Author: J. Barrett Lee

A God Worth Believing In

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

This week’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is Genesis 22:1-14.

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!

“And God saw that it was good.”

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon2 Comments
Image of the Carina Nebula taken by the Hubble Space Telescope

Trinity Sunday sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is Genesis 1:1-2:4a.

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.”

My (re)Ordination

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon4 Comments

My leap over Hadrian’s Wall is now complete!  I am a minister of the Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Click here to read the bulletin from the service.

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.

We Are All Ordained

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon3 Comments

William Wilberforce, as portrayed by Ioan Gruffudd in Amazing Grace (2006)

This week’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is Acts 2:1-21.

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.

It Gets Better

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment

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.

My text is Ephesians 1:15-23.

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’:

A Wild Communion

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment
Wild Ramps

During the week after Easter Sunday, I had the opportunity to gather wild ramps with my friend Nancy in the forest around her farm.  For those who are unfamiliar, ramps are kind of like little wild onions.  It was a clear and mild day during an unusually rainy spring.  Before heading out into the woods, we took a trip over to the greenhouse, where some seedlings needed watering.  Her greenhouse is a homemade structure with a cathedral ceiling covered in clear plastic.

As Nancy walked up and down the aisles with her water-hose, I thought back to the Easter Vigil service I had attended at an Episcopal church the Saturday night prior.  My friend Ed, the priest, had dedicated the church’s new Paschal candle, led us in the renewal of our baptismal vows, and sprinkled us with holy water in the same way that Nancy was now blessing the baby plants, nurturing fragile new life with the most basic elements of water and light.

After Nancy finished her botanical asperges with the seedlings, we made our way through some of the muddiest terrain imaginable toward the hillside where wild ramps were to be found.  As we sloshed through the quagmire, Nancy and I talked about how she came to fall in love with organic farming.  The details of that story are hers to share, but the process of telling the story as we walked reminds me of the many biblical readings from the Torah and the prophets that take place in the middle of the Episcopal Easter Vigil service.  The readings chronicle the long and messy journey of the Jewish people from slavery and exile into freedom.

Finally, we arrived at the wooded hillside that was covered in patches of wild ramps.  These precious little vegetables are currently in high demand among upscale restaurants all over the country.  Some farmers earn a significant portion of their annual income with a single load in their pickup trucks.  And there we were, sitting in the abundance of a remote hillside in rural New York with a small fortune growing around our feet.

Is this not the essence of Easter?  The triumph of abundance and life over scarcity and death!  It’s no mistake that Christians celebrate this, our highest holiday, during the springtime.  The smell of dirt emerging from beneath the melting snow and the sight of flowers bursting forth from their buds are sacramental reminders of the resurrection life that pervades this universe in which we live.  This most precious treasure is the free gift of God for all who will open their hearts and embrace it as such.

Nancy the farmer, priest of God’s green earth, made this truth real to me in a new way as she tore off a piece of edible ramp-leaf and handed it to me on that hillside saying, “Here.  This is Communion.”  As I put it in my mouth, I couldn’t stop myself from saying “Amen” with my whole heart.

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.

-William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

All Truth Is God’s Truth

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon4 Comments

This week’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

My text is Acts 17:22-31.

Legend has it that, sometime around the year 600 BCE, there was a plague that struck the ancient city of Athens, Greece.  At a loss over what to do, they called in the philosopher Epimenides, who came promptly.  The plague, so they thought, was due to one of the gods being angry with the city.  In order for the plague to be lifted, that deity would have to be appeased by a sacrifice.  But the ancient Greeks had so many gods, how were they to know which one was upset?

Epimenides proposed a solution.  He took a group of sheep to the Areopagus (a.k.a. “Mars Hill”) and released them to go out in every direction.  He ordered attendants to follow the sheep and, wherever one laid down to rest, there they built an altar and made an offering to whatever god or goddess was associated with that place.  In this way, thought Epimenides, they would cover all their bases and increase their chances for beating the plague.

But there was still one problem: what if the sheep lay down in a place that had no affiliation with any deity?  “Well,” he said, “build an altar anyway!”  Maybe there was another god or goddess who was not in their pantheon.  In that way, they would really really cover all their bases.  So, according to this legend, that’s how it came to pass that Athens had altars that were dedicated “to an Unknown God”.  After the plague had passed, the Athenians maintained the altars in remembrance of what had happened there.

Centuries later, the apostle Paul happened across one of these altars during his visit to Athens.  And Paul, ever the conscientious preacher, decided to use it as a sermon illustration.  The leading citizens of Athens invited Paul to speak in the Areopagus, the exact same place from which Epimenides had originally sent out the sheep, and they listened to what he had to say.

While the sight of so many altars to so many different gods and goddesses made Paul extremely uncomfortable, he was nevertheless very affirming of the Athenians’ religious practice.  “Athenians,” he said, “I see how religious you are in every way.”  He then went on to describe how he had come across Epimenides’ “altar to an Unknown God” during a stroll through town.  Paul also praises their philosophical insight, quoting directly from Epimenides himself, “In [God] we live and move and have our being”.

Isn’t this odd?  A Christian missionary preaches a sermon where he praises the polytheistic religious practices of the Greeks, doesn’t mention Jesus (except indirectly), and fails to reference even a single verse of the Bible.  In fact, he takes as his text a poem written by Epimenides, a pagan philosopher!  I don’t know about you, but I can imagine pastors getting fired from their churches for less than that!  Yet, this is the great apostle Paul, the Church’s preeminent theologian, a New Testament author, and the preacher who supposedly set the standard by which all others would be judged.  What in the world was he trying to do here?

First and foremost, I think Paul was making a statement about God by the way in which he paid respect to the philosophies and the religious practices of the Athenians.  Paul was saying that the Christian God honors wisdom and devotion wherever it is found, even when it is found in those who are not Christians.

“All truth is God’s truth.”  This is a scandalous statement.  It has serious implications for us all, especially those of us who live in an era of history that has seen so much division and conflict along religious lines.  If the God we worship as Christians is the same God who Paul preached about to the Athenians, then we too are called to honor and celebrate truth wherever we find it, even when it comes from non-Christian sources.  While this does not mean that God is calling us to give up what is unique and special about our Christian faith, it does mean that God is calling us to look for the best (not the worst) in our neighbors of other faiths.  It means that Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Atheists are not our enemies.  It means that God is calling us all to learn from each other and grow together.

Augustine of Hippo, a famous theologian from the fifth century, said it this way, “A person who is a good and true Christian should realize that truth belongs to [God], wherever it is found, gathering and acknowledging it even in pagan literature.”  (On Christian Teaching II.75)

“All truth is God’s truth.”  This statement also has implications for our lives outside the specifically “religious” sphere.  It means that the discovery of truth in fields like science, medicine, art, government, and commerce has a divine quality to it.  In our society, which tries to keep the sacred apart from the secular, there is an assumed conflict between “faith and science” or “faith and politics”.  But if we take Paul’s implications seriously, then the line between sacred and secular is blurred.  Suddenly, the fight to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS becomes a holy quest.  Likewise, those who work to further the common good in both private and public sectors are engaged in a spiritual vocation.

In the sixteenth century, the reformer John Calvin wrote, “If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonour the Spirit of God.”  Calvin goes on to describe disciplines such as politics, philosophy, rhetoric, medicine, and math.  He finishes, “No, we cannot read the writings of the ancients on these subjects without great admiration. We marvel at them because we are compelled to recognize how preeminent they are. But shall we count anything praiseworthy or noble without recognizing at the same time that it comes from God?”  (Institutes 2.2.15)

While Paul proclaimed his deep admiration for the Athenians’ wisdom and devotion, it’s important to note that he also challenged them toward growth.  He invited them to “repent”, that is, metanoia, which is Greek for “change the way you think” or “think differently”.  Paul’s particular challenge to the Athenians had to do with their relationship to their objects of worship.  He said, “The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.”  Quoting the philosopher Aratus, Paul continues, “29Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.”  Paul invited his Athenian listeners to open their minds and think beyond the level of surface appearances to the deeper spiritual reality in which we all dwell.  He said, “26From one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth… 27so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’”.

In the same way, we as Christians have something to say to world around us.  The word “evangelism” has become kind of a bad word in our society.  It conjures up mental images of TV preachers asking for money.  For others, it makes them think of religious groups who use guilt and fear in in order to convert and manipulate others.  Well, evangelism doesn’t have to mean any of those things.  In fact, the word itself literally means “gospel” or “good news”, which is the exact opposite of guilt, fear, and manipulation.

Don’t we have good news to deliver to the world around us?  Don’t you?  What kind of difference has God made in your life?  What does your faith mean to you?  Maybe it gives you a sense of continuity with the past or hope for the future.  Maybe your faith in God helps you find strength and comfort for today.  You should feel free to share that experience with others as you participate in respectful conversation that celebrates their own wisdom and devotion.  Who knows?  You might find that someone is quite touched by what you have to say.  They might even start to feel more interested in or attracted to Christianity.  If so, that might be a good time for you to invite that person to attend church with you.  I know it sounds cliché, but it’s a big and lonely world out there.  Some folks feel lost in it.  They’re looking for something to believe in or somewhere to belong.  If one of your friends is searching in that way, why not invite them to explore that feeling together with us?

Evangelism doesn’t have to be a dirty word.  In fact, it doesn’t have to be a word at all.  Some of the most powerful sermons are the ones we preach with our actions.  After all, a single act of compassion says more about God than all the books in a theology library.  As you have often heard me say, “Preach the gospel always.  Use words when necessary.”

Seriously, please watch this video.

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Community Chaplaincy1 Comment

“I’ve been looking for a Savior in these dirty streets…”

This lyric from Tori Amos has been the tagline for this blog since I started it last year.  It describes what I’m trying to do in my off-beat approach to ministry.  I want to go out there in the world and discover Jesus alive in the people around me.

Today, I caught a sighting of him.

Jesus shows up several times in this video footage from ABC News.  See if you can spot him:

Matthew 25:31-40:

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment
"What, Me Worry?"

This week’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is John 14:1-14.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

These are good words to hear from Jesus on the morning after the end of the world.  According to Harold Camping, president of Family Radio, the Final Judgment of humanity was scheduled to begin last night (May 21, 2011) at 6pm.  Mr. Camping came up with this conclusion using a combination of literal and symbolic interpretations of certain biblical texts and then combining those interpretations with some fancy mathematics.  Judging from the fact that so many of us are still here today, I think we can safely say that Mr. Camping’s calculations were (at least) slightly off.

This is not the first time someone has made such precise predictions about the Apocalypse.  In fact, Mr. Camping himself previously insisted that the end of days would arrive promptly on September 6, 1994.  Before him, there was the very famous case of the Millerites.  This sect of believers followed the teachings of one William Miller, who predicted that Christ would return and the world would end before March 21, 1844.  After this day came and went without incident, the deadline was extended to April 18 and then October 22.  After his third failed prediction, Miller’s followers gave up on him.  However, several of them went on to found the Seventh Day Adventist and Jehovah’s Witness churches in subsequent years.

So yes, apocalyptic enthusiasts are nothing new to Christian history.  In fact, Jesus even warned us to watch out for folks like this.  When the disciples asked Jesus about the end of the world, he told them in Matthew 24,

…if anyone says to you, ‘Look! Here is the Messiah!’ or ‘There he is!’ —do not believe it. 24For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce great signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. 25Take note, I have told you beforehand. 26So, if they say to you, ‘Look! He is in the wilderness,’ do not go out. If they say, ‘Look! He is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. 27For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

Instead, Jesus comforts his followers with these words from today’s gospel reading:

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. 2In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

When it comes to this “end of the world” business, Jesus is essentially saying, “Don’t worry about it” and “Trust me.”  Nevertheless, there always seems to be someone out there who claims to have the inside scoop on when and how the world is going to end.  They claim to know “the way” to secure one’s eternal destiny in light of the coming devastation.  Well, Jesus had a thing or two to say about that as well.  He reminded his followers they already knew “the way” to God.

“Wait a minute,” one of them said, “what ‘way’ are you talking about, Jesus?  I don’t remember you saying anything about a ‘way’!”

“Sure you do,” Jesus said, “It’s me.  I am the way.”

Now, if you’re still feeling confused as you read this, don’t worry.  It’s supposed to be confusing.  This is another classic example of Jesus talking right over the heads of his disciples.  He uses these cryptic images in order to shake people out of their normal way of thinking.  Jesus wants to expand their (and our) minds to operate on a spiritual level, far above that of ordinary reasoning.

With this famous phrase, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life”, we are venturing into territory that makes Christianity unique among the religions of the world.  In many world religions, there is usually founder or other figurehead who acts a messenger for the Divine.  That person is given a message that will guide the world toward salvation or enlightenment.  Moses received the Torah, Muhammad received the Qur’an, and the Buddha received the Eightfold Path.  In each of these cases, it’s the message, not the messenger, that’s most important.  The unique thing about Christianity is that the messenger is the message.  God is not revealed through a book or a teaching, but through a person, namely, Jesus of Nazareth.  To know Jesus is to know God.  If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus.

This makes people uncomfortable.  A personal God is too unpredictable and too intimate for most people.  The only way to be in a relationship with a personal God is to come to know, love, and trust that person.  Most people (including Christians) feel much more at ease with a God who can be contained within a body of teaching (like the Bible) or an institution (like the Church).  Protestants do it just as much as Catholics.  So-called “liberal” Christians do it just as much as so-called “conservatives”.

Let me give an example:

Many people in our society are quite familiar with the traditional evangelical presentation of the Christian message: Jesus Christ was born, so they say, in order to die on the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of humankind so that people can go to heaven when they die.  The way to God is through the cross of Christ.

On the other hand, many people are also quite familiar with the progressive and “liberal” presentation of Christianity: Jesus Christ was an inspirational activist and philosopher whose teachings offer humankind a system of ethics that will lead us toward a more spiritually enlightened society.  The way to God is through the teachings of Jesus.

I think both of these perspectives fall short of Jesus’ intention.  Both the cross and the teachings of Christ are of paramount importance in the larger scheme of things, but they are only parts of the whole.  It’s the person of Jesus Christ who is the final revelation of God to humankind.  Jesus is the way.  If we want to get to know God, we must get to know Jesus.

How do we do that?  I don’t have an answer to that question.  Sure, I could hand you a list of activities (like reading the Bible or going to church) that are supposed to help you get to know Jesus, but that would be just another way of putting God into a manageable box that can be unlocked with the right formula.  The fact is that there are as many ways of getting to know Jesus as there are ways of getting to know any other person.

Think about the last time you were really in love or had a crush on someone.  What did you do?  You spent a lot of time thinking about that person.  You hung on his or her every word.  You gazed longingly over your shoulder whenever that person walked by.  You studied every feature on his or her face.  You spent as much time as possible with that person.  Your friends probably got sick and tired of hearing you talk about it.

In the same way, getting to know Jesus is more like falling in love than signing a contract.  The only difference between us and his earliest followers is that we don’t get the luxury of his physical presence with us.  We have to get to know Jesus in other ways.  I can’t tell you how it’s going to happen for you, because it’s different for everybody.  However, I can offer you some ideas about how it might happen.

For some people, getting to know Jesus happens dramatically and suddenly, like falling head-over-heels in love.  For others, it happens gradually over a long period of time, like sharing a cup of coffee with an old friend.  For some people, it happens through conventional channels, like going to church or reading the Bible.  For others, it happens in very surprising and unconventional ways.

My favorite story of an unconventional encounter with Jesus comes from the autobiographical work Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott.  (I should warn you that this vignette will be edited for content, as Anne is known for being a somewhat foul-mouthed saint.)  This scene opens with Anne living on a houseboat at the end of a dock, deep in the throes of her addiction to alcohol and drugs.  One week prior, she’d had an abortion and was still bleeding profusely.  During this time, she would occasionally visit a Presbyterian church near her house, but would always sneak out before the sermon.  Anne continues:

Several hours later, the blood stopped flowing, and I got in bed, shaky and sad and too wild to have another drink or take a sleeping pill.  I had a cigarette and turned out the light.  After a while, as I lay there, I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner, and I just assumed it was my [late] father, whose presence I had felt over the years when I was frightened and alone.  The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there—of course, there wasn’t.  But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus.  I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this.

And I was appalled.  I thought about my life and my brilliant hilarious progressive friends, I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen.  I turned to the wall and said out loud, “I would rather die.”

I felt him just sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love, and I squinched my eyes shut, but that didn’t help because that’s not what I was seeing him with.

Finally I fell asleep, and in the morning, he was gone.

This experience spooked me badly, but I thought it was just an apparition, born of fear and self-loathing and booze and loss of blood.  But then everywhere I went, I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in.  But I knew what would happen: you let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and then it stays forever.  So I tried to keep one step ahead of it, slamming my houseboat door when I entered or left.

And one week later, when I went back to church, I was so hungover that I couldn’t stand up for the songs, and this time I stayed for the sermon, which I just thought was so ridiculous, like someone trying to convince me of the existence of extraterrestrials, but the last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape.  It was as if the people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling—and it washed over me.

I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along my heels, and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God’s own dreams, and I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said, “F**k it: I quit.”  I took a long deep breath and said out loud, “All right.  You can come in.”

So this was the beautiful moment of my conversion.

The Great Shepherd

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment
Himalayan shepherd. Image by Raja Selvaraj.

This week’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is good old Psalm 23.

Over the course of these past seven months, I’ve been getting to know all of you as I begin my tenure of service as your pastor.  During that time, one thing has become quite clear to me: it’s been a long and hard road for you in your search for a new pastor.  There’s been a lot of heartbreak and frustration.  Mistakes have been made.  New hopes have turned into false starts on more than one occasion.

I know something about how that feels.  Today, I’d like to share some of my story with you.  I’d like you to know something of the road that has brought me to you at this particular time.  I’ve had my own share of mistakes, heartbreaks, and frustrations along the way.  But I’m sharing my part of this story because I believe that, in spite of all the setbacks, the Holy Spirit has brought us together at exactly the right time.

As most of you already know, I began my career in ministry as an Episcopal priest.  The denomination I served was not the large mainline Episcopal Church that most people are familiar with.  (In other words, it was not the same denomination that’s associated with our good neighbors down the road at Trinity Episcopal on Schuyler Street.)  I served a small independent group that was founded as a separate organization about ten years ago.  Out of respect for that church and the people in it, I won’t be naming any names this morning.  I was initially attracted to their ministry ideals and their commitment to serving the poor.  But I discovered in time that a denomination that small comes with its own set of problems.  The top-down hierarchy meant there was little accountability for those at the top of the organization.  Sadly, abuse of power was bound to happen in that kind of situation.  And it did happen.

It would be inappropriate for me to go into gruesome details about the nature of the abuse, suffice to say that it eventually reached a point where I found it personally and ethically impossible for me to continue serving as a priest in that church.  So I made the decision to leave.

This was the hardest decision I have ever had to make.  Years of prayer and preparation had gone into my process of ordination to the priesthood.  The decision to serve that church was not one I made lightly or rashly.  The decision to leave was even harder.  I consulted several trusted friends, family, and professionals.  I went through some very long days of struggle and self-doubt about my sense of call to the ministry.  Yeah, it felt like I was walking “through the valley of the shadow of death”.  Not my physical death, but the death of my dreams, the death of certain close relationships in my previous church, and the death of my plans for the future.

Yes, I’ve been through that valley.  I know you’ve been through that valley as a church.  I also know that many of you have been through that valley as individuals.  So, this morning, I’d like for us all to keep our own personal experience of this “valley of the shadow of death” in mind as we explore the 23rd psalm.

First of all, this is one of the most famous passages in the entire Bible.  I had us read it together this morning in the King James Version because that’s the version in which most people are used to hearing it.  The language may sound archaic, but to many of us, it’s also comforting.

Obviously, the language of this psalm paints a picture of God as the Great Shepherd.  Shepherding was an important job in the ancient world.  Livestock was a measure of one’s wealth in those days, much like an investment portfolio is for us today.  The richer you are, the more you need a shepherd’s help.  Ironically, the shepherding profession itself was not held in high esteem.  Shepherds were thought of as dirty hillbillies.  This was not unusual in ancient agricultural societies.  More “civilized” farmers who settled down and established a homestead on a particular piece of land often looked down on the nomadic shepherds, who had to travel wherever there was sufficient pasture and water for the sheep.  Farmers spread lots of nasty rumors about shepherds.

In fact, this farmer vs. shepherd rivalry is so long-standing, some biblical scholars think it may have been the inspiration for the legendary Cain and Abel story in Genesis 4.  These two brothers were the first sons born to Adam and Eve after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.  Cain, the elder, stronger, and more “civilized” brother was a farmer, while Abel, the younger and weaker brother was a nomadic shepherd.  I could go into more interesting detail about their story, but that would be an entirely different sermon.  For now, it helps us to see that shepherds were looked down upon in the ancient world.

What does it mean that God was identified with this necessary-but-despised profession?  I like to think it means that God, the Great Shepherd, isn’t always present to us in ways that are nice and pretty.  Sometimes, God seems to be very “rough around the edges”.  This makes me think of the character Strider in J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic, The Lord of the Rings.  Strider is a dark and mysterious wanderer.  Nobody knows if he can really be trusted, but it turns out that he is actually destined to be a great king over the land of Gondor.  In spite of his rough appearance, Strider is one of the most noble and trustworthy characters in the book.  I think that God, the Great Shepherd, is quite similar to Tolkien’s Strider.

As Psalm 23 progresses, we learn more about God’s job as the Great Shepherd.  We learn first that the Shepherd is a Guide.  The flock is destined for “Green pastures” and “still waters”, places of rest and refreshment, while they walk with God.  Even in the darkest valley, the sheep are never alone or abandoned.  Their final destination is the place where God lives, the place where a home has been prepared for them by the Shepherd.

The second thing we learn is that the Shepherd is a Guardian.  The “rod” and “staff” mentioned in verse 4 are actually weapons used to fight off wolves that might try to attack the sheep.  As flocks of sheep wandered through the wilderness, they would often have to worry about predators that might be stalking them from behind.  Who knows what kinds of dangerous and wild animals might be following the flock?  But the sheep says in verse 6 the Great Shepherd is so good at the job that only “goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life”.  No wild animals here!

Third, we learn that the Great Shepherd is a Host.  The sheep says that the Shepherd “preparest a table for me in the presence of mine enemies”, therefore “my cup runneth over.”  The nomadic life of sheep and shepherds often looked unstable to outsiders.  They had little control over outward circumstances.  How could one know whether there would be sufficient food or water at the next stop?  I’m sure it was nerve-wracking.  Faith in God’s providence for our lives can be just as unsettling.  We never know whether feast or famine lies around the corner.  It feels more sane and stable to trust in the fragile and fabricated security systems of wealth and power in our society.  But the fact is that we cannot effectively “insure” our health, life, or property any more than helpless sheep can safely find their own way to food and water in the deserts of Palestine.  We need a guide and provider.  Will we trust the Shepherd to do this for us?

Fourth, we are told that the Shepherd is a Healer.  The sheep says that the Shepherd “restoreth my soul” and “anointest my head with oil” (a common medicinal practice in the ancient world).  Tending to sick and wounded sheep was a big part of the Shepherd’s job.  More than anyone else in this room, I’m sure our veterinarian friend, Terry Hausserman, could tell us detailed stories about animals in need of tender care.  God promises to do this for us.

All of these roles for the Great Shepherd (Guide, Guardian, Host, and Healer) have been much needed by me and the people of this congregation during this long and difficult period of transition.  Can God be trusted to fill these roles for us?  Well, I can tell you what I’ve seen in my own experience:

After I decided that it was time for me to leave my previous denomination, I made a call to my friend Naomi Kelly, who is the co-chair for the Committee on Ministry in this presbytery.  I explained the situation and she was sympathetic.  It would be an understatement to say that these colleagues received me with open arms.  The committees and the stated clerk of presbytery literally bent over backward to welcome me as one of their own.  It didn’t happen overnight.  Paperwork and exams were involved.  There was also the issue of receiving a call.  In order for me to come on board, I would need to receive a pastoral call from a congregation.

Well, it just so happens that, the next Sunday after my initial phone call to Naomi, I was scheduled to preach here in Boonville.  My decision to leave my previous denomination was so fresh, I wasn’t yet talking about it to anyone outside of my inner-circle of close friends.  I came here that morning and did what I always do.  But then, after the service, a group of elders basically cornered me in the sanctuary.  “What will it take,” they said, “for you to consider coming here to be our pastor?”  Let me tell you, I was totally blown away.  There was no way that any of these folks could have known about the decision I had just made in the previous week.  How is it that they picked that exact moment to approach me about becoming the pastor?  I wanted to come right out and tell my whole story right then, but prudence dictated otherwise and I simply said that we should consult the presbytery’s Committee on Ministry and ask for their guidance.

But there was obviously someone bigger than a committee that was guiding us in that moment.  In spite of the dire circumstances of that “dark valley”, I can honestly say that I have never in my life felt so clearly the presence of God the Great Shepherd as Guide, Guardian, Host, and Healer than I did in that moment.  Even as God was leading me away from an unhealthy situation, God was also leading me toward this new future in ministry.  God’s timing was impeccable.  So yes, I’ve been through the “valley of the shadow of death”, but I also know that I need “fear no evil” for the Great Shepherd is with me.  Throughout my ordeal, God has been my Guide, Guardian, Host, and Healer.

I can see the hand of the Great Shepherd at work in the life of this congregation as well.  Yes, it’s been a long and hard road in your search for a new pastor, but you’ve never wandered alone or abandoned.  In fact, you’ve always had what you were looking for.  Did you know that the word “pastor” is actually Latin for “shepherd”?  You’ve been searching for a new pastor, but all along you’ve been under the care of the Great Shepherd (the Great Pastor).  In a very real sense, I’m only serving this congregation as the “assistant pastor”.  It’s not my job to guide, guard, host, and heal you.  I’m here to help you look for the ways in which God is already doing those things.  “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want”.  God has been your pastor all along; there is nothing you lack.  And let me tell you, as a pastor, God is a tough act to follow!

As you sit here this morning, you may be walking through your own personal “valley”.  Maybe it’s the loss of a job, a relationship, or your health.  Your circumstances will inevitably be different from mine, but the question is the same: Can God be trusted as Guide, Guardian, Host, and Healer?  I invite you to look around in your present situation.  See whether God has already been present and active in these ways.  Also, I invite you to be patient and see what might be coming around the bend.  Ask God to show you these things.  As Jesus promised, those who seek will find.  And those who trust in the Great Shepherd will dwell in God’s house forever.