Mark's Little Apocalypse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Canon Within the Canon

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



Matthew 25:31-46

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When the Exception Comes to Rule

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Capitalists in the Hands of a Testy God

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The God Who Loves Justice

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

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

Matthew 23:1-12
23Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2"The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; 3therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. 4They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. 5They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. 6They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, 7and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. 8But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. 9And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father--the one in heaven. 10Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. 11The greatest among you will be your servant. 12All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which Commandment in the Law is the Greatest?

Community Christian Church
Dr. David Trobisch
October 23, 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prayer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AMEN

The Lord's Hind End

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But please, just no more BS.

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

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

Anywhere I go 'cause I was made of this earth

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

And even with the pain I believe in this earth

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

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

I got faith in the sky, faith in the one

faith in the people rockin' underneath the sun

'cause every bit of land is a holy land

and every drop of water is a holy water

and every single child is a son or a daughter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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