Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday in Pentecost

September 12, 2010

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28

Luke 15:1-10



I will have to paraphrase the sermon, or give my best recollection of it since I was working without a net on Sunday. I hadn’t pulled out my guitar in a while at the late service, and I figured we’d have a bunch of folks back from vacations so I thought we should have some fun.


I began by having them sing the first three verses of Lord of the Dance. Dance then wherever you may be. I am the Lord of the dance said he, and I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be for I am the Lord of the dance said he.


From there I went into a John-can’t-dance routine……


When I went in last month to have my foot surgery, I was waiting in the pre-op room, you know, where they put lines into your arms and monitors on you. They give you a shot that will “take the edge off.” Anyway, I’m lying there thinking that when I see the doctor I’ll pull the old will-I-be-able-to-dance gag, the one that goes will I be able to dance after the surgery? Great, I’ve always wished I could dance. Right. Well I thought about it and then decided not to do it. But when I saw the doctor the next week in his office, I saw my chance. I asked him if I’d be able to dance when everything healed and he said, “you already did that to me in the operating room.” I don’t want to know what else I might have said as I was zoning out before surgery.


I have always made jokes about not being much of a dancer. During my teen years I was staring at lava lamps and contemplating with Maharishi, and I never really got around to dancing. I do, however, remember those first junior high dances where you kind of had to go but didn’t really want to have to dance. Those things were usually put on by grown ups. They sometimes even chose the music. Not good. Anyway, most of us--guys, that is-- would stand around the edges of the dance floor trying to avoid going out there. There were two things that might get one out on the floor in such situations.


One way was that your friends, who really didn’t have your best interest at heart, would goad you into dancing. They just wanted you out there so they could laugh at you. They’d tell you you were chicken, or just push you out into the action. Their basic approach was to push you in a direction and make you feel bad if you tried to resist.


The other thing that could get you out onto the floor worked from the other direction. Somewhere out there, maybe hugging the wall on the other side of the room, was a girl. She would look at you with eyes that said, “I hope you’ll ask me to dance.” Those eyes and a smile would suggest that even if you didn’t think you could dance, you might be able to in her presence. She would be like Charlie Brown’s “little red-haired girl,” the one who makes him all goofy and a believer in the impossible. That girl inviting me out onto the floor was the other thing that could pull me into the dance.


That was the difference. The guys were pushing and she was inviting. I have always liked the invitation better than the shove. You probably do too.


I thought of this dance thing when I saw the lessons for tis morning. Here we have Jeremiah talking about foolish children, stupid people, filled with evil. Jeremiah is trying to get his people to do the right thing. You’re a bunch of jerks, he seems to be saying. Get your act together and get out there and do what you’re supposed to. Jeremiah is pushing and shaming his hearers into compliance.


Jesus, on the other hand, is in trouble today for being willing to hang out with anyone. Everyone is welcome--invited by Jesus into the dance. Jeremiah would push us into the dance, but Jesus searches us, looking for some opening where the invitation can take hold. He doesn’t push people away or begin by telling them what is wrong with them. He begins by telling them they are wanted. Come out onto the floor, says Jesus, and you may be surprised at what we can do together. I don’t care what you have thought about yourself or what others have told you you can’t do. I want you out here in the dance. Come on. Give me a try.


The other thing we read in this bit from Luke today goes right along with this theme of welcome in the way Jesus invites us to participate with him. Jesus tells two stories about seeking the lost--stories about every last one of us being worth whatever effort it might take to find us and include us. Every one of us has something to contribute to the dance, every one of us is important. Even if we’ve believed at times that we were flawed or unneeded or not valuable, Jesus tells us today that we count, we are important, we are worth a celebration. Not only are we invited to come and dance with Jesus. we’d be missed if we didn’t show up. Even I’ll try dancing if that’s the deal.


……….I stopped talking somewhere around there, and we sang the last two verses of the song.


I danced on a Friday when the sky turned black…….they bruied my body and they thought I’d gone, but I am the dance and I still go on.


They cut me down and I leapt up high. I am the life that’ll never never die. I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me. I am the Lord of the dance said he.




Thursday, September 9, 2010

Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

September 5, 2010

Luke 14:25-33


There has been a lot in the news this past week about Christianity, what is it, whose version is right or whose version is a little twisted. It has been an interesting conversation, and one that I find kind of hopeful. I find it refreshing that these questions are being addressed out loud because I think we usually try not to get into such debates in public. I am pleased at the number of folks who are weighing in to broaden the public message of what Christianity is about. Too often, in the vacuum left by not discussing or debating our faith differences, what is represented as Christianity in the media is something that seems far removed from the gospel as I understand it. I cringe sometimes when I hear pollsters or reporters covering an election talk about the “Christian” vote. I wonder if those reporters have any idea how many of us voted against what they have dubbed the “Christian” agenda precisely because we are Christian. Christianity has always been messy, has always involved different points of view and strong feelings about what constitutes the center of our faith. These debates signal that we are discussing something important, something real and worth some struggle, so I was glad to see letters to the editor this week and editorials seeking clarity about faith.


Someone caught me as we were leaving the early service last week wanting to talk about the debate opening up in the public square about Christianity. She was greatly distressed over an article in which someone had been quoted as saying Jesus would never be in favor of redistributing wealth in this country. “Haven’t they read the gospels?” she asked. She went on to talk in more detail about her faith and what she believes and how strongly she holds those beliefs. The public conversation opens up possibilities for personal reflection and exploration of our beliefs.


I wonder how many people--how many Christians--heard about Liberation theology for the first time this week as Glen Beck told his supporters that president Obama believed in Liberation Theology which, Beck said, was a perversion of Christianity. I wonder how many of those people went on to try and learn more about what Liberation Theology is really about and where it finds its authority. If they did, they may have read about how often in the gospels Jesus calls for sharing with the poor, giving to the poor, letting go of possessions, as in today’s gospel. The center of Liberation Theology says simply that if you read the gospels with the poor in mind, you will begin to notice that Jesus always--always favors the poor when it comes to issues of money and justice. It says also that the work of Christians is to bring our lives into synch as much as possible with what we read in the gospels.


The problem is that most of us were taught to read the Bible or listen to it for what we must do to be saved. We were taught that the Bible is mainly a book for individuals. Seeing scripture through that lens, we often focus on verses and passages and we can easily miss the message of what was important to Jesus throughout the story. Liberation theology began in the early sixties when some people began to read the Bible to see what it had to say specifically about their situation and their group. Those people happened to be poor. What they found surprised them and shook the Church. Liberation theology taught many of us how to read scripture--how to let scripture speak to us and it taught us that there will always be more to discover in those living words. Soon people were taking their questions to the Bible asking ‘what do these words mean for our lives in our situation?’ Women began to read the Bible to see what it had to say about them and they noticed that Jesus was a radical in his time in the way he traveled with, spoke to and taught women. People living at the margins of society began to realize that Jesus always expanded the margins to include outsiders. Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians--Popes and pastors, Christians all over the world have celebrated the gifts that Liberation theologians have contributed to the Church.


But all that really isn’t what I wanted to talk about today. Well, apparently it was. Where I had planned to go was to this line we hear his morning where Jesus says in distressingly unambiguous language, “none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions." I claim to be a believer in this theology that favors the poor and calls us to turn away from seeking riches. I find this call hard., but not as hard as what we hear in the beginning of today’s reading, the part about hating our families. That is even worse. But there it is in black and white. One of the teachings of Liberation theology is that we have to be very careful about saying the words of our faith and not living them. How in the world do we live these words?


I found some help in the word that is translated as “hate” in the first part of this passage. I am assured by the experts that it is a semitic way of expressing detachment, not the emotion that we think of when we hear the word, “hate.” Maybe in the same way, Jesus is calling us to be detached from our possessions. I can’t imagine how we would all get along, or how society would function if we all gave away all our possessions. Detachment is better than actually giving it all away, but even detachment is not easy. How do we bring ourselves to live into the difficult call of discipleship set forth this morning?


Maybe the Liberation theology folks can help. One of the great gifts of Liberation Bible reading is the understanding that we have to approach scripture with the right questions in order to find what we are seeking, and that sometimes we have to read between the lines. Sometimes we have to ask what is not being said? What is being assumed? What must be behind Jesus’ question?


Jesus talks a lot today about the cost of discipleship. “Count the cost,” he says. “Make sure you are really ready to come along with me.” Reading these words this week I realized that I have always heard Jesus talking about the cost of discipleship and that is really all I have heard. The “cost” language sometimes seems to bear down, feel heavy. Somehow it has never occurred to me to ask in those times when the cost sounds too high what the promise or reward might be. Cost is what we pay for something. What is the something we are being asked to pay for here? On the surface of today’s passage the only answer available seems equally hard. What our turning from what we have held most important in our lives buys us is a cross. It is, as Paul say, a stumbling block to the wise. What we know about the cross is, now, for us, thank God, a part of the answer. We know the cross to be the way, a portal to new life. What we buy with our following--this market language sounds crass here, but it will have to do--what we buy is a new life that we will want even more than the old one. That is the promise.


We don’t get to know what that new life will look like in our particular case. We don’t get to know how it will come to us or what we will have to leave behind in order to arrive in that new place. The promise is that as we let go of what we think we can’t get along without, we receive something better.


I can’t tell anyone what the cost of discipleship will buy them. Ask anyone in recovery if they would trade the new life for the old one. Find a doctor who has given up a lucrative practice to open a free clinic or fly around the world repairing people who can’t afford it. Ask the folks who have left Wall Street to teach in poor neighborhoods. The will tell you they wouldn’t trade their new life for the old one. They will tell you have found meaning and grounding for their lives in a way they had never imagined. Ask them about what they had to give up and they may laugh. Silly question. Ask them about what they have found and you may hear about community and a relationship with people who need what they have to offer. You will hear about their lives being bound up in the lives of others. You may hear them tell how God set them free by binding them into a community of mutual need. You might even hear them talk about how liberating their new life is.