Category: Sermon

God is Generous to a Fault

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment

Here is this morning’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is Matthew 20:1-16

Do you remember what it feels like to be picked last for a team in school?  Most of us do.  The excitement of playing a new game quickly gives way to fear as the number of other kids around you starts to dwindle.  Fear then becomes shame as you are left standing alone in the vast emptiness of space in between the two teams while the captains argue over whose turn it is to have the “loser” on his or her team.  Your confidence is shot before the starting whistle blows, making it that much more likely that you will mess up at a critical moment, drop the ball, and thus increase your chances of being picked last again next time.

It’s a bitter feeling.  And it’s a feeling that each and every one of us carries around inside of us.  Whether we admit it or not, whether we even realize it or not, it’s there.  And it stays there for most of our lives.  Inside each and every one of us is that scared and hurt little kid who just doesn’t want be picked last again.  So we do whatever we can to prove our worth to ourselves and everyone else around us.  We get up early and work late.  We work hard to become the strongest, fastest, smartest, prettiest, wealthiest, most popular, most powerful, or most “successful” (whatever that word means).  The saddest cases are those that involve bullies who are only too willing to step on and hurt their fellow human beings in order to reach the “top” and stay there.  They might play it tough, but inside each and every one of them is another scared and hurt little kid.  We all just want to “be somebody”.

We might fool ourselves into thinking that we’re really beyond all of that nonsense.  We might think we’ve grown up and taken on a more mature view of ourselves, the world, life, and reality.  But, as I have often observed, the politics of the professional board room and the politics of the high school locker room are one and the same.  Here’s a famous example: The Enron Corporation.  Enron had a policy of firing the least productive 15% of their employees each year.  It didn’t matter how well you did in previous years.  Honestly, it didn’t even really matter how well you did that year.  What mattered is whether or not you did better than the person in the cubicle next to yours.  All you had to do was stay out of the bottom 15%.  Rather than fostering a spirit of camaraderie in the pursuit of quality service, this firing policy created an atmosphere of ruthless competition and backstabbing that eventually led to the moral and financial ruin of the company.  In a very real sense, none of these professional adults wanted to be picked last for the team!

This phenomenon is hardly unique to 21st century Americans.  We can see it the Bible too.  Jews and Christians in the first century had a rough time of things.  They all lived under the occupation of the Roman Empire, which wasn’t so bad as far as empires go, but it still wasn’t the kind of freedom, prosperity, and security they had longed for.  And even these supposedly progressive and tolerant Romans had a nasty side.  Those who were accused of inciting a rebellion against Caesar had a way of getting flogged and crucified as a deterrent to others.

Before Rome, the Jews had suffered under the brutal Seleucids, the Babylonians, and Egypt’s genocidal Pharaoh in Exodus.  It seemed to them like they were constantly struggling to preserve their culture, faith, and dignity under the thumb of some other oppressive regime.  This ongoing fight gave them a sense of national and religious pride.  This fight kept them together as a people.

This is why there was so much conflict between Christians and Jews in the early days of the church’s existence.  Christians were seen as traitors who abandoned the traditions of the Torah that were preserved by generations of Jews who suffered under the yoke of oppression.  As for the Christians themselves, they didn’t know what to think.  They saw themselves as faithful Jews whose faith in Jesus as the Messiah fulfilled God’s plan for the salvation of the whole world, Israel included!  The fact that their faith was rejected by most mainstream Jews was very painful for the early Christians.  They suddenly felt very alone, like the odd one out or the last one picked for the team.  How were they supposed to maintain any sense of self-worth and dignity?  The temptation would have been to strike back with their own counter-rejection of Judaism.  They could have easily come to see themselves as spiritually superior to their Jewish neighbors.  After all, didn’t the Jewish religious leaders reject their own heaven-sent Messiah and conspire with the Romans to have him killed?

The author of Matthew’s gospel saw this conflict going on in the hearts and minds of Christians at that time.  Their struggle for significance brought to mind something that Jesus had once said.

It all started one day when a well-to-do young man came up to Jesus one day and asked him, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?”  Jesus told him about following the commandments of the Torah, which is what anyone would expect of a good rabbi.  But something inside that young man still felt empty.  He intuitively knew that there must be more to life than that.  He responded, “I have kept all these [commandments of the Torah]; what do I still lack?”  So Jesus upped the ante, saying, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  The rich young man got exactly what he asked for but it was too much.  He had found his limit.  He didn’t have the strength in him to do something that drastic.  It just felt impossible for him.

Meanwhile, Peter and the disciples were watching this exchange take place with smug smiles.  After the young man left, Peter walked up to Jesus and said, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.”  Yeah, Peter felt pretty sure of himself.  That brash young kid just didn’t have what it takes to roll with Jesus and his crew!  But Peter and the twelve had already done everything Jesus asked of the young man.  They had left their possessions, their jobs, their families, and everything else to go and follow Jesus.  Peter figured that put him and his buddies in a class above these other half-hearted people.  He thought he had all the right stuff, which is probably why God picked him as part of the Messiah’s entourage.

Jesus picked up on Peter’s smug attitude.  In fact, he was able to look past it and see that scared and hurt little kid hiding deep down in Peter’s heart.  Maybe there was a time when little Peter got picked last for a team.  Maybe somebody once told him that he was a worthless good-for-nothing who would never amount to anything.  Maybe that’s why Peter felt the need to puff his chest out and flash his spiritual credentials around for all to see.  Just like the rich young man, he thought he had to do something to earn a sense of dignity and self-worth.

So Jesus spoke directly to that little kid inside Peter and told him a story.  It’s a story about who God really is and the way life really works.  He told him about a vineyard owner who had some pretty inefficient business practices.  He didn’t seem to know how many workers he needed for his grape harvest.  Most farmers would hit up the day-labor pool just once in the morning during harvest, hire whatever help they needed, and go to work for the day.  But this person kept going back to the unemployment line again and again.  Every few hours he was going back out to see who was there.  He kept on doing this right up until five o’clock, as the workday was coming to an end.  The only folks left to hire at that point were the rejects and losers who nobody else wanted to hire.  These workers were weak and scrawny.  Bored and ashamed, they kicked at the dirt in front of them as the sun got lower and the shadows got longer, wondering how they would put food on the table that night.  Then that same old vineyard owner showed up again, wanting to hire them.  It didn’t make any sense.  There was only an hour left until quitting time, but they figured that a little work was better than no work at all, so they got to it, hoping that somehow the vineyard owner would make it worth their while.

An hour later, as the shift was ending, people started lining up for their pay.  The last-picked hires lined up first, expecting maybe half a crust of stale bread.  They just wanted to get a little something for their trouble and then shuffle off in shame.  The vineyard owner smiled as they walked up and put a full denarius in each of their hands.  A denarius was a full-day’s pay.  They couldn’t believe their eyes!  They looked at each other, then they looked back at their boss.  He was either really rich or really stupid, but they weren’t about to complain.  They tipped their hats and went off to buy dinner.  Before they got too far away, they heard shouting and turned around to see what was the matter.  One of the first-picked hires was losing it at the vineyard owner.  They heard their own names, followed by all kinds of unrepeatable slurs.  Apparently, their boss was giving everyone the usual daily wage.  The first-hires didn’t like that one bit.  But the boss just looked back at them and calmly said, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? 14Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”  The first-picked workers stormed out in a huff.

Amidst all the shouting, there was one phrase that had stood out to those last-picked workers: “You have made them equal to us”.  Equal.  Suddenly, something dawned on them.  They figured out what their boss was up to all along.  He didn’t need extra hands that day.  He didn’t even care about turning a profit after that harvest.  This boss cared about people more than profits.  Their value to this boss wasn’t based on what they could do for him.  Because of his graciousness, the social barriers between first-picked and last-picked were momentarily destroyed.  The pecking order had been dismantled.  Because of the boss’ generosity, the losers and rejects had been made equal to those other “successful” types.

Jesus ended the story there.  Peter and the other disciples looked at each other uncomfortably.  They understood the story’s meaning: Their sense of dignity and self-worth didn’t come from their ability to keep the commandments of the Torah or even their faith in Jesus.  God, like that vineyard owner, is generous to a fault.  That hurt and scared kid inside of them can come out to play now, because, from the perspective of eternity, every player gets picked first.  Trying to earn your place in the kingdom of heaven is ludicrous and can only end in frustration, because you are trying to earn that which has already been given to you for free.  You’ll be a whole lot happier if you can just embrace the gift and be thankful.

The author of Matthew’s gospel wrote this story down in order to remind those Christians in the early church of this incredible truth.  The way to overcome that fear and pain of being rejected, outcast, or picked last (for any reason) is to recognize the unconditional grace of God as the great equalizer.  Then we can all let go of our constant striving to be the best and beat the best.  It doesn’t matter if we get picked last because on God’s team, the only one that really matters, there are no first and last picks.  We are free to be ourselves and try our best in life without the urge to be constantly working or productive as if our sense of self-worth depended on it.

You don’t have to try hard to “be somebody” because you already are “somebody”.  You matter.  God loves you and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.  So you might as well just accept it.

My September 11th Sermon

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon7 Comments
Bulletin cover from this morning’s service. Presbyterian bulletin covers are not usually this cool.

I normally wait until after church to post my sermon, but I’m doing it early today, given it’s time-sensitive nature.  The recording will be up later.

My text is Matthew 18:21-35.

To be perfectly honest, I’ve been dreading this sermon all year, ever since I learned that today’s date would fall on a Sunday and I would have to get up into this pulpit and say something meaningful.  I wasn’t sure whether I should just ignore the day and preach the lectionary text from Matthew or cut whatever else we had planned for today and just focus on what I know is on everyone’s mind.  After agonizing over it all year, I can’t really think of any other way to begin except by coming right out and saying it:

Today’s date is the 11th of September.  And we’ve come together this morning to remember something important that happened.  Some of us remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when the news of this event first struck us speechless while others have simply grown up hearing about it.  It was a great injustice.  It was a horrifying spectacle that still leaves us in shock and awe.  For days afterward, people could do little else than huddle together behind closed doors and drawn curtains.  They held each other and sobbed, knowing that, whatever else they had hoped their future might be, it had now changed forever.  It was a watershed moment that defined who we are as people.  The very worst in the human race came face to face with the very best in the human race.  The events of that day brought us together as a community like nothing else ever could.  More than any other before or after it, this event taught us to admire and respect and love those individuals who lay down their lives and make the ultimate sacrifice for the benefit of others.  Because of that which we remember this morning, none of us will ever be the same ever again.

The event that I am describing here is not the attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Flight 93 that took place ten years ago today.  The event that I’m describing here is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Before I go on, I feel like I should pause and tell you that I’m not trying to be flippant or witty about the events of September 11, 2001.  Nor am I trying to disrespect the memory of a national tragedy by twisting it into an opportunity for religious proselytism.  What I’m trying to do is reflect on who we are as Christians and human beings on this particular day.  I want to take the smaller events of our personal stories and understand them in the larger context of God’s big Story.

The cross is one of the most universally recognizable symbols in the world.  Ask almost anyone, regardless of their religious affiliation, to name one Christian symbol and most people will probably mention the cross.  More than any other event in history, what happened on the cross shows us who we are as followers of the way of Christ.

On the night of his wrongful arrest, Jesus assured Peter that he had the power to call down legions of warrior angels to annihilate the world in his defense.  However, we know that Jesus didn’t do that.  Instead, Jesus looked down from the cross at his executioners and prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”

Most of us who read that story with the benefit of two thousand years’ distance find this gesture admirable but also pitiful.  “It’s a generous sentiment,” we say, “but you can’t live that way.  It wouldn’t work!  People would walk all over you!”  We don’t believe there is any actual power in Jesus’ prayer, so we dismiss this noble gesture as a product of his divinity and proceed to hide behind a comfortable curtain of systematic theology in which we benefit from the effects of that forgiveness without ever actually having to experience it.

But Jesus doesn’t let us off the hook that easily.  Teaching about forgiveness in today’s gospel reading from Matthew 18, Jesus assures us that the only way to remain assured of God’s forgiveness is to give forgiveness away.  “Blessed are the merciful,” Jesus says, “for they will receive mercy.”

The passage begins with a legitimate question from Peter about the reasonable limits of forgiveness.  He says, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive?  As many as seven times?”  Jesus’ response is ridiculous and shocking, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”  He then tells a cautionary tale about two people: one with an impossibly large debt and another with a trivial one.  The first debtor owes ten thousand talents to the creditor.  How much is that in today’s terms?  Well, a “talent” is a term of measurement.  The parable doesn’t tell us exactly what was being measured but, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that we’re talking about talents of gold.  Let’s use today’s gold price ($1,855.15 per ounce) times 16 ounces in a pound times 71 pounds in a talent times ten thousand talents, and we end up with a debt of $21,074,504,000.  That’s how much this first person owed.  That’s how much debt the creditor forgave!

The second debtor owed one hundred denarii.  A denarius was equivalent to a day’s wages for a laborer.  Let’s put that in today’s terms using New York state’s current minimum wage.  That’s $7.25 an hour times eight hours in a workday times one hundred days, and we get $5,800.  This person’s lending firm received a twenty-one billion dollar bailout yet foreclosed on a debt of less than six thousand dollars.  According to Jesus, those are some messed up priorities.

The unmerciful servant in this parable was a person who was adamantly unwilling to look at the smaller issue of the debt he was owed in relation to the massive debt he was forgiven.  He would not understand the smaller events of his personal story in the larger context of God’s Story.  Forgiven people have an obligation to spread their amnesty over as wide a field as possible.  Otherwise, they are only robbing themselves.  The paradoxical irony of heaven’s economy is that those who keep forgiveness for themselves will lose it while those who give it away will keep it forever.

But forgiveness is also a dangerous business.  It is demonstrably true that one cannot guarantee economic security or national defense on a consistent doctrine of forgiveness.  Just look at Jesus himself.  When he prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” he did not speak from the comfort of heaven’s glorious throne.  No, he forced those words out as he hung from the cross, bleeding and dying.  Jesus was a failed revolutionary who was branded as a “terrorist” by those who were fighting to protect their own national security and traditional family values.  One can imagine the Centurions and the Pharisees laughing at Jesus when they heard him say this.  His position at the time would have served as incontrovertible proof that forgiveness “does not work” as a strategy.  A few may have admired him for it, but everyone still walked away shaking their heads after this forgiving Messiah finally fell silent.

But you and I know that’s not the end of the story.  That night, they laid his body in a tomb and rested on the Sabbath.  Then, on the first day of the week, early in the morning, a few brave women made their way to Jesus’ tomb and when they got there, they couldn’t believe their eyes!  The stone had been rolled away from the entrance, the soldiers had passed out from fright, and angel stood in the entrance and asked, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?  He is not here.”

Why not?  “He is risen.”  Today is the day that everything changes.  Death itself has begun to work backwards.  The dead come alive.  The blind see.  The deaf hear.  The mute sing.  The lame dance.  The weak are strong.  The foolish are wise.  The first are now last and last are now first.  The whole world is turning upside down.  Or is it right side up?

We know for a fact that forgiveness does not work.  Yet we believe in the truth beyond the facts.  We believe it when the Bible says that “mercy triumphs over judgment” and “love covers a multitude of sins.”  We believe it because that failed revolutionary who died in disgrace with forgiveness on his lips is now hailed as the most influential person in human history.  His ridiculous message of forgiveness outlasted the culture that gave it birth and the Roman Empire that tried to suppress it.  That message of forgiveness has now reached the shores of every continent on this planet and continues to spread as people like you and I choose to take our smaller personal stories and understand them in the larger context of God’s big Story.  We take the small debts that we must forgive and hold them up next to the huge debt that has been forgiven us.

It is true that September 11, 2001 changed us.  It was a horrifying spectacle and a tragic injustice.  It brought us together as a community.  We saw the very worst and the very best of humanity in action on that day.  Our future will never be the same because of it.  But September 11 does not dictate who we are.  If we take the events of that one story and look at them in the context of God’s big Story, then we will be able to see that it is the cross of Jesus Christ, seen and understood in the light of his Resurrection, that shows us who we really are.  As we move from our smaller stories to God’s big Story, which is what we do each week here in church, we will find all the strength we need for healing and yes, even forgiveness.

“My Feet Is Tired, But My Soul Is Rested”

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment
“Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

This morning’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is Matthew 18:15-20.

Someone once asked the famous author C.S. Lewis why he thought it was necessary for Christians to go to church.  Lewis, with his usual wit and candor, had this to say:

When I first became a Christian, about fourteen years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn’t go to the churches and Gospel Halls; . . . I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit.

The “solitary conceit” that Lewis mentioned is one of the hallmarks of trendy spirituality in our culture.  Spiritually-minded Americans, from Transcendentalists to Evangelicals, have often emphasized individuality at the expense of community when it comes to their devotional lives.  Lillian Daniels, a United Church of Christ minister from Illinois, minces no words as she calls this kind of spiritual individualism “self-centered” and “boring”.  She goes on:

There is nothing challenging about having deep thoughts all by oneself. What is interesting is doing this work in community, where other people might call you on stuff, or heaven forbid, disagree with you. Where life with God gets rich and provocative is when you dig deeply into a tradition that you did not invent all for yourself.

One’s relationship with God is always personal but never private.  One does not simply wander off into a cave to commune with the Divine in total silence and solitude.  Even ancient hermits in the desert maintained practices of hospitality toward wandering beggars and spiritual seekers.  One cannot be a Christian by oneself.

We find this counter-conviction to American individualism all through today’s gospel reading.  Here we see Jesus teaching the people about spiritual community.  Specifically, he’s talking about those times when community gets messy.  He starts with the words, “If another member of the church sins against you”.  This is Jesus giving advice about conflict resolution.  Rather than getting bogged down in the procedure that Jesus lays out, I’d like for us to focus our attention this morning on the underlying values and beliefs that undergird Jesus’ message to us in this passage.  I say “values” and “beliefs” but really there’s just one of each: a value and a belief.

The value that Jesus was trying to communicate is the value of reconciliation.  Reconciliation was a major theme in the ministry of Jesus and the early church.  Notice how it comes up again and again in this passage.  Jesus says repeatedly that the goal of this conflict-resolution exercise is to persuade people to “listen” to one another.  That word, “listen”, appears four times in three verses.  Meanwhile, there’s no “eye for an eye” or “hellfire and damnation” language at all.  Even in the worst-case scenario, where the “sinner” will not “listen”, Jesus recommends that the church should “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”  This might sound like punishment at first (remember that tax collectors were the most hated people in ancient Israel), but remember how Jesus treats tax collectors and other religious outsiders?  He welcomes them and affirms them!  He goes out of his way to make sure that these people know they are loved by God.  It seems like Jesus is saying that the point where negotiations fail is the point where real love begins.  This is so different from our world where justice is associated with punishment and vengeance!  For Jesus, real justice is the restoration of harmonious relationships.

The theme of reconciliation that resonates through this passage is related to the core belief that Jesus is trying to instill in his followers: the belief that God is love.  As the people of the community of faith work together to reconcile their differences, Jesus tells them that they will begin to discover a mysterious divine presence working in and through them.  Decisions made in this spirit of reconciliation will have the weight of spiritual truth.  This is what Jesus means when he says, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”  Likewise, the community of faith that is committed to reconciliation will see God working impossible miracles through them.  Jesus says, “If two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.”  Reconciliation and love are important values to embody because they most accurately reflect who God is.  God is present wherever this process of reconciliation is going on.  Don’t look for God in the sky or in magical rituals, but in the genuine love that is made manifest through us, the people of the church.  This is why Jesus says, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

Love.  It’s all about love.  Love is what Jesus calls us to.  Love is who God is.

This belief runs entirely counter to our culture’s punishment-oriented individualism.  In that sense, it is truly “counter-cultural”.  People who believe in love, as Jesus presented it, are crazy by this world’s standards.  Yet these people see things that others can’t see.  When they speak, they speak with supernatural clarity and conviction.  When they stand together, they sense that there is “something more” standing with them, empowering them, and holding them up.

One of my favorite examples of this power at work comes from the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott that took place in 1955-56.  For over a year, the African American citizens of Montgomery, Alabama  stood together against the demonic spirits of racism and discrimination.  These prophetic activists were made the subjects of constant harassment from local citizens, government, and police.  Walking together along city streets, many of them described a feeling of divine empowerment.  Wherever these few were gathered in the name of Jesus, he was there among them.

One particularly elderly woman was stopped on the street one day during the boycott.  The interviewer asked whether her feet were exhausted from all the walking, perhaps hoping that she might give up soon and take a bus.  Her reply resonated with exactly the kind of spiritual authority and divine presence that Jesus was talking about:

“My feet is tired,” she said, “but my soul is rested.”

As we go out from this place today, may our lives reflect that same kind of divine glory.  May we sense that same spiritual presence among us, especially in this sacrament of Holy Communion.  May our church be known to this community as a place where reconciliation happens.  May we all be able to say as we reach the end of our earthly pilgrimage, “My feet is tired, but my soul is rested.”

The Gift of Diversity

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon2 Comments

This morning’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is Genesis 11:1-9.

Who here has seen the movie (or read the book) Jurassic Park?

It was one of the epic stories of the 1990s.  Scientists find a way to bring dinosaurs back to life and put them on display for tourists.  How is that possible?  No problem!  They cloned them using dino-DNA from prehistoric mosquitoes trapped in fossilized tree sap.  How do they control the dinosaurs?  No problem!  Genetic manipulation makes it so that the dinosaurs can’t reproduce while high-powered electric fences keep them safely contained.  However, those who are familiar with the story know what happens next.  The genetic manipulation doesn’t take and the dinosaurs start breeding.  Then a power-outage deactivates the electric fences.  The tourists’ initial wonder gives way to terror as they are chased and eaten by hungry prehistoric predators!

The scientists of Jurassic Park thought they had the answer to everything.  They thought they had absolute control over their situation.  But life turns out to be just a little bit more complicated than the scientists expected.  Their control gives way to chaos.  In the end, Jurassic Park is a classic story about human progress gone wild.

This morning, we read from another classic story of human progress gone wild.  It’s the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11.  The story begins on a positive note.  The human race exists as one family with one language.  They are explorers and inventors who bravely probe the depths of human creativity and ingenuity.  They settle new territory and develop new technology (i.e. bricks).  All in all, it sounds like a pretty utopian society, kind of like the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek.  But the Bible, it seems, is a bit more realistic than Star Trek.  It doesn’t take long before this “masterpiece society” develops a dark side.

The human race quickly gets ahead of itself in verse 4, saying, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves”.  That’s quite a leap, isn’t it?  One day, they’re inventing bricks and the very next day, they’re building downtown Manhattan, complete with skyscrapers!  There’s no small amount of arrogance that comes with this new idea.  Their new skyscraper will have “its top in the heavens”.  Humanity literally intends to lift itself up by its own bootstraps.  Also, they intend to “make a name” for themselves.  They want to be feared and respected.  By whom?  We don’t know.  Theoretically, this group comprises the entire human race.  But that’s just one more reason why we’re not reading these stories as literal and historical fact.  They’re stories that are meant to tell us something about who we are and who God is.

What’s the reason for this sudden and huge undertaking?  Why build this urban metropolis?  The people tell us why in the second half of verse 4: “otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”  They’re afraid.  They’re afraid of being scattered.  The flip side of their arrogant pride is a paralyzing fear.  Do you know anyone like this?  Some big and tough person whose macho attitude is just a cover for feeling afraid and insecure?  Bullies like this are everywhere: from high school locker rooms to corporate board rooms.  They’re all motivated by fear.  In fact, if we’re honest with ourselves, I think we can all identify with that impulse to hide our fear with pride.  It’s no different for the humans in this story.  Their big building project is motivated by fear.

The ironic thing is that this fear becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.  The text tells us in verse 8 that, in the end, “Yahweh scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth”.  The very thing they feared is what they brought upon themselves through their efforts to relieve their fear.  It’s kind of tragic, isn’t it?

But is “scattering” really so bad?

In order to answer that question, we should first look at the reason why God decided to do it.  Everybody was safe, happy, and getting along with each other in Babel.  Why not leave well enough alone?  God gives a hint in verse 6, saying, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.”  Now, that might not sound so bad at first, but think about the kinds of things that humans tend to do when they get together and make big progress on big projects.  Midway through the twentieth century, humanity unlocked the secrets of the atom.  The very next thing we did was make a giant bomb and use it.  We then spent the remainder of the century living in the shadow of the mushroom cloud, terrified of nuclear annihilation and “mutually assured destruction”.  That’s the kind of thing that human beings do when “nothing that they propose to do [is] impossible for them.”  So God, interrupting this progress-gone-wild and scattering the human race, was actually saving people from themselves.

Also, according to the text of Genesis, “scattering” itself may have been part of God’s plan for humanity from the beginning.  In Genesis 1, God says to humanity, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth”.  God says it again in chapter 9, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.”  And yet again, only six verses later, “And you, be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and multiply in it.”  Is it just me or is God sounding like a broken record here?  Do you think maybe there’s a point that God is trying to make here?  Yeah, I think so too.

I think God is trying to say, “Hey everybody, get out there!  Go out into this amazing world and be who you were meant to be!  Don’t let fear hold you back!”

Traditionally, the invention of languages in this story is thought of as a punishment for the human race, but I’m not so sure about that.  I see it as a blessing.  God sees human beings imprisoning themselves behind walls made of brick and fear.  God is a like a mother eagle who gives her little birdies a push out of the nest in order to teach them how to fly!  The push out of the nest in this case is the confusion of languages.  In other words, God challenges humanity to become who they were meant to be by giving them the gift of diversity.

In many ways, things aren’t so different for you and me.  We build our own protective “towers” of ideology.  Whether you’re fearful about the economy, social justice, church attendance, or family values, the temptation is the same: to imprison yourself behind the brick walls of arrogance and fear, blurting out easy answers in convenient, bumper sticker-sized slogans, and surrounding yourself with people who talk like you, look like you, think like you, and believe like you.

Enter God.  God sneaks behind the walls of your tower of terror with this brilliant gift of diversity.

Through this gift, God shows you that life is far more complicated than your easy answers would have you believe.  Through this gift, God meets you with the realization that you really don’t understand the human being sitting right next to you at home, at church, or in line for the voting booth.  And if you ever hope to understand that person, it’s going to take a long and difficult process of patient listening.

But if you can rise to the occasion, if you can receive God’s gift of diversity, and if you can accept God’s invitation to embrace real unity rather than simple uniformity among your fellow human beings, you’ll discover that being “scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” isn’t so bad after all as God leads you out from behind your walls of fear and into this amazing world and the fruitful life that God has always meant for you to have.

Textual Harassment

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon4 Comments

This week’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is Genesis 9:18-28.

One of the scariest things about the Bible is how people can take one small part literally and out-of-context in order to make it say some pretty strange things.  We’re used to this in some ways.  Who hasn’t seen “John 3:16” posted on billboards or bumper stickers around town?  Thank goodness nobody (so far) has put Leviticus 26:29 on their bumper sticker: “You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters.”  Personally, that verse alone is enough to make me think twice before eating at any place that calls itself a “family restaurant”!

What would it be like if we took things that literally in our love poetry?

“Oh darling, your face reminds me of the morning sun!”

“Are you calling me a giant ball of gas?!”

It wouldn’t work!

And it doesn’t work with the Bible either.  The Bible is not a magic book filled with easy answers that can never be wrong.  Yet some Christians still seem to treat it as such.

I have a good friend who has struggled with clinical depression for over a decade.  Folks at church would tell her things like, “You should just remember what it says in Nehemiah 8:10: ‘the joy of the Lord is your strength.’”  These folks sincerely meant well, but their words did more harm than good.

My friend responded, “Ordering me around with Bible verses about joy will only make me feel more distant from God than I already do!”

Again, the Bible is not a magic book that’s full of easy and infallible answers.  It’s complicated and often confusing.  The divine Word comes to us in the midst of these human words.  You have to listen for it.  And sometimes, it can be very hard to hear.

Nowhere in the Bible is this truer than in the passage we read this morning from Genesis.  This is the real end of the Noah’s Ark story.  It’s the part they probably didn’t teach you about in Sunday school.  It’s pretty dark and disturbing, isn’t it?  There’s no divine intervention or moral to the story.  All we have is the image of Noah getting blackout drunk, Ham committing an unspeakable act of abuse against his father, and Noah then cursing his grandson Canaan for all time.  This story doesn’t lend itself to simplistic interpretation.

Many biblical scholars see this as a story that was made up in order to explain the origins of a certain international conflict.  In the ancient Middle East, there was an intense rivalry between Israelites and Canaanites.  They were competitors for the same piece of land (not unlike the modern-day conflict between Israelis and Palestinians).  Undoubtedly, young Hebrews would eventually come to the point of asking, “Why do we hate them so much, anyway?”  So the tribal elders produced this story as an answer to that question.  You may have noticed that Noah’s cursed grandson is named “Canaan”, just like the nation that was then in conflict with the Israelites.

Canaan was the son of Ham, who had other sons.  If you look at the list of their descendants in Genesis 10, you’ll see some other familiar names: Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, and the Philistines.  All of these (along with the Canaanites) were the ancient enemies of Israel.  And (according to the story) they all had Noah’s son Ham as their common ancestor.  The Israelites, on the other hand, claimed Noah’s other son, Shem, as their ancestor.  By the way, that’s where we get the words “Semitic” and “Anti-Semitic” in reference to Jewish people.  “Semitic” is derived from the name “Shem”.

So, for the purposes of this story, all of Israel’s national enemies are lumped into one convenient ethnic basket.  They can all be traced back to one person: Ham son of Noah.  You can see why the Israelite storytellers then had a vested interest in making this individual out to be as nasty and evil as possible.  So they have him commit this horrible act of violence against a member of his own family (who also happens to be a member of Israel’s family, according to the mythological genealogy in Genesis).

The text tells us that Ham “saw the nakedness of his father”.  This is more than just accidentally walking in on someone in the shower.  It’s a Hebrew euphemism that typically refers to some kind of shameful abuse.  Thankfully, the text spares us the gory details.

Ham, the ancestor of Israel’s enemies, is a perverted deviant while Shem, the ancestor of Israel, is the hero who tries to help his father.  As a result, Noah proclaims, “Cursed be Canaan [son of Ham]” and “Blessed by Yahweh my God be Shem”.  So, an ancient Hebrew reading this story would come away with the notion that “we are the good guys” and “they (our enemies) are the bad guys”.  The purpose of this story is to justify the hatred of one’s enemies.  It paints the ancestor of one’s rival as a monster who was less than human.  This hardly seems consistent with the ethic of love that Jesus taught!

What’s even more disturbing is the way this text was interpreted by Christians for several centuries.  You’re looking at the primary biblical text that was used to justify the institution of slavery until the 19th century.  Early commentators portrayed Ham as the ancestor of African people.  His African descendants, they said, bore the weight of Noah’s curse and were thus doomed to be the “lowest of slaves”.  Christians bought this line of twisted theology for hundreds of years.  Our African brothers and sisters suffered and died under the yoke of slavery because of it.  It wasn’t until the 19th century that Christians in the abolitionist movement came up with a new way to read and interpret the Bible.  Thankfully, many Christians in that day followed this new guiding light from the Holy Spirit.  In fact, some of them lived right here in our own community.  We know from historical records that the Underground Railroad ran right through our little village of Boonville as escaped slaves made their way toward freedom.

You may notice that, while I’ve said a lot about how this passage should not be interpreted, I haven’t said much about how this passage should be interpreted.  I’ll be honest: I’m not going to.  This is a difficult passage that defies easy answers.  If I were to make an attempt at interpreting this passage, it might go something like this:

This is a warning passage.  The hateful rhetoric in the book of Genesis eventually gave rise to brutal genocide of Canaanites in the book of Joshua.  In the same way, the Anti-Semitism of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s eventually gave rise to the Holocaust in the 1940s.  I might ask a question: What words are we using today that might become the basis for atrocities in the future?  But, like I said, I’m not going to give this particular Genesis passage a full treatment in this sermon.  Instead, I’m using it as a springboard to launch us into a discussion about how we understand and use the Bible itself.

If we treat the Bible like a magic book with easy and infallible answers, then we are bound to end up in some strange ideological territory.  This text alone has been used to justify everything from slavery to genocide.  The good news is that this is not the only way to read the Bible.  If we come to the text with open minds and hearts, we can trust that the Holy Spirit can and does still speak to us through these ancient words.  Even though the Bible was used to uphold the institution of slavery, let’s not forget that the abolitionists also drew their inspiration from the same Bible.  They just read it differently!

How can we be sure that we won’t end up reading the Bible in a way that oppresses and dehumanizes our fellow human beings?  What kinds of tools are out there to help us listen for the divine Word as it comes to us in midst of these human words?  There are several.

To name a few, I’m going to pull from a paper published by the Presbyterian Church back in in 1982.  It sets forth some general guidelines for understanding the authority and interpretation of the Bible.  These guidelines are printed on an insert in your bulletin.  I invite you to take it home with you and look it over in greater detail.  In the meantime, let’s read these guidelines out loud together as our Affirmation of Faith this morning:

BIBLICAL AUTHORITY AND INTERPRETATION

The United Presbyterian Church in the USA, 1982

Recognize that Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, is the center of Scripture.  The redemptive activity of God is central to the entire Scripture.  The Old Testament themes of the covenant and the messiah testify to this activity.  In the center of the New Testament is Jesus Christ: the Word made flesh, the fulfillment of Israel’s messianic hope, and the promise of the Kingdom.  It is to Christ that the church witnesses.  When interpreting Scripture, keeping Christ in the center aids in evaluating the significance of the problems and controversies that always persist in the vigorous, historical life of the church.

Let the focus be on the plain text of Scripture, to the grammatical and historical context, rather than to allegory or subjective fantasy.

Depend on the guidance of the Holy Spirit in interpreting and applying God’s message.

Be guided by the doctrinal consensus of the church, which is the rule of faith.

Let all interpretations be in accord with the rule of love, the two-fold commandment to love God and to love our neighbor.

Remember that the interpretation of the Bible requires earnest study in order to establish the best text and to interpret the influence and cultural context in which the divine message has come.

Seek to interpret a particular passage of the Bible in light of all the Bible.

Life in the Midst of Chaos: Underdogs, Roller Derby, and Noah’s Ark

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment

This morning’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is the story of Noah’s Ark, found in Genesis 6-9.

Has anyone here ever been to a roller derby bout?  It’s quite an experience.  Two teams on roller skates chase each other around an elliptical track.  Unlike most American sports, there’s no ball or puck involved.  Certain players, called ‘Jammers’, score points by passing other players without getting knocked down.  It’s a high-energy, full-contact sport with its own quirky sense of humor that makes for really fun viewing.  Explaining all the rules would take more time than I have for this sermon.  If you ever want to check it out for yourself, there’s a local organization that supports multiple teams from our area.  My wife and I are particularly fond of rooting for the Rome Wreckers and the Utica Clubbers whenever we get the chance.

We became roller derby fans a few years ago after seeing a movie called Whip It starring Ellen Page and Drew Barrymore.  Whip It is the story of a young girl named Bliss Cavendar who is somewhat lacking in the self-esteem department.  That changes once she discovers roller derby and joins her local team (which is somewhat lacking in the winning department).  Going by the nickname “Babe Ruthless”, Bliss finds out that she’s actually pretty good on roller skates.  I could keep going, but I don’t want to spoil the movie for those who might see it.  It’s worth a rental and it gives you a fun introduction to roller derby.

Whip It is a classic underdog story.  It’s all about finding confidence, embracing who you are, and following your dreams until they get you somewhere.  Who doesn’t love rooting for the underdog?  We do it in Star Wars and Harry Potter.  We do it in history class every time we read about the American Revolution.  We even do it in the Bible.

This morning, we read from the story of Noah’s Ark in Genesis, which is one of the most well-known (and strange) underdog stories in the entire Bible.  This story can be found in the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  Our Muslim neighbors regard Noah as one of their great prophets along with Muhammad, Adam, Moses, and Jesus.

Even people who haven’t been to church, synagogue, or mosque are somewhat familiar with the story.  God tells Noah to build an ark (a fancy word that really just means “box”) because a flood is coming that will engulf the whole earth.  Noah builds, the flood comes, lives are saved, the ark lands, and a rainbow appears.  That’s the story in brief.

Before I get into looking at Noah himself, there are a few things I should clear up about this story.  First of all, a lot of people have trouble believing in a God who would commit such large-scale genocide against so many people, plants, and animals.  Why should anyone worship that kind of deity?  If any human president did that, they would be tried for “crimes against humanity”!  Well, it might help you to know in this case that the almighty Yahweh would probably be acquitted based on the evidence at hand.  There is no scientific evidence that a great flood has covered the entire world in the last five thousand years.  Like our earlier stories from the Garden of Eden, it seems that the story of Noah’s Ark contains little (if any) historical fact.  So we can all rest easy.  The God we worship never actually killed the majority of the human race in a great flood.  We can let God off the hook for that one and focus instead on what’s happening in the story itself.  There is truth to be found here, even in the absence of scientific and historical fact.

 

It’s no accident that a flood is what overtakes human civilization in this story.  Do you remember way back in Genesis 1, which we read several weeks ago?  That story opened with the image of a dark and stormy ocean.  To the ancient Hebrews, the sea was a symbol of chaos.  To them it represented all the random and dangerous parts of the world that worked against God’s will in the world.  It’s the raw material of creation that God shapes into various useful environments and creatures.  So it’s highly symbolic that, when the hearts of humanity become filled with violence and evil, the sea (a symbol for chaos) overtakes the cultivated and “civilized” land.  The flood represented more than just a natural disaster; it was the undoing of creation itself.

That being said, let’s look at Noah himself.  He’s a guy with a pretty weird dream.  He’s building a boat in the middle of the desert.  He says that rain is coming but there isn’t a cloud in the sky.  Jewish and Muslim embellishments on this story spend a lot more time describing the kind of ridicule that Noah experienced because of his faith in God (and the ark project).  But Noah the underdog holds fast onto his dream and keeps building.  Unlike Noah’s neighbors, we (the readers) know why he’s acting so strange.  He’s building the ark because he’s heard God’s voice.  Noah is dreaming God’s dream.

We don’t know exactly how Noah heard God’s voice.  Maybe it came through a literal dream or vision.  Maybe it came down like a voice over a loudspeaker through a part in the clouds.  Maybe he just had a kind of “holy hunch” about what was about to happen.  The text doesn’t tell us exactly how he heard it.  All we really know is that Noah listened and acted.

Personally, I like to imagine the last option being the way that Noah heard God’s voice.  I like to imagine that he looked around at his society and saw the forces of chaos and violence threatening to overwhelm his fellow human beings.  Disturbed by what he sees, Noah acts on a hunch and works quickly to preserve life as best as he can, in spite of the abuse heaped upon him by his neighbors.

The amazing thing is that, not only does God inspire the dream, but God also provides for the completion of Noah’s dream.  In spite of all odds being stacked against him, Noah’s little lifeboat project survives a watery Armageddon and lands safely to begin a new world.

This seems to bear a lot of similarities to the ways in which people tend to hear “God’s voice” in our own society.  Brave people of faith step out, based on a “holy hunch”, often against impossible odds, and make a real difference in their world.  Knowingly or unknowingly, these prophets are the ones who are dreaming God’s dream.

Martin Luther King, Jr. caught onto this when he dreamed out loud “that one day my children will live in a world where they will be judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”  People told him the end of segregation was impossible in the south, but forty years later, God is still seeing that dream through.

During the Great Depression in New York City, a man named Peter Maurin and a woman named Dorothy Day were greatly disturbed by the poverty they saw in the city around them.  Dorothy and Peter were especially troubled that most of the people on the unemployment line believed that the church had no good news for the poor.  As a result, Dorothy and Peter started publishing a newspaper called The Catholic Worker that aimed to teach people about the social teachings of Christianity.  In addition to publishing the paper, Dorothy opened up her own apartment to homeless people and fed hundreds of people every day from a soup and bread line.  Peter Maurin commented on their little project, “We are bring forth a new world from the ashes of the old.”

Isn’t that exactly what Noah was doing?  “Bringing forth a new world from the ashes of the old.”  Preserving life in the midst of rising chaos.  Peter and Dorothy were also dreaming God’s dream.  As the economy collapsed around them, they reached out with a creative vision for preserving life in the midst of chaos.  They built an “ark” in their own way.  Even though both of them are long gone, their newspaper is still being published today.  Poor people in New York City can still get soup and bread every day from their “house of hospitality”.  Similar houses, inspired by Peter and Dorothy’s example, have since opened up in big cities all over the world.

When you look around at our society today, where do you see the forces of violence and chaos wreaking havoc?  What injustice and inequality threatens the essence of life?  Do you have a “holy hunch” about some way to respond to this injustice?

We live in an age when media pundits of all ideological stripes shout their opinions louder and louder over each other.  Eventually, their angry words become part of the larger and louder chaotic chorus around them.  They all have something to say about what other people should be doing, but so few of them get up and do something themselves.  So, my question to you is: what do you sense God calling YOU to do?  What evidence of violence or chaos do you see?  What kind of wild idea or hunch do you have for somehow preserving life in the midst of that chaos?

Answer this question, and you’ll be dreaming God’s dream too.  Your holy hunch might sound like just another crazy underdog idea.  People might ridicule you for it, but if you make a leap of faith, I think you’ll find God working miracles to see this dream through to its fulfillment.

God loves a good underdog story.  Incidentally, so do I.  I’d love to hear your wild and crazy ideas about doing real ministry in our little church.  We might not be the biggest, richest, or most powerful act in town, but if we step out in faith while dreaming God’s dreams, I believe that we, like Noah, can expect to see some miraculous things happening that we never would have thought possible.

So, I leave you with these words from the classic rock band Aerosmith: “Dream on!”

CSI: Mesopotamia

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

This morning’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is Genesis 4:1-16.

Click here if you’d rather listen to this sermon at fpcboonville.org!

Imagine with me, if you will, that you’ve got three kids.  (Maybe you really do have three kids, but if not, then just imagine with me.)  Two of your three hypothetical kids are doing just fine: they get good grades, make lots of friends, and generally enjoy life.  But then there’s your third.  This one comes home with cuts and bruises on a regular basis.  Nobody ever comes over to play with this kid.  Then you get a phone call from the teacher, letting you know that your child’s grades are slipping so badly that she might not be able to advance next year with the rest of the class.

What do you think a good parent should do in a situation like this?  What would you do?  Let’s look at some options.

First of all, you could cut your losses.  This kid had just as much opportunity to succeed as the other two.  If she can’t compete on a level playing field, it’s no one’s fault but her own.  You could take the time, energy, and resources that you would otherwise spend on that child and use them instead to improve the lives of the other two, who seem to be doing a better job of managing their own affairs.  Besides, raising kids is labor-intensive!  When you look at the situation statistically, two out of three ain’t bad!  So that’s one option.

The next option is to look at the playing field itself.  You can carefully divvy up your parenting effort between the three kids.  Make sure that each one has an equal share of your time and energy.  Why not create a schedule?  How about a menu of parental services offered?  This way, you can be sure that everything gets done in a way that is totally fair.  Everybody gets something from you.  We’ll call it “Equal-Opportunity Parenting”.  That’s another option.

There is a third option, but it’s completely ridiculous and totally unfair.  You could meet your kid with a hug at the door as she gets off the school bus.  You could bandage cuts and nurse bruises while you ask what happened at school.  You could give hugs while you get tears and snot all over your good work clothes.  You could take time out of your busy day for conferences with teachers and guidance counselors.  You could make phone calls to other parents.  You could help with homework, even if it means missing NCIS.  Like I said, this option is totally ridiculous.

Who in their right mind would sign up for something like that?  Who?  Wait, you would?  Seriously?

But what if it’s a waste of time?  It doesn’t make sense to waste that effort on someone who’s not going to be a neurosurgeon or movie star!

“It doesn’t matter when it’s your kid,” you say?  Well then, that certainly says something about you all as parents!  You would go out on a limb for this kid, just because she is your own.  While you love all your children, you would give this one special attention simply because she needs it more at the moment.  Her potential productivity does matter to you, does it?  She’s precious to you, just for being alive!

Well, did you know that God loves God’s kids in the same way?  God loves us all, but some of us need God more than others.  God has a special place in God’s heart for those who are poor, oppressed, or discriminated against in this world.  God cares most about those who matter least.

We can see this truth depicted beautifully (but also brutally) in today’s scripture reading from Genesis 4.

It’s the famous story of Cain and Abel.  We learn a lot about these two brothers by looking carefully at the first few verses of the text.  Cain is the firstborn son of Adam and Eve.  A lot of celebration surrounds the story of his birth.  Eve announces to the world, “I’ve gotten a man, with Yahweh’s help!”  She doesn’t even call him a “baby”, he’s her “man”.  Likewise, the name “Cain” comes from the Hebrew word for “gotten”.  Her statement about Yahweh helping comes almost as an afterthought.  In addition to being the firstborn, we also learn that Cain was a farmer, which was considered to be a more “civilized” and “powerful” profession in the ancient world.

Abel, on the other hand, doesn’t receive much attention at all.  He’s just “another baby”.  In the original text, Abel is referred to as “Cain’s brother” before we even learn his name!  The name “Abel” means “vapor” or “breath”.  It signifies something that is fleeting or meaningless.  We get the idea early on that Abel doesn’t seem to matter much as a person.  He’s kind of an underdog who probably grew up in the shadow of his big brother, Cain.  As an adult, we learn that he became a shepherd.  As wanderers, shepherds were treated like despised, working-class people in ancient Middle Eastern cultures.  They were considered to be “backward rednecks” who wandered from place to place with the sheep.  They depended on the kindness of farmers (like Cain) for the sustenance of their flocks.  Most of the time, people spread all kinds of nasty rumors about nomadic shepherds.

Cain was the star of this family while Abel was little more than an afterthought.  Cain got all the attention.  Cain won his parents’ favor.  Cain did well for himself, while Abel seemed to struggle in his brother’s shadow.

All of a sudden, it seems significant that Yahweh deliberately chose to favor Abel’s offering over Cain’s.  Many theologians have offered potential explanations of why it is that the God Yahweh showed such favoritism.  Some say that Abel’s offering was better of quality, being from the “choice cuts of meat”.  Others suggest that Cain was somehow morally inferior to Abel.  Personally, I like the idea that God was showing affirmation to Abel the underdog.

Reading the story this way helps to shed some light on Cain himself.  If he’s used to being the top dog, then it makes sense that he would be upset about having to take second place to such a “loser” as Abel.  It would have felt insulting to him, as God’s amazing grace often does to those who seem to “have their act together”.

Even so, Yahweh does not abandon Cain in this critical moment.  We can see God acting as Cain’s pastoral counselor, warning him about the impending danger of uncontrolled rage and telling him, in effect, “Cain, you’re better than that.”

Unfortunately, we know how the story goes.  Cain doesn’t listen.  We get to see this “favorite son” at his worst.  Even after the ghastly deed is done, Cain’s lingering bitterness shows through in his sarcasm: “How should I know [where my brother is]?  Am I his babysitter?”

Cain has been thoroughly (and permanently) knocked off his pedestal as the family hero.  How the mighty have fallen!  He loses his status as a “civilized farmer” and is forced to become a “homeless wanderer on Earth” (much like his brother Abel once was).  He settles in the land of Nod, which means “wandering” in Hebrew.  Eugene Peterson calls it “No-Man’s-Land”.  Through his murderous actions, Cain has become what he once despised.

But, even in “No-Man’s-Land”, Yahweh is not absent.  In fact, Cain’s newfound status as an exiled and struggling underdog puts him in an ideal position for a divine encounter.  In Cain’s moment of deepest helplessness and hopelessness, God intervenes with a word of grace.  It is here that Yahweh imposes the famous “Mark of Cain”.

We often associate Cain’s mark as a sign of shame or punishment, much like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famous “Scarlet Letter”.  However, if we look at what’s actually happening in this story, God puts the mark on Cain “to protect him”.  It’s an act of loving care and grace!

For the first time in his life, Cain is in the uncomfortable position of having to rely on someone other than himself.  God graciously steps in to fill that void.  Cain has now become the troubled child and God will continue to reach out in tender compassion, even for this murderer.

God cares most about those who matter least.

That’s what this passage is all about.  It doesn’t matter that Cain shows promise and Abel doesn’t.  It doesn’t matter that Abel deserves it and Cain doesn’t.  God is Love and Love loves because that’s just who God is.  It has nothing to do with the worthiness of the object.

The same is true for each one of you in relation to God.  You are loved no matter who you are or what you’ve done.  You can’t earn God’s love.  You can’t stop it.  You can’t sin it away.  It just is.

Maybe, like Abel, you’ve been an underdog all your life.  Maybe, like Cain, your own bad decisions have earned you a place in “No-Man’s-Land”.  Either way, God is with you.  God loves you.  Nothing can change that.  Ever.

My Most Embarrassing Moment… Ever

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

This week’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is Genesis 3.

If you have ten minutes, I highly recommend listening rather than reading, since the story is much funnier when heard.

Click here to listen to the sermon recording.

As I was preparing this week’s sermon, I called my mother in North Carolina to see if she could help me.

“Mom,” I said, “I’m looking for a story about my teenage years for this week’s sermon.  I’m looking for some amusing incident when I made a bad decision and had to face the consequences.”

Well, let me tell you something: I learned a valuable lesson from this exercise.  I learned that parents have a supernatural ability to reach into the deep, dark shadows of the past and pull out your single most embarrassing moment.  Furthermore, I learned that if you ask them to exercise this ability, they will.

Let’s just say that, in the future, I’m going to think twice before I ask for my mother’s input on a sermon!

However, I can’t complain too much because I got exactly what I asked for: a somewhat amusing story about a time when I made a bad decision.  Over the phone, my mother laughed as hard as I’ve heard her laugh in a long time.  So, without further ado, I give you my most embarrassing moment:

I almost got arrested once.  It happened late one night in the years after I had finished high school.  I met some pals at “an establishment of merriment” and got caught up on our high school days.  After they left, I went to go settle my tab and discovered that I was a little short on cash.

My next move was to find an ATM inside a nearby mall.  The door was locked.  What next?  Well, there was this outdoor fountain beside the mall entrance.  You know, the kind of fountain that people toss their spare change into for good luck.  I was only a little short on my bill.  I could probably get what I needed from there.  So I rolled up my sleeves and you can guess what I tried next.

Thanks to the magic of closed-circuit surveillance television, Mall Security was on me in a flash.  They escorted me into their office, let me off easy, and banished me from the mall for a year.  I wish I could say that I learned some kind of redemptive and philosophical lesson from this encounter.  I can’t say that.  But I can tell you I learned that the money in those fountains goes to local charities and is taken quite seriously by Mall Security!

It was a growing-up moment and a stupid decision on my part.  Like I said, there’s not really any redeeming quality to this story.  It simply stands out as moment in my life when I was not at my best.

So it is with this morning’s story from Genesis 3.  There’s no moral to this story.  There’s no last-minute rescue or redemption.

Over the millennia, theologians of all stripes have tried to impose additional layers of meaning onto this text.  In the Christian tradition, many have read this story as an historical account of how “original sin” came into the world.  The talking serpent is understood to be Satan himself, tempting humanity to sin.  Paying special attention to Eve’s role in these events and the curse imposed upon her by God in the end, many have also used this story to justify the subjugation and mistreatment of women in the western world.

However, the text does not lend itself so easily to such black and white interpretation.  The serpent is never explicitly named as “Satan” in this passage.  Likewise, there is no mention of “original sin” whatsoever.

This story is often referred to as the story of “the Fall”, but I don’t see it as such.  For me, this is not a story about humankind “falling down”.  Instead, I see it as a story about humankind “growing up”.

In my understanding, humanity was not created perfect, but innocent.  The human race was in its infancy in the Garden of Eden.  Everything was provided for them as a free gift from God.  This is not at all unlike what human beings do with their own children.  They are born into our lives and we provide for them in any way that we can.  Parents feed, clothe, shelter, and love their kids.  It’s the natural thing to do.

However, there comes a time when kids grow up.  They start taking for themselves the things that we used to give them.  It starts in the terrible twos and continues through the teenage years.  As they grow older, they take on more and more knowledge.  With that knowledge comes increased responsibility.  It can be a very difficult process.  But eventually, most teenagers break through into adult life and (hopefully) a more mature relationship with their parents.

This is exactly what happened with Adam and Eve in this story.  They begin as children.  They were placed in a lovely garden where everything was given to them.  Then, they begin to exercise their free will.  They tested the boundaries set for them.  They took upon themselves the “knowledge of good and evil” and become responsible for it.  They had to leave their happy home.  That which was previously given to them had to be worked for.  This is the way of the world.  It’s the way life goes.

It’s the same journey that all of us must undertake at some point.

It begins with a decision that cannot be undone.  We must face reality and go out into the world.  The end results are mixed.  Sometimes we learn from their mistakes and sometimes we don’t.  Sometimes we use our power responsibly and sometimes we don’t.

I don’t believe this particular story is historical at all.  To quote the author Rob Bell, I see this as a story that “happens”, not one that “happened”.  It’s a very human story that expresses truth but not fact.  There is no airtight theological system at work here, nor is there a redemptive resolution at the end.  Adam and Eve walk off into an uncertain future that will be of their own making.  What it becomes is up to them.

However, I do see a glimmer of hope:

God is present.  At no point in this difficult “growing up” process does God ever reject Adam and Eve as children.  They must be made to face reality, but they will not do so alone.  God provides them with new clothes on their way out the door and, as we know from the rest of the book of Genesis, God never gives up on them or their family.

God keeps on showing up unexpectedly in the darkest of situations.  God is constantly working to guide, provide, and console.  I used to tell folks in my street ministry, “I like the book of Genesis.  It’s one of the few books I can read and find people more dysfunctional than I am.  And God never gives up on them!”  God doesn’t give up on Adam and Eve either.

Don’t parents do this with their grown-up kids as well?  They never give up.  They never stop hoping.  They never stop loving.  In the best of circumstances, a new relationship begins to develop.  This relationship is more mature and more mutual than the one-sided provider role that falls to the parents of little kids.

I believe this is God’s hope for us.  As we learn to use our power, God’s hope is that we will someday return home as adult believers who have become mature in our faith.  We can explore new and undreamed of territory that was completely foreign to us before.  We come back to God with a gift to offer and not just a need to fill.  This kind of relationship is more mutual and fulfilling for parties on both sides.  Having known the fruit of labor and redemption, we appreciate what we have so much more.

That is the kind of relationship that God wants with each one of us.  Are we prepared to accept that offer?

A God Worth Believing In

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

This week’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is Genesis 22:1-14.

Rev. John Buehrens, former president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, has an interesting response to folks who tell him, “I don’t believe in God.”

“Tell me about the God you don’t believe in,” he says, “Chances are that I don’t believe in ‘Him’ either.”

I’ve got to say that I love Buehrens’ response for the way it insightfully cuts through the veil of cultural assumptions and seeks to help both speaker and listener come to a deeper understanding of the words they use.

There are several good reasons for not believing in God.  Many of these reasons depend on which conception of “God” is being rejected.  In our society, there are several popular conceptions of God that manage to float around in our collective unconscious mind.

First, some have the idea of God as an old man with a long, white beard who lives in the sky.  Cartoonist Gary Larson often depicted God like this in his famous comic strip, The Far Side.  This God is the product of medieval superstition, not the ancient wisdom given through the scriptures and traditions of the church.  This is a God made in our own image: complete with physical form, location, and gender.  I am inclined to agree with my atheist friends that such a deity is not worth believing in.

Next, some think of God as a distant judge who stands aside like the referee at a ball game, just waiting for someone to break a rule.  Whenever that happens, this God makes sure to write it down for all eternity.  This God is kind of like Santa Claus, who is “making a list and checking it twice” with the assumption that someday, God is “coming to town” in order to dole out rewards and punishments.  This God is more interested in following the rules than growing in relationship.  I don’t blame my atheist friends.  I wouldn’t want to believe in that kind of God either!  As a matter of fact, I don’t.

Next, some have the idea of God an almighty being who controls everything that happens in the universe.  This God causes earthquakes and hurricanes as well as cancer and car accidents.  All tragedy can be attributed to “God’s will” according to this understanding.  Furthermore, this God predestines certain people for eternal salvation and others for eternal damnation.  Human beings have no free will, but are mere pawns in this God’s cosmic chess game.  I can understand why someone would not want to believe in this kind of God.

Next, some think of God as a kind of tribal deity or mascot, who is associated only with certain people in a certain place and time.  This God loves some people more than others, depending on some predetermined characteristic.  They say that God only loves Americans, or straight people, or Christians.  Anyone who doesn’t fit into the right category is excluded from God’s favor.  This kind of God is also not worth believing in.

These concepts of “old man in the sky”, “distant judge”, “almighty chess player”, and “tribal totem” arise from our culture’s assumptions about what God is like.  When people think of “God”, they are usually thinking of something (or someone) similar to one or more of these categories.

In the ancient Middle East, people had their own socially accepted ideas about what God must be like.  Most folks in those days believed that gods lived in stone or wooden sculptures.  The early Jews and Christians had no such idols, so they were referred to as “atheists” by the culture of their day.  People in that culture also believed that their gods needed to be fed by humans in order to thrive and survive.  Offerings and sacrifices were made so that the gods could “eat”.  No one in that society would have thought it strange that a deity would ask for some kind of sacrifice from people.  Occasionally, these gods would demand a human sacrifice in order to guarantee peace and prosperity during the coming year.  This was an accepted practice.

So, it would have come as no big surprise in their society that God would ask Abraham to sacrifice his firstborn son.  It fit with their cultural conception of spirituality.  It’s the kind of thing any god would have done in the ancient Middle East.  So, that’s why Abraham hardly batted an eye when God told him to go sacrifice his son Isaac on a mountain.  “It’s just what gods do!”

When we read this story in the modern world, we’re horrified by it.  We can’t imagine the God we worship asking someone to kill their own child as a test of faith.  We take people who do that sort of thing and lock them up in jail.  Jews and Christians alike have tried to understand this passage by interpreting it allegorically or symbolically.  Jews call this passage the “Akedah” and see it as a story about themselves as Isaac on the altar with his survival and God’s promise hanging in the balance.  A lot of Jewish theology written since the Holocaust has paid special attention to the Akedah as a lens for understanding what happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany.  The Jewish people were brought to the brink of destruction, but were spared at the last minute.  Many Christians, for their part, interpret this text as an allegorical symbol for what happened to Christ: the beloved son ascended a hill carrying wood on his back, and faced a sacrificial death.  Philosophers like Soren Kierkegaard have analyzed this passage as a metaphor for individual choice and personal faith.  The list goes on…

What all of these renderings have in common is that they are trying to either sidestep or understand the sheer horror of a God who would call someone to kill his or her own child.  But we miss something as we project our modern values on this ancient text.  In that culture, a deity calling for human sacrifice was considered normal.  In fact, it was so normal that Abraham hardly thinks twice when his God seems to be asking for it.

If there’s anything strange and shocking about this text from an ancient standpoint, it’s the fact that Abraham’s God stops the sacrifice at the last possible second.  This must have been mind-boggling to Abraham!  His whole idea of who God is and how the world works must have been turned upside down in that moment!

By stopping the human sacrifice, God was challenging popular cultural notions about religion.  God was changing the way religion worked in that society.  God was saying to Abraham, in effect, “I’m not like that.  I’m different.”

God isn’t like that.  God is different.

I wonder what this idea would look like if we applied it to some of our own cultural conceptions about God?

Remember the conception of God as the “old man in the sky”?  We already identified this kind of God as “not worth believing in”.  How might God say, “I’m not like that” about the “old man in the sky”?  Let’s look at the first part: Is God really male?  Well, did you know that there are several places in the Bible where God is actually described as a mother?  Sure enough in Deuteronomy 32, Job 38, Isaiah 46, and Jeremiah 31, God is a woman giving birth.  Likewise, the name “El Shaddai”, usually rendered as “God Almighty” by English translators, probably comes from the word that is used to describe nursing mothers.  What about the second part?  Does God really live “up there” in the sky?  Well, our annual Christmas celebrations would seem to deliver a resounding “No” to that question.  At Christmas time, we Christians celebrate our belief that God “took on flesh and dwelt among us”, as it says in John 1.  Later on Jesus said repeatedly that if we want to look for God, we should look among the people in this world who suffer most.  “Whatever you have done for the least of these who are members of my family,” Jesus said in Matthew 25, “you have done for me.”  If you want to go looking for God, don’t look on some cloud floating up in the sky.  Look around you, down here on earth!  That’s where God is!  God lives in the people around us who need help the most.  So, when it comes to our culture’s idea of God as “old man in the sky”, I think we can safely say that God isn’t like that.  God is complex, diverse, and intimately present in our lives.  That’s what God is like.

How about the idea of God as the “distant judge” who is “making a list and checking it twice” in order to find out who is “naughty or nice”?  We’ve already said that it’s not worth believing in a God who is more interested in rules than relationships.  Is our God really that kind of “distant judge”?  Well, let’s look at the kinds of things that Jesus said and did.  He went out of his way to welcome outcast sinners who had been kicked out of their synagogues for failing to live up to “old fashioned family values”.  Jesus went so far as to break time-honored religious laws in order to express God’s radical welcome to those who were least deserving of it.  Again and again, Jesus showed us that forgiveness, rather than judgment, is the way that God operates in this world.  When it comes to harsh judgment, Jesus tells us, “God isn’t like that.”  God is more interested in loving sinners than upholding the self-righteousness of judgmental hypocrites.  That’s what God is like.

What about God as the “almighty chess player” who causes everything that happens in the world, including tragedy and disaster?  This one is a bit trickier (especially for us Presbyterians, who have historically emphasized God’s sovereignty).  Philosophers have been wrestling with this question for centuries.  There’s no way we can sum up their arguments in a single paragraph.  But we can point to passages in the Bible that refer to God’s character.  I’m thinking of passages like Jeremiah 29:11: “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”  In James 1:17, we learn that “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights”.  When it comes to predestined salvation and damnation, we read in 2 Peter 3:9 that God is patient with us, “not wanting any to perish”.  As we piece together these snippets, we begin to get the idea that “God isn’t like that” when it comes to the “almighty chess player”.  God is a generous giver who works for the good of everyone.  There are no dispensable or “extra” people in God’s eyes.  That’s what God is like.

What about the conception of God as “mascot” or “tribal totem”?  Does God belong to only one group of people?  Passages like Psalm 87 describes the community of God’s people as an extremely diverse group, made up of all the nations of the world, even those who were regarded as Israel’s enemies at that time.  The Jewish prophet Isaiah spends a lot of time describing this reality in detail.  We see it spelled out in Isaiah 2, 55, and 60.  Jesus and the early Christians began to fulfill Isaiah’s vision as they opened the doors of the church to include Greeks, Romans, Africans, and Samaritans as well as Jews.  God does not belong to one group of people as their mascot.  God isn’t like that.  God loves all people and wants to gather us together into one human family.  Jesus himself said it best in John 12:32, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”  Notice that he said “all people”, not just “some”.  Not just Americans, straight people, or Christians, but “all”.  That’s what God is like.

There are some ideas about God that just aren’t worth believing in.  Abraham learned that in his experience on Mount Moriah.  I think we can have a similar experience when we compare our cultural notions about “who God is” with what we actually read about in the Bible.  With Abraham, I think we will discover a God who is bigger, better, more loving, and more amazing than we can possibly imagine!