Seven Questions 4

You ask how the church can serve as a peacemaker, and again I must begin by admitting that I’m not sure I know what the church is. I can point to various communities and institutions that refer to themselves as churches, but they don’t necessarily recognize one another as churches. Honesty would require that we rephrase the question and ask how churches can serve as peacemakers, and then we would have to begin with a long, humble look at our divisions and confess that we have little to say about peacemaking since we can’t even  recognize one another as members of the one body of Christ. We are very successful at tolerating one another, which is just another word for leaving each other alone, pretending that we have no need of each other.

I’d say the best way churches can serve as peacemakers is by being as faithful as they can in their prayers and their service, and by letting the sad reality of division and mutual exclusion bother us again and bother us enough to reach across the barren lands of tolerance between us. It is good that we no longer burn each other as heretics, but it is not good enough. Peace is not the mere absence of violent conflict or persecution; peace is the fullness of life that emerges when relationships are made right.

We heard lines from Psalm 85 today, a beautiful piece of Hebrew writing. I remember well when I first heard verses 10 and 11, I was a teenager.

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
and righteousness will look down from the sky.

I was a teenager when I first heard these lines, and I was deeply troubled by the lack of righteousness I had begun to see in the world.

I was upset that small farmers in Africa were losing their land and livelihoods, so that agro businesses could grow green beans for export to Europe.

I was upset that governments in the U.S. and Europe were burning corn and dumping vegetables in the ocean to keep commodity prices from falling while people in other parts of the world were starving.

I was upset that the CIA arranged for the toppling of a democratically elected government in Chile to replace it with Pinochet’s military junta.

I was upset that German banks and manufacturers continued to do business in South Africa when the injustice and violence of apartheid was no secret.

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.

I heard those words and I saw the embrace, and the image never left me. When I think of relationships made right, I think of these verses from Psalm 85 where the pillars of God’s covenant loyalty become a promise for us.

Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
and righteousness will look down from the sky.
The Lord will give what is good,
and our land will yield its increase.

When I think of the world at home, I think of these verses that sing, “All will be well.” All will be well between heaven and earth, between God and humankind, between individuals and nations, between people and the land. All will be well.

The psalm doesn’t begin with that serene sense of peace, though; it begins with memories. It begins in a place where God’s redemptive actions in the past are remembered, and are needed again, now. The tone is rather demanding:

Lord, you were favorable to your land;
you restored the fortunes of your people;
you forgave the iniquity of your people;
you pardoned all their sin;
you withdrew all your wrath;
you turned from your hot anger –
Restore us again! Show us your steadfast love!
Life is not the way it’s supposed to be and we need you to do something about it. Will you not revive us again?

The words come from a place where God’s redemptive actions in the past are remembered, but are needed again, now. And after this long outburst of need and insistent questioning and persistent demand, suddenly the voice and tone change.

There is a moment of silence, a long moment of listening, and a single voice says,

“Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people.”

A single voice calls us to listen for the voice and word of God, confident that God will speak peace to the faithful, confident that God’s salvation is not far away but at hand for those who fear God. Nothing in the psalm indicates how long the moment of listening lasts – a day, a year, a generation? And then there is this burst of beauty and imagination, of promise and trust:

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
and righteousness will look down from the sky.

The world will come to be the world God intends, a communion of shalom. All will be well between heaven and earth, between God and humankind, between individuals and nations, between people and the land. All will be well.

We are in Advent. We are in a time of waiting and watching, a time of staying alert and preparing to receive, again. We know something of redemption and of this God whose covenant faithfulness has been attested by generations of God’s people, and we wait for God to come again and speak peace.

Our life in the world is one of dispute and conflict, of juggling divisive issues and keeping violence at bay, and we wait. We are in Advent and we lean forward expectantly, because the world is under promise: All of creation is headed for God’s shalom.

Perhaps the most fruitful way for us to serve as peacemakers is to remember that God calls us to faithful relationship with God and with each other and with all our fellow creatures; and to remember in the ensuing debate over just how to do that, that the fullness God intends for us is not something some of us have and others don’t, but rather something we can only receive together.

Mother Teresa said, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” We may prefer hanging out with the people who are like us. We may prefer talking with the people who think like us. We may prefer worshiping with the people who share our theology or our taste in music. We may prefer living in little tribes of conformity, but all we are doing is confirm our amnesia: we have forgotten that we belong to each other. We have forgotten that the fullness God intends for us includes the people who aren’t like us, who don’t think like us, who don’t share our theology or our musical taste or our political views.

I had a conversation with a group of divinity students at Vanderbilt last week. They told me how difficult it is to put one’s theological hunches into words when everybody in the room comes from a different background – how it can be both exhilarating and very frustrating. How you have to explain so much more and be really careful about what you say about the eucharist. You don’t want to offend a fellow student who may come from a non-sacramental tradition but rather help her hear what you found to be true and how you found it.

I listened and I nodded a lot, yes, it is difficult to do theology in an environment like that. “It was much easier when I went to div school. We were all white, we were all protestants, and the entire faculty was protestant and white and mostly male. I wish I had had the opportunity to study New Testament with a Jewish woman. I wish I had had the opportunity to study with Catholics, Mennonites, and Pentecostals. When we discussed the theology of the Lord’s Supper, we thought it was great fun laughing at Catholic sensibilities and teachings. It was easy enough, there were no Catholics in the room. At the end of my time in seminary, we met for a weekend with a class of candidates for the priesthood from a Catholic seminary. The conversation changed in an instant. We suddenly realized how little we had actually thought about the doctrines we had learned to repeat, because nobody had challenged our thinking.”

Mother Teresa had it right, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” Peacemaking begins with reaching across the barren lands of a tolerance that is nothing more but a mask for our ignorance, our fear, or our lack of interest. Peacemaking begins with listening to the voice and the voices we have excluded, intentionally or not. It may be the voice of spouse or a child, the voice of a Muslim neighbor or a pro-life co-worker or the old woman who never makes eye-contact. Peacemaking begins with the invitation, “Tell me your story.”

Things are far from how they’re supposed to be, and yet God’s salvation is near. We are in Advent. We are in a time of waiting and watching, a time of staying alert and preparing to receive, again. God’s covenant faithfulness has been attested by generations of God’s people, and we wait for God to come again and speak peace.

We are in Advent. We await the divine gift of a human community that will perform its life according to the will of the Giver of life. We practice kingdom living one relationship at a time. We practice leaning forward expectantly, because the world is under promise.

Seven Questions: 3

A woman took a walk in the fields, along the edge of the woods. It was a glorious spring-day, and the air was filled with the songs of more birds than I could name – warblers, wrens, and chickadees, robins, finches, and sparrows. It was a celebration of life unlike anything you could even begin to imagine in the cold, rainy days of November, but the woman didn’t notice; she was a botanist.

I smiled when I heard this on the radio, and I could see her walking along the edge of the woods, her eyes on the ground, fully absorbed in noticing and naming unique and spectacular little green things most of us would call weeds, or maybe wildflowers on a good day.

Attention is a strange and wonderful thing. The things I do attend to can so completely absorb my senses that I forget about time and everything else. And the things I don’t attend to in a sense don’t exist, at least not for me. We say we “pay attention,” suggesting that, when we are attentive, we are spending limited currency that should be wisely invested. We select a portion of all that’s there, and this thin slice of life becomes part of our reality, and the rest is consigned to the blurry margins and the shadows of oblivion.

Attention’s selective nature enables us to comprehend what would otherwise be chaos. We live in daily noise, some more so than others; we move through jungles of thoughts and ideas; we are drenched in feelings, constantly exposed to images; and attention allows us to protect our minds from overload and make our world from all that is happening.

About five years ago, the Washington Post published a great article. It was about a man playing the violine outside the Metro.

A youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.

It was just before 8am on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, this violinist performed six classical pieces, and more than 1000 people passed by. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade was Joshua Bell, one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the greatest music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made.

His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities – as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would great art have the power to disrupt the ordinary, hurried routines of passersby?

The musician played masterpieces that have endured for centuries on their brilliance alone, including Bach’s Chaconne for solo violine, soaring music befitting the grandeur of cathedrals and concert halls.

The acoustics in the arcade proved surprisingly kind. The stone, tile, and glass somehow caught the sound and bounced it back round and resonant. The violin is an instrument that is said to be much like the human voice, and in this musician’s masterly hands, it sobbed and laughed and sang – ecstatic, sorrowful, importuning, adoring, flirtatious, castigating, playful, romancing, merry, triumphal, sumptuous.

The writer apparently was paying attention, but what about the commuters?

In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run – for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look. Now, if a great musician plays great music but no one hears, is it still great and beautiful art or is it just more noise on a busy Friday morning?

Bell said, “At a music hall, I’ll get upset if someone coughs or if someone’s cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to appreciate any acknowledgment, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change.” This is from a man whose talents can command $1,000 a minute.

Before he began, Bell hadn’t known what to expect, and he was nervous. “It wasn’t exactly stage fright, but there were butterflies; I was stressing a little (…) When you play for ticket-holders, you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I’m already accepted. Here, there was this thought: What if they don’t like me? What if they resent my presence ...” [1]

It’s not that they didn’t like him, they simply didn’t hear him. For the vast majority of commuters that Friday morning Joshua Bell’s music was only part of the background while their minds were focussed on getting their kids to school before work or how to impress their boss with a presentation later in the day.

American Philosopher William James wrote in 1890, “Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalisation, concentration of consciousness are of its essence. It implies a withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.”[2]

Attention allows me to focus on some things and filter out others; it distills the vastness of all that is into my world – and that means I must make choices. And making choices requires effort. And sometimes – too often, I’m afraid – I just take the lazy way out and drift along, and I squander precious currency on whatever happens to capture my awareness. Some of us like to blame technology for our diffused, fragmented state of mind, it’s the internet, it’s the cell phones, it’s texting and social media, but our seductive machines are not at fault. They each come with a power button.

Attention implies a withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others. Thus the question is solely what it is we want to deal with, and that defines how often, how long, and how far we withdraw from other things.

I am talking about attention this morning because I believe it is at the heart of the question you asked me to address.

When we look back in history, we can see that dictators like Hitler were bad and we wonder why Christians didn’t stand up sooner to save the people. What about nowadays? When do we know to act, what to do? Where is our collective power?

When I first saw this question, my eyes skipped several words and jumped to “Hitler,” and I felt the pain and guilt and shame connected to that cursed name. I thought about the terror of those years, the unimaginable murder of Jews on an industrial scale, the war mongering, and how it all began in the hearts of human beings and with thoughts and words.

When we look back we can see… but the question that has haunted me since I started asking questions about my family, my people, my culture, my church, the question that I can’t answer is, why didn’t more people see when they didn’t have to look back? What was it they were paying attention to when they weren’t paying attention to the persecution of their neighbors? What were they paying attention to earlier when they weren’t paying attention to the transformation of public discourse into hate speech?

A pastor in Silesia, one of the many who had swallowed the junk food of so-called race theory and of Arian superiority, of German Christians and of “the Jewish question,” this pastor, this shepherd of his people, stood in the pulpit one Sunday morning and told the members of the congregation who didn’t qualify as Arian under the race laws, he told them to get up and get out – three times he told them, and we wonder why they didn’t all stand up and leave, we wonder why they didn’t all stand up and walk out together and leave him alone in his house of lies.

Then there was movement at the front of the sanctuary. There was a cross above the communion table, front and center, and the crucified Jesus came down from it and walked out, saying, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”

What about nowadays? When do we know to act, what to do? I don’t know, what are you paying attention to?

Jesus points to the marginalized, the poor, and the suffering ones and says, “Can you see me now?”

Ezekiel, after lamenting the fall of the holy city, utters his severe indictment against the political class,

“Woe, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals.”[3]

In a tradition of obligation that begins at Sinai, God’s covenant people are meant to be a community that is preoccupied with the well-being of the neighbor, and a community that is prepared to exercise public power for the sake of the neighbor, particularly the vulnerable neighbor in the person of the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant. Ezekiel insists that power cannot be sustained or give prosperity or security, unless it is administered with attention to the well-being of all who have little or no power. And Jesus asks, “Can you see me now?”

Everything depends on what we pay attention to. The real world in which God invites us to live is not the one made available by the rulers of this age, the masters of distraction, the peddlers of the simple answer, and the manipulators of our fears. The real world in which God invites us to live emerges when we let the good shepherd guide our attention, shape our imagination, and give us the courage to act.

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[1] See the full article at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

[2] William James, The Principles of Psychology, Chapter XI: Attention

[3] Ezekiel 34:2-5; the readings of the day were Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 and Matthew 25:31-46

Seven Questions: 2

You gave me seven questions to address in sermons, and this morning I will respond to the second one: How do we make the circumstances of our everyday life lead us to holiness?

We don’t talk much about holiness, do we? We are much more comfortable speaking about living our faith or seeking to embody the love of God. Holiness talk makes most of us uncomfortable because we immediately think of sour-faced, holier-than-thou people who keep a halo by the door and seem to draw deep satisfaction from reminding us how far from perfect we are.

You could have asked me, “How do I make the circumstances of my everyday life lead me to holiness?” and I’m glad you didn’t, because our focus in matters of faith and spirituality already tends to be too narrowly individualistic. One of the songs in our hymnal urges us in four verses to Take Time to Be Holy, as though holiness were something one can add to one’s schedule like 30 minutes of exercise or a doctor’s appointment.[1] The rest of the song, with the exception of the repeated opening phrase, is actually quite helpful in suggesting practices that can sustain a life of faith – I just wish the writer had not entirely neglected the communal nature of our faith.

In Israel, talk about holiness begins with the unambiguous summons of God at Sinai:

You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.

They were a bunch of cheap laborers who had just escaped the oppressive machinery of Egyptian brick production for a taste of sabbath, and at Sinai the Lord God who alone is holy claimed them as God’s own, a holy nation, a people set aside for the purposes and intentions of God, a people with a mission.

“You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy,” is the theme of Leviticus, and it’s all about the proper order of things, how to have holy priests and holy sacrifices and holy offerings and holy festivals and holy shrines and holy bread and holy everything. Leviticus is all about taking great care in knowing and maintaining the boundary between what is holy and what is not. It’s all about not mixing things that shouldn’t be mixed and protecting the purity of the sacred from contamination with the profane.

And then you read Deuteronomy, and in Deuteronomy you find that quite different matters are given weight and attention. There you read,

When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, don’t go back to get it. Leave it for the immigrant, the widow, and the orphan. And when you beat your olive trees, don’t strip what is left. Leave it for the immigrant, the widow, and the orphan. And when you gather the grapes of your vineyard, don’t go back to pick the ones you may have missed. Leave them for the immigrant, the orphan, and the widow.[2]

Holiness is not limited to matters of purity, it is also about the right ordering of social relationships. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that your God is passionate about justice for the poor. Be attentive to faithfulness in every dimension of your life together. Holiness is not about doing holy things in holy places during holy times. Holiness is about being a holy nation, a people claimed to manifest on earth the glory of the Holy One, a community that reflects in its life together the very character of God. All of the Old Testament is about this demanding relationship and the constant temptation to abandon it for the convenience of idolatry.

In the Babyonian exile the question became, how can we maintain our identity as God’s holy people without the land, without the temple, without priests and sacrifices and festivals, and without political power? How can we maintain our identity as God’s holy people when we have been stripped of all markers, except our stories and our songs?

How do we make the circumstances of our everyday life lead us to holiness when the circumstances aren’t favorable to the pursuit of holiness? What can we do to maintain our identity as a people claimed by God in a context where the gods of distraction are in charge and the masters of the sound bite rule?

Daniel suggests that we learn to say No. Daniel was a young man when King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon told his palace master to find the best talent among the exiles from Judah, smart, strong, good-looking young men who graduated top of the class and were competent to serve in the king’s palace. They were to be taught the literature and language of Babylon, they were to be given a daily portion of the royal rations of food and wine, and after three years they were to be stationed in the king’s court. The palace master did as he was told, and among the young men he chose were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. And the first thing he did was give the palace interns new names, Babylonian names: Forget who you are and learn whose you are now. Daniel he called Belteshazzar. And this could have been the end of the story: super power assimilates God’s people – resistance is futile.

But Daniel – the name means ‘God is my judge’ – "Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the royal rations of food and wine."[3] He and his friends asked for a ten-day experiment: they would eat only vegetables and drink only water, and at the end of the period the palace official could compare them to the rest of the interns. That’s what they did, and in our day you know that you could watch the whole thing as a reality show on Babylonian tv, anyway, after ten days, Daniel and his friends were not only the smartest in the bunch, but also the best-looking.

How do we maintain our identity as God’s people when it is under pressure from every side? Daniel would say, “We remember whose we are, and we find practices that sustain our identity.” Daniel said No to the royal rations of food and wine.

The circumstances of our everyday life will not lead us to holiness, they are simply the circumstances in which we must remember our identity as a people who have been claimed by the Holy One to participate in the mission of Christ. We must engage in practices that allow us to stay mindful of who we are, rather than swallow the royal rations of the masters of our exile.

We are far from home, but that doesn’t mean we don’t know where we belong. Christ has made us his own, and in our baptism we were claimed as sons and daughters of God and we ourselves claimed that new identity as ours. We are holy, not because of anything we have done, but because we belong to Christ. And because we are holy, we are called to live holy lives.

As Paul says in today's passage from his first letter to the Thessalonians,

You learned from us how you ought to live and to please God (as, in fact, you are doing), you should do so more and more. (…) Concerning love of the brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anyone write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another; and indeed you do love all the brothers and sisters throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, beloved, to do so more and more.[4] Do what you know is pleasing to God, and do so more and more. Love one another, and do so more and more.

The circumstances of our everyday life will change, but our identity as God’s own will not, nor will our calling to embody in our life together the love of Christ, for the sake of the world. We are not far from home, because we know where we belong: every Sunday we gather at the table to receive and share bread and wine, the royal rations of our Lord.

We Disciples say that we are a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world, and I think it’s a beautiful little oddity that holiness and wholeness sound so very similar. Both speak of our being claimed for the purposes of God, and every time we gather at the table we remember and proclaim Christ’s work of reconciliation that makes us holy and whole.

And after we’ve eaten we turn, not to protect the purity of the holy meal from unholy contamination, no, but to help extend God’s hospitality into every dimension of our life together. One in Christ and therefore one with each other we gather around the table and practice a new economy, one that isn’t defined by greed; we practice a new politics that isn’t defined by grasping control; we practice a peace that isn’t defined by bigger guns; we practice the new life that is holy, whole, and true in every way because it is rooted in generosity, mercy, and faithfulness.

We refuse to eat the junk food of the masters of our exile, because every Sunday we are invited to the royal banquet. And that’s why we can sing a better song than Take Time to Be Holy. We sing, Y’all Take a Day Off to Remember Who You Are. Y’all Take a Day Off to Celebrate Whose You Are. Y’all Take a Day Off to Get a Taste of Home. And we sing it to the tune of SABBATH.

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[1] Chalice Hymnal #572, words by W. D. Longstaff, 1882

[2] Deuteronomy 24:19-21

[3] Daniel 1:8

[4] See 1 Thessalonians 4:1-12

Seven Questions: 1

A few weeks ago, I asked you to jot down any questions you wanted me to address in a sermon, and you did; then I asked you to pick your top seven, and you did. I had a lot of fun with the process, watching the questions come in and wondering what I might say in response, and I got a little nervous when I watched my favorite question of all slowly drop from the top rank to the bottom. I was greatly relieved to see it in sixth position when the polls closed, and in case you didn’t know, my favorite question is one submitted by Calin: “Why doesn’t God have a mommy? Everyone should have a mommy,” and I’ll join him in wondering about this deep concern on the Sunday before Christmas. Today, though, I will try to respond to this one:

What should be the role of the church versus the moral and ethical corruptions of modern society? Handmaiden? Critic? Gadfly? Partisan supporter? Evaluator? Other?

It’s a question that offers its own possible answers, and I suppose I could choose one or perhaps two and elaborate a bit on my choice, why the church should be doing this or that or the other. Handmaiden? Sure, why not, as long as she remembers that she can’t serve two masters. Critic? Absolutely, since the word of God judges our thoughts, words, and deeds. Gadfly? I love the image of a tiny fly moving a heavy bear with a single sting. Partisan supporter? No, not a good idea, unless we think of God’s people as partisans of God’s reign in the thick forest of the world. Evaluator? Sounds a little distant to me, I see people in lab coats with clip boards or figure skating judges, not a pleasant thought. Which leaves “other,” and other with a question mark invites all kinds of possibilities to describe the church’s role versus the moral and ethical corruptions of modern society. Healer? Enforcer of divine law? Jester?

It’s not that there are so many options and I just can’t make up my mind. My problem bubbles up long before I get to the first question mark: I don’t really know what the church is. There are more churches in this city than all flavors of pop tarts, jello, and ice cream combined. Which one of them is the church that is to take on some role or another? Or is it all of them together, somehow?

Growing up, I was encouraged to study the ancient creeds of the church and the confessions of the reformation, and I learned to say,

The Church is the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered. And to the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments.[1]

Sounds simple enough, but look where agreeing on doctrine got us. And I’ll spare you the much wordier and much fierier paragraphs from the Westminster Confession.[2]

What the church is has been contested since the days of Peter, Paul, and Mary, and I’m not talking about the 60’s that tend to get blamed for everything these days. In talking about the church, the best we can do is confess our faith in the unity of the church, confess our sin of fracturing that unity again and again, and proclaim our faith that nevertheless the body of Christ is alive in the world. Despite the scandal of a fractured church, the mission of Christ in the world continues and we have the privilege of having been called to participate in it. So perhaps we should ask the question differently: What should our role be, what should you and I do about the moral and ethical corruptions of modern society?

We should notice them, and not simply in others, which is always convenient; we should notice them and our own entanglement in them. We may want to talk about business ethics on Wall Street, but we also need to talk about our own greed. We may want to talk about sex and violence on tv, but we also need to talk about putting tv’s in our children’s rooms. We may want to talk about drugs in sports, but we also need to talk about our own methods of self-medicating to numb the pain or to push us on. Yes, we should notice the corruptions, and we should begin to name them, and I for one believe we should make a habit of sitting with the prophets and the psalms, and learn to lament again and cry.

Our very souls have been invaded and colonised by the forces that corrupt our life together, and we need strong partners like Amos to free our imagination from the endless commercials and silly soundbites that occupy our minds. We live in dark times, and we keep telling ourselves and each other that it’s the economy, when in truth we have lost all sense of what it means to live together.

Amos cried when he spoke to the people of the city who had done well for themselves. “You desire the day of the Lord? What makes you think it is a day of glory and light? It is a day of darkness, a day of judgment and truth.” And then the tears of Amos became transparent as God’s own tears of anger and grief:

I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.[3]

We live in dark times, and we keep telling ourselves and each other that it’s the economy, and we keep singing our songs or fighting over what songs to sing and presenting our offerings while God is in tears over the ruin of God’s people.

The light that shines in this darkness is the call of God to let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream. The light that shines in the darkness is the call to a life together that embodies the commandments of God.

What is our role versus the moral and ethical corruptions of our time? We notice them and our own entanglement in them, we name them, we lament the absence of fullness, and then we respond anew to the call of God to a life of faithfulness. And faithfulness doesn’t come easy. It is much easier to draw a line, choose a side, and start shouting across whatever the line of division may be.

I recently listened to a couple of conversations Krista Tippett had with two Christian leaders from very different camps, and I was moved and encouraged by their wisdom.

Richard Mouw is a conservative Protestant who is strongly opposed to same-sex marriage. Since 1993, he has been president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, one of the largest centers of Evangelical higher education in the world.

Frances Kissling is best known as the President of Catholics for Choice, a post she held from 1982 to 2007, fighting to keep abortion legal in this country. Both have been involved in heated debates about difficult moral and ethical issues, both learned important things, and I want to make room for their voices this morning.

Mr. Mouw said, “The kind of Evangelical fundamentalist Christianity that formed me early on had a very strong streak of incivility. We not only had enemies, but we felt that it was essential to our spiritual identity that we have enemies. It’s almost as if we’ve always got to have somebody that we feel legitimate about really hating. A lot of people today who have strong convictions are not very civil, and a lot of people who are civil don’t have very strong convictions, and what we really need is convicted civility.”

Then he went all the way back to Aristotle to explain that civility is about learning to live in the city, learning to live with strangers, and he added, “for Christians who take the Bible seriously, it isn’t that we have these convictions and then we also got to try to be civil, but the truth element of civility is itself one of the convictions.”

The truth is at stake not just in the positions we take, but in how we take them. Mouw continued, “[In First Peter, there’s] a verse that gets used all the time among Evangelicals, ‘Be ready at any time to give a reason for the hope that lies within you, of anyone who ask it of you.’ We’ve always had that. You know, we’ve always got to be making the case. We’ve always got to be defending our beliefs against people who disagree with us. But we seldom go on and quote the next part of that verse, which is, ‘And do so with gentleness and reverence…’ I’ve often thought how different our theological and even our interreligious disagreements would get played out if we constantly said to ourselves, I’ve got to treat the other person with gentleness and reverence.”

And then he added, “Maybe it’s time to stop yelling at each other and accusing each other in public and maybe we ought to just sit down and turn the agenda into something where I would ask my gay and lesbian activist friends, ‘what is it about people like me that scares you so much?’ And [then they] in turn would listen to me [as I tell them what worries me so much about what they are advocating. And then we’d] talk about hopes and fears rather than angrily denouncing each other as homophobes or as people who are engaged in despicable behavior.” That would be a very different kind of conversation.[4]

Ms. Kissling, a.k.a. “the cardinal of choice,” was very frank. “I’m not a big believer in common ground. I think that common ground can be found between people who do not have deep, deep differences. But to think that you are going to take the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Organization of Women and they are going to find common ground on abortion is not practical. But I do think that when people who disagree with each other come together with a goal of gaining a better understanding of why the other believes what they do, good things come of that. I have learned — I have changed my views on some aspects of abortion over the last 10 years based upon having a deeper understanding of the values and concerns of people who disagree with me. And as a result, I have an interest in trying to find a way that I can honor some of their values without giving up mine. What is it in your own position that gives you trouble? What is it in the position of the other that you are attracted to? Where do you have doubts? [We must learn to] acknowledge what is good in the position of the other, acknowledge what troubles us about our own position. The need to approach others with enthusiasm for difference is absolutely critical to any change.”[5]

I am grateful for the wisdom of these seasoned leaders. In nurturing “convicted civility” and “enthusiasm for difference” we will find better answers to the moral and ethical challenges of our time, and we certainly get closer to a renewed and faithful vision of life together.

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[1] The Augsburg Confession (1530), Art. 7  http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/concord/web/augs-007.html

[2] The Westminster Confession (1646), ch. 25 http://www.reformed.org/documents/wcf_with_proofs/index.html

[3] Amos 5:18-24

[4] http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2011/ccp-mouw/transcript.shtml

[5] http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2011/ccp-kissling/transcript.shtml

Visit to Riverbend

We were able to schedule another visit to Riverbend (short for Riverbend Maximum Security Institution); so if you missed the tour on October 18, please join us on Monday, November 21. The tour begins at 5:30 and lasts about two hours, including conversation with two inmates.

Visit to Riverbend
Monday, November 21, 2011
5:30-7:30pm

Register now

The group size is limited, and we must submit the list of visitors to prison officials for background checks prior to the visit. Please use this form to submit your name and date of birth. We will organize child care as needed and make car pool arrangements. Registration deadline: Monday, November 14, 9:00am.

The visit is part of our prison:360 focus.

Where Are You From?

Recently, I overheard a conversation between two Lutheran pastors. They were talking about what to make of this Sunday at the end of October when many Protestants dust off the old battle drums for Reformation Sunday. One of the pastors said,

As it stands, Reformation Sunday is the only Sunday of the entire church year that commemorates a moment in the history of Christianity rather than a moment in the narrative of Scripture itself. It is elevated and idealized precisely because it is so unique. This needs to stop. 

The other replied,

You’re absolutely right. But I would argue that we should change how we celebrate Reformation Sunday rather than bury it. True, we’ve set our liturgical calendar to commemorate the date on which Brother Martin posted his 95 theses for public consideration.  However, one could (and I believe should) point out that there have been moments like this throughout the church’s history, all of which are worthy of being called reformation moments, moments where the church has been re-oriented toward the gospel, moved away from the many, many roads down which our distracted, narcissistic minds can take us.[1]

Reformation moments, I like that, moments where the church has been re-oriented toward the gospel, I like that a lot. But why set aside one Sunday for that? I think we need every single Sunday the good Lord gives us, not to celebrate past re-orientations, but rather to ask the risen Christ to re-orient us today, because there are indeed many, many roads down which our distracted, narcissistic minds love to take us.

The last thing we need are more opportunities to bolster tribal identities within the body of Christ. Luther himself was horrified when he heard people referring to themselves as “Lutherans.” “I ask that my name be left silent and people not call themselves Lutheran, but rather Christians.” Amen to that. And so we sing “A Mighty Fortress” on this Sunday with a nod to tradition, but we don’t make this a Protestant holy day; instead we celebrate that the Spirit of the risen Christ continues to work in such a fractured community as the church, and today we do so by remembering and giving thanks for those who have gone before whose lives embodied Christian faithfulness. We celebrate All Saints Sunday in a thoroughly apostolic manner: Paul addressed his letters to the saints, and he wasn’t writing to the few, the chosen, the stars among God’s people, but to all who had found new life through faith in Jesus Christ.[2]

It is difficult for us to say and celebrate who we are without stumbling into nasty messes. Who, for example, is an American and who is not? Well, the first people who came to this land were from Asia, and when the first Spanish settlers arrived, they called them Indians. They mingled and settled in what are today Florida and New Mexico, but the meaning of “American” continued to change. People came from England, Scotland, and Wales, from Holland and Germany, some to escape religious or political persecution, others to seek economic opportunity. Hundreds of thousands, of course, were brought here against their will on slave ships from ports on the West African coast.

The first U.S. Census in 1790 counted nearly 4 million people, the majority of them of English, Welsh, or Scottish heritage; the next-largest group were 757,000 blacks, followed by Germans. Not all of them qualified as “Americans”, though; only “free white persons” could apply for citizenship. Then came large groups of immigrants from Ireland and Italy, and Jewish immigrants from Germany and Eastern Europe, constantly changing the mix of cultures, especially in cities like New York, Boston, and Chicago. Emma Lazarus, herself the daughter of Portuguese Jewish immigrants, captured the nation’s welcoming spirit in an 1883 poem—“Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...”

But the surge in Irish and Italian immigrants to a mostly Protestant nation provoked a backlash against Catholics, and immigrants in general, with some believing that the Pope was plotting to undermine U.S. democracy. No wonder many Protestants were eager to celebrate Reformation Day with great enthusiasm!

Out West, the presence of Chinese immigrants also provoked protests. The abolition of slavery had produced a demand for cheap labor, and Chinese workers had been brought in to build railroads. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred all immigrants from China for 10 years, and the ban was later extended – while immigration from Europe continued unabated for almost 40 years.[3] Immigrants from Europe were considered better suited for becoming Americans than immigrants from China.

Maya Lin is a Chinese-American artist who gained worldwide recognition for designing the Vietnam memorial in Washington, D.C.. Years ago, I heard her recall in an interview a recurring scene in which somebody asked her where she was from. “When I said, ‘from Ohio,’ they replied, ‘No, where are you really from.’” Lin was born in Athens, Ohio, but in the imagination of those who asked her, people from the American heartland “just didn’t look like that.”

Just days ago I read something Benjamin Franklin wrote back in 1751 about the Pennsylvania Germans whom he considered to be a “swarthy” racial group distinct from the English majority in the colony.

Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion?[4]

Other 18^th-century proponents of Anglifying all people accused Germans of laziness, illiteracy, and a reluctance to assimilate, in addition to their excessive fertility and their Catholicism.[5] What strikes me in those statements, besides their rudeness and blatant racism, is how easily they could be recycled for use against Irish and Italian immigrants – and they were – as well as against several Spanish speaking groups, summarily referred to as “Mexicans” these days.

The circumstances of our lives change constantly, sometimes slowly and gradually, sometimes too fast for our souls and imaginations to keep up. And when the world around us changes faster than our minds, we get anxious. When the world around us changes faster than our ability to mourn our losses and comprehend the startling newness of things, fear creeps in. And when fear creeps in, we seek safety. And nothing feels safer than circling the wagons and shouting ugly epithets at those on the outside. Much of our public discourse reflects that sad reality these days. We just keep going down the many, many roads our distracted, narcissistic minds can take us. How can we be re-oriented toward the gospel in this fear-feeding mess?

Today’s reading from 1John urges us to remember who we are.

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.

Perhaps you think ‘children of God’ sounds a little too cute, too infantilizing. Try this: See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called sons and daughters of God; and that is what we are.

Everything around us may be in flux, but our Christ-given identity and status as those who belong to God will not change. We speak different languages, we sing different songs, we were born on different parts of the planet, we tell different stories, and we uphold different values – but see what love the Father has given us, that we should be called sons and daughters of God; and that is what we are. The world changes constantly, and when we locate the core of who we are in the world, we are building on hopelessly unstable ground and we are setting ourselves up for disappointment and worse. When we locate the core of our identity in the world, we end up being defined by the world: we become what we do or what those in power need us to be; we become what we earn; we become the clothes we wear, the neighborhoods we live in, and the schools our children attend; we become the job we have or no longer have, we become the house we can afford or slaves of our mortgage payments. But see what love the Father has given us, that we should be called sons and daughters of God; and that is what we are.

What we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

Everything around us will continue to change, but who we are will not change, but rather continue to be revealed. We are growing into a future which resembles the one in whom we dwell, and that is why we can face all the changes and the losses they represent, with courage and with hope. Nothing will change who we are, and we will see with greater clarity what it means to be called sons and daughters of God. Our likeness will no longer be veiled by layers of ignorance and fear.

The witness who speaks to us through this passage from 1John urges us to live in the kingdom of God, to make that our first address, and to let it shape our loyalties. Then we continue to live in the world, but we don’t believe the stories it tells us about ourselves and others; we don’t allow its anxieties to define us. We trust the word that we are sons and daugthers of God, and we dwell in the land of mercy. And when our neighbors start circling the wagons, we will, by the grace of God, have better hopes to affirm.

There is no better way to honor the spirit of reformation or the memory of those who have gone before than to listen more carefully for the word of God amid the clamor of our days.

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[1] http://nachfolge.blogspot.com/2011/10/why-we-should-celebrate-reformation.html

[2] Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:2; 2 Corinthians 1:1; Ephesians 1:1; Philippians 1:1; Colossians 1:2

[3] http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/indepth/upfront/features/index.asp?article=f0904b

[4] The papers of Benjamin Franklin. Ed. Leonard W. Labaree. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1959. vol 4:234

[5] http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/officialamerican/englishonly/

Can Prisons Be Places of Healing?

I still remember the faces of the women at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. I still remember the words they shared with each other, their courage to speak truth, hard, painful truth.

Eve Ensler conducting a writing workshop with inmates at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York.Monday night, as part of our prison:360 focus, I watched a documentary, What I Want My Words To Do To You, about a writing workshop led by playwright Eve Ensler inside a women's prison. I had the privilege to witness the power of words to open paths toward healing and wholeness. Fifteen women, the majority of them convicted of murder, used writing and conversation to delve into their most terrifying realities and grapple with their own culpability. If you haven't seen this documentary, I hope you will.

We all need places where we can speak the truth without fear, places where, in an atmosphere of love, we can explore the things that haunt and terrify us. We all need relationships that allow us to face our own brokenness, and for some of us prison can be the place where such relationships finally become possible.

On Sunday, we will have guest speakers from The Theotherapy Project, both during the Sunday school hour at 9:30 and during worship at 10:45. Mark and Dana West will talk about their work with small groups inside Tennessee prisons, and with former female offenders at Rivera House, a transitional home for women in East Nashville. Two of the residents will talk about their experience during worship. When truth is spoken and heard in a setting defined by love, healing occurs. Join us on Sunday in the fellowship hall and in worship, and you too will remember the faces and words of women who found healing behind prison walls.

Full of Blue

How long has it been since you heard the Ten Commandments read out loud?[0] I don’t remember, it’s been quite a long time. In some old churches on the East coast, worshipers and tourists can still find the words written on the sanctuary walls, framing the lectern and the pulpit, the baptistery and the table. Early Anglican tradition in the colonies, long before the American Revolution began, required that the Ten Commandments were to be “set up on the East end of every Church and Chapel, where the people may best see and read the same.” In those days, the East end was the front of the sanctuary. Before the service began, you could sit in the pew, meditate on the writing on the wall and reflect on your week in light of the ten words.

Martin Luther was convinced that knowing the Ten Commandments was tantamount to knowing the entire Bible. “This much is certain,” he wrote in the introduction to the Large Catechism, “those who know the Ten Commandments perfectly know the entire Scriptures and in all affairs and circumstances are able to counsel, help, comfort, judge and make decisions in both spiritual and temporal matters.”[1] He knew, of course, that knowing the ten perfectly doesn’t end with being able to recite them – but it certainly begins there. There are ten of them, which is very good because we can use our fingers to help us learn and remember. They are, for the most part, brief and simple, so we can take them to heart and hold them in memory. They become part of us so they can guide us in our living. Knowing them perfectly is not just about unfolding every possible nuance of their meaning, but about living with them, every day; becoming familiar with them as with a path you walk every morning, and every morning it shows you something new. They are more than just rules and laws; they are good words that open us to the will and wisdom of God.

At the heart of the ten commandments is the good word about remembering the sabbath. Jesus taught that the sabbath was created for humans, and not the other way round, humans for the sabbath.[2] Of course, we want to know what it means that the sabbath was made for us and whose it is. I thought about that particular commandment these last few days, as I sat and chatted with Emily Dickinson. I had read her little poem, Some keep the Sabbath, and, curisously, I both loved it and felt moved to protest.[3]

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church —
I keep it, staying at Home —
With a Bobolink for a Chorister —
And an Orchard, for a Dome —

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice —
I, just wear my Wings —
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton — sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman —
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last —
I’m going, all along.

It’s easy to see her, sitting in the orchard with the birds, isn’t it? She’s smiling, there’s not one boring moment, the sermon is never long. I think I know the place she’s writing about so beautifully, and I think you know it too.

A couple of weeks ago, nine of us drove to the mountains. The sky hung low like a grey blanket, and the early morning air was cold. We drove to Chattanooga, on to Cleveland, and up the Hiwassee, waiting for the sun to rise. We pushed our kayaks in the water and started paddling down the river – and with every paddle stroke, it seemed, the clouds got thinner. Suddenly the sky was bluer than a Titans jersey, and the light awakened the colors all around us: the trees on either side of the river, with specks of yellow and red, the ancient rock faces with hues of silver and copper, the bright green patches of eelgrass in the water right below us, and on the edge of an island a little red flower whose name I still don’t know. It was as though the sunlight had kissed the world awake and everything was singing.

Heaven is declaring God’s glory;
the sky is proclaiming God’s handiwork.

We were paddling down the river surrounded by an anthem of praise – but there was no speech, no words, only the lovely sound life makes when it is very good.

The Psalm we heard this morning also sings about this place where the sermon is never long.

One day gushes the news to the next, and one night informs another what needs to be known. Of course, there’s no speech, no words — their voices can’t be heard — but their sound extends throughout the world; their words reach the ends of the earth.

Who, then, in Ms Dickinson’s orchard, speaks of Sabbath? Who proclaims the promise of peace in the garden? Who told her that the joy she finds there is of the heavenly kind? Neither day nor night nor the bobolink break the silence of nature with a word of heaven.

Kathleen Norris, in her book Dakota, writes about a little girl she met at an elementary school where she taught creative writing for a while. The little girl had recently moved from Louisiana to the vast Dakota landscape, and she wrote what Norris says is “the best description I know of the Dakota sky.” It’s a most beautiful line:

‘The sky is full of blue / and full of the mind of God.’[4]

There is a fullness we cannot know unless a voice ends the silence of the sky. The psalmist knows what it is like when we see more than we can say, when we run out of words to give voice to our awe and wonder and we reach for the power of metaphor. In the psalm we heard, the sun rises like a groom coming out of his honeymoon suite, and like a warrior, it thrills at running its course. But unlike Ms Dickinson, the psalmist also reminds us that God has broken through the silence of nature, disclosing God’s name and making known the mind of God in the liberation of God’s people and the gift of the commandments. Suddenly, out of the blue, the psalm sings of the Lord’s perfect instruction, faithful laws, and pure commands, of God’s torah in words that revive, make wise, gladden the heart, enlighten and last.

They are more desirable than gold —
they are sweeter than honey —
and there is great reward in keeping them.

The psalm is as exuberant in giving voice to the wonders of God’s word as in singing of the silent witness of earth and sky.

Every creature is a song of praise, a poem of divine glory – and so are we, when we are fully alive. Yet we are only fully alive when we can tell God from idol. For us to be fully alive, we must live with these ten good words and with the One whose life embodied and proclaimed their deepest meaning.

I told Ms Dickinson that I believe we must keep the Sabbath going to Church not only to hear about and taste the promise of Sabbath peace in contrast to a world that tells us to do what we want and then goes on to tell us what to want. We need to keep the Sabbath going to Church because our coming together is part of the peace God intends. We do not come to the garden alone. We don’t paddle down the river by ourselves. We must be together in order to know God’s good word perfectly. Hearing it again and again is the beginning. Embodying it together is the fulfillment.

The psalm has a third movement after the silent witness of creation to the glory of God and the exuberant praise for God’s torah. The third movement is quiet and introspective. It takes us back to the pew in a little church somewhere in Virginia or Massachusetts where the Ten Commandments are written on the wall facing the congregation. Perhaps you got there early, before the service began; perhaps the sermon was long and your mind started wandering. Now you sit there reading the words, from the first to the tenth, and you reflect on your life in their light. You notice the shadows. “Can anyone know what they’ve accidentally done wrong?” you wonder with the psalmist and you pray with the psalmist, “Clear me of my unknown sin and save your servant from willful sins. Don’t let them rule over me.”

The psalm moves from the grandeur of the heavens to the surrender of the heart; from the power of God to create and speak to the power of God to forgive and save. The final words are not words about God, but words addressed to God. The final word is a heart trusting in God.

I promised Ms Dickinson that today’s sermon would not be long. So allow me to close with a song whose writer was inspired by our psalm.

All things praise thee—night to night
sings in silent hymns of light;
all things praise thee—day to day
chants thy power in burning ray;
time and space are praising thee,
all things praise thee—Lord, may we![5]

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[0] In worship, we read the ten commandments and Psalm 19 from the Common English Bible

[1] The Book of Concord: the confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, by Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, Charles P. Arand (Augsburg Fortress, 2000) 382; older editions online, e.g. http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/catechism/web/cat-01.html

[2] Mark 2:27

[3] http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182809

[4] Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1993) p. 21

[5] George W. Conder, Appendix to the Leeds Hymn Book, 1874; sounds lovely to the tune of "For the Beauty of the Earth"

Seven Questions

I asked you to submit questions for a sermon series, and you did. Thank you! I asked you to select the top seven from all the questions that were entered, and you did. Thank you! Here they are, seven questions that I will address in upcoming sermons:

How can the church serve as a peacemaker in dealing with the divisive issues (other Christian traditions, other faiths, political extremes, social values) of our time?
This one I will address on December 4.

How do we make the circumstances of our everyday life lead us to holiness?
This one I will address on November 13.

When we look back in history, we can see that dictators like Hitler were bad and we wonder why Christians didn’t stand up sooner to save the people.  What about nowadays?  When do we know to act, what to do? Where is our collective power?
This one I will address on November 20.

What should be the role of the church versus the moral and ethical corruptions of modern society? Handmaiden? Critic? Gadfly? Partisan supporter? Evaluator? Other?
This one I will address on November 6.

Can you be a Christian if you don’t care about “going to heaven”?
This one I will pick up in January.

Why doesn’t God have a mommy? Everyone should have a mommy.
This one I will pick up on December 18.

Whatever happened to the concept of sin? Aren’t many of our serious social problems related to The Seven Deadly Sins (wrath, greed, sloth, lust, envy, gluttony, pride) and the lack of support for The Seven Cardinal Virtues (fortitude, justice, prudence, temperance, faith, hope, charity)?
This one I will pick up in January.

It has been so much fun working with you on this project. Thank you for your input! I so look forward to preaching those sermons...

A Temple in the Streets

“You ride into town on a donkey, and you allow the crowds to greet you as king. You enter the temple and you drive out all who are buying and selling there. You overturn the tables of the money changers. You allow the blind and the lame to come to you in the temple, and you cure them. The children sing to you, Hosanna to the Son of David, and you do not stop them. Just who do you think you are?”[1]

The temple authorities were not just curious, they were angry and they demanded answers. “What kind of authority do you have for doing these things? Who gave you this authority?” Where did you go to school? What is your degree? When and where were you ordained? Do you have letters, certificates, diplomas?

The temple authorities lived in a very orderly world where authority was hard-earned and carefully assigned. You study hard, you finish top of your class, you get the right internships, you network in the outer courtyards to find a way into the inner circle, you make sure the people in charge remember your name.

It is easy to see how these seasoned temple leaders were disturbed and shaken by Jesus’ freedom. His words and actions went against all that was holy to them. And his words and actions undermined their power: Forgiveness of sins was temple business, yet Jesus forgave sins on the street.

The crowds saw it and praised God, who had given such authority to human beings, but the temple authorities couldn’t see it that way.[2] The crowds shouted, the children sang, but the chief priests and the elders of the people raised angry questions. “What kind of authority do you have for doing these things? Who gave you this authority?” They only knew the authority of the law and the authority of tradition, and Jesus didn’t fit.

They asked Jesus, but only they themselves could answer these questions, just like you and I trust the word and witness of others only to the point where we ourselves know the authority of Jesus. It’s a matter of seeing. We know his authority because it grabs us, it changes us, it puts us on a different path. We give the answer when the question isn’t a question anymore, and we give it with your lives.

Jesus didn’t give them an answer, because he gave it with his life as well. Instead he asked them a question, “Where did John get his authority to baptize? Did he get it from heaven or from humans?” They remembered John, who called people to repentance, and who baptized those who confessed their sins. They remembered him: he had called them a brood of vipers – not a phrase they could forget easily. John challenged them along with all the sinners gathered at the river’s edge to produce fruit that showed that they had changed their hearts and lives.[3]

Now Jesus asked them whether John’s authority came from heaven or from humans. What were they to say? They didn’t discuss if John was a prophet from God or just a crazy wild man, but they showed great concern for the political implications of their response. “If we say ‘from heaven,’ he’ll say to us, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ But we can’t say ‘from humans’ because everyone thinks John was a prophet.” The safest thing to do was to plead ignorance. “We don’t know,” they replied. The entire conversation wasn’t shaped by a desire to know the truth, but by political considerations. Power was at stake, and these men were not free to respond to John or Jesus, because they were trapped in positions of privilege. An honest answer, either way, would have threatened those positions.

The way Matthew paints the scene makes it very easy for us, too easy, I believe, to stand in the courtyard and chide the religious authorities for their failure to respond with honesty. It doesn’t take great courage to demand honesty when others are the ones faced with the question. But if we’re honest – and I can only speak from my own experience, but I suspect I’m not alone – if we’re honest, we must admit that our own response to Jesus is determined by considerations of power and privilege, all the time: calling Jesus my Lord and Savior involves letting go of habits of thinking, speaking, and doing that are quite comfortable. And when I’m not ready to let go, I’m as good as the first of the chief priests at pleading ignorance.

I hear the little story of the two sons with great humility. A man had two sons. Now he came to the first and said, “Son, go and work in the vineyard today.” “No, I don’t want to,” he replied. But later he changed his mind and went. The father said the same thing to the other son, who replied, “Yes, sir.” But he didn’t go. Which one of these two did his father’s will?

Yet another question, and this time the temple leaders didn’t huddle to discuss their answer. “The first one,” they said. It was a good answer. What we say matters, but not as much as what we do. Actions speak louder than words. Well done is better than well said. It was a good answer, but it was also a word of judgment. Jesus draws our attention to the actions of notorious sinners, people who never claimed to do God’s will: When John came, they trusted his word that repentance was the gate to the kingdom. Tax collectors and prostitues changed their hearts and lives, and they are entering God’s kingdom ahead of you. Those who were blind are able to see. Those who were crippled are walking. Those who were deaf now hear. Those who were dead are raised up. The poor have good news proclaimed to them. [4] And all you do is ask, ‘Who gave you this authority?’ What does it take for you to see the grace of heaven at work on earth? What does it take for you to join the company of sinners in the embrace of God’s mercy? Are you so proud? Are you so proud?

In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky writes about the “lady of little faith.” She is an old woman who has doubts about her destiny in the face of death, and she seeks spiritual advise from Father Zosima.[5]

He tells her, “Strive to love your neighbor actively and indefatigably. In as far as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul. If you attain to perfect self-forgetfulness in the love of your neighbor, … no doubt can possibly enter your soul. This has been tried. This is certain.”

“In active love?” she replies. “There’s another question—and such a question! You see, I so love humanity that … I often dream of forsaking all that I have, leaving [my family], and becoming a sister of mercy. I close my eyes and think and dream, and at that moment I feel full of strength to overcome all obstacles.”

She wants to say ‘yes’ with her whole heart, but then she wonders how long she could endure such a way of life. What if the patient whose wounds she would so lovingly and selflessly be tending, what if that patient should fail to respond with gratitude? “If anything could dissipate my love to humanity, it would be ingratitude,” she says.

Then the priest tells her what a doctor once told him.

“He was a man getting on in years, and … spoke as frankly as you, though in jest, in bitter jest. ‘I love humanity,’ he said, ‘but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams,’ he said, ‘I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion if it had been suddenly necessary; and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with any one for two days together, as I know by experience. As soon as any one is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. … The more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.’ ”

“But what’s to be done?” the woman asks. “What can one do in such a case? Must one despair?”

“No,” the priest replies. “It is enough that you are distressed at it. Do what you can, and it will be reckoned unto you. … If you do not attain happiness, always remember that you are on the right road, and try not to leave it. Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute. … What seems to you bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of your observing it in yourself. … Never be frightened at your own faint-heartedness in attaining love … I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all ... But active love is labor and fortitude.”

The love of God which encounters and invites us in Jesus is not a love in dreams. It is a love that reveals its depth in the long labor of our redemption.

In the life of Jesus, word and action become one to build a temple in the streets. He calls us to change our hearts and lives and to join the company of sinners in the embrace of God’s mercy. He calls us to let go of our pride and recognize one another as brothers and sisters in our need for forgiveness. He calls us to join him in the dailiness of love’s labor, which is our priestly service. He calls us to give the answer with our lives.

---

[1] See Matthew 21

[2] See Matthew 9:2-8

[3] Matthew 3:1-12

[4] See Matthew 11:5

[5] http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1073265&pageno=37

One Coin

It’s not easy to put a large table cloth on the ground for a picnic. Have you ever tried it? On a calm, windless day it’s just a matter of shaking it out so it spreads and settles down slowly. But if there’s a little wind, even just a breeze, it becomes near impossible: the fabric billows, the corners fly – you want the cloth to behave in a tame, domesticated manner, but it wants to be a banner, a kite, or a sail.

A good parable is like that. You expect somebody would know how to lay it out on the ground, nicely and orderly, but it just won’t lie still. It’s full of possibilities and surprises; every time you hear it, it’s new, it’s deeper, challenging, confusing, comforting.

Imagine you take this little gem of a story about a vineyard owner to the business round table, the next time they have a luncheon downtown. Entrepreneurs, executives, managers – they listen how this peculiar workday unfolds from first light to pay time, and they wonder what kind of business man the landowner is and how he ever managed to stay in business.

Then you take the story to the union hall, if you can find one, and they try to keep calm while they explain to you why you can’t pay some workers for one hour’s work what others make in an entire day.

Now imagine you take the story to the corner of the parking lot at Home Depot where out-of-work men gather, waiting for someone to hire them. They laugh as they listen because they know how hard it is to make a full day’s wage with part time labor. They know how hard it is to watch truck after truck drive by – and very few trucks come around after noon. Not a lot of people are hiring these days. On the way home you hear on the radio that the unemployment rate in Tennessee is at 9.8% and that 1 in 6 Americans now live in poverty.

When Jesus first told this parable, many farmers in Galilee had lost their land, and they had to make a living as day laborers. Mid-size and large farms, many of them owned by absentee landlords, were usually operated with day labor rather than slaves; it was much cheaper, and there was an abundance of landless peasants. Farmworkers in Galilee were poor, underemployed, and heavily taxed by the Roman authorities.

One denarius, a small Roman coin, appears to have been the going rate for a day of field labor, but a denarius wasn’t much. You could buy 10-12 small loaves of pita bread for a denarius. For a lamb you had to pay 3-4 denarii; for a simple set of clothes, 30 denarii.[1]

The landowner in the story is very peculiar. He goes out early in the morning to hire laborers, which was the usual time. But then he comes back at 9 to hire more, and you say to yourself, “Well, he finally realized that he needed more hands to get the work done.”

When he comes back at noon, you wonder if he knows what he’s doing or if he is one of those rich city slickers who bought himself a vineyard and a winery. And then he comes back in the middle of the afternoon, when everybody is dreaming about quitting time, and he keeps hiring – and you are running out of explanations that would make sense of this kind of behavior. Has he been in the sun too long?

But that’s not the end of it. The sun is already low in the west when he returns again to the marketplace, and he hires every last worker he can find. The day began in the familiar world of the tough Galilean rural economy, but it ends in a world that looks and feels very different.

Imagine you got up at dawn to go to the corner where they pick up day laborers. You know that if you get hired, you can get some bread on the way home and your family will eat dinner. But you don’t get picked in the first round. You go to the other side, hoping to have better luck over there, but you don’t. The younger ones are hired first. The stronger ones are hired first. You cross the road again, hoping for better luck on the other side, but it’s noon already. You decide to check out the Labor Ready office on Gallatin, but they tell you to come back tomorrow, and to be there early. So you go back to the marketplace, and just when you decide to call it a day and walk home, this landowner shows up and asks you, “Why are you standing here idle all day?”

The economy has tanked and you find yourself pushed to the margin, and you already feel like a left-over person, no longer needed, unnoticed, forgotten, and this man calls you idle. This man doesn’t know how long you have been on your feet. He doesn’t know how hard you have tried to find work. He doesn’t know how hungry you are and how much you dread coming home tonight with empty hands. Did he just call you lazy or work-shy?

“We’re here because no one has hired us,” you say.

“You also go into the vineyard,” the landowner replies.

And you go. You’re not doing it for the money, or you would have asked him how much he’s paying. You go because …, who knows. You go because you want to be useful, because you are somebody, because you want to contribute and participate. You go and work in the vineyard.

Soon the manager calls everybody to line up, starting with those hired last, starting with you. You barely got your hands dirty. How much could it be for an hour’s work? A copper penny? It doesn’t really matter. It won’t be enough to put bread on the table. It’ll be another dinner of wild field greens for you and the family, organic and locally harvested!

Now the manager puts a coin in your hand. It’s a denarius. It’s a full day’s pay. It’s unbelievable! You turn around to the people behind you, “Look at this! A full day’s wage!”

The news travels fast to the end of the line, where the ones hired first are waiting to be paid. Imagine you’re one of them. You’ve worked twelve long, hard hours. You are dirty, sweaty, your clothes are sticking to your skin and your back is aching. Talk about eating your bread by the sweat of your brow! But you’ve heard the news and now you’re looking forward to a little bonus, and your back is already starting to feel better.

You move to the front of the line, and the manager puts a coin in your hand. It’s a denarius. One denarius. It’s unbelievable! You turn to the people around you, and they are just as upset as you are.

“These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” You have made them equal to us. You have wiped out the distinctions that are so important to us and to our sense of justice and fairness.

This story comes with more than just a breeze; the air is charged, a thunderstorm is brewing. You expect somebody would know how to smooth it out on the ground, nice and square, but it just won’t lie still. This story will continue to challenge, confuse, and comfort us, depending on how and where we enter it.

This little story holds the pain and the hope of those in every generation who are treated like left-over people. All those in the company of sinners and tax collectors who are not pious enough to be considered righteous and worthy of divine reward, and yet Jesus welcomes them into the kingdom. The story holds the pain and the hope of all those in the company of landless peasants who feel like they are no longer needed or wanted, and Jesus insists that their needs and dignity matter.

But this little story also holds the anger and resentment of those in every generation who worry that too much mercy for others will only breed further lack of effort on their part. All those in the company of the self-made upright who cannot imagine themselves as recipients of gifts they didn’t earn, but whom Jesus welcomes with equal compassion as he welcomes notorious sinners. The story holds the anger and resentment of all those who look with envy on those they deem less industrious, less committed, less worthy of the joy of God’s reign than they are.

This little kingdom story holds a mighty surprise, and whether we respond with joy or with grumbling depends entirely on how we see ourselves: Have I been working since the break of dawn, or am I only just beginning to get my hands in the dirt in this vineyard? I like to think that I’ve been working for a very long time, but what if all my busyness since the break of day was only idleness in the eyes of the owner of this vineyard? This little story is full of possibilities and surprises; every time you hear it, it’s new, it’s deeper, challenging, confusing.

One thing I know: God is not like some absentee landlord who shows little interest in us but much more like the quirky vineyard owner in our story. The God who meets us in Jesus is one who comes and seeks us, as if the day was not complete until each of us has done at least a little vineyard work. God comes and finds us, sometimes early, sometimes late, and will not rest until we’re found, every last one of us. And at the end of the day, we all receive the fullness of what God so generously gives: life. Life that is nothing but life.

---

[1] Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus (EKK 1/3), p. 146

What Are Prisons For?

At first the answers may seem simple. Prisons are for the punishment of people who have broken the law. Prisons are for the protection of the community from potentially dangerous offenders. Prisons are for the correction of behaviors that threaten life in community. But prisons are also communities where people live and work, where babies are born and people die of old age. What do we make of the fact that the U.S. has the largest prison population in the world? How effective are prisons in accomplishing what they are supposed to accomplish?

This fall we will meet numerous times for conversations around incarceration and how it relates to our faith. Some of the conversations will happen in our fellowship hall, others in homes, in a local prison, and in our sanctuary. We are well aware that we cannot address every dimension of this seemingly simple question, What are prisons for? Once the planning team started naming themes for programs, we quickly realized that we were looking at a complex and multi-layered set of issues.

The idea behind prison:360 is not to look at an issue from every possible angle. What we try to accomplish is integrating traditional classroom learning with opportunities for fellowship and service, as well as spiritual practice and reflection. 

All of the programs are open to the public, but please note that a registration is required for some.

Wednesday, October 12

6:30 p.m. (dinner begins at 6 p.m. ) in the fellowship hall

Robin Porter – How Do Prisons Work?

Robin began working in prisons as an intern when she was a student at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and today she is the Director of Victim Services with the Tennessee Department of Correction. She will share with us from her own experience how prisons work, system-wide and on the day-to-day level in a specific setting.

Make your dinner reservation by Monday October 10

Thursday, October 13

8 p.m.   Documentary night at the Kleinert’s

American Drug War (2007)

The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world, and illegal drugs have a lot to do with that. The War on Drugs has become the longest and most costly war in American history, the question has become, how much more can the country endure? Inspired by the death of four family members from “legal drugs” Texas filmmaker Kevin Booth sets out to discover why the Drug War has become such a big failure.

Map and directions

Sunday, October 16

9:30 a.m.   in the fellowship hall

Gayle Ray – What Are Prisons For?

Gayle is a former sheriff of Davidson County and former Commissioner of the Department of Correction. She will talk about the purpose of prisons: what is incarceration supposed to accomplish, and how well does the system work?

Sunday, October 16

10:45 a.m.   worship
Lee Camp, guest preacher
Lee is Professor of Ethics at Lipscomb University, at both the college and graduate level, and he is well known as the host and creator of Tokens, a “theological variety show.”

Monday, October 17

7 p.m.   Documentary night at the Kleinert’s

What I Want My Words To Do To You ( 2003)

The film goes inside a writing workshop at New York’s Bedford Hills Correctional Facility led by playwright Eve Ensler. Fifteen women, most of whom were convicted of murder, delve into and expose their most terrifying realities as they grapple with the nature of their crimes and their own culpability. The film culminates in a prison performance of the women’s writing by acclaimed actors Mary Alice, Glenn Close, Hazelle Goodman, Rosie Perez and Marisa Tomei.

Map and directions

Tuesday, October 18

5:30 p.m.   Riverbend Prison

Life Behind Bars

We have the opportunity to visit one of Nashville’s prisons, Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. Visitors get a close look at life behind bars as well as time to talk with two of the inmates. The group size is limited and early registration is required. Please register here or call the church office at 269-5614.

Sunday, October 23

9:30 a.m. in the fellowship hall

Prisons – Places of Healing?

Many non-government agencies, groups, and ministries work with inmates and ex-offenders. Mark and Dana West are with The Theotherapy Project, and they will tell us about their work with convicts while in prison as well as after their release, when they face the challenges of life outside. Graduates of the program will talk about their experience during worship.

Monday, October 24

7 p.m.   Documentary night at the Kleinert’s

The Dhamma Brothers (2008)

An overcrowded maximum-security prison in Alabama is dramatically changed by the influence of an ancient meditation program. Behind high security towers and a double row of barbed wire and electrical fence dwells a host of convicts who will never see the light of day. But for some of these men, a spark is ignited when it becomes the first maximum-security prison in North America to hold an an emotionally and physically demanding course of silent meditation lasting ten days.

Map and directions

Wednesday, October 26

6:30 p.m. (dinner begins at 6pm) in the fellowship hall

Charlie Strobel – When Crime Becomes Personal

Most of us know and love Fr. Strobel for his work with the homeless in our community. What many of us don’t know is that Charlie’s mother, Mary Catherine, was murdered in 1985 by a man who had escaped from a prison mental ward. We have invited Charlie to talk about how his faith shaped his response to the violent and painful loss of his mother.

Make your dinner reservation by Monday, October 24

Wednesday, November 2

6:30 p.m. (dinner begins at 6 p.m. ) in the fellowship hall

Robin Porter and Nicole H. Smith - Victim Impact

Incarceration is a means to punish and rehabilitate offenders. What about the victims of crime? How does the prison help offenders take accountability for what they have done? What systems are in place to support victims of crime? Robin is the Director of Victim Services with the Tennessee Department of Correction. Nicole has used her experience as a victim of crime to teach victim impact classes for inmates and facilitate victim offender dialogues.

Make your dinner reservation by Monday, October 31

Thursday, November 3

8 p.m.   Documentary night at the Kleinert’s

Prison Town, USA (2007)

In the 1990s, at the height of the prison-building boom, a prison opened in rural America every 15 days. The film tells the story of Susanville, California, one small town that tries to resuscitate its economy by building a prison — with unanticipated consequences.

Map and directions

Sunday, November 6

After weeks of conversations and experiences, we address in worship and in the context of the gospel some of the questions that have been raised. Our faith traditions speak and sing about prisoners losing their chains and prison doors flying open, about repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation, and the scriptures are full of prison stories – Joseph, Daniel, John, Peter, Paul, to name just a few. Who knows what will emerge when we juxtapose recent experience and ancient tradition, burning questions and living Word?

Sunday, November 6

4:45 p.m.   Documentary night with the youth group

(the title of the film will be announced shortly)

A Lovely Idea?

The world turns, the years pass, and on this day people of every faith throughout the world pause and gather to mark the passage of a decade since that sunny morning in September when thousands died in a premeditated act of mass murder. We each have our own memories. Where we were. How we felt. How long it took for the reality to sink in. How our lives were touched by stories of loss and of human courage. How much our lives have changed in response to the heart-stopping violence of that day.

We are here this morning to worship God and to remember Jesus Christ. Our faith urges us to perceive the world in the light of God’s grace, and we gather here to receive that vision. We gather here that we may grow in faithfulness to God’s will rather than shrink in fear. We gather here to practice walking in the paths that lead us out of cycles of hatred, violence, and revenge to a life that is God-pleasing. You may call it an uncanny coincidence or a divine gift that one of Jesus’ teachings on forgiveness is the lectionary text for this Sunday.

Forgiveness is at the very heart of Jesus’ ministry. A college professor reports that whenever she asks her undergraduate students in her religion class what they believe to be the most important part of the Christian message, they unfailingly bring up forgiveness. Jesus came to bring a message of forgiveness, they say. So true. And some of the students remember to add that he came to teach us how to forgive one another. In a world where hatred, violence, and revenge are not to have the last word, forgiveness is a daily necessity. And so, every Sunday, we gather to affirm the life Jesus embodied, proclaimed, and opened to us.

Every time we say the prayer Jesus taught us, we speak about forgiveness. Whether we learned to say trespasses, debts, or sins, we put into words our need to be forgiven and to be forgiving. We ask our Father in heaven to ‘give us this day our daily bread’ and in the same breath we remember the one thing we need just as much as bread – forgiveness, given and received, daily.

You know that breaking bread with a stranger is much easier than sharing the gift of forgiveness with a friend. Vengeance and retribution are easy; all I have to do is follow my instincts and let the waves of my emotions carry me. You hurt me and I’ll hurt you back; it’s easy. But there is nothing instinctive or natural about forgiveness. C. S. Lewis wrote,

I said … that chastity was the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. But I am not sure I was right. I believe there is one even more unpopular. (…) Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.[1]

Forgiveness has increased in popularity since C. S. Lewis wrote those lines, but it is still a lovely idea. Like community is a lovely idea, until you are part of one. Like a committed relationship is a lovely idea, until you live in one, daily. We can’t say what’s harder, to forgive someone who has wronged  us or to acknowledge that we have hurt somebody and ask for forgiveness. Most of us know how it feels when a relationship is stuck in tension. We know how it feels to long for resolution, for a way of leaving the hurt behind and moving toward healing. But we also know how it feels to wait for the other to make the first move. We love the idea of forgiveness, but we don’t always find it easy to do, both the giving and the receiving. The idea lives in our mind, but we sense that something other than our mind is needed in order to move out of stuckness, something we call the heart, the soul, our innermost being.

A few weeks ago, I read about Thomas Ann Hines. Thomas Ann was a divorced mother of an only child. Her son, Paul, twentyone, was a senior at Austin Community College, four hours south of their Plano home, when she got a call from the police one night. Her son had been shot; he was dead. The murderer was a seventeen-year-old drug dealer, Robert White. Believing he was about to be arrested for a burglary, he wanted out of Austin fast. He needed a car. Near a video arcade he spotted Hines and asked him for a ride. He told him his mother was deathly ill, that he wanted to see her, and Hines agreed to take him. Minutes later he was bleeding to death, shot through the lungs and heart.

Thomas Ann descended into a pit of anger and vengeance. The hope of her life was gone. She was completely alone now, without a future, without hope, without any reason, it seemed, to live.

She endured the investigation and the trial, hoping for the death penalty. White was convicted of murder, but he was too young for Death Row. He was sentenced to thirteen years “flat time,” and probation until age forty. Thomas Ann managed to survive. She regularly wrote letters to the Parole Board to ask if her son’s murderer “had died yet,” and to remind them that she would fight his release at every opportunity. Her hope was that Robert Charles White would rot in prison for what he’d done to her son. But struggling to heal, she read voraciously, books on the soul and the spirit and the criminal mind, and the more she read, the more interested she became in who these offenders actually were.

One day she was invited to join a panel of violent crime victims speaking at one of the state prisons. The idea is that victims tell their stories to inmates—not the offenders in their own cases—in an effort to show the human consequences of their crimes. Hines was already convinced that inmates had it too easy, and she thought they ought to be facing “real guilt and pain.” If she could make them do that by telling her story at prisons, she was ready.

And then she sat at the front of the room, awaiting her turn to speak to the 200 assembled inmates, and she noticed a red-haired young man sitting not far from her who, she says, “could easily have passed for Paul’s brother. I looked at him, and suddenly thought to myself, ‘what would his mother want to say to him if she could say something?’ I realized that if my son was in this room, I’d want someone to reach out a hand to him.” It was a moment that instantly transformed her from an angry lecturer to a compassionate mother. It was the beginning of her new life’s work with victims of violent crime and offenders.

On the morning of June 9, 1998, in the chapel of the Alfred D. Hughes Correctional Facility in Gatesville, Texas, where White was an inmate, Thomas Ann Hines sat across the table from the murderer of her son. They talked for eight hours, and if I had just one hour, I would tell you all the things they talked about. No, it wasn’t forgiveness. It was just hard, painful truth. But when, in the course of the conversation, the young man put his face down on the table at which they sat and began to sob, she reached across and touched his arm.[2]

I don’t know if this story did become one of forgiveness. It is a story of healing, though, of moving out of stuckness. What I love about it is that it isn’t one of those tales of modern day saints that give forgiveness a patina of heroic exception, when it is in fact deeply embedded in the day-to-day struggles that are part of living with others. It is not the exceptional that moves me in Thomas Ann’s story; it is the long arch from unimaginable loss to new life. And what moves me more than anything is that moment when she sees a red-haired young man among the inmates and suddenly realizes, “if my son was in this room, I’d want someone to reach out a hand to him.” The love for her son enabled her to see those men – men who had committed terrible crimes – not solely as offenders but as children of mothers, and in that recognition a new and better future began.

“If a brother or sister sins against me,” Peter asked Jesus, “how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?”

The first lesson in forgiveness is that it isn’t something that can be counted. When your brother owes you money and you forgive his debt, that’s easy. He borrows money and you forgive his debt. Once. Twice. Three times. Ten times. You can do it as often as you want or think is wise. But if your brother or sister sins against you, you can’t make yourself forgive them. Forgiveness is hardly ever a simple matter of will, something one decides to do – once, twice, three times. Forgiveness is not a series of seemingly saintly acts. It is a call to a future better than vengeance, a future not bound by the past. It is a call to move out of stuckness.

You can’t make yourself forgive anyone, but you can make the effort to remember your own dependence on God’s acceptance of you and all your brokenness. You can pray that this deep memory of God’s mercy will shape how you react to those who have injured you. Forgiveness is not so much something we do as it is something we participate in. It is a healing river whose source is not in us. Forgiveness begins with God’s love for the world, a love we recognize most fully in the life of Jesus Christ.

In Jesus, God becomes vulnerable to the world of human beings, vulnerable to the human capacity to touch, caress, comfort, and hold, but also vulnerable to the many ways in which we abuse, betray, mock, and abandon one another. In Jesus, God enters the space where sin destroys trust and friendship and all that is sacred between us, and Jesus ends up judged, condemned, and crucified. Everything ends there, in the darkness of Friday. Everything but God’s mercy and faithfulness. And God makes the first move by raising Jesus from the dead.

Forgiveness is much broader than a lovely idea. It is one of the names we give the new creation we inhabit, initiated by the One who makes all things new. Forgiveness is a healing river flowing freely from the heart of God, and all we do – all we can do – all we must do – is remember that we live in the flow of God’s forgiveness, and allow that memory to shape how we relate to each other.

And if a brother or sister sins against me, it always begins at the beginning, countless times: Take a step. One-to-one. Face-to-face. Take a breath. Tell the truth.

---

[1] Mere Christianity, Harper Collins 2001, p. 115

[2] Jon Wilson, Crying for Justice http://www.justalternatives.org/CryingforJustice.pdf

OK... Which Seven?

It's time for the final round. I asked you to submit questions you thought I should address in a sermon series, and you did. I did some minor editing, but there still are 22 questions.

Now it's your turn! Since there is no way to do this that is both elegant and simple, this is how we'll do it: below you'll find a long list of twenty-two questions, each with a 1-7 scale. I suggest that you scroll through and read all of them first. Then give your favorite question a 7, your second choice a 6, your third choice a 5, ... you get the idea. You can submit fewer than seven, but please no more than seven (in that case my trusted robot will randomly delete one of our entries). You may think you have to do all the hard work, but I'll keep track of all the responses and I'll do the math. You will soon realize that the entire process is statistically impeccable, but don't let that keep you from voting.

If the form doesn't load, use this link. Thank you!

Face to Face

The whole passage from Matthew we heard this morning is printed in red: whenever Jesus speaks, the editors want his words to stand out. Our passage is part of a long teaching Jesus gives in response to the disciples who asked, “Who is the greatest  in the kingdom of heaven?” Jesus talks about children and humility, about stumbling blocks and lost sheep, all in very rich, metaphorical language – but then there is a noticeable change. “If a brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.” The words are printed in red, but Anna Carter Florence observes, “Jesus is so concrete and practical in this passage that you could swear he was Paul, writing to a feuding congregation. He tells the disciples what to do if [one sins against another,] and then offers step by step instructions for how to proceed.”[1] She is right, he does sound a little bit like Paul who wrote long, passionate letters to the church in Corinth to remind them and the church throughout all generations that we need each other in order to be whole.

Paul is often concrete and practical, but he’s no stranger to rich, metaphorical language. We need each other in order to be whole. We must pursue one another when sin creates a rift in our relationship. Paul says it beautifully: One member of the body of Christ cannot say to another, “I have no need of you.”[2]

Jesus may sound like he’s teaching a course on church polity; he may sound like he’s writing the article on excommunication for the bylaws, but he’s still responding to the disciples who are with him on the road to Jerusalem, wondering who will get the best seats in the kingdom.[3] They have their eyes and minds set on greatness and triumph, and he teaches them, teaches us the hard and humble work of reconciliation between one sinner and another.

A congregation is not just another organization that needs members and money and bylaws. Paul wants us to think about a body where every limb and organ is part of the whole. Jesus wants us to keep in mind the one lost sheep without which the flock is incomplete. He may sound like he’s starting to write the bylaws, but he’s teaching his followers how to be one body, how to be each other’s shepherds when sin has caused separation. We may be dreaming about greatness, but he teaches us to humbly seek and restore one another and cultivate gentleness, mercy and forgiveness.

Here is how it often goes, instead, and I’m not talking about any of you – I have plenty of illustrations from my own life. If a brother or sister sins against me, I want to tell somebody about it. I want to tell my story and make sure I get plenty of sympathy. I have been wronged. I have been harmed. I have been hurt. I may end up telling all my friends about it, but not the one person who, according to Jesus, needs to hear about it first and foremost. Or I just carry the weight of that sin around with me and don’t tell anyone. This is how it often goes. I know it’s not right, but often I can’t get my proud heart to relent. The Spirit urges me to mend the relationship, but the flesh is slow to go. Let me add that hesitation isn’t always bad; waiting a bit and pondering what has happened sometimes helps me see that just because I’m miffed with someone, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re in the wrong.

Jesus skips all the preliminaries and says, “Go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.” You can add a cup of coffee, but beyond that it’s as basic as it gets: One-to-one. Face-to-face. Take a breath. Tell the truth.

Beverly Gaventa states quite elegantly, “Jesus’ counsel … demands a costly forthrightness that I normally reserve for the few and the greatly trusted.”[4] Yes indeed, Jesus’ counsel demands that I expand my small circle of the few and the greatly trusted to include all who are members of the community he has established. I may think that sin is a matter between me and God and between me and the other person, but Jesus has placed me and the other into this community of reconciliation. Consequently the rift sin has created between me and another is not a private matter, but the place where the whole fabric is torn. What we do or fail to do to each other has an impact not just on individual relationships, but on the community as a whole. In every instant, the whole community Christ has gathered is at stake.

Jesus teaches in the tradition of Israel’s covenant law, where we read in Leviticus, “You shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”[5] It is this particular expression of love Jesus points to when he says, “If a brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.” Face-to-face. Take a breath. Tell the truth. Hear them out. If the two of you can work it out, no one else needs to know. There was pain, there was guilt and shame, but now all is held in mutual love. In the place where the covenant of love was broken, it has also been restored.

Jesus continues, “If you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you.” You’re not bringing in additional troops to intimidate your brother or sister. You ask for their help so the two of you can hear each other out and come to a shared understanding of what happened. You ask for their prayers to hold you both in the mutual love of the community. If you can work it out, no one else needs to know. The relationship has been mended, the community is restored.

Jesus continues, “If the brother or sister refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.” It is easy to see how this can go terribly wrong. First one, then several people, then an entire congregation confront one person with their sin, but instead of a humble confession, they only encounter a growing wall of silence. Some may describe such a coordinated effort as loving persistence, but the person at the center of their attention may experience their actions as harassment. Scenes from The Scarlet Letter come to mind where an entire community is all too eager to mark and exclude the “offender.” Jesus himself comes to mind, alone on the cross, outside the city gates, the excluded “offender,” violently excommunicated. Keep that image in mind for a moment.

“If the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a gentile and a tax collector.” A hard word of exclusion. But the one who said it died for gentiles, tax collectors and every other species of scoundrel on the face of the earth. The excluded are the very people Jesus seeks out to save and restore to community in his ministry.[6] So in one sense, treating someone “as a gentile and a tax collector” means rejection, exclusion, excommunication. In another sense, and quite ironically, it means the radical, offensive inclusion demanded by the gospel itself.[7]

I take this challenging dilemma as further encouragement to focus my attention on the beginning, the first step on the road to reconciliation. That first step is the bigger issue for me and, I suspect, all of us. Take a step. Face-to-face. Take a breath. Tell the truth. This approach to dealing with the reality of sin is tough. It is demanding. It is persistent. It doesn’t write off anyone. It hangs in there. Paul comes to mind again.[8] Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is demanding. Love is persistent. It doesn’t write off anyone. It keeps going back repeatedly to work toward reconciliation. “Owe no one anything, except to love one another,” Paul writes in Romans; “for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”[9] In every relationship, the whole community Christ has gathered is at stake. The road to the brother or sister who has sinned against me is demanding and difficult, but it is the road Jesus has prepared for us. I must learn to be truthful without being hurtful. You must learn to say hard things gently. We must learn to live as people of the covenant by trusting the bond of love Christ has created between us.

Jesus says last, “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” To me, this is the verse that holds the entire passage together. “If a brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.” One-to-one. Face-to-face. In his name. Not alone. When we gather in his name, we are never just the two or three of us. We are only together because of him and the work of reconciliation he has accomplished. At first glance, we may only see a sister struggling to find the right words to tell a brother how he has sinned against her. Now we see Jesus, one arm on her shoulder, the other on his. Trusting in the work and presence of Christ, we find the courage to bring each other back to the reconciled community.

Let me finish with another scene, one which at first glance has nothing to do with what Jesus teaches in this passage. On Friday morning, just hours before Jesus was crucified, Judas realized what he had done, and he brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. He said, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” And they replied, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” They left him alone with his guilt and his shame. He went and hanged himself.[10]

I wonder what might have happened if, instead of going to the chief priests and elders, Judas had gone to his brothers and sisters to confess. I wonder what might have happened if he had remembered the promise, “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” I wonder if mercy would have embraced him, a sinner among fellow sinners.

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[1] Anna Carter Florence, Preaching the Lesson, Lectionary Homiletics Vol. 19, No. 5, p. 54

[2] 1 Corinthians 12:21

[3] See Thomas G. Long, Matthew (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 202

[4] Beverly Gaventa, “Costly Confrontation,” The Christian Century, August 11-18, 1993, p. 773

[5] Leviticus 19:17-18

[6] See, e.g. Matthew 9:10-13

[7] See Beverly Gaventa, “Costly Confrontation,” The Christian Century, August 11-18, 1993, p. 773

[8] See 1 Corinthians 13

[9] Romans 13:8

[10] Matthew 27:3-5

After Ten Years

Next Sunday marks the 10^th anniversary of 9/11 and the shock and pain the attacks of that day brought to the U.S. and to the world. So much has changed in these ten years, and I often wonder if we will ever fully regain the sense of safety that in retrospect seems like innocence.

The past decade has been defined by the struggle to bring the perpetrators to justice and to prevent future attacks. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars. The line between national security needs and constitutional freedoms has constantly been under negotiation. Survivors of the attacks, the families and friends of the victims, first responders and their families, and all of us were relieved when Mr. Bin Laden was killed earlier this year, but we are far from what we too lightheartedly call closure. We continue to grief and to rebuild and to seek deeper understanding.

We will each have our own personal way to honor the great losses of that day and to remember the extraordinary courage of ordinary men and women who responded with selfless service. We will observe a moment of silence in our worship services at Vine Street. But many Nashvillians will also come together from across the various communities of our city: we want to affirm our belief that peace is not a thing of the past but a possibility for the future.

In the afternoon of September 11, 2011, the Office of Religious Life at Vanderbilt University invites the community to an interfaith gathering at Benton Chapel. This gathering, “Prayer, Remembrance and Hope,” will include music offered by Vanderbilt students and Blair Children’s Choirs, readings by representatives of various faith traditions, the presence of ROTC/NROTC and police/fire personnel as well as members of the Interfaith Council, the Divinity School and the VU student government.

The painful events of 9/11 have reminded us that we cannot live in isolation as if on islands. We must reach out to each other, try to understand and appreciate our differences, and prevent seeds of fear and suspicion to take root. Coming together to remember helps us do that.

Sunday, September 11, 2011, 2:30 p.m.
Prayer, Remembrance and Hope
Interfaith Gathering at Benton Chapel

Armor-piercing Moments

Moses grew up in a world of contrasts. Raised by his Hebrew mother, he had been given an Egyptian name. He was the child of slaves, but as the adopted son of the Princess Royal, he lived a life of privilege in the big house. One day he went out to his people, the story continues in the book of Exodus, leaving us wondering if he knew that they were his people, his kinsfolk, or if that was only the storyteller’s knowledge. Moses hadn’t lived among his folk for so many years, and formative years at that, you can’t help but wonder if he thought of himself as a Hebrew or an Egyptian, as a grandson of Pharao or a brother of those groaning under slavery.

One day he went out to his people, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew[1]  – now I don’t imagine that to be an unusual scene, do you? The whole system of slavery was built on violence, I would think that abusive language and physical abuse were pretty common and quite visible – unless, of course, you lived your life in the sheltered world behind the palace walls. One day Moses went out and he saw what he may not have seen before or perhaps he had forgotten, and the injustice he witnessed stirred his soul. He couldn’t just walk away from the scene as though it had nothing to do with him. This moment demanded a response of him.

The Jewish scholar and author, Martin Buber, wrote in 1947,

Each of us is encased in an armour whose task is to ward off signs. Signs happen to us without respite, living means being addressed, we would need only to present ourselves and to perceive. But the risk is too dangerous for us, … and from generation to generation we perfect the defense apparatus. All our knowledge assures us, “Be calm, everything happens as it must happen, but nothing is directed at you, you are not meant; it is just ‘the world’, you can experience it as you like, but whatever you make of it in yourself proceeds from you alone, nothing is required of you, you are not addressed, all is quiet.”

Each of us is encased in an armour which we soon, out of familiarity, no longer notice. There are only moments which penetrate it and stir the soul to sensibility.[2]

This was such a moment. Moses couldn’t just walk away as though everything happened as it must happen. He looked around, and seeing no one he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.[3] His passion against injustice urged him to act, and the only response he knew was more violence.

The next day he went out again, and he saw two Hebrews fighting. “Why do you strike your fellow Hebrew?” he said to the one who was in the wrong, and the man replied, “Who made you a judge over us? Are you going to kill me too?” Certainly not, but now Moses knew that there had been at least one witness the day before, and he was afraid. It was just a matter of time before Pharao would hear of it and seek to kill him. And so Moses fled and settled in the land of Midian. He met and married Zipporah, one of Jethro’s seven daughters, and she bore a son whom he named Gershom.[4] The boy’s name, meaning “a stranger there,” spoke of Moses’s lack of a home; he didn’t know where he belonged; he didn’t know what to tell his own son about his people.

You could say Moses had a good life in Midian. He had a wife and a child, he had decent work, but for him all that didn’t add up to being at home. He was an alien residing in a foreign land and he didn’t even know where home was. I bet he enjoyed being out in the field with the sheep where nobody asked him where he was from. And out there, beyond the wilderness, he came to Horeb, the mountain of God, where he saw the blazing bush.

This is a place where I trust Zora Neale Hurston’s imagination over Cecil B. DeMille’s any day.[5] She wrote,

Moses could not believe his eyes, but neither could he shut them on the sight. Because the bush was burning brightly but its leaves did not twist and crumple in the heat and they did not fall as ashes beneath charred limbs as they should have done. It just burned and Moses, awed though he was, could no more help coming closer to try and see the why of the burning bush than he could quit growing old. Both things were bound up in his birth. Moses drew near the bush.

“Moses,” spoke a great voice which Moses did not know, “take off your shoes.” [6]

Don’t think of this as a place far away. Think of it as another moment that demanded a response. Remember what Buber wrote,

Signs happen to us without respite, living means being addressed, we would need only to present ourselves and to perceive.

Have you lived through moments when, trembling with awe you wanted to take your shoes off? I have; they are the moments when suddenly the everyday becomes translucent and you see life as the miracle it truly is. The least you can do is take off your shoes so nothing touches the ground but your bare feet. It is as though the moment has been prepared just for you to arrive and notice and abide.

When I was little, we had a small rug, no bigger than one foot wide and perhaps three-and-a-half feet long, stretching along the wall right behind the front door. When we came home, we would stand on the entrance mat, untie our shoes, and then place them on that small rug. You could tell who was home just by looking at the shoes that were lined up behind the door. I know my mom taught us to take off our shoes at the door, because she didn’t want us to carry in all that dirt and dust from outside. But there was something else going on. Every time I walked in, when I paused to untie my shoes, there was a brief moment of recognition: I’m at home now. This is where I belong.

When Moses bent to untie his sandals, he certainly did it with deep reverence and vulnerability, but I also like to think that perhaps for the first time in a long time he knew how it feels to be at home. I like to think that when he heard the great voice calling him by name he was no longer an alien residing in a foreign land. He felt like one who belonged.

“I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. 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, and 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.”

There was a better land than the land of oppression and bondage. The violence and injustice Moses had seen with his own eyes had not gone unnoticed in heaven. The God who knew and called Moses by name, had observed everything, had seen and heard and declared, “I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them.”

That was good and most welcome news, but there was another word: “Moses, I want you to go down to Egypt.”

“Into Egypt? Egypt is no place for me to go. They have my face on every most-wanted poster.”

“I said Egypt, Moses. I want you to go down and tell that Pharao to let my people go.”

“Me? Pharao? Who am I to tell Pharaoh what to do? He won’t pay me no attention, I know he won’t.”

“Go on down there. I will be with you.”

Moses, the child of Hebrew slaves who grew up in a palace of privilege; Moses, the man driven by a deep sense of justice but unable to control his anger; Moses, the refugee who longed for home; Moses suddenly felt the weight of God’s claim on his life.

“Well, if I go, what do I tell your people? I don’t even know your name. Who do I tell them sent me?”[7]

“I am who I am.”

That response sounds more like a riddle than a name, doesn’t it?

“I will be what I will be.”

Volumes have been written about these three words in Hebrew and the four letters of the name that hasn’t been spoken in many hundreds of years. But even if we knew how to pronounce the name, it wouldn’t add much to what we know of God. Why? Because who God is is forever tied to what God has promised and done. God’s name is embedded in the stories of God’s people. God is one who hears the cry of the oppressed and does not forget. God is one who sees the injustice in the land of bondage and is moved to action. God is one who suffers in the sufferings of others and acts for their deliverance. God said to Moses, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And now I will be your God. I will go with you.” Moses didn’t learn God’s name by the blazing bush where God summoned him. That was the beginning. That was but a first taste of home for the sojourner who didn’t know where he belonged. Moses learned God’s name over a lifetime of listening for God’s voice and call.

The name of God is forever tied to the liberation of God’s people from the land of bondage, and thus our God is the God of Moses and Aaron, of Miriam and Joshua. The name of God is forever tied to the prophets who spoke with urgency and courage in times of crisis, and thus our God is the God of Hosea and Amos, Jeremiah and Isaiah. The name of God is forever tied to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and thus our God is the God of Mary Magdalene and Paul, of Peter and James and Lydia. Our God is the God of Sojourner Truth and Martin Luther King.

To know the God of our ancestors, we recall the stories of the witnesses to whose names the name of God is forever tied, and then we go. Like all of them before us, we go – with a little courage and still with fear, but we go – toward the good and broad land, toward the future where all of God’s children and indeed all of God’s creatures are at home. We go to live as witnesses – always listening for God’s voice and call and responding with faith.

---

[1] Exodus 2:11

[2] Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004, p. 12

[3] Exodus 2:12

[4] Exodus 2:13-22

[5] The Ten Commandments http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049833/

[6] Zora Neale Hurston, Moses, Man of the Mountain, p. 125

[7] With thanks to Zora Neale Hurston, Moses, Man of the Mountain, p. 126

Seven Questions

Earlier this month, I asked you to help me create a sermon series. Many of you participated (Thank You!), and after the race was neck-to-neck for a while, in the end it was a clear victory for "Seven Questions."

Now this means that we are starting a crowd sourcing project: I invite you, your friends, neighbhors, distant relatives to submit questions: Do dogs go to heaven? Is sin just another word for bad morals? What is good about Good Friday? Questions like that. Any questions you think the preacher should address (i.e. not the kind of questions you think any preacher should stay away from).

You can submit your questions online (there should be a box at the end of this post), via email or twitter @thomaskleinert, or via handwritten notes (in the offering plate, under the door, or in my mailbox). I will collect and post all your questions, and then you'll get to rank them. I will address the top seven of your choices as best I can. That's what I call a grassroots campaign.

Here are a few questions I have already received:

• What should be the role of the church versus the moral and ethical corruptions of modern society? Handmaiden? Critic? Gadfly? Partisan supporter? Evaluator? Other?
• Whatever happened to the concept of sin? Aren’t many of our serious social problems related to The Seven Deadly Sins (wrath, greed, sloth, lust, envy, gluttony, pride) and the lack of support for The Seven Cardinal Virtues (fortitude, justice, prudence, temperance, faith, hope, charity)?
• How can the church serve as a peacemaker in dealing with the divisive issues (other Christian traditions, other faiths, political extremes, social values) of our time?
• What happens when forgiveness does not lead to repentance?
• When does a virtue like compassion or accepting difference turn into a vice?
• Did Jesus study Buddhism between ages 12 and 30?
• The first recorded miracle of Jesus is at the wedding of Cana, where he turned water into wine. The last recorded miracle is the healing of the servant whose ear was cut off. The other miracles can be explained as changing people’s attitudes. The first and the last are magic. What’s your take on that?

The Shadow of Pharaoh

Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.[1] You know Joseph, youngest of Jacob’s sons until baby Benjamin was born. Joseph the dreamer with his fancy coat whom his brothers hated so much they sold him as a slave to some Midianite traders. He ended up in Egypt, where he rose to a position of power and authority. You know Joseph who made it, against all odds, and who made it big: Pharao’s right-hand man.

When drought and famine struck the land of Canaan, the sons of Jacob went down to Egypt looking for food, and there they reconciled with the brother they hadn’t seen in a very long time. After the party Pharao said to Joseph, “Settle your father and your brothers and their families in the best part of the land,” and they settled in the Nile delta. Pharao remembered Joseph who had made him owner of all the arable land by reorganizing Egypt’s economy, and Joseph’s people enjoyed most-favored immigrant status.

Then Joseph died, and all his brothers, and that whole generation. But the Israelites were fruitful and prolific; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them. Now a new king arose over Egypt, one with a short memory. Now those resident aliens and their large families were regarded with growing suspicion.

In Exodus, the first person to speak is this new king who doesn’t remember, and in his mind fruitfulness and flourishing among the Hebrews aren’t signs of blessing but a growing threat. “Look,” he says to his people, “the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we.”

What we hear in his words is not just the sadly familiar fear of strangers that so easily turns into prejudice and hate. The Israelites are the bearers of God’s promise to Abraham; their life is a testimony to the faithfulness and trustworthiness of God, and the king wants to suppress their life.

The new king remains unnamed in this story. He is more than a historic figure whose name the story tellers failed to recall. This king embodies our own forgetfulness and our resistance against God’s plans for the flourishing of a people in whom all the families of the earth would be blessed, which was the promise to Abraham. He embodies our fear of everything that might undermine the plans we make and the systems we build to control life, no matter how large or small our thrones might be.

The new king’s anxiety quickly turns into a policy of forced labor, but the results of his efforts are the opposite of his intentions: the Israelites continue to multiply and fill the land. The powers of oppression and abuse are helpless against the power of blessing that is at work in this community.

In these opening paragraphs, God isn’t mentioned, only the irrepressible growth of God’s people, against all odds, despite all the ruthless efforts to make their lives bitter with hard service. And when forced labor doesn’t have the desired effect, the king ratchets up the oppressive measures. Building royal supply cities with cheap labor wasn’t enough to bolster his sense of power and to keep the Hebrews in their place. Now he summons the Hebrew midwives and gives them the obscene commandment to kill all newborn Hebrew boys.

Zora Neale Hurston wrote in her 1939 book, Moses, Man of the Mountain,

Moses hadn’t come yet, and these were the years when Israel first made tears. Pharaoh had entered the bedrooms of Israel. The birthing beds of Hebrews were matters of state. The Hebrew womb had fallen under the heel of Pharaoh. ... So women in the pains of labor hid ... They must cry, but they could not cry out loud. They pressed their teeth together. ... Men learned to beat upon their breasts with clenched fists and breathe out their agony without sound. ... The shadow of Pharaoh squatted in the dark corners of every birthing place in Goshen. Hebrew women shuddered with terror at the indifference of their wombs to the Egyptian law.[2]

They shuddered with terror, but in the deadly chaos of genocidal cruelty, courage and grace arose, and each is given a name in the story: Shiphrah and Puah. Remember those names, remember those women. You don’t need to remember how many times Joseph’s brothers travelled from Canaan to Egypt; you don’t even need to remember their names – you can look them up anytime you want. But these two names you need to remember, the names of Shiphrah and Puah, because the moment will come in your life, if it hasn’t already, when you witness the depth to which human depravity can sink, especially when power is at stake. And you will feel small and powerless against the forces that oppose the flourishing of God’s people in true freedom and true peace. And you will shrink a little more and say to yourself, “What can one person do?”

You need to remember Shiphrah and Puah, the Hebrew midwives. The first time God is mentioned in the great story of the Exodus is when these two women are introduced. They know a lot about the irrepressibility of new life that wants to be born. They know a lot about helping life to emerge and thrive. And this king summons them and says, “If it is a boy, kill him.”

These two women know everything about the shadow of Pharaoh squatting in the dark corners of every birthing place in Goshen. But the midwives, it says in verse 17, feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. What can one person do? You can choose to fear the God of life. You can refuse to obey the masters of oppression.

The great story of the liberation of God’s people begins with Shiphrah and Puah, the Hebrew midwives, two women willing to say ‘no’ to a mad king’s deathly decree. With defiant grace they go about their good work in the birthing place. When the king summons them again and demands an explanation, they lie and life among the Hebrews continues with the blessing of children.

Now the king ratchets up his rule of terror yet another level and he commands all his people to throw every boy born to the Hebrews into the Nile.

This king distorts everything that is good: Work is a form of human creativity, a source of pride in making things, a source of joy in being useful. This king turns work into forced labor. Midwives assist in the birth of new life with patience, love, and great skill. This king wants to turn them into servants of death. The great river runs through the land like a life-giving artery, watering the fields and replenishing them with fertile silt, and carrying the ships that bring the harvest to market. This king wants to turn the river into a grave. It is as though in the realm of this king nothing can escape the pull of fear and death. In such a world, what can one person do?

The next chapter begins with a man and a woman. There is a marriage. There is a birth. It is as though out of the chaos which the king decreed, life again emerges defiantly; and it is good. The infant’s mother hides him, and when she can no longer hide him, she makes a basket; she puts the child in it and places it among the reeds on the bank of the river. She does it all with love and great care and with tears, and his sister stays close by the river’s edge to see what will happen to the boy.

The Hebrew story teller has left a beautiful hint that is hard for us to detect, but we have wise teachers in the rabbis who point these things out for us. The word which is translated ‘basket’ here, is the same word which is translated ‘ark’ in the story of Noah and the flood. We are to hear the two stories together, let one resonate in the other, and know that the little boy is safe, floating in his little ‘ark’ on the water which the king had intended for his death. It may appear as though in the realm of this king nothing can escape the pull of fear and death, but this little basket tells a different story.

The boy’s sister watches as the daughter of Pharao comes to the river to bathe, and she finds the basket and opens it and sees the little boy who is crying and she picks him up. She knows exactly what she is doing. “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,” she says. She recognizes that he is a child from the slave community, a child under death sentence from her father – and yet she doesn’t throw him into the river. She obeys a different law than her father’s and thus becomes part of the conspiracy of grace that resists Pharaoh’s fury.

Now the boy’s sister steps forward, another accomplice in this conspiracy, and smart as a whip she asks with all innocence if perhaps her royal majesty would like her to go and get her a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for her? And before you know it, the little boy is back in his mother’s arms.

This is how the great story of Israel’s liberation begins: With Shiphrah and Puah, the Hebrew midwives, whose fear of God gives them the courage to ignore the king’s command. With a mother and a sister whose love inspires them to be creative and incredibly bold at just the right moment. And with the king’s own daughter, who doesn’t obey her father’s deathly decree, but responds with compassion to the child’s vulnerability. Together these five women resist the pull of fear and death, and their actions align with God’s life-giving and liberating intentions and work. In later chapters of Exodus, God takes direct action with great displays of power against those who stubbornly oppose the freedom of God’s people. But here in the opening chapters, the power of God is almost hidden. God is barely mentioned, and yet God is at work. The shadow of Pharaoh may be squatting in the dark corners of every birthing place, but courage and grace make a bright light. Remember those names: Shiphrah and Puah.

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[1] Exodus 1:8

[2] In Moses, Man of the Mountain, first chapter

Sermon Survey Update

Last week, I asked for your input in creating a sermon series. Who would have thought that the wisdom of many would lead to a tie?

If you haven't submitted your vote yet, please do (here's the ballot) and help us get a definitive result. Voting will end on midnight, Sunday, August 21. Thanks!

Update on 2011-08-21 14:50 by Thomas Kleinert

The current score is 2.5 / 3.05 / 2.3

"Seven Questions" is the front runner, followed closely by "Do You Speak Christian?"

Voting will end tonight at midnight.