Sermon: Happy Hen Party Mix

"Happy Hen Party Mix"


Edited transcript of sermon preached at South Wedge Mission
Rochester, New York
11 May 2014
Fourth Sunday of Easter

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Day Text: Acts 2.42-47

42 They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. 44 All who believed were together and had all things in common; 45 they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

~

We’re taking a slight detour on our journey through First Peter during the Season of Easter to look at one of the most remarkable texts in the New Testament.  In times when the church is struggling, its fashionable to say, “if only we could be as radical as the ‘early church,’ before it got so institutionalized.”  I agree it’s radical - and I’d love for us to look closely at the snippet today, to see what it has to teach us about our Easter exploration of “practicing resurrection.”    

Generally, when I hear people talk about the early church, I’ve found they’re referring, somewhat romantically, to verses 44 and 45, how they basically started history’s first soviet commune, “holding all things in common,” and selling their possessions to meet each others’ needs.  It’s the kind of hippie nirvana that, St. Francis aside, has seldom materialized in the sad history of God’s church.  But it’s awe-inspiring to imagine: what if we too could simplify?  What if we too could be that radical in our giving and our sharing?

What I’m also interested in, though, is not just that they gave, or what they gave, or whether it was “the first 10% of their income” or whether they were promised tenfold prosperity in return.  What I found beautiful is the community in whose story this radical generosity is practiced.  Such powerful gratitude is possible, Luke seems to say, because of who they understood themselves to be - whose they are, and who they were to one another.

Look at the text with me.  We start off with some standard churchy stuff in verse 42, where they’re learning at the feet of Jesus’ original disciples, praying together, doing the communion thing - all that good “Word and Sacrament” Lutheran-y worship stuff that generally makes church church.  We’re told in verse 43 that some of them were even doing miracles, which helped their PR.  But what’s vital here is that their community is centered around a certain story of who they are together.  Worshipping the God revealed in the Eucharist and in the story of Scripture - hearing stories from those who knew Jesus personally, and passing them on to newer members of the family.  Communities rally around all sorts of stories; this community is practiced at reminding one another who God is, and who they are in God.

Then in verse 46, we are told they take this worship public.  They are in the temple together, every single day, and that they are also starting to meet for meals in their homes.  Maybe they stick around to watch Game of Thrones afterwards, or play Dominion or whatever.  Point is, they don’t just keep it to themselves.  What starts as worship becomes a way of life.  It permeates and permutates who they are in all aspects of life.  Public as well as private.

Which is no small thing at the time.  Because about the only thing to be gained by worshipping a crucified revolutionary as Lord in the midst of an Empire whose leader proclaimed himself the only legit heir to that title…was to paint a bigger target on yourself.  To gather publicly in the temple was basically telling the Romans, “here’s an extra-large bag of lion food for the area, gift wrapped and easy to find!”  To worship in your house, and not in the secret safety of the catacombs, was to say, in effect, “we don’t care if you find us, because we believe our household, and our public lives, revolve around a different Lord - which means that Caesar is not.”

So it’s this community, centered on living out an alternative Gospel, in worship and in every day life - and living it out together, regardless of consequences or even of death - it’s this church that is able to share their possessions, and also, to sell what they have when need arises.

You have to be pretty committed to your Gospel - and to your fellow Gospel-ers - to  give up so much.  So much time.  So much safety.  So much capital.  So much of everything.  

See, that’s what I think is so radical about the early church, particularly against the backdrop of our commitment-phobic age.  Maybe some of you have seen that ATT commerical, where various young adult-ish folks share with almost a prideful glee that “commitment is not for me,” before, strangely, committing to ATT’s no-commitment plan.  We don’t know where we’re going to live, who we’re going to love, or what we’re going to believe even in a few weeks.  So commitment is a pretty dirty, difficult word.

And here are a group of people, so willing to commit to each other - on the basis of God’s story of how beloved people are - that they are willing to sacrifice ownership of goods.  Willing to worship publicly in life-or-death circumstances.  Willing to give extravagantly - and as verse 46 tells us, “with glad and generous hearts.”  They delight in each other.  They have joy in one another.  And that’s what people noticed.

People were willing to give generously of themselves, their time and their possessions, because they delighted in one another, committed to one another, and basically, went all-in on each other.  And that makes it slightly easier for me to be able to talk about hard things like “money and church” and “where we spend our time” and “what kind of commitment do we make to each other” with you today.  Because at the end of the day, its not promises of prosperity or moral arguments about what we should or should not do or whatever that compel us to give.  

Giving, sharing, and supporting happen naturally - in fact, they are done willing, just natural overflowing of our relationships - when we are committed deeply to each other, and learn to delight and dwell richly in one another’s lives.  We give freely to what we most care about, what we treasure, where our hearts are.

Take this (holds up bag): “Happy Hen Treats.”  I was at Tractor Supply yesterday, and of course, my chickens really needed a special treat.  And it’s not just bird seed.  It’s corn and mealworms!  No, really, there are actual meal worms in there!  Because, you know, it says on the bag “PARTY MIX!”  My chickens deserve a party mix.  

Now, you laugh and nod, because if you’ve ever been a pet owner, then chances are, you have purchased something even more ridiculous and more expensive for your beloved creature!  AND, if you are a mother, or a father, or an aunt or uncle or certainly a grandparent, then you’ve also probably spoiled the children in your life, “just because.”  Right?  We do extravagant, ridiculous things for those we love. 

Because we want the best for them, right?  I want my little chicken ladies to enjoy a little party mix in their lives.  I want my kids to go to college if they like and graduate without as much debt.  Because I love them dearly.  I invest in them every day.  I am committed to them.  They delight me.

And I think its a similar dynamic when it comes to stewardship, and the practice of gratitude and generosity, in a radical Christian community.  We want to give to those we love.  And when we invest our time in deep relationships with one another, giving is not really even a question.  Its not an option.  Its a no-brainer.  

But of course, our brains often get in the way.  Along with our desires, and our addictions, our libidos and our egos.  Because even though I love my wife, and my kids, and my dog, and my chickens, and my church more than anything else, I also love myself more than anything else.  I’d love to give freely and generously to loved ones - but I also have lots of things I want for me too.  

And giving means I have to become vulnerable.  Not just that my money or my my time might be spent in ways that I can’t control.  It also means that I might not get what I really want.  If I sacrifice for my kids, I might never have the time to go out and find people with whom to start a band.  If I spend more time at church, I might not get to see every single episode of Game of Thrones as it happens.  If I share my heart with strangers, they might stomp on it, and betray it, and stomp it to shreds.

And see, that’s the rub.  Investing our time, and our gifts, and practicing gratitude and generosity, its a risk.  That’s why its called an “offering,” a “sacrifice.”  Because we don’t get to control the outcome.  We don’t really get to control the in-come either.  Because in church, we don’t just get to be in community with the selected few that we would choose.  We don’t get to set our weekly and monthly and yearly schedule to our own rhythms. We don’g get to pursue only our own interests and desires anymore.  Because we don’t get to choose our own story anymore.

But.  I wonder if that’s why the disciples of the early church seem so damn joyful.  Because I can’t help but imagine that, if they spent that much time together, in circumstances of life and death, that in some ways, the returns they received, the blessings that came back to them, were precisely those deepened relationships which made life worth living and sacrificing.  

I wonder if, in sharing each other’s vulnerabilities and failures, they also received the blessing of discovering how failure and betrayal are not the last words.  How conflict could be a rich source of continued returns in terms of wisdom, and deeper friendships.

I wonder if, in refusing to worship Caesar or their own desires, and instead, clinging to the story of the Gospel of the New Creation, they found that the time and the status they clung to so fervently, evaporated, leaving behind so much free time and free energy and fresh imagination to spend in coming up with creative, life-giving, radical displays of love for one another.

I wonder if, hearing the story week in and week out of a God who sold all God’s possessions, leaving glory and power and eternity behind and giving the proceeds, his flesh and blood, to the poor and needy sinners desperate for love - I wonder if hearing this story, and realizing that they were the ones who were receiving God’s generosity and grace day in and day out - I wonder if knowing themselves as loved and worthy of love and capable of sharing love - I wonder if this is what gave them the patience, the joy, and the generosity, to commit to one another in this life, and to settle for nothing less than a beloved community where all needs were met.

See, that’s the thing.  We don’t “invest” our valuables and possessions in order to collect interest on them later.  We give them away because in doing so, we open up even more space for even more life.  Not just life for ourselves.  But life together.  With the actual people we have actually been given.  The ones who are here.  The ones with whom we get to image and participate in the very life of our relational, Triune God.

We delight in each other because we realize that this kind of life together is truly LIFE together.  It is to be alive.  It is to be living in the pocket of reality’s rhythms.  

It becomes a kind of party mix.  Corn, mealworms, chickens and all.  All of us.  Our darkness and our light.  Our possessions and our poverty.  It becomes a mix of friends and foes, good and bad, life and death, pain and prosperity.  

If we as a church - and if the church in general - would commit to just loving, and discovering, and delighting, and being faithful to the people who are already here - the people God is gathering - rather than worrying about who is not here, or how little money we have, or other aspects of an economy of scarcity - and if we as a church started letting funding follow faithfulness - started to live full of gratitude and delight because we are given a family, a fellowship, a story, and a song to commit to - than I imagine that the rest will follow of its own.  

Just look at the passage from Acts.  We are told “they had the favor of all the people.”  Not because they were hip, or because they were rich, or because they had a compelling demographic marketing strategy.  It was because of how they worshipped.  And how they loved each other in a committed, generous, extravagant way.  

When we give, and when we commit ourselves to joy, delight, and to one another, the rest will truly follow.  And the returns will too.  Our needs will be provided for.  And the gifts we will receive…will be those who come to us, longing to join the dance, and with their own mealworms and corn kernels to add to the party mix.

So practice resurrection.  Love someone who does not deserve it, as the Poet tells us.  And give freely.  Of your stuff.  But also, of your self.  Amen.   

Postlude: Those who stayed to view Brother Sun, Sister Moon after service observed that, as striking as the Franciscans commitment to poverty and simplicity was, even more so was how much they sang together, and supported one another, and cared for those who were in need.  Funding follows freedom and faithfulness.  

Sermon: This Story is True, or, "Westeros Withers, and the Bronies Fall..."

"This Story is True, or, 'Westeros May Wither and the Bronies Fall...'"

Preached at South Wedge Mission

Rochester, New York

4 May 2014

Third Sunday of Easter

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Text: 1 Peter 1.22-2.3

(second sermon of a season-long series and study of 1 Peter)

22 Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. 23 You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. 

24 For
“All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower falls, 
25 but the word of the Lord endures forever.” 
That word is the good news that was announced to you.


2:1 Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

~

Grace Mercy and Peace is yours from the Triune God.  Amen.

There’s plenty of good stuff to chew on in this week’s passage from 1 Peter.  I love verse 22’s invitation - command, really - to “love one another deeply from the heart.”  Eugene Peterson translates it in the Message thus: “love each other as if your life depended on it.”  We could spend a few decades trying to tease out just what that means for ourselves, our community here, and in our lives in the world.

But what also caught my eye this week was the next verse, 23: “you have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring Word of God.”  It’s followed by that beautiful poetry about the grass withering and the flower falling, and the Word of the Lord enduring forever - familiar especially if you grew up Baptist or Methodist, where it’s often used as a prayer before reading the Gospel or the sermon.  Gorgeous imagery.

Now, a caveat: St. Peter is not talking about the Bible here.  He’s not telling us that we just need to believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, or that the whole thing is literal, or that if you just read your Bible for fifteen minutes a day, then you’re “really” born again.  That’s not “the Word.”

Rather, the Word Peter is extolling with poetry and joy is the Gospel.  The Good News (see verse 25b).  First and foremost, the Word is nothing and no one other than the person, Jesus Christ.  Incarnate and accompanying.  Crucified and resurrected.  When we celebrate the Word that makes us new, we’re not talking about your theory of the inspiration of Scripture.  If you are, worship that theory.  We are talking about the King of the Universe who makes things new.

The Word is also the story that we tell about this King.  It’s the proclamation.  It’s the Gospel.  See, back in the day, a Gospel proclamation was an announcement.  Usually, it was imperial.  The Romans would conquer your kingdom, and then a herald would roll into town, set up in the public square, and say, “Good News!  You are all now part of the most glorious empire that has ever existed!  We have graciously allowed you to be a part of it - so pay your taxes and don’t rebel or we will crush you like worms.  Have a nice day, welcome to the club!”  Essentially, you’ve got a new story.  You’re now part of a new history.  Rome’s history.  You have been assimilated.

Which makes Peter’s utter commitment to the Word, the Gospel, of Jesus, all the more striking.  Because it’s not just theology or theory or a call to Bible Study.  It’s a radical political statement.  It’s a different Gospel than what the Empire proclaims.  It’s a revolution.    

Because our stories tell us who we are.  When someone asks you about yourself, you generally tell a story.  "I'm Tim, and I'm from Gates, and I've lived here my whole life," or, “I am Ser Jamie Lannister, called Kingslayer, of House Lannister, son of Tywin, etc.”  When Rome proclaims a Gospel over you, they are telling you who you are.  You belong to Rome.  Your life is about Rome.  Your value is created by Rome.  Your future is Roman.  

So when Peter says, “you have been born anew through the living and enduring Word of God,” he’s making a similar proclamation.  He’s serving as a herald - a witness - to the Kingdom of God.  He is essentially telling the people of the early church that everything they have been told about reality is a lie.  That Jesus, the crucified Lamb is King.  Which means that Caesar is not.  Which means that nothing else, and no one else, gets to tell them who they are.  Except for the God of grace and mercy and love and peace revealed in the resurrection of the Christ.

It’s such a mind-blowing declaration that even the Matrix movies are tame in comparison.  Because it means that we are called to radically reimagine everything we ever knew about ourselves.  Or thought we knew.  It means, truly, that everything old has passed away.  That everything is a new creation.  That this story, this Gospel, this “Word of God,” is either insanely, beautifully true - that all of humanity, all of creation, is most certainly and irrevocably GOOD…or else, the way of the Empire continues.  

Now, we are a generation that loves stories.  Not all of us may be convinced that the Empire is such a threat anymore.  After all, the story we often tell of ourselves, whether we admit it or not, is that because we have been born between a certain latitude and longitude in the Western hemisphere in a certain union of states at the turn of the century with paler hued skin and a modicum of wealth, that we are entitled to freedom and are exceptional in the history of humanity.  Which is, of course, another way of saying that we are in fact the Empire.  “American” just sounds nicer.

But we have other stories to.o.  We believe other Gospels that help give shape to our lives, and offer us hope.  Some of you saw an article I posted this week about “Bronies.”  That’s a short-hand for “Bros” and “Ponies,” as in, a geek community of young adult males who are communally obsessed with My Little Pony - a cartoon about pastel-colored talking ponies (sometimes with wings).  Grown men who build motorcycles, fix your computer, and manage your finances, who also put on rainbow wigs and cardboard wings and make Trekkie conventions look tame.  True story.

What’s striking about the Bronies, though, is not the wigs.  Bronies get together because the stories that they share and love help create for them…a community.  Something about telling those stories, dressing up and acting those stories out, living into those stories, and communing around those stories, creates for them a sense of belonging.  Of escaping loneliness.  Of having a common bond and goal to live for.  In short, it creates for them a sense of identity.  My Little Pony is, for this group, a powerful Gospel, and an attractive alternative to Empire.  

Now I actually really admire the Bronies.  Just before coming to church today I was at the park on Culver Road flying kites with my kids, and to our great delight, across the lake, we saw LARPers, Live Action Role Players, dressed in armor and actually SWORD FIGHTING!  I don’t know who was more thrilled - Tai Tai or me!  AND, when we went over to talk to them, they actually invited us to come see them at Highland Park…and told me they always have extra armor and weaponry if I ever wanted to join them and give it a try!  Sold.

Because whether you are into knights, or you’re a Trekkie, or a Whovian, or you watch Breaking Bad, or whether you are a member of the Democrat or Republican parties, or part of a Christian denomination, then to an extent, you’re no different than a Brony!  We get together with friends to binge on television shows, or to insult our political opponents, or to dress up in robes and call it “church” because our stories tell us who we are, and who we are together.  Our stories are alternatives to the dregs and downfalls of living in the Empire.  Also, of being the Empire.  

We are tired of living in an age where we are measured by what we accomplish and by what we can produce.  Tired of living in a society where we some people are told that because their story includes having ancestors who were once enslaved by our ancestors, they do not deserve access to decent schools or a minimum standard of living.  Tired of living stories where, because we drank too much at that party and dressed too nicely, of course we deserved to be assaulted.  Tired of being told that unbridled greed and competition and destruction of the world could possibly be called profit.  Tired of the story in which this is all there is, and modern scientific people simply cannot reasonably believe in magic or mystery - let alone a Creator or a cause.  

We are tired of living these stories.  And so we choose new ones.

Maybe some of these stories are your stories.  Maybe you’ve been told that you are defined by the ways you have failed to live up to the Empire’s standards - or to your parents’, or your school’s, or your partner’s, or God’s, or your own.  Maybe you’ve participated in stories where people and societies are arranged around irony and sarcasm and envy and slander, instead of “loving one another as if our lives depended on it.”  Maybe you too are tired of being told this is who you are.  And so maybe, you’re a Brony, or a Whovian, or an Alcoholic, or just plain lost.  

But there is a difference between these stories and the Word of the Lord that Peter tells us is the very foundation of our identity and our reality.  Because unlike all these other stories, this one is true.  

This one is true.  This story says that you, and every single human being who ever existed, were created by a Loving God, as an utterly unique, irreparable act of utter devotion and delight, and that nothing can change that.  That when people refused to believe that they were made good and delighted in and beloved by the Creator, and continued to make up other stories for themselves, and even started living these stories by killing off and hurting and enslaving people with different stories, that God intervened, again, and again, and again.  That God came in God’s own person, putting on our story, sharing it with us, LARPing as one of us, even allowing Godself to be killed by us, because God would rather be with us and tell us we are good, than kill us back or destroy us with His sword of fire.  

And that this God turned that fiery sword, not on us in vengeance, but upon Death itself, and on the forces of injustice, and of sin, and of selfishness, and of Empire, and said, “it is finished.”  That this God rose again.  And this God has proclaimed, “behold, a new creation!  I declare it Good!  My Gospel is my risen body, my Gospel is my Word, and my Word is Love, and that is the final, the only, and the truest Word that will ever be spoken!”  This God declares to you today, in the sacrament of God’s body and blood, this simple, life-changing story: you are Mine.  Nothing can ever change that.  And no one else gets to tell you who you are.

I’d like to think that Doctor Who could do that for me.  I’d love it if playing Magic the Gathering could resurrect me into a new creation.  I’d be delighted if being a part of a political party could ultimately change the world and me.  But they can’t.  They are simply not true in the same way that this Gospel is true.  Dressing up in a cloak, or a robe, or a suit and tie, does not make that story any more able to redeem the world than if we showed up in a t-shirt and jeans.  Because the grass withers, the flowers fade, and all flesh, all stories, all the glory we try to create…it will fade away and fall.  

But the love of God we have in Christ Jesus; the reign of God which proclaims “love one another as if your life depended on it!”; the kingdom of love where every single human being is valued totally and solely on the basis of the fact that they are God’s beloved children for whom Christ died and resurrected; this is not one story among many.  It is the story.  The story by which all other stories are true.  It is the story by which we know the truth about ourselves.  And the truth about all of reality.   Not because we have to believe anything about God.  But because God has continued to believe in us, and has acted on our behalf, and has loved us with an everlasting love.  Whether we like it or not. 

And brothers and sisters, I share this with you tonight, at the outsert of a season of focus on “practicing resurrection,” because, ultimately, before we know what it means to love one another deeply from the heart, we must first hear how God loves us deeply, from God’s heart.  You can be a Trekkie and be a very good person, and probably do a lot of justice in the world.  Or even a Democrat or a Republican for that matter.  But its not about what we do. 

As witnesses, as heralds, as minstrels of this story, this Gospel, this Word, we are called to proclaim this news.  We are called, to an extent, to remind the world of who we truly are.  We belong to God.  We live in the Kingdom of God.  Each human being is a citizen of this kingdom.  Which means we don’t get to kill other citizens of this kingdom.  Or segregate some of these citizens into ghettos or suburbs.  Or slander them.  Or envy them.  Or exclude them.  Or exclude ourselves.  That’s not who God is.  Which means, that’s not how reality really is either.  

One final story in closing.  This past Friday, I was honored to preside over my first funeral service, for one June Kelly.  June died on Tuesday.  She was a member of Peace Lutheran, the church who gave us this building for our mission.  For the last decade of her life, she lived in various care homes, struggling with dementia.  I’d never met her.  I tried calling other Peace members to find out about her.  I was struck that almost no one from Peace had ever met her either.  She had moved to Canandaigua long before they arrived.  

BUT.  Every single member of Peace knew her name.  They knew who June Kelly was.  Because, almost to a T, every single one of them said, “yeah, I know June.  We said her name, every single week in the prayers, as we asked for her healing.”  Grace was loved, and known, and upheld by people she’d never met.  She was part of the family of God.  That’s her story.  I didn’t need to know about any of the good things, or the bad things, that she had done in life.  I knew enough to celebrate her.  Because she is one of us, and we are one of her’s too.  Because she belonged to a story in which, week after week, she was named, and remembered, and prayer for.  She is part of a story in which we are remembered, and named, and prayed for, and beloved.  

This is a story of retirement homes, and solitude.  A story of moldy smelling funeral homes and the lifeless body of an old woman.  A story of complete strangers awkwardly standing around a grave in Mt. Hope Cemetery, trying to think of things to say.  It’s not a magical story like My Little Pony or Doctor Who or the United States of America.  But at her grave, we poured sand upon her casket in the shape of a cross.  We prayed.  We remembered her.  We told her story, and our story.  We told the story.  A story, that for June, continues on.  Because we knew whose June was.  And is.  And will always be.  

We are not called to be “good people.”  We are called to be “God’s people.”  Which means, simply, to love one another as if our lives depended on it.  Which means no one and nothing else gets to tell us who we are.

The grass withers and the flower falls, but the story of the King of Love endures forever.   Because this story is true.  

Amen.  

Sermon: "On Commitment, or, Why God Always Loses at Fantasy Football"

"On Commitment, or, Why God Always Loses at Fantasy Football"

Preached at South Wedge Mission

Rochester, New York

8 September 2013

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Text: Luke 14.25-33

~

-It’s fantasy football season again.  Despite telling myself I would retire after winning my league last year, I’ve let myself get roped in yet again.  It’s a tradition, after all.  One of the ways I stay in touch with my divinity school friends.  I’m committed. 

-It’s also a great place to witness ministers behaving badly.  There’s swearing and mocking, smack-talk and sarcasm.  But even worse, there’s bunk trade proposals.  Now, if you’ve ever played fantasy sports, you know what I’m talking about.  The owner of Team A, who is known for his track record of success, makes an offer to Team B, staffed by a new-comer or someone who just doesn’t care.  Team A says, “hey, if you give me your three best players, I will offer you these three guys I just grabbed off the waiver wire!  It’s a great deal!”  Of course, if Team A has to explain that its a great deal, you know its a crap one.

-And yet, the worst crap deal I can think of pales in comparison to what Jesus seems to be offering his would-be disciples.  In today’s Gospel from Luke, Team Jesus makes this proposal to Team Disciples: “You follow me to Jerusalem.  And in return, you get to a) hate your family, b) give up all your possessions, and c) get crucified.”  

-Say what?  I cannot think of a rational human being who would willingly commit to such an offer.  Even if, as many commentators suggest, that Jesus is using hyperbole to scare away any posers on the bandwagon to his final confrontation with the authorities in the Capital, this is a pretty insane sales’ pitch.  No wonder Jesus compares the hearers to a king who sees his army overwhelmingly outmatched and so sues for peace.  

-And it feels like sometimes, that that’s how our culture - and probably many of us here - view commitment in general.  I feel like my whole life, I’ve relished having tons of choices and lots of options.  Commitment - limiting ourselves for just “one thing?” - closing the door on a possibility? - saying no to anything better that might come along? - requires something of us.  Sometimes, a downright sacrifice.  And there’s no guarantee it’ll pay off in the end.  

-I feel like such a powerful request request for deep commitment like Jesus’ can often feel almost incomprehensible in our postmodern day and age.  Forget that the commitment of marriage has become seriously terrifying in a world saturated with divorce and heart break.  Take something simpler, like Facebook.  Friendships develop far too quickly on facebook, and disappear just as quickly as a new fast friendship moves in.  I can pretend like I deeply cared about your three-year old’s ballet concert without having to suffer through the video - a simple “like,” and voila, instant connection minus commitment!  We may click “join” or “yes” to an event invitation, but if you’re like me, I’ve also clicked “join” to several other events, and often have moved on to something even more novel and immediate by the time the big day rolls along.  It’s not that I don’t have good intentions about going.  It’s just easier to keep my options open.  Right?

-The reality might be this: that most of us are probably better at committing to a week of watching the complete series of LOST or Doctor Who (for the third time), or to the World of Warcraft, or to our fantasy football teams, then we are to the things and the people that actually most give us life.  

-And for me, oneof the saddest parts of such a commitment-phobic society is, frankly, that we also struggle to ask for commitments from others.  Growing up, when I still had a land line and AOL Instant Messenger was the latest rage, I’d actually have to call folks on the phone.  And I’d have to ask them directly, and personally: “will you come to my party this Saturday?”  And often, they’d have to say yes or no.  I asked for an RSVP.  I wanted to be prepared.  Didn’t want to be a second choice.

-Now, I feel like people say, “yeah, I’m having this event; you should come if you want.”  I haven’t actually been invited.  It’s like they don’t care or expect me to come.  Like they don’t want to commit to me, or ask me to commit to them.  Like it’s padding against disappointment.  Like the real world is becoming more like the facebook one.   

-Or maybe, we’ve just lost the knack for commitment.  For keeping our word.  Maybe we’re addicted to novelty.  Maybe we’re afraid that we’ll be let down.    Maybe we’re afraid of who we’ll become if we just stay put.  Maybe we’ve just jacked up our expectations for others, and for ourselves, to unreasonable, uber-romanticized levels.  Maybe we don’t even know what reasonable expectations are.  As satirist Charlie Brooker once noted, “no one writes love songs about just-settling.” 

-And see, that’s where I think Jesus’ request isn’t so crazy.  Because as a God who has seen His people Israel make commitment after commitment, only to worship other gods over and over, Jesus knows what it is to be heart-broken.  God’s created the church, only to see us take the Gospel of grace, and make it about anything but, time and time again.  God’s been committed to God’s people almost to the point of unhealthiness.  And God keeps that commitment - that covenant God has made with God’s world - even unto death.  Being executed as a Betrayer, as Unfaithful, by an unfaithful and uncommitted people.  

-See, in Christ, God remains committed to us.  And God sacrifices for it.  The cross is proof.  Even though Jesus knows most of us will never hate our family or sell all our stuff, God loves us far too much to leave this marriage up to us.  At the end of the day, the trade God offers is actually a crap deal...for God.  Because Team Jesus gets killed.  And Team Humanity gets salvation, divinity, redemption, and everlasting life.  We end up the champions of the season.  And it’s no fantasy.

-But see, we’re worth the deal to God too.  Worth the commitment.  We are worth the rejection.  There is no better option coming along.  No passive invitation.  We’re it.  We’re enough.  Because Christ is headed for Jerusalem, regardless of whether we accept his invitation to come along.  He seems to think that such commitment will lead to something more important than even death.  So whatever he’s “just settling” for - it must be really worth it.  

-It struck me, re-reading this passage, that Jesus’ willingness to ask us for a commitment sounds an awful lot like a proposal.  Maybe even a marriage proposal.  Like he’s not just saying, “give up all you have to die,” but also, “take everything I have to give you, and live!”  Often at weddings, the story from the Book of Ruth is read, where the widowed Ruth tells her mother-in-law Naomi, “Where you go, I will go, and your people shall be my people.”  There’s deep fidelity there.  You lose a lot of possibilities.  But you gain the reality of rootedness, intimacy, love.  

-As Leah can tell you, I struggled with the decision to get married all the way up until our wedding day.  I’ve never pinned down an exact reason.  Maybe I was afraid of losing the possibility of someone more...ideal?  More like me?  Less eager to challenge me?  Maybe I just couldn’t let go of my addiction to novelty, to possibility.  Maybe I was just afraid, because I was heaping far too many expectations on marriage, on her, and on myself.  

-I was really helped by the words of one of my seminary mentors, Stanley Hauerwas.  The first time I met him, he told me Hauerwas’ Law: you always marry the wrong person. Now that was some cynicism around marriage I could wrap my Lutheran mind around!  It was liberating to realize that the covenant to one another is what makes marriage work - not feelings, failures, expectations, or everlasting newness.  The willingness to stick around, to forgive and ask forgiveness - and to know and be known intimately.  What a gift!  Sure, our marriage will never be perfect.  But it is very good.  And if I could, I’d go back and knock some sense into me!  

-I’ve kind of felt the same way about church.  There are so many other things I’d love to commit my time to.  Maybe you’ve been there too.  Why not leave the God-question open?  Why commit to this community of failures - of people who are not cool, who will not always act as we want them too, who will promise to go to the cross with us...and then deny us?  Why get married to a religion, or a church, when simple spirituality is so open-ended and commitment free?  

-But then, I’ve had to wonder: has anything else in my life that I’ve committed and sacrificed for really given me what Jesus is offering?  Not just happiness, and wisdom, and fulfillment.  But deep and lasting intimacy.  Freedom to be myself.  Forgiveness for my failures.  Abundant life that is not perfect, but is very good?  Why wouldn’t I give up everything, and take up the revolutionary cross, and follow this man to the end, just as he has followed me to mine?  

-I think it’s worth considering.  Because the commitment of church - of following the Way of Jesus in community - is not a commitment to perfection. It’s not a fantasy.  Or a facebook friendship.  It is a commitment to the promises of God.  And when we say “I do” with all of ourselves that we are able to muster, I wonder if we will like who we become.  My guess is we will.  Because God does.  

-Because, after all, even God follows Hauerwas’ Law.  God always marries the wrong person.  And it’s definitely not perfect.  But it’s very, very good.  

-Amen.

#IAMGEORGEZIMMERMAN

#IAMGEORGEZIMMERMAN

Before reading this, please read this article "An Open Letter to Whites about the Black Community and the Trayvon Martin Case." 

"The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists of listening to them. Just as love of God begin with listening to his word, so the beginning of love for the brothers and sisters is learning to listen to them. It is God's love for us that he not only gives us his word but also lends us his ear. So it is his work that we do for our brothers and sisters when we learn to listen to them." Dietrich Bonhoeffer

~

“If you did not mention #trayvonmartin in your sermon, you should rethink your vocation.”

This sage advice, and other such pearls, proliferated across social media this past Sunday, along with white pastors’ profile pictures mysteriously morphing into the silhouette of a young black man in a hoodie who was murdered in Florida.  Clearly, we clergy do not want to be found on the wrong side of history on this one.  And of course, our colleagues and congregations and readers should feel as earnestly as we do.  

And yet, for me, this grand (and I am sure, earnest) gesture strikes with all the force of a Princeton student sporting a Che Guevara t-shirt.   But also, because to me, this kind of posturing is everything that is wrong with the church and social media - precisely at a time when the church cannot afford to dabble in trivialities and mere sincerity of emotion. 

One prominent blogger who posted this statement gave as reasoning that a majority of “nones” interviewed stated “the church has nothing to do with the world I live in.”  As a mission developer in one of the least religious cities in America, I sympathize with the desire to want to put forth a different face.  But is putting forth the face of a black youth, and trying to take on the voice of the black community, when I am clearly not of the same hue, really what “nones” need to see of the church?  Is Trayvon Martin now about being relevant?

Putting on this face feels like a mask.  A mask that covers the inescapable fact of our Whiteness.  A mask that hides the disturbing fear within me that, as a white male pastor who looks more like George Zimmerman than Trayvon Martin, I have no clue what to think or what to feel, or what to say, or what to do.  Because had I grown up in George Zimmerman’s shoes, I am not sure I would have thought, felt, said, or done any differently than he did.

Because, as much as I want to put forth the social media mask of sincerity and outrage, the truth is, my first reaction to the rage of white people was to say, “yes, but the court decided.  We can’t just act like children who, playing a game and seeing their opponent gain the upper hand, flip over the table. take their boards, and go home.”  The system worked after all.  The operators of the system - that’s another story.   

But if I’m honest, my outrage is first at myself for not being outraged.  My outrage could recognize that this, as a blogger quoted, “is the most significant civil rights moment” of our time.  And I want to join the picket lines and the sit-ins and the online throwing of stones.  I want to react.  But I cannot.  Because I am a white person.  Of privilege.  I am part of the problem.  I depend on the game board and the rules and the system and the guns.

And besides - did we honestly think we'd receive any other verdict?  I wonder if the reactivity and outrage is a result of faith misplaced - in a justice controlled by just us, and in human progress.  Which has always been the gated community of paler skin.  And our justification of ourself by our works.     

If I were to have preached a sermon on Sunday (I was enjoying a week off), and was given the text of the Good Samaritan, it would have broken my heart.  Because while I would want to call my people to take up the mantle of the Good Samaritan and to wrap the bloody body of the Trayvons and the Alifahs and the Patricks and the Isatahs and the women raped in India and the North Koreans escaping to freedom on the Chinese Underground Railroad - it’s a prophets mantle that is not mine to give or take.  

Because as people of privilege, and as a willing participant in Whiteness, I am not a Samaritan.  I am not an outsider.  On countless occasions, on countless days, in my own neighborhood, on my own block, where cameras and presidents and tweeters do not walk, I pass the victims of our violence.  And I do nothing.  I live in a city where the school system is broken, segregation is rampant, child poverty is out of control - and most of the white people cluster in the paradise of a single quadrant where the hipster can lie down with the boomer, volunteer once in awhile, and feel content that the peaceable kingdom has arrived.   

Every day, here in my own context, Trayvon Martin is branded, and stalked, and ignored, and beaten, and often killed, by police, and gang members, and businesses seeking to “clean up the area,” and by people like me who choose the safety of a blog over the dangers of walking with another human being.  The most significant human rights issue of our day is not Trayvon Martin.  It is the persistent success of the idolatry of the racial caste system of Whiteness to dominate our imaginations, and leaving a Sherman-like trail of destruction and segregation in its well-intentioned, pseudo-progressive wake. 

Because the awful truth is this.  We are not the Samaritan.  We are the bandits who leap out of the shadows to plunder the passerby.  We are the clerics who bustle busily by, worried about our own holiness and self-righteousness and being on the “right side of history,” while passing by the side where the blood and dirt and the truth about ourselves is to be found.  We are not Trayvon Martin, and probably should never sport the hashtag or the profile photo.

For me, the only acceptable hashtag I can post, and the only one white people, however sincerely earnest they may feel, should most, is #IamGeorgeZimmerman.  

If you don't believe me, go out tonight after dark.  Go somewhere where you know you'll run into black folk.  When someone different than you walks by you in the shadows between street lights, see if you can walk by without feeling fear inside.  Without wondering if you're going to be mugged.  Go for it.  Can you be free from fear?  I cannot.  

Because like Mr. Zimmerman, we are safe behind the gated (largely white and privileged) online and ecclesial communities and our pulpits, wielding the fire arms of prophetic fervor, believing we are called to take up an office for which we are not qualified.  Like GZ, we stalk whatever innocents wander this hellish racially charged world, greedily chewing them up in our need to be relevant, to be perceived as part of the solution, to be on the right side of history, to put forward the right face to the world.  And like George Zimmerman, as white folk, we are acquitted.  We get off, literally and figuratively, again and again and again.  With impunity.  The world is on our side.    

#IamGeorgeZimmerman.  And like him, I too am bloodied, I sport wounds from my actions.  My forehead bears the overhyped dramatic scars of having been involved in the scuffle for human rights - except that, in trying to do so, I am only making it worse.  Because at the end of the day, I am free to walk into a coffee shop to write a blog like this, and no one in that shop will look at me with fear because of the color of my skin.  I am free to be afraid of black people and not be seen as culturally aberrant.  I am free to have an opinion on this horrible tragedy, while ignoring the bloody traveler in our neighborhood, and the blood on our own hands.  And so I too am scarred.

But there is truth in the blood.  Because in many ways, I am also the mangled traveler on the ground.  Because our self-righteousness, our need to judge and divide the church because they do not react and feel and blog as earnestly as we do, our need to take on the mask of Trayvon as if we were the black community rather than listening to the laments and the cries and the outrage of that community - this leaves us all chained, and wounded, and immobile, and self-deceived, and helpless, slaves to Whiteness and race.

And as the bloodied traveler, we need a Samaritan to save us.  Satan cannot cast out Satan, as Jesus proclaimed, and Whiteness cannot mask Whiteness.  We need Trayvon, and the black community, to remind us who we are in this battle - we are George Zimmerman too.  And it is time for us to stop trolling the social media world with our judgements and our reactivity and our sincerity, and to shut up.  To start sitting still.  To lay down our weapons.  To be a different kind of leader.  To listen.  

To stop being like Martha, indignant that others are not doing the hard work no one ever asked us to do.  And perhaps, like Mary, to sit where the voice of Christ can be found.  Outside of us.  Challenging us.  For the truth of a power that can cause a revolution of our hearts.  And so, give us a true justice and love - gifts that can never be taken away.  

And let’s start listening.  For once, wordlessness is acceptable.  I have never been the father of a black teenage son who was murdered by a white man.  I have never been a black teenager.  I have much to learn, and I do not yet know how to feel this.  I am helpless and have nothing to say.  And, I pray, that this is the beginning of recovery.  I am as helpless as the man beaten on the road.  And I need to let the Samaritan teach me how to be well.  And, I pray and pray, that this will teach me to repent.  To take off my mask.  To have truth about the way things are.  And so, to learn from others and from the God of the Cross, what it means to be a neighbor.  

Relevant religion begins, not with social media, but with repentance.  If our communities do not start there, then perhaps we should rethink whether Christianity has ever really been relevant.   

We are George Zimmerman.  Let’s stop insulting insulting Trayvon Martin, his family, his community, and the cross, by pretending otherwise.  

St. Paul and the Very Foolish Galatians - The Complete Sermon Series

This past Sunday, we at South Wedge Mission finished our six-week long trek through St. Paul's letter to the Galatians, following the revised common lectionary's given readings with some modifications.  I've included the complete six sermons below in case you missed one or are interested in checking them out.  Included Part 2 on Codependent Peter, which has languished in the editorial stack for weeks and finally sees the light of the blogosphere:)

Thanks for reading/listening/taking the Gospel back with you wherever you may go!


6/2 - Gal. 1.1-24 - "Story, Gospel, Art, Mission: Introducing St. Paul's Letter to the Galatians"

6/9 - Gal. 1.10-12, 2.1-16 - "Chameleons and Mockingjays: The Case of Codependent Peter"

6/16 - Gal 2.15-3.5 - "Justification...on a SPACESHIP! or St. Paul Comes to Call"

6/23 - Gal 3.5-29 - "Notes from Underground (Railroad), or, How Slaves Taught us Freedom from Inclusivity"

6/30 - Gal 5.1, 13-25 - "SARX WARS, or, How the Apocalypse Stole My Fruits"

7/2 - Gal 6.1-16 - "Magna Carta Holy Grail (of Christian Freedom), or, Reborn on the Fourth of July"

Sermon: "Mockingjays and Chameleons, or, the Case of Codependent Peter" (St. Paul and the Very Foolish Galatians Part 2/6)

"Mockingjays and Chameleons, or, the Case of Codependent Peter" (St. Paul and the Very Foolish Galatians Part 2/6)

Preached at South Wedge Mission

Rochester, New York

9 June 2013

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Text: Galatians 1.10-12, 2.1-16

~

-Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ. (Gal 1.10)

-Ever since I was a little kid, my mom often told me that I was a “chameleon.”  And not just because of that phase when I bought baggy shorts and started wearing long sleeve t-shirts under short-sleeved ones like all the skater kids – despite not actually owning a skateboard!  Or when, after college I made the horrible mistake germane to young white activist types of trying to dreadlock my hair. 

-No, see, I’ve always been good - am still good - at assimilating the styles of those around me (even if someone else’s cool wallet chain looked ridiculous with my Abercrombie and Fitch khakis!).  On the postivie note, I think I am deeply atuned to particular nuances and stylistic and tonal particularities, which enables some great impressions, creative musical improvisation, and is a virtue when it comes to reading and interpreting texts.  It’s served me well as I’ve always had a diverse group of friends, and can adapt to a number of circumstances and situations.  As St. Paul says elsewhere, “I become all things to all people.”  Being a chameleon is a major asset for ministry.

 

-And also a major curse.  Because if there’s one thing every pastor knows, if only secretly in their heart, it’s that one of the main incentives for taking on such a challenging and otherwise borderline insane calling is our almost universal need for three things: admiration, affirmation and approval.  Being able to change colors to fit the color scheme at hand is also convenient for giving people what they want to hear – though not always what they need.

-And it’s hard to remember who you are after so many changes.  Redefining myself to achieve other people’s ever-shifting standards of approval ultimately means that I am always allowing myself to be re-defined by what I think are their standards.  The message my life speaks, then, is not something distinctly me – not what God gifted to me in my creation.  I am like that Mockingjay bird in the Hunger Games – a mutation of separate creatures spliced together, able to imitate, but ultimately, easily employable and influenced by the deceptive and destructive forces of the Capital.  I’m still a slave to power outside of myself.

-I share all this because if I’m honest, I really feel for St. Peter in today’s reading from Galatians.  Peter, Jesus’ number one discipline, his right-hand man, the person many believe was commissioned by Christ to be the universal head of the new church movement and beyond – he hasn’t really changed much.  Because in so many ways, it feels like he is a fellow chameleon too.

-Because after being called by Jesus, witnessing the life death and resurrection of Jesus, and performing miracles and preaching in Jesus’ Name, Peter is still, after all that, struggling with his need for approval.  He’s a biblical poster-child for codependency.

-Just look at his bio.  When Jesus asks the disciples who they think he is, Peter’s the first to have the right answer – “the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!”  A few verses later, when Jesus is talking about being crucified, Peter speaks the group’s (understandable) trepidation at being mutilated and killed, only to be called “Satan.”  He’s ready to walk on water to Jesus, but he freaks out when he sees the waves, and calls out to Jesus for help.  At the Last Supper, when Jesus corrects him for trying to avoid having his feet washed, Jesus promptly rebukes him, leading Peter to request a full body washing!  The man can’t hold his own to save his life.

-And then, of course, who could forget Peter’s big low – denying Jesus three times on the night of his darkest trial, because he was afraid of what the guards and servant girls might think about him?  Or, as he and John walk along the seashore with the resurrected Jesus, and Peter is told he will be crucified one day, and Peter promptly asks, “well, what about the other guy?”

-This is the same Peter – the already saint still sinner Peter – we meet in Antioch, who is also the brunt of a major butt-whooping by a very unhappy St. Paul.  Because now, after having approved of Paul’s somewhat unorthodox ministry to the Gentiles (read: non-Jews), a ministry Jesus himself gave and the “watchdogs” at Jerusalem approved, Peter’s at it again.  He’s in Galatia, and instead of backing Paul – instead of making a powerful statement, as the head of the church, of Gospel inclusion, Peter’s decided that it’s best for him to eat with the Jews – the other circumcised folks.  They DO have the power, after all.  And after a lifetime of fearing other people, why should he let go of his codependency now?

-And I wonder – are any of us really that different than Peter?  Have we desired approval and security and a sense of self so badly that we’ve allowed ourselves to be defined, not only by other problematic folks, but also, at the expense of those who are already on the ropes?  Whether in the high school locker room, or in the pseudo-safety of facebook and blog comments, or in our work environments or our families, have you, like Peter and me, betrayed your deepest beliefs and convictions of what you know is just and right…because you were afraid of losing approval?

-And see, I wonder why we really desire approval so much at all.  Aside from the whole being-included-with-the-winning-or-the-cool-side of things,, or the desperate need to be known and accepted and understood, or just the desire to get ahead and find security and safety, I think it gets down to something more.  I think we seek the approval of others because, secretly, we don’t really approve of ourselves.  We deny approval to others as well – get mad when others don’t meet our standards, want to be like us, give us their approval – because, honestly, we are as harsh on ourselves as others are.  Tied to their conditional love, we practice conditional love against ourselves.  And then, turn that on others.

-And it’s because, I think, we forget the Gospel.  That simple, yet profound truth, that we are not justified by any works of the Law or anything we can be or do on our own.  But are claimed by the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and given an unshakeable identity, because in through the lens of the cross, we are able to see ourselves for who we truly are: God’s beloved.  God’s always-already claimed children.   Defined by God alone, and God’s work in Jesus Christ.

-Jesus, the one who came, not seeking our approval, but seeking to give us the approval we could never find from one another.  Who was disapproved by us – rejected, because he forced to play our idolatrous codependency games, and placed in a position of utter disregard and scorn: crucified, outside the city walls, in the place of a criminal, a traitor, an outcast.  Jesus, who offered to us and proved to us the original approval, the “it was good!” of God’s original creation.  Jesus, who by the cross, crucified codependency, and gave us back ourselves.

-Jesus was the ultimate chameleon - taking on our humanity and everything with it, and giving to us God's divinity, and everything with it.  Death and disapproval and destitution and codependency - for grace, truth, joy, peace and love.  

-See, that’s why I think it’s so crucial that, as we learned last week, Paul leads with his own story.  Paul has no delusions about needing approval from the Galatians like Peter does.  Because Paul is unafraid to tell his own death and resurrection story.  To share how the Gospel has worked in his life.  He has no secrets, has no qualms, and so, is able, with brutal honesty and seeking reconciliation and restoration, to confront Peter.  And to confront him publicly, in order to restore him to the truth of how reality really is.

-Because in Christ is revealed the true nature of the world.  That we were made for relationship, with God, and with one another.  Not to be chameleons, always changing along with everyone else’s changes.  But resting in the unchanging, always and forever love of God for God’s creation.  Not seeking approval from others, or seeking to give our own fickle approval to those seeking it from us – but, having known ourselves as definitely approved by God – a deal signed in the blood of the cross – we are free to simply share with others the Gospel that they too are claimed by God.

-And we are given freedom. Freedom to eat with Gentiles, and enemies, and outsiders, and unexpected guests, and the weak, and the absolutely worthless in others’ eyes.  Free from using church as a vehicle for political causes, or denominational battles – all of which, in the end, are also covert battles for approval and acceptance in culture and in halls of power.   Free to stop trying to fit people into an unstable system of our own devising – and instead, to discover, with wonder, uncertainty, risk and delight, how each of us, as unique and unrepeatable manifestations of the creative love of God – fit into the story, God’s story.  The story of reality.  Whether we approve it or not. 

-And we’re free to confront one another in love too.  Free to tell the Peters and Matthews and chameleons and mockingjays in our communities that we are backsliding.  That we are falling under the spell of the lie.  That the way we are living is proclaiming, not a world approved by God, but a God approved by the world, and a sense of self utterly at the whim of the crashing waves and driving currents of turbulent waters on which we should be walking freely, rather than sinking desperately.

-The Gospel gives us a true sense of who we are in God.  It gives the gift of boldness.  Of a willingness to be radically honest.  To stand up for those who are disapproved, regardless of whether we are approved of or not.  We need to hear it again and again.  Because all of us are, in a certain sense, mockingjays and chameleons.  We are made in the image of God, and so, are called to reflect God’s colors.  Called to sing the songs of humanity back to one another in such a way as to sing them in the key of grace. 

-We can do so, bringing others with us as together we strive for freedom, because we know ourselves in Christ.  As approved, accepted, affirmed, and admired by the one who alone needs no approval from anyone.  But delights in sharing it with everyone.  With you.  With me.  With all. 

-In Jesus’ Name, Amen.