Christmas Stories

Scripture: Luke 2-16

For more than a month, we get ready for Christmas.  At church, we celebrate the ancient tradition of advent, which occupies so much of our time and attention that we call it a “season.”  We read biblical passages that anticipate the birth of Christ; we light candles; we decorate the sanctuary; we gather toys and gifts to donate to those who have fallen on hard times.

Outside of church, we engage in other sorts of rituals.  We unpack the nativity scene, the decorations, and the ornaments.  We put up the tree.  We cook and bake and devour vast amounts of food.  We labor to find just the right presents for just the right people.  We marinate in Christmas music that starts in November and that follows us ubiquitously into cars, malls, stores, elevators, restaurants, even restrooms.

In this connection, I’ve noticed that a number of contemporary Christmas songs ask a question that sounds something like this: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Christmas could last all year long?”  And I have to confess: I wonder.  After all, the way we do Christmas is pretty exhausting.  And I’m not sure how many of us would enthusiastically agree to spend the next fifty weeks doing the same things we have done for the last two—let alone at the same pace.

Also, this time of year can seem a little artificial.  It should have a special quality—and it does; it shouldn’t feel like the rest of the year—and it doesn’t; but, as Prince Hamlet said, “there’s the rub.”  After all, we spend most of our lives in the other eleven months of the year.  So there is always the risk that we may elevate this season to such a height—and accelerate it to such a frantic dash—that it will lose its relevance to how we actually spend the overwhelming majority of our time on planet earth.

I think that this is what makes Luke’s description of the events immediately preceding the birth of Jesus so instructive.  It doesn’t seem like a particularly inspiring collection of verses; to the contrary, it reads like a pretty bland recitation of relatively non-momentous facts.  It almost sounds like an entry in the “local news” sidebar of the Bethlehem Daily Tribune: “census brings Joseph home after long absence; ‘gee, it’s great to be back,’ he declares.”

Indeed, everything about the text reinforces its ordinariness.  The emperor issued a decree—that’s hardly surprising.  Decreeing things is what emperors do, and this one did a lot of it.  As you may recall, Augustus came into power after the assassination of Julius Caesar and during a period of political upheaval and military rule.  After defeating his rivals, Augustus restored the trappings of the republic, but historians tell us that in many respects he remained a dictator.  The most famous statue of Augustus—the Augustus of Prima Porta housed in the Vatican Museum—portrays him with his right arm raised commandingly, as if issuing just the sort of decree Luke describes.

Next we’re told that this particular decree required the registration of everyone who was under Roman rule.  Now, this passage has prompted a vigorous and unresolved debate among biblical scholars because little, if any, historical evidence confirms that such a census occurred during this period.  So, what’s going on here?  Was Luke thinking of the census that is mentioned in Acts 5:37 but confused about its date?  Was he giving us a nod toward Psalm 87, which seems to link the registering of people with the birth of the Messiah?  Was he doing a little stage management by offering an explanation as to how Jesus came to be born in Bethlehem, thereby fulfilling an ancient prophecy?

For today, let’s put those questions aside and shift our focus from why Luke tells us about the census to how Luke does so.  If you look carefully, you’ll notice that this passage is characterized by a severe economy of words and by no drama whatsoever.  This seems particularly striking because these verses are surrounded by drama.  Immediately before it, we get Mary’s beautiful magnificat (“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior”) and Zechariah’s spirit-driven prophecies about the birth of John (“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and redeemed his people”).  Immediately after these verses, we get angels appearing to shepherds and “a great company of the heavenly host singing ‘Glory to God in the highest.’”  Chapter 2 of Luke comes to us as an interruption in the midst of exaltation. 

The verses about the census are dry, low-key, and journalistic.  They probably have something to do with the government wanting to tax its citizens—a practice, as Ben Franklin observed, that is as inevitable and predictable as death.  Certainly, these verses don’t make particularly good fodder for hymns or Christmas carols or holiday pageants.  In his Messiah, Mr. Handel decided to skip this rather prosaic part of the story entirely.

And that leads us to the most surprising part of this very unsurprising first advent: Luke’s declaration that Joseph went to be registered with Mary, who was “expecting a child.”  Surely, this wins any contest of the greatest understatements in the history of the written word.  In fact, it may be that the only real competition comes in the next verse: “While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son.” 

So, how does Luke describe the events immediately preceding the birth of Christ?  He portrays them as the stuff of everyday, ordinary life.

But what do we do in the days immediately preceding Christmas?  We labor—sometimes to the point of despair and dismay—to make them as special, as non-everyday, as extraordinary as we can.

Do you sense something of a disconnection here?

Now, permit me to say that I’m as fond of Christmas preparations as anyone I know: I love reading the familiar verses and singing the old carols; rediscovering the silly ornaments that Lisa and I have accumulated over the years; getting together with friends to celebrate the season; searching for gifts that will bring smiles to the faces I adore; smelling the fresh-cut Christmas tree as it warms in the living room and the sap starts to flow again.  I am no Grinch, even if I do wish that my heart was bigger, more accommodating, and open to greater levels of commitment and empathy and forgiveness than it seems currently able to sustain.

So please understand that I am not asking you to downplay Christmas or to ignore its obvious specialness.  I get all that.

No, to the contrary, I am inviting you—as I think Luke does—to see that Christmas also lives in all the simple, mundane, unspectacular weeks that will follow.

It lives in the midst of business as usual, where decrees are issued and taxes come due and people obey laws and couples become engaged and children enter this weary and restless old world.

It lives in the miracle and wonder and blessing that we celebrate on December 25^th —and also in the miracles and wonders and blessings that may cross our paths on all the days that follow. 

It lives in readiness and in celebration—and also in the midst of drudgery and in the uneven and uncertain path that we call work-a-day existence.

It lives when our hearts are filled with inexpressible joy—and also when we are burdened with unimaginable horror and sorrow over the headlines in the newspaper.

I think that the special genius of this passage in Luke is that it moves us past the idea of getting ready for Christmas and into the idea of getting ready for anything—because God may become stunningly present for us even in the highly improbable context of a governmental head-counting.

*    

I am sure that many of you have seen the photograph and the videos that went viral a couple of weeks ago on the Internet about New York Police Department Officer Larry DePrimo.  DePrimo was on patrol on 44^th Street in New York on a very cold night when he noticed an elderly man lying on the sidewalk.  The man had no socks or shoes, and DePrimo became concerned.  He ran into a nearby store and bought the man a pair of sturdy one-hundred dollar boots.  DePrimo knew that this was the kind and compassionate thing to do; what he did not know was that a tourist took a photograph of him doing it.  That picture was posted on Facebook; it promptly garnered hundreds of thousands of “likes”; DePrimo was identified; and the picture and the tale spread like wildfire.  Everyone agreed: it was a great Christmas-time story, and so it is.

But, of course, there are countless Christmas stories.  Many of them happen during the other eleven months of the year.  Many of them unfold over a number of years, or even decades, or even lifetimes.  All of them bring a ferocious light that presses back against the relentless darkness that always threatens to consume us, but that finally cannot, because God won’t have it.

Here are just a few of those stories, gleaned from a single website (the CNN 2012 Heroes page, if you're interested), after only about fifteen minutes of looking around on the Internet:

For the past two years, Dr. Benjamin Labrot has practiced medicine from the decks of a 76-foot-long refurbished ship called the Southern Wind, where he serves not only as the chief physician but often as captain, cook, and lab technician.  Sailing a nonstop circuit between Haiti, Honduras, and Panama, Dr. Labrot and a crew of volunteers have managed to provide critical services to about thirteen thousand people—many of whom had never before received any medical attention at all.  Dr. Labrot acknowledges the challenges and the rewards his work entails.  He says: “I had to postpone many aspects of my own personal life.  I don’t have a home.  I had to give up a lot.  But I gained everything.”  This Christmas story has been going on for two years, now—two years and counting.      

Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world.  It has no social safety net.  This means that, when someone goes to prison, they have two choices: they can bring their children to prison with them; or they can leave their children to fend for themselves on the street.  Since 2005, 28-year-old Pushpa Basnet of Nepal has taken those children in.  This doesn’t require much of her.  She just has to feed, clothe, teach, and launder for the forty children who live with her; take them to visit their parents in prison; and help their parents learn a trade so they’re in a better position to be caregivers once they’re released.  This Christmas story has been going on for seven years.  And Pushpa Basnet is still a very young woman.

A common problem bedevils children who are diagnosed with certain types of cancer: the treatment severely compromises their immune systems.  As a result, the disease does not just steal their health—it steals their childhood, preventing them from such basic activities as playing with other kids.  Well, one day a woman named Nancy Zuch, whose daughter Morgan was battling cancer at the time, noticed something: the hospital where Morgan was receiving treatment allowed her to play with another child who was in the same condition.  Morgan went on to recover, and Nancy went on to found a preschool in her daughter’s name.  The Morgan Center is a cheerful, bright, colorful, and meticulously sanitized space—the only one like it in the world—where children who are fighting for their lives can gather together to do the stuff kids loves to do: sing; read stories; make arts and crafts projects; laugh; play.  This Christmas story has been going on for nine years … and it has a beautiful future.

Stan Brock, on the other hand, did not appear to have a particularly beautiful future when he was a teenager.  He dropped out of school at sixteen and found himself herding cattle for a living.  He barely scraped by, sometimes going for days without food or water.  Indeed, just about the only thing he could say for himself was that he was working hard and developing some amazing skills with a lasso.

And that’s where he was when a television show called Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom discovered him in the nineteen-sixties.  It turned out that the show needed someone who could lasso big and unfriendly animals—you can see a video of Stan wrangling with a buffalo on YouTube if you like—so they took him on.  His new role gave him security, a certain measure of fame, and the opportunity to travel the world.  But he never forgot where he came from: “I understand what it is like to be penniless, homeless, and uninsured,” he says.

So, after he learned how to fly an airplane, Stan offered to bring medical support to areas that otherwise wouldn’t receive it.  In 1985, he turned this avocation into a nonprofit organization called Remote Area Medical, which has involved more than 70,000 volunteers, has held over 600 medical clinics worldwide, and has helped more than half a million people.  Stan Brock sleeps in his company headquarters at a ramshackle old schoolhouse in Tennessee; he has no assets other than a bicycle and some tools; and he does not accept an income from the enterprise he runs.  “I guess I’m your basic indigent CEO,” he says.  This Christmas story has been chugging along for more than a quarter of a century.  And it ain’t over yet.

In each of these stories, a moment of clarity, insight, and inspiration came to someone.  Stan Brock realized the importance of medical care in remote areas after a horse kicked him in the head in the Amazon.  Nancy Zuch observed one fragile child playing with another and recognized the potential.  Pushpa Basnet saw innocent children going to prison—because that’s where their parents were—and concluded that this was an intolerable state of affairs.  Benjamin Labrot sat down and wept when he discovered that he could not carry all the medicine that his patients needed in his backpack—and he resolved to find a way to carry more.  Officer Larry DePrimo says that he was moved to buy that pair of boots after the homeless man for whom he had expressed concern looked him in the eye and said “God bless you.”

Maybe that’s how Christmas stories work for all of us.  We stumble across a blessing.  We realize we need to carry more.  We encounter an injustice that we cannot ignore.  We see a new way to bring people together.  We get kicked in the head.  And so we set out to write our own Christmas story—one that may start tomorrow or that may already be underway; one that may last for sixty minutes or sixty years; one that may begin its unfolding in any season, under any circumstances, at any moment, even in the most ordinary of moments—even at this very moment.

So, what moves you toward Bethlehem?

What gifts do you bring?

What causes you to raise your eyes and to look beyond the madness and the malevolence and the materialism of this world and to see—at long, long last to see—the faint but unmistakable glimmer of an irresistible star?

Amen.

On the Solid Rock

Scripture: Matthew 7:24-27

        From time to time, Jesus spoke in terms that were simple and direct.  Consider, for example: “[D]o not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.  Today’s trouble is enough for today.”  Of course, we may struggle to do as Jesus urges and to set our worries aside; but at least we understand what he was getting at.  He said it plainly. 

        Often, though, Jesus used language that was more indirect and subtle.  On these occasions, Jesus did not lay out explicit instructions about what to think or how to behave.  Instead, he invited his audience into a space—created by a question or a parable or the irony of their own hypocrisy—where he hoped they might consider things more deeply and see the truth on their own.

One of my favorite examples of this approach occurs in the story of the woman who was taken in adultery.  In confronting her accusers, Jesus might have said something ferociously straightforward, like: “Stop.  All of you are sinners, and therefore none of you is in any position to condemn this woman.  Go home.”  But he didn’t.  To the contrary, Jesus said that they could proceed to stone the woman to death if they liked—provided they could look within themselves and conclude they were without sin.  Of course, Jesus knew what they would find in their hearts; but he wanted them to discover it for themselves.

That brings us to today’s familiar—and deceptively simple—parable:  There once lived two men: one was wise, the other not so much.  The wise man built a house on rock.  The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew, but his house stood firm.  The foolish man built his house on sand.  The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew—and his house toppled over spectacularly.  Jesus explains: a person who hears the word and acts on it is like the wise man; a person who hears the word and ignores it is like the foolish man.  It doesn’t seem all that complicated; but I think it is.

By using a parable, Jesus is able to tell us something simply and directly.  Indeed, he even explains the parable for us, in case we missed the central point.  But his choice of the parable form is important, because it allows him also to tell us lots of things indirectly.

Consider, for example, this idea: a flood attacks a house from underneath; rain from above; and winds from the sides.  In other words, Jesus suggests that in the course of this life—and in the natural order of things—our little houses will be assailed from every possible direction.  Anyone care to argue with Jesus on this point?  I don’t. 

Or how about this: Jesus doesn’t tell us much about the houses the two men built.  We don’t know if they are similar or different; large or small; sparsely or handsomely furnished; two bedroom bungalows without enough room to swing a cat or fifty room mansions with enough room to swing a golf club.  Without saying so directly—indeed, without saying anything at all about the houses—Jesus signals that for purposes of this story—for purposes of this life—only one question matters: how good is the foundation?

But what I want you to notice about this parable today is how much Jesus leaves unsaid—directly or indirectly.  Perhaps most importantly, there are some important gaps (which we’ll discuss) in his description of what makes for a firm foundation.  And this is provocative because the question of how we build such a foundation is critical: it’s one that every person of faith needs to think through—as does every church, including this one. 

Jesus does give us a few clues in this text as to how we should proceed.  Let’s start here: Jesus notes the importance of hearing the word.  This suggests that we should make our church one that takes seriously the business of listening to, reading, and studying the scriptures.  Of course, we won’t all agree on what certain passages mean.  But, through study and discussion, we can work our way toward a collection of understandings that are thoughtful, responsible, defensible, respectful of reasoned disagreement, and consistent with the loving ministry of Jesus Christ—even if they are not entirely uniform.

Now, there’s a related point.  I suspect that most of us—maybe all of us—believe that the Bible is the most important and influential book in the history of the world.  Even those who disagree with that proposition, though, would probably concede that it is the most misquoted, misapplied, and misused of all books.  People have invoked biblical passages to defend and justify everything from slavery to genocide to torture to the oppression of women to the abuse of children.  It is an ugly history … and it isn’t over yet. 

In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, the character Antonio sums the problem up nicely when he observes that even “[t]he devil can cite scripture for his purpose.”  The devil can indeed, and in fact does so in the fourth chapter of Matthew.  (And, sometimes, when I happen across certain television and radio programs I think he’s still doing it.)   So this church—like all churches—needs a firm foundation in the scriptures not just because they will help guide our steps but because, in all candor, the scriptures need all the friends they can get.

You’ll notice, though, that Jesus suggests that hearing the word isn’t enough.  In this passage, Jesus doesn’t distinguish those who hear the word from those who don’t—the parable isn’t about how people don’t listen.  Rather, he distinguishes everyone who hears the word and acts on it from everyone who hears the word but doesn’t act.  In other words, our foundation cannot just consist of sacred words and faith; those are necessary, but not sufficient.  Our foundation must also consist of actions.

Now, you’ll remember that earlier I suggested that Jesus sometimes creates an open space in the text where we need to do a lot of the work ourselves.  I think that this is one of those spaces.  I believe that Jesus deliberately, intriguingly, and wisely leaves a blank here for us to fill in.  It is as though we say to Jesus “Okay, I get it; my foundation isn’t complete until I act on your word; so what should I do?”  And Jesus says back: “What have you got?”

Can you volunteer to help the homeless?  Do that.  Knit a prayer shawl?  Do that.  Teach children?  Do that.  Feed the hungry?  Do that.  Visit the sick?  Do that.  Make peace with an enemy?  Do that.  Fight injustice?  Do that.  Sing in the choir?  Do that.  Serve communion?  Do that.  Collect clothes for the needy?  Do that.  Write a check?  Do that.  In fact, if you can, write several of them, and be generous, because this business of trying to change the world is many things, but it ain’t cheap.

*

On this very day, thousands of people—including a number from this congregation—are running in the Detroit marathon.  I’ve run a few marathons, but I can’t recall how many because all of them have been, in one way or another, minor disasters so I have repressed most of my memories of them.  It took me a few tries to discover that if you’re a big-boned 200-pound German with a 17-and-a-half-inch neck you can do many things—but you aren’t built for speed.  Still, there is a story about one Detroit marathon that I recall and that has some bearing on what I’m saying here.

A number of years ago, my mother (who passed away earlier this year) went through a very difficult time.  She had begun a long and hard battle with Alzheimer’s disease.  She was packing up, leaving a house she had lived in and loved for decades, and moving to a facility where she could receive the necessary care and attention.  It was an immensely challenging period.

In the course of helping mom pack, we discovered a small pin that she had received many years ago when she graduated from nursing school.  It meant a lot to her, and it gave me an idea.  So I told my mother that I would be running a marathon in a couple of weeks and that, as a tribute to her courage and perseverance, I would carry her pin across the finish line.

So the big Sunday came and the first thirteen miles of the twenty-six mile run went fine.  But, then, at mile thirteen I pulled a calf muscle—severely.  My slow run turned into a trot, which turned into a sort of sideways hobble.  It wasn’t pretty.

Ironically, because of the way the course looped, at mile thirteen I was only a few blocks away from the finish line.  All I needed to do was hang a right, limp along a little, and quit.  The alternative was to go straight, follow the course out onto Belle Isle, and do the best I could for thirteen more miles.  I will be honest with you: if I had not made the promise to my mother, I would have quit.  But I did, and so I couldn’t.  I kept going.

Somewhere out on Belle Isle the pain and exhaustion got to me and my temper started to boil.  At just that moment, a police patrol car with two officers in it pulled up beside me and the window went down.  “Uh, sir,” a friendly face called out, “can we give you a ride back?”  I glared at him and growled: “No thanks.  I am going to cross the finish line if I have to crawl over it.  And, when I do, I’m going to spit on the damn thing.”  He smirked and said “Well, okay then” and the car dropped back out of my sight.

I finally worked my way off of Belle Isle and back to Jefferson and toward the finish line.  As I turned left to limp through the final hundred or so yards of the course, I glanced back behind me.  There was the police car.  I’d had two guardian angels and didn’t even know it.  Those guys had followed me around an island, over a bridge, and down a thoroughfare to make sure I was alright.  In short, they had seen someone who needed watching—and they did that.

*

  And that, my friends, is how you build a church with a firm foundation.  You welcome all who come—because all are called.  You give everyone a chance to study the word—because everyone needs to.  You help them figure out what they can do to help—because everyone has something to contribute.  Then you put them to work—every last one of them—in the name and for the glory of God—because we need every last one of them.  And then you love them and keep an eye on them—because now they’re not just in His flock, they’re in yours. 

Why am I so confident that this will work?  Because these are the construction plans followed by the Master Builder himself.  This is how Jesus himself laid a foundation that has lasted thousands of years.  This is how Jesus himself built a house that has survived floods and winds and rain—and even some inhabitants who have tried to destroy the house from inside of it.

So let me leave you with a few questions to ponder:

What can you add to the foundation?

What have you got?

What are you waiting for?

Amen. 

Why Church? Making A Difference in the World

Scripture: Matthew 5:14-16
      

        Over the years, lots of people have asked me why I go to church.  I have asked myself that question from time to time.  In both cases, the question is particularly awkward when the answer is that I had to come because I was the preacher.

       Of course, that may not be much of an answer.  After all, people do not need to come to church to be bored by me—I can bore you over dinner, at a baseball game, during a long car ride, or in any number of locations at the Chelsea Fair.  Attending church just allows you to be bored by me while you’re seated uncomfortably.

Indeed, it might seem as though there is very little we can do inside of church that we can’t do outside of it.  Outside of church, we can still sing, pray, worship, read the Bible, celebrate life, and praise God.  There are certain ceremonies and sacraments that are usually observed with the trappings of a church around us—like marriage, baptism, and the Lord’s supper—but most of us only receive communion once a month and, with any luck, we get married with even less frequency.

       This point holds true for our desire to do good in the world as well.  By mobilizing our energies and pooling our resources we are able to do things through the church that would be difficult or impossible to do individually.  Every year, this church touches the lives of thousands of people we don't even know by serving them breakfast on Saturday mornings, by feeding them through Faith in Action, by visiting them at homeless shelters, by sustaining them through donations to the United Methodist Committee on Relief, by providing them with Christmas presents as part of the "angel tree" program, and so on and so on.

But someone could argue that this isn’t a good enough answer to the question “Why church?”  After all, we could also do this sort of good in the world by contributing to and working with countless worthwhile secular organizations, like the American Red Cross, Oxfam, UNICEF, and Doctors Without Borders.  Indeed, if our goal were only to make that sort of difference in the world, then the question “Why church?” might seem very hard to answer.

Whenever this question comes up I am reminded of a story about the great Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki.  Suzuki wrote a famous book called Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind and over the years he attracted many students.  On one occasion, after an evening lecture, a man raised his hand and said: “You say that Zen is everywhere.  So why do we have to come to the Zen Center?”  “Zen is everywhere,” Suzuki replied.  “But, for you, Zen is right here.”  This morning, I want to suggest that, while possibilities for making a difference in the world are everywhere, for us they are right here.  This is true for at least four compelling reasons.

First: by making a difference in the world through the church we convey the message of God’s deep and abiding love to those who badly need to hear it.  Like all of you, I have been on the receiving end of many kind and generous gestures.  They are wonderful things, even when taken only as evidence of someone’s good and gracious heart.  But such acts are especially powerful when we sense that they reflect something else as well: that God is present in our lives, here and now; that we are loved beyond describing by a force beyond imagining; that we are never alone, never abandoned, never ever forgotten.

Second: by making a difference in the world through the church we glorify God.  This does not just mean that we give God the credit; it means that we give people a deeper and clearer sense of who we believe God actually is—something that matters immensely these days.  Please permit me for a moment to overcome my natural shyness and to be blunt.  If people see a church that is remote, disconnected, exclusive, judgmental, humorless, and joyous only in its sense of smug self-superiority—and, let’s be honest, people do see churches that are like that—then they will understandably conclude that this may be what God is like, or, at least, that this is what “church people” think God is like.  On the other hand, if people see a church that is involved, engaged, welcoming, inclusive, loving, forgiving, celebratory, and joyful, then they will conclude that this might be what God is like, or, at least, that we sure think so.

Third: by making a difference in the world through the church we unite the church.  We can and do disagree about all sorts of things: the kind of music that moves us; the proper structure of worship services; the best way to interpret the scriptures; how we should pray; etc., etc.  Major fissures develop in some churches over the color of the carpeting in the sanctuary.  But we can absolutely unite behind our efforts to fulfill the commands of Jesus that we serve others, that we love our neighbors as ourselves, that we feed the hungry, that we welcome strangers, that we clothe the needy, and that we visit the sick and downcast.  We can absolutely unite behind our desire to be a "Matthew 5:14 church," shining our light out into the dark corners of the world.

In fact, this turns out to be not only a powerful way to unite the church, but to help it grow.  In prior sermons, I have talked about Sara Miles, the author of the wonderful book Take This Bread.  As you may recall or otherwise know, in the year 2000 Sara Miles founded a food pantry at an Episcopal Church in San Francisco.  The endeavor grew and grew, until it now buys and gives away somewhere between nine to twelve tons of food each week.  And do you know where they give it away?  In the sanctuary.  As the pantry has grown, the volunteer base has grown right along with it, bringing countless people to church who might otherwise never have found their way inside. 

In this spirit, I want to issue a friendly challenge.  Perhaps you’re reluctant to invite people to join you at church because you’re unsure about where they stand on spiritual matters.  Or maybe you’ve extended such invitations without success.  Well, how about asking them to join you in volunteering to help with one of our church’s many service activities?  Sometimes this cuts through concerns and sensitivities that might otherwise exist.  I recall an instance many years ago, when I asked someone to join me on a Habitat for Humanity work day sponsored by the church I was then attending in Ann Arbor.  My friend said, “I don’t know.  I’m not sure whether I believe what the Methodists believe.”  I smiled at him and said, “For purposes of this Saturday, the Methodists believe that you should know how to hit a nail with a hammer.”

Finally, here’s a fourth reason: by making a difference in the world through the church we strengthen each other to do God’s work.  There are, of course, many ways that each of us takes sustenance from the community of this church.  In fact, it's quite an amazing and magical thing to watch: people walk through the front door as strangers and discover they have a community; they walk through the front door alone and discover that they have a family; they walk through the front door weighted down with burdens and the members of this congregation grab whatever they can of it ... and lift.  Perhaps the world is, as C.S. Lewis suggested, occupied territory--a battlefield of sorts.  Church, if we do it right, can say that this hill has been taken by angels.

But today I want to focus on one way church helps sustain us that might not yet have found its way into our hearts as fully as it should and that can help us prepare us to go out into the world and fight the good fight.  It is something we do every Sunday.  It is the passing of the peace.

For thousands of years, Christians have passed the peace from one to the other.  Of course, this has biblical roots in the way in which Jesus greeted his disciples, saying “Peace be with you.”  (Luke 24:36; John 20:19, 26)  But, from the beginning, these words became a sign—a coda among saintly troublemakers, if you will—exchanged between the followers of Christ before they got down to the daunting tasks at hand.  Thus, every letter of Paul—every letter—begins with an invocation of the peace of the Lord.

Think about that for a moment.  Here are the early disciples of Jesus.  They are in the distinct minority.  They are vilified.  They are persecuted.  They are seen as enemies of the Roman Empire—one of the most expansive and powerful empires in the history of the world.  They face insurmountable odds.  They understand that any day could bring them oppression, torture, or even death.  And how do they prepare for this?  They say to each other: “For the struggles of this day, in order to go out and face the world and make a difference in it, you will need the peace of Christ.  I pray that you might find it; I pray that you might feel it; I pray that you might share it with others.  Let it be with you.”

Let me be clear: I am not a passing-of-the-peace-party-pooper.  That people in this church pass the peace with joy and vigor and enthusiasm seems to me entirely appropriate.  But I think it is also appropriate—if not terribly important—to remind ourselves of what we are doing.  We are doing something with a storied and ancient history.  We are doing something profoundly holy.  We are helping each other get ready to do the Lord’s work wherever it needs doing—which, last time I checked, was everywhere.

So, for today, when the time for the benediction comes, we are going to pass the peace to one another—that’s why we didn’t do it earlier.  We will say those ancient words—“May the peace of Christ be with you,” “And also with you.”  And we won’t utter them out of habit or by way of saying hello or as a prelude to complimenting someone on their dress or their necktie or their new eyeglasses.  Instead, we will exchange these words because in that moment we will see each other for what we are: ordinary people, living differently because of the love of Christ, trying to help each other make a difference in a world that needs all the difference-makers it can find, and that can spare not a single one--especially you.

Amen.

Blessed Rage for Order

Scripture: John 13:34

        In the very early hours of Friday morning, that cold and remorseless ghost that we call Tragedy paid a visit to Aurora, Colorado.  The images that have emerged from those events have come to feel all too familiar.  In a sense, it seems remarkable that after Columbine and the Oklahoma City bombing and 911 and the Virginia Tech shootings and the massacre at the Norwegian youth camp that we have retained our capacity to be shocked by madness and violence.

        What happens next—what is happening now—has become fairly predictable.  We learn the terrible details of how the events unfolded; and, at some point, we conclude that we cannot bear to know any more.  We scour the evidence to try to understand how someone could inflict so much pain on so many innocent people; and we realize that—even after all the psychological, social, and other explanations have been offered—we cannot understand.  We weep for the victims and suffer with their loved ones and mourn with the community; and, all the while—let us be honest—we hold something of ourselves back, so that the storms of irredeemable grief do not overtake us.

        As people of faith, we face hard questions; we read them on the Internet and in newspapers, we hear them on talk radio, we are confronted with them by our friends, we stumble over them in our own hearts.  How could God let this happen?  Why would God allow such evil to exist?  Why didn’t God protect the innocent?  What of those who somehow managed to escape injury—did God intervene on their behalf?  If so, then why did God choose them and not others?  In light of events like these, how can we believe in any God at all—let along a God of love and compassion?

        Over the years, I have prayerfully tried to work toward answers that make sense to me.  I believe in God.  But I also think that belief is a matter of faith and not subject to objective proof.  I believe that God made us free and that this allows for most of the greatest blessings in our lives.  But I also believe that this freedom necessarily entails the possibility that things will go badly—even horribly badly.  I believe that sometimes in the midst of calamity God does intervene.  But I also believe that He does so for reasons that we cannot hope to comprehend and that are exclusively His department.  And, perhaps most importantly, I believe that when we suffer, God suffers along with us, beside us, within us.  I believe that this is one of the primary messages of the cross.

        Maybe your answers sound something like mine; maybe not; maybe answers still seem elusive to you; maybe the entire project of looking for answers in this context strikes you as a fool’s errand.  I certainly make no special claims of truth for the answers at which I have arrived.  I like to think that they have come out of a serious and sustained effort, but I also recognize that laboring and succeeding are not the same things.

        This reminds me of one of my first experiences as a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity.  I arrived on site with the skills of a moderately competent rough carpenter, a collection of well-used tools, and grand aspirations about doing something meaningful and constructive for a family that needed a home.  When I got there, however, we were informed that the previous day’s crew had been enthusiastic but inexperienced.  We would, in essence, be spending almost all of our time taking down everything that they had put up the day before.

        Nobody grumbled about this—or, at least, grumbled much.  Each of us had, at one time or another, done the same thing—gone at a project with more zeal and energy than facility or understanding.  Each of us had constructed something in our lives that later did not hold up to closer scrutiny and inspection.  Each of us had been forced to take apart a thing, a theory, a theology that we had worked long and hard to put together.

So I have tried to assemble what are for me workable answers to the tough questions of our faith.  But I readily acknowledge that I cannot possibly have anticipated every strong wind that will assail the little house that I have built.  And I harbor no illusion that, on questions of faith, I have swung my last hammer or plied my last crowbar.

In this regard, I will confess to a lifelong antagonism to the phrase “systematic theology.”  I understand the technical meaning of the term.  But the juxtaposition of those words has always struck me as embarrassingly arrogant, perhaps even oxymoronic, and strongly at odds with the human condition.  I think the best that any of us can hope for is to construct a “sort-of-systematic theology”: humble; admittedly imperfect; constantly subject to revisiting and revising; leaving plenty of room for God to work in unexpected and inexplicable ways.

But the bigger problem with trying to answer the most challenging questions of our faith systematically is that we do not experience them systematically.  Something comes over us when we learn about incidents like those in Aurora, Colorado.  We encounter feelings that are deeply unnerving, unsettling, and chaotic, and that do not lend themselves to detached intellectual analysis.

In the last couple of days, I have heard people say things like “I don’t know what has become of the world” or “We just seem to go from crisis to crisis” or “I feel like everyone has just gone crazy.”  I have heard them express their dismay in words that remind me of those amazing lines of William Butler Yeats: “Things fall apart / the center cannot hold / mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”  I have not heard a single soul say “Gosh, I wish I had a systematic way to think through the theological implications of this event.”

That is, I think, why incidents like these pose such a confounding challenge to us.  We long to bring order out of chaos—we are, after all, the children of the living God that did so and we are made in His image.  But we cannot construct unassailable arguments that tidily dispose of the troubling questions that confront us—because we are also imperfect human beings who see “through a glass, darkly.” 

Under these circumstances, where can we go?  What can we believe?  What can we cling to?  What will help quiet the impulse that the poet Wallace Stevens called our “blessed rage for order?”

 Well, I suggested earlier that after horrible events like these “what happens next—what is happening now—has become fairly predictable.”  But I only told part of the story.  There is another part to this narrative—one that is equally predictable, indeed, I would say, divinely inevitable.

As time passes after such tragedies, we start to hear other things.  We hear about the victims who died trying to protect others.  We hear about police officers who put themselves in harm’s way for strangers.  We hear about the members of the community who have blanketed the survivors and the friends and families of the victims with support and compassion.  We hear about people from around the country—even around the world—who want to do whatever they can to help the residents of a town that, earlier last week, they did even not know existed.  In short, we hear the story of love.

Over and over again, throughout the gospels, Jesus tells us this story.  What is the critical message underlying God’s commandments?  Love.  What is the new commandment offered to us?  Love.  What do you owe to those you do not know?  Love.  How should you deal with your enemies?  Love.  What did the Samaritan give to the stranger on the road?  Love.  What did they accuse and mock and crucify and try to kill?  Love.  What rose again, and lives, and prevails over the darkness, all the darkness, even the darkness that surrounds us now?  Love.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, do you need something to believe in?  Do you need something to hold onto?  Do you need a guidepost?  Do you need a theology that will bring order out of the chaos?  Do you need the answer to all of life’s hardest questions?  All these things have been given to you:  Love.  Love.  Love.  Love.  Love.

Last weekend, I wrote a sermon to share with you today.  It obviously is not the one you just heard.  On Friday morning, after I learned about the events in Colorado, I put that sermon aside and started working on a message that I hoped might offer some small comfort to those who needed it.

I thought that sermon would feel technical, academic, and strangely disconnected from where our hearts and minds would probably be this morning.  That sermon looks at some of the most legalistic texts of the Hebrew Bible (the last half of Exodus, and the books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) and tries to assess their relevance and significance to twenty-first century Christians.  It dwells on lots of textual examples.  It teases out half-a-dozen interpretive difficulties.  Perhaps you will hear it sometime, although based on what I have said you may think that would be a good idea to sleep in on that particular Sunday.

Here, though, is what I want you to know.  The title of that sermon was “Blessed Rage for Order.”  The scripture I was going to share with you was John 13:34.  If you’ve been paying attention, you will note that the title of the sermon and the underlying scripture are unchanged—even though the two sermons could not, on their face, be more different.  You see, in the process of building one sermon, and then tearing it down to construct another one, I discovered that their central messages were identical.

So I feel as though God said this to me, and very much wants me to say this to you:  “Sure.  Go ahead.  Start anywhere you like.  Make this as complicated as you want.  Wander around.  Seek.  Feel confused and dismayed and frustrated and sad and even angry.

“But know this:  In the end, you must find your way to Love.  That is where you will discover the only answers that matter.  That is where you will find the only peace that this life has to offer.

“And, once you have found Love, hold on.  Grasp Love ferociously, bravely, and tirelessly.  And cling to Love by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, for all the people you can, as long as ever you can.

“It is the Way.

"It is the Truth.

"It is the Life."

Amen.

Buried Treasure

Scripture: Matthew 6:19-21

My father had a deep and abiding fondness for stuff. He liked his tools, his hunting gear, his boats, his pocket knives, and his comprehensive collection of every device that was ever invented to help a human being catch a fish. Whenever he acquired something—no matter how small—you could sense in him the special delight that can only be experienced by those who spent their childhood in profound poverty, as he did.

At the same time, my father seemed to have a philosophical attitude toward all of these things. He grew up without any of them and so understood that they were not essential to his survival or happiness. He lost all of them, and had to start over, after the business that he had worked hard to build fell into ruin. And, as he grew older and struggled with serious health issues, he had to put these things aside as he gave up the various activities that they had allowed him to pursue.

Indeed, when I think about the overflowing garages and basements of my youth, it seems ironic that I can hold all of the physical things that descended to me from my father in one hand. There is a small wallet that contains his pilot’s license and a badge that he received for serving as a volunteer deputy sheriff. There is a silver belt buckle that bears his initials—and mine—and is so hopelessly garish that it cannot be worn in the sunlight. And there is a small plastic religious medallion that none of us knew he carried around until after he passed away. All of the other things he had accumulated seem to have gone by the wayside over the course of many years, many moves, and many changes.

This stark reality reminds me of the lyrics of a wonderful song by Guy Clark called “Step Inside This House.” The song begins with these lines: “That picture hangin’ on the wall / was painted by a friend. / He gave it to me all down and out / when he owed me ten. / Now it doesn’t look like much, I guess / but it’s all that’s left of him. / And it sure is nice from right over here / when the light’s a little dim.” When I was a boy I had the sense that a caravan of stuff followed my father wherever he went. Now I can fit into my coat pocket “all that’s left of him.”

When we read today’s passage from Matthew we may understand it to be offering a cautionary message about investing too much of ourselves in stuff. These powerful words of Jesus remind us that physicality is deceptive: it seems solid and permanent; but, in the end, it is ephemeral and fleeting. Physical things can be eaten by moths and overtaken by rust and carried off by thieves—and sooner or later we will have to leave them behind.

I think it is clear that this passage conveys this message and that this message is important. But this morning I want to suggest that this does not really get at the central meaning of these verses. Indeed, I hope to persuade you that this passage is only indirectly about the true nature of stuff and that at its heart lies something much more critical—something that can, and should, fundamentally change the way in which we move through the world and live our lives.

Now, to tease out what I think Jesus was trying to convey to us here I want to tell you a story. It is a very old story, it is one of my favorites, and it is one that you know. Significantly, Jesus knew it, too. To borrow a phrase from Philip Yancey, it was part of “the Bible that Jesus read.” So here goes.

A very long time ago, there was a man named Moses. For reasons we are not told—and probably would not comprehend anyway—the Lord decided to tell Moses many awfully important things. The directions he gave Moses were pretty clear, including this one: “You shall not make for yourself an idol.” In fact, God mentioned this prohibition before He got to the parts about not murdering or stealing so it seems fair to conclude that the Lord was terribly serious about this directive.

Anyway, Moses and his brother Aaron and the Israelites fled Egypt and the oppressions of Pharaoh and wound up in the wilderness, which made the people grumpy—very grumpy. They got even more restless when Moses wandered up a mountain to talk to the Lord yet again and stayed away longer than they expected. When Moses came back down the mountain, he discovered that Aaron had allowed the Israelites to make an idol in the image of a golden calf and that they were dancing around it in wild abandon. Moses was outraged at this plain violation of a plain rule.

Please permit me here to take a brief detour. When Moses confronted Aaron about this offense, his brother offered up an excuse that can only strike us—to use the parlance of today—as unbelievably lame. Aaron told Moses: “The people said to me, ‘Make us gods, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. So I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off’; so they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!” “And out came this calf,” indeed.

In a New York Times article several years ago, William Schneider noted the tendency of politicians to “apologize” for their mistakes by using language that suggested that some unnamed individual or force was responsible. He cited as an example the notorious phrase “Mistakes were made,” which political figures of all stripes have deployed from time to time. Schneider jokingly suggested that these individuals had invented a new grammatical tense that could be called the “past exonerative.” Schneider evidently forgot that Aaron had actually initiated this as a strategy a few thousand years ago.

So why am I reminding you of this story from the book of Exodus? Because one thing is absolutely clear about it: it is not a story about a golden calf. After all, if the Israelites had molded this object to use as a lawn ornament or a doorstop then we might think their conduct foolish—particularly given the absence of lawns or doors in the wilderness—but we would not think it sinful.

No, this is not a story about a golden calf—it is not a story about a physical object, about stuff. It is a story about a state of mind. It is a story about where the Israelites set their hearts. It is a story about a decision that the Israelites made concerning what to focus upon, what to love, what to treasure.

Indeed, the Second Commandment is not limited to tchotchkes made from precious metals. To the contrary, the commandment says (in the NRSV translation): “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 commandment thus anticipates our seemingly limitless capacity to fixate on things and make idols of them; and it tells us to resist that temptation and to set our hearts on the Lord.

In the same way, the warning that Jesus offers us is primarily concerned with an internal reality—not with external realities about moths and rust and thieves. Indeed, the point that Jesus is making would have no less force if we could figure out a way to manufacture something that was immune to those forces. Neither the Second Commandment nor these verses from Matthew turn on the question of whether we are worshiping something made out of Kevlar or corn flakes. They turn on the question of whether we have started worshiping something other than God.

Interestingly, this concern applies with equal force when we make a fetish out of something that has no physical substance at all: an idea; a doctrine; a memory; a tradition; a way of going about things. It applies even to notions of religious observance. Indeed, over and over again in the gospels Jesus locks horns with priests who so idolize a rule that they elevate it over the work of God. Consider, for example, their quarrel with Jesus over some of his miraculous healings because he performed them on the Sabbath.

Of course, this very simple command—to love and honor the Lord and to seek after His kingdom—is easier said than done. After all, in the grimy grind of everyday life such treasure tends to get buried under layers of other stuff. Some of that stuff is physical; some is emotional; some is cultural; some is ideological. Jesus cautions us that if we do not dig deeply enough we will mistake one of those layers for the thing we have been looking for; we will own it so devotedly that it will own us; and we will be lost.

At various points, the scriptures provide direction about how to find and hold onto that buried treasure. It tells us to seek; to be watchful; to pray without ceasing; to stand guard; and, above all else, to love.

We might sum this up by saying that to unearth and keep a hold on this treasure we must be constantly present in the quest for it. Without such presence, those other layers of life will wash over and obscure it. And in these our times, when we are besieged by so much sensory overload, the challenge to remain present in this search is perhaps greater than it has ever been in the history of our species.

I would like to close with a quotation from the author Diane Ackerman, who recently wrote a beautiful article about these contemporary challenges. She ends her piece with this line: “On the periodic table of the heart, somewhere between wonderon and unattainium, lies presence, which one doesn’t so much take as engage in, like a romance, and without which one can live just fine, but not thrive.”

Amen. And amen.