This has been an amazing few months in my life. In May, the Presbyterian Church (USA) amended their constitution to allow for the ordination of LGBT deacons, elders, and pastors. Then, last week, New York became the sixth US state to legalize same-sex marriage. My wife and I participated in demonstrations both inside and outside our state capitol building.
I also had the opportunity to speak on the local news about the upcoming vote in the senate.
Look carefully at this list. It would be a mistake to assume that all the “positive” adjectives refer to those who agree with me and all the “negative” adjectives apply to those who think differently. As a matter of fact, the list is mixed for a reason. I could use several of these words to describe people on both sides of “this issue” (although I am loathe to call it that).
What speaks the most about us in times like these is how we respond, and not just the content of our response. I have felt such compassionate support from those who passionately disagree with me. I have also cringed at the hard-hearted self-righteousness of those who hold views similar to my own.
I will continue to hold onto the views I express in these articles because I believe them to be good and true. I honestly believe that I am following (however imperfectly) the lead of the Holy Spirit and the message of the Bible as I take the course I have chosen. I know that not all of you will agree with me. I won’t ask you to change your mind unless you want to. I will not enter into a Bible-quoting argument with you unless you truly want to understand how someone can read the Bible differently than you do.
I encourage you all, wherever you stand, to look at the character of your response to others. Is it in keeping with the Spirit of Christ? In your words and deeds, are you loving your neighbor as yourself?
What you say does not say so much as how you say it.
Rev. John Buehrens, former president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, has an interesting response to folks who tell him, “I don’t believe in God.”
“Tell me about the God you don’t believe in,” he says, “Chances are that I don’t believe in ‘Him’ either.”
I’ve got to say that I love Buehrens’ response for the way it insightfully cuts through the veil of cultural assumptions and seeks to help both speaker and listener come to a deeper understanding of the words they use.
There are several good reasons for not believing in God. Many of these reasons depend on which conception of “God” is being rejected. In our society, there are several popular conceptions of God that manage to float around in our collective unconscious mind.
First, some have the idea of God as an old man with a long, white beard who lives in the sky. Cartoonist Gary Larson often depicted God like this in his famous comic strip, The Far Side. This God is the product of medieval superstition, not the ancient wisdom given through the scriptures and traditions of the church. This is a God made in our own image: complete with physical form, location, and gender. I am inclined to agree with my atheist friends that such a deity is not worth believing in.
Next, some think of God as a distant judge who stands aside like the referee at a ball game, just waiting for someone to break a rule. Whenever that happens, this God makes sure to write it down for all eternity. This God is kind of like Santa Claus, who is “making a list and checking it twice” with the assumption that someday, God is “coming to town” in order to dole out rewards and punishments. This God is more interested in following the rules than growing in relationship. I don’t blame my atheist friends. I wouldn’t want to believe in that kind of God either! As a matter of fact, I don’t.
Next, some have the idea of God an almighty being who controls everything that happens in the universe. This God causes earthquakes and hurricanes as well as cancer and car accidents. All tragedy can be attributed to “God’s will” according to this understanding. Furthermore, this God predestines certain people for eternal salvation and others for eternal damnation. Human beings have no free will, but are mere pawns in this God’s cosmic chess game. I can understand why someone would not want to believe in this kind of God.
Next, some think of God as a kind of tribal deity or mascot, who is associated only with certain people in a certain place and time. This God loves some people more than others, depending on some predetermined characteristic. They say that God only loves Americans, or straight people, or Christians. Anyone who doesn’t fit into the right category is excluded from God’s favor. This kind of God is also not worth believing in.
These concepts of “old man in the sky”, “distant judge”, “almighty chess player”, and “tribal totem” arise from our culture’s assumptions about what God is like. When people think of “God”, they are usually thinking of something (or someone) similar to one or more of these categories.
In the ancient Middle East, people had their own socially accepted ideas about what God must be like. Most folks in those days believed that gods lived in stone or wooden sculptures. The early Jews and Christians had no such idols, so they were referred to as “atheists” by the culture of their day. People in that culture also believed that their gods needed to be fed by humans in order to thrive and survive. Offerings and sacrifices were made so that the gods could “eat”. No one in that society would have thought it strange that a deity would ask for some kind of sacrifice from people. Occasionally, these gods would demand a human sacrifice in order to guarantee peace and prosperity during the coming year. This was an accepted practice.
So, it would have come as no big surprise in their society that God would ask Abraham to sacrifice his firstborn son. It fit with their cultural conception of spirituality. It’s the kind of thing any god would have done in the ancient Middle East. So, that’s why Abraham hardly batted an eye when God told him to go sacrifice his son Isaac on a mountain. “It’s just what gods do!”
When we read this story in the modern world, we’re horrified by it. We can’t imagine the God we worship asking someone to kill their own child as a test of faith. We take people who do that sort of thing and lock them up in jail. Jews and Christians alike have tried to understand this passage by interpreting it allegorically or symbolically. Jews call this passage the “Akedah” and see it as a story about themselves as Isaac on the altar with his survival and God’s promise hanging in the balance. A lot of Jewish theology written since the Holocaust has paid special attention to the Akedah as a lens for understanding what happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany. The Jewish people were brought to the brink of destruction, but were spared at the last minute. Many Christians, for their part, interpret this text as an allegorical symbol for what happened to Christ: the beloved son ascended a hill carrying wood on his back, and faced a sacrificial death. Philosophers like Soren Kierkegaard have analyzed this passage as a metaphor for individual choice and personal faith. The list goes on…
What all of these renderings have in common is that they are trying to either sidestep or understand the sheer horror of a God who would call someone to kill his or her own child. But we miss something as we project our modern values on this ancient text. In that culture, a deity calling for human sacrifice was considered normal. In fact, it was so normal that Abraham hardly thinks twice when his God seems to be asking for it.
If there’s anything strange and shocking about this text from an ancient standpoint, it’s the fact that Abraham’s God stops the sacrifice at the last possible second. This must have been mind-boggling to Abraham! His whole idea of who God is and how the world works must have been turned upside down in that moment!
By stopping the human sacrifice, God was challenging popular cultural notions about religion. God was changing the way religion worked in that society. God was saying to Abraham, in effect, “I’m not like that. I’m different.”
God isn’t like that. God is different.
I wonder what this idea would look like if we applied it to some of our own cultural conceptions about God?
Remember the conception of God as the “old man in the sky”? We already identified this kind of God as “not worth believing in”. How might God say, “I’m not like that” about the “old man in the sky”? Let’s look at the first part: Is God really male? Well, did you know that there are several places in the Bible where God is actually described as a mother? Sure enough in Deuteronomy 32, Job 38, Isaiah 46, and Jeremiah 31, God is a woman giving birth. Likewise, the name “El Shaddai”, usually rendered as “God Almighty” by English translators, probably comes from the word that is used to describe nursing mothers. What about the second part? Does God really live “up there” in the sky? Well, our annual Christmas celebrations would seem to deliver a resounding “No” to that question. At Christmas time, we Christians celebrate our belief that God “took on flesh and dwelt among us”, as it says in John 1. Later on Jesus said repeatedly that if we want to look for God, we should look among the people in this world who suffer most. “Whatever you have done for the least of these who are members of my family,” Jesus said in Matthew 25, “you have done for me.” If you want to go looking for God, don’t look on some cloud floating up in the sky. Look around you, down here on earth! That’s where God is! God lives in the people around us who need help the most. So, when it comes to our culture’s idea of God as “old man in the sky”, I think we can safely say that God isn’t like that. God is complex, diverse, and intimately present in our lives. That’s what God is like.
How about the idea of God as the “distant judge” who is “making a list and checking it twice” in order to find out who is “naughty or nice”? We’ve already said that it’s not worth believing in a God who is more interested in rules than relationships. Is our God really that kind of “distant judge”? Well, let’s look at the kinds of things that Jesus said and did. He went out of his way to welcome outcast sinners who had been kicked out of their synagogues for failing to live up to “old fashioned family values”. Jesus went so far as to break time-honored religious laws in order to express God’s radical welcome to those who were least deserving of it. Again and again, Jesus showed us that forgiveness, rather than judgment, is the way that God operates in this world. When it comes to harsh judgment, Jesus tells us, “God isn’t like that.” God is more interested in loving sinners than upholding the self-righteousness of judgmental hypocrites. That’s what God is like.
What about God as the “almighty chess player” who causes everything that happens in the world, including tragedy and disaster? This one is a bit trickier (especially for us Presbyterians, who have historically emphasized God’s sovereignty). Philosophers have been wrestling with this question for centuries. There’s no way we can sum up their arguments in a single paragraph. But we can point to passages in the Bible that refer to God’s character. I’m thinking of passages like Jeremiah 29:11: “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” In James 1:17, we learn that “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights”. When it comes to predestined salvation and damnation, we read in 2 Peter 3:9 that God is patient with us, “not wanting any to perish”. As we piece together these snippets, we begin to get the idea that “God isn’t like that” when it comes to the “almighty chess player”. God is a generous giver who works for the good of everyone. There are no dispensable or “extra” people in God’s eyes. That’s what God is like.
What about the conception of God as “mascot” or “tribal totem”? Does God belong to only one group of people? Passages like Psalm 87 describes the community of God’s people as an extremely diverse group, made up of all the nations of the world, even those who were regarded as Israel’s enemies at that time. The Jewish prophet Isaiah spends a lot of time describing this reality in detail. We see it spelled out in Isaiah 2, 55, and 60. Jesus and the early Christians began to fulfill Isaiah’s vision as they opened the doors of the church to include Greeks, Romans, Africans, and Samaritans as well as Jews. God does not belong to one group of people as their mascot. God isn’t like that. God loves all people and wants to gather us together into one human family. Jesus himself said it best in John 12:32, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” Notice that he said “all people”, not just “some”. Not just Americans, straight people, or Christians, but “all”. That’s what God is like.
There are some ideas about God that just aren’t worth believing in. Abraham learned that in his experience on Mount Moriah. I think we can have a similar experience when we compare our cultural notions about “who God is” with what we actually read about in the Bible. With Abraham, I think we will discover a God who is bigger, better, more loving, and more amazing than we can possibly imagine!
We read this morning from the story of creation in the book of Genesis. This is one of the most familiar (and controversial) texts in the entire Bible. It’s often used as a wedge and a weapon by those who would try to set up science and faith as mutually exclusive categories of knowledge.
Some say that this is a literal and historical account of what actually happened during the first week of existence for the universe (which they take to have happened about six thousand years ago). These folks often have witty bumper stickers that say things like, “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it” or “The Big Bang Theory: God spoke and BANG, it happened”.
On the other hand, there are those who say that this story is nothing more than an ancient legend made up by people who didn’t have the benefit of modern science at their disposal. These days, they say, this story is useful only as a cultural artifact. It should be studied in the same way that Greek mythology is studied: without regard for its truth or relevance to contemporary life.
So then, are these our only two options for understanding this text? Do we reject, on the one hand, the findings of the scientific community as the deceptions of Satan or the product of secular humanist conspiracy? Or, on the other hand, do we throw out the Bible as an ancient relic, abandoning it to be used and abused by ignorant bigots, like those who once believed that the earth is flat?
Or is there a third option? Is there some way for us to lower our mental buckets into this well and bring up gallons of living water? Can this text serve as a source of divine truth for us, even if we don’t accept it as literally and historically factual? I think there is.
Let’s start by looking at the text itself. You’ll notice that there is a lot of repetition going on. “And God said, ‘Let there be… and God saw that it was good… and there was evening and there was morning, the [#] day.” This happens over and over again, so much that you start to expect it. There is a kind of natural rhythm to this passage. Tell me, where else do you find rhythm and repetition in language? In poetry! This text reads like a poem.
What’s even more interesting is how the ideas and images in this poem develop as we read on. Let’s look at the first six days of creation and the creatures that emerge on each day. To make it easier to understand, we’re going to divide the days into two groups that stand side by side: days 1-3 and days 4-6.
On the first day, God creates light and darkness itself. Parallel this with the fourth day, when God creates the sun, moon, and stars (i.e. those objects (beings) that dwell in the light and darkness of day and night). On the second day, God separates the sky and the water. Then look at the fifth day, when God creates birds and fish (i.e. the life-forms that live in the sky and water). On the third day, God calls forth the land and vegetation from the sea. Match this up with the sixth day, when God makes land animals and humans, whose job it is to care for the rest of creation.
On days 1-3, God creates a particular environment and then fills each environment with inhabitants on days 4-6, leaving human beings in charge of the whole thing. Then, on the seventh day, God takes a break. For this reason, the text tells us, every seventh day is set apart as sacred. On this day, people are called to rest from their work and reflect on the goodness of God’s creation.
“Okay Barrett,” you might say, “it’s a nice poem, but what does it mean? Why are these words and ideas laid out in the way they are?” In order to answer that question, it would make sense to look at who wrote this poem, where and when it was written, and why they wrote it.
The problem is that we don’t exactly know the who, where, when, and why of this poem’s author. Unlike modern writers, authors in the ancient world didn’t exactly sign and date their material. And, as any teacher will tell you, it’s almost impossible to figure out who wrote a nameless and dateless paper, even when you know it was written in the last week! Imagine trying to do it with a paper that’s several thousand years old! Forget about it!
Biblical scholars have spent years trying to solve this mystery. Their best guess is that this poem was probably written by a Jewish person sometime during the sixth century B.C. Jews at that time were living in exile, working as slaves in the country of Babylon. The Babylonians had conquered the holy land and dragged many of the people off to work for them elsewhere. Removing people from their land was a common strategy used by the Babylonians to break people’s spirits and keep them submissive. The Jews living and working in Babylon huddled together in sorrow for their lost home. All around them, their Babylonian bosses made them feel like they were less than human. They treated God’s people like machines or property. They made fun of Jewish culture and religion.
“You God is so weak,” they said, “our god, Marduk, was able to beat yours in battle. That’s why you’re our slaves now. Why don’t you give up worshiping your pitiful little God and worship ours instead?”
Well, the Jews didn’t listen to that talk. They got together and, once a week, these Jewish slaves went on strike. They refused to work. They huddled together to sing, pray, and tell stories. They celebrated their faith and culture. This is the Sabbath day.
On the Sabbath the Jews said to the Babylonians, “You might be in charge (for now) but you don’t own us. We belong to our God, who made heaven and earth.” That’s where scholars think this poem came from. The sun, moon, and animals were all different gods to the Babylonians. They worshiped them and made all kinds of sacrifices, but the Jews said, “Those aren’t gods! The sun and moon are just lights in the sky. The animals were made by our God and given to us to care for.” Rather than bowing down, the Jewish people stood up to preserve their dignity and celebrate their faith that, one day, their one true God would free them from slavery and bring them home again, just like God once did with Moses in Egypt. In the meantime, the Jews kept going on strike once a week. They kept meeting together to worship. “We’re not your property,” they said, “We’re God’s people.”
So this poem becomes a celebration of faith, hope, and human dignity in the face of chaos, destruction, and oppression. The poem opens with the image of a dark and stormy ocean. Nothing but a “formless void”, but God is there. God is speaking. And God is making something good out of this mess!
In the same way, you and I live in a dark and chaotic world. The society around us laughs at our faith. It would be so easy to become frightened or cynical. Maybe we’re not exactly slaves, like the Jews were under the Babylonians, but we often get treated like we’re less than human. Government bureaucracy treats us like cattle, shuffling us around and identifying us by our Social Security Number. Corporate advertising calls us “consumers” and tells us that our only value as human beings comes from how much money we have to spend.
“It’s a dog-eat-dog world,” they say, “you’ve got to take whatever you can get or somebody else will!”
Can we, as people of faith, find the courage to stand up and say no to that?
Like the ancient Jews, you and I already gather here once a week to sing, pray, and tell stories like this one. When you come here, you’re reminding yourself that you are more than just a consumer or constituent. You are a child of God. You have inherent dignity as a human being. You matter.
That’s a message that the world around you will try to drown out, if it can. It will try to swallow up your soul in that ocean of darkness and chaos.
The power of faith is the power to resist that fear and cynicism. It’s the power of hope. It’s the power of human dignity. It’s the power to celebrate the goodness of creation. It’s the power to say that our God is more real than the false gods of consumerism and ideology. The power of faith is the power to say, “God is making something good out of this mess!”
Do you believe that? Can you see in your life what the ancient Jews saw in this passage? The truth in this text has little to do with how the universe began, whether it was thousands or billions of years ago. It has everything to do with how you look at the universe today. Are you a faith-full or a faith-less person? My prayer is that God would open your heart in the midst of this life’s “formless void”, so full of darkness and chaos, and that you would somehow sense the mystery of God’s presence saying to you, “Let there be light.”
Posted below is the sermon, which was written and delivered by my dear friend (and fellow Trekkie), the Reverend Naomi Kelly. Naomi serves as pastor of Forest Presbyterian Church in Lyons Falls, NY. This sermon is reprinted with her permission.
Her text is the Beatitudes, Matthew 5:1-12.
I’m sure that you’ve watched many Star Trek episodes, and I’m sure you’re familiar with the Episode from Star Trek: The Next Generation where Captain Picard becomes a little boy, there is some kind ionic cloud and passes over the shuttle craft and he, Guinan and Ensign Ro are genetically altered to the time just before puberty, they are pre-teens is you will. Captain Picard is very happy that he has hair, and when the antidote seems impossible and the he will be young and grow up again, and be given another chance to go through life, he begins to imagine what he can become, he was already a Star Ship Captain, maybe this time he will be an archaeologist, another one of his passions. But soon the ship is in danger and young or not he must act, he must do something to save his ship. It was very difficult for him not being able to command his ship the way he used to. He still has all his skills, only in a younger body. And he finds that when he changes his perspective and begins to see with the eyes of a child he is able to do great things, he is able to use his childishness to save the ship. His perspective is changed as he figures out what he needs to do in order to succeed at his calling. When Jean Luc was able to humble himself, to become vulnerable, to allow the child that he’d become to direct his actions, he was able to do great things. Star Trek always has the ability to give us new and fresh perspectives on our culture by taking us outside ourselves just enough so that we can see where we fall short, where we need work, what we can do better.
Jesus does that too, (you see Star Trek always copies Jesus) Jesus gives us new perspectives on life, like His Sermon on the Mount. The Beatitudes give us one such twist. Seasons of the Spirit, a commentary on “Year A January 30, 2011 says: “In these saying, Jesus turns human notions of happiness upside down. What kind of living brings God’s blessing? Jesus teaches that the blessed ones are those who are humble of heart, who are gentle, who show mercy, who hunger and thirst for God’s ways. Those who mourn will be comforted; those who make peace will be called God’s children. Those who are persecuted in the cause of justice will find themselves part of God’s transforming reality.”
The Beatitudes give us a beautiful vision of what the world can be like. It is a vision that allows us to see the world from a different perspective. Like Paul says in the letter to the Philippians we need to be humble as Jesus was humble, to be more Christ like- that gentle merciful nature that is part of us, that we hide away, because we think it makes us vulnerable is what Jesus reminds us to show to the world. The kind of power that we’re used to, is not God’s idea of power.
These stories are revealing of the church in a way, they remind us that at one time the church took itself too seriously, that we began to want more power and influence in the world, and now all the mainline denominations are struggling, perhaps we lost the vision of Jesus’ teachings, perhaps the world doesn’t need what we have to offer anymore. I don’t know about you, but I often think I know better than God, I have all the answers, this kind of attitude leaves us inflexible, and not humble at all.
It is time for new a perspective again, it is time to reform and always be reforming, it is time to read the words that we have had handed down to us with new eyes, in a new light, and see where we need to change our perspective. The Spirit of Christ enables us to do that, gives us the insight and vision to change. Just as the young Jean Luc was able to change his perspective and use the skills of a pre-teen to save his ship, we are able to open to new ways of being church to make a difference in our world. And we can say, Blessed are the weak because when we are weak then God is strong and can influence and change our lives and our behavior. Blessed are the flexible for they will survive the changes that come along.
Blessed are the young at heart for they will able to transform the church to serve the world and each other.
William Wilberforce had a problem. He was trying to figure out what to do with his life. Most youth and adults know what that’s like. However, what makes this case different is that Wilberforce was already a successful member of the British Parliament. In American terms, he would be called a Congressman. To be where he was (especially in 18th century England), one would assume that he had already climbed the ladder of success!
The thing that had Wilberforce all worked up about his future is that he had recently experienced a profound and life-altering spiritual awakening. His personal relationship with God had suddenly taken over his life to such a degree that Wilberforce was thinking of quitting politics for good and entering ordained ministry in the Anglican Church. He was at a loss over what to do.
While he was in this state of mind, Wilberforce was introduced to a group of Christian activists who were campaigning heavily for the abolition of the slave trade in Great Britain. The beginning of Wilberforce’s involvement with this group (later known as ‘the Clapham sect’) is depicted beautifully in the 2006 film Amazing Grace. Seated around his dining room table, they showed him examples of the irons used to restrain captured slaves during their journey across the Atlantic. Conditions were so brutal that no one was guaranteed to survive. They introduced him to Olaudah Equiano, a liberated slave who became an active abolitionist. Equiano showed him the scars on his body. While Wilberforce’s mouth was still hanging open in shock, Thomas Clarkson and Hannah More delivered what I believe to be the best line in the film:
Thomas Clarkson: Mr. Wilberforce, we understand you are having problems choosing whether to do the work of God or the work of a political activist.
Hannah More: We humbly suggest that you can do both.
And I think they were right.
The members of this group understood one very important truth that most Christians tend to forget. It’s a truth that we celebrate every year on the feast of Pentecost. And here it is: The Holy Spirit ordains all people to preach good news to the world.
Not just some, but all. Have you ever noticed something strange about the early church in the book of Acts? Most other radical movements in history emerge with a chain of successors once the initial founder is out of the picture. There was even biblical precedent for this. After the prophet Elijah ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire, people everywhere recognized his apprentice Elisha as his chosen successor. They said, “The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha.”
But that didn’t happen in the early days of Christianity. Jesus Christ had no heir or replacement. The title ‘Messiah’ did not pass to a predetermined chosen one after his departure into heaven. Instead, the Holy Spirit, the very power and presence of God, came to dwell within the entire community of faith.
We read, “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”
This kind of thing was totally unprecedented, although the ancient prophets had prayed for something like it to happen. One time, when people complained to Moses about unauthorized prophets in the Israelite camp, Moses said, “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” Later on, God spoke through the prophet Joel saying, “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.”
And that’s exactly what happened. The entire community of believers on Pentecost was filled with the Holy Spirit and each one started “speaking about God’s deeds of power” to people from “every nation under heaven”. There was no seminary course or board-approved examination. They simply opened their mouths and started to speak “as the Spirit gave them ability.”
There was no single successor to Jesus’ ministry. There was no special order of priests or prophets. The only qualification for speaking forth good news in the power of the Holy Spirit is that you had to believe. “Out of the believer’s heart,” Jesus said, the Holy Spirit would flow, like “rivers of living water”. He never said, “Out of the apostle’s heart” or “Out of the pastor’s heart”. No, Jesus said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”
Anyone with an open heart and an open mind about Jesus is a vessel for the Holy Spirit. This is an important piece of good news for us to hear, on this day of all days. Later today, a new pastor will be ordained in this church. But, if we take the message of Pentecost seriously, then we must admit that there is a very real sense in which all of us are already ordained as ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore, each of us has a responsibility to answer God’s call on our lives and preach good news to the world around us as the Holy Spirit gives us ability and opportunity.
Of course, that doesn’t mean we all need to become experts at delivering sermons. That’s only one way to preach the good news. A single act of kindness can be a sermon unto itself. You can even preach by listening while people tell you about their problems. You might not have fancy theological answers to questions about Christianity, but the simple fact that you’re letting someone ask a tough question is sometimes enough to speak to that person’s heart.
William Wilberforce found his way to do the work of God and the work of politics at the same time. He devoted the rest of his life to fighting slavery. He sent petitions, lobbied Members of Parliament, spoke out in the House of Commons, and wrote legislation. Finally, in 1807, he succeeded in ending the British slave trade once and for all. He never became a member of the clergy, but this was his life’s work as an ordained minister of the good news.
In the same way, each one of you is an ordained minister of the good news. You will leave this church today and go back to your neighborhood, your family, your school, your shop, or your office. As you go, let this reality sink into your heart. Let this mentality take over your brain: You are a missionary. The place where you stand is your mission field. Be open to whatever ministry opportunities the Holy Spirit may bring into your life today. Be faithful in your calling as an ordained minister of the good news of Jesus Christ.
Today’s Sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville. We celebrated Ascension Sunday and Youth Sunday. Today also happens to be More Light Sunday for some churches in the PC(USA). Visit www.mlp.org to find out more.
Billy Lucas, Cody Barker, Seth Walsh, Tyler Clementi, Asher Brown, Harrison Chase Brown, Raymond Chase, Felix Sacco, and Caleb Nolt. These nine names belong to nine teenagers who took their own lives during the month of September 2010. Nine youths in a single month. What’s even more shocking is that each one of these nine people were driven to suicide by the same thing: each of them was being bullied and tormented by classmates, roommates, and peers because of their sexual orientation.
This rash of suicides last fall received a lot of attention in the media. Many people were wondering what caused such a sudden spike in such tragedy. Personally, I wonder if it was happening around us all along, but we just weren’t paying attention until then. Whatever the case, the events of last September caught the attention of a journalist named Dan Savage who decided to do something about it. He launched a video campaign on YouTube to reach out toward other teenagers who might be considering suicide for the same reason.
Dan wanted to send a message of hope to these kids. He wanted them to see videos of adults who persevered through the bullying and went on to find happiness, health, success, and love in their lives. The message of the project is that, no matter how hard life might seem right now, it gets better. In fact, that’s what the project is called: ‘It Gets Better’.
‘It Gets Better’ has been a huge success. 200 volunteers had uploaded videos by the end of the first week, telling their stories and offering their lives as an example of hope. By the end of the second week, they had already reached the 650 video limit imposed by YouTube, so they had to open their own website. Since then, over 10,000 videos have been produced and submitted.
Most of the videos are posted by regular people who have firsthand experience with being bullied for their orientation; others come from people who simply want to voice support as allies. People from all walks of life have contributed: students, artists, police officers, soldiers, clergy (including the pastor of this church). Pretty soon even community organizations and churches were jumping on board. There are several famous household names who have volunteered as well: Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, the Boston Red Sox, Dane Cook, Tom Hanks, Neil Patrick Harris, Jennifer Love Hewitt, even the President of the United States contributed a video!
The message of ‘It Gets Better’ is all about hope, which is the same thing we’re talking about today, on Ascension Sunday. The Ascension is not just a neat magic trick that Jesus did once. It’s an event that has significance for us all. Whenever we recite the Apostles’ or Nicene creeds together, we affirm that the resurrected Jesus “ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.”
In today’s epistle reading from the book of Ephesians, the author talks a lot about what the Ascension of Christ means for believers today. It starts with a prayer. The author prays that God will give people “a spirit of wisdom and revelation” so that, with “the eyes of [our] heart enlightened”, we might come to believe in the power of hope.
The author looks to Christ’s Ascension as the basis for that hope. By virtue of the Ascension, Christ holds dominion “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.” In other words, all of the powers-that-be in this world bow down to Christ as the Ruler of the Universe. This would be incredible good news for Christians in the first century.
As many of us already know, Christians were hunted and killed during the first centuries of their existence. The Roman Empire branded Christians as terrorists (because they refused to worship the emperor) and atheists (because they had no statues of gods). It was a dangerous thing to “come out of the closet” as a Christian in those days because one could face the death penalty for doing so. It seemed like the powerful Roman Empire was bound to eliminate this radical new Christian movement from the face of the earth. The situation was utterly hopeless.
But the author of Ephesians has a different perspective on the matter. All the guts and the glory of the Roman Empire was like a drop in the bucket. As an international superpower, Rome was one of the “powers that be” in the world system of that day. All “authority, power, and dominion” led back to Rome (and the house of Caesar). But Ephesians sees Rome as just another pawn in God’s big chess-game of the universe. According to Ephesians, the entire Roman Empire existed “under [Christ’s] feet.” Even the great Rome was accountable to a higher authority.
This means that Rome would not have the last laugh. They could hunt Christians all day long (which they did), but they would be unable to bring a stop to the work of redemption that God completed in Christ. The bad guys could not win. The battle was already won.
The problem is that it didn’t look that way to the average person in the street. For them, the Empire looked stronger than ever and was stepping up its ferocity in hunting believers. Any logical analysis of the situation would lead a rational person to believe that the Christian church at that time was on its way out of existence and would amount to a footnote in some distant history book.
You and I, as people who live on this end of history, know full well that this didn’t happen. In fact, it was the Roman Empire that faded away while the Christian Church has survived and thrived in almost every part of the world. But how, we might ask, could the author of Ephesians be so sure that this would be the future of the Church?
The answer, of course, is that the author didn’t know for sure. The power of hope is something that can’t be proved. It has to be believed in. So, when it comes to inspiring hope in these persecuted Christians, the author doesn’t construct a rational argument, but instead prays that “the eyes of [their] heart [would be] enlightened”.
That’s how hope works. I have days sometimes when I feel really bitter and cynical about my life or the world. What brings me out of that funk is usually some story or song that speaks to my heart more than my head. There’s this inner voice that speaks without words from somewhere between the notes of the music. When it happens, it feels like a hunch or a gut instinct. If I were to try and put the voice into actual words, they would probably sound something like this: “It’s okay. You’re going to be alright. You’re not alone.” Personally, I believe that’s the voice of God, speaking light into the darkness of my heart and inspiring hope. I try to hold onto that feeling, even though I might not have a logical reason for believing in the power of hope. I believe this is what it means in Ephesians when it says,
I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, 18so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which [God] has called you.
This kind of hope is what the contributors to the ‘It Gets Better’ project are trying to inspire in the hearts of bullied teenagers who might feel so frustrated with their circumstances that they’re considering suicide, which is really just a permanent solution to a temporary problem. As they make these videos, they’re praying that maybe some teenager who already has one hand on that gun, that bottle of pills, or that rope might stumble across one of these videos online and sense the eyes of their heart being enlightened by the power of hope. And maybe they’ll put down that gun, those pills, or that rope and decide to live.
“Hope” is what comes to my mind when I say that I believe in the risen Christ, who ascended to the right hand of God, “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion”. To me it means that the power of hope inspired by Jesus is stronger than all the powers that be in this world. Stronger than the forces of injustice and inequality. Stronger than hate. Stronger than the bullies. Stronger than that voice inside your head that says, “You’re no good” and “Nobody loves you” and “Life isn’t worth living”.
I don’t know your circumstances this morning. Maybe you too are being bullied because of your sexual orientation. Maybe you’re facing a crisis in your job, family, or relationship. Maybe the headlines of TV news are making you feel cynical about the future. Maybe you’re even considering a permanent solution to a temporary problem. The still, small voice of hope might just sound like a silly little hunch or whisper, but listen to it! Believe in it! That voice has the power to transform your world. It’s the voice of the Creator God, speaking again into the darkness and chaos, saying, “Let there be light”, “I love you”, and “It gets better”.
This is a video of the choir at Immanuel Presbyterian Church performing with the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles for the ‘It Gets Better’ project:
This video is my humble contribution to ‘It Gets Better’:
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 