Tag: martin luther king

Empowerment

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized4 Comments
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Ms. Rosa Parks with Rev. Dr. King in the background. Image is in the public domain.

 

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

When I was in seventh grade, I used to get picked on a lot.  And I mean a lot.  It was a really hard time for me.  In fact, things eventually got so bad that the Vice Principal of my school recommended that I take Karate lessons for self-defense.  So I did just that.  And it went really well.  It was fun, I was active, and I really liked my teacher: Shihan Jessie Bowen.  Shihan Bowen was a 5th degree black belt and the founder of our school.  There was even a picture on the wall of him next to the kung-fu movie star Chuck Norris.

I, on the other hand, was an awkward twelve-year-old who was barely good enough for a beginner-level sparring class.  So, you can imagine how much trepidation I felt that night at the end of class when Shihan Bowen ordered me to stand up and fight him one-on-one in front of the rest of the class.

It was an epic five-point sparring match.  Shihan Bowen and I matched each other blow for blow with everyone watching.  In the end, I managed to land the final blow for my fifth point.  I couldn’t believe it: I had beaten Shihan Bowen, the Grand Master and the founder of the school, by one point.  For the first time in my life, I felt powerful.  That’s an amazing feeling for a lanky seventh grader who was used to getting beat up and pushed around.  I discovered pride and strength within myself.

Now, I can’t say that this one event solved all my problems at school or in my neighborhood, but I do believe that something of that experienced must have stayed with me because it wasn’t until almost fifteen years after the fact that I did the math in my head: Shihan Bowen was a 35-year-old Grand Master; I was a 12-year-old beginner.  It took me that long to realize one obvious fact: he let me win.

By the time I realized it, of course, I was a grown man.  I had long since grown out of my awkward middle school phase, but I’m grateful for what he did that night because he let me taste empowerment for the first time in my life.  For once, I was a victor, not a victim.  Something I did made an impact on the world around me.

This theme of empowerment is an important one, so we’re going to spend some time with it today.  It factors rather highly in our reading this morning from the gospel according to Luke.

The story begins with Jesus sending a group of his followers out on a mission to heal the sick, cast out demons, and proclaim the kingdom of God.  It’s not the first time he’s done something like this.  In fact, it’s the second.  Just a chapter earlier in Luke’s gospel, Jesus sent another group of disciples out with an identical mission: heal the sick, cast out demons, and proclaim the kingdom of God.  The first time he did it, Jesus sent 12 disciples out.  The second time, he sent 70.

Why do you think that is?  Is it just a random number?  Was that just the number of people who happened to be hanging around that day?  Well, no.  It’s not random.  Numbers had great symbolic significance for people in the ancient world.  Whenever two things or events have the same number in the Bible, you can bet that they’re connected somehow.

Let’s take the number 12, for example.  12 is the number of disciples Jesus had.  12 is also the number of tribes in the original nation of Israel.  Are these ideas connected?  You bet they are.  By sending out 12 disciples, Jesus was saying that his mission was not just for himself alone, but for the whole nation of Israel.  All of God’s chosen people had a part to play in what was happening through Jesus.

What about 70?  This one’s a little bit trickier.  It’s not so obvious to us modern American readers, so I’ll help you out by unpacking it a little.  70 is the number of the nations of the world named in the first part of the book of Genesis.  Genesis, the first book of the Bible, tells the story of the creation of the world and the beginning of all peoples, cultures, and nations.  And the final number of nations listed in Genesis 10 is 70.  So, when Jesus sends out 70 of his followers to heal the sick, cast out demons, and proclaim the kingdom of God, he’s taking his mission even one step further as if to say, “Hey y’all, what you see going on here isn’t just about me, it’s about our whole nation; in fact, it’s not even just about our whole nation, it’s about every nation.  The amazing things you see God doing in me and through me is meant to be shared with the whole world… everybody.”  That’s the symbolic significance of Jesus sending out the 70 disciples on a mission.

Now, let’s take a look at what that mission was.  What is it that God is doing in and through Jesus, the nation of Israel, and ultimately the whole world?  Well, we’ve heard about it already: heal the sick, cast out demons, and proclaim the kingdom of God.  This is what Jesus and his followers are all about.  But what does that mean for us?  Should we all become faith healers, exorcists, or televangelists?  Well, probably not.  In fact, I would advise against it.

When modern Christians talk about “proclaiming the kingdom of God,” they usually mean “preaching the gospel,” and it usually sounds something like this:

“You’re a real bad sinner but God loves you anyway.  So, you should accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, become a Christian, and go to church so that your soul can go to heaven when you die.”

That’s what modern, American Christians usually mean when they talk about preaching the gospel or proclaiming the kingdom of God.  But is that what Jesus was talking about in this passage?  Is there any talk in this passage about becoming a Christian or going to heaven when you die?  No, there isn’t.

Let me say something that might surprise you: Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God has nothing to do with religion or the afterlife.  What is it then?  Well, let’s look at it. 

What is a kingdom on the most basic, fundamental level?  It’s the place where a king or queen has authority and is in charge.  A kingdom is a king’s territory. 

Based on that definition then, what is the kingdom of God?  It’s the place where God is in charge.

What does this mean?  Whenever we allow peace, justice, and love to reign in our hearts, that’s the kingdom of God.  Wherever groups of people organize themselves into communities to care for those who suffer, seek justice for the oppressed, and embody Christ-like compassion in their lives, that’s the kingdom of God.

When Jesus told his followers to go out and proclaim the kingdom of God, he was telling them to plant a flag in the ground.  He was declaring war on the way things are.  He was saying, in effect, “Hey y’all, there’s a revolution going on and we are the insurgents.”  It’s not a battle we can fight with death-dealing weaponry, but with tools that build life.  That’s why healing the sick and casting out demons were so important to Jesus: he was announcing a reversal of the cosmic powers that kept the children of God under the yoke of oppression.  The forces of sin and evil were doomed to failure.  That’s why he said, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you.”  I’ll say it again: There’s a revolution going on and we are the insurgents.

There are all kinds of examples of the kingdom of God breaking through into this world.  I could talk about the falling of the Berlin Wall or the end of Apartheid in South Africa.  But the example that stands out most in my mind this week is that of a middle-aged seamstress and a young pastor (age 26) who organized an entire group of people to right a wrong in their community through the power of nonviolent direct action.  The seamstress (Rosa Parks) and the pastor (Martin Luther King, Jr.) organized the Montgomery bus Boycott of 1955.  For entire year, the African American population of Montgomery, Alabama walked to work instead of riding the bus.  Their voices were heard and they paved the way for the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. 

Their movement was one moment among many that marks the breaking through of the kingdom of God into this world.  Toward the end of the protest, someone asked one elderly woman whether she was tired out from a year of walking at her age.  She famously replied, “My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.” 

That, my friends, is the proclamation of the kingdom of God through the empowerment of (all) the people of God.  It is the dethroning of the powers of sin in this world, the casting out of demons, and the healing of our sick society.  It is the eternal revolution of Jesus and we (all of us) are the insurgents.

The end-result of this revolution is not mere political reform but spiritual transformation as the kingdom of God is established “on earth as it is in heaven.”  After describing the revolution to his followers, Jesus told them, “Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

Through this empowerment, we the followers of Jesus wake up to who we really are.  All of us are invited recover our dignity as beloved children of God and temples of the Holy Spirit.  Each of us bears the image and likeness of God.  As Jesus said, our names are written in heaven.

Brothers and sisters, this is the truth I invite you to discover and recover as you go out into the world this week.  You may not be called upon to march in the Montgomery Bus Boycott or tear down the Berlin Wall, but there is still plenty of sin and injustice left in this old world.  Go out with your mind’s eye and the ears of your heart open to where it is that the Spirit of Jesus is calling you and empowering you to plant a flag as an insurgent in heaven’s revolution.  Heal the sick, cast out demons, proclaim the kingdom of God, and rejoice that your name is written in heaven.

Be blessed and be a blessing.

The Great Ends of the Church: The Promotion of Social Righteousness

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Image is in the public domain. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.
Image is in the public domain. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

My wife played me a recording this week from an NPR program called This American Life.  The entire episode was about the way kids think and the funny (sometimes profound) things they say.  It was originally broadcast in 2001:

It all began at Christmas two years ago, when my daughter was four-years-old. And it was the first time that she’d ever asked about what did this holiday mean? And so I explained to her that this was celebrating the birth of Jesus. And she wanted to know more about that. We went out and bought a kids’ bible and had these readings at night. She loved him. Wanted to know everything about Jesus.

So we read a lot about his birth and his teaching. And she would ask constantly what that phrase was. And I would explain to her that it was, “Do onto others as you would have them do unto you.” And we would talk about those old words and what that all meant.

And then one day we were driving past a big church and out front was an enormous crucifix.

She said, who’s that?

And I guess I’d never really told that part of the story. So I had to sort of, yeah, oh, that’s Jesus. I forgot to tell you the ending. Well, you know, he ran afoul of the Roman government. This message that he had was so radical and unnerving to the prevailing authorities of the time that they had to kill him. They came to the conclusion that he would have to die. That message was too troublesome.

It was about a month later, after that Christmas, we’d gone through the whole story of what Christmas meant. And it was mid-January, and her preschool celebrates the same holidays as the local schools. So Martin Luther King Day was off. I knocked off work that day and I decided we’d play and I’d take her out to lunch.

We were sitting in there, and right on the table where we happened to plop down, was the art section of the local newspaper. And there, big as life, was a huge drawing by a ten-year-old kid from the local schools of Martin Luther King.

She said, who’s that?

I said, well, as it happens that’s Martin Luther King. And he’s why you’re not in school today. So we’re celebrating his birthday, this is the day we celebrate his life.

She said, so who was he?

I said, he was a preacher.

And she looks up at me and goes, for Jesus?

And I said, yeah, actually he was. But there was another thing that he was really famous for. Which is that he had a message.

And you’re trying to say this to a four-year-old. This is the first time they ever hear anything. So you’re just very careful about how you phrase everything.

So I said, well, yeah, he was a preacher and he had a message.

She said, what was his message?

I said, well, he said that you should treat everybody the same no matter what they look like.

She thought about that for a minute. And she said, well that’s what Jesus said.

And I said, yeah, I guess it is. You know, I never thought of it that way, but yeah. And it is sort of like “Do onto others as you would have them do unto you.”

And she thought for a minute and looked up at me and said, did they kill him, too?

The NPR story ends there, but the answer to the little girl’s question is, of course, Yes.  They did kill Dr. King too, and Oscar Romero, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the prophet Isaiah, and the apostle Paul.  It seems that the treatment inflicted upon Jesus has also been visited on those who stand up for what is true and right in any age.  The apostle Paul himself, before he was beheaded by the Roman state, famously said, “In my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.”  Paul seems to have picked up on the inherent connection that exists between what happened in Christ on the cross and what happens in those whose lives are similarly extinguished by unjust powers.  In the mind of God, these events are not separate: They are one.

Jesus himself articulated a similar sense in Matthew 25 when he said to his followers, “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.”  The suffering of the hungry, naked, sick, and imprisoned people of this world is one and the same with the suffering of Christ.

We Christians don’t always understand this truth.  At least, we don’t live as if we understood it.  We separate these events in our minds.  We separate the social from the spiritual.  We say things like, “The church shouldn’t get involved in politics.”  While I agree with this statement when it comes to religious institutions endorsing candidates or receiving state funding, I disagree with the idea that our most deeply held beliefs and values should not shape the way we organize our life together.  Politics, on the most basic level, has to do with relationships, and relationships are what Jesus is most interested in.  When someone once asked Jesus about the most important part of the Bible, he said it all comes down to relationships: your relationship with God and your relationship with your neighbors.

The quality of our relationships is the measure of the quality of our religion.  In fact, we read in this morning’s scripture readings how religion should even take a back seat to relationships.  In our first reading, from the book of Amos, the prophet tells the people that Yahweh their God is disgusted with their religious rituals and fed up with their pious posturing.  He says that God isn’t even listening to the sound of your hymns anymore.  Why not?  Because what God really wants is for “justice [to] roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”  In other words, God listens for the harmony and not the melody.  God wants harmony between people, not just musical notes.  That’s what the words justice and righteousness mean in this passage.  God wanted nothing to do with their religion because their relationships were all out of whack.  There is an inherent connection between the way people behave toward each other and the way they behave toward God.  Injustice toward a neighbor is a sin against God.  The spiritual is political.  The quality of one’s religion is measured by the quality of one’s relationships.

In our New Testament reading, we see Jesus cleansing the Jerusalem temple.  As he drove out the money changers, he shouted, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’?  But you have made it a den of robbers.”

He was quoting a passage from the book of Isaiah.  In that section, the prophet was setting forth a vision of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem as an international, multi-cultural center of faith and learning.  People from all over the world, not just Jews, would one day be welcome in the house of God.  The place designated for this activity was the Outer Court, also called the Court of the Gentiles.  It was the only part of the temple where non-Jews were allowed to participate in worship.  It just so happens that this was the very place where the money changers and animal dealers had set up their shops.  They had robbed the Gentiles of their rightful place in God’s house.  And for what?  To make more money.  By placing profit over people, they undermined the legitimacy of their spirituality.  They made the house of God into “a den of robbers”, according to Jesus.  Like Amos, Jesus wanted to see “justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”

Again, the quality of our religion is measured by the quality of our relationships.  What we do for our neighbors, we do for God.  There is a connection between the suffering of people and the suffering of Christ.

This morning, we are continuing with the fifth sermon in a five-week series on the Great Ends of the Church.  We’re asking the question, “Why does our church exist?”  We’ve already given four answers to that question.  We said the Great Ends of the Church are the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind, the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God, the maintenance of divine worship, and the preservation of the truth.  This week, we’re adding a fifth Great End: the promotion of social righteousness.

This one tends to get us into trouble sometimes, because many (including some within the church itself) say “the church shouldn’t get involved in politics.”  They cringe when preachers bring up controversial social issues from the pulpit, preferring instead that preachers would just “stick to the gospel.”

But here’s the thing: a good preacher can’t preach the gospel without getting into relevant social issues.  Any minister who just wants to save individual souls for heaven isn’t preaching the gospel of Jesus.  Jesus said the quality of our religion is measured by the quality of our relationships.  Jesus said, “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,you did it to me.”  Jesus drove the money changers out of the Gentiles’ place in the temple and told his followers to leave their offerings at the altar and make peace with their neighbors before coming to worship.  Jesus said that God preferred the compassion of the Good Samaritan over the ritual purity of the priest and the Levite.

No Christian who actually reads the Bible can preach the gospel of Jesus without engaging in the promotion of social righteousness.

Now, as I said before, this doesn’t mean that churches should be endorsing candidates, telling people how to vote, or accepting money and power from the state.  What it does mean is that we should all have a clear enough understanding and a firm enough commitment toward our beliefs and values that we are willing to speak up and act up when the culture around us promotes practices and policies that contradict said values.  Do we believe at all people are made in the image of God?  Then we should have something to say about equal opportunity for all races, classes, and genders in housing, education, and employment.  Do we agree that Jesus had a special place in his heart for poor and outcast people?  Then we should not just make room for them in our hearts, homes, and churches; but we should also re-locate and re-orient ourselves to be where they are: in the slums, bars, and jails of Oneida County.  Do we believe that God loves everyone and never gives up on anyone?  Then neither should we.

These Christian values, if we live them, will inevitably put us at odds with American values.  We will have to go against the grain and the flow of the larger culture in order to hold it to a higher standard.  It will be uncomfortable.  It will make us unpopular.  It might even be dangerous.  But let us remember what our Savior taught us: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

People throughout history, from Martin Luther King to the apostle Paul, have followed Jesus on the path of the cross.  Their suffering and his suffering are one in the eyes of God.  They didn’t just preach the gospel, they were the gospel.  And they share in the resurrection life of Christ, who overcomes the bonds of death and proclaims a new reality in our midst, a new community that is overthrowing and replacing the old domination systems of this world: the kingdom of heaven-on-earth.  When the church challenges the unjust practices and policies of the powers-that-be, we show ourselves to be citizens of that kingdom with the saints in light.  The church’s promotion of social righteousness is not separate from the proclamation of the gospel or in addition to it, it is an essential part of it.  Our actions in relationship with our neighbors comprise the text of the silent sermon we preach every day to the people around us.

The Arc of the Universe

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized2 Comments

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Click here to listen to this sermon at fpcboonville.org

They say growing up is hard to do.  And I think they’re right.  Because growing up involves change and kids generally like to have a regular, predictable routine.  I remember one time when life interrupted my routine and I had to adjust to a new way of doing things.  It happened at the beginning of fifth grade.  I was having a hard time adjusting to my new classroom, my new teacher, and more challenging homework assignments.

When I finally had all I thought I could handle, I made an appointment to see the school guidance counselor, Mr. Arnold.  I walked into his office with my mind made up.  I had a plan.  I thought I already knew the solution to my problem, so I told him: “Mr. Arnold, this fifth grade stuff is too hard.  I don’t like my teacher, I can’t keep up with the material, and I’m just not happy here.  I’m obviously not ready for this.  I think I just need to back to fourth grade.”

Well, you can imagine what Mr. Arnold’s response was.  When he finally stopped laughing, he told me in no uncertain terms that returning to the fourth grade was not an option.  Then he introduced me to a new word, one that I’ve carried with me ever since.  To be honest, I think he made it up, but it describes so well what I was doing by asking to go back to fourth grade.  Mr. Arnold’s word was awfulizing.  He said, “You’re awfulizing this situation, and no, you can’t go back to the fourth grade.”  And then he explained what he meant by that:  my ten-year-old self was choosing to see only the negative parts of fifth grade and blowing them out of all rational proportion until I convinced myself that the only solution was to go backwards and stay in my old comfort zone.  By awfulizing the situation, I was basically just giving in to despair and giving up on life.  I was refusing to trust that life had given me enough resilience and adaptability to rise up and meet this new challenge.

Despair can be a powerful sedative.  Awfulizing, while cathartic, is an addictive anesthetic that keeps us from feeling our growing pains.  The upside is that it numbs our pain, but the downside is that it stunts our growth.  Evolution only happens through struggle.  Life has to be pushed past its previously known limits in order to adapt to new environments.

This is never easy.  When it happens in the biosphere, there is always struggle and the imminent risk of failure and death.  When it happens in the struggle for social justice, people stand up against powerful and entrenched institutions, like oppressive regimes, unjust laws, multinational corporations, and long-held beliefs, prejudices, and assumptions.  Change only happens slowly and with great effort.  Activist movements often struggle for generations before they reap a harvest from their labors.  They endure persecution, ostracism, imprisonment, and death.  Many lose hope and give up the fight along the way, but those who persevere become the catalysts for our social and spiritual evolution.  For example, who could have guessed on the night of the Stonewall riots that, within a generation, several countries, the president of the United States, multiple states, and even a few religious institutions would recognize the right to marriage equality?

Change happens slowly, but it does indeed happen.  Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said, “The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”  Not many know this, but Dr. King was actually adapting the words of the famous 19th century Unitarian minister Theodore Parker.  Parker said, “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways… But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”

These words have been a source of comfort and hope to many in the struggle for justice.  But the question arises, How do we know?  How can one be so sure that this universe is arranged in such a way that we can be sure that right will win out in the end?  Well, the short answer is that we don’t.  Philosophers are quick to point out the naturalistic fallacy, a rule (if you will) of critical thinking which states that one cannot derive an Ought from an Is.  In other words, you cannot logically draw a definitive conclusion about the way things should be based on the way things are.  Take, for example, the following popular label on food and drug products: Contains All Natural Ingredients.  We consumers are supposed to look at that and think that, because the ingredients are all natural, they must therefore be good for you.  But we know that’s not true.  You want to know what else is natural?  Arsenic, Plutonium, and Hydrochloric Acid.  These things contain all natural ingredients as well, but I wouldn’t want to put any of them inside my body!  Just because something is natural doesn’t necessarily make it good.

So, how then can Rev. Parker and Dr. King say that the arc of the universe “bends toward justice”?

Well, I think we can start by looking at the facts.  There are certain things we know about the universe that we would almost certainly label as good.  How about the fact that we are here?  We exist.  Most would accept that fact as both true and good.  How then did this favorable state of affairs come about?

Let me tell you a story: it takes place on a planet where a race of life forms has learned how to extract a vital resource from its environment.  The downside is that the extraction process gives off a toxic gas that poisons the atmosphere.  These life forms, with wanton disregard for anything other than their own immediate needs, willingly pollute the atmosphere of their planet for generation after generation until the air is saturated with poison.  Yet, even then they continued their pollution.  They kept going until the vast majority of life on their planet had been eradicated.

This sounds like a sad beginning to a dystopian science fiction story, doesn’t it?  But it’s not.  There’s a lot more science than fiction in this story because it happened right here on our planet about 2.4 billion years ago in what scientists call the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE).  In the GOE, anaerobic cyanobacteria figured out how to extract hydrogen from water molecules.  The poisonous air pollution that resulted from this process was a toxic gas known as oxygen.  We don’t think of oxygen as pollution nowadays because we need it to live and breathe, but there was a time when it caused our planet’s first pollution crisis.  The fact that we are here now, breathing oxygen, is a testament to life’s amazing capacity to endure and adapt.

They say, “One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.”  You could say that’s certainly true in our case, where we now depend on oxygen for our very survival.  We could say that one era’s pollution is another era’s air!

Life is amazing, isn’t it?  The universe has taken almost 14 billion years to produce the people sitting in this room right now.  You and I are sitting here as the end-result of billions of years of evolutionary success.  Of course, we can’t say that it was all good, but I think most of us would agree that something must have gone right along the way!  We’ve gone from single-celled organisms to fish, to dinosaurs, to mammals, to primates, to humans.  We are the heirs of a vast evolutionary inheritance passed down from generations of ancestors leading all the way back to the stars themselves, in whose furnaces the atoms of our bodies were forged.

We’ve come so far, across eons and light years, to sit together in this room today.  That’s quite a pilgrimage!  We’ve overcome so much strain and adversity.  The odds were (exponentially) against us ever getting here in the first place, but we beat the odds.  We are here.  We have overcome.  In the words of Dr. King, we have hewn “out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope,” a precious jewel set into the ring of our being.  Our very existence on this planet is a testimony to hope.

Other ancestors have testified to this hope as well.  I’m thinking primarily of our predecessors in the liberal religious tradition: the Universalists.  They were the great prophets of hope.  They were the first to jettison doctrines of hellfire and damnation from their religion.  They refused to give up on anyone because they believed there is hope for all.  They taught that there is a place for everyone in this world and that all things will eventually come together for good.  Rev. John Murray, one of the founders of Universalism in America, once said, “You may possess only a small light, but uncover it, let it shine, use it in order to bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men [and women]. Give them not Hell, but hope and courage.”

Liberal Universalist faith was founded on hope.  We are gathered here this morning as heirs of both the evolutionary and the Universalist legacies of hope.  We have more reason than most to draw strength and courage from this faith.

Sure, we can’t guarantee that any particular struggle for liberty or justice will immediately end in our favor.  No one can promise that.  But it seems, based on our scientific and religious history, that life itself can be trusted.  Life endures.  Life adapts.  Life overcomes.  This tendency seems to be woven into the fabric of the evolutionary process itself.  To put it in human terms, using symbolic language:

When we stand on the side of love, the universe stands with us.

“The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

This assertion, far from being a justification for fatalism and inaction, has the capacity to fill us with hope, strength, and courage.  When Desmond Tutu’s church in South Africa was once invaded and surrounded by a SWAT team during Sunday services, he stopped his sermon, calmly looked around, smiled, and said, “Since you have already lost, I would like to invite you to come and join the winning side.”  At this, the congregation erupted with joy and began dancing… right out into the street where more soldiers were waiting, weapons at the ready.  Not knowing what else to do, they stepped aside and let the dancers pass by unharmed.

Desmond Tutu’s faith that equality and justice would win out over evil in the end was the source of his amazing strength to keep going when the cause itself seemed hopeless.  His faith proved stronger and more enduring than the powers of Apartheid.  The strength of life itself flowed up and out through his heart, mind, and body as he committed his whole self to the evolution of the human spirit and society.

My hope this morning is that you and I might choose to trust life and embrace the faith of Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King, and Theodore Parker.  May we come to know and feel the long, gentle arc of the universe, bending inexorably toward justice.  May we draw strength from this hope and rise again to meet the challenges of injustice, trusting that, no matter what happens, life will overcome.

May it be so.

Be blessed and be a blessing.

Getting Ahead of Jesus

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized3 Comments
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The Wedding at Cana, by Paolo Veronese (1562). Public domain. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

Let’s face it:

Parents just don’t understand.

I’m only 32, so it wasn’t all that long ago that I was a teenager bemoaning this very fact to my friends at school.  All through those years, my elders kept on telling me, “You’ll understand when you have kids of your own.”

Well, you know what?  I do have kids of my own now and guess what:

Parents still don’t understand!

For the life of me, I cannot comprehend even a fraction of what goes on in my four year old daughter’s mind.  I admit that I’m still pretty new to the parenting game, but somehow, I get the impression that me not understanding her is only going to get worse as she gets older.

She has this incredibly vibrant and active imagination that can create entire worlds with their own cast of characters and plotlines.  Once in a while, she’ll poke her head out of her fantasy play world and update us on what everybody in there is doing.  Naturally, she just assumes that we’ve been in there with her all along and therefore know exactly what she’s talking about.  We don’t, of course.  But whatever she’s telling us is obviously important to her, so my wife and I usually just nod, smile, and say, “Okay!”

Parents just don’t understand.

But, as a parent, there certainly are things that you do understand.

For instance, there are things we know about our kids that no one else will ever know (with the possible exception of their future partners/spouses).  Sometimes, we know them even better than they know themselves.  We know what they’re capable of, even if they don’t.

I imagine that such was the case between Jesus and his mother as well.  On one occasion, around the time that Jesus began his ministry, he and his mother attended a wedding together in a tiny little village called Cana.  This village was so small and remote, in fact, that archaeologists today aren’t entirely sure where it was located.  During the celebration, the unthinkable happened: the host family ran out of wine.

If that happened at a wedding today, we would probably say something like, “Gosh!  That’s a bummer!” but then quickly get back to entertaining ourselves in other ways.  Generally speaking, we would get over it.  But in the ancient world, where social capital was just as valuable as money, this would have been a supreme humiliation.  The family’s reputation would be ruined for all time.  They would never live it down in the eyes of the community.  The shadow of this event would haunt them for the rest of their lives.

With that in mind, you might be able to imagine the very real concern in Jesus’ mother’s voice when she tells him, “They have no wine.”  At this point in the story, it’s not entirely clear what Jesus’ mother was trying to accomplish by telling Jesus this.  According to the narrative text in John’s gospel, Jesus had never done anything particularly amazing or miraculous before this point.  Even Jesus himself seems standoffish and dismissive when his mother first approaches him.  He says, “Woman (which was a term of respect back then, like ma’am or madam is today), what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”

Now, I just wish that the narrator had described the look on her face in that moment.  In my imagination, I see her with her head cocked to one side and her hands on her hips, looking her son right in the eye.  Then, without another word, she turns around, grabs a panicked staff member as he rushes by, and almost shoves him in Jesus’ direction, saying, “Do whatever he tells you.”  Jesus, visibly annoyed, clenches his jaw and furrows his brow at his mother.  She simply raises her eyebrows and walks back to the party, smiling knowingly.

Jesus says it isn’t time yet, but his mother knows: it’s time.  It’s time for Jesus to become the person he was always meant to be.  It’s time for the potential hidden in his life to break out into the open.  He may not have even seen it in himself, but his mother saw it.  And in order to actualize that potential, she had to get ahead of Jesus.  She had to take that leap of faith and push him into something that even Jesus didn’t think he was ready for.

What happens next is the famous incident of Jesus miraculously turning water into wine.  According to the narrator of the text, it was Jesus’ first miracle… and it never would have happened if his mother hadn’t pushed him into it.

Now, this whole scene might strike some of us as strange.  We’re used to thinking of Jesus as our guru: the all-knowing, all-wise Son of God.  He teaches and people listen.  After all, he’s Jesus Christ, right?  But in this story, he’s the one being pushed.  The situation feels a little upside down.

To be honest, the more I think about this disturbing idea, the more I like it.  In a metaphorical sense, it’s almost as if Jesus’ mother is reaching out across two thousand years of time just to mess with our heads.  But if you let yourself sit with this ironic image of Jesus being pushed into his first miracle, some interesting thoughts start to develop.

Here’s what struck me about this story: Jesus’ mother is getting ahead of Jesus.

When I think about some of the most heroic people in history, I can’t escape the observation that most of them had to push back against the forces of cultural inertia in order to achieve greatness.  In a sense, they too were getting ahead of Jesus, so long as we understand “Jesus” as a cultural icon whose name is invoked by the powerful in order to legitimate the social status quo.

For example: 150 years ago, a large number of preachers invoked the name of Jesus and even quoted the Bible in order to justify the practice of slavery in this country.  And you know what?  They were right… technically speaking.  Numerous passages in both the Old and New Testaments talk about slavery as an accepted part of life.  Pro-slavery advocates had the text of the Bible on their side.

Nevertheless, abolitionist movements, beginning with the Quakers in the 1600s, gradually built up steam and generated support among the people.  They argued that the ownership of another human being as property violates the spirit of Christianity, even though it’s not expressly forbidden in the text of the Bible.

We take this line of reasoning for granted in the 21st century, but it was still a hotly contested issue in the 19th century.  It was not socially advantageous to be an abolitionist in those days.  Those who called out in the name of conscience were often beaten back by well-respected citizens carrying Bibles.  These early heroes of freedom and equality, like Jesus’ mother in the story of the wedding at Cana, had to get ahead of Jesus in order to stand up for what is truly right and good: not the historical person named Jesus of Nazareth or the Spirit of the risen Christ that lived in their hearts, but the image of Jesus that was constructed and corrupted by the prejudice of the slave-owners.

When I talk about “getting ahead of Jesus”, I mean to say that people need to challenge their ideas about Jesus, not Jesus himself.  We need to cultivate enough self-awareness to question our own assumptions about reality.  When well-dressed and well-paid preachers go on TV, quote the Bible, and use it to justify the exclusion of gay & lesbian people, we to get ahead of that Jesus.  When someone sends you an email with a painting of Jesus wrapped in an American flag and carrying an assault rifle, you need to get ahead of that Jesus.  When politicians use Christian rhetoric to turn our diverse society into a religiously monolithic nation, we need to get ahead of that Jesus.

Whenever we take a controversial stand for what we believe is right, there will always be people who can quote the Bible against us.  On the surface, many of these folks will appear to be more knowledgeable and more dedicated believers than some of us, but I’m telling you now that you don’t have to buy into their ideas.  The real measure of your faith is not the church you attend, the Bible you read, or the check you write.  The real measure of your faith is the life you live.

When people call you a hell-bound heretic, just remember Jesus’ mother, who made a miracle happen by getting ahead of Jesus.  Remember the abolitionists and Martin Luther King, whose birthday we celebrate tomorrow.  They all got ahead of Jesus, going beyond the text of the Bible in order to honor the spirit of the Bible and so they worked their own kind of miracle: a living miracle of freedom and equality that has yet to be completed in our day.

It falls to us to keep this miracle going, to question our own assumptions and challenge deeply-established injustice, to get ahead of our ideas about Jesus and come to know, love, and follow the real Jesus, the Jesus whose Spirit lives within us, working miracles in us and through us that we cannot even begin to imagine.

Martin Luther King on Endorsing a Candidate

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Image is in the public domain. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

The link below connects you to a document preserved electronically by the King Center.  It is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. responding to multiple requests that he endorse candidates in the 1960 election.  Dr. King refused all such requests.

He writes:

The role that is mine in the emerging social order of the south and America demands that I remain non-partisan.  This devoid of partisan political attachments, I am free to be critical of both parties when necessary.

He continues:

The best antidote to degeneration of conflict of opinion into maliciousness and violence is statesmanlike, firm, expressions of the moral issues giving active support to proper resolution.

This is not the time to look back, but to look forward.  I am full of hope for the future because of the goodwill and concern shown by so many people in Georgia and all over the country.

Now let us use this period for genuine negotiations so that Atlanta can take a step forward toward the society of “wisdom, justice and moderation” which the seal of the state of Georgia and the Constitution of the United States promised.

Click here to read the entire document.  Click and drag to move the page.

I Have A Dream

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Yesterday was his 83rd birthday.  In school, most of us read the edited half-version of this speech.  If you have never seen the full 17 minute version, I recommend that you take some time to do so now.  Pay special attention to what happens about 11 minutes into the speech: he stops looking at his notes.

He wasn’t martyred for being a nice guy and singing ‘Kumbaya’.  He was an agitator for equality who shook the powers in their high places.  He is still singing ‘We Shall Overcome’.

Elements of Worship: The Word

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

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

The text is II Timothy 3:10-17.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maladjustment

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

One of my favorite paragraphs from Martin Luther King, Jr.

Copied from teachingamericanhistory.org

Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word. It is the word “maladjusted.” Now we all should seek to live a well—adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities. But there are some things within our social order to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I call upon you to be maladjusted. I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to mob rule. I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic effects of the methods of physical violence and to tragic militarism. I call upon you to be maladjusted to such things. I call upon you to be as maladjusted to such things. I call upon you to be as maladjusted as Amos who in the midst of the injustices of his day cried out in words that echo across the generation, “Let judgment run down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” As maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln who had the vision to see that this nation could not exist half slave and half free. As maladjusted as Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery could cry out, “All men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” As maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth who dreamed a dream of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. God grant that we will be so maladjusted that we will be able to go out and change our world and our civilization. And then we will be able to move from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man to the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.

"Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted." -MLK

Martin Luther King in his own words (and Bono’s)

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment

I tried to think of something insightful for today’s MLK holiday, but it’s no surprise that my words could never come close to Dr. King’s.  I’ll shut up now and let him speak for himself:

There’s also a fantastic article from our local newspaper, the Utica OD:

http://www.uticaod.com/features/x1254711284/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-The-man-of-God

Finally, because it just wouldn’t be me without a U2 reference, here’s their song ‘Pride’ with footage of Dr. King:

Happy Martin Luther King Day!