
There is no human being who has a straight path home into the heart of God. You were born the apple of God’s eye, precious, beautiful, beloved. Yet from your first moments, you caused pain. You received pain. You have been shaped by love and loss and day-by-day choices. Some of them pleasing to God, and others, well…. Not so much.
God does not claim only the beautiful parts of your story. God claims the whole story: the parts that were created whole and holy, and the parts that are broken and need to be redeemed.
Wherever your life has gone off the rails, whether it is by your choices, or someone else’s choices, or sheer circumstance, know this: You are the same child who was once - and is forever - washed in the water of divine love. You are the same youth called in from the wilderness and invited to kneel – even though you barely had a clue what was happening, what you were in for. And precious oil anoints your head, always, and you are called beloved, chosen of the Lord. That holy moment overlays every broken moment that brings you to your knees. They are, together, the fabric that makes up human existence, the pattern of our relationship with God.
Life didn’t get any easier for David. War and family strife followed him all of his days. But even so, the shepherd king kept singing:
“The Lord is my rock, my fortress, my deliverer…
my stronghold and my refuge, my savior.”
(2 Sam 22:2-3).
“In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I called…
he heard my voice, and my cry came to his ears.” (2 Sam 22:7)
In his old age, the stories tell us, David still found the company of a young woman a pleasant way to keep warm.
Shall we speak of what is holy, and what is broken?
“O Lord, open our lips, and our mouths will declare your praises.” (Ps 51:15)
Hallelujah?
Hallelujah.
Amen?
Amen.
It was preached at McFarland UCC on October 20, 2013.
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