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Dec. 27 After the Passover celebration, when all the travelers had packed up and left to go back home, Jerusalem must have seemed pretty quiet. The Temple itself must have been as empty as it ever got, people sweeping up after thousands of dusty feet, the merchants with depleted inventory maybe taking a day off to recover. Cleaning out the fire pits where sacrifices had been made, replacing hundreds of oil lamps, enjoying the hush after the commotion of so many voices. But the boy Jesus was not ready for Passover to be over. He had some questions and ideas he wanted to follow up on, and in all his short life he had never had such a fabulous opportunity as this to consult with people who ought to know, scholars and wise men. He stayed, and that’s where Mary and Joseph found him, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Obviously we don’t know what Jesus was really like as a child. This story is one of the less imaginative stories that were told about the child Jesus, the others being so wild that they didn’t even make it into the New Testament. Luke’s point here is to show that from the beginning Jesus was oriented toward God, and that his wisdom was recognized and acknowledged by those in authority, who should know what’s real and what’s counterfeit. This boy was really smart and really in touch with God; that is recognized by the scholars at the Temple. But if the story tells us that Jesus from an early age was attuned to God, what are the implications for us? Just another stamp of approval on Jesus, as if we needed another? No, it’s better than that. It’s also a model of audacity, even for those of us well past adolescence, permission to suspend responsibility sometimes in order to follow something tantalizing. We talk a lot about how adolescent this is, how Mary and Joseph must have been so worried, how inconsiderate Jesus was, and so forth. But seriously, the story is illustrating that he had priorities that sometimes called him away from his family, and it implies that that was not only necessary but good. It’s the same for us. One of my students from last semester had been an electronics guy in the army, and he was telling me one day about how he’d gotten interested in circuitry as a boy. Somehow, maybe in shop class, he’d wired up a circuit, and then he played around with it and extended it and figured out that when he put more lights on it they all got dimmer, and I don’t know what all he did. But as he was telling me the story I caught a sense of the child’s entrancement with a new discovery, and the almost physical force of his curiosity to push the boundaries of his understanding. And then he grew up and went to Iraq, and the religion of his childhood didn’t work any more, and he set it aside, but now he had to take this class and what do you know, he started fooling around with theology in the same way, pushing it and adding stuff on and taking stuff off and turning it upside down, and I hope he gives himself permission to keep fooling with it now that the class is over and he has to take a whole new set of classes. What the young Jesus reminds me of is how, when you have children, you’re frequently late because they have no sense of time. They don’t budget time, they don’t watch the clock and when they’re interested in something time just stops for them. That makes it extremely difficult to get the whole crew from Point A to Point B, or to enforce bedtime, or to wrap up the children’s sermon neatly. But in the post-Christmas hush, maybe we should recover a little of that childish imperviousness to time and allow ourselves to fool around, see what interesting things God has tied to the end of the string we haven’t had time to pull on. Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote: “We may doubt anything, except that [when] we are struck with amazement. When in doubt, we raise questions; when in wonder, we do not even know how to ask a question. Doubts may be resolved, radical amazement can never be erased. There is no answer in the world to [our] radical wonder. Under the running sea of our theories and scientific explanations lies the aboriginal abyss of radical amazement.” (Man Is Not Alone, p. 13) He also wrote, “The root of religion is the question what to do with the feeling for the mystery of living, what to do with awe, wonder and amazement.” (God in Search of Man, p. 162) Once asked by an interviewer what he believed to be his greatest gift, Heschel replied, “My ability to be surprised.” It was probably easy for the 12 year-old Jesus to set aside his filial duty and responsibility in order to pursue his burning interests. We learn responsibility gradually. But oh, once we’ve learned responsibility, it is so hard to unlearn it! I know I spend way more time inventorying my list of “shoulds” and taking care of them than I do in awe, wonder and amazement. And yet even as an adult who presumably had learned responsibility, Jesus told his disciples to reject their families if they kept them from following him, and rhetorically rejected his own family when they stood in the way of his teaching. We are called not only to care for our dependents and those who have no one to care for them, but also to care for ourselves—to challenge our own stale, entrenched ways of thinking, to waste time wondering about something that may never come to pass, to stop moving like automata through the days and weeks so that we can play with new ideas or new toys that interest us. That’s how we stay open to the Holy Spirit, and that’s how we make ourselves available to God. Jesus did it; we should too.
Dec. 20 The Magnificat: Mary praises God in this triumphant song, for what God has done: He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. And we appreciate the spirit of her song, even as we have to wonder a little just exactly when this happened. It hadn’t happened yet in her time. King Herod was so brutal and so unpopular that he knew people would celebrate when he died, so he supposedly had 70 elite Jewish citizens imprisoned with orders that they be executed on the day of his death so that there would be tears in Israel (The Christian Century 12-15-09). It hasn’t happened in our time. The powerful are even now formulating new ways to stop financial reform in this country and to make health insurance reform meaningless. So what is Mary up to? A Greek grammarian at Luther Seminary says that Mary is speaking in the gnomic aorist tense, which means that she’s talking about how God always acts. It translates into English as past tense, but it’s really about the habitual way of God: brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. You may not see it right this moment, but it is what God is doing and has always done, and God will not rest until it is completed, because it’s in the nature of God to fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty. It has become commonplace to note that these world-shaking events are spoken of by an obscure 14 year-old girl, and that Micah’s prophecy about the return of the Davidic king has that return take place in an obscure town of Judah, Bethlehem. We’ve all heard—and I hope believe—that God works through the very ordinary and unremarked-upon people out of the limelight. But how can we be those people? Because we want to be! We want to be part of the work of God! But we feel so helpless sometimes in the huge tides of empire and market forces. You may not have been aware of this—it wasn’t covered in the Des Moines Register—but the World Parliament of Religions was held in Melbourne Australia Dec. 3-9. I read about it in the National Catholic Reporter. One of the sessions was called “Alternatives to Empire,” and it began with an enumeration of the signs that the American empire is falling: The financial and economic crisis which began in the United States, involving the dollar and fundamental structures of the economy and means of production, have impacted practically all the rest of the world; The foundational pillar of the U.S. empire, i.e., military power, with bases girding the globe and a budget which exceeds one-half the total military expenditure of the entire world, has proved ineffective in achieving the empire’s aims. Hard-power, whether in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, or Afghanistan, has not been able to withstand the challenge of the people’s movement; If the empire has not been able to contain its own backyard (read: Latin America), how can it continue to wield an influence on the rest of the world? Considering that the implosion of the Soviet Union began with the revolutions in the surrounding Eastern European nations, the rejection today of United States’ influence by a number of Latin American countries is certainly cause for concern for the empire. http://ncronline.org/news/global/parliament-discusses-alternatives-empire What are the alternatives? Rev. Harry Kerr, the Convenor of Pax Christi Victoria, suggested that just as in Christianity “when the first disciples were proclaiming Jesus is Lord they were actually challenging the Lordship of the Roman Empire,” so too people of faith today can rise up to offer alternative ways of organizing and of living, especially “in ways which are as radical as Jesus’ fundamental option for the poor.” This was the early Church’s role until, as Kerr lamented, “Christianity was co-opted by the empire and bishops began donning imperial vestments.” And of course he’s right, but then the question arises about how to offer alternative ways of organizing and of living where we are, in our time. That’s the real question: how? Joe Volk, an American Quaker, says that we have to do what Mairi Winslow has been modeling for us this Advent with our candle ceremony: we have to tell stories. He writes, A former member of Congress and I were talking a few years ago. We were wondering how advocates of so-called national missile defense systems manage to win appropriations each year. He said, “We opponents win on the facts of the matter. We win on policy analysis. We win on policy recommendation. But then we lose floor votes in the House and the Senate. Why?” Then he answered his own question: because advocates of the national missile defense system have the best story. People – and law makers -- go with the story rather than with the facts and the analysis. This “best story” is a narrative about threats and fear. The narrative tells people about their world and their place in it. The national-defense story – like the war-on-terror story -- is a narrative of cosmological proportion. The definition of the problem runs like this: good people and bad people inhabit the world, we are the good people, and the bad people are trying to kill us. The resolution to this problem is: if we want to survive, we will have to stop the bad people from attacking us by killing them first. The story defines the problem, and the problem definition leads to the “solution.” http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4732 We have to tell a different story. This same Quaker, Joe Volk, talks about a conversation with Congressman John Lewis, who was active in the civil rights movement. He asked Lewis about what he saw as alternatives to our society’s fatal infatuation with brute force, and Lewis recalled the time when he had to reframe the civil rights struggle for himself as, not blacks against whites or progressives against bigots or right against wrong, but as a story of brothers and sisters learning to live together. “We brothers and sisters are all children of God. He said that this view of our human community liberated him from hate and revenge and allowed him to forgive even those who beat him senseless on the bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965.” John Lewis made that his master narrative: not opposing forces, but brothers and sisters learning to live together. He did not see a cosmic battle between good and evil as yet unresolved, but a process in which people were hurting each other but also learning about each other, changing and growing. And that master narrative allowed him and those with whom he shared it to do transformative work. Our master narrative is that God comes to obscure people and places and does amazing things—makes a way where there is no way, redeems what is lost, makes new what was broken and worn out. We have to tell those stories. So, for instance, I also read a story in National Catholic Reporter about an elderly woman in South Bend Indiana who started a Christian-Muslim women’s dialog group five years ago. She’s not a civic leader or a religious scholar, and neither are the women who come to the group. They’re just ladies who want to be good neighbors. They discuss food, family customs, family celebrations and religious practices, but not politics. There are about 30 of them now, and I would bet that the potential for anti-Muslim activity in South Bend is considerably diminished since these women have become friends and mutual supporters. God just used a few ordinary ladies to move the mountain of Islamophobia in that obscure Indiana town; could you have imagined that anything revolutionary would come out of South Bend? Another for instance: we, a little congregation of maybe forty, had extra money lying around. Normatov Dadajon, a 35 year-old father of three in Tajikistan, is a competent cattle farmer who needed to be able to raise more cattle to care for his growing children. So we and 28 other microlenders lent him a total of $1,000 (and the average annual income in Tajikistan is $1300) so he could buy more cattle to raise and sell. Suddenly he has the opportunity to do much more for his children, to open doors for them that were not even visible, because God can use little bitty congregations to do enormous things along the lines of lifting up the lowly and filling the hungry with good things. We do not have a lot of dollars or a lot of powerful friends. Even people who do, like George Soros, seem almost helpless in the face of the forces of greed and fear that pillage the earth and the wealth of nations. So maybe it’s time, not to stop paying attention to the big players, but to pay our closest attention to the extremely small players who are playing by a different playbook, if you will, or a different script. Maybe it’s time to tell the stories and even be the characters in the stories that Micah and Luke tell, in which God does cosmic, redeeming things when not many people are looking, with 14 year-old girls and old ladies and small farmers in Tajikistan. Those are the stories that will change the world. O God of Elizabeth and Mary, you visited your servants with news of the world's redemption in the coming of the Savior. Make our hearts leap with joy, and fill our mouths with songs of praise, that we may announce glad tidings of peace, and welcome the Christ in our midst. Amen.
Dec. 13 Look at how the first two readings for today address fear. The passage from Zephaniah proclaims that God has turned away the enemies of Israel and “you shall fear disaster no more. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak.” And then the rest of the passage is all about how God is in your midst, God is rejoicing over you with gladness, God is going to save the lame and gather the outcast and bring you all home. “I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes.” The second reading is from the end of Paul’s letters to the Philippians, where he advises them not to worry about anything. “In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” And then your hearts will be guarded by peace, which by definition excludes fear or anxiety. I couldn’t help but think about how our world, not the globe but the social world we inhabit, is corroded by fear. Go to the airport and you’ll hear the recording that says the threat level is orange, whatever that means. Send your child out to play, and watch her get bored and lonely as nobody joins her, because really good parents don’t let their children out of sight for fear they’ll be kidnapped, or fall out of a tree and break an arm, or eat something off the ground that will poison them. Try to come up with a plan for universal healthcare coverage, and ignite cries of death panels and rampant socialism, loss of everything for the haves, and a gain of nothing for the have-nots. Truly fear rules from a thousand places, and that is no surprise, because it is the nature of fear to infiltrate, not just bad situations where fear might be justified, but good situations, where comfort and plenty exist – but perhaps not for long. The 20th-century theologian, H. Richard Niebuhr, wrote a book that was published after his death called The Responsible Self. He says that there are a total of three ways that we can see reality, and each of these ways of seeing reality correlates with a way of responding to reality, or responding to life. So to be a responsible self you have to choose how to see. The first way you can see the whole is as threatening and hostile. This would be exemplified by June’s grandmother, who used to say, “Laugh before supper, cry before bedtime.” (By the way I should just admit right now that this entire sermon is pretty much cribbed from last week’s adult Sunday School.) The cosmos is threatening and hostile, and as soon as you get comfortable, it’ll getcha. Be careful what you pray for. The only sure things are death and taxes. People are basically selfish, and you’d better look out for yourself because nobody else will. Niebuhr says that if you do see reality as hostile, of course you’re going to adopt a self-protective stance. You’ll build up your systems of security. And Niebuhr says that this is the predominant form of Christianity—God will get you if you don’t believe the right things, offer the right sacrifices, purify yourself, whatever. Your only chance is to do everything right and hope to be spared from the eternal fire. The second way that people see reality is as indifferent. It goes its way, we’re here for a while, enjoy what you can of it and don’t attach meaning to anything. That is probably the most common non-religious perception of the whole. The third option is to see reality as life-giving and nourishing—the theological term is “gracious.” Obviously Niebuhr advocates this position, but he’s not closing his eyes to evil here. He knows about the Holocaust and the World Wars; he knows about the atrocious things human beings can do to each other. He does not deny any of that. Rather, he says that in the midst of that, if we can see reality as gracious, as life-giving in some ways that we don’t understand, it makes it possible to respond to life gratefully—and not need to be primarily concerned with defending the self against an indifferent or even hostile universe. Marcus Borg says, It makes possible what another theologian calls "the self-forgetfulness of faith". It makes possible what yet another thinker has called "a willingness to spend and be spent in the service of an over-arching vision". It makes possible the kind of life that we see in Jesus, that willingness to spend and be spent. The kind of life we see in Jesus is also the kind of life we see in the saints, whether they be known or unknown. When I say "unknown", I think there are a lot of Christians throughout the centuries whose lives aren’t known about beyond their own family, and maybe community, who have reached this place of being willing to spend and be spent in the name of this vision of reality. So last week in adult Sunday School we were talking about how to be joyful in the midst of uncertainty or even sorrow, which the Advent readings advised, and Susie said something that really resonated with me. She said that every Advent or Christmas season there is something that happens that is completely unexpected and unpredictable, and that the only way to get that experience is to stay open the whole time. You have to just stay open to whatever is happening, so that when that surprise comes, you’re there to receive it. And I think the kinds of things she was talking about were a great conversation, or a lovely hour and a half with your family, or the sudden manifestation of generosity or compassion in your child—not giant cosmic shifts, but significant and meaningful signs that God is at work right now, right here, improvising and creating and doing a new thing. When Zephaniah and Paul tell us to fear not and not to worry about anything, what exactly is the fear they’re addressing? The fundamental fear is that God isn’t here—and God isn’t coming, either. The fundamental fear is that the universe really is indifferent or hostile, and we’re on our own. And once that fear gets its claws into us, we are so panicked and obsessed with self-preservation that we become incapable of seeing those surprises that Susie talked about, those signs that God really is with us. Fear keeps us from seeing that God is present with us, and coming to deliver us from all threats. The prophets and apostles and angels have to keep reminding us, “Fear not!” Because God is at work right now, right here, and it would really be a shame to miss the party.
Dec. 6 - Steve Rose, preaching This being the Christmas season, this sermon should have something to do with Jesus, and eventually it will. But I need to tell you up front that I have a bias toward John the Baptist. Perhaps more than any other Biblical figure, Jesus excepted, he’s the one that most fascinates me. But he’s definitely a second fiddle sort of guy. Come to think of it, the Israelites throughout their history were pretty much a second fiddle nation, constantly being conquered by and subjugated under more dominant peoples. The message we heard from the Psalms is the exception of the Israelite experience, not the rule. But back to John the Baptist. What’s his role in Christian thought and history? Yes, he’s a patron saint, as are most important New Testament figures, but the patron saint of whom or what? Thanks to the internet, I learned that he the protector of and intervener for “hailstorms, epileptics, spasms, tailors, printers, lambs, and the diocese of Patterson, New Jersey.” Not exactly a list of lofty responsibilities, and have you ever been to Patterson, New Jersey? What do you do with a hailstorm? And with Kindles, printers are going to be a diminishing breed. You search through the section on Wikopedia devoted to saints, and he’s not even listed! That’s a sure sign f being a second fiddle. He was five years Christ’s senior, and died the same year that Christ did. His mother and the Blessed Mary were related we know, although we don’t know how. Now John was a wild man, really with his coat hair robe and diet of locusts and honey. I imagine him a big man, a linebacker/biker dude—broad of shoulder with wild and uncombed hair and beard. I see him tramping around the desert, catching the locusts and dipping them in honey to tone down the taste. I think it’s no accident that the savior-prophet wild man in the dystopian novel Brave New World was named John, John the Savage to be precise. Like John the Baptist, he also comes to an untimely and lonely end, not sure that he made any difference. But John the Baptist was making a difference—big time—until upstaged by his cousin. Like his little cousin Jesus, he had a large following in his heyday, he had public arguments with the Pharisees, and he preached a new world order. He also had a miraculous birth, born to a couple well into their Medicare years; and he was executed in a grisly fashion by an unwilling official only a few months after Christ himself was executed. In fact, Christ’s assent to heaven, and John’s death would have been within a couple of months of each other. As we know, Pontius Pilate had no real quarrel with Jesus. He simply succumbed to the wishes to the Jewish power elite. John’s execution by Herod was similar. Herod gave into the manipulations of his wife and stepdaughter. Having a wife and stepdaughter myself, I can empathize. So John the Baptist is reduced to a head on a tray, a head whose tongue were told was stabbed repeatedly by Herod to prove to those women how much Herod disliked the words that rolled off that tongue. John knew he was a second fiddle. In the third chapter of Luke, first verse, he tells us: "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie." Since un-shoeing another person is the job for a servant at that time, John really knows his place. He also tells the Christ that it is Jesus, not himself, who should be doing the baptizing of the other. But Jesus is a stickler for protocol, and it is he who is dunked into the Jordan. An interesting aside here: in three of the four gospels, it is at this point that Jesus sees the spirit of God descend upon him, and in the fourth—the gospel of John—John the Baptist sees the spirit make the show. So what kind of God juice was Jesus running on up to that time? We know Christ had a strong ministry at that point, but was he the same messiah before the baptism as he was afterwards? Interesting, but I digress. Back to being second fiddle. One could make the case (I guess I am making the case) that there can be a unique responsibility in that role, even if it’s often a thankless one. Forgive the football comparison—I’m not Baptist—but the role of the long snapper in field goal and extra point attempts is a good case in point. No one notices if the snap is delivered accurately, but let it go short or long, and the effort is generally doomed. You only get attention—and I know this from my days of being the long snapper in high school—when you screw it up. One could even go so far as to say that being a willing second fiddle is downright Christ-like. In the gospel of John, chapter 13, we read: “’You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you." And Christ not only washed their feet; there are some accounts that he dried them with a garment off his own body. Then there’s his ultimate act of second-fiddleness: sacrificing himself for the sins of the world—Christ putting the needs of louts like us over his sinless own. I still chill at the scene of Christ on the cross—not because of the nails in his hands or the holes in his torso. No, such a sight would be pretty common at Golgatha—in our tongue, the “place of the skull.” I chill at what one would hear, at least in the gospels of Mathew and Mark. We hear Jesus, the very son of God, cry out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It is at that moment of atonement—the second fiddle’s atonement for our sinful selves--that he’s stripped of his relationship with his God. And at a time when he needs God more than he ever needed God in his life. But as we know, it ends happily. A few days later the stone rolls away and our second fiddle savior gets to walk and talk with his disciples for some weeks before the final ascent. What about us? When do we make being a second fiddle a calling instead of a course? In a society that celebrates self-aggrandizement and rewards narcissism, being a second fiddle does get us much attention. But that doesn’t mean that being a second fiddle isn’t important. Take my trade—teaching. If you are going to do it right, you need to sacrifice your sense of self-importance and self-involvement for the needs of your students. Personally, I get more actual joy out of designing lessons, researching them, writing them, and so on, than I do in the actual delivery; but that’s not important. It’s what my students learn that matters. My Liberal Art Seminar class—a small group of freshmen—helped me at this point. I was driving nine of them to a service-learning project and asked them to give me instances where being a second fiddle was called for in their lives. One young woman brought up the practice of cleaning her dorm room before her roommate’s mom visited. The mom praised her daughter, not knowing that Meagan did the cleaning. Another woman talked about coaching another student on a writing assignment and that other student doing better on the assignment than she did herself. Take being a parent. Talk about being a second fiddle to a two-month-old tyrant! The diapers, the feeding schedule, the crying. It can almost be heroic in scope, but it’s definitely putting the needs of another ahead of your own. It’s being a second fiddle. And take that same child and add 16 years and a driver’s license. You know that if they would just listen to you and do things the way you think they should be done, you’d both be better for it. But you also know you’ve got to give up some of that control so your offspring develops some self-control. I still can’t watch my youngest, now a woman of 25, pull out of the drive way without cringing. But neither can our mailbox. Economically, the USA is becoming more and more a nation of professional second fiddles. More and more our livelihoods turn on our ability to provide services—skills, support, expertise, sought-after advice. We are less and less a nation of self-made men, and more and more a nation of other-serving women. And that may well be why women in this recession have suffered a considerably lower rate of unemployment than men. I look at our public servants. The best ones are second fiddles. No matter how exalted the role, a true public servant seeks out and serves the legitimate needs of her electors. Let us hope that in this time of economic hardship those leaders have the guts to do the hard things for the greater good. And if that makes feeding the hungry, protecting the vulnerable, and healing the ill lead to a tough decision—raising taxes maybe—then that’s what they ought to do. And the same holds true for the church, whether we’re talking about single congregations like Crossroads, or that amorphous entity we call Christianity. The best way of spreading the word is living the word; and you’ll win more souls in service to the needy than in building a bright new building. That’s one of the main reasons I’m a part of this congregation; I’ve never met such a collection of second fiddles who play their “music of ministry” loudly if not always melodically. Of course, we’ve gotten cosmetic with the concept of second fiddling. We’ve coined the term servant leaders. Both ways of looking at giving onto others has its place. Servant leader certainly sounds more dignified, even glamorous, but I prefer the plain Jane term second fiddle. It puts me in my place. And it reminds to relax, to let things be even as I do what I can do. And that reminds me of my favorite prayer. It is called “Always We Begin Again: The Benedictine Way of Living” and it was written by John McQuiston II in 1996. The first rule is simply this: Live this life and do whatever is done in a spirit of thanksgiving. Abandon attempts to achieve security, they are futile, Give up the search for wealth, it is demeaning, Quit the search for salvation, it is selfish. And come to comfortable rest in the certainty that those who participate in this life with an attitude of Thanksgiving will receive its full promise. A second fiddle is grateful for getting to play at all. And that makes the playing all the more worthwhile. Let us pray. Lord and God, Creator and Redeemer Thank you for our humble roles in your vast and great universe. Help us humble ourselves to you and to our fellow humans. Make our service to others our great calling, even as Christ and John the Baptist found that calling 2,000 years ago. Help us help our brothers and sisters, our arms about their waists, helping them to walk the road and us not caring whose head is held higher.
Nov. 29, 2009 On Clinton Ave., just east of the Elks Lodge, there is a tree stump. I’ve been driving by that property for nine years, and it wasn’t until just last month that I noticed that the stump is not dead. It’s a big, wide stump of what must have been a very old tree, and right out of the middle is growing a new little sprout. I noticed it before all the leaves had fallen, and this little sprout boasted quite a few leaves on its spindly branches, all of them on the job, valiantly sucking up sunlight and converting it to energy so the skinny little trunk could grow big and strong again in the fullness of time. As a trained theologian I recognized it immediately, of course: it is a reminder of God’s promise in Jeremiah: “In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” To be perfectly explicit, the symbolism is of a monarchical lineage that has ended—has been cut off—and then somehow from the dead remainder a new anointed king appears, a new ruler of the lineage of David. Imagine that—right here in Indianola, next to the Elks Lodge, a sign of God’s salvation for the earth. It’s almost like having the Virgin Mary’s likeness appear in a tortilla, or an image of Jesus in French toast, only better—because it’s not freaky and weird, it’s perfectly normal. It probably won’t make the National Enquirer, and they probably won’t make an apocalyptic movie about it, but take it from me, this is a class A certifiable sign from God. “I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” The gospel reading for today is another apocalyptic reading; that’s the way we start Advent, with signs of the end of the world. But this year I’m seeing the signs as very normal. Okay, it’s dramatic when Jesus says “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.” That is dramatic. But when we realize that the sun was the symbol of Rome itself, the empire under which Jesus and Luke’s congregation lived, the picture begins to resolve itself into comprehensible national dynamics. The sun is Rome, and moon and the stars are the empire’s client kings clustered around it, and we are being told that it’s not the end of the cosmos but the shaking of the earthly principalities and powers. That’s big stuff, but it’s not new to us. Our empire seems to be crumbling around us right now too, and the pain of lost jobs, financial stresses, and scarce public resources is very, very familiar to us. Furthermore, although times of chaos like this beget anxiety and the desire to use sophisticated instruments to determine what’s going on, Jesus directs his listeners’ attention toward a more low-tech sign, the fig tree. “As soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.” Jesus is letting us know that we don’t have to work so hard to figure out what’s going on; God speaks to us through the most ordinary events of our lives. When the trees leaf out we know it’s almost summer; when there is chaos and tribulation among the powers and principalities, we should know that the reign of God is near. I suppose the question is, how will we recognize it? How will we know when we’re done waiting? I found a couple of clues. One is in the letter to the Thessalonians. They are certainly living in the in-between time, a time of worldly powers crumbling and also a time in which Jesus could come back at any moment but he hasn’t yet. I would imagine it was a very anxious time for the Thessalonian Christians, sort of on pins and needles all the time. But what Paul says to them suggests quite the opposite; it suggests that the Thessalonians are spending their waiting time following the Way of Jesus very successfully. “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you?” It’s not that they’ve got all their questions answered, because Paul goes on to mention wanting to restore whatever is lacking in their faith. But he sure can’t wait to get back there: “Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you.” There’s something wonderful going on in Thessalonica. To live between the times is to live with uncertainty and often anxiety. Anxiety tempts us to fearfulness, isolation, and reactivity. When we are anxious, we seek to fortify ourselves, take out insurance of various kinds, minimize contact with those who need something from us, stop making plans for the future or taking risks or initiatives. Anxiety constricts us while we wait for deliverance in uncertain times. But Paul prays for more of whatever’s going on already at Thessalonica: increasing and abounding in love for one another and for all, a strengthening of their hearts in holiness, a spirit of faith, courage, and love. The Thessalonians are doing their waiting actively. They are performing works of love and justice even while they await greater fulfillment of love and justice in God’s reign. As long as you’re waiting, you might as well bind up the wounded, beat down a few bureaucracies, invite a few friends to join you for dinner. It reminds me a little bit of when Qayum and Sadagat lived in a really dumpy little apartment, and Qayum asked her once why she was picking up sticks and litter around the place since it wasn’t theirs or their responsibility. She said it was because civilized people don’t live like this, with crud all around them. She expected to be gone from there at some point, but while she waited for that time, she was going to live like a civilized person. We wait for the coming of the messiah, but in the meantime let’s wait like the people of God. Or, I have to share this wonderful anecdote I found about an eclipse of the sun during the colonial period; apparently nobody had anticipated it, and a meeting of a state legislature was taking place when the sky grew black. In the midst of general panic someone moved to adjourn the meeting, but one of the legislators stood up and said, “Mr. Speaker, if it is not the end of the world and we adjourn, we shall appear to be fools. If it is the end of the world, I choose to be found doing my duty. I move you, sir, let candles be brought.” I said I had a couple of clues to help us recognize the reign of God. One was the letter to the Thessalonians, in which we see that the Thessalonians are waiting actively and following the Jesus Way with all they’ve got, not giving in to anxiety and paranoia. The other clue is the growing pile of data about the giftedness of this congregation, which we’ve worked on in two retreats this fall. At the first retreat we looked at our own spiritual gifts and the clusters of gifts that we fell into, and discovered that for such a small church, we have a really wide distribution of gifts. I won’t do the excruciating detail, but of the four clusters of gifts, we had seven people in Organizing, ten in Outreach, six in Witnessing, and five in Nurturing. That’s pretty even distribution; we’re not deficient in any! At the second retreat we looked out our individual spirituality types and then what the type for the whole congregation of Crossroads is. Spirituality types are kind of the ways in which you are drawn to relate to God, and our book gives you six to choose from. We had six Heart types, who focus on sharing faith and value direct experience. That was the plurality. But we also had two head types, who find God through intellectual activity and who keep us rigorous and grounded, two mystics, who connect with the holy through mystery, two servants, who find that God is most knowable through other people and live their faith more than they think it, three pilgrims, who ask questions, keep us open to new possibilities, and don’t let us settle for final answers; and one crusader, who offers us focus and commitment and gets out front to lead us when we’re slow or timid. We didn’t have as many participants in the second retreat, so that’s just a bare minimum; obviously we have more of all six types. Then we discussed what the corporate spirituality type is for Crossroads, and we were nearly unanimous in saying that it was pilgrim—asking questions, never settling for answers, having fun. Again, we’re very rich! That’s just 16 people, and we had at least one in every category! No wonder I feel like we can do anything! Together we have the gifts and the variety of orientations to do the work of ten churches! But the really important thing is that we have each other’s gifts—what I can’t bring to the congregation, you can, so that together we supply one another with different ways of seeing, different models of discipleship, different accesses to the vision of the fulfillment of the reign of God for which we are all waiting. Maybe our task in goal-setting is not to correct our deficiencies but to capitalize on the wide range of abilities that we have together. I’m telling you, the signs of God and the gifts of God are enormous, cosmic in their significance, life-changing and earth-shaking. But they are not exotic or bizarre. They are as ordinary and accessible as a tree stump off the highway or as the urge to ask why and why again. Watch and wait, be wakeful and alert for the coming of the day of the Lord. But don’t wait to be given the equipment for the day of the Lord. That, we already have. Let’s be wonderful with it.
Nov. 22, 2009 I’ve been teaching World Religions again this fall, this time for Simpson’s Evening and Weekend Program, and as usual I’ve gotten sucked up into the fascinating ways the students respond to the material. Everything’s pretty quiet while we do eastern religions, because nobody has a lot of experience with them or much of a personal stake in them. Then we get to Judaism and Christianity, and all hell breaks loose. Islam is next, and I can’t wait to see what happens. Some of my students are ardent Christians; they have varying degrees of awareness that it’s possible to read the Bible skeptically and still be a Christian, and they are eager to defend their faith from skeptics. One such student, writing his first paper on Marcus Borg, admonished Borg for what he saw as unbelief. When I asked him to elaborate on why he thought Borg was dangerous, he said, “I . . . find this ReVisioning to be dangerous for someone of new faith whose faith is based mostly on belief without knowledge, hearing this put forth I believe does allow for a remaking of God in our own value image.” “I find this ReVisioning to be dangerous for someone of new faith.” My student, an enthusiastic churchman, is concerned not to threaten or undermine the fragile new faith of converts, and so he works hard to project a seamless, foolproof Christianity in which there are no loose ends or odd holes. During class discussion he represented Christianity as very much an authoritative, reliable system of faith and thought in which all the answers were to be found if you looked in the right places. Others of my students have rejected Christianity. And by the way, all my students were non-traditional, so they had a few years of life experience before college. The students who rejected Christianity did so, not because it didn’t make logical sense, but because the Christians they had known were, in their words, hypocrites. Here’s what one of them wrote: “I have my beliefs in a higher power, but I also have seen great atrocities wrought on people in the name of religion, and God. I have seen many hypocrites in the born again caste: people who, because they believe in their salvation and relationship with God so strongly they judge others. Do not judge, lest you be judged. Living a life full of God and the spirit, to me, has always been about walking the path less chosen.” Another wrote, “Much of my past contention with those who preach the Christian way so loudly and strongly is the question of whether Jesus himself would approve of what some would consider strong arm tactics to make people believe.” As you can imagine, I live for students like these. I personally find seamless theologies unconvincing, and my bias is toward allowing ambiguity and tension to exist openly while I struggle for greater clarity. And of course the evangelist in me always thinks, aha, these are people who maybe could develop faith if they just had an alternative to the hypocrisy or certainty of the Christianity they’ve experienced. All of which actually does have something to do with the trial scene in the gospel of John. This is just a snippet of a much longer scene in which Pilate examines Jesus, leaves, comes back, negotiates with the crowd, hears from the high priest, tries to get out of sentencing him, and has this dialog on two levels with Jesus. The trial is about whether Jesus has claimed inappropriate power for himself. “Are you the King of the Jews?” Is he going to lead an insurrection against the Roman government? Jesus’ reply is complicated, but the point I want to emphasize here is that the claim he makes to authority is not a claim to coercive power but to truth. “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” He’s a king, but not one with an army: “If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over.” His claim to kingship lies with the power of truth. It is not irrelevant that Jesus utters these words to Pilate while standing before him nearly naked, bloodied from being beaten, dirty and hungry. How can he do that? How do you stand naked before a ruler, your life in his hands, your sanity intact, and claim to be in a better position than that ruler? Because that’s what he’s claiming. Jesus is saying Yes, I am a king, and the kingly power I exercise is that I tell the truth, I embody the truth. If Jesus’ power lies in truth, that truth is not an idea, not a concept, not a formulation, not even a fact. It is a way of being in the world in suffering and hope. The truth that Jesus evidences is a way of being in the world in suffering and hope, so radical and so raw that we can hardly understand it. The kingdom that Jesus preached, you know, was life under God’s reign rather than the current rulers. With God king and the king not king, the political, economic and social subversions are endless: peacemaking instead of warmongering, liberation instead of exploitation, sacrifice rather than subjugation, mercy not vengeance, care for the vulnerable instead of privileges for the powerful, generosity instead of greed, embrace rather than exclusion. That is not the way it looks out there right now, nor did it look that way 2000 years ago. But Jesus says the truth actually is that God is in charge, and the true, inevitable order of the world is peace replacing war, embrace crowding out exclusion, shalom for all of God’s creation. Standing naked before Pilate, Jesus puts his trust in that truth, a truth so powerful that he does not fear or wobble before Pilate; in fact it’s Pilate who wobbles and vacillates and ultimately pronounces sentence out of fear of the mob. What my students’ skepticism about Christianity suggests to me is that the Christian lives they have seen do not reflect the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed, and the truth those Christians claim lacks authority because it has not cast out fear. My skeptical students have in mind sinners like all of us who want to project strength and coherence but who instead reveal insecurity and a desire to win at the giant cosmic game of life. The fact is that the truthfulness of our faith must be judged on how well it teaches us to live without murderous fear or nihilistic despair. The picture of Jesus standing so ragged before the representative of imperial power, willing to stake his life on God’s kingdom rather than Caesar’s, is actually more powerful than all the pomp and circumstance that Pilate could have mustered. In fact, I think his projection of power is more believable than Pilate’s; we know how hollow the authority of coercive power is, and how compelling and life-changing the power of love is. I read somewhere that in Zen (or was it Taoism?) a cracked teapot that has been glued back together carefully is more valuable than a shiny new unscathed one. It also seems to me that our cross becomes more valuable, the more it’s mended. Last month when Tom and I worshiped at Wellington Avenue UCC, where I was an intern 26 years ago, I visited at coffee hour with a couple members who were thinking ruefully about the impression that their beat-up old building probably makes on newcomers. This is an old brick church building that has been shared with an MCC congregation, that hosts a theater group, that welcomes after-school programs and all kinds of meetings and at one time also served as an overnight homeless shelter—oh, and as a sanctuary for Guatemalan refugees when I was there. It is SO used, almost battered. And I’m sure it doesn’t make an impression of spaciousness and serenity and boundless possibility on the visitor who’s looking for a reassuring church home. It’s not a Martha Stewart church; it’s an Anne Lamott church, with ragged people among the suits and dark, scarred woodwork and truly historic linoleum in the basement. But it reminds me of the resurrected Christ, who always appears still bearing his scars, the broken cross mended again, the stretch marks that never go away after childbirth. Suffering and scarring are the norm for Christian life; we do not sail from triumph to triumph but we do place our confidence in the faithful God whose power reaches past death. A ministry student once watched a classmate of his preach to a congregation of prisoners. He told them how Jesus came from working-class people in a small town. How he never held a steady job. How he was betrayed by a friend and given a shoddy trial. How he was summarily executed. The student watching looked at the faces of the prisoners, and wrote, “It seemed to me that Jesus’ experience was closer to theirs than to my own.” Ultimately I think we hail Jesus as king and proclaim his rule, not because he has everything sewn up for us, but because he knows pain as we know pain. Naked and bloody, about to be killed, he did not give in to fear or despair because he knew that the God of shalom was trustworthy. May we also be sustained through our trials by the power of that truth. Let us pray. Shepherd of Israel, hear our prayer as your Son heard the plea of the criminal crucified with him. Gather into Christ's holy reign the broken, the sorrowing, and the sinner, that all may know wholeness, joy, and forgiveness. Amen.

Sermons 2009

Dec. 27

After the Passover celebration, when all the travelers had packed up and left to go back home, Jerusalem must have seemed pretty quiet. The Temple itself must have been as empty as it ever got, people sweeping up after thousands of dusty feet, the merchants with depleted inventory maybe taking a day off to recover. Cleaning out the fire pits where sacrifices had been made, replacing hundreds of oil lamps, enjoying the hush after the commotion of so many voices. But the boy Jesus was not ready for Passover to be over. He had some questions and ideas he wanted to follow up on, and in all his short life he had never had such a fabulous opportunity as this to consult with people who ought to know, scholars and wise men. He stayed, and that’s where Mary and Joseph found him, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.
Obviously we don’t know what Jesus was really like as a child. This story is one of the less imaginative stories that were told about the child Jesus, the others being so wild that they didn’t even make it into the New Testament. Luke’s point here is to show that from the beginning Jesus was oriented toward God, and that his wisdom was recognized and acknowledged by those in authority, who should know what’s real and what’s counterfeit. This boy was really smart and really in touch with God; that is recognized by the scholars at the Temple.
But if the story tells us that Jesus from an early age was attuned to God, what are the implications for us? Just another stamp of approval on Jesus, as if we needed another? No, it’s better than that. It’s also a model of audacity, even for those of us well past adolescence, permission to suspend responsibility sometimes in order to follow something tantalizing. We talk a lot about how adolescent this is, how Mary and Joseph must have been so worried, how inconsiderate Jesus was, and so forth. But seriously, the story is illustrating that he had priorities that sometimes called him away from his family, and it implies that that was not only necessary but good. It’s the same for us.
One of my students from last semester had been an electronics guy in the army, and he was telling me one day about how he’d gotten interested in circuitry as a boy. Somehow, maybe in shop class, he’d wired up a circuit, and then he played around with it and extended it and figured out that when he put more lights on it they all got dimmer, and I don’t know what all he did. But as he was telling me the story I caught a sense of the child’s entrancement with a new discovery, and the almost physical force of his curiosity to push the boundaries of his understanding. And then he grew up and went to Iraq, and the religion of his childhood didn’t work any more, and he set it aside, but now he had to take this class and what do you know, he started fooling around with theology in the same way, pushing it and adding stuff on and taking stuff off and turning it upside down, and I hope he gives himself permission to keep fooling with it now that the class is over and he has to take a whole new set of classes.
What the young Jesus reminds me of is how, when you have children, you’re frequently late because they have no sense of time. They don’t budget time, they don’t watch the clock and when they’re interested in something time just stops for them. That makes it extremely difficult to get the whole crew from Point A to Point B, or to enforce bedtime, or to wrap up the children’s sermon neatly. But in the post-Christmas hush, maybe we should recover a little of that childish imperviousness to time and allow ourselves to fool around, see what interesting things God has tied to the end of the string we haven’t had time to pull on.
Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote: “We may doubt anything, except that [when] we are struck with amazement. When in doubt, we raise questions; when in wonder, we do not even know how to ask a question. Doubts may be resolved, radical amazement can never be erased. There is no answer in the world to [our] radical wonder. Under the running sea of our theories and scientific explanations lies the aboriginal abyss of radical amazement.” (Man Is Not Alone, p. 13) He also wrote, “The root of religion is the question what to do with the feeling for the mystery of living, what to do with awe, wonder and amazement.” (God in Search of Man, p. 162) Once asked by an interviewer what he believed to be his greatest gift, Heschel replied, “My ability to be surprised.”
It was probably easy for the 12 year-old Jesus to set aside his filial duty and responsibility in order to pursue his burning interests. We learn responsibility gradually. But oh, once we’ve learned responsibility, it is so hard to unlearn it! I know I spend way more time inventorying my list of “shoulds” and taking care of them than I do in awe, wonder and amazement. And yet even as an adult who presumably had learned responsibility, Jesus told his disciples to reject their families if they kept them from following him, and rhetorically rejected his own family when they stood in the way of his teaching. We are called not only to care for our dependents and those who have no one to care for them, but also to care for ourselves—to challenge our own stale, entrenched ways of thinking, to waste time wondering about something that may never come to pass, to stop moving like automata through the days and weeks so that we can play with new ideas or new toys that interest us. That’s how we stay open to the Holy Spirit, and that’s how we make ourselves available to God. Jesus did it; we should too.

Dec. 20

The Magnificat: Mary praises God in this triumphant song, for what God has done: He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. And we appreciate the spirit of her song, even as we have to wonder a little just exactly when this happened. It hadn’t happened yet in her time. King Herod was so brutal and so unpopular that he knew people would celebrate when he died, so he supposedly had 70 elite Jewish citizens imprisoned with orders that they be executed on the day of his death so that there would be tears in Israel (The Christian Century 12-15-09). It hasn’t happened in our time. The powerful are even now formulating new ways to stop financial reform in this country and to make health insurance reform meaningless. So what is Mary up to?
A Greek grammarian at Luther Seminary says that Mary is speaking in the gnomic aorist tense, which means that she’s talking about how God always acts. It translates into English as past tense, but it’s really about the habitual way of God: brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. You may not see it right this moment, but it is what God is doing and has always done, and God will not rest until it is completed, because it’s in the nature of God to fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty.
It has become commonplace to note that these world-shaking events are spoken of by an obscure 14 year-old girl, and that Micah’s prophecy about the return of the Davidic king has that return take place in an obscure town of Judah, Bethlehem. We’ve all heard—and I hope believe—that God works through the very ordinary and unremarked-upon people out of the limelight. But how can we be those people? Because we want to be! We want to be part of the work of God! But we feel so helpless sometimes in the huge tides of empire and market forces.
You may not have been aware of this—it wasn’t covered in the Des Moines Register—but the World Parliament of Religions was held in Melbourne Australia Dec. 3-9. I read about it in the National Catholic Reporter. One of the sessions was called “Alternatives to Empire,” and it began with an enumeration of the signs that the American empire is falling:

The financial and economic crisis which began in the United States, involving the dollar and fundamental structures of the economy and means of production, have impacted practically all the rest of the world;
The foundational pillar of the U.S. empire, i.e., military power, with bases girding the globe and a budget which exceeds one-half the total military expenditure of the entire world, has proved ineffective in achieving the empire’s aims. Hard-power, whether in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, or Afghanistan, has not been able to withstand the challenge of the people’s movement;
If the empire has not been able to contain its own backyard (read: Latin America), how can it continue to wield an influence on the rest of the world? Considering that the implosion of the Soviet Union began with the revolutions in the surrounding Eastern European nations, the rejection today of United States’ influence by a number of Latin American countries is certainly cause for concern for the empire. http://ncronline.org/news/global/parliament-discusses-alternatives-empire

What are the alternatives? Rev. Harry Kerr, the Convenor of Pax Christi Victoria, suggested that just as in Christianity “when the first disciples were proclaiming Jesus is Lord they were actually challenging the Lordship of the Roman Empire,” so too people of faith today can rise up to offer alternative ways of organizing and of living, especially “in ways which are as radical as Jesus’ fundamental option for the poor.” This was the early Church’s role until, as Kerr lamented, “Christianity was co-opted by the empire and bishops began donning imperial vestments.”
And of course he’s right, but then the question arises about how to offer alternative ways of organizing and of living where we are, in our time. That’s the real question: how?
Joe Volk, an American Quaker, says that we have to do what Mairi Winslow has been modeling for us this Advent with our candle ceremony: we have to tell stories. He writes,
A former member of Congress and I were talking a few years ago. We were wondering how advocates of so-called national missile defense systems manage to win appropriations each year. He said, “We opponents win on the facts of the matter. We win on policy analysis. We win on policy recommendation. But then we lose floor votes in the House and the Senate. Why?” Then he answered his own question: because advocates of the national missile defense system have the best story. People – and law makers -- go with the story rather than with the facts and the analysis.
This “best story” is a narrative about threats and fear. The narrative tells people about their world and their place in it. The national-defense story – like the war-on-terror story -- is a narrative of cosmological proportion. The definition of the problem runs like this: good people and bad people inhabit the world, we are the good people, and the bad people are trying to kill us. The resolution to this problem is: if we want to survive, we will have to stop the bad people from attacking us by killing them first. The story defines the problem, and the problem definition leads to the “solution.” http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4732

We have to tell a different story. This same Quaker, Joe Volk, talks about a conversation with Congressman John Lewis, who was active in the civil rights movement. He asked Lewis about what he saw as alternatives to our society’s fatal infatuation with brute force, and Lewis recalled the time when he had to reframe the civil rights struggle for himself as, not blacks against whites or progressives against bigots or right against wrong, but as a story of brothers and sisters learning to live together. “We brothers and sisters are all children of God. He said that this view of our human community liberated him from hate and revenge and allowed him to forgive even those who beat him senseless on the bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965.”
John Lewis made that his master narrative: not opposing forces, but brothers and sisters learning to live together. He did not see a cosmic battle between good and evil as yet unresolved, but a process in which people were hurting each other but also learning about each other, changing and growing. And that master narrative allowed him and those with whom he shared it to do transformative work.
Our master narrative is that God comes to obscure people and places and does amazing things—makes a way where there is no way, redeems what is lost, makes new what was broken and worn out. We have to tell those stories.
So, for instance, I also read a story in National Catholic Reporter about an elderly woman in South Bend Indiana who started a Christian-Muslim women’s dialog group five years ago. She’s not a civic leader or a religious scholar, and neither are the women who come to the group. They’re just ladies who want to be good neighbors. They discuss food, family customs, family celebrations and religious practices, but not politics. There are about 30 of them now, and I would bet that the potential for anti-Muslim activity in South Bend is considerably diminished since these women have become friends and mutual supporters. God just used a few ordinary ladies to move the mountain of Islamophobia in that obscure Indiana town; could you have imagined that anything revolutionary would come out of South Bend?
Another for instance: we, a little congregation of maybe forty, had extra money lying around. Normatov Dadajon, a 35 year-old father of three in Tajikistan, is a competent cattle farmer who needed to be able to raise more cattle to care for his growing children. So we and 28 other microlenders lent him a total of $1,000 (and the average annual income in Tajikistan is $1300) so he could buy more cattle to raise and sell. Suddenly he has the opportunity to do much more for his children, to open doors for them that were not even visible, because God can use little bitty congregations to do enormous things along the lines of lifting up the lowly and filling the hungry with good things.
We do not have a lot of dollars or a lot of powerful friends. Even people who do, like George Soros, seem almost helpless in the face of the forces of greed and fear that pillage the earth and the wealth of nations. So maybe it’s time, not to stop paying attention to the big players, but to pay our closest attention to the extremely small players who are playing by a different playbook, if you will, or a different script. Maybe it’s time to tell the stories and even be the characters in the stories that Micah and Luke tell, in which God does cosmic, redeeming things when not many people are looking, with 14 year-old girls and old ladies and small farmers in Tajikistan. Those are the stories that will change the world.

O God of Elizabeth and Mary,
you visited your servants with news of the world's redemption
in the coming of the Savior.
Make our hearts leap with joy,
and fill our mouths with songs of praise,
that we may announce glad tidings of peace,
and welcome the Christ in our midst. Amen.

Dec. 13

Look at how the first two readings for today address fear. The passage from Zephaniah proclaims that God has turned away the enemies of Israel and “you shall fear disaster no more. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak.” And then the rest of the passage is all about how God is in your midst, God is rejoicing over you with gladness, God is going to save the lame and gather the outcast and bring you all home. “I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes.”
The second reading is from the end of Paul’s letters to the Philippians, where he advises them not to worry about anything. “In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” And then your hearts will be guarded by peace, which by definition excludes fear or anxiety.
I couldn’t help but think about how our world, not the globe but the social world we inhabit, is corroded by fear. Go to the airport and you’ll hear the recording that says the threat level is orange, whatever that means. Send your child out to play, and watch her get bored and lonely as nobody joins her, because really good parents don’t let their children out of sight for fear they’ll be kidnapped, or fall out of a tree and break an arm, or eat something off the ground that will poison them. Try to come up with a plan for universal healthcare coverage, and ignite cries of death panels and rampant socialism, loss of everything for the haves, and a gain of nothing for the have-nots. Truly fear rules from a thousand places, and that is no surprise, because it is the nature of fear to infiltrate, not just bad situations where fear might be justified, but good situations, where comfort and plenty exist – but perhaps not for long.
The 20th-century theologian, H. Richard Niebuhr, wrote a book that was published after his death called The Responsible Self. He says that there are a total of three ways that we can see reality, and each of these ways of seeing reality correlates with a way of responding to reality, or responding to life. So to be a responsible self you have to choose how to see.
The first way you can see the whole is as threatening and hostile. This would be exemplified by June’s grandmother, who used to say, “Laugh before supper, cry before bedtime.” (By the way I should just admit right now that this entire sermon is pretty much cribbed from last week’s adult Sunday School.) The cosmos is threatening and hostile, and as soon as you get comfortable, it’ll getcha. Be careful what you pray for. The only sure things are death and taxes. People are basically selfish, and you’d better look out for yourself because nobody else will. Niebuhr says that if you do see reality as hostile, of course you’re going to adopt a self-protective stance. You’ll build up your systems of security. And Niebuhr says that this is the predominant form of Christianity—God will get you if you don’t believe the right things, offer the right sacrifices, purify yourself, whatever. Your only chance is to do everything right and hope to be spared from the eternal fire.
The second way that people see reality is as indifferent. It goes its way, we’re here for a while, enjoy what you can of it and don’t attach meaning to anything. That is probably the most common non-religious perception of the whole.
The third option is to see reality as life-giving and nourishing—the theological term is “gracious.” Obviously Niebuhr advocates this position, but he’s not closing his eyes to evil here. He knows about the Holocaust and the World Wars; he knows about the atrocious things human beings can do to each other. He does not deny any of that. Rather, he says that in the midst of that, if we can see reality as gracious, as life-giving in some ways that we don’t understand, it makes it possible to respond to life gratefully—and not need to be primarily concerned with defending the self against an indifferent or even hostile universe. Marcus Borg says,
It makes possible what another theologian calls "the self-forgetfulness of faith". It makes possible what yet another thinker has called "a willingness to spend and be spent in the service of an over-arching vision". It makes possible the kind of life that we see in Jesus, that willingness to spend and be spent. The kind of life we see in Jesus is also the kind of life we see in the saints, whether they be known or unknown. When I say "unknown", I think there are a lot of Christians throughout the centuries whose lives aren’t known about beyond their own family, and maybe community, who have reached this place of being willing to spend and be spent in the name of this vision of reality.
So last week in adult Sunday School we were talking about how to be joyful in the midst of uncertainty or even sorrow, which the Advent readings advised, and Susie said something that really resonated with me. She said that every Advent or Christmas season there is something that happens that is completely unexpected and unpredictable, and that the only way to get that experience is to stay open the whole time. You have to just stay open to whatever is happening, so that when that surprise comes, you’re there to receive it. And I think the kinds of things she was talking about were a great conversation, or a lovely hour and a half with your family, or the sudden manifestation of generosity or compassion in your child—not giant cosmic shifts, but significant and meaningful signs that God is at work right now, right here, improvising and creating and doing a new thing.
When Zephaniah and Paul tell us to fear not and not to worry about anything, what exactly is the fear they’re addressing? The fundamental fear is that God isn’t here—and God isn’t coming, either. The fundamental fear is that the universe really is indifferent or hostile, and we’re on our own. And once that fear gets its claws into us, we are so panicked and obsessed with self-preservation that we become incapable of seeing those surprises that Susie talked about, those signs that God really is with us. Fear keeps us from seeing that God is present with us, and coming to deliver us from all threats.
The prophets and apostles and angels have to keep reminding us, “Fear not!” Because God is at work right now, right here, and it would really be a shame to miss the party.

Dec. 6 - Steve Rose, preaching

This being the Christmas season, this sermon should have something to do with Jesus, and eventually it will. But I need to tell you up front that I have a bias toward John the Baptist. Perhaps more than any other Biblical figure, Jesus excepted, he’s the one that most fascinates me. But he’s definitely a second fiddle sort of guy. Come to think of it, the Israelites throughout their history were pretty much a second fiddle nation, constantly being conquered by and subjugated under more dominant peoples. The message we heard from the Psalms is the exception of the Israelite experience, not the rule.
But back to John the Baptist. What’s his role in Christian thought and history? Yes, he’s a patron saint, as are most important New Testament figures, but the patron saint of whom or what? Thanks to the internet, I learned that he the protector of and intervener for “hailstorms, epileptics, spasms, tailors, printers, lambs, and the diocese of Patterson, New Jersey.” Not exactly a list of lofty responsibilities, and have you ever been to Patterson, New Jersey? What do you do with a hailstorm? And with Kindles, printers are going to be a diminishing breed. You search through the section on Wikopedia devoted to saints, and he’s not even listed! That’s a sure sign f being a second fiddle.
He was five years Christ’s senior, and died the same year that Christ did. His mother and the Blessed Mary were related we know, although we don’t know how. Now John was a wild man, really with his coat hair robe and diet of locusts and honey. I imagine him a big man, a linebacker/biker dude—broad of shoulder with wild and uncombed hair and beard. I see him tramping around the desert, catching the locusts and dipping them in honey to tone down the taste. I think it’s no accident that the savior-prophet wild man in the dystopian novel Brave New World was named John, John the Savage to be precise. Like John the Baptist, he also comes to an untimely and lonely end, not sure that he made any difference. But John the Baptist was making a difference—big time—until upstaged by his cousin. Like his little cousin Jesus, he had a large following in his heyday, he had public arguments with the Pharisees, and he preached a new world order. He also had a miraculous birth, born to a couple well into their Medicare years; and he was executed in a grisly fashion by an unwilling official only a few months after Christ himself was executed. In fact, Christ’s assent to heaven, and John’s death would have been within a couple of months of each other.
As we know, Pontius Pilate had no real quarrel with Jesus. He simply succumbed to the wishes to the Jewish power elite. John’s execution by Herod was similar. Herod gave into the manipulations of his wife and stepdaughter. Having a wife and stepdaughter myself, I can empathize. So John the Baptist is reduced to a head on a tray, a head whose tongue were told was stabbed repeatedly by Herod to prove to those women how much Herod disliked the words that rolled off that tongue.
John knew he was a second fiddle. In the third chapter of Luke, first verse, he tells us: "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie." Since un-shoeing another person is the job for a servant at that time, John really knows his place. He also tells the Christ that it is Jesus, not himself, who should be doing the baptizing of the other. But Jesus is a stickler for protocol, and it is he who is dunked into the Jordan. An interesting aside here: in three of the four gospels, it is at this point that Jesus sees the spirit of God descend upon him, and in the fourth—the gospel of John—John the Baptist sees the spirit make the show. So what kind of God juice was Jesus running on up to that time? We know Christ had a strong ministry at that point, but was he the same messiah before the baptism as he was afterwards? Interesting, but I digress.
Back to being second fiddle. One could make the case (I guess I am making the case) that there can be a unique responsibility in that role, even if it’s often a thankless one. Forgive the football comparison—I’m not Baptist—but the role of the long snapper in field goal and extra point attempts is a good case in point. No one notices if the snap is delivered accurately, but let it go short or long, and the effort is generally doomed. You only get attention—and I know this from my days of being the long snapper in high school—when you screw it up.

One could even go so far as to say that being a willing second fiddle is downright Christ-like. In the gospel of John, chapter 13, we read: “’You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you." And Christ not only washed their feet; there are some accounts that he dried them with a garment off his own body. Then there’s his ultimate act of second-fiddleness: sacrificing himself for the sins of the world—Christ putting the needs of louts like us over his sinless own. I still chill at the scene of Christ on the cross—not because of the nails in his hands or the holes in his torso. No, such a sight would be pretty common at Golgatha—in our tongue, the “place of the skull.” I chill at what one would hear, at least in the gospels of Mathew and Mark. We hear Jesus, the very son of God, cry out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It is at that moment of atonement—the second fiddle’s atonement for our sinful selves--that he’s stripped of his relationship with his God. And at a time when he needs God more than he ever needed God in his life.
But as we know, it ends happily. A few days later the stone rolls away and our second fiddle savior gets to walk and talk with his disciples for some weeks before the final ascent.
What about us? When do we make being a second fiddle a calling instead of a course? In a society that celebrates self-aggrandizement and rewards narcissism, being a second fiddle does get us much attention. But that doesn’t mean that being a second fiddle isn’t important. Take my trade—teaching. If you are going to do it right, you need to sacrifice your sense of self-importance and self-involvement for the needs of your students. Personally, I get more actual joy out of designing lessons, researching them, writing them, and so on, than I do in the actual delivery; but that’s not important. It’s what my students learn that matters.

My Liberal Art Seminar class—a small group of freshmen—helped me at this point. I was driving nine of them to a service-learning project and asked them to give me instances where being a second fiddle was called for in their lives. One young woman brought up the practice of cleaning her dorm room before her roommate’s mom visited. The mom praised her daughter, not knowing that Meagan did the cleaning. Another woman talked about coaching another student on a writing assignment and that other student doing better on the assignment than she did herself.
Take being a parent. Talk about being a second fiddle to a two-month-old tyrant! The diapers, the feeding schedule, the crying. It can almost be heroic in scope, but it’s definitely putting the needs of another ahead of your own. It’s being a second fiddle. And take that same child and add 16 years and a driver’s license. You know that if they would just listen to you and do things the way you think they should be done, you’d both be better for it. But you also know you’ve got to give up some of that control so your offspring develops some self-control. I still can’t watch my youngest, now a woman of 25, pull out of the drive way without cringing. But neither can our mailbox.
Economically, the USA is becoming more and more a nation of professional second fiddles. More and more our livelihoods turn on our ability to provide services—skills, support, expertise, sought-after advice. We are less and less a nation of self-made men, and more and more a nation of other-serving women. And that may well be why women in this recession have suffered a considerably lower rate of unemployment than men.
I look at our public servants. The best ones are second fiddles. No matter how exalted the role, a true public servant seeks out and serves the legitimate needs of her electors. Let us hope that in this time of economic hardship those leaders have the guts to do the hard things for the greater good. And if that makes feeding the hungry, protecting the vulnerable, and healing the ill lead to a tough decision—raising taxes maybe—then that’s what they ought to do.
And the same holds true for the church, whether we’re talking about single congregations like Crossroads, or that amorphous entity we call Christianity. The best way of spreading the word is living the word; and you’ll win more souls in service to the needy than in building a bright new building. That’s one of the main reasons I’m a part of this congregation; I’ve never met such a collection of second fiddles who play their “music of ministry” loudly if not always melodically.
Of course, we’ve gotten cosmetic with the concept of second fiddling. We’ve coined the term servant leaders. Both ways of looking at giving onto others has its place. Servant leader certainly sounds more dignified, even glamorous, but I prefer the plain Jane term second fiddle. It puts me in my place. And it reminds to relax, to let things be even as I do what I can do.
And that reminds me of my favorite prayer. It is called “Always We Begin Again: The Benedictine Way of Living” and it was written by John McQuiston II in 1996.
The first rule is simply this:
Live this life
and do whatever is done
in a spirit of thanksgiving.
Abandon attempts to achieve security,
they are futile,
Give up the search for wealth,
it is demeaning,
Quit the search for salvation,
it is selfish.
And come to comfortable rest
in the certainty that those who
participate in this life
with an attitude of Thanksgiving
will receive its full promise.

A second fiddle is grateful for getting to play at all. And that makes the playing all the more worthwhile.
Let us pray. Lord and God, Creator and Redeemer
Thank you for our humble roles in your vast and great universe.
Help us humble ourselves to you and to our fellow humans.
Make our service to others our great calling, even as Christ and John the Baptist found that calling 2,000 years ago.
Help us help our brothers and sisters, our arms about their waists, helping them to walk the road and us not caring whose head is held higher.

Nov. 29, 2009

On Clinton Ave., just east of the Elks Lodge, there is a tree stump. I’ve been driving by that property for nine years, and it wasn’t until just last month that I noticed that the stump is not dead. It’s a big, wide stump of what must have been a very old tree, and right out of the middle is growing a new little sprout. I noticed it before all the leaves had fallen, and this little sprout boasted quite a few leaves on its spindly branches, all of them on the job, valiantly sucking up sunlight and converting it to energy so the skinny little trunk could grow big and strong again in the fullness of time. As a trained theologian I recognized it immediately, of course: it is a reminder of God’s promise in Jeremiah: “In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” To be perfectly explicit, the symbolism is of a monarchical lineage that has ended—has been cut off—and then somehow from the dead remainder a new anointed king appears, a new ruler of the lineage of David.
Imagine that—right here in Indianola, next to the Elks Lodge, a sign of God’s salvation for the earth. It’s almost like having the Virgin Mary’s likeness appear in a tortilla, or an image of Jesus in French toast, only better—because it’s not freaky and weird, it’s perfectly normal. It probably won’t make the National Enquirer, and they probably won’t make an apocalyptic movie about it, but take it from me, this is a class A certifiable sign from God. “I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.”
The gospel reading for today is another apocalyptic reading; that’s the way we start Advent, with signs of the end of the world. But this year I’m seeing the signs as very normal. Okay, it’s dramatic when Jesus says “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.” That is dramatic. But when we realize that the sun was the symbol of Rome itself, the empire under which Jesus and Luke’s congregation lived, the picture begins to resolve itself into comprehensible national dynamics. The sun is Rome, and moon and the stars are the empire’s client kings clustered around it, and we are being told that it’s not the end of the cosmos but the shaking of the earthly principalities and powers. That’s big stuff, but it’s not new to us. Our empire seems to be crumbling around us right now too, and the pain of lost jobs, financial stresses, and scarce public resources is very, very familiar to us.
Furthermore, although times of chaos like this beget anxiety and the desire to use sophisticated instruments to determine what’s going on, Jesus directs his listeners’ attention toward a more low-tech sign, the fig tree. “As soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.” Jesus is letting us know that we don’t have to work so hard to figure out what’s going on; God speaks to us through the most ordinary events of our lives. When the trees leaf out we know it’s almost summer; when there is chaos and tribulation among the powers and principalities, we should know that the reign of God is near. I suppose the question is, how will we recognize it? How will we know when we’re done waiting? I found a couple of clues.
One is in the letter to the Thessalonians. They are certainly living in the in-between time, a time of worldly powers crumbling and also a time in which Jesus could come back at any moment but he hasn’t yet. I would imagine it was a very anxious time for the Thessalonian Christians, sort of on pins and needles all the time. But what Paul says to them suggests quite the opposite; it suggests that the Thessalonians are spending their waiting time following the Way of Jesus very successfully. “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you?” It’s not that they’ve got all their questions answered, because Paul goes on to mention wanting to restore whatever is lacking in their faith. But he sure can’t wait to get back there: “Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you.” There’s something wonderful going on in Thessalonica.
To live between the times is to live with uncertainty and often anxiety. Anxiety tempts us to fearfulness, isolation, and reactivity. When we are anxious, we seek to fortify ourselves, take out insurance of various kinds, minimize contact with those who need something from us, stop making plans for the future or taking risks or initiatives. Anxiety constricts us while we wait for deliverance in uncertain times. But Paul prays for more of whatever’s going on already at Thessalonica: increasing and abounding in love for one another and for all, a strengthening of their hearts in holiness, a spirit of faith, courage, and love.
The Thessalonians are doing their waiting actively. They are performing works of love and justice even while they await greater fulfillment of love and justice in God’s reign. As long as you’re waiting, you might as well bind up the wounded, beat down a few bureaucracies, invite a few friends to join you for dinner. It reminds me a little bit of when Qayum and Sadagat lived in a really dumpy little apartment, and Qayum asked her once why she was picking up sticks and litter around the place since it wasn’t theirs or their responsibility. She said it was because civilized people don’t live like this, with crud all around them. She expected to be gone from there at some point, but while she waited for that time, she was going to live like a civilized person. We wait for the coming of the messiah, but in the meantime let’s wait like the people of God.
Or, I have to share this wonderful anecdote I found about an eclipse of the sun during the colonial period; apparently nobody had anticipated it, and a meeting of a state legislature was taking place when the sky grew black. In the midst of general panic someone moved to adjourn the meeting, but one of the legislators stood up and said, “Mr. Speaker, if it is not the end of the world and we adjourn, we shall appear to be fools. If it is the end of the world, I choose to be found doing my duty. I move you, sir, let candles be brought.”
I said I had a couple of clues to help us recognize the reign of God. One was the letter to the Thessalonians, in which we see that the Thessalonians are waiting actively and following the Jesus Way with all they’ve got, not giving in to anxiety and paranoia. The other clue is the growing pile of data about the giftedness of this congregation, which we’ve worked on in two retreats this fall.
At the first retreat we looked at our own spiritual gifts and the clusters of gifts that we fell into, and discovered that for such a small church, we have a really wide distribution of gifts. I won’t do the excruciating detail, but of the four clusters of gifts, we had seven people in Organizing, ten in Outreach, six in Witnessing, and five in Nurturing. That’s pretty even distribution; we’re not deficient in any!
At the second retreat we looked out our individual spirituality types and then what the type for the whole congregation of Crossroads is. Spirituality types are kind of the ways in which you are drawn to relate to God, and our book gives you six to choose from. We had six Heart types, who focus on sharing faith and value direct experience. That was the plurality. But we also had two head types, who find God through intellectual activity and who keep us rigorous and grounded, two mystics, who connect with the holy through mystery, two servants, who find that God is most knowable through other people and live their faith more than they think it, three pilgrims, who ask questions, keep us open to new possibilities, and don’t let us settle for final answers; and one crusader, who offers us focus and commitment and gets out front to lead us when we’re slow or timid. We didn’t have as many participants in the second retreat, so that’s just a bare minimum; obviously we have more of all six types. Then we discussed what the corporate spirituality type is for Crossroads, and we were nearly unanimous in saying that it was pilgrim—asking questions, never settling for answers, having fun.
Again, we’re very rich! That’s just 16 people, and we had at least one in every category! No wonder I feel like we can do anything! Together we have the gifts and the variety of orientations to do the work of ten churches! But the really important thing is that we have each other’s gifts—what I can’t bring to the congregation, you can, so that together we supply one another with different ways of seeing, different models of discipleship, different accesses to the vision of the fulfillment of the reign of God for which we are all waiting. Maybe our task in goal-setting is not to correct our deficiencies but to capitalize on the wide range of abilities that we have together.
I’m telling you, the signs of God and the gifts of God are enormous, cosmic in their significance, life-changing and earth-shaking. But they are not exotic or bizarre. They are as ordinary and accessible as a tree stump off the highway or as the urge to ask why and why again. Watch and wait, be wakeful and alert for the coming of the day of the Lord. But don’t wait to be given the equipment for the day of the Lord. That, we already have. Let’s be wonderful with it.

Nov. 22, 2009

I’ve been teaching World Religions again this fall, this time for Simpson’s Evening and Weekend Program, and as usual I’ve gotten sucked up into the fascinating ways the students respond to the material. Everything’s pretty quiet while we do eastern religions, because nobody has a lot of experience with them or much of a personal stake in them. Then we get to Judaism and Christianity, and all hell breaks loose. Islam is next, and I can’t wait to see what happens.
Some of my students are ardent Christians; they have varying degrees of awareness that it’s possible to read the Bible skeptically and still be a Christian, and they are eager to defend their faith from skeptics. One such student, writing his first paper on Marcus Borg, admonished Borg for what he saw as unbelief. When I asked him to elaborate on why he thought Borg was dangerous, he said, “I . . . find this ReVisioning to be dangerous for someone of new faith whose faith is based mostly on belief without knowledge, hearing this put forth I believe does allow for a remaking of God in our own value image.” “I find this ReVisioning to be dangerous for someone of new faith.” My student, an enthusiastic churchman, is concerned not to threaten or undermine the fragile new faith of converts, and so he works hard to project a seamless, foolproof Christianity in which there are no loose ends or odd holes. During class discussion he represented Christianity as very much an authoritative, reliable system of faith and thought in which all the answers were to be found if you looked in the right places.
Others of my students have rejected Christianity. And by the way, all my students were non-traditional, so they had a few years of life experience before college. The students who rejected Christianity did so, not because it didn’t make logical sense, but because the Christians they had known were, in their words, hypocrites. Here’s what one of them wrote: “I have my beliefs in a higher power, but I also have seen great atrocities wrought on people in the name of religion, and God. I have seen many hypocrites in the born again caste: people who, because they believe in their salvation and relationship with God so strongly they judge others. Do not judge, lest you be judged. Living a life full of God and the spirit, to me, has always been about walking the path less chosen.” Another wrote, “Much of my past contention with those who preach the Christian way so loudly and strongly is the question of whether Jesus himself would approve of what some would consider strong arm tactics to make people believe.”
As you can imagine, I live for students like these. I personally find seamless theologies unconvincing, and my bias is toward allowing ambiguity and tension to exist openly while I struggle for greater clarity. And of course the evangelist in me always thinks, aha, these are people who maybe could develop faith if they just had an alternative to the hypocrisy or certainty of the Christianity they’ve experienced.
All of which actually does have something to do with the trial scene in the gospel of John. This is just a snippet of a much longer scene in which Pilate examines Jesus, leaves, comes back, negotiates with the crowd, hears from the high priest, tries to get out of sentencing him, and has this dialog on two levels with Jesus. The trial is about whether Jesus has claimed inappropriate power for himself. “Are you the King of the Jews?” Is he going to lead an insurrection against the Roman government? Jesus’ reply is complicated, but the point I want to emphasize here is that the claim he makes to authority is not a claim to coercive power but to truth. “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” He’s a king, but not one with an army: “If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over.” His claim to kingship lies with the power of truth.
It is not irrelevant that Jesus utters these words to Pilate while standing before him nearly naked, bloodied from being beaten, dirty and hungry. How can he do that? How do you stand naked before a ruler, your life in his hands, your sanity intact, and claim to be in a better position than that ruler? Because that’s what he’s claiming. Jesus is saying Yes, I am a king, and the kingly power I exercise is that I tell the truth, I embody the truth. If Jesus’ power lies in truth, that truth is not an idea, not a concept, not a formulation, not even a fact. It is a way of being in the world in suffering and hope. The truth that Jesus evidences is a way of being in the world in suffering and hope, so radical and so raw that we can hardly understand it.
The kingdom that Jesus preached, you know, was life under God’s reign rather than the current rulers. With God king and the king not king, the political, economic and social subversions are endless: peacemaking instead of warmongering, liberation instead of exploitation, sacrifice rather than subjugation, mercy not vengeance, care for the vulnerable instead of privileges for the powerful, generosity instead of greed, embrace rather than exclusion. That is not the way it looks out there right now, nor did it look that way 2000 years ago. But Jesus says the truth actually is that God is in charge, and the true, inevitable order of the world is peace replacing war, embrace crowding out exclusion, shalom for all of God’s creation. Standing naked before Pilate, Jesus puts his trust in that truth, a truth so powerful that he does not fear or wobble before Pilate; in fact it’s Pilate who wobbles and vacillates and ultimately pronounces sentence out of fear of the mob.
What my students’ skepticism about Christianity suggests to me is that the Christian lives they have seen do not reflect the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed, and the truth those Christians claim lacks authority because it has not cast out fear. My skeptical students have in mind sinners like all of us who want to project strength and coherence but who instead reveal insecurity and a desire to win at the giant cosmic game of life. The fact is that the truthfulness of our faith must be judged on how well it teaches us to live without murderous fear or nihilistic despair.
The picture of Jesus standing so ragged before the representative of imperial power, willing to stake his life on God’s kingdom rather than Caesar’s, is actually more powerful than all the pomp and circumstance that Pilate could have mustered. In fact, I think his projection of power is more believable than Pilate’s; we know how hollow the authority of coercive power is, and how compelling and life-changing the power of love is.
I read somewhere that in Zen (or was it Taoism?) a cracked teapot that has been glued back together carefully is more valuable than a shiny new unscathed one. It also seems to me that our cross becomes more valuable, the more it’s mended. Last month when Tom and I worshiped at Wellington Avenue UCC, where I was an intern 26 years ago, I visited at coffee hour with a couple members who were thinking ruefully about the impression that their beat-up old building probably makes on newcomers. This is an old brick church building that has been shared with an MCC congregation, that hosts a theater group, that welcomes after-school programs and all kinds of meetings and at one time also served as an overnight homeless shelter—oh, and as a sanctuary for Guatemalan refugees when I was there. It is SO used, almost battered. And I’m sure it doesn’t make an impression of spaciousness and serenity and boundless possibility on the visitor who’s looking for a reassuring church home. It’s not a Martha Stewart church; it’s an Anne Lamott church, with ragged people among the suits and dark, scarred woodwork and truly historic linoleum in the basement. But it reminds me of the resurrected Christ, who always appears still bearing his scars, the broken cross mended again, the stretch marks that never go away after childbirth. Suffering and scarring are the norm for Christian life; we do not sail from triumph to triumph but we do place our confidence in the faithful God whose power reaches past death.
A ministry student once watched a classmate of his preach to a congregation of prisoners. He told them how Jesus came from working-class people in a small town. How he never held a steady job. How he was betrayed by a friend and given a shoddy trial. How he was summarily executed. The student watching looked at the faces of the prisoners, and wrote, “It seemed to me that Jesus’ experience was closer to theirs than to my own.” Ultimately I think we hail Jesus as king and proclaim his rule, not because he has everything sewn up for us, but because he knows pain as we know pain. Naked and bloody, about to be killed, he did not give in to fear or despair because he knew that the God of shalom was trustworthy. May we also be sustained through our trials by the power of that truth.
Let us pray.
Shepherd of Israel, hear our prayer
as your Son heard the plea
of the criminal crucified with him.
Gather into Christ's holy reign
the broken, the sorrowing, and the sinner,
that all may know
wholeness, joy, and forgiveness. Amen.