Birth and Death, Marriage and Divorce, Life and Disease, Vitality and Old Age, Ebullience and Depression

Community Christian Church of Springfield
Roger Ray, pastor
April 14, 2013   Easter 3

Psalm 30
Thanksgiving for Recovery from Grave Illness
1 I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up, and did not let my foes rejoice over me.
2 O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.
3 O Lord, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.*
4 Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name.
5 For his anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.
6 As for me, I said in my prosperity, 'I shall never be moved.'
7 By your favor, O Lord, you had established me as a strong mountain;
you hid your face; I was dismayed.
8 To you, O Lord, I cried, and to the Lord I made supplication:
9 'What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit?
Will the dust praise you?   Will it tell of your faithfulness?
10 Hear, O Lord, and be gracious to me! O Lord, be my helper!'
11 You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, so that my soul* may praise you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever.

Human beings invented religion when they became sufficiently self aware to realize that they were going to die one day.  Bishop John Spong argues persuasively in his book, A New Christianity for a New Age, that humans needed to invent supernatural deities in the heavens governing over an unseen after life in order to cope with the existential awareness that like birds and trees, fish and flowers, we have only a few short years to live under the sun.

And it is true enough that an awful of the sillier parts of religious life amount to little more than a kind of existential whistling in the grave yard, assuring ourselves that we should not fear being snuffed out of existence because our imaginary friends in the clouds are going to take us to eternal reward when we die.

But that is not the better part of even very ancient religions.  Even among the poems and philosophical musings that echo down from the dawn of human civilization are insights that are helpful far beyond any opium for the anxiety caused by mortality.

I was privileged a few years ago to hear the famous Old Testament professor, Walter Brueggemann talking about the importance of the Biblical lament.  If you took every passage of the Bible about heaven or hell or your soul or any afterlife reference and printed it together, you would have about a dozen pages.  A great deal of the Hebrew Bible is devoted to human self expression of fear, depression, anxiety, confusion along with supplications for hope, health, and even meaning.

Much of the wisdom literature of the Old Testament is not written as if it is God speaking to us, it is written in the voice of us asking God why?  Why do we suffer?  Who do bad people seem to prosper and good people  seem to fail?

Most of us grew up in churches where the word "salvation" always had to do with going to heaven when you die but that's not how it is generally used in the Bible.  When, in that walking on the water story in Matthew (14:30), Peter decides that it would be a good idea to walk out on the water to meet Jesus and Peter quickly sinks under the waves and is drowning.  Matthew says that Peter cried out, "Lord, save me."

Now, who among us, if you were to take this account on its face, believes that Peter, as he was drowning, was saying to Jesus, "Please die for my sins on the cross so that I can go to heaven after out drown in this lake?"  Clearly, the only salvation Peter was looking for was a hand back into the boat.
When we read in the Psalms where David is saying, "my enemies are encamped all around me, my strength is run out," when he says "save me," he has a very specific agenda in mind..... something to the tune of, "Dear God, please let me live to wake up in my own bed tomorrow."

The real meaning of the word, "salvation" is "to be made whole."  If your life is broken by health issues, then being healed is salvation to you.  If your life is broken by mental illness, disturbed relationships or even grievous sin then salvation  comes in the form of being empowered to get your life back on track.

I was sorry to learn this week of the suicide death of the adult son of  the famous evangelical pastor, Rick Warren.  I was certainly one of the people who published sharp criticisms of President Obama for inviting Rick Warren, an outspoken anti-gay evangelical, to take part in the first Obama inauguration.  I don't like the body of Warren's work and it would be hypocritical of me not to confirm that now but I am proud of the fact that when his son, Matthew, took his own life, Warren did not fall prey to the culture of shame and denial so often associated with religion.

Being a religious person does not alter the course of events in this capricious universe in which we live.  Mental illness, cancer, diseases as well as car accidents, addiction and freaks of nature, plague people of faith just as much as they do anyone else in the world.  I have no idea what the nature of Matthew Warren's mental illness was.  I will not speculate about what caused his depression and why he chose to end his own life but because I have lost close friends in the same way, I simply acknowledge the loss of a young man's life and the hole left in a family and a congregation as a result.

A few months ago I received a call from a doctor's office asking me to come pick up an elderly woman whom the doctor believed should not be trusted to drive herself home.  The woman was in distress.  Because of deep grief, she had not been able to sleep or eat and she was run down and at the breaking point.  Before I took her home, the physician's assistant called me back into a consulting room and said, "Dr. Ray, I know that you'll agree with me that the real problem with this patient is that she is not close enough to Jesus Christ."

I will not repeat what I said to that outrageously inappropriate and condescending unprofessional statement because I would like for at least our internet audience to enjoy the illusion that I can be a nice person in stressful situations and yet, no matter how ignorant and uninformed this medical professional's dismissal of a beautiful grieving widow's spiritual condition was, it is not far from the kind of magical self delusion common among religious people.

Had I been inclined to be instructive in that moment, much of what I would like to say to pious Christians is wrapped up in the quote you have heard me repeat from Soren Kierkegaard in the past, that is that "prayer does not change the one to whom we pray but it changes the one who prays."

That is, our silent, internal prayers do not then change the mind of God and cause divine intervention.  Lots of people tell themselves that "God answers prayers," in a magical manner but Matthew Warren didn't die because Rick Warren didn't pray hard enough.

The mortality rate in our liberal, post supernatural theist church is exactly the same as the mortality rate down at Six Flags Over Jesus or at Warren's Saddleback church.  It is 100%.  Pray all you want, everybody dies.

So what is the benefit of being in a spiritual community?  Why pray?  It is this.... two years ago when the most powerful tornado in recorded history wiped out a huge swath of Joplin, MO, in insurance jargon, those hundreds of people who lost their lives and thousands of homes that were destroyed were lost in what is sometimes call an "act of God."  I say that's bologna.  A tornado is not an act of God, it is simply a part of a capricious universe.

When we loaded up pick up trucks and went over to Joplin with food, tarps to cover houses, chain saws to clear roads and trash bags to help survivors to clean up their yards and homes.... that was an act of God. That was a sign of the compassion that is born of sitting in this room, singing hymns, studying religious texts, taking communion and passing the peace.

Our spirituality does not change how God acts in human history but it changes how we act in human history.  My faith won't keep me from being depressed or getting cancer but I hope that it changes how I react to those painful aspects of the human condition.  We pray, as they say in the AA program, to increase our conscious connection to God and to one another.  When I pray for you when you are in the hospital, I don't think that I am sending your magical energy beams that knits your bones back together and seals your surgical wounds..... I am pausing for a moment to love you, to feel my concern for you and to compose my own heart into action.....
which in Ron Hertenstein's case this week, amounted to getting up and taking him some Andy's frozen custard after doctors used a circular saw to install a new knee in his right leg.

Now, you tell me, when you have been through some trauma, would you rather have some evangelical church put you on their prayer list or would you rather have someone bring you an Andy's Frozen Custard?  See, you are all becoming theologically discerning here.

Our funeral services do not give some soul a boost on their way to heaven.... they give us a chance to express our grief and to console one another in our losses.  Our worship services are not intended to satisfy the ego needs of a twisted deity that needs to be praised by his subjects.... our services are intended to strengthen our community in which we show love to one another when we are hurting and we challenge one another to rise up and work harder to live lives of love adorned by good deeds.

Comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable is not a platitude, it is literally what we do here.  Your personal spirituality may certainly have ineffably mystical dimensions.... mine certainly does, but our corporate religious life is rooted in reality.  There may be some kind of afterlife where souls reside in eternity but what I know for certain is that neither I nor anyone else knows anything at all about that existence and anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or crazy.

What I do know is that we live in a world in which love relationships that were supposed to be permanent sometimes come to an end.  We inhabit bodies that sometimes turn on us such that good people die far too young.

I know that sometimes because of human evil or human indifference or human ignorance that people die in accidents, get sick, get left out of meaningful work, education or housing but that because of the human desire to be spiritual people that we can kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.

There was a Russian poet who wrote that every morning he takes a razor in his right hand, looks into the mirror and makes the decision of whether he is going to shave or cut his throat.  I've been at that point and I bet Rick Warren has too and I suspect that most of you have as well.

So what makes you decide to shave again rather than cut your throat?  Most of the time, for me, it was because of my connections to people who cared about which decision I made.  My spirituality doesn't make life perfect but it makes it clear that the world expects something of me.... that my daughter expects something of me, my friends expect something of me, you expect something of me.

On Thursday there will be a hundred homeless people lining up at Bill's Place expecting us to show up to pray with them..... I mean, bring them a hot meal..... I'll pray with them too but mostly we'll pray by ladling some hot stew into a bowl against the violence of the cold wind on the sidewalk.

There is an African proverb that teaches, "When you pray, move your feet."  Because that is the only kind of prayer that really makes a difference.

Not Going to Play Dead for You

Community Christian Church of Springfield
Roger Ray, pastor
April 7, 2013   Easter 2

Acts 5:27-32  27 When they had brought them, they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them,
28 saying, "We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man's blood on us."
29 But Peter and the apostles answered, "We must obey God rather than any human authority.
30 The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree.
31 God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.
32 And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him."

American history was never a subject that captured my attention.  As a Biblical student, my attention was always focused on the Ancient Near East and American history seemed like a matter of modern interests.  But during my time in the Boston area when I was a fellow at Harvard, I took some free afternoons to ride my bike over parts of the route where Paul Revere rode a horse.  I visited Bunker Hill and Beacon Hill and walked the Freedom Trail.

In that small area around the bay where the Boston Tea Party started the Revolutionary War, I listened in on tour guides speeches who were not always fawning nationalists.  It turns out that while there was a lot of general unhappiness with the British rule of the colonies, what it took to actually get settlers, merchants and farmers to show up and fight and die to liberate the colonies from British rule was not all that noble.

That is to say, as frustrated as most of us are at the lies that were told to the American public to get us into a war with Iraq, those lies were nothing compared to the whole cloth fabrications told to American settlers to get them to come out and muster to fight the British.
Samuel Adams turned out to be such an outrageous propagandist and character assassin that I have never again been able to enjoy the modern product that bears his name. Crazy, stupid lies were told to the people in order to get them sufficiently angry or afraid or both in order to do what, eventually, turned out to be in their best interests.

I'm not historian enough to argue whether we should have revolted against British rule or not.... Let's just assume for the sake of argument that it was manifestly the best thing to do.  For good or for ill, evidently, the colonists were not motivated to fight in sufficient numbers until they were tricked, lied to and manipulated into responding with some force.

I suspect that we could go through the historical record and find no small amount of that sort of deceptive propaganda in every great military battle.  We sometimes like to remember WWII as being the "great war" or the "good war" because in it we were fighting against evil nationalistic forces in order to liberate the Jews from concentration camps.  Sadly, stopping the holocaust was more of a by-product than a motivation for entering the European war.

The truth is that the American government turned away boatloads of Jews seeking refuge in America and even sent out the Coast Guard to make sure that no one jumped off those boats and tried to swim to shore.  I wish that it had been different but it wasn't.

A hundred years passed from the end of the Civil War in America before the Civil Rights movement began in our nation.  Blacks were oppressed in ways that may have been more cruel even than slavery for generations.
In many ways, it was the employment opportunities created by manufacturing during WWII that created a black middle class that then pushed up leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. who made Civil Rights a successful cause.  The subsequent impoverishing of the black population in the past two generations is the best reason why there has not been another Martin Luther King to arise in this generation.

When people are beaten, impoverished, oppressed, it is very difficult to persuade them to find the courage, the energy, the nobility to organize, to fight back, to stand up to their oppressors.  People will stand by and watch horrible tragedy until they are prompted by self-preservation or personal profit to roll up their sleeves and get involved.  The single most disappointing aspect of church life to me, during my years of serving denominational churches was that no matter how hard you worked, how much you did to serve a congregation, that when someone tried to wring me out in a public meeting, in almost every case, the board would sit and watch like sheep watching one another eat grass.

The author of the book of Acts tells stories of heroism among the earliest disciples in order to inspire similar devotion to the cause among later generations.  We have good reason to read Acts with a great deal of skepticism about its historical veracity but, assuming that it is a product of the early second century, it is written after the persecutions of Christians had become very violent in certain parts of the empire.

One of the few evidences of the spread of the church from antiquity is found in a letter written by a Roman governor, Pliny, to Emperor Trajen asking for clarification of his orders to persecute Christians.
He asks the Cesar, "but do your instructions apply also to those who are no longer Christians, for many of them say that they have not been Christian for years."  Being a Christian when it meant being a part of a loving community that liberally shared its food and thumbed its nose at the empire was one thing, but when the empire began to grind the young church under its heel, many were all too willing to resume their former more pluralistic lives.

A great deal of the New Testament is written in a way to encourage readers to have the courage to face martyrdom, torture, threats and oppression.  Because, men and women, then and now, the reflex reaction of almost everyone in the world is to grumble quietly but do nothing to fight an oppressive government, employer, spouse, parent or church.  We just watch and even if we are mad about it, we do nothing.

The Nobel prize winning author, Elie Wiesel, explained in his acceptance speech that the holocaust only happened because the world was willing to sit back and watch.  He told his audience that they must choose to take sides in matters of ethical importance because neutrality always serves the oppressor and never serves the interests of the oppressed.  By turning away refugees, Americans and Europeans were not morally different from the Nazis who imprisoned and killed the Jews.

He said that you could distill the ethical teachings of all of the Bible down to a single sentence, "Thou shalt not stand idly by."  We took that simple statement of truth and put it on this worship banner when we started our church.

The winged lion is typically the symbol of the gospel of Mark but we adapted it to stand over this central truth for our church.... A solemn pledge that we would not stand idly by.

The church in our age is facing extinction.  The cathedrals of Europe have been turned into warehouses, office complexes and shopping malls.  Those that remain open as church have tiny gatherings comprised largely of tourists.  On the east and west coasts of the United States, other than a few mega churches that offer a cultural religion entirely unrecognizable to those who are actually interested in the teachings of Jesus still exist.

Among main stream churches in the United States, the average Sunday attendance is fewer than 40 as aging congregations try to keep the lights on long enough for the church doors to remain open for their own funeral.  And, honestly, for the most part, I can say, "good riddance."
The church that stood silently by while women had to fight for the right to govern their own bodies and to fight for equal pay for equal work.....
the church that stood idly by and watched as black Americans were set upon by racist police, dogs, water cannon and tear gas.....
The church that remained silent in Argentina during the "Dirty War" and in Guatemala during the time of the disappeared and in Nicaragua during the Contra war.....
the church that encouraged discrimination against gays and lesbians while hiding sick pedophilia in their own ranks....
The church that abandoned their inner city, turned their backs on the poor and used their resources to build obscene monuments to the pretense of their own importance....
The church that sat in silence while the income gap between the poor and the rich grew wider....
The church that virtually applauded the recruitment of our nation's poor sons and daughters to be put in uniforms and sent to kill the poor sons and daughters of Iraq and Afghanistan......
the church that has patiently and silently sat on the sidelines and watched our environment being spoiled, our schools crumbling and our black young men being imprisoned while our gay sons were literally pushed into suicide....
That church can go to hell.

The church with the government, the two great guardians of the status quo.... The apologists for corruption in the economy, the military, religion and education, flogged the apostles and told them to keep quiet and, I must beg you to forgive me for saying it twice, the apostles told the authorities to go to hell.... They said it lovingly, I'm sure

We will not always be right.... But we will not be silent out of fear of being wrong.  We will not often have our way in matters of public debate and ethics but we will not be a silent co-conspirator with oppressors.  We are not many in number but we will not be intimidated into silence.  We are not rich, we are not powerful, we are not located on a major highway nor do our pageants require TV news coverage but I don't have to wear a clergy collar when I go to a city council meeting because of who we are, I stand out like Ralph Nader in an automobile plant.

The church that deserves to survive the rapid changes in religion is the church that has a meaningful voice.... It is the church that opposes war and works for peace....
It is the church that doesn't just use the poor as a backdrop for a foot washing ceremony but that actually works for justice, fair wages and access to health care, education and housing.
It is the church that defends the environment and is unafraid to demand alternative energy sources and protection of our air, water and soil.
It is the church that is willing to tell the truth about government protection of Monsanto and their Frankenfoods, the abuses of the oil and coal industries and the sociopathic insanity of the NRA.

Because we know from experience that if we don't do it that the whole world will be silent and we know that it is our calling to never stand idly by.

I am proud to be counted among your number.

The Resurrection of the Whole World

Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor
March 31, 2013    Easter

Isaiah 65:17-25
17For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. 18But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. 19I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. 20No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. 21They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 22They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. 23They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord-- and their descendants as well. 24Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. 25The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent--its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

Things are happening so fast these days that I feel almost as if I were tied in chains only being allowed to preach once a week and to write a newspaper column every two weeks.  Most days I am limited to shouting at the television as I switch from news channel to news channel, sometimes at a pace that is something like starring right into a strobe light.

There are a lot of topics about which we need to be vigilant.  With some fear of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I do have some fear that our economy, especially the economy of the very wealthy, has become predicated on a perpetual state of war and that as the military spending in Afghanistan and Iraq wind down, we are being set up to accept another war in either Iran or North Korea or both.

My heart is breaking over the rapid retreat of those who were willing to work for real gun law reform in the wake of Sandy Hook, as Americans once again demonstrate that their short attention span is the greatest weapon in the NRA's arsenal.

But on the positive side, we now have two cases under consideration by the Supreme Court that many of us who have advocated for the civil rights of the gay and lesbian community have worked for and prayed for these past decades.  I remember taking part in a demonstration on the campus of MSU several years ago as the then president of MSU resolutely refused to add sexual orientation to the university's non-discrimination policy.  I shouted at the president from the sidewalk below his office window:  "We are in the right and we have already won, you just don't know it yet."

For the past 15 years there has been relatively little evidence that I was right, but little by little we have seen progress.  Nine states now have legalized same sex marriage.  Of course, it is legal to have sex with a horse in 23 states so America still has a good deal of catching up to do when it comes to our maturity in these matters.

Last year, Vice President Joe Biden either very cleverly or very clumsily announced his belief that same sex marriage should be legal, which forced the president to also get over his silly insistence that his views were "evolving".  Once the president had sided with same sex couples, the NAACP felt compelled to let their long standing prejudice fall since then we have seen a virtual domino effect in public opinions.

The German philosopher (1788 - 1860), Arthur Schopenhauer, observed 200 years ago that, "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."  Many of us here have lived through the ridicule and the violent opposition.

Some of our gay members have suffered discrimination in employment and you have been treated horribly by family members, fake friends and mean spirited peers in school.  Some of us who have been your supporters and advocates have also suffered damaged careers and strained relationships.  Through my years of advocating for gay rights from the pulpit I have turned literally hundreds of Christians into Presbyterians, Methodists and Lutherans.  Not that there are not gay friendly Presbyterian, Methodist and Lutheran congregations in other cities but our YouTube viewers must remember that these broadcasts originate in Springfield, Missouri and though things are changing here, most mainstream denominations are still a safe place to hide your prejudices.

A few years ago, Bishop John Shelby Spong announced that he would no longer give an explanation for his support of same sex relationships because, he said, enough time has passed for everyone to have been made aware of the medical, psychological, moral and biblical issues around this topic and now it is time to put the ball in the court of the people who want to defend the prejudice.  They are now the ones who need to explain themselves.

As we have seen in early testimony in before the Supreme Court this week, the argument that tries to defend this prejudice is so shallow, so thin and unsubstantial that we have clearly arrived at a time when the truth has become self evident.

It is not necessarily self evident to all nine of the justices and certainly at least three of them will end up voting to uphold DOMA and maybe four or even five of them will but, regardless of the importance afforded to them in the media or even in the constitution, the Supreme Court doesn't get to determine what is true and what is not true.
I would say to them what I said to MSU's president fifteen years ago..... we have already won it is just a matter of them deciding if they want to be on the right side of history or if they want their legacy to make them look like George Wallace blocking the door to black students at the University of Alabama fifty years ago.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "The arc of time is long but it bends towards justice."  That fact is not always visible because progress is often very slow.  I have, for many years in this community, been labeled as a radical and there are not more than two or three pastors in this city today who are willing to be seen in public with me but things that I said that seemed to be so radical when the church was just sure that homosexuality was a sin and that Jesus really wanted us to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq just don't seem all that radical anymore do they?

Mohandas Gandhi said to his own family, "Never Apologize For Being Correct. Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth. For being correct. For being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you're right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth."

On this Easter Sunday when so many churches are teeming with people who have come to be told once again that Jesus died for their sins and was raised from the dead by God so that they will all live forever in heaven, I invite you who have found your way into this very small crowd in this tiny church to set aside that self serving religious message to think about resurrection in a different way.

I do not believe that substitutionary death and a promise of eternal life is what the resurrection meant to the disciples in the mid first century and I don't think that line of thinking will find many adherents in the future, though for now it seems radical to many to contradict that line of thinking.

I believe that Jesus was a preacher of radical compassion who stood up to the religious authorities who condemned everyone who wasn't as pious as they were and he stood up to the empire that oppressed his people and to the economic system that enslaved and impoverished his people and that his message of defiance and radical compassion got him killed by the empire and I do not doubt that he was betrayed by members of his religious community, his family and his school peers and don't we all know something about that?

I believe that the empire killed him to shut him up and the religious teachers of guilt and piety walked away from his tomb thinking that they had ended that message but that his followers believed that what he had to say had a life that could not be held in a tomb and that the truth he represented couldn't be judged by a Supreme Court or a high priest.

I believe that they experienced his living presence among them and they were willing to follow his example, even if it led to their own deaths rather than to cower in the face of Rome's cross and the tomb.

I believe that resurrection means that even if you kill Jesus the gospel is still preached.  Even if you kill Gandhi, and murder King and imprison Mandela there are things that prisons and graves can't hold.  I believe that the meaning of resurrection is that you, you, you the faith community still stands up to the empire.... That you refuse to give up....
That even though the arc of time is long that we will bend it towards justice even if we have to use our own flesh and blood to do it.

Two weeks before he was assassinated, El Salvador's archbishop, Oscar Romero, said, "I have often been threatened with death. If they kill me, I shall arise in the Salvadoran people. If the threats come to be fulfilled, from this moment I offer my blood to God for the redemption and resurrection of El Salvador. Let my blood be a seed of freedom and the sign that hope will soon be reality."

Turning Jesus into a God whose relevance is confined to some pie-in-the-sky hope of heaven is, in my opinion, just another way of stuffing him back into the tomb to shut him up.  But we are done with that stuff.  His blood, like the blood of the prophets who came before him and the saints who have followed him, now runs in your veins.  You are the resurrection.  You are the prophets.  You are the apostles and saints and some of you will be figuratively and maybe even literally the martyrs who make resurrection real.

And so we rise up to defend the people rejected by organized religion. We have risked our good names, reputations and careers to defend those the world would have abused and this year we will see substantial victory in some areas and we must remain vigilant, resolved and very very loud to avoid tragic decisions in other areas.

Though we mean different things when we say it, I will add my voice to the liturgical expression of the church through the centuries...... He is not dead, he is risen..... I see him among you and I will not lose faith.

Compelled To Talk Yourself into Trouble

Community Christian Church of Springfield MO
Roger Ray, pastor
Palm Sunday     3-24-2013

Isaiah 50:4-9a                            
4The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens-- wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. 5The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. 6I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. 7The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; 8he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. 9It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty?

 From time to time, someone suggests that I publish a collection of my newspaper columns. I have never been interested in doing that because a newspaper column is intentionally aimed at something currently topical and not something that would be very interesting a month or two later.  I have, however, considered publishing a collection of my columns that the NewsLeader refused to publish.

I had a column rejected just before I left town. I understand that he paper wants to build up subscriptions and not run off advertisers but I have found that it is almost always by best work that gets rejected.  Though it can reasonably be said that my rejected columns are provocative, I would argue that none of them were inaccurate.

My most frequently rejected columns have been on health care related topics and most of what I have been trying to get into print was very similar to what appeared in a recent issue of Time Magazine.  The Time article even mentioned our own Springfield Mercy hospital along with the CEO's salary, outrageous profit margins and price fixing that our local paper always refused to publish, I assume out of fear of alienating major advertisers though other less plausible reasons were given.

Again, I don't fault them.  It is my job to speak prophetically, it is their job to sell newspapers and those two things don't always go together.

What troubles me more is when churches start to make decisions to edit their message in order not to alienate their paying customers.  I can forgive a for-profit industry for doing what it has to do to make a profit but you cannot realistically extent the same to a "for prophetic" institution like the church for failing to be prophetic.

I love the modern proverb that says, "You can't fault a child for being afraid of the dark but we cannot similarly excuse adults who are afraid of the light."

Our scripture lesson from Isaiah this morning directly connects the prophet's willingness to speak on behalf of the Lord with his willingness to have people spit in his face, pull out his beard and hit him with sticks.  I know that we have several pastors who view our YouTube Channel and I would like to say to you, as painful as it was being absurdly fired by a denominational church and rejected by my mother denomination, I have to admit that being fired has proven to be the single most liberating thing that has ever happened to me.

How many of us have spent most of our careers trying to walk the fine line between doing what we know is right and managing to keep our jobs?  How much of our souls have we sold to remain securely employed?  It is certainly unpleasant to have people spit in your face, pull out your beard and hit you with sticks but it is no longer legal to crucify annoying prophets and you can survive everything else they can do to you.  Integrity is better than a pension fund and being free to speak the truth is better than being popular.

There will always be someone who wants to edit the content of your sermons.

Even in the most liberal and progressive of settings there will be some who insist that you not say this or say that or who through friendship or guilt try to make themselves the filter of your message and while no one is above criticism there really is not excuse for not saying what you know is right just because someone you know isn't going to like it.  In fact, I'm not sure that I have much confidence in any member of clergy who has not been fired at least once.

My most recently rejected article had to do with gun control.  You look at the conversation that has gone on in public about gun control in these months since the Sandy Hook shooting.  It has been amazing to me to watch because the nation seemed so unified against the lunatic fringe at first but we have been continually giving ground ever since.

We didn't start on a very realistic footing because the most inciting gun deaths are mass murders committed by deranged individuals with crazy big weapons.  But of the 30,000 gun deaths in America every year, those high publicity mass murders never account for more than two or three dozen deaths.  Handguns are the real culprits in America's insanely high casualty count but it seems that we are not allowed to talk about that.

Hardly any religious voices are talking about gun control at all and if they are, they are talking about the fringe, the most symbolic, the least controversial of measures.  Fearful of backlash, even in the face of 30,000 deaths a year, a hundred times more than what is experienced in most industrial nations, the church is silent.

My most recent attempt at publishing on the topic was inspired by Illinois legislator, Jim Sacia (R), who, during a recent gun control debate, said, "Here's an analogy folks, I ask you to think of this: You folks in Chicago, want me to get castrated because you're families are having too many kids. It spells out exactly what is happening here! You want us to get rid of guns..." (http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/02/il-state-representative-compares-chicago-gun-laws-to-castration-video-2578552.html) To quote Mike Myers' character, Austin Powers, "Paging Dr. Freud!"

It wasn't technically what we call a Freudian slip though it rather goes to the heart of the intent.  Many mental health care professionals have assumed that there is a phallic connection to be made between men and their addiction to guns but Representative Sacia just came out and made the connection very personally.  For him, gun control is equivalent to castration.

So when you wonder why we can't make any progress on the gun control issue in America, if you are willing to have the courage to be really honest about it, it seems that the 2nd amendment is not really what is at stake.  We waste a tremendous amount of time while tens of thousands of people die every year because we won't talk about what is really at sake here.....male insecurity.

Sure there are a lot of men who inherited hunting rifles.  There are people who have been in the military or in police service who just have an affinity for weapons but they are not generally the ones who oppose all forms of sane gun control that would significantly reduce the number of deaths in this country.  The lunatic fringe is driven by psychological motivations that we are simply too polite to mention and while we are being polite and politically correct and debating the symbolic aspects of gun control, another 80 or 90 Americans will die today, tomorrow and Tuesday.

The lunatic fringe tells us that we can't talk about gun violence or meaningful gun control because that would offend them, insult them, if the church got involved it would mixing religion and politics.... And so the church remains uninvolved and another 90 people will die on Wednesday, another 90 or so on Thursday...... but we're afraid of offending people.

Or did you really think that what made people pull out Isaiah's beard and spit in his face was because he was telling them that God loved them and they should pray more and attend church regularly?  The ancient prophets suffered abuse, not because they were too religious but because they were too honest, too relevant, too willing to tell the most unvarnished truth about what mattered the most in their day.

You can be well thought of or you can be relevant but in spite of years and years of looking for way to be both, I am convinced that there is no way to do it.  I know that several of you have had people really give you a hard time just for attending this church.  After 22 years in Springfield, there are people, especially in the conservative evangelical community, who have tried to libel me in every way possible.  But that is the nature of ad homonym.... If you can't refute the message, try to negate the messenger.

I don't like waking up in the morning and reading some letter to the editor calling me everything but a prophet.  I didn't like finding out that a group of conservatives had even hired a private investigator several years ago in a very expensive and entirely failed attempt to find something that you actually use against me.  I can laugh about it now but I assure you it was not funny then.

But I accepted what I am betting you to accept that a certain amount of beard pulling and face spitting is the price you pay for not selling out.  The best we can hope for is name calling and beard pulling during our life time and maybe a place in the Bible when we are gone or they may name a street in a dangerous neighborhood after us but, really, what more did you ever think that we deserved?

As Charlie Shedd pointed out, "A ship in harbor may be safe but that is not what ships are built for."

Let the other ships stay tied up to the dock if they have to but if we see ourselves as being a part of the Jesus movement, a part of the prophetic tradition.... If we see ourselves more in the vein of Martin Luther King, Jr. than of Billy Graham, more of Dorothy Day than of Dana Carvey's "Church Lady" then we can never hang back and wait for the winds of public opinion to make it safe to tell the truth.... We have to be willing to take the lead.

A decade ago every pastor in town who had spoken up about the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan were in favor of it until public opinion began to shift the other way and the same pastors came out against it.  Against that backdrop of irrelevance and hypocrisy, I would like to go on record now as already being against the next war.

The church has no business sitting on the fence when it comes to matters peace, justice, compassion and the environment.  After all, it's not like they killed Jesus for being a moderate.

What Do You Do, If You Find Out that You Are the Bad Guy in the Bible?

Dr. David Trobisch
March 17, 2013

John 12:1-8
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
4But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5"Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" 6(He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 7Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."
Sermon 

I am a Bible Scholar.
When Moses received the Ten Commandments. there was thunder and lightning, the sound of a trumpet filled the air, and smoke came from the mountain.
The people were afraid and trembled and kept at a distance.
They said to Moses: "You speak to us, not God."

And when Jesus walked down the mountain, where he had just delivered the Sermon on the Mount his audience was astonished.
They talked to each other and said: "This is a wonderful teacher."
And another one replied: "He speaks with authority".
And yet a third person added: "Yes not like those Bible Scholars."

I am a Bible Scholar.
What do you do, when you find out that you are the "bad guy" in the Bible?

Believe me, when I finish a class there is no trumpet sounding, no thunder and lightning and no mountain is smoking.
You know why? Because I do not teach with authority but just like one of those Bible scholars.

Today's lectionary reading is from John 12.

Judas presents a perfectly reasonable argument. Why not sell the perfume and give the money to the poor? It makes sense to me. Does it make sense to you?
Careful! Judas is "the one who was about to betray" Jesus, and Judas "said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it."

Why do Bible scholars have a bad rap with many Christians?
Take a look at the Bibles that are in your pews. The translation we are using is done by scholars. The title is The "New Revised Standard Version".
You have four disclaimers right there:

·     New. Does that mean that there already was an old Revised Standard Version? - Yes.
·     Revised. So: the Bible of our fathers and mothers had mistakes? - Sure.
·     Standard. Does that mean that there are other translations around as well? You can only set a "standard" if there is some variety. - That's exactly what it means.
·     Version. So this text is just a version? Not the original? - You got it.

Or do you want to know what I think about the story in John 12 that is part of the lectionary reading for this Sunday? Do you really want to know?
At the end of the gospel, in chapter 21, the editors tell us:

·     That they had a manuscript written by the Beloved Disciple
·     That they believe that it is trustworthy "We believe that the witness is true"
·     That they put the book together after the Beloved Disciple had died

It is rather obvious to the reader of this Gospel that the manuscript that was supposed to have been written by the Beloved Disciple contains long passages where the author simply channeled what God was telling him (or her). Very much like some Old Testament prophets, or the Book of Revelation, or the Book of Mormon.
And why would the editors do this?
Because they are correcting the Gospel of Luke.
In Luke the woman comes early in the ministry of Jesus in Galilee. She is portrayed as a prostitute. In John she is Mary, a good girl, the sister of Lazarus.

·     Cleansing of the temple happens during the last week of Jesus' life in Luke, but it is one of the first things Jesus does in John.
·     Date of Jesus' death in Luke is the day after the Passover meal is eaten, in John Jesus dies they day of Passover.

From what I can tell, the Gospel of John looks very much like other gospels of the second century: it makes up stories about Jesus - like the gospel of James, older brother of Jesus. It lets Jesus talk in revelations, channeling what the author hears from God. Very much like the Gospel of Mary Magdalene or Judas. Or the Gospel of Truth that we studied two weeks ago here on Sunday morning..
Do I think the author of John has any reliable historical information about Jesus? No. I don't think so.
Can I be sure? - No, I cannot be sure. I am not talking with authority, just like "one of those Bible scholars".

As a scholar you are trained to formulate your ideas in a way that it makes sense to others. Scholarship is about communicating. It is not enough that it makes sense to you. It has to make sense to others.
The methods we use to achieve this goal were developed by secular sciences. And our audience is not limited to the Christian community alone. We submit our ideas in a form which meets secular standards of scholarship.

Scholarship is not about telling everyone what is right and what is wrong.
Scholarship is about encouraging each other not to act on whatever is said to you with authority but to be critical to go back to the sources to check them and to make up your own mind.
Scholarship is not about repeating what others have said before us, scholarship is about finding your own voice.

I think I made my point.

But don't feel sorry for me. The Bible is full of bad guys, and chances are that you too are one of them:
Are you a

·     A tax collector
·     A lawyer and do not want to part from your money
·     A woman with long hair who makes a lot of money and shows acts of random kindness
·     Someone who thinks that slavery is not such a good institution
·     Someone who thinks that democracy is better than a kingdom
·     Or are you clergy? Something like a Pharisee or a Sadducee or a Levite
·     Or are you a donor, but you ask for a receipt each time you give, so you can deduct your donations from your taxes?
·     Or are you lesbian, gay or transgendered?

Don't feel sorry for me. I was born a hetero sexual, white, Protestant male .When I took my first breath 54 years ago I had everything going for me. I cannot imagine what it means to be black, a woman, Catholic, or to be a Christian who is gay.

The reading from John got one thing right. Just having long hair does not make a woman a prostitute.
Being a Bible scholar does not mean that you cannot be a devout Christian.
The apostle Paul felt called by God to serve the Gentiles. Gentiles is a ten dollar word for "the others".
Where to or three are gathered I will be among them. Be one of those two or three. Don't be quiet about what is important. You and I, we too are the church. And we shall transform it.

So what do you do when you find out that you are the bad guy in the Bible?
Be yourself. Be who you are. Please, don't shut up!

Seeing one another with Softer Eyes

Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor
March 10, 2013     Lent 4

2 Corinthians 5:16-20
16From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. 17So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 20So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

We have recently crossed a racial line in the United States.  Now there are more children born of non-European white decent than are born of other racial heritages.

Of course, such categories are, at the same time, becoming increasingly meaningless.  I am occasionally reminded of the fact that President Obama had a white mother and a black father and was largely raised by white grandparents.  And yet we say, rather matter-of-factly, that he is black.  You could, just as accurately say that he is white and yet no one does say that.  The fact that no one ever says that hearkens back to a centuries old prejudice that says you can only be white if you are all white but there is no logical context in which that can be true.

When I was a kid, we registered ourselves on government forms as being black, white or other.  Slowly, other categories were introduced.... Asian, or Pacific and one of my favorites:  Latino.  Latino means that you speak Spanish and are not directly from Spain but there are people in Central and South America who speak Spanish and are blond and blue eyed and there are others who are dark skinned Africans.  So what does "Latino" mean.... or "Anglo" for that matter since every color of American speaks English..... and don't even try that word in Great Britain.

There are people who are now trying to say that race does not exist and even though you can make a pretty good case for that genetically and as the races mix and intermarry we will have less and less obvious racial differences, I don't want to deny that race is real because that would imply that the burden of minority is not real and that the history of oppression is not real.  There is such a thing as race and it does matter in terms of self understanding and life experience but the lines are fuzzy and they will be more so.

My daughter was born to Korean parents 24 years ago but spent only 4 months in Korea and has been in the USA her entire life.  MSU offered her a "diversity" scholarship when she graduated from High School and I refused to even consider accepting it because she wouldn't bring any meaningful diversity to the university beyond mere appearance.  She has lived in Texas long enough now that she can do a very impressive Forrest Gump impersonation but I don't think that counts for diversity....and yes, I know Forrest Gump wasn't from Texas but you know how we lump everything south of the Ohio together.

My recent column in the Springfield NewsLeader compared the employment practices of the two retail giants, Walmart and Costco.  My argument was that because Costco pays higher salaries that they have better employee retention and worker satisfaction so they are more productive, making Costco spend less on salaries related to their retail volume than the more conservative Walmart.  My argument being that if Walmart were a more generous employer they would not only improve the communities where they do business but they would also fatten their bottom line.

When I went on line to look at my reader comments, every single critic was writing in to complain about President Obama..... who, to my knowledge, is not in management of either Costco or Walmart.

After 22 years of writing for the NewsLeader, I am aware that just seeing my picture in the paper is to conservatives approximately what it is to show a torch to Frankenstein, "Ugh FIRE". So that when they see that I have published on any topic, their only response is, "Obama BAD."

I have to conclude, that for these people, the black appearance of Barack Obama trumps any record set on the Dow Jones, employment numbers or defense record.  As a liberal, I have not a few bones to pick with our President but conservatives really don't have much to complain about and yet they hate him with a passion that seems in my eyes to be inescapably fueled by ignorant racism.  I could be wrong about this...... no, no, on later thought, there really is no way that I could be wrong about that..... it's racism.

Even some of my best friends were surprisingly ebullient about Hugo Chavez's declining health and recent death.  They tell me about how he controlled the media and arrested dissidents and when I pointed out that his media was less controlled than ours is and that he had not jailed a tenth as many dissidents as we jailed  Occupy Wall Street protestors they look at me like I'm the one whose crazy..... and even if I am.... accusing Chavez of controlling the media and dissent in Venezuela and not screaming about it here.... well, is Obama white or black?  It is all a matter of perspective isn't it?

I know that when Chavez nationalized the oil industry in Venezuela and severed military ties to the US and snuggled up to Cuba that it upset a lot of people in the business world in the US but I can tell you that by making Venezuela's natural resources a national resource, infant mortality was cut in half.  They grew to being number 5 in the world for per capita college graduates.

They cut poverty by 40% and they built power generating plants in Nicaragua, paved roads through Central America, provided food to preschools in Venezuela and many other impoverished nations.  My friends in Nicaragua are terrified about the prospects of the corporate powers taking over the government in Venezuela again and not a few corporate Americans want to make sure that we never know how much can be done for the poor by claiming natural resources for the national interests.

Yes, Chavez was a socialist.... a socialist who raised the standard of living of the poor, fed the hungry and even subsidized heating oil for the poor in the USA.  Was he egotistical, manipulative and self promoting?  Yes he was and if you don't see every Republican and every Democrat that you have ever known as being egotistical, manipulative and self promoting then, I'm pretty sure that you are kidding yourself.... and not all of them are even trying to elevate the standard of living of the poor, provide food to the hungry or electricity and heating oil to the poor.  So give me an insincere socialist any day if they can run a better railroad than a sincere capitalist.  Can I get an "amen" out of you folks or are you afraid to exhale?

The Apostle Paul lived and traveled in a world that was divided by who was a Roman citizen and who was not.  It was divided between slave owners and slaves.  It was divided by Greek speakers and Jews and other Aramaic speakers.  They were aware of racial divides that we would not even be able to tell apart any more than Paul could appear in this room and tell who was Latino and who was Anglo.

But even in that world that, if such a thing is possible, the people were even more divided by race and politics than we are, he wrote to the church in Corinth:

But we no longer see one another from a human point of view.  Is Barack Obama black?  Yes he is.  Is Barack Obama white?  Well, yes he is. Will we all one day be totally embarrassed about having ever cared if anyone is white or black, socialist or capitalist, Democrat or Republican, Latino or Anglo..... God I sure do hope so.

I'm not saying that all people are the same or that all of politics is equal because people are different and politics matters.  What I'm saying is that what does not matter is skin color, language, nomenclature or even what name you call the God that you pray to.  What matters is a life lived in compassion with a passion for justice.  It was the Dali Llama who defined love simply as being the absence of judgment.

If Hugo Chavez decreased human suffering and gave hope to more people in Central and South America through socialism than his predecessors had through capitalism then he is golden in my eyes.  If Barack Obama can end this stupid defense of marriage act we have and decrease gun violence in our streets and increase employment in this nation then he isn't black or white he is red, white and blue so far as I am concerned.

Some of the most wonderful people I know aren't much to look at and some of the most attractive have ugly characters.  Some of the most educated people I know are embarrassingly simple and some of the most humble folks are astonishingly wise.  Some young people can't program your DVR and your DVR was invented by an old person.  Your prejudices are just a weight you have carried for years that has done nothing but limit how far you can go spiritually and limited how many friends you can have and how happy you can be.  You officially have my permission to lay that burden down right now.

Standing on the Railroad Tracks

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
March 3, 2013    Lent 3

Isaiah 55:1-9                            
Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. 3Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. 4See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. 5See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.
6Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; 7let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. 8For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. 9For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.    

Many of you will have heard the behaviorist illustration that says that if you drop a frog in hot water it will jump out immediately but if you put it into cold water and allow the temperature to slowly rise, the frog will complacently sit until it dies from the heat.  This is a great illustration about how we either react or fail to react to a crisis.  If a horrible situation arises all at once, we know to respond quickly and meaningfully but if it just creeps up on us slowly, with a very gradual evolution of our circumstances, we may just slumber into our own demise.

And, as it goes, the illustration is helpful when it comes to things like climate change.  The only reason we are still burning coal to generate electricity and burning gas to power private individual automobiles is because the poisoning of our environment is so slow, so gradual, that it is easy not to say, on any particular day, that things have gone too far and we must change our ways.

So, the slow boiled frog illustration is true when it comes to humans and environmental disaster.  It is not, let me stress this, not true about frogs. I don't know what kind of sick high school biology experiment started with putting live frogs on to boil but given the opportunity, a frog will escape lethal hot water.

Which, in a way, is kind of sad because even a frog will not sit quietly and allow its environment to become lethal but either the most arrogant or the most intelligent of earth's inhabitants will sit still while our own conduct kills off our species.

I love this text from Isaiah that David read for us this morning.  The prophet asks why people spend their resources on that which does not satisfy them.  Did joining the country club give you the close circle of friends you thought it would?  Did building a bigger house make you feel as important as you had hoped?  After stock piling guns and ammunition, do you actually feel safe?  It is like drinking diet coke because you are hungry.  Even if you could drink a thousand diet cokes, you would still be hungry because, even though it is sweet and bubbly, there is no food value in it.

 The prophet is, of course, not talking about food.  He is asking why people spend their time and resources on things that don't really satisfy them. That is a good question!

Jurnegan Moltmann wrote in his work, The Theology of Hope, that there is something called the "sacrament of the status quo."  The way that things are comes to be viewed as holy.  19th Century missionaries, who went from the United States to teach Christianity in Africa, New Zealand, and Indonesia, couldn't imagine the Christian faith apart from western commerce and American government.  Many succeeded in passing along the faith but they were, in many ways, better at spreading the markets of Coca Cola and American's addiction to cigarettes.  In many places in the world, the Christian missionary churches are a fading memory but Marlboro and McDonalds are still there.

 We don't have much mass transit in the USA because we have cars.  We make cars.  And because we make cars we build roads.  And even though our cars and roads are destroying the planet we cannot conceive of a world without all of these cars and roads and when the dinosaur juice that runs our cars starts to get scarce, rather than looking for alternative ways to get around, we will literally intimidate, control and even go to war to keep things just the way that they are, even if to do so we will destroy ourselves in the process!  That is the sacrament of the status quo.

 Because, the voice of the prophet, the voice of the poet, is rarely heard in our day.  Only in church, really, and that not in many churches and not that often there.  Almost every minute of every day we deal with the way that the world is and give only passing thoughts to how it might be.

And, eventually, you get to the point that you cannot even imagine the world as being any different from the way it now is.  In fact, when you hear the way the politicians talk about it, we have to do whatever we have to do to maintain this consumer - military based economy and society, even though we know how it is going to end.

Our generation is like a man standing on a set of railroad tracks watching a locomotive headed straight for him and he is so accustomed to standing on those tracks that he has no will left to get out of the way of the oncoming train.  Even slight changes in position seem to be too much trouble, to require too much effort, too much sacrifice to act to save his own life.

The prophet Isaiah asked the people of his day, "Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?"

"Why do you just dig in and entrench yourself in a culture which is based on controlling the rest of the world through militarism so that you can consume more and more of their stuff?"  "Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?"

It seems that all of the power in the world is either economic or military.  And you don't need for me to tell you that the church, in almost every century, in almost every place, has become little more than the court jester for the forces of the military and money.  The thing that has made this congregation so different is that we have very nearly entirely rid ourselves of bondage to the kind of prejudice and superstition which are generally the hallmarks of religious practice and to try to actually hear the challenging word of the prophets.

When it comes to the environment, the church absolutely must stop being the lap dog of the marketplace.  It is time for us to get up and do some barking around here.

The poet, the prophet, sings:
"Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price."

If we will allow our imaginations to be infected by the poet's words then the world as we know it can come to an end, and the world as God imagined it can emerge.  We don't have to just stand on the railroad tracks and watch the world come to an end, we can help it to be reborn.
Recycling plastic and paper is a largely symbolic gesture but we should do it because the discipline of doing it helps us to think about how we can save the planet.  The fact that our church leased an electric car makes a statement, a largely symbolic statement but one that needs to be made.  We should all try to live closer to where we work, drive less and insist on mass transit investment but until then, we should burn as little fossil fuel as possible.

Going out and helping to pick up trash out of a local river is largely symbolic but you will not quickly come home from a day of nasty river recovery and then passively pollute a river ever again.  We can air condition our homes without Freon, we can grease our cooking pans without hydroflurocarbons and we can keep our underarms smelling fresh without deteriorating the ozone layer.

The first thing is that we have to stop standing on the railroad tracks while the train comes towards us.  Then we need to put a stop to these science experiments that involve boiling frogs.