Category: Sermon

Sola Gratia

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon4 Comments

King Street in Boone, NC. Image by Jeremy Mikkola

This week’s sermon from Boonville Presbyterian

Click here to listen to this sermon

1 John 3:16-24

Back when was in college, I lived in a little town in western North Carolina called Boone.  It’s nestled way back in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which form part of the ancient and gentle Appalachians.  Once you get up into the High Country of Christmas tree and tobacco farms in the hills around Boone, let me tell you: you will meet some “interesting” people.  We had one guy named Joshua who lived in a tent in the woods and sold poetry on the street corner.  We had Satanists, Neo-nazis, drug dealers, apocalyptic conspiracy theorists, and fire-breathing preachers galore.  Don’t forget: this is the same region of the country that produced snake-handling churches.  I think there are even a few folks left in that region who (still) might not have read the memo saying that the Civil War is over.

One such “interesting” person that I had the singular privilege of knowing was a guy named Mike.  Mike was a reformed drug user who lived in a trailer way back up in the woods.  He attended a particular church that holds the unique belief that theirs is the one and only true church left on planet Earth.  All others have either forgotten or corrupted the true gospel of Christ.  They believe that strict adherence to the dogmas and morals that constitute the membership requirements for their one, true church is what could secure one’s status as “saved” in the eyes of God.

Mike himself was an intense and energetic loner who felt drawn to their form of religious belief and practice.  Their robust conviction and die-hard certainty was attractive to him.  However, Mike was a person who struggled in many ways.  He wrestled with substance abuse and mental illness.  His church, unwilling to bend their strict rules in the name of pastoral sensitivity, was constantly excommunicating him and then readmitting him to membership.  Whenever I would bump into him in public, Mike’s customary greeting was, “I got saved again!”  Mike believed that his status before God was constantly in a state of flux because of his inability to adhere to his church’s code of faith and conduct.  That inflexible code, I think, only served to increase Mike’s anxiety and make him feel alienated from the Source of life and love that could truly help him on his quest to become a better person and a more faithful Christian.

Now, I don’t think many of us are likely to find ourselves in Mike’s position.  While we too might very well wrestle with problems like addiction and mental illness, this church does not exclude or condemn people for being human.  However, we do live in a time when it is quite likely that you will encounter someone (in person, online, or on TV) who will try to send you the message that you’re not “saved” or “born again,” which is to say that you don’t count as a “real” Christian or a child of God.  Let me tell you right now that I think that’s a bunch of baloney.

In the interest of full-disclosure, I should probably take this opportunity to also tell you flat-out that I am a universalist.  What that means in theological terms is that I believe in the doctrine of universal salvation.  What it means in plain English is that I don’t believe in hell.  I find the idea of eternal punishment after death to be completely incompatible with the nature and purposes of the God of Love who is revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ.  This means that I believe everyone, everywhere, regardless of their religion or their behavior, is “saved.”  I’m going to come back to this point later, but I think it’s important that I lay it out now, just so you all know where I’m coming from and where I’m going with this.

Those who try to draw lines in the sand between us and them (i.e. the saved and the damned, the religious insiders and the secular outsiders), typically do so using one or both of the following criteria: belief and behavior.  They might say that there are certain ideas you need to accept before you’ll count as a “real” Christian in God’s eyes.  They might also say that there are certain things that you need to do if you want to be “saved.”

Folks like this have been around for a long time.  In fact, I think it’s probably fair to say they’ve been around for as long as organized religion has been part of human society.  We can definitely see their tendencies emerging within the pages of the Bible itself.

In the earliest decades of Christianity, there were two influential groups that developed within the church, each with its own ideas and ideologies.  The first group is now known as the Judaizers.  These were folks who had a very high degree of respect for Christianity’s roots in Jewish religion and culture.  So great was their love for this heritage that many of them began to insist that every new Christian should become Jewish first.  They thought this would limit the amount of cultural perversion and assimilation that might happen among Christians.  The Judaizers insisted that Christian believers of all ethnicities should make certain that they follow all 613 of God’s commandments in the Jewish Torah.  The leaders of the early church, however, decided together that the doors of the church should be flung as wide open as possible in order to welcome people from every tribe, language, people, and nation into the community of Christ.  Christianity’s honored roots may have been Jewish, they said, but its future would be international and multicultural.  You can read about the details of this conversation in chapter 15 of the book of Acts in the New Testament.  The apostle Paul confronted this controversy head-on in his Epistle to the Galatians (also in the New Testament).  He had a lot of passionate things to say about it (he was against the Judaizers).  Even though the issue seems to have died down in the later part of the first century, we can still hear echoes of that conflict in today’s reading from John’s First Epistle.  John’s words about “obey[ing] the commandments” may well have been a reference back to the controversy with the Judaizers.  With their strict emphasis on following the commandments, one can easily see how the Judaizers were the ones who said that there are certain things that people need to do in order to count as “saved” in God’s eyes.  We could say that they believed in self-salvation through behavior.

The second influential group in the early Christian church was actually a collection or series of different groups that had common characteristics.  Collectively, they are now known as the Gnostics.  These were folks who came into their Christian faith from the Greco-Roman side of the equation.  They brought with them a love of philosophy and wisdom as part of their cultural heritage.  As they began to explore their newfound Christian faith, they tried their best to understand Christianity through the lens of philosophy.  Popular philosophical thought at the time saw the physical world as completely evil and the spiritual world as completely good.  The Gnostics saw Jesus as a kind of divine messenger who floated down to earth and appeared to take on human form in order to teach humanity the secret knowledge that would allow them to transcend above the realm of the physical and enter the spiritual realm, where God lives.  The early church leaders, especially the author of John’s First Epistle, were extremely uncomfortable with the idea that this world is totally evil and Jesus wasn’t a real flesh and blood human like you or me.  With their emphasis on “secret knowledge” as the source for salvation, the Gnostics were like those who insist that a person has to accept certain ideas or interpretations of scripture in order to count as a “real” Christian.  We could say that they believed in self-salvation through belief.

Now John, writing as a pastor to his congregation in his First Epistle, challenges both of these false assumptions, but he spends a lot more time being concerned about the Gnostics (probably because that was the bigger issue with this congregation).

John counters these ideas with one, huge, over-arching principle that trumps both belief and behavior: Love.

John is the writer who famously wrote, “God is love.”  God’s love, given freely and unconditionally to those who neither deserve nor earn it, is the basis of all authentic Christian faith and action.  Another word for this kind of unconditional love is “grace.”  That’s what we mean when we sing, “Amazing grace!  How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!”  The Protestant Reformers, our forbears in this church, were following in John’s footsteps when they leaned heavily on the principle of sola gratia or “grace alone” as one of the central foundations of their faith.  In theological terms, grace is the “unmerited favor” of God.  In plain English, it means “God loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

For John, the Protestant Reformers, and all of us in this church, the primary revelation of God’s love is in the person of Jesus Christ.  Jesus embodied love.  He lived and died for others.  He set for us an example of what love looks like and what the power of love can do in this world.

According to John, the only way to respond to this free gift of unconditional love is to give love freely and unconditionally.  When we love like Jesus, we remind ourselves and others that love is the Ground of our Being.  Love is the heartbeat at the center of the universe.  When we love like Jesus, our hearts beat in time with the cosmos.

Love is so much simpler, yet so much more difficult, than following a list of prescribed beliefs and behaviors.  We would much rather have an itemized creed to which we demanded adherence from everyone.  That’s way easier than loving.  We would much rather have a code of conduct that spelled out every possible contingency and application for each regulation.  That’s way easier than loving.

Love is a fluid and unpredictable thing.  Love keeps us creative and flexible.  Love is difficult, but it’s also so sorely needed.

You and I live in a society where dogmatism and litigiousness run rampant, but real love and community are on the decline.  Just as the Beatles found out that “money can’t buy me love,” we’re finding out that we can’t legislate it either.  It would be so much easier to simply draw our lines in the sand over belief and behavior, keeping us in and them out.

The one thing that’s lacking in this land is a sense of love and community.  People are longing to belong.

In spite of our exponentially accelerated rate of communication and information exchange in our culture, folks are feeling more isolated than ever.  This is a time when the recovery of love as our central principle for faith and action is needed more than ever.

Because of this great need in the world and the great love that is in us as the people of God, I am ordaining and commissioning you all this morning as evangelists and missionaries of love to Central New York and the North Country.  I’m not asking you to go proselytize your neighbors or try to win converts at the grocery store.  There are enough folks out there doing that already.

At best, those “missionaries” and “evangelists” are only trying to get people to “believe that” certain ideas about Jesus are true (i.e. that he is the Son of God who was born of a virgin, died on the cross, and rose from the grave).  Those pamphlets of religious literature can never really get people to “believe in” Jesus in a real way.

I can say “I believe that” about any number of facts.  I believe that I am standing in a pulpit right now.  I believe that there is a stack of paper in front of me.  I believe that I can see our organist from here.  All of those are simple statements of fact.

But to say “I believe in” takes a much more personal commitment.  I believe in this church.  I believe in you.  It’s a statement of personal trust and relationship.  It goes way farther than simply giving intellectual assent to a list of statements on a piece of paper.

Into this isolated and isolating world that knows so little of real love, I want to send you all as evangelists and missionaries of unconditional love in word and action.  Show your faith in love through loving deeds, not creeds.  Help people to believe in that love which we hold most sacred.

I commission you in the words of another, more famous, American Universalist named John Murray, who preached during the 1700s:

Go out into the highways and by-ways.  Give the people something of your new vision. You may possess only a small light, but uncover it, let it shine, use it in order to bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men and women. Give them not Hell, but hope and courage.  Do not push them deeper into their theological despair, but preach the kindness and everlasting love of God.

A Tale of Two Strangers

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment
Happy Earth Day!

This week’s sermon from Boonville Pres.

Click here to listen at fpcboonville.org

Luke 24:13-35

“We had hoped.”

Those were the stinging words that reverberated within the hearts and minds of the disciples in the days following Jesus’ crucifixion.

When John the Baptist first pointed to Jesus and said, “He’s the one we’ve been waiting for, the one whose sandals I’m not worthy to untie: the Lamb of God,” they had hoped.

When Jesus preached his first sermon in his home synagogue in Nazareth, he read those inspirational words from the book of the prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor,” they had hoped.

When he then started his sermon with the words, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” they had hoped.

When they saw him make good on that promise, bringing sight to the blind, food to the hungry, and good news to those who had never heard anything other than bad news, they had hoped.

When Jesus told them to get ready, because the new reign of heaven-on-earth was at hand, they had hoped.

When he rode triumphantly into Jerusalem and kicked those corrupt money changers out of God’s house, the sacred temple, they had hoped.

But then, the pounding force of a Roman hammer driving twisted spikes of iron through flesh and wood put a sudden and bloody end to their hoping.  They heard Jesus recite lines of ancient poetry about being forsaken by God.  At the bitter end, he had pathetically muttered, “It is finished,” just before giving up his fight for life.  And he was right: it was finished.  It was over.  Three years of their lives wasted on this cult leader who died in disgrace.  Perhaps he would be remembered as the David Koresh or Jim Jones of his day.  They would be lucky to escape with their lives and slink back to their families in shame.  They had hoped.  Look what it got them.

Such was the state of mind of the two disciples who shambled slowly down the road on that Sunday afternoon.  They probably hadn’t eaten or slept much in the few days prior.  What’s the point of eating when all food has lost its taste?  One might as well be eating ashes.  Getting out of bed probably felt like working out with lead weights strapped to your arms, legs, and head.

Emotionally, they probably oscillated between feeling nothing at all and that sickening sensation of a knot in the gut that makes its way up to your throat and finally threatens to burst out through your eyeballs.  These folks were heartbroken.

Most of us will experience real heartbreak at some point in our lives.  It might come with the loss of a relationship or a job.  It might stem from the regret of a missed opportunity.  It might come from a serious diagnosis with a poor prognosis, the death of a parent, spouse, or child, or with what Howie Cosell used to call “the agony of defeat.”  Whenever and however it comes, real heartbreak is undeniable and unforgettable.

For these two disciples of the late Jesus, walking down a lonely road on a hot Sunday afternoon, heartbreak had come with the dashing of their highest aspirations against the concrete of imperial power and religious corruption.  They were probably just beginning to formulate a plan of what to do next when, suddenly, they realized that they were not alone on the road.

A stranger met them as they walked along the road between Jerusalem and a town called Emmaus.  In an attempt to join the conversation, the stranger politely asks about the topic.  The question literally stops the disciples in their tracks.  It’s like they can’t even bring themselves to answer the question directly.  The subject is just too painful.  Finally, one of them answers the original question with another question: “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?”  I take that to be another way of saying, “Well, y’know…” in hopes that the stranger won’t ask them to finish the sentence.

Unfortunately for them, the stranger keeps pressing.  He asks them, “What things?”  Eventually, they open up to this stranger about the grief in their broken hearts.  “We had hoped,” they tell him, “that he was the one to redeem Israel.”  The stranger listens, talks back, and engages them in conversation as they walk along.  They talk about Jesus, they talk about faith, and they talk about the Bible.  It seems like this stranger became a real pastor to them in their moment of deepest heartbreak.  He was there for them.  They didn’t know him from Adam’s housecat, but they felt safe (or at least desperate) enough to allow him to take part in their pain and shame.  Later on, those disciples would talk about how their hearts were “burning within [them]” as the stranger walked and talked with them.

Before they knew it, the group had arrived at Emmaus.  The two disciples had reached the place where they were going, but the stranger kept walking.  They looked at the sun going down in the distance.  It would be dark and cold soon.  Traveling at night could be dangerous.  They saw an opportunity to give back to this stranger a little bit of what he had given to them: hospitality.  Maybe they even thought about what Jesus had once taught 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.”  They called out to their new friend as he walked away, “Hey!  It’s getting dark outside.  Stay with us tonight.  It’s the least we can do.”  The stranger agrees.

Later that night, at dinner, this mysterious stranger “took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.”  And just then, in that moment, something happened.  They couldn’t explain it.  Maybe one of them caught a glimpse of a scar on the stranger’s wrist as he reached for the loaf of bread.  Maybe it was the sound of the stranger’s voice as he blessed and broke the bread, just like their dead friend had done only a few days prior.  Maybe it was something deeper than that.  Whatever it was, something happened.  In that moment, the text of Luke’s gospel tells us that “their eyes were opened.”  They squinted across the table at the stranger in the dim and flickering lamplight and then, just for a split second, they saw something that almost made their broken and burning hearts jump right out of their chests because, in that moment, they could have sworn (as impossible as it sounds) that they were looking into the eyes of Jesus!  And then, just as quickly as it came, it was gone.  The moment was over, but the experience had shaken them to their core.

This startling and disturbing encounter led them to go back to Jerusalem and their fellowship of broken-hearted disciples.  Much to their surprise, others among the group reported having similar experiences.  They didn’t know what to make of it all.  They just shared their stories with one another.  And then, in the while they were doing that, it happened again: that sense of peace and the experience of the presence of Christ in their midst.  He wasn’t dead and gone.  He was alive and with them.  They had seen him in the eyes of a stranger who had walked with them on the road and broken bread with them at home.  With eyes wide open and hearts on fire with passion, they realized that the brutality of the centurion’s hammer had not beaten the hope out of them permanently.  They had hoped.  They were still hoping.  In some way that defies explanation, hope was alive in them: opening their tear-filled eyes and setting their broken hearts on fire.

I believe the power of Christ’s resurrection is available to each of us in this Easter season.  In the midst of our heartbreak, whatever its cause, hope still has the power to open our eyes and set our hearts on fire.  There are many ways in which this can happen.  Taking a hint from today’s New Testament lesson, I want to focus on one way in particular that this might happen: Resurrected hope has the power to reach us through the presence of the stranger.

We meet all kinds of strangers in life: the random strangers we meet on the street or at the store, the strangers we think we know but don’t really (do any of us really understand our spouses, parents, or children?), then there are those strangers we don’t physically meet but whose lives are connected to ours in some way (think about the people who grow our food, make our clothes, or construct our cars), and then there are those strangers who aren’t even human: the plants and animals who share this planet with us.

There are two ways of recognizing the risen Christ in the many strangers who live around us.  First, there are those strangers who help us in some large or small way.  We saw this happening in today’s New Testament lesson as the stranger walks alongside the two disciples and gets them to open up about their broken hearts.  He was there for them in a time when they were at the end of their rope, dangling over a deep, dark chasm of despair.  He brought them back from the brink and set their broken hearts on fire with his words of hope.  The text of Luke’s gospel tells us that this stranger was the risen Christ, coming to meet them on the road.  How many times have you been blessed by a kind word, a listening ear, or a shoulder to cry on?  Have you ever been in a situation where a simple visit, a card, or a casserole, given as a symbol of love, meant the whole world to you?  In such moments, the risen Christ is present with us, igniting a fire in our broken hearts and rekindling hope.

Second, we recognize the risen Christ in those strangers who we get to help.  We saw this happening as well in today’s reading.  As the stranger in the story prepares to wander into the night, the disciples seize their opportunity to offer Christ-like hospitality.  Their eyes were later opened to the truth that it was actually Christ that they were welcoming into their home.  This is eerily similar to what Jesus told them would happen:

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… 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.

Today is the third Sunday in the season of Easter.  We are celebrating today as Compassion Sunday.  We give thanks for the particular ministry of a group in our church: the In His Name Women’s Mission Society.  Among the many other ministries that they support locally and globally, In His Name sponsors a little girl named Gladys, who lives in Guatemala, through an organization called Compassion International.  Compassion International is a faith-based group that provides food, water, medical care, and education to over 1.2 million kids in 26 countries.  In His Name’s sponsorship of Gladys is part of the mission of this church.  In a small but very important way, we get to demonstrate to her the compassion of Christ in our hearts.  But, in an even bigger way, Gladys is Christ to us.  Through Gladys and so many other children in need, Christ calls us to make a difference in this world.  Whatever we do for them, we do for Christ.

Finally, today also happens to be Earth Day, where we give thanks for the abundance of creation and pledge ourselves to work for its healing.  I believe we can celebrate the presence of the risen Christ in these our fellow creatures in the natural world.  In this age of mass pollution and global warming, we can no longer afford to limit our religious and spiritual vision to the well-being of human beings alone.  We are part of an interdependent web of life that connects us to all forms of life on this planet.  We must respect this life and care for it.  But we must also remember to celebrate and enjoy it.  As this spring speeds quickly into summer, get yourself outdoors into God’s green earth.  Let the presence of the risen Christ in nature ignite your heart and open your eyes again.  Relearn what it says in the book of Isaiah: that “heaven and earth are full of [God’s] glory.”  Let this celebration of resurrected glory inspire us to care for our planet and its creatures.  As the preacher Tony Campolo once said, “Every time a species goes extinct, a hymn of praise to God is silenced.”  These strangers (the animals, plants, and the Earth itself) are also members of Christ’s family.  Whatever we do for them, we do for Christ.

Christ is alive and comes to meet us in the guise of strangers: those we help and those who help us.  All of these strangers are connected to us and I believe we have the capacity to see and serve the risen Christ living in each of them.  They are Christ to us and we are Christ to each other.  Whatever we do for each other, we do for Christ.  This Easter, may the risen Christ rekindle hope in you by setting your broken heart on fire and opening your eyes once again.

The Empty Tomb

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment

Easter sermon from Boonville Presbyterian.

The text is Mark 16:1-8.

Click here to listen to this sermon at fpcboonville.org

A Wall Street executive once hired a consultant from the Czech Republic to come and advise him on business matters.  After a highly productive and successful series of meetings, the time had come for the consultant to return to his home country.

“I want to thank you for all you’ve done to help our company.”  The executive said, “Before you return to the Czech Republic, is there anything you would like to see or do here in America?”

“Well,” the consultant said, “I have always heard such wonderful things about the zoos in America.  We don’t have anything like them back home in the Czech Republic.  I would really like to go to the zoo.”

So the executive makes arrangements and takes the rest of the day off in order to escort his new friend to the zoo.  While they are there, the consultant is fascinated by the lions’ den.  He leans as far as he can over the railing to get a good look at them.  But suddenly, the unthinkable happens: he loses his balance and tumbles headfirst into the lions’ habitat!  The lions are on him in a flash and devour him so quickly that there is nothing left by the time the zookeeper arrives with the police.

“Okay,” the authorities say to the executive, “You were the only eyewitness to this tragedy.  Did you happen to see which lion actually ate your friend?”

The executive gives it some thought and says, “Yes.  It was the male lion with the large furry mane.  I’m absolutely certain that he was the one who ate my friend.”

So they shoot the male lion and open him up.  Alas, the lion’s stomach was empty!  So they proceed to shoot the female lion and open her up.  Sure enough, there was the poor consultant in her stomach.

Now, there are two morals to this story:

The first is that you should never trust the word of a Wall Street executive who tells you, “The Czech is in the male.”

The second moral to this story is that you should never be too certain about certainty.

As a society, we tend to put a lot of stock in certainty.  We buy products that come with a “guarantee.”  We buy all kinds of “insurance” to protect us from anything bad that might happen.  We trust the words of our political and religious officials as if they were gospel truth.  But just take a minute and think about all the times in history when people lost their lives over a certainty that later turned out to be completely false?

Several years ago, there was a science fiction movie called Men In Black starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.  In one scene of this movie, Will Smith has just found out that there are aliens from outer space living on Earth in disguise.  Tommy Lee Jones tries to comfort him with these words about certainty: “Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”  Certainty, it seems, is a very fickle thing.

Certainty is also something that is commonly associated with people of faith.  Preachers, theologians, and church goers often speak with great passion and conviction about things they know to be true, beyond any shadow of a doubt.  On the other hand, those who struggle with faith are often called “agnostic” which can be translated as “not knowing” or “uncertain.”  Agnostic people sometimes ask religious people questions about certainty like:

  • “How can you be so sure that God exists?”
  • “How can you be so sure that there’s life after death?”
  • “How can you be so sure that everything will turn out for the better in the end?”

In the minds of average people (agnostic and religious alike), certainty and faith seem to go hand in hand.  This association is so firmly ingrained that religious people are often made to feel a deep sense of guilt whenever they question some or all of their beliefs.  Likewise, agnostic people are often made to feel like there’s no place for them communities of faith (like church).  So many of them feel like they have to choose between the intellectual integrity their minds long for and the sense of reverence and belonging their hearts long for.  If faith and certainty are permanently associated with one another, you have to make a choice.  There is no room for questions or doubt.  It’s black and white.  You’re either in or out.  In the minds of average people (agnostic and religious alike), that’s what faith is all about.

This morning, I want to take that preconceived notion (faith = certainty) and put it on trial next to what the Bible actually says or, more importantly, what it doesn’t say (because you can learn a lot by paying attention to what the Bible doesn’t say).

Let’s start by looking at today’s New Testament reading.  Do you notice anything missing from it?  We have the women who show up at the tomb.  The stone is rolled away.  There’s a young man in white telling them that the person they’re looking for isn’t there.  They run away in fear.  Do you notice anything missing?  How about anyone?

Jesus!  That’s right, Jesus forgets to show up to his own party!  Today is Easter and we’re celebrating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  Isn’t it at least a little odd that the risen Christ doesn’t even make a single appearance in the reading?

Let me add a little more wood to this fire: today’s reading is from Mark’s gospel, which most biblical scholars agree was the first of the four canonical gospels to be written.  It was probably written about thirty or forty years after the death of Jesus.  Now, we don’t have any original manuscripts for this (or any other) book of the Bible.  All we have are copies of copies.  Sometimes, these copies differ from one another.  For example, the later versions of Mark’s gospel have Jesus showing up and giving some sage advice to his disciples, but the earliest manuscripts we have end with this passage: the one where the women run away in fear at the end.

That’s kind of anti-climactic isn’t it?  I mean, the resurrection is kind of the central miracle in the Christian faith.  It’s the reason for today’s celebration, the highest holiday in our religion.  Wouldn’t you expect a more certain and definitive record of it in the earliest accepted account of its occurrence?

Now, let me be clear, I’m not trying to argue that it did or didn’t happen.  What I’m trying to point out here is that the earliest available editions of Mark’s gospel leave us with a big question mark, rather than an exclamation point.  Mark simply presents us with an empty tomb and then leaves us to make up our own minds about what happened.

I think this is good news for those of us who struggle with faith (and I include myself in that number).  It means that we are not required to check our brains at the door when we come into church.  It means that there is a whole lot more mystery than certainty in authentic Christian faith.  Most of all, it means that faith is more about staying open and asking honest questions about what might be true rather than forging and holding onto hard-and-fast answers about what we think is true.

It means furthermore that doubt is a friend of faith, not its opposite.  In fact, if we’re defining faith as openness to possibility, then doubt is what makes faith possible.  For those of us (like me) who worship at the empty tomb, standing there with a big question mark hanging over our heads, the only real opposite to faith would have to be certainty.

You and I seem to live in a time of unparalleled questioning.  Thanks to many brilliant advances in information and communication technology, we probably know more but understand less about the incredible diversity on this planet than any generation that has come before us.  We’re facing questions about science and sexuality, faith and philosophy, politics and pluralism.  Whether we’re talking about robots, rocket-ships, or religion, we are already coming up with answers to tough questions that our ancestors never would have dreamed of asking.

In the face of such daunting challenges, it’s only natural (healthy, even) to feel more than a little intimidated.  There are powerful voices in our society who are calling on us to return to yesterday’s answers in response to today’s (and presumably tomorrow’s) questions.  These fearful folks long for the comfort that certainty brings, so they hunker down, roll up the sails, and batten the hatches, hoping that their ship has the right stuff to weather the winds of change.  As those winds grow stronger and stronger, those voices of fear grow louder and louder.

It would be easy to let those loud voices and that powerful wind of change intimidate us.  It would be easy to give in and huddle together below decks in hopes that the wind will eventually stop.  That would be so easy to do if we didn’t know who we are, where we’ve come from, and how we got to where we are today.  Our ship, the church, was made to sail in these winds.  The wind is our friend.  If it wasn’t for the wind, we never would have left our home port.

Allow me to offer a few examples:

Today’s wind has brought us to face controversial and challenging questions about issues like religious diversity and human sexuality.  Fifty years ago, we were asking questions about whether two people of different races or ethnicities could get married and have a healthy family.  There were those who said it would never work because it was unnatural and went against the established order for human society laid out in the Bible.  Sound familiar?  It wasn’t until 1967, in the case of Virginia v. Loving that the U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled bans on interracial marriage as unconstitutional.

Before that, folks in our church were arguing about whether or not women could be ordained to serve as clergy in our church.  There were some who said it would never work because it was unnatural and went against the established order laid out in the Bible.  Yet, here I am, a proud member of a generation where women in ministry are not only my peers, but also my predecessors in the pulpit.  I don’t think I even need to mention the name of Rev. Micki Robinson and her epic seventeen year ministry in this church.

Before that, there were folks who stood up and proclaimed that, because all people are created equal, the institution of slavery should be abolished.  People said it would never work because it was unnatural and went against the established order laid out in the Bible.  They even fought a bloody war over that question.  Yet, I think we can all agree that our country is better off for having faced that question and challenged its previously conceived notions.

Before that, another group of people declared that, because all people are created equal, a country should be run by democratically elected leaders and not a royal monarchy that was handed down from generation to generation by supposed “divine mandate.”  These same people also had a bold new idea that church and state should remain separate, in order to protect the freedoms of both.  Thus, the United States became the first country in the history of the world to be founded on an idea, rather than a common ethnic identity.

Before that, people like John Calvin and Martin Luther challenged a millennium of church tradition and authority, believing that people have the right to read and interpret the Bible for themselves, rather than waiting for some Pope to issue an authoritative doctrinal statement on behalf of the people.

Before that, a man named Jesus of Nazareth challenged the very foundation of religious and political power in his day.  He proclaimed a bold new vision of the kingdom of heaven-on-earth.  He gave us the core spiritual principles and beliefs that continue to shape our lives to this day.

Before Jesus, in the Hebrew Scriptures (what Christians call the Old Testament), there was a long line of Jewish prophets like John the Baptist, Jeremiah, Elijah, and Moses, who stood up to “the way it is,” questioned the legitimacy of the status quo, and proclaimed a bold and prophetic new vision of what might be possible, which leads us right back to that definition of faith as openness to possibility.

We gather together this morning to celebrate this mystery of the resurrection of Jesus.  We are confronted with the image of an empty tomb and a huge question mark hanging over our heads.  We are not given many concrete answers, backed up by the guarantee of certainty.  But, as we have already seen, we gather at this empty tomb with a great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us.  They, like us and the women at the tomb in today’s gospel story, were gripped with an overwhelming sense of fear and amazement.  I can imagine us all standing there, staring into the darkness, maybe holding onto each other for support, wondering together what might be happening, not certain of anything, but open to what might be possible.

Where do you find yourself in this story today?  Are you perhaps a questioning believer who is afraid to let your doubts shine, for fear that they might invalidate or undermine your faith?  Are you perhaps a hopeful agnostic who yearns for a sense of transcendence and community, but is afraid that there is no place for you in any institution that calls itself a “church?”  Are you perhaps one of the frightened faithful who miss the old comfort of certainty from the “good old days,” who long for an anchor for their souls amid the winds of change, and who look to answer today’s questions with yesterday’s answers?  Whoever you are, I want to invite you, on this Easter morning, to join us at the empty tomb.  Let us hold onto each other as we stare into the darkness together with more questions than answers, overwhelmed by that odd emotional combination of fear and amazement, and let us do our best to remain faithfully open to what might be possible for us at this time and in this place.

Prophetic Preaching: Hoodies on Palm Sunday

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
I preached in a hoodie this week in solidarity with the collective cry for justice in the Trayvon Martin case.

The text is Mark 11:1-11.

Click here to listen to this sermon at fpcboonville.org

It probably feels a little strange to see your pastor preaching in a hoodie on Sunday.  Half of you are probably wondering if I’m trying to make some kind of point.  The other half of you are probably wondering if maybe we need to turn up the heat in here.  Both groups would be right (in a manner of speaking).

It all got started earlier this year when I realized that Palm Sunday would fall on April Fools’ Day this year.  I said to myself then, “Oh man, that’s too good.  I’ve got to have some fun with this!”  And the beauty is that it doesn’t even take that much work to find a connection between these two days.

The setting of the scene, as we already know, is the Jewish festival of Passover.  Jesus and his disciples were joining crowds of their fellow Jews as they made their way on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the holiday.  Passover is an annual celebration of Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt.  They get together each year and tell the story of how God set them free from foreign oppressors.  The message of Passover was particularly powerful to Jews in Jesus’ day as they survived under Roman occupation.

In order to halt any bright ideas about rebellion during this festival, the Roman governor (Pontius Pilate) made a point of marching his troops through the city as a display of Imperial dominance.  He wanted to send a clear message that Rome was in charge.  The troops marched through town with their banners proudly waving.  At the head of the line, Pilate sat mounted on his mighty steed.

Contrast this image with the image of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, surrounded by his usual riffraff as they waved palm branches and made a scene.  It was a deliberate mockery of Pilate’s procession.  Jesus was making fun of it!  It was like an April Fools’ prank, but with a point.

Jesus’ parody of Pilate’s pride was actually a brilliant and prophetic display of political and spiritual theater.  I call it prophetic, not because it was predicting the future, but because, in that moment, Jesus was engaged in the exercise of “speaking truth to power.”  People have this funny idea that prophecy is all about predicting the future or the end of the world.  In reality, the job of a prophet is to reinterpret the present from a spiritual point of view.  They present us with a vision of reality as it could be, if we would only open our hearts to what God is doing in our lives at this moment, or a warning of reality as it might become if we remain closed.

Jesus was hardly the first or last person in history to “speak truth to power” as a prophet.  We can all think of others who, through their words or actions, presented us with a vision of reality as it could be.  I have my own litany of saints who have affected me like that: Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gene Robinson, and many others.  Maybe you know of others.

Jesus had his favorites as well.  One of them was an ancient Jewish prophet by the name of Zechariah.  Zechariah had this crazy vision in his day that Jesus decided to make come true.  Jesus knew that people wanted him to become king of the Jews.  So, he decided to show them the kind of king he would be.  You might call this his “royal mission statement.”  He borrowed this donkey-riding image from the mind of Zechariah.  Zechariah said,

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.

Jesus would be a humble king and a peacemaker, not a guerilla fighter or imperial overlord.  And his reign of peace would include all the nations of the earth, not just his own ethnic group.  This, by the way, was also another slight against the Roman Empire.  They prided themselves on their large and (relatively) stable territory.  They rejoiced in what they called the Pax Romana (Roman Peace) that would one day spread to the ends of the earth through the imposition of military order.  Jesus shook his head at this idea and laughed.  He used the words of the prophet Zechariah to introduce another vision of world peace.

In this hilarious lampoon of Rome’s arrogance, Jesus is reminding his followers (and everyone else) where true power lies.  It doesn’t rest in the hands of the privileged few who happen to wield the death-dealing resources of an international superpower.  True power comes from God.  And it is not on display in the exercise of intimidation, but inspiration.  True power, as God sees it, doesn’t come from dealing death, but giving life.  It’s not about exclusion, but inclusion.  Real power, according to Jesus, doesn’t come from our ability to condemn, but to forgive.  This is the upside down vision of reality that Jesus is proclaiming to us on this Palm Sunday.

This leads me back to the hoodie that I’m wearing.  Most of you are probably aware of certain events that took place in Florida over a month ago.  An African-American teenager by the name of Trayvon Martin was on his way back from the store with a bag of skittles and an Arizona Ice Tea when a vigilante neighborhood watchman named George Zimmerman, who has a documented history of aggressive and violent behavior, called 911 about a young black male in his gated community.  The 911 operators specifically told him to leave Trayvon alone, but Zimmerman picked up a gun and went after him anyway.  The facts of what happened next have not yet been established (it appears that there was some kind of fight), but we know that it ended with George Zimmerman shooting an unarmed minor in the chest and killing him.

Over a month later, George Zimmerman is still free.  He has not been arrested or charged with a crime.  The state of Florida has not even suspended his license to carry a concealed firearm.  In theory, this means there would be no legal barrier to prevent this same person from walking into this room with a gun right now.  If this had happened to one of our kids in Boonville, would we be satisfied to wait a full month before the authorities investigated deeply enough to make an arrest?  How safe would we feel if it was a student from Adirondack High School lying on the ground with a hole in his chest while the person who pulled the trigger was happily mowing his lawn a month later?  Wouldn’t we, in the very least, be passionately asking questions about the truth of what happened that night?  Of course we would.

In the weeks following Trayvon’s shooting and death, members of the media have been weighing in on this.  I realize you might be sick of hearing about it, but I’m following the advice of theologian Karl Barth this morning: “Preach with the Bible in one hand and the New York Times in the other.”  Some pundits have tried to paint a mental picture of Trayvon Martin as a no-good thug by appealing to stereotypical images of young black men.  Geraldo Rivera went so far as to blame this incident on the fact that Trayvon was wearing a hoodie (like this one) on the night of his death.

There has been a widespread response to Geraldo’s ignorant comment.  Last Sunday, pastors in churches all around the country joined together in a prophetic display of political and spiritual theater, just like Jesus’ famous entrance into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday.  They all preached in hoodies.  Since then, folks in other public professions have followed suit.  There have even been some of our elected officials who have worn hoodies into the halls of Congress.  I’m a latecomer to this action, since I didn’t hear about it until after-the-fact, but that’s okay because it fits well with what we’re talking about today.

Geraldo Rivera implied (intentionally or unintentionally) that wearing a hoodie somehow makes a person eligible to be shot.  If that’s really true, then I’m eligible to be shot right now and, as I already noted, there is nothing to legally stop George Zimmerman from walking into this room and doing so.

Now, you and I know that such an idea is ridiculous.  No one out there really believes that hoodies justify murder.  The importance of this symbol lies in its association.  This style of dress is associated with the hip-hop subculture which, in turn, is associated with negative stereotypes of African-Americans.  So really, underneath the surface, this is still a conversation about race.  Geraldo used the word  hoodie, but what he really meant to say was black.  Trayvon Martin was shot and killed because he was black.  The only thing that disturbed George Zimmerman was the sight of a young black man walking down the street in a suburban gated community.  Why?  Because young black men aren’t supposed to live in gated communities, according to the racist subconscious assumptions of our society.  We may have outlawed segregation on paper, but racism is still very much alive in reality.  And that, brothers and sisters, is a gospel issue.

We agree with the apostle Paul when he says that, in Christ, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free.”  We could easily add “black nor white.”  When I and my fellow-pastors wear these hoodies into our pulpits, we are standing together to make a bold prophetic statement.  We’re not doing it because we’re cold (although we are trying to “turn up the heat” on this issue).  The prophetic statement we are making has to do with the equality of all people in the eyes of God.  We’re saying that one black life, ended in violence, is no less disturbing or tragic than a white one.  This prophetic action is shining the light on this truth, which we all hold dear.

In a few moments, we’ll all be participating together in another bold prophetic action as we celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.  Around this table of Christ, we gather together and partake of one loaf and one cup.  We remind ourselves that we are all members of one family.  The same blood, the blood of Christ, flows through each of our veins.  This is the truth we believe in that trumps any other division or distinction we try to make among ourselves.  We are connected, through the mystery of this sacrament, to each other and to God.

On this Palm Sunday, we remember Jesus’ prophetic proclamation of the power of peace.  Likewise, we are making our own prophetic proclamations as we wear hoodies and share Communion with each other.  This celebration leads us into Holy Week, the final stage of our journey toward Easter.  We will be reminded during the coming week that there is a price to pay for speaking about God’s vision so boldly.  This willingness to confront is what ultimately got Jesus crucified.  He spoke out against the dominant system of power in his day and the system pushed back.  The system used all the terrible might at its disposal to silence his message.  But Jesus wasn’t afraid of them.  He didn’t keep quiet.  He continued to proclaim the prophetic vision loud and clear, even though he knew it would get him killed.  Why?  Because Jesus believed that love is stronger than death.  He believed that the prophetic vision of the kingdom of God was bigger than his own individual survival.  He trusted in resurrection more than survival.

As Christians, we are called to do the same.  We are called to be Easter people who believe in the power of resurrection more than survival.  Jesus has handed this prophetic vision to us, so that we might continue to proclaim its truth in the midst of a world that doesn’t want to hear it, but needs to hear it.  As a church, a household of faith, we are called to take chances.  We are called upon to risk our very lives for the sake of truth.  We are called to embody this truth in our words and actions at church, home, school, work, or play.  We should make those uncomfortable observations and ask the hard questions that we would rather ignore.  It will not make us popular or successful.  If we’re doing it right, it will lead us, as it did Jesus, to our own crucifixion and death.  But it will also lead us to experience the Easter-power of resurrection and eternal life, which will continue to stand firm long after the systems and the nations of this world have passed away.

The Hour Has Come

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Common Sense Liberalism, Evolutionary Thoughts, SermonLeave a comment

Today’s sermon from Boonville Pres.

The texts are John 12:20-33, Jeremiah 31:31-34, and Psalm 87.

Click here to listen to this sermon at fpcboonville.org

Whenever my friends and acquaintances find out that I’m a minister, it usually opens up some very interesting avenues of conversation.  This will sound weird, but the very first thing that most people do is apologize.  I haven’t quite figured out why they do that, but it happens about seven times out of ten.

Once that’s out of the way, the conversation usually gets interesting.  I don’t know of any other job that generates the kind of small talk that this one does.  When accountants meet people at parties, I doubt that folks immediately start talking about their bank account balance.  When teachers meet people in public, I doubt that folks immediate start talking about their high school GPA.  However, when I meet people out in the world, I find that many folks almost immediately want to talk about their personal beliefs and practices.

I get to learn a lot that way.  I learn about peoples’ individual life stories.  I learn about the way they see the world.  I learn about the importance that spirituality holds for most people, even those who don’t go to church.  Most of all, I learn about the way we Christians are perceived by the rest of the world.  I find that a lot of people admire us for our commitment to a particular way of faith but don’t want to limit their own spiritual journey to such a small circle of beliefs and morals.

We Christians have done plenty of things throughout our two-thousand-year history to establish the idea that ours is a small-minded and judgmental faith.  Even today, in the twenty-first century, those who most loudly and proudly broadcast their Christianity to a national audience tend to be rather one-sided in their view of the world.  It makes me sad sometimes that the incredible depth and diversity of our tradition seems to have become lost in all the hubbub.  I really can’t blame people who reject Christianity on the grounds that being Christian (from their point of view) means being like these big-time televangelists or members of the Religious Right.  I don’t blame them.  If I hadn’t met certain people or read certain books at just the right moment in my life, I would probably think as they do.

More and more, I’m also finding Christians within the church who operate with a similar mentality.  They value their Christian faith but wish there was some way they could practice it that is more thoughtful and less judgmental.  They hate feeling like they have to close their hearts and minds to the world in order to be faithful believers but don’t know of any other way to be truly Christian.  Some of these folks slog it out, longing for something better.  Others eventually give up and just leave altogether, thinking there’s no place for people like them in church.

I want to tell you today that I think there is another way.  Whether you’re sitting in church this morning, hanging on in quiet desperation, or listening to me on the radio at home, thinking the roof would cave in if you ever tried to walk through the door of a church building, I want you to know that, whoever you are, there is room for you to be you in Christ’s church.

If the church has failed to send that message clearly, it’s our own fault.  We need to learn how to be more like Jesus and do the kinds of things he did, like the one we heard about earlier in this service in our reading from the gospel according to John.

The story opens as Jesus is visiting Jerusalem with massive throngs of pilgrims on their way to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover.  Mixed in with this group are a number of Greek people.  They weren’t Jewish by blood, but they had come to believe in and respect the monotheistic faith of Judaism rather than the many gods worshiped by their own people.  These Greek folks wanted to take part in the Passover festivities as well, but they were only allowed to go so far.  Jewish law prevented them from entering the great Jerusalem temple because of their race.  There was one, single area set aside for them at the very farthest back end of the temple.  We would call the nosebleed section.  They called it the Court of the Gentiles.  Unfortunately, even this one distant space had been taken away from them and filled up with all kinds of vendors exchanging foreign currency and selling animals for the ritual sacrifices.  Feeling like the odd ones out, these Greek folks were definitely getting the message that there was no place for people like them in the “church” of their day.

In the midst of all this going on, these Greek people somehow managed to hear that there was this remarkable new rabbi named Jesus who happened to be in Jerusalem for the festival.  They were intrigued by what they heard and wanted to meet him, so they tracked down someone from Jesus’ entourage.  They found Philip and said, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”  I can’t imagine what the look on Philip’s face must have been in that moment.  Why would these foreigners want anything to do with Jesus, the Jewish Messiah?  Philip was confused enough that he thought he needed a second opinion, so he went and talked to Andrew, another one of Jesus’ disciples.  Even together, they still couldn’t figure out what was going on, so they decided to bring the issue to Jesus himself.  Jesus’ reaction to this news probably shocked them even more.  He said, “The hour has come.”

What does that mean?  Well, there’s a lot of talk about Jesus’ “hour” in John’s gospel.  Early on, when Mary asks Jesus to show his power by changing water into wine at a wedding, Jesus refuses (at first) saying, “My hour has not yet come.”  Later on, when people try to get Jesus to use another Jewish holiday as a publicity platform, Jesus again refuses (at first) saying, “My hour has not yet come.”  Finally, when he had enraged one crowd to the point where they tried to kill him, the text notes that they were unsuccessful because “his hour had not yet come.”  It was like the whole book had been building toward something big that was about to happen.  What would it be?  Maybe when his hour came, Jesus would finally confront the corrupt religious and political leadership in Jerusalem.  Maybe when his hour came, he would go kick Pontius Pilate and his Roman thugs out of the holy city once and for all.  Maybe when his hour came, Jesus would restore the nation of Israel to the glory of its golden age under King Solomon.

But no, it turns out that Jesus’ hour came when these no-account foreigners came looking for him.  Greek people.  What’s the matter with Jesus?  Didn’t he realize who he was?  Didn’t he remember where his loyalties lay?  He was Jewish.  He belonged to his own people.  His mission, as the Jewish Messiah, was to be with other Jews and help them, not these foreigners.  Yet, when these Greek people seek him out, Jesus says, “This is it.  The hour has come.  This is why I’m here.  This is what it’s all about.”

Huh?  Don’t be ridiculous, Jesus.  What about us?  What about our people?  Our security?  Our prosperity?  Our survival?  When times get tough, human beings tend to think like that.  We want to batten down the hatches and circle the wagons.  We instinctively want to protect what’s ours.  Look out for number one.  Be responsible.  This is how evolution has hard-wired us.  Truthfully, it has allowed to survive as long as have.  But, Jesus says, there comes a time, a moment, an hour, when all of that needs to be set aside.  There is an hour for opening up, reaching out, and taking risks.  These are the moments when evolution actually happens and we take small steps or giant leaps toward our destiny.  In such moments, ironically, it is our evolutionary instinct for survival that may actually be killing us.  Jesus said it like this, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

We, as individuals, churches, institutions, communities, countries, a planet, are meant to be so much more than single grains.  We are meant to bear much fruit.  We are meant to grow and evolve beyond what we have been.  For Jesus himself, this meant pursuing a vision of the kingdom of God as a spiritual community that was multi-national and multi-ethnic.  Even though he was a faithful Jew, he realized that God’s activity in the world was bigger than Judaism and the special interests of his own nation.  We take it for granted today that God’s “got the whole world in [God’s] hands,” but that was still a relatively new idea in Jesus’ day.  It got him and the early Christians in a lot of trouble.  Some, like Jesus, even paid for that vision with their lives.

Jesus said, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”  He didn’t say all Jews, Presbyterians, Protestants, Americans, or Christians.  Jesus said all people.  This meshes pretty well with what we heard earlier today in our Old Testament reading from the prophet Jeremiah.  Jeremiah talked about his vision of a new covenant that God would make with people.  He said, speaking in God’s name, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”  Jeremiah said that, under this new covenant, we will all know the Lord and the essence of the Bible will not be carved in stone or printed in books but written on our hearts.  Whose hearts?  The hearts of all people, from the least to the greatest, for we will all know the Lord.  Christians have believed for thousands of years that this new covenant is exactly what Jesus came to accomplish.  This theme also appears in Psalm 87, which we read from this morning as well.  That poem describes how all kinds of foreign nations, like Egypt, Babylon, and Ethiopia will one day be counted as citizens of Zion and included among God’s people.  You could say, based on these prophetic visions, that the kingdom of God is meant to be an all-inclusive trip.

So, this is why I think, as I mentioned earlier, that there is another way to be Christian in this world.  We are not obligated to sell out to narrow, one-sided interpretations of our religion.  There is room in this church for everyone.  Whoever you are and however you are hearing this today, I want you to know there is room in this church for you.

I think there’s also a challenge for all of us in Jesus’ words.  I think it’s worth continually asking ourselves whether our “hour has come.”  Are we currently, in our personal or collective lives, at a point where, in order for evolution to happen, we need to let go of our evolutionary instinct for survival and takes risks?  Back in Jesus’ day, it was a moment for reaching out beyond one’s ethnic and national identity to grab hold of a religious vision for a spiritual community that was open to Greeks as well as Jews.  During the millennia since then, the Christian church has continued to wrestle with other issues.  We have worked to build a church where people of different races are welcome to worship side by side as equal partners.  We have opened our doors to acknowledge members of other churches and denominations as friends in Christ.  We have opened our pulpits for women to preach the gospel and administer the sacraments.  Each of these developments involved a certain amount of risk in its day, and there were those along the way who resisted, often citing Scripture to justify their fear, but I think we can all agree that each leap of faith was one more positive step in the direction of evolution and we are a richer church today for having taken those steps.

What challenges are we now facing as a church?  Once again, we’ve fallen on hard times.  It’s true that church attendance in this country is not what it used to be.  Many churches are tightening their belts and trying to do the best they can with shrinking financial resources.  A lot of folks are worried for our future and our survival.  They think we should circle the wagons and batten the hatches.  Some think mission and service projects should take second place to institutional survival.  Some have shut their ears to new ideas or new interpretations of ancient truths.

There are two particular areas where I think the hour has come for us as Christians in this generation.  In these two areas, I believe we are being called to open our hearts, minds, and doors just as Jesus opened his to those Greek foreigners who came looking for him in Jerusalem.

The first is one you’ve heard me mention before and will hear me mention again.  I don’t mind admitting that I am personally passionate about this issue.  I’m talking of course about the full-inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people in the life of our church.  Last year, the Presbyterian Church voted to open the doors for these folks to be ordained as pastors, elders, and deacons in our denomination.  This summer, our General Assembly will decide whether or not these same people are allowed to get married in our churches.  I think this issue, in particular, holds a key to growing our little congregation here in Boonville.  For lack of a better term, I think we have a niche market here.  There are plenty of churches in Boonville who have bigger budgets and flashier programs than we do, but there are not very many who share our convictions about the full and equal inclusion of people of all sexual orientations.  Believe it or not, there is a gay community in our neck of the woods and there are people in it who are longing to find a spiritual home where they know they will be fully loved and accepted for who they are.

The second area where I think our hour has come is in our relationship toward people of other religions or no religion at all.  We live in a society of unparalleled diversity and interconnection.  Our neighbors aren’t just Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish anymore.  They’re Buddhist, Hindu, Atheist, Taoist, and Muslim.  We have the opportunity to learn and grow by listening to one another and casting our neighbors in a positive light.

For the last ten years, we’ve struggled with a particularly strong bout of Islamophobia in this country.  The fear and anger generated in the wake of 9/11 has spread beyond the fanatics of Al Qaida and tainted our perception of all Muslims.  We need to unstop our ears to the voice of progressive Muslim clerics like Feisal Abdul Rauf of Cordoba House (aka the Ground Zero Mosque) in New York.  Leaders like him are calling for peace among their own people and opening the doors to dialogue, respect, and learning.  When we hear the Muslim call to prayer from the minarets, let’s respond by adding our Christian ‘Amen’ to their ‘Allahu Akbar.’

The way to fuller and greater life for ourselves, our church, and our country does not lie in circling the wagons and battening the hatches.  We need to realize that the hour has come for us to take risks and reach out in the name and Spirit of Jesus, who has promised to draw all people to himself in the all-inclusive kingdom of heaven-on-earth.

Your Focus Determines Your Reality

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon3 Comments

This morning’s sermon from Boonville Pres!

The text is Numbers 21:4-9.

Click here to listen at fpcboonville.org

Qui-Gon Jinn, Jedi Knight

As most of you already know, I’m a major science fiction geek.  And for us sci-fi geeks, 1999 was a big year.  Not because it was the end of the millennium, but because that was the year that the new Star Wars movie came out.  We had waited sixteen long years since Return of the Jedi.  Beginning with The Phantom Menace, we would finally get the full back story on Darth Vader.  I remember the week it came out in theaters.  I was at a conference that week in Windy Gap, NC.  As it turns out, that was the very same conference where I met my wife for the first time.  I didn’t get to see the movie until I got home.

When I did finally see it, I made up for lost time.  I went to see The Phantom Menace in the theater no less than six times during that summer.  The acting stunk, but the fight-scene choreography was amazing.  Along with most Star Wars fans, I thought that Jar-Jar Binks was the worst thing to ever happen in cinema history.

In addition to all those big things that happened in The Phantom Menace, there was one little thing that stuck with me.  It was a single line that Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn (played by Liam Neeson) said to little Anakin Skywalker: “Always remember, your focus determines your reality.”

I’ve always liked that line.  It sounds like good advice.  It reminds me of the Israelite people in this morning’s reading from the book of Numbers.  Now, the book of Numbers is part of the Jewish Torah, which is part of what Christians call the Old Testament.  The book of Numbers chronicles the journey of the Israelites as they live a nomadic life in the desert before settling in the Promised Land.

Life in the desert was never easy.  They lived life on the edge, never knowing for sure that their next meal would be there.  The text of the Bible says that God provided regular bread, meat, and water for the people through all kinds of unusual (some might say miraculous) circumstances.  But none of it ever lasted more than a day.  There was no such thing as long-term security for these desert nomads.  The only thing keeping them alive on a daily basis was an interdependent web of the grace of God, the abundance of the earth, and the kindness of strangers.

As the Israelite people made their way through this desert, they did not have the best of attitudes.  In fact, they were whining all the time.  They said to Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but I can hear myself in those words.  I get an especially big kick out of that last part: “For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.”  There is no food and I can’t stand this food!  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve paced around my kitchen, with its fully stocked fridge and cupboard, and said to myself, “There’s nothing to eat in this house!”  Has anybody else here ever done that?  What is the matter with us?  Are we blind?

We modern-day people think we’re so advanced and evolved.  We think we’re better than our ancestors with their immaturity and superstitions.  But then you look at this passage and see that we’re just like them.  “There is no food… and we detest this miserable food.”  “There’s nothing to eat in this house!”  We’re just like them.  They were just like us.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

This, by the way, is how I understand the Bible to function for us as God’s Word.  We see ourselves in it.  Some Christians take that to mean that the Bible is some kind of magic book that can never be wrong.  Personally, I take it to mean that our sacred text is like a mirror through which we can get some perspective on who we are and, by extension, who God is.  Another author, Brian McLaren, says that the Bible is a like a mathematics textbook in school.  It’s not useful because all the answers are written in the back.  It’s useful because, by working through the problems, we become wiser people.  God’s Word to us in the Bible is a living word, not a dead list of dogmas and morals to be accepted without question.

This point becomes important as we look at what happens next in this story from the book of Numbers.  It says, “Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died.”  Now, if we take this story at face value, we very quickly run into some serious problems.  It would lead us to believe that our God is the kind of person who would kill someone just for complaining.  It would also lead us to believe that natural events, like snake bites, happen because God wills it as a form of punishment.  If we really believed all that, we wouldn’t support organizations like Church World Service and Presbyterian Disaster Assistance because we would think the victims of earthquakes and hurricanes were just wicked sinners being punished by God.  But we don’t believe that.  We believe that God is love.  We believe that God stands with those who suffer and with those who work to alleviate suffering in this world.  And our belief in that kind of God leads us to go back and read this passage in a different way.

This story may or may not have been based on actual events, but that’s beside the point.  When the text says that “the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people,” I take it to be a reflection of the Israelites’ state of mind.  The snakes are a symbolic representation of their collective attitude and its effect on their communal life.

Have you ever been around people at work or school who just love to complain about every little thing?  I’m talking about the people who always look for the worst in other people and situations.  How does it feel to be around them?  It’s kind of a drag, isn’t it?  Being around them drains your energy.  It’s like a poison that saps the life right out of you.  Hanging around them kind of feels like walking through a snake pit: you’re just waiting for one to jump out and bite you.  So, when I read this story about people and their attitudes, the snake analogy makes a whole lot of sense to me.

When times are hard, it’s easy to focus on what’s wrong with the world.  It’s easy to get caught up in talking about the good old days or the way you wish things were.  It feels cathartic to let your frustration out (which is a good thing) but when the catharsis becomes a way of life, it can be toxic.  Just as much as honest venting, we also need people who can help us to see what’s right in the world.  They empower us to make things better.  They help us to change our focus.

That’s exactly what the Israelite people needed in today’s story and that’s just what they got.  The text says that, “Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.”  Isn’t this interesting: the people of Israel had a poisonous attitude of complaining that was sucking the life out of their community.  So, what’s the cure?  Look up, focus on this, and you will live.  Change your focus in order to change your reality.  It’s like they said in Star Wars: your focus determines your reality.

Let’s fast forward to the New Testament.  We also read a story about Jesus today.  In this story, Jesus is compared to Moses’ bronze serpent on a pole.  It’s the same dynamic as before, except that this time, the thing we’re supposed to focus on is not a symbolic statue but a living, breathing person.  Jesus is, for Christians, the primary revelation of God in the world.  When we want to know what God is like, we look at Jesus.  When we want to become the kind of people we’re meant to be, we look at Jesus.  When we need to remember everything that’s good, right, beautiful, and holy in this world, we focus on Jesus.  When we’re ready to be cured of the poisonous attitudes that infect our minds, our community, and our church, we look at Jesus.

We remember the principles he taught us.  We reflect on his deeds of healing and forgiveness.  We reflect on the love that poured through him to every corner of creation.  We do our best to reorient our lives around Jesus’ vision.  When we feel the snakebite and the poison’s burn, we look up to this man who died with forgiveness on his lips for his murderers and we ask ourselves that famous question: “What would Jesus do?”

Your focus determines your reality.  Change your focus and you change your reality.

There is a story I heard several years ago, but I can’t trace it back to its source.  It takes place in a Nazi concentration camp at the end of World War II.  The camp had already been liberated by the allies, but the survivors were still too weak to be moved.  They stayed in the camp for a little while longer to regain their strength.  They were finally being fed real food and treated with medicine.  For the first time, the gates were open and prisoners could come and go as they pleased.  During this time, two former-prisoners were walking together in the woods around the camp.  They came across a small patch of ground with little baby plant sprouts and young flowers poking up out of the earth.  The first man kept walking right over them, oblivious to their presence.  The second man stopped, looked, and stepped around them.  His friend said, “You mean to tell me that, in spite of everything we’ve been through, you still believe in the meaning and value of life?”  The second man replied, “No, I mean to tell you that, because of everything we’ve been through, I still believe in the meaning and value of life.”  Two men lived through the same horror came out with very different interpretations of their experience.

Two years ago, I had the difficult honor of being both friend and pastor to a young couple who suddenly lost their newborn daughter.  I can’t think of anything else in this world that does more to upset our perception of the goodness and natural order of the universe.  Through that time, I watched this family struggle, question, doubt, cry, and mourn their loss.  As a pastor, I had no answers for them.  In spite of all the Bible and theology I had learned in seminary, nothing could prepare me for that horrible moment.  I could only be there with them in that deafening silence.  There’s just nothing you can say in a moment like that.

What amazed me, as time went on, is how they clung together as a family.  They focused on their love for each other and, through that, found their way back to faith.  In time, this turned into compassion as they reached out to support others in pain. They have been part of support groups for grieving families, they have volunteered to assist the homeless in Utica, and they’ve walked in the March of Dimes in their daughter’s name.  Their compassion has become a point of focus for them.  Through it, their pain has not been erased, but it is being redeemed.

Your focus determines your reality.  When people think about what it means to “have faith,” they usually think about the various beliefs associated with a particular religion.  Faith, they think, is about believing that Jesus walked on water or was born of a virgin.  But those dogmas mainly have to do with what you think.  Faith, as we’re talking about it today, is about how you think.  Do you see the universe as hostile or friendly?  Will you approach life as meaningless or meaningful?

May we, as Christians and people of faith, in seasons of conflict and tragedy, learn to shift our focus to the one who came to show us a vision of what life can be.  May you become an agent of healing from the poisonous attitudes you encounter at home, school, work, or church.  In this soul-sucking culture of toxic vision that only sees what’s wrong with the world, may you be inspired to become a life-giving beacon of faith, hope, and love to all the people around you who so desperately need to hear what you have to say.

The Hidden Commandment

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

The text is Exodus 20:1-17.

Click here to listen at fpcboonville.org

I’d like to take a trip with you this morning.  We’re going to do a little time traveling.  We’re going to hop into Marty McFly’s DeLorean and travel back to the year 1981.  A lot of things happened that year.  A famous movie star by the name of Ronald Reagan took up residence in the White House.  Here in Boonville, a handsome young music teacher named Rod Ventura began directing the choir and playing the organ at our church.  There was a popular rock n’ roll song on the radio by a guy named Rick Springfield and it was called Jessie’s Girl.  It went a little something like this:

Jessie is a friend,
Yeah, I know he’s been
A good friend of mine
But lately something’s changed
That ain’t hard to define
Jessie’s got himself a girl
And I want to make her mine
And she’s watching him with those eyes…

I’ll leave the rest for you to listen to on your own.  This is one of those songs that has definitely outlived its fifteen minutes of fame.  Thirty years later, you can still hear it on the radio.  Why is that?  The music is catchy but the lyrics aren’t particularly poetic.  Rick Springfield was hardly William Shakespeare.  What was it about this particular song that earned it a place in the history of rock n’ roll?  I think it’s the fact that just about everybody can relate to that feeling.  Most people, at some point in life, have probably wailed with Rick Springfield (in their own way), “Why can’t I find a woman like that?”  Jessie’s Girl is the national anthem of envy.

Rick Springfield wasn’t even the first to turn his poetic sights on this almost-universal human experience.  Long before him, way back in the 1800s, the great American poet Walt Whitman put it this way:

WHEN I peruse the conquer’d fame of heroes, and the victories of mighty generals, I
do not
envy
the generals,
Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great house;
But when I hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them,
How through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging, long and long,
Through youth, and through middle and old age, how unfaltering, how affectionate and
faithful
they
were,
Then I am pensive—I hastily walk away, fill’d with the bitterest envy.

Envy, of course, is slightly different from jealousy (although the two are often confused with one another).

In marital terms:

  1. Jealousy is what a person might feel when his/her spouse is flirting with someone else.
  2. Envy is the impulse that makes a person want someone else’s spouse for his/her own.

Envy is a powerful impulse.  According to some scholars, it’s the driving force behind human civilization.  Human beings compete with one another in pursuit of some lofty image of the “ideal” life.  What is our basis for this ideal image?  The very people with whom we are competing!  We fight with each other in our attempt to imitate each other.  That’s what “keeping up with the Joneses” is all about.  As it turns out, the Joneses have been trying to keep up with you all along.  Thus, an entire civilization is built on mutual envy.  Kind of absurd when you think about it, isn’t it?

Earlier in this service, we read from the famous Ten Commandments.  It’s a long list of “Thou shalt nots” made popular by Charlton Heston (there was a movie, you may have seen it).  At the tail end of this list is one that is quite different from the rest.  It reads, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”  Covet is another word for envy.  What makes this final commandment different from the rest (i.e. “You shall not murder… You shall not commit adultery… You shall not steal… etc.”) is that this one is about a desire rather than a behavior.  It has to do with what’s going on inside you.

This tenth commandment is going to be our starting point for talking about the other nine.  Rather than go through them one by one, we’re going to start at the end and end at the beginning.  We’ll end with the first commandment, which goes like this: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”  We’ll sum up all of the other commandments between those two: “You shall not covet” and “You shall have no other gods before me.”

Think about what’s really going on inside you when you become obsessed with something or someone that someone else has and you don’t.  Even if you don’t act on it, the impulse is still there.  Depending on what it is and how much you want it, you might sacrifice your own integrity to get what they have.  Even if you won’t, there’s someone else out there who will.  We hear about it all the time on the news.  Some person or nation has something that some other person or nation doesn’t have but wants.  So they fight over it.

Eventually, mutual envy becomes an obsession.  People sacrifice all kinds of things to its pursuit.  They lie, cheat, steal, and kill for it.  In time, it becomes a kind of god in itself, leading us all the way back to the first commandment: “you shall have no other gods before me.”  Thus, we can look at the entire list of Ten Commandments through the lens of the last and the first commandments.  Envy leads to idolatry.  The last commandment leads to the first by way of the other eight.

Someone once asked Jesus, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”  Jesus replied, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

A lot of people have come to understand the Ten Commandments as being summed up by these two ideas from Jesus.  They say that commandments #1-4 can be summed up under “love the Lord your God” and #5-10 can be summed up under “love your neighbor.”

I think that Jesus’ summary of the Torah fits well with what we just said about envy leading to idolatry.  He taught people to love their neighbors, but it’s hard to love people for who they are when you’re green with envy over what they have and you don’t.

The secret, I think, to getting past this cycle of destruction lies in what I like to call the hidden commandment.  Jesus summarizes the Ten Commandments with a single Great Commandment.  He replaces the long list of “thou shalt nots” with a single “thou shalt.”  Jesus says, “Thou shalt love.”  Love God and love your neighbor.  It’s that simple.  Isn’t it funny how people like to complicate things?

But, before we do that, we should look a little closer at Jesus’ commandment.  The hidden commandment is tucked away where it can be easily missed.  Jesus said, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  [And] ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”  Can you hear it?  Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.  The Great Commandment is love and the hidden commandment within it is to love yourself.

This whole culture of envy: where do you think it comes from?  I see people who get up every morning and, at some level, hate what they see in the mirror.  They wish they could be somebody else.  So they try.  The problem is that everybody else hates themselves too.  They get up, look in the mirror, and wish they could be somebody else too.  But they can’t, so they settle for coveting what other people have.

In our addiction to envy, most of us tend to forget that we are unique and beloved children, made in the image of God.  No matter how we try to destroy it, run from it, or hide it in the closet, none of us can change who we are.  Your true self, “the you that is really you in your heart of hearts,” is beautiful and beloved.  Most of us try to deliberately forget or ignore that truth.  Some of us even try to use God and religion as a way to cover up what we don’t like about ourselves.  We think that faith can make us more like somebody else.  Personally, I think real faith will make us more like ourselves.

Hundreds of years ago a great Jewish rabbi named Susya of Hanipol talked about this tendency.  He said (I paraphrase), “When I die and get to heaven, God will not ask me, ‘Why were you not more like Moses?’  God will ask me, ‘Why were you not more like Susya?’”

During this season of Lent, when Christians are preparing to celebrate the holiday of Easter, a lot of people use the time to try and change what they don’t like about themselves.  They try to break a bad habit, give up a vice, or even drop a few extra pounds.  They try to make themselves conform to some imaginary ideal of what they should be.  A lot of folks even look to the Ten Commandments as a guide to the kinds of things they should and shouldn’t be doing.  But before you start checking on your long list of “thou shalt nots” and before you get all negative on yourself because you don’t look like or act like someone else, I want to invite you to listen more carefully to Jesus’ Great Commandment.  Jesus said, “Thou shalt love.”  Love God.  Love your neighbor.  Love yourself.

You’ve got to start by learning to love yourself.  Practice the wisdom of self-acceptance.  If you’re going to try to do anything, try to cultivate in yourself an awareness of the truth that God loves you unconditionally, as you are, warts and all.  Jesus said that God causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on good people and bad people alike.  God doesn’t discriminate.  Even if you can’t hold it together and “your cheese is sliding off your cracker” (thank you, Brennan Manning), you are still loved and accepted as you are.

Love yourself.  That’s the hidden commandment.  That’s the truth that has the power to free you from the shackles of envy and help you become the best possible version of yourself.  Then, and only then, can you learn to love others for who they really are.  Then we can all learn together how to give back the infinite love that God has already lavished on us.

The Art of Letting Go

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment

Over in Africa, they have a very interesting way of catching monkeys.  First, they secure a hollowed-out coconut to the end of a line and make a small hole in one end.  Next, they put something small and tasty (e.g. some nuts) inside the coconut.  Eventually, a monkey comes along and realizes that there’s a treat inside the coconut.  It reaches inside to get the treat.  Here’s the catch: the hole in the coconut is only big enough for the monkey’s hand to get through if it is empty.  As long as the monkey is holding onto the treat, it can’t get out.  If the monkey wanted to, it could let go and get away any time.  However, they almost never do that.  Instead, they hang on for dear life, even though it means their death.

Letting go is a hard thing to do.  Just ask parents who have ever dropped a sons or daughters off at college.  You hope that everything you’ve said and done over the past 18 years will be enough to guide them on their way, you draw out the goodbyes for as long as you can, but there’s no stopping that inevitable moment when you just let go, get back into the car, and drive away without them.

Our Buddhist neighbors have a lot to teach us Christians about the art of letting go.  Their entire spiritual path is built around that idea.  They start with the observation that life is full of suffering.  We never suffer, so they say, for the reasons we think we do.  We think we suffer because we lack something we want.  We say things like this: I wish I had a better job.  Why?  So I can make more money.  Why?  So I can buy more expensive things.  Why?  So I can impress this other person.  Why?  So she or he will like me.  And so on and so forth.  Happiness, we think, is always just one step outside of our reach.  We think it lies in some other job, object, or person.  If I could just have that, then I would be happy.

“No,” the Buddha says, “you won’t be.”  Real suffering doesn’t come from your lack of something, but from your desire for it.  If you can learn to let go of that inner urge to always be reaching and grabbing for the next big thing, you’ll find real happiness.  Along the way, you’ll also begin to find out who you really are inside.  We tend to lose sight of that in our endless pursuit of the next big thing.  We get lost in the rat race.  As we learn to let go, we find ourselves again.  The end result of this process is what Buddhists have always called Enlightenment.  All of their rituals and meditation exercises are oriented toward this one goal.  It’s all about letting go.

The art of letting go factors rather highly in this morning’s reading from the gospel according to Mark.  Our story is part of a series of stories that we started talking about two weeks ago on Transfiguration Sunday.  It began with the story of a blind man who Jesus had to heal twice.  After the first time Jesus touched him, he was beginning to see, but everything was still blurry.  After the second time, he could see clearly.  We took this as a kind of metaphor for Peter, one of Jesus’ disciples, who was in the process of learning how to see (in a spiritual sense), but wasn’t quite seeing things clearly yet.

In the section just before today’s passage, Jesus asks Peter, “Who do you say that I am?”

Peter boldly replies, “You are the Messiah.”

Then Jesus begins to explain what it means to be the Messiah.  He tells his disciples that the Messiah “must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

At this point, Peter steps in and pulls Jesus aside with some friendly advice.  One might say that Peter saw Jesus as the hot new presidential candidate and himself as Jesus’ campaign manager.  Peter’s idea of Jesus as the Messiah (or “Christ”) was very different from Jesus’ idea of himself.  Peter thought the Messiah was supposed to be part political leader, part military revolutionary, and part spiritual guru: Che Guevara meets Barack Obama meets Dr. Phil.  With God on their side, they were supposed to have a meteoric rise to fame and power.

But Jesus, it seemed, had a very different idea of what his life is supposed to be all about.  Instead of fame and fortune, he talked about suffering and rejection.  This really got under Peter’s skin, so he got up in Jesus’ face about it, but Jesus let him have it right back.

“Get behind me, Satan!”  He said, “For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”  In other words, there’s a bigger story going on than the one you see right in front of your face.  Jesus knew how he fit into that bigger story because he knew who he was as God’s beloved Son.  He would conquer the world, not through violence, but through the power of self-giving love.  This was not an insight he could have had if he had been busy selling out to his culture’s idea of what a Messiah should be.  But Peter, as it turns out, was having a hard time letting go of that idea.  He was holding onto it so tight because he was absolutely convinced that the future security and prosperity of his country depended on it.

Don’t people still do that all the time?  If you flip through the various noise news channels on any given day, you’ll find no shortage of people angrily shouting at each other because everyone is convinced that their idea holds the key to peace and plenty in the future.  Whenever they stop to take a breather, the audience is instantly swamped with commercials for products that also claim to hold the secret to happiness.

We human beings have this crazy tendency to get so caught up in our own egos, ideas, products, and relationships that we forget who we really are inside.  We are God’s beloved children.  Our lives are part of a bigger story that has been going on since the beginning of time and will continue until its end.  Jesus never forgot that truth.  His faith in his identity as God’s beloved Son gave him the strength to resist the temptation to sell out to the popular ideology of his day.  Suffering and rejection didn’t scare him one bit because he knew the great Love at the center of the universe that transcends fear and death.

Today, God is inviting you to enter into a greater awareness of that Love by letting go of your attachment to those things, people, or ideas that compete for your trust.  Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?”

You are invited to participate in the art of letting go and trust in the Love that is stronger than death.  Maybe the thing for you to let go of is an idea, thing, or person.  Maybe it’s an old grudge or crush.  Maybe it’s an unhealthy attachment to work or a cause you believe in.  It can be good things too:  like your attachment to your family, church, or system of beliefs.  Many of these are wonderful things, but they can’t tell you who you are or give you lasting happiness.  Whatever your attachment is, Jesus is inviting you to let it go and rediscover your true identity as God’s beloved child.

It’s not an easy path.  Christians call it “the Way of the Cross” for a reason.  You will have to face your own fear of mortality.  You will have to sacrifice your sense of security.  But the promise, as Jesus gives it, is that you can ultimately save your life by letting go of it.  That’s what faith in the Resurrection is all about.

None of us does this perfectly.  We’re all refusing to let go of something inside that keeps us from embracing who we really are and living the kind of full life that God intends for us.  The good news is that our refusal to let go doesn’t change who we are as God’s beloved children; it only keeps us from recognizing the truth about ourselves.

As I was writing this sermon, I got a message about an old college buddy who passed away quite suddenly this weekend.  Like all such announcements, it reminded me of the fragility of our biological existence.  It also reminded me that the call to let go extends even to letting go of life itself.  God asks a lot from us (everything, in fact).  I compare it to doing a trust fall off the edge of the Grand Canyon, believing that we are held, as the apostle Paul says, by a reality that is higher, deeper, longer, and broader than we can possible imagine.  It is the Love that passes knowledge and the peace surpassing understanding.  When we are called upon to trust and let go, whether it’s letting go of some person, thing, or idea that we’re clinging to for happiness and security or letting go of life itself in our final moments, we journey forward in faith, trusting that we are not wandering into the darkness, but are being welcomed into the light.  We are not enveloped by oblivion; we are embraced by eternity.

Repent! Think Different.

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

This morning’s sermon from First Pres, Boonville.

The text is Mark 1:9-15.

Three brothers grow up together in Dublin, Ireland.  When they come of age and go off to make their way in the world, they make a pact: whenever they drink, they’ll always order three pints of Guinness, one for each brother.  One of the brothers settles in New York, where he finds an Irish pub and becomes a regular.  He explains the pact to the barkeep, who always knows to bring him three pints.  Then, one fine day, the man comes in and asks for only two pints.  The barkeep realizes that one of his brothers must have died.

“Condolences,” he says as he brings the pints over, “these are on the house, on account of your loss.”

“What are you talking about?”  He says, “There’s no loss.  I just gave up drinking for Lent!”

I think this guy has the right idea about Lent.  He’s creative!  He’s thinking outside of the box.

Traditionally, this is the season of the church year where they really turn on the guilt.  A lot of people talk about “giving something up for Lent.”  This tradition got started way back in the olden days when new church members (called “catechumens”) would spend several weeks spiritually preparing themselves for baptism on Easter Sunday.  They would pray and fast for extended periods of time, sometimes intentionally going without food for days on end.

Eventually, this practice was extended to all Christians and has been watered down to the point where people symbolically try to break a bad habit or deny themselves some minor luxury, like chocolate, during the 40 days before Easter (as if going without M&Ms for a few weeks was really supposed to be spiritually empowering).  Our scripture readings in church during this time tend to be a little more somber in tone.  For example, Jesus starts his sermon in today’s reading from Mark’s gospel with a call for people to “repent.”

I don’t know about you, but that word (repent) stirs up some very specific mental images for me.  Maybe it’s just because I grew up down south in the Bible Belt, but I have several memories of fiery preachers on street corners with signs that said things like, “Repent, sinner!”

These guys (they were usually male), had a knack for going into great detail about the pains of hell that awaited those sinners who would face the wrath of God on the Day of Judgment.  The only way out, they said, was to repent.  And by repent, they mean: convert to (our version of) Christianity and feel really, really sorry for all your sins.  Do that, and maybe (just maybe) God won’t burn you in hell for eternity.

So, that’s their story.  I think I want to tell a different one.  I think we need to take a good, hard look at that word, repent, and see what it actually means, rather than let some fire-breathing preacher do the job for us.  The word repent in Greek is metanoia, which literally means “to change the way you think.”

Do you remember that series of advertisements for Apple Computers that came out about ten years ago?  They had pictures of all kinds of original geniuses like Albert Einstein, Jim Henson, Mahatma Gandhi, and Jane Goodall.  And next to each person’s photo was the phrase: “Think Different.”  To me, that’s what the word repent means: “Think Different.”  Think outside the box.  Get creative.  Imagine new possibilities.  “Explore strange, new worlds.  Seek out new life and new civilizations.  Boldly go where no one has gone before.”

So the, what is it that we’re supposed to “think different” about?  Well, the full text of Jesus’ sermon from today’s gospel reading goes like this: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

We’ve already talked about what “repent” means.  What about the rest of it?  As many of you already know, one of my favorite phrases in the entire Bible is, “the kingdom of God has come near.”  A lot of folks like to think of “the kingdom of God” (a.k.a. “the kingdom of heaven”) as a happy place that exists way up on some cloud or in an alternate dimension where people go when they die, but that’s not how Jesus uses the phrase.  Listen to what he says again, “the kingdom of God has come near.”  Another way to translate “has come near” is “is at hand.”  Let’s try something.  If you’ve been hanging out here for a while, you’ve probably done this with me before, but we’ll do it again, just so the message sinks in.  Hold your hand out in front of you and look at it.  Jesus says, “the kingdom of God (heaven) is at hand.”  How far away is heaven?  As close as your own hand.

For Jesus, the kingdom of God is a present reality.  It has to do with this world.  The kingdom of God is Jesus’ vision of what this world would be like if God were allowed to be in charge instead of the powers that be.  In a world where “might makes right,” Jesus has the audacity to stand up and say, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” and “blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.”  Remember the Berlin Wall?  It stood for decades as a symbol of the barrier between democracy and communism.  The powers that be on both sides of that wall had their guns and missiles pointed at each other around the clock.  Do you remember how it came down in a single night in 1989?  It didn’t happen because we Americans scared those Russians away with our big, bad nuclear weapons.  It happened because one East German official mistakenly announced on TV that their borders were now open.  Later that night, as people started lining up at the border, Harald Jaeger, a low-ranking border-guard, made the first decision to open his gate.  People flooded through to the other side.  Within days, the wall was torn down.  Within a year, Germany was reunited.  Two years after that, the great Soviet Union itself was gone.  An entire generation of Americans and Russians was raised to believe that the Cold War would end with a mushroom cloud and the fulfillment of Mutually Assured Destruction.  But it ended with dancing instead of marching, singing instead of marching, and the sound of champagne bottles being uncorked instead of the sound of gunfire.  Who could have imagined such a peaceful resolution?  “The kingdom of God has come near.”

Now, that’s a big-picture example.  I think the kingdom of God comes near to us every day.  Whenever we’re at the pharmacy, café, or supermarket and we look the server in the eye, “the kingdom of God has come near.”  Whenever some jerk cuts you off in traffic and you don’t give him the finger or blow your horn out of spite, “the kingdom of God has come near.”  Whenever two people in conflict sit down together and try their best to work it out, “the kingdom of God has come near.”  Whenever your kid comes home and says, “Mom & Dad, I’m gay,” and the first words out of your mouth are, “I love you,” “the kingdom of God has come near.”  Whenever your spouse is in the hospital and you’re standing by the bed, holding his/her hand and saying, “We’ll get through this,” “the kingdom of God has come near.”

Whenever aging parents agree to let their children hire in-home assistance for them, even though they don’t think they need it, but know that it will put their children’s minds at ease, “the kingdom of God has come near.”

The kingdom of God is a present reality.  It’s Jesus’ vision of what this world could be like.  He calls it “good news” and invites people to “believe in” it.  Have you ever “believed in” something or someone?  Maybe there’s some high school kid who is nervous before that big performance or big game and the coach or teacher says, “I believe in you.”  It’s empowering, isn’t it?  A statement like that can really make a difference in a kid’s life.  And I don’t care how old you are, whether you’re age 9 or 90, we all still need to hear that from time to time: “I believe in you.”  In the same way, you might donate your time and energy to cause you believe in: feeding the hungry, taking care of young kids, or helping underprivileged families have a Christmas.  When you believe in it, you give yourself to it, and that makes a difference.  Jesus called it “good news.”  He invites all of us to believe in that good news: “the kingdom of God has come near.”

And that leads us back to that word, repent.  It’s has nothing to do with guilt or fear.  It has everything to do with thinking outside of the box.  The great scientist Albert Einstein once said, “A new type of thinking is essential if [hu]mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.”  Jesus is inviting you today to embrace the mystery of imagination and participate in the miracle of creativity.  Think different in order to make a difference.  That’s the “good news” Jesus is inviting you to “believe in” and be part of: the kingdom of God come near, the kingdom of heaven-on-earth.

We pray for it every Sunday:

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Mountaintop Experiences

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

This morning’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is Mark 9:2-10.

Click here to listen at fpcboonville.org

Steve Urkel's unrequited first crush on Laura Winslow made him famous.

Who remembers their first real crush?  C’mon, who doesn’t?  It’s one of the most unforgettable rites of passage in life.  It happened to me in the seventh grade.  Her name was Brooke.  She was funny, pretty, and everything else that a thirteen year old guy could want.  Above all else, what I liked best about Brooke was that she was so very kind.  Those of us who have ever worked with middle schoolers know how rare that is.

It was about that time when the rest of our friends at school were beginning to pair off with one another.  We were goofing off as usual and I joked that we should get together too.  I believe her exact words were, “Yuck, no!”  And we all had a good laugh.  But then… something happened.  It occurred to me that it might not be the worst idea in the world.  In fact, I kind of liked the sound of it.

And that’s when I was initiated into a whole world of “strange new feelings.”  I’m sure you all remember the symptoms: your heart is pounding, you can’t eat, you can’t sleep, you can’t think, and you can’t even breathe.  It seems like they should have some kind of medication for that.  The mental topography of your world gets turned upside down.  Before, all you thought about was: “Where is my locker?  Where will I sit at lunch?  What route should I take to my next class?”  After, all you can think about is: “Where is her locker?  Where is she sitting at lunch?  What route is she taking to her next class?”  It’s a good thing the police can’t read your mind when you have a crush, because I’m sure we’d all be arrested for stalking.

My first crush hit me like a ton of bricks.  Even though we had been friends since we were little, I looked at this person and it was like I was seeing her for the very first time.  I saw my friend in a whole new light.

This morning, we’re celebrating the Feast of the Transfiguration.  We’re remembering a significant moment when some of Jesus’ friends looked up and saw him in a whole new light for the first time.

The story began about a week earlier, when Jesus was traveling through a village called Bethsaida.  On his way through town, Jesus met a blind person.  Everybody knows what happens next: Jesus instantly heals the person, everybody cheers, and a party ensues.  Right?  Wrong.   What happens next is the only time in the four gospels that Jesus doesn’t instantly heal someone.  He has to do it twice.  After the first time, Jesus asks, “Can you see anything?”  The person says, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.”  There was some improvement, but things still looked blurry.  So Jesus had to go back and try again.  After the second attempt, the person was able to see.

Immediately after this two-part healing, Jesus and his disciples were traveling along the road between Bethsaida and the next town.  Jesus asked, “Who do people say that I am?”  The disciples tossed around some of the more popular theories, most of them involving reincarnations of prophets from Jewish history.  Then Jesus asked, “But who do you say that I am?”  And Peter, in a moment of insight, declared, “You are the Messiah (the divinely appointed ruler who would liberate Israel from foreign oppression).”  And then, I suppose, the Sunday school teacher must have given Peter a gold star for his theologically perfect answer.

But alas, the glorious thrill of success was short-lived.  In the very next breath, Jesus started explaining that, while Peter was right about the Messiah part, he was wrong about the definition of the word Messiah.  The anointed leader would be a suffering servant, not a conquering king.  I guess the Sunday school teacher had to take that gold star back.

Peter went from spot-on to dead wrong in a matter of minutes.  Like the blind person in Bethsaida, Peter’s eyes were very slowly being opened.  He wasn’t the person he used to be, but he wasn’t yet the person he would become.  He was still somewhere in the middle.  After chewing Peter out for his right-yet-wrong answer, Jesus promised, “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”  Did you get that?  Jesus said, “There are some standing here who will not taste death until they see.”  Peter is learning how to see things in a new way.

Fast forward one week.  The very next scene in Mark’s gospel is the passage we read from this morning: the story of the Transfiguration.  Peter, along with James and John, follow Jesus up a mountain on a spiritual retreat.  While they are praying and meditating, they started seeing Jesus in a new way.  The text says that Jesus was “transfigured before them.”  Now, the New Testament was written in Greek, and the Greek word for “transfigure” is “metemorphothe,” which is where we get the scientific term metamorphosis.  Metamorphosis, you may remember, is what we call the process whereby a tadpole becomes a frog or a caterpillar becomes a butterfly.  For Peter, seeing Jesus in this new light was like watching a butterfly emerge from its cocoon and spread its beautiful, colorful wings.  It was a like a thirteen year old boy seeing his childhood playmate become his first crush.  Everything is the same, yet everything is different.  The text says that Jesus’ “clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.”

And then, things get really weird.  They notice that there are two other figures standing near Jesus and talking to him: Moses and Elijah.  They were the two of the most prominent prophets in the Jewish religion.  Their appearance meant that Jesus must be important enough to be in the same club as them.  Even though something new and unique was about to happen through Jesus, it would stand in continuity with the heroes who had come before him.  This would have been very important to a Jew in the first century.

In Peter’s mind, an event this big deserved some kind of commemoration.  He said, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”  That’s understandable, isn’t it?  When we have those big moments in life, there’s always a part of us that wishes we could just stay there forever.  I can’t blame Peter for feeling that way, but once again, he is only just beginning to see.

While Peter is getting ready to build a memorial on the site of this event, a thick fog rolls in and obscures everything from view.  Interesting, isn’t it?  This passage is all about learning how to see in a new light, yet right in the middle of it, all this glorious seeing suddenly stops.  And somewhere in the fog, a voice says, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”  The mysterious voice in the dark fog said, “Listen!”  Don’t build a memorial.  Don’t stay here with your mountaintop experience.  Just listen.

When the experience was over, Peter and the others walked back down the mountain in a kind of stunned silence.  This whole mountaintop experience had left them with a lot more questions than answers.  Like the blind person in Bethsaida, Peter was still learning how to see.  Unlike the blind person in Bethsaida, things were becoming less clear, not more clear.  Peter just wasn’t quite sure about what to make of it all.

A lot of people have had “mountaintop experiences” of one kind or another.  For some folks, they are sudden, dramatic, and profoundly religious in nature: they feel like they’ve been “born again” or “filled with the Holy Spirit.”  For others, the spiritual awakening happens gradually over time.  These folks come to recognize a growing sense of peace or serenity in their lives that wasn’t there before.  Others find it in their vocation: maybe a job that you were just “meant to do,” or a cause that you deeply believe in.  Some experience it the accomplishment of particular tasks: that perfect moment as you sand the last rough edge off a table you’ve just built, the sight of compiled and sorted data on a computer screen, or the last note of a difficult piece of music that you’ve been rehearsing for weeks.  Maybe for you it comes with the feel and smell of a hot cup of coffee on your back porch in the morning or the sight of the sun slipping slowly over the horizon as your fishing line rests in the water.  All of these mountaintop experiences are sacred, whether we realize it or not.  They are beautiful moments of deep clarity and awareness.  They are a gift.  They open us up to a whole new world that we never thought possible.

But they never last long enough.  Sometimes it seems like a split-second or less and then they’re gone.  Like Peter, we wish we could just build a dwelling and stay in that moment forever.  But that’s just not how it works.  The fog of real life rolls in and we have to walk back down the mountain to where we came from.  But even though the moment can’t last forever, maybe there is some part of it that we can take with us into the rest of our lives.  Maybe we’ll be able to sense that mysterious voice of love calling to us from within the fog and saying, “Listen!”  “Pay attention!”  “This is important!”

If we can heed that advice, if we are truly listening, we’ll find that all of our moments are just as profound as those mountaintop experiences.  Just like the poet William Blake said, you’ll be able “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.”

We are not alone.  All of life is sacred.  Life itself is meaningful.  Our various kinds of mountaintop experiences can help us to see that truth more clearly, if only we would stop trying to memorialize them and build our dwellings in them, if we would instead listen with the ears of our hearts to what they will teach us, and trust that the light is always shining, even if we can’t quite see it all the time.