The Evil We Do to Fit In

July 15, 2012  Proper  10
Community Christian Church  
Roger Ray, pastor

Mark 6:14-29
¹⁴King Herod heard of it, for Jesus' name had become known. Some were saying, "John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him." ¹⁵But others said, "It is Elijah." And others said, "It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old." ¹⁶But when Herod heard of it, he said, "John, whom I beheaded, has been raised."
¹⁷For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, because Herod had married her. ¹⁸For John had been telling Herod, "It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife." ¹⁹And Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him. But she could not, ²⁰for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him. ²¹But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee. ²²When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, "Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it." ²³And he solemnly swore to her, "Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom." ²⁴She went out and said to her mother, "What should I ask for?" She replied, "The head of John the baptizer." ²⁵Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, "I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter." ²⁶The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. ²⁷Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John's head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, ²⁸brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. ²⁹When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.

The unsavory story of Jerry Sandusky has been back in the news though Sandusky himself is already convicted of multiple counts of pedophilia and is already imprisoned.  The news this week is about the investigation that is trying to answer the question, "How on earth could such a high profile character have continued to rape little boys in his care at both his home and at Penn State when family members and university employees knew what was going on?"

The Freeh report, released this week, describes what they call "a striking lack of empathy" on the part of university officials and the Penn State newspaper asks the question, "Where were the heroes?"  As horribly sad and morally repugnant as it is to have to think about child rape, we do know that it goes on and we accept that the perpetrators are mentally ill.  What everyone around the university community is now trying to wrestle to the ground is the fact that people all of the way from janitors to the head coach, Joe Paterno, and possibly the wife and children of Sandusky, knew about it but did nothing to stop the abuse.

How do people who are not criminals or mentally ill themselves, manage to turn the other way and avoid getting involved when something so absolutely unspeakably horrible is going on?  Especially when our population seems to absolutely love to talk about sex.  We'll skewer a politician for having an extramarital affair.  The media loves to find some gay bashing preacher or senator involved in a same sex relationship.

And those of us who live here in small town, Midwest know all too well that you can meet someone for a cup of coffee and by the next day you are having an affair.  People love salacious gossip and they love it so much that if they can't find something real to talk about they'll exaggerate some tale or make something up whole cloth.

But, see, the Sandusky thing wasn't going to be idle gossip.  Whoever reported him was going to suffer some personal loss.  His victims had, from time to time, reported the abuse but even the police didn't want to take the reports seriously.  The football program at Penn State is like a regional religion and Sandusky was a local hero.

In fact, the person who finally forced the issue was not a victim at all but rather a 22 year old, recent journalism graduate who followed leads and insisted on publishing an article about it.  Were it not for Sarah Ganim, I'm not sure that Sandusky wouldn't still be recruiting new victims.  And she took heat from everyone around her for a year for investigating Sandusky but she had the moral fiber to not give up.

In our gospel lesson today, we see another situation that needed a hero.  Most of us are very familiar with the story of how Herod felt trapped into beheading John the Baptist though most of what we think we know is just speculation.  Neither Matthew or Mark actually name the daughter of Herodias.  Josephus says that she had a daughter by that name so maybe it is Salome, but the whole lusty dance of the seven veils is not a Biblical story and it isn't Josephus who tells us about it.  It is actually Oscar Wilde who puts a name to it.  Again, we like to attribute lusty, incestuous motives to Herod because we like to tell stories like that but that is not Mark's story.

Mark tells us simply that Herod's step daughter danced at his birthday party and he made the absurdly bold offer to give her anything she asked for.  Because her mother hated John the Baptist, she influenced her daughter to ask for the head of John on a platter.

But the line this narrative turns on is verse 26..... and this is the description of everyone who knew what Sandusky was doing and said nothing.... This is the description of every Bishop who moved a pedophile priest to another parish.... Every business that decides to settle out of court with victims to hide the offenses of executives.... It says, "The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her."

The request was that he have an innocent man murdered and he did it because he didn't want his guests to think less of him!  People will lie and gossip and tear another person's life apart for the titillating entertainment of talking about someone else's real or imagined foibles but when it comes down to putting your own flesh into the matter, then people have an amazing capacity to turn and look the other way.

We ignore horrible evil in order to not be excluded, to not be derided ourselves.  Whistleblowers never become famous for whistleblowing..... they usually find themselves unemployed and unwanted by anyone.

It was my great honor to meet Elie Wiesel on two occasions.  Once here at MSU and the second time when I was a fellow at Harvard.  I really hate it when people compare everything in the world to the holocaust because few things actually deserve to be held up next to that event, but Wiesel has written and spoken about the kind of moral test that was put to him and so many of his Jewish countrymen by the extremity of the holocaust.

He has made it very clear that it is not only the German Nazis who are to be remembered as being responsible for this horror but also everyone who knew about it and did nothing to stop it.  Ships filled with Jewish refugees tried to come to the United States but they were turned away.  The coast guard blocked the warm waters around Florida from Jews trying to jump off their ships and swim to shore.

We did not start or perpetrate the holocaust but we were partners in it because we not only stood idly by but we actively refused to be drawn into it.  When Wiesel first wrote his short book of memories from the holocaust, no one would publish the book because, for nearly two decades after the war, when we knew what the facts were, still, no one wanted to acknowledge what had happened and how we had failed to stop it.

Once "Night" was published and when Wiesel won the Nobel Prize for it, at his acceptance speech he said that the ethics of all of the Christian and Jewish bibles could be distilled to one sentence:  Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By.

When we started this church and we were meeting in a windows rented hall, we commissioned these two worship banners to be made to look like stained glass windows to represent the core values of the church.  On the one is the multi-colored hands joining together in community.... Which is beautiful and nice and almost any church would be proud to display it..... this other one might be another matter.
It bears the image of a winged lion.... Powerful, with a look of determination on his face and his paw raised in a way that let's you know that he just might be dangerous.  The winged lion is the traditional symbol for the gospel of Mark but we didn't want to be that narrow.  We put that famous quote from Wiesel on the book the lion is holding.... "Thou shalt not stand idly by."

I got to speak briefly with Wiesel when he was in Springfield in 1998.  I asked him why he was so certain that the holocaust would never happen again.  He said that people had learned from what happened to the Jews and the people of the world would never sit back in such indifference again.
When he spoke at Harvard in 2004, after we had trumped up a case for invading Iraq, I reminded him of what he had told me in Springfield and I asked him if he still felt the same way.  He sadly shook his head "no."  Various types of ethnic, ideological or just plain old economic events  take place within and between nations.  We have learned lessons from the Holocaust.  We learned from the story of Rwanda.  We have both done too much and too little as we try to navigate the complex circumstances of people striving to gain freedom in nations with despotic leaders.

You would have thought that after our nation's experience in Vietnam that we never would made the mistakes we seem gleefully to have made in our current oil wars but the lessons to be learned must be learned and re-learned.

A part of standing idly by is that we simply cannot fight every fight.  We know that there is racial discrimination in the justice system.  We know that PayDay lenders in this state are charging up to 2000% interest on small loans to the poor.  We know that many of the people who are executed by the state were not actually guilty of the crimes with which they were charged.  We know that lethal weapons are sold all along the American border with Mexico and that tens of thousands of innocents are being killed in the Mexican drug wars with weapons bought at Walmart stores in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico.  I could go on and on with that list but we can't get involved with everything.  No one has the energy to take on the world but somewhere between standing idly by and martyring ourselves this afternoon there is a conscionable place to stand.

Several years ago Sheryl Crow put a line in her song, "Love is a good thing," that said: Watch our children while they kill each other with a gun they bought at Walmart discount store.  And this caused no small discomfort to Walmart executives because they do sell guns right next to the toy department in every Walmart in America.

So they had a meeting down in Bentonville to discuss this phenomenally stupid practice in their corporation and they made a bold decision.  They decided that the would not cell that Sheryl Crow cd with the offensive line in it.  As Lily Tomlin said, "It seems that no matter how cynical I become, I just can't keep up."

Folks, what I heard Elie Wiesel say is this:  Take sides.  Neutrality always serves the oppressor and never the oppressed.  There is no honor in remaining neutral in matters of ethical importance.  Always taking the middle ground doesn't make you smart, or balanced and it certainly doesn't make you innocent because your silence always serves the will of the oppressor.

The Reverend Allan Boesak of South Africa, said during the battle against apartheid:  We will go before God to be judged, and God will ask us, "Where are your wounds?" and we will say "We have no wounds." And God will ask, "Was nothing worth fighting for?"

I don't want to pick your battles for you, but I do want to assure you that there is more to life than just trying to arrive at your funeral as a nice looking corpse.  Be sure you go to that day with some meaningful wounds.

Saying What No One Wants To Hear

July 8, 2012    Proper 9 
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO   
Roger Ray, pastor

Ezekiel 2:1-5                            
He said to me: O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak with you. 2And when he spoke to me, a spirit entered into me and set me on my feet; and I heard him speaking to me. 3He said to me, Mortal, I am sending you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have transgressed against me to this very day. 4The descendants are impudent and stubborn. I am sending you to them, and you shall say to them, "Thus says the Lord God." 5Whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house), they shall know that there has been a prophet among them.

Mark 6:1-5                                                  
He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. 2On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, "Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! 3Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him. 4Then Jesus said to them, "Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house." 5And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. 6And he was amazed at their unbelief.

I had a little "Come to Jesus" meeting with the Executive Editor of the Springfield NewsLeader this week.  Contact between the Executive Editor and opinion columnists is fairly rare.  When it happens it is almost always a "come to Jesus" meeting of some sort.

This one took place because the editor had gone over the head of our opinion page editor and changed the wording in one of my recent columns.  He would have said that he was "toning down" my rhetoric a bit.... Something editors do sometimes when they would like for me to be a nicer chap than I actually want to be.

And so I had sent him a bit of a cryptic message explaining my views on journalism.  I said, in my two sentence message:  Journalism is the publishing of something someone doesn't want you to publish.  Everything else is just self promotion.

He thought that perhaps we should talk.  I am completely sympathetic with the fact that it is his role to produce a paper that people will buy and in which businesses will advertise.  But I implored him to understand that from my perspective, I write for the paper because there are topics of great ethical importance that I want to keep before the public.

It is not difficult to see, then, that we are often at cross purposes.  I believe that a free press and an unfettered pulpit are both crucial to keeping the government honest but publishers must acknowledge that the free press is not free.... Every newspaper is dependent upon subscribers and advertisers.  But, as we have seen illustrated so clearly in the past year.... Money is speech but the people with the most money, even though they may get most of the TV, radio and print time, doesn't have anything at all to do with whether they are telling the truth.

Aaron Sorkin has created a new series for HBO that was just launched this week.  It stars Jeff Daniels as a TV news anchor who is very intelligent, apparently rather bitter and jaded, and, also more than a little delusional.... Possibly even schizophrenic.  He imagines seeing people in the audience holding up challenging signs... trying to get him come out from behind his non-partisan, neutral news reporter disguise and to tell the absolute truth.

It is interesting to me that, as we saw in the old movie Bullworth, for any public figure to tell the truth, to make it believable, the prophet has to be a little bit crazy.  Let me share this four minute clip from the inaugural show..... it may be the best 4 minutes of television I have ever seen:  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ6YXYf0Dvs)
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Of course, the news anchor suffers terrible consequences for this lapse into honesty.  That's what keeps most politicians using important sounding words without ever actually saying anything.  That's why, if you did a free association word test on almost anyone in America, if you say the word "sermon" the first word they will say is "boring."  Almost every pastor I know has been willing to exchange relevance for job security.

We normally have only one scripture reading in our services, today we have two because they both illustrate a similar point from two periods of our ancient faith history, separated by nearly 600 years.  The job of the prophet is to say what most people don't want to hear.  The job of a newspaper is to print what someone doesn't want printed.

The truth, St. John says, will set you free.  But we know that before it sets you free, it is likely to make you angry.  And yet, it is the willingness to expose ourselves to things we don't want to hear that inspires us to be better people, that keeps us honest, and, if in fact we want to be able to say that ours is the greatest nation in the world, we have to be willing to work to put some meat on those bones because it should be becoming obvious to all of us that we cannot rest on the memory of the greatest generation.

The spiritual death I see in our culture, and I love the way Jeff Daniels' character phrases it.... We've gone from a war on poverty to a war on the poor.  President Johnson's initiative in the war on poverty was more successful than we have generally given it credit.... There was homelessness in America back then but not at all in the numbers we see now.  The war on poverty gave way to the War on Drugs, which has been, as lest in my estimation, a total failure.

Did you know that if we transferred the money we are spending in the war on drugs to higher education spending that we could pay off every student loan in America?  You don't have to be more than an armchair sociologist to realize that most of drug addiction is motivated by the depression people feel when they don't feel that they have a future.  If we had free college education in America, I'm going to stand here and claim that drug use in America would go down much more than by any affect of the war on drugs.

If you want to do more than just stick your chest out and say that we are the greatest nation in the world because we happen to live here, then you know that you have to invest in the future.  Rather than making education easier to obtain, we're making it nearly impossible for the poor to go to college to become taxpaying, successful citizens.

Fifty years ago, President Eisenhower led our nation in investing in our own infrastructure, creating the nation's interstate highways which made our economic success possible.  But, in the past 25 years, the number of vehicles on our roads have doubled and yet the total number of miles of pavement have remained about the same.  We've gone from being the world leader in transportation to 24th out of the 124 soverign nations of the world.  Our bridges and roads are crumbling.

In terms of GDP, Norway, South Korea and Austrailia are spending twice as much as we are in developing their roads and bridges.... Even struggling European economies in Spain and the United Kingdom are way ahead of us.  Americans keep talking about improving our infrastructure but according to polls reported in Time Magazine recently, 71% oppose any new gas taxes, 64% oppose toll booths..... I guess a 100% would like for the tooth fairy to fix our roads and bridges!
The column my editor had altered was about access to health care.  Nation wide about 10% of Americans don't have health insurance.  In Missouri, it is 18%, nearly double the national average.  And yet many of the people I know are adamantly opposed to health care reform that will give access to those millions of people because they might have to sacrifice something themselves.  I referred to those people in my column as being "moral midgets."  My editor said that was name calling.  I said it was demonstrably objectively true.  I believe that he thinks that I might be a little bit crazy.  I think that he is probably right, but then, I'm counting on your to be a little bit crazy too....

When I was a college student I had a very annoying medical problem.  It was a virus in the sole of my foot called a "plantar's wart."  It was very painful and I had to do a lot of walking on campus and so I kept going to a local doctor who tried every cure known in those days.  He cut them out but they grew back.  He burned them with electricity.... But they came back.  He even put a kind of acid pack on them that burned for days but once the flesh grew back, the painful warts returned.

The doctor finally told me that these kinds of things would never go away until I believed that they would go away.  When I told my father what the doctor had said after nearly two years of unsuccessful treatments, my father said, "You tell him to just keep sending me a bill until he believes that he has been paid."

Dad was a little cynical about such things.  But I want to point out to you a very peculiar passage in our gospel lesson today.  It is printed there in your bulletin, from Mark.  It is about when Jesus went to preach in his hometown and people were unwilling to accept him as a religious teacher.

It is right there at the end, verses 5 and 6 of Mark, chapter 6:

It says that he could do no deed of power there and that he was amazed at their unbelief.  Matthew and Luke copy almost all of Mark but they don't copy that sentence.... Mark inserts a qualifier himself..... it is hard to think about Jesus not being able to do something but even in the formula of the healing miracles they report, they all say that Jesus said to the cured individual, "Your faith has made you well."

Without the faith of the people, Jesus couldn't do anything.  You would never have heard of Gandhi if he had made the salt march alone.  No matter how brilliant Martin Luther King, Jr. was, if no one had marched with him.... If he alone had been arrested, beaten, imprisoned..... he would have hardly rated a couple of column inches in the metro section of the Memphis newspaper that April 5th morning after he was murdered.

If you want to be able to say that America is the greatest nation in the world and say it with a straight face, then we have to end homelessness..... we need to end the extremity of poverty. Every sick person should be able to access medical help and it shouldn't bankrupt them.  Every child of the poor should be able to get an education that would end the cycle of poverty in their family.

And that can happen if you will believe it can happen.  If you will work for it to happen.  If you are willing to sacrifice for it to happen.  If you refuse to give up until it has happened.  To do that you either have to have a lot of faith or you have to be kinda crazy.... Either way works for me.

Healing Divisions in Relationships

July 1, 2012     Proper 8
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor

Mark 5:25-34  
25Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. 26She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. 27She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28for she said, "If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well." 29Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, "Who touched my clothes?" 31And his disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, 'Who touched me?'" 32He looked all around to see who had done it. 33But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. 34He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease."

We will soon be celebrating our fourth anniversary of the founding of our little church.  The process of our birth has not always been easy and the outcomes have not been certain but we've made it and I am sincere in telling you that I love what we have become and I am very happy to be the pastor of our emerging congregation.

One of the speakers at the Wild Goose Festival I was attending this past week had also founded a new church under circumstances very similar to our own.  He specifically asked not to be quoted in detail about his story of the ups and downs of their journey from 40 participants to 700 members but one thing is just too telling not to repeat.  He said, "You start a church with the 50 craziest people on the playground which is OK because the crazy ones all leave in the first three years."

We also started with about 40 people and the first couple of years there was a huge amount of coming and going.  People came in presenting needs that were sometimes very demanding and sometimes, even if we bent over backwards to help them in their challenging circumstances, whatever we did was not enough, and many who left, left angry.... Some had to be asked to leave.

But mostly, as we were seeking to create community, we did a lot of visiting in one another's homes.  We cooked and cleaned the homes of those who were sick, a couple of times bailed out people who were in jail, and got urgent medical care for those without insurance or money.  But more importantly, we socialized with one another.  Sometimes we spent holidays together, babysat one another's kids, and took vacations together.

Some of our early community members had to move away for work.  Some have died.  But there were others, whom I loved, trusted, and counted to be friends, who just disappeared.  Sometimes they didn't agree with something I said, or some decision the church made, but every time, having to accept their departure was a blow.

Churches that have been around for more than a century have a core constituency that wouldn't leave if you set the building on fire.  They sit in the pew where their grandparents sat and their family has endured bad preachers and loved good ones, they have been there for the thick and the thin years..... but a new church has no such inherited heritage.  We are the community that we decide to create.  Nothing holds you here other than your desire to be a part of who we are and what we are doing.

And we have sought to create this community in a time when people are finding it more and more difficult to stay in community.  Friendships, family members, spouses, even children are more disposable today than in any time in my memory and I suspect we may be in a nearly unique period of history.

In 1990 I would hazard the guess that not a one of us had ever even heard of a Bosnian or a Serb.  For our lifetimes, they were simply the people who lived in Yugoslavia.  When Tito's died and internal strife lead to the break up of Yugoslavia, many people who previously didn't even know if they were from Muslim or Orthodox background started to fight and kill one another.  We lived the first half of our lives assuming that Muslims were Muslims until we saw Sunnis and Shi'a fighting protracted bloody wars with one another in Iraq and Iran.

Our own nation is possibly more divided right now than we have been at any time since the Civil War and I fear that if conservatives and liberals lived in distinctly different regions of the country we might be in danger of open conflict right now.

The advent of cell phones, the internet, twitter and texting, the ability to SKYPE with almost anyone, anywhere in the world for free has not increased our connection to one another but rather has heighted the cheapening of our language that can make me say that I have 1600 "friends" on Face Book and no one with whom to go see a movie!

Because I just love to hear Sheryl Crow, Joan Osborn, Paula Cole and Sarah McLachlan, I made the decision a few years ago to attend not one but two of the Lilith Fairs, one in Kansas City and one in St Louis.  I know that heterosexual males were not the target audience for those concerts and in fact the two or three of us who were among the sea of thousands of women there would sometimes turn and give one another nervous glances and nods..... especially when the over crowed Women's rooms evidently gave courageous women permission to join us in the Men's rooms.

You've never really had a shy bladder until three women are standing behind you waiting for their turn at the urinal..... but I digress.....

I never listen to country music but by virtue of going to the Lilith Fair I was treated to this song by Lisa Loeb that I asked Ashley to sing for us today.  The title line stuck in my mind as such a succinct way of describing how incredibly shallow and disposable our relationships often are..... she sings, "The time between meeting and finally leaving is sometimes called 'falling in love.'"

And, of course, the most obvious application of that ironic line is to personal love relationships though it certainly doesn't stop there.  When I first became single nearly 20 years ago, I passively assumed that within a year or so that I would marry again and try to have me some of that "happily ever after" that everyone keeps talking about.

The truth of my experience is that first dates often didn't make it through the appetizer before one or both of us realized that we wouldn't be lingering over dessert and coffee.  Meaningful connection turns out to be a whole lot harder than I thought.  After, oh, I don't know, fifteen or sixteen years of disappointing first dates, you start to wonder if maybe I'm not quite the fetching catch that I thought I was.

Even when you take out the alcoholics, addicts, borderline personalities and passive dependents, it still isn't easy for two adults to meet and excuse one another's idiosyncrasies enough to make a lasting relationship work.  I'm not single at the age of 55 just because I forgot to get married.  It is because I have the dual challenge of being very picky while being nearly impossible to live with.
And I would be very worried about that fact if there were not so very very many people in about the same spot in life.  We don't connect well in the 21st century.  People are less inclined to join smaller churches where they have to actually interact with people they know.  The people who still go to church tend to go to churches that are more like going to a movie theater where you temporarily gather as a random collection of strangers and scatter as soon as the pop corn is gone.

Neighbors don't talk to one another.  People don't join civic organizations and most families gave up even trying to have family reunions back before Watergate.  All of our centuries of Christian worship and practice has left us with a society that is harsh and intolerant and judgmental and nearly bereft of basic skills of forgiveness and minding our own business enough to let other people be who they are and still be willing to sit around the pool and chat with them.

I know it was a long time ago but I want to ask you to remember the passage of scripture that Ashley read for us before I started talking today.  It is about a woman who had a persistent menstrual period, which, if ever there was something that was no one else's business, that would have to be it.

But in that society, when a woman was menstruating, she was considered to be somehow spiritually unclean and she was to separate herself from the rest of society.  Bad enough for two or three days out of the month but solitary confinement for the woman in this text who had been made to feel like and unwanted leper in her community.

In fact, the use of the word "leper" is specifically relevant here.
One of the ways of looking at the healing miracles in the gospels is to ask yourself how each of the people Jesus is said to have healed would have been cut off from community before the healing and how being healed restored them to community.  Lepers were forced to live away from healthy people and when they walked down the street there were supposed to yell "unclean!" as warning to healthy people that a leper was coming.

In most cases, in our society and in theirs, we let gossips do that for us.... The gossips shout and whisper about how unclean everyone else is. Mudslinging journalism tells us what everyone's failing, everyone's illness, everyone's pain is.  This woman didn't walk around yelling about her problem but she walked, head bowed, face to the ground, and wouldn't even dare to speak to Jesus, she just reached out to touch the hem of his garment from behind.

In the church where I worked for several years, I greeted parishioners by the sanctuary door next to the pulpit.  Some people shake my hand, some people hug me and some people go out one of the other doors.  But I noticed that this one tiny, white haired woman often came through the line and hugged me more than once each week, sometimes three or four times and I realized that she came through the line, hugged me, then went through the chancel door and came back and got in line again, sometimes over and over.

Finally I asked her why she was doing that and she said, "Because you are the only person who touches me all week long and sometimes I just need another little bit of contact before I go back home."  And I don't want to go all Leo Buscaglia on you folks today but do you hear how indicative that is of a society that is on its last legs of civilization?
For all I know she wasn't a great mother, or maybe she wasn't a good sister or even a caring neighbor.... There may have been reasons for her isolation but, I'm confident, not reason enough.

When Jesus healed a leper, he restored that person to being able to go back home, to go back to work, to synagogue, to the marketplace.  When he healed a blind man, a lame person, when he exorcised a demon from someone, or healed a woman with a persistent issue of blood, he broke down the barriers that kept them from being in community.

And I don't know if you take these miracle accounts literally or metaphorically, whether they are a matter of history or of literature, they still have about the same meaning..... they are stories of restoration.... Of ending isolation.... Of opening up the way for a human being to once again become a part of community.

Many of us, if not, indeed, most of us, have been exiles from the faith community where we grew up.  Some are exiles from family, past friends, places of employment.  When my life blew up five years ago and I felt that I had been betrayed by friends, parishioners and members of my staff, I remember sitting in a meeting with my board chairman, a man whom I had believed to be a close friend, and I can remember only being able to say to him, "I hope I never trust another human being as long as I live."

I left that church and I told my friends that I was going to sell everything I owned, change my name to Habib Shashimi, and buy a coffee stand in Florida and never have another human interaction that went beyond, "Do you want me to leave room for cream and sugar in that?"
I'm only exaggerating a little bit.  I did go down to Florida and started looking into businesses that were for sale.  I was done with church.... I was done with friends... I was done with even trying to love or trust anyone.  But I learned a couple of things pretty quickly.  Number one was that Starbucks does not sell franchises; they own all of their stores so I had to forget about that.

Number two was that life cut off from others is not worth living.

The Buddha taught that he who has 50 loves has fifty sorrows and he who has 10 loves has ten sorrows and he who has no loves has no sorrows.  Who am I to disagree with Buddha?  I agree that to love anyone is to run the risk of betrayal and a broken heart.  Some people will just stop loving you.  Some friends will reject you for reasons so venial it would embarrass Attila the Hun. But, with all due respect to the Buddha, the person who has no loves has nothing but sorrow.

There is risk in loving another person but there is certain failure in cutting yourself off from friendship or the potential even of love.

In conclusion then, I have this to say.  Friends will sometimes reject you for no good reason.  That's a fact.  But I charge you, don't you be that person.  Some people will love you and include you in their lives until the day they turn their back on you.... It happens.... But I beg of you, don't you be that person.  In our society when you can reach out and communicate with anyone anywhere at anytime, it gets easy to see any one individual as being entirely disposable.  I'm here to tell you that is not healthy.

Jesus made a career of making broken people whole....of forgiving, healing, restoring people to community.  If we say that we are followers of the teachings of Jesus then we too are to make it our business to forgive and to forego judging.  It is our business to reconcile and not to reject.  It is our moral obligation to work towards the creation of a peaceful, loving, healing, and reconciling community and to reject any base impulse we may have through moral condescension, judgment, resentment, or gossip to tear community apart.

You are the salt of the earth.... You are the light of the world.  You are the hope of the future.

My mother killed all the Indians. My father killed all the Jews.

June 24, 2012

Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Dr. David Trobisch

I was born from a German father and an American mother. In school I had a teacher who told me that my father killed all the Jews. And another teacher told me that my mother killed all the Indians.


I went to kindergarten in Mannheim, Germany. We children played in an abandoned street, just next to the kindergarten. I remember the ruins of houses, the black streaks on burnt walls, four story buildings which had collapsed under American bombs.

My teachers were not wrong. On both sides of my family I am related to people who have done terrible things.

In the 1940's my father was fighting for his German Vaterland.

My father did not talk much about the war. Only once, during a summer vacation in France and Italy, did he pour out his heart. For one hour every day he would tell his three oldest children his story of the war.

He was seventeen when he was drafted into Hitler's army. He was one of the very few who survived the battle of Stalingrad, where more than 650.000 German troops and 500.000 Russian soldiers were killed in a single battle.¹ Of the 850.000 civilians who once inhabited the city, the census after the war counted only 1.500. The overall loss of life amounts to about 1.5 million people. In one single battle.

Heavily wounded, my father was thrown on the back of a truck. The truck driver crossed through two enemy lines without being detected and attacked.

As soon as he recovered from his injuries my father was sent back to the Russian front. This time his platoon was surrounded. The only hope for these young soldiers was to run up a hill under heavy fire. For years my father had been a devout Christian and active youth leader. But it was then that he decided not to pursue his dream of becoming a theater director. If he survived, he prayed, he would study theology and become a minister.

I will never forget how he told us about the longest night in his life, running half a mile up that hill, under heavy fire. My father was the only one in the platoon to survive. For four weeks he walked west, traveling at night, hiding during the day, until he met with German troops again.

The next time my father was sent to the front, he was sent to Italy. On Christmas Eve an American grenade exploded close to him, sending splinters into his neck and upper arm. Until his death 35 years later he would pull little pieces of shrapnel out of his skin.

My American uncles, about the same age as my father, were fighting for America. My father and my uncles were shooting at each other. A family divided? At that time we were not a family not yet.

The house my wife and I had bought and lived in for ten years in Germany before we moved to Maine was an old house. More than a century old. The sandstone walls were two feet thick. On the outside there were marks from the splinters of a bomb, which had detonated in the little park across the street. The splinters had done little damage to the strong walls of our house. Our neighbors, an elderly couple, told us that only two bombs had fallen on this particular part of Mannheim. One in front of our house.

The other bomb, I knew, had hit the home of my Godmother. The house was completely destroyed. It had been a dark night. The city observed a complete black out. My Godmother's neighbor, however, had left a light on, and it was this light that had led the pilot to drop his fatal load.

I am a Lutheran. And as far back as the sixteenth century my family was Lutheran. My Godmother is very active in the local Lutheran congregation.

Several years ago my wife and I attended a church service in Missouri. We were introduced to a retired pastor who had made a fortune in the stock market. With this money he would buy lots in thriving suburbs and help local Lutherans to form new congregations, erect church buildings, and hire pastors. This was his ministry.


When he learned that we were from Germany he told us that he had been in Germany once before.
He seemed a little hesitant at first. But then he explained: He never put his foot on German soil, but as a young man, as a soldier in an airplane, he had seen Germany from above. Their mission was to drop bombs over Mannheim. But they had problems with one of the engines, decided to turn back early, and therefore dropped their bombs on the first target they could identify, a little light.

That little light led the bomb to the house of my Godmother.

My Godmother's house collapsed in a way that the emergency crews could not get to the basement. She, her husband, her mother, and her father were buried in rubble. During that night my Godmother witnessed the slow and painful death of both, her father and her husband. She could not move, lying under a heavy load of bricks, with a broken hip and shoulder, but she heard every word, every cry.
What is the difference between a German and an American? What is the difference between an Iraqi and an American?

I know enough of my father to see that he was not fighting in Stalingrad because he had a choice. And I know enough of my American uncles to understand that they were doing what they felt they had to do. And I know that my Godmother is a good Lutheran and the retired pastor, who bombed her home, is a good Lutheran as well.

We all have had our experiences and we all had to live and cope with the experiences of the generation before us. All of this forms the way we think and it forms the way we speak. And it informs the way we express God's presence in our lives.

When we came to the US one of the early lessons my wife and I learned, was that on this continent God speaks English. All our lives we had prayed to God--together with our families and friends--in German.

My father grew up in former East Germany, in Leipzig, in Saxony. The people there have a strong dialect. The expressions they use the way they pronounce certain words it sounds funny to other Germans. No matter, what they say, the way they say it makes us laugh.

My mother is American. The German she learned, she learned from my father.

After the wall had come down my mother visited her husband's hometown, Leipzig, for the first time. And what did she say when she came back?

"The people from Saxony are the only people in the world who speak German without an accent."
We all have an accent. And the accent betrays our "past". It tells those who me meet, who we are, and where we come from.

We do not speak God's language. God speaks our language. That is why God speaks with an accent as well. God speaks with our accent.

In my case, after living in the US for several years, God starts to speak English, with a German accent.

¹ "When you tally the figures for the German 6th Army and its allied auxiliaries which supported the march to the Volga, the numbers are both impressive and distressing. The Germans lost about 350,000 men, the Italians, Hungarians and Romanians about 100,000 men apiece. The Red Army also must have lost at least 500,000 men in Stalingrad and the surrounding areas which were adjunct to the battle. But the most horrendous toll must have been on the innocent civilians who formerly lived in the city. Stalingrad was estimated to have had 850,000 residents in 1940. It isn't known how many of them may have escaped the carnage and vanished into the interior of Russia. But after 1945, a census showed only 1500 of these people remained in the pile of rubble that had once been Stalingrad." Source: http:www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/stalingrad/annihilation.aspx

When Truth is Treason

June 17, 2012
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor



It is difficult to graph a timeline of the world's empires, especially since most of us tend to view the world from the perspective of the Bible, then to Europe and then to the Americas.  In the ancient world there were long lasting empires that did not know about one another.  While Egypt flourished, so did civilizations in Asia and South America.  One of the longest surviving empires of the world was the Mayans and they were largely ignored in such global views until this year when their little calendar issue has received disproportionate attention.

But even if you broad brush the history of empires, from Egypt to Assyria, Babylon to Rome, Byzantine and Mayan, Arab and British and you come down to Soviet and American, the inescapable awareness is that empires rise and empires fall.  And, seemingly, the cycle of rising and falling gets shorter as you walk down that historical timeline.

Early in the 20th century, the United States began to don its imperial robes.  Colonialism was dying off but economic, technological and military colonialism was taking its place.

We were just one of the players in the early development of things like moving pictures, flight and computer technology but we grew and advanced so quickly that our TV and movie industry dominated the world and infused our culture, our fashions and our values into the whole of the world.  There are pilots the world over but if you want to fly and talk to a control tower anywhere in the world, you have to speak English..... our toys, our rules.
Thirty years ago there were lots of kinds of computers as the industry was in its infancy and now it is either PC or Apple in a stand off that gets more like Coke or Pepsi every day.

Cultural empires expressed themselves, in the west, in Greek, then Arabic, Latin and then English and for those of us born in the second half of the 20th century, it is difficult to see that we too, are the kings on the cultural empire hill for only a moment in time.  America will not always dominate the world's technology, culture, military and economy.

Our primary rival for our life times was the Soviet Union.  The Soviet Union fell under the sheer weight of an arms race that they could no longer finance.... And now we are expanding our military presence in the Pacific as if we could launch enough ships to contain China.  China's economy is growing and we are increasing our military spending in much the way the Soviet Union did thirty years ago and we will likely hand the baton of world domination to China because we lack the foresight to stop following in the footsteps of the Soviets.

Even in Afghanistan, long known as the graveyard of empires, we watched as the Soviet Union depleted their capital resources in a useless war there from 1979 to 1989 and we have been there from 2001 to the present trying our best to commit economic and political suicide.

We maintain more than 700 military bases in 130 nations, many of which are related to WWII issues even though that war was ended 70 years ago.

In American political debate, both the Democrats and the Republicans have had recent presidential candidates that tried to shine a light on the lunacy of this military empire we have built, Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul, two very different men from totally opposite ends of the political spectrum but they have both been portrayed as being members of the lunatic fringe.  All politicians probably deserve to be seen as being at least a bubble off of plumb but these two have been escorted to the curb of political consideration because, as Ron Paul said, "Telling the truth is treason in the empire of lies."

Before I appear to be applauding Paul too much, let me hasten to say that he paraphrased that famous quote from his book from George Orwell who said that, "In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

I don't mention the inevitability of the demise of the American empire to be upsetting nor to suggest that we should take steps to remain at the top of the mountain.  I'm just making a observation about power.

We have two scripture readings in our service today when we normally have only one, but both of these are lectionary choices for the day, appropriately paired because they are in contrast with one another..... one of the precious times when the common lectionary gets it right.

The Old Testament lesson comes from the 17th chapter of Ezekiel where the prophet is triumphalistically declaring that the day would come when God would raise up the kingdom of Judah to rule the world.  He uses the image of Israel as a mighty cedar tree growing tall and all of the birds of the air, representing the nations of the world, come to build nests in its branches.
This Zionist vision is repeated here and there through the Bible and is sometimes so subtle that even modern Americans seem to be persuaded that God wants to put this particular government and this particular piece of real estate in a prominent position.  It is absurd if you allow yourself to think about it but the sum total of absurd things I have heard from American pulpits is a huge body of work that grows larger every Sunday.

But the gospel lesson demonstrates that Jesus was not taken in by Ezekiel's excesses of nationalistic enthusiasm. In our gospel lesson from Mark chapter 4, Jesus likens the Kingdom of God, not to a giant cedar tree but to a tiny mustard plant.  He mocks Ezekiel saying that birds build their nest in the mustard plant but not any bird that is not intent upon almost immediate extinction because the mustard week only grows to be about a foot to a foot and a half tall.... It can be crushed by stepping on it and it dies in the first frost.

To rub it in just a bit further, the mustard weed was no kosher and was used only to feed cattle and sheep.  Jesus chose the weakest, most disgusting and unlikely plant to represent the Kingdom of God and he did that just as Roman armies were carrying their fierce symbols of military might all over the western world.

A decade ago I was a board member on more than a dozen of our community's government and civic organizations.  I was on the board of Burrell Mental Health, the Community Foundation, the Community Partnership, The Family Achievement Academy and several others.
At the time I was the senior pastor of one of the big steeple denominational churches in town and being seen on those boards was just the normal role for a person in my position but I begin to notice that even though my name was on the stationary of those organizations, they almost always entirely ignored everything I said.

They used me and my position to garner legitimacy for themselves while often doing exactly the opposite of what I felt was in the best interests of the city's poor, mentally ill, addicted and homeless.  I came to realize that while power and position can be addictive that the real role of the prophet was not to be either on the stationary or at the board table but to be on the sidewalk shaking my fist at the board when they met.

If we are to "speak the truth to power" we have to first accept that speaking is our power.  I am glad when someone from our ranks finds a seat in government or in authority but I am always suspicious of power because every empire eventually becomes an empire of lies.

We not only invaded Iraq under false pretenses, once our initial lies were uncovered, then the defense for occupation was that Saddam Hussein administered a corrupt government that violently put down protest and even tortured prisoners.  But, of course, we also tortured prisoners, violently put down opposition and the amount of corruption and the hundreds of millions of missing dollars forces one to wonder, in a contest between our management of Iraq and Saddam's government which one was the most deadly and oppressive and corrupt.

Of course, I have no idea what the honest answer to that question would be but what I know for certain is that it is not a question that you will hear asked on any corporate owned news media channel nor in any denominational church because speaking the truth in the empire of lies is considered to be treason.

When Jesus points to the vulnerable, non-kosher mustard plant as the symbol for the kingdom where we want to hold our citizenship it is an anti-empire symbol.

As an American, I want my nation to be the one that delivers emergency relief aid.  I even want my nation to be the one that helps to depose dictators, stop genocide and to encourage human rights around the globe.  But I know that power always comes with economic heavy handedness, and we start saying things like, "Water boarding isn't torture because Americans do it and America doesn't torture....." So if speaking the truth is treason in the empire of lies, I just want to make sure that this church is guilty of treason.  Or if you prefer George Orwell's wording so that speaking the truth in an age of deceit is a revolutionary act.... But no matter how you slice it, we should never be afraid to speak the truth to the empire because without us, they are sure to prefer their lies.

Concerning Religion + Politics

June 10, 2012   Proper 5
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor

1 Samuel 8:4-20                    
4Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, 5and said to him, "You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations." 6But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, "Give us a king to govern us." Samuel prayed to the Lord, 7and the Lord said to Samuel, "Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. 8Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. 9Now then, listen to their voice; only--you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them." 10So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. 11He said, "These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; 12and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 13He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. 15He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. 16He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. 17He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 18And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day." 19But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, "No! but we are determined to have a king over us, 20so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles."

It was not big news in Montgomery, Alabama nor was it much of a surprise to his family when the Rev. Vernon Johns was fired by the Deacon Avenue Baptist Church.  Johns had been fired before and he would be fired several more times after he left Deacon Ave. Baptist.  He was just too political.  He couldn't help himself.  The irony is, however, that the board of this particular church told Johns that they wanted to hire a minister who was more "conventional."

James Earl Jones plays Johns in a movie about his life and it depicts the scene when Johns was introduced to his younger, safer, more conventional replacement, the newly graduated Martin Luther King, Jr.  The idea that a church wanted to hire a minister who was more conventional and less political and ended up with Martin Luther King, Jr. has always amused me but I believe that when King accepted that call that he really did intend to be just what Deacon Avenue Baptist Church wanted him to be.
It was precisely because he was a young college graduate who had not stirred the pot or made any political enemies that the community of black pastors in Montgomery asked him to take the lead in a meeting they held to discuss this incident that had been created when Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus.

There were other actions, protests, resistance before this incident but the real start of the Civil Rights Movement began when Rosa Parks made this courageous gesture.  African American pastors realized that this was the right opportunity for them to organize and act but the competition for recognition among them made it difficult for anyone to emerge as the leader of the boycott so someone called and basically cajoled King out of his home to come chair the meeting.

King became the greatest leader and spokesperson of the Civil Rights Movement and he deserves every bit of recognition and praise that he has received but he became that because the circumstances of America's version of racial apartheid combined with his devotion to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth compelled him to become the man for whom we now have a national holiday.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated 44 years ago and for all of my adult life I have heard people asking, "Who is the next Martin Luther King?"  And for many years they have asked, "Why did no one become a leader like King was?"  There may be a myriad of answers to those questions but at the top of the list of answers would have to be that churches still fire pastors who try to speak out about social justice and they tell the successors that they want a more conventional and less political preacher.
To keep their jobs, two generations of preachers have talked about heaven and hell but not much about Main St. and Commercial St. and certainly not Wall St.

The Bible is about 1200 pages long.  If you took the texts read in churches for almost every sermon preached.... Passages about going to heaven.  Accounts of super natural miracles and warnings against going to hell.... And those passages are in the Bible, but you could consolidate them to about ten or twelve pages.  And it makes you wonder if people in church don't ever get curious about what is written on the other 1,190 pages?  Because most of the Bible addresses what the board members at the Deacon Ave. Baptist church called "politics."

Most of the Bible speaks to the just treatment of the poor, about compassion for the elderly, orphans, the sick and the hungry.  Most of the prophetic books have preachers addressing sermons to kings and politicians, condemning them, as we see in this text from 1 Samuel that Dr. Trobisch told us this morning, about the excessive militarism of the government, indifference towards the poor, abusive taxation to serve the interests of the wealthy.... Folks, this is from three thousand years ago and that theme of liberation, of passionate and sacrificial concern for justice is a theme that marches through the history of the judges, prophets, apostles and saints, many of whom were assassinated, imprisoned or repeatedly fired for doing and saying the right things.

I believe that the largest single reason why the mainstream church is dying so rapidly right now is because they have become morally irrelevant.  And fundamentalist churches are growing because they tell people exactly what they want to hear.... They tell people that God is just as militaristic, greedy, racist and sexist as they are and people will eat that up with a spoon.... For a while.
Those of us who regularly go down to Bill's Place to take lunch to the unsheltered homeless of Springfield have gotten to know some of the regulars there.  We were all a bit shocked one day this week when I inquired about one of those regulars who hasn't been around in the last week.

I first noticed Slick months ago because no matter what we were serving, he wanted hot sauce.... Lot's of hot sauce, and we started keeping big bottles of hot sauce in our supplies because we knew Slick would want it.  But the last few weeks I couldn't escape noticing that more often than not Slick would have his wife bring his plate to him in his chair because he was too drunk to stand in line.  I talked to him, encouraged him to be sober the next time I came back but last week he and his wife got into a fight and he tried to cut her throat with a hack saw.

We've been told that she was not seriously injured and that she is recovering well but Slick will be in jail for a long time.  That story was hard for us to hear and I apologize to you for telling you such a gruesome account here in church today because I know it is hard for you to hear too.... But the point is that this is the real world.  This is the world of unemployment, of poverty, of the addiction and violence that comes with racism, with cuts to education, with the transfer of wealth into the hands of a smaller and smaller class of aristocrats.

When poverty rates go down, violent crime goes down.  When education rates go up, unemployment goes down.  If we refuse to see the big picture... if we refuse to read from those other 1190 pages....  If we become the church that prays for the sick but doesn't fight for health care access for all.... If we will feed the hungry and walk away without also fighting for jobs, safe housing and meaningful living then we become one of those dying institutions that everyone is trying to leave as fast as they can.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said:  "A religion true to its nature must also be concerned about man's social conditions.... Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a dry-as-dust religion."

There is tremendous pressure on every church in America to steer to the safety of the middle ground.... To talk about what is called "spiritual" concerns without recognizing that poverty, addiction, war, domestic violence, homelessness, hunger, racism, gender and sexual orientation prejudices ARE spiritual concerns.

Jim Wallis was fond of telling us in class at Harvard that no one goes to heaven without three letters of reference from homeless people.  We're not here to sing hymns and study religious history.  We come here to get ready to change the world..... and that will inevitably put us at cross purposes with the people who are currently in power.

Winston Churchill said, "So you have enemies?  Good.  That means that at some point in your life you stood up for something."

The narrator of the movie about the life of Rev. Vernon Johns starts the film by saying:

"Before the civil rights movement could begin, it would take the actions of a few brave souls to start that movement into motion. This is a story of one of them."

Fifty years later, we stand at a time when we will either watch the church become as dry as death itself or we will have to be the brave souls to start a prophetic movement that will give life back to the institution that bears the name of Jesus."

Most churches build sanctuaries, gymnasiums and fellowship halls so that they can keep their kids safe and so they can stay far away from people like Slick.  I don't know about you, but I just want to make sure that we keep going to the places where we might be able to show enough compassion to really change Commercial St. and Main St. and Wall St. but whether we succeed or whether we fail, I want to be sure that people like Slick know my name because I just might need a good letter of reference myself someday.

Before the church can come to life again, it is necessary that some brave souls will take the kinds of actions that gives life back to the gospels and the prophets.... And I am betting that you are those people.

Stop Being Afraid

June 3, 2012    Proper 4
Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor

 Romans 8:14-17      
14For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 15For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" 16it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,
17and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ--if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Billy Graham has been, for most of the past 50 years, the exception to the rule of televangelist insanity.  Most of the figures who promoted themselves on the national scene as great evangelists embarrassed themselves both in how they lived and in what they said but Billy Graham generally maintained an impeccable personal reputation and, even though his theology is distinctly evangelical, he made his messages seem somehow more sane and palatable than those of his peers.

But his children seem to have fallen pretty far from the tree.  Though both have done some very laudable things as they have tried to establish themselves as national evangelical leaders, they also regularly appear to be a bit nuts if not downright mean.

I've had my picture taken shaking hands with Roy Blunt, though we both looked a bit shaken by the experience, I can tell you that I never want to stand that close to Franklin Graham!  Billy Graham personally went and bailed Martin Luther King, Jr. out of jail a couple of times but his kids appear to be on the other side of the fence.

The 94 year old advisor and friend to many presidents is now out of the spot light but his daughter, Anne, was recently interviewed about her views on who should be the next president.
Evangelicals have had to do a lot of theological contortions since they appear to have to now choose between a Mormon and an African born-Muslim-socialist in the fall election..... of course, President Obama is not a Muslim and is not African born nor a socialist but they are not known for letting facts get in their way and they sure aren't about to start now.

Anne Graham said that the number one thing she looks for in a presidential candidate is that they fear God.  Let me let you hear her saying it herself on Meet the Press, (play clip of Graham saying, "The thing I think is so important is the Bible says that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord......)

She is accurate in that the Bible does say this, in both Proverbs and more than once in the Psalms but, of course, the Bible also says, as appears in our lesson from Romans this morning, that as members of God's family, we have no reason to fear.  And 1 John, chapter 4, says that "perfect love drives out fear."

Biblicists are fond of saying that you can't "pick and choose" from among the scriptures but, clearly, you have to because no one can take the Bible as a whole and give equal value to every verse.  There is wisdom and insight in the pages of scripture but there is also prejudice, misogyny, and violence.  As Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer puts it in his interesting little book, Jesus Against Christianity, the Pentateuch basically describes God as being a pathological land thief.  And in spite of how many Zionists in the world continue to insist that God is in the real estate stealing business, I do not choose to believe in that god.

Though I long ago gave up a supernatural view of God that would have required adherence to any particular set of doctrines, I have often jokingly said that were it not for fear and guilt I wouldn't have a job.

But in spite of the potential career risk it may pose, I'm here to tell you that fearing God is not the beginning of wisdom, it is more like the first step towards a therapist's office.

Last Spring there was a fairly short flurry of news reports about pastors publicly saying that they don't believe in hell.  A couple of small church pastors lost their jobs but then an evangelical mega-church pastor, Robert Bell, published a book entitled "Love Wins" in which he affirmed the same belief.  And he was broadly denounced by evangelicals and Christian publishers from coast to coast because if you take away the fear of going to hell there might be a virtual stampede leaving evangelical churches and heading downtown for the gay bars.... Or as one Assemblies of God seminarian told me, "The dancing is so much more fun there."

The Ontario newspaper, The Globe and Mail, just reported yesterday that the Toronto Catholic archbishop had issued a long statement protesting the Liberal Ontario government for passing an anti-bullying ordinance that included language against bullying kids for being gay.  Which is wrong in at least two very serious ways.... The first and most obvious being that an Archbishop protesting an anti-bullying bill is the height of religious hypocrisy but perhaps more seriously, an English speaking Toronto Bishop criticizing anything in French speaking Ontario is tantamount to a declaration of war....... What, you people don't follow Canadian politics?  May I ask one of our Canadian viewers to send me an explanatory note that I can pass along to my Midwestern congregation?
The ancient Persians invented the concepts of heaven and hell because the constructs were useful to the royal class in controlling their slaves and peasants.  Marx wasn't the first to realize that promising the suffering poor "pie in the sky in the bye and bye" might make them more cooperative with being abused.  The Zoroastrians used it on their Jewish slaves in Babylon and they brought the idea back to Judah and infected both the post exilic expression of Judaism and early Christian communities with it.

I believe that the historical Jesus was concerned about alleviating the suffering of the poor, the sick and the marginalized in there here and now and if that is picking and choosing then let me be very clear about this, I do not choose to be afraid of God and I hope that you are not either.

I believe that fear was primarily and originally a form of government manipulation of the population and where religious fear doesn't work, I'm convinced that the government finds other tools to engender sufficient fear to keep us compliant.

So much has happened in the past decade in the name of protecting us from terrorists.  George Orwell never dared to dream of the level of government spying on its own citizens that we now experience.  Terrorism is the excuse used to place cameras and listening devices in public places and to eavesdrop on telephone conversations and read e-mails as if terrorists were likely to send one another emails about their activities..... "Hi, Jamal, the bomb factory is coming along nicely!"

Not that terrorists generally come straight out of the MENSA club.... I'm certain that Homeland Security has thwarted some serious terrorist plots but what we hear about is some guy who turns his car into an incendiary bomb and then locked himself out of his car and couldn't detonate it.  Or the guy who wore an underwear bomb and succeeded only in setting his own private parts on fire.

We had a guest lecturer at Drury University a few years ago who was a strategist for Homeland Security and during the question and answer period I asked him, "Which poses the greatest threat to Americans, foreign terrorists or this winter's strain of the flu."  He was red-faced and angry about the question but the answer is obvious..... if the government were really concerned about saving lives, they would pass out more Kleenex and anti-bacterial hand sanitizer but the flu doesn't require the construction of an office structure larger than the Pentagon and a budget bigger than education.  And while the flu is something to be concerned about, it just doesn't have the sexy fear appeal of terrorism.

I must ask you to consider why people commit acts of terrorism in the first place?  Isn't it to frighten large numbers of people at a small expense?  Terrorism is sometimes called the warfare of the poor and oppressed.  Terrorists can't field a navy or an air force, they don't have armies and tanks so they secretly do the most violently attention getting things that they can do in order to intimidate and threaten their enemies.  So the single most effective counter terrorism measure we can take is to decide not to be terrorized.... To refuse to be afraid, to never make decisions based on fear.

Fear is not the beginning of wisdom.  Fear doesn't cause you to make good decisions.  And fear never inspires what we say that we want..... grace, forgiveness, peace, and certainly not love.

The public rhetoric asks you to be afraid of poor people who might get some of your money for something they didn't work for.  It asks you to be afraid of sick people who might get health care that you might have to help pay for.  You are asked to be afraid of criminals who are treated like royalty while in prison at your expense.  And you are asked to be afraid enough to give up your rights to privacy and to accept outrageous expansions of government agencies and intrusions into your life to protect you from terrorists when lightening poses a much larger threat and the flu is a hundred times more likely to get you than anyone in Al-Qaida.

Apparently, fear makes us stupid and mean and those are two things that are contrary to who we say we want to be.  It is the terrorist who wants you to be afraid, where that is a fanatic with a bomb, or a government that keeps exaggerating the threat of bombers, or religious wackos who make up tall tales about places of eternal punishment..... they are all terrorists and the best thing we can do is to ignore them and get busy being good at loving.