Christmas Stories

Community Christian Church  
Roger Ray, pastor
Christmas Eve 2011



Helena, the sainted mother of Emperor Constantine, used the influence and wealth of her son to build churches in the Holy Land.  Three centuries after the events described in the gospels, she went to Jerusalem to build a church where Jesus was buried and to Bethlehem to build a church where Jesus was born.

I have been to both a few times but then, I have also been to Jericho where a guide showed me the actual Sycamore tree that Zacchaeus climb up into so that he could see over the taller people when Jesus came to town.

Now, Helena was no archaeologist determined to preserve history.  She was a devout worshipper so when she asked people in Bethlehem where Jesus had been born, the locals showed her a shepherd's cave.  She, of course, did not enshrine the cave, she had the entire hill excavated and a replacement cave made in the lower floor of the great cathedral of the Nativity out of precious marble.

Visitors to the Church of the Nativity are often treated to a plaintive tour guide who says that the manger in which Jesus was born is not on display there, not because such a crude wooden item would have turned to dust and ash thousands of years ago but, because it was stolen by the Catholic Church and is housed in the Vatican..... the absurdity of that claim never seems to trouble Israeli tour guides nor the curators of the Vatican's treasures who have no intentions to relinquishing the manger that has no more to do with Jesus than I have to do with managing the caviar trade in Russia.  Sometimes it is hard to embarrass religious people.
One of the most difficult issues in teaching Bible in my college classes is the fact that moderns tend to be so fact literal.  You read the parables where Jesus says that the Kingdom is like a man who had two sons and then another parable says that the Kingdom is like a woman who lost a coin and modern people get mad and say, "Well which is it?  Is it like a man with two sons or a woman who lost a coin because it can't be both!"

I sit in the back of the sanctuary and watch Dr. Trobisch patiently teaching us about the gospels, understanding them as stories written to help us understand great truths, metaphors used to open the mind to see reality in new ways, and, inevitably, at the end of the class, someone will raise their hand and ask, "But how do we know that this really happened?"

I complimented David once on his uncommon patience and in the midst of the conversation someone came up to him to demand an explanation for why God would be so cruel as to kill all of the animals on earth in the world wide flood of Noah when it was the people who had been sinful.  I responded, "Don't you understand that it is a sermon and not a bit of history, there has never been a world- wide flood."  And David interjected, "Well, in a way, it happens every time the story is read."

That is the power of story telling.... It becomes real in the moment it is shared in a community in order to bring about something that is real within us.

When St Helena went to Bethlehem, she was looking for the stable mentioned in Luke's gospel.  But that was just a choice she made.  In Matthew, Jesus was born in a house.
The two gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus have almost nothing in common other than the gender of the child.  In Matthew, the holy family lives in Bethlehem but flees to avoid the slaughter of the innocents and ends up settling in Nazareth.  In Luke, the family lives in Nazareth but are compelled in the most unlikely manner to visit Bethlehem for a Roman census and then return to their home after the birth.

Neither account is historically true.  Jesus was, in all likelihood,  born in and grew up in Nazareth.  Neither Mark nor John are interested in the geography or circumstances of Jesus' birth.  Matthew and Luke both have reasons of Jewish heritage to say that he was born in Bethlehem but Matthew and Luke don't compare notes.

The shepherds, angels, stable and the magnificat are only in Luke.  The magi, star, and flight to Egypt are only in Matthew.  The one thing that both have in common is that neither is the slightest bit interested in the historical facts because they are too busy trying to tell us an important story.... And we're still wondering why the Vatican refuses to give that old wooden manger back to the church in Bethlehem where it belongs.

The best way to kill a good story is to try to take it too literally.  One of the great rallying cries of the Progressive Christian movement is that we take the Bible seriously but not literally.  The question we should be asking is, if Luke and Matthew had no facts about the historical circumstances of the birth of Jesus, then why did they write these accounts?  Why?  What do they mean?  What is the message.... Those are the questions every story teller is actually trying to answer.

Matthew is at pains to tell the Jesus story in a way that proves to us that he is the true Jewish messiah.  He begins his account with a long genealogy tracing Jesus through the family of Joseph back to Abraham and then he tells us that Joseph wasn't really his father... like I said, Matthew doesn't want to be disturbed with any logical facts, he is telling us a story.

Like Matthew, his story is full of powerful irony.  Though Matthew will quote Old Testament texts repeatedly through the next 25 chapters of his book to prove that Jesus was the messiah, he completely leaves the Jews out of his birth narrative.  No one in the temple was aware of the birth of Jesus, but some foreign astrologers knew about it and they traveled across the wilderness to come bring presents.  Astrologers were anathema to Jews.  Practicing astrology is punishable by death, according to Deuteronomy 17 and yet, Matthew, the most Jewish of New Testament writers, is willing to slap traditional Judaism in the face and insist that gentiles knew about Jesus and his own people didn't.

There is a real message of humility in this.  As Michael Franti sings, "God is too big for just one religion."  Matthew tells us a story of a messiah who comes into the world, embraced by those who seek him but endangered by the both the institutions of religion and government.  The priests are indifferent and Herod tries to kill him, so that Jesus is aided by members of another religion and then is forced to flee as a political refugee.  If you let Matthew tell the story his own way, you see how we Christians are always uneasy around institutional religion, the halls of political power, and we can always look for Jesus among the refugees and the illegal immigrants.

Luke tells his Christmas story with entirely different details but hauntingly similar themes.  For Luke, Jesus is born into poverty and suffers both indignity and rejection by government and religion.

They are forced from their home by an oppressive occupying government and then in Bethlehem, they are not even shown the dignity to be allowed to give birth in doors.  We have all heard all of our lives that there was "no room" in the inn for them but I am inclined to think that Luke had something even more pointed in mind.

Ancient inns did not rent "rooms."  They were not like a Days Inn, after all.  Inns were just big houses largely comprised of a lower floor and an upper room.  Customers just paid to come in and they found a place on the floor among the other guests.  At what point does an inn keeper in the ancient world tell a paying customer, "I don't want any more money"?

It is possible that Luke is suggesting to us that for religious reasons, it was not simply that there was not room inside, it is that there was no room among all those people for Mary and Jesus.  Again, in Jewish tradition, everyone who is in a house when a woman gives birth is defiled and must make an offering.  Perhaps Luke is telling us that Jesus was rejected by formal religion even before he was born..... something that all of us who have been rejected by either family or faith because we were somehow "unclean" in their judgment should be able to appreciate.

Where do we find Jesus in Luke's story?  Out in the barn, among all of the stuff that you know is found in a barn.  And to whom is the divine birth announcement given?  Not to priests or kings but only to shepherds in the field.
We modern Americans tend to romanticize shepherds but don't kid yourselves....being a shepherd was the real night cashier job at Walmart in those days.  Sheep are smelly and stupid and they have to be watched all of the time.  Shepherds didn't get to observe Sabbath and they were always unclean literally or religiously.

That angels appeared to shepherds who were led to a barn where Jesus was born is a statement that you will find Jesus in homeless shelter for runaway teens where some unwed teen-ager just had a baby.  If you let Luke tells his story his way, you can appreciate why Jim Wallis says that no one goes to heaven without three references from homeless people.

The Jesus story is real, and every time we tell it, we bring good news to the poor, we bring hope to those in despair, we shine a light in dark places, promising justice to the oppressed, the refugee, the homeless and the unemployed.  The story of Christmas is not the first corner stone of a new organized religion.  It is a story that begins our story, our story of standing up to governments and churches, of siding with the poor and the oppressed.... Of kicking at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.  Merry Christmas my friends.

How Mary Interprets Her Son's Birth

Community Christian Church  
Roger Ray, pastor
Dec. 18, 2011    Advent 4

Luke 1:46b-55                                      
46And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, 47and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; 49for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. 50His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. 51He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 52He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; 53he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. 54He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, 55according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever."

Sean, Barry and I get together every couple of weeks to look over the outlines of my future sermons.  I usually have a few song suggestions for them to ignore and then they tell me what we're going to do each week.  I've been a pastor for 33 years now, I know not to try to negotiate with either musicians or terrorists.... But I repeat myself.  Seriously, they are both brilliant musicians and some of my suggestions actually do get a little airtime during our services.

But I have to tell you that the Christmas season is a hard time for us.  I regularly remind them that every hymn doesn't have to match the theme of the sermon for the day and sometimes, those of us who grew up in traditional churches just like to sing hymns that we love for nostalgic reasons more than for their theology.

But when it comes to Christmas carols, we sit and read through the lyrics and generally find unanimous consensus that we just can't do it again.  The ones we know the best tend to take the birth narratives very literally on the one hand and they all seem to focus on some kind of incarnational theology that we just can't swallow.

I'm so glad to have Jia Ling here to sing portions of the text Valerie read for us from Luke.  Jia Ling, of course, sang from the Bach version and, pretty much, once Bach has treated a topic all mere mortals keep their hands off of ever trying to do it a different way.

The early church infused the Jesus story with the elements of Greek mystery religions, and insisting that, like the Roman Emperors about whom it was said that they were sired by the gods and that their mothers were virgins, that Jesus was every bit as magical and important if not more so than any Roman myth.  But before the incarnational Christmas carols got a toe hold in the church, they wrote this very first Christmas song and set it on the lips of Mary.

I'll say more about the whole message of the two competing and contradictory birth narratives in the New Testament from Matthew and Luke next week, but this week I want to let the mother of Jesus have a moment at the microphone.

Now, this is not a literal story.  Mary didn't just break out into improvisational song and someone remembered the words 80 years later and wrote it down in Luke's account of the birth.  No, but this is a song written by the church that remembered Mary and set down a theological interpretation of the meaning of Jesus' birth.

Long before there was a "little town of Bethlehem," or "Silent Night," or "Angels we have heard on high," Mary sings a Christmas carol and, if you read it, you see that it is a song of revolution.  It is a song of reversals of power.

When Mary first speaks about this child she will give to the world, she says that he will cause, well, it is there in verses 51 and 52, that he will scatter the proud in the imaginations of their hearts... he with throw the powerful down off their thrones and he will lift up the down trodden.... He will give food to the hungry and send the rich away with nothing.

If Mary actually said that you may see why the early church didn't let women preach!  The Catholic Church put up statues of Mary and praised her for her virginity..... which suggests some really twisted psycho-sexual stuff to me but you can't make me talk about that today.... Unless you buy me lunch.... Cause, honestly, I kinda want to talk about it, just not right now.

This is prophetic preaching.  It is threatening to the people who are in power.  There is nothing about this that should have been perverted into "Joy to the world," because it really talks about a house cleaning!

Some of you know that I will be going back to Nicaragua for a few days next month to visit some of the jungle villages where I have worked in past years among the rural poor.  These are the villages that were the most sorely oppressed during the Somoza years.

Prior to the 20th century Nicaragua was one of the most prosperous nations in Central America, but at the turn of the century our country installed a puppet dictator, Anastasia Somoza.  And a member of his family ruled the nation for the next 50 years, enslaving the rural peasants to work on coffee plantations and banana farms.  He was violent and greedy.  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is reported to have said, "Somoza is a real son of a bitch but he is our son of a bitch."

And that he was.  But during those years of violent oppression, even the illiterate poor carried with them a copy of the song of Mary..... Ha esparcido a los soberbios en el pensamiento de sus corazones....he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.....Ha quitado a los poderosos de sus tronos....
He has thrown the powerful down off their thrones.

The jungles of Nicaragua is one of the places where liberation theology was born before it was mentioned in American pulpits.  They were poor but they were not stupid.... They understood Mary's Christmas Carol.... They knew what the birth of Jesus really was about.

The practice of carrying it as a sign of hope for the end of Somoza's rule was so common that the dictator required that people in that region carry with them at all times, paper proof that they had voted for Somoza.... The soldiers called it their "magnificat."  The pope tried to crush the liberation theology movement, fearing that it would lead to socialism.... Which, for some reason, the pope found to be more distasteful than a cruel dictatorship.....this might be a long lunch.

The powerful, both in Rome and in Managua, wanted to shut Mary up.  A lot of priests who caught a vision of liberation theology were killed throughout Central America.  The most famous priest and poet of Nicaragua was Ernesto Cardenal.  He managed to escape when a coup against Somoza failed in the 1950's.  Ironically, Cardenal, was living very near my family home when I was born in Kentucky.  He was a student of the famous Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, at Gethsemane.

But he returned to Nicaragua and rejoined the revolution, creating a community of liberation theology on the island of Solentiname.  He is still alive though he has distanced himself from Sandinista president, Daniel Ortega, but then so has just about everyone else.  He was elected to be a revolutionary but he is just another greedy Central American head of state.

But, you know, my friends, Mary was not the head of a political party.  She didn't want to see one dirty ruler cast down off the throne to be replaced with different flavor of politician.  What she was after was justice and that is what the early church said that Jesus was all about when they composed this first hymn.

So once I get to leave the airport in Managua, and Ortega's government is in the rear view mirror of the jeep and I get back under the shade of banana plants where the coffee bushes grow we will sing Mary's song again, we will remember the real Jesus and we will hope for the day when the hungry are filled and the downtrodden are raised up..... look can't you see that's what Mary's boy always wanted?

The Liberation Theology of Jesus

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
December 11, 2011

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11                
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; 2to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; 3to provide for those who mourn in Zion-- to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.
4They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. 8For I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. 9Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed.
10I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 11For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

There are speeches, plays, songs and poems that are so much a part of our culture and our growing up that we only have to say the first three or four words before we all immediately begin to see the setting, the characters or to hear the tune:  Four score and seven years ago..... To be or not to be..... Amazing Grace..... Mine eyes of seen the glory.... Life can be a challenge,...... life can seem impossible, .......it's never easy when there is so much on the line.... You know, from the Pokemon movie, the song Herman Cain quoted in his farewell speech.... Don't we all know the lyrics from the Pokemon movie?  Ok, maybe not.

You get my point.  Every culture in every age has had its most familiar stories, hymns and poems that everyone knows.  You don't have to sing all of the verses of Amazing Grace for anyone who has gone to church over the past 50 years to immediately remember the whole song.

When the gospel writers were telling the story of Jesus, there were points at which they would use just a first line of a familiar quote from the Hebrew Bible in order to suggest the whole passage.  All four gospels talk about Jesus going to his home town and not being accepted by his home congregation but Luke tells us that when he went to his synagogue he was handed  the scroll of Isaiah and Luke tells us that Jesus read the first two verses of Isaiah 61, a very popular piece of prophetic preaching.  The two verses are used in Luke's account by Jesus to tell his family, his cousins, the people he grew up with, just who he had become and what he was going to do.

They had heard that he was a miracle worker and they may have come for a magic show, but what he told them he was going to do was what Isaiah talked about in this passage of scripture.  In those turbulent times, when Israel was a very unpopular vassal state in Rome's empire, there were several Hebrew Bible and later religious works that had become very popular in the frightened and oppressed population of the Jews.

In fact, almost all of the much talked about Dead Sea Scrolls were copies of books written about certain religious prognostications about how they were going to get out of their current mess.  Their expectations, their predictions, their hopes were not at all singular in nature.  There were lots of differing opinions ranging all of the way from the highly unlikely all of the way to the totally insane.

But, if we can take Luke at his word, Jesus chose from among all of those different images of Israel's future and he picked this passage from Isaiah to define himself and how he thought God would go about setting things in the world right.

I'm fond of this book by Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer that is provocatively titled "Jesus against Christianity."  As you might guess, his premise is that the Jesus of history would not have approved of the religion that now bears his name.

What Pallmeyer says that really attracted me to his book is that Jesus looked at all of the many different and contradictory images of God both in the Hebrew Bible and in the hundreds of rival books floating around at the time and Jesus chose just one image, one expression of the character of God, one vision of what it meant for him to be the man who represented God to his people and that image was of the prophetic liberator.

We all been treated to the patently absurd summary of the Bible that people who have never read it like to quote, saying that there is a harsh punitive God in the Old Testament and a loving and nurturing God in the New Testament.  That's just not true.  There is loving and nurturing stuff in both testaments and there is no shortage of rather cruel and judgmental stuff in both testaments.

But what Jesus chose to believe in, what he chose to try to be, was this agent of good news, this liberator of the oppressed.  A few weeks ago I talked with you about the canon within the canon and I told you that for me, I take that judgment scene in Matthew 25 as my core understanding of the message of Jesus and I interpret the rest of the gospels out from that point.  I don't take every gospel story as being of equal value and where a text wanders too far from the value of radical compassion expressed in this text then it won't get much attention from me.

Jesus was a Jew.  And he was only one of very many religious leaders in that very troubled time period but there is a reason why his name is remembered and others are not.

The majority voice of the people was expecting something cataclysmic to happen.  They were looking for a religious leader who would destroy the Roman occupation, punish the bad guys and put Jews in charge of the world.  That was the mainstream message.  The message of Jesus is remembered because it was not the mainstream message.  His was the alternative message.  He picked a canon within the Jewish canon of books and scriptures that was articulated by the prophet Isaiah.

Paul, who never met Jesus and never heard him teach, had a lot to say about Jesus.  The early church, created a religion around the name of Jesus that was, to be honest, a blending of Jewish scriptures with a bit of the teaching of Jesus and a very large portion of the mystery religions that flourished in the Empire at that time.  But that is what the early church said about Jesus, but what did Jesus say about himself?  How did he define himself?  What was his canon within the canon?  What kind of religious figure did he see himself as being?

And if we are going to let the man speak for himself for just a minute, we have to let go of all the stuff we have been told..... all of the gold plated, heaven and hell, super-theistic stuff we have been told and stop for a moment and hear what Jesus had to say, using the words of Isaiah, about himself:

Please look at the Hebrew Bible lesson printed in your bulletin.... Look at Isaiah 61, verse 1:  He says that he is called by God to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to liberate captives and release prisoners.
Now a real religious person would tell you that Jesus came to liberate you from bondage to sin, and to heal your sinful heart, and to release you from the captivity of hell where you are held prisoner by the devil.  You have been told that.... I've been told that.... The church told us that.... In some ways, Paul told us that.... But look at the text.  Jesus didn't say that.  Jesus didn't mean that.  I think, and call me a rebel on this one, but I think he meant what he said.

There is no army of angels coming down from heaven in this text.  There is no apocalyptical battle against a beast.  There is no heaven or hell.... In fact, there is no divine intervention.  Because bringing good news to the oppressed involves you and be working to end oppression.  We are the ones who work to bind up the people who are in pain.  We work to liberate captives and release prisoners.

In very 4 he says that he is going to lead us into rebuilding ancient ruins, to pull blighted neighborhoods out of their devastation.  And why is this what Jesus wants to do?  Look at verse 8, because God loves justice, and hates the way the people have been robbed and mistreated.  Don't let a religious sounding phrase like "I will faithfully give them their recompense" slip past you because it sounds like Sunday School talk.  What is recompense?  It means getting paid fairly... it means paying people what they are owed.

Jesus was talking about a heavenly kingdom that would descend out of the clouds and make everything right..... even though that is exactly what a lot of the people around him were saying.  The vision of Isaiah, the vision that Jesus chose to use to define himself, was the building of a nation defined by justice and mercy and that is a domain that is created by one act of compassion after another, one just, fair, decent decision after another.
It doesn't descend from the clouds, it comes out of your hands.... It comes out of your heart, your decisions, your labor.

Remember we talked a few weeks ago about how the Hebrew words for "justice" and "righteousness" mean the same thing.  When the prophet says that God will clothe him in a robe of righteousness, you can see that as a nation enfolded in justice.

And so that prayer we have said so many times in church, the one that says, "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."  That part about doing God's will on earth is just this... because God loves justice and hates the robbery of the people and God's will is that you and I get busy bringing good news to the oppressed, liberation to the captives, comfort to the broken hearted and release to the prisoners and that, is what it means to be a Christian.

Now I know that's not they way we were taught.  I'm just saying that this is what Jesus said about himself..... if you think you know better, I can only encourage you to take it up with him.  But in the choice between the religion I inherited and the message of Jesus, then I'm gonna go with Jesus on this one.

Living the Good Life to Become the Good Person

Community Christian Church  
Roger Ray, pastor
Springfield, MO
Dec. 4, 2011

"Living the Good Life to Become the Good Person"   A sermon based on sayings of Confucius



When people ask you, "Why do you go to church?" I would love to be a fly on the wall to hear your answers.  Unlike Fundamentalists or Catholics or most Evangelicals, we do not believe that there is an angry or punitive God who is so ego deficit that the divine self sits enthroned in the clouds, hungry for our adoration and praise, pillorying heaven with prayers and sacrifices.  I doubt that many of you have any concern about either being cast into the fires of hell or designing a heavenly mansion.  So why are you here?

I suspect that most of us have found that we can be improved.  That is, we can be better people, have deeper character and we can live more compassionately and meaningfully if we participate in a spiritual community, expose ourselves to moral deliberation, education and direction, and if we work collectively towards those things which we believe make the world a better place and make us better people.

And if you said that in the middle of an Evangelical conference you might well be told that you are not really Christian, or maybe that you are not even religious.... You might be called a Humanist because your spiritual concern is not with satisfying a supernatural deity but in reshaping yourself to reflect the values you believe to be holy, pure, good and commendable.

Of course, the greater likelihood is that none of you would participate in that conversation in the first place because we have learned not to care very much about how other people criticize us or try to categorize us.

But if we did, we might find ourselves in the middle of the same debate western religious people have had about Confucianism for the past millennium. Most scholars tend to say that Confucianism is not a religion because they do not have a theistic world view, even though they do have temples, rituals, a written text, sacrifices and a certain worship of the spirits of Confucius and other great teachers.
And, I suppose that you can say that they have hymns since our closing hymn today is comprised of sayings of Confucius.

Jesuits who first went to Japan declared that Confucianism is a philosophy and not a religion which gave them permission to not go on a crazy rampage burning books and tearing down temples like they did in other places.  Confucianism as a system of ethics was deemed to be compatible with Catholicism as it has been seen as a supportive partner by many Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists.

But when it comes to typical religious themes, Confucius neither denied nor confirmed religious speculation.  In eastern thought, worship of or veneration of the spirits of deceased relatives is the most common expression of spirituality but when Chi-lu asked him exactly what is due to the ghosts of the dead. The master replied, "We fail in our duty to the living; can we do our duty to the dead?"

I know that it frustrates some of my more traditional religious friends but it doesn't make much sense to me to talk about what cannot be known.  If there is life beyond our mortal bodies we surely don't have any information to go on to build a belief system around it.  When Confucius was asked directly about death, he said        "We know not life, how can we know death?"

That is not to say that we know that there is nothing, just that we do not know.
Confucius taught that we should focus on being a person of character in the here and now without obsessing about a life we do not and cannot know anything about.  I am always reminded of Sören Kierkegaard's comment that there are things that are true when they are whispered that become false when they are shouted.  Humility and reality dictate that all sincere people of faith spend their time and energy doing a better job embodying our philosophy and practicing our faith where we are today and leave what cannot be known in the hands of God.... Or, the universe, as Confucius might say it.

I really cannot emphasize this enough.  The general impression people seem to have that religion exists to guarantee their adherents a cushy place in eternity is absolutely misleading and, in the end, really very foolish.  Religion is not about life after death..... it is about meaningful living right now and into tomorrow..... that time line may go on for eternity but the truth is we don't know that we'll live until the next sale at Joseph A. Banks.

If you believe that repeating certain creeds or reciting certain magical incantations will send you to heaven then I've got some e-mails from a Nigerian Princess with a lot of money to send to America that's really going to excit you!

I was talking with a recent visitor to our church right after our team had served lunch to the homeless people we care for at Bill's Place on Thursday.  As we talked about how our church tries to practice our faith, I said, "I just handed out 70 turkey sandwiches to homeless people.... Do you think they would have preferred that we just gather and pray for them?"  Of course, the guys I know want the sandwich but for me, and I suspect for many of you, handing out the sandwich is a form of prayer.  As the African proverb goes, "when you pray, move your feet."
In that I think we share a spirituality with Confucian thought that teaches a kind of inward virtue that expresses itself in social virtue and civic virtue.  If you read Confucius, you will be surprised by how often he speaks of being a gentleman but what he means by that is to become a person of character, embodying honesty, civility and avoiding hypocrisy.

He said:  "I hate those who mistake spying for wisdom. I hate those who take want of deference for courage. I hate evil speaking, cloaked as honesty."  He expected people to live in such a way that they treated one another with sincere respect.

Asian culture emphasizes courtesy but Confucius wanted it to be more than just polite deference.  He wanted it to be real.  He said:  "A man of worth can always talk, but talkers are not always men of worth."

Like Jesus, Confucius eschewed personal wealth and made fun of people who pretended to be scholars or political leaders just to make money.  He said, "Living on coarse rice and water, with bent arm for pillow, mirth may be ours; but ill-gotten wealth and honors are to me a wandering cloud."  Which is to say, that if you learn how to live comfortably in poverty you don't have to sell your soul to bet a better living.

If I may be allowed to skip around the continents for a moment to quote a
Greek philosopher who was a contemporary of Confucius, Diogenes was visited
by another teacher, Aristippus as Diogenes was making a dinner of lentils. He
said, "If you could but learn to flatter the king, you would not have to live on
lentils."

Diogenes said, "And if you could learn to live on lentils, you would not have to
flatter the king."

Confucius was concerned with sincerity of motive.  He once said that "I have
met no one who loves the good as much as they love women."  .... Which is a
tad personal I suppose but we know what he means.  A great deal of the
hypocrisy in religion that has been disappointing to us is wrapped up in the
pretense of piety without the more substantial foundation of actually wanting to
do the right thing.

There are those who insist that Confucianism is not a religion because he does
not give lessons on eternal life, heaven and hell, and a supernatural theism but I
think that we are more likely to keep company with the likes of Confucius and
Buddha when it comes to those issues and as best I can tell, so would Jesus.

I believe that the challenge for the emerging church of the future is to be willing to boldly separate ourselves from the religious habits and practices that turn God into a divine Santa Claus in the clouds and reduce the teachings of Jesus to a kind of super spiritual ranting that is all about an unseen other world, ignoring the very real issues of our present existence.

We are not a flat-earth society engaging in magical rituals.  We move our feet when we pray.  Our most vital sacraments involve working to end poverty, to restore the earth and to create peace among nations, among families and within ourselves.

Confucius was concerned about individual character, meaningful civilization and the alleviation of suffering.... so was Buddha and so was Jesus.... And shouldn't that be what we are about as well.  And so, we keep kicking at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.