Capitalists in the Hands of a Testy God

Community Christian Church, Springfield, MO    
Roger Ray, Pastor    
November 6, 2011     Proper 27

Amos 5:18-24          
18Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light; 19as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear; or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall, and was bitten by a snake. 20Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?
21I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. 22Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. 23Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. 24But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.

I want to begin today by sharing with you a story I read about in the Chicago Sun-Times back in August.  I don't know why it was in the Chicago Sun-Times because the story concerns a school superintendent in California.  At the beginning of this school year, Larry Powell was 63 years old and his contract called for him to work three more years at an annual compensation of just over $300,000 dollars a year.

But California's tax base has been hit harder than most states and cuts in education spending have been draconian.  Faced with seeing many of the programs he had fought for being cut to the bone, Powell made a decision to resign and then he asked to be re-hired under a three year contract in which he would be paid less than a starting teacher.  Larry Powell, kept his job but he gave his employer back $800,000 of his salary in order to help protect some of the school's crucial programs.

He didn't seek any publicity about it.  He made the proposal to the school board.  They accepted it and it took four days before anyone outside of the board to catch wind of what had happened.  For him, it was just the right thing to do.  He had been angry about what the city council in Bell, California had done, in voting themselves huge salary increases, and so he wanted to do something to show that government can work and that there are ethical people still in public service.

Powell, and his wife, Dot, had led a fairly frugal life together.  They had savings and a retirement and for them it was more important to help the school system than to help themselves.  And as much as I and others have trumpeted the Warren Buffett's of the world who ask the government to tax them at a higher rate.... Buffett is not actually paying a higher tax bill.  He is willing to, if everyone else in his income bracket does as well, but he is not leading the charge by going ahead and paying a fair tax rate as an example.

I have had the good fortune to know and work with a number of philanthropists in my life.  I have taken six figure checks to the Rainbow Network office for relief work in Nicaragua and to my former parish on several occasions.  But those checks either came from people who were so wealthy that what they gave did not have any real impact on their own life style or the gift was a part of their estate..... something they couldn't take with them.

What this superintendant did was give away a sum of money that could have kept he and his wife in a tropical paradise together for several years, but in stead he gave it back to the schools, he tied his tie, got in his car and went back to work.

We might think that he was foolish if he did but I don't think that Superintendent Powell is doing something foolish.  In fact, I would like to call it patriotism.  I would call it justice.  And here, in this room, I would be inclined to call it righteousness.

The famous biblical scholar, Marcus Borg, has suggested that every time we see the word "righteousness" in the Bible that it is fair to read that word as "justice."  This is especially true in the Hebrew Bible because in Hebrew the two words seem to mean more or less the same thing.

The Hebrews did not write poetry by rhyming words, they did it through couplets of repetition.  The second line simply restates the line before it in slightly different words like in Psalm 9 that says:
 
For the needy shall not always be forgotten,

 nor the hope of the poor perish for ever.
The first line "the needy shall not always be forgotten," means essentially the same thing as the second line, "nor the hope of the poor perish for ever."

The last verse in our pericope from Amos 5 today says:

24But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever flowing stream. 

Justice rolling down like waters is the same thing as righteousness flowing down like an ever flowing stream.

What we see in this prophetic text, well, what we see in almost all of the prophetic texts, is a statement of just how very very much that God loves justice and that message is delivered, buried in a sermon that says, "God doesn't think you love justice very much."  Amos says that God loves justice but you people seem to love perverting justice and, Amos concludes, God is going to come and mess you up.

So I wanted to start with a very positive story today because Amos isn't all that positive and I didn't want to scare you right away.  Many religious historians believe that the most important sermon ever delivered in America was a sermon delivered in Connecticut by Jonathan Edwards, entitled, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."  One of my graduate school professors in a class aptly titled "Virtue and Sin," loved to quote Edwards' famous sermon delivered to an audience whom he believed to be mired in sin.  He said, "Thy God doth surely despise thee as a man who holds a spider by a thread over a flame."

Fear has often been associated with religion based on the revivalist style of Edwards and an awful lot of Protestant and Catholic preachers who followed him who believed that the threat of hell was the best tool they had in their arsenal to gain converts.  I have often said that if it were not for guilt and fear I wouldn't have a job.

But for every nun who rapped a little boy across the knuckles with a steel edged ruler for not remembering his catechism and every red faced revival preacher who tried to make teenagers feel loathed by God for having the exact same feelings and desires that ever young woman and man have had since mammals first climbed out of the ocean onto dry land, we now have people who are prepared to adamantly reject all forms of guilt and to consign any sense of religious fear to the psychoanalyst's office.  And generally, I am in agreement with that.

What traditionalists believe about we progressives is that we are way too permissive.  They believe that we pick and choose our way through the Bible, tossing out anything that requires moral responsibility and embracing every forgiving, permission giving and irresponsibility encouraging phase of scripture..... which sounds about right in lots of ways..... but not really.

We reject neurotic guilt.  We are careful about the use of the word sin.  We do not affirm the gospel I grew up on, the one my mother taught us in Sunday School, the gospel about how much God hates smokin', drinkin', dancin', cussin' and the nasty things that people who smoke, drink, dance and cuss do when it gets dark.

Neurotic religion wants you to feel guilty for being human and having the human impulses which keep our species from becoming extinct.  Neurotic religion wants you to live in a state of fearful panic about saying the right magical incantations, performing the right rituals and avoiding the tainting impurities of joyful living so that you can avoid the fires of hell.

That stuff is crazy.  It has always been crazy.  It is a distortion of faith and an absurd violence to the simply joy of living and being a human being.
But.... And this is the important part so if you have been balancing your check book or thinking about where you are going to have lunch, let me invite you back into this sermon.... What this text does say is that there is such a thing as appropriate guilt.... And, if you are willing to play along with Amos, there is even reason to be afraid of getting on God's wrong side.

Amos lived a long long time ago, nearly 3000 years ago.  But even a long long time ago, there were people who were basically of the same world view as you see in Tim LaHay's "Left Behind" series.  They had the religious conviction that they were so special, so chosen, so blessed that God was going to come to earth, kill everyone else and put them in charge.

Amos didn't like the Jewish version of the "Left Behind" saga.  In fact, he says, "Why do you long for God to come to earth?  When God comes to this place, it is going to be like you just ran away from a lion and ran right into the jaws of a bear..... or you get away from the bear, get to your house and lean breathlessly against the wall only to find that you put your hand on a deadly poisonous snake who bites you."

Why, you ask, does Amos think that the Lord's coming will be like being attacked by a lion, or a bear or a snake?  Because, he says, their religion is hallow and meaningless.  It is self-congratulatory and concerned with all the wrong things.  Amos says that God hates your hymns, your sacraments, your religious holidays and your piety..... because all that God has ever asked of you is that you treat one another fairly and that is the one thing you have refused to do.

God, according to the prophet, is not much interested in religion.  God is interested in justice and the kind of personal righteousness that is willing to make a personal sacrifice to make bad situations better.  Amos said it, John the Baptist said it when he told people that if you want to get right with God, go home and get your extra coat out of your closet and give it to someone who is cold.  Jesus said it when he told us, in as much as we have shown compassion to any of the vulnerable of the world then we have become his friend.

I don't think you should feel bad about enjoying a good dinner or moderate drink and I don't think that you should be afraid of your own bodies whether you are gay or straight but I do believe there are some things about which it is entirely appropriate to feel guilt.... And maybe even to such a degree that we might be wise to be a little bit afraid..... not afraid of God, but afraid that we might cease to be humans.

I don't know if Superintendant Powell is even a church-goer but I can tell you that I believe he knows more about the heart of God than Jonathan Edwards did.  I believe that we should repudiate the religion that weighs us down with guilt and fills us with neurotic fear and we should embrace the faith that calls us to show compassion to those who are in need.  To be willing to say "no" even to our own appetites if doing so can help us to alleviate the unjust suffering in the world.

If only we can be righteous in that way, then there is no reason for guilt or fear to ever set foot in this place of justice and of joy.

The God Who Loves Justice

Community Christian Church
Dr. Roger Ray, pastor
Oct. 30, 2011   Proper 26

Micah 3:5-12
5Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who lead my people astray, who cry "Peace" when they have something to eat, but declare war against those who put nothing into their mouths. 6Therefore it shall be night to you, without vision, and darkness to you, without revelation. The sun shall go down upon the prophets, and the day shall be black over them; 7the seers shall be disgraced, and the diviners put to shame; they shall all cover their lips, for there is no answer from God.
8But as for me, I am filled with power, with the spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin. 9Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob and chiefs of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity, 10who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with wrong! 11Its rulers give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets give oracles for money; yet they lean upon the Lord and say, "Surely the Lord is with us! No harm shall come upon us." 12Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height.

Matthew 23:1-12
23Then 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.

Sometimes a good fiction is the best way to tell the truth.  British comic book author, Alan Moore, in the 1980's, created an imaginary hero who fought against a fascist government while disguised in a Guy Fawkes mask and hat. For those of you who might not be fully briefed on British history, Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the Parliament building 400 years ago to retaliate for a series of anti-Catholic laws passed by Parliament.  He was unsuccessful but his effort was immortalized with a holiday and a poem that sort of threatens the government not to go too far in taking away the freedoms of the people (Remember, remember the 5th of November gunpowder treason and plot.  I see no reason the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot).

Moore was angry at Margaret Thatcher because he felt that she was pushing Britain towards becoming a police state. Twenty years later the Wachowski brothers used that character to express their disdain for the way the Bush administration was using the fear of terrorism following the 9-11 attacks to turn America into a police state.  They produced the movie V is for Vendetta, set in a fictionalized future Great Britain, but the themes are clearly aimed at 21st century America.

The premise of the film is that Britain was attacked with a biological weapon which killed thousands of people.  As the plot unfolds, we learn that the British government actually unleashed the terrorist attack themselves in order to frighten the population into submission. They took away individual rights and took charge of the media which they used to keep the people in a constant state of fear.

The masked hero of the film devises ways of humiliating the government and persuading the public to come out of hiding and unite against the government's abuse of power.  At one point, V is able to take control of the government's emergency broadcasting system to deliver this stirring revolutionary speech, asking the people to set aside their fear and to unite against a tyrannical system. (V's speech)

So, it came as no surprise to me to see the film's Guy Fawkes masks on protestors at Occupy Wall Street events.  It seemed to me to be such an appropriate piece of political theater that I bought a costume for myself which I have worn to a couple of demonstrations.

The media has behaved towards the Occupy movement as if its coordinated goal was to discredit the movement and act like they just don't get the point.

Yesterday, on CNN's morning news show, they actually brought in a high school drop out from the Atlanta Occupy movement to answer questions about the protest.  Democracy Now interviews professors from Yale and Harvard and people like Kanye West and Michael Moore but CNN, with all of their journalist prowess, couldn't find anyone to talk to who was better informed than a 30 year old drop out who happened to be in front of their Atlanta office building.  But as silly as that was, you have to tune the dial to the far right to get a message that is even more crazy than the characters in the movie.  I'm talking about none other than my old friend Glenn Beck who said this early in the week (Glenn Beck:  they will drag you out in the streets and kill you). Too crazy for Fox but still a part of the public fear mongering conversation.

I really despise the conspiracy theorists who seem to abound at virtually all protests and demonstrations because the truth is scary enough without trying to come up with crazy conspiracy theories.  In fact, I think that some of the media division of society was not even intentional.  I think that news talk shows started featuring someone from the left and someone from the right to appear to be a balanced program but in effect, what they have done, is to create a huge partisan split in the country in which the population is divided into two nearly equal parts who yell at one another, blaming one another for the current crisis as if our problems of poverty, lack of health care, paucity of jobs with a living wage and the foreclosure crisis was caused by either Republicans or Democrats, or, conversely, could be fixed by either Republicans or Democrats.

One of the morning news talk shows, MSNBC's Morning Joe, has regularly featured Joe Scarborough saying that he just doesn't understand why protesters are occupying Wall Street but then one morning this week he chastised his guests saying, "Don't you realize that Wall Street owns both the Republican and the Democratic party?"  So Joe, you have answered your own question.  Washington is not where the power is..... the power is on Wall St.

I don't think it was originally intentional but I do believe that the media keeps trying to pour us into the battle between Republicans and Democrats as if both Republicans and Democrats were not equally to blame and the voters on both sides of the divide are being equally victimized.

The only thing that scares the people in power is if the people who are not in power stop fighting with each other and start to unite.  As soon as the economy started to tank, the first target we heard about were teachers unions and public employees' unions and labor unions.  Was it the middle class wages paid to union members that ship wrecked the American economy?  No, it was the middle class workers who built the nation and created the wealth that was traded in casino like financial instruments that have make a hand full of investment bankers rich but has robbed the pension plans of the middle class.

More than 2000 Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have been arrested, pepper sprayed, handcuffed, beaten with nightsticks and at least one Iraq veteran has sustained a nearly fatal head wound from a police fired tear gas canister.  But there have still been no indictments, no arrests, no one jailed from among the greedy traders who wrecked the world's economy.

And the main stream church does what it usually does..... nothing at all.  If they speak, they call for peace.... For people to calm down and to avoid using polarizing rhetoric.

Let me say this very clearly:  Peace in the absence of justice is surrender.  The people who ask you to realize that there are two sides to every story and we all just need to calm down and seek a middle path are asking the victims to surrender.  And there is only one answer to that:  NO!

The people who have affordable health insurance have been trained to resist changes that would bring the uninsured into access to health care, without ever questioning why we have to siphon off billions of dollars to pay insurance companies who do not treat patients, perform surgery or even empty bed pans.  We have the largest percentage of our population without health care of any industrialized nation in the world while we boast of having the most scientifically advanced medicine.  The problem is not the sick people.... The problem is the sick system.

We have been taught to scrap with each other over the crumbs under the table without looking up to the palace to see where our resources are really going.  If you look at what the Old Testament prophets really did, most religious people today would swear that the prophets were not really religious.  Look at this Micah text.... He isn't talking about how to go to heaven or how to get your sins forgiven, he is talking about how the powerful use warfare to make themselves rich.

And in the same vein, Jesus confronts the hypocrisy of religious leadership that worries about personal piety while people are genuinely suffering from hunger, homelessness and illness.  People are camping out in the streets of our cities because our government works for the banks and our churches...... work for the banks.

We have traded honesty for lies, uncomfortable truth for comfortable indifference.  We have abandoned the message of the prophets and apostles to be seduced by the rhetoric of the media and the political parties.

I want to tell you a short story before I let go of the microphone today.  Last year  lead guitarist for Rage Against the Machine, Tom Morello, became aware that virtually all of the guitars with which he and his peers were becoming quite wealthy were manufactured in South Korea in pretty miserable conditions.  So, the Korean workers went on strike to demand justice and dignity in the workplace.  In response, the makers of Fender and Gibson guitars shut down the Korean factories and moved manufacturing to mainland China.

A handful of the Korean workers pooled their resources and sent representatives to the annual Association of Music and Merchants trade show in Anaheim, California to plead their case to the millionaire rock stars who play their guitars.

Morello and others were persuaded to help the striking workers and they organized a concert to raise money to support the Koreans and their families.  But just before the concert, Haiti experienced the devastating earthquake that left so many homeless and in desperate need.  Those unemployed Korean guitar makers made the on-the-spot decision that the people in Haiti needed the money from the concert more than they did and they asked that all of the money be sent to Haitian relief.

Morello was inspired by their sacrifice to write Worldwide Rebel Songs to encourage that kind of unity among the victims of the world.  Because that kind of unity will be necessary for all of us to rise up out of our apathy and by uniting with one another, restore dignity and freedom to everyone.

Which Commandment in the Law is the Greatest?

Community Christian Church
Dr. David Trobisch
October 23, 2011

Matthew 22:34-46                      
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" 

He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: "What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?" 

They said to him, "The son of David."  

He said to them, "How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying, 'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet"'? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?"  

No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Prayer

Father in heaven.
Open our eyes, so we may see.
Open our ears, so we may hear.
And open our hearts, so we may understand.
Amen

Introduction
The lectionary reading for today ends with the words: "From that day on nobody dared to ask him any more questions."

I don't like the way Jesus is portrayed in this story. What kind of teacher would take delight in the fact that nobody dares to ask a question anymore?

And the questions the Sadducees and Pharisees had asked were very good ones. To this very day we would like to have answers to them. "Is there a heaven?" the Sadducees ask. They suspect that there is not.

And the Pharisees seem to hope that the Messiah will be from the royal house of David. A political savior. Someone who will lead the nation.

However, I do like the answer Jesus gives, when he is asked: "What is the most important commandment?" - "It is Love," he says. "Love God and love your neighbor!"

There is encouragement in this opinion, encouragement to find an answer that is not scripted, encouragement to be open, to be vulnerable, and to be ready for change.

Manfred
I was raised in Europe and grew up in a small Austrian village that consisted of five houses, five families, and 25 children. We had to walk three miles through the forest to school everyday. Austrian winters are fierce and some years the snow was so high that our parents would not let us go, they would keep us at home for weeks and teach us themselves.

You know the saying, "It takes a village to raise a child." It was in such a village that we grew up. We were happy children.

Just like his father and his father's father our neighbor Matthias was a farmer. He had five children, all about our age, two boys and three girls. His youngest son was named Manfred.

Like my father, Matthias was part of the generation that was drafted and had fought under Hitler. And what they had seen had hardened them. Many of these men could not cry anymore. It was as if all of their tears had dried up.

One day Manfred, Matthias' youngest son, came to my mother. He asked for help. He wanted to speak to his father. But like many teenagers he found it difficult to talk to his parents about intimate matters.
Manfred attended boarding school, when he entered puberty. And on his right side, he was growing a breast. The doctor at school had told him that the breast could be amputated and everything would be all right. Well, not everything was all right for Manfred, and he desperately wanted to talk to his parents about it.

Matthias was a good Lutheran. Austria is a Catholic country with very few Protestant Christians. Our tiny village is isolated on a mountain and far away from other settlements because it was founded generations ago at a time when Lutherans were persecuted in Austria. They were given the choice to either leave the country or try to evade the authorities. The families, who had started our little village, had decided to hide in the woods.

Matthias, Manfred's father, was an elder in our congregation, and a much respected one. Proudly Matthias would show us children the little hiding place behind the cabinet in the living room where his forefathers had kept the German Bible. "There was a time when it was forbidden by law to read the Bible in German," he would explain. And we children felt terribly proud to be Protestant.

It is the custom in rural Austria that, when the youngest son marries, he takes over the farm and pays off his siblings. By that time the parents usually are close to retirement age. This is a system that has worked well for as far back as people can remember.

One day, Manfred came to talk to his father. Matthias was in no way prepared for what Manfred would say. Manfred told his father that he was gay and that he was never going to marry.

Not only did Matthias not know how to deal with the homosexuality of his son, but he also realized that the future of the family farm was at stake.

Those were the early years of the AIDS virus, when information was scarce and fears ran high. Many people thought that this disease affected gay communities only. And many Christians honestly believed that this virus was a punishment from God for sinful behavior. Matthias told me later that from the moment Manfred had confided in him he lived in constant fear that his son would be infected.

Three years later Manfred died of AIDS in a hospital in Vienna. Because Matthias was so appalled by homosexuality and because he did not know how to deal with the gay and lesbian friends, who had taken care of Manfred, he had never visited his son in the hospital.

The funeral took place in our small church. The building was crowded. Not only did all the parishioners come as is the custom in rural Austria but many of Manfred's friends, who had long since left to study or work somewhere else were there. My wife and I came from Germany, where we lived at the time, and my brother Steve came all the way from Springfield, Missouri, just for the day.

And there were Manfred's gay friends from Vienna. Quite a sight for a rural Austrian Lutheran Church! Earrings and tattoos, leather jackets, mini-skirts, the hair died in red, green, blue or any other color of the rainbow.

And when the first part of the liturgy was over, the pastor climbed up the steps of the artfully carved, 13th century pulpit. Everyone was quiet. Everyone was waiting.

I do not remember, how the pastor structured the sermon or what text he used. But I still remember very vividly what the conclusion of the sermon was:

"Manfred," the pastor proclaimed, "simply drove through a red light at a busy intersection. He will have to face the consequences. Do not be deceived: 'Fornicators, adulterers, sodomites will not inherit the kingdom of God!' Manfred will go to hell for eternity."

"No", Matthias shouted, who sat in the first row. "No, no, no!"

It was more than I could bear. Was this the gospel that we believed in? Was this the message our Lutheran ancestors were persecuted for? Is this all we have to say to a troubled father, mother, brother, sisters, friends, who had lost a loved one?

At this point in the sermon I got up and left the church building. Manfred's friends from Vienna followed. Half the congregation walked out of the church.

The pastor was confused, the organist did not know what to do, and at that moment my brother Stephen stood up and sung.

We were not sure whether we were doing the right thing or not. I walked over to the group of gay friends, who were standing there, quietly, calmly.

"This happens all the time," one of them told me. "We feel like we are on a tour through rural Austria. It seems, every other week one of our friends dies of AIDS. And at every funeral service we go to, we hear the same message."

The first thing Matthias did when the service was finally over was that he told the pastor that he did not want him to participate in the meal, which traditionally follows an Austrian funeral. I was close enough to hear the conversation.

"God made Manfred the way he was," Matthias explained, "and it is not up to you, pastor, to criticize God's creation. That my son was taken from me was a blow, but what you said was a beating."

The second thing Matthias did was that he walked to the group of friends from Vienna. He shook hands with every single one of them. He had overcome his fear of many years, to touch a gay person. And he invited each of them personally to please come to the meal, which was just being prepared in a restaurant close by.

"You took care of my son when he was sick," he said. "You dressed him, fed him, washed him, read to him, talked to him, sat with him. You did what I was not able to do."

And then -- Matthias wept. I was one of the first ones to arrive at the restaurant. When Matthias walked through the door and saw me, he embraced me, he put his head on my shoulder and wept. No one had seen him cry before, not his children, not his wife, not his friends. This strong man was now leaning on my shoulder, weeping.

Being a Christian is not about having all the right answers. It is about hope that the Lord will lay his hand on us and heal us. It is about love. And about change.

When Matthias embraced me and wept on my shoulder, I changed.

AMEN

The Lord's Hind End

Community Christian Church  
Roger Ray, pastor
Oct. 16, 2011   Proper 24                       

Exodus 33:12-23            
12Moses said to the Lord, "See, you have said to me, 'Bring up this people'; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, 'I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.' 13Now if I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people." 14He said, "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest." 15And he said to him, "If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here. 16For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth." 17The Lord said to Moses, "I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name." 18Moses said, "Show me your glory, I pray." 19And he said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, 'The Lord'; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20But," he said, "you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live." 21And the Lord continued, "See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; 22and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; 23then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen."

This week's political theater opened a controversy I've been waiting for now for several months.  Rick Perry was being introduced at the Values Voters' conference by a prominent Baptist preacher from Dallas, Robert Jefferies.  Jefferies sought to undermine Mitt Romney, saying that, although Romney is a good man, he is not a Christian man because he belongs to a cult.

This was bound to happen, especially as Perry is slipping in the polls and Romney has remained at a more or less constant level of depraved indifference on the part of Republican voters.
And, it is true enough, when I took a course in American cult religions at Vanderbilt Divinity School in the early 80's, Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses were included in a course that covered Moonies and the indisputably crazy Jim Jones of that era.

Currently, The Book of Mormon is playing to sold out crowds on Broadway and I've already bought the sound track because I can't wait for the show to come here.  The Mormon Church does, in fact, pass the sniff test for a lot of what might make us call a religious group a cult.  They suffer from the inconvenient fact that their founder, Joseph Smith, lived only a couple of centuries ago and his manipulative, con man antics are well documented.... So much so, that the South Park episode that made fun of Mormons did so without making up anything.... They just told the Joseph Smith story and the facts are hilarious enough.

But there has been a big public backlash against what Jefferies said because, quite frankly, as weird as Mormons are, they have a lot of company.  The Southern Baptist Church and the Churches of Christ were formed as pro-slavery spin off's from their mother denominations..... not something they put in their literature either.  And main stream church of Christ ministers still regularly teach that God is so very petty that if you have not been baptized by them by total immersion or if you attend a church that used instruments in worship that our kind and loving God will burn you up in a lake of fire for all eternity.  I want to be respectful and inclusive of other faith traditions but folks, you just have to say that is 32 flavors of crazy.


And Mormons stand out as a recent and uniquely American church and you can make fun of them for their magic underwear but really, how different is that from the scapular you can get at a Catholic Church that if you wear it under your shirt it can keep a demon from jumping into your soul?  And you have to be blind not to notice that the world's largest Christian denomination, the Catholics, and a whole lot of their cousins in various protestant flavors, still insist that you have to have boy parts in order to be a religious leader.  Really?  Really?  You think God cares what is in your underwear rather than what is in your heart?  Please!

And that whole celibacy thing?  After all of the sexual perversion revealed in the past few years, the Catholic Church still can't give up on their hypocritical veneration of female virginity, male priest celibacy and condemnation of homosexuality?  If I could get an afternoon alone with the pope, I could introduce him to several gay Catholic priests and to an even larger number of Catholic women who are saintly people who don't fit the virgin mother Mary image they seem to insist upon clinging to.  When are religious people going to wake up to the fact that demonizing human sexuality is nothing less than demonizing humanity in its entirety?

After a firestorm of angry rejection of Perry's apparent endorsement of the idea that Mormons are a cult and Southern Baptists aren't, his wife came to his tearful defense claiming that her poor husband was being persecuted for being a Christian.  Anita...... I think you have missed the point.... And, frankly, I think you have missed it on purpose.  This kind of religious hypocrisy needs to be drummed out of politics.

I must beg your forgiveness if I am being rude in my attempt at being entirely honest.  But one of the things I learned in my work in addiction recovery is that you can love the addict and support the addict in their recovery but you don't do them any favors by acting like you believe their lies.  I want us to be charitable, I want for us to be tolerant, I want for us to encourage inter-faith dialogue, but I refuse for one second to act like I believe their lies just because they are religious lies.  That's not good for us but more importantly; it's not good for them.

Progressive Christianity seeks to restore the voice of Jesus who was one of the world's greatest moral teachers and to accomplish that goal, we have resolved to rid ourselves of superstition, magic and any claim that any religion makes to having ownership of absolute truth or control over who receives eternal reward or punishment.  That is an addiction I refuse to play along with and I hope you do to.

The awareness that no one gets to own the absolute truth is buried even in the most ancient strata of the Hebrew Bible.  So far as the Jewish faith was concerned, no one who ever lived was closer to God than Moses.  And in this drama described in Exodus 33, Moses implores God to allow him to have the beatific vision, to see God face to face.

And God says, according to this text, something that needs to be said Rev. Jefferies, and Anita Perry and Mitt Romney and to all the rest of us, and that is that no mortal can ever know that much about God.  No one.... Not the pope, not Mohammed, not Jesus or Buddha..... and certainly not your or me.

God tells Moses to hide in a cleft of a rock and God will pass by.... This is a very anthropomorphic story, of course, assuming that God walks and has hands and feet.  But it has to be told in an anthropomorphic way to make the point.  And that is, Moses arrogantly wants to be shown what no mortal can see and as a consolation prize, God let's Moses see his back side.... Or, as my Old Testament professor said in the language of the 1980's, God mooned Moses......metaphorically speaking, of course.

As crass as this story is in some ways it makes the unmistakable point that if the greatest prophet of history is only allowed to see God's back side then the rest of us need to assume a bit of humility whenever we presume to make statements about stuff that no one can know.

The heart of the teachings of every faith is found in their teachings of ethical conduct in the here and now.  Anything that is said about what happens in heaven or hell or in any unseen realm or afterlife should be taken with a grain of salt and a health dose of skepticism.  We don't believe in magic, we believe in justice.  We don't want to teach superstition, we want to develop character.

NPR was interviewing some southern voters this week, asking them if a candidate's religious affiliation mattered to them.  One man replied, "It sure does, I'm not going to vote for anyone who doesn't believe in the niacin Creed."  And, I know that he meant Nicene Creed but I think that he was on to something more substantive..... most of the Nicene Creed is unknowable truth claims which have little or no bearing on the teachings of Jesus but the niacin Creed, surely Jesus would want us to get our vitamin B.

But please, just no more BS.

In this case, as is so often true, the poet has a better grip on God's truth than the popes and prophets:  (Michael Franti)

I don't need a passport to walk on this earth

Anywhere I go 'cause I was made of this earth

I'm born of this earth, I breathe of this earth

And even with the pain I believe in this earth

so I wake up every mornin' and I'm steppin' on the floor

I wake up every mornin' and I'm steppin' out the door

I got faith in the sky, faith in the one

faith in the people rockin' underneath the sun

'cause every bit of land is a holy land

and every drop of water is a holy water

and every single child is a son or a daughter

of the one earth mama and the one earth papa, so 

don't tell a man that he can't come here 'cause he got brown eyes and a wavy kind of hair,

And don't tell a woman that she can't go there

because she prays a little different to a god up there,

You say you're a Christian 'cause God made you,

You say you're a Muslim 'cause God made you,

You say you're a Hindu and the next man a Jew

Then we all kill each other 'cause god told us to? NAW!

Relevant Priorities

Community Christian Church  
Dr. Roger Ray, Pastor
Oct. 2, 2011  Proper 22   

Exodus 20: 1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Then God spoke all these words:
2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 3you shall have no other gods before* me.
4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
7 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
8 Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9For six days you shall labor and do all your work.
12 Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
13 You shall not murder.*
14 You shall not commit adultery.
15 You shall not steal.
16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
17 You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
18 When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid* and trembled and stood at a distance, 19and said to Moses, 'You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.' 20Moses said to the people, 'Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin.'

At the end of World War II, when the United Nations was being created and the world was coming to grips with the fact that civilization had arrived at a time and a technology when, for the first time in history, we possessed the ability to kill everyone and bring life and history itself to a halt.  When even the skeptics were having to face the reality of a holocaust with millions of casualties and atomic bomb craters from which countless thousands has simply evaporated into a mushroom cloud, the United Nations drafted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

My thoughts were naturally drawn to this declaration of human rights when I saw that our Biblical text for today was to be the Ten Commandments.  Those of you who are in my Wednesday night class may recall the picture I showed you of the Code of Hammurabi, that stone monument with the ethical laws of the land in Babylon inscribed upon it and at the top of the stele was an image of King Hammurabi being handed the code of laws by God.

This image must certainly have framed the ancient Israelite telling of how Moses went up on Mt Sinai and received the Ten Commandments written in stone by the finger of God.  The purpose of the Decalogue was to establish the ancient Israelite civilization in a way that was both stable and just.  For a people trying to survive the transition from being wandering nomads to an increasingly agrarian society with set land boundaries and consistent neighbors, the whole not killing one another and not taking each other's stuff was suddenly very important.

We have tended to paste these up in public school classrooms and Circuit Court Clerk's offices as a kind of wordy oblation to the Jewish and Christian traditions but the real purpose was to establish their nation around a religion and a set of emphatic human rights laws.  You can say that the Ten Commandments were written for a community that had escaped cruel slavery and were trying to establish a secure and peaceful nation in much the same way that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written in the modern era to help us to establish a secure and peaceful world.

But, you don't see the Ten Commandments posted in public much but perhaps more importantly, you don't hear much about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights anymore.

It was not especially well written, in the sense that it is not great literature, it isn't poetic, it cannot be set to music, even though I believe some have tried.
You can look it up on-line and I have some printed copies out in the narthex you can pick up on your way out today.  I just didn't want to put them in your hands ahead of time because I don't want to have to compete for your attention while I'm preaching.

It was written at a time when the world had just survived its most bloody and destructive war and the world's statesmen recognized that the root cause of international conflict is injustice.  The survivors of World War II wanted to create a world in which universal respect for the rights of every human being would help to secure a peaceful world in the future.

Of course, a certain ominous die was cast when there were eight nations that voted against it, including Soviet bloc nations and Saudi Arabia.  But the real reason it is not often mentioned is that even 60 plus years later, we have yet to take its noble standards seriously.

The universal declaration of human rights forbids slavery and forced labor but slavery abounds in the Eastern Hemisphere and the fruits of slavery are purchased without a twinge of conscience in the West.

On the heels of the Holocaust the declaration insists that everyone has a right to nationhood..... and we were so determined to give nationhood to the surviving Jews that we took it away from Palestinians, solving a European crime with Middle Eastern real estate and even now, as Palestinians beg the United Nations to vote to recognize their nationhood, the United States has assured them of a veto and we, sixty years later, tell them that they should try some more negotiation..... take two aspirin and call me in the morning.
I don't want to sound anti-Israeli in saying that.  In fact, I must count myself among those who have been entirely seduced by the city of Jerusalem, its history and its architecture.  I love Israel and I want for them to have both peace and security but I can't stand the fact that the victims of the Holocaust are exacting a pound of flesh from every generation of Palestinians and they are doing it with our tax money and military support.

The Universal Declaration of Human rights also says that everyone has a right to have freedom from torture.... Which appears to be a standard viewed as quaint by some in our own nation.  It also says that everyone has a right to marry and have a family though even then they may not have considered the fact that "everyone" means "everyone."

The most apparently redundant of the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights goes to a series of statements about equal treatment in courts of law.  Clearly, several people on the committee writing this document wanted to repeat this guarantee in so many different forms as to make it unavoidably obvious that ever court system in every nation has to treat everyone who stands before a judge with absolute impartiality, a presumption of innocence until proven guilty and no favoritism to be shown for any reason.

There are a number of things in America about which I have become rather cynical but nothing in recent years has disappointed me as much as my occasions to see the seamy underbelly of our court system and the penal system that does the court's bidding.

Favoritism is not only shown to corporations and the wealthy but it has become unavoidably obvious to me that our justice system is managed by a good-ole-boy system of lawyers who run the courts almost as if it were their private vineyard and playground.

I had one proud moment, finally representing myself in court, when I stood before a judge and quoted Howard Zinn who said that the justice system does not seek to decide who is right and who is wrong, it serves only to determine who can pay the lawyer the longest.  With few exceptions, only the wealthy can afford to either seek justice or to defend themselves against injustice in our judiciary.  And if there is corruption and favoritism in the American justice system, I shudder to think what might be true in Mexico, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Russia or China.

We have just witnessed the eventual release of two American hikers who have spent two years in prison in Iran on trumped up charges and they were only released on the strength of what amounts to a million dollar bribe.

And, even when the whole health insurance industry was in its infancy, the writers of this declaration of human rights said:    (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.


Amazing, isn't it?  When you just sit down to think about how the world should be run, it is obvious that sick people should have access to health care and old people
should have access to retirement and widows and orphans should be able to live with dignity.  The profit motive seemed small at the end of World War II and human rights seemed very large but in the decades since we nearly blew ourselves up, corporations have become people and people have become expendable.

The Ten Commandments represented an ancient faith community's attempt as establishing peace, security, stability and human rights for everyone.  I am certain that they largely failed in their application of these principles but they knew in their hearts that they needed to try.

In the modern era we've attempted to write a Bill of Rights, a constitution, even our own 8 points of progressive faith and internationally we have composed his statement of universal human rights but it is all just so much talk if we don't work, sacrifice, testify, demand, provoke and sometimes even threaten our own society to pay attention to human rights.

Torture is wrong and it should never happen.  Nations have a right to exist and live in peace with self determination.  The judiciary should be held to a sacred standard of justice and equality.  And people who love one another and want to pledge themselves to become a family shouldn't need any government's permission to do so.

The Ten Commandments were written to inspire faithfulness, peace and security among an increasingly settled population of former nomads.  In our day we have to respond realistically, ethically and responsibly to our situation and our challenges.
We can destroy virtually all life on this planet either through warfare or careless pollution and we have a moral responsibility to make certain that neither of those things happen.

And even though we have gleefully escaped the tyranny of mind and heart imposed upon us by neurotic organized religion, we have an even more important obligation to our faith in a God who is the author of justice and mercy to make certain that justice roll on like rivers and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.  Let the people of God say "Amen."

The Renunciation of Privilege

Community Christian Church                     
Dr. Roger Ray, pastor    
Sept. 25, 2011   Proper 22

Matthew 20:1-16                                            
'For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. 3When he went out about nine o'clock, he saw others standing idle in the market-place; 4and he said to them, "You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right." So they went. 5When he went out again about noon and about three o'clock, he did the same. 6And about five o'clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, "Why are you standing here idle all day?" 7They said to him, "Because no one has hired us." He said to them, "You also go into the vineyard."

8When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, "Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first." 9When those hired about five o'clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. 10Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. 11And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12saying, "These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat."

13But he replied to one of them, "Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?* 14Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?"* 16So the last will be first, and the first will be last.'

When modern biblical scholars look at any one of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the gospels, they impose a certain sniff test to question whether the saying sounds like something the later church would have created because they needed for Jesus to have said it or was it something they might have wished he had not said.  Anytime the gospels gives us a saying of Jesus that seems to be inconvenient to the later church.... Something they might have wished that he had not said, then we are more inclined to believe that it is historical.

The saying before us today is awkward, so awkward, in fact, that it is something of a wonder that it was preserved... which while it makes it more likely to be a reliable teaching of Jesus, we are still left to wonder what it could have meant.

We read this story where a land owner goes out and hires day laborers at four different times on a workday:  9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.  So some people worked 9 hours, some six, some three and a few folks only worked for an hour.  The land owner pays them all the same amount but the amount he paid was the standard price of a day's work.

The people who had put in nine hours of hot back breaking labor were outraged that the people who had only put in an hour got the same pay that they did.  No one had been cheated but still, it is clearly unfair.  And we might expect Jesus to weigh in on the side of the laborers who felt cheated but instead he takes the other side.

Ironically, the people who got a day's pay for working a full day, would not have complained if the other workers had been paid less!  That is, you gold brickers don't deserve to be treated as well as we are being treated.

The land owners reply, well, the English translation goes to great lengths to make it understandable but the literal translation is a bit more abrupt and more of a punch in the face.... It actually says something like, "Is your eye evil because I am good?"  Perhaps a better way to word it is, "You see me doing something generous and it makes you mad?  What does that say about you?"

The saying is so obscure I would be dishonest to tell you that it means some certain thing but one thing I think we can be fairly certain of that it was a part of a core of Jesus saying that is dismissive of our economic assumptions.  Jesus is not big on ownership, property, wealth or money.  The historical Jesus is not a practical person and the church has always done violence to his memory when they try to make him sound practical.

If Jesus had been made the ruler of some small nation I'm not sure that any of us would want to live there.

His teachings would not amount to a very well run and stable state.... He is a bit permissive about crime, indifferent about economics and didn't seem to put a lot of stock in things like going to work and raising a family. But we turn to the teachings of Jesus to question ourselves, our values, our assumptions.

When it comes to what you are entitled to, what is yours, what you deserve..... Jesus is not likely to help you out very much.  I don't believe that the historical Jesus was in anyway indifferent to the violence of poverty or social injustice but I am inclined to think that he was nearly entirely dismissive of human competition to be better than, more wealthy than, more comfortable than anyone else.

In eastern thought there was an inclination among spiritual people to be more devoted to self denial than makes sense to us in a modern capitalist society.  I do not doubt that the last phrase of the last point we print on our bulletin covers each week is the least read and least understood part of the eight points.

We say that we:  Recognize that being followers of Jesus is costly, and entails selfless love, conscientious resistance to evil, and renunciation of privilege..... OK, but what privilege exactly are we renouncing?  Ironically, we in middle class America very often do not see that we have any privilege at all.... Life is hard, demanding, filled with uncertainty and vulnerability. Fear and self preservation drive us towards greater individualism and pours conflict into our politics and into our families as we fight for survival.

We tend more and more to think of ourselves as individuals and we see ourselves as being less and less connected to one another.

If you will allow me to make something of a leap by illuminating a teaching of Jesus with a teaching of Buddha:

Buddhism teaches that one of the fundamental mistakes we make is to convince ourselves that we are separated from everyone else. They actually call this a primordial ignorance and the first of the three poisons out of which arise the other two poisons, greed and hate. We experience envy and anger and even become violent with others because we cling to this false perception.

The realization of wisdom is that this separation is an illusion. Even the "I" we think is so permanent is an illusion.  Buddhism teaches that through the path of enlightenment we may be freed of the pernicious effects of the three poisons. When we understand that the causes of hate and greed are illusions, hate and greed -- and the misery they cause -- disappear.

This isn't an easy concept but the more you meditate on it, the more obviously true it becomes.  Our willingness to renounce privilege has a very practical implication for society.

I was very impressed this week with something Elizabeth Warren said in response to all of the recent talk about class warfare.  She said:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there--good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that maurauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea--God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.

But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

I hope that this very frank and very factual description of the fabric of our capitalist democracy will form a space where conservatives and progressives can have meaningful conversation.  We are connected to one another.  No one in America is a self made millionaire. There is no disputing the fact that some are more productive than others, some are more burdensome to society than others.... We are not the same, we don't have the same intellect, habits or genetics but we are connected to one another.

People who work harder or longer than others, in spite of what Jesus may have said in this parable, do deserve a bigger piece of the pie but they don't deserve the whole pie.  And shame on you for wanting to take the whole pie and leave everyone else hungry.

We don't have to feel guilty about being warm and well fed if we aren't trying to keep other people from being warm and well fed.... If we are actively working to give everyone a chance to make it, to have a place at the table.  This whole, "I got mine, everyone else keep their hands off," is just not a spiritual world view.  We are connected by history, dna, and culture to the poor, the unemployed, the uneducated, the elderly and sick.  The belief that separate is an illusion.

This week, when the military policy of "don't ask, don't tell" came to an end, all of us who are straight but not narrow minded could rejoice with our sisters and brothers who are gay.  Because we are connected we say, "Do ask!  Do tell!"

As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "We may have come to America on different kinds of ships but we're all in the same boat now."

Getting in Line Behind the Prostitutes and Traitors

Community Christian Church  
Roger Ray, pastor
September 18, 2011     Proper 21  

Matthew 21:28-32  
28"What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work in the vineyard today.' 29He answered, 'I will not'; but later he changed his mind and went. 30The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, 'I go, sir'; but he did not go. 31Which of the two did the will of his father?" They said, "The first." Jesus said to them, "Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.

In the regular debates about social justice issues, progressives tend to hold the moral high ground on matters of fighting discrimination against minorities, immigrants and gays.  We tend to have ethics on our side in discussions about immigration, education, poverty, access to health care, housing and food but when our critics have run out of ammunition in every other way, many will play what they consider to be their trump card:  But do you favor abortion?

Some of my critics think that topic is their crucifix, wooden stake, holy water and garlic to protect them from the obvious conclusion of facts and information.  Frankly, when I adopted an abandoned baby from a third world orphanage, I felt like I cast my vote on the abortion issue.  I am not in favor of abortions, per se, but I am dramatically in favor of a woman's right to manage her own reproductive life.  I will never get an abortion but the last time I checked, other than a really bad Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, I need to assume that I'm not in the club of people who need to be consulted on that issue.

But controversial issues are used to dismiss people when you can't think of any other good reason to dismiss them. It is called "redirection" in argumentation.
I quoted Thomas Jefferson in a conversation with a rather unhappy gentleman and he interrupted me and said, "Jefferson owned slaves, you can't take him seriously."  And, you have to admit, slave ownership is repugnant, horrible, virtually unforgivable, but does that mean that Washington, Franklin and Jefferson had no redeeming qualities?

Dorothy Day had an abortion and several affairs.  Martin Luther King, Jr. had lots of affairs.  Martin Luther had some pretty serious mental issues and Joan of Arc was clearly schizophrenic.  Mohammed was a polygamist.  Abraham Lincoln suffered from major depression and may have been bi-polar.  Gandhi refused to allow his wife to be given antibiotics that would have saved her life.  Winston Churchill smoked cigars..... which is just one of the things I like about Winston Churchill...but I digress.

Seriously, if you look at history as if you were writing for a tabloid newspaper you would see the world as being a place devoid of heroes.  But if you look for people who have accomplished a great deal, alleviated suffering, liberated the oppressed and made the world a better place, you could find a lot of exciting and wonderful examples.

As you have heard me say before, the primary conflict in the pages of the gospel is a conflict between a religion of piety and the teaching of radical compassion.  The pious religious leaders lived their lives carefully to remain untarnished by the world.  And there are some good things to say about piety.  We certainly want our kids to live their lives in such a way that they don't end up with a criminal record.  We don't want them to get pregnant in high school, or contract AIDS.

We want our kids to be productive, responsible and to enjoy a good reputation but if they need to go to treatment for addiction, do you want the rest of the world to look at them for the rest of their lives as being a second or third class citizen?

It is the fallacy of ad homonym, to try to insult a person's character to remove the credibility of their lives from them unjustly.  And this is often the native tongue of religious people.  We act like we're being pious when we are really just gossiping.

We skewer a person, like pinning a bug to a piece of poster board and then we identify them.... Welfare recipient.... Alcoholic..... divorced.... Gay..... convict... drop out....adulterer.... lazy.... Or worse, we have stooped to racism and derision based on language, nation of origin or family.

Jesus, a friend to the most outcast among the outcast in that environment.... And, you know, Jesus wasn't a rabbi.... Some people called him that but really, he was neither priest nor cleric.... Just the son of a poor family born under dubious circumstances.  But he look at those important dignitaries....the pious, the religious, the respectable community leaders, and he said, "You know, God likes prostitutes a lot more than He likes you.  God will prefer the company of the corrupt tax collectors over your solemn assemblies."

They didn't kill Jesus because he said that he was the messiah, they killed Jesus because he told those pious pompous priests that they weren't all that special.

This is, I believe, one of the real crises in leadership in our world today.  We have allowed our minds to be captured by the pious when what we really need in church and in government are leaders who can do something.
There are people in public life who have lost their status...., do you remember in 1972 when Edmund Muskie dropped out of the presidential campaign because he wept in public?  The same year Thomas Eagleton dropped out when it was discovered that he had been treated for depression?

Do you ever wonder how many wonderful, capable people never ran for office because they didn't want to be identified by having ever had a personal problem?  I have had people trying to recruit me to run from everything from the school board to the state legislature but I already know what it is like to have been the victim of a puritan witch hunt and I would never subject myself to that kind of thing again.

Politics can be mean but the church can be more so and family can be even worse.  The nip in the air this week reminds us that summer is coming to an end and fall is on the way.  In a couple of months it will be Thanksgiving and a month later it is Christmas.  This is my first full year as an orphan and my daughter still lives with me but pretty soon my life time of traveling to be with my parents on holidays will give way to waiting to see if my daughter will be coming home for the holidays.

For more than 30 years, during those horribly challenging years of being a full-time graduate student and a full-time pastor, but loading up the car for a long drive every Thanksgiving and Christmas, exhausted and yet pressured to take what I euphemistically called our "holiday guilt trips" so that I could get caught up on what all I was doing wrong in life.

So, let me say a pastoral word to all of you who are hoping to have in-laws and out-laws coming to your patriarchal home this holiday season:  Jesus liked the prostitutes and tax collectors more than the pious people who did everything right.
Seriously, you cannot judge your kids into perfection.  You cannot manipulate your kids with guilt or judgment into becoming the happy family you imagine. You cannot gossip your way into having the church of your dreams and you cannot dissect politician's personal lives to create the country you want to live in.

Give me a politician with a track record of accomplishments even if she or he has had a few major screw ups along the way.  Give me a church that is willing to stand for something, even if they don't always get it right.  Give me a family full of interesting people who live their lives to the fullest, even if their skeletons are hanging in the living room rather than the closet.  I don't want my daughter to fail in marriage, career or life but I don't want her to be afraid to try.... Certainly not out of fear of her very Reverend father's judgment.

What I'm suggesting is, give your kids a Christmas present early, keep your opinions to yourself over Thanksgiving.

I realized many years ago that the Jesus of the gospels was tolerant of everything except intolerance.  He was a friend to tax collectors and sinners.  He hung out with prostitutes and the rejects of society but the only people he ever insulted, yelled at or condemned were religious leaders who passed judgment on others and that is a consistent element of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Mark Twain used to say that he would prefer to go to Heaven for the weather but to Hell for the companionship.  Ironically, it appears that Jesus felt the same way, which gives us some reason to hope for those of us who like to keep company with people who have bad reputations but who are a lot less pious.  On this one, I can clearly say that I'm with Jesus and I hope you are too.