Category: Sermon

Oct 21 – How to Vote

Mark 10:35-45
And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What do you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand, and one at your left, in glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” And they said to him, “We are able.” And Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink and the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared. And when the ten heard it, they began to be indignant at James and John. And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be slave of all. For the Son of man also came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

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James Madison

Excerpt from the Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison
The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have in truth been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the American Constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired . . . [Nevertheless,] Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, . . . that our governments are too unstable; that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties; and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice, and the rights of the minor party; but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. . . . These [distresses to our rights] must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administration.
By faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interest of the community.

I.
To me, this is one of the most fascinating conversations in the federalist papers. James Madison, who was the author of the first amendment protecting religious freedom through disestablishmentarianism, and a one time seminary student at Princeton University, provides, what I call, a public theologians’ analysis of the problem. He does not use explicitly Christian language – he cannot, writing under the pen name publius – but he does provide, in this tenth essay, a philosophical argument for enshrining in the rule of law, something we might call the rule of Christ. His thinking is based on the clear evidence that divisions, what he calls factions, are “sown into the very nature of man.”

What he means by this is much what St. Paul means by sin – it is the human condition to somehow fall for that which is destructive and to fail to rise up, consistently to that which is constructive. If we understand this, we only understand it because our neighbors also have a claim upon us. When we regard this claim, we see it as a claim to the right to be included in the conversation. It is the claim that truth is not limited to human constructs, but is identifiable through human reasoning.

Madison argues that when factions destroy the voice of the minority, the strength of the republic is threatened.

Most dangerous, writes Madison, is when the citizen’s voice speaks through money. A majority’s voice thus driven, will do what it can to protect this most powerful motivating factor to quiet the other voices in the conversation.

Madison argues, in our reading today, that any faction which is adverse to the rights of other citizens or the common good, should be balanced. Madison never argued that the distribution of property should be entirely equal, only that the inequalities should not eliminate the conversation about the common good.

Madison thinks that the system of government as it is laid forth the Constitution, best minimizes the problems which tossed the democracies of Greece and Italy.

We are familiar with his analysis. A representative system where a large number of people voting for a small group would dilute some of the passions of factionalism. A large pool of voting citizens would issue smart, competent officials and the great variety of self-interests in the public would lead to turn-over and would prevent a particular party from permanent rule.

We see all of this operating more or less successfully, in our modern democratic elections.

II.
I am currently reading a book about the depressed situation of our economy. It is, as you know only inching toward health. Stiglitz, the author of this book maintains that one of the reasons it is failing to recover is the presence of an enormous inequality in the distribution of wealth. This inequality, he argues was created through the self-interest of elected officials who are then able to pass legislation to regulate the banking and markets in ways favorable to their position.

Madison seemed aware of this looming problem. And he labels it the most serious problem of factionalism. Madison’s solution, curiously, questions the self-interested assumption behind “the one-person, one-vote” pillar of our democracy. Madison invites us in the tenth essay, to formulate our vote based on the interest of a common good.

What I want to suggest in the remainder of this sermon is to invite you to consider a different kind of self-interest, and a different kind of faction.

III.
In our brief snippet from the Federalist Papers this morning, Madison argues that a faction is, by definition a group united by a passion, say the passion of making money by having money, which is adverse to the rights of other citizens. But he invites us to consider an alternative – the very alternative that Jesus calls his followers to adopt.

When James and John ask to be placed at Jesus’ left and right hand, the operate out of the kind of self-interest that we think of when we think of one-person, one-vote. They compete with other disciples for the privilege.

Jesus tells the brothers that if they are able to stick with him in the trails he is to face and all that goes with his baptism, yes, they can be his companions. But, Jesus says, it isn’t his call to determine whether their self interest will win out over the self interest of the other disciples who might like such a position. That, he says, is not his call to make.

And then Jesus explains to all of his disciples what he means: Indeed, earthly rulers, ie., elected officials can and will govern in ways that serve their own self-interest as rulers or, as in our case, money-makers.

Jesus then says: “But it is not so among you, for whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be the slave of all.”

That would seem to apply, in our political context, to Christians running for public office: that if they are truly followers of Jesus, they must not exercise their political leadership either on the basis of their own self interest or on the self interest of particular ind
ividuals and factions of individuals. No, as Christians, they must exercise their political leadership so all are served. They are to be the “slave of all,” as St. Paul once put it.

Clear enough. That might be the primary question Christian voters ask of political candidates who claim to be Christians.

Is, however, this different rule applicable only to Christian candidates for political office and Christian political leaders? Or does it also apply as well to Christian voters?

Put another way: if, in a democratic republic, “we the people” are to be the “rulers,” then doesn’t it follow that the Christian voter must not vote on the basis of her or his self interest, or in a way that benefits the “faction” of Christians?

Doesn’t it follow that the Christian voter is under obligation to vote for the self interest of others, not herself or himself, but on the basis of providing for those without the power of the majority, or the power of wealth, or the power of influence? Doesn’t it follow that, if we are to be the slaves of all, we must resurrect the principle of the “common good” which Madison strove also to resurrect?

Isn’t the Christian voter to be, in a democratic republic, the exception to the rule of pure self interest in politics?

The Apostle Paul seems to have understood this when he wrote the following to the Christians in Philippi: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” (2: 1–4)

IV.
Story of Exceptional Teachers of the year. . . 

The head of the teachers union felt it somehow her right to call the gathered to vote with the union. Certainly it would have been within her Constitutional right, even if not all of the teachers were union teachers.

Not, however, for Constitutional reasons, do clergy not tell their congregations how to vote. The prohibition on non-profit religious organizations from direct, partisan political activity became part of the US Tax code in 1954 when it was introduced and passed into legislation without any testimony from non-prfits.

Nevertheless, it does make good sense. As Thomas Jefferson was fond of pointing out – the clergy held considerable influence, and some of it not so good. He wrote: “History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.”

Less, cynically, Jefferson argued that the highest function of a religious institution would be fulfilled by by its insistence that the truth which it teaches has nothing to fear from free and open debate. He wrote in a letter to John Adams, “The law for religious freedom… [has] put down the aristocracy of the clergy and restored to the citizen the freedom of the mind.”

When Paul wrote that we should have the interest of others at heart, or that we should “take on the mind of Christ,” he was not arguing against freedom of the mind – he was arguing for an expansion of the mind – suggesting that indeed, our highest calling, was free and fair debate around the issues that concern, not only our own short-term self interest, but the long-term question of the good for all.

The question from me, as a member of Jefferson’s somewhat reviled priestly class is not how you will vote, but how will we explore the meaning of Madison’s hoped for resurrection of the common good? To drink the cup Jesus drinks and to be baptized with his baptism is no easy path and affords no easy solutions.

Let us be an exception to the rule of pure self interest in politics – let us reason with one another and explore how our self-interests may be served or changed by the call to engage in a dialogue about the common good. Amen.

End of Religion

Texts:
So Philip ran up to [the Ethiopian eunuch in the chariot] and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” He replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.” The eunuch asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. – Acts 8:30-35
Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold

Sea of Faith

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
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One quality that makes a good poem a good poem is that it can mean different things to different people at different times. Or to put it another way, people can argue over it!
Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” is one such poem.
Some find it dark and hopeless. The eternal note of sadness, the melancholy retreat of the Sea of Faith and the naked shingles of the world announce the author’s position – it’s not worth it anymore.
Others read the poem differently and find it beautiful and liberating.
Today – I find myself in the latter camp.
The conflict, which I vaguely remember from my Brit Lit I class back in college, has to do with the difficulty of understanding the openings lines of the poem which describe a calm sea and an inviting air with much of the rest of the poem which is less settled. And even if you recognize that the sea being described in the middle stanzas is the sea of yesterday, that Arnold is contrasting two different times and states of the sea of faith, he never seems to return to any of the first lines’ hopefulness. Indeed the last line of his poem is one of the more famous lines in British Literature – “Where ignorant armies clash by night.” To what does this refer, we might ask, echoing the confusion of the Ethiopian eunuch of our reading from Acts.
For me the poem holds forth a conversation about the end of religion – not in the Nietzschean sense of meaninglessness — but in the sense that there is no longer a realm of the supernatural where meaning is generated and stored and retrieved. The ignorant armies that clash by night then refers to the long struggle against the two-world theory of religion which Emile Durkheim made famous: “The division of the world into two domains, the one containing all that is sacred, the other all that is profane, is the distinctive trait of religious thought.”
Durkheim points out that sacred things are very diverse: they may include spirit-beings, beliefs, times, persons, rituals, buildings, spaces, amulets, traditions and institutions. The most general characteristic of the sacred is that it is profoundly Other: so different that it is only glimpsed by mere mortals – so Other that we have taken to referring to it as all-powerful. Religious transformation is an experience of ascension, if only for a brief period of time, and symbolized in ancient religious texts by experiences of mountain top chats with God, of fire touching one’s lips, of walking through the sea, of death and rebirth. The two-realm theory of God and its accompanying notion of God’s omnipotence leads directly to the orthodox view of Jesus – the one Philip presumably told the eunuch – God had from the beginning ordained one to come and die for us – the only possible offering that could be made to an all-powerful God in repayment for our destructive ways.
Arnold sees the retreat of the sea of faith, not as the loss of what is important, but as the inevitable loss of a certain kind of faith – the kind of faith that wants to take comfort in the notion of an omnipotent God, a God distant, but in control. The God in whom we can bury our nakedness and therefore, also our troubles and find solace.
If the poem were only that, it would be uninteresting, but Arnold sees where the end of religion is also the beginning of the glimmer of the sacred light in the ordinary. It can be real possibility of hope for a world in which the sacred has simply disappeared. But it is precisely this disappearance, like the disappearance of a crutch, that lets love be true. To be true-to-love, we must experience the land before us – so various, so beautiful, so new, but also so difficult and full of tragedy and sorrow.
Love and moral-action-in the-world are connected this way.
Arnold’s aim and golden vision is love. Not the cozy love that suggests that all we need to do is “believe,” and our issues will take care of themselves – that position has lead to the not-intractable problems in the middles east, that position has led to the not intractable problems of global environmental destruction – the list could go on. By assuming that because our faith tradition said that, for example Jerusalem should be won, or that nature should be dominated and extracted, we can ignore the results of these actions and count on a blessed reward in some other world, we have virtually guaranteed it – we have failed to see in the night because we have failed to grasp the light of love.
I want us to think about “Dover Beach” this morning because it describes the 21st century religious condition – the sacred has disappeared and no longer do 1/3 of young adults put any credence in a two-world theory, or find value in ritual that continues to be described as God’s deigning to come down to us for the moment, or prayer understood as miracle generating.
II.
So, when the latest poll from the Pew Forum on Religion and the Public was released last week, I was not at all surprised to find that not only has the trend of church decline since the 1970’s continued, it has accelerated in the last decade. In a nutshell, that study, which is one of the most widely respected studies on religion and public life in America, found that 1/5 of adults do not identify with any religion. More significantly, the youngest cohort – those in their 20’s and 30’s 1 of every three self-identifies as not religious. Many of those indicate they have no desire to be spiritual or to be in any way, shape or form connected with religious institutions.
I don’t believe this necessarily bodes poorly for the church. It bodes poorly for a church which continues to try to do theology in the way of Philip from our reading today, who when asked by the eunuch to explain the scriptures did so by uncritically interpreting the whole of Jewish scriptures as prefiguring Jesus. I’m not saying the Philip is to be blamed for what he did. I’m saying that we (the church) are to be blamed for following his approach. We have treated the our scriptural traditions with rough shod impunity, finding in them what we will to support our fear of being left naked on the cold shingles of the world – to give us comfort in our dying days. And, we have refused, in our reading of the scriptures to hear Jesus’ call to take the blinders from our eyes and see that our neighbors are the poor, Jesus call to work for fairness in our economies, Jesus’ call to open our eyes to the kingdom of heaven in our midst and to sacralize all of our work and all of our living, so that no longer may we abuse the environment, no longer may we ignore the growing chasm between those of us who are rich and the poor.
III.
Andrew Furlong is a defrocked Episcopal priest in the United Kingdom. Actually, he was brought before the church on a heresy trial, after refusing to recant his views about the nature of Jesus. That trial was the culmination of years of struggle, trying to be true-to-love and honest with himself and his church about what that love meant. As long as he refused to believe that Jesus was God and man, both natures in one, who was offered as a sacrifice for our sins, the church would not stop hounding him. Three days before his trial, he resigned his post.
He writes about that moment his his book, Tried for Heresy: a 21st Century Journey of Faith:

I consider that religious faith finds its most appropriate home, and only authentic home in a pluralist setting characterized by metaphor and symbolism, diversity and debate, tolerance and respect, innovative thinking and provisionality, and critiquing and acknowledgement of mistaken or outdated interpretations. In my view the Christian world is a world embraced by one great mysterious love. I look on people, who claim for themselves a Christian identity, as both struggling to, and as also resisting, living out their response to that ultimately faithful mystery which I call “God.” My vision of the church, at its best, is not of a people at enmity with each other because of the different ways in which they express their beliefs, . . . but a vision of a people struggling together in a common task.

That task, I believe, and try to call you and me to engaging each week, is to live a “live journey of faith” – that is a journey marked by conversation and diversity, by tolerance and respect, and by a sense that in all of that lies the mystery of God’s utterly unearned gift of love. Jesus asks – what will you do? The way of Philip is dead. Chose instead the way of love – and be given, by the one great source of love, the courage to walk a new path, to make a whole life – to live not in enmity with with other’s different conversations, but to struggle together in our common task for the common good.

2012 Church Canoe Trip

On Tuesday morning, August 14, 13 intrepid adventurers with canoes on top and paddles in the trunk headed west for a few days on the beautiful waters of upstate New York.  
After a long drive and a short wait at the launch, we were off!  Our first night was spent on a large island in Floodwood Pond.  We set up camp and enjoyed a dinner of steak and potatoes cooked over the campfire.  Then we paddled around the island in the quiet late evening dusk, watching the birds, and enjoying the quiet beauty of the place.
Day two was a longish one: about eight miles of paddling and two portages (or as they say in the Adirondaks, “carries”.)  The weather forecast on departure called for rain all day interspersed with thunderstorms.  We were ready for the worst.  We did get some rain, off and on in the morning.  By our second carry, the sun was out and the morning’s grey burned off.
We camped again on an island in Follensbee Clear Pond.  And we enjoyed a fantastic sunset and a small vespers service around the campfire before trundling off to bed — weary from a long day.
As it turns out, I was more weary than I thought and ended up having an Addisonian Crisis in the middle of the night.  Thanks to prompt action by my tent mate, Ben Smith, I was ok — though we all decided it best to get me to a hospital.  I can’t thank everyone enough for their care and the way everything unfolded that night.
It was disappointing to have to end the trip early. That said, we had a really good time and look forward to a potluck supper at the home of Dennis and Laurel Scannell’s to look at pictures and relive the adventure.

Ben and Suzanna Smith

Evening on Follensbee Clear Pond

Singing! Singing! Singing!

Wynne and Taite, enjoying the view!

The UCC

A UCC pastor from Massachusetts recently wrote an article in honor of the 55th anniversary of the denomination.  I was struck by her opening observation that despite 55 years of good work, we are nevertheless largely unknown.
“If asked to identify a UCC church, most people in our area simply look perplexed. A few may have seen signs with the UCC name, but most have no real knowledge of what the UCC is all about.”
Her urban, Massachusetts world and ours are not so different. Part of our conversation today, here, is about advertising, getting the word out. We are a remarkable denomination with a remarkable history; we are “doing church” differently, but for all many folk know, we’re a church more concerned with creeds than current events, more concerned with church order than the common good, more concerned with right thinking than with broad thinking.
I.
The UCC is one of the newest denominations in the United States, formed by the joining together of four different denominations in 1957. But even that basic fact has a story that is representative of who we are today. The Congregational Church was one of the largest of the four denominations. In many towns, especially across New England, it was the church to which you had to belong, partly because if you wanted to have a role in community decision making, or if you wanted to vote, you needed to be Congregational.
Our status was reflected by our property – large, white and located in the center of town on a beautiful green.
It almost goes without saying, given our wealth and status, that a union was not easily accomplished.  It took many years of intense conversation leading up to our birthdate in 1957, and it took many years of sometimes acrimonious debate after that birthdate for the UCC to reach some sense of security in our formation because the union was not only a union of a “powerful church” with smaller, much less powerful churches, and so a handing over of some power, but also a blending of traditions that are as different as catholicism is from protestantism.
The result of that decades long struggle between the four denominations was a union that defies easy description; but one that embraces difference of opinion and appreciates a central theme of the gospel – a critique of power and a willingness to abide Jesus’ insight that the first are, by and large, actually last, and that the last shall be first.
II.
This saying, from our reading of the 4th chapter of the Gospel of Thomas is classic Jesus: in one short, memorable phrase, he turns everything upside down.  This saying is also found in the Gospel of Matthew (20:16). In Matthew the saying follows the story of the vineyard workers who start work at different times during the day, agreeing only to a fair wage.  At the end of the day the landowner pays them all the same liveable wage, no matter their start time. The landowner rebuts his challengers, with the line, the last shall be first and the first last.  Many feel that the story and the saying don’t fit well together.  I agree. It is quite likely that the story and the saying were not originally, in Jesus’s telling, put together.  Perhaps Matthew thought he would make a rather nonmemorable story more memorable by appending this little saying as recorded by Thomas.  No matter, both saying and story straightforwardly and significantly challenge the social script — that unconsciously followed path through life that is set by the social order of which we are a part.
If you were to ask me what I thought the common thread running through all of Jesus’ sayings and stories was, I might suggest it was that Jesus offered a critique of the common assumptions about how people ought to order their lives. The critique argues that bigger is not better; that the top is the bottom and the bottom offers more than you expect, that to gain your life, you have to lose it first, that richer is poorer and that poorer is richer.
This critique is based on Jesus’ awareness that the world is ours, not God’s. We take our cues from the world which will provide all the answers we need to our most pressing questions about living. Who am I? What will I do with my life? What should I value most? Whom should I love? Our social world (humanly created) can easily lay out the script for our existence and provide us with an identity and a purpose. And in fact, aims to provide a role for us. In the social setting, in our culture, we know our lines; we know where we should stand, and with whom and where not to stand and with whom we should not associate.
The reason Jesus held the imaginations of so many for so long, is that he had an important insight into this situation.  He realized that the world provides a script for us to blindly follow.  He realized that this script is not a necessary one — that we can, and usually should, break from it.  Jesus realized that the script by which most of us run our lives is invented and because it’s merely human, leaves us wanting.
When the powerful congregationalists (our forebears) agreed to join forces with the German Evangelical and Reformed churches and various smaller associations known as the Christian Connection (which had their origins in Lyndon, Vermont), we were attempting to re-imagine the script.  Arguing in word and deed that the acquisition of power and autonomy (that favorite congregational word) is not what we are about — but that living in covenant and unity is absolutely what its about.
It is therefore not too surprising to learn, if you didn’t know it already, that the UCC has always been among the first to call for actions on issues of inclusivity and justice. This is an important part of our heritage, and defines our social position not as liberal or conservative, but as bearing witness to the insight of Jesus that the last shall be first.
We were the first to ordain an African-American pastor, way back in 1785; the first woman in 1853; the first openly gay person in 1972; and first to affirm same-gender marriage equality in 2005 – all instances of challenging the script and of allowing the last the first spot.
III.
One of the several interesting and well crafted mottoes of the UCC is that “our faith is 2000 years old, but our thinking is not.” It is precisely this wonderful combination of tradition and progressive thinking makes the United Church of Christ important in today’s highly scripted world and such a bearer of hope for so many.
What this means, aside from the witness to the very real possibility that the script handed you is not necessarily your lot, is that we take seriously the notion that truth is not predefined, but arrived at in conversation – conversation with good minded folk, who take seriously the notion that truth has nothing to fear from conversation.
Within our church, there are a wide range of beliefs, and there is room for them all in honest conversation.
If there is one thing that disturbs me about the current state of the United Church of Christ, it is its timidity in arguing truth. We are more and more likely to say that within the UCC there are a wide range of beliefs and that there is room for them all, without the important addition that there is room for them all in honest conversation. For the argument must be that we are not in fact an “anything-goes-church.” To accept the insight of Jesus about a script is to accept the requirement that evaluate one script, the script of the world’s with any other script we might freely choose.
We say that God is still speaking, not because we think that we should not be speaking, but precisely because the conversation is not locked up in some ancient books we call scripture, but continues in the good faith efforts of the people of God who want to communicate something about their experience of God’s hand in challenging the stifling script of their lives.
IV.
The fact that not all people in our church or our denomination agree on all aspects of faith or tradition, or have the same experience of God.  That’s OK — in fact, that’s essential. We do not love and respect each other because we are the same, but precisely because we have differences.
There are too few places in today’s society that allow a safe space to speak the truth in love, to disagree, and still come together in worship, mission and fellowship.
Given this valuable role the UCC has to play in our society, I want to make a proposal.
One can only, authentically speak about the meaning of one’s chosen script, from that script.  My script is not big enough and the conversation by which truth is discerned not present.  So, I would like to honor the grand tradition we have of welcoming different, considered voices to the table by creating a process whereby you, if or when you feel moved, have the opportunity to lead worship with me.
Many congregations I’ve been a part of, have had lay leaders.  I propose something more significant than that.  I am hoping that together we might create a worship experience that engages your conversation with our tradition, using your script.
This proposal has the merit of addressing several of the issues facing our church:

  • The first is that it invites direct involvement with our denomination and church.  If the UCC is to survive — this involvement is critical. It is our denomination.
  • Second it has the merit of letting others on our pews learn more about our pew mates.  We should be more than names to each other. Such knowledge is vital for a congregation that wants to grow.
  • Third the proposal might hook you into worship in a new way, by reason of simply having been involved in its planning and execution. Investment and commitment is active.
  • And finally, of course, it allows for more viewpoints, which is critical to a church that believes that God is still speaking.

Like music, you have gifts to share, and we have enshrined that responsibility to share them in community with our motto, my favorite: “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.”

Salvation

You may have noticed that for a few Sundays now I’ve changed the title of the “Sermon” to “Sacrament of Word.”  The reason for that change has to do with being clear about what it is I do here at this time.

What I am doing, at least for now is a sermon in the old definition of the delivery of a exposition or exhortation.  But I also aim to be sacramental.  In fact, I don’t aim to be “sermonic” at all — but, by speaking, to open up your own yearnings to a deeper self-awareness, or to a deeper self-examination.  My hope in every “sermon” that I preach is that you might catch a glimpse of something holy — not because I am, but because here, as no where else, these matters are opened probed.  That’s what I mean by Sacrament of Word.  Something happens within your space that I could not have predicted, and perhaps you could not have either. And that something, at least for the moment had you saying “aha”.

I mention this today because I want to talk about “salvation.”  Not the kind of salvation we’re used to hearing about — the kind that invites you to paradise on the one hand but squeezes your shoes on the other in order vto keep you inline.  I want to talk about salvation as that which names your deepest yearning.  I’m not going to name that for you — that’s your work.  The whole point of  a sermon is to experience something, even fleeting, of an awareness of our deepest yearning being met by God — of being sacramental.

II.

Zacchaeus is an interesting character for us to consider as we do this work.

One the one hand, Zacchaeus’ name in Hebrew means “pure” or “righteous,” — yet his name in public was anything but.  Perhaps Z, before we do anything else at all with him or his story opens up territory that is fertile for a sacramental encounter.  It is impossible to yearn for something that is entirely absent from our experience. Z yearns for something deeper, something universally freeing — because to be human at all is to know something of purity and righteousness — capable of sacrament.

It is necessary to say more about Z’s public figure in order to make this punchline of this story all the more pointed.

III.

Zacchaeus belonged to a despised group of Jewish citizens who were employed by the Romans to collect taxes from their own people, and who were notorious for extortion, greed and deceit. He was, in fact, a “chief tax collector,” one who employed tax collectors under him to collect revenues throughout his district.  The position brought him great wealth, but it had also cost him the respect and affection of his neighbors. He was despised by his fellow Jews.

New Testament scholar Fred Craddock says that Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector is entangled in a:

corrupt system [where] the loftier one’s position, the greater one’s complicity in that system.  While nothing of the private life of Zacchaeus is revealed in the story, this much we know on principle: no one can be privately righteous while participating in and profiting from a program that robs and crushes other persons.

Zacchaeus was short, wealthy and hated.  But he was also human — and as human experienced the same yearnings that all of us have had at one point or another for something deeper, something more universally profound, than the common run of life. And having heard that Jesus was coming to town, he desired to see him.  Why?

Somewhere, somehow, Z had run into some people who had talked about their experiences with Jesus that made him to think that Jesus might treat him differently . . . that led him to believe that Jesus was himself in touch with the story of grace for which he so fervently longed . . . that by dining with him, perhaps that longing might be met . . . that Jesus might recognize Zacchaeus as a person capable of love, and not a despicable tax collector just out to make a dinar. Perhaps Jesus would recognize his eponymous purity and righteousness and set him free.

It is certainly a fascinating encounter.  Jesus, walking along, mobbed by townspeople, suddenly stops and looks up into this tree where the wealthy little citizen has positioned himself.  Did Jesus know he would find Zacchaeus in the tree that day?  How did he know to call him by name?  Had he heard of him?  Was he aware of his occupation and reputation?  Had others in the crowd already spotted the tax collector in the tree and begun to hiss?

Either way, Jesus calls out to him, saying, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately.  I must stay at your house today.”  The Greek word is translated “immediately,” or “make haste” or “hurry” – this is an urgent request.  He is not content to make an appointment for later.  Now is the time.

The move from death to life, the need to meet the yearning for depth and integrity, is not something that is accomplished once and then hung up like a trophy on the wall. It is like a rain shower in the desert. To put off the moment is to miss the whole point. Z scrambles down from his perch for a divine, sacramental, encounter.

IV.

The word salvation, in our bible, takes its cue from our passage today from Exodus.  In the bible, salvation is not about what the popular imagination today represents it to be — it is not about afterlife, it is not about who’s in and who’s out, it’s not about following rules or being moral — it is about release from bondage.

There are of course all types of bondage — in Egypt, the issues were economic, political and religious.  The Hebrew people were not only slaves, and so limited in their economic and political freedom, they were also beaten for any attempt to worship God and forced to worship the Pharaoh.

The moment of our reading is the moment in Israel’s history that defines their understanding of God’s activity on their behalf — it is rescue from trouble — not little trouble — but the kind of trouble that can define you — the kind of trouble that lead Zacchaeus to say about himself:  “I am despised and worthless”  and to ask: “what would he have to do with me?”

Later, during the Babylonian exile, salvation became the naming of God’s continued presence and so of return from exile.  And in the psalms David uses the word to describe his sense of God’s rescue from peril, which I suppose as a young shepherd and an heir apparent to the throne and eventual king, a condition with which he was too well familiar.

In the New Testament, Salvation took similar forms — Salvation was the movement from death to new life.  The key idea here being that almost enigmatic  phrase of Jesus’ “Let the dead bury the dead.”  Meaning that as dead, you have two options — you can either carry on as dead or you can move past it.  Jesus’s story is replete with instances of movement from death to life, from blindness to seeing, from infirmity to wellness.  And just as in his “let the dead burying the dead” does not obviously speak of the literally dead, but of the living breathing dead, so these stories should be understand as that movement, in so many different ways, for so many different people from a conditions, of death to life.

 V.

With all of this said — perhaps it seems that at least one part of the cultural definition of salvation is correct — that it is a personal thing — that it is only about God and me.

But the broad sense of the word salvation is political — political in the classic sense of the word meaning the forum in which the question “What should the humanly created world look like?”  “How shall we work together to bring a good vision of human life to fruition.”   The question has become divisive of late because people have different ideas about that vision and those ideas have become off-limits to real conversation and because we live in such a complex society that ideas have policy implications which have very complicated ramifications.

I say all of this because I want to be clear — there is a difference between the idea of salvation as the representation of what a humanly created world should look like and how that vision can implemented in the real world.

Differences, for example over the recently upheld Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act, are real and some of those differences based on serious policy complications.  And if, in fact, those differences are such that it creates a new underclass, or that it does nothing to help those of our community who find their lives in the limbo because a basic human right, healthcare, is denied them, then these differences should lead to a revised law.

A study published last week by the Kaiser Foundation, however, finds that the adult uninsured population of southern states would be cut in half.

Overall, the Medicaid expansion is expected to result in a decrease in the number of uninsured of 11.2 million people, of 45 percent of the uninsured adults below 133 percent of poverty. States with low coverage levels and higher uninsured rates will see larger reductions(Alabama 53.2 percent and Texas 49.4). […](Source).

Why did Jesus invite himself to dinner in Zacchaeus’ home?
It can’t be simply that he was hungry.  And it can’t simply be that Zacchaeus was the only outcast in the crowd.  Jesus announces that “Salvation has come to this house” when his inner yearning to transcend the common run of his life and move from death to life is met with a fresh commitment to transcend the injustices of the system upon which his livelihood depends.  Zacchaeus’ deepest yearning is not separate from his job — but to deal in it, honestly with people, to do his part to move the system from injustice to justice.  That Jesus names salvation.
I believe that our deepest yearning to be free of the common run of life can only be met as we seek not only for our own freedom, but for the freedom of others.
Amen.