While Ferguson Still Burns

November 30, 2014
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor

(an excerpt from an Independence Day speech delivered by the former slave, Fredrick Douglass, in the presence of President Millard Fillmore in 1852)

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced. 

There is a Buddhist parable about a group of monks who were traveling with their abbot when they came upon an uprising in which a group of peasants were fighting against government soldiers.  The abbot said to his disciples, "We must join the conflict."  Confused and surprised by this uncharacteristic demand, they asked, "Master, on which side should we fight?"

"Both," the abbot replied.  "The government must learn to care for the poor and not to mistreat them, and the poor must learn to respect the powers that bring order to our society."

I'm not typically indecisive.  In fact, I'm sure that most of you would readily assure me that I am more inclined to be decisive when I should hang back and think about things a little longer.

In May I drove a thousand miles to participate in a Moral Monday March in North Carolina where the state legislature has been taking very deliberate steps to keep black citizens from voting.

I have not, however, driven the 200 miles between Springfield and Ferguson, Missouri to participate in demonstrations there since the August shooting of Michael Brown.  The right wing politicians and much of the media in North Carolina bemoaned the fact that there were "out of state agitators" swelling the numbers of the Moral Monday Marches in their state.  If only I had known how vociferously they were going to object, I would have had a t-shirt made that said, "Out of State Agitator."  "Agitator," is, in fact, one of the more flattering things that I have been called.

But when the Prosecuting Attorney in St Louis County, Robert McCulloch, finally announced on Monday evening that there would be no indictment against officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, there was a predictable outburst of looting and burning on the part of a small minority of those involved in the demonstrations that have been ongoing in Ferguson since Brown was killed in Mid-August.

Tuesday morning, the Ferguson Police Chief, Tom Jackson, was angry that the clergy had not shown up to do more to prevent this from happening.  You know that I often complain about pastors not taking to the streets often enough but I have not participated in the Ferguson demonstrations.  In part, I have stayed away because I don't think that I need to help clean up the mess that Ferguson's city government and police department created through years of racial discrimination and over policing of the black community.

 I don't agree with those who set fire to buildings in Ferguson, or who looted stores, or who fired shots or threw stones at Ferguson policemen..... but, I understand why they are angry and why it is coming out this way.

And I want for you to know, if you have not heard it in the news already, that it was not just black protesters who were setting buildings on fire.  Michael Brown's family's church in Ferguson, the Flood Christian Church, was burned to the ground that night after having received more than 70 threats from white supremacist groups. Our corporate media keeps an audience by making white people feel superior to and somewhat afraid of black people.... They appear to have no incentive to even report on white criminal violence against the black community.

But, still, I didn't go because I couldn't get comfortable with the push to portray Michael Brown as a martyr that represents the plight of young black men in America.  And I don't think that Officer Wilson is the incarnation of evil that we want to fight.... Still, I understand those who think differently.

Michael Brown was a kid but he evidently used his size and his ability to intimidate others to push boundaries that he, if he actually did what he was accused of, would certainly end up badly.

Similarly, we were horrified this week by the news of a 12 year old boy, Tamir Rice, being shot and killed by Cleveland police.  Again, the boy was technically unarmed but he had a real looking BB gun and he was pointing it at people in a public park in order to make them think that he had a gun.

He should not have been killed.  The police should have managed the situation much better.  Tamir needed a good talking to but he didn't need to be shot, or arrested, or anything of the sort.  BB guns are still legal and they are still sold in the toy department of Walmart....they probably shouldn't be but they are and as long as they are, it shouldn't be a crime to buy one.

There were, however, many things in the Ferguson case, in Officer Wilson's testimony and subsequent interviews that are disturbing.  That he said that Brown looked "demonic" and that he was afraid for his life.... So much so that he fired his weapon 12 times, hitting Brown six times, possibly killing him when he was still a hundred feet away.

Wilson had never fired his gun on duty before.  He was not known as being either a racist or for being excessively aggressive, but when asked if there was anything that he could have done differently, he insisted that he did the only thing that he could.... I wasn't there, I don't know what I would have done in the same circumstances, but I can't help believing that there were a whole lot of things that could have been done short of using lethal force.

I don't think that Wilson was likely a monster but that he not only didn't get an indictment but that he can't even say that he wishes that he had wounded Brown rather than killing him.... Couldn't he at least say that he wished that he had not killed Brown?  Well, as I said, I understand why there are riots in Ferguson.

But in this same week, decades old charges of rape against the seemingly charming and lovable comedian, Bill Cosby, seemed to come in such large numbers that it is no longer possible to ignore them.  A new TV show featuring Cosby has been canceled and even his appearances in Las Vegas have been canceled and Vegas is not known for setting a high water mark in their expectations of virtue in their performers.

If he is only 10% guilty of the charges against him, then his career is over.  But six years ago people were saying that big named entertainers like Bill Cosby and Oprah Winfrey had made it possible for Barak Obama to win the 2008 election to become the President of the United States.  Here is the paradox that we have to be willing to deal with as mature adults.... His sex crimes are horrible.... And he was a transformative figure in race relations in America.

Thomas Jefferson, John Kennedy, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, even Dorothy Day, all had some things, sometimes horrible things, to be ashamed of in their personal lives.  So, yes, Michael Brown wasn't a saint.... But you don't have to be a saint to deserve not being shot by the police.

In many ways in spite of how they died, it was fortunate that Gandhi, Kennedy and King, all got to leave the stage of public attention before their personal lives became fodder for media taunting.  No one can stand the scrutiny of a probing modern media that is more interested in what happens between your bedroom sheets than they are in the rampant injustice against an entire race of people in our streets.

Al Sharpton may show up for every public civil rights fight, but he is not the face of civil rights, nor is Cornell West, ... though I don't know of any substantive moral criticism of either Sharpton or West... but then neither are Bill Cosby or Michael Brown to be dismissed because we know of some things that they did that were wrong.... Or am I alone up in here as the only person in the room who has made some mistakes?

We have to stop allowing the mud slinging and public humiliation of any individual to take the power out of the larger issues.

No, rioters should not burn down businesses or police cars to avenge Michael Brown.  But, folks, racism is real.  Wilson should not have shot Brown.... That, however, was an individual event and the rightness or wrongness of the public's anger can not be judged based on whether or not Michael Brown reached in the Police patrol car window and fought Officer Wilson for his gun.

Every life matters.  Michael Brown's death is tragic and important but the issue of state sponsored racism did not begin or end with Michael Brown.

Black men are disproportionally stopped by the police, they are five times as likely to be charged and jailed for the same offense as a white person is.  Even the way the penal system is written discriminates against black people.... Jail sentences for possessing crack cocaine used to be many times the punishment for having powder cocaine.... Crack being preferred in black neighborhoods and powder cocaine being more popular among members of Congress and the Senate.

You may think that I'm exaggerating but I will point out as just one example the recent resignation of the Florida representative, Trey Radel, after being arrested with cocaine and he had been one of the legislators pushing for drug testing of all food stamp recipients.  I guarantee you that a higher percentage of members of Congress would be found to be using drugs than are food stamp recipients.
If we couple drug testing of elected officials to drug testing of welfare clients, there will never be a bill passed mandating drug testing of people on welfare.

Al Sharpton and Bill Cosby, though condescending in tone, were not wrong to counsel black young men not to try to make themselves look threatening and anti-social.  Crime in the black community is not an imaginary problem.

However, I can tell you how to cut crime in the black community by as much as 90% in a single year and I'm not even all that smart.  We could cut crime, I'm going to claim by 90%, by creating good paying manufacturing jobs in the inner-cities, by funding our urban schools the same way predominantly white private and suburban schools are funded, by decriminalizing drug addiction and by offering treatment for addiction rather than incarceration...AND, if I may add.... By instituting sane gun laws and by making health care universal.

We turned the "war on poverty" into a "war on drugs" and it has evolved into a "war on the poor."  I don't like to use words like "stupid" in the pulpit, but this shift in public policy is stupid....well, not entirely stupid.... It is mostly evil.  Racism in 21st century America is a choice, an institutionalized, wicked, inexcusable choice and it is time for it to end.

More than a decade before President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, a run-away slave, Fredrick Douglass, was asked to deliver a 4th of July address in Rochester, New York.

Perhaps next summer we may just read the address in its entirety as our sermon for Independence Day but I used an excerpt from it for our wisdom lesson today.

But if I may summarize, in the years before the Civil War, before the end of slavery in America was anything but certain, he reminded his white audience that the Independence they were celebrating on the 5th of July had been given to them by a generation of brilliant and largely peaceful people who had simply had enough of the oppression of the British crown.

He said, "Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression."

There were those who were scandalized by the suggestion that we forcefully reject the oppression of Great Britain.  There were those who protested the Civil War and refused to serve in it, insisting that the end of slavery would come gradually and peacefully if we just gave it time.

So, I understand why anger among the black communities of our nation's major cities can go from the boiling point to the point of open flames.  As President Kennedy said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

I don't want to be guilty of exaggerating for effect because what I want to say, I want to be understood literally:

America is at a breaking point.  The income disparity that is driving the middle class into poverty and making the burden of poverty unbearable is not sustainable.  The absence of jobs that pay a living wage and the inaccessibility of health care, transportation, housing and education so that a smaller and smaller slice of society can be obscenely wealthy will push our once great nation to the point of violent revolution if we cannot intelligently correct our course.

The news media on both the left and the right use fear and misinformation to keep a profit generating audience.  The Republicans and the Democrats both serve corporate interests and both are guilty of wholesale deception of the voting public.

In the real world, however, racism is real.  Poverty is real.  Schools in poor neighborhoods are breeding grounds of ignorance, crime, and addiction, making them a pipeline into for-profit prisons.  It isn't slavery but it has so many of the elements of slavery in it that you have to strain to defend the differences.

A hundred and sixty years ago, Douglass said:

For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

Men and women, I suspect that there are young black men in Ferguson who have turned over police cars and thrown Molotov Cocktails at stores who could not even tell you why they feel such violent rage.  Just as, if they can catch the white extremists who burned down Flood Christian Church would not be able to sensibly describe why they are so afraid of black people and why they give vent to such hatred and violence.

We know that it wasn't the death of Michael Brown or the vilifying of Darren Wilson.  Those are the fuses on a social bomb that has been under construction for 200 years.... A fury that was born in slave ships and at the business end of whips on long forgotten plantations.

The rage comes from media that feeds a gullible public on subtle forms of racial fear and hated, disguised as entertainment.  As Noam Chomsky has said:  "As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome."

So, my friends, it is up to us not to be passive, apathetic, nor easily diverted by corporate media, nor led by our ignorant, racist friends into hatred of the vulnerable....because will must not let the powerful do as they please.  We must not stand idly by.

In A Country Well Governed

Dr. Roger Ray        
                       

Confucius "In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of." -

Deuteronomy 8:7-14, 17   7For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, 8a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, 9a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. 10You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you.
11 Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes, which I am commanding you today. 12When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, 13and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, 14then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery,..17Do not say to yourself, 'My power and the might of my own hand have gained me this wealth.' 

The Lord of the Flies, by British author, William Golding, was a 1950's novel that most of us had to read when we were in middle school.  It describes a plane crash on an island in which all of the adults were killed and only a few dozen pre-adolescent boys are left to fend for themselves.

Initially their only goals were to have fun, survive, and keep a signal fire going so that a ship might be enticed to come and rescue them.  The novel brilliantly chronicles the emergence of the darker side of human nature even in a fairly plush tropical island, as the boys engage in power struggles, dividing into rival clans and finally killing one of the boys.  In the end, the entire island is set ablaze in an attempt to corner and kill another of the island's leaders.  The smoke does attract a ship and the boys are confronted by a single adult officer and suddenly, their conscience catches up with them as they realize how feral, how violent, and evil they had become in just a few days of being left unsupervised.

I suppose that our teachers assigned the book to us just as we were coming into adult bodies and being pulled in every passionate direction as we struggled to become adults but it is not as if the story could only be told about pre-pubescent children.

This week we will celebrate our American Thanksgiving holiday that embodies a lot of myths about the awkward beginnings of the British colonies that became the United States of America.  The Jamestown colony was a group of several dozen adults who had the opportunity to build a new world settlement in the presence of abundant natural resources but they were nearly wiped out by the individual greed of the colonists who spent time looking for gold rather than planting crops.

Captain John Smith forcefully took control of the colony and gave work assignments to everyone so that their circumstances were improving until Smith had to return to England for medical treatment, and, like a bunch of unsupervised children on an island, the colony fell back into their old habits without Smith there to hold them accountable.  There is solid historical evidence that the Jamestown colony actually resorted to cannibalism, not just in digging up freshly buried Indians, but also in killing and eating a teenaged girl in their own colony.

A few years later, the Plymouth colony that was largely founded on religious principles, did not fare much better.  The sad commentary on both Jamestown and Plymouth was that when everyone was supposed to work for the common good, most people tried very hard not to work, even when public flogging was employed to discourage sloth.

It was not until they abandoned shared community property and began to work only for their own benefit that most people began to work hard enough to make a living in the new world.  This has, of course, encouraged some people to insist that free market capitalism saved America but that is far too simple an explanation for just how dark our human shadow can be, even when our own survival depends upon our willingness to help one another.

The Thanksgiving storyline that taught us that European immigrants came to the colonies for religious freedom and for liberty, democracy, and the free market was more than a little exaggeration.  Most immigrants came to escape poverty, the poverty created by an entrenched economic system that forced the many to serve the interests of the wealthy few.

Sadly, The Lord of the Flies, is not just a fictional novel.  It described the truth of our very human ability to exploit one another, even when we are trying to escape being exploited ourselves.

The Plymouth community was not unfamiliar with the failings of the Jamestown Colony.  The Pilgrims on board the Arbella crossing the Atlantic to found the Plymouth Colony, were not, however, all Pilgrims.  The cost of the voyage made it necessary to sell passage to a few people of means who were coming to America to get rich.  They did not plan to get rich by the sweat of their own brows but rather, they certainly planned to employ some poor Pilgrims.

Fearing their potential for failure, before they made landfall, their spiritual leader, John Winthrop, delivered a highly idealistic sermon to his captive audience in which he said:
"Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our own wants (superfluities), for the supply of others' necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others' conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our ... community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace."

Economics is a complicated science.  Religion gets involved only when the dark shadow of humanity takes charge of the economy so that it becomes abusive.  If you look carefully at the dating of the careers of the Old Testament prophets, it becomes clear that there wasn't any notable prophetic preaching when things were going well in ancient Israel.  It was only when the majority were being exploited or abused by the powerful and the wealthy that we began to see the bold preaching of the prophets arise.

It is nice when religious leaders and focus on baptizing babies, presiding over weddings, funerals, and holiday festivals with poetic liturgy and nostalgic carols and hymns. But when people are going hungry, homeless, and uneducated... when the poor are being left to suffer with their illnesses or being forced to bear the weight of the labor that benefits the rich, then people with a sincere spirituality cannot be idol, indifferent or devoted to Bible Study and Christmas caroling.

John Winthrop's fears came true.  Their attempt at communal living failed but their survival strategy, an "every man for himself" capitalist economy has not proven to be salvific either.  Somewhere between the extremes of communal property and economic survival of the fittest there is a just society and we can never be blindly patriotic until we have found that right balance.

We began today with this wonderful Confucian quote about poverty and wealth.  We think of Confucius as either a philosopher or a spiritual leader but he drew his paycheck for being a low level government official.  He thought about government a lot, about how a government can succeed or fail in supporting the creation of a just, harmonious, and he would even say, a courteous society.

He says that in a country that has a good government, that is being well managed, there mere existence of poverty should be embarrassing because, if you still have poor people when you have an efficient government then that can only mean that the people in power just don't care about that plight of the poor and that should be humiliating to them.

Confucius tended to teach in parallel couplets and the mirror image of this first statement is the observation that in a country that is poorly managed, that has an ineffective government, wealth should be a source of shame.


We can look to our southern neighbors to see examples of that.....the government of Nicaragua is one of the most ineffective that I have had the chance to see up close... in a nation of 4.5 million people, there are five fabulously wealthy families and nearly 2 million people living at the point of malnutrition.  Wealth, in a poorly run country is almost always gained at the enslavement of the powerless.  We have monkeys in our local zoo who are better housed and fed and who, frankly, have greater personal freedom, than do the Nicaraguans who work on most of the coffee plantations.

The people in our country who think that they would like to have a Libertarian led government have no idea what a nation governed by the survival of the fittest really looks like.  It looks like a nation without roads, bridges, schools or hospitals, with millions suffering in abject poverty while a few demonic super rich families try to imagine new ways of enjoying their wealth.

Still, the Thanksgiving myths that inspired the first Thanksgiving and the school plays we are endured as children should not be set lightly aside.  We have a strong and comparatively efficient government.... And if you don't believe that they are, try not filing an income tax return for a year or two, but it is a strong and efficient government that often fails to have a moral rudder.

Winthrop and many early leaders of utopian religious communities simply gave human beings more credit than we deserve.  The "dark side of the force is strong with us."  In our minds, we can see, we can do the calculations and we can see that we have come into, as Moses said, a land flowing with milk and honey.
We have the resources in the United States to wipe out poverty, to care for the sick, to educate the next generation and to employ the poor at a living wage.  All we have to do is marry our minds to our hearts, to let our idealism, our patriotism, our spirituality, become sufficiently influential to keep our shadow at bay.

There will be no more poverty in America when we will no longer tolerate it.  There will be no more discrimination against minorities, no denial of rights to gay people, and no splitting of families because of which side of the river they were born on, when we will no longer be willing to be a part of a nation that is well governed but still possessing a second class of peasant citizens.

Winthrop was idealistic but he was not wrong.... We must make the conditions of others our own, having always our community before our eyes, until everyone has reason to be thankful for the circumstances of their lives.

So, in conclusion, let me tell you a little bit about the word "amen."  We say it sometimes just to indicate that we are at the end of a prayer or hymn, or we shout it as a sign of agreement with a statement or a speech.  Technically, it means "truly," or "so be it."  Where our gospels translate Jesus as saying, "Truly, truly, I tell you..." the text literally says, "amen, amen, I tell you...."

There is, in saying it in a religious context, both a sense of affirmation and a bit of a prayer of intercession.... A hope, a wish, that what has been said will become true.  And so, as we prepare for our nation's observance of Thanksgiving, I hope that we will rekindle a dream of a nation so great that we don't have to be ashamed of our mistreatment of the poor, our neglect of the aging and the ill, our oppression of minorities, but that we may, in fact, become that nation that is a city built on a hill as a shining example of a place of opportunity, freedom, liberty, and of real social justice.  To that, I hope, we can all say, "amen."

Israel's Alternative Goddess

Proper 27       November 9, 2014
Community Christian Church of Springfield
Roger Ray, pastor

Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16            
12 Wisdom is radiant and unfading,
and she is easily discerned by those who love her,
and is found by those who seek her.
13 She hastens to make herself known to those who desire her.
14 One who rises early to seek her will have no difficulty,
for she will be found sitting at the gate.
15 To fix one's thought on her is perfect understanding,
and one who is vigilant on her account will soon be free from care,
16 because she goes about seeking those worthy of her,
and she graciously appears to them in their paths,
and meets them in every thought. 

They say that history is the version of events as recorded by the people who won the war.  The voices of the defeated are soon forgotten and lost to history with very few exceptions.

That can certainly be said of scripture.  The Bible was written by the people who won the religious wars.  The ancient near east was full of rival, regional religions, with various gods who specialized either in certain aspects of nature or life, or they were at least jealous about certain hill tops and high places.

But the Bible we inherited as children was written from the perspective of the Palestinian religion centered in Jerusalem, at the hilltop temple on Mt. Moriah.


There were other temples that practiced forms of Yahwistic religions, made sacrifices, and talked about Moses, the escape from Egypt, and the 10 commandments but the version that comes down to us states clearly that Israel was a monotheistic state with its religious center in Jerusalem.  That's not historically true but that is the sanitized version of religious history that we were handed.

Even if you are talking about those settled and stable periods when the royal family and the priestly class worked in harmony and there really was a fiercely dominant state religion, as Christianity was to a large degree in the first half of the 20th century in America.  Even still, there were always those who, on the more superstitious end, dabbled in other religions and forms of magical thinking, and there were always those on the intellectual end of the spectrum, who spoke the language of the dominant religion but who understood it in more symbolic and utilitarian terms.

I'm fond of the saying that equates religion to a swimming pool.... Most of the splashing and noise usually comes from the shallow end... but there is still usually a deep end for the stronger swimmers.  My value judgments are added to this sermon at no extra charge.

Seriously, though, if you read even the dialogues of Plato, you see that 400 years before Jesus, in Greek society, thinking people did not take their religious myths either literally nor even all that seriously.  Read the Republic and you see how Plato articulates through the character of Socrates that religion is used to tame and control the simple minded and the poor and to give encouragement to the noble and the wise, but it is not taken literally.

We get hints and echoes of the same, even from the sanitized view of religious history we get from the Bible.  As the Palestinian religion rubbed up against Greek culture more and more, we see the suggestion of a kind of alternative goddess standing somewhere near that monotheistic faith that attributed all holy things to Yahweh.

It is, of course, much more than an echo in the 4th chapter of Proverbs where we find a virtual hymn of praise to a goddess known as wisdom.  You always have to pay attention when a staunchly monotheistic faith speaks out of the corners of its mouth about some other god standing next to the big God.

There were people in ancient Palestine that spoke of angels and demons and buried religious trinkets in their fields in hopes of a better harvest.  And there were orthodox Jews who imagined that the one true God's presence actually sat on a throne in an inaccessible inner chamber of their temple on top of Mt Moriah within the walled city of Jerusalem.  But there were others who turned with religious devotion to wisdom itself, to intelligence and truth as if intelligence could be personified in a person.... Literally... a person to be desired.... A woman,... a strong, beautiful, woman.

Greek mythology had it that wisdom was a warrior goddess, Athena, and in unmistakable symbolism, she had been born, fully grown and clothed in battle armor, straight out of the forehead of Almighty Zeus.  As such, she was a mythic goddess.... A personification of a character quality that was respected, adored, and desired by ancient people who could see that wisdom was their way out of the darkness of primitive society.

Our wisdom lesson today comes from one of those "in-between" pieces of ancient literature.... Attached to Old Testament material but probably originally written in Greek rather than Hebrew.... A hybrid of Hellenist and Hebrew cultures.  It is from what Protestants call the "Apocrypha" and Catholics have called the "deuteron-canonical" part of the Bible but for our purposes, it is an example of how the ancient mind was striving to break free of the magic and superstition that had dominated the ancient civilizations and to aspire to something higher, something more honest if somewhat less comforting.

Our good friend, Dr. Charlie Hedrick, has mused about this point recently in his writing.  Several of the honored "wise men" of history eventually became described as being either divine or partially divine but that evolution of praise through the fog of history usually took a century or two, or three!  But in the case of Jesus, there were people who were saying that he was semi-divine within a generation of his death.

Why did it happen so fast?  What was it about Jesus that called forth such a rapid promotion from sage, to saint, to prophet, to demi-god and finally to God?

Sermons, unlike college classroom lectures, really ought to have only one point.  I know better than to stand up here and have lots of options in a short speech but this is a topic that simply can't tolerate a one note description.

The first person we know of who tried to push Jesus beyond mere mortal wisdom into a divine role was a guy who had never met him but who did at least have a geographical and biological reference point for Jesus and that was none other than Paul, the self-appointed apostle.
Sadly, however, even though he was closer in time and space, Paul apparently knew less about the historical Jesus than we do and, even more importantly, he cared even less.... He was not interested in the man, Jesus.... He was interested in a mystical Christ.

Fifty years later, one of the first of the famous Christian writers whose works did not make the cut to be included in the New Testament, a man we remember as Justin Martyr, wrote that, "Now the son of God, called Jesus, even if only an ordinary man, is on account of his wisdom (σοφία) worthy to be called son of God." (First Apology, 22)

In the early second century, Justin did not argue that Jesus was God's own offspring because he was miraculously born of a virgin by divine parentage, or that he was any kind of human, divine mix, but rather, quite simply, because he bore the stamp of the goddess who is wisdom.... It was his teachings that made Justin regard him as being a son of God.

In that sense, we too are chosen to set aside the manipulations and deceptions of a creedal religion that wants us to focus on pie in the sky in the by and by, in favor of a religious devotion to wisdom, to the truth, to faith rooted in rational evidence, reality and facts.

Folks, the best part of our faith has nothing to do with denial of reality.  Mysticism is not an embrace of fantasy over science.  Our faith is a principled decision not to be deceived by the trickery of modern magicians who are always asking for you to look "over here" while they are picking your pocket "over there."

Proper 27       November 9, 2014     Community Christian Church of Springfield
Roger Ray, pastor      "Israel's Alternative Goddess"
Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16            
12 Wisdom is radiant and unfading,
and she is easily discerned by those who love her,
and is found by those who seek her.
13 She hastens to make herself known to those who desire her.
14 One who rises early to seek her will have no difficulty,
for she will be found sitting at the gate.
15 To fix one's thought on her is perfect understanding,
and one who is vigilant on her account will soon be free from care,
16 because she goes about seeking those worthy of her,
and she graciously appears to them in their paths,
and meets them in every thought.

They say that history is the version of events as recorded by the people who won the war.  The voices of the defeated are soon forgotten and lost to history with very few exceptions.

That can certainly be said of scripture.  The Bible was written by the people who won the religious wars.  The ancient near east was full of rival, regional religions, with various gods who specialized either in certain aspects of nature or life, or they were at least jealous about certain hill tops and high places.

But the Bible we inherited as children was written from the perspective of the Palestinian religion centered in Jerusalem, at the hilltop temple on Mt. Moriah.


There were other temples that practiced forms of Yahwistic religions, made sacrifices, and talked about Moses, the escape from Egypt, and the 10 commandments but the version that comes down to us states clearly that Israel was a monotheistic state with its religious center in Jerusalem.  That's not historically true but that is the sanitized version of religious history that we were handed.

Even if you are talking about those settled and stable periods when the royal family and the priestly class worked in harmony and there really was a fiercely dominant state religion, as Christianity was to a large degree in the first half of the 20th century in America.  Even still, there were always those who, on the more superstitious end, dabbled in other religions and forms of magical thinking, and there were always those on the intellectual end of the spectrum, who spoke the language of the dominant religion but who understood it in more symbolic and utilitarian terms.

I'm fond of the saying that equates religion to a swimming pool.... Most of the splashing and noise usually comes from the shallow end... but there is still usually a deep end for the stronger swimmers.  My value judgments are added to this sermon at no extra charge.

Seriously, though, if you read even the dialogues of Plato, you see that 400 years before Jesus, in Greek society, thinking people did not take their religious myths either literally nor even all that seriously.  Read the Republic and you see how Plato articulates through the character of Socrates that religion is used to tame and control the simple minded and the poor and to give encouragement to the noble and the wise, but it is not taken literally.

We get hints and echoes of the same, even from the sanitized view of religious history we get from the Bible.  As the Palestinian religion rubbed up against Greek culture more and more, we see the suggestion of a kind of alternative goddess standing somewhere near that monotheistic faith that attributed all holy things to Yahweh.

It is, of course, much more than an echo in the 4th chapter of Proverbs where we find a virtual hymn of praise to a goddess known as wisdom.  You always have to pay attention when a staunchly monotheistic faith speaks out of the corners of its mouth about some other god standing next to the big God.

There were people in ancient Palestine that spoke of angels and demons and buried religious trinkets in their fields in hopes of a better harvest.  And there were orthodox Jews who imagined that the one true God's presence actually sat on a throne in an inaccessible inner chamber of their temple on top of Mt Moriah within the walled city of Jerusalem.  But there were others who turned with religious devotion to wisdom itself, to intelligence and truth as if intelligence could be personified in a person.... Literally... a person to be desired.... A woman,... a strong, beautiful, woman.

Greek mythology had it that wisdom was a warrior goddess, Athena, and in unmistakable symbolism, she had been born, fully grown and clothed in battle armor, straight out of the forehead of Almighty Zeus.  As such, she was a mythic goddess.... A personification of a character quality that was respected, adored, and desired by ancient people who could see that wisdom was their way out of the darkness of primitive society.

Our wisdom lesson today comes from one of those "in-between" pieces of ancient literature.... Attached to Old Testament material but probably originally written in Greek rather than Hebrew.... A hybrid of Hellenist and Hebrew cultures.  It is from what Protestants call the "Apocrypha" and Catholics have called the "deuteron-canonical" part of the Bible but for our purposes, it is an example of how the ancient mind was striving to break free of the magic and superstition that had dominated the ancient civilizations and to aspire to something higher, something more honest if somewhat less comforting.

Our good friend, Dr. Charlie Hedrick, has mused about this point recently in his writing.  Several of the honored "wise men" of history eventually became described as being either divine or partially divine but that evolution of praise through the fog of history usually took a century or two, or three!  But in the case of Jesus, there were people who were saying that he was semi-divine within a generation of his death.

Why did it happen so fast?  What was it about Jesus that called forth such a rapid promotion from sage, to saint, to prophet, to demi-god and finally to God?

Sermons, unlike college classroom lectures, really ought to have only one point.  I know better than to stand up here and have lots of options in a short speech but this is a topic that simply can't tolerate a one note description.

The first person we know of who tried to push Jesus beyond mere mortal wisdom into a divine role was a guy who had never met him but who did at least have a geographical and biological reference point for Jesus and that was none other than Paul, the self-appointed apostle.
Sadly, however, even though he was closer in time and space, Paul apparently knew less about the historical Jesus than we do and, even more importantly, he cared even less.... He was not interested in the man, Jesus.... He was interested in a mystical Christ.

Fifty years later, one of the first of the famous Christian writers whose works did not make the cut to be included in the New Testament, a man we remember as Justin Martyr, wrote that, "Now the son of God, called Jesus, even if only an ordinary man, is on account of his wisdom (σοφία) worthy to be called son of God." (First Apology, 22)

In the early second century, Justin did not argue that Jesus was God's own offspring because he was miraculously born of a virgin by divine parentage, or that he was any kind of human, divine mix, but rather, quite simply, because he bore the stamp of the goddess who is wisdom.... It was his teachings that made Justin regard him as being a son of God.

In that sense, we too are chosen to set aside the manipulations and deceptions of a creedal religion that wants us to focus on pie in the sky in the by and by, in favor of a religious devotion to wisdom, to the truth, to faith rooted in rational evidence, reality and facts.

Folks, the best part of our faith has nothing to do with denial of reality.  Mysticism is not an embrace of fantasy over science.  Our faith is a principled decision not to be deceived by the trickery of modern magicians who are always asking for you to look "over here" while they are picking your pocket "over there."

Just as the ancients struggled to break free of a world defined by fear of demons and spirits by giving their faith and loyalty to a more reliable deity, a goddess they called "wisdom," so we choose to be freed from a culture that worships war, bows down to the power of wealth, worships at the altars of banks, corporations and a hysterical media that distorts reality as if they were feeding us a cocktail of meth, coke, and alcohol that they call "news," and we choose in stead an informed, sober, and sometimes somber awareness of reality that buffer only with hope that is born of faith.... Faith that together, we can make it better.

The Long Overdue Death of Denominations

Proper 26    November 2, 2014
Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor

Matthew 23:1-12      Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2"The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; 3therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. 4They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. 5They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.6They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, 7and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. 8But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. 9And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father--the one in heaven. 10Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. 11The greatest among you will be your servant. 12All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

There is an old proverb I'm very fond of about a time when a certain man and the devil were taking a walk together.  As they walked along, the man stumbled upon a great truth.  He showed it to the devil and Satan said, "Here, let me organize that for you."  There is just something about institutionalizing something wonderful that takes everything good out of it.

We get used to expecting politicians to be dishonest and self-serving.  We regrettably accept that corporations and the wealthy will manipulate the banking and tax systems to serve their own interests.  We may even become wary of friendships and love relationships that come and go far too easily.  But when it comes to the church, that vessel that has carried the gospel through the centuries, it never seems right to just accept corruption there and when we find it there, it seems always to be more malignant, more insidious, more heart breaking, because it is so very out of place.

It is one of the things you have to love about the gospels.  The Bible wasn't written by God, or Jesus nor was it even written by the Apostles...the gospels are a product of the early faith community, preserved by churches and edited by pastors and priests.  And yet, as we find in it, here and there, as in our reading from Matthew this morning, an occasional stone thrown right at organized religion and the pompous bishops, priests and pastors who run it.

There really isn't much preserved of the teachings of the historical Jesus, especially considering how important he has been to human history... but of all that got left out, edited out, covered up by later church tradition, it is kind of surprising that Matthew was able to preserve this stinging rebuke of the clergy in his gospel.

It is a helpful reminder for us in this age to make sure that we realize that the gospel and the church are not the same thing.  As important as the church was as a social institution, I always wondered if Jesus ever would have bothered to attend one.

The primary preaching message of Jesus was about the Kingdom of God.... The rule of God, the world where people didn't kill, steal, or lie.... The world in which there was neither warfare nor poverty... that's the kingdom Jesus talked about... that's the kingdom that Jesus said was coming.... But it didn't.  He didn't get the Kingdom of God.  He did get the church.... Is it any wonder then that he hasn't bothered to come back?

The church has been the vessel of the message of Jesus.  The church codified the gospel, ritualized, and in many ways sanitized it but at least it preserved a way of thinking and a vision for a better world.... Even while often lending its support to governments and economies that are the exact opposite of what Jesus envisioned.

But the church has been a vital institution for hundreds of years.  There was hardly a rural crossroads in America that didn't sprout one or two churches.  Our downtown city-scapes have been punctuated by cathedrals and steeples.  But the dominance of the church has gone the way of the wooden slide-rule and the manual typewriter.  Churches all over America and Europe are closing or being repurposed.

Twenty years ago, on a Sunday morning, I preached to between 300 and 400 people who crowded into two services in an ornate sanctuary.  In those days we had thirty or forty people a week who asked for a cassette tape of the sermon and a few hundred read a missive from me in the printed church newsletter.  Now we see 40 or 50 people gathered in our simple little church while somewhere between five and ten thousand people will download the message every month as either a video or a podcast.

I have tried in vain to make substantive connection with our far flung audience... struggled to somehow make them a part of our community...but the world has changed.  People don't connect they way they once did.  I fear that bricks and mortar churches will exist only in symbolic ways in the next generation but even still, you have to see, the church is not the gospel.

Our church never bothered to affiliate with any larger denomination.

I served Disciple of Christ churches for nearly 30 years and there was a time when I looked up to my denominational leaders with admiration and with confidence.  As the institution shrank, and jobs became scarce, it seemed to me that all of the really good guys were forced into retirement or unemployment and the rules of Machiavellian power manipulation took the place of virtue and noble leadership.

In place of self sacrificing servants of the church, the few remaining judicatories seemed willing to be as dishonest and corrupt as they had to be in order to keep drawing a salary and to hold on until they could retire.  My relationship with the Disciples did not end initially when I reported a former General Minister and President of the denomination, William Nichols, of pedophilia and of using church funds to pay for illicit sex.  I reported it but I trusted the church to deal with it appropriately but they didn't.  They paid of the living victims and swept it all under the rug unwell Nichols had died.

Closer to home, I demanded an audit of our local Ozarks Lakes Area office when it became apparent to me that the Area Minister was using designated funds to pay his own salary until all of the funds were depleted and all of the records had been destroyed.  To this day I cannot believe that Mike Weinman is not in prison rather than still serving as Area Minister.  More than that, I cannot believe that all of the Disciple ministers in the area, who saw this happening, chose to be silent and to allow the embezzling to just go on.

But the hypocrisy of others is no excuse for indifference on our own parts.

The institutional church was dying from financial starvation and now they are making themselves morally irrelevant.  I want to believe that this new pope, Pope Francis, is the real deal.  I hope that the reforms he is hinting at actually take root but whether they do or they don't, the Catholic Church is at least a half a century behind the inevitable changes of society and though they have the numbers and the money to survive for another century, they will shed numbers at a rate that will look like a free fall.

Smaller protestant denominations will either merge with one another or they will blink out of existence and, so far as I am concerned, they won't disappear fast enough to suit me.  They were useful at one time but have become too sick to redeem.  They need to get out of the way and make room for something new and different to emerge.

The institutional church is somewhere between the intensive care unit and the morgue but the gospel is still alive and well.  Where it will take root is still not entirely clear to me.  Though we have ten times as many listeners on line as we have in the room, I do not think that faith will find it's home on iTunes or YouTube.  Somehow, people of faith will still need each other, they will have to find one another and build community.

Bishop Spong has pointed directly at our little church and has declared that we are an example of what the church must become.  I find that validating and encouraging but like the two thousand people who will download one of our messages on the web this week, Bishop Spong lives a thousand miles away and even though he and Christine Spong have generously contributed to our future work, it remains to be seen if even our wild and rebellious version of church can survive.

But folks, you have to realize, the kingdom still hasn't come.  The military industrial complex still has more power than our elected Congress and President.  Our corporate media still tries to distract us as if we were all pre-school children, and poverty, which could have been stamped out by now, is actually on the rise.

The denominational church may and probably will, and probably should, die.  The whole business of religious institutions being against other religious institutions may have served a purpose in previous centuries but it threatens to kill us now.  There is no need to have a religious body that thinks that Christianity is right and Buddhism is wrong.... We need faith communities that believe that peace and justice is right and war and injustice are wrong.  It is not about communion, baptism, praying five times a day while facing Mecca, or putting food offerings and incense in front of a statue.... It is about paying a living wage to workers.... It is about treating people with respect and affording fundamental human rights to minorities, regardless of their gender, race, sexual orientation or nation of origin.

There are big issues in life waiting for our time, attention and resources.... Religious turf battles need to be relegated to the pages of history.