Author: J. Barrett Lee

Setting a Higher Standard

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Community Chaplaincy4 Comments

Another home run ruin for law enforcement in central New York.

Earlier today, I posted an article on Facebook about an off-duty state trooper who was caught breaking into a house in Utica.  Miraculously, this individual was not arrested, although caught red-handed on the scene by Utica Police.

Read WKTV’s report on the incident here.

Tonight, I came across another sparkling gem, courtesy of the Utica Phoenix:

Read the Phoenix article here.

I’m not even including the many incidents that took place while I was working as a counselor at the Addiction Crisis Center and a Community Chaplain in the neighborhood where this second incident took place.  Some of these events I witnessed personally, others were reported to me by my clients.

I respect the difficult job that law enforcement officers have.  However, our bravest and finest have a responsibility to conduct themselves with a degree of integrity and professionalism appropriate to the power with which they have been invested.

To my neighbors in the Utica Police Department:

You can do better than this.  You must.

Why Be Normal?

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

This week’s sermon from Boonville Presbyterian.

The text is Matthew 2:1-12.

Click here to listen to this sermon at fpcboonville.org

What is ‘Normal’?

People use this word all the time, as if they knew exactly what it meant.  Picky eaters at the dinner table whine, “Mom, why can’t we have normal food for dinner?”  Angst-ridden teenagers roll their eyes and moan, “Why can’t I have normal parents?”  Meanwhile, their parents are pulling their hair out and screaming, “Why can’t I just have normal children?”

For me, this question of ‘normalcy’ is a vocational one.  After college, many of my peers spent their twenties getting established in their respective careers.  They worked as real-estate agents, pastors, teachers, reporters, etc.  Meanwhile, I went to graduate school for 3 years and then got a job doing laundry for homeless and drug addicted people.  Since then, I’ve been a stay-at-home Dad, a philosophy professor, a chaplain in the inner-city, and the pastor of a country church.  Through it all, I often ask myself, “Why can’t I be happy in a normal job?”

So I ask again: what is ‘normal’?

Honestly, I’m beginning to think there’s no such thing as ‘normal’.    It’s an illusion people create, based on what they think other people’s lives are like.  But the truth is that most of your neighbors probably feel just as ‘abnormal’ as you do.

There are lots of ways in which a person can be made to feel abnormal.  I already mentioned family and work as two big ones.  We might feel abnormal because of our mannerisms or our relationships.

We might also be made to feel abnormal because of our spirituality.  I find this one especially interesting.  I think there are many people who have a very deep and abiding spirituality, but don’t feel comfortable in church.  Their relationship with God finds its expression in their enjoyment of the natural world, their study of the sciences, their pursuit of social justice, or their artistic endeavors.  I think the sad fact is that too many of these people don’t recognize their own activities as genuine expressions of faith.

For these people, and for anyone else who feels ‘not normal’ in any way, I have good news this morning: you are one of the Magi.

The Magi were an interesting group of people.  Church tradition has attached all sorts of ideas to them that aren’t necessarily true.  “We Three Kings of Orient Are” is an especially misleading hymn.  First, there weren’t necessarily three of them.  Next, they weren’t kings.  Finally, they weren’t from the so-called “Orient”.

In reality, the Magi were astrologers (like the ones you see on TV) who probably came from somewhere in the vicinity of present-day Iraq.  Their job was to study the movement of the stars and make predictions for the future based on the stars’ movement.  These Magi weren’t Jewish, so they wouldn’t have known about the Torah or the Hebrew prophets, and they certainly weren’t waiting for a Jewish Messiah to come and deliver them.  Nevertheless, God spoke to the Magi in the language they were most likely to understand: astrology. God didn’t send a rabbi along to teach them the Bible or take them to a synagogue.  Instead, God was willing to connect with these Magi through pagan rituals of divination!  Talk about ‘not normal’!

Let’s see what happens next:

The Magi head to Jerusalem and meet with the established religious and political authorities in order to find this newborn “King of the Jews”.  So the royal officials and scholars get together, have a Bible study, and figure out that the Messiah is supposed to be born in Bethlehem.  So the Magi set out again, but once they’re on the road, do they follow the instructions laid out by the religious scholars?  No!  Matthew’s gospel explicitly tells us that they follow the star again.

Think about how mind-boggling this is!  Even after going to Jerusalem and learning the Bible from the best scholars of the day, these Magi go right back to relying on their pagan practices; and instead of astrology leading the Magi astray, it brings them to the exact place where they were supposed to be: in the presence of Jesus.  From beginning to end, there is nothing ‘normal’ about this story!

This is good news for all of us who feel ‘not normal’ in some way (especially those of us who feel out-of-place in church).  This is good news because it means that the God we encounter in the person of Jesus Christ is a creative and inclusive deity.  It means that this God reaches out to all people in whatever way they are most likely to hear.  One of my roommates in seminary liked to say, “God will broadcast on any antenna you put up.”  The question of whether someone’s spiritual journey is ‘normal’ or ‘not normal’ by our standards is irrelevant in the eyes of God.

I am slowly coming to have an appreciation for the ‘not normal’ ways that God is at work in my life.  I told you before about the wandering path that my career has taken during these past few years.  I can see now that my dead-end job doing laundry with a Master’s degree was really a two-year extension of seminary.  I learned to apply the theological and pastoral skills I had learned in the classroom to real-life situations.  Likewise, I formed personal relationships with homeless and drug-addicted people that helped me in my future ministry.

In 2009, I started offering spiritual care to people in the inner-city through St. James Mission, an ecumenical outreach ministry in Utica.  We call it our Community Chaplaincy program.  While many people refer to me as a street preacher, the truth is that I don’t do much preaching at all.  I’m more of a street listener.  The job of a Community Chaplain is to help people listen for the ways in which God is already present and active in their lives.

I am constantly being taken by surprise in the course of this ministry.  The people I work with, who exist in the very margins of our society, live lives that can in no way be understood as ‘normal’.  I know one gentleman who is constantly struggling with addiction and mental illness.  He has been on and off the streets several times in the past few years.  The central point in his spiritual life is the image of planting seeds, which Jesus makes use of in several of his parables.  Planting seeds, for this man, meant doing small deeds of kindness for others.  So, in spite of his own struggles, he volunteered in several local organizations.  For a long time, he was an active participant in our Bible studies on Thursday nights.  He had dream of one day providing forums, called Feedback Seminars, where clients of social service agencies can offer insight and advice to service providers for making their organizations more effective.  “Just like a doctor puts on a white coat to go help people,” he said, “Jesus puts us on and uses us to heal others.”

This man’s faith looks very different from what we would call ‘normal’ Christianity, but it is nonetheless genuine.  He is one of the Magi, following the star God has set before him.  Likewise, without my ‘not normal’ experiences of feeling lost in my career, these pieces would never have come together to form the ministry that God has called me to be a part of on the streets of Utica, in college classrooms, and here in Boonville.  Even though my call to ministry looks very different from most other pastors, I believe this is the star that God has called me to follow right now.

I would like to invite you to examine those ‘not normal’ parts of your life, whatever they may be.  Are they just odd quirks in your circumstance or personality?  Are you just a misfit or a freak who doesn’t belong?  Or is God calling you to follow a star?  Could it be that God is calling you to embark on a wild and wonderful journey of faith and discovery?  I want to encourage you to follow that star and see where it leads you!

For those who may not feel this sense of ‘not normality’ that I’ve been talking about today, I want to encourage you to pay special attention to those unusual people in your family, your neighborhood, or your church.  Those people are Magi who have been specially chosen by God to teach us about the inclusive creativity of God and God’s work in the world.  Don’t write them off as freaks and misfits, but trust that God is leading them along a special path to the same place where God is leading you: to worship Christ, the newborn king who was born in a stable, the most ‘not normal’ king of who ever lived.

Have Yourself A Messy Little Christmas

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon2 Comments

A little late.

This was the sermon from the fourth week of Advent at First Pres, Boonville.

The text is Luke 1:26-38.

Click here to listen to this sermon at fpcboonville.org

Did you ever notice that every time you’re going through some major transition in life, especially if you’re getting married, suddenly everyone you meet somehow magically turns into an expert on the subject?  Suddenly, everyone has that one piece of wisdom that’s going to make the whole situation clear.  Suddenly, everyone’s got a PhD in wedding planning, right?  They think they’re so wise and insightful but they almost always end up being obvious and inane: “Make sure the flowers don’t clash with the bridesmaid’s dresses!”  And they all start the same: “One word of advice…”

“One word of advice: don’t pick a DJ who will play ‘Bootylicious’ while your Grandma is still in the room.”

“One word of advice: Kanye West’s ‘Gold Digger’ is not an appropriate song for your first dance.”

Really?  Thank you.  I don’t know what I’d do without you.

Nobody likes it when people do that, yet everybody still does it.  I’m no exception.  I get to work with a lot of couples as they plan their big wedding day.  And, like everyone else, I’ve got my “one word of advice” for every couple that comes through my office.  I like to think it’s brilliant, but maybe it’s just as annoying as everyone else’s.  It goes like this: “The key to the perfect wedding day is imperfection.”

When I see these shows like ‘Bridezillas’ and ‘Say Yes to the Dress’, it strikes me that a lot of people out there are obsessed with having “the perfect wedding day”.  But here’s the thing: it doesn’t exist.  Something will go wrong.  Count on it.

On the day that Sarah and I got married, we used recorded music and thought we had it timed and coordinated perfectly.  Unfortunately, there was a miscalculation and the music stopped while Sarah was still halfway down the aisle.  What do you do then?  Start over?  “OK everybody, take two!  Back to the beginning.  We didn’t get it right.  Cue bridesmaids!”  No, not really.  You just roll with it.  As long as everybody gets there in one piece and says, “I do,” it counts as a successful wedding.  Everything else is just icing on the cake (no pun intended).

You’ll have to excuse me.  I’ve got weddings on the brain today because today is my anniversary.  Sarah and I got married seven years ago today.  But this idea of imperfection being the key to perfection doesn’t just apply to weddings.  As it turns out, there’s also no such thing as the perfect car, house, job, family, or holiday (especially Christmas).

People tend to get especially funny about this idea of ‘perfection’ around the holidays.  As a society, we’re so doped up on nostalgia during the holidays that we can’t see the forest for the (Christmas) trees.  We sing silent night by candlelight around the sweet little Nativity Scene at church.  Perfect, right?  Actually, no.

Wondrous?  Yes.  Beautiful?  Absolutely.  But not perfect.  This is an important fact to remember whenever we get down on ourselves because our Christmas, our families, or our lives don’t look like what we see in that warm, candlelit manger.  Here’s the thing: those people around the manger didn’t have the perfect Christmas either.  In fact, a close evaluation of the Christmas story itself will show us just how ‘imperfect’ this whole experience really was.

At Christmas, we celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation, where God comes to meet us in the middle of the blood, sweat, and tears of our messy and imperfect lives.  When we come to the point of being open to the presence of that mystery in our mess, then we can say that we’ve truly understood the meaning of Christmas.

Let’s look at the biblical text.  Today’s reading from the gospel according to Luke is usually referred to as ‘The Annunciation’ because this is where the angel Gabriel makes an ‘announcement’ to the Virgin Mary that she is pregnant and will soon have a baby.  Mary is from Nazareth, a little hick town way out in the middle of nowhere that was probably less than half the size of Boonville.  As we’ve mentioned before, the country she lived in was at that time occupied by the Roman Empire.

Living in a society that was hardly ‘empowering’ to women, Mary’s only hope for a secure future lay in finding a good husband and having lots and lots of male children to care for her when she got old.  The price she had to pay in exchange for this security was her body.  She was considered to be the property of her husband.  Her value as a human being was defined by her virginity.  If any man was to make a lifetime investment in her, he would want assurances that he would have exclusive access to her.  Any evidence to the contrary (i.e. getting pregnant before the wedding by someone other than her fiancé) would be grounds for calling off the whole thing.  The next step would probably be a public execution.  Some might even view that as merciful, because it would save her family from shame and spare her from a life on the streets as a beggar or prostitute.

By the way, I should mention that Mary was probably somewhere around 13 or 14 years old while all of this was happening.  I’ll let that sink in for those of you who have ever had young teenagers.  Mary was an unwed teenage mother with no conceivable future from a backward hick town in an occupied country.  Does this still sound like the perfect Christmas to you?

Nevertheless, the angel Gabriel begins their conversation by saying, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”  What kind of opening line is that?  In the midst of all this mess, knowing the scandal she was about to face, how could this angel have the audacity to call her “favored” and say, “The Lord is with you?”  It doesn’t make sense.

We’re not the only ones to notice the absurdity of the situation either.  The text tells us that Mary herself was “perplexed” and asking questions like, “How can this be?”  Her faith was not blind and unquestioning.  She didn’t walk around like some mystical saint with a halo over her head.  Mary was a realist.  She was just as confused as you or I would be in her shoes.

Nothing about her situation made any sense.  The angel’s message went against everything she believed in, morally and theologically.  The angel was asking the impossible.  Yet, as a voice told Mary in verse 37, “nothing will be impossible with God.”  Through the presence of that great divine mystery (which we call “God”) in the messiness her life, Mary encountered infinite possibility and creativity.  “Nothing is impossible.”

Her risky response, “Let it be,” opened her up to actualizing this potential in her own life.  This openness, more than religious dogma or morality, is what real faith is all about.  Are you open to the divine mystery being present in the messiness of your life?  To take the risk of disaster and damnation is to make a leap of faith.  “Let it be” is a statement so bold and so brave that the Beatles even wrote a song about it: “When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, ‘Let it be.’”  “Let it be” was her response to the angel’s invitation.  I think John Lennon perhaps understood something of the power in those words.

After Mary had spoken these words, everything was the same yet everything was different.  New life had begun to grow inside of her.  When the time was right, this new life was born into the world: Jesus (Yeshua, salvation, deliverance, liberation).

Celebrating Christmas is about looking for the mystery in the mess.  It’s not about perfection in holiday nostalgia, moral uprightness, or religious dogma.  It’s about saying “Yes” and “Let it be” to the limitless possibilities in front of you.  It’s about staying open to the new life that is waiting to be born in you.

Be open to the angel’s invitation when it comes to you in your messy life.  It might not look like a winged messenger from heaven, but it might show itself in a sudden opportunity to help someone, welcome someone, trust someone, forgive someone, or love someone.  When it happens, you’ll know.  In that moment, say in your heart, “Let it be” and watch new life grow in and be born through you.

Be open to the mystery in the mess.  Embrace the divine possibility in the earthly imperfection and take that leap of faith, saying, “Let it be.”

And have yourself a messy little Christmas.

Internet Heretic Superstar Makes Headlines Again

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Community ChaplaincyLeave a comment

I’m in the news again (and not in the Most Wanted section).  I had a lovely conversation with Cassaundra Baber from the Utica Observer-Dispatch the other day.  We talked about Christmas and secularization.  The article comes out today.  The only problem is that she told everybody my first name.  Only my mother gets to call me that…

Here’s the link:

http://www.uticaod.com/features/x1569718972/Christian-families-focus-on-the-reason-for-the-season

Christmas and Reincarnation

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Christmas Eve sermon from First Pres, Boonville.

Have you ever met a word nerd?  You know who I’m talking about.  I’m talking about those annoying people who almost always manage to find the most complicated way of saying the simplest thing.  They would rather say, “I would like to annunciate my most sincere benevolent aspirations for your fecundity and longevity in this season of the remembrance of the birth of Christ” when a simple “Merry Christmas” would do just fine.

What do you call that? “Syllable envy?”  If one is good, then six is better.

I readily confess that I am one of those people.  My name is Barrett, and I am a word nerd.  I use this on my students at Utica College all the time.  I get a kick out of talking about “inductive teleological arguments for classical theism” and “epistemic circularity in the evaluation of sense perception.”  Yes, I am a word nerd.  But, as bad as I am, I don’t hold a candle to my wife, who was an English major in college.  Whenever we play games like Boggle or Scrabble as a family, Sarah and I have a house rule that I win whenever I manage to get half her score.

It’s no coincidence that word nerds like Sarah and me also happen to be ministers.  There’s something about this job that attracts word nerds.  Going almost all the way back to the very beginning of Christianity, we ministers have had a knack for taking something very simple and attaching some kind of multi-syllabic monstrosity to it.  Being a word nerd is lots of fun and it makes us sound smart, but it can also cause problems.  We’ve started arguments, split churches, and even fought wars over words.

If you look at tonight’s sermon title, you’ll notice one of those big nerdy words: Christmas and Reincarnation.  “Now, wait a minute,” you might say, “’Reincarnation’?  Isn’t that something that Buddhists and Hindus believe in?  So, why would we be talking about that in church at Christmas?”  Well, you would be right.  Reincarnation, as it’s typically understood, is not a Christian idea.  It typically refers to the belief (often held by most Buddhists and Hindus) that human beings are born over and over again in different bodies throughout human history.  It’s part of their beliefs about the afterlife.  It’s not a belief that has typically been part of the Jewish and Christian religions.  In case you’re still confused, let me put your mind at ease: I’m not using the word “reincarnation” in the Buddhist or Hindu sense of the term.  I’m not talking about the afterlife; I’m talking about this life.

Let me unpack this word in order to explain what I mean:

We start with the prefix Re-.  We all know what this means.  When you “redo” something, you do it again.  TV networks show “reruns” when there are no new episodes to broadcast.  You “repeat” yourself whenever you have to say something for the second time (or third, fourth, or fifth time… for those of us with toddlers or teenagers).  Re- means “again”.

Next, we come to the really meaty part: Incarnation.  Now this is a very Christian term.  It’s one of those nerdy words that ministers came up with in the early days of the Christian church.  The prefix In- is just like our English word “in”.  It means “into” or “inside”.  The next part, Carne, literally means “flesh” or “meat”.  Have you ever had chili con carne for dinner?  It’s chili with meat, right?  So, Incarnation literally means “in the flesh” or “in meat”.

Tonight, as we gather to celebrate Christmas, we are celebrating the Mystery of the Incarnation.  Incarnation is the nerdy word that Christians use to describe how special we think Jesus is.  When we look at him, we something special.  To us, he’s more than just a philosopher or a hero.  He’s not just another person.  He’s not even our favorite person.  Christians believe that, somehow, in a way that we will never understand, the great divine and eternal mystery that we call “God” was present in this flesh and blood person, Jesus of Nazareth.  That’s what we mean when we talk about the Incarnation: God “in the flesh”.  Christians have this two thousand year old hunch that something about the mystery and meaning of life itself was making itself known through this Jesus guy.  We can’t quite put our finger on it, but we can sense it in the things he said and did.  For us, he’s like that missing puzzle piece that makes all the other pieces of life’s puzzle fit together.  When we look at and listen to Jesus, we feel like we can finally see things clearly and make sense of the universe.  That’s why we like to call him “The Light of the World”.

Light is an amazing thing.  Without it, life would be impossible.  The light of the sun warms our planet to the point where organic life can exist.  Plants feed on sunlight through the process of photosynthesis.  Animals eat those plants.  Further up the food chain, humans are nourished by both animals and plants.  So, in an indirect way, we eat light.  Obviously, light also helps us to see clearly and make sense of our surroundings.  We are dependent on light as a basic natural resource.  From Christians, Jesus makes life possible, he nourishes our life, and he helps us to make sense of life and see things more clearly.

There’s a lot of talk about light in the passages from the Bible that we read tonight.  In the beginning, God is present in the darkness and says, “Let there be light.”  In the second reading, Jesus was described as “The true light, which enlightens everyone” that “shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  In the third reading, we see Jesus in action as “the light of the world.”  What is he doing?  He’s healing somebody!  That should give us a big clue about what it means to be “the light of the world.”

Finally, in the last reading from Matthew’s gospel, Jesus gets really interesting.  He takes this idea of the eternal mystery and the light of the world and turns it back on us.  He says, “You are the light of the world.”  And then he tells people, “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

The really neat thing about the Incarnation is that it’s not just something that happened with one guy two thousand years ago.  It happens again and again and again.  God didn’t just happen to pop on down for a visit during Jesus’ lifetime.  God is still here with us.  The light of the world continues to shine.  In the midst of the brutality, chaos, and darkness of this world, the words of John’s gospel still ring true: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

There is still darkness in this world, yet the light of the world continues to shine.  Where?  We don’t see Jesus physically hanging around anymore.  Where is the light of the world?  It’s you.  The light of the world shines in you.  That’s what Jesus said.  “You are the light of the world… [so] let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

When we live as people of love, committing “random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty”, the light of the world “takes on flesh again” in us.  Did you hear that?  “Takes on flesh again”: Re-in-carnate.

I’m not talking about reincarnation because I believe that people come back to earth again and again after death.  It’s not about life after death; it’s about life before death.  And you don’t get reincarnated at all.  It’s Christ who gets reincarnated in you whenever you love.  Jesus is the light of the world.  You are the light of the world.  That’s what reincarnation has to do with Christmas.

Here’s a cheesy song, but what the hey: It’s Christmas.

Who Are You?

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized6 Comments

This week’s sermon from First Pres, Boonville.

The text is John 1:6-8, 19-28.

Click here to listen at fpcboonville.org

I was at a church meeting in Lyons Falls this past week and brought my daughter along in tow.  She played while the grownups talked.  During the meeting, she came up to sit in my lap.  I asked her, “Don’t you want to go back and play with your puzzle?”  She replied, “The puzzle is broken.”

After the meeting was over, Diane Hausserman and I were helping to clean up the room and we discovered what she meant.  There was this one puzzle that was being totally uncooperative.  I don’t know why they called it a “kids puzzle” because it apparently takes two full-grown adults to get the job done!

It took us a while to get all the pieces together.  When we finally did, we could tell that the picture on the puzzle was supposed to be Jesus (precisely what one would expect to find in a church nursery).  But, even when we had all the pieces together and arranged in the right order, we discovered an additional problem: for some reason, the pieces just didn’t want to fit inside the frame!  So there we were: two educated adults, one a pastor and the other an elder in the church, who were pushing, pounding, rearranging, and then pounding again all because we wanted Jesus to fit nicely and neatly inside our convenient little frame, so that we could put him back on the shelf at church (where he belongs) and then go home.

I had to laugh at the irony of the situation.  It’s a perfect metaphor for what people do all the time.  We do it with each other, we do it with God, and we even do it with ourselves.  We’re not the first to do it, either.  Look at this morning’s reading from John’s gospel, we can see people trying to force John the Baptist, that great puzzle of a prophet, into their own neat and tidy little frame.

This is the second week in a row that we’ve talked about John.  Last week, we talked about the fact that he was a person of great faith, a prophet even, who wasn’t afraid to get loud and shake things up when necessary.  This week, I want to look at John as a prophet who could not be squeezed into a framework of preconceived notions and categories.

After John first showed up and started causing a stir in Judea, the religious authorities took notice and sent a committee to interview him.  They wanted to know what to do with him.  Was he a dangerous radical?  Was he a heretic?  Could he be the real thing?

Their list of questions centered around one core question: “Who are you?”  And they presented it as a multiple choice question.

Are you:

a. The Messiah.

b. Elijah.

c. The Prophet.

First, they wanted to know if John considered himself to be the Messiah.  We are all familiar with this term.  It was later applied to Jesus.  In Hebrew, it means “Anointed” and referred to a coming king who was supposed to liberate Israel from foreign occupation and inspire the people to follow the laws of the Torah.  Many modern day Jews still await the coming of their Messiah.  Christians believe that Jesus filled this role during his lifetime (although they radically reinterpret the meaning of the word).  In the days when John the Baptist was alive, lots of revolutionary leaders were jumping up and saying “I’m the Messiah!”  These violent revolutionaries (one might call them terrorists) did more harm than good, so the leaders of the religious establishment knew to not take them too seriously.  In that sense, asking John whether he was the Messiah was a loaded question.  If he said “Yes” then they would automatically know that he wasn’t the real Messiah.  But John didn’t fall into their trap.  He answered right away, “I am not the Messiah.”

Next, they wanted to know whether John was Elijah.  As we mentioned last week, John acted and dressed in such a way that reminded people of Elijah, one of Israel’s ancient heroes.  What made that possibility even more important was something said by another Jewish prophet named Malachi.  Speaking in the name of Israel’s God, Yahweh, Malachi said, “Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.”  The rabbis and theologians in John’s day understood this to mean that Elijah, who, according to Jewish legend, had been taken up into heaven alive, riding on a chariot of fire, would one day return to earth, and that his return would herald the coming of the Messiah.  So, like the first answer, this was another trick question.  If John answered “Yes” then they would know that he still had some kind of Messianic agenda and was a potential threat to national security, which depended on keeping the Romans happy.  Once again, John dodged the bullet by answering, “No.”

Finally, the religious authorities asked John whether he was “the prophet.”  By asking this, they were referring to a passage in the book of Deuteronomy, where Moses tells the Hebrews, “Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet.”  Some rabbis thought Moses was referring to a particular person whose appearance, like Elijah’s, would herald the coming of the Messiah.  Others thought Moses was simply referring to prophets in general.  Whichever interpretation was implied in the question, John once again declined the opportunity to take up that mantle.

Given options a., b., and c., John goes for:

d. None of the above

What’s odd here is that, elsewhere in the New Testament, John is very much regarded as a prophet, even the greatest of all prophets.  Also, Jesus himself directly identifies John with Elijah.  Why then wouldn’t John publicly acknowledge who he really was?

We’ve already addressed some of the political concerns associated with such a loaded term as “Elijah.”  But I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that there may have been a deeper reason why John didn’t feel the need to have the proper labels attached to him.  Perhaps, for John, being was more important than appearances.  This conviction is beautifully summed up in the Latin phrase that serves as the state motto of North Carolina, where I grew up: Esse Quam Videri.  “To be rather than to seem.”

Being and living out of his true self is far more important to John than any title or position.  John may have been the long-predicted prophet or even Elijah himself, but he didn’t need to be recognized as such in order for his ministry to be authentic.

For the religious authorities, on the other hand, recognition was everything.  They wanted John to have an official title so that they could fit him inside their little frame, put him back on the shelf, and forget about him.

You and I do this all the time.  We like to use names and buzzwords to organize and separate people into categories.  Instead of “Messiah” or “prophet,” we use words like:

  • Male and female
  • Black and white
  • American and Afghani
  • Liberal and conservative
  • Gay and straight
  • Christian and Muslim

We attach labels to people so that we can dismiss them and not listen to what they have to say.  Like that puzzle, we fit all the pieces into a neat little frame and put them on a shelf in the back of our minds.  But people are complicated and tend to resist being categorized so easily.  When we do that, we only cheat ourselves out of the opportunity to learn something important from another person.

More importantly, when we categorize and dismiss other people like that, we’re really doing it to God.  The Bible tells us that every human being is made “in the image of God.”  Every human life is a prism that reflects and refracts the eternal light of divine mystery in a way that is totally unique to that person.  When we shut our eyes to that rainbow of light, we are ultimately turning away from God.  It’s God that we’re putting on that shelf in the back of our minds when reality doesn’t conform to our simplistic expectations.

Finally, if we’re going to try and open ourselves up to the light of God that shines through the lives of our fellow human beings (like it shone through the prophet John the Baptist), we need to start by recognizing how that light shines through ourselves.  You too are made in the image of God.  The eternal light of divine mystery shines through you in a way that it utterly unique unto you.  There are truths about God that only you can reveal to the world.  If it weren’t for you, something of God would be lost to the world forever.

All of us have internal “tapes” or “scripts” that we play over and over again in our heads.  We categorize ourselves.  We think these messages tell us who we are.  These internal tapes say things like:

  • “I’m no good”
  • “I’ll never amount to anything”
  • “Nobody will ever love me”
  • “I could never do that”
  • “I’m too fat/short/skinny/tall”
  • And many others…

All people have tapes like these playing in their heads.  The particular words may vary from person to person, but the result is the same: you are trying to force yourself into those same old categories rather than see yourself as you truly are: a human being, unconditionally loved, and made in the image of God.  Learning to love yourself in that way and letting that love drown out the noise of the tapes playing in your head is best way to let the light of God shine through the prism of your life.

My prayer for you, as we move through this Advent season and into Christmas, is that you would be a person like John the Baptist, who refused to be put into any neat and tidy categories.  I pray that you would be able to see the “light of the world” shining in your own face, so that you can go out into the world and see it shining in the faces of the people around you.  I pray that you, like John the Baptist, will be “a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe.”  Testify to the light.  Tell the world what you have seen.  Tell them how you found that light in yourself and how you see it in them.  Rise above the categories that this world imposes upon people.  Be who you really are.  Take the holy light that shines so uniquely in you and sing out loud, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.  Let it shine!  Let it shine!  Let it shine!”

It’s Time for Love to Get Loud

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

This week’s sermon from First Pres, Boonville.  Blog fans will notice some similarity with my previous post, Get Loud.

There is considerable congregational participation toward the end, so it would be better to listen at fpcboonville.org

The text is Mark 1:1-8.

First impressions are funny things.  They have a way of setting the tone for what comes next.

This is true for stories:

Who doesn’t remember the opening scene of Star Wars, when Princess Leia’s starship races across the screen, relentlessly pursued by Darth Vader’s menacing Star Destroyer?  George Lucas had audience members on the edge of their seats from the beginning to the end of that film.  How about the first line of the novel, A Tale of Two Cities?  “It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times.”  I particularly like the opening line of my favorite novel: Neuromancer by William Gibson.  “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

It’s also true in relationships:

My over-eager self-introduction to a professor on my first day of seminary effectively ended my career in academic theology before it started.  On a more positive note, my propensity for sharing too much information made an impact on my friend Matt, who works at a bagel shop in Utica.  At first, he was taken aback by my apparent lack of tact and subtlety, but those same qualities came to shape our future friendship as one characterized by intense honesty and trust.  He is one of my closest companions today.

This morning, we’re taking a look at the opening scene of Mark’s gospel.  Right off the bat, Mark sets the tone for what comes next in the story.  This gospel has a powerful opening line that often gets overlooked: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

That sounds pretty straightforward and innocuous, right?  Wrong.  There are three terms I need to unpack before we can come to a full understanding of what this verse is saying.  Those three terms are good news, Christ, and Son of God.

Good news.  The Greek word we’re looking at here is euangelion.  It’s a term that comes from the world of imperial politics.  An euangelion was a joyful announcement sent out by royal courier to the farthest reaches of the empire.  It usually announced big news, like the birth of a new heir to the throne or the victory of the emperor over his enemies.  Anyone else who proclaimed an euangelion that didn’t have to do with Caesar could be found guilty of treason.  Mark’s use of euangelion in the very first sentence of his gospel is an extremely radical and subversive move.  It’s the kind of thing that could get someone arrested by the Department of Homeland Security.  It says something important about the way Mark looks at the world and, more importantly, the way he looks at Jesus.

Christ.  Most people these days are used to thinking of this word as Jesus’ last name.  Well, it’s not.  Christ is a title.  It’s a Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah, which means “Anointed”.  When first century Jews talked about the Anointed, they imagined this Che Guevara kind of person who would rise up and liberate the Jewish people from Roman tyranny.  In short, the Anointed/Messiah/Christ was supposed to be a terrorist.

Son of God.  This is another title that was reserved for the emperor.  Caesar was worshiped as a god in ancient Rome.  People were required to make regular sacrifices to his statue as a sign of loyalty.  It was kind of like pledging allegiance to the flag, only more so.  When Mark proclaims Jesus as divine, he is implying that Caesar is not.  This is a bold statement to make in an occupied country.

With a fuller understanding of what these words mean, let’s hear them again: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  In American terms, we might say, “The inauguration of President Jesus, our real commander-in-chief.”  Anyone who walked around this country seriously talking like that would probably earn a one-way ticket to Guantanamo Bay.

Mark goes on from that opening sentence to paint a picture of the person who first ran through the countryside, shouting this euangelion at the top of his lungs.  His name was John.  He, like the message he preached, was a radical.  Later in the story, John is arrested and eventually executed for exposing the hypocrisy of Herod, the puppet king set up by the Roman government to maintain order.  Like the opening sentence of Mark’s gospel, John is subversive of the established status quo.  He looks instead to the way things ought to be, the way they will be, in God.  John is not satisfied with mere Roman order; he longs for the divine harmony that God intends for all creation.

John is not alone in his task.  He stands in the shadow of another outspoken reformer.  When John first shows up in Mark’s gospel, he is “clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist” and eating “locusts and wild honey”.  That might not mean much to us, but it would mean a lot to first century Jews.  Dressed in those clothes, they would immediately recognize him as the prophet Elijah, as surely as we would recognize a fat man in a red suit coming down the chimney on Christmas Eve as Santa Claus.

Elijah was another subversive radical from Israel’s history.  Like John, he exposed and confronted the powers that be.  He was constantly challenging the corrupt government of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel in his day.

Mark seems to be going out of his way to drive the opening point home: the gospel of Christ is a subversive message preached by radicals.  Those who want safe, predictable religion should stay away from Jesus at all costs.

What made John live his life as a “prisoner of hope” who never stopped questioning the way things are?  What is this radical message that turns the whole world upside down?  Mark spends the rest of the book answering that question.  It’s the story of Christ, a never-ending story that includes John, you, and me in its eternal plot.  There’s no way to fully capture its message in a single sermon, book, or library.  That being said, I’ll try to sum up one small part of it like this: God is with us, God is Love, Love wins.

This, in part, is the message of Christmas: God is with us, God is Love, Love wins.    Therefore, all that is not Love is destined to fade away like dust in the wind or a bad dream after you wake up.  There is hope in this.  And that hope gives us the strength to stand up and speak out loud and clear against all that would stand in Love’s way.

John believed in this Love (i.e. God’s Love, the God of Love, the God who is Love).  That’s why it bothered him to see so much un-Love in the world around him.  I call John a realist because he confronted the reality of the world as it is.  However, I also believe he trusted in a deeper reality that is more real than what he saw with his eyes.  I think John’s faith in that deeper reality is what gave him the strength to stand up and get loud.  His is not a voice of rage or hate.  There is no call to arms or partisan propaganda.  When John gets loud, it’s the voice of Love getting loud.

Here in this room today, we believe that God is with us, God is Love, and Love wins.  But, like John and Elijah, we live a world that is deaf to Love’s call because Love has been drowned out by the white noise of apathy and injustice.  What does that mean for us?  It means it’s time for Love to get loud.

What does that mean for us?

It’s time for Love to get loud.

God is with us, God is Love, and Love wins.  But somewhere this week a boy got his face slammed into a locker at school just because he likes other boys.  What does that mean for us?  It’s time for Love to get loud.

God is with us, God is Love, and Love wins.  But somewhere this morning a girl looks into a mirror and cries because what she sees there doesn’t look like what she sees on the cover of a magazine.  What does that mean for us?  It’s time for Love to get loud.

God is with us, God is Love, and Love wins.  But somewhere there’s a local shopkeeper who is fretting about how to keep the family business open for another generation.  What does that mean for us?  It’s time for Love to get loud.

God is with us, God is Love, and Love wins.  But somewhere today someone is mourning the death of a beloved parent, spouse, or sibling.  What does that mean for us?  It’s time for Love to get loud.

God is with us, God is Love, and Love wins.  But in 2011, there are still churches in this country where the Bible is used as a weapon and people can be denied membership just because of the color of their skin.  What does that mean for us?  It’s time for Love to get loud.

God is with us, God is Love, and Love wins.  But Oneida County is still eliminating daycare funding for children already living below the poverty line.  What does that mean for us?  It’s time for Love to get loud.

It is indeed time for Love to get loud.  How will Love get loud in you?

It’s time to raise your voice, like John the Baptist, in the name of Love.  It’s time to lift every voice and sing!

Get Loud

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized10 Comments
Getting loud... Sue Sylvester knows what I'm talking about.

Earlier this week, I posted an article on Facebook about a Stella Harville and Ticha Chikuni, a couple who was denied membership at Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church in eastern Kentucky because they are an interracial couple.

You can read the article by clicking here.

In the comments, my new friend Jaime asked, “What can I do, how can I have a positive impact as a Christian against this type of hate and bigotry?”  I started sketching my thoughts and decided to post them in my blog, rather than on Facebook.

What can we do?  That’s the big question.  What gets to me at this time each year is the constant, self-righteous whining about “keeping ‘Christ’ in ‘Christmas'”.  If there’s anything that’s going to make Christ mad enough to flip over some tables, I’m guessing it’s probably going to be the above article, rather than ‘Happy Holidays’.  I also seem to remember that the most famous example of Jesus getting THAT angry took place in a house of worship.

I don’t have the answer to that question.  Whoever does will be the next Martin Luther.  All I’ve got right now are a few ideas that I’ve been trying to work out in my life.  I’ll share them here.  If anyone finds them helpful, please feel free to steal them.  Again: no answers, just ideas.

1. Honesty.  I want to own the truth about how racist/sexist/homophobic I really am.  It seems like everybody likes to start these discussions with the phrase: “I’m not racist/sexist/homophobic but…”.  But the cold, hard fact is that, half a century after Martin Luther King, I still live in a country where 85% of the people on death row are African American, women make 75 cents for every dollar a man makes, and the suicide rate among LGBT youth is twice that of their peers.  It’s like we’ve settled into this pattern where it’s okay to BE racist/sexist/homophobic as long as I don’t SAY I am.  As a privileged white, male, heterosexual Christian, I’m thinking it’s time for me to sit with the prophet Isaiah and confess, “Woe is me!  For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, yet I am encountering the face of reality!”

2. Proximity.  Our culture has sped up the amount and rate of information exchange to the point where it’s all becoming a big blur that goes by while we stay isolated behind ‘screens’ (kind of like I’m doing right now).  We don’t actually have to face each other or get close to one another anymore.  We can just blast them in anonymous comments on YouTube.  We end up saying things we would never say in the real world.  I wonder if it’s really a coincidence that political dialogue became so extremely polarized in the same decade that Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter emerged?  How many members of Westboro Baptist Church have openly gay friends/family?  How many members of the church in the above article have close friends of another race?  Speaking for myself, the point when I started questioning my homophobia came when I realized that some people I love are gay.  I care a whole lot more about sexism now that I have a daughter.  And so on…

It’s hard to hate (or ignore) a group when people you love are part of it.

3. Education.  I am woefully ignorant about issues of inequality and established injustice.  I find that most folks are.  It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve become aware of the difference between personal prejudice and systemic oppression.  Most folks seem to think that racism/sexism/homophobia has to do with their personal feelings.  Cornel West and bell hooks have been most enlightening in helping me recognize that one can have friends of another race and still be racist.  I have a lot more to learn if dismantling injustice really matters to me.

4. Simplicity.  The flip-side of the need for education is our need to keep the message clear to those who are not educated.  The Right seems to claim a monopoly on ‘common sense’, folksy wisdom, and ‘family values’.  We tend to show up with charts and figures of trends and projections.  All of that is super-important because we need the facts to support what we’re saying, but I’ve noticed that a lot of people eventually get lost and check out of the conversation before we’ve even made our point.  We’ve got to find some way to keep it clear, simple, and short.

5. Volume.  I was recently listening to Dan Savage talk about how frustrated he gets when liberal Christians come up to him and whisper, “Psst!  We’re not all homophobic.”  Dan said how he wants to tell them to stop whispering that to him and start shouting it to Pat Robertson.  Progressive types (especially progressive Christians) are so eager to appear different from the screaming Bible-thumpers, we hardly raise our voices at all.  We sit quietly in our churches and don’t bother anyone else… ever.  Well, what if people need to be bothered?  To paraphrase Gustavo Gutierrez: Silence is a vote in favor of oppression.  Being “liberal” or progressive does not equal “politically correct”.  I need to get up off my fat butt, get over my fear of offending someone, get out there where people are suffering, and GET LOUD.

Those are my ideas.  Who is with me?