Category: Sermon

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.

Elements of Worship: Sacrament

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Elements of Worship, Sermon2 Comments

This week’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is I Corinthians 11:23-26.

Click here to listen to this sermon at fpcboonville.org

“ACHOO!”

“Bless you!”

Gyula Derkovits, 'The Last Supper'

Do you know why people say that when someone sneezes?  The practice goes back almost to the time of Christ, but nobody knows for sure how or why it got started.  There are a number of interesting theories out there.  Some think it started during an outbreak of the bubonic plague as a way of commending people to God’s care when nothing more could be done for them (i.e. “It’s been nice knowing you”).  Tibetan Buddhists believed that sneezing provides a moment of “clear consciousness” (like dying, falling asleep, or meditating) during which one might be able to achieve Enlightenment.  But my favorite explanation is this one: when you sneeze, your soul is temporarily dislodged from your body.  The blessing makes it go back in so that the devil won’t come and possess you.

That’s just one example of the kinds of crazy superstitions that we got rid of at the end of the middle ages in western society.  We might still say “bless you” when somebody sneezes, but I seriously doubt that anyone still believes that it’s your soul trying to leave your body.  We needed to get rid of that superstition (along with several others).  I, for one, am glad that our society no longer burns women at the stake because “they might be witches.”

The light of reason brought us out of those dark ages and into the modern era, where humanity has grown by leaps and bounds.  We’ve landed on the moon and created a global communication network so efficient that I could just flip out my phone and have a conversation with someone in India if I felt like it.  Letting go of these old superstitions has, on the whole, been a good thing.  But, like everything else in this world, our so-called Enlightenment has its dark side.  We now live in a world that is “disenchanted”.  We’ve lost that sense of meaning and connectedness with the world around us.  We no longer see spirits and fairies in the trees and rivers.  If we think of God at all, it is as some distant and abstract Creator who has little or nothing to do with the world as we know it.  Naïve superstition gives way to cynical materialism and we see ourselves as random collections of atoms that just conveniently happen to make consciousness possible.  The world around us becomes an empty shell of resources just waiting to be exploited for profit.  Human life becomes equally meaningless under this mindset.  What matters is gaining the upper hand in the ongoing battle for survival (which we all eventually lose).

In reaction to this sinister cynicism, some religious folks have chosen to side with the aforementioned distant Creator.  They gather round their campfires and sing, “This world is not my home, I’m just a-passin’ through” and “Some bright morning, when this life is over, I’ll fly away.”  These folks want to save their souls from this wicked world in order to enjoy the blessings of some far-off heaven for eternity.  This perspective may seem more like faithfulness at first, but it nevertheless leaves this world looking just as empty and meaningless as cynical materialism does.  It is the advocates of this kind of escapism who shout things like, “Drill, baby drill!” and figure, “This whole world is going to hell anyway, so why bother to take care of it?”

We needed to drop the ridiculous superstition of the middle ages, but I wonder if maybe we threw out the baby with the bathwater?  Secular and religious folks alike have lost all sense of connectedness to God, the earth, and each other.  Both sides are saying that this earth just doesn’t matter.

Is there some way to reconnect with that larger sense of meaning and mystery in the cosmos without going back to that ridiculous superstition?  I think so.

We’re currently in the middle of a five-week sermon series on the Elements of Worship.  We’ve already looked at the Word, prayer, and service as Elements of Worship.  Next week, we’ll be talking about relationship.  This week, we’re talking about sacrament.

The word sacrament comes from a Latin word that means mystery.  When Christians talk about sacraments, they’re typically referring to one of two church events: Baptism and the Eucharist (a.k.a. the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion).  A few weeks ago, we had a service where talked about the sacrament of Baptism at length in the sermon.  We even baptized three new people into our congregation.  So this week, I’m mainly going to focus on sacrament of the Eucharist (which we happen to be celebrating in our service later today).

In the sacrament (mystery) of the Eucharist, we celebrate three realities.  First, we remember Jesus: who he is and what he did.  Jesus revealed the heart of God to the world in a way that no one else ever has.  He “gave himself for us” in a life of service and love.  We participate in that act of self-giving when we remember him and receive his gift of himself, his body and blood, into our own bodies.

Second, we participate in a present reality.  Remember the old saying, “You are what you eat”?  Well, it’s true.  We are the body of Christ.  Through him, we are also part of each other: one loaf, one cup, one body, one family.  They also say that “blood is thicker than water”.  In this case, the blood of Christ is thicker than our own blood.  The blood of Christ flows in our veins.  Gone is any illusion of pedigree, race, nationality, status, or caste.  As Christians, this is where our loyalty lies.  This is where our true identity is to be found.  Blood is thicker than water and this blood is thickest of all.  When we target, discriminate against, or otherwise antagonize those who have been to the table of Christ with us, we are turning our backs on our own kin.  This is a truth worth remembering whenever we are next tempted to divide the world into “us” and “them”.

Finally, Christians at the Lord’s table anticipate the future with hope.  Christ told his disciples that he would drink wine with them next when the kingdom of God comes in its fullness.  The end of history is often described in the scriptures as a fully-catered wedding reception.  The bread and wine we now eat and drink around this table is a foretaste of that coming celebration when all things are made new, justice and equality are established on earth, and (as it says in Revelation) “God will wipe every tear from [our] eyes.  Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.”  When the tides of despair threaten to overwhelm us, we have these edible tokens to hold onto.  They are the aperitifs of the heavenly banquet.

In the Eucharist, we are fed with spiritual food.  This sacrament, I think, holds the key to reconnecting us with our lost sense of wonder and mystery.  Without it, Christian faith too easily becomes just one more product for sale in the modern marketplace of ideas.  With it, we are able to “taste and see that the Lord is good.”  Through this sacrament, we touch the mystery of Love that springs from the very heart of the universe and reaches out to its edges.  Just as we say in the Great Thanksgiving, I invite you to “Lift up your hearts” to see that “heaven and earth are full of [God’s] glory”.

How do we do this?  How can we “lift up our hearts”?  Well, I think we can start by simply celebrating the sacrament as often as we can.  As recently as the 1970s, most Presbyterian congregations celebrated the Eucharist only four times a year.  Since then, the frequency has increased.  Most of our churches celebrate it monthly.  More and more, there are churches in our denomination that are beginning to celebrate the sacrament on a weekly basis.  In our church, that is a decision for the session of elders to make.  I would like to encourage those of you who are currently serving as elders to meditate on this and consider increasing the frequency with which we celebrate communion.  In our Book of Order it says that the Eucharist “shall be celebrated regularly and frequently enough so that it is clear to all that the Lord’s Supper is integral to worship, and not an addition to it.”

We Presbyterians are used to thinking of our Sunday worship as revolving around the central event of reading and preaching God’s Word.  This is true.  But it’s also true that we worship in a binary system.  Our liturgy revolves around the twin stars of Word and Sacrament.  They are meant to go together.  John Calvin, one of the founders of our tradition, urged his churches in Geneva to celebrate Communion weekly.  Calvin told them that, yes, the scriptures make up the foundation of the church, but the sacraments are its pillars.  The church won’t stand up without both to support it.  Let’s make sure that we are not starving ourselves of Christ’s spiritual food and drink.

The moment of real transformation comes when we begin to see the presence of Christ, not just in this bread and wine, but everywhere we look.  This is what it means to “lift up your hearts” and see that “heaven and earth are full of [God’s] glory,” as it says in the liturgy.  The more regularly we honor the presence of the sacred mystery in this bread, the more we will begin to see it in all bread.  And we will see that, like this consecrated bread, all bread is meant to be shared.  So let’s share our bread with those who are hungry.  And I’m not just talking about literal bread either: let’s share the bread of freedom and equality with all.  Let’s learn to share the bread of work, education, healthcare, and housing with those who are also our brothers and sisters.  They are God’s children and we are one family.  This sharing is a sacramental sharing.  It’s an integral part of what we do here on Sunday.

This whole universe is sacred.  It is infused with divine glory from stem to stern.  Our celebration of the sacraments helps us reconnect with that mystery.  Let’s make that connection as deeply and as often as possible, so that it might stay with us as we go out from this place to share our bread with the hungry and be the body of Christ in the world.

Lift up your hearts.  Heaven and earth are full of God’s glory.  Let us give thanks.

Elements of Worship: Service

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Elements of Worship, SermonLeave a comment

This week’s sermon from First Pres, Boonville.  Part 3 in a series of 5.

The text is Matthew 16:21-28.

Click here to listen to this sermon at fpcboonville.org.

Star Trek's George Takei (Mr. Sulu). Image by Gage Skidmore.

Did you know that there’s a civil war going on in our country right now?  I’m serious.  There is.  It’s been happening for over thirty years.  Unlike the last Civil War, this one isn’t between the North and South.  You might be thinking, “He means the war between the political Right and the political Left.”  Nope.  Black and White?  Nope.  Haves and Have-nots?  Not even close.  Right now, I’m talking about the bitter divide that exists between Star Trek fans and Star Wars fans.  The geeks and nerds community is a house divided against itself.  My fellow Americans, this cannot be!

I feel so torn in this conflict.  The fight between Star Trek and Star Wars runs right through the center of my own heart.  I dream of one day being beamed aboard the starship Enterprise so that I too can “boldly go where no one has gone before.”  At the same time, I also fantasize about trained as a Jedi by Obi Wan Kenobi.  How can they ask me to choose sides between these two epic artifacts of science fiction lore?

Fortunately, there is one person out there who has issued a call for “Star Peace” and it’s none other than George Takei, the original Mr. Sulu on Star Trek.  He’s calling for a “Star Alliance” of fans from Star Trek and Star Wars who are willing to put aside their differences and fight the real threat to good science fiction: Twilight.  You may have seen the Twilight books and films being advertised in recent years.  For those who haven’t experienced it, Twilight, in George Takei’s own words, is all about “Vampires who sparkle and mope and go to high school.”  In Twilight, according to Takei, there is no “sense of heroism, camaraderie, and epic battle… There are no great stories, characters, or profound life lessons to be had… In Twilight, the only message that rings through loud and clear is: ‘Does my boyfriend like me?’”

Now, I don’t actually care if people like Twilight.  So why am I telling you this?  Why am I taking time out of my sermon to drag you down this wormhole into the darkest depths of the nerd kingdom?  Because I’m very intrigued by the way in which Mr. Takei has criticized Twilight.  Let me give it to you again in his words:

Gone is any sense of heroism, camaraderie, or epic battle.  In its place we have vampires that sparkle and mope and go to high school… there are no great stories, characters, or profound life lessons to be had in Twilight.  No.  In Twilight, the only message that rings through loud and clear is: ‘Does my boyfriend like me?’

What Mr. Takei is saying, in so many words, is that good stories are always bigger than the people in them.

As it is in science fiction, so it is in real life.  Imagine those who live entirely selfish lives with no connection to anyone or anything other than that which maximizes their own personal profit.  The thrill of financial stability lasts for a little while, but wears thin eventually.  Who can’t think of tabloid headlines depicting any number of celebrity scandals brought on by conspicuous consumption and wanton indulgence?  Despite its material benefits, I think most of us can agree that such a life does not sound ultimately appealing.  Something deep within us longs to be part of a bigger story than that of our own little lives.

We’ve been talking about the Elements of Worship these past few weeks at our church.  On the first week, we talked about the Word of God as an Element of Worship.  Last week we talked about Prayer.  If you missed either of those sermons, you can listen to them on our website at www.fpcboonville.org.  In coming weeks, we will discuss Sacrament and Relationship as Elements of Worship.  This week, we’re talking about Service as an Element of Worship.

“Service” is a word that we use a lot.  If you go out to a restaurant where the staff is friendly and the refills keep coming, you’re probably going to say, “Wow!  This place has really good service!”  And what will you do next?  You’ll probably leave a bigger tip.  Isn’t that interesting?  A waiter brings his whole self to work, welcomes customers with genuine personal warmth, and people just naturally respond with generosity.  Remember that point because it will become important later.  Here’s another example: When a person is a soldier or sailor in some branch of our country’s armed forces, we say that she is “in the service.”  In other words, she dedicates her whole self to the cause of national defense by risking her life in a combat zone.  We tend to respect that, don’t we?  A lot of people wear yellow ribbons that say, “Support the Troops.”

In the same way, when we talk about service as an Element of Worship, we’re talking about more than this one-hour-per-week ritual that we do on Sunday mornings in this building.  We’re talking about more than the cash we fork over in the collection plate.  We’re even talking about more than the time and energy that so many of you tirelessly volunteer for our various church projects during the year.  Just like that waiter or soldier, real service happens when you offer your whole self to something bigger than you.  Service, as an Element of Worship, is a self-offering.

As Christians, we see our self-offering as connected to and growing out of the self-offering of Jesus.  His life, death, and resurrection provide us with a lens through which we can come to understand what it means to give ourselves as an offering.

First, his life.  Jesus gave himself as an offering in two ways.  He offered himself to God and he offered himself to others.  These two ideas cannot be separated.  Jesus believed that God is Love, therefore you can’t love God with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength without loving your neighbor as yourself.  If you try to do one without the other, you’re going to end up very confused about what love is.

Jesus’ commitment to love (in this dual sense) got him into trouble on more than one occasion.  He exposed the hypocrisy of the powers that be.  He threatened the security of religious and political authorities in ways that no terrorist ever could.  Leaders in the public and private sectors alike were so frightened by what Jesus stood for that they even temporarily put aside their mutual hatred for each other in a grand conspiracy to have him killed.

Under these circumstances, no one would have blamed Jesus for mounting a defensive strategy in order to ensure his own survival, but that’s not what he does.  It says in today’s reading from the gospel according to Matthew: “Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”  Jesus walks straight into the belly of the beast, knowing full-well what the beast is about to do to him.

Jesus was not so caught up in his own ego that he wasn’t willing to offer himself.  He knew that his personal story was part of the universe’s bigger story.  Sure, he could pick up a sword and fight for his own survival, but he knew that survival isn’t everything.  His fellow Jews were fighting for their survival every day and, ironically, it was killing them.  “Those who live by the sword die by the sword,” he said.

So, instead of the path of survival, Jesus opted for the path of self-offering.  He lived his life of love as an offering to God and others.  When that love brought him into conflict with powerful forces that wanted to kill him, he walked the way of the cross and let them do their worst.  But that’s not the end of the story.

What happens next is the best part.  We celebrate it every year at Easter time.  The offering turned into a miracle.  Early in the morning, on the first day of the week, three women found an empty tomb.  And an angel asked them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?  He is not here.  He is risen!”  This is where the big story really gets going.  Death itself starts to unravel like an ugly old sweater.  The powers that be were vanquished by the power of love.  Christians remember this event annually as our most sacred holiday.  We celebrate it weekly in order to remind ourselves of what we really believe in.  As Christians, we don’t believe in survival; we believe in resurrection.  That is the true meaning of service (self-offering) as an Element of Worship.  Jesus taught us that.

What does this look like for us?  That’s a great story about Jesus, but how can we live lives of self-offering and resurrection today?  Jesus said to his disciples, “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 will find it.”  The way of the cross is a path, not just for Jesus, but for all of us as well.  We who claim to follow him must decide whether we will choose survival (like the world) or resurrection (like Jesus).

When we choose to follow the way of the cross, we become part of a story that’s bigger than us.  We say that we are willing to jeopardize our survival for something more important.  It’s a dangerous move to make, but if we move in faith, we see miracles.  I once heard someone say that, until you find something worth dying for, you’re not really living.  Are we really living?  Are you?  What are you willing to die for?  What is this church willing to die for?  When we find an answer to that question, we’ll learn what resurrection is really all about.  Like George Takei was saying: there we will find heroism, camaraderie, and epic battles.  There there are great stories, characters, and profound life lessons to be had.

I heard a story this week from Rev. Marlin Lavanhar, the senior minister at All Souls’ Unitarian Church in Tulsa, OK.  He said their church made a rather controversial decision several years ago.  They decided to take all the money that came into the church through their collection plate (about $20,000 per year) and give it away.  People were scared because that’s a lot of money.  The church depended on that money for their operating costs.  But they decided it was the right thing to do, so they amended their budget and went for it.  In that first year, rather than the $20,000 that usually came in through the collection plate, they raised $150,000 and gave it all away.  Now, you might say, “That’s great, but it’s too bad that they couldn’t meet their budget.”  Actually, according to Marlin, they did meet their budget that year.  They even took in about 10% more than they needed.  “Generosity begets generosity,” Marlin said.  Remember what I said about the waiter?  When somebody serves from the heart and offers him/herself, aren’t you just naturally inclined to leave a bigger tip?  Generosity begets generosity.

Let’s find another example, maybe one that’s a little closer to home.  I’ve mentioned this already, but I can’t help bragging on you folks again.  You remember this past Christmas Eve, right?  We heard about a crisis in our community where the county government was cutting funding to daycare programs.  Hundreds of kids were being affected and some of the most reputable and affordable daycare agencies were in danger of closing.  And the elders of our church voted unanimously to take the collection from Christmas Eve, our single biggest worship service of the year, and send the whole thing to one of those struggling daycare agencies.  Did you know that, with what came in that night, our little country church was able to cut a check for $1,000 to Thea Bowman House?  We’ve never taken up a Christmas Eve collection that big!  Generosity begets generosity.  Did you know that there are people in the community who noticed what we did and decided to join our church because of it?  That’s resurrection in action.

One more story about you folks.  Last summer, controversy was in the air as New York state was making a decision about legalizing same-sex marriage.  I drove down to Albany that week and stood in the halls of the state capitol building.  I saw the crowds of people shouting and holding signs with Bible verses about hellfire and damnation.  During that time, our little church took a stand.  We stood up and said, “All God’s children are created equal: black or white, male or female, gay or straight.”  At a church supper only two weeks before that happened, one of our own long-time church members came out of the closet to us at a church supper.  He shared his story with us.  And I remember the first thing that anybody said, after a long silence, was, “Well, God don’t make no junk!”  Our church took a stand.  We made a statement that this is a welcoming church.  We told the world that this church is a place where the law of love trumps the letter of the law.

Sure, it was a controversial thing to do.  It still is.  Our survival instinct might tell us to keep quiet and not rock the boat, because we don’t want to lose church members to controversy.  But you all chose resurrection instead of survival.  Did you know that people in the community noticed what we did?  On the very next Sunday after the legislation passed in Albany, a news crew surprised us during our morning worship.  They had TV news cameras set up right here in the sanctuary.  People heard about our little country church and said, “What?  A church that accepts and welcomes gay and lesbian people?  A church that believes that God loves everybody?  We’ve got to check this out!”  In the past few months, families have driven in from as far away as Utica to visit our church.  We didn’t lose people by being controversial, we gained them!  That’s resurrection in action!

And let me tell you what: we’re going to keep doing it.  We’re going to open the doors of this church so wide that the whole world will know it’s welcome here.  There are a lot of churches in Boonville, but there’s not very many where people can go and know they’ll be loved and accepted no matter who they are.  But people know they’re welcome here.  This sermon is being played on the radio, so even more people will know after this week.  I know it’s controversial but I don’t care (and neither should you).  Just like Jesus, we are offering ourselves to God and our neighbors.  We are choosing resurrection over survival.

When we go downstairs after worship today, we’ll be hearing our annual reports from all our different church committees.  We’ll be voting on this year’s budget and deciding our thoughts together for 2012.  As you look at the paperwork and hear the reports, I want you to remember what service and self-offering are really all about.  I want to invite you to look past your ego-driven instinct for survival and look to your God-given faith in resurrection.  That, more than anything else, will make a difference for the future of our church.  Like George Takei was saying: here we will find heroism, camaraderie, and epic battles.  Here there are great stories, characters, and profound life lessons to be had.

Here is a video of George Takei’s call for Star Peace:

Elements of Worship: Prayer

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Elements of Worship, SermonLeave a comment

This week’s sermon from First Pres, Boonville.  2nd of 5 in a series on the Elements of Worship.

The text is Matthew 6:5-15.

Mahatma Gandhi, the great Indian social reformer, once said something quite profound when someone asked him what he thought of Christianity.  He said, “I like your Christ but I don’t like your Christians.  They are so unlike your Christ.”  In a similar vein, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said to a group of Christians (in his typically caustic fashion), “Yuck, you make me sick!  Because you redeemed don’t look like you’re redeemed!”

While these comments are more than a little bit harsh, I think we Christians have to admit they are also more than a little bit true.  For a long time, Christians have held onto a crazy idea that we are the guardians of infallible doctrine and impeccable morals.  The end result of this idea is that the rest of the world has come to see Christians, not as messengers of good news and amazing grace, but as “sour-faced saints” with their halos screwed on just a little too tight.  Under these circumstances, church becomes little more than a “holy club” for people with an answer for every question and a solution to every problem.

Is this who we’re meant to be?  I think not.  Consider Nietzsche and Gandhi’s words in reverse: how would you describe someone who “looks like” he or she is “redeemed”?  Can you imagine what it would be like to live in moment-to-moment awareness of the truth that within, behind, and beyond the apparently random facts of life there is, at the very heart of the universe, a “Love that will not let me go”?

Christians (in their better moments) believe there has been at least one such life in the course of human history.  By this, I am referring of course to the life of Jesus.  Folks come out in droves to celebrate with us at Christmas and Easter the beginning and the end of Jesus’ thirty-something years on Earth (and we’re delighted to welcome them on those days).  But there are, of course, fifty other Sundays of the year when we celebrate everything that happened in the middle!  Jesus’ amazing life is something worth remembering, celebrating, and imitating all year long.  There is something so wonderful about the life of Jesus that even Gandhi, a devout Hindu, sat up and took notice.

“I like your Christ, but I don’t like your Christians.  They are so unlike your Christ.”

What was it about the life of Jesus that caught Gandhi’s attention?  What kind of moment-to-moment awareness of Love’s presence did Jesus live with?  One phrase that he liked to use more than any other was “the kingdom of heaven.”  For him, this wasn’t some far away realm where angels played harps on clouds, but a very present reality.  For Jesus, the kingdom of heaven was very near, “at hand,” closer to every atom than its own nucleus, closer to every person than her own soul.  If you asked him to describe it, he would start telling stories about the things he saw around him.  Jesus saw heaven everywhere: a farmer sowing seed, a woman baking bread, a merchant buying pearls, a shepherd tending sheep, a woman sweeping her house out, birds that nest, seeds that grow, and flowers that bloom.  For Jesus, the question isn’t “where is heaven?”  For Jesus, the question is “where isn’t heaven?”  This is the kind of life that Jesus lived: a moment-to-moment awareness of the truth that within, behind, and beyond the apparently random facts of life there is, at the very heart of the universe, a “Love that will not let me go.”

“Believe the good news,” he said, “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

This week is the second in a five week series of sermons on the elements of worship.  We’re looking at who, what, when, and where but also (most importantly) why we do what we do each week in church.  Last week, we talked about the Word of God, found in (but not mistaken for) the words of the scriptures, which forms a kind of central fulcrum around which the rest of our liturgy revolves.  This week, we’re talking about prayer.  In the coming weeks, we’ll cover service, sacrament, and relationship.

I began this week’s discussion on prayer by describing the kind of life that Jesus lived: a life of moment-to-moment spiritual awareness.  In doing this, I kind of started at the end.  This is the point to which we will return.  This moment-to-moment spiritual awareness, demonstrated and embodied in the life of Jesus, is the purpose of all prayer and the final destination of every praying person.

But before we get back to that central point: a few words about what prayer is not.  First, prayer is not magic.  There are many churches and organizations out there who teach that if you pray for something long enough, hard enough, or in a particular way, you will (or should) always get what you want.  Many prominent televangelists and proponents of the so-called “Prosperity Gospel” have made use of this idea as a fund-raising strategy.  The most corrupt among them have willingly and knowingly manipulated people into giving up their money as a “seed of faith” in exchange for some sort of miracle.  A private investigation of one such organization during the 1990s found that the donations were being sent to a bank where the checks were deposited and prayer requests were simply thrown into the trash.

A further problem with the “prayer is magic” approach is how it deals with the inevitable question: “What happens when we don’t get what we pray for?”  This is not so big a deal when we’re talking about some trivial thing that the heart desires, but it becomes a big deal when we’re praying about things that really do matter: What happens when the cancer doesn’t go into remission?  What happens when the child isn’t found alive?  These are big questions that make a big problem for those who subscribe to the idea that prayer is magic.  Sadly, there are those in this group who answer this question by blaming the victim.  “Oh well,” they say, “I guess you just didn’t have enough faith.”  If you’ve ever had someone say that to you, let me be blunt and tell you that it’s nothing but a load of baloney.  It’s a lie from the pit of hell.  Don’t believe it.  There are many stories in the gospels of Jesus working miracles for people, but never once does he look an individual person in the eye and say, “Go away.  You don’t have enough faith.”  Don’t take my word for it, go and look it up for yourself.

In response to this obviously destructive idea that prayer is magic, many other folks have adopted the very modern notion that prayer isn’t actually anything at all.  They would say that prayer is a placebo.  For those who might not be familiar with that term, the Placebo Effect is an event that doctors have noticed during clinical trials of experimental medications.  When they’re testing a new drug, they run a test where half of the people are given the real medicine and the other half are given a sugar pill (i.e. placebo) that looks like the real thing but doesn’t actually do anything to your body.  Nobody knows which pill they’re getting.  What the doctors found is that the patients who received the placebo nevertheless showed signs of improvement.  The mind was tricked into believing that it was receiving a new medical treatment that would make the body feel better.  So strong was this mental expectation that the body responded by feeling better, even when there was no actual medicine involved.  This is known as the Placebo Effect.

Those who view prayer as a placebo see it in the same way.  They think that prayer is just a mental exercise that people undertake in order to make themselves feel better.  It would be foolish, they say, to think that God would intervene to make a difference in human circumstances.  Honestly, the idea that prayer is a placebo makes me just as uncomfortable as the idea that prayer is magic.  I have a hard time believing that this universe is a closed and mechanical system with nothing beyond itself.  I think that God is real, that God does care about our pain, and that God does make a difference in this world.  I feel stuck between unfounded idealism on the one hand and hard-nosed cynicism on the other.  I can’t claim to have the final answer to this conundrum, but I have a hunch that the reality of prayer is actually a mystery that somehow encompasses and yet transcends both of ends of the ideological spectrum.

The Presbyterian Book of Order defines prayer as “a conscious opening of the self to God.”  I really like that.  It reminds me of the first verse from our beloved hymn: “Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love; Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee, Opening to the sun above.”  While I do believe that prayer can and does make a tangible difference in this life and this world, I don’t see that as the reason why we pray.

Even though it’s become kind of a dirty word (even in church), I have to admit that I like the term religion.  It comes from a Latin word that means “to reconnect”.  Thanks to online tools like Facebook, people all over the world today are enjoying that feeling of reconnecting with old friends from days gone by.  It’s the same way with religious practices.  Through them, we find ways to reconnect with God, ourselves, our neighbors, and the universe as a whole.

Now, I should qualify that statement by saying that I don’t believe we are ever completely disconnected from God in an absolute sense.  The scriptures tell us that it is in God that we “live, move, and have our being,” that God is “above all, through all, and in all,” and that “from God, through God, and to God are all things.”  When we reconnect with God, we are reconnecting with that which is already nearer to every atom than its own nucleus and closer to every person than her own soul.  It would be more proper to say that through prayer and other religious practices, we are nurturing our conscious connection with God.  Prayer brings us to an awareness of the Reality in which we already live, move, and have our being.

There are many ways that we seek to nurture this conscious reconnection in our public worship.  First of all, there are those parts of our service that are explicitly referred to as prayer.  In our Call to Worship, we acknowledge God’s presence and invite God to work in us whatever needs to happen in order for us to become the kind of loving and compassionate people that God wants us to be.  In our prayer of Confession, we acknowledge our shortcomings and celebrate God’s undying and redeeming love.  Confession is not about guilt and fear.  Confession is about honesty and trust that God never gives ever up on us.  In the prayer for Illumination, as we talked about last week, we ask the Spirit of God to enlighten our hearts and minds so that we can hear, believe, and follow God’s Word.  In the prayers of the People, we lift up to God our specific needs and concerns, trusting that God is working in us and in the world to bring peace and wholeness to all.  In the prayer of Thanksgiving, we raise a voice of gratitude for all the goodness we see in the world around us and we dedicate our lives to cooperating with God’s work in the world.  Finally, we gather all our various prayers into one great prayer that Jesus taught his disciples: the Lord’s Prayer.  There is so much to be said here, but time grows short and the hour grows late.  I will leave most of that for another sermon on another day.  For now, I’ll simply say that this one prayer encompasses all the other forms of prayer that I have already mentioned.  We say it by rote week after week, but I encourage you, as an extended meditation exercise, to stop sometime and really think about what you are saying: “Our Father, who art in heaven: hallowed be thy name…”

Not all prayer involves words or speech.  Music itself is a form of prayer, even when it is purely instrumental.  The preludes, hymns, anthems, offertories, and postludes of our worship service are not provided for your entertainment.  They are prayers in themselves.  The beautiful arrangement of sound into organized tones called music is meant to guide you and me into and through the present moment to the eternal mystery in which it rests.  Can you resonate with the music of the spheres?  Can you imagine, during an organ solo, the life-giving harmonies of our delicately balanced solar system?  Music, as a form of prayer, leads us beyond ourselves to participate in a larger reality.  A theologian once said, “The one who sings prays twice.”

Prayer can also be undertaken in total silence.  No words are necessary.  Sitting quietly for an extended period of time and focusing on the unconscious rhythm of each God-given breath is a form of prayer.  This kind of prayer, called contemplative prayer, lets go of all doing in favor of just being with God in the present moment.

“Prayer is a conscious opening of the self to God.”  In its various forms, we reconnect with that which is deepest in us and the universe.  We move beyond just “knowing about God” through dogma and theology.  We come to “know God” in a direct and mystical sense.  Through the regular practice of prayer, our lives begin to look more like Jesus’ life: living in that moment-to-moment spiritual awareness of the Love in which we live, move, and have our being.

Elements of Worship: The Word

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Elements of Worship, Sermon1 Comment

Starting a new sermon series at First Pres, Boonville.  This is part 1 of 5.

The text is II Timothy 3:10-17.

Click here to listen to the recording of this sermon at fpcboonville.org

Does anybody here remember the Periodic Table?  I’m taking you back to 6th grade science class on this one.  It’s an oddly shaped chart of letters and numbers that’s somehow supposed to explain everything that exists.  Personally, I always thought it looked like somebody started writing the alphabet and then got really confused.  I’m told that students used to have to memorize the whole thing, but they did away with that by the time I got to Middle School (mostly because scientists were coming up with all kinds of new additions like Einsteinium and Nobelium, so the Table was getting bigger every year).  These days, I think we’re up 118 entries.  The Periodic Table is divided into metals on the left and non-metals on the right.  At the far right, there are the Noble Gases like Helium and Radon.  On the far left are the Alkaline metals like Lithium.  Each individual unit on the Periodic Table is called an element.  Elements are the basic units of chemistry.  An element represents the most basic level to which a compound or molecule can be broken down using chemical processes.  To go any father (i.e. protons, neutrons, and electrons), you’ve got to use nuclear means.  So, they are called elements because they are the basic components of the science of chemistry.  In the olden days, that same term was applied to the basic forces of nature: earth, air, water, and fire.  These were called the four elements.  These days, when kids get old enough to go to school, they begin at a basic and introductory level in an elementary school.  An element is a basic component of some larger system or process.

Starting today and continuing for the next four Sundays, we’re going to be talking about elements in church.  Now, we won’t be talking about chemical elements on the Periodic Table.  No, for these five Sundays, we’ll be talking about the Elements of Worship.  We’ll be looking at a kind of Periodic Table for the Church, if you will.  Each week, we’re going to look at a different element and see how each element fits into the big picture of what we do each week in church.  There are five Elements of Worship that we’ll be looking at.  The five elements are as follows: Word, Prayer, Service, Sacrament, and Relationship.  Everything we do in church, from the Announcements to the Benediction, is made up of these five elements in some combination and configuration: Word, Prayer, Service, Sacrament, and Relationship.  Even though we’re only focusing on one element per week, it will quickly become clear that none of these exists in isolation from the others.  They are all connected and intertwined with each other like a great big spider web.  We can’t really think about one without touching on the others.  Nevertheless, you’ve got to start somewhere.  So let’s get going…

This week, we’re focusing on the element of the Word.  By that, we specifically mean the Word of God.  Now, I know what you’re all thinking right now: “I know what that is.  He means the Bible.  The Word of God is the Bible.”  My answer to that is: “Well, yes and no.”  You see, the Bible never actually refers to itself as “the Word of God”.  In the Hebrew Scriptures (what we call the Old Testament), “the Word of God” typically refers to a particular message that came to particular prophet at a particular place and time.  Thus, it says in Genesis 15, “The word of the Lord came to Abram”.  Later on, in the New Testament, “the Word” mostly refers to Christ himself.  Jesus Christ is the living Word of God.  Thus, the Word of God is a person, not a book.

What then can we say about the Bible?  First of all, the Bible is more of a library than a book.  It is a massive collection of stories, poems, and letters composed and compiled over a period of many centuries.  Thus, I like to refer to them as “the scriptures” (plural) rather than “the Bible” (singular).  These writings chronicle the ongoing relationship between God and God’s people.  Opening the scriptures is kind of like finding your grandparents’ old love letters in a trunk in the attic.  When you read them, you get these insightful little snapshots into a romance that has spanned the ages.  We treasure these fragments but we would never mistake them for the relationship itself.  That is something that can only be experienced firsthand.  Thus, the scriptures point beyond themselves to the deeper reality of a relationship into which you and I are invited.  Marcus Borg calls the scriptures “a finger pointing to the moon.”  If you’re looking at the finger, you’re looking at the wrong thing.  Look instead to where the finger is pointing.  Then and only then will you “get the point”.  Jesus himself said as much in John 5 as he was debating with the Pharisees, a group of religious people who had worked very hard to preserve the scriptures in their own tradition.  Jesus said to the Pharisees, “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf.”  The scriptures point beyond themselves.  They are a means to an end, not an end in themselves.

In this day and age when the culture prizes knowledge that can be objectively verified and scientifically proved, people of faith often experience the temptation to find absolute certainty on historic and scientific facts documented in the scriptures.  They believe that the authors of the scriptures were inspired by God in the same way that a secretary takes down a dictation.  For them, the Bible (singular) is literally “the Word of God”.  They see the Bible as a single book with a single author who can never be wrong.

Reading the scriptures in this way can provide a comforting level of certainty in these uncertain times, but it can also cause all sorts of problems.  First of all, the words of the scriptures can be and have been used to justify all manner of brutality and injustice.  Advocates for slavery, exploitation, genocide, racism, sexism, and homophobia have all used the texts of the scriptures to support their causes.  A further (and bigger) problem that arises when we read the Bible as the literal Word of God is that our confidence in the book actually undermines our faith in God.  We mistake that box of Grandma and Grandpa’s love letters for the relationship itself.  We worship the Bible instead of God.  It seems to me that the second of the Ten Commandments has something to say about that: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”  The way I like to read that sentence is: “You can’t put God in a box.”  I think the same holds true whether that box is a statue, a building, or a book.  Make no mistake: worshiping the Bible in God’s place is idolatry.

Presbyterians, on the whole, do not tend to view the scriptures as a single, inerrant document.  We see them collectively as the “unique and authoritative witness” to Jesus Christ as the living Word of God.  For us, the scriptures are that “finger pointing to the moon” and we want to look (and go to) where that finger is pointing us.  We want to get closer to Jesus.  We want to grow in our relationship with God.  For us, the stories, poems, and letters contained in the scriptures are a record of our ancestors’ relationship with God, centering around this amazing person named Jesus.  They remembered, reflected on, and wrestled with everything his life meant to them.  Finally, they wrote it all down in the best way they knew how, using the words and ideas they had available to them at that time.

And so we listen: we listen to these words of our fellow human beings with the ears on our heads, but we also listen for the Word of God with the ears of our hearts.  We believe the Word of God still speaks to us through these human words, limited and imperfect though they may be.  To do this, we need help.  In order to take us from these human words to God’s Word, we need something Presbyterians call “the inward illumination of the Holy Spirit”.  That’s why we stop to say a short prayer right before we read from the scriptures each week during worship.  Go ahead and check it out in your bulletin.  Right before the scripture reading, there is something called the Prayer for Illumination.  We’re asking God to turn the lights on inside of us so that we can see things more clearly.  We’re asking the Holy Spirit to help us find God’s Word in these human words.  This event is central to our worship as Christians.  When we come together, we prepare ourselves to receive God’s Word by gathering together, praising God, confessing our shortcomings, and making peace with our neighbors.  We listen for God’s Word in the reading of the scriptures and reflection on the sermon.  We respond to God’s Word by affirming our faith, praying for our needs, giving thanks for God’s blessings, and offering our whole lives to God’s service in the world.  Finally, we follow God’s Word back out into the world, trusting that the One who meets us in this place will continue to guide us out there during the other six days of the week.  It’s all about God’s Word, not a book but a person, Jesus Christ: God’s living Word.  As the lights come on inside of us and we begin to hear God’s Word through the human words of the scriptures, our lives will begin to look more like Jesus’ life: the life of a radical healer, teacher, revolutionary, and friend.

I can’t help but mention the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, whose 83rd birthday just so happens to be today.  Dr. King knew what we’re talking about today.  During his lifetime, people from all over the United States, even pastors, used the words of our scriptures to put him down and keep African American people under the thumb of segregation.  But Dr. King didn’t listen to those words.  He opened the scriptures and heard the Word of God saying to him (in the words of the prophet Amos), “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”  The Word of God showed Dr. King how to dream that his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  In spite of being ridiculed, beaten and arrested, Dr. King heard God’s Word in the book of Isaiah, dreaming of that day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”  On that day, he said, all God’s children: black and white, Jew and Gentile, Protestant and Catholic, will join hands and sing together, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”  Through the inward illumination of the Holy Spirit, these ancient scriptures became for Dr. King vessels for the Word of God.  That same Spirit lives in you, illumines you.  May the Word of God be a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path.  May you be able to say, along with Martin Luther King:

I’ve heard the lightning flashing, and heard the thunder roll.
I’ve felt sin’s breakers dashing, try’n to conquer my soul.
But I’ve heard the voice of Jesus telling me still to fight on.

He promised never to leave me, no, never alone.

Say Yes to Love

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon3 Comments

This week’s sermon from First Pres, Boonville.

The text is Mark 1:4-11.

Back when I was a kid, we used to have a snarky way of telling people we didn’t want them to be part of a conversation.  We’d say, “This is an A-B conversation, so C your way out of it!”  In that same vein, we also used credit card names, saying, “This is a Visa-Mastercard conversation, so Discover your way out of it!”  Neither of those is very nice.  And today, I want to invite you to do the opposite.  I would like for you to C your way into this particular A-B conversation.  Even better, I would love for you to Discover yourself in this conversation.

We’re talking about baptism today.  First of all, we’re remembering Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan River.  Second, we’re welcoming a new family into our church, three of whom will be joining by baptism.  Even though we’re talking about these two specific events, one that occurred two thousand years ago and another that will occur in a few minutes, I would like for all of us to see through them to the one great universal event that encompasses all of us in its grand embrace.

Let’s look first at Jesus’ baptism.  We read that story this morning from the first chapter of Mark’s gospel, the second book in the New Testament canon.  What’s interesting is that this is where Mark chooses to begin his retelling of the Jesus story.  There is no Christmas story in Mark’s gospel: no angels, shepherds, magi, manger, or virgin birth.  For whatever reason, Jesus felt compelled to join with John, the passionate preacher and activist, in his grassroots movement for spiritual revival and social change.  Everyday people were inspired by and responding to John’s call to renewal but the religious and political authorities were suspicious.

John made use of an ancient Jewish ritual bath, called tevilah, as a sign of personal commitment to this movement.  Tevilah washing was common for ancient Jews.  Women did it monthly for sanitary reasons, all Jews did it at least once a year before Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), and Gentiles did it when they converted to Judaism.  Moreover, there were several smaller washings that took place daily for both sanitary and religious reasons.

This, by the way, is why many Jews were spared from the horrors of the Bubonic Plague in medieval Europe.  Christians falsely accused them of causing the plague by poisoning the wells.  The reality is that the Bubonic Plague was caused by fleas that arrived in Europe on the backs of shipboard rats.  Jewish religion required regular bathing while Christian religion did not.  Jewish people got sick less frequently simply because they were much cleaner than their Christian neighbors.  Alas, this did not stop our forebears from concocting all sorts of slanderous conspiracy theories.  But I digress.

John made use of this very familiar Jewish ritual as a symbol of hope and dedication.  John had a hunch that he was getting people ready for something big that was about to happen, although he might not have been totally sure about exactly what that was.  And then, here comes Jesus.

At first glance, there didn’t seem to be anything particularly unusual about Jesus.  According to Mark’s gospel, there’s not even any indication that Jesus himself knew what was about to happen.  He was just another person who felt drawn to this radical and passionate preacher.  He decides that this is the place for him, his spiritual home, so he undergoes John’s symbolic cleansing ritual.

And then something happened that wasn’t part of the ritual.  Jesus had a spiritual awakening.  Compare it to Moses beholding the glory of God on top of the mountain or the Buddha attaining Enlightenment while meditating under a tree.  The text of Mark’s gospel tells us, “just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.”

Earlier this week, I was listening to a biblical scholar named Marcus Borg talk about a similar series of experiences that once happened to him.  He describes these mystical experiences in language that will sound less poetic and more familiar to our modern ears:

[These mystical experiences] began to occur in my early thirties. They changed my understanding of the meaning of the word “God”-of what that word points to-and gave me an unshakable conviction that God (or “the sacred”) is real and can be experienced…

I saw the same visual “landscape” – a forest, a room, the inside of an airliner – that I normally see…

For a minute or two (and once for the better part of an hour), what I was seeing looked very different. Light became different – as if there were a radiance shining through everything. The biblical phrase for this is “the glory of God” – as the book of Isaiah puts it, “the earth is filled with the glory – the radiance – of God. The world was transfigured, even as it remained “the same.” And I experienced a falling away of the subject-object distinction that marks our ordinary everyday experience – that sense of being a separate self, “in here,” while the world is “out there.”

They were… experiences in which I felt that I was seeing more clearly than I ever had before – that what I was experiencing was “the way things are.” And they were also experiences of complete peacefulness, marked by a sense that I would love to stay in this mental state forever. Anxiety and distraction utterly disappeared. Everything looked beautiful.

I imagine that when Mark’s gospel tells us that Jesus “saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove” it is describing the kind of experience that Marcus Borg was speaking about.

Next, Jesus hears a voice speaking to him.  We aren’t exactly told whose voice is speaking, but it makes sense to infer that it must be the voice of God.  The voice says to Jesus, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  Let’s narrow it down: “Love.”  The voice from heaven is the voice of Love.

Jesus listened to this voice and it changed his life.  That was the point in the story where Jesus’ ministry began.  The Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus and the voice of Love empowered him to go out into the world and heal the sick, feed the hungry, welcome the outcast, and enlighten lost souls.  His great miraculous mission started right here, in a cold and muddy river, where a voice from heaven called him “Beloved”.  He spent the rest of his life trusting in that Love and sharing it with other people.

The word baptism comes from a Greek word that means “to soak or immerse.”  On one level, it obviously refers to the way that a person is literally and physically soaked in water during the ritual.  On a deeper level, we are all surrounded by and soaked in the infinite Love of God throughout our whole lives and beyond.  It is part of the air we breathe.  We need it more than oxygen.  Baptism is a ritual, we call it a “sacrament” (Latin for “mystery”), that makes this Love real to us.  God’s Love washes over us like a refreshing bath.  Day in and day out, we are floating on an ocean of Love.

The response of faith has ironically little to do with our religion.  Real faith means saying “Yes” to Love.  When you say that Yes, Love empowers you to live the kind of life that Jesus lived: healing the sick, feeding the hungry, welcoming the outcast, and enlightening the lost.

This is exactly what our church tries to do in its various denominational and grassroots organizations that work together for peacemaking, disaster assistance, hunger relief, health education, environmental preservation, social justice, and human equality.  This is the Presbyterian Church at its best.  And we’re not the only ones doing it.  Other churches, faith communities, and non-profit groups are working for these same goals.  Each one is saying Yes to Love in its own way.  That’s what real faith is.

Each of us is called to say Yes to Love in our personal lives as well.  This is harder than it looks.  We have to contend with the powers-that-be in this world that would try to choke the life of the Spirit and the voice of Love out of us forever.  We have to actively resist the pull toward cynicism.  We have to live like nonviolent radicals and revolutionaries, practicing random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty.  Saying Yes to Love is a lifelong task that involves every part of life: church, work, school, and home.  All life is ministry and baptism is your ordination.  Say Yes to Love.

I pray that, as we think about and celebrate the sacrament of baptism this morning, it would be more than just a religious ritual to you.  I pray that it will be to you a sacred mystery.  I pray that the eyes of your heart will be opened so that the infinite ocean of Love in which we are all soaked might be made more real to you.  I pray that you will say Yes to this Love and go out from this place today to live the kind of life that Jesus lived: a life of Faith, a life of Hope, and a life of Love.