The Empty Tomb

On April 8, 2012April 8, 2012 By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment

Easter sermon from Boonville Presbyterian.

The text is Mark 16:1-8.

Click here to listen to this sermon at fpcboonville.org

A Wall Street executive once hired a consultant from the Czech Republic to come and advise him on business matters. After a highly productive and successful series of meetings, the time had come for the consultant to return to his home country.

“I want to thank you for all you’ve done to help our company.” The executive said, “Before you return to the Czech Republic, is there anything you would like to see or do here in America?”

“Well,” the consultant said, “I have always heard such wonderful things about the zoos in America. We don’t have anything like them back home in the Czech Republic. I would really like to go to the zoo.”

So the executive makes arrangements and takes the rest of the day off in order to escort his new friend to the zoo. While they are there, the consultant is fascinated by the lions’ den. He leans as far as he can over the railing to get a good look at them. But suddenly, the unthinkable happens: he loses his balance and tumbles headfirst into the lions’ habitat! The lions are on him in a flash and devour him so quickly that there is nothing left by the time the zookeeper arrives with the police.

“Okay,” the authorities say to the executive, “You were the only eyewitness to this tragedy. Did you happen to see which lion actually ate your friend?”

The executive gives it some thought and says, “Yes. It was the male lion with the large furry mane. I’m absolutely certain that he was the one who ate my friend.”

So they shoot the male lion and open him up. Alas, the lion’s stomach was empty! So they proceed to shoot the female lion and open her up. Sure enough, there was the poor consultant in her stomach.

Now, there are two morals to this story:

The first is that you should never trust the word of a Wall Street executive who tells you, “The Czech is in the male.”

The second moral to this story is that you should never be too certain about certainty.

As a society, we tend to put a lot of stock in certainty. We buy products that come with a “guarantee.” We buy all kinds of “insurance” to protect us from anything bad that might happen. We trust the words of our political and religious officials as if they were gospel truth. But just take a minute and think about all the times in history when people lost their lives over a certainty that later turned out to be completely false?

Several years ago, there was a science fiction movie called Men In Black starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. In one scene of this movie, Will Smith has just found out that there are aliens from outer space living on Earth in disguise. Tommy Lee Jones tries to comfort him with these words about certainty: “Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.” Certainty, it seems, is a very fickle thing.

Certainty is also something that is commonly associated with people of faith. Preachers, theologians, and church goers often speak with great passion and conviction about things they know to be true, beyond any shadow of a doubt. On the other hand, those who struggle with faith are often called “agnostic” which can be translated as “not knowing” or “uncertain.” Agnostic people sometimes ask religious people questions about certainty like:

“How can you be so sure that God exists?”
“How can you be so sure that there’s life after death?”
“How can you be so sure that everything will turn out for the better in the end?”

In the minds of average people (agnostic and religious alike), certainty and faith seem to go hand in hand. This association is so firmly ingrained that religious people are often made to feel a deep sense of guilt whenever they question some or all of their beliefs. Likewise, agnostic people are often made to feel like there’s no place for them communities of faith (like church). So many of them feel like they have to choose between the intellectual integrity their minds long for and the sense of reverence and belonging their hearts long for. If faith and certainty are permanently associated with one another, you have to make a choice. There is no room for questions or doubt. It’s black and white. You’re either in or out. In the minds of average people (agnostic and religious alike), that’s what faith is all about.

This morning, I want to take that preconceived notion (faith = certainty) and put it on trial next to what the Bible actually says or, more importantly, what it doesn’t say (because you can learn a lot by paying attention to what the Bible doesn’t say).

Let’s start by looking at today’s New Testament reading. Do you notice anything missing from it? We have the women who show up at the tomb. The stone is rolled away. There’s a young man in white telling them that the person they’re looking for isn’t there. They run away in fear. Do you notice anything missing? How about anyone?

Jesus! That’s right, Jesus forgets to show up to his own party! Today is Easter and we’re celebrating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Isn’t it at least a little odd that the risen Christ doesn’t even make a single appearance in the reading?

Let me add a little more wood to this fire: today’s reading is from Mark’s gospel, which most biblical scholars agree was the first of the four canonical gospels to be written. It was probably written about thirty or forty years after the death of Jesus. Now, we don’t have any original manuscripts for this (or any other) book of the Bible. All we have are copies of copies. Sometimes, these copies differ from one another. For example, the later versions of Mark’s gospel have Jesus showing up and giving some sage advice to his disciples, but the earliest manuscripts we have end with this passage: the one where the women run away in fear at the end.

That’s kind of anti-climactic isn’t it? I mean, the resurrection is kind of the central miracle in the Christian faith. It’s the reason for today’s celebration, the highest holiday in our religion. Wouldn’t you expect a more certain and definitive record of it in the earliest accepted account of its occurrence?

Now, let me be clear, I’m not trying to argue that it did or didn’t happen. What I’m trying to point out here is that the earliest available editions of Mark’s gospel leave us with a big question mark, rather than an exclamation point. Mark simply presents us with an empty tomb and then leaves us to make up our own minds about what happened.

I think this is good news for those of us who struggle with faith (and I include myself in that number). It means that we are not required to check our brains at the door when we come into church. It means that there is a whole lot more mystery than certainty in authentic Christian faith. Most of all, it means that faith is more about staying open and asking honest questions about what might be true rather than forging and holding onto hard-and-fast answers about what we think is true.

It means furthermore that doubt is a friend of faith, not its opposite. In fact, if we’re defining faith as openness to possibility, then doubt is what makes faith possible. For those of us (like me) who worship at the empty tomb, standing there with a big question mark hanging over our heads, the only real opposite to faith would have to be certainty.

You and I seem to live in a time of unparalleled questioning. Thanks to many brilliant advances in information and communication technology, we probably know more but understand less about the incredible diversity on this planet than any generation that has come before us. We’re facing questions about science and sexuality, faith and philosophy, politics and pluralism. Whether we’re talking about robots, rocket-ships, or religion, we are already coming up with answers to tough questions that our ancestors never would have dreamed of asking.

In the face of such daunting challenges, it’s only natural (healthy, even) to feel more than a little intimidated. There are powerful voices in our society who are calling on us to return to yesterday’s answers in response to today’s (and presumably tomorrow’s) questions. These fearful folks long for the comfort that certainty brings, so they hunker down, roll up the sails, and batten the hatches, hoping that their ship has the right stuff to weather the winds of change. As those winds grow stronger and stronger, those voices of fear grow louder and louder.

It would be easy to let those loud voices and that powerful wind of change intimidate us. It would be easy to give in and huddle together below decks in hopes that the wind will eventually stop. That would be so easy to do if we didn’t know who we are, where we’ve come from, and how we got to where we are today. Our ship, the church, was made to sail in these winds. The wind is our friend. If it wasn’t for the wind, we never would have left our home port.

Allow me to offer a few examples:

Today’s wind has brought us to face controversial and challenging questions about issues like religious diversity and human sexuality. Fifty years ago, we were asking questions about whether two people of different races or ethnicities could get married and have a healthy family. There were those who said it would never work because it was unnatural and went against the established order for human society laid out in the Bible. Sound familiar? It wasn’t until 1967, in the case of Virginia v. Loving that the U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled bans on interracial marriage as unconstitutional.

Before that, folks in our church were arguing about whether or not women could be ordained to serve as clergy in our church. There were some who said it would never work because it was unnatural and went against the established order laid out in the Bible. Yet, here I am, a proud member of a generation where women in ministry are not only my peers, but also my predecessors in the pulpit. I don’t think I even need to mention the name of Rev. Micki Robinson and her epic seventeen year ministry in this church.

Before that, there were folks who stood up and proclaimed that, because all people are created equal, the institution of slavery should be abolished. People said it would never work because it was unnatural and went against the established order laid out in the Bible. They even fought a bloody war over that question. Yet, I think we can all agree that our country is better off for having faced that question and challenged its previously conceived notions.

Before that, another group of people declared that, because all people are created equal, a country should be run by democratically elected leaders and not a royal monarchy that was handed down from generation to generation by supposed “divine mandate.” These same people also had a bold new idea that church and state should remain separate, in order to protect the freedoms of both. Thus, the United States became the first country in the history of the world to be founded on an idea, rather than a common ethnic identity.

Before that, people like John Calvin and Martin Luther challenged a millennium of church tradition and authority, believing that people have the right to read and interpret the Bible for themselves, rather than waiting for some Pope to issue an authoritative doctrinal statement on behalf of the people.

Before that, a man named Jesus of Nazareth challenged the very foundation of religious and political power in his day. He proclaimed a bold new vision of the kingdom of heaven-on-earth. He gave us the core spiritual principles and beliefs that continue to shape our lives to this day.

Before Jesus, in the Hebrew Scriptures (what Christians call the Old Testament), there was a long line of Jewish prophets like John the Baptist, Jeremiah, Elijah, and Moses, who stood up to “the way it is,” questioned the legitimacy of the status quo, and proclaimed a bold and prophetic new vision of what might be possible, which leads us right back to that definition of faith as openness to possibility.

We gather together this morning to celebrate this mystery of the resurrection of Jesus. We are confronted with the image of an empty tomb and a huge question mark hanging over our heads. We are not given many concrete answers, backed up by the guarantee of certainty. But, as we have already seen, we gather at this empty tomb with a great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us. They, like us and the women at the tomb in today’s gospel story, were gripped with an overwhelming sense of fear and amazement. I can imagine us all standing there, staring into the darkness, maybe holding onto each other for support, wondering together what might be happening, not certain of anything, but open to what might be possible.

Where do you find yourself in this story today? Are you perhaps a questioning believer who is afraid to let your doubts shine, for fear that they might invalidate or undermine your faith? Are you perhaps a hopeful agnostic who yearns for a sense of transcendence and community, but is afraid that there is no place for you in any institution that calls itself a “church?” Are you perhaps one of the frightened faithful who miss the old comfort of certainty from the “good old days,” who long for an anchor for their souls amid the winds of change, and who look to answer today’s questions with yesterday’s answers? Whoever you are, I want to invite you, on this Easter morning, to join us at the empty tomb. Let us hold onto each other as we stare into the darkness together with more questions than answers, overwhelmed by that odd emotional combination of fear and amazement, and let us do our best to remain faithfully open to what might be possible for us at this time and in this place.

Evolutionary Thoughts: The Paradox of Resurrection

On April 6, 2012 By J. Barrett LeeIn Evolutionary ThoughtsLeave a comment

Yes, we are a resurrected people. Evolution has been telling us that since time immemorial. Resurrection is the mythical/religious name we give to the triumph of matter over antimatter, life over death, meaning over meaninglessness, cosmos over chaos. But it is also the name we give to that baffling transformative process that requires paradox – apparent contradiction – as an essential ingredient in every transformation, whether personal or global…

Assuredly, not everything in our world is in harmony, and often we are overwhelmed by mysterious forces that push our sanity and sanctity to their very limits. But before we address these big questions, let’s get our own house in order. Let’s begin by resolving and dissolving all the meaningless suffering that we ourselves cause either directly or indirectly. Then the chances are that the other great paradoxes that baffle and confuse us will not seem that irrational anymore. We then will be in a position to understand with greater wisdom and equanimity the paradoxically creative Spirit who energizes the E-mergent miracle of our evolving universe.

Then, too, we are likely to be more at peace with the paradoxical enigmas of each day. With graced intuition we will be more at ease about the fact that death is a precondition for new life; we do not know why, but it is. Chaos is the fermenting ground for creative order; light is meaningless without the dark; pain and beauty have a strange familiarity; suffering awakens us into compassion. The evolutionary cycle of creation and destruction manifests itself in every realm of life and permeates every recess of our being.

–Diarmuid O’Murchu, Evolutionary Faith (p. 107-108)

How Important is the Afterlife?

On April 3, 2012 By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized10 Comments

Ok class,

jones — My classes will never be as cool as this guy's.

Time to sit up and pay attention. I’m asking YOU a question today, so I want to see lots of answers and comments down below!

This is a question that my philosophy students at Utica College are pondering and discussing this week and I thought it would be fun to put it before you.

I was having lunch at a cafe yesterday when someone walked up and handed me a religious pamphlet that asked whether I knew for sure that I was going to heaven when die. This is an interesting question.

It’s even more interesting that so many in the fundamentalist camp choose to start their evangelistic pitch with this question. If one’s faith is based on fear for the ego’s survival in an unknown afterlife, then it doesn’t seem to be qualitatively different from the dog-eat-dog drive for survival in this world.

I’m not trying to disparage eternal hope for anyone, but during Holy Week, Christians celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus was willing to sacrifice himself. His vision and ultimate concern was much larger than his drive for egoic survival. He embraced death willingly and so became the primary model by which Christians measure their faith.

There is an extent to which I believe we Christians are called to do the same. Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me.” Christians like to remind each other that Christ died for us, but there is also a very real sense in which we are called to die with Christ. We are participants, not merely consumers, in the unfolding drama of eternity.

Friedrich Schleiermacher said it like this in On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (1799):

Religion is the outcome neither of the fear of death, nor of the fear of God. It answers a deep need in man. It is neither a metaphysic, nor a morality, but above all and essentially an intuition and a feeling. … Dogmas are not, properly speaking, part of religion: rather it is that they are derived from it. Religion is the miracle of direct relationship with the infinite; and dogmas are the reflection of this miracle. Similarly belief in God, and in personal immortality, are not necessarily a part of religion; one can conceive of a religion without God, and it would be pure contemplation of the universe; the desire for personal immortality seems rather to show a lack of religion, since religion assumes a desire to lose oneself in the infinite, rather than to preserve one’s own finite self.

The question I am putting before you, superfriends and blogofans, is taken from chapter 9 of William Rowe’s Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction.

How important to religion is the belief in personal survival after death? Do you think that religion must stand or fall with this belief? Can you imagine a viable religion which accepts the view that death ends everything? What would such a religion be like? Explain.

Post your answer in the comments below!

Elements of Worship: Service

On January 30, 2012March 5, 2012 By J. Barrett LeeIn Elements of Worship, SermonLeave a comment

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

The text is Matthew 16:21-28.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does this look like for us? That’s a great story about Jesus, but how can we live lives of self-offering and resurrection today? Jesus said to his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” The way of the cross is a path, not just for Jesus, but for all of us as well. We who claim to follow him must decide whether we will choose survival (like the world) or resurrection (like Jesus).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My September 11th Sermon

On September 11, 2011July 29, 2013 By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon7 Comments

Cool Bulletin Cover — Bulletin cover from this morning’s service. Presbyterian bulletin covers are not usually this cool.

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

My text is Matthew 18:21-35.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rejecting Rejection: An Easter Sermon

On April 27, 2011April 28, 2011 By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment

My first Easter sermon at First Presbyterian, Boonville. The text is Matthew 28:1-10.

Philip Gulley and James Mulholland tell a story in their book, If Grace Is True (HarperCollins: 2003), about a scene that is probably familiar to all of us (especially those of us who are parents). It goes like this:

When I was about five years old, I demanded my mother buy me a certain toy. She refused, explaining she didn’t have the money.

I recall flying into a rage and screaming, “I hate you!”

My mother was utterly unperturbed. She didn’t spank me and send me to my room, though that would have been understandable. She didn’t break into tears. She didn’t drag me to a therapist. She most certainly didn’t buy the toy. She simply said, “Well, I love you, and your hate can’t change my love.” (p.110)

I think most of us have been there, am I right? If you haven’t experienced it firsthand, you’ve probably seen something like it in public. As the father of a two-year-old, I’m intimately familiar with what goes through a parent’s head in a moment like that. I worry about making a scene. I wonder what other people must be thinking about me as a parent. I’m scared that, no matter what I do, I might be psychologically scarring my child for life.

But when I see other parents dealing with similar meltdowns in public, I don’t judge them. In fact, my heart goes out to them. I don’t think they’re bad parents. I see others like me who are just doing the best they can in a difficult moment. The only parents I worry about are the ones who return the rage in kind. You know what I’m talking about. All of us lose our cool with our kids on occasion, but it’s pretty obvious when a parent in public crosses the line verbally or physically. In the effort to maintain control of the situation, they lose control of themselves. Those are the parents that other people tend to worry about.

Imagine what people would think if the mother in Gulley and Mulholland’s story had shouted, “I hate you, too!” and stormed out of the store, leaving this five-year-old little kid to find his own way home. We would be horrified! We would run to the child’s aid and probably call the police. We would say that such a mother deserves to be locked up in jail.

Unfortunately, there are those among Christians past and present who believe that this is exactly how God behaves. Those who turn their backs on God, so they say, are doomed for eternity. Those who reject God will be rejected by God. They claim that God, who is infinitely holy and righteous, must respect the freewill of these unrepentant sinners and allow them to receive exactly what they deserve. Most Christians who believe this can quote lots of Bible verses to support their position.

What I can’t understand is this: if we would call the police on any human mother who abandoned her child in that way, then why wouldn’t we do the same for a parental deity who abandons even one of God’s children to eternal torment? Why should we worship God for doing that for which we would incarcerate a human? It doesn’t make sense.

Fortunately for us, that is not the God who we worship. The God of love revealed in Jesus Christ is more like the mother in the first story from Gulley and Mulholland’s book. When we scream, “I hate you!” at God, God responds, “Well, I love you, and your hate can’t change my love.” This God rejects the rejection of the rebellious children.

This God would rather leave the ninety-nine sheep in the field to go search for the one who is lost. Jesus tells us in Luke 15 that this good shepherd searches until that lost sheep is found and carries it home rejoicing. Jesus teaches his followers to love their enemies because that’s what God does. He says, in Matthew 5:44-45,

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.

Not only did Jesus teach us about God’s love, he showed it to us in the way that he unconditionally accepted the most messed-up and undesirable people of his day as members of his own family.

More than any other story in the scriptures, the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection shows us just how far God is willing to go in order to reject our rejection. Last Sunday, and then again on Good Friday, we heard the story of how the powers that be in the world rejected Jesus. The political and religious authorities wanted to shut him up. His closest disciples betrayed, denied, and abandoned him. Last week, we also looked at the hard fact that you and I are really no different from the crowds who shouted, “Hosanna!” on Palm Sunday and “Crucify!” only five days later on Good Friday. The cross stands as a reminder of the lengths to which we, the people of this world, will go in order to reject Jesus. Like five-year-olds throwing temper tantrums, we scream, “I hate you!” to God at the top of our lungs. With all our pretended power, we lash out with the very worst torture and death that we can muster. Intoxicated by our ability to inflict death, we delude ourselves into thinking that we’re so strong. We can even make God go away… permanently!

But then, on the third day, on that first Easter Sunday, something happened. It says in today’s reading from Matthew that there was an earthquake. Matthew is the only one of the four gospels to record this fact. What does it mean? I like to think it means that something fundamental at the very heart of reality shifted in that moment. The power of life overcame the power of death. The very worst of human hatred was undone by the very best of God’s love. In the cross, the world rejected Jesus Christ. But in the resurrection, God rejected the world’s rejection. This is what Easter is all about!

As if this weren’t enough, look again at what happens in verse 10. Jesus appears to the two Marys and gives them a message for his “brothers” (meaning the twelve disciples). Remember that the last time we saw any of them in Matthew was in 26:56, when they were all running away from Jesus in his hour of need. They rejected him. But the risen Jesus nevertheless calls them “brothers” and invites them to return to the mission they had begun together. He rejected their rejection.

This is (very) good news for people like me who struggle with our loyalty to God. If God were to respect my freewill and give me what I deserve (and sometimes ask for), I would be abandoned like a five-year-old in a department store with no way home. I am thankful that God does not respect my freewill, but goes out of the way to seek after me until I am found. I am thankful that God has rejected my rejection.

What does this mean for all of us?

Maybe you are a Christian, but you struggle with things like sin and doubt. Well, the good news for you is that you don’t have to impress God with your morals or your dogma. The only thing for you to do, in the words of the theologian Paul Tillich, is “accept the fact that you are accepted.”

Maybe you’re here today and you’re not a Christian. Maybe you want to believe in something, but can’t wrap your mind around some theological point or maybe you’re sickened by the judgmental hypocrisy of those who call themselves Christians. The good news for you is that the God of love revealed in Jesus Christ is not the cold-hearted and small-minded bookkeeper of conventional religion. The God I believe in is not standing at a distance, waiting to burn you in hell. My God is just as angry about the pretended piety of so-called “saints” to which you have borne witness. Likewise, God is not threatened by honest questions on a quest for truth.

Whatever your individual struggle may be, what I want you to take away from this Easter is that, in the resurrection of Jesus, God has rejected your rejection. Sure, you might kick and scream like a kid having a tantrum. You might even deny God’s existence or yell, “I hate you!” to the empty sky, but in those moments, the God I believe in just holds you that much tighter with an eternal love that will not let you go.

Hopping Hadrian's Wall

Tag: resurrection