Love is a Verb

Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor
January 27, 2013     Epiphany 4

1 Corinthians 13:1-13                  
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

In the wee hours before dawn, while most of you are still sleeping, the doorbell rings at my home and I pull on heavy gloves, a mask and hooded coat, and head out into the darkness to walk with Russ Venable while the wind chill factor is still in single digits.  We walk four miles through the darkness at a fairly rapid pace.

Russ and I have talked about losing weight and exercising for several months.  Most of those talks took place in the back yard over adult grain beverages and hand rolled Nicaraguan cigars.  I cannot remember exactly what moved us from months of talking about it to actually meeting at an unholy hour before we go to work but I can tell you with existential certainty that there a lot of difference between talking about exercising and actually exercising.  And most of the difference can be found in the exercising part.

I wish that exercise and dieting could be more like sitting in the back yard, eating and drinking on a warm summer evening but the truth is that it is hard work.  Some people enjoy it more than others.  Almost every enjoys it more than I do evidently.  But we both know that we need to do it and so we are challenging one another to do it and we are committing to do it together and the $100 wager on who loses the most weight by May 1 is really just a friendly side bet and I'm willing to split the proceeds with anyone who can get Russ to eat a fist full of donut holes before he comes into the sanctuary each week between now and the first of May.

I wish it were easier.  I wish that lettuce and carrots tasted like steak and baked potatoes.  I wish that cross country bike rides were all down hill and that weight lifting felt more like getting a full body massage.  And I wouldn't mind winning the lottery or having Halley Berry return my phone calls either.

But we all know that the fact of life is that exercise and following a healthy diet are what it takes to be the right size.  And that money actually comes from hard work and sacrifice and yet when it comes to love we still seem to believe that it should be something like winning the lottery.

We talk about "falling" in love or "finding" love as if it were like tripping on the curb or spotting a penny on the sidewalk.

In Eugene O'Neill's play, "The Great God Brown" The character, Dion, articulates the cynicism that many of us feel so existentially when he says: Love is a word, a shameless ragged ghost of a word, begging at all doors for life at any price!
Love is supposed to be so important to us.... It is the subject of movies, music, poetry and art and yet the most powerful statements about love in those mediums almost always seem to be about broken hearts, disappointments, infidelity and abandonment.

My contention is that being in love is not an adjective describing a condition or a feeling but that it is necessarily a verb describing action and, in all seriousness, action that involves sacrifice and concentrated effort.

It feels good to be in good shape, to be strong, to like what you see in the mirror, to wear the size clothes that you think look good on you but that good feeling doesn't just fall out of the sky.  It takes work.  For me, it takes deliberative, painstaking choices about what to eat and what not to eat.  It takes getting up in the dark and cold and walking, walking, walking, day after day, week after week, month after month.

If talking about it, wishing for it, defining goals and processes over beer and cigars would get you there, Russ and I would look like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon..... I'm the Ben Affleck one because I'm taller.

Our scripture lesson today, Paul's "Ode to love" from I Corinthians 13, is most commonly heard in weddings which is one of the most ironic moments in biblical interpretation when anyone brings up the Apostle Paul in reference to any romantic setting.

But in weddings I like to invite couples to substitute their own names where the passage says "love" and read it aloud and see how it sounds to them.  How does it read if you say, "Michael is patient; Michael is kind; Juli is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  Jim does not insist on having his own way.  Ann is not irritable or resentful......

So you want to keep that in mind if you ever want me to read that passage in your wedding.  None of us read our own names in that list of adjectives and get to stand up straight by the end of the reading.  It has become a bit trite in its over use but that famous quote from Gandhi that says, "You must be the change you want to see in the world," applies no where more than in this topic.

It should be clear that Paul was not writing this, or copying it..... a lot of us assume that Paul is borrowing this text from another source because, frankly, it is a bit lofty sounding for Paul.... A bit out of character for him.... And yet he clearly is not talking about marriage or just family relationships.  He is talking about love in the global sense, as a dimension of character and spirituality.

A lot of young people wear images of Che Guevara on their shirts because of his reputation as a defiant, even a militant socialist revolutionary but I actually keep a quote from Che hanging in my office that says:

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality... We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.

We're more used to thinking of Che as an armed revolutionary but whether you are talking about Che, or King, or Dorothy Day or any one of us who have sought out this church because we want to be prophetic, we want to be a part of the people who defiantly carry signs in protest in front of city hall and the Bank of America.... I have my Guy Faulks mask, hat and cape at the ready for the next Occupy demonstration but, men and women, anger is not enough.... Sure, we have things to be angry about.... But anger is not enough.

We rage against the injustice that keeps hundreds of people living on the streets at the edge of death from hunger and exposure but we can't just go back down to Commercial Street with hundreds of meals to share because we're angry.  You know that the real goal here is not just to feed people but to be able to love them..... the ones who complain about the food.... "did you put onions in that?"  The ones who want special consideration, "When are we gonna get fried chicken again?" Or even the ones who ask for a different color of gloves when the wind chill factor is in single digits.

It usually falls to me to say the prayer before we serve the meal each day and I tend to be a bit repetitious, not so much for them as for me.... "Lord help us to be patient with everyone we encounter today, especially for the one who deserves it the least and needs it the most."  Because, it's not about the food..... it is about the love.

I'm back in full swing in professor mode this week so I am going to leave you with an assignment, just be sure that you don't quote me out of context.  What I want for you to do this week, and I want you to sincerely work on it, sacrifice for it, devote yourself to doing it..... I want for you to be better lovers.

A Job Description for a Messiah

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
Jan. 20, 2013     Epiphany 3

Luke 4:14-21    
14 Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
18'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
   because he has anointed me
     to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
   and recovery of sight to the blind,
     to let the oppressed go free,
19to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.'
20And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21Then he began to say to them, 'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.'

A good story teller does not tell you everything that happened, and sometimes what they tell you didn't even happen at all but what they do tell you captures the essence of what actually took place.  The gospel writers are not attempting to give us an exact account of the life of Jesus.  They are trying to tell us stories in a way that help us to understand Jesus, to feel like we know him, like we can get inside of his skin and his head.

In this account we've just read, Luke is telling us about a time when Jesus went to a synagogue, read scripture and spoke.  Is this exactly the way it happened?  No, of course not.  The entire service of reading and preaching, if it happened this way, would have taken less than two minutes and that is not like any church service that any of us have ever attended!

When they went to synagogue it was pretty much for the day.  The scripture readings were long, going on, sometimes, for hours.  The preaching might be even longer, involving more than one preacher.
So Luke tells us about a service at the synagogue in Nazareth and he draws it down to just two verses of scripture and a single sentence.  That's not how it actually happened but Luke distills this story down, like a good story teller, in order to let the full weight of a day in church rest on just this very concise image.

Jesus has returned to his home town.  He is surrounded by the people he grew up with, cousins, siblings, his mother, and neighbors; everyone who thinks that they know everything there is to know about Jesus.  And Jesus tells them who he is.

Now, if you were attending a public meeting..... let's say it is an inter-faith study class with Jews, Moslems, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus all in attendance, and if the leader of that discussion group turned to you and said, "To get us all started, why don't you stand up and tell us exactly who Jesus is"....... Would you feel comfortable doing that?

If you had to boil it all down to its most essential parts, who is Jesus?
You ought to be able to answer that.  We're Christians here..... we ought to know who Jesus is.  And Luke doesn't want us to be stymied by this question either.  And so he tells us.  Jesus looks at his old school chums, his family and extended family, and he uses the this brief passage from the prophet Isaiah to define what he is all about:

'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
   because he has anointed me
     to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
   and recovery of sight to the blind,
     to let the oppressed go free,
19to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.'
20And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.

Who was Jesus?  He was a religious prophet who specifically reached out to the poor.  He understood himself to be a liberator of the oppressed.   Now, you take that back to first century Nazareth where they had been living under the heavy hand of Rome's military occupation and you realize that the only kind of leader anyone was looking for was the kind of leader who could lead them to liberty.... But they were clearly expecting that to be a military victory.

You will hear me quote my Harvard professor, Jim Wallis, very often because he frequently cited this fundamental truth:  If all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.

If you put all of your resources, all of your scientists, all of your manufacturing, all of your personnel, into building, equipping and arming an army then when you encounter a problem...... if all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.  Jesus' contemporaries wanted to be liberated alright but they were not looking to sacrifice one of their own on a Roman cross to accomplish that.  They wanted to be liberated by killing all of the Romans.

People in the first century and people in the 21st century try to project onto Jesus what they know good and darned well what he is supposed to be.  His cousins wanted him to use his power and popularity to run out the Romans and give them back their country.  The modern church wants him to hang on a cross and bleed so that they can feel that their sins are forgiven and they can go to heaven when they die.

Neither one has the slightest idea what Jesus meant by reading this passage from Isaiah and using it to define his ministry, his purpose, his essence.  The early church laid a number of very metaphorical and spiritual sounding interpretations over the story of Jesus and every century since has tried to use the Jesus story to their benefit whether it is an emperor trying to raise an army, a government trying to raise taxes, a feudal lord trying to make peasants work harder, or some self involved American praying for a close parking place at the mall.

We've tried to make Jesus a military leader, a magical good-luck charm, divine fire insurance and the inspiration for a lot of really bad music and even worse art but who did he say that he was?  Luke tries to make it easy for us.

Jesus is a liberator with a special passion for the poor.  And if that is true, why don't all of the churches that bear his name look more like him?

As the early church heaped praise and religious language onto Jesus, they did so in adoration and respect but in many ways the end result was totally covering up the prophet whose message is so vital.  Putting Jesus up on a pedestal is, in effect, turning him into a god and taking away everything he said and stood for.

How close are we to the Jesus who described himself as one who came to bring good news to the poor and liberation to the oppressed?  Most of us were raised in religious traditions in which we essentially put Jesus on a space ship and sent him way up to a golden throne far beyond the stars.

And from this great distance we were suppose to endure boring religious services and pay lip service to magical beliefs for which there was never any proof and from which any comfort we derived was as illusory as ghosts we used to talk about in the dark when we were children.

Rediscovering the voice of Jesus in his teachings about liberation and taking good news to the poor, we have found ourselves renewing our faith..... as the aroma of a hearty beef and vegetable soup travels from June's kitchen, and Elsie's, and Mary's...  where they lovingly fills huge pots with stew or ham, to the dirty little building where the homeless come inside to warm up on Commercial Street and one of you ladles out steaming bowls of grace.

Men and women who have often found themselves estranged from everyone who is their blood kin, by reason of violence or addiction or crime, now are greeted by the smiling beautiful face of Mary Kapustka or Ruth Miller as she hands them a chocolate dessert she made just for them the night before, showing acceptance these people may not have felt from their brothers and sisters, mothers or fathers for years.

At Crosslines on Tuesday our crew handed food to nearly a hundred families.....so many that they were running out of food long before we were running out of time.  We are not always good at following the rules..... we give out more food than we are supposed because, well because we had come to bring good news to the poor.... The year of the Lord's good favor.

There is resurrection in that.... There is baptism.... There is communion.... Confirmation... reconciliation, even incarnation in that...maybe even salvation... Without all of the Sunday school theology.

I remember our very first worship service 4 and a half years ago at the funeral home.  There were forty or fifty of us there and I looked around the room and saw so many people I have known.... Ruth and Mel were there.... A couple who had four children and then started adopting children no one else wanted.... A little black boy, an Indian, an Asian family..... long before the Civil Rights movement had even started, before Martin Luther King, Jr. had even started preaching.... Mel and Ruth were risking their careers and their very lives to live liberation, the end of racism, the beginning of the year of the Lord's favor.

There was my old friend Jim Price, who has left the comfort of his Iowa college to go down to Nicaragua to use his own presence in tiny Sandinista villages to stop the American bombing of the peasants in Matagalpa.  Jim went to Guatemala to be an escort to journalists who were in very real danger of assassination among the "disappeared" while that government was seeking to kill off hundreds of thousands of the Indians of Guatemala.

We had the support of my old friend Nelson Parnell, who had, with his wife Betty, worked for decent, safe housing for the poor, for social justice and civil rights for immigrants and the gay community.

In our short time together I've seen people showing such humility in service, .... Going to the home of a new friend who is recovering from surgery, not only with hot food but with a laundry basket to help them wash their clothes.
I've seen people invite total strangers into their home to share a meal and sometimes to move into the guest room for more than a year!  I've seen such trust develop that they share with one another their life challenges.... Illnesses and addictions.  What's more, I've seen people get sober, grow past their brokenness and have their lives restored and literally resurrected within the loving community of faith.  There is salvation in that, isn't there?  There is resurrection in that.

You can see Dr. David Adams at Crosslines anytime we are there..... but I have also seen David sitting in a café in Matagalpa with survivors of the Contra War in Nicaragua, talking loving with them about his hopes for their country..... and I've seen him stumble out of his huge garden looking like a poor tenet farmer himself, where he works full-time for months out of the year growing food for the hungry of our city.  Can you feel the spirituality in that?

I could go on but I won't right now..... a good story teller doesn't tell everything... he just distills it down to the essence of the story.

Why did we start this church?  Who are we?  What is our reason for being here?

.....to bring good news to the poor.
....to proclaim release to the captives
   and recovery of sight to the blind,
     to let the oppressed go free,
19to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.'

For the Common Good

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
Jan. 13, 2013    Epiphany 2

I Corinthians 12:1-11                  
Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. 2You know that when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. 3Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says "Let Jesus be cursed!" and no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit. 4Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

This week the famous French film star and producer,  Gérard Depardieu, officially gave up his French citizenship and went to Russia to accept a new passport directly from the hands of Vladimir Putin.  Depardieu still lives in Belgium but his paper defection is in an attempt to avoid the top French income tax rate of 75%.  He likes France.  France has given him opportunities, a career and fabulous personal wealth but he doesn't want to turn the majority of his income over to pay the bills for running France.  His move is certainly being applauded by many tax revolutionaries but I wonder how much wealth he would have had if he had made the move to Russia forty years ago?

It goes to one of the campaign issues of last fall when President Obama was quoted as having told business owners "You didn't build that."  Many people took to the media to shout, "I did too build that," though they failed to mention that in the process of building that they had taken millions of dollars in loans from the federal government, and depended upon hiring a work force educated at public expense, and that their product is moved on roads paid for at public expense and they are protected by police and firemen who are paid for at public expense..... but they built their business all by themselves with no help from anyone.

Rather more quietly, without much media coverage, the author of the Harry Potter book and movie franchise, J. K. Rowling, has remained in Great Britain.  She was a single mother on welfare who wrote her first book sitting in a coffee shop while her children were in school because the coffee shop would give her free refills all day.

Rowling said, "When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major's Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism."

There is a line in our pericope from I Corinthians chapter 12 that is almost a throwaway line in our culture because it is almost impossible to hear what you do not understand.  When someone talks about something you know nothing about, that is not a part of your life experience, your mind tends to gloss over it.... you don't hear it, you don't remember it, you don't think about it...... and trust me, I'm not just talking about my university students.

Paul is talking to people in the church about their various talents, what he calls, "gifts of the Spirit," and he says to them, it is in verse 7.... may I ask you to look on the text in your bulletin and focus on what he is saying:

7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

The reason that this is such a throwaway sentence for us is that we have a much more visceral, real and felt identification with Gérard Depardieu than we do with J. K. Rowling.  We understand the desire to keep what is ours for ourselves and for our children and to resent anyone around us who appears to get something for nothing.

And I can be as irritated by lazy people who have an entitlement disorder as anyone but, do you remember last fall when Mitt Romney talked about how much it damages children to have only one parent and you realize that both Obama and Bill Clinton were raised by single mothers, who were dependant upon welfare benefits.  That our president was one of those people fed by food stamps..... just like J. K Rowling was on welfare on her way to being in a position to pay millions of Euros in taxes back into the system?

The challenge for modern Americans, the challenge for the modern church, is to not always see everything from a perspective of self interest.  Sure, indulge yourselves.  Eat from the vineyard you planted.  Enjoy the fruits of your labor, but remember that you don't live alone and someone sacrificed to give you a chance in life and there is always another generation coming along behind you.

Paul is reminding the church to think about their community.  It is great if you have a high IQ, or if you are a natural in the business community, or you have great talent in art, music, science or carpentry but Paul wants to tell you that you were not given that talent to make you either rich or comfortable but rather you were given that talent so that you could be a blessing, a resource, a support for your family, your community, your nation.

We've been so trained to always be afraid.... to be afraid that we won't make end's meet, that we won't survive the next economic downturn, that we might become unemployed and unable to support ourselves and as real as those fears can be, if we allow those fears to make us forget about the community around us then I guarantee you that those fears will be realized.

The only thing that makes it possible for us to live a decent life is if we make sure that everyone else gets to live a decent life.

Honestly, it is so disappointing to me when I hear people who are in such rebellion against taxes that they literally would rather have 90% of 4" pie than half of a 12" pie because they can't be satisfied with what they have if they think that anyone else is getting something.

We don't want to fund public health, public education, state universities, food stamp programs or public housing but because we don't see that poverty among a large portion of the population is literally, not just figuratively, but literally like trying to feed your right arm and left leg while starving the other two to save money.

Poverty drives both crime and addiction and then crime and addiction drives up the crime and prison population, taking people out of productive taxpaying careers and putting them on the most expensive form of public assistance there is, incarceration.

There are people in Great Britain right now who would like to cut the assistance given to people like J. K. Rowling a few years ago, and here we have huge disdain for the welfare moms like the ones who raised Bill Clinton and Barack Obama but whether you like either their literature or their politics, they have turned out to have been a good investment.

I'm not saying anything too complicated here.  I'm just saying don't starve your left leg so that your right leg can be stronger and more healthy.  As long as there is a hungry child in this city who goes without proper nutrition, as long as there is a senior citizen who is being denied the health care they need because we, as a society, are willing to cast off our weakest members then we are poisoning our own bodies.

This is not a complicated spiritual idea but it is a hard one to let sink in.  So, you can trust me to bring it up again.  We are born selfish little pigs, but through worship, study, service and by practice of faith, we give birth to a new character defined by radical compassion.  None of us are entirely there yet but the good news is that we have another week in which we can work on getting better at it.

A Prayer for Good Government

Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor
Epiphany 1

Psalm 72:1-7, 12-14            
¹Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king's son.
²May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice.
³May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness.
⁴May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.
⁵May he live while the sun endures, and as long as the moon, throughout all generations.
⁶May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth.
⁷In his days may righteousness flourish and peace abound, until the moon is no more.
¹²For he delivers the needy when they call, the poor and those who have no helper.
¹³He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy.
¹⁴From oppression and violence he redeems their life; and precious is their blood in his sight.

Everyone knows that the most fundamental rule for any social gathering is to avoid talking about either religion or politics.  As a pastor, religion professor and a journalist who writes political essays, I'm about as dangerous to a pleasant social gathering as a tsunami at a beach vacation.  I don't watch sports and I am often uncertain as to which professional sport is in season but when I am at a loss for words, I often just throw out a, "How about those Bears?" and hope that it hit it lucky.

But the truth of the matter is, at least for me, that there is no way to avoid, not only religion or politics, but more accurately, I always have to have the two together.  Though there are certainly those who cry out against any mixture of religion and politics, it is a rather absurd complaint.  Almost everything in scripture and serious religious practice has a political implication.

I find that people only cry foul when you are saying something with which they don't personally agree.
 No one says that the Catholic Church is meddling in politics when they are publicly opposing abortion, or that the Quakers are political when they are opposed to war or the Baptists are against almost anything that is especially fun to do.

Anyone who reads the prophets and the gospels should not be surprised when we in the progressive movement advocate for peace, protecting the environment and the equal rights of all races, genders and sexual orientations.  In fact, specifically because we take the prophets and the gospels seriously, we have fought to lower the interest rates charged by predatory lenders, to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, for poverty related services and access to health care and addiction treatment.  That may seem political to people who only want us to pray, baptize and serve communion but those people don't get to tell us what it means to be spiritual people.

There is a common misconception that the involvement of the faith community in politics is something new, a perversion of pure religion.  That is, what we call in technical theological language, pure hogwash.  Look at this reading we have this morning from Psalm 72.  This is an example of what we call an "enthronement psalm," but if you look at it, it is little more that a public prayer for a just and ethical government.

Verse 4 that asks that the ruler of their nation "defend the cause of the poor ...., give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor," that's exactly what we are all about..... and that's 3000 years old!

Jesus and the ancient prophets were not imprisoned and killed because they were extolling people to pray more often, make sacrifices and memorize scripture.
They were imprisoned and killed for exactly the same reasons that Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Berrigan brothers, Archbishop Romero and Dorothy Day were imprisoned or killed or both.  They criticized the government.  They opposed military service.  They were a threat to the economic system that involved the rich taking advantage of the poor.

Jesus wasn't killed for making claims to be the messiah or for matters of religious doctrine.... they killed him because he was a threat to the established order of government, of banking, of business and the institutional religion that supported government, banking and business.

This is the point where we often find ourselves parting company with the more traditional churches that insist upon a fairly literal reading of the gospels.  Reading the gospels in their historical setting helps us to see that the titles the early church heaped up on the executed Jesus were the exact same titles that were traditionally reserved for the Caesar, the emperor of the empire.

The statues, banners, even their coins referenced the Caesar as either god incarnate or the son of God.  They called their emperors "lord" and even "savior."  You were told in Sunday School when you were a child that "Christ" was not Jesus' last name.... "Christ" means "king" and yet our Sunday School teachers rarely put 2 and 2 together to let us know what that meant.

Imagine what it would mean if we put on our sign out front, not "Dr. Roger Ray, pastor" but rather, "Roger Ray, the President of the United States."  That has a rather more ominous ring to it doesn't it?

The cry of the early church, "Jesus is Lord!" was a defiant proclamation that the Caesar was not the lord.  To call Jesus "the Christ" meant that Caesar was not the king.  I doubt seriously that during his lifetime anyone called Jesus "Christ" or "Lord" or "Savior" and certainly no one called him "son of God," but right after the government had him executed the people who were still gathered around his message saw the stark contrast between the message of Jesus and the domination of Rome and by the time Paul started writing letters to churches fifteen years after the first Easter, it was already common anti-empire language within the church to say that Jesus was God's son, the savior, the Christ and our Lord.

With good reason there are many among progressive religious folks who don't like using any of those titles because they are so closely associated with the domination of empire and, when you think about it, they are mostly pretty strongly male dominant as well.  I find myself avoiding these titles most of the time because I don't want to be misunderstood but when I do use a word like "lord" in reference to God or to Jesus, I want you to understand that I am saying that the message of Jesus is what I prize, not any king, emperor, president or employer.  When we say that Jesus is lord what we are saying is that the economic and political powers of this world do not own us.... they are not our lords because we have a given our allegiance to the message of Jesus of Nazareth.

The anti-empire implications of those titles were not lost on Paul.  He was a citizen of Rome and was willing to exploit his citizenship in the Empire for his missionary purposes but there is no credible way that he could have been unaware that the language he used was revolutionary.

Still, Paul started a process of shifting attention away from the cry for mercy for the oppressed, relief for the poor, justice for the downtrodden and towards a hope that was more invested in a kingdom that was to come in heaven than the kingdom where we have a street address, businesses, schools, slums and leper colonies.

There is no shortage of books that detail the differences between the religion of Paul and the teachings of Jesus.  I believe that there was a world of difference between the two but that wades into a lot of historical speculation because even our canonical gospels were written long after Paul's letters were commonly read and Paul had more influence on the final shape of those gospels than, frankly, he really should have.

That's a value judgment on my part though I don't say that to drive an unnecessary wedge between progressive Christians and traditional Christians.  The final redaction of New Testament materials and the selection process of what to leave in and what to take out was influenced by the agenda of the empire.

I am convinced that the Jesus movement was distinctly anti-empire, was fully invested in advocacy for the poor and was a message of radical compassion.  Paul expressed those values within a more theologically contrived structure that unfortunately played into the hands of the interests of Constantine and his successors.  The faith that started by being a thorn in the side of the empire was transformed into being the tip of the spear of the empire's exploitation of the poor.  Frankly, I believe that every reform movement in the history of Christianity has to one degree or another, been an attempt to take Jesus back from the empire and give him back his message of radical compassion, liberation and hope.

For me, turning Jesus into a god and worshipping him takes away most of the relevance and power of his message.  Thankfully, there are those who have a very high christology who are joining us in our prayers that the government will defend the weak, heal the sick, feed the hungry, provide for, as the psalmist says, "prosperity for the people and defense from violence and oppression."

We have sometimes been known to be dismissive of traditional religious people because they are too emphatic about Jesus being the lord of heaven and they have been dismissive of us because we are so emphatic about the message of Jesus being the lord of the earth.  The gospels insist that God is lord of both heaven and earth so, perhaps, in this case, we both get to be right.

I don't know much about heaven but I've gotten a pretty good taste of the earth.  I've seen children making rugs in wretched circumstances in Egypt.  I've seen old people worked so hard in Ecuador that their skeletons are bent and their bare feet look like the feet of an elephant.  I've been in many villages in Nicaragua where some children are blind from malnutrition and where many have died.

I know people who live in their cars in Springfield.  We regularly feed children who live below the radar of child protective services and school truant officers.  And so, I think it is only right that we take up the prayers of our ancestors in the faith so that we also pray that our government will judge the poor with justice and work for prosperity among the people.  That our government will defend the cause of the poor, give deliverance to the needy and crush the oppressors..... and if they don't, they will have reason to imprison and kill a few more prophets because we intend to do more than pray.