Busting Down the Walls

20 February 2011
Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18

In this season of Epiphany, which begins with the light of the star that marked the place where the child Jesus lay, we have been celebrating the light of Christ. Simultaneously, we have been enjoying a little more light day by day. So little, that you hardly notice it at first. But the other day, as we were driving up highway 371 on a return trip from the Cities, I noticed something wonderful. It was 5:00 p.m., and we did not need our headlights yet! I could still see well enough to keep on knitting. (Relax, Richard was driving. I’m not so accomplished yet as to drive and knit at the same time.)
The season begins with the cold light of the star, the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it. The darkness, personified by King Herod, tries but fails to snuff out the infant light.
The Old Testament writings reminded us that God gave us Israel, our spiritual ancestors, as a “light to the nations.” And Jesus called us to be the light of the world. In the Sermon on the Mount, which we have been reading bits of for several weeks now, we are shown how to let that light shine.
And at the same time, our part of the globe leans into the sun, like a sunflower drawn to the light, as if to remind us of our calling, to resist darkness, and lean into the light.
Meanwhile, beyond the church doors, we have been reminded of the eternal struggle. When we see in Egypt the crowds of peaceful resistors standing up to a dictator, we see it in terms of light versus darkness. And when we see the Wisconsin State Capital overflow with peaceful protestors, we see light versus darkness. My brother-in-law and I may disagree about who represents light and who represents darkness, but we both tend to see it as good versus evil. As if the drama of real life were as simple as High Noon or Star Wars.
But real life is complicated by the problem of sin. Whether it’s “original” or “new and improved,” sin is a part of each of us, and we deny it at our peril. Self-identifying with the white-hats, and casting others who are not like us as the villains, that is the very thing that drove Jesus into full-time ministry.
Jesus didn’t have a problem with sinners. He spent a lot of time with them. Jesus had a problem with the self-righteous, the pious, those who prayed, “Thank God I’m not like those people.” Jesus had a problem with the scripture, particularly those scriptures that build walls between “us” and “those people.”
We all remember the parable of the Good Samaritan, who took care of the man who had been beat up and robbed, after three nice religious people passed by on the other side. But do we remember what preceded the parable, do we remember the set-up? Someone was asking Jesus which commandment was the greatest, and then answered his own question. Jesus prompted, “What’s in the law, what do you read there,” and the person who asked the question answered: “To love the lord and to love your neighbor as yourself.”
It’s straight out of Leviticus, we heard it in our Old Testament lesson for today. Leviticus is most well known for being the source of the holiness code, the laws that build walls between “us” and “them:” the dietary codes, the purity laws, the “you shall not eat” and the “you shall not touch.” Leviticus is the book that uses the word “abomination” a lot, and it is the book that justifies a death sentence for those who violate the code.
Now, those people in the parable, who passed by on the other side, they were following the code. They were staying away from blood, so as to remain ritually pure. The Samaritan (feel free to read any despised person here, to personalize the paraphrase—the good Iraqi, the good Mexican, the good Muslim) didn’t follow the code, but allowed himself to be ritually violated by blood. And in doing so, in that beautiful paradoxical way that we find in scripture, fulfilled the law. The good Samaritan fulfilled the law by breaking the rules.
Go and do likewise.
Go and violate the laws that build walls. Go and break the rules if necessary, to keep the spirit of the law of loving your neighbor as yourself.
“Who is my neighbor?” is the title of the antiracism event we are co-sponsoring on Saturday. I want you to be ready for this. The event itself is not a protest or a demonstration. The gathering at the courthouse on Tuesday was a demonstration, a symbolic act. Symbols are subject to interpretation. Saturday’s workshop is our effort to provide an interpretation.
One possible interpretation of the demonstration might be that it was an effort to paint the accused as “evil” and identify the demonstrators as “good,” to symbolically paint black hats on the accused and white hats on everyone who gathered outside the courthouse. If that’s all it was, then we are no better off for having gathered. If that’s all it was, then it only served to put up more walls between “us” and “them.”
The workshop is an effort to come to terms with the difficult truth that real life is not that simple. The workshop is an effort to come to terms with the sin of racism, and the place that it has in our own souls and in our communal soul.
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” begins Robert Frost’s poem. Conversely, something there is that loves a wall. Sin is that wall-builder. Sin is that impulse that points the finger and says “that is not us.” Grace acknowledges a brother or sister.
The beating of Willie Navy held up a mirror to our community. We didn’t like what we saw, so we have done our best to deny it, to say, “That is not us.” But that is us. When we hold up a mirror to our community, we want to see the cover of the Lake Country Journal. That is us too, but that is not the whole picture. We must come to terms with the whole picture.
On Saturday, we are going to take a good look at the whole picture in the mirror. Once we acknowledge the whole picture, then we can chose how to change it for the better.
Here is a new parable for you. A gardener planted a garden in the Lake Country. To keep the critters out of it, she put up a fence. The deer leapt the fence, so she built it higher. The rabbits went through the gaps in the chain link, so she built it up with stone. And behind the stone walls, the garden withered and died, for lack of light.
Then she realized, if she wants this garden to grow, she’s got to start busting down those walls.
Go and do likewise.

The Unhistoric Acts of the Saints

(For the February church newsletter.)
In January, we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr Day. In February we will celebrate the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln on Presidents’ Day, and observe Black History Month. While we all owe a debt of gratitude to great historic figures for their great historic acts, we should also remember, as George Eliot wrote, in her novel Middlemarch, that…

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

We are dependent not only on the historic acts of historic figures, but on the unhistoric acts of people who live faithfully, who do justly, who love kindly, and walk humbly with God. I’m sure you can think of someone who intervened in your life at a key moment. I am thinking of my sixth grade teacher.
In elementary school, I was an indifferent student, and an embarrassed reader. One day my sixth grade teacher called me to sit beside her desk and quietly explained to me that I would fail reading that semester, unless I read a book a week for the next nine weeks. I didn’t think that was possible. I didn’t come from a family of readers, we were avid watchers of television. As a child, I felt I was as much (or more) a part of the Brady family and the Partridge family as the Griffin family. I was sure I could not read a book a week, but my teacher was sure that I could.
So I went home that day, with a book from the school library, a book that my teacher recommended. When I got home, instead of sitting on the sofa for the usual fare of Gilligan’s Island, followed by Hogan’s Heroes and Star Trek, I sat in a chair and told my mom I had to read. And I read. The book was called Freaky Friday. That’s right, like True Grit, it was a book before it was made into a movie based on a movie! When Mom called me for supper, I was astonished to realize that I was one chapter away from the end of the book. I had read almost a whole book in a day, and I hadn’t thought I could read one in a week.
My sixth grade teacher changed the course of my life, by telling me I could do better. Through this simple, unhistoric act, she saved me—she became an agent of my salvation. I was saved from being a sixth-grade failure, and from whatever comes of being a sixth-grade failure.
Sometimes, people just need to know that they can do better. The apostle Paul knew this, and I believe that is why he began nearly all his letters with thanksgiving to God, for the people to whom he was writing. Sometimes he wrote to correct the people, sometimes to encourage the people, but whether to comfort or cajole, he first expressed his thanks for the people. In giving thanks, he was reminding them who they were. Not isolated individuals but members of one body in Christ; not powerless, but endowed with the power of the Holy Spirit.
Paul speaks to us through these pages, to remind us of who we are: We are God’s children, fed by God’s Holy Spirit, given authority to continue the work begun in Christ, saving the world in Christ’s name. We each have our part to sing, our role to play, our work to do.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the past, to the historic and unhistoric acts of the saints who have gone before us. And the best way to pay our debt to the past (wrote John Buchan) is to put the future in debt to us. Without ever expecting to collect interest, for all that we are we owe to others, who have themselves been agents of our salvation. Let us go, and do likewise.

Why everything we think we know is probably wrong

A Sermon for January 30, 2011
Texts: Micah 6:1-9; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 and Matthew 5:1-12

In the title of this sermon I promise to tell you why everything we think we know is probably wrong. I’m also going to tell you why that is good news. When we survey the scriptures, we find that whenever people think they have God figured out, God begs to differ. That’s why everything we think we know is probably wrong, and why meekness is a virtue.
Take for example this passage from Micah. Now, in Micah’s day, which was a time of rebuilding Israel after the long Babylonian exile, people were trying to figure out how to get Israel back on top. They had heard the stories from their parents and grandparents, about how great it was back in the day, back when Jerusalem was the center of the world, back when queens and princes from faraway lands would travel by camel caravan just to see the glory of that city. But, you know, how grandparents can embellish stories, right? How the stories become tall tales, so the past becomes legendary. The Jerusalem of the stories probably far outshone the Jerusalem of history.
Rebuilding a city and a nation was not as simple as it had seemed. They did not find it as their great-grandparents had left it. After decades of neglect, Jerusalem was a ruin, the land of Israel forgotten. What do we have to do, the people were complaining. We returned, we cleaned up the temple, we devoted ourselves to the worship of God the way our grandparents told us. They promised that if we do this, the riches of the nations would come pouring back into Jerusalem. Well, what more can we do? We have kept our part of the bargain, where is God?
You think you know me? God says, through Micah. You don’t know me! It doesn’t matter what you do inside the temple, if you don’t do right outside the temple. What happened was, the returning exiles turned the restoration of Israel into a big land grab. When they came back to the city they acted as if they had a right to all the best houses and all the best lands, and they displaced the people who had been living there for generations, whose families did not Go into exile. Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God. The retuning exiles thought that justice was something God would do for them, once they got their ritual on. God, through Micah, turned the world upside down and inside out. Justice is not the reward at the end of the journey, it is the journey. Everything the people thought they knew about God was wrong, and that was good news! Because God was working through them to build the city of peace, Jeru-salem, (that’s what the name means, the dwelling place of peace).
And in Jesus day, people thought they knew who was blessed and who was cursed, just by looking at them. Obviously, the wealthy person with a house full of children is blessed by God; obviously the beggar at the gate was cursed. But Jesus, he saw things differently. Through him, the people learned to look with the eyes of their heart and see things differently. Once again through Jesus, God turns the world upside down and inside out, blessing the cursed.
And in the days of the apostle Paul, when the people of the church in Corinth were trying to outdo one another in claims to wisdom, God did it again—turned the world upside down and inside out through the words of the apostle Paul. What you think you know, Paul said, is foolishness, and that is good news. You don’t have to depend on your own cleverness, and that is good news. ‘Cause you aren’t so clever as you think!
And even now God is calling us to turn our vision inside out. Turning the church inside out is one of the keys to success—and I’m a bit uneasy with the term—in church development. I’m uneasy with the term “success” when it comes to the church because what we think of as success conflicts with the Jesus movement. Jesus turns our idea of success upside down and inside out too. Look at Jesus. He was not the leader of a mega-church. Jesus had a small church, a small band of disciples. And sometimes, Jesus would say something that would make people mad, and they would leave. Jesus didn’t even have a home or land or a big family, and he didn’t live to a ripe old age—these were the measures of success in his day. He was arrested, tortured, and killed. Hardly a success story, by our conventional standards.
According to the Center for Progressive Renewal, the vital, successful church is one that is turned inside-out: the one where people come in, for the purpose of going out. So, when we think of a “successful” church, we shouldn’t picture the church of the past, the church of history or legend, where everyone up and down the street went to worship every Sunday morning, and the Sunday schools were bursting at the seams. I don’t think recreating the protestant church of the 1950’s is high on God’s list of priorities. But God has shown us what success means: what is high on God’s list is that we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God
Humility, is one virtue I still have to work on, when it comes to my church. Because I am so proud of my church. Even when people say, “First Congregational, which Lutheran Synod is that?” Or “United Church of Christ? Church of Christ, like Pat Roberton?” I say, no, no that’s a different church, and we have no connection to that famous person. The Congregational church and the United Church of Christ—remember the pilgrims? You know us. We invented America. And we invented the abolition of slavery. And women’s rights. And we even invented Unitarianism.
But we cannot rest on our laurels. We cannot sit back and bask in the reflected glory of the faithful past. When we get together here in this church, we come to fill up on the nourishment of the scriptures, and to build one another up in love, but that’s not the be-all and end-all of the faith. We come here to fill up, so we can go out there and give it away. The Holy Spirit comes to us all, and gives each of us gifts, but not for our own sake. The Holy Spirit comes to us on its way to somebody else.
So, go from this place and do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. And come back for more, to go out again. Thanks be to God for the Spirit in our midst.

Called to Rise

A Sermon for Sunday, January 23. Text: Mark 4:12-23

There are no prerequisites for discipleship. That’s what today’s gospel lesson is about. It’s totally an entry-level position. No educational requirements, no pre-certification. If those fishermen were qualified, then so are you.
There are no prerequisites, but there are expectations, great expectations. The expectation is that when we are called we will rise up and follow.
Disciples are called to rise. Called to rise to the occasion. Called “for such a time as this,” or for such a time as will be.
Moments of decision come while we are mending our nets, washing our dishes.They come when we are on our way to important meetings, or going nowhere in particular. There is a call, a plea, a searching look, and we can return to our nets, our sink full of dishes, the business of the day, or, we can rise to the occasion, and be someone we did not think we could be.
Rosa Parks, the woman whose arrest in 1955 sparked the Montgomery Alabama Bus Boycott, rose to the occasion by remaining seated. Now, when I was a child, I learned in school that Rosa was tired from working all day, and just decided right then and there that she had had enough. I got the idea that it was social change through weariness. Well, a few years ago when I was visiting the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, I learned that that is not the whole story. Rosa Parks had been a member of the NAACP for a more than a decade. She had participated in voter registration drives. She had attended training sessions on civil disobedience. She was prepared for the occasion. She had practiced, and role-played so that when someone said to her, “If you don’t get up out of that seat we are going to call the police and they will arrest you,” she was ready to say, simply, “You may do that.”
What we are about in the church is practicing faith. Practicing for the occasions to come, so that we will be ready to rise. One of my summer jobs when I was in college was camp lifeguard, and one of the responsibilities of the lifeguard is to train, every day, in order to be ready when the occasion comes. So I swam a half-mile every day and occasionally a mile. With the other lifeguards I participated in search and rescue drills, and we practiced carrying people to safety. Most of the time, lifeguarding is about watching. In three years, I never had to rescue anybody. But I had to be ready, should the need arise.
We might never be called to greatness. We may never be called to save a life or start a movement. Or, we might. Unless we are ready we won’t know what God may do through us. We may have a role to play in someone else’s greatness, like Mother Pollard, a woman who encouraged Martin Luther King, Jr, when he was frightened and his faith was failing. You can read about her in Dr. King’s book, The Strength to Love. The story leaves me wondering if Dr. King would have been Dr. King without the encouragement of this elderly, poor, uneducated but profoundly wise woman, who offered encouragement to the struggling young pastor who led the bus boycott in 1956.
Here we are. Practicing the faith together, that we might be ready to rise when the occasion calls us, with words of encouragement, acts of love and justice. New life begins here, with the call to rise, where it might lead, God knows.

Why the Christmas Story is Good News, and Why It Matters to Me

On Christmas Eve I have always preferred to let the Christmas story preach itself. Carefully placed and rehearsed and paced, read out from the pulpit of this beautiful sanctuary, accompanied by pipe organ and carols, the seven lessons are like seven gems in a filigree setting. What more can one say, but that which has already been said:

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”

And,

 “Do not be afraid.”

And,

“I bring you good news of great joy. Unto you is born this day a savior, who is Christ, the Lord.”

This story is trustworthy and true. It may not have actually happened this way, but it is trustworthy and true. The Jesus Story is just one version of the overarching story of God and God’s people. It is the story of what lengths God will go to, for the people, to save the people-- to save us from each other and to save us from ourselves. This story is an invitation: God invites us into relationship. We get to decide how to receive the invitation. Whether to receive it as good news, bad news, or no news, is up to us.

According to the gospels of Luke and Matthew, the story of God’s incarnation was received with mixed reviews. The same may be true today. God comes with justice. This is good news. It is good news for shepherds in the field, good news for low-wage workers, good news for the alien wanderer in the land. Good news for the merciful and the meek. But bad news for Herod. Bad news for those who oppress the workers and visit violence upon the homeless traveler. The light that shines in the darkness is not the innocuous glow of the twinkling tree. It is a searchlight, which allows no injustice to hide from God who comes with justice, to set the prisoners free, to bring down the mighty from their thrones and life up those of low degree.

According to God, we are free. We get to decide whether or not to turn and walk back into our prisons. According to God, our eyes have been opened! We get to decide, whether to keep watch and bear witness, to call out when we see suffering, or whether to close our eyes and pretend not to see.

We get to decide how to live in response to this story. Living faithfully, day after day, is not easy living. It is thoughtful, spiritual, mindful living. Fortunately we are not left on our own. We have the church, and the promise that God will guide us. We are in good company.

This is a church that seeks to know and share the love of God which we find within us, and within these stories. We live to be faithful in our relationships with one another, with the church universal, with other people of faith, and with God. You, all of you, are welcome to come and be a part of this church. We don’t pretend to have all the answers. God knows. But we are a safe place to ask the questions, about how to live faithfully, do justly, and walk humbly with God and with each other.

Whatever we decide, about God, about the story, about the church, God is always seeking us out, inviting us in, because God is love; and I hope you will agree, that is good news.

May the peace of Christ be with you, this night, and always. Amen.

God Is With Us

19 December 2010

Isaiah 7:10-16; Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25

“And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matt 28:20b (the last word)

                In life, in death, in life beyond death,

                                God is with us.

                We are not alone. Thanks be to God.

                                                                --“A New Creed,” United Church of Canada, 1980

                Today we have lit the candle of Love, and we have read and heard the story of the birth of Jesus, from Matthew’s point of view. Matthew’s birth narrative is much briefer than Luke’s; and where Mary is the focus of the birth narrative in Luke, in Matthew’s gospel Joseph plays the pivotal role.

                Poor Joseph. In our crèche, his figure stands like an accessory to Mary, like Ken to Barbie. He is always in the background. In Catholic tradition, Mary becomes the Queen of Heaven, but Joseph, he is just a saint. Sure, he has a few hospitals and a children’s aspirin named after him, but there are few great works of art that focus on his love and care for the child. In Christmas pageants too, he gets few lines, if any. Stage direction: Joseph approaches Inn, knocks on the door. Enter innkeeper. Joseph: “Got a room?”

Because Matthew’s version of events is recorded so tersely, I believe an appreciation for Joseph requires some faithful, respectful, and I hope not too fanciful, expansion of the story. To be faithful to the time and place, we must set aside our modern, western notions of marriage.  For most of the world, throughout much of history, marriage was considered far too important to be initiated by a boy and a girl. Marriage was arranged by elders and relatives who knew better. Joseph might not have even seen Mary before the betrothal ceremony, and may have had little contact with her after. The two ceremonies-- one for betrothal, when a woman was claimed by the husband’s family; and one for the marriage, when the man and woman began to live together as husband and wife—were separated by a sufficient amount of time (6 months or so) to confirm that the bride’s family was not trying to pass off “damaged goods.”

So, for Mary to turn up pregnant during this time is a grave dishonor, a shame upon Mary’s family, and upon Joseph’s too. All deals were off. Mary would not only have been disgraced, she could have been killed according to the law-- stoned to death as an adulteress.

That Joseph had resolved to dismiss her quietly shows that he is not only a righteous man (that is, a man who would not take an adulteress as a wife), his resolve to dismiss her quietly also shows that he is a compassionate man. This internal struggle, between righteousness and compassion, between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, mirrors the moral struggles of the church to which Matthew addressed his gospel. And it foreshadows the teachings of Jesus, as recorded in the Sermon on the Mount: all those “you have heard that it was said” sayings that call us to go beyond the letter of the law, even to ignore the law, to be compassionate, as God is compassionate.

After he had resolved to do this, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Do not be afraid.” This is the fulfillment of God’s promise—Emmanuel—God is with us. This is the beginning of the Gospel, and this is the end: Emmanuel, God is with us. Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

When when Joseph awoke from his dream, the pathway was clear. Confronted with the law, torn between obligation and compassion, Joseph, emboldened by the promise of God’s presence, chose compassion. So may we all.

Isaiah's Vision; Paul's Hope

Texts for Sunday, December 5: Isaiah 11:1-10’ Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19; Romans 15:4-13; Matt 3:1-12

                The scriptures provide the following job description for kings: justice for the poor and meek, deliverance for the needy. Peace will come, the prophet promises, with a leader who will serve the last and least of the people. And on that day, the wolf shall lie down with the lamb, the cow and bear will graze, the lion will eat straw like the ox. And pigs will fly, the prophet might add. Like, “That’ll be the day.”

                Cynicism is easy, too easy. Anyone who is paying attention to news from Washington knows that our kings and princes have recently decided against deliverance for the needy. The least of these don’t even make the list of very important people. That is not how it should be.

                Jesus and the prophets held up a different picture. A vision of peace, that peaceful place where predators become herbivores, and prey have no worries. And this is written to give us hope, the apostle Paul wrote. Hope is the antithesis and the antidote to despair. Hope is powerful. Hope is not just wishful thinking, hope is a commitment to live in the present as if the future has already arrived.

                It is hope that drove the people into the wilderness of the Jordan, to be baptized by John. John announced the coming of the prince of peace and taught the people to prepare for his coming. “Repent!” was the word he used. Repent means “turn around.” Repentance is a reversal of course. Repentance clears the way for a new and better future. And repentance confirms in each of us the hope for a better future.

                Hope, three times in this brief passage Paul uses that word. Hope is extraordinary. Hope requires a minute shift in vision, just a small but powerful movement. Elsewhere in the letter to the Romans, Paul explains it this way: Suffering produces Endurance, and Endurance produces Character, and Character produces Hope. Somehow that proclamation seems counter-intuitive, because we all can think of examples of how suffering produces nothing but more suffering. But we also have witnesses to the power of hope. We have Paul, and we have Gandhi, and we have King, and we have Tutu. We have Wiesel, and Kushner, and so many others, people without headline names. We have witnesses to the power of hope, hope that the wrong shall fail, and the right prevail, with peace on earth, good will to all.

                And our witnesses show that living in hope gives us the power to join the movement of the one who ushers in the age of justice, and righteousness, and peace.

                May the God of hope fill you with all peace and joy in believing, that you may abound in hope, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit. Amen.