How Mary Interprets Her Son's Birth

Community Christian Church  
Roger Ray, pastor
Dec. 18, 2011    Advent 4

Luke 1:46b-55                                      
46And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, 47and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; 49for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. 50His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. 51He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 52He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; 53he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. 54He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, 55according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever."

Sean, Barry and I get together every couple of weeks to look over the outlines of my future sermons.  I usually have a few song suggestions for them to ignore and then they tell me what we're going to do each week.  I've been a pastor for 33 years now, I know not to try to negotiate with either musicians or terrorists.... But I repeat myself.  Seriously, they are both brilliant musicians and some of my suggestions actually do get a little airtime during our services.

But I have to tell you that the Christmas season is a hard time for us.  I regularly remind them that every hymn doesn't have to match the theme of the sermon for the day and sometimes, those of us who grew up in traditional churches just like to sing hymns that we love for nostalgic reasons more than for their theology.

But when it comes to Christmas carols, we sit and read through the lyrics and generally find unanimous consensus that we just can't do it again.  The ones we know the best tend to take the birth narratives very literally on the one hand and they all seem to focus on some kind of incarnational theology that we just can't swallow.

I'm so glad to have Jia Ling here to sing portions of the text Valerie read for us from Luke.  Jia Ling, of course, sang from the Bach version and, pretty much, once Bach has treated a topic all mere mortals keep their hands off of ever trying to do it a different way.

The early church infused the Jesus story with the elements of Greek mystery religions, and insisting that, like the Roman Emperors about whom it was said that they were sired by the gods and that their mothers were virgins, that Jesus was every bit as magical and important if not more so than any Roman myth.  But before the incarnational Christmas carols got a toe hold in the church, they wrote this very first Christmas song and set it on the lips of Mary.

I'll say more about the whole message of the two competing and contradictory birth narratives in the New Testament from Matthew and Luke next week, but this week I want to let the mother of Jesus have a moment at the microphone.

Now, this is not a literal story.  Mary didn't just break out into improvisational song and someone remembered the words 80 years later and wrote it down in Luke's account of the birth.  No, but this is a song written by the church that remembered Mary and set down a theological interpretation of the meaning of Jesus' birth.

Long before there was a "little town of Bethlehem," or "Silent Night," or "Angels we have heard on high," Mary sings a Christmas carol and, if you read it, you see that it is a song of revolution.  It is a song of reversals of power.

When Mary first speaks about this child she will give to the world, she says that he will cause, well, it is there in verses 51 and 52, that he will scatter the proud in the imaginations of their hearts... he with throw the powerful down off their thrones and he will lift up the down trodden.... He will give food to the hungry and send the rich away with nothing.

If Mary actually said that you may see why the early church didn't let women preach!  The Catholic Church put up statues of Mary and praised her for her virginity..... which suggests some really twisted psycho-sexual stuff to me but you can't make me talk about that today.... Unless you buy me lunch.... Cause, honestly, I kinda want to talk about it, just not right now.

This is prophetic preaching.  It is threatening to the people who are in power.  There is nothing about this that should have been perverted into "Joy to the world," because it really talks about a house cleaning!

Some of you know that I will be going back to Nicaragua for a few days next month to visit some of the jungle villages where I have worked in past years among the rural poor.  These are the villages that were the most sorely oppressed during the Somoza years.

Prior to the 20th century Nicaragua was one of the most prosperous nations in Central America, but at the turn of the century our country installed a puppet dictator, Anastasia Somoza.  And a member of his family ruled the nation for the next 50 years, enslaving the rural peasants to work on coffee plantations and banana farms.  He was violent and greedy.  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is reported to have said, "Somoza is a real son of a bitch but he is our son of a bitch."

And that he was.  But during those years of violent oppression, even the illiterate poor carried with them a copy of the song of Mary..... Ha esparcido a los soberbios en el pensamiento de sus corazones....he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.....Ha quitado a los poderosos de sus tronos....
He has thrown the powerful down off their thrones.

The jungles of Nicaragua is one of the places where liberation theology was born before it was mentioned in American pulpits.  They were poor but they were not stupid.... They understood Mary's Christmas Carol.... They knew what the birth of Jesus really was about.

The practice of carrying it as a sign of hope for the end of Somoza's rule was so common that the dictator required that people in that region carry with them at all times, paper proof that they had voted for Somoza.... The soldiers called it their "magnificat."  The pope tried to crush the liberation theology movement, fearing that it would lead to socialism.... Which, for some reason, the pope found to be more distasteful than a cruel dictatorship.....this might be a long lunch.

The powerful, both in Rome and in Managua, wanted to shut Mary up.  A lot of priests who caught a vision of liberation theology were killed throughout Central America.  The most famous priest and poet of Nicaragua was Ernesto Cardenal.  He managed to escape when a coup against Somoza failed in the 1950's.  Ironically, Cardenal, was living very near my family home when I was born in Kentucky.  He was a student of the famous Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, at Gethsemane.

But he returned to Nicaragua and rejoined the revolution, creating a community of liberation theology on the island of Solentiname.  He is still alive though he has distanced himself from Sandinista president, Daniel Ortega, but then so has just about everyone else.  He was elected to be a revolutionary but he is just another greedy Central American head of state.

But, you know, my friends, Mary was not the head of a political party.  She didn't want to see one dirty ruler cast down off the throne to be replaced with different flavor of politician.  What she was after was justice and that is what the early church said that Jesus was all about when they composed this first hymn.

So once I get to leave the airport in Managua, and Ortega's government is in the rear view mirror of the jeep and I get back under the shade of banana plants where the coffee bushes grow we will sing Mary's song again, we will remember the real Jesus and we will hope for the day when the hungry are filled and the downtrodden are raised up..... look can't you see that's what Mary's boy always wanted?

The Liberation Theology of Jesus

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
December 11, 2011

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11                
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; 2to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; 3to provide for those who mourn in Zion-- to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.
4They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. 8For I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. 9Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed.
10I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 11For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

There are speeches, plays, songs and poems that are so much a part of our culture and our growing up that we only have to say the first three or four words before we all immediately begin to see the setting, the characters or to hear the tune:  Four score and seven years ago..... To be or not to be..... Amazing Grace..... Mine eyes of seen the glory.... Life can be a challenge,...... life can seem impossible, .......it's never easy when there is so much on the line.... You know, from the Pokemon movie, the song Herman Cain quoted in his farewell speech.... Don't we all know the lyrics from the Pokemon movie?  Ok, maybe not.

You get my point.  Every culture in every age has had its most familiar stories, hymns and poems that everyone knows.  You don't have to sing all of the verses of Amazing Grace for anyone who has gone to church over the past 50 years to immediately remember the whole song.

When the gospel writers were telling the story of Jesus, there were points at which they would use just a first line of a familiar quote from the Hebrew Bible in order to suggest the whole passage.  All four gospels talk about Jesus going to his home town and not being accepted by his home congregation but Luke tells us that when he went to his synagogue he was handed  the scroll of Isaiah and Luke tells us that Jesus read the first two verses of Isaiah 61, a very popular piece of prophetic preaching.  The two verses are used in Luke's account by Jesus to tell his family, his cousins, the people he grew up with, just who he had become and what he was going to do.

They had heard that he was a miracle worker and they may have come for a magic show, but what he told them he was going to do was what Isaiah talked about in this passage of scripture.  In those turbulent times, when Israel was a very unpopular vassal state in Rome's empire, there were several Hebrew Bible and later religious works that had become very popular in the frightened and oppressed population of the Jews.

In fact, almost all of the much talked about Dead Sea Scrolls were copies of books written about certain religious prognostications about how they were going to get out of their current mess.  Their expectations, their predictions, their hopes were not at all singular in nature.  There were lots of differing opinions ranging all of the way from the highly unlikely all of the way to the totally insane.

But, if we can take Luke at his word, Jesus chose from among all of those different images of Israel's future and he picked this passage from Isaiah to define himself and how he thought God would go about setting things in the world right.

I'm fond of this book by Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer that is provocatively titled "Jesus against Christianity."  As you might guess, his premise is that the Jesus of history would not have approved of the religion that now bears his name.

What Pallmeyer says that really attracted me to his book is that Jesus looked at all of the many different and contradictory images of God both in the Hebrew Bible and in the hundreds of rival books floating around at the time and Jesus chose just one image, one expression of the character of God, one vision of what it meant for him to be the man who represented God to his people and that image was of the prophetic liberator.

We all been treated to the patently absurd summary of the Bible that people who have never read it like to quote, saying that there is a harsh punitive God in the Old Testament and a loving and nurturing God in the New Testament.  That's just not true.  There is loving and nurturing stuff in both testaments and there is no shortage of rather cruel and judgmental stuff in both testaments.

But what Jesus chose to believe in, what he chose to try to be, was this agent of good news, this liberator of the oppressed.  A few weeks ago I talked with you about the canon within the canon and I told you that for me, I take that judgment scene in Matthew 25 as my core understanding of the message of Jesus and I interpret the rest of the gospels out from that point.  I don't take every gospel story as being of equal value and where a text wanders too far from the value of radical compassion expressed in this text then it won't get much attention from me.

Jesus was a Jew.  And he was only one of very many religious leaders in that very troubled time period but there is a reason why his name is remembered and others are not.

The majority voice of the people was expecting something cataclysmic to happen.  They were looking for a religious leader who would destroy the Roman occupation, punish the bad guys and put Jews in charge of the world.  That was the mainstream message.  The message of Jesus is remembered because it was not the mainstream message.  His was the alternative message.  He picked a canon within the Jewish canon of books and scriptures that was articulated by the prophet Isaiah.

Paul, who never met Jesus and never heard him teach, had a lot to say about Jesus.  The early church, created a religion around the name of Jesus that was, to be honest, a blending of Jewish scriptures with a bit of the teaching of Jesus and a very large portion of the mystery religions that flourished in the Empire at that time.  But that is what the early church said about Jesus, but what did Jesus say about himself?  How did he define himself?  What was his canon within the canon?  What kind of religious figure did he see himself as being?

And if we are going to let the man speak for himself for just a minute, we have to let go of all the stuff we have been told..... all of the gold plated, heaven and hell, super-theistic stuff we have been told and stop for a moment and hear what Jesus had to say, using the words of Isaiah, about himself:

Please look at the Hebrew Bible lesson printed in your bulletin.... Look at Isaiah 61, verse 1:  He says that he is called by God to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to liberate captives and release prisoners.
Now a real religious person would tell you that Jesus came to liberate you from bondage to sin, and to heal your sinful heart, and to release you from the captivity of hell where you are held prisoner by the devil.  You have been told that.... I've been told that.... The church told us that.... In some ways, Paul told us that.... But look at the text.  Jesus didn't say that.  Jesus didn't mean that.  I think, and call me a rebel on this one, but I think he meant what he said.

There is no army of angels coming down from heaven in this text.  There is no apocalyptical battle against a beast.  There is no heaven or hell.... In fact, there is no divine intervention.  Because bringing good news to the oppressed involves you and be working to end oppression.  We are the ones who work to bind up the people who are in pain.  We work to liberate captives and release prisoners.

In very 4 he says that he is going to lead us into rebuilding ancient ruins, to pull blighted neighborhoods out of their devastation.  And why is this what Jesus wants to do?  Look at verse 8, because God loves justice, and hates the way the people have been robbed and mistreated.  Don't let a religious sounding phrase like "I will faithfully give them their recompense" slip past you because it sounds like Sunday School talk.  What is recompense?  It means getting paid fairly... it means paying people what they are owed.

Jesus was talking about a heavenly kingdom that would descend out of the clouds and make everything right..... even though that is exactly what a lot of the people around him were saying.  The vision of Isaiah, the vision that Jesus chose to use to define himself, was the building of a nation defined by justice and mercy and that is a domain that is created by one act of compassion after another, one just, fair, decent decision after another.
It doesn't descend from the clouds, it comes out of your hands.... It comes out of your heart, your decisions, your labor.

Remember we talked a few weeks ago about how the Hebrew words for "justice" and "righteousness" mean the same thing.  When the prophet says that God will clothe him in a robe of righteousness, you can see that as a nation enfolded in justice.

And so that prayer we have said so many times in church, the one that says, "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."  That part about doing God's will on earth is just this... because God loves justice and hates the robbery of the people and God's will is that you and I get busy bringing good news to the oppressed, liberation to the captives, comfort to the broken hearted and release to the prisoners and that, is what it means to be a Christian.

Now I know that's not they way we were taught.  I'm just saying that this is what Jesus said about himself..... if you think you know better, I can only encourage you to take it up with him.  But in the choice between the religion I inherited and the message of Jesus, then I'm gonna go with Jesus on this one.

Living the Good Life to Become the Good Person

Community Christian Church  
Roger Ray, pastor
Springfield, MO
Dec. 4, 2011

"Living the Good Life to Become the Good Person"   A sermon based on sayings of Confucius



When people ask you, "Why do you go to church?" I would love to be a fly on the wall to hear your answers.  Unlike Fundamentalists or Catholics or most Evangelicals, we do not believe that there is an angry or punitive God who is so ego deficit that the divine self sits enthroned in the clouds, hungry for our adoration and praise, pillorying heaven with prayers and sacrifices.  I doubt that many of you have any concern about either being cast into the fires of hell or designing a heavenly mansion.  So why are you here?

I suspect that most of us have found that we can be improved.  That is, we can be better people, have deeper character and we can live more compassionately and meaningfully if we participate in a spiritual community, expose ourselves to moral deliberation, education and direction, and if we work collectively towards those things which we believe make the world a better place and make us better people.

And if you said that in the middle of an Evangelical conference you might well be told that you are not really Christian, or maybe that you are not even religious.... You might be called a Humanist because your spiritual concern is not with satisfying a supernatural deity but in reshaping yourself to reflect the values you believe to be holy, pure, good and commendable.

Of course, the greater likelihood is that none of you would participate in that conversation in the first place because we have learned not to care very much about how other people criticize us or try to categorize us.

But if we did, we might find ourselves in the middle of the same debate western religious people have had about Confucianism for the past millennium. Most scholars tend to say that Confucianism is not a religion because they do not have a theistic world view, even though they do have temples, rituals, a written text, sacrifices and a certain worship of the spirits of Confucius and other great teachers.
And, I suppose that you can say that they have hymns since our closing hymn today is comprised of sayings of Confucius.

Jesuits who first went to Japan declared that Confucianism is a philosophy and not a religion which gave them permission to not go on a crazy rampage burning books and tearing down temples like they did in other places.  Confucianism as a system of ethics was deemed to be compatible with Catholicism as it has been seen as a supportive partner by many Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists.

But when it comes to typical religious themes, Confucius neither denied nor confirmed religious speculation.  In eastern thought, worship of or veneration of the spirits of deceased relatives is the most common expression of spirituality but when Chi-lu asked him exactly what is due to the ghosts of the dead. The master replied, "We fail in our duty to the living; can we do our duty to the dead?"

I know that it frustrates some of my more traditional religious friends but it doesn't make much sense to me to talk about what cannot be known.  If there is life beyond our mortal bodies we surely don't have any information to go on to build a belief system around it.  When Confucius was asked directly about death, he said        "We know not life, how can we know death?"

That is not to say that we know that there is nothing, just that we do not know.
Confucius taught that we should focus on being a person of character in the here and now without obsessing about a life we do not and cannot know anything about.  I am always reminded of Sören Kierkegaard's comment that there are things that are true when they are whispered that become false when they are shouted.  Humility and reality dictate that all sincere people of faith spend their time and energy doing a better job embodying our philosophy and practicing our faith where we are today and leave what cannot be known in the hands of God.... Or, the universe, as Confucius might say it.

I really cannot emphasize this enough.  The general impression people seem to have that religion exists to guarantee their adherents a cushy place in eternity is absolutely misleading and, in the end, really very foolish.  Religion is not about life after death..... it is about meaningful living right now and into tomorrow..... that time line may go on for eternity but the truth is we don't know that we'll live until the next sale at Joseph A. Banks.

If you believe that repeating certain creeds or reciting certain magical incantations will send you to heaven then I've got some e-mails from a Nigerian Princess with a lot of money to send to America that's really going to excit you!

I was talking with a recent visitor to our church right after our team had served lunch to the homeless people we care for at Bill's Place on Thursday.  As we talked about how our church tries to practice our faith, I said, "I just handed out 70 turkey sandwiches to homeless people.... Do you think they would have preferred that we just gather and pray for them?"  Of course, the guys I know want the sandwich but for me, and I suspect for many of you, handing out the sandwich is a form of prayer.  As the African proverb goes, "when you pray, move your feet."
In that I think we share a spirituality with Confucian thought that teaches a kind of inward virtue that expresses itself in social virtue and civic virtue.  If you read Confucius, you will be surprised by how often he speaks of being a gentleman but what he means by that is to become a person of character, embodying honesty, civility and avoiding hypocrisy.

He said:  "I hate those who mistake spying for wisdom. I hate those who take want of deference for courage. I hate evil speaking, cloaked as honesty."  He expected people to live in such a way that they treated one another with sincere respect.

Asian culture emphasizes courtesy but Confucius wanted it to be more than just polite deference.  He wanted it to be real.  He said:  "A man of worth can always talk, but talkers are not always men of worth."

Like Jesus, Confucius eschewed personal wealth and made fun of people who pretended to be scholars or political leaders just to make money.  He said, "Living on coarse rice and water, with bent arm for pillow, mirth may be ours; but ill-gotten wealth and honors are to me a wandering cloud."  Which is to say, that if you learn how to live comfortably in poverty you don't have to sell your soul to bet a better living.

If I may be allowed to skip around the continents for a moment to quote a
Greek philosopher who was a contemporary of Confucius, Diogenes was visited
by another teacher, Aristippus as Diogenes was making a dinner of lentils. He
said, "If you could but learn to flatter the king, you would not have to live on
lentils."

Diogenes said, "And if you could learn to live on lentils, you would not have to
flatter the king."

Confucius was concerned with sincerity of motive.  He once said that "I have
met no one who loves the good as much as they love women."  .... Which is a
tad personal I suppose but we know what he means.  A great deal of the
hypocrisy in religion that has been disappointing to us is wrapped up in the
pretense of piety without the more substantial foundation of actually wanting to
do the right thing.

There are those who insist that Confucianism is not a religion because he does
not give lessons on eternal life, heaven and hell, and a supernatural theism but I
think that we are more likely to keep company with the likes of Confucius and
Buddha when it comes to those issues and as best I can tell, so would Jesus.

I believe that the challenge for the emerging church of the future is to be willing to boldly separate ourselves from the religious habits and practices that turn God into a divine Santa Claus in the clouds and reduce the teachings of Jesus to a kind of super spiritual ranting that is all about an unseen other world, ignoring the very real issues of our present existence.

We are not a flat-earth society engaging in magical rituals.  We move our feet when we pray.  Our most vital sacraments involve working to end poverty, to restore the earth and to create peace among nations, among families and within ourselves.

Confucius was concerned about individual character, meaningful civilization and the alleviation of suffering.... so was Buddha and so was Jesus.... And shouldn't that be what we are about as well.  And so, we keep kicking at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.

Mark's Little Apocalypse

Community Christian Church          
Roger Ray, pastor
November 27, 2011   Advent 1  

Mark 13:24-37
24"But in those days, after that suffering,
the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
25and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
26Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in clouds' with great power and glory. 27Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
28"From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. 31Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
32"But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. 34It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. 35Therefore, keep awake--for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, 36or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake."

There are very few times in life when the stark differences in religions can be seen as clearly as when I go downtown for the First Friday Art Walk and see the bearded, coverall wearing Mennonites holding signs on the street corners.  You can almost forget that those sorts of religious beliefs are still around until you see them scowling at the largely college aged crowds moving from bar to gallery, to bar, to.... Another bar.

Women dressed like that.... Young men acting like that..... it is a wonder that more of the young Mennonites don't drop their signs and run to join the crowd.  But they have a worldview.... Admittedly, it is a pretty dour, repressed and unworkable worldview but it's theirs and no one can take it from them... and, frankly, no one else wants it.

Though, in all seriousness, I shouldn't say that no one wants it.  People under serious duress often come to the conclusion that the world is so messed up that it is surely about to blink out of existence one way or another.

I was invited to give a series of lectures in a preaching school in Ecuador a few years ago and after a full day of struggling either with my Spanish or the translator's attempts at getting my historical Jesus lectures into that delicate blend of Quichua and Spanish necessary to communicate with the rural preachers in the Otovalo area, when it came time for audience questions, all of their questions were about what I believed to be the signs of the end of the world.

The Quichua are so poor, so desperate, and they have seen little reason for hope in their earthly future during any time since the Spanish arrived in South America and so, for them, their best hope is that the whole place is just going to be blown up and God will give them a better, more just, happier world in which to live.

We have seen the rise of "end time" religions in America during times of war, or economic depression and there is a constant attraction to this kind of religion among those who find themselves to be perpetually locked in the under-class.

I'll confess that I sometimes succumb to these feelings myself, most recently when I learned that there was actually going to be a fourth Twilight movie but that may just be a personal fear of mine.

But talk about a coming cataclysmic end of the world is one of the things we religious folks inherit from our Biblical tradition.  In fact, many New Testament scholars suggest that this text we have before us today, what is often called the "little apocalypse" in Mark 13 is the oldest fragment of our canonical gospels.  It may have circulated around Jerusalem before the Romans destroyed the Temple and carried out a virtual holocaust against the Jews and the early Christian movement.

Most of the Jesus Seminar members tend to believe that Jesus didn't really say anything about a coming end of the world.  I'm less certain of that.  Most of the inter-testamental literature was apocalyptic.  Certainly, the book of Revelation and an awful lot of early Christian writing was apocalyptic.  It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Jesus partook of that rather pessimistic view of history as well but, we resist believing that because those predictions were obviously wrong and we just hate it when Jesus is wrong.

But, we have our own prophets of doom these days that come to us from the scientific community rather than the religious community.  Where I think the Bible gets this apocalyptic vision right is in the clear statement that human sin is pushing the world to an unnatural end.  It's just that in the ancient world, people feared nature and now the tables have been turned and nature fears us.  We have to recognize that the Bible teaches us principles of living but is low on specifics when it comes to dealing with uniquely modern problems.

When we first considering starting this progressive church, a few of us began to meet together to study Bob Edgar's book, Middle Church.  Edgar was both a former member of Congress and a former General Secretary of the National Council of Churches and he was writing about what kind of church would be relevant in the future.
He came up with three core issues around which, he argued, the emerging church must focus:  the achievement of peace, the end of poverty, and the restoration of the planet.  Advocating for peace and working to end poverty should be no-brainers for those of us who have inherited the spiritual traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam but the environmental piece is harder to get at.

There is no "thou shalt recycle" in the Ten Commandments but the principle behind it isn't hard to get at.  Pollution almost always disproportionally affects the poor. We put toxic waste dumps in impoverished areas.  Rising sea levels will primarily displace the poor.  Rising health care costs resulting from environmental hazards hit the poor the hardest, that list can go on and on but in the end it isn't just about the poor, it is about the future.

One of the first fishing lessons I learned when I was a young boy in Kentucky is that you have to refresh the water in the bucket where you keep you live bait because the crawdads are constantly fouling the water in the bucket and they will die from their own waste in a matter of hours.

The larger truth for us, my fellow crawdads, is that if we continue to foul our only fish bowl then there will be no habitable world for the next generations.  But pollution is a part of the economy and because of that, it is very difficult to change our ways.  During the BP oil spill in the gulf last year, we went through weeks and weeks of intolerable corporate lies about how much oil was being spilled and how little affect it would have on the environment.  Even while oil was still gushing into the gulf, tremendous political pressure was being applied for Obama to approve more off shore oil drilling before anything was done to increase safety standards.
We've approached the environment with all of the forward looking discipline commonly seen in a crack addict.  Approving BP for any more off shore drilling would be like hiring Casey Anthony to babysit our kids.... Sure, she was found "not guilty" but like BP, I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean the same thing as "innocent."

A couple of months ago George Mason University did a survey on political groups and their beliefs about global warming.  It is no surprise that the overwhelming majority of Democrats and Independents reported believing in human caused climate change while the vast majority of Republicans and Tea Party members did not.  I don't want to sound partisan about this because I think what we see there is something that goes beyond politics, something deeper than politics.... What we see there is the ability to deny facts if those facts threaten your pocket book.

It is no great wonder that T. Boone Pickins, the well known Oklahoma liberal and environmentalist, believes that natural gas is the answer to our nation's energy problems.  T. Boone Pickins owns about 40% of America's natural gas supply and so, he thinks you should want to buy some.

Once anyone acknowledges the hard science about global climate change then what necessarily follows is that we have to do something to change our impact on the environment but those who are making a lot of money off of burning coal and building cars want to keep saying that the jury is still out on global warming.      

The church is often afraid to speak when speaking might alienate donors or members.  And so, the loudest religious voices on any topic are the voices that are saying what their constituents' want to hear.
And when I mention loud religious voices, I always remember Jerry Falwell, who famous said just a few years before his death:  The fact is that there is no global warming.... I urge everyone to go out and buy and SUV....today.  Folks, you can't make this stuff up.

The first order of business of the church is to speak the truth to power and we cannot be afraid to bring this urgent message that the time to act on behalf of the planet is right now and no small symbolic measures should silence us or placate us.

This is not a time when collecting aluminum cans and buying a hybrid car can stem the tide of environmental destruction.  We need to move rapidly towards alternative energy sources. We need to rebuild the infrastructure of mass transit.  If using white shingles actually reduces home energy consumption by 20% then roofing choices in America should either be a photo-electric cell or a white shingle.... If you are more willing to kill the planet than to suffer some aesthetic loss of color coordination with your brick then you just don't understand the crisis we are in.

I don't want to talk about this in a way that would make me sound like the dooms day prophets on the street corners downtown, because I have hope but that hope is predicated on the people of faith having the courage to take the truth to the streets.  We have to change the way we think, the way we live, the way we buy, the way we vote and the way we let corporations and governments know that we won't roll over and play dead when they lie to us because we want our children and our grandchildren to be given a chance to live.  What we have to say to the climate change deniers is simply this:  Science is not just a liberal plot.

The Canon Within the Canon

Community Christian Church  
Roger Ray, pastor
November 20, 2011    Proper



Matthew 25:31-46

I want to talk about this judgment scene in the 25th chapter of Matthew but I am going to talk about within the context of a very shocking event and so I'm going to tell you where I'm going with this because I don't want for to feel emotionally ambushed in the middle of a sermon.  A couple of days ago, I was contacted by Tom Eagleburger.  Tom asked me if I would consider doing a funeral for his brother Kevin.  Kevin was just 49 years old.  He had been laid off about a year ago and in the stress of being unemployed, he suffered a heart attack.

He was taken to Cox South hospital where he was treated and released.  He tried to get onto disability but was rejected.  He couldn't get a job and he couldn't get disability but Cox hospital turned over his $70,000 bill to bill-collectors who hounded Kevin until he felt that he had no option but to take his life.

Although I did not personally know Kevin, some of our church members did and that is why they called me.  I agreed to do it because, quite frankly, I recognized that I am just as much a part of the society that murdered Kevin as the bill-collectors who hounded him to death.

And so, church, I want to talk about Kevin's suicide but I want to talk about first by talking about this book:

This book, this collection of 66 short books is what we Protestants call the "canon" of the Bible.  The Catholic Bible has a somewhat larger canon with 46 Old Testament books, seven more than the Protestant canon and the Ethiopian Church has an even larger canon, with more than 80 books.

Different expressions of Christianity have debated for centuries what is and what is not to be included in the Christian canon.  But what we become aware of pretty quickly when we listen intently to any of those groups is that they all have a canon within the canon.

Some of you who grew up here in the heartland of conservative Protestantism will recognize immediately what we mean by the "Roman Road," that is intended to lead someone to salvation by having them read from 9 different short passages in the book of Romans.  My college fellowship spent time with little pocket New Testaments writing in the front cover, "turn to page 212" and on that page we underline a verse and then write at the bottom of the page, "turn to page 28" and on and on until we felt that we could leave that Bible out somewhere on campus and a lucky person would find it, follow our simple directions to about a dozen passages of scripture and find eternal reward as a result.

Such a list of favorite passages used to define the faith is called a "canon within the canon".  Few people will admit to it but we all do it.  A lot of the differences that exist today between conservative and liberal churches, denominations and sects is what they choose to be their canon within the canon.

Evangelicals tend to prefer the Jesus of John's gospel, main stream churches prefer the Jesus of Matthew, Mark and Luke.  Pietists prefer the letters of Paul while social justice advocates prefer the teachings of the prophets and of Jesus. So, in the name of full disclosure, I will tell you today what my canon within the canon is.  In fact, if you think about it, you already know because I would be bringing it up if it were not the scripture reading we have already heard.

This second half of the 25th chapter of Matthew contains a description of the final judgment found in no other gospel.  It is unique to Matthew.  This is certainly not a sermon preached by the historical Jesus, but it is, at the very least, an attempt by the early church to sum up the ethical teaches of Jesus in a single recitation.  It is set in a final judgment scene because if you want to emphasize something as being of absolute eternal importance, you couch in the context of making the difference to you personally between going into eternal reward in the Kingdom or eternal punishment in a lake of fire.

In this account, Jesus comes as a righteous judge who divides the people of the world into just two camps, those who are rewarded and those who are condemned.  The division is not between those who were baptized and those who were not.  Nothing is said about who speaks in tongues and who doesn't.  There is no mention here of being saved, inviting Jesus into your heart or accepting Jesus as your personal savior.
Much to the chagrin of many in our day, it was not basically a division of Christians and Muslims, or Democrats and Republicans, liberals or conservatives, Fox News or MSNBC, Wall Street Occupiers or Tea Partiers.  The judgment was determined by one thing and one thing only and so we should pay very close attention to this shouldn't we?  This is the one thing that we all ought to be sure that we get right!

Those who were invited to enter the Kingdom were the ones who had shown compassion.... They had fed the hungry, provided safe drinking water to the thirsty, they clothed the naked, housed the homeless, they had cared for the sick, the imprisoned, the alien in their midst.  The righteous protest that they cannot remember having ever done these things for Jesus but Jesus explains that whenever they did it for a vulnerable person they were doing it for him.  Mother Theresa described the poor, the homeless, the sick as "Jesus, in his most distressing disguise."

Who goes to hell in this biblical scene?  The people who told the hungry to just get a job.  The people who refused to help the alien because they could conveniently label them "illegal."  The people who didn't want to extend health care to the uninsured or those who had pre-existing conditions because that might dilute their own level of health care and who, after all, will stand for that?

I have spent the last three days trapped between tears and rage, thinking about a 49 year old unemployed man with a big unpaid medical bill decided to kill himself.  There is no denying that you and I are a part of a society that failed to show compassion at every turn and when Kevin ended up dead it is nothing but hypocrisy to try to blame that last decision on Kevin.

I spoke about my feelings on a couple of internet sites for progressive Christians and hundreds of people responded.... Some with stories of their own.  One woman had attempted suicide herself after being refused medical care.  Several people from Canada and the UK expressed their complete bewilderment about how a nation as great as the United States of America could continue to operate in the grips of insurance company greed while pushing the vulnerable to suicide.

Kevin's death is the fault of a Congress that has consistently refused to pass a job's bill so that unemployed Americans would have a chance to go back to work.  It is the fault of insurance company lobbyists who made sure that health care reform was a joke, increasing their profits while leaving millions uninsured.  It is the fault of a nation that is locked in a survivalist mentality that says that as long as I've got mine what you don't have is not my problem.

This isn't just about Kevin, it's about thousands of Kevins, hundreds of thousands, millions even who are facing the same bleak reality that drove him to take his life.

People at the hospital who had sicced the bill collectors on Kevin were so sorry.  "There were other options," they said.  Just because you are turned down for disability doesn't mean that you can't try again.  There are charities, you know.  You can be reduced to calling and begging..... I get those calls at my church office every day.

We spend a huge portion of our resources in providing food for the homeless and the poor of our community but people call who need rent money, they need their utilities kept on..... if I had ten million dollars sitting on my desk I still could not say "yes" to everyone who calls because, men and women, we live in a society that has told itself that someone else will show compassion, someone else will do it and there are not enough people who are doing it.... Not enough for Kevin, not enough for thousands of people in the same place as Kevin.

This week the "super committee" assigned the task of trying to reduce our nation's deficit spending is supposed to make their recommendations to the congress and the senate.  Of course, there are three lobbyists on capital hill for every elected official there representing the profits of the pharmaceutical companies. There are lobbyists for the insurance companies, for the hospitals, for the AMA but the problem is there are no lobbyists there for Kevin Eagleburger and for the millions in America who are just as vulnerable as he was.

Republicans and Democrats are both to blame for this crisis but the lone independent voice in the Senate spoke up this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.  Aside from all partisan bickering he urged the congressional debt committee not to propose any cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
"This country does in fact have a serious deficit problem," he said to about 200 people packed in the Senate Budget Committee room.

"But the reality is that the deficit was caused by two wars -- unpaid for. It was caused by huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country. It was caused by a recession as result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street. And if those are the causes of the deficit, I will be damned if we're going to balance the budget on backs of the elderly, the sick, the children, and the poor. That's wrong."...... which sounds eerily similar to what Jesus said in the 25th chapter of Matthew.

I was asked to speak at Kevin's funeral because a whole lot of the preachers in our area might take the occasion of Kevin's death by suicide to condemn Kevin for the choice he felt compelled to make and his family knew that was not the God they believed in and they were not in a mood to put up with any stupid religious babble that amounts to blaming the victim for the sins of the society.

A lot of preachers would look at Kevin's death and conclude that Kevin needed to have been saved.  I look at it and conclude that our society needs to be saved.  And on Kevin's behalf, I am not the least bit afraid to say that I am right and they are dead wrong.

When the Exception Comes to Rule

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor      
November 13, 2011    Proper 28

Judges 4:1-7                
The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, after Ehud died. 2So the Lord sold them into the hand of King Jabin of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor; the commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-ha-goiim. 3Then the Israelites cried out to the Lord for help; for he had nine hundred chariots of iron, and had oppressed the Israelites cruelly twenty years.
4At that time Deborah, a prophetess, wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel. 5She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim; and the Israelites came up to her for judgment. 6She sent and summoned Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali, and said to him, "The Lord, the God of Israel, commands you, 'Go, take position at Mount Tabor, bringing ten thousand from the tribe of Naphtali and the tribe of Zebulun. 7I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin's army, to meet you by the Wadi Kishon with his chariots and his troops; and I will give him into your hand.'"

Many Years ago, while sitting in a plenary session with our new dean at Vanderbilt Divinity School, some students were complaining that our graduate school of religion did not seem to be very tolerant of evangelical and conservative Christian thought.  The students were insisting that the next faculty appointments be professors who affirmed their more conservative views.  The dean thought for a moment, drew a deep breath and said, "Vanderbilt Divinity School is extremely inclusive and tolerant within the liberal religious tradition."

That didn't sound good to the dean's critics and it didn't even sound good to me and I had specifically chosen to go to Vanderbilt because of its reputation as a liberal divinity school.  Part of the meaning of being "liberal" is to be "liberating" to be open minded, un-judging, accepting, and inclusive.  And the dean affirmed that we were all of those things..... within the liberal religious tradition.

You have heard me say before that Jesus was tolerant of everything except intolerance.  Jesus was willing to be seen in company with prostitutes and tax collectors, Samaritans and gentiles.
He seemed to be loving and forgiving of everyone except for the pious religious people who were judgmental of prostitutes, tax collectors, Samaritans and gentiles.  It is logically impossible to be inclusive of people who are exclusive.  We can certainly affirm their right to believe differently than we do but tolerance, by definition, cannot include intolerance.

When we started this church we made the decision that we were going to be a "Progressive Christian" church.  Not simply "Progressive," though we certainly could have made that choice.  We could be a progressive church that opens its arms in the way Unitarian churches try to, to be equally affirming of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism as well as all of the sisters, brothers and cousins of the big five.  But we decided that even though we are respectful of all other religious traditions and we will borrow wisdom from their religious texts, songs and art, we decided to acknowledge that we interpret those other traditions from the perspective of our Christian heritage.

As Christians, we are wedded, for good or for ill, to the Bible.  Because we are, in that sense, a people of the book, we share a great deal of commonality with the rest of the Christian world as well as with Jews and Muslims.  But we have a much less dogmatic relationship with the Bible than most of our faith cousins.

Muslims will say that they believe the Quran, their holy book, to be perfect and, in fact, they say it is the primary miracle of Islam.  We look at it and while we find much of it to be instructive and spiritually insightful, we also find parts of the Quran to be morally objectionable if not downright evil.

Many evangelical and fundamentalist Christians will say that their Bible is perfect and inerrant.  Main stream Christians are less dogmatic and will often try to make the more objectionable passages seem to be less offensive by dismissing them as being either later intrusions into the text, or a bad translation or necessarily metaphorical in nature.  And sometimes we can turn to that page of the hymnal and agree with them..... there are a lot of things in the Bible that suffer from bad interpretation or even from bad translation.

But where I think we differ from most of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faith traditions is, while we love and cherish our scriptures and we read from them every single week when we gather in worship, we also give ourselves permission to read a passage and say, "I don't believe that," or "I disagree with that."

Because, men and women, when we are totally honest about it, the Bible says some things that are not just morally wrong.  It says some things that are just downright evil.  On the one hand, we are all familiar with the dramatic Genesis narrative in which God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, and once both Abraham and Isaac have demonstrated their willingness to be obedient to God, an angel stays the hand of Abraham and the boy's life is spared. Yeah for the Bible!

We don't talk about it as often but there is also a story in the eleventh chapter of Judges that does not turn out quite so well.  In that account, Jephthah makes a pledge to the Almighty that he will sacrifice the first person who steps out of his home if only God will give him victory on the battlefield.

Jephthah is wildly successful in battle and when she hears about it, his daughter comes running out of the house to greet him, dancing and playing a tambourine.
And so, the Bible tells us, with a brief vacation first, Jephthah makes good on his pledge and kills his daughter.  Now, folks, that's a horrible story.  There are no circumstances under which you should kill any one of your kids, even if it seems like a good idea at the moment.  Nor should you sell any of your kids into slavery, which is provided for in Exodus chapter 21.  Nor should you, as it says in Proverbs 13, beat your kids.... Even if it seems like a good idea at the moment..... you don't beat your kids, you don't sell them into slavery and you don't kill them.

With our apologies to our religious cousins who feel differently, as a progressive we can clearly say that God did not write the Bible.  The Bible was written by the faith community.  It is not God's word, it is our words about God and as such, the Bible contains a great deal of internal debate.  The story of Jephthah is in contrast to the story of Abraham.  Some parts of the Bible were written to correct other parts of the Bible.  John was written to both illuminate and sometimes to correct Matthew, Mark and Luke.  The letters of Peter were written, at least in part, to correct the letters of Paul.  The story of Jonah is told, at least in part, to correct the social narratives of Ezra and Nehemiah.

Reading scripture is like watching a Republican presidential debate, you over hear the statements, contradictions and arguments and you hope that by the end of the night something makes sense, but you certainly choose one over the other.  Our evangelical sisters and brothers will tell us that we cannot pick and choose our way through the Bible, we either accepted as a whole or we have no business laying claim to it at all.  That is, of course, utter nonsense and even the evangelicals have never taken the whole thing literally either..... they wear blended fabrics, eat shrimp and they don't sacrifice their kids or applaud polygamy.

Nor do they, greet one another with a holy kiss as Paul tells them to do in four of his letters and that is the one thing that Peter agrees with Paul on because in 1 Peter he tells them the same thing.  I've met a lot of evangelicals in my time and most of them won't even shake my hand, let alone kiss me!

We have to read scripture critically.  We engage it in debate, finding astonishing insights in some passages and insulting prejudice in others.  This prejudice is most prevalent when it comes to talking about gender.  The Bible, taken on the whole, is a misogynistic document.  It is patriarchal.  Scripture has been used for most of modern history to deny women basic liberties and rights and has justified sexual, financial and physical abuse of women.  And we need to look at those passages and say in a very clear voice that we are Christian who do not accept those parts of the Bible as being either from God or even remotely morally acceptable.

Let me hasten to say that the Bible is not universally anti-women.  There are exceptions.  Our reading from Judges today is one of those exceptions.  In the times before there were kings in Judah, in those days long after Moses and Joshua were dead, the loosely associated tribes of Israel looked to certain powerful wise leaders to give them direction.  They were men.... Usually military men who probably had large land holdings and therefore had the resources to command respect.

But our text today is about a woman named Deborah whom the text describes as being a prophetess who used to just sit under a tree in Ephraim and people would come to her for guidance and judgments because she was generally recognized as being wise. As a female leader in an ancient patriarchal society, she is certainly an exception to the rule but as such she is a very significant figure.
Even in a society that tended to favor men over women by huge odds.... In a society that tended to keep women covered up and separated from society.... In a culture that did not even allow women to attend to their most sacred religious ceremonies or to interpret or even to hear their sacred texts being read, this woman rose to leadership.

And if you remember Deborah from your elementary Sunday School literature, you may remember her as having been portrayed as being about 22 years old, tall, slender with a creamy white complexion and long flowing brown hair.  Esther, a thousand years later, saved the Jews from destruction by winning a beauty contest but that's not how Deborah became a national leader.  She got there because she was smart..... and that's just not something that most of our tradition churches have been able to deal with in the Biblical narrative.

I think that it is much more reasonable to think of Deborah as having looked more like Golda Meir than like Sarah Palin but that points up one of the enduring prejudices we experience in America.  Male dominance has gone unchallenged in national leadership for most of human history with relatively few exceptions outside of inherited monarchies.  It is 2011 and we have yet to elect a female head of state in this nation even though some have come closer in recent history but we continue to treat women very differently in politics.

Those who have been recently candidates are judged harshly on their appearance.  Palin and Bachman are relative beauty queens.  When Hillary Clinton was first lady she was sharply criticized for having thick ankles..... have you ever heard comments about a male politician's ankles?

In a recent interview, our senior Senator from Missouri, Claire McCaskill, was being complimented for having lost over 50 lbs recently.  She replied that her diet was a part of preparing for her re-election campaign next year.  And it is just true, Claire will stand a much better chance of being re-elected as a 140 lbs woman than she will as a 200 lbs woman and that in a state that just elected a congressman from our district who is so large that he has smaller congressmen in geosynchronous orbit around his waistline. Do you agree that no woman who was as over weight as Billy Long is could ever have been elected?

And you cannot say that our lingering gender prejudice is based solely on the Bible because Golda Meir was elected as prime minister of Israel in 1969.  And not long after, Indira Gandhi serverd terms as prime minister of India in the 70's and 80's.  Margaret Thatcher was elected in Great Britain in 1979.   Thirty and forty years ago there have been female heads of state in China, Argentina, Iceland, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Switzerland and the Philippines.  Needless to say, we have issues.

On the whole, religion has not been very helpful.  The largest Christian sect, the Roman Catholic Church, still defends and exclusively male priesthood.  And even churches that have unlocked the doors to the possibility, the preponderance of church leadership is still male while the preponderance of the people who attend church, contribute, volunteer, cook, clean, teach and evangelize are not men.

And so, as progressive Christians, it is our job to be the exception to the rule.  We need to bear witness to the majority that discrimination based on gender is no longer morally defensible and it is a form of oppression that must come to an end in both religion and politics.  We, as progressives, need to accept that it is our roll to be a religious fruit loop in world filled with Cheerios.

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.