More Than a Feeling

  

1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17

Mildred and Richard were in love. They had known each other since childhood, but as they grew up they fell in love. In 1958, when Mildred was 18, the left their small, nurturing hometown in Caroline County, Virginia to be married in Washington, DC. Having returned home, five weeks later, in the middle of the night, the newlyweds were abruptly awoken, handcuffed, and taken in jail. Their crime? Being in love.

Richard and Mildred Loving (really, that was their last name) were in love with each other in a time when their love was prohibited because Richard was white and Mildred was black. They lived in Virginia under the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 which not only prohibited interracial marriage in Virginia, but it prohibited Virginia interracial couples from circumventing the law by legally marrying elsewhere and returning to Virginia to live. They were charged, pled guilty, and sentenced to a year in prison that was suspended for 25 years on the condition that they leave the state. The Lovings left Virginia again and moved to the District of Columbia.

In 1964, frustrated by the fact that they couldn’t visit their family in Virginia they were referred to the ACLU for legal help by then Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Three long years later, after their case made its way to the United States Supreme Court, the Lovings won the right to be in love and be married. Their sentence was overruled and the Virginia law was struck down as a violation of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Richard, Mildred, and their three children returned home to Virginia.

Love can’t really be legislated. Can it? We can’t tell people who NOT to love. Can we? And, for me at least, knowing that we can’t tell people who not to love, it’s hard to heard Jesus’ commandment TO love. Commandments about love are counter-intuitive to how I usually think about love.

Love as our culture commonly talks about it is something we possess. Love is a thing we try to get or a feeling we fall into. It’s butterflies in the stomach. It’s an aching, a longing, a desire. It’s a cure for an ailing heart, the key to happiness, an elusive prize waiting to be found, won, or given away.

But here in John’s gospel love seems to be something different - -something that can be commanded. Love seems to be more than a feeling for which we hope, or an impulse that flows from desire. Love is something we MUST do.

Last week we heard in the first letter of John the simple, yet profound statement at the core of the gospel, “God is love.” If we cut to the chase about all of this, about faith, about life, about our call as the church, we get to this message, “God is love.” I even said it was simple. Ha! It’s simple as in singular. It’s simple as in an argument with few points or counter-points, but let’s not be so naïve as to think it’s simple in living

The love we talked about last week was certainly more than a dizzying or warming feeling at the sound of a voice or the sight of a face. It is, in the words of John, abiding love, and abiding love is the love of Jesus. It is intruding, disruptive, difficult to offer, and maybe just as difficult to receive. Abiding is the act of dwelling with another, even a stranger wherever she is found. It is a willingness to go the distance, descend to the depths of pain and suffering, and stay there with him in darkness until the glimmer of light appears on the horizon. Abiding love is the love of hospitality, the love for the stranger that is just as strong as the love for family, friends, for self. It is love that is open to a change of plans, love that that is given without judgment, without convenience, without checking the calendar or plans for the day, or for the life. It’s the love of Jesus’ command.

It isn’t easy, is it? It isn’t easy to open our lives, ourselves to the deepest needs of others. It’s not like the things on our “to do” lists are optional. It’s not that we are TRYING to ignore the people in front of us who are aching for friendship, companionship, a good word, a hot meal. It’s just that there are all these other things we need to do first. It’s just that abiding with someone takes time, it takes an energy of the spirit that we just don’t think we have right now. Maybe once my finances are in order, I can help someone else with theirs. Maybe once I feel calm and refreshed, I can offer refreshment to another. Maybe once I have experienced the abiding love of another, I can abide with a stranger. Maybe once I have felt loved, I’ll know how to love others.

But then there comes this commandment again. “Love one another as I have loved you.” It’s not even “love one another when you feel my love for you.” Jesus doesn’t give us time to get it, to feel it, or to understand it. He doesn’t give us the excuse to wait until we have found love before we share it. He commands us to do right here, right now, because he knows love is more than a feeling. He also knows we may never get up and do it if it’s dependent on our experience or knowledge or feelings of preparedness. So, having loved us from the beginning, Jesus tells us to go out and love others. Actually, he doesn’t just tell us to do it, he tells us what it looks like and even shows us.

Love is what we do. Love is an action. Love is more than a feeling; it’s a sacrifice. Love is laying aside our schedules, our priorities, our preferences. Loving is putting down our comfort and our security to love other people. Love is active. Love is setting aside, but in setting aside it is also taking up, taking up the causes, the burdens, the pains, the injustices of others. Love is what we do with who we are.

The gospels don’t tell us very much about what Jesus was feeling. Here and there we get a few snippets of his emotions – anger, frustration, tears and sorrow occasionally – but for the most part time isn’t spent reporting or speculating about what Jesus felt about what he encountered and experienced. The bulk of the time in the gospels is spent telling us what he said and what he did. The bulk of the time in the gospels is spent showing how Jesus shared the good news with the people he met, how he healed them of their injuries and ailments, how he included the people who were left out, how he fed the people who were hungry, how he gave living water to the people who were thirsty. We don’t know how Jesus felt while he was doing what he was doing, but we know by what he did that he loved.

Today in the United States is the day that has been set aside for honoring mothers. It’s a day of flowers and gifts and brunches and pampering for many, but it can also be a day of longing, confusion, and sorrow for others. Historically speaking, the latter is more appropriate to the founding of the holiday than the former.

Mother’s Day has varied roots throughout the world. Many different cultures and religions have a day set aside to honor and give thanks for those who bring forth life. In earlier Christian understandings Mother’s Day wasn’t even about human mothers, but about the Mother Church. In US religious history this understanding was dismissed by the Puritans who barely even celebrated with obvious joy Christmas and Easter, much less a holiday that celebrated the institution of the Church.

No, our modern US Mother’s Day has its roots in the Mother’s Day Proclamation written by Julia Ward Howe, better known for penning the words to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” In 1870, deeply saddened by the carnage of the Civil and Franco-Prussian Wars, disturbed that the sons of one family could be responsible for the death of the sons of another family, Howe called on mothers and all women actually to shape their societies, to work for peace on all levels, not just in their homes, but in their nations, and in the world. 

"Arise, then, women of this day! 

Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs." (1870 Mother's Day Proclamation)

Howe’s call to women was a call to love. All the “feelings” in the world won’t do anything unless they are applied. All the compassion, all the heartache for the loss of life that we hear about, all the sadness over what we see on the streets of the city, in shacks of forgotten villages, in the slums of the world, all the concern we can muster when we hear about the young who are abused, the elderly neglected, men, women, and children who hunger for a bite to eat - - all of it won’t do a THING if we don’t love with our actions.

Jesus hasn't just commanded us to love each other, he has shown us how to love each other, and he has given us what we need in order to do it, and he promised us joy and victory over despair when we love with actions like his.

The good news in Jesus is that he did not sit by the wayside and watch a world in pain waiting for the perfect status, the perfect checkbook, the perfect platform from which to love. He loved from where he was. He loved the people he was with. He loved with everything he was and everything he did. And now he has sent us to love in the same way – by acting on it, by healing and helping and wiping away tears, by calling injustices unjust, by working for peace not discord, by forgiving and welcoming and listening, by judging a whole lot less and serving a whole lot more. And, thankfully, he has promised to be with us, the source and shape and strength of love in the world.

God is on the loose and casting out demons!

He was a divided man. You could see it in his disheveled hair, his wild eyes, his fidgeting hands. He just couldn’t stop moving, correcting himself, going this direction then that trying to keep his body and his mind under some kind of control when all they wanted to do was race away just out of reach, where he couldn’t get a grasp of his own self. Sometimes it meant that he just couldn’t stop shaking, that man who was there in the synagogue. He couldn’t stop crying out, speaking at all the wrong moments, saying all the wrong things, shouting out when everyone else was composed, pulled together, perfectly…appropriate. The rest were calm and focused and attentive to the worship leader, but he was, he was, possessed.

Something else had a hold of his body and mind. Something else was fighting for control of the thoughts he was thinking, the moves he was making, the words that danced on the tip of his tongue. Something else had entered into his body, his life, and whatever it was it was holding him captive, gripping him, so tightly that he couldn’t break free from its bounds. It was evil, both the way it tormented him inside and the way it separated him from everyone else. The way it separated him from God.

Some people pitied him, sorry for whatever he had done to deserve this hell on earth. They looked down their noses at him, wished it would go away for his sake and for theirs, but never getting close enough to see if there was anything they could do. Everyone feared him. What held him was other-worldly. It was demonic. It was unclean. Was it contagious? Could they catch it? If they were near him would his fate jump from his life to theirs? Would they be infected? Would they be shunned the way they shunned him? Would they be relegated to a life divided, a mind divided between two wills, a body divided between two masters, a spirit divided from God?

He pitied and feared himself. He couldn’t remember a time that it wasn’t like this – so terrible, so horrific, so completely out of control. He longed for a way back to the way things used to be, knowing life wasn’t perfect, but at least it was one life, one mind, one spirit. When he could close his eyes to dream even just for a moment dreams that weren’t painted with demonic colors he could imagine his life without the spirit, even just for a moment, and it felt free. It felt light. It felt…divine.
Unclean spirits. Demons. Possession. Exorcisms.

We don’t quite know what to do with these things, do we? Maybe I should just speak for myself. I don’t quite know what to do with these things. It’s not every day conversation for me except when one of these difficult passages shows up on the preaching calendar. I knew a pastor once who claimed he could smell evil spirits when they came near, but that’s not the kind of thing you hear everyday, especially from us nice controlled, reasonable, level-headed Presbyterians. These sorts of things, these sorts of accounts feel just a bit outside of my reach, and when I come face to face with Jesus’ ministry of casting out demons I get a little squirmy, a little uncomfortable; I feel a little lost.

This report of an unclean spirit challenges my modern or post-modern sensibilities. It throws me for a loop, and then unfortunately, often, it gives us an excuse to just skip over this important act of God in Jesus – the first miracle Jesus performs in this gospel. While there must be something important here, there must be something incredible going on, it’s so foreign to my understanding it’s tempting to skip over it, ignore it, and stuff it in the back of the drawer.

Understandings of the demons in Scripture range from the literal to the symbolic. But however each of us understands the unclean spirit, there's one thing on which most of us can agree. The demon that possesses the man in the synagogue is disrupting the life God intended for him. The possession is in direct conflict with the will of God in his life. That’s what “unclean” means. Uncleanliness in the Jewish tradition was not a physical dirtiness, it was a spiritual corruption. It meant that the creation that God had made and called good had not suddenly turned bad, but that there was something that was marring it, something that was smudging it, something that was separating the good creation from the perfect Creator who had molded it. There was a layer of “ICK” between God and God’s beloved creature, and things were not as they were supposed to be.

In the case of an unclean spirit, however, you understand that, literally to metaphorically or somewhere in between or somewhere undecided, it means that something is holding onto the man before Jesus, something is vying for control of his thoughts, words, behaviors, and spirit. Something is working hard to distort the will of God, successfully it seems, and things are not as they should be in the kingdom that Jesus’ proclaims has come near. That’s a demon I can get my head around. That’s a demon I have seen and known.
I have been possessed by demons of jealousy. I have wanted what others have so badly that I have forgotten who I am and with my own thoughts and unquenchable desires have muddled and tarnished the image of God within me. I have tried too hard to be something other than what God created me to be, working against God’s impulses in my life.

I have been possessed by demons of pure anger. I have held grudges that built walls that restricted the flow of God’s love through me. They have artificially blocked my experience of God’s love flowing to me. They have held me back from reconciling. They have held me back from forgiving. They have divided my mind, body, and spirit so that as Paul says in the letter to the Romans, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

Have you known these demons to possess you? Maybe your demons are other demons. Some people describe their unhealthy cravings for alcohol, drugs, or gambling as demons. Others speak of ungodly and all-consuming desires for money, for power, for prestige that contort their understanding of what God has said is important, the divinely-given vision for what leadership looks like, the Christ-like call to servanthood. Demons of deceit mar God’s will for openness and honesty. The demons we know from the inside or out threaten our relationship with God; they distort our understanding of the reality God has created, the kingdom Christ has brought near.
Going beyond the individual experience we can see demons in the world in attitudes and institutions that perpetuate racism. There are demons that possess society distorting God’s will for wholeness for all people, for abundant and healthful and grace-filled life for all of God’s creation. There are demons that we allow to divide our spirits, to compartmentalize our faith so that the church is all too silent on issues of fair wages, just working conditions, and accessible health care. There are demons that we allow to divide our witness as followers of the God who welcomed those who were cast aside, ignored, and even stoned by the rest of society. There are demons that possess our minds, convincing us that somehow someone else will take care of the poor, the lonely, the widow, the orphan, those far and those near who are enslaved by economics, enslaved by greed, even enslaved by real people not just overseas in deserts and jungles, but 20 miles down the road in the human trafficking trade and probably less than a mile down the road in our own town.
These demons are real. They are present in the world. They present among us. They are present in our lives. They have everything in common with the demon that held the man in the synagogue in that they grip us, they toss us around, they replace our impulse to live a life in close communion with God, in the realm of God, by the design of God, right here, right now. They separate us from God and from the created order as God intended it to be.

These demons are real, but they will not be tolerated. That’s what we see in the gospel according to Mark. Jesus doesn’t deny the demon’s existence. He doesn’t ignore its reality or smooth over its effects. But he also doesn’t accept that what he sees is the way it has to be. Jesus refuses to let the man live a divided life. He refuses to allow him to be held captive by anything that stands between a child and his God. He refuses to let this man’s world continue on the trajectory it is following and right there in the middle of the synagogue, surrounded by people who are watching, waiting, and wondering what he will do about this disturbance, this disruption, this denigration of God’s will and God’s creation, Jesus commands that unclean spirit to come out.

It isn’t pretty. It isn’t easy. It doesn’t come without convulsions and crying, but he does it. He sends the unclean spirit away with audacity and authority, and it works. He does the same for us. The demons that plague our lives, the demons with which we sometimes even conspire, are not a part of God’s will and desire for us. The demons in our neighborhoods and our nation are not a part of the reign of God that Jesus carries into the world, and he’s not afraid to cast them out. He does the same for us and he asks the same of us.

This is how God is on the loose. This is the One we commit to follow. It’s not safe. It’s not easy. It’s not comfortable. It’s rarely neat and tidy. It means letting Jesus cut out and throw out those things that grip us and hold us back from following him fully and completely, those things that stand between us and our God. It means taking a look at what’s right in front of us and calling the demons demons. It means, looking at those things in our lives, in our culture, in our society, in our community that hold us back from being a part of God’s kingdom of grace and welcome and justice and refusing to tolerate their existence in our midst. It means we can’t ignore hunger. It means we can’t deny the disparity between rich and poor. It means we can’t excuse corruption that holds people or corporations to different standards of decency. It means we can’t remain silent when we have gathered what we need, when we have moved on to what we want, when there are others lagging far, far behind.
This is how God is on the loose in Jesus our Christ. This is how God is on the loose in the world. So, if we really mean what we say when we say we want to follow him, if we really mean what we say when we say we want to be his disciples, then it means we have to stand up and take action. We have to be a part of the reign of God that counters everything that stands in the way of God’s grace, and love, and peace. We have to call demons “demons” and we have to be a part of casting them out, healing what divides, and letting the reign of God come pouring down. May it be so for us and for the world. May it be so.

Stories We Tell

Luke 24:13-35

Wednesday night at the Networks senior high youth group meeting I participated in an "Ask the Pastor" question & answer night. Questions submitted ahead of time ranged from "Was Jesus Caucasian?" and "Why don't people in the Bible have last names" to "How do I know I have a soul?" The pastors helping out at the middle school meeting and I received these about a week in advance to start formulating our answers which was helpful. On Monday, though, Elliott Krizek, our Networks youth director, very wisely sent out an additional question that was timely in the face of the news we were all processing from the night before. Elliott asked, "What should be the Christian response to the death of Osama bin Laden?"

It was a great question and so incredibly important for us all to consider. Our conversation on Wednesday night made me think, in fact, of the scripture I was pondering for worship today. It felt like in a way we were re-enacting the walk to Emmaus. The disciples had experienced something life-rattling. Reactions in the different gospels include great joy and exuberance, fear and comfort-seeking, even silence in the face of confusion over the missing body and the empty tomb.

The two disciples here in Luke's gospel, Cleopas and another who is unnamed do something completely different. They do pretty much what we did at youth group. They did what literally millions of people, including quite a few in the Christian community, did on Facebook or Twitter or other social media outlets. They got together to tell the story of what had happened. They got out and walked and while they walked they talked, about all that had happened. And hopefully you noticed that when they did just that Jesus showed up among them, blessing them with his presence, comforting them through their conversation together.

This is exactly what I want us to spend some time doing together here this morning; walking together on a road after something life-rattling for some of us individually, but for many or most of us collectively, I want us to talk about the things that happened. I believe that as we do so, Jesus will walk with us and join with us in our conversation.

As soon as the question was posed to me on "Ask the Pastor" night, "What should be the Christian response to the death of Osama bin Laden?" I answered how any other pastor would in the same situation. I immediately threw a question back to the youth! It's the same question I put before you here today, "What reactions to the news did you have or did you see?" There is no right or wrong answer here. This is a time of sharing without judgement. Just what did you see or hear or feel yourself as the news was broken and the story unfolded.

Why do you think people reacted the way they did? What feelings or emotions or experiences were behind such a diversity of responses?

One thing of which I was reminded this week as I reacted and as I watched the reactions of others in person, on the internet, and throughout the news media is that everyone has a story. Behind every reaction and feeling and response is a story, and behind many of our feelings about what took place this week is often a story about what happened on September 11, 2001 or maybe even a story of what happened on December 7, 1941, or maybe a story about a loved one who has served in the military in the last 10 years, or maybe some other story that was brought back to the raw and tender surface as soon as the news was heard. Everyone has a story, and our stories are usually behind our responses.

People of faith are people of stories. Our shared stories are what we have to connect us to one other. The first this Cleopas and a fellow disciple did when they heard the life-changing news of Jesus' resurrection was get together and tell stories. They first thing they did when they found a stranger who didn't seem to know anything about what had happened was tell him the story. The first thing Jesus did when he got a word in edgewise was to place himself in the midst of the story of God's redemption of the world. He claimed the story of how God called and worked through Moses as his own story. He jumped right in the work of the prophets who called God's people back to faithfulness and showed how he was part of that story.

We are a people of stories and the way we experience things, the way we react to news and events all depends on the stories that have priority in our lives. In the hours and first few days that followed the announcement of the death of Osama bin Laden we saw a diversity of reactions. Many of us FELT in in our own bodies, minds and souls a diversity of feelings - - comfort of a threat removed, sorrow at a human death, frustration with our common human corruption, pride in the bravery of soldiers, confidence the leadership of our government, thankfulness at justice served.

As I watched reactions and feelings come pouring in where I was, connected to what was going on only by a computer screen, I saw each of these and more, and then I also saw something very disheartening. I saw brothers and sisters in Christ turn on one another, attacking and debating whose response was was the right response to the news we all received, the news none of us were prepared to receive.

Good people of faith forgot the biblical response of celebration, of release of emotions like Miriam's after the Israelite slaves crossed the Red Sea safely. She sang aloud with joy and exuberance, “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider God has thrown into the sea." They attacked people whose first reaction was joy and release. Other good people of faith forgot the wisdom of scripture that warns against feelings of triumphalism and joy at the expense of others' pain, "Do not rejoice when your enemies fall, and do not let your heart be glad when they stumble."(Proverbs 24:17) They attacked those who called for peace and restraint.

A colleague of mine, Tripp Hudgins, an American Baptist pastor in the suburbs of Chicago, among several others pointed me this week towards and editorial about this international news written by an American rabbi, Rabbi Menachem Creditor. "He reminded the rest of us that Jews were [in the midst of their annual remembrance of] the Holocaust when the news came across the wires. Story upon story upon story…. He wrote of the confusion of emotions available to all of us. Some of us remembered 9-11 with great fear. Some rejoiced in the streets. He asked,

'How do we respond when the architect of enormous evil is brought to justice? What does it mean for us, as Jesus, as Americans, that Osama Bin Laden has been killed?'

According to a Midrash [a Jewish teaching story that expands on the words of scripture], when the angels rejoiced at the victory of God and the deliverance of the Children of Israel at the Red Sea, they invited God to join in their celebration. God declined, saying, 'How can I rejoice when my children are drowning?' God's response, as intuited by our tradition, teaches us that the very people who enslaved and tortured us were still human beings when viewed through sacred eyes.'

The diverse witness in Scripture to how we human beings respond to death and victory mirrors the responses we have witnessed even this week. The stories that are behind our own responses are not new stories - - stories of pain and loss, of family pride, of national tragedy and fear of our common enemies. Yet as people of faith, particularly people of the CHRISTIAN faith we share yet another story that needs to inform our response to this and any news we receive. It is the Easter story.

"Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who do not know the things that have take place there in these days? The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed an sword before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive."

He is alive! The Lord has risen! He has risen indeed! This is our story. This is our core story as people of Christ, as Christian people. This story above all stories, all stories in Scripture, all stories in our own lives, all stories that come across our screens and over the radio, and in our newspapers, is the story that defines who we are and ultimately how we react. Death is not to be taken lightly. Death is not to be laughed about or skipped over as unimportant. Death is not to be rejoiced or dismissed. Death is solemn. Death is holy. Death is so final that God got involved with it, God experienced it.

The sacred eyes of Jesus looked at his enemies from the cross and loved them. The sacred eyes of Jesus turned to those who did him harm and begged for their forgiveness when they never asked for it. And the sacred eyes of Jesus look even at us who experience complicated emotions of anger and vengeance and satisfaction and grief at the death of another, and those eyes gaze on us with a longing for peace. Because death is so serious that God decided to conquer it. Death is so serious that God decided to intervene and redeem it.

Jesus our Lord, Jesus our teacher, Jesus our brother, Jesus our God, experienced death, but death could not hold him. This is the story out of which all of our responses must flow. This is the story which we must tell, "The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed."

The power of God is stronger than the power of death. This is our story.
The power of life is stronger than the power of death.
This is what we believe.
This is what we celebrate, not that another human being,
no matter how hurtful,
no matter how dangerous,
no matter how cold-blooded in his calculations against individuals and nations, was put to death.
We celebrate that
in the resurrection of Jesus there is new life.
In the resurrection of Jesus there is new hope.
In the resurrection of Jesus is comfort and joy and especially peace.

The Next Level

Micah 6:1-8
Matthew 5:1-12

Advertisements for a new book started appearing this week in all the “trade” magazines churches and pastors get during the week. Westminster/John Knox, a Presbyterian-related publisher, released the new title, What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still be a Christian. Immediately upon seeing the title the hairs went up on the back of my neck. Really? What’s the least I can believe? Have we sunk that low that it’s assumed we’re trying find the bottom line on which we have to sign to make sure we’re in? Or we’re covered? Or we’re safe?

I did a little more research after hearing the title, and I discovered the title did exactly what the publishers probably hoped it would do. It overstated the content of the book and by doing so drew me in to learn more. The book itself, from what I can gather, is not as bad as the title sounds, and in fact may be a very interesting study for some or all of our churches to undertake. But that’s all beside the point. What drew me in, I think, is the age old question that the title essentially restates straight from Micah, “What does the Lord require of you?”

It came to the people of Israel during what was likely some pretty shocking judgment from the prophet. Shocking because even the judgment itself earlier in the prophecy points out that they were not unreligious people. They weren’t lacking in their practice of their faith, but actually the opposite was true. They were faithful with their sacrifices and activities in the temple. They knew all the right things to say to God and really were talking about their faithfulness pretty publically and pretty loudly. They truly believed they were doing everything just right. That a challenge or judgment or question was being posed to them was unbelievable.

I can just imagine how people of deep religious belief or practice today would take the kind of judgment Micah was bringing. Imagine if he walked into the Presbyterian Church General Assembly last summer, or the non-denominational Women of Faith Conference, or a Billy Graham-sponsored revival, or a meeting of the World Council of Churches and started calling us all to task about doing or NOT doing what God has asked us to do. Imagine if a prophet came through the doors of our church right in the middle of worship when we are doing the very thing we know God desires and told us that God has a case to lay out against us in the heavenly courts. I don’t think we’d take the news or the question so well.

No, the people of Judah never saw it coming. They THOUGHT they were doing everything just right. They THOUGHT they were being faithful. They were making sacrifices in the temple. They were waiting for the Messiah. They were speaking out loud, maybe too loudly, about what they do to worship God. They THOUGHT they were on the right track as religious people of God.

It’s an easy trap for anyone to fall into, turning the life of faith into a religious check list, and then on top of that broadcasting it to the world when we are proud of ourselves for marking off all the tasks on the list. Sing “Amazing Grace” and “How Great Thou Art?” Check. Read 2 chapters from the Old Testament and 3 from the New? Check. Attend Sunday worship? Check. Sign up to usher? Double check! Make it for a communion Sunday? Hat trick! Three checks! Put money in the offering plate? Check. Bow head and pray at every meal? Check. Say bedtime prayers? Check. Make it to “Amen” before falling asleep? Bonus check!

It’s an easy temptation to fall into, and it’s exactly this behavior against which Micah speaks. It’s exactly this bone that God has to pick with us. God calls us out on it turning the majestic landscape of creation in a divine courtroom. God calls us to step out before the bench of the mountains, the jury box created by the hills and answer a few questions. The gracious piece, though, is that it isn’t really with rage or fury that God comes to prosecute. Other prophets and even other parts of Micah can really be angry sometimes. Yet this time the tone of God’s controversy is different. Instead of anger, the tone is one of frustration, even pain. It sounds like everything is turned around and instead of creation crying out “How long, O Lord?” the creator is weeping, “O my people, where did I go wrong?” God is upset, but even more than anger it sounds like disappointment.

God is saddened when our faith is placed in the things that we do. God is saddened when we start to reduce our faith to a religious checklist. That’s not the whole point. It’s not supposed to be about trying to figure out what rituals we need to perform to get by or what doctrines we have to agree to in order to meet all the criteria. God is wearied when we try to rely on our rituals to save us instead of our relationship. God’s goal for all of this is not just to count the rear ends in the pews and check off all our names in the Book of Life, calling us good because bothered to show up week after week after week. Just making it to worship and even participating is just not the point.

Don’t get me wrong. Worship is good! The traditions and routines of our public and private faith practices are good! They aren’t only good; they are great. In the fall one Sunday we talked about how much God desires our worship. I’d say it’s even the first and most central thing to which we are called. In one of our historic Reformed catechisms the question is asked “What is the chief end of [humanity]?” The answer that generations since passed were able to answer in one strong voice is, “The chief end of [humanity] is to glorify God and enjoy [God] forever.” God wants us to worship together, to give praise and honor and glory to God, to hear God’s Word, to make offerings to God, to celebrate the sacraments as the body of Christ, to sing praise, and to offer our prayers for ourselves and others.

God LOVES when the community gathers for ritual. God LOVES when individuals are committed to their personal and private acts of faith and devotion… but not when they replace a living faith in God, a relationship with Christ. Not when they replace being an active disciple of Jesus. Worship is good! Traditions and practices of our faith are good! But not when they prevent us from going to the next level.

I have to pause here and give thanks to Lynne Hobson and Marie Bourget for the inspiration they gave me in last week’s children’s time. If you were here you may remember them talking to the kids about “going to the next level.” If not, they started by talking about video games and how players work hard to master the skills at one level to make it to the next, where the skill set changes a little and the challenges are somewhat harder, but the reward for mastering them is even higher. Then they talked about how being a disciple of Jesus can be thought of in a similar way. Knowing about Jesus is one thing, but following him is taking it to the next level. Hearing about Jesus is the warm up round, but believing in him and accepting the challenge to go with him is more difficult, but at the same time more rewarding. It’s taking it to the next level.

Take it to the next level, Micah reports for God. Do more than just honor God with the ritual bare minimum. Do more than just try to cover your bases with your worship, your public sacrifices, and your private prayer. Take it to the next level and really live this faith we proclaim; follow God’s lead, placing your footsteps right next to Christ’s, and move on to the harder challenges of justice, mercy, and humility.

God desires more, so much more, than our empty words and our mindless ritual. God desires more than our affirmation of memorized doctrine and the lowest common denominator of belief. God desires our relationship. God desires our actions. God desires that we submit ourselves to the divine will, that we humble ourselves by letting go of our emphasis on what we need to do to just get by or look good in front of others so that we can instead seek opportunities to enact God’s justice and to reveal God’s mercy to the world.

In presenting God’s case, Micah refers to particular acts of God, asking the people of Israel and us if we remember these saving acts of God. He brings to their mind and to ours these stories that aren’t just accounts of days gone by, but accounts of what God does even now, what God does for us. Remember how God brought us up from the land of Egypt? Remember how God stood up for us when we had no voice, no power, no strength? Remember how God is all about justice, freeing those who are bound up, releasing captives, lifting up the oppressed?

Next Micah reminds us of another story that is probably even farther back in our minds, if it was ever there are all. He prods our collective memory of the time when God got in the way of a foreign king who was trying to curse Israel. In fact, God even used the prophet for the enemy, a foreigner, to bless us to show us God’s redeeming love. Remember how God shows us mercy, using any available means to bring us into a deeper relationship with Christ?

Then he brings up the way Joshua led the people across the Jordan, FINALLY into the Promised Land. He recalls how after generation upon generation first of slavery in Egypt, then as a people wandering around in the desert wilderness, the promise of God was fulfilled. After walking faithfully and humbly with God, not always know why we were doing what we were doing, how we were going to make it where we were going, we were finally brought to the land of God’s blessing. Remember how God’s footsteps lead us right where we belong? Remember how God never left the our poor, questioning side?

Yes, one of our greatest callings and privileges as the body of Christ and individually members of it is to glorify God, worship God, give praise and honor and make sacrifices to God. But what God requires of us, what will take away God’s frustration and sadness over our personal attempts is when we take it to the next level. What does God require of each of us? That we enact God’s justice on behalf of the poor and the forgotten. That we show God’s mercy to those cast aside and left out. That we walking with faith and humility wherever God chooses to take us.

The blessings of God don’t come to us because we are completing the right checklist. That would be the way the world operates. God’s ways are not our ways. God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom. Instead God’s blessings are with those who are poor, those who mourn, those who are meek, those who are merciful, those who work for peace and righteousness and the unexpected ways of God. God asks us to take it to this next level. God asks us to step up to this greater challenge with this greater reward - - that in stepping up to the challenge we will be filled with Christ’s love enough to share.

Mary's Song, Mary's Sermon

Luke 1:39-55

Our kids love playing with the Little People nativity set that my parents gave them during Advent a couple of years ago. Unlike the Little People farm and castle and even the Little People Noah's ark, the figurines and the stable for the nativity set can't be found littering our house year round. They are kept packed away in boxes with other Christmas items, not just the ornaments and decorations, but many of the children's Christmas books and music, pulled out only for a special 6 weeks of the year. When the stable and figures come out there is hardly a day that goes by when the story isn't told and the people aren't moved around into another tableau depicting the birth of Jesus.

But some of those tableaus aren't your traditional arrangements. Sometimes characters from other of the world's favorite stories show up to see the baby in the manger. You shouldn't be surprised to see Cinderella or Spiderman at the Anthony family creche. A few Nebraska football players have even lined up, leading us, one year, to snap this ironic picture of Lord visiting the Lord.

Earlier this month, though, this was the picture I took of the nativity set. The pieces weren't gathered in their usual spot, in the stable topped with the angel. Instead they were fixed around another favorite toy in our house, the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, which gave a stage-like setting to the whole picture. Karoline saw me looking at what was apparently her creation, taking pictures of it, and told me what was going on here.

"That's Mary preaching, Mom," she said. (Only a pastor's daughter, right?) "That's Mary preaching, Mom, and Baby Jesus helping when she's telling them all why Jesus was born." Out of the mouths of babes, right? Mary probably never imagined herself "preaching," but in the beautiful song she sings to her cousin Elizabeth she proclaims the good news of God's salvation as passionately, joyfully, and graciously as any of the world's greatest preachers past, present, or future.

We heard a couple of weeks ago about Joseph, and I shared how I totally understand why he was afraid about the news he received concerning Mary. Afraid, and I imagine and understand, also angry. Well, if Joseph's fear is understandable, even more would we expect fear from Mary. Joseph had his future to worry about; Mary's LIFE was at stake. She could have been left on her own without the protection of a husband or father at best, or at worst stoned to death, because of her pregnancy.

Fear and confusion, and because she was a much stronger woman than I would ever be in that situation, gratitude carry her to the house of Zechariah and Elizabeth. She is pregnant, apparently by the grace and blessing of God, but she is unmarried. She has been allowed to live, but her life most likely came with ridicule and bullying. It's a situation that begs for an escape to the hill country, but even in the middle of all this, somehow Mary can sing, and somehow Mary can preach.

She preaches as one who has been made lowly by her life situation. She preaches from her experience as one who is at the bottom of the social ladder. She preaches as one who is unjustly poor. She preaches as one who hungers for companionship and protection. She preaches as one who needs help, has begged for mercy, and whose life depends on the very promises of God that she recites to the rest of us, the promises she knows God will keep even in her own lifetime.

And for that reason while her preaching is on the one hand passionate and joyful and grace-filled, it is on the other hand utterly subversive, even revolutionary. That's not the image we usually have of Mary, a revolutionary, because often we spiritualize what she sang. We take the wind out of her sails by softening her song. We turn her declaration of her own lowliness into a statement about her spiritual humility, but it is nothing of the sort. It is an honest assessment of her political and social humiliation. We make the meaning of her words match the popular images of her, a delicate porcelain-skinned, blue draped figurine, soft and gentle, passive and subtle.

But there is nothing passive or subtle about what Mary says to Elizabeth. From her experience and her memory she tells us that God has a heart for those who have nothing. God's way is to lift up those who have been cast aside by society and scatter those who think too highly of themselves over other. God feeds those who are empty and sends away those who come greedily seeking more of what they already have while others are lacking. God pulls powerful oppressors out of power, and supports and empowers those who are weak.

Mary declares in full voice that God has biases. God is on the side of the poor. That's why this is so revolutionary. The reigning theory that material wealth is a sign of extra blessing from God, a closer relationship to the divine is not a 21st century curse. It was the usual understanding even in Mary's time. The idea was and too often still is that God rewards with money and protects those whom God loves the most. But Mary sings and preaches the complete opposite. She sings of revolution.

It was the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who stated, before he was killed by the Nazis, "The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy, Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings....This song is not one of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about collapsing thrones and humbled lords of this world, about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind." (quoted in the sermon "Mary: Prophet of the Poor" by Rev. Dr. Byron E. Shafer preached Dec. 21, 2003 www.rutgerschurch.com/sermons/sermon122103.html; referencing an article by Elizabeth A. Johnson, C. S. J., "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary" in U. S. Catholic, Dec. 2003)

Mary's words are not tender and mild words from a sedate and compliant expectant mother. These are words of challenge, words of engagement; these are words of revolution intended to bolster those who are pushed down, ignored, and tossed aside. They are words meant to rally sentiment and support, words meant to inspire action to change the world. It's no wonder, then, that in the 1980s the government of Guatemala prohibited the public reading of the subversive Magnificat.

They understood the power of Mary's words. They understood the threat of her ideas and preaching to their position of authority. Her words and God's bias are against them, powerful oppressors. If Jesus is Lord, and that's the Christmas message, then the kings and emperors of this world are not. Merciless and greedy governments and leaders of this and any day and age are not the final authority. According to Mary, God is NOT on their side.

Like Karoline said, Mary preaches to tell us why Jesus came. Mary testifies to what God has done for her in her child Jesus, and she magnifies that, she expands that to tell us that what God has done for her, God will do for the world in her child Jesus. In Jesus God will lift up those who are considered lowly. In Jesus God will bring down the powerful, the oppressors, those who lord their authority over others. In Jesus God will show us that true authority comes not from power that is misused and abused, but from service and love and freedom. In Jesus God will fill up the hungry with food that is long overdue and send away those who have kept it from them. In Jesus God will free the people of this earth that are bound up and gagged and silenced by culture expectations and ungodly prejudices. In Jesus, Mary sings, God has done this for her. In Jesus, Mary sings, God will do this for the world.

What we have done when we have softened Mary's words, toned them down to fit our image of the round yon virgin, is that we have taken away their call to action. We have taken away there sense of urgency that is meant to push us into the service of THIS God, God who lifts up the poor and helpless, God who fills the hungry, God who crashes down authorities who don't do the same. What we have done when we have softened Mary's words is give ourselves an excuse not to get involved, when really what Mary is singing about, what Mary is preaching about and God is calling us to is complete involvement.

The Guatemalan government realized something important. They realized Mary's words had power. They realized the poor of their naition might hear these words and believe what is true, believe what seems impossible - - that God is on their side, God has come to save them. And in realizing this the Guatemalan government realized that the converse must also be true. They were the ones God would bring down from their powerful thrones. When we soften Mary's words, when we spiritualize them and strip them of their revolutionary power, it's my guess that we do it because deep inside we have figured out on what side of this we are find ourselves.

Most of us are not hungry with the kind and depth of hunger about which Mary sings. Most of us are not poor to the extent she was. Most of us are not so oppressed that laws have to be repealed in order for us to live and serve openly and freely before one another. No most of us here today are not on THAT side of Mary's song, and so Mary's sermon becomes particularly important for us.

It becomes for us a wake-up call. It becomes for us a call to action, a call to transformation, even a call to repentance. It becomes a sermon in the style of that better known Advent preacher, John the Baptist. Repent, he says, for the kingdom of God is near. Make straight your paths. The Lord is coming. The Lord is coming and he is on the other side. Jesus is coming and Mary is urging us to get on the right side - - the side of the hungry, the side of the oppressed, the side of those who are pushed aside and ignored and imprisoned.

Later in our service we're going to sing a hymn about "Gentle Mary." I had my reservations about picking that hymn, or any of our hymns about Mary. They stylize her in way that is very different from the words she sang to Elizabeth. Instead of showing her as a fearless advocate of the poor and oppressed, they depict her as a subdued, pious mother, doting on her newborn son. But in the end I think the paradox of these two images is appropriate. For the God who has brought down the powerful from their thrones and filled the hungry with food is the God who was born of a human woman, the God who came to earth as a helpless child. If it can be true about God whom she worships and magnifies, it can also be true about Mary. Out of the same love and passion she bore for her baby, she sang with love and compassion for the helpless of the world. Gentle Mary who lovingly and tenderly cared for her infant son, is also the bold and revolutionary Mary who calls for justice, true justice, and righteousness, for the up-ending of world systems and the lifting up of the poor. This is the Mary who preaches to us, sings to us, and invites us to share in her prayers and actions for the world.

So, yes, I debated about whether we should sing about "Gentle Mary," since I think the word she preaches is anything, but gentle. However, we will sing it because before we sing it, we will sing Mary's not-so-gentle words. We will sing her words of power, her words of revolution, her words of a world that will be changed and turned upside down by the child she carries in her womb. We will sing her sermon and in singing it we will magnify her words, we will magnify her God and our God, and preach along with her what God does in Jesus, our Christ, Jesus our Lord.

Together let's make Mary's song our own. As you are able, please stand and sing Hymn #600, the Song of Mary.

Don't Shake the Olive Trees

I know we don’t hear much from Deuteronomy in our usual worship and most preachers’ preaching. The book has a long-standing reputation of being somewhat of a bore – a list of rules and commandments ordering all sorts of aspects of daily and not-so-daily living.

But Deuteronomy is really so much more than that. It could be called God’s vision statement. It’s a statement longer than most consultants would recommend, but God has a big job to do. It can also be roadmap for avoiding the sort of rags to riches pitfalls we’re used to seeing as celebrities rise quickly to fame and financial fortune, but forget or never bother to remember that their new financial freedom comes with responsibilities, too.


Newly freed from slavery in Egypt, God gives the Israelites commandments to guide their life and their society before they take the final steps of their journey into the Promised Land. Listen now for God’s wisdom and vision.

READ Deuteronomy 24:10-21

Loans and wages and justice, oh my! Loans and wages and justice, oh my! Who know all this was in here? Who knew God had something to say about banking and pay schedules and collateral and the random olives left on the trees? And why does God bother?


Because you were a slave in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there. God said it in there twice. It must be important. Because you were a slave, and because I redeemed you, I care. Because you were a slave and you were mistreated, because you were a slave and your wages were withheld, because you were a slave and I brought you out of slavery for a life better than that, I care. Like a mother might say to her child, “I raised you better than that.”


Loans and wages and justice, oh my! What are these rules of economics really all about?


First of all, they assume that the hearers are the ones making the loans, paying the laborers, and reaping the harvest. The burden of a just economic society, the burden of organizing sustainable life and communities according to God’s wisdom is on the people with the economical and political power . The rules don’t tell the poor how to beg. The rules don’t tell the aliens and foreigners how to fit in and measure up. The rules don’t tell the widow how to find respectable work. The rules don’t tell the orphans to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The rules and commandments of God tell the lender, the employer, the landowner how to be gracious and merciful and generous with what they have.


Because I was gracious enough to pull you out of slavery, because I was merciful enough to redeem you from Egypt, because I was generous enough to shower you with manna from heaven and water from a rock, you also should use your power, your position, your blessings for the benefit of those who have none.


Secondly, the rules aren’t about hand-outs that strip the recipients of dignity and promote the givers to the throne of the divine. The commandments don’t tell the people of God to organize bread lines that dehumanize or donations that create second-class citizens. The rules are about loans that will eventually be paid back. The rules are about wages that are earned through honest labor. The rules are about food that is gathered by the ones who will eat it or sell it for profit to make a living. The rules are about respecting the people who live alongside us as people created in the image of God with the same hopes to earn a living, the same goal to provide for family, the same dreams to contribute to society as those who are already doing so.


God’s commandments describe the ideal world, the world toward which we strive, but the world we have not yet reached, the world in which those who are poor and strangers and widows have a chance to work honorably and productively, just like the rest of society; the world in which those with the means to lend and hire and grow do so with generosity and grace, because they know that what they have comes only by the generosity and grace of God. The lenders and the employers know they aren’t the source of their blessings, but they remember they were once slaves and the Lord saw fit to redeem them.


In his series of books about the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith tells the story of Precious Ramotswe, a single woman, past the “usual” marrying age in Botswana, who, unusually, but blessedly, lives independently. Alone and in a modest home, with no husband or children to care for or clean-up after, Mma Ramotswe employs a housekeeper. In her first person narration of the stories, Mma Ramotswe acknowledges the way this may look wasteful or over-the-top to the outsider.


But she sees it entirely differently. She sees it as her duty. Mma Ramotswe may not have much to clean or a complicated life to keep organized, but she recognizes that she has been blessed with more than enough for herself. She sees it as her DUTY to employ someone because she can. She can afford to give another woman work to do. She can afford to pay wages that will benefit another family, lifting them out of poverty and into a life of dignified work and compensation. Because she knows that the position she occupies is one of blessing and even simple privilege, she knows it is her call to make sure that another human being is able to work, be paid, and live a productive life with dignity and honor.


Mma Ramotswe, in the words of Deuteronomy, isn’t shaking the olive trees to gather the last few fruits for herself. She isn’t picking over the vines for the grapes that were left behind. She has taken what she needs from what is hers, what she has earned, and she is finding a way to make sure others can live off the blessings she has received.


“Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I COMMAND you to do this.”


Lastly, these commandments tell us that what exists is enough. The poor will have food, the orphans will be sheltered, the strangers among the Israelites will have work, the widows will be clothed and taken care of out of what already exists. God doesn’t ask that new fields be planted for them. New cloth is ordered to be woven. What is already lurking around our economic system, what we have planted in the fields, the fruit growing on our vines and trees, the clothes on our backs, in our closets, on the racks in the stores is enough, MORE than enough to meet the needs of the world.


What we have has been generously given by God, and all of creation will continue to receive blessings upon blessings. There is enough that the lender need not keep the borrower’s cloak overnight. There is enough that our storehouses will be full for a rainy or disastrous day. Lest you fear that I am using this pulpit to preach socialism, communism, or any other –ism, hear me say there is even enough for some to enjoy luxuries, while others live more simply. There is enough for all of this, and enough to meet the world’s needs when people are treated justly, equitably, and compassionately.


Remember, out of God’s great love and compassion, we who were once slaves, have now been redeemed. Because of this, we have these commands to obey.


In a study guide written in November of 2006 by the National Council of Christian Churches, US churches were reminded of our American history: “More than 100 years ago, workers caught in the machinery of early industrialization were ground down by 12-hour shifts and seven-day workweeks. Families were broken by absent or exhausted parents. Workers with disabilities were summarily dismissed and devalued. Retired works were left without pensions. Children worked when they should have been at school or at play. At the same time enormous wealth was generated. That wealth, however, was distributed to a relative few, primarily the owners of industry.”


The description of the turn of the previous century was clearly meant to echo the economic climate of the contemporary day, almost 3 years ago. However, the foreshadowing language is even more poignant today as we have seen the struggle of workers in our own community, even in our own congregation, intensify since November 2006. The 20th century was ushered in by the industrialization of the world’s economy, and the 21st has rushed in with technology none of us would have ever imagined and globalization like the world has never seen. Neither of these transitions has happened without a struggle. Neither of these transitions has been without their negative impacts on the national and global economy.


This is not the situation God desires. This is not the society envisioned by the commandments God gave through Moses as the Israelites looked into the Promised Land. This is not the life for the world that God intends. Olive trees are being shaken in such a way that the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. The vineyards are being picked clean by machines or desperate, under-paid practically slave laborers who have no way, no voice, or no hope to speak against the economic pressures they feel. In the midst of excitement and joy celebrating individual freedom and wealth, those who live in comfort, maybe even some of us who live without worry, have forgotten the wisdom and commandments of God.


Enough IS enough, God says. Take what you need, enjoy what you earn, but leave some for others. Give them opportunities to work as you have worked. God’s blessings are generous, we heard in Matthew (20:1-16), beyond what the world calls fair. Take what I have given, and from it take what is enough for you, God says. But remember God tells us, all of us – you, too, were once a slave. We, too, were once held captive, bound by others, bound by sin, bound by blind ambition. We are warned, don’t now be bound by greed. Work while we can, even enjoy the fruits of our labor. But we are commanded this, too, “Do not deprive others of justice. For you were a slave, and I redeemed you.”


We have known God’s generosity and mercy. In knowing it we are called embody it, making commitments to God’s commandments, striving to align not just our actions and behaviors to God’s desires, but striving to transform the society in which we live, the economic systems in which we participate.


Responding to the situation of their day, the churches of the newly formed Federal Council of Churches in 1908 put in place social principles that were to guide the Council’s work in the succeeding years – principles, you may say, that would lead to a sustainable and Spirit-led industrialized society. This Social Creed was a concise and practical summary of what a “Christ-like God” wills for those seeking “to reduce the hardships and uphold the dignity of labor.”


The working conditions and specific problems have changed, but similar economic problems persist today that existed 100 years ago: injustice in the workplace, growing social inequities, and the intolerably high percentage of people living in poverty in the United States and in other nations. Responding to the situation of our day, in time for the 100th anniversary of the first Social Creed, the National Council of Christian Churches developed a new Social Creed. It was approved in a number of denominations in subsequent years, including our own Presbyterian Church (USA) in 2008.


This week and over the next two weeks in worship we will confess portions of this creed together. Affirming our faith, professing our love, and praying with hope that the world God envisions will be visible in our beliefs and actions.

A Social Creed for the 21st Century
Background to Social Creed received for study by NCCC, Nov. 9, 2006