Here is a link to an article in the Utica Phoenix, following up on recent events that I wrote about in a previous post entitled Setting A Higher Standard.
Here is the article:
Author: J. Barrett Lee
Say Yes to Love
This week’s sermon from First Pres, Boonville.
Back when I was a kid, we used to have a snarky way of telling people we didn’t want them to be part of a conversation. We’d say, “This is an A-B conversation, so C your way out of it!” In that same vein, we also used credit card names, saying, “This is a Visa-Mastercard conversation, so Discover your way out of it!” Neither of those is very nice. And today, I want to invite you to do the opposite. I would like for you to C your way into this particular A-B conversation. Even better, I would love for you to Discover yourself in this conversation.
We’re talking about baptism today. First of all, we’re remembering Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan River. Second, we’re welcoming a new family into our church, three of whom will be joining by baptism. Even though we’re talking about these two specific events, one that occurred two thousand years ago and another that will occur in a few minutes, I would like for all of us to see through them to the one great universal event that encompasses all of us in its grand embrace.
Let’s look first at Jesus’ baptism. We read that story this morning from the first chapter of Mark’s gospel, the second book in the New Testament canon. What’s interesting is that this is where Mark chooses to begin his retelling of the Jesus story. There is no Christmas story in Mark’s gospel: no angels, shepherds, magi, manger, or virgin birth. For whatever reason, Jesus felt compelled to join with John, the passionate preacher and activist, in his grassroots movement for spiritual revival and social change. Everyday people were inspired by and responding to John’s call to renewal but the religious and political authorities were suspicious.
John made use of an ancient Jewish ritual bath, called tevilah, as a sign of personal commitment to this movement. Tevilah washing was common for ancient Jews. Women did it monthly for sanitary reasons, all Jews did it at least once a year before Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), and Gentiles did it when they converted to Judaism. Moreover, there were several smaller washings that took place daily for both sanitary and religious reasons.
This, by the way, is why many Jews were spared from the horrors of the Bubonic Plague in medieval Europe. Christians falsely accused them of causing the plague by poisoning the wells. The reality is that the Bubonic Plague was caused by fleas that arrived in Europe on the backs of shipboard rats. Jewish religion required regular bathing while Christian religion did not. Jewish people got sick less frequently simply because they were much cleaner than their Christian neighbors. Alas, this did not stop our forebears from concocting all sorts of slanderous conspiracy theories. But I digress.
John made use of this very familiar Jewish ritual as a symbol of hope and dedication. John had a hunch that he was getting people ready for something big that was about to happen, although he might not have been totally sure about exactly what that was. And then, here comes Jesus.
At first glance, there didn’t seem to be anything particularly unusual about Jesus. According to Mark’s gospel, there’s not even any indication that Jesus himself knew what was about to happen. He was just another person who felt drawn to this radical and passionate preacher. He decides that this is the place for him, his spiritual home, so he undergoes John’s symbolic cleansing ritual.
And then something happened that wasn’t part of the ritual. Jesus had a spiritual awakening. Compare it to Moses beholding the glory of God on top of the mountain or the Buddha attaining Enlightenment while meditating under a tree. The text of Mark’s gospel tells us, “just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.”
Earlier this week, I was listening to a biblical scholar named Marcus Borg talk about a similar series of experiences that once happened to him. He describes these mystical experiences in language that will sound less poetic and more familiar to our modern ears:
[These mystical experiences] began to occur in my early thirties. They changed my understanding of the meaning of the word “God”-of what that word points to-and gave me an unshakable conviction that God (or “the sacred”) is real and can be experienced…
I saw the same visual “landscape” – a forest, a room, the inside of an airliner – that I normally see…
For a minute or two (and once for the better part of an hour), what I was seeing looked very different. Light became different – as if there were a radiance shining through everything. The biblical phrase for this is “the glory of God” – as the book of Isaiah puts it, “the earth is filled with the glory – the radiance – of God. The world was transfigured, even as it remained “the same.” And I experienced a falling away of the subject-object distinction that marks our ordinary everyday experience – that sense of being a separate self, “in here,” while the world is “out there.”
They were… experiences in which I felt that I was seeing more clearly than I ever had before – that what I was experiencing was “the way things are.” And they were also experiences of complete peacefulness, marked by a sense that I would love to stay in this mental state forever. Anxiety and distraction utterly disappeared. Everything looked beautiful.
I imagine that when Mark’s gospel tells us that Jesus “saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove” it is describing the kind of experience that Marcus Borg was speaking about.
Next, Jesus hears a voice speaking to him. We aren’t exactly told whose voice is speaking, but it makes sense to infer that it must be the voice of God. The voice says to Jesus, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Let’s narrow it down: “Love.” The voice from heaven is the voice of Love.
Jesus listened to this voice and it changed his life. That was the point in the story where Jesus’ ministry began. The Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus and the voice of Love empowered him to go out into the world and heal the sick, feed the hungry, welcome the outcast, and enlighten lost souls. His great miraculous mission started right here, in a cold and muddy river, where a voice from heaven called him “Beloved”. He spent the rest of his life trusting in that Love and sharing it with other people.
The word baptism comes from a Greek word that means “to soak or immerse.” On one level, it obviously refers to the way that a person is literally and physically soaked in water during the ritual. On a deeper level, we are all surrounded by and soaked in the infinite Love of God throughout our whole lives and beyond. It is part of the air we breathe. We need it more than oxygen. Baptism is a ritual, we call it a “sacrament” (Latin for “mystery”), that makes this Love real to us. God’s Love washes over us like a refreshing bath. Day in and day out, we are floating on an ocean of Love.
The response of faith has ironically little to do with our religion. Real faith means saying “Yes” to Love. When you say that Yes, Love empowers you to live the kind of life that Jesus lived: healing the sick, feeding the hungry, welcoming the outcast, and enlightening the lost.
This is exactly what our church tries to do in its various denominational and grassroots organizations that work together for peacemaking, disaster assistance, hunger relief, health education, environmental preservation, social justice, and human equality. This is the Presbyterian Church at its best. And we’re not the only ones doing it. Other churches, faith communities, and non-profit groups are working for these same goals. Each one is saying Yes to Love in its own way. That’s what real faith is.
Each of us is called to say Yes to Love in our personal lives as well. This is harder than it looks. We have to contend with the powers-that-be in this world that would try to choke the life of the Spirit and the voice of Love out of us forever. We have to actively resist the pull toward cynicism. We have to live like nonviolent radicals and revolutionaries, practicing random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty. Saying Yes to Love is a lifelong task that involves every part of life: church, work, school, and home. All life is ministry and baptism is your ordination. Say Yes to Love.
I pray that, as we think about and celebrate the sacrament of baptism this morning, it would be more than just a religious ritual to you. I pray that it will be to you a sacred mystery. I pray that the eyes of your heart will be opened so that the infinite ocean of Love in which we are all soaked might be made more real to you. I pray that you will say Yes to this Love and go out from this place today to live the kind of life that Jesus lived: a life of Faith, a life of Hope, and a life of Love.
Preparing for the ‘Apocalypse’ in 2012
They got us in Y2K. Harold Camping tried on May 21. Now it’s supposed to happen again this year. Here’s my take on all of this ‘end of the world’ business (be it digital malfunction, Mayan calendar, walking undead, or ‘biblical’ prophecy).
Good job by a kid in the UK, regardless of the fact that he looks like the love child of Harry Potter and Justin Bieber.
Worth watching, if only for the last line:
Spirit of Life
We trying out a new call to worship tonight at St. James Mission.
It’s called Spirit of Life and was written by Carolyn McDade.
Our music director, Annie Wadsworth-Grove, first heard it at All Souls’ Unitarian Church in Washington, DC. It can be found as #123 in Singing the Living Tradition, the official hymnal of the Unitarian Universalist Association.
Spirit of Life, come unto me
Sing in my heart, all the stirrings of compassion
Blow in the wind, rise in the sea
Move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice
Roots hold me close, wings set me free
Spirit of Life come to me, come to me
2011 in Review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,900 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.
Setting a Higher Standard
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.
The State of the Union
The State of the Union
No
No
No
Why Be Normal?
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
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.
