The Two-Faced God

Dec. 27, 2015
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor

Janus

Come two faced Janus, lie to us

Bring me to your door, and leave me ambiguous

A sane drunk in the roads middle

Between prophecy and history

The present stands on a griddle

Full of rational ambiguity

We are burning now

Who dream of a happy new year

While to the bottle bow

Seeking anesthesia from old despair

Oh, fallacy of a pagan lore,

Jekyll Janus, will you be also door

And prophet? Mask in the dead history

And usurped memory,

The earth will spin and a new year starts

Around the sun again as youth departs.

So usurper of Mars and Venus, faked

Jupiter, how can you begin

Anything that you cannot create? Wake

Not the ire of the true God to such sin

Yet I must bid you come despite

Since your name on the first month hangs so tight

To our meaningless wisdom and days

A subtle ferment of surreptitious praise

January, new month of beginning

How do I, like you, find new meaning

Or fresh faith for fractured flesh

Recovering youth and dreams I fled?

Speak not! my soul in a new dimension thresh

You affirm the truth sealed in my head.

Copyright (c) 2015 L'nass Shango 

I offer my most sincere apologies to any of you who are true devotes to speculations about time travel, even to those who attempt to garner some credibility for science fiction by quoting Albert Einstein.

But I would like to say, at least from a philosophical perspective, that time does not exist.  Time is not a thing, it is not a river that you can either go back upstream or power your way along into the future.  Time is mere a way of making movement.  That is, if nothing every moved at all. . . if every molecule of your body and the environment around you stayed in exactly the same place, there would be no way to mark time.

Time, then, is a conceptual measuring stick to mark change.  The sun rises and sets as the earth turns, which, for us, defines the passage of a day. Something sadly missed by the writer of the first chapter of Genesis who insists that God was creating heaven and earth, light and day, on day one. . .  separating water from land on the second  day. On the third day, the Omnipotent one made plant life but didn't get around to creating the sun until the 4th day which means that those first three days were just guesses.

A day is simply the rising and the setting of the sun in our experience.  You cannot, as Superman movies might suggest, reverse time like a DVD by making the earth go backwards for a few revolutions.

Though all of the world's religions insist upon trying hallow certain days and seasons as if Christmas and Easter, or Hanukkah, or Ramadan are really anything other than just the continued rotation of the earth, the truth is, there is only change. Christmas is not more holy than Festivus nor do our calendars have any special power. January 1st of 2000 looked a lot like December 31st of 1999. They are just numbers, used to count the rotations of the earth.

And yet, we will celebrate the arrival of a new year this week with rituals that attempt to imbue that turning of the calendar with importance that it simply does not inherently have. The first month of the year is named for the two faced Roman god, Janus. January, falling at that time of year in the northern hemisphere when days begin to be a little longer, was seen as the doorway to a new year.

This is a fairly rare case where the Greeks had no similar god, but in Roman tradition, Janus was the god of transformation, the portal of potential change. In honor of Janus, we still make New Year's resolutions to use the perceived passage of time to make ourselves or our world better.

If you have been thinking about joining a gym and starting to try to get in shape, I suggest that you wait until February first when almost all of the New Year's resolutions of our neighbors will be a part of history. January, the gyms will be packed with people who are, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, demonstrating the triumph of hope over experience.

But I don't want to make light of New Year's resolutions.  If people cannot make a conscious decision to change for the better then there is absolutely no reason for anyone to ever deliver another sermon.  This weekly exercise we engage in exists in part to inform, but surely it is also to inspire, persuade, and encourage us to try to change in ways that more fully embodies our shared values.  In the good ol days we could dispense with informing and persuading and go straight for threats and fear, promises and rewards .... I kinda miss the old days but, as I observed earlier, there is no going back in time so I'm going to try and work with what we have left.

2016 is an election year. I find it interesting that there is conversation on both sides of the political continuum that cries out the desire to "take our country back." The Tea Party crowd has been chanting that slogan for years.... I think that they mostly mean that they want to take their country back from that black guy in the White House.... I'm pretty sure that they would like to make it a "whites only" house.

But it is not just the right wing candidates that want to "take our country back." You can say that in many ways Bernie Sanders wants to take back our country for the middle class, wresting authority and control from the super wealthy. You cannot escape the draw of the Clinton campaign for those who, in spite of his failings, still miss Bill and would like to see the Clintons back in the White House.

But the more remarkable fear-driven, turn back the hands of time, sentiments do seem to be coming from the right.  I never dreamed that anyone in my lifetime would reference the massively illegal and morally bankrupt internment of Japanese families during World War II as a good thing, but recently, the leader in the Republican primaries, Donald Trump, suggested that we put American Muslims in internment camps and defended that policy by referencing how well it worked for us to put the Japanese in internment camps.

I never dreamed that I would ever hear something so massively evil and simultaneously stupid coming out of the mouth of someone who just might become the President of the United States... which makes 2016 look a bit more like Alice falling through the looking glass than it does a 21st century political conversation.

And though it has not been talked about much in the media, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's views on birth control sound like a page out of a 1950's Catholic sermon.

Now, you have to hand it to him, his 8 children bear witness to the fact that he and his wife have evidently practiced what they claim to believe but that he would defend that by saying that artificial birth control is abusive to women and encourages irresponsible conduct is very nearly unbelievable.  Thankfully, Santorum is so far down in the polls as to be virtually insignificant in the race but what concerns me is how many people would really like to return to the security of the past when gay people couldn't get married, most blacks didn't vote, when we could pay Mexican farm workers pennies an hour to do our hard work for us and then kick them out of the country, calling them criminals, and to take health care away from millions of people because they are not sufficiently affluent to be able to pay to stay alive.

Progress never happens in a straight line. Society, marriages, businesses, churches, even friendships, take two steps forward and one, or two, or three steps back.  Progress never just goes forward but it eventually must and going backwards is not really an option.  Lots of people may still hate it, but once given equal rights, gay people will never be forced into second class citizen rolls again.

The new Tea Party governor in my home state of Kentucky, Matt Bevin, removed the right to vote for 140,000 former felons and then reversed the previous governor's decision to raise the minimum wage for government workers to over $10 an hour.  Bevin took away $3 of that, a 30% cut in pay for people who are already living in poverty.
Bevin is a living example of what happens when you move from conservative Fox News chest thumping into actual, real life governing.  I hope that people are paying attention because images of a dystopian future may work for a Mad Max movie but in the real world... they are a bad idea.  Still, everyone on the Republican stage, all devout Christians that they are, still oppose a minimum wage increase and Donald Trump went so far as to say that salaries in America are too high and the minimum wage will have to be lowered in order for American manufacturing to become competitive on the world market.

As they ratchet up the rhetoric in the full swing of the campaign in 2016, I wonder how long it will take for someone to advocate the return of our constitution's defense of the institution of slavery.  No one seems to see the connection between this kind of crazy rhetoric and what actually happens in the real world.

Several presidential candidates are big fans of the NSA's meta-data, large scale invasion of privacy of the entire population but several are emphatic about wanting to monitor and shut down Islamic Mosques where domestic terrorists are being radicalized.  And sure, after the mass murder in San Bernardino earlier this month, there is substantial reason to look into how a guy who was born in, educated in, and who was pretty well employed in the USA could have become so horribly radicalized.  I get it. There are religious and political subcultures that spread a way of thinking that directly leads to violence and terror.

What I object to is that we do not appear to be having a similar conversation about what radicalized the guy to commit the mass murder at a Planned Parenthood office in Colorado last month. Who radicalized him?
Who fed him the false information that Planned Parenthood was selling the body parts of aborted fetuses? Didn't that lie come straight from the mouth of Carlie Fiorina?  We want to deport Muslim Imams who teach hatred and fear, who manipulate and radicalize their followers with misinformation, convincing them that they are victims of inferior people but why do we tolerate an entire news agency devoted to manipulating low information viewers, convincing them that they are victims of people who are inferior to them and literally insisting that their army of frightened, paranoid followers be allowed to arm themselves with all manner of lethal weapons?

I'm all about freedom of speech, but we all know from our middle school civics classes that the freedom of speech does not allow you to yell "fire" in a crowded theater.

The people who try to manipulate the public through fear... and this goes a long way back.... Fear of communists, socialists, Jews, Catholics, immigrants, feminists, homosexuals, AIDS, terrorists, Ebola, and now Syrian refugees.... Don't they have some responsibility for the radicalizing of the fringe of their crazy followers?  Can't there be a time when we wake up to the fact that we have never made a good decision based on fear?

The names of the months and the numbers on the calendars mean nothing at all but what is true is that the world will change.... Time is change... we can change for the better or we can change for the worse.  We can make principled, moral, spiritually inspired decisions about how we will shape the world, or we can react in fear like sheep hoping to run into the arms of a pretentious, dishonest, shepherd because we hope that he will protect us.
For me, progress is a matter of moral determination and courage.  As Cezar Chavez said "Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducated the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate a person who has felt pride. You cannot oppress a people who are not afraid anymore."

Be proud of being progressive liberals. Don't be afraid of the future, make the future what you know that it should be.

Practical Theology (Because who wants impractical theology?)

Advent 3   December 13, 2015
Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor

Luke 3:7-14                    
7John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 9Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." 10And the crowds asked him, "What then should we do?" 11In reply he said to them, "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." 12Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?" 13He said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." 14Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what should we do?" He said to them, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages." 

For most of human history, poverty was caused by scarcity. There simply was not enough food, water, housing, and there were not enough seats in classrooms for everyone to receive an education, be comfortably housed, and adequately fed. The past half century was the first time in the history of civilization when the world has had more than enough to provide these things to everyone but what we have now is not a lack of resources but a lack of morality, a lack of will, a lack of common decency. Our poverty is uniquely created by those who hoard both wealth and power.

By the mid-90's this fact was being broadly discussed among both economists and agricultural specialists.  There was no longer a need to focus on how to produce more food. We were already producing more than was being eaten and, in fact, more than could be eaten. We were subsidizing turning food into gasoline to try to get rid of it while still surrounded by starvation.

I have been involved in poverty and hunger related charities for most of my adult life. I've helped to build feeding centers in rural Nicaragua, cooked for our local homeless and still, every week, I'm on the serving line helping to feed as many hungry, homeless guys as we can find.  But I know that charity is not the answer.

I don't want to diminish charity. I sent a gift to Nicaragua this week because I still very much believe in the work that the Rainbow Network does there. I'll be back serving lunch to the homeless this Thursday, as I am every Thursday. But I know that these gestures are symbolic.... It is like trying to put out a forest fire with a squirt gun. The problem is not that food is not available, the problem is that so many people cannot buy it... they can't get into the economic flow of people who get a regular pension or paycheck, that let's them go the market, buy what they want to eat, and take it home and cook it.

As Dorothy Day was fond of saying, the problem is our rotten stinking system, and our acceptance of it.

Our ancient scriptures, our hymns, our cultural myths and stories, all evolved in a world where there was a shortage of goods and so we have derived images of generosity, of sharing, of showing charitable concern for those who are less fortunate... but all of those tender hearted, well intended images are not accurate descriptions of current day.

I get it... I get it more than most of you.... I have seen Dickens' A Christmas Carol a hundred times, I've played the Ghost of Christmas Present at least three times on stage myself, and I still cry every time Scrooge has his epiphany at the end.... Even when I watch the Mr. McGoo version of the Christmas Carol! But I'm telling you, charity is a kind of feel good tipping in the face of the real problem which is an economic system that keeps nearly a half of the population locked into poverty when we have more than enough to take care of them.

There are more empty repossessed houses in the United States than there are homeless people!  There is more food going to the landfill every day than is needed to feed every hungry person in the world. Our problem is not scarcity... unless what you mean by scarcity is a dearth of conscience.

My favorite historian, forgive me Dr. Adams.... You are a close second, my favorite historian, Howard Zinn, said, The rule of law does not do away with the unequal distribution of wealth and power, but reinforces that inequality with the authority of law. It allocates wealth and poverty. . . in such complicated and indirect ways as to leave the victim bewildered.

One of the smartest, most multi-talented people I know is on public assistance and has been, off and on, for 20 years.  She can do carpentry, plumbing, electrical work, and she can fix nearly anything on almost any car. She can cook any form of game and manage to make food stamps feed the homeless and dispossessed kids on her street, but she can't break into the universe of employment, insurance, retirement, and homeownership.  She is hardworking and talented but she has some health issues, some complicated family hurdles, and absolutely cannot break out of the cycle of poverty.

And if she were the only person in town in this predicament, I would solve her problems myself.... If her situation was a stand alone circumstance, I would just take it on my own shoulders and solve it.

But my phone rings every day with calls from people with very legitimate needs, asking for assistance.... Yesterday, a woman called who had fled a violent spouse and was staying in a local cheap hotel and she needed someone to help her stay there.... The spouse abuse shelter is full and has a waiting list that may be months long..... should he subject herself and her children to violence and possibly murder and just wait for an open room?

I'm telling you, the system is a dirty, rotten, stinking, system that is not fit for humans.  And it isn't like Dorothy Day, Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, and I just discovered this fact in the past century.

We have a biblical text before us today.... I know that some of you may have almost given up on me every referencing the Bible again but today we actually have a gospel lesson from the third chapter of Luke.  If we were a church that was very aware of the lectionary and the Christian calendar, we would know that today is the 3rd Sunday of Advent, that season of precursor lessons before Christmas.

And every year, the prescribed gospel lesson for the 3rd Sunday of Advent features a reference to John the Baptist. But this year, what is called "year c" featuring readings from the gospel according to Luke, is the only year that we get even a fragment of what John is reported to have preached.

John actually enjoyed a good deal more fame in the first century than Jesus ever did.  There was a religious sect that remained faithful to him long after he died... a quasi Jewish-sect that gathered in the name of John until his memory was finally eclipsed by the Jesus movement.

So the four canonical gospels all have to at least tip their hat to John... they had to somehow polemically make the claim that John personally acknowledged that Jesus was more important than he was.  The gospels even insist that John was beheaded and only then Jesus became a public preacher but other historical sources suggest that Jesus was killed before John was executed.... The gospel writers may have played a bit fast and loose with the details here and if they did, it wouldn't be the only time they did....

Only Luke even attempts to preserve any substantive part of the preaching of John.  John was very popular, he was very influential but if you want to know why, you have to look at these seven verses in the 3rd chapter of Luke because that's the only hint that you will get.

But there is nothing there about a coming messiah.... Nothing about going to hell or being rewarded with heaven..... his advice is much more down to earth.... Sort of an economics 101.

When I was in seminary, one of the professors dared to offer a course entitled, "Practical Theology," which set the rest of the faculty in an uproar because if you can offer a course in practical theology that implies that all of the other courses in theology were impractical and sometimes, in a prestigious university, the simple fact that the shoe fits doesn't mean that you have the slightest interest in wearing it!

I don't know if these 7 verses are a historical reflection of what John really stood for, what he actually said and was all about, or if this is a creation of Luke's imagination.  There is no historical evidence either way so your opinion is just as good as any learned scholar on the matter.

For may own part, and I have a microphone and none of you do right now so I will pretend that means something, I like to believe that this is an echo of John's real preaching.  It pleases me to think so.  It pleases me and it is consistent of what I see in the basic historical record of Moses, Buddha, Zoroaster, the Maccabees, Jesus, Mohamed, Francis and maybe even Martin Luther.

That is, it seems that almost every meaningful religious reform movement begins when someone manages to stand up for the poor, the marginalized, the enslaved, the landless, the hopeless, the poor, and say:  Look, you buttholes, if you have two coats, give one to someone who doesn't have one.... If you have more than enough to eat, share your bread with someone who is going hungry.

No one could be much more cynical than I am about organized religion and yet here I am.  I am a pastor of a church.  I am the voice on a religious podcast, the image on a YouTube religion channel, and even though when someone on the plane next to me asks me what I do, I tell them that I am a philosophy professor, my tax return's W-2 says that I am a pastor......
I am an ordained, tax-exempt, institution of organized religion and yet I what I hold onto is that I am not a part of the guilt-ridden, manipulative, self-serving purveyors of misinformation and magic.....

I want to lay claim to being a part of the history of prophets who fought to free slaves, liberate the oppressed, who spoke up for the poor, and demanded that people open their closets and send their extra shoes to Nicaragua, their coats and hats to Bill's Place, and to vote in a way that brings the poor into the economy rather than keeping the laws and banking rules in place that awards the few with wealth and the many with suffering.

No one here is in realistic danger of hunger but we are all in danger of being on the wrong side of history if we do not work, sacrifice, prophecy, and actively seek to change the dirty, rotten, system, that leaves hundreds in danger of freezing to death tonight while many of the rest of us argue over what we will watch on HBO.  John said that the ax was laid at the root ready to throw the useless into the fire.... He have been guilty of overstatement, but not by much.  Merry Christmas y'all.