Two Ways of Seeing the World

August 26, 2012
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor


I'm going to have lunch with a couple of pastors on Tuesday.  That wouldn't be an unusual thing for most ministers, of course, but it is quite uncommon for me because, other than the retired pastors who are members of our church, I generally don't like pastors and they universally return the sentiment.  They are not bad people, I just typically don't do well in large gatherings of them.

Charles Wesley once observed during a church conference that pastors as like manure, spread around on the fields, they can do a lot of good, but piled up in one place they are just a pile of..... I think what he said was that piled in one place they raise quite a stench.... But we know what he meant.

What is unusual about this lunch that we are going to have this week is that it was my idea; in fact, it is something I've been trying to get to happen for several months.  I believe that the progressives of our community really should be in conversation with one another so I have prevailed upon our local Unitarian pastor and our local Unity pastor to break bread in the hopes that we can form a more mutually supportive relationship.

In my previous incarnation as a denominational pastor, I used to have to spend a lot of time in sort of contrived meetings with other pastors that can only be described as a waste of time.
Charles Dickens once found himself stuck in a long gathering of clergy back in the 19th century when séances were very popular.  As the meeting drug on and on, Dickens interrupted with the suggestion that they all stand in a circle, join hands, and see if they could contact the living.

Religion, on the face of it, should be a uniting force that brings people together in loving community.  However, what we more often see is the exact opposite.  Religion seems to be much more likely to divide people so that we get this well known proverb that tells us not to discuss either religion or politics in polite society because either could turn a wonderful dinner party into a bar room brawl if not an intercontinental war.

This has been an especially volatile week as Congressman Todd Akin has been trying to explain to Missouri voters the differences between legitimate rape and illegitimate rape, or "she had it coming rape."  The national weather bureau has named the hurricane threatening to disrupt the Republican National Convention this week, Hurricane Isaac, but I'm afraid that storm is only secondary to Hurricane Akin's destructive hot air.  But that is such low hanging fruit that I refuse to talk about it today.  Let's just register our disgust and move on.

One of the things that makes it difficult for progressives and traditional religious people to be in conversation is that our use of scripture is quite different.  We cherish the Bible and we read it aloud in our services, discuss it in our classes and both David and I teach college level classes in Bible but we do not understand the bible to be a document written by God.  It is a collection of the spiritual writing of ancient faith communities that were, in fact, not just in conversation with one another but often engaging in open debate with one another.

Traditionalists will try to act like they revere the Bible as the owners manual for a human soul but of course, if you want to believe that the Bible is God's word on how we are to live you either have to avoid reading it or allow yourself to be exposed to a God who has more conflicting personalities than Sybil.

Dr. Adams and I recently attended a meeting of all of the churches involved in the community's shared food pantry at Crosslines.  We were informed that the Kitchen, which operates the other large food pantry in town, was no longer going to be giving out groceries so that they could focus on their homeless services.  Which means that our volume of clients at Crosslines may double in the next month.

Now, there are about 300 member churches in the Council of Churches and they try to get a church to cover one day a month at Crosslines but they can't get enough churches to do it so we cover two days a month..... and we are not a member of the Council of Churches because, evidently, we don't believe in Jesus enough for them to consider us to be a Christian organization.  However, even though we are not as big as some of the Sunday School classes in the churches that can't find enough volunteers to cover one day at Crosslines, we cover two.  And so, at the prospect of doubling the number of hungry people we serve, I raised my hand and asked a number of detailed questions about schedules, food supplies and the need to increase the number of volunteers.

You would have had to have been there to believe the patronizing answer from a member of their board who told me that I just had to believe what the Bible says and have faith that the Lord will provide.  But, since their three hundred member churches can't cover the 22 days a month that Crosslines is open and they need us to cover two days.... Just as at Bill's Place, we need only five of the more than 400 churches in town to take a day a week to feed the unsheltered homeless and we have to take two days a week because they can't find five churches that will do it......  I accept that they believe that the Lord will provide, it's just that based on our experience over the past few years, I'm starting to worry that they think that we are the Lord.

Which brings us down to the real dividing point between progressives and traditionalists.  Traditional Christians are very concerned with orthodoxy, believing the right things.  Progressives are very concerned with orthopraxy, or doing the right things.  I am not disinterested in matters of belief.  In fact, I spend a great deal of time in study for both writing and teaching every week but my beliefs are informed by a commitment to orthopraxy.  And I would not suggest that traditionalists are not concerned with orthopraxy, it is just that they place so much emphasis on beliefs that they excuse themselves from the kind of commitment to social justice that our current circumstances demand.

It has taken me a while to get to it, but we actually do have a biblical text today, in fact, we have two.  For the most part, the gospels of Matthew and Luke copy the older and shorter gospel of Mark and just add to it from their various sources...... except for where they feel the need to correct Mark.

The older gospel, Mark, reports that when the disciples were unhappy about people using the name of Jesus who were not a part of their narrowly defined group that Jesus told them to lighten up..... he said that if these other people were not specifically arrayed against them that they should consider them to be a part of their own community...... telling them to expand their tent to cover those who might not be exactly the same as they were.

A generation later, when the critics of the early church might have become rather more contentious, Matthew edits Mark to say the exact opposite.  Where Mark portrayed Jesus as being very generously inclusive, Matthew insists that Jesus was very exclusive, saying that if others were not precisely with them, that they should be seen as being against them..... literally, that they are enemies.

Both passages are in the Bible.  Both are gospel texts and both are attributed to Jesus..... but both of them cannot be true, or right, or, to put it in the language we used earlier, both cannot be orthodox.

Traditionalists will insist that the Bible is the reliable word of God and so, they have to read these two passages and pretend that they do not say the exact opposite things or, and this is more likely, they don't read either passage and remain blissfully unaware of the conflict.

We read them and we recognize that these are two different voices trying to claim that their perspective is the perspective of Jesus.  Matthew insists that Jesus stands for something very specific, very concrete, and he will not put up with relativism... and I can resonate with that perspective.  I find most of religious language to be dripping in superstition and magic and I want to separate myself from it as far as possible.

But this other voice wants to portray Jesus as being less concerned about orthodoxy, they want us to see Jesus as being more inclusive, less judging, less harsh.  Mark's Jesus wants us to have lunch with Barney Frank and Todd Akin, at the same time.

I'm more comfortable with the exclusiveness of Matthew's Jesus because I am tired of putting up with religious people who seem to me to be simultaneously morally irrelevant and intellectually dim but I fear that way lies monsters.  Though it is not my preference, in my heart, I believe that Mark's Jesus comes closer to what is right.

So often when people visit with us here, they tell me that they are looking for a church where they feel comfortable.  And on the one hand I can appreciate that..... I don't think that women should have to tolerate misogynistic religion..... I don't think that gay people should have to tolerate homophobic religion.... And I don't think that people who take the Bible seriously should have to tolerate a lot of silly magic and superstition.... But.... If you think that you should be comfortable in church then I don't think that you understand what church is for.

When reading the Bible and given a choice between a Jesus who makes us uncomfortable and a Jesus who confirms our prejudices, in almost every case, we should pay more attention to the Jesus who makes us uncomfortable.

I remember hearing Scott Peck say once that the only reason to get married is for the tension..... which may say a lot about his marriage.... But what he meant, of course, is that we should not look for a life partner who coddles us but rather we should look for a life partner who challenges us.

I'm saying, you should look for a church that challenges you.... That not only makes you think but that makes you want to be a better person..... not to tell you what to believe but to goad you into action.  We do not seek the Jesus who makes us feel comfortable but rather the one with whom we feel some tension.... Some moral challenge.... Who pushes us not simply to surround ourselves with those who agree with us but to open our minds and hearts to include those who, even though they may be wrong, force us to stretch our minds, clarify our beliefs and exercise our ability to love those who sometimes are not easy to love.

We may say that are followers of Jesus but I have to warn you that there is more than one Jesus in the gospels and you will have to choose which one you want to take seriously..... it would really rather not, but I believe that I need to try to choose to follow the one who asks me to include more people at the lunch table rather than the one who gives me permission to just sit down with those who are the most like me.  I'm not trying to tell you who which one you need to choose but I am telling you that you need to make a conscious choice, because, if you don't make a choice, you will always defer to the path of least resistance and I don't think you are likely to find Jesus on that path.  That's just my opinion, I could be wrong......but we all know that I'm not.

God had a Wife

August 19, 2012
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Dr. David Trobisch

Proverbs 9:1-6
1 Wisdom has built her house,
She has hewn her seven pillars.
2 She has slaughtered her animals,
She has mixed her wine,
She has also set her table.
3 She has sent out her servant girls,
She calls from the highest places in the town, 4 "You that are simple, turn in here!"
To those without sense she says, 5 "Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. 6 Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight."

Did you know that according to some Biblical writings in the beginning when the world was created God had a wife? She was there from the very first moment, even before light, earth, heaven and time existed.

The name of this woman was Chokmah in Hebrew, or Sophia in Greek, or as we call her in English: Wisdom.

I am not saying this to annoy Bible loving Christians, I am simply repeating what anyone can read, let me quote:

8:27 When God established the heavens,
I, Wisdom, was there,
When he drew a circle on the face of the deep, 28
When he made firm the skies above,
When he established the fountains of the deep, 29
When he assigned to the sea its limit, (...)
When he marked out the foundations of the earth, 30
I was beside him,
Like a master worker;
Proverbs, chapter 8, verses 27-30.

When the world was created, Sophia, Wisdom, was there. God had a companion in creation, a woman who stood at his side "like a master worker" (Proverbs 8:30).

The Bible doesn't always say what we expect. Does it?

For 12 years I taught at a small seminary in Maine. I am not an ordained minister, but I never turned down an invitation to preach. My first invitation came from a small community church in Smithfield, close to Waterville.

After the service a lawyer shook my hand and said, "This was good. You gave us food for thought." And then he added, "And I am so glad that you don't come every Sunday!"

I am a Bible scholar. I do not baptize children, I do not marry couples, I do not have to visit people in the hospital, and do not do funerals. I do not tell people what to believe or who to vote for. And I am skeptical of those who do. I am skeptical of those who know so much about God that they always seem to know what is right and what is wrong.

My role is different. I confuse people. My trade - Bible scholarship - is not faith based. When I go to conferences, I don't know if my fellow scholars are Catholic or Mormons or Jews or Muslims or atheists. Like Sophia-Wisdom I and tens of thousands of other Bible scholars in America and all over the world, we minister to the public. We serve not only those who sit in the pews, we serve everyone.
And believe me, there are people out there who are tired of being treated as if they were stupid. They feel that organized religion has all too often insulted their intelligence. They are told to believe what they do not understand and to do what they are told. But they want to understand! They want to do what they think is right!

Believe me, there are people who have seen that God does the good and the bad. And they ask: Why? What is the point? They are not afraid to ask the hard questions.

These people run our hospitals, they work in our courtrooms, they engineer our bridges, airplanes, and cars. We trust them with our lives every single day. They want to know more: About the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and they will even sit down with a scholar for two and a half hours on their evening off and read Josephus.

They have heard the call of Sophia--Wisdom who is shouting from the high places in the city: Grow up! Use your intelligence! There is life before death! Follow your own insight!

I often wish I had a little camera with me and I could show you what I see when I go and do my lectures, seminars or workshops. Often participants react surprised, when they hear me talk about what is common knowledge in Bible scholarship. But rarely are they shocked, and almost never do they turn away. Their interest is sparked, eyes light up, they want to know more, when they hear, for example, that in some books of the Bible God has a female consort at his side.

They understand the difference between history and stories. Remember - these people run our hospitals, work in our courtrooms, and engineer our cars. They deal with complicated matters every day.

They understand that story tellers take liberties, that stories in and outside of the Bible work with humor, imagination and irony. They understand that the experience of God differs from faith community to faith community; that the experience of God differs from individual to individual. They realize that God says different things to different people.

I also know that many of us experience God as a tiny voice that commands us to do certain things and not to do others. Like a GPS device this voice always seems to know where we are, where we are supposed to go, and what the fastest way is to get there.

And when we veer off the narrow path, we will hear the voice loud and clear: Recalculating. Recalculating. Make a U-turn!

Like in the story of Adam and Eve in Paradise. God said: Don't eat from this tree - or you will be punished.

Do you remember the name of the tree? It was called the tree of wisdom, the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

So, when the woman saw that the tree would make her wise (Genesis 3:6), she took from its fruit and ate and also gave some to her husband.

But didn't we hear in today's scripture reading wisdom shouting out: "Come, eat of the bread I made, drink of the wine I mixed, and lay aside your immaturity"?

Grow up! There is life before death! Trust your own judgment!

Follow the path of your own insight!

How could both be correct? How could it be right to blindly follow God's rules and commands and at the same time could it be right to trust your own intelligence?

How can both go together?

I don't know. Remember: I am a scholar. My role is to confuse. And I am not going to lie to you about the Bible.

But I suspect that both positions to follow God's commands and to follow your own insight I suspect that both positions are true.

I will end with a Midrash,  the old Jewish practice to comment on a problem in the Biblical text with the help of a story.

A Story, A Story!
(Response:) Let it come, let it go!
...
End of the story. Amen.

Yeah, Right, Get Over Yourself

August 12, 2012
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor

1 Kings 19:4-8                        
⁴But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: "It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors." ⁵Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, "Get up and eat." ⁶He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. ⁷The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, "Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you." ⁸He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.

Over the past year our church has gone from being a small progressive outpost in an otherwise pretty ferociously conservative city to being, in a way, two congregations.  We have our seated congregation here in Springfield who have purchased and maintained this building and who have created a very respectable outreach to the poor of this community while offering great adult religious education and progressive witness in the Ozarks.  And we have a far flung congregation who join us via our YouTube and iTunes channels, usually amounting to more than two thousand downloads per week.

I spend a significant amount of my work week answering correspondence from our web based church and feeding thoughts and rants to our page on Face Book that is called, "The Emerging Church."  As this congregation has evolved there have been two things that I've noticed that have been very surprising.  The first is that our video's outnumber our podcasts in popularity by nearly ten to one.  I don't know why anyone would sit at their computer and look at a corpulent cleric week after week when they could just download the audio to their phone and listen to the message.
They live all over the world, in Asia, Africa, South America, Europe and Austrailia but demographically I have noticed that the two largest identifiable groups of people we have viewing are pastors and atheists.

That may sound odd at first but honestly I understand it.  Being a progressive thinking pastor in a denominational church can be like being mentally enslaved.  Many have written to me saying that our congregation gives them hope and I hope with them that the mainstream church can be transformed before it dies in irrelevance entirely.

But the atheists group is interesting to me in a different way.  They often feel obligated to self identify as an atheist before saying anything complimentary.
Just this week, I heard from dozens of self described atheists, you can read many of them posted in the comments section on our YouTube channel.
They are often very flattering of me and of us, though most are tinged with a sense of hopeless isolation.  It is as if they are saying to me, "You and I get it but no one else does."

If I am right about what I see here, the isolation they feel, the sense that they have a rational world view and they are surrounded by people imprisoned in misinformation, superstition, magical thinking and fear based politics.... Then, in fact, the atheist group and the group of pastors are probably here for about the same reason.

You feel as if you are very nearly or entirely alone.  You have your eyes opened to the real justice issues of life, you see the ravages of poverty, the discrimination against racial minorities, gay people and the desperation of the sick who cannot afford health care..... and then you see the news..... just at the suggestion of a radio talk show host that invites people to stand up for bigoted prejudice and millions of people across the nation line up at Chick-fil-A to cast their vote.

The budget cuts recommended by Paul Ryan would turn Medicare into a voucher system telling sick elderly people to go try to buy private insurance......when it is obvious that handing the elderly sick a cyanide pill makes as much sense as giving them an insurance voucher.  The budget plan is so cruel to the poor and so favorable to corporations that a bunch of nuns came out of their convents and started a nation wide tour on a bus to talk to voters and candidates about morality.....

And, of course, the Vatican told them to stop it and go back to their convents and talk about why women shouldn't use birth control or get abortions.
And nearly every pastor knows what that feels like..... anything that smacks of the radical claims of the gospel.... Anything that inspired you to go to seminary in the first place, when you try to talk about those things you are told by your bishops and your presbyters and board members not to talk about politics.... Not to offend those whose personal beliefs might be pro war, pro business, or pro slavery....just don't say anything that matters or you might get fired.

In our scripture text from I Kings, Elijah has run away.... He left the ministry.... He left the church.... He is hiding from everyone and lies down and says to God, why not just go ahead and kill me now.... Nothing makes any sense anymore.

If you looked under the bushes in that part of the wilderness, you are likely to find embittered pastors and cynical atheists under every bush.  The most recent issue of Newsweek has an article in it entitled, "America the anxious."  There are no jobs for the unemployed.  The national debt threatens our future.  Education is becoming too expensive for the middle class to consider.  Wages are stagnant and health care costs are rapidly rising.  People who had planned to retire can't afford to.....shoot, even though some people are still screaming about illegal immigration, the fact is that there are more immigrants leaving the United States than are coming here because there is no work here either.

So Elijah does what Mitt Romney suggested.... He "self deported."  John Shelby Spong says that the fastest growing religious community in the United States is the church alumni society..... people are self deporting from church too.  Churches either insult your intelligence or insult your morals.

When people who watch my sermons regularly tell me that they are atheists, I have to believe that what they are saying is that they no longer believe in the moralizing, guilt producing, threatening, supernatural deity who is the imaginary friend of Fundamentalists.  Of course, we don't believe in that god either.  I'm just not willing to believe that once you reject the "heaven or hell" gamble or the anthropomorphic super Santa in the clouds that I am then willing to run into the wilderness and die.

A couple of people write to me every week to say, "If you had been my pastor years ago, I would not have left the church."  Which, I know, they mean as a compliment but, darn it, if you aren't writing from the cancer ward why are you talking about yourself in the past tense?  There is nothing special about me.... I'm not doing anything you couldn't do.

The desert is littered with prophets hiding under bushes, filled with self pity because your Sunday School teacher told you a bunch of myths that turned out to be lies, or your parents used guilt, shame and fear to keep you from having sex and using drugs and now you want your church offering money back.  The wilderness is full of preachers who have given up.... They wouldn't say that they have given up.... They sit under their scrub bush and think very sophisticated and well informed liberal thoughts and as long as the universe is just between their ears, they are just fine.... Smug, self righteous.... And pretty much worthless.

In this very metaphorical text..... let go of reading the tales of the prophets in the Old Testament as history... they are not historical... they are sermons.... Listen to the story as a sermon and try to see what the point of the sermon is.

The prophet has run into the wilderness to die and an angel appears to him and tells him to get over himself and go back to town and get to work..... you have to be able to hear through the religious language, .... He had gone out there to die of hunger and thirst and the angel brought him water and food and said, "Eat your fried chicken and drink your sweet tea because you have a lot of work ahead of you and you are going to need your strength."

I understand that saying you are an atheist is a way of protecting yourself from the disappointments that have marked your family and your religious history and I'm not asking you to believe in what you cannot see and what no one can know..... I'm asking you to open your eyes..... look at the sky, the sea, the land.... Look at the trees, the rivers, the people, the children, the elderly.  Can't you see the disabled and the sick?  Can't you see the emptiness in the eyes of teenagers who have lost hope, who cannot get an education and cannot earn a living wage.  Can't you see the elderly greeting at Walmart, carrying out groceries at Harter House, sweeping the floors in hotels because they can't retire and they can't give in to their aching feet, sore back and chest pains because as soon as they stop they will die.

You can't see God but unless you are blind you can see the suffering around you and I'm telling you that the separation you may feel from those people is just an illusion.  You are those people.  Call that spirit that connects you to our polluted earth and our impoverished humanity God and if you can't believe in that God then you have let your heart turn into a cold hard place and you are as good as dead.

Pastors.... As denominational budgets have diminished, they have had to lay off and consolidate jobs and most of the best and the brightest have been shoved out of the nest because when resources get scarce the mean and the dishonest will find a way to survive and those of good intent will likely become unemployed.  Your church structures will not save you but then you didn't enter the ministry to serve church bureaucracy did you?

Some of you need to get your head out of the clouds and a lot of you need to get your head out from between your legs.  We need your education, your experience, your ability to write, to speak, to inspire, to lead.... But if you have allowed cowardice to make your decisions for you then all of your talents are just being wasted.

On Tuesday there will be thirty or forty of us gathered in front of Senator Blunt's office to protest his desire to keep women and the elderly from getting health care and he won't pay a bit of attention to us and we won't accomplish anything other than a few dozen good hearted people will spend an hour together.  But if everyone would just come back out of the wilderness.....if hundreds of pastors came and they brought a few dozen church members with them.... If we had a crowd of thousands in front of his office then he would come out and want to have his photo taken with us.

In any number of efforts regarding war, poverty, pollution, discrimination, crime, racism, sexism, declining employment and compensation.... It is true, things are getting worse and when you are through with your pitty party and are ready to get back to work, we can change things.... And when you get back from the wilderness and are ready to take to the streets to make a difference you will find us there waiting for you because we're not afraid and we're not going to give up.

Creating a Faith Community

August 5, 2012    Proper 13
4th anniversary of Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO  
Roger Ray, pastor          

Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-16              
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. 7But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift. 11The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, 12to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. 14We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. 15But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love.

I went a little "postal" Wednesday evening.  The whole Mike Huckabee  call for a "Chick Fil A Appreciation Day" had not shown up on my radar until some church members told me about driving past the fried chicken restaurant and saw cars lined up for blocks.  They were giving me a ride home from church that evening and I asked them to drive by our local Chick-Fil-A so that I could see if it was still going on.  Sure enough, at 9 p.m., there was still a line stretching down the road for blocks.

I was, of course, appalled but when I saw a huge campaign bus for one of our gubernatorial hopefuls here in Missouri turning off of Glenstone and taking their place in line..... well, that was just too much.  I jumped from the passenger seat of Mike and Carolyn's van and ran over to the bus and began shouting at the candidate..... "You are trying to get the hate vote?  Is that why you want to be governor?  You want to encourage people to murder gay people?  You want to export them from the USA?"

If you did not know it, the owners of Chick Fil A have donated more than $5 million to causes supporting the political decision in Uganda to execute anyone found to be gay and another group advocating for the expulsion of gay people from America.  This is hardly a free speech issue..... this is advocacy of genocide and ethnic cleansing..... a point perhaps lost on folks who were there because their right wing pastor told them to be there but certainly not lost on a political candidate for the office of governor.

Of course, Dan Cathy, the Chick-Fil-A's president says that he is not anti-gay but rather he is just, in his own words, "very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit."  Now, by that, he does not mean the Biblical view of the family in the majority of scripture.... He isn't advocating for polygamy, concubinage and having sex with slave girls as most of the Bible does but rather, he favors the more narrow implied definition in the New Testament.  Still, if he were being honest, surely we would see him trying to repeal no-fault divorce laws, or wanting to make infidelity a criminal offense, or restrict the cohabitation of unmarried persons of the opposite sex.  He has not spent a cent on those measures but has donated more than $5 million to violent anti-gay causes.... So, as in most cases when people say, "I'm not anti-gay, I'm just in favor of free speech," they're really anti-gay.

I was seething with anger but, angry outbursts are not very helpful in such situations.  I went home, dug my white alb that I reserve for baptism ceremonies out of the closet and put it on.

I then went, looking like an out of place monk, and stood in front of Chick-Fil-A until they were closed and all the cars were gone.  I didn't argue with anyone, I just smiled and passed out copies of a newspaper article detailing how the owners of the restaurant used profits to further their Neo-Nazi agenda..... but I did it in a nice way.... You would be proud of me.

I know all too well that such actions don't change anyone's mind but may I remind you of that old Civil War story about the old woman who came running off the porch of her cabin holding her broom over her head to join the army as they ran to the battle front. A young soldier said to her, "You better go home grandma, you can't do much out here with that broom."  And she replied, "Yes I can, I can show them whose side I'm on."

I know that I must have looked like a crazy man, out there all alone, but I felt that someone had to stand up for the gay people who were being so hideously maligned by this public display of homophobia.  I had to at least show them that there are Christians who don't join them in their violent hatred.

Let me ask you to take a look at the cover of your bulletin where we print the 8 points of progressive Christianity every week.  Number 3 says, "By calling ourselves progressive, we mean that we are Christians who seek community that is inclusive of ALL people, including but not limited to:  conventional Christians and questioning skeptics....Believers and agnostics, Women and men,...Those of all sexual orientations and gender identities,
Those of all classes and abilities....
The 4th point illustrates what we mean by this too as it adds that we know that the way we behave towards one another is the fullest expression of what we believe.

On this day when we are celebrating the 4th anniversary of our church's founding, I want to talk about community.  We were not named accidently, after all.  It is our intent to form, not simply a church, but an intentional community of faith.  Creating community, especially in the social environment of the 21st century, is very difficult.  We divide ourselves so eagerly along political, gender, economic class, race, language and age lines.

The famous psychiatrist, M. Scott Peck, wrote a book about building community entitled, The Different Drum.  In it, Peck argues that one of the most crucial aspects of community is that it must be ferociously inclusive.  In fact, I have heard Peck say on several occasions, to build community, you have to be tolerant of everything except for intolerance.  That is, you must push yourself to be accepting, forgiving, inclusive of especially the people with whom you disagree, the people who are different from you, the people who may even offend your sensibilities.  But the one thing that a community must reject is intolerance.

In fact, after the first time that I heard Scott Peck say that in a lecture I went to my study and looked up every time that the gospels describe Jesus as being in heated conflict with someone.  The Jesus of the gospels is known to socialize with tax collectors and sinners.... Which in our parlance is traitors and prostitutes....
He visited with, had dinner with, and partied with the people we might be afraid to be seen with but the only people he got into a shouting match with.... Indeed, the only people he told to go to hell, were religious bigots who refused to accept the people who lived on the margins of society.  He said to the Pharisees (Matthew 23): 13 'But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. 15Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Passivity does not create community.  Being neutral in ethical matters doesn't create community, it just creates victims.  It takes courage to create community.  It takes a willingness to invest energy in understanding one another, forgiving one another, loving one another.

Mega-churches fill warehouses with thousands of members who do not ever have to engage one another in conversation.  House churches self select people who are carbon copies of themselves so that they never feel the discomfort of being around someone who voted differently in the last election or who has a disability, or a sexual orientation that might make them feel slightly uncomfortable.

Real inclusivity is much dirtier business.  In a real community you live in close enough proximity to know the people around you.  You know who is unemployed, who has cancer....
You know who is divorced and who is straight, gay or bi....
You break bread with people of different races and political parties.  You disagree about issues and beliefs but you never let those things make you reject that person, unless they predicate your friendship on your willingness to join them in rejecting, judging, executing or deporting someone else.

As Karen Armstrong so clearly states: "If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, or self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology."

We have rejected the part of our religious heritage that masked cruel, unkind or violent behavior by blaming it on God.  We have forsaken the church that asked us to sit quietly and dream of heaven while those around us suffered a hell on earth.  We are striving to give birth to a faith community that is safe, that is affirming, that is inclusive, healing and prophetic.

In fact, fours years into this journey together, as we sit here in this building surrounded by thousands of pairs of shoes that will begin their journey to the poor of Nicaragua tomorrow and as you make plans for how you will once again meet and feed the homeless here in Springfield this week, I say, that you have done it.

Most weeks you generously applaud my meager effort at preaching but today, we should turn the tables because it is you who deserve applause.... You have swum against the current of religious irrelevance, you have rejected the religions of prejudice, judgment and guilt, you have sent a message or forgiveness, acceptance and justice all around the globe.
I appreciate you.  I applaude you!  I love you!