Sermon for the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost

October 24, 2010

Luke 18:9-14

A few weeks ago the adult ed. class heard Marcus Borg, in the video for the morning, offer a definition of religion. He said, “religion is about ultimate transformation.” I have always liked Borg for his ability to pack much wisdom and what feels like deep truth into a few well chosen words. “Religion is about ultimate transformation.” As soon as I heard him say the words I began to wonder why they sounded so solid, and I began to wonder what I might have said religion was about before I heard them. I came up with quite a list, and what I find about Borg’s definition is that if I lay his definition and all the others I can think of before me, his is the only one that can contain all the others. My list included the message of religion, its attempt to teach us how to live, teaching us about our place in the universe, about relationship with God and neighbor and about getting to heaven. At different times in my life I have thought religion had to do with all of those things. What I hadn’t noticed was that all of those aspects of religion have to do with being transformed.

The christian message is that God has acted in a new way in the world in order to be related to us in a new way. The message and new relationship have to do with a new chance for all of us to continue the journey with God upon which Abram set out so long ago. That journey was one in which God promised to transform the lives of Abram and his descendants. It was a journey of leaving behind trust in our their resources in order to learn utter reliance upon God. The Christian message is that that same journey which was abandoned in principle when Israel built its kingdom is still available to anyone who wishes to walk with God. The message is also about Jesus, the one who walked well with God. Who kept walking, even into a painful death, and discovered in the process that God is faithful.

If religion has to do with the question, how should I live? it is worth noting that the question assumes we need to ask it--that we still have something to learn about how to live, how to love, how to be faithful. When Jesus appeared on the scene, there was a struggle going on as there is in every age about who is doing a better job of keeping the rules, or whose life is more pleasing to God, or whose ideas are closer to those of the nation’s founders. (That is exactly the kind of thing we hear from this proud man in Luke’s gospel this morning.) Jesus said to the people he met that the goal was to let our hearts be changed into hearts that would know the best way and want to keep to that path. ‘The Spirit when it comes will teach you what you need to know,’ he said. For Jesus, learning how to live involves not just knowing the law, but it involves becoming people who don’t really need the law anymore. Learning how to live involves transformation.

Religion is also about knowing our place in the universe, and for Christians the teaching about our place in the universe is good news--it is that we are far more important than we might have thought. We are worth quite a bit of effort on God’s part. We are sought by God who would have us realize our potential as creatures created in the image of God. We each have a role to live into, and that role is different for every one of us. God’s creation is wildly diverse, from gnats to elephants, from goose down to mountains, there is no end to what is possible in creation and that applies to each of us. Some of us spend our whole lives learning who we are to be in this world. All of scripture either suggests or says very explicitly that we are to grow into what we are to be. It is a process that takes time. “We are being changed,” says Paul--not have been changed but are being changed--”from glory to glory.” Religion teaches us who and whose we are like schools teach us to read. See Spot run is fine for a while, but from there we move on to Mark Twain and Shakespeare. Learning our place in the universe involves our being transformed over and over again.

And of course, religion, especially for Jews and Christians and Muslims, is about relationship with God. And the Lord told Moses to say to the people, “You will be my people and I will be your God.” Protestant Christians often speak easily about relationship with God whereas those with more Catholic roots might speak more easily of sacramental connections to the creator. For a long time I wasn’t very comfortable with talk about relationship with God. It seemed kind of strange, foreign to my experience, and I wasn’t sure I liked or could trust a lot of the people who talked so easily about their relationship with Jesus. I understood something about having been joined to the family of God in baptism, and I would have told you easily as a young child even that Jesus shares food with us at his table every Sunday. I said some prayers most days and when life began to get complicated I said even more. It just took me a lot of years to realize that all that eating and talking together over a lifetime constituted a relationship. I think if you’ve showed up in this place more than a couple of Sundays, you have a relationship with God. Doesn’t most of the transformation we experience in our lives come about through relationship?

Jesus talked as much about loving our neighbor, especially those in need, as he did about loving God. Christians have known for two thousand years that caring for the poor and those at the margins of society involves partnering with God in a way that makes God present in the world through our actions. As our concern for our neighbor grows so does our reliance on God. You can’t work alongside someone for very long without developing a relationship with them.

Whether you connect through a strong sense of personal friendship with Jesus or through the sacramental mystery of water, wine and bread, this religion of ours is about being transformed over time in the close company of the source of all that is. Again, Borg’s definition holds. Religion is about transformation.

And finally, though it is not true about all religions it is certainly true about Christianity, religion for most of us has had a lot to do with getting into heaven. We believe there is more than just this life, that there are qualities of our lives, our relationships and loves that must continue beyond this life. Jesus passed through death and came to life in a new way and so shall we. I can’t think of a more ultimate sort of transformation.

And if religion is about ultimate transformation, then what do we have to do to experience that transformation? What is the plan?

All we have to do, pretty much the whole program, as best I can tell, is to be aware that we still have a lot of growing to do and be open to the process of transformation. In all the ways Christianity might be seen to work in our lives, what is required of us is that we be able to look at our lives and know that we still have a long way to go. If our lives are about transformation, about becoming, then we need to be aware of what we like to call our “growing edges.” We don’t have to be anxious or fearful about the growing we still have before us, though sometimes anxiety or fear or regret will move us to embrace the next bit of transformation that is being invited. Maybe the best way is to be able to apply some humor to ourselves and the process of becoming. We can be gentle with ourselves and our need for transformation the way God is gentle with us. In his fantasy about heaven, The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis is told by a citizen of heaven that all it really takes to get into heaven is the ability to laugh at ourselves.

Maybe the only real barrier to getting where we need to go is thinking we have already arrived.

The parable we heard a little while ago is so short I’d like to read it again.

Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded other with contempt. “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God I thanks you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

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.

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.

Sermon The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

August 29, 2010

Luke 14:1, 7-14

I want to call you attention to what has happened so far this morning and to what will happen in the next few minutes. Let’s take a look. We arrived. We gathered our intentions for the day in a prayer. We have heard the ancient stories; readings, a psalm. Now you are being encouraged to consider some part of the message of the story or stories of the day. In a few minutes we will remember the tradition of belief that developed after Jesus as we recite the creed shaped by the early community of believers. Then we will pray for the church and for the world. We will confess our sins and receive forgiveness.

All of that can and regularly does happen in the part of the service we call the liturgy of the word. That is everything that takes place before the offertory sentence, you know, the one that says, “walk in love as Christ loved us….. or let us offer our life and labor to the Lord”….something like that. What follows that sentence is the liturgy of the table and we’ll get there in a minute, but for now I want to focus on the first part of the service.

We arrive. We come here from all the different corners of our neighborhoods, from the individual arenas of our homes, our families, our work, all of the parts of our lives that define us, that tell us who we are. We greet each other coming in the door as people arriving to share a part of our individual lives that happen to overlap. We all go to the same church.

We sing and say a prayer or two and then we hear the stories held sacred by those who have been gathering for “church” for three thousand years. That’s how long ago our Hebrew scriptures were written. Maybe as we hear these stories we begin to get the sense that they are our stories too in a way, that they have something to do with us. The liturgy of the word focuses our attention on the fact that we are part of a community. We are people who belong to the stories about Israel, to the stories about Jesus, Paul and the others may even be writing for us.

After the readings the preacher calls us to consider some message that might be taken from what we have heard. The sermon is usually an attempt to help us take the stories very personally. The stories of the faith community are our stories. Something we have just hear has to do with us.

We move on from there usually to the Creed………We are part of a particular community that wrestled in its early years with how to understand and speak about its belief. Some of us may still struggle with some of the ideas in the Creed, but it is the family document going way back and it has helped define the community called Christians since the fourth century.

So far, the liturgy of the word brought us together, reminded us of our common interest in an ancient story and suggested that the tradition has something to say about our lives--about our goals and how to live. Hopefully the liturgy has led us to reflect on who we are and how we want to be in the world.

Having recalled who and whose we are in the sacred stories of the community, we take on a bit of the work of Christ as we look on the world with compassion. We lift up in prayer our neighbors, our leaders and all who are ill or are in any kind of trouble. Just as Christ did for all of us, we ask God to be present in their lives in ways that will transform them, make them whole and serve the good purposes of creation.

So far, we have arrived from our separate little worlds. We have heard the stories of a great community. We have been reminded that their stories are ours also. And then in our prayers we participate in the work of that community.

Having done all of those things we may be aware of some part of the work we still need to do in ourselves to be able to serve and live faithfully in this community. We may be ready to note some of our own failings and ask for healing and forgiveness in our own lives. So we ask in our confession to be made new, to be set right once again. In response, we are told that our sins are indeed forgiven. We then as equals, as common beneficiaries of the grace of God, we greet each other in the name of the Lord as we exchange the peace.

I wanted to highlight what goes on in the liturgy of the word for a couple of reasons. First, in two weeks you will see a few changes in the service designed to help mark the transition from the liturgy of the word to the liturgy of the table. I wanted to speak about the two parts of the service in anticipation of those changes.

The other reason is that as I hear Jesus talking about the liturgy of the table today….surely that is what all that banquet etiquette talk is about. As I hear Jesus talking, I understand better and give thanks for the shape of our worship. I give thanks in particular for the liturgy of the word. I don’t know how I would get near the table without this great liturgy of ours.

I hear Jesus saying that we are to arrive at the banquet--the one that will begin in a few minutes with the offertory sentence--that we are to arrive with a realistic understanding of who we are. And I hear him saying that if we come with a proper sense of who we are that we will not really be thinking much at all about ourselves, about how worthy OR unworthy we might be. We are encouraged to approach the table with humility and gratitude, not focusing on any aspect of ourselves, but on the generosity of our host. The liturgy of the word that locates us in the vast community of humanity and believers and helps us take stock of our lives and sets us to work praying for and caring about others--that liturgy prepares us to approach the liturgy of the table with the kind of attitudes Jesus calls for this morning.

I am particularly glad that we circle the table here at St. Aidan’s. That means that as we arrive at this weekly banquet, any and all of us might well hear our host saying, “Friend move up higher.” and as we look around the circle we might understand every possible place in the circle to be the place of honor. And…..if we can find ourselves hoping that is true for everyone we see, then we will certainly have arrived well prepared for the banquet. JB

Sermon

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

August 22, 2010

Luke 13:10-17

A funny thing has happened in my life in the last year or so. And in a nice turn of events, the same thing has happened in Mary’s life as well. We have, here in the somewhat advanced middle part of our lives, discovered baseball. Of course we’ve always known about baseball, but these days we keep up with the scores, we know who the home team is playing and where, we watch games on TV and we get out to the park from time to time to eat junk food, drink a beer and cheer for the team. And the team isn’t just the team, but a a bunch of players whose quirks and talents and foibles make the game interesting. Part of the joy of an Adam Dunn home run is watching him blow bubbles with his gum as he runs the bases. You gotta love the way Nyjer comes up all smiles out of the cloud of dust that represents yet another stolen base, and you have to wonder how some crazy ump in Atlanta can throw an all American nice guy like Ryan Zimmerman out of a game. I’m even a fan of Ian Desmond who’s got more errors to his credit than just about anyone in the game. I think he’s gonna be remembered as a great player. I’m pulling for him. How can I not have known the joys and pains of baseball before now.

Oh, it isn’t that I never knew about baseball or that I never paid any attention to game. I had a glove, I played sand lot ball as a kid. I had a transistor radio in my pocket and was listening at my post as a crossing guard in the sixth grade when Tim McCarver’s grand slam won the Cards the fifth game of the World Series in 64. I was listening to the game that day because I lived in a family where the Cardinals were the law. St. Louis, just 250 miles from Memphis was the closest major league team so they were pretty popular in my town, and my father’s home was in Missouri so the Cards being our team always made sense. Dad would watch the game on Saturday and yell at the players as if he was at the park. He was et up with em, and I never questioned they were THE team to pull for.

Since those days though, I haven’t paid much attention to baseball. Maybe it had to do with the way sons sometimes pull away from their fathers, which I know I certainly did. Anyway, I haven’t been serious about baseball in all the years since then until now. My faithfulness to the sport has been sort of a Christmas and Easter kind of participation. If the Cards have a shot at the pennant or are in the series, I might look at the sports page to see how they’re doing, but that’s been about it. Until now. Now I have gotten caught up in the doings of the Nationals and I have become a fan, which brings me to the point if all this baseball talk. Next Thursday evening, I expect to find myself right in the middle of some serious tension between ancient teaching and current practice. I’m sure I will feel pulled in one direction by the law with which I was raised and in another by a deepening understanding of the good that law was meant to serve. Mary and I have tickets to see the Nationals play the Cards. It should be an interesting evening. I’ll try not to picture my father, sitting there, staring aghast in open mouthed disbelief that I could be cheering about Pudge getting another RBI.

“Don’t you know, Jesus…..don’t you know,” ask the leaders of the synagogue, “that you aren’t supposed to do any work on the sabbath? Healing this woman looks like work to us. The people are coming to you for spiritual guidance and here you are breaking the law.” I wonder if Jesus every got really disheartened--frustrated sometimes at how difficult it could be to teach his simple lesson. How often in the story do we hear Jesus trying to open and soften the hearts of those around him only to run into the stone wall of law. “Imagine what is possible,” Jesus seems to say. “That’s not the way we’ve always done.” it comes the answer.

Again today we find Jesus at odds with those who are responsible for teaching the faithful how to behave. For those leaders, the answer is simple. Our calling is to observe the law. That is how we will know we are in right relationship with our God. God gave the laws. We follow the laws. What could be more clear? For Jesus too the answer is simple. Love God and love your neighbor. Strive to make sure that everything in your life, even the laws you cherish, serve that end. What could be more clear? Today the question is raised as to the intention of not only the law about keeping the sabbath, but all the laws by which the people of God are guided.

I speak sometimes about Christianity being not so much about following the rules as it is about being in relationship with Jesus. I have long been drawn to that message when I hear it in the gospel story. I admit that in part, some of my agenda in that discussion has been to separate myself from the parts of the faith that I found troubling. I resonate at times with Jesus’ challenge to the institution of religion and to the authorities. Yet even as I recognize my desire to pull back from some of the rigid-seeming teachings, I know at the same time that I want something more substantial in their place. Rules can seem cold and hollow unless they are grounded in the warmth of love and community. All laws worth following are created to serve the cause of love. I hear Jesus saying as much today as he asks those leaders, “how could I not free this woman on this day or any other?” Jesus’ standard of love trumps the law about the sabbath.

There are times when we have to choose between the law and love. We see it in civil law: civil disobedience, revolution, writers protecting a source, whole villages that broke laws, lied, stole and more as they hid Jews from the Nazis, times when the Church has provided sanctuary to those outside the civil laws. But what about the laws given us by our ancestors in faith. They came to understand in their early experience of God that some lessons are so important they should be carved in stone and passed on from one generation to the next forever. Should we ever question those laws? Jesus did.

Honor your father and mother, we are told. In the service of love--that is in the service of spreading the news that God has entered the world in a new way to bring new life--Jesus calls poor old Zebedee’s boys to leave their father and follow him. Seems like a poor way to honor one’s father. I wonder if Zebedee ever understood.

And today’s story is not the only one about Jesus upsetting the righteous by doing good works for others on the sabbath. And his breaking the rules about the Sabbath isn’t always in the service of others. When his disciples are caught picking corn on the sabbath because they are hungry, Jesus basically tells his detractors that the question is a no-brainer. The sabbath, says Jesus, was created to enhance human life. What then could possibly be wrong with feeding oneself on the sabbath?

And then there are those long lists of laws from Moses. Jesus sometimes tumbles those like the tables of those money-changers outside the temple. “You have heard it said you shall give and eye for an eye, says Jesus, but I tell you love those who hurt you and treat them well.

Living well into the relationships the rules were meant to serve is much more difficult--and much more rewarding--than simply following the rules. It would be much easier for me to be a Cards fan. I wouldn’t have to spend money on games, I enjoy cheering from the comfort of my easy chair. Being a Nats fan is messy--crowded trains, eight dollar beer. For forty five years I told people I was a Cards fan. What that really meant was, “in my family, growing up, I was taught that we were Cards fans.” What I’m learning is that being a fan involves cheering for the team even when they are down ten to nothing. Sometimes it means sitting in the sun on the first base side in July. It means believing in the hitter and hoping for a run even though he has been in a dry spell for weeks.

We’ve all hear that keeping the sabbath is a good thing, the law, even. But we don’t keep the sabbath. We are all busy on Saturdays, cutting the grass, shopping, driving kids around. We do show up here fairly often on Sunday--which is not the sabbath or seventh day, but the first day of the week--we do try to remember God mark a few moments in our week as holy. But the good that the law about sabbath was meant to serve too often gets lost in our busy-ness. Maybe real sabbath happens for us in many little ways throughout our week, not on any particular day. Sabbath is about restoration and family and grounding, and being renewed. Those good causes may be served in a few moments of quiet at the end of the day, or maybe listening to music in our car while stuck in traffic or texting a child who is away at school. Maybe you find sabbath during an exercise class, or a meal, or a conversation in which you remember that our life is part of something much larger.

Maybe in this way at least, sabbath is a bit like baseball . For me, these days, the joy of baseball lies in what I am discovering and what I have yet to discover, not in staying with what I was taught about the sport as a kid.

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Pentecost

July 4, 2010

Readings

Well, here we are in church, not just on the fourth of July weekend, but on the fourth of July, and though your bulletin for today says clearly that we are celebrating the sixth Sunday after Pentecost, you will hear in a few minutes that that is only partly true. First some background.

One of the trickiest paths for church folks--and by that I mean all of us, clergy lay, everybody--to negotiate is the path running between the two entities of church and state. The historical line between the two is marked by areas of friction in which church and government rankle each other by claiming authority in the same area, and by times of such complete cooperation that the lines between church and government seem to disappear. In our own generation, we have seen people of faith marching in the streets to challenge laws that clash with basic tenets of their religious tradition and we have seen politicians rise or fall on their record of response to faith based causes like outlawing abortion or ending a war. People of faith do not tend to agree on what they would have their government do because people of faith, often reading the same scriptures, come up with different interpretations. The ability to hold those different opinions is part of what the fireworks will be about when they burst over the city tonight. But those different opinions about what faith should ask of government are a part of what makes the intersection of government and religion so fraught.

One of the debates church folks can get into has to do with whether the American flag should be displayed in church. I googled the subject a while back and came up with some interesting history. It seems we Americans are unique in displaying the national flag in church sanctuaries. The practice began about a hundred and fifty years ago in Catholic churches when Catholics were suspected of serving a foreign ruler, the pope. The pope was, until the 1870s the leader of a group of states that included most of Italy and his power outweighed that of the local national leaders. The flag stood in the sanctuary to show that American Catholics’ first loyalty was indeed to the U.S. The question of loyalty being cleared up by the presence of the flag was between pope and nation. The question was still alive in 1960 when John Kennedy became the first Catholic U.S. president. In 1978 the Catholic church issued a ruling that the flag should be removed from all churches because nothing in the sanctuary should distract worshippers from the central purpose of worship, which is to draw closer to Jesus. I ran across one posting in my flags-in-church search that started out, “if you want to get fired all you have to do is…” I had to open that one. It was by a pastor somewhere in Georgia who had tried to remove the flag from a church where it had been part of the service for a hundred years.

Over the years, in different times and places around the U.S. the line between loyalty to God and loyalty to country have often become blurred. They are seen as being similar, if not the same. The Boy Scout God and Country award seems to sum up the equality of these two components; that is until you do a little scratching and find that the award emphasizes loyalty to God first and country second and that all of the work done to achieve the award centers on God and faith, not country. The name is a bit of a misnomer. It makes me wonder if they had to attach the word “country” to the award to get people interested in it.

The line between church and state can get messy. Some people just avoid the problem by declaring politics and religion to be oil and water. They don’t mix, end of subject. Others see implications in the gospel that require some kind of engagement with the secular powers that be. There are strong feelings on both sides.

The subject of how to manage God and National issues is so challenging that it was one of the questions on the General Ordination Exams in my senior year at seminary. We had three hours to write a Fourth of July sermon that we knew would be read by graders who either had very strong opinions of how such things should be handled or who were looking for ideas in dealing with the question in their parishes. I told a story about some people in a small rural town setting up early in the morning for the day’s celebration. I don’t remember how or if I tied that story into the story of the Church.

So when Barbara contacted me about which readings we should use today, I realized that it was time once again to try bringing together the celebration of our nation’s birth and the primacy of our life in God. The task seemed to involve calling us to give thanks for this nation, its pioneers, it defenders of freedom, its dreamers, its great possibilities and potential--to give thanks for all of those and at the same time to do that with humility, a humility that we won’t see on the mall tonight or hear in the celebratory speeches on the steps of the capitol. It seemed to me that we needed to focus on some part of this nation’s heritage that won’t be addressed by fireworks and bands, by candidates and drums. I wondered for a while what “other” side of this great day I might find to hold up for you this morning, and the answer was sitting right there on my desk all the time in the lectionary readings for Independence Day.

I told you in the beginning that we were only kind of celebrating the sixth Sunday of Pentecost. Even though today is the fourth, the church calendar of seasons takes precedence over a national holiday, but we are allowed to transfer some of the readings for another day into the Sunday service. So, all the readings today are those appointed for the fourth of July. And the readings appointed for the fourth may just be worth posting on your refrigerator, or folding up and taking into the city tonight. They speak of why and how great nations are built and they point not to what we have become, which will always be a work in progress, but what was being sought by those who established this land we celebrate today. They speak of what it takes to create such a land. They speak, not about country, but about seeking a country. Listen.

The Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords. the great God mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the stranger, providing for them food and clothing. You also shall love the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

They confessed that they were strangers, foreigners on the earth, for people who speak this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.

And about Abraham…..he looked forward to a city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

And this one, maybe most important of all in these times…..“You have heard it said,” says Jesus, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy, “but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, for if you only love those who love you, what good is that?”

Today, on the day we celebrate our nation’s independence, the church would remind us that our ancestors--that some of us here today-- once sought a homeland. We are reminded of the hopes that all humans have, the hopes that bring people together. We are reminded that our dream has always been to live in justice and that the way to that better place involves caring for and even forgiving others. The national anthem you will hear today speaks of our persevering and triumphing through battle and that is certainly a part of what has brought us to the place we are today. The church reminds us today that the road ahead involves learning to love our enemies. Church is probably the only place you will hear that message on this day. We are still strangers in search of that better homeland.

Maybe one reason why celebrating our nation and worshipping on Sunday are not an easy fit is that on the fourth we celebrate having arrived at a kind of promised land. In the Church, we understand ourselves to still be on the way to such a place. Our ancestors made it clear that they were strangers and foreigners seeking a homeland. The trick for us on this fine day is to not let our celebration of what we have received quench our fierce longing for that better homeland.

JB

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost

June 6, 2010

Readings

Last weekend, Mary and I went to the American art gallery. We hadn’t been in a few months and it is one of the places we try to visit often so we hopped on the metro and spent a couple hours looking at art. In the hall of presidents, I noticed for the first time a quote from Martin Luther King written large above the portraits of some of our recent leaders. It said, “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, it comes through continuous struggle.” That seemed apropos for most of our nation’s history, and certainly for the times I can remember, but the quote kind of struck me and I ended up writing it down because I thought it might have something to say about the healing stories we have heard this morning. Does change come quickly, or does it come through the kind of struggle that can take a lifetime? That seems to be a worthwhile question to ask about the kind of miracle stories we have in the readings from Kings and Luke.

Does new life--rebirth--come upon us all of a sudden or might we have to struggle for it. The question is important because if we hear in these stories that divine restoration and healing are characterized by happening quickly, then we may not enter into the kind of collaborative, life-long work of being made new to which Jesus calls us. We may not recognize that slower, more complicated process as resurrection or even as divine. If we think being raised from death into new life happens in a flash or not at all then we may discount or dismiss all the little ways in which we are invited daily to become new people, more alive than the day before.

I am asked sometimes if one has to believe the miracle stories in our tradition in order to be a good Christian. My answer is always, “no,” of course. I hear religion’s detractors go on about miracle stories, wondering how anyone could believe such things. I read such stories and I wonder what to make of them, how to take them and where they came from. How did these stories begin? Did such things really happen in those earlier times? I generally deal with my own questions about the miracle stories by choosing not to spend much time trying to come up with the answers. I don’t think we have to be able to believe them literally; we may someday, but we don’t have to begin there. In fact, I think we are in greater danger of missing the point when we treat such stories literally than when we take them metaphorically. Literally, they seem to function as signs of the greatness and power of God, but they also leave us with the problem that such signs are not present, or at least not common in our time. Metaphorically, these stories speak of the nature of God and of the relationship between God and creation. God creates life, restores life, raises us up into the life for which we were created. That is taking place even now. Literally, these stories are about a few particular individuals. Metaphorically, they are about all of us. Literally, the miracle stories are about fixed moments in time. Metaphorically, they speak of what is happening throughout our lives, and about what has been taking place since the beginning of creation.

So what does it mean then to be brought back from the dead? What does it mean to be alive? What might it mean for a community, a nation, a culture, humanity itself to be raised into life from the way of death? The questions go way beyond the stories of a couple of people who lived in another time?

Last week, as we celebrated Trinity Sunday, we heard God described as “Wisdom.” In his book, Original Blessing, Matthew Fox writes about a Native American understanding of wisdom. He says wisdom means: that the people may live. He goes on to say, “Wisdom wants the people to live. What does that mean? Obviously to not die before their time, yes, but to live is not merely to survive. Living implies beauty, freedom of choice, giving birth, discipline, celebration. Living is not just shopping. Living is not building a nest to protect us from the suffering of others.”

Fox’s words startle me in their truth. They stop me with their truth and sadden me because, like Ezekiel in that great story about the valley of the dry bones, I find myself looking around at so much of what is taught and valued in our time and in our culture and I ask, how can these bones live? Our marketplace and economy are based on making people want to shop, on making us want to have whatever is bigger and better and easier. The voices of those who have been telling us for the last forty years that we have to end our dependence on oil, those voices have too often fallen on dead ears and now that oil has come back to haunt us. As a culture we celebrate the accumulation of wealth as if there will always be more of everything for the taking and as if wealth for one doesn’t mean poverty for another. I know that I am, in some respects, preaching to the choir. Some of us are struggling with these issues and trying to turn things around in our little corner of the world.

Foxes words about life being more than shopping and insulating ourselves from the need of others startle me and they give me a glimmer of hope. They speak on the one hand of what is wrong in our world while at the same time holding out the promise of something else…..a new way of living. The place to begin that new way of living would seem to involve taking stock of what really is important. It must involve asking, what does it mean to live? Besides breathing and being above ground, what does it really mean to be alive. Fox offers a partial list--beauty, freedom of choice, giving birth, discipline, celebration--but that is only a beginning. Each of us can assess what it would mean for us to be truly alive and to struggle in whatever way we have to live the life to which we are called. Yes, I am speaking of call. I don’t think we can make our lists--describe what it means to be alive--in isolation. If being alive is living out the possibilities that our creator has imagined for us, then deciding what our lives can still be about must involve listening and interacting with our creator. As we meet God in prayer, in the community, in the ancient stories, in nature, in family, who knows? We may discover what really constitutes life.

By going beyond the literal story of Jesus raising the dead and asking what that would involve in our lives we can begin to see ourselves as part of the ongoing work of creation. We have a role to play--a witness to provide to the world around us. You may recall that Jesus said his friends would do the kinds of amazing things that he did and more. In the literal version of today’s story from Luke, we might expect to have to come up some kind of quick fix for the problems we se around us. In the version where transformation and the call to life is an ongoing work, maybe our most powerful response to the world’s pains can be our lives. We can live lives that are unexpected, lives that are a little out of synch with the general movement of our culture. We can witness by living lives that make others want to know something about their source. JB