Truth vs the Empire

Community Christian Church

Roger Ray, pastor

Nov. 25, 2012    Proper 29

John 18:33-3733Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” ³⁴Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” ³⁵Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” ³⁶Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” ³⁷Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Welcome, friends, to this brave new world where Twinkies and Dolly Madison cream filled cup cakes are no longer available. The combination of the legalization of pot in several states occurring at the same time as the disappearance of these snack cakes has sent many stoners into a panic and yet the world marches on.

Personally, I’m suspicious of any packaged food that I can put on the shelf and just open and eat two weeks or two years later. The disappearance of items like this from convenience store shelves is probably good for public health but I am disturbed by the classically dishonest way that it has all been portrayed in the media. 

Our age has become so pro-corporation and so anti-worker that we seem to be willing to believe even the most blatant of anti-union rhetoric from our corporate owned media.  Yes, the employees who make less than $20 an hour at Hostess were on strike because, while corporate executives were giving themselves raises of between 60 and 100%, and the CEO gave himself a 300% raise…. These executives simultaneously were trying to cut baker’s pay by 8% and cut their benefits by more than 30%. 

While filing for bankruptcy, corporate executives borrowed $160 million dollars from workers’ pension holdings…. Money they will not have to pay back in bankruptcy.  But it was those poor, low salaried workers that drove Hostess out of business!  Lily Tomlin once said, “No matter how cynical I become, I just can’t keep up.”

The morning news this week included very one sided reports on the war along the border of the Gaza Strip and Israel.  A handsome, blond Israeli reporter with a very American accent spoke forcefully on CNN about the bombing of a bus in Tel Aviv in which 15 were tragically killed.  The reporter went on to say that the terrorist bombing was being celebrated in Gaza with adults handing out candy to children in joyous reveling at the deaths of innocent civilians.  He told us that Israeli’s try to avoid civilian deaths when they strike in Gaza but the Hamas militants target Israeli civilians.

They would have us to believe that the Palestinians are morally bankrupt if not actually sub-human.  What is missing from the main stream media is any kind of honest description of the imbalance of the conflict.  There are one and half million people living in Gaza, most of whom are not a part of Hamas.  They have been under a blockade for more than 2 years. 

Yes, they are firing missiles and they probably had help from Iran to build those missiles.  But what they don’t have is a navy, what they don’t have are heavily armed F-16 fighter jets and they don’t have heavy artillery.  Yes, Hamas stoops to terrorism, but given the military might of Israel, this is not a war…. It comes closer to being murder. 

You will not hear that said on CNN or ABC or NBC but don’t assume that I am over stating the facts.  They are under stating the facts and distorting the information.  I’m not trying to be anti-Israel…. I count myself as being among those people who fell in love with Jerusalem upon my first visit there thirty years ago. 

But people, there are numbers…. Facts are not conservative or liberal…. Math is not pro-Israel or anti-Palestine….. even counting that bus bombing there had been fewer than 20 Israeli deaths in this current exchange of missiles and more than a hundred deaths in Gaza.  And even though this very handsome reporter tells us that Israel only targets military sites, among those 100 casualties there were 24 children and 10 women.  Those are facts.

 Ibrahim Shatali, a training officer in Gaza for the American Society of Friends teaches in a Palestinian youth program. He wrote this week:

My father sought refuge in Gaza after being forced to leave Majdal in 1948. He was only twelve years old when he accompanied his parents to what was thought to be a safer place.

Today, we have to go to a funeral at my cousin’s who lost his four-year-old twins and other members of his family. It is very sad. I live in my family’s home together with my five brothers, their wives, and offspring. You are talking about moving a human mass of thirty children towards the stairway every time an explosion is heard in the vicinity. The Islamic National Bank targeted this morning is 500 meters away from our home and 150 meters from the (our) office.

Every day the series of explosions begins at 6 pm and escalates until 6 am at which time we try to steal some hours of sleep. No one is exempt from this terrifying experience.

Israel has the big weapons and pro-Israeli interests own most of the big media, but you own the truth, no one can take that away from you unless you willingly give in to the empire.

Our scripture lesson this morning comes from that dramatic confrontation in John’s account of Jesus’ trial before Governor Pilate.  A lot of progressive scholars tend to be very dismissive about John’s gospel.  It is written long after the actual events and it shows little sign of being concerned about history.  If you want to know what Jesus of Nazareth said and did, most scholars would tell you that John is a pretty pour source. 

But, of course, we didn’t come here for a history lesson…. I hope you didn’t.  Most gospel accounts are not historical.  The gospels are sermons.  The gospels tell stories that employ metaphor, similes, parables and stories. 

Some of my students in my university classes object loudly that if they are not historical, why should we read them at all?  That is a very modern sort of concern.  We tend at times to be very fact literal about things without having an appropriate concern for meaning.

The gospel writers, and this is especially true for John, were not so concerned with filling the later church in on historical details…. They wanted to convey the message, the moral, the meaning of the Jesus movement.  John isn’t showing us a photograph of Jesus before Pilate, he is painting a word picture.

It is an image of a poor, uneducated, tortured, powerless peasant standing in front of the heavily armed, very powerful representative of the empire that ruled the world and owned all of the world’s wealth.  And the people who looked at this image John painted already knew what was going to happen….they knew that the powerful empire would murder the peasant in the most painful way imaginable.

The empire would seek to make an example of this poor man, nailing him up onto a post by the road like a billboard sign that reads, “This is what happens to those who defy the power of the empire.”  And yet, Jesus is defiant, unafraid, in fact, it seems, the way John wants us to see it, Jesus is the powerful one because, when all the blood is dried and the crosses are gone…. No one sings hymns to Pilate.  No one tells Pilate stories.  No one defines their lives as being followers of Pilate.

The empire murdered the peasant, but look at us, 2000 years later, we’re still talking about the peasant in a million houses of worship all over the globe.  But still, the metaphors of the gospels are not written to make you look at Jesus and say, “Wow.” Here is the truth of the matter….. these stories are not historically true because what would it matter if they were or they weren’t? They are morally true…. And not as stories about great martyrs who deserve for us to immortalize their names.

Men and women, these stories are not ultimately about Jesus….. Jesus had been dead for three generations when this was written down.  This story is about the Jesus community.  This isn’t about what happened; this is about what you can do tomorrow.  The gospel isn’t buried in the past, it is buried in your heart so that when the empire asks you to believe a lie, to be passive in the presence of violence and bloodshed….

It asks you to stand up for the truth with the poor who are being fired and whose pensions are being stolen from them, when their homes are being foreclosed, when they are being denied access to health care or housing in the name of the religion of profit. This story isn’t about Jesus in any historical sense; this story is intended for you to see yourself standing in front of the empire, for you to think about it before it happens.

The real Christian religion has always been about orthopraxy over orthodoxy.  The empire wants to turn all religions into orthodoxy…. Make it all about beliefs that exist only between your ears because that religion never threatens the empire… that religion, ultimately serves the empire.  I often call traditional Christianity “the religion of Constantine,” the religion the emporer demanded that everyone follow.  But that religion doesn’t follow Jesus, it worships Pilate and everything Pilate represented…. The religion of domination of the weak, of veneration of military and economic power.

Our religion, our faith, our practice, is to stand up before the empire, armed only with the truth.  As Gandhi said in his battle with the empire that oppressed his people:  At first they ignore us.  Then they make fun of us.  Then they fight us.  Then we win.

In the case of Jesus there may be one more step…. First they ignore us, then they make fun of us, then they fight us, then …. They torture and kill us…. But, still, then we win.

Don't Forget to Provoke One Another

Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor
Nov. 18, 2012   Proper 28

Hebrews 10:24-25
And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

People my age are sometimes heard to insist, "I may be old but at least I got to hear all of the really good bands."  I'm old enough to have seen the Beatles and gone to Woodstock but I just wasn't that cool.  But I do feel fortunate to have met some of the most amazing authors and thinkers of our time before they died.... I got to hear Truman Capote and William Buckley speak.... Though admittedly, they were both drunk at the time.  I met and talked with Scott Peck, I was frequently in Peter Gome's classroom and living room, but the most impressive now deceased person I have ever gotten to talk to in person was the American historian Howard Zinn.

I honestly believe that it was a mistake when MSU first invited Zinn to speak here in 2003.  A grad student arranged the visit and I don't think the administration knew what kind of a radical they were allowing on campus.  People at Drury heard him at MSU and arranged quickly to have him there.  Finally, in 2004, I got to hear him a third time at Harvard.

When we started this church, one of the first things we did was ask Dr. David Adams, our resident American history professor, to lead us in a year-long study of Zinn's book, A People's History of the United States.  An old proverb says that history is that it is written by the winners.  Zinn's particular gift was to write history from the perspective of the oppressed, the victims of genocide, the displaced and the poor.

His work, in my eyes, is especially important because he shows us how often the most horrible things that have ever happened have been allowed to happen because people of conscience were not organized in their opposition and ultimately, many otherwise good people were tricked by false patriotism or evil religion to murder and do other horrendous things.  It is important to note that most of history's genocides and most horrible events were legal... they were done under the direction of or the approval of the government.

Zinn said, "Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience."  We have been obedient to sick religion, obedient to the manipulations of governments, obedient to fear based prejudices, racist practices, discriminatory hiring practices and the institutions that both create and perpetuate poverty.

Every time I heard Zinn speak, I could feel a kind of collective resolve in the room, a kind of emotional electricity as people realized that they had been lied to by official histories, they had been manipulated into cooperation with oppression.... They had been raised by schools, churches and families to be obedient to rules and leaders with whom they do not morally agree.

But that kind of fire doesn't last long, not once we've all put our coats back on and walked out into the cold darkness of the real world.  It is so easy to become cynical, to be both angry and isolated......like the bad guy in the Matrix movie, Cypher, who decides that reality is too painful and he chooses to be plugged back into the Matrix, to be lost in the unreality of an imaginary world rather than face the painful realities of a world that demanded both sacrifice and courage from those who are aware of the facts.
And that, my friends, is why we go to church.  That is why we need one another.  Without a faith community, none of us can maintain our courage.... There are no long lasting solo prophets in the world..... we need prophetic communities, not individual martyrs.

Our scripture text today is, I believe, the only passage from Hebrews I have read aloud in church for 20 years.  Hebrews is one of the kind of sketchy books of the New Testament.  In ancient manuscripts it was stuck onto the end of the collection of Paul's letters.  Some argued that the Apostle Paul had written it and so it had to be preserved but apparently everyone, even in the ancient church, was sufficiently skeptical about it to put it at the end of the collection.

We are absolutely certain now that it wasn't written by Paul and if the church of the 4th century had been similarly confident, it would not have been preserved.  It's theology is mechanical and too frequently heavy handed in its moralizing.

It is a letter written in a time when the church had come under severe persecution.  Paul often talks about the church being persecuted but there had not been any wide spread persecution of the church until right at the end of Paul's life.  In fact, we presume that Paul was among those Christians executed by Nero when he blamed them for the great fire that burned up so much of Rome.

After that time, it became very dangerous to be a Christian in Rome.  Many people were dying and many more were abandoning the young church to avoid persecution.  We have a late first century letter from the Roman governor, Pliney the younger, who wrote to Emperor Trajan to ask for some guidance in the persecution of Christians.
He asks about those who are no longer Christians for, upon examination, many testified that they had not been Christian for years.  The church was falling apart in hard times.  That's when the Letter to the Hebrews was written, which accounts for most of its severity and demands for loyalty to orthodoxy.

This one passage we have before us today from chapter 10 intrigues me.  In fact, in many ways, it is one word in the passage that draws my attention. The author writes, "Let us consider how to 'provoke' one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some...."

Let us consider how to "provoke."  Now, I'm no linguist and I'll usually leave all of the translation gymnastics to Dr. Trobisch who is, in fact, one of the world's leading scholars in the field of translation.  But "provoke" is an odd word to find in a sentence about love and good deeds.  The Greek word, "par-oxus-mon" cannot be translated into what you would expect Paul, or a decent pastor for that matter to say.  It doesn't say, "let's encourage one another."  It can't be something more church like.... It doesn't say "teach" or "lead" or "inspire."

It is, in fact, a harsh word.  Sometimes it means "to cut," "to sharpen" even "to pester" or "to punch."  We find it translated as "incite," but "provoke" is the better term here.  It is a hard word for a hard time.... But really, when it comes to working for justice and mercy in the world, when is it not a hard time?

One of the very real dangers in offering our messages on YouTube and iTunes is that we immediately found members of our own congregation no longer attending very often in favor of just waiting for the upload on Sunday afternoons.

I'm glad that people are interested in hearing what I have to say.... I've always believed that the whole world has a right to my opinion.  But consider this.... What if that fateful August day in 1963 when Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered his famous, "I Have A Dream" speech that instead of 200,000 people crowding in to hear him, it had been a few dozen and everyone else just waited to see it on TV?

Black Americans sitting in their homes knew what racism was.  They knew about the Apartheid of segregated schools, the insult of "coloreds only" water fountains and toilets.  They knew.... They didn't generally need to be educated about the facts.... It wasn't that they needed to have their opinions changed or their beliefs confirmed..... they needed each other.  The real gift of Martin Luther King was not only in his brilliant writing and preaching but that thousands came out of their homes and marched with him, visibly, courageously and they provoked one another to take action.

I am grateful for the thousands of listeners we have around the globe but I implore you, I encourage you, in fact, I would like to incite you, provoke you, into finding your own tribe in your own towns.  Listen in when you can but don't let this be a replacement for getting off of your butt and going to be in community with other people who are willing to be provoked into love and good deeds if only enough people cared enough to get together and provoke one another.

Many of you here today are actively involved in service to the poor of this city.... How involved were you before you found yourselves regularly surrounded by people who provoked you into love and good deeds?  Many of you have gone to New Orleans with me to do hurricane relief, to Joplin to do tornado relief.
Some have gone to Nicaragua and others are going with me in February.... Would many of you have gone to Joplin or New Orleans on your own?  Would you go to Nicaragua and try to help the poor in the rural jungles?  Would any of us be who we are without the other people here to have taught us, been an example for us, encouraged us and yes, sometimes irritated, incited, provoked us to open our minds and then to open our hearts and our hands?

The whole world seems to expect churches to just be passive gatherings of nice people who would never swat a fly.  And I know that even some of you would like it better if I were just a bit less outspoken and a tad more concerned with being perceived locally as being a nicer, more patient and kind sort of pastor.

But there is this passage in the tenth chapter of Hebrews..... Let us consider how that we can.... Pester.... Incite....provoke..... and you know me, I'm quite the Biblicist.  Without these two verses from Hebrews I would just be an obnoxiously opinionated old preacher but as long as we stay in community with one another then, I'm just doing my job.

But let's not just be difficult.... Let's try to provoke one another to love and good deeds.

Skin in the Game

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
Nov. 11, 2012    Proper 26

Mark 12:38-44            
38As he taught, he said, "Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, 39and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! 40They devour widows' houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation."
41He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. 42A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. 43Then he called his disciples and said to them, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. 44For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."

A record amount of money has been spent in the past year on a relentless campaign that came to an end on Tuesday.... well, everywhere but Florida which seems to have staked out election incompetence as their personal fiefdom.  In spite of all of the parties, speeches and celebrations, not much has changed after all of the expenditure of resources and time.  President Obama remains in the White House, the Democrats remain in the majority in the Senate and Republicans remain in the majority in Congress.

Here in Missouri, we kept our governor, our senator and, in our district, we kept our congressman.  I'm glad it is all over.  The divisive and not infrequently dishonest rhetoric of the campaign has taxed many friendships, even strained some marriages and polarized communities in most unhelpful ways.

After the horrific events that allowed Hitler to come into power, Germany enacted national election laws that make it illegal to knowingly lie in any campaign speech or advertisement.  While we Americans have often used Nazi Germany as the example of government gone mad, they now look at our election process and wonder why we didn't learn anything from the dangers of dishonest electioneering.  But in the United States, you can say anything and our media is so devoted to even handed reporting that they will almost never report on fact checking.  Which, in fact, makes the existence of churches with free pulpits all the more important though, we all know, that most churches are merely servants of whoever is in power..... as Thomas Jefferson said, "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection of his own."

Churches such as ours are vital to our nation and yet basic civil involvement in voting is still vitally important.  I raised my daughter to treasure her right to vote.
I always get an absentee ballot when I am going to be away on an election day as I was this past week, but there is something quite deceptive about voting that I want to be very straight forward about today.

You have heard me quote the 19th century evangelist, Alexander Campbell, before but my favorite of his sayings is the core of what I have to say today.  He was was speaking specifically of prayer but I would interpret it to mean voting or expressing any opinion.  He said, "To pray for that for which you will not also rise up and work and sacrifice to achieve is a disappointment to yourself and an insult to God."


I think that one of the most self deceptive activities among our more conservative religious friends is their use of the phrase, "I'll pray,"  .... "I'll pray for you," "I'll pray about it," "I'm praying for God to do something."  I agree with Kierkegaard who said that prayer does not change the One to whom we pray but rather prayer changes the one who prays.... or at least it should.

But in the exact same way, I think that one of the most self deceptive traps among progressive thinkers is that we believe that we have accomplished something because we have arrived at progressive opinions.  Having an enlightened opinion about access to health care, education, work, retirement, housing and even food doesn't mean much if you never do anything about it.
                                                                         
The God to whom evangelicals appear to be praying most often seems to me to be an imaginary Santa Claus in the clouds.  The God many liberals seem to bow to is their own ego expressed substantially in the opinions we cherish between our own ears.

How is it anything but hypocrisy if you believe that gay people should have the same rights as straight people if you have never risked yourself in any way to help give birth to that social change?  I suspect that most of you here and most of you who will join us on the web are outraged by Tea Party politics with all of its anti-women, anti-poor, pro-war, and none-too-subtle racism, and yet, how exactly does it change anything for you to just sit and watch MSNBC every night and repost liberal memes on Face Book?  If you feel like you recognize social injustice and are not doing anything substantively to change it then you are, ipso facto, supporting the injustice.

As Elie Weisel said, "Always take sides. Neutrality always serves the oppressor and never the oppressed."

The most difficult decision our little church has faced in our short 4 year history was the decision to buy this building when we had just a year of experience and no money in savings.  We started with nothing and after our first year we still had almost all of it left when we first took a look at this property.  One family put up the down payment and then the rest of us had to look at one another and figure out if all of the big talk and high minded ideals we had been kicking around for a year meant any real business.

On the day before we bought this building, we could have disbanded this church in a matter of day, giving a few hymnals and some office furniture to some other church and we could have simply gone out of existence.  But we voted..... we voted to make an offer, then we voted to accept an offer, then we voted to borrow the money..... each time the largest number of people in the room didn't vote at all.  Some couples canceled out one another's vote.  Each time we voted to take a step forward with a majority but never anything approximating consensus.

We are a church that has always reached out to the poor and, for obvious reasons; we have always had a lot of members who were barely getting by.  And so, it is not a surprise that nearly half of the people who attend our church do not contribute to the church.  What did surprise me was that several of people who never contributed were outraged by the decision to buy a building...... some were sure it would ruin our message, our mission, our focus.......and, as if to support their predictions, they stopped attending.

I don't want to speak critically of people who are not here to defend their honor, but I say it simply to make the observation that people who do not have skin in the game can easily be deceived into believing that their opinions are of vital importance simply because they are their opinions..... not because they are going to do anything of substance one way or another or risk anything or sacrifice anything.  What I am saying should be fairly obvious, if you want others to take you seriously then you should first take yourself seriously.  If your opinions are not backed up by being willing to put some skin in the game then you don't really mean your opinion yourself and the rest of us are just agreeing with your own assessment of your opinion if we ignore you.

There are a whole lot of people who say that they want to serve God but way too many want to serve only in an advisory capacity.  Now, let me be clear about this:  I'm talking about active engagement and not just money.  We have members of our community who are engaged in making this church happen and most of us are involved in very active volunteerism in many causes.  Members of our church mow our lawn, clean the building, do our record keeping and business, all of which makes it possible to avoid paying for lawn care, secretarial or janitorial services.  You cook and serve at Bill's Place, carry out groceries at Crosslines, give tutoring time at Rare Breed's literacy program, some of you are mentors and prison visitors and several of you have served on mission teams to Nicaragua and hurricane and tornado relief.

I know that many of you who are our internet viewers are pastors, social workers, nurses, physicians and professors and many serve in other helping professions and volunteer circumstances.

And I am not at all wanting to provoke the slightest guilt in those of you who are viewers or listeners who have not yet found your way to contribute to real action...... I'm not interested in guilt but I am inviting you to come off the bench and get on the field..... sacrifice something, risk some skin in the game.

We don't do pledge drives in this church.  We don't charge for our content on YouTube or iTunes.  People can view or attend for as long as they like without any commitment, donation or involvement but let's not ignore the obvious truth that if someone didn't donate, if someone didn't volunteer then this progressive church would not exist and this content would not be on line.  So, ask yourself, if everyone did exactly what you do, would this church exist?  Would any progressive church exist?

We have the good fortune of having a couple of donors who are able to make large contributions but what I would love to see is that even if you cannot make a large gift, I would love to see everyone make a small gift.... even if you have to get a single item pizza for dinner instead of a supreme to be able to donate $5 once a year, I would love to have the reassurance that you are voting for our continued existence.... that you more than intellectually approve of what we are trying to accomplish but that you are willing to put $5 worth of your skin in the game.

Giving is sometimes a matter of practice.  You get used to assuming that someone else will pay the bills.  One of the things we see in so many divorces is that people come to view their own money and someone else's money as being entirely different.  My money is precious and you can't have any of it..... your money is cheap and you should share it liberally.

We do have some people who sacrifice dearly to make our church exist..... their standard of living would be much more comfortable if they were not giving what they give..... I doubt that many of them would agree that it is OK for them to pay the bills while others reserve all of their resources for themselves.  Money is a fungible way of investing your personal time and energy into a cause and you have to practice acting on what you believe is important and not using everything you have to scratch your own appetitive itches.

When Jesus praised the woman in the temple who donated the only small coin she had it was not that she was either changing the fortunes of the temple nor dramatically sacrificing her own future.... since that coin would hardly have purchased a meal, she was, however, casting a vote that cost her something..... more than an opinion, more than personal beliefs, she was willing to get involved to the level that she could.

Jesus clearly didn't think much of wealth, personal possessions there are times that money seems like a silly idea to him.  Fortunately for him, not all of his friends felt the same way.  And as critical as we often are of some of the traditional institutions of religion, I recognize that I have a debt to the religious institutions and individuals who made it possible for me to go to Vanderbilt and Harvard.....and where will the next generation of educated leadership come from if we fail to help send other willing candidates into serious preparation for ministry?

We don't charge to attend here.  The content of our internet channels is offered at no charge.... but none of this is free, in fact, it is very expensive.  It is up to you to decide if it is worth it, in fact, every time you see the donate button on our web site or see the offering basket passed around this room, you get to vote on whether we should come back and do this again next week.

Unlike American idol or, in many ways, the American congress, your vote here really matters.  We're trying to change the world, I hope you will not stand idly by.