Holy Week Evotional - Day 3

Some thoughtful Holy Week words from James Martin in his book, Becoming Who You Are

Toward the end of his earthly ministry, Jesus is clearly able to see what needs to be done. He has by this point more fully embraced his identity and his ministry. But there is one last test: his time in the Garden of Gethsemane immediately before the beginning of the Passion. Near the end of his life, he struggles with a complete embrace of his mission. "If it is possible, let this cup pass from me," he says, hoping that perhaps suffering is not what God intends.

But somehow he realizes, through prayer and reflection, that his impending suffering, whatever it would be, is what God is asking of him at this moment. He realizes that it is part of the reality of his life. And it is here, it seems to me, that in accepting the cup of suffering, Jesus fully and decisively accepts his identity. Part of his life and vocation includes suffering, as do all of our lives and vocations. Jesus is then completely free.

Holy Week Evotional - Day 2

A Holy Week prayer for you today – from author and theologian Brain McLaren.


Compassionate God, as we consider the sufferings of your servant Jesus, in whose face we see your glory and love, our hearts are moved in compassion. As we weep with him for Jerusalem, for Israelis and Palestinians who are alike your beloved children, we also weep for those who suffer in our cities and towns around the world.

We pray for drug dealers and criminals for whom deadly weapons are the tools of their trade. We pray for weapons merchants and aggressive politicians who think deadly weapons can achieve peace. We pray for crooked police officers and city officials, whose corruption fuels violence. We pray for racists and hate-mongers who think their security is enhanced by reducing the security of others. We pray for people plotting terrorism, thinking that terror can cure terror. We pray for all those who live by the gun, the bomb, the knife, the threat, the insult, the epithet. Help them see that these things do not make for peace.

We pray for those facing unemployment, for the complex economic currents that we theorize about but don't fully understand. We know that violence is often a twin-brother of unemployment, and so we pray for business leaders who can seek to maximize employment for many, not only profit for a few.

Turn our cities, we pray, to your way of reconciliation, forgiveness, grace, compassion, and love. Help them see the futility of any path to peace that violates peace in its means. Help them see that there is no way to peace, but that peace itself is the way. Raise up prophets for peace - leaders in every city who pray, preach, and work for peace.

And help each of us as well, to find ways to be instruments of your peace. As participants in your mission to heal the world we pray. Amen.

Holy Week Evotional - Day 1

A brief e-votional each day this Holy Week. Today, the day after Palm Sunday, it's a quote from Joan Chittister, from her book The Liturgical Year:

"Palm Sunday... reminds us that at the moment of what seems to be the height of Jesus' public acceptance also begins the process of His public betrayal, His public failure, His public abandonment. Only in the mind of God is Jesus any longer a success, it seems ... Here in the Passion narrative we trace the struggle, one scene at a time, between the Word of God and the ways of the world.”

How He Lived; How He Died

Palm Sunday Sermon in 2 Parts - Sunday, March 28

As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”

How He Lived…

Two of my favorite authors and thinkers in the faith are Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. Together they’ve written a book called The Last Week, and it’s an exploration of this Holy Week in which we now find ourselves. One of the images they bring to light is that of Jesus, entering Jerusalem. He’s riding on a colt, but his friends are all walking. They’re wearing robes and sandals and carrying very little.

On the other side of town, Borg and Crossan suggest that another figure is entering the city—that of Pontius Pilate. Unlike Jesus, Pilate rides on a majestic warhorse. He’s accompanied by Roman soldiers carrying weapons and banners—impressive and intimidating signs of empire. Pilate, of course, is essentially an extension of the Roman Empire, sent to Jerusalem to keep an eye on things.

So there you have it. On one side of the city, a Roman bureaucrat arrives in an intimidating display of power. Surrounded by spear carriers and sword wielders, he’s here to maintain order.

On the other side of the city, a simple carpenter’s son arrives on a colt. Had it not been for the miracles and the rumors spreading ahead of him, he would have looked like just another peasant making his way into the city.

Both Pilate and Jesus come with power. Pilate has the power to make right with might, to represent the authority of a great earthly kingdom. Jesus has a different power—power to love and to serve and sacrifice—and he brings the authority of a heavenly kingdom.

Both Pilate and Jesus come in peace. Pilate is here to keep peace—to make sure no one gets out of line, to keep an eye on the activists, to prosecute those who could present a threat to Rome. Jesus is here to announce peace, but this is not the same kind of status quo peace based on the political convenience of some far-distant power. Jesus’ peace is a peace that can be given freely but not legislated—shared but not enforced.

This was how Jesus lived. Jesus was the living alternative to a business-as-usual, might-makes-right way of life. At every turn, Jesus flipped institutionalized religion upside down. He misquoted scripture, healed on the Sabbath, touched people with leprosy, met with outcasts, talked with a Samaritan woman, forgave sins… Jesus was an inconvenient presence in his time and in his faith. And now here he is, riding into Jerusalem—into the regional lions’ den of earthly power and authority.

A question to consider: What was Jesus doing in Jerusalem? Really—what was he doing there? After all, Jerusalem was a hotbed of religious thinking and politics—a dangerous place for a man like Jesus, whose reputation for confronting and disrupting religious and political powers was sure to get him in trouble. So what was Jesus doing there? Well, thanks to hindsight and close to 2,000 years of Christian tradition, we could say that he was there to die—that Jesus was there in Jerusalem to be crucified. But I wonder if this is at least a slight oversimplification.

Ask yourself: What might Jesus have been thinking about that day? As he rode into town on that young colt, and as he watched the people waving palm branches and shouting, “Hosanna,” was Jesus thinking to himself, “Well, it’s been a nice run. These three years have sure gone fast. Too bad it all has to end this week…” Is that what Jesus was thinking? After all, Jesus surely must have known that death was a possibility here—that he was putting himself in harm’s way. So what was he thinking? Was he saying to himself, “I know what I’m here for—I’m here to get myself killed, so let’s get this over with.”

Or is it possible that Jesus was thinking something much different—that in fact Jesus was thinking, “I have to keep trying. I have to keep loving. Keep healing, keep reaching out, keep telling the truth, keep announcing peace…” Is it possible that Jesus came to Jerusalem to do what he’d been doing all along—to offer a compassionate, inclusive vision of God’s love for God’s people? To present a hopeful sense of purpose in this world?

Maybe Jesus didn’t come to Jerusalem to die. Maybe—just maybe—he came to be fully alive and to teach others what it could mean to live that way. And maybe this was the problem, because throughout history humanity has had a way of violently rejecting those who could do such a thing. And of course, Jesus did die in Jerusalem—he was killed there. But there is a huge difference between saying “Jesus came to be killed so that we could know love” and “Jesus came to love and so we killed him.”

If we say that Jesus came to Jerusalem to be killed so that we could know love, on some level we imply that his presence there was part of some cosmic script over which he had no control. But if we say that Jesus came to love and then was killed, we embrace this Holy Week as a remembrance of the way Jesus lived.

Jerusalem was a death trap for Jesus, but that’s where he went. And in doing so, Jesus said something about the nature of God—namely, that God is in the constant business of entering and confronting the broken places in our world. God will not be kept from showing up where love and truth are most consistently rejected. Jerusalem, Racine, your family, your thoughts, your marriage, your fears and worries, your pain… To the very end, without counting the cost, that’s where Jesus will go, because that’s how he lived.


How He Died…

Jesus died asking the question, “Why?” In Mark’s gospel, we read something of Jesus’ last moments before death…

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Mark 15:33-34)

I don’t know about you, but I usually like to think of Jesus as having things under control. Calm. Cool. Collected. When storms rage on the sea, he quiets them. When the religious leaders try to trap him, he slips away. When the disciples argue amongst themselves, he sets them straight. Over and over again, Jesus is the one keeping it all together. With grace, he moves through towns and cities and countrysides, healing the sick, forgiving sins. Around practically every gospel corner, we see Jesus speaking and moving with graceful purpose,
handling the world’s problems with apparent ease…

But now this. “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?”

And so Jesus joins the entire human race in asking the question: Why? Why, God, why? Jesus, in that moment of blinding pain and anguish, having watched his friends filter away, and now hanging from the cross, asks that question that is so central to the human experience—especially the human experience of suffering: WHY?

It’s not a always a rational question, but it’s a human question: Why? Why, God?
Why is it, if you’re so powerful and good, that evil exists in this world?
Why, God? If you can do anything, why was my child born with a mental handicap?
Why did my father have to die so soon?
Why did the tornado hit my house?
Why can’t I get through one day without feeling lousy?
Why cancer, God?
Why earthquakes, God?
Why the holocaust, God?
Why can’t I have a normal life, my God?
My God, why have you forsaken me, God?
Jesus’ “WHY” wasn’t the first human “WHY” and it certainly wasn’t the last. But it was definitely was a human why. Which brings us to the heart of it all—that Jesus was human. Really human. God with us. God, yes—but one of us. A walking, talking, eating, sleeping, laughing, crying, feeling joy, feeling pain human being. Prone to sadness and misery, prone to defeat and heartache—human.

Jesus was NOT God in a human costume, parading around for roughly three decades, pretending to know what it’s like, pretending to struggle with the confines of an earthly body, thinking all the while, “Gosh, it’ll sure be great to get back up to Heaven with Dad so I can lose this goofy human body.”

The story of Jesus isn’t a story of God masquerading as a human being—pretending to feel pain, pretending to catch a cold, pretending to grieve when John the Baptist died, pretending to know what it’s like to feel so undeniably human all the time. The story of Jesus is the story of Emmanuel—God with us, truly with us, one of us, one with us. Living with us and, in the end, dying as one of us.

And when Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” it’s not a show. It’s not a desperate plea for posterity’s sake. It simply is what it is. A real man, hanging on a cross, wondering just where in God’s name God is. Feeling alone, abandoned, forsaken. And, when you think about it, what else is there to say? Love. Pure, unadulterated love, is being betrayed, denied, and murdered here. Flushed down the toilet of humanity’s wasteful greed and ignorance.

And thus the cross comes into focus and we see more of what’s going on. God is with us. With us in our living, and with us in our dying. With us in our suffering. With us in our abandonment.

God with us in that feeling we get that God is nowhere to be found. That is how Jesus died.

Evotional - Oscar Romero

Today is the thirty year anniversary of the death of Oscar Romero, once the Archbishop of El Salvador who, inspired by his faith, confronted that country’s oppressive and often violent government through nonviolence. Romero worked diligently to promote peace and justice among the people of El Salvador, but he was assassinated by the military.

A few Oscar Romero quotes, then...

“If we are worth anything, it is not because we have more money or more talent, or more human qualities. Insofar as we are worth anything, it is because we are grafted on to Christ's life, his cross and resurrection.
That is a person's measure.”

"Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty."

And then, shortly before his assassination, Romero wrote these words:

“It helps now and then, to step back and take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about: We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capability.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.”

As we move through Holy Week and towards the cross, may we be mindful that our lives are grated onto Christ’s own. And may we take “the long view” as we let God’s kingdom find its way into our lives and our world.

Peace,
Ben

Abundant Living - John 12:1-8

Sermon on Sunday, March 21

Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair.

Today is the fifth Sunday in Lent and that means a few things. It means that next week is Palm Sunday and the following week Easter. Our Lenten vigil is drawing to a close, making way for shouts of “Hosanna,” Holy Week, the empty tomb, and an Easter egg hunt. For the past five weeks, we’ve been leaning toward the cross—toward those moments when Jesus is betrayed, arrested, denied, and crucified.

But first Jesus pays a visit to a family—sisters Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus. At first, one might think of this simply as a follow-up visit. Just days earlier, Jesus had performed a miracle at their home. Lazarus was dead, you’ll recall—dead for four long and lonely days—dead and gone long enough for all hope to be lost. By the time Jesus had arrived at their house, Martha had said as much: “Don’t roll away the stone, Jesus—there’s a stench.” But the stone was taken away from the tomb, and Jesus cried out, “Lazarus, come out!” And out walked this man, their brother Lazarus, still bound in bands of burial cloth, undoubtedly a bit dazed, wondering what had just happened to him.

Jesus doesn’t schedule too many follow-up appointments in the gospels, but you could argue that this was a special case. Maybe that’s what Martha and Lazarus were expecting. Maybe they thought Jesus would ask a few questions, run a few tests, and maybe prescribe some physical therapy. Being dead for four days, after all, must have some serious side effects. But not much is said about Lazarus in this story—he’s just sitting there, ready to eat with his sisters and with Jesus. We can well imagine that the world is a pretty fantastic place for Lazarus at this point. Dead for four days and now alive! Air, food, water, conversation—it all tastes like new life to him—like a second life he didn’t know he had coming.

Martha, meanwhile, gets busy preparing a meal. After all, how do you thank a man who raised your brother from the dead? You can’t respond in kind. You can’t return the favor. If you offered money you would only cheapen the gift of that miracle. And so Martha does what a lot of people do when they don’t know what to say or how to say it: she cooks. I imagine her cooking up a storm, having lovingly planned a meal for this man who brought her brother back to her from death. She’s back in the kitchen, pulling out all the stops, making everything just so, getting ready to communicate her loving thanks through food. Martha would have made a good Presbyterian.

And then there’s Mary. When Jesus had seen her weeping at Lazarus’ tomb, it moved him and he wept too. And now here they are again. And unlike Martha and Lazarus, and unlike the disciples, Mary seems to have a sixth sense about what’s going on. Jesus isn’t going to make it. She knows it. She saw what happened after he raised Lazarus from the dead. She knows what a threat Jesus has become to the religious establishment. And she’s heard the word going around: that anyone who knew where Jesus was should report it to the chief priests and Pharisees so that he might be arrested. In Mary’s mind, the clock is ticking. She doesn’t have much time because, in fact, Jesus himself doesn’t have much time.

And so Mary does the only thing that makes sense in her mind. She brings a container of costly perfume into the room. It’s made from nard, a precious ointment imported from the East. And she anoints Jesus’ feet with it. I wonder if at first Martha and Lazarus thought this to be a bizarre gesture—nice, maybe, but a little strange. But then Mary keeps going, she keeps anointing and keeps anointing. Finally she pours more and more than enough—too much, really—on Jesus feet. The aroma must have been suffocating. “Mary, dear, you’re using way too much.” But she won’t be stopped. She tips the jar over entirely, every last drop spilling out onto Jesus’ feet. And still somehow it’s not enough. And so she begins to wipe them with her hair. Weeping, cleaning, anointing. Dumping it all out—every last drop.

At last she finishes cleaning Jesus’ feet with her hair. And I imagine there followed then an awkward silence in the room. How does one break the ice after a woman intentionally tips a year’s salary’s worth of perfume onto Jesus’ feet and onto the floor? What do you say after such an embarrassingly intimate and public display of love and waste? What do you say to Mary, whose hair is now drenched with perfume and covered with dust? Lazarus might have said, “Well, ok! Now who’s hungry?” Martha might have said, “Let’s open some windows and air this place out.” Instead it was Judas who spoke, and he probably said what everyone was really thinking: “What a colossal waste! Why wasn’t this perfume sold?” In other words: “We’re all dirt poor, traveling around the country on a shoestring with resources few and far between. What in God’s name could have possibly gotten into you, Mary?”

But Mary knows. And Jesus knows. “Leave her alone,” he says. “She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.” Mary’s act was not an act of thanksgiving or even cleansing. She was doing what many of us do for our loved ones when they die—she was treating his body with care and respect and devotion—preparing it for burial.

Mary’s gift is a gift of extreme extravagance. It goes overboard—too far, in fact. Now there are a couple ways to look at that jar of perfume—the one that Mary dumped out at Jesus’ feet. One would be to say that it represents a nest egg—a foundation of wealth to be saved—a precious resource to hang onto, to use, maybe, gradually over the course of a lifetime—to sell in small volume, perhaps, during a rough year.

But Mary looks at that jar and says, “What else am I waiting for?” She may have thought to herself, “How many times in my life will I have a chance to be this crazy? Maybe never again.” I wonder if she said to herself, “If I can’t be generous and extravagant right now, it’s probably true that I’ll never really be generous or extravagant.” And so Mary treats that jar of perfume like she’s got a hundred others sitting in the back closet collecting dust.

Some people have the gift of being able to look at the world that way. Some people are simply blessed with the sense that nothing in this world is truly valuable if you can’t somehow turn it into a gift.

Not long before he raised Lazarus from the dead, Jesus said, “I have come that all may have life, and have it abundantly.” There’s an invitation there for us to wonder more about what it means to live abundantly—to adopt a world view that flourishes with an abiding sense of abundance.

Have you ever noticed that if you believe and behave like you don’t have enough time, then in reality, you don’t? And have you ever noticed that if you believe that you have plenty of time and behave like you have plenty of time, then most of the time you do?

Some people in this world operate out of a sense of scarcity and some out of a sense of abundance. Some people—some of us—move through this world like there’s never a minute to spare. There’s always “the next thing”—the next phone ringing, the next text message, the next event to plan, the next meal to prepare, the next day to worry about. And so we miss moment after moment after moment because time is a scarce resource.

But there are some people—some of you—who seem gifted with the ability to move through this world with plenty of time. Plenty of time to turn off the phone, to chat, to stop by with a casserole, to plant seeds, to look at the clouds moving in… plenty of time because time is an abundant resource.

Have you ever noticed that if a person believes that love in this world is scarce, then it is? And have you ever noticed that if you believe that love in this world is abundant, then it is?

Some people operate out of a sense of scarcity when it comes to love. And it’s hard for them to trust love because there isn’t enough of it. And so love itself is measured and conserved—received, perhaps, with suspicion and shared tentatively.

But there are some in this world who operate out of a sense of true abundance when it comes to love. They know that love is a renewable resource—strengthened when it is given and received. They never worry about running out of love simply because they never have. They know that there’s no such thing as loving too many people because love itself isn’t something you have to ration. It’s abundant.

We could say this about lots of things. If you believe goodness in this world is scarce, then it is; but if you believe that goodness is everywhere, you’re sure to find it in abundance. If you believe that true friendship is rare, then it can be scarce. But if you believe you’re friends are everywhere, then they often are!

How much of our perspective in this world is shaped either by our sense of scarcity or by our sense of abundance? Another exciting question for us to ask ourselves as a church is this: what does a sense of abundance do in terms of our mission and outreach in this world? What could a family of faith like this one do with an endlessly abundant sense of its resources—its time, its talent, its potential. The possibilities are endless if you think about them abundantly.

In many ways, this reflects a conversation that the leadership of this congregation has been having lately. We’ve been asking ourselves the question, “How are we uniquely gifted by God to serve this church at this time?” Sometimes this is a hard question to answer. Church life is full of to-do lists. We’ve got lots of things to do around here. People to reach out to, light bulbs to change, classes to teach, ministries to keep going… there’s always a lot to do. But the truth is this: we don’t want you here so that we can give you something to do. We want you here because we believe that each person who comes into this place is uniquely gifted by God to be a part of this family of faith.

A quote that I love comes from Howard Thurman, who wrote, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

This week, I would invite you ask yourself: What makes me come alive? And how has God gifted me to be a part of the world? And may your response to those questions foster in you a true sense of abundance—that your life might spill over with extravagant love and grace. Amen.

E-votional - Steadfast

This past Sunday we sang, "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning, new every morning. Great is your faithfulness, oh Lord; great is your faithfulness.

Steadfast... This past week, the crocuses behind the house came up, pushing their way through the lingering snow. Part of the joy of planting bulbs is that by the time they come up, I've usually forgotten where I planted them, or that I even planted them at all. Crocuses are the first to arrive, defying winter's lingering grip and willing spring into existence. Poking through the snow, they seem to say, "We will not be denied!" And so it begins again: melting, thawing, growing, gardening, picnicing, playing...

Steadfast... Through Lent, we recall God's unwavering faithfulness. We remember that even as this season carries us relentlessly towards the cross, our faith blossoms from the mystery of resurrection - that sense that death never has the last word and that new life simply will not be denied. Thanks be to God for this enduring faithfulness, and for endless possibilities of new life!

Lost and Found - Luke 15:1-7

Sermon on Sunday, March 14

Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?

Everywhere you go, there’s a ‘lost and found.’ Schools, stores, churches… they all have a ‘lost and found.’ Maybe it’s a closet or a cardboard box in somebody’s office. It doesn’t have to be fancy—just something to hold wayward mittens, stray umbrellas, misplaced reading glasses…

Reading through the gospels, it’s hard to miss a ‘lost and found’ theme. When Jesus talks about the kingdom of God, he often uses losing and finding images. He tells the story of a woman who loses a coin and sweeps her entire house until she finds it. Jesus refers to the kingdom of heaven as a treasure that a man found in a field, and as a fine pearl found by a merchant. I suppose there’s just something about being lost and being found that resonates with us as human beings.
In our story today from Luke’s gospel, Jesus is eating with tax-collectors and sinners. And this frustrates the Pharisees and scribes. Maybe they’re jealous. Maybe they wish Jesus would beg for an invitation to eat with them. Or maybe Jesus’ willingness to eat with outcasts has simply made them embarrassed and uncomfortable, because they know deep down inside that if they took their faith seriously, they’d be doing the same. In any case, the religious leaders, the faithful Pharisees and scribes, are grumbling about Jesus. And so Jesus asks them an intriguing question:

“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’”

It’s easy, I suppose, to read this and think, “Yes, this is what a good shepherd does. A sheep gets lost and so he leaves his flock and goes after it. That’s the ‘good shepherd’ way.” Upon further reflection, however, we might question the wisdom of this particular shepherding strategy. Say you’re a shepherd and you’ve got 100 sheep. You’re in the wilderness—a place where a mountain lion could easily pick off one of your sheep if you’re not paying attention. So every couple of hours, you make a habit of counting your sheep, just to make sure they’re all there. One afternoon you’re doing the count, “96, 97, 98, 99…” and you realize that one’s gone missing.

What do you do now? Do you stay with your flock of 99? Or do you leave them alone while you search for the one? What makes good shepherding sense? Well, according to Jesus, the good shepherd leaves his 99 sheep alone in the wilderness to go and look for one that’s probably already made a nice meal for a lion or some other creature. What kind of shepherd does that?

In Jesus’ story, though, the shepherd gets lucky. He finds the lost sheep and says to his friends and neighbors, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” And we can well imagine his friends and neighbors saying, “Gee, that’s great. Remind me not to send you into the wilderness with my sheep, because as shepherds go, you stink!”

I imagine that might be what the Scribes and Pharisees are thinking in Jesus’ presence. But of course, this is not a seminar at the annual Judean shepherding convention. This is Jesus, eating with the tax collectors and sinners, and the Scribes and Pharisees are there too, grumbling about the whole thing. “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them!”

Jesus’ teaching is not counsel on the finer points of shepherding; rather, it is a direct challenge to anybody who would attempt to pass judgment on who is “in” and who is “out.” Had Jesus not communicated in parable language here, his words to the Pharisees and scribes may well have been, “What makes you think you’re so good? What makes you think you’re the only ones God cares about? In fact, I’ll tell you what, God rejoices when these tax collectors and sinners come to me and listen! God rejoices when they show a fraction of the faith you practice…” Jesus might have said to the Pharisees and scribes, “You know, God may not be a practical thinker like you. God might be more like an impractical shepherd who’s so upset about a lost sheep that nothing can keep God from it—nothing!”

We always think of Jesus as the “Good Shepherd,” which is strange, because he’s the shepherd who will always throw conventional shepherding wisdom out the window when one of his sheep gets lost. Jesus is more like the “Crazy, Unpredictable Shepherd,” which would be a wonderful name for a church, wouldn’t it? Every town’s got a “Church of the Good Shepherd,” but wouldn’t it be fun to worship at the “Church of the Crazy, Unpredictable Shepherd”? “Where do you go to church?” “Oh, my family and I worship at the ‘Church of the Wild, Crazy, Impractical Shepherd.’” That’s the shepherding Jesus describes here—the kind of shepherding that leaves the whole flock for the sake of just one who gets lost.

Maybe here’s where we come in. Have you ever been lost? Have you ever felt lost? When’s the last time you got lost? I’d like to take a moment to invite you to think of a time in your life when you were lost…

• As a child, separated from family…
• Maybe you got lost once when you got your heart broken…
• You realized that you friends weren’t who you thought they were…
• You got some news over the phone that scared the life out of you...
• You came to realize that you weren’t really sure who you were...
• Lost in a sea of unfriendly faces…
• Lost in a sea of confusing medical reports…
• Lost without a job, without purpose, without someone or something to turn to...

It’s easy to get lost. It’s easy to wander away and find ourselves lost. Lost in the wilderness of isolation, of individualism, of consumerism, materialism, perfectionism, busy-ism… It’s easy to get lost in the wilderness of I-don’t-need-anybody and it’s equally easy to get lost in the wilderness of nobody-needs-me. We know what it means to be lost. Sometimes the whole trick in life is getting found.

Of course, we usually like to be in charge of our getting found. Especially when it comes to faith, we like to be in charge. That’s why we use this language of “finding God.” You’ve heard it before: “I found God.” “I was lost in my life, but then after searching for a while, I finally found God.” “I found God when…(I went to church, I joined a Bible study, I saw a beautiful sunset, I heard a really good sermon, I met a wonderful person…) I - I - I - I found God!”

Did you ever hear that? Did you ever say it? I know I have. It’s like we’re rewriting the parable of the lost sheep and we’re the sheep who gets lost. It goes something like this...

“The Kingdom of God is like a sheep who wanders away from the flock. He wanders and wanders until he can no longer hear his 99 sisters and brothers. After awhile, he gets really, really hungry and, to his astonishment, remembers that there may be predators lurking around nearby. ‘Wow!’ he says, ‘I need to get home!’ Relying on his innate sense of direction, the sheep aligns the stars and plots an effective course from his current position back to the flock. When he arrives, he exclaims, “I was lost, but now I have found my shepherd!”

This is the Christianity around us, friends—a faith that relies on the individual to get found—a faith that makes you the active agent of your salvation. And it makes sense. We live in a culture that encourages and rewards our resourcefulness as individuals. But here’s the gospel: you are a child of God not because you found God, but because God has found you. God is the one seeking you. God is like a crazy shepherd for you and it doesn’t matter how lost you become! God is like a wild shepherd who didn’t pay attention in shepherding school because God would sacrifice everything just for you! And there is no place in the whole wide world or in the deep depth of your soul that God won’t come looking for you.

We’ve got just a few weeks left in Lent. And I would like to offer this invitation. Instead of seeking God during that time, maybe try remembering that God is seeking you. God is looking after you, searching for you in all the lost places you find yourself. God is in the constant business of looking for you, and then finding you, and then welcoming you home. That’s who God is—the Wild, Impractical Shepherd. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Stand Up - John 5:1-18

Sermon on Sunday, February 28

When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”

The Oscars are coming up next Sunday night. I’ve always enjoyed the Oscars, except there are years when I realize I haven’t had time to see any of the movies. This is one of those years—I’ve seen just two of the films receiving any nominations and so watching the Oscars is only sure to confirm that yes, I am currently out of touch with popular culture.

I was an extra in a movie once—nothing to write home about. It was a small, independent film, shot in the house next door to ours when we were living in Austin, Texas. That’s how I got the role, really. They needed people for a scene and so they started asking neighbors. In my six seconds of fame, I’m standing in my neighbor’s backyard, wearing a suit and pretending to laugh at a joke. No Oscar nominations for me that year, I’m sorry to say.

Sometimes I wonder about the “supporting cast” of Scripture. A large group of people, some with speaking parts, who drift in and out of these Bible stories. In most cases, we’re not told what their names are. If the Bible were a movie, the closing credits would include a long list of characters known simply as, “rich young man,” “woman with a withered hand,” “boy with five loaves and two fish.”

There are dozens of them in the gospels alone—these characters who help us understand the message and who, at times, can seem a bit one-dimensional. “The leper,” “the man with dropsy,” “the woman at the well”—they show up in the story, do their job, and go home. It’s left to us to wonder, “Who is this person, really? What is he like? Does she have a family? Dreams? Aspirations?”

The man in our story from John’s gospel this morning is “the invalid by the pool,” and he’s a little more than an “extra.” He’s got a few lines to say, and in terms of his particular condition, he might stand out a bit. Still, it’s easy for him to blend in with that large, unnamed cast of biblical characters, so I wonder if it won’t pay to wonder about him for just a little while.

Jesus goes to Jerusalem and heads over to Bethesda—to this pool which at the time was surrounded by people who were suffering from various sorts of illnesses and disabilities.
Now you need to know that this was no ordinary pool. Legend had it that from time to time, the waters were magically stirred, and when they were, at that moment an angel would appear and heal the first person who got into the water.

Jesus comes to this pool and sees among those waiting by its side, a man who’s been ill for thirty-eight years. He sees him lying there and says, “Do you want to be made well?” The man replies, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.”

Jesus commands him, “Stand up, take your mat, and walk.” And at once he is made well. He stands up, takes up his mat, and begins to walk, leaving us to wonder, perhaps, “Who was that guy? Who was he really? What was true about him?”

Once, when Sylvia was just three, we were driving in the car, and she piped up from the back seat, “Dad, I’m going to tell you something, and it’s not true, but it’s very true.” I was instantly curious, of course, ready to hear something profound coming from my daughter. She cleared her throat importantly and said, “Tweety Bird has wings and arms because she can fly and carry things.” Not true, but very true. How true.

I wonder what’s very true about our man lying beside the pool at Bethesda…

Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Bethesda, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. Bethesda was a depressing place. The architect who designed it had in mind a bright, cheerful spot where families could gather, where children could bathe, where afternoons could be spent with friends lost in conversation sitting by these beautiful pools. But the truth: Bethesda was a depressing place.

Sometimes children—on their way to or home from school—intentionally walked by the pool so they could stare at the people with strange diseases and crippled bodies. And often times adults—going about their business during the day—intentionally avoided Bethesda so they didn’t have to look at the people with strange diseases and crippled bodies.

Bethesda was a dump—literally, a dump. When a person became horribly crippled, or when a baby was born without sight, or when a family member became incurably sick, friends and family tried their hardest to support them. They really, really tried. But, you know, after a while, it got hard. And there were other mouths to feed, and the doctors couldn’t do anything, they said, and taking care of someone who required round-the-clock care became an all-consuming occupation that gradually defeated the caregiver. So people got dumped at Bethesda. Bethesda was a dump—literally, a dump.

One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. Of course, he hadn’t been at Bethesda that whole time. No, in fact, in the beginning, there was great hope for him—that he would get well. He was faithful to his doctor and he did everything that he was told to do. He was the “perfect patient”!

After a couple of years, though, it kind of became clear that he might not get better. So family and friends rallied around him. “God must have a different plan for you,” some said. Others tried to cheer him up with, “You must have gotten sick for a reason. God’s ways are mysterious, you know.” Still others said, “Maybe you did something wrong, and that’s why this happened to you.” One time somebody said (and this hurt the man a lot) “Pray hard about it, and if you have faith, God will heal you.”

“If I have faith?” he thought. “If I have faith?” What kind of crazy talk is that? All I’ve got these days is faith! My body is wearing away before my eyes and you dare to tell me “if I pray hard enough?” What do you think I’ve been doing for the past two years? “If I have faith…”

He continued to try to be the perfect patient. But gradually the man became “difficult.” It happened slowly, some said. At first, the question “How you doing?” was met with a “getting by!” But after awhile the response became, “How do you think I’m doing?” and eventually, “Oh, I’m great! Just perfect! You know, my body’s falling apart and it looks like I’m going to spend the next twenty years of my life slowly dying from this painful, torturous disease God has ‘blessed’ me with, but other than that, I’m splendid! How are you?”

People stopped asking, “How you doing?”

His family tried to keep him at home. They really did. But in the end, they couldn’t. Caring for him, dressing his bedsores, helping him go to the bathroom, trying to figure out what he could eat and keep down, cleaning up when he couldn’t keep it down… it all added up and it all took its toll. They weren’t bad people, you see. It’s just that after 16 years of it all, well, they were burnt out—more than discouraged—hopeless…

And by the time they looked for another place for him to live, their closer friends had had enough, too. For awhile they paid someone to take care of him in her home, but the money ran out, and the work was really too much for her, anyway.

They’d heard about the pool, Bethesda. At first, it sounded like a bad joke. “An angel comes and stirs the waters and then the first person to jump in gets healed? Don’t be ridiculous!” But then, as any hope for his health slipped away, it didn’t sound so bad. Finally his brother said, “Lord knows we’ve tried everything else!” The family brought him to Jerusalem. When they first saw the pool, the man exclaimed, “It must be true! Look at all the invalids here! Blind, lame, and paralyzed! They wouldn’t all be here if it weren’t true!”

His family was excited too. “Yes!” they thought, “This could work!” And with renewed vigor, they sat with him by the pool—patiently—waiting for the waters to move. The first time the waters were stirred, they hadn’t really noticed it. It was late in the day and they had been nodding off, so by the time they could stand up and look, thirty or maybe forty people had already jumped into the water to get healed. They weren’t sure that anybody was made well that time, actually. A rumor went around that a man’s arm was strengthened, but nobody was verifying it.

So they waited. And waited. And waited. And they watched that water so closely. Any movement, any ripple, any wave—the angel could come at any time! So they watched and waited. For about a year, the family waited with him. Not all of them, of course. There was still work to be done, mouths to feed. But they took turns, waiting with him by the pool.

They didn’t give up all at once. At first someone came by once a day to check on him, make sure he didn’t need anything. Then it went to a couple times a week—once a week—once or twice a month—once every once in a while… and every once in a while turned into once in a great while. Finally, they stopped coming. And then finally, after a painfully long time, he even stopped expecting them to come. So it was just him with the other invalids. He remembered one day when he was thinking about that word, “invalid.” “I know what that word means,” he thought to himself. “Invalid – in-valid – not valid.”

He smelled. He was hungry. When he wasn’t watching the pool, he was begging for food to eat. And if he wasn’t begging for food, he was begging for someone to wait with him to carry him into the water. He wouldn’t have told you this, probably, but what he really wanted was someone to wait with him. In his mind, maybe, he knew the water wasn’t going to heal him. Perhaps he knew that this whole angel-stirring-the-water-story was a pile of garbage—a hopeful pile of garbage, maybe, but nonetheless, a pile of garbage. What he really wanted was someone to wait with him—to sit with him—to talk with him—to be human with him…

When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me… Will you wait with me? Will you sit with me? Will you talk with me? Will you listen to me?!”

Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” But a story came first. A sometimes hopeful, often tragic story came first.

I may have gotten this guy’s story wrong—I know that. It might not have all happened this way. But you know what, there’s no such thing as a one-dimensional man who’s been sick for thirty-eight years and has found himself hoping in a hopeless pool of healing. There’s more to it than that. There’s always more to it.

Jesus says, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” Can you imagine what people were thinking when they heard that? This is a pool where the hopeless live! This isn’t a place for real healing! “Stand up? What, are you out of your mind?”

When Jesus tells him to stand up, he does more than heal him—he does more than make him well. He cuts through thirty-eight years of pitiful, self-loathing, downward-spiraling, debilitating sickness. Christ reaches through layers of broken relationships, defeated hopes, and broken promises, and says, “My friend, this is over! Get up!”

This is the gospel, my friends. The gospel is infinitely more than something we believe in. It is hope that the worst parts of our world—the Bethesda pools, even—can be redeemed. We—our lives—we can be redeemed, but also—our world! Our world can be redeemed.

Can’t you feel it? Sometimes it’s like our world is just sitting there by this Bethesda pool. Our whole world—given to war after war after war—unable to stop fighting. Our world—having enough food to feed everybody but somehow not doing it—having the resources to get drinking water to people who need it, but failing…

And what are we waiting for? Some miracle? Some kind of angel coming down to stir the waters and make all the bad stuff go away? Is that what we’re waiting for?

Christ comes. Christ says to us, “Stand up!” Christ says to us, “Pick up your mat!” And Christ says to us, “Walk!”

And that’s what it means to say “Yes” to God! That we stand up and say to ourselves, to God, and to our world, my life will not be defined by this hopelessness! And furthermore, I will not sit idly by while others’ lives are defined by this hopelessness! And so we are people of faith who engage in mission, where we say to others in our world—people who are hurting, people who are without homes, people who are hungry, people who have lost hope…

I will sit with you.
I will stand with you.
I will help you take up your mat.
I will walk with you.

Amen.

Led to Trust - Luke 4:1-13

Sermon on Sunday, February 21

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.

Today is our first Sunday in this season of Lent. So welcome to that—welcome into the midst of another season of reflection and listening and learning to trust. Lent always has a way of slowing us down, encouraging us all to reflect a little more, to engage life more prayerfully. Lent also runs alongside winter turning into spring. Just as we look forward to the melting of snow and the revealing of tender shoots and bulbs, Lent calls our attention forward to a celebration of resurrection.

During World War II, some European cities were bombed so heavily, there wasn’t much left of some buildings that was recognizable. Homes, shops, and cathedrals that had been standing for decades fell, leaving communities with enormous piles of rubble. But something amazing happened in the midst of that destruction. In some places where a wall might have fallen over, or where a foundation might have been blown apart, seeds had been lying in the soil, dormant for ages. And so after the war, people began to find various plants growing through the cracks in the destruction. And here’s the interesting part: some of them they’d never seen before—beautiful flowers and heirloom varieties of vegetables and herbs. (1)

I love that image of unknown seeds patiently waiting under layers of human construction. Just waiting for the right time and the right conditions—some warmth, a little rain, a crack in the rock above. It makes me wonder what seeds might be lying dormant in my own life—seeds of possibility that are just waiting for my own life to present them with a chance to grow. That’s part of life’s fun and mystery, I think. All of you—all of us—no matter how old we are and no matter how predictable we may think we’ve become, contain within us seeds of potential and promise that no one has yet considered. And when the conditions are right, they’ll grow in us and grace our lives with something new.

I say all this because it’s something of what I see happening with Jesus in our story from Luke’s gospel. At the very beginning of his ministry, life makes some demands of Jesus—perhaps some demands that he wasn’t expecting at the time.

I know that we don’t say this outright, but I think we often picture Jesus as somebody who’s always got things under control, always got his act together, and always knows what to do and what to say in any given situation. That’s pretty much how we tend to picture Jesus, isn’t it? Cool, calm, collected. We forget sometimes that Jesus was human—that Jesus really, really was human. We forget from time to time that Jesus was a real guy—that he got tired, that he might have gotten crabby, that he found some things annoying… We forget that Jesus cried—wept, even—and we forget that Jesus felt pain, feared pain.

Our story in Luke begins, “was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.” The language here is worth paying attention to. Some translations say that Jesus was “led by the Spirit.” Others suggest that he was “driven by the Spirit.” Calvin wrote that Jesus was “carried away by the Spirit.” The point is this: Jesus didn’t wake up one day and say to himself, “You know what? I think I’m going to go camping for a few weeks.” He didn’t pack, he didn’t prepare. He was led, driven, carried away. Jesus begins his public ministry as one who is not in charge, but rather as one who’s been dramatically moved by the Spirit against his will—into the wilderness. And we have to keep in mind here that “the wilderness” wasn’t a state park. “Wilderness” was a place beyond the city’s safety where one was subject to the elements and to robbers and thieves. No water, no food, no safe haven—this is where Jesus was taken.

Writer Barbara Brown Taylor’s got a great description of what “the wilderness” might look like in our own lives. “Maybe it just looked like a hospital waiting room to you,” she writes, “or the sheets on a cheap motel bed after you got kicked out of your house, or maybe it looked like the parking lot where you couldn't find your car on the day you lost your job. It may even have been a kind of desert in the middle of your own chest, where you begged for a word from God and heard nothing but the wheezing bellows of your own breath.”

Have you been to the wilderness? The wilderness of the moments after she stopped breathing. The wilderness of too much debt. The wilderness of believing—really believing—that others judge you just as harshly as you judge yourself… Have you been to the blinding wilderness of anger? And if you’ve been to the wilderness, or if you are in the wilderness, a question to consider is this: What tempts you there? How are you tempted in the wilderness of your own life?

The gospel writers understood the devil as the source of temptation. You may or may not think of the devil as literally as they did, and that’s fine. Our problem usually isn’t that we don’t know what to believe about the devil. Our problem is that regardless of our theology, we often fail to take temptation seriously. We often fail to acknowledge and grapple with the powerful, seductive forces of temptation in our lives. So I’ll ask it again: What tempts you in the wilderness?

Are you tempted to believe you can do it all alone? Are you tempted to think you’ve got all the answers? Or are you tempted to believe that life will never be as good as it once was?

See, understanding temptation isn’t always easy. Maybe if the devil himself were the one doing the tempting, we might stand a chance, but so often we’re the ones creating those subtle undercurrents of temptation in our own lives.

Are you tempted to say nothing—because if they knew you, they wouldn’t love you? Are you tempted not to try, because somewhere along the line, a fear of failure took a hold of your life? Are you tempted to expect less of yourself, because it’s easier that way? Are you tempted to trust less, because that way you won’t be disappointed? Are you tempted to never cry again, to never let your guard down?

Temptation isn’t always obvious. But sometimes it is. Are you tempted to keep drinking? Are you tempted to cheat? Are you tempted to lie or steal? Are you tempted to finally blow up? Are you tempted to think too much of yourself? Or are you tempted to doubt yourself? Are you tempted to believe that your worth can be measured by the things you’ve done right? Are you tempted to believe that your lack of worth can be measured by the things you’ve done wrong?

Writer and humorist Sam Levenson once said, “Lead us not into temptation. Just tell us where it is; we'll find it.” That’s true, I think. We have a way of finding temptations in our lives—temptations to exaggerate our worst fears and to give credence to our baser instincts.

Here’s the good news. And it’s strange news, too, but it’s good news. Jesus was tempted. And maybe that’s hard for us to believe. Maybe we want to think that somehow Jesus couldn’t have known what it’s really like to lose hope, to fear, to be tempted to give up. But Jesus was tempted. If Jesus wasn’t tempted, then what are we to say? That Jesus looked human, but really it was all a façade? That in reality, Jesus was just God parading around the countryside pretending to feel pain, pretending to struggle with life, pretending to fear?

The Lenten season draws us more deeply into an understanding of incarnation—that in Jesus Christ, God was really human, and that it wasn’t an act. Jesus’ temptation was real temptation. Jesus’ tears were real tears. Jesus’ “if it is possible, let this cup pass from me,” was real fear of death by crucifixion. This is good news because it reminds us that in Jesus Christ, God entered into the true depth of human existence, which can be a nightmare.

One more thing about the wilderness. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like being lost too much. The novelty of being lost wears off quickly for me, especially when I’m late. Now that I’ve got my iPhone, of course, I’ve got instant access to a global positioning system that will tell me where I am on the map at any time. I like that. And it’s not that I like the prospect of never having to stop to ask for directions. I like the security of knowing that I can’t get lost with this device at my side!

Sometimes in this life, though, we get so lost—lost among the temptations we face to believe the lies we tell ourselves—lost among temptations to trust less, believe less, expect less… We get lost in the wildernesses of this world where no gadget can save us—where we’ve got nothing going for us except, perhaps, to trust God.

And the biggest temptation we face, I think, is the temptation to trust ourselves and ourselves alone. When you stop and think about it, this is where most temptations end up—a trust in one’s self at the expense of trust in others. Trusting yourself to stay in control. Trusting yourself to always be right. Trusting yourself to know your limits. Trusting you and you alone to get yourself out of this mess. Now there’s nothing wrong with a good, healthy dose of self-confidence. But when your confidence prevents you from expanding your circle of trust to include others—to include God, you’re in trouble.

The way out of temptation is not avoidance. The way out of temptation is trust.

Shannon, a single mom, lost her job when her kids were four and nine. Work had been steady, but not steady enough, so there wasn’t much in the bank. Rent, groceries, doctor visits, clothes for school. Something had to give, finally. She had family but they were far away, so she and her kids stayed with a friend on the pull-out sofa. “The hardest thing wasn’t making myself believe that I could make it,” she said. “The hardest thing was realizing that I couldn’t make it alone.”

Trust—real trust—is scary because in trusting, we place our lives in another’s hands, sometimes entirely. And friends, we are always tempted to not do that—to keep our lives in our own hands. But this Lenten season, in whatever wilderness you find yourself, could you be led to trust?

(1) I'm grateful to my good friend Allen Brimer, who shared this image of post-WWII seeds during a call to worship back in our seminary days. It was during Lent when he shared this, and seldom has a call to worship enlivened my sense of place and purpose more.

On Faith and Evolution - Genesis 1:1-8

Sermon on February 14, 2010

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.


A little girl asked her mother, “How did the human race appear?” The mother answered, “God made a beautiful garden called Eden. God put two people in this garden, Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve had lots of children and they had children and that’s where people came from.”

Two days later the girl asked her father the same question. The father answered, “Many years ago there were monkeys from which the human race evolved.”

The confused girl returned to her mother and said, “Mom, how is it possible that you told me the human race was created by God, and Dad said they developed from monkeys?” The mother answered, “Well, dear, it is very simple. I told you about my side of the family and your father told you about his.”


Part of what we’re celebrating in church today is “Evolution Sunday”—a chance, really, to think faithfully and critically about faith and science, and to wonder a little about how it all fits together. Of course, today is also our congregation’s “Anniversary Sunday”—a chance to stop and reflect on what 171 years of ministry means, and perhaps to wonder about 171 more. Today is also Valentine’s Day, tomorrow is Presidents Day, and Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, thus beginning the season of Lent. You may be wondering this morning, “With Valentines, Presidents, Lent, and our church’s anniversary, did Ben really need to go dig up yet another thing to think about this morning?” Truth be told, I’m not going to say anything about Valentines or Presidents today, and I’m going to leave Lent for next week. But I think it’s entirely appropriate that today, on the anniversary of our congregation’s life, we think about issues of faith and evolution—science and religion. What better way to celebrate the rich, thoughtful, and engaging history of faith and learning at First Presbyterian Church!

I’d like to take a quick moment to explain that “Evolution Sunday” is not a day that I just made up for the sake of a sermon title. Evolution Sunday is a Sunday that coincides with the birthday of Charles Darwin, and it provides an opportunity for people of faith to raise questions about faith and science in the context of worship and Christian education. That’s what we’re doing today.

Churches around the country began holding Evolution Sunday services when, in 2004, a school board in Grantsburg, Wisconsin passed a series of anti-evolution policies. Of course, school boards around the country had already done similar things, and so I’m not too sure why it was that Grantsburg provided the impetus for what followed. I do know that at the beginning, a couple hundred clergy from around the state of Wisconsin signed a letter to the school board in Grantsburg. I won’t read the entire letter to you now, but here are a few pieces of it:

“While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook… Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts. We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator… We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.”

It started with 200 clergy in Wisconsin, and today that list has grown to over 12,400 signatures—all pastors, preachers, and professional Christian educators adding their “yes” to this statement about faith and science.

Not everyone sees it that way, of course. We all have different ways of thinking through these issues. For some, faith falls apart in light of what science teaches, and for others, science fails to convince in light of what the Bible says.

A zookeeper came across an orangutan reading two books. One was the Bible; the other was Darwin’s Origin of Species. “Why are you reading such opposite books?” the zookeeper asked. The orangutan replied, “Well, I’m trying to figure out if I’m supposed to be my brother’s keeper or my keeper’s brother.”

That’s sort of where some folks fall—an understanding of faith and science as opposites, and a belief that, like the orangutan, we need to choose one or the other. So, which is it? Or where do we start? Part of the problem, in my mind, is that we’ve got too many people running around with Bibles trying to disprove scientific discoveries, and at least a few others running around with science books trying to disprove faith. Another part of the problem is that all too often, faith is strictly filtered through the lens of scientific discovery or science is strictly filtered through the lens of biblical teaching.

That being said, there’s also a temptation to say, simply, “Let’s let faith be faith, and let’s let science be science,” and to then never let the two comingle. But then can a Christian take science seriously without dismissing his faith? Can a scientist be a disciple of Jesus Christ without leaving her scientific brain at the door?

Our Scripture reading today from Genesis goes back to the beginning. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters…”

For some, this is the beginning of all the science they need about Creation. I’ve seen a bumper sticker that says, “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” Theories and prospects of a “Big Bang” and any evolutionary designs that might have followed are apparently not worth considering. The problem, though, with this literal, simplistic reading of Genesis is that it misses something beautiful about what its author was attempting to say. Take the phrase, for example, “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” For our Jewish faith ancestors, the “wind from God” was God’s Spirit, moving over the waters. Water itself represented chaos, disorder. So the image of Genesis 1:2 is an image of God’s Spirit, hovering over this gigantic churn of chaos and shining a light on it. “Let there be light,” God says, and so we’re given this image of a Divine spark, brining sense and order to Creation.

Is this significant because it says how it happened? Is it true because it gives a literal account of what things really looked like on Creation’s first day? Is this really all the science we need? Or, could it be that what we have here in these first two verses of Genesis really has nothing whatsoever to do with science and everything to do with how we understand the loving nature of God? God—never far from the chaos of life—hovering over it, actually, shining a light on those places in our world and in our lives where the chaos seems overwhelming—calling that light “good.”

The first chapter of Genesis is not a science textbook. It’s poetry. It’s a hymn that may actually have been sung when it was first written—a song of God’s faithfulness to Creation. The second verse goes like this: And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.”

Now all this talk of domes and waters might seem confusing. But imagine a person a few thousand years ago standing on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. He looks out at the water. What color is it? It’s blue. He looks up at the sky and what color is it? It’s blue. And what is it that occasionally falls from the sky? Water! What might he naturally conclude about the makeup of the sky? There’s water up there! Another giant sea hovering high above us!

If there’s any science in Genesis, it’s a basic, observational science that concludes that beyond this dome above us called “Sky” there lies yet another chaotic churn of water. And guess what? Now that we’ve flown through our atmosphere, we know that that understanding of the Sky is scientifically wrong. But Genesis is not about science—it’s a poetic love song to God, the Creator. And the author says in Genesis, “Thank you. Thank you, God, for creating this dome in the midst of these waters so that we might have life and breath.”

The purpose of Genesis is not to scientifically explain it all. The purpose of Genesis is to express awe and wonder at the sight of it all.

A creationist would disagree. A creationist would find a way to argue that in spite of everything I’ve said, Genesis 1:1-2 really gives an accurate scientific, historical account of the first two twenty-four hour days of creation. A creationist might also argue that Intelligent Design be taught in public schools as a science, in spite of the fact that there are no peer-reviewed scientific journals publishing empirical data supporting intelligent design. None.

But a creationist would argue that the universe must have a source—that we human beings couldn’t possibly have evolved from primates. Of course, there are a number of problems with this, one of them being that Darwin’s theory of evolution has absolutely nothing to do with the source of creation—it merely explains how it is that various species have come to look like what they look like today.

More conversation about this to come. As I preach today, I have the distinct advantage of knowing that Dave Higgs and I are about to begin a three-week Christian education series on faith and science, beginning today. That frees me to not try and say everything in the context of this particular sermon!

But for now I will say this. I believe that our best faithful minds and our best scientific minds operate in a similar direction. Both attempt to give voice to mysteries of creation and life. Both instill a true reverence for the way things are—for the sky, for fingerprints, and for the fact that our minds are advanced enough to even have this conversation. Both faith and science call us to wonder, to ask questions, and to marvel at universe around us.

Kenneth Miller has written a book, Finding Darwin’s God. In it he writes: “Even as we use experimental science and mathematical logic to reveal the laws and structure of the physical universe, a series of important questions will always remain, including the sources of those laws and the reason for there being a universe in the first place.”

One day a group of scientists got together and decided that humanity had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell God that they were done with Him. The scientist walked up to God and said, “God, we’ve decided that we no longer need you. We’re to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don’t you just go on and mind your own business?” God listened very patiently and kindly to the man. After the scientist was done talking, God said, “Very well, how about this? Let’s say we have a man-making contest.” To which the scientist replied, “Okay, we can handle that!” “But,” God added, “we’re going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam.” The scientist said, “Sure, no problem” and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt. God looked at him and said, “No, no, no. You go get your own dirt.”

May our best faithful and scientific minds lead us to wonder more and more about God at the source of it all. Amen.

Called, Sent - Isaiah 6:1-8

Sermon on Sunday, February 7

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple...

I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”


I want to share three phrases with you today. Just three phrases. The first is, “In the year that King Uzziah died.”

Nobody names their kid “Uzziah” anymore. I don’t know that I’ve ever met an “Uzziah.” But the name, “Uzziah” means, “The LORD is my strength.” And our story from the book of Isaiah begins, “In the year that King Uzziah died…”

If you look elsewhere in the Old Testament, you can find bits and pieces about Uzziah’s reign as king. He took the throne when he was just sixteen years old and ruled until he was in his late sixties. For fifty-some years, Uzziah—“The LORD is my strength”—ruled over Judah. In the books of Kings and Chronicles, it is said of Uzziah that he was faithful to God, bringing prosperity to the land.

Uzziah was a famous king. Throughout the region, to the border of Egypt, his name was known and revered. In Jerusalem, Uzziah built fortified towers and raised a massive, powerful army. According to the book of Second Chronicles, “the whole number of the heads of ancestral houses of mighty warriors was two thousand six hundred. Under their command was an army of three hundred and seven thousand five hundred, who could make war with mighty power, to help the king against the enemy. Uzziah provided for all the army the shields, spears, helmets, coats of mail, bows, and stones for slinging.”

Uzziah was powerful and organized. He ruled Judah with vision and with authority. For most of Uzziah’s reign as king, his name was synonymous with prosperity and prestige. But then, as the story unfolds, Uzziah’s reign did not end well. In his strength he became prideful, says the writer of Chronicles, and his pride became his downfall. His crime? He attempted to elevate his status to that of high priest. Apparently, the power of kingship wasn’t enough for Uzziah, and so he barged into the temple and assumed the role both king and priest. As the story goes, he was immediately struck with leprosy for defying God’s will in this way.

For his last ten years as king, Uzziah was shut away in a separate house, shunned from any real power. His son, Jotham, ran the kingdom in his place. Finally, Uzziah withered away and died, and because of his leprosy, was buried alone—not with the former kings of Judah. It was sort of a pathetic end to a once mighty and prosperous kingship.

Our story today begins, “In the year that King Uzziah died…” But I’d like to rephrase that. “In the year that King Uzziah died” means, “In the year that ‘The LORD is my strength’ died…”

The year King Uzziah died: the year we questioned the LORD’s strength...
The year we wondered if our best days were long gone,
The year we wondered if we’d been blessed or just lucky,
The year King Uzziah’s earthly power and fame finally shriveled to nothing,
The year we had to accept that even the best of us could fall so low…

History has a way of forcing moments like these upon us—moments when we question God’s presence, when we question all that we thought we knew about our strength and sense of security. Isaiah chapter six begins with the people of God wondering, “What now, God? What next?” And perhaps it should evoke in us all those times and places when we simply could not see a way forward.

The year King Uzziah died: the year we questioned the LORD’s strength...
The year the economy dropped out from under us,
The year he lost the job,
The year we lost the house,
The year she got sick,
The year the marriage finally fell apart…

The year we questioned the LORD’s strength...
The year the earth shook,
The year a hurricane took our city away,
The year the towers fell,
The year we lost faith,
The year we questioned everything…

It’s not so often that I spend so much time on just seven words, but the phrase, “In the year that King Uzziah died” is loaded. More than a simple historical marker, it says something of the human condition—that from time to time we find ourselves questioning God, questioning ourselves, questioning our future… and that so often life itself gets carried away to the point where we’re not sure who’s in control anymore, if anyone.

In the book of Isaiah, it is in the midst of this anxiety and uncertainty that a new prophet is born. It is in the context of turmoil and fear and doubt that God’s voice is heard again and in a new way. This brings us to our second phrase: “The hem of God’s robe filled the temple.”

In our story, Isaiah is not a prophet yet. But he’s in the temple and he sees God “sitting on the throne, high and lofty.” It’s a pretty fantastic scene, with six-winged seraphs flying around and singing and smoke rising up everywhere. It’s a vision of God on a massive scale—so massive, in fact, that just the hem of God’s robe fills the temple.

Some interesting things about this description of God. If you wanted to read it all literally, you might say, “Well, that settles it—God must wear a robe—a really, really big robe! With a big, big hem.”

Or we might say instead that nothing in this world can contain God. God is always bigger than the temple, bigger than the church, bigger than our understanding. Our words can’t contain God, our beliefs can’t contain God… even our religion can’t contain God—nothing can! God cannot be contained! God is God, and perhaps the visions we have of God are but fragments of a much, much larger whole.

“In the year that King Uzziah died,” Isaiah saw the Lord sitting on the throne, high and lofty, and “the hem of his robe filled the temple.” In other words: In the year everything fell apart and we began to question everything, we saw God and God was bigger than all we could see.

The third phrase is a question: “Whom shall I send?” In light of the first two phrases, I marvel at these four words: “Whom shall I send?” The world is falling apart—Uzziah, “The Lord is my Strength,” has died. But still, God is still God—a God so big, even the hem of God’s robe fills the room. And yet, God’s question for humanity is not what we would expect it to be. God does not say, “How can I help now that your king is dead?” or “What can I do to restore your faith?” Instead, God’s question is, “Whom shall I send?”

We’d often love to have a Superman God—a God who swoops in when the going get rough—a God who makes everything ok. So often we’d love to have a God who makes it easy to believe, easy to trust, easy to not worry about the things that fall apart in this world. But God doesn’t ask, “How can I make everything ok?” Instead God asks, “Whom shall I send? Whom shall I send?”

This is the nature of God. God—bigger than our understanding, always bigger than our imagining. But not a “Superman God”—rather, a God who is always asking, “Who will go for me? Who will speak for me? Who will move with my Spirit and love with my love?” Even when the world seems to be falling apart, crumbling in the midst of war and poverty and brokenness, God is whispering into the ears of would-be prophets like you and me: “Whom shall I send? Whom shall I send? Whom shall I send?”

The faithful response, then, is not to understand it all, or even to know the way forward. The faithful response is to daily summon the will to say, “Here am I. Send me.”

Come Alive - this week's E-votional

Every week I try to send out an "e-votional" to folks at the church. Sometimes it's just a little quote or a poem; sometimes it's something of my own making - a thought or two, a prayer... This week's e-votional features a quote by Howard Thurman that I like a lot:

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Isn’t that a powerful thought? I think so. So many needs around us, and often we’re tempted to meet them all. A question to consider, though, is “What makes me come alive?” And perhaps our answers to that question really do lead us to the places where we’re most needed.

Leaning towards this Sunday, I'm preparing to preach on that text from Isaiah 6: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" "Here am I; send me!" At this point, I don't know if Thurman's quote will make it in the sermon or not, but I'm wondering more and more about a "coming alive" that goes along with saying "yes" to God's call in our lives. We'll see. Blessings until then!

It's About Love - I Corinthians 13:1-13

Sermon on January 31, 2010

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

If you’ve ever been to a Christian wedding, you’ve probably heard I Corinthians 13 read aloud. Whenever I’m doing premarital counseling with a couple and it comes time to plan the actual service and think about which scriptures they’d like to have read at their wedding, I share with them a list of passages that they might want to consider. I Corinthians 13, of course, is on the list, and when we get to it, I’ll often hear one of them say something like, “Oh, no. We can’t do I Corinthians. Everybody uses I Corinthians at their wedding. We’ve got to find something different.”

Once, in my very first premarital counseling session with a couple, we were just getting started—still weeks away from planning the service—when the bride told me, “Well, before we get going, just so you know, we are not using I Corinthians 13 at our wedding.” “Really?” I asked. “How come?” “All my friends have used it, and quite frankly, I’m tired of hearing it.” But then she asked, “Is there another good ‘love passage’ in the Bible?”

I guess a couple of things are going on here. First, more and more, couples are feeling some strange pressure to be “different” in their wedding—as if somehow entering the covenant of marriage and binding your soul to that of another person needs to “stand out” any more than it already does. But also, this general criticism of I Corinthians 13 suggests that it has been overdone. In a way, it’s sort of become the “Kum ba yah” of biblical passages, the song that’s been played way too many times—so many times, in fact, that it’s begun to lose its meaning.

Or perhaps I Corinthians 13 simply smacks of too much Hallmark greeting card sentimentality—so much so that “Love is patient; love is kind…” has become like “Roses are red; violets are blue…” overused to the point of becoming useless. Of course, the truth is that I Corinthians 13 is a powerful biblical text. There’s a good reason so many couples have chosen to have it read at their weddings. It presents such powerful, compelling language about love—language that sets love apart, I think, from its many references in pop culture and on Valentines Day cards.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

If you’re sitting there and your sense that I Corinthians 13 is overdone still prevents you from considering it much further, let me invite you to do a little exercise. Start with verse four and read through verse seven, and instead of reading the word “love,” substitute your own name. Instead of reading, “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude,” read to yourself, “____ is patient; ____ is kind; ____ is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. ____ does not insist on his own way; ___ is not irritable or resentful; ___ does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ___ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

To what extent do I embody “love”? Makes for an interesting self-inventory, doesn’t it? And we realize that “love” here isn’t simply an emotion; rather, Paul thinks of love as a “way.” He writes, “I will show you a still more excellent way.” Love—not a feeling, but a way, a practice, a life that we lead. And as Paul describes it, the way of love can be described both by what it is and by what it isn’t. “Love is patient… love is not envious…”

It’s kind of like the aspiring wood carver who was really trying to whittle a basic project—a little figure of a dog. He was making a mess of it and failing. So he went to his teacher with his knife and his rough block of wood and said, “I give up. How do you do this? What is the secret of carving?” The teacher looked at him and said, “Well it’s easy, really. You just take this piece of wood and cut off everything that doesn’t look like a dog.”

What happens when you cut everything else away in your life? What are you left with in the end? Is it something that resembles love? Is it a dog? Think about the rough block of wood of your own life. And imagine whittling it down to its essential substance. Chip off those outer layers, the stuff that really doesn’t look like you, and what are you left with?

Sometimes you can get to the core of it all and not like what you see. When that icon of baseball, Mickey Mantle, was dying of liver cancer, he was asked what advice he would give young people who still looked up to him. Mickey Mantle—an amazing athlete, an all-star on the field, but one whose recklessness and debauchery off the field gave him a reputation. He looked at the camera and said simply, “Don’t be like me.”

And the end of it all, when you see your life for what it is, will it look like love? Love is, at the end of it all, what it’s about. Love is the heart of our faith.

When I was in Austin, I was doing campus ministry near the University of Texas. One of the years I was there, the Dalai Lama was touring the United States, and he came to the UT campus and spoke in the Erwin Center—the basketball arena where the Longhorns play. The students at the church and I jumped at the chance to attend—to hear from one of the world’s religious leaders. And so we packed in with thousands of other young people that evening to hear from this little man in an orange robe with glasses.

He spoke for a while about the practice of faith and about peace, and near the end of his talk, he invited students from the audience to ask him questions. A young man near the front of the arena came to a microphone and asked simply, “What advice would you give to us college students who are about to go out into the world.”

The Dalai Lama was silent for a moment. My own seat was up high—in the nose bleed section—but I could almost sense the crowd leaning forward, ready to take in whatever this man said to them. And then he spoke. He said, “Be kind to each other.” That was it. Next question, please.

At first, I thought, “Really? Be kind to each other? We’ve got the Dalai Lama here and that’s it?” I guess I was expecting something a little more, oh, I don’t know… revolutionary? But then the students and I talked about that response during our walk back to the church, and we realized something: if we truly took kindness seriously, it would be a revolution. If everyone in the world was simply and deeply committed to kindness, we’d have a wonderful revolution on our hands!

And then we began to wonder about things that Jesus said that, on the surface, seemed perhaps a little too simplistic—things that, if we took them seriously, would revolutionize the way we lived our lives. “Love your neighbor as yourself” was one of them.

And we could have added to the list Paul’s words: “Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” Love is the greatest. It’s about love—our faith is about love. I’ve said this before here, and I’ll say it again: this is what the gospel is all about—that in Jesus Christ, God loves us. Through Jesus Christ, God says to us, “You can betray me, you can deny me, and you can doubt me, but I will still love you. You can even put me to death—even death on a cross—but you cannot destroy my love for you.”

“You can do everything right in the world or you can do everything wrong. You can run to me and you can run away from me. You can choose to love me back, or not,” says God, “but nothing will ever change the fact that I love you. You can love me, love the world, and love yourself, and you can hate me, hate the world, and hate yourself, but nothing you ever do or fail to do will change my love for you.” This is God’s love—a love for us to embrace and practice in our own lives and in our world.

Have you ever heard of the phrase, “six degrees of separation”? Supposedly, every person in the world is connected to every other person in the world through six people. So, for example, I have a friend from high school who used to go out with a guy who used to date the singer Jewel, who, in turn, probably knows at least one person who knows Kevin Bacon, and so forth… If you think of everyone that you know in your life and then were to branch out to everyone that they know, and then branch out even further, with only six steps you would likely reach every person on the planet.

The question to ask, then, is an exciting one: What power could your love have in this world? Beginning with you and moving out, what power could it have? In light of the world’s problems, we tend to think of ourselves as immeasurably small, but the truth is this: love can change the whole world and it begins right here.

Evotional - To Be of Use

One of my favorite poems of all time is “To Be of Use” by Marge Piercy. As Haiti’s earthquake has snapped us to attention and begged us to consider what we might do to alleviate the suffering of others in our world, these words have come to mind again for me. May they bless you with an earnest curiosity about your own work, whatever it may be: serving, caring, leading, teaching, building, healing, listening, parenting, grandparenting…


“To Be of Use”
by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Body Language - I Corinthians 12:12-31

Sermon on January 24, 2010

If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.


I was a teenager in the 1980’s. For youth and young adults today, I realize that makes me something of a curiosity. But it’s true—I came of age during the era of acid-washed jeans, MTV, parachute pants, and mullets. My generation was the last to move through high school without the internet and without email and without cell phones. It’s sort of strange today to think of life without those things, but somehow we survived.

I bring this up because there’s an episode of the 80’s that I’d like to share with you. Some of you will remember this—that in 1986, there was a movement in the United States called “Hands Across America.” Basically, the idea was that millions of people would come together for fifteen minutes, holding hands in a line that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Everyone would pay $10 to participate and that money would be donated to local charities that fought hunger and homelessness.

I guess in 1986, this seemed like a pretty good idea. Sunday afternoon, May 25, more than five million people lined up across the country and held hands. The line stretched 4,152 miles from New York City to Long Beach, California. And had that line been absolutely straight, it would have indeed been an unbroken chain all the way. But in order to get more people involved, the organizers had the line snaking its way from one major US city to another. So moving eastward from New York, the chain only made it to Maryland before it suffered a large gap; apparently the folks in Baltimore didn’t want to hold hands. The line continued through the country, mostly intact (five million people is a lot of people), but it suffered significant gaps here and there, especially in the Arizona desert, where the longest breaks in the chain occurred. Some die-hards flocked to the desert, though, and formed mile-long chains here and there. In the end, the event turned out to be, “Hands Mostly Across America.”

Not a complete loss, though – the event raised close to $20 million for soup kitchens and homeless shelters across the United States. Not bad for a day’s work. Of course, the event was expensive to promote and to run. Before it could even take place, corporate sponsorships totaling close to $30 million had to be raised to cover costs. So yes—the math: Corporations like Coca-Cola and Citibank doled out $30 million to run an event that, in the end, raised $20 million.

But, we could argue, that $20 million was really put to good use, and what about the symbolic significance of everybody holding hands across the country? What about the hope, the love, the promise that such an event could instill? What about the fact that on May 25, 1986 at 3:00 p.m. Easter Standard Time, five million folks across America, including Jazzercisers, Hell’s Angels, Hopi and Navajo Indians, 500 little leaguers at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium, numerous celebrities, and President Ronald Reagan held hands together and sang “We Are the World,” “America the Beautiful,” and the Hands Across America theme song? (Yes, there really was a Hands Across America theme song – part of the $30 million price tag, I guess) All those people holding hands, connected and singing sappy 80’s pop music (which by the way, wasn’t called “sappy 80’s pop music”—it was just called “music.”) Isn’t there something wonderful about that single act of solidarity?

And you could say “Yes”—that Hands Across America, despite its shortcomings, provided a symbol of unity and hope for a nation struggling to address issues of global hunger and poverty. So, yes, Hands Across America was a nice gesture.

But if events like “Hands Across America” teach us anything, it’s this: that true unity is awfully hard to organize and even more difficult to maintain. Furthermore, I would argue that when we engage in an activity that focuses our attention and our efforts on issues of poverty in our world, we are apt to more fully understand that poverty in our world is overwhelming. And in the true face of poverty, our symbolic acts of unity often fail to deliver long-term results.

It’s relatively easy to hold hands and claim for a moment that “Yes. We are the world. We are one human family.” It’s much more difficult to shape our lives in ways that authentically resonate with the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose quote I included in our bulletin this morning: “I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.”

Dr. King echoes those words of the apostle Paul, who wrote in his letter to the Corinthians, “In the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body… If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”

There’s a word for that. Ubuntu. Go ahead and say it: “Ubuntu.” “Ubuntu” is a word from the Bantu languages of southern Africa, and it means, “I am because you are.” “Ubuntu—I am because you are.” Go ahead and take a quick second and say to the people next to you or around you, “Ubuntu.”

I am because you are. If you suffer, I suffer with you. If you are honored, I rejoice with you. I am because you are. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. Ubuntu. I am because you are. Ubuntu—more, much more than fifteen minutes holding hands. Much more than a photo opportunity. Ubuntu is a way of life that acknowledges the truth of our connectedness!

A nice image for us striving to live in a spirit of Ubuntu is the aspen tree. Did you know that out in Colorado and Utah, an aspen forest is usually just one tree? That’s the way aspens grow. The root system is all connected. You can take a genetic sample from the leaf of one aspen and then walk a mile or so and take another from another tree, and you’ll find that it’s all really one tree—connected underground.

What would happen if we human begins began to understand ourselves that way? What would happen to our sense of connection as a church? What would happen to our view of the world around us?

I’d like to talk again about the earthquake in Haiti. Those pictures online and on TV are still so vivid in our minds and we continue to express concern and care for folks living in Port au Prince. On Friday night, a bunch of singers and celebrities came together to raise money for Haiti, and I guess the danger might be that this becomes another “Hands Across America Moment”—a strong show of unity and support followed by a gradual fading away as other news stories take center stage and capture our attention.

Haiti, like the gulf coast after Hurricane Katrina, is going to need serious, long-term care. And so we might wonder what will sustain that kind of commitment. And here’s the truth. It won’t be our good intentions. Feelings of sadness and sympathy will not sustain the kind of loving humanitarian outreach that will be needed in Haiti over the next decade or so. But you know what will? Ubuntu. A conviction that what Paul said was true—that if one member suffers, all suffer together with it. That’s what will sustain outreach to Haiti—an unswerving commitment to the fact that our very identity is wrapped up in the identity of the people of Haiti.

This, by the way, is what really makes a difference in our world—our recognition of ourselves in each other. Scripture’s teaching—Christ’s teaching—that you love your neighbor as yourself is an Ubuntu teaching—a call for you to see yourself in the face of another.

You’ve all experienced this, I know. Many of you here have lost loved ones. Your life’s great grief has been the loss of a parent or a spouse or a child. And you’ve said it: “When he died, a part of me died with him.” “When she died, a part of me died too.” And that’s not just a figure of speech—it’s true. It’s true because in our loving relationships, our identities bleed together and it’s hard, if not impossible, to understand ourselves apart from the other.

Think about what the world would be like if we all shared that sense of “self” and “other”—if we could all truly see ourselves in the faces of others. This is a big part of what being a church family is all about. Because it’s here in this family of faith that you and I practice Ubuntu. It’s here that we recognize each other as sister and brother in the same body of Christ. And it’s here that we experience the truth that when one of us suffers, we all suffer with that one. And when one of us rejoices, we all find cause for rejoicing.

The challenge and joy of being a church family is expanding our sense of Ubuntu to include an ever-widening pool of family members. Our outreach, then, to folks who are homeless and hungry, to our neighborhood and to the city of Racine, and to places like Haiti grows not from our desire to be charitable; rather, it flows from our conviction that we are one body.

I’m going to give you an assignment today. And that assignment is this: practice Ubuntu with somebody this week. Practice I am because you are with somebody! Maybe it’ll be with someone you know and maybe it’ll be a total stranger. Someone at work, a girl serving coffee, somebody on the street… Imagine that the two of you are part of a much larger body. See yourself reflected in the face of another, and then see what that reflection enables you to say, to do, and to believe. Amen.