Two Ways of Seeing the World

August 26, 2012
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor


I'm going to have lunch with a couple of pastors on Tuesday.  That wouldn't be an unusual thing for most ministers, of course, but it is quite uncommon for me because, other than the retired pastors who are members of our church, I generally don't like pastors and they universally return the sentiment.  They are not bad people, I just typically don't do well in large gatherings of them.

Charles Wesley once observed during a church conference that pastors as like manure, spread around on the fields, they can do a lot of good, but piled up in one place they are just a pile of..... I think what he said was that piled in one place they raise quite a stench.... But we know what he meant.

What is unusual about this lunch that we are going to have this week is that it was my idea; in fact, it is something I've been trying to get to happen for several months.  I believe that the progressives of our community really should be in conversation with one another so I have prevailed upon our local Unitarian pastor and our local Unity pastor to break bread in the hopes that we can form a more mutually supportive relationship.

In my previous incarnation as a denominational pastor, I used to have to spend a lot of time in sort of contrived meetings with other pastors that can only be described as a waste of time.
Charles Dickens once found himself stuck in a long gathering of clergy back in the 19th century when séances were very popular.  As the meeting drug on and on, Dickens interrupted with the suggestion that they all stand in a circle, join hands, and see if they could contact the living.

Religion, on the face of it, should be a uniting force that brings people together in loving community.  However, what we more often see is the exact opposite.  Religion seems to be much more likely to divide people so that we get this well known proverb that tells us not to discuss either religion or politics in polite society because either could turn a wonderful dinner party into a bar room brawl if not an intercontinental war.

This has been an especially volatile week as Congressman Todd Akin has been trying to explain to Missouri voters the differences between legitimate rape and illegitimate rape, or "she had it coming rape."  The national weather bureau has named the hurricane threatening to disrupt the Republican National Convention this week, Hurricane Isaac, but I'm afraid that storm is only secondary to Hurricane Akin's destructive hot air.  But that is such low hanging fruit that I refuse to talk about it today.  Let's just register our disgust and move on.

One of the things that makes it difficult for progressives and traditional religious people to be in conversation is that our use of scripture is quite different.  We cherish the Bible and we read it aloud in our services, discuss it in our classes and both David and I teach college level classes in Bible but we do not understand the bible to be a document written by God.  It is a collection of the spiritual writing of ancient faith communities that were, in fact, not just in conversation with one another but often engaging in open debate with one another.

Traditionalists will try to act like they revere the Bible as the owners manual for a human soul but of course, if you want to believe that the Bible is God's word on how we are to live you either have to avoid reading it or allow yourself to be exposed to a God who has more conflicting personalities than Sybil.

Dr. Adams and I recently attended a meeting of all of the churches involved in the community's shared food pantry at Crosslines.  We were informed that the Kitchen, which operates the other large food pantry in town, was no longer going to be giving out groceries so that they could focus on their homeless services.  Which means that our volume of clients at Crosslines may double in the next month.

Now, there are about 300 member churches in the Council of Churches and they try to get a church to cover one day a month at Crosslines but they can't get enough churches to do it so we cover two days a month..... and we are not a member of the Council of Churches because, evidently, we don't believe in Jesus enough for them to consider us to be a Christian organization.  However, even though we are not as big as some of the Sunday School classes in the churches that can't find enough volunteers to cover one day at Crosslines, we cover two.  And so, at the prospect of doubling the number of hungry people we serve, I raised my hand and asked a number of detailed questions about schedules, food supplies and the need to increase the number of volunteers.

You would have had to have been there to believe the patronizing answer from a member of their board who told me that I just had to believe what the Bible says and have faith that the Lord will provide.  But, since their three hundred member churches can't cover the 22 days a month that Crosslines is open and they need us to cover two days.... Just as at Bill's Place, we need only five of the more than 400 churches in town to take a day a week to feed the unsheltered homeless and we have to take two days a week because they can't find five churches that will do it......  I accept that they believe that the Lord will provide, it's just that based on our experience over the past few years, I'm starting to worry that they think that we are the Lord.

Which brings us down to the real dividing point between progressives and traditionalists.  Traditional Christians are very concerned with orthodoxy, believing the right things.  Progressives are very concerned with orthopraxy, or doing the right things.  I am not disinterested in matters of belief.  In fact, I spend a great deal of time in study for both writing and teaching every week but my beliefs are informed by a commitment to orthopraxy.  And I would not suggest that traditionalists are not concerned with orthopraxy, it is just that they place so much emphasis on beliefs that they excuse themselves from the kind of commitment to social justice that our current circumstances demand.

It has taken me a while to get to it, but we actually do have a biblical text today, in fact, we have two.  For the most part, the gospels of Matthew and Luke copy the older and shorter gospel of Mark and just add to it from their various sources...... except for where they feel the need to correct Mark.

The older gospel, Mark, reports that when the disciples were unhappy about people using the name of Jesus who were not a part of their narrowly defined group that Jesus told them to lighten up..... he said that if these other people were not specifically arrayed against them that they should consider them to be a part of their own community...... telling them to expand their tent to cover those who might not be exactly the same as they were.

A generation later, when the critics of the early church might have become rather more contentious, Matthew edits Mark to say the exact opposite.  Where Mark portrayed Jesus as being very generously inclusive, Matthew insists that Jesus was very exclusive, saying that if others were not precisely with them, that they should be seen as being against them..... literally, that they are enemies.

Both passages are in the Bible.  Both are gospel texts and both are attributed to Jesus..... but both of them cannot be true, or right, or, to put it in the language we used earlier, both cannot be orthodox.

Traditionalists will insist that the Bible is the reliable word of God and so, they have to read these two passages and pretend that they do not say the exact opposite things or, and this is more likely, they don't read either passage and remain blissfully unaware of the conflict.

We read them and we recognize that these are two different voices trying to claim that their perspective is the perspective of Jesus.  Matthew insists that Jesus stands for something very specific, very concrete, and he will not put up with relativism... and I can resonate with that perspective.  I find most of religious language to be dripping in superstition and magic and I want to separate myself from it as far as possible.

But this other voice wants to portray Jesus as being less concerned about orthodoxy, they want us to see Jesus as being more inclusive, less judging, less harsh.  Mark's Jesus wants us to have lunch with Barney Frank and Todd Akin, at the same time.

I'm more comfortable with the exclusiveness of Matthew's Jesus because I am tired of putting up with religious people who seem to me to be simultaneously morally irrelevant and intellectually dim but I fear that way lies monsters.  Though it is not my preference, in my heart, I believe that Mark's Jesus comes closer to what is right.

So often when people visit with us here, they tell me that they are looking for a church where they feel comfortable.  And on the one hand I can appreciate that..... I don't think that women should have to tolerate misogynistic religion..... I don't think that gay people should have to tolerate homophobic religion.... And I don't think that people who take the Bible seriously should have to tolerate a lot of silly magic and superstition.... But.... If you think that you should be comfortable in church then I don't think that you understand what church is for.

When reading the Bible and given a choice between a Jesus who makes us uncomfortable and a Jesus who confirms our prejudices, in almost every case, we should pay more attention to the Jesus who makes us uncomfortable.

I remember hearing Scott Peck say once that the only reason to get married is for the tension..... which may say a lot about his marriage.... But what he meant, of course, is that we should not look for a life partner who coddles us but rather we should look for a life partner who challenges us.

I'm saying, you should look for a church that challenges you.... That not only makes you think but that makes you want to be a better person..... not to tell you what to believe but to goad you into action.  We do not seek the Jesus who makes us feel comfortable but rather the one with whom we feel some tension.... Some moral challenge.... Who pushes us not simply to surround ourselves with those who agree with us but to open our minds and hearts to include those who, even though they may be wrong, force us to stretch our minds, clarify our beliefs and exercise our ability to love those who sometimes are not easy to love.

We may say that are followers of Jesus but I have to warn you that there is more than one Jesus in the gospels and you will have to choose which one you want to take seriously..... it would really rather not, but I believe that I need to try to choose to follow the one who asks me to include more people at the lunch table rather than the one who gives me permission to just sit down with those who are the most like me.  I'm not trying to tell you who which one you need to choose but I am telling you that you need to make a conscious choice, because, if you don't make a choice, you will always defer to the path of least resistance and I don't think you are likely to find Jesus on that path.  That's just my opinion, I could be wrong......but we all know that I'm not.

God had a Wife

August 19, 2012
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Dr. David Trobisch

Proverbs 9:1-6
1 Wisdom has built her house,
She has hewn her seven pillars.
2 She has slaughtered her animals,
She has mixed her wine,
She has also set her table.
3 She has sent out her servant girls,
She calls from the highest places in the town, 4 "You that are simple, turn in here!"
To those without sense she says, 5 "Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. 6 Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight."

Did you know that according to some Biblical writings in the beginning when the world was created God had a wife? She was there from the very first moment, even before light, earth, heaven and time existed.

The name of this woman was Chokmah in Hebrew, or Sophia in Greek, or as we call her in English: Wisdom.

I am not saying this to annoy Bible loving Christians, I am simply repeating what anyone can read, let me quote:

8:27 When God established the heavens,
I, Wisdom, was there,
When he drew a circle on the face of the deep, 28
When he made firm the skies above,
When he established the fountains of the deep, 29
When he assigned to the sea its limit, (...)
When he marked out the foundations of the earth, 30
I was beside him,
Like a master worker;
Proverbs, chapter 8, verses 27-30.

When the world was created, Sophia, Wisdom, was there. God had a companion in creation, a woman who stood at his side "like a master worker" (Proverbs 8:30).

The Bible doesn't always say what we expect. Does it?

For 12 years I taught at a small seminary in Maine. I am not an ordained minister, but I never turned down an invitation to preach. My first invitation came from a small community church in Smithfield, close to Waterville.

After the service a lawyer shook my hand and said, "This was good. You gave us food for thought." And then he added, "And I am so glad that you don't come every Sunday!"

I am a Bible scholar. I do not baptize children, I do not marry couples, I do not have to visit people in the hospital, and do not do funerals. I do not tell people what to believe or who to vote for. And I am skeptical of those who do. I am skeptical of those who know so much about God that they always seem to know what is right and what is wrong.

My role is different. I confuse people. My trade - Bible scholarship - is not faith based. When I go to conferences, I don't know if my fellow scholars are Catholic or Mormons or Jews or Muslims or atheists. Like Sophia-Wisdom I and tens of thousands of other Bible scholars in America and all over the world, we minister to the public. We serve not only those who sit in the pews, we serve everyone.
And believe me, there are people out there who are tired of being treated as if they were stupid. They feel that organized religion has all too often insulted their intelligence. They are told to believe what they do not understand and to do what they are told. But they want to understand! They want to do what they think is right!

Believe me, there are people who have seen that God does the good and the bad. And they ask: Why? What is the point? They are not afraid to ask the hard questions.

These people run our hospitals, they work in our courtrooms, they engineer our bridges, airplanes, and cars. We trust them with our lives every single day. They want to know more: About the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and they will even sit down with a scholar for two and a half hours on their evening off and read Josephus.

They have heard the call of Sophia--Wisdom who is shouting from the high places in the city: Grow up! Use your intelligence! There is life before death! Follow your own insight!

I often wish I had a little camera with me and I could show you what I see when I go and do my lectures, seminars or workshops. Often participants react surprised, when they hear me talk about what is common knowledge in Bible scholarship. But rarely are they shocked, and almost never do they turn away. Their interest is sparked, eyes light up, they want to know more, when they hear, for example, that in some books of the Bible God has a female consort at his side.

They understand the difference between history and stories. Remember - these people run our hospitals, work in our courtrooms, and engineer our cars. They deal with complicated matters every day.

They understand that story tellers take liberties, that stories in and outside of the Bible work with humor, imagination and irony. They understand that the experience of God differs from faith community to faith community; that the experience of God differs from individual to individual. They realize that God says different things to different people.

I also know that many of us experience God as a tiny voice that commands us to do certain things and not to do others. Like a GPS device this voice always seems to know where we are, where we are supposed to go, and what the fastest way is to get there.

And when we veer off the narrow path, we will hear the voice loud and clear: Recalculating. Recalculating. Make a U-turn!

Like in the story of Adam and Eve in Paradise. God said: Don't eat from this tree - or you will be punished.

Do you remember the name of the tree? It was called the tree of wisdom, the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

So, when the woman saw that the tree would make her wise (Genesis 3:6), she took from its fruit and ate and also gave some to her husband.

But didn't we hear in today's scripture reading wisdom shouting out: "Come, eat of the bread I made, drink of the wine I mixed, and lay aside your immaturity"?

Grow up! There is life before death! Trust your own judgment!

Follow the path of your own insight!

How could both be correct? How could it be right to blindly follow God's rules and commands and at the same time could it be right to trust your own intelligence?

How can both go together?

I don't know. Remember: I am a scholar. My role is to confuse. And I am not going to lie to you about the Bible.

But I suspect that both positions to follow God's commands and to follow your own insight I suspect that both positions are true.

I will end with a Midrash,  the old Jewish practice to comment on a problem in the Biblical text with the help of a story.

A Story, A Story!
(Response:) Let it come, let it go!
...
End of the story. Amen.

Yeah, Right, Get Over Yourself

August 12, 2012
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor

1 Kings 19:4-8                        
⁴But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: "It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors." ⁵Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, "Get up and eat." ⁶He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. ⁷The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, "Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you." ⁸He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.

Over the past year our church has gone from being a small progressive outpost in an otherwise pretty ferociously conservative city to being, in a way, two congregations.  We have our seated congregation here in Springfield who have purchased and maintained this building and who have created a very respectable outreach to the poor of this community while offering great adult religious education and progressive witness in the Ozarks.  And we have a far flung congregation who join us via our YouTube and iTunes channels, usually amounting to more than two thousand downloads per week.

I spend a significant amount of my work week answering correspondence from our web based church and feeding thoughts and rants to our page on Face Book that is called, "The Emerging Church."  As this congregation has evolved there have been two things that I've noticed that have been very surprising.  The first is that our video's outnumber our podcasts in popularity by nearly ten to one.  I don't know why anyone would sit at their computer and look at a corpulent cleric week after week when they could just download the audio to their phone and listen to the message.
They live all over the world, in Asia, Africa, South America, Europe and Austrailia but demographically I have noticed that the two largest identifiable groups of people we have viewing are pastors and atheists.

That may sound odd at first but honestly I understand it.  Being a progressive thinking pastor in a denominational church can be like being mentally enslaved.  Many have written to me saying that our congregation gives them hope and I hope with them that the mainstream church can be transformed before it dies in irrelevance entirely.

But the atheists group is interesting to me in a different way.  They often feel obligated to self identify as an atheist before saying anything complimentary.
Just this week, I heard from dozens of self described atheists, you can read many of them posted in the comments section on our YouTube channel.
They are often very flattering of me and of us, though most are tinged with a sense of hopeless isolation.  It is as if they are saying to me, "You and I get it but no one else does."

If I am right about what I see here, the isolation they feel, the sense that they have a rational world view and they are surrounded by people imprisoned in misinformation, superstition, magical thinking and fear based politics.... Then, in fact, the atheist group and the group of pastors are probably here for about the same reason.

You feel as if you are very nearly or entirely alone.  You have your eyes opened to the real justice issues of life, you see the ravages of poverty, the discrimination against racial minorities, gay people and the desperation of the sick who cannot afford health care..... and then you see the news..... just at the suggestion of a radio talk show host that invites people to stand up for bigoted prejudice and millions of people across the nation line up at Chick-fil-A to cast their vote.

The budget cuts recommended by Paul Ryan would turn Medicare into a voucher system telling sick elderly people to go try to buy private insurance......when it is obvious that handing the elderly sick a cyanide pill makes as much sense as giving them an insurance voucher.  The budget plan is so cruel to the poor and so favorable to corporations that a bunch of nuns came out of their convents and started a nation wide tour on a bus to talk to voters and candidates about morality.....

And, of course, the Vatican told them to stop it and go back to their convents and talk about why women shouldn't use birth control or get abortions.
And nearly every pastor knows what that feels like..... anything that smacks of the radical claims of the gospel.... Anything that inspired you to go to seminary in the first place, when you try to talk about those things you are told by your bishops and your presbyters and board members not to talk about politics.... Not to offend those whose personal beliefs might be pro war, pro business, or pro slavery....just don't say anything that matters or you might get fired.

In our scripture text from I Kings, Elijah has run away.... He left the ministry.... He left the church.... He is hiding from everyone and lies down and says to God, why not just go ahead and kill me now.... Nothing makes any sense anymore.

If you looked under the bushes in that part of the wilderness, you are likely to find embittered pastors and cynical atheists under every bush.  The most recent issue of Newsweek has an article in it entitled, "America the anxious."  There are no jobs for the unemployed.  The national debt threatens our future.  Education is becoming too expensive for the middle class to consider.  Wages are stagnant and health care costs are rapidly rising.  People who had planned to retire can't afford to.....shoot, even though some people are still screaming about illegal immigration, the fact is that there are more immigrants leaving the United States than are coming here because there is no work here either.

So Elijah does what Mitt Romney suggested.... He "self deported."  John Shelby Spong says that the fastest growing religious community in the United States is the church alumni society..... people are self deporting from church too.  Churches either insult your intelligence or insult your morals.

When people who watch my sermons regularly tell me that they are atheists, I have to believe that what they are saying is that they no longer believe in the moralizing, guilt producing, threatening, supernatural deity who is the imaginary friend of Fundamentalists.  Of course, we don't believe in that god either.  I'm just not willing to believe that once you reject the "heaven or hell" gamble or the anthropomorphic super Santa in the clouds that I am then willing to run into the wilderness and die.

A couple of people write to me every week to say, "If you had been my pastor years ago, I would not have left the church."  Which, I know, they mean as a compliment but, darn it, if you aren't writing from the cancer ward why are you talking about yourself in the past tense?  There is nothing special about me.... I'm not doing anything you couldn't do.

The desert is littered with prophets hiding under bushes, filled with self pity because your Sunday School teacher told you a bunch of myths that turned out to be lies, or your parents used guilt, shame and fear to keep you from having sex and using drugs and now you want your church offering money back.  The wilderness is full of preachers who have given up.... They wouldn't say that they have given up.... They sit under their scrub bush and think very sophisticated and well informed liberal thoughts and as long as the universe is just between their ears, they are just fine.... Smug, self righteous.... And pretty much worthless.

In this very metaphorical text..... let go of reading the tales of the prophets in the Old Testament as history... they are not historical... they are sermons.... Listen to the story as a sermon and try to see what the point of the sermon is.

The prophet has run into the wilderness to die and an angel appears to him and tells him to get over himself and go back to town and get to work..... you have to be able to hear through the religious language, .... He had gone out there to die of hunger and thirst and the angel brought him water and food and said, "Eat your fried chicken and drink your sweet tea because you have a lot of work ahead of you and you are going to need your strength."

I understand that saying you are an atheist is a way of protecting yourself from the disappointments that have marked your family and your religious history and I'm not asking you to believe in what you cannot see and what no one can know..... I'm asking you to open your eyes..... look at the sky, the sea, the land.... Look at the trees, the rivers, the people, the children, the elderly.  Can't you see the disabled and the sick?  Can't you see the emptiness in the eyes of teenagers who have lost hope, who cannot get an education and cannot earn a living wage.  Can't you see the elderly greeting at Walmart, carrying out groceries at Harter House, sweeping the floors in hotels because they can't retire and they can't give in to their aching feet, sore back and chest pains because as soon as they stop they will die.

You can't see God but unless you are blind you can see the suffering around you and I'm telling you that the separation you may feel from those people is just an illusion.  You are those people.  Call that spirit that connects you to our polluted earth and our impoverished humanity God and if you can't believe in that God then you have let your heart turn into a cold hard place and you are as good as dead.

Pastors.... As denominational budgets have diminished, they have had to lay off and consolidate jobs and most of the best and the brightest have been shoved out of the nest because when resources get scarce the mean and the dishonest will find a way to survive and those of good intent will likely become unemployed.  Your church structures will not save you but then you didn't enter the ministry to serve church bureaucracy did you?

Some of you need to get your head out of the clouds and a lot of you need to get your head out from between your legs.  We need your education, your experience, your ability to write, to speak, to inspire, to lead.... But if you have allowed cowardice to make your decisions for you then all of your talents are just being wasted.

On Tuesday there will be thirty or forty of us gathered in front of Senator Blunt's office to protest his desire to keep women and the elderly from getting health care and he won't pay a bit of attention to us and we won't accomplish anything other than a few dozen good hearted people will spend an hour together.  But if everyone would just come back out of the wilderness.....if hundreds of pastors came and they brought a few dozen church members with them.... If we had a crowd of thousands in front of his office then he would come out and want to have his photo taken with us.

In any number of efforts regarding war, poverty, pollution, discrimination, crime, racism, sexism, declining employment and compensation.... It is true, things are getting worse and when you are through with your pitty party and are ready to get back to work, we can change things.... And when you get back from the wilderness and are ready to take to the streets to make a difference you will find us there waiting for you because we're not afraid and we're not going to give up.

Creating a Faith Community

August 5, 2012    Proper 13
4th anniversary of Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO  
Roger Ray, pastor          

Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-16              
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. 7But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift. 11The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, 12to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. 14We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. 15But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love.

I went a little "postal" Wednesday evening.  The whole Mike Huckabee  call for a "Chick Fil A Appreciation Day" had not shown up on my radar until some church members told me about driving past the fried chicken restaurant and saw cars lined up for blocks.  They were giving me a ride home from church that evening and I asked them to drive by our local Chick-Fil-A so that I could see if it was still going on.  Sure enough, at 9 p.m., there was still a line stretching down the road for blocks.

I was, of course, appalled but when I saw a huge campaign bus for one of our gubernatorial hopefuls here in Missouri turning off of Glenstone and taking their place in line..... well, that was just too much.  I jumped from the passenger seat of Mike and Carolyn's van and ran over to the bus and began shouting at the candidate..... "You are trying to get the hate vote?  Is that why you want to be governor?  You want to encourage people to murder gay people?  You want to export them from the USA?"

If you did not know it, the owners of Chick Fil A have donated more than $5 million to causes supporting the political decision in Uganda to execute anyone found to be gay and another group advocating for the expulsion of gay people from America.  This is hardly a free speech issue..... this is advocacy of genocide and ethnic cleansing..... a point perhaps lost on folks who were there because their right wing pastor told them to be there but certainly not lost on a political candidate for the office of governor.

Of course, Dan Cathy, the Chick-Fil-A's president says that he is not anti-gay but rather he is just, in his own words, "very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit."  Now, by that, he does not mean the Biblical view of the family in the majority of scripture.... He isn't advocating for polygamy, concubinage and having sex with slave girls as most of the Bible does but rather, he favors the more narrow implied definition in the New Testament.  Still, if he were being honest, surely we would see him trying to repeal no-fault divorce laws, or wanting to make infidelity a criminal offense, or restrict the cohabitation of unmarried persons of the opposite sex.  He has not spent a cent on those measures but has donated more than $5 million to violent anti-gay causes.... So, as in most cases when people say, "I'm not anti-gay, I'm just in favor of free speech," they're really anti-gay.

I was seething with anger but, angry outbursts are not very helpful in such situations.  I went home, dug my white alb that I reserve for baptism ceremonies out of the closet and put it on.

I then went, looking like an out of place monk, and stood in front of Chick-Fil-A until they were closed and all the cars were gone.  I didn't argue with anyone, I just smiled and passed out copies of a newspaper article detailing how the owners of the restaurant used profits to further their Neo-Nazi agenda..... but I did it in a nice way.... You would be proud of me.

I know all too well that such actions don't change anyone's mind but may I remind you of that old Civil War story about the old woman who came running off the porch of her cabin holding her broom over her head to join the army as they ran to the battle front. A young soldier said to her, "You better go home grandma, you can't do much out here with that broom."  And she replied, "Yes I can, I can show them whose side I'm on."

I know that I must have looked like a crazy man, out there all alone, but I felt that someone had to stand up for the gay people who were being so hideously maligned by this public display of homophobia.  I had to at least show them that there are Christians who don't join them in their violent hatred.

Let me ask you to take a look at the cover of your bulletin where we print the 8 points of progressive Christianity every week.  Number 3 says, "By calling ourselves progressive, we mean that we are Christians who seek community that is inclusive of ALL people, including but not limited to:  conventional Christians and questioning skeptics....Believers and agnostics, Women and men,...Those of all sexual orientations and gender identities,
Those of all classes and abilities....
The 4th point illustrates what we mean by this too as it adds that we know that the way we behave towards one another is the fullest expression of what we believe.

On this day when we are celebrating the 4th anniversary of our church's founding, I want to talk about community.  We were not named accidently, after all.  It is our intent to form, not simply a church, but an intentional community of faith.  Creating community, especially in the social environment of the 21st century, is very difficult.  We divide ourselves so eagerly along political, gender, economic class, race, language and age lines.

The famous psychiatrist, M. Scott Peck, wrote a book about building community entitled, The Different Drum.  In it, Peck argues that one of the most crucial aspects of community is that it must be ferociously inclusive.  In fact, I have heard Peck say on several occasions, to build community, you have to be tolerant of everything except for intolerance.  That is, you must push yourself to be accepting, forgiving, inclusive of especially the people with whom you disagree, the people who are different from you, the people who may even offend your sensibilities.  But the one thing that a community must reject is intolerance.

In fact, after the first time that I heard Scott Peck say that in a lecture I went to my study and looked up every time that the gospels describe Jesus as being in heated conflict with someone.  The Jesus of the gospels is known to socialize with tax collectors and sinners.... Which in our parlance is traitors and prostitutes....
He visited with, had dinner with, and partied with the people we might be afraid to be seen with but the only people he got into a shouting match with.... Indeed, the only people he told to go to hell, were religious bigots who refused to accept the people who lived on the margins of society.  He said to the Pharisees (Matthew 23): 13 'But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. 15Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Passivity does not create community.  Being neutral in ethical matters doesn't create community, it just creates victims.  It takes courage to create community.  It takes a willingness to invest energy in understanding one another, forgiving one another, loving one another.

Mega-churches fill warehouses with thousands of members who do not ever have to engage one another in conversation.  House churches self select people who are carbon copies of themselves so that they never feel the discomfort of being around someone who voted differently in the last election or who has a disability, or a sexual orientation that might make them feel slightly uncomfortable.

Real inclusivity is much dirtier business.  In a real community you live in close enough proximity to know the people around you.  You know who is unemployed, who has cancer....
You know who is divorced and who is straight, gay or bi....
You break bread with people of different races and political parties.  You disagree about issues and beliefs but you never let those things make you reject that person, unless they predicate your friendship on your willingness to join them in rejecting, judging, executing or deporting someone else.

As Karen Armstrong so clearly states: "If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, or self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology."

We have rejected the part of our religious heritage that masked cruel, unkind or violent behavior by blaming it on God.  We have forsaken the church that asked us to sit quietly and dream of heaven while those around us suffered a hell on earth.  We are striving to give birth to a faith community that is safe, that is affirming, that is inclusive, healing and prophetic.

In fact, fours years into this journey together, as we sit here in this building surrounded by thousands of pairs of shoes that will begin their journey to the poor of Nicaragua tomorrow and as you make plans for how you will once again meet and feed the homeless here in Springfield this week, I say, that you have done it.

Most weeks you generously applaud my meager effort at preaching but today, we should turn the tables because it is you who deserve applause.... You have swum against the current of religious irrelevance, you have rejected the religions of prejudice, judgment and guilt, you have sent a message or forgiveness, acceptance and justice all around the globe.
I appreciate you.  I applaude you!  I love you!

The Lie at the Root of Evil

July 29, 2012     Proper 12
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO    
Roger Ray, pastor

2 Samuel 11:1-15
In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem. 2It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful. 3David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, "This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite." 4So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself after her period.) Then she returned to her house. 5The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, "I am pregnant."
6So David sent word to Joab, "Send me Uriah the Hittite." And Joab sent Uriah to David. 7When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the people fared, and how the war was going. 8Then David said to Uriah, "Go down to your house, and wash your feet." Uriah went out of the king's house, and there followed him a present from the king. 9But Uriah slept at the entrance of the king's house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. 10When they told David, "Uriah did not go down to his house," David said to Uriah, "You have just come from a journey. Why did you not go down to your house?" 11Uriah said to David, "The ark and Israel and Judah remain in booths; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do such a thing." 12Then David said to Uriah, "Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back." So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day. On the next day, 13David invited him to eat and drink in his presence and made him drunk; and in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.
14In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. 15In the letter he wrote, "Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die."

The last time I was in New Orleans, I was leading what, I believe, was my seventh or eighth recovery team trip working on homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina.  As we rounded the corner into a what had been a middle class neighborhood before flood waters rose to about the level of the ceiling on the first floor of those houses, we were surprised to find the road blocked off by huge TV trucks and police cars.

By chance, the house we had been asked to work on was just a few doors down from the destroyed home that had been selected as the place where John Edwards would announce his candidacy for the office of the President of the United States.  The work of gutting a flooded home is about the nastiest work I've ever done and it doesn't leave you looking like you should work your way into a crowd to hear a political speech.
But from a safe distance, from time to time, we took breaks to go listen to the candidate speak.  Two thirty-something women on my team, both wives with young children at home, stood behind and one said, "I wonder if I could throw my panties at him from here?"  And the other replied, "Let's try."  Thankfully, they were kidding.

I had been attracted to Edwards because he was the only presidential candidate in history who had plainly announced that he wanted to establish a single payer health care plan in America, completely shutting out the insurance companies which are, in my opinion, the real death panels in America.... But clearly these two women saw something else in Edwards..... a handsome, articulate, millionaire who might become the president of the United States.

While these women from my former church were just inappropriately fanaticizing, evidently, there was at least one campaign staffer with similar motivations.

A lot of time has passed since then.  Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan drug on.  The world ecology is heating up and the world markets have cooled down.  Banking fraud, abuses of power on Wall Street and graft in military contractors in the Middle East have made the news but have never resulted in an indictment or a trial.  Billions of dollars have been lost, tens of thousands of people have died unnecessarily, and even more families have been evicted from their homes but no one is held responsible.

The government did, however, find the funds and the legal force of will to put John Edwards on trial for having an affair.  That wasn't the formal charge but that's basically what it was about..... just as President Clinton was not really impeached for perjury, it was really because he had been caught lying to cover up an affair.

Our current president is using predator drone aircraft to target and kill people on his list of dangerous people, sometimes killing American citizens who have not been found guilty of a crime or even had the formality of being charged with a crime and tried in absentia.  And no one in the network news agencies is even raising an objection.  You can send a robot to kill an unindicted citizen from the air on the other side of the world but you better not get caught in an extra-marital dalliance or there will be serious consequences.

All of these things are elements in the story of King David and the wife of Uriah, Bathsheba.  There are a lot of things you could say about this warrior king that would seem to be more grievous than that he had an affair, assuming that Bathsheba was a willing partner in the relationship..... not a detail ancient writers tended to include in their stories.

What was most crucially missing in the stories of John Edwards, Bill Clinton and the biblical account of David, was a willingness to confess that they had done something wrong..... and not something wrong in business or on the battlefield but in the bedroom..... which, though arguably not as serious as killing tens of thousands of people or evicting hundreds of thousands of families from their homes.... But it is unavoidably more personal, closer to your ego, your sense of yourself, your need to be looked up to.  Edwards evidently spent a lot of money trying to hide his dalliance even though it was going to end up with a name and a birth certificate.  Clinton tied up congress and way too much media time and King David not only had an innocent man killed but he involved members of his family and the military in the plot to kill an innocent man for no reason but to cover up his affair.

Let me ask you to look at this metaphorically:  Through the years it has been my good fortune to know several physicians of various sorts in the congregations I have served.  Medical malpractice is the bogyman that haunts every physician I have ever known even though no living physician has ever been found guilty of medical malpractice in Greene Co.

No matter how exhausted, no matter how over worked, no matter how complicated the disease or the procedure.... No physician is ever in a position to say, simply, "I made a mistake."  Insurance companies, lawyers, hospital administrators and peers, all push every doctor to defend everything that they have ever done as having been the right thing to do, the only thing to be done under the circumstances.

When I was working on my doctorate, I was working as a chaplain in the VA hospital next door to Vanderbilt and because I lived so far away, when it was my turn to take call at night, I had to sleep in the residents' ward to be available for emergencies.  Consequently, I got up and ate with them in the doctor's dining hall.

One morning, one surgeon asked his friend across the table from us, "Do you remember that guy who died on the table this morning?"  And the other doctor assured him that he remembered very well.  The first doctor said, "Just before he went into arrest, I felt my scalpel punch through something.  Do you think I should tell the chief of surgery?"  His friend dropped his fork and looked at him as if he had lost his mind and replied, "Not only should you not tell him, you shouldn't be telling me!"

I have always found that to be the most ridiculous set of rules I have ever seen.  I'm a fairly clever guy... I have a lot more education than is required for my profession.... I have 32 years of experience.... And I make mistakes every single day.  I forget things.  I say the wrong thing.  I lose my temper.  I fail to edit my own writing properly.  I sometimes make judgments with insufficient evidence....

Now, I'm not delivering babies or doing brain surgery back here, and if I were, I'm certain that I would be more careful.... But if we were to get the spouses of any one of our physicians in our church alone and ask them, "Is the good doctor perfect or does he or she sometimes make mistakes....?"  Dr. Gill is single and so am I and sometimes it is best just not to have a potential critic too close to you but you get my meaning don't you?

It is insane to expect anyone in any profession, no matter how experienced, educated, talented and well intended to never make a mistake.  It is ridiculous to assume that anyone makes it through life without a lapse in moral judgment but we set up our moral standards in a way that we don't seem to honor truthful confession.
The puritanical Christian values of at least America's media suggest when you are caught in a moral mistake, the only thing you can do is lie.  I'm suggesting that there is something very unhealthy on both sides of that exchange.

The famous author of The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck, also wrote a rather less popular book about human evil entitled "The People of the Lie."  The "lie" referenced in the title is probably not what you would expect.  The lie that is the root of evil in the human character, Peck argues, is the insistence that we are innocent, that we have not done anything wrong.  

I have argued with friends in the media that when a reporter asks the president of the United States about something as personal as their sex life that they deserve whatever lie the POTUS comes up with at that moment. There are things that should be off limits to the prying eyes of the public and if some reporter wants personal dirt on a public figure then I don't think anyone owes them a response at all.

But from David through a long line of public figures, male and female, political and religious, we find that even murder is not untenable when it comes to hiding our faults.  That is how deeply rooted the lie of innocence is in our psyche.  Maybe because we don't believe that forgiveness is real.... Maybe we're convinced that innocence is the only way to survive, even if it doesn't exist.

What Peck argues, and I find that it is a crucial insight into the value of having a spiritual life, is that we have to give up the pretense of innocence.
Doing that means that we have to be willing to accept forgiveness and, in turn, to be decisively forgiving.  It is no surprise then, that the Lord's Prayer, which has often been described as being the perfect prayer, includes in its brief paragraph the sentence, "forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us."  Forgiving and being forgiven go hand in hand and it doesn't much work when you try to have one without the other.

I know that a lot of our progressive friends are surprised to see that among the few things that we have not given up from our previous traditional Christian worship, is the inclusion of a prayer of confession.  I sometimes wonder myself if it is too negative, to closely wedded to the neurotic guilt of the religion from which we have emerged but every time I think about changing the description and the character of that part of our service, I am reminded of the need we have as a community and as individuals, to practice our ability to just tell the truth, to confess our sins, to own our mistakes, and to ask for forgiveness, reconciliation, and the renewal of a fresh start from our family and our faith community.

When we insist on being seen as innocent, we never let go of the wrong that hurts us.  When we refuse to forgive, the burden of resentment grows so large that it will crush us.

There is an old Buddhist parable about two monks who were traveling together on a long journey.  They came to a river crossing where the water had risen a couple of feet above the bridge and there was a beautiful woman wearing a traditional silk gown and stockings who stood looking at the water, perplexed as to how she could get across without ruining her expensive clothing.

The rule of in the monastery of these monks was that they were not to ever speak to, let alone touch a woman. But in those circumstances, the older monk invited the woman to sit on his shoulders and he carried her across the bridge and set her down on the other side.

The two brothers continued walking in silence for another two days, neither saying a word. As they finally approached the monastery, the younger monk asked his mentor how he was going to account for his contact with the woman.  The elder monk looked as his brother and said, "Are you still carrying her on your back?  I set her down two days ago."

If you are carrying resentments from some wrong that was done to you long ago, I would like to suggest to you that this would be an excellent time for you to set that burden down.  If you are hiding behind a false mask of perfection or innocence, let me assure you, we already know that you're not all that and a bag of chips and we have already decided that we both forgive you and love you and we're not especially interested in hearing all of the details...... we set the job of judging you down a long time ago.

You are free.  Be at peace with God and with one another.

God Has No Religion

July 22, 2012     Proper 11
Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor

2 Samuel 7:1-14a              
Now when the king was settled in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, 2the king said to the prophet Nathan, "See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent." 3Nathan said to the king, "Go, do all that you have in mind; for the Lord is with you.   4But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan: 5Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? 6I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. 7Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, "Why have you not built me a house of cedar?" 8Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the Lord of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; 9and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. 10And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, 11from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. 12When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use, with blows inflicted by human beings.

Mohandas Gandhi was born in British ruled India. As a young man, in order to be successful, he tried to become as much of an Englishman as he could.  He went to England to study law.  He practiced Christianity.  He dressed like an English gentleman, tried to speak and act like one.  But he discovered that no matter how English an Indian tried to be, that he could never be accepted as one of them.

That disappointment motivated him to look again at what it meant to be an occupied country and to have one's religion and culture demeaned and extinguished.  He returned to the religion of his homeland and resumed dressing, and behaving in a way reflective of his own culture.  For a while, it would be fair to say, that he was something of a sectarian Hindu but as he spiritually evolved he began to accept all world religions as having both insights and flaws.

He famous replied to one person who asked him if he accepted Christianity by saying, "I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians, they are so unlike your Christ," which may be only an approximate quote given in an interview.

What he did say that I would like for us to pay more attention to is that "God has no religion."  God is not a Muslim, God is not Buddhist, or Confucian, nor is God Jewish or Hindu and God is not Christian.  All of the religions of the world are an attempt by a specific culture to express their most deeply held beliefs about their object of greatest concern.

I always ask my students to think of a religion in the way that they think of a language.  Christianity is a language that tries to speak of God, and so is Judaism and Buddhism....  And just as you cannot say that French is right and Spanish is wrong, it makes no sense to say that one religion is right and all others are wrong.

But that doesn't mean that they are all the same.  The reason why most opera is written in Italian is because that language is simply more beautiful when sung in the grand style of opera.  Regional languages are going to have some advantages in describing the life and experience of people in that region but it doesn't mean that the other languages are wrong.

God doesn't have a religion.  Religions are our way of trying to describe God.  Everyone here grew up being primarily influenced by the Christian language set and we are the most comfortable using that language to express our faith but would you really try to teach concepts of the Trinity to a Buddhist, or try to convince a Jew to believe in incarnation or atonement by substitutionary death?

Some people would, of course, but we don't go to that church anymore do we?

The second of the 8 points we publish on the front of our bulletin every week says, "By calling ourselves progressive, we mean that we are Christians who affirm that the teachings of Jesus provide but one of many ways to experience the sacredness and oneness of life, and that we can draw from diverse sources of wisdom in our spiritual journey."  Though, I think that Michael Franti says that more succinctly in his song, "East to the West" when he shouts, "God is too big for just one religion!"

Still, we almost always base our services, not only on a text from the Christian Bible, but usually one of the choices from the common lectionary.  This keeps us in a kind of synchronous conversation with a lot of our peers in the Christian churches around us.  But I'll admit that some weeks none of the offerings in the lectionary really speak to my progressive beliefs but I always manage to find a topic that I believe is relevant to our day.

Today is the first time in my 33 years of preaching that I have chosen a test, not for what it offers but specifically because I want to speak in opposition to it.  Rev. Mel read for us that labored passage in 2 Samuel about how God commissioned the building of the temple in Jerusalem.  I would like to go on the record immediately saying that I do not believe that God is interested in either architecture or real estate.

I do not believe that one mountain is more holy than another or one building more sacred than another.  Again, I love what Michael Franti says in his wonderful song, "Hello, Bonjour" Every bit of land is a holy land and every drop of water is holy water and every single child is a son or a daughter of the One Earth Momma and the One Earth Papa.

Let's be very factual about this:  cities build great religious temples and cathedrals to make their city seem important, powerful, wealthy and superior to their neighbors.  There is sincere devotion and a desire to give honor to God in there but, folks, do you know what the difference between a city and a town is?  A city has a cathedral and a town does not.

When you are a tourist in Paris you go to Notre Dame and San Supice, when you go to London you visit Westminster Abby and St Paul's, when you go to Egypt you visit the grand mosque of Cairo and the temples of Luxor and Karnak.  The ancient Judeans didn't have a directive from God to build a temple.  The building of the temple is how David wanted to make Jerusalem the capital of a united Judah and to make the city where he was the ruler the most important site in the region.

But since we were children we have known that God doesn't live in a house.  God doesn't need a building.... The very suggestion is blasphemous.  But what we need to accept with the same certainty is that God doesn't fit in your box, or my box, or the Jewish box, or the Muslim box.

Once you accept that fact, then what we realize that we are giving up is religious certainty..... and that is why there are not more of us here on Sundays.  Most people want certainty.  They don't want to believe, they want to know.  They want to be confident in the face of death and the prospect of judgment.

And so, even though they cannot know, they cannot be certain, they choose to act as if they can be.  Progressives choose honest uncertainty over false certainty.  It is not easy, especially not at first.... It can be frightening but most of us who are here realized that we were more angry about having been lied to and manipulated by religion than we were afraid of living with uncertainty.

People will say that wars are fought over religious differences but I pretty sure that is hog wash.  Governments use religion to whip up the simple minded to make them go fight their wars, but the government doesn't want to go to war over religion.  Governments go to war to gain wealth, real estate or power.... They just have to dress it up in fear and religion to get the poor people to be willing to die in a war.  ....let me know if I'm going too fast for you!

We acknowledge that a great deal of our religious belief is based on faith and hope and about those things we need to be liberal in allowing others to believe differently.  What we, in this church, have elected to focus on is what we can know.  As a matter of faith and practice, we believe that love is superior to hate.  That forgiveness is better than resentment.  That poverty, hunger, homelessness and illness are not divine judgments but they are opportunities for us to show compassion and to practice love.  We will work for peace and sacrifice to avoid war.  We will love our country and often do so by challenging our government when our politicians lower the ethical standards of what it takes to be a great nation.

We will teach our children to love God by first loving one another without regard for race, nationality, sexual orientation, class, age or appearance.

We will challenge one another to care for our earth and one another just as we care for ourselves.  And we will speak up for justice, even when everyone else is silent.

I don't believe that God told us to build a temple or a cathedral or a box of any kind..... we fill our boxes with our sacrificial compassion and we take it out into the streets wherever we are needed and that is doctrine, creed and religion enough.

The Evil We Do to Fit In

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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