A Wedding in a War Zone

On October 9, 2011October 9, 2011 By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

"Love Among the Ruins". An image captured during the 2011 Stanley Cup riots in Vancouver.

This week’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

Click here to listen to the sermon at fpcboonville.org

You can also tune in to hear us on the radio at 7:30 Sunday mornings on 99.3 and 101.3 FM “The Moose”.

Did anybody here happen to catch the royal wedding on TV earlier this year? Pretty impressive, wasn’t it? Of course, there’s the dress. Everybody wanted to know what Princess Kate would be wearing that day (designed by Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen’s fashion house, in case anyone was still wondering). There was all the dazzling royal regalia and decoration. I, for one, was particularly impressed with how they managed to get so many full grown trees inside to line the center aisle of Westminster Abbey! Being the theology nerd that I am, I’m probably the only person who tuned in primarily to hear the Bishop of London’s sermon. What does one write for such an occasion? As it turns out, he did a pretty good job. I especially liked his quote from St. Catherine of Siena, “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.”

However, there was one thing about the whole affair that I found disconcerting: my invitation seems to have gotten lost in the mail! Did this happen to anyone else? We were invited, right? I mean, why wouldn’t we be invited? We’re basically nice people, aren’t we? I’m sure we’d behave ourselves. No one would put a whoopee cushion underneath Prince Charles’ seat (at least not during the service). Who knows? We could have really shown those royal types a good time!

Alas, the reality is that regular folks like us don’t usually get invited to royal weddings. Those invitations only go out to those who possess this-worldly qualities of nobility and celebrity. The Prime Minister of England was there. Elton John was there. One of the Spice Girls was there. You know, important people, the rich and famous, the elite. Yes, it was quite a spectacle. The couple kissed, cameras flashed, and everyone had a wonderful time.

Now imagine with me, if you will, what would happen if people from London’s “elite” had started turning down their invitations. The excuses might seem innocuous at first: Elton John is busy recording his new album, Parliament is passing important legislation, the Spice Girls are getting back together. Important people have important things to do, right? But then imagine that the royal couriers start coming back with horrible stories. One by one, they burst through door of Buckingham Palace, panting and wounded. “Something’s happening,” they say, “They’re turning on us out there!” Queen Elizabeth quickly turns on the TV, just in time to see Prime Minister David Cameron on the screen, tearing up his wedding invitation and publicly executing the royal courier on live TV! With the gun still smoking in his hand, he loudly proclaims, “We’ll do the same thing to every single member of the royal family!”

Anyone who saw that bloody broadcast would have to agree that it looked an awful lot like the beginnings of a civil war in the UK and the insurgents picked the day of the royal wedding to make their move! Guards, police, and military would be immediately deployed to deal with the insurrection. Instead of riding to the wedding in a Rolls Royce, Kate pulls up in an armored jeep. Instead of elegantly striding into the church, she ducks and runs inside as soldiers lay down cover fire over her head. Machine gun fire drowns out most of the Bishop’s sermon. Explosions outside cause Westminster Abbey to rumble and shake. This would not have been the wedding day that William and Kate had hoped for. Most of us would probably feel quite sorry for them in that situation.

On the other hand, there would be something brave and admirable in the couple’s decision to continue with their wedding in a war zone. Like Bruce Cockburn said, they would be “lovers in a dangerous time”. It would be a powerful symbolic gesture, as though William and Kate were celebrating the power of love in defiance of the power of death. Fortunately though, William and Kate didn’t have to make that call on their special day together.

In our scripture reading this morning, Jesus tells us a story about a wedding where such a tragedy did happen. A king sends out wedding invitations to his noble subjects and receives rejections in return. What’s even worse is that people start beating up and killing the royal messengers as acts of rebellion against the king. The National Guard gets called and it’s an all out civil war. But the royal wedding goes ahead as planned, in spite of opposition from without and within. In fact, the king takes advantage of this crisis in order to fling wide the doors of his palace and invite all the everyday people on the street. He says, “Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” Matthew’s gospel tells us that all kinds of people, “both good and bad”, came to the wedding. Luke’s gospel goes into even more detail, telling us specifically that “the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame” were all welcome at this celebration of love.

Jesus tells this story in order to show us how the kingdom of heaven is like a wedding in a war zone. Now, it’s important to remember here that “the kingdom of heaven” that Jesus mentions has little or nothing to do with the afterlife. Jesus isn’t talking about “going to heaven when you die.” He’s talking about a present-day reality in this world. “Heaven” is just a Jewish euphemism for the word “God”. “Kingdom” can also mean “reign”, “dominion”, or “territory”. It’s a spiritual state of being, rather than a geographical location. The “kingdom of heaven” or “reign of God” exists wherever God’s way of love is followed rather than the ways of the world. Jesus is saying that the life of faith is an all-inclusive celebration of life and love that goes on in spite of the all-pervasive destruction that’s going on around us. Theologian William Stringfellow referred to this as “living humanly in the midst of death.”

Each one of us is cordially invited by God to live a life of faith in the present reality of the kingdom of heaven. When I say “faith” I’m not just talking about subscription to a set of doctrines, adherence to a set of morals, or participation in certain rituals. “Faith” in this sense of the word is a heart-felt response to God’s loving invitation that rises up from the very core of your being. It’s that part of you that says “Yes” inside to the all-inclusive celebration of love. It’s a radical act of defiance against the power of this world where “might makes right”, “the ends justify the means”, and “history is written by the winners”. Whenever someone chooses reconciliation over retribution, that’s the kingdom of heaven breaking through. Whenever someone chooses trust over cynicism, that’s the kingdom of heaven breaking through. Whenever the rigid armor of this world system cracks in some small way, even for just a moment, and let’s a little bit of light and humanity in, that’s the kingdom of heaven breaking through. We pray for this to happen every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

I’d like to illustrate this point with a true story taken from a book by Philip Yancey called What’s So Amazing About Grace?

Accompanied by her fiancé, a woman went to the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Boston and ordered the meal. The two of them pored over the menu, made selections of china and silver, and pointed to pictures of the flower arrangements they liked. They both had expensive taste, and the bill came to thirteen thousand dollars. After leaving a check for half that amount as down payment, the couple went home to flip through books of wedding announcements.

The day the announcements were supposed to hit the mailbox, the potential groom got cold feet. “I’m just not sure,” he said. “It’s a big commitment. Let’s think about this a little longer.”

When his angry fiancée returned to the Hyatt to cancel the banquet, the Events Manager could not have been more understanding. “The same thing happened to me, Honey,” she said, and told the story of her own broken engagement. But about the refund, she had bad news. “The contract is binding. You’re only entitled to thirteen hundred dollars back. You have two options: to forfeit the rest of the down payment, or go ahead with the banquet. I’m sorry. Really, I am.”

It seemed crazy, but the more the jilted bride thought about it, the more she liked the idea of going ahead with the party—–not a wedding banquet, mind you, but a big blowout. Ten years before, this same woman had been living in a homeless shelter. She had got back on her feet, found a good job, and set aside a sizable nest egg. Now she had the wild notion of using her savings to treat the down-and-outs of Boston to a night on the town.

And so it was that in June of 1990 the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Boston hosted a party such as it had never seen before. The hostess changed the menu to boneless chicken—–“in honor of the groom,” she said—and sent invitations to rescue missions and homeless shelters. That warm summer night, people who were used to peeling half-gnawed pizza off the cardboard dined instead on chicken cordon bleu. Hyatt waiters in tuxedos served hors d’oeuvres to senior citizens propped up by crutches and aluminum walkers. Bag ladies, vagrants and addicts took one night off from the hard life on the sidewalks outside and instead sipped champagne, ate chocolate wedding cake, and danced to big-band melodies late into the night.

That’s the kingdom of heaven on earth!

When I ask you about your faith, I honestly couldn’t care less about your religious affiliation or observance. What I want to know (and what God wants to know) is whether you are the kind of person who would go to a wedding in a war zone. Will you join in the celebration of God’s all-inclusive love in the midst of this violent and broken world?

What do you say? Are you with me in this?

If anything deep inside of you is answering “Yes” to that question right now, listen to it! That’s the power of faith, hope, and love rising up inside of you. That’s the kind of faith that has the power to sustain us through the ups and downs of life. That’s the kind of faith that has the power to renew our church. That’s the kind of faith that has the power to change the world.

Practical Atheism

On October 2, 2011October 5, 2011 By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon7 Comments

Sermon for the 27th week in Ordinary Time at First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is Matthew 21:33-46.

Click here to listen to the audio at fpcboonville.org!

As many of you already know, being the pastor of First Presbyterian Church is only one of my jobs. I also teach philosophy at Utica College. Let me tell you: it’s a fun job. I love the friendly banter I get to have with my students. I love challenging them to think outside the box and grow as human beings. One of my favorite memories came on the first day of class a few semesters ago. I was sitting at the front of the room, stapling papers, when my first student arrived early and sat down. The first words out of his mouth were, “My name is Josh and I am an atheist!” Now, it’s important for you to know that the vast majority of my students don’t know that I’m a pastor. I try to keep that piece of information to myself in order to maintain an open and unbiased atmosphere in the classroom. So Josh had no idea who he was talking to. He told me about his favorite atheist authors and I recommended a few others he might like. At the end of the conversation, he told me he was glad that his philosophy class was being taught by me and not “some Christian moron”. I just smiled and kept on stapling my papers.

Over the next few weeks, Josh and I continued to develop a healthy teacher-student rapport. Then one day, he came into my office and was making small-talk. And he asked me if I was an atheist like him.

“Actually no,” I said. He looked surprised.

“Really,” he said, “What are you then?” And without saying a word, I just reached into my pocket and put my clerical collar on. For the next few seconds, he was speechless. He just sat there with his mouth hanging open. The look on his face was priceless. I’m happy to say that my newly-discovered clerical status didn’t damage my professional relationship with Josh. To this day, he and I maintain a lively connection based on mutual respect.

There are those who might say, “Barrett, how is that possible? He’s an atheist and you’re a Christian! Aren’t you afraid that this might somehow compromise the integrity of your faith?”

And my answer is no. I’m not afraid of that at all.

Honest skepticism poses no threat to Christianity whatsoever. God can handle doubt.

That being said, I do think there is a particular kind of atheism that does pose a threat to authentic faith, but it’s not the kind of atheism that you’re likely to find in the halls of the ivory tower, the ranks of the Communist Party, or the meetings of the Secular Humanist Association. The kind of atheism that poses a real threat to Christianity is the kind you find in church. I’m not talking about atheism by philosophy or belief. I’m talking about practical atheism, where otherwise religious people, even Christians, live their everyday lives as if God didn’t exist. Practical atheists read the Bible, receive the sacraments, say their prayers, and recite the creed with sincerity and devotion.

Right now, it would be easy for me to offer some example of a publicly religious personality who was caught in some major scandal or hypocrisy. Those stories certainly are tragic, but saddest of all are those who never fall prey to such public humiliation. They’re upstanding citizens and model Christians. They go through the motions so well that even they don’t realize that they are actually practical atheists.

Jesus knew people like this. He reached out to them, connected with them, and invited them into a deeper experience of who God really is. He told them this story:

Once upon a time there was an entrepreneur who started up an elaborate winery and leased it out to tenants for management. Already, in this first sentence, we have an insight about the nature of God versus the nature of practical atheism. Practical atheists are quick to use the word “my”: my church, my tradition, my house, my family, etc. But, if we take the entrepreneur to be a symbol for God, we see that God is the one who started all this. This is God’s church. Two hundred years ago, God began to do something in Boonville through the people of this church. Today, their mission has been passed to us, but we don’t own it. We are tenants here who have been given stewardship for the moment. Each of us plays a part, but God is the one with the master plan. This is a simple and obvious truth that is too easily forgotten in the fog of maintenance and administration. We need to remember that nothing in this church exists for its own sake. Everything is a tool for participating in God’s mission project here in Boonville. Just like the landowner in Jesus’ story built the vineyard for a purpose, God built this church for a purpose.

Back to the story itself, these tenants forget just whose vineyard it is anyway. The absentee landlord sends multiple employees in succession to the vineyard for a progress update and the tenants treat each one worse than the one before. When the landlord sends his own son at last, they say, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.” The only way this logic makes any sense is if the tenants assume that the landlord has died. Only then would they have a shot at “get[ting] his inheritance”. In the same vein, Jesus’ audience of practical atheists must have (at some level) assumed that God is dead (or unreal), in spite of their outward religious fervency. They mistook themselves for the owners of God’s vineyard and forgot that they were merely tenants.

Any remnant of God that remains in their minds becomes shrunken and twisted so that their idea of God looks very much like their idea of themselves. When Jesus asks them what the vineyard owner (God) will do to the wicked tenants (them), they reply in no uncertain terms, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.” Let’s listen to that again: this is what God looks like to them: they assume that God is the one who “will put those wretches to a miserable death”. This deity, while technically just and powerful, is small-minded and unsympathetic (not unlike the Pharisees themselves).

Jesus confronts this faulty image of God with all the care and compassion in his heart. If you look closely at the text, he never affirms the Pharisees’ idea of a God who “will put those wretches to a miserable death”. Instead, the first words out of his mouth are, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’?” Jesus quotes from the sacred text of their own religious tradition and presents the living God as one who accepts unacceptable people and honors outcasts and rejects. The God of Jesus does not seem to show much interest in putting “wretches to a miserable death”. Jesus’ God would rather go looking for that tossed-aside piece of broken cement so that it can be treated with special care and honor. This is what the living God is really like, according to Jesus.

The one part of the Pharisees’ response that Jesus agrees with is the part about “leas[ing] the vineyard to other tenants”. Jesus tells them, “[T]he kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.” This sounds like punishment at first, but isn’t it liberating in the end? Isn’t Jesus setting them free from bondage to the leased vineyard that has now become a spiritual burden? Without that albatross around their necks, they will be free to see God more clearly. Perhaps this is what they need in order to stop seeing God as the one who “[puts] wretches to a miserable death” and start seeing God as the one who receives outcasts and honors rejects. By taking way their religious power, Jesus is curing the chief priests and Pharisees of their practical atheism. I think God is doing the same thing for all of us.

Honestly, I think we’re all practical atheists at some level or another. We like to trick ourselves into thinking that we’re self-made individuals who can pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We like to cast ourselves as the hero in our own story. We are apt to forget that we are merely tenants in God’s vineyard and think of ourselves instead as the owners. In short, we’re trying to play God. Into this fog of delusion comes the real and living God. We’re terrified because we assume that God is coming in order to put us “wretches to a miserable death”, but instead this seeker of rejected cornerstones is coming to liberate us, not punish us.

So, how do we apply this cure for practical atheism in our own lives? How do we embrace the liberation that God has in store for us? How do we get in touch with this living God?

As it turns out, there’s not much to it at all. We don’t have to go far to find the living God because God is already here. The apostle Paul tells us Romans 11 that God is the source, guide, and goal of all things. It is in God that we all “live, move, and have our being.” As long as there is air in your lungs, the living God is present and active in your life.

We don’t need to do much of anything to get God’s attention either. Just as God is not intimidated by honest skepticism in the classroom, God is also not impressed by pious posturing in church. Jesus taught people that there’s no need to “heap up empty phrases” when they pray because God “knows what you need before you ask”.

So, in the end, the cure for practical atheism is as simple as what Jesus taught his followers in Luke 11:

Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. ¹⁰For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. ¹¹Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? ¹²Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? ¹³If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!

So, if you feel like that’s you today: the practical atheist who is just going through the motions of spirituality, why not take some time this week for a little open-minded asking, searching, and knocking? You might just be surprised at the gifts you receive, the treasures you find, and the doors that open up for you.

Hard Questions for Easy Answers

On September 26, 2011 By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

This week’s sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is Matthew 21:23-32.

OK class, it’s time for a pop quiz! That means you have to close your books. All of them. I don’t want to see an open hymnal or Bible in this church for the next few minutes! We’re going to see how much you know.

What is the last petition in the Lord’s Prayer?
Fill in the blank: “I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the _________.”
What is the Fourth Commandment?
“What is the chief end of man?” (wording from the 1647 Westminster Shorter Catechism)

(See answers posted below)

We’re talking about questions today. We’re asking lots of questions, we’re answering questions with more questions, we’re exploring all of these questions to see whether they can tell us something enlightening about ourselves, but the one thing we’re not doing today is getting a lot of straightforward and direct answers.

That’s not something we’re very used to in 21^st century North America. As products of the modern era, we like to have an answer for every question and a solution to every problem. This works pretty well for us, most of the time. Since the dawn of the modern age, humanity has developed capabilities undreamed of in previous periods of history. We’ve eradicated diseases, traveled into space, and thanks to the internet, exponentially multiplied our capacity for distraction and procrastination. But, in spite of all these benefits, the Law of Unintended Consequences still applies. Our pursuit of easy answers and quick fixes has often led us to find better and more effective ways to manipulate and kill our fellow human beings.

One of my favorite examples of the Law of Unintended Consequences halting the drive for easy answers and quick fixes comes from about ten years ago. TV infomercials were all atwitter about this new device that was supposed to help you lose weight. It was a belt that fit around your stomach and would send electrical impulses to stimulate your abdominal muscles. Theoretically, you could get six-pack abs while sitting on your couch and watching TV. Sounds pretty great, right? It’s the boldest claim I’ve heard since McDonald’s started offering “health food”!

Unfortunately, this fairy tale did not have a happy ending. These devices were not FDA approved and several safety issues quickly arose. First of all, the FTC determined that they have little or no muscle-building effect. Second, several people were badly burned or electrocuted as the belts started to wear out from regular use. Comedian Robin Williams commented that people should actually strap it to their heads and tell themselves, “I [zap] will not [zap] buy [zap] stupid [zap] junk [zap] for no [zap] reason [zap].”

Our obsession with easy answers and quick fixes will lead us to no end of insanity. Thankfully, we are not alone in this. God knows about this tendency in us and has shown us a way out of our own obsessive craziness and back into blessed sanity.

I’m about to tell the story of Jesus cleansing the Temple, which took place in Jerusalem in 30AD, but I’m going to tell it in today’s terms:

Jesus blows into town like a hurricane one Sunday morning and visits the big old First Presbyterian Church downtown. Entering the building before worship, Jesus goes into their bookstore/gift shop and tells the clerk to take an early lunch. After she’s gone, Jesus rolls up his sleeves and starts taking all the merchandise off the shelves: Christian t-shirts, WWJD bracelets, greeting cards, posters, praise & worship CDs, and Christian Living bestsellers. And he sets them out by the curb with a sign that says “FREE”, all the while muttering something under his breath about “house of prayer” and “den of thieves”. Then he goes back in, pulls the cash register off the counter, and empties the money out on the floor of the fellowship hall. Going back into the now-vacant shop, Jesus pushes all the racks and shelves back into a corner, sets a chair down in the middle of the room, and pulls a Bible out of the plastic shrink-wrap.

“We’re going to have a Bible study in here,” Jesus says, “Stick around, if you want.”

Well, people do stick around and the Bible study is a hit. Unfortunately, Jesus didn’t bother to consult the pastor or get the approval of the session before starting it (not to mention his little “renovation” of the gift shop). So the presbytery forms an emergency judicial commission to go down to First Church and regain control of the situation.

So they go down there and get right up in Jesus’ face. “Listen,” they say, “We want some answers and we want them NOW. What gives you the right to do all this? Who died and made you God?” (Which is an interesting question to ask Jesus. I like to imagine he said, “Give me a week and I’ll tell you.”) This visit from the denominational officials is the part of the story we read in this week’s gospel lesson.

Well, Jesus doesn’t give the religious leaders the answer they’re looking for, but he does ask some rather poignant questions. He engages them in the Jewish art of pilpul, which is a way of getting at the truth through vigorous debate. Rabbis would argue endlessly (and loudly) over a particular passage of the Torah. To the outsider, this looked like pointless hair-splitting, but within the Jewish tradition, pilpul was a means to getting at the essence or heart of a matter.

In the west, we have a similar rhetorical device used today by philosophers and lawyers. It’s called the Socratic Method. Socrates, an ancient Greek philosopher, was famous for pestering his debate opponents with endless questions until they stormed off in frustration, unable to defend the inevitable contradiction in their thinking. Like the rabbis who practiced pilpul, Socrates wasn’t so much interested in answering the question as much as getting at the very essence of a problem or person.

In this week’s gospel lesson, the religious leaders show up wanting answers and control, but Jesus doesn’t give it to them. Instead, Jesus uses question on top of question in order to cut to heart of the matter. He’s not particularly interested in hearing what they think about John the Baptist. In fact, Jesus couldn’t care less about their answer to his question because their answer isn’t the point. The point is in the question itself. The question itself is enlightening. It reveals who they are on the inside. It exposes the fact that their obsession with their own agenda had completely blinded them to what God was doing right in front of them. That’s the truth that Jesus is trying to get at.

When we read this story about Jesus interacting with these religious leaders in the first century, we get some insight into the way that God interacts with us in the twenty-first century. We come to God looking for easy answers but God gives us hard questions instead.

I started our sermon this morning with a little theology pop quiz. We talked about the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, and Presbyterian tradition. That’s all well and good. But at the end of the day, those questions tell me a lot about what you know. By themselves they don’t tell me very much at all about who you are. And that’s what God is most interested in.

Are you the kind of person who walks through life, fixated on your own agenda, looking for easy answers and quick fixes? Or are you the kind of person who can embrace the mystery of life with an open heart, even when it messes with your agenda and leaves you with more questions than answers?

For me, that’s what the journey of faith is all about: moving forward, taking risks, trusting that we’re not alone in this life, believing that all of this mess is going somewhere, even if we can’t see where that is just yet? Will you trust with me? Will you come with me on this journey? I don’t exactly know where we’re going either, but I can promise you this: it’s going to be one heck of a ride!

Pop Quiz answers:

1. Deliver us from evil

2. Forgiveness of sins

3. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy

4. “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

Thoreau and Pride

On September 20, 2011 By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon2 Comments

This past Sunday afternoon, I had the honor of preaching at the interfaith worship service for PrideFest in Utica. My chosen text was a passage from Henry David Thoreau’s famous book, Walden:

We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology! — I know of no reading of another’s experience so startling and informing as this would be.

I love Thoreau’s question, “Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?” For me, that question sheds light on our culture’s assumption that “truth” is primarily propositional. We think it can be found in books.

As a book-lover, I fall particularly prone to this assumption!

Because of this, many folks who are active in working for LGBT equality tend to focus their efforts on establishing adequate education and legislation for equal rights in our public institutions. To be sure, these are important. We need to be putting time and effort into education and legislation. Equality will not come without them.

However, I don’t see either education or legislation as the primary catalyst for social change. For me, the deciding factor is relationships. It was my close and personal encounters with LGBT friends, roommates, pastors, and colleagues that opened my mind and heart for the first time. Only after that did I go back and reread the pages of the Bible with a new set of eyes. Only then did I make phone calls, write letters, speak out to the media, and march with a sign outside my senator’s office. Before education and legislation, there was relationship.

It began with people who cared about me enough to talk, listen, wait, forgive, and ultimately love me into a new way of thinking. It was these relationships that led me to experience the miracle of “look[ing] through [an]other’s eyes for an instant”.

These relationships have carried me thus far and I believe they have the power to carry us all forward. Let’s make every effort to “look through each other’s eyes for an instant”. Let’s find a friend there. Ultimately, let’s find the face of God there.

God is Generous to a Fault

On September 18, 2011September 18, 2011 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 21^st 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 September 11, 2011July 29, 2013 By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon7 Comments

Cool Bulletin Cover — 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 11^th 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 September 4, 2011 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 August 28, 2011August 28, 2011 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 August 1, 2011August 1, 2011 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 19^th 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 19^th 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 July 24, 2011 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!”

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Category: Sermon

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