A Way of Living

Community Christian Church of Springfield
Roger Ray, pastor
December 30, 2012    Christmas 1

Colossians 3:12-17
12As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 13Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. 16Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. 17And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

The first Hindu temple in the United States was dedicated in 1977.  Hindus were late coming to the United States but large numbers of Indians made their way to our shores in the late 70's and early 80's and it was then that their faith was met with a question they were not prepared to answer.  Curious Christians in Sunday School classes, excited by the exotic presence of a new religion, politely asked, "What do Hindu's believe?"

They expected to be handed a holy book, like the Bible, and to be introduced to hymns, prayers and worship services and probably a story about an incarnation of God in human form.  And while Hindus have such things, in fact, not just one of any of them but many gods, incarnations, texts and traditions but never in India had anyone demanded a list of beliefs.

To satisfy those who could only approach faith from that perspective, a list of beliefs was eventually formed but it would not prove to be very satisfactory, neither to inquisitive Americans nor to the native practitioners of Hinduism.

What I think might have surprised many of those Sunday school classes struggling to understand Hinduism is that early Christians would not have gotten their question very well either.  If you had asked Jesus of Nazareth what he wanted people to believe he would likely have just stared at you.  Paul might have had an answer but he wouldn't have spent much time on it.

The earliest name for Christians was "followers of the way."  The word "disciple" means to be a student, an understudy of sorts.  The question early Hindu immigrants could have answered that would have made more sense to them would be, "How are you Hindu?"  or "What do you do?"  That is the question that Jesus or Paul might have more likely been interested in answering.

The New Testament offers several bits of insight and guidance in what it means to live the Christian faith but interestingly, a lot of those passages have historically been read over with haste to get to the good stuff..... what you are supposed to believe to go to heaven.

When I was in seminary, a passage such as the one we read today from the third chapter of Colossians would most commonly be called a "holiness code" or a "household code."  We didn't pay much attention to them.  They didn't seem to be very theological.... They were more like what your grandmother might put into a needlepoint wall hanging than what we scholars were in grad school to discuss.

In grad school back in those days, we talked about orthodoxy..... we didn't generally approve of it but we knew what it was.  The word I did not hear until years later, the word we should have been talking about, was orthopraxi.  Orthodoxy is about right beliefs.  Orthopraxi is about right actions.
Only in the last decade have I realized how irrelevant beliefs are when compared to practices.  Now, granted, some religious practices are rituals.... Praying, going to temple, mosque or church.  Some are reflective of a kind of scorched conscience... washing, refraining from sex, alcohol or meat.  The purity practices often appear to be extreme and even psychologically unhealthy but if you pull back the wide angle lens a bit and listen to the life this holiness code is actually describing.  We don't believe that Colossians is an authentic letter from Paul but rather this is how the church looked back on the founders of the faith and summarized their teachings.  They tell us:

clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 13Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.

This passage and many like in the New Testament ask the fundamental question about orthopraxis. It doesn't say that you have to go to church every week though I certainly appreciate those of you who do.  It doesn't say anything about baptism, communion, confession or inviting Jesus into your heart.  The concept of praxis is that by following a certain path, you draw near to God..... it is not be reciting a creed or participating in a religious ritual.... it is by showing compassion, by being forgiving, by loving others, tolerating their irritating quirks and celebrating their strengths.  The question we really want to answer is not "what do you believe" but rather, "what do you do."

On the cover of each Sunday's bulletin we print our mission statement and the 8 points of progressive Christianity.  We do this to be clear about who we are trying to be.  And if you notice, the 8 points are not so much about beliefs as about praxis.  We are somewhat more concrete than this passage from Colossians.  We are trying to be specific in saying that we are concerned for the environment, for social justice and for tolerance among different races, sexual orientations and religions but we're saying the same things in principle, we're just fleshing out some details.

None of that is to say that I or we don't care about beliefs.  I do.  I teach Bible and religion in college classrooms and I assign papers and give tests and I expect to see well thought out answers that at are at least approximately what I have told them in my lectures and I'm not afraid to give bad grades to bad answers.

Bad beliefs can lead to bad behaviors and so I can be fairly adamant about things like:
God didn't write the Bible.  Flawed people in ancient circumstances who had personal agendas wrote most of it and so you have to be careful in how you use it for guidance in modern days.
Evolution happened and is happening still..... except in Texas school books.
Women have all the same rights as men and they get to govern their own bodies.
Owning a gun is not a God given right.
God is not a Democrat or a Republican.
America is not God's chosen country and Israel isn't either.
Non-Christians don't burn in hell for eternity, not even your ex-spouse.
Homosexuality is not a sin and the shared life of consenting adults is none of your business no matter how dissatisfied you are with your own intimate life.

I could go on but I suspect that you have already gotten the point.

The decision to be a progressive Christian is not summed up in simply rejecting magical thinking and superstitious religious beliefs.  As weary as most of us are with that Constantinian religion, just changing the way you think about such things doesn't have much of an impact on the world.

For us, meaningful religion is a transforming way of living, not just some kind of imaginary divine fire insurance.  The real promise of being a disciple is that we can be changed, not simply in some mystical internal way but in the way that people actually experience us.

As we face the symbolic turning of the calendar to a new year, I encourage you to seriously consider what a New Year's resolution is really all about.  Henry David Thoreau said, "I know of no more encouraging fact than that a person can elevate his or her own life by conscious effort."  We are not victims of the choices made by our parents or the circumstances of our lives.  We are not trapped in our prejudices, narrowness of vision or even our character flaws.  We have chosen to live in a way.... to follow a praxis, to be disciples of a Jewish boy whose unknown date of birth is observed in this season of the year because we believe him to be the teacher of compassion.
A Hindu was once asked about the saying from John's gospel in which Jesus is reported to have said, "I am the way, the truth and the life."  The guru replied, "Yes, I believe that because Jesus was the teacher of compassion and living a life of radical compassion is, in fact, the only way to God."

Mary the Radical (Who Suffers From a Good Reputation)

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
Dec. 23, 2012    Advent 4

Luke 1:46-55        
46And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, 47and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; 49for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. 50His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. 51He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 52He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; 53he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. 54He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, 55according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever."

Images of Mary, the mother of Jesus, may be the most easily recognized in all of the world though we know almost nothing about her.  Of the four gospels in the New Testament, Mark and John have no interest in telling us about the circumstances around the birth of Jesus or of Mary's unique story.  Matthew has a long narrative but as is classic of literature of the period in that place, no woman gets a speaking line in Matthew's story.  He tells the Christmas story from Joseph's perspective even though he is relegated to a "D list" role.

Luke is the only one to turn the spotlight on Mary and leave it there long enough for us to hear what the young mother has to say.  And in spite of all of the statues, icons, stained glass windows, rosaries and pictures, very few people could summarize her short Christmas speech because what she has to say is quite revolutionary.

I think that Mary suffers from the ill effects of a good reputation.  She is portrayed as a sweet, virgin child mother.  She has put in more post-mortem appearances than Elvis and yet no one seems to actually listen to her.  I never tire of pointing out the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church where most of her statues are to be found but if she were to walk into one of those churches in the flesh, they would not allow her to speak because she comes with the wrong set of genitalia.
But we shouldn't gloat too much about that because even in the more progressive churches where women are allowed to preach, they wouldn't long tolerate what she has to say.  When Mary rises from the pages of the New Testament to tell us what she thinks, she forcefully insists that what her boy is going to do is to challenge all of the powers that currently exist.  That the presidents, kings, prime ministers and bankers are going to be cast to the ground so that the poor and marginalized will be put in power.  She says that all of us who have been used to being over fed are going to have to learn to live with going hungry so that the people have never had a place at the table will be allowed to eat their fill.

If Cesar Chavez had been there for that sermon he might have said, "Slow down girl, you need to turn that stuff down a notch."

Now, as a biblical scholar, let me say that I do not take this account of Mary's song as being historical.  It is fairly evident for reasons I'll not go into now that there was an earlier version of Luke that did not have any of this birth narrative and when this was added to his gospel Jesus, Mary nor Luke were still alive.  This is an account of the early church looking back on events.  They are creating a theological narrative to preach their own convictions and yet.... And yet, there is an echo in this.... An echo of a historical reality.... Traces left of the anger a young woman might really have felt at the injustice, the violence, the hunger, the oppression of the world in which she lived who might have said something exactly like this and even if she didn't, the early church said it and, my good friends, damn us if we are afraid to say it now.

Like Mary, we live in a world full of violence, hunger and oppression.
Unlike Mary, we do not have an occupying army in our nation but we are occupied by an arrogant and sick mentality exemplified nowhere better than in the statement made by the executive vice-president of the NRA one week after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary school.  As our nation is still in shock and grief, we waited to see if the NRA would make a sane offering in response to the carnage for which they are, in large part, directly responsible.

Sadly, no Republican elected official was willing to make an official statement on the topic until their owners and operators, the National Rifle Association, had made their statement.  When I was a child, growing up in a home where there were many guns, with a father who took both his sons and his daughter out to teach us how to shoot and safely manage a weapon, the NRA represented both the 2nd Amendment and sane gun regulations.

In the past two generations, that once helpful organization has become nothing but a lobbyist group representing gun manufacturers, ginning up the paranoia and blood lust of a hugely profitable industry that sells weapons that no sane person would ever use and the sanity of anyone who wants to own it has become suspect.

LaPierre decried our nation's unwillingness to maintain a national list of the mentally ill, but based on what he said in his statement, I'm inclined to think that there may be a list of the majority of the nation's mentally ill..... forgive me for saying it, but if what he said represented the rank and file members of the NRA, that is list enough of the people who have no business owning a gun of any kind.  Of course, we know that he does not represent the actual citizen membership of the NRA.... He really only represents the manufacturers who are getting nasty rich by exploiting the frightened, the paranoid, the insane.
For LaPierre, the unnecessary deaths of more than 30,000 Americans is insufficient to warrant a change in gun laws.  So we are forced to wonder how many people would have to die before the NRA might reconsider their intransigent position?  Would 300,000 deaths be enough?  Would 3 million do it?  Would the blood from human carnage have to rise to be knee deep?  Would it have to come up to his neck before he would accept that something must be done?  My fear is that if 30,000 deaths are acceptable that 3 million would be just as acceptable because what he is telling us is that he does not care about human life.

Several of you are psychologists, can you imagine being asked to certify the sanity of someone who has applied to own a weapon that has no practical use other than to kill dozens of people in a matter of minutes?  Jesse James has been a famous outlaw for 150 years, but people, in his entire career, Jesse James killed 16 people!

We have people all around us now who go to Walmart or Bass Pro and say, "I would like to own a weapon that if I ever decided to use it for its intended purpose dozens of children, innocent theater goers, high school students, politicians will die and then we say that we should only sell these to people who are certified to be mentally healthy?  What are we looking for here?  Do they have to serve red wine with fish before we realize they might not be sane?

LaPierre squandered a real opportunity to come back to sanity.  Rather than advocate for some sane regulations he returned to the same obfuscating tactics used after ever other mass murder insisting that it is not the guns.... It's video games, its our judicial system, it's the movies, it's the music.....in total disregard for the fact that it is clearly the proliferation of guns.

In Japan the kids play violent video games more than in the United States but they only have three or four gun deaths a year in their entire nation when we have upwards of 30,000.  These are the people who bombed Pearl Harbor, who raped and pillaged their way through Korea and the Philippines.  These people came to terms with their violent lust for world domination and they changed the very character of their nation.  They don't have private ownership of guns and now for every Japanese citizen who is a victim of gun violence there are 10,000 American deaths.

This was not a new statement, it was an old lie.  It is an official policy that says rather than doing what we know works, what has worked in other nations, we should actually make the situation much worse by putting more guns into the hands of citizens.  Spending billions of dollars to put armed guards in a 100,000 public schools knowing that there were armed guards at Columbine High School and they could do nothing to stop the murders there.

America is not occupied by cruel Roman legions the way Mary's world was.... We are occupied by violence loving, greedy NRA representatives and their bought and paid for politicians and they stay in power because people of faith have chosen silence over standing up next to Mary and belting out a song that actually says something.

We live in a society surrounded by lies.  We'll do almost anything to anesthetize our ability to think until we are able to forget.

Religious tradition has hidden the radical world changing message of Mary behind the image of a sweet, pretty teen-aged girl full of tranquility and virtue..... not at all the Mary we meet in the Bible.

In this time of painful crisis, I discovered a new image of Mary in the form of a 60 something, obese lesbian folk singer....Cheryl Wheeler, who wrote a song about the NRA obfuscation of the facts shortly after the Jonesboro School Massacre in 1998.  If you will allow me to read the lyrics, this Mary sang:

Maybe it's the movies, maybe it's the books
Maybe it's the bullets, maybe it's the real crooks
Maybe it's the drugs, maybe it's the parents
Maybe it's the colors everybody's wearin

Maybe it's the President, maybe it's the last one
Maybe it's the one before that, what he done
Maybe it's the high schools, maybe it's the teachers
Maybe it's the tattooed children in the bleachers

Maybe it's the Bible, maybe it's the lack
Maybe it's the music, maybe it's the crack

Maybe it's the hairdos, maybe it's the TV
Maybe it's the cigarettes, maybe it's the family
Maybe it's the fast food, maybe it's the news
Maybe it's divorce, maybe it's abuse

Maybe it's the lawyers, maybe it's the prisons
Maybe it's the Senators, maybe it's the system
Maybe it's the fathers, maybe it's the sons
Maybe it's the sisters, maybe it's the moms

Maybe it's the radio, maybe it's road rage
Maybe El Nino, or UV rays
Maybe it's the army, maybe it's the liquor
Maybe it's the papers, maybe the militia

Maybe it's the athletes, maybe it's the ads
Maybe it's the sports fans, maybe it's a fad
Maybe it's the magazines, maybe it's the internet
Maybe it's the lottery, maybe it's the immigrants

Maybe it's taxes, big business
Maybe it's the KKK and the skinheads

Maybe it's the communists, maybe it's the Catholics
Maybe it's the hippies, maybe it's the addicts

Maybe it's the art, maybe it's the sex
Maybe it's the homeless, maybe it's the banks
Maybe it's the clearcut, maybe it's the ozone
Maybe it's the chemicals, maybe it's the cell phones

Maybe it's the fertilizer, maybe it's the nose rings
Maybe it's the end, but I know one thing.

If it were up to me, I'd take away the guns.

Kicking the Darkness Until it Bleeds Daylight

Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
December 16, 2012   Advent 3

Luke 3:7-14
7 John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."
10 And the crowds asked him, "What then should we do?"
11 In reply he said to them, "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise."
12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?"
13 He said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you."
14 Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what should we do?" He said to them, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."

We gather here together this morning, where else would we go?  Something horrible has happened that demands to be undone but it cannot be undone.  We demand answers to questions for which there are no answers.  Yesterday, the famous poet and sometimes prophet, Maya Angelou, said, "Our country is grieving. Each child who has been slaughtered belongs to each of us and each slain adult is a member of our family. It is impossible to explain the horror to ourselves and to our survivors. We need to hold each other's hands and look into each other's eyes and say, 'I am sorry.'"

I think that she is right.  We must start with sympathy for parents and grandparents of children, 20 elementary school aged children, senselessly and violently murdered for no reason and with no warning.  Sympathy for the spouses and family members and co-workers of six, no seven adults because even the shooter leaves behind family and friends, neighbors and a brother who carry a burden of both grief and guilt.

We say, "I'm sorry" and try to move towards empathy, towards sharing their pain and helping to lift the burden.  We say "I'm sorry," to begin to find our compassionate legs to know how we can personally respond in a way that brings both healing and a determination that this must not happen again.

I am not sure what all Maya Angelou meant, but I believe that saying "I'm sorry" needs to have a larger meaning this time.  There is a part of it in which we need to say "I'm sorry" to take personal responsibility for this happening.  To own the fact that we are a part of a society that has now, in 2012, set a record for these kinds of mass murders.  And to say, "I'm sorry" because those 27 deaths were only unique in that they came all in one place but there are more than 30 gunshot homicides in America every day and I can tell you, spreading them out across 50 states doesn't really change much.

Something is wrong in America.  Somehow we have a violence sickness, a gun addiction. We murder one another at a rate unprecedented in any other nation in any other century.  If you look at it per capita, there a very few nations of the world where you might be more likely to be murdered than in the USA such as Mexico, Brazil, Nicaragua, Columbia, Panama and El Salvador.   But to be completely honest, most of those nations have homicide rates directly related to the American gun industry and money from our drug trade. So, even there, we have reason to say, "I'm sorry."

I suspect that Maya Angelou was inviting us to mourn rather than to blame....to feel grief rather than anger.  I hear that but with all due respect to Ms. Angelou, I can do more than one thing at once.  I am grieving and I am angry.

The gun lobbyists hypocritically always insist that we not discuss gun laws in the aftermath of an incident such as this one.  They insist that we must respect the victims and not politicize a tragedy.  That is just a bunch of bull.  They know that the public's stomach for thinking about these things makes us turn our attention quickly away.  The shooting in the movie theater in Colorado this summer where 12 people were killed and 58 were wounded did not receive as much press coverage as when Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a "slut" or when, to the surprise of no one, Anderson Cooper told us that he is gay.

Tragedy happens but the gun industry has learned that if they can just cap the debate for a couple of weeks, nothing will come of it.  All of us who let these events pass onto the back burner can say "I'm sorry" to all of the victims.  We need to put this issue on the front burner and make it all we talk about and all we do until meaningful reform is in place, even if we have to gag every journalist who says the words, "fiscal cliff."

Early in 2007, Molly Ivans made a pledge that she would devote every column she wrote to ending the war in Iraq until the war was ended.  She did not know that her own death would come right on the heels of having made that pledge and I am forced to wonder if newspapers would have continued to run a steady drum beat of anti-war columns for five years but I think that it is time for those of us who know that our nation's gun safety laws must be changed to make a similar pledge.  We cannot let go of this issue without substantive change.

And, in fact, even the majority of NRA members agree.  A big part of the problem is that most of the huge financial resources of the NRA does not come from its members.  If you are not aware of this already, then I beg you to pay close attention to what I am saying right now:  the majority of the money the NRA has to bribe politicians and prevent sane gun legislation from being passed does not come from citizen members but from the deep pockets of gun manufacturers.

The money made on the sale of semi-automatic and assault/military style rifles is what is driving this insanity.  Only so many guns will be sold for hunting or home protection and many of those will last within families for more than a hundred years.  The only way to make increased profits is to manufacture demand for a product that is not only not at all necessary but is entirely dangerous.  These weapons are slipping across our border to arm drug cartels in Central and South America.  They end up in the hands of terrorists, white supremacists, anarchists and people with serious mental illnesses.

I used to take my daughter to the Bass Pro shops when she was little to see the turtles, the fish tanks, the ducks and the big stuffed bear but hunting and fishing is not going to move the sports goods business along fast enough so they are remodeling to offer weapons for people with paranoid personality disorders and Jason Bourn fantasies. They now have a "tactical weapon" shopping area replete with dummies armed with hand guns..... the double entendre in that sentence was intended. Soon they will open an entire NRA museum intended to spark the yearning for more and bigger weapons.

They will try to tell you that it is a second amendment right, even though shooting up elementary schools has nothing to do with a well regulated militia and semi-automatic assault rifles with 100 round clips is not what the framers of the constitution had in mind in any event.  All I want to hear from the gun lobby is what Maya Angelou said that we should all say, I want to hear them say...... "I'm sorry."

And the gun fanatics will trot out their absurd false equivalencies, saying that more people die from auto accidents than from gun shots as if we could ride a hand gun to school or work, or transport their wounded to the hospital on the rifle that wounded thousands or dig a grave for their victims with their banana ammo clips.  I don't want to hear any more of their dodges and stupid defenses.  What I want to hear them say is.... "I'm sorry."

And the lobbyists will cry out that if only we would repeal the existing gun restrictions, if only everyone in that Colorado theater had been armed and, I suppose the kindergarteners and first graders in Connecticut had been armed, they could have stopped this shooter sooner..... without any logical appreciation for the fact that it is the proliferation of guns that has driven up the number of fatalities in our nation, not the absence of guns.  No, all I want to hear from the lobbyists right now is..... "I'm sorry."

And to Republicans who have held onto office by catering to the absurd whims of the gun manufacturers and the Democrats who decided to have campaign photos taken holding a hunting rifle in your hands to curry the dumb down vote, I don't want to hear any more false pretense out of you when you know that all you are doing is clutching onto power with any kind of deal you can make with the devil in spite of more than 30,000 gun deaths every year in the nation you have sworn to serve.  All I want to hear out of you is..... "I'm sorry."

On this third Sunday of Advent when we traditionally give John the Baptist a moment to speak, we desperately need the practical theology of the guy who says that if you have extra food to share it with the hungry and if you have two coats to give one to someone who doesn't have a coat.  We need the practical wisdom of a truth telling prophet who can say, "In the choice between your hobby and 30 deaths a day of my brothers and sisters, my children and grandchildren, don't you dare tell me about how much you enjoy your hobby.  All I want to hear out of you is..... "I'm sorry."

I have no instant solutions to offer.  Guns, once manufactured and sold remain in use for generations and there is no effective way of calling them back.  We can, however, make a meaningful start by both addressing the immoral culture that turns so easily to violence, that so quickly denies mental health treatment to troubled young men while offering them weapons next to the toy department of Walmart.  We can eliminate sales of guns without background checks.  We can put a stop to gun shows.  We can take semi-automatic and hand guns off the market and we can outlaw high round count ammo clips.... And make bullets very very expensive.  Even in small ways, as the song, Lovers in a Dangerous Time, says: we must kick against the darkness until it bleeds daylight.

This sermon is a call to action in honor of the twenty children murdered on Friday and in honor of a few special people whom I feel compelled to name:
The school's principal, Dawn Hochsprung, and school psychologist, Mary Sherlach, who, though unarmed, when other adults were hiding under tables, ran out into the hall and threw themselves at the assailant to try to stop him and lost their lives in the process.
And 27-year-old Victoria Soto, a first grade teacher, who used her own body to shield a child, saving the child's life while losing her own.  Tell me again, Gov. Scott Walker, what a bunch of freeloaders that public teachers are in your twisted little mind!

These women make me want to be a better man.

To all of my friends who tell themselves that your guns will never be used in a mass murder and that you need your guns for your own protection... I encourage you to man up and be as brave as Dawn Hochsprung, Mary Sherlach and Victoria Soto.  Destroy your weapons and live with courage for a better and more sane world.

My literature friends often cringe at rhyming poetry but I must close today with Edna St Vincent Millay's "Dirge Without Music"

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.  Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.

No More Silly Religion for Me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Truth vs the Empire

Community Christian Church

Roger Ray, pastor

Nov. 25, 2012    Proper 29

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don't Forget to Provoke One Another

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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