No More Silly Religion for Me

Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor
December 9, 2012     Advent 2

Malachi 2:17-3:4                    
17You have wearied the Lord with your words. Yet you say, "How have we wearied him?" By saying, "All who do evil are good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them." Or by asking, "Where is the God of justice?"
3See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight--indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. 2But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; 3he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. 4Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.

Christmas came a little early for me this week.  I didn't know that there was any chance of getting same sex marriage considered by the Supreme Court in this session but the announcement that two related cases will be reviewed by the court this year is good news to me and reason for you and all progressives who have been trying to raise this civil rights issue to national attention for the past twenty years to give yourselves a round of applause.  They say that the court doesn't consider popular opinion and that is every bit as true as saying that the sky is green and grass is blue.  The nation's highest court has a long history of acting only when the prevailing public opinion makes it obvious that it is time to change and because people like you have had the courage to speak up, I am very hopeful that we will see a landmark decision handed down in the next few months.

But that was not my only Christmas gift this week.  I have to admit that my darker side rejoiced when I heard that Fox had removed Carl Rove from their programs.  Rove now gets to join Glenn Beck in that special little Darwin's Waiting Room reserved for people who are too crazy, even for Fox, and that is quite a water mark to rise above.  Rove was a part of what many are now calling the "conservative entertainment industry," blaming them for a part of the loss of stature and credibility of the Republican party.
I think that is a fair analysis.  You expect certain commentators or consultants to be partisan.... It is their job to get a particular candidate elected and so they understandably want to exaggerate the positive and down play the negatives but there is still a fundamental expectation of being devoted to both reality and honesty and that has been absent from many in the conservative entertainment industry.  I know that there are offenses on both sides of political spectrum but the score of misleading statements or entirely fabricated facts is distinctly in favor of the Glenn Becks, Karl Roves and Rush Limbaughs of the media.

Now that the election is over, I for one, am glad to hear Republicans doing some soul searching to rid themselves of dishonest advocates and to try to restore intellectual and moral credibility to the political process.

But I don't want to stand up here and crow about credibility and honesty because as a Christian pastor, I am a part of an institution that is in bigger trouble in the arena of both intellectual and moral credibility than our modern political parties.

This is the fourth advent and Christmas season that Sean and I have worked together and every year when this season rolls around we get ourselves all tied up in knots trying to deal with both the scripture readings and the songs that are traditionally used in churches during December.

And in spite of what a wonderful job that Handel did in setting several of the favorite Old Testament texts used in this season to music in his epic work, The Messiah, honesty demands that we preachers begin to say clearly that there is nothing in the Hebrew Bible about Jesus.

The early church was determined to take texts entirely out of context from Isaiah, the Psalms, Genesis and Exodus as well as this text from Micah that we read today, to say that the prophets were foretelling the coming of Jesus.

If you have any lingering doubts about this, I would be willing to lead a class for as many weeks as necessary to treat each of these texts individually but I hope that you will trust me on this one.... Early Christian preachers did not have a New Testament so they turned to their revered Hebrew scriptures and interpreted them to fit their situation.

Sure, it was a part of their tradition to use scriptures in this way, just as it is a part of the tradition of political advisors to manipulate polls, statistics and history to suit them but it is still dishonest.  

I just finished my college lectures on the letters of Paul this week.
For our last reading assignment in that class, I ask my students to read the oldest Christian letter that did not make it into the New Testament.  It is written by Clement who was a bishop in Rome and he was writing to the church in Corinth right around the end of the first century.

The apostles were all dead at this time and even though Paul's letters and the synoptic gospels were in circulation, Clement does not quote from them. At that time, the only scripture that had authority in the church was the Hebrew Bible.  Exhaustively, Clement quotes from Isaiah, Exodus, Genesis and Psalms, building these really bad arguments for why and how the Corinthian Church was to understand Jesus.

Finally, in attempting to prove to them that a physical resurrection is in God's plan for them, he turns to nature, saying that resurrection is at work all around them in the daily movement of the sun from light to darkness and the annual change of the seasons that always brings life giving spring back to us.

But then he goes on to tell them about a certain bird that lives in eastern lands, called the Phoenix.  The Phoenix, he tells them, lives for 500 years and when its time of dissipation is upon it, it builds a nest out of frankincense and myrrh and dies in it. The Phoenix, he tells them, attracts a particular kind of worm that feeds on the carcass of the dead bird and then begins to grow feathers and these worms become a new Phoenix.

The Phoenix, he tells them, is evidence of the resurrection of Jesus.  There were other reasons why I and II Clement didn't make it into the New Testament, but at least a part of it had to be, even though he manipulated the Hebrew Bible about the same way as his early church peers did, this Phoenix thing is kind of tell tale.

The ancient church held a lot of beliefs that we need to be able to generously allow to them because they lived in a pre-scientific age but we need to just as generously allow ourselves to move on.  The earth is not flat.  There is not a firmament above us nor are there angels and demons populating the air.

Though the prophets of the Old Testament did not know that Jesus was coming and they did believe in sea monsters, giants and even unicorns, they were not limited in their moral vision.

For centuries the church has used the writing of the prophets like hand puppets, manipulating them to serve the purpose of giving congregants false assurances like Karl Rove telling their constituents that their party would win.... The church has told us to believe things about Jesus that Jesus wouldn't have believed about himself and we shouldn't either.

Getting our credibility back, getting our facts straight and our message oriented to reality, we come back to these prophetic texts to see that in every case they were calling the people of their day back to living up to their own spiritual conscience.

The Micah text read in churches all over the world this morning begins with chapter 3, verse 1, with those familiar words, "Behold, I am sending my messenger to prepare a way."

And the lectionary would have preachers in pulpits on seven continents look right into the eyes of their parishioners and tell them, "See, the Hebrew prophets foretold that John the Baptist would prepare the way for Jesus to come."

But if those corpulent clerics would just trouble themselves to read the passage in context, it is immediately evident that this is has nothing to do with John or Jesus.  Micah mocks the people of his day because they have become morally lax.  They have taken advantage of the poor and the weak and they say, "See, God never does anything about it so it must be okay with God!"  They taunt the prophet saying, "Where is your God who loves justice?"

So Micah is the messenger he references in his preaching.  Micah is the messenger who tells the ruling class of Israel that they are about to be destroyed because they have abused the poor, neglected the sick among them and waged war on their hungry neighbors.  Micah is the prophet we know for the beautiful imagery of turning our spears into pruning hoods and our swords into plowshares.  Micah is the prophet that tells the people that God will show compassion on them when they start to show compassion on the vulnerable around them.

You know, a lot of our critics in the religious community here in Springfield insist that we are not really Christians.  In many ways, I'm starting to agree with them.  I like to think that we are devoted to the message of Jesus and the prophets but the message of the Christian Church seems to me to be weighed down with a lot of superstition, magic and no small amount of fundamental dishonesty and sloppy thinking.

In our life times, the American Civil Rights movement was born in churches that embraced a prophetic message of liberation and civil rights were codified by Supreme Court decisions only when the belief in racial equality became deeply rooted in the conscience of America.  The Supreme Court didn't rule on even mix race marriages being legal until 1967 and that not until persons of conscience demanded an end to the discrimination.

You cannot trace the genesis of women's reproductive rights directly to churches but I can tell you that among that movement's most outspoken proponents were courageous communities of faith.  It took a long time to being our war in Vietnam to an end but moral outrage began in progressive houses of worship.

Much of my discomfort with the religious traditions of this season is that so much of it seems to trivialize the liberating message of Jesus and the moral challenge of the prophets.

No number of recitations of "Away in a Manger" and "Joy to the World" would ever have made the Supreme Court decide that it is time to take the yolk of oppression off of the shoulders of our gay sisters and brothers.  No "Little Town of Bethlehem" will ever address the people who have been turned out of their jobs and their homes and turned away from necessary medical care.

Micah's critics taunted him, "Where is your God who loves justice?"  His answer was to stand up to the corrupt leaders of his nation and say, "God is right here, in my flesh, in my words, in my witness for justice."

And to you, in this Christmas season, we may ask, "Where is this Jesus who is born King of the Jews?"  And the answer is not in a crèche scene in front of McDonalds nor in a Constantinian church in Bethlehem.... He is born right here, in each of you, when you decide that you will not tolerate injustice, you will speak up for liberation, you will defy the oppressors and seek justice for the weak.

Sure, I'll have a merry Christmas, as soon as all devoted loving couples can marry one another, and all sick people can see a doctor, and everyone who wants to work can have a job and everyone who works can have a home.  Where is the God who loves justice?  Right here and woe be unto our own government if they dare to turn their backs.

Fear, Hate or Violence in God's Name is Blasphemy

Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor
Dec. 2, 2012     Advent 1

Psalm 25:8-10
8 Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in the way. 9 He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way.10 All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.
Teaching the same university class, semester after semester, can be a bit like being trapped in the movie, Groundhog Day.  Most semesters I teach a class for Drury University on world religions.  Every semester I get a new batch or largely Midwestern students who have grown up with the assumption that the Bible was written by the finger of God and that their evangelical Christian religion is the only true religion and that all other world religions are some kind of silly idolatry. 

Many leave my class still believing that, only adding to their list of beliefs that Roger Ray is a raving heretic. For those who have the courage to look seriously at the history and evolution of religion, there can be some very painful dawning realizations.  The Bible did not fall to earth, leather bound, from heaven.  Clearly, ancient agricultural and earth religions influenced the development of both eastern and western religions.

Zoroastrianism obviously influenced ancient Judaism to the point that you can really talk about Judaism as two different religions.  The ancient Canaanite religion before the exile, and a post-exilic faith that picked up entirely new ideas about angels, demons, the devil, heaven and hell that had not been a part of the more ancient kind of Judaism.  And you can see that Judaism, Christianity and Islam influenced one another and they all borrowed traits from neighboring cultures.

Some of my students insist that religions that do not have a formal doctrine of how to go to heaven and how to avoid going to hell are not really religions.
Especially religions that do not have a concrete conception of the nature of God, such as Buddhism, some aspects of Hinduism and certainly Confucian and Taoist faiths, often are not, through a western lens, thought to really be a religion.  Now, Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists and Confucians think that they have a religion but they don't pass the smell test for Western evangelicals whose primary interest is in certainty regarding the afterlife.

Of course, you can have a religion without some anthropomorphic deity in the clouds.  This may come as a surprise to many evangelicals and it may not be a satisfactory religion for them, but a religion is really an expression of absolute concerns, your highest values, your most treasured truths, beliefs, even myths and rituals.

I have, for example, owned a few Honda motorcycles over the past 30 years and several people have suggested that I ditch my Japanese bikes and buy a Harley, to which I always reply, "No thanks, I don't need a Harley.  I already have a religion."

I'm not seriously saying that anything can be a religion but I am saying that you can have a religion without an imaginary friend in the clouds.  In fact, I prefer forms of spirituality that deal with what can be known rather than focusing too much on what cannot be known.

Some say that there is a place of eternal torment where those who are not saved will be punished in an afterlife.


I say that there are 700 people living under bridges and in the cars around Springfield, there are more than a 1000 children who have been taken from their parents in this county and placed in foster care to protect them from the people who are suppose to care for them.  There are about 10,000 addicts in our area, 20,000 unemployed and half of our children are growing up in poverty...... don't waste my time with your speculations about a hell you have not seen and you do not know anything about because I can show you a hell that we know and that we can change through our action as a spiritual community.

A religion that addresses what cannot be known, cannot be seen and for which there is not a shred of proof or evidence but ignores the very real circumstances of life is not much of a religion to me.... It is a kind of spiritual anesthesia but if you put a Christian who is obsessed with how to believe the right things in order to go to heaven in a set of spiritual scales with a Buddhist who is concerned with showing compassion, leading a life of peace and self denial in the interests of others and I think that you will quickly see that there is a better case to be made for a non-theistic belief system like Buddhism being a real religion over the Christian evangelical who has little to show for their faith other than magical thinking and a lack of orientation to reality.  I hope that I am not being vague about this.

One of the most difficult aspects of moving from an evangelical faith towards a more progressive faith is just this:  It is the frightening move from false certainty to honest uncertainty.  Fundamentalist religions of all stripes offer absolutes, they offer the security of certainty..... now, it is not an honest certainty.... In fact, in most cases, you pretty well have to assassinate your brains to keep up belief that a snake talked to Eve in the garden, that Jonah lived in a fish's stomach, that Jesus walked on water, or that Mohammed flew up to heaven on a horse or that Joseph Smith found magical golden tablets buried in the hills of New York.

The great Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, said, "There are two ways to be deceived.  The first is by believing what it not true and the second is to fail to believe what is true.  Honest spirituality embraces what is true and rejects what is false.... And should be at least suspicious of any truth claim that cannot be honestly known.

People will try to force themselves to believe things at a synagogue, church or mosque that would be an insult to their intelligence anywhere else.  But once you give up on trying to act like you are certain about things that cannot be known then we find ourselves becoming literally dizzy with the fact that we no longer have a painted cathedral roof over our heads or a reliable floor under our feet.

So a student will insist, "If Jesus is not the only son of God how can you know that anything he said is true?  How can you know what is really good and what is really evil?"  And that is the rub.... You cannot abdicate from the personal responsibility for thinking and even when you try very hard, it remains entirely impossible to know anything with absolute certainty. There are things that are right in one age, in one set of circumstances that become evil in another.

We are left to existentially figure it out.  We don't always arrive at the same conclusions.  That is what makes some hard topics so hard.  There are good and reasonable reasons to be opposed to abortion.  There are good and reasonable reasons to defend a woman's right to manage her own reproductive life.  There is no word from on high that resolves these issues.... Persons of conscience, persons of good will, the spiritual community, must try to grapple with these things and come up with the best possible answers we can.

Existentially, there are a few a priori truth claims from which we can function.  I regard the field of ethics to revolve fundamentally around the highest value of discerning what is the greatest good for the largest number of people.
And so I tend to oppose government or economic systems that consolidate resources into the hands of a tiny elite leaving the majority of people in poverty.  The relevant question for me, as a spiritual person, as a person of conscience is,
"What gives the greatest good for the largest number of people in a certain situation?"  And sometimes that answer will be capitalist and sometimes it will be socialist, sometimes it will be communal.

When I was a kid the joke about communist idealists was that they didn't want to take over America because they depended upon us for food.  Now, as much noise as we make about communism, we are funding our government with money borrowed from communist China.  The world is not simple and we have to be able to think about the greatest good for the largest number of people without becoming too stagnant about any one way of thinking.

When it comes to religion, I am fond of the way that Karen Armstrong sums it up in her autobiography: "If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, or self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology."

The Bible, for us, is a resource, it is a repository of ancient spiritual insight and wisdom, but you cannot quote scripture to prove anything or to give you certainty about modern issues of marriage, family, warfare, abortion, racism or gay rights.  There is no way to avoid the hard work of figuring out what is faithful, what is ethical, what is right for us in our time and place.

We do that individually and we do that as a community, challenging, teaching and pushing one another into mature, healthy spirituality.

Institutional, rigid, doctrinal religious views can be helpful.  A solid evangelical Sunday School education can encourage people to be honest, hard working, loyal to their spouse, law abiding and even generous and brave.  But it can also keep women trapped in abusive relationships.  Force women to have babies they are not prepared to love and care for.  It can justify enslavement of minorities and oppression of gays and lesbians.  It can lead people to fight unnecessary wars and to persecute those who are even slightly different in the most subtle of ways.

We believe that you can have the positive aspects of a healthy spiritual life without indulging in the abuses of a rigid, doctrinal monotheism.  We believe that if we are committed to seeking the greatest good for the largest number of people, being willing to advocate for justice, to teach peace and to live lives of radical compassion that we will find ourselves in the embrace of the most holy religion imaginable.

This is not the last time you will hear me say these things but there is an old church tradition that says that the apostle John was the only one of the twelve who lived to die of old age.

It is said that he preached his last sermon to the church in Ephesus saying only these words that are found in 1 John:

7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.

Truth vs the Empire

Community Christian Church

Roger Ray, pastor

Nov. 25, 2012    Proper 29

John 18:33-3733Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” ³⁴Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” ³⁵Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” ³⁶Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” ³⁷Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Welcome, friends, to this brave new world where Twinkies and Dolly Madison cream filled cup cakes are no longer available. The combination of the legalization of pot in several states occurring at the same time as the disappearance of these snack cakes has sent many stoners into a panic and yet the world marches on.

Personally, I’m suspicious of any packaged food that I can put on the shelf and just open and eat two weeks or two years later. The disappearance of items like this from convenience store shelves is probably good for public health but I am disturbed by the classically dishonest way that it has all been portrayed in the media. 

Our age has become so pro-corporation and so anti-worker that we seem to be willing to believe even the most blatant of anti-union rhetoric from our corporate owned media.  Yes, the employees who make less than $20 an hour at Hostess were on strike because, while corporate executives were giving themselves raises of between 60 and 100%, and the CEO gave himself a 300% raise…. These executives simultaneously were trying to cut baker’s pay by 8% and cut their benefits by more than 30%. 

While filing for bankruptcy, corporate executives borrowed $160 million dollars from workers’ pension holdings…. Money they will not have to pay back in bankruptcy.  But it was those poor, low salaried workers that drove Hostess out of business!  Lily Tomlin once said, “No matter how cynical I become, I just can’t keep up.”

The morning news this week included very one sided reports on the war along the border of the Gaza Strip and Israel.  A handsome, blond Israeli reporter with a very American accent spoke forcefully on CNN about the bombing of a bus in Tel Aviv in which 15 were tragically killed.  The reporter went on to say that the terrorist bombing was being celebrated in Gaza with adults handing out candy to children in joyous reveling at the deaths of innocent civilians.  He told us that Israeli’s try to avoid civilian deaths when they strike in Gaza but the Hamas militants target Israeli civilians.

They would have us to believe that the Palestinians are morally bankrupt if not actually sub-human.  What is missing from the main stream media is any kind of honest description of the imbalance of the conflict.  There are one and half million people living in Gaza, most of whom are not a part of Hamas.  They have been under a blockade for more than 2 years. 

Yes, they are firing missiles and they probably had help from Iran to build those missiles.  But what they don’t have is a navy, what they don’t have are heavily armed F-16 fighter jets and they don’t have heavy artillery.  Yes, Hamas stoops to terrorism, but given the military might of Israel, this is not a war…. It comes closer to being murder. 

You will not hear that said on CNN or ABC or NBC but don’t assume that I am over stating the facts.  They are under stating the facts and distorting the information.  I’m not trying to be anti-Israel…. I count myself as being among those people who fell in love with Jerusalem upon my first visit there thirty years ago. 

But people, there are numbers…. Facts are not conservative or liberal…. Math is not pro-Israel or anti-Palestine….. even counting that bus bombing there had been fewer than 20 Israeli deaths in this current exchange of missiles and more than a hundred deaths in Gaza.  And even though this very handsome reporter tells us that Israel only targets military sites, among those 100 casualties there were 24 children and 10 women.  Those are facts.

 Ibrahim Shatali, a training officer in Gaza for the American Society of Friends teaches in a Palestinian youth program. He wrote this week:

My father sought refuge in Gaza after being forced to leave Majdal in 1948. He was only twelve years old when he accompanied his parents to what was thought to be a safer place.

Today, we have to go to a funeral at my cousin’s who lost his four-year-old twins and other members of his family. It is very sad. I live in my family’s home together with my five brothers, their wives, and offspring. You are talking about moving a human mass of thirty children towards the stairway every time an explosion is heard in the vicinity. The Islamic National Bank targeted this morning is 500 meters away from our home and 150 meters from the (our) office.

Every day the series of explosions begins at 6 pm and escalates until 6 am at which time we try to steal some hours of sleep. No one is exempt from this terrifying experience.

Israel has the big weapons and pro-Israeli interests own most of the big media, but you own the truth, no one can take that away from you unless you willingly give in to the empire.

Our scripture lesson this morning comes from that dramatic confrontation in John’s account of Jesus’ trial before Governor Pilate.  A lot of progressive scholars tend to be very dismissive about John’s gospel.  It is written long after the actual events and it shows little sign of being concerned about history.  If you want to know what Jesus of Nazareth said and did, most scholars would tell you that John is a pretty pour source. 

But, of course, we didn’t come here for a history lesson…. I hope you didn’t.  Most gospel accounts are not historical.  The gospels are sermons.  The gospels tell stories that employ metaphor, similes, parables and stories. 

Some of my students in my university classes object loudly that if they are not historical, why should we read them at all?  That is a very modern sort of concern.  We tend at times to be very fact literal about things without having an appropriate concern for meaning.

The gospel writers, and this is especially true for John, were not so concerned with filling the later church in on historical details…. They wanted to convey the message, the moral, the meaning of the Jesus movement.  John isn’t showing us a photograph of Jesus before Pilate, he is painting a word picture.

It is an image of a poor, uneducated, tortured, powerless peasant standing in front of the heavily armed, very powerful representative of the empire that ruled the world and owned all of the world’s wealth.  And the people who looked at this image John painted already knew what was going to happen….they knew that the powerful empire would murder the peasant in the most painful way imaginable.

The empire would seek to make an example of this poor man, nailing him up onto a post by the road like a billboard sign that reads, “This is what happens to those who defy the power of the empire.”  And yet, Jesus is defiant, unafraid, in fact, it seems, the way John wants us to see it, Jesus is the powerful one because, when all the blood is dried and the crosses are gone…. No one sings hymns to Pilate.  No one tells Pilate stories.  No one defines their lives as being followers of Pilate.

The empire murdered the peasant, but look at us, 2000 years later, we’re still talking about the peasant in a million houses of worship all over the globe.  But still, the metaphors of the gospels are not written to make you look at Jesus and say, “Wow.” Here is the truth of the matter….. these stories are not historically true because what would it matter if they were or they weren’t? They are morally true…. And not as stories about great martyrs who deserve for us to immortalize their names.

Men and women, these stories are not ultimately about Jesus….. Jesus had been dead for three generations when this was written down.  This story is about the Jesus community.  This isn’t about what happened; this is about what you can do tomorrow.  The gospel isn’t buried in the past, it is buried in your heart so that when the empire asks you to believe a lie, to be passive in the presence of violence and bloodshed….

It asks you to stand up for the truth with the poor who are being fired and whose pensions are being stolen from them, when their homes are being foreclosed, when they are being denied access to health care or housing in the name of the religion of profit. This story isn’t about Jesus in any historical sense; this story is intended for you to see yourself standing in front of the empire, for you to think about it before it happens.

The real Christian religion has always been about orthopraxy over orthodoxy.  The empire wants to turn all religions into orthodoxy…. Make it all about beliefs that exist only between your ears because that religion never threatens the empire… that religion, ultimately serves the empire.  I often call traditional Christianity “the religion of Constantine,” the religion the emporer demanded that everyone follow.  But that religion doesn’t follow Jesus, it worships Pilate and everything Pilate represented…. The religion of domination of the weak, of veneration of military and economic power.

Our religion, our faith, our practice, is to stand up before the empire, armed only with the truth.  As Gandhi said in his battle with the empire that oppressed his people:  At first they ignore us.  Then they make fun of us.  Then they fight us.  Then we win.

In the case of Jesus there may be one more step…. First they ignore us, then they make fun of us, then they fight us, then …. They torture and kill us…. But, still, then we win.

Don't Forget to Provoke One Another

Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor
Nov. 18, 2012   Proper 28

Hebrews 10:24-25
And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

People my age are sometimes heard to insist, "I may be old but at least I got to hear all of the really good bands."  I'm old enough to have seen the Beatles and gone to Woodstock but I just wasn't that cool.  But I do feel fortunate to have met some of the most amazing authors and thinkers of our time before they died.... I got to hear Truman Capote and William Buckley speak.... Though admittedly, they were both drunk at the time.  I met and talked with Scott Peck, I was frequently in Peter Gome's classroom and living room, but the most impressive now deceased person I have ever gotten to talk to in person was the American historian Howard Zinn.

I honestly believe that it was a mistake when MSU first invited Zinn to speak here in 2003.  A grad student arranged the visit and I don't think the administration knew what kind of a radical they were allowing on campus.  People at Drury heard him at MSU and arranged quickly to have him there.  Finally, in 2004, I got to hear him a third time at Harvard.

When we started this church, one of the first things we did was ask Dr. David Adams, our resident American history professor, to lead us in a year-long study of Zinn's book, A People's History of the United States.  An old proverb says that history is that it is written by the winners.  Zinn's particular gift was to write history from the perspective of the oppressed, the victims of genocide, the displaced and the poor.

His work, in my eyes, is especially important because he shows us how often the most horrible things that have ever happened have been allowed to happen because people of conscience were not organized in their opposition and ultimately, many otherwise good people were tricked by false patriotism or evil religion to murder and do other horrendous things.  It is important to note that most of history's genocides and most horrible events were legal... they were done under the direction of or the approval of the government.

Zinn said, "Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience."  We have been obedient to sick religion, obedient to the manipulations of governments, obedient to fear based prejudices, racist practices, discriminatory hiring practices and the institutions that both create and perpetuate poverty.

Every time I heard Zinn speak, I could feel a kind of collective resolve in the room, a kind of emotional electricity as people realized that they had been lied to by official histories, they had been manipulated into cooperation with oppression.... They had been raised by schools, churches and families to be obedient to rules and leaders with whom they do not morally agree.

But that kind of fire doesn't last long, not once we've all put our coats back on and walked out into the cold darkness of the real world.  It is so easy to become cynical, to be both angry and isolated......like the bad guy in the Matrix movie, Cypher, who decides that reality is too painful and he chooses to be plugged back into the Matrix, to be lost in the unreality of an imaginary world rather than face the painful realities of a world that demanded both sacrifice and courage from those who are aware of the facts.
And that, my friends, is why we go to church.  That is why we need one another.  Without a faith community, none of us can maintain our courage.... There are no long lasting solo prophets in the world..... we need prophetic communities, not individual martyrs.

Our scripture text today is, I believe, the only passage from Hebrews I have read aloud in church for 20 years.  Hebrews is one of the kind of sketchy books of the New Testament.  In ancient manuscripts it was stuck onto the end of the collection of Paul's letters.  Some argued that the Apostle Paul had written it and so it had to be preserved but apparently everyone, even in the ancient church, was sufficiently skeptical about it to put it at the end of the collection.

We are absolutely certain now that it wasn't written by Paul and if the church of the 4th century had been similarly confident, it would not have been preserved.  It's theology is mechanical and too frequently heavy handed in its moralizing.

It is a letter written in a time when the church had come under severe persecution.  Paul often talks about the church being persecuted but there had not been any wide spread persecution of the church until right at the end of Paul's life.  In fact, we presume that Paul was among those Christians executed by Nero when he blamed them for the great fire that burned up so much of Rome.

After that time, it became very dangerous to be a Christian in Rome.  Many people were dying and many more were abandoning the young church to avoid persecution.  We have a late first century letter from the Roman governor, Pliney the younger, who wrote to Emperor Trajan to ask for some guidance in the persecution of Christians.
He asks about those who are no longer Christians for, upon examination, many testified that they had not been Christian for years.  The church was falling apart in hard times.  That's when the Letter to the Hebrews was written, which accounts for most of its severity and demands for loyalty to orthodoxy.

This one passage we have before us today from chapter 10 intrigues me.  In fact, in many ways, it is one word in the passage that draws my attention. The author writes, "Let us consider how to 'provoke' one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some...."

Let us consider how to "provoke."  Now, I'm no linguist and I'll usually leave all of the translation gymnastics to Dr. Trobisch who is, in fact, one of the world's leading scholars in the field of translation.  But "provoke" is an odd word to find in a sentence about love and good deeds.  The Greek word, "par-oxus-mon" cannot be translated into what you would expect Paul, or a decent pastor for that matter to say.  It doesn't say, "let's encourage one another."  It can't be something more church like.... It doesn't say "teach" or "lead" or "inspire."

It is, in fact, a harsh word.  Sometimes it means "to cut," "to sharpen" even "to pester" or "to punch."  We find it translated as "incite," but "provoke" is the better term here.  It is a hard word for a hard time.... But really, when it comes to working for justice and mercy in the world, when is it not a hard time?

One of the very real dangers in offering our messages on YouTube and iTunes is that we immediately found members of our own congregation no longer attending very often in favor of just waiting for the upload on Sunday afternoons.

I'm glad that people are interested in hearing what I have to say.... I've always believed that the whole world has a right to my opinion.  But consider this.... What if that fateful August day in 1963 when Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered his famous, "I Have A Dream" speech that instead of 200,000 people crowding in to hear him, it had been a few dozen and everyone else just waited to see it on TV?

Black Americans sitting in their homes knew what racism was.  They knew about the Apartheid of segregated schools, the insult of "coloreds only" water fountains and toilets.  They knew.... They didn't generally need to be educated about the facts.... It wasn't that they needed to have their opinions changed or their beliefs confirmed..... they needed each other.  The real gift of Martin Luther King was not only in his brilliant writing and preaching but that thousands came out of their homes and marched with him, visibly, courageously and they provoked one another to take action.

I am grateful for the thousands of listeners we have around the globe but I implore you, I encourage you, in fact, I would like to incite you, provoke you, into finding your own tribe in your own towns.  Listen in when you can but don't let this be a replacement for getting off of your butt and going to be in community with other people who are willing to be provoked into love and good deeds if only enough people cared enough to get together and provoke one another.

Many of you here today are actively involved in service to the poor of this city.... How involved were you before you found yourselves regularly surrounded by people who provoked you into love and good deeds?  Many of you have gone to New Orleans with me to do hurricane relief, to Joplin to do tornado relief.
Some have gone to Nicaragua and others are going with me in February.... Would many of you have gone to Joplin or New Orleans on your own?  Would you go to Nicaragua and try to help the poor in the rural jungles?  Would any of us be who we are without the other people here to have taught us, been an example for us, encouraged us and yes, sometimes irritated, incited, provoked us to open our minds and then to open our hearts and our hands?

The whole world seems to expect churches to just be passive gatherings of nice people who would never swat a fly.  And I know that even some of you would like it better if I were just a bit less outspoken and a tad more concerned with being perceived locally as being a nicer, more patient and kind sort of pastor.

But there is this passage in the tenth chapter of Hebrews..... Let us consider how that we can.... Pester.... Incite....provoke..... and you know me, I'm quite the Biblicist.  Without these two verses from Hebrews I would just be an obnoxiously opinionated old preacher but as long as we stay in community with one another then, I'm just doing my job.

But let's not just be difficult.... Let's try to provoke one another to love and good deeds.

Skin in the Game

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
Nov. 11, 2012    Proper 26

Mark 12:38-44            
38As he taught, he said, "Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, 39and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! 40They devour widows' houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation."
41He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. 42A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. 43Then he called his disciples and said to them, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. 44For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."

A record amount of money has been spent in the past year on a relentless campaign that came to an end on Tuesday.... well, everywhere but Florida which seems to have staked out election incompetence as their personal fiefdom.  In spite of all of the parties, speeches and celebrations, not much has changed after all of the expenditure of resources and time.  President Obama remains in the White House, the Democrats remain in the majority in the Senate and Republicans remain in the majority in Congress.

Here in Missouri, we kept our governor, our senator and, in our district, we kept our congressman.  I'm glad it is all over.  The divisive and not infrequently dishonest rhetoric of the campaign has taxed many friendships, even strained some marriages and polarized communities in most unhelpful ways.

After the horrific events that allowed Hitler to come into power, Germany enacted national election laws that make it illegal to knowingly lie in any campaign speech or advertisement.  While we Americans have often used Nazi Germany as the example of government gone mad, they now look at our election process and wonder why we didn't learn anything from the dangers of dishonest electioneering.  But in the United States, you can say anything and our media is so devoted to even handed reporting that they will almost never report on fact checking.  Which, in fact, makes the existence of churches with free pulpits all the more important though, we all know, that most churches are merely servants of whoever is in power..... as Thomas Jefferson said, "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection of his own."

Churches such as ours are vital to our nation and yet basic civil involvement in voting is still vitally important.  I raised my daughter to treasure her right to vote.
I always get an absentee ballot when I am going to be away on an election day as I was this past week, but there is something quite deceptive about voting that I want to be very straight forward about today.

You have heard me quote the 19th century evangelist, Alexander Campbell, before but my favorite of his sayings is the core of what I have to say today.  He was was speaking specifically of prayer but I would interpret it to mean voting or expressing any opinion.  He said, "To pray for that for which you will not also rise up and work and sacrifice to achieve is a disappointment to yourself and an insult to God."


I think that one of the most self deceptive activities among our more conservative religious friends is their use of the phrase, "I'll pray,"  .... "I'll pray for you," "I'll pray about it," "I'm praying for God to do something."  I agree with Kierkegaard who said that prayer does not change the One to whom we pray but rather prayer changes the one who prays.... or at least it should.

But in the exact same way, I think that one of the most self deceptive traps among progressive thinkers is that we believe that we have accomplished something because we have arrived at progressive opinions.  Having an enlightened opinion about access to health care, education, work, retirement, housing and even food doesn't mean much if you never do anything about it.
                                                                         
The God to whom evangelicals appear to be praying most often seems to me to be an imaginary Santa Claus in the clouds.  The God many liberals seem to bow to is their own ego expressed substantially in the opinions we cherish between our own ears.

How is it anything but hypocrisy if you believe that gay people should have the same rights as straight people if you have never risked yourself in any way to help give birth to that social change?  I suspect that most of you here and most of you who will join us on the web are outraged by Tea Party politics with all of its anti-women, anti-poor, pro-war, and none-too-subtle racism, and yet, how exactly does it change anything for you to just sit and watch MSNBC every night and repost liberal memes on Face Book?  If you feel like you recognize social injustice and are not doing anything substantively to change it then you are, ipso facto, supporting the injustice.

As Elie Weisel said, "Always take sides. Neutrality always serves the oppressor and never the oppressed."

The most difficult decision our little church has faced in our short 4 year history was the decision to buy this building when we had just a year of experience and no money in savings.  We started with nothing and after our first year we still had almost all of it left when we first took a look at this property.  One family put up the down payment and then the rest of us had to look at one another and figure out if all of the big talk and high minded ideals we had been kicking around for a year meant any real business.

On the day before we bought this building, we could have disbanded this church in a matter of day, giving a few hymnals and some office furniture to some other church and we could have simply gone out of existence.  But we voted..... we voted to make an offer, then we voted to accept an offer, then we voted to borrow the money..... each time the largest number of people in the room didn't vote at all.  Some couples canceled out one another's vote.  Each time we voted to take a step forward with a majority but never anything approximating consensus.

We are a church that has always reached out to the poor and, for obvious reasons; we have always had a lot of members who were barely getting by.  And so, it is not a surprise that nearly half of the people who attend our church do not contribute to the church.  What did surprise me was that several of people who never contributed were outraged by the decision to buy a building...... some were sure it would ruin our message, our mission, our focus.......and, as if to support their predictions, they stopped attending.

I don't want to speak critically of people who are not here to defend their honor, but I say it simply to make the observation that people who do not have skin in the game can easily be deceived into believing that their opinions are of vital importance simply because they are their opinions..... not because they are going to do anything of substance one way or another or risk anything or sacrifice anything.  What I am saying should be fairly obvious, if you want others to take you seriously then you should first take yourself seriously.  If your opinions are not backed up by being willing to put some skin in the game then you don't really mean your opinion yourself and the rest of us are just agreeing with your own assessment of your opinion if we ignore you.

There are a whole lot of people who say that they want to serve God but way too many want to serve only in an advisory capacity.  Now, let me be clear about this:  I'm talking about active engagement and not just money.  We have members of our community who are engaged in making this church happen and most of us are involved in very active volunteerism in many causes.  Members of our church mow our lawn, clean the building, do our record keeping and business, all of which makes it possible to avoid paying for lawn care, secretarial or janitorial services.  You cook and serve at Bill's Place, carry out groceries at Crosslines, give tutoring time at Rare Breed's literacy program, some of you are mentors and prison visitors and several of you have served on mission teams to Nicaragua and hurricane and tornado relief.

I know that many of you who are our internet viewers are pastors, social workers, nurses, physicians and professors and many serve in other helping professions and volunteer circumstances.

And I am not at all wanting to provoke the slightest guilt in those of you who are viewers or listeners who have not yet found your way to contribute to real action...... I'm not interested in guilt but I am inviting you to come off the bench and get on the field..... sacrifice something, risk some skin in the game.

We don't do pledge drives in this church.  We don't charge for our content on YouTube or iTunes.  People can view or attend for as long as they like without any commitment, donation or involvement but let's not ignore the obvious truth that if someone didn't donate, if someone didn't volunteer then this progressive church would not exist and this content would not be on line.  So, ask yourself, if everyone did exactly what you do, would this church exist?  Would any progressive church exist?

We have the good fortune of having a couple of donors who are able to make large contributions but what I would love to see is that even if you cannot make a large gift, I would love to see everyone make a small gift.... even if you have to get a single item pizza for dinner instead of a supreme to be able to donate $5 once a year, I would love to have the reassurance that you are voting for our continued existence.... that you more than intellectually approve of what we are trying to accomplish but that you are willing to put $5 worth of your skin in the game.

Giving is sometimes a matter of practice.  You get used to assuming that someone else will pay the bills.  One of the things we see in so many divorces is that people come to view their own money and someone else's money as being entirely different.  My money is precious and you can't have any of it..... your money is cheap and you should share it liberally.

We do have some people who sacrifice dearly to make our church exist..... their standard of living would be much more comfortable if they were not giving what they give..... I doubt that many of them would agree that it is OK for them to pay the bills while others reserve all of their resources for themselves.  Money is a fungible way of investing your personal time and energy into a cause and you have to practice acting on what you believe is important and not using everything you have to scratch your own appetitive itches.

When Jesus praised the woman in the temple who donated the only small coin she had it was not that she was either changing the fortunes of the temple nor dramatically sacrificing her own future.... since that coin would hardly have purchased a meal, she was, however, casting a vote that cost her something..... more than an opinion, more than personal beliefs, she was willing to get involved to the level that she could.

Jesus clearly didn't think much of wealth, personal possessions there are times that money seems like a silly idea to him.  Fortunately for him, not all of his friends felt the same way.  And as critical as we often are of some of the traditional institutions of religion, I recognize that I have a debt to the religious institutions and individuals who made it possible for me to go to Vanderbilt and Harvard.....and where will the next generation of educated leadership come from if we fail to help send other willing candidates into serious preparation for ministry?

We don't charge to attend here.  The content of our internet channels is offered at no charge.... but none of this is free, in fact, it is very expensive.  It is up to you to decide if it is worth it, in fact, every time you see the donate button on our web site or see the offering basket passed around this room, you get to vote on whether we should come back and do this again next week.

Unlike American idol or, in many ways, the American congress, your vote here really matters.  We're trying to change the world, I hope you will not stand idly by.

Her Name is Malala

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
Oct 28, 2012     Proper 25

Mark 10:46-52                                
46They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. 47When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" 48Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" 49Jesus stood still and said, "Call him here." And they called the blind man, saying to him, "Take heart; get up, he is calling you." 50So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. 51Then Jesus said to him, "What do you want me to do for you?" The blind man said to him, "My teacher, let me see again." 52Jesus said to him, "Go; your faith has made you well." Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

                 
On a recent trip to New York, I found myself stuck out in Queens in a bargain hotel for several long evenings.  My hotel TV only had about a dozen channels, most of which were devoted to sports.  There were only two news channels.  One was CNN and the other was one I had never seen before, Russian Television.  RT is apparently a sort of a Voice of America in reverse, with British and American accented reporters, covering the day's news from a distinctly Russian perspective..... sometimes gloating about being able to tell their western audience about news events that were not covered in our media.... Things like CNN accepting bribes from the royal family in Bahrain to not report on human rights abuses in Bahrain..... a story which, not too ironically, was not reported on CNN.

You may not be much inclined to believe propaganda from a Russian TV news service but I checked that one out and it is true, not that it surprised me much.  Corporate owned news agencies are colossal failures when it comes to actually being reliable news sources.  They are largely entertainment sources that should not be relied upon for anything beyond sports scores.

You can, however watch broadcast news to plumb the psyche of American culture because they way TV reports news is telling about how we tend to think.

There is a wonderful program called "Counter Spin" that in our area can only be heard on the internet but it is a 30 minute weekly review of how our news media creatively spins language to hide the more stark realities of life.

In a recent program they pointed out how we tend to talk about death on the battlefield.  In a recent ABC report by David Murer, he said, and I quote, "Overseas now to Afghanistan and a stark reminder of the human cost of war."  Whenever you hear someone on ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX or other American news agencies talking about the "human cost of war" you can bet that you are going to hear about American soldiers who died.  And, sure enough, Murer's report was about the 2000 American to die in Afghanistan with no mention of the Afghanis who die in the war there nearly every day.

Two weeks earlier the same network ran a story about a NATO airstrike that had killed 8 Afghan women who had been out gathering firewood.  They described it as an "incident that is causing tension."  The year before when ABC reported on a drone strike that killed 9 Afghan children, they mentioned the death only to introduce a story about Afghan President Hamid Karzai's harsh words in response to the "incident.

Words matter and our choice of words indicate how we unconsciously feel about things.  When it comes to the news media, it is hard to tell if it is a "chicken or the egg" matter.

Are they just reflecting our indifference about the deaths of women and children in Afghanistan or are they training us to be indifferent, carefully avoiding any criticism of a war that helps to fuel corporate profits?

There is a similarly subtle wording issue in our gospel lesson this morning.  I don't know if Mark intentionally worded it this way or if it was just a reflection of how the culture had preserved the story.  In this pericope, Jesus encounters a blind man who is called Bartimeaus.  In fact, Mark shows how little he understands Palestinian Jewish culture when he says that Jesus encountered "Bartimeaus, the son of Timeaus," because "son of Timeaus" is what "Bartimeaus" means.  They did not have family names as we do but rather the were known by their first name and then the name of their father, and for good measure they may throw in the name of their father's father.  In that culture, I would be called "Roger, son of Teddy, son of John."  Or, in Aramaic, "Roger BarTeddy BarJohn."

The point is, whether Mark was conscious of it when he wrote this down, it appears that no one had bothered to give this blind man a name.  He wasn't "Matthew son of Timeaus" he was just the blind son of Timeaus.

On several occasions, it has been my responsibility to sit with a couple who had just lost a pregnancy.  There are miscarriages that happen so early that the fetal material is simply discarded.  If the pregnancy was farther along, the family might want to have a funeral.

But at least once I presided over a funeral when the miscarriage occurred at a point at which the couple wanted to have a graveside service but the pregnancy was not quite far enough along to give a name to the fetus..... almost a person but not quite.


I see in this text, that sort of thing at work..... Bartimeaus, because he was not a whole person, he was not quite a person, and the neighbors, the villagers, didn't bother to call him by name.  Surely his parents did give him a name.... I hope..... but you know how parents can be sometimes.... Maybe they didn't, maybe they didn't want to think about him or talk to him... maybe he wasn't of much use to them because he couldn't work.... He was reduced to being a beggar.

I want to think that we are better about it now but a person with a serious disability could be cut off from society.... They couldn't work in the fields, couldn't build a house, couldn't make furniture .... So they couldn't get married, have kids, nor could they lead in the religious community.

Whether he had a name or not, he somehow didn't count, wasn't quite a person..... he needed, somehow to be saved.

I hope you don't mind me using that word because it is the word used in the Bible.  Modern English translations usually render it, "go, your faith has made you well," but what it actually says in Greek is, "go, your faith has saved you."  But the people who translate the Bible assume that Jesus didn't mean save here since he didn't tell the man that he was going to heaven, he just cured his blindness.

When the same Greek word appears when Jesus tells the sinful woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee that her "faith had saved" her, they don't mind translating it as saved because they assume that she was a bad person who was being forgiven of sins.

But a more honest understanding of salvation means to be made whole..... however you are broken, what ever makes you less than a whole human being.  So a woman with a bad reputation is cut off from family, the religious community.... She can't get married, have a family.... She is cut off, buried.... Nameless.... Known only as a sinful person.

Blindness, in the Bible, often represents something other than literally not being able to see.  Blindness often represents what we mean by the proverb, "none are so blind as those who refuse to see."

We use gossip and slander to tear a person down so that we can justify doing them great personal harm.  We dehumanize gay people so that we can deny them the right to marry, inherit, have health care, adopt within their families the same way straight families do.  We scream about deporting illegal aliens from their own ancestral land because we successfully stole it from them a century ago.

Yes, it is horrible that 2000 American soldiers have lost their lives fighting in Afghanistan in the past 11 years.  By the way, do you have any idea how many people have died in the drug wars in Mexico.... A war funded by the American market for illegal drugs and armed by weapons purchased in the more than 6000 gun stores along the Mexican-American border?

Do you know?  Because it is hardly mentioned in the news.  In less than half of the time we have been in Afghanistan, between 50,000 and 60,000 Mexicans have died in a war in which we are silent instigators, participants and gun dealers.

Why do you suppose our corporate media never talks about it?  And yet we know that Jessica Simpson is on a diet, that Twilight star, Kristen Stewart, had an affair.  We can give network time for Donald Trump to make a complete fool of himself and devote hours to hand wringing over whether Lance Armstrong might have used steroids to overcome cancer and become the world's fastest cyclist for seven consecutive years.....but 50,000 deaths on our doorstep.... Not a word.  You are more likely to hear about Lindsay Lohan getting another DUI than you are about the deaths of 10's of thousands citizens within a day's drive of Brownsville, TX .... Now tell me please why that is.

There has recently been an exception to the rule of media silence and anonymity and that exception has a name that I hardly feel worthy to say aloud:  Malala Yousufza.

The 14 year old Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by a Taliban assassin while on her way home from school has become a familiar image in the news though she was known to many before this horrible attempt on her life.  She has been a spokesperson advocating for access to education for girls in her native Pakistan but more than that, she has demanded full rights to be able to go to the market, to sing, to speak her mind in public.

She was asked by a reporter last year, "But what do you say to a young girl who is not as brave as you are who doesn't want to risk going to school or the market but who wants to remain safe in her room?"

Malala said, "I would tell her, you cannot just stay in your room because on the day of judgment, God will ask you, 'Where were you when your people were calling on you, when they were being blown up, when they were being killed?  Where were you when your people needed you?'"

You know me.  I'm not much on the day of judgment thing.... Not because I eschew the notion of a great final judgment but because my own beliefs are more immanent.  I think the day of judgment comes every day.  So where were you when Malala was shot?  Where were you when we refused to restrict the sale of military weapons, even along the border of Mexico while a civil war is raging there?  Where were you when Missouri passed an amendment to the constitution forbidding same sex marriage?

Where were you when the church told you to stay out of politics and just worry about making sure your soul went to heaven while your neighbors were being evicted from their homes, refused medical care, losing their unemployment assistance or being trapped in payday loans with 1000% interest rates?

There are no partial people.  There are no disposable people.  The deaths of innocents is never just an incident.  You will not often know their names but you should never doubt their humanity.

I'm not trying to make you feel guilty.  Guilt is the most useless emotion in the world.  I'm just saying that we don't have any business standing idly by.  I'm not worried about God judging me at the end of my life.... I just want to live in a way that if she ever heard about us, that Malala would be proud of us and, when I do die, I hope that I have lived in a way that Westboro Baptist Church will come and protest at the funeral.

Learning to Lead from Behind

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
Oct. 21, 2012    Proper 24

Mark 10:42-45
42 So Jesus called them and said to them, "You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

You don't hear much about it in American news media.... But then, you don't hear much news in the American news media..... but since we hear so many disparaging things about Muslims in our news, let me tell you about a prominent Muslim who has come up with what I think is one of the best ideas I have ever heard.  Mo Ibrahim was born in the Sudan and he earned degrees both in Africa and Great Britain.  He became a multi-billionaire in the cell phone industry and he decided to find a way to help the people of his native region.

He established a foundation to encourage good government in Africa.  The foundation awards an annual recipient a one time gift of $5 million and $200,000 a year for their rest of their lives for being an African head of state who succeeds in office to deliver security, health, education and economic development to their nation and then, and here is the catch, then they must leave office when their elected term is finished and provide for a peaceful transition in leadership.

It is a wonderful idea, since one of the worst problems with African governments is that anyone who manages to get into the office of president or prime minister never seems to be willing to give up the reins of power.  Corruption, abuse of power and maintaining a violent dictatorship while making themselves very wealthy has been the norm in Africa but Ibrahim's proposal would make it possible for a person to be an excellent leader and still retire wealthy and have no worries for the future.
It is a great idea but the bad news is that there has not been anyone qualified to receive the award this year or, in fact, for three of the seven years that he has tried to give these millions of dollars away.  Apparently, corruption has run so deep among African governments that you can't even bribe them to stop taking bribes.

But, folks, I need to really shoot straight with you one this one..... even though, in America, we are able, after lots of shouting and name calling in the political election process, to still execute a peaceful transfer of power once the ballots have been counted, there is still a lot of corruption in our government as well.  We tend to get exasperated with dictators in Central America and in Africa because their moral failures are so obvious but I believe that the primary difference is simply a difference of scale.

I got my feet wet in social involvement in my student church in the county seat town of Russellville, KY.  When I became aware of how much bootlegging was going on in that dry county and how that was making both alcohol and drugs available to the kids in my church, I started to agitate....Only to discover that the biggest bootlegging operations were puppet operations for the local prosecuting attorney.  I took the issue to the city council and discovered that they were all a bunch of property development businessmen who were using city resources to put utilities and streets into property they were developing for their own profit.  The circuit judge was involved in a sham corporation taking payments from the city that went to a post office box in Florida.

The more I pulled the thread, the deeper the corruption seemed to go until the local chief of police warned me that I was likely to be killed if I didn't back off.
I've never been a big fan of being killed but what I did do was to organize a committee to vote the town wet so that we could have legal liquor stores that would not sell drugs and would not sell to kids. The local Baptist pastors were outraged that a minister was working to see the town go wet but I was successful.  Russellville is still the smallest wet community in Kentucky but we got a lot of drugs off the streets, reduced drunk driving incidents by 75%, and increased city tax revenues by enough to hire a couple more policemen and a supervisor of legal liquor sales.

Of course, as I was leaving that community to move to Louisville, the city council members awarded themselves most of the few liquor licenses and shortly thereafter voted to lower the taxes they had to pay the city.  Because, men and women, power corrupts people and there is no more fluid form of power than money.

Jesus grew up in a poor region of an occupied country.  Jesus saw the power of the empire from the bottom rung.  People often like to tell themselves that Jesus wasn't political but those people don't read much of what he said.  A great deal of what Jesus said could be placed under the heading, "Teachings against the empire."

Today's scripture lessons is one of those sayings......"You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them."  That's the view from the bottom rung of the ladder of power.  "You know how the Roman Caesars act.....you know how the generals of the occupation army, the governors they put in charge of us act...."  And you know how Noriega was, you know about Saddam Hussein, you remember Charles Taylor in the Congo and Muammar Kaddafi in Libya.
You remember Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier in Haiti and how we hoped that the election of a liberation theology priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was elected president.  When he was overthrown by a military coups, President Clinton sent American troops to the island to restore democracy and put Aristide back into the office of the president.

He initially seemed to be trying to institute massive reforms, raising the minimum wage, disbanding the army, ceasing all forms of government repression and torture but, it appears that he was not able to maintain his commitment to these values and, in the end, he suffered accusations of human rights abuses himself, including the practice known as "necklacing" opposition leaders.  This horrible form of execution involved tying a tire soaked in gasoline around a prisoner's neck and setting it on fire.

Jesus looked at the abuses of power in the empire and he said to his followers:  But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.

When scholars look at the gospels and ask, "which of these sayings originated with Jesus and which came from later church traditions?" one of the things we look for is how far the saying goes against the norm of society at the time.

When Jesus is reported to have said, "Love your enemies," we tend to think, "Yes, that is the authentic Jesus," because that is the Jesus who not only pushes back against the empire but he also pushes back against society and against our human nature.

Dictators, generals, Caesars, pharaohs, Democrats and Republicans are not all that different from you and me.  Once we are in power, we start to conspire about how we are going to stay in power.  When we get to the top of the economic mountain, we try to make sure that no one pulls us down.

But, if we will expose ourselves to Biblical preaching, if we will devote ourselves to being in community, if we can put our ego on the shelf long enough to say a prayer of confession, to chase the sounds of TV commercials out of our ears for a few minutes with the poetry of hymns, then we can hear Jesus saying to the little dictator who keeps trying to come out in all of us..... "but it is not to be so among you for the greatest among you will be the servant of all."

I know that we have a lot of pastors who listen to our YouTube and iTunes recordings and I do not want to presume to school you in how to be a pastor, but I want to share a personal experience.  For many years before we started this church, it was my habit to go to Nicaragua a couple of times every year and I loved the rural poor of that nation and did a lot to raise support for them but in those days I worked in a big church and sat in an office adorned with crystal chandeliers and a marble fire place and the poor were people who lived a thousand miles south of my office.

When we started this church, I made a new commitment to myself, to spend a part of every week with the most poor people that I could find as close to me as I could find them.  Two or three times a week, in the company of our church volunteers who cook and donate food, who gather up sleeping bags, blankets and coats, I go and spend time with people who are standing where Jesus spent most of his life, on the bottom rung of the empire's economic ladder.
Many of them are sick.  In the line of people we talk to and serve every week, some are just unemployed and cut off from family and supportive friends but there is also mental illness, there is alcoholism, there is HIV, TB, hepatitis, and the open sores that go with chronic methamphetamine addiction.

Sometimes they are rude and demanding.  Sometimes fights break out.  Some are con men always trying to get something out of us..... but, there is not much difference between us.  Most of the members of this church are involved in some kind of poverty ministry, either professionally or as a volunteer.  I go every week, not because I am a good man but because there is a third world dictator inside of me that would love to take over and be the ruler of my heart, my wallet, my conscience.

What I'm saying to you who are pastors is that you need to be aware that even a well intended liberation theology Catholic priest can become an evil third world dictator who gets to the point of saying that he loves the smell of a burning tire around the neck of a protestor if you lose touch with your own identity with the poor.

So, I stay in community, both with the faith community and the homeless community.  I come here, I pray, I sing, a take communion and listen to the teaching of the prophets, the saints and of Jesus because, I'm sure that if I don't that I will forget.  It is not that Manuel Ortega, Saddam Hussein, Charles Taylor, Baby Doc Duvalier, Jean-Bertrand Aristides and Moammar Kaddafi are evil and we are good, it is that given the right circumstances, given a few years of being addicted to power and money, we could become who they are.

We are here because we have chosen a different path.  I don't describe myself as being a Christian very often.... That word seems to be far to weighed down with beliefs and rituals that have dubious meanings to me.  I strive, not so much to be a Christian as I want to be a follower of the teachings of Jesus.  I don't want to be a believer..... I want to be a doer, a follower, a disciple so that the dictator in me remains hidden.

Americans were born on the top of the economic mountain.  Even the poor among us have a better shot at a decent living than people in most parts of the world.  We don't have to suffer indignities internationally.  Our president, whoever is president, can order attack drones, warships, nuclear missiles, and armies to any place on earth and so even if there is a sneak attack against our people, we can exact a thousand fold retribution and our nostrils are filled with the smell of revenge.

And so, I say to you Americans..... it is not to be so among you.... For the greatest among you will be the servant of all.  The challenge before the greatest power on earth... the greatest military and economic power on earth, is to set that power aside and to reach out and identify with the stranger.  To learn to let go of resentment and anger and fear and to lead by example, by love, by a path of generosity.

There may be no Mo Ibrahim Foundation to reward you with millions of dollars for resisting the urge to be a tyrant but I will make the claim that following in the path of Jesus is its own reward.