July 31

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
July 31, 2011  Proper 13

Isaiah 55:1-5
55:1 Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.  3 Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live.

I began making trips to Nicaragua in 2003 and over the next four years I made a total of eight trips to visit the most impoverished areas of the western hemisphere.  I'm no stranger to poverty, having seen a great deal both in my professional and personal life but Central and South America is the only place I have ever visited where everyone in a village lived in a dirt floor shack made out of scrap material, jungle vegetation and mud.

People have often asked me why I went all of the way to Nicaragua to help the poor when there are so many poor people right here in Springfield.  Of course, no one who has ever been in rural Nicaragua would ever ask that question.  Poverty in America is rarely like poverty in the third world.  On my first trip up onto the mountains of Matagalpa, the residents were suffering from the results of a protracted drought.  Their usual food sources were unproductive and malnutrition was common and actual starvation was not uncommon.

My heart was broken by their plight and helping to provide assistance to those rural villages became my life's focus for the next several years.  But you see different things as you make repeated trips to the same places.  Immediately I saw the dirt floored shacks, the hungry children, the absence of older people in a place where the difficulties of life and the lack of medical sources cuts nearly everyone's life expectancy in half.

I saw the lack of opportunity, the scarcity of education and transportation and I saw the vulnerability in which everyone lived.... Vulnerable to violence, abuse and exploitation.

On almost every trip I took a team of church member volunteers who helped to build houses, worked with the medical teams and in education.  But at the end of each day we would retreat to a hotel which was protected from Nicaragua by an armed guard and razor wire.  While the people we came to serve finished up their daily ration of beans and rice before the sun set and darkness descended on their world, my traveling companions and I visited a restaurant where we sat at table cloth covered tables and ate very well.

We retired to the hotel bar or lobby and sat and talked.  What I began to notice on each trip was that the talk quickly left Nicaragua and began to be more personal.  A lot of the stories were not happy..... unhappy at work, marriage problems, difficulties with the kids, challenges with divorce settlements, inheritance issues and health problems.

The ironic contrast became more evident to me with each trip I made into the jungle.  In the villages, where they have nothing, the people smiled, sang songs and the children often danced and were eager to read their poems to us or to tell us about their hopes for the future.  Inside the razor wire, though we North American travelers had every essential creature comfort at our ready disposal, there was distinctly less joy than there was outside of the fence.

I have taken a lot of people on mission trips and some were able to really see the ravages of poverty but, at least it seems to me, most returned fairly unscathed by the adventure, returning to relative opulence punctuated by sheer human misery.  Why are the rural poor of Nicaragua, people who have to carry their water up from an open creek.... People in live in shacks with no floor or closets, no electricity or plumbing and generally no doors, whose children often have no shoes and no toys and food is repetitive and frequently rare..... how do those people dare to be happier than we are?

Or as the prophet Isaiah words it, "Why do you spend your money on that which is not bread and your labor on that which does not satisfy?"  Because, we are full.... We have even changed our architecture to have walk in closets and bigger garages.  The rental storage unit industry has sprung up and spread.  We have more clothes than we could wear out in a lifetime.  We have every kind and color of shoe imaginable.  We have every kitchen appliance ever known which gather dust while we go from restaurant to restaurant looking for a new dining experience..... but we are not satisfied.

In recent years, the modern phenomenon of  hoarding has become so common that there is even a television show dedicated to it.  When I first encountered hoarders the most common explanation was that they were people who grew up in the depression and they were so fearful of going without that they couldn't throw anything away.

Of course, my parents grew up abject poverty in the depression but they kept the most meticulous house you have ever seen and they refused to keep anything for which they did not have an almost immediate use.  As the hoarding issue has passed to a post Great Depression generation, we have learned to see it as something else.

In the most severe cases, it is caused by and obsessive compulsive disorder but unlike a strict clinical mental health diagnosis, hoarding is often passed down from one generation to the next and, in a family, it has to become a shared value between spouses and children.

Old newspapers, canned foods long out of date and almost certainly deadly to anyone who might try to eat the contents, worn out car tires and thread bear clothing pile up until certain rooms of the house can no longer be lived in.  Only a pathway to a chair in the living room remains between stacks of papers and magazines.  They have to leap over boxes of half used cleaning supplies to get to the toilet which is surrounded by empty toilet paper rolls being saved for future unknown pre-school art projects.

Throwing something away causes great distress but saving everything causes great shame.  It would not be hard to conclude that possessions make people sad and having nothing makes people happy but that is not substantially true.  I would be very willing to fight anyone who said that the evidence of happiness among the poor should relieve us of any obligation to bring education, food and health care to them.  Poverty is a form of violence and no decent person should ever allow themselves to be dismissive of that fact.

But what we can very accurately conclude is that possessions do not make people feel either happy or satisfied.  I've heard it said that the people who believe that money can't buy happiness simply don't know where to shop.  And, sure enough, there are things you can buy and do and eat which are quite enjoyable.

But if I ask you to remember the most remarkable meal you ever ate, if you pull that memory of your very favorite dining experience, isn't it true that the company you shared at that meal is crucial to it having been your most memorable meal?

I share my home with my 22 year old, very socially active, daughter which means, in essence, I live alone.  I certainly take most of my meals alone and I always have my morning coffee alone.  If there is a movie I want to see, I almost always go alone.  I have often traveled alone in Europe and America.

It doesn't bother me to be alone but I can tell you this, the first time I went to England I was by myself and I went to the British Museum which is one of the world's finest historical collections of things stolen from every nation of the world.  I have a natural interest in both history and archaeology so I was absolutely thrilled to be there.

But I can remember the moment that I first saw the Rosetta Stone as if it were yesterday.  The experience of finally seeing this item which I had heard of all my life, which opened the door to translating the wealth of Egyptian hieroglyphs was amazing.

I was surrounded by a British school children, chirping about like a flock of starlings, but there was no one even approximately my height that I could turn to and say, "Would you look at that?"  And though being in the British Museum is one of my absolute favorite things in the world, I recognize that no experience which is not shared with someone you care about has the same depth as when you experience it in connection to someone else.

I have sat in a beautiful Las Vegas theater and watched the breath taking performance of Circ de Soleil but, in terms of impact on my life, I remember more profoundly the first time a group of elementary school students in the poverty stricken village of San Ramon, Nicaragua came out and tried to perform a dance routine to a recording of a Britany Spears tune.

Which is to say, that to be satisfied.... That is, to have a life that is worth living, simply having, acquiring things, experiences, consumables, is just a part of the picture.  Having social connections is also just a part of the picture.  Having some spiritual depth, some expression of genuine connection through compassion and empathy.... That, I believe, is what makes the difference.

The belief that American consumerism is killing off our spirituality is not simply a liberal or a progressive soapbox.  Even the famous evangelical preacher and close friend of George W. Bush, Tony Campolo, has recently written:

"We all know that we Americans spend more and more money to buy more and more things we don't need in order to impress more and more people we don't know. In short, we have turned away from the lifestyle prescribed by scripture, failed to be good stewards of God's creation, ignored the needs of the poor, and, in the words of scripture, 'spent our money on that which does not satisfy.' The time is at hand for repentance--not only for Wall Street tycoons and self-serving politicians--but for all of us."

I trust that you remember the famous Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, whom I have often quoted in the past.  He wades in on this topic from the perspective of the Exodus instruction to the Israelites about the manna from heaven that they were to only "gather enough for the day."  They were not to hoard or try to take away their dependence upon God's mercy and grace for the next day or the next week.  In the presence of scarcity of resources, there can be no hoarding.  In a true community, there is no need for greed, theft or brutality of any kind because people share what there is to be shared.

But Brueggemann goes on to say that the consumer culture we have become is inextricably connected to militarism because you can't consume the majority of the world's goods without a strong and aggressive military to force the world to serve at your table.  Brueggemann calls it a sickness or a kind of madness.

He says: The central promise of the gospel is peace that is God's good gift (John 14:27). But it is clear upon any reflection that the ways of consumerism do not lead to peace, but only to anxiety. The ways of militarism do not lead to security, but only to destruction, violence, and dehumanization. And in the midst of this mad scramble toward death are Christians, the church, with this conviction that the crucified risen One matters even here, because this One, and only this One, is Lord and Savior.

Isaiah speaks poetically, asking people to consider the fact that they have sold out their lives for a standard of living which leaves their houses full but their lives empty.... They eat and eat but they are always hungry.

Jeremiah is rather less diplomatic.  He says: "From the last to the greatest of them, every one is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, every one deals falsely.
They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace.
 Were they ashamed when they committed abomination?
  No, they were not at all ashamed;
they did not know how to blush. 
Therefore they shall fall among those who fall..." says the Lord.

Jeremiah looks at the scandalous, unaware consumerism of his people and he says, very frankly, "they don't know how to blush."  We have anesthetized our conscience to such a degree that we don't even know to be ashamed of ourselves.

One of the common psychiatric treatments for hoarding is to ask your patient to stop by a store on the way to their appointment and to buy a couple of the most recent editions of their favorite magazine.  Then, in the midst of therapy, the therapist takes one of the magazines and begins tearing one page out at a time and tearing it up and throwing it away.

This will create a great deal of anxiety on the part of the patient but the therapist keeps reassuring them, "see, you can live without this.... You don't need this.... This isn't hurting you."


Of course, it does hurt because in the extreme, we get so attached to things that we think that we need them.... We think that we love them.... But that is only because we're kind of crazy.  Eventually, the therapist will ask the patient to take the other magazine and begin to destroy it, telling themselves that they are ok.... They don't need this magazine, they can live without it, it doesn't hurt to destroy it.
I have known several people who have been treated for OCD, some successfully and many more unsuccessfully.  If I were to be allowed to address a gathering of the American Psychiatric Association, I would have a theological suggestion to make.  I would like to suggest that rather focusing on teaching people how to destroy and throw away that they might try to focus on learning to give away.

I never personally knew the millionaire recluse, Jeanette Musgrave, for whom the Musgrave Foundation is named, but I knew her accountant very well.  Joe Clark was a good friend of mine and over the years he shared with me how, when Mrs. Musgrave had inherited millions of dollars from her brother, that long lost relatives, neighbors and strangers all tried to get her to give them some of it.  She had always been a bit of a recluse and she had been very frugal.

But over the years Joe talked Mrs. Musgrave into reading a story in the paper about someone who had lost everything in a fire and he would say, "Wouldn't it be nice to help those folks out a little bit."  Now and then, she would let down her guard and give someone twenty or thirty dollars.  And when she did, Joe would bring it up again later and say, "Didn't it feel good to know that you were helping a stranger with a serious problem?"

And she acknowledged that it did feel good.  And over time she began to charge her accountant to find other people who could be helped with some gifts of money and eventually she was persuaded to help the entire community by donating the money to build our art museum additions and in the end she put her entire estate into a trust fund which continues to make many important charitable causes happen in this city.

She never had children and she died with virtually no remaining relatives but she was lovingly and powerfully connected to an entire city through her ability to find meaning out of helping other people.
What Joe Clark did for Jeannette Musgrave is what I wish we could do for America..... to cure our madness.... To heal the sickness of consumerism and to stop the violence of militarism which keeps our shelves lined with cheap shoes, bananas and coffee.  I want for us to teach America how to blush again.... How to remember that we are a nation built largely out of the victims of European classism and African slavery and Central American feudalism.

Our culture tells us to eat when we are not hungry and to buy products that separate us from other people.  Our faith tells us to say "no" to our appetites, no to consumerism and yes to one another.

Concerning the Holy Land and American Exceptionalism

Community Christian Church  
Roger Ray, pastor
July 17, 2011          Proper 11

Genesis 28:10-19a
10
Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran.

11 He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place.

12 And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.

13 And the LORD stood beside him and said, "I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring;

14 and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.

15 Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."

16 Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, "Surely the LORD is in this place--and I did not know it!"

17 And he was afraid, and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven."

18 So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it.

19a He called that place Bethel; but the name of the city was Luz at the first.

This past week I have been on vacation, a driving trip that I have called the Roger Ray Heritage tour.  I had some long over due visits to make with family and friends so my friend, Jeanmarie, and I set out driving from Springfield to Memphis where I used to live, then down to Birmingham, AL to visit my brother and an old seminary friend.  Afterwards we drove up through Nashville, TN where I went to grad school and then spent a couple of days in a National Park near my hometown, allowing me to see the home and church where I grew up and the veterans memorial recently placed on the site of my original church home in honor of my father.

We ended the week visiting two of my best family friends in Louisville, KY.  From time to time, Jeanmarie would say, "You really miss it here don't you?"  And, as much as I love being the pastor here, I have to admit that there is something about the hills, rivers and forests of Kentucky that have an almost magical pull on me.  And I recognize that it really is a land thing.  As much as the rather anti-intellectual and conservative religious climate of Springfield is irritating, I know it is even worse in Kentucky.
Kentucky is now the state where Mitch McConnell is the sane senator!  Only Rand Paul can make that guy look like he has an oar in the water.  I'm embarrassed for my home state but, I have to tell you, I love it there, I can't help it, and God knows, I've tried!

It is almost inescapable that all of us have a certain sense that our homeland is, in once sense or another, a holy land.  Anyone who has been in Ireland on St. Patrick's Day can attest to the fact that immigrants in America carry on about St. Patrick's Day ten times more than anyone in Ireland does.  I have romantic feelings about my home. I ate country ham every day that I was on vacation.  I ate pinto beans, grits, a hot brown and fried corn bread..... my ethnic foods.  If you get to go over to Andrea Zamora's house on a holiday, she will serve you a piece of a tres leches cake which is just as uninviting to me as country ham and grits is to anyone who cares about their heart health.  If you eat breakfast over at the Hartenstein's you'll be offered a half of a broiled tomato in Scottish style with your bacon and eggs...... we relish these reminders of our home.

It is helpful to remember that most of the Hebrew Bible was not written in Israel or Judah.  Homesick Jews who were slaves in Babylon wrote most of it.  They were not in their Holy Land, they were remembering their Holy Land.  The story we just read from Genesis about Jacob's dream of ladders going up to heaven is not simply metaphorical in the minds of ancient Jews.  They believed that God's throne was straight up over Mt. Moriah.  The Arc of the Covenant was made like a giant throne and it sat in the Temple in the Holy of Holies, directly under where God's true throne was in heaven.

Jacob's vision was recorded in Genesis as a declaration that while other nations might be bigger, or stronger or more wealthy, that their land was God's land.  That conviction, though it seems silly to claim today, is still at the root of what we call Zionism.  It isn't rational, but when is extremist nationalism ever rational?

I love my homeland.  I know that June still loves Scottland and Andrea loves Mexico and for reasons which defy logic, Jim Payne still loves Alabama.  It is natural to love your homeland.  It is noble to be patriotic about one's country.  To sacrifice for, work for and maybe even die to protect the welfare of your country.  But there is a continuum which may begin with warm feelings about country ham and biscuits that runs through patriotism and can keep going until it is nationalism or even a religious fervor to adamantly demand that your nation is not just God's country in your music and art but in your international politics.  Most of the soldiers in the Nazi army just thought of themselves as being patriotic.
Sociologically, that was the early attraction to the Mormon religion in America.  Joseph Smith claimed that the lost tribes of Judah had come to the Americas and that Jesus, when he had ascended from Jerusalem, came back down in the Americas.  The magic golden plates Smith claimed to have found buried in the hills of the finger lake region of New York State were evidence that America was the new Holy Land.

God and country are inextricably wound together in Mormon theology and that is why every Mormon church has a boy scout troop as their virtual Sunday School program.  Of course, every religion, if you look at from a skeptic's perspective can look pretty silly.  Catholics and Jews, Baptists and Jehovah's Witnesses believe some pretty incredible things but they all have the benefit of having their holy texts and heroes protected by the veil of hundreds of years of history.

Jesus might have been really bad at math and he might have gotten drunk at his senior prom but we would have no way of knowing anything about such details.  Joseph Smith, however, is close enough to us in history that a lot of his personal embarrassments are well known to us.  Most of which will likely find their way into the media in the coming year if Mitt Romney remains in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

It may not be fair, but it will be hard for anyone seeking public office not to lose a lot of credibility when associated with Joseph Smith's personal story but every nation has examples of similarly nationalistic characters who lost touch with reality.

Jewish scriptures are not very good at being self critical about their nationalistic views.  But then neither was Spain or France or Great Brittan when they built their empires, nor Russia when it built the Soviet Union, as Germany certainly wasn't in the first half of the last century.

Americans are able to be self critical about how we treated the native American Indians..... at least those of us who live at some distance from remaining tribes are able to do so.  We cringe at the religious glee of 17th century accounts such as the description by William Bradford, an early settler, of Captain John Mason's attack on a Pequot village.

Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword, some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived that they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy.

But the closer we get to our own time, the harder it is for us to even allow ourselves to think of the possibility that we have confused nationalism with the more appropriate patriotic love of country.
American exceptionalism began to be entered into our national documents by the likes of Secretary of War Elihu Root, who in 1899 declared, "The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the world began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness."

As Howard Zinn pointed out in an article published just before his death, "At the time (Root) was saying this, American soldiers in the Philippines were starting a bloodbath which would take the lives of 600,000 Filipinos."  As Molly Ivans has been famously quoted, "It's hard to convince someone that you are killing them for their own good."

At the end of World War II, Henry Luce, then the owner of Time Magazine and several other important publications, declared that this would be "the American Century," that victory in the war gave the United States the right "to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit."

Most people these days try to mask their feelings a good deal better but in the days when Donald Trump was warming up for a run for the office of the President, he said that if he were elected he would take a trillion dollars worth of oil from Iraq to pay for what we "did for them" and that it would invade Libya and just take their oil.  It's frightening in one way but in another it at least has the refreshing ring of honesty to just skip that stuff about weapons of mass destruction and nuclear ambitions.

Men and women, this is hard stuff for us and I know that some of you feel very differently but I beg you to let me speak as a pastor on a matter of the heart of our nation.  I just drove nearly 2000 miles through Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky.  No where along the route of my long journey did I drive past a French Air force base, or a Saudi army base or even some innocent looking Canadian Mounties.  Nor would we tolerate such a presence on our sacred soil.

But America presently has nearly half a million soldiers, sailors and pilots scattered over nearly a hundred nations from Bahrain to Brazil, from Japan to Qatar.  Boys and girls, that's an empire.

We say, in our literature, that we are a religious community that is willing to question traditional beliefs.  We say that we want to be open minded, to look at all sides and to have the courage to question our most cherished beliefs.  But this is a hard one.

We want to believe that our nation's sins are all in the distant past.  Our grandfathers and great grandfathers were blind to their ambitious nationalism but we get to wear the white hat and go forth to rescue, to liberate, to share democracy, capitalism, McDonalds and CocaCola...... but from the view of most of the world, it is not largess.... It is empire.

I am not so foolish as to think that we could be like Costa Rica and just dismiss our army and focus on education.  We wouldn't survive for a week without some means of defense.

I don't live in a gated community and I regularly leave my doors unlocked.  I shouldn't, I know, but I do.  In large part because I don't own the things that thieves steal.  I don't own guns, or jewelry, I don't have gold or silver or expensive art or electronics.  Most of what is in my house is not dissimilar from what you might find in a yard sale.... Used clothing and unused exercise equipment.... So my house is sort of like Costa Rica.... No one is likely to attack me.  But the United States as a whole is wealthy and resource rich and we have a lot of enemies.

We are now the modern equivalent of Ancient Egypt, or Babylon... We are the Roman Empire trying to keep a nervous Pax Americana at the tip of a spear.  The question for people like us is, what do we do now that we are the king of the hill?

One horribly cold February day I was exploring the old Latin quarter of Paris.  I sat alone in the unheated St. Supice cathedral listening to an organist practicing for a Bach concert until I could no longer feel my fingers or toes. I stumbled out into the snow to find a place where I could warm up in that part of Paris where either no one spoke English or no one cared to admit that they spoke English.
I ducked into a café and muttered in very bad French that I wanted a cup of coffee.  It was a tiny, dimly lit café full of old French men.  The barista curled his lip and pushed a tiny espresso my way and asked for 80 francs, which was about $18 dollars.  I stepped back to see if it was a joke or if he was trying to just price gouge me enough for me to drink my coffee and leave with empty pockets.

While I was still trying to assess the situation, a very wrinkled up old man put one hand over mine and with the other he reached into his pocket and pulled out the money to pay the angry looking waiter.  The old man patted me on the back and what I caught was, "Merci, Merci Americans."

He was among those rescued by the American liberation of France during WWII and he would not stand by and watch me be charged for a half a dozen cups of coffee when I had ordered only one.

Now, see, that's the kind of American I want to be..... I want to be the kind that old man thought I was.... A noble, selfless, courageous liberator. There is still an America like that but there is also an empire.

My fear is that mainstream religion can no longer tell the difference.  My fear is that almost every church in this country is in service of the empire. And that is the church I hope we never become.

Jesus the Teacher

Community Christian Church
Dr. David Trobisch
July 10, 2011

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
13:1 That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea.  13:2 Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach.  13:3 And he told them many things in parables, saying: "Listen! A sower went out to sow.  13:4 And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up.  13:5 Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil.  13:6 But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away.  13:7 Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.  13:8 Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.  13:9 Let anyone with ears listen!"
13:18 "Hear then the parable of the sower.  13:19 When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path.  13:20 As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy;  13:21 yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away.  13:22 As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing.  13:23 But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty." 

Pray with me:
Open our eyes, so we can see,
Open our ears, so we can hear,
And open our hearts, so we can understand.
AMEN

ARRIVING IN BANGOR
It was a cold and wintry day when Vera and I first arrived in Maine. English is not my first language, and Vera had not lived outside of Germany before.

We visited the LL Bean store in Freeport. I insisted on buying a pair of their "duck boots," boots with rubber shoes and leather shafts. Vera thought they were ugly. I told her that owning a pair and wearing them for our first visit might demonstrate a willingness to live up to the climate and whatever else our new country of residence would throw at us.

It was a Saturday morning when we parked our car on the empty lot in front of the library of the old campus. As we approached the entrance of Maine Hall the doors opened wide, and the President walked toward us with outstretched arms. To my delight, the President wore "duck boots".

Our twelve years in Maine were the most satisfying years in my life as a teacher. I knew that Maine was where God wanted me to be, and Vera found a spiritual home there as well.

AUSTRIA
I was born in Africa. My parents were missionaries. When I turned six the family moved to Austria where we lived on a remote mountain with five other families, all farmers. When I turned ten, I was sent to boarding school, as it was impossible to get to a high school from where we lived and return the same day.

PORTLAND
In Bangor we bought a small house just across the street from the Seminary. The following years were turbulent for the School. In the wake of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq the economy declined, the financial situation of families and churches became more and more strained, and the catastrophes of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina diverted the charitable donations of wealthy Mainers to other causes than to the Seminary. Students who were able to pay full tuition without borrowing became a rare commodity; full time students all but disappeared from our class rooms. Our salaries were frozen, faculty openings were not filled in a timely manner, and when my contract was up for renewal the President had to disclose that the financial situation of the institution was so desperate that the Board could only offer me a twelve month extension. The review committee had suggested tenure.

The Board understood that the future of the School depended on the strength of their Portland campus with its wealthier population and a stronger base for recruiting donors and financial supporters. To achieve this, at least one faculty member had to be moved from Bangor to Portland. I volunteered.
But real estate in Portland is three times as expensive as in Bangor. The salary I received was so pitiful that no bank would lend us the money to buy a house. So it was agreed that the Seminary would act as a lender.

But the Board of Trustees did not deliver a contract. After eight months of stalling, postponing, and finding excuses, all the while encouraging us to pack and set a date for the move and sell our house in Bangor, they gave us a contract, one hour before the closing. It missed a paragraph that regulated what would happen if the real estate market collapsed and the house could not be sold at the price it was bought. The President promised that the Board would pick up the difference.

We refused to sign the closing documents, and I called the Trustee who had been assigned by the Board to work with us. She gave me her word over the phone that the Board would keep the President's promise: The word of the President and the word of the Trustee, an investment banker, whose husband had written the contract, and who was fully aware of the promises made to us, was good enough for Vera and me. We trusted them and we signed.

ON THE BALCONY
Because many Austrian families live in remote areas, the only chance for their children to receive a higher education is by sending them to a boarding school when they are 10 years old. Each group of twenty boys was called a "family" in our school and was assigned to one "professor". Being both, teacher and supervisor, allowed professors to draw a larger salary. It meant, however, that we were at their mercy, day in and day out.

I vividly remember the first communal shower. Once a week we were lead as a group down into the basement of our building and ordered to strip. Along the ceiling, pipes were installed with showerheads lined up in a row. The professor would turn on the hot water for a few minutes then turn it off. And after we applied soap, he would run hot water again. The ritual always ended with the professor turning on the ice cold water without warning, sending us squealing through the room, running naked for our towels. Some professors got enormous pleasure out of tormenting us and some did little to hide their erections.

These scenes still haunt me. We boys referred to the communal shower as the "gas chamber". I was a very modest child when I entered boarding school. Even when seeing a doctor I did not want to take off my clothes, unless my mother was present.

I especially remember the philosophy teacher. His philosophy of dealing with 20 unruly boys was that if one of us did something wrong, all of us were to be punished. And his preferred way of punishment was to make us stand quietly in the common room for an hour while he insulted us. "One for all and all for one," was his motto. So one evening, when two of my class mates had started a pillow fight and the professor walked into their room, once again all 20 boys were lined up and made to stand in complete silence.

It is difficult to express the emotions a situation like this will create in the heart of a young man. My mother always insisted that, of her five children, I was the one with an exaggerated sense of justice. Even as a little boy, she would say, I could not control myself when I felt that injustice was done to others. This trait has not been helpful to me in my life. By speaking out for others, I have often harmed my own interests.

That particular evening, the philosophy professor made fun of my parents and ridiculed them in front of the group for being missionaries. I am not sure, whether I did it on purpose or whether the "wind blows where it chooses", but - I let one fly. It was a good fart. Long, noisy, and it smelled its part. My classmates laughed hilariously, and the professor's anger was aroused. He wanted to know who it was, but none of my peers gave me away: "All for one, and one for all". The professor had to question us individually, and when he asked me directly, I did not lie.

My punishment was severe. I was made to go outside, on the third floor balcony, in the middle of winter, and stand there barefoot, wearing nothing but pyjamas, at sub-zero temperatures.
Next morning I woke up with high fever and was taken to the sick bay with a severe case of bronchitis. My parents somehow found out and complained to the institution. The professor was severely reprimanded.

At that moment my life as a naïve little boy, who was born in Africa and grew up a happy child on an idyllic mountain in Austria, came to an abrupt end. I now had a mortal enemy, who had the power to control and hurt me every waking moment. And he did so as often as he could, in subtle but terrifying ways. And he very much enjoyed terrorizing me. I went to boarding school for eight long years.

FIRST TALK
Now, in 2007 my mother died, and it became clear that our days in Maine were coming to an end. My family needed me in Missouri. Following through on the suggestion of the outgoing president I contacted the new President and asked whether the School had an interest in buying our house. I proposed that the architects, bankers, lawyers, and realtors on the Board be involved and tour the house. But the new President immediately discouraged any Trustee to talk to us. It took him two months until he could find the time to sit down with me. When we met he said he did not have the necessary information about the house and promised to get back to me soon. When I did not hear from him and contacted him, he responded in an email that he copied to the Chairman of the Board that he had come to the meeting fully prepared. I had never been lied to by an executive officer of any institution quite so bluntly before. That was in August. In September of 2008 the housing market crashed.

The ensuing e-mail correspondence with the new President revealed a man who was more comfortable hacking out two-liners on his BlackBerry than meeting in person. This man had no practical experience in fundraising. He had seen academic institutions only from the perspective of a student. He did not seem to have published one line in a scholarly journal. He had not pastored a church for 15 years, and the membership of his last church had declined by almost a third during his tenure. There were red flags everywhere.

It became obvious to me that this man had no business leading a Seminary. At the time, it seems, that I was the only one who saw this.

Facing such incompetence, in our despair Vera and I petitioned the Board directly to allow us to continue to finance our house at bank interest rates for several more years until the market would rebound. We had made arrangements with a property management company, had identified potential renters, and the numbers seemed to work.

We were not allowed to be present when the Trustees met to discuss the matter. Two weeks after the board meeting the President sat me down and disclosed that the Board had turned down our petition and that he had no solution to propose. We should simply pay the loan back. He said this with a broad smile on his face and with a rather obvious satisfaction.

I remember sitting across the table from the little, bald man with those huge lips, who could never seem to wipe the smirk off his face. When he spoke, he sent torrents of spittle through the air. What struck me more, however, was the joy in his eyes as he watched me digest the information: Neither the previous President nor a lawyer, banker, or realtor serving on the Board would even talk to us. He had managed to cut us off from any meaningful conversation with the Board.

I had seen this look before, in boarding school. And suddenly it dawned on me that I was dealing with one of those people again, who gained pleasure from hurting others.

REFLECTION
Why am I telling you this? And what does it have to do with the parable of the sower?
Because that President and those Trustees are good people!

I know many of the Trustees very well. Some had been student of mine. For others I organized educational events. I preached in their churches. Together we stood at the graves of students, staff members, professors, and trustees. We spent long hours working together in committees, finding unusual solutions for our problems. We marched side by side, demonstrating for the rights of gay, lesbian and transgendered fellow citizens. We organized workshops for battered women. We attended funerals of our most beloved students, staff - one of our secretaries froze to death in front of her home one winter - or Trustees - one died together with her partner in a plane crash off the Canadian coast.

These Trustees are not only good people. They are the best the Church has to offer. No one serves on the Board of a desperately poor Seminary facing an uncertain future for prestige or because they have nothing else to do. They are mission driven. They want to do what it takes to provide educated clergy for the churches of Northern New England. Founded in 1815, this is the third oldest theological school in the USA only because of the resilient, creative, and resourceful nature of the Trustees who have served the institution for two centuries. I would be proud to serve on their Board.

And the President, even as he failed the institution and finally had to be relieved of his duties two weeks ago, was doing his best. Maybe he thought that "being tough" with that unruly German scholar was what an administrator is expected to do? I don't know. He was well aware of his lack of professional qualification, when he came. Taking the job he knew it would be a challenge and an act of faith. This person is a good man.

Roles are easily reversed. I could have been on that Board; I could have been the perpetrator, not the victim.

And where is God in all this?

God is in the conflict.

A conflict is when you have two parties, and both are right.

Our spiritual challenge is to not give up on one another, to not walk away, but to face each other.

CCCSGF
This congregation is diverse. From the first moment that I experienced you, I was impressed. Republicans and Democrats sitting in the same pews. In Springfield, Missouri? Grandparents with their sons and daughters and their grandchildren worshiping next to gay and lesbians, in  Springfield, Missouri? Who would have thought? Catholics, Assemblies of God, Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans (both Missouri and ELCA) participating together in the Christian rituals, while the leadership of their own denominations is not sure whether they should encourage this? In Springfield, Missouri?
You don't just talk, you live what others are preaching: There can be unity in diversity.

On the other hand, compared to some of the other groups meeting today here in this city, we are not a big crowd. Not everyone is comfortable reaching out and bridging gaps.

What if the other party in the conflict does not want to talk? What if they do not seek the dialogue?
This is what happened in my case: In the three years not one of my emails or letters to my Christian brothers and sisters on the Board has been answered. What do you do then?

THE SOWER
The Parable of the Sower has offered me deep consolation. It seems to me that no sower would intentionally waste seeds on pavement or on rocks or sow among weeds. The seed will always grow without our control - I am speaking as a teacher now - no perfect PowerPoint presentation, no perfect manuscript can guarantee that a seed comes to life.

The parable does not encourage us to grow, it encourages us to sow. I have always experienced growth as a miracle.

In an unresolved conflict, we are encouraged to continue to sow. Some seeds will fall on barren ground, others on rocky spots, others among the thorns, but others on good soil - and they will bear fruit.

END
When I walked out of the room after that final conversation with the President, I stumbled across my colleague of many years, the Ethics professor. And when he asked me, how the meeting had gone, I spontaneously answered: "I've just been raped."

I continued to walk down the hall. In the sitting area I met the new President's wife. She was delighted to see me. She had a question about the New Testament that she had not been able to research to her satisfaction.

((PAUSE))
It was at that moment that I had to decide, who I was. And I decided to be, who my students had taught me to be during the twelve years I proudly served them.

I listened to the President's wife as carefully as I could in this difficult situation, and I answered her question to the best of my knowledge.

End of the Sermon. // Amen.

((Blessing: Go with God! Go in peace! - And sow the seed!))

Beyond Religious Hypocrisy

Community Christian Church    
Roger Ray, pastor    
July 3, 2011     Proper  9

Matthew 11:16-19, 28-30                        
16"But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, 17'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.' 18For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon'; 19the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds."
28"Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

If you ever decide that you would like to learn how to fly and airplane, you will discover that what it takes to actually operate a small aircraft is not much more complicated than driving a manual transmission car.... With the important difference of not being able to pull off to the side of the road when something goes wrong.

What I was surprised to discover is that the actual operation of the airplane was nothing compared to the skill needed to navigate.  In fact, before GPS guidance systems became affordable, most of we private pilots preferred to fly with two pilots... one to hold onto the controls and the other to stare endlessly at the navigation chart.

The first time you look at a navigation chart, it looks like a very important but totally possible to comprehend pile of colors, lines and numbers, many of which are detailing obstacles that could kill you if you don't get them right.  Some numbers tell you the height of certain towers and mountains, others let you know what the radio frequency of a particular airport's tower or navigation point and some let you know the hours of operation of military fighter jets over huge expanses of land nearly everywhere you thought you wanted to go.  You have to love a sport with so many colorful and intricate ways in which to kill yourself!
I suspect that for many of you, when Dr. Trobisch and I ask you to open the Bible with us, that what you see there looks a lot like what a new pilot sees when looking at a nav chart.  Even when rendered in modern English, it presumes knowledge of an ancient culture and religious beliefs which are as foreign to us as how a navy pilot lands a jet on the moving target of an aircraft carrier at sea.... The chances of actually getting it right seem to be miniscule.

Before you can grasp all of the numbers and lines, first you have to see the big picture.... You have to see the road, rivers, towns and the tower field in Fordland that has several towers that go up to 2000 feet from the ground.  Once you can see those things at a glance, the rest of it all starts to fall into place.

I would argue that there are similar things you have to be able to see when you start looking at our Bible.  Specifically, when you look at the gospels.... When you look at these stories about Jesus, what are they really trying to tell us?

I am indebted to Jesus Seminar scholar and author, Marcus Borg, for so clearly pointing out the roads, rivers and towns in the wide angle view of the Jesus narrative.  Borg asks his readers, "What is the primary theme of the gospels?"  And he asks, "What is the central conflict around which the story revolves?"

Here are the two central points I would ask anyone to have in mind when they start reading the gospels.  Number one is that Jesus was the teacher of radical compassion.  Number two is that Jesus, as the teacher of compassion, is in constant tension with the prevailing religion of piety.


I've always known that somehow, when my Sunday School teachers, when my mother looked at the pages of the Bible, what they saw was the gospel against smoking, drinking, dancing and cussing.....and when you get up to about 10 years old, they added, oh, and don't think about sex either.

It's like trying to be a recruiter for the Catholic priesthood..... OK, there is no salary, no retirement, no days off and no sex and no family..... are there any reasons why someone might not want this job?

The conflict between compassion and piety is nowhere expressed more succinctly than in this gospel passage before us today.  Jesus, just a few months into his life as a preacher, has discovered that there is no way to satisfy pious religious critics.  He compared them to whinny children.  Because, John the Baptist had come and he really was a very observant religious person..... he didn't drink wine, he didn't eat meat, he wouldn't even wear clothing made of cotton or wool.  He lived in the wilderness wearing animal skins and eating bugs and they said that he, well.... They said that he had a demon but what they meant was that John was a tad crazy... off his rocker.... A few bricks short of a load... not playing with a full deck.... His elevator didn't go to the top floor.... He was, in our parlance, a bag of fries short of a happy meal..... which is where you could easily wind up if you took my Sunday School teachers too seriously.

But Jesus wasn't that way.  Jesus wasn't always serious.  He liked to go to parties.  He liked to hang out with people who had bad reputations.  He drank wine, enough that some people called him a drunk.  He liked to eat so much that some people called him a glutton.

And yes, in all seriousness, there is a moral implication to leading a life of faith.  We don't want to hurt other people or ourselves.  We want to be healthy and to promote health in others and in society.... But the way of piety just never seems to get it right.

When I was in seminary our field education teachers warned us never to socialize with church members.  They warned us against being too friendly or too available because when you become too familiar, people will criticize the house you live in, the car you drive, the length of your hair and how you raise your kids.

And it is true enough, some people just can't resist piously judging everyone from their children to their pastor as being either demonic or drunk.  I just never would go along with the business of acting like a distant priest because that would mean that I would only socialize with other pastors and, frankly, pastors are a pretty dull crowd to hang out with.

You can never be good enough, or drive the right car or raise your kids in a way that really satisfies the pious but, as W. C. Fields said, "It ain't what they call you.  It's what you answer to that matters."

Jesus offers his followers an alternative to the religion of piety.  There was a park bench near my home when I lived in Memphis, TN.  And it said, in large letters, "come to me, all you who are weary, and I will give you rest."  Obviously, the quote is from our gospel lesson today but what had made me remember that park bench now for 30 years is that when those words were written on a park bench, they were literally true, honest and sincere.  But when you hear these words of Jesus being uttered in church.... Are they true?
Is the yoke of being a Christian light and easy?  Is the burden of trying to live this life easy?

When you open the Bible to read from the gospels, ask yourself, "What is he really saying?"  And when you see Jesus in conflict with others, ask yourself, "What are they really arguing about?"  I think that when we experience the church as being full of guilt and fear, manipulation and judgment, rejection of joy and embracing somber piety then we are experiencing the religion that Jesus specifically rejected.

Radical compassion, at the very least, means that you stop passing judgment on other people.  I can't resist buying bumper stickers by the dozen.... Sometimes I wish I could have one of those digital marquise running in the back window of my car because there are so many single sentence pithy things I want to say to the world, like, "I'm pretty sure that when Jesus said, 'love your enemies' he meant that we shouldn't kill them."  There are parts of the Bible that really require a commentary and some parts ought to be allowed to stand alone.

Radical compassion is not necessarily easy because there are people that it is just easier to judge them than it is to love them.  And I find that the world is populated with people who would be every so much happier if they would just let me change them a little bit......none of you, of course, but almost everyone who isn't here today.

The religion of Jesus is not the gospel of smoking, drinking, dancing and cussing we heard about when we were kids.  The religion of piety which often wears his name, is a fraud.

If we are sincere followers of Jesus then we stand within a tradition of following the teacher of radical compassion and, from one guy sitting on the park bench to another, it shouldn't be that complicated and we really ought to enjoy the journey.

Søren Kierkegaard said, "It is so much easier to become a Christian when you aren't one than to become one when you assume you already are."  I fear that millions of people have dismissed the Christian faith because they believe that it is the religion of piety that, in fact, Jesus explicitly rejected.  The hard thing is to get someone who has already decided about institutional religion to open their minds again to the possibility that there is a better option.... One defined by justice and compassion rather than fear and guilt.

I often regret that we do not have more people here to hear Dr. Trobisch's lectures on scripture, but most people are pretty well convinced that they know what is in the Bible and they don't like it much.  Probably, you don't know that much about what is in it and you are in for a pleasant surprise when we let the real Jesus stand up in its pages.

We have rejected the religion of piety, with all of its magic, superstition, anti-intellectualism and neurotic judgment.  We have set that down in favor of being yoked with Jesus, who is gentle and humble in heart and who provides for us a respite from the insanity of the world and hope that we may be able to make it better.