Being Prophetic in the Land of Unclean Lips

May 31, 2015
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor

Isaiah 6:1-8
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. 2Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3And one called to another and said:
'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.' 
4The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. 5And I said: 'Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!'
6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: 'Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.' 8Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?' And I said, 'Here am I; send me!'

       
The state of Texas has experienced unprecedented flooding in the past week with nearly all of its major cities facing either flooded rivers or flash flooding from heavy rains. An image on the internet showed houses and cars standing in several feet of water and the caption read, "Why don't you try cutting taxes on the rich and then letting the free market fix this?"

The earth, speaking globally, is very slowly warming.  That warming is causing some shifts in weather patterns that actually makes some parts of the globe abnormally cool and is causing movements in the atmosphere that seems to be preventing rain on the west coast and brining uncommon rain fall in Texas and Oklahoma, along with the often discussed rise in the sea level that will eventually cover most of Florida, New York City, Boston and many other places that we would really rather not give back to the seas.

There are long-term solutions to our environmental challenges.... But, to date, our nation and much of the rest of the world remain unwilling to work on solutions.  There is not Republican and Democratic science.  There is just good science and junk science.
However, there are attempts at making science partisan.  The Republican control states of Florida and North Carolina have, by act of their legislature, made it illegal for state employees to use the term, "Global Climate Change" or any of its corollaries such as "global warming," and "sea level rise."  They have to say things like "nuisance flooding."  Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas, have all taken similarly science denying state policies.

C. S. Lewis made the helpful observation that a lunatic cannot blot out the sun by writing "darkness" on his cell wall.  Refusing to deal with the facts, refusing to say the words, like Scarlet in "Gone with the Wind" saying, "I'll worry about that tomorrow," is just deadly ignorant.... Literally.

However, even though it is somewhat satisfying to see Texas officials who voted against funding for Sandy relief just three years ago, now demanding federal relief in light of their much less devastating flooding in Texas, it is not helpful simply to make fun of their hypocrisy.

In this scripture lesson Jennifer read fro us from Isaiah, in a vision the young prophet feels that he is being called upon to confront the hypocrisy, the injustice, the evil within his culture but he objects saying, "I am a man of unclean lips who lives among a people of unclean lips."  Which is to say, "Sure, we're pretty messed up right now... we have a huge income and capital disparity between the ruling class and the working class... most of our food is produced in near slave-like conditions and our foreign policy is likely to get us killed but, I am a part of the society that has created all of these problems.... Who am I to speak?"

You don't typically think of the words "humble" or "modest" when you think of Isaiah or, for that matter, any of the Old Testament prophets.  Preaching, in and of itself, is all the evidence you need to accuse someone of arrogance.  Expecting hundreds of people to sit quietly while I tell them what I think about matters of utmost importance is a narcissistic exercise that could only be trumped by printing your own picture on currency and yet, this is what a prophet is supposed to do.

But I appreciate his modesty, even if it was only in a vision and he was only telling it about himself.  The fact remains, Isaiah identified himself as being a part of the same corrupt society that he was being sent to confront.  And that is a helpful reminder for all of us.  

Late night talk shows and news-parody shows have trained us all to be rather snarky in our conversation about politics as if we were all trying out to take the place of Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart and I'm especially guilty of that because I have this 20 minute weekly gig in which I want to appear to be simultaneously persuasive and also terribly witty.

I have good friends who regularly try to get me to tone down my rhetoric, insisting that there is guilt on both sides of the political divide and no progress can be made until we meet in the middle. I get that.... I and we are a people of unclean lips who live in a society of unclean lips but the offenses are not anything like equal and false equivalencies don't help us to get at the truth.

My politics are based on my approach to spirituality and ethics.  I know that a lot of conservative religious people would say the same thing.  The right wing of religion, whether your are Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, tends to resist equal rights for women, or the rights of women to manage their own reproductive life... they tend to be very pro-business and anti-union, ... they usually oppose gay rights and they are willing to edit both science and history to suit their own purposes.

Those of us on the religious left, again, of all three major western faiths, take nearly opposite views on civil rights and poverty issues.  That does not, however, make me a very good Democrat.  I sometimes say that I hail from the Democratic wing of the Democratic party because it seems to me that the party, as a whole, has been willing to talk the talk but then walk the military and corporate walk.

I was very surprised the first time that we lost church members because I was critical of our Democratic president.  I would never assume that a prophetic pulpit owed any kind of fealty to a political party but clearly that is not a universally shared opinion.  It appears to be one thing that Republicans and Democrats do have in common, they are not very good at being self-critical.

I am very critical of the plan to build a new pipe-line over major aquifers of the United States in order to pump tar sands out of Canada.... Not just because of the environmental risks presented to American water sources but because we really should leave that nasty carbon sequestered in the ground.

But, I did drive a gas powered car to church today and as much as I am opposed to slavery, I am wearing a suit that was manufactured in slavery-like conditions in South Korea.  I had English tea at my home this morning but I know the tea wasn't grown in England and I'm equally sure that I would be appalled by the circumstances under which it was grown and harvested.

I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a nation of people with unclean lips.  I suspect that I am employed by a church comprised of people with unclean lips.  None of us are innocent and yet we must not be paralyzed by that fact.  Isaiah, in his vision, endured an angel pressing a hot coal to his lips as a sign of purification so that he could then speak the truth to power.

Minus the hot coals to the lips, that is our job too.  What do you believe are the most important issues our society must face and solve in the next decade?

You may have a somewhat different list but I would say that the biggest challenges we must solve are:
1)    Income disparity
2)    Dependence on fossil fuels
3)    And, a foreign policy based on maintaining a military empire
But what do we talk about most in the news?  Benghazi... Hillary's email server... gay marriage.... The sexual peccadillos of politicians... and mostly we talk about which candidate will be allowed to serve the interests of corporations and the super rich next.  Do you see the problem here?

As long as the media keeps us focused on the trivial and political parties both engage in dog whistle manipulation of voters then the poor will become more impoverished, the corporation that make money off of wars, medicines, food, and banking services will continue to run our government for their own benefit, while the earth itself becomes uninhabitable and the concepts of freedom and individual prosperity will become matters of history.

We have been a part of the society of unclean lips but we can be the prophetic voice that guides our path towards a more peaceful, sustainable and just society.  If we fall in love with the truth, and find the courage to step out of the system the world can be changed.

Faith in the 21st Century

Easter 6    May 10, 2015
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, Pastor

Psalm 1                  
1 Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers;
2 but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
   and on his law they meditate day and night.
3 They are like trees planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.
4 The wicked are not so,
   but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgement,
   nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
6 for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
   but the way of the wicked will perish.

In my recently published book, Progressive Faith and Practice, I explain the initial invention of religion as the attempt of early civilizations to cope with two things:  the capricious nature of the universe, and their awareness of their own inevitable death.  When humans became self-aware, they attempted to project a personality onto the earth, weather, agriculture, the seas and the skies in order to account for why they did what they did.  The earliest of religions did not include a belief in an afterlife but for many, especially in western culture where individualism seemed to be increasingly important, a belief in eternal life was added to western religions and to varying degrees, it has also pollinated some eastern faiths.

For most people, it seems, the function of religion has never really progressed from just that level.  From the time when ancient Palestinians believed that God sat on a throne in the heavens right above their temple on Mt Moriah in Jerusalem, to the announcement of Mike Huckabee last week in Hope, Arkansas in which he reflected on his childhood experiences in school, saying, "We prayed at the start of each day, and we prayed again before lunch, and I learned that this exceptional country could only be explained by the providence of almighty God," religion has not evolved.  Jews thought that God had chosen them to rule the world and that God hated all of their neighboring nations.  Mike Huckabee would say that God created all of the world and all of the people in it, but God only seems to really like the white folks in America. God is funny that way.

At this most simple and self-serving level, religion in most churches is basically what it was when the first cave man stood in the morning light and silently prayed that the gods would give him success in the day's hunt.  But, and today I would like to say a profound, "Yes - But" even to myself and my own published summation of the genesis of all religions.  Yes, it is true that human self-consciousness led to the creation of religions based on a personification of aspects of nature and a lust for some assurance that we will not all die in the way that cows, chicken and pigs seem to die, never to rise again.

Yes, religion was initially a psychological balm to comfort the anxiety of primitive self-awareness but that is not all that it was and not all that it is and most certainly not all that it must be in the 21st century.

I could point to many earlier historical quotes but in light of Gov. Huckabee's theological interpretation of what make America great, I will assert that it was a unique and powerful blossoming of the American Enlightenment in the mid 1700's.  The American Enlightenment was certainly sparked by the European Enlightenment but ours carried some unique markers and amazing insights in turning sectarian religious thought into moral deliberation.

Thomas Jefferson is famous for having taken his knife to the New Testament, cutting out every reference to the miraculous, to claims of divinity and immortality, and preserving the moral teachings he found there.  The primitive magical thinking and superstition, along with the wishful thinking in hopes of invisible friends who help you out of tight spots, were seen as the packaging that real religion came in.... packaging that was best discarded so that you could get at the real point of it.

Unlike many in our day who, once they give up on the packaging of religion, are willing to toss the virtues in the garbage as well, the leaders of the American Enlightenment not only didn't reject religion, they doubled down on its core message.  Because, alongside of the more visceral motivation to create myths to help you to cope with a capricious universe and a short personal lifespan, there has always been the dual purpose of trying to define what it means to be a good person.

You have often heard me reference the ancient Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, that gave birth to post-exilic Judaism, early Christianity and Islam, that taught that the good life is lived by achieving three things:  right thoughts, right words, and right actions.

Professor Mark Berkson of Hamline University has distilled what he believes the core virtues of classic Greek thought, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Christianity... I've printed them in your bulletin and for those of you who are joining us online, if you want to see it written out, you can find the entire text of this sermon on our website.  Berkson's list is this:


Classical Greek thought:  Wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance
Confucianism: Benevolence, propriety, righteousness, and wisdom
Buddhism:  Compassion, loving kindness, sympathetic joy, and equanimity
Christianity:  Faith, hope, and charity

A reasonable person might argue with aspects of Berkson's summary but in general what we see here is a broad outline of what it means to be a good person.  In Greek society, it might have been described as the good citizen.  Confucius spoke of being a gentleman though clearly what he meant is more of what we mean by saying that someone is a gentleman and a scholar. Buddhism cannot be meaningfully discussed, in my opinion, without also mentioning detachment, but the ideal Buddhist is someone who lives without greed or competition and is at harmony with others and at peace with her or himself.

Christianity is a bit harder.  Clearly, he is drawing on Paul's letter to the Roman church but if you can translate "faith" to mean a courageous commitment to principle, and "charity" to mean both compassion and unjudging love, then I can say a hearty "amen" to his list.

What I would ask you to notice about this list, even the beginning with Zoroastrianism, is that there is no need for a supernatural theistic person in the heavens to make this true.  Virtue is true in an existential way.  Virtue becomes its own evidence.  That leading a good life, improves the quality of your life and the lives of those around you.  Virtue in the individual is lent to the community, infusing society with is compassion, love, empathy, with its willingness to sacrifice courageously for the greater good.

But none of this is necessarily natural.  Theft, violence, self-serving appetites.... Those are natural.  Virtue is a choice.  Virtue is a matter of practice, of discipline, of determination.

To reference our American Enlightenment once more, in a memoir written for his son, Ben Franklin described how he methodically identified 13 virtues and took on one at a time to try to make them each a part of what it meant to be Ben Franklin.  You would not be surprised to know that "thrift" was one of Franklin's chosen virtues, but so was moderation, the ability to be silent, humility, courage of convictions, temperance, productivity, orderliness and cleanliness, and he even mentioned chastity which he no more achieved than most of our modern politicians.

The point is that religion, the good part of it, the virtues that we need to bring to the 21st century, are not accidents of our occasional association with any faith system.  Practicing a faith is not about sacraments, rituals, liturgies and hymns.  Practicing a faith is about carefully identifying who you want to become, about choosing virtues that address the broken places in your life, in your character, that may inspire you to be healed, to be more whole, to be a better person.

The claim is that this is best done in community.  We don't read texts in our gatherings to satisfy God.... We read them because they are supposed to instruct our character, to inspire us to try again.  We do not pray to ask God to perform magic in our lives or anyone elses.... We pray as reflective meditation in the hope that we might be changed for the better.

We don't sing to placate the ego of a Divine entity that expects praise.  We sing because the poetry of music is more powerful in its inspiration than is the spoken word.... Except of course for the lyrics of most Country Music and, for that matter, Italian opera, but we don't need to discuss that now.

If there is to continue to be a church in the later part of the 21st century, certainly it must be a place that is free of the packaging of Iron Age myths and superstitious thinking.  I believe that every educated member of clergy already knows this and would be saying it if they were not afraid of unemployment.  But unemployment is coming if we continue to try to bolster belief in absurdities and remain loyal to creeds rooted in truth claims that have no substance other than that they feel somewhat familiar and might take the edge off of fear and grief.

If the church has a reason to exist, surely it is to raise a prophetic voice to challenge the evils of our society in the big picture, and to individually draw that down to the teaching, encouraging, and maybe even confronting of the same in ourselves.  You will not become a saint by following the path of least resistance.  Everyone is naturally the hero of their own novel in which we always make ourselves the main character crying out only to be sympathetically understood.

We will become the good people we want to be, we will help to bring about the good society we know should exist, only by making a courageous and fearless commitment to self-examination, by being determined to work and sacrifice to be better people and by being willing to encourage others to do the same.

I don't know if the church will survive the death of superstition but I hope it will.  I'm staying because I know that even in my advanced years, I am nowhere near being the person I hope to be and I hope that you will help me to become more like that person every week when we gather to do whatever it is that people like us do in church.