Have Yourself A Messy Little Christmas

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon2 Comments

A little late.

This was the sermon from the fourth week of Advent at First Pres, Boonville.

The text is Luke 1:26-38.

Click here to listen to this sermon at fpcboonville.org

Did you ever notice that every time you’re going through some major transition in life, especially if you’re getting married, suddenly everyone you meet somehow magically turns into an expert on the subject?  Suddenly, everyone has that one piece of wisdom that’s going to make the whole situation clear.  Suddenly, everyone’s got a PhD in wedding planning, right?  They think they’re so wise and insightful but they almost always end up being obvious and inane: “Make sure the flowers don’t clash with the bridesmaid’s dresses!”  And they all start the same: “One word of advice…”

“One word of advice: don’t pick a DJ who will play ‘Bootylicious’ while your Grandma is still in the room.”

“One word of advice: Kanye West’s ‘Gold Digger’ is not an appropriate song for your first dance.”

Really?  Thank you.  I don’t know what I’d do without you.

Nobody likes it when people do that, yet everybody still does it.  I’m no exception.  I get to work with a lot of couples as they plan their big wedding day.  And, like everyone else, I’ve got my “one word of advice” for every couple that comes through my office.  I like to think it’s brilliant, but maybe it’s just as annoying as everyone else’s.  It goes like this: “The key to the perfect wedding day is imperfection.”

When I see these shows like ‘Bridezillas’ and ‘Say Yes to the Dress’, it strikes me that a lot of people out there are obsessed with having “the perfect wedding day”.  But here’s the thing: it doesn’t exist.  Something will go wrong.  Count on it.

On the day that Sarah and I got married, we used recorded music and thought we had it timed and coordinated perfectly.  Unfortunately, there was a miscalculation and the music stopped while Sarah was still halfway down the aisle.  What do you do then?  Start over?  “OK everybody, take two!  Back to the beginning.  We didn’t get it right.  Cue bridesmaids!”  No, not really.  You just roll with it.  As long as everybody gets there in one piece and says, “I do,” it counts as a successful wedding.  Everything else is just icing on the cake (no pun intended).

You’ll have to excuse me.  I’ve got weddings on the brain today because today is my anniversary.  Sarah and I got married seven years ago today.  But this idea of imperfection being the key to perfection doesn’t just apply to weddings.  As it turns out, there’s also no such thing as the perfect car, house, job, family, or holiday (especially Christmas).

People tend to get especially funny about this idea of ‘perfection’ around the holidays.  As a society, we’re so doped up on nostalgia during the holidays that we can’t see the forest for the (Christmas) trees.  We sing silent night by candlelight around the sweet little Nativity Scene at church.  Perfect, right?  Actually, no.

Wondrous?  Yes.  Beautiful?  Absolutely.  But not perfect.  This is an important fact to remember whenever we get down on ourselves because our Christmas, our families, or our lives don’t look like what we see in that warm, candlelit manger.  Here’s the thing: those people around the manger didn’t have the perfect Christmas either.  In fact, a close evaluation of the Christmas story itself will show us just how ‘imperfect’ this whole experience really was.

At Christmas, we celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation, where God comes to meet us in the middle of the blood, sweat, and tears of our messy and imperfect lives.  When we come to the point of being open to the presence of that mystery in our mess, then we can say that we’ve truly understood the meaning of Christmas.

Let’s look at the biblical text.  Today’s reading from the gospel according to Luke is usually referred to as ‘The Annunciation’ because this is where the angel Gabriel makes an ‘announcement’ to the Virgin Mary that she is pregnant and will soon have a baby.  Mary is from Nazareth, a little hick town way out in the middle of nowhere that was probably less than half the size of Boonville.  As we’ve mentioned before, the country she lived in was at that time occupied by the Roman Empire.

Living in a society that was hardly ‘empowering’ to women, Mary’s only hope for a secure future lay in finding a good husband and having lots and lots of male children to care for her when she got old.  The price she had to pay in exchange for this security was her body.  She was considered to be the property of her husband.  Her value as a human being was defined by her virginity.  If any man was to make a lifetime investment in her, he would want assurances that he would have exclusive access to her.  Any evidence to the contrary (i.e. getting pregnant before the wedding by someone other than her fiancé) would be grounds for calling off the whole thing.  The next step would probably be a public execution.  Some might even view that as merciful, because it would save her family from shame and spare her from a life on the streets as a beggar or prostitute.

By the way, I should mention that Mary was probably somewhere around 13 or 14 years old while all of this was happening.  I’ll let that sink in for those of you who have ever had young teenagers.  Mary was an unwed teenage mother with no conceivable future from a backward hick town in an occupied country.  Does this still sound like the perfect Christmas to you?

Nevertheless, the angel Gabriel begins their conversation by saying, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”  What kind of opening line is that?  In the midst of all this mess, knowing the scandal she was about to face, how could this angel have the audacity to call her “favored” and say, “The Lord is with you?”  It doesn’t make sense.

We’re not the only ones to notice the absurdity of the situation either.  The text tells us that Mary herself was “perplexed” and asking questions like, “How can this be?”  Her faith was not blind and unquestioning.  She didn’t walk around like some mystical saint with a halo over her head.  Mary was a realist.  She was just as confused as you or I would be in her shoes.

Nothing about her situation made any sense.  The angel’s message went against everything she believed in, morally and theologically.  The angel was asking the impossible.  Yet, as a voice told Mary in verse 37, “nothing will be impossible with God.”  Through the presence of that great divine mystery (which we call “God”) in the messiness her life, Mary encountered infinite possibility and creativity.  “Nothing is impossible.”

Her risky response, “Let it be,” opened her up to actualizing this potential in her own life.  This openness, more than religious dogma or morality, is what real faith is all about.  Are you open to the divine mystery being present in the messiness of your life?  To take the risk of disaster and damnation is to make a leap of faith.  “Let it be” is a statement so bold and so brave that the Beatles even wrote a song about it: “When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, ‘Let it be.’”  “Let it be” was her response to the angel’s invitation.  I think John Lennon perhaps understood something of the power in those words.

After Mary had spoken these words, everything was the same yet everything was different.  New life had begun to grow inside of her.  When the time was right, this new life was born into the world: Jesus (Yeshua, salvation, deliverance, liberation).

Celebrating Christmas is about looking for the mystery in the mess.  It’s not about perfection in holiday nostalgia, moral uprightness, or religious dogma.  It’s about saying “Yes” and “Let it be” to the limitless possibilities in front of you.  It’s about staying open to the new life that is waiting to be born in you.

Be open to the angel’s invitation when it comes to you in your messy life.  It might not look like a winged messenger from heaven, but it might show itself in a sudden opportunity to help someone, welcome someone, trust someone, forgive someone, or love someone.  When it happens, you’ll know.  In that moment, say in your heart, “Let it be” and watch new life grow in and be born through you.

Be open to the mystery in the mess.  Embrace the divine possibility in the earthly imperfection and take that leap of faith, saying, “Let it be.”

And have yourself a messy little Christmas.

Internet Heretic Superstar Makes Headlines Again

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Community ChaplaincyLeave a comment

I’m in the news again (and not in the Most Wanted section).  I had a lovely conversation with Cassaundra Baber from the Utica Observer-Dispatch the other day.  We talked about Christmas and secularization.  The article comes out today.  The only problem is that she told everybody my first name.  Only my mother gets to call me that…

Here’s the link:

http://www.uticaod.com/features/x1569718972/Christian-families-focus-on-the-reason-for-the-season

Christmas and Reincarnation

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Christmas Eve sermon from First Pres, Boonville.

Have you ever met a word nerd?  You know who I’m talking about.  I’m talking about those annoying people who almost always manage to find the most complicated way of saying the simplest thing.  They would rather say, “I would like to annunciate my most sincere benevolent aspirations for your fecundity and longevity in this season of the remembrance of the birth of Christ” when a simple “Merry Christmas” would do just fine.

What do you call that? “Syllable envy?”  If one is good, then six is better.

I readily confess that I am one of those people.  My name is Barrett, and I am a word nerd.  I use this on my students at Utica College all the time.  I get a kick out of talking about “inductive teleological arguments for classical theism” and “epistemic circularity in the evaluation of sense perception.”  Yes, I am a word nerd.  But, as bad as I am, I don’t hold a candle to my wife, who was an English major in college.  Whenever we play games like Boggle or Scrabble as a family, Sarah and I have a house rule that I win whenever I manage to get half her score.

It’s no coincidence that word nerds like Sarah and me also happen to be ministers.  There’s something about this job that attracts word nerds.  Going almost all the way back to the very beginning of Christianity, we ministers have had a knack for taking something very simple and attaching some kind of multi-syllabic monstrosity to it.  Being a word nerd is lots of fun and it makes us sound smart, but it can also cause problems.  We’ve started arguments, split churches, and even fought wars over words.

If you look at tonight’s sermon title, you’ll notice one of those big nerdy words: Christmas and Reincarnation.  “Now, wait a minute,” you might say, “’Reincarnation’?  Isn’t that something that Buddhists and Hindus believe in?  So, why would we be talking about that in church at Christmas?”  Well, you would be right.  Reincarnation, as it’s typically understood, is not a Christian idea.  It typically refers to the belief (often held by most Buddhists and Hindus) that human beings are born over and over again in different bodies throughout human history.  It’s part of their beliefs about the afterlife.  It’s not a belief that has typically been part of the Jewish and Christian religions.  In case you’re still confused, let me put your mind at ease: I’m not using the word “reincarnation” in the Buddhist or Hindu sense of the term.  I’m not talking about the afterlife; I’m talking about this life.

Let me unpack this word in order to explain what I mean:

We start with the prefix Re-.  We all know what this means.  When you “redo” something, you do it again.  TV networks show “reruns” when there are no new episodes to broadcast.  You “repeat” yourself whenever you have to say something for the second time (or third, fourth, or fifth time… for those of us with toddlers or teenagers).  Re- means “again”.

Next, we come to the really meaty part: Incarnation.  Now this is a very Christian term.  It’s one of those nerdy words that ministers came up with in the early days of the Christian church.  The prefix In- is just like our English word “in”.  It means “into” or “inside”.  The next part, Carne, literally means “flesh” or “meat”.  Have you ever had chili con carne for dinner?  It’s chili with meat, right?  So, Incarnation literally means “in the flesh” or “in meat”.

Tonight, as we gather to celebrate Christmas, we are celebrating the Mystery of the Incarnation.  Incarnation is the nerdy word that Christians use to describe how special we think Jesus is.  When we look at him, we something special.  To us, he’s more than just a philosopher or a hero.  He’s not just another person.  He’s not even our favorite person.  Christians believe that, somehow, in a way that we will never understand, the great divine and eternal mystery that we call “God” was present in this flesh and blood person, Jesus of Nazareth.  That’s what we mean when we talk about the Incarnation: God “in the flesh”.  Christians have this two thousand year old hunch that something about the mystery and meaning of life itself was making itself known through this Jesus guy.  We can’t quite put our finger on it, but we can sense it in the things he said and did.  For us, he’s like that missing puzzle piece that makes all the other pieces of life’s puzzle fit together.  When we look at and listen to Jesus, we feel like we can finally see things clearly and make sense of the universe.  That’s why we like to call him “The Light of the World”.

Light is an amazing thing.  Without it, life would be impossible.  The light of the sun warms our planet to the point where organic life can exist.  Plants feed on sunlight through the process of photosynthesis.  Animals eat those plants.  Further up the food chain, humans are nourished by both animals and plants.  So, in an indirect way, we eat light.  Obviously, light also helps us to see clearly and make sense of our surroundings.  We are dependent on light as a basic natural resource.  From Christians, Jesus makes life possible, he nourishes our life, and he helps us to make sense of life and see things more clearly.

There’s a lot of talk about light in the passages from the Bible that we read tonight.  In the beginning, God is present in the darkness and says, “Let there be light.”  In the second reading, Jesus was described as “The true light, which enlightens everyone” that “shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  In the third reading, we see Jesus in action as “the light of the world.”  What is he doing?  He’s healing somebody!  That should give us a big clue about what it means to be “the light of the world.”

Finally, in the last reading from Matthew’s gospel, Jesus gets really interesting.  He takes this idea of the eternal mystery and the light of the world and turns it back on us.  He says, “You are the light of the world.”  And then he tells people, “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

The really neat thing about the Incarnation is that it’s not just something that happened with one guy two thousand years ago.  It happens again and again and again.  God didn’t just happen to pop on down for a visit during Jesus’ lifetime.  God is still here with us.  The light of the world continues to shine.  In the midst of the brutality, chaos, and darkness of this world, the words of John’s gospel still ring true: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

There is still darkness in this world, yet the light of the world continues to shine.  Where?  We don’t see Jesus physically hanging around anymore.  Where is the light of the world?  It’s you.  The light of the world shines in you.  That’s what Jesus said.  “You are the light of the world… [so] let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

When we live as people of love, committing “random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty”, the light of the world “takes on flesh again” in us.  Did you hear that?  “Takes on flesh again”: Re-in-carnate.

I’m not talking about reincarnation because I believe that people come back to earth again and again after death.  It’s not about life after death; it’s about life before death.  And you don’t get reincarnated at all.  It’s Christ who gets reincarnated in you whenever you love.  Jesus is the light of the world.  You are the light of the world.  That’s what reincarnation has to do with Christmas.

Here’s a cheesy song, but what the hey: It’s Christmas.

Who Are You?

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized6 Comments

This week’s sermon from First Pres, Boonville.

The text is John 1:6-8, 19-28.

Click here to listen at fpcboonville.org

I was at a church meeting in Lyons Falls this past week and brought my daughter along in tow.  She played while the grownups talked.  During the meeting, she came up to sit in my lap.  I asked her, “Don’t you want to go back and play with your puzzle?”  She replied, “The puzzle is broken.”

After the meeting was over, Diane Hausserman and I were helping to clean up the room and we discovered what she meant.  There was this one puzzle that was being totally uncooperative.  I don’t know why they called it a “kids puzzle” because it apparently takes two full-grown adults to get the job done!

It took us a while to get all the pieces together.  When we finally did, we could tell that the picture on the puzzle was supposed to be Jesus (precisely what one would expect to find in a church nursery).  But, even when we had all the pieces together and arranged in the right order, we discovered an additional problem: for some reason, the pieces just didn’t want to fit inside the frame!  So there we were: two educated adults, one a pastor and the other an elder in the church, who were pushing, pounding, rearranging, and then pounding again all because we wanted Jesus to fit nicely and neatly inside our convenient little frame, so that we could put him back on the shelf at church (where he belongs) and then go home.

I had to laugh at the irony of the situation.  It’s a perfect metaphor for what people do all the time.  We do it with each other, we do it with God, and we even do it with ourselves.  We’re not the first to do it, either.  Look at this morning’s reading from John’s gospel, we can see people trying to force John the Baptist, that great puzzle of a prophet, into their own neat and tidy little frame.

This is the second week in a row that we’ve talked about John.  Last week, we talked about the fact that he was a person of great faith, a prophet even, who wasn’t afraid to get loud and shake things up when necessary.  This week, I want to look at John as a prophet who could not be squeezed into a framework of preconceived notions and categories.

After John first showed up and started causing a stir in Judea, the religious authorities took notice and sent a committee to interview him.  They wanted to know what to do with him.  Was he a dangerous radical?  Was he a heretic?  Could he be the real thing?

Their list of questions centered around one core question: “Who are you?”  And they presented it as a multiple choice question.

Are you:

a. The Messiah.

b. Elijah.

c. The Prophet.

First, they wanted to know if John considered himself to be the Messiah.  We are all familiar with this term.  It was later applied to Jesus.  In Hebrew, it means “Anointed” and referred to a coming king who was supposed to liberate Israel from foreign occupation and inspire the people to follow the laws of the Torah.  Many modern day Jews still await the coming of their Messiah.  Christians believe that Jesus filled this role during his lifetime (although they radically reinterpret the meaning of the word).  In the days when John the Baptist was alive, lots of revolutionary leaders were jumping up and saying “I’m the Messiah!”  These violent revolutionaries (one might call them terrorists) did more harm than good, so the leaders of the religious establishment knew to not take them too seriously.  In that sense, asking John whether he was the Messiah was a loaded question.  If he said “Yes” then they would automatically know that he wasn’t the real Messiah.  But John didn’t fall into their trap.  He answered right away, “I am not the Messiah.”

Next, they wanted to know whether John was Elijah.  As we mentioned last week, John acted and dressed in such a way that reminded people of Elijah, one of Israel’s ancient heroes.  What made that possibility even more important was something said by another Jewish prophet named Malachi.  Speaking in the name of Israel’s God, Yahweh, Malachi said, “Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.”  The rabbis and theologians in John’s day understood this to mean that Elijah, who, according to Jewish legend, had been taken up into heaven alive, riding on a chariot of fire, would one day return to earth, and that his return would herald the coming of the Messiah.  So, like the first answer, this was another trick question.  If John answered “Yes” then they would know that he still had some kind of Messianic agenda and was a potential threat to national security, which depended on keeping the Romans happy.  Once again, John dodged the bullet by answering, “No.”

Finally, the religious authorities asked John whether he was “the prophet.”  By asking this, they were referring to a passage in the book of Deuteronomy, where Moses tells the Hebrews, “Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet.”  Some rabbis thought Moses was referring to a particular person whose appearance, like Elijah’s, would herald the coming of the Messiah.  Others thought Moses was simply referring to prophets in general.  Whichever interpretation was implied in the question, John once again declined the opportunity to take up that mantle.

Given options a., b., and c., John goes for:

d. None of the above

What’s odd here is that, elsewhere in the New Testament, John is very much regarded as a prophet, even the greatest of all prophets.  Also, Jesus himself directly identifies John with Elijah.  Why then wouldn’t John publicly acknowledge who he really was?

We’ve already addressed some of the political concerns associated with such a loaded term as “Elijah.”  But I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that there may have been a deeper reason why John didn’t feel the need to have the proper labels attached to him.  Perhaps, for John, being was more important than appearances.  This conviction is beautifully summed up in the Latin phrase that serves as the state motto of North Carolina, where I grew up: Esse Quam Videri.  “To be rather than to seem.”

Being and living out of his true self is far more important to John than any title or position.  John may have been the long-predicted prophet or even Elijah himself, but he didn’t need to be recognized as such in order for his ministry to be authentic.

For the religious authorities, on the other hand, recognition was everything.  They wanted John to have an official title so that they could fit him inside their little frame, put him back on the shelf, and forget about him.

You and I do this all the time.  We like to use names and buzzwords to organize and separate people into categories.  Instead of “Messiah” or “prophet,” we use words like:

  • Male and female
  • Black and white
  • American and Afghani
  • Liberal and conservative
  • Gay and straight
  • Christian and Muslim

We attach labels to people so that we can dismiss them and not listen to what they have to say.  Like that puzzle, we fit all the pieces into a neat little frame and put them on a shelf in the back of our minds.  But people are complicated and tend to resist being categorized so easily.  When we do that, we only cheat ourselves out of the opportunity to learn something important from another person.

More importantly, when we categorize and dismiss other people like that, we’re really doing it to God.  The Bible tells us that every human being is made “in the image of God.”  Every human life is a prism that reflects and refracts the eternal light of divine mystery in a way that is totally unique to that person.  When we shut our eyes to that rainbow of light, we are ultimately turning away from God.  It’s God that we’re putting on that shelf in the back of our minds when reality doesn’t conform to our simplistic expectations.

Finally, if we’re going to try and open ourselves up to the light of God that shines through the lives of our fellow human beings (like it shone through the prophet John the Baptist), we need to start by recognizing how that light shines through ourselves.  You too are made in the image of God.  The eternal light of divine mystery shines through you in a way that it utterly unique unto you.  There are truths about God that only you can reveal to the world.  If it weren’t for you, something of God would be lost to the world forever.

All of us have internal “tapes” or “scripts” that we play over and over again in our heads.  We categorize ourselves.  We think these messages tell us who we are.  These internal tapes say things like:

  • “I’m no good”
  • “I’ll never amount to anything”
  • “Nobody will ever love me”
  • “I could never do that”
  • “I’m too fat/short/skinny/tall”
  • And many others…

All people have tapes like these playing in their heads.  The particular words may vary from person to person, but the result is the same: you are trying to force yourself into those same old categories rather than see yourself as you truly are: a human being, unconditionally loved, and made in the image of God.  Learning to love yourself in that way and letting that love drown out the noise of the tapes playing in your head is best way to let the light of God shine through the prism of your life.

My prayer for you, as we move through this Advent season and into Christmas, is that you would be a person like John the Baptist, who refused to be put into any neat and tidy categories.  I pray that you would be able to see the “light of the world” shining in your own face, so that you can go out into the world and see it shining in the faces of the people around you.  I pray that you, like John the Baptist, will be “a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe.”  Testify to the light.  Tell the world what you have seen.  Tell them how you found that light in yourself and how you see it in them.  Rise above the categories that this world imposes upon people.  Be who you really are.  Take the holy light that shines so uniquely in you and sing out loud, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.  Let it shine!  Let it shine!  Let it shine!”

It’s Time for Love to Get Loud

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

This week’s sermon from First Pres, Boonville.  Blog fans will notice some similarity with my previous post, Get Loud.

There is considerable congregational participation toward the end, so it would be better to listen at fpcboonville.org

The text is Mark 1:1-8.

First impressions are funny things.  They have a way of setting the tone for what comes next.

This is true for stories:

Who doesn’t remember the opening scene of Star Wars, when Princess Leia’s starship races across the screen, relentlessly pursued by Darth Vader’s menacing Star Destroyer?  George Lucas had audience members on the edge of their seats from the beginning to the end of that film.  How about the first line of the novel, A Tale of Two Cities?  “It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times.”  I particularly like the opening line of my favorite novel: Neuromancer by William Gibson.  “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

It’s also true in relationships:

My over-eager self-introduction to a professor on my first day of seminary effectively ended my career in academic theology before it started.  On a more positive note, my propensity for sharing too much information made an impact on my friend Matt, who works at a bagel shop in Utica.  At first, he was taken aback by my apparent lack of tact and subtlety, but those same qualities came to shape our future friendship as one characterized by intense honesty and trust.  He is one of my closest companions today.

This morning, we’re taking a look at the opening scene of Mark’s gospel.  Right off the bat, Mark sets the tone for what comes next in the story.  This gospel has a powerful opening line that often gets overlooked: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

That sounds pretty straightforward and innocuous, right?  Wrong.  There are three terms I need to unpack before we can come to a full understanding of what this verse is saying.  Those three terms are good news, Christ, and Son of God.

Good news.  The Greek word we’re looking at here is euangelion.  It’s a term that comes from the world of imperial politics.  An euangelion was a joyful announcement sent out by royal courier to the farthest reaches of the empire.  It usually announced big news, like the birth of a new heir to the throne or the victory of the emperor over his enemies.  Anyone else who proclaimed an euangelion that didn’t have to do with Caesar could be found guilty of treason.  Mark’s use of euangelion in the very first sentence of his gospel is an extremely radical and subversive move.  It’s the kind of thing that could get someone arrested by the Department of Homeland Security.  It says something important about the way Mark looks at the world and, more importantly, the way he looks at Jesus.

Christ.  Most people these days are used to thinking of this word as Jesus’ last name.  Well, it’s not.  Christ is a title.  It’s a Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah, which means “Anointed”.  When first century Jews talked about the Anointed, they imagined this Che Guevara kind of person who would rise up and liberate the Jewish people from Roman tyranny.  In short, the Anointed/Messiah/Christ was supposed to be a terrorist.

Son of God.  This is another title that was reserved for the emperor.  Caesar was worshiped as a god in ancient Rome.  People were required to make regular sacrifices to his statue as a sign of loyalty.  It was kind of like pledging allegiance to the flag, only more so.  When Mark proclaims Jesus as divine, he is implying that Caesar is not.  This is a bold statement to make in an occupied country.

With a fuller understanding of what these words mean, let’s hear them again: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  In American terms, we might say, “The inauguration of President Jesus, our real commander-in-chief.”  Anyone who walked around this country seriously talking like that would probably earn a one-way ticket to Guantanamo Bay.

Mark goes on from that opening sentence to paint a picture of the person who first ran through the countryside, shouting this euangelion at the top of his lungs.  His name was John.  He, like the message he preached, was a radical.  Later in the story, John is arrested and eventually executed for exposing the hypocrisy of Herod, the puppet king set up by the Roman government to maintain order.  Like the opening sentence of Mark’s gospel, John is subversive of the established status quo.  He looks instead to the way things ought to be, the way they will be, in God.  John is not satisfied with mere Roman order; he longs for the divine harmony that God intends for all creation.

John is not alone in his task.  He stands in the shadow of another outspoken reformer.  When John first shows up in Mark’s gospel, he is “clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist” and eating “locusts and wild honey”.  That might not mean much to us, but it would mean a lot to first century Jews.  Dressed in those clothes, they would immediately recognize him as the prophet Elijah, as surely as we would recognize a fat man in a red suit coming down the chimney on Christmas Eve as Santa Claus.

Elijah was another subversive radical from Israel’s history.  Like John, he exposed and confronted the powers that be.  He was constantly challenging the corrupt government of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel in his day.

Mark seems to be going out of his way to drive the opening point home: the gospel of Christ is a subversive message preached by radicals.  Those who want safe, predictable religion should stay away from Jesus at all costs.

What made John live his life as a “prisoner of hope” who never stopped questioning the way things are?  What is this radical message that turns the whole world upside down?  Mark spends the rest of the book answering that question.  It’s the story of Christ, a never-ending story that includes John, you, and me in its eternal plot.  There’s no way to fully capture its message in a single sermon, book, or library.  That being said, I’ll try to sum up one small part of it like this: God is with us, God is Love, Love wins.

This, in part, is the message of Christmas: God is with us, God is Love, Love wins.    Therefore, all that is not Love is destined to fade away like dust in the wind or a bad dream after you wake up.  There is hope in this.  And that hope gives us the strength to stand up and speak out loud and clear against all that would stand in Love’s way.

John believed in this Love (i.e. God’s Love, the God of Love, the God who is Love).  That’s why it bothered him to see so much un-Love in the world around him.  I call John a realist because he confronted the reality of the world as it is.  However, I also believe he trusted in a deeper reality that is more real than what he saw with his eyes.  I think John’s faith in that deeper reality is what gave him the strength to stand up and get loud.  His is not a voice of rage or hate.  There is no call to arms or partisan propaganda.  When John gets loud, it’s the voice of Love getting loud.

Here in this room today, we believe that God is with us, God is Love, and Love wins.  But, like John and Elijah, we live a world that is deaf to Love’s call because Love has been drowned out by the white noise of apathy and injustice.  What does that mean for us?  It means it’s time for Love to get loud.

What does that mean for us?

It’s time for Love to get loud.

God is with us, God is Love, and Love wins.  But somewhere this week a boy got his face slammed into a locker at school just because he likes other boys.  What does that mean for us?  It’s time for Love to get loud.

God is with us, God is Love, and Love wins.  But somewhere this morning a girl looks into a mirror and cries because what she sees there doesn’t look like what she sees on the cover of a magazine.  What does that mean for us?  It’s time for Love to get loud.

God is with us, God is Love, and Love wins.  But somewhere there’s a local shopkeeper who is fretting about how to keep the family business open for another generation.  What does that mean for us?  It’s time for Love to get loud.

God is with us, God is Love, and Love wins.  But somewhere today someone is mourning the death of a beloved parent, spouse, or sibling.  What does that mean for us?  It’s time for Love to get loud.

God is with us, God is Love, and Love wins.  But in 2011, there are still churches in this country where the Bible is used as a weapon and people can be denied membership just because of the color of their skin.  What does that mean for us?  It’s time for Love to get loud.

God is with us, God is Love, and Love wins.  But Oneida County is still eliminating daycare funding for children already living below the poverty line.  What does that mean for us?  It’s time for Love to get loud.

It is indeed time for Love to get loud.  How will Love get loud in you?

It’s time to raise your voice, like John the Baptist, in the name of Love.  It’s time to lift every voice and sing!

Get Loud

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized10 Comments
Getting loud... Sue Sylvester knows what I'm talking about.

Earlier this week, I posted an article on Facebook about a Stella Harville and Ticha Chikuni, a couple who was denied membership at Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church in eastern Kentucky because they are an interracial couple.

You can read the article by clicking here.

In the comments, my new friend Jaime asked, “What can I do, how can I have a positive impact as a Christian against this type of hate and bigotry?”  I started sketching my thoughts and decided to post them in my blog, rather than on Facebook.

What can we do?  That’s the big question.  What gets to me at this time each year is the constant, self-righteous whining about “keeping ‘Christ’ in ‘Christmas'”.  If there’s anything that’s going to make Christ mad enough to flip over some tables, I’m guessing it’s probably going to be the above article, rather than ‘Happy Holidays’.  I also seem to remember that the most famous example of Jesus getting THAT angry took place in a house of worship.

I don’t have the answer to that question.  Whoever does will be the next Martin Luther.  All I’ve got right now are a few ideas that I’ve been trying to work out in my life.  I’ll share them here.  If anyone finds them helpful, please feel free to steal them.  Again: no answers, just ideas.

1. Honesty.  I want to own the truth about how racist/sexist/homophobic I really am.  It seems like everybody likes to start these discussions with the phrase: “I’m not racist/sexist/homophobic but…”.  But the cold, hard fact is that, half a century after Martin Luther King, I still live in a country where 85% of the people on death row are African American, women make 75 cents for every dollar a man makes, and the suicide rate among LGBT youth is twice that of their peers.  It’s like we’ve settled into this pattern where it’s okay to BE racist/sexist/homophobic as long as I don’t SAY I am.  As a privileged white, male, heterosexual Christian, I’m thinking it’s time for me to sit with the prophet Isaiah and confess, “Woe is me!  For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, yet I am encountering the face of reality!”

2. Proximity.  Our culture has sped up the amount and rate of information exchange to the point where it’s all becoming a big blur that goes by while we stay isolated behind ‘screens’ (kind of like I’m doing right now).  We don’t actually have to face each other or get close to one another anymore.  We can just blast them in anonymous comments on YouTube.  We end up saying things we would never say in the real world.  I wonder if it’s really a coincidence that political dialogue became so extremely polarized in the same decade that Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter emerged?  How many members of Westboro Baptist Church have openly gay friends/family?  How many members of the church in the above article have close friends of another race?  Speaking for myself, the point when I started questioning my homophobia came when I realized that some people I love are gay.  I care a whole lot more about sexism now that I have a daughter.  And so on…

It’s hard to hate (or ignore) a group when people you love are part of it.

3. Education.  I am woefully ignorant about issues of inequality and established injustice.  I find that most folks are.  It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve become aware of the difference between personal prejudice and systemic oppression.  Most folks seem to think that racism/sexism/homophobia has to do with their personal feelings.  Cornel West and bell hooks have been most enlightening in helping me recognize that one can have friends of another race and still be racist.  I have a lot more to learn if dismantling injustice really matters to me.

4. Simplicity.  The flip-side of the need for education is our need to keep the message clear to those who are not educated.  The Right seems to claim a monopoly on ‘common sense’, folksy wisdom, and ‘family values’.  We tend to show up with charts and figures of trends and projections.  All of that is super-important because we need the facts to support what we’re saying, but I’ve noticed that a lot of people eventually get lost and check out of the conversation before we’ve even made our point.  We’ve got to find some way to keep it clear, simple, and short.

5. Volume.  I was recently listening to Dan Savage talk about how frustrated he gets when liberal Christians come up to him and whisper, “Psst!  We’re not all homophobic.”  Dan said how he wants to tell them to stop whispering that to him and start shouting it to Pat Robertson.  Progressive types (especially progressive Christians) are so eager to appear different from the screaming Bible-thumpers, we hardly raise our voices at all.  We sit quietly in our churches and don’t bother anyone else… ever.  Well, what if people need to be bothered?  To paraphrase Gustavo Gutierrez: Silence is a vote in favor of oppression.  Being “liberal” or progressive does not equal “politically correct”.  I need to get up off my fat butt, get over my fear of offending someone, get out there where people are suffering, and GET LOUD.

Those are my ideas.  Who is with me?

Abundance at Christmas

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment

I was in Price Chopper last week and noticed teeny little shopping carts with “Customer in Training” written on the side.  It occurred to me that training was a very appropriate word to use in that situation.  Our entire culture trains us to be good consumers from the time when we are young enough to walk and talk.  We are trained to believe in the power of scarcity.  We are trained to believe that security lies in our ability to take all we can for ourselves in this dog-eat-dog world.  Most of us have been so well-trained that we cannot even imagine society being other than it is.

The radical message of Advent and Christmas is that the way things are is not the way things have to be.  With Christ’s entrance into history, a new world becomes possible.  The life of Jesus demonstrated a deep and personal trust in the sheer abundance of providence.  He dressed like the lilies of the field and feasted like the birds of the air.  In the upside-down economy of heaven, one’s supply of love increases as it is given away.  In the new world that Christ ushers in, power is obtained through service, security through sacrifice, and justice through mercy.  The presence of Immanuel (‘God with us’) is meant to inspire our imaginations into visualizing and actualizing this new reality here and now.  Faith is the measure of our ability to trust the word of Christ over and against the way of the world.  Will we give ourselves over to this faith in the coming holiday season?

As I walked back out to my car after seeing the “Customer in Training” cart at Price Chopper, an SUV pulled into the parking lot with music so loud I could hear the lyrics as I put my groceries into my trunk: “I barely get by!  I barely get by!”

This is the heart-song of our society.  Its message of scarcity, competition, and consumerism trains us to believe that we’re always only “barely getting by”.  So, after a single Thursday of giving thanks, we charge out into the deep darkness of Black Friday, intent to grab all we can before someone else gets it.  Last year, a store employee was trampled to death.  This year, customers used pepper spray on each other.  So desperate are we to fulfill our perceived wants and needs!  So convinced are we that we’re only ever “barely getting by”!

During this Advent and Christmas season, let’s trust in the word of Christ, who “came that they may have life, and have it abundantly”, according to John 10:10.  We are not “barely getting by”.  We are blessed.  Let’s give thanks by giving back, in whatever way we can, out of the abundance that has been heaped upon us.

The following prayer, attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, speaks to me as the prayer of a heart soaked in abundance.  Let this be our prayer as we journey from Thanksgiving, through Advent, to Christmas:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life. Amen.

Why I’m (not) a Heretic

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized6 Comments

This post is a follow-up to my previous one (see ‘Internet Heretic Superstar‘).  A former seminary classmate asked me over Facebook why I chose to use the term ‘heretic’ in describing myself in that post.  This is my response to her question.  Many thanks to Ahna Phillips for getting me to explore interesting questions!

I use the term heretic in a (somewhat) sarcastic way.  Do I really think of myself as a heretic?  No and yes.  No, I don’t think that I’ve been deceived by lies and led away from the truth to the peril of my soul.  On the other hand, the word ‘heretic’ comes from the Greek word for ‘choice’.  As you know, it initially referred to those who embraced their own ‘chosen’ faith rather than orthodox tradition.  In that sense, one could say there is a ‘heretical’ element to all Liberal, Evangelical, Reformed, Protestant, and Christian faith.  Each of these broke with its mother tradition at some point in order to pursue a new vision of faithfulness.  Jesus himself was once branded as an insane and demon-possessed terrorist/heretic.  One could argue that being called a heretic is indeed a badge of honor insofar as it puts one in a position of solidarity with the Christ.

As for me personally, I use the term ‘heretic’ intentionally in order to describe a theological shift that’s been happening in me this past year.  For the last decade or so, I’ve hovered on the very edge of the Evangelical world (in the territory generally occupied by the so-called ‘Emergent’ types).  Over the last twelve months, certain events have transpired that lead me to realize that I cannot authentically or conscientiously continue to identify myself as an ‘Evangelical’ (even in the ‘Emergent’ sense).

I’ll discuss two of these events here:

First, I resigned from the priesthood in the Free Episcopal Church for various ethical, professional, and personal reasons.  An unfortunate side-effect of this move is that I was cut-off from the more catholic expression of my faith, which had been a kind of anchor for me.  Without that particular expression of worship, there was apparently little to keep me in conformity with traditional doctrine.  I’ve continued my ministry in the Presbyterian Church (USA), where the liturgical/sacramental aspect is not emphasized as much.  There is considerable theological diversity in the PC(USA), ranging from conservative/evangelical to progressive/liberal.  The colleagues with whom I associate and the presbytery in which I serve (Utica) are generally representative of the latter.  Iron sharpens iron, as they say.

Second, I came under intense fire last summer when I went on local TV as a pastor in support of my state’s new same-sex marriage legislation.  While many of my committed Evangelical friends and family were extremely understanding, respectful, and supportive of me, the backlash from the broader community was astounding.  The Rescue Mission of Utica, where I had worked and volunteered for over five years banned me from preaching in their chapel services.  An Orthodox priest I know is no longer on speaking terms with me because I supposedly “blasphemed the Holy Spirit” by supporting this legislation.  Violent hate mail directed toward me poured in through newspapers and the TV station.  I realized then that the Christianity they practice bears little resemblance to the Christianity I practice.  Self-identifying as Evangelical would be both inaccurate and disrespectful to Evangelicals and to me.

On the other hand, I’m finding that personal distance from the term ‘Evangelical’ is allowing me to appreciate certain things about their tradition that I would otherwise miss because I was too busy trying to fight back and prove myself as ‘one of them’.  For example, I’m finding that I respect the Evangelical commitment to studying the Bible, personal spirituality, and engaging in mission.  These are gifts from which the larger Christian community can reap blessings.  Too many folks in the progressive/liberal mainline are stuck in old patterns of institutional maintenance, dry rote, and biblical illiteracy.  Evangelicals have something to teach me, even if I can no longer count myself as one of them.

Internet Heretic Superstar

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment
The Original Superstar

You know you’re a real Internet Heretic Superstar when you get requests for interviews.

But I don’t think it counts when it comes from your former roommate (shades of Spaceballs: “I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate“).

This particular request came from Brian Kingbird, who I bunked with during my Freshman year at Appalachian State.  Our conversation is part of Brian’s ordination process in the United Methodist Church.  Send him your best thoughts, prayers, vibes, and/or small animal sacrifices (I’ll donate one of my cats if you don’t want to use your own).

As I was typing my answers, my only intent was to be honest.  When I was done, my answers surprised me.  This year, I’ve come to new levels of honesty with myself over just how far I’ve traveled from the theological territory where I started my journey.  I remember shaking my head at people like me only ten years ago.  Now, I’ve become “that guy”.

Anyway, here’s what I wrote:

How has your relationship with God developed over your lifetime?

Life with God, for me, has been a long and meandering process of evolution.  I use the term evolution deliberately, despite the controversy surrounding its use in church.  One of the core principles of evolution (in the biological sense) is the emergence of life from death.  Organisms pass on their DNA to future generations and further the growth and development of species.  In the spiritual sense, the concept of evolution bears striking resemblance to the way of the cross, as described by Jesus.  Out of his death, new life was born.  He taught his followers to follow him in this respect.  Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  In another place he says, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”  New life is born out of death and it is as I follow the way of the cross that I discover an ongoing resurrection taking place within me.  This continual path of death and resurrection has led me into, between, and through several different corners of the Christian world: from evangelicalism to the charismatic movement, the Episcopal priesthood, and most recently to congregational ministry in a Presbyterian church.

I also find that many of my own thoughts and opinions about theology, morality, and spirituality have undergone a similar process of evolution over time.  There has been death and resurrection there as well.  For example, I never could have imagined in high school or college that I would one day have a ministry as a chaplain to the gay and lesbian community.  God has led me to become a spiritual companion to people who have been exiled from their churches of origin because of their sexual orientation.  Being an advocate for their equal rights has become a major part of my work as a pastor.  This particular aspect of my ministry has brought me into no small amount of conflict with many in the church who believe the Bible speaks clearly about homosexuality as sinful.

For me, my faith in Jesus, Christianity, and Bible has brought me to a place where grace trumps legalism and intelligent faith trumps blind faith.  I am comfortable with ideas like same-sex marriage and the theory of evolution.  I value the blessings of interfaith dialogue and fully expect to encounter many faithful non-Christians in the kingdom of heaven.  Rather than a move away from Christian faith, these developments have arisen out of my ongoing attempt to take Jesus, Christianity, and the Bible seriously.  I am continually and pleasantly surprised to find that Christianity still has much inspiration and guidance to offer me as I move into ideological territory that would have been unthinkable for me only a few years ago.  I go forward into the future, trying to stay open-minded, and fully expecting to be surprised at what God has in store for me as my faith continues to evolve.

How does being Christian affect your daily life?

If I had a favorite Bible verse, it would be 1 John 4:16: “God is love and those who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.”  These words provide me with ample fuel for spiritual and ethical meditation.  What it says to me is that God is not some distant and all-powerful authority figure who sits on some golden throne above the clouds in an alternate dimension.  Instead, God is a mysterious and loving presence who can be experienced here, on this earth and in this life.  If I want to serve God, I can only do so by loving my fellow human beings.  Anywhere there is love, there is God, regardless of whether the name of God is verbally spoken or not.  As Jesus told his followers in Matthew 25: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”  I love the baptismal vows in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, where the new Christian pledges to “seek and serve Christ in all persons” and “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being”.  At the end of every Sunday service, I charge my congregation with these words from the Presbyterian Book of Common Worship: “Go out into the world in peace; have courage; hold on to what is good; return no one evil for evil; strengthen the fainthearted; support the weak, and help the suffering; honor all people; love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.”  For me, this is what it means to be a Christian in my daily life.

How are you in (your) ministry in the world?

My “ministry in the world” is largely shaped by the principles outlined in the previous question.  I find that working as a pastor is the easiest way for me to live out that universal Christian calling.  Specifically, I am interested in ministries of social justice and mercy: alleviating the effects of poverty and eliminating the causes of poverty.  I try to nurture relationships with those who exist outside the bounds of institutional religion.  I have already mentioned my work with the gay and lesbian community.  Another issue close to my heart is homelessness.  I spent several years of my life during and after seminary working with people on the street who struggle with hunger, illness, and addiction.  My first job was to be a faithful friend and my second job was to provide assistance where possible.  Sometimes, this would lead to conversations about religion and spirituality.  Sometimes, people would start coming to my church or seek a more active and conscious relationship with God.  I was always open about my faith and inviting people into Christian community, but I am careful to never make conversion a prerequisite for relationship or assistance.  My hope is that others will see Christ in me as I try to “seek and serve” Christ in them.

I am also passionate about the liturgical aspect of my ministry.  The nurture of the church’s ministry through Word and Sacrament is, in my mind, what makes us uniquely Christian.  I try to help people open the Bible for themselves and listen for inspiration and guidance from the Holy Spirit through its pages.  I lead a weekly Bible study using the lectio divina method of simultaneous prayer and reading.  I am also an advocate for more regular celebrations of the sacrament of the Eucharist (also known as the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion) in our church.  I believe that Christ is truly present in this mystery, feeding and empowering the people of God with his very self.  As we come to recognize Christ’s presence in these physical elements, I believe we will be more able to recognize Christ’s presence in the rest of the world.  The meaning of this sacrament is quite simple and can be taught in a single Sunday school lesson, but the regular and frequent experience of this sacrament opens us up to ever deepening levels of truth and spiritual reality.  In essence, Communion is caught, not taught.

What (do you think) are the gifts of discipleship?

There are two ways I might answer that question.  First, I could understand “the gifts of discipleship” to be gifts given by the Holy Spirit to empower us in our daily Christian living.  On the other hand, I could see “the gifts of discipleship” as the blessings that arise from the process of being Christ’s disciple.  For the sake of brevity, clarity, and simplicity, I will choose to take the second meaning as the one I will keep in mind as I answer the question.  The primary blessing that I receive in my life as a disciple is a growing sense of connectedness.  I love that the Latin word religion literally means “to re-connect”.  Through Christ, I re-connect with God, myself, my neighbors, and creation.  Paraphrasing the words of theologian Paul Tillich, sin is separation from these things (God/self/neighbor/creation).  Through grace, I am reconnected with them.  I honor God’s grace by passing it on in deeds of love and mercy.  Grace becomes an experienced reality of connectedness and restored relationship.

What are the challenges (to your ministry), if any?

In a general sense, the biggest challenges to my ministry come from my own ego and selfish failings.  The phone rings with one more person needing assistance or another annoying drunk person who wants to spend all day chatting.  I get so busy with sermon writing and bulletin printing that I ignore my daughter’s pleas for attention.  I exhaust myself at work to the point where I take no time to care for myself with proper food and rest.

On a more specific level, my most recent ministry challenges have to do with the specific issues that arise within congregational ministry.  In the first two years after my ordination as an Episcopal priest, I worked as a chaplain.  There was a constantly changing stream of people who came through my office seeking help.  This is the first time that I’ve worked with a larger organization with long-term members.  I am also more involved in practical administration and daily leadership.  This requires that I develop a new set of skills and nurture deeper and more long-term relationships with the people under my care.  It’s a new challenge for me, but a welcome one.