Costly Discipleship

Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor
April 29, 2012     Easter 4

1 John 3:16-24
16We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us--and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. 17How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? 18Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. 19And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him
20whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; 22and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.
23And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

 Newark, New Jersey's mayor, Cory Booker, was returning home from an interview a couple of weeks ago and noticed that his neighbor's house was on fire.  He and his two security guards knocked on the door and evacuated the residents on the first and second floor but then learned that there was another woman on the third floor.  They rushed up the stairs and found the third floor entirely engulfed in flames.

His security guards wouldn't let him enter the flames until Booker game them a direct order and they let go of him and he dove in.  They were sure that he was dead.  But, sputtering for air, with burning embers on his hand, he came out carrying the woman on his shoulder.

Now, you have to know that most folks run from a fire but it takes a person with the heart of a hero to run into a fire.  And while I don't want to take anything away from Booker's heroic and dangerous rescue, for a politician, this is almost a made for Hollywood set up.

I think that I would run into a burning building to save someone but I don't know that I would..... I mean, how many of us have ever seen a building engulfed in flames with no professional firemen around?  Booker is a hero though this daring rescue has put him in the position of being able to say to the media, "Ah shucks, it wasn't nothin no decent person wouldn't have done."

I don't know if it affects young women as much as it does little boys, but we are reared on stories of heroism and we all dream of being the one to save the damsel from distress, to disarm the bomb, to charge into the burning building to save the baby or to save the world from some mad scientist.  We imagined being Spiderman, or James Bond, Matt Dillon or even Mighty Mouse if it comes right down to it though we spend most of our lives playing the parts of Gomer Pyle or Gilligan.

Not that we would wish for more burning buildings or mad scientists but we do wish that we could be in the right place, at just the right time, to be able to say, "Ah shucks, it wasn't nothing no decent person wouldn't have done."

Five hundred years ago a Spanish knight was seriously injured while fighting very valiantly at the battle of Pamplona.  The French were so impressed with his courage that they actually carried Ignatius back to his home in Loyola to recover rather than to a French prison.  During his long months of recovery he was bored and he asked for some romantic novels to read to help him pass the time.  However, there were none available.  In those days when the printing press was still a very new invention, books were rare.  There were only two in the castle.  Once was a life of Christ and the other was a collection of the lives of the saints.

He poured over these texts and, having no wanting for ego, he kept reading about how the saints became saints and saying to himself, "I could do that." He is the only person I know of in history who actually made it his personal goal to live a life that would force the Pope, after his death.... Which is the only way you can be a Catholic saint, you know, you have to be dead.  Since he was long dead when it happened so I don't know if he derived any satisfaction from his success, but, about 60 years after Ignatius of Loyola's death, Pope Gregory XV declared him to have been a saint.

In the days of Ignatius those collections of the lives of the saints were very popular devotional books.  You can still find some around in the homes of pious Catholics and, in fact, in the early 19th century there was a Protestant version published by John Fox called "The Book of Martyrs" which paid special attention of Protestant evangelists who were killed by the Catholic Church.  In the spirit of ecumenism, I have both books.

All kidding aside, what frosted Ignatius about those collections of the lives of the saints is that his fellow Catholics seemed content to read them and considered themselves to be pious because they could recite what these saints of old had done in service of God's Kingdom.  Ignatius thought the stories should ignite some passion to get out and do the same thing.... Run into some burning buildings to save babies, disarm some bombs, capture the mad scientist, don't just sit in your room watching Spiderman and reading comic books.

I have often thought of this when I have gone to our local Martin Luther King, Jr Holiday observances.
We march down back streets so that we don't disrupt any traffic flow.  We meet in an auditorium and listen to nervous Middle School students reading their essays about Martin Luther King.  We give awards to civic groups that have organized volunteers to pick up litter by the highway and we encourage young people to "get involved."

I made myself rather unpopular at one of the planning meetings of the NAACP when I pointed out to the room, "You folks do remember that they shot Martin Luther King because of what he was saying and what he was doing."  No one gets shot for writing essays and picking up litter.  I thought it was an important historical reminder.... You can imagine my surprise when I got an email from the current NAACP president telling that it was not necessary for me to attend any more of the planning meetings. I have a real gift for making friends.... Though I don't think that's what the committee chairman called it.

We have posters around our building with quotes from Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, and Rosa Parks.  We have a big poster of that brave Chinese man standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square during the 1989 demonstrations.  Maybe Ignatius founded the Jesuit order so that he could become a saint but none of the saints and martyrs hanging on our walls did what they did so that they would be immortalized under glass in church hallways and meeting rooms.

Please don't congratulate yourself for attending the church that has pictures of social justice heroes displayed on the walls.  Don't think that you have been liberated from meaningless symbolic religion because you have progressive thoughts in your head.

We have put some distance between ourselves and our religious cousins who think that the Kingdom is just in heaven, after you die, pie in the sky by and by.  But, come on, the Kingdom is not in your head either.  I'm glad we have all gotten past our racial prejudices; I'm glad that at least at this church there is no lingering prejudice around sexual orientation or class, but surely you don't think that the battle is over?

The most famous prayer of our tradition tells us that Jesus taught us to pray for the will of God to be done on earth as it is in heaven...... on earth.... Not just in heaven and not just in between our ears but out there.... In the industrial parks, in City Hall, on Commercial St.  Alexander Campbell said that to get down on your knees and pray for anything that you will not then stand up and work for, sacrifice to make happen is an insult to God and a disappointment to ourselves.

The thing that keeps most of us from being saints, from being heroes, is there just aren't enough damsels in distress, not enough burning buildings for us to muster our courage in a single moment for a sudden burst of death defying service.  The problem is that real saints and heroes are doing things that require little bits of courage, pieces of self sacrifice, disciplined service day after day.

If being a skinny was simply a matter of forgoing all food for a day then I can tell you that I would be so thin I'd have to jump around in the shower to get wet.  The problem is that a healthy diet is a matter of making good decisions almost every day, at every meal.

Being a hero, being a saint, is not a matter of running into a burning building one evening....
It's being willing to open your wallet and buy two hundred dollars worth of food and then standing in your kitchen all day and cooking to feed our homeless friends at Bill's Place.  It's walking down the street asking people to sign petitions so we can close down these predatory lenders who are sucking the resources out of desperately poor homes and having people tell you "no," having them slam their door in your face.

It's not just that you are not prejudiced anymore; it's that you refuse to be silent when the office gossip starts up about someone who is gay or whose life is under some kind of puritanical scrutiny.  It's when you take a risk and hire someone who has a criminal record or who is just out of treatment.  Because it is not enough to wish that those in need will be warm and well fed.

I'm going to say that you don't know what it is to pray, "give us this day our daily bread," until you have just once given all of your daily bread away and you are praying for the next loaf because you don't have one.

The previous form of the 8 points of Progressive Christianity had a line in it that I was sorry to see got edited out in the most recent version.  It used to say that we acknowledged that being followers of Jesus is costly.  Because, I'm afraid, that your faith is worth about as much as you are willing to sacrifice for it.

Living With Wounds

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
April 22, 2012     Easter 3

Luke 24:36b-40
36While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." 37They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 38He said to them, "Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." 40And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.

         

The classical stage play and movie, "Fiddler on the Roof," tells the story of Tevya, a Russian Jew who has three daughters who challenge his devotion to the traditions that define what it meant to be a Jew living as a minority among a violent Christian majority.  His first daughter does not want to marry the person selected for her by the match maker, as tradition dictated, but rather she wanted to marry for love.  With humor and deep personal reflection, Tevya stretches to accept this change in their social fabric.

But then the second daughter falls in love with a political radical and Tevya refuses to give his blessing but discovers that neither his daughter nor her groom would accept his authority over them.  In the end, Tevya has to stretch a even farther to accept that his daughter had the freedom to make this choice, even over his objections.

But the good humor drains out of the play when the third daughter, Chava, decides to marry a Russian Orthodox Christian.  He seems to try but he cannot stretch that far and with great pain for both of them, Chava and Tevya's loving father-daughter relationship comes to an end.

The first time you see the play you keep thinking that there will be some reconciliation; surely it will not end that way.
In the closing scene, reluctantly, he gives her permission to write to them but it is anything but a satisfying restoration of their family.

When the writers of the screenplay first tried to market the story to movie makers they rejected it because they thought it would only be meaningful to Jewish families but they were wrong.  Fiddler has been translated into dozens of languages and everyone from Jews, to Muslims, to Christians and families removed from any particular religious heritage, can see themselves in the play because almost all of us have either left someone behind or have been left behind.

It is especially relevant for us.  Those of you who have found your way into this little congregation or who have become regular devotees of our YouTube and iTunes channels, almost all of us had to leave someone behind to get here.  You struggled with your faith.  You fought to let go of rigid constraints until your mind was freed.... What you did not know is that everyone you love does not necessary believe that your mind is your own.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said that once a mind has been stretched by a new idea never returns to its original dimensions.  Those of us who have come to a progressive understanding of our faith could no more go back to pretending to believe in incarnation, atonement, substitutionary death, the trinity and the whole heaven and hell bargain with an angry Deity, Pascal's wager, than we could go back to believing in Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy.

Letting go of the traditional religion of our youth was painful for many of us.
We learn only when we are uncomfortable; we change only when change is made necessary.
We became who we had to become, with or without our own Tevya's blessings.

Some of you have told me about relationships you have had to leave behind.  Even within families that no longer really practice their faith.... There are Catholic families that are offended that if you are going to go to church at all that you are not going to the church you are "supposed" to go to.  Some of you have grown children who have embraced a religious fundamentalism that makes it hard to visit and makes you shudder when you think about what your grandchildren are being taught.

I've been communicating with Carol, who is with us today from Kansas City, over the past several months.  She was so excited about finding a Progressive church in her state but was disappointed to discover that we are three hours away from her home.  And so she has been joining us through YouTube and reposting the sermons she has found meaningful on her own Face Book page and has discovered that by simply stating that she thinks this way, believes this way, feels embraced by this spirituality that she has been shedding friends.

I recently had a friend encourage me to let go of some of my past injuries with the attitude of a young puppy.... Saying, if you can't eat it or play with just pee on it and move on.  And there is a part of me that wishes that I could be that cavalier.  OK, you don't want to be my friend anymore because I refuse to join you in your superstitious beliefs, fine, I'll just make new friends.

But life doesn't really work that way.  And you can't really make new parents, new siblings, new children....those losses are painful and I don't think we should even pretend otherwise.
We don't want to become so hard hearted that we can lose close connections and not be hurt by the loss.

When I first moved to the Ozarks twenty years ago, I made the obligatory journey down to Eureka Springs to visit the Christ of the Ozarks, that giant statue of the resurrected Jesus sprouting out of an Arkansas mountain top.  Beyond the fact that it had been constructed by that old racist, E. B. Smith, the whole thing seemed offensive to me.  It struck me in much the way Las Vegas struck me when I visited there..... it's big, it's tacky, and it seems both very fake and manipulatively intending to get money out of me.

It has structural issues... Jesus is buried up to his knees in the mountain because once construction had begun they learned that they were going to have to put a flashing red light on Jesus' head to warn off low flying aircraft.  To avoid that Smith took the Jesus statue down to his knees so that if he were to lower his arms his knuckles would drag the ground.... Which makes him look a bit more like the KKK members who financed the original construction but I don't want to go down that path.

What strikes me about the statue that is the most theologically offensive is the fact that his image of the resurrected Jesus has no scars.  In both John and Luke, it is important to them when they are writing their metaphorical accounts of resurrection appearances that the only way to be sure that it is really Jesus is because his hands and his feet are wounded.

The resurrection does not undo the cross.  Coming back to life doesn't mean that he had not been tortured and killed.
In fact, the gospel writers seem to never tire of pointing out that his followers could not look at his face and recognize him.... His wounds were the most clear and recognizable thing about him because the wounds were real.

The past cannot be undone.  I would even argue that we should not try to be cavalier about our losses.  Our wounds are real and in a very real way, they make us who we are.  Still, as Kierkegaard said, "Life can only be lived forward though it can only be understood backward."

I have lost friends over the past decade that I thought would always be a part of my life.  There are people that I loved whose correspondence and phone calls finally slowed down to a complete stop.  I don't know how much of that is because of differences in theology or differences in the way that I have understood our recent wars, the whole complex of economic and moral crises that relate to my social justice work.  Sometimes it was a newspaper article and sometimes it was just easier to write me off than it was to put up with trying to be my friend.  I know that most of you have been similarly wounded.

Pastorally, I want to say this.  Never give into to revenge.  Retaliating with rejection, as well as it works for puppies, is beneath who we are striving to be.  There is a saying from the Desert Fathers that teaches that the fire you kindle against your enemies will burn you.

We cannot allow ourselves to just bleed arterially for the rest of our lives.  We can't obsess or forever grieve those losses but there is nothing to be gained in trying to protect ourselves behind a wall of resentment.

You won't often catch me quoting Max Lucado but I like his definition of "forgiveness" where he says, "Forgiveness is unlocking the door to set someone free and realizing the prisoner was you."

The wounds are real and they will always be a part of you but you have the right, in fact, you have the obligation to be true to yourself.  The Buddha taught that there are "Three things cannot long be hidden:  the sun, the moon, and the truth."

You don't have to pretend to be what you are not to make other people more comfortable.  You don't have to change them and you can always be the one who is ready to reconcile, the one who is willing to go the extra mile, the one who will suspect judgment, forgive past wrongs and to be the healer of broken relationships but you don't have to deny the truth.

As Tevya and his wife prepare to flee Russia to go live with family in Chicago he gives his estranged daughter permission to write to them and then the curtain falls.  What happens after that is up to the audience member to decide.... I'm inclined towards optimism tempered with a heavy dose of reality orientation.

But given a choice between compliance with a falsehood that is popular or embracing a truth that is cherished only by a few, then I pray that I will always choose to stay in the path in search of the highest and best of truth and I'll willingly take my wounds.

An Experiment in Collective Ownership

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
April 15, 2012   Easter 2

Acts 4:32-35
The Believers Share Their Possessions
32 Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. 33With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. 34There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. 35They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

As much as we are talking about religion in this year's presidential election, I want to go on the record and say that even if Jesus of Nazareth were running for office this year, I would not endorse him.  While I would certainly be glad to have a president who would not send our armies into occupy foreign nations on trumped up charges and exaggerated threats, I would still want a president who would be willing to defend our borders if attacked.

While I think that our current policies that end up imprisoning a huge portion of our population is wrong headed and frequently immoral, I'm pretty sure that if Jesus was president that he would just unlock all of the prison doors and forgive everyone with a "go and sin no more" admonishment that just might not work in every case.

Moses and Muhammad were not just religious leaders; they were also heads of state.  Confucius was a government official.  Even the Buddha had to give leadership to a monastic community. Jesus was more like a speaker at an occupy movement event.  He had complaints about injustice and very high values for social ethics but he did not offer a workable program.

Telling people to sell all they own and give it to the poor is an admirable idea. Just imagine how, if Bill Gates or Warren Buffet actually did just that, the world would be different, really different, for a week or two.  If we all did it, the world's economy would collapse and there would be no more agriculture, manufacturing, construction or health care.

 My high school history teacher, Mr. Brown, liked to say, "Socialism is based on idealism.  Capitalism is based on realism."  As a follower of the teachings of Jesus, I am convinced that it is wrong that some people live in mansions and some people live under bridges.  I am outraged that some can dine as if they were monarchs while others are rooting through the garbage in dumpsters looking for something to eat.  I think that it is really wrong that some face old age and illness with the confidence of knowing that they will be cared for with the best that science and technology can bring to the table while most people face their golden years with fear and dread.

If Republicans and Democrats were actually virtuous their sole concern would be in discerning a path towards providing the greatest good for the largest number of people.  The disgusting thing about partisan politics is that it so often appears that neither party is concerned with anything more than gaining or retaining power.  Capitalist countries in the west need to be infused with some of the idealism of socialism just as socialist countries in the east are embracing a great deal of the pragmatism of the western economies.

What we, who are inspired by the idealism of Jesus and Moses and Mohammed and Buddha and Confucius hope for is that capitalists and socialists will figure out a way to decrease human suffering, to give housing to everyone, and make health care both effective and available to everyone, and to give people as much freedom as we can give them without exposing them to too much risk of violence.

Jesus didn't have a workable plan but he sure has a great goal.  In our reading from Acts today we see Luke's account of a little experiment in community ownership of property.  The Easter event, according to Luke, had such a huge impact on the early church that at least for a short time there was a near total collapse of ego boundaries.  The early faith community was so united that they no longer considered their property or their money to be exclusively their own but they freely shared with anyone who was in need.

A discerning Biblical historian might note that a few years later Paul was traveling around the churches of the Greek world asking for donations to help out the poor of Jerusalem where the people were totally impoverished.  I'm not sure that it is fair to draw a straight line from Luke's account of collectivism to Paul's charity work but in terms of real economy, what those of us who are inspired by Jesus really want is not for everyone to sell everything they own but for those of us who have jobs and homes and health insurance to work together to make sure that everyone has a chance to have a job, a home and health care.

I believe that on anyone's short list of the greatest threats to western civilization in 2012 is the income disparity between the rich and the growing numbers of poor people in our nation.  That is why, last fall, I put on a Guy Fawkes costume and stood with others in Occupy demonstrations but even at our first big event in Springfield, there was a guy with a megaphone participating in the demonstration who was spouting Glenn Beck style condemnations of the federal government and suggesting that we refuse to use currency and trade only in gold.
 I have tried to talk to this guy at subsequent meetings and I will employ the full force of my pastoral counseling training to conclude that he is completely nuts.  Occupy encampments around the country often include elements of a Woodstock type gathering with open use of illegal drugs, lots of sex and irresponsible conduct.... So much so they look almost like a Secret Serve detail on duty in South America.... But I digress.

We will focus on things like the litter left behind when an occupy protest is dispersed, or even on a moral midget in a police uniform pepper spraying peaceful protesters at point blank range but as furious as we may be about these things we must not fall into ad homonym and lose sight of the real issue.

The issue is the income disparity that is choking the future out of this generation through unbridled greed and irresponsible economic policies.  And while I, like Jesus, am neither an economist nor a political scientist, I emphatically agree with Gandhi who said that there is more than enough for the world's needs but not enough for the world's greed.

Where the idealism of socialism and the pragmatism of capitalism intersect, where the values of spiritual leaders and the authority of politicians must over lap is that we cannot tolerate any circumstance where gluttony and hunger are expected to peacefully co-exist side by side.  As President John Kennedy once said, "Those who oppose peaceful social transformation will make violent social change necessary."

Americans can be very pig headed.  Most nations of the world figured out how to bring slavery to an end without a civil war, but not us.
Western European countries have managed to blend their economic systems to make health care and housing available to everyone and even China is blending their economic systems to raise the standard of living of their population.

At a recent economic conference one Chinese official was asked by a reporter if China was not abandoning their commitment to communism in this global market.  The official thought for a moment and replied, "China will do what we must to grow our economy and whatever we do, we will call it socialism."

That may seem a bit hypocritical but I like the idea.  We who are motivated by the compassion of a spiritual life desire to see the greatest amount of good for the largest number of people and you can call it whatever you want.

I will never endorse a candidate or a political party but I will say this, anyone who does not have a plan to elevate the living circumstances of the poor, provide health care to those presently excluded from proper health care.... Anyone who doesn't have a vision for how to eradicate hunger, homelessness and unemployment, anyone who is not driven with a passion to protect vulnerable children and the elderly, that person doesn't have the moral character to hold public office.....and neither the threat of crucifixion nor any amount of pepper spray will make the people of faith give up their hope for justice.

More than Switching Dead Bodies

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
April 8, 2012   Easter

John 20:11-18
11But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; 12and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 13They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." 14When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." 16Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher). 17Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" 18Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

I'm not sure it is an apology but I at least want to acknowledge to our visitors today and to those of you joining us on YouTube and iTunes that this may be about the strangest Easter sermon you have ever heard.

I remember hearing a lecture delivered by Brite Divinity School homiletics professor, Joey Jeter, several years ago in which he was berating preachers for delivering such dull and horrible Easter sermons when, in fact, Easter is not only the church's traditionally largest crowd but also the central witness of the faith.  Frankly, I couldn't have agreed with him more.  I had heard a lot of bad Easter sermons and I had delivered a lot of bad Easter sermons.  In fact, I had heard Joey Jeter deliver an uncommonly bad Easter sermon.

The problem was not that every preacher in the room was so intimidated by the larger crowd but, in fact, the problem is the message itself..... when you start with the premise that we are all so bad that God had to kill himself and then rewards us for being willing to believe that outrageous claim with eternal life in heavenly bliss, then your sales pitch is already on pretty shaky ground.

You cannot reasonably fault the gathering of preachers for not being able to successfully sell that story to a modern audience.  The whole notion of substitutionary death, which may have appealed to an ancient culture still familiar with animal sacrifice to appease demonic gods, only stuck in western culture because we spent centuries promising children that they would burn in hell if they didn't believe it and that form of cruel mistreatment of children just doesn't have legs in the modern era and for that we can be thankful.

But the traditional church, faced with the fact that its central message was losing its power in our generation decided to try to reinvigorate the church by infusing the old message with fresh contemporary religious music and to illustrate bad theology with video clips and a little high tech razzle dazzle, supplemented with a great basketball program and a Starbucks in the lobby.

All of which rather reminds me of mortuary sciences.  You know, when you walk up to the casket of a deceased neighbor and someone says, "They look just like they were sleeping,"..... and you are not allowed to say, "Actually they look dead to me and more than that, it looks like he is wearing way too much makeup!"

The church tried to switch a dead message with a different body.... Or to gussy up the old cadaver with convincing lighting and makeup and, by and large, discerning people just aren't buying it.

The cover of this week's Newsweek magazine shows an image of Jesus wearing casual street clothes and standing in a busy New York street.  The cover bears the caption, "Forget the Church, Follow Jesus" which is the choice more and more of us are making.

Historical Jesus scholarship of the past 200 years has left us with little doubt that the real Jesus was killed by the Roman government, not because he was a divine blood offering but because he was a threat to the security and authority of the state.  He was an advocate for the poor.  He was in conflict with the economic and government systems which abused the poor and vulnerable, the sick, the widow and the orphan.  He challenged the dominant religious system's focus on piety and instead taught radical compassion, forgiveness and love.

The later church and the much later empire all but extinguished the real message of Jesus that got him killed and replaced that message with a lot of religious doctrines about atonement, redemption and after-life salvation but that is not the message of Jesus and those of us in the progressive movement are tired of trying to square the message of Jesus with the message of Constantinian religion.

The real message of Easter, if you take the metaphor seriously, is that the empire killed Jesus but the message did not stay in the tomb.  The message of Jesus cannot be killed.  You cannot kill an idea.  You cannot imprison a message.

You look at the creeds that emerged from the Empire's meeting at Nicaea.... It is all about the virgin birth, the crucifixion and the resurrection but not a word about what Jesus taught.  They could not keep the message in the tomb in Jerusalem and so the empire put it in a much more secure tomb, the tomb of the church, the tomb of the creeds.

In his Newsweek article, Andrew Sullivan, references the opinion of Thomas Jefferson; that the teachings of Jesus were buried in the embellishments of the evangelists like "diamonds" in a "dunghill," glittering as "the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered" to the world.

What was literarily obvious to Thomas Jefferson has been more substantially proven by later Biblical historians.  And even if you are reticent to reference the miracle accounts and all of the substitutionary death, incarnation and creedal beliefs of both scripture and the church as a dung heap.... Still, you have to at least treasure the diamonds that are the teachings of Jesus.

We don't have a big beef with traditional Christians if only they will also listen to what Jesus taught.... But, to use Jefferson's words, most of the church keeps trying to preach the dung hill while they ignore the diamonds..... and that's something we're not willing to even play along with any longer.

Jefferson cut those "diamonds" out of his Bible and pasted them together as a much slimmer version of the Christian message and it was not just for his own purposes but he had his heavily edited version of the gospels reprinted at tax payer expense and copies were given to every member of Congress.... Something that would have led to impeachment in our era but people were much more open minded 200 years ago than they are now.

Jesus did not come to earth to be a sacrifice for our sins but he was killed because he fought against the poverty, injustice, judgment and the cruelty of the world and if you are willing to be a follower of Jesus then you can expect some of the same treatment that he received.  Thankfully, crucifixion has gone out of vogue but imprisonment and persecution have not.

The application of the teachings of Jesus to our day, once rescued from the dung heap of religious language and superstition, drives the progressive church to be concerned about matters of international peace, about poverty, about prejudice and oppression and violence and about protecting the environment.  We will either address the teachings of Jesus to those issues in the 21st century or the church will go out of existence and, frankly, if we fail to aggressively address those issues, we should go out of existence.

But we can expect to meet fierce opposition.  Many of you are familiar, I am sure, with the case of Tim DeChristopher, an environmental activist in Utah.  In 2008, at the end of the Bush administration, the Bureau of Land Management was holding an auction of oil and mineral rights on federal lands near national parks.

DeChristopher and others became aware of the auction which had been set up in disregard for the legal standards governing those lands, so DeChristopher attended, registering himself falsely as a bidder and bid nearly $2 million dollars for some of the mineral rights.

Of course, he didn't have any money, he was just trying to call attention to the illegal event.  He embarrassed the Bureau of Land Management and so, even though bidders often can't come up with the money they pledged, they decided to make an example of this environmental activist and he was charged and sent to prison.  His continued writing and testifying to the press has now resulted in an undisclosed member of Congress having him secretly moved into solitary confinement so that he can no longer leak stories to the media.

The people DeChristopher was outbidding for these illegal oil and mineral rights were none other than the infamous Koch brothers of Kansas.... Whose political clout is suspected of being behind having DeChristopher denied his rights as an American citizen.  As I said, crucifixion is out of vogue but they keep trying to put the message back into the tomb.

I hate conspiracy theorists and I have walked out of very many liberal political meetings when people start to go off the deep end.  The only good reason to be a liberal is to be open minded enough to embrace the truth, no matter what the consequences may be but no one should be so open minded that their brains fall out.  Scaring one another with outrageous rumors of political power abuses only serves to marginalize the movement.

But I will tell you something today that is absolutely true.  Last month President Obama signed an innocuously named bill, HR 347, entitled, "Federal Restricted Building and Grounds Improvement Act."  That sounds kind of like it is all about trimming hedges and mowing the grass around federal buildings doesn't it.  But it is better known as the "Anti-Occupy Bill" because it appears to have been aimed at giving police the authority to arrest and imprison anyone involved in the Occupy movement.  This year, as spring brings back the protests against the massive income disparity that is turning America into a third world economy with a tiny aristocracy and a massive peasant, protests that we participated in legally last year are now deemed to be illegal.

In Jefferson's day, which was certainly more dangerous than our own, democracy was protected by a bill of rights that guaranteed freedom of speech.
Now, in the 21st century, the right of citizens to peacefully assemble and protest was taken away by a nearly unanimous vote of Congress.... Only three votes dissented.... Republicans and Democrats alike are afraid of the Occupy protests that will certainly resume this spring.

I would have like to have believed that our own Claire McCaskill might have helped to lead the Democratically controlled Senate to vote against this violation of free speech but it passed by general consensus in the Senate, avoiding a roll call vote that would have recorded how each member of the Senate voted.  And President Obama signed it.

There will almost certainly be people arrested this year in peaceful demonstrations, protesting the corporate control of our economy and our government.  Because, men and women, the Empire always wants to keep Jesus in the tomb.

The empire will let us out if we promise to keep the diamonds of the ethical teachings of Jesus hidden in a dung hill of bad boring hymns, incomprehensible dogmas, prayers, rituals and magical incantations but if you try to take the compassionate message of Jesus into the streets of the United States, the nation that wants to believe that it is the most freedom loving nation in the world, you may very well get to see the inside of prison cell this year.

They can imprison a corpulent cleric but they cannot entomb the truth.  We will not stand idly by and give silent consent to the abuse of the elderly, the poor, the sick, the immigrant or the mentally ill.  Protests that many of us participated in quite legally last fall may now be considered to be federal violations of law so a lot of people will be intimidated into silence.

I promise you that I will not be intimidated into silence, though I have no special desire to be arrested or imprisoned and I certainly hope that those of you still walking around outside won't forget about me and let them move me into solitary confinement as they have Tim DeChristopher.

The meaning of Easter is that the message of Jesus cannot be crucified, entombed, imprisoned or silenced as long as there is a community of faith that has the courage to rise up from the tomb and walk away from the irrelevance, magic, superstition, and ignorance that the empire wants to saddle us with.  You are not dead so, I invite you not to act like you are.

Believe the good news of the gospel.  The tomb is empty.... The tomb is empty because the church refused to play dead!

The Passion Narrative as Archetypal Story

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
April 1, 2012    Passion Sunday



Those of us in progressive churches, along with our predecessors in the Liberation theology movement, are primarily motivated by the ethical and social justice teachings of Jesus.  Evangelicals and most traditional Christians, as is evidenced in the traditional creeds of the church, are not as interested in what he said as they are interested in what was said about him as a sin offering who repaired their relationship with an angry God.

But, to be honest, neither of these two camps get everything they are hungry for out of the gospels.  The oldest of the four gospels, Mark, is only 16 chapters long and nearly half of it describes events that take place between Palm Sunday and Easter.  Why does Mark use so much precious space in telling us so many details of the events around Jesus' death?

The easy answer is that his agenda was not our agenda.  Written right about the time of the Roman holocaust against the population of Israel and the final destruction of the Jewish temple, Mark seems at greatest pains to hold Jesus up as an example of martyrdom.

There would eventually be an all out persecution of the young church but at the time Mark wrote, church martyrs were probably fairly few in number but they were the first saints and heroes of the church.
I grew up with Sunday School teachers telling me that early Christians met in the catacombs of Rome because their persecutors would not come into the graves to molest their meetings.  But the truth is that the catacombs became places of worship because the bodies of the martyrs were found there and early Christians came to pray at their tombs and leave tributes to them.

Mark wanted his first readers to be encouraged and emboldened by the fact that Jesus had known that going to Jerusalem would mean dying but that he went with conviction and courage where he was betrayed by his own people and executed by the government.

What Mark could not have known is that he was writing one of the most powerful archetypal stories in all of human history.  The passion narrative is a story that immediately jumps inside your heart, not because it is Jesus so much as because we have lived that story.  Jesus loved and trusted Judas.  He is positioned right beside him at the last supper and yet, for reasons of his own, he betrayed Jesus.

When we hear that Judas kissed Jesus in the garden we don't see some dark bearded Arab kissing another dark bearded Arab..... we immediately think of someone we loved who hurt us as deeply as they possibly could have.

We see ourselves in the place of Jesus, sometimes we see ourselves as Peter, turning his back on his friend, as Mary, confusing the lines between friend, follower and lover.  We have stood before Pilate or Herod, or we have stood in judgment of an innocent person, eating their flesh through gossip.

Mark's passion narrative tells such a powerful and universal story that even though they want to put their own theological spins on it, Matthew, Luke and John feel compelled to copy almost every line of it.
For Mark there is no virgin birth, there are no resurrection appearances and most of his recounting of sermons, miracles and exorcisms serve only as a lengthy introduction to the story he really wants to tell.... That the world's greatest teacher of compassion, love, justice, mercy and forgiveness was rejected by his faith community, his family, friends, countrymen and he was killed by his government but God would not stand for that injustice and the Holy One refused to allow death to be the last word.

So for me, the most powerful aspect of the story is just that.... Not that it tells me beyond dispute what happened to Jesus because as history, we can be no more certain that that than we can in any other narrative of the ancient world, but it is the message of the story that gives us hope.

When someone you loved betrayed you, you probably felt like you were going to die.  When you realized that you could not trust your government.  When your church refused to accept you, when your family went totally nuts, when you discovered that your best friends were entirely unreliable and you couldn't think of a single reason why you would want to live another day.

Mark says, that's when God stepped into your graveyard and said a Divine, "not yet.... You don't get to end his beautiful life."  Resurrection is not something that happened one Sunday morning at daybreak 2000 years ago because in the community of faith, it is something that happens every day.

Resurrection gives us the hope to survive betrayal, adversity, a corrupt judicial system, an unreliable friend or an unreliable church and we rise up to kick at the darkness again until it bleeds daylight.