Detente with Demons

Epiphany 5     February 8, 2015
Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor

Mark 1:32-39              
32That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. 33And the whole city was gathered around the door. 34And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. 35In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. 36And Simon and his companions hunted for him. 37When they found him, they said to him, "Everyone is searching for you." 38He answered, "Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do." 39And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

I don't typically pay any attention to the National Prayer Breakfast.  I quit going to the local observance more than 20 years ago when I realized that it really was just a public affirmation of the love affair between conservative politics and evangelical Christianity.  They always tried to make the invitation sound like it wasn't that but that is what it always turned out to be, a kind of religious and political PDA that was more than a little nauseating to have to watch.

But on the national plane, the organizers feel obliged to invite the President to be the speaker and even though it is clearly an event for right wingers of both political and religious bent, the President usually feels obliged to attend.  In years past, what few clips I have heard in the news made it sound like President Obama went into hostile territory and tried to polish his Christian bona fides a bit before returning to the safety of the Oval Office.

But this year, this horrible year in which religious extremism seems determined to rush back into the dark ages, our President decided to step out a bit at this event.

He didn't just condemn Isis and Boco Haram, whose attempt at establishing a radical Muslim Caliphate has seen them capturing children and forcing them into marriage or, more honestly, selling them as sex slaves before their 10th birthday.  And, even more shockingly, dousing a fellow Muslim in gasoline and burning him alive in a cage and posting the video on line as if they were proud of their barbarism.

He did condemn those things but he also reminded his largely Christian audience that extremists in the Christian faith had a bloody history as well, all of the way from the Crusades, through the practice of African slavery, and down to the lynching's and Jim Crow history of America. It was nothing that I and many others have not said but the President came in for some outrageous criticisms in response to his Prayer Breakfast speech.

The morning after, former congressman and MSNBC news host, Joe Scarborough, nearly blew a fuse on Morning Joe, mocking the president as a pseudo-intellectual, and screaming about how insulting it was for him to bring up things that happened 800 to a thousand years ago.

Scarborough was shouting and demanding that everyone on the set agree with him, even though most tried their best to look away and avoid being engaged in the rant.
But it wasn't just Scarborough who was enraged.  Rush Limbaugh has nearly blown a fuse and Jim Gilmore, the former governor of Virginia, said that the president's remarks were the most offensive words utter by a president in his lifetime.  And, of course, Franklin Graham felt obliged to demonstrate his lack of comprehension of either history or religion as well as he attempted to represent the outrage of Evangelical Christians.

Though many were wagging their heads and attempting to shame the president, none could actually say that anything the president said was not factually true, and that is what astonishes me.  Of course, Scarborough, trying to bury these things in the distant past, was just absurd denial.

The Crusades were a millennia ago, the Inquisition was 800 years ago, but the American slave trade is not nearly so deeply buried in history and Jim Crow laws and lynchings remain in the memory of almost everyone in the room today.  Lynchings, generally involved hanging, but sometimes victims were set on fire or drug behind a horse or a car until their bodies fell into pieces.

Racially inspired lynching continued right up into the 1960's during the Civil Rights movement and who can forget the 1998 lynching of Matthew Shepherd in Laramie, Wyoming... a 21 year old university student murdered on the suspicion that he might be gay.

These events were Christian in more or less the same way that the immolation of a captured Jordanian pilot was Islamic.  We can say that the KKK had nothing to do with real Christianity in the same way that Muslims can say that Isis and Boko Haram are not Islamic but....well, it is not that hard to draw the lines, is it?
There are many official Islamic organizations statements of condemnation of terrorist acts done in the name of Islam but, what worries many of us is that there is also way too much sympathy hidden in Muslim congregations for these heinous deeds.

And while the practice of racially motivated lynchings in America peaked in the 1890's, there was still far too much sympathy for modern atrocities hidden in our Christian churches during the civil rights movement and not a little violent homophobia lurking, right up in to the 90's when Matthew Shepherd was murdered and it is not gone yet.

When we read the synoptic gospels, it is evident that high on the list of the memories of Matthew, Mark and Luke, was a memory of Jesus of Nazareth as a demon exorcist.  Most of us have been inclined to read such things with a mixture of embarrassment and skepticism.

Clearly, some of those accounts were primitive descriptions of epilepsy or of mental illness, but the gospel writers described them in very matter of fact ways, as real, present, and disgusting creatures who lived among them.

Of course, I do not take such accounts as being literal but I will assure you that I do believe that there are demons that live among us.  The ancients talked about demons as external things..... that is a trick of psychology that has persisted through the centuries.
Demons, in the sense of grave and horrible social evil, exist for sure but we always like to project them onto something external.  I'm a democrat so republicans are evil.  I'm an American, so Russians are evil.  I'm a Christian, so Muslims are evil.

We know that evil exists.  It frightens us.  Out of fear we do extreme things, militarily, through police action, and in mob mentality.  Out of fear we seek to annihilate the "other." But what the gospels always seem to say is that the demons are actually quite close at hand.  In the passage just before the one we read from Mark today, Jesus encounters the first demon in the gospel in the most disturbing place..... in church.

I always wonder, how long had that demon been there in that congregation and no one else had noticed?  I take these accounts to be metaphorical in nature but that does not mean that they are not true.... It just means that they are more true and true at a deeper level.

We tend to make peace with the demons that are the most familiar to us.  I can tell you, existentially, I grew up going to a segregated school and I didn't even know it was segregated.  I worked with the children of black tenant farmers on neighboring farms and never wondered where they went to school on Mondays.  I was a blissfully ignorant white southern boy who had not spent a moment thinking about the injustice, the violence, the oppression of America's Apartheid until segregation was ended through judicial coercion.

No one at my church talked about the evil of segregation.  The death of Martin Luther King was not mentioned that April week in 1964 when he was murdered.  No one in my church said that he should have been shot but the demon of racism could comfortably come and go from that church for many more years.

The evangelicals who were so offended by the President's prayer breakfast comments do not want to see that there is a connection between Christian extremism and Islamic extremism.  They do not want to see how their history of racism is made of the same cloth as the more current excesses of Jihadists.  But it is.

What I find captivating about the way the gospels describe these stories is that somehow, when Jesus showed up, something about Jesus, something in his character, his demeanor, his honesty, his integrity, made the demons visible..... like turning on the kitchen light in some of my old college apartments would reveal all of the cockroaches living in the student slums.  They would run for cover but there was no denying that they were there.

Our problem is that we get way too comfortable with our demons.... So comfortable, that we like to pretend that they don't exist.  They become so much a part of the scenery that we can get really angry when someone calls our familiar cultural furniture just what it is..... demonic.

We get used to industries that ruin the environment.  We accept that our poor neighborhoods have the most underfunded schools and our wealthy neighborhoods have our best schools and never let ourselves acknowledge that it should be the other way around.  We have twice as many foreclosed upon, empty houses as we have homeless people and yet we insist that there is no solution to homelessness.

1% of our nation holds 90% of our capital assets and yet we say that there is not enough to solve the problems of poverty.  Most political donations are made by less than one in every 100,000 Americans and yet we do not want to be told that we have sold our democracy to the highest bidder.  We drive past payday loan shops and sex shops that sell this week's version of Meth, preying on the poor and the desperate and we do not notice because we are not poor and we are not desperate....yet.

Historically, we have had a tendency to kill the people who reveal the demons of our culture rather than to be outraged by the presence of the demons themselves.  Too much of our society is content to live with the cockroaches and just insist that no one turn on the lights.

I don't know about you, but I want to be more like Jesus.  I want to turn on the lights.  I may not be able to drive out all of the demons but I sure don't want them to think that they can stay hidden when we walk into the room.

Islam needs to change.... And so does Christianity.... And let me tell you, so does Judaism.  But the demons we have to fight are not out there, or over there.... They are there but they are not our problem to solve.... We have plenty close at hand that we need to deal with. First, we have to be willing to turn on the lights and be honest with ourselves.

Sorting out Fact from Fiction

Epiphany 4    February 1, 2015
Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor

1 Corinthians 8:1-13        
Now concerning food sacrificed to idols: we know that "all of us possess knowledge." Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 2Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; 3but anyone who loves God is known by him.
4Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that "no idol in the world really exists," and that "there is no God but one." 5Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth--as in fact there are many gods and many lords-- 6yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
7It is not everyone, however, who has this knowledge. Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. 8"Food will not bring us close to God." We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. 9But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. 10For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols? 11So by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed. 12But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. 13Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.

I have only one friend from seminary with whom I have stayed in contact over the generations.  We don't get to see one another often but when we do it is a loud and long meeting, and even our phone calls rarely clock in at anywhere under either sixty minutes or  60 decibels.

Charles often says that we "fought for our friendship" and the word "fought" is crucial to that understanding.  As a young white man from rural Kentucky, Charles felt that there were a lot of things about racism that I needed to learn from his urban, Atlanta black experience.  He was not always a patient teacher, and the lessons were often adorned with colorful language but, I believe, we finally got there.

But a couple of decades ago the shoe shifted to the other foot.  When Charles heard some of my messages about gay rights and the ordination of homosexuals we discovered that we had another huge issue to discuss.

He was especially unhappy when he heard me call gay rights a "civil rights" issue because he did not believe that the discrimination he had experienced as a black man growing up in the south should be compared to the discrimination being shown to gays and lesbians.  Because I really love Charles Lee, I was more patient with him on this issue than I have been with most people.  Charles was with me in class, he was with me when I graduated.  He was with me when my daughtered arrived from Korea, and years later he stood at the bedside with me as we watched my mother die.  Charles was too important to me to allow our disagreement to damage our friendship.

He and his wife, Wynnett, live in Birmingham, AL and I always spend time with them whenever I am passing through.  This past year, when our friends, Andrea and Jill had moved to Birmingham, it was with some trepidation that I called to let Charles know that I was going to be in town and that I would be staying with Andrea and Jill.

And he said, "Well, are you going to bring them to church?"  And I said, "Well, Charles, they are lesbians."  And he asked, "Will they being doing anything outstandingly lesbian while they are in church?"  He explained, "As long as they don't have to physically demonstrate their sexual orientation during the worship service, I would like to meet them!"

I compromised and agreed to bring them to lunch after church because, well, you know Andrea.... You can never be sure what she might do!

The point being, 20 years ago, Charles, in spite of his excellent education and his long term experience in civil rights work, was not ready to accept that being a homosexual was not a sin.

Ten years ago he was willing to more or less look the other way.  Now, given time and space to let his views evolve, he has repeatedly reached out to Andrea and Jill to help them to feel welcome and at home, even in Birmingham, AL.  This growth has taken place only because I did not insult his faith or his intellect in the process, because our mutual love was stronger than our disagreement.  And in the safety and security of absolutely certain love, he has been able to grow in this area.

Charles called this past week after his grand-daughter had brought her boyfriend home from college to meet the family.  She is certain that this is the one.  The boyfriend in question happens to be white.  Charles said, "Roger, when they left, I realized that I was not really ready for this."  He said, "All those years ago, I thought I had put all of those prejudices behind me but now I realize that we need to carve out some time to talk about this again."

Racism, prejudice, that all too human inclination to divide people, one against the other, doesn't die easily and typically it doesn't die very quickly, nor does it die just because you have decided that you are done with it.

I have prejudices that live inside of me that I do not want.... They are demons that are not welcome.
I have locked the doors of my mind to shut them out and then, when you turn out the lights, you can hear them breathing in the shadows of your character.

Now, it will come as no great surprise to you to hear me say that I do not often cherish the work of the Apostle Paul.  The version of Christianity that Paul writes about in the New Testament, in my opinion, has very little in common with the religious teachings of Jesus and, frankly, I often find Paul to be rigid, misogynistic, and prejudiced but then he will say something that makes me have to pause and give him another chance.

One of the ways that people in the first century divided themselves into racial and religious subgroups was by what they ate and how they ate it.  In the polytheistic world of the growing Roman Empire, small temples and altars were blended into the marketplace.  Most butcher shops were associated, in one way or another, was an altar to one or more gods.  So, if you bought meat in the marketplace, a part of it had likely been sacrificed to one of these gods.

Many pious people in those days would, on moral grounds, refuse to eat meat that had been sacrificed to an idol.  My father, a veteran of WWII, would refuse to ride in a Japanese automobile.  I have met people in Jordan who would not eat an orange if they thought it had been grown in Israel.  I do not eat in local restaurants that display campaign signs for Republican congressman, Billy Long.... If they would vote for Billy Long, how could I have confidence they know how to cook without poisoning us?

This is a basic competency test, right?

Paul is being very matter of fact in this letter to the church in Corinth.  Sacrificing the unusable parts of an animal on an altar doesn't change the spiritual character of either the meat or of the people who eat it.  The color of a person's skin, a person's nationality, religion or sexual orientation is, in the end, of no real consequence, unless, of course, you think it is.

Paul is fairly evolved on this point.  There is no reason to be prejudiced but, he cautions, give your sisters and brothers enough time and safety to get to the same place.  I am convinced of this truth about psychology..... people do not often change because they have been humiliated, criticized, or attacked.  They change when people love them enough for them to feel secure because it is only in that place of safety that we can genuinely give ourselves permission to change.

Now this is a tough challenge for us.  Our little progressive church exists, in many ways, for the express purpose of offering a liberating approach to faith that gives people permission to set aside the magical and superstitious thinking of traditional forms of religion.  Our challenge to conservative ways of thinking often comes across as being condescending, insulting, dismissive and is, on the whole, too controversial for most people to be able to accept it.

So there is a challenge.....how many steak dinners do you have to turn down because someone else in the restaurant believes that a good Christian can't eat meat that has been sacrificed to an idol?  How many times do you have water rather than beer because someone at the table with you thinks that alcohol is always sinful?

When do you put your foot down and refuse to go to a Catholic Church service because Catholics still won't ordain women, or to a Baptist or Assemblies of God church because they still condemn our gay and lesbian friends?  How do we talk about our progressive faith that is free of supernatural theism with all of its angles, demons, lakes of fire and streets of gold in the clouds, with making our traditional church going friends feel like we think they are stupid.... Even when we kind of do think that?

And now you will hear me say something that you do not commonly hear.... Where do we draw the line?  When do we say that we will no longer tolerate prejudice and ignorance?  Frankly, I don't know.  And honestly, I am afraid that more often than not, I have erred on the side of pushing for progress too hard.

What I know from my long term relationship with Charles is that I was able to grow out of a lot of stupid white-southern prejudice because he loved me enough not to give up on me.  And Charles has been able to grow out of a lot of his stupid heterosexual homophobia because I have always loved him in spite of himself.

So, in the battle between being right and being kind, in the contest between awareness and affection, between being insightful and being loving, in almost every case, we probably need to assume that being more loving is not just better but that it is more effective than just being smart.

I say that, not simply because it is incumbent upon preachers to favor love but because it, honestly, it works better.  If I could successfully insult my traditional Christian friends into opening their minds to be more progressive I would have done it a long time ago.

No one ever changes when they feel threatened.  We can really only grow in an emotionally safe environment.  It isn't just that love smells better and makes us feel good, sincere love is the fertilizer in which we all can grow.

Paul was telling his church friends to love one another long enough to give one another the chance to finish growing up.  And that is a message we can all stand to be reminded of from time to time.  You even have my permission to occasionally remind me that I said this in public.

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.