In Search of Our Myth

January 25, 2015
Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, Pastor

"Joseph Campbell said all the problems that we are experiencing - economic disparity, ecological meltdown, crime, alienation, atomization, war, starvation - are the result of us having no communal myth.  A story that unites us, defines us, in relationship to ourselves, other people, and nature.  Campbell says the myths that we do have are antiquated and irrelevant 'desert myths.'"    Russell Brand

In truth, I hardly know her, though she has a key to my house for five years and she comes over every two weeks to do the housekeeping that I don't want to do myself.  I ran by the house this week to make a quick change of clothes into a shirt and tie that did not have bits of my lunch on them and there on the kitchen counter were the broken pieces of an old hand painted china plate.  She was very embarrassed and offered, "Can I replace it."

"No," I said, "it had been a gift from an elderly aunt, something she had given to me just before she died about 30 years ago.  I'm not the kind of guy who would choose to hang a piece of painted china on my wall, regardless of its value or artistry.  I'm gay friendly but not actually a member of the club.

I assured her not to worry about it.  Accidents happen.  It's no big deal.  But when I got home that night, she had left her paycheck behind with a heart-felt note of apology.  I will get the money to her, of course.  I am certain that she does not clean other people's houses for the entertainment value of it.

What has captured my attention about this little exchange is this person I hardly know has such a clear set of values, that she is so earnest to take more responsibility for her actions than anyone could reasonably expect.

They have not made much of it for a couple of centuries now but Catholics used to talk about deeds of "Supererogation" which literally means going above and beyond what is required but it carried the implication of trying to be even better than God expects you to be.  I mention it now because there are so few opportunities to meaningfully say supererogation in polite conversation.

In a world where the Catholic hierarchy has moved pedophile priests and my own former denomination, The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) hid pedophile denominational leaders by moving them from state to state to evade criminal prosecution.... Where elected officials in this ostensibly Christian nation will torture prisoners, turn the mentally ill out onto the streets to die from exposure to the winter weather, and invade nations on false pretenses, where people you have supported in their times of greatest need will betray you for nothing more than the power they feel in being able to hurt you.... Comes a stranger with more evidence of character than is often found in congress, cathedrals or even in your backyard at a family barbeque.

I'm currently preparing to go on my first real speaking tour and I have the good fortune to be doing that in Scotland and England.  I asked my Scottish host to suggest some readings that would help me to understand my audience in Glasgow.  He sent me several articles about the recent vote around Scottish independence and wrapped that up with a suggestion that I read a recent book by the British author, Russell Brand, entitled, Revolution.


I regularly have lunch with our good friend, Dr. Charles Hedrick, and this past week, when he asked me, as he usually does, "What are you reading these days?" I felt obligated to name several other things and avoid mentioning Brand's book because, Brand is a well known alcoholic, drug addicted, womanizing, famous, millionaire movie star, and I wasn't sure that I should offer that particular bit of information.

But, I have to admit, I've really liked Brand's book and have been shocked to discover how much I have in common with him.... Other than the alcoholic, drug addicted, womanizing, famous, millionaire movie star, part.

Brand became a famous and wealthy person on the strength of his stories about his exploits as a spoiled and self-serving addict but this book is about his recovery in the AA movement, his discovery of a largely rational and social justice based spirituality.  He is no intellectual but he has become an avid reader and he has been willing to analyze his personal faults in a very public way.

Like a lot of us, he found it increasingly necessary to dismiss the creedal religions that lost all credibility for us in the face of the reality both of science and of the undeniable human suffering caused by irrational religion and governments controlled by the super-wealthy.

In sobriety he has found the gratitude we so often hear expressed by former addicts who find the bliss of sobriety and a life lived oriented to reality.  But, again, like many of us, he has found it difficult to give an account of his new found spiritual enthusiasm to his peers who have found religion to be all too easy, and dare I say, necessary to abandon.

I suspect that we are likely to be the only church on earth where a Russell Brand quote is the wisdom lesson for the day but this comment he made about Joseph Campbell seems to really speak to our current challenge.  The stories that come to us from wandering Palestinian shepherds and barely settled agricultural societies of first century Judah no longer have the power we have tried to give them by claiming that God wrote them.

Campbell's observation that we need new communal myths to guide us into relevant moral living seems to be right on to me.  I have been inclined to think that we can replace those with modern biographies... the recent release of the movie, "Selma," seems like a good example.  The problem, however, with lifting any modern leader into that role is that we also have access to information about their faults.

Jesus may have been guilty of some of the racism of his culture but we have little to go on to make that point.  He is protected by two millennia of the fog of memory.  But when you talk about Gandhi, or King, or even such bright lights as Dorothy Day or Mother Theresa, we can also enumerate the ways that they disappointed us.

We have difficulty in appreciating anything that anyone does without also wallowing in their more salacious failings.  This is almost as true of public figures as it is of religious leaders.  Though he has recovered a lot of popularity, history will likely remember Bill Clinton more for his tryst with Monica Lewinsky than his rise from Arkansas poverty to the White House.

We've watched the conservative world trying to find a soft place in Barack Obama where they can stick a dagger in for six years.  Their attempts often seem rather desperate, such as in Mike Huckabee's criticism of the Obama's poor parenting in allowing their daughters to listen to music by Beyonce'.... In spite of the fact that Huckabee's son was found guilty of hanging, torturing and killing a neighbor's dog..... this is not a game of moral finger pointing that he is likely to win in the universe of bad parenting wars.

We have got to be able to praise the decision of 18-year-old John Lewis to kneel in prayer on the Evan Pettus Bridge during the Selma march while Alabama State police mercilessly cracked his skull with their batons.... We have to be able to tell the story of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the Montgomery, AL bus that started the bus boycott that fueled the civil rights movement without trying to go through their garbage to tell ourselves that we don't need to follow their example.

Gossip is used to destroy reputations of leaders to give ourselves a pass on all of our own shortcomings.  We have got to rise above these false diversions so that we can be more concerned about virtue than we are about trying to drag everyone down.  I'm guilty of it too but I can tell you that the 21st century is starved for meaningful myths and examples to guide us, to inspire us, and to motivate us to deeds of kindness, compassion, and liberation.

All the while, we are being fed false heroes.  At the same theaters that are now showing "Selma" larger crowds are going to see "American Sniper,".... A hero tale about a man who evidently killed more than 200 Iraqis.

The self-aggrandizing auto-biography of a soldier who claimed to have beaten up Jesse Ventura in a bar fight which has been proven to be false in a libel suit, and who claimed to have killed two car-jackers in Texas and shot looters during the Katrina aftermath.... None of which was true.... Nor was his claim to have given all of the proceeds of his book to charity.

Clint Eastwood claims that the movie is not political but the twitter feed of those who have seen it would seem to contradict that, as enthusiastic movie goers have reported that they came out wanting to shoot as many Arab Muslims as they could.  If there is a vacuum of real heroes in modern culture, it seems that we will create role models that we really shouldn't follow.

Athletes, movie stars, rock stars, and snipers may be pushed up in the public consciousness because they are famous, or wealthy, or even because they are portrayed as being brave but I come back to this house-keeper who, without much thought, has a reflex reaction to do the right thing, even more than the right thing..... I'll say it again.... To commit an act of supererogation..... you know that you'll want to use that this week....

Largely unchurched Western Europe seems to do a better job of showing compassion to the poor, the mentally ill, and even to those guilty of crimes than in our heavily church populated country.

But it doesn't have to be that way.  My fear is that without spirituality, pure reason can lead human kind into a moral vacuum.  We just have to acknowledge that there are good and bad myths.
There are popular role models who are dangerous and there are others whose virtues are to be praised and imitated.  And there are very unhealthy forms of religion and very helpful and promising forms of faith.  As the famous scholar, Karen Armstrong, has written:
"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, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology."

Let's not leave the future up to chance.  Let's think, and act, following in the pathway that leads to liberation, courageous compassion, non-violent transformation, and into a consistently loving community.

Our progressive faith should free you from bondage to old myths that no longer work in our modern society but that liberation should not lead to either cynicism or rabid individualism.  Together, we really must learn anew how to be the people we always inherently admired for their good deeds and to learn again the way of living that leads us to love one another.

The Word of the Lord was Rare...

Epiphany 2    Jan. 18, 2015
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor

1 Samuel 3:1-11                    
3Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. 2At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; 3the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. 4Then the Lord called, "Samuel! Samuel!" and he said, "Here I am!" 5and ran to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call; lie down again." So he went and lay down.6The Lord called again, "Samuel!" Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call, my son; lie down again." 7Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. 8The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. 9Therefore Eli said to Samuel, "Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, 'Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.'" So Samuel went and lay down in his place. 10Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, "Samuel! Samuel!" And Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant is listening."
11Then the Lord said to Samuel, "See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.

Though the world has become quite diverse and there has been an explosion of movies, music, and books; for most of human history there has been a certain shared core of songs and stories that you only have to hear the first few notes, the first few words, and it reminds you immediately of the whole.

If I say, "Four score and seven years ago....." your mind will automatically return to the Gettysburg address.  If you are a child of the seventies as I am, you only have to hear the first two notes to the Star Wars theme and the image of a gigantic white Imperial cruiser is framed against the blackness of space in your mind.

For those of us who grew up in church, there are a lot of passages and stories from the Bible that affect us the same way.

I know that this generation is not as steeped in Biblical readings as were preceding generations but I have to tell you, as a preacher, I'm still there.

Most of us at least consult a very ancient cycle of readings from the Bible that assigns an Old Testament lesson, a Psalm, a Gospel lesson and a reading from the epistles for every Sunday of the year.  I don't always follow the lectionary and even when I do, I usually only use one of the assigned passages here in church, but I read them all, every week.

The cycle repeats itself every three years, so, at this point in my life, I am half way through an even dozen times of preaching my way through the lectionary.  After having written a dozen sermons on this text we have today about the boy Samuel, sleeping in the temple, I only have to read the first sentence to remember the words of the passage the way that you would remember the lyrics to the songs on the very first album you ever bought, the one you played over and over and over again when you were a kid.

And don't worry, I won't tell anyone that your first vinyl LP was the Partridge Family Album.

For most of the past several centuries, it wasn't just preachers, it was everyone who, when they heard the opening lines of this story:  "The word of the Lord was rare in those days".... Everyone would immediately lip the next phrase, "visions were not wide spread."

When I was young, I made the mistake of reading these stories as if there were photographs in an old family album.... Little snippets of our faith history.... This is what Samuel looked like when he was young.... This was his first grade picture, and here he is at senior prom, wearing that silly suit with wide lapels and sporting a polka-dot bow tie.

I read the Bible that way back then, as if learning the history of the heroes of the faith would somehow make me a better Christian.  But, of course, they were never meant to be read that way.  They were always stories that were supposed to mean something new every time they were read.

When you hear a love song on the radio, do you immediately imagine the woman that the musician is singing about or do you think about the woman that you love?  See, you never imagined singing that song to the artist's girlfriend, you dream about singing it to the one for whom your own heart longs.

That's how you read the Bible.... That's how the stories come to life.  Sure, there is a specific setting to this little story.... A very young man has been given to the priesthood as a servant.  Samuel was sort of a houseboy for Eli.  He put oil in the lamps, carried the groceries, swept the floor.

And in this sort of Cinderella story, Samuel doesn't have a bedroom.... He is just sleeping in the sanctuary of the church.  You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see the metaphor in that..... he is in the church.... Sleeping.  And then, the story says, the Lord God Almighty calls out to him.  I don't know what the voice of the Lord God Almighty would sound like but I want to believe that if the Lord God Almighty were calling my name that I would recognize the voice.

But in this story, repeatedly, Samuel doesn't recognize God's voice... and he just keeps going back to sleep.  There is the metaphor... there is the symbolism.... People thought that the word of the Lord was rare, that visions were not wide spread... but the church was asleep.

This isn't a story about Samuel.... And it isn't a story about catching a nap during the sermon.  It is about a community so dead to the word of the Lord that they are in a coma.

We know about that kind of cultural deafness, don't we?  We make progress in many arenas of life.... The Supreme Court is finally going to hear a case that will allow them to make same sex marriages legal in all 50 states.... 20 years after I performed my first same sex wedding, illegally.... But no one ever accused the Supreme Court of getting things figured out very quickly.... The 9 justices can sleep comfortably through generations and so, we know what it means to say:

The word of the Lord was rare in those days.

Would you humor me a bit and repeat this verse with me?  When I say, "The word of the Lord was rare in those days." Would you say, "visions were not widespread."

You may not remember many of the scripture passages you hear read here but I would really like for you to let this one sink in.  I am afraid that our culture is asleep and this story is one we should remember.

Because, you know, here in Missouri, I have been writing columns and leading demonstrations against predatory lending for almost two decades.  Our state is either the worst in the union or we're in second place for abusing our poor and vulnerable.  Payday Loan businesses can charge nearly 2000% interest on small loans, literally taking food off of the tables of the poor, causing them to be evicted from their homes and having their cars repossessed.  Every state around us has put a stop to these practices years ago but our legislature refuses to do so.

A bill is introduced in every legislative session to cap interest rates at something reasonable and that legislation has never made it to the floor for a vote.... Is no one paying attention?  Is the governor asleep?  Is the legislature asleep?  This is a monumental problem with a very simple answer.... So simple that they have already figured it out in Kentucky, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Illinois.... This is not organic chemistry or a complicated calculus problem... this is easy.  And yet there has been no progress.  I'm thinking:

The word of the Lord is rare in those days.......

But money in politics has not just affected Missouri.  On the national scene ever since the Citizen's United decision removed any upper limit to campaign donations, billions of dollars in corporate donations have flooded into political campaigns.  The small donations of private citizens have become totally irrelevant in the face of the hundreds of millions donated by corporations.

And it is a good investment too.  Recent studies show that their billions in donations are becoming trillions in government contracts.
For every dollar a corporation donates to a political campaign, they get back, on average, more than $700 in government grants, tax breaks and contracts.

What could be more obvious than that it is unethical for politicians to take donations from the very corporations that they are elected to regulate?  But they don't regulate them....and the current congress only wants to deregulate farther.  It seems to me:

That the word of the Lord was rare in those days......

Just over two years ago, when Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary and killed twenty children and six adults, there was finally enough shock in our nation to make sane gun control legislation inevitable.

But the NRA shamed the public for trying to make such a tragic event a political lightening rod.  They told us, "now is not the time....." and of course, weeks pass, memories fade.  I don't know what the number is now.... Last summer there had been more than 70 more shootings in schools since Sandy Hook... nearly 200 more children dead.... We don't talk about gun control much anymore.... Because

The word of the Lord was rare in those days......

The story in I Samuel, with real tongue in cheek humor, begins sort of mockingly.... Saying that the word of the Lord was rare but then repeatedly showing that no one recognized the voice of God.  But it ends almost with a threat.

Look at the last verse of the periscope, verse, 11:
"See, I am about to do something.... That will make everyone's ears [hurt]"

Again, I'm not talking this literally as if there were going to be some disembodied voice that shouts down from heaven.  What makes our ears hurt is not just when we are told something that we don't want to hear.... It is when we are told something that we know is true that we don't want to hear.

We know that poverty is violence.  We know that hunger, homelessness, joblessness, the gutting of pensions and the funding of higher education is inexcusable in a wealthy nation.... We just don't want to hear it because once you acknowledge that truth, it becomes more difficult to resist change.

Newsweek published a banner headline this week reporting that the Dali Lama had stated that he is a Marxist when it comes to economics.  Americans have swarmed to events where the Dali Lama was speaking for two decades but they never seem to hear what he is saying.  He has been talking about economic injustice for years... he has repeatedly said that he was a Marxist... but every time it comes up, people act surprised because they were not listening the last dozen times he said it.

The Pope Francis has condemned unfettered capitalism as being the "new tyranny" of our time.  Of course, the Wall Street Journal and the London Telegraph immediately bemoaned the fact that the Pope doesn't understand economics....the marketplace loves religion when it teaches the poor to be obedient, honest, hardworking, and to be willing to accept their piece of the pie only in the sky in the by and by, but when the Pope says that the system is rigged to exploit the poor and serve the rich, they can only shake their heads and say, "Isn't it sad that there are no great spiritual leaders in our day?"

I think that the word of the Lord is not rare.  It is, however, true that most of the public finds it easier to sleep than it is to listen, to be informed, to network with other concerned people and to take collective action.

The minority can only oppress the majority as long as the majority is willing to fight with one another.  The very wealthy want Christians to be afraid of Muslims, for Muslims to blame Jews for their poverty, for poor blacks and poor whites to arm themselves for neighborhood anarchy while both poor blacks and poor whites are in servitude to banks and corporations that place no more value on them than another piece of scrap wood to throw on the fire.

I would remind you that in Buddhist tradition, it is said that when people would ask the Buddha if he were a god, or the son of a god, he would reply simply, "I am awake."

In response to the dire issues facing the world, I hear a lot of people saying that they just stopped reading the paper... that they are turning off the news.... That they are insulating themselves from what makes them unhappy..... so falling asleep is now a spiritual path?

Bad news.... The stuff that makes your ears hurt.... That is not the goal but it is a first step... to wake up, to be aware, to refuse to believe the propaganda, to reject indifference and to stop judging the people who are on the side of solutions as if every thinking liberal in the world was just too awesome to tolerate anyone who differs from them even slightly.

The only way that the darkness can prevail is if people of good will fail to love one another and work together and that is why I refuse to give up.

Fundamentalism, Terrorism, and Rationalism

January 11, 2015
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor

Psalm 72:1-7, 12-14
1 Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king's son.
2 May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice.
3 May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness.
4 May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.
5 May he live while the sun endures, and as long as the moon, throughout all generations.
6 May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth.
7 In his days may righteousness flourish and peace abound, until the moon is no more.
12 For he delivers the needy when they call, the poor and those who have no helper.
13 He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy.
14 From oppression and violence he redeems their life; and precious is their blood in his sight.

Strolling along the downtown streets of our fair city during a First Friday Artwalk, I stepped in one of the more edgy galleries and I found myself almost immediately offended, which, for those of you who know me, is no small accomplishment for an art gallery.

In their packaged novelty area, they had for sale a small rubber Jesus toy, one of those stretchy, malleable dolls that was clearly intended to simply make fun of Jesus.  I'm no fundamentalist and I have about the lowest Christology of anyone in the ministry but an intentional effort at insulting the likeness of Jesus seemed to be a very low class and entirely unnecessary attempt at insulting people who do esteem Jesus as a religious figure.

I was reminded of the Chinese poet whom I heard years ago reading a poem about how she felt the first time she saw a bottle of our cheap American aftershave, Jade East, bottled in a green glass container made to look like the Buddha.  You may remember it.  You literally screwed off Buddha's head to pour out the contents.

It is not difficult to imagine how shocked we would be if we walked down the toiletries isle of Walgreens and saw some Asian brand of aftershave being sold in bottles that looked like a crucifix that you had to screw off the thorn crowned head of Jesus to dispense the cheap cologne.

This week the issue of religious intolerance, satirical religious cartoons, and terrorism has been on all of our minds.  Ever since 9-11, any violent crime committed by someone who claims to have been motivated by their religion, specifically, their Islamic faith, has been news.

I want to take a few minutes with you today to try to put these horrible, frightening, and undeniably evil events into a rational, honest, perspective.

First of all, we have to acknowledge that the content of our corporate news, on TV, radio and in print, does not fairly represent what actually happened in the course of any day.

Quietly, without much fanfare or media attention, an estimated 6000 people in Missouri have died because our legislature, for purely partisan reasons, refused to participate in Medicaid expansion.  This was an entirely predictable outcome and it was entirely preventable.  The victims of this narrow-minded political decision were just as innocent as the people killed in Paris this week, and they were our neighbors, and there were 200 times as many of them.

Is it better to die by the hand of an Islamic terrorist in a Kosher grocery store or by being denied health care by your allegedly Christian state representatives?

You may have a preference but from my perspective, the body count is significant.  And when you mention the body count, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that we still have more than 30,000 gun deaths every year in America, virtually none of which are at the hands of Islamic terrorists.  You are about a million times more likely to be killed by one of your gun-toting neighbors in the NRA than you are by a member of Isil.  This kind of domestic terrorism is so popular that the media and our elected officials are afraid to talk about it but if we are being honest, when it comes to terrorism, there is no place quite like the good ol USA.

This week, most news outlets stopped running commercials while they gave full-time coverage to the dual standoffs in France, ginning up the fear of millions of Americans who were glued to their TV sets.  All the while our local hospitals are full to overflowing in a flu epidemic that is hardly mentioned and will, inevitably, take many more lives than all forms of terrorism.  The flu has always been more dangerous than Islamic Fundamentalism so rather than being scared all of the time, if you really want to make yourself more safe you should cover your mouth when you cough, wash your hands regularly and use hand sanitizer after we shake hands during the Passing of the Peace.

People who claim to be Muslim who commit violent crimes are always identified in the media as being Islamic.  However, when Tim McVeigh bombed the Murrow Federal Building in Oklahoma City, he was not identified as being a "Second Amendment enthusiast."  When Scott Roeder shot the Kansas abortion doctor, Robert Tiller, he was not identified as a Catholic terrorist.

We know better than to assume that Scott Roeder represents Catholicism or that Tim McVeigh represents gun enthusiasts.

Islamic terrorists do not represent Islam.  Thousands of French Muslims joined with other Parisians in demonstrations immediately following these horrible murders.  At Friday prayers at mosques in Paris, devout Muslim's carried signs that read "Not in my name."

The news media rarely makes more than a symbolic effort at putting these crimes into any kind of rational perspective and we absolutely must be smarter than that.  But rational perspective demands that we also be carefully honest.

Terrorism committed in the name of Islam is not reflective of the majority of Muslims.  It is not a healthy form of religion.  But, admittedly, it is way too common.  And even though only a tiny fraction of Muslims are party to religious violence, way too many of what may be called "main stream" Muslims, are far too sympathetic with these violent crimes.

Even the Imam of what has been derisively named the "Ground Zero Mosque," Imam Abdul Rauf, a religious leader widely heralded as a moderate voice of reason, displayed an uncomfortable degree of sympathy for the terrorists who stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo.  On the set of MSNBC, he likened the derogatory cartoons of Mohamed to shouting "fire" in a crowded theater.

His point was that there are rational limits to freedom of speech but his analogy was a false equivalent.  Charlie Hebdo is an equal opportunity offender.  I have also felt offense at some of their cartoons.

Similarly, I thought that the movie, "The Interview," was offensive. A movie about assassinating a head of state, even a really bad, ridiculous dictator head of state, is in bad tastes and probably shouldn't have been made.  But once that ridiculous dictator attempted to keep it from being shown, he went too far.

Imam Abdul Rauf was not asking for equal treatment for Muslims in the west, he was asking for special treatment and that he does not deserve.  I detest Seth Rogan movies because they are stupid and offensive in their vulgarity but I downloaded "The Interview" to cast my $6 vote in favor of freedom of speech.

I don't find the cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo to be very funny. In fact, I would generally say that they are unnecessarily offensive and shouldn't be published but that is a far cry from saying that they can't be published and it is a million miles away from approving of violence in response to their vulgar publication.

I enjoy satire.  I indulge myself in forms of humor that probably ought to be outside of the confines of my profession but I'm just not very sensitive about comedy.  But if I enjoy the way that cartoonists, or South Park, or stand up comedians make fun of conservative politicians, or conservative religions, then I need to keep a stiff upper lip when it is my ox that is being gored.

The Muslim world, if they do not want to remain isolated in Islamic nations, is going to have to evolve.  Bill Maher has been calling we liberals out about how much deference we have shown to the Muslim world.

Maher is a comedian, albeit, an uncommonly intelligent entertainer, but he is not a religious scholar.  A lot of what he has said about all religions is more rooted in personal prejudice than it is in information but when he points out that sympathy for terrorists is not confined to the fringe elements of Islam, he is shining a light on an important though uncomfortable truth.

Far too many Muslims in mosques that are not limited to Saudi Arabia and Yemen but are also found in Germany, England, France and in the United States are sympathetic if not sometimes enthusiastic about Islamic terrorists.  I am willing to concede that point to Bill Maher.

And I am unwilling to lay the blame for the provocation of Muslim communities that have not assimilated and have not been economically successful in Europe and in the United States squarely on the doorstep of prejudiced Europeans or Americans.  You don't hear Asian immigrants complaining about a lack of opportunity even in places where they have suffered from discrimination.
Where I differ from many pundits and from my beloved Bill Maher is just this:  These terrorists were not radicalized by culturally insulting cartoonists or movies.  They were radicalized by two centuries of colonialization, economic exploitation and virtual slavery, and by two crazy illegal wars of invasion and occupation by western military powers in the Middle East.

Terrorism is the military response of the poor to the oppression of well-armed, uniformed occupation forces from rich nations.  When two mentally ill and very provoked men shoot up a magazine office it is of the same cloth as the murder of innocents who are described clinically as "collateral damage" when our drones kill a suspected terrorist while also killing children playing in the street and women hanging out laundry behind the house where we believed the terrorist was plotting diabolical plans.

You may think that dying as collateral damage from a drone fired missile is to be preferred to being blown up by a suicide bomber but I can guarantee you that the deceased innocent victims cannot tell the difference.  If we want less terrorism in the west then we need to stop terrorizing the Middle East.

And finally, no rational review of this topic could be complete without also making the frank observation that even though the Christopher Hitchens sorts can be quite annoying about their anti-religious views, no atheist adherents have ever tried to kill anyone for not agreeing with them.

It is not sick atheism that provokes terrorism.  It is sick religion.  And at that juncture every one in this room and everyone who joins us on line must be a part of the solution.
Religion is, in all frank honesty, often the repository, fertilizer and genesis of insanity.  We cannot pretend that magical thinking and superstitions are morally neutral.  Once your thinking is disengaged from reality then your conclusions can become absolutely crazy.

If we are to preserve the ethics and good works that are the products of a healthy spirituality, then we need to aggressively deny space to the kind of irrational thinking that fosters terrorism in all of its forms...and for the sake of clarity, let me enumerate a representative list:

• Shooting innocent people because they have shown disrespect for your religion
• Blowing up marketplaces, office buildings, or theaters because they symbolically represent your sense of personal oppression
• Invading foreign sovereign states for political or economic gain
• Torturing prisoners
• Keeping people in prison without due process or without being charged with a crime
• Economically or socially oppressing minorities because of their gender, race, sexual orientation, or nation of origin
• Executing prisoners
• Failing to recognize that poverty and ignorance are forms of violence and they cannot be tolerated in the presence of abundance.
• Maintaining a virtually unregulated arsenal of lethal weapons in a nation that has turned a blind eye to tens of thousands of murders every year.

Against these and all other forms of terrorism, let us never allow ourselves to wallow in indifference.

Janus, the God of Doors and Hallways

January 4, 2015
Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor

Henry David Thoreau
"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor."

The first thing we did when we bought this building five years ago was to start an A.A. group.  Our meeting is at 5:30 on Thursdays and this year, of course, both Christmas and New Year's Day fall on Thursday. You might think that our little group would just not meet on those days but nothing could be farther from the truth.

No self-respecting A. A. group ever cancels a meeting.  And if anyone asks about it, the reply is predictable.  Some experienced member of the group will ask the rhetorical question, "When you were drinking, did you ever drink on Christmas Day?"  Even when we had some really bad weather last winter, some new members would call and ask, "Is there still going to be a meeting today?"  And if I knew them well enough to risk it, I would say, "When you were drinking, did you ever drink on days when you were snowed in?"

What I have always loved about the recovery movement is that it is a disarmingly honest, realistic, and fact based approach to spirituality. There are no holidays except for the anniversaries of your last drink, and every day is divided into 24 hours and every hour is divided into 60 minutes and you decide, sometimes moment by moment, that you are going to preserve your sanity and your sobriety for one more minute, one more hour, one more day... though no one in the movement ever says, "I'm never going to drink again...."

They try to keep reality in manageable amounts.... I'm not going to drink this hour.  I'm not going to drink today.  There is a lot of God-talk in the recovery movement but it is a reality based spirituality rooted in personal choice.

In Scott Peck's famous book, The Road Less Traveled, he talks about a patient he had when he was an Army Psychiatrist, based on Okinawa.  The soldier had been referred to him for treatment of alcoholism but in their sessions, the sergeant blamed his drinking on the isolation of the island.  Peck asked him, what do you like to do when you are home in the states.  The sergeant said that he liked to fish.  Peck pointed out that fishing was a popular sport on the island.  The sergeant insisted that he was on duty during the day and Peck again pointed out that there were organized night fishing groups.

Changing tactics, the soldier said that he really liked to read and when Peck pointed out that there was a library on base, his client objected that the library was too far away.  So, in the end, the obvious truth emerges.... There are lots of things to do on Okinawa but what this particular sergeant chose to do was drink.

I never want to minimize the real power of addiction nor do I want to make light of the agony that can be caused by depression or other mental disorders but this much I can confidently say, no one ever gets any better until they take full personal responsibility for their own health and progress.


If you are older than 3 years old, no one makes you angry.  No one makes you depressed.  Sure, people can be real jerks at times.... They can lie, gossip, back stab, steal and assault but any anger or resentment you take away from the exchange is your choice.  Some suffering in life is inevitable but any misery you experience is your own choice.

Like this sergeant on Okinawa, the impulse of the addiction may be real, and powerful, and painful but only he could change the choice that he made.  It wasn't the island, it wasn't the military, it wasn't the people he was stationed with..... he was choosing to cope with life by excessive drinking and when that solution became a bigger problem that the issues he was trying to avoid, no one but him could choose to live differently.

I have to admit that I was mildly insulted a year ago when I had to interview a new doctor.  Like a lot of people who changed insurance under the Affordable Health Care Act, I had to go to the marketplace in search of a new physician.  In our initial meeting, my slender, young doctor brought up the issue of my weight.

I told her about my life long struggle with weight loss and gain.  I told her about exercise plans that I have been on, various diets and medications, some of which work for a time but none of which have ended in long term success.  And like some aged Zen master, she said to me with very flat affect, "Have you ever considered feeling hungry but still choosing not to eat?"


All of the diet plans that claim it is a matter of less fat, or no sugar, or no carbs, or a magical combination of foods that chemically interact to melt fat are the absurd claims of a drunken soldier whining that there is nothing to do on this island.  Sure, eat less sugar, fewer carbs, eat more natural vegetables and fruit and exercise more, but it still comes down to this.....

You can feel hungry and choose not to eat......anything else that anyone says is just another form of self-denial.  Yes, I am a stress eater.  Yes, I grew up on southern cooking.  Yes, I have a largely sedentary job.  And yet, what you see before you is the sum total of the choices that I personally make, day after day.

And you, my friends, you are the sum total of the choices you made.  If you struggle with depression, or if you find that you are angry a lot, or can't maintain relationships.... None of that will ever change as long as you blame external forces, or if you tell yourself that your happiness depends upon someone else changing, behaving differently, or being something else.

When I worked in mental health, we used a program called Parent Effectiveness Training to help parents to understand their children's sometimes-bad behavior.  The program taught that there were four basic motivations for misbehavior:  Power, Attention, a Display of Inadequacy, or Revenge.  Parents were encouraged, when their children were behaving badly, to ask themselves.... Is my child simply seeking attention?  Are they trying to assert their personal power?  Are they trying to get revenge?  Or, are they trying to convince me that they cannot do something for themselves by pretending to be inadequate in the face of responsibility?

I taught these classes in a mental health center for months before sitting in a very dysfunctional church board meeting and realizing that there were no age limits to these four motivations for bad behavior.  It is more complicated in adults.... Some people spend their adult lives trying to get revenge for what they feel was done to them as a child.

Some people feel that they have never accomplished what they should have in life and so they seek power in the most petty and disappointing ways without ever understanding why they are behaving so irrationally.  Some are convinced that all that they have to do is repeatedly display that they are failures and no one will expect anything of them... they will be taken care of.  And some people just need attention and affirmation that they do not want to earn.... They just want to demand it and if they don't get it, they will pick up their toys and go home.

No one has ever been helped to grow or mature by caving into their childish displays of power, revenge or attention seeking, and you believing that they are inadequate will help no one.  I call each of these an "invitation to crazy town" and the best thing you can do in the face of these behaviors is to refuse to go to crazy town with them.  Anytime that I forget this and find myself in a showdown on Main St. in crazy town, I turn into an ordained version of Louis Black and I get this overpower urge to drive an ice pick right through my eye-ball.

It has been quoted so often that it has become rather trite, but when Gandhi said that "You must be the change you want to see in the world," he was right on target.  The society is, as Plato taught, an individual writ large.

If we want a healthy society that doesn't abuse the poor, always fall back into warfare, while killing the planet, and taking away basic human rights from minorities, then we have to choose to be responsible, informed, thinking, moral people.

The whole business of New Year's resolutions can be like spitting into the wind if you don't take into your very soul the factual realization that you can change who you are through your own conscious choice.

The ancient Romans dedicated the first day of the year to a god about whom no fables, myths, or stories are told and yet the god's two-faced image appeared on many coins and gateways. Janus represented a concept.... The concept of choice, looking backwards or looking forward, choosing one door rather than any other door.

Unlike the other gods about whom elaborate psychological dramas were told, this god guarded only the reminder of your potential to change, to go in another direction, to become the person you choose to be rather than to be defined by what others want to project onto you.

Your life does not have to be defined by neurotic fears, shallow friendships, consumerism, and ego battles.  You get to choose.  I know a hundred people who would love to tell me how to be Roger Ray and some of them just can't help doing it over and over again, but there is one person who shaves Roger Ray's face every morning and the guy who holds a razor to my throat every morning is the one who is finally responsible for who Roger Ray is.

Ladies, you may have to adjust that metaphor for your own purposes but I trust that you know what I mean.  2015 might be a year for huge social changes..... we might actually manage to not invade any foreign nations this year.... We might actually make strides in mass transit, alternative energy, health care and fair wages.... We might beat back some of the worst abuses of the war on drugs and the war on gay families.  We may even get over some of our phobias about immigration but if any of that is going to happen we will have to choose to be people of integrity ourselves.

I know of no more encouraging fact than this, that you can become the person you choose to be through your own conscious choice.  Good luck with that.... I'm cheering for you.... Not that it matters because, if you have been paying attention, you know that my opinion is not what matters.... it really is all in your hands.

Christmas Stories

Christmas 1  Dec. 28, 2014
Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor

Luke 2:8-14
8In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.10But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see--I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: 11to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. 12This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger." 13And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, 14"Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!"

Helena, the sainted mother of Emperor Constantine, used the influence and wealth of her son to build churches in the Holy Land.  Three centuries after the events described in the gospels, she went to Jerusalem to build a church where Jesus was buried and to Bethlehem to build a church where Jesus was born.

I have been to both a few times but then, I have also been to Jericho where a guide showed me the actual Sycamore tree that Zacchaeus climb up into so that he could see over the taller people when Jesus came to town.

Now, Helena was no archaeologist determined to preserve history.  She was a devout worshipper so when she asked people in Bethlehem where Jesus had been born, the locals showed her a shepherd's cave.  She, of course, did not enshrine the cave, she had the entire hill excavated and a replacement cave made in the lower floor of the great cathedral of the Nativity out of precious marble.

Visitors to the Church of the Nativity are often treated to a plaintive tour guide who says that the manger in which Jesus was born is not on display there, not because such a crude wooden item would have turned to dust and ash thousands of years ago but, because it was stolen by the Catholic Church and is housed in the Vatican..... the absurdity of that claim never seems to trouble Israeli tour guides nor the curators of the Vatican's treasures who have no intentions to relinquishing the manger that has no more to do with Jesus than I have to do with managing the caviar trade in Russia.  Sometimes it is hard to embarrass religious people.

One of the most difficult issues in teaching Bible in my college classes is the fact that moderns tend to be so fact literal.  You read the parables where Jesus says that the Kingdom is like a man who had two sons and then another parable says that the Kingdom is like a woman who lost a coin and modern people get mad and say, "Well which is it?  Is it like a man with two sons or a woman who lost a coin because it can't be both!"

I sit in the back of the sanctuary and watch Dr. Trobisch patiently teaching us about the gospels, understanding them as stories written to help us understand great truths, metaphors used to open the mind to see reality in new ways, and, inevitably, at the end of the class, someone will raise their hand and ask, "But how do we know that this really happened?"

I complimented David once on his uncommon patience and in the midst of the conversation someone came up to him to demand an explanation for why God would be so cruel as to kill all of the animals on earth in the world wide flood of Noah when it was the people who had been sinful.  I responded, "Don't you understand that it is a sermon and not a bit of history, there has never been a world- wide flood."  And David interjected, "Well, in a way, it happens every time the story is read."

That is the power of story telling.... It becomes real in the moment it is shared in a community in order to bring about something that is real within us.

When St Helena went to Bethlehem, she was looking for the stable mentioned in Luke's gospel.  But that was just a choice she made.  In Matthew, Jesus was born in a house.
The two gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus have almost nothing in common other than the gender of the child.  In Matthew, the holy family lives in Bethlehem but flees to avoid the slaughter of the innocents and ends up settling in Nazareth.  In Luke, the family lives in Nazareth but are compelled in the most unlikely manner to visit Bethlehem for a Roman census and then return to their home after the birth.

Neither account is historically true.  Jesus was, in all likelihood,  born in and grew up in Nazareth.  Neither Mark nor John are interested in the geography or circumstances of Jesus' birth.  Matthew and Luke both have reasons of Jewish heritage to say that he was born in Bethlehem but Matthew and Luke don't compare notes.

The shepherds, angels, stable and the magnificat are only in Luke.  The magi, star, and flight to Egypt are only in Matthew.  The one thing that both have in common is that neither is the slightest bit interested in the historical facts because they are too busy trying to tell us an important story.... And we're still wondering why the Vatican refuses to give that old wooden manger back to the church in Bethlehem where it belongs.

The best way to kill a good story is to try to take it too literally.  One of the great rallying cries of the Progressive Christian movement is that we take the Bible seriously but not literally.  The question we should be asking is, if Luke and Matthew had no facts about the historical circumstances of the birth of Jesus, then why did they write these accounts?  Why?  What do they mean?  What is the message.... Those are the questions every story teller is actually trying to answer.

Matthew is at pains to tell the Jesus story in a way that proves to us that he is the true Jewish messiah.  He begins his account with a long genealogy tracing Jesus through the family of Joseph back to Abraham and then he tells us that Joseph wasn't really his father... like I said, Matthew doesn't want to be disturbed with any logical facts, he is telling us a story.

Like Matthew, his story is full of powerful irony.  Though Matthew will quote Old Testament texts repeatedly through the next 25 chapters of his book to prove that Jesus was the messiah, he completely leaves the Jews out of his birth narrative.  No one in the temple was aware of the birth of Jesus, but some foreign astrologers knew about it and they traveled across the wilderness to come bring presents.  Astrologers were anathema to Jews.  Practicing astrology is punishable by death, according to Deuteronomy 17 and yet, Matthew, the most Jewish of New Testament writers, is willing to slap traditional Judaism in the face and insist that gentiles knew about Jesus and his own people didn't.

There is a real message of humility in this.  As Michael Franti sings, "God is too big for just one religion."  Matthew tells us a story of a messiah who comes into the world, embraced by those who seek him but endangered by the both the institutions of religion and government.  The priests are indifferent and Herod tries to kill him, so that Jesus is aided by members of another religion and then is forced to flee as a political refugee.  If you let Matthew tell the story his own way, you see how we Christians are always uneasy around institutional religion, the halls of political power, and we can always look for Jesus among the refugees and the illegal immigrants.

Luke tells his Christmas story with entirely different details but hauntingly similar themes.  For Luke, Jesus is born into poverty and suffers both indignity and rejection by government and religion.

They are forced from their home by an oppressive occupying government and then in Bethlehem, they are not even shown the dignity to be allowed to give birth in doors.  We have all heard all of our lives that there was "no room" in the inn for them but I am inclined to think that Luke had something even more pointed in mind.

Ancient inns did not rent "rooms."  They were not like a Days Inn, after all.  Inns were just big houses largely comprised of a lower floor and an upper room.  Customers just paid to come in and they found a place on the floor among the other guests.  At what point does an inn keeper in the ancient world tell a paying customer, "I don't want any more money"?

It is possible that Luke is suggesting to us that for religious reasons, it was not simply that there was not room inside, it is that there was no room among all those people for Mary and Jesus.  Again, in Jewish tradition, everyone who is in a house when a woman gives birth is defiled and must make an offering.  Perhaps Luke is telling us that Jesus was rejected by formal religion even before he was born..... something that all of us who have been rejected by either family or faith because we were somehow "unclean" in their judgment should be able to appreciate.

Where do we find Jesus in Luke's story?  Out in the barn, among all of the stuff that you know is found in a barn.  And to whom is the divine birth announcement given?  Not to priests or kings but only to shepherds in the field.

We modern Americans tend to romanticize shepherds but don't kid yourselves....being a shepherd was the real night cashier job at Walmart in those days.  Sheep are smelly and stupid and they have to be watched all of the time.  Shepherds didn't get to observe Sabbath and they were always unclean literally or religiously.

That angels appeared to shepherds who were led to a barn where Jesus was born is a statement that you will find Jesus in homeless shelter for runaway teens where some unwed teen-ager just had a baby.  If you let Luke tells his story his way, you can appreciate why Jim Wallis says that no one goes to heaven without three references from homeless people.

The Jesus story is real, and every time we tell it, we bring good news to the poor, we bring hope to those in despair, we shine a light in dark places, promising justice to the oppressed, the refugee, the homeless and the unemployed.  The story of Christmas is not the first corner stone of a new organized religion.  It is a story that begins our story, our story of standing up to governments and churches, of siding with the poor and the oppressed.... Of kicking at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.  Merry Christmas my friends.

Angels, Virgin Mothers, and the Power of Myth

Advent 4  Dec. 21, 2014
Community Christian Church
Dr. Roger Ray

Luke 1:26-38
26In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. 28And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you."29But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." 34Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" 35The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37For nothing will be impossible with God."38Then Mary said, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." Then the angel departed from her. 

2014 is drawing to a close now and not many of us are going to miss it.  We have been pummeled with horrible news. Much of which reminds me of when Mark Twain said, "I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened."  We have spent months being warned about the tragic mistakes and cover up in a scandal around Benghazi, which, after several investigations, turned up no scandal, just a very sad and violent attack and equally sad and mentally deficient politicians trying to scare us.

Many of the same have tried to frighten us with images of bloody murders committed by members of Isil.  And, of course, the special in the run up to the fall elections was the outrageous misinformation campaign about the threat of Ebola in the United States.  Winner of the award for biggest "pants on fire" politician in America had to be a United State's senator from our neighboring state of Kansas, Sen. Pat Roberts, who rolled all of the talking point fears together and warned that Ebola infected Isis terrorists could stream across our porous southern border to kill us all.

You could not make this stuff up.

But, for the more informed, beyond the fake Benghazi stories, the hysterical Ebola scare, and the push to get us involved in the tribal civil wars of the Middle East again, there have been some pretty sorry things going on.  You only need to consider how much air time was given to these exaggerated issues to realize the gravity of the news blackout on matters of real importance, like the fact that 90% of the growth in our current economic recovery has benefited only the top 1% of the wealthy in our country.  To the best of my knowledge, that hugely important fact has hardly been mentioned.
The political power of people like the Koch brothers continues to bend public policy toward making them richer as seen in the push to build the Keystone XL pipeline that will poison our air and may poison our water and will do very little for anyone other than Koch industries.

The news has covered a series of horrifying police killings of unarmed black men and there have been demonstrations in many major cities... enough to make elected officials pay attention. However, the demonstrations have also revealed the prevalence of racial prejudice among uniformed officers in cities across America as well as in otherwise seemingly sane people we all thought were our friends.
Recordings were made of some of the most egregious CIA torture practices but the CIA managed to destroy most of the evidence before they were investigated, though enough evidence remained to make every thinking American more than a little nauseous.

Here, at the end of this racist, violent, infected, impoverished, politically inept or corrupt year, finally comes Christmas.....and you thought that I had forgotten!

Having demythologized the New Testament's birth narratives, we don't go nuts around here with crèche scenes, we don't have a hanging of the greens service, there is no Advent wreath and no midnight candle light services.  But having swept the angelic hosts from the skies and mucked out the stall where the cattle have been lowing... along with other things... I would like to take a more sober look at the story of Jesus' birth.

The first versions of the gospels did not contain a birth narrative.  Mark never had one and it is fairly obvious that the nativity accounts in both Matthew and Luke were tacked on long after the original works were composed and made popular.

But modern progressives need not be too haughty about having figured out that the virgin birth account and the incarnational theology of the first century are not fit for modern consumption.  The people who wrote these birth narratives knew were babies came from.  Even if you had prudish, puritanical parents like I did, you don't have to spend too much time around the farm to get the birds and bees story.

The gospel writers were not gullible or ignorant.  They were storytellers.  Stories of heroes and super humans who were born of divine parentage have been around as long as there have been paintings and writing.

The ancient rulers of Egypt were depicted as standing under gigantic images of their gods to support their claims that there was divine blood in their veins.  The Greeks and Romans had hero stories of semi-divine historical characters who were only half human until current rulers began to wrap themselves in the mantle of divinity.

The gospel writers did not think that they were writing historical accounts of the birth of Jesus, they were writing a polemic, a sermon.  When early Christians announced that "Jesus is Lord," what they were specifically saying is that "Cesar is not lord," or, more completely, "I have chosen the message of Jesus over the authority of my government."

That was a dangerous thing to say back then.  Standing up to government authority.... Well, you could end up living like a prisoner in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for a couple of years as Julian Assange has, or be exiled in Russia as Edward Snowden is.

Just as Chelsea Manning is in prison for leaking information about war crimes committed by American soldiers though no American soldiers were ever put on trial for the murders of civilians that Manning exposed.

And, now that we know with certainty about the CIA torture of prisoners, you might expect criminal prosecutions.  So far only one person has been sentenced to prison related to American torture of prisoners.  Was it the guy responsible for chaining a naked man to a wall in a cold cell until he froze to death?  Was it the agent who beat his prisoner so hard that he put out one of his eyes?

No, so far, the only CIA agent in jail is John Kiriakou, and he has been in prison for two years now for leaking information to the media about our torture program.

So, you see, saying that someone other than Cesar is lord can be a very dangerous thing to do.  But the gospel writers knew very well the stories about how their rulers had miraculous virgin births.... That the Cesar's were incarnations of God.  They had read on the Roman coins that the Cesar was their savoir, their lord.

And so, they wrote about Jesus being born of a virgin, not because they were so stupid that they didn't know where babies came from but because they were so brave that they were going to adorn a Palestinian peasant with the accolades usually reserved for their rulers.

You have always heard the Christmas story told with an emphasis on the humble circumstances of Jesus' birth but I want you too see that it was not told this way as a "rags to riches" story.  It was told this way as an alternative to the glorious royal stories of Hebrew Kings and Roman dictators.
It was told this way to say that Jesus comes into the world where there is manure on the ground, in the stinking part of town where people live in barns and abandoned buildings, under bridges and in cars that don't start anymore.

The narrative, and I invite you to do with it what you will, but the narrative insists that God is not indifferent.... God isn't cloistered in some cathedral or temple... God isn't simply standing behind the king.... Saying the prayer at the opening of the day in Congress before any congress members have bothered to arrive and take their seats.

God, these narratives say, enters the world where the CIA tortures prisoners, where the media purposefully deceives, where the government is run by the corporations it is supposed to regulate, where police authority is exercised along racial lines, and where the poor are having their pensions taken from them to pay bigger bonuses to bankers and corporate bosses.

Because the gospel writers didn't want you to accept that the corruption we experience is the last word or that things are the way that they will always have to be.  I try to avoid anthropomorphizing my religious language but in the Christmas story it seems almost necessary to say it this way....
Yes, the world is violent, unfair, discriminatory, and the wrong people always seem to have the power but you should not let yourself believe that God does not know and does not care about your plight.  The Christmas story says that God was born right into the middle of all of it, at the bottom rung of the ladder, chained naked to a wall in Abu Ghraib, born in the back seat of Ford Tempo whose heater doesn't work.  God enters the world as a refugee, an unemployed grocery union worker, a retired employee who is made to feel like his meager Social Security check is some kind of a hand out after paying into the system for 50 years.

Your life story is known to God.  You are not alone.  We are not the silent, compliant, subjects of the throne, no matter who is holding the scepter this year.  For unto you is born this day a savior, who lives among you as a voice of justice, a voice of reason, a heart filled with compassion, and a generous advocate for you.  Let the people say, "hallelujah."

Mary: The First Christian Revolutionary

Advent 3   Dec. 14, 2014
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor

Luke 1:46b-55
46And Mary said,

"My soul magnifies the Lord, 47 and 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." 

We started this church in the summer of 2008.  Our vision statement included the idealistic notion that we would try to give to this city a healthy spiritual community.  We specifically said that we were going to start a healthy spiritual community because we had all just come from one that was pretty unhealthy.... Toxic... dangerous.... Deadly.

So, we believed, we would wipe the slate clean and start all over without all of the petty political bickering of denominational politics, and the humiliating dimensions of ego battles in organized religion.  There were only fifty or sixty of us and about a fourth was one family group.

We began timidly, meeting in borrowed space and after a few weeks we had the courage to sign a lease for rented space and an office in a conference center.  The patriarch of the family that made up such a large portion of the church, paid the deposit and the first month's rent to get us started.

So you can imagine my surprise when he called me early one morning just a couple of months later to say, "I'm out, I'm never coming back."

I managed to get him to explain that the reason he was leaving.... And, of course, the rest of his clan left with him.... Was because I had written a column for the local paper in which I condemned our military's practice of torturing prisoners of war.

We had hints and rumors early on in the war on terrorism.  Then there were pictures of the abuse from the infamous Abu Ghraib Prison and our special prison in Guantanamo Bay.  The CIA's Inspector General's report that was released this week comes many years after we already knew enough to be outraged.

And so I asked my former friend, church member and benefactor, "So you are going to go to a pro-torture church?"  And he said something that I will never forget.... He said, "I will find one where I won't have to hear it mentioned."  Which, I suspect, is just about all of them.

I was crushed.  I was pretty sure that the church wouldn't survive.  We didn't have enough members; we didn't have enough donations to survive losing that many people.  And I was crushed because this was the sort of thing that I thought we had left behind.... The kind of church where you have to reel in the message to keep from stepping on anyone's toes... the kind of church where you are expected to talk about religious things but never real things.

I don't want anyone to think that I am brave.  I'm not.  I'm a coward.  I've spent most of my life being afraid.

I've led demonstrations and rallies, I married gay people to one another under threat of being fired, sued and even murdered but I was always afraid.  I just did it anyway. But that does not mean that I am a brave person.


What I knew then, what I believe now, is that the church where torture is never mentioned is, in every meaningful way, a pro-torture church.  As Elie Wiesel said, "Take sides.  Neutrality always serves the oppressor and never the oppressed."  There is no way to be a healthy church and to say to the truth, even painful and inconvenient truth, "you have to just hush up if you are going to come in here."
This week, as news commentators have been discussing the Inspector General's report, I keep feeling like I am in an AA meeting.  When I was in grad school, I was doing my research on addiction recovery and I went to AA meetings four or five times a week for a couple of years.

I went to enough meetings that I became familiar with the certain stock, off the shelf stories.  A guy who was there because he was court ordered to go to AA would tell us about people he knows who drink more than he does and who have worse driving violations that the offenses that landed him in this church basement.

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough has demagogued through news shows, talking about prisoner abuse in Vietnam, in Russia and China, to say, "They drink more than we do... they drive worse than we do."  Donnie Deutsch chimes in that given our losses on 9-11, whatever we did to protect ourselves from future attacks cannot be judged by anyone.

They always try to use the "ticking time bomb" defense, as if we had a prison full of suspected terrorists on 9-11 and we were sending Jack Bauer into their cell to beat the location of the hidden nuclear weapon out of them.

Of course, it was none of that.  We didn't have people to interrogate for more than a year after 9-11.  When we did, we were picking up anyone we could find, and, if you can bear for me to say it, we even picked up a bunch of kids and used "enhanced interrogation techniques" on them.

My old college roommate is a military language specialist and though he is even older than I am, he was called up and deployed to Iraq to interrogate prisoners. Alan has made fun of me for 30 years for being so politically engaged and he has always tried to get me to relax and just accept the world the way it is.

But between back-to-back tours of duty, Alan came home for a couple of weeks in January of 2005.  He saw his wife in California and then drove his old car from California to Washington, D.C. so that he could be on Pennsylvania Ave. when George W. Bush's motorcade came by from his second inauguration.  And my very non-political, just roll with the punches old roommate, stepped to the front of the crowd as the president's limousine passed and he pulled down the pants of his uniform and turned his backside to the President of the United States.

Alan explained to me, "I'm being forced to interrogate children who had been caught stealing food because they were starving as if they had information about terrorist attacks against the United States."

He said, "I am angry and I am ashamed of my country." Ironically, he was not arrested for this display of protest.... I suspect that everyone who saw him, even though they didn't know any of the details, still, they could understand why.

The Inspector General's report hasn't told us much that we didn't already know or suspect.... We just didn't want to talk about it.  We still want to act as if it all happened in the heat of the moment after 9-11, when, in fact, it went on for nearly a decade.

Even some of my friends have posted a dramatic image on Face Book of a man falling to his death from the burning twin trade towers that carries the caption, "This is why I don't care about how we tortured terrorists."

Because we don't want to think about it, we tell ourselves that we only tortured terrorists during the heat of battle.  Yesterday's front page of the New York Times reports on interviews with 26 different people who were tortured, some over a period of years, whom the CIA later determined had no connections to terrorism and who had committed no crime.

We tortured some prisoners during WWII and documented the fact that it didn't work... you don't get go information that way.  There were some incidents again during Vietnam and those only confirmed what we already knew.... It doesn't work, it only turns us into what we hate.

What I find to be especially ironic is how much chest thumping is involved in the defense of our use of torture, as if it is the strong and the brave who favor torture when it is clearly the cowards who wet themselves every time they feel scared... as if being afraid is a reason to throw your humanity, your values, your beliefs out the window..... so much for the land of the free and the home of the brave!  As Jon Stewart has said, if you abandon your principles when times are hard, then they were never really principles, they were just hobbies.

For the most part, religion is a hobby.  Church, in almost every case, is a life enhancing activity.... Not a life changing, challenging, informing activity.

Look at our music, especially the music for this season of the year.  If you buy into the Christmas narrative.... That God became incarnate in a human man-cub... what does our music say about this absolutely amazing event?

O little town of Bethlehem how still we see thee lie.... Hark, the herald angels sing, glory to the new born king,..... Angels we have heard on high, sweetly singing ore the plain....

To hear how the church has treated this ancient narrative you would think that it was just the sweetest thing.... Just precious... darling, even.

Sean is singing parts of the first Christmas carol, if I may call it that, for us today.  Mary's song as recorded in Luke.... Now, let's be clear.... I'm not taking that as a historical record.  I don't believe that an angel appeared to Mary and told her that she was going to bear God's son and then she burst into poetic singing.

This account is a creation of the early church but it is an important creation of the early church.  How did they interpret the birth of Jesus?  What was the significance of the Christ event in their minds?
You may not read Latin very well but let me tell you, it wasn't about, "away in a manger, no crying he made."  The early church says that Mary's immediate response to the angel was a revolutionary declaration.  Luke has this teenaged girl saying what Che Guevara and Cesar Chavez never had the nerve to say:

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.

A preacher could get fired for talking about revolution, about kicking the powerful off of their thrones and returning power to the people.  Why, people would leave the church if you started talking about a radical redistribution of wealth so that the hungry would be filled and the rich would be sent empty away.

This is not disguised.  This is not secret code.  This is in the Bible!  It is in chapter 1!  This is the introduction, if you don't get this you don't understand the rest of the story.