Her Name is Malala

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learning to Lead from Behind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stating the Obvious

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
Oct. 14, 2012    Proper  23

Amos 5:6-7, 10-15                      
6 Seek the Lord and live, or he will break out against the house of Joseph like fire,
   and it will devour Bethel, with no one to quench it.
7 Ah, you that turn justice to wormwood, and bring righteousness to the ground!
10 They hate the one who reproves in the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks the truth.
11 Therefore, because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain,
you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them;
you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.
12 For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins--
you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate.
13 Therefore the prudent will keep silent in such a time; for it is an evil time.
14 Seek good and not evil, that you may live;
and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you, just as you have said.
15 Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate;
it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

I was living in Louisville, KY when we first adopted our infant daughter from Korea.  I was, of course, married at that time..... as hard as that may be to believe for some of you who know me best.  We had to endure a number of rather peculiar questions about our decision, some of which were insanely personal and others were just, well, really stupid.  I will not reveal which family member asked us if we planned to tell our very Asian daughter that she was adopted.  The strangest inquiries came from total strangers in public places.

One day, when Valerie was more than a year old and had come into her beautiful long black Korean hair, her mother and I were grocery shopping with Valerie riding along in the cart.  A woman came up beside us and said, "What a beautiful child, did you adopt her?"

Being a bit weary with these impromptu invasions of privacy, without answering the woman, I turned to my wife and said, "See, no one thinks she looks like me, isn't there something you want to tell me?"  My former wife did not universally enjoy my sense of humor but when that woman grabbed her purse and abandoned her shopping cart to sprint for the front door, even she was able to enjoy my extemporaneous "why don't you mind your own business" lesson that day.

There are things that are so obvious that they shouldn't have to be said and yet, we end up saying them and even then, the obvious does not always win.  I'm reading a new book that I recommend to you very highly.  It is written by an Episcopal priest who was previously unknown to me.  His name is Harry Cook and the book is entitled, "Long Live Salvation by Works". I was first drawn to this book by a single quote from it that a friend emailed to me.  Cook says, "It is an axiom of human behavior that you cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place. However, a person who did reason himself into a position might be reasoned out of it and into another more reasonable position."

That single sentence sums up a lot of what I have found difficult in my life as a religious person.  There is so much about religion that we do not arrive at by reason.  We are told to believe certain things, and we are told to believe them emphatically and never to let them go.

You would not, through observation of the world or through any personal experience, come to believe in the divinity of Jesus, or the sanctity of sacraments.  You would not reason your way into believing in incarnation, heaven and hell or substitutionary death.
And so, when we try to apply reason to the practice of our spirituality, we find ourselves constantly at odds with those who refuse to allow reason to be a part of their thinking.

Religious people are so often like the Queen in "Through the Looking Glass" who, when Alice objected:  "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Lewis Carol, of course, was not simply writing humor for children.  Once you can get a person practiced to believe impossible things then you can get them to believe almost anything.  And, I'm afraid, a lot of our early religious training works to anesthetize our ability to think critically.

Sometimes we miss a lot of what even the Bible says because we have been trained to look at it as if it were a book full of magical spells.... it becomes so holy in our minds that it becomes incomprehensible.  We tend to think of the word "prophet" to mean someone who has divine insight into the future, like a saintly Nostradamus.  That is not true at all.  The prophets rarely foretold the future.  They almost always talk about the present.  The meaning of the word "prophesy" is no different that the meaning of our word "to preach."

The prophets were said to speak in a way that made the people's ears to tingle, to make them want to cover their ears.  They were not foretelling distant future events, the coming of a later messiah nor the end of time.

They mostly talked about the present time with such naked honesty that it made people put them into prison or kill them rather than to deal with what they were saying.  We say that the role of the prophetic church is to speak the truth to power but power rarely wants to hear it.

It was the prophetic church that stood up to the abuses of our colonizers.  It was the prophetic church that challenged the practices of child labor in the early textile industry.... that challenged the institution of slavery.... the relegation of women to second class status.... the labor abuses of immigrants and defenseless workers.

Institutional religion has a whole long laundry list of social justice issues in which they were on the wrong side of ethics.... but that's not because they were accustomed to speaking truth, it is because they were well practiced in believing six impossible things before breakfast.

The emerging church of the 21st century must stop asking people to believe what cannot be known and that which is inherently unreasonable.  Faith is compatible with hope but not with ignorance.  The prophets were not magical diviners who had angels whispering in their ears, they were people who were able to speak the truth to power.

Consider this text before us today from the 5th chapter of Amos.  Sure, he is pronouncing divine judgment on the people but look at why:
in verse 11 he says very clearly that their nation is going to fall apart "because you trample on the poor."  He says in verse 12 that they take bribes and push the needy away from the gate.  Can the modern church hear the voice of its own prophets?

Let me give you an example that we have never talked about before..... a clean slate issue.
Let's just look at some facts about voter fraud and voter suppression.  There have been lobbyists working across the nation to change voter laws to require that every voter present a photo ID.  It is estimated that over 20 million voters do not have a photo ID which is normally associated with owning a car.  Of that 20 million people who do not have a driver's license, almost all of them, statistically speaking, are poor and many are minorities.

By both instituting photo ID's and restricting pre election day voting, lobbyists are potentially removing more than 20 million votes in the name of protecting our elections from voter fraud.  How many cases of voter fraud do we typically have in a year in the USA?  Between 5 and 20.  So, when politicians are willing to keep 20 million poor and minority voters from voting to avoid 5 to 20 cases of voter fraud, can you possibly make yourself believe that the motivation is to avoid voter fraud?

You see, we are interested in calling out the public to embrace the truth.  This week, billboards began appearing in minority neighborhoods in Cleveland, OH that read, "Voter Fraud is punishable by a 3.5 year prison sentence and a $10,000 fine."  These billboards are only appearing where there are immigrants and poor blacks who are generally expected to vote democratic in this very important swing state.

You can understand that there are people who are inspired to try and get Obama out of the White House, but once they decide that they can trample on the poor to accomplish that goal then they should not expect persons of conscience to act like we are willing to believe that they are not enemies of democracy and justice.

Now, Plato, in The Republic, advocated that philosophers should be kings.  In our age, we could say, for example, that only people who have an IQ over 140 should be allowed to vote.  So if only geniuses could run the government, we would have a very efficient and dependable government.

But one of the interloculars in Plato's Republic, once Socrates had described this wonderful state run by philosopher kings, asked, "But who would want to live there?"  An America run only by and for the rich or an America run only by and for the elite would not be an America we would long want to live in.

As sloppy and inefficient as it is, the beauty of our nation is found in striving for equality among all people..... we are nowhere near there..... as religious people we can say that being rich is not a blessing and being poor is not a curse but when you have lived on both sides of that fence you can say with the pigs in Animal Farm that some of us are just more equal than others.

Traditional religious people want us to show kindness to the poor, the hungry, the sick, as sort of the icing on top of our self congratulatory religious beliefs that we are heaven bound travelers on a sacred highway.  The prophets asked us to be more devoted to the absolute truth than to any dogma or religious ritual.

In our very complicated world in which politicians play dice with deciding which sick people get health care, which people will live in mansions and which live under bridges, and who gets to vote and who doesn't..... then we should be considered to be dangerous people who will always take the side of the truth rather than the powerful and that devotion to compassion and reason is now our sacred scripture and our holy quest.

Curse God and Die

Community Christian Church
Dr. David Trobisch
October 7, 2012

Job 1:1, 2:1-10
1:1 There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.
2:1 One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the LORD.
2:2 The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?"
Satan answered the LORD, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it."
2:3 The LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason."
2:4 Then Satan answered the LORD, "Skin for skin! All that people have they will give to save their lives. 2:5 But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face."
2:6 The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life."
2:7 So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. 2:8 Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes.
2:9 Then his wife said to him, "Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die."
2:10 But he said to her, "You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?" In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

The name of my grandfather was Ralph Hult. His family had emigrated from Sweden to Nebraska in the 18 hundreds.

As a young man he felt the call to ministry. He received a full scholarship to study at Augustana College in Rock Island.

At the age of thirty, he and my grandmother Gertrude served as missionaries in Africa. They first were in Nigeria, where Ralph Hult traveled inland and later also served in Nigeria, all in all for six years. During this time my uncles Paul and John and my mother Ingrid were born. And Ralph Hult had another daughter, Ruth, who died shortly after she was born, and who is buried in Tanzania, on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Ralph Hult also traveled inland and became one of the first white men to travel through Central Africa.
In the area of what is today Chad, Ralph Hult had a spiritual experience. God wanted him to serve as a missionary to a specific tribe.

But when Ralph Hult returned to the United States on furlough, he was not able to persuade his mission board to send him back. In fact, the mission board had just decided that they would not continue the Sudan Mission into French speaking Africa, which Ralph Hult had pioneered.
Fifteen years later, in the dawn of World War Two, the German Lutheran missionaries in British East Africa either interned or deported because of the war. And the German Lutherans asked the American Lutherans to take over the mission fields that were left leaderless.

So the Mission Board in Minneapolis remembered that rogue pastor in Missouri, swallowed their pride, and sent him a letter. They inquired in cautious tones whether Ralph Hult, now fifty-two years old and the father of ten, would consider returning to Tanzania for the duration of the emergency. If he would help to organize the transition, they would in return send him to the tribe that he felt called to minister to.

It took the mission board 15 long years before they decided to send him to Africa again. And when they did, the year was 1940, the world was in turmoil, and the United States were just about to enter World War Two. Ralph Hult The boat, which was supposed to bring him to Tanzania, was the "Zamzam", an 8,000-ton ship, which had served as a British troopship during World War I. More than one hundred missionaries,  some with wives and children,  representing 20 different denominations, were on the Zamzam  when it started out from New York in the spring of 1941.

Among the travelers was a group of young ambulance drivers  who tried to escape the draft. And on the first evening, as the ship glided down the Hudson River past the Statue of Liberty, 120 missionaries sang the hymn "Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me" while the ambulance drivers tried to drown them out with an impudent song of their own. If the missionaries are to believed, those young men were drunk most of the time.

But the real conflict, it seemed, was between the missionaries themselves.

There were Lutherans, Methodists, Adventists, Catholics, and Pentecostals on board. Knowing how stubborn my grandfather could be in matters of faith  I do not find it hard to imagine  that there may just have been a thing or two  he wished to clarify with his fellow theologians.

The Egyptian crew mostly consisted of Muslims.

So what do we have: a ship,  full of Christian missionaries,  constantly rubbing soldiers  steered by Muslims.

At some point during the voyage from Brazil to Capetown, the captain received orders to sail under blackout. British intelligence sent coded radio instructions charting a safe course.
And when everyone retired the evening of April 16th 1941 it felt like any other night on board the ship. They were counting off the days until the Cape would come in sight, and they would disembark and set foot on African soil for the first time.

Little did the passengers know that for days they had been secretly followed by a German raider.

My grandfather was awakened at dawn by what he thought at first was the crash of a large wave against the ship. The second "wave" however, made him realize that the ship was being shelled. He immediately got dressed and went on deck. The passengers seemed to be calm but the crew panicked. Nevertheless Ralph Hult was able to reach his assigned lifeboat. As soon as the boat had been lowered, however, they discovered that shrapnel of the shells had torn a hole in it. The boat tipped over, throwing all into the shark infested sea.

And when after a while  the Egyptian seamen had managed to crawl up on the overturned boat were lifting up their arms to call on Allah, spirited Ralph Hult pleaded with them to lower their arms and pull at least the floating children out of the water.

The German raider sent out rescue boats. And in what my grandfather later would describe as "a business-like manner" brought passengers, baggage and other material from the Zamzam to the raider. Eight hours after the Zamzam had been shelled the ship sunk.

Miraculously, all passengers survived. Only two men had received severe injuries.

Of course: two ambulance drivers!

The Germans realized their mistake  but they tried to hide the sinking. This incident could have triggered the US participation in World War 2 if it had been publicized.
There were 330 ship wrecked passengers from the Zamzam who had to be put up on the German ship: 35 children, 76 women -- 5 of the women were pregnant. But the German ship had accommodations for only 35 passengers. Three women were sharing two mattresses on the decks of public rooms. In the forward hatch 108 men were sleeping head to foot and shoulder to shoulder  on rough wooden planks  in a total space of 50 feet by 50 feet.

Ralph Hult was  as I told you  a good Lutheran. And so were the soldiers in Hitler's navy. Every Sunday there would be a Lutheran worship service on deck. And the German chaplain would preach. And the soldiers would sing hymns. And my grand father would know those hymns.
The toughest message these missionaries had to learn during their voyage was that the enemy  Hitler's army  shared the same Lutheran faith in a loving and caring God.

The German captain received instructions from Berlin to bring the passengers to a port in occupied France. To get there, however, the ship had to run through the British sea-blockade. All the passengers were forced under deck where they waited in complete darkness. Terrified. Afraid to be sunk again, but this time from their friends and allies. At any given moment ship could collide with a British mine or a torpedo could penetrate the iron hull of the ship.

The voyage from where the Zamzam sunk to the port France, where the passengers disembarked, lasted five weeks. By that time the mission boards had informed the families that the ship and every soul on it was lost. Memorial services were organized. My mother was 14 years old, when the principal of her school took her out of the class room and told her: "Ingrid, your father is dead."

One of the last three American passengers on the Zamzam to return to the US was Ralph Hult. After waiting for 15 years for his mission board to send him  after being so close to the continent God called him to serve  after surviving a shipwreck and barely avoiding a second one Ralph Hult was standing again at the peer in New York, where he had left.

Ralph Hult finally did make it to Tanzania. On board a monition ship. He helped take over the mission stations from the Germans. But on a trip to Dar es Salaam he died of heart failure in a hospital. He had checked himself in, but no one knew who he was and who to notify. Following the Islamic custom he was buried before sunset the same day. No friends, no colleagues, no family attended the ceremony.
Ralph Hult never made it to the tribe that God had called him to serve.

We tend to tell stories of God's promises  to show how God is reliable, how God carries us through. But the Bible has other stories as well. Like the story of Job.
God and Satan have a bet. For no good reason, God admits in the story, He turned against Job and destroyed him.
And Job's family? How supportive are they? His wife looks at him  sitting among the ashes, scratching his sores with a potsherd, and all the consolation she has to offer is: "Curse God and die!"

Being a Christian is about sharing a boat with people you do not necessarily like. The conflict is in the boat. Like in the Zamzam.
This is why we use the language of family when we talk about our faith community: we are brothers and sisters. We cannot choose our brother or our sister. Even if we don't like them, they will not go away.
I do not know if you ever were on a boat  figuratively speaking  shelled and sunk by your sisters and brothers in faith. Chances are, you know what I am talking about.

But the true conflict is not in the boat. The real problem is with God. Why is God so unreliable? Why doesn't God do what we ask God to do? Why do things happen to us  that make no sense?
Why do things happen to us  that make no sense?
Why does God do what God does?  I have no good answer for you. But I can tell you that on other days the very same events look differently. In all the disappointments, tragedies, horrors and pain  we can see the light. We can look at the exact same events in our past and see them as blessings. We can even say "Thank you" for what happened.
I cannot tell you why this is, but I can tell you that it is true. We call it hope. And faith.
My grandfather, Ralph Hult, was not an unhappy man.
Blessed is who feels a call from God - and responds to it. Life is a voyage. But it is not so much about arriving as it is about travelling.
God bless you all on your voyage!
AMEN

The Persian Horse

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor  
Sept. 30, 2012    Proper 21

Mark 9:41-50
41For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.
42"If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. 43If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. 45And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. 47And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, 48where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.
49"For everyone will be salted with fire. 50Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another."

Cursing is a peculiar art, and it is, in my opinion, a sadly failing art in our culture.  Our curses are few and very crude.  Four centuries ago, Shakespeare peppered his plays with almost throwaway insults that were wonderful:

"Sir, my desire is that we become much better strangers."
"I could endure anything before but a cat, and now he's a cat to me." Or, "Let's meet as little as we can."

We would not generally tell someone that they are fat but in a more subtle time, the English might say, "By truth, your girth doth make a mill stone seem a feather."

We have no more imagination than to simply say that someone is just ugly but the English might say, "Thy vile canker-blossom'd countenance curdles milk and sours beer."

I'm not encouraging you to be rude, I'm just saying that when you are rude, you could try to use a little more creative flair.

Cursing in our era tends to be one of only two things.  You might hear someone telling someone to go to place of eternal torment.... Which, clearly, expresses some sincere anger.... But the other common curse wishes a sexual encounter on another person, which, as curses go, doesn't really make much sense.  Our curses are either wishing someone eternal torment or brief ecstasy.  Which makes no more sense than angrily saying, "I hope your daughter gets into Harvard."  Or "I hope you get a substantial promotion."

That one I can't make sense out of but the former seems to come from a much deeper necessity.  A necessity because the world is unfair, it is especially unfair to people who live in militarily occupied nations.... It is unfair to slaves who are bought and sold.... It is unfair to the poor who are defined by cast, class or race to be perpetually poor, generation after generation.

Something innate in our souls calls out for justice.  In the most ancient strata of human religious thinking, the gods and demons meted out reward and punishment instantaneously.  Earthquakes, floods, droughts and plagues were signs of god's wrath and bumper crops, healthy births and victory on the battlefield were signs of god's favor.

That system proved to be unsatisfactory.  Sacrificing animals really doesn't make it rain or make crops grow.  Carrying religious idols and emblems into battle will not really insure victory over bad military odds.

Our ancestors could not accept that God was either indifferent or unjust but if you just look at the events of current times or even of history, a plausible case could be made for accusing God of being indifferent, unjust or just plain old ineffective.  Various religious solutions for this dilemma have been offered.... Reincarnation continues to be an inviting idea to many.... If life sucks this time around, you have an infinite number of opportunities for life to suck even more.

It was the ancient Persians who first put into words the solution that seems to have mostly stuck, at least for modern Christians, Muslims and some Jews.

Our ancestors long held fairly nebulous hopes that there was some life beyond this life.  Ancient Jews had almost nothing to say about it beyond the shadowy house of Sheol, and ancient Egyptians held only to a hope that the demigod pharaohs had a future.

The Persians, as envisioned by Zoroaster, believed that everyone marched from death into eternity and there had to cross a bridge into the eternal world from which all souls come.  The bridge, however, crosses over a deep pit of fire and if you have lived a good life, the bridge is wide and easy but if you have not lived well, the bridge turns and is as narrow as the blade of a knife, so that the unjust fall into the eternal flame.

Hebrew slaves were exposed to this very convenient religious belief while they were in captivity in Babylon and worked this view of eternity into their post exilic Judaism which gave birth to Christianity and Islam.  I say that it is a convenient religious creation because it allows us to believe that God is just, that the world, though it looks unfair, will be ultimately set right.


On the one hand, that hope becomes a way of tolerating the gross injustices of life.  But on the down side, it becomes a tool for keeping people in oppression.  African slaves introduced to Christianity in North America were told that if they were obedient and worked hard, enduring their misery in this life, would have untold riches and joy in the world to come.

Even St Paul lends his voice to the conviction that this life is so temporary, compared to eternity, that we should suffer in silence, setting our hope on the unseen, unknown, unprovable world of reward for which there is not a scrap of supporting evidence.....the ultimate pig in a poke, the pie in the sky in the by and by promise for which no one can file a complaint of false advertising.

The threat of hell is then used not only to keep the poor and the enslaved in compliant service, but it is also used to keep women in abusive relationships, to tell young men and women that the urges stirring within them can not only lead to incurable diseases and unwanted pregnancy but also to eternity in a place where the flame is unceasing and the worm never dies where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth...... which never seemed to eradicate sexual conduct but it sure invested it with a lot of conflict, guilt and despair.

In very recent years, several evangelical authors have found the courage to take a look at this issue and begin to say things like, "love wins," rejecting the notion that a loving God will burn you up in eternity for doing things that a million years of evolution insists that you will do.


When I was attending the Wild Goose Festival this summer, the film "Hellbound" was being hawked by its producers and the largely evangelical preachers who spoke at that event were nearly doing cartwheels in joy as the movie traces the hell myth back to Zoroastrianism and its influences on evolving Judaism and the birth of Christianity and Islam.  Something they would have known a long time ago if they had bothered to go to school..... but it only seems to infuriate them when I point that out and they generally have to fall back on one of the two insults they know, one of which makes no sense and the other had just be debunked...... it's awkward.

In this we stand at the open mouth of a dark cave with our pre-civilization ancestors.  We do not know what, if anything happens when we die.  We seem to have an innate hope and we have an abundance of ideas, experiences, accounts of angelic sightings, ghosts, bright lights and voices all of which add up to absolutely no proof of anything and no certain conclusions other than that we hope.

Like so many aspects of religions which begin as revolutionary movements of the poor expressing defiance against the powerful, hell is a piece of a formula in search for ultimate justice.... That there are people who are so evil, circumstances so unjust, that surely God can't let it go without some settling of accounts, some justice on the other side of what we can see and know.  But then, as all surviving religions eventually become state religions, the threat of hell is used against the weak and oppressed to keep them in compliance and to control their lives.

What the emerging church must realize is that the spiritual life either has value in and of itself or it has no certain value at all.

When I was a young preacher in Louisville, KY, I taught a Wednesday evening Bible Study in the church's fellowship hall on Taylorsville Road and I had about thirty or forty people in that class.  The next major road to the west was Bardstown Road where there was a very large bar that, on Wednesday nights, held a "naughty nighty competition."  So I regularly thanked those in attendance at the Bible Study for choosing to read the gospels with me rather than going to the naughty nighty competition at the Toy Tiger.

But as I looked at some of the young college students in the class, I thought I could detect a certain discomfort with the choice they had made.  And here is the issue, if you are in Bible study when you would rather be at the Toy Tiger because you are afraid of going to hell then, you have been tricked.

Like all of you, I have hope for life in the future and I can even add to that a bit of faith in a loving and kind God so that whatever the great unknown may be, I am willing to trust God with that.

An engaged spirituality, a religion embedded in the real world, opens its eyes to look at what is through a lens of faith.  Our innate feeling that the world is unjust and that somehow the will of God still favors justice is not wrong, we just anesthetize it with talk about heaven and hell.

Your passion for justice, your desire to ameliorate suffering, to share the resources of the world with those in need..... that is holy and anything that keeps you from working to make that happen, anything that tells you to disengage and leave it in the hands of an unknown hereafter, that, I submit, is the opposite of spirituality..... in fact, when you think about it, it's really not religion, it is just old fashioned stupid.

Some people sitting at their desk watching this sermon on YouTube will protest, but Jesus warned us carefully avoid the unquenchable fire of hell, it is right there in the 9th chapter of Mark.  I can tell you that the preponderance of New Testament scholars from the members of the Jesus Seminar to any Ivy League school you want to name would tell you that though the early church wrote such texts into the gospels that the historical Jesus would not have said that.

I'm here to tell you that even if he did, you need to have the courage to say that even he could be wrong about some things.  Jesus was, at least in part, a product of that same culture that inherited as fact that part of their Persian history that put justice off into the afterlife.  Jesus is a part of that flat earth culture that believed that it rained when God opened doors in the firmament to let the waters above fall on the earth beneath, and that the sun was literally reborn each morning as God drew it across the sky.

What we, as spiritual people in the 21st century must do is to examine the heart of the faith we have inherited, to preach good news to the poor, liberation to the captives, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless and to pay fair wages to laborers.

That's in the prophets, that's in the gospels, that's the preaching of the apostles and testimony of the saints.

You will not often hear me quoting that 18th century Irish American revivalist, Alexander Campbell, but he said this one thing that I love..... that if Christians will get down on the knees and pray for anything for which they will not then stand up and work for, sacrifice for, to make it happen then they are only insulting God and disappointing themselves.

We know enough about hell in the here and now without wasting time on speculation about the afterlife.  Hell is when middle class legislators make it illegal for poor women to manage their own bodies when those legislators can afford to send their kids to Canada or Europe for any medical procedure they make illegal here.  Hell is living in a nation with enough empty foreclosed upon houses to house every homeless person in the country but no one seems to be willing to do the math necessary to correct that absurdity.

Hell is fighting the bloodiest domestic war in history to end slavery in this nation and then blithely accepting slavery produced goods and food because they come from a nation far enough away that we don't see it.  Hell is telling people that they have to get off of welfare and go to work and then we devise a transportation system where you have to buy a car, insurance, gas, pay taxes and fees to get to work.... Which is virtually impossible and at least here in Springfield, we design our bus system routes to keep the number of riders low because it costs too much to subsidize the buses.

 Hell is sending the poor of this nation to kill the poor of another nation to keep the transfer of wealth into the hands of the few sailing on a sea of the blood of the unsuspecting, compliant, obedient poor.  What does your religion have to say to that?
 If you demand that the message of Jesus remain imprisoned in a religion that does not speak to the hell we know in favor of one that doesn't exist then, well, I have a couple of cryptic curses for you, and you can take your choice of which one you like the best, I just insist that you stay out of our way because we are going to try to change the world so that the will of God is done on earth where we can see it.

How Our Cravings Make Us Crazy

September 23, 2012    Proper 20
Community Christian Church  
Roger Ray, pastor

James 3:13 - 4:2                        
13Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. 14But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. 15Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. 16For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. 17But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. 18And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.
4Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? 2You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts.

On Friday morning television crews were out filming images of people sleeping on the streets in sleeping bags.  Some were in small clusters around camp stoves and tents.  But these were not homeless people.  We don't allow homeless people to sleep on the sidewalks.... Even when they are hiding from plain view, our local police force will arrest or evict them, confiscate their belongings and discard them and even take their pets to the animal shelter where they will likely be put down.

No, the people sleeping on the sidewalks this week were in line to buy the new iPhone 5..... a product with differences so subtle from the last version of the iPhone that most of us would be at pains to meaningfully say what they are.  Still, the irony present in the fact that you cannot sleep on the streets if you have no home and nowhere else to go but you can sleep on the streets if you do own a home but you intend to buy something and if that doesn't tell you something of the degree to which capitalism has become America's real religion then, my friends, you are not paying attention.

I don't say that to be hyper-critical of techno-nerds.  I actually have an iPhone 4 myself which I purchased when they added the Siri communication feature, only to discover that I can't communicate with Siri any better than I have been able to communicate with any of the women I've dated over the past two decades.

And I would even say that I need to put some distance between myself and a lot of my very liberal, tree hugging, anti-consumerism friends.  If we all just stop buying things and learn to live very simply on much less then the economy grinds to a halt and the poor suffer even more.  A lot of the hardship we are experiencing across the country right now is a direct result in the slowdown of the economy that has cut production and retail jobs, cut state sales tax income, forcing reductions in school and road budgets and layoffs among police and fire fighters.

Excessive greed and consumerism is part of what caused this economic melt down but the other end of the spectrum has its own monsters.  No matter what else you might want to say about the "dot.com bubble" of the 1990's, the hyper stimulated market was directly responsible for an increase in employment and income and under those circumstances a lot of wonderful things happen that should make both liberals and conservatives happy..... the crime rate went down.... Violent crime by more than 50%.... even the abortion rate went down by 50% because women who feel that they can raise a child are much more likely not to terminate a pregnancy.

Unemployment went down, the numbers of teen pregnancies, single parent births went down and giving to global charities reached all time highs.


A liberal progressive who really wants to see an alleviation of suffering and a raising of the standard of living of the poor needs to take a sober look at the reality of what a bull market can do if all of the profits are not being skimmed off into the pockets of the now infamous 1%.

But, of course, the answer to the poverty issues that plague us today is not nearly so simple as telling people to go buy more, consume more, own more.  The sobering reality is that if we want to give more people a living wage and a decent standard of living then we are going to have consume less but pay a lot more for it..... and that does not translate well to the marketplace.  You will never see a grocery store chain called "Pay More Get Less."

Although, truth be told, that is what our local Farmers' Markets really are.  Buying produce at one of our local Farmers' Markets is good for the environment; it is good for your health, it's good for the local economy but you are going to pay an awful lot for apples and onions.

You can take comfort in knowing that one of our favorite local musicians, Dallas Jones, who also is an farmer, will not have his infant children out in the field digging up potatoes or cracking open pecans by candle light in the basement at night. If you buy local produce you will have to pay American wages to people who work under acceptable first world conditions and then you find out why food at Walmart is so much cheaper.

If you buy food at Chick-fil-A you know that you are getting a little hate and prejudice with your fried chicken.
If you buy produce at Sams and Walmart, which most of us do, then you can know that someone is being abused on the other side of that transaction.  If you are a person of conscience, then certainly you want to work to alleviate suffering and to make the market place more fair, more just, and, if you are a heard hearted greedy capitalist, you at least want to make profits the right size to make market growth sustainable.... During the dot.com bubble, no one was calling President Clinton a communist, were they?

In our scripture lesson from James today, James is making the eternally true observation that greed leads to conflict, even to murder.  No matter what the spin put on international warfare, it is almost never about religion, humanitarian aid, liberation or spreading democracy.... There are times when it is but when you hear hoof beats you think "horses" and not "zebras."  Most wars are about economics, about the market, about profit and power.

James says that the warfare is within us.... We want something and we do not have it and so we will murder to get it.... If not literally, then essentially.  Most of us would be ashamed to wear the shoes on our feet if we saw the conditions in which they were made.  We live with a clear conscience because of what we do not see, what we do not know, but when we refuse to see or become informed, then, in fact, we already know that we will wear the shoes either way.  And that is the point at which spirituality enters the marketplace of both ideas and shoe shopping.

At the heart of Buddhist teaching is what is called the Four Nobel Truths.  It is always dangerous to try to sum up any religious teaching too simply but if you will give me permission to give you a short hand version of the four truths:

The first is that life is full of suffering, dissatisfaction and dis-ease.
The second is that our suffering, dissatisfaction and lack of contentment comes from our unrealized desires.
The third is that the end of this discomfort comes from letting go of all desire.
The fourth point has to do with following what is called the "eight fold path" which consists of consists of: Right Understanding, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.

Really explaining that 4th point would require that you take my course in eastern religious thought..... the tuition for that course at Drury University is $2,400, which gets us back to the whole point about greed, consumerism and camping out in front of the Apple store to get a version of Siri that actually understands me.

The first three points are a bit easier.  When your friend tells you that they are going to Hawaii for two weeks, is your first thought that you are really happy for your friend that they are going to get to have such a nice vacation or is your first thought jealousy?  You see, letting go of desire, being able to have a balanced approach to life goes to the heart of the problem between the first world and the third world.

Would I be willing to get by on three pairs of shoes rather than fifteen pairs of shoes if the people who make my shoes got to eat every day and live in a house that has a floor?  If you cannot answer "yes" to that question then you need to keep coming to church every week until you can.

Finding the right balance to our consumerism that gives others a chance to have a decent life is a spiritual issue.  When we can get our appetites under control then a lot of life factors start to change..... marriages will last longer, children will be better cared for, there will be fewer wars, fewer people who need to sleep on the streets and more people interested in signing up for my college classes..... and that, as Martha Stewart says, would be a good thing.

Teaching and Learning, Learning and Teaching

September 16, 2012    Proper 19
Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor

 

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

In 2004 Missouri earned the dubious distinction of becoming the first state in the union to pass an amendment to our state constitution, banning same sex marriage.  I grew up in Kentucky where, even when I was growing up, our state constitution banned automobiles.  Needless to say, that conservative move by the voters in Kentucky didn't keep cars off the streets any more than Missouri's absurd amendment will stop gay people from falling in love with one another.

When the amendment was put on the ballot, I organized a press conference and invited pastors in the area to join me in making a united statement in opposition to this prejudiced and backward amendment.  And I did have several who joined me for the press conference but I was disappointed that they were all retired pastors.  I was the only pastor at the press conference who was still drawing a salary from a church though I did receive phone calls from a few other parish pastors who said that they would really love to join me but that... as one said, "I have young children at home and I have to keep my job to keep a roof over their heads."

And I don't want to be too diminishing to that response.  I was fired not long after that and I had a kid going into college and a mortgage and a lot of years to work before retirement.  I have felt the fear of economic desperation.
I know what it is like to be over 50 and unemployed and let me tell you, when one big church fires you, there are not a dozen others that come rushing to offer you a job.  Being fired by people whom you have loved and literally grown up with for two decades is traumatic but, and it took me a long time to get to the point of being able to say this, but it may have been one of the best things that ever happened to me.

They say that the best way to defend a lion is to open the cage door.  I had no way of appreciating how small my prison had become until I had been set free.

Our beautiful and poetic reading from Isaiah this morning moves quickly from one image to another.  At first, the prophet is just reveling in the belief that he had been called to be a preacher who is, first and foremost, a teacher:
The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens-- wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.

But then, without explanation, he turns immediately to a violent image, saying:

I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.

On the one hand, the prophet is ebullient about being in a role of teaching prophetic truth but he is aware that people will also pull out his beard and spit in his face for doing it.  And here is what I really want to draw to your attention about his text.  This is not first Isaiah, the writer of the first 39 chapters of Isaiah was predicting the destruction of their nation by a foreign army.
You can easily understand why people would want to fire, abuse or kill a prophet who is predicting doom for his own nation.  We're used to seeing Old Testament prophets being imprisoned or abused for saying things no one wants to hear.

But Second Isaiah, the beautiful poetry from the middle of the book of Isaiah comes from a different preacher in an entirely different generation.  He isn't warning an established nation that they are about to be conquered and carried away into slavery.   He is talking to a ghetto full of slaves who have been in slavery for as long as almost anyone alive could remember.

He is telling them that their cage is open!  They can leave the familiar surroundings of slavery in Persia and return to their own land, rebuild their own nation, observe their own religion and culture and, apparently, a lot of the slaves in ghetto responded by spitting in his face and abusing him.

The famous abolitionist, Harriet Tubman, escaped from slavery but then returned to the south many times to help free others.  She said, late in her life, "I freed thousands of slaves but I could have freed thousands more if only they had realized that they were slaves."

From the days of the ancient Egyptian Pharaohs and the Greek gods of Olympus, governments have used religion to help keep society stable..... as such most houses of worship have been the defenders of the status quo.  Ironically, the prophetic tradition has always stood up to challenge the status quo but the institutional priest and preacher tells people that we have always supported war against whoever we need to kill this year.... We've always hated gays.... We've always bowed to the power of the employer or slave owner..... and you must always believe in the same magic!

Keeping people believing in the same anti-intellectual, anti-logical, anti-critical thinking religion is a part of keeping them from questioning authority and the social order. Once you can make someone believe something that is totally absurd then you can get them to do almost anything, from strapping on a suicide bomber vest to telling your own son or daughter to get out of the house because they are gay...... nothing a sane person would do who didn't have their head filled with non-sense.

Once you question ancient religious assertions that tell you that you are so sinful that God had to kill himself..... that even though life is unfair, unjust and cruel in this world that God made, there is another world that God also made that is either infinitely more cruel or incomprehensibly cushy..... of course, God could have started you out in the cushy world but a little suffering for a few decades here will make you appreciate it all the more...... there are some other things about preachers inside of fish and walking on the water but basically, just don't think and don't question the guy in the big dress.

I was in graduate school more than 30 years ago and even then some of my biblical professors would occasionally introduce a lecture by saying, "Now you can't say this in your church......" assuming that if we took good scholarship into the parish that the stupid people there would revolt and fire us.

And that is why, most churches today hold onto a seventeenth century way of talking inside their churches while people have to leave and try to live in the 21st century.... And so, is it any surprise that there are people who insist that global warming is not real because they don't believe in it.  They can say that the United States has the best health care in the world because they refuse to accept the actual research that places us somewhere around 35th in the world.  Even C. S. Lewis, one of the darlings of the evangelical church, said that a mad man cannot put out the light of the sun by writing the word "darkness" on his cell wall.... And yet traditional religion expects to do basically that..... assuming that you can recite a creed and make it true because you and a lot of other people say it in unison.  Give me someone who believes that the doctrine of the Trinity accurately describes the nature of the one true God and, trust me, you are looking at a person who can be made to believe that you can cut taxes and balance the federal budget at the same time.... No really, some people will believe anything!

Those of you who are on my email list have seen many of the letters from viewers we have from around the world who often write saying that they have never heard anything like what I tell them about the Bible or about a way of being Christian that is free of superstition and magic..... that you can still be devoted to the ethical teachings of Jesus without believing in blood sacrifice or the threat of a burning hell..... or the alternative with the streets of gold and dozens of virgins..... and what is so special about that if they all insist upon remaining virgins for all of eternity anyway?

But here is the newsflash for you..... there is nothing that I have said that is original to me.... I'm not an original scholar in any way.... The only thing different about me is that I am no longer afraid..... if there is anything about me that is different from a garden variety preacher it is that I have failed to pay attention to my professors when they said to us, "You can't say this in church."

John Shelby Spong says that the fastest grown church in America is the Church Alumni Association because people are just not going to go on being willing to assassinate their brains and believe stuff that is clearly not true that leads to all kinds of oppression, violence and discrimination.

And so, I believe, the only church that will survive, the only one that should survive, is the one that joins Isaiah in courageously telling the truth, even if it makes people mad.... Even if they would prefer to remain in mental slavery, even if they prefer the cage to freedom.

We have already freed thousands from the grip of irrational fear, guilt and superstition and there are thousands more to free whenever they are willing to stop being enslaved to ignorance and fear.

To those who are willing to unplug from the matrix of illusion and lies, welcome to reality.  It isn't all that pretty but I can tell you this, if you still want to go to heaven you are going to have to roll up your sleeves and join us in the trenches because the only heaven we are sure of is the one we work together to build in this world by fighting against poverty, discrimination, war and injustice.