First Mornings- the sermons

The Womb of God

2008-08-25T20:16:00.003-06:00

One of my favorite biblical authors is Abraham Heschel who, in 1962, wrote the definitive book on the prophets, called The Prophets. He described the time period around 400-500 B.C. when some of the great Old Testament prophets had begun to write and speak in alarming, revolutionary, and largely unlistened-to ways (I’m going to paraphrase just a little, because his words can be difficult at times):

Heschel wrote of that time- “Religion had declined not because it had been successfully argued against, but because it had become irrelevant, dull, oppressive, uninteresting. When faith is replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crises of today are ignored because of the remembered splendor of the past; when faith becomes an inherited heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority and rules rather than the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.”

Part of my personality- my vision of the world, the universe, God, and all things and beings contained therein- is summarized in that statement. I listen to and read other preachers, so many other Christian teachers and thinkers, and I end up feeling lonely sometimes, embarrassed even because what I see and believe seems so different from what I hear being proclaimed as God’s Truth, God’s Word by almost everyone else, including many of my own denominational colleagues. And that sometimes leads to a kind of situational depression on my part. I wonder if I am wrong, and if I am even being fair in sharing some of my deepest insights and doubts and wonderings with you because they so often seem to run counter to what is considered orthodox and traditional in Christian thinking and doctrine.

That is this preacher’s burden. Robbie, primarily, and some others of you catch the brunt of that odd depression from time to time, maybe too often. But I hope all of you also hear and feel- underlying that confusion and what is a very real sadness at times- I hope you also hear a real hopefulness on my part. I don’t believe Jesus intended to lead us in circles around and around in 2000 year old cultural realities and perceptions. In fact, I think that following Jesus is God’s way of leading all people, in all times, out of the Bronze Age that religion had irrelevantly, dully, oppressively, and uninterestingly become stuck in, and into an always-being-made-new Creation.

I sit by the ocean watching the waves in early morning moonlight and think about these things. I walk beside the evening’s incoming tide, watching the records of that Creation in the scampering of sandpipers and the 200 million year old ballet of pelicans. I stand on Carolinian sand dunes blown into existence by winds which blew across the continents of Africa and South America long before there was a human present to scratch boundaries of ownership across them. Around me are pairs of ragged claws, as T.S. Eliot called them, crabs scuttling in and out of their ancient habitats, in and out of holes dug among the tangle of vines, the cacti, the wildflowers, and the swaying salt marsh grasses.

One morning, as I am making what is for me a jaw-dropping discovery that the horizon is not a perfectly straight line, but a series of barely discernible ups and downs of tidal risings and forming waves, like letters, words, and sentences- a kind of oceanic story being written in circles around the globe, and on that morning that story is punctuated a mile offshore with two large spouts of water. A whale.

That same morning, a little later, dolphins- 3 of them- appear near my son and daughter and others, ten yards away, jumping from the water in perfect, almost friendly formation. Then, later that same day, two sharks- small ones- appear just beside the shore, gulping the small fish caught in a temporary lagoon caused by receding tides. Those who are swimming leave the water quickly, but are unable to stop watching this scene, an unchanging scene, a wild and eternal scene older even than the time of dinosaurs.

I watch episodes like these shoulder-deep in the water, or from my sandy seat atop a dune, or hunkered down beside the water’s edges where waves born in the meeting of Caribbean currents and sub-Saharan winds are wetting my feet as my toes curl into the million and millions of tiny worn shards of ancient shellfish, now grains of sand. Other shells lie all around me, saltwater shelters abandoned by ten thousands of mollusks and crabs, shells which one day, wave after wave after wave away, will also be pummeled into the granular debris of other beaches, other shores.

I am caught up again and again in the transcendence of moments and minutes, of time and eternities. All that is around me on this shore- on any shore, and on beyond these shores to the mountains far behind me and the plains and rivers and lakes and fields beyond; all that is around me, beside and behind me, over me and under me, from the verdant green of every flower, to the forests of trees beyond them in the Great Smoky mountains, from those creatures in the seas which are too small to be seen, to sharks and whales, to crabs and the pelicans, the gulls and sandpipers, to each and every animal that burrows, flies, swims, crawls, slithers, or hunkers down near the waves watching it all- all of it, all of them, emerged in their primary, first forms from the ocean. Life- all life- has been born in these salty wet depths. All life has surged upward and outward and forward from this womb of God, this birthplace of an always new Creation.

Above me, and I cannot look elsewhere now, the morning sun is rising between scattered gray, yellow, and white clouds moving from east to west in massive air currents I cannot feel, but only see. Clouds formed by the endless evaporation of water from the ocean’s surface in response to the 10 billion year old sun’s invitation to rise toward its light and warmth. Clouds which, when laden with the many tons of hydrogen and oxygen atoms formed into molecules of water, attracting each other, joining together and spilling in heavier-than-air raindrops on the lands over which they pass. Gentle spring rains or summertime deluges, the ocean pours through them onto lands beyond, where the grasses absorb them and grow. And then the oceans are eaten in their now green and leafy incarnations by cows. And dairy farmers gather the now milky white drops of the ocean together into pasteurization vats and stainless steel tank trucks, some of which, not far away, will be made into ice cream.

Lick the ice cream and savor the ocean’s journey onto your lips. Taste the ocean’s always new and endless Creation on your tongue. We are a part of it. It is a part of us. The boundaries of difference among living things are blurred and obscured by the commonalities of our origins. Our own saltwatery blood pulses in rhythms begun by the oceans and the moon in gravitational, tidal dances, and I am overcome, again. I put my earphones on and listen to the Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah” as I watch and wonder in gratitude and humility and I raise my arms in the same form in which I earlier saw the whale’s spouts, and I listen, and I try to sing, because I must. I must.

It goes like this

The fourth, the fifth

The minor fall, the major lift

The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

When I come back up to the house and onto the porch my son and his girlfriend are sitting there drinking coffee and Joshua asks me, with a tinge of worry, I can tell- “Daddy, what in the heck were you doing down there?” (I didn’t think anybody would be out of bed yet!) “What in the heck were you doing down there with your arms in the air?”

And I tell him, “Becoming sane.”

Psalm 24:

1 The earth is the LORD's, and the fullness thereof, and all who live in it;

2 for he founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the waters.

I need those words. I need those words to wash over the curse of my own jabbering ego; I need those words to clean and scour the false priorities I schedule for myself constantly. I need those words, in waves crashing against my pride, I need those words to remind me that, at the bottom of everything I am nothing, but that me and you and every living thing are a part of the whole of everything. We are the intricately, intimately related parts of the earth’s fullness thereof. And we are loved very, very, very, very, very, very, very much.

Matthew 5 from ‘the Message’, verse 3: "You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

4"You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.

5"You're blessed when you're content with just who you are—no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.

6"You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat.

7"You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being 'care-full,' you find yourselves cared for.

8"You're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

Here’s the truth the ocean was drowning me in that morning, and during those days there. Here’s what I can see so much more clearly now- what Jesus is able to lead me, and all of us toward, if we are following him.

Continuing in Matthew 5, verse 13: "David, Let me tell you why you are here. (No, my name is not really there. But there’s a white space there- insert your own name in it!) David, let me tell you why you are here. (Do it, let Jesus talk to you here) David, ___, ___, ___, ___, ___, let me tell you why you are here. You're here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You've lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage.

Verses14-16: "Here's another way to put it: You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don't think I'm going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I'm putting you on a light stand. Now that I've put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you'll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.

So, I cannot be quiet. I dare not be quiet. If I feel the saltwater kiss of God on my lips, what else can I do but share that caress in these ways available to me, with you? I must continue to shout that I can learn almost as much about God from a wildflower field as I can from the first chapter of John. I must admit without embarrassment that I learn as much about the active presence of Jesus in a roomful of sentenced-to-life convicts as I do from the letters of Paul.

And I must stop being ashamed or otherwise discombobulated, when I tell you or others, or even admit to myself that an hour beside the ocean, lost in the eternal mysteries of blue-green waters tinged with golden sunlight, is better than any sermon, any day. Even this one.

So, on a gray Friday morning a week ago, August 15, the day after Sarah and Travis’ wedding, I got up, almost as usual before everyone else, walked down the catwalk across the dunes, sat on the last step, and wrote what follows. I didn’t know then if I would ever share it with anyone. Having read these words of Jesus just now, though, I know that I must:

Abba, Father..

Through the smallness of my words, I cannot explain to anyone, least of all to myself, who or what you are.

Through the inadequacies of language and grammar, whatever I write leaves so much unwritten that it might be better to tear this blank page into a thousand pieces, lift them to the wind and, as they are blown across the beach say “There, there is God.”

But if I don’t write something, right now, I might cease to breathe.

I know that Genesis says humans were created in the image of God, but I think we have done a much better job of recreating God in our own image. I would rather watch the image of God I see in these pelicans, or in these scampering sandpipers, than think about the image of God which fueled the hundreds of slave ships which crossed these waters in front of me.

My heart soars as I watch the image of God in this rising sun, and know what the ancient biblical writers could not have known: that this is one of a trillion sun-stars, and a fairly minor sized one at that. I see God better in the golden explosion of these early morning, sun-reflecting clouds better- infinitely better- than I do when I read the church-blessed history of the “godly” men who came to these shores 400 years ago with ships full of guns, germs, and plans to baptize and bless the “savages” who had lived here 6000 years on land they called “Father” near the waters they called “Mother.”

My heart aches as I think about the Japanese trawlers chasing down with high powered, 21^st century harpoons the whale I saw yesterday, because a Japanese god wants whale oil burning in his temples. And my heart breaks when I think of the creature-killing weapons-testing happening beneath these waters because an American god says “My country, right or wrong, my country.”

It is the man-created images of God which infect my soul, not this billions year old image in front of me! The truest maps of creation are written on the backs of these seabirds, and in the God-writ words on the horizon. I can taste God here in the spray of saltwater. I can hear God in the symphonies of the sun and moon and the harmonies of the ceaseless waves. I can see God in paths of crabs and the nests of sea turtles. And I can touch God here, simply by lifting my hands.

Hallelujah!

No Beginnings, No Endings: God

2008-01-01T22:31:00.000-06:00

John 1: 1-5 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

The Greek word which was translated as The Word in this well-known passage from the gospel of John is Logos: In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God. The Greeks understood Logos to be the underlying grid, the foundations from which everything came into being. They did not know about or understand specifically what those foundations were- there were no Periodic Charts of the Elements in existence yet; Einstein’s theories of gravity and relationship in the universe were still 3000 years away. So they used a general term for the God, or gods- the forces behind everything, that caused everything to be.

John gave the Logos, the Word, a name. He identified Jesus as the underlying everything, the foundation of all that was, is, and will be: “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” And he then, even more specifically, identified what it was that had come into being through Jesus- Life! “And Life was the Light of all people.”

Nothing that John has just written about Jesus would have contradicted a single Greek notion about Logos. In this way, John was cleverly associating Jesus, a brand new person who was being introduced to the world, with Logos, an ancient concept already understood by most of the Mediterranean world.

Logos is eternal. Light is always moving outward. And Life goes on. Jesus, John says, is all of those things: an eternal Light, who is the author and sustainer of Life.

Today is the next to the last day of 2007- December 30, 2007: two days before January 1, 2008. A calendar year is ending as a new calendar is about to begin. Today is last Sunday of 2007. Next Sunday will be the first Sunday of 2008. It is now 11:40 a.m. Almost noon- the end of morning, the beginning of the afternoon- halfway through the day.

Let’s do something here for a little while. Let’s put aside all of these artificial, humanly- designed ways of chopping up time into comprehensible little chunks and try for a little while to think, not about time, but about eternity. Let’s try- and that’s all we can do- but let’s try to think not about beginnings and endings, but about the Logos, the Word of God, Light, and Life.

Here’s where we start:

*tear up a 2008 calendar*

*smash a watch*

There are no more days, minutes, months, hours, years, seconds, or even eras or decades. There is Light and there is Life. And there is God, before and after all of it. What we have thought of as beginning has always been. And what we think will be ending, will always be.

Now, before you think I have lost my mind in abstract thinking, let me read to you one of my favorite verses in the New Testament, from Revelation 22, verses 1 and 2. An angel shows John a vision of what Life- God life, eternal Life- is really like. And it is not about calendars and minute hands. Here’s what John sees:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Life is like water in a river, flowing from the throne of God through the very center of the city. We can name a river, we can even draw it on a map, but we can never see the same river twice. A river is always changing. The water moving in front of us is not the same water that moved by us yesterday or even two seconds ago. Sneeze, focus again, and there is yet another new river to behold, and there, there, there another and another and another. Even the banks of the river are slowly, all the time, changing. Maps of rivers always need redrawn; banks wash away, the river changes course, lakes are formed, and silt from upriver creates new obstacles and courses.

No one looks at a river today and feels sad because it is not the same water that was there yesterday. In fact, something wonderful is happening that should cause us from feeling anything but sad. Much of the water that ran by us yesterday in the river is now gathering about us in the form of clouds- evaporated water. Somewhere downwind, that evaporated river water will be heavy enough to begin to fall down from the sky and it will rain on a field, where dairy cows will eat the grass the rain is absorbed into. The cows will produce milk. The milk will be hauled to the creamery and some of it will be made into ice cream.

We can stand by the river today, in other words, and enjoy the rivers of yesterday on our tongues. Vanilla, strawberry, butter pecan- the yesterday river is still alive, not only giving us Life, but enhancing our Life.

Where did the ice cream begin? In fact, it has always been. Ever since the crashing of hydrogen clouds 13 billion years ago against the hot gases of a dying star, the water has always been present. And whether it is an ocean, a river, a cloud, rain, grass, milk, or ice cream, it always will be.

As we are part of that river of life, flowing from the throne room of God, we can also see ourselves- or, at least, begin to see ourselves- in an eternal context too. Our lives are no more static than the river itself. Who we are today is not at all who we were yesterday. I look at a picture of myself when I was 16 years old: is that me? In calendar language, in the language of social security numbers and permanent records- that’s me, yes. But I look at this and see only part of who I am today. There are eight more years of school, a wife; three kids who wear carry part of my heart around with them all the time. There are sad years in there that I don’t even want to think about, but have to. There have been about 5000 times of laughing so hard I could barely breathe! I’ve lived in 13 different homes, in 8 different towns in 2 other states since then. I’ve cried over the deaths of people I’ve loved that I didn’t even know then, back then when death was still so abstract and far away as to seem impossible. I have voted for both George McGovern and for Ronald Reagan. There were years in there where I despised the very idea of God, and I’m just about ready to finish off paying for 10 years of seminary debt caused by falling in with love God. Am I looking at me in this picture? Or am I looking at someone who is still swimming, and will be swimming for eternity, in the river of life?

And it’s a river, a blessed river without beginning and without end, that we are all a part of. It flows from God and runs directly under the Tree of Life..that’s what John saw! A tree that bears twelve seasons of fruit..life-giving sustenance, fruit to nourish the body and the soul, food to feed the mind and the heart. We are being produced, made better and better by this tree, this tree of life that grows over the river of God. A tree, the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations..

What could this tree of Life be that John is seeing? What is it, who is it, that produces fruit that both nourishes and heals? Who is it, that told his disciples he was the yesterday, today, and forever, and would never leave them or forsake them and who went ahead of them to prepare a room for them in his father’s home, and who is the only beginning and the only end of all things?

It is the tree that gives Light, and the Light that gives Life. It is Jesus, the author, and the finisher of our faith. He is the colors in which we are being painted; he is the music which allows us to sing. His are the leaves which flow in the river with us, into the bays, into the oceans of the world..we are his and he is ours..

Therefore, what I am saying this morning is this: The calendars and wristwatches of our lives are not what our lives are about. We are not a mere series of actions leading to some future event. We are here now, in these moments, part of an ever-changing, always different river of Life. The leaves that are dropping around us from the Tree of Life are not the same leaves that fell yesterday, or the same ones that will fall tomorrow. The messages of God for us right now should not be missed because we are focused on appointment next week, or an anniversary next year. The colors and sounds of today are unique, blessed, and special. This part of the river will never be the same again. Jesus was..is..the Logos, the Word that brought Light and Life to the world. As followers of Jesus, as those passing this moment beneath his Tree of life, we are a part now, too, of the beginnings of everything from this minute forward. Each of us, no more, no less than anyone else, or anything else, are parts- vital parts of the Great Story of this day which will remain forever as chapters in the Great Stories of eternity.

We are part of the flow that began in the throneroom of God, and which now flows into the unending reaches of the universe. The Tree of Life gives us comfort and shade, and the leaves of the Tree of Life give us meaning. All of them are important. And everything from this moment onward is dependent on our being awake to them.

e.e. cummings, one of the great American poets of the last century, is a part of those leaves dropping around each of us right now. I think these words about God are as important as John’s. Catch hold of them, right now, as we pass by in this part of God’s river:

i am a little church (no great cathedral)

i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

Amen

(With thanks to e.e.cummings and Thich Nhat Hahn)

Christmas Eve, 2007

2008-01-01T22:24:00.000-06:00

We step into Christmas Eve with some trepidation. It’s kind of a time machine in which many of the Christmas times of the past are telescoped into the present and we are looking backwards as often on a day like this as much as we are looking around and forward.

For some this year, there is the question of what to do with that empty chair at the table- the one where he always sat, or from where she said the grace last year. For others, it may feel to them like they’re peeping toms, standing on their tiptoes looking through the windows of others at how they hoped life might have been, but never really was. And for some there is the difficult wondering that never stops but which seems to peak especially sharply this time of year: Where is she now? Is he happy? Do they remember me? Is everything OK there?

Our thoughts return home on Christmas Eve, and for many that’s a blessing but for many it is only a vague and fuzzy concept that derives more from the The Walton’s Christmas Special or a Hallmark television drama, than from warm recollections of their own. They might remember how good the pie was at Aunt Nettie’s house, but then there was the drive home that night and that terrible fight in the kitchen that seemed to go on and on.

The money is being squeezed to the choking point, and some are sitting here right now remembering the one thing they meant to do and did not get done or the two or three things, and you don’t have to be sitting to feel that kind of pressure, either. You can be standing right here and feel it, too.

Outside of here, far away in geographical distances but about a half inch away emotionally for some, there are wars and rumors of wars. We all have triangle folded flags poking at our fears or our memories and we’ll just have to put off thinking about that lab report, or that grade report, or the job performance review, and the letter from the IRS, the VA, and the mortgage company..tomorrow, or the next day.

Time telescopes from the past to the present and it feels like tomorrow may never be as bright as we want it to be or remember it being.

None of us faces this dilemma, this tension, alone however. We all share it: the tallest among us, the shortest among us; male, female, the nationality, the race, even the economic condition doesn’t really matter. We are all in the same little boat, crossing an ocean of life that is sometimes stormy, sometimes downright frightening. We are making our ways the best ways we can, the best ways we know how, but there is, with all humans, the deep feeling that there must be, has to be, something more.

There is something else we want, something we share with every other person, every other living being. Rumi, the 13^th century poet, called it “The Kiss”- the Kiss we want:

There is some kiss we want with

our whole lives, the touch of

spirit on the body. Seawater

begs the pearl to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately

it needs some wild darling!

The Kiss we want..like a mother’s kiss that will fix it where we hurt ourselves. But more.

Like the touch of someone we love..the assurance that we are not alone. But more.

Like the embrace of father, who tells us everything will be all right. But more, even more than that.

The kiss we want, I believe, is precisely the reason we have gathered together this evening. No matter how we came here, as families, as individuals, because Mom said you had to be here or because there is no other place you could imagine being on Christmas Eve.. what we have gathered here for this night is to remember and receive, again, the Kiss we want, the kiss we have longed for, the kiss of God on all humanity.

That is who Jesus is. That is precisely the reason, I maintain, for his birth. There are theological, philosophical, and historical explanations for Jesus, God’s Word made flesh and dwelling among us..thousands of books full of those commentaries, definitions, and explanations. We can study them for a lifetime!

Or, we can accept the Kiss. Jesus- the Kiss of God for all of humanity- past, present, and future. And Jesus, the Kiss of God on the cheek of each person here as well. That’s what this baby was.

Jesus was the affirmation of what God said when he formed the world and said, “That’s good.”

Kiss. It still is.

Jesus was the assurance from God that we are not alone, never alone.

Kiss. He is with us now.

Jesus was God’s whisper, the whisper of a Daddy, that everything will, really will, be all right.

Kiss. It is what we have longed for. It is what we want.

God’s gift for all of humanity, for me, for you, was not an esoteric text. It was not a sacred relic to be worn around the neck or a place to make a pilgrimage to. It was not faraway, difficult to grasp, or hard to understand. It wasn’t a set of rules, there was nothing to memorize or agonize over.

God’s gift was a touch, his flesh to our own. His love co-mingled with ours in the manger of a new creation. His trust that we would embrace his son as he had embraced us.

“Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christthe Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

A sign to the shepherds, to you, to me, to everyone who would look past themselves and into the face of God himself- one of us. A sign for all the world of peace that is possible, joy that is real, and hope that is always present. A sign of Light, understanding and trust, first in the darkness of a stable, but radiating outward through time into the dark corners of our own fears.

A sign to the shepherds, to you, to me..the kiss that we want. The kiss we have longed for.

“Unto us a son is born, unto us a child is given.”

Lean down now, against the soft cheek of a baby, lean down now and receive the kiss of our Savior.

Let us pray:

Into our lives, God, you have been born. Into our hearts, Father, you have been given. On this night that we remember the gift of yourself to a world that needs you, we acknowledge and are thankful for your love for us, for each of us. May others experience through us, the manger of new beginnings. May we, too, be ready always to share the kiss we have been given, with all of Creation.

(with thanks to Rumi, Barbara Brown Taylor, and Walter Bruegemann)

The Journey

2007-12-10T19:14:00.000-06:00

Matthew 1: A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham:
2Abraham was the father of Isaac,
Isaac the father of Jacob,
Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,
3Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar,
Perez the father of Hezron,
Hezron the father of Ram,
4Ram the father of Amminadab,
Amminadab the father of Nahshon,
Nahshon the father of Salmon,
5Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab,
Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth,
Obed the father of Jesse,
6and Jesse the father of King David.
David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife,
7Solomon the father of Rehoboam,
Rehoboam the father of Abijah….

Blah blah blah blah blah…

It is not wrong, I don’t think, to maybe expect the story the story of Jesus Christ, son of God, savior of the world, to start off with just a little bit more of a bang, is it? These are the first words of the New Testament, and as dull as they may at first glance be, they are important. Because they are about a journey through time that will, 28 generations after Solomon, begin to converge in a whole series of journeys across time and geography- journeys that include the chapters of our own lives right here, right now.

The genealogy I just read covered 14 generations, from Abraham through Solomon- about 700 years. Another 14 generations would take the genealogy of Jesus into the time of Israel’s captivity in Babylon. And then another 14 generations later, a total now of almost 2500 years from the time of Abraham, the birth of Jesus would happen. It was 2500 years of Jewish history in the making, and it’s been 2000 years of world history in the remembering. How well, or how not well we’ve done our part- the remembering- is what we’ll talk about today.

But first, buried within that seemingly dull list of names, there were four surprises, planted there by Matthew like warning flags to tell his readers that what they would be reading was going to be a very unusual story. Normally, a Jewish genealogy was about one thing- the line of patriarchs- the honorable and pious men who passed on their legacy- I guess- in spite of all the women in the way.

Now, the surprises placed in this family tree, however, were exactly that- women! Something had happened in the mind of some very Jewish, culturally patriarchical men like Matthew, that had caused them to open their eyes wider than they had even been before. Something had caused Matthew to acknowledge the personhood, the importance of women at a time when that just wasn’t done. There was no reason to, after all! Women weren’t men, and the thinking of the time, men were what mattered. Men, and the number of donkeys they owned.

So when Matthew sneaks the names of Tamar and Rahab, prostitutes, and Ruth, a conniver, and Bathsheba, a woman who took baths on her roof in full view of King David..when Matthew makes sure the reader knows that Jesus has these women’s blood pulsing through his veins, Matthew is saying, without shouting it, that everything, as it has been known, was being turned upside down.

The doors to a relationship with God, being a co-creator with God in the Kingdom of God, had just been opened a whole lot wider than they had ever been before.

When he’s done with that blockbuster of a genealogy, then, Matthew begins to show us exactly how upside down things were about to become.

Verse 18: This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

20But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,because he will save his people from their sins."

Verse 24: When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

Another journey; a nine month physical and emotional journey for two, then three people. Two obscure young people, related to King David to be sure, but just as related all kinds of others through time as well: two obscure young people who would have lived their lives in continuing obscurity had they not taken the necessary, government ordered journey to Jerusalem, then arrived at that place where they could look down at the baby in front of them and say, “Jesus.”

Then another journey, the first of untold thousands of geographical journeys that have been undertaken throughout history because that couple in time, and because of that baby in a manger:

Chapter 2, verse1: After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi^[^a^] from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east^[^b^] and have come to worship him."

When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ^[^c^] was to be born. "In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied.
Verse 7: Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him."

After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east^[^e^] went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. 12And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

The wise men ended up taking another route home. They followed a star, they journeyed, they found the child, they worshipped, and they knew they could not return home the way they’d come.

There are those times when we too, like the Magi, encounter the Living Christ, in the flesh, unencumbered by the rules and doctrines of other humans. While we were at Capstone (fictitious name, as are almost all names to follow) in the Metroplex- and I’m going to bring up one of the best series of memories that I know Robbie and Mike and Christy and I have of our time there- I hope I can begin to describe it adequately for everyone- while we were there, there were two group homes that were a regular part of the congregation. One was a group of 8 men, and the other was a mixed group of men and women, all profoundly mentally and/or physically challenged.

When we combined the two churches there- ------- and St. ----’s- to form Capstone, we brought the 2 groups from the smaller ------- to St.----’s. You may remember that I told you the Superintendent assigned me to ------- because, he said, they were all lovable misfits, and that I would fit right in. I don’t know what the thinking was when I was assigned to here- whatever it was, I’m glad it happened. But I digress, as happens..

The group homes had been to three other churches in the area in their journey to find a Sunday morning place of worship for these special people. “Our doors aren’t wide enough for the wheelchairs,” they were told, or “We’re afraid the noisiness of these people would be upsetting, and our cry room isn’t large enough to hold all of them.” All kinds of reasons why these children of God would not be welcome, until they came to ---------- one Sunday morning, and the “misfit” who was greeting people at the door said, “Why not?”

It was a glorious relationship. The group homes would always arrive late. It didn’t matter, no matter where we were in the service, the greeter would come in and announce, “they’re here” and 8 wheelchair helpers- little kids, choir members, even some of the older people who had trouble walking themselves, would get up and go outside to help them in. They became a part of fellowship meals- some needed to be fed- and there was even a special confirmation class for some of them, so they would full-fledged members of the United Methodist Church.

Why was all this effort made? You’ll see in a minute. Because the journey of these group homes became the journey of a church.

When -------, and it’s people moved to the larger, less mis-fitting, St.----’s, there were some problems over our friends. One suggestion, made early on, was that the church would take out the two back pews so they could all sit together in the back of the church. In one of the only times anyone there saw me red-faced and shaking with anger, this misfit preacher said, “No.” And from that point on, most of them, wheelchairs, walkers, noise, and all, sat right up front.

Angie, one of the wheelchair women, could talk to me from there during the sermons, and sometimes did, loudly. It was cool with me, because I knew she was listening. Billy, a 65 yr old man with Cerebral Palsy, would sit beside Sadie, a 70 y/o with CP from the other group home, in their wheelchairs, and hold hands. Armando, an Hispanic Down’s Syndrome man, didn’t want to sit in front. He would wander, sitting wherever he wanted to and singing loudly, often with his hymnal upside down. Becky was a black woman, about 40, with the mind and smile of a 6 y/o. And Vera loved what you are hearing this morning. When Mike and Christy and the other musicians we had there would play, Becky would begin to dance in her wheelchair, and sometimes begin to shout with shouts with of pure joy that could not be contained. As much as I love Mike and Christy, Becky’s music was even greater than theirs.

In the beginning, the St.---- folks didn’t know what to make of the least of these in their midst. Within months, they were planning birthday and Christmas parties at the homes, one woman would go there every week to do nails and schmooze, we did a Bible study there for awhile, and the church would go caroling there every Christmas. Some of the young people there- teenagers- on Communion Day would help me serve the bread and cup. That meant putting those things into the mouths of some of them, then staying there with a napkin. But they did it..I always had volunteers.

St. ----’s, like -------- before, had met, in a manger, the helpless, dependent child of God- children of God-and had had the very best in themselves brought forth. Like Becky’s laughter and shouting, they could not contain the love within them. Like the wise men, they would never be able to go back home the same way they’d come. None of us could.

The importance of the Nativity event for those who encountered the baby Jesus, was not the destination, it was the journey there. And the journey from there.

Our encounters with the Living Christ can be every bit as radically transforming as it was for the Magi and, as Luke will tell us, the shepherds. They met the child Jesus, and his family, who pulled from them not only their worship, but their transformation into new creatures. They knew nothing about the 33 years to follow; they knew only this day, this child, these angels, that star..and that was enough for them to change their journeys. That was enough for the story to begin to be told to the world.

No matter who we are, or what we bring with us when we come here, the same- exactly the same opportunity exists for us as existed for the wise men, and for the shepherds, and for the people at St.----’s. Come here, go anywhere, with open eyes, open hearts, and you’ll see tear-filled eyes, and broken hearts. Don’t look away. Give your gifts. Here’s my ear, it’s connected to my heart; it’s the best thing I can give you. I don’t have any frankincense and gold, and I don’t even know what myrrh is, but here’s my presence, here’s my hand, here’s my love.

Be open, be still, be silent, and look around. Let your heart lead you like a star toward that man or woman, boy or girl, to those persons who are desperate for that calmness you have to give, that brightness you have to share. Allow the angelic chorus that sings to you from the blue of a noon day sky, from the color of springtime wildflowers, or from the moonlight of a crystal clear star-filled night, let those things fill your journeys toward the Christ child, so tender and mild.

We are the disciples of heavenly peace.

Imperfect as we may feel, as unworthy as we may think we are, we are the agents of love’s pure light, we are the re-presenters of redeeming grace.

We are the ones who proclaim with our lives that Christ the Savior is born, that Christ the Savior is born.

The Invitation

2007-12-02T16:58:00.000-06:00

We begin the joyous season of Advent, those party-filled, gift-laden four weeks before Christmas Day, with what is perhaps the saddest Psalm of all, number 137. Written at a time when the Hebrew people had been displaced from the land they loved, and facing a future that they knew nothing about and had no control over, they had lost all hope.

Psalm 137

1 Beside the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept
as we thought of Jerusalem.^[a]
2 We put away our harps,
hanging them on the branches of poplar trees.
3 For our captors demanded a song from us.
Our tormentors insisted on a joyful hymn:
“Sing us one of those songs of Jerusalem!”
4 But how can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a pagan land?

Over the next several weeks, there will be songs to sing- “Joy to the World!”- but sometimes, for some persons, those songs will feel tormenting, too. You might feel as if those songs of joy and hope and promise are being demanded of you at a time when you simply have run out of anything to sing.

I talk about the difficulties of the Christmas season each year. And if you don’t know why I do that, then some year, you will. Because for every year that passes in our lives, the opportunities for that empty place in the middle of our souls- that hole in the blanket of our memories- that place has a chance to grow larger. And at Christmas time and other special times of the years, the edges of that hole feel like they’re on fire.

My son’s girlfriend writes an on-line column (mybrotherisdead.blogspot.com) which I know several of you are regular readers of, too. She began her blog in late July after the tragic accidental death of her brother Kyle earlier that month, and as one means of coping with his death. Here’s something Miranda wrote in late September, as she was already anticipating the difficulties of Christmas this year:

“Usually, Kyle and I fly in from our respective schools and do Christmas Eve at my mom's and Christmas Day at my dad's. It's a casual affair - we're not a religious family and only slightly interested in ceremony. We usually end up trimming a tree, we stuff stockings that we may not hang, we exchange presents geared much more to necessity than luxury. Nothing spectacular. We may dress up to go to my dad's, but only because mom insists each year that she doesn't have any pictures of us, and with a photographer for a father, for heaven’s sake! It's pretty laid back. We like it that way.

“Which makes it a little surprising that, when I think about Christmas this year, I get shaky. Now, here, sitting at work in September, thinking about a holiday that I'm at best indifferent to and at worst annoyed by , I want to cry. The reasons are obvious, I guess. In LA, we stay with my mom in her two bedroom condo and having no one to fight with over the second bedroom, no one to fight with over the car, no one to gossip with about my parents, no one to drive with to my dad's Christmas Day is more lonely a feeling than I knew existed.”

The reason those of us who read her like her, is because of Miranda’s complete honesty in her writing. “Christmas Day is more lonely a feeling than I knew existed.” A lot of us feel that way some of the time. And many people feel that way all the time- it’s not just the first year of a person’s absence that hurts, or a child’s being away from home, in Iraq, at school, or even in their own home away from yours with their own new family. Those Christmas times when everything seemed to be- in memory- the way things should always be, can rear their heads over the present day manger scenes and holiday decorations in sad, lonely, and regretful ways.

As I stand right here, I can see a woman who for 15 years, arranged the Christmas celebration at her church. She arranged for 10 or 12 different music groups to come and perform for 2 hours, with a meal following. It was a solid month of planning. She baked decorated Xmas cookies by the dozens for her sons, took them for trips all over the place during Xmas vacation to see relatives, decorated the whole house for the family reunion Xmas night, and sent out about 500 Xmas cards, but this year she will have no idea it’s Christmas until she sees the tree on that day.

We’ve all got those wonderful but potentially crippling, depressing memories, and we’ve got to figure out what to do with them so they don’t define us in such a way that they cause us to miss this year, this day, these moments.

One of the things I say often at funerals is this: “The sadness of this day is the result of joys we shared during many yesterdays.” And while those words don’t lessen the sadness, they do help some people begin to put their sadness into a context of movement through time. Those people and times we miss, would not be missed if they had not been such a vital part of who we are right now. While we are alive, they are alive, in us and through us.

Everything about the people we might be acutely missing the physical or emotional presence of this year, everything about them continues moving through time, through us. You are great grandma’s gift to your children across time; Miranda is Kyle’s continuing presence to ever larger numbers of people, who are getting to know him through her. She’ll have no one to fight with this year over the second bedroom, but now there are 103 people here in this Texas church who have been touched by Kyle.

And if you like me at all, don’t forget that I am a continuing expression of the one “the one who brung me.” Who she was, is a big part of who I am, and not just physically. Your loved ones, because I love you, live in on me, too, and in each person who has received the gift of them, through you.

We are waves on the ocean for a little while; we are the water of the ocean for eternity. Everything we may regret not being able to see this Christmas season, or any time of the year- all of those people and events that brought us yesterday’s joys, are still in us. We can build the walls of our sadness so high that those joys become dammed up within us, or we can set them free, to wash over others. We’ve got the gifts of yesterday to give away today.

Miranda is helping untold numbers of people around the world cope, through her writing about her brother, with physical death. Kyle becomes a living gift to those people.

I can gripe and moan, even cry that I will never ever see again one of those incredibly decorated Christmas cookies. Or I can continue to give away her cookies in all the forms that cookies can take. Those cookies are not my cookies, they are our cookies, and they are living gifts of hers to whoever receives them.

To those people who sat by the rivers of Babylon and wept over the Jerusalem they had known, and believed they would never be a part of again, God sent a messenger. Isaiah had a message from the God of his understanding and that message, in its simplicity, was this:

You can continue sitting there in your sadness, and in your regrets. You can do that. God will neither stop you nor punish you for doing so. But you also have an invitation from God, to stand in a new place for a little while, and see the world as God sees it- as a continuing river of Life.

As Christians, we call some of the prophecies of Isaiah, messianic prophecies- 300 years before the birth of Jesus, they seemed to point toward Jesus. For certain, however, to everyone who heard them, and hears them, they are words of hope, words of a new perspective on the past, words of Light in a world that may seem very, very dark. He spoke for God:

Isaiah 55

1 “Is anyone thirsty?
Come and drink—
even if you have no money!
Come, take your choice of wine or milk—
it’s all free!
2 Why spend your money on food that does not give you strength?
Why pay for food that does you no good?
Listen to me, and you will eat what is good.
You will enjoy the finest food.

3 “Come to me with your ears wide open.
Listen, and you will find life.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you.
I will give you all the unfailing love I promised to King David.
4 See how I used him to display my power among the peoples.
I made him a leader among the nations.
5 You also will command nations you do not know,
and peoples unknown to you will come running to obey,
because I, the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, have made you glorious.”

What had belonged to King David 300 years before was exactly what still belonged to those people sitting by the rivers of Babylon. Wrap up those gifts of David in new wrapping paper, and pass them on, God said. Which is exactly what they did. Where once they had sat in fear and sadness by the rivers, they now began gathering together their knowledge about God, and the memories of their lives in Jerusalem. The gathered together the remembered psalms and proverbs. They collected the pieces of prophecies circulating among their people orally and on scrolls. They began writing down, and cataloging the great stories of Ruth, of Job, of Esther, King David, and King Solomon.

Out of their sitting sadness, the people stood up and handed on to eternity the Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament. They would always feel sadness over the past they had known, but they turned that past- the joys of yesterday- into hope and promise for the future. They didn’t let the joy they had known become dammed up in their hearts and die. They passed it on. Out of their sadness, they became glorious.

In the Advent stories we will be hearing, and in the stories of Jesus we know, we will see the same kind difficult circumstances faced by the Jews, and by every human being who has ever lived on the earth- we will those difficult circumstances transformed by hope for the future.

Mary, pregnant out of wedlock. Joseph, a proud man, having to buy Mary’s story. Mary, Joseph, and the baby- homeless, being pursued by a murderer. Jesus, homeless again, accused of being a criminal, dying on a cross. The disciples, without a leader, accused themselves of criminality. Every chapter of the gospels contains stories that could have given rise to life-ending, dead-end stories of regret, depression, and overwhelming sadness. Every one of those chapters could have been the last chapter.

But every one of those chapters also contains Light. The Light of the Word made flesh and dwelling among, as a human- just like us! In every one of those chapters we can hear God saying to them, and now to us, It’s OK to sit there by the rivers and not be able to sing. It’s OK, really. You can be as sad as you want to be. But come, stand over here for a minute, because I’ve got something for you to see!

Look, Mary, I know this wasn’t part of your plans, but I’ve got bigger and better plans.

Look, Joseph, I know her story sounds preposterous, but I need you!

Look, shepherds, despite the hard and crummy lives you’ve led so far, I’ve got something for you to see that will be good news for all people.

Look, wise men, even though you’re disobeying your king, look up in the sky- there’s a star to follow that will take you to where that king back east can never take you!

Look, sick woman whose been bleeding for twelve years, he’s right there, go touch him!

Look, Mary and Martha, look at the tomb they laid your brother Lazarus in three days ago.

Look, Mary Magdalene, look past your sadness into the eyes of the gardener standing beside you.

Look, disciples, look who’s coming down the road.

Look, sons and daughters of mine, God says, look at the gifts- the heaps of joyful gifts you have received from those loved ones of the past- look at them and then see who needs them.

Those memories, those joys of the past that cause the sadness of this season- those memories, those loves, they are gifts now- your shared gifts- to be passed on. They are no more dead and gone than Jesus is dead and gone. As Jesus is here among us, so is every grandmother, aunt, child, wife, husband, and friend you have ever loved. So is Kyle, so is the woman I once knew so well. They are right here (heart), you feel them, you know them, every day, every hour. Just like Jesus, the world needs to know them. The world is waiting for them.

“Fear not,” Jesus said, “for I am with you always.”

Thank God, there are always new places to stand , and old and precious gifts to share with new people.

Simplicity

2007-10-14T15:04:00.000-06:00

Simplicity

As we’ve talked about the Sermon on the Mount over the past several weeks, something about the appeal of these words of Jesus began to dawn on me. And last week at South Padre, the appeal of those words became even greater as they got mixed in with the vision and smell of the ocean.

Here’s what I wrote one morning there after sitting with others on a sixth floor balcony the night before, watching in quiet community the breaking of the waves on the shore below:

“These sounds, too, are the voice of God..the rhythmic, symphonic music of the world to which crabs by the hundreds are dancing side-step, and through which gulls and pelicans are sailing in eternal crescendos. And I have been allowed to listen in! We have been able to listen in to the sounds of God creating, and have been able to see the measures of his music written in white-capped notes across liquid pages of the ocean’s roar.”

All right, yes..places like that carry me away. I can’t help it. And I hope they always do, because places like the ocean, or the mountains, or a field of wildflowers give me, give all of us, the opportunity, if we allow them, to see just beyond the edges of God’s fingertips and to feel the air move against our faces as he passes near us.

The attraction of these places is precisely the same attraction of the words of the Jesus’ Sermon. In those places, and in these words, God becomes knowable. There’s no humanly inspired doctrine between God’s mountains and our eyes. There is no Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant theology standing between us and the ocean. In the words of Jesus here, we are hearing our Father’s intentions, with no human interpreters standing in the way.

The appeal of the mountains, the ocean, and these words of Jesus is this.. this is the word I brought back from the shoreline of South Texas with me: Simplicity. These things simplify my understanding and love of God. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

Matt 6: 22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; ²³but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

In Jesus’ day, a ‘healthy eye’ meant generous. It was an idiom, a part of speech like when we say someone “hit the ceiling.” People would have heard that simply, exactly as he spoke it. Listen how simple Jesus makes it: “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if you’re generous, your whole body will be full of light; but if you’re stingy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

That’s exactly what it says! It is profound in its simplicity. Jesus tells us earlier in the sermon to be like Light, and then he tells us that the secret to being like Light is to be generous. Simple simple simple. But people don’t like ‘simple.’ Listen to what another preacher, who is steeped in doctrine and complicated theology, does with those same verses. I find this both amusing and heart-breaking at the same time. This is from a big church in Dallas. Just listen:

“The meaning of our Lord appears to be something like this: the activities of the body are directed according to the light which is received through the eye. When that organ is sound and functioning properly, perceiving objects as they really are, the whole body is illumined, and we are able to discharge our duties and to move with safety and circumspection. But if the eye be blind, or its vision faulty, then we perceive objects confusedly and without distinction, and then we stumble as if in the dark, and cannot perform our task or journey properly, being continually liable to lose our way or run into danger. So far all is simple and plain. But what, we may ask, is connoted by the "eye"? And what is here signified by "the whole body"? That these are figures of speech is obvious, but figures of what? It is at this point the commentators vary so much in their explanations.”

And then he goes on to quote too many of those commentators.

He takes the simple and elegant words of Jesus and turns them into a testimony to his own intellectual abilities. He turns that which is divinely simple into something complicatedly human. Now I’m not just indicting that preacher for doing such a thing, I’m pointing the finger at myself and all of us: we’re all good at building gaudy and elaborate monuments to ourselves out of the simple, powerful, and eternal understandings offered by God to us. Because those understandings of God, offered by God, are centered around his son and our becoming like his son. And that’s not easy to do while tending to an always-hungry, power-seeking, and applause-needing ego.

Jesus did not come to start a new religion. He didn’t come to be the founder of Christianity. He ministered, lived, taught, and died for the reform of Judaism. The Sermon on the Mount is all about taking the Jewish scriptures out of the private vaults of the Jewish leaders, and opening those scriptures, first to all other Jews, and then the world.

Simple.

But then that Jewish movement got turned into institutional Christianity and everything started to become complicated again. The egos of humans took the self-sacrificing, out-reaching, generous example of Jesus and turned them into the justification for greed, power, and nationalism. Instead of following a man in a muslin robe into meals with sinners, Christians began following men in high hats and expensive robes onto boats with cannons. Instead of walking in the footsteps of a man who treated women, foreigners, and even his enemies as beloved, equal children of God, the institutional church came up with doctrines and rules, ego protecting dogma that would insure the superiority and privilege of some over others.

The beautiful simplicity of Jesus became the complicated religious and political scheming of mankind. The simplicity of following Jesus into a life of sacrifice, generosity, and always growing circles of love, became a complicated, difficult, and- let’s face it- sometimes boring life of being good, following the rules, don’t do this, don’t do that, sit still, sit up, stop laughing, and don’t you even think about having anything to do with those people over there.

The Jesus who dared to touch lepers and other untouchables was reduced to an embroidered cross on a colonial flag. The Jesus who said “turn the other cheek” and then showed how that was done, was turned into an excuse for launching ships of war. The Jesus who invited women and children to come near him, because God loved them, was historically twisted into the mouthpiece and champion of the Third Reich, and those Bosnian perpetuators of “ethnic cleansing.”

Why do we need, why do we so desperately need these chapters 5, 6, and 7 of Matthew again and again and again? Because the Sermon on the Mount reminds us again about the simplicity of a one on one relationship with God. We are reminded by Jesus, told by Jesus, that that relationship is not based on our ability to memorize scripture, pay our tithes, or to do good works. It is based on God’s acceptance of us, as screwed up and as poor in spirit as we already are.

“If you’re generous, your whole body will be full of light; but if you’re stingy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” We need to remember that the one who said that was not speaking from an air-conditioned television studio. He was sitting on a rock. He had no home to call his own, and he was dependent on others for his daily bread. Yet, he is known 2000 years later as the Light of the World because he was the Light of generosity in a world always ready to go dark under the veil of human stinginess.

It is so simple, Jesus told us: depend on others as they depend on you. It is so simple, Jesus demonstrated to us: love your neighbor as yourself. It is so,so,so simple, it is the theme of everything Jesus said and lived: be generous. Don’t be stingy. Give yourselves to others. “store up for yourselves treasures in heaven..where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Chapter 6, beginning at verse 25: ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink,^* or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.”

Beginning in about the year 2700 BC, the first indigenous people began to occupy the longest inter-coastal island in the U.S.- known today as South Padre Island. We’ll get to that name in a minute. Indians lived on the island, moving back and forth between it and the mainland for over 4200 years. They were the Karankowa Indians. For 4200 years, they lived on the generosity of God. They fished during the day and gathered up those side-stepping crabs at nightfall. We would, from the perspective of 21^st century, call their lifestyle primitive. They lived for generations without money, Walmart, or television in a place where they depended on each other, and the ocean, for their daily bread. For a period of time 20 times longer than the U.S. has been a country, the Karankowa lived in community with each other, and with God.

The problem was, in the eyes of the Catholic missionaries who began arriving on the island in the early 1500s, these Karankowa didn’t know the proper name of that God, and they would need to learn it. So they were taught that name under the auspices of the holy royal family of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, a family whose royal claims were of course supported and protected by the Church in Rome.

The Spaniards put the Karankowa to work, building missions, clearing ranchland on the island, and building and launching ships on the mainland for the Spanish assault on the gold of other Indians throughout Mexico and Central America. Man had entered the forest- stingy man, men with bad eyes- ungenerous, selfish natures.

After having lived on the Island for 4200 years, it was only 350 years before the tribe was extinct. Gone. Forever. Killed off in large part by the guns, germs, and steel of the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire, the last several hundred members of the tribe died in a mass suicide in the 1850s rather than convert to the Christian religion they had been experiencing, and become slaves to the new Island owners. Who were former missionary priests, and who had been given the island by the Mexican government in 1829. Padre Jose Balli- you can still see his statue as you exit the Queen Isabella bridge to his Island from Port Isabel.

But squint your eyes, even now, even from a sixth floor balcony, and it is possible to get a glimpse here and there for increasingly longer moments, of what it once was like, what the world was like once upon a time for those other generations of peoples created also in the Image of God. The light of the moon, reflected in eternal rows of white capped waves reveal birds- terns, gulls, pelicans- even at nite, flying just above the ocean’s surface- feeding and flourishing in the reflections- the generous reflections- of God on this part of Creation. Without a single thought toward sowing or reaping or gathering into barns, these also beloved creatures of our father live and move and have their being.

Look closer at the shoreline now. Great vast growths of kelp roll to the beach from massive growths beyond the breaking waves. Kelp, feeding fish, once having fed Karankowa Indians, pouring forth as a by product of their underwater photosynthetic activity, tons of life-giving oxygen into the atmosphere: God’s largesse, God’s generosity.

And across the dunes below, the spreading, reaching tendrils of ivy and wetland grasses reach with deep rooted perserverance through million year old sand toward pockets of fresh water. In response to that life giving moisture, they bloom in magenta, lavender, and blue fire- lilies of the dunes, not a single worry, no worry or toil. But they shout to all who would hear them of our God’s- their God’s, our God’s- generosity.

Simplicity. It is shining through the clutter all around us, if we look for it with our good and generous eyes. It echoes in the words of Jesus, if we choose to hear them with our good and generous hearts..

On Beyond Zebra, with Dr. Seuss and Jesus

2007-08-09T07:41:00.000-06:00

The word “gospel” is a slight corruption of an old English phrase- godspell- meaning, good news, and while it can mean good news about anything, we know the four primary records of good news about Jesus as gospels- the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But there is other good news, too, and I’m going to begin tonight by reading from the gospel of Dr. Seuss, the book On Beyond Zebra, pages 1 through 5:

“Said Conrad Cornelius o”Donald o’Dell, My very young friend who is learning to spell: ‘The A is for Ape. And the B is for Bear. The C is for camel. The H is for Hare. The M is for Mouse. And the R is for Rat. I know all the twenty-six letters like that..

“..through to Z is for Zebra. I know the all well.” Said Conrad Cornelius o’Donald o’Dell. So now I know everything anyone knows, from beginning to end. From the start to the close.

“Because Z is as far as the alphabet goes.’

“Then he almost fell flat on his face on the floor when I picked up the chalk and drew one letter more! A letter he never had dreamed of before! And I said, ‘You can stop, if you want, with the Z, because most people stop with the Z. But not me!

“In the places I go there are things that I see that I never could spell if I stopped with the Z. I’m telling you this ‘cause you’re ne of my friends. My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends!”

This is a theme of all of Dr.Seuss’ books- unlocking the reader’s imagination with his own. He actually felt sorry for the Conrad Cornelius o’Donald o’Dells of the world and wanted to do whatever he could to keep their young imaginations alive.

And not merely alive, but curious, creating, and- above all- free. “Oh, the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done!” Dr. Seuss wrote in his last book. But to get there, he told the kids, and the parents who read to them, to get there, you’ll have to never stop looking with your eyes and your minds wide open; never stop looking down Mulberry Street to see what others cannot see. Imagine the fun you could have if the Cat in the Hat would come to visit. And listen, all the time, like Horton the elephant, for the tiniest Who. “A person's a person, no matter how small,” Who says. For little kids, especially, sometimes it feels like they’re surrounded by big adult Hortons who don’t hear them very well. But keep talking, Dr. Seuss tells them- tell them you’d like Green Eggs and Ham for breakfast today, they’ll hear you! Tell them:

“My alphabet starts with this letter YUZZ. It’s the letter I use to spell Yuzz-a-ma-Tuzz. You’ll be sort of surprised what there is to be found once you go beyond Z and start poking around!

“So on beyond Zebra! Explore! Like Columbus! Discover new letters! Like WUM is for Wumbus, my high-spouting whale who lives high on a hill and who never comes down ‘til it’s time to refill. So, on beyond Z! It’s high time you were shown that you really don’t know all there is to be known!”

Our imaginations take a beating as we grow older. We get criticized for coloring outside the lines, painting the sun green, or for asking, “Why?” too many times. We learn just enough history and science just long enough to pass the test- most of us. Or we learn to be acceptable and depend on others to do our imaging for us- we need TV or movies to make us laugh, cry, or even think sometimes. We even end up having faith in somebody else’s faith- but more about that in a minute.

Every generation needs a Dr.Seuss, a dozen of them. Because the ruts of routine into which we can all get bogged down, are always changing. Who would have thought, in 1954 and 1955, when most American households were getting their first television sets, and sitting in amazement, with their imaginations on fire while they watched Milton Berle or Bishop Sheen, that one day their grandchildren, by the age of 5, would have seen approximately 30,000 commercials telling them the same thing over and over: buy stuff and be happy.

Every generation needs someone who will chase us away from the TV and into a new book. We need those persons who can inspire us to bend down and see the miracles happening in our backyards. We need a friend, a companion, someone who cares enough about us to say. “Open your eyes again! Unstuff your ears!” Someone who will enable us to imagine again, to be able to see “three free fleas flying through three cheese trees,” or to think at night, just before we go to sleep, “to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street!”

Well, I’ve got Good News for you! I’ve got Godspell, and here it is: we have that kind of companion, to lift us out of the ruts and save us from the ditch. We have that kind of guide- who will hide the TV clicker from us while he points outside to the birds of the air and the flowers of the field for answers. We have that kind of Savior, who will and does, set captives free, from the chains of routine, from the fears that cause us to build fortresses against new ideas, and from the slavery of mere faith in someone else’s faith.

And here’s the evidence. Here’s where Jesus takes us On Beyond Zebra, past the spiritual and legal alphabet of his day and for all time. Listen now, as Jesus, a rabbi who very few people knew, but many had heard about, listen as Jesus sits down in the middle of a crowd of people who feel unworthy of the priesthood and excluded from the Temple, people who are looked down upon by the Scribes and Pharisees and who know they will never ever get to see inside that Holy of Holies where God dwells. Listen, as minds explode when Jesus says,

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is- is, is!- the Kingdom of Heaven!”

Listen, too, as he says to those families standing around them, every one of whom has lost one, two, three children in infancy. Listen as he speaks to the men, 20 to 30% of whom have lost wives in childbirth, and to the women who have lost husbands at sea. Listen as he says to them,

“Blessed..blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted!”

Blessed are the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers; blessed are those who hunger to know God, and blessed are those who have been put down by every priest and soldier they pass by. Blessed are those who have been insulted, and lied about. Rejoice! And be glad! For great is your reward in heaven!

Can we imagine how those words were blowing the lids off minds that day? Can you imagine that those words still are having the same effect right now on people right here in this room? Can you accept that Jesus is still grabbing for our imaginations and saying to us, “There is more to know! There are more places to go! There is more fun to be done!”

Now, in case anyone in the crowd that day hadn’t understood yet what was happening, and just in case there may be someone here wondering what the dickens is that guy from Jack County talking about..Just in case..listen to this, because Jesus is going to say something six times:

"You have heard it said..” and then follow that statement with a saying from Hebrew scripture. “You have heard it said, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” He introduces an old scripture that way, then immediately adds,

“but I say..” before putting a whole new and up to date meaning on that old scripture: “You have heard it said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say, turn the other cheek, if a robber wants your coat, give him your shirt, too!”

Six times he does that- “You have heard it said, but I say..”. He is taking the dry, legal faith of someone else, wetting it down with his son of God imagination, and handing it to people who have just been set free.

“You have heard it said…but I say..” It is exactly as if he is saying, You know the alphabet, but there’s more to know, much more. You know all the letters A to Z, but there is Yuzz, and Um, and Wum, and Humph still to learn!

We make a mistake I think by not freeing the stories Jesus told from their history. It is very, very important to understand the meanings of the time these words were spoken in, but once they are understood, we can resurrect them into the year 2007, and let them help us unlock our imaginations again. Here’s an example, it’s from Luke 18, beginning at verse 9. I’m not changing the meaning one bit. But I am going to pour imagination all over it. And I’m choosing this scripture because of what comes right after it, in verse 15.

Luke 18: 9-14.

(Jesus told this parable to the yearly Convention of the One True Church of Jesus in America, meeting this year in the Dallas Convention Center. These were the men, all men, who knew they were the only ones on earth who had Jesus down right and so they also knew with great satisfaction, that the rest of the world was going to hell.)

Verse 9: Jesus said this to them. “Two men went up to the new $15 million Church of the Suburbs in Plano. One was a Bishop, appointed by his daddy, the former owner of the church. The other man was a Security Guard, hired by the church to watch over the Humvees and BMWs in the parking lot. The Bishop checked himself in the mirror, and had his assistant dust him with a little powder before looking into the television camera, and praying from the tele-prompter, ‘ Gawwwd, I thank you that I am not like other people: people on welfare, drug-users, sexual deviants, or even like that guy over there who works in the parking lot..what’s his name. I tithe from my salary down to the penny- don’t even miss it. I even miss breakfast, twice a week, so that I may lead the young women’s group here at the church in a Bible Study.’

But the security guard stood in the bushes near the entrance of the church- he’d never been inside before. He felt ashamed of all the bad choices he’d made in life which had ended him up here at age 44 in a part-time minimum wage job. He wrung his hands together, and he cried as he whispered, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’

Jesus said to the Conventioneers, ‘I tell you, that man out there crying made God smile, because he’s someone God can work with. He’s got nowhere to go but up. That other guy..what’s his name..that so-called Bishop.. he’s got to where left to go, but down.’

Now if I changed the meaning of that scripture even a little bit, you get onto me about it, because I don’t want to do that. That wasn’t my intention. I just wanted to try to do what Jesus did all the time, and take the story a little bit beyond Zebra.

Here’s another fascinating thing, though. The story which immediately follows that one about the two very different men, is the one about Jesus and the children. In other words, all the pompous Pharisees who just got slapped in their egos by the story Jesus just told, are about to get poked in their judgmental eyes when they saw what Jesus did next. I’m reading this one straight.

Verse 15: People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they sternly ordered them not to do it. (They were just following ancient Temple Law, by the way, which didn’t allow children inside because, also according to that law at the time, children weren’t real people yet. In the same way that women weren’t whole, complete people,either.) ¹⁶But Jesus called for them and said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. ¹⁷Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’

How does a child receive the Kingdom of God? They can’t buy their way in, they have no monetary assets. At least they didn’t at the time of Jesus. They can’t go door-knocking and preaching on people’s front porches; there’s not a lot of big religious work they can undertake. All they have is themselves. All they have is their desire to be near the one who has invited them to come near. All they have- and they’re working at their best at the ages of 2, 3, 4, and 5- is their imaginations!

Just a few minutes before, in this Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had blessed their parents. For the first time ever, poor people, unclean people, people who couldn’t go and stand in the Temple like “good” Jews, these outcasts, these people poor in spirit, had been told by a rabbi, by an obvious holy man, that they were blessed! This was pretty exciting news for people who thought they were forever assigned to living at the edges of society, on earth and in heaven.

This man, this holy man, was telling them that there was more than the law, there was something beyond the law. There was more of a relationship possible and here was this rabbi telling them that they were in that relationship already! There was more, more, more to be known about God than what the Pharisees had told and taught them, or even that the Pharisees themselves knew!

Can you imagine the wonder these parents who heard that must have had, about the children who were with them? “If he says we’re blessed- we who have nothing- then maybe our children are blessed, too! Let’s find out..” And, nervously, they begin carrying their children up through the crowd to where Jesus himself is sitting..pushing themselves beyond the boundaries of what is normal…then they hear him say, “Bring them!”

Let the children come to me and do not stop them! Later on, in another story, Jesus would say, in effect, “Don’t you dare stop them!”

The Kingdom of God is also practical- another new revelation, and Jesus demonstrated that, too. It is not about going through religious motions. He was not talking about a pie in the sky, nose in the air way of doing his Father’s business. When people were hungry, he fed them. When others were thirsty, he gave them something to drink. The gospel cannot be heard by anyone who is starving. The first and best gospel message for many is a hamburger..and then, Jesus.

On beyond the words of deadening doctrine spoken by those who measure the Kingdom of God in rules obeyed and pledge cards received. On beyond the rituals, the endless committee meetings, and the eighty-first verse of O, For a Thousand Tongues to Sing. On beyond churches who have made ignorance of a science a virtue to be embraced and on beyond churches who still still still regard women as half-formed men. On beyond the alphabets of worship which leave us comfortable and satisfied while children anywhere are hungry, thirsty, or dying.

On beyond the word made dead by legalism and into the word made flesh in Jesus.

Jesus said two words, which for me, summarize everything there is to know about being his disciple. I can study the theology of others all day and into the night, and I have. I can spend a lifetime lining up all the spiritual jots and tittles until I’m sure God approves of me. I can do those things, or I can respond as the first disciples did when he turned to them and said “Follow me.”

Jesus will put you with people you had consigned to the ash heap before you knew him. He’ll hand your heart to others and hand theirs right back to you. He’ll get your hands dirty, smelly, even bloody sometimes, and you’ll feel grateful to have served him. Jesus will make you touch the formerly untouchable, listen to stories that make you cringe, and go places you thought, once upon a time, you’d never step foot in. And in response, you’ll say “Thank you” and look forward to the next time.

Then he’ll lead beyond the mundane routines and into the realm of daily, hourly miracles. And “Follow me” are the only words you need to go there.

There is, simply put, work to be done, beyond reading the stories of Jesus. There is life happening outside the walls of church. We get to live those stories now, and make them our own gospels. There is the love of Jesus yet to be realized, practically and divinely, in the lives of countless peoples around the world.

Finally, these words of Dr. Seuss..and I’m sorry if sounds blasphemous to say that I can hear Jesus speaking these words, too, but I can..

“The places I took him! I tried hard to tell Young Conrad Cornelius o’Donald o’Dell a few brand-new wonderful words he might spell. I led him around and I tried hard to show there are things beyond Z that most people don’t know. I took him past Zebra. As far as I could. And I think, perhaps, maybe I did him some good…

“Because, finally, he said: ‘This is really great stuff! And I guess the ld alphabet isn’t enough!’

“Now the letters he uses are something to see! Most people still stop at the Z…But not HE!”

And I won’t stop there, and I don’t think you will, either.

Blessings.

Amen!

The Free Life

2007-07-01T17:41:00.000-06:00

One of the things we are thankful for, living in America, is freedom. We say that. We celebrate that, with parades, songs, and fireworks. And we emphasize that notion with the occasional war.

So I’d like to look at freedom for a few minutes- the concept and the reality, and then hear a few other comments from the Apostle Paul.

Freedom. There is an ingrained maxim in the U.S. that our pursuit of happiness is in direct proportion to our freedom. Our Declaration of Independence says so. And one of the evidences of our freedom is our ability to make choices. Our freedom is maximized by the maximized choices we have.

Maybe..

I like freedom, don’t mistake anything I say here otherwise. But I do wonder if we need to think about freedom a little differently. Here’s what I mean:

At a typical Kroger’s store in Dallas or Fort Worth one has a choice of 285 different kinds and brands of cookies. 40 brands and types of toothpaste. And 175 kinds of salad dressing; that’s if you don’t count the 10 brands of extra virgin olive oil and the 8 brands of balsamic vinegar that you can use to make your own salad dressing should none of the aforementioned 175 kinds meet your needs.

In a typical Fry’s electronic store, it is possible- their estimation- to configure, with items in stock on any given day, 6.5 million versions of an entertainment center for one of the walls of your living room. Different speakers, tuners, televisions, amps, stereos, DVD and tape players, recorders, etc.

In communications equipment there are chapters of choice being added daily. We saw Friday and Saturday the introduction of Apple’s iPhone- an incredible piece of technology, it really is. It has, in some circles, enlarged what we call our basic set of freedoms, by giving consumers yet another choice in communicating with others. I dare say that every one in here today who has a cell phone, has a slightly different model or style from everyone else. Apple is working very hard to make the iPhone the one phone to which we all aspire.

Many of us remember, living in what was a free country then, too, when we could have any kind of phone we wanted as long as we called AT&T to get it. And even then we rented it, which means those phones never broke. And they still haven’t.

Even beyond non-material goods, we have a whole new array of choices in service areas like health care. It used to be that you went to the doctor and the doctor would say here’s what’s wrong and here’s what needs to be done. Now, it is a matter of options- “Here’s the problem, here’s some solutions, here’s the side effects, what would you like to do?”

“Just tell me, Doc, if you were me, what would you do?”

“Well, I’m not you; here’s the problem, here’s some solutions, here are the side effects, you choose..”

Which is why we see drug companies advertising on television their prescription products which we can’t just rush out and buy. They know we have the choice of calling our doctors and telling our doctors that we want the little purple option, or that we want that pretty green moth to flutter into our bedroom at night, too. And the drug companies know our doctors will listen to us, and do- most of the time- what we say. Or what the drug companies have told us to say. The pharmaceutical houses are using us, the customer, to create the demand.

Choices seem to equal freedom. More choices equal more freedom, yes? But good news never comes without the possibility of bad news, too.

One downside of having many choices is paralysis. We have so many choices we can’t decide and so we do nothing. One small evidence of that which we can almost all relate to is our Dish or Cable Television choices. 900 channels, and we find “there’s nothing good on.” Is that true, or is it that we simply can’t or won’t decide?

There was also a study done by Vanguard- the huge mutual fund company- which confirms this. The more options a company gives employees regarding their retirement program, the fewer that sign up for any of them. For every 10 programs presented beyond 5, the number participating in any program dropped by 5%, even when the employer was offering matching funds! It was too hard to decide, I’ll decide tomorrow, or next week, next year, and on and on. I know most of us can relate, if not about mutual funds, then about any of so many other, many-optioned decisions we have to make.

Paralysis- indecision- is one downside to having many choices. But here’s another, and studies are being done, and I’m certain they will confirm what many of us have experienced. Because we have so many expectations, so many possibilities to choose from, our expectations become very high, unnaturally high. We make a decision, finally, about buying a house for instance, or a car, or a college education, or.. whatever. And then we immediately begin second-guessing ourselves- because we can!

It is easy for us to begin to imagine alternative decisions we could have made, because they did exist. Any disappointment we may be realizing from our purchase- and who isn’t easily able to be disappointed in something about whatever it is we just bought- we blame ourselves for those disappointments. We should have made a different choice. Our standards are so high that we disappoint ourselves- “What an idiot I was!” or “I’m so stupid!”- when in reality, it was the number of choices, not us, that has caused us to set our standards so impossibly high. Prolonged disappointment in ourselves of this sort is a gateway to depression, and depression in America, the “most free” country in the world when we measure disposable incomes and ways and places to dispose of that income, depression in America is an ever-growing plague.

Our choices are legion. Our inability to decide is increasing. Our expectations are unrealistically high. And our disappointment in ourselves- for not buying the 80 GB iPod instead of this stupid old useless 20GB piece of junk- our advertising agency inflicted disappointment in ourselves is growing. No wonder we’re depressed!

But I’ve got a special little pill here for you. You can decide whether you want it or not. I’m not you; I can’t decide for you. But here it is. It’s something the Apostle Paul wrote to the church meeting in Galatia. I’m reading it from the Message, because it’s easier to hear that way. Which might make it easier for us to decide.

Galatians 5

13-15 It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don't use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that's how freedom grows. For everything we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That's an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?

Paul begins to say something here that’s important. He’s calling freedom a good thing, and a dangerous thing. Even within the boundaries of the Law, we know we can make choices, market-driven, Constitutionally-protected choices that will land us- very possibly- in a heap trouble. As soon as a young person hits their 21^st birthday, forget the 285 kinds of cookies they can go to the grocery store and buy, they can head to a liquor store and buy any of, I would guess, a thousand different ways to be unconscious in two hours. They have the freedom to buy the first links of a chain that could enslave them for years, or for a short lifetime.

We all have the freedom to give up our freedom to banks and credit card companies. We used to see a phenomenon in Dallas- I’m sure it still exists- of the “Big House-Empty House.” Mortgage brokers made it so easy to find a mortgage- forget the interest, we’ll figure all that out later- that would put a young couple in a bigger house than their parents ever had- “haha, beat you, dad!” But then they sat in bean bag chairs and ate off TV trays while they waited for another credit card offer to arrive in the mail. Big House-Empty House. Freedom to choose, but not much fun, and the choices of divorce and depression often suddenly appear in the doorway.

16-18 My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God's Spirit. Then you won't feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don't you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?

19-21It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.

A little less choice may mean, it sounds like Paul is saying, more freedom. Let’s think for a minute of a goldfish in a medium sized fishbowl. We watch it, doing what goldfish do, and we lean in and whisper to the goldfish, “You can be anything you want to be!” And the goldfish hears us, takes our well-meaning words to heart, and asks us one day, “Help me? Help me to be free?”

So we pick up a hammer, and free him..he has no more boundaries, no more limitations as he slides from the bowl in a gush of water. Quickly, though, he ends up on the floor- paralyzed and frustrated, then depressed and dying.

I wonder, sometimes, if we in our affluence have not gone on beyond the bowl of Creation in which we were meant to live and thrive. Have we broken through the environmental and life-giving walls of what we have decided is limited freedom to end up on the floor, paralyzed, depressed, and dying? Have we allowed the Kingdom of God, within us and outside of us, to be hammered into a broken, temporary illusion of unlimited freedom?

Here, as a reminder from Paul, are the payoffs for staying in this marvelous, incredible, ever-able-to-be explored, but limited fishbowl of God’s Creation into which we born:

22-23 But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

Freedom comes to us as a God-given right- the framers of the Declaration of Independence were absolutely correct! But unlimited freedom, and the always endless choices that go with it, are not life-giving. They are conjured up by people with hammers and sold to us as rights we have. God’s choices for Creation, for us, are enough. They are the standards which can cause our decisions to be easier to make, and better for us and our children and our neighbors, next door and around the world. Those God-given boundaries in which we enjoy Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are the only ones to which it is worth pledging to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Here’s one more way to look at it. You can remember everything I’ve just said by imagining this: The choice between one of Ozella’s fried pies and a slice of Jean’s angel food cake is enough, more than enough, isn’t it? 285 kinds of cookies cannot possibly make anyone happier than that.

Amen

Step 12 of the 12 Steps: The Point of the Journey, So Far

2007-06-18T09:54:00.000-06:00

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all of our daily living.

Ever since the Greek writer Homer wrote about the wanderings of his mythic hero Ulysses in the Odyssey, the idea of a journey has been an often used metaphor for understanding life. We are able to understand and know Abraham, for instance, because in Chapter 12 of Genesis, it was written: “Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.,” and he did. If he’d have stayed in his father’s land where everything was familiar and comfortable, all the episodes of Abraham’s life which added up to his being the father of Judaism, would never have happened.

In Genesis, the journeys of others are used to describe spiritual as well as geographical change: the journeys of Noah, Jacob and Esau, then of Joseph, then another wandering journey: the 40 year journey of Moses from Egypt to the Promised Land.

We fit Jesus’ life into a journey, from the stable to the cross. Dante’s Inferno later described a journey, into hell. Mark Twain in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, described the maturing of a boy and the maturing of a nation after the Civil War, by describing a journey on a raft down the Mississippi. Jonathon Swift, Gulliver’s Travels. Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley. Jack Keroauc, On the Road.

Humans have an understanding of journeys; we understand, unlike any other life-form on earth, we understand beginning and ends, filled with chapters and plot twists and revelations. Reading about the journeys of others is an easy, but also deep and meaningful way of understanding our own journeys through life.

You may have been able to see by now, as I’ve talked about the Twelve Steps, that there is a very real journey involved in moving from Step One to the Twelfth and final step. The alcoholic or addict, or the person whose personal identity has been lost in the compulsive behavior of chemicals or culture, comes to a determination and begins again to move: “We admitted we were powerless; that our lives had become unmanageable.” They begin, by saying those words, to leave a place of powerlessness, yes, and of unmanageability, yes, but most of all, they begin to work up the gumption, based on their own life’s messes and based on the testimony of others at this point, they begin to move from a place of hopelessness.

If you have never been there, to that place, where life has been reduced to mere need, where your best friends are the clerk at the liquor store, or the pharmacist, or whoever it is that has sent you yet another Mastercard application; that place where you cannot see clearly into the next hour, let alone the next day, or year; if you have never been there, Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

If you have, there is no need for my trying to describe it further, because hopelessness is everything so inhumane and so ungodly, that my words cannot begin to describe it for you and it would be insulting of me to even try.

To move from that place of hopelessness, to begin to take that very first step outward, involves strength and courage that can only come from outside of ourselves. It’s not within us anymore to go on. Admitting that out loud to another person, or to God, or to just scream it into the darkness- is where everything begins to be made new. It may feel, at the time, like it is trying to light a candle on a windy seashore, but it is, in fact, the very first light of a new dawn.

It’s the beginning of a journey- a journey which will turn us inside out. It will really hurt. It’s a journey that will force us from our sickbed of terminal uniqueism, into a community where we will find people who are just as screwed up as we are, but who are also, we will find, as beloved of God as we are.

It’s a journey from certain early death to life, through ten more steps after that first one, until we arrive at this one, Number 12: “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all of our daily living.”

Journeys have beginnings, and journeys have destinations. This is the destination of the Twelve Steps. It is not merely a destination though; it is a rest-of-our lives place of continued and continual healing; of giving away as often and as much as possible what we have been given and, in so doing, becoming wealthy in the knowledge of our place in God.

Bill W., a drunk insurance agent in Akron, Ohio- the founder, along with Dr. Bob, of AA, wrote this in a letter, years after he had enabled tens of thousands of others to become sober:

“Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for top approval, perfect security, and perfect romance, urges quite appropriate to age seventeen, prove to be an impossible way of life when we are at age forty-seven and fifty-seven.

”Since AA began, I've taken immense wallops in all these areas because of my failure to grow up emotionally and spiritually. I kept asking myself "Why can't the twelve steps work to release depression?" By the hour, I stared at the St. Francis Prayer ... "it's better to comfort than to be comforted". Here was the formula, all right, but why didn't it work?

”Suddenly, I realized what the matter was. My basic flaw had always been dependence, almost absolute dependence, on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security, and the like. Failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and specifications, I had fought for them. And when defeat came, so did my depression.

“Because I had over the years undergone a little spiritual development, the absolute quality of these frightful dependencies had never before been so starkly revealed. Reinforced by what grace I could secure in prayer, I found I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA, indeed upon any act of circumstance whatsoever.

”Then only could I be free to love as Francis did. Emotional and instinctual satisfactions, I saw, were really the extra dividends of having love, offering love, and expressing love appropriate to each relation of life.

”Plainly, I could not avail myself to God's love until I was able to offer it back to Him by loving others as He would have me. And I couldn't possibly do that so long as I was victimized by false dependencies.”

If we’re going to begin to be whole, if we going to have a chance at continued sobriety; if we’re going to, any of us, have a chance at a life that reflects the God-image in us; if we’re going to, any of us, give up the culture-driven, ego-driven drives within us that keep us from our Promised Land, then, we, too, must give up what is false, to make room for that which is true.

And the best way to do that- the only way to that- is to give away all of that false pride, those false emotional dependencies on others.

The best example I can think of is one I’ve told you about before, but it’s an image that defines me, and you feel free to borrow it. Etta was a 65 year old Lakotah Sioux woman that my wife and I worked with in South Dakota. Born in 1910, she had been of that generation that was forcibly removed from her parents to go to white man’s boarding school. After that, she was relocated, also by the government, from the reservation to Chicago, to become assimilated, which, in government jargon meant, to become white.

She tried; they all tried. But Etta failed and ended up at the bottom of a bottle for many years. She made her way back to the reservation in the 50s, married a man 30 years her senior- her third marriage. But this time she married a man who had never stopped being Indian, and who knew Jesus. Together, John and Jesus brought Etta home.

It meant an end to the false pride forced upon her. She came to the end of dependency on others, so unlike her, for approval. In the acceptance of her people as she was, Etta could accept herself, as she was becoming.

There are so many incidents and stories of being around someone who served others in the name of Jesus, without ever considering it an obligation to do so. One late afternoon, I was with her when she got a call that an old man, a neighbor of hers, needed a ride home. He been found by the road, by the police, passed out. “David and I will be there,” she said to whoever it was on the phone, while she was making it impossible for me to say “No.”

We drove into the country, got _____ into the car, where he fell into the back seat and promptly threw up, all over Etta’s floor. Etta laughed while I cringed. “Smoke a cigarette,” she said, “so that you can’t smell it.” And she drove _____ home. Without a single complaint. No preaching. No condemnation of _____. Only acceptance. Only service. Only Jesus.

Back to Bill W.’s letter: “This seems to be the primary healing circuit: an outgoing love of God's creation and His people, by means of which we avail ourselves of His love for us. It is most clear that the real current can't flow until our paralyzing dependencies are broken, and broken at depth. Only then can we possibly have a glimmer of what real love really is.

”If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root of it some unhealthy dependence and its consequent demand. Let us, with God's help, continually surrender these hobbling demands. Then we can be set free to live and love: we may then be able to gain emotional sobriety.”

And that’s where we are going in this journey of the 12 Steps, and in this journey of Life. “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all of our daily living.”

Which means, by the way, carrying this message- this message of spiritual growth and human wholeness- not only to addicts, but to everyone. Daily living includes people who all around us who are living in various degrees of hopelessness. We may outwardly believe, if we are still buying into the false pride and false emotional dependencies of the world, we might make the mistake of assuming that the guy across the street is nothing more than a loud-mouth show-off. Or that “her” sister is just a gold-digging little tramp. Or that the guy with the new car every year has “got it made.” Or that the drunk passed out beside the road is just another drunk Indian, let him lay there and sleep it off.

But each of them, bottom line, is far more like us, than they are unlike us. Having done a spiritual and moral inventory of ourselves back in Steps 4, 5, 6, and 7, it is forever impossible to see anyone again only through the narrow-focused lenses of our own egos. We can begin to see others in the light of mistakes they’ve made, and their regrets, and in the knowledge that they, too, are involved, like we were, in actions of self-deception and denial. We can see them, and know them, for the fragile creatures they and we are.

And that makes all the difference. It is the point where, as Paul said, “Behold! All things become new.”

When Jesus stood up in the synagogue and publicly announced his ministry, he didn’t turn to Isaiah 61, he picked up the scroll and read from that place where it said:

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
²to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
³to provide for those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.

Later on, Jesus said that “those who come after me will do even greater things than I have done.” That’s the responsibility being handed on to us by Jesus, by Bill W., Doctor Bob, and Etta. We are the ones on this planet, right now, we are the ones to bring good news to the oppressed. We are the only ones- those of us who can see beyond ourselves into the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Continuing Creation- we are the only ones Jesus has right now, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.

We are the only ones with any inclination at all to have a sick guy in the back seat of our car and be able to imagine at all that God sees him, that guy who just messed up the back seat, as an “oak of righteousness, planted by the Lord, to display his glory.”

A final word from Bill W., at the end of his letter: “Nowadays, my brain no longer races compulsively in either elation, grandiosity or depression. I have been given a quiet place in bright sunshine"

Step 12- that’s all you need to remember about it; it’s the destination of all of our journeys: “a quiet place in the bright sunshine” where the belovedness by God of all persons can finally be seen.

(An AA chip) This was given to me this earlier this week, by a brother in Christ who’s also a brother of the 12 step table. I show it to you not because it has a single thing to do with me, it absolutely does not. This is a thirteen year medal of sobriety. It belongs to Etta, to my wife, to my family, to the hundreds of people around tables as I was going to 90 meetings in 90 days back in 1993 and 1994, and to the people I sit with now on Wednesdays, and the people I stand in front of today. It belongs to Jesus, who really, really does continue to do great things.

Amen..

Step 11 of the 12 Steps: Knowing God Better

2007-06-12T11:48:00.000-06:00

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry it out.

This is the latest edition of the North Texas Conference newspaper and this week’s edition shows all of next year’s assignments of pastors to churches. This makes it official: David Weber, Jacksboro.

My heart is with those who are moving to new places this morning, because I remember what it was like four years ago doing the same thing. I was thinking this week of what that one last thing might be that I would want to talk to you about if we in fact were on our way to somewhere else. And what that topic would be is exactly the same theme as this 11^th Step.

Whether we are involved in the 12 Steps and learning to live sober, or whether we are moving through our lives with the desire to better know and more closely follow Jesus, we must arrive at a place- not a geographical place, but a spiritual place. It is that place where we enter into state of communication with God, a place of prayer and meditation with God.

Those words- prayer and meditation- are loaded with traditional meanings. If there is one thing I hope you know by now about me by now, and feel good about exploring for yourselves, it is that we must not ever bound in our journeys with God by the traditions of other people, no matter how old and well established those traditions are. There is the familiar story of the new bride who was serving her husband her family’s special roast beef. After a couple such meals, the husband asked his wife why she always cut the ends off the roast before putting it in the oven. “It’s better that way.. it browns better, I guess” was her response, which was the only response she had.

When the in-laws came to visit, mother-in-law prepared her version of the family’s roast beef special recipe and new husband watched her as she cut off the ends of the roast, too, before adding various spices. “Why do you cut off the ends like that?” he asked.

“It just makes the roast better, more juicy, it cooks better that way..I think. Anyway, that’s the way we’ve always cooked it in our family,” was her answer to the question that she’d never been asked before.

At Christmas, new wife and husband made the journey to grandma’s house. On Christmas Day, grandma announced that they would be having her special roast beef dinner. New husband immediately inserted himself in the kitchen to do more research. He watched as Grandma got an old, slightly dented roasting pan from under the stove, and set it beside the cut of roast.

He watched as Grandma, too, meticulously cut the ends off the roast, before putting it in her pan. “Why, Grandma, why do you cut the ends off the roast?” he asked, again.

And finally he heard the real, very unmysterious answer: “So it will fit in the pan,” she said.

It never hurts to ask, “Why?” about anything. Roast beef or God, it doesn’t matter. Because the answers, when we find them, are almost always rooted in formerly unquestioned traditions, and sometimes- even in questions about God- we find that it had to do with something as silly as the size of the pan, or the size of the mind that God was being fit into.

Why do we pray in the ways that most of us pray? We know the answer, historically, and it doesn’t have very much to do with anything particularly “holy.” In the Middle Ages, as the relationship between the Church and the State was growing stronger, by force from the leaders of both parties, it was decided to pattern some of the outward worship practices of the Church to the well-established legal traditions of the State. There really wasn’t that much difference anyway between standing in a court of law and standing in a church at that time.

People would get on their knees when approaching royalty, or representatives of royalty like judges. Sometimes they’d even crawl from the back of the room to emphasize their lowly station in life compared to the high and mighty person in front of them. So we now kneel to pray. And lower our heads. Kow-towing, they called such a practice in China.

Similarly, because mere mortals were not allowed to look directly into the eyes of some royalty, some priests adopted that custom, too, and made the people close their eyes in prayer. Even in the 18^th century, in New England, ushers would walk around the room and make sure people had their eyes closed during prayer. If they didn’t, they might get a little knock on the head from the sticks the ushers carried with them. So we close our eyes, too.

When people would beg mercy from the court, they would put their hands together, in a formal sign of pleading. So we put our hands together in prayer.

Priests and judges were regarded as necessary intermediaries between God and humans; you want to have God hear you, then you go to the places where priests and judges hang out- the church or the courtroom. Even today, you’ll notice that courtrooms often, suspiciously, look like the front of a church. Actually, it’s the other way around. Churches were designed to look like courtrooms- the jury box, the judge’s bench, the bar. So we come to church to pray.

“Why?” It’s always a good question.

Here’s another one: Why are so many drunks reluctant about coming to church, and why, when you do get them there, do they sit there in a cold sweat, running their fingers down the bulletin to see how close we are to that last hymn, and “how fast can I get to the exit?” Well, it’s because many of them have stood right here in places that look a whole lot like this.

“License suspended, 30 days, 2 years…”

Or worse: “The prisoner is reprimanded to the jailer..”

And even if the drunk has never been to court, or even if a person has no problem with any of the obvious addictions, coming to church is made to feel like a threat sometimes, like the preacher, or God, will be keeping tabs on what you wear and how still you sit, or even be able to know somehow what crazy, “unholy” thoughts you may be having while sitting there. Yikes!

Now, back to the original thoughts I was having about the most important thing I could say to you, about prayer and meditation. About everything, really. And that is this: Follow Jesus.

Follow the priests and the judges, if they are following Jesus, until you can strike out on your own directly behind him, if you need to. Learn about and practice prayer in church, if you need to, but only so it becomes a natural and normal part of life outside of here as well. But make that your ultimate goal- following Jesus- and everything else falls into place.

So, as we’re following Jesus, where and when do we observe him praying? Everywhere and often, apparently. There were times of formal prayer on his part that were recorded- think of his teaching of what we call the Lord’s prayer, or think of that night in the Garden of Gethsemane before his death. We know how the Hebrews prayed- like this: arms spread up and out, eyes wide open. Not at all unlike a puppy or a cat who rolls over on its back to show its vulnerability and trust in you. Openness is the key here I think, an invitation, not a wall. And eyes wide open, listening for God, but also watching for God, not only during prayer, but during life, all the time.

And if communication with God through prayer by following Jesus is the most important thing- that, I think, is the most important thing about prayer: keeping our eyes, ears, hearts and minds open; permitting our imaginations, our visions, our dreams, even our daydreams, to be ready, on call, and aware that God is everywhere and can speak to us, be seen by us, in church yes, but everywhere else, too. If we choose to see God in all things.

Again, following Jesus: he drew lessons from the birds of the air, the lilies of the field, grains of wheat, fig trees, rocks by the road, from bread, from a cup of wine. He saw the image of God in children wanting to be near him, in a widow dropping her pennies in the collection plate, in a short guy up in a tree, in lepers, in a demoniac, in fishermen, tax collectors, grieving people, poor people, sick people, in people who were hungry, thirsty or in prison.

His eyes were wide open. Imagine following him! Imagine him stooping down to watch the ants, imagine him sighing when he looks out a field of wildflowers, imagine him tracing the clouds with his eyes, or becoming lost in the moon’s glow.

Imagine him reaching out to touch those lepers, those children, those fishermen, that drunk, that addict. It’s not hard at all to imagine is it? We can easily imagine that because it’s the Image of God in Jesus and the same Image of God in us, talking back and forth right now, and that is prayer. That is praying like Jesus prayed, all the time, aware and awake, open and vulnerable to messages in the wind that are without words, and to the silent thunder of God’s voice in the quiet of a sleeping child’s face or in the serene face of one whose body is about to die.

The path behind Jesus that I am describing is at odds sometimes with the practice of religion as it is often taught. A lot of people sitting around a Twelve Step table come to realize that. It is not about the rules of church, the very rules that some of us were rebelling against (we thought) when we began to drink, or use, or otherwise sacrifice our souls on the altars of our Selves. It’s not about religious dogma and human doctrine, it’s about relationships, between ourselves and God and with each other.

It is about learning to be grateful for those same birds of the air and lilies of the field that Jesus was. It’s about not being afraid, like Jesus wasn’t afraid, to touch lepers and scoundrels. It’s about not being completely spiritually satisfied by meeting together in church, as beneficial and inspiring as that might be! It is about being anxious to get back into the world and follow Jesus there in all the places where you may not have thought before about his being present.

Step 11, again: Prayer and meditation are so that we can “improve our conscious contact with God.. so that we may have knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry it out.”

If we can get over the notion, and I know Jesus enables us to do this, if we can get over the notion that we are standing on top of a world that was created for us, and realize, instead, that we are a part of something that is still being created, then- no matter who are or what we have been- everything can be new.

Religion has often taught, tragically, that the world, the earth, other people, and everything in the world are ours to exploit, to use at our leisure as quickly as possible. That system of thinking came directly out of the Greco-Roman world that Jesus stood up to and died fighting against. That system of thinking is a breeding ground for jealousy, greed, and all kinds of psychological problems because it flies in the face of God’s face, God’s image, in us. It is easy to be disappointed and even bitter toward the world and the people around us when we have bought into that easy-to-buy-into tradition, It’s also easy to drown that disappointment and bitterness, for awhile, or to smoke or inject it away.

But Jesus leads us into a better way. We can follow Jesus into a continuing

Creation, where he shows us the tools- love, grace, and forgiveness- with which we can be co-creators, with God, of this part of God’s universe. We can follow Jesus into a world that burning with God’s beauty and we can be changed by it in the same way Moses was when he encountered the burning bush of God’s voice.

If we’re on top of the world, we’re alone. If we are part of Continuing Creation, we are in community with every single thing in the universe, from the rings around Saturn, to the baby blue jay learning right now to fly, to the sunflowers beginning to bloom, to the healthy baby just born anywhere in the world, to the old man or woman dying somewhere else.

And why in the world would someone want the dark curtain of alcohol, or the wretched selfishness of drugs to remain standing between themselves and..all of that?

Next week, Step 12, and we’ll talk about the very best thing step of all- helping others escape from behind that dark curtain and leaving behind the soul cancer of selfishness. We’ll see the real party that following Jesus leads to.

Step 10 of the 12 Steps- Building Markers

2007-06-12T11:38:00.000-06:00

Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

In anthropology, the study of humans, their cultures, and their emigrational moves from Southern Africa to the various continents of the worlds, one of the earliest pieces of evidence, looked for by anthropologists of human presence, is found in stones. Stones piled in an unusual way, or fitted together, or erected in a particular formation, like Stonehenge, are often the first indicators of an ancient human presence.

Stones were used by ancient humans for thousands of years before the refinement and firing of various ores into metal took place. But even before rocks were used as tools, they were used as fire boundaries, as altars, markers, and memorials.

It’s a tradition, a human endeavor, which has never stopped. Distance markers laid by ancient Greek then Roman armies are still found throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Stone monuments and stone plaques built into walls are still an affirmation of the stone’s permanent qualities over the impermanence of human flesh. We have grave markers built for loved ones- a continuing, modern manifestation of something which began happening even before humans had a language or the tools to write on rocks with.

A pile of stones- in the form of a circle, or in the carved heads on Easter Island, or in the form of a pyramid in Egypt or Mexico, or a carved commemorative cornerstone, or a headstone up here at Oak Grove- a pile of stones, or a special stone, is a primary and certain indicator of human habitation. We are, after all, the only species aware our impermance and therefore the only species which has developed both a need and the skills to use rocks in these ways.

Here’s part of a story from Genesis that shows rocks being used in a particular way that has everything to with Step 10 of the Twelve Steps. It’s OK if yo don’t see the connection yet, because you will.

Jacob was Abraham’s son, the father of Judaism. Jacob was the leader of a band of families, all related to Abraham, and which included Laban and his sons. Bands of families, like some churches, even some countries, occasionally get to squabbling with each other over real or perceived problems and either fight it out, or go their separate ways. Jacob and Laban, lucky for newly born people of Israel, decided to go their separate ways when Laban’s sons accused Jacob of keeping all the good livestock for himself. Which is exactly what Jacob had been doing.

Genesis 31: 45-55

⁴⁵So Jacob took a stone, and set it up as a pillar. ⁴⁶And Jacob said to his kinsfolk, ‘Gather stones,’ and they took stones, and made a heap; and they ate there by the heap. ⁴⁷Laban called it Jegar-sahadutha: but Jacob called it Galeed. ⁴⁸Laban said, ‘This heap is a witness between you and me today.’ Therefore he called it Galeed, ⁴⁹and the pillar Mizpah, for he said, ‘The Lord watch between you and me, when we are absent one from the other. ⁵⁰If you ill-treat my daughters, or if you take wives in addition to my daughters, though no one else is with us, remember that God is witness between you and me.’

51 Then Laban said to Jacob, ‘See this heap and see the pillar, which I have set between you and me. ⁵²This heap is a witness, and the pillar is a witness, that I will not pass beyond this heap to you, and you will not pass beyond this heap and this pillar to me, for harm. ⁵³May the God of Abraham and the God of Nahor’—the God of their father—‘judge between us.’ So Jacob swore by the Fear of his father Isaac, ⁵⁴and Jacob offered a sacrifice on the height and called his kinsfolk to eat bread; and they ate bread and tarried all night in the hill country.

Now Laban saw this particular rock pile as a witness, a reminder to Jacob that if Jacob wouldn’t be watching him, God was. And he also saw the pile of rocks as a line in the sand, a boundary. “That’s your side, this is my side”- like two kids fighting in the back seat of a car. The rock pile was made official by breaking bread over it and eating before each party went its separate way.

Whichever role the rock pile officially played for the tribes of Jacob and Laban, it was an important role. It was a reminder of God’s presence, or it was a boundary. Which is what Step 10 is: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

By now, we’ve come a long way. To have come this far in the Steps means we are looking outward for answers and guidance, toward God as we know God, and not inward, toward ourselves, who we now know we really didn’t know very well at all. We, those of us who really thought we needed alcohol, have been surrounded now for weeks by people who, we’ve learned, were also really messed up but who have been able to live sober. We have become dependent on their stories, their encouragement, their insight into themselves and us.

We’ve looked hard and long at ourselves, figuring out, piecing together where we’d gone wrong, when we had stopped drinking alcohol and when alcohol had begun drinking us. We made the first faltering, hesitant attempts to turn those shortcomings over to God, as God sits there with us in the hearts, love, and presence of people who not only want us to get well but believe we can get well.

We’ve even begun to make some amends. We’ve found out that some persons we hurt in our addictions have sometimes been hurt beyond any chance of healing. Others are skeptical as the dickens, which they should be; they don’t want to be hurt again. And some accept our stumbling, inadequate apologies.

We are, at this point, maybe at our weakest, most dangerous point in the whole 12 Step process. Because this is where we begin to say, way too often, sometimes repeatedly, to ourselves. “Hmm..I’ve done pretty good so far. I’ve come a long way.”

And indeed we have. We’ve been sober now for six weeks, six months, six years- however long it is- when those suicide bomb statements about ourselves to ourselves come bubbling to the surface. And I know that it’s not hard to remember saying those kinds of things about a whole range of bad habits humans suffer with.

“I’ve not smoked a cigarette for two months now..pretty good!”

“I’ve made it a whole week without complaining to anyone about anything..I must be getting better!”

“I’ve not clicked onto a porn site in a month,” “I’ve not gone shopping crazy since last Christmas,” “I’ve not had a hit, a snort, a poke, a taste, in a year now and I’m feeling great!

Amen, amen, amen to all those statements- hallelujah for you! Here’s your 30 day, 60 day, six month, one year token, we’re proud of you!

But it’s then, on the way home, sitting alone in front of the TV, or waking up one morning with the pressures of the day already accumulating, that the other part of those self-congratulatory statements gets spoken: “I think I’ve got it under control. In fact, I feel like a new person, I really do. I feel great!” Then:

“I think I’ll have a drink. Just one, for old time’s sake. I know how to handle it now.”

If you have never put that set of sentences together yourself, then you know people who have. And we all know the rest of the story is worse than the first chapters.

Which is why Step 10 is vital. It is a never, never-ending step for anyone who ever wants to change their ways, by allowing God to change their ways. We’ve got to keep to door of vulnerability open to God. We’ve got to know that the chemistry, the physiology of our brains that made us crazy to drink- or whatever- in the first place, is still the template to which our actions will default. Nothing has changed except our perspectives and our relationship to some new, also formerly weak people and to God. The synapses in our brain are still sitting up there by the millions like dry sponges waiting to be wetted down by golden liquids.

“I know how to handle it now.” We know that demonic thought is always on its way to being said. And there is a great one word, two syllable, unquotable response which we also need to be ready to make to ourselves when that lie is ready to be spoken. And if that’s the first line of defense for you, so be it, put your head in a pillow and scream until you believe it.

But you can also, while you’re still climbing the hill of the Twelve Steps, do something else which is of far greater permanence, and won’t scare the kids if they were to catch you screaming into a pillow.

You can build rock piles. Along the way, you can start building memorials of where you were on a given day in your struggle. You can start, early on, to build boundaries around your new perceptions and your new behavior that will remind you that there are places you cannot cross into again. There are fences which must separate you from the grass on the other side no matter how green it seems to be.

One of those rock-piles can be coming out of your anonymity. That’s not for everyone, but it is for some of us. I’m open about my own problems for two reasons: the second is so that others with the same problem will know that they have a friend. They really do. But the first reason I’m open about it is that the more people I tell, the more people I’m accountable to. I don’t want you ever to have to hear that your cousin’s daughter-in-law’s boss’s sister saw me at the liquor store in Bryson, Wichita Falls, or Fort Worth or anywhere else. It’s protection. It’s a boundary line for me. Every single one of you helps me, whether you knew it or not, to never drink again.

Another rock pile marker is, as I said before, a Jacob reminder that while no one is watching, God is. And I don’t think God is watching us with a scorecard in one hand a lightening bolt blow gun in the other. I think God is watching us with hope. God is my co-pilot, you remember that famous poem from WWII. Well, I think of God as my cheerleader, too. God is our cheerleader. God cheers while the rest of the world doubts. God hopes for us when the rest of the world has given up. God is even there to scream into a pillow with us, I think, and so it is entirely appropriate to build a heap of stones, a pillar, to God. A picture on the wall that only you know the real meaning of. A rock on the fireplace, an altar in the backyard that you can see from the window over the sink, a plastic Jesus ridin’ on the dashboard of your car, it doesn’t matter. Build it, because those self-deluding lies are always looming, waiting to be born. Again.

And one more thing when those lies start to be said, promptly admit it. That’s where a sponsor, a pastor, a wife, a husband, a confidant, is vital. Don’t pretend to be strong. We’re not, admit it. Don’t pretend that it doesn’t matter to anyone that we are wrestling again. It does.

Step 10 must never stop. It is yet another way to pray, as Paul said, continuously. Or as Jesus prayed, “Deliver us from evil.” Because that is what anything that separates us from the love of God, the cheerleading of God, is.

No one with a predilection toward bad behavior can afford to think of themselves as invincible, in control, or on top of whatever that “problem” is. We never were in control before, and we will never be in full control again. The process of self-examination, of gaining new insights, must be on-going.

It is possible for awhile, to act sober while all the old stimulations and wrong attitudes are still pinging away inside. That’s called being a “sober drunk.” It’s like driving a car with no oil: it will get us down the highway a little ways, but at some point, the engine’s going to blow.

That’s why we maintain our engines. That’s why we must maintain our sobriety. We must constantly be shedding the weight of burdensome attitudes- losing the baggage that got us where we were, where we never want to be again.

Rock piles- markers which point us to God, and away from ourselves, help us do that.

Steps 8 and 9 of the 12 Steps: Dancing in Public

2007-05-27T18:46:00.000-06:00

Step 8: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Step 9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

And now back to St. Francis, and the rest of the story. (This message had been preceded by a Children’s Message about St.Francis of Assisi)

He was born a rich kid, the son of a wealthy merchant in Assisi. In this town, he would have been the 16 year old with a Hummer.

But one day, when he was about 18, Francis met a leper on the road to town. Francis offered him some money, but the man refused. “I don’t want your money,” he said, “I would like to have a little of your time.”

Francis had no idea how to react to such a request. So, easily noticing the rags the leper wore, Francis offered to trade his fine clothes for the beggar’s rags. An exchange was made, and Francis was not recognized when he returned to town. He realized then that his many friends in town were not friends of his, but friends of his clothes, his riches. He tried an experiment. He sat down on the steps of the church and begged for money from passersby. And he received their charity.

He returned that evening to his former life, as a party animal. But the experience of that day had affected him. So much so, that his friends accused him being too serious and less fun than he used to be. This hurt Francis, but gave him an opportunity to show himself as the real man he was becoming.

There were no football games in Italy in the year 1212, the year Francis was 20 years old. But periodically, neighboring towns would have a brief war over boundary lines or some similar problem. Perugia was a larger town than Assisi, and declared war on Assisi. Francis and his friends dressed in their finest war clothes, sang a lot of songs, drank a lot of wine, and rode off with the Assisi army to do battle.

It was a slaughter. The Perugians won easily and Francis was taken prisoner and remained a prisoner of war for a whole year. Which gave him a whole year to live without pretense, without the standards of good clothes, superficial friends, or all the work that living the ‘good life’ demanded. He remembered the leper, and how that encounter had made him feel. So he dedicated himself, for however long he would be a prisoner, to helping his fellow prisoners.

He became a nurse, a confidant, an acting priest. He ministered, he served, he suffered with those who were suffering. And he felt more alive, there in prison, than he had ever felt before.

When he was released, he returned to Assisi, went into the church there, and prayed, all by himself. He heard a voice. It said, “Rebuild my church.” He looked up and saw the crumbling walls and peeling paint f the church he was praying in. Assuming that that was the church he had just been requested to rebuild, Francis went to his father’s store, took a bunch of fabric and a horse, and sold them in order to raise the money to rebuild the church.

His father, Piero Bernardone, was very angry. His beloved, spoiled, handsome son had not only stolen from him, but Francis was rejecting all of the values which he, a rich man, had so loved. So Piero had his son arrested, and demanded repayment of the stolen money.

Francis asked his father to meet him in the village square the next day. At that time, he returned what money he had left. He took off his rings, his silver-buckled shoes, and his big-feathered hat and gave those things to his father, too. Francis was taking on the poverty of Jesus, who did not have a home or even a pillow of his own. He knew that, like Jesus, he would also have to give up all of his pride as well, in order to truly walk in Jesus’ footsteps, and the beggar’s footsteps, as best he could.

So he stepped behind some trees in the square, and when he emerged from them, he was holding his clothing in his arms. He gave those clothes to his father. But still, Francis did not feel stripped of his ego; he did not feel empty of himself like he wanted to be in order to be like Jesus. Even as the crowd laughed at him, and his father swore at him, Francis knew he had to do more.

So he danced. He danced to the music of the beggar; he danced to the gratitude of the prisoners he had helped. He danced for Jesus, and left all of his pride, all his reputation, all of his status, there on the ground, upon which he danced.

And he went on, indeed, to rebuild the church.

He only lived for 21 more years. He never again owned more than a cloak and a staff. He lived by begging and if he ever had any coins left at the end of the day, he gave them away, so that he could begin the next day totally dependent on others. Others began to follow him. He single-handedly stopped one of the Crusader’s Wars with Islam by daring to go and talk to and becoming friends with the Muslim leader Saracen. He started way-stations, rest areas for injured soldiers- hopitaliers- hospitals, a brand new concept in the delivery of health care. The Franciscan order is still a major influence in the Catholic Church today. In California, the Franciscans started a mission in the 1500s and named the mission after Francis, San Francisco. His words are in our Methodist hymnal, page 481- “All Creatures of Our God and King.” And we tell his story to children today.

All because Francis dared to lay down his pride. Because he dared to dance.

Step 8, and Step 9 is the addict’s, the alcoholic’s public, humiliating, ego-stripping dance. For those who haven’t had to, try to imagine making a list of everyone who has ever- because of you- been harmed, insulted, betrayed, or cheated by 5 years, 10 years, 40 years of out of control, selfish, chemically altered behavior. This is where the drunk, or anyone who seeks to confront his or her past, must be more courageous than they have ever been before. Who did I borrow money from? Who did I insult? Who did I steal from? Which employers did I give less than my best to? Sometimes- who did I hit, or fight with, or, as must be asked too often, who did I cripple or cause to die?

Sometimes, paying back- money, goods, even time- is possible. More often, acknowledgements- a letter, a personal (and excruciating) personal visit- are necessary. This is not really about making amends- bringing everything back into the balance of the “way it should have been” is impossible. No one can make everything OK again by writing a check.

But it is about being willing to try, to confront the consequences of our actions, and to learn, in the process, about the real meaning of behavior we must, must, must never enter into again.

Step 8: “Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.” Step 8 is about being willing to pick up our cross.

Step 9: “Made direct amends to such people wherever possible.” Step 9 is about being nailed to that cross.

In Luke 19: 1-10, a story is told of Jesus when..

He entered Jericho and was passing through it. ²A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax-collector and was rich. ³He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. ⁴So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. ⁵When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’ ⁶So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. ⁷All who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.’ ⁸Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ ⁹Then Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.’

Jesus was ready to forgive Zaccheus, he always is, but his words demonstrate that he wasn’t ready to forget. The local tax collectors for Rome were, by everyone’s definitions, including their own, sinners. They paid a franchise fee to Rome, promised to pay Rome a certain amount each month, and were allowed to keep anything they collected above and beyond that amount. And they had Roman soldiers to help them do that.

So, of course, the people who saw what was happening in this little scene between Jesus and Zaccheus grumbled. That’s what most people do very well- look for someone whose sin is greater than their own, by their own how-convenient standards, then grumble or cluck their tongues in judgment.

But Jesus never says that there are not civil penalties to pay when we have sinned. We may be forgiven in the divine scheme of things but there are still secular laws to be followed and obeyed. People who are owed money or who have been injured, hurt, or cheated by us while we are in our sin, even though we’ve left that sin, need to be compensated, to the best of our abilities.

Zaccheus knew, as all humans know, the cost of that yin/yang debt which hung on his heart. The elation he felt about being acknowledged by Jesus was being drug down by the methods through which he’d become a rich little man. ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ Now, notice again, Jesus’ answer to that oath was not “Don’t worry about it, Zaccheus, everything’s OK now, you’re saved!”

To the contrary, Jesus accepted Zaccheus’ promise to pay back, to make amends. That promise was the hinge which allowed Jesus to say ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.’ Jesus was not about making Christians, he was about making true Jews. And Zaccheus here demonstrated with his oath that he was a true Jew, a son of Abraham. He was ready to leave behind his status as a Roman puppet, and become again the son of Abraham he was born to be. Zaccheus was willing, like Francis, to dance in public, and Jesus said, “Do it.”

It is useless to sober up, get straight, or leave behind a former harmful way of life, without going back and cleaning up, to the best of our abilities, the messes we left there. Because those messes, like a pair of scissors or a sponge left behind in a surgical procedure, will eventually make us sick again, if we don’t remove them.

During the Savings and Loan scandals of the 1980s, I had, as a client one of the Savings and Loan banks in ________. I made many, many trips between that Savings and Loan and a local very cooperative property appraiser and a realtor there. They were flipping properties, sometimes three times in a day. I could watch the paper on the front seat of my car, the title for a local condominium, go in value from $25,000 to $100,000 in one day. And all of those inflated dollars were guaranteed to be paid to the originating Savings and Loan by us- the U.S. taxpayer. Which they were, and still are, I guess.

But it was a deepening mystery to me because this was right about the time I was beginning to pay serious attention to Jesus, who I didn’t know very well. And every week, some of these same men who were flipping condos as fast as most people can shuffle a deck of cards, these guys were in the newspaper, building new church additions, giving scholarships to minority kids, giving their “come to Jesus” testimonies in some of the big Dallas churches.

It didn’t add up for me. And, as we all remember, it didn’t add up for the federal prosecutors or juries either, and most of these guys ended up in jail, including all of the ones that I moved paper for.

That was happening all over Texas, and then all over the U.S., of course. But I happened later, in the 90’s to meet one of the former S&L bigwigs, after he had spent eight years at the Federal Correction Center in Fort Worth. He had had to give up all his assets- his home, his accounts, everything- as fines and penalties before he went to jail. His wife had gotten a job and an apartment and waited.

While he was in Fort Worth, this man met the true Jew. This Jesus was not the cardboard puppet Jesus which he had known before, who he had paid lip service to, and who he grandstanded in churches on behalf of. This was the Jesus who said, “I forgive you, but you’ve got some amends to make.” I met him on a Kairos prison ministry team. He was working two jobs- one as a 40 hour a week paid employee in the bookkeeping bowels of a major retailer, and the other job was as unpaid mentor to a class of ten kids in a _______ high school. That job was 2 hours every day and all day Saturday. He had fallen in love, with Jesus and the “least of these.”

He said that when he met the real Jesus, he found out living was not about what he could make, but what he could give. He still had a load on his heart- he’d been, he knew, a real jerk, just as all of these guys did because they knew exactly what they were doing. But the Jesus part of his heart was getting heavier and better all the time, too. Balance was happening. He said he hoped he would never see his name in the paper again, but he hoped that there was a bunch of kids in that high school who would remember him.

He will never be able to repay. None of us who focused on ourselves will ever be able to fully repay. But we can make some amends. We can cause, because he’s helping us to do it, to make the Jesus part of our hearts heavier, stronger, and more like his own.

We can, hat in hand, tail between our legs, red-faced and embarrassed, begin to dance. Ever so clumsily at first, yes..these are the hardest public steps of the Twelve. But getting better, and giving ourselves more and more reasons to stay sober, all the time.

Amen.

“Steps 6 and 7 of the 12 Steps- Ready, Willing, and Able (Maybe)”

2007-05-21T13:13:00.000-06:00

6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. We humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.

This is one of those messages where I’m going to speak directly to the high school seniors here with us this morning, and everyone else can, if you wish, listen in. Because, as we’ve all discovered, a big chunk of who we are now, no matter how old we are, was being formed right about the time these young people are living in today. So if I say something relevant to them, let your eighteen year old ears hear, too. Because they are still listening.

I’ve been talking the last several weeks about the Twelve Step Program. About which it is my hope that none of you will ever have to become more acquainted with it than you what you will hear about it today. So, if you listen closely to these 6^th and 7^th steps of the Twelve Steps, I believe we can help that goal of future ignorance about the 12 Steps to be a real one.

But first, don’t think you are immune from the potential need for this program. Forty years ago, right about now, on a Sunday like this one, I was sitting in a church that I never missed a Sunday attending. I was president of the church’s youth group, and I was surrounded by a loving and large family who filled many pews of that church. We, too, the class of 1967, were being honored as graduating Seniors.

One year later, 1 of my classmates was dead, in an unpopular war not unlike the one some of your classmates will end up in. Five years later, 1 more was dead from the war, 2 had their brains cooked by Southeast Asia heroin or Vietnamese speed, and there were already, as I remember it, about ten failed marriages in a class of 115 people. Ten years later, two people were in prison, at least one had died in an alcohol related auto death, and I didn’t know anyone, except the Mennonite kids, who hadn’t tried, at least, marijuana, and much else that was available at the time. And many of us were drinking with a great deal of regularity and a few of us were drinking with a whole lot of compulsion. And not a single one of us would have said ten years before that we would be dead, addicted, divorced, in prison, or the least bit unhappy.

But, it is easy to see now, many of us were.

And I also remember how I would have reacted if someone in 1967, had stood up that day in church and said, “Here’s what’s going to happen to your class over the next ten years.” I’d have been choking on my own laughter, maybe even getting angry at such a pessimistic prophecy. “We’re different,” I would have shouted with the full and righteous conviction that 18 year olds then had about themselves and their generation. “We’re not our parents! We’re going to make a difference in the world!”

That kind of attitude said so much about who many of us thought we were back then. Our parents had lived through a Depression, fought and won a terrible and noble and sacrificial war against genuine evil, yet we didn’t want to be like them. We were different.

You might be saying, thinking the same thing. And, you know what?, this time you’re right- you are different than young people were forty years ago. You’re about an inch taller, on average, and your life expectancy is between five and six years longer. You’ve got much more knowledge, good and bad. You know way more stuff than the average 18 year old in 1967 did. You know science and technical language about things that hadn’t even been thought of forty ears ago. But you’ve also go all the junk from 115 cable and Dish channels in there, too, and most of you have had that inflowing all your lives. You know probably ten times more about Paris Hilton than I did about the Beatles. You actually, whether you want to or not, have opinions, based on huge amounts of information, about people like Kevin Federline, Britney Spears, and Lindsey Lohan.

And, you also have available to you something inconceivable forty years ago. This- well, something that looks like this (crytal meth). Cruise the edges of Main Street here or in other nearby towns tonight, or, if you prefer, Google up a recipe for it. You know it’s right there. This stuff, maybe more than anything else, makes your generation different from any other. Because 24 hours from now, after 2 or 3 puffs of this, your soul can belong to a multi-billionaire in Mexico, who will begin a two, three, maybe four if you’re lucky, a few year process of squeezing every dollar from you, your loved ones, and every unfortunate sucker who comes near your lies during that time.

You do this tonight, and within a couple years, you can come see me at Thursday afternoon chapel over at the jail. If you’re alive.

I know I’m shocking other people more than I’m shocking you, because you’ve already seen what this stuff has done to some of your peers. Because you are different than we were- in absolutely stunning and wonderful ways, but in some horrid ones as well.

I know each of you is prepared, and probably already have had the opportunity to say “No, no, no” to this and other stuff. But, I also know that over the next several years you will be making discoveries about yourselves- your brains, at this age, are exactly at the place, cognitively, that you will begin to examine your beliefs about he world and about yourselves. You will have the ability, and it will develop further over the next 2 or 3 years, to think critically about what it is you believe. You will be developing a worldview. You will discover, and want to something about- here comes Step Six- you will discover defects in your character.

Don’t be insulted by that statement. None of us, grew up in the Garden of Eden. Stuff, as the bumper stickers used to say, Stuff Happens. And you’re going to sometimes find things out about yourselves that you want to change. You want that to happen, that’s a good thing. Here’s a story from the gospel of John, Chapter 5, about a defective guy who really went about dealing with his defectiveness in a screwed up way:

John 5: 1-3 After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.

Notice that when Jesus asked the man if he wanted to be made well, the man didn’t answer “Yes!” He made a whiney excuse instead. He’d learned to live with his defectiveness. He maybe even had grown used to and enjoyed the special attention it brought to him. It certainly gave him a good excuse to not try anything new. He’d grown satisfied living a half life.

Don’t be satisfied, ever, living a half life. The man in this story had learned to live with his disability. He had learned to feel sorry for himself, to make excuses, to be comfortable in his discomfort. He had redefined what living meant in order to accommodate his circumstances. He had come to love his mat more than the dream he once had to get up off of that mat.

It’s why Jesus’ question to him- “Do you want to get well?”- was so important. It was a question the man had stopped asking himself. It was too scary of a question for the man to ask himself. The only way Jesus could demonstrate this oddity of human nature was to go ahead and heal the man anyway. “Stand up, take your mat, and walk,” Jesus told him.

Now when you read the rest of the story you’ll find out that the man wasn’t happy with his having been healed. He went right to the Jewish authorities and tattle-tailed on Jesus for having healed on the Sabbath. I have my doubts whether the man was physically sick in the first place. I think he was kind of like the guy who’s gotten used to laying around in front of the TV, making excuses about not getting up and going outside with real people in a real world, who keeps a long and ready list for anyone who dares to listen of all the aches, pains, trials, and tribulations that life has dumped on him. I think he enjoyed playing sick s that others would say, “poor boy.”

So, it’s a question we must all ask ourselves from time to time, just to make sure we haven’t fallen ourselves into the “poor me, nobody will help me” syndrome. Because the defects of character, which we address in Step Six are laying all around out there, ready to be picked up or inflicted on us.

We really do choose, crazy as it may seem, to pick some of those defects up ourselves. They come in brown and green bottles, or little baggies, or in wrong emotional responses to the world, like anger, or shame. We even cultivate some of them- they don’t all immediately grab our souls like this one does. (the baggie) Two beers a week can become after a year or two, eight to ten beers a night. It’s no longer something we choose to do, it’s something we have to do.

“Do you want to get well?” can be a life-saving question we ask ourselves, courtesy of Jesus.

But, I also said that some of those defects in character can be inflicted on us. Here’s an example, you can explore your own lives and find out the ones that have affected you personally. Pick any one of the Spanish-language talk shows some afternoon and watch. It doesn’t matter which one, because this is always true. The hosts of the show, the people in control, the pretty ones with nice clothes, will be European Mexicans. The crazy people, the ones who fight, dress badly, and have bad haircuts, will be Indian Mexicans. That’s a choice the producers of those shows make for whatever racist reasons they choose to do so.

But if you’re a young, Spanish speaking kid of Indian background, how do you grow up thinking about yourself in light of what you’ve learned about Indian Mexicans on TV? It affects everything- the average American woman is 5’5”. The average model or television actress is 5’11”. That’s a false defect that has been inflicted on American girls to the point that eating disorders and self-image problems have become a plague. It’s as false as a Mexican talk show.

“Do you want to get well?” Whatever the problem is- and I wish I could tell you there will never be any, but there will- whatever the problem is, its solution starts there, an important question given to you by Jesus himself: “Do you want to get well?”

When the addict is ready to say “Yes” to that question, when anyone is ready to say “Yes” to that question, we are ready to take Step Seven: “We humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.”

Our pride, our perceived unique-ness, our human attitude of being oh-so-special is what most often has gotten us into a defective state of being in the first place. Our pride can even be an addiction of its own!

And so that we aren’t here all day, listening to me tell you the 25 most important things that I think you should know as graduating Seniors, let me shoot right to the top of the list and give you the single most important thing I want you to know: If you want to be happy in life, if you want to be satisfied, whole, and happy at 20, 30, 40, and 80 and 90 years of age; if you want to live life with a minimum of regrets, if you want to follow Jesus in a way the most admirable people you know of follow Jesus, forget Pride. Adopt the attitude as soon as possible that life is not about what you get, it’s about what you can give.

Here’s a parable Jesus told:

Luke 18: 10-14 ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’

You think Jesus couldn’t be sarcastic? He scorned the show-off who held himself above the riff-raff. His words were venomous toward those who judged and lorded it over other people. On the other hand, he cherished those who were humble, those who understood their defectiveness, and were willing to quietly, behind the scenes, seek mercy and healing for themselves and others.

Don’t get me wrong here. Be proud, proud as the dickens about that A you will receive on a big term paper. But be prouder of that professor, not for giving you an A, but for enabling you to earn an A. Let him or her know. And be proud of the parents who have helped and are helping make this whole further learning experience happen.

And then take that A and dedicate it and yourself to making the world better.

Sobriety for the addict comes when we begin to see beyond ourselves into the family, the community, and the world around us. Happiness, satisfaction in life, comes the same way. The same way.

Love, and you will be loved. Be instruments of peace, and you will know peace. Give, and it will be given to you. It really is that simple.

(Sing)“And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.” I always wanted to end a message with the Beatle’s shortest song- Paul McCartney at the end of “Abbey Road.” Jesus could have sung it himself.

Come to think of it, he did.

And I hope you will, too.

Steps 4 and 5 of the 12 Steps: Discovering and Letting Go

2007-05-17T20:10:00.001-06:00

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs

It’s Mother’s Day, so I begin with a Mommy story. I was probably seven years old, my brother Denny would have been five. Our uncle, whose family had just moved to Florida, had sent my brother and I two genuine Seminole Indian tom-toms. Each of them was about the size of a coffee can and covered with stretched piece of rubber from an old tire tube. Genuine Indian.

For whatever reason a seven year old might have for doing such a thing, I could not resist the temptation to push a sharpened pencil through the taut rubber on one of the tom-toms- my brother’s tom-tom, which, of course, rendered it useless as a tom-tom. Immediately, I regretted what I had done, so I hid the drum up high on a fireplace, where my brother couldn’t find it. The top of the fireplace was exactly where Mom’s eyes landed first when she was trying to help Denny and stop his crying by finding his missing tom-tom.

“What happened here, Dave?” she asked holding the now holey drum out to me.

“I don’t know. How did it get up there?” I asked, ridiculously.

“Tell me,” she said. I knew that she knew, and she knew that I knew that she knew, so I decided to tell the truth.

And here’s what I said. I think the only reason I remember it so well is that it was even absurd for a seven year old:

“When I came in here this morning,” I began, “I saw a mouse leaning up against a pencil and the mouse pushed the pencil into the tom-tom. I got it away from the mouse and put it up there where it would be safe.”

Now, I don’t remember my mom’s specific response, but I know my mom well enough to know she probably turned around and laughed before putting her game face back on. “That’s just silly,” she said. “Give Denny your drum.”

“Not fair,” I’m sure I said, in the great comeback known to all four to ten year olds, when they know they’ve lost, and when they know that you know that they know they’ve lost.

Later on, we all remember the routine, the lying gets a little more sophisticated, and, sometimes, amazingly and unfortunately in retrospect, they worked:

“My grandma died.”

“Somebody spiked the punch.”

“I only drank a couple.”

“I’ll never do that again!”

They get more sophisticated, so much so that we even believe some of them ourselves:

“It’s not my fault I didn’t get hired; they (the great THEY) are a bunch of idiots.”

“I drink to relax, there’s a lot of stress at work.” (Stress- the other great straw man of the modern era.)

“I can stop anytime, don’t worry about it. I’m not.”

And on and on and on. Oh, what a tangled web we weave..you know the saying. But what heavy chain and rope-bound life that tangled web becomes! It’s crippling because it’s so heavy; it’s blinding as the lenses through which we see ourselves and the world become darker and darker; and it’s dangerous as we slide further and deeper into our own now misshapen egos and away from the Image of God. From blaming a mouse- the stupidest of small lies- to living a lie, the stupidest of human actions.

It is at this point in the Twelve Steps that most people need a helper- a sponsor, a spiritual guide, a mentor, a Mom- someone who will encourage us, for however long it takes, to look back at all the missteps that got us into trouble. And someone who will recognize when we relapse into the claptrap we have come to believe about ourselves. We need someone who knows that we know that they know. And who we will learn to trust as we have maybe never trusted anyone before.

There is an interesting passage in the book of Nehemiah, that describes that period of time when the exiles returned after several generations, fro Babylon, back to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was physically in ruins, as were most of their lives. They had been cut off from the Temple, from their families, from their history, and there was a whole ruined city to be rebuilt. During the rebuilding, a copy of the book of Deuteronomy was discovered. It had been lost for centuries. Deuteronomy contains an explanation of the covenant established between Godand the Israelites through Moses, while the Israelites were still wandering in the desert.

Neh 8: 7-10

…the Levites [the priests], helped the people to understand the [newly found law], while the people remained in their places. So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.

And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, ‘This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.’ For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, ‘Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.’

When confronted with the lost truths of their ancestors, the people were ashamed, saddened over what they had lost, and how far they had yet to go. Nehemiah and Ezra were encouragers, though. They were sponsors, if you will, spiritual guides, mentors, Moms to children who had to relearn how to live within new and life-giving possibilities. Just like the child who falls off the bike and cries the first couple times, but who is blessed with a mom or dad or says “get up, try again” even when mom and dad want to protect the child from ever being hurt, Nehemiah and Ezra encouraged their people. They took the long view: “the joy of the Lord is your strength.” The grief would, they promised, come to an end if the people kept their eyes on the prize.

People whose lives have become defined by their weaknesses, rather than their strengths- and that certainly is the case of all addicts- need encouragement. But they’ve got to be able to accept it, first- which begins in Step One- “Came to realize our lives had become unmanageable.” That realization, that admission, leads to a recognition for the need for outside help- God, Steps Two and Three- a power greater than oneself. But there’s a difference in the Twelve Steps at this point that separates the Steps from what is happening in many churches.

In the Twelve Steps, God has clothes on. God is sitting across the table from you with a cup of coffee. God has a phone number. This program recognizes that God speaks to us best, most eloquently, and most powerfully, in the language of other humans. We need someone who will listen to us who will help us keep our eyes on the prize, like Nehemiah. We need someone who knows when the lies of addiction, when the lies of our self-serving weaknesses begin to be spoken, like Mom. We need someone who has met God and knows God and will take the time to help us become properly, and messily, introduced.

One of the mistakes made during the Reformation of the Church in the 16^th century, I think, was getting rid of the confessional booth. The Reformers correctly said that faith was a matter between persons and God, and that humans did not need to rely on the intervention of a priest for their salvation.

But humans do need a community. And some of the Reformers “go it alone” attitudes led to isolation on the part of many believers. They end up screaming at God for help, feeling as though their prayers are bouncing off the ceiling, when in fact they are simply missing the language God speaks best in- the language of other humans. We need persons around us who are willing to listen, to help, to be there when we need them.

To admit to another person, a priest who will listen, a sponsor, a spiritual guide, to admit to them the exact nature of our wrongs, is the beginning of a loooong process. It doesn’t happen in an evening. It’s a process that will be marked by anger, sadness, and the remembrance of things we hoped we would never have to think about again. But one of the mistakes we make as humans is to think we have put bad stuff behind us when, in fact, all it takes is a reminder of that bad stuff for it to drop from the clouds of our clouds of our past and become a full-fledged tornado, wreaking havoc in our present day lives… unless we get help, unless we are prepared for the inevitable tornado warnings and know what to do.

If we don’t change who we were that led us night after night to the bottle, if we don’t come to a new understanding of the detours and roadblocks that sent us careening off the paths of God, if we don’t reframe our old memories, then we will end up even deeper in the drowning pool of our addictions.

As the Indian in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest said, “I was no longer drinking from the bottle, the bottle was drinking from me.”

We need humans who are already firmly holding the hand of God, to hold on tightly to our own. We need people who will keep our eyes on the prize, and off of ourselves. And that’s where the rest of us come in.

People need people. God created us to be in community, and we must be available to each other. We need to be the carriers of God’s message of love, acceptance, and help to others. It’s not easy. It’s would have been no solution at all for Nehemiah to have told his people, “Let’s all be sad forever and give into the heartbreak of our history.” It would have been no solution at all for Mom to have said, “We’ll just have to buy Denny a new tom-tom.”

Paul wrote to the Galatians in chapter 6, verse 8: So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.

Working for the good of all means starting to work for the good of one. That is the highest honor given to us by God: to stand in for God when necessary, to be God to the best of our abilities when someone is reaching out for God. And Moms, as a rule, I have found, do that very well. As does the Mom of my children.

Like all of you, I am thankful for all the Moms, and all the Nehemiahs I’ve encountered along the way, because they helped me on my way. Let us go and do likewise.

Amen

“Step 3: We made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God, as we understood God.”

2007-05-05T11:02:00.001-06:00

1. We admitted we were powerless...over our dependencies- that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. We came to believe...that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. We made a decision…to turn our will and our life over to the care of God as we understood him.

We admitted we were powerless; we came to believe; we made a decision.

It is my hope that you are beginning to see, even if you have never heard the Twelve Steps talked about before, that there is a spirituality here that is embraceable by everyone. These steps are a way of growing our awareness of God, of ourselves, of our relationship to all of Creation.

The faith we have, the faith that any believer anywhere has in a power greater than themselves involves a decision. It may be an easy decision, a decision that rises from living in an environment where a loving, gracious, and good God has been taught about, thought about, and is easily perceived. I share with you the belief that the Jesus of the gospels, enables our faith to grow in such an environment. I share with you the belief that following Jesus, from the moment we decide to so, allows us to discover and begin to live in the Kingdom of God on earth. And I share with you the belief that following Jesus- following his examples, his teachings, his will- bears much more good fruit in my life and for the world- than does anything I can conjure up out of my own will. Those shared beliefs make it possible for us to act in faith, to pattern and plan our actions and our lives after someone who has shown the way, the truth, and the life.

But those shared beliefs that bring us together under this one roof this morning are not the beliefs of many people. And that makes this decision to turn one’s will and life over to God a very, very difficult one for those many people.

Let me explain that by looking at a few verses from Deuteronomy, one the books of the Law of the Hebrew Bible. It’s Deuteronomy 30: 15-20. As I read it, connect the dots in your mind as you react to these words. Think about how they make you feel toward the God who is speaking them. Moses is remembering these words of God as he remembers the covenant relationship established by God with the people of Israel who are, at this time, still wandering in the desert, but about to cross over, after forty years, into the promised Land.

15 See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16 For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.

17 But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18 I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.

19 This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20 and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

If you heard and focused on the words of “life and prosperity” being spoken, along with the promise that in choosing to love and follow God “you will live and increase, and the Lord will bless you,” then the reasons you are here today have almost surely come naturally and comfortably. You’re reasons for wanting to be here with a community you care about and that cares about you are the compelling ones which got you up on a day you could have slept in, or gone to the lake, or even headed for a mall somewhere.

I hope no one here is here based on the fear of God if you don’t show up. I hope that you heard the words that God was speaking about the destruction which comes to a people who choose to live outside these commands of God, but I hope those admonitions- those threatened trips to a heavenly woodshed out back- are not the motivating factors in your being here- in your decision to turn your will and your life over to God.

But we all know that that is the case for many people in many churches, and for many who have turned their lives over to the fear based teachings of fast-talking Svengalis and Rasputins. In other words, I pray that you are motivated more by wanting to follow Jesus, than by any fears of what might happen if you don’t follow Jesus.

The trouble is, fear is a powerful motivator, and- this is very particular to American Christianity- fear has replaced love in getting many people to church and into a relationship with God. Fear of what other people might think, fear of financial and family failure, and fear of damnation, of the eternal fire and brimstone being stoked even at this moment for all those who fail to squeeze through the oh-so-narrow gates of an angry, coercive, faraway God.

Now many people who grow up with that fear bearing down on them for the first sixteen or seventeen years of their life make a mad dash for the exit as soon as they have a set of car keys and enter into the only alternative world they can see at that point- the illusionary land of freedom where anything goes. Or, even if someone has had no religious or spiritual training at all, the alternative of a loving God, a caring Jesus, is all but invisible. The last Christians they saw on TV were those despicable members of the Westover Baptist Church of Wichita, Kansas protesting at the funeral of a soldier by holding up “God Hates Fags” posters. (By the way, those jerks from Westover Baptist have no relation whatsoever to any Baptist church you know! They are a one family, fear-based cult, but the media loves them, because they feed so many preconceptions of what Christianity is all about.)

But imagine someone coming from either of those scenarios, someone who has come to the realization that their life has become unmanageable for whatever reason, and who have tentatively begun believing that only a Power greater than themselves is ever going to get them out of the mess they are in, imagine such a person now wrestling with the decision to turn their will and their life over to the care of God. God? That angry big guy in the sky who is just waiting for me to mess up again, and who already has my name on an invitation to hell? God? That “loving” God who allowed my dad to beat my mother, that “caring” God who took away my baby brother, that God of the bullies at school, that God of the holier than thou neighbor man who made me promise never to tell anyone- that God? Get outta here!

Here’s where those four words at the end of Step Three become so important: “We made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God as we understood God.” But as important as those words are, something has had to have happened to make a new understanding, however small, possible. And that something is someone: it’s us.

It’s us, second of all, who are sitting around that God-shaped table at a Twelve Step meeting. We’ve been where that person is sitting over there, fighting through the life-saving, life-affirming, life-changing decisions and conclusions he or she has come to so far. All we can do- which is everything and the most important thing we can do, is share our stories: our stories of admitting we were powerless, of coming to believe, and of making a decision. All we can do, is offer those stories in love, in testimony, and in gratitude. All we can do is be the love that person has missed so far, at home, or in school, or at church, or in life. We can accept that person for who they are, despite what they are, maybe for the first time in that person’s life, ever. We can be welcoming like the God as we understand God is welcoming. Any one at one of those meetings is willing to be called upon in the middle of the night or day by that new decision maker for words of strength or encouragement, or even a ride home from the bar, because we know the God of second, third, fourth, and fifteenth chances.

But even before the “us” of that Twelve Step table, that person who is getting ready, getting strong enough to make the most important decision of his/her life, that person has had to encounter someone else- the first “us”- the rest of us. And that can be any of us.

There is not a person who has ever sat down for the first time at a Twelve Step table; there is not a person anywhere in the world today who has made a decision to follow God, who has not first encountered one of us. A person may claim to have been knocked off a horse on the road to Damascus, or to have had a one-on-one encounter with the Holy Spirit all by themselves, but I guarantee there was some one, some person, some one of us, that helped make that encounter possible. Some one prepared the way of the Lord, which is all that John the Baptist claimed to have done by the way. Some one had to model the grace of God to us, some one had to demonstrate to us, in a way that made us curious enough to want to know more about the one-sided love of God and God’s people for us, even us. Some one had to kick some the rocks and hurdles of fear and judgment and prejudice that clutter the way to God, out of the way. Some one had to demonstrate that the following of Jesus is a joyful, not a fearful, journey.

Only then were our own on-going encounters with God’s Holy Spirit able to begin. Only then, will anyone who needs to, find their way to a Twelve Step table and community. Only then, does the decision to be whole, for any of us, maybe for the first time ever, begin.

That’s why we must always be on, be ready, and be willing to point the way, to demonstrate God’s love for another. It may be loving someone so much that you must lock them out of the house. It may mean sitting with them during that first uncomfortable and embarrassing meeting. It may mean going to meetings all by yourself so you can learn what it is your loved one is facing. It may simply be being the only person in years who has shown the respect due a beloved child of God with a hug, or an ear, or a little time.

Hear now, finally, these words of God as spoken by the prophet Isaiah. Hear them with the fierce, unbounded desire that God has for each person who has lost their way, who has been afraid to come too close, or who is so ashamed that they feel God would want nothing to do with them. Some selected verses from Isaiah 54:

4 "Do not be afraid; you will not suffer shame.
Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated.
You will forget the shame of your youth

6 The LORD will call you back
as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit—
a wife who married young,
only to be rejected," says your God.

7 "For a brief moment I abandoned you,
but with deep compassion I will bring you back.

8 In a surge of anger
I hid my face from you for a moment,
but with everlasting kindness
I will have compassion on you,"
says the LORD your Redeemer.

That’s God the Redeemer’s final word to each person, each addict, each of us: “With everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you.” It is God’s final word that we, each of us, can know and see demonstrated in the life of Jesus. It is the word which the world, some of us more desperately than others, needs to hear. And it is through us- the first us- through our actions and words and demonstrations of God’s everlasting kindness, through which God speaks to the world today.

Next week, Steps 4 and 5:

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

This is where we must get out the acetylene torch and hack saw, and start cutting through chain links. This is where learn what Jesus meant when he said, “I have come to set the captives free.”

Bring a friend.

Amen

Step 2: We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity

2007-04-28T14:44:00.000-06:00

What separates humans from other animals and even from other early humanoid beings, is this front part of our brain, the frontal lobes. All vertebrates have them, but in other vertebrates they are much smaller. Ours in comparison are huge. They make up almost one half of our brains size.

Other parts of our brain, and their various functions, are something we share with all animals, even though our brains are of many different shapes. They work automatically. They cause us to breathe, they tell our hearts to beat, they control our metabolism, our need for sleep, our need to eat and drink. Those parts of our brain are on call, thank God, all the time. There’s no turning them on or off willingly.

We share half our brains with everything else, but we only share our developed frontal lobes with each other. They are that part of the brain which makes us, according to our definitions, human.

It is where our consciousness rises from. We can think abstractly about the world- we are not merely reacting to the sticks in our path or to the raindrops or to our instincts, like ants, who don’t have frontal lobes. And unlike dogs or birds or snakes, who do have small frontal lobes, ours have developed in ways that allow us to imagine events before they happen. And that’s the key to our human consciousness. We know, pretty well, the consequences of our actions. And that’s because of something else our frontal lobes enable us to do: remember for a long time.

Our ancestors remembered that where the little trees were growing at the edge of their camp was exactly where they had their old apple cores. Putting that memory together with the all important question, “What if..?” – two important frontal lobe functions- enabled farming to begin. And agriculture- a fairly recent event in human history- changed everything.

Those frontal lobes went into overdrive, because for the first time in maybe a million years of human history, humans no longer had to spend ¾’s of their time thinking about what they were going to eat. They had time to relax, to think, to converse, to philosophize about an endless flow of “What if’s”. They even began, and this is really recent in the history of humans, they even began to write down in an always developing language, some of the things they were thinking about and that they had discovered.

Without frontal lobes, without this uniquely developed human part of our brains, we would, if we existed at all, certainly not be here in this place today. This building would not have been able to be imagined. The lack of memory about how things in our environment interact with each other would have prevented anyone from putting stones on top of each other to build a wall, or to make paper, or to write down, of all the abstract abilities of humans, music!

We would also, without this part of our brains, have never looked beyond the food we needed right now and been able to perceive God. Nor, would we have been able to recognize and respond to the voice of God.

There is a passage in Paul’s letter to the Roman church which talks about this. Now even though the Apostle Paul didn’t know a thing about frontal lobes or brain physiology, he is writing about something here that we can understand in a new and, I think, really interesting context. (In fact, at the time Paul was writing, it was believed that our emotions and most of our thinking came out of our hearts- what this thing up here was, was still something of a mystery.)

Paul was writing to people about the people they lived among in Rome, who didn’t acknowledge or understand God, or who had rejected God. He’s kind of harsh on them, but that’s the way Paul was. His long term memory was filled with memories of jail cells and whippings. Those memories influenced his present thinking, whether he was aware of that or not. Nonetheless, he was a very intelligent and learned man, and great truths emerge from his writing. Romans 1, verse 19:

¹⁹For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; ²¹for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.”

Humans have, Paul is saying, the ability to see beyond what is there in front of them. And if they fail to see the obvious God who is there, as Paul says it’s possible for anyone to see God, they “become futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds are darkened.”

Futile thinking is a lot like the powerlessness that I was talking about last week in Step 1 of the 12 Steps: “We admitted that we were powerless over our dependencies..” Anyone who is focusing inward, toward themselves and themselves only, will end up with a life that becomes unmanageable. Humans need reasons to exist that are larger than themselves. They need to be able to imagine possibilities, to plan, to dream; humans need, and this is what the frontal lobes and God gives us that makes us human, humans need, in order to thrive, the ability to hope.

The addict is without hope. Be it alcohol, drugs, or anything else that stands between humans and their God-given possibilities, hope is sacrificed on the altar of immediate gratification. Self gratification can be- let’s not lie about it- self gratification can be loads o’ fun the first time, or for the first few days, or even for years. I am told that the very first puff of heavy metal laden methamphetamine smoke is almost glorious in its power, as it drains away adrenaline and dopamine reserves that have taken a lifetime to build up. That ‘glory’ will never be experienced again- there are no more reserves to draw upon- but the addict will pursue that false hope for the rest of their short lives.

The drunk begins to sweat and worry about 6:00 on Saturday evening if there is nothing in the house to drink tomorrow. (Liquor stores close early Saturday night and are not open on Sundays.) The bulimic will look forward to those few minutes alone each day when she, or he, can stuff themselves full with fleeting happiness and futile love from the refrigerator or Taco Bell. The shopaholic will hide credit cards, order new ones, and juggle them all for the false sense of immediate power and joyless gratification of buying another pair of shoes, another car, or a new whatever it is that Apple or Microsoft or Abercombie and Fitch says to buy, which will finally make them whole and happy and satisfied.

But the darkness descends. It is inevitable. The need for real joy, the need for happiness, the need for true love- the need for hope, those needs are as hard-wired into our God-imaged consciousness as are the needs we don’t have control over, like breathing. The day inevitably comes when the false light of perversions, or addictions, or dependencies, burns out. The frontal lobes are almost non-functioning at this point, clouded over by the reptilian part of our brain which screams “more more more” of whatever we have been feeding our souls. God’s doorway into the Kingdom of God, has become a static-filled, unreceptive squawk box, full of nothing more than a lot of false information put there by ourselves or accepted by us from others.

It is the darkness of meaninglessness, the joylessness of futility, and there is nothing more awful. Some people, too many people, have no one at that point to reach out to, or have nobody- even more tragically- reaching out to them. And those saddest of human stories ensue.

For the fortunate ones, and there are many of us, for the fortunate ones there are those persons nearby who have not given up on us, moms and dads and grandparents who have never stopped praying for us, friends who able to see beyond the mess we are, who are able, even when we can no longer do it ourselves, to hold onto hope for us.

That hope of others can also be read about. It may be a brochure picked up months ago and stuck on top of the refrigerator- “I’ll get around to reading it someday.” A friend of mine from high school told me that those were her exact words one day eleven years ago. Then one day ten years ago, waking up one morning with someone she didn’t know, again, she went to that little dust covered brochure and read, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol..” And Patty began, again, that morning, despite a horrible hangover, to be born again.

That’s how it works. When we begin to take our own egos out of the equation, the answers will begin, if we let them. Listen to this remarkable little episode written about by the prophet Daniel about 2500 years ago. It’s Daniel 9, beginning at verse 19. He was pleading to God, in a prayer for himself and his people. He had run out of options, as had the nation.

“Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, listen and act and do not delay! For your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people bear your name!”

It’s a demand. He’s pleading, he’s desperate. Here’s what happened, verse 20:

“While I was speaking, and was praying and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the Lord my God on behalf of the holy mountain of my God— ²¹while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen before in a vision, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice. ²²He came and said to me, ‘Daniel, I have now come out to give you wisdom and understanding. ²³At the beginning of your supplications a word went out, and I have come to declare it, for you are greatly beloved.”

At the moment Daniel began to speak, a word went out in the heavens, and Gabriel, messenger of God, was on his way to Daniel. At the moment we are able to say the words of Step Two, however garbled and confused and even silly they may seem, God hears.

“We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

God hears, and Gabriel is on his way. God hears, and Jesus, who’s been knocking at the door for years, has an opportunity to enter in. That’s why, at an AA meeting, surprisingly enough to many people, that’s why there is always room for the drunk who wanders in. A person doesn’t have to be sober to call out in desperation- most of them, in fact, are not. But room is made for even the sick drunk who can barely stand up, because everyone else there knows that a power greater than that drunk, greater than any of them, is on the way. And because of that power, that power that has made, kept, and is keeping them sober, they’ve learned something about God’s love for the least of these, that many people have missed.

For the person who can say that there is a power greater than themselves, even if hey know nothing about the name, the personality, or the history of that power, for the person who can admit that they can no longer manage being the King or Queen of their own lives, for the self-centered person who is able, even for a moment to step out of the spotlight of their terminal unique-ism, for that person, new birth begins. And God is on the way to assist in the delivery.

The sun has begun to just peep over the eastern horizons, a sunrise has just begun. The opening chords of a great symphony, have just sounded. A single swipe of oil paint has just been brushed over what will become an ageless masterpiece. “Behold!” Paul would later write, “all things have become new!”

It is good to mark such a time and place with a symbolic act, so that we remember (and we will need to remember in the days and years ahead), so that we will remember the where, when, how, and why of everything becoming new with us. With one man I was with, it was a joyful emptying of probably $500 worth of liquor from the liquor cabinet which had become a household altar. Another man sat in the parking lot of the church in Dallas and smashed with a hammer a very large collection of porno tapes. Others have cut up all the credit cards except one for emergencies which they then freeze inside a block of ice, which gives them time think should that thing they suddenly “really need” rear its head again.

For me, it was symbolically, prayerfully, with witnesses, handing over to Jesus the last and final six-pack. If I want another one- ever- I’ll have to wrestle it from Jesus’ arms to have it. And I’m not willing to do that.

Now, is all over? Is it a downhill slide at this point into sobriety and wholeness from this point on? There are ten more steps; the answer is no, sobriety has just begun. The important thing though, is that is has begun!

The body will scream for more. The soul will ache with a parched pulse for more of whatever it is that closed down the receptors of the brain to the breath of God. The lies we told ourselves- “I can handle it”, “Just one won’t hurt”, and “I’ll start again tomorrow” will eloquently and seductively begin their song, and dance, again and again. The words, “Unmanageable” , “Came to believe”, and “restored sanity” are not one time spoken events. They need to be repeated daily sometimes, affirmed hourly some days, or breathed constantly to remind ourselves that “God is here, we are not alone, thanks be to God.”

And, finally, what is that sanity to which we hope to be restored? It is that full functioning of those frontal lobes which define our humanity. It is that renewed capacity to see beyond ourselves- to know that we are a part of a community, citizens of the Kingdom of God which we are getting to know better and better. It is the ability to plan beyond the next hour or the next day, it is the renewed ability to imagine our lives in the colors and sounds of continuing Creation, it is the ability to know, as Gabriel told Daniel, that we are greatly beloved.

It is the ability to hope.

Amen

Step One: We admitted we were powerless over ourselves- Hitting Bottom

2007-04-28T14:38:00.000-06:00

Two biblical incidents, two different scenarios, two different sets of characters, separated by two thousand years:

The first comes from the beginnings of the story of the Exodus. God is speaking to Moses, getting Moses ready for the role he will play:

Exodus 3: 7-12: Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, ⁸and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey…⁹The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. ¹⁰So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’ ¹¹But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ ¹²He said, ‘I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.’

The second incident is from the New Testament. Matthew 8: 5-13: When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, appealing to him ⁶and saying, ‘Lord, my servant is lying at home paralysed, in terrible distress.’ ⁷And Jesus said to him, ‘I will come and cure him.’ ⁸The centurion answered, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed. ⁹For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, “Go”, and he goes, and to another, “Come”, and he comes, and to my slave, “Do this”, and the slave does it.’ ¹⁰When Jesus heard him, he was amazed and said to those who followed him, ‘Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.

As Christians, these are two of our sacred stories. These are two of the stories that we’ve allowed to speak to us across the centuries. A sacred story is not sacred just because it comes from the Bible, but a story is sacred because it speaks to us at our deepest core; it sounds a chord within us. A sacred story can set to life a melody within our beings that allows us to dance in the steps of the Creator.

What do these stories have in common? In both cases, someone had come to end of their personal capacity to cope. They no longer had it in themselves to fix what was wrong in their lives. They had run out of all human resources. They had hit bottom. After many years of slavery, the Israelites in Egypt had lost hope. The Roman centurion was helpless in the face of his beloved servant’s illness. The Israelites cried out to a god they knew very little about after generations of living in Egypt. The Roman centurion went to a wandering Jewish teacher, about whom he had heard, but about whom he knew very little else.

Both the Israelites and the centurion were desperate. But desperation alone has never fixed anything. Both took the next step, the first step, the most difficult step of all and said, in effect, “I need your help.” Both had to reach outside of themselves and admit to another their own lack of resources. They had to drop their pride, their fears of what others would think about them; they had to admit their weakness, their impotency. They had to admit, because there was no further place to fall, that they were at the bottom of their lives and their hopes; they had nowhere else to go.

The words, “I need help” are the most difficult words that most people can say. Pride blocks those words in our throats; none of us wants to admit our dependency on others. Or our personal failures. The first human story in the Bible, the story of Adam and Eve, is a story about each blaming the other, each refusing to take personal responsibility for the misbehavior in which they had been caught. Both refused to say, “I screwed up. I failed. I’m a mess.”

Pride is the cancer at the center of almost every human problem. Because of pride, we strap masks of competency and strength over our faces so we think that the people around us will think that we’re OK, we’re fine, we’re cool, “couldn’t be better!”

Which makes Step One of the Twelve Steps the most difficult one. Here’s how it was originally written by the alcoholics were getting sober:

“We admitted to ourselves that we were powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable.”

One of those drunks that formulated that statement- because he lived that Step- was a successful surgeon, Dr. Bob. The other was a successful insurance salesman- Bill W. For years, both beginning in college, their lives had been defined by alcohol. It had been a problem, many, many, many times for each of them in different ways. But they would choose, on their own, to not drink for a day or two, even a week or two on occasion. Thus, for years, they fooled themselves; they were able to believe, to convince themselves, that they chose to drink, and they, of their own volition and strength, could choose not to drink.

But Dr. Bob came to a point where he could o longer operate without a nurse giving him drinks of beer to calm his shaking hands. Bill W. came to a point where he was, he knew, going to lose Mrs. W and his family. They met each other at Akron General Hospital, coincidentally some might say, and they began a conversation that continues around the world in hundreds of cities and thousands of meeting rooms, to this very day.

And it was a conversation based on helplessness. They had each tried and tried and tried on their own to stop drinking, but were unable, by themselves, to stop. The Egyptian’s slaves- the Israelites- had lived for generations with the hope that things would somehow get better, but there was always another pyramid to be built, and finally, they gave up that foolish hope. The centurion could command his soldiers and slaves with a single word, but he had no authority, no command whatsoever over the disease of his servant.

The cries heard by Dr. Bob and Bill W., each to the other; the cries heard by God of the Israelites; and the cries heard by Jesus of the centurion, all of these cries were born from the forlorn, lonely, and brutal bottom of these peoples’ lives. And that’s the lesson today, and it’s two-fold: one of those lessons is about helping others to reach the bottom of their lives and the other is about calling out for help ourselves, when we need it.

First, why would we ever want to help another hit the bottom of their existence? Why would we want to see such a terrible thing happen? Here we must discuss what has come to be known as tough love. Unfortunately, more and more people, even here in this town, are being forced to confront it, know about, and act on it. Methamphetamines have made this formerly unknown part of acting love more and more necessary to more and more people. Addiction to any substance will eventually lead to this point, but meth has sped the whole process up exponentially, so the moment a problem is suspected is the moment tough love must be begun. And it will be the second most difficult thing loved ones and friends of the addicted will ever have to go through. The worst thing, of course, is what happens if nothing is done, and that is death.

As long as the meth user, and eventually the alcoholic, the pain-killer addict, or other substance abuser, has access to a warm bed at your house, your checking account, your car, and your enablement, he/she hasn’t hit bottom. And until he/she does hit bottom- that’s the way it works and has worked for 4000 years now- until they hit that bottom where there are no more of their or your resources to draw on, then they have not hit the bottom they must hit in order to cry out for help. As long as there is an illusion existing in their minds that there is a place to sleep, 25 bucks to be gotten, or something they can steal and sell, they are maintaining an illusion of control. And it’s that illusion which will, in the case of meth, kill them. Unless we can help them find whatever there bottom is, they will die.

Tough love is risky, because all we’re doing is increasing the chances that they will live; there are no guarantees. And it will almost always get worse before it gets better. For some parents, and I’ve talked about I right here in town, the goal must be rehab. But if the kid is over 18, that’s not an easy option. That’s when we do what is necessary, and this sounds horribly heartless I know, but when rehab is not possible, then county jail is the next best place. County jails have saved countless lives in the last ten years of the methamphetamine plague, because for many middle class people, that is about as bad as they could ever imagine it getting. County jail at least gives persons the opportunity to sober up, learn a little bit about addiction, and, hopefully- and this is the point- cry out. For the meth addict, there are only two other opportunities to stop- state prison and the funeral home.

I will say this again, if you know of a family facing this kind of crisis, there are people here in town, available anytime, to encourage, care for, and walk them through this tough love process. My number, for one, is on the back of every bulletin, and I’ll help make those kinds of arrangements. And there are others.

Alcohol, even heroin, does not always need that kind of drastic action, but often it does. Those addictions, too, will always end in the early deaths of those addicted or of others. The only saving grace of those problems is that the bottom is often, not always but often, a few steps up from county jail. The unmanageability of one’s life, the inability to take control over something one wants to have control over, is the realized bottom which a person must come to. That can happen in the gutter, in jail, in a rehab center, or even in the living room of one’s own home. Thank God, it can happen in the living room of one’s own home. Confrontation may be enough to start the addict down the road to recovery. Maybe, hopefully. Confrontation takes courage too, of course, lots of it, maybe even a couple years of it. But confrontation is often the very best way possible of saying, “I love you.”

The other lesson to be learned from Dr. Bob and Bill W, from the Israelite slaves, and from the Roman centurion, is about our own need for help. Not just help with addictions. And I want to emphasize again, that’s not what this series on the Twelve Steps is only about. This is about addictions and about becoming better disciples, better followers of Jesus Christ, and more joy-filled, happy humans.

Our own need for help, from God, from others, also involves dropping the mask of invulnerability. It also, to a greater or lesser extent, but no less difficult ways, involves admitting, out loud, to ourselves, that we need help. Just a couple weeks ago, my car stopped running out at the dam one night where we’d taken the dogs to walk. Stick the key in, turn the ignition and that sickening sound of…click, click, nothing. Well, maybe if I turn it this way, or this way, it’s not like there are a lot of options. Maybe if I speak to the key gently, or to the battery harshly. Maybe if I put up the hood, wiggle the wires, look real hard at it in the dark. Maybe. Nope, still nothing.

So, in a mini-process of admitting to myself that I was powerless over my car, and that my life, and that the lives of my wife and the two dogs, for these moments, had become unmanageable, we called friends to help us. They had something we needed- a vehicle that ran to get us out of there. And we were pretty sure that that they had the willingness to help us in our powerlessness.

Not a big deal now, in retrospect. The car got towed the next day, fixed, and got me here this morning. The key to its not being a big deal though, is that we gave up, made the call for help and most importantly, were responded to by people willing, even anxious to help.

Now, as I think back, and I invite you to think back, too, about circumstances you have faced, whenever I’ve been in trouble and asked for help, I’ve gotten it. Maybe not on the first cry, but soon thereafter. “Mommy!” we learn early on to cry out easily when we’ve fallen off our bike, and we knew she’d come running. Later on, after years and layers of pride have settled on our thick hides and thickening hearts, it’s not so easy. I saw a lady get hit by a car in downtown Dallas years ago. Right in front of me. I ran out to her, and she immediately started apologizing for being a bother. 30 seconds earlier she was spinning in the air, and now she was apologizing for needing help. That’s pride. But it’s exactly the same kind of pride- a misbegotten, kind of silly self-love- that has stopped me about ten thousand times from asking for help when I needed it. Or feeling badly when I was forced to.

It’s easier to cry out when we are hurting physically. 9-1-1: that’s what it’s there for. But emotionally and spiritually I’ve needed help many times, too, and tried to suck it up, go it alone, be a man..and accomplished nothing more than strapping the mask of “Nothing Wrong” around myself even more tightly than it had been. And that mask- like meth, or alcohol, or any other destructive fix, can kill us, too. It suffocates us slowly, our own pride asphyxiates us over years. Our fears of needing help, of admitting our weakness, or of expressing needs which we can no longer conjure up solutions for, can choke the happiness from life. It can take the gifts of God’s grace in our lives and turn them mundane. Our pride can make the sacred into something profane, our blessings into joyless desires for more of them.

It’s been said that the three hardest words to say to another person are, “I, love, you.” But the three hardest words we have to say to ourselves are “I, need, help.”

They are hard words to say, but remember the Israelites in the mud pits of Egypt. When they finally said “Help!” they were heard. Remember the Roman centurion, he was heard, too. Think even of some poor slob in his living room one day, 23 years ago, who’d hit that bottom- and would hit bottom again a few more times. Every time he’s hollered help, he’s gotten it.

Psalm 46:1: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in times of trouble." As are the people of God. But that help begins here, for each of us, by taking off the mask, and admitting to ourselves that we need that help.

Next week, Step Two: “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” All of the Steps are liberating, but not all of them are fun. This one can be fun.

Be here, bring a friend.

Amen.

Born Again (and again and again and again): an introduction to 12 Step spirituality

2007-04-17T16:10:00.001-06:00

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.”

Those are the first words of Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount. They are the only words possible for this the beginning of this series, and I’ll spend the next ten weeks or so telling you why.

The Twelve Steps are a program put together initially by two men, Bill W., an insurance salesman, and Dr. Bob, a surgeon, in their founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, in the 1930’s. That program has saved the lives of thousands and thousands of persons since that time, and remains relatively unchanged since its earliest beginnings.

But this will not be a series about alcoholism, although a drunk or two may show up in a story from time to time. It will not be a series about overeating, narcotics, sexual misbehavior, gambling, or even religious addictions, even though some of those persons, too, might have a word or two with us.

This is will be a series about the poor in spirit, and finding the Kingdom of God, which, Jesus also said, is already right there in each of them.

Now, the challenge for me is to transform a series about “them”- those people- into a series that is meaningful to us- all of us, the rest of us. My challenge, our challenge, is to discover what it is that all humans share with each other, and what all humans share with Jesus, that caused him to point to those people at the edges of society, at the furthermost edges of hearts, and say “there I am.”

I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. (Matthew 25: 35, 36)

You’ve no doubt realized by now that those are among the ten or so verses I could talk about every week. And that is so because they speak most loudly and clearly to me about both the mystery of Jesus and the practicality of following him. People in need, according to those words, are the people from whom we can learn the most about Jesus, by being with them, and from whom we can learn about the Kingdom of God in each of us, by serving them.

Which brings us back to “them” and “us.” Who are those people in need? Who was Jesus talking about- those people “poor in spirit?”

We understand, at least intellectually- we say the words from time to time- that “…God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:17) Who did Jesus come to save? Who was it that he came to repair the separation for, between them and God?

Yes, indeed, it was those drunks, those addicts, those religious crazies, all of those who try to numb the pain of separation from God or others through some initially satisfying but ultimately destructive behavior. And indeed it was all of those who, grasping at the brass rings of earthly pleasures, sought to make themselves more powerful, more beautiful, more fun, more happy, but who found themselves gaining nothing but the need for more of whatever it was that they thought would make everything better.

That’s “them”: those guys.

But, have you ever been hungry or thirsty, maybe not for water or food, but for companionship, respect, love? Have you ever felt left out, in a prison of lost opportunities and personal regrets? Have you ever been the stranger, the new guy, the one passed over for a job you deserved, the one who got bullied, the one who never felt quite good enough, or smart enough, or worthy enough for what everyone else seemed to have? Or the one who felt all alone, even in a crowd?

For the fortunate ones among us, those are fleeting moments, common feelings we all share at crucial points in our lives. But for others of us- not just them, but us- for others of us those feelings become a definition of who we are. We learn to live with and even hide those feelings that grind at us in the night, that affect our decisions throughout the day, and that we even pass on to our children with about as much effort as it takes to pass a plate at the dinner table.

When we get trapped that way within our own selves, it is easy to feel separate from God, from the rhythms and the symphonies of life. We may not rush for the bottle, or a baggie filled with crystallized hope, but there are dozens of other ways we tend to shield ourselves from the truths we don’t want to face. “I have a bad temper,” we might say, somehow blaming our anger on our DNA. Or, “I’m just not very lucky”, which is a whole lot easier than admitting, “I’m afraid to try.” We may find ourselves looking out on the world through the blue lenses of regret about the past, or the red lenses of anxiety about the future. Some people find themselves almost immune from the enjoyment of today- these moments- as they nostalgically ruminate endlessly over some vague “good old days” or as they wait for, hope for, wish for some magic that will miraculously fix things in the future.

Those are all things that, left unsaid, or not confronted, build up over time into half-lives: lives lived outside the joy and the peace that God has placed within us, that God has for us within the Kingdom of heaven that is ours right now, Jesus said.

The Twelve Steps of Recovery offer anyone who enters into them, the chance, the opportunity, the assurance of being better than they were before entering into them, because they are about recovering the relationship with God that Jesus has demonstrated is possible for any human to have. It is not about being drunk and getting sober; it is not about being addicted and getting clean. It is about being broken and getting fixed- not with the tools we’ve tried and failed with in the past, but with the love and intentions of God, and because of the sacrifice and example of Jesus Christ.

Each week, we will look at one or sometimes two of the Twelve Steps. I’ll talk about their biblical counterparts and their spiritual truths. And you will, I hope, be able to see clearly, maybe even in a way that affects you personally, why I say it is possible, maybe even necessary, to be born again, and again, and again and again and again.

The Twelve Steps are about vulnerability- openness to God and with each other. They are about honesty, with ourselves and one another. They are about forgiveness, maybe above all about forgiveness- the letting go of anger and blame we hold for ourselves and others. They are about the miraculous turning of fear into love and then, finally, about being willing, willing and wanting, to share that love with others.

In Psalm 139, the psalmist wrote a powerful statement about God’s presence:

¹O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
²You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
³You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
⁴Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
⁵You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
⁶Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.

No matter what our concept of God is- we are inside that God. To try to define ourselves outside the parameters of what the natural forces of the universe are, is a uniquely human and silly endeavor. In fact, most addicts, and many of the rest of us are engaged in a way of behaving and thinking that says we are “different, special, and have different needs.” The best phrase I’ve ever heard to describe this is terminal uniqueism. People are dying- killing themselves- because they feel so unique, so different, so left out, or so special, that nothing can help them. “Nobody understands me” is their war cry as they refuse to surrender to the God who loves them.

⁷Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
⁸If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
⁹If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
¹⁰even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
¹¹If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night’,
¹²even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

The Spirit of God blows through time. It is God’s breath, God’s intentions for all of Creation as evidenced in the harmonies and rhythms of Creation. When we try, and my oh my how some of us have tried, to step outside and away from that Spirit of God, we suffer. When we place ourselves with those harmonies and rhythms, when we allow God and those who care for us to help us escape our terminal uniqueism, we can know peace. And beyond peace, joy. We can begin to know that Kingdom of God is not some far away place that we might, if we’re good, get to enter when we die; the Kingdom of God is not a reward deserved by someone else, or something that we merely read about, or a place that we can hold over someone’s head like a weapon. Blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is- is is is is is- the Kingdom of God, right here, right now. The terminally unique don’t see that though. It is the tragedy, suffered by so many people, of lives half-lived. Lives of waiting to die. Lives blurred by alcohol, or drugs, or fear.

¹³For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.

The metaphors of God’s presence in our lives, in all of Creation, are perfect here. We are woven together in our mother’s womb and even before that, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Sounds like an evolutionary statement to me- but no matter how one reads it, it says there is way, a truth, a commonality that runs through all of humanity. We share our beginnings, we share the imprimatur of God on our souls, we share the ability to align or re-align ourselves in the wind, the Spirit of God. We share the ability to follow Jesus, to take him at his word, and to realize and let loose the Kingdom of God that is within us.

Let me summarize the rest of Psalm 139 as I read it and as I have allowed it to shape and bend my own thinking: God knows me- God knows my shortcomings, my failures, my betrayals, my mistakes. God knows all that stuff about me that ha separated from the Spirit of God so so so many times in the past and probably will again. God knows me, but loves me anyway.

As we gather around these 12 Steps over the next several months, my words may cause, from time to time, the Spirit of God to tweak a memory, or a feeling, or a new discovery about yourself that you aren’t too happy about, maybe even ashamed of. So hang on to what I’ve just said- God loves you anyway. There’s nothing any of us can do to stop that love, either. Even those in the throes of dying from their terminal uniqueism are loved, known by God, loved by God, as the persons God intended them to be.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.

Next week, Step One, the first and most difficult step: “We admitted we were powerless over ourselves--that our lives had become unmanageable.”

Be here, bring a friend.

Amen

The Journey to Easter: One Last Story

2007-03-26T14:38:00.000-06:00

It’s the final journey to Jerusalem. There’s not much more time left for teaching. No more days left for walking into the hills, or beside the sea. The time is running out. What has begun happening now is what Jesus has been expecting would happen.

He’s here in the temple with some of his disciples and other people who have come to hear him. The people who are following Jesus around now are of serious concern to the temple priests. Those followers are, after all, seated in front of Jesus, not in front of them. They’re listening to this upstart rabbi from out in the sticks, not them. The priests are about to lose the people, and that means nothing but trouble with a capital T. Rome depends on the priests and scribes and elders to maintain calm among the Jewish people. If things get out of hand it will be the priests themselves who will be called before Pilate, the emperor’s representative, to explain what has happened. The priests have seen the dozens of crosses on the hill just outside the city, and they have experienced the Romans unhesitating ability to use those crosses to put their enemies out of circulation.

No, no, no, no..they must take control from this trash-talking preacher!

“By what authority are you doing these things?” one of the priests shouts at Jesus, interrupting him. “Who gave you this authority?” ( Luke 20:2)

They’re trying to trap Jesus now by making him answer in a way that will get him indicted by the civil authorities. That way, their hands will be clean when the Romans come to take him away. But Jesus, being Jesus, doesn’t answer them, he returns the volley, and asks them a question which will get them in trouble with the people no matter how they answer. It’s a trick question, a very smart question, and you can read it in verse 3 if you’d like, but I want to stop right here and point out something about the way Jesus taught people- teaches us- about the Kingdom of God.

When Jesus teaches, he never goes to the blackboard. He never turns on a Powerpoint presentation or starts handing out topical outlines for the day. He is always operating from the presumption, the knowledge, that the important answers, the stuff we need to know about, is already in us. On another occasion, when confronted by the Pharisees and priests, he told them to stop thinking about when and how where the Kingdom of God would come: “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation,” Jesus told them, “the kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 17: 21)

I don’t think I personally can overemphasize this enough. Jesus didn’t teach with answers, he taught with questions, and as we’ll see again in a moment, stories. He asked questions and told stories because of the respect he had for the people who were listening to him. Jesus knew the yarn God had used to knit people together in their mother’s wombs. He knew the Image of God that was imprinted on each and every person. All that Godstuff in a person was still there even if it had been buried for years under the cultural and religious debris of life, and what Jesus did better than any teacher before or since was help people to rediscover the God in them, on their own.

The Kingdom of God is within you, he told them, and then he began to help them find it again. By doing it this way, Jesus wasn’t always successful. Some people wouldn’t get the point of his stories- “So, what are you saying, Jesus- that we should all join the Church of the Good Samaritan?” Not everyone gets the point, or they are too uncomfortable with the answer that comes bubbling to the surface of their hearts when confronted with one of Jesus’ pointed questions. But for those who do get it- for those who have ears to ears, as Jesus said over and over again- for those people the world becomes different. The world changes forever. The Kingdom of God begins slowly leaking into their worldview and, if they allow it to, it becomes a thunderstorm that never stops.

Back to today’s story. Jesus has effectively, for the moment, hushed the priests who are interrupting him. I can imagine him shifting his eyes from them, and back to the people who are feeling a little bit uncomfortable right now, a little bit scared. Jesus has just shut down the priests who hold a great deal of real power over the people, and they know those priests right now are most likely in the process of taking names. I can imagine, easily, Jesus giving the crowd a quick wink at this point. Verse 9:

He went on to tell the people this parable: "A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. 10 At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 11 He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. 12 He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out.

Stop. This parable, this story, is different from any Jesus has told before. This is the last story he would tell before the events of the last week of his human life would begin the next day. This was the Saturday before Palm Sunday. Everything he teaches from this point on will told only to the disciples. This is the final story he has for the people. And while he speaking it into the ears of the people, he is aiming it at the hearts of the Pharisees and priests who are still listening, even though they are pretending not to.

He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out. Verse 13 "Then the owner of the vineyard said, 'What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.'

14 "But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. 'This is the heir,' they said. 'Let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' 15 So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

"What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? 16 He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others."

When the people heard this, they said, "May this never be!"

Most of the people are getting most of this story. They’re putting 2 and 2 together quickly. God had sent the prophets over and over again to the vineyards of Israel but just like the servants in the story, the prophets had literally been beaten and treated shamefully by the people- the sharecroppers of the vineyard. As a result of those rejections, the people of Israel had been kicked out of their homeland. That fear of being sent from their homeland is where the priests and Pharisees had stepped in. When people, then and now, are afraid, they are willing to hand over the control of their lives to others claiming authority.

But what about this “son of the vineyard’s owner”? Who’s that? This is the first and last parable Jesus told in which one of the main characters of the story was himself. How many mouths dropped open that day as that realization began to dawn?

Certainly not all of them, because there is still enough fear in the room for some of the people to protest the ending of this story. “May this never be!” they argued, I’m guessing with a sidelong glance back at the priests who were by now seething.

So Jesus brings in some supporting data from the Psalms. He uses the priest’s precious scriptures to write up a writ of indictment against them:

Verse 17. Jesus looked directly at them and asked, "Then what is the meaning of that which is written:

"'The stone the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone'?

18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed."

19 The teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. But they were afraid of the people.

They were afraid of the people. Fear begets fear begets fear. What the blackboard and Powerpoint teachers of the law did at this point was to stomp out of the room in a flurry of huffiness and insult. And we know from what follows that they hid out from the people for the next several days and began sending spies to gather information about Jesus which they could go the Roman authorities with. In fact, that the priests even found a special spy named Judas, inside Jesus’ inner circle.

Jesus could have jumped all over the priests and Pharisees, got the crowd all stirred up, and begun right here the kind of insurrection that Judas and others were hoping he would. Instead, he told a story. It was a story designed to do exactly what all the other stories Jesus told had been designed to do- cause the Kingdom of God to come to the surface in those who were hearing it.

And it did in two ways. For those with ears to hear and hearts to be changed, they had just heard Jesus clearly identify himself as the son of the vineyard owner, the son of God, the cornerstone- referred to in the Psalms. They would be among the few who would know what was really happening on that cross the following Friday.

Others with ears to hear, but hearts unwilling to change- the teachers of the law- had the Kingdom of God stimulated in them that day too, but for those with a vested interest in the status quo, the Kingdom of God is worse than a salmonella stomache ache.

As with all of Jesus’ parables, there was the local and immediate meaning and a larger, universal, and eternal meaning. This parable meant something specific to those in front of Jesus that day. But what does it mean to those of us with Jesus this day?

At this point I could give you a 1, 2, 3 list of major points and we’d remember them all about as long as it takes to hit the sidewalk just outside. Or, I can try to do what Jesus did and tell you a story:

Once upon a time there was a woman who raised roses. She had tea roses in the window boxes, antique roses in the backyard, and hybrid roses of all colors tastefully planted throughout her front landscape. She worked hard to grow them; she had special soil and fertilizer delivered from the gardening center, hovered nearby while her yard man spread the soil and fertilizer, and personally checked the Rainbird water controls daily.

It was her greatest desire to win “Best of Show” at the Rose Nationals each year and she’d come close in the past. Each September, on the day before the Rose Show was to begin, she would put on her L.L.Bean muckaboots, her Abercombrie and Fitch garden apron, and with her Swedish steel scissors, imported from the Dieter-Schmidt Tool Craft Center in Dresden, Germany, proceed into her gardens with a Styrofoam encased vase, a stainless steel metric ruler, and high hopes. Checking each rose for size, petal count, and swirl balance, she would choose five of the very best roses to enter into that year’s contest.

She stressed all of that night and throughout the following day as she and her husband drove to the show. Arriving hours before the judging would begin, she spread her fine Irish linen tablecloth, chose five of the seven cut glass antique rose vases she’d brought along, fretted and fussed over the perfect angular placement of each rose and each vase, brushed each them carefully with a tiny ultra-fine sable brush, and misted each of them with a blend of water and sucrose so that precisely placed drops would enhance each petals beauty.

Some years she had won First Place. Many years she had won 2d or 3^rd place. And each year’s failures- and that’s all they are if you don’t win Best of Show- each year’s failures would be unceremoniously dug up by the yard man and thrown in the front yard dumpster.

This year, though, would be different. The woman had worked throughout the winter, spring, and summer, grafting, transplanting, and daily fussing over a hybrid rose born of two of the antique roses from the backyard. The Queen Victoria Pink and the Grover Cleveland Yellow would she knew, produce a one-of-a- kind peach colored beauty come September and indeed it did.

It was the Best of Show that year and the woman was the talk of Rose Societies everywhere. When it came time to name the rose, she named it the Peachy Elizabeth Carson Shaw, which was, of course, her own name.

Still beaming with the pride that only a Best of Show award can bring, Elizabeth, upon arriving home, made a beeline for her closest neighbors, so she could share with them the pictures and the trophy she had won, all by herself.

In the neighbor’s front yard, she noticed that the neighbor’s 6 year old granddaughter, come for a visit, was lying on her elbows in the front yard staring intently at some weed there. “What on earth are you doing, honey?” Elizabeth asked the little girl, but then the neighbor’s door opened and Elizabeth didn’t have time to wait for an answer

Melanie- that was the little girl’s name- Melanie didn’t want to answer anyway. She didn’t want to scare away the little white butterfly which had landed on the yellow, end-of-summer dandelion in front of her. She tried to count the petals but forgot she was counting when she saw that each petal looked the same but was just a little bit different. Then she saw the butterfly’s long tongue dipping into the dandelion, and then..and then, she thought she saw the butterfly’s little black marble eyes move in her direction!

And it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen and she would never forget it. Twenty-seven years later, in fact, she took her own three children into the backyard one September afternoon to see if they could find dandelion’s of their own, and maybe even have their own breath taken away by a little white butterfly’s friendly greetings.

Let anyone with ears, hear.

Amen

Islam..WWJD?

2007-03-07T07:52:00.000-06:00

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of it's furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

--Jalaluddin Rumi

Next week, we will begin a “proper” series of Lenten messages leading to Easter on April 8. I promise.

But there is one more, very important subject to talk about before I finish this month’s series on “controversial” topics; and that topic is Islam. And I’ve chosen to study Islam this week by seeking an answer to the dangerous question, “What Would Jesus Do?”

I call that a dangerous question because there is never a clear answer. Jesus didn’t teach in clear, formulated answers. He taught in parables-stories- and by example. And those ways of teaching led to problems then, even as they continue to lead to problems now. Here’s an example: Luke 22: 36. It is the verse, taken out of its context, which is most often used in connection with present day discussions of Islam:

It was spoken by Jesus to his disciples just after the Last Supper in the Upper Room, and immediately after telling Peter that Peter would betray him. It was a warning- Jesus knew that for the next several days, after his death, the disciples would be in a fair amount of danger. Here’s what he said:

Verse 36: “He said to them, But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.”

It’s one of the great mystery verses of the New Testament, because there is no evidence anywhere in any of the gospels, or in Acts, or in any of the epistles that a single disciple bought a sword, nor that any of them ever used one in their own defense. It goes against everything demonstrated by him as Jesus was being crucified. Despite that, though, it is a verse which has been used, over and over again to justify aggression on the part of Christians.

And that’s the trouble with the question, “What would Jesus do?” It is possible to dig around and find an easy answer. But rarely is the easy answer the right answer. Beware of easy answers!

So here’s the question for this morning: What should we as Christians, think or do about Islam? And I’ll let you decide whether my answer is the easy answer or the right answer, or..none of the above.

First, There were no Muslims in first century Palestine. But there were Samaritans and they were a pretty interesting group of people: They believed that the Jews were wrong about almost everything. They believed there had only been one true prophet- Moses- and that all the rest of the Jewish prophets were false prophets. They had their own version of the Torah- Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy- and it was written very differently from the Jewish Torah. They believed the true Holy Mountain was not Mt. Sinai in the South, but Mt. Horeb, in the North, where they lived. They believed their priests were the only true priests.

Now for their part, the Jews believed Samaritans to be unclean, to be avoided at all costs, and to be wrong in every possible way about the way they worshipped their “false” God. they were never to be trusted, never to have business dealings with, and to be spoken to as little as possible.

It really is OK to think of Samaritans as modern day Muslims, because the attitudes held toward them were very similar to the attitudes held toward Muslims by non-Muslims today, and for many of the very same reasons. So, what would Jesus do? Well, here’s what he did:

John 4:4

Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

Point #1: Jesus was not afraid to enter Samaria. He refused to be bound by religious law that separated human beings, one from the other.

7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?"

Point #2: Jesus spoke first. He spoke to someone the Jews would have labeled as inferior on two counts- a Samaritan and a woman. And he spoke out of his vulnerability, as a person in need. He was thirsty.

9 The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?"

10 Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."

Point #3: Jesus makes the woman curious about him. He is respectful, but mysterious. He has something for her, and he wants her to know it, but he wants that need to rise in her, and not be inflicted on her.

11 "Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"

13 Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

15 The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."

Point #4: Kindness and gentleness works! The Kingdom of God within this woman has been aroused! She wants to know more!

16 He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."

17 "I have no husband," she replied.

Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."

Point #5: There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. He doesn’t preach, he doesn’t shame, he doesn’t tip his Jewish nose up in the air in self-righteous authority, he simply states the facts as only a prophet- a true prophet- could know them.

19 "Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."

(Since Samaritans believed that there have been no prophets since Moses, this is one whale of an admission!)

21 Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

Point #6: Jesus does not hide the fact that there are differences between Jews and Samaritans. But these are not fighting words. They are followed with an inclusionary vision of “true believers,” a status which the woman is just inches from at this point.

25 The woman said, "I know that Messiah" is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."

26 Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."

Point #7: Ta-da!

27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"

28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers.

Point #8: Jesus stayed with the Samaritans- he would have eaten their food, drunk from their vessels, looked them right in the eye, and right in the heart.

42 They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world."

Notice: No sword talk. No high-fives- “My team is better than your team.” No listing of points 1 through 8. Just conversation, openness, a willingness to go against the religious and cultural law, and..dare we say it?..love.

None of those things are easy to do. For most of us today, here in the U.S., breaking fee of the cultural bias toward Islam and Muslims is very difficult. Since 1979, when the Ayatollah took over the government of Iran, and especially since 2001, we have been fed particular images of particular Muslims in such a way by our media and by our government, so that it is almost impossible for us not to think of Muslims as anything but flag-burning, mob-crazed, oil-spoiled, Jew-hating maniacs.

And, indeed, some are. But most of those we see, because it is easy to see them (some of them love network cameras), most of those we see are nationalists using the language of Islam. They are not at all unlike the Nazis in that regard- nationalists who used the language of the Bible- specifically the gospel of John which we just read from- to further their nationalistic goals. Not at all unlike Timothy McVeigh who truly believed that by blowing up the Mullah building in Oklahoma City, he could help return this country to its so-called Christian roots.

One of the very real problems we must deal politically and spiritually with the reality of when dealing with Islam, is that it is not a hierarchical religion. There is no Pope, no international governing body. The nature of Middle-eastern and Asian Islam is that it becomes indistinguishable from the government of a country. Think of Saudi Arabia or Iran or Egypt. And then, when billions of dollars of oil are mixed into that formula, fundamentalist Muslims- who are usually among the have-nots- grow in political power, legitimate and otherwise.

When Church and State are one and the same, that’s called a theocracy. And, thank God, it is something we don’t know much about in the United States and must always be on our guard against this country ever becoming a theocracy. Theocracy always- always- leads to killing in the name of whatever God is fashionable at the moment. That’s true in the Middle East, just as it was true for awhile in the American colonies.

But even judging Islam by their Church/State connectivity can be confusing at times. Here’s an example: the three countries in the world most heavily populated by Muslims are, in order- Indonesia, India, and Pakistan. Now we know about the repression of women in Islamic societies, right? Or, do we? All three of those Muslim-heavy countries are democracies, or representative republics, similar to the U.S. system. Yet, unlike the U.S., where Christianity is predominate, Indonesia, India, and Pakistan have all, within the last forty years, elected women as presidents or, in the case of India, prime minister. We talk about equality here, but in those three countries, anyway, they demonstrated something we have not been able to yet.

Confusing? Yes. But then, most human things are, which is precisely the reason that easy answers are almost never the right answers. Here’s some more confusing statements for most Americans.

“The Detroit-based Shari'a Muslim Scholars Association of North America (SSANA) strongly condemned the 9-11 attack and said that there is no cause that justifies "this type of an immoral and inhumane act that has affected so many innocent American lives."

“These fundamentalist groups are endangering and embarrassing ordinary Muslims”
Inayat Bunglawala
Muslim Council for Britain

"Anyone can prove anything from any scriptures, provided he has a $2 piece of equipment," said Jamal Badawi, head of the Canada-based Islamic Information Foundation. "That is enough to buy a cheap pair of scissors to cut up verses and put them together the way you want."

“This despicable incident is an unacceptable outrage, regardless of who is ultimately held to be responsible, and we condemn it as fundamentally un-Islamic and against all the principles of our holy faith. We pray God to have mercy on the souls of the murder victims and to punish all evildoers who perpetuate and support such an act of Terrorism.” Islamic Association of Egypt.

“It's not courage in any way to kill an innocent person, or to kill thousands of people, including men and women and children..”

Sheik Mohammed Sayed Tantaw, Syria

That’s five of literally hundreds and hundreds of such statements issued by Islamic groups and scholars from around the world and available for anyone to see on the Internet, including Fox News and all the various preachers who seem to think God needs their special protection.

I maintain again, as I have for the past several weeks, that fear is the main culprit, not Islam. Fear sells television advertising, fear has a free hand in the public treasury, fear causes people to reach in their pockets and buy salvation from whatever hustler is screaming the loudest in the God-language of their own secret terrors.

Should we be wary of certain Muslims? Absolutely! Just as we should be wary of certain Christians, Buddhists, atheists, and Jews. The weapons of today are heinous and American and European factories are designing and manufacturing them at greater levels than anytime in history and they make their way- wink, wink, nudge, nudge- into the wrong hands all the time. We would be stupid not to be vigilant and wary.

But we are also- and that’s a collective ‘we’, my taxes buy the same percentage of weaponry as yours do- we are also..well, less than smart, less than our Savior would have us be, if we continue to fail to follow Jesus in this most important of challenges.

What if we put aside the normal human responses of fear, anger, greed, revenge, and dogma that we apparently cherish because we- humans- have been using them to no avail throughout all of recorded history? What if, instead, we, like Jesus, put ourselves purposefully and intentionally into positions to empathetically communicate with those we fear, to be respectful of differing ideas, to be motivated by Jesus’ kind of love, to identify the source of such of such love in kindness and gentleness, to sit knee to knee, eye to eye, stay with, eat with, and genuinely be with other humans as people born in the Image of God? And then, if it didn’t work the first time, to start all over again?

No, we won’t change everyone, through force or love. But we can change us. Our responses to Islam, and all things and people, must be as similar as we can make them to the responses of Jesus to all things and people. That’s not an easy thing to do: Jesus demonstrated that for us, too. But when you ask the question, “What would Jesus do?”, there’s a couple of answers.

One more by Rumi, to end these thoughts for now:

Tender words we spoke

to one another

are sealed

in the secret vaults of heaven.

One day like rain,

they will fall to earth

and grow green

all over the world.

Global Warming: A Changing Earth

2007-02-18T16:47:00.000-06:00

Today is Transfiguration Sunday on the Christian Calendar. It marks that event described in Matthew 17: 1-6..

1 After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. 2 There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. 3 Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

(When I was a kid reading comic books, this is where there would have been a picture of open-mouthed, forehead-slapping disciples and a word balloon containing the words “What the..?” That’s how Peter reacts, anyway; he’s excited, confused, and more than a little frightened.)

4 Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters-one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah."

(Forgive Peter for acting silly, which is what he’s doing here. He wants to do something to mark this moment- make it last. So he offers, of all things, to build houses for everyone!)

5 While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!"

(This is the voice of gentle invitation, but it is terrifying to the disciples. Again, we may find it easy to judge them as we sit here in a comfortable, warm, and safe place but, as we’ll be talking about it in a moment, that same voice of God, that same gentle invitation, might be heard by any of us in equally discombobulating circumstances.)

6 When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. 7 But Jesus came and touched them. "Get up," he said. "Don't be afraid." 8 When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.

And there is some good news! It comes in the form of a command from Jesus- “Get up! Be resurrected! Don’t… be… afraid!”

And that’s our segue into today’s topic of the day- Global Warming, or, as it is also being called, Climate Change. It is part of the Transfiguration of our own planet, and one in which we are all, by the nature of being human, playing a part. And I think that it is a phenomenon that will cause us all to be reminded again of those words of Jesus, “Don’t be Afraid.”

I’m not here today to debate the accuracy or inaccuracy of some of the predictions being made by diverse scientists and climatologists from around the world about the changing climate of the planet. The novelist Upton Sinclair wrote 80 years ago that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” None of us here today are unaware that oil and the raising of livestock are two of the factors identified by many scientists as being primary contributors to global weather changes. Almost every dollar that passes through this area, has its beginnings in one or both of those two commodities. So, admittedly, we all have some reluctance to embrace some of the doom and gloom predictions being made.

But there are some things we an agree on, I think. Here’s an example that has been helpful to me in understanding the problem in the first place. It is the greenhouse effect, which is what the real culprit in global warming is.

To illustrate the greenhouse effect, consider a car with the windows rolled up:

The sun's rays- visible light- pass through the car's windows, and hit the car's seats.
The visible light is absorbed by those car seats, and re-radiated to the interior of the car as Infrared heat.
But the car's glass windows, while transparent to visible light, are opaque to Infrared heat, so the heat is trapped within the car, and the car's interior temperature becomes unbearable. It’s why the air in a car with the windows rolled up is 10, 15, 30 degrees hotter than is the air outside of the car.

The atmosphere of the earth is exactly like the windows of that car. Sunlight passes through the 8 mile high transparent atmosphere, and is absorbed by everything on the earth. Not only is it absorbed by everything on the earth- water, land, etc.- but it is absorbed by carbon and carbon dioxide molecules in the air. For millions of years there has been a perfect balance between what’s in the atmosphere and the ability of the planet to clean itself. Rainforests and ocean plankton were the perfect vacuum cleaners. Plants breathe in carbon dioxide and release it as oxygen, which doesn’t hang on to the sun’s heat. That balance has enabled life to thrive on earth, instead of turning it a desert planet like Venus.

But since the Industrial Revolution began 200 years ago, and as it has been fueled by the burning of fossil fuels ever since, a whole lot more carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere than can be absorbed by the plants of the earth. There is simply more and more stuff in the air to trap the infrared heat reflected by the earth. It’s measurable, it’s real, and about those facts there is no debate. We are putting more and more carbon into the air, and decreasing our abilities to clean it out of the air. The rainforests are being chopped down, China and India- the two most populous countries in the world- have entered the fuel-burning Industrial Age, and glaciers are measurably melting.

The good thing, and the bad thing about all of this is, is that it is all happening in relatively very slow motion, in most places. It is hard to see and, therefore, it is easy to ignore. And there is still an argument over the percentage effect that humans have in all of this versus what Nature itself has. The fact remains, however, that there has been the same amount of new carbons put into and suspended in the atmosphere over the past 100 years as were put there the previous 10,000 years. And we know that from analyzing the ancient ice of the now melting glaciers.

We can talk for the rest of the day about what unchecked climatic change will mean to life on the earth, long term, including the migration of humans and animals and plants northward, the changing of ocean currents, and the flooding of every ocean shoreline on earth. A ½” rise in the ocean has already engulfed two long-inhabited islands- one in the Bering Straits of Alaska and one off the coast of India. What will happen in Amsterdam, Miami, New York, and Boston and a thousand other seashore towns will be catastrophic.

“Get up. Don’t be afraid.” Hang on to those words now.

Climatic Change is happening, but- again- in slow motion. It is one of many reminders that the earth is not a series of parts but an integrated, functioning whole. There are other reminders that we have much geological history of, but little modern experience with, including: Super-volcanoes. The one we know as Yellowstone National Park has an average 200,000 year cycle. It last erupted 240,000 years ago. When it erupts, and someday it will, it will be equivalent to 2000 Mt. St. Helens eruptions.

Or, Super-tsunamis. We saw a big one in the area of Indonesia at Christmas in 2005, but there could just as easily be on in the Atlantic. The volcano Cumbre Vieja in the Canary Islands off of Africa caused part of the island to drop partway into the Atlantic in 1949. Another volcano, or even an earthquake there, could cause the other half of the island to fall all the way into the ocean. And when it does, an inland flood of unimaginable devastation will engulf shores 10 miles inland in England, Ireland, France, and the United States. That might not happen for 10,000 years. But it also could also happen in ten days.

In either one of those scenarios, Walmarts everywhere, among many other things, will be closed, for a long time.

I’m talking about these things this morning as a realistic reminder that we walk upon a liquid, changing, and fragile planet. We have some control over some of the disastrous potential scenarios- climate change and nuclear weapons among them- and no control over others. What we do have control over, because it is something given to us, a gift from God, is our fear about such events.

“Get up. Don’t be afraid.”

The disciples were afraid because they were seeing something that they had never seen before, or could even have imagined: Jesus transfigured, talking to the long-dead Moses and Elijah. It wasn’t a disastrous scenario, but it was just incomprehensible. It didn’t make sense. 2 + 2 no longer equaled 4.

And even if we don’t have to face any of those potential BIG earthly disasters, we all have to face from time to time, those events which personally are just as devastating, just as incomprehensible. And it is in those times, just as it might be, some day will be, when we humans must face true worldwide calamity, it is in all of those times that we can- against all odds- have the hope in our hearts made evident by Jesus’ transfiguration. The disciples saw the living Moses and the once again alive Elijah. What the…indeed! But Jesus came and touched them. ”Get up,” he said, “and don’t be afraid.”

The psalmist said all of the things I’ve just been saying, another way. Psalm 29:

3 The voice of the LORD is over the waters;

the God of glory thunders, the LORD thunders over the mighty waters.

4 The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is majestic.

5 The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars;

the LORD breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon.

6 He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, Sirion like a young wild ox.

7 The voice of the LORD strikes with flashes of lightning.

8 The voice of the LORD shakes the desert; the LORD shakes the Desert of Kadesh.

9 The voice of the LORD twists the oaks and strips the forests bare.

And in his temple all cry, "Glory!"

And this brings us, I think, to the really exciting part of living in a faith that enables us, like the disciples, to expect Jesus to touch us, to reassure us, even in the midst of the incomprehensible- in the midst of disaster, trials, sadness, grief, and pain. For Jesus to touch us that way- and many of you have personal experience and evidence of that calming touch!- for Jesus to be able to touch us with the peace that passes understanding, and whisper in our ears, “Don’t be afraid.” For Jesus to be able to do that means that Jesus is present with us right now.

It’s not that Jesus will come to us at the time when we need him to, it is that Jesus is already here, right now. We walked up the mountain with him. Like Peter, we have sometimes reacted foolishly when we saw the things he wanted us to see. We have even, because Jesus was sensitizing us to it, we have even heard the voice of God at times- not always booming from a silver cloud, but more often in the still, small sounds God most often speaks with. And those things make it possible, even in the midst of chaos, even in the center of those situations which are causing others around us to react in fear and panic, that experience with Jesus makes it possible for us to live in no fear.

Stand up- be resurrected- and don’t be afraid!

Everyone who spent time with Jesus- beginning with his Mother Mary- saw things, experienced things which made no sense. “Don’t be afraid” The angel Gabriel told Mary. “Don’t be afraid” Jesus told his disciples again and again when thy saw things no humans had ever before seen. The importance of that phrase cannot be overemphasized. Walking with Jesus, following Jesus, opens our eyes to the tragedies and sufferings of the world- and those things are often frightening.

But Jesus’ approach to the world and all that he encountered in his world- his approach to it all, was with love. He embraced it, accepted it, touched it. It was a radical response.

The opposite of love, we sometimes think, is hate. If we don’t love something, we hate it. But the real opposite of love is not hate, but fear. We are in love, or we are in fear. And Jesus showed us that even though fear may be the initial response to a problem, it is not the Godly response; fear is not the response that will change anything, it only adds to the problem.

Being proactive in the face of that which causes fear is the very best way to turn that fear into love. And here is where many of our brothers and sisters in faith make a mistake, I think. (You might notice in this series how good I am at pointing out the faults of others. So be it) When many Christians encounter difficulties, they go ahead and built those little houses up on the mountain. They retreat into church. They start living in the Bible, instead of from the Bible. Where Jesus led his disciples down off the mountain, back into the world, after this fearsome encounter with God, there are those who “hole up”, go through holy motions, and-in effect- ignore the very problems that Jesus plunged himself into.

So, the opposite of fear is love, but that love translates into coming down off the mountain and doing something to alleviate the causes of fear in the lives of others.

We can live in fear of the havoc Global Warming will cause in the lives of our grandchildren, or, we can come off the mountain and…change the light bulbs. Really. You do the smallest things first. These new lights up here in the choir loft not only give better light, but they emit about 60% less carbon into the atmosphere. They are cheaper to use, and they burn more efficiently. Same with these guys (smaller fluorescent bulbs) in your homes. Over their 5 year lifetime, they will give off about 65% less carbon into the atmosphere than the old incandescent globes. And even when we are talking about light bulbs, small as they are, we are talking in terms of tons of carbon emissions.

I won’t bore you with a list of all the other things that it is possible to do. Magazines from Redbook to Popular Mechanics are full of ideas. I will tell you that, based on some recently completed research at M.I.T., areas like ours are going to be in the near future, prime areas for new manufacturing plants to be built in the United States. Abandoned gas and oil wells are perfect receptacles, it turns out, for factory emissions. One day there will be no more smokestacks. There will be pipes going underground where the shale we live on top of, it turns out, is one of the best absorbents of all that smoke which now goes straight into the atmosphere.

It’s proactivity in the face of fear. Doing something, anything, besides trembling on top of the mountain. Loving instead of fearing. Living with the touch of Jesus: “Get up, don’t be afraid.”

Evolutionary Creation..Where's God?

2007-02-11T13:52:00.000-06:00

Let’s begin looking forward by looking backwards:

Ten years ago- 1997. Among other events, the Hale-Bopp comet, remember that? Also, the deaths of Mother Teresa and Princess Diana.

Ten times ten years ago- 1897. The first Oldsmobile was built and Pope Paul VI was born.

Ten times one hundred years ago- the year 1007. The first Viking settlement was begun in Newfoundland and new pueblos were being built in what is now New Mexico.

Times ten again. Ten thousand years ago- The last great Ice Age was melting. The Great Lakes were being filled, and wooly elephants- mastodons- roamed the upper Midwest. Some tribes of Asian Mongolians began moving their way northeast toward the frozen Bering Straits toward a new continent where, 9000 years later, some of their descendents would be found building pueblos.

Ten times that- One hundred thousand years ago. There are tribes of people in places scattered throughout Africa, the Middle East, and in Australia. A few of those from the Middle East have begun trickling into the very cold and hostile environs of Europe. In 50,000 years, some humans- Cro-Magnons- will paint pictures of buffalo and bears and holy men on cave walls in southern France.

Ten times 100,000 years, 1 million years ago. Ten times that, 10 million, Ten times that, 100 million, and 3 ½ times 100 million- 350 million years ago- and we’re getting close to the birthdays of all these little fossilized creatures you’re holding in your hands today.

All of these fossils are mollusks- bipods, some of them, ancient clams. And they resemble exactly the same little bipods still able to be fund alive in lakes everywhere. Most of these fossils are a type of cephalopods- snails with octopus- like appendages reaching out from them. These specifically are a class of cephalopods called ammonites (not to be confused with the Mooninites, lately in the news.) They no longer exist anywhere in the world, even though we’re sitting over top of billions of their relatives right here where we live.

All of these come from the shale hills out by the lake; my wife and I picked them all up there. Some of you may also have some of these cylindrical or round fossils- those are probably pieces of coral. Because for several hundred million years, we were at the bottom of an ocean here. You can also find the occasional shark’s tooth fossil amongst these ammonite and coral fossils- big ones- ten bigger than present day White Sharks. This might be one of them.

About one hundred million years after these little ammonites began frolicking in the surf, their days began to be interrupted by large creatures swimming by, or casting shadows from up in the sky, or, stomping around on the shores of the now receding oceans- dinosaurs. The dinosaur heydays were from about 250 million to 65 million years ago. As these oceans over North America began to recede into what is now the South Pacific, lush jungles- giant ferns, massive trees, an explosion of all kinds of great and huge tropical plants began to thrive, and the dinosaurs lived among them. As they and the plants died, great deepening piles of rotting animal and plant flesh accumulated. In many areas of the world, those garbage piles, under ever-increasing pressure, became coal deposits; in other areas, and we’re sitting on a massive one, they became shale and oil.

But then something happened in this dinosaur and ammonite Garden of Eden. An asteroid about the size of Rhode Island smashed into the ocean about 1200 miles from here. What is now known as the Gulf of Mexico, was first an explosion that sent enough debris and water into the air to envelope Earth in a dirty cloud for many years. long enough for all of the dinosaurs, except the very smallest ones, and for all of the ammonites to die. We know why the dinosaurs died- they either choked on the dirty air or they died because much of their plant food died when it couldn’t get enough sun. But we can only guess at why the fragile ammonites died worldwide. One theory is that the waters became too acidic for them.

Anyway, a lot of that dirt from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico ended up here, as it rained back down here on top of the dead ammonites, covering the vast pools of oil and hills of shale, eventually to be covered by the growth of bluegrass and other prairie grasses and grains.

One other very important benefit, besides oil, of the dinosaurs dying off is that the many tiny mammals which had begun making appearances around the world had the opportunity now not to be eaten. And that’s why we’re sitting here today. And why we’re sitting here holding ammonite fossils. All of us- ammonites and humans alike- have spent a loooong time, and a very complicated route, getting here today, and that’s what I want to talk a little more about this morning.

Ten times 350 million years ago, the birthday of these ammonites- that’s 3.5 billion years ago- and the Earth was still cooling off, from it’s 10 billion year history before that of being a mass of burning hydrogen- goodness gracious, a great ball of fire that eventually cooled off and became rock.

Let me say all of this another more familiar way:

Genesis 1

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

9 And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good.

11 Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning--the third day...

20 And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth." 23 And there was evening, and there was morning--the fifth day.

Two stories about the same event. One was expressed in the best scientifically verifiable way I can muster, given my own scientifically limited vocabulary. And the other, the better known one, was expressed poetically, mythically, liturgically, as a prelude to the ancient story of the Hebrew tribes.

In the first one, I left out all references to the Cambrian and Paleozoic Ages, and the very important Carboniferous Period. I did not reference at all the various radioactive carbon dating methods and other radiometric methods that allow us to know when these events occurred, and how old these fossils are. I left those things out because I figured a few of you might be as confused by that jargon as I am.

In the second story- the Genesis story- whether you believe it was written by God himself, related by Moses, or gathered together from the oral tradition by several priests with the ability to write, the same thing is happening. The audience for these words was being considered. A nomadic tribe of people, all of them illiterate, with the mud of Egypt still drying under their fingernails- what chance would there possibly have been for them to understand any but the most basic language about where they had come from, and how?

Evolution is not merely a theory, it is the central theory around which all of science has been gathering since Darwin first wrote down, in a readable way 150 years ago, what had been thought about and talked about since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers. The theory of evolution is not yet a complete theory; there are still many holes of understanding in it, just as there are huge holes in the various theories of gravity, the reality of which everyone accepts, because we live inside of it. But why and how gravity works, is not yet fully known.

Nor do we understand exactly how bacteria, throbbing with life, came to be, even though we do know that the waste from their munching of the rocks and of the sun’s photons produced the first oxygen on earth and gave that bacteria the ability to become lichens and fungus and which became gradually, over those 100s of millions of years, sharks, palm trees, and ammorites. We don’t know exactly, but we learn bits and pieces every year.

Those who fear evolutionary theory point to those holes in our knowledge- an easy thing to do because there are many of them. But to do so, they must ignore some pretty significant truths, many of which have been arrived at and are being arrived at in our own lifetimes; DNA, for instance, those miles long strands of information packed into every one of our cells- half from our mom, half from our dad. Not only does DNA tell us about the inherited color of our hair, but it also tells us that we share the gift of life- the same gift of life- with all living creatures. When the mushrooms pop up in our yards this spring, remember that we- humans- share 78% of the same DNA with them. When those of you who ride horses next get on the back of one, remember that you and that horse share over 93% of your biological substance with each other.

Those scientific facts affirm for me the truth, said in another way, of Genesis 2:7: “the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” What we all have in common- all of us, every living thing- is that dust, that molten starstuff, those eroded rocks of 10 billion years ago, that cooled off hydrogen which began it’s explosive journey from the beginnings of all we know 14.6 billion years ago.

Those who fear our relationship with mushrooms and horses are attempting, sometimes through legal coercion, to keep God in a humanly understandable box. And that leads to real problems. I talked to a woman in Dallas once who said she preferred the 7 day creation story because it was “easier to explain to her children.” I listened to a preacher, also in Dallas, who I admired greatly until that moment, when he said that Satan was responsible for burying all those dinosaur bones in order to confuse Christians.

As I said last week, when we use the Bible as a stopping point in our understanding of God and God’s Creation, we cut ourselves off, sometimes in very foolish ways, from experiencing the incredible grandeur of God’s Continuing Creation. If we close our eyes and ears to the colors and the music of God’s ever-moving presence in the universe, then we are participating actively in the turning of this book (the Bible) into pages full of flat, dead ink.

Here’s what I think, four things:

1. Science and spirituality, or religion, are not two separate things. Religion simply asks, “Why?” Science simply asks, “How?” Those who oppose certain areas of scientific inquiry often call such inquiry a conspiracy against their faith. But if one reads any of the scientific journals, they would see that scientists fuss and fight with each other over what they have published more than junior high girls fuss and fight over boyfriends. But the evidence of evolution is so overwhelming, despite the holes, that even the strangest of scientific bedfellows agree on its principles. The religionists accuse scientists of hijacking the Truth. But that is wrong. Science, simply and elegantly, defines a way of knowing.

2. The greatest gift humans have been given is this: for the first time in the 14.6 billion year history of the Universe, the Universe now has the ability to reflect upon itself. Through us- through our eyes and ears, through our ability to imagine then build the polished lenses of telescopes and microscopes, and then imagine and send those lenses into orbit around distant planets or on trajectories toward other galaxies- through us, the universe can now begin to think about and understand itself. We can reflect on the meaning of dying stars in the cosmos which cause the birth of yet more stars. We can understand poetically, mythically, then factually, something about the movement of God through time, and begin to do what we can to cooperate and harmonize with that movement. Here’s what I mean by that:

3. We can believe that every inch of the ground upon which we live, and every living creature we live with, is ours to exploit. Or, we can cooperate with the billions of years of life yet to be lived on this place. The study of evolution has revealed, in our lifetimes, the interdependence of all things, and the need for cooperation on larger and wider scales. We didn’t know the extent of that need even 150 years ago, when our pioneering ancestors shot every passenger pigeon out of the sky and almost did in the buffalo and the indigenous people who already lived here. We have, to our great credit, stopped oohing and awwing over the skins of endangered animals draped around our shoulders. We have stopped dumping the ancient saltwater from oil well drillings onto fertile prairie land. At the same time, we have yet to fully realize- as a species- the dangerous nature of our prolific breeding habits and our life-ending rush to deforest the rain forests of the world.

Those are a few examples- good and bad- of the vital work which lays ahead for every young person in here. And they need good educations to that- educations not inflicted upon them by popular political movements, but educations which unleash and inspire the God-imaged brains God has enabled to evolve in each of them. And that responsibility will lie not just with our American children, but every child in the world. We must also be doing what we can for them as well. Examples: The price of an Ipod will keep a kid in Thailand in school for two years. The cost of one movie ticket will keep a child in Zaire in school for six months. Those facts, among many, demand changes in attitudes which I think our children will have a much greater capacity for than we do. If we allow them to.

4. Understanding evolution- or, at least, beginning to understand evolution, has for me, deepened my relationship with God. I better understand that I share something of his Image- we all do- in our ability to Create, cooperate, and be in community not only with each other but with the universe and every single thing in it. But I also understand that I must never, ever try to re-create God in my image. God is not a projection of my political beliefs, my selfish economic desires, or of my limited intellectual abilities. When I make God into any or all of those things, then I am not serving God; I am standing in the way of God’s breath moving in time, and of God’s Continuing Creation of all that is.

Closed minds do not protect God. God will be God no matter how angry we get at each other, or how stubborn we are about cooperating with each other. When we live in cooperation with the movement of God through our lives and through the universe, we can live in happiness and satisfaction. When we are living outside the rhythms and harmonies of God, we suffer, as individuals, and as a species, and take many other species down with us.

On the Sunday before his death, Jesus came into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey and the crowds went wild, cheering and praising the Messiah. The soldiers warned Jesus about the noise and fanfare. “Get these people to shut up!” he was told.

“I tell you the truth,” Jesus said, “if they keep quiet, then the stones will cry out.”

I maintain that that is exactly what these ammonites, these tiny little 350 million year old stones are doing today, in our lifetimes- crying out, affirming the ways of God in the universe, and helping us all to better understand, and praise, and live in the movement of the God of all Creation.

The Bible: Literal, Negligible, or..What?

2007-02-05T07:52:00.000-06:00

Luke 4:16-21… He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to release the oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."

With these words, Jesus began his public ministry. He chose the 750 year old words of the prophet Isaiah to make this announcement. He was, because he was speaking them in this place, resurrecting those words, bringing them back from the dead: “Get ready,” he was saying, “these words are about to live again.”

Over the next four messages, I am going to be exploring some topics- controversial topics- that I, like many preachers, tend to shy away from. I do so not because I am particularly courageous, or because I want further fractionalize Christianity more than it already is. I do so because of what Jesus said he was about that day in the synagogue in Nazareth. He was about words of life, wonderful words of life. John would later describe Jesus as “the Word made flesh, who dwelled among us.”

The words of Isaiah on that day Jesus spoke them were 750 years old. They had become ritual words, liturgical words, words to be memorized then coughed up by the priest occasionally during a Sabbath reading. The words of Jesus, as recorded by the gospel writers, are now almost 2000 years old. And I am afraid sometimes that they have become, because of their familiarity, because of their age, and because they have become something other than what Jesus intended them to be, less and less relevant, more and more dead to increasing numbers of people, including Christians.

In the coming three weeks, I’ll be talking about evolution, global warming, and Islam- all topics that Jesus knew nothing of, so, of course, said nothing specific about. But we do need to talk about them, because the Word made flesh walked among us for a reason, and that reason was to reconnect us to the God of all Creation. And once that re-connection has been made, we, too must translate these 2000 year old words into the relevant, living, and revolutionary words that Jesus intended them to be, and as he spoke them.

When my opinions today and in the next three weeks are personal, I’ll tell you, and I will also emphasize that you don’t have to agree with me. My name is David Weber, not Jim Jones. And if you don’t know who Jim Jones was, Google him up when you get home and discover the modern hell that can be created, when Jesus language is used to feed human egos. When Christians disagree, they should, they must, talk to each other. They should not, must not, build forts around their egos and opinions and start lobbing bombs at each other or anyone else who disagrees with them. We have a long history and highly developed habit of doing that in the Church of Jesus Christ, and untold millions have died because of it.

So I begin today with these words (the Bible) because they are the source of more historical and modern controversy than any of the other topics I will be talking about. These words have not only transformed lives, but they have been used to destroy lives, from the Crusades across southern Europe all the way to the Middle East; from the streets of Belfast, the slave plantations of Mississippi, and the diamond mines of Sierra Leone, to Hitler’s Europe and the jungles of Guyana.

When the Bible has been misused as a weapon, every time it has been used to support the arguments and worldviews of one people over another, a particular and specific phenomenon has happened. There is something common in all of the misuses of the Bible over the centuries, and it is this:

It has been turned into a set of doctrines and dogmas by those who want power or are in power. The words of the Bible were hammered into swords and molded into bullets to defend the fort of fashionable interpretation against other interpretations, other imaginations, and anything new which has been revealed about God’s universe.

An example, and I’ll talk a little more about this next week. The book of Genesis is one of my five favorite books of the Bible. (The others are Psalms, Luke, John, and Revelation.) Genesis is one of my favorite books not because it reveals to me anything concrete about science or history, but because it one of the oldest records of how our ancestors in this faith first began to think about and understand God. These are the campfire stories of countless generations, passed on from fathers and mothers to sons and daughters, before they were finally begun to be written down, once there was a written language in operation, around the year 2000 B.C. These were the stories through which people could understand God, the Creation in which they lived, and each other.

They spoke of God as Ish (the fire always burning) and of humans as ishtar (the sparks which rose from the flames, glowed brightly, and then died, returning to the fire.) They were the stories of God’s relationship to this nomadic tribe of Hebrews, their choseness through Abraham, their dispersion and increase through Jacob, and their salvation through Joseph. It was a love story between God and humans, humans and God.

The “facts” of Genesis are irrelevant for me, in comparison to the Truths of God revealed in Genesis. Using the telescopes of their time- their eyes- they looked at the bright lights in the sky- the sun, the moon, and the stars- and knew that God had created all of it for good. Using the radar of the day- their ears- they could hear God’s continuing presence, God’s continuing creativity among them in the whirlwinds, the thunder, and the oceans waves.

That we’ve learned more about each of those phenomena in the intervening years does not take away one jot or tittle from those Truths about God, it only adds to them!

In Jesus, those words from Genesis, Exodus, Psalms, Isaiah, Habakkuk, Micah and all the rest of the Hebrew Bible’s books, all of those words, spoken around campfires, written down on leather and copper scrolls, and kept in safe-keeping by the priests, all of those ancient understandings of who God was, became flesh. Again, those ancient manuscripts, which been taken from the liveliness of campfire gatherings and been locked up in the synagogues to become dead words of legalism and liturgy, were about to become alive again. No longer would they be the proprietary possessions of the priestly class, they were about to become good news to the poor.

No longer would they be the mere doctrinal and dogmatic words they had become, they would proclaim freedom for the prisoners.

No longer would humans be held in the dark prisons of unquestioning, puppet-like obedience; there was about to be a recovery of sight for the blind.

Jesus had come to release the oppressed, and that is what is he continues to want to do today. Let me share one example.

The story of the Good Samaritan- you know that story- it begins with a discussion between Jesus and a lawyer.[1]

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” That’s the lawyer’s question. It’s a “do” question, not a “be” question, nor even a “believe” question. Like Jesus, he has been raised on Torah, which is about how to live, not what to believe. His question concerns practice and not belief. He wants Jesus to tell him in plain language what kind of life he should be living now in order to live in God’s presence forevermore. It’s a good question, even if it is a test. You’d like to know the answer, wouldn’t you?

Well, you’ve come to the wrong rabbi, because the only answer that interests Jesus is the lawyer’s own. “What is written in the law?” Jesus asks him. “What do you read there?”

Woody Allen: Why does a rabbi always answer a question with a question?

Rabbi: Why shouldn’t a rabbi always answer a question with a question?

Jesus and the lawyer both know what is written in the law. Either one of them could look it up, but the Word Made Flesh doesn’t want chapter and verse. He wants to hear the living word come out of the lawyer’s own mouth.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind,” the lawyer says, “and your neighbor as yourself.”

In Luke’s gospel, it’s the lawyer who gets to give the summary of the law, not Jesus. Jesus just stands there quietly, waiting to hear what the lawyer has to say. It’s almost as if Luke is standing behind each of them with a sign on a stick. The sign over the lawyer’s head says, “The Word.” The sign over Jesus’ head says, “Made Flesh.”

Here’s how it sounds.
Here’s how it acts.

Meanwhile, the lawyer’s answer is almost chapter and verse from Deuteronomy and Leviticus, but inventive—two pieces of Torah scotch-taped together. And Jesus likes it very much: “You have given the right answer,” Jesus says to him; “do this, and you will live.”

It’s not unkind, but it’s a sucker punch all the same—a way of letting the lawyer know that getting the words right is not the same thing as giving them flesh. Answers weigh about as much as the breath it takes to expel them. Like helium balloons, they come out of the mouth and float away, leaving no footprints anywhere on the ground.

A right answer, a doctrine, has never picked up a frightened child, or put an ice chip in the mouth of a dying friend. A right answer, dogmatic as it may be, has never written a check to the Red Cross, or cleaned the vomit of a sick person from the back seat of the car. A right answer, no matter how many people have memorized it, has never even showed up at the polls to vote on election day, or taken to the streets in peaceful protest. It kind of makes you wonder why religious people spend so much time fussing and fighting with each other on right answers, when the truth is that a right answer alone never changed a thing.

“You have given the right answer,” Jesus says to the lawyer; “do this, and you will live.”

You won’t find Jesus preaching doctrine and dogma anywhere. We will find him, over and over and over again, saying “follow me,” “go and do likewise,” “leave everything else behind, get going”, and “follow me” again. And again. When the flesh of Jesus is reduced to a group of words, and when those words become a stopping place instead of a call for action, then they have become perverted. They become more bad news for the poor, they become bigger jail cells for more prisoners, a deeper darkness for the blind, and longer, larger chains for the oppressed.

This (the Bible) is a book. It is not an idol, it is not an object of worship. It is the very best window we have into the realms of God, but every bit of it is written in the always expanding language of humans. There is, therefore, more to say about God. There will always be more to know about God.

Going back to the story of the Good Samaritan for a moment. If anyone were to follow the Bible literally, word for word, as so many are very proud to say they do, then we would still be pouring oil and wine on our wounds instead of antiseptics and antibiotics. We would take injured people to innkeepers instead of doctors. And we would carry them there on the backs of donkeys instead of in an ambulance.

Do I mean to say that the word of God is still being written? Am I saying that there is more to know about God than we can learn from the Bible? Yes, and yes! Jesus said, recorded in John 14, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these…”

In other words, we must not think for a moment that all that God has to say has been said. We must never relax our brains, our intellect, our imaginations; we must never be lulled into spiritual sleep by the easy lullabies of literalism. There are greater things to do than even Jesus did- he said that, not me. We must never be tempted to stop with the words about him, the word made ink; we must be willing to follow him, the word made flesh.

This (the Bible) is where we begin, not where we stop.

It is where we jump from, not what we land on.

It is a gate, not a corral.

It is the key, not the lock.

A window, not a wall.

A love letter, not an indictment.

A map, not a destination.

The Bible gets us near to God, maybe closer than we have ever have been before. But Jesus says “Follow me,” then reaches his hand back for ours. It’s the warm hand of flesh felt by lepers, a paralyzed man, a bent-over woman, children, babies, and the disciple Thomas. It’s the hand of his flesh in yours, the warmth of his skin, your skin, his pulse, your pulse. His hand in our hand, his gospel, now our gospel in the world of 2007.

Keep reading it; but- above all- keep writing it: his gospel, your gospel- and keep doing it!

[1] For the analysis here of the Good Samaritan discussion, I have unashamedly lifted, word for word in some paragraphs, from Barbara Brown Taylor. No one can talk about the Bible better than her, so why try?