Cardinal Sins and Not so Big Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 Lawrence Jackman
There is a memorable exchange between Anne Sullivan (The Miracle Worker) and her boss (Helen Keller’s dad, Captain Keller). Anne is about to be sent along and is asking for another week or so with Helen to accomplish the next task:
Captain Keller: What would another week accomplish? We are more than satisfied. You taught her things to do, how to behave. She's more manageable, cleaner. Annie Sullivan: Cleaner? Captain Keller: Well, we say cleanliness is next to godliness. Annie Sullivan: Cleanliness is next to nothing!
Jesus and his followers were verbally confronted by the scribes and Pharisees. At issue, and it was a critical issue, was the question of cleanliness. The disciples casually ate without washing. They were not washing hands, food from the field, and food from the market. They were just willing to eat.
The Pharisees, on the other hand, practiced a heavy ritual of washing and cleansing. They ceremonially washed hands, food products, and utensils. (Now I need to tell you that either washing or not washing had much to do with sanitation. The water wasn’t clean, the methods were not sanitary and there wasn’t any soap.) It was about being ritually clean.
So the Pharisees come with the complaint about not washing. “Look Jesus”, they say, “Don’t you get it? Cleanliness is right up there with Godliness”. And Jesus replies back to them, “Cleanliness is right up there with nothing.” “It is what is inside of a human that makes that person either clean or not—it is not the outside stuff or the surface. It is what is deep down inside.”
The Christians of the early centuries began to attempt to categorize what Jesus had to say here about what was inside and could “defile” humanity. They came up with a differentiation of two types of sin. One was the garden variety and the other was this internal list that Jesus spoke of—the Cardinal sins/ deadly sins/ mortal sins call them what you will. The Scholastics of the middle ages crystallized thinking about all this. They identified Pride, Envy, Anger, Gluttony, Lust, Greed and Laziness as the 7 sins that kill. Now I don’t know where or why we got away from that concept, but it pretty well got lost in the Protestant movement. We got to the point where we focused much more on the surface sins and lost track of the core lesson that Jesus was teaching. “It is what is inside that really matters”.
Now you’ all know that I generally believe that Sin is an overworked term and almost a pointless one in the way Christians talk and think. I am not sure, at all, that it is meaningful. One proof of that I might offer is the fact that we work this into the worship service every week. We say a group prayer of confession and then we dedicate time for us to think about our personal and private needs for forgiveness. I counted the seconds today and we dedicated ……14 seconds to the private prayer time. Now, if we really believed this stuff wouldn’t we need to dedicate more than that?
We talk about this stuff and think about it so much because, if we didn’t spend our time and spiritual energy here, we might be forced to spend it where it would matter.
And we fend off core reality of Jesus’ lesson. You know the mechanism. It is the same one that assures me that my child is assertive while someone else’s kid is a bully. The one that makes us believe that we take care with our physical presentation and another person is vain. It is the mechanism that makes a welfare recipient greedy and someone of my middle class background a person of shrewd business acumen.
We invest energy in the 10 Commandments and even convince ourselves that this is the best expression of obedience to God and also of failure to obey. Fact is, the Commandments are, at least 9 out of 10 times, external. They are not about the really big issue of what is inside. They describe external behaviors. They are terribly important not because they describe morality, but rather because they describe a social code. If they are broken you also break community. The violation of this code assures a ripping apart of the very core fabric or a society. But none of that is about morality or of having a soul that is fit for an intimate relationship with God.
In short, we worry about the exhaust of a dirty engine and ignore the issues inside of the engine itself.
These issues (the ones traditionally called the deadly sins) are deadly for a single reason. They are building blocks in a wall that prevents our souls from being accessible to other souls; including the Ultimate Soul. How that works is incredibly simple. Everyone can understand the mechanism.
Let’s take pride. Jesus names it not as sin, but rather as an “evil”. Further, the word for evil is more like error than it is anything else. Dirty or unsanitary comes to mind as a way to get to the precise meaning. So, back to pride. If I have it I want the world and even God (if I think I can get away with it) to think very well of me. I want that so badly that I will create an image that is better than I am. I will show only my best side and I will polish and varnish that best side till it is just perfect. Then, my sisters and brothers in this life (and maybe even God) will love me.
Of course the problem is pretty clear. They didn’t love me. They loved the painting of myself that I showed to them. That even exacerbates the underlying belief in me that I am indeed not lovable or worthy or cherished. I dig for my own salvation an even deeper hole from which escape seems impossible.
So here is what confession is really all about. It is about taking away, even if only for a moment, the blocks we use to build our walls. If I can but remove pride from my own insides, then someone on the outside can get a better glimpse of the real me. If I am loved at that point, it is the real me that finds comfort in that love. If, at that point, I am a mess that only God can love then at least I will be able to claim God’s love. And it will be me making that claim, not an image I present.
Billy Joel sang about the person behind the wall of evils we call the cardinal sins. That person was “The Stranger”. The contention being that deep inside we are actually fascinated by and in love with the stranger within. Billy provoked us with this lyric line:
You may never understandHow the stranger is inspiredBut he isn't always evilAnd he is not always wrongThough you drown in good intentionsYou will never quench the fireYou'll give in to your desireWhen the stranger comes along.
The deadly sins (if they are sins) are deadly for precisely this reason. They keep the stranger inside and the stranger is my soul. I don’t want that to be locked away or out of view or in a closet. I want it to be right there on the table for you and for God and for anyone else in this world to see.
All I have to do is have courage and remove the blocks. Helen Keller in some sense is a powerful metaphor along with being heroine. For we too are isolated by blindness, by the inability to hear. Just like for Helen the deficits are acquired and not essential reality.
So if we remove the blocks—the stuff from within that defiles—we can claim life, but not until we do that removal.
One last word from Anne Sullivan. When she got through the blocks of blindness and muteness she made this promise to Helen: “there is one more word I need to teach you—EVERYTHING.”
That is the promise beyond the wall for each of us, EVERYTHING. Drop the pretense and claim the prize for the prize is everything.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Sunday, August 23, 2009
The Thinkable and the Unthinkable John 6:56-69 Lawrence Jackman
John Kocur told me the other day that, given my appearance and my tone sometimes he thought maybe I could be channeling George Carlin. I found that flattering pretty much because George was skinny. Inside a robe you just can’t tell huh? One of Carlin’s bits was a list of words you couldn’t say on TV. It was a pretty obnoxious bit actually. For a long time, though, I have thought seriously about the things that you can’t say in church. (at least not very well).
One thing you aren’t really able to say is the truth about biblical people.
We make up some pretty interesting stories about biblical times. Even the characters in the Bible itself made up some pretty interesting stories about things they should have known about. Ah…lets face it, they put a spin on things that had very little to do with reality. Solomon probably didn’t want to speak ill of his father, David. Was he really asking us to believe that God wanted to use David as a model for future generations? The king David was as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. He was an awful moral mess. Of all people Solomon had to have known that. Yet for Solomon that wasn’t a speakable truth. And the more that the truth could not be spoken, the more you could not really even think this through.
Jesus thought the unthinkable. He said the unspeakable. And he was not universally accepted because he did just these things. The passage from John is pretty interesting because it includes a fact that we just do not ever think about. Men and women were walking with Jesus. They were listening to his words, hanging on his every word, watching miracles happen. They were believing. They were close enough to God on earth to reach out and touch him.
When Jesus then began to explain some of his most profound thoughts, what happened? It looks like from the record that a majority of his followers simply left him. They walked away. It looks like maybe only the twelve are left. Maybe it is more, but it doesn’t sound much like very many more. And even they sounded more like resignation than commitment. Jesus says, “So, you guys going to leave too?” They answer, “There is nobody else to go to. You have the words about eternal life.”
In a day, maybe an hour or two, Jesus lost the majority of the flock. If he had been a minister in a church, he would have been fired.
So, in order to honor a Savior who thought the unthinkable and spoke the unspeakable, what do you say we spend a little time this morning getting use to the idea that we are called precisely to the unthinkable. Those folk who left Jesus were the ones who could not tolerate a new idea. The people who stayed were perhaps not too impressed with or enthusiastic about the brand new ideas, but were impressed with the fact that no one else had answers and Jesus did.
The fact of the matter is that the “faith” /Christianity is not a settled place or a settling in place. It is more of a way that we travel. It is not the destination—it is the sandals we wear as we move along a journey. And those sandals are just like you would imagine they ought to be. They are dirty, damp with human sweat, scuffed by the surface of the road, smelly and altogether very human tools. That is the faith—our sandals. They take us on this journey through unthinkable and unspeakable realities that need to become both thinkable and speakable.
Can we talk about new forms for church in the church? Generally the answer is no. We need to. Let me spin you a bit of a personal yarn about new forms. We have in the Presbytery both a church transformation group and a church planting group. It costs money to start a church or to redevelop one—a lot of money. I am guessing that in this environment and time it would cost something over a million dollars to actually found a church and get it off the ground. Would it be worth it? Of course it would, if that church nurtured members and strengthened the kingdom. But, it would take all that money and maybe 5 years for the group to become self supporting.
There might also be a way to start a church for one percent of that much money and three percent of the time and have it be self supporting in a couple of months. All we would have to do is give up everything that we think about when we think “church”. Bricks, mortar, pews, rooms, and whatever else.
There was a church fire in one of our places in Florida last week. The members of that church stood around the ashes and declared what every congregation facing that situation that I have ever seen declared. They said, “That was the building. We are the church.” When push comes to shove we do know that the church is such a greater thing than any room we sit in. Who says that there isn’t a First Church of Starbucks, of the Web, or of the public meeting room or the living room?
All we have to do is think the unthinkable. And when we do, we can foster the Kingdom of God in ways we have not dreamed of.
Can we mentally go where the people are? The world is hungry for the spiritual value that Christianity offers. All we have to do is go where the world is. But we have answers and they have doubts. Can we tolerate the doubts of the world? They doubt our sincerity. They doubt that we believe as completely as we say we do. They doubt that we have our “act all together” like we want the world to think.
Can we have the courage to go where the world is? God did in sending Jesus. Jesus did in walking the highways and byways. The disciples did who packed up and followed on the roads. God, Jesus and those people led with their weakness instead of their strength. It was vulnerability, displayed weakness, and open lives that converted the world the first time. It will be those qualities again. We will be like the disciples who stayed on board—not flinching from the challenges of being weak. We will look at our brothers and sisters in this world and say quite honestly, “We don’t know either. But we do have an extra pair of scruffy sandals. Take them and let us walk together.”
We do not have answers, but we do have relationships founded in love. However tenuous that fact may be it is the one reality that we need to learn to serve like no other. Jimi Hindrix said, (and you know I am out on a limb when I quote a musician of any stripe) “When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.” Love is the single transformational principle of individual or corporate life.
Think about that and the Church. I believe all the way to the bottom of my heart that we can become the Kingdom if we but latch onto that single principle. We are here for a lot of reasons. Sense of duty; I made a promise; it is a good habit I just can’t seem to break; I want to learn more; I am hoping that I can find meaning, purpose or belonging; I want to meet God. We are all different and sometimes we have to work pretty hard to tolerate each other. We do that tolerating because we have an institution to maintain, programs to promote, and a structure to support.
What a different world it might be if we were gathered for a single purpose. What if we all said, “I am here because I love you”. What if we believed that so deeply that we would say it to God and to each other individually? Even just trying that on as an idea or a fantasy is truly transformative. Ah. lets do that. Lets become a new thing.
Once a long time ago in my life, I had a period of trial. It pales in comparison to many people’s experiences and I am deeply aware of that. I was working 6 days a week and commuting 90 miles each way to work. I was trying very hard to be a person and a half at work and a single parent at home. I was trying to survive divorce and a redefinition of my professional life simultaneously. Poor me. Here was an epiphany I had one night late when I got home and collapsed in my bed. I was both too tired and too depressed to even figure out how to pray. I lay in the dark and said perhaps the most authentic prayer of my entire life. I said, “I love you God”. And I went to sleep. That was a pivotal moment in my life. That was all there was. And that was all there needed to be.
Love for each other individually and love for God individually that is the transformational principle on which our faith is founded. “For God so loved…..” If we move nothing else in this world, let us move the concept of love from the unspeakable and unthinkable to the speakable, thinkable and doable skills of the church.
We can’t say the church should have new forms. Lets change that. We can and we will either by leading the way into the future or by being dragged kicking and screaming into the night. The church can be a new and transformed reality.
We can’t say in the church that we need to be where the world is. Lets change that. We can sanctify the world with our presence. We can transform the world like leaven. Lets not be afraid of that.
We can’t say in the church, “I love you”. Oh for heaven’s sake, (literally) lets change that. We have been given the power of love lets make it work like the power it is for all women, men and even the little ones. Amen
John Kocur told me the other day that, given my appearance and my tone sometimes he thought maybe I could be channeling George Carlin. I found that flattering pretty much because George was skinny. Inside a robe you just can’t tell huh? One of Carlin’s bits was a list of words you couldn’t say on TV. It was a pretty obnoxious bit actually. For a long time, though, I have thought seriously about the things that you can’t say in church. (at least not very well).
One thing you aren’t really able to say is the truth about biblical people.
We make up some pretty interesting stories about biblical times. Even the characters in the Bible itself made up some pretty interesting stories about things they should have known about. Ah…lets face it, they put a spin on things that had very little to do with reality. Solomon probably didn’t want to speak ill of his father, David. Was he really asking us to believe that God wanted to use David as a model for future generations? The king David was as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. He was an awful moral mess. Of all people Solomon had to have known that. Yet for Solomon that wasn’t a speakable truth. And the more that the truth could not be spoken, the more you could not really even think this through.
Jesus thought the unthinkable. He said the unspeakable. And he was not universally accepted because he did just these things. The passage from John is pretty interesting because it includes a fact that we just do not ever think about. Men and women were walking with Jesus. They were listening to his words, hanging on his every word, watching miracles happen. They were believing. They were close enough to God on earth to reach out and touch him.
When Jesus then began to explain some of his most profound thoughts, what happened? It looks like from the record that a majority of his followers simply left him. They walked away. It looks like maybe only the twelve are left. Maybe it is more, but it doesn’t sound much like very many more. And even they sounded more like resignation than commitment. Jesus says, “So, you guys going to leave too?” They answer, “There is nobody else to go to. You have the words about eternal life.”
In a day, maybe an hour or two, Jesus lost the majority of the flock. If he had been a minister in a church, he would have been fired.
So, in order to honor a Savior who thought the unthinkable and spoke the unspeakable, what do you say we spend a little time this morning getting use to the idea that we are called precisely to the unthinkable. Those folk who left Jesus were the ones who could not tolerate a new idea. The people who stayed were perhaps not too impressed with or enthusiastic about the brand new ideas, but were impressed with the fact that no one else had answers and Jesus did.
The fact of the matter is that the “faith” /Christianity is not a settled place or a settling in place. It is more of a way that we travel. It is not the destination—it is the sandals we wear as we move along a journey. And those sandals are just like you would imagine they ought to be. They are dirty, damp with human sweat, scuffed by the surface of the road, smelly and altogether very human tools. That is the faith—our sandals. They take us on this journey through unthinkable and unspeakable realities that need to become both thinkable and speakable.
Can we talk about new forms for church in the church? Generally the answer is no. We need to. Let me spin you a bit of a personal yarn about new forms. We have in the Presbytery both a church transformation group and a church planting group. It costs money to start a church or to redevelop one—a lot of money. I am guessing that in this environment and time it would cost something over a million dollars to actually found a church and get it off the ground. Would it be worth it? Of course it would, if that church nurtured members and strengthened the kingdom. But, it would take all that money and maybe 5 years for the group to become self supporting.
There might also be a way to start a church for one percent of that much money and three percent of the time and have it be self supporting in a couple of months. All we would have to do is give up everything that we think about when we think “church”. Bricks, mortar, pews, rooms, and whatever else.
There was a church fire in one of our places in Florida last week. The members of that church stood around the ashes and declared what every congregation facing that situation that I have ever seen declared. They said, “That was the building. We are the church.” When push comes to shove we do know that the church is such a greater thing than any room we sit in. Who says that there isn’t a First Church of Starbucks, of the Web, or of the public meeting room or the living room?
All we have to do is think the unthinkable. And when we do, we can foster the Kingdom of God in ways we have not dreamed of.
Can we mentally go where the people are? The world is hungry for the spiritual value that Christianity offers. All we have to do is go where the world is. But we have answers and they have doubts. Can we tolerate the doubts of the world? They doubt our sincerity. They doubt that we believe as completely as we say we do. They doubt that we have our “act all together” like we want the world to think.
Can we have the courage to go where the world is? God did in sending Jesus. Jesus did in walking the highways and byways. The disciples did who packed up and followed on the roads. God, Jesus and those people led with their weakness instead of their strength. It was vulnerability, displayed weakness, and open lives that converted the world the first time. It will be those qualities again. We will be like the disciples who stayed on board—not flinching from the challenges of being weak. We will look at our brothers and sisters in this world and say quite honestly, “We don’t know either. But we do have an extra pair of scruffy sandals. Take them and let us walk together.”
We do not have answers, but we do have relationships founded in love. However tenuous that fact may be it is the one reality that we need to learn to serve like no other. Jimi Hindrix said, (and you know I am out on a limb when I quote a musician of any stripe) “When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.” Love is the single transformational principle of individual or corporate life.
Think about that and the Church. I believe all the way to the bottom of my heart that we can become the Kingdom if we but latch onto that single principle. We are here for a lot of reasons. Sense of duty; I made a promise; it is a good habit I just can’t seem to break; I want to learn more; I am hoping that I can find meaning, purpose or belonging; I want to meet God. We are all different and sometimes we have to work pretty hard to tolerate each other. We do that tolerating because we have an institution to maintain, programs to promote, and a structure to support.
What a different world it might be if we were gathered for a single purpose. What if we all said, “I am here because I love you”. What if we believed that so deeply that we would say it to God and to each other individually? Even just trying that on as an idea or a fantasy is truly transformative. Ah. lets do that. Lets become a new thing.
Once a long time ago in my life, I had a period of trial. It pales in comparison to many people’s experiences and I am deeply aware of that. I was working 6 days a week and commuting 90 miles each way to work. I was trying very hard to be a person and a half at work and a single parent at home. I was trying to survive divorce and a redefinition of my professional life simultaneously. Poor me. Here was an epiphany I had one night late when I got home and collapsed in my bed. I was both too tired and too depressed to even figure out how to pray. I lay in the dark and said perhaps the most authentic prayer of my entire life. I said, “I love you God”. And I went to sleep. That was a pivotal moment in my life. That was all there was. And that was all there needed to be.
Love for each other individually and love for God individually that is the transformational principle on which our faith is founded. “For God so loved…..” If we move nothing else in this world, let us move the concept of love from the unspeakable and unthinkable to the speakable, thinkable and doable skills of the church.
We can’t say the church should have new forms. Lets change that. We can and we will either by leading the way into the future or by being dragged kicking and screaming into the night. The church can be a new and transformed reality.
We can’t say in the church that we need to be where the world is. Lets change that. We can sanctify the world with our presence. We can transform the world like leaven. Lets not be afraid of that.
We can’t say in the church, “I love you”. Oh for heaven’s sake, (literally) lets change that. We have been given the power of love lets make it work like the power it is for all women, men and even the little ones. Amen
Sunday, August 16, 2009
August 16, 2009 Sermon
Participation Needed John 6:51-58 Lawrence Jackman
It is clear to some of you, but probably not to all. There is this thing called a lectionary in many churches. Today, for instance, the readings we just read from the bible were read and are being discussed in Catholic churches, United Church of Christ, Disciples, Methodists, Episcopals, and a variety of other places. No one has to follow this set of suggestions, but I choose to. I choose that for two reasons—over the period of a year it makes me deal with a broad area of scripture. It becomes a sort of discipline rather than a focus on my pet issues. Secondly, I am forced to try to make sense of some things that just do not make much sense to me on the surface.
So it is today, I am forced to try to deal with some concepts that might be left out in my choices.
There is something absolutely primal here in the Gospel passage for the day. Anybody who says that the passage is easy to understand and accept is kidding themselves. This is “over the top” and on a literal level is a discussion of cannibalism.
That word and thought – eating human flesh – was as foreign and as totally repugnant to the first century Jew as it is to you and me. It is unthinkable. It was unthinkable. So Jesus’ statements are almost beyond heresy. It is no wonder that those listening to him were repelled and disgusted with this very literal discussion.
And yet, yet there is a level at which we may be able to at least consider something that is normative here. My daughter, my son, my grand girls all went through an interesting time of development. I am trying to remember how old they all were and I can’t. My best guess is it was about the time they were say eight months to one year of age. In that pre-critical state, without very many negative judgments, they totally adored me.
They got to a place where what appeared to be a kissing ritual was norm when they were held. Rear back, open the mouth, fall forward against your face and slobber all over creation. They would stand supported on your lap and continue that again and again till they ran out of slobber or something. That developmental behavior would go on for several months and then gradually wear out. Here is what I think really goes on in a nine month old brain. They totally adore the object of their love. The message is one of love, but it has a twist—the twist is, “I am going to devour you”. All that “kissing” is really an attempt to take in the person they love—to just eat them up.
Adults sometimes respond to the child with exactly the same verbal message. You hear people playing with a child and state, “I’m just going to eat you up.” OK so it isn’t quite the same as the “flesh eating” conversation in John, but the words themselves are pretty much the same sounding. Why do we use those words? Why do we talk that way?
We do it because the whole business points toward a primal expression that is deeper than any words. It is a reality that certainly is way past being Christian only. It is probably a reality that dates to human experience about the time we came down from the trees and began to walk upright. Now I don’t want to press this Sigmund Freud/ Desmond Morris/ primitive anthropology thing too far. I do want to call it all to mind. You can fill in the blanks and extend the logics on your own.
Bottom line is this. Belonging is the ultimate human drive. It is what the baby means when they give those massive messy kisses—I am going to take you in, you will be a part of me and I will be a part of you.
We do not often think out loud about this drive. This drive to belong. If we are being religious we talk about the prime search being for meaning or perhaps for God. If we are being very secular we may talk about the primal human quest being for reproduction or life itself. If we are talking biology we think in terms of the survival of the species. Somehow that all makes more sense to us.
But underneath any of those quests – secular or sacred – is the single real drive and primary need of humankind. That is the absolute need to belong.
This is the factor for which people will willingly die if need be. It is the element that nations bank on when they are creating wars—cause that is the only way to get men to make the ultimate sacrifice—to convince them it is about belonging. It is the component of life that drives family, and holds together institutions, even those of risky viability. It is so deep and so profound that we are not even aware of what it is all about—it is like the atmosphere that humans walk in.
Here is what I believe to be the most dramatic example. Marriage. Women and men will like up by the millions every year to pledge each other their “lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.” We bet it all on an institution that makes no statistical sense. Half the time first marriages will end in divorce. If folks end up on the loosing side of that, they will go out and bet it all again. Second marriages will end in divorce two times out of three. Loose again and the same people will line up for the “third place” window where the odds are one in four. That is just not logical; BUT, we need to belong and we will do anything to achieve that. This is way deeper than logic.
This is not a negative comment about marriage—it is just the opposite. It is a statement that the institution addresses a need that is written so deeply into our fibers that it probably shows in our DNA.
We do not seem to search for our souls, for God, for meaning, truth or beauty near as much as we quest for belonging. Look at the sensational success of “My Space” and “Facebook”. I signed up for “Facebook” a few weeks ago. People from 50 years ago and some from 50 days ago began to find me. In a couple of weeks I began to have “my people” in a defined virtual space. It is real belonging, just virtually enabled across time and geography. The kid in Guam, the octogenarian in Illinois and he high school fellow misfit in Virginia all are herded together into my connection list. They are “my people” and I am theirs. It is about belonging.
I always contended when working with kids that gangs were all about belonging. The campaigns to eliminate them were always doomed to failure unless a substitute form and format for belonging was part of the plan.
Normal teens who need to stretch beyond family and family defined institutions are successful only when offered other ways to belong. Fail to enable the good choices and the bad ones will express themselves. The need is so strong and so valid.
Well, as Yul Brynner said in the “King and I”, “etcetera, etcetera, etcetera”.
It is the whole point of the John passage where Jesus says, “we are going to have such a close belonging relationship with each other; that ‘you are going to eat me up’. “I will become a part of you and you will become a part of me”.
There is a lot of Old and New Testament testimony to God and from God. It says, “I will be your God and you will be my people”. Even God seems to want to belong. We are not servants, not subjects. We are instead God’s people. We are not little half finished works of art on some shelf, not players in a drama. We are instead God’s people.
That calls out all sorts of active participation in the salvation drama. Belonging is a two way process or more than two ways.
So what does this all mean in the here and now for the church? It is pretty clear that it means everything out there in the world. What about inside the “stained glass curtain”?
I see two profound messages for us at the moment.
One is that we practice, work on and evolve the most profound belonging experiences that we know how. That has implications for everything that we do and say. We need to raise with each other questions about , “How does this enhance our belonging?” and “Can we do it anyway that would make belonging more profound?” “What gets in the way of belonging in this place and how can we change that?”
Does that sound too obtuse to you? OK, how does this room filled with fixed pews that only face one way (and even the choir is over there) – how does that enhance belonging? Can we do it any better? Where in this congregation’s life is enhanced belonging to each other most profound? In what experiences of our life do we best belong to each other?
Two. It is time for us to discover what it is we can offer……. It is belonging in the most profound way and manner. That, boys and girls is what I believe our real product can be in this world. We are long on this product and the world is hungry for it. What do you say we figure out how to feed them?
Amen
It is clear to some of you, but probably not to all. There is this thing called a lectionary in many churches. Today, for instance, the readings we just read from the bible were read and are being discussed in Catholic churches, United Church of Christ, Disciples, Methodists, Episcopals, and a variety of other places. No one has to follow this set of suggestions, but I choose to. I choose that for two reasons—over the period of a year it makes me deal with a broad area of scripture. It becomes a sort of discipline rather than a focus on my pet issues. Secondly, I am forced to try to make sense of some things that just do not make much sense to me on the surface.
So it is today, I am forced to try to deal with some concepts that might be left out in my choices.
There is something absolutely primal here in the Gospel passage for the day. Anybody who says that the passage is easy to understand and accept is kidding themselves. This is “over the top” and on a literal level is a discussion of cannibalism.
That word and thought – eating human flesh – was as foreign and as totally repugnant to the first century Jew as it is to you and me. It is unthinkable. It was unthinkable. So Jesus’ statements are almost beyond heresy. It is no wonder that those listening to him were repelled and disgusted with this very literal discussion.
And yet, yet there is a level at which we may be able to at least consider something that is normative here. My daughter, my son, my grand girls all went through an interesting time of development. I am trying to remember how old they all were and I can’t. My best guess is it was about the time they were say eight months to one year of age. In that pre-critical state, without very many negative judgments, they totally adored me.
They got to a place where what appeared to be a kissing ritual was norm when they were held. Rear back, open the mouth, fall forward against your face and slobber all over creation. They would stand supported on your lap and continue that again and again till they ran out of slobber or something. That developmental behavior would go on for several months and then gradually wear out. Here is what I think really goes on in a nine month old brain. They totally adore the object of their love. The message is one of love, but it has a twist—the twist is, “I am going to devour you”. All that “kissing” is really an attempt to take in the person they love—to just eat them up.
Adults sometimes respond to the child with exactly the same verbal message. You hear people playing with a child and state, “I’m just going to eat you up.” OK so it isn’t quite the same as the “flesh eating” conversation in John, but the words themselves are pretty much the same sounding. Why do we use those words? Why do we talk that way?
We do it because the whole business points toward a primal expression that is deeper than any words. It is a reality that certainly is way past being Christian only. It is probably a reality that dates to human experience about the time we came down from the trees and began to walk upright. Now I don’t want to press this Sigmund Freud/ Desmond Morris/ primitive anthropology thing too far. I do want to call it all to mind. You can fill in the blanks and extend the logics on your own.
Bottom line is this. Belonging is the ultimate human drive. It is what the baby means when they give those massive messy kisses—I am going to take you in, you will be a part of me and I will be a part of you.
We do not often think out loud about this drive. This drive to belong. If we are being religious we talk about the prime search being for meaning or perhaps for God. If we are being very secular we may talk about the primal human quest being for reproduction or life itself. If we are talking biology we think in terms of the survival of the species. Somehow that all makes more sense to us.
But underneath any of those quests – secular or sacred – is the single real drive and primary need of humankind. That is the absolute need to belong.
This is the factor for which people will willingly die if need be. It is the element that nations bank on when they are creating wars—cause that is the only way to get men to make the ultimate sacrifice—to convince them it is about belonging. It is the component of life that drives family, and holds together institutions, even those of risky viability. It is so deep and so profound that we are not even aware of what it is all about—it is like the atmosphere that humans walk in.
Here is what I believe to be the most dramatic example. Marriage. Women and men will like up by the millions every year to pledge each other their “lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.” We bet it all on an institution that makes no statistical sense. Half the time first marriages will end in divorce. If folks end up on the loosing side of that, they will go out and bet it all again. Second marriages will end in divorce two times out of three. Loose again and the same people will line up for the “third place” window where the odds are one in four. That is just not logical; BUT, we need to belong and we will do anything to achieve that. This is way deeper than logic.
This is not a negative comment about marriage—it is just the opposite. It is a statement that the institution addresses a need that is written so deeply into our fibers that it probably shows in our DNA.
We do not seem to search for our souls, for God, for meaning, truth or beauty near as much as we quest for belonging. Look at the sensational success of “My Space” and “Facebook”. I signed up for “Facebook” a few weeks ago. People from 50 years ago and some from 50 days ago began to find me. In a couple of weeks I began to have “my people” in a defined virtual space. It is real belonging, just virtually enabled across time and geography. The kid in Guam, the octogenarian in Illinois and he high school fellow misfit in Virginia all are herded together into my connection list. They are “my people” and I am theirs. It is about belonging.
I always contended when working with kids that gangs were all about belonging. The campaigns to eliminate them were always doomed to failure unless a substitute form and format for belonging was part of the plan.
Normal teens who need to stretch beyond family and family defined institutions are successful only when offered other ways to belong. Fail to enable the good choices and the bad ones will express themselves. The need is so strong and so valid.
Well, as Yul Brynner said in the “King and I”, “etcetera, etcetera, etcetera”.
It is the whole point of the John passage where Jesus says, “we are going to have such a close belonging relationship with each other; that ‘you are going to eat me up’. “I will become a part of you and you will become a part of me”.
There is a lot of Old and New Testament testimony to God and from God. It says, “I will be your God and you will be my people”. Even God seems to want to belong. We are not servants, not subjects. We are instead God’s people. We are not little half finished works of art on some shelf, not players in a drama. We are instead God’s people.
That calls out all sorts of active participation in the salvation drama. Belonging is a two way process or more than two ways.
So what does this all mean in the here and now for the church? It is pretty clear that it means everything out there in the world. What about inside the “stained glass curtain”?
I see two profound messages for us at the moment.
One is that we practice, work on and evolve the most profound belonging experiences that we know how. That has implications for everything that we do and say. We need to raise with each other questions about , “How does this enhance our belonging?” and “Can we do it anyway that would make belonging more profound?” “What gets in the way of belonging in this place and how can we change that?”
Does that sound too obtuse to you? OK, how does this room filled with fixed pews that only face one way (and even the choir is over there) – how does that enhance belonging? Can we do it any better? Where in this congregation’s life is enhanced belonging to each other most profound? In what experiences of our life do we best belong to each other?
Two. It is time for us to discover what it is we can offer……. It is belonging in the most profound way and manner. That, boys and girls is what I believe our real product can be in this world. We are long on this product and the world is hungry for it. What do you say we figure out how to feed them?
Amen
Sunday, August 9, 2009
August 9, 2009 Sermon
About another World John 6:35,41-51 Lawrence Jackman
A week ago last Wednesday was July 29. It is a date remarkable to me, but probably not to many others. It would have been my brother’s birthday. You may know he died a year ago next month. Butch passed from a cerebral trauma following a fall. He was younger than me by enough years for me to have had a sort of almost parental role in his life. Lots of long stories are there for the telling, but the real content is that the anniversary of Butch’s birthday causes me to think about all this ultimate stuff that we refer to as “life and death”.
Then comes along today’s lectionary passage. It is filled with more of this “life and death” discussion and content. So I tell you the personal part of this in order to let you know this is a very personal piece of thinking that I am trying to do.
John’s Gospel portrays Jesus in a very different way than the others. The other Gospels are similar in pattern and content though each has a differing emphasis. Mark tells a quick impact tale that perhaps took less than a year to complete the entire ministry. Matthew tells a story of a Jesus who was totally consumed with teaching about the Kingdom of God. Luke’s special emphasis is a Jesus who burns with compassion for the outcasts and the damaged members of society.
John, on the other hand, has not a single parable in it. The discourses are long teachings about this world and another world. There is a profound interest in knowledge and in what is almost a route from this veil of wrath and tears to another and higher plane of existence. Knowing is saving for John. John is mystical, in a broad sense Gnostic, and filled with content fixed for something other than our normal Christian thought. Parts of it are more like Star Trek than they are like biography.
Take this passage from the sixth Chapter that we read today. It is clear in the thought process that there are two levels of reality being discussed. Bread starts as a physical and tangible reality and quickly moves. First it becomes some sort of special or ultra-substance and then goes even further to be an almost metaphysical reality. Jesus himself is first discussed as an ordinary human being. “Is this not the son of Joseph? Are those people over there not his family? We know his people, how can he make these exaggerated claims?”
Step two, Jesus is claiming a unique role and proximity to God. “God alone directs and draws people to me”, Jesus says. And again the quantum move onward toward the truly metaphysical, Jesus says, “I am the living bread from heaven come down. Anyone who eats will never die.”
The promise is eternal life. The promise is, however, really not so clear. The Bible does not spell out the particulars of eternal life very clearly at all. Instead it settles for this promise. Our images of the afterlife are all born of strange times and images that are no longer part of our lives. Many are born of mythology and of the fantasy of medieval poets like Dante who have about as much authority as you or me. One of the problems is, I believe, the fact that we have evolved our understanding of the total context of Christianity without, at least sometimes, evolving our appreciation of the faith itself. For instance, once a long while back Elizabeth Ross was just starting to become known. I had some dealings with her and was convinced that we could bring her to our Presbytery in the Saint Louis area to help us understand this great mystery. My colleagues puffed their pipes and pontificated about how Doctor Kubler-Ross had unusual theological concepts. Well yes she did, and so we kept our middle ages theology in tact rather than try to work with a new thought.
The new thought may actually be not so new. I want to focus you on several words and thoughts this passage from John 6. The words are life, death, belief and world. Each one of those words enlightens for me an understanding of the promise—though the promise itself is still far from clear. I find for myself that the more I understand even the words of the promise, the more I can actually live like a person who claims the promise.
Taking those words backwards from how I just said them and the first word to lift up is the word “world”, in Greek “Kosmos”. It is the word from which we get terms like cosmic. For the Gospel of John the target consumer for all this saving activity is “the world”. All by itself and even in English that is a massively inclusive thought. The promise says “the world” and not nice folks, people who go to church, people who pray, people who are pious, or people who don’t swear, or people who are conventional in their lifestyle. None of that is the Godly target, the “world” is.
And when you go to the Greek the word has an even more inclusive meaning. “Kosmos” in New Testament meant the “worldly world”. It referenced the underbelly of life and of society. It referenced the things we would rather not be associated with. That means my Unitarian brother, it means my non religious Grandfather, it means all people of any stripe or conviction. It also means all the people I do not like and anyone I might actually happen to like. God loves them all—the goal is to save them all. Now can God accomplish the goal? I am betting yes.
I find comfort in the notion of universal salvation. I also know in every fiber of my being that the core issue of life is that of “trust” which brings me to the second word. I need to go and count the actual times that the Greek word “pistis” or some form of it is changed from its core meaning in the New Testament. The word means “trust” and we always change that to “belief”. And we make belief into an intellectual work. If I believe something that is hard to believe, then I have accomplished my part of the saving drama. So ideas become more important than anything else. Well baloney!
Jesus actually addressed this misunderstanding. You remember when he said, “You believe? Big deal ! The devils believe and tremble”. Now here is the issue – that we trust. Indiana Jones (in the movie The Last Crusade) must make his way across a chasm armed with only a clue about what to do. In desperate action he steps out to walk an invisible bridge across a perilous drop. It works.
Now you could say that the person who sat down and read the clue and agreed that it was true as a statement “had faith”. But the person who steps out and places their foot where there may or may not be support—that person has trust. It doesn’t matter a lick what is going on in the head—it is the feet that express trust. I find great comfort in that notion that I do not need to bend my brain to live in the promise. I need instead to move my feet.
The passage also includes the terms death and life. Here is a fundamental fact of New Testament study. There are a couple of words for life that point to a basic thought contrast and even point of misunderstanding. One word is the one we normally think about when it comes to the concept of dead and alive. The word is “bios” from which we get things like Biology. This means basically, “having vital signs”—a pulse, breathing, brain activity etc. That word is used I think, three times in the New Testament.
The other word in the New Testament and used most often used (and used here in John 6) is the word, “zoe”. It means life but life with spirit, quality, gusto, meaning. It is ironic that in the church we so often focus on “bios” and so little focus on “zoe”. There are parallel concepts about death. One could be said to be “clinically dead” and the other “spiritually dead”. The New Testament is most concerned with the spiritual—both life and death.
The more I focus there, on qualitative life, the more I can live like a person of the promise. And the less I worry about the physical realities.
There are, at least, two levels of reality. There is the tangible and the spiritual. Beneath every tangible reality are spiritual realities. This is not about wispy and sentimental. It is all so very practical.
There is a man in Taylorsville who use to work sometimes on my mower for me. I forget how old he told me he was, but it starts with an 8. He has pretty well given up working on mowers for the time being because his wife had a stroke and needs more constant care. I saw him the other day and stopped to ask how his family was. He explained the very tangible problems and issues. He explained those with clear love and devotion toward his ailing wife.
He points me toward the dual level of reality. You know he has a mate. That is tangible and it means very little. The way he explains and talks tells me he has a “soul mate” for all time. That means everything.
The promise is spiritual and lies in all things spiritual. Life and death are incredibly complex and beyond understanding. There is a promise out there that life does not end when we can no longer see. Understanding that promise is impossible.
Claiming life in that promise, living as a person of the promise, that is fully achievable.
A week ago last Wednesday was July 29. It is a date remarkable to me, but probably not to many others. It would have been my brother’s birthday. You may know he died a year ago next month. Butch passed from a cerebral trauma following a fall. He was younger than me by enough years for me to have had a sort of almost parental role in his life. Lots of long stories are there for the telling, but the real content is that the anniversary of Butch’s birthday causes me to think about all this ultimate stuff that we refer to as “life and death”.
Then comes along today’s lectionary passage. It is filled with more of this “life and death” discussion and content. So I tell you the personal part of this in order to let you know this is a very personal piece of thinking that I am trying to do.
John’s Gospel portrays Jesus in a very different way than the others. The other Gospels are similar in pattern and content though each has a differing emphasis. Mark tells a quick impact tale that perhaps took less than a year to complete the entire ministry. Matthew tells a story of a Jesus who was totally consumed with teaching about the Kingdom of God. Luke’s special emphasis is a Jesus who burns with compassion for the outcasts and the damaged members of society.
John, on the other hand, has not a single parable in it. The discourses are long teachings about this world and another world. There is a profound interest in knowledge and in what is almost a route from this veil of wrath and tears to another and higher plane of existence. Knowing is saving for John. John is mystical, in a broad sense Gnostic, and filled with content fixed for something other than our normal Christian thought. Parts of it are more like Star Trek than they are like biography.
Take this passage from the sixth Chapter that we read today. It is clear in the thought process that there are two levels of reality being discussed. Bread starts as a physical and tangible reality and quickly moves. First it becomes some sort of special or ultra-substance and then goes even further to be an almost metaphysical reality. Jesus himself is first discussed as an ordinary human being. “Is this not the son of Joseph? Are those people over there not his family? We know his people, how can he make these exaggerated claims?”
Step two, Jesus is claiming a unique role and proximity to God. “God alone directs and draws people to me”, Jesus says. And again the quantum move onward toward the truly metaphysical, Jesus says, “I am the living bread from heaven come down. Anyone who eats will never die.”
The promise is eternal life. The promise is, however, really not so clear. The Bible does not spell out the particulars of eternal life very clearly at all. Instead it settles for this promise. Our images of the afterlife are all born of strange times and images that are no longer part of our lives. Many are born of mythology and of the fantasy of medieval poets like Dante who have about as much authority as you or me. One of the problems is, I believe, the fact that we have evolved our understanding of the total context of Christianity without, at least sometimes, evolving our appreciation of the faith itself. For instance, once a long while back Elizabeth Ross was just starting to become known. I had some dealings with her and was convinced that we could bring her to our Presbytery in the Saint Louis area to help us understand this great mystery. My colleagues puffed their pipes and pontificated about how Doctor Kubler-Ross had unusual theological concepts. Well yes she did, and so we kept our middle ages theology in tact rather than try to work with a new thought.
The new thought may actually be not so new. I want to focus you on several words and thoughts this passage from John 6. The words are life, death, belief and world. Each one of those words enlightens for me an understanding of the promise—though the promise itself is still far from clear. I find for myself that the more I understand even the words of the promise, the more I can actually live like a person who claims the promise.
Taking those words backwards from how I just said them and the first word to lift up is the word “world”, in Greek “Kosmos”. It is the word from which we get terms like cosmic. For the Gospel of John the target consumer for all this saving activity is “the world”. All by itself and even in English that is a massively inclusive thought. The promise says “the world” and not nice folks, people who go to church, people who pray, people who are pious, or people who don’t swear, or people who are conventional in their lifestyle. None of that is the Godly target, the “world” is.
And when you go to the Greek the word has an even more inclusive meaning. “Kosmos” in New Testament meant the “worldly world”. It referenced the underbelly of life and of society. It referenced the things we would rather not be associated with. That means my Unitarian brother, it means my non religious Grandfather, it means all people of any stripe or conviction. It also means all the people I do not like and anyone I might actually happen to like. God loves them all—the goal is to save them all. Now can God accomplish the goal? I am betting yes.
I find comfort in the notion of universal salvation. I also know in every fiber of my being that the core issue of life is that of “trust” which brings me to the second word. I need to go and count the actual times that the Greek word “pistis” or some form of it is changed from its core meaning in the New Testament. The word means “trust” and we always change that to “belief”. And we make belief into an intellectual work. If I believe something that is hard to believe, then I have accomplished my part of the saving drama. So ideas become more important than anything else. Well baloney!
Jesus actually addressed this misunderstanding. You remember when he said, “You believe? Big deal ! The devils believe and tremble”. Now here is the issue – that we trust. Indiana Jones (in the movie The Last Crusade) must make his way across a chasm armed with only a clue about what to do. In desperate action he steps out to walk an invisible bridge across a perilous drop. It works.
Now you could say that the person who sat down and read the clue and agreed that it was true as a statement “had faith”. But the person who steps out and places their foot where there may or may not be support—that person has trust. It doesn’t matter a lick what is going on in the head—it is the feet that express trust. I find great comfort in that notion that I do not need to bend my brain to live in the promise. I need instead to move my feet.
The passage also includes the terms death and life. Here is a fundamental fact of New Testament study. There are a couple of words for life that point to a basic thought contrast and even point of misunderstanding. One word is the one we normally think about when it comes to the concept of dead and alive. The word is “bios” from which we get things like Biology. This means basically, “having vital signs”—a pulse, breathing, brain activity etc. That word is used I think, three times in the New Testament.
The other word in the New Testament and used most often used (and used here in John 6) is the word, “zoe”. It means life but life with spirit, quality, gusto, meaning. It is ironic that in the church we so often focus on “bios” and so little focus on “zoe”. There are parallel concepts about death. One could be said to be “clinically dead” and the other “spiritually dead”. The New Testament is most concerned with the spiritual—both life and death.
The more I focus there, on qualitative life, the more I can live like a person of the promise. And the less I worry about the physical realities.
There are, at least, two levels of reality. There is the tangible and the spiritual. Beneath every tangible reality are spiritual realities. This is not about wispy and sentimental. It is all so very practical.
There is a man in Taylorsville who use to work sometimes on my mower for me. I forget how old he told me he was, but it starts with an 8. He has pretty well given up working on mowers for the time being because his wife had a stroke and needs more constant care. I saw him the other day and stopped to ask how his family was. He explained the very tangible problems and issues. He explained those with clear love and devotion toward his ailing wife.
He points me toward the dual level of reality. You know he has a mate. That is tangible and it means very little. The way he explains and talks tells me he has a “soul mate” for all time. That means everything.
The promise is spiritual and lies in all things spiritual. Life and death are incredibly complex and beyond understanding. There is a promise out there that life does not end when we can no longer see. Understanding that promise is impossible.
Claiming life in that promise, living as a person of the promise, that is fully achievable.
Friday, August 7, 2009
August 2, 2009 Sermon
Fresh Every Morning Exodus16:2-4, 9-15 John 6:24-35 Lawrence Jackman
The story of manna from heaven is a great one. It is a bit longer than what we usually read or tell. Part of what we do not say is really an interesting twist. The people are out there whining and complaining. “Our bellies are empty”. “Moses, you idiot, you brought us out here in the wilderness to starve to death. What were you thinking?”
So bread comes from heaven. We are going to eat and not starve. Like the dew it drops on the ground in the morning. But there is a catch. You are supposed to go out and pick up a day’s provisions. You have been hungry. That has gone on for some time. Now there is food all over the place and the instruction to only take a day’s worth.
Folks being folks, they go out and pick up a day and a half, maybe two days worth of the manna. And the stuff turns rotten. The incredibly simple lesson being, “you can not store up God’s grace. There is enough to be sustained throughout a day, but that is it.”
If you try to hold onto yesterday’s grace you end up with a pretty stinky mess.
All relationships are designed to be “dynamic” that is alive and filled with all the stuff that life is full of. Relationship is meant to be in a kind of constant state of change and perhaps even evolution. Relationship is meant to grow.
I couldn’t love my grandchildren any more than the day I first held them. It is the same me and the same them now as it was then. But the expressions of that love, the qualities it has, and outward appearance has changed mightily and will change in the future. So, what makes us think that a relationship with God isn’t something like that. God loves you just like the day your first met. The quality of that Divine love, the outward appearance and the expression has doubtless changed.
That is what dynamic means—growing, changing and moving. That is what relationships are—dynamic. And yet…….yet, we try always to make things static. We try to create relational realities that maintain, that are constant, that are always working the same way that they did in the past. And we end up with a rotten mess. Even our attempt to make things static does not deny the reality that things will change no matter what. The critical issue is will they change for the better or will they turn “foul”?
So the static versus dynamic tension acts itself out in our religious lives again and again. We have a book of writings. We refer to it as the Bible. Individual pieces of that book are very difficult to avoid as calling out parts of who and what we are for attention. Most pieces of the book require work to glean understanding. Lots of parts of the Bible are nearly impossible to extract anything from.
The gift of the Book is a dynamic one. That means we need to live in relationship with it and see it as a sort of living reality. It changes, it moves, it expresses itself differently as we evolve with it. So we can’t just sit with a book and a concordance ready to look up the definitive answer to something. It is not a phone book. And even a phone book is somewhat dynamic.
I think that means, if you don’t ever talk about the Bible, read it, or talk it through with others; please just be quiet about it. You confuse others into thinking this is a static gift and then they can’t find the answers to moving questions and issues.
We attempt to serve static faith when we decide that ideas are more important than the realities toward which they point.
I was in the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. In the middle of a large cavern of a room stands a stone structure. It is revered as the burial place of Jesus. An orthodox priest guides pilgrims through the storage building sized tomb. He shows us exactly where Jesus was laid. He has an answer for every question and offers candles for sale which you can light as a sort of prayer ritual.
After taking the tour, I walked to the back of this little structure. In the darkness there was a little Byzantine monk in very humble attire. He beckoned me over to where he squatted. Reaching under his outer garment he brought a treasure out for me to see. It was a plain piece of rock—like 10,000 others I could have picked up that day. To him it was a jewel, a treasure and a mystery. In badly broken English he explained, “I have a piece of the real tomb.” He didn’t want to sell it to me, he just wanted me to share in his joy in this limestone gem. I touched his treasure and we shared his mystery.
One tomb was static and one was alive.
We try to make the faith static by devoting ourselves to theology. I was engaged in a discussion with some non Presbyterian folks and another Presby pastor not long ago. The conversation moved somehow toward how Presbyterians might treat a baptism of an infant who was at risk of dying. The non Presbyterians wanted to call that an emergency baptism. My colleague began to intone, “you must remember that in Reformed theology there is no such thing as an emergency baptism.” “The questions you should be asking the family are…” Then there were a short list of questions about religious perspective and belief about things.
That is the sort of response that makes me want to choke the life out of the next person who talks about Reformed Theology as though it is something to be served. There is only one question of substance in that case and it is, “Where is the water?”
Talking about God (even in Reformed Theology terms and thoughts) does not substitute for living with God. Nothing wrong with theology, as long as you remember it has limits. I think I can be tried for heresy for thoughts as benign as these. I’m good with that.
If you truly believe that the faith is dynamic, then you can move rather quickly to the truth that needs an expression today. Our denomination struggled mightily in the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s of the last century to get to the point where we could recognize women and ordain them to elder roles and minister roles. We had to move so many pieces of static stuff and put it in new places in our rigid systems. Eventually we got it done.
How much easier it was for the Pentecostals! They see the faith as moving and changing and alive. They see it as dynamic. All you have to do is watch them worship to know that in a dramatic way. I can’t quite get there with them, but I sure can appreciate what they are doing. One step for them from a male exclusive club of clergy and other church leaders to an inclusive group. Someone observed, “The spirit seems to be active in Sister Margaret.” Sister became clergy. Point to point when you actually believe that the faith is dynamic and alive.
Now if I have only one point/application to suggest today it is this. Communion is an expression of a dynamic faith—one that wants to be alive.
Many of you, like me, were raised on the thoughts of Ulrich Zwingli. His ideas made a lot of sense in the context of the 1500s. He taught us that the Lord’s Supper was a memorial service. We bought it. We carved the words “In Remembrance of Me” a million times in communion tables.
For the past thirty to forty years the sacrament has labored toward becoming alive again.
“This is the joyful feast of the people of God.” It is not static nor is anything else that matters in this world. It is alive and charged with change and the promise of change. It is a celebration of one of life’s primal dramas. Lets not serve it up in somber sadness. Rather let us partake and eat and celebrate like a people in love with their God and with each other.
This is the manna God offers to us this morning. Take and eat.
The story of manna from heaven is a great one. It is a bit longer than what we usually read or tell. Part of what we do not say is really an interesting twist. The people are out there whining and complaining. “Our bellies are empty”. “Moses, you idiot, you brought us out here in the wilderness to starve to death. What were you thinking?”
So bread comes from heaven. We are going to eat and not starve. Like the dew it drops on the ground in the morning. But there is a catch. You are supposed to go out and pick up a day’s provisions. You have been hungry. That has gone on for some time. Now there is food all over the place and the instruction to only take a day’s worth.
Folks being folks, they go out and pick up a day and a half, maybe two days worth of the manna. And the stuff turns rotten. The incredibly simple lesson being, “you can not store up God’s grace. There is enough to be sustained throughout a day, but that is it.”
If you try to hold onto yesterday’s grace you end up with a pretty stinky mess.
All relationships are designed to be “dynamic” that is alive and filled with all the stuff that life is full of. Relationship is meant to be in a kind of constant state of change and perhaps even evolution. Relationship is meant to grow.
I couldn’t love my grandchildren any more than the day I first held them. It is the same me and the same them now as it was then. But the expressions of that love, the qualities it has, and outward appearance has changed mightily and will change in the future. So, what makes us think that a relationship with God isn’t something like that. God loves you just like the day your first met. The quality of that Divine love, the outward appearance and the expression has doubtless changed.
That is what dynamic means—growing, changing and moving. That is what relationships are—dynamic. And yet…….yet, we try always to make things static. We try to create relational realities that maintain, that are constant, that are always working the same way that they did in the past. And we end up with a rotten mess. Even our attempt to make things static does not deny the reality that things will change no matter what. The critical issue is will they change for the better or will they turn “foul”?
So the static versus dynamic tension acts itself out in our religious lives again and again. We have a book of writings. We refer to it as the Bible. Individual pieces of that book are very difficult to avoid as calling out parts of who and what we are for attention. Most pieces of the book require work to glean understanding. Lots of parts of the Bible are nearly impossible to extract anything from.
The gift of the Book is a dynamic one. That means we need to live in relationship with it and see it as a sort of living reality. It changes, it moves, it expresses itself differently as we evolve with it. So we can’t just sit with a book and a concordance ready to look up the definitive answer to something. It is not a phone book. And even a phone book is somewhat dynamic.
I think that means, if you don’t ever talk about the Bible, read it, or talk it through with others; please just be quiet about it. You confuse others into thinking this is a static gift and then they can’t find the answers to moving questions and issues.
We attempt to serve static faith when we decide that ideas are more important than the realities toward which they point.
I was in the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. In the middle of a large cavern of a room stands a stone structure. It is revered as the burial place of Jesus. An orthodox priest guides pilgrims through the storage building sized tomb. He shows us exactly where Jesus was laid. He has an answer for every question and offers candles for sale which you can light as a sort of prayer ritual.
After taking the tour, I walked to the back of this little structure. In the darkness there was a little Byzantine monk in very humble attire. He beckoned me over to where he squatted. Reaching under his outer garment he brought a treasure out for me to see. It was a plain piece of rock—like 10,000 others I could have picked up that day. To him it was a jewel, a treasure and a mystery. In badly broken English he explained, “I have a piece of the real tomb.” He didn’t want to sell it to me, he just wanted me to share in his joy in this limestone gem. I touched his treasure and we shared his mystery.
One tomb was static and one was alive.
We try to make the faith static by devoting ourselves to theology. I was engaged in a discussion with some non Presbyterian folks and another Presby pastor not long ago. The conversation moved somehow toward how Presbyterians might treat a baptism of an infant who was at risk of dying. The non Presbyterians wanted to call that an emergency baptism. My colleague began to intone, “you must remember that in Reformed theology there is no such thing as an emergency baptism.” “The questions you should be asking the family are…” Then there were a short list of questions about religious perspective and belief about things.
That is the sort of response that makes me want to choke the life out of the next person who talks about Reformed Theology as though it is something to be served. There is only one question of substance in that case and it is, “Where is the water?”
Talking about God (even in Reformed Theology terms and thoughts) does not substitute for living with God. Nothing wrong with theology, as long as you remember it has limits. I think I can be tried for heresy for thoughts as benign as these. I’m good with that.
If you truly believe that the faith is dynamic, then you can move rather quickly to the truth that needs an expression today. Our denomination struggled mightily in the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s of the last century to get to the point where we could recognize women and ordain them to elder roles and minister roles. We had to move so many pieces of static stuff and put it in new places in our rigid systems. Eventually we got it done.
How much easier it was for the Pentecostals! They see the faith as moving and changing and alive. They see it as dynamic. All you have to do is watch them worship to know that in a dramatic way. I can’t quite get there with them, but I sure can appreciate what they are doing. One step for them from a male exclusive club of clergy and other church leaders to an inclusive group. Someone observed, “The spirit seems to be active in Sister Margaret.” Sister became clergy. Point to point when you actually believe that the faith is dynamic and alive.
Now if I have only one point/application to suggest today it is this. Communion is an expression of a dynamic faith—one that wants to be alive.
Many of you, like me, were raised on the thoughts of Ulrich Zwingli. His ideas made a lot of sense in the context of the 1500s. He taught us that the Lord’s Supper was a memorial service. We bought it. We carved the words “In Remembrance of Me” a million times in communion tables.
For the past thirty to forty years the sacrament has labored toward becoming alive again.
“This is the joyful feast of the people of God.” It is not static nor is anything else that matters in this world. It is alive and charged with change and the promise of change. It is a celebration of one of life’s primal dramas. Lets not serve it up in somber sadness. Rather let us partake and eat and celebrate like a people in love with their God and with each other.
This is the manna God offers to us this morning. Take and eat.
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