On the Way

04 December 2012

Awake & Astounded: I. Stay Open - An Advent Series

Psalm 24 & Revelation 3: 14-22

First Sunday of Advent/ 2^nd December 2012

Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates,

Behold, the King of glory waits;

The King of kings is drawing near;

The Savior of the world is here! [1]

These words, this hymn (which we sang at the beginning of the service) summon us to enter a new (liturgical) year, a new world, a new dimension, a new and holy space. “Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates.” That’s what the psalmist sang: “Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors! That the King of glory may come in” (Psalm 24: 7). It’s an entrance psalm, a psalm sung for a royal procession, the procession of the Ark of the Covenant up into the great temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem. It was sung by a choir, with call and response, as the Ark, the dwelling place of Yahweh, made it’s way to the temple mount. And as they approached the gates of the temple and its ancient doors, the choir sang to the doors, commanding the gates, to rise, to open. Do not block. Do not hinder. Make way. Open up and allow the glory of God move through your threshold and permit access, so that that the walls of the temple might indeed become a sanctuary, a container, a dwelling place for the sanctus, the Holy, the Holiness of Yahweh.

And the procession made its way to the temple because the temple is the meeting place between heaven and earth, the axis of the world, the axis mundi, the point of connection, the point of contact, the meeting place between the people and God. The psalmist tells us, “Such is the company of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob” (Psalm 24:1).

We, too, are in that procession, aren’t we? We, too, are among the company of those who seek after God, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. That’s our story, isn’t it? Their procession is our procession, that long walk through a lifetime that’s continually searching and seeking after the face of God, the presence, the place of meeting. The search for the face that won’t turn away is one of the deepest desires of the human heart and we are never, ever fully satisfied until we find it. It’s what everyone desires. Whether one believes in God or not, I believe this deep hunger for the face drives the human spirit.[2] Advent is a time when we remember – or maybe discover for the first time – the depth of that desire, when we remember the meaning and joy of the procession and return to it (or perhaps finally join it).

Fling wide the portals of your heart;

Make it a temple, set apart

From earthly use for heaven’s employ,

Adorned with prayer, and love, and joy.

The author of this hymn text, Georg Weissel (1590-1635), a seventeenth-century Prussian pastor-theologian, takes the literal reference to a temple structure and beautifully transforms it into a metaphor for the human heart and then invites us to an internal or inner Advent. The heart then becomes like a temple, the dwelling place, the meeting place of God. And in order for that to happen the gates of the soul need to be lifted up, the ancients doors of the heart flung wide open to allow access. The King of glory is coming and wants to come in. Yahweh is on the move and wants to come in, wants to live among us, to get close. Make way.

But as we all know, this is easier said than done. Those gates are heavy and the doors are thick.

The Franciscan priest and writer, Richard Rohr, was recently asked the question, What do you think God is doing these days? What is God up to? Rohr’s answer was this: “God is into giving away God. That’s all God is doing is giving away God. There’s nothing else. That’s God’s job description. I want to give away some more God. And God is trying through every metaphor, every act of creation, every moment of time to reveal a little more of God.”[3] So why don’t we feel it? Why don’t we see it? Why don’t we experience it? Because we put up so many obstacles and barriers and gates and heavy doors that we shut God out, we deflect God’s goodness, block God’s love, reject God’s presence, we close our eyes, and fence off our minds, and wall off our hearts. But, why? Why do we do this?

Gates, doors are provocative symbols. They offer protection. They keep us safe in our homes, protect our families. They’re also mysterious and dangerous. Gates stand between here and there, between the known and unknown. They are places of transition. The ancients had great respect for thresholds, these liminal places, they could be holy, sacred places, we still have all kinds of rituals associated with them – shoes are removed before them, brides are carried over them, Jews place mezuzahs over them and Christians place crosses and a modern pagan might nail up a horseshoe or two.[4] Gates and doors can take us from what is known into the unknown, from one world into another. And that’s why they’re potentially dangerous.

Can you risk opening the door? Can you risk stepping through the threshold? That’s what Advent is about. The psalmist says, “Lift up the gates.” But there’s something in all us that wants to keep them shut, tight. Maybe we’re self-satisfied with things as they are. Maybe we’re feeling self-sufficient, that we’re happy and content and comfortable. Maybe we think we don’t need anything or anyone – even God.

We must always be on guard when these thoughts and feelings of self-sufficiency surface – and they will – because often they’re hazardous illusions. That’s what the Spirit said to the church in Laodicea. They were shut off in their bubble of self-sufficiency and complacency and could not see the state they were in. As a result, they suffered from a bland indifference and paralyzing indecision. “I know your works,” Jesus said, “you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” The exact rendering here is actually stronger, something like vomit. “For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing” (Rev. 3:15-17a).

Laodicea was an exceptionally rich city in central Asia Minor (Turkey). “It was so wealthy that after it was utterly destroyed by an earthquake in 60 C. E., the city proudly refused imperial disaster assistance from [Rome] and rebuilt the city completely with its own resources.”[5] It was at a crossroads in Asia Minor, a city well known and well endowed by its textile, banking, and medical industries. Its signature commercial items were shiny black wool and Phrygian powder, which was mixed with water to make a medicinal eye salve. They also had a significant water problem. The source of their water came from the medicinal springs of Hierapolis, six miles away. By the time it made it’s way down to Laodicea, its “tepid and mineral content made the water nauseating.”[6] The people were prone to spit it from their mouths.

The wealth of the city made its way into the church so that the church, too, was wealthy and self-sufficient. They were not open to the truth of their condition. “You do not realize,” Jesus said, “that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.” Jesus reproves them in love and says, Open up and see. I offer you real wealth, refined by the fire of suffering. Instead of black, itchy wool, I offer you white robes of cloth. And here, put my salve on your eyes, this will heal your blindness. Jesus is quite harsh with First Church, Laodicea. They think they’re doing the work of Christ, they think they’re being good witnesses, they think Christ is among and within them, but he’s not.

How do we know this? Because he says to them, “Listen! I am standing at the door [– on the outside of the door, which they have closed against him –] knocking. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me” (Rev. 3: 20).

Can you risk opening the door? Will you allow him to cross the threshold and come in? Doorways can be risky places, but also holy places, sacred places. When we lift up the gates and open the doors of our hearts – and keep them open – open long enough to welcome the movement of God’s glory across the thresholds of our lives, then something holy and miraculous will occur – I promise. This is Advent – it’s about opening up and staying open long enough to welcome the presence, the birth of God, the face of God in our midst.

Redeemer, come! I open wide

My heart to Thee; here Lord, [in my heart, Lord] abide.

Let me Thy inner presence feel;

Thy grace and love in me reveal.

[1]From the hymn, “Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates,” written by Georg Weissel, was first published in 1642. It was translated from the German by Catherine Winkworth (1827-1878) and published in The Chorale Book for England (1863).

[2] On the “search for the face,” I am indebted to the work of James E. Loder, The Transforming Moment (Colorado Springs, CO: Helmers & Howard, 1989). See also, Kenneth E. Kovacs, The Relational Theology of James E.Loder: Encounter and Conviction (New York: Peter Lang, 2011).

[3] Richard Rohr’s comments may be found here: www. http://vimeo.com/49803870.

[4]The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images, The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (Taschen, 2010), 558.

[5] Brian K. Blount, Revelation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 80.

[6] Blount, 80ff.

19 November 2012

Called to Freedom

Galatians 2:1-10

Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost/ 18^th November 2012

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty – and we must rise to the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.” That’s what he said. That’s what Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) said. December 1, 1862 in an address to Congress, one month before signing the Emancipation Proclamation. Remarkable words, remarkable insight, a model of visionary leadership.

With the release this weekend of Steven Spielberg’s new movie Lincoln, we are given a new look into the life of our sixteenth president. I saw the movie yesterday and it was great. I’ve always been struck by Lincoln’s strength, courage, and deep moral core. As a religion and history major at Rutgers College, I wrote a thesis on Lincoln’s theology and his quest – a spiritual quest – to save the Union.[1] On Election Day this year I felt drawn to go back to the Lincoln Memorial, my favorite place in Washington, DC, to read again those profound lines in the Second Inaugural, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.”

From our vantage point, Lincoln was among our great presidents, perhaps the greatest. During his presidency, however, especially through the storm of the Civil War, he had his critics, even in his own Republican party. What made him a great leader, however, was his determination to be his own person. He knew the right, the moral, the just thing to do. He was not called to be popular. Yes, he was politically savvy and wise, but he was also his own man. And he was odd. He was odd looking. He marched to the beat of a different drum. While Lincoln was never a formal member of any church, as president he often worshipped at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, just a few blocks from the White House. He was good friends with the pastor, the Reverend Phineas Densmore Gurley (1816-1868). Instead of sitting in a pew where his presence might be a distraction during worship, Lincoln listened to the sermon from the pastor’s study with the door cracked open.

There was a kind of freedom in Lincoln’s own being that freed him to be his own person (and the movie makes this clear); he was free to be odd and different, free to do the unpopular thing, especially freeing the slaves and bringing an end to slavery – which was unpopular even in the North. A liberation, as Lincoln said in his address at the National Cemetery in Gettysburg, just 52 miles from this sanctuary, yielding “a new birth of freedom.”

I can imagine that Lincoln would have gotten along well with the apostle Paul. There might be a little of Paul in Lincoln – for Lincoln knew his Bible, he read Paul’s letters. Lincoln had large parts of the Bible memorized; it was part of his being. (As a boy he regularly recited the Sunday sermon by memory later in the week for his friends.) They were both lawyers, although Paul’s early life does not parallel Lincoln’s early life, when Paul was known as Saul, before the Damascus Road experience, before Paul had a change of heart. Paul, too, was not popular; he was looked at with suspicion by both the Jewish authorities and the early followers of Jesus. Paul was driven – not by pride, ego, or ambition, but as he himself said, he was driven by the Spirit of God. At the beginning of the letter he makes it plain, “Paul an apostle – sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father” (Galatians 1: 1), and later he added, “I want you to know…that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origins; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (1:11-12).

That “revelation” was a turning point in Paul’s life. It was “a new birth of freedom” for him. Despite his former life when he was actively persecuting the followers of Jesus, he was now a Jesus follower. Not just a follower, but also an apostle, that is, someone sent by God to serve the revelation of God found in Jesus Christ. Because of the grace that Paul experienced – Saul, now Paul – Paul knew that everything in his life had changed. This past week I heard Bono (of U2 fame) speak at Georgetown University. He talked about the need for “a conversion heart.” When a conversion of heart occurs, you cannot un-know what you’ve come to know, you cannot un-see what you’ve come to see. This was true for Paul. There was no going back.

Paul was given a new understanding of God – a God rich in mercy and grace to the likes of him, a God not easily “managed,” who takes delight in doing the unexpected. God did that which was unthinkable, unimaginable for a Jew. God was at work in someone like Jesus, who, according to the Law must be considered “cursed.” As Deuteronomy states, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (Deuteronomy 21:23). The cross is like such a tree. The fact that God would raise, would justify such a man and then to embrace the fact that such a man was God’s son – all of this was blasphemous for Saul. But for Paul, it was also true. As Paul discovered, God isn’t too worried about blasphemy. God is doing something new. And so Paul was given, then, a new self-understanding, how he viewed himself had to change. And how Paul understood his role in the wider Roman world was also in need of change.[2] In relation to these – God, self, world – Paul was given a new birth of freedom through a revelation that changed his life. This was so earth shattering and mind-blowing for him that he went away to Arabia (Jordan) for more than fourteen years. It’s not surprising that Galatians is known as the epistle of freedom. Paul writes in Galatians 5, “For freedom, Christ has set us free, do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (5:1).

What is that yoke of slavery? The burden, the enslavement of empty religiosity. For Paul, that meant all the trappings of the Jewish Law. Some said that one has to become Jewish before following Jesus. Being Jewish entails following the dietary laws, kosher laws, for some, circumcision, the sign of covenant. Paul, raised in the tradition, says, no. A Gentile does not have to follow Jewish practices in order to follow Jesus. This is the tension, the conflict, the war waging in the church in Galatia and throughout the Jewish world.

Why does Paul feel this way? Why is he so passionate about this? Because he knows from personal experience that God’s love and grace always liberate, they always free us. It’s the grace and love of God that matter most, therefore we need to be wary and even “war” against anything that asserts that we have to do something or be someone in order for God to love and accept us. Religious rituals and practices are not wrong, but in themselves, they’re not the means of grace. As you can imagine, therefore, the authorities in Jerusalem were not happy with Paul. Paul was undermining the tradition and the institution that preserves these traditions. And so Paul stayed away from Jerusalem for at least ten years. As a new follower of Jesus, Paul left everything. He went to Arabia (Jordan) – to make sense of his new calling, to live with other Jesus followers. He’s on his own, for the most part, probably part of a Christian faith community. Like Lincoln, he’s odd, aloof, doing his own thing, following the rhythm of a different drum. Paul runs from conflict, hiding from the conflict tearing the church apart: the Jewish-Gentile question.

Paul easily could have stayed away from Jerusalem. He could have demonized the Jewish authorities. He could have dug in his heels and refused to have anything to do with them, living isolated, cut off, alienated. That would have been a natural response, a human response. We can think of plenty of parallels in our age, both within and without the church, of similar conflicts tearing apart community, with name-calling, demonizing, us vs. them attitudes. He could have dissociated himself from Jerusalem – and maybe, at some level he wanted to do that.

But that’s not the way of Jesus Christ. That’s not the way of the God and Father of Jesus Christ. That’s not the way of a Christ-follower. “Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabus…. I went up in response to a revelation” (Gal. 2:1). Another revelation, an insight, a tug of the Spirit, a word from the Lord that would not allow him to remain cut off, but sent him into the lion’s den, as it were; a word from the God that sent him to “them,” to the other, to the people who were excluding him and making it difficult for him to live.

Can you imagine what that conversation was like? Can you image what that was like, having to justify his very existence before a group of people who believed he was wrong? But he went and told his story – he gave testimony, he witnessed to God’s grace in his life. And when they heard his story and saw the evidence of grace in his life, “when James and Cephas [Peter] and John, who were acknowledged pillars, recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave to Barnabus and me the right hand of fellowship…” (Gal. 2:9).

The right hand of fellowship. Reunion. Connection. Communion. Peace. Reconciliation. That’s the way of Jesus Christ. That’s the way of the God and Father of Jesus Christ. That’s the way of a Christ-follower. That’s what Paul had come to know. That’s what the Spirit called him toward. That’s what Christ is always calling his sisters and brothers toward. Reconciliation. Paul knew from his own personal experience that God’s good news is ultimately about reconciliation, healing alienation, restoring relationship. Paul knew in his bones, in his body, in his guts that there was a time when he was alienated from God’s way, but now he is welcomed home nevertheless. He knew that by grace that Christ was alive in him and therefore he was ultimately free – free to live in a new relationship with God, with himself, and with the world. He was then free to go the people he was alienated from to experience reunion, the relationship restored. This is what grace can do. This is what grace always does. It’s not what we expect; the outcome is more than one could ever hope for, always yielding something new. Paul says elsewhere, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us” (2 Corinthians 4: 18-19).

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present….we must think anew and act anew.” The old ways, the expected ways, the usual ways are inadequate to the present, new ways are required, new ways are given by grace in order to allow us to do a new thing in the world.

When Lincoln stepped out of the Capitol building to give his Second Inaugural Address in 1865, the crowd, indeed, the world were expecting a speech that would humiliate and shame the Confederacy. The city was packed with visitors. There were not enough hotel rooms available. People were sleeping in hotel hallways on cots. One reason why space was so limited was because every other available space was used for wounded and recovering soldiers. There were hospitals everywhere. The number of amputees in the city shocked visitors. The people were angry and mad. Every family was touched by grief and loss. Approximately 700,000 people died the war – an enormous percentage of the population in the 1860s. Compared to our current population today, it would be equivalent to approximately 5 million casualties.[3]

Lincoln never says Confederacy, traitor, nor rebel in the speech. He doesn't feed off of their hate and anger and need for judgment and retribution. Instead, in a speech lasting just eight minutes, he ends with these words: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.” Remarkable, really. Where does such wisdom and grace come from? The crowd and the press didn't know what to “do” with such a speech. It’s not what they expected. But it’s what was needed for reconciliation. Grace is never what we expect. It always surprises us. In just over a month Lincoln would be dead, on Good Friday. Yet, he had the freedom to say and do what was needed to be said and done.

That’s why I think Lincoln and Paul would get along. It’s why I hear a lot of Paul in Lincoln. The freedom exercised by Paul and Lincoln and countless others is always available to you and me. For God’s grace and love always yield liberation. Liberation for us – a new birth of freedom – and liberation for others. Anything less is no gospel. Anything less, Paul would say, is “anathema” (Gal. 1:8-9). Anything less than liberation is not gospel.

Image: The only image of Abraham Lincoln giving the Second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1865. Photograph by Alexander Gardner.

[1] Kenneth E. Kovacs, “Lincoln’s Quest for Union: The Use of Covenantal Thought as a New Paradigm for an Historical and Political Understanding of the Relationship Between Religion and Culture in America, 1801-1865,” Rutgers College, B.A./ Henry Rutgers Scholar Thesis, May, 1986.

[2] Here, I am indebted to Brigitte Kahl’s extraordinary commentary, Galatians Re-Imagined: Reading With the Eyes of the Vanquished (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010), 277. “God’s apocalyptic revelation (apokalypsai, 1:16) drops him into a devastating threefold self-alienation that entirely distorts his image of himself, of God, and of the other…” (277).

[3] See Ronald C. White, Jr., Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 21-29.

22 October 2012

Service as Sacrament

Mark 10: 35-45

Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost/ October 21, 2012

It was the great theologian Augustine of Hippo (354-430), writing in the late-fourth to early fifth-century, who gave us one of the best descriptions of a sacrament. So good it’s stood the test of time. A sacrament, he said, is “a visible sign of an invisible grace.” It’s that simple; so easy to remember. I remember learning it in college.

A sacrament is something that allows the invisible grace of God to become visible, even tangible in our lives. A sacrament is a holy act that allows something of God to come into focus. It’s an act that allows the grace of God to become more accessible to all of our senses and therefore more real. That’s what baptism does. That’s what the Lord’s Supper does. The definition works for any moment, any activity that helps to reveal the presence and love of God. As we know, Protestants affirm two sacraments; our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters consider five additional acts sacramental. But if we affirm Augustine’s definition and say that a sacrament is “a visible signs of an invisible grace,” then that means there can be many signs that make grace visible to us. If we were to add to the list of sacraments – and I’m not suggesting that we do so, but if we did – perhaps Protestants and Roman Catholics, as well as Orthodox Christians would agree that acts of service can also be regarded sacramental. Because service, when done in love, can also be a sign of God’s grace and reign in the world. Service, when done in love and joy, can convey to the world that God is near.

This is Jesus’ point here, much to the consternation, frustration and confusion of the disciples. “…but whoever wishes to be great among you must become your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave (or servant) of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:43-45).

Now, these verses sound pretty harmless. Don’t they? They sound, well, so Christian. Jesus as servant. Jesus as servant of all. Jesus as suffering servant. The Christian is called to serve. That’s what we do – or what we’re supposed to do – we serve one another. This is what it means to be Christian, some say. We do nice things for people. We try to do some good in the world. It’s the Christian thing to do. Christians don’t have the market on doing good, however.

To be a follower of Jesus, however, is more than just trying to be good person. Doing good does not a Christian make. Jesus is more than a teacher of ethics. For what Jesus is saying here, what he’s expecting from his disciples requires something more than a willingness to do good.

Just before we read about James and John asking to be their teacher’s pet, their teacher tells them, “See we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit on him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days rise again” (10:33-34). Then, we find James and John not listening – or listening, but not hearing, ignoring, denying what he said – asking Jesus for a favored position when he sits in glory. There’s only room for two, they think, one on the left and one on the right. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. You really don’t know what you’re asking. You have no idea, do you; you have no idea what I’m about, do you? Sure, we do. Just pick us. You’ll see. We’re better than the others.

When the others heard James and John, they became angry. So Jesus called them all aside and said, look, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.” You know that among the Gentiles… Who is Jesus talking about here? Who are the Gentiles? Non-Jews, yes. But who is the ruler of the Gentiles? The Roman governor. He’s also the ruler of the Jews, too, because the Romans are occupying Palestine. You know how the Romans operate, Jesus says, they lord it over them; their rulers lord it over them, and subjugate everyone, including their “great ones,” probably a veiled reference here to the Roman Emperor himself.

How does Rome act? It’s all about power. Those at the top have all the power; those at the bottom have none. Those on the bottom exist to serve those on the top. Those without power are destined to serve those with power – and they are powerless to do anything about it. Those who have more honor, more glory, more power expect to be served by those who are beneath them. That is the Roman way.

But it’s just not the Roman way, there’s something about all this that reflects a very human way, a fallen-human way, in that we struggle to be on top of the heap, to be the best, to have the place of honor, the recognition of the crowd, the glory. If we’re honest, there’s something of James and John in all of us. We all have ego needs, like James and John, and we have a tendency to look to wealth, power, position, authority, honor, glory, and status to help meet our ego needs. To be clear, these are not inherently bad, but they can easily become hurtful and destructive, petty and small, ugly and dishonoring, even evil if all we’re worrying about is our ego needs, if we’re only worrying about ourselves, if we use people and power and privilege – and yes, even religion (!) – to get ahead in the world.

“But it is not so among you,” Jesus says.

One of the wisest and honest writers I know is Parker Palmer, a Quaker, an educator, philosopher, a humane human being. Several years ago, in his book Let Your Life Speak, he was brutally honest about a time when he was offered the presidency of a small educational institution. He wanted the job, and he thought he should take it. He gathered a half-dozen trusted friends and formed what’s called in the Quaker tradition, a “clearness committee.” This helps to discern what the Quakers call way, whether the way is clear or closed. They gathered around him, not to offer advice, but to ask honest, open-ended questions of Palmer to help him discern the call.

Halfway through this three-hour meeting, a friend asked Palmer what he would like most about being president. He mentioned several things he wouldn’t enjoy, like wearing a tie. But one friend said, you’re not answering the question. Palmer says that he then “gave an answer that appalled even me as I spoke it: ‘Well,’ I said, in the smallest voice I possess, ‘I guess what I’d like most is getting my picture in the paper with the word ‘president’ under it.’” He continues, “I was sitting with seasoned Quakers who knew that though my answer was laughable, my mortal soul was clearly at stake! They did not laugh at all but went into a long and serious silence – a silence in which I could only sweat and inwardly grown. Finally, my questioner broke the silence with a question that cracked all of us up – and cracked me open: ‘Parker, can you think of an easier way to get your picture in the paper?’ By then it was obvious, even to me, that my desire to be president had much more to do with my ego than with the ecology of my life.”[1] That moment of clarity led him to withdraw his name from the search.

“But it is not so among you….”

When Jesus offers these words, he’s leading his disciples down an entirely different path. It’s not the way our egos usually want to go. It’s not the way that comes naturally to us. And it’s certainly not the way one chooses to go if one’s ego is especially fragile and insecure, when it full of worry and anxiety, when the ego “dominates, exploits, and manipulates others for its own advantage.”[2]

“But it is not so among you….”

Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be servant or slave of all. Jesus is talking about mutual servant-hood here, one serves the other, seeks to serve the other, does not seek to “lord it over” the other. Equal to equal.

But how? How do we do this? It sounds impossible, given human nature. It cuts against the grain of so much of who we are. Is Jesus setting up an impossible standard for us to achieve? I don’t think so. That wouldn’t be loving, would it?

Jesus didn’t have to grab for glory or wealth or power or authority or status in order to affirm who he was. He knew who he was. In the absolute best sense of the phrase, Jesus was truly full of himself, that is, clear about his identity and purpose. And it’s from that state of fullness, of completion, of participation in the love and generosity of God that he was free – not compelled, but free – to serve and to give. I believe that the way of Jesus is offered to us through him. From Jesus’ perspective, “only the strongest sense of self, a self that neither grovels nor grasps, can resist chasing counterfeit notions of greatness.”[3] When we have a strong sense of self, who we really are, deeper than the ego, then we are free to serve and give in a new way.

When we serve and give in this way – when we see it happening toward others, when we’re the ones doing it, when we’re the ones receiving this kind of generosity – it becomes and looks and feels sacramental. There’s something holy and good about it. Something of God is present in those moments because that is the way God is, that’s how it’s done. And, I believe, it’s possible for us to live and serve this way, not by human will and determination alone, but when we know who we are, when our identity is firmly grounded in the One who created us, loves us, redeems us, and empowers us to act.

Whether we’re putting together Safe Motherhood Kits for IMA World Health, helping at the Samaritan Women here in Catonsville, building homes with Habitat for Humanity in impoverished Baltimore neighborhoods, sharing a meal through Lazarus Caucus, engaging in advocacy, working for justice and fairness, making the world safe for our children, sitting beside someone who is scared, lending an open ear and an open heart, or giving space and time to the things and people that really matter, we’re not just doing “good works." When we do all of this – as well as the countless other ways that we serve one another – in love because of the One who loves us, then service becomes a sacrament. It’s a holy moment. Holy. In those moments we know that God is at work in us and through us. In those moments we know that God is near.

[1]Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999), 44-46. I’m relying on Daniel D. Clendenin’s helpful summary of Palmer’s account found on his website, Journey with Jesus: http://journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20121015JJ.shtml.

[2]Clendenin, http://journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20121015JJ.shtml.

[3]Clendenin makes this point here, http://journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20121015JJ.shtml.

15 October 2012

The Blessing of Minority Status

Mark 10:17-22

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost/ 14^th October 2012

No, this is not a stewardship sermon. This is not a sermon about money and pledges and budgets. But it does have to do with wealth and power and influence. It’s often called the parable of the rich (young) man. You know the story. While Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him asking, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit life?” After deflecting his adulation, Jesus says, “You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; …’” The man replies, “I have kept all of these since my youth.” I’ve followed the rules, I’ve been a good person, I’ve done what is expected of me by my family, my faith, my community.

Then, Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” Of course, we know what happened. The man was troubled by the answer and “he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”

Jesus looked around and said to his students, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.” And then they were shocked and perplexed.

As we hear this story, it’s quite natural to think Jesus is talking only about money and possessions. And he is at some level. Because of the judgment Jesus makes against wealth and possessions here, it’s easy to assume that wealth and possessions are inherently evil or bad. But Jesus isn’t saying this. There’s another level here. What he is saying is that if you have a lot of wealth and possessions it’s just more difficult to be his follower, you have more baggage, as it were, more weighing you down.

When we focus on the wealth verses, it’s easy to overlook these words, which, I think, really drives this text: Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said… Jesus looked at him, saw him, I believe, looked into the depths of his soul, and loved him, loved him through and through, to the depths of his soul, and in love – true love – said to him, You who claim to “have” so much, who “own” so much, “claim” to have done so much, are lacking one essential thing. What you’re lacking is the ability to let go. What you’re lacking is the willingness to release your grip, to relax your striving and your selfish ambition, your fearful grasp after things, your obsessive compulsion to get it right, your anxious worry about missing out on eternal life. Let it go. “Sell it.” Detach from it.

For this man, it was his many possessions and their death-grip on his life that needed healing. It’s in love that Jesus invites him “to sell,” not because wealth is bad, but because for him the wealth meant more to him than eternal life, his wealth distracted him from life in the kingdom, his identity was too wrapped up in what he owned, how much he had. And he looked for his security and assurance in how much he had. You can tell how much his wealth was connected to his fearful ego because the thought of changing his status caused him considerable grief.

How hard, indeed, it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. Jesus isn’t saying it’s impossible for the rich to enter the kingdom. It’s just more difficult. Not because wealth is bad, but because we value wealth more than the kingdom. To truly be a child of the kingdom requires a giving up, sacrifice, a dying and a rising into a new way of being in the world. When we give up attachment to wealth and power and possessions and, yes, even people, and focus on the kingdom, on God, something remarkable happens. We gain a different kind of wealth and power and things and even people. “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold (one hundred times) now in this age – houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and field, with persecutions – and in the age to come eternal life.”

Like so many other places in Jesus’ preaching, the world is turned upside and inside out, and those who have ears to hear and eyes to see, let them hear and see. For this is the truth that the rich man could not bear to hear and what he needed to hear and what we need to bear and heed and hear, “…many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” If this isn’t contrary to the way most of us live in the West, I don’t know what is. This is the opposite of our Western values, our American values – where we say that we must be the first, the goal is to be first, the best, and God help, literally, the last, the least, the second-best. This might be the American gospel, but it’s not God’s gospel, and it’s not the message of the cross.

It’s striking that the Gospel lectionary for today, which includes these words, “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first,” comes to us the same week that the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released its latest statistics on religion in America. For the first time in our nation’s history, Protestant Christians now make up 48% of the population. We are now a minority faith in the United States for the first time. We were at 60% of the population in the early 1990s. This is a dramatic shift. If this doesn’t tell Protestants that we’re “not in Kansas anymore,” that we’re not in the 1950s any more, that the church and the world around us have changed and is changing, I’m not sure what will.

The Pew Forum also cited that for the first time in our nation’s history the fastest growing segment of our population are those who describe themselves as “nones” – those with no religious affiliation. Their number has risen to almost 20% of the population, which reflects an increase of 15% in the last five years.

Now before we respond to these numbers with doom and gloom, before we find someone or something to blame for this change, we should probably take a step back and take an honest, sober assessment of ourselves, and ask a few questions. And we must resist attempts to rush in to “fix” the problem, because the problem can’t be easily “fixed,” if at all. There’s a question whether or not it should be fixed. There’s the deeper question, what is the problem?

The problem might be that we Protestants are like the rich man in the parable. Maybe we have been seduced by our “wealth.” By wealth, I don’t mean money alone – although, historically, we Protestants have been and are among the wealthiest in the nation. We have been rich in financial resources, but we have also been rich in our influence, rich in power and resources (such as education), rich with a cultural hegemony that said, believed, acted as if this nation was ours, that ours was the true church of Jesus Christ, that we knew how to do church, how to worship, how to preach and live the gospel. We cannot underestimate the enormity of Protestant power and dominance in our nation’s history. We know the history: the pilgrims in Plymouth were Protestants; most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Protestants; our form of democracy, although inspired by the ancient Greeks, was really channeled through the religious reforms of the Reformation. The oldest and best universities and colleges in America were founded by Protestants. When Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) of France traveled through America in the early nineteenth century and described the people in this democracy, he saw a people shaped by a Christian outlook. “There is no country in the world,” he wrote in Democracy in America (1835/1840), “where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.” He was describing Protestant America. Until the large influx of Roman Catholics in the late nineteenth-century Protestants were the unchallenged dominant class, the dominant church, the dominant political force. And among the Protestants, Presbyterians were among the most powerful, particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The American Revolution was known in the Houses of Parliament in Westminster as the “Presbyterian rebellion.”

But maybe – just maybe – our wealth, broadly understood, is no longer a blessing but burden. Maybe it has become a distraction; maybe we have become so obsessed with our Protestant ideal and our Protestant work ethic, our ambition, our pride, our drive, our desire to be first, that we have lost the spirit and fire of the gospel. Perhaps we have become so obsessed with our “possessions” that we’ve lost the purpose of our calling. Have we become so entrenched in our way of doing church, in our way of having power, control, and influence, that we’ve neglected the core mission of the gospel? Have we attached our self-importance to dominance? Are we valuing the wrong things? Do we value the trappings of church and culture more than the gospel?

The Pew Forum found that among the 20% “nones” population that these people have not given up on God, they have not given up on prayer, they have not given up on spirituality, and they have not given up on caring for the least among us. These women and men are among the “spiritual but not religious” category. They’re on a spiritual journey, but they’re their path completely bypasses the institutional church. The decline among Protestants is also similar to the decline among Roman Catholics in this country. And among Protestants, it’s occurring in the evangelical and in the so-called liberal churches. It all points to the fact that something is essentially wrong with institutional Christianity in the West. There are many reasons for this shift; however, the largest influence increasing the “nones” population, as the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam has shown, is young adults’ “reaction to the religious right.” “The best predictor of which people have moved into this category over the last twenty years,” Putnam says, “is how they felt about religion and politics” aligning, particularly conservative politics and opposition to gay civil rights.[1]

Yes, it’s a little depressing to learn that we’ve lost our market-share of the religious economy in America. It’s a jolt to our Protestant egos. But maybe it’s a gift. Maybe it’s a wake-up call. Maybe it’s an opportunity for us to re-examine what it means to be a child of the Reformation, of being “reformed and always being reformed.” But more than that, maybe it’s an opportunity to discover again what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ, what it means to live in and toward God’s kingdom. Philip Jenkins, president of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, said something similar in an interview this week. “It may do us a lot of good as Protestants to lose dominance,” he said. “Instead of reaction, we need to listen to this carefully. It could help Protestants to reflect more critically on our purpose as people of faith.”[2]

Maybe Jesus is looking at us and in love says to us, “You lack one thing. Go and ‘sell’ it.” Let it go. Let your Protestant “wealth” and cultural dominance go. Instead of grieving over the loss of our “wealth,” maybe we can detach from it, not over-identify with it, shake off its weight and discover a freedom that we’ve been missing, a freedom to really live the faith without all its cultural baggage. Let the first become last and as “last” we might get to see what being “first” really looks like in the kingdom of God. Then we’ll claim or reclaim our “treasure” and value what matters most. Not institutions and numbers and size and power and influence and endowments. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Maybe trusting so much in our wealth, liking it so much, we’ve lost the ability to value the kingdom.

All is not lost, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

So here’s to discovering the blessing of minority status! Let us raise a glass to minority status! On the way to being last, may we discover or rediscover all the more profoundly what it really means to be “first” in God’s kingdom, rediscovering that this should be the ultimate concern for us as individuals and as a church: being attentive to the deep hunger in the human heart that can only be satisfied by the grace of God, the deep human hunger for mercy, for justice, for healing, for love. This should be our treasure that we are called to embody. This is eternal life. This is what God treasures. This is what calls us to life!

[1] Cited in The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/one-in-five-americans-reports-no-religious-affiliation-study-says/2012/10/08/a7599664-11c8-11e2-855a-c9ee6c045478_story.html

[2] Cited in the Louisville Courier-Journal, http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20121008/FEATURES10/310090020/Report-says-Protestants-no-longer-U-S-majority

10 October 2012

Love in Truth and Action

1 John 3:18, 4:7-21

World Communion Sunday/ 7^th October 2012

“Words, words, words! I’m so sick of words!” So sang Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady.[1] Words fill every hour, every day. Spoken. Read. Sung. Heard. We can’t get away from them. We Presbyterians are guilty as charged. You have to admit, we’re a wordy-bunch of Jesus lovers. Just look at how many words are in today’s worship bulletin!

A lot of good is accomplished with words. But words can also be a distraction: they can prevent us from hearing what needs to be said; they remove us from the work at hand. It’s easy to talk a good game.

On the subject of love, the writer of 1 John has a few words for us. He offers one of the most profound expressions of the meaning of love found in Scripture. But, stop talking about love, he says. Stop writing about love. Stop preaching about love. Stop with the words. “Let us love,…not in word or speech, but in truth and action” (1 John 3:18).

John knows that love is not a noun, but a verb. It causes things to be. What it causes to be is an extension of the one who is love. With these verses we have the only place in the Bible where God is defined as love. Yes, there are expressions of a loving God found in the Bible. But here we find John saying God is love, it’s who God is. Love is the expression of God’s Being, completely, which means that if God is to remain God, then God cannot be anything other than love itself, the One who loves in truth and action. How do we know this? Jesus as God in the flesh is God’s love in “truth and action,” the Word of God embodied, enfleshed, and enacted because words are not enough; they’re never enough. Love, if it is love, is embodied, enfleshed, and enacted. Love causes something to be and what it causes to be is always an extension of the one who loves. God is love. As lovers of God, let us love, not in words only, but in truth and action.

So, then, what do we mean by love? That’s the question. Sadly, what tries to pass for love is not love. I’ve known plenty of people in my life who say they love someone, but their actions betray them: they do not practice what they preach, they do not embody their love. In fact, their actions are the very opposite of love, inflicting fear and shame, sometimes violence and hurt and pain. And, frankly, some people really don’t know how to love because they have never been on the receiving end of love and respect; they don’t know what that feels like and looks like. When it comes to love, though, we all fall short.

On this World Communion Sunday as we consider our connection with Christian brothers and sisters around the world looking for love, we are lifting up, in particular, the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo, who needs a whole lot of love. Through the life and witness of Don Padgett we as a church have a strong tie with Presbyterians in the DRC, especially in the Kasai (the central region that has a strong Presbyterian witness). Bulape, Kananga, Tshikaji, and Lubondai are familiar place names to us, places that know our love in truth and action. And we have been blessed with knowing something of the pain, suffering, and trauma experienced by the Congolaise. I say “blessed” because they have helped raise our consciousness around issues that we otherwise would have been ignorant. And in this knowledge – in this love – we have been called to truth and action.

The DRC is a tough place to live; it’s one of the poorest nations in Africa, among the poorest in the world. The unspeakable suffering and loss that they have experienced is beyond our capacity to imagine. As a result it’s a place where reality is a little unhinged. I saw that eight years ago when I traveled to the Kasai with Don. And I saw it in August 2011 while traveling in Kivu, Eastern Congo, with Rick Santos and members of the IMA World Health board, visiting new places like Goma, Bukavu, and Mwanza. This past summer I went back to Christ in the Desert, a Benedictine monastery in New Mexico. While I was there I met a monk who was from Zambia. I mentioned to him that I had spent some time in the DRC, that I’ve been to Goma and Bukavu. He was amazed. “You’ve been to Bukavu?” he said. Then he touched my hand to see if I was real. He couldn’t believe that a Westerner had been to a place like Eastern Congo. Places that have been in the crosshairs of wars and civil wars, with countless women, men, and children the victims of war, particularly victims of sexual and gender-based violence. A UN official once called Goma the “rape capital of the world.” On our visit we met several women who were raped. We talked with them. Listened to them, heard their stories. Unknowingly, we also met and talked with their perpetrators.

I have to confess, I didn’t know much about sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) before going to Goma. But I’m grateful for the “blessing” of this knowledge, because it has caused me to be better informed, better educated around this issue, and better equipped to do something about it there. But what came as a shock to many of us – and Rick Santos shares this view in his introduction to the One In Three sermon guides recently released by IMA World Health through their We Will Speak Out initiative – is that what is happening in Congo is actually happening in one form or another to women, men, and children, but mostly to women, all around the world, including the United States.[2] Sexual and gender-based violence is far more pervasive than we like to admit. The disturbing PBS-series Half the Sky, which aired this past week, based on the book by award-winning journalists Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn, makes this abundantly clear.[3] In 2010, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a national survey of American adults and discovered that “more than one in three women in the US have reportedly experienced sexual assault, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime. The same is true for more than one in four men.”[4]

According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, “boys who witness domestic violence are twice as likely to abuse their own partners and children when they become adults.”[5]

And it’s occurring in the church. An internal study done by the United Church of Christ (here in the US) states, “What will strike some as remarkable is that the data we gathered contains nothing remarkable. The numbers of persons who have experienced sexual and domestic violence…are very consistent with national averages.” As Rick Santos says, “attending church didn’t make anyone less susceptible to sexual or domestic violence.”[6]

These are sobering statistics and difficult to hear. I know. I am conscious that this is a sensitive subject to talk about. We’re very conscious of this. We don’t often hear about these things in worship. Our silence, though, is not helpful and it’s not loving, particularly toward those who might be included among these statistics. But we’re talking about more than statistics here; we’re talking about real people. The silence allows the shame to permeate one’s life. The church’s silence reinforces the shame and the pain and keeps it in shadow. This is not the way of Jesus Christ. As Jesus graciously said, “For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light” (Mark 4:22). Love in truth and action calls us to speak out with and for those who cannot speak out. And if the church won’t speak out, who will? Love in truth and action invites us to take what’s been placed in shadow and shame and lift it up to the light of God’s healing love, so that the totality of one’s self can be loved and fully embraced and held.

Love in truth and action means ensuring that our homes and church are safe places, sanctuaries – places where God’s love is enacted and embodied, known and felt and celebrated, places of healing and hope, places where people know that God’s love is liberating and freeing. In the hope of putting love in truth and action, we want to ensure that we are creating safe places here today. I have asked Dorothy Boulton to be available in the Crossroads room after the service if any of our youth would like to talk about anything heard today, and I invited Dr. Elaine Bain, a psychologist and person of faith on staff at the Suburban Pastoral Counseling Center (based here at the church), to be available in the France Room. And I’ll be around if anyone wants to talk.

So what is this love, then? What is God’s love? What does it look like? Feel life? What does it do? As Jesus demonstrated and embodied with every ounce of his being, God’s love raises the dead to new life. It is resurrection and it’s renewal. It’s liberation and new creation. It transforms everything that has died or is dying in us and offers life. It’s a love that is powerful and creative and always – always! – life-giving. It calls people to life and it fights and struggles against anything or anyone that tries to destroy or dehumanize one of God’s beloved children. It wants people to live and to grow and to thrive. It wants the best for God’s children. It takes delight in the uniqueness and joy of the other – whoever the other might be.[7]

The early church father, Irenaus (d. c.202), the bishop of Lyon, France, said, “The glory of God is the human being fully alive.” We glorify God by helping people come alive, to be the people they were created by God to be. Love not only invites people to come alive, love also creates the space for it to happen in safe, loving communities, families, and churches where people are loved, respected, and honored. Love creates caring spaces for people to grow and develop, spaces that are safe, spaces that allow deep healing to occur so that men, women, and children can grow into being the people they were created by God to be. Several years ago one of our young, budding theologians asked her mother, “Mom, what is the church for? This is what the church is for.

And this is what it looks like, a Table of welcome placed at the center of God’s world. This, too, is love in truth and action. And our host invites us to come, urges us to come from north and south and east and west, trusts us – and counts on us – to make it safe for everyone to make their way safely to the Table, so that all can feast on the abundance of God’s love. With arms out stretched in love to a world in need, Jesus welcomes us here and with the embrace of his arms actually creates the space – he is that space – where we encounter again and again the deep healing love of God, a space that continually calls us to come fully alive!

[1]Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, 1956.

[2]One in Three: Preventing Sexual Violence in Our Communities, IMA World Health, 2012.

[3] Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Vintage Books, 2010).

[4]Cited in One in Three: Preventing Sexual Violence in Our Communities (IMA World Health, 2012), 4-5.

[5]Cited in One in Three, 8-9.

[6]One in Three, 4.

[7]These comments are drawn from my contribution to the One in Three sermon guide, “Why We Must Choose Love,” 7-10.