Sermons

December 8, 2024

Poetry for Advent “long pauses. . . .” On Peace

Our headlines are full of destruction, death, and disaster.  Turkish backed rebels have captured the cities of Aleppo and Hama in Syria and are now at the gates of Damascus; North Korean troops have joined the Russians in their ongoing assault on Ukraine; Israel continues to pound Gaza in retaliation for it’s invasion last year. How can we come here this morning and celebrate the angels’ song of peace on earth?  That is the question staring us in the face today as we continue the pulpit series on “Poetry for Advent”.  This Sunday, I have chosen to draw upon the words of Denise Levertov; you’ll find her poem, “Making Peace” on the insert in your bulletin:

A voice from the dark called out,

“The poets must give us

imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar

imagination of disaster. Peace, not only

the absence of war.”

But peace, like a poem,

is not there ahead of itself,

can’t be imagined before it is made,

can’t be known except

in the words of its making,

grammar of justice,

syntax of mutual aid.

A feeling towards it,

dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have

until we begin to utter its metaphors,

learning them as we speak.

A line of peace might appear

if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,

revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,

questioned our needs, allowed

long pauses. . . .

A cadence of peace might balance its weight

on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,

an energy field more intense than war,

might pulse then,

stanza by stanza into the world,

each act of living

one of its words, each word

a vibration of light – facets

of the forming crystal.

Her poem speaks volumes about the disturbance in our souls that seeps in over the morning coffee and the bloody headlines.  She uses the metaphor of poetry itself to place the realities of our world and its challenge in front of us.  “. . . peace, like a poem,” she writes, “is not there ahead of itself.”  She could not be more right.  The peace we seek not only fails to arrive ahead of itself, it seems to always remain beyond itself – beyond reach.  It is very hard to know how we get from this bloody mess that is the world we’ve created to the blessed ideal of peace on earth.  Jesus knew that.  As he approached Jerusalem two thousand years ago he saw the same bloodstained streets that we encounter today.  And Luke tells us that he wept over the city and said, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!”

But although this poem of peace that Levertov speaks of “can’t be imagined before it is made” she does give us clues about those “things that make for peace”.  Crucially and powerfully she refers to “Peace, not only the absence of war.”  There is a world of meaning in that simple phrase.  When we bring to mind the hope of peace, you and I so often think merely of how to keep the guns and missiles and bombs at bay.  We imagine that if only the people of the earth would stop killing each other we would have peace.  And I admit that if everyone would at least stop killing one another that would be a great start.  But it is not peace.  Peace’s poem

“can’t be known except

in the words of its making,

grammar of justice,

syntax of mutual aid.”

Simply put, peace without justice is no peace.  Peace without hearts and hands ready to reach out to others in compassion is no peace.

So, where does this leave us?  It leads us back to ourselves and to the wisdom found in this epistle of James: “Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.  But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. . . . For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind.”  Levertov puts this bluntly:

“A line of peace might appear

if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,

revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,

questioned our needs . . . .”

This is where the dream of peace on earth begins.  It begins with the hard work that is done in each of our hearts.  It begins with our learning and exercising the capacity to question the primary place that profit and power hold in our culture and our lives.

And make no mistake, profit and power reign supreme in our land.  The profits of the gun industry are sufficient to fund broad scare campaigns that convince millions of otherwise rational Americans that sensible, reasoned regulations having to do with firearms sales mean that the government is coming to take your guns away.  It’s not that I don’t understand the knee-jerk reaction; when I read the headlines these days something within me wants to reach for a gun too, but I’ve been around long enough to know that more guns just mean more bullets fired into more bodies.  As a former police officer, let me tell you that I agree with a New York Times editorial that said, “It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that people can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill [other people] with brutal speed and efficiency.”  I grant you, gun control is not a “silver bullet” – if you’ll pardon the analogy – but it is a very significant step in trying to tamp down the rampant gun violence pervading our culture.

However, it is not only the machinations of power and profit on a grand cultural scale that is our concern, it is ultimately our task, as Levertov puts it, to question our own needs; because that’s where this hard work of crafting the poetry of peace begins.  Questioning our own needs means considering the possibility that the needs of others are just as significant, and in some cases more significant.  That ultimately leads us to the hardest part of this task, to allow “long pauses. . . .”

Most of us, most of the time, do not pause . . . much.  We are busy setting our agendas, filling our needs, making our points, structuring our worlds.  We may take short pauses to catch a breath, but they are not the stuff of peace.  Long pauses . . . are those large gaps intentionally carved out of our lives that make room for the other.  To pause long . . . is to lift one’s head and look; it is to open one’s eyes and see; it is to consider that which lies outside of one’s own needs, interests, and points of view.  And that is where peace begins.  It begins there because it is only in the long pauses . . . that room is made for something other than the hectic self-absorption that leads finally to winning and losing, control, dominance, and violence.  Thomas Howard speaks of “The ordinary stuff of our experience” that reflects much larger issues and realities.  He writes that “The sarcastic lift of an eyebrow carries the seed of murder since it bespeaks my wish to diminish someone else’s existence.”  He acknowledges that this is not a new insight to most of us but, like Levertov, he knows it is the domain of the poet to make it real.  He writes, “The prophets and poets have to pluck our sleeves or knock us on the head now and again, not to tell us anything new but simply to hail us with what has been there all along.”¹

So this morning I bring you a brand new idea that is older than the ages: First, practice taking long pauses . . . .  Be the peace you want to see come to the world, because that is the only way it will ever come.  As Denise Levertov puts it,

“. . . peace, a presence,

an energy field more intense than war,

might pulse then,

stanza by stanza into the world,

each act of living

one of its words, each word

a vibration of light – facets

of the forming crystal.

And so, peace be with us and among us.  And may we not simply practice peace, but may we learn to pause long enough to be peace.

¹ Thomas Howard, The Novels of Charles Williams, Wipf & Stock, 2004, p. 18.

December 1, 2024

Poetry for Advent “To mingle with the Universe” On Hope

This morning I begin a four-part series for Advent in which I am bouncing off of not only scripture but poetry.  I have chosen poems that I feel help us look more deeply into the traditional Advent themes of Hope, Peace, Love, and Joy.  For today I have chosen two poems (you’ll find them printed on your bulletin insert).  One of them is very familiar to many of you, I’m sure.  It is from Emily Dickinson:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of Me.

I love this poem.  An old dear friend of mine once said that you can tell a poem by whether it “flies” or not.  I think this one has sufficient wings.  I think what grabs me most about it is the punch line: this hope – this “thing with feathers” – “. . . never, in Extremity, It asked a crumb – of Me.”  That brings me to my first observation: hope is not an achievement; it is not earned or acquired with any amount of effort of meditative discipline; it is a divine grace; it is an absolutely free gift.  Nonetheless, it seems at times elusive.  When the trials and traumas of life mount up, hope can seem to be hiding somewhere – or, according to another poet, bottled up somewhere.

We’ve all heard of Pandora’s box.  In our popular culture Pandora’s box is the mishmash of problems mistakenly opened up by some unsuspecting soul.  But in the ancient poem from which this notion is taken, Pandora doesn’t actually have a box; it’s a jar.  The poem is “Works and Days” by the ancient Greek poet Hesiod.  In this epic work Hesiod doesn’t reveal a very high view of women.  Pandora is sort of the archetype of all women, and an unflattering one at that.  He writes:

The gods’ herald then gave her voice and called this woman

Pandora because all the gods who dwell on Olympos

gave her as a gift – a scourge for toiling men.¹

At any rate, Zeus gives a jar full of woes to Epimetheus – which Pandora then opens, apparently on secret orders from Zeus, to release all the evils it contained: hardship, numberless sorrows, and diseases.  But for some reason, Pandora was under orders from Zeus to put the lid on before Hope could escape.  Hesiod writes:

but the woman with her hands removed the great lid of the jar

and scattered its contents, bringing grief and cares to men.

Only Hope stayed under the rim of the jar

and did not fly away from her secure stronghold,

for in compliance with the wishes of cloud-gathering Zeus

Pandora put the lid on the jar before she could come out.²

Hesiod never explains why Zeus wants Hope to remain trapped in the jar, but the implied assumption is that, with the lid on the jar, men will have only trouble and sorrow with no access to hope.  It feels like that sometimes.  But I personally like Thomas Bullfinch’s take on the ancient story.  He writes, “The whole contents of the jar had escaped, one thing only excepted, which lay at the bottom, and that was hope.  So we see at this day, whatever evils are abroad, hope never entirely leaves us; and while we have that, no amount of other ills can make us completely wretched.³

With apologies to Hesiod (and Zeus) Hope is not bottled away from humanity for all time.  But it is hard to get a handle on and at times elusive.  In truth, I’m preaching an entire sermon about something I don’t entirely understand.  I know when Hope – that “thing with feathers” – alights in my soul and makes me mindful of the inexplicable gift it is (that it “never asked a crumb of me”).  But I’m not entirely sure from whence it came or wither it goes.

The prophet Jeremiah spoke of a very specific Hope.  He writes, “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.  In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land . . . .”  And we in the Christian Church hear those words as a prophetic hope that was fulfilled in the person of a baby born in a cow stall.  And that specific object of Hope – Jeremiah’s Hope and mine – does indeed offer guidance and a light (however diffuse and flickering) with which to see through this world’s often dark path to the justice and righteousness that the Branch of David would execute.  But even that light which we celebrate in this season does not entirely illumine the shadowy corners of our experience or fill our hearts with the constant glow of Hope.

What Jeremiah’s affirmation does suggest, however, is that whatever Hope is, it seems to be allied with that other inexplicable and elusive commodity, Faith.  I know I’ve tried at least a dozen times in sermons here to offer words that give some metaphorical shape to this thing called Faith (perhaps also something “with feathers”).  One of the finest expressions of Faith is offered in our other poem for this morning from Byron.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but Nature more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.

“Mingling with the Universe” is for me a most elegant expression of the essence of Faith.  Indescribable as the experience of it may be, it is most palpable in those moments “in the pathless woods,” or when “There is a rapture on the lonely shore.”  It is a sense of not merely knowing, but feeling down to the heart of one’s soul, a participation in the ageless, timeless, boundless Life of all Being.  Byron has an equally hard time describing it.  He speaks of what it is to, “feel What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.”

For me, the great goal of life is to take those indescribable moments in the woods or at the shore and make them a constant awareness in the depth of my heart – to feel myself mingling with the Universe in every minute of every day: at home in the living room, out at the grocery store, or driving in the car.  That’s the closest I can come to telling you what Faith is to me.  And it reveals quite a bit about what Hope is to me.  Hope is the free gift that comes with Faith – that unshakeable connection with the Heart of Being that in Byron’s words is “the Universe”.  When such Faith takes up residence in our hearts, Hope, like a precious bird, alights in our world as a wondrous gift.

But you and I don’t live from day to day and hour to hour in that place of wonder.  Instead, we are often like the victims of Zeus’s pranks, living as though Hope were bottled in a jar somewhere with the lid firmly closed while trouble and sorrow harass us like the flying monkeys in the Land of Oz.  Worries about our world and its fate, distress about our families, and embarrassment over our failures swirl in our heads and hearts.  And the maddening part of it all is that so many of our fears, worries, and troubles are of our own making.  It is as though we are frequently stuck in life-draining patterns from which we don’t even know how to think about escaping.  Rick Barger writes that, “The hold of the ‘rat race’ is that it works like an addiction.  We know we are on a merry-go-round and do not know how to get off of it.  Instead of jumping off, we keep buying more tickets.  As Saint Paul writes, ‘I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate’ (Romans 7:15).”⁴

Barger’s image is perfect: we keep buying tickets on the merry-go-round.  But I know there is a way off of it.  I can’t give you a simple prescription this morning, because indeed what we seek is as elusive as “a thing with feathers”, and is something we might “feel What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.”  But the Apostle Paul in his letter to the church at Rome gives us a hint that perhaps even our struggles and woes comprise a good starting point.  He writes, “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.”  Maybe he’s right.  Maybe one has to be on the merry-go-round for a time before one knows enough to get off.  I have a feeling that a good jumping off place may be discovered “in the pathless woods” where a certain pleasure might be found, or “on the lonely shore” where one might experience rapture.  Or, perhaps it may be as simple as opening one’s heart to make it a kind of perch for “a thing with feathers.”  In any case, my prayer and my Hope for you and for me in this season of lights is that we may by the miracle of grace approach the manger of Bethlehem and find ourselves mingling with the Universe, and our souls visited by Hope.

¹ “Works and Days” in Hesiod, Second Edition, Translation by Apostolos N. Athanassakis, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004, P.67, lines 81-83.

² Ibid. Lines 95-100.

³ Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch’s Mythology , Dell Publishing, 1966, p. 96.

⁴ Rick Barger, A New and Right Spirit: Creating an Authentic Church in a Consumer Culture, The Alban Institute, 2005, pp. 21-22.

November 24, 2024

It Ain’t Just a Big Dinner

I’d like everyone to open their red hymnals to number 18, “All People That on Earth Do Dwell.”  Keep the hymnal open in front of you as we proceed; you’re going to need it.

This simple, brief Psalm 100 that Jim read this morning may seem like rather lean gruel to feed an entire sermon, but as we all prepare to sit down to a sumptuous feast this Thursday I’d like to remind us that there is as much meaning and power hidden beneath the lines of this psalm as there is hidden in our annual Thanksgiving dinners.  In fact, I intend to argue this morning that thanksgiving can change your life, not to mention the world.  It ain’t just a big dinner.

Psalm 100 is one of the most familiar of all the 150 of them.  Many of us cut our teeth on it in Sunday school.  But it has a fuller and richer background than most of us have ever considered.  It was a sort of liturgical hymn (or, actually two hymns stuck together) reserved for the occasion of the thank offering.  In some respects, it’s a relic of the first Thanksgiving – which did not happen when the pilgrims sat down with the Indians; it happened thousands of years ago.  The thank offering in ancient Israel was a special service of gratitude to the Lord that involved a great feast and offerings.  When all the worshipers approached the Temple for the service of thanksgiving and thank offerings it was a great, solemn procession.  And as they came to the gates of the Temple, a choir at the front of the procession would sing a hymn which consisted of the first three verses of this psalm. We’re going to be that choir this morning.  I’d like you to sing the first two verses of the hymn, “All People That on Earth Do Dwell” which is a rephrasing of this Psalm 100.

[The congregation sings verses 1&2]

Then, another choral group waiting at the temple gate would sing another hymn in response (which consists of verses 4 and 5 of the psalm).  We’re also going to be that choir this morning and sing together the last two verses of our hymn.

[The congregation sings verses 3&4]

Thank you for being our two choirs.  You can put your hymnals away now.

Additionally, this psalm is a kind of creed – a concise statement of the core affirmations of Judaism.  The elements of this creed are: The Lord is God (in other words, Yahweh is the ruler of the Universe), God is the creator of all that is, we (the Israelites) are God’s people, God is good, God’s kindness is eternal, and God’s faithfulness endures forever.  This is their shared religious faith in a nutshell.

So, get this picture: there is a great feast and celebration, and all the people join in a huge procession to the Temple, the choirs sing these words antiphonally, and every Israelite knows them by heart.  They are the essence of their faith, the great affirmations that bind them together as a people.  It’s like one enormous family coming together for a Thanksgiving dinner and finding common purpose and spirit in the joy of their shared heritage.

But you and I know that this blissful oneness is extraordinarily rare around our real Thanksgiving dinner tables.  Aunt Martha who loves to hear the sound of her own voice drones on about absolutely nothing while everyone is obliged to nod approvingly while glancing at the clock.  The in-laws who are on the opposite side of the political spectrum are all there because they have to be invited, but everyone trips over their own tongues trying to avoid any potential land mines of conversation topics.  Johnny shows up with a new girlfriend who, to mother’s absolute dismay, is covered in layers of Goth make-up.  And just when everyone seems to have their annoyances and frustrations in check, Sarah speaks up and asks about leaving after dinner to go see her friend, which sets dad off on a tirade about how she doesn’t respect the family traditions, Junior jumps in to her rescue, and all the sudden we’re off to the races.  Does any of this sound familiar?

Well, the blissful picture of that ancient thank offering celebration is also not entirely on target.  In fact, there was in ancient Israel a long standing dispute between the Levitical priests and the prophets.  There were even divisions among the priests about correct interpretation of the Torah, and its applications to daily life and worship.  We see those divisions still brewing in the time of Jesus, who was himself a bit of a renegade coming from a more liberal region and challenging the Jerusalem rabbinate.  You know about aunt Martha, and the in-laws, and Johnny, and Sarah, and Junior at the Thanksgiving table, so you know that those ancient priests and prophets and their followers did not leave their differences at home when they joined the procession to the Temple.

But here’s the thing.  They did join the procession; and they did bring their thank offerings, and they did sit down together at the great feast; and they did all hear these magnificent words sung by the choirs as they approached the holy gates.  It was a time to be thankful for the Lord’s blessings, and in that gratitude they found a strange kind of unity in the midst of their not insignificant differences.

Thanks-giving cannot make us all agree.  Being thankful cannot heal every rift.  But thankfulness can bring people together around the table.  And that’s not nothing.  If people who prayed to the Almighty using different names could nonetheless find common cause in their thankfulness, and if that table of thanksgiving were large enough, maybe we could get a lot of folks around it: Russians and Ukrainians, Palestinians and Israelis, Sunnis and Shias, American Christians and ISIL Islamists.  That may sound a little like “pie in the sky” but I tell you it may ultimately be the only way we finally save ourselves from mutual destruction.  If humanity is given enough time to grow up, we just may discover that in shared thankfulness there is not only this strange kind of unity, but there is a major shift in perspective, and there is abundant joy to be found.  And that joy can conquer tyrants and all their armies.

William Willimon writes about a friend of his who “was active in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.  He helped organize churches to protest against, to march against, to defy, and to attempt to overturn the unjust, racist laws.  ‘One of our most potent weapons,’ he said, ‘was joy.  The oppressors just can’t stand for the oppressed to be joyful.  By refusing to be miserable, we were refusing to let our oppressors define us.  We took charge of things.  We turned things around and demanded to be the final word on the situation.  Joy is a powerful protest against the forces of death and injustice.”  Willimon says, “So is thanksgiving.”¹

But the unity, the joy, and the enlarged perspective that grow out of thankful hearts is not only for the high and mighty, it’s for you and for me.  As all the characters in our family dramas gather ’round the turkey and dressing we have an opportunity.  It is the chance to test out the power of thanksgiving to change our lives – to find out if, indeed, being truly thankful together helps us to affirm common ties, injects into our lives a bit of joy, and causes us to see our points of view, peccadillos, and personality clashes in a whole different light.

There’s a great Fred Craddock story from the time when he was Professor of Preaching at Candler School of Theology at Emory University.  He was asked at the last minute to teach an adult Sunday school class.  Fred was a little reluctant because he didn’t have much time to prepare but the one who called him told Dr. Craddock that it was an easy lesson, the familiar parable of the Prodigal Son.  So Fred agreed to do it.  When the class started, Craddock read the parable from the King James Version of the Bible, right down to the place where the prodigal son came back home and the father came out to greet him.  But at that point Fred continued as if he were reading from the Bible, and said, “And the father said to his son, ‘How dare you show up here after all the shame you’ve brought on this family!  You’ve made your bed.  Now lie in it.  Don’t come back here again until you’ve gotten a haircut and a decent job.’”  Craddock stopped.  There was a long silence.  Finally, someone sitting in the back row said, “Well, that’s what he should have said.”²

You and I know how the story actually came out.  There were hugs and tears, and a great big, family dinner.  It all happened because the father was so filled with thankfulness that his son was home that he could not scold, complain, or even offer a brief sarcastic shot.  His world had been changed.  He couldn’t get past his joy.  The older brother, you may recall, couldn’t get past his bitterness.  He was unable to find that thankful heart that could have changed him.  So he sat on the stoop and pouted.  He missed out on the family dinner.  Thanks-giving changes everything.

Your Board of Trustees is initiating our annual stewardship campaign.  They’ve mailed out pledge cards for the coming year.  But perhaps this time could also be used as an opportunity, as Nowell and Mike did this morning, to share our stories of life in this church family, to discover your hopes and disappointments, and your joys and celebrations.  Today, following worship we are all invited to help decorate for the Christmas season. Linda Bevan is providing salad rolls as a special luncheon treat.  Maybe we could take the opportunity to give thanks – to give thanks for one another, thanks for our mutual dedication to the work of the kingdom, thanks for the church and its ministry and mission.  We might consider our salad rolls to be a kind of shared meal of thanks-giving.  I hope you will all come and join in the celebration. And I hope that spirit of joy and thankfulness will carry all the way to Thursday and beyond.  After all, it ain’t just a big dinner.

¹ William Willimon   Pulpit Resource, August16, 2009.

² This story has been retold and adapted over time.  What may be the original version is found in: The collected Sermons of Fred B. Craddock, Westminster John Knox, 2011, p. 175.

November 17, 2024

The Be-Attitudes

Today’s Gospel reading comprises the well known “beatitudes” from Jesus’ sermon on the mount.  They’re called beatitudes because they are all regarded as statements of blessing (or “beatification,” if you will).  Nine of the verses begin “Blessed are . . .”  I’d like to offer a new rendition of the beatitudes – one that’s a little more realistic, and based on life as we know it to be:

When the leader saw the poll numbers and market potential, he went on television; and after he sat down on the set, the cameras started to roll.  Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

“Pitiful are the poor in spirit, for they fail to take pride in themselves and in their heritage.

“Pathetic are those who mourn, for their lives aren’t happy like they’re supposed to be.

“Ridiculous are the meek, for they will be crushed beneath the feet of the strong.

“Clueless are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they haven’t figured out that it’s all about wealth and power.

“Gullible are the merciful, for they will be unlikely to receive mercy themselves.

“Delusional are the pure in heart, for no one is pure any more, and we all know it.

“Naive are the peacemakers, for they will fall victim to the guns and bombs of the war makers.

“Hopeless saps are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the fate of all starry-eyed believers.

“Justified in righteous indignation are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely.  Strike out and get revenge, for your reward will be a sizable settlement for damages and mental anguish, for in the same way they persecuted others and got away with it, but not any more.

Now, doesn’t that sound a little more like it?  I mean, let’s get real – “The meek . . . will inherit the earth?”  Just exactly how is that supposed to transpire – if we all just bow our heads, and shuffle our feet, and shrug our shoulders, the terrorists are going to stop bombing us and give us flowers and kisses instead?  Give me a break.  How un-American can you get?

When was the last time you felt “blessed” because you were “poor in spirit, mourning, meek, or persecuted?”  I daresay, most of us have felt cursed when those things befall us.  How in the world did Jesus get his values so upside down?

Well, as I’m sure you can guess, I think it’s not Jesus whose values are upside down.  Here’s the big question for us: how do we get from where we are in this world, to where Jesus is?  If I could answer that question in fifteen minutes, I’d go on TV myself.  But I do have some thoughts to share with you that just might help kick-start your own thinking about it.

The first observation has to do with the reward Jesus is offering to the “poor in spirit” and those who are persecuted.  He says, “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  He doesn’t say that they’ll get into the kingdom of heaven, or even that they will have the kingdom of heaven.  It’s present tense, possessive case.  In other words, these people have the kingdom of heaven.  All the other beatitudes have a future tense reward: “they will be comforted . . . they will inherit the earth . . . they will be filled . . . they will receive mercy . . . they will see God . . . they will be called children of God.”  But when it comes to the Kingdom of heaven, the poor in spirit and the persecuted have it.  What does it mean to have the kingdom of heaven?  I can’t say what it means to you, but here’s what it means to me.

Heaven may have something to do with life after death, but it’s the heaven in the here and now that means the most to me.  Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is, depending on how you translate his words, “within you” or “upon you”, or “in the midst of you.”  That doesn’t mean life is a blissful romp through the daffodils.  You and I have been around the block enough times to know that’s not the case.  I think it means that existence is perfect – it’s perfectly magnificent.  Yes, I know, there are 367 different kinds of suffering, and evil sometimes overwhelms us; reality bites, but, as Woody Allen said, “it’s the only place to get a good steak.”

When I was divorced, many years ago, I was devastated.  I had lost my family, I had lost my home, I had left my job.  I have never felt so alone in my life.  I was fortunate enough at the time to find a very wise therapist who didn’t try to rescue me from that loneliness, but pushed me deeper into it.  Groping around in that darkness, I discovered a resource I never knew was there – it was the comfort of simply being – being alone in my own presence.  I made an amazing discovery in that time. It is that existence is a magnificent thing, and it doesn’t require of you that you be happy in order to drink of its joy.   Pain, and aloneness, and depression, and darkness, and evil, and all the other things we fear most, are not ultimate things.  They’re part of the mix – along with pleasure, and beauty, and passion, and meaning.  And to be part of it all, to exist, to embrace existence without having to fight it or flee from it, that’s perfection.

I think that’s why the “poor in spirit” and the “persecuted” have the kingdom of heaven.  Because those on the other side, the proud and the persecutors, are so engaged in trying to hammer existence into a form that suits their fancy that they entirely miss the heaven that’s “upon” them.

Jesus is, I believe, calling us to a deeper kind of living, a kind of “submarine life’ that rides beneath the froth and foam of distractions, pleasures, and pursuits that fill our hearts.  I believe he’s calling us to an entirely different set of values than we are accustomed to.  He lifts up those who are “poor in spirit,” the “meek,” the “merciful,” the “peacemakers” as models.  He says that these people ‘get it.’  Can you imagine how far a political leader would get today advocating the values of the sermon on the mount?  He’d be driven out of office – laughed out of town.

This sermon preached by Jesus on the mountainside is his inaugural address.  It’s his “state of the Kingdom” speech, offered at the very beginning of his ministry.  And he begins it by giving us a new set of values.  They are not the values of sexual propriety, or having a nuclear family with 2.5 children, or striking down indecency on television, or defining in absolute terms the beginning or end of life.  No, what Jesus offers us are attitudes – attitudes that transcend our preoccupation with pleasure, and power, and self-protection, attitudes that reflect a deep appreciation of being.  They are “be – attitudes” if you will – attitudes of being meek and merciful, poor in spirit, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, and being peacemakers.  To develop and hold such attitudes is to move gracefully into the art of being, and to have the kingdom of heaven.

I’m sure you’ve all noticed that I usually offer an appropriate quote from Frederick Buechner in the bulletin.  He’s a great resource for inspiring and creative thinking and writing.  He died just over two years ago, and today, if you’ll bear with me, I’d like to take the opportunity to share with you some rather lengthy, but worthwhile thoughts from Buechner on the Beatitudes.

He writes: “If we didn’t already know but were asked to guess the kind of people Jesus would pick out for special commendation, we might be tempted to guess one sort or another of spiritual hero—men and women of impeccable credentials morally, spiritually, humanly, and every which way. If so, we would be wrong. Maybe those aren’t the ones he picked out because he felt they didn’t need the shot in the arm his commendation would give them. Maybe they’re not the ones he picked out because he didn’t happen to know any. Be that as it may, it’s worth noting the ones he did pick out.

“Not the spiritual giants, but the “poor in spirit,” as he called them, the ones who, spiritually speaking, have absolutely nothing to give and absolutely everything to receive, like the Prodigal telling his father “I am not worthy to be called thy son,” only to discover for the first time all he had in having a father.

“Not the champions of faith who can rejoice even in the midst of suffering, but the ones who mourn over their own suffering because they know that for the most part they’ve brought it down on themselves, and over the suffering of others because that’s just the way it makes them feel to be in the same room with them.

“Not the strong ones, but the meek ones in the sense of the gentle ones, that is, the ones not like Caspar Milquetoast but like Charlie Chaplin, the little tramp who lets the world walk over him and yet, dapper and undaunted to the end, somehow makes the world more human in the process.

“Not the ones who are righteous, but the ones who hope they will be someday and in the meantime are well aware that the distance they still have to go is even greater than the distance they’ve already come.

“Not the winners of great victories over evil in the world, but the ones who, seeing it also in themselves every time they comb their hair in front of the bathroom mirror, are merciful when they find it in others and maybe that way win the greater victory.

“Not the totally pure, but the “pure in heart,” to use Jesus’ phrase, the ones who may be as shopworn and clay-footed as the next one, but have somehow kept some inner freshness and innocence intact.

“Not the ones who have necessarily found peace in its fullness, but the ones who, just for that reason, try to bring it about wherever and however they can—peace with their neighbors and God, peace with themselves.

“Jesus saved for last the ones who side with heaven even when any fool can see it’s the losing side and all you get for your pains is pain. Looking into the faces of his listeners, he speaks to them directly for the first time. “Blessed are you,” he says.

“You can see them looking back at him. They’re not what you’d call a high-class crowd—peasants and fisherfolk for the most part, on the shabby side, not all that bright. It doesn’t look as if there’s a hero among them. They have their jaws set. Their brows are furrowed with concentration.

“They are blessed when they are worked over and cursed out on his account he tells them. It is not his hard times to come but theirs he is concerned with, speaking out of his own meekness and mercy, the purity of his own heart.”¹

I think Buechner put his finger on it. And here’s what I believe with all my heart: if I could, and you could, and followers of Christ around the globe could actually adopted these attitudes of being, it

¹Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words

November 10, 2024

The Widow’s Might!

You’ve probably heard enough sermons on this passage about the “widow’s mite” to choke a big, muddy pig. I’ve preached a ton of them too. They’re always stewardship sermons – sermons about how this poor woman who only had mite, gave it as an offering, and so we too should give sacrificially. Well, I’m not preaching a stewardship sermon this time, and my sermon title is not a typo. If you’ll excuse the play on words, I’d like to share a few thoughts about the might, the amazing power, displayed by this woman of faith – a power that could change your life, and change the world.
I want to begin by sharing my unshakeable conviction that what we are about here – here in this church – is the most important thing going on in the world. That may sound like hyperbole, but it’s not.
What’s the biggest problem we’re facing in our world or in our nation today? Is it a fragile, teetering, global economy in which the disparity between the rich and poor keeps growing and threatening an eventual breakdown of the social order? If so, what’s the solution? Some say it’s more government regulation, some say it’s less. Some say it’s socialism, some say unrestrained capitalism. Here’s the honest truth, as deeply as I can peer into it: no government regulation, no expanded freedom, no economic system, no “ism” can solve this problem, because every system can be beat, every regulation can be skirted, every law can be loopholed, every structure can be manipulated. The only thing that can finally bring economic justice and optimal prosperity to the greatest number of people is if the minds and hearts of human beings are changed on a massive scale, and mutual and community interests, fairness, and generosity, overshadow self-interest and greed.
Is the greatest problem we face today the overuse of resources that threatens our environment with pollution and global warming, and raises the specter of wars being fought over food, water, and land? If so, what’s the solution? Maybe we’ll find some miraculous technological fix that will allow us to continue our global population growth and increasing use of natural resources without dire consequences. But something tells me mother earth has clear limits that will be imposed one way or another. We need, at least, new minds and hearts, recalibrated to learn perhaps from our American Indian brothers and sisters to live more in harmony and partnership with the land and the trees, and the sky. We need to rethink our values, and our definitions of good life and good communities.
Is the greatest threat we face from radical religious fanatics, bent on carrying out holy war? If so what’s the answer? Will more bombs and tanks make us secure? Will squadrons of unmanned drones armed with guns and missiles do the trick? Not according to our best military and diplomatic authorities. The only way to bring security in the long run is to win the battle to change minds and hearts. And if the minds and hearts of our enemies are going to change, I suspect it’s going to involve some changing of our own minds and hearts.
That’s what we’re doing here, folks. We’re not coming up with new economic policies; we’re not inventing new energy technologies; we’re not putting forward new strategies in international relations, we’re one small outpost of a whole huge network of revolutionaries, doing the daily, weekly business of changing minds and hearts, starting with our own. It’s the only thing that’s ever going to make a real difference in this world.
And a prime example of the kind of change we’re about is a poor widow woman who walked into the courtyard one day while Jesus was hanging around by the treasury. Her story isn’t about the money she gave. It needs to be heard in the context it’s set in. Jesus had been talking about the pride and self-interest of the religious leaders of his day – the ones who, as Jesus said, “like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” Truth is, I wear a long robe on Sunday mornings, and have the best seat in the sanctuary, and some here would say I am at times inclined to long prayers. So I, for one, need to be a little cautious and reflective about my motives and values. Perhaps we all need to.
The problem with the scribes, the ones in the long robes with the long prayers and the big gifts, is not simply that they had a bad attitude, it’s that they missed the point! Their values were in the wrong places. They thought it was all about them! They were putting their trust in prestige, their confidence in a system that set them apart with comfort and privilege, their faith only in themselves, and their money only where their mouths were, not their hearts.
I remember as a boy coming to church with a fist full of pennies on my birthday. It must be that just about every church in those days did the same thing. When it was your birthday, you brought to church the number of pennies that represented how old you were, and put them in the bank one at a time, while everyone sang, “Count Your blessings.”
How many people here did that when you were children? How many of you know the old song, “Count Your Blessings?” Would you join me in singing it? It’s just, “Count your blessings, name them one by one, count your blessings see what God has done.”
It’s good to share something, even if it’s just a song, or a memory. But we share so much more than that, don’t we? For one thing, we share in all the many blessings that are ours in this world, in this nation, in this place we live – blessings, at times, too many to count! From the simple beauty of a sunrise to the penetrating giggle of a baby, from the underappreciated gift of three meals a day to the rarely mentioned extravagance of a place to lay our heads at night. Our inheritance as children of the earth is wondrous!
We also share in the rich fellowship of this church. I doubt that there is person here who cannot testify to the joy and life-giving goodness of all the laughter, quarrels, tears, labors, and hugs that get passed around here. They’re found sometimes on these Sunday mornings in the pews or at the coffee hour. And when we take the time to sit here, look around, and count up all the blessings that are ours, we are doing an exercise in humility, we’re tempering our pride, and allowing gratitude to deepen our souls and give us generous spirits.
And so we also share the privilege of the “poor widow” – the woman Jesus pointed out who dropped her two pennies in the offering. It is the privilege of sharing in something far grander than ourselves, and having something of ultimate worth to give ourselves to. It is the priceless treasure of knowing that the power of the Spirit is loose in the world, and any common one of us can have a stake in that power and that Spirit simply by throwing the “meager weight of our existence” into the fray on the side of good.
It is the power of the widow’s pennies. Her gift was blessed by Jesus not because of the gift itself, but because it represented the fact that this poor woman “got it!” She understood. Because she gave all of what little she had, it was apparent that she had some sense of the greatness of what she was participating in, and a profound humility at the undertaking. It was clear that she was the sort who brought those last two pennies to the treasury with a quiet little smile – a smile that reflected a candle glow within: the light of joy at having found something worth giving her all to, of knowing that there were other poor widows bringing their pennies, and many more who were helping to keep the faith, proclaim the word, give hope to the downtrodden, and speak truth to power. She had discovered the profound joy of shared love, genuine compassion, living generously. And in all that there was a kind of strength the scribes could not comprehend. It was the might of the poor widow, who had found something to be part of that ignited her spirit and rekindled her passion. That, my friends, is a treasure.
The kind of example that Jesus was pointing to in the act of this woman is more than a matter of coins. It is a participation in the divine sedition of the Kingdom; and it is joining in league with all those others throughout the world whose souls have been ignited, and who come to the altar with quiet smiles to give themselves for that which is greater than themselves. Those quiet smiles and acts of simple goodness and humility are a shared experience, a communal act.
I’d like for you to think about that poor widow and her mighty act of selflessness, and I’d like you to smile. Because you are part of a powerful force in this world, a force that is greater than systems, and polices, and laws, and inventions. It is the might of widows and workers and chambermaids and children and families and fund managers and truck drivers and teenagers gaining a new mind and a new heart, learning to share a commitment to giving themselves to the cause of truth and beauty and love – the work of the Spirit of Holiness in the world. And I’d like you to consider that your choice to be here, to share in this community of faith, to sit together and weekly count and recount our blessings, is not a solitary gesture, but that it represents your participation in something grander than yourself. It represents your small piece of the Divine great design for humanity, your mighty act of changing the world, one heart, one mind at a time – beginning with yourself.

November 3, 2024

Entropy, the Internet, and the Wisdom of Disobedient Love

While everyone is anxious about what will happen on Tuesday (and for the next four years), I thought I’d extend our perspective this morning to the slightly longer view – say, about a billion, billion, billion, billion years.  Cosmologists are divided on what will ultimately happen to our universe (in fact, they can’t even agree on what the universe is).  But most agree that its fate is tied to its total mass and energy.  To put it simply, if the total mass of the universe is great enough, the whole thing will stop expanding at some point and re-collapse on itself; if the mass is just right, it will reach a steady state; or if it’s less, the universe will keep expanding and end in an entropy death.  The key ingredient in all this is really gravity.  There may be some mysterious “dark energy” at work counteracting the gravitational force of all the matter out there, but simply put, it’s gravity that will hold us together, if we are to be held together.

So what has this to do with Ruth, Naomi, and Jesus? – I thought you might be curious.  I’ll get to that in a minute.  But first, I’d like to say a few words about the Internet.  It is astounding to step back and look at our world, and how dramatically it has changed in the last ten to twenty years.  The magnitude of this change is illustrated while waiting for a table in a restaurant.  Just glance around at all the other people in the waiting area.  Virtually every single one of them has his or her face buried in an electronic gizmo of one sort or another.  Some are pulling up music to listen to, some are using two fingers and expanding menus or maps or something, some are texting or tweeting – by the way, as I was writing this, the spell-checker in my word processing program didn’t recognize “texting” as a verb (there’s an idea of how fast things have changed).  In an extremely short period of time, we humans have become “pods” in a global web of connections, ideas, reactions, images, and fads.  There are now regular segments of news programs dealing only with how the political candidates are using the Internet, and what people are tweeting about them.  This global, electronic collection of loose, sporadic thoughts puts me in mind of the myriad atoms, planets, and galaxies in the universe, all connected in some mysterious way at the quantum level, and yet all bouncing along through time according to their own particularities.  So here’s my question – and it has everything in the world to do with Ruth and Naomi, and Jesus – where’s the gravity that holds together this universe of ideas called the Internet?  What is it that might keep us all from flying off, each into an isolated world of his own making, until our culture finds its end in a communications entropy death?

Here’s my thesis for the day: there is a certain gravity to ancient wisdom – a gravity that may just be essential in holding our world together.  In our culture of instantaneous computerized stock sales and YouTube videos that claim some kind of instant authority, the Bible seems more and more like an irrelevant relic from a dusty past that’s completely disconnected from reality.  But we break the bonds of the force that ties us to our ancestors at our peril.  Truths that have stirred the imaginations and touched the depths of souls for generation upon generation accumulate over time a certain weight.  Times change and, like the galaxies that travel through the vast realms of space, the circumstances and trajectories of our lives and cultures keep moving.  Like the inflating universe, we humans keep expanding our awareness and our capabilities.  But if we are to survive in the long run, we cannot outpace the gravity of truths that abide through the millennia.

And that’s where Naomi and Ruth and Jesus come in.  In the story of Ruth, her sister-in-law, Orpah, and her mother-in-law, Naomi, it’s easy to see nothing more than a quaint tale from ancient Israel about some women who fell on hard times.  But this is a legend whose specific gravity in relation to timeless, divine truth is massive.  It’s about good and bad decision-making, and how sometimes good is bad, and bad is good, and there is a good that surpasses all others.  Naomi told her daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, to leave her and return to their home while she undertook a perilous journey to another land.  At first they both refused, saying that they would go with her, but when she insisted, Orpah made the “right” decision, the obedient decision to go home as she was told.  But Ruth disobeyed.  She refused to leave her mother-in-law, and in words that have echoed down the millennia, she said, “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.  Where you die, I will die – there will I be buried.”  There has perhaps never been a more beautiful statement of disobedient love than those words.  Ruth made the “wrong” decision, the disobedient decision, but her disobedience was trumped by a greater good, her indomitable love.  True, pure, unshakeable love supersedes all other ethics, and can transform misery into hope.  And that’s the truth that sits in the heart of this story like a great boulder, bearing sufficient gravitational mass to keep a distracted, twenty-first century life from spinning out of control.

Jesus knew the weight of this ancient wisdom.  When he was asked about the bottom line, asked to boil down all the revered laws of Moses to that which is most important, he said, in essence, love God and love your neighbor at least as much as you love yourself.  He said that nothing was more important.

There is so much that seems more important in our world.  Accumulating, achieving, creating, being entertained, (and, of course, in this election season, winning).  But, tethered as we are to our IPhones and Androids, I fear we are losing touch with one another under the guise of being more intimately connected.  I fear that we are losing ourselves in an electronic world of our own making, and therefore losing our grasp on each other.  Our culture increasingly tells us that in order to be relevant we must bury our minds deeper and deeper in this web of ideas and images, and that the highest good is whatever notion we might post online, and the most dependable word is the latest thing that a friend “liked” on Facebook.  The people of our nation, and increasingly of our world, are marching obediently to the orders of this new mandate.

But not here.  I thank the Almighty for this body of disobedient people.  Not that no one here has an IPhone or a Galaxy S IV (I’ve got my own), it’s simply that there’s something different in this community of faith than in the world at large.  It’s actually a linguistic coincidence that the measure of the magnitude of gravitational force and the celebration of the Eucharist in the Catholic church are both called “mass.”  But I like it.  In fact, in some ways I kind of wish we called our worship “mass.”  Because there is a gravity about what we do here.  By your presence and participation in this counter-cultural movement that is our church, you are declaring your allegiance to a higher ethic, a nobler value, a more enduring truth, you are affirming that some ancient wisdom found in a dusty old book indeed has value beyond reckoning.  By coming together month after month and breaking bread in the name and memory of Jesus you are affirming the priority of faith and of the tie that binds us together as children of the Most High.  By joining hands and hearts as the body of Christ you are contributing your weight to that timeless force of indomitable love, love that is the greatest rule, love that is the highest ethic, love, even in disobedience, that holds the universe together.

October 27, 2024

Is Faith Enough?

Five hundred and seven years ago this Thursday, the Augustinian friar and professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg, Germany, Martin Luther, composed a list of ninety-five points of dispute with the Roman Catholic Church.  The historical tradition, although disputed by some, is that he posted his Ninety-five Theses on the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg as a means of sparking a debate on the issues.  Whether he actually did post them, or just mailed them to his bishop, they were eventually printed and circulated.  The common people were inspired, and Rome was not pleased.  In short order the Protestant Reformation, that would forever alter the landscape of Christianity, was underway.  Luther had a lot of gripes with the church (as I mentioned, he had ninety-five of them).  But chief among them was his insistence on something called “justification by faith”.  Luther was taken by the Apostle Paul’s words in Romans: “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus . . .”¹ and in Ephesians: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works . . . .”²  So he took issue with the church’s doctrine that the only faith that justifies (or “saves”) a person is the faith demonstrated in good works and righteous living.  Luther wrote, “All have sinned and are justified freely, without their own works and merits, by His grace . . . . This cannot be otherwise acquired or grasped by any work, law or merit.  Therefore, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us.”³  Luther referred to this as the “Chief Article” of his confessions.  He said, “Upon this article, everything we teach and practice depends.”⁴  Luther made it clear: faith is enough.

Now, I know this all sounds like a lot of “theological twaddle”, but it’s important stuff, for at least a couple of reasons.  First of all, I think it’s terribly important to consider what in the world it means to be “justified” or “saved”.  I know for some people this means winning a ticket through the pearly gates after death.  There’s nothing wrong with that belief, but I don’t happen to adhere to it.  I think it has to do with getting right with that Indefinable Unknowable that we often refer to as God.  For me, God is best thought of, metaphorically, as the Beating Heart of Love that pervades the Universe and resides at the Core of Being.  “Getting right” with that Heart of Love means, I think, being free to find and express love in all relationships and to live in the constant assurance of the immutable bond we have with Being itself.  In my book, that’s what it means to be saved – to be justified.

Which brings us to the question posed by my sermon: Is faith enough?  The Apostle Paul and Martin Luther both adamantly declare that it is by faith alone that we are saved.  Are they right?  Is faith itself sufficient to bring to one’s life this freedom and this assurance that I speak of?  Once again, that depends, I’m sure, on one’s definition of “faith”.  For many people, including, I daresay, Martin Luther, faith is about believing.  To have faith, by this account, means believing the right things.  For Luther faith was a free gift of God, but only given to those who believe that Jesus is Lord and savior – God’s Messiah.  This is at least one point at which I part company with Luther (by the way, there are others, including his extreme anti-Semitism in later life).  I don’t happen to think that faith has anything at all to do with believing things.  I suppose this makes me a fish swimming against the current of modern Christianity, but there it is.  I contend that people are born with faith.  It’s in our DNA.  We come into the world wide-eyed with wonder, reaching out to trust the first face we see, sometimes squawking about things not being the way we want them, but always ready to be touched by love.  It is only over time that we unlearn that faith.  We become disconnected from the center of our own Being – the very center that all other beings share – and we begin to think of ourselves as autonomous and become enslaved by our needs for power and security.

And, paradoxically enough, one’s beliefs, rather than being a source of faith, can easily become vehicles for working out those needs for power or security.  The most glaring case in point is, I suppose, the outfit that is calling itself the “Islamic State”.  They are so enslaved to their need for power that their beliefs simply become a major weapon used to exert that power.  Any group of people who don’t conform to their beliefs can quite simply be slaughtered.  And I heard a while ago about folks in India who were murdering people who were suspected of having beef in their home, or of having eaten beef.  Their belief in the sacredness of cattle makes them regard the life of a cow more highly than the life of a fellow human.  You may object that these extreme examples don’t reflect the lives of everyday Christians who hold dear such things as their belief in the inerrancy of scripture or in any of the other doctrines of their churches.  But I have to tell you that in my experience beliefs on a whole have tended to do more to separate people from one another than to bring them together; they have created more hostility and division than love and mutual understanding.

Let me explain why I think beliefs can be a snare.  As I have often said, if that which we refer to as God is truly all that is said and believed about him (or her), then that God must be beyond words, images, or any other kind of description or understanding.  Any concept of Divinity that can be visualized or comprehended by one tiny human brain is way too small to be all that we claim.  Consequently any beliefs we hold in our heads about Divine will, intentions, or strictures must, by definition, be wholly inadequate.  And to hold such beliefs with an iron grip that claims divine authority is, in my view, nothing less than idolatry – placing one’s own tiny little brain, or the tiny little brains of some church “fathers,” on the throne: a throne that can only be occupied by that great Indefinable Unknowable that we often refer to as God.  This is why in all religion we speak in metaphors.  We speak of that Indefinable Unknowable, as scripture does, as a Father, as a Mother, as an Eagle, or a Bear.  We speak of Jesus as “Son of God” and “Son of Man”, or, as the author of the letter to the Hebrews wrote, a “High Priest”.  All our religious language is metaphorical because we are intended to keep reminding ourselves that what we speak of is beyond words and beyond knowing.

So I hold my beliefs very lightly; they are not critically important.  But that does not mean they are insignificant.  Those metaphors of belief can lightly comfort us when we rest in the hands of abiding faith.  C. S. Lewis does a wonderful job of suggesting how our metaphors of belief can nurture us if we are not too desperately chained to them.  In one of the Chronicles of Narnia books, The Silver Chair, the queen of the underworld wants Puddleglum the Marshwiggle to believe that Narnia only exists in his imagination.  Puddleglum says, “Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself.  Suppose we have.  Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones.  I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan.”⁵  Well, I’m on C. S. Lewis’ side.

Faith is not about believing things; it is an attitude of Being that one recaptures and brings up from the depths of the soul to offer to life.  It is an unshakeable sense of connectedness to that Beating Heart of Love at the center of everything.

So, how is it that this kind of faith “saves” us, or “justifies” us?  It does so by keeping us on the path of love, by keeping us grounded and centered in that which truly matters in life – which brings peace, wholeness, harmony, and grace.  Faith heals.  It heals hearts and it heals communities.  It is a power we barely understand.  Jesus told the blind beggar, “Go; your faith has made you well.”  And this healing, this power, this grace is not simply an individual affair.  That groundedness, that centeredness, that reveals itself in trusting love, involves a participation in a Unity of Being, and we are all part of that Unity.  That is why we speak of this body of folks here as a “community of faith”.  We are held together by this mysterious thing we call faith, and each one of us is held lovingly in the hands of that faith.

Roger Alling writes about a dear friend who died at the age of 56.  Alling says his friend had been “. . . priest and rector of a fine parish for many years.  As Bob lay dying, a parishioner spread out a quilt on the parish-hall floor and, with indelible markers, she traced around the hands of all who patiently stood in long lines for the privilege of being part of this loving pattern.  Families put their hands one on top the other.  Gnarled old hands of matriarchs and patriarchs were drawn, and tiny hands of sleeping babies, a pattern made of all the hands of the whole community of faith.  And then the quilt was taken to Bob’s bed and gently laid upon him.  As he died he received the laying on of hands of all the faithful ones to whom he was so incarnately connected in our Lord Christ.”⁶

So I come to the title of my sermon, and raise the question posed at the top: Were Martin Luther and the Apostle Paul right?  Are we justified/saved by faith alone?  Is faith enough?  My answer: faith is not simply enough; faith is everything.

¹ Romans 3:23-25.

² Ephesians 2:8-9.

³ Martin Luther, “The Smalcald Articles”, in Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions, Concordia Publishing, 2007, Part two, Article 1, p. 263.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair (The Chronicles of Narnia #4), Harper Collins, 2002, p. 190.

⁶ Roger Alling, David J. Schlafer, ed., Preaching as Image Story and Idea: Sermons that Work VII, Morehouse Publishing, 1998.

October 20, 2024

“The Order of Melchizedek”

I love puzzles. I used to do jigsaw puzzles — the kind with 250 pieces in a box.  Now Dadgie and I do 3D puzzles together.  But the kind that really intrigue me are the ones that play tricks with your mind.  I’ve always been able to get absolutely lost in solving a chess problem, or a tricky hand of bridge, or a crossword, or a sudoku.  And that’s why I love things like this cryptic phrase in today’s reading from the Letter to the Hebrews.  It’s a wonderful little puzzle buried in an ancient text.  The writer refers to Jesus as “having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.”  And there’s the puzzle: what in the world is “the order of Melchizedek?”  A whole world of meaning is concealed beneath this one simple, arcane reference.

Stay with me through this next part, I know it can get a little deep – or at least roll up your pants legs.  Melchizedek is only mentioned once in Israel’s recorded history.  His name appears in Genesis (Chapter 14) as “King Melchizedek of Salem” and he is referred to as “priest of God Most High.”  In the Genesis passage, Melchizedek greets the patriarch, Abram, on his return from routing the enemy.  Melchizedek serves a priestly role, giving Abram a blessing, and receiving a tithe from him.  The reference to Melchizedek as king of Salem, which is an ancient name for the city of Jerusalem, and the historical roots of his name, Melchi-zedek (which means my king is righteous) make it most likely that he was a Canaanite king of Jerusalem before it was inhabited by the Israelites.  So Melchizedek was not legitimate, according to the ancient rule of succession of priests from the Israelite tribe of Levi.  Here’s the rub: Abram treats this Canaanite priest-king from Salem as a superior.  He is the only one in the narrative to whom Abram submits, even though Melchizedek was an outsider.  He didn’t belong.  His priesthood was an aberration.

Then, in Psalm 110, we find this reference: “The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.’” The psalm appears to be praising some ancient, Judean king and acknowledging his lineage back to old king Melchizedek, and, interestingly enough, affirming his role as not only king but a priest – even though he was not a Levite – because Melchizedek was regarded as a priest.  Our author here in the Book of Hebrews is picking up on that language in the psalm, and saying that Jesus has the legitimacy of being directly sanctioned by God for all time as high priest on behalf of us all, even though he did not have the inherited authority of the Levitical priesthood.

So, we made it through the weeds.  Here’s the long and short of it: the Canaanite king, Melchizedek was exalted by the Israelites as a king and priest of their own.  The people who believed so whole-heartedly in the power of a name that they would not even pronounce the name of God essentially “adopted” this foreign ruler, with his non-Levitical name, as an embodiment of divine authority.  And that’s the “order of Melchizedek” according to which Jesus is regarded as “high priest.”  It’s the order of an adopted foreigner, an illegitimate pretender to the priesthood, to whom the greatest patriarch of the faith submits himself.

In the classic novel, Bread and Wine, by Ignazio Silone, the priest, Don Benedetto says that sometimes when the world goes crazy God must hide and appear only under strange guises and with assumed names.  Talking to his former student Pietro Spina who had returned to fascist Italy from exile disguised as a priest, Don Benedetto says that God also may appear in the midst of their troubled circumstance in disguise.  “It would not be the first time.” says Don Benedetto, “that the Lord has been forced to hide Himself and make use of an assumed name. As you know, He has never attached much importance to the names men have given Him; on the contrary, one of the first of His commandments is not to take His name in vain. And sacred history is full of examples of clandestine living. Have you ever considered the meaning of the flight into Egypt? And later, when He had grown up, did not Jesus several times have to hide himself to escape from the Pharisees?”¹

Don Benedetto then relates the story of Elijah hiding in the cave, who didn’t hear God in the wind or the earthquake or the fire but only in a “still, small voice.” He tells Pietro that you have to be on the lookout if you are going to hear God. God may only be present in the unexpected.

“I too,” Don Benedetto says, “in the depth of my affliction have asked, where then is the Lord and why has He abandoned us? The loudspeakers and the bells that announced the beginning of new butchery to the whole country were certainly not the voice of the Lord. Nor are the shelling and bombing of Abyssinian villages that are reported daily in the press. But if a poor man alone in a hostile village gets up at night and scrawls with a piece of charcoal or paints ‘Down with the war’ on the walls the Lord is undoubtedly present. How is it possible not to see that behind that unarmed man in his contempt for danger, in his love of the so-called enemy, there is a direct reflection of the divine light? Thus, if simple workers are condemned by a special tribunal for similar reasons, there’s no doubt about which side God is on.”²

So Don Benedetto reveals the solution to our cryptic puzzle: The divine power that fuels the very soul of the universe makes its appearance in the least expected ways.  Like the foreigner who serves as priest to a patriarch, Jesus came on the scene as a humble servant, washing the feet of others.  He said to his disciples, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.”  The Power of Divinity shows up, as Don Benedetto suggested, in every act of mercy, of crying out against injustice, of opposing oppression and violence, and in the quietest and least noticed of acts of grace.

There was a newspaper story some time ago about a mother and her little daughter caught beneath the rubble of a collapsed building after an earthquake in Armenia.  It was terribly cold, and they were trapped under these huge slabs of concrete for a week.  The little girl got more and more thirsty, but there was no water.  So the mother found a broken piece of glass and cut her own finger, telling the child to suck the blood from the cut.  The girl was still thirsty and begged her mother, “Please Mama, cut another finger for me.”³  Well, they did survive and were eventually rescued, but it’s hard to let go of the cry of that little girl, asking her mother to cut another finger.  After the fact, doctors opinions were divided about whether the blood from her mother’s fingers actually saved the little girl’s life, but that misses the point.  The television broadcasts are likely in a situation like this to focus on the workers who spent a week digging through the rubble to get to these two, but when all the details come out, it’s clear that the mother’s quiet compassion, steadiness, and willingness to sacrifice are the real story.  It’s easy to pay attention to the hype and miss the real, common heroes in life.  It’s easy to look at leaders and celebrities in the media and discount the simple acts of love or the quiet voice of reconciliation that are reflections of divinity itself.  It’s easy to praise those in our own circle of familiar faces and stories and pass over the gentle face of a foreigner who may, if we yielded ourselves, serve as a priest of the Most High.

Like us, the disciples got all caught up in trying to figure out who’s winning and who’s losing.  Mark says they came to Jesus and implored, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”  We love to watch the presidential debates and follow the latest polls to find out who’s on top, and vicariously, whether we’re among them.  But victory is not always what we expect it to be.  Jesus knew that.  He knew that what constitutes triumph in the eyes of the Lord is generally a far cry from what we usually pump our fists in the air over.  He said to his disciples, “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.  But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”  This is entirely contrary to the values of our world – the values of our culture.  All around us we hear the echoes of a society terrified of weakness and hungry for triumph.  The media posts and newspapers celebrate prosperity, the television promotes acquisition, our conversations around the dinner table are about achievement, our debates over the back yard fence are about how we measure success, and everyone wants to win.

Can you imagine how Jesus would do in the presidential election?  We want a leader who tells us how great and powerful we are, and how prosperous our lives can be, not one who calls us to sacrifice and servanthood.  Jesus has got the wrong message for our time.  His poll numbers would fall through the basement.  There’s no way he could adhere to the focus group generated talking points.  Dadgie caught a great line from Jim Wallace in an issue of Sojourners Magazine a while back.  He pointedly noted that, “Jesus didn’t say, ‘What you have done for the middle class, you have done for me.’”⁴

So who is Jesus?  He is a priest according to the order of Melkizedek.  It is an order that every tired, over-stressed, seemingly insignificant one of us is summoned to enlist in.  It is the order of a woman who bleeds to save her daughter’s life.  It is the order of a man who scrawls a revolutionary message on a wall in the middle of the night.  It is the order of one who foregoes the shady deal, or declines the opportunity to knife his coworker in the back – who stands on principle and sacrifices an opportunity for advancement or loses his job.  It is the order of a teenager who loses favor with friends for refusing to do drugs, or join in taunting an unpopular kid, or cheat on a test.  It’s the order of a nation that puts human rights above trade imbalances and oil prices, or principles of compassion and cooperation above pure national interests.  It’s the order of every lowly one of us who finally grasps what Jesus was trying to teach and live out among us, every one who chooses the difficult road, who lives in the great and proud tradition of an ancient, Canaanite priest-king, an alien, who offered what he had, and reflected in a simple gesture Divinity itself.

¹ Ignazio Silone, Bread and Wine, Signet Classics, 2005, p. 222.

² op cit. p. 223.

³ John-Thor Dahlburg, Associated Press, December 29, 1988.

⁴ Jim Wallace, How to Choose a President, Sojourners Magazine, November, 2012, p. 15.

October 13, 2024

If You Have to Ask the Price, You Can’t Afford It

Jesus would never have made it as a church pastor.  By any estimation his ministry was a public relations disaster.  Church growth experts and media consultants agree on one simple rule for success: “Don’t give people what they don’t want.”  But Jesus was apparently not as savvy as the sound-bite wizards and church growth gurus of our day.

Along the road in his ministry, Jesus made a number of stops and committed a number of terrible gaffs.  For instance, the one that was recounted in the 14th Chapter of Luke, in which he was being pursued by great numbers of people, all excited about his power and potential.  And what did he do?  He “turned on” the crowd and came forth with this little gem to lead the six o’clock news: “If anyone comes after me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

George Buttrick, writing in the Interpreter’s Bible, says that Jesus’ words here were so stern that “the crowd was winnowed.”  If I had been on Jesus’ board of deacons, I would have begun to pull my hair out.

And this little beauty from today’s scripture reading:  A very wealthy man (obviously a fine prospect to get involved in the movement) came up to Jesus and expressed an earnest desire to get more involved.  He had been a virtuous and exemplary individual, keeping all the commandments,  and he was asking what more he could do to gain this “eternal life” that Jesus was talking about.  And what does Jesus do?  He scares him away by telling him (of all things) that it would cost him everything he owned!  He told him to give it all away!

At that point, Jesus’ board of trustees would have joined with the Stewards and started a movement to throw him out.

Of all the things to say!  To tell a prospective member with fine credentials and a sincere, intelligent question, that the cost of discipleship is so high that he can’t possibly afford it!  What in the world could he have been thinking?

George Frederick Watts has painted the sad shuffle of that young man as he walked away from Christ.  In the painting, all we see is his back.  He is stooped, as though carrying a heavy burden.

He came to Jesus unburdened by the plight of the poor, and left with the weight of the world on his shoulders.  He came to Jesus with a simple, careless question, and got more than he bargained for.  He came to Jesus confident of his righteousness, wanting to know the price of divine approval.  Jesus told him, in essence, “If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it.”

I have a confession to make; I don’t like Jesus’ answer any more than did the man who walked away.  When I was little, I learned that putting my hand into the cookie jar meant getting a spanking, and doing the dishes meant being praised.  All my life I have believed that hard work and faithfulness counted for something.  If the divine realm is at all fair, there should be some kind of larger reward for those who commit themselves to larger devotion.  There is a difference between Adolf Hitler and Mother Theresa!  If there’s a heaven, she deserved to go there if anyone does; if there’s a hell, he deserved to go there if anyone does.  When I want to know what it takes to be counted among the good, I want to know!  Don’t tell me it’s impossible!

I see people who are good, and loving and faithful.  I can point them out, the ones who really have a way of knowing and caring about others, the ones who genuinely feel the hurts and respond to the needs of others, the ones who come through when the chips are down.  There are truly good people in this world.

And I know my own strengths and my own weaknesses.  I know how often I tend to be insensitive, to not hear, not think, not follow through.  I know that there are some things I can do well.  And what I want is to do them well enough!  I want to do the things I’m good at in such a way that they make up for the things I suck at.  And I only pray that those things are enough!

I want to make a mark with my life, because otherwise I might just come to the end of my days having lived without consequence!  And I can’t bear that – I can’t bear the possibility that I will end up just being a waste!

So don’t tell me there’s nothing I can do that’s enough!  Don’t tell me the price is far too high for me to pay it!  Don’t tell me that the search for personal worth and value is a waste of time!  Because then I’d have to walk away with a dagger in my heart, and the weight of the world on my shoulders.

Jesus shows no mercy to those of us who want desperately to be good enough.

In one way or another – in our church work, in our relationships, in our professions, in our community service – we keep trying to measure up.  We keep asking through our efforts the question: how much is enough?  And Jesus says simply: Trust me; you can’t afford it.

You can work your whole life to be the best person you can be.  You can wear yourself to death caring for others, making your mark, growing in strength of character, and you will never be enough!  You will never be good enough, you will never be kind enough, you will never be important enough, you will never be sincere enough.  There is no way out of this bad news about life – no way –

. . . except surrender – to surrender to the truth of your insufficiency, your inadequacy, your common lot with all others, your utter dependence on grace.  And, in the sort of irony that is always the Lord’s way with us, that’s enough.

That’s the simple truth of the well-known story of the prodigal son.  After trying his hardest to go it alone, after taking all the gifts he had been given, and letting them carry him as far as he could go, after crashing into the limitations of being human and weeping over his failure, he miraculously discovered that all he had to do was turn and say, “Here I am.”

Paul Hoon writes, “The God of the twelve basketsful also is the gratuitous God of Israel who leads the people into a land where they shall eat bread without scarceness and where all they have is multiplied.  He is the God of the Psalmist who speaks of a stream of living water, of a table prepared in the midst of one’s enemies, and of a cup that runneth over.  He is the God who . . . when [people] lack the wine of life’s joy, bids them – as Jesus in Galilee – ‘Fill the water pots,’ and ‘they filled them up to the brim.’  He is the God who does not merely run to welcome home the prodigal son but who does so much more than he needs to, who brings forth a robe and a fatted calf, and causes music to play.  He is the God who, even after [humanity has] forsaken and crucified him, yet prepares a breakfast of bread and fish on a lakeshore, and calls: ‘Come and dine’.”¹

Hoon has it right.  This is not “cheap grace.”  With apologies to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the gracious acceptance of abundant life is not merely “cheap,” it is absolutely free!

So, are loving and caring and contributing and trying pointless?  Hardly.  Grace simply means that we do these things not for any gain or benefit or merit, not because it will earn us something, not because our efforts will somehow finally allow us to measure up, but because by the grace of the ageless divine embrace, we are freed to love because he first loved us, we are freed to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, we are freed to rejoice in hope, to be patient in tribulation, to be constant in prayer, to contribute to the needs of the saints, to practice hospitality.

One of the great frustrations of life is that we only seem to get answers to the questions we ask.  And we waste a lot of time asking the wrong questions.  So long as we keep asking what must we do to be worthy, to be of value, we will continue to get the same answer Jesus gave the rich young man: If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, reflecting on his term on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, addressed those at a dinner held in his honor, “. . . what is to show for this half lifetime that has passed?” he said.  “I look into my book in which I keep a docket of the decisions of the full court which fall to me to write, and find about a thousand cases . . . many of them upon trifling or transitory matters, to represent nearly half a lifetime . . . Alas, gentlemen,” he said to those assembled, “that is life . . . We cannot live our dreams.  We are lucky enough if we can give a sample of our best, and if in our hearts we can feel it has been nobly done.”²  This, from one of the most distinguished jurists of all time.  The price of worthiness is indeed out of reach.

So, as the time approaches for our annual stewardship campaign, some of you, aware of our church’s great financial needs, may be wondering: how much should I give?  How much is enough?  Truth is, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.  I hope the board of trustees does not resign en masse if I give you a surprising answer.  The good news is this: the water of life, the wine of salvation, the milk of Divine loving kindness, these things are priceless!

The word of the Lord, from the prophet Isaiah:

“Ho, every one who thirsts,

come to the waters;

and he who has no money,

come, buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk

without money

and without price.”

¹ Paul Waitman Hoon, The Integrity of Worship: Ecumenical and Pastoral Studies in Liturgical Theology, Abingdon Press, 1971.

² Extract cited in J H Wootten, Creativity in the Law (1972).

October 6, 2024

Another Thing I Wish He Hadn’t Said

In last week’s sermon I dealt with some words of Jesus that I told you I wished he hadn’t said.  The truth is, there are a number of things that I stumble upon emanating from the lips of Jesus that I can hardly believe are coming out of his mouth.  I landed on another one these “things I wish he hadn’t said” in today’s reading from the gospel of Mark.

I have read these verses before — the ones about anyone who divorces and remarries being an adulterer — and usually I have just quickly kept reading.  Looking for something a little more uplifting and theologically or spiritually satisfying.  As most of you are well aware, I have been divorced and remarried, and I’m not particularly fond of what Jesus has to say on the subject.  In fact, I wish he hadn’t said it at all.

I suspect I’m not alone.  Howard Clark Kee, writing in the Interpreter’s Commentary on the Bible, talks about Matthew’s account of this saying of Jesus.  In Matthew, the words are a little different.  Jesus’ blanket condemnation of divorce and remarriage is softened a bit in the Matthew account.  Here, a person is given the right to divorce on the grounds of unchastity.  Kee sees this as a tinkering with the words by the early church.  He describes the more lenient account in Matthew as a “setting aside of the unconditional rejection of divorce and remarriage in Mark 10, which was surely the teaching of Jesus himself.  Matthew shows that the early church was not able to live by the radical demands of Jesus, but had instead to modify them — as it thought — practicable.”  If Kee is to be believed, folks have been having trouble swallowing these words of Jesus all the way back to when they were first written down.

It’s interesting to note, that, in the same book of commentary, Lindsey Pherigo, commenting on the Mark passage says almost the opposite – that “this account represents a Gentile Christian adaptation of Jesus’ original teaching . . . Matthew 19:9 more accurately represents Jesus . . .”  Apparently, neither commentator wants to claim these words, in the gospel they are dealing with, as the words of Jesus.  I bet there are a lot of folks who just plain wish he had never said this.

But, as much as I dislike this saying of Jesus, I have come to regard it as among the best of Biblical arguments in the debate about homosexuality and the church.  That statement obviously requires a little explaining.  So, here goes:

Whenever I hear someone quoting scripture to support their condemnation of gay and lesbian people, I tend to think I’m not hearing a reasoned scriptural position so much as a bit of proof-texting to support a deeply held personal feeling based on a strong cultural taboo.  But whenever the subject of homophobia comes up, what I hear from those anti-gay Christians is something like this: “Oh no, this isn’t about homophobia.  It’s purely a matter of being faithful to scripture.  The Bible says it’s an abomination, and that’s all there is to it.  I’ve met a lot of gay people; I’m not homophobic.  I just follow the Bible.”

The only problem with that argument is, well, this morning’s scripture reading.  If it’s all simply a matter of following scripture, then if folks are going to go into a rage about immorality and all those people who flaunt the moral laws of God, why is it I never hear them talk about this one?  I think they must kind of skip over it too, the way I’d like to, hoping nobody will notice.  Which is pretty wise for those among our more conservative brethren and sistren, since probably 40% of their constituents are divorced and remarried.  It’s one thing to stand up and rail against the evils of those kind of people, whoever they may be, but when you start saying such things about such a large percentage of your constituents it gets a little more dicey.

The point is, it was the Apostle Paul who said that “men [being] consumed with passion for one another” was “unnatural.”  Jesus never said a single word about homosexuality.  But it was Jesus himself who said that if a man divorces his wife and marries another he commits adultery!  I personally would put a lot more stock in the words of Jesus than in those of Paul – Paul, who also said that women should keep silent in church – Paul, who condoned slavery.  No, this condemnation of those who divorce and remarry comes from Jesus himself.  So, my point is this: if it’s not about homophobia, and it’s purely a matter of faithfulness to scripture, why aren’t the Southern Baptists throwing all those “remarrieds” out of the church.  I mean, here are people who are, according to Jesus, living in an adulterous relationship.  They are unrepentant.  And worse, they’re “flaunting” it!

I realize that all of this doesn’t do anything to get me off the hook.  As a divorced and remarried man, I’m still hanging out there dangling in front of these words of Jesus that I’d like him to take back.

There may be a few of you sitting out there who are thinking, “boy, this really is a problem.  I’m glad I’m not divorced and don’t have to think about it.”  Well, guess what, I’ve got a few for you to consider, too.

Do you think you might have ever said or done anything that may have been hurtful or a “stumbling block” to others — particularly children?  Have you ever said anything like, “Johnny, what’s wrong with you?  Why did you do such a stupid thing?”  Or, strike out at a child in anger, unintentionally communicating that he or she is of lesser value or unacceptable?  Have you ever wondered if such brief thoughtless moments have had any cumulative negative impact on them?

Listen to what Jesus said about that: “Stumbling blocks are sure to come, but woe to him by whom they come!  It would be better for him if a millstone were hung round his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble.”  Welcome to the club.

Jesus had some very harsh language for any of us who may have felt we had sufficient justification for anger at our parents.  He administered a scathing blow to those who soften the commandment to honor one’s father and mother.  He shouted at them, and called them hypocrites!

And when I read through the rest of scripture, I find things like Paul saying that those who are immoral or idolators, or greedy will not inherit the kingdom of God.  What does that say about every one of us sitting in this room — every person who has grown up in America, a nation built and flourishing on the primacy of greed, and the idolatry of power, wealth, youth, and possessions.

And if I haven’t hit you yet with one you’re guilty of, trust me, I could stand up here for the next hour quoting scripture, and sooner or later, I’d getcha.

Now, I realize, you may be thinking that I just shifted the focus again, because I didn’t want to keep dealing with this saying of Jesus about divorce.  It hits a little too close to home.  Maybe it’s true.  I have to confess, of all the sins I find listed, and all the commandments, and rules and restrictions, I find myself reading this one from Jesus, and just wishing he hadn’t said it.

Well, I have some bad news.  Try as I might, I haven’t found any way around these words of Jesus.  I haven’t been able to do the exegetical shell game of Mr. Kee and Mr. Pherigo, and say that the words in Matthew aren’t the original words of Jesus, so they don’t count, and coincidentally, the words in Mark aren’t either.  I’m afraid I’m stuck with Jesus’ condemnation.  And, I’m sorry to say, so are you — stuck with whatever it is in this book that you are guilty of.

Now, I realize preachers aren’t supposed to be hitting people over the head with the Bible in this age of enlightened positive thinking.  We’re all supposed to feel good about ourselves.  We’re supposed to stand in front of the mirror every morning, and say, “I’m capable.  I’m creative.  I’m competent.  I’m a winner!”  And church is not supposed to be a place where we have all our positive self-image ripped to shreds.  Someone told me once that one of the terrible things he remembers about the church of his youth is how he walked out of church every Sunday feeling like he had been beat up.  Nobody likes that.  In fact, I agree!  I don’t want to walk out feeling like I’ve just beat up on myself!  But I still can’t just ignore these words of Jesus, and pretend he didn’t say them.

So what’s the point?  Simply this: I have only one plea: guilty as charged.  But at least I’m not alone.  So do you.  That puts every last one of us in a kind of club together — or a family.  It’s a family of sinners.  It’s a club for everyone who stands guilty — convicted.  And that’s all of us.  And we are bound together in that family, as William Sloan Coffin said, because of our “. . . inability to separate ourselves from each other through judgement.  And that is no mean bond.”

You see, the more I read scripture, the more convinced I become that there is an evil that transcends the evil of divorce and remarriage, or the evil of adultery, or the evil of failing to honor father and mother, or the evil of causing a child to stumble, or the evil of greed, or the evil of idolatry.  When I read the teachings of Jesus, I realize that he saved his most devastating and scathing words for those who separated themselves from others through judgement.  He said, “Judge not, lest you yourself be judged.”  He said, “Take the log out of your own eye, before commenting on the speck in your neighbor’s eye.”  And for their hypocrisy and self-righteous judgments, he called the Pharisees a bunch of snakes!

I think the teachings of Jesus and the words of scripture are not intended to leave us feeling self-satisfied.  I think the point is we’re supposed to feel just a little beat-up.  We’re supposed to be right there with the disciples when they find their heads spinning from it all and finally say to Jesus, “Then who can be saved?”  We’re supposed to be right there, so that we can be ready to receive his answer, “With God, all things are possible.”  We’re supposed to know our need of grace, so that we can stand shoulder to shoulder with all of our fellow human beings under the shelter of that same grace.

Loren Eisley, the great naturalist writer, told of coming upon a remarkable sight one afternoon while on one of his excursions in a barren desert valley in the western United States.  A huge blacksnake had coiled itself around a hen pheasant.  The bird was struggling to free herself.  Eisley watched for a moment and saw the “bloodshot glaze” deepen in the bird’s eyes, but finally knew he had to intervene.  He describes how he arbitrated the matter:

“I unwound the serpent from the bird and let him hiss and wrap his battered coils around my arm.  The bird, her wings flung out, rocked on her legs and gasped repeatedly.  I moved away in order not to drive her farther from her nest.  Thus the serpent and I, two terrible and feared beings, passed quickly out of view.

“Over the next ridge, where he could do no more damage, I let the snake, whose anger had subsided, slowly uncoil and slither from my arm. . . . which throbbed from his expert constriction.  The bird had contended for birds against the oncoming future; the serpent writhing into the bunch grass had contended just as desperately for serpents.  And I, the apparition in that valley — for what had I contended? — I who contained the serpent and the bird and who read the past long written in their bodies. . . . I had struggled, I am now convinced, for a greater, more comprehensive version of myself.”

Eisley made a great discovery by holding the bird and the snake — containing them within his experience in an instinctive act of grace.  He knew himself to be as mortal and struggling as they, and so shared his life with them for a brief moment, and found his own world was made larger.

That’s what grace always does.  It allows us to touch one another, hold one another, contain within ourselves something of each other’s life.  Because it is only when we know ourselves to be equally mortal and equally in need, together breathing the same fresh air of Divine infinite love and forgiveness, that we can truly enter into each other’s experience.

And for what?  Perhaps, in Eisley’s words, “for a greater, more comprehensive version of ourselves.”