Text: Mark 1:14-20
Several years ago, I had a conversation with Tom, as he was considering taking the position of Christian Education director of the church. I said to him that, while I find the job of Christian education to young children terribly important, I did not know how to do it. The problem was not that where I went to school we did not do that stuff, indeed we didn’t. The problem was not that I hadn’t read on what people where writing about teaching the faith to young children. It was something more fundamental.
Faith is not simply something that you have – and when you have it, that’s all there is to it – you have it. Faith is a much more dynamic response to God in each moment of our lives that stretch on as far as the mind’s eye can contemplate. For to be truly as we are to be requires we ask and answer of ourselves, on a continual basis, will I live in the way I know to be the way of love, or will I follow, right now, a different path?
That question can never be answered the same way for all time – which means that the teaching of stories as though they were something other than the struggles of people to answer these questions for themselves in their own day, is to miss the boat of faith.
Thankfully Tom did not say, “Well, I know how to teach the answers to these questions, just hire me.” Because I don’t think we would have hired him. But then again, I don’t think he would have found himself in the position of looking to be Christian Ed Director here if he thought he had all the answers or if he thought that teaching children about faith, the very faith that he claims as deeply important in his life, was simply about giving them stories to memorize and illustrate with arts and crafts.
Continue reading “May 29 — The Challenge of Christian Education”
Category: Sermon
May 15 – All that is Important to Humanity
I ask therefore that turning from all that is usually called religion you aim your attention only at these individual intimations and moods that you will find in all expressions and noble deeds of God-inspired persons. If you then discover nothing new and pertinent even in the particular, as I hope may occur despite your learning and your knowledge, if your narrow concept that is produced only by superficial observation does not expand and transform itself, if you could then still despise this bent of mind toward the eternal – if all this is important to humanity can still seem ludicrous to you even from this point of view, then I shall believe that your disdain of religion is in conformity with your nature and shall have nothing further to say to you. Only do not worry that I still might, in the end, resort after all to those common measures of demonstrating to you how necessary religion is for maintaining right and order in the world and for coming to the aid of the shortsightedness of human perspective and the narrow limits of human power with the reminder of an all-seeing and infinite power. Nor shall I say that religion would be a true friend and a saving support of morality, since its holy feelings and its brilliant prospects make the struggle with the self and the accomplishment of good very much easier for a weak humanity. — F. Schleiermacher, On Religion
We had a slow crowd here for the Ham and Bean Supper. I, like many of you, I suspect, felt somewhat depressed by that fact. I apologized to Pierro, the music director of the Mad River Chorale, after the concert that so few people attended the concert following the supper. He said something to me that I will not soon forget. He said, “Look, you’re up here Sunday after Sunday preaching the gospel, and after a week of rain, if Sunday morning dawns bright and clear, even the gospel is not going to get them here. What makes you think some esoteric music that I take an interest in can do what you can’t?”
Well, of course he’s right. But what is really striking is that for so long it has, and I think it continues, to bring people into sanctuaries, even on nice days.
But I think we must also be clear. The church is a struggling institution.
One statistic I read recently posits that in 10 years the US Church will claim numbers like the European church today does — .5% of the population attends church on a Sunday morning. I agree with Philip Clayton who quoted that statistic — “Jesus’ message will be consigned to the dustbins of history unless we, together, begin to show why and how it remains relevant to our day.”
I want to being with one metaphor and end with another, more hopeful one. The first metaphor comes from the great French composer, Claude Debussy, who when he was a young man, struggling to make ends meet writing music, made money on the side as a music critic. He was required to review the music of the great Richard Wagner who was widely acclaimed as a genius. Wagner’s music caused consternation early on, but by the time Debussy reviewed it, Wagner was an old man, but his music was all the rage. Debussy thought otherwise. “Wagner,” he wrote, “is the sunset which some have mistaken for a sunrise.”
Part of Pierro’s observation is true. The gospel has remarkable staying power. But we cannot pretend the occasional light is a sunrise. We must begin to show why and how it remains relevant today.
II.
When I graduated from divinity school and returned to my home church, several clergy people were present who had long since retired. They had retired at the height of the “God is dead” movement of the 60’s and 70’s. That movement was nothing new — nevertheless, some of these retired clergy were disturbed by the 60’s presentation of it and pressed me for information on how the professors were thinking about it. But the fact is that the word “God” has been through all sorts of ups and downs, and Nietzsche’s claim that “God is dead,” is nothing, in my opinion compared to the depths to which it is being dragged now, used to sanction economic injustices, wars, and violence against the poor. In some ways Christianity has been terribly effective — it has marshalled a mighty political machine in service to economic dominance and military might.if you see this as a problem, there are three logical paths optiond — 1) we can abandon the Way of Jesus. We can acknowledge that the word “God” is too fraught with unstable images. We can abandon these things and simply go to war over the ideological sense of injustice we might feel. This way is superficial and will not work in the long run.2) We can try to force Christianity back on to the Way of Jesus. Philip Clayton writes pointedly in response to statistics that suggest by 2020 US church attendance will rival that of today’s European church attendance — about .5% of the population. He says:
I used to think that the answer was a new theology. My emphasis on constructing a theology was similar to the protagonist in Field of Dreams: “if we build it, they will come [back].”
Let’s put it on the record, he continues, I was wrong. Christianity’s problem today is not theology.
If Clayton means by this that theology, as the language of the institutional church, will pull a sudden fast one, like Schleiermacher, in our reading today acknowledges has been done too often in the past, and force us back to the way of Jesus, I entirely agree. The language of Christianity has become entirely too easy to misuse. Perhaps we’re more accurate to say the language of religion, as Christianity is not alone in using religion to grab hold of power through state sponsored violence. Look at Judaism — In the name of a promise from God — the state, against many Jews who wish otherwise, occupies, oppresses and slaughters, on a regular basis, their neighbors, the Palestinians. Look to Islam too — some preach murder and suicide as a mark of Ins’ Allah, the will of God. Their ungodly noise is not stiffled by their friends and neighbors.
III.
Let me offer the third way — a way that reclaims all that is important to humanity, from religion, and moves forward — with another metaphor.On the day Osama bin Laden was killed, another muslim by the name of Omar Ahmad died of a heart attack in California. He was the mayor of San Carlos and universally beloved for his optimism and his power to lead which he did not do by force, but by inspiration and encouragement. One obituary said that people admired Omar “not because he was Muslim, but because being Muslim made him do admirable things” The obituary continues:
When we think of Muslim-America, we think of Omar. . . When we think of role models for our community, we think of Omar. He gave only what was best—and he gave it every day for everyone, regardless of color or religion. . .
But he was not bigger than life. Despite all his accomplishments, he was humble, grounded, full of conviction, congenial, and approachable. . . His spirit, energy, relentless curiosity, and fierce intellect could not be anchored. . .
Most people leave us behind. He left us moving forward.
I mention Omar Ahmad, because while Debussy’s metaphor, functions to illustrate the end, — Ahmad’s life is the metaphor we need on the positive side. If abandoning religion will not ultimately work, and inventing a new theology holds little promise — then the third option is to reclaim all that is important to humanity from the structures of institutional religion and move forward — not because we are Christian, but because being Christian leads us to engage the common good; to seek after our better angels.
People like Ahmad make us realize that all that is important to humanity is no longer tied up in churches or synagogues or mosques — and since these structures are so laden with Debussy’s sunset — something new needs to happen. And here’s where I struggle a lot with all of this. I do not know what that will look like.IV.But who cares? That matter will take care of itself if the language of God is returned to the people of God. That matter will take care of itself to the extent that we grow beyond thinking about religion as an external requirement making us to bow down before altars. That matter will take care of itself if we can, right now, grow beyond thinking it is the job of pastors and priests to minister and be good and obey, but instead the extraordinary gift and responsibility of all of us. That matter will take care of itself, if we can grow beyond the thinking that we have to get our theology right our own believing right, in order to belong to a community. That matter will take care of itself as we proclaim and live the highest ideals that we can articulate about humanity.
These ideas are not just limited to thinkers like Clayton in the 21st century or Schleiermacher in the 19th. They can be found in the bible too. Cast your nets where the fish are. Turn around, the kingdom of God is near and you can see it too. The first shall be last and the last first.
And these words from the Psalmist — “O God, establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands.”
That doesn’t mean just any work. It certainly doesn’t mean evil work. It means the work of the hands that move us forward — it means the kind of thinking, worshiping and living that moves us forward, together. Different people, different colors, different religions, different orientations, seeking the common good.
May it be said of us, that all that is important to humanity is worth more than our ideology, more than our theology, and more even than our institution. Amen.
These ideas are not just limited to thinkers like Clayton in the 21st century or Schleiermacher in the 19th. They can be found in the bible too. Cast your nets where the fish are. Turn around, the kingdom of God is near and you can see it too. The first shall be last and the last first.
And these words from the Psalmist — “O God, establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands.”
That doesn’t mean just any work. It certainly doesn’t mean evil work. It means the work of the hands that move us forward — it means the kind of thinking, worshiping and living that moves us forward, together. Different people, different colors, different religions, different orientations, seeking the common good.
May it be said of us, that all that is important to humanity is worth more than our ideology, more than our theology, and more even than our institution. Amen.
Living in the Mess, Hoping for Grace
John 20:19-31
Dietrich Bonhoeffer — “When a man takes guilt upon himself in responsibility, he imputes his guilt to himself and no one else. He answers for it . . . Before other men he is justified by dire necessity; before himself he is acquitted by his conscience, but before God he hopes only for grace.” – Ethics
“There is hardly anything that can make one happier than to feel that one counts for something with other people. What matters here is not numbers, but intensity. In the long run, human relationships are the most important thing in life; the modern ‘efficient’ man can do nothing about human relationships. God uses us in his dealings with others. Everything else is very close to hybris. Of course, one can cultivate human relationships all to consciously in an attempt to mean something to other people . . . ” — Letters and Papers from Prison
I.
I still remember BlackHawk Down. The images beamed back from half-way around the world of locals dancing with joy around the dead bodies of U.S. soldiers. We rightly recoiled in horror.
Last Monday, President Barak Obama announced that U. S. Special Forces troops located and killed Osama bin Laden, and there was partying in our streets. After all these years, I’m still not sure what to think about our actions in response to 9/11/01. Something had to be done. And we hope that what has been done will deter others from following in his footsteps. But I am troubled. And we knew this could not end, if it ever does, without some moral ambiguity.
I have had a few conversations with various of you this week about how disturbing the response by some has been to this particular death. We have seen images of people dancing in the streets. I heard an interview of a Port Authority Police officer, who lost so many on that day, expressing surprise if his son who lived in constant fear for his father’s life, were not out partying at ground zero.
While a highly emotional response is not surprising, nearly ten years after suffering the attacks of 2001, this man’s death is not an occasion for joy and delight.
I would argue that there are times when taking a human life is justifiable. There are times when ending one person’s life seems likely to prevent greater harm. But as Christians, we must never forget that taking another life is the “lesser of two evils.” Those of us who take part in such actions (whether we bear arms or pay for others to do so), must undertake them with profound thoughtfulness and deep humility. Before God, we may only hope for grace.
Continue reading “Living in the Mess, Hoping for Grace”
Finding a Middle Ground – J. Loewer
The following sermon was preached by Jeremy Loewer — a 10th grader who was confirmed on Sunday, May 1, 2011
Thank you Jeremy!
Finding a Middle Ground
When I asked Peter what God thinks of our past actions as a species, he replied with the question “Does God, Think at all?”
God is a topic that is seldom discussed in today’s modern world, perhaps because of the wide variety of opinions around his presence in our lives. Working with Cindy, Peter, and my fellow confirmands has helped me appreciate how God is present not always in the stereotype of a human being, but in the image of all living things. Perhaps God can not physically help us with our social and environmental challenges, but instead can offer understanding and enlightenment.
It is often unclear what humankind’s purpose is in life.
But if we use a wider perspective, our purpose suddenly becomes clear. We have positioned ourselves at the top of the food chain, so don’t we have the moral obligation to watch over the creatures below us? Instead, we choose to neglect these creatures, by constantly focusing on our personal well being.
Is it in our nature to be so selfish? I certainly don’t believe so. This nature is forced upon us. We feel we don’t have the power, the resources, or even the time to take care of the planet. So it begs the question, what are we good at?
We as a species have proved that we are incredibly dynamic beings. The possibility for further progress has been calling us for generations, because we have discovered that progress is what it means to be human. This quest of success has led us to create a world all our own, which offers more benefits then we could have imagined, but it is not ever perfected.
The quest for this perfection is something everybody seeks, but it is those who follow it that become true activists. Throughout humankind’s quest, we have often disregarded the process, having been too focused on the goal. This kind of behavior leads to a good product, while leaving quite a bit of footprints behind. My generation is enticed to enjoy that product, by being submerged in countless advertisements daily, but is also forced to deal with the footprints.
Because your generation has more political power over mine today. I feel it’s the responsibility of my generation to voice our concerns about these issues, and I believe it is your responsibility to help make them a reality for us. You cannot change what has been already done, but you can start making a change today. My goal in life is to be a part of cleaning up the footprints, because if we choose to ignore them like done previously, then we could be making a big mistake.
It comes down to the decision of personal values. You could choose to give up all of consumer culture, and respect the Earth wholesomely. Except this choice suggests throwing away all homo-sapien ideas to become primitive, which seems infinitely ignorant. After all, we need not go backwards. We must move forward to solve this problem.
On the other hand, you could fully enjoy the benefits of the consumer culture, and completely disregard the planet you call home. You would eventually destroy that planet, degrade the economy, and corrupt the social ties of globalization. The way our world is setup, doesn’t respect our natural resources and creatures; doesn’t respect those who slave away in third world countries for low wages, and most importantly, doesn’t respect YOU as a consumer, because obedience without understanding, is blindness. This option, however, isn’t a prophecy, this is today’s news.
Therefore, we stand at a precipice, and ignoring it would be inhuman. If we can find a middle ground between these two extremes, then we can move forward, without degrading quality of life, or degrading our planet. This middle ground is becoming more defined every day, and if you can be an activist for this change, I would argue that you will lead a better life.
If we don’t start to recognize what goes on to support our very way of existence, then we will continue to be trapped by its limitations, and harmful effects. I believe that God created us to take care of each other; and to take care of the world we live in—and I became confirmed today because I believe God will be there for us in this endeavor. We must start employing the ingenuity we use everyday towards the future, so that the future is something we can look forward to together.
Amen
Keeping Easter
I was driving home from Maine several years ago on Route 2. As you know it’s not easy going. And when it’s tourist season, as it was, it can be really tough,
especially if you are in a hurry, as I happened to be. I got behind a very large RV just this side of Lunenberg. The RV’s top speed was just exactly the speed limit, if not slightly more, on the downhill. He slowed to 25 mph going up the many hills on Route 2 between here and St. Johnsbury. Well, you know the drill. You finally get so tired of slowing down and speeding up, that you attempt to pass on a downhill that is sketchy at best. In order to do that you’re clearly going to have to break the speed limit.
I passed that RV, and it wasn’t 10 seconds after I got over into my lane that a Vermont State Trooper came around the corner, and clocked me going 65.
That was the second time I’ve been given a ticket, and the third time in my life I have been pulled over. I can remember each occasion. I suppose that’s the point of the whole ritual. The blue lights, the slow saunter of the officer up to the window, while he or she adjusts the hat on his or her head. There are no pleasantries — May I see your license and registration. The walk back to the cruiser and the long wait before you are delivered the news. To help you to remember to slow down, here’s a ticket for $75. Have a nice day.
I am generally a slow driver. Living in town can do that to you. But I still find myself in a hurry, whether behind the wheel of a car coming home after a long week away, or a computer chasing a reluctant sermon. The question today is not about driving. It’s about our back pains, and headaches and nervous breakdowns and burnout. Why do we do think that racing through life is the solution to our constant behindness?
The answer to this question is not factual. The answer to this question is not something we will discover in a laboratory or on a therapist’s couch. The answer has to do with the fact that we have been taught that the meaning to life’s most persistent questions is elusive, will never sit still for us while we are sitting still. We have been taught that the truest true is supernatural in origin and will apparently only come to those who strain to see beyond the horizon of this world. And Easter, isn’t that what it is all about? Perhaps we’ll catch a glimpse today?
In the next few minutes permit me to say why this way of thinking about God is so bad for us. And how the gospel can be so much simpler, so much freer.
II.
So, a few minutes on the problem. And then a few more on a better way.
Let me begin with another story. A church in Michigan held an art show in their sanctuary. It was a show designed to show-case the talents of its members and of artists in the community, talents not always identified in this culture as important ones for our collective welfare, but which are actually essential.
One artist submitted a sculpture of the bust of Ghandi. Some few days into the show, the pastor of the church discovered that someone had put graffiti on the sculpture which said, “Don’t you know that Ghandi is in hell?”
Ghandi is in hell? thought the pastor. Ghandi is in hell because he grew up in a hindu nation and like his compatriots embraced hinduism? Are the people who lived and died before the time of Christ all condemned by God because they did not know Jesus? How does any of us know anything about a time and place beyond our death? And why do some feel compelled to advertise to the world their certainty that God only enjoys and offers the benefit of God’s love to those who say they are a Christian? Or, even more narrowly, who profess to follow a certain “correct” path of Christianity?
I do not tell this story because I think this community thinks like the tagger of the Ghandi bust, proclaiming that God’s reward for a Hindu life well-lived is eternal punishment. It is an extreme example, however, of something we have all internalized — our liturgy expresses it, as does our hymnody, and some of our scripture too — that God, in order to be God, must function as a complete, total, and ultimate Being of power and might. A God who from his heaven ordains the wind and the rain, to say nothing of the thousands of daily decisions that inform our actions. Our petition and our right action might just get God to act on our behalf.
Easter, in this view, is proof of God’s omnipotence. Or, to put it in more personal terms, we show up for Easter worship, to catch a glimpse of God’s other worldly power — hoping that here the longing of my heart and soul for that elusive, tricky God will be met and I can rest.
There is plenty of support for this version of Christianity, a version that feels it must constantly be in search of this awesome God, but it is, I tell you, bad for your heart and bad for the church.
Let me talk now about the God of love who calls us to a calmer, albeit less pyrotechnic God. A God who loves without condition and with utter abandon, which conditionless and abandoment lie as the foundation for who we are as humans, as creatures of God.
III.
It was a year ago, last Easter, that I stood here for the first time after being out of the pulpit for over a month recovering from a freak illness. That recovery has been long and has forced me to slow down.
When people ask how I am doing, I usually tell them that I am doing well, but that I need to take a nap a few times a week in order to function. While this is a brand new experience for me, if it is a retired person with whom I am speaking, invariably they respond, “Ahh, isn’t that nice?!” It’s as though they’ve discovered an open secret, open because everyone knows it, secret because nobody knows it until they’ve let go, until they’ve lost something.
Easter will forever be very tangible reminder to me to stop, to take a breath, to exit the rat race and to prove to myself that the world doesn’t run because I’m in it.
Our religious ancestors had a name for this. They called it “keeping Sabbath.” And when the first Christians, those Christians who lived in the immediate aftermath of Jesus’ execution, found refuge from the storm of persecution in which they daily lived, by worshipping together in the upper room of a friend’s house, or in the catacombs in Rome, they weren’t just hiding out, they weren’t just worshipping on the run — they were keeping Sabbath. — except they called it Easter. It was like taking a nap in the middle of the rat-race. It was the medicine they needed to go on living in a world that wanted them dead, like Jesus. It was Easter that let them live freely, without obligation to the tyranny.
One of the hardest parts of those months of recovery was Sunday morning. At 9:50 Marty Brooks faithfully rings the two hundred year old steeple bell, calling all, far and wide, to worship. My house was quiet; the rest of the family had left for church.
Because our tradition does not teach the daily office of prayer, I was left to my own devices, but I felt like an Episcopalian colleague of mine who upon her retirement felt like an invalid too, confined to her house on Sunday morning, with only her prayer book as a guide. I couldn’t move off the couch for my morning worship on the porch, and I had no prayer book — instead I had a copy of Metaphysics and the Future of Theology — fine for me — but we each found in the silence something welcome and healing.
My Episcopalian colleague writes of this healing that “Sitting there on my porch that first Sabbath morning, I understood what Native Americans mean when they speak of “medicine.” In the strictest sense, they are speaking of how a little yellow root can help with indigestion or a tea brewed with chamomile can help you sleep. In the broader sense they are speaking of the curative power of creation. Sitting there in the healing presence of the mountains, the waters, the birds, and the beasts, I could not recall why I had so often neglected this medicine, though it was lying all around me.”
She concludes: “As I rounded the corner on my first front porch sabbath with the congregation of creation, I framed an apology to all the people who had ever told me they were not in church the previous Sunday because the weather had been so nice.”
We pastors do that. At least until an Easter happens and we can let go of the illusion that grace lies around the next corner, if only we would all suck it up and not shirk our responsibilities to keep things running.
IV.
The practise of keeping Sabbath hails back many thousands of years. Jesus’ teachers would have said, “Keep the Sabbath and you will fulfill all of the law. Stop one day out of the week and rest and you will know what it means to be created in the image of God, who rested on the seventh day, not from weariness, we note from the text, but from sheer delight, from complete freedom.”
Surely one of the things that the unnamed women in this morning’s Easter story must have reflected upon when the text says that they “recalled what he had said,” was just this — the promise of God is for all who rest in God. To rest in God is to subject yourself to no other person or agenda or fear. To rest in God is to be free.
Let us not strain after Easter like a gnat. Let’s keep it instead, and keeping it, be surprised to see God in all things, in each other’s faces, in snow in April, under a rock in your garden. Let’s keep Easter, and keeping it, be free to let go and be free.
Happy Easter!