The God Who Loves Justice

Community Christian Church
Dr. Roger Ray, pastor
Oct. 30, 2011   Proper 26

Micah 3:5-12
5Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who lead my people astray, who cry "Peace" when they have something to eat, but declare war against those who put nothing into their mouths. 6Therefore it shall be night to you, without vision, and darkness to you, without revelation. The sun shall go down upon the prophets, and the day shall be black over them; 7the seers shall be disgraced, and the diviners put to shame; they shall all cover their lips, for there is no answer from God.
8But as for me, I am filled with power, with the spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin. 9Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob and chiefs of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity, 10who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with wrong! 11Its rulers give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets give oracles for money; yet they lean upon the Lord and say, "Surely the Lord is with us! No harm shall come upon us." 12Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height.

Matthew 23:1-12
23Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2"The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; 3therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. 4They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. 5They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. 6They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, 7and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. 8But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. 9And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father--the one in heaven. 10Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. 11The greatest among you will be your servant. 12All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

Sometimes a good fiction is the best way to tell the truth.  British comic book author, Alan Moore, in the 1980's, created an imaginary hero who fought against a fascist government while disguised in a Guy Fawkes mask and hat. For those of you who might not be fully briefed on British history, Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the Parliament building 400 years ago to retaliate for a series of anti-Catholic laws passed by Parliament.  He was unsuccessful but his effort was immortalized with a holiday and a poem that sort of threatens the government not to go too far in taking away the freedoms of the people (Remember, remember the 5th of November gunpowder treason and plot.  I see no reason the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot).

Moore was angry at Margaret Thatcher because he felt that she was pushing Britain towards becoming a police state. Twenty years later the Wachowski brothers used that character to express their disdain for the way the Bush administration was using the fear of terrorism following the 9-11 attacks to turn America into a police state.  They produced the movie V is for Vendetta, set in a fictionalized future Great Britain, but the themes are clearly aimed at 21st century America.

The premise of the film is that Britain was attacked with a biological weapon which killed thousands of people.  As the plot unfolds, we learn that the British government actually unleashed the terrorist attack themselves in order to frighten the population into submission. They took away individual rights and took charge of the media which they used to keep the people in a constant state of fear.

The masked hero of the film devises ways of humiliating the government and persuading the public to come out of hiding and unite against the government's abuse of power.  At one point, V is able to take control of the government's emergency broadcasting system to deliver this stirring revolutionary speech, asking the people to set aside their fear and to unite against a tyrannical system. (V's speech)

So, it came as no surprise to me to see the film's Guy Fawkes masks on protestors at Occupy Wall Street events.  It seemed to me to be such an appropriate piece of political theater that I bought a costume for myself which I have worn to a couple of demonstrations.

The media has behaved towards the Occupy movement as if its coordinated goal was to discredit the movement and act like they just don't get the point.

Yesterday, on CNN's morning news show, they actually brought in a high school drop out from the Atlanta Occupy movement to answer questions about the protest.  Democracy Now interviews professors from Yale and Harvard and people like Kanye West and Michael Moore but CNN, with all of their journalist prowess, couldn't find anyone to talk to who was better informed than a 30 year old drop out who happened to be in front of their Atlanta office building.  But as silly as that was, you have to tune the dial to the far right to get a message that is even more crazy than the characters in the movie.  I'm talking about none other than my old friend Glenn Beck who said this early in the week (Glenn Beck:  they will drag you out in the streets and kill you). Too crazy for Fox but still a part of the public fear mongering conversation.

I really despise the conspiracy theorists who seem to abound at virtually all protests and demonstrations because the truth is scary enough without trying to come up with crazy conspiracy theories.  In fact, I think that some of the media division of society was not even intentional.  I think that news talk shows started featuring someone from the left and someone from the right to appear to be a balanced program but in effect, what they have done, is to create a huge partisan split in the country in which the population is divided into two nearly equal parts who yell at one another, blaming one another for the current crisis as if our problems of poverty, lack of health care, paucity of jobs with a living wage and the foreclosure crisis was caused by either Republicans or Democrats, or, conversely, could be fixed by either Republicans or Democrats.

One of the morning news talk shows, MSNBC's Morning Joe, has regularly featured Joe Scarborough saying that he just doesn't understand why protesters are occupying Wall Street but then one morning this week he chastised his guests saying, "Don't you realize that Wall Street owns both the Republican and the Democratic party?"  So Joe, you have answered your own question.  Washington is not where the power is..... the power is on Wall St.

I don't think it was originally intentional but I do believe that the media keeps trying to pour us into the battle between Republicans and Democrats as if both Republicans and Democrats were not equally to blame and the voters on both sides of the divide are being equally victimized.

The only thing that scares the people in power is if the people who are not in power stop fighting with each other and start to unite.  As soon as the economy started to tank, the first target we heard about were teachers unions and public employees' unions and labor unions.  Was it the middle class wages paid to union members that ship wrecked the American economy?  No, it was the middle class workers who built the nation and created the wealth that was traded in casino like financial instruments that have make a hand full of investment bankers rich but has robbed the pension plans of the middle class.

More than 2000 Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have been arrested, pepper sprayed, handcuffed, beaten with nightsticks and at least one Iraq veteran has sustained a nearly fatal head wound from a police fired tear gas canister.  But there have still been no indictments, no arrests, no one jailed from among the greedy traders who wrecked the world's economy.

And the main stream church does what it usually does..... nothing at all.  If they speak, they call for peace.... For people to calm down and to avoid using polarizing rhetoric.

Let me say this very clearly:  Peace in the absence of justice is surrender.  The people who ask you to realize that there are two sides to every story and we all just need to calm down and seek a middle path are asking the victims to surrender.  And there is only one answer to that:  NO!

The people who have affordable health insurance have been trained to resist changes that would bring the uninsured into access to health care, without ever questioning why we have to siphon off billions of dollars to pay insurance companies who do not treat patients, perform surgery or even empty bed pans.  We have the largest percentage of our population without health care of any industrialized nation in the world while we boast of having the most scientifically advanced medicine.  The problem is not the sick people.... The problem is the sick system.

We have been taught to scrap with each other over the crumbs under the table without looking up to the palace to see where our resources are really going.  If you look at what the Old Testament prophets really did, most religious people today would swear that the prophets were not really religious.  Look at this Micah text.... He isn't talking about how to go to heaven or how to get your sins forgiven, he is talking about how the powerful use warfare to make themselves rich.

And in the same vein, Jesus confronts the hypocrisy of religious leadership that worries about personal piety while people are genuinely suffering from hunger, homelessness and illness.  People are camping out in the streets of our cities because our government works for the banks and our churches...... work for the banks.

We have traded honesty for lies, uncomfortable truth for comfortable indifference.  We have abandoned the message of the prophets and apostles to be seduced by the rhetoric of the media and the political parties.

I want to tell you a short story before I let go of the microphone today.  Last year  lead guitarist for Rage Against the Machine, Tom Morello, became aware that virtually all of the guitars with which he and his peers were becoming quite wealthy were manufactured in South Korea in pretty miserable conditions.  So, the Korean workers went on strike to demand justice and dignity in the workplace.  In response, the makers of Fender and Gibson guitars shut down the Korean factories and moved manufacturing to mainland China.

A handful of the Korean workers pooled their resources and sent representatives to the annual Association of Music and Merchants trade show in Anaheim, California to plead their case to the millionaire rock stars who play their guitars.

Morello and others were persuaded to help the striking workers and they organized a concert to raise money to support the Koreans and their families.  But just before the concert, Haiti experienced the devastating earthquake that left so many homeless and in desperate need.  Those unemployed Korean guitar makers made the on-the-spot decision that the people in Haiti needed the money from the concert more than they did and they asked that all of the money be sent to Haitian relief.

Morello was inspired by their sacrifice to write Worldwide Rebel Songs to encourage that kind of unity among the victims of the world.  Because that kind of unity will be necessary for all of us to rise up out of our apathy and by uniting with one another, restore dignity and freedom to everyone.

Which Commandment in the Law is the Greatest?

Community Christian Church
Dr. David Trobisch
October 23, 2011

Matthew 22:34-46                      
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" 

He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: "What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?" 

They said to him, "The son of David."  

He said to them, "How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying, 'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet"'? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?"  

No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Prayer

Father in heaven.
Open our eyes, so we may see.
Open our ears, so we may hear.
And open our hearts, so we may understand.
Amen

Introduction
The lectionary reading for today ends with the words: "From that day on nobody dared to ask him any more questions."

I don't like the way Jesus is portrayed in this story. What kind of teacher would take delight in the fact that nobody dares to ask a question anymore?

And the questions the Sadducees and Pharisees had asked were very good ones. To this very day we would like to have answers to them. "Is there a heaven?" the Sadducees ask. They suspect that there is not.

And the Pharisees seem to hope that the Messiah will be from the royal house of David. A political savior. Someone who will lead the nation.

However, I do like the answer Jesus gives, when he is asked: "What is the most important commandment?" - "It is Love," he says. "Love God and love your neighbor!"

There is encouragement in this opinion, encouragement to find an answer that is not scripted, encouragement to be open, to be vulnerable, and to be ready for change.

Manfred
I was raised in Europe and grew up in a small Austrian village that consisted of five houses, five families, and 25 children. We had to walk three miles through the forest to school everyday. Austrian winters are fierce and some years the snow was so high that our parents would not let us go, they would keep us at home for weeks and teach us themselves.

You know the saying, "It takes a village to raise a child." It was in such a village that we grew up. We were happy children.

Just like his father and his father's father our neighbor Matthias was a farmer. He had five children, all about our age, two boys and three girls. His youngest son was named Manfred.

Like my father, Matthias was part of the generation that was drafted and had fought under Hitler. And what they had seen had hardened them. Many of these men could not cry anymore. It was as if all of their tears had dried up.

One day Manfred, Matthias' youngest son, came to my mother. He asked for help. He wanted to speak to his father. But like many teenagers he found it difficult to talk to his parents about intimate matters.
Manfred attended boarding school, when he entered puberty. And on his right side, he was growing a breast. The doctor at school had told him that the breast could be amputated and everything would be all right. Well, not everything was all right for Manfred, and he desperately wanted to talk to his parents about it.

Matthias was a good Lutheran. Austria is a Catholic country with very few Protestant Christians. Our tiny village is isolated on a mountain and far away from other settlements because it was founded generations ago at a time when Lutherans were persecuted in Austria. They were given the choice to either leave the country or try to evade the authorities. The families, who had started our little village, had decided to hide in the woods.

Matthias, Manfred's father, was an elder in our congregation, and a much respected one. Proudly Matthias would show us children the little hiding place behind the cabinet in the living room where his forefathers had kept the German Bible. "There was a time when it was forbidden by law to read the Bible in German," he would explain. And we children felt terribly proud to be Protestant.

It is the custom in rural Austria that, when the youngest son marries, he takes over the farm and pays off his siblings. By that time the parents usually are close to retirement age. This is a system that has worked well for as far back as people can remember.

One day, Manfred came to talk to his father. Matthias was in no way prepared for what Manfred would say. Manfred told his father that he was gay and that he was never going to marry.

Not only did Matthias not know how to deal with the homosexuality of his son, but he also realized that the future of the family farm was at stake.

Those were the early years of the AIDS virus, when information was scarce and fears ran high. Many people thought that this disease affected gay communities only. And many Christians honestly believed that this virus was a punishment from God for sinful behavior. Matthias told me later that from the moment Manfred had confided in him he lived in constant fear that his son would be infected.

Three years later Manfred died of AIDS in a hospital in Vienna. Because Matthias was so appalled by homosexuality and because he did not know how to deal with the gay and lesbian friends, who had taken care of Manfred, he had never visited his son in the hospital.

The funeral took place in our small church. The building was crowded. Not only did all the parishioners come as is the custom in rural Austria but many of Manfred's friends, who had long since left to study or work somewhere else were there. My wife and I came from Germany, where we lived at the time, and my brother Steve came all the way from Springfield, Missouri, just for the day.

And there were Manfred's gay friends from Vienna. Quite a sight for a rural Austrian Lutheran Church! Earrings and tattoos, leather jackets, mini-skirts, the hair died in red, green, blue or any other color of the rainbow.

And when the first part of the liturgy was over, the pastor climbed up the steps of the artfully carved, 13th century pulpit. Everyone was quiet. Everyone was waiting.

I do not remember, how the pastor structured the sermon or what text he used. But I still remember very vividly what the conclusion of the sermon was:

"Manfred," the pastor proclaimed, "simply drove through a red light at a busy intersection. He will have to face the consequences. Do not be deceived: 'Fornicators, adulterers, sodomites will not inherit the kingdom of God!' Manfred will go to hell for eternity."

"No", Matthias shouted, who sat in the first row. "No, no, no!"

It was more than I could bear. Was this the gospel that we believed in? Was this the message our Lutheran ancestors were persecuted for? Is this all we have to say to a troubled father, mother, brother, sisters, friends, who had lost a loved one?

At this point in the sermon I got up and left the church building. Manfred's friends from Vienna followed. Half the congregation walked out of the church.

The pastor was confused, the organist did not know what to do, and at that moment my brother Stephen stood up and sung.

We were not sure whether we were doing the right thing or not. I walked over to the group of gay friends, who were standing there, quietly, calmly.

"This happens all the time," one of them told me. "We feel like we are on a tour through rural Austria. It seems, every other week one of our friends dies of AIDS. And at every funeral service we go to, we hear the same message."

The first thing Matthias did when the service was finally over was that he told the pastor that he did not want him to participate in the meal, which traditionally follows an Austrian funeral. I was close enough to hear the conversation.

"God made Manfred the way he was," Matthias explained, "and it is not up to you, pastor, to criticize God's creation. That my son was taken from me was a blow, but what you said was a beating."

The second thing Matthias did was that he walked to the group of friends from Vienna. He shook hands with every single one of them. He had overcome his fear of many years, to touch a gay person. And he invited each of them personally to please come to the meal, which was just being prepared in a restaurant close by.

"You took care of my son when he was sick," he said. "You dressed him, fed him, washed him, read to him, talked to him, sat with him. You did what I was not able to do."

And then -- Matthias wept. I was one of the first ones to arrive at the restaurant. When Matthias walked through the door and saw me, he embraced me, he put his head on my shoulder and wept. No one had seen him cry before, not his children, not his wife, not his friends. This strong man was now leaning on my shoulder, weeping.

Being a Christian is not about having all the right answers. It is about hope that the Lord will lay his hand on us and heal us. It is about love. And about change.

When Matthias embraced me and wept on my shoulder, I changed.

AMEN

The Lord's Hind End

Community Christian Church  
Roger Ray, pastor
Oct. 16, 2011   Proper 24                       

Exodus 33:12-23            
12Moses said to the Lord, "See, you have said to me, 'Bring up this people'; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, 'I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.' 13Now if I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people." 14He said, "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest." 15And he said to him, "If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here. 16For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth." 17The Lord said to Moses, "I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name." 18Moses said, "Show me your glory, I pray." 19And he said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, 'The Lord'; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20But," he said, "you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live." 21And the Lord continued, "See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; 22and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; 23then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen."

This week's political theater opened a controversy I've been waiting for now for several months.  Rick Perry was being introduced at the Values Voters' conference by a prominent Baptist preacher from Dallas, Robert Jefferies.  Jefferies sought to undermine Mitt Romney, saying that, although Romney is a good man, he is not a Christian man because he belongs to a cult.

This was bound to happen, especially as Perry is slipping in the polls and Romney has remained at a more or less constant level of depraved indifference on the part of Republican voters.
And, it is true enough, when I took a course in American cult religions at Vanderbilt Divinity School in the early 80's, Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses were included in a course that covered Moonies and the indisputably crazy Jim Jones of that era.

Currently, The Book of Mormon is playing to sold out crowds on Broadway and I've already bought the sound track because I can't wait for the show to come here.  The Mormon Church does, in fact, pass the sniff test for a lot of what might make us call a religious group a cult.  They suffer from the inconvenient fact that their founder, Joseph Smith, lived only a couple of centuries ago and his manipulative, con man antics are well documented.... So much so, that the South Park episode that made fun of Mormons did so without making up anything.... They just told the Joseph Smith story and the facts are hilarious enough.

But there has been a big public backlash against what Jefferies said because, quite frankly, as weird as Mormons are, they have a lot of company.  The Southern Baptist Church and the Churches of Christ were formed as pro-slavery spin off's from their mother denominations..... not something they put in their literature either.  And main stream church of Christ ministers still regularly teach that God is so very petty that if you have not been baptized by them by total immersion or if you attend a church that used instruments in worship that our kind and loving God will burn you up in a lake of fire for all eternity.  I want to be respectful and inclusive of other faith traditions but folks, you just have to say that is 32 flavors of crazy.


And Mormons stand out as a recent and uniquely American church and you can make fun of them for their magic underwear but really, how different is that from the scapular you can get at a Catholic Church that if you wear it under your shirt it can keep a demon from jumping into your soul?  And you have to be blind not to notice that the world's largest Christian denomination, the Catholics, and a whole lot of their cousins in various protestant flavors, still insist that you have to have boy parts in order to be a religious leader.  Really?  Really?  You think God cares what is in your underwear rather than what is in your heart?  Please!

And that whole celibacy thing?  After all of the sexual perversion revealed in the past few years, the Catholic Church still can't give up on their hypocritical veneration of female virginity, male priest celibacy and condemnation of homosexuality?  If I could get an afternoon alone with the pope, I could introduce him to several gay Catholic priests and to an even larger number of Catholic women who are saintly people who don't fit the virgin mother Mary image they seem to insist upon clinging to.  When are religious people going to wake up to the fact that demonizing human sexuality is nothing less than demonizing humanity in its entirety?

After a firestorm of angry rejection of Perry's apparent endorsement of the idea that Mormons are a cult and Southern Baptists aren't, his wife came to his tearful defense claiming that her poor husband was being persecuted for being a Christian.  Anita...... I think you have missed the point.... And, frankly, I think you have missed it on purpose.  This kind of religious hypocrisy needs to be drummed out of politics.

I must beg your forgiveness if I am being rude in my attempt at being entirely honest.  But one of the things I learned in my work in addiction recovery is that you can love the addict and support the addict in their recovery but you don't do them any favors by acting like you believe their lies.  I want us to be charitable, I want for us to be tolerant, I want for us to encourage inter-faith dialogue, but I refuse for one second to act like I believe their lies just because they are religious lies.  That's not good for us but more importantly; it's not good for them.

Progressive Christianity seeks to restore the voice of Jesus who was one of the world's greatest moral teachers and to accomplish that goal, we have resolved to rid ourselves of superstition, magic and any claim that any religion makes to having ownership of absolute truth or control over who receives eternal reward or punishment.  That is an addiction I refuse to play along with and I hope you do to.

The awareness that no one gets to own the absolute truth is buried even in the most ancient strata of the Hebrew Bible.  So far as the Jewish faith was concerned, no one who ever lived was closer to God than Moses.  And in this drama described in Exodus 33, Moses implores God to allow him to have the beatific vision, to see God face to face.

And God says, according to this text, something that needs to be said Rev. Jefferies, and Anita Perry and Mitt Romney and to all the rest of us, and that is that no mortal can ever know that much about God.  No one.... Not the pope, not Mohammed, not Jesus or Buddha..... and certainly not your or me.

God tells Moses to hide in a cleft of a rock and God will pass by.... This is a very anthropomorphic story, of course, assuming that God walks and has hands and feet.  But it has to be told in an anthropomorphic way to make the point.  And that is, Moses arrogantly wants to be shown what no mortal can see and as a consolation prize, God let's Moses see his back side.... Or, as my Old Testament professor said in the language of the 1980's, God mooned Moses......metaphorically speaking, of course.

As crass as this story is in some ways it makes the unmistakable point that if the greatest prophet of history is only allowed to see God's back side then the rest of us need to assume a bit of humility whenever we presume to make statements about stuff that no one can know.

The heart of the teachings of every faith is found in their teachings of ethical conduct in the here and now.  Anything that is said about what happens in heaven or hell or in any unseen realm or afterlife should be taken with a grain of salt and a health dose of skepticism.  We don't believe in magic, we believe in justice.  We don't want to teach superstition, we want to develop character.

NPR was interviewing some southern voters this week, asking them if a candidate's religious affiliation mattered to them.  One man replied, "It sure does, I'm not going to vote for anyone who doesn't believe in the niacin Creed."  And, I know that he meant Nicene Creed but I think that he was on to something more substantive..... most of the Nicene Creed is unknowable truth claims which have little or no bearing on the teachings of Jesus but the niacin Creed, surely Jesus would want us to get our vitamin B.

But please, just no more BS.

In this case, as is so often true, the poet has a better grip on God's truth than the popes and prophets:  (Michael Franti)

I don't need a passport to walk on this earth

Anywhere I go 'cause I was made of this earth

I'm born of this earth, I breathe of this earth

And even with the pain I believe in this earth

so I wake up every mornin' and I'm steppin' on the floor

I wake up every mornin' and I'm steppin' out the door

I got faith in the sky, faith in the one

faith in the people rockin' underneath the sun

'cause every bit of land is a holy land

and every drop of water is a holy water

and every single child is a son or a daughter

of the one earth mama and the one earth papa, so 

don't tell a man that he can't come here 'cause he got brown eyes and a wavy kind of hair,

And don't tell a woman that she can't go there

because she prays a little different to a god up there,

You say you're a Christian 'cause God made you,

You say you're a Muslim 'cause God made you,

You say you're a Hindu and the next man a Jew

Then we all kill each other 'cause god told us to? NAW!

Relevant Priorities

Community Christian Church  
Dr. Roger Ray, Pastor
Oct. 2, 2011  Proper 22   

Exodus 20: 1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Then God spoke all these words:
2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 3you shall have no other gods before* me.
4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
7 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
8 Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9For six days you shall labor and do all your work.
12 Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
13 You shall not murder.*
14 You shall not commit adultery.
15 You shall not steal.
16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
17 You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
18 When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid* and trembled and stood at a distance, 19and said to Moses, 'You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.' 20Moses said to the people, 'Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin.'

At the end of World War II, when the United Nations was being created and the world was coming to grips with the fact that civilization had arrived at a time and a technology when, for the first time in history, we possessed the ability to kill everyone and bring life and history itself to a halt.  When even the skeptics were having to face the reality of a holocaust with millions of casualties and atomic bomb craters from which countless thousands has simply evaporated into a mushroom cloud, the United Nations drafted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

My thoughts were naturally drawn to this declaration of human rights when I saw that our Biblical text for today was to be the Ten Commandments.  Those of you who are in my Wednesday night class may recall the picture I showed you of the Code of Hammurabi, that stone monument with the ethical laws of the land in Babylon inscribed upon it and at the top of the stele was an image of King Hammurabi being handed the code of laws by God.

This image must certainly have framed the ancient Israelite telling of how Moses went up on Mt Sinai and received the Ten Commandments written in stone by the finger of God.  The purpose of the Decalogue was to establish the ancient Israelite civilization in a way that was both stable and just.  For a people trying to survive the transition from being wandering nomads to an increasingly agrarian society with set land boundaries and consistent neighbors, the whole not killing one another and not taking each other's stuff was suddenly very important.

We have tended to paste these up in public school classrooms and Circuit Court Clerk's offices as a kind of wordy oblation to the Jewish and Christian traditions but the real purpose was to establish their nation around a religion and a set of emphatic human rights laws.  You can say that the Ten Commandments were written for a community that had escaped cruel slavery and were trying to establish a secure and peaceful nation in much the same way that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written in the modern era to help us to establish a secure and peaceful world.

But, you don't see the Ten Commandments posted in public much but perhaps more importantly, you don't hear much about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights anymore.

It was not especially well written, in the sense that it is not great literature, it isn't poetic, it cannot be set to music, even though I believe some have tried.
You can look it up on-line and I have some printed copies out in the narthex you can pick up on your way out today.  I just didn't want to put them in your hands ahead of time because I don't want to have to compete for your attention while I'm preaching.

It was written at a time when the world had just survived its most bloody and destructive war and the world's statesmen recognized that the root cause of international conflict is injustice.  The survivors of World War II wanted to create a world in which universal respect for the rights of every human being would help to secure a peaceful world in the future.

Of course, a certain ominous die was cast when there were eight nations that voted against it, including Soviet bloc nations and Saudi Arabia.  But the real reason it is not often mentioned is that even 60 plus years later, we have yet to take its noble standards seriously.

The universal declaration of human rights forbids slavery and forced labor but slavery abounds in the Eastern Hemisphere and the fruits of slavery are purchased without a twinge of conscience in the West.

On the heels of the Holocaust the declaration insists that everyone has a right to nationhood..... and we were so determined to give nationhood to the surviving Jews that we took it away from Palestinians, solving a European crime with Middle Eastern real estate and even now, as Palestinians beg the United Nations to vote to recognize their nationhood, the United States has assured them of a veto and we, sixty years later, tell them that they should try some more negotiation..... take two aspirin and call me in the morning.
I don't want to sound anti-Israeli in saying that.  In fact, I must count myself among those who have been entirely seduced by the city of Jerusalem, its history and its architecture.  I love Israel and I want for them to have both peace and security but I can't stand the fact that the victims of the Holocaust are exacting a pound of flesh from every generation of Palestinians and they are doing it with our tax money and military support.

The Universal Declaration of Human rights also says that everyone has a right to have freedom from torture.... Which appears to be a standard viewed as quaint by some in our own nation.  It also says that everyone has a right to marry and have a family though even then they may not have considered the fact that "everyone" means "everyone."

The most apparently redundant of the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights goes to a series of statements about equal treatment in courts of law.  Clearly, several people on the committee writing this document wanted to repeat this guarantee in so many different forms as to make it unavoidably obvious that ever court system in every nation has to treat everyone who stands before a judge with absolute impartiality, a presumption of innocence until proven guilty and no favoritism to be shown for any reason.

There are a number of things in America about which I have become rather cynical but nothing in recent years has disappointed me as much as my occasions to see the seamy underbelly of our court system and the penal system that does the court's bidding.

Favoritism is not only shown to corporations and the wealthy but it has become unavoidably obvious to me that our justice system is managed by a good-ole-boy system of lawyers who run the courts almost as if it were their private vineyard and playground.

I had one proud moment, finally representing myself in court, when I stood before a judge and quoted Howard Zinn who said that the justice system does not seek to decide who is right and who is wrong, it serves only to determine who can pay the lawyer the longest.  With few exceptions, only the wealthy can afford to either seek justice or to defend themselves against injustice in our judiciary.  And if there is corruption and favoritism in the American justice system, I shudder to think what might be true in Mexico, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Russia or China.

We have just witnessed the eventual release of two American hikers who have spent two years in prison in Iran on trumped up charges and they were only released on the strength of what amounts to a million dollar bribe.

And, even when the whole health insurance industry was in its infancy, the writers of this declaration of human rights said:    (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.


Amazing, isn't it?  When you just sit down to think about how the world should be run, it is obvious that sick people should have access to health care and old people
should have access to retirement and widows and orphans should be able to live with dignity.  The profit motive seemed small at the end of World War II and human rights seemed very large but in the decades since we nearly blew ourselves up, corporations have become people and people have become expendable.

The Ten Commandments represented an ancient faith community's attempt as establishing peace, security, stability and human rights for everyone.  I am certain that they largely failed in their application of these principles but they knew in their hearts that they needed to try.

In the modern era we've attempted to write a Bill of Rights, a constitution, even our own 8 points of progressive faith and internationally we have composed his statement of universal human rights but it is all just so much talk if we don't work, sacrifice, testify, demand, provoke and sometimes even threaten our own society to pay attention to human rights.

Torture is wrong and it should never happen.  Nations have a right to exist and live in peace with self determination.  The judiciary should be held to a sacred standard of justice and equality.  And people who love one another and want to pledge themselves to become a family shouldn't need any government's permission to do so.

The Ten Commandments were written to inspire faithfulness, peace and security among an increasingly settled population of former nomads.  In our day we have to respond realistically, ethically and responsibly to our situation and our challenges.
We can destroy virtually all life on this planet either through warfare or careless pollution and we have a moral responsibility to make certain that neither of those things happen.

And even though we have gleefully escaped the tyranny of mind and heart imposed upon us by neurotic organized religion, we have an even more important obligation to our faith in a God who is the author of justice and mercy to make certain that justice roll on like rivers and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.  Let the people of God say "Amen."