Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“The Responsibility of Friends”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon

Sunday, May 13, 2012

John 15:9-17

I want so say a little something that’s long overdue.  This disrespect to women has got to be through.  To all the mothers and the sisters and the wives and friends, I want to offer my love and respect to the end.  That’s a little love from Adam Yauch, better known as MCA of the hip hop group the Beastie Boys.  He died last Friday from cancer.  He was only 47 years old.

I love the Beasties.  I started listening to the Beastie Boys when I was in the 7^th grade.  That was right after they hit it big with Licensed to Ill.  It was one of the first cassette tapes I ever bought (Remember cassette tapes?).  One of the biggest hits on Licensed to Ill was a silly little song called “Girls.”  “Girls” is one of the most sexist songs ever.  It’s so demeaning toward women I dare not cite even one line from it at this pulpit.  But it was so much fun to sing when I was in middle school.  My friends and I, we sang “Girls” all the time.  Now, I would imagine that if Pancho or Alex or Jonathan or Daniel or Jeremy or Spencer sang “Girls” in this place, they’d get glares, they’d get a talkin’ to, and maybe even a slap in the mouth.  And that’s just from Rhoda.  I don’t even want to think about what Judy would do to them.

But Adam Yauch and the Beastie Boys recorded that song, “Girls,” as a parody of sexist stereotyping of women.  It was supposed to be a big joke, but that big joke made them superstars.  So, about ten years later, when their superstardom had lifted them to an iconic status, the Beastie Boys recorded another album called Ill Communication. And the first song on that album, “Sure Shot,” has MCA rapping: “I want so say a little something that’s long overdue.  This disrespect to women has got to be through.  To all the mothers and the sisters and the wives and friends, I want to offer my love and respect to the end.”  A little Mother’s Day message if you will from Adam Yauch, MCA.  May he rest in peace.

From what I’ve read about Adam Yauch—his principles, his morals, his virtues—I’m certain that he meant what he said with those apologetic lyrics.  I’m certain that’s how he truly felt.  But I’ve always thought that maybe he wrote and recorded those lyrics because he felt a responsibility to do it.  He was treating his iconic status as a hip hop artist with great responsibility.

Stan Lee is the creator of Spider-Man and Marvel Comics.  And that movie that’s smashing the box office these days, The Avengers?  That’s Stan Lee’s brainchild, too.  One of my favorite seminary professors, Russell Dalton, has a book that came out last year called Marvelous Myths: Marvel Superheroes and Everyday Faith.  And Stan Lee granted Dalton an interview for the book.  One of the first things they talk about is the boy behind Spider-Man’s mask, Peter Parker.

Dalton says, “[Peter Parker] had this sense that ‘with great power comes great responsibility.’  So even though he wanted to quit, it was that sense of responsibility that kept him going.  Do you have any thoughts on that, Peter’s motivation as responsibility?”

And Stan Lee says, “I’ve often thought, what would make a superhero…risk their life day after day, fighting bad guys, putting their life on the line all the time?  It would have to be a very compelling reason.  So, in Peter Parker’s case, it was the feeling that he had the responsibility to do this…He became very much aware that, when having any sort of an ability, you are almost compelled, you have to use it, you have to be responsible, because you have that talent, that ability, that superpower if you will.  And with that power comes the attendant responsibility.”

With great power comes the attendant responsibility.  Sounds like Adam Yauch understood that.  Stan Lee understood that when he created Spider-Man.  Do we, as Christians, understand that?  We’re not superheroes, but by claiming the name Christian and taking on a life of discipleship, a life of following Christ, we take on some new responsibility.  So, do we as Christians understand that with a life of discipleship comes the attendant responsibility?  Well, let’s back up and ask another question to put this in perspective: What is our responsibility as Christians?  To what are we responsible?

Ask the congregation

Well, we are supposed to feed the hungry.  We are supposed to help the poor.  We are supposed to evangelize and spread the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  We are supposed to attend church regularly (That’s something we say in our vows when we join the church).  We are supposed to exercise forgiveness and refrain from judging.  We are supposed to prioritize children.  We are supposed to be good stewards of the earth.

Let me suggest that, based on this morning’s Scripture from John’s gospel, our foremost responsibility as Christians is to abide in Christ.  In John 15:4, Jesus says, “Meinate en emoi,” translated from the Greek, “Abide in me.”  And just a few verses later in this morning’s Scripture he says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.”  Abide.  That is our responsibility.

Now, let’s unpack that a little bit: The Greek word for abide is meinate.  Meinate implies the believer’s responsibility for the relationship.  Meinate suggests, in the context of this morning’s Scripture, that before anything else, our responsibility as Christians is to our relationship with Jesus Christ.  Jesus abides in the love of God—that’s our primary example of relationship.  And our first and foremost responsibility as Christians, Jesus says, is to abide in him—to be responsible to our relationship with him;  because when we are responsible to our relationship with Christ, then his joy is in us, as Jesus says, and our joy is complete.

There was a rally for equality held on Thursday.  It was at Legacy of Love Monument at Oak Lawn & Cedar Springs in Dallas.  The former pastor of this church, Jo Hudson, and another one of my favorite seminary professors who’s also preached here at Friends Church, Steve Sprinkle; they both spoke at the rally.  But the testimony from that rally that God placed on my heart, as my evangelical siblings in Christ might say, came from a young man.  He held a megaphone mic in his hand, stood on the monument steps and told the crowd about how he came out to his parents in 2006, and his parents proceeded to kick him out of their house.  He shared how he was forced to move into a one-bedroom apartment with his boyfriend and one other roommate.  He shared how his boyfriend and he moved into a place of their own, and how they eventually moved from where they were in Arkansas to Dallas, and how they became a part of the gay community there and discovered acceptance.  He talked about how his parents slowly came back into his life at that point, but that they still wouldn’t have anything to do with his boyfriend.  And then he shared how it was at that time in his life that his mother and he took a trip to Las Cabos in Mexico together.  They were walking along the beach when he asked his mother, “If I were to ever get married, would you come to my wedding.”  His mother said to him very firmly, “No.”  And so he said to his mom, “Look, you kicked me out of the house, you made me feel like I was less than for many years, but if you were to not come to my wedding, the happiest day of my life, I would never, ever talk to you again.”

To abide is to remain, to stay, to be responsible to the relationship.  When the young man came out to his parents in 2006, they chose to no longer abide with their son; they chose to no longer share in his great joy.  But even after years of estrangement, even after the loud ridicule of his parents’ silence, the son took a walk on the beach with his mother and invited her back into the relationship.  He invited her to share in his great joy by coming to his wedding.  Now, of course, he said, “If you don’t show up, I’ll never talk to you again,” but two weeks later, his mom called him up.  She said that she had prayed about it, talked about it with all of her co-workers, all of their family, and everybody at her church.  And she said to her son, “If you get married, not only will I be there, your dad will be there, your grandparents will be there, and the entire church will be there to support you.”  And after the young man shared that story, he told the crowd, “Now, I’m not saying you should threaten your parents, but people do change, and I am proof of that.”

The point of his testimony is about abiding; it’s about responsibility to the relationships we have.  Jesus invites us to abide with him.  So, here’s the second thing we need to unpack: If we’re going to be responsible to our relationship with Jesus Christ, we need to understand the nature of the relationship.  Jesus says, “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends.”  This isn’t a one-way relationship where there is a master and a servant.  This is a mutual relationship between friends.

I believe that what we Christians spend so much time getting riled up about, getting anxious about stems from a big misunderstanding of that relationship.  A lot of times we assume that our relationship with God in Jesus Christ is based on the Master/Servant model still, and where we really go off the rails is that we put on the role of master and we give the servant role to Jesus, not the other way around.  We put Jesus in a box of serving us, answering our prayers, meeting our needs, and then we spend our life of faith trying to master Jesus, trying to master God, trying to know all there is to know about living a perfect life, a righteous life, a Godly life.  We try to master our faith so that we can somehow live a life worthy of God loving us, of Jesus serving us.  I am the master of my faith!   Where is the relationship in that?

Yes, Jesus says in Mark 10:45, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.”  Yes, Jesus was a servant during his earthly ministry.  “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.”  That’s what he was living out.  But Jesus’ disciples always called him their master, and they were his servants.  And today’s Scripture takes that relationship to a life-changing level.  Today’s Scripture takes place when Jesus is ending his earthly ministry and he’s talking to his disciples for the last time.  And in that crucial moment he addresses them as friends.

For us to abide in the love of Jesus Christ, for us to be responsible to that relationship is for us to abide with one another and for us to be responsible to each other; because Jesus calls all of us friends.

Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners, has a book, Called to Conversion where he writes about a conference he attended in New York City.  Wallis writes, “The topic was social justice.  Assembled for the meeting were theologians, pastors, priests, nuns, and lay church leaders.  At one point a Native American stood up, looked out over the mostly white audience, and said, ‘Regardless of what the New Testament says, most Christians are individualists with no real experience of community.’  He paused for a moment and then continued: ‘Let’s pretend that you were all Christians.  If you were Christians, you would no longer accumulate.  You would share everything you had.  You would actually love one another.  And you would treat each other as if you were family.’”  Wallis writes that the man’s eyes were piercing when he asked the group, “Why don’t you do that?  Why don’t you live that way?”

Maybe if we want to answer that question, “What is my responsibility as a Christian” we should stop getting riled up and anxious about that title of being Christian and start thinking of each other instead as friends.

God has blessed me with a lot of friends in this place.  My friends Kevin and Jess bring roses from their garden to put in vases and set on the altar.  My friends Gene Fitzwater and Walter Bertsch, 163 wise years between the two of them; they bring me books and magazines every week on spirituality and theology just to share.  I have a friend in this place who was so moved by a mid-week devotional that I wrote a few weeks back that she baked up a big cinnamon role, left it on my desk, and I took it home and shared it with my kids for breakfast the next morning, and they loved that breakfast.  Ruthie eats like a bird, and she devoured that simple gift.  And my friends Tami and Justin Dudo, when their son Sean was outgrowing his coat, they gave it to Mac.  That coat kept my son warm and happy for a long time.

When the penitent Christian gets on their knees and cries out to Jesus saying, “Lord, I want accept you into my heart,” if they listen well, Jesus says, “Sure, I’m in.  But can my friends come to?”

Jesus didn’t call his disciples Christians; he called them friends.  We are friends together because Christ first befriended us.  And Jesus commands us as friends together to love one another.  Remember that Jesus told his disciples, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  Sounds like a big responsibility!  Thank God we were chosen by the love of Christ to share that responsibility together.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“The Quality and Extent of Christian Love”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon

Sunday, April 29, 2012

John 10:11-18; 1 John 3:16-24

We have two big Scriptures today.  The Scripture from John’s gospel about the Good Shepherd and the sheep is a metaphor for the relationship that God the Father has with Jesus the Son, and consequently for the relationship that Jesus has with us and that we have with Jesus.  And the Scripture from 1 John gives us instruction on how we’re supposed to treat each other, and how that treatment is a reflection of our relationship with Jesus Christ.  There’s a lot in these texts.  When we place these two Scriptures next to each other, though, the biggest theme is love.  The biggest lesson we have this morning is love.

Now, love is a big deal for us.  We love to talk about love.  It’s the first thing we pray about in a lot of the children’s messages: “Dear God, thank you for loving us.”  It makes us happy to think about how God loves us, how God loves everyone.  It’s a comforting thought to be reminded that “God is love,” as it’s written in 1 John, the fourth chapter.  And we love the idea of loving others…and we should!  But while we’re getting happy about love, do we know what love is?  Do we take time to think about what Christian love really is?  This morning’s Scriptures beg those questions for us.

I’ll give you an example that came to mind for me.  A few Sundays ago, some wonderful person made cookies and they brought them to church.  People were enjoying those cookies over there by the kitchen after the service.  Meanwhile, I was in the narthex visiting with people as they were heading out the door.  One of those people said, “Pastor, did you get one of those cookies?  They’re amazing!”  I said, “No, but I’ll definitely get one here in a little bit.”  That’s when someone else said, “Sorry.  You’re too late.  They’re all gone.”  I said, “Oh well.”

A few minutes later, I’m standing outside my office, and I look down to find 9-year-old Ella Maxwell standing right next to me…and she’s eating one of those cookies—presumably the last one.  So, I joke with her and I say, “Oh!  You got a cookie.  Where’s mine?”  And Ella doesn’t flinch, she doesn’t laugh, she just takes what’s left of that cookie, breaks it in two pieces, and hands me a piece; the bigger piece I might add.  It really was an amazing cookie.  It’s a simple example, I know; but that’s what Christian love looks like.

A biblical commentator named Paul Hoon writes, “Only when we surrender that which has value for our own lives in order to enrich the life of another do we love.”  It’s only when we give something that we value in our own lives so that someone else’s life would be enriched that we truly love.  There’s enough right there for us to think about all week.  What do I value?  When was the last time I shared something I value?  With whom do I share it?  Is what I share making a difference in other people’s lives?  Asking those questions gets to the heart of our Christian discipleship and whether we are loving one another as Jesus commands us.

But let me peel away a few more layers of this theological onion for us this morning.  I want to point out something even more fundamental to Christian love than it being self-giving in nature; because what’s even more foundational to Christian love is that Christian love is actions.  Christian love is what we do.  Now, don’t go confusing this with the ongoing question about whether it’s works or faith that grants salvation.  That’s another topic entirely.  Just put that over there.  We’re talking about love.

The love of Jesus is defined in terms of action, in terms of what Jesus does.  The first verse that I read from this morning’s text, 1 John 3:16 (not to be confused with John 3:16) says, “We know love by this, that [Jesus] laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.”  The love of Jesus is defined in terms of action; not emotion, not reason, but action.

Love requires our actions.  Emotions might give us a good feeling about love, but emotions like fear and worry and jealousy and anger and enmity can keep us from love.  Reason can keep us from love, too, because it’s often easier to use reason so that we can exclude someone from the fold of love than it is to use reason for purposes of inclusion.  Reason says, “Well, I’d help that person, but they’ll just keep making bad choices.  I’m not going to waste my time helping someone who’s hopeless.”  But the love of Jesus isn’t defined by emotion or reason; it’s defined by action, because with actions we have no choice.  We just do it.  We just love.  No matter the circumstances,  no matter the potential for political upheaval, no matter the level of need, we just love; because “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?  ¹⁸Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”

So, there you have it: Self-sacrificial action is Christian love.  Very good.  But there’s still a problem.  There’s still a hang-up.  How much and how often we are willing to love one another depends on how much and how often we judge each other.  Paul Hoon also points out: “The tragedy of the church so often has been its unwillingness to exemplify as an institution the obligation of love it enjoins upon its members— [that obligation being] to lay down its life for others.”

Let me bring another child into the message now to try and makes sense of this for us, specifically my 7-year-old child.  I was driving Mac home from his swim lesson this week, and that was when Mac said, “Some kids in my class say bad words.”  And then my inner priest in the confession booth came out and I said, “Really?  What kind of words?  Elaborate, my child!”  And Mac said, “They say S-T-U-P-I-D.”  I said, “Oh!  Well, you know, sometimes when I read you a book that word comes up, and if I see it coming I’ll use a different word in its place like ‘silly.’”  And Mac said, “Yeah, I should tell those kids to not use bad words.”  So I said, “Well, I think you should let your teacher worry about that, Mac.  You don’t need to be telling those kids how to behave.  But you know what you can do is set a good example.  So, instead of telling them, ‘You need to stop saying bad words,’ you can just not use bad words yourself.  Set an example.  Does that make sense?”  And Mac said, “Yeah.”  And then he looked out the window for a while.  I could tell that he was thinking about it.  So, me being a typical parent witnessing a lesson literally taking root in my child’s mind right before my eyes, I was so excited that I felt like I had to say something else.  I said, “Mac, you know there’s a verse in the Bible where Jesus says, ‘Don’t judge.’  Do you know what it means to judge?”  He said, “Not really.”  At first I thought I’d stepped in it, but I tried to explain it.  I said, “When we spend our time telling people what they’re doing wrong, it’s because that’s all we’re thinking about.  All we’re thinking about is the bad things other people are doing.  That’s judging.  And if all we do is think about the bad things people do, then we start to think that they’re just bad people.  And that’s not fair, because if we think that people are bad people, then it’s really hard for us to love them.  And that’s the most important thing that Jesus tells us to do: to love people no matter what.  We can’t do that if all we’re doing is judging them.  Does that make sense?”  And, praise God, Mac said, “Yes.”

Now, how about us, congregation?  Does that make sense?  Let me try to put it in some more adult terminology here.  I know that some of you in this room have read The Way to Love by Anthony De Mello; his last meditations.  He has a meditation in that book titled “Love One Another,” where he says that the first quality of love is its indiscriminate character.  The first quality of love is that it does not discriminate; yet how much time do we spend writhing in our most fervent emotions of resentment and anxiousness and fear and worry to the point that we discriminate against any number of people for any number of reasons, and so we justify withholding love from them.  How much time do we Christians spend reasoning about who deserves love and who does not, about what might be considered enabling and what would not, before we will get up off the theological couch and love somebody in the name of Jesus Christ?

I don’t know where exactly Anthony De Mello got the assertion that the first quality of love is its indiscriminate character, but he may as well have gotten it from this morning’s Gospel reading.  Jesus says, “I lay down my life for the sheep. ¹⁶I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”  Some biblical scholars remark that the others Jesus is referring to are the Gentiles, and some say that he’s referring to other Christian communities of that time not yet in the fold with Jesus’ bunch.  But the spirit of Jesus’ words here remains true through the ages: the spirit of unity, of inclusiveness, of bringing the margins to the middle.  It’s not about there being a fold in the middle here that’s deserving of God’s love and others out there, whoever we choose those others to be, who don’t deserve love.  It’s about the spirit of community and togetherness.  It’s about the essence of our United Church of Christ mantra: “…that they may all be one.”  It’s about the spiritual truth that Mother Teresa reminds us of when she says, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”  One body.  One community.  One family.  One flock.

Kate Huey recalls an email that she received from Delle McCormick.  Delle McCormick is a UCC minister who served as the executive director of Borderlinks, working in ministry with immigrants.  In that email to Kate Huey, McCormick said, “Until we are willing to lay our lives down, literally and figuratively, for those who are lost in the desert, in our detention centers, and yes, in the legal system, in schools, even in our own ‘back yards,’ sheep will continue to be lost, and we will all suffer for it.”  When it comes to the self-sacrificing act of Christian love, are our actions indiscriminate?  Or to ask a simpler question for our spiritual gut check this morning, in the words of Bo Didley, who do you love?

A few years ago there was a student named Travis in United Campus Ministry, the college ministry that this church supports.  Spring break was coming up, and Travis discovered a ministry called No More Deaths.  No More Deaths was basically about saving lives.  People would cross the border into Arizona not knowing how big and desolate the desert really was, so they were ill-equipped to deal with the extenuating circumstances.  Many people would die under the unforgiving heat.  So, No More Deaths, maybe taking a page from those angels that waited on Jesus in the desert after Satan left him until a more opportune time, they would go out into the desert with water searching for people who needed it.  Simple.  They’d offer to give people a ride, too, but they’d be up front about that ride being back to the border.  It was an offer, not a requirement.

Travis was excited.  So, he brought this No More Deaths idea to his UCM peers hoping they could make it their Spring Break mission trip.  But almost immediately most of the group shot it down.  Some said that it was too dangerous.  Some said that No More Deaths was just enabling people to cross the border illegally.  The trip never happened.

I’ve held onto that story these past few years ever since my friend Kyle told me about it (Kyle’s the pastor for UCM).  I’ve always thought that at the heart of those words—‘it’s too dangerous,’ and, ‘we’d just be enabling them’—I’ve always thought that beneath the surface of those hesitancies and holdups was the fear of the stranger.  Maybe the students who didn’t want to participate in No More Deaths were really just afraid of who they’d have to help…out there in the desert.  But Jonathan Sacks, the chief Rabbi of Great Britain, notes that in the Bible we are commanded much more often to love the stranger than to love our neighbor, 36 times to 1 in fact.

What is keeping me from loving those strange others as much and as often as I love the familiar neighbors in my fold?  I told Kyle that I might use that UCM story in today’s sermon.  He warned me that it’s not the most flattering UCM story to tell.  But he also told me that in his experience of working with college students for well over a decade that ever since 9/11, students, like all of us, are more hesitant and fearful about taking risks.  They want to love others, they know it’s the right thing to do, but it’s unknown—it’s strange.  He says that now, when it comes to picking and choosing a mission trip that (sometimes, not all the time) emotions flare up and reasons for “why we shouldn’t” outnumber reasons for “why we should.”  It waters down the potential of Christian love.

I think that those emotional flare-ups and those reasons we come up with for why we shouldn’t love someone in the name of Christ creep into our theology—how we understand God and the teachings of Jesus and the mission of the Church.  And what results from that tendency we have to be more caught up with emotion and reason in our understanding of Christian love is our divisions.  Our denomination, our religion, our citizenship, our gender, our sexuality, our skin color, our nationality, they shouldn’t divide us, especially when it comes to Christian love.  We are one flock, by the grace of God, and when we just act, when we just lay down our lives for one another, when we just love, all of those divisions fall away and we are one—one flock.

I’ll leave you with this: Last Sunday afternoon at our Spring Meeting of the Brazos Association in this place, we had three ecclesiastical councils.  Three people were coming forward to be ordained into Christian ministry.  They’d all written papers outlining their faith journey and their theological position.  And one of the candidates indicated in her paper that she struggled with believing in the bodily resurrection of Jesus.  She believed wholeheartedly in the resurrection, but she struggled with the bodily resurrection.  So, after she offered some remarks and answered some questions, she left the room for us to vote on her ordination.  That’s when a clergy person, a pastor, finally stood up and said, “I have a real problem with Nikki not believing in the bodily resurrection.”  He said, “That’s at the core of our belief system.  It’s what we’re all about.”  And then he looked at another pastor and said, “What do you think?”  And that pastor lit up and gave an energetic retort using a food metaphor where he said that if we like a particular food and then suddenly we find out how it’s made we wouldn’t stop liking the food, would we?  The room got really excited and emotional, and a few more reasons were shared for why the specifics of the resurrection should not hinder Nikki’s ordination.  And, in general, we all felt pretty good, but we weren’t really at peace.  So, finally, a woman stood up—she was probably in her late 70s—and she said, “If I may offer my thoughts as a lay person.”  She said, “I think that if Jesus were to walk in this room right now, he wouldn’t ask us what we believed about his bodily resurrection.  He would ask us, ‘Did you feed my sheep’?”  That did it.  That was it.  There was our peace.

Sisters and brothers of the borderless, unconditional fold of the Good Shepherd’s flock, “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?  ¹⁸Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“The Embodiment of the Resurrection”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon

Sunday, April 22, 2012

1 John 3:1-7 and Luke 24:36b-48

Easter is probably my favorite time in the Christian calendar year, but not just Easter Sunday.  I enjoy the Season of Easter: Eastertide.  It’s a time of celebration in the life of the Church, and the reason for that is resurrection.  It’s an intentional time of recognizing what our bulletin cover articulates as “Christ among us.”

Eastertide is a time for us to unpack the meaning of resurrection and its implications on our life of faith.  If we pause from our loud shouts of alleluia, we find this morning’s Scripture from Luke’s gospel revealing to us Jesus’ pain and suffering when he shows the disciples his wounds.  And this is an integral part of the Easter story, this passage from Luke.  So, if we’re going to unpack the meaning of resurrection this morning, we cannot overlook those key elements of pain and suffering.

“Pain and suffering?  No thanks.  I’ll just hide that in the spiritual junk drawer—sort though that next Good Friday…maybe.”  But when we close our eyes and our ears and our very lives to that piece of the story, we strip resurrection of its power.  And here is what the power of resurrection brings us: peace, forgiveness, love, hope, and new life.  If we compromise that, if we fall short of that, then what power have we got…Church?  What do we have left?

When I was in seminary at Brite Divinity School at TCU, Elie Wiesel came to campus.  Elie Wiesel is a Nobel Laureate and Holocaust Survivor who might be best known for his book, Night, which is based on his experiences in the camps at Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald.  If you read Night, you read about how Wiesel lost his father in the camps, you read about the horrible pain and suffering that Wiesel and those around him endured in those camps, you read about what death looks like.

I went to hear Wiesel speak at Daniel Myers Coliseum.  We were all seated at the start of the program, but Wiesel was already on the stage.  From a distance, I could see this skinny, gray-haired man sitting in a chair with his head turned to the podium, one hand on his temple.  Even though he was wearing a suit, he looked humble and kind.  But when he was introduced and he stood up to speak, everyone jumped out of their seats and that coliseum was filled with some of the most thunderous applause I have ever heard.  I nearly fell back into my seat under the weight of the sheer emotion of it all.  We watched this gentle man walk from his chair across a stage to the podium, and in that moment all of us recognized not only Elie Wiesel’s achievements and his greatness, but also his pain and his suffering—all of it together; that’s what we recognized—and that recognition gave birth to a moment where we were clapping so loudly that everyone in that place couldn’t help but feel the power of hope, the power of life having the last word over death.  That’s what resurrection looks like.

During our post-Easter days of triumph and celebration, let’s remember the ancient church.  Let’s remember how the disciples couldn’t get much of anyone to embrace the notion of a Messiah who had suffered and endured pain and then risen to new life.  A suffering and dying Messiah?  That was a something far too frightening for the mighty religious powers of the day to accept.  The Sanhedrin was the greatest religious authority of that time, and those chief priest and elders and interpreters of religious law would have nothing of this pain-ridden, suffering Messiah.  That irked them.  Are we any different?  Two thousand years later, wouldn’t we rather preach and teach the joy of resurrection and bask in that joy year-round than ever veer off the course of that joy into the darkest valleys of pain and suffering?  Well, the Apostle Paul and his rag tag cronies went from town to town and prison to prison preaching Christ crucified and Christ risen.  In Galatians 3:1, Paul writes, “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified!”  That, apparently, is an integral part of the story of resurrection, and that tension gives us the origin of the Church.

Fred Craddock says, “The first two major problems the Church had to struggle with were 1) coming to terms with the idea of a suffering and dying Messiah, and 2) accepting non-Jews into the fellowship without distinction.”  We have fragments of those same problems in our churches today.

Twenty centuries later, preaching a crucified as well as a risen Christ and accepting all people equally, no matter who they are or whey they come from?  Those things are still problems for us.  So, if I’m breaking this down correctly, the only thing standing between us, the Church, and the power of resurrection is for us to 1) come to terms with a crucified and risen Christ, come to terms with pain and suffering, and 2) for us to accept all people into the fold of God’s love without distinction.  Let me suggest to us this morning that those two things are linked.  Let me suggest to us this morning that when what frightens us about the suffering and pain of Christ crucified comes to terms with Christ risen, then the full acceptance of all people into the fold of God’s love comes naturally…because recognizing pain and suffering is a part of recognizing Christ among us, and all of us have pain.  All of us have suffering.  That’s how resurrection works—those two steps: coming to terms with pain and suffering as part of resurrection’s power, and the acceptance of all people into that empowerment, no matter who we are or where we come from.  It’s like my friend Steve Lucas told me years ago: “Spirituality and social justice are two sides of the same Gospel coin.”

I was contacted by The Battalion this week.  They’re doing a story on GLBT Aggies, and the focus of the story is on what it’s like for students who come out, what that experience is like for them.  One student who was interviewed mentioned how this church was a part of that experience for him; hence me being contacted for more quotes.  We’ll see how that pans out if and when the story runs.  But one of the questions the interviewer asked me was about how being a church where students have come out as gay attend, how that has affected us.  I said, “I can tell you how it has affected me personally.  It has given me a further glimpse into the diversity of God’s creation, and it has shown me just how big the love of God is.”  Now, elaborating on that response, I can tell us this morning that I would know nothing about that beautiful diversity of God’s creation, nor would I know the first thing about the expansiveness of God’s love if I did not also get a candid glimpse of pain and suffering.

My journey of Christian faith here and before here have revealed to me the pain and suffering of impoverished families living in low income housing complexes in Arlington, Texas where clothes and furniture and food are seen as luxuries.

I have witnessed the pain and suffering of homeless women and men on the streets of Chicago, many of whom are fraught with mental disabilities, pouring into the basement of a church in the inner city to line up for a soup kitchen.

I have witnessed the pain and suffering of teenagers who have lost friends to suicide, whose worlds are fractured and bruised seemingly beyond repair as a result, and who now look at the world with unanswerable questions that lead to anxiety and worry.

I have witnessed the pain and suffering of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people who have been kicked out of their families when their sexuality or gender identity were discovered, and then forced to find a new family of their choosing.

I have witnessed others’ pain and suffering when it comes to losing a job, the pain and suffering of a relationship ending, the pain and suffering of depression, the pain and suffering of ailing parents, the pain and suffering of losing a loved one, the pain and suffering of interpersonal conflicts of all kinds.

But in all of these situations, in all of these places and contexts, in all of these holy moments, I also witnessed sparks of resurrection.  In the midst of all the pain and suffering this world can come up with, I also witnessed hope and peace and forgiveness and love and new life.  In all of these holy moments I witnessed Christ among us and the power of resurrection.  Reading this morning’s text I wonder, “If my call to discipleship with Jesus Christ had not led me to those situations and places and contexts, and if I had never seen the pain and suffering of God’s children in those moments, would I have ever seen them at all?  And without seeing them, would I have ever witnessed the power of resurrection?  Would I have anything to testify to and witness to and celebrate on Easter morning?”

I’ve got a good friend.  Stacy and I’ve known him for a few years now.  He lives in Austin, and he’s come to visit us here.  Stayed with us.  Came to church.  He’s had us over to his home a few times.  Back before my band broke up, he was at all of our shows.  We’ve spent a lot of time together.  He always expresses genuine concern for how my family and I are doing.  Stacy and I think that he’s one of the kindest, sweetest people we’ve ever known.  And he’s got it together, too.  He lives in a really cool part of town.  He’s got a good job.  He has pictures of his family in his living area—his parents, his sister and her family.  He even drives a Prius.  Good man.  He’s the kind of friend you want to spend time with especially when you’re having a tough time or you’re stressed out.  But since he lives in another town and we’ve got our lives here and we get busy and consumed by this life we’ve got here, we just hang out with him when we can and don’t think much more about it.

Last weekend I was in Austin doing a wedding, so Friday night I called my friend up.  I said, “Hey, buddy, let’s go hear some music.  I haven’t seen a show in forever.”  I met him at his house.  We walked to some place close by to get something to eat before the show.  We sat down and that’s when my friend said, “So, a lot’s been going on with me since we last talked.  I’ve been sober since December.”  Okay.  He told me about how he’d been watching a football game with some friends at a bar, and when it was time to leave he decided that he’d go and buy some cocaine.  A chill ran over me.  I thought, “Not you.  Really?”  He told me about how after he’d gotten the drugs that he got high, got in his car, and proceeded to go 90 miles an hour on the highway.  He got pulled over, arrested for DUI, and then they found the drugs in his car, which resulted in a felony.  He spent the night in jail, and the next day he entered a program to get the felony expunged from his record, which includes a rehab program that he’s enjoying.  His job’s going better than ever.  His relationship with his family is stronger than ever.  And he’s feeling better than he’s ever felt in his life.  I just sat there in complete disbelief.  But what shocked me the most was when he went on to tell me how he’d been addicted to cocaine for nine years, how he’d kept it a secret, done it on weekends alone in his home, how it consumed his thoughts, how he spent thousands of dollars on it, how no one really knew, no one had any idea what he was going through.  But now I knew.  It was the same friend sitting across from me that Stacy and I knew as a kind, sweet person with a cool head and his wits about him, but now I could see his pain and his suffering.  It was my same good friend sitting there with me, but suddenly something had changed.  Before I’d honestly thought of him as just a good friend that was always there; someone I could hang out with when life allowed the time, and someone who I know would contact me if he ever wanted to shoot the breeze.  But in my prayer life, when I prayed, I never really thought of him.  I thought about the church’s prayer chain and my family and our church and matters of concern in our community and our world, but I never really thought about my friend.  He was over there just…whenever.  He wasn’t in here.  But now…suddenly he was sitting across a table from me sharing his pain and suffering with me, and then his joy and amazement at this new path his life had taken; and when I read this morning’s Scripture from Luke, I think about my friend sitting across the table from me last Friday night and I feel like I’m a little bit closer to knowing what those disciples felt like when suddenly their old friend Jesus appeared to them and showed them his pain and his suffering.  I felt like I was sitting there witnessing resurrection.

Well, now I pray for my friend every day.  Stacy and I are excited about his recovery, and we find ourselves rooting for him, supporting him from afar in our own way.  He’s the same friend we had before, but now we think about his pain and suffering and it weighs heavily on our hearts.  Now his pain is our pain, and now his newfound joy and happiness are our joy and our happiness.  Now he is another glimpse of the expansiveness of God’s love for us, and I wonder, “How could I not see this before?  How was I blind to his pain and suffering?  How did I keep him conveniently separate from my comfortable understanding of resurrection for so long?”  Do you have any friends like that?  You might.

Are we even in this very sanctuary, even in this very family of faith, overlooking one another’s pain and suffering?  Are we blind to the scarred places in our lives that have led us to this holy moment, this situation, this context?  Beloved community, know this: There are precious souls sitting next to you and in front of you and behind you and across the room from you who are blessings from God.  There are people all around you this morning who embody the resurrection.

This is the Good News of Easter: Jesus embodies resurrection—all of it: the pain and the suffering, the joy and the amazement, the triumph and the celebration.  And we are the body of Christ.  We are the embodiment of the resurrection, every precious, unmistakable one of us.  So, if we do not open our eyes to one another fully, pain and suffering and all, warts and all; if we do not see one another in here, then what power have we got to witness to Christ among us out there?  Without the power of the resurrection, what have we got?

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“RT@nodoubt:redeemer#Jesus”

Delivered by Ana Deter, Licensed Lay Minister
Sunday, April 15, 2012

Acts 4:32-35; John 20:19-31

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“The Power of the Easter Story”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Mark 16:1-8

The Little Red Hen.  The Velveteen Rabbit.  The Little Drummer Boy.  Chicken Little.  Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  The Three Little Pigs.  The Three Billy Goats Gruff.  And let’s not forget Green Eggs and Ham, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Good Night, Moon, and, of course, Where the Wild Things Are.  And then there’s those stories from the Bible, like Noah’s Ark, Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors (also known as the Technicolor Dream Coat), my personal favorite David and Goliath, and Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he, the tax collector who climbed a tree to get a good view of Jesus in the crowd.  Great stories!  Show of hands here: How many of us have heard at least a few of those stories.  Why do those particular stories stick with us?  Why is it that we’re familiar with those stories and not others?

My grandfather told us grandchildren a lot of stories when we were growing up.  One story he didn’t tell us, though: When Granddaddy was a young man living with his parents in Waco—this was in the early 1920s—there was a man who flew a biplane.  And occasionally he would land that plane in a field close by.  Now, if you’re young and it’s the early 1920s and a biplane lands in a field close to your house, it’s a pretty big deal.  What’s an even bigger deal is when the pilot will take you with him for a ride in that plane, if you pay him, of course.  So, Granddaddy would pay this pilot and go for rides in a biplane, flying through the Waco sky, zipping over farms and fields with some mysterious pilot.  It was horribly dangerous.  There’s no way his parents would have approved, so he wouldn’t tell them about it.  He’d just sneak off to the field, pay the pilot, and go up into the air in that biplane.  But one day, inevitably, his parents found out and they were furious.  Granddad was in a world of trouble.  According to my mother, who told me this story about my grandfather well after he died, Granddaddy said that the point is this: “Sometimes it’s better to ask forgiveness after the fact than permission before.”  No wonder we were never told this story growing up!  There’s no telling what we would’ve been capable of if we had this story under our belts.

Carolyn Heilbrun says, “Power consists in deciding which story shall be told.”  So, I’m wondering, “Why this story today?  Why the resurrection story?  Why, on this day that is more highly attended in the Church than any other day in the entire year, why, on this day when there are guests with us, some of whom might not get the opportunity to attend church with us very often if at all, but they are here on this particular morning, why, on this day, the one day out of the year when this pastor wears a suit and tie, why, on Easter Sunday are we given this story about an empty tomb and a stone rolled away and Jesus’ body missing and an angel appearing to frightened women telling them to go meet the risen Christ at Galilee and to tell the other disciples about it?  Why this amazing, outlandish, unbelievable story on this day?

Why not the Prodigal Son instead?  I could offer a message about the Prodigal Son is an example of the expansiveness of God’s forgiveness and we are called to forgive one another in kind.  Amen!  Let’s hunt for eggs.  Or I could read the story of the Good Samaritan and offer a sermon about how we are called to show kindness and generosity to others no matter who they are or where they come from, especially in their time of need.  Amen!  Now, how about that Easter brunch!  That sure would be easier, but it wouldn’t be very powerful.  There’s got to be a reason why on this day, over and above all other stories, we have this story; because power consists in which story we tell.

So, something that distinguishes today’s story: A lot of those old children’s stories we know and love have iconic characters with memorable names: Goldilocks, Sam-I-Am, Max.  But in so many of those other biblical stories that we don’t turn to on Easter Sunday, the women are nameless.  They’re nameless in that patriarchal society, that patriarchal society in which the stories that inform our faith were written.  Think about that.  There’s Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus and the Canaanite woman, the alleged prostitute that Jesus defends from being stoned to death, the woman who makes her way into Simon the Pharisee’s home to kiss Jesus’ feet, anoint them with her tears and wipe them away with her hair.  Nameless women.  Unrecognized, largely unappreciated, ironically overshadowed by the very message of Jesus Christ that is being told through their involvement; and that message is supposed to be about inclusivity and equality and justice.

But the story we have today on Easter Sunday has three women, and here are their names: Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Salome.  And by the way, the name Salome means “peace.”  Peace went to the tomb where Jesus had been laid, and Peace became one of the first three witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Good story.

Why not all those other stories today?  Because those other stories are not big enough to convey the enormous message of God’s love.  We have this story today on this most important day because in this story people who typically go unnamed, unrecognized and unappreciated in the biblical narrative are brought into the spotlight center stage.  Fred Craddock says that this is a story where insiders become outsiders, and outsiders do the work of insiders.  Interesting how we have a Bible chock full of stories with messages about doing justice and loving mercy and walking humbly with God, and about loving  our neighbor as we love ourselves, but it isn’t until we get to this story that is the centerpiece of our faith—this resurrection story—that we finally see who those messages are emphasizing: the marginalized.  The message is all about…

The teenager bullied because of their sexual orientation to the point of silent self-loathing; the transgender adult denied job after job after job because an employer can’t fit them in a box that they understand; the Black youth living in constant anxiety and fear for his future because of the alarming statistic that one in every three Black men will spend part of their life in prison; the undocumented immigrant who never speaks in public, not because he doesn’t understand English, but because he is constantly told that he is not a human being; the Iraq War veteran, who carries around the unimaginably heavy weight of post traumatic stress disorder every day in a society that largely prefers to keep any talk of the violent costs of war confined to cable news on TV.

Huh.  It’s like if we don’t make these dear souls and so many others on the margins of our world the focal point of our faith, the focal point of Jesus’ new command that we love one another as Christ loved us, then we’re missing the message of the greatest story ever told altogether.  That’s how God works.  That’s the power of this resurrection story; it’s powerful enough to tear down all of our assumptions, assumptions that weaken our faith.

Mary and Mary Magdalene and Salome, they had lost Jesus.  They loved him deeply, and now he was gone.  It was a terrible loss.  But death was something they understood.  They’d experienced loss before.  They’d mourned before.  So, now it was time to do something they were familiar with: it was time to grieve.  So, they did.  And along with their grieving process came the ritual of anointing the body of the deceased with spices.  That’s exactly what they were going to do.  All of this was sad, but it was nothing out of the ordinary.

And then there was the matter of that pesky stone, so we get that question in the story: “Who will roll away the stone for us?”  It’s a rhetorical question.  They know they don’t have the strength to roll that stone away.  They know that no one’s going to do it for them.  But they go to the tomb anyway with those spices as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, because they assume this is where their journey with Jesus will end.  This is how it always ends.  That’s the assumption.

What sad assumptions do we have?  At what places in our life do we say, “My journey with Jesus will only go so far.  It’s safe to assume there’s an immovable stone up ahead.  May as well grieve now.  Cut my losses.  That’s easier.”?

Let me tell you a story: Stacy and I are blessed to call Lynn and Gary McClean our friends.  They’re our Brangelina friends, because they’ve adopted many children from outside the United States.  All of their children are grown now.  That didn’t come easy.  Gary and Lynn fell in love with two children: twins, a girl and a boy that they found at an orphanage in Korea.  The orphanage had plans to sell the children to the circus, but Lynn and Gary stepped in and said, “Please don’t do that.  We’ll adopt the children.”  That was fine with the orphanage.  According to Lynn, the orphanage looked at the children like a department store looks at their goods: It doesn’t matter who buys them, they just need to sell them.  This made the situation urgent, because if Lynn and Gary couldn’t get visas for the two children and move ahead with adoption, the orphanage would go ahead and sell them to the circus.  And that was the immovable stone, because at that time the law stated that you could only purchase up to two visas to adopt children, and Gary and Lynn had already adopted two children from overseas.  Their visa-buying power was maxed out.  Their only chance was a bill that had passed Congress and was going through the Senate that would allow for parents looking to adopt children to obtain additional visas.  The bill was a no brainer.  The problem was that it was tied up in a committee, and the committee was chaired by a man named Ted Kennedy.  Why was it tied up?  Kennedy, well intentioned as he was, wanted all Amer-Asian children to become automatic U.S. citizens, and he wouldn’t allow the bill to be voted on unless this stipulation was added onto it.  The bill had been tied up like this for ten years.  Time to grieve, Gary and Lynn.  That stone’s not moving.  You can safely assume that this is where your adoption journey ends.

Not so fast.  This is where Gary and Lynn set aside grieving and assumptions and they leaned instead on faith.  They decided to do something about that bill.  They started lobbying to get the bill out of committee and voted on.  And in their efforts they discovered countless other families who were in the exact same bind: having two children and wanting to adopt more.  They wrote letters, made phone calls, and spent time on Capitol Hill, but nothing seemed to work.  The spring past, summer came and went, and with the fall came the deadline: the orphanage was going to sell the twin siblings to the circus.  But then something unbelievable happened.  Apparently, Senator Kennedy heard the families’ cries, and he released the bill from committee.  It was voted into law and the two visas were telegraphed to Gary and Lynn in Korea with just one day left before the circus was going to come for the children.  So much for grief and assumptions.

Pretty amazing story, isn’t it?  But you’ve heard it before.  The details are different, but the story’s the same.  The story says that there is no stone that is too heavy for the resurrection power of the risen Christ.  There is no rock that is immovable for the unlimited love of God.  That’s why we tell this story on this day every Easter every year.  It’s that powerful.

You know what the best thing is about this story, though (and it might just be the most powerful thing about this story, too)?  It’s incomplete.  It’s not finished.  Mark 16:8, the last verse in this story and the last verse in the Book of Mark says, “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  Pretty abrupt ending, don’t you think?  Cliffhanger!  It’s not just that it sounds like it leaves us hanging, it literally does.  Mark 16:8 is literally translated from the original Greek to read: “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid of…”  For they were afraid of…  The power in this story is that Mark insists we have to finish the story for ourselves, even if we’re frightened to do it, even if we are convinced that there’s no hope, even if we think the journey’s over.  Do you see how powerful that is?

I have a friend, John, who’s a pastor of a UCC church in Coupland.  Not too long ago his wife was diagnosed with cancer.  It was advanced and barely treatable.  The doctors realistically gave her no chance for survival, but they recommended aggressive chemo to slow the cancer down.  John’s church rallied around him and his wife.  It didn’t bother them that John was spending less and less time at the church, less and less time with the congregation.  John was giving his all to supporting his wife, being by her side through the entire process of her battle with cancer.  John says that, of course, he did this because he loves his wife, but he also was so obsessively at her side in this process because John and his wife both were convinced that she wasn’t going to make it.  So, John’s uncompromisingly loyal support was, in a way, a silent goodbye.

But when the chemo was finished and the test came in, the doctors reported something amazing, something unbelievable: the cancer was in remission.  All of a sudden John went from that silent goodbye to saying, “So, what do we do now?”  John shared with our minister’s group a few months ago that he was still processing the fact that suddenly he and his wife are planning for the future.  After they’d grieved, after they’d assumed their story was over, suddenly they’re writing new chapters.

Easter people, that is what we are called to do.  The story isn’t finished, and we are called to keep on writing the greatest story ever told…every day.  No matter how hopeless things might seem, no matter how cruel people might appear, no matter how many times you’ve seen the greater good compromised, you are the hands and the feet of the resurrected Christ in this world, and you have a story to keep writing.  Otherwise it just sits in a tomb.

So, if you’ve grown tired or cynical in your faith, if you’ve become steeped in doubt and skepticism, if you’ve given up hope on this broken world, remember this story.  Remember this story of resurrection and new life that we tell and retell, even in the face of this world’s suffering and death.  Remember that the powers of religious zealotry and political corruption and societal violence and hatred and fear and injustice, they couldn’t keep the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, the Word made flesh, confined to a tomb.  The stone has been rolled away, and the powers of forgiveness and healing and justice and peace and love, they’ve been set loose on the world.  And if that wasn’t powerful enough for you, remember that Jesus isn’t in the tomb.  He’s alive and he’s in the world, and when we follow him we are saying, “Yes, I will keep on writing the greatest story ever told.”

Power consists in deciding which story shall be told.

The world has a tale of warmongering and violence, greed and competition, grudges and resentments…but we’ve got this story.

The world has a tale of character assassination as a matter of acceptable discourse, and Darwinian gestures of self-preservation as entertaining virtues, and tearing down our neighbor for the sake of our own gain …but we’ve got this story.

The world has a tale of people who withhold justice and kindness and generosity and fairness from those who differ from them on account of their religion or their skin color or their nationality or their political views or who they love…but we’ve got this story.

The world seems to only know stories that end with death…but we’ve got this story.  It’s the best story I’ve ever heard.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Unridden Colts in a Sentimental World”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Mark 11:1-11

A week ago, I was on my way to Burton for a board meeting and I stopped at the Starbucks before I got out of town.  It was about 9am on a Saturday morning, so I thought, “Surely, there won’t be a line.  I can just zip in and out of there.”  But when I opened the door I was greeted by someone’s back, indicating to me that the line started right there.  Why all the caffeine-hungry traffic?  It was the Big Event.  A&M students dressed in work clothes from head to toe were lined up to get their morning fix before they would scatter across our community to do anything from painting a house to landscaping to washing windows.  I’ve never taken advantage of the Big Event personally, but people that I know who have say that it’s an amazing display of volunteerism where the brightest virtues of cooperation and humbleness and kindness and generosity shine through our community’s college students.  In one day lawns are mowed, driveways are cleared, roofs are patched, leaks are stopped, cracks are sealed, mulch is spread, flowers and trees are planted; everybody’s helping each other out and everybody’s happy.  All of this in one day.  And all of this just one day out of the entire year.

It’s no wonder the Big Event is such a big event.  Against the backdrop of our usual day-to-day, it’s huge!  Most other days the events that seize our attention display virtues that stand in stark opposition to the Big Event.  The stories that flood the airwaves and tick across the cable news feed and flood the blogosphere’s headlines spin tales of greed and competition, hate and revenge.  This is our daily living.  This is what seizes our attention.  This is what informs our day-to-day.  And this is what makes it harder and harder for us to look one another in the eye, because when our attention turns to matters such as these, then our attention consequently turns against each other.  So, when the Big Event comes along it’s huge, because it’s an exception to the rule.

There’s a tragedy in that, though; because if the Big Event is just an exception to the rule then all of the good it accomplishes is just sentimentalism.  We look at the Big Event and we think, “Aw, that’s so cute.  Bless their little hearts, helping people out like that.  That’s so sweet.”  You see what I’m saying here?  Instead of us looking at the Big Event as the potential of humanity, instead of us looking at the Big Event as evidence of the better angels of our human nature at work, we look at all that hard work, all of that teamwork and cooperation, all of that reconciliation and inspiration, and we see an exception to the rule of things.  We see an endearing sentiment.

Let’s understand what this sentimentalism is so we can get into this morning’s message, because the Palm Sunday story is about realism—it’s about the realism of Jesus processing right into the heart of sentimentalism and flipping it on its head—so appropriate that today is April Fool’s Day!

Listen to this quote from a biblical commentator talking about the Palm Sunday story.  He says, “Sentimentalists are the romantic fools who imagine that it is possible to build security and peace on a foundation of hate and revenge, or of greed and competing sovereignties.”  Listen to that again: “Sentimentalists are the romantic fools who imagine that it is possible to build security and peace on a foundation of hate and revenge, or of greed and competing sovereignties.”  Sisters and brothers, on what is the foundation of our day-to-day living built?

The Roman Empire was built largely on hate and revenge and greed and competition, and Caesar ruled over the romantic fools of Jerusalem with the illusion of sentimentalism.  Security and peace would be maintained at all times, because if anyone threatened that security and peace, they would be killed for it; executed publicly by gruesome crucifixion for all to see.  This seized the people’s day-to-day attention; they bought it.  And as a result, the people became sentimentalists; they became the romantic fools who imagine that it is possible to build security and peace on a foundation of hate and revenge, or of greed and competition.  Injustice had become normal.  It’s into this context that Jesus processes, flipping normalcy on its head.  And as Jesus rides into that crowd, he begins to weave a new narrative of realism.

In my spare time I love to keep track of God’s timing in pop culture.  On that note, I find it fascinating that the Hunger Games is such a huge hit these days.  It was only a matter of time before I mentioned the Hunger Games in a sermon.  Now, I haven’t seen the movie yet (That will probably be my “I survived Holy Week again” reward after Easter), and I’ve only finished the first book.  But the Hunger Games being such a phenomenon right now is fascinating, or at least interesting.

The premise of the Hunger Games is that there is an empire, known as the Capitol, and the Capitol rules over an area that used to be North America.  It’s divided into 12 districts.  And every year the Capitol selects two individuals from each of the 12 districts, one boy and one girls between the ages of 12 and 18, and then places these 24 individuals into an arena where they are forced to fight to the death, and the last one standing wins.  These are the Hunger Games.  It’s the Capitol’s way of maintaining security and peace.  And the people look at this awful display of hate and revenge and greed and competition…and they not only accept it, they love it.  The sentimentalists love the Hunger Games.  They eat it up.

But the story is told from the point of view of a 16-year-old named Katniss Everdeen, and Katniss Everdeen is a realist.  She sees through the contrived rule of the Capitol’s awful Hunger Games, and even though she is forced to participate in it by being selected as her District’s female representative, she doesn’t play along blindly.  She does not suffer sentimentalism lightly.  She recognizes the injustice of it all.  That is the tension that makes the story so addictive, and it might be the reason why the Hunger Games is such a huge hit.

Fascinating, because it’s that kind of tension we encounter at the gates of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.  The spiritual connection between a character like Katniss Everdeen and Jesus of Nazareth is that Jesus was a realist, too.

On this day we know as Palm Sunday, Jesus processed into the heart of sentimentalism and shattered the people’s illusion of normalcy with realism, because only then could he usher in the kingdom of God.  And today, Jesus is processing into our hearts that have been swayed for too long by the illusion of sentimentalism that views compassion and kindness and acts of justice and inclusiveness and demonstrations of forgiveness and healing as mere exceptions to the rule; and in the place of that sentimentalism, Jesus is offering us realism.  Jesus is offering us realism that says, “Love one another.  By this the world will know that you are my disciples.”  Our savior is riding into this time and place on a colt and saying to us, “Everyone is a child of God.  Everyone is beautifully made in the image of God.  Everyone has gifts to share in this world.  Everyone is someone, and no one is nobody.”  That’s real.  That’s the Palm Sunday story.

And a big detail: Jesus rides into town on a colt that had never been ridden.  The first seven of the 11 verses that tell us this story in Mark’s gospel, those first seven verses are all about the disciples getting the colt for Jesus to ride.  I hadn’t thought before about why the colt is so important in this story.

Now, every Sunday during Lent we have had Lenten Meditations to start our services.  And for the past six Sundays, different people from our congregation led those meditations from this pulpit.  Week to week I have seen this as a procession of sorts.  It’s a procession of beautiful, unmistakable people who represent this church’s identity.  Jim and Lynn, Bart and Curt, Linda and Gene, Kelly and Nancy, Theresa and Alaina, Izzy and Justin.  They are all blessings from God.  That’s real.  Every one of these dear souls came to this church for different reasons, and they all decided to stay a part of this congregation for different reasons still; but I know that I can speak for each of them in saying that part of the reason why they showed up here in the first place was because of our identity of being an Open & Affirming congregation.

That piece of who we are as Friends Congregational Church, that piece of our identity didn’t come easy.  Becoming an Open & Affirming congregation and adopting a statement in 1996 that said in part, “that as agents of reconciliation and wholeness we will continue our efforts toward inclusiveness, embrace all who are disenfranchised from the religious community, and stand against all forms of discrimination,” that didn’t come easy.  It hadn’t been done before, not only in this town, but in our entire United Church of Christ conference.  It was unorthodox, unknown, unheard of, unridden.

Jesus told those two disciples to go and find him a colt that had never been ridden, to bring that colt to him, and then he rode that heretofore unridden colt into Jerusalem.  That colt hadn’t been trained.  It hadn’t been neutered.  There was no telling what that colt was going to do, but that’s exactly the kind of colt Jesus instructed his disciples to acquire for him to ride into a town that had become entranced by sentimentalism, because, sisters and brothers, some times the good news that God has for our lives has got to buck and kick against what we accept as normal.  Sometimes the goodness and the transformative power of God have got to buck and kick against what we sentimentally consider to be mere exceptions to the rule of things.

In Hereford, Texas, where the cattle industry is number one, you’ll find a Baptist church named after the town.  And inside Hereford Baptist Church you’ll find its pastor, Traci Dunn-Noland.  Traci is a friend of mine.  She’s has a sweet heart and a clever mind and a tough wit, which, she discovered, a female pastor needs to have when they take the reigns at Hereford  Baptist Church, nestled in the Texas Panhandle.

Traci laughs about a communion story.  They don’t observe communion in the Baptist church nearly as much as we do here at Friends.  But early on in Traci’s time at Hereford Baptist, they had a communion Sunday.  They observed communion by intinction, like we often do, where you come forward and receive the elements.  There was this one man who Traci lovingly describes as a good ol’ boy, who strutted his way down the aisle that Sunday morning to receive communion.  And when Traci tore off a piece of bread for him and placed it in his hand saying, “This is the body of Christ, the bread of heaven, given for you,” the man winked at Traci and said, “Thank you, darlin’.”

Perhaps the man viewed Traci not as a pastor, but as an exception to the rule; as a dear sweet lady serving communion to him like a waitress in a diner might serve him coffee.  But what the man didn’t know was that Traci had answered a call from Jesus Christ to serve the church as its minister.  She had seen an unridden colt outside Hereford Baptist Church, and she brought it to her Savior, and Jesus got on that colt, processed into the church, and said, “Traci, my child, follow me and let’s usher in a little more of God’s kingdom.”  That’s real.  And now, these years later, when that man, whom Traci speaks of with fondness, now when he comes down the aisle to receive communion, and she places the bread in his hand, and she says, “This is the body of Christ, the bread of heaven given for you,” he looks at his pastor and he says, “Amen.”

What other unridden colts are out there waiting to be untied so that one of us might bring them to the Christ that we strive to follow?  What other unridden colts are out there waiting for us to bring to Jesus so that he would ride it into the heart of this world’s sentimentalism and usher in a little bit more of God’s kingdom—God’s kingdom that is just and righteous and real?  And where are we going to find those unridden colts?  Well, search for certain exceptions to the rule of things and you can bet that there will be an unridden colt waiting close by.

Let’s think about something together as a way to wrap up today’s sermon: The death of Trayvon Martin is getting more and more attention, more and more press.  The tragic shooting of a 17-year-old African American child in Sanford is being talked up on the radio, on the internet, and certainly on cable news.  People are demanding justice for Trayvon’s death, that the man who shot and killed him be arrested immediately.  A tweet that was shared by celebrities like Spike Lee and Rosie O’Donnell has gone viral that says, “We live in America where a girl that threw flour on Kim Kardashian was arrested on site But the man who killed Trayvon Martin is still free.”  Since Trayvon was wearing a hoodie when he was killed, the hoodie has become iconic.  Protest signs and marches and petitions are springing up across the country.  It appears that the news of Trayvon Martin’s death has launched a movement of sorts.  Slowly but surely people are realizing how unjust the shooting death of Trayvon Martin really is.

But Trayvon Martin was killed on February 26^th.  It’s now April 1^st.  Why is it taking us this long to realize how deeply unjust his death is?  Why is it taking us this long to start really caring?  Perhaps it is because of the sentimentalist nature that hears this story and says, “Oh, how terrible.  How sad that a teenager in some distant town was shot and killed for walking around in a neighborhood where he didn’t live.  Such an unfortunate misunderstanding.  That doesn’t happen every day.  How sad.”  Do we hear the sentimentalism in that response?

The reality is that the death of Trayvon Martin is not some sad exception to the rule.  In America the number one cause of death among African American males between the ages of 15 and 24 is homicide.  Since the late 1980’s the Centers for Disease Control has considered young African American males to be an endangered species.  So often are these homicides that the news seldom reports them, and we end up viewing those few-and-far-between stories as sad exceptions to the rule.

I think God is working through the news of Trayvon Martin’s death.  I think Jesus is ushering in a renewed sense of justice that is real and true, because all across the country there are unridden colts being untied, bucking and kicking against the unchecked indifference we have toward the real experience of young African American males in America.  And when our eyes are opened to that realism, then God’s kingdom starts to be ushered in.  Then God’s kingdom starts to make its way into our hearts and into our human condition and into our world.  And in God’s kingdom, it doesn’t matter what the color of your skin is, or who you love, or what your gender identity is, or whether you have papers to prove your citizenship, everyone is worthy of inclusion and recognition and justice and love, and everyone has gifts that need to be shared.  And until this world that looks so much like the gates of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday embraces that realism of everyone’s preciousness and importance, then our shouts of Hosanna will go unheard.  Hosanna means ‘save us,’ and it takes the salvation of all of God’s children for there to be real salvation for even one of us.

So, during these days of Holy Week that process into Jerusalem and toward the celebration of Easter, may our eyes be opened to the unridden colts that need to be untied and brought to our Savior, Jesus Christ.  May we follow his procession into the heart of sentimentalism, even if it means going into our own hearts.  For the sake of God’s kingdom, for the sake of all of God’s children, Lord, have mercy, and thy will be done.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“The New Incentive: Our Fidelity to God and Neighbor”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Today I’m going to preach about adultery. Get excited! You can’t preach a sermon about adultery without a little rock n’ roll. So, I thought we’d start out the sermon this morning by singing the first couple of verses of a timeless rock tune by Derek and the Dominos. You might know it as an Eric Clapton tune.

Play “Layla”…

“Layla” has to do loosely with adultery, or at least the temptation of adultery. The song was inspired by Eric Clapton’s love for another fellow musician’s wife; specifically George Harrison’s wife Pattie Boyd. But instead of acting on that love, Clapton turned his feelings inward and he came up with arguably one of the best rock songs ever written.

Now, how does talking about adultery have anything to do with today’s passage from Jeremiah about God writing a new covenant on our hearts? Well, for Jeremiah the new covenant doesn’t replace any of the past covenants God made with God’s people. For Jeremiah, the new covenant takes the essence of all of those previous covenants and writes it on our hearts. One of those past covenants was made at Mount Sinai after the people had been delivered from slavery into freedom, and that covenant included God’s law, what we call the Ten Commandments. Jeremiah 31:33 says: “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.” One of those Ten Commandments, of course, says, “Do not commit adultery;” hence a sermon on that topic.

Now, since our religion tells us that that commandment is now written on our hearts, I thought we might unpack what is meant by the words etched into an ancient stone tablet: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” First of all, for all my sisters in Christ, I thought you might want to know about something interesting. I talked to a dear friend of mine from seminary days who is now a tenured professor at Bethany College where she teaches Biblical Archaeology, Biblical Hebrew and a class on Women and the Bible. She informed me that the word ‘thou’ as in “thou shalt not,” that Hebrew word ‘thou’ is in the singular masculine form, which means that the Exodus 20 Bible verses that include the Ten Commandments are directed at men. In other words, my Professor of Biblical Hebrew friend tells me, “When it comes to the Ten Commandments, God is talking to you guys. We women get a pass.”

It’s in that same patriarchal context that the commandment about adultery is framed. The Hebrew translation of the original word for adultery is pronounced ‘nah-ahf.’ And nah-ahf, adultery, has a couple of different meanings in the Bible: For one thing nah-ahf means that if a married man has sexual relations with another married woman, he is committing adultery; but according to nah-ahf, if a married man has sexual relations with an unmarried woman, he is not committing adultery. That’s one meaning of “thou shalt not commit adultery” in that ancient context. But here’s another meaning: The biblical character Jezebel is often thought of as a harlot and the word for adultery, nah-ahf, is used to describe her in 2 Kings. But her sin of adultery isn’t promiscuity. Her sin of adultery is her worship of multiple gods. So there’s another meaning of “thou shalt not commit adultery” in that ancient context—a kind of reiteration of the first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

The point is this: That’s what those Commandments meant in ancient times written on those stone tablets, yet we still project our 21st century Western World meanings onto those stone tablets, and we completely overlook God’s law that is written on our hearts in the process. So, “thou shalt not commit adultery” becomes our modern day Christian mandate for marital monogamy, even though adultery, nah-ahf, has a much deeper meaning than that.

I helped out with a Vacation Bible School for kids about ten years ago where the theme was the Ten Commandments, and the week ended with a musical program where the kids sang about the Ten Commandments one by one. And when they got to that seventh one they sang: “Don’t be a louse…be faithful to your spouse.” Ah! But in the new covenant God reminds us of how God is our spouse. Jeremiah 31:32: “They broke my covenant though I had espoused them,” or other translations say, “though I was a husband to them.”

See, there’s something much deeper here than our simple packaging of God’s law. So thank God for the new covenant that’s written on our hearts, because the new covenant gives us a new incentive for obeying God’s law that the Ten Commandments never had—the new incentive of relationship.

We’ve been talking a lot about this during our season of Lent, about how the Hebrew Scriptures for Lent have a theme of relationship; how they’re all about community and about us relying on God and us about leaning on each other in the process. Think about it: Those old covenants, like the covenant of the rainbow where God will never again flood the earth, and the covenant of freedom, where God delivers the Israelites into the wilderness out of slavery, those were covenants made on high, on the mountain top. God the deity was way up there, and the people were way down here. But now, with this new covenant, God establishes relationship. God comes into our hearts and says, “I’m your spouse. I’m your partner. I’m with you for life, no matter what. This is our covenant we’ve got now, you and me. And here are the precepts for our relationship, here’s how you can practice fidelity to this covenant and not commit that nah-ahf adultery: Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.”

Jeremiah had a lot to say about the stubbornness and the wickedness of the evil heart. Eleven verses of the Book of Jeremiah are devoted to the stubbornness and the wickedness of the evil heart. I wonder if Jeremiah’s obsession with the stubbornness and wickedness of other people’s hearts originated in his own heart. Yes, he was a prophet, but he was also human, and so are we.

It’s from within our own hearts that we produce judgments on other people, people that we call stubborn and wicked and even evil. We are quick to point out the stubbornness of others: “That person is so stubborn. They won’t ever admit that they’re wrong. They won’t ever concede. They won’t ever see things my way.” We are quick to point out the wickedness of others: “I can’t believe that person can be so selfish. That person is so self-righteous, it’s disgusting. They need to wake up and be a better person…like I am.” And it’s an election year people. As the days inch closer to November, we will be quick to think of people who differ from us philosophically or politically or morally as evil. But before we act on that temptation, Jeremiah tells us about this new covenant where we’re summoned to look inward and get in touch with the Spirit of God’s law, get in touch with God deep within our hearts and find that place where we can hear Jesus asking us: “Why do you pay attention to the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but you don’t notice the log in your own eye?”

You recall that last August a few different evangelical Christian organizations and our good governor put together a prayer rally at Reliant Stadium in Houston. It was billed as a day of intentional prayer for our nation where everyone was welcome, but a couple of the organizations hosting the event had been labeled hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of their stances against gay and lesbian people and against Muslims. A lot of different groups recognized that as an injustice and decided to take a stand against it. There was hodge podge of activists standing outside Reliant Stadium that day holding signs in protest of the event. One of the groups was even a UCC church from Fort Worth, Texas. I was standing out there protesting along with a few friends of mine from our church and our local Pride Community Center. Eventually we headed back to our cars, and we had to take a light rail shuttle to get there. There was a woman in the shuttle car with us who had been attending the event inside Reliant Stadium, Bible in hand, heading back to her car, as well. None of us spoke, but I could tell that the woman was looking at us. And I could tell that she could tell that we had been protesting the event. I guess our signs that said, “God loves everyone, no exceptions,” and our rainbow flags gave us away. When we came to our stop, she stayed seated and we filed out, and the last two of us were a two women who’d come along with us from the Pride Community Center. As they were getting out of the shuttle, the woman said to them in a sweet, sarcastic voice, “Bye, vipers.” She was referring to John the Baptist and Jesus calling the Pharisees a brood of vipers. Our two friends had no idea that she was being antagonistic toward them, so they said, “Bye,” right back. But I heard that exchange, and I recognized what was going on, and even though I was already outside the shuttle, I went, “Uh uh. No ma’am. Unacceptable.” So, I popped by head back into the shuttle with the doors about to close and I said, “Ma’am, you have a log in your eye.” The doors closed, the shuttle took off, and I did a little victory dance.

Yeah! I told her! In yo’ face! Take that! I felt like I had done my good deed! I had spoken out against injustice. I had taken my stubborn-hearted neighbor down a peg. Maybe I had done a good thing, maybe I had planted a seed in her mind for her to ponder, but as we walked to our car I was feeling more and more antagonistic toward the woman on the shuttle. I was feeling colder and colder toward her, and that cold shoulder was being fostered by my silly sense of pride thinking that I’d done a good thing back there. But in hindsight I can hear the voice of my Savior saying, “If she had a log in her eye, then you’ve got a post oak in yours.”

This world can be antagonistic. This world can be stubborn and wicked. This world can be crazy. And we love it. Our human nature loves this world’s craziness. We can’t get enough of it. But do we love this world, or do we love God? Are we espoused to this world, or are we espoused to God? Are we partners with God who says, “Hey, if we’re going to make this marriage work, you’re going to have to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with me, and you can’t walk humbly with me unless you walk humbly with your neighbor, because, see, I’m written on her heart, too, and his heart, and their hearts.” It’s all about relationship.

This world can be antagonistic. This world can be stubborn and wicked. This world can be crazy. But in this world, all we’ve got is each other. All we’ve got is the blessing of relationship. As Martin Luther King, Jr. says, “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” And in our life of faith, in our Christian walk, all we’ve got is this relationship with God, this marriage with God that is written on our hearts, where God tells us, “I love you no matter what, but you can’t love me and not love your neighbor.” As it says in 1 John 4:20: “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.”

Last night I had the blessing of speaking on the phone with Rev. Jacqui King. She’s the pastor of First United Methodist Church down the street. It’s a predominantly African American congregation. She told me about how many in her congregation are really shaken up about the death of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old boy who was shot and killed last month for allegedly looking suspicious in a gated community in Florida. Rev. King said her congregants seem to be asking, “How do we find the peace of God when the world is so crazy?” I look at Rev. King and me having that phone conversation as just one of many hopeful answers to that question. Lent is about turning away from sin and turning toward the Good News of Christ. It’s about turning away from the craziness of this world and turning toward God. It’s about turning away from divisions, hostility, and fear, and looking deep within our hearts for the promises of God, the new covenant of God that is always about reconciliation and healing, forgiveness and love. Rev. King and I talked about how we might get our youth groups together to start visiting with each other and learning from each other and building some relationships with each other that fly in the face of this world’s craziness. When tragedies happen, all we’ve got is each other. It’s all about relationships.

Often when I perform a wedding, I point out the difference between contract and covenant. Contracts have to do with what the party I’m partnering with can do for me, and the other party’s primary concern is what I can do for them. But in a covenant each party enters into a relationship for the sake of the other. I don’t enter into a covenant relationship for my own protection or my own rights; I enter into a covenant relationship for the sake of the other person’s well-being in all things. Instead of “what can you do for me,” it’s all about “what can I do for you.” That’s the relationship that God enters into with us, God’s covenant relationship with us. God sets aside that notion of “what can you do for me, O mortal,” and instead God establishes a covenant with us that says, “what can I do for you, my beloved child?” That’s God’s covenant. That’s what’s written on our hearts. The question is, how are we doing with our end of that covenant?

Parker Palmer says that true covenant “means the acceptance of weighty obligations to a Lord who demands that we ‘do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.’” Palmer says that the church’s acceptance of this true covenant, our acceptance of this true covenant, would “serve as a channel of reconciliation in a world that is in love with divisions.” So, instead of us being a contractual people in love with being masters over each other and in love with lording our greatness over each other, we are a covenant people who proclaim our fidelity to God, our fidelity to humankind, and our fidelity to the vision of what Palmer calls a peaceable kingdom. This all puts an interesting perspective on what’s meant by “thou shalt not commit adultery.”

So, in these two weeks we have left before Easter, look inside your self. Search your heart for God’s law, and ask God’s Spirit that dwells within you, “Holy One, when you say, ‘don’t commit adultery,’ what instead would you have me do?”

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Snakebitten in the Sanctuary”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon

Numbers 21:4-9

When my dad’s brother, Sam, was born, something was wrong with his stomach.  He had a life-threatening ailment in his tummy that was so serious that the doctors said he would only live a few days.  They said there was nothing they could do for him.  That was it.

Well, my grandmother, Beatriz, being a woman of devout faith, would not accept that answer.  Her son Samuel was going to live, by God.  So, she took her baby to her church, where the Presbyterian minister offered prayers of healing for the child, but that was really all that he could do.  She then took her baby across the street to her husband’s church, the Catholic Church, where the priest offered prayers of healing over the child.  After touching the baby’s tiny frame with holy water, the priest said, “I wish we could do more.”

But the child was still sick; still whimpering with pain at this sickness in his belly that was threatening his little life.  So, my grandmother, out of options but not out of faith, decided to take her baby to a curandera, a witch doctor.  The curandera took my uncle from my grandmother’s arms.  She laid the baby on his back, and she took a raw egg and rubbed it gently over Sam’s tummy.  As I understand the story, the curandera was searching for the ailment in his stomach.  And when she found it, she cracked the egg on that spot on his belly.  My Uncle Sam is still alive today.

Now, why is a Christian minister telling a story that seems to fly in the face of religion as we know it to start off a Sunday sermon?  Well, that’s for each of us to decide.  Is the story of the witch doctor saving a baby’s life mere superstition, or is there some kind of Divine providence in the details here?  Remember that it was one determined woman’s devout faith that led her to the curandera in the first place.  Is this superstitious, or is the hand of God at work somehow?

On the surface, this allegedly true story sounds like something right out of an M. Night Shyamalan movie.  It sounds really superstitious.  But then so does today’s Scripture reading out of the Book of Numbers!  Snakes biting people without provocation?  A bronze serpent head on a stick?  People being healed by looking at it?  Seems really superstitious.  But this biblical story is meant to reinforce the prophetic teaching that God cures, not some magical object.  God God’s self heals; not some bronze serpent.  So, maybe there had to be superstition in this story in order to point to a greater truth.

Martin Luther founded the Reformation largely on the grounds of accusing the pope of superstition.  In his Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Martin Luther called the papacy “that fountain and source of all superstitions.”  Yet the current Catechism of the Catholic Church considers superstition to be sinful.  For the Catholic Church and its teachings, superstition implies a lack of trust in the Divine providence of God, which is a violation of the first of the Ten Commandments: “I am the Lord your God.  You will have no other Gods before me.”  In this sense, the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines superstition as “a perverse excess of religion.”

I don’t argue with the Catholic Church’s assessment of superstition, but I might offer an addendum to the Catechism.  (And I offer this here with generous intentions.)  I would say that superstition is only a perverse excess of religion when it is allowed to be a perverse limitation to our faith.  Superstition is only a perverse excess of religion to the extent that we allow it to be a perverse limitation to our faith.

The Israelites had allowed superstition to overshadow their faith in God and God’s hand working in all things.  Idolatry ruled the day, and now this bronze serpent is placed in the story to speak to them in their context and on their level in order to redirect their superstition toward faith; faith in a greater truth.  They look upon the bronze serpent to be healed, not because the object heals, but because God heals; God who above all things heals out of God’s desire for relationship with them, with us.  Basically, superstition can be fun, it can be scary, it can be strange, it can be silly, but superstition limits while faith liberates.

About four months ago, our youth group was invited to the Institute for Interfaith Dialog’s Raindrop Turkish House for an evening of dinner and education.  There were five or six youth and a handful of adults from our church there, and we were received by about eight people, women and men who had prepared a Turkish dinner for us of roasted lamb, rice, vegetables, dessert and, of course, hot tea.  One of the women offered a power point presentation for us that explained Muslim holy days and their religious observances.  Really informative, interesting stuff.

And after that, we went to the next room where we were introduced to ebru, the art of paper marbling.  They would take this 9 x 13 aluminum pan of water that had been thickened somehow, and with a paint brush they’d delicately dash paint on the surface of the water.  The paint stayed condensed enough that it could be manipulated with the opposite end of the paintbrush to make different shapes on the top of the water.  Then they’d take some semi-porous, cardstock paper and place it on the surface of the water, which would absorb the paint image, and then you’d have your ebru creation.

They let the youth group take turns doing this, and this is the ebru artwork the youth group designed that night.

It was an amazing night: food, friends, creativity, community, education and understanding.  But last month I received an email from someone where the subject line was one word: ‘Shocking.’  I opened it and it said: “Pastor, I was shocked to find that your youth group was allowed to be entertained and hosted by a known “Islamic” group known as the Raindrop Turkish House.  They are in the business of infiltrating America with sharia law and will stop at nothing to accomplish their goal.  You can call it stealth jihad.  They will kill us from within by our own hands.”  This well intentioned person was writing on behalf of a Political Action Committee that I’m not going to mention the name of.  I share the email with you because it’s an example of superstition.  It’s superstition like this that limits us with the fearful notions of things like stealth jihad.  It’s superstition like this that tears even further asunder a world that is already divided along the intolerant lines of religious conflicts.

The well-intentioned author of that email would perhaps look at our delicious meal that night, and the gracious power point presentation, and the beautiful ebru paintings as magical objects that might turn us into Muslims.  But those things—the meal, the power point presentation, the ebru paintings—they were not objects of superstition, they were the blessings of faith; faith that pointed to a greater truth.

Our youth group and adults didn’t go to the Raindrop Turkish house that night because we were considering a religion switch, we weren’t religion shopping; and our hosts didn’t receive us with intentions of indoctrination.  We spent an evening with friends that night because our faith compelled us to accept a gracious invitation to community; our faith compelled us to accept hospitality.  Our faith compelled us: our faith that tells us to love one another as we love ourselves.  We spent a blessed evening at the Raindrop Turkish House because our faith transcended superstitious fears that might have otherwise kept us from going there.  And that night, the greater truth of our faith revealed God’s works of healing, and reconciliation, and friendship, and love, and all of us looked upon it together.

But I mention this example to you for another reason.  In that story of the bronze serpent, God sends venomous snakes that bite the people.  Sounds awful, but here’s some background: Venomous is translated ‘fiery,’ which means that the snake bites caused skin inflammation, not death.  See, it’s not so bad after all!  But then God tells Moses to put a bronze snake on a pole and have everyone look at it so that then they could be healed and receive new life.  Do we hear the big detail?  Only by being wounded could the people look upon the bronze serpent that God created and be healed and receive new life.  Only through their wounds could the Israelites recognize healing and new life.  The big detail is that wounds may seem hurtful on the surface, they may seem troubling, but sometimes they can save our life!

The Scripture that [the layperson] read for us, where Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, starts with Jesus saying, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”  So, we cannot look upon the love of God made manifest in Christ Jesus and receive the many blessings of that love unless we look upon Jesus through our wounds: all of our troubles and doubts, all of our fear and worry, all of our anxiousness and anxiety—our wounds.

You remember how I asked us earlier about the witch doctor and whether that healing story incorporated the work of God’s hand?  Questions like that rock our faith, they challenge our faith, they sometimes go so far as to wound our faith—it’s like we’re being snake-bitten right here in the sanctuary; but as surely as we break the sacramental bread of Holy Communion, sometimes things have be broken to be blessed, sometimes things have to be rocked and challenged if they’re going to progress beyond a level of superstition and ascend closer to God’s marvelous light, sometimes things have to be wounded if they are going to be healed, reconciled, and blessed with new life.

That well-intentioned author of the email, subject line: shocking, perhaps the mention of a Christian youth group and adults spending an evening in community with Muslim women and men rocks and challenges their faith, perhaps it so perplexes their faith as to wound it, to snake-bite it.  But embracing such wounds is the very empowerment that guides us to look upon Jesus Christ and receive the blessings of healing, reconciliation, and new life.  Holding those wounds at arms length and denying their infinite blessings is like turning away the stranger in our midst.  It does our faith a disservice, and it reduces our religion to mere superstition; superstition that is fun, scary, strange, silly and tragically limited.

But there are other types of wounds that we have endured along our faith journey, wounds that go beyond theological challenges to our religion.  There are wounds that are so deep that the spiritual scar tissue they leave behind make healing seem almost impossible.  Randy Alcorn has a book called Heaven where he writes this: “A Christ-centered church is not a showcase for saints but a hospital for sinners.”  That’s something so important for this congregation on the verge of building expansion to hear: “A Christ-centered church is not a showcase for saints but a hospital for sinners.”  This is a sanctuary where the wounded gather.

We are wounded by addiction, by depression, by joblessness, by abuse, by loss, by something that leads us to falsely believe that there is something wrong with us.  All of us have wounds.  There are those of us in this room whose family makeup or denominational background or ethnicity or political leanings have drawn the hostile stares of our Christian sisters and brothers in this community; stares that seem to say, “Something about you is strange.  Something about you doesn’t fit in the circle of Christianity.”  Do we know what that wound feels like?  And we need to be reminded that there are those in this room who have been told from a pulpit or in a Bible study small group or by family members or friends that because of who they are and because of who they love, they are going to hell.  Now, those of us who do not share that particular experience, can you imagine a wound that deep?  Yet, by the grace of God, our wounds, with all of their particularities and histories and experiences, our wounds come together in this very room.

On the surface this might seem troubling.  But here is the empowering, life-giving Good News for us, the wounded children of God: You can’t look on the face of Jesus Christ and recognize the healing power of God unless you’ve been wounded.  And there are plenty of us who have the scars to prove that we’ve been there.  These Scriptures from the Book of Numbers and the Gospel of John are our story of spiritual homeopathy, because wounds heal wounds.  1 Peter 2:24: “By his wounds you have been healed.”  We, the wounded children of God, look upon Jesus Christ, who was lifted up like the serpent in the wilderness, and by his wounds we are healed.  All of the pain, all of the hurt, all of the wounds we have endured at the hands of this world’s superstitious fears are now guiding us toward the healing love of God.

It strikes me as awesome that so many of us at some point or another have been hurt by the church; we’ve been snake-bitten in the sanctuary, yet we come back to the church for healing.  Why do we do that?  I don’t think it’s because we’re gluttons for punishment.  I think it’s because we’ve moved beyond the superstitious fears that allowed for us to get wounded in the first place and now we’re ready to nurture our faith with a greater truth. Now we’re ready for some healing and some new life!  In our past there may have been some snakes slithering around the sanctuary that bit us, and our skin may have gotten a little inflamed, but those snake bites didn’t get the best of us.  And now we’re back in a house of faith, and we’re looking to the Son of Man so that we might find the greater truth of God’s love that heals, that reconciles, and that leads us into life.

So, ponder this closing thought.  Last week we baptized a baby in this place.  Part of that baptism included questions of the parents and godparents where they were asked, “Will you raise this child and instruct him in the Christian faith so that someday he might profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?”  This profession of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is a widely recognized piece of our faith.  But is it a vital piece of our faith, or is it mere superstition?

If we profess on our lips that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior and we look at that profession as the end game of our faith, where no matter what we do from that point on we are okay, and anyone who doesn’t say the same profession is hopeless and not worthy of our attention in terms of hospitality and justice and love, then that profession is just superstition.  It’s just a shiny, magical object.  But if that profession that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior points us toward a greater truth, if it points us toward the love of God that is unconditionally offered to everyone, the love of God that transcends all human understanding, the love of God has the power to move mountains, the love of God that has the power to crush bombs and melt guns and end wars, the love of God that is big enough for everyone, the love of God that forgives when no human being can, then that profession of Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior surpasses superstition and leads us into life.

Beloved community, we are what Henri Nouwen would call “wounded healers.”  This is the gift of our faith.  It’s not meant to limit us by our fears; it’s meant to liberate us into new life.  Turn your eyes upon Jesus.  Be healed and heal others.  Amen.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

John 3:14-21; Numbers 21:4-9

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“God’s Law Is Sweeter Than Honey”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Psalm 19

You may have noticed that for the past couple of weeks, the sermons have focused on the Hebrew Scriptures instead of the Gospels.  Two weeks ago we looked at the story of Noah’s ark and the new covenant.  Last week we looked at Abraham and Sarah being blessed with name changes and becoming the parents of many nations.  If we had looked at the Gospel lessons, we would have found two texts from Mark; the first where Jesus is baptized and then wisped to the desert for 40 days, and the second where Jesus starts telling his disciples about how he must suffer and die.

Every Lent, I have preached on the Gospel Scriptures that the lectionary prescribes.  So, this year we’ve been unpacking the Hebrew Scriptures for a change of pace.  What’s the difference?  For one, the Gospel lessons focus on Jesus’ experience, and that experience sometimes affects us only on an individual level.  Jesus teaches us what we need to do in our own lives leading up to the alleluia of Easter.  But the Scriptures from Genesis and today from the Psalms are more communal and relational in nature.  They do fit with the message of Lent—that we are summoned to repent and change our life’s direction—but the Hebrew Scriptures describe that repentance in terms of relationship: our relationship with God and our relationship with each other.  It’s never just about me in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Today’s Psalm describes how we are bound to God and how we are thus bound to each other by way of God’s law.  It’s not an individual thing, it’s a relationship.  And Psalm 19 describes God’s law as being sweeter than honey.  I couldn’t read that part without thinking of Aretha Franklin singing “Respect”: “Ooh, your kisses…sweeter than honey!”  That’s what she says in the song: “Ooh, your kisses…sweeter than honey,” but then says, “And guess what…so is my money.”  And all Aretha is asking for is a little respect.

Ooh, our piety is sweeter than honey, but guess what…so is God’s law.  And all that God is asking is for a little respect: respect for God and respect for each other.

Psalm 19 starts off talking about the cosmos declaring God’s glory, and the skies testifying to the work of God’s hands.  Wow!  So, God is all around me?  So, that tree that produces the air that I breathe, the air that swims in my lungs so that my heart can keep beating and my blood can keep flowing, the air that makes blood bubble up to my brain so that I can produce these words that are coming from my mouth, that tree is declaring God’s glory?  Wow!  And those bees buzzing around the lemon tree in my backyard, with all of it’s purple buds and white blooming petals and sweet smells of spring, those bees that get their nectar from that tree and then keep the environment alive by their ceaseless work—hence the term busy bee—those bees are testifying to the work of God’s hands?  Wow!

Do you see how God’s glory and God’s handiwork are all interconnected?  Do you see how they have a message of mutual respect?

Well, right after we get a glimpse of how huge God’s glory and handiwork are, the psalmist tries to pull it down from the heavens and put it on a human level that we can understand.  The psalmist writes about how all of this is what God’s law looks like.  The psalmist writes about how God’s law is perfect, how it revives the soul, how it gives joy to the heart, how it enlightens the mind, and how all of this is sweeter than honey.

I performed a wedding a few years ago where the bride was Christian and the groom was Jewish.  And they incorporated a honey ceremony into the wedding.  You ever seen this before?  It’s not just a Judeo-Christian ritual; it also has roots in the Persian tradition and in Hinduism.  In the wedding that I did, the couple had a bottle of honey, and they dipped their pinky into it, and then they crossed arms and put their pinky in the other one’s mouth so they could suck the honey off their partner’s finger.  I have to admit, I’d never seen that before, so when the couple did the honey ceremony, I went, “Wow, that just happened.”

But the ritual made an impression on me.  In that ceremony, honey represents the sweetness of life.  And when the couple give the honey to each other, the minister says, “As together you now share this honey, so may you now share perfect love and devotion to each other, share your lives together, and thereby may you find life’s joys doubly gladdened, its bitterness sweetened, and all things hallowed by time, companionship and love.”  Sounds a lot like Psalm 19.  It sounds a lot like the perfect nature of God’s law, God’s law that is sweeter than honey.

What that ritual taught me is that while I might understand God’s law to be sweet and good, like honey, its sweetness and goodness are only realized when everyone is invited into that covenant relationship.  And that realization is what enlightens the mind and what opens our eyes to God’s glory and handiwork all around us.  Wow!  I once was lost but now I’m found.  I once was asleep, but now I’m awake!

The Buddhist monk and teacher Jack Kornfield says, “Those who are awake live in a state of constant amazement.”  Wow!  But just as surely as knowledge is power, our great awakening can take us in dangerous directions.

I have fallen victim lately to a show on AMC called Breaking Bad.  It’s a very dark comedy drama about a simple man named Walter White.  He’s a 50-year-old high school chemistry teacher with a pregnant wife and a 16-year-old son.  He works at a car wash after school to make ends meet.  And then he’s diagnosed with terminal lung cancer that’s inoperable.  His only hope is to undergo aggressive chemo that might buy him more time, but there’s no way he can pay for it without steeping his family in debt.  He has a brother-in-law who is a DEA agent.  The brother-in-law constantly brags about busting up drug rings worth millions of dollars, so Walter White, the chemistry teacher, enlightened by this position of having nothing left to lose, decides to take matters into his own hands by cooking methamphetamine and selling it through a former high school student of his who dropped out and is now peddling drugs.  The former student is puzzled at this man he only knew before as Mr. White, high school chemistry teacher, so he says to him in one of the first episodes of the show, “This is totally not how I remember you, Mr. White.  What happened?”  And the newly enlightened man says, “I’m awake.”

He’s liberated.  He’s excited, and we, the Machiavellian viewer, we’re excited right along with him.  But sure enough Walter White’s enlightenment has consequences.  Spoiler alert: His marriage is unraveling.  His son is losing respect for him.  He has a feeble relationship with his newborn daughter.  He loses his job.  His actions lead to lies, mistrust, betrayal, addiction, death, destruction.  And the show has yet to address the fact that the runoff from cooking crystal meth has horribly toxic effects on the environment (just sayin’).

I mention this example because it all harkens back to the Creation story in Genesis when God grants us dominion over the earth.  From the beginning of time humankind is awakened to that truth.  Wow!  But that powerful awakening of having dominion can go two ways: We can practice dominion by being good stewards of the environment, recognizing the preciousness of living things and the holiness of the relationship that we share with one another in this gift that is all around us, or we can practice dominion by domineering the earth, setting aside cultivation for consumption, bulldozing through one another to take care of me and mine, and never thinking about the fact that our actions affect others, let alone the consequences of those actions.  This isn’t just an agrarian virtue; this is an interpersonal virtue, a relationship virtue—and it is the essence of God’s perfect law.

God has shown us, O mortals, what is good.  And what does the Lord require of us, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.  When we are awakened to the power of God’s law, then we are liberated and freed to carry out that law with grace-filled abandon that is sweeter than honey.

Awakened, we recognize the injustice of same-sex couples not being allowed to marry, and thereby being forced to adopt their own children to obtain the legal rights of parenthood, while legally married hetero couples automatically have such rights of parenthood without us dads having to undergo that adoptive parent process, and, awakened, we work for justice for our LGBT neighbors no matter what the so-called family values of Texas might say.  Awakened, we recognize the mercilessness of one in every three LGBT youth in America being thrown out of their homes when they tell their parents about their sexual orientation or gender identity, and the consequence being that between 20 and 40 percent of the 600,000 or more homeless youths across the country are LGBT young people, and, awakened, we cry across the country in the name of Divine love, “Have mercy, have mercy, have mercy,” so that all of God’s children would have a home in the human family that God has blessed to be as big and vast as the billions of beautiful stars in the sky.  Awakened, we recognize the sin of pride that takes over our religion when we deny the love of God from our Muslim sisters and brothers (as if it’s ours to withhold), and the sin of pride that takes over our abundance when we treat our undocumented immigrant neighbors as subhuman, and, awakened, we walk humbly with people of other faiths upholding the life of Jesus who transcended all political and religious and cultural boundaries with the power of God’s love, and we walk humbly with our undocumented immigrant neighbors realizing that the biblical imperative of hospitality charges us to welcome them as a guest who harbors the very presence of God.

Beloved community, the awesomeness of God’s law is translated to us by Jesus of Nazareth who tells us, “A new command I give you, that you love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”  And when Jesus charges into the temple with a whip, scattering the sheep and cattle and overturning the tables of the money changers, cleansing the house of God, Jesus demonstrates for us that any obstacle that would keep us from loving one another as Christ loves us must be removed.  Only then can we realize God’s perfect law.  Only then do we reach enlightenment.  Only then will our hearts be awakened to a new alleluia that says, “No matter what, I will do justly, and I will love mercy, and I will walk humbly with my God.”

So what does Psalm 19 mean for Friends Congregational Church?  We can’t understand that outside of relationship: our experience in relationship with the experience of others.  This is what I mean: Last Sunday we had a congregational meeting, and I started it by reminding us about a time in our church history when we were this close to closing our doors.  Membership and money were down, and it looked like this little UCC church wasn’t going to make it in College Station, but then we heard about the UCC’s Open & Affirming initiative, where churches were asked to take on an ONA Statement.  And after two years of intentional study and conversations and events and sermons, Friends Church became the first ONA congregation in our conference.  That resulted in a small boom in membership and giving that revitalized our church, and that allowed for us to be who we are now.  That’s our experience.

Meanwhile in St. Paul, Minnesota, at a UCC congregation called Grace Community United Church, their pastor, Rev. Oliver White, voted in favor of the UCC’s endorsement of gender equality in marriage in 2005.  Because of his vote, Rev. White’s church developed a reputation of being a “gay church.”  Sound familiar?  But people stopped coming.  And people stopped giving.  Grace Community United Church has shrunk to less than 50 members.  They had to take out a mortgage to keep their doors open.  And when they couldn’t keep up with payments, the mortgage was sold to an investor who has the option of closing if the payments come in even one minute late.  Rev. White says, “It’s been a great burden on us.”

What Psalm 19 means for us today is that we are called to share our experience with Rev. White and Grace Community United Church so that their burden might be lightened.  While we’re in the middle of a capital campaign and looking at expanding our church space, we’d do well to remember our charge to stand by our neighbors, especially our neighbors in the wider church.  As we were reminded in our Hospitality Retreat from the Book of Galatians: “Whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.”

So, Jenny Vogel helped me out at the eleventh hour by putting together a card from Friends Congregational Church to Grace Community United Church.  It’s our way of letting our sisters and brothers in St. Paul know from our experience that while times might be tough now, it gets better, especially when we remain steadfast in doing what’s right.  We need for them to know that while standing up for justice may have dealt them an initial wound, we know from experience that standing up for justice can also bring the blessings and challenges of new life.  So, inside the card we share our experience of adopting the ONA Statement and the way that has shaped our church since 1996, and then it ends with this Scripture from Romans 8:28: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”  So, I hope you’ll take a moment after the service today to write your name and maybe a note of encouragement or a prayer for our friends at Grace Community United Church.  God’s law compels us to prayerfully look out for one another like this.

So, I imagine that God is a big Aretha Franklin fan.  And maybe one of the Lord’s modern day prophets might use some of Aretha’s words and say to us: Ooh, your worship service, ooh, your choir and your music, ooh, your pulpit and your preacher, ooh, your building expansion plans against all odds, ooh, they’re sweeter than honey; and guess what, so is God’s law.  Ooh, God’s law is sweeter than honey; and guess what, so is the new command Christ gives us: “Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By doing this the world will know that you are my disciples.”  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Overcoming the Island Identity”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

Let’s ponder a question this morning: From the words of Lewis Carroll’s caterpillar, “Who are you?”  It’s a complex question.  Who are you?  Where to begin?  Let’s start figuring it out by looking to this morning’s lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures where we find the implications of one’s name.  Abraham means “father of nations.”  Sarah means, “Princess of many.”  So, in thinking about who we are, we might start by recalling what our names mean.

The other day I was typing away on my laptop, clearly obsessing with the task at hand, and just looking way too serious.  This was amusing to my friend who was watching me at the moment.  He thought I needed to get over myself and relax, so he said to me jokingly, “Just want you to know, I’m judging you right now.”  To which I responded with a smile, “Clearly you don’t know what my name means.  Daniel means ‘God is my judge.’”  Snap!

I wish that I could tell you that I’m always that confident and sure of myself when it comes to the meaning of my name.  I wish I were always that assured of who I am.  I wish I could tell you that when life gets challenging or stressful that I’m always able to smile and say, “No big deal.  I know exactly who I am.”  Snap!

But the truth is that there are times when I find myself at loose ends.  The truth is that there are times when I am unsure of myself, unclear as to exactly who I am.  There’s an early 20^th century book by Carl Jung called, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, where Jung writes about people being full of inner friction and dislocations, and about how people have jangled and disconcordant energies, and how people can’t tie themselves together in one effective whole.  Well, the truth is that’s me from time to time (thank you, Dr. Jung).  And the truth is that makes me just like everyone in this room.

We are the infant looking in a mirror with wonder at this strange creature staring back at us.  We are the child with a brain full of questions and innocent fears asking our parent for an explanation of who we are.  We are the teenager celebrating a milestone birthday and then posting on Facebook, “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”  We are the young adult searching for the parameters of our identity through exciting new experiences that can be anything from ridiculous to profound.  We are the adult who is so scared to face our own fears about the future that we act out and make foolish decisions, prompting our spouse or our friends to say, “I don’t even know you anymore.”  We are the ones who lose a job or a friend or a lover, and along with it we lose our sense of self.  All of us, at some point or another, are at loose ends, incomplete, unsure of who we are.

What’s fragile about that is that when I am at loose ends about who I am, I am worried exclusively about me.  I can be so obsessed with figuring myself out that I become the only point of reference for my own identity.  What I end up with is an island identity.

But the truth is we need relationship to know who we are.  We don’t need somebody else’s critique of us or somebody else’s judgments of us to know who we are.  We need relationship to know who we are.

We had our Hospitality Retreat this weekend.  We learned a lot.  A few things we learned about hospitality are that: 1) hospitality is a way of being, 2) hospitality is an essential component of our faith, and 3) hospitality not only requires relationship, it yearns for relationship.  Hospitality is an essential component of our faith because it draws us to relationships with others, and those relationships constantly reveal to us that it’s not about just me.  Hospitality is a way of being that constantly draws me toward something other than me, something more than just me, something bigger than just me.

Now, biblical commentators remark that Abraham was great because he had inner unity.  Abraham relied on something stronger than himself to give him strength.  He relied on his relationship with God to complete his identity.

I participated in a Religion and Spirituality Symposium this past week at the Mays Business School.  There was a Hindu representative on an interfaith panel, and he shared how Hindus and Yogis rely on the spiritual transcendentalism of a being that is greater than they are.  In fact, the Hindu representative said that he was not there representing Hinduism, but he was there representing anyone who acknowledged something bigger than they were, some type of higher power.  Hindus are in relationship with this higher power, and their faith is all about nurturing that relationship; making their relationship with their higher power stronger and stronger and stronger.  There’s no room for an island identity in Hinduism.  Same thing goes for Christianity.  Our actions, our decisions, our life choices, our being does not exist in a vacuum.  There is no room for an island identity in our faith.

We can take a page here from Alcoholics Anonymous.  One of the twelve steps in AA is for the alcoholic to recognize their higher power, to name it, and to start a relationship with whatever or whoever they understand that higher power to be.  Only through relationship can there be reconciliation and recovery and rebirth.  And for a lot of people in the 12-step program, that can be he most difficult step, because it means getting rid of the loose ends of an island identity and embracing the whole self of a relational personhood.  It’s the sense of self that happens when ‘I’ become ‘we.’

I’m borrowing that terminology from my childhood minister, Browning Ware.  I’ve mentioned Browning before.  He wrote a lot about life during the last few months of his own when he was struggling with cancer.  This is something he wrote I wanted to share with you:  “I read obituaries in search of life.  My life.  To recognize a face, to scan biographical and family information with which I am familiar confirms me.  Not simply that I exist, but that my life has been authenticated in the experience of another.  Through them, I become me.  With them, I became we.”

With God, Abram became Abraham, and Sarai became Sarah.

The first verse of Genesis 17 has God talking to 99-year-old Abram and saying, “Walk before me and be blameless.”  And by that identity, Abram becomes Abraham.  He goes from being “Great Father,” to being, “Father of Many Nations.”

What does it mean to be blameless?  It sounds like it means to be perfect.  To be without blemish, stain or sin.  To be without blame.  Abraham is to be blameless.  Sounds like a tall order, being perfect all by oneself.  But blameless is translated from the Hebrew word ‘tamim’ which means, “complete, whole, entire.”  Walk before me, have a relationship with me, wrestle with me, struggle with me, celebrate with me and be complete, whole, entire.

This season of Lent, this season of repentance, is about taking our lives in a new direction.  One thing we learn from Abraham is that this new direction is about turning away from the incompleteness of going it alone, and turning toward relationship.  Our Lenten calling is to turn away from our island identity and embrace our new identity of covenant, because our faith teaches us that we are a covenant people, that we belong to each other.

Let’s realize that the covenant God makes with Abraham and Sarah from the very start is not only relational, it’s expansive.  “Walk before me and be blameless.  And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.”  That has huge implications for our faith!  It implies that where Abraham found completeness, wholeness and entirety of being in his relationship with God, and through that blamelessness of being, he and Sarah parented all of us, we are now in covenant relationship with each other.  That’s what our faith is all about!

This story from Genesis that we share this morning means that our religion, our faith directs us to find completeness and wholeness and entirety in relationship with one another, that we seek the presence of God in one another.  The religion that we practice means that my actions do not ever pertain to me exclusively, but my actions always affect my neighbor.  The faith that we practice implies that my decisions do not better or worsen my life alone; my decisions have consequences, for better or worse, for my neighbor.

I read a great commentary on today’s passage by someone named Becky Purcell.  Becky is very much a Sarah figure herself: she’s the spouse of a university professor at Union Presbyterian Seminary, a student at Union’s Extended Campus Program, an elder in her church, a mother of three and member of the local school board.  Sarah lives on!  Becky Purcell remarks that in the covenant God makes with Abraham and Sarah, God summons us to live with God in a way that is, as one of her seminary professors daily reminds her, “joy and nothing less.”  Hear that again: God summons us to live with God in a way that is joy and nothing less; in other words, in a way that is blameless.  We can’t live fully with God in covenant unless we live fully with one another, and it’s in that relationship living that we find joy and nothing less.  It’s in our acknowledgement of our belonging to one another that we find blamelessness.

I mentioned in my remarks at the Religion and Spirituality Symposium that the core values of our religion and faith that we all hold in common is a belief in what Hans Küng has called a “global ethic,” a universal affirmation of the Golden Rule.  It’s a 21^st century worldwide belief in the sanctity of spiritual values.  It’s that conviction that we belong to each other.  That’s how we’re united; not by my faith or my religion existing apart from yours, or worse yet trumping yours, but by us upholding the sanctity of one another’s spiritual values.  That global ethic is what God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah looks like in our diverse, multicultural 21^st century.  It’s how God’s covenant continues to give us new names, new identities, just like Abraham and Sarah before us, and our new identities move us away from an island mentality and toward relationship.  It’s a new direction that moves us from I’s to we’s, where we belong to each other, and where in that belonging we are found blameless: complete, whole, entire.

My name, Daniel, may mean “God is my judge,” but then my daughter Ruthie came into the world and gave new names to everyone in our family.  You know how sometimes a toddler sibling or a toddler cousin comes along and they give new names to everyone in the family, because they can’t quite understand or pronounce our proper names just yet—Like, when they were kids, Stacy’s brother called her ‘Tee Too,’ or when my brothers and I were kids, my youngest brother Mikey called me ‘Day Dah.’—and then you spend the rest of your life at family functions being referred to by those names?  Thanks to my eldest niece, Anna, I am now known to our entire family as ‘Unca Dan.’  Well, Ruthie gave new names to all of us.  It’s nothing special.  She just added the word ‘my’ to our names.  When she first started talking she called her brother ‘My Mac.’  She called her mother, ‘My Mommy.’  And she called me, ‘My Daddy.’  So, for example, she would say, “I want My Mac,” or, “What are you doing, My Daddy?”

Such a simple name change with such huge new meanings: My Daddy.  By adding the possessive to my name, Ruthie reminded me constantly of how I belong to her.  I’m not talking about being wrapped around my daughter’s finger, which I am.  I’m talking about being bound to her, belonging to her.  Like all of us, I belong to God, and by God’s covenant, I am called to live fully with God every day with joy and nothing less.  And here’s the thing: I certainly find the whisper of God’s voice coming from Ruthie’s lips when she speaks and sings and laughs and cries.  And every day I find joy and nothing less in that little girl, even on those really frustrating days—joy and nothing less.

Well, that’s my new name.  But the good news for all of us is that we all have a new name.  We all have new identities that summon us to move away from island identities and toward relationship.

Next Sunday, we will have the blessing of baptizing a little baby named Cooper Clinton Conley in this place.  And with God’s covenant people gathered around this little man, we will witness this pastor putting water on his tiny forehead and then saying to him, “The Holy Spirit be upon you, child of God.”  That is our new name: Child of God.  People of the covenant, let us live into that that name every day with joy and nothing less so that we would be found blameless before God and one another.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Rainbow People”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Mark 1:9-15; Genesis 9:8-17

After fielding thoughts from the congregation about the symbolism of the rainbow: I urge us to see this rainbow together as a sign of hope.  See this rainbow as hope, and hear these words from Genesis 9:8-17…

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ⁹“As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, ¹⁰and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. ¹¹I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”  ¹²God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: ¹³I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, ¹⁵I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. ¹⁶When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” ¹⁷God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

Noah’s ark.  It’s a children’s story.  That’s one way to look at it.  Maybe we think about those cute animals parading into a giant boat two by two, and we sing songs with made-up words like ‘floody floddy,’ and we rhyme those words with ‘muddy muddy.’  An old seminary professor of mine told me about one children’s book with a version of Noah’s ark where the animals actually assist Noah in building the ark.  Cows, giraffes, and elephants are standing upright on two feet, and they somehow have the ability to hammer nails with their miraculous opposable thumbs.  Amazing!  That variation of the flood story informs how we look at rainbows.  That story of Noah’s ark tells us that rainbows are a reminder to us that God loves us…and that God loves cuddly little puppy dogs, too.

That version of the story probably exists to cover up a different version of the story—you know, that flood story about how God is so angered by human rebellion that God floods the whole earth in a fit of divine rage that makes Clash of the Titans look like a children’s story.

If those are my two options for understanding the story of the flood, then what would make me more crazy: believing in a god that is that angry, or believing in a god that is that cheesey?  Luckily, there’s another translation of this story that transcends those other versions and that has more truth to it.

Elizabeth Webb is an Episcopal layperson in Liberty, Missouri.  She remarks that God sends the flood not as an act of revenge or wrath, but out of grief.  She looks at Genesis 6, verses five through six and comments on the breathtaking language found in those passages.  Genesis 6:5 says that God saw that every inclination of the thoughts of human hearts was only evil continually.  But despite that, God’s response to this realization is not anger or revenge.  Instead, the very next verse says that God was “sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.”  Elizabeth Webb says that God is pained by the brokenness of creation, so out of sorrow over the collapse of right human relationship with God, God sends the flood.  And the waters washed over the wickedness and evil and injustice of the world, and every living thing in the whole of creation that had suffered under that yoke of wickedness and evil and injustice was restored…and then came the rainbow.  So, out of that story, what does the rainbow mean?

Some interesting stuff about the sweet, sweet rainbow: First of all, it’s symbolic of weaponry.  The Hebrew word for ‘bow’ refers to a weapon.  It goes back to the idea that lightning is God’s arrows that are shot from God’s bow.  Psalm 18:14 says: “And he sent out his arrows, and scattered them; he flashed forth lightnings, and routed them.”  This isn’t new imagery.  The rainbow is portrayed as a divine weapon in a lot of mythology.  The portrayal in Genesis, though, is that lightning is no longer God’s arrows shot from the bow.  The bow in the form of the rainbow is now permanently set aside, permanently placed in the cloud as a reminder of God’s promise: “…never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

Never again shall we be cut off from God.  Never again shall we be separated from the love of God and the presence of God.  And get this: all of this is totally unconditional, totally initiated, instigated, and self-given by God.  There is no requirement on the part of humankind.  The gift is just there.  And this is good news for everybody, because remember: the flood story—the Noah’s ark story—happened way before Christianity came about.  This is something hopeful for everybody.  This is for atheists and Christians and Muslims and Jews and everybody.  That’s what that rainbow means.

But here’s another interesting thing about the rainbow: Did you know that the rainbow, with all of its symbolism and all of this meaning, it’s supposed to serve as a reminder—but did you know that the biblical rainbow isn’t a reminder for us?  The rainbow isn’t our reminder; it’s God’s reminder.  From Genesis 9: “God said…‘¹⁶When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.’”  I will see it, says our God, and I will be reminded.

That’s great news that total destruction is off the table for eternity, and that’s great news that God has a perpetual reminder of that good covenant; but while God keeps God’s eye on the rainbow, wickedness and evil and injustice persist here in our time.  Wickedness persists in the hearts of humankind when we, living in a country that has the largest gap between the rich an poor of any industrialized nation in the world, overlook the biblical mandate to help the poor, and we turn instead to justifications for wealth at the expense of our neighbor before we will use our gifts to help our neighbor.  Evil persists in the hearts of humankind when the death of Whitney Houston gives rise to antagonizing talk about her deserving the demise that came to her, and crude talk about depression and addiction being some kind of self-willed human indulgence, and such talk then leads us to justifications for turning away from the pain and suffering of our neighbor when we should be turning toward our neighbor in their darkest hour with comfort and warmth.  Injustice persists in the hearts of humankind when we utilize the pages of Holy Scripture to legitimate and uphold bigotry and inequality and violence rather than those scriptures being utilized to break open our hearts and let the love of God that transcends all human understanding turn us away from any justification of bigotry or inequality or violence.  Wickedness and evil and injustice may have been washed away with that ancient flood, but they came back with a vengeance.

Lord, have mercy in Syria.  Lord, have mercy in Afghanistan.  Lord have mercy in Uganda.  Lord, have mercy in the overcrowded classroom.  Lord, have mercy in the home straddled with abuse.  Where is our rainbow in the midst of all of this?  Where is our perpetual reminder that never again will destruction win the day?  Where is our hope?

The kids and I went to go see George Lucas’ worst mistake since ewoks yesterday.  We saw Star Wars: Episode 1.  My only respite was Ruthie needing me to take her to the bathroom three times during the movie.  But there’s this one scene where the little boy, Anakin Skywalker, is standing in front of Yoda getting vetted for whether he can be trained to become a Jedi.  And Yoda tells the boy, “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.”  And then he tells him, “I sense much fear in you.”  That boy of course grows up to become one of pop culture’s most iconic villains: Darth Vader.

Why the Star Wars illustration?  Because when we let hopelessness get the best of us, then we’re on the same trajectory.  And we’re not called to be Darth Vaders, we’re called to be rainbow people.  We’re not supposed to let fear get the best of us.  We’re not supposed to let acedia get the best of us.

You ever heard of acedia?  Medieval theologians wrote a lot about the sin they called acedia.  Acedia was a kind of creeping, gradual despair that’s characterized by a sad dejection of spirit.  According to those Medieval theologians, Acedia is that sin that makes us feel out of sorts with God, out of sorts with the world, and out of sorts with ourselves.  It’s an acute numbness and universal boredom where nothing is any good.  Acedia is what the Israelites wandering in the wilderness let get the best of them in Exodus 17 where they lament about everything: “Why did we bother being freed from slavery if all we had to look forward to was a miserable wilderness with no food and no water?  We’d be better off moping back to Egypt and taking what we can get from Pharaoh.  Better to get by under the yoke of wickedness and evil and injustice than to try for anything better when the odds are clearly stacked against us out here.  Why bother out here?  This is just the way it is!”  Do their voices resonate with us?  Do their ancient voices strike a chord with our worldview these days?  Does their ancient experience reveal how the sin of acedia might be getting the best of us today?

Here’s a formula for acedia: The opposite of hope is despair.  The opposite of love is indifference.  When we lose hope and we let despair get the best of us, then we become indifferent.  We become indifferent about everything and everybody.

“People are always going to be poor, so I’ll just wait for Christmas to come around to do my good deed.  That’ll do.  That’s par.  People are never going to fully accept LGBTQ people—that’s just the way it is; so I’ll just lean on my progressive openness to my gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender and queer friends, and I’ll leave the struggles for equality up to them.  There’s always Glee!  Global warming is irreversible and climate change is inevitable, so I’ll recycle and use reusable shopping bags, but the real sacrifices are for the generations after me.  Why bother?  Forgiveness just isn’t worth it if that person isn’t going to meet me halfway and forgive me, too.  Too much work.”

Did you bring some acedia in this sanctuary with you this morning?  Well, let’s recall Ash Wednesday from just a few days ago, where we had ashes imposed on our foreheads and hands, and we heard a charge: “Turn away from sin and believe the Good News.”  The Good News is that God is love, and that God has made an everlasting, unconditional covenant with all of creation.  That’s why this Noah’s ark story is placed right here on the First Sunday of Lent.  Lent is all about turning away from acedia and turning toward love.  We can’t do that without hope.  We can’t do that without what the rainbow represents.  Hope is the path that leads to love.  So, where is our hope?

We have these Lenten devotionals in the narthex.  They’re written by Henri Nouwen.  He was an amazing spiritual writer.  At one point Nouwen lived in a community where he worked with people with disabilities.  That was his ministry.  He writes about it in an essay titled, “Fragile and Hidden.”  He talks about how, when he first started there, he was asked to take care of Adam.  Adam was 25 years old.  He couldn’t speak or walk.  He was, in Nouwen’s words, what some people might call “a vegetable.”  “Would you be willing to wash Adam?” they asked.  “Would you be willing to dress him and give him breakfast?”

Nouwen writes that as he started to take care of Adam he slowly discovered what life is about.  Adam taught Nouwen about the smallness of living, about how life is fragile and hidden, but always there.  Every time Nouwen bathed Adam, every time he washed his face, every time he combed his hair, every time he fed him, every time he dressed him, he realized more and more what an incredible gift life is.  From taking care of Adam, Nouwen began to realize that every time people recognize life and turn toward it instead of being indifferent to it that they start to give hope to each other.

Here’s the point that Nouwen writes more eloquently that I could ever preach it.  Here’s what he says: “I have never experienced hope so concretely until I began to wash Adam.  Adam strengthened my hope.  It wasn’t optimism.  Adam is never going to get better.  But he offers hope.  This hope can form a very strong bond among people who are willing to go where life is fragile and hidden.”

So, I’m looking at the message of Noah’s ark with renewed vision this morning.  God has God’s rainbow perpetually—that’s God’s constant reminder of everlasting hope, God’s constant reminder that God will never give up on us.  That’s always there for God.  But a rainbow for us is only going to happen every now and then (especially in Texas).  But the world needs more than a little justice and mercy and love every now and then.  We need more than just a little justice and mercy and love every now and then.  And we are made in God’s image with perpetual reminders of our own of God’s everlasting covenant of justice and mercy and love all around us all the time.  They just tend to be fragile and hidden.  In this gift of life, we need reminders of the constant, relentless, unconditional love of God, and we are called to seek out those reminders.  Put simply, when it comes to the love of God, when it comes to the Good News of Easter, we are called to be reminded and to remind.  That’s what it means to be a rainbow people.

The other day I was studying for this sermon at home, and my four-year-old daughter, Ruthie, came into the room with a tiny purple flower about the size of a sunflower seed in her hand.  She came up to me and put this tiny flower in my hand, and then, spoken just like the true daughter of the pastor of Friends Congregational Church, Ruthie said, “Daddy, sometimes girls have flowers and sometimes boys have flowers.”  I told my friend Kevin Graham about that and he said, “Yes, but it might have been more accurate to say, ‘Sometimes girls have flowers and sometimes boys have impeccably designed floral arrangements.’”

I kept that tiny purple flower on my desk this week.  What Ruthie said let that flower remind me that God always works outside the box of what our minds consider to be normal, and that Christ, the Word of God made flesh, always calls us to the forgotten and overlooked margins so that we can find the beauty of God’s ongoing creation in all things.  But it didn’t stop there, because see, that tiny purple flower was beautiful, but it came from one of the weeds we have in our yard these days.  So, every time I sat down to work on this sermon, that flower reminded me of the fragile, hidden beauty that God always finds in everything and everybody.  That tiny purple flower reminded me that no matter how ugly life might get, no matter how overwhelming and difficult these times might appear, no matter how indifferent the world might become, there is always hope.  There is always a rainbow after the flood.

Rainbow people, the world is being redeemed.  This is good news.  This is hopeful news.  But the world will never realize that it is being redeemed until we start acting like a redeemed people.  Turn away from sin and believe the good news.  Turn away from despair and turn toward hope.  Leave indifferent behind and strive for love.  Be living, breathing symbols of God’s everlasting covenant.

May the world see through our lives what God always sees: a perpetual reminder that never again will we harm one another, and that always we will uphold the preciousness and dignity and well-being of every human being by loving our neighbor as we love ourselves.  May the world see through our lives what God always sees: love, for this world is now too small for anything but truth and too dangerous for anything but love.  May the world see through our lives what God always sees: a rainbow.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Do You See the Whirlwind?: A Question for Would Be Modern Day Prophets”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Kings 2:1-12

Elijah is a person of vision.  He is one of the greatest prophets of God, if not the greatest prophet.  Elijah is able to see who God needs for him to be and where God needs for him to go.  Even when it’s time for Elijah to meet his end, he sees clearly the route he must take: Bethel to Jericho to Jordan.  And then he’s carried off in this fantastic whirlwind.  No wonder he’s the stuff of legend!

This story we hear from 2 Kings this morning is the exclamation point on Elijah’s legacy of being God’s messenger, and it has, in fact, produced legend.  Elijah is believed to be the Jewish ancestor of El-Hudr, the wanderer of Islamic lore who drank the water of life and never grows old.  Elijah is kind of like Superman, too, because legend has it that he is liable at any time to appear suddenly in order to right the wrongs of humankind.  Malachi 4:5 states that Elijah will return before the day of the Messiah.  And dogs might signal that he’s back.  It’s said that when dogs start barking excitedly that it’s a sign of Elijah’s presence.  (That puts a fun perspective on it when I’m sitting in my office and I hear the neighbors’ dogs at the edge of the property all start barking.)  And at the Passover meal it’s customary to leave a door cracked so that Elijah might enter the house.

Elijah the legend, the prophet, the visionary…and now he’s gone.  It appears that Elijah left some pretty big shoes to fill, but for some reason this feeble, young understudy named Elisha thinks that he is up to the task.  Elisha replace Elijah?  You’ve got to be kidding!  I mean, not only was Elijah this larger than life messenger of God, he also meant too much to Elisha for him to be thinking clearly here.  Elisha was devoted to Elijah, he was loyal to Elijah, he loved Elijah; and then Elijah was taken from him, carried off by a whirlwind right before his very eyes.  And he’s so consumed by grief—Elisha—that he tears the very shirt that he’s wearing.  Can you imagine?  One might be emotionally shaken if they were in Elisha’s shoes.  One might have a crisis of faith after experiencing a deep loss like this.  Now, pick up the mantle of Elijah and carry on his legacy of prophetic vision…after this?  How?

You ever thought about that when it comes to losing someone you love?  How are we supposed to pick up where they left off?  Or maybe when someone famous dies?  Who’s going to replace them?  It all starts with how we see things.

There’s a song by U2 called, “When I Look at the World.”  According to an official book aboutU2, the song is about a person’s faith being troubled by tragedy.  It’s been described by the band’s singer, Bono, as being told from “the point of view of someone who is having a crisis of faith looking at someone who has built their house upon the rock.”  That certainly sounds like what Elisha might have been experiencing when he witnessed Elijah meeting his demise: this strong person of faith being carried off by a whirlwind.  That’s how the book describes the song, but I saw U2 play live in 200?; and when they were about to play that song, “When I Look At the World,” Bono started talking to the audience.  (Bono likes to talk a lot between songs you know.)  He said that his father had died less than a year ago, and that he was thinking of his dad when he wrote that song.  It was a way of coping with his grief.

I’m going to share the first part of that song’s lyrics, but while I read these words, think about Elisha losing Elijah.  Or maybe if that’s too farfetched to imagine, think about someone you have lost that seems irreplaceable.  You might even think of a famous person you’ve never met that’s gone now, like Molly Ivins or Harvey Milk or MLK.  Think of them, think of losing them, and hear these words:

When you look at the world
What is it that you see
People find all kinds of things
That bring them to their knees

I see an expression
So clear and so true
That changes the atmosphere
When you walk to the room

So I try to be like you
Try to feel it like you do
But without you it’s no use
I can’t see what you see
When I look at the world

When the night is someone else’s
And you’re trying to get some sleep
When your thoughts are too expensive
To ever want to keep

When there’s all kinds of chaos
And everyone is walking lame
You don’t even blink now do you
Don’t even look away

So I try to be like you
Try to feel it like you do
But without you it’s no use
I can’t see what you see
When I look at the world

We turn on the radio, surf the web, peruse blogs, get hypnotized by 24-hour cable news, we submit to routines and habits that are consequences of our culture, and even when we are surrounded by other human beings we submerge ourselves in the ease of individualism, and from that vantage point we see the world around us; and what we see creates the reality that we accept as truth.  Well, what do we see?  Do we see competition and consumption and greed as normal and essential to survival?  Do we see the inward maintenance of our lifestyles and territory and possessions as a justification for our outward indifference?  Do we see reasons to suspect our neighbor and to defend ourselves against them?  Do we see people as stereotypes or labels: thug, criminal, user, addict, hippie, socialist, neo-con, liberal, alien, queer, homeless?  Do we see people placed into societal categories that make it easier for us to cast judgments on them one way or the other?  Is that what we see?  Because whether we consider ourselves to be well-intentioned, ethical people, it’s really easy to see the world that way.

The other day someone from our church was describing our Family Promise ministry to somebody else—how it offers assistance to families who are homeless, trying to help them get back on their feet.  And the person they were talking to said, “Well, that’s just a waste of time.  Homeless people do it to themselves.  They have a choice.  They don’t have to be homeless.”  Really?  Do you really believe that?   Do you really see it that way?  Or has our society, has our culture led you to see people who are homeless in that light?

Elijah didn’t see the world that way.  And I’d venture to say that the people we’ve lost who are swimming in our thoughts right now, that way of looking at the world wasn’t foremost in their minds either.  So, let’s get back to Elijah and Elisha here.

Elijah knew that his time was almost up, so he turns to Elisha and says, “Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?”  And Elisha says, “Give me a double portion of your spirit.”  (I read a sermon on this same Scripture and it was titled, “Make Mine a Double!”)  Now, Elisha’s not asking to be twice as powerful as Elijah.  He’s using inheritance language when he says, “Give me a double portion of your spirit.”  It’s based on a custom from Deuteronomy 21:17 which states that the rightful heir receives a double portion of the inheritance.  Elisha wants to be Elijah’s successor.  He wants to pick up where Elijah left off.

So, Elijah says, “You’ve asked a difficult thing, but if you see me when I am taken from you, it will be yours.”  Suddenly Elisha wanting to be like Elijah and carry on his legacy becomes Elisha desiring to see the world the way Elijah did.  He was intent upon seeing things the way Elijah did, because only by that vision would he receive that double portion of his spirit.

The desire was there, and Elisha saw a chariot of fire and horses of fire that separated him from Elijah; and he saw Elijah being carried off in that whirlwind.  He saw what one biblical commentator calls a spiritual reality.  This is what the commentator says: “Spiritual realities are not discerned by the outward eye, but are perceived only by those who are intent upon and sensitive to them…If we do not see these realities it is not because they are not there to be seen, but rather because we have not the eyes with which to see them.”

I used to be in a band, and we had a song that one of my band mates wrote called, “D.o.M.A.”  That’s, of course, the acronym for the Defense of Marriage Act.  The chorus of the song cries out to the heteronormative lens through which many Christians view same-sex couples, and how they consequently dismiss same-sex couples.  It says:

I see love and you see only disgust

With your faith you think that everyone must

Fit your mold for what it right versus wrong

But it’s not that easy anymore

It’s never that easy.  Seeing the world in terms of right and wrong, good and bad, insider and outsider, morally pure and morally impure, winner and loser is never going to be easy for us when what we really desire is a double portion of the love of Jesus Christ.  Think about how we are tempted to see the world and how we are tempted see our neighbor every day and hear this good news from Jesus of Nazareth: “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

The biggest obstacle to us seeing the world’s spiritual realities is not the state of the world.  It is the state of our minds and hearts.  What’s going on in here?  Well, let’s have a spiritual litmus test: I’m going to give you a quick illustration about something that might sound scandalous.  This is from an article in Reuters from July 23, 1998 by Abigail Schelz.  She reports about a Swedish photography exhibition in Europe that produced a flurry of fundamentalist protests and letters.  She writes, “Attracting over twenty thousand visitors, the photo exhibit included a homosexual Jesus in black stiletto heels surrounded by muscular leather men and transvestites; drag queens replacing the disciples in a version of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper; and a version of the conception of Jesus in which Mary is portrayed as a lesbian who is handed a test tube for artificial insemination by an angel.”  Sounds scandalous, especially coming from a pulpit on a Sunday morning!  But does it sound scandalous because it is scandalous, or does it sound scandalous because that’s the way we see it?  It might be easy to see it that way if I don’t comprehend different sexualities and gender expressions, and if I see those as a threat to what I consider normal.  But if what I really want is a double portion of the love of Jesus Christ, then it will be far from easy to see it that way.  The easy yoke and light burden of Christ empower us to see where love is already present in order for that love to be recognized and celebrated, and not violently forced back into a closet.  The easy yoke and light burden of Christ empower us to see where love is already present so that the expanse of God’s love can get bigger and bigger until it’s big enough for all of us.  When she was interviewed about the photo exhibit, Swedish artist Elizabeth Ohlson stated, “My aim is to show a loving God.  One who loves, above all, when there is love.”

God sees love, and upon seeing love God loves as God has always loved.  That is grace.

Can we see what God sees?  Elijah could.  Elisha could.  The prophets and saints who’ve gone on before us got a glimpse of it.  As Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his last sermon before he was assassinated, “I just want to do God’s will.  And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain.  And I’ve looked over.  And I’ve seen the Promised Land.”  The people who’ve been swimming in our minds this morning, the people we’ve lost, in their own way and from their own experience, they’ve caught a glimpse of it, too.  But now we’re left standing at Jericho on the other side of the Jordan, and we’re looking from afar at the crumpled mantle of those who’ve gone on before us.  And like Bono sang about the loss of his father, we cry out, “Without you it’s no use!  I can’t see what you see when I look at the world.”

You know, a lot of times we say, “Where have all the prophets gone?  Where is this world’s Isaiah or Amos or Micah or Jonah?  Where is this generation’s Abraham Lincoln or Dorothy Day or Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Teresa?  We kick the dust and wear long faces saying, “They’re all gone now.  They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.  No one sees things the way they did anymore.”  But what this story from 2 Kings tells us from across the ages, what our still-speaking God is saying to us through the Living Word of the Bible is that the vocation of prophet does not end with death, but the vocation of prophet is ready and waiting for all who choose to carry on that tradition.  We just need vision.  We just need refreshed perspective.  We just need God to open the eyes of our heart.  We just need for our self-absorbed, fear-ridden worry wart way of looking at the world to be buried with Christ, so that God can raise our vision to walk in the newness of life.  As the praise song sings, “The Jesus in me sees the Jesus in you.  So easy, so easy, so easy…so easy to love.”

Dennis Tucker, Associate Professor of Christian Scriptures at Truett Theological Seminary, writes, “The voice of the prophet is rare indeed these days, not because all of the prophets have ascended into the heavens, but because few choose to see the whirlwind, and fewer still choose to live as though it has changed us.”  Sisters and brothers, see the whirlwind.  See the spiritual realities of God all around you.  See the expansive grace of God in the beloved community that’s gathered this morning.  See the limitless love of God in the world that we will be summoned back into when this worship service ends, because then we will be changed.  Then we will be transformed.  Then we will receive a double portion of the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.  Then we will become successors of the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.  And every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low, and the rough ground shall become level, and the rugged places a plain.  And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together.  For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Our Neighbor Earth: A Sermon for the National Preach-in on Global Warming”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, February 12, 2012
1 Corinthians 9:24-27; Mark 1:40-45

What God has joined together, let no one tear asunder.  I say this during the Declaration of Marriage at every wedding ceremony I have the good fortune to officiate.  Those are affirming words, they’re powerful words.  What God has joined together, let no one tear asunder.  But “What God has joined together, let no one tear asunder,” has to do with more than just the two people being united in marriage.  It also has to do with that love that exists between all of us as neighbors.

We preachers spend every Sunday and every Wednesday and every day in between preaching and teaching and witnessing to the truth that all of us are bound one to another in the bond of Divine love, and that we are called to nurture and strengthen that love as an act of remembering—re-membering—the Body of Christ.  (It gets back to that ministry of reconciliation and healing that we talked about last week.)  We belong to each other.  We need one another.  What God has joined together, let no one tear asunder.  We’re neighbors.  We need to stick together!

But here’s something we preachers spend little to no time communicating—a simple question: Have you ever thought of the earth as your neighbor?  And in the same spirit that we are called to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, do we appreciate the earth as something we are bound to?

Let’s ponder that together this morning: We have a neighborly and even symbiotic relationship with the whole of Creation.  We are united in love with the expanse of God’s handiwork.  The rivers and lakes and streams, the plants and flowers and trees, the birds of the air, the creatures of the deep, the creatures on the land, the soil and grass and rocks at our feet, the air around us and the air our lungs, we belong to each other.  We need one another.  We’re neighbors.  We need to stick together!  And with that truth washing over our souls like the ocean waves washing over the shore’s parched sands, we hear that old charge in a new way: “What God has joined together, let no one tear asunder.”

This morning I’m joined by over a thousand different faith leaders across the country preaching on the topic of environmental stewardship, or what I would call “ecojustice.”  This sermon is a part of the National Preach-in on Global Warming.  So, it’s encouraging to know that there are hundreds of other pastors and priests and rabbis and imams and teachers raising awareness about this topic in our respective houses of worship this weekend.  But our messages are not meant to teach our congregations about the seriousness of global warming alone.  Our messages are intended to link our understanding of environmental stewardship with our faith.  Our messages are intended to link our ethics of being green with, in our case, our discipleship—our call to follow Jesus Christ.  That sacred connection starts to happen when we realize that the earth, this planet, the Creation that God spun into being, is our most vital neighbor.  It’s a sacred relationship that we all share, and it’s a relationship from which no one is permitted to tear anyone asunder.

It’s fitting, in this respect, that this National Preach-in on Global Warming is an interfaith effort.  Our interfaith sisters and brothers make this point that much clearer…

Linda Cutts is the Senior Dharma Teacher at Green Gulch Zen Center.  She says that Buddhism sees everything as interconnected.  She describes the universe as the Buddhaverse.  The charge there is that we’re supposed to treat the earth as a piece of who we are.  It has strong resonance with our Christian virtue of loving our neighbor as we love ourselves.  Being a good steward of the earth, then, isn’t just an ethic, it’s a spiritual mandate.

The same thing is true in Islam.  Do you know what the word ‘Muslim’ means?  Muslim means anyone or anything that surrenders to the will of God.  M.A. Azeez is an imam at the Salam Center for the League of Associated Muslims.  He explains that the ocean is a Muslim, because the ocean surrenders to the will of God and does what God created it to do all the time.  A tree is a Muslim, because a tree surrenders to the will of God and does what God created it to do all the time.  So, if a human being who identifies as a Muslim does harm to the ocean by polluting it or does harm to the tree by destroying it, that person is doing murderous harm to another Muslim, which is a grave crime.  Being Muslim or being Buddhist carries with it the spiritual mandate of caring for the earth.

In our Judeo-Christian ethics, we have the same spiritual mandate.  We who are made in the image of God at the beginning of all things, we have dominion over all of Creation according to Genesis 1:26.  But having dominion doesn’t mean that we exploit Creation or that we manipulate it for our own purposes, because dominion means stewardship of, love for, care for.  God has dominion over us.  So, having dominion over the Creation that God has entrusted to our care means that just like God cares for us so that we might be the best we can be in this life, we are called to care for the earth so that it can be the best it can be.  As Rabbi Melanie Aron of Congregation Shir Hadash points out, “God said to Adam, ‘This is the last world I shall make.  Hold it in your hands.  I place it in trust.’”

Given that this sermon has to do with global warming, a quick tidbit that all of us might not be aware of: Carbon emissions contribute to global warming by adding excessive carbon dioxide to our atmosphere and sealing in more and more heat.  (After the service you might go online and discover how big your own carbon footprint is at earthlab.com.)  Now, Reverend Sally Bingham is president and founder of Interfaith Power & Light.  She serves as Canon for the Environment in the Episcopal Diocese of California, and she has good news to report about our carbon emissions.  Rev. Bingham says that some congregations are setting examples for their community by putting solar panels on their roofs.  In the last year, our church has been shifting our energy dependence to wind watts; another good example for our community.  It’s the new evangelism, people.  Come on in!  Rev. Bingham says that congregations are installing compact fluorescent light bulbs.  Wait ‘til she sees our cloth napkins.  Rev. Bingham reports that more and more congregants are driving more fuel efficient cars.

Now, I drive a Toyota Prius.  Your Director of Music Ministries drives a Prius.  If and when we ever hire an Associate Pastor for our growing congregation, I think that he or she should be required to drive a Prius, as well.  We’re setting an example here.

The Toyota Prius gets about 45 miles to the gallon.  You can drive 45 miles on one gallon of gas.  But here’s the thing: Somehow, through marketing or perception, we believe that driving a Prius is good for the environment.  It may be better for the environment than most cars and trucks, but it’s not good for the environment.  (It gets back to that Smartphone Spirituality stuff from last week, right?  I have a Smartphone which enables me to do more things, so I should do more things.  I have a Prius that gets better gas mileage, so I am free to drive more than I used to.)  There’s this book, the title of which is inappropriate for me to share from this pulpit, where it jokes about how if you see someone driving a Prius you can say, “Wow, it’s great to see that you’re doing something for the Earth,” and that by saying this, you’ll make the Prius driver feel great about themselves, and then they’ll offer to give you a ride somewhere thinking that by giving you a ride somewhere they are saving the earth in the process.

Kelly Wellman shared an article with our Social Justice Class about this a few days ago.  What’s going on here is that technological advancements and innovative breakthroughs are equipping us with things, inventions, gadgets, resources that make us believe the same human behaviors we were doing before those things came along are now somehow good for the environment, good for the earth.  “It’s okay to drive places I could walk to; I’ve got a Prius.  It’s okay to leave every light in my house on 24 hours a day now; I use compact fluorescent bulbs.”

Here’s where our faith comes in again.  Our faith is not something that we ascribe to because it’s convenient for us.  Christianity isn’t meant to uphold our present behaviors and habits and choices.  Christianity challenges our behaviors and habits and choices and by God’s grace it holds us to the higher standard of loving our neighbor as we love ourselves, including our neighbor known as the earth.  Our faith, over time, changes us, transforms us so that we are less about finding ways to support the life we want and more about creating a life that sustains what everyone needs.  That faith, that spiritual mandate, charges us to do more than buying more energy-efficient gadgets for the sake of ecojustice.  That faith charges us to make serious choices, sacrificial choices, life-changing choices that serve to love our neighbor earth as we love ourselves.  And when we make those kinds of choices that end up changing us and changing our habits and lifestyles, then our ministries and how we do church will naturally follow suit.

Scott Carlson wrote an article that appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education that speaks to this.  At Saint John’s University and the College of Saint Benedict in Minnesota, students read a book by Anna Lappé called Diet for a Hot Planet.  The book was about the vulnerabilities of the industrial food system and the threats posed by climate change.  The solutions presented in the book were nothing new: buy fruits, vegetables, and meats locally, and cook them at home.  Simple, right?  But nearly all of the students shared the same problem: they didn’t know how to cook.  Even the young, single adult T.A.’s in the group admitted that they lacked both the know-how and the motivation to cook.

Well, that’s not just a Minnesota thing, and it’s not just a college students thing either.  So, what if this green church with its Earth Stewardship Covenant were to offer the ministry of a cooking class?  It could foster community, it would give us a chance to get to know each other better, and it would be equipping us to be better stewards of the earth.  It might seem quirky or even unorthodox at first, but it starts to make sense after a while, and it all starts with a choice.

A man with leprosy comes to Jesus and begged him on his knees saying, “If you choose, you can make me clean.”  Jesus was filled with compassion, so he reached out his hand and touched the man saying, “I choose.  Be clean!”  And immediately the leprosy left the man and he was cured.

Seems like a simple story.  Jesus was compassionate.  Why wouldn’t he have healed this guy?  But there’s so much more going on here.  The man had leprosy.  It was a societal taboo, it was a cultural no no to come in contact with someone who had leprosy.  The Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament dictated that if you saw someone with leprosy, you were required to yell out, “Unclean!  Unclean!” and you were supposed to keep your distance.  Don’t touch.  So, you see how much more is at play when the leper says, “If you choose, you can make me clean,” and Jesus says, “I choose.”

By touching the man with leprosy, Jesus violated the very holiness code that the people subscribed to in order to best understand God.  By touching the unclean man, Jesus violated a societal taboo, which itself violated God’s compassion.  How ironic that in our doctrinal concept of the Incarnate Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, in the limited human form of God, used the extension of human touch to expand and increase the cosmic love of God.  He didn’t wait for some justification for his actions or some Divine epiphany that might tell him, “It’s okay, really.  Go ahead and touch him.”  Jesus just took compassion on the man because it was a good thing to do, and he made a choice to heal him.

Now, when I was baptized at the age of 14, I didn’t know what I was doing.  The main reason why I got baptized was because my little brother decided he wanted to be baptized, and I thought, “No way my little brother’s getting baptized before me!”  I really didn’t have any concept of what I was doing.  All I knew was it was a good thing for me to do, so I made that choice.  I have spent the 23 years since the day I was baptized figuring out bit by bit, piece by piece, day by day, prayer by prayer, failure by failure, and lesson by lesson what it means to be a baptized into the Christian faith.  It’s a journey that has challenged me and strengthened me and humbled me and that has above all changed me.  And I am thankful to the point of trembling for how much it has changed me.

The point I want to make is this: One sermon might not be enough to help us connect environmental stewardship with our faith.  One series of classes, like the one our Social Justice Class is having right now on environmental stewardship, might not be enough to help us wrap our heads around our care for the earth being a spiritual mandate.  One National Preach-in on Global Warming might not be enough to help us see the earth as our neighbor.  But the earth with all its rising seas and droughts and crop disruptions and increased floods and polluted waters and smog-filled air is saying to us, “If you choose, you can make me clean.  You who are the hands and feet of Christ in this world, if you choose, you can heal me.”  Making that kind of choice might violate societal norms or cultural norms or political taboos or even some religious taboos, but we are being called to choose, to choose to love our neighbor earth as we love ourselves.  And, sisters and brothers, if we commit to that choice, then by God’s grace the choice will challenge us and strengthen us and humble us and above all it will change us.

I’ll leave you with this: A couple of months ago, Ecumenical News International reported that about 200 young people travelling in a caravan of buses left Nairobi on November 7^th.  Their group was promoting action on climate change.  It was a two-week trip.  Two weeks punctuated by music and dance and drama, and sponsored by faith-based groups and secular groups.  The Climate Caravan ended in Durban, South Africa, at the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change conference called COP-17.  Norwegian Church Aid was one of the supporting agencies for the caravan, and at their launch event, a Kenya coordinator named Paul Mbole said, “Climate change requires a justice response.  We cannot afford to see it differently.  It is not only an economic, but also a moral ethical issue. It needs a response that addresses the injustices it has caused so far.”

Rev. Bingham says, “Global warming is the greatest moral issue of our time, because how we respond to it is going to define the future.”  Well, how will we choose to respond?  How will we choose to respond to our neighbor earth, our sacred neighbor with whom we all have a relationship?  What God has joined together, let no one tear asunder.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Smartphone Spirituality”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Isaiah 40:21-31; Mark 1:29-39

Jesus left the synagogue.  Do we see that subtle example from the Christ that we follow?  It’s actually a pretty huge example if we think about it.  Jesus left the synagogue…and he took his ministry with him.  He didn’t check it at the door on his way out.  Jesus carried his ministry out of the synagogue and into Simon and Andrew’s home.  That’s where he healed Simon’s mother-in-law, and that’s where he healed the masses…outside the synagogue.

I mention this because we tend to be so captivated by Jesus’ ministry that we overlook the subtlety about where his ministry took place.  The result is that what we neglect in our own ministries, in our own church programs, in our own Christian education, in our own discipleship is that Jesus has left the building.

I want to share a poem with you by Logan C. Jones.  I love the title.  It’s called, “Elvis is Dead…Really”:

It’s a rather sad sight,

All this clamoring for an encore,

All this yelling, “More!  More!

Bravo!  Bravo!”  What’s buried

Inside this noise is a shrill

Unspoken plea: Stay longer.

Please don’t go and leave us.

Play all the oldies we love

So we can feel good about ourselves

And what we do.  We want to

Hang on to what we once had.

Instead of an encore, the opening

Acts return, now disguised in

Different costumes of new programs,

All designed to entertain.  Mostly

They distract.

The frenzied clapping and stomping,

Jumping up and down and waving

Continue.  But it’s not enough.

The princes of the Church just don’t

Get it that, like Elvis, God has left

The building.

If the Incarnate Word of God in Jesus Christ has left the building, then we who follow this Jesus are called to head out the door after him.  We are called to leave the building and let our light shine in the world.  However (before we up and leave the building right now), when it comes to letting the love of God shine through our lives, when it comes to us letting the light of Christ shine through our words and deeds, we need to be careful that we don’t shine so brightly that we burn somebody.  There’s enough of that going on out there already.  A friend of mine, Joe Phelps, is Pastor of a Highland Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky.  He wrote a book whose title sums up what we need out there: More Light, Less Heat.

Here’s something from the “News Brief” section of the latest Progressive Christian magazine: “Complaints about religious harassment at work are rising according to recent statistics from the Equal Opportunity Commission and Department of Justice.  According to an article at KnoxNews.com, University of Tennessee Professor Rosalind Hackett recently told a gathering of human resource managers, legal, professional and religious specialists that religious harassment claims are second only to complaints about sexual harassment.”

Yes, we’re called to carry our faith and values beyond the sanctuary, but no, we’re not called to harass each other with them.  Here’s the kind of ministry Jesus takes with him when he leaves the synagogue: Jesus leaves the synagogue and enters Simon and Andrew’s home, and he sees Simon’s mother-in-law sick with a fever, cut off from society, and he takes her hand.  He shows her the love of God through the warmth of human touch.  She is healed, and she is raised up, and she is immediately empowered to rejoin the community that she had been cast out from because she was sick.  Jesus’ ministry is about healing and reconciliation.

What does that teach us about how to live a life of discipleship outside the church?  Instead of a brash defensiveness of our religion, we need to be proactively sharing the love of God.  We need to be about healing and reconciliation.  We need more light, less heat.

When our passions turn into fanaticism, when our convictions turn into zealotry, when our religion turns into religiosity, then the light we’re trying to shine out there can burn our neighbor when we’re really called to just share the light of God’s love.  It’s like a charismatic African American seminary peer of mine told our preaching class once: “God doesn’t want to burn you.  God just wants to bake you a little bit.”

But here’s another lesson that Jesus teaches us in today’s Scripture: Not only does God not want us burned up, God doesn’t want us burned out.

Here’s what I mean: The mission of Friends Congregational Church is to change God’s world one act of love at a time—that the leaving the church and doing ministry in the world; there’s that part. But the mission of Friends Congregational Church is to change God’s world one act of love at a time, and what’s the second part?  To seek a deeper spirituality.  It is the mission of Friends Congregational Church to change God’s world one act of love at a time and to seek a deeper spirituality.  I wonder if when that mission statement was being crafted that the very Scripture we hear today from Mark’s gospel was what this church used to come up with it.  Because here’s the thing: Jesus did move out of the synagogue and into Simon and Andrew’s home, but before he moved on from there, before he left Capernaum to keep letting the light of God’s love shine through him, before he kept on healing and reconciling, he went off by himself, he found a secluded place, and he prayed.

We are called to change God’s world one act of love at a time AND to seek a deeper spirituality.  Jesus sets two examples for us: He leaves the synagogue to let the light of God’s love shine through his words and deeds AND he recognizes his limitations.  As my seminary peer said, God doesn’t want to burn us, but God also doesn’t want us to burn out.

Here’s where I hope we can avoid being tempted by the idol of what I call “Smartphone Spirituality.”  I have a Smartphone.  A lot of us in this room have a Smartphone.  And I really like my Smartphone.  Some of us in this room like our Smartphone so much that we use it during the sermon (I know this thanks to the Orwellian Facebook).  Smartphones are great.  They can help us do a lot of things.  But our culture has become so reliant on Smartphones, so hypnotized by Smartphones, that we are rendered obsolete without one.  If we don’t have a Smartphone, then society views us like the ancient world viewed Simon’s mother-in-law when she fell sick.  “She’s sick.  Ah, then she can’t do anything.  Forget about her.”

Lucky for me I’ve got a Smartphone.  But I was who I was before I got a Smartphone.  I had the gifts and limitations that I have now before I got a Smartphone.  I was fearfully and wonderfully made, as the Scripture says, before I got a Smartphone.  So, who is the world to tell me that I’m nothing without it?  Well, the world’s assessment of me is only as powerful as I allow it to be.  The world’s assessment of me is only as true as I allow it to be.  That’s where the temptation of Smartphone Spirituality can get the best of us.

A Smartphone might help me do more things than I could without it, but I have the same gifts and limitations whether I have it or not.  The technological wizardry of Smartphone Spirituality tempts me into believing that I’m more gifted than I really am, that I have a broader skill set than I really have, and that I have less limitations than I really do.  And what ends up happening is that because I can do more things using a Smartphone than I can without it, and because I am matriculated into a culture that views this as the new normal, I convince myself that I need to do more things than I really need to do.  And thinking that I need to do more things than I really need to do convinces me that I am more gifted and less limited than I really am.  That’s Smartphone spirituality.  That’s what the Apostle Paul might call puffed up spirituality.  That’s not the deeper spirituality that Jesus calls us toward by his example of finding a secluded place to pray.

My brother Ben is actively involved with Alcoholics Anonymous.  On Friday he sent a devotional from the AA Bible to our family.  It said, “First of all, we had to quit playing God. It didn’t work.”  The details are different, but the dynamic is strikingly similar to Smartphone spirituality.  We have to quit playing God.  It doesn’t work.

Jesus healed a lot of people at Andrew and Simon’s house, and a lot more people came to him hoping to be healed.  We can hear them:  “My brother is sick, Jesus!  Can you cure him?  My spouse is dying, Jesus!  Can you heal her?  My back is broken Jesus!  Can you help me out?”  But when Jesus did all he could do, he went off and found a secluded place and he prayed.  It’s sad that all those nameless others didn’t get healed that night; sad, but it’s not tragic.  Even Jesus had limitations.

That’s the other example that Jesus sets when he separates himself from the busyness for a little while: It’s okay that we can’t do everything.  It’s good to carve out purposeful seclusion and take a break.  It’s only because of the false belief that we are supposed to do everything that makes us feel horrible when we don’t do everything.  It’s only because of the false belief that we can do everything that makes us feel horrible when we can’t.

The other day our daughter Ruthie was playing on the playground at her daycare when she took a really bad fall.  She scraped up the side of her tummy, scraped up her elbow, and she was crying her eyes out.  And her teachers told me that when she was crying she was saying, “I want my Daddy!  I want my Daddy!”  When I heard that, my heart broke.  I felt horrible.  Well, Stacy was supposed to pick up Ruthie that day, but I said, “Let me pick her up after school.  I’ll take care of it.  I’ll make her feel better.”  So, I picked up my daughter, got her in the car, and I said, “I’m here now, Ruthie.  Are you doing okay, sweet girl.”  And she said, “Yeah, but I wanted Mommy to pick me up.”  I said, “Well, I’m sorry, Ruthie.  I hope it’s okay that I picked you up today.”  And she said, “No, I want Mommy.”  Out of the mouths of babes.

We might imagine those nameless unhealed people standing outside Simon and Andrew’s house, and we might imagine what they would say to Jesus after he left them at Capernaum: “Why weren’t you there?  Why couldn’t you help me?  Why couldn’t you do what you’re gifted at doing to help me out?”  We might imagine that being said…to Jesus, because we are not called to be Jesus, we are called to follow Jesus.  Jesus had some amazing gifts, but he also had some very real limitations.  And just as surely as God is still speaking, Jesus had to keep moving.  That’s our example.

We are called to leave the church and let God’s love shine through our words and deeds.  We are called to change God’s world one act of love at a time, but we are also called to seek a deeper spirituality.  And we do so when we recognize our limitations, when we take purposeful breaks from doing more than we should, and when we embrace the truth that when we do seize Sabbath there are others who carry the Christ light for us.  We seek a deeper spirituality when we plant seeds of God’s love that we may never see come to fruition and still acknowledging that it is enough and then keep moving.  As Hildegard Goss-Mayr, the Christian theologian and Austrian peace activist, says, “We should remember that no effort, no action that we carry out through the force of Love and Truth is ever Lost.”

God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change; courage to change the things we can; and wisdom to know the difference.  Empower us, we pray, to change this world one act of love at a time and to seek a deeper spirituality.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“No Possessions”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Mark 1:21-28; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13

If you were with us on Wednesday night, our intimate gathering took a look at Paul’s letter to the Corinthians; we unpacked 1 Corinthians 8:1-13.  Paul talks about knowledge and love, and about how ignorance is the beginning of true knowledge, because from that point knowledge leads to love.  We have to let go of thinking that we have life all figured out before we can really obtain knowledge.  And that kind of humble quest for knowledge always leads us to our neighbor: the joys and concerns of our neighbor, the wealth and plight of our neighbor, the highs and lows of our neighbor.  Paul might suggest that if we have all knowledge but have no concept of how we belong to each other, no concept of how our destinies are bound together, then we know nothing.  So, it’s in that spirit of us being bound together, of us belonging one unto the other, that I urge us to think about this story….

They went to Capernaum; and when the Sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. ²²They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. ²³Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, ²⁴and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” ²⁵But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” ²⁶And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. ²⁷They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” ²⁸At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

Martin Luther once said, “When the word of God is rightly preached, demons are set loose.”  No pressure on the preacher, right?  When the word of God is rightly preached, demons are set loose.  But we understand the sermon as a corporate experience.  We are the body of Christ, and we hear the Word of God together, and that Word speaks to us each in different ways.  So I would add to Luther’s statement, “When the Word of God is rightly heard, demons are set loose.”

Think about that story from Mark’s gospel.  Let’s sum it up.  Jesus walks into the synagogue and starts preaching.  A man who’s possessed by an unclean spirit jumps up and says, “I know who you are, Jesus of Nazareth!  Get out of here!”  And Jesus says, “Shut up.”  That’s worship in the synagogue for you.

Fast forward to worship in this place.  It’s the same thing.  We came to worship this morning to be in relationship with God.  (Maybe we find our relationship with God through a class or singing with the choir or a good cup of coffee, but we came to worship this morning to be in relationship with God.)  Now, when we came to worship this morning, we brought our baggage with us.  We brought our unclean spirits, we brought our demons with us.  And the demons we brought with us recognize Jesus, they recognize the healing and liberating Word of God, and upon recognizing that Word of God that is in Christ Jesus they say, “Get away!  We’ve got life figured out here for Carmen, for Kristen, for Izzy, for Justin.  We’ve made things justified and manageable for Judy and Linda and Brian and Chris.  We’ve got a handle on this!”  And Jesus says, “Shhhh!  You need to listen!  Whatever is possessing you,” Jesus says, “is keeping you from the very presence of God you came here to be in relationship with.”  That’s worship in the church for you, and that’s our sacred challenge: Letting go of the things that possess us in order to let God’s living Word heal us and set us free.  When the word of God is rightly heard, demons are set loose!

So, what part of God’s living Word made manifest in the words of the prophets and the teachings of Jesus Christ are we not rightly hearing?

Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

I can do justice all day long.  It feels good to do good deeds, but loving mercy and walking humbly?  As my four-year-old daughter would say, “That’s not good for me.”  Love mercy and walk humbly?  You’re breaking up, Lord!  I can’t hear you!

Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

My neighbor bothers me to no end, and my self-image isn’t tip top these days.  Love my neighbor as I love myself?  You’re going to have to speak up, Lord!  I can’t hear you!

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

I’m sorry, Lord, I thought you said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  That sounds nice, but that can’t be what you meant when you were talking to me.  I can’t quite hear you, Lord! Speak up, Lord!  Nothing that you’re saying meshes with my lifestyle!  Nothing that you’re saying jives with the ethics I find to be understandable and just!  Nothing that you’re saying is good for me!”

“Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!  Be quiet,” says Jesus of Nazareth, “Listen!  Come out of him!  Come out of her.”

That’s what Jesus says to the unclean spirit that possesses the man in the synagogue.  That’s worship for you.  Pinpointing whatever possesses us is the first part of removing the cotton balls from our ears so that we might rightly hear the Word of God.  So, what possesses us?

Gretchen Ziegenhals is managing director of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity School.  She says, “If we are honest, we recognize that we are all possessed—by jealousies, addictions, pride, unhealthy life styles, excessive worries or unforgiving spirits—issues that need to be exorcised,” she says, “in order for us to live the lives that God in intended for us.”

Who is possessed by always wanting to have the last word in a conversation thread on Facebook, especially when it has to do with politics?  Who is possessed by worrying about other people’s lives—not other people’s lot in life, but worrying about other people’s lives, how they carry themselves in the world on a day-today basis?  Who is possessed by fear—fear of change, fear of being unloved, fear of going broke, fear of losing our position in society?  How about work?  Who is possessed by an addiction to work?  Whatever our possession is, the point is that whatever possesses us stands in contradiction to the Spirit of Christ, the Living Word of God that desires only for us to have a whole and healthy life.  “I have come that they would have life and have it abundantly,” says our Christ.

I want to share something with you.  There was a recent study done that tracked the health of civil service workers in Great Britain.  It showed that people who work 11 hours a day or more, more than doubled their risk of major depression compared with colleagues putting in eight hours a day.  You might think that working longer hours to make more money would make one happy.  But the study revealed that those long hours of work wiped out the euphoric effect of extra income.

Marianna Virtanen is an epidemiologist at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health.  She conducted a study prior to this one where she found that working long hours also increases the risk of heart disease and of decline in cognitive function.  Isn’t there something in the Word of God about remembering the Sabbath and keeping it holy?  I don’t know.  I can’t really hear that good Word all the time.

Let’s do this: Think about your work for a moment.  Think about your job.  And you don’t have to be employed to have a job.  If you’re a student, school is your job.  The search for paid employment can be the hardest work out there.  Whatever you do that consumes most of your day, think about that.  It can be the work of solving interpersonal disputes or running errands or raising children or volunteering.  Whatever your work is, think about that for a moment.  Think about your work.  How much time do you devote on a weekly basis to that work?

Now, just like anyone in this room, I wear a few different hats.  But for me, when it comes to the work of pastoral ministry alone, most of the time I work anywhere from 45 to 55 hours a week.  But every now and then I work closer to 65, 75, even 80 hours in a week.  I don’t mention this out of some egotistical pride that says, “Look at all the work I’ve done and all the overtime I’m putting in.”  That’s not what I’m saying.  This is our experience I’m talking about, because the world—our culture—encourages us to compete in terms of hours worked, and to brag about overtime.  But Jesus calls us to be in the world and not of it.  We’re called to be radically countercultural in our life of discipleship following Christ.  No, I mention this to say, “Shame on me.”

When I do work those 75- and 80-hour weeks, when the week is done, I crash physically, emotionally and spiritually—I crash.  And when I wake up from that mostly self-imposed stupor, and I try to come back to life, still drunk on the work that ran me into a wall, I look around, I try to put things in perspective, I try to get refreshed, and I start sounding like David Byrne in that Talking Heads song when he says, “Now you may ask yourself, how did I get here?”

A friend of mine shared an old saying with me this weekend, and I’ve held onto it: Watch your thoughts, they form your actions.  Watch your actions, they form your habits.  Watch your habits, they form your character.  Watch your character, it forms your destiny.  Is our destiny with Jesus, the one we call Christ, who says, “Do not worry about your life”—is our destiny with him?  Are our thoughts and our actions and our habits and our character leaning on the everlasting arms of God as the old hymn says, or has our destiny become possessed by work, by aiming to please, by proving our worth to others, by thinking that if we get hit by a bus the world will cave in?  Has our destiny become possessed by the demons of jealousy, addictions, pride, excessive worries, unhealthy lifestyles, grudges that hamstring our spirits and leave us unwilling to forgive?  Have we become so possessed and so far gone from the direction of God’s will and way that we are distant from our neighbor, from our friends, from our family, from the people we love, from the people we passed the peace with in this room just a few moments ago?

Bill Clinton said that our destiny is bound up with the destiny of every other American.  Sounds good, but let’s be a little more global and a little more spiritual here to get to the point.  When I was in DC last May for the Human Rights Campaign’s Clergy Call, there was a worship service that began with a prayer from a Metropolitan Community Church minister named Reverend Elder Darling Garner.  She said something that’s forever emblazoned on my heart in that prayer.  She said, “The universal spiritual truth is that none of us are free until all of us are free.”  The universal spiritual truth is that none of us are free until all of us are free.  Until all of us are free, until all of us are liberated from whatever possesses us, from whatever weighs us down, from whatever consequently keeps us distanced from one another and therefore distanced from God, then none of us are free.

So, in comes the church.  Parents have spent months preparing for the birth of their child, but when the baby is born, they’re suddenly possessed with worry about the simple things that we always overlook until the moment is upon us.  And then friends from their church family show up with a home-cooked meal, and another meal the next night, and another meal the next night, and those church friends say, “Shhhhhhh!  Don’t worry about dinner.  Don’t worry about food or cooking.  Be where you are needed most, and be who God intended you to be for each other and for your child.”

In comes the church.  A family’s home and all of their belongings are destroyed by sewage flooding into their house.  And suddenly they are possessed by fear and worry, and the mother of the family is possessed by the hard line of self-reliance and never asking for help.  But then friends from their church start showing up to strip carpet and paint walls and deliver new furniture pooled together by folks in the congregation, and those church friends say, “Shhhhhhh!  Don’t worry about your life, and quit thinking you can do this all on your own.  Receive this help as a blessing.  Let us roll up our sleeves and help you, because, after all, Jesus rolled up the shirt of his own back and washed his disciples’ feet.”

Sounds like a communal exorcism.  Sounds radically countercultural to the mores and routine of the world.  Sounds like everyone holding one another accountable to a covenant that says, “If all of us aren’t healthy and whole, none of us are healthy and whole.  Until all of us are free from whatever is possessing us, then none of us are free.”  So continues the mission of the church.

I’ve always thought of my possessions as the things that I own: the clothes on my back, the roof over my head, the money in my pocket.  John Lennon solidifies that thinking in one of the best songs ever: “Imagine no possessions…I wonder if you can…No need for greed or hunger…A brotherhood of man…Imagine all the people sharing all the world.”  No doubt that song influenced Brett Dennen’s song that Chris Hoffman and I have sung together before called “Heaven.”  The song says, “You must lose your earthly possessions.”  I get that my possessions are the things that I own, and that those possessions can become my idols, and that those possessions can end up dragging me down and my neighbor right along with me because of my selfishness.  I get that.
But today I’m thinking of possessions as more than what I own.  My possessions are also the things that own me.  It doesn’t matter if I own them or they own me; they’re my possessions.  So, my possessions are also the addiction to work and the temptation to withhold forgiveness and the obsessing over worries that drag me down.  Now that being said, here’s the Good News: We are called to give back to God not only the possessions of time and money that we own, we are also called to give God our possessions of pride, jealousy, ageism, racism, and apathy that own us; because whether we think we own it or it owns us, both of them can bring us down, and both of them can drag our neighbor down right along with us.  Whether we own them or they own us, our possessions have the demonic power to keep us in prison; to keep us caged one from another in an already divided world.  The Good News is that God-with-us in the presence of Jesus Christ came to set the captives free.  And Jesus, the living God-with-us, is working in this very room, because that’s worship for you.

Giving God our possessions of time and talent that we own is just as good as giving God our possessions of jealousy and pride that own us.  So give it up.  Giving God our possessions of labor and money that we own is just as good as giving God our possessions of addictions and excessive worries that own us.  So give them up.  Giving God our possessions of volunteer hours and monetary donations is just as good as giving God our possessions of unhealthy living and oppositions to forgiveness that own us.  So give them up!  Because none of us are free until all of us are free.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Kairos Moments”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Psalm 62:5-12; Mark 1:14-20

At about 1:30 on Tuesday afternoon, I got one of the best text messages a pastor can ever get.  It was a picture from Amanda and Kay of their son, Cooper Clinton Conley, just a half-hour old at that point.  As I looked at the picture of this beautiful child, weighing just a few pounds and not able to open his little eyes just yet, I thought about my kids who are now 4 and 6 years old, and I found myself saying something I didn’t think I’d be saying for a few more years: “Wow!  They grow up fast, don’t they?”

It was just last week that Mac and Ruthie were Cooper’s size.  I can remember those days, but it’s already getting harder and harder for me to grasp them; like they’re slipping through my fingers.  But seeing little Cooper in that text message, I was able to remember something from the days when Stacy and I were first-time parents of an infant.

When Mac was just a matter of weeks old, he had no sleeping schedule.  No sooner would we go to sleep than the baby would start crying.  At one hour Stacy would get up to nurse him.  The next hour I would get up to change him.  The next hour Stacy would get up to nurse him and change him again.  But sometimes being fed and changed wasn’t enough for the new human being living under our previously quiet roof.  Some nights, usually between the hours of 3 and 5am, the baby would cry and I would pick him up out of his crib (or out of his little Moses basket that we kept beside our bed for those first few weeks of his life).  His diaper was dry.  He wasn’t hungry.  So, I’d hold him in my arms (Sometimes I’d just hold him in one arm like a football—He liked that; Ruthie not so much), and I’d walk him around the living room, and I’d say, “Shhhh.  Shhhh.”  But he’d still be crying, so I’d walk over to the window and the moonlight would pour over his tiny face.  And sometimes the cats would be looking in from the patio, George and Gracie, going, “What’s that thing you have there?  How come he’s getting all our attention?”  But he’d still be crying, so then I’d start moving my weight side to side, just kind of swaying.  (This got to be a habit.  I’d be in the middle of a conversation with another adult, and I’d just start swaying for no reason.  Took a long time to break that habit.)  But he’d still be crying.  So, I’d keep swaying and then I’d say really softly, over and over again, “It’s okay.  It’s okay.  It’s okay.”  And eventually, he’d calm down and stop crying and go back to sleep.

I see this imagery when I read Psalm 62: “Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.”  It’s like the person who wrote that Psalm is describing a struggle that has to happen before they find peace.  I love that message because I can relate to it.  It doesn’t say, “My soul finds rest in God alone,” it says, “Find rest, O my soul.”  Calm down.  Chill out.  Those moonlit hours of swaying back and forth with an infant in my arms were that kind of sweet struggle where rest didn’t come easily, but it was an assurance that came only after saying over and over again, “It’s okay.  It’s okay.  It’s okay.”  And you know what?  We struggled, but it was always okay.

Those already long gone late night struggles are what I now see as “kairos moments.”  Kairos is the Greek word for time, and it’s what Jesus says in Mark 1:15 when he says, “The time is at hand,” or, “The time has come.”  When we think of the time being at hand, we might think of an apocalyptic message that some guy has scribbled on a sandwich board.  It has a tinge of finality to it: “The time is at hand!”  But what we hear isn’t really what it means.

The time that Jesus is talking about—kairos—means the time foreseen by the prophets.  Kairos refers to the time fixed in God’s foreknowledge.  How God sees the world and how God knows that the world can be when Creation is at its best is at hand.  So when Jesus says, “The time is at hand,” he’s proclaiming the realization of God’s vision.  It’s not a question about whether everything’s going to be okay, it’s all just a matter of when.  So swaying my children to sleep were kind of kairos moments where it didn’t matter how long it took, eventually the babies would find rest and it would be okay.

It sounds nice, but we think of time in terms of urgency and finality.  Time for us is that hourglass flipped over with those grains of sand trickling down faster than we’d like.  But for God, time is a nonissue.  Part of the Good News of the incarnation is that God has defeated even time itself through the destruction of death itself and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  God deals in terms of eternity, not temporality.  Jesus says, “The time is at hand.”  The kairos is at hand.  God’s vision is now being realized.  And it’s those kairos moments in our lives when that realization, that vision of God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, comes just a little bit closer.  Kairos moments are when God is whispering to us over and over again it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay, and for a change we actually listen.

Another way to think of kairos moments is to think of those times in our past when we have set aside our self-absorption and started listening.  We’ve started listening for more than just our own willpower that says, “I got this.  I’ve got a handle on things.  I’ve got perspective.”  Kairos moments are the times when we get over ourselves, those moments when we remember that from dust we were created and to dust we shall return, and we start hearing that as good news, not something urgent.  We start hearing it as empowerment so that we can reach out and start relying on people and power and perspectives and possibilities that are greater than the little god I have made myself out to be in my everyday life.  Kairos moments are when our life’s posture stops making fists and starts opening our arms.  It’s when we do what some of my Catholic friends call letting go and letting God.

Now, this is the second week in a row that the Scriptures have focused on Jesus calling his first disciples.  It’s a fascinating story.  But what fascinates us are those disciples; those guys just drop what they’re doing and they follow Jesus.  Wow!  We’re so enamored with Simon and Andrew and the rest of them just dropping their nets and following Jesus.  We say, “I don’t know if I could do that!  I don’t know if I could do what those guys did!”  At one of our men’s breakfasts about a year ago, we talked about this, and the sticking point was, “Well, I’d want to know that Jesus was the real deal before I could go making a big decision like that.”  And what ends up happening is that because we get so hung up on whether we’d be able to summon the willpower to do what those first disciples did in following Jesus, because of that we overanalyze ourselves and our subconscious says, “Well, I couldn’t do what those guys did, so I guess I’m not as worthy as those guys were.”  We maybe even compare ourselves to other people around us and say, “Wow, he’s got what it takes to be a Christian.  I could never do that,” or, “She’s the most Christian person I’ve ever seen.  I couldn’t ever be like that.”  That’s the opposite of a kairos moment.  That’s taking a step backwards from who we are called to be and who we are meant to be by the grace of God.

Barbara Brown Taylor thinks that we’re missing the point if we linger on thoughts like those.  She has a sermon based on this Scripture; it’s called, “Miracle on the Beach.”  She says that this is a story about God—not about the disciples and not about us.  To focus on what the disciples gave up and whether we could do the same is, she says, “to put the accent on the wrong syllable.”  Barbara Brown Taylor says that this is a miracle story.  She says that Jesus calling the first disciples is really a story about the power of God walking right up to a quartet of fishermen and working a miracle, creating faith where there was no faith, creating disciples where there were none just a moment before.”  I’d call it a kairos moment, because the thing about kairos moments is they only happen when we stop thinking that it’s all about us; that we can take the future by the reins and make it whatever we want it to be.

So, what I’d like to do is share one of my kairos moments with you.  I’ve been reflecting a little bit this week on the past ten years, because it was ten years ago this past Friday that I was ordained into the Gospel ministry of Jesus Christ.  It’s been a decade of kairos moments and spiritual pitfalls; what the Walk to Emmaus and the Journey Retreat would call my “discipleship denied” moments.  But those kairos moments are still working on me, like the potter’s hand on the clay.  Those kairos moments are still hemming me in behind and before as the Psalms tell us.

So, I want to get a bit personal with you one more time.  I hope that’s okay.  You’re my church family, and I feel safe sharing this with you.  Before I made any decision to go to seminary, let alone be ordained, my grandfather died.  It was April of 1997.  Before he died, I’d gone to see him at the hospital one last time, and I sat outside his room for a moment not knowing what to do or how to feel.  And for whatever reason, I pulled out a spiral notebook and a pen and I started writing.

A few days later after Granddaddy had passed and we were making his funeral arrangements, I went to visit my pastor.  I don’t know why, but I felt like I needed to share with him what I’d written; like it needed to get out.  So, I sat in his office and pulled out that piece of spiral notebook paper and read those inexplicable words to him.  I read about Granddaddy’s life, about the sadness I was feeling, and about how comfort and peace were ultimately his and mine.  And when I finished reading, “I looked up at my pastor,” and he said, “You need to read that at your grandfather’s funeral.  Just slow down.  You’re reading too fast.”

So, I practiced.  I’d never given a big speech like that, certainly not at a funeral.  I walked through it a dozen times.  I slowed down my speech.  I made sure that I could pull it off.  And on the morning of Granddaddy’s funeral, I snuck into the little prayer chapel at the church and stood at a lectern and read through it one more time.  No problem.  I had this.

The time came for me to give this speech.  Our family was gathered in the sanctuary, and a host of my grandfather’s friends and peers were in attendance.  Two ministers sat up in chairs behind this big pulpit.  But I was focused.  I walked up to that pulpit brimming with confidence.  All I had to do was say this speech exactly how I’d practiced it.  But when I looked up and opened my mouth, my throat got tight, my hands started shaking, my voice was quivering.  I was crying, and I hadn’t even started speaking yet.  That was when something really strange, something really out of character started happening to me.  I started hopping up and down on my tiptoes.  I started rotating my shoulders.  I moved my head around like I was in the corner of a boxing match.  And I started taking deep breaths.  Then, I spoke again.  Every now and then my voice would start to quiver, so I would literally swat the air like I was telling my grief, “Get out of here.  I’ll deal with you later.”  I exhibited this odd behavior in front of God and everybody.  But I got through that speech.

After the funeral, one of Granddaddy’s old friends came up to me and said, “You did a fine job.  I’ve never seen anyone physically fight off grief before.”  I hadn’t thought about that much since until I looked at this morning’s scriptures from the Psalms and Mark’s gospel.  In retrospect, I don’t think I was fighting off grief.  I think I was fighting off the temptation to get through that speech on my own.  I was struggling with the temptation to do it exactly as I’d planned it by my own willpower.  But when that struggle was over, it was okay.  That was one of those moments in my life that I can only see clearly from hindsight where I dropped my net, let my guard down, and didn’t look back.

Fred Craddock says that kairos is “a special time, an opportune time, a time in which the constellation of factors creates an unusually significant moment.”  Choosing to follow Jesus Christ is not something that happens all at once, as tempting as it may be to think that way.  Choosing to follow Jesus is God’s miracle in progress in our lives.  Our discipleship, our journey of faith, is a series of kairos moments that over time begin to lead us in the direction of Jesus Christ as he walks beside the Sea of Galilee in our everyday living.  As Paul says in 1 Corinthians, “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”

You don’t need an anniversary of some significant milestone in your life to stop and reflect on the path that has led you to this point.  From the rock where God has delivered you safe thus far, from the hindsight granted you by a life of faith and doubt, blessings and struggles, look back and pinpoint those kairos moments.  They are the stepping stones that show us the direction our lives have been taking.  And if, looking back over the path that has led us safe thus far, we find moments when we stumbled, when we failed, when we did things we now regret, know this: It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.

Find rest, O my soul, in God alone.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“The Creative Dedicated Minority”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18; John 1:43-51

It is the second Sunday after Epiphany.  This is the season when we are called and recalled to having our eyes opened to the light of Christ—the light of Christ that was sent into this world to stand up for the oppressed and to set the captives free.  Martin Luther King, Jr. founded his entire life and ministry on that light of the world.  So, with today also being the eve of MLK Day, we might need to turn our attention to those oppressed captives that a young Baptist preacher from Georgia was called to serve.

I’m talking here about minorities, because Martin Luther King, Jr. served minorities.  He’s often equated with standing up for the rights of African Americans, yes.  But King also stood up for garbage workers and the poor and the young men sent to fight in Vietnam, only to be later forgotten and even condemned by their country.  He defended minorities.  King spent his life fighting against the power structures that were hell bent on the systematic destruction of minorities.  And King understood the systematic destruction of minorities as being worse than genocide or holocaust or murder of any kind.  For King, a minority was destroyed when they were robbed of their God-given personhood.

Think about it: A minority is systematically destroyed when its very existence is denied, when its authentic identity is not accepted.  The systematic destruction of a minority chafes between the lines of Arizona’s legislation that targets Hispanics.  No papers, no personhood, no humanity.  The systematic destruction of a minority seethes in the lack of accountability we have to the other 1% in our country: the volunteer servicewomen and -men coming home from war scarred by PTSD.  No self-willed ability to readily matriculate into normal society, no personhood, no humanity.  The systematic destruction of a minority slithers on the floor of the Tennessee legislature when a so-called “Bathroom Bill” is introduced that would make it illegal to use a bathroom other than the one assigned to your gender of either man or woman, thereby blatantly targeting people who are transgender or gender variant.  No birth certificate stating that you are of the legal gender to use a particular bathroom, no bathroom for you, and no personhood, no humanity.

But Dr. King had something else to say about minorities.  He said, “Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.”

This just in: In Colorado, the Girl Scouts are ensconced in controversy.  Apparently, a transgender child, a boy who self-identifies as a girl, and whose parents affirm that identity for their child, tried to join their local Girl Scout Troop.  Initially, the child was turned away when they were told that they had “boy parts” and therefore could not be a Girl Scout.  But then Girl Scouts of America came out with a response saying, “Girl Scouts is an inclusive organization and we accept all girls in Kindergarten through 12th grade as members.  If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.”

This news had some backlash.  There have been responses to this statement asking for people to boycott Girl Scout cookies this year.  I never would have thought that transgender youth could be systematically destroyed by a boycott of Girl Scout cookies.  But then I see a youtube video of a woman who was a Girl Scout for ten years wearing her brown Girl Scout vest and sporting her lifetime membership card decrying the boycott as being counterproductive to making the world a better place and saying, “Now I’m going to have to buy twice as many Girl Scout cookies as I usually do, and my college student budget can’t handle that, but I’m going to eat Ramen for a few months so that a girl, even a transgender girl, can go to camp.  And to transgender scouts or just transgenders out there, you are my sister.  Let’s do a service project and go camping.  Peace out, G scout.”

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.

I’m compelled by this because of today’s account from John’s gospel about Jesus calling the first disciples; or today I should call them the first of the creative dedicated minority in Christianity.  I find it interesting that all of the gospels in the Bible—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—tell the story of Jesus’ life and ministry, but they all start off differently and they all mention different things.  Matthew starts off with the genealogy of Jesus, Jesus’ family tree: Abraham begat Isaac begat Jacob begat Judah on down to Jesus.  Mark starts off with Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist.  Luke starts of with the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth.  And John starts with that theological pronouncement about Christ being in existence with God at the beginning of all things: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  Not only that, but Mark and John don’t mention the birth of Jesus at all; Matthew and Luke tell that story.  Maybe Mark and John didn’t think the story of Jesus’ birth was that important.  But what all four gospels do mention is Jesus calling his first disciples.  It’s that important to the story of Jesus’ life and ministry.  Not only that, but in all four gospels, the calling of the disciples is how Jesus’ ministry officially starts.

I’m compelled because it appears that God so loved the world that God sent God’s only son into the world as the light of the world, hence our season of Epiphany, but that light of the world could not illuminate alone.  That light of the world could not carry out the mission of God’s undying love for all of creation without other little lights shining in the darkness right along with him.  Jesus needed help.  He needed a creative dedicated minority to make this world become God’s realm on earth as it is in heaven.  God needs relationship to make this world better, and we are made in the image of God of this relationship-seeking God.  It’s compelling!

Now, the way the gospels tell the story of Jesus calling those first disciples, it sounds kind of unfathomable.  Guys going about their daily lives of fishing and stone masonry and so forth, and somebody they’ve never met before coming along and saying, “Follow me,” and they go, “Okay.”  But even if the story didn’t happen exactly like that, what the writers of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John show with Nathanael and the others instantly dropping what they were doing to follow Jesus is how each of those men shifted dramatically from being defined by the cultural structures of their time over to being defined by their God-given personhood and their God-given mission in life.  True, it might be that almost always a creative dedicated minority has made the world better, but that creative dedicated minority is composed of hearts set on fire by the epiphany of personhood, the epiphany of the individual’s true humanity, the epiphany of self that is bolstered by a love that will not let us go no matter what the structures of this world may say.  That self is the well of living water where we draw that kind of passionate strength that cries out to the world, “I can do all things through Christ, the light of the world, who strengthens me.”  And in this broken world rife with temptations of all kinds, in this world held down by the dead weight of indifference, that self can be so easily destroyed.

I heard another one of Dr. King’s speeches recently.  I don’t know where or when he delivered this speech or who his audience was, but the message is timeless.  He said:

“I come here tonight and plead with you.  Believe in yourself and believe that you’re somebody.  As I said to a group last night, nobody else can do this for us.  No document can do this for us.  No Lincolnian Emancipation Proclamation can do this for us.  No Johnsonian Civil Rights Bill can do this for us.  If the Negro is to be free, he must move down into the inner resources of his own soul and sign with the pen and ink of self-assertive manhood his own emancipation proclamation.”

Psalm 139 that Anne read us this morning affirms this self-assertive personhood: “O God, you have searched me and known me…You hem in me, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me…All of the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

James Limburg wrote a commentary on the Psalms, and he tells a story about a young rabbi named Zusya.  Rabbi Zusya was quite discouraged about his failures and weaknesses.  His discouragement led him complacency with indifference.  That’s when an older rabbi said to Zusya, “When you get to heaven, God is not going to say to you, ‘Why weren’t you Moses?’  No, God will say, ‘Why weren’t you Zusya?’  So why don’t you stop trying to be Moses, and start being the Zusya God created you to be?”

Psalm 139 is about our call from God, but it is also about how we are recalled this very day to our still-speaking God’s assurance that, no matter what anyone says about us, no matter what ills befall us, no matter what structural means try to destroy our authentic self, we are always precious in God’s sight.  In every moment of our lives, we are examples of God’s hand in creation.

The late preacher to Harvard, Peter Gomes, talks about Psalm 139 like this.  He says, “Being created in the image of God means to be created in the image of goodness itself…Self-worth, self-esteem, self-value, these are not essays in mere ego, these are essays in divinity…the stuff of goodness and godliness itself, and it is that image that provides security and serenity in the world.”

Kate Huey poses a question for us: “How might it altar your self-image to think of yourself as God’s ‘work-in-progress’?”

I want to end this sermon by shift gears just a bit, because if we are going to be about self-examination this morning then we need to take a good look at the church and who God created us to be as congregations.  When Jesus said to Phillip, “Follow me,” Phillip went and found Nathanael.  And he told Nathanael, “Remember who Moses and the prophets told us about?  Well, I found him.  Jesus of Nazareth.”  And Nathanael says, “Nazareth?  Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

There are Nathanaels sitting under fig trees all over this world, and those Nathanaels are contemplating and meditating and thinking on ways to make this world better, and those Nathanaels receive an invitation to add their contemplation and their meditation and their thinking to the body of Christ in the Church, and those Nathanaels say, “The Church?  Can anything good come out of the Church?”

Jefferson Bethke is a modern day Nathanael.  He appears in a youtube video that’s gone viral called, “Why I Hate Religion, but love Jesus.”  Some of our own church members have shared that video on Facebook recently.  In the video, Bethke recites his own poem where he says, “The problem with religion is it never gets to the core.  It’s just behavior modification like a long list of chores.  Like, let’s dress up the outside, make it look nice and neat, but it’s funny—that’s what they used to do to mummies while the corpse rots underneath.”

Has the church confused a God-given hunger and thirst for righteousness with righteous indignation?  Has the church mistaken God and the prophets’ insistence on justice for a justification of my own indifference toward my neighbor, so long as I stay on the straight and narrow track in my own life with my own portable, pocket-size Jesus?  Has the Church adopted a posture of judging and even condemning the very neighbors that our congregations are called and recalled to serve?  Has the Church confused self-preservation with self-affirmation?  If this is the case, then the ironic tragedy is that we have used our own structure for the systematic destruction of our own God-given personhood.  The ironic tragedy is that we have been using the Church to topple the mission of Jesus, and the Nathanaels out there and the Girl Scouts out there and the oppressed minorities out there are asking, “Can anything good come out of the Church?”

John Thomas came out of the church.  John Thomas is the former president and general minister of our denomination, the United Church of Christ.  And on the eve of MLK Day, Thomas, who is only a little younger now than King would have been if he were still alive, asks, “Could those of us who shared our youth with King have imagined that we would observe his 83^rd birthday in a country where state legislatures are engaging in a full scale assault on voting rights, cynically depriving African Americans and others of the core sign of full citizenship in this democracy simply to make partisan gain?  Could we have anticipated a nation that has been at war for over a decade in Afghanistan and Iraq, wars whose lies and deceptions, deaths and futility bear such an eerie resemblance to the conflict in Vietnam he spoke against so courageously and eloquently?  Could we have thought that a mainstream politician in 2012 would feel comfortable once again rhetorically reducing African Americans merely to food stamp recipients (most of whom are white, by the way), betraying not only the persistence of racism but also implying that there is something evil about a government that seeks to feed children and the elderly?”

Thomas’ questions are in this sermon to plead with us this morning, just like the Nathanaels out there are pleading with us: Church, be recalled to your true personhood, be recalled by Jesus Christ to drop your nets and take up your cross and become the creative dedicated minority that would make this world better one act of love at a time.  By this the world will know that you are Christ’s disciples, and by this you are utilizing your inner resources to embrace the true self that God hopes for you to be.  Be about justice and you will know freedom.  Be about freedom and you will know love.  Be about love and you will know God.

Sometimes I wonder how Martin Luther King, Jr. would feel about justice for minorities, like people who are transgender; how me might feel about Christians standing up for the rights of those who are oppressed by “Bathroom Bills” and bullying and Girl Scout cookie boycotts.  King’s speeches were powerful, but he used the vernacular of his time.  The movement he spoke of was all about brotherhood and men uniting with one another.  There was no mention of women in King’s words.  So, without that sensitivity to gender inclusivity, I wonder whether King would approve of justice for all minorities, including our transgender siblings.

But King also said that a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, and biblical justice is about all of creation moving toward economic empowerment and moral equality and social inclusiveness.  That’s the funny thing about the Word of God: It doesn’t matter who we are or the context we find ourselves in; when we embrace our true selves as made in the image of God and we let the Holy Spirit fill our being and we allow Jesus Christ to speak through our very lives, then love trumps any previous misconceptions or biases or even bigotry that we may have clung to, and through our lives justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a never-failing stream.

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Baptism: An Announcement of Our Identity”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Genesis 1:1-5; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11

Today has two titles in the Christian calendar: It’s Baptism of Christ Sunday, and it’s the First Sunday after Epiphany.  Typically, we’re supposed to go with one or the other, but if we put them together, they have a pretty powerful message: The baptism of Christ serves as Jesus’ epiphany about who he is and what his mission is in the world.

Let’s think about it in light of Family Promise.  This morning we wrapped up our Family Promise host week.  There were three homeless families staying in our church this week.  Now, whenever I make announcements about this ministry, I draw attention to it saying that we need volunteers to host the homeless families who will be our guests in this place.  Sometimes people are hearing about Family Promise for the first time right then, and it’s a matter-of-fact way to let them know what Family Promise is about and how important it is.  But the Family Promise guidelines that all of our partnering churches are supposed to follow insist that we not refer to our guests as homeless.  Homelessness is their circumstance, it is not their identity.

Now, baptism is often thought of as a sacrament that changes our identity; baptism changes who we are.  It starts with baptism’s roots.  Baptism was a Jewish purification rite; it was about cleansing.  It’s where we get that charismatic language about our sins being washed away.

And then there’s the symbolism of the dove at Jesus’ baptism: Heaven was torn open and God’s spirit descended upon him like a dove.  We usually look at the dove as a symbol of gentleness, peace, innocence, and moral purity.  But it symbolizes more than that.  The dove harkens back to the creative power of God in Genesis.  Just as God’s Spirit brooded over the waters in the creation story, God’s Spirit in the form of the dove brooded over Jesus at his baptism.  The message is that in baptism we become a new creation; we receive a new identity.

Sounds about right.  Makes sense.  But the way Mark tells it in his gospel, Jesus’ baptism isn’t about the inner experience of Jesus himself.  It isn’t a biographical sketch of him becoming a new person.  It isn’t about him making some fresh decisions and turning his life around and becoming a new person based on those decisions.  Mark tells it differently.  Jesus’ baptism is an announcement.  Jesus’ baptism is a Divine announcement about who Jesus is and whose Jesus is and what his mission is in the world.  That’s the epiphany for Jesus, and that’s the epiphany for everyone in that wilderness and all of us in this sanctuary: This is who Jesus has always been, not who he has become.  Now that he knows it and now that we all know it, that changes things.  That epiphany changes how we look at the world, how we look at ourselves, and how we look at our neighbor.

Now, bear with me for a minute while I share a story from that other school over in Austin.  UT alumni are called Texas Exes.  (Clever, I know.)  The Houston Chapter of the Texas Exes often ends up with extra football tickets.  They probably have a lot more extra football tickets lately than they used to.  Those extra tickets usually go to fellow alumni, but last fall the chapter board members decided to connect with a high school student instead.  So, their chapter president, Julie Long, called up Houston ISD, and she said, “We’ve got this ticket.”  And they said, “You should meet Reva.”

Reva Menson was a diehard UT fan, so it was practically a given that the ticket go to her.  In the process of her getting the ticket, though, Julie Long discovered that Reva and her family had been homeless for a while, and that they were now living in an extended stay hotel.  Reva had a four-hour roundtrip commute to school.  Despite all that, she was a stellar student.  Long said that meeting Reva was the best thing that ever happened to her as Chapter President.  She made sure that her chapter endowed a scholarship in Reva’s honor, and now Reva’s excelling in college, majoring in English and planning a career in law and social work.  She wants to go out there and stand up for disadvantaged kids.

It sounds like a wonderful story.  Our culture tends to hear this story as a success story.  But when Reva is asked now about her experience with homelessness, she rolls her eyes a little.  She remembers that when she got that ticket to the football game that the Houston media heard about it, and they ran stories that said, “Texas Exes Take Homeless Girl to Game.”  Reva says, “Being homeless was never the central point for me, you know?  First, I wasn’t homeless at the time, but even if I were, my name isn’t Homeless Girl.  It was hurtful to be reduced to those two words.”

We tend to look at baptism like we look at Reva’s story, like it’s a biographical sketch.  Reva, the homeless girl, hopeless and going nowhere, studies hard, makes good decisions, and goes to college.  Look what the homeless girl did!  Look at the new her!  With baptism we tend to look at the sinner: The sinner, hopeless and going nowhere, makes good decisions, and is saved.  Look at what the sinner did!  Look at the new her!  Look at the new him!

But what Reva is saying is, “This is me.  This is who I always was.  This is what I’ve always been capable of.  And I’ve got a mission in this life.”  Baptism is a lot like that.  Baptism announces to the world, “This is me.  This is who I always was, and this is whose I’ve always been, and I’ve got a mission in this world.”  Baptism is more than a purification.  It’s more than a transformation.  It’s an announcement.

I often say that when someone is baptized that it reminds us of our own baptisms.  That’s not just a sentimental thing, because for those of us who were baptized when we were babies, we can’t remember much about that.  The reminder is that we’re all adoptive daughter and sons of God; we’re all adoptive daughters and sons of a love that will not let us go.  That’s not something that the waters of purification make happen. That’s something that the waters of baptism announce.

John the Baptist came baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance.  We associate baptism with repentance.  What does repentance mean?  We define repentance as, “being sorry, remorseful, or penitent.”  So, did John the Baptist come baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of “being sorry, remorseful, and penitent”?

Here’s an image: Jewish baptism and early Christian baptisms were self-administered.  People would immerse themselves in water while the baptizer, sometimes two people, would recite portions of the law.  So, think of John the Baptist standing in the Jordan River, someone wades out to him, and then John starts yelling the law at this person, and then they literally dunk themselves, all the while going, “I’m so sorry.  I’m so remorseful.  I’m so penitent.  I feel so bad.”  And then they come up out of the water and say, “Hey, I feel great!”

That’s not an accurate image, because that’s not what repentance means.  The Greek word for repentance is metanoia, and metanoia has additional meanings in the Judaism of Jesus’ day.  Repentance, metanoia, means a complete change of mind, a new direction, an altered purpose in life.  Marcus Borg points out that repentance in Jesus’ time “was associated with return from exile; to repent is to return; to repent is to follow ‘the way of the Lord’ that leads from exile to the promised land.”  So, repentance is about liberation.  It’s about freedom.  It’s what Paul Tillich calls “the courage to accept acceptance.”  In other words, baptism is about us getting in touch with our authentic self.  Baptism is an announcement, an epiphany, that says, “This is who I am, made in the image of God, fearfully and wonderfully made, blessed, beautiful and redeemed; this is whose I am, a child of God and a follower of Jesus Christ; and, by God, I have a mission in life.”

When I was in seminary, I remember the toughest prof I had was a guy named Dr. Michael Greene.  He taught a course on the “African American Experience in Social Ethics” and another course on the “Black Church.”  I took both of those classes with Dr. Greene.  Both of those classes met Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 8am.  Both of those classes required us to read about half a book and write a paper on what we’d read and come ready to discuss what we’d read for every class meeting.  Dr. Greene carried us through some eye-opening, often tense conversations in those classes.  Most mornings were baptisms by fire and epiphanies with Dr. Greene.  I learned a lot from him and from those classes.  He stood out for me from most of the other professors.  He was tough, but I admired his authenticity.

The best lesson Dr. Greene ever taught me wasn’t in the classroom.  It was in the weekly Tuesday worship service in Carr Chapel.  Dr. Greene was the preacher one of those Tuesdays.  He started his sermon by sharing about how he was the first person in his family to graduate from high school.  It was a long time coming and a long struggle for Dr. Greene and his family to get to Graduation Day.  They were all so proud.  And at the ceremony, Dr. Greene says that when he walked in with all of his peers dressed in their cap and gown, his grandmother handed him a note.  When he took his seat, he opened it and read it.  All it said was, “Be who you is, not who you ain’t.”

Repentance is the spiritual act of being who we are, not who we’re not.  Our accomplishments and our shortcomings in life, our successes and our failures, they are not our identity.  They are not who we are.  It’s like when I was working at a PR firm in college, and my boss had a saying on his wall that said, “Just because you have a job doesn’t mean you have a life.”

“Be who you is, not who you ain’t,” says God’s Spirit that broods over our lives as the dove brooded over Jesus at his baptism.  “Be who you are, not who you’re not,” says the still-speaking voice of God that is with us even now.  Take courage and accept acceptance.

You know, some of us were baptized when we were infants, some when we were adults.  Some of us haven’t been baptized.  So let’s be baptized in some truth for a moment…

In the UCC Book of Worship, there’s an order for baptism.  And the baptizer has questions they ask the person being baptized.  Maybe, along with questions like, “Do you accept the joy and the cost of discipleship?” we should ask questions like, “Do you accept acceptance?  Do you accept who you are and whose you are?  And by that identity, are you willing to join Jesus on a journey of discipleship where we proclaim good news, liberation, healing, and a new social order to a broken and hurting world?”  That sounds so refreshing!  That sounds new.  That sounds revolutionary.  But really it’s just who we are, and it’s what we’re called to do.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“What Do You See?: A Sermon Inspired by Ben Breedlove”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Isaiah 61:10-62:3 and Luke 2:22-40

Chicago.  1860.  The Republican Convention’s in town.  But the GOP are divided over who their nominee will be.  Tensions are high when the third ballot is cast.  Ohio switches four votes from Salmon P. Chase to Abraham Lincoln.  And with that, the lawyer from Illinois clinches the nomination.  Ohio makes its announcement, and one man starts crying, but another man starts quoting the Bible at the top of his lungs: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: ³⁰For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,³¹ which thou hast prepared before the face of all people…”

These are the words from what’s referred to as Simeon’s poem.  We hear it today from Luke’s gospel.  Those words have been used in Christian liturgies, like the Book of Common Prayer.  They’ve been set to music by composers from William Byrd to Gustav Holst.  And for centuries, Christians have spouted off those words whenever they see something or someone that resembles a savior.

The good Baptists at Baylor might be shouting those words now that they’ve seen the likes of Robert Griffin III: “Lord, my eyes have seen your salvation!”

But whether it’s Abraham Lincoln or RG3 or some other gifted individual, their appearance of being a savior comes with a certain level of proof.  Public speaking skills or athletic prowess or charisma or just having that “it” quality, it’s enough to make the soul that longs for salvation cry out, “Lord, I’m convinced!  My eyes have seen your salvation!”

But Simeon and Anna had no such proof.  And these weren’t fair-weather fans of God.  Simeon and Anna weren’t just waiting for some good-looking warrior smacking of charisma to be the one who would console Israel and liberate the oppressed in Jerusalem.  Simeon was righteous and devout.  And Anna, whose husband had died only seven years into their marriage, had spent her entire life since then as a widow never leaving the temple, fasting and praying.  Eighty-four years old, and she’s still devoted to this discipline of waiting.  But when Simeon and Anna see Mary and Joseph’s baby, when they see that 8-day-old scrap of a human being, wrapped in rags, they are convinced that this is salvation in the flesh.

Lauren Winner is Assistant Professor of Christian Spirituality at Duke Divinity School.  She points out that Simeon and Anna aren’t the first instance of dramatic faithfulness in the gospel of Luke.  Mary is certainly faithful to God.  Zechariah, Elizabeth’s husband, is so faithful that the first thing the man says after months of being mute is a prayer.  The shepherds “watching their flocks by night” are faithful enough to go to Bethlehem and see the baby.  But, as Lauren Winner says, Simeon and Anna’s faithfulness takes the cake.  At least Mary and Zechariah and those shepherds had visits from angels to rely on for proof.  Simeon and Anna had no burning bush, no talking donkey, no visit from an angel.  All they had was this baby.  But somehow Simeon and Anna saw Jesus and they saw the salvation of the world.

Now, that’s vision!  Do you have vision?  Do we have vision?  Can we look at something that’s completely void of proof of being anything more than what it is right there in front of us and see something more?  Because that’s what vision is essentially.  Vision is being able to see something that isn’t immediately visible so clearly that we believe it, and in that belief finding peace; peace enough that our souls might echo the words of Simeon: “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now release your servant in peace.  For my eyes have seen your salvation.  My eyes have seen your vision.”

Some of you might know the name Ben Breedlove.  He went to the same high school in Austin where Stacy and I went, so between that and the fact that he posted a youtube video last month that’s gotten millions of hits worldwide, I’ve been hearing a lot about the kid.  Ben Breedlove had a disease called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.  It’s a thickening of the heart muscle that makes it work harder.  The video he posted just weeks ago had him holding up white note cards that told the story of his struggles with the disease.  Every now and then he flashes this infectious smile.  You should check it out when you get a chance.  But what makes the video even more powerful is that Ben Breedlove died on Christmas Day.  He was 18 years old.

Ben had a vision.  He shares about it in the video.  He tells about how when he was four, he had a life-threatening seizure where his blood sugar dropped to 14.  He doesn’t remember much about that day except one thing.  He remembers being rushed down a hallway on a stretcher by two nurses and his mom running alongside.  He looked up and saw a light shining over him, but it was so bright that he couldn’t make out what it was.  He pointed up and said, “Mom, look at the bright light,” but she couldn’t see it.  There weren’t any lights on in that hallway.  Ben says it was a peaceful feeling that he never forgot.  That’s all he could say about it: that he felt peace.

Later in the video, Ben mentions his second brush with death.  It happened on December 6^th.  He sat down on a bench and passed out.  He stopped breathing for three minutes.  Ben says that during those three minutes, he could see the EMTs going to work on him with shock pads.  He heard them say, “His heart has stopped and he has no pulse.”  And then he had another vision.

Ben found himself in a white room with no walls; it just went on forever.  There was no sound, just that same peace he felt when he was four.  He was wearing a suit and so was his favorite rapper, Kid Cudi, who was there with him for some reason.  He looked in a mirror and his first thought was, “We look good!”  And as he kept looking at himself, he couldn’t stop thinking how proud he was of everything he’d ever done.  He says it was the best feeling.  And then Kid Cudi took Ben over to a glass desk, sat him down and put his hand on Ben’s shoulder, and Ben’s favorite song of his came on at that moment at the part where it says, “When will the fantasy end?  When will the heaven begin?”  And then Kid Cudi said to Ben, “Go now.”  That’s when Ben woke up to the EMTs doing CPR on him.  He says, “I didn’t want to leave that place.  It was so peaceful.”  He ends his video holding up note cards that say, “Do you believe in God or angels?  I do.”

Ben had a vision and Ben had vision, because Ben witnessed what he could only describe as overwhelming peace to the point that his whole life seemed to revolve around this confident, joy-filled belief in that peace.  Ben’s vision is maybe what made it easier for his family and friends and youtube fans to release him in peace.  That’s the kind of transcendent, transformative power that vision gives us.  It’s God’s gift to us.  And I’m not just talking about visions of the afterlife, I’m talking about visions that are so powerful that they inform and sustain our belief to the point of transcending and transforming our lives and the lives of those around us.

I often remind us of our church’s vision.  New Years Day is certainly an occasion for that.  It is the vision of Friends Congregational Church to offer God’s extravagant welcome to all.  That sounds good like Ben Breedlove’s vision sounds good.  But can we see it?  Can we see God’s extravagant welcome being offered to all?  Because if we can’t see it, if it just sounds good and we can’t see it, then there’s no way we can truly believe it; and what’s a vision without people believing in it?

Simeon and Anna looked at a sleeping, burping, pooping, peeing infant and saw the salvation of the world.  Can we look at the childish, hurtful ridiculousness of this world and see God’s salvation?  Can we see God welcoming every human being into the eternal embrace of a love that will not let us go?

Can we see tormenters and the tormented, bullies and the bullied being reconciled to one another in the hospitable space that we call church just as the prophets before us saw the lion lying down with the lamb in peace?  Can we see it?

Can we see all individuals and all families participating in the full life and ministry of the Church based solely on their devotion and faith rather than on some charitable exceptions that say, “It’s okay that your gay, or it’s okay that your transgender, you’re still welcome here despite that”?  Can we see the authenticity of who we are being fully embraced in the life and ministry of the Church not in spite of but in celebration of who we are, because as Paul says in Galatians, “We are neither Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, but we are one in Christ Jesus”?  Can we see it?

Can we see the marginalized, the outcasts, and the oppressed being welcomed with open arms in the warmth of the congregation, just as Jesus said that he has come to bring good news to the poor and to set the captives free?  Can we see it?

Because that’s a glimpse of what offering God’s extravagant welcome to all looks like.

It was about a year and a half ago that our friend Noe Cardenas came to Friends Church.  She joined our congregation last fall, and she was baptized this past Easter.  This morning she’s in the Valley celebrating the holidays with her family.  But I called her last night and said, “I’m going to talk about you in church tomorrow.”  I want to talk about Noe for a minute because Noe is just one of many who came to this church in response to our vision.  She came in response to that vision of offering God’s extravagant welcome to all.  And from the moment she hit the sanctuary door, her life of faith in this place has been a journey of rubbing her eyes so that she can truly see that vision that we articulate.  She believes it, and her life’s direction is devoted to it.  This May she’ll be the first person from her family to ever graduate from college, and she’s presently waitlisted with AmeriCorps waiting to head out and welcome and empower and love all of God’s children right where they are.

Last night Noe posted something on Facebook that I want to read to you.  She said, “2011 was sure good to me, but I know that 2012 has better things in store, for it will be the year I graduate from college and move away from Texas to travel the country and help the needy.  Happy New Year!  Be safe, people, and make sure to have a DD tonight!”

God’s servants in this place like Noe help me look at our church’s vision of offering God’s extravagant welcome to all as more than just words on paper.  Because of people like Noe and Nelis and Sally and Sue, I can see that vision and I believe it.  I break the bread of Holy Communion with Walter and Rhoda and Mark and Lucy and Kevin and Jess and Kathy and Cathy and I see that vision, and I believe it.  I drink wine and juice from the cup of God’s love with Diane and Doris and Kristin and Lucy and Tami and Justin and I see that vision and I believe it.

I believe that the poor will receive good news.  I believe that the captives will be set free and the oppressed will overcome.  I believe that people of all faiths will open their homes to one another in peace.  I believe that that the words ‘homosexuality’ and ‘Christianity’ will be uttered in the same sentence without a feeling of tension but with a sense of belonging and peace.  I believe in the power of forgiveness to heal all scars that keep us from welcoming one another into mutual communion and peace.  And I believe that the church will return to its roots of being that picture of Pentecost, where people from all walks of life, speaking different languages gathered together and worshiped God regardless of what skeptical onlookers thought about that scene, because the fiery passion and love of Pentecost is what made the skeptics see and believe and know peace.

Joy Moore is Associate Dean for Black Church Studies and Church Relations at Duke Divinity School.  Moore writes, “Our announcements of Christ’s birth into human history should render sufficient joy that the present circumstances cannot diminish the intrusive signs of God’s peace.”  The world has resolutions, but we have the Word of God.  The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever.  The world has resolutions, but God has given us vision.  So, what do you see?  By God’s grace, what do you see?

Above all, can we look in the mirror like Ben Breedlove did in his vision and see someone looking back at us who is fearfully and wonderfully made?  Can we look in the mirror and see someone who is blessed and beautiful, forgiven and free, redeemed and sustained by the love of God?  Can we see someone in the mirror who is one of a kind and essential to God’s still-speaking voice and still-creating hand in this world?  Can you see it?  Believe it.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“The Gift of Otherness: Pondering the Mission of Jesus”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Christmas Eve, December 24, 2011
Luke 2:8-20

For the last few weeks, the sign outside has read, “Unto us the mission of Jesus is born.”  We thought about putting simpler messages up there.  Maybe just one-word Advent messages, like the word ‘hope,’ or the word, ‘peace.’  We thought about finding some semi-challenging medium between “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays” by putting up the message ‘Happy Holy Days.’  Ultimately, though, we went with ‘Unto us the mission of Jesus is born.’

These last few weeks, I’ve wondered what people think when they see that sign.  I think it all has to do with how we perceive the mission of Jesus.  Some might think of the mission of Jesus as Good News; peace on earth and that sort of thing.  Some might think of the mission of Jesus as something we have to make happen.  Some might think of the mission of Jesus as a tired crusade.  And some might think of the mission of Jesus and just roll their eyes.  But no matter what our gut reaction is to the mission of Jesus, it doesn’t mean much of anything at all unless we ponder it.

The story of the shepherds is a roller coaster ride of emotions.  Shepherds are sitting calmly, until, “Boom!”: angels show up and terrify them.  Then the angels say, “Don’t be afraid,” and they start singing songs and praising God, and the shepherds move from fear to elation.  Then the shepherds say, “We gotta go see this child that’s been born!”  And they ‘moved with haste’ the Scripture says, hurrying to the manger.  And when they see the baby, the shepherds are so excited that they tell anyone they can find all about it, and when people hear this news they’re amazed.  It’s enough to make your head explode.  But Mary…Mary watches this roller coaster ride of angels and shepherds and exploding emotions, and she ponders these things.  Mary ponders the mission of Jesus.

What are we pondering?  It’s Christmas Eve, people!  Such an important night!  What are we pondering tonight?  Are we pondering whether we got all our Christmas shopping done or if we got everything we needed from the grocery store today?  Or like the Facebook post from a friend of mine sums up in a word: ‘Mall’?  Or are we pondering conflict in our relationships, tension between friends, unresolved issues with family members?  Are we pondering healthcare costs and mortgage rates, the stock market and the price of gas?  We’ve been receiving phone calls here at the church and visits from folks in our community who are pondering whether their lights will stay on, pondering how they’re going to put food on the table, pondering how they’re going to get Christmas gifts for their children.  When you take all of this into consideration, when you think about all this, it’s enough to make your head explode!  No thanks!  No pondering for me.

“But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”  Mary pondered, Mary took into consideration the mission of Jesus.

Would you ponder the mission of Jesus with me for a moment then?  God is love.  Jesus is the birth of God made flesh—the incarnate deity as we call him.  We proclaim that God is with us in the birth of Jesus—Emmanuel: God with us.  God in Christ, then, is like every single one of us—we who are as made in the image of God.  However, not a single one of us is like Jesus.  The birth of Jesus makes us all others.

A lot of us in this room have light skin.  Our culture tends to paint the picture of Jesus being a light-skinned child, so we might claim that likeness to Jesus, but Jesus was born in a region of the world where you can bet that he didn’t have light skin.  There goes that likeness a lot of us might have with Jesus.

The males in this room might claim likeness with Jesus by gender.  Jesus was a baby boy, yes.  But Jesus was God made flesh, and that divine personhood transcends even gender.  The Koran recognizes the holy birth of Jesus, but the child is referred to as ‘it,’ not ‘he’ or ‘him.’

Looking around the room, I can safely say that few if any of us bear likeness with baby Jesus by age.  His infancy makes us all other.

And, above all, Jesus was born and then placed in a feeding trough for animals.  He rested on hay in a cold barn right when he came into this world.  Can any of us claim that origin?

Jesus was born a baby that is unlike anyone else.  This makes us all other.  “And the child Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.”  So, here’s the mission: Jesus lived and died and rose again for the sake of all others.  Think about it: Jesus died a marginalized other for the sake of all marginalized others.  Jesus lived and died and rose again in order to draw the wayward others back to the love of God.  So, Jesus’ life and death and resurrection, Jesus’ mission was to transform our otherness into oneness.  Now, in our world divided by religion and war and culture and creed, that’s something to ponder.

When we overlook the mission of Jesus, when we don’t ponder the mission of Jesus, then we overlook the good news of Christmas.  The good news of Christmas is that by the birth of Jesus anew into our hearts this night we are all bound by our otherness, unified in our otherness to the point that there is no otherness anymore.  There is just love.

This fall our church started up a weekly breakfast ministry.  Every Wednesday morning we meet in the kitchen of First Presbyterian Church in Bryan.  We make about 60 breakfast tacos and brew coffee.  Then we head over to the Chevron at William J. Bryan and Highway 21.  We park our cars, grab our bags full of breakfast tacos and our thermoses full of coffee and our orange juice and our cups, and we start walking.  There are men gathered for a few blocks around that area waiting to maybe be picked up for a day’s labor.  They’re all Hispanic.  Some of them know English, some of them don’t.  Regardless, we approach every one of them and offer breakfast.

Now, think what you will about immigration issues.  Think what you will about philosophies of charity versus handouts; teaching a man to fish versus giving him a fish, that sort of thing.  But there is something more going on here than our tensions founded on racial differences and countries of origin and philosophies of labor and morality.  There is something deeper at work here; there is something transformative going on here, something greater than what we typically ponder.

It’s thirty-seven degrees at 7:30 in the morning, and Nancy Plankey-Videla is pouring coffee into a cup for a man in his mid-sixties standing out there waiting for work, and he’s shivering and smiling and saying to her, “Mi reina, mi reina, mi reina.”  My queen, my queen, my queen.

Nelis Potgieter, our church member from Africa, his native language is Afrikaans, his second language is English, and he doesn’t know a lick of Spanish.  But he holds open a bag of breakfast tacos and greets people with his charming accent, “Good morning!”  And the men reach in and grab breakfast tacos and say back to him, “Gracias.”

English, Spanish, or Afrikaans, the language we’re speaking out there is love, the language of God.  And no matter what language we speak, or where we were born, or whether we’re employed, out there off the intersection of William J. Bryan and Highway 21, there are no others, because in that communion we are all one.

Jesus’ birth comes with a mission that says there are no outsiders or insiders, slave or free, male or female, gay or straight, documented or undocumented, we are all one in the love of God incarnate born anew this night in Christ Jesus.  So, no matter who we are or where we come from, and no matter what might be consuming our thoughts this night, let us treasure and ponder these words in our hearts: ‘unto us the mission of Jesus is born.’  Merry Christmas.  Feliz Navidad.  Geseënde Kerssees.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Rebuilding the Name ‘Christian’”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; John 1:6-8, 19-28

In the second century, Athenagoras of Athens wrote an essay called “A Plea for the Christians.”  Life for Christians in that time was a lot like the Israelites’ experience we find in this morning’s Isaiah passage.  Christians were oppressed, outnumbered, and misunderstood.  So, Athenagoras makes his plea to the Emperors Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus where he writes: “Among us you will find uneducated persons, and artisans, and old women, who, if they are unable in words to prove the benefit of our doctrine, yet by their deeds exhibit the benefit arising from their persuasion of its truth: they do not rehearse speeches, but exhibit good works; when struck, they do not strike again; when robbed, they do not go to law; they give to those that ask of them, and love their neighbors as themselves.”

By following the example of Jesus Christ, the earliest believers relied more on the authenticity of their deeds than the assumptions associated with their name—Christian—in order to give meaning and strength to their religion.  They cared less about claiming the name Christian than they did about carrying out the actions and responsibilities implied by that name.

And so began Jesus’ ministry in the synagogue at Nazareth.   Jesus picked up a scroll and read those same words we hear from Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  And then he rolled up the scroll, the Scripture tells us, gave it back to the attendant, sat down, and he said to everyone there, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  From the beginning of his ministry, Jesus was known for his actions, what he was sent by God to do.  He was known for his mission, not his name.

Every Advent season we sing hymns that pronounce the many names of Jesus Christ: “And he shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”  Unto us a Savior is born, a Messiah is born!  Those are big names.  Titles like those imply a lot of authority, they command a lot of reverence, they get our attention.  But Jesus was always reluctant to claim the title “Messiah.”  That title had come to mean things that didn’t mesh with what Jesus understood God’s messenger to be.  So, Jesus dodged the lofty title of Messiah and he relied instead on the actions he thought that name should imply.  People could call Jesus whatever they wanted—Messiah, Teacher, Rabbi, Master, Lord—but people knew him by his deeds: by his passion for justice, by his empathetic hurt at the sight of human suffering, by his vulnerability, by his accessibility, by his involvement in healing, not by his title.  And Jesus wasn’t just recognized for those things either; he was also known for rebuilding.  Isaiah 61:4: “They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.”  And so Jesus, the embodiment of Isaiah’s prophecy, Jesus, the incarnation of God’s promises, was also recognized for restorative justice; he was known for rebuilding in the midst of despair, he wasn’t just known for his name: Messiah.

Fast forward to the 21^st century where we seem to have it the other way around.  When it comes to positions of stature and authority, we’re much quicker to seize the title than we are to carry out the mission that title implies.  We want our name on the window or the marquee or in the program, but we’re not so thrilled to do all the things that having our name in lights demands of us.  In far too many cases, we want the name ‘parent,’ we want the title of parenthood, but we’re reluctant to do all it takes to raise a happy, healthy child.  And so many of our political leaders want the title that comes with winning votes, but they don’t really want to carry out the demands that come with those titles.  Case in point: Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.  He was found guilty on 17 counts of corruption while he was in office, and this week he was sentenced to 14 years in prison.  The severity of his sentence has to do no doubt with how he dragged the name Governor of Illinois into the mud.

Well, how are we doing with the name ‘Christian’?  In this so-called Christian nation are we doing Athenagorus and those earliest Christians proud, or are we dragging the name Christian into the mud?  Do our deeds live up to what the name Christian implies?  Are we reflecting the mission that Jesus Christ was sent into the world to do: advocating, healing, rebuilding, restoring?

More importantly, we need to ask who stands to lose when we are reluctant to carry out that mission?  Who out there suffers when we are Christian by name but not by deed?

Jacob Rogers is a teenager.  He went to Cheatham County Central High School in Ashland City, Tennessee, at least until a few weeks ago.  Jacob had been severely bullied for four years, and it had gotten so bad that around Thanksgiving he quit going to school.  Jacob would tell his friends, “I don’t want to go back.  Everyone is so mean.  They call me gay.  They call me a queer.”  Ultimately, Jacob was bullied to death.  On Wednesday he took his own life.

Without their once glorious Temple, chewed up and spit out by Babylonian captivity, surrounded by false gods, the Israelites had lost all hope that they would ever be able to rebuild what they had lost.  They were convinced that they were all alone now.  They thought that they’d been forever ignored and forgotten, that no one was going to come to their rescue.  And into that hopelessness God sent the prophet Isaiah with authentic words, words that reflected the nature and the actions of God, words of comfort and joy—and the people regained their hopes, the people began to rebuild, and the people were restored.

Where were Jacob Roger’s words of comfort and joy?  Where was the presence of God’s love of justice when Jacob needed it most?  Where were the deeds, the mission of Christianity that would advocate for his life?

John Shore is a writer.  A couple of his books are titled 10 Ways We Christians Fail to Be Christian, and I’m OK—You’re Not: The Message We’re Sending Unbelievers and Why We Should Stop.  Shore wrote about Jacob’s death in his blog.  He wrote: “Certainly there are always myriad causes behind the suicide of any person. But that does not alter the fact that the root cause of gay teens being bullied because they are gay (whether or not they actually are) is that strain of Christianity which continues to insist that homosexuality is an evil affront to God.”

How has it comes to this, that the name Christian is known for its arrogance, not for its advocacy?  When did Christian become a name associated with turning inward to protect institutionalism, not for reaching outward to empower rebuilding, restoration and renewal?  We worship a living God who loves justice, not an indifferent God who loves things the way they are.  We follow a resurrected Christ who is known for making all things new, not a crucified Christ who keeps things unchanged in the confines of a tomb.  Why has Christian become more associated with entitlement than with an imperative for mission?

I was on a mission trip in Fairfax, Virginia about ten years ago, and our group was housed in a megachurch called McLean Bible Church.  We lovingly referred to it as the Death Star.  Our group slept in a few rooms off of one wing of the place, and we were restricted from crossing over the food court area into the other side of the church building.  (Yes, I said ‘food court.’)  One night the youth ministers got together with the mission trip coordinator.  He had a few instructions for us.  And he stressed how crucial it was for our kids to not go down that dark hallway on the other side of the food court.  He said, “This is for your kids’ safety.  Sometimes we have janitors working down there who might not be Christian.”

Wow.  I have to tell you, that was one of those moments that informed my theology.  I didn’t want to go down that dark hallway on the other side of the church building until you told me the reason why I shouldn’t.  I didn’t want to go looking for a stranger on the other side of the church building until you warned me to stay away from them because they might not be Christian…by name.  Didn’t Isaiah’s prophecy tell us that the rebuilding, the restoration and the renewal of the devastated ruins will be based on the strengths and insights of those whose voices had long been ignored or forgotten?

While we Christians are busy putting up billboards insisting that the name Christ be kept in Christmas, the secular world, the world that is not Christian by name is going down the ignored and forgotten hallways that are crying out for restoration and renewal.  (And by the way, if anyone ever tells you that it bothers them when people spell Christmas with an ‘x’—X-mas—please let them know that ‘x’ is the Greek abbreviation of Χριστός…Christ.)  People who are not Christian by name are out there helping the poor, and comforting the brokenhearted, and proclaiming freedom for the captives.  People who are not Christian by name are out there advocating for the voiceless, ignored Spanish-speaking women and men who build and maintain our infrastructure.  People who are not Christian by name are reaching out to runaway, at-risk LGBT youth, reminding them how precious and important they are, literally saving their lives.  People who are not Christian by name are out there demanding justice from the institutional power structures that keep the poor lowly.  People who are not Christian by name are providing comfort and joy to those whose lives are in a state of ruin because of addiction, depression, bereavement or loss.  Is it possible that the secular world that does not bear the name Christian is carrying out God’s righteousness and justice more authentically than we Christians?  Is it possible that we have come to treat the name Christian with so much stature and authority that we have neglected the mission that name implies?

You know, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian.  But you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know that there’s something wrong with Christianity when studies reveal that a majority of Americans associate the name Christian with hypocrisy, judgment, and being anti-gay, yet even us Christians who cringe at that fact will do nothing to change it.  Jesus’ mission of rebuilding and restoring and renewal made Christianity strong.  It can make Christianity strong again, because carrying out Jesus’ mission restores hopes and it makes all things new.

My friend Kristin Galle is a UCC pastor, and she’s now the interim minister for Covenant Presbyterian Church down the street.  She told me recently about how she stopped at a gas station in a small town.  There was a woman filling up her tank there, too, but unlike Kristin, the woman was lost.  So, she asked Kristin for directions.  And who knows, maybe it was just because Kristin is so warm and approachable, the woman asked her what she did for a living.  And Kristin told her, “I’m a Christian minister.”  That title must have meant something, because the woman went, “Oh!  Well, then, can you tell me: Am I going to hell?”  Kristin was taken aback, and she said, “I’m sorry?”  And the woman said, “Oh, it’s just that I had a divorce 12 years ago and my minister told me I was going to hell.”  Well, Kristin paused, and Kristin received this woman without judgment, and Kristin offered her words of comfort and joy.  And right there at a gas station in a small town, the mission of Jesus empowered a woman asking for directions to rebuild and restore and renew her life, and in so doing the mission of Jesus rebuilt and restored and renewed the name Christian minister for my friend Kristin.

So, I want to leave you with a personal story.  When my dad was 23 he was working at a place in Austin called Newt’s Barbecue.  And there was a regular customer there named Dan Davidson.  Dan was about 13 years older than Dad.  He was also the city manger.  There wasn’t really much reason for a guy like Dan Davidson to converse with a kid cleaning tables in a barbecue joint and working his way through law school, but it didn’t bother Dan. So, they struck up a friendship.

A couple of years later, Dad was struggling to finish law school when his wife, Elizabeth, was diagnosed with stomach cancer.  Two days after Christmas, Dad turned 26, and a few days after that, Elizabeth died.  Dad was devastated.  Coping with his grief and loss, he holed himself up in the tiny duplex where he was living.  He’d built up dreams with his wife, his wife who stood by his side while he struggled through law school in order to make a future for the both of them.  Now all of that was gone, and dad found himself lost in the ruins of it all.  Dad was alone, living in a self-imposed exile, ignored and forgotten, hopeless.

And wouldn’t you know it, there came a knock at the door.  It was old Dan Davidson, City Manager, 13-years dad’s senior, coming to see Dad.  It wasn’t just a one-time thing.  Just like Dan had been a regular customer at the barbecue place, now he was a regular visitor to the duplex where a grieving young widower lived.  Dad recalls that Dan would come to see him, he’d be present with him, he’d offer him words of comfort, and, slowly but surely, Dan helped Dad rebuild.

Dan helped restore Dad’s hopes.  He encouraged him to get out of that duplex and into the world.  And the next thing you know, Dad’s wondering what that girl Arleigh he always liked from his school days was up to, and Dad’s calling her up and going on dates with her.  Dad’s falling in love…again.  And pretty soon after that, Dad asks Arleigh to marry him.  They’re married on September 15, 1973, and nine months later to the day, I’m born.  When I look at Mom and Dad’s wedding pictures, in the background I can see Dan Davidson in almost every one.

My brothers have biblical names, so I always thought that I was named after the Daniel of the Bible.  But when Dan Davidson died, Mom and Dad told me that I was named after him.  For my dad and then my mom, Dan Davidson was an embodiment of comfort and joy who had a mission of helping them rebuild and restore and renew their hopes.  That’s where my name comes from.  Turns out my name has a bit of a mission to live up to.

That’s the story of my name.  But all of us who follow the blessed Messiah, who goes by many names; all of us who follow Jesus the Christ are named after him.  We bear the name Christian, and that name comes with a mission.  It appears that the name Christian could use some rebuilding, at least the perspectives of that name anyway.  Here’s a thought: When we Christians continue the mission of Jesus Christ, when we serve as the hands and feet of Jesus in this world, being present to the afflicted, the marginalized and the oppressed, bringing words of comfort and joy to the brokenhearted, helping the hopeless to rebuild and restore and renew their lives, maybe we will rebuild and restore and renew the very name Christian in the process.  Maybe.  But let’s just carry out the mission the name Christian implies and let God transform how it’s perceived.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Sharing Our Private Shalom”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Isaiah 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8

The Second Sunday of Advent always makes mention of John the Baptist.  For one day out of the Christian liturgical year, we remember the story of John the Baptist, the voice crying out in the desert, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  One Sunday a year is devoted to this message.

But if you think about it, every Sunday morning, every Wednesday night, every time we gather to worship in this place, we are acting out the story of John the Baptist.  He may have had a rugged appearance and an unorthodox way of doing things, but John the Baptist had a message that resonated with the people throughout the Judean countryside and all of Jerusalem.  Life had become juiceless for the people of Jerusalem and Judea living under the oppression of the Roman Empire.  Only being able to go so far with one’s dreams had become a matter of course.  And even though the people lived relatively free lives, so long as they obeyed the rules, any feeling of true freedom, any feeling of the soul’s fulfillment was hamstrung by the society’s acceptance of the way things were.

So, when John the Baptist came along, the people poured out of the city and into the wilderness to get a taste of this new life—new life that they didn’t even know they really needed until they heard that voice calling out in the desert: “Hey!  Over here!  Prepare the way for the Lord.”

Whether we are employed or unemployed, the constant reminders of the unemployment rate lingering at nine percent leave us all with an unspoken feeling that we can only go so far with our dreams; that’s what we’ve led ourselves to believe.  Stories of violence in Syria and Egypt, images in our country of civilians and police clashing in a sea of pepper spray and ravaged tents, they cast a heavy shadow over our desire for true freedom.  So, out of our longing for something more, out of our search for the soul’s fulfillment, we pour out of the Brenham countryside and all of Bryan-College Station, and we gather at this river in the desert, taking our seat in this sanctuary.  This morning, we are acting out the story of John the Baptist, because we come to church seeking peace.  We need respite from the captivity of our daily living, so we come to church seeking Shalom.

I pull into the parking lot and walk up to the church building and I look down at the sidewalk and see blue and pink and yellow and green messages written in chalk telling me, “God loves you,” and I see Shalom.

On Sunday mornings, I peek into classrooms and see adults gathered around a table or sitting on old couches, sharing stories about their week, expressing their need for prayers, unpacking the Scriptures and the current events of our world; and I see our children in the nursery and the Godly Play Room and the Peace Corner sometimes giggling and cutting up, sometimes sitting with wide-eyed stares at their teachers, learning about the abundance of God’s love and the teachings of Jesus Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and I see Shalom.

On some Wednesday nights, our friend Kelly Donahue brings us some of her homemade pies, and Walter and Rhoda brew up coffee, so we gravitate over to the fellowship area after the worship service, and we serve up slices of Shalom and cups full of Shalom, and we lean on each other for love and support.

I could go on and on, but all this got me to thinking about something.  Last week in the sermon I shared some of my hopes:

I hope for an end to the sensationalism and vitriol of cable news.

I hope to never hear another human being referred to as “illegal.”

I hope that the next generation will learn and then teach us to never say “that’s so gay” about anything.

I hope for an end to our addiction to war.

I hope for an end to world hunger.

I hope that forgiveness and reconciliation become the ultimate desire of every human heart.

I hope that Christmas will serve not as a processing of our wishes, but as a culmination of our hopes.

Thinking about the Shalom that we come to this place seeking on Sundays and Wednesdays, it’s clear to me that the Church secures my hopes.  In this place, I do not hear sensationalism or vitriol when we talk about God and God’s people and the prophets and Jesus of Nazareth throughout history.  In here, not only do I not hear human beings referred to as “illegal,” not only do I not hear the expression “that’s so gay,” I hear voices coming together advocating for constructive language and narratives that strive for the preciousness of all of God’s creation.  In here, there is no lust for war, but a yearning for peace.  In here, Christian education and volunteer hours and offerings and food drives are given to end world hunger.  In here, I witness forgiveness and reconciliation, changes of perspective and the nurturing of relationships, the likes of which I have heard some people say in this place, “I never thought I would ever see it happen.”  In here my hopes are secured by the countercultural Shalom of God and the people of God.

So, my life finds true freedom and my soul finds fulfillment when I hear the words from Isaiah in this place: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.”  But then Walter Brueggemann has to go and mess the whole thing up for me.  Brueggemann notes that Isaiah 40, this message about God liberating God’s people from their captors and delivering them into true freedom, it’s mentioned in all four of the Gospels.  He writes, “[Isaiah 40] is a text that voices the radical newness that is to be initiated in the story of Jesus.”  In other words, it’s about evangelism.  But my hopes are secure right here, just the way they are.  Why would I want to go and mess up a good thing?  This is where Brueggemann warns about the seduction of what he calls “private shalom.”

Some quick historical context about Isaiah 40: The Israelites were living under the thumb of the Babylonian Empire.  They’d lost all the structures and institutions that gave identity to them as a community.  And now, living in Babylonian captivity, they were constantly seduced by the hanging gardens and the mighty architecture and breathtaking masonry of the Babylonian empire.  It was enough to make a wayward Israelite content with the way things were, enough to make the wayward Israelite keep the mystery of God all to himself in his own private shalom.  That was the nature of the Israelites’ Babylonian captivity.

Hang onto that metaphor and consider this: What holds us captive?  What seduces us into contentment on a daily basis in our lives?  What seduces us into contentment with the way things are?  What is the nature of our Babylonian captivity?

I was at a coffee house Wednesday afternoon, and I looked over at someone sitting close by.  There was a college student sitting in one of those big comfy chairs.  She had an iPad with a document on the screen sitting on the armrest, she had her laptop in her lap with an episode of Gossip Girl playing, and she had her iPhone in her hand playing a game of solitaire—all at the same time.  There’s a snapshot of contentment.  I’d call it a snapshot of Babylonian captivity, something that easily seduces us into our own private shalom.  The Church could never be like that, could it?  This place that secures our hopes, it could never be seduced into the contentment of a private shalom, could it?

We love this church.  We love the people who make this church what it is.  And we love the way things are.  But that’s the moment when we should hear the whisper of God become deafening: “Hey!  Prepare the way for Christ!  Prepare the way for hope and peace like you have never experienced it before!  Prepare for the challenges and blessings I have in store for you by sharing your shalom!”

We are blessed to receive new members.  This morning we welcome Kristen, Katie, Ann, Emily, Jordan, Kristin and Lucy into the full life and ministry of Friends Congregational Church.  But let’s not give thanks because they saw something we had and wanted to be a part of it.  Let’s give thanks because they recognized a place where they could share their lives, their gifts, and their voices with unabashed authenticity and true freedom.  Let’s give thanks because they are bringing their voices into this place crying out with joy, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” so that all of our souls would find fulfillment.  And let us remember, Friends Church, that our efforts at being a hospitable body of Christ are one thing, but it takes a lot of courage and a lot of passion and a lot of hope for someone to take that step to learn about a congregation and engage in community with a congregation and then come forward and join a congregation.  We are all so blessed.

So, Kristen, Katie, Ann, Emily, Jordan, Kristin and Lucy, you may not be dressed in camel’s hair, you may not be eating locusts and wild honey, but on this Second Sunday of Advent, you are this church family’s John the Baptist.  You are the unmistakable, life-giving voice crying out to us, waking us up from the seductions of Babylonian captivity, and reminding us that in all things we, the Church, must prepare our hearts, our minds, and our very lives for the transformative power of Jesus Christ.  And, above all, during this time of Advent as we prepare for Christmas, you are the culmination of our hopes.

Sisters and brothers, let us never be seduced by a Babylonian captivity that will only usher us into the confines of a private shalom.  Let us instead share our Shalom.  Let us welcome these new friends into the life of this church, and let us together prepare the way of the Lord!  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“The Hope in Making Paper Airplanes”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Isaiah 64:1-9

Today is the First Sunday of Advent.  The candle of hope is lit.  As we gather around the Advent wreath this morning to worship God and to remember all that God has done and that God continues to do in our lives and in our world, do we know what hope is?  Do we know what it means to hope?

If we look at how loosely we use hope in our everyday speech, our hopes sound more like the jumbled wish list of the human condition:

I hope so-and-so gets elected.

I hope my professor lets us out early.

I hope that “check engine” light on my dashboard isn’t anything too expensive.

I hope no one mentions politics or religion this Thanksgiving.

I hope I have a better week this week than I did last week.

I hope it rains.

In all of those examples, we may as well replace hoping with wishing.

Eugene Peterson writes this in a book of daily devotionals: “Wishing grows out of our egos; hope grows out of our faith.  Hope is oriented toward what God is doing; wishing is oriented toward what we are doing.  Wishing has to do with what I want in things or people or God; hope has to do with what God wants in me and the world of things and people beyond me.”

When we think of it like that, then what does it mean for us to hope for something?  In that light, what is hope?

Elizabeth Barrette has a poem that helps me understand hope.  It’s called “Origami Emotion.”  She writes:
Hope is

Folding paper cranes

Even when your hands get cramped

And your eyes tired,

Working past blisters and

Paper cuts,

Simply because something in you

Insists on

Opening its wings.

Sooner or later most all children discover one unmistakable product of origami: the paper airplane.  Lately our son Mac’s been obsessing over folding the perfect paper airplane.  The crease has to be straight and the dimensions have to be just right, because in Mac’s mind the slightest imperfection means the plane won’t fly correctly.  This causes him a great deal of frustration.  Mac will be sitting at the table folding, and then something goes wrong.  He drops the paper, crosses his arms, he dons his best scowl, and through locked teeth he says, “I can’t do it.”

Reflecting on this morning’s text, I imagine the Prophet Isaiah sitting across the table from the Israelites: all of them slouching with their arms crossed, scowling, and saying, “We can’t do it.”

They could pick up that piece of paper, reengage that hopeful art of origami—they are God’s chosen people after all—but they have convinced themselves that it’s worthless trying—pointless.  “All of us have become like one who is unclean,” they say, “and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.”  All our righteous acts.  But hope is oriented toward what God is doing; wishing is oriented toward what we are doing, and all our righteous acts.

So, then comes the Prophet Isaiah with the call to hope that rings true for us this morning: “O Lord, you are our Father.  We are the clay, you are the potter: we are all the work of your hand.”

From the history of the Israelites: We are the ones that you freed from slavery in Egypt, O God.  We are the ones that you delivered into freedom, the ones that you guided into the wilderness, the ones whose thirst you quenched from the water that sprang from that rock at Horeb, the ones that you provided with quail and manna in the desert, the ones that you nurtured and shepherded and never let go.  How could we have forgotten, O God?

The point of this Scripture with all of its apocalyptic poetry is to renew the people’s hopes.  The renewal of their hope, insists the Prophet Isaiah, depends on their recommitment to remembrance.  If they simply repent, if they simply turn around and remember all that God has done for them, all that God has done for their people, for their family and friends, then they will receive hope; hope that overshadows the limits of their immediate wishes and their righteous acts.

Mac sits in that chair with his arms crossed, staring that down that piece of paper, scowling, and I say, “Mac, come on, kiddo!  I know you can do it!  Just try.”

“I can’t do it.”

“Yes you can.  Remember that awesome plane you made last week?  You didn’t have any help making that one.  I know you can do it again.”

And then he reaches up and picks up the paper, still scowling, still frustrated; and he folds one part of the paper over into a triangle, and then the other side.  And I say, “Yes!  There you go!”

More folding now, and the airplane’s really starting take shape, and it’s a beauty; but he still wants to hang onto that scowl a little longer.  So, I keep pressing, “What are you so sad about?  Look at what you’re doing!  That thing’s going to be awesome!”

And now he’s fighting back a smile, keeping his head down as he works.  And then it’s finished.

“Yes!  That looks great, Mac!  Look at that airplane!”

Mac can’t hold it back any longer.  He jumps out of his chair, the perfect paper airplane in his hand, a smile on his face with no memory of the scowl from a moment ago.  And what’s that?  Is that a tear in one of his eyes?  Is that tear because he’s happy, or is it because of how hard he fought against what he remembered to be true about himself coming to the surface?

This is how it was with the Israelites, and this is how we are when it comes to repentance and remembrance, to acknowledging truth, and letting real hope into our lives.  Things go wrong in life, things that douse our hopes; and over time we become comfortable just sitting back and accepting it as the way things are: “It won’t get any better than this.”  We live in the self-imposed confines of existentialist indifference where our 21^st century standard of living rolls its eyes at injustice, as if it’s just a naturally ingrained part of everyday life. Where is the church?  Where are our hopes?

In 1963 police turned hoses on black youth and release dogs on nonviolent protestors of segregation in Birmingham, Alabama.  Those images made it to our TV screens.  We saw it, we were outraged, and the Civil Rights Movement gained traction over the wakeup call to the reality of injustice and the advent of hope.  The 1964 Civil Rights Act followed suit.  Now we see images of women and men returning home from war missing limbs and testifying to the psychological ravages of PTSD, and we hear our political leaders using poisonous language about human beings as a matter of course, and witness an innocent elderly woman being pepper sprayed by the police, and we just shrug our shoulders and say, “Well, it won’t get any better than this.”

Where have our hopes gone?  Have we people of faith forgotten the power that comes in hoping for the realm of God?  Have our ears become so deafened by indifference that we cannot hear the Prophet Isaiah speaking across the ages: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence— ²as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! ³When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. ⁴From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him;” God who works for those who remember the miraculous power of God in our lives and in our world, God who works for those who never stop longing for the possible that this world decries as impossible, God who works for those who always hope.  Why has an acceptance of injustice become our standard of living?  Where has our hope gone?  Where has our belief in hope gone?  Maybe it’s been consumed by all our righteous acts.

Well, today is the first day in the Christian calendar year.  Today’s our New Year’s Day.  So, if January 1^st is a time for resolutions, those things that I will do, then today I want to share with you a few of my hopes, some things I expect God will do.

I hope for an end to the sensationalism and vitriol of cable news.

I hope to never hear another human being referred to as “illegal.”

I hope that the next generation will learn and then teach us to never say “that’s so gay” about anything.

I hope for an end to our addiction to war.

I hope for an end to world hunger.

I hope that forgiveness and reconciliation become the ultimate desire of every human heart.

I hope that Christmas will serve not as a processing of our wishes, but as a culmination of our hopes.

These are a few of my hopes.  And this isn’t too much to ask.  It’s just a standard that we’ve forgotten.  It’s a standard that God breathed into being and that God reminded the Israelites of throughout the pages of the Bible.  It’s a standard that Jesus Christ always taught, and that he gave his life for us to never forget.

I’m going to avoid mentioning anything about the game Thursday night, but there is something I want to share.  I was with Stacy, her brother, and a dear friend of mine.  And after the game we went to the top floor of the Koldus parking garage to get to our car.  The cars trying to get out of the parking garage were backed up all the way to the top floor, and they weren’t moving an inch.

So, we decided to let the traffic to die down.  The four of us took a stroll down Military Walk and we ended up at Northgate.  We thought we’d while away the hours by sipping tea.  That’s what we do, don’t you know.  There we were, dressed in burnt orange, walking on University Drive.  Door guys stood in the entrances of bars just looking at us as we walked by.  One of the door guys was a woman, about three times my size, and wearing a maroon football jersey.  As we were walking up, she exhaled a puff of smoke from her cigarette that stopped us in our tracks.  She looked at us and she said, “Are people being nice to you?”

And I said, “Well, yes, thank you.”

She said, “Good, because that’s Aggie spirit.  And if anyone’s mean to you,” she said, “I want you to bring them to me.”

I said, “Thanks.  You’re far too kind.”

And she said, “I’m kind, but not far too much.”

Now, the example may be playful, but the point isn’t.  Being kind to our supposed enemies, and even acting on their behalf when they are treated poorly, shouldn’t be too much; it should be as simple as folding a paper airplane.  Have we forgotten the stories that inform our faith?  Have we forgotten that when a violent crowd brought an alleged prostitute before Jesus wanting to stone her to death because she’d supposedly been caught in the act of adultery that Jesus stood up for her and sent the crowd away silenced by their shame?

Standing up for those who are bullied should not be considered an exceptional example of heroism.  It should be as simple as folding a paper airplane.  Holding a group accountable or even the church accountable for having positions that dehumanize people on account of their sexual orientation or their gender identity should not be a radical blog.  It should be as simple as folding a paper airplane.  For Christians to lean on the tenets of our faith and point out the immorality and the injustice of poverty and the gap between the rich and poor in our country should not be theological rocket science.  It should be as simple as folding a paper airplane.  For us to pray for an end to hunger, for us to long for an end to war, for us to hope for a world that resembles the teachings of Jesus should not be the next bestselling book made into a movie.  It should be as simple as folding a paper airplane.

So, as we begin the Advent season in anticipation of Christ’s birth, what are we hoping for?  What are we truly hoping for?  Answering that question might just bring us to tears, and that’s okay, because tears like that are the birth pangs of God’s hopes.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Counting Ourselves Blessed: Changing Our Focus to Change the World”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Matthew 25:31-46

Well, are you a sheep or are you a goat?  Or in terms of this morning’s theme, do you count yourself blessed or do you count yourself cursed?

Today is the last day of the Christian calendar year.  Liturgically speaking, it’s “Reign of Christ Sunday.”  This is the day where our year of Christian worship comes to an end, and next Sunday, if you can believe it, is the first Sunday of Advent where we start preparing for Christmas.  Next Sunday is our New Year’s Day so to speak.  But today marks the end of another year, and it’s marked by judgment.

Matthew’s gospel shares yet another parable from Jesus that deals with that theme: judgment.  But let me start off with some semi-good news in this respect: Jesus’ parable about the sheep and the goats, it’s not directed at churches or even individuals; it’s directed at nations: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. ³²All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”  All the nations.  Well, if we’re talking about nations, does that mean I’m off the hook?

In 1993, apartheid was lingering in South Africa.  What’s more, a famine was devastating the region.  It was during that time that a photojournalist named Kevin Carter went with a UN food drop to the Sudan to take pictures of the atrocities there.  Supposedly, Carter and another photographer with him were expressly told not to touch anybody because of the risk of disease.  And supposedly they were given only 30 minutes to take pictures, because that’s how long the food drop would take.

One of the pictures that Carter took is the one you find in your bulletin this morning.

Apparently, the little girl in the picture was trying to make her way to the food camp located about a kilometer away when she collapsed, unable to go any farther.  The vulture just a few feet away from her completes the story.

The AP picked up the picture, and it appeared on the cover of the New York Times and just about every other major newspaper around the world.  Carter won the Pulitzer Prize for it, and the picture served to raise global awareness about hunger and the ongoing effects of apartheid in Africa.  It seemed that one Pulitzer prize-winning picture brought justice one step closer to a nation.

Meanwhile, the papers that ran the picture had to run an editor’s note along with it, because readers’ questions were pouring in.  They wanted to know what happened to the little girl.  So, conflicting stories started bubbling up.  Carter waited 20 minutes for the vulture to flare his wings before he settled on the shot that we see.  Carter took the picture immediately and then chased the vulture away.  But to this day no one really knows what happened to the little girl.  The St. Petersburg Times in Florida said about Carter: “The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering, might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene.”  Or, as Jesus might say in today’s parable, another goat.

A movie called The Bang Bang Club came out last year.  It’s based on the real life experiences of Carter and three other photojournalists in the years between 1990 and 1994.  Right after Carter wins the Pulitzer in the movie, the actor who plays him, Taylor Kitsch, is being interviewed about the picture by a group of reporters.  It’s supposed to be a moment of glory and triumph, a chance for him to elaborate on the effort it took for him to capture that image.  But then one of the reporters asks, “What happened to the little girl?”  Carter fumbles with an answer, not really knowing what to say.  So, the questions keep coming, “Did she make it to the food station?  Was she okay?  What happened to the little girl?”  And then Carter starts defending himself, making excuses to redirect the questions: “Look, I took a great picture!  That picture helped expose some horrible atrocities!  I did a good thing!”  At that point one of Carter’s friends grabs his shoulder and urges him to leave the interview.  No more excuses.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer points out that when a man comes up to Jesus earlier in Matthew’s gospel and asks him, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” that he’s really just looking for an excuse to do nothing.  In today’s reading that question shows up again, but in a slightly different way.  The disciples ask Jesus (and it may as well be us), “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?”  It’s like they’re looking for an excuse for their inaction, and they’re almost putting the blame on Jesus himself: “Lord, you didn’t reveal yourself; so how could we see you?  What were we supposed to do?  What did you expect?”

The biggest lesson for us to learn from this Scripture is not about doing good deeds.  This parable isn’t meant to straddle us with guilt so that we’ll do more good things in the hopes of making it over to the sheep side instead of the goat side.  The greatest lesson for us to take from this Scripture is Christ’s call for us to see one another, to see the very presence of Jesus Christ in one another, and in that focus being able to recognize injustice that we would be drawn toward it empowered by God’s justice, mercy, and love.

We’ve heard this spiritual practice before: that we’re supposed to see Jesus Christ in others, that we’re supposed to see the face of Christ on our neighbor.  That’s so hard to do.  When I think “look at my neighbor and see Jesus Christ” I transpose pictures of Jesus on my neighbor based on popular paintings and images of Jesus.  So, when I see someone I don’t get along with or someone that seems scary to me, just someone I find it a challenge to embrace as my neighbor, I end up squinting at them, and then they start looking like a gentle, bearded guy with a flowing white robe.  I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind for us to do.

So, how is my vision that is humanly hindered by a literal focus supposed to see my neighbor as I would see Jesus Christ?  Let me suggest a spiritual discipline for us this morning: If you want to see Christ in your neighbor, take a look at how you talk about them first.  If you want to adjust your focus, adjust your speech, because changing the way we talk about people changes the way we see one another.  Our speech affects our focus.  If we look at who Jesus describes as the least of these, and we refer to them as those people—those street people, those homeless people, those freaks, those vagrants, those lepers, those criminals, those nutcases, those sinners—chances are that our focus will not reveal the face of Christ.  And no amount of doing good deeds out of some fire-in-the-belly ethic of self-righteousness will ever change that focus.

A clergy peer of mine dropped by a few weeks ago.  He has a strong devotion to community service.  We got to talking.  At one point in our conversation I mentioned this new ministry in our community that our church is a part of: BIIN, the Brazos Interfaith Immigration Network.  And that spurred my buddy to tell me with a bit of pride, “Oh, yeah!  We make breakfast every now and then and take it out to those illegals on Highway 21.”

Jesus didn’t say, “As surely as you did it to one of the least of those, you did it to me;” he said, “As surely as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.”  See, asking the question, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or poor or naked or a stranger or sick or in prison,” the question implies not only our blindness to our neighbor, it implies our assumption that we are on the right side with the sheep of God’s pasture, and all those other people are not.  What we need is a change of focus before we go thinking we can change the world.

Today isn’t just Reign of Christ Sunday.  It isn’t just the end of the Christian calendar year.  It’s also the 13^th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.  Today, tonight, and through the night, from Melbourne, Australia to Canada to Hong Kong to Helsinki to France to Greece to India to Ireland to Scotland to Turkey to the UK to the United States, thousands of people will gather for candlelight vigils to remember those who have been murdered because of their gender diversity.  In Austin they’re gathering at City Hall; in Dallas they’re gathering at Interfaith Peace Chapel; in Fort Worth, San Antonio and Waco, they’re gathering at Metropolitan Community Churches; here in College Station they’re gathering at Lick Creek Park; and in San Angelo they’re gathering at an Open & Affirming United Church of Christ new church start.  In San Antonio, an MCC congregation is receiving donations of shoes, each pair representing someone who lost their life because of their gender identity; those shoes will later be donated to an inclusive charity.  These dear souls are gathering to change the world’s focus.  They are gathering for these candlelight vigils so that the world would take notice and move away from talking about transgender people as “those trannies,” and toward seeing transgender people as these sacred human beings.  And when it comes to Christians and all people of faith, they are lighting candles and remembering the dead so that we would stop talking about transgender people as “those others,” and start seeing transgender people as children of God, as made in the image of God, and as precious sheep of God’s pasture.

When we see one another as children of God, when we see one another as Jesus Christ, when the Christ in me sees the Christ in you, then we are compelled, we are motivated by more than mere ethics to do good deeds.  Our hearts are set on fire by the grace and strength of God to live lives of justice, mercy and love toward one another, and for one another, and in communion with one another.  It’s when we see one another with this focus that the power of God breaks in on this world and the Son of Man is revealed for all to see.  And when we in the church who sometimes assume that we are automatically in the fold with God’s sheep, when we realize that Jesus Christ is out there waiting to be seen, waiting to be recognized, then the focus of our mission of seeking a deeper spirituality and changing God’s world one act of love at a time shifts outwards.  Our vision of offering God’s extravagant welcome to all shifts outwards.  That outward shift is the change of focus we need to have our good deeds stop working for us and start working for God.

Even earlier in Matthew’s gospel Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  Have you ever seen yourself as “poor in spirit,” or are the poor in spirit “those people,” those outsiders, those strangers on the margins?  Maybe what the parable of the sheep and the goats calls us to recognize, calls us to see is how we are all beckoned back to Jesus’ invitation to be poor in spirit so that we would not be self-righteous in our ethics.  Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “I think that the world will not be converted to the hope of Christianity if first Christianity does not convert itself to the hope of the world.”  Sisters and brothers, sheep of God’s pasture, we cannot count ourselves blessed until we count all of God’s children blessed.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Waking Up from the Myth of Inevitability”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Stacy and I are trying to renew our life insurance.  So, I had that phone interview this past week; the one where the insurance rep asks you all kinds of questions about your health history: Do you have a history of asthma or breathing problems?  No.  High blood pressure or heart problems?  No.  Have you been hospitalized for any reason in the last five years?  No.

Have you or any immediate family member been diagnosed with diabetes or cancer before the age of 65?

Yes.

Who was that?

My mother.

And what was she diagnosed with?

She was diagnosed with breast cancer about ten years ago.

Okay.  And what happened?

She beat it.  There you go.

The guy was just doing his job.  His company won’t insure me if they don’t have some understanding of when and how I’m going to die.  They were determining what they might call calculated risk.  But I would call it the myth of inevitability.

This is a term I’m borrowing from a guy named K. C. Golden.  He’s the policy director of Climate Solution and the former director of energy policy for the state of Washington.  I’ll get back to him in a minute, but let me expand on what I mean by the myth of inevitability in light of this morning’s text from Zephaniah.

Medical research suggests that we run a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer if we eat fatty, sugar-ridden foods chock full of additives and preservatives than if we don’t.  But when a plate full of temptation is put right in front of us that would make Homer Simpson go “awwwwwwww,” then suddenly we say, “Meh, our health problems are all biological anyway.  Why bother?”  That’s the myth of inevitability.  Everything’s inevitable.  Why bother?

That’s what it looks like in terms of health, but let me broaden the definition a little bit.  We are living in times of extreme uncertainty.  No sooner does one region of the world recover from a flood than another is stricken by a tornado.  The stock market is about as predictable as Texas weather.  College athletics conferences are changing faster than sports fans can keep up.  The political winds move at institution-breaking speed and shift direction just like that.  The McRib is back, and then it’s gone, and then it’s back again!  (Just sayin’.)  Now, in the midst of so much uncertainty, we need some kind of certainty, something to look forward to; we need something inevitable to hang our hat on, even if it’s bad, even if it’s not true.  So, bring on the myth.  Give us something that we can indifferently believe in.

Zephaniah warns the people about the Day of the Lord.  He says that their wealth will be plundered and their homes demolished; that they’ll build houses but not be able to live in them, and that they’ll plant vineyards but not be able to enjoy the wine.  Well, if that’s what’s coming, then why should the people even bother?  It’s hard enough to accumulate wealth, to build a house, to build a vineyard.  Why bother?

I’ve got a lemon tree and a Clementine tree in the backyard.  It’s almost nonstop work making sure they have enough water, and securing their branches to stakes to make sure they grow up and not out, and keeping the raccoons and squirrels away from the citrus forming on the vine.  If another drought is inevitable, then why bother?

So, here’s where K. C. Golden comes in.  He writes in an essay titled “The Inevitability Trap”: “It’s more pragmatic to be resigned to the inevitable than to chart a new course through the chaos.  So the myth of inevitability spreads and the prophecy fulfills itself.”

Zephaniah was giving the people prophecy alright, and it sounded pretty terrible; but the good news of that prophecy, despite the terrible imagery, was that it was meant to wake the people up, to snap them out of their apathy, to loosen their grip from their indifferent resignations.  It wasn’t meant to give more weight to the peoples’ myth of inevitability.

See, the people had become detached from their faith, because they were convinced that God was no longer with them, God wasn’t present among them.  Zephaniah captures the peoples’ feelings in verse 12, when they say, “The Lord will do nothing either good or bad.”  And that’s the indifference that the prophecy is meant to shock the people out of.

So, a quick Bible study: Zephaniah 1:14 says, “The great day of the Lord is near, near and hastening fast; the sound of the day of the Lord is bitter, the warrior cries aloud there.”  The Old Testament is written in Hebrew, and the Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible is regarded as Judaism’s official version of the tanakh; it’s the precise letter-text of the Jewish canon.  And how the tanakh is vocalized and accentuated is known as the Masorah.  Now, if you translate the Hebrew of Zephaniah 1:14 from the tanakh into English, the text looks like a bunch of letters strung together with no spaces.  That’s how that vocalization and accentuation translates to English from the Masorah.  So, the raw translation of Zephaniah 1:14 ends up looking like this: ‘GODISNOWHERE.’  Now, what does that look like?  Maybe at first glance it looks like ‘God is nowhere.’  And maybe that’s exactly what it would look like at first glance to the people who were under the myth of inevitability.  If you look at this through a lens of indifference then it isn’t going to make a difference.  But Zephaniah’s prophecy was meant to wake people up—to shake them free of their indifference and look at the world through a new lens.  The heart of faith that hungers and thirsts for righteousness looks at this passage and sees something different: ‘God is now here.’  God is now here!  That’s a shot in the arm!  The great day of the Lord is near, near and hastening fast; the sound of the day of the Lord is bitter, the warrior cries aloud there—there among the people.

See our God is an incarnational God through the gift of Jesus Christ.  Our God is a God with us, a God for us; not a God above us or a God against us.  And with God present, with God now here, then the prophecy from Zephaniah doesn’t sound like a myth of inevitability.  This prophecy is heard as a wakeup call to all of God’s people throughout the ages, and it’s heard by us today, so that we would stand up and be children of the light in a dark, broken, divided, cynical world.

Here are some of our present day myths of inevitability:

The Ides of March is gospel.  All politicians, no matter how idealistic and well-intentioned, will always cave to corruption.  Nothing will change no matter what I do or say.  Why bother?

War will never cease.  We have too many religious differences and ideological resentments between us for the military machine to ever come to a halt.  Why bother?

It is impossible to stop world hunger.  There’s just not enough food and clean drinking water on earth to keep all 7 billion of us healthy.  Why bother?

It’s too late to do anything about the damage we’ve already done to the environment.  Global warming and climate change are going to melt the polar ice caps, the water’s going to flood the land, and the world, as we know it, will come to an end.  Why bother?

I sound like Zephaniah preaching about the Day of the Lord!  But here’s the good news: Zephaniah wasn’t offering a myth of inevitability; Zephaniah was preaching about what would not happen so long as the people would rely not on their own vision—a vision informed by indifferent resignation—but instead on God’s vision; God’s vision that takes the human heart of skepticism and refines it into a heart that hungers and thirsts for righteousness; God’s vision that turns our swords into plowshares; God’s vision that turns our lack into abundance; God’s vision that turns our anxiety and fear of death into hope and life everlasting; God’s vision that insists that we never cave to indifferent resignation and that we never slump into the myth of inevitability.

Zephaniah talks about God’s judgment coming to those who are complacent, who are like wine left on its dregs.  Older versions of the text say ‘those who are like wine thickening upon their lees.’  Wine needs to be stirred up.  It needs to be poured from vat to vat; otherwise, it thickens and loses strength.  We, who are made in the image of God, we are not made to stand around losing strength.  We are not made to stand around thickening.  I don’t like to think of myself as thickening.  We are made to keep being poured from vat to vat, to keep moving, to keep pushing against the myth of inevitability and to keep changing—or, as we say in our church’s mission statement, to keep transforming God’s world one act of love at a time.

So, here is one example of how I hear Zephaniah’s prophecy connecting with God’s people here at Friends Congregational Church:

In our New Member Class last Sunday, we were reminded about a time in this church’s history—not too long ago—when we were faced with the possibility of closing our doors.  Money was so tight that the treasurer had to decide each month whether to pay the utility bill or pay the pastor.  Things were looking pretty inevitable.  The people had built this building, but it didn’t look like our church family would be able to live in it.  The people had planted the trees around this property, but it didn’t look like they’d be able to cool off in their shade anymore.

That was about the time that the congregation went through an intentional two-year process of dialog and learning about the possibility of becoming what our denomination, the United Church of Christ, called an Open and Affirming congregation.  Becoming Open and Affirming meant that a church would adopt a statement to that effect saying that all people are welcome into the full life and ministry of the congregation, regardless of age, race, gender identity, ability, disability, or sexual orientation.

This wasn’t easy to do.  It would have been much easier to succumb to indifferent resignation and slip into the slump of inevitability than to engage in that intentional process of listening and learning, valuing and honoring one another in this place.  But this congregation trusted God and took a leap of faith.  And after two years of Bible studies and prayer and soul-searching, this church took a congregational vote to become an Open and Affirming Church.  Pretty soon God took the people’s lack and turned it into abundance.  People from all walks of life started coming into this place in response to that extravagant welcome.  And the people that came brought along with them their faith backgrounds and spiritual journeys, their opinions and perspectives, their gifts and limitations, their distinctions and quirks, their hearts and their minds.

Fifteen years later we relish in that abundance.  Fifteen years later our very lives that came here in response to an ONA Statement have now reshaped that statement into an identity.  Our identity is that we are children of the light, and by the grace of God we will no longer be tempted by the myth of inevitability.

So, the stewardship message is this: Relishing in God’s abundance can quickly turn into us believing that things are always going to be this good no matter what we do.  So, why bother doing anything else?  But if we look at our past, we realize again and again that God was with us and God us with us, that God was for us and God is for us.  That has nothing to do with some mythic inevitability.  It has everything to do with the power of faith.

So, in the days ahead, let’s all be thinking and praying and discerning together how our gifts of time and money can serve to continue striking down the myths of inevitability that exist in our church and in our community and in our world.  Things are good, yes, but they could be better.  They could always be better for the ones we are striving to reach when we seek to offer God’s extravagant welcome to all.  So, children of the light, next Sunday when we share our pledge cards that reflect our 2012 commitment to one another in this place, let your light shine.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“A Lesson on Grace and Justice from the Ten Jujitsu Virgins”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Amos 5:18-24 and Matthew 25:1-13

Foolish or wise.  Bad or good.  Outsider or insider.  This isn’t a really fun story to read.  It’s a pretty scathing Scripture.  Some people have seriously bad memories of it.

Anna Florence is Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship at Columbia Theological Seminary.  She recalls how a man told her that when he was in high school, his teacher would take great pleasure in slamming the classroom door as soon as the bell rang, and then she’d wickedly say with glee to every late student who knocked at the door, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you!”

This doesn’t sound like Jesus at all.  And because it doesn’t sound like Jesus, the temptation is to try and make it sound like us, how it might sound if we were telling it.  We’re satisfied understanding this story in terms of foolish or wise, bad or good, outsider or insider, so long as we’re the ones on the inside.  That’s our kind of parable.

But hang on: Didn’t the Prophet Amos inform Jesus’ teachings?  Jesus was a Rabbi, a teacher.  He studied the ancient texts.  Amos said that God despised the people’s festivals and rituals because the people had divorced their religious practices from matters of justice; specifically, the justice of showing compassion to the marginalized and the poor.  And since there was no justice, Amos prophesied that God would intervene and give everyone a taste of God’s justice.  The foreign nations and the Israelites, the outsiders and the insiders, the bad and the good, the foolish and the wise, everyone would be accountable to justice.

Now, what implications do Amos and his prophecy of God’s justice have on the teachings of Jesus and how we hear the teachings of Jesus?  Bearing that question in mind, here’s a contrast that has some similarities to The Parable of the Ten Virgins: We give you “The Parable of the Construction Crew.”

At this point, a skit was performed in the sermon.  Refer to the audio podcast to hear.

Now, that’s more like it!  That’s what justice looks like!  The foolish construction worker didn’t bring his lunch, which rendered him incapable of working, much like the foolish virgins who didn’t bring enough oil for their lamps weren’t ready for the bridegroom when he showed up in the middle of the night.  So, the foolish construction worker got a dose of justice.  But unlike the wise virgins who horded their lamp oil for themselves, the wise construction workers who didn’t share their lunch with their poor co-worker, they got justice, too.  Amos would be so pleased with “The Parable of the Construction Crew”!

But I doubt Jesus would.  Amos may have informed Jesus’ teachings and Jesus’ understanding of justice (as Jesus says in Matthew 5:45: “…for God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous), but Amos was not Jesus, and Amos is not Jesus.

It’s like this report they had on 60 Minutes about ten years ago where they had an evangelical African-American Baptist minister being interviewed about social issues and the Bible, and they asked him, “So, what do you think about how some Christians construe Paul’s teachings in the New Testament to be anti-gay?”  And the minister said, “Well, Paul ain’t Jesus.”  Amen.

Jesus tells the parable, not Amos.  That means there’s more to the parable than justice.  There has to be.  It’s Jesus talking.

Fred Craddock says that Jesus preaches two kinds of parables: justice parables where the harvest comes from what is sown, and parables that end with a surprise of grace.  Justice parables and grace parables.  And Craddock asserts that with these two kinds of parables that Jesus preaches, both of which, Jesus says, are demonstrative of the kingdom of heaven, one parable becomes distorted without the other.  In other words, there’s no grace without justice, and there’s no justice without grace.  You have to have both.  That’s what God’s kingdom looks like: grace and justice, justice and grace.

So, where is the grace in this parable?  You can sum up this parable in one verse.  Matthew 25:13 says, “Keep awake, because you do not know the day or the hour.”  We have often heard that verse to mean, “Be ready.  Be prepared.  Jesus is coming, look busy.”  But the Greek imperative that’s translated to mean ‘keep awake’ is more accurately translated ‘be vigilant.’  Be vigilant, Jesus says, for you do not know the day or the hour.  Never grow weary in loving God and loving your neighbor.  Be vigilant in these greatest commands, Jesus says, for you do not know the day or the hour.  Be vigilant.

Love God!  Don’t love the false gods of materialism and nationalism that teach us to draw lines between wise and foolish, good and bad, insider and outsider, citizen and alien, have and have-not.  Don’t love your stuff and your territory.  Love God so that you can love your neighbor, all of your neighbors: your wise neighbor and your foolish neighbor, your neighbor with citizenship and your undocumented neighbor, your conservative and your liberal neighbor, your gay and your straight neighbor, your religious and your non-religious neighbor.  Love your neighbor!  Be vigilant in making this a different and better world for all of God’s children; a world that look’s like God’s kingdom.  Don’t sit around waiting, keeping awake—be vigilant!

That’s the grace in this parable.  Because when we are vigilant in loving God and loving our neighbor, when we are vigilant in doing justice, then God’s grace comes to all of God’s children.

As surely as God is still speaking, and as surely as Jesus breathes new life into old traditions, there is an ongoing lesson of Christian vigilance in this parable for us today.  The Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids gives us a glimpse of justice, and we may not like the particular way the story ends, with the door being shut on the ones who ran out of lamp oil.  But Jesus tells the parable, and then he says, “So, be vigilant.”

Perhaps this story of justice is in the Bible in order to teach us how to live our lives in such a manner that the ending of future stories would not have the same ending.  Justice and grace.  Grace and justice.  This story gives us a glimpse of justice so that by God’s grace we would be vigilant, we would not stop, in making sure that there is enough oil for every bridesmaid’s lamp, enough lunch for every construction worker, enough food for every hungry child, enough justice for all of God’s children.

Do you see how it’s a shame to reduce this parable to our terms of foolish and wise, bad and good?  Do you see how it’s an injustice to reduce those ten bridesmaids to commentaries on gender roles and marriage, when the Amos-informed Jesus is talking about justice and grace?

Lauren Winner is Assistant Professor of Christian Spirituality at Duke Divinity School.  She’s also the author of a great book called Girl Meets God.  Winner calls today’s Scripture reading “The Parable of Five Catty, Hard-Hearted Virgins.”

She points out that in 17^th-century Italy there were plays based on this parable staged in convents, and the plays aimed to foster in the women who saw them the virtues of the wise virgins.  Winner notes that in one such play, the women were subtly named things like “Taste” and “Hearing.”  The not-so-subtle lesson was: “Use your senses for holiness, not frivolity.  Your ears should be used for the hearing of Scripture; you should not be listening to frivolous song and chat.”

And in year between 1737 and 1738, our good friend Jonathan Edwards preached a nine-part sermon series on the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids.  He took the parable’s nuptial setting as an opportunity to comment on the proper ordering of Puritan households.

Winner concludes, “It seems that the church has, for a long time, put this parable to work in conversations about how we want women to behave.”  Too bad it hasn’t been used to teach us all to be vigilant in loving God and loving our neighbor.  Too bad it hasn’t been used as a lesson on grace and justice.

So, it’s about time the ten virgins did jujitsu on this parable.  Here’s how Winner imagines it:

The wise virgins shared with the foolish virgins—and then, in fact, no one had enough oil—but the bridegroom welcomes them anyway because in the kingdom of heaven there is no lack and things are multiplied when you offer them to your neighbor; in the kingdom of heaven lack is converted to fullness and those wise women who shared their oil with whoever asked were seeing Christ in the one who came to them and asked for something.

Booker T. Washington said: “Lay hold of something that will help you, and then use it to help somebody else.”  Let us lay hold of this parable so that it would help us to love God and love our neighbor, and then let us use what we have learned about God’s justice and grace to help others.  Let us use what we have learned from the jujitsu virgins in Jesus’ parable so that we can write new endings to the stories God places before us everyday.

Then, by the grace of God, the parable will sound like what we heard from Matthew 25:1-13 this morning, but it will start to look more like this:

Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this.  Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.  ²Five of them were foolish, and five were wise.  ³When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; ⁴but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.  ⁵As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept.  ⁶But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ ⁷Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The wise noticed that the others’ lamps were going out, and they said, “We only have enough oil for our lamps, but take a portion of what we have that together our lamps might shine a bit longer.”  When the bridegroom arrived, he found all of the bridesmaids together in the darkness, for their lamps had burned out.  When he saw their love for each other, the bridegroom trimmed his lamp, and suddenly all of them were able to see.  The foolish and the wise followed him together into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut.  Therefore be vigilant, for you do not know the day or the hour.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Hall Pass Christianity”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Micah 3:5-12 and Matthew 23:1-12

I want to start this morning with a shout out to my Lutheran friends, those worshipping in this sanctuary who were raised in the Lutheran Church, because today is Reformation Sunday.  Reformation Sunday recalls that in 1517 Martin Luther confronted an indulgence salesman with his Ninety-Five Theses, which stated that salvation could not be achieved by works, and that the Bible is the only source of divinely revealed knowledge.  If the Reformation hadn’t happened, our denomination, the United Church of Christ, would not have been born, and we would not be worshipping together in this sanctuary this morning.  It’s a big day.

But I have never preached a Reformation sermon, and I wouldn’t know where to begin.  So, luckily I found a tidbit from Fred Gaiser, who’s a Professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.  Gaiser says that the primary goal of the Reformation was and is sola scriptura, Latin for ‘by Scripture alone.’  So, Gaiser says, “Preaching any text, actually paying attention to a particular text, will always be a Reformation sermon.”  Sola scriptura.  Who knew?  Looks like you get a Reformation sermon this morning after all.

Let me begin with a quote from Molly Ivins.  Molly Ivins described “people who want to be Texan but aren’t” as being “all hat and no cattle.”  If Ivins were translating Jesus’ assessment of the Pharisees in this morning’s Scripture, she might say that the Pharisees wanted to be religious leaders, but they were all law and no spirit; they were all legalism and no authenticity.

Pharisees were masters of the legalism that informed commerce and culture, ritual and religion.  They were sola lex, by the law alone; and when it came to interpreting the law, no one topped the Pharisees.  No one dared confront the Pharisees…except Jesus.

Now, before I go pontificating on the Pharisees’ shortcomings, let me invite us into the story. See, we have something in common with the Pharisees of Jesus’ day.  Just like the people in antiquity would look to the Pharisees to understand the law, society today will often look to the Christian community to understand Christianity and the church and the Bible.  It’s like it’s been said, “You may be the only Bible that someone will ever read.”  And what one finds in looking to the Christian community isn’t always an authentic portrayal of Christianity and the church and the Bible.

Brennan Manning has a book called The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out.  And he writes something in that book that I think is timely for us today, given what’s going on with the Occupy Wall Street Movement.  Manning writes, “The Christian community resembles a Wall Street exchange of works wherein the elite are honored and the ordinary ignored.”  There’s a message in here for us, because Manning’s observation of the Christian community resembles a lot of Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees.

Here’s what Jesus was criticizing: The Pharisees would impose requirements of things like Sabbath observances and purity codes; and Jesus recognized that it was impossible for peasants and the urban poor to follow those requirements.  The Pharisees did just fine on the Sabbath, not working, but peasants and the urban poor?  They had to work.  They had to break the law or they’d lose their livelihood.  Remember what Jesus says to the Pharisees when they accuse him of breaking the law by healing a man on the Sabbath.  He says, “Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out?  ¹²How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep!”  When it came to Sabbath observances and purity codes and other legal requirements, the Pharisees were the elite that were honored while ordinary folk were ignored.  Jesus called these the heavy burdens that the Pharisees put on people’s shoulders, burdens that were obviously impossible for ordinary people to live by.

But the Pharisees didn’t even recognize the impossibility of those heavy burdens.  The Pharisees were like Rick Moranis in the 1989 movie Parenthood.  They have this scene where Rick Moranis is talking to his child about her studies, and he’s getting on her case about how she needs to do better if she has any hope of succeeding in life.  The child is off camera while Moranis says to her, “Sweetheart, if you want to have just an ordinary academic career, that’s your prerogative.  But all your mother and I are asking is that you show a little extra effort.”  And then the camera reveals that the daughter is this sweet little three-year-old girl.  And she says, “Okay, Daddy.”  My three-year-old daughter would probably tell me, “And I want you to make me some chocolate milk!”

Jesus was criticizing the Pharisees for being hypocrites.  We don’t hear him say that word in this morning’s Scripture reading.  Today we hear from Matthew 23:1-12, but if you read through to the end of Matthew 23, Jesus calls the Pharisees hypocrites six times.  But let’s look into this criticism a little deeper.  We often think of hypocrisy in terms of practical contradiction—you take a side on an issue, and then you act against that position.  That’s how we define a hypocrite.  So, we might think that Jesus was criticizing the Pharisees for interpreting the law and then not obeying their own interpretations.  But the Pharisees obey the law to the letter.  That’s not the issue here.  So, how are they hypocrites?

The Greek word that we read as ‘hypocrite’ is actually translated literally to mean ‘actor.’  When the Pharisees are living by the letter of the law and not by the spirit of the law, then they are just acting; they are acting out their faith, they’re not living it.  When the Pharisees are comfortable practicing their religion to the letter in their own lives while the tenets of their religion cause other people to be oppressed, then they are merely acting.

Jesus scolds the Pharisees for wearing phylacteries.  Phylacteries are black leather boxes that they would wear on their upper left arm.  The box contained Scriptures on parchment, the idea being that the phylacteries were a constant reminder of how the Pharisees were supposed to conduct themselves in accordance with their religion.  But when the Pharisees only applied the meaning of a phylactery to their own daily living and did nothing to apply the teachings on those parchment Scriptures to the world around them, when they did nothing to love their neighbor in addition to themselves, then those phylacteries became mere props for a bunch of actors.

Do you hear the message in here for us?

They say the Mainline church is dying.  Young people are staying away from church these days, and from where we sit we think we’ve got it all figured out.  We know why they’re not coming.  They see the church as hypocritical.  They see the church as being anti-science and anti-gay, and that contradicts the vastness of God’s creation as revealed in Scripture and the teachings of Jesus; so, understandably, the Millennials stay away.  Simple, right?  Not really.  See, we can roll our eyes and complain all day about our Pat Robertson-following Christian siblings and our Joel Osteen-inspired friends in the faith for their stances on evolution being taken out of textbooks and advocating for prayer in schools and gays being thrown out of the church.  We can call them hypocrites and rejoice in the fact that we really get it when it comes to the Scriptures and the teachings of Jesus.  We can take comfort in the fact that our denomination proclaims a still-speaking God of abundance and inclusiveness, and we can take comfort in the fact that our church is open to all people, regardless of age, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, ability or disability.  But as we wear our progressive phylacteries like our Christian siblings wore those “What Would Jesus Do?” bracelets in the 90’s, the Millennials are waiting for the Christian community to be proactive, to stop acting in here and start living out there; to stop being passively open and affirming and to start being actively welcoming and affirming.

We take comfort in our faith as we understand it, and that’s good, but meanwhile young people and spiritual seekers and the creeping-closer-every-day-to-the-99 percent of non-church-going folk want to see this faith lived out where they are every day, not just acted out where we are on Sundays and Wednesdays.  What I’m suggesting is that perhaps the reason why church attendance has dropped off so much in the last three decades isn’t because of stereotypes of religious zealots, but because of the Church’s lack of authenticity.  And when it comes to the religious right, when it comes to living out their faith as they understand it every day, everywhere, you gotta hand it to them—they’re being pretty authentic.

There’s a 2008 book that’s a collection of testimonies from gay teenagers called Coming Out, Coming In: Nurturing the Well-Being and Inclusion of Gay Youth in Mainstream Society.  There’s a 15-year-old girl named Jane, a lesbian, who says something so simple and pure and challenging in the book.  She says, “Where are my allies?  I don’t need to know that you are my ally; I need you to BE my ally.”  Do you hear the voice of God in Jane’s plea?  Our sign outside says, “Every Child is a Word of God.”  Do you hear the Word of God still speaking through Jane’s life?  Do you hear the conviction of Christ speaking through Jane’s life?  Jesus Christ and a 15-year-old named Jane are crying out for the Church to be authentic.  They are inviting us to take a challenging look at our lives and to pinpoint those areas, those contexts, those situations where we might be behaving hypocritically, where we might be acting our faith instead of living our faith everyday, everywhere, for the sake of everyone, for the sake of every child of God bearing heavy burdens that Jesus says no one should have to bear.

When it comes to our faith, Jane needs us to be authentic.  Our children need us to be authentic.  The Muslim and undocumented and LGBT students of Texas A&M who are experiencing an environment on campus lately that is unsafe and vitriolic need us to be authentic and present.  And in this place, in this family of faith that we love, in this gift of the Church that we praise God for, we need for one another to be authentic all the time.

I’ll leave you with this simple story: You may have heard of Clarence Jordan.  He’s the founder of Koinonia Farms, which birthed Habitat for Humanity.  Jordan graduated with a degree in agriculture, but he also studied the Bible incessantly.  He was inspired by the Book of Acts where it talks about the first Christian community sharing everything they had in common, living together, and pooling their resources.  So, Jordan bought a farm in rural Georgia outside the little town of Americus, and he invited other Christians, both black and white, to come live together, growing crops and sharing what they had.

This was in the 1950’s before the Civil Rights Movement and during the Red Scare.  So, on the one hand, Jordan’s farm was being vandalized by the Ku Klux Klan, torching his crops and randomly firing bullets into farm buildings on the property; and on the other hand, McCarthy was sniffing around Jordan’s farm because it reeked of communism.  But Jordan stood firm.  He took the teachings of the Bible seriously not just for himself, but for everyone who was being persecuted.  Jordan was truly living out his faith authentically all the time.

But then his daughter, Jan, came home from school in tears.  Jordan said, “Honey, what’s wrong?”  And she said, “Oh, Dad, a lot of the kids are mean, but there’s this one boy named Bob Speck.  Every time Bob sees me coming down the hallway, he comes up and knocks me down.  He throws my books down the hallway.  He says the ugliest words to me.”  Jordan said, “Jan, you’ve got long fingernails.  Why don’t you scratch his eyes out?”  And she said, “Well, I thought about that, but I heard you say in your sermon that Jesus said we’re supposed to love our enemy, so I thought I wouldn’t scratch his eyes out.”  And Jordan said, “Well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do: Tomorrow I’ll go to the school, and I’m going to ask Jesus to excuse me from being a Christian for about 15 minutes while I beat the daylights out of Bob Speck.”  But then Jan said, “Daddy, you can’t do that.”  He said, “Why not?”  She said, “You can’t be excused from being a Christian for 15 minutes.”

God is good all the time, and all the time God is good.  Those who worship God and who follow God’s son Jesus the Christ are called to live out that truth with authenticity for the sake of all of God’s children.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Cultures that Clash”

Delivered by Rev. Tamara Franks
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Psalm 1 and Matthew 22:34-46
Transcript coming soon…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Spiritual Conversations: The Importance of Asking Questions”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Isaiah 45:1-7 and Matthew 22:15-22

It’s Children’s Sabbath Sunday.  Today we focus on the littlest ones in our midst.  The kids are leading our worship service, reading Scripture and singing songs—this is great!  We want for our children to know how much the adults in their church family adore and appreciate them.  But Children’s Sabbath Sunday urges us to show our adoration and appreciation for the littlest ones in our midst by doing more than just smiling and applauding.  Children’s Sabbath Sunday is about learning from our children.  In light of this morning’s Scriptures, maybe the greatest lesson our children can teach us is the importance of asking questions.

For example, children always ask why:

Why does the kitty run away when I want to pet it?

Why do we have to pay money for things?

Why do I have to obey the rules when that other kid in my class doesn’t?

Why can’t Snoopy talk?

Why does Jesus look so sad in pictures?

Here’s another practical ‘why’ question: Why do we adults feel like we have to have an answer for every question, whether those questions come from children or not?  Why do we always have to have an answer?  Are we afraid of not knowing something?  Here’s what the conundrum is, one of the great ironies of our faith: The modern human mind is skeptical and suspicious of mystery, and God is a mystery.

The late Texas preacher, Browning Ware, said that asking ‘why’ is the most profound question in human experience.  The problem is that instead of entering into the spiritual conversation that comes with asking ‘why,’ we want to have complete control of the answers and leave it at that.  We want monologue, not dialogue.

Flannery O’Connor wrote: “Mystery is a great embarrassment to the modern mind.”

And Browning Ware wrote: “Discomfort with mystery is so intense and our need to be manager of everything is so consuming that we crank out our catalogs of answers to resist pondering life’s crucial questions.”

You ever read Bill Watterson’s comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes?  I used to love Calvin and Hobbes.  There’s this one comic strip where the little boy, Calvin, is in the backseat of the family station wagon.  His parents are up front.  And they’re driving on a bridge where the sign says, “Load Limit 10 Tons.”  Calvin asks, “How do they know the load limit on bridges, Dad?”  And his dad says, “They drive bigger and bigger trucks over the bridge until it breaks.  Then they weigh that last truck and rebuild the bridge.”  Calvin says, “Oh, I should’ve guessed.”  And Calvin’s mom says to his dad, “Dear, if you don’t know the answer, just tell him!”

We are so much like Calvin’s dad.  Answers are more important to us than questions.  Certitude is more important to us than mystery.  But that leaves no room for our faith to grow.  It doesn’t leave any room for spiritual conversations.

Children aren’t afraid to ponder life’s crucial questions, and maybe that’s why Jesus says that we need to become like children if we ever want to enter the kingdom of heaven.

I’ve had the privilege to spend some time in the hospital with one of our church members this past week, Laura Beaster-Jones.  As many of you know, Laura and her husband, Jayson, and their two-year-old daughter, Gwen, were in a terrible car accident a week ago today.  Rhoda and Walter Bertsch were able to retrieve their belongings from the car after the accident, and Rhoda told me, “From the looks of that car, it’s a wonder that they’re alive.”  Laura and Jayson are relieved that little Gwen walked away from the accident with no injuries.  But now Mom and Dad have broken bones and internal injuries that make it nearly impossible for them to get around.  It’s frustrating to say the least.

What’s more frustrating is this: Five years ago, Laura and her brother were involved in a serious car accident where the car rolled over multiple times.  Laura sustained injuries in that wreck, too; not nearly as bad as this time around, but bad injuries nonetheless.  I was reminded of that when Laura and I talked a couple of times this past week.

So with the frustration of Laura’s and Jayson’s injuries pounding in my head, and the frustration of this being Laura’s second near-death car accident in five years, I went straight from the hospital Thursday morning to a desk where I opened the Bible to study this morning’s texts.  And that’s when Isaiah 45:7 hit me like a hammer in the face: “I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things.”

What?  What does that mean, God?  Does it mean that you made that truck hydroplane and you made Laura’s car smash into it on University Drive?  If so, then, why?  Why, God?

The Pharisees have cornered Jesus once again, and they ask him a question to trap him: “Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?”  And Jesus gives that famous reply: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”  And with that, the Pharisees stop their questioning and go away.  That’s a good enough answer for them.  And it’s a good enough answer for us even today.  Jesus’ reply makes good sense.  It keeps everything in its place.  We love to take Jesus’ reply to the Pharisees and falsely apply it to our modern doctrine of the separation of Church and State.  We read Jesus’ response as some clear-cut distinction between the secular world and the spiritual world.  That’s good enough for us.  It’s like that bumper sticker that says, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.”  We’re content with the answer, so we stop our questioning and we go away.

But what if the Pharisees had not been afraid of being uncomfortable with continued dialog?  Maybe what doesn’t happen in this story is a greater lesson than what does happen.  What if when Jesus said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s,” the Pharisees had said, “Why?  Why, Jesus?”  What if after they asked, “Should we pay taxes to Caesar,” the Pharisees had followed up by asking, “Okay, should we worship Caesar?  Should we follow Caesar?”  Talk about a spiritual conversation!

See, all throughout Jesus teaching, Jesus proclaimed the sovereignty of God in all things.  Jesus teaches that God has made us, the heavens are God’s throne, and the earth is God’s footstool.  As one commentator writes, “Christ cannot ever be construed as dividing the world into secular and sacred, or as allowing that any ruler has a realm or power independent of the Creator.”  In other words, yeah, give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s, but never forget that even Caesar, even the powers of this world, are not independent from the sovereignty of God.

Take what’s happening on Wall Street; the Occupy Wall Street Movement.  The longer this thing goes on, the more press coverage it gets.  And the more press coverage it gets, the more we try to define it—the more answers we try to give about what it is before we ask any questions about what’s behind it and why it’s happening.  Everyone is trying to define the Occupy Wall Street Movement by explaining what kind of people are in the movement, inferring what they want, and pointing out what the consequences will be should they get what they want.  And the more presumptive definition is given to the Occupy Wall Street Movement, the more urgent it becomes for us to choose a side.  Are you on the side of the Movement or are you on the side of Wall Street?  Are you rendering to God or are you rendering to Caesar?  But Jesus teaches that all things are sacred, all things are spiritual, all matters are spiritual matters, and that all things are connected to the sovereignty of God.  So, maybe instead of being so quick to give our answers about what this Occupy Wall Street Movement is, we should start asking ‘why.’  “Why is this happening?  Why now?  What’s going on?  And where is God in the midst of all of this?”

Where is God in the midst of all of this?  That is at the heart of asking the question ‘why.’

The Prophet Micah says, “The Lord has shown you, O mortal, what is good.  And what does the Lord require of you?  To do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”  Those are spiritual disciplines that we can apply to our everyday lives: do justice, love mercy, walk humbly.  And the more we carry out those spiritual disciplines, the more we are pushed to those areas of this world where we see brokenness; we see injustice, and we see inequality, and we see cruelty.  And when we see all of those things, our hearts get restless.  That is the mystery.

St. Augustine says, “God, you have made us for yourselves.  Our hearts are restless until they find rest in You.”  When we, who are made in the image of God, witness brokenness, we can’t just be satisfied with that being the way things are.  We can’t just say, “Well, that’s good enough for me,” and then go away.  We have to persist.  We have to ask those crucial questions from the depth of our restless hearts so that we might get to the heart of God.  We have to ask “what’s this all about,” “what’s really going on here”; we have to ask why.

Walking the walk leads to the blessings of talking the talk.  Spiritual disciplines lead to spiritual conversations.  Doing justice and loving mercy and walking humbly lead to spiritual conversations.  And spiritual conversations don’t explain away the world’s brokenness; spiritual conversations lead us through the darkest valleys of the human condition as well as the highest mountains with the assurance that God is with us every step of the way.  Like it says in Joshua 1:9: “Be strong and of good courage; be not frightened, neither be dismayed; for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

I drive through Bastrop, and I see all these black trees and damaged guard rails and melted signs and foundations where homes and businesses used to stand.  I think about this horrible drought and the tiny spark somewhere that got the wildfires started, and I find myself asking, “Why?  Why?  Why?”  And while I’m shaking my head in disbelief, I see city officials working hard to rebuild the community, I see church signs that say, “Food, clothing, help,” and I see volunteers pooling together as much as they can to help people rekindle their hopes that are still burning under those ashes.

I see our friend Laura with broken bones, and I think about the physical rehab that Jayson and she will endure in the coming months, I imagine little Gwen and all of her precious needs in that process, I think of that truck hydroplaning and causing this whole mess in an instant, and I ask, “Why?  Why?  Why?”  And while I’m shaking my head with frustration, I get phone calls from church members wanting to know how they can help, and I see emails flying back and forth figuring out a schedule for providing meals to Laura’s family, and I hear about friends from their neighborhood taking care of Gwen, and Laura tells me about Gwen visiting her at the hospital and telling her parents with great pride about the get-well card she’s making for them.

The Methodist preacher William Willimon says, “To be a Christian is to be someone who takes the time to be in conversation with God.”  Maybe all my frustrated questions about wildfires and hydroplaning trucks are really just my human lust for a scapegoat; I want someone to blame.  But that kind of questioning is a monologue, not a dialogue.  It’s an answer seeking validation, not a question seeking mystery.  But when I ask ‘why’ from the vulnerability of my restless heart, I get something better than any concrete answer; I get a glimpse into the mystery of God.  And the more questions I ask, the more that mystery unfolds.

I shared this story with you a few years ago: That mentor of mine I mentioned earlier, Browning Ware—when he was a little boy, Browning would come home from school and climb to the top of a stool in the kitchen that he calls his mountain top.  That’s where his mom would serve him his favorite snack: peanut butter on light bread and a glass of sweet milk.  They had all kinds of conversations right there on that mountain top.  Browning asked his all-knowing mom about everything under the sun.  Sometimes he even asked her about God.  Browning says, “God was a mystery to me, but a close friend to my mother.”  So, speaking about God and Jesus one day, Browning asked his mom where Lazarus had been when he was dead; you know, before Jesus brought him back to life.  He says, “Mother gave me one of the greatest answers I have ever heard, even to this day.  ‘Son,’ she said, ‘I don’t know.’”

Browning writes, “Admitting that there were things she didn’t know increased her authority.  To this day, I like to learn from persons who don’t know everything.”

In that comic strip, Calvin’s mom sounds a lot like God might sound when she says, “Dear, if you don’t know the answer, just tell him!”  So, when it comes to all those questions we have about our faith, here’s the best news that this preacher can give you this morning: I don’t know everything.  Thank God for the littlest ones in our midst, then, who remind us of the importance of asking questions.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“The Gift of Tension in Our Ongoing Life of Faith”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Isaiah 25:1-9 and Matthew 22:1-14

The Scriptures that Carie and I read this morning are what some preachers might call difficult texts.  The Isaiah text talks about God bringing a nation down to a heap of rubble, and then it turns around and talks about God gathering all nations together for a feast of rich food and aged wine.  The Matthew text starts out innocently enough: A king wants to have a wedding banquet, but then people refuse to attend; so then there’s violence and counter-violence—it’s an ugly scene.  The whole thing exposes a theological tension.  We can either tiptoe around that tension, or we can march right into it.  And the choice we make—to avoid or to confront—has everything to do with how we understand tension.  So, the sermon title for this morning is “The Gift of Tension in Our Ongoing Life of Faith.”

You recall back in January that it was the 20^th anniversary of the start of Operation Desert Storm.  To commemorate the anniversary, President George H.W. Bush and Vice Presidents Dan Quayle and Dick Cheney and Secretaries of State Colin Powell and James Baker and Generals Brent Scowcroft and Walter Boomer got together on stage at our own Reed Arena.  The men all spoke on a panel, sharing their recollections about the escalation of Operation Desert Storm.  And then they engaged in discussion.

Later in the discussion, Dick Cheney was talking about the military build up.  And right then, from the back of the floor seats in Reed Arena, a man jumped to his feet.  He started clapping his hands and walking toward the stage.  And then he started singing: “I’m gonna lay down my sword and shield down by the riverside…down by the riverside…down by the riverside… I’m gonna lay down my sword and shield down by the riverside…down by the riverside…Study war no more.”

Of course he was immediately escorted out of the arena by agents.  Cheney wasn’t fazed, but when he finished his remarks, Powell said, “To the panelist that just joined us, if you don’t want to study war, then you better be prepared to fight it.”  And crowd roared.

Powell’s comment allowed the audience to exhale.  It eased the tension, but it didn’t remove it.  Whether we are unrelenting pacifists or “just war” Christians or staunch believers in capital punishment; whether we’re seated in Reed Arena or going about our everyday lives, we don’t want to talk about war and the consequences of war and the costs of war and the damage being done by war, so the tension remains.  The tension remains and our ongoing life of faith tiptoes indifferently around it.  Nothing changes.

Jesus tells a story about a king throwing a wedding banquet for his son.  The king has the oxen and fattened calf butchered.  This is going to be huge.  It’s the kind of party no one would want to miss.  But when the king sends his servants to bring the invitees to the wedding banquet, the Scripture says, “They paid no attention and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, ⁶while the rest seized his servants, mistreated them, and killed them.”  It sounds like the people invited to the wedding banquet really didn’t want to be there!  I mean, making up excuses like “I’m feeling a little under the weather” or “my car broke down” so that we can get out of going to the party where that person we can’t stand is going to be, that’s nothing compared to this!  Why did they go to such great lengths to avoid that wedding banquet?

Well, the story goes on: The king takes care of those ungrateful invitees and invites a whole new crop of people to the wedding banquet—anyone his servants can find, good or bad.  And once everybody’s there and the party’s ready to start, the king sees one guest not wearing his wedding clothes.  Gasp!  The king, sounding like Ursula from The Little Mermaid, trudges over to this poor, unfortunate soul and asks sarcastically, “Friend, how did you get in here without wedding clothes?”  The guest is speechless.  Awkward!  And then comes the king’s decree: “Tie him hand and foot and throw him out into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth!”  Okay, I can see why those original invitees didn’t want to go to that party!

But why are those wedding clothes so important that they’d cause someone to be publicly humiliated and kicked out?  Well, Jesus is telling this story, so let’s understand the time and context of the Rabbi Jesus.  In Jesus’ day, if you were invited to a Jewish banquet you had to wear suitable clothes.  The wedding garment Jesus describes is like the one given to the saints in Revelation 19:8, where it says, “Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.  (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints!)”  So the wedding clothes in Jesus’ story are symbolic of righteousness.  If the guests did not clothe themselves with righteousness, then they would not be permitted to stay.  And just so that we can understand that ambiguous righteousness thing a little better, righteousness in rabbinical teaching means repentance.  The kingdom of God is like a wedding banquet where everyone is invited, and the host insists that everyone be clothed in repentance.

There’s the tension.  There’s that thing that those original invitees wanted to avoid.  And if we’re being honest, it’s something that we all want to avoid.

A few months ago I’m stopped at a light off a busy highway.  There’s a woman—a vagrant—walking up the median right outside my window.  She’s wearing tattered clothes, her backpack is on the ground, her skin is dirty and damaged by the sun, she’s holding up a cardboard sign begging for money.  Before she gets to my car the light turns green and I proceed through the intersection.  And then I hear the voice of my six-year-old son from the back seat: “Daddy, why didn’t we give the woman any money?”

Sometimes it takes a protestor or a child to bring tensions to the surface, but even if we can avoid protestors and the candid questions of children, even if we can go back to our farm or our business, even if we can dissolve into the status quo and the conventional religious pursuits of our everyday living, the tensions remain.

But in our ongoing life of faith tension is a blessing.  It may not seem like it when Jesus frames it with a harsh story about a wedding banquet, but confronting the tensions that exist in our lives leads to blessings.

The Isaiah passage that Carie read earlier, it’s a prophecy about all nations gathering on God’s holy mountain and eating and drinking together.  And it’s supposed to be a time of reconciliation and healing: “The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth.”  It sounds wonderful.  It almost sounds like universalism.

But just a few verses back, everyone isn’t living in harmony.  The strong and ruthless are afraid, while the poor and needy experience refuge.  There may be a rich mountain, but there’s also a ruined city.  There’s a finality of judgment on what Isaiah 25:5 calls “the noise of the aliens,” but then there’s this ultimate blessing for “all peoples” just one verse later.  We want this prophecy to be about universalism, but it’s just not.

Still, there’s a vision there.  There’s a vision of everyone being included, and that universal spirit in Isaiah’s vision makes for a theological tension that keeps going for us.  It’s a tension that says, “You know what, these passages from the Bible, they may have imagery that makes our hearts tremble, and they may have language that makes us cringe, but they are reaching for something greater.”  Isaiah’s prophecy and Jesus’ parable, they are reaching for the fulfillment of God’s vision, where everyone is fed and everyone has a place to rest their head and tears are wiped from all faces; but that just won’t happen unless we shift away from the status quo and away from our conventional religious pursuits.  God’s vision of life abundant won’t happen until we recognize that the discontent of our neighbor is our discontent, no matter how comfortable we might be with the way things are.  God’s vision cannot take shape until we stop tiptoeing around the tensions in our world and we choose to confront them.  There is blessing in that.

When Stacy and I get into a fight, the air in the house gets really tense.  And we can give each other the silent treatment or one of us might get out of the house and walk around the block or pretend to work on something that isn’t really that urgent, and that might ease the tension a little, but the tension still remains.  And after the air clears, we can be nice to each other, and speak kindly to each other, but the tension still remains.  We can even say we’re sorry to each other, but if we don’t confront the tension and change course from what caused the fight in the first place, if we don’t confront the tension and repent, then sorry doesn’t make a difference.  We can show up to the wedding banquet, but if we’re not wearing the wedding clothes…nice try.  Until we confront the tension there’s no peace, there’s no healing, there’s no real joy!

I think that’s what Jesus was getting at.  Jesus went around making things tense for everybody.  He was a walking systemic intervention.  He did things and said things that made the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes and the teachers of the law and the government and his family and even his own disciples squirm; because what Jesus did and what he said exposed their fears and their doubts and their anxieties and their worries and their hypocrisy and the tragedy of their indifference.  And his reason for exposing those tensions was to get them to recognize them, to face them, and to repent so that they might experience real joy!  As Jesus says to the Samaritan woman at the well, “Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.”

So, what tensions exist in our lives?  What are the tensions that keep us up at night—the tensions that make us squirm?  What are the tensions that we tiptoe around with our bondage to the status quo and our conventional religious pursuits?

Maybe you have friends and family that you love dearly, and a lot of them ascribe to other religions or have no use for religion at all; but you’ve been raised on a doctrine that says that only those who profess on their lips that Jesus is Lord will live forever in heaven.  Tension.

There are needs across the ocean where women, men and children are homeless and dying after earthquakes and tsunamis have destroyed their land, and we give all we can to the mission offerings taken up in our church that fund relief efforts, and we assemble hygiene kits and mail them off to Church World Service, but then wildfires ravage our state and rob people of their homes and businesses in Bastrop and Grimes County, and we simply don’t have much energy left or resources to give or time to spare for those hurting in our own backyard.  Tension.

We seek to offer God’s extravagant welcome to all, and we use inclusive liturgy and our pastor preaches hospitable sermons and we sing from a hymnal with gender non-specific language; yet we also rely heavily on the Word of God in the pages of Scripture to inform our faith and how we worship.  And the Holy Bible is rife with patriarchal language, and stories that have been translated for centuries through a heteronormative lens that excludes the experience and perspectives of women and our queer siblings.  Tension.

Or how about our church’s Open and Affirming Statement?  Our ONA identity strives to include all people, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, ability or disability.  Yet we have no gender variant restrooms, and our only handicap accessible restroom is out in the portable.  Tension.

In a 2001 book called Gifted by Otherness: Gay and Lesbian Christians in the Church, M.R. Ritley writes this: “We are not invited into a church where everyone is welcome but no real conversation takes place.  We are invited to a community where we are all pressed to lifelong growth, which will necessarily involve stress, doubt, conflict and relearning.”  That’s the gift of tension in our ongoing life of faith.

I was at a local minister’s meeting, and after the meeting I was in the parking lot talking with a pastor of another church in town.  We got to talking about that protestor in Reed Arena.  I told him about how this guy stood up right there in front of God and everybody and sang an old spiritual about not studying war anymore.  He said, “Yeah, I know who you’re talking about.  He’s friends with my son.”

I said, “Really?  Small world.  So, what happened to the guy after they escorted him out?”

He said, “Well, the agents had to call his parents to confirm that he was sane before they could let him go.  And his parents assured the agents that he was not only sane but that he was really smart, too.”

We just sat there smiling a little and looking into the distance.  I think the protestor got two pastors thinking about some tensions that exist for both of us in our ongoing life of faith.  I’m an American citizen, I’m a tax payer, and I’m a Christian who follows a Savior who had a thing or two to say about war.  That tension remains.  I’m trying to confront it.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Freezers, Lawnmowers, Comic Books, and Bunk Beds”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 and Matthew 21:33-46
Transcript coming soon…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Ecumenical Wednesdays–The Mennonite Church”

Delivered by Jon and Andrea Welty Peachey
Wednesday, September 28, 2011

That they may all be one!” Each week a different member of our church will share lessons and stories from their faith background, as well as how those perspectives shape their participation in the life of Friends Church, UCC.

Transcript not available…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“A New Theology: It’s Everyone or No One”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Revelation 22:1-5 and Matthew 21:23-32
Transcript coming soon…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Ecumenical Wednesdays–The Church of Christ”

Delivered by Lorraine Rosales
Wednesday, September 21, 2011

That they may all be one!” Each week a different member of our church will share lessons and stories from their faith background, as well as how those perspectives shape their participation in the life of Friends Church, UCC.

Transcript not available…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“It Gets Better”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Kyle Walker
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Philippians 1:21-30 and Exodus 16:2-15
Transcript coming soon…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“The Sukka of Shalom: The Blessings of Vulnerability”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Matthew 18:21-35, Genesis 50:15-21 and Psalm 139:7-12
Transcript coming soon…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Ecumenical Wednesdays”

Delivered by Nelis Potgeiter
Sunday, September 7, 2011

That they may all be one!”  Each week a different member of our church will share lessons and stories from their faith background, as well as how those perspectives shape their participation in the life of Friends Church, UCC.

Transcript not available…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Listen to the Trees”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Matthew 18:15-20 and Acts 17:2-28

Transcript coming soon…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“From Forbidding to Following: Thinking God’s Thoughts”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Romans 12:9-21 and Matthew 16:21-28

Transcript coming soon…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Barnabas and the Christians: Conclusion to a Summer on the Margins”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Romans 12-18 and Acts 11:19-30

This summer, I’ve been preaching on texts that don’t appear in the Revised Common Lectionary.  To catch us all up, the lectionary is what most preachers refer to every Sunday.  It’s a collection of Scriptures from the Bible that covers a three-year cycle so that at the end of those three years churches have studied a broad collection of texts.  It’s got a lot of merit.  But preaching from the lectionary alone still leaves out a majority of the Bible.  It has good intentions, but the lectionary consequently marginalizes a lot of the stories and characters and lessons and great mysteries that would inform our faith.

So, for the past ten Sundays we’ve followed a theme called “A Summer on the Margins.”  From the Book of Joshua we heard about Rahab and her hospitality to the two Israelite spies, and that gave us point to pause about the extent of our vision at Friends Church: “To offer God’s extravagant welcome to all.”  The Prophet Amos directed our attention to the similarities between a largely self-absorbed Israel of ancient times and our present day Western World culture.  Hearing about Elijah in the Book of II Kings forced us to ask questions about why one of God’s prophets would purify the water of a parched land to save a community and then turn around and take vengeance on antagonistic teenagers by summoning she-bears to maul them.  To sum it up, the stories and voices and perspectives we found on the margins this summer were meant to change us; they were meant to change us in ways we might not ever realize without reading the Bible through the lens of the marginalized.  And why is that marginalized perspective so vital to our faith?

Mary Ann Tolbert is Professor of Biblical Studies and Executive Director at the Pacific School of Religion.  She wrote the foreword to a book called Take Back the Word: A Queer Reading of Scripture.  In it, she points out that the books of the Bible were produced over a span of slightly more than one thousand years mostly by marginalized groups in the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean basin.  She writes, “Not only did these groups participate in cultures that were deeply patriarchal and nationalistic; they for the most part were located socially on the marginalized fringes of those cultures, colonized by the dominant powers of the period from Assyria to Babylon to Persia to Greece and finally to Rome.”  This is all too familiar, because what we often encounter now in 21^st century preaching and teaching and learning is an interpretation of the Bible that is largely informed by the powers that be.  The powers that be control the interpretation, and the 21^st century powers tend to be patriarchal and nationalistic.  So, what our summer on the margins has attempted to do is to put these sacred texts back in the hands of their original authors so that we might hear them from that sobering purview.  We’re striving to give these stories back to God’s storytellers: those pushed to the margins.

Barnabas is about as marginalized of a biblical character as we’re going to find.  Do you know much about Barnabas?  His story is nowhere in the lectionary.  You never hear Barnabas speak in the pages of Scripture, you just read about him for a few verses.  But apparently Barnabas cultivated the first church that ever existed outside of Jerusalem—at Antioch, the third most important city of the Roman Empire, and that’s where we were first called “Christians.”  Barnabas!  Who knew?

Let’s have communal introduction to this little-known pioneer of the church.  The name ‘Barnabas’ translated from the Greek text of Acts means “son of consolation” or “son of encouragement.”  He owned a lot of land in Cyprus.  And incidentally, he sold all of that land and gave the money to the church at Jerusalem.  He was a capital campaign’s dream come true!

Now, if Barnabas had so much to do with all that—with the origin of our name, “Christian,” and the success of the church at Antioch—then why do we hear so much in the New Testament from a guy named Paul but we hear nothing from Barnabas?  Paul has a lot to say about a lot of things—Paul talks and talks and talks about the dos and don’ts of Christianity if you will—but trying to follow Paul to the letter isn’t humanly possible!  In a book called The Acts of the Apostles, F.J. Jackson says, “Paul’s elevation of character makes him scarcely human, while the virtues of Barnabas make him singularly loveable.  The Paul of history contributes to the progress of the world, while Barnabas makes it endurable to live in.”

If the growth and success of the Antioch church where we were first called “Christians” is based on Barnabas’ example much more than on Paul’s words, then Barnabas’ actions have a lot to teach us about what it means to be “Christian.” So what did Barnabas do?

He did a couple of things…

One: Right after we read in Acts 11 about the success of the church at Antioch, and about how it was there that the people of faith were first called “Christians,” it was time for these Christians to answer the question “what’s in a name.”  There was a severe drought in Jerusalem.  The crops were failing.  So, the Christians at Antioch, following the leadership and example of Barnabas, provided mission relief to the church at Jerusalem.  And Barnabas and Paul were the ones who took those donations from Antioch to Jerusalem.

Barnabas showed that being Christian means that you help your neighbor in their time of need.  Or to put it another way, Barnabas showed that being Christian means that you carry out the commandment of Jesus Christ when he said to his disciples, “A new command I give you, that you love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this the world will know that you are my disciples.”

Two: After Barnabas and Paul delivered mission relief to the church at Jerusalem, they reported back to the church at Antioch.  They explained how back in Jerusalem the Gentiles were being excluded from the church, and how even if those Gentiles were allowed in the church, they were forced to conform to the customs of Judaism.  Well, the Antioch church sent Barnabas and Paul back to Jerusalem for a second visit; but this time their charge was to stand up for the Gentiles.  Barnabas and Paul insisted that the Gentiles needed to be included fully in the life and ministry of the Jerusalem church.  They were making the claim that God loves more than just the people who think that they are God’s favorites.  They were stating that God loves everyone no matter who they are or where they come from.

Barnabas showed that mission relief is not enough if the help is only for a select few.  Barnabas showed that being Christian means that you stand up for your neighbor and you stand alongside your neighbor until everyone is fully included in the expanse of God’s mercy and grace.  He showed that being Christian means that you strive for reconciliation and restoration, for healing and atonement in all things; otherwise, Christian community is found wanting.

So, from the marginalized character Barnabas we get two lessons: We learn that being Christian means that you love your neighbor, and that you work to include all marginalized people until we are all considered mutual neighbors, children of God belonging one unto the other.  Good lessons.

Barnabas is a voice on the margins who exemplifies what it means to be Christian.  So, let’s think about something: When our confirmands go through confirmation, one of the things they learn is that we Christians understand the Bible as written by human beings who were divinely inspired by God.  Looking at the history of our faith, if the people who were pushed to the fringes of society by patriarchy and nationalism gave us the sacred texts that we read in the Holy Bible today, and if we proclaim that those writings penned by the marginalized were divinely inspired by God, then what if we were to open up the pages of Scripture to additional writings now, in the 21^st century?  Who would keep writing it?  Who might God be speaking to and through most poignantly now?  Or, if God is still speaking, then to whom and through whom is God’s voice most candidly and powerfully evidenced today?  Where is our Modern Day Barnabas, our present day voices from the margins?

Would the authors of our Holy Scriptures come from the bottom fifty percent of Americans who collectively hold only 2.5 percent of our country’s wealth?  Their voices are certainly disregarded.  Perhaps the Scriptures would be written in the journals of American soldiers coming home from Afghanistan or Iraq with severe cases of PTSD.  Those women and men are frequently pushed to the fringes of normal society.  Or would God’s voice be recorded in the blogs and cyber chat rooms of LGBT youth who are bullied by their peers and often disowned by their parents?  Maybe God’s Word would be written in Spanish by undocumented immigrants, the ones dehumanized by the label ‘alien.’  Perhaps it would come from transgender people in our midst.  I would argue that we in our ONA churches of extravagant welcome have the most to learn from our transgender siblings in the faith.  As Yvette Flunder, the pastor of City of Refuge United Church of Christ in San Francisco, writes, “The trans community makes us tell the truth about the blurred lines that have always existed in our community.  Transgenders make us honest.”  To what voices from the margins are we called to listen for the still-speaking voice of God today?  How might the marginalized perspectives that exist today help us hear God’s voice anew that we read in the ancient texts of the Bible?  That’s what we’re getting at.

Well, my Turkish friend Fatih, and his wife, Sumeyye, are Muslim.  The last time I checked, Muslims were not exalted at the center of mainstream society in the Western World, and certainly not in College Station, Texas.  Fatih and I were talking about the tragic drought and food shortage in Somalia.  He remarked that there has been a recent surge in the relief effort to Somalia from Muslims, and he commented that perhaps this jump in charitable donations was because of the Holy month of Ramadan, where Muslims fast from sunup to sundown.  They do this, Fatih tells me, so that they can empathize with the plight of their neighbor and turn their attention to the needs of the poor and the hungry.  I thought, “Wow, what an eye-opening spiritual discipline?”  And I wondered what other disciplines and traditions and ideas Fatih might share with me to help illuminate the tenets of my own Christian faith.

Or how about a Jewish perspective.  Can’t find a lot of Jews visibly in Bryan-College Station.  But, praise God, my sister Rhoda Bertsch insists that every Christian church needs a little Jewish mothering.  Rhoda attended Theology on Tap the other night with us at Good Time Charley’s for our conversation about ‘atonement.’  And she said, “It’s too bad you’re not having this discussion a month or so later, because Yom Kippur has some really good implications for atonement.”  Yom Kippur is the holiday that calls upon Jews to intentionally seek forgiveness from their neighbor.  And I thought, “Wow, Rhoda!  That’s great!  What other ideas are out there to help me live out my Christian identity of standing alongside my neighbor and striving for atonement that leads to inclusiveness and wholeness?  What further insight from Judaism could teach me how to live and act like Barnabas and the Christians about 2,000 years before me?”

At Friends Congregational Church, we try to focus on the margins by offering an extravagant welcome to homeless families in our Family Promise ministry.  That ministry continues to change me.  One night at the beginning of the summer I was here visiting with a couple of our Family Promise guests while their children were playing games in the sanctuary.  And we got to talking about what would be our dream vacation.  One of the parents said, “Hawaii.”  Another said, “Cozumel.”  And at one point I mentioned a vacation that my family and I had taken to Santa Fe.  It was an all-expenses paid trip because I was doing a wedding for someone out there.  But I said, “I know it sounds nice, but we had the kids with us…the whole time.  Don’t get me wrong—I love my children.  But they were always right there!  They were right next to us in line, right next to us on the plane, right next to us in the rental car, and even in our hotel room there was no place to go for a few minutes of peace.  Made it hard to enjoy the trip as much as we might have.”  And then this single mother of four who drives a cab from sunup to sundown and then spends her evenings in a different room of a different church night after night with her kids always right there with her said to me, “I have to do that every day.  I think you need to change your perspective.”

The people who were marginalized to the fringes of ancient society wrote the Bible that we turn to for guidance and revelation concerning God’s will and way.  And the people of God pushed to the margins of our present day society give voice to those Scriptures in ways that our restless souls need like the Brazos Valley needs rain.  If we want to learn how to live out our faith with authenticity and passion and vision like Barnabas and those first Christians before us, if we want to love our neighbor and stand alongside our neighbor until everyone is made welcome—atoned one to another in the expanse of a community of love—then we need to follow Christ to the margins in search of the face of God.

So, I want to leave you us with this quote form Yvette Flunder, who’s the pastor of perhaps the most diverse church in America.  She was the keynote at our South Central Conference Annual meeting this past June.  She writes in her book, Where the Edge Gathers: Building a Community of Radical Inclusion: “An authentic ethic of inclusion must reach from the center to the farthest margin and work its way back.  When we reach for the ones who are the least accepted, we give a clear message of welcome to everyone.”

See, Barnabas and those first Christians may have been blessed by growth and success in their church at Antioch; but they didn’t strive first for growth and success.  They strived to be authentic to their faith.  They strived to follow Christ.  They strived to seek the face of God by reaching to the farthest margin and working their way back.  The inevitable result was the growth of a faith that we still practice today.

I thank God for this church and I thank God for each and every one of you; yet still my soul asks, “What is missing from this beloved community, and what blessings from God are still waiting out there for us to discover?”  For our summer on the margins and the unmistakable fellowship and joy of this family of faith, thanks be to God.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Partial Vision”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Luke 7:36-50; Mark 8:22-26

When I was in the 7^th grade, I had what was known as a boom box or a jam box.  A little portable stereo.  It wasn’t that big, but it was loud enough.  It was able to blare music from the back of the bus all the way to school and all the way home (much to the bus driver’s delight I’m sure).  Every time I got on the bus, I picked a tape—yes, a cassette tape—from the modest collection I’d acquired, and from that modest collection I’d provide my peers with the soundtrack of their bus rides.  If you rode my bus, you’d hear anything from Run DMC’s, “Raising Hell,” to Bon Jovi’s “Slippery When Wet,” to the Beastie Boys, “Licensed to Ill,” to the movie soundtrack for “Stand By Me.”  I got some mileage out of that trusty boom box.

It was small enough to fit in my locker, too, which is where I’d keep it during the school day.  But one afternoon I opened by locker to find that my boom box was missing.  I retraced my steps.  Maybe I left it on the bus.  Nope, I’d never do that.  Could it be that someone had actually figured out the combination to my locker and stolen my boom box?

Sure enough, a few days later a friend of mine reported that my boom box had been spotted.  Apparently another kid in our grade named Michael was walking around with a boom box that looked a lot like the one I’d lost.  He was even playing music on it from the back of his school bus.  My friend, the school bus spy, then told me, “That guy Michael painted your boom box to disguise it, but I’m telling you, Daniel, it’s yours.  He stole it.”

I didn’t know Michael at all—never had a class with him.  But all of a sudden I knew all I needed to know about him.  As far as I was concerned, Michael was a thief.  He was a guy who violated my space and took my stuff and thought he could get away with it.  I thought of Michael playing music on my boom box and reveling in all the attention he was getting from entertaining his peers, attention that I should have been getting—attention that he’d stolen from me.  Oh, I had Michael all figured out.  He was rotten to the core—cold, selfish and arrogant.  He had it coming, and he was going to pay for what he’d done to me.  So, I marched to the school office and reported to the secretary what was going on.  She told me they’d look into it, and I went back to class walking tall and feeling proud.

Later that day I got a note from the office.  I was called out of class.  The note didn’t say what it was about, and the adult who walked me to the office didn’t give me a hint either.  Now I was getting scared.  And it got worse.  When we got to the office, I was directed to the principal’s office.  My heart was racing when I walked to the door that read, “Robert Dyer, School Principal.”  When I opened the door I found Mr. Dyer sitting at his desk with a serious look on his face.  He motioned for me to sit down in one of the two chairs in front of his desk.  That was when I noticed who was sitting in the chair next to me: It was Michael.  He was hunkered in the chair like a frightened puppy.  He could barely look at me, and I was too afraid to look at him.  Seeing Michael sitting next to me, all of a sudden I felt like I’d done something wrong, that I was the culprit.

Mr. Dyer said, “Daniel, I have your boom box.  Can you describe it for me?”  I described it for him.  Mr. Dyer pulled the boom box out from behind his desk and handed it to me.  With the boom box now back in my possession, I felt a mixture of relief and shame.  Then, Mr. Dyer rubbed it in by telling Michael to apologize to me.  I had to look Michael in the eye, and he had to look me in the eye.  In that moment Michael and I saw the mutual feeling of shame oozing from our faces.  In that moment we saw how scared we were.  And then Michael said, “I’m sorry.”

I wish that I could give you some hallmark happy ending to this story.  I wish that I could tell you that Michael and I ended up being friends and that we keep up to this day.  That didn’t happen.  But I can tell you that in the principal’s office that day, I saw Michael.  I didn’t see the picture of him that I’d painted by my own design.  Those colors ran off the canvas and hid like the disciples at the crucifixion of Christ.  I thought I knew all there was to know about Michael, that I had him all figured out; but it turns out I was blind.  Looking him in the eye helped me to see.  He was ashamed just like I was.  He was scared just like I was.  He had an innocent heart just like I did, and he’d made mistakes just like I had.  Michael and I truly saw each other in a moment of intimacy and truth that some of my best friends and I would never share.  Why had I held this brother of mine at arm’s length?  Why had I thrown psychological stones at someone I didn’t even know?  Because of my partial vision—my partial vision that had made me blind.

Have you ever been accused of being blind?  Has anyone ever said to you, “You just don’t get it!  You can’t see!  You’re blind!”  It’s scary when that happens.  And if you think about it, we put a lot of effort into avoiding any and all situations where someone might say that to us: “You’re blind.”  We run from any possibility where we’ll be accused of being blind, because being accused of blindness means that our partial vision is called out—our hypocrisy is called out.  And that’s a scary thing.

Alice Walker writes, “When I am in the presence of other human beings I want to revel in their creative and intellectual fullness, their uninhibited social warmth…Everything I would like other people to be for me, I want to be for them.”  Partial vision hinders that.  Partial vision enables us to ignore the fullness of our neighbor, and to even dismiss the humanity of our neighbor.  That’s because partial vision only gives us a partial image, an abstract image, a blurred image of what our neighbor is supposed to look like: how our neighbor is supposed to act, the language our neighbor is supposed to speak, the clothes our neighbor is supposed to wear, the family our neighbor is supposed to be a part of, and so forth.  In other words, partial vision turns our neighbor into a stranger.  It allows us to justify helping the neighbors we like and ignoring the strangers we don’t like.  Partial vision allows for us to only love one another partially, conditionally, at arm’s length.

The same thing applies to how we view Jesus.  When Jesus heals the man at Bethsaida, the cure isn’t initially complete.  It isn’t instantaneous.  It’s gradual.  Jesus removes his hands from the man’s eyes, and he asks him, “What do you see?”  The man answers him, “Well, I can kind of see, but everyone looks like trees walking—abstract, blurred, partial.”  That’s when Jesus says, “Here, let me help you,” and he puts his hands on the man’s eyes again.  And then the man is given perfect sight.  He can truly see.

Where we stumble in our faith, is that after Jesus removes his hands from our eyes that first time we think that’s enough.  We think we know all we need to know to live a life of righteousness.  We think we’ve got it all figured out.  Jesus touches our eyes that first time and we say, “Wow!  I can see.  Things are a little blurry, but I can manage from here!  Thanks, Jesus!  This partial vision will do!  This partial vision is comfortable for me!  This partial vision is all I need!”

George Johnson is a Lutheran pastor in Laguna Woods, California.  He wrote an essay called, “Idols in the Church,” where he cited a story about a family reunion.  He writes, “At one of our family reunions my niece told me that she and her husband were looking for a church where the pastor believed the Bible.  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Have you found some pastors who don’t believe the Bible?’  She finally admitted that what she meant was that she wanted a pastor who interpreted the Bible the way she did.”  In other words, Johnson’s niece didn’t want a pastor to ever suggest to her that she might be blind.

Now, how can the Bible, the Word of God, be something that promotes partial vision?  How can the Bible blind us from the fullness of Christ and blind us from our neighbor?  Simple.  When we deify the Bible, when we elevate the Bible to Divine status, then we make the Bible an idol that will sooner obstruct our vision than it will open our eyes to the will and way of God.  George Johnson puts it like this: “The Bible is not God.  We may say that but live as though it is.  When it comes to what the Bible says about sexuality we become literalists, but when it comes to what the Bible says about money and greed we refer to the metaphorical use of literature by the authors.  Are we not all selective literalists?”  Or if I may translate the words of Rev. Johnson for this sermon, “Are we not all blind?  Do we not all have partial vision?”

Now, when the notion of God’s love for all people, including our gay and lesbian siblings in the faith, is scrutinized, that scrutiny says, “You can’t cite those passages in the Bible that affirm what you believe and ignore all the other ones.”  Sure.  But in that legalistic respect, we’re all guilty of being half-blind, selective literalists.  I’ve heard that finger-wagging scolding a million times: “You can’t pay attention to some parts of the Bible and ignore all the other ones.”  Yeah, but you can’t deify the whole Bible at the expense of the message of Christ.  You can’t make the Bible your god at the expense of the Gospel.  You can’t use the Bible to promote partial vision when the Bible testifies to a Savior who came to bring sight to the blind and to set the captives free.

An expert in the law asked Jesus a question to test him. ³⁶“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” ^37J Jesus said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ ³⁸This is the greatest and first commandment. ³⁹And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  ⁴⁰All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.”  Run the entire message of the Bible through that filter, run the entire Judeo-Christian account of Scripture through that filter, run the entire story of God and the Kings and Prophets and Jesus of Nazareth and the Apostles and the Church through that filter, and if anything remains that keeps me from seeing others fully as children of God, if anything is left that keeps me from seeing my neighbor fully as equally loved and as precious in God’s sight as I am, if anything is left that keeps me from seeing Christ Jesus fully as the one who unites and reconciles and restores and redeems all things to the glory of God, if anything is left of my partial vision, then I am blind.

This morning’s Scripture really resonates with me personally.  The notions of partial vision and spiritual blindness are gripping my heart like a parent grips a child’s hand when they’re walking across a busy street.  This is because just a few days ago I was accused of being blind.  Last Saturday I stood outside Reliant Stadium protesting the event being held inside: a prayer rally called “The Response.”  I stood in protest mainly because it was sponsored in part by a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled a hate group, and also because my Baptist background reminds me of why the separation of Church and State is so vitally important.  The media interviewed a few people at the protest, me being one of them, and a quote or two of mine made it into the evening news.  That prompted a few folks to send me emails.  One of the emails said, “You can’t pick and choose what is Truth. It is my prayer that Jesus Christ does reveal Himself to you and you turn from your wicked ways. We all fall short, but you are blind.”

Now, that was just an excerpt.  I’m not going to read that email in its entirety, because a lot of it speaks with the kind of fear and finger-pointing that many of us in this room have already endured.  Those words don’t need repeating in this place.  Many of us in this room have experienced that kind of accusatory language and sentiment so much that we have the scars to prove it.  And many of us have endured words like that so much that they drove us to the mountain top, and we looked over, and we have seen the Promised Land, and we have no intention of going back to that bondage from our past.

So, I just share the end of that email that says, “You are blind.”  Because maybe I am.  Maybe I am blind, because my temptation after reading that email was to argue.  My temptation was to find Scripture references and bits of theological insight to refute the antagonism of my accuser.  My temptation was to dismiss the email entirely because, I could easily treat the email sender the way I treated Michael when I heard that he’d stolen my boom box.  I could easily put the email sender in a box marked: delusional, hateful, crazy, blind.  But then what would that make me?

I read emails like that and I hear the voice of Christ breaking through all of the fear and frustration and anger that tempt our souls every day, that tempt us to hold one another at arm’s length, that tempt us to avoid one another with every fiber of our being, that tempt us to draw conclusions about each other and to rely on that partial vision to steer our faith; and the voice of Christ says, “Do you see one another?  Do you see the person who sent you that email?  Simon, do you see this woman?  Do you see your sister?  Do you see your brother?  Do you see your neighbor?  Because if you cannot get over yourself enough to see one another, then you cannot see me,” says our Christ.

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put the ways of childhood behind me.  For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.  Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”  In this time between the already and the not yet, may Christ lay his hands upon our eyes again and again and again until we can see one another as God sees us.  Heal us from our partial vision, Jesus, so that we can be agents of justice and mercy and love. Heal us from our partial vision so that God’s will would be done in this time between the already and the not yet.  Heal us from our partial vision so that God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“God’s Storytellers: Shaping a New Narrative from the Story of Jonah”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Psalm 145: 8-9, 14-21 and Jonah 1

We started unpacking the first chapter of Jonah in the Wednesday night worship service.  I asked the congregation to think of a group of people that they just couldn’t stand; a group of people that they flat-out despised.  I could tell from the winces and furrowed brows that it sounded weird and borderline offensive for this Christian minister to ask a congregation to do such a thing.  But we kind of have to do that if we’re going to try to understand Jonah and how he looked at the world.  That’s essential to understanding Jonah.

Something else that’s essential to understanding Jonah is that we acknowledge that it’s a story.  The Book of Jonah is a story; it’s a powerful parable that’s not meant to be taken literally.  Biblical commentators say that the author of Jonah would roll over in his grave if he heard that we were taking it literally.  Jonah is a story that’s meant to teach its readers valuable lessons about God, about justice, about selflessness, and about how we view our neighbor.  The lessons don’t stop there, but let’s focus this morning on that last lesson: how we view our neighbor.

Now, if Jonah is a story, then who does the character Jonah represent?  Jonah represents ancient Israel, and ancient Israel did not look favorably upon their neighbors.  God, Yahweh, had made Israel a great nation, and now God wanted to send a message to all nations about God’s forgiveness and about God’s desire for justice and equality and for accountability to one’s neighbor.  It was God’s call for everyone to return to that mutual harmony and purity that was created at the beginning of all things.  And now God wanted to use God’s chosen people, Israel, as a beacon for that cause.  Israel was supposed to be a kind of moral compass for the world.

Trouble was that Israel was so busy relishing in their elite nationalism that they didn’t have room for God anymore; at least they didn’t have any room for what God wanted them to do and who God wanted them to be.  And if we don’t have room for God’s intentions for our lives, then we don’t have room for God in our lives.  So, for ancient Israel’s sake and for our sake, the story of Jonah was written.

Jonah is called by God to go to Nineveh to deliver a message about God’s forgiveness, but Jonah doesn’t want to do it.  Now, our years of Vacation Bible School and Sunday School lessons and songs about Jonah and the Whale tell us that Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh because he thought those Ninevites were bad people.  But what’s behind that story is that Israel during that time viewed Nineveh with racial hatred.  Nineveh was the capitol of Assyria, and Assyria was responsible for the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the past.  The Israelites of that time were scattered geographically because of it.  So, the Israelites, now in a position of power, hated Nineveh racially.  That’s the potency of the story of Jonah for the ancient Israelites who heard it.  The story was telling them that they needed to reevaluate how they viewed their neighbor before they went boasting their favor with God.  They needed to search out their hearts for any obstacles that would keep them from loving their neighbor, because those are the same obstacles that keep us from a relationship with God.

So, how does this story speak to us?  What does Jonah mean for us?  What lesson does Jonah’s apprehension about going to Nineveh teach us?  Well, first we’ve got to ask, “Who do we hate?”  Who are people who strike fear in our hearts?  Who are people that we don’t want to be around, people we’d run to the farthest part of the world to avoid, like Jonah did?  Who are people that we view with racial hatred?

Especially since 9/11, by and large we look at Muslims that way.  It might make us cringe in this place to acknowledge it, but the fact is that it’s socially acceptable in our culture to hate Muslims, and it’s because of the common narrative—a common narrative that forgets about stories like Jonah and turns instead to the sensational stories of our world.

Most if not all of the stories we see and hear and read in the media about Muslims have a narrative of extremism and aggression and intolerance.  And talking heads out there exacerbate that stuff so much that their rants become our perspective.  And suddenly Muslims become our Nineveh.  Well, we need a new narrative.  Our country needs a new narrative.  Our world needs a new narrative, and that new narrative is that God loves all of us.  That new narrative is that our Creator God breathed all of us into being, we all hail from the Divine; and when we want to hate our neighbor because of their religion or their nationality or their race, we need to remember—when we want to hate our neighbor because they are different from us, when we want to hate our neighbor because of who they are—we need to remember that God doesn’t make junk.  That’s the new narrative.  That’s the new narrative that we can find in the story of Jonah: that we are all God’s children and that we belong to each other.

The story of Jonah tells us, “Who are we to say who God loves and who God doesn’t love?  Who are we to say who’s in and who’s out?  Who are we to say who’s forgiven and who’s not?”  And when it comes to God’s forgiveness, we human beings, we Jonahs tend to focus more on what we think people need to be forgiven for than the good news from Jesus Christ that God has forgiven us all.

I love how Sharon Bezner reads the story of Jonah.  Sharon is the Coordinator of Christian Programming at the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, which has more gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender members than any church in the country.  Their pastor is one of this church’s former pastors, too.

Anyway, Sharon Bezner depicts Jonah as a member of the Christian Coalition.  Like the ancient Israel that Jonah represents, Bezner asserts that the Christian Coalition view themselves as God’s chosen, God’s elect, the only ones favored by God.  And Bezner writes an interpretation that reads like this: “Now the word of God came to Jonah, elected leader of the Christian Coalition, saying, ‘Go at once to San Francisco, that great gay city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.”  Christian Coalition Jonah doesn’t want to go there!  In his mind, gay people are a threat to the traditional family, and they’re responsible for the increased occurrence of divorce in heterosexual marriages.  They are the enemy to the Christian Coalition.  Jonah doesn’t want to go over there and tell them that God has forgiven them, because if God has forgiven them, then who will Jonah hate?

But God is teaching Jonah a lesson just as much as God is teaching Nineveh a lesson, because God is telling Jonah, “I’m not forgiving them for what you think I’m forgiving them for.  You need to get over all of your misconceptions about what you think they need to be forgiven for, because it’s not about you.  And I know that you hate your neighbor, Jonah, but I forgive you.  I forgive you so that your neighbor can know that they are forgiven, too.”

Do you hear that new narrative?  Do you hear that new way that Jonah is called to look at Nineveh?  That new way that the religious right is called to look at gay and lesbian people?  That new way that Americans are called to look at Muslims?  That new way that Christians are called to look at their neighbor no matter who we are or where we come from?  I forgive you, says our God, so that the world would know that it is forgiven.  I redeem you, says our God, so that the world would know that it is being redeemed.  I love you, says our God, so that the world would know that God is love.

We need that new narrative in our lives.  We need stories like Jonah to teach us that new narrative.  And we need to share those overlooked present day stories that have the power to change the narrative of our apathy and hatred into God’s narrative of forgiveness and love.

So, I want to tell you a story that was shared with me by a fellow minister and also by a member of this church (A lot of you have already heard it I’m sure): In Egypt, two hours south of Cairo, there’s a tiny village named Sol.  After the downfall of Egypt’s dictator, Hosni Mubarak, Sol became the site of the first church burning.  Rumors played a big part in it: Apparently, a Christian man had been in a romantic relationship with a Muslim woman, and a domestic dispute broke out in the woman’s family over the whole deal.  Two people ended up being killed because of it, including her father.  So, after the funerals, a crowd of Muslims went looking for the Christian man.  They heard he’d sought refuge in a church.  Then word started going around that black magic was being performed on Muslims inside that church, so the crowd set the church on fire.  Typical, right?  That’s just like those Ninevites over there in messed up Nineveh.

But wait!  Then something unexpected happened.  A group of young Muslim and Christian leaders from Cairo swept into Sol to address the situation.  With tensions flaring and violence all around them, day after day, this group of Christians and Muslims locked arms to protect Muslims during prayers.  They did the same thing for Christians during Mass.  And wouldn’t you know it, the narrative started changing.  All of a sudden, everyone, including the Muslim Brotherhood, was saying, “Of course Egypt is for all Egyptians.  Of course there should be no discrimination.”  Within weeks, the military had rebuilt that four-story church that had burned to the ground, and the whole place was buzzing with excitement.  What a story!

Sisters and brothers, when it comes to the societal and political and religious divisions that cause us to look at others with the same disdain that Israel had for Nineveh, let’s remember that God is telling the life-changing story of Jonah again and again through our very lives.  God is telling the life-changing story of Jonah again and again through this church and how we carry ourselves as the body of Christ.

This world whose apathy and hatred is built on sensational, vitriolic narratives of self-fulfilling prophecy needs a new narrative; and God is still speaking.  Who will go for us and who shall I send, says the Lord.  Who will tell my stories and change the narrative of this world so that the kingdom of justice and mercy and love would be established on earth as it is in heaven, asks our God.  Will we pull a Jonah and run to the farthest place from the apathy and hatred of our world that we can find, or will we be God’s storytellers in the midst of it all?  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Welcome to the Doomsday Parade”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52 and Amos 2:4-7a, 12-16, 3:12

When I was in seminary, I took a course on the Theology of Amos, and the course was taught by an incredibly intelligent man—a dear sweet soul—named Roy Melugin: Stooge Meluge.  Dr. Melugin loved this Hebrew Bible, Old Testament prophecy stuff, and he loved talking about God’s justice (and you kind of have to be passionate about all that if you’re going to teach a room full of seminarians about it for nearly three hours once a week for an entire semester).

The basic theology that I took from Amos was that it was a prophecy of doom.  God’s threatening to destroy the people of Judah and Israel for all of their injustices.  So, hearing about this over and over again in that seminary classroom every week for an entire semester got to be a little humorous.  Plus, Dr. Melugin—the guy spouting off all this stuff—never stopped smiling and squinting through those bifocals that always looked like they were about to fall off his nose; so the whole thing seemed a little silly to me.  It sounded less like doom and more like a parade, which is why I wrote that song 11 years ago, “Doomsday Parade.”

Parades can be humorous.  Parades can be silly.  And what is a parade?  It’s basically a parody of reality.  They’re celebrations, but at their core, parades are dramatic magnifications of reality, parodies of reality.

In our community, we’ve got the bumper stickers parade.  Bumper stickers magnify our pride, our priorities, our achievements, and our activism, and they also parody our antagonism, our apathy, our cynicism, and our self-absorption.  It’s enough to make you roll your eyes and just laugh sometimes.  What a parade!

And all over the news we’ve got the budget talks parade.  Day after day, we hear things about debt ceilings and entitlement programs and job creators and tax cuts and tax increases and loopholes and loan defaults and corporations and big oil and tax holidays.  But nowhere in the parade do we see the poor.  Nowhere in the parade do we hear about children and youth and education.  That’s pretty telling.  What a parade!  And we’re all just marching along.  This is our curse.  This parade is our mutual, compliant curse, and we need to snap out of it; but first, let me give an example of another parade as a metaphor for what’s going on in the Book of Amos…

I did a wedding years ago, back before we all knew each other, at a place called The Vistas in Austin.  This wedding was particularly humorous and silly.  And it was because of the amount of drinking that was done before the wedding took place.  I’m all for the people imbibing at a wedding reception.  Let us recall that Jesus’ first miracle recorded in the pages of Scripture takes place at the wedding at Cana where he changes water to wine.  But this was a little much.

Picture this: It was an outdoor wedding, and before the people got to their seats, they stopped at this shaded area with round top tables and a wait staff taking drink orders.  So, before the ceremony even began, people were laughing it up with beer and wine.  The wedding was supposed to start at 6pm, and it was a few minutes after 6, and no one had taken their seats yet.  So I had to go up to the shaded area and remind the ushers that it was time to begin.  And that’s when the parade began.

The people, drinks in hand, all mosied down to the chairs where the wedding would take place.  And since they did this all at once, they looked like a herd of cattle coming to pasture.  Then came the seating of the parents.  The mother of the bride comes walking down the aisle with one hand holding the usher’s arm and the other hand holding a goblet of merlot, lipstick all around the rim; and because she’s so overwhelmed with emotion, tears are falling down her cheeks and ruining her makeup.  Then come the groomsmen, who’ve easily devoured half a keg between the six of them at this point, walking down the aisle and shouting at the groom like there’s nobody else around:

“Dude, this guy!”

“Rock on, brother!”

“I love you, dude!”

And the final touch was the couple sharing the kiss that I’ve mentioned before that looks like Axl Rose and Stephanie Seymour’s exchange in the “November Rain” video.  It was a big ol’ parade.  It seemed like more of a parody of a wedding and a parody of the couple’s relationship than anything else.

An old mentor of mine once told me, “Take the journey seriously, but stay loose in the saddle.”  I saw the bride not three months after that wedding and she told me that they’d gotten a divorce.  She said, “We were just having so much fun that we finally realized we were just friends having a good time and not so good at being married.”  They were staying so loose in the saddle that they didn’t take their relationship seriously, and their marriage suffered as a result of it.

It’s like what’s going on in Israel during the time of Amos.  The Israelites were staying so loose in the saddle that their worship of God had slipped; their reverence for Yahweh—the God who delivered them out of slavery and who carried them through the wilderness and who made them a great nation—had become a joke.  They were worshipping God as if God were a Baal, an ancient idol that they could craft into whatever meaning they chose.  In other words, the Israelites’ worship of God did not cause them to change as a result; instead they projected their own desires and their own proclivities onto God insisting that the idol of their worship change along with them and their preferences, not the other way around.

And that laughable worship and loss of humbleness made Israel lose their way.  Listen to this: Israel was waging war with other nations with reckless abandon, taking their attention away from their own people and placing their focus instead on warmongering with others.  Israel had become a prosperous nation, but that prosperity had come with gross perversions of justice between the rich and the poor.  Israel’s wealth was possessed by an elite few at the cost of impoverishment of the many.  The poor were even being pawned off into servitude, slavery that robbed them of their dignity and further silenced their voices.  Israel treated foreigners as if they were mere goods.  And Israel, God’s chosen people, knew better.

So, now the scene in Israel had become so pathetic that it was just silly, and God was going to see to it that all of Israel suffered as a result; everyone was going to suffer as a result.  It was a big ol’ doomsday parade.

Now, let me ask us this: followers of Christ, followers of the one who says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they are the children of God,” followers of the one who says, “When you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me,” followers of the one who says, “Love your neighbor,” followers of the one who says, “Love the Lord your God with all your mind, strength and soul,” followers of Christ who reside in the United States of America, how does our nation contrast with the Israel portrayed in the Book of Amos?

When it comes to Christianity in the Western World, the prosperity gospel rules.  If we’re successful in life, then we are blessed by God.  The more prosperous and wealthy we become, the more favorable we are in the eyes of God.  That’s the message we like and that’s the God we like to worship.  No change required on our part; no accountability to our neighbor, to the least of these, to the alien, to the poor.

And while the children and youth and educators of our nation’s schools slide slowly down the slope of petty bureaucracy, we are spending trillions of dollars fighting unwinnable wars.  We have the largest gap between the rich and the poor in our country than in any industrialized nation in the entire world.  Human trafficking, which escalates in American cities when big events come to town like the Super Bowl, is higher now than it ever has been in history.  Our friends gathered along Highway 21 waiting for day labor are constant reminders of how we treat foreigners like calculable goods.  And just like the Israelites before us, we have hindsight enough to know better.  The whole scene’s enough to make you laugh.  It’s just silly.

The point is: Welcome to the doomsday parade.  This is our curse, and we all are accountable to it.  But just like we often say that something is a curse and a blessing, there is some good news for us in this doomsday parade.

“Thus says the Lord: As the shepherd rescues from the mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear, so shall the people of Israel who live in Samaria be rescued, with the corner of a couch and part of a bed.”  There’s a sliver of hope.  And considering the broad-sweeping, graphic details of this impending doom, this sliver of hope appears to be about the size of a pinch of yeast or the size of a mustard seed.

Jesus says that’s all it takes for the kingdom of God to flourish.  Something that small is all it takes for justice to roll on like water, and righteousness like a never-failing stream.  You remember those words don’t you?  “Let justice roll on like water, and righteousness like a never-failing stream!”  You can find those words just a little later in the Book of Amos.  Those are a few words that one lone preacher named Martin Luther King Jr. said in a speech that ushered in a portion of the kingdom of God.

Just like MLK, Amos is just one man on the margins who delivers a prophecy.  Just like MLK, Amos speaks boldly so that the curse of injustice would be removed for all our sakes.  Because that’s what the kingdom of God looks like.  That’s what God’s justice looks like.  God’s justice is not about legalistic right and wrong.  God’s justice is not about rewarding the haves and punishing the have-nots.  God’s justice is about mutuality and inclusiveness and equality.  God’s justice is about us being humble to one another and accountable to one another.  God’s justice is about love that keeps no record of wrongdoings and that rejoices in the truth as spoken by those mustard seed-size prophets from Amos to MLK to the hidden poor in our midst to the courageous children and youth the world over.

I have a collection of essays called The Impossible Will Take a Little While.  (That could have just as easily been the sermon title for this morning.)  And Alice Walker has an essay in there that I feel carries on the prophecy of Amos in our 21^st century doomsday parade.  Her words remind us of the truth that while our actions and words that attempt to fight against the fear and indifference and despair of these times might appear as small as a mustard seed or as indistinguishable as yeast dashed into dough, our words and actions are not a drop in the bucket.  They are the very real beacons of hope that help us to slowly, one by one, veer off the path of the doomsday parade together until every human being is delivered safely out of the bondage of injustice and into the freedom of God’s justice.

The Prophetess Alice Walker writes this:

Whenever I experience evil, and it is not, unfortunately, uncommon to experience it in these times, my deepest feeling is disappointment.  I have learned to accept the fact that we risk disappointment, disillusionment, even despair, every time we act.  Every time we decide to believe the world can be better.  Every time we decide to trust others to be as noble as we think they are.  And that there might be years during which our grief is equal to, or even greater than, our hope.  The alternative, however, not to act, and therefore to miss experiencing other people at their best, reaching toward their fullness, has never appealed to me.  Only justice can stop a curse.

Followers of Christ, know this: to seek God is to seek justice, and to seek justice is to seek the fullness of every human being.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Salt and She-Bears: Maintaining the Integrity of the Gospel”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Isaiah 44:6-8 and 2 Kings 2:15-25

Staying true to our summer on the margins, today’s reading is not found in the Revised Common Lectionary.  2 Kings 2:15-25 tells the story of the Prophet Elisha.  I doubt many of us know a whole lot about Elisha.  So, before I read this Scripture, here’s some Elisha 101.  Some of his miracles:

• Elisha multiplies a poor widow’s jar of oil
• He brings a woman’s son back to life
• He multiplies 20 loaves of barley into a supply enough for 100 men
• He cures Naaman the Syrian of his leprosy
• When the army of Jehoram was faint from thirst, Elisha asks for rain to fall from the sky to help them out.
• And Elisha was still performing miracles even after he was dead.  He died and was laid in his grave, and a year later another dead body was placed right next to Elisha.  When the corpse came in contact with Elisha’s remains, the man was “revived, and stood up on his feet” (2 Kings 13:20-21).

There’s a lot more to Elisha.  You can read all about him in the Book of 2 Kings.  Read it this afternoon.  Fascinating stuff.

But I also need to give you the context of this story.  Basically, 2 Kings 2:15-25 is an account of what Elisha does after he becomes God’s prophet.  It takes place right after Elijah the Prophet has been carried into heaven by a whirlwind with Elisha watching on helplessly.  For my Star Wars dorks, it’s like when Luke Skywalker is at Yoda’s bedside and he watches him vanish into thin air from natural causes at the ripe young age of 900.  And like Luke carries on role of the Jedi, Elisha carries on the role of God’s holy man: Elisha the Prophet.

I’m excited to preach on this text because I never have, and because I doubt many preachers ever touch this Scripture.  I doubt many churches ever read these verses publicly in the sphere of worship, and you’re about to hear why…

2 Kings 2:15-25: When the company of prophets who were at Jericho saw him at a distance, they declared, “The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha.” They came to meet him and bowed to the ground before him. ¹⁶They said to him, “See now, we have fifty strong men among your servants; please let them go and seek your master; it may be that the spirit of the Lord has caught him up and thrown him down on some mountain or into some valley.” He responded, “No, do not send them.” ¹⁷But when they urged him until he was ashamed, he said, “Send them.” So they sent fifty men who searched for three days but did not find him. ¹⁸When they came back to him (he had remained at Jericho), he said to them, “Did I not say to you, Do not go?”

¹⁹Now the people of the city said to Elisha, “The location of this city is good, as my lord sees; but the water is bad, and the land is unfruitful.” ²⁰He said, “Bring me a new bowl, and put salt in it.” So they brought it to him. ²¹Then he went to the spring of water and threw the salt into it, and said, “Thus says the Lord, I have made this water wholesome; from now on neither death nor miscarriage shall come from it.” ²²So the water has been wholesome to this day, according to the word that Elisha spoke. ²³He went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead!” ²⁴When he turned around and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two she-bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys. ²⁵From there he went on to Mount Carmel, and then returned to Samaria.

There were some stressful times during my days as a youth minister when those verses from 2 Kings brought me comfort.  Sadistic comfort, but comfort nonetheless.  It’s a tough story to hear, isn’t it?  When I told my friend Walter that I’d be preaching on this passage, he said, “Oh, I can’t stand that story!  It’s awful!”  Yeah, it is.  So, what’s it doing in the pages of our Holy Writ?  How do you make sense of it: she-bears tearing teenagers to pieces in the pages of Scripture?  It sounds more like a Harry Potter book.  Do you hear that, Harry Potter geeks?  The Bible is cool.

So, to get to the bottom of this, the sermon this morning is titled, “Salt and She-Bears: Maintaining the Integrity of the Gospel.”  First, let’s talk about the she-bears.  What’s with the she-bears?  How do you make sense of that whole mess?  Well, maybe those youth shouldn’t have been messing with Elisha, calling him a “baldhead.”

In biblical times, baldness was seen as a disgrace; not like it’s seen now.  Now baldness is, of course, seen as more of a sign of prosperity and having received the Lord’s favor.  Amen?  But back then those teenagers were certainly being arrogant calling an adult ‘baldhead.’

When I consulted a biblical commentary from the late 20^th century for some answers, all it talked about was immorality and the irreverence of youth.  Basically the commentary said that if teenagers are going to act like hellions, then they deserve what they get (in this case being ripped apart by she-bears).  And Elisha—the holy man of God—Elisha is given a pass because technically he didn’t summon the she-bears.  He just called down a curse on the teenagers.

Really?  That’s the explanation?  And we wonder why so many people out there think the church is full of it.  We need to be a little bit more honest about this, and that might be a scary thing for us to do.  We church types have a long tradition of hesitating to own up to our own hypocrisy because we don’t want to make God look bad.  But Thomas Long snaps us out of that hesitation with these words.  He writes, “The simple fact that the church always has its share of hypocrites does not make the gospel hypocritical, nor does it destroy the integrity of God.”

Yes, Elisha was God’s prophet.  Yes, Elisha was a holy man.  But Elisha was also very human.  And all of us human folk from time to time tend to be hypocritical.

Now, given Elisha’s unavoidable humanity, let’s take a closer look at him.  Let’s deconstruct this text a bit.  How do we perceive Elisha?  Is he a so iconic that he can do no wrong, so holy that all of his actions are perfect?  Certainly not.  Go back to where the people of Jericho see Elisha and they say, “Hey!  Look!  It’s Elisha, God’s new prophet!  But, Elisha, where’s Elijah?  Where’d he go?”  And Elisha knows that Elijah was carried up to heaven in a whirlwind, so he says, “Don’t bother looking for him.  He’s gone.”  But the people persist, saying, “Well, maybe the Lord carried him off somewhere and he’s okay.  We just need to find him.”  And Elisha feels ashamed, so he says, “Okay, you can go look for him.”  The people look for Elijah for three days, and when they come back empty-handed, Elisha, like a drunk who’s changed his mood from the night before, says, “See, I told you not to go looking for him!”  What’s that all about Elisha?  Why so moody?  Why so vindictive?  Why so ambivalent, holy man of God?  And why so harsh with those 42 youth?

Elisha is a well-intentioned prophet, but he’s a judgmental guy with a temper.  He’s human.  Can’t we all relate to Elisha?  Don’t’ we all share his outlook from time to time?  “God, I want to do your will, but I’ve got problems of my own to deal with today.  God, I want to help the poor, but they annoy me—they look weird, they talk weird, they smell weird, they sound weird, and they make me feel weird when I get too close to them.  God, I want to love my neighbor, but how can I be kind to my Hispanic neighbors in this community if they can’t speak English.  If they’d learn English I could do right by them in Your name, Lord.  God, I want to advocate for children and youth, because I know that’s what Your son, Jesus the Christ, teaches us to do, but I don’t get young people these days.  They’re disrespectful and they don’t seem to care about anything at all, so how am I supposed to help them if they aren’t willing to help themselves?”

If that is my outlook, my lens through which I understand this story about Elisha and the she-bears and the 42 youth, then I’ll give Elisha a pass every time: “Too bad for those teenagers, but they should have known better.  Elisha’s an important guy and they shouldn’t have been messing with him.”  But when I give Elisha a pass like that, then I’m giving myself a pass, too.  When I don’t hold Elisha accountable in this story, then I’m also not holding myself accountable.  And when I do that, then I’m compromising the integrity of the gospel.

Let me give an example: Let’s deconstruct this story in light of a recent study released last week.  According to a USA Today analysis of data from 43 states, nearly all U.S. counties stricken with both high rates of HIV infection and poverty are in southern states.  Harold Henderson, who’s an HIV expert at the University of Mississippi, says that Southern states suffer from a host of health issues, including HIV, for reasons that extend from poverty to a lack of education and fragile families, and he adds that many children in the South lack sufficient sex education.  The study also revealed that counties with the highest rates of HIV-infected people had, on average, one in seven people living in poverty, earning roughly $22,350 for a family of four.  And in Mississippi, blacks account for 37 percent of the population but for 76 percent of new cases of HIV.

Can we see the she-bears: poverty, lack of education, insufficient sex education, the spread of HIV?  Can we see who the she-bears are tearing to pieces: the poor, residents of southern counties living below the poverty line, African Americans, youth?  When we deconstruct this ancient text from 2 Kings like this, when we stand by the notion that God is still speaking, and when we search for the integrity of the Gospel, the question for us becomes, “What does Elisha think?  Does Elisha notice?  Does Elisha care?  What is God’s prophet supposed to do?”  Because asking those questions becomes an exercise in self-examination.  And like the sermon mentioned two weeks ago, we are called to change God’s world one act of love at a time, and often that change starts with me; it starts with me asking God to change my perspective, my outlook, my tendency to judge my neighbor and give myself a pass from having anything to do with them; it starts with me asking God to break me, mold me, fill me, use me.  “Thy kingdom come…thy will be done…not mine, Lord.”  That takes some courageous honesty for us human folk.

Now, hold that thought and let’s talk about the other part of the story, where Elisha heals the water of Jericho with salt.  The water in Jericho is ten times worse than the high-sodium water of Bryan-College Station.  Nothing can grow there.  So, Elisha takes a bowl of salt, throws the salt in the spring, and the water is healed.  The Scripture says, “And the water has remained wholesome to this day.”  All from a little salt.

That’s what the Gospel is like: a little salt.  And that’s what the Gospel does: it heals, it changes things.  The Gospel is the message of Jesus Christ, and the Gospel has the power to set us free from everything that weighs us down and that keeps us from loving one another: our misconceptions, our prejudices, our antagonism, our judgments of each other, and the hardness of our hearts—the Gospel shatters that shell of who the world has molded us to be and restores us to our true selves as made in the image of God.

Just a little salt.  That’s all it took for Elisha to heal the waters of Jericho.  And just a little salt is all it takes to change God’s world one act of love at a time.

Elisha carried the prophecy of God on his shoulders, and we carry the message of the Gospel on our shoulders.  So our task is to maintain the Gospel’s integrity.  But if Elisha compromised the integrity of God’s justice and mercy and love with his human frailty, summoning she-bears in a moment of anger, how can we expect to be any different?  How can we expect to be any less hypocritical?  How can we hope to maintain the integrity of the Gospel if we are so very human, so very imperfect?  Simple: We maintain the Gospel’s integrity by relying on God’s grace and by being honest about who we are, honest about our beautifully flawed humanity.  There’s a lot of integrity in that.  Just ask Betty Ford.  And the world could sure use some honesty right now, especially from the church.

As statistics show young people in particular continuing to drift from the church, and as the world grows more disheartened by extremism and fanaticism, the world needs to hear the church say, the world needs to hear us be honest and say, “You know what?  We don’t have all the answers and we aren’t any better than people who sleep in on Sunday mornings.  We don’t know exactly what God likes and what God doesn’t like.  We don’t know what the best method of prayer is.  We don’t know what heaven is like.  We don’t have the perfect precepts on morality.  We don’t have it all figured out.  And, this just in, we don’t know when the rapture’s going to happen.”

But the world needs more than our apologetics. The world needs more honesty than that.  The Gospel has more integrity and power than that.  The world needs to hear the church’s honest voice lifting the veil of fear so that sight would be restored to the blind and release would be granted to the captives.  The world needs to hear the church speak up and speak out with honesty.

When people are scolded and shunned and scoffed at and treated with disdain because of their nationality or the color of their skin or the questionable nature of their U.S. citizenship, the world needs to hear from the church.

When political figures turn human beings into abstract issues by ranting against gays and lesbians and the alleged agenda of LGBT people, the world needs to hear from the church.

The world needs more honesty from the church, more of an acknowledgment of the God-given flaws of humanity that bind us and less of the false notion that we are somehow better than the rest of the world; because, to put it very simply, for far too long the church has been summoning she-bears when we should be dashing a little salt.  Amen?

We’ve been dealing out judgments when we should be exercising humility.  We’ve been drawing lines in the sand when we should be embracing our neighbor.  We’ve been putting up barriers between us and the world when we should be offering as many cold cups of water to God’s little ones as we can carry.  We’ve been giving Elisha a pass and giving ourselves a pass from doing this labor of love called God’s will when we should be ushering in some accountability and letting the Holy Spirit break us, mold us, fill us, and use us.  We’ve been compromising the Gospel when we should be maintaining its integrity.  Too many she-bears and not enough salt.

So, let me leave you with this.  When it comes to our God-given human nature, Fred Craddock writes: “There’s a tension between the compulsion to purge imperfection and the obligation to accept, forgive, and restore…the task of judging between good an evil belongs not to us but to Christ.”  May the grace of God continue to move us toward self-examination, humility and honesty in all things, honesty about our gifts and limitations, honesty about our doubts and our faith, honesty about how much God loves us; for as Jesus proclaims to us in the Sermon on the Mount, “You are salt of the earth.”  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Understanding Obadiah: Changing God’s World One Act of Love at a Time”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Matthew 11:16-19; 25-30 and Obadiah

Can you see why Obadiah isn’t in the Revised Common Lectionary?  It’s a pretty graphic account of God’s retribution.  It’s no fun.  And who wants to hear about God being angry on a Sunday morning?  Where’s the happy, hopeful message in another one of those accounts of God bringing a nation to its knees because they didn’t do what God said to do?  Well, let’s find out.

In this story, Edom is the nation that gets burned.  The Edomites watch their neighbors in Israel suffer, and they do nothing about it.  Edom sits idly by while Jerusalem is attacked and plundered; and what’s worse, they even rejoice in Jerusalem’s suffering and they take advantage of their neighbor’s plight.  If Edom were a character in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, they would be someone who sees the man beaten and left for dead on the Road to Jericho, and instead of helping him, they would check to see if he had any valuables left on him.  You could say that Edom had it coming.  And as the text says, God brought them down.  But what exactly is it that Edom did to merit God’s retribution?  What is the lesson to be learned from this harsh account from Obadiah?

It’s easy and common to interpret this through a lens of territorialism and tribalism; saying that anybody that doesn’t proclaim God as Lord has it coming.  Jerusalem loves God, and Edom does not, so anything bad that happens to Edom is justified, and it’s okay for God to destroy any other nation, too, if they don’t proclaim God as Lord.  That’s one way to look at it.  One of the commentaries I read about Obadiah was by an Old Testament professor named Thomas Finley, and he puts it like this: “Whatever Obadiah says about Edom applies equally to any nation that sets itself against the Lord and His people.”

Okay.  It’s easy and common to see the story that way when we see ourselves as a nation of God’s people, a nation of God’s elect.  In fact, it’s easy to interpret anything in the Bible as being directed against other people when I, the reader, am the one who holds the power of God’s protection and favor.  That’s how we so often read texts like this one from Obadiah, because we associate ourselves with Jerusalem.  We are God’s people and those other poor souls are not.

It’s easy and it’s common to get that lesson from this story when we think in terms of territory and tribe.  For example, look at the drug wars in Mexico: the gangland murders, the kidnappings, the new discoveries of mass graves.  Corruption is spreading in Mexico like Texas wildfires in the summertime.  The drug wars took the lives of 3,200 people in Juarez last year; that’s a murder rate of more than 200 per 100,000 residents, and it makes Juarez the most dangerous city in the world.  Surely, like Edom before them, Mexico’s got it coming.  Surely, such behavior doesn’t merit the favor of God.  Look at what those wretches are doing to themselves!

But hold on a minute: According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Americans consume $65 billion dollars worth of illegal drugs annually; that’s roughly what we spend on higher education, and most of those drugs are either produced in Mexico or transit through it.  Are we so blind?

Before we are quick to interpret Obadiah from the vantage point of territory and tribe, before we are so quick to judge our global neighbors for their shortcomings and thereby justify any bad things that might happen to them on that basis, before we understand Obadiah like that, we might do well to listen to Jesus when he tells us, “Before you go pointing out the speck in your neighbor’s eye, you might want to get that log out of your own.”

Hold on a minute: The message from Obadiah is not about the good guys winning and the bad guys losing (us always being associated with the good guys of course).  It’s about what happens when Edom dissociates itself from the miseries of their kinfolk in Israel.  It’s a message about what happens when the Edomites wash their hands free of their neighbors, like Pilate washed his hands clean of any accountability for Jesus’ death when the people called for him to be crucified.  It’s a message about God’s retribution happening when human beings watch evil and injustice transpire and then do nothing about it.  It’s a message about God’s retribution happening when human beings see the plight of their neighbors and then take advantage of that plight for their own gain.  And that accountability applies to all of us, every nation.  It’s reminiscent of Jesus’ metaphor of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 when he says to his disciples, “When you did not help the least of these in their time of need, you did it to me.”  And suddenly our eyes are opened.

I’m sure many of you know the name Walter Rauschenbusch.  He played a key role in culminating the social gospel movement that evolved into what we understand as social justice.  Here’s the context: When Rauschenbusch was a young man (this was during the late nineteenth century), the mainline Protestant churches were largely allied with the social and political establishment.  So, in effect, churches during that time were passively supporting domination by robber barons and income disparity and the use of child labor.  The church leaders those days didn’t see a connection between those issues and their ministries, so they didn’t do anything about it.  But Rauschenbusch saw the connection.  He recognized where his love of Jesus met those issues, so his faith became the catalyst for his efforts at improving social conditions.

Now, Rauschenbusch also taught at Rochester Theological Seminary.  It was one of those upstanding places of higher learning; the place where every young seminarian wanted to be.  It was during that time that the first-ever proposed Child Labor Law was defeated in the New York State legislature.  (Interesting to think about how far New York has come on social issues when you contrast that with last weekend’s decision about gender equality in marriage.)  Well, Rauschenbusch had worked really hard to get that Child Labor Law passed, so he was crushed.  The next morning when his class at Rochester Theological Seminary was arriving, the students found their teacher with his head bowed over the morning newspaper that was spread on his desk.  Rauschenbusch slowly raised his head to address his students, and with tears streaming down his cheeks and his voice choking up, he said, “There will be no class this morning.  You are dismissed.”  That was a more potent, unforgettable lesson about church and ministry than those seminarians would ever get from absorbing lectures in a classroom.

I think Rauschenbusch understood the message of Obadiah.  Rauschenbusch understood that when injustice is happening out there, injustice that affects the human family to which we all belong, then you can’t just carry on with business as usual.  Rauschenbusch understood God’s demand that we not limit our days to educating ourselves about what is right when there are people being robbed of their humanity due in large part to pride and indifference—pride and indifference that look a lot like the apathy of Edom.  As Martin Luther King, Jr. says, “We shall have to repent in this generation, not so much for the evil deeds of the wicked people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

But above all, I think Rauschenbusch understood the gift of wisdom that God grants to those with open minds and servant’s hearts, to those with ears to hear, as Jesus says.  Because here’s another verse I came across when I was studying Obadiah.  Listen to this, Proverbs 16:19: “Better to be lowly in spirit and among the oppressed than to share plunder with the proud.”

So, here’s what I want to leave us with this morning: Hold Obadiah up to that part of our church’s mission statement that says, “It is the mission of Friends Congregational Church to change God’s world one act of love at a time.”  It’s tempting to hear that in terms of changing other people, changing other places, changing other cultures, to match our definition of what is right and good and in God’s favor.  It’s easy and common to hear that mission statement—“change God’s world one act of love at a time”—as my marching orders to change some poor wretch out there as part of my Christian duty, to change a lowly Edomite because my morally upright Jerusalem conscience says so.  But that’s not what Obadiah’s all about.  That’s not what Jesus’ “sheep and goats” lesson is all about.  That’s not what Walter Rauschenbusch’s concept of social justice is all about.  “Better to be lowly in spirit and among the oppressed than to share plunder with the proud.”

When it comes to changing God’s world one act of love at a time, maybe the change needs to begin with me and how I understand of Obadiah.  Because if you think about it, how I understand Obadiah determines a lot about how I understand the world, how I understand war, how I understand humanity, how I understand Christianity, how I understand the church, and how I understand my neighbor.

Speaking of Juarez, in 1997 I spent a week there on a mission trip.  It was the middle of July.  Hot.  We were providing a Vacation Bible School in a neighborhood of cardboard houses and incomplete, roofless houses.  Our church vans would pull up every morning and we’d be greeted by a sea of kids running towards us in a big cloud of dust their little feet would kick up from the dry ground.

There was one boy there named Martín.  He was about six or seven years old.  Martín was disruptive and rambunctious.  While all the other kids were listening intently to the Bible story or working on an art project, Martín was fidgeting or yelling something out loud.  My first understanding of Martín was that he was annoying and irritating.  I thought Martín was so ridiculous that my dark side understood him as a class clown or a court jester.  I just rolled my eyes at this clueless, poor little boy.  “That Martín just doesn’t get it.”

But every morning, I was there and Martín was there.  And every morning I learned things about him that I didn’t notice the day before.  I learned that Martín only owned two sets of clothes, and that he would wear one shirt and pants for two days before changing into the other ones.  I learned that Martín had no father to speak of, and that he lived somewhere in that broken neighborhood.  I learned that Martín most likely had ADD and maybe even ADHD given his behavior in a group setting.  I learned that Martín was disruptive and rambunctious in part because that’s all he knew, and in part because he, like me and like all of us, just wanted to be loved.

So, at the end of our last day of VBS, we were serving Kool-Aid to the kids.  They formed a line in front of a cooler full of that ice-cold purple liquid with paper cups in hand.  Martín was at the front of the line and got his Kool-Aid first.  But before everyone had been served, Martín was back in line for Kool-Aid again.  I saw one of the adults ask Martín to stick out his tongue.  It was purple, so the adult said, “Sorry.  You need to get out of line and wait for everyone else to be served first.”  Martín threw an absolute fit.  All week long, I’d never seen him like this.  He was yelling with his high-pitched screech, flailing his arms around in protest, and, hold on a minute, he was crying.

I didn’t know what to do.  I hadn’t signed up for this.  The kids were supposed to do things as we had planned and act the way we expected.  What was I supposed to do with this kid?  But my heart went out to him.  I found Martín wailing and yelling against a fence with his paper cup in his hand.  So, I just sat down next to him, I put my arm around him, and I said the only thing that made any sense: “Te amo,” which means ‘I love you.’  Over and over again I said it softly into Martin’s ear: “Te amo.  Te amo.  Te amo.”  And I kept my arm around him and held him close until he calmed down.  In that moment, I may have comforted Martín, but Martín changed me.  All week long Martín changed me.

I think that’s essential to changing God’s world one act of love at a time, one purview at a time, one perspective and one understanding at a time.  Because when I am changed, then I can read stories like Obadiah and Ruth and Joshua and hear God still speaking, not in terms of territory and tribe, but in terms of righteousness and justice and inclusiveness.  For God has shown you, O people, what is good.  And what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.  So, let’s change God’s world one act of love at a time starting with us.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Everybody Dance”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Matthew 10:40-42; Ruth 2

The message today might be more appropriate to next Sunday for 4^th of July weekend, because it has to do with independence, at least initially it does.  I share this with you based on a couple of resources.  I reflected on Ruth by reading a book by Joan Chittister called The Story of Ruth: Twelve Moments in Every Woman’s Life, and by reading a book by Rob Sheffield called Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time.  Joan Chittister is a Benedictine nun, author and speaker who contributes a web column called “From Where I Stand” to the National Catholic Reporter.  Rob Sheffield is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine.

So, first I want to share what Sheffield’s experience offers us when he meets Ruth.  Sheffield’s whole life is about music.  And he sums up his love of music through his appreciation of mix tapes.  Audio tapes may have gone the way of the Dodo in the mid-nineties, but people still make song mixes on CDs and iPod playlists, and a lot of people still call those mixes “mix tapes,” no matter what the medium.

Sheffield says that there are mix tapes for pretty much anything.  There’s a mix tape for road trips.  There’s a mix tape for letting someone know you like them.  There’s a mix tape for letting someone know you’re breaking up with them.  There’s a mix tape for expressing how much you hate your job.  There’s a mix tape for packing up and moving.  There’s the commute tape, the dishes tape, the shower tape, and the list goes on.  According to Sheffield this is important because, “Every mix tape tells a story.”  He writes, “Put them together and they add up to the story of life.”

But before they can add up to create the story of life, the songs on those mix tapes gain their independence.  Sheffield explains that independence like this.  He says, “I’d rather hear the Beatles’ ‘Getting Better’ on a mix tape than on Sergeant Pepper any day.  I’d rather hear a Frank Sinatra song between Run DMC and Bananarama than between two other Frank Sinatra songs; because when you stick a song on a mix tape you set it free.”  Put a song on a mix tape and it gains its independence.

Now, he learned this life lesson about a song’s independence the hard way.  When Sheffield was 13 years old he was put in charge of making the mix tapes for the school dance.  Being a music lover, he took his task seriously.  He asked his fellow students for their favorite songs, and he even borrowed records from his peers so he could record songs off of those records before he gave them back.  But being a 13-year-old boy, Sheffield was mostly into what 13-year-old boys were into musically: rock anthems from bands like Foreigner and the Knack and Supertramp.  So that’s what Sheffield went looking for in putting together his mix tapes for the school dance.

His efforts resulted in the worst school dance ever.  Most of the music was fist-pumping rock, so the boys dominated the dance floor, jumping up and down, chanting the words to the songs, and not caring if their shirts came un-tucked.   The girls only got up to dance a couple of times when Sheffield’s mix tapes condescended to play the song “Pop Musik,” by M and ironically the disco tune, “It’s Raining Men.”  Eventually what happened was that even though the rock music kept pumping, the guys eventually got bored and quit dancing, too, because the girls weren’t dancing.  The girls weren’t dancing, so no one was dancing.  The girls weren’t happy, so no one was happy.  It was the worst school dance ever.  And it was all because those songs that would have gotten the girls on the dance floor were held captive to Sheffield’s boyish perspective.  The songs that the girls loved didn’t make it onto the mix tape, so they didn’t gain their independence; they weren’t set free.  And what happened was that the boys dominated the dance, the girls sat on the sidelines, and no one had a good time.

Funny what happens to the rest of the songs on the mix tape when one song is left out and doesn’t gain its independence, too.

This is where Ruth comes in.  Ruth has a lot to teach us about independence.  Whether we’re a girl or a boy, woman or a man, old or young, straight or gay, Ruth has a lot to teach us about independence and just how important independence is for every human being—independence gained for the sake of all.

Ruth is a woman in a patriarchal society.  She has no husband and no father.  The only person she has on her side is a widow, Naomi, and Ruth is all that Naomi has.  What’s more, Ruth is a foreigner.  She’s from Moab, where they worship the tribal god Chemosh; and now she’s in Bethlehem where they worship the God of Israel, Yahweh.  And she’s unemployed.

Joan Chittister remarks that Ruth has no security and everything to fear: racial slurs, ostracism, the advances of the men in the field.  Back in Moab her life was spent baking bread, washing clothes, cleaning vegetables, and being a housebound wife.  Her identity has been defined by a hyper-masculine society.  Any sense of self she had was found in her husband.  But now she’s stepping out of all of that to go to work.  She’s leaving what little home she has left with her mother-in-law, Naomi, to go to work in the fields by herself.  She’s not even going to work where everyone else works, where all the native men work; she’s gleaning behind them the text says.  She’s going to earn her living by picking up the scraps that the harvesters leave behind, scraps that are left for the poor.

It may look like a despicable living, but, by God, Ruth’s determined.  She works harder than those other harvesters.  She works longer hours than those other harvesters.  She takes life into her own hands despite the odds and gains a blessed independence.  She gains a sense of self—self-esteem, self-control, self-development, self-worth, self-awareness—that is not rooted in the person that society has dictated her to be, a self that is not rooted in whatever music they’re playing for a select group of tastes at the school dance, a self that is not rooted in some fabled lot in life, but rooted in God.  Ruth gains her God-self.

And Boaz takes notice.  This pillar of the community reveres Ruth, advocates for her, defends her.  He changes the entire sociological landscape because of her, changes whatever music it is that those men in the fields are dancing to so that Ruth can hit the dance floor, too.

And when Ruth asks him, “Why have you taken such favor in your eyes that you notice me—a foreigner?” Boaz responds, “I’ve been told about all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, and how you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before. ¹²May the Lord reward you for your deeds, and may you have a full reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge!”

In other words, Boaz says, “When I looked at you I didn’t notice a foreigner or whatever abstract label society might have for you.  I noticed an amazing person, and I noticed God shining through who you are.”

Ruth is holy.  Ruth is holy.  Ruth’s lesson in gaining her independence is a lesson for all of us, because when Ruth gains her independence, things start to change.

She is holy.  When she gains her independence she is blessed with holiness, holiness for all our sakes.  Think about it like this.  God so loved the world that God sent a Son, Jesus the Christ, into the world so that the whole world would be saved.  Praise and thanks be to God.  And Ruth goes into those strange fields against all odds for the sake of the whole world, too.

Listen to Joan Chittister commenting on the implications of Ruth’s independence: “Until a person is independent, real community is impossible.  Where half the human race is not enabled to be fully contributing members of the human community, only conformity is possible.  Independence gives a person a right to opt into the creation of community, not the responsibility to be used by the community for its own ends only.  Independence, ironically, is the only true voucher we have to true interdependence.”  Have we gained our independence like Ruth before us, or are we just abstract pawns in the game of life being used by the powers that be for their ends only?

Just like when all those mix tapes with all those beautifully independent songs are strung together to form the story of life, our independence makes interdependence possible.  Only when we find our independence, our God-self, is interdependence possible, and interdependence is essential to the kingdom of God.

Martin Luther King, Jr. says, “A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  I love that quote.  But to establish justice everywhere means that we work for the independence of every human being, every human being’s right to opt into the creation of community, even if we have to sacrifice our role in society to do it.  Otherwise we’re just being pious.

Joan Chittister says, “The pious participate in rituals designed to protect them from the world.  The holy go beyond the rituals to wrestle with the angels of life.”  Ruth is holy.  Ruth is independent.  Ruth is a character created by the Spirit of God to be our role model.

But if we can’t be as courageous as Ruth, then by one act of love at a time, maybe we can be as humble as Boaz.  Maybe, one act of love at a time, we can notice the God-self of every human being so that slowly but surely the sociological landscape would change around us, the music would change around us, and everybody would dance.

Putting those mix tapes together for the school dance put Rob Sheffield in a position of power and privilege, at least in the eyes of his peers.  You could say that he was the Boaz of the school dance.  His position caused a girl named Heidi from his algebra class to come up to him with a request.  Heidi handed Rob her copy of the Rolling Stones album Hot Rocks.  Without even cracking a smile she said, “Wild horses.  It’s a slow dance.  The girls like it.”  She wouldn’t let go of the record until Rob gave her the “Wild Horses” guarantee.  That was the first and last conversation Heidi and Rob ever had.  She may as well have been Ruth, because “Wild Horses” made it onto the mix tape, and Rob never looked at music or the story of life the same way ever again.

So, think of your religious perspective as a mix tape.  Think of how you view God and how you view your neighbor as a mix tape.  Think of how you interpret Jesus and the Beatitudes as a mix tape.  Think of how you understand the Golden Rule as a mix tape.  Now, when you play your mix tape, do the songs that fill the air make room for everybody to dance?  If not, let’s work interdependently to make it so, because God’s justice and God’s kingdom are counting on it.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Recognizing Holiness”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Matthew 28: 16-20; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; Joshua 2

Transcript coming soon…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“I Want to Tell You a Secret”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, June 12, 2011
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13 and Numbers 11:24-30

Jesus told the disciples a lot of secrets.  For the last few weeks we’ve been unpacking John’s gospel and the Book of Acts trying to understand just what in the world Jesus was talking about.  In those post-Easter Scriptures, Jesus was always telling his disciples secrets.  He’d pull them close, huddle them up, and tell them about God the Father sending an Advocate in Jesus’ place—a counselor, a paraclete, the Holy Spirit.  Yeah, Jesus was telling his followers a lot of secrets, but they had no idea what those secrets meant.  That’s a lot of what Pentecost is all about.  On Pentecost, the meaning of those secrets was revealed.  Finally, everyone knew what Jesus was talking about, and it made all the difference in the world.

So, in that helpful spirit of sharing secrets, I want to tell you a secret.  Some random trivial secrets about me:

I’ve never had stitches and with the exception of my pinky toe, I have never broken a bone.

When I was in the 9^th grade, I was supposed to write an essay from the perspective of one of the characters in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, so I wrote down the lyrics to Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here,” turned it in, and received an A.

When I was 18 I worked at a funeral home; and whatever you’re wondering about what my responsibilities entailed at that job, yeah, I did that.

Chuck Klosterman is my favorite contemporary writer.

Mark Jarman is my favorite poet.

The Houston Rockets are my favorite NBA team, and I’m rooting for the Mavs in the championship just because I don’t want Lebron James to win.

The Dallas Cowboys are my favorite football team, but I also root for the Saints.

LBJ is my favorite president.

I can’t stand Bob Marley or The Doors.

I can’t understand why Taylor Swift is so successful.

And I’ve never seen an episode of American Idol.

There.  Some secrets about me.  Maybe my sharing those secrets struck a chord with you.  Maybe not.  But sometimes when secrets are shared, things change.  Barriers are broken down.  Perspectives shift.  Transformation occurs.  And nothing is ever the same.  That’s the nature of good secrets, like the one God revealed to the world in the form of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.  Now, do you know any secrets like that?  I think you do.

It has been said on occasion in this place that Friends Congregational Church is the best kept secret in Bryan-College Station.  That speculation is confirmed for me most times when I meet people and they find out that I’m a pastor.

“You’re a pastor?  Oh!  For what church?”

“Friends Congregational Church.”

Pause.  I sadistically smile while the person I’ve just met struggles to decipher which church I’m talking about as if to be apologizing to me for not knowing the church I serve.

I will say that it is true: Friends Church is one of the best kept secrets in our community.  And just what is the secret?

I think it’s spiritual gifts: some of us are prophets, some are healers, some work miracles, some have the ability to recognize and discern miracles, and so forth.  Maggie read that Scripture about the Body of Christ; many gifts, one Spirit.  There are so many gifts of the Spirit in this very room.  If we knew the breadth and depth of the gifts we possess as the Body of Christ in this place, the things we could do in this church and in this community would be exponentially more amazing and transformational than they are now.

But put simply, what is the secret?  The people.  When you let your guard down and set aside your notions of clicks and birds of a feather flocking together and you get to know the people in this place, then, let me testify to you in the words of Peter Gabriel, the relationships you make in this place will enable you to see the doorway to a thousand churches.  That’s a pretty powerful secret!  So, why are we keeping it?  Shouldn’t we share it?  Don’t we want to stop branding ourselves as “the best kept secret in Bryan-College Station”?

Maybe we should be like some of our church neighbors in this town and get some commercials on TV.  Or maybe we could get on a few billboards out there.  Stacy and I love that billboard they had on Texas Avenue in Bryan for the longest time.  It was a billboard for Lighthouse Bible Church, and their slogan was, “Get lit this Sunday.”  Dude, that sounds awesome.

If we want to share the secret of Friends Church, then I guess that’s what we have to do; because sharing this secret is about growth, right?  Well, yes, but not necessarily that kind of growth—not just growth in numbers.

We’re certainly blessed by some amazing people coming forward to join this church family today, but let’s not let our celebration of this day end with adding eleven to our roll.  Our cause for celebration is these dear ones reminding us of our commitment as the Body of Christ to seek a deeper spirituality.

There was an article in a recent Christian Century magazine about church membership these days.  It quoted an Episcopal bishop in Washington State named Greg Rickel.  Rickel makes a great point about what’s happening to church membership when he says this: “What denominational metrics people are asking—how many people are in church on Sunday, for example—may not be the right measure for today.  The measures that contemporary churches need may be more intuitive and more spiritual in nature.”

The Spirit of God has the power to change lives, and today is about God sharing that secret with the world.  It’s the kind of growth that’s measured in spiritual terms, not just numbers.

One thing the Book of Numbers tells us this morning is that whether God’s secret of the Spirit is being shared adequately with the world is not to be measured by the number of people who’ve discovered that secret, but by how that secret from God is received and how it is utilized to expand, further, and progress the Divine tenets of justice and mercy and love.  In other words, it’s not about what you’ve been given but what you do with that gift.

Moses gathers 70 elders around the Tent, and the Lord comes down in a cloud and speaks with Moses.  God takes a portion of the Spirit that was upon Moses and places it upon all those elders that were gathered.  And when they receive that gift they start prophesying.

God was telling them a secret, and the secret was that it didn’t matter who they were or what their level of ability was, they could now stand up to any power in the world that was bolstered by oppression and bring it down by speaking truth to it.  Remember, Moses had a stutter, but that didn’t stop him from letting God’s Spirit speak truth to power through him so that the Hebrews would be set free from slavery in Egypt.  This was the gift of the Spirit that these elders were now receiving.  This was the secret that God was now telling them.

But a couple of guys had stayed back in the camp with the rest of the people: Eldad and Medad.  And God’s Spirit rested on them, too.  They weren’t with Moses and the gang.  They hadn’t gathered around the Tent like they were supposed to.  They ignored the TV ad, they ignored the billboard, and they stayed back at the camp, but God told them a secret about the power of the Spirit, too.

Well, Joshua was having none of it.  Joshua was one of Moses’ right hand guys, and when he heard about Eldad and Medad hanging back at the camp and prophesying where they weren’t supposed to, he said, “Moses, make them stop!  Shut them up!  They’re not supposed to be doing that over there!  It’s only over here that we’re supposed to prophesy!  It’s only over here that we’re supposed to share God’s secrets!”

And what does Moses say?  “Are you jealous, Joshua?  Are you jealous for my sake?  I wish that all of the Lord’s people were prophets and that God would put the Spirit on all of them!”  Moses was saying something like what we share in our Benediction some Sundays in this place: “Joshua, don’t you know that it’s not about keeping the secret of God under wraps and using that secret only in an orthodox manner.  The world is now too small for anything but truth and too dangerous for anything but love!”

Joshua is more concerned for Moses’ and the elders’ honor and privilege than he is for the ways of God and the common good, the good of the whole people.  Joshua is concerned about politics and orthodoxy and maintaining the power structure, and Moses is concerned about serving God’s people.

Now, I could go off here on how Joshuas are running around the Texas Legislature and keeping all kinds of secrets from the children and educators of our state, and that if we were all privy to those secrets then truth would be spoken to power in some ground shaking ways.  But I’ll save that for another sermon.

That same dynamic, though, is what I want to leave planted in our hearts and minds this morning.  Joshua knows a secret, God’s secret: that the Spirit of God has the power to prophetically change this world one act of love at a time, one life transformed at a time, one secret about God’s love shared at a time.  And Joshua wants to keep that secret safely secured around the Tent so that it would never make its way to the camp for everyone to hear.

So, I want to tell you another secret.  Did you know that God loves you?  Pentecost is God sharing the secret about the expanse of God’s love.  The secret’s out.  God loves you.  You’re whole self, all of who you are—God loves you.  So, now that you know that secret, what does that mean for your life?  Now that the secret’s out, now that the nay sayers and the fear mongers and even death itself have failed to suppress that secret from your ears, now that antagonism and competition and territorialism have been backhanded by the Divine, now that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God loves you, what will you do?

Action by action, life by life, secret by secret, God is still speaking.  Thanks be to God!

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“It’s Not Really About You”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, June 5, 2011
John 17:1-5 and 20:21-23; Acts 1:6-14

Transcript coming soon…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Paraclete People: A Conversation with the 2007 Confirmands of Friends Church”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, May 29, 2011
John 14:15-21; Acts 17:22-31

Today we have the privilege of honoring our three high school graduates: Cassie, Dillon and Kalena.  So in a gesture of authenticity, I thought this sermon would do well to draw from their words and not just this preacher’s.  The message today is titled, “Paraclete People: A Dialogue with the 2007 Confirmands of Friends Church.”  Four years ago, almost to the day, Cassie, Dillon and Kalena stood before this congregation on Pentecost Sunday and read aloud from their shared Statement of Faith in much the same manner that Paul stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus.  So, I want to start the message this morning with some words from a then 14-year-old Kalena Miller who’d just completed Confirmation and had this to say:

When I was little, I didn’t like going to church for two reasons: 1. It took forever and I’d rather be sleeping, and 2. I felt so out of place, because everyone else seemed to be sure of themselves. Everyone else seemed to believe in God with certainty and not doubt themselves. But I didn’t even know if I believed, so listening to a preacher talk about it made me uncomfortable. As I got older and got to know people in the church, I realized that everyone was not sure. Everyone wasn’t sure and that’s what made our church special. Because you didn’t have people telling you what to believe; they asked you what you believed instead.

Wise words.  The irony of certainty is that it lacks grace.  And where there is an absence of grace, fear about our doubts can seep in and take over.

The Apostle Paul has ventured to Athens and he’s now standing up in the Areopagus.  He’s a stranger in a strange land.  And as he looks around at everyone gathered there, Paul says, “I see that in every way you are very religious.  For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.”

Now, Cassie, Dillon, and Kalena, I know that school’s out, but allow me to share a quick history lesson.  Biblical commentators point out that there is no evidence of any inscription like that: ‘to an unknown god.’  The author of the Book of Acts most likely borrowed that idea out of a lost book entitled Concerning Sacrifices.  In this ancient book, Diogenes Laertius tells how during a plague Epimenides the Cretan instructed the Athenians to let loose black and white sheep on the Areopagus, and, wherever they lay down, to sacrifice those sheep to “the appropriate god;” in other words, sacrifice them to the unknown god who was somehow concerned in the matter.

It seems like these people didn’t know what they were doing!  “Yeah, just let loose some sheep over there, and wherever they lay down go ahead and sacrifice them to whatever god is paying attention and that will be adequate.”  What kind of theology is that?  On the one hand, it sounds very meticulous, it sounds very purposeful, it even sounds very certain; but on the other hand it appears inauthentic, it appears reckless, it even appears lazy.  Sacrificing those sheep to an unknown god demonstrates a lazy theology, a shrugged-shouldered theology, a theology that sounds so much like the sentiment that churns in our present day Christianity: “Well, if those homeless people would just make better decisions in life, they wouldn’t be homeless.  If those teenagers would quit acting so gay, they wouldn’t be bullied at school.  If that girl hadn’t been running around with those boys, she wouldn’t be left with a child to care for on her own and having to drop out of school.  If that transgendered woman had stayed out of the women’s bathroom at that McDonald’s, she wouldn’t have beaten unconscious.  If those sheep hadn’t have laid down, we wouldn’t have had to kill them.  It all makes sense.  It’s all just.  It’s all a part of the plan.”

What plan?  What god?  The unknown god?  Well, what good is that?  No matter how certain we may appear about anything from morality to ideology to theology, what good is it when that certainty rests upon a foundation of fear that covers up all the doubts we really have?

Paul stands up in the Areopagus and he says, “Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.”  Paul sounds just as certain as those Athenians.  But Paul isn’t certain, Paul is convicted.  And the difference between certainty and conviction is that certainty draws from the empty well of our human fears, while conviction is fueled by a greater good that transcends our individual doubts and limitations.  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

But the other part of this morning’s message is that Christ is leaving.  The Scripture from John’s gospel is the account of Jesus’ farewell message to the disciples.  Without Christ, without that greater good, where will our conviction come from?  Here’s where the Paraclete comes in.

John 14:16: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete to be with you forever.”  The Paraclete, the Counselor, the Advocate is the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Someone has called the Holy Spirit the “Go Between God;” the stuff that holds God together, that part of God that is the active power of God, constantly reaching, embracing, drawing in, pulling together, empowering.  That link is given to the disciples.  That link, that Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, is given to us.

So, here’s what Dillon Garrett had to say about the Holy Spirit four years ago: I think the Holy Spirit keeps people going until they reach their goals and never allows people to quit, no matter how much they want to give up. The Holy Spirit is in everyone that believes in God, as a reassurance that they should keep on having faith and believing.

And not to be outdone, here’s an elaboration from our sister Kalena.  She said: Our Father is God and he/she watches over us.  (Sorry, but I hate it when people always assume that God is male, who’s seen God in person, really?)  When I say that, I don’t mean it in a cheesy way that God watches every move we make, but God is with us every move we make.

Jesus says, “When I leave, God will give you another Paraclete to be with you forever,” and the word ‘paraclete’ means literally “someone called alongside.”

Do you hear Jesus’ invitation?  Do you hear God’s charge?  We are called to stand alongside the marginalized and the afflicted.  We are called to stand alongside the orphan and the widow, the stranger and the alien.  We are called to stand alongside the teenage mother and the bullied teenager.  We are called to stand alongside the ostracized undocumented immigrant and the antagonized transgendered woman.  We are called to stand alongside the poor and the homeless.  We are called to stand alongside one another with conviction and to never hold one another at the arm’s length of this world’s fear-based certainty.  And when we stand alongside our neighbor like this, then justice will be done, righteousness will be revealed, love will shine, and the unknown god will be made known.

And here is the best news: The Paraclete, the gift of God’s Holy Spirit, lives in you.  Divinity lives in you.  The power of God’s righteousness that can move mountains of cold injustice lives in you.  That is the best news.  That is the best news for two reasons.  For one thing, Cassie, Dillon, Kalena, everyone in this room will readily admit to you that it is hard to sacrifice status for our convictions.  But if we rely on convictions that are greater than our fears, if we rely on the Paraclete within, then we can cross the margins of worldly certainty with Spirit-led convictions that usher in the kingdom of God.  That’s another sermon for another day.

What I want to stress to you this morning is the second reason why that is the best news.  The Spirit living in you is the best news because, Cassie, Dillon, Kalena, there will be times in your life when you are so certain that you are doing the right thing that you will be sorely tempted to allow all your morals and ideals to fly right out the window.  In those moments, let the Holy Spirit remind you of what is good so that the world will see what is good through your very life.  And what does the Lord require of you?  To do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

I want to give you this example that blessed me.  As you know I had the opportunity to attend the Human Rights Campaign’s Clergy Call in DC this past week.  On Monday morning we gathered in a Methodist Church downtown where we were treated to a panel of some of the most inspiring clergy persons out there; women and men who are living on the front lines of crucial ministry and making God known.

One of the panelists was Rabbi Denise Eger.  She’s the founder and rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood where she’s served since 1992, and she’s the first female Rabbi to be elected president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.  Rabbi Eger has a window in her office that overlooks the sanctuary, and inscribed on that window are those words from the Prophet Micah: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Rabbi Eger remembers the night of November 4, 2008.  It was an emotional night.  The polls showed that we had elected the first African American president of the United States.  That was cause for many Americans to celebrate.  But the polls in California also showed the passage of Proposition 8, which revoked the right from gay and lesbian people to marry; a right that gay and lesbian people had enjoyed for only a few months before it was stripped from them yet again.  Our own Dinah and Ro Anderson were married in California right before Prop 8 reared its ugly head.

Well, there was anger in Los Angeles.  The Mormon Church in California was credited with the passage of Prop 8.  They had raised the money and fueled the campaign that convinced Californians that gay and lesbian people getting married would destroy American families.  So, gay rights activists and LGBT people and allies poured into the streets of LA and started marching toward the Mormon Temple.  They were angry, they were hurt, and they were certain that what they were doing was right.

A lot of the people in that march belonged to Rabbi Eger’s congregation, and Rabbi Eger felt their pain.  She was on their side of the issue.  But she also was convicted by God’s righteousness; righteousness that was greater than her human certainties.  So, Rabbi Eger ran in front of the emotional marchers and stood between them and the doors of the Mormon Temple.  Her conviction caused her to stand alongside her enemies in a precarious moment, and the result was that right there outside the Mormon Temple in LA on an emotional election night, a female rabbi made the love and justice and power of God known.  Rabbi Eger told us, “I got a lot of flack for that, but I am convinced that in that moment I did justice and loved mercy and walked humbly with my God.”

I call Rabbi Eger a Paraclete Person.  And we in this place all strive to be Paraclete People.  This family of faith is drawn together by the Spirit, the Counselor, the Advocate, the Paraclete that is always with us, that dwells within us and that empowers us with the convictions of God’s justice, righteousness and love.

So, Cassie, Dillon and Kalena, today we Paraclete People are saying somewhat of a farewell to you.  To a certain extent we are letting you go.  But we pray that you would never forget the Spirit that drew us together in the first place.  And we pray that you would never forget that just as God’s loving Spirit is always standing alongside you, we are always with you, too.  And we pray that you would never lose sight of your convictions and never lose sight of the connections you have with all human beings through the gift of the Holy Spirit.  We love you so much.

I leave you with the words of our sister Cassie McAden from your shared Statement of Faith.  Cassie says: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Just be yourself knowing that God will always love you no matter what you do in life.  Let us live our lives to the fullest each day so we will have no regrets when we die.

And the Paraclete People said together, “Amen!”

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“The Way of Forgiveness: Onward in the Triumph Song of Life”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, May 22, 2011
John 14: 1-14; Acts 7: 55-60

Last week we talked about “the way of subversion.”  This week we hear again about the way.  Jesus says in John’s gospel, “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”  So, this morning we’ll continue on that path, but moving from the way of subversion, let’s talk about the way of forgiveness.

You’ll notice that the title for the message today is “The way of Forgiveness: Onward in the Triumph Song of Life.”  Anyone know what hymn those words come from: ‘onward in the triumph song of life’?  Let’s sing the first stanza of Joyful, Joyful, We Adore You.  It’s hymn number 4 in your hymnal.  And for you good Methodists and Baptists and Presbyterians and the like, if you want to sing the original wording, “Joyful, joyful, we adore thee,” feel free.  Let’s sing…

Joyful, joyful, we adore you,

God of glory, God of love;

Hearts unfold like flowers before you,

Opening to the sun above.

Melt the clouds of sin and sadness,

Drive the storms of doubt away;

Giver of immortal gladness,

Fill us with the light of day.

Fill us with the light of day.  That’s what we want.  That’s what we need…now.  There’s no time to wait for reconciliation.  There’s no time to wait for healing.  There’s no time to wait for the abundance of God’s love to fill us with the light of day.  That’s what we need now!

I want to tell you a piece of a story: In Steve Martin’s autobiography that chronicles his 25 years as a stand-up comedian, Born Standing Up, the comedian turned actor and musician and writer recalls the terse relationship that he had with his father.  His dad never did anything or said anything to support his son’s aspirations to make it in show business, and Steve Martin certainly “made it” in show business.  Sometimes we forget how much he shaped pop culture.

The next time you get frustrated with someone and you say, “Well, excuuuuuuuuuse me!,” thank Steve Martin for that little quip.  It came from his standup act.  He was huge on Saturday Night Live.  It was kind of before my time, but I completely appreciate Dan Akroyd and Steve Martin’s bit about “two wild and crazy guys.”  But after Steve Martin first appeared on SNL, his dad wrote a bad review about him in his newsletter to the Newport Beach Association of Realtors where he wrote, “His performance did nothing to further his career.”

You remember Steve Martin’s first movie ever, The Jerk?  I still quote that movie at least once a week.  It was voted into the American Film Institute’s top 100 comedies of all time.  But when Steve Martin took his dad to the premiere of that movie and then to dinner afterwards with friends, his dad said nothing about the film.  He talked and talked, but said nothing about his son’s big movie.  So, finally, one of Steve’s friends asked his dad what he thought about the movie, and all his dad could say was, “Well, he’s no Charlie Chaplain.”

Martin vowed to never talk to his dad about his career ever again.  You can’t blame him.  You can’t blame him for keeping his dad at arm’s length; his mother, too, so he could set consistent boundaries for his own peace of mind.  It seemed to do the trick, because Steve Martin became the most successful comedian in history, and his movies were comic gold.  But in the 1980’s, at the peak of his career, when he was basking in all of this success and ignoring the family that he’d left in his rearview mirror, Steve Martin was approached by a friend.  His friend’s father had died in a car accident while crossing the street, and his mother had committed suicide on Mother’s Day.  This friend gave Martin some advice that might ring true for many of us in this room: “If you have anything to work out with your parents, do it now.  One day it will be too late.”

This morning’s story out of the Book of Acts isn’t a pleasant one: Stephen being stoned to death.  It’s even more unpleasant when we consider the notion that we are so much like the ones who threw those stones.  Stephen has just delivered a speech to the Sanhedrin, to the high priest and the men there.  He called them out on how they had always shut out hope, cast out the blessings of the Holy Spirit, and how they had shunned prophets with their messages of new life and even killed those who testified to the coming of righteousness.  Stephen called them out like a friend might call us out with shot-in-the-arm advice that pierces our hearts with the power of truth; truth that we need now.

But when they hear Stephen’s speech they cover their ears and yell at the top of their lungs.  They don’t want to hear it.  They don’t want to face it.  They drag him out of the city and stone began to stone him.  But while we might hold something in common with Stephen’s antagonists, our lesson, thankfully, doesn’t come from their antagonism; it comes from Stephen.  Our lesson comes from Stephen’s prayer.

Stephen is dying.  This is the bleakest, stormiest moment in his life, a moment when you couldn’t blame him for yelling right back at the ones throwing those stones; a moment when you couldn’t blame him for casting them out, being done with them.  But in that moment he prays, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”  No more counting beans.  No more keeping score.  But the part of his prayer that I find even more compelling is when he prays, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

He doesn’t pray, “Lord Jesus, save my life.  Get me out of this mess.  Make them see how they’re wrong and raise me up the triumphant victor.  Let them see how I’m right.  Lord Jesus, save my life.”  He doesn’t look back.  He doesn’t cling to desperation.  He doesn’t ponder how he could’ve witnessed to Christ differently, how he could have made his point without confrontation.  Stephen seems to take comfort and confidence in the truth that all of that mess is settled—nothing left to do about it anymore.  He forgives and looks forward: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

After that friend came to visit his buddy Steve Martin, Martin committed himself to reconciliation.  He made weekly lunch dates with his parents and spent more time with them in a few months than he had in his entire young adulthood.  When his father was dying, Steve sat at his bedside.  And at one point his dad muttered, “I wish I could cry.  I wish I could cry.”  Steve asked his dad, “What do you want to cry about.”  His dad said, “For all the love I received and couldn’t return.”  And then he said to his son, “You did everything I wanted to do.”  And when Steve responded, “I did it for you” the two men fell into tears; tears of joy that washed away a lifetime of regret, a lifetime of counting beans and keeping score, a lifetime wasted on the stubborn human grievance of always looking back when we are summoned by our Creator to give thanks and look ahead—onward.

We often think about forgiveness in terms of forgiving others.  We’ve heard that preached and taught a million times: that we need to forgive others.  And we’re reminded that forgiving others for the wrongs they’ve committed against us is probably the most powerful thing that we human beings can do.  True.  But what about forgiving ourselves?  That can be so much harder, you know?  I think that was what was going on between Steve Martin and his dad.  They weren’t forgiving each other for whatever the other did wrong.  Who knows exactly what they did wrong or where they went wrong in the course of their relationship, or who was right or who was wrong?  They were forgiving themselves.  They weren’t looking back anymore.  They were looking forward…onward.  “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

This is the way of forgiveness.  Stephen’s prayer of forgiveness is symptomatic of a pattern; the pattern of a forgiving life, a way of life: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.  And, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”  Onward in the triumph song of life.  This is the way of forgiveness.  It’s what Jesus taught.  It’s what Jesus preached.  It’s who Jesus was: forgiveness.  And in the Christian faith, Jesus is the way, forgiveness is the way to the Father.

You know what the irony is about the colonialism and conquest approach to Jesus saying, “I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me”?  That notion that my acceptance of Jesus gives me access to God in heaven and anyone who doesn’t do it my way is doomed to hell?  The irony to that is the lack of forgiveness and grace.  The irony is that I cling to my own fear-based uncertainties about myself and my doubts about life and the shortcomings of my past so much that all I have left to care about is getting my fire insurance; accepting Jesus so that one day I’ll make it to the Father.  And the notion that my acceptance of Jesus is the exclusive avenue by which I reach God is validated only if there are other heathens out there that will surely not make it to the Father.  It’s all based on a formula where the abnormal folk out there make for the existence of the normal folk; the outsiders give the insiders their identity; and the so-called unsaved give validity to the saved.  The rapture can’t have its blessed elect unless there are those who are left behind, right?  It’s like Fred Craddock said in an old sermon, “What’s the fun making it to heaven if when you get there you can’t look over the rail at everyone who didn’t make it and go, ‘Ha ha!’”

Sounds fun, but there’s no grace in that doctrine.  There’s no forgiveness in that formula.  And it’s not about others shaping up and finding the right path to God.  It’s about us trusting in the love of God so much that we cannot accept salvation without the inclusion of our neighbor in that blessed assurance.  And, sisters and brothers, we can only be gracious to others to the extent that we are gracious to ourselves.  We can only show forgiveness to others to the extent that we can show forgiveness to ourselves.  It’s a pattern. It’s a way.  And it leads us onward in the triumph song of life.

The bottom line is that God needs us to keep the beauty of Creation going.  God needs us to establish peace and justice and righteousness and love in this world.  That is what the church stands for.  But if we are hung up on fear, then there’s no room for peace.  If we’re hung up on our own shortcomings, then there’s no room for justice for all people.  If we’re obsessing over our transgressions, then there is no room for righteousness.  And if we cannot let go of our sins, then there is no foundation for love.  And just as surely as Christ is forgiveness, God is love.

I know it makes us liberal Protestant types cringe and wince to think of the account of Jesus’ crucifixion, but in this time of Easter let us take assurance and find conviction in the three words Jesus cries from the cross when he is about to die that the world would be reconciled to God: “It is finished.”

It is finished.  Forgiveness is yours.  Forgiveness is mine.  No looking back now.  Do not be burdened with the confusion and chaos and doubt and shame of this world that drives the human heart to fear.  Trust in God.  Trust also in Christ.  For the sake of peace and justice and righteousness and love, let us move onward in the triumph song of life.

But before we do, I want to call our attention to Lynn McLean.  Gary McLean joined this church a couple of months ago.  Lynn is his wife.  Lynn is a retired minister.  In fact, when Gary and Lynn came to visit me months back in talking about Gary joining the church, Lynn said, “I know that joining the church invites us to share our gifts.  Well, my gift to you is that I can be your minister.  I can give you pastoral care. You can lean on me.”  Lynn is an incredible person.

As many of you know from our email prayer chain, Lynn is battling not only an aggressive cancer but the aggressive surgery and treatments for it.  I wonder what’s worse: the cancer or the cure.

Lynn is an amazing woman.  She’s full of life and humor and love, and I’m blessed by God to know her.  If anyone deserves a life of happiness and peace, it’s Lynn.  So, when Lynn told me back in October that she had been diagnosed with cancer in her mouth and how difficult the treatments would be, all I could do was shudder and wince and scratch my head wondering, “Why, God?  Why Lynn?  Why does this have to happen to such a life-giving person?”  I pondered and prayed on it.  I looked back over the theological fragments of those questions that I know are futile, and I sifted through the doubts that resurface in my heart and mind every time tragedies like this comes along.  I kept looking back.  I kept looking back and I couldn’t seem to let it go.  I couldn’t forgive it.

But Lynn told me pretty soon after that, “But do you know what’s great about all this?  I’ve already done all my Christmas shopping for my children and grandchildren!  I was looking for something to do!  Now I have nothing but time to fight this thing!  Onward!”

Let’s thank God for Lynn this morning, and let’s throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  Open your hymnals one more time to hymn number 4 and let’s sing the fourth stanza of Joyful, Joyful We Adore You.  Sing loud and proud for Lynn.

Mortals, join the mighty chorus which the morning stars began;

Boundless love is reigning o’er us,

Reconciling race and clan.

Ever singing, move we forward,

Faithful in the midst of strife,

Joyful music leads us onward in the triumph song of life.

Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“The Way of Subversion”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, May 15, 2011
John 10:1-10 and Acts 2:42-47

There is a term that makes many of us ministers uneasy: ‘church shopping.’  This term might not make the Joel Osteens and other mega-church ministers uneasy.  They might love that term, because when it comes to church shopping, their church and their church’s message is what a lot of those shoppers are buying.

But that’s not the reason the term “church shopping” makes a lot of us ministers uneasy.  It’s not because we fear competition or losing numbers in our congregations.  It makes us uneasy—it certainly makes me uneasy—because church shopping implies that our search for a congregation and our commitment to a congregation are handled in the same manner that we live by as consumers.  We shop for a church just like we shop for the best price, or a good mechanic, or a competent electrician, or the store with the most variety, or the hair stylist or barber that does our hair just how we like it.

Now, I don’t want to belittle the importance of searching for a church home.  It’s important for all of us to find places of acceptance and safety and spiritual nurturance and faith development for ourselves and our partners and spouses and our children.  But more often than not, when it comes to the term “church shopping,” it all boils down to what explanation of Christianity will best suit my preferences.  We want churches that will explain Christianity to us in ways that we not only easily understand, but in ways that match our opinions and comfort levels.

We want explanations of Christian doctrine; explanations of atonement, explanations of salvation, explanations of the Trinity, explanations of Christology and ecclesiology and eschatology, explanations of the sacraments, explanations of morality, explanations that will assure us that our understanding of Christianity is correct, right on track, built on a firm foundation like Jesus talks about in the Sermon on the Mount.

I need to interject here and tell you that my children have discovered Mary Poppins.  The singing of Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke has become oxygen to Mac and Ruthie.  I bring that up to say that all of those explanations are just a spoon full of sugar to help the Christianity go down in the most delightful way.

But as my son Mac would say, here’s the thing: Christianity isn’t something to be explained, it’s something to be lived.  It’s not a doctrine or a creed or a series of comprehensive laws or the perfect set of Bible verses.  Christianity is a way.  Christianity is a way of life.  And in this context, church shopping is just one more consumerist method of tiptoeing around that way with a cart full of sweet-sounding explanations.

The biblical commentator Theodore P. Ferris wrote, “It is far more difficult to practice the way than to accept the explanation.”  He wrote that in 1954.  Things haven’t changed.  It is still just as difficult to practice the way of Christianity over accepting its mere explanation, if not more so; but the most difficult piece of practicing the way is probably living in community—getting over ourselves enough and reaching out enough and constantly coming back to the table enough and listening enough and humbling ourselves enough to live in community with one another.  That is maybe the ultimate challenge of practicing the way.

The most powerful thing we learn from this passage from the Book of Acts is that practicing the way means that we have to live in close association with other Christians.  We have to live together as a fellowship of believers.  That can be tough sometimes.  Why does it have to be so tough?  In society, we can avoid that phone call or not reply to that email or de-friend that antagonistic Facebook friend from high school or call in sick or roll up the car window or avoid eye contact.  Not in the church.  Not in the fellowship of believers.  And that can be a drag sometimes.  When I was doing a lot of mission work with youth groups every summer, I used to say, “The only thing I don’t like about mission work is the other missionaries.”

But, God bless them, they loved Jesus and I loved Jesus.  And with all their quirks and redundant praise songs and prayers that used the words ‘just’ and ‘Father’ sometimes five times in one sentence, we worked together.  We lived together.  We practiced the way of Christ together: sorting clothes and food and toys for families in need, delivering furniture to low income housing complexes, working in soup kitchens in urban areas dense with homelessness, learning from the Word of God together, breaking bread together, praying together.  There were no divisive, temperamental explanations of Christian doctrine; there was just the way.  And if it weren’t for practicing that way, there is no chance that many of us would ever have crossed paths, much less lived in community with each other.

That can certainly be said about this place, too.  It always brings me a sense of awe when I think about how unlikely this fellowship of believers is.  What I want to point out is that the costly nature of practicing the way has blessed us with this community, and within this community our spirituality deepens and our faith is strengthened in ways that are otherwise impossible; and all of this is by nature of the unlikely relationships we accumulate as a consequence of practicing the way over accepting its mere explanation.

I’ll give you an example: Our Capital Campaign Coordinator, Kathy Langlotz, gave an emotional and moving mission moment about the Friends in Faith Campaign on a Wednesday night not too long ago.  And in that mission moment she named people in this church who inspire her and challenge her and bless her in so many different ways—people who help deepen her spirituality and strengthen her faith.  And when that worship service was over, I heard her talking to our sister Beth Leopold.  Beth and Kathy wouldn’t have a relationship at all if it weren’t for this fellowship of believers.  And Beth and Kathy could not be more different in terms of their gifts and limitations, their ideologies and politics, their vocations, their family makeup, their history and upbringing, their sense of humor, and the list goes on.  But Kathy said to Beth, “I should have mentioned in that mission moment how much I appreciate you.  You center me, you ground me, you focus me.  Thank you for that.”  Were it not for the way…

The rule of society spins a reality for us that says that the Kathys and the Beths out there aren’t supposed to be in community with one another.  The rule of society spins a reality for us that by and large forbids people who are different from each other in any way from forming community.  Because of how reality portrays us to one another in terms of our generational differences, our ethnicities, our cultural backgrounds, our income tax brackets, our abilities, our sexualities, our gender identities, we are not supposed to be in community with one another.  Do you hear reality talking?  It’s saying that you’re not supposed to even be here, fellowship of believers!  We’re not supposed to be here in this place together this morning.

But we worship the God that the psalmist testifies to in Psalm 23.  We worship the God who is with us even in the darkest valleys of life; the God who is always with us no matter how harsh the reality set before us might appear; the God who pours love over us all that will not let us go.  And when we gather in community with each other, we reflect the love of God.  We are saying by the way that we live our lives in this place that we are here for one another, that we will walk through the darkest valleys with one another, that we will not let one another go.

We may appear different and undecipherable and quirky to one another at times in this place, but, praise God, because of the love of Christ I know that Linda will not let Jess go.  I know that Jess will not let Olivia go.  I know that Olivia will not let Walter go.  I know that Walter will not let Sally go.  I know that Sally will not let me go, because we practice the way of Christianity that reflects God’s love; a love that will not let us go.  That is the way of Christianity that subverts reality.

So, is church an escape from reality?  In part, yes.  This fellowship of believers is a partial glimpse into the kingdom of God.  But the world needs a glimpse of this kingdom living, too, or that reality that holds us at arms length from one another will continue.  Left unchallenged by this truth, this love that will not let us go, that broken reality that makes us into stereotypical abstractions so that injustice is somehow justified will go on.  Fellowship of believers, we cannot let that happen.  We are called to subvert that reality by practicing the way out there as a celebration of how God has blessed us in here.

I love Eugene Peterson’s translation of today’s text in The Message.  When he writes about the fellowship of believers in the Book of Acts selling their possessions and pooling their wealth and breaking bread together and praying together, he mentions onlookers, and he writes, “People in general liked what they saw.”

Well, it appears that people aren’t moved too much by what they see from us Christian folk these days.  When it comes to the notion of community, the irony is that the more that Christianity has assimilated into the community of a so-called Christian nation, Christianity has lost its way.

David Kinnaman is the president of the research organization called The Barna Group, and he wrote a book called Unchristian.  In his book, Kinnaman and The Barna Group surveyed people who were not affiliated with Christianity.  Participants were given a host of different words to choose from, and they were asked to select the words most closely associated with Christianity in their minds.  The survey revealed that the top two words most commonly associated with Christianity were ‘anti-homosexual,’ and ‘judgmental.’  Two words that were nowhere close to the top of the list were ‘friendly’ and ‘welcoming.’  That is reality.  That is what society has accepted as reality when it comes to the church, because that is how we Christians have explained the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world.  We have grown so comfortable with accepting explanations of Christianity that that’s all we have left to offer.

That has to change.  We have to get out there and subvert that broken reality by practicing the way—practicing the way that gets the attention of onlookers like Jesus got society’s attention: breaking down societal barriers, not settling for indifference when justice needs to be done, challenging the status quo, standing up for and standing alongside the marginalized, making everyone from the leper to the centurion believe that “truly this was the Son of God.”

And when it comes to the fact that Christianity is perceived to be ‘anti-homosexual’ let me say: I know that it makes some of us squeamish or uneasy when this pastor preaches about LGBTQ issues or preaches about the lived experience of LGBTQ people.  I’ve heard second- and third-hand things like, “Why do you have to talk about that stuff all the time,” or, “Don’t you think it’s a little repetitive.”  I appreciate that.  I do.  I don’t want to accentuate one perspective to the detriment of another.  This is the blessed tension that is created by an Open & Affirming community.  But as one of my predecessors, Rev. Charles Stark, said during the days when this church was considering becoming an Open & Affirming church, “We’ve got to make it a big deal in here so that it won’t be a big deal out there.”  He was right.

We have got to show the world by how we practice the way of Christianity that LGBTQ concerns and Christianity are not oil and water.  When the world sees, when onlookers see our children and youth and adults from all walks of life, all ethnicities and ages and sexual orientations and gender identities, practicing the way of Christianity together—feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, advocating for the oppressed—then everyone will know that diversity is not a stumbling block to Christian living but an essential component of it.  The world will see by how this unmistakable fellowship of believers practices the way that there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, but that we are all one in Christ Jesus.  Then, and only then, will those surveys about the church put words like ‘friendly’ and ‘welcoming’ at the top of the list.

I leave you with this: I have to mention two more folks in our fellowship of believers: Viktor Sanchez and Noe Cardenas; Viktor and his rainbow-colored socks and Spider-man baseball cap and Noe and her contagious smile and relentless laughter.  They joined our church six months ago.  Since then they’ve become involved with the Justice and Missions Committee; they’ve helped with lay leadership and children’s messages in worship; in one weekend they helped with the youth group’s 30-Hour Famine and with the Peace through Music event; they’re helping gather School Kits and Hygiene Kits being donated to Church World Service; and Noe was baptized on Easter Sunday, in her words, “Because it felt like the next step in her faith journey with this congregation.”  Do you know how Viktor and Noe found out about this church?  Viktor saw on the Facebook page for A&M’s GLBT Resource Center that Friends Congregational Church was having a garage sale where the proceeds would be donated to the GLBT Resource Center’s endowment fund.  Viktor told his friend Noe about it, and the two of them decided to come and see what this community of faith was all about.  Were it not for the way…

They committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the life together, the common meal, and the prayers.  Everyone around was in awe, and all the believers lived in a wonderful harmony, holding everything in common.  They sold whatever they owned and pooled their resources so that each person’s need was met.  They followed a daily discipline of worship in the Temple followed by meals at home, every meal a celebration, exuberant and joyful, as they praised God.  People in general liked what they saw. Every day their number grew as God added those who were saved.

So, as much as you can, as much as can be allowed within your means, as much as your resources allow, as much time and financial availability are at your disposal, I urge us to pledge to our church’s capital campaign, to contribute to the School Kits and Hygiene Kits for the South Central Conference annual meeting next month, to anticipate and prioritize our quarterly mission offerings, to volunteer at the Brazos Church Pantry, to be a part of our Family Promise ministry to homeless families, and to come together for worship and prayer and singing and celebrating and the breaking of bread so that we can keep this energy and fellowship going strong; because this is the way of subversion.  This fellowship of believers has the gospel-fueled power to lift the yoke of a broken reality from this world and replace it with the truth of God’s justice, mercy and love.  So, let us never grow weary in well-doing, let us never take for granted the blessings of fellowship, and let us never lose sight of the importance of practicing the way.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Accounting for our Fascinations”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, May 8, 2011
1 Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35

This morning’s story at its core is about the blessing of breaking bread.  I had the blessing of breaking bread with a dear friend and mentor of mine just yesterday afternoon: Steve Sprinkle, the fine preacher and Brite Divinity School faculty member who preached in this place a few months ago.  Steve and I got to talking about how Mother’s Day had become as big as Christmas and Easter in the church.  And I said, “Yeah, but there are those of us who have conflicted relationships with our mothers; and there are those of us who do not have children, either purposefully or not; and there are those of us whose mothers have died.  Some of us might get annoyed by Mother’s Day or even flat out resent it.  I know of a mother or two who think of Mother’s Day as a waste of paper, another hallmark holiday.  So, even though I personally view Mother’s Day fondly, I appreciate how tricky it is to endorse it on the level of Christmas and Easter in the church.”

And Steve said, “Yes, but when it comes to Mother’s Day in the church, whether we like it or not, that stuff gets bowled over.  It takes a timeout.”  And Steve and I went on to reminisce about times when preachers in different churches had recognized moms on Mother’s Day by having them stand and then take their seat slowly by saying, “Alright, if you’ve been a mom for five years or more, stay standing.  Ten years or more, stay standing.”

So, if that’s the case, I’ll play along.  On this Mother’s Day that falls on the Third Sunday of Easter, let us, the church, embrace the implications of Mother’s Day and celebrate to the utmost extent.  But let me be clear about the implications that we celebrate on a day like this.  Let us recall the earliest implications of Mother’s Day in the United States.  In the late nineteenth century, Mother’s Day was all about peace.

One of the earliest calls to celebrate Mother’s Day was written in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe: “The Mother’s Day Proclamation.”  It was a pacifist reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War.  “The Mother’s Day Proclamation” was rooted in Julia Ward Howe’s feminist belief that women had a responsibility to shape their societies at the political level and be champions of peace.

We need to celebrate that message today, don’t we?  So much that we’ve been hearing all week has been about warmongering and a renewed call to vengeance, wiping out our enemies.  Osama Bin Laden is dead!

I don’t know Osama Bin Laden, never met him.  I know that he was an extremist and a terrorist.  I know that he was a violent man, who publicly declared war on America, saying that in that war he did not differentiate between soldiers and civilians.  I know that he has been reportedly happy about the deaths of thousands of innocent people over the years.  And I know that he plotted to make a lot of people so angry that they would rise up and give him the war that he wanted.  For all intents and purposes, one could justifiably say that he was a bad man.

So, respect that viewpoint, and I respect that there are many of us who are looking upon the news of Bin Laden’s death as closure.  I can’t imagine the myriad emotions going through the hearts and minds of people this week who lost loved ones on September 11^th.  Human emotions are potent and passionate things, and I do not wish to trample on the time and space that we human beings need to grapple with those emotions.

But, as a Christian minister on a day that implies peace, on the Third Sunday of Easter, I have to point out our lingering and troubling fascination with killing and death.  That fascination is bleeding into every aspect of the human condition, and the result is that when we read news about a gay activist beaten and left for dead on a street in front of a bar in Austin, we interpret it as justification for more violence against gay people, not a reason to squelch it.  We are so fascinated with killing and death that when we hear news about the unjust degradation of our environment at the hands of big business or about how human trafficking, slavery, is now higher than it ever has been in human history, we receive the news with indifference, as opposed to a call to action.

Cleopas and the other disciple tell that stranger on the Emmaus Road about how Jesus was hoped be the one who’d redeem Israel, but that the chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death and to be crucified.  “Oh, Jesus gave us so much hope.  He was going to fix all these problems, make everything okay.”  But the chief priest and rulers changed all that.  They seized the people’s attention with a different message: “This Jesus has crossed the line,” they said.  “He’s a blasphemer and a rabble rouser.  He’s a troublemaker and a threat to our way of life.  He’s a bad man.  Don’t you want to kill him!  Don’t you want to see him dead!”  And we know how the story goes after that.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I am not likening Jesus of Nazareth to the personhood of Osama Bin Laden in any way, not in the slightest.  I’m likening the chief priests and rulers of antiquity to our political discourse and media spin of today, and I’m likening the people’s reactions of crucify him, crucify him, crucify him to our present day fascination with killing and death.  Do you see how easily it gets churned up, and do you see the folly in that?

We’ve been struggling with this all week long, and no matter whether we agree that the death of Bin Laden saw that justice was done, something about how that news has been portrayed and how we’ve all responded to it just doesn’t seem right.

Some of you read my “Mid-Week Message from the Pastor” email on Wednesday about how I walked into a convenience store Monday morning, and the man at the counter appeared stereotypically to be of Middle Eastern lineage.  And another man walked into the store and said to the clerk, “They flushed out your boy!”  Maybe you’ve heard or even experienced similar stories this past week.  Things like this weigh heavily on our hearts and minds.  Something about all this just doesn’t seem right.  So, we flock to our communities of faith hoping to find hope, clarity, redemption; the kind of stuff that Cleopas and the other disciple had hoped for before they called it quits and moped their way to Emmaus.

Frederick Buechner writes about Emmaus in a book called The Magnificent Defeat.  He says that we all look to places to run to when we’ve lost hope.  We all look for a place to run to when we don’t know what to do, when things just don’t seem right.  We need an Emmaus, a place of escape, of forgetting, of giving up, of deadening our senses and our minds and maybe even our hearts, too.  And what I find troubling about what Buechner writes, is that he says, “Emmaus may be going to church on Sunday.”

Given all that we’ve heard this past week, all that we’ve experienced, all that we’ve read and witnessed, all of this kinetic fascination with killing and death, have we come to church in the same manner that Cleopas and the other disciple trudged along the Emmaus Road?  Are we here this morning to get away from all that for a little while?  If that’s the case, then the chief priests and rulers have gotten the best of us again.

We cannot let killing and death overshadow the message of Easter.  Have we forgotten how powerful this thing is that we celebrate: resurrection…new life?  The church has the kind of power to change things, to do something about things, to transform the world.  This resurrection message is powerful stuff.  We know the truth, and the truth has set us free from fascination and preoccupation with killing and death.  We know that the resurrection message of Easter is about new life.  It’s about homeless families being shown hospitality and new possibilities for getting back on their feet despite the rising number of homeless in Bryan-College Station.  It’s about churches working together to find ways to help undocumented immigrants and show them pathways to hope, despite the mountainous antagonism that oppresses them every day.  It’s about getting together on a Sunday morning and celebrating peace, despite the war cries for more killing and death.  The Easter message of resurrection and new life is a powerful thing; powerful enough to transform the world, because, as Cleopas and the other disciple said to their friends upon seeing the risen Christ, “Christ the Lord is risen indeed!”  Killing and death are no more!  Do you hear this good news?  Is it burning in your heart this morning?

I want to do something simple that we did this past Wednesday night together in worship.  Hear these words and pay close attention to the emotions and feelings and thoughts that surface for you when I say them:

Christ is risen indeed!

Christ is risen indeed!

Christ is risen indeed!

Let those emotions and those feelings and those thoughts wash over you.  Now, pay close attention to the emotions and feelings and thoughts that surface for you when I say these words:

Osama Bin Laden is dead.

Osama Bin Laden is dead.

Osama Bin Laden is dead.

Which emotions and feelings and thoughts are greater?  The ones that respond to the news of death or the ones that respond to the blessings of new life?  The tension that exists between the two is the reason why we come to church.

We come to church not to escape the reality of death, but to be transformed by the message of new life, despite the reality of death.  We come to church to be in purposeful communion with one another, so that our friendship in this place would give us new life, revitalized hopes, new visions for how this world can and should be by the grace of God.  We come to church to be in community with each other as a fellowship of those who believe in the power of the Easter message, so that our hearts would burn anew within us and inspire us, invite us, challenge us to transform this world by creating peace.

So, on this Mother’s Day, I want to share with you “The Mother’s Day Proclamation,” by Julia Ward Howe:

Arise, then, women of this day!

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

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

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: “Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

That sounds an awful lot like Jesus’ fervent prayer to God when he prayed, “That they may all be one.”  That’s the prayer that our denomination is founded on.  The United Church of Christ is built on that prayer, that vision, that hope from Jesus.

So, as we go from this place with burning hearts, transformed by the message of resurrection and new life, let’s try to answer that prayer for Jesus’ sake.  This week, as the world’s fascination with killing and death lingers on, say something, write something, do something for peace.  The world will not know that it has been redeemed by the love of God until God’s redeemed peopled start believing that for themselves and start acting like a redeemed people.  So live your life faithfully, truthfully and boldly as one that has been blessed with resurrection and new life.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Reflections on the 30 Hour Famine”

Delivered by Cain Miller and Jonathan Chapman
Sunday, May 2, 2011
Matthew 25:34-40 and Isaiah 58:1-9

Transcript not available…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Recognizing Christ”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Jeremiah 31:1-6 and John 20:1-18

The Jeremiah text for this morning seizes me.  It grabs my attention.  Mainly this verse: “Again you shall plant vineyards upon the mountains of Samaria; the planters shall plant, and shall enjoy the fruit…”  I’m relishing in this good news more than I typically would because of the fact that we haven’t had rain for so long around here.  “The planters shall plant, and shall enjoy the fruit.”  That sounds refreshing to me.

I planted a Clementine tree a few weeks back.  It’s supposed to give me those tiny oranges that taste really sweet, like an apricot.  It’s green and budding.  But some of its leaves are wilting.  The arid conditions are threatening it.

A few yards away from that Clementine tree is what’s left of my lemon tree.  The freeze two years ago drove a dagger in that tree, and the long, hard freeze from this past January and February twisted that dagger.  That lemon tree went from a chest-high tree yielding 30-plus lemons every December to an ankle-high shrub.

One tree threatened by dryness and heat, struggling to survive; the other nearly destroyed by the bitter cold, but still they reach for the sun.  Still they live.  And so I water them.  And I take comfort in the provisions of God: “The planters shall plant, and shall enjoy the fruit.”

I look at those green bursts of hope in my backyard and I recognize more poignantly than I might otherwise the blessings of new life.  And when I hear this Scripture from Jeremiah that Judy read for us about vineyards and planting and fruit, I recognize those blessings of new life all the more as seen through the eyes of my neighbor.

This is what I mean: The youth group and I watched a video a couple of weeks ago about a town in Northern Kenya called Kerkorisogol.  It’s named after a river that hasn’t flowed in over a year and a half because of drought.  The reporter for this story caught on camera a moment when it rained for just a few minutes in Kerkerisogol, and the people poured out of their homes and into the streets and danced and danced and danced.  The reporter caught another moment when the people got together for a worship service in a small church.  They took up an offering and counted it: $3.50.  They held this offering up in the air and they danced and they danced and they danced.  “Praise God!”

Here’s a report, a video, that’s trying to expose the atrocities of world hunger and magnify the death that’s going on in Northern Kenya, but the people in the video just celebrate in the blessings of new life.  I wonder, if they can recognize so much life underneath layers and layers of death, how much new life are we missing?  How many blessings of new life are we overlooking from our perspective?

My brother, Ben, and I were on a mission trip in Juarez, Mexico about ten years ago.  Our group had set up a free health clinic in a church in the middle of nowhere.  People were gathering from all over the place to get access to medicine and healthcare.  Inside the church, little children sang and played games, did arts and crafts.  Outside, my brother and I played football with ten or so boys, all of them about 10 or 11 years old.  It was blazing hot outside, and the ground was nothing but dirt and rocks.  And at one point the football rolled under the church van that we’d taken out there.  Ben and I just stood there going, “What now?”  And immediately, all of the boys ran over to the van, jumped under it, and squirmed their way to the football; dust is going everywhere.  And finally, one of the boys popped out from under the van.  He had a huge smile on his face and he was holding up that football like a parent holding their newborn child in the window of a hospital nursery: “Look what I’ve got!”  That boy got Ben’s and my attention as if to say, “It may be hotter than Georgia asphalt out here, my mom may be inside with my infant sister trying to figure out why she can’t produce breast milk to feed her, these may be the only clothes I own and my body may be covered in scratches and bruises now, but there’s a football under your church van.  There’s new life under your church van.  Can’t you see it?”  Can we?

When Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb, she’s looking for Jesus, and he’s there; but she doesn’t recognize him.  He calls her name, and she mistakes him for the gardener.  Mary is looking for a dead Jesus.  No wonder she doesn’t recognize the living Christ.

On this Easter Sunday morning, let’s acknowledge how much we are like Mary of Magdala when she goes seeking the dead among the living; because if all that we see is death, how can we ever recognize life?  If all that we recognize is death, how will we ever notice the blessings of new life?  If all that we allow to fill and consume our souls is death, then what room is left for this thing that we celebrate today: resurrection?

Some of you have heard of Rob Bell.  He’s the evangelical Christian minister of Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan.  They draw over 7,000 people to their worship services every Sunday.  Rob Bell is making headlines these days because of a book he just produced where he argues the possibility that hell doesn’t exist.  Time magazine had a feature article about him a couple of weeks ago called “Hell’s Bell.”  The article talked about how Pastor Bell got the idea for his book after his church hosted an art exhibit that included a quote from Gandhi.  Apparently, someone left a note next to the Gandhi quotation that read, “Reality check: He’s in hell.”  And Bell thought, “Really?  Gandhi’s in hell?  We have confirmation of this?  Somebody knows this?  And somebody decided to take on the responsibility of letting the rest of us know?”

Bell’s book is called Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.  Sounds good, but not to Bell’s peers.  Mars Hill Bible Church is losing church members.  Bell’s colleagues are dismissing him left and right.  After the book was released, a conservative Evangelical pastor named John Piper tweeted, “Farewell Rob Bell.”

Why all the fuss?  Why all the anger over the suggestion that hell doesn’t exist?  Maybe it’s because we’re afraid of losing the only thing that we know.  Put very simply, hell is the cavernous confines of death; and if you take away the only thing that we see, if you take away the only thing that we notice, if you take away the only thing that we obsess about in life, if you take away the only thing that we are able to recognize, then what’s left?  It frightens us to even think about.  God, what’s out there for us without death and hell?  And the living Christ answers, “Everything.”

G. K. Chesterson tells a story about St. Francis of Assisi.  St. Francis lived in a time when leprosy was as palpably terrifying as HIV/AIDS in modern day Africa.  Leprosy scared St. Francis so much that he cringed at even the sight of a leper.  But one day there was a man with leprosy walking up the road toward St. Francis.  St. Francis had the easy option of ignoring this man, but he thought twice and got over himself.  He walked right up to the man, threw his arms around him in a warm embrace, and even kissed the man, a sign of loving friendship.  And then St. Francis moved on down the road.  But after walking only a few yards, St. Francis looked back.  The man with leprosy had vanished; nowhere to be found.  From then on St. Francis was convinced that the man he had embraced and kissed was Christ.  The leper he had seen was none other than Christ himself.

All that St. Francis could recognize in a leper was his leprosy; in other words, all that St. Francis could see in another human being was death.  But when he set aside his limited vision of only being able to see death, suddenly he recognized the living Christ.  Do we recognize Christ in others?  Do we recognize Christ in the modern day lepers pushed to the margins of society?  Or let me ask us this: Do we recognize Christ in ourselves?  Maybe that’s a more foundational question for us to ask: Do we recognize Christ in ourselves?

Mary Magdalene may have gone looking for the dead Jesus.  She may have been unable to recognize the living Christ; but here’s what’s even more powerful about this story: Despite her most desperate efforts, Mary Magdalene didn’t find Jesus; Jesus found her.  The living Christ found Mary at that tomb and ripped her attention away from the death of that scene.  The living Christ found Mary and seized her attention with the blessings of new life.  And once she received that new life, once she was able to recognize her Christ, Mary got out of that tomb and started running.  She started running to tell the disciples what she had seen and nothing could stop her.  That’s resurrection.

Mary’s story is our story.  Jesus has found us.  And the Spirit of Christ lives in each and every one of us, no matter who we are or where we come from or what we’ve done or what we’ve left undone or what this world has accused us of; so, what’s stopping us?  What’s keeping us from running full speed toward the promises of God?  What fragments of death and hell are swimming in our souls that we can’t let go of?

Are we afraid that we are less worthy in God’s sight because someone has mistreated us or because someone has scorned us or because someone has abused us in some way?  Do we think we’re damaged goods?  Are we afraid that we’re less than because we lost the job opportunity or because the project was a failure or because the marriage fell apart or because our parents don’t recognize our accomplishments or because our children don’t appreciate us?  Are we afraid that we will never measure up to the blessings that others seem to deserve in this world because we differ somehow from what is heralded as “normal”?  Are we afraid that because someone cannot bring themselves to forgive us for something hurtful that we did or said in the past toward them that we are altogether and forever unforgiveable?  Are we afraid that the Scriptures that speak about God being for us are really for everybody else but us?  If hell exists, then what I want to tell you this morning is that not being able to let go of fears like these is hell.  That is hell.  That is death.  And if we release all of that death from our weary souls, then what is left for us to obsess about?  What is left for us to think about?  What is left for us to dedicate our lives to?  Everything.  That’s resurrection.

When we look in the mirror these days, are we looking at the person we are trying so desperately to be in order to make things right in our lives, and are we judging ourselves based on that premise, that agenda?  Or are we looking at ourselves and recognizing Christ within us, Christ who has found us, Christ who loves us, Christ who will never let us go, Christ in whom and through whom we can do everything?  Are we looking at ourselves and recognizing the power of the resurrection?

If all we recognize in this world is death, then there is no room for life.  God is relying on us to be living proof of the resurrection, living proof of the eternal hope of Easter.  So, children of the resurrection, let go of the folly of death that you would recognize the blessings of new life.  Be seized by the resurrection message, so that you might devote your life to feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, comforting afflicted, bringing sight to the blind ignorance of this world and setting the marginalized captives of society free.  Be seized by the resurrection message, so that you might devote your life to establishing justice that will not stand for the verbal, psychological or physical abuse of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer people.  Be seized by the resurrection message, so that you might devote your life to raising awareness about the need for environmental stewardship and the just dissemination of food and clean drinking water.  Be seized by the resurrection message, so that you might devote your life to ushering in the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.

The living Christ found Mary and seized her attention with the blessings of new life, and from that point forward she went out from the tomb of death running toward hope.  Well, Mother Theresa says that we are to be the hands and the feet of Christ in this world.  So, Easter people, let us recognize the presence of Christ in ourselves.  Let us recognize the power of the resurrection in our own lives so that the world’s attention might be seized by the love of God working in us and through us; because these days all of us need a refreshed perspective of what God’s justice and mercy and love look like.  These days, we all need to witness God’s blessings of new life.  These days, we all need to be reminded that sometimes we need to lose everything if we are going to be free to do anything.  Alleluia.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“A Palm Sunday Reality Check”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 and Matthew 21:1-11

I couldn’t believe what I heard on the radio a couple of weeks ago.  NPR doesn’t give much attention to sports news coverage, but they make it a point to cover the big stories: the World Series, the Super Bowl, Tiger Woods crashing his car…stuff like that.  But what’s this?  The news on the radio talked about the Texas A&M women’s basketball team making it to the national championship game.  And it wasn’t just a quick headline, it was a full story.  They talked about the players in depth, and they played sound bytes from their press conference after that game where they’d beaten Stanford in the Final Four matchup.  Here were the Lady Ags from College Station on National Public Radio saying, “We goin’ to the ship!  We goin’ to the ship!”

On the day of the big game, people in this town were wearing much more maroon than usual.  And a lot of folks had black plus signs marked on the back of their hands.  I didn’t know about this, but apparently Coach Blair encourages his team to put a plus sign on the back of their hands so that they will focus on only positive thoughts.  Someone I know who works on campus was talking about how she didn’t know about this, so when she saw all these students walking around with plus signs marked on the back of their hands she thought, “Must have been a blowout party last night!”

And then it happened: the Texas A&M women’s basketball team beat Notre Dame to win the national championship.  That next morning I listened to the radio again, wondering what they might say.  Again, another full story.  Here was Danielle Adams on national radio talking about how she just stayed focused; that was the key.  And as I listened to this story and reflected on the excitement surrounding it, I thought, “This is just unreal.”

T.S. Eliot once wrote, “Humankind cannot bear much reality.”  So true.  There is only so much news about poverty and world hunger we can take; 14% of Americans on food stamps, 2,100 children dying everyday from malnourishment.  We can’t bear it.  There is only so much news about war and violence in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Pakistan that we can take; militarization in Iran and North Korea and along our Texas/Mexico border.  We can’t bear it.  There is only so much news we can take about the insanity of politics surrounding federal and state and university budgets; higher taxes for the working poor, the dismantling of education.  We can’t bear it.  It’s too much reality for us to bear.

So, for the sake of our own sanity, thank goodness we can escape reality, if only for a few moments, at the football stadium or the basketball arena or the soccer field or the baseball diamond.  We need moments like the Lady Ags winning the national championship and the radio prominently covering it so that we can cathartically release the heavy burden of reality that plagues our souls into the euphoria of the unreal.

That’s what’s going on at the gates of Jerusalem when Jesus enters the city on a colt and donkey.  Jews are shouting.  The disciples are screaming.  Palm branches are waving.  Garments are making their way from people’s backs onto the ground.  Cries of ‘hosanna’ are filling the air.  A supposed savior is riding into town to save the people from the oppression of Roman rule.  This moment is unreal.

Understand: The people needed that unreal moment.  Understand that we all need momentary escapes from reality.  It’s one of those essential components that fall into the equation of there being a time for everything under heaven.  It’s an ecclesiastical thing.  But Jesus recognizes how precious this unreal moment is and he uses it to usher in the stark truth of a new reality, no matter how challenging it might be to face that new reality.

We all know about Pontius Pilate, the guy who asks Jesus, “Are you a king?” and, “What is truth?”  (A girl in my old youth group used to pronounce his name Pontius Pill-á-tay.)  It was customary for Pontius Pilate to enter the city like Jesus does here, but Pilate’s triumphal entry would have been militaristic, with war horse and chariot and weapons.  And he would do this grand entrance in the days before Passover to remind the people that Rome was in charge.  Entering the city like this at Passover was a powerful show of authority and might, because Passover was a celebration of the liberation of the Jews from slavery in Egypt.  So, when Jesus subverts this typical show of power by riding a colt and donkey, he reminds all those people that Rome was the new Egypt, and the Emperor was the new Pharaoh.

Do you see what Jesus is doing in this unreal moment?  Jesus uses this unreal moment to deliver the crowd into a new reality.  Jesus utilizes this unreal moment to usher the people into God’s reality, God’s kingdom reality, that says with unapologetic candor, “You’re life is linked with the lives of those who went before you, those who suffered oppression, who braved the unknown and who were delivered into freedom before you.  Your life is connected to the truth that requires us at times to enter into the darkest valleys of suffering if God has any chance of delivering us into true freedom, true liberation from the very real things from which we are trying to escape all the time.”  That’s the paradox of Palm Sunday.

The arts are an escape from reality.  We can get lost in a song or a painting or a play or a monologue.  But it’s when art amplifies reality so much that it alters our perspectives of that reality that art is truly done well.  When the unreal medium of art exposes reality so much that we take a look at ourselves and are penitent in some areas of our lives, that’s when art is really done well.  But when art lingers in the unreal, when it escapes from reality and doesn’t come back, it’s tasteless, it’s juiceless, it goes nowhere.  That’s why folks can argue that 80’s music is so terrible.  (I’d disagree with them by and large, but when you listen to a song like “White Lines,” if anything comes to mind aside from roller skating and drug use, then you are truly a progressive artist.)

A better example would be the Victorian editions of Shakespeare.  Peter Gomes talks about this.  The Victorians in their optimistic moralism couldn’t bear the thought of Shakespeare’s corrupted sense of reality having the last word and influencing the minds of the young and innocent; so they changed the tragic endings of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet and Macbeth and so forth.  The Victorian version of Romeo and Juliet has the lovers suddenly recovering in the end.  Not only that, but they are reconciled and their families are reconciled and they live happily ever after.  Bleh!

Is the Texas A&M women’s basketball program going to live happily ever after?  I’m not talking about them going on to build a dynasty.  I’m talking about the future of how their program is perceived and how women’s college basketball is perceived.  The Lady Ags winning the national championship was a glorious moment, and the coverage of their victory seemed unreal.  But Coach Blair seized the euphoria of that moment to draw attention to a greater reality: the stark reality that women’s basketball is not getting the attention and respect that it deserves.  That’s the reality that is perhaps, as T.S. Eliot would say, too much for us to bear.

That’s the kind of reality check Jesus is exposing us to in the Palm Sunday message.  But facing those true realities is what it takes for us to be Christ-followers, for us to be Christ-imitators whose mission it is to usher in the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.

Two very glorious, unreal things happened on Friday at 12:30pm on Texas A&M campus: GLBT students and straight allies marched across campus and undocumented immigrants spoke from a podium in front of the Sul Ross statue.  Wearing shirts that said, “Gay? Fine By Me,” and holding signs for GLBT advocacy, students and former students and faculty and staff members and parents and children, young and old, marched all across campus, out in the open, celebrating the gifts of sexuality and gender identity.  It looked a lot like a Palm Sunday processional.

And at the same time, roughly a hundred people gathered to hear eight undocumented students and former students from Texas A&M and other Texas universities speak about their experience of being undocumented.  One woman spoke about how she had been living here since she was four years old.  She talked about how she graduated from A&M with a teaching degree, and about how she took the teacher certification exam.  Halfway through taking it she was told that there was no point in her completing the exam, because she didn’t have a social security number.  She wouldn’t be able to teach anyway.  She completed the exam anyway and passed it.  All she wants to do is teach ESL classes to underprivileged children.  The woman spoke with confidence and without apology, and crowds gathered to hear her and others speak.

A friend of mine told me that he left the GLBT march for a while to listen in at the event for undocumented immigrants, and the first thing he saw was a student holding a rainbow-colored sign that said, “Undocumented and queer.”  Oppression knows no hierarchy, nor does the demand for social justice.  And all of this happened Friday where?  On Texas A&M campus in College Station, Texas?  Amazing.  Unreal.

What happened Friday on A&M Campus might sound too good to be true; and so long as we simply smile at the joy of that moment and leave it at that, it will remain something that’s too good to be true.  Moments like those are amazing and unreal, but they call us to face up to greater realities, even if those realities make us uncomfortable or angry.

Remember that after the unreal moment at the city gate when Jesus was ushered into town by the people’s enthusiasm that Jesus marched into the Temple, got angry, threw a fit and overturned all those tables.  He was exposing the reality of the people’s complicity with the Roman power structure.  He was reminding the people that they needed to get back in touch with who they were, to reconnect with the events in history that had made them who they were, and to realize where God was working in their lives.  That must have made the people so angry!  But if that’s what it takes…

Peter Gomes preaches about Palm Sunday like this: He says, “We are to share in suffering, to weep as Jesus wept at the brokenness of what is meant to be whole, to see a thing as it is meant to be and to experience it broken, fractured, and shattered, not just the Savior’s body but the body of the world; to suffer with indignity and inhumanity, to weep at injustice and crime, and violence and deprivation and depravity, to enter into the sorrows of another as if they were our own, because they are our own.”  Do you see how we’re connected to the story of God and God’s people?  Do you see how we are connected to each other?  Do you see this kingdom of God reality?

Here’s what Palm Sunday means for us: Jesus is standing at the gate of our hearts, at the gate of our consciousness, at the gate of our life’s direction; and Jesus wants in.  Jesus wants to come in and expose all the disconnected areas of our souls; those areas of our lives that have become disconnected from the injustices of this world because it’s too much reality for us to bear.  And Jesus wants to reconnect us with the life-giving, still-speaking, still-creating story of God so that we would be reconnected, interconnected with one another.  “Return to me,” says our God.  Jesus wants to carry us through the unreal celebration of Palm Sunday and usher us into a kingdom reality that says, “You!  These stories about prophets and kings and deliverance and redemption and injustice bowing at the feet of love, these stories are not tall tales.  These stories are your stories.  They’re not just connected to you by church tradition, they’re about you; they’re all about you.  And when you find your life, your self, in the pages of God’s story and in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, you are connected to a reality that is powerful enough to change your life and change this world through your life.”  Do you see it?  Do you see this kingdom of God reality?

Lent is drawing to a close.  Holy Week begins today.  But if we don’t open our eyes to the reality of Jesus, then Holy Week is just a bunch of pomp and circumstance leading up to a charade.  Taking an honest look at our lives might bring us discomfort; it might even cause us to suffer.  Considering the possibility that we’re complicit in certain worldly injustices might make us angry.  But, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The truth will set you free, as Jesus said.  But first it will make you very angry!”  If that’s what it takes…  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“A Sense of Urgency”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Dan De Leon
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Ezekiel 37:1-14; John 11:1-16

I want to tell you about Dee Dee and Gregg.  Dee Dee and Gregg are friends of mine that I know from a church where I served the youth ministry.  They’re proud parents to three children, two sons and a daughter: Travis, Trent and Tessa.  When they were expecting their firstborn, Gregg was working at a job where a lot of people relied on his leadership to do their jobs.  There was a lot of promise in this position for Gregg at this point in his life; a lot of promise for his family-to-be.  It was an anxious time for him.  And it was an anxious time for Dee Dee, whose tummy was getting larger and larger with each passing month.  But one day that anxiousness turned into urgency.

Dee Dee was alone at home when her water broke.  She knew where Gregg was: He was in a meeting with his co-workers.  Dee Dee was able to make her way to the phone.  She called Gregg and his secretary promptly put him on the phone.  Dee Dee said, “Honey!  Thank goodness I got through to you.   My water just broke.  It’s time.”  And Gregg said, “Okay, honey.  I’m in the middle of a really important meeting.  Can I call you right back?”  Needless to say, Gregg has yet to live that one down.

On the other end of the phone, Dee Dee proceeded to justifiably raise her voice and sharpen her tone.  Gregg’s co-workers watched him go pale as he listened to his wife say that if he didn’t get home immediately that the future of their physical intimacy in any capacity would be in serious doubt.  Gregg, responding to this sense of urgency, left the meeting and raced home.  There was a new life coming into the world after all: a little child.  Nothing should keep a parent from that kind of urgency.

Jesus encounters a sense of urgency in our lesson from John’s gospel.  The difference is that it doesn’t have to do with new life.  It has to do with anxiety about death.  Mary’s brother Lazarus is sick.  So she and her sister, Martha, send word to Jesus.  They tell him, “This man Lazarus, the one you love, is gravely ill.”  It’s an urgent matter that has to do with someone near and dear to Jesus’ heart.  But what does Jesus do when he hears about it?  He stays put for two more days.

Seems pretty cold.  Surely he had other requests for healing that he had to turn down.  But it doesn’t just look like Jesus is being indifferent toward Mary and Martha.  Jesus comes across as being cold, because Lazarus is someone Jesus supposedly loves.

At Theology on Tap Tuesday night we talked about relationships and the Bible.  We set the stage by talking about Jonathan and David, and about how their souls were bound together.  That’s how Scripture defines the relationships we have with the ones we love.  We love our partner, our spouse, our parent, our children, our siblings, our friends, our pets.  And that love establishes a bond that creates a sense of urgency when our loved ones get sick; specifically, in contrast with Lazarus, when our loved ones are dying.

It’s in a spirit of urgency that we are faced with difficult decisions, like whether to move the person we love into assisted living, whether to go with the feeding tube or not, whether to give that risky surgery a try, or whether to contact hospice.  Often times, in those moments of urgency, our decisions are based on fear.  We are afraid to lose our loved one.  We are insecure about things changing.

That’s what’s going on in the vision of the valley of dry bones.  Israel has been displaced from their Temple; their place of worship, the place where their community gathers and forms their identity.  Not only that, but the Temple has been destroyed; collateral damage in war over territory.  So, the Israelites have no hope.  Their way of life as they know it is dead.

The dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision represent Israel’s hope being dried up.  But when God’s priest, Ezekiel, speaks, new life is breathed into those dry bones.  And God’s message is essentially, “What is your problem?  You don’t need that Temple to worship your God?  You don’t need that Temple to have an identity as a people.  You don’t need that Temple to have a relationship with the Divine.  I, the Lord your God, am always with you!”  The Israelites were so sad over losing the Temple that they let fear determine their entire outlook.  They were afraid that they had nothing left, nothing left to live for.  No wonder they were so…dead; just a valley of dry bones.

But listen to this: There’s an old Buddhist teaching that says, “Hopelessness is not the opposite of hope.  Fear is.”  The Israelites are urgent about preserving their way of life, because they are afraid that without the Temple they have nothing left to live for.  Mary and Martha are urgent about Jesus coming to visit Lazarus, because they are afraid of what might happen if he doesn’t, that Lazarus might die.  But Jesus is urgent about removing any obstacle that stands between him and Jerusalem, because he is filled with hope for the Easter blessings of resurrection and new life.

Hear these words from Hebrews 12: Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.  And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.  For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Do you see how Jesus’ sense of urgency differs from the Israelites’ sense of urgency and Mary and Martha’s sense of urgency?  Do you see how Jesus’ understanding of urgency stands in stark contrast with what we get so urgent about in our lives because we are so afraid of things dying?  So insecure about things changing?  With two weeks left before Easter, I’d be remiss if I didn’t remind us that Easter is all about things changing, transforming, resurrecting; and death has no part in it when all is said and done.

There’s a lot of urgency over our nation’s budget and talk of the government shutting down, but so much of that urgency is based on fear; fear of how our identity might shift, fear of different directions we might go in, fear of who will take the blame when it’s done, insecurity over what might change.  And I know that some of that urgency is based on practical realities that need to be acknowledged.  What I’m saying is that no matter what decisions are made, when all is said and done, many things will not have changed: militarization and war will still be sacred cows, children all over the world will still die by the hundreds and thousands daily from the effects of malnutrition and hunger-related diseases, women throughout the world will still suffer oppression and violence at the hands of cultural patriarchy, so much of which is informed by religion and the Bible, and fear will still maneuver our public discourse.

The situation isn’t hopeless, it’s just hamstrung by fear; fear of things dying, insecurity about things changing.  But here’s hope: The East German dissident, Rudolf Bahro, writes, “When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure.”  That’s what new life looks like.  That’s what resurrection looks like.  That’s what Jesus’ understanding of urgency looks like.  And that’s certainly what the disciples who followed Jesus were all about: Not being afraid to be insecure.  Not being afraid of the unknown.  That’s the stuff that leads to new life.

How many of you have seen Finding Nemo?  Show of hands.  Keep your hands up if you’ve seen Finding Nemo 50 times or more.  Amazing parents and parent figures, all of you.  Treasures in heaven!

There’s a scene in Finding Nemo where our heroes, Dori and Marlin, Ellen Degeneress and Albert Brooks; these two little fish are stuck inside a great whale.  (Biblical parallel!)  Dori communicates to the whale that Marlin needs to get back out there and find his lost son, Nemo, and the whale communicates back that they need to let go.  Dori and Marlin and hanging onto something inside the whale’s mouth for dear life, because if they let go they’ll fall down into black void of his stomach.  So, Dori says to Marlin, “He says, ‘It’s time to let go.’”  Marlin says, “How do you know something bad isn’t going to happen?”  And Dori says, “I don’t.”  Dori and Marlin let go and the whale shoots them out into the open water.  New life.

When it comes to urgency and our fear of things dying and our insecurity about the unknown, I’ve got something I hope we might think about together: Mary and Martha view Lazarus as dying, and that informs their sense of urgency.  Jesus, on the other hand, views Lazarus as merely sleeping.  Okay.  But inversely, how about the things that we celebrate?  What’s the contrast between our view of vitality and life and Jesus’ view of vitality and life?  As I mentioned in last week’s sermon, we have a lot to be thankful for and a lot to celebrate at Friends Congregational Church.  But think about this: What if there are areas of our church’s life, what if there are parts of our shared identity as a community of faith that we celebrate as being alive and vital and “all that,” but those same things that we celebrate appear to Jesus to be just a valley of dry bones?  In other words, in our urgency to be sure and thank God for all that is good in this place, maybe Jesus is asking with equal urgency, “What is missing from your vitality?”  When it comes to living out our vision of offering God’s extravagant welcome to all, what is missing?

Karen Georgia Thompson is the UCC’s minister for ecumenical and interfaith relations.  She puts it like this: “Where are the places of hopelessness and despair among us?  What is the word we bring to communities that are devastated and seem beyond repair?  What are the conditions that exist for communities today?  Is there room for life among us?  Can these dry bones live?”

Being an Open and Affirming congregation, another way for us to ask Thompson’s questions is like this: “If we, as a community of faith, are truly open to everyone, then are we adequately affirming the diversity of life and the blessings of God’s gifts that come as a result of that openness?”  Ignoring those questions just throws more dry bones into the church graveyard.

Spiritual growth and change will require us to embrace insecurity and set aside our fears of the unknown, because if we follow Jesus then there’s no telling what will new life will flood into this place, flood into our lives, flood into our souls.  Jesus’ only sense of urgency was about ushering in resurrection and new life, and just like Dee Dee’s phone call with Gregg adamantly reminded him, when it comes to blessings like that, you’d better be ready to move mountains out of your way to usher them in; you’d better be ready to throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, you’d better be willing to remove anything that stands between you and the unknown blessings of Easter, or death might get the best of you.

I’ll leave you with this: Wednesday morning I woke up earlier than usual to get some work done before getting out of town.  I had to defend my doctoral project at the seminary in Fort Worth later that day.  I’d been preparing for this day for seven years.  Stacy had to get to work, too, and the kids had to get to daycare and kindergarten.  But during the night, Stacy’s back had popped.  She slept on it wrong, so now she was in a lot of pain and moving slowly.  I raced to the kitchen to get breakfast ready for everyone, but the cupboard was bare; no coffee either.  My sense of urgency was increasing.

I ran out to pick up donuts and coffee, and raced back home to find the family barely out of bed with precious minutes to spare before it was time to leave for the day.  Getting more anxious at this point, I nervously blurted out, “I’m late for the biggest day of my life.”  But it wasn’t the biggest day of my life.  I was just so afraid of something going wrong and so unwilling to face my own insecurity about the unknown aspects of the day that I held up a shield of false conviction, refusing to stray from course, clinging to my sense of urgency.

That was when Ruthie, my three-year-old daughter, with a voice as sweet as honey, said to me, “Daddy, will you help me put on my sandals?”  Sure, she’s got me wrapped around her finger; but there was nothing, and I mean nothing, that would stop me from the life-giving tasks of helping her and Mac and Stacy in that moment.  We ate breakfast together, I got the kids to school, Stacy got to work and I got out of town in time to defend my dissertation.  I had planned on reading parts of it one more time before the defense, but that got sidetracked by a little girl snapping me out of it with the sandals hanging off her tiny feet.  I thank God for Ruthie redirecting my sense of urgency and allowing for me to embrace my insecurity about that day.  It made Wednesday more of a blessing for me to receive than a battle for me to fight.

So, what are you so urgent about?  Why?  What is your sense of urgency?  When Mary and Martha’s message about the urgency of Lazarus’ situation reached Jesus, he was two miles away from Jerusalem.  We are two weeks away from Easter.  As we move closer to the cross, what is our sense of urgency?

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“God, Teach Me How to Love You”

Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, April 3, 2011
1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23

The Lord is my shepherd.  I shall not want.  These words from Psalm 23 conjure up different feelings and recollections and images for us.  By and large, Psalm 23 is viewed as a message of comfort and assurance.  But at its core, Psalm 23 is a message about allegiance and trust.

In the ancient Near East, the word ‘shepherd’ implied kingship.  Kings during that time were in the position of providing for their people: making sure that they had homes and food and livelihoods, that their basic human needs were met.  So, the opening lines of Psalm 23 serve as a metaphor for us giving all of our allegiance and trust to God: “The Lord is my shepherd.  I shall not want.”  The entire psalm uses the imagery of a shepherd and his sheep to demonstrate how the Lord provides all of the necessities of life.  All this goes to say that the writer of Psalm 23 is composing a prayer that says, “God, teach me how to love you.  Teach me how to live a God-centered life.  Teach me how to walk in path’s of righteousness for your namesake.  Teach me how to set aside all the powers and principalities of this life so that I can say to the world with all that I am and all that I do, ‘The Lord is my shepherd, my king, my rock and my redeemer, my constant help in times of trouble, my salvation, my strong deliverer.  The Lord is my shepherd, not you!’  God, teach me how to love you.”

This morning we look at Samuel, the high priest of Israel, and we notice that he lives out this prayer in all that he is and all that he does, “God, teach me how to love you.”

I heard a life story that sounded a lot like Samuel’s the other night.  Stacy and the kids and I were having dinner at Chuy’s.  And if you haven’t been to Chuy’s yet, I will warn you that it’s always crowded and they’re constantly playing 80s music.  I never thought I would hear “A View to a Kill” by Duran Duran ever again until I went to Chuy’s the other night.

Mac and Ruthie were a few feet from the table playing with a couple of other kids.  One of the kids was a little girl who looked to be about 18 months old.  She had beautiful brown curly hair and an unstoppable smile.  And she was wearing a red t-shirt that came down to her knees that had big white block letters on it that said, “Teach me how to protest.”  I wondered if the shirt had to do with the protests going on in Wisconsin over the state budget and education; so, I commented to the little girl’s mom at the table next to us, “I love that shirt!”  And sure enough the little girl’s mom said, “Yeah, I grew up in Wisconsin and my family still lives there.  My mom sent me that shirt to give to her.”  I said, “Oh, Wisconsin.  A lot of crazy stuff is going on up there.”  And she held up her hands, kind of waving off that conversation, and said, “I don’t talk like to talk about that.  People around here tend to get annoyed when I share my opinions about all that.”

I respectfully nodded my head and noticed that the margarita sitting in front of this former Wisconsinite parent was full.  And sure enough, when that margarita glass was empty a few minutes later, she had a few things to say.  She said, “You know, people love to tell me their opinions about all the rallies and protests going on up there, and a lot of the things they say are so rude.  People talk so matter-of-factly about their political beliefs and about how those people up there are just making a scene, and it makes me so sad, because they’re talking about people I know.  It’s not their opinions that bother me so much as the antagonistic way that they express them and who they’re talking about.  They’re talking about teachers who helped raise me.  They’re talking about friends of mine living there who are concerned about their children’s future.  They’re talking about members of my family.  They don’t realize how much it hurts.”

This parent went on to talk about how she’d been raised in Madison, and about how her husband’s job and her job had caused them to move to different areas of the country for a few years, and now they were settled in College Station.  She loves living here and the life she and her family are building together, but she still mourns over the way of life back in Wisconsin from which she is now displaced.  She mourns over all those promises and all that hope that nurtured her all those years that she now sees being described in media stories as chaos and disorder.  Looking at her little daughter’s red and white t-shirt that said, “Teach me how to protest,” I thought about how this parent’s life still speaks about Samuel’s life.

Here’s the back story: God, appoints Samuel as the high priest of Israel.  Sounds good, and when the time comes for Samuel to anoint a king of Israel, one of his sons sounds like the perfect patriarchal choice.  But the Israelites rise up against Samuel’s sons.  They said that Samuel’s sons were so corrupt that they had no business ruling over Israel, so Samuel set aside all of those hopes and all of that promise and turned to God for guidance.  God instructed Samuel to anoint Saul as King of Israel; new hopes, new promises.  But then God instructs Saul to consume the Amalekites.  The Amalekites oppose Israel after their deliverance out of Egypt, so God tells Saul to go scorched earth on these guys; to wipe them out entirely, livestock and everything.  Saul obeys God, but only to an extent.  He overthrows the Amalekites, but he claims their livestock for Israel and makes the Amalekite king his slave.  This causes God to tell Samuel to dismiss Saul as King of Israel.  It breaks Samuel’s heart all over again.  But before Samuel can mourn this disappointment, God tells Samuel to get up and go to Bethlehem to find a new king for Israel.  The story starts out with God asking Samuel, “How long will you mourn?”  It’s almost like God’s taunting Samuel in the midst of his sadness: “Yeah, Samuel, I had to let Saul go.  Boo hoo!  He messed up.  Now, how long are you going to cry about it?  Get moving.  Go to Bethlehem.  We have work to do!”

Why is it that some of the biggest challenges in our lives land in our lap when we are at our most emotionally vulnerable?  We lose a job and we are immediately challenged to find a new one.  A relationship ends, and we are immediately challenged to heal and move on.  An enemy wrongs us, slaps us on the cheek, and Jesus immediately challenges us to offer them the other cheek, to forgive them.  Why the taunts, God?

I was at a tailor getting some clothes fitted the other day, and there was a boy who looked to be about 19 years old, 20 tops.  He was wearing a maroon t-shirt that said “beat the [antithesis of heaven] outta t.u.,” and over that t-shirt he was trying on a suit.  He had a sheepish look on his face like he didn’t know what he was doing.  Later, he was in the changing room next to me, and I heard him talking to his parents, and my heart went out to him.  He said, “Dad, I understand, but I just can’t do this.  I’ve got to get out of town now.  Yes sir.  Okay.  I’ll do it.  Mom, please stop.  Mom, no.  No, Mom, I can’t even talk about this right now.  I have to go!  Yes, ma’am.  Okay.  I’ll do it.”  I could be wrong, but that boy could have been heading to a funeral.

Why the tedious challenges when there is so much weighing on our hearts?  Why the taunts, God?  That might be what it sounds like, but God isn’t telling Samuel to get over it.  God isn’t telling Samuel that it’s a waste of time to mourn.  Remember the words of Jesus, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”  When God tells Samuel to get up and go to Bethlehem and God asks Samuel, “How long will you mourn?” God, our shepherd, is demonstrating assurance.  God is saying, “Whatever challenges you have to face right now, you may be mourning and feeling like you can’t do it, but know this: that I am with you.  I am your rod and your staff and I will comfort you.  I am your shepherd, and I will provide you with what you need to get through this.”

So, Samuel goes to Bethlehem and he invites Jesse and his sons to a sacrificial meal.  Little do they know that he’s looking for a new king of Israel.  Samuel asks Jesse to present his sons to him.  And the first son he presents is Eliab; rugged, built, resembling Saul in stature.  Surely, this is who God intends for Samuel to anoint as the new king.  But God says, “Nope, not him.  No more tall guys.  People look at outward appearances, but I look at the heart,” says the Lord.

Now, this is a beautiful message.  It’s a wonderful sentiment that’s been preached a million times in a million pulpits: that God doesn’t look at outward appearances, but God looks at the heart, especially when it comes to seeking out leaders.  This is an important message, because we want the leaders in our churches to represent the diversity of God.  We proclaim the need for all of God’s children to represent the church, the need for our pulpits to be filled with all walks of life.  That message is there, and it’s crucial that we hear it, but the story doesn’t stop there.

Samuel’s story is about to end.  His whole life since being appointed High Priest of Israel has been spent in a wilderness of mourning, displaced from the hopes and promises of the past.  But Samuel gives all of his allegiance and trust to God, and Samuel finds new promises and fresh hopes.  Samuel finds Jesse’s son David, an unlikely shepherd boy, and Samuel anoints him King of Israel.  He lives out the prayer that says, “God, teach me how to love you,” and a boy shepherd from Bethlehem is anointed king.

So, when the woman at Chuy’s told me about her wilderness journey and the mourning she had endured, I looked at her little girl’s t-shirt that said, “Teach me how to protest,” and I thought, “Watch out!  This little girl’s going to have something to say, by God.  This little girl might just change the world.  You never know.”  What I do know is that when that little girl’s mother receives a gift from her mother of a red-and-white toddler t-shirt with a message of hope written on it, and she puts that t-shirt on her daughter, she is rising to the challenges that flank her life despite her mourning and relying on new promises and fresh hopes to see her through to the next chapter in the journey.  That’s what faith looks like.  And for us, that’s what putting our allegiance and our trust in God looks like.  That’s what a life guided by Psalm 23 looks like.

At Friends Congregational Church, these are days of change.  These are days of envisioning new promises and fresh hopes.  And what Psalm 23 and Samuel’s story teach us is that so long as we put our allegiance and trust in God, we will be delivered into the next chapter of this journey, and we will receive the blessings of those new promises and those fresh hopes.

But not if we go the way of Saul.  Saul worried too much.  He deviated from God’s path and missed the mark as a result of it.  We might suffer the same fate if we veer away from the Good Shepherd.  If, in these days of promise and hope, we obsess over how many people are coming to worship services, or what kind of people might start coming to our church as we grow, or if we worry about whether we are raising enough money in our capital campaign, or how our traditions might shift to form new ones, then we will go the way of Saul and be dismissed.  We’ll be left with a spiritual mansion with nothing inside of it.  Instead we have to pray ceaselessly, “God, teach me how to love you.  God, teach me how to live a life centered on you.  For you are my shepherd, and by your blessings I shall not want.”

Look at our past.  We prayed, “God, teach me how to love you,” and Earth Day came to be in this community.  It all started in our parking lot out there.

We prayed, “God, teach me how to love you,” and the Friends Church Choir was formed.  There is a ministry seated on those risers over there that gives just as much life to all of us seated out there as it does to the people singing up there.

We prayed, “God, teach me how to love you,” and an Open and Affirming Statement was born.  There’s no way to measure how much we continue to be blessed by that even in this very moment in this very room.  Praise God.

We prayed, “God, teach me how to love you,” and a Habitat House was built.  We pooled our resources of time and money and hard labor, and now a family in our community has a home.  Praise God.

We prayed, “God, teach me how to love you,” and we became the first church to do a Family Promise ministry host week in this community.  We realized that this gift called the church is truly meant to be claimed by God’s children living on the margins of society; the people Jesus was most strongly drawn toward.  Praise God.

We prayed, “God, teach me how to love you,” and a ministry advocating for undocumented immigrants in our community began.  People from around our community gathered in this place for presentations and discussions about immigration, and now we are on the cusp of starting a program that will provide services to undocumented immigrants in Bryan-College Station who are forced to live in the shadows.  Praise God.

We prayed, “God, teach me how to love you,” and our youth group raised funds to battle world hunger.  Two years ago the young people of this church participated in World Vision’s 30-Hour Famine, fasting and raising money in an effort to make a difference in the lives of children who suffer every day from the effects of malnutrition and hunger-related diseases; and at the end of this month they’re going to do it again, and I know that they’re going to make even more of a difference this time around.  Praise God.

We have so much to be thankful for; so many reasons to give our allegiance and our trust to God.  And if we are about this in all that we do in this church and in our vocations and in our relationships and in our lives, then surely  goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our life, and we will dwell together in the house of the Lord forever.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Divine Disruptions: A Sermon Using Queer Biblical Criticism”

Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Exodus 17:1-7 and Luke 7:36-50

I used to work in bars.  I started out as a bar back when I was nineteen: washing glasses, filling the wells with ice, restocking everything.  And eventually I became a bartender.  But no matter what your position was in the bar—tender, wait staff, bouncer, bar back—when the clock struck 2am, every employee’s top priority was getting folks out of the bar.  We did this by saying out loud, over and over again, “You don’t have to go home, you just have to leave!”  Now, in retrospect, I wonder, “Where did they go?”

We might giggle and smirk about the answer to that question using our most wickedly playful creativity; but apply that question to the woman in Simon the Pharisee’s home and things aren’t so funny anymore.  The last words that we hear, the last thing that’s said in this story comes from Jesus when he says to the woman, “Go in peace.”  Well, where does she go?  All that we know about this nameless woman is that she lives somewhere in the city and that she is a sinner.  That’s all we know.  And we have Simon the Pharisee to thank for that.  Simon thinks, “If this guy Jesus was all that he’s cracked up to be, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him—that she is a sinner.”  That’s all we know about the woman.  So, when Jesus says, “Go in peace,” who knows?  Maybe Jesus is left standing there contemplating the compassionate, thoughtful question, “Where will she go now?”  But before that question has the chance to take root and challenge anything about the institutional power structure that pushed this woman to the margins in the first place, Simon steps in and says, “That’s right!  You heard him!  Get out of here!  Go back to where you came from, wherever that is!  You don’t have to go home, you just have to leave!”

Some of you may have heard this story on the radio Tuesday afternoon.  There’s a guy named Brock Savelkoul who served the U.S. military for three tours in Iraq.  His family and friends described him as being an all-around kind of guy.  That was altered in January of 2009 when a rocket exploded near the trailer in Baghdad where Brock and a few other servicemen were staying.  Brock was diagnosed with a mild traumatic brain injury and he went to Thailand for some R&R.  From there he made erratic phone calls to his family where he sounded out of touch with reality and paranoid about a phantom enemy coming to get him.  After that, the army transferred Brock back to the U.S. where he was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder.  He would spend a year in and out of treatment for it, but when he didn’t get better, the army discharged him; in effect saying, “You don’t have to go home, you just have to leave.”

The story comes to a head after that when Brock smashes his Purple Heart display case and steals all of his dad’s guns, along with an assault rifle.  He gets in his Tacoma pickup and leads the cops on a high speed chase on the highways and back roads of North Dakota.  He runs out of gas and gets out of his truck, gun in hand, and the standoff continues.  Brock was exhibiting a phenomenon called suicide by cop, where someone cannot bring themselves to take their own life, so they provoke the police to do it for them.  The standoff ends with Brock being taised to the ground, arrested and charged with three felonies.

Do you know a Brock Savelkoul?   If you do, what do you know about him?  Typically, all we know is where he’s been.  That’s all we really know, and it’s because of Simon the Pharisee and his elite group of insiders always halting our awareness right there when they say, “Oh, that woman?  We know where she’s been.  And if you know where she’s been, you won’t let her anywhere near you!”  Oh, Brock?  Oh, that guy?  We know where he’s been.  He’s just a big mess.  Don’t let him anywhere near you!

The hospitable heart must ask where Brock goes and where the woman goes, because the Scriptures reveal to us that hospitality is emphatically extended to the stranger, no matter where they’ve been; and that hospitality is extended in anticipation of a blessing from the Divine, a blessing from God.  Do you see how Simon’s hostile approach cuts God’s blessings short?  Do you see how hostility cuts Brock’s life story and what he might bless the world with short?  Do you see how resting on the judgments of where someone has been keeps the justice and mercy and righteousness and love of God held captive?

In Georgia the legislature is considering Immigration Bills that target undocumented immigrants.  The legislation would require employers to use a federal database to check the immigration status of new hires, and it would authorize law-enforcement officers to check the immigration status of suspects who can’t produce an accepted form of identification.  Okay.  Where will they go?

In Texas, our state budget threatens to dramatically slash funding for education; slashing classrooms and teachers and children.  One might argue how this makes fiscal sense.  Fine, but when it comes to the exodus of schools and teachers and children and the dreams that are their purpose to foster, where will they go?

And when it comes to the rising number of women and men serving in American’s armed forces coming home with brain injuries, and physical limitations and PTSD, while our attention remains focused on the escalation of war for “insert political reason,” where will those servicewomen and servicemen go?  Where will they go?

Brock Savelkoul had to go on a high speed police chase and get out of his truck with a gun in his hand to have a standoff with law enforcement in order to get our attention and force us to ask that question: “Where will they go?”  And the nameless woman who kissed Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her tears forces her way into Simon’s home and into this story so that she might get our attention, too.

Well, what is she saying?  It’s hard to tell really.  All that we know about her is what Simon the Pharisee allows us to know about her: that she’s a sinner, that she lives in the city, and that she’s not welcome in Simon’s home.  We want to know more, so we apply queer biblical criticism here, because a queer reading disrupts the story; it disrupts the text just like the nameless woman disrupts Simon’s home.

Simon views the woman abstractly.  He views her as a type of person fitting into a particular category, not as a person.  Her supposed identity of “sinner” makes Simon and his guests “saved.”  But Simon and his company need this woman in order to assert their own identity, to know who they are, because normal needs an abnormal to know itself.  This experience, this identity heaped on the nameless woman, is the bondage that she lives with everyday.  It’s the yoke of slavery that she endures every day of her life.  This is why the scholars who came up with it call it queer biblical criticism, because queer reading is rooted in the LGBTQ experience.

As many of us in this room know far too well, every day gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people live under a yoke of slavery that says, “Oh, we know who they are.  And from our abstract stereotypes and our vantage point of normalcy, we know where they’ve been.”  This is a culturally imposed experience that enslaves LGBTQ people with constantly having to choose how far out of the closet they will live today and tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that.

Think of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness.  They’ve been delivered from slavery, or so it would appear.  They can’t find water in the desert and their livestock is dying, so they complain to Moses and say, “We’re never going to really be free, because this existence is no better than life back in Egypt.  Let’s just cut our losses and go back to the slavery that we came from.”

But the woman in Luke’s gospel, she won’t settle.  She recognizes the culturally imposed slavery that has pushed her to the margins.  The woman recognizes the farce of Simon’s power that hides behind andocentric patriarchy and heterosexist masculinity.  She sees the false power that fuels Simon’s hostility and she says, “Enough!”  She forces herself into his home, into this story and into our hearts, like a stick striking a rock and causing water to explode into the desert.  She exposes false power and reveals the justice and mercy and righteousness and love of God, which causes Jesus to point to her and say, “Wow!  Do you see this woman?”

Perhaps now more than any other time in the Christian year we proclaim Jesus Christ as the ultimate revelation of God.  And this ultimate revelation of God points to a nameless woman that has been brushed off by a hostile culture that says, “Oh, we know where she’s been,” and Christ says, “Do you see this woman?  She is light for the world!  She has come into this home and into the story of God to remove the bushel basket and let God’s light of justice and mercy and righteousness and love fill the whole house, the whole world, so that no one would be cast off into the wilderness, so that everyone would be acknowledged and appreciated and revered, and so that everyone would be set free by this blessing from the God, this Divine disruption.”

I want to tell you about James.  James was a Divine disruption.  James was homeless, living somewhere in the city, like the woman in Luke’s gospel, and he forced his way into our hearts and minds at First Baptist Church of Austin.  Every Sunday morning, James would wander in from who-knows-where with his frazzled red hair and wide eyes and tattered clothes.  Every Sunday morning he stood right outside the sanctuary where everyone could see him, leaning against the staircase with a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand.  Every Sunday morning he cornered you, no matter how old or young you were.  I was only a teenager when James stopped me in my tracks for a conversation that lasted a thousand years.  He was in my parents’ Sunday School Class, and he made those classes awkward every week when he asked for prayers for his diarrhea.  Crazy old homeless James.  We were kind enough to let him in because it was the Christian thing to do, but most of us held him at arm’s length with Simon the Pharisee’s kind of hospitality because, “Hey, we know where James has been.”  And every Sunday when the worship service was over and the preacher said, “Go in peace,” we seldom brought ourselves to ask the question, “Where does James go?”

I learned that James found housing in an apartment somewhere with no working AC.  One summer when the sun was unforgiving, it got so hot that James died of heat exhaustion right there in his home.  We had a memorial service for James at the church.  James didn’t have any survivors, no family to speak of, so we put a microphone at the front of the sanctuary and the pastor asked for members of the congregation to come forward and share a memory about James.  I sat in the balcony and watched people, one by one, come up to the microphone and share their memories of James.  The testimonies were joyful and interesting and awkward, just like James was, but they also harbored a communal feeling of accountability.  James had disrupted our sense of normalcy, and nothing would ever be normal anymore.  The testimonies served as somewhat of a call to justice and mercy and righteousness and love.

I served another church in the city a few years later, and we held a Vacation Bible School for children one summer when it was exceedingly hot.  The church wanted to teach the children about Jesus’ command to love your neighbor, and we focused that lesson on folks like James who were suffering under the unforgiving summer heat.  Every morning of those five days of VBS the children brought offerings that we took up in the kick-off worship service, and while the kids were off playing games and learning Bible stories and doing arts and crafts, adult volunteers would take the offering and get as many 20-inch box fans as that money could buy.  They would then take those fans and stack them in the sanctuary along the wall so that the next morning when the children gathered for the kickoff worship service they would see the fruits of their labor.  That excitement grew, and every morning the kids would bring more and more money for the offering, and the adults would buy more and more fans and stack them along the wall so that by Friday morning the wall of box fans were kissing the ceiling, kissing the ceiling with justice and mercy and righteousness and love.  I think James would have liked to see that.

The greatest lesson that we learn today doesn’t come from the Israelites.  It doesn’t come from Moses, and it only indirectly comes from Jesus.  The greatest lesson we learn is from the nameless woman who would not settle for a lackluster existence in the hostile wilderness of patriarchal interpretation.  By forcing her way into God’s story, she disrupts normalcy and replaces abstract judgment with concrete blessings, and Jesus, the light of the world, points to this Divine disruption and says to us, “Do you see this woman?”  And then Jesus tells us, “Go in peace.”

Do you wonder where Brock Savelkoul went?  After his arrest and trial, his story was picked up by a veterans advocate at the governor’s office.  Late last year, the state freed Brock on bail and sent him to an inpatient program at the VA.  He’s finished more than two months of intensive treatment.  He’s 29 years old.  He’s going to counseling at the VA.  He’s checking out colleges.  And he’s adopted a dog, a dachshund mix, and he named the dog lucky.  Do you see this man?

For James and Brock and for the woman so enslaved by patriarchal interpretation that the writer of Luke’s Gospel would not even give her a name, for these and so many Divine disruptions that God sends us to change our hearts and minds so that this world would be transformed one act of love at a time, thanks be to God.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“What Makes a Christian: Moving from Hostility to Hospitality”

Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17 and Genesis 12:1-4a

In his letter to the Romans, Paul mentions Abraham (We hear him referred to as Abram in the Genesis passage I just read, his title before God changed his name).  Abraham was the father of many nations.  Abraham was blessed and he was a blessing, and Paul utilizes Abraham’s story to make a point in his letter about what justifies someone to God.  We hear that passage from Romans today that Maggie read for us a moment ago as a lesson on what it takes to be Christian, what makes a Christian.

We talked about that passage Wednesday night in this place, and we licked away the layers of that theological Tootsie Roll Pop trying to get to the revelatory center.  Do good works make a Christian?  Does great faith make a Christian?  Tough questions.  But instead of attacking that question from our own encounters with dogma and doctrine and street corner evangelism and theologies of salvation, we instead looked at our own spiritual paths.  We looked at our own faith journeys and recalled that person or those people who we viewed as being the most Christian people we’d ever encountered, and we reflected on what made them so, what made them Christian.

We shared our recollections of childhood friends and Sunday school teachers and family members and co-workers.  Each of these people revealed to us in different ways what makes a Christian.  These good people were observant, recognizing others’ needs and striving to meet those needs or at least to make it apparent that they cared.  These people were set aside, marching to the beat of their own drummer, no matter what others may have thought of them.  These people prioritized their faith.  They allowed their faith in God to transcend even their own philosophical or political opinions; they demonstrated the power of righteousness over self-righteousness.  These people were selfless, devoting their lives to serving others, and then, when the time came, graciously handing those responsibilities of servanthood over to other anxious leaders.  Do you know anyone like that?  As you think of individuals like that in your life, perhaps they are at least a part of the reason for you being here in this house of worship this morning.

What all of these good people hold in common, all of these souls that help us understand what it means to be Christian, is that they are blessed and they are a blessing.  Like Paul’s mention of Abraham in the Romans passage, they are blessed and they are a blessing.  And what that means is that the blessings that they give to others—the blessings they give to you and me—are actions that expand the space surrounding our lives in which we come to know God.  The people in our lives that we think of as being the most Christian people we know bless us by expanding the space around our lives, little by little, in which we come to know God.  It’s a liberating act, this blessing.  It serves to break any yoke of slavery that keeps us from a relationship with the Holy.  And isn’t that at the very center of the Tootsie Roll Pop of Christianity; Christianity that is founded on a Savior who came to set the captives free?

There are elements of our faith history that stand to the contrary though.  Our forebears in the wilderness were more about constricting and territorializing space than about expanding it.  Johannes Pedersen wrote a book in the early 20^th century called Israel, Its Life and Culture, and he says this: “For the Israelite it is a matter of course that common flesh makes common character.  Therefore family, mishpāhā, is the designation of those who are of the same kind, have the same essential features.”

We revere Father Abraham in our faith, but just like even our most beloved family members have their flaws, the family before us, the nations of Abraham, had its flaws.  Just like so many churches that stereotypically fear change, many of those ancient Israelites did not want God to love and take care of anyone but them, and they wanted it to stay that way.  They did not want a God of impartial Holiness; they did not want a God that was impartial to everyone, they just wanted a God that would be partial to them.  Remember that the Israelites were out to destroy all the non-Israelite people of Palestine, anyone outside the family who were not like them.  Deuteronomy 7:2: “…and when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them.  Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy.”

Wow.  This doesn’t sound very Christian, does it?  It certainly doesn’t sound like the people our Wednesday night gathering described as being the most Christian-like folk they’d ever known; but fortunately, for the ancient Israelites and for us, the story changes.  The concept of Holiness shifts.  As God continues to speak through the prophets about the expansiveness of God’s justice and mercy and love, the Israelites gradually move away from nationalism and toward universalism.  They realize that their identity of being blessed requires that they be a blessing to others, even if those others don’t look like them or act like them or come from the same country as they do.  Isaiah 2:3: “Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’”  This is a movement from hostility to hospitality.

Let me tell you what I mean: There’s a Catholic theologian named Henri Nouwen.  We’ve shared some of his Lenten devotionals here at Friends Church in the past, and we even have some copies of his book about the spirituality of fundraising as a means of providing some guidance for our current “Friends in Faith” capital campaign.  Nouwen was a prolific writer.  One of the books he wrote was called Reaching Out: Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, and there is a section in it describing the spiritual movement from hostility to hospitality.  What does this look like and why is it so important for us?

Hostility is what makes competition more fierce than fun.  Hostility is what fans the flames of greed until everyone burns.  Hostility is what ratchets up tribalism and territorialism to the point that we may know proudly where we stand but we have lost all touch with what we stand for.

Hostility is what guides the hand that wrote the letter that appeared in The Eagle on Friday, talking about undocumented immigrants.  The letter said, “These illegals have paid nothing, but they, along with many others, are here with their hands out and living off of us.  We have to build more schools, hire more teachers and buy more buses when they dump their kids in our schools—not just one or two or three, but six, eight or ten.”  Hostility, of course, is what fuels racism.  Hostility is what causes the American psyche to go on a witch hunt for Muslims.  Hostility was at the core of the ancient Israelites’ desire for God to be partial to them alone.  All of this doesn’t sound very Christian, does it?

Back to Nouwen here: Nouwen suggests that we move away from this hostility and toward hospitality, because hospitality is at the very heart of Christianity.  So, does that mean that we fight hostility with hospitality?  Are we supposed to proudly combat and exterminate hostility with hospitality?   No, because to fight hostility with anything is a hostile gesture in and of itself.  It’s like Martin Luther King says, “You can’t drive out hate with hate.  Only love can do that.”  What Nouwen suggests in his spiritual movement from hostility to hospitality is that hospitality surrounds hostility, hospitality envelopes hostility, and expands the space around it until that space is so vast and open and free that hostility has no more power.

Now, make no mistake: hostility pulsates throughout the texts of our Bible because those texts were written by patriarchal storytellers in a heterosexist, hyper-masculine time and culture; and hostility is what hangs onto that purview and that context to the detriment of the message itself and to the detriment of all of God’s children.  What then are we to say about the authority of this ancient text that serves to guide our faith?  Well, this is where hospitality comes in.

Hospitality behaves as Jesus when it comes to the Bible.  Hospitality breathes new life into this authority that we call the Word of God as Jesus breathed new life into the Law and the Prophets before him.  It’s a liberating act; a blessing.  Hospitality proclaims that everyone has a God-given place in the pages of Scripture.  Hospitality sees to it that everyone has a place in the still-speaking story of God and God’s people.  Hospitality points out that everyone has a gift to give, a light to shine, just like Abraham and Sarah and Ester and Ruth and David and Jonathan and Rahab and Rispah and the prophets and the disciples and Paul and Timothy and Jesus of Nazareth, the light of the world who came to set the captives free.  Hospitality expands the space that is already filled with God’s love until every yoke of slavery in this world is broken; every yoke of slavery that says that some are in and some are out when it comes to the Word of God is broken; everyone is set free by the Word and God and set free into the Word of God.

Here’s how Nouwen describes it: “Hospitality…means…the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy.  Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.  It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines.  It is not to lead our neighbor into a corner where there are no alternatives left, but to open a wide spectrum of options for choice and commitment…It is not a method of making our God and our way into the criteria of happiness, but the opening of an opportunity to others to find their God and their way.” (49)

I saw news footage of a rally in DC a few weeks back where Christians had gathered to make their voices heard in opposition to civil rights for Muslims.  Signs opposed to Islam were held high, American flags waved and the people yelled.  It was a hostile crowd.  But in the midst of the rage, right there in the middle of everyone, a Muslim man laid a mat on the ground.  He got on his knees, put his face to the ground, and prayed.  On occasion he sat upright looking up to the sky before returning his face to the ground.  And the whole time that this man is praying, reverently, peacefully, in his own way, the people around him are chanting louder and louder, “Jesus!  Jesus!  Jesus!”  Someone standing next to the man even had a sign that he pushed into the man’s face that read, “Jesus loves you.”

To move from hostility to hospitality would require this rally of Christians to stop constricting the space around the Muslim man and instead expand the space around him, just as Jesus expanded the space around the woman that the scribes and Pharisees brought to the Temple to be stoned to death on account of her alleged sexual infractions when he said to them, “Whoever is without sin, let him cast the first stone.”  Moving from hostility to hospitality would be for the rally of Christians to take a page from their forebears who moved away from a partial God of territory and toward an impartial God of Holiness.  Moving from hostility to hospitality would be for this rally of Christians to acknowledge that they are blessed, not privileged but blessed, and therefore required to be a blessing, to be as Christ to the stranger in their midst.  That is what makes a Christian.

Friends Congregational Church, our denomination proclaims that we are a united and uniting church.  Like Abraham, we are blessed and required to be a blessing.  God has created the expanse of Creation, and we are required to continue expanding it, not to draw pious lines around it.  If we have been blessed, as the psalmist writes in Psalm 23, and our cups truly do runneth over, then we are called to provide more cups until everyone receives the blessings of God’s justice and mercy and love.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Getting in Touch with the Character of God”

Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7 and Matthew 4:1-11

Oh, to be God for a day.  It’s a thought that’s been rhetorically pondered by humanity for centuries.  Throughout our history, poetry, music and cinema have begged the question that still ruminates in our anxious minds: What would you do if you were God for just one day?

Would you stop global warming?  Would you resurrect Haiti and Japan and the areas of the Pacific crushed by earthquakes and tsunamis?  Would you cure cancer?  Or would you maybe take care of all those loose ends that have made your life seem overwhelming for so many months and years: pay off that debt, pay off that mortgage or that student loan; get a more fuel-efficient car; patch that hole in the roof; get the best care and the best environment possible for your ailing parents to live in; get a personal shopper and a personal chef?  What would you do?

If you were God for a day, would you make a name for yourself?   Would you make certain that everyone recognized your opinions and that everyone found the true merit in your viewpoints once and for all?  Would you see to it that your traditions and your worldview were revered above all others?  Would you show ‘em who’s boss?  What would you do?

If you were God for a day, would you march into DC and clean up everything that’s wrong with our country?  Would you stand in the crossfire between dictatorships in the Middle East and the rebellions that seek to overthrow them offering your own form of good and perfect government?  Or would you arise as the matriarch or patriarch of your family, or as the shining star among your friends; the one that everyone adores and the one whose words and actions become the stuff of legend practically overnight?  What would you do if you were God for a day?

Our answers to that question will all differ one from the other.  But the common threads woven throughout our answers are exactly what Satan tempts Jesus with during those forty days in the wilderness.  Satan tempts Jesus with three things: He tempts Jesus to work miracles for the satisfaction of immediate need (turn these stones into bread!); he tempts Jesus to give a convincing sign of his authority (throw yourself down from the pinnacle of this temple!); and he tempts Jesus to exercise political power (bow down and worship me, and all these kingdoms of mine will be yours!).  Such actions show exactly what it’s like to be God, don’t they?  Working miracles to satisfy immediate needs and giving convincing signs of our authority to the world and exercising our political power—these are all demonstrative of God’s power, aren’t they?

That’s what Satan is suggesting to Jesus.  And that’s what the Serpent suggests to the first humans in the Creation story: “Eat this fruit from the tree of knowledge and you will be like God.”  But here is a detail that Eve and Adam overlook: The Serpent tells the woman that likeness to God is to be achieved by defiance of God’s command; you can’t be like God unless you defy God.  It suggests that the likeness that is within human reach is likeness not in character, but in power alone.  Humankind might be able to make itself God’s equal by being able to recognize good and evil, like God in power, but humankind cannot be like God in character, not by defiance anyway.  And trying to become like God in character by defying God’s will, it will surely kill you.

My grandmother was a chain smoker.  She smoked when she worked her crossword puzzles every morning at 4am.  She smoked over every game of gin rummy with her friends.  She smoked after cooking meal, and she smoked after washing the dishes.  When I was in the backseat, she’d roll down her window to blow her cigarette smoke out of the car, but it would always just waft back to me and make my eyes water.  Even though moments like those nearly suffocated me, I found a certain allure to Grandma’s smoking habit.  There was something tempting about her kitchen drawer full of Marlboro Reds and plastic cigarette lighters.

So, once upon a day in my boyhood curiosity, I crept into the kitchen, opened that drawer, and swiped a pack of Grandma’s cigarettes and one of her plastic lighters.  A few days after that, my parents found me in the woods behind our house puffing on a cigarette in Clintonesque fashion; I didn’t know how to inhale.  I don’t recall the details of my punishment, maybe because I was so shell shocked by the severity of it.  But I recall vividly my next encounter with my Grandmother after that incident.

I’d naively hoped that my parents wouldn’t tell Grandma that I’d swiped her cigs and lighter.  I’d foolishly hoped that they wouldn’t tell her about how ridiculous her grandson looked frantically trying to hide the evidence of his crime with the air all around him smelling like a scene from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  But the next time I saw Grandma, there was a moment when she and I were together in the kitchen at her house with no one else around.  You could cut the tension with a knife when Grandma walked over to her drawer and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.  As she packed them, she said, “So, I heard about what you did.”  I nodded.  She pulled out a cigarette, put it in her mouth and lit it.  Then she look a long drag, blew that smoke up into the kitchen air, and she said, “You shouldn’t smoke these things, you know.  They’ll kill you.”

That moment right there is the main reason why I have never been a smoker; because in Grandma’s nicotine-ridden voice, I heard the voice of God.  You can come to my house for sleepovers and Christmas Days and Easter egg hunts and birthday parties and everything in between, but don’t touch my cigarettes.  They’ll kill you.  You can partake of anything in this garden and enjoy all that it has to offer to your heart’s content, but do not eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge, for you shall surely die.

Whether you’re on the social networking site, Facebook, or not, most all of us are now familiar with the name Mark Zuckerburg.  Mark Zuckerburg is the founder of Facebook and the youngest billionaire in history.  One out of every ten human beings in the world is on Facebook.  Our Theology on Tap group recently discussed the effects that Facebook will have on rallies and rebellions all over the world in the near future.  We can talk all day long about the merits and flaws of this revolutionary internet tool, but it is growing and changing so rapidly that our conversations become irrelevant before they even begin.  This is a remarkable thing.  This is a powerful thing.  But when you think about the fact that it’s all dancing on the strings of one person’s hand, a late-twenty-something named Mark Zuckerburg, it gives you, as my friend Anne Wehrly would say, point to pause.

I saw a documentary about Facebook on MSNBC last month.  In an interview, Mark Zuckerburg talked about how he studies the Chinese language for an hour a day.  He does this because China has yet to allow Facebook to infiltrate its country, and Zuckerburg thinks that if he can’t talk the talk, he’ll never be able to walk the walk and do business with China.  He’s a driven guy.  He’s an inspiring guy.  He’s a powerful guy.  And I don’t mean for this sermon to speak ill of Zuckerburg (there are plenty of mediums out there already doing that, including his own invention of Facebook), but we might ask, “With all that power at his fingertips, does he have the character it takes to wield it.  With all this power at our fingertips, do we have the character to be good stewards of it?”  Or are we curious children in the woods with kindling and dry brush all around trying to light a cigarette?

We human beings are powerful people; and in particular, we Westerners are powerful human beings.  We have the power to make and utilize weapons from handguns to nuclear arsenals.  We have the power to fight wars in different countries simultaneously.  We have the power to assist various regions of the world in their time of need, be it from famine or the spread of HIV or genocide or natural disasters.  We have the power to drill for oil.  We have the power to build and militarize a security fence along our border.  We have the power to process and distribute food by the warehouse and truckload on a minute-by-minute basis.  And we have the power to voice our opinions to the world about all of these things with just the click of a button.

Now, all of this might sound political, but this is not political speak; this has to do with the character of our faith, because when it comes to all of the power that we have in this world, our faith compels us to ask, “Is our character worthy of wielding this power?  Is my character not found wanting in the eyes of my God when I utilize the power given to me?  Am I treating the power at my disposal justly?  Is the power that we as a society possess being used to promote equality and wholeness, justice and mercy; is it being used to continue the life-giving act of Creation spun into being by our Creator God who has granted us dominion over this beautiful gift?”

The Creation story reveals to us that we human beings have achieved likeness with God in terms of power.  We are as powerful as God, because we have the ability to recognize good and evil.  But on this First Sunday of Lent, a day this is about setting aside all obstacles and hindrances that keep us from following our Christ to the cross and to the empty tomb on Easter morning, we need to also recognize the difference between the power we possess and the power of God.  Humankind’s power is characterized by money (that is the mightiest religion in this world after all).  Humankind’s power is characterized by money, and God’s power is characterized by righteousness.

The Season of Lent is about getting in touch with the character of God; and what does God’s character look like?  What does a character of righteousness look like?  A righteous person does not live on bread alone, says Jesus, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.  A righteous person does not put God to the test, says Jesus.  A righteous person worships and serves God only, says Jesus.

A person whose power is characterized by the temptations of this world might be able to work miracles to satisfy an immediate need, or give a convincing sign of their authority, or even exercise political power.  But a person whose power is characterized by the righteousness of God is blessed.  And maybe that’s the opposite of dying, being blessed.  That stuff will kill you, but righteousness will bless you.

So, if you were God for a day, what would you do?  As much as it might frustrate us, God’s character is not geared toward the things that we want, even the things that we desperately want; like for God’s hand to sweep in and slap that tsunami wave back into the sea or to pluck that tumor out of our loved one’s brain.  God’s character is not about meeting our every desire, although it is wickedly tempting to believe that is so.  God’s character is founded on righteousness that craves only a relationship with us, and in that relationship for our hearts to be opened up to that Divine character.  Blessing.

In the beginning God looked upon all that God had created and called it good, but God was lonely; so here we are.  And Jesus, the incarnation of God, gives us a glimpse of that loneliness when he spends forty days alone in the wilderness.  God’s character is a lonely one, set aside, detached from the injustices of our world; our world that is easily tempted by quick fixes and easy answers and political gain and financial levity, the stuff that Satan shells out by the score.  The power of God is characterized by God’s desire that our hearts would be broken, opened up, so that the abundant grace of God could enter in.  And from that abundance we are further empowered to change this world in ways that look more like what God hopes for and less like what we think is best for us, the world we want all the time.

I had the opportunity to spend five hours in Austin on Friday afternoon.  I was meeting with a couple whose wedding I’m officiating in June, and then studying for this morning’s sermon.  I drove into town on South Congress, and I stopped at the light at Oltorf.  There was a man squatting down on one corner of the intersection.  He had a baseball cap on, semi-long brushy hair, a beard; and the stoic look on his face told the story of a life spent in the wilderness, a life spent on the margins of a culture molded by a serpent’s temptations.  And the cardboard sign he held in his lap said, “I have no one.”

God is calling us to see this man as God’s very presence.  God is calling us to see this man as the very face of Jesus Christ.  God is urging us, beckoning us to turn our eyes upon Jesus and have our hearts broken.  God is summoning us, wooing us to turn our eyes upon the poor in this world, upon children who have no homes, upon undocumented immigrants displaced from their families and working for next-to-nothing just to hold onto hope, upon the news of hate crimes committed against people because of the color of their skin or their sexuality or their religion, upon our neighbor, and in seeing to have our hearts broken by the power of love.

During this Season of Lent, our faith calls us to get in touch with the character of God.  So, let us shed the skin of who we think we are by our own designs and wants and fears and instead venture into the wilderness that we might discover who God hopes for us to be.  Such is grace.  And in the words of a fellow minister whose character exuded righteousness all the days of his life: “May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, superficial relationships, so that you will live deep within your heart.  May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from panic, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you will reach out your hand to comfort them and change their pain into joy.  And may God bless you with the foolishness to think that you can make a difference in the world, so that you will do things which others tell you cannot be done.”  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“The Island of Misfit Toys”

Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Exodus 24:12-18 and Matthew 17:1-9

I want to start this morning’s sermon with a little history lesson about our own church family.  A few years back our friends Tami and Justin Dudo were looking for a church.  The fact that Tami and Justin had two beautiful sons only added to their desire to find a church where their family could plant some roots and grow with a community in the love of Christ.  We certainly don’t have a shortage of churches here in the Bryan-College Station area.  You’d think that Tami and Justin would have found a church home sooner rather than later.  But there was one problem: Tami is black and her husband is white.  Tami has shared her testimony about Justin’s and her church search with our New Member Classes in the past: She says that whenever Justin and she and their children would darken the doors of a church, heads would turn and shoot stares at this interracial couple and their beautiful children.  Sometimes people’s stares were unfriendly.  Sometimes people looked at them like they didn’t really know what to make of them or what to do with them.  And some people would stare at them with smiles that were relishing in the novelty of a couple like Tami and Justin; smiles that seemed to say, “You are welcome here so long as you act the way that we presume you are supposed to act.”

A couple of months ago when we were hosting homeless families in this place for Family Promise, Tami and Justin and their boys, as well as Beth Leopold and her daughter Kelsie, were here with the families.  I walked in to find them playing the game Taboo with the families, where you have to get your teammates to guess a word without saying the word itself to them.  The game is on a timer, too, so the adrenaline’s pumping to get your teammates to guess the right answer and pass the timer to the person next to you.  Whenever Tami’s team would score a point, she and her teammates would celebrate with loud shouts, and the kids would jump up out of their seats and do a little victory dance.  So, Tami recalled growing up in the Baptist church, and how people would be overcome with the Spirit, and they would start jumping up and down with their hands in the air.  And Tami started celebrating in that fashion, like she was all of a sudden transported to the church of her upbringing and overcome with the joy of the Holy Spirit.  Now, if Tami had expressed that kind of joy in that kind of way, Justin and she might have been booted out of some of the churches they visited.  That wasn’t the way they were supposed to behave after all!

Needless to say, Tami and Justin’s church search came to a halt.  But then Tami’s friend Michelle told her about a church where she and her husband, Randal, and their two children, Katelyn and Spencer, were attending.  Michelle told Tami, “Give this church a try.  You’ll be welcome there.”  And Tami said, “Not a chance.  We’re done.”  But Michelle persisted.  Michelle told Tami about how her husband, who was skeptical about church, had told her that if she could find a church that accepted everybody that he would come to church with her.  He said this with the Napoleonic certainty that there was no way that Michelle would be able to find a church like that.  Well, she found Friends Congregational Church and the rest, as they say, is history.

Sharing that story with her friend Tami, Michelle convinced Tami to get her family to visit Friends Church.  And when Tami, Justin, Jeremy and Sean darkened the door of this place, they found not only a place where they could fit in; they found a place where they belonged.  Like Michelle and Randal before them, Tami and Justin had found the island of misfit toys.

Over the years I have heard a couple of congregants in this place refer to our church family by that title.  They say we are the island of misfit toys.  And they say that with different emotions.  Sometimes it’s said playfully, tongue-in-cheek.  My friends Dinah and Ro Anderson even gave our family a Christmas ornament a couple of years ago that has the toys from the island of misfit toys on it; and Dinah jokes with me about who is who; like she’s the little doll and I’m not going to tell you who she says the other characters are in this congregation (unless you buy me lunch).

But I have also heard it said that we are the island of misfit toys with a sense of sadness, as if we have been banished here like those misfit toys in the 1964 Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer TV movie, and this is our congregational lot in life.

I’ve held onto that title for a few years now, and I’ve thought about those emotions that it stirs up in our flock for those who use it to describe this church.  I’ve always kept it in the back of my mind thinking, “Maybe, someday years from now I can preach a sermon as a gesture of pastoral care where I assure our flock that we are not the island of misfit toys.”  That’s what I wanted to do for a long time, but I can’t do that anymore.  I’d just be running away from the truth.

One of our church members and I had the opportunity to visit for a while this past week, and she asked me about my doctoral study and how it was going.  This church member is gay.  She said, “I know that your study is focusing on hospitality that emphasizes LGBTQ perspectives, but why the ‘Q’?  Why did you add that on there?”  The acronym LGBTQ stands for ‘gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer.’  She went on to say, “When I hear that word, ‘queer,’ a couple of different things come to mind.  For one thing, it sounds like an overt comment, like I’m saying, ‘In your face’!  But on the other hand, it sounds derogatory, like an insult against me.  But either way,” she said, “it’s true.”

We, all of us, here at Friends Congregational Church are the island of misfit toys; and if we’re going to understand what that means and get to a point where we can embrace that instead of just laugh about it or be sad about it, we need to revisit that precarious word ‘queer.’  This word scares us.  We are afraid to talk about it.  It has connotations that bring us fear.  To talk about a word like ‘queer’ in church is like when we put the word Leviticus on our church marquee out front, which we did not too long ago.  Seeing the word Leviticus on our church sign strikes fear in the hearts of some of our LGBTQ church members, because Leviticus 18:22 has been used as a clobber passage against them for far too long by the church.  It’s no wonder that when a gay or lesbian person sees the word Leviticus on our church’s sign that they are overcome with feelings, symptoms bordering on PTSD.  But the Word of God, the Bible, in its entirety, which belongs to all people, gay and straight, is not meant to strike fear in the hearts of some while others remain comfortable.  And the same can be said of this word ‘queer.’  It may initially bring us fear to talk about it, but that’s what today is all about.

Today is Transfiguration Sunday.  This is a day that has entirely to do with fear.  Peter, James, and John, the disciples, are on top of this mountain with Jesus.  And suddenly, right before their eyes, Jesus is transfigured.  His face shone like the sun and his clothes became a dazzling white.  A cloud enveloped them and a voice spoke to them from out of that cloud saying, “This is my son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.  Listen to him!”  And the disciples fall on the ground facedown, terrified.

The transfiguration records the fact that God has broken into our world through Jesus.  But for the disciples, the transfiguration was a bright, shining, terrifying moment when they saw Jesus for who really was.  God reveals Jesus’ true identity to the world, and how is it received?  With fear.

And the Apostle Paul continues to reveal the true identity of Jesus Christ to the world in the book of Galatians when he testifies that in Christ there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female; we are all one.  That oneness that has no use for hostile divisions, that oneness is what is met by a world divided by race, gender, nationality, age and sexual orientation with fear.  And when we are baptized into Christ we clothe ourselves with Christ, and we are transformed into living examples of that oneness.

For many church-going Christians in our heteronormative society, this is a scary thing.  When pockets of Christianity use clobber passages like Leviticus 18:22 to demonize LGBTQ peoples, but then turn around and testify to a God who receives us all in the oneness of Christ, hypocrisy sets in, and hypocrisy leads to self-loathing, and self-loathing is more susceptible to and easily tempted by fear.

One of the LGBTQ people I interviewed for my doctoral study was a therapist in his early fifties named Paul.  And Paul talked about how the folks who insisted more strongly than his other patients that they had the most wonderful families, those folks had the most numerous and deeply afflicting issues.  Paul said that those issues were a direct correlation with how sick the families really were.  And he saw this, as his experience as a gay man, as one of his metaphorical contrasts with the church.  He said, “The church is made of humans, so it’s going to have its flaws.  I don’t mind that; I even expect that.  It’s just that some of the church’s biggest supposed flaws are what it preaches against the most.”  It’s frustrating that the church fears change, but it’s tragic that the church fears transformation.

When we are baptized into the oneness of Christ, we are transformed into new creations.  We are transformed into a new identity that throws out the divisions of nationality and social status and gender identity.  That means that all binaries and categorizations that used to separate us one from another in terms of normal and abnormal, typical and atypical, heterosexual and homosexual dissolve.  And when we are made one, worshipping the same God and serving the same God that our LGBTQ siblings worship and serve, then we become, all of us, a queer community.

Marcella Althaus-Reid was a profound theological mind, and she wrote a book before she died called From Feminist Theology to Indecent Theology.  She writes this: “Queer is a word which originally meant ‘transverse’ or ‘oblique’ and it is used in a positive way.  Queer theory celebrates diversity, the crossing of borders and imprecise frontiers.  It liberates the assumed reference of theology and therefore liberates Godself from assumptions and ideological justifications.”[1] See, in queer community, we are called to be more than passively open to one another; we are called to be proactively affirming of one another, valuing and honoring the truth of who we are as individuals.  The Christ in me sees the Christ in you, and in that relationship we are transformed into a oneness that trumps this worlds divisions.  The word ‘transfigured’ that we find in Matthew 17:2 is used by the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:18 when he writes about the Christian community: “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is spirit.”

To be in community with our LGBTQ siblings in this place, to stand alongside our LGBTQ siblings in this place, to worship and to serve and to love and to be called by the same God as our LGBTQ siblings worship and serve and love and are called by in this place might appear to the world to be little bit queer.  It might cause us all to look a bit queer.  But our queer identity is not based on the binaries that give our hostile world its identity.  Normal must point to an abnormal, or it has no identity.  Typical must have an atypical, or it has no identity.  But we are not abnormal and we are not atypical.  We are not some alternative way of Christian living that confirms the antagonism of the Christian right.  We do not view being Open and Affirming as an alternative to the norm.  We do not view our church family of various races, nationalities, ages, gender identities and sexual orientations as some alternative way of living outside the norm.  We are God’s island of misfit toys.  And just like a misfit elf who wants to be a dentist instead of a toymaker, we have a diversity of gifts to share with this world that are essential to the progress of humanity.  We are queer community that seeks every day to be transformed by the oneness that is found in Christ Jesus.

Over the years, I have received mail that I consider to be hateful.  I’ve received hate emails from time to time (not nearly as much as you’d imagine, but I receive them nonetheless).  They’re always anonymous, always antagonistic, and always self-loathing in tone.  One email I got a while back was from a fellow Christian who felt that it was his duty to rebuke me, because I am a preacher, and therefore I wield authority in the church.  And I thought, “Obviously, this guy hasn’t been in a UCC church, but oh, well!”  He talked about that tired song-and-dance about homosexuality being sinful and gay people having no place in the church.  And he told me that because I teach and preach in the church about God’s love of LGBTQ people, that makes me worse than being gay.  Well, I believe that I’m better than being straight.  I am a Christian, named and claimed by a love that will not let me go.  I am a Christian transformed by the overflowing love of God revealed in the transfigured Christ, in whom we are all made one.  I am a Christian who serves and worships and loves and is called by my Creator who transcends all binaries and divisions and hostilities, the original queer, Yahweh, Jehovah, Emmanuel, the Lord, my rock and my redeemer.  And transformed by God’s unrelenting love, I refuse to be drowned by self-loathing and fear.  I am liberated and set free on the island of misfit toys.  For the queer community that seeks to transform this world by one act of love at a time, thanks be to God.  Amen.

[1]  Althaus-Reid, 143.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“The Gospel According to Facebook”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Kyle Walker
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Matthew 6:24-34 and Isaiah 49:8-16a

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Going the Second Mile”

Delivered by Rev. Charles Stark
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18; Matthew 5:38-48

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“REALLY?!?!?!”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Carla Cheatham
Sunday, February 13, 2011
1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Love in the Ruins: Objectionable, Disreputable, Unavoidable”

Delivered by Rev. Dr. Stephen Sprinkle
Sunday, February 6, 2011
2 Samuel 21:10-14; Luke 18:1-8

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“The Last Staff Meeting”

Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon and Rev. Tamara Franks
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Psalm 15; Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“What Are We Doing: A Question of Growth and Spirituality”

Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Psalm 27:1, 4-9; Matthew 4:12-23

I love seeing you all here. As I often say, it’s really a miracle that all of us are gathered in this space on a Sunday morning. We’ve all gotten out of bed, we’ve gotten ourselves ready. We’ve made an effort to be here, and now here we are: seated together in a sanctuary in College Station, Texas with the sunlight pouring into this room. And if all of us weren’t here, this room, this sanctuary, would just be a hollow echo chamber.

But here we are. This is beautiful. You’re beautiful. The cover of our bulletins says that we’re “called together.” We are a community of faith that is called together. We’re called together in this beautiful moment in this beautiful space on this beautiful morning. This is amazing. But now what?

If we stay in this space and revel in this moment for too long, it will lose its luster. If we hang onto the beauty of what we’ve got here for too long, the petals will start to fall from the rose. If we sit still and rest on our laurels in this amazing gift of the church, we, as a congregation will stagnate, we as a people will become detached one from another, we as a church will ossify.

Football fans and non-football fans alike, Aggies and non-Aggies alike, allow me to share with you for a moment this illustration involving the University of Texas Longhorns football program. At the start of this most recent football season, everything was looking great. Texas started the season in the top ten. They were coming off 12 back-to-back bowl appearances. They had just made a national championship appearance, and even though the Longhorns lost that game, a bench-warming redshirt freshman had played the majority of that game after the starting quarterback, Colt McCoy, was injured on the opening drive; and this wet-behind-the-ears back-up showed promise for the upcoming year. It looked great. And from the vantage point of a guy who spent his senior year at Texas watching the football team go 4 and 8 and fire their football coach, it looked amazing.

But the Longhorns never really moved from that point. This past football season, Texas lost to nearly all of their arch rivals (save the Red Raiders and the Cornhuskers on the road, go figure). They lost to Baylor at home for the first time since 1989, they failed to make it to a bowl game for the first time since 1997, and they strung together more home losses in one season than they’d suffered since the Eisenhower administration. And adding insult to injury, the Longhorns lost their defensive coordinator to the Florida Gators, fired their offensive coordinator and lost one of their stellar players one year prematurely to the NFL.

I know most of you in this room enjoy hearing all this. I just thought I’d bring you some joy this morning! I watched my Longhorns play an abysmal 5-7 football season that seemed to go nowhere from the excitement and promise of where they started back in September. Week to week, Saturday to Saturday, they played with less and less emotion until they just fell apart. I watched the A&M victory over Texas on Thanksgiving night (congrats, Aggies). And at one point in the game, when the referee made a questionable call, the Longhorns head coach, Mack Brown was caught on camera with his hands in the air yelling, “What are we doing?” That about sums up the 2010 season for Texas: Mack Brown throwing his arms in the air and helplessly crying out on national television, “What are we doing?”

Now allow me to move from college football to matters of the church, because I think that statement captures what Jesus might say to us. On any given Sunday morning in our houses of worship, largely hamstrung by a lack of diversity and a rapid decline, Jesus might say, “What are we doing?”

What happened to that beauty and promise? What happened to that amazement and wonder? Where did all of that go? What are we doing? Various polls reflect that only one in every five Americans attends church on a regular basis. A generation dies and churches close their doors. A growing sentiment in America stereotypes churches as being doctrinally paralyzed and socially insignificant; worse yet that churches are misogynistic institutions of segregation and homophobia that are good for nothing but show. In many cases, in most cases, churches are on the decline. Well, what gives? What are we doing?

The Methodist theologian, William Willimon, says, “Church decline is an expected result for a church that refuses to follow a Savior who is relentlessly out to grow God’s reign.”

That’s a tough quote to process, especially for those of us who think that ‘grow’ is a four-letter word in church speak. We like things the way they are, thank you very much. And I’m right there with those of us who fear change. We’ve got a good thing going here at Friends Church, so the word ‘grow’ might not be one we want to hear because it means change. But it’s more than that. ‘Grow’ is a bad word because of more than our fear of change.

At a leadership retreat a couple of years ago, I kicked off one of the meetings with a suggestion for how we might grow as a church. I thought it would be met with enthusiasm and excitement, but a lot of folks around the circle were pensive. And finally we started sharing how we didn’t like the word ‘grow,’ and why that was. When we in that circle thought about growth, we thought in terms of how our culture understands growth.

No wonder we don’t get excited in our churches about growing. No wonder we Christians don’t get enthusiastic about Jesus’ invitation to follow him and be fishers of people. Grow is a bad word. We think of growth and we think of building and expansion for the purposes of dominance and monopolization. Growth in our world means that we get bigger and louder, consuming and devouring everything in sight, so that we can be with the majority, the normal ones who herald uniformity. Growth means size and weight and power and authority. That’s how our culture tends to think of growth. The thought of growing in that way sounds downright offensive. Not me. Not us. Not this church.

But if we move away from that understanding of growth, away from understanding growth in worldly terms, and toward understanding growth in terms of God’s reign, we might get more excited and enthusiastic. Because here’s where it gets fun: When it comes to growing the reign of God, the powers that be and CEOs of institutionalized oppression in this world squirm. Growing God’s reign means promoting safety and sanctuary and stability for all people. It means promoting equality and justice for all people. Growing the reign of God is countercultural; it’s revolutionary. And in the eyes of this world’s unjust power structures, it is revolting. Countercultural, revolutionary and revolting. Suddenly the word ‘grow’ sounds more fun, doesn’t it?

Here’s a little historical context for this morning’s Scripture: Peter and Andrew are fisherman. They are in a business of rigorous manual labor. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, are in the family business of working with their strong backs and hands. The classical civilization of the Greco-Roman Era took little notice of guys like Peter and Andrew and James and John. They worked with their hands. They worked with their backs. They worked like slaves to earn a living in the eyes of society around them. Nobody paid them any mind. And Jesus starts his mission with them. Because of that, Jesus’ mission was countercultural and revolutionary from the very start. And because of that, the oppressive powers of that Greco-Roman Era thought Jesus and what he stood for were revolting. Countercultural, revolutionary and revolting. So began the story of Savior and his mission of relentlessly growing the reign of God on earth as it is in heaven.

Stacy and I were at a restaurant in South Austin celebrating our anniversary recently. It was a place on South Congress. And if you know anything about Austin, South Congress is an area that is on the margins. Downtown Austin is an area that is growing up and up and up, and right across the Congress Avenue bridge is the outskirts land of old Austin, where musicians and baristas and trailer business vendors and the queer community congregate. It’s an area where you see shirts hanging in store windows that say, “Welcome to Austin, don’t move here.” To some this area of Austin is hip and fun, but to most, and from the vantage point of those buildings and businesses going up and up and up, it is countercultural, revolutionary and revolting.

Back to that restaurant on South Congress Avenue where Stacy and I were: I looked out the window at a utility pole on the sidewalk. It’s covered in flyers for shows at music venues close by and some ads for things like dance lessons and yoga. But this one flyer had an oval shape with text inside that was a wavy font that said, “Keep Jesus Weird.” You’ve seen those stickers that say, “Keep Austin Weird.” This one was a play on that: “Keep Jesus Weird.” And the slogan underneath said, “Don’t just tear this flyer down, take a free beer-pon and join us for conversations about Christ.” The beer-pons were those tabs that hang from the bottom of flyers that give contact information and details. A good church-going person might see that flyer and find it offensive: countercultural, revolutionary and revolting. But you know what? All of those beer-pons, all of those little tabs, had been taken.

Jesus is not out to make everything perfect and uniform. Jesus is not about good order and removing unsightly blemishes from society. Jesus is about relentlessly growing the reign of God. And he does this by meeting people where they are, listening to them and visiting with them and being with them where they are. But we in our churches that are statistically on the decline, we hear Jesus invitation to follow him and be fishers of people, and we think, “What is the perfect plan to get people to come to our church? What is the most orderly way we can bring people to God, so that they will have their blemishes removed and be more like us? What is a good strategy for that? What is a good plan for that? Surely, there’s a conference I can attend or a book I can read that will make me a perfect agent for God!”

I was at a funeral mass yesterday morning and I heard a good story that I want to share with you. A good friend of mine’s mother had died after a nearly three-year bout with cancer. Her name was Marisol Brown and she’d lived a good, long life. To give you a glimpse of that life, Marisol was an immigrant from Spain, 36 years old and single, teaching Spanish in DC for people training to be spies in the CIA. That’s how she met the man she would marry soon thereafter.

The story goes like this: Marisol and her husband, Glenn, had been relocated to Honduras on assignment for his CIA spy detail. Marisol was incredible at sewing and she was pregnant, so she went to a fabric store in town to buy materials to make some drapes to put up in the room she was making into a nursery. Marisol was also bold and daring in striking up conversation, so she and the woman at the fabric store counter made fast friends. They talked for a good while, and then Marisol went home with her fabrics.

When she got home she was surprised to find her husband home early from work, so she told him about the fabric store she’d gone to and the woman she’d met. And Glenn’s eyes got really wide and he said, “Are you kidding me? Do you know who you were talking to? The woman at that store is married to the man I’m on assignment to make a connection with! He’s a successful industrialist with political connections across the board. We’ve been trying to come up with some way for me to establish a relationship with this guy.” And Marisol said, “Oh! Well, you’re in luck! They’re coming over for dinner next week!”

When it comes to Jesus’ invitation to follow him and be fishers of people, we think of numbers. We think of getting more people to come to our churches, and we think that the bait is an invitation to normalcy and perfection: “Join our church and you will know blemish-free purity.” But Jesus’ invitation isn’t that we follow him and be salespeople for church attendance. His invitation is to follow him and become fishers of people. His invitation to those first disciples is to “come and see.” And his mission is not to add more numbers to a church roster; his mission is to relentlessly grow God’s reign. We are invited to follow God and be fishers of people who grow God’s reign, and we do that not by doctrinal mastery, not by the perfectly-articulated profession of faith, but by sharing the love of God.

One last illustration: A few years ago there was a woman, a college student, who was frequently attending our church. She loved this place, loved the people here, loved to worship here, loved going to Theology on Tap, and she was active on the Stewardship and Justice & Missions committees. When she got her ring for graduation, she invited me to her ring dunk. She said, “Yeah, I’d love it if you could come!”

Now, I know that the Aggie ring dunk is an age-old tradition, and I was flattered that I was invited to attend, but I thought, “What business do I have going to a ring dunk? I’m a pastor for crying out loud. Surely I can congratulate this student at a later date here at the church; maybe ask to see her ring and say, ‘Ooh! Ah!’” That might be easier. It might be more orderly, but it didn’t seem right.

So, that Friday night came along. Stacy and the kids were already asleep. I walked out the door, drove over to Northgate, walked up to the bar where this ring dunk was going to take place, and I was a few minutes early. So I decided to wait outside until this student showed up. And I killed time by pulling out my phone and text messaging a friend of mine who was also a minister. He knew what I was doing that night, so I typed, “What am I doing here?” And he responded, “You’re being an incarnational minister.”

You don’t have to be a minister to be incarnational. Being incarnational means that we put flesh on the love of God. We make the love of God evident and real, and we share it with whomever God calls us to share it with, and wherever they might be. Sharing the love of God draws us to people and places we might not think are orthodox. Sharing the love of God draws us to people and places where we might not be comfortable. But those moments, those places, those interactions and conversations, those moments of listening and learning and sharing and teaching are where the world’s empty cup and God’s living water meet. Those moments deepen our spirituality, and when our spirituality deepens, the result is that we grow. That kind of growth might be seen as countercultural and revolutionary and even revolting, but it is a sweet, sweet sound to the ear of our God.

Muslims and Christians sharing space and meals and dialogue together might look countercultural, revolutionary and revolting. Advocating for Spanish-speaking migrant workers and for the homeless, standing beside them and empowering and loving them might look countercultural, revolutionary and revolting. And just this morning, men who are gay and men who are straight sharing breakfast together, sharing their lives and prayers with one another, and following Jesus together, might look countercultural, revolutionary and revolting. But we praise God for all of it. We praise God for the chance we have to be fishers of people. We praise God for chances to deepen our spirituality and grow in Christian love. We praise God for giving us a Savior to follow whose mission it is to relentlessly grow the reign of God, the reign of love.

All of this is beautiful and amazing. So, what’s next? What are we doing? Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“For the Sake of Roger Sulzgeber”

Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Isaiah 49:1-7; John 1:29-42

Last week was Baptism of Christ Sunday.  Last week we heard about John baptizing Jesus, and about how Jesus’ ministry began from that point.  And we heard about that starting point of Jesus’ ministry being a challenge, because Jesus was baptized in troubling and troubled waters.

This week we move from those waters of Jesus’ baptism and follow Jesus with the help of the Spirit; because as John the Baptist tells us, Jesus baptizes those who follow him not with water but with the Spirit.

And along the way, the next thing that happens in Jesus’ ministry recorded in the pages of Scripture is that Jesus acquires his first disciples.  They are called.  They are called to be as John the Baptist before them was—they are called to be transparent to Christ.  They are invited to a life of discipleship where their whole lives, all that they are, will be transparent to Jesus.  People are supposed to be able to look at these first disciples and see the essence of Jesus; because, as the Prophet Isaiah says, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”  The disciples’ call, then, is to witness to, point to, be transparent to the light in the midst of the world’s darkness; and that light is Jesus.  Jesus: the one we celebrate in this season of Epiphany as being revealed to the world.

So, what we need to do before we can understand anything about witnessing to this light is we need to take a look at darkness.  We need to go to the beginning.  We need to go to Genesis (and I hope a few of you will be ready to share out loud what strikes you about these verses after I read them).  From the first five verses of Genesis…

¹ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  ² Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.  ³ And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.  ⁴ God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.  ⁵ God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Now, what strikes you about this passage?  What does it say about darkness?

What I find most peculiar about the first five verses of the Story of Creation is that God does not dismiss darkness.  God does not do away with darkness.  God creates light in the darkness, separates one from the other, calling light “good,” and Creation moves on from there.  Darkness doesn’t go away.  Darkness is woven into the fabric of Creation.  And that co-existence of light in the midst of darkness is the nature of the human condition.

For over a week now, our entire country has been wrestling with the aftermath of the tragic shootings in Tucson that took human lives, including a 9-year-old girl, and that injured so many others.  We’ve been hearing a lot about the alleged political motivations behind the shooting, but I want to share another glimpse into the story.

After the accused gunman, Jared Loughner, had opened fire at that Tucson grocery store, after he had killed and injured so many people, he was wrestled to the ground by three people.  One of those people was Roger Sulzgeber.  After this past Wednesday’s memorial service, Roger Sulzgeber shared publicly for the first time his account of that moment.  He said, “I had my knee on that artery that runs down behind your ear to your shoulder, and I had his arm twisted behind his back. And I’d never been that close to killing someone, but I didn’t.”

The news story described that precarious moment and the memory of it that Sulzgeber now carries with him as darkness.  I doubt any of us in this room know what Sulzgeber’s darkness feels like, but I believe wholeheartedly that every single one of us, in our own peculiar way, knows darkness.  Every one of us has experience with our own darkness.  Every one of us knows what darkness feels like; the intensity of it, the relentlessness of it; and sometimes even the invincibility of it.

I certainly have my own patches of darkness lurking in my soul.  There are times when I have caved to indifference, had the wind taken from my sails by apathy.  There are times in my past when I have been jealous of my younger brothers for whatever reasons, and I have felt more like the angry heart of Cain than the loving heart of Jacob.  There are times when I have consciously or unconsciously put my vocation or my studies before my wife and my children.  And there have been times when I have had encounters with others and I have felt like Linda Coats’ description of when she was confronted by an antagonistic man at a political function, and she said to him, “You are testing the limits of my Christian love!”

And the temptation, when such moments of darkness are prevalent in our souls, is to run away, to be evasive, to, like Adam and Eve before us, find a place to hide and wallow in our dark moments, covering them with the fig leaves of self-help, self-medication, self-imposed exile, self-indulgence, self-absorption.  But we know from ethics as well as religion and spirituality that no one is an island.  When I feel tempted to succumb to this temptation, the voices of children can be the most poignant articulations of God.

Stacy was driving Ruthie to daycare one morning last week, and they stopped at Shipley’s to get donuts for Ruthie’s classmates and teachers.  There was a truck kind of in the drive-thru lane, kind of hanging out of it, and its direction was veering away from the drive-thru lane.  Regardless, this truck wasn’t moving, so Stacy squeezed in past the truck and moved up to the order window in the drive-thru lane.

That’s when a man twice her size came barreling out of the truck.  Even though Stacy saw this man stomping toward her car, she still jumped when he banged on her window.  She hadn’t even finished rolling it down when this man laid into her: “What are you thinking!  I was in front of you!”  And his tirade continued.  Stacy tried to interject with an apology and an explanation, but she was just pouring turpentine on a brush fire.  The man erupted with more angry ridicule.  He finally stopped, walked back to his car, and pulled 100% into the drive-thru lane behind Stacy.

All of this had taken place at around 7:30am.  This man had been standing in the 20-degree weather outside the window of a woman young enough to be his daughter yelling at her at the top of his lungs about a minor, easily forgivable infraction; all the while a wide-eyed three-year-old girl was watching and listening on.  Who knows from what dark place in this man’s soul his rant was coming that morning.

And when Stacy and Ruthie left the donut place, Stacy said, “Ruthie, are you okay?”  And she said, “Yeah.”  And then Ruthie said, “That man needs to talk more quietly.”  But then Ruthie followed up with a sweet voice of sincerity and she said, “Mommy, where did that man go?”

I hear the voice of God calling out to us like the Shepherd who leaves the flock of ninety-nine in search of the wandering, lost one in that question: “Where did that man go?”

Where did that man go?  Where did that woman go?  In our moments of overwhelming darkness, where do we go?  God is asking.  God is still speaking.  And God is more relentless and invincible than any darkness in our present or past lives.

And this is where the love of God that is in Christ Jesus finds the disciples.  Jesus finds them where they are in the state that they’re in and just says, “Come and see!”  He doesn’t ask them where they’ve been.  He doesn’t ask them about the ethical validity of what they do for a living.  He doesn’t ask them about whatever past infractions they may have committed against themselves or their fellow humanity.  He just says, “Come and see.”  Because as the unknown poet writes, “God doesn’t call the qualified; God qualifies the called.”

Think about this: Perhaps we are the called.  Perhaps we are the called no matter the dark places n our lives.  And the called need to have faith enough to take Jesus up on that invitation when he says, “Come and see”; because as Catherine Doherty writes, “Faith walks simply, childlike, between the darkness of human life and the hope of what is to come.”

The faith those first disciples must have had.  When I take another look at stories from the Bible like the one we hear this morning, I wonder what they’d be like without the disciples.  Can you imagine the New Testament, the Gospel, the Good News without the disciples?  Who would fight over who was the greatest among them?  Who would ask Jesus the questions that we read retrospectively and find amusingly dense?  Who would wake Jesus up during that storm when the men were afraid for their lives so that Jesus could calm the waters?  Who would follow Jesus up to that mountaintop where we get the story of the Transfiguration?  Who would go fetch Jesus that donkey for him to ride into town on what we now celebrate as Palm Sunday?  Who would betray Jesus; who would sell him out to the Romans; who would deny him three times; who would hide for fear of their lives when he was being crucified?  Who would show us the way to the light that shines in the darkness?

The people who lived in darkness have seen a great light, and the disciples are the women and men who pointed to that light for all to see, including us.  They were the ones who heard Jesus say, “Come and see,” and they followed and saw.  And now, in these troubling and troubled 21^st century times, we are called to be the ones who would continue to point to and be transparent to that light.  We are the ones in the church who preach and teach and prophesy and testify about a Messiah, Jesus, who says to us, “Come and see.”  And it’s up to us to pick up where the disciples before us left off and take Jesus up on his invitation, Jesus who was sent by the Creator God who looks upon this world and wonders, “Where did my children go?”  Because what good is our passionate talk in the church without an equally passionate walk?  What good is a truth that doesn’t change our lives?  And if our lives are transformed, how can we not talk about it?

Now, we love to expose how the Religious Right who congregate in so many mega-churches across America practice doctrinal oppression and ridicule.  Pointing out their folly and hypocrisy is like shooting fish in a barrel.  But meanwhile on our side, we in our mainline churches try to dot the ‘I’s and cross the ‘T’s on a perfect Christian theology that is flawless in its articulation of what is good and just an righteous.  We are well-intentioned in our quest for doing what is right; doing things like advocating for undocumented immigrants, and raising mission funds for causes that support the least of these, and declaring to the world that our LGBT sisters and brothers are not toxic issues in our churches but beloved children of God.  All of these things are good, but they tend to flow out of our mastery of abstract Christian thought combined with morally upright intellectual prowess before they flow from our love of Jesus.

And let’s face it, when we all breathe our last and go to meet our Maker face-to-face in the sweet by and by, all of us, from the left to the right, will all have to repent of some bad theology.

The point is: Are we dabbling in darkness, or are we pointing to Jesus?  Where in all our ethical idiosyncrasies and our religious leanings and our theological quirks is Jesus?  Where is the one who is revealed to us during this season of Epiphany?  Where is the one we are called to reveal to the world in all that we are: Jesus?

It’s like when Barbara Brown Taylor went to preach at a UCC church somewhere in Oregon, and when she’s standing next to the pastor of the church getting ready to preach, he says to her in all seriousness, “It’s okay if you want to mention Jesus in your sermon.  They need to hear about him every once and a while.”

Where are the ones now who point to and are transparent to the light that shines in the darkness?  Where are the ones who hear Jesus say, “Come and see,” and then follow him on a journey of faith that points to the abundant love of God?

The world has seen its share of darkness in our recent past: war and violence, drug cartels and tyranny, natural disasters and chaos, shootings and so forth.  But the people who lived in darkness have seen a great light.  The world could certainly use 21^st century followers of Jesus to point to the light and lift some of that darkness.

Roger Sulzgeber struggles with his own inner darkness.  He attended the memorial service Wednesday night that remembered the ones who’d been killed in those awful shootings in Tucson.  And being around all those people, and hearing hopeful words from the people who survived that tragic incident, and basking in loud shouts of courage and steadfastness, Sulzgeber felt a spiritual challenge to his darkness.  He said, “This whole thing here was kind of the flipside of that to me, which was really a good thing.”  The news report said that the memorial service was a way for Roger Sulzgeber to have some of that darkness lifted.

There are Roger Sulzbgebers everywhere.  We might be that Rober Sulzgeber.  But let us pray that in the relentlessness of faith and in the love of community that we would continue to point to the light that helps Rober Sulzgeber and each one of us in this room have a little bit of that darkness lifted.  Life is too short to be wasted on hopelessness.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Into the Troubling and Troubled Waters”

Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17
Transcript coming soon…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“An Epiphany Celebration for the New Year”

Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Ephesians 1:3-14 and John 1:10-18
Transcript coming soon…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Am I Nothing But A Hound Dog?”

Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, December 26, 2010

Isaiah 63:7-9 and Matthew 2:13-23

After playing “Hound Dog”…

Who sings that song?  We might first think of Elvis, but “Hound Dog” was originally sung by an African-American woman named Willie May Thornton, more commonly known as Big Mama Thornton.  Big Mama Thornton recorded that song back in 1952.  But it wasn’t until 1956 when Elvis remade that song that it took off.  In fact, “Hound Dog,” is #19 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.

There are theories out there that musicians like Elvis Presley and Bill Haley and the Comets and the Beatles stole Black Music from African American peoples, and I think there’s certainly some truth to that.  But whether those theories are entirely true or not, the fact remains that if Elvis Presley, with his Southern sexuality and good looks and white skin, hadn’t remade the song, “Hound Dog,” it would not be popular at all.  We certainly wouldn’t be singing it in church on a Sunday morning!

But have you ever heard Big Mama Thornton’s version of “Hound Dog”?  Go google an mp3 of it after the service, because she can sing.  I enjoy Elvis’ version of the song, but it’s a shame that we don’t all know Big Mama Thornton’s version, too.

In 1952 when Big Mama Thornton recorded “Hound Dog,” brilliant singers and musicians were having little success because of the color of their skin.  Add onto that Big Mama Thornton was an African-American woman, and 1952 was fourteen years before James Brown would record the song, “This is a Man’s World.”  Yeah, she could sing, and I’d argue that she could sing with ten times more power and authority than Elvis, but Big Mama Thornton, in her time and context, was a second-class citizen.  She was a victim of prejudice.

Big Mama Thornton and Jesus of Nazareth have a lot in common.  Verse 23 of today’s Gospel lesson from Matthew 2 says that Jesus “went and lived in a town called Nazareth.  So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: ‘He will be called a Nazarene.’”  Most of us know that Jesus being born from the lineage of King David was fulfillment of prophecy, but what about him being called a Nazarene?  What did that have to do with prophecy?

Several prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures predicted that the Holy One of God would be despised and rejected, that he would be a victim of prejudice.  In the time of the Gospel of Matthew’s composition, the word ‘Nazarene’ was a derogatory term.  People who lived in Nazareth or anywhere else in Galilee were viewed as second-class citizens.  So, it seems that yesterday we celebrated the birth of a Savior who is less than.  The Christ child that we worship in adoration is a victim of prejudice, a second-class citizen.

So, I have to ask, hypothetically: If God is still speaking, and Jesus needed to be born in a place that we view pejoratively or derogatorily in order for the prophecy of him being the Messiah to be fulfilled, where would Jesus be born today?  Would our Savior be Jesus of Tehran?  Would our Savior be Jesus of P’yongyang in North Korea?  How about Jesus of Kandahar or Jesus of Peshawar?  Or in our own backyard, areas against which we build literal and figurative fences, would our Savior be Jesus of Juarez?  And if our Savior were Jesus of Juarez or Jesus of Tehran or Jesus of P’yongyang, would we be convicted enough and willing enough to follow him?

I would hope so.  And it’s not so much because hindsight is 20/20.  That’s not what I’m saying.  What I’m getting at is this: Behind the socially prescribed stigma, behind the socially prescribed mask of Jesus being a second-class citizen and a victim of prejudice, there was amazing power and blessed assurance and offerings of peace and unmistakable, limitless gifts for each and every one of us.  That’s the voice of God that still speaks today regardless of how we view one another in our cities or provinces.  That’s the voice of God that still speaks to and through us no matter who we are or where we come from.

So, Jesus was born a Nazarene in order to fulfill the prophecy that he would have to be a second-class citizen in order to truly be the Messiah.  Well, what do we know about Nazarenes?  The New Testament was originally written in Greek, and the Greek word for ‘Nazarene’ is ‘Nazoraios.’  ‘Nazoraios’ comes from the Hebrew of the Old Testament ‘Nezorai,’ which is used in Isaiah 49:6 to describe Him who shall both restore Israel and be a light to the Gentiles.  It appears that because of who he was as well as where he came from, Jesus the Nazarene had quite a gift to share with the world.

All of us have gifts to share.  Every woman, man and child has gifts to share for the sake of this world’s peace, but so long as we hold one another at arm’s length, so long as we view one another with suspicion, so long as we psychologically see one another as second-class citizens, those gifts will remain hidden.  And that prejudice has negative consequences on us more than it has on the person offering that would be gift.  We’re the ones who miss out.  We’re the one who never hear the likes of Big Mama Thornton tear the roof off the place with her God-given voice.

Do you hear the voices of the disciples asking Jesus, “Lord, when were you hungry and we fed you?  When were you naked and we clothed you?  When were you a stranger and we welcomed you?”

So, when it comes to the people and places that our Western World thinking and our places of privilege and our relentless media teach us about in negative ways, when it comes to all of the “thems” out there, what do we really know about them?  What do we really know in our hearts and minds about Juarez, Mexico and P’yongyang, North Korea and Tehran in Iran?  And how does that perspective inform the ways we might treat people from those places in our everyday lives?  Getting to the bottom of that question might answer a deeper question of spirituality for us: If we saw Jesus today, how would we treat him?

One of the most eye-opening blessings I received at the UCC’s national meeting in 2007 in Hartford, Connecticut was during the floor “speakouts.”  People from among the 9,000-plus gathered were given 15 minutes at one minute-per-person to speak out from a microphone to the entire auditorium about whatever they wanted to say.  Some folks offered words of gratitude for the UCC General Synod’s hospitality.  A teenage boy got up and asked us to start being true to our UCC principles and to recycle all of our plastic bottles for crying out loud.

And one woman, who had served as a missionary in Iran, got up to the microphone and said, “It’s no secret that we’re being primed for war with our sisters and brothers in Iran.  We are training ourselves to view them with hatred, just like we have viewed our opponents of war in ages past.  But I have been to Iran,” she said.  “And I have lived among the people there, and I have spoken with the people there.  They are beautiful, wonderful people, with so many gifts to share; and when we get to talking about U.S. relations with their country, they implore me over and over again, as if I am the one who can grant their plea, saying, ‘We don’t want war.  All we want is peace!’”

So, in these days of Christmas, what we Christians call the Days After Christmas or Christmastide, I encourage you to remove whatever social stigmas or psychological barriers or even stubborn biases you have so that you might experience unexpected, new blessings in your life.  Because when we take a step in that direction, we are responding to that call from God, that whisper from God that asks, “Who will go for us?”  And so many women and men of faith have responded to that question by removing their own spiritual hang-ups that keep them from truly embracing their neighbor by saying, “Here I am, Lord.  Send me!”

Maybe we need to read about things we paid no mind before.  Maybe we need to listen to ideas we had written off before.  Maybe we need to reach out to people we had never even noticed before in our daily lives: at work, at school, in our routines and in our places of commerce.  Maybe we need to make more of an effort to get to know our neighbors instead of locking our doors and setting the alarm every day.  And in the church, maybe we need to try a new class or small group or a new ministry that we’ve always thought of as “not for us.”  As John Robinson, one of the founders of our United Church of Christ, once said, “There is yet more light and truth to break forth from God’s Holy Word.”  Yes, and there are gifts from God waiting out there for us to discover.  And when we discover those unexpected gifts, our own gifts from God are nurtured.  That is what this journey of faith is all about.

On this First Sunday after Christmas, it basically comes down to this: In our everyday living, in our spirituality and vocations and routines and priorities, are we now following the Christ child?  Are we following Jesus of Nazareth, or, like Big Mama Thornton says, are we nothing but a hound dog?  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Never Forget What This Feels Like”

Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Christmas Eve
Friday, December 24, 2010

Psalm 97 and Luke 2:8-20

Eating a leftover cupcake from the Family Promise host week at the pulpit…

The shepherds watching their flocks by night get a visit from an angel and the heavenly host on Christmas Eve, and what do I get?  This cupcake!  Don’t get me wrong, this cupcake is delicious.  In fact, this cupcake is nothing short of Divine.  I’m just saying, I’m going to need a lot more of these cupcakes if I’m going to get to the equivalent of that Divine feeling that the shepherds watching their flocks by night experienced on that night filled with wonder some 2,000 years ago.

But when is it enough cupcakes?  How many cupcakes will it take for me to reach the equivalent of that feeling the shepherds experienced when they received a heavenly visit.  I want that!  I think I need that!  So, give me more and more and more until I reach that heavenly feeling.

Let me take a page from God God’s self this Christmas and create that heavenly feeling for  myself.  All it will take is more: more trees and tinsel and train sets, more cards and crèches and candy canes, more wassail and wagons and Wiis, more eggnog and e-cards and i-products, more stocking stuffers and Star Wars stuff and Snuggies (God bless us, every one!).

Everybody’s racing after that heavenly feeling.  Everybody’s got to get that fix, and time is running out!  I checked the Facebook live feed every few hours today, and every third or fourth status update said something like, “So much shopping to do today,” or, “So much cooking to do today,” or, “So many errands to run today, and time is running out!”  One of theme even said, “I’m about to go to the mall.  Pray for me.”  And after all that exhaustion, one final update summed it up best: “For Christmas, I would love for Santa to bring me sleep.”

Let me remind us of what we all know but seldom acknowledge by our actions: We cannot recreate that heavenly feeling of a visit from the angels and the heavenly host no matter what we do, no matter what we buy, no matter what we cook.  And when we remember that, when we embrace that feeling, God’s peace comes closer to us.

I’ve heard this Christmas story from Luke’s gospel more times than I can count, but there’s still more wonder in it every time I turn to it.  Here’s what occurred to me this time around: The angel and the heavenly host came to the shepherds and told them that unto them a child was born, a Savior.  Wow!  What an amazing experience!  What an incredible feeling!

Mary and Joseph didn’t get that.  What did Mary and Joseph get?  A child being born under impossible circumstances, and no vacancy in a motel on a miserably cold night.  They’re the parents of Jesus for crying out loud.  But the shepherds have to come to them and tell them about this amazing thing.  Where’s their equivalent to that feeling the shepherds got?

How come Mary and Joseph don’t get that heavenly visit?  Because for them, the baby that they were now caring for, despite the cold and the miserable circumstances, was enough.  That was all they needed to reach the heavenly feeling the shepherds had experienced.  What Mary and Joseph had was enough.  It gave them peace.  And their peace is our peace that the world might know God’s peace.

Maybe that’s our lesson.  It might look like they didn’t have much.  It might look like what they had was no fun.  But what Mary and Joseph teach us is that so long as we never forget the promises of God and the blessings that are placed right in front of us in the middle of and in spite of all the misery and chaos and brokenness of this world, the heavenly feeling of God’s peace will never leave us.  And when we have that feeling, when we embrace that feeling, we become new creations in which and through which God can establish the peace on earth that we sing about once a year.

Reverend Mark Sandlin wrote an article that appeared on the website, The God Article.  It’s called “All I Want for Christmas is…”  Here’s Reverend Sandlin’s three wishes…

1)      “All I want for Christmas is for people to stop looking for reasons to hate each other.”  It’s not that we hate each other; it’s that we look for reasons to hate each other.  Turn on the news.  Eavesdrop on holiday party conversations.  Read the bumper stickers that may as well be mobile dividing lines in our city.  Those reasons to hate each other are not hard to find.  But what if we were to stop looking for reasons to hate each other and start looking for ways to love each other?

2)      “All I want for Christmas is for the middle class to feel a little less entitled to their privilege.”  Rev. Sandlin says that he doesn’t include the richest upper class in his Christmas wish even though he concedes that he probably should merely because he doesn’t know what it’s like to be that rich, so he shouldn’t cast judgment where he is ignorant.  Still, his wish rings true for all of us: less feelings of entitlement and privilege.

A quick tangent here to underline this point: Let’s be reminded that when the economy takes a downturn, it often hits the most vulnerable children and families the hardest, and our recent recession is no exception.  Katherine Sell and her colleagues at PolicyLab, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, share some discoveries in their paper, “The Effect of Recession on Child Well-Being: A Synthesis of the Evidence.”  Their research discovered that it takes years post-recession for families to bounce back to pre-recession income levels, and low-income families take even longer to rebound.  They also discovered that public programs play a pivotal role in blunting the negative impacts of a recession.

And in this year’s Hunger and Homelessness survey released by the United States Conference of Mayors, which was conducted over 27 cities: Every city surveyed reported that requests for emergency food assistance had increased over the past year, and those requests increased by an average of 24% across those cities.  Our own Brazos Valley Food Bank had an increase of 22%.  And among those requesting emergency food assistance, 56% were persons in families, 30% were employed, 19% were elderly, and 17% were homeless.

Jesus tells us that when we provide food for the hungry, helping the least of these, that we are helping him.  And Jesus instructs us to prioritize children, to bring the little children to him.  And Rev. Sandlin’s second Christmas wish is that we lessen our feelings of entitlement and privilege for the sake of the Christ child that we adore this night.

Finally, Rev. Sandlin’s third wish: “All I want for Christmas is for Christians to start acting like Christians and stop playing games.”  He writes, “Somehow ‘Christian’ has become a label rather than a life perspective.  It has become a badge of honor rather than a burden to bear.  It has become a way to access privilege rather than a mandate to align with those who have been marginalized.”

It seems that in our Adam-and-Eve way of taking a page from God God’s self and attempting to create our own heavenly feelings that we have just been playing games.  And the more we play games, the more we forget God’s promises and we forget who we are and who we are called to be: new creations in which and through which God can establish peace on earth.

Rev. Sandlin wraps up by saying this: “These Christmas wishes will not cost you a dollar, but they will cost you your life.  The good news is: when you lose the life that prevented you from doing these things, you will gain the life God intended for you—the old life will be gone, and the new life will have begun.”

I think the new life, the life filled with God’s new creations, is one where we realize that the promises and blessings of God are enough.  I think the new life is one where we never forget the feelings that God grants us in simple, tiny miracles that occur every day, but that we seldom notice, let alone appreciate.

So, what have you forgotten?  What experiences in your life have you forgotten?  What feelings that gave you a glimpse of God’s abundance and goodness and hope and joy and love have you forgotten?  Because to forget those feelings is to lose hold of God’s peace.  To remember those feelings is to empty out the hostility of this world and to let God fill us with all that we need to be agents of change, messengers of hope, vessels of peace on earth.

I have to confess: In the busyness of the season and with so much on my plate lately (cue the violins), I have succumbed a bit to the temptation of making and doing more and more and more so that I can somehow create that heavenly feeling of Christmas amazement in my household tomorrow morning.  But reflecting on tonight’s Scripture and the lesson that Mary and Joseph bring us tonight, I remembered something simple that I want to share with you tonight to wrap up this Christmas Eve message…

When Stacy’s and my son Mac was only a few weeks old, we brought him to church for the first time.  Although we first-time parents were feeling really protective at this point, we wanted to share our child with our church family.  After the worship service I was walking the boy around the fellowship hall, wrapped in a little blanket.  I made sure to move around enough so that everyone could see the boy, and to move around quickly enough so that hands upon hands wouldn’t be touching the boy’s face.  (Like I said, first-time, protective parent.)

But then Teresa was standing in front of me.  Teresa was a mother of two children, a teenage boy and a pre-teen girl.  And Teresa asked kindly and directly, “May I hold him?”  In that moment, I felt like Sophia from the Hebrew Scriptures, Wisdom herself, was asking to hold my child.  So, of course, I said ‘yes,’ and handed my bundle of joy over to Teresa.

Teresa held Mac with one hand on his back and one hand cupping his little bottom.  Mac’s bottom fit in one hand!  She looked down at that hand holding his little bottom, and then she looked up at me with raised eyebrows and said, “Never forget what this feels like.”

Thanks, Teresa.  I have never forgotten what that feels like.  And it’s one of those feelings in my life that reveal to me the in-breaking of God’s blessings and promises on this world.  When I remember what it felt like to hold my children’s little bottoms in one hand, I feel like what God has granted me this day is enough.  I feel like I can look at the news and eavesdrop on fear-driven conversations and thumb through statistics and read antagonistic bumper stickers and say, “You have no power over me.  You have no power over this world.  For there is a greater Lord than indifference; there is a greater king than apathy; there is a greater Ruler than antagonism; there is a greater Comforter than fear; there is a greater Redeemer than hatred: the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus, the Savior born unto us this night.

For the sake of this broken, war-mongering world, tonight, we sing about that Savior.  Tonight we exchange hugs and handshakes, smiles and laughter in anticipation of that Prince of Peace.  Tonight we light candles and bask in the warmth of friendship that is made possible because of that Christ Jesus.  Tonight, by the grace of God, we experience a heavenly visit.  Sisters and brothers, never forget what this feels like.  Merry Christmas, and amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Love Changes Everything”

Delivered by Rev. Tamara Franks
Sunday, December 19, 2010

Romans 1:1-7; Mathew 1:18-25; Psalm 80

Charlie and Samantha

He moved to town for a job. The economy was rough. He found work where he could. He was a framer and the housing market had crashed for a time. Work was hard to find.  In this new town, the promises and hopes were pregnant with promise. He had even seen this lovely, fair maiden, as they say, across the diner as she served food to her regulars.

He asked her out, she said yes and the rest – well – it was a story that would have made the silver screen but it was too full of love. There was not enough drama to make it a movie. Instead, it was a simple, true love that they had between them.

They dated – in the old fashioned way – before dating really meant living with each other – they went on walks, spent time finding out the other, really beginning to know one another – they dated like this for almost a year. Their love deepened and Charlie proposed.

Samantha cried in happiness and the sappy story of love seemed to know no wrinkle until . . . . well, until two weeks before their ceremony of marriage. Their plans had gone great. The cakes – both bride and groom were ordered – the flowers were going to be gorgeous – all lillies in a bouquet of colors. Travel plans for the wedding party were confirmed and the dresses had been fitted – and – well – they were ready.

But, a bomb was about to explode.

Charlie discovered that Samantha was pregnant. He knew it was not his – because he was the old-fashioned type –  he surely had thought about it  . . . in those moments alone with Samantha. As he had looked deep into her eyes across the pizza box or over the fried chicken sitting on the quilt in the park. But, he had loved her too much to disrespect her in that way – this was how he had been taught. These were the law.

So, what was he to do with this pregnancy? She had disrespected him. She had broken his heart two weeks before their marriage.

Preston

Preston was a bully. He had been raised in a home with out love – without true love.

Oh sure, his home was full of all any one needed in the sense of material possessions. His room was full of Hot Wheel cars and tracks that had long been abandoned. The remote control cars and airplane were stuffed on the top shelf and covered with dust and cobwebs where the maid couldn’t reach them. The football and baseball glove, looking like they had hardly ever been used, were stuffed in the chest.

Preston was the sort who didn’t much care to play alone. He could from time to time; but, he really wanted to have someone notice him, spend time with him, and listen to his stories.

He loved having fun – but fun is only as fun as having a play mate. So, he attempted to play with others – make others play with him. The only problem, he didn’t quite play like the others. He hit hard. He tripped. He pushed. He made fun of others – not playful, good-natured fun – but rude, hurtful and damaging – fun only to him.

These were the rules he knew.  And he stood by them to the law. The laws of life – make sure that you do whatever it takes to get ahead, to look the best, to make others look stupid or to make them afraid – because a scared human being is a worthless human being and we all know that to make it in this world – survival means destroying all those around you.   Especially the chinks —

Those chinks were good for nothing. They deserved to have their faces bloodied and their shins kicked.

Hank, the black dog

Hank showed up in the cold of February. As the winds blew hard down the plains bringing the cold torrents of air, Hank found his way to the inside corner of a brick home, behind the prickly Holly bush. He circled himself as tight as he could summoning all the warmth his emaciated frame could muster as he burrowed down into the dirt behind the shrub.

Night fell. Hank, continued to stay curled behind the bush hoping that he would make it through the night. Somehow, he really didn’t know how, his eyes opened in the bright of day. As the door to his side opened and shut, Hank realized he had made it through the night.

As the man of the house made his way out to the barn, Hank slowly uncurled and found a piece of sunshine to stand in as he wondered where he should head next. As he was standing, peering in different directions, the door again opened. This time, Hank exposed, did what had become natural, he crouched low and began to run away from the impending horror. He could only vaguely hear the whistle and the call as the wind blew past his ears. When he believed he was safe, he stopped and looked. There, still standing on the doorstep was an older woman sitting down an old skillet with the breakfast scraps in it.

Hank couldn’t believe his eyes. He couldn’t trust his vision. He couldn’t believe in some stranger offering food to his old skin and bones self. So, he crouched low behind the wheel of a tractor and watched until the woman went back into the house. Thirty minutes later, he began to creep towards the skillet.

For months, Hank lived this type of existence. His emaciated frame began to fill out just enough to cover his bony protrusions. He never let the humans get close enough that they might grab him. Who knew what might happen when they ever got that close. And well, he knew that the skillet never had enough in it for more than one. That meant that anytime another would wander up, Hank took care of them, claiming this territory for himself.

He lived a scared and timid existence always coating himself with the true scary sheen of menacing growl and bared teeth whenever another four-legged came near. Those sickening, good-for-nothing fluffies were the worst and the easiest to dispose of — most of the time.

The place that Hank had discovered and stayed was a large compound – huge barn where he had found an old blanket that was much warmer and softer than behind the prickly Holly. The humans seemed to like having him around, as the skillet would always appear with a whistle and a holler. They didn’t know his name was Hank – but Blackie worked since his hair had been midnight black since his birth – he knew who they meant.

What he didn’t expect or know exactly what to do one warm summer morning. Unbeknownst to him, a lean, calico feline had shown up a few days earlier. She had kept to herself, resting her limbs and feeding her empty stomach as her own bowl had appeared in the garage. She was the most loving and kind creature the two-leggeds had ever experienced.

She continually rubbed her lithe body around their legs. Anytime they even got near, where ever she was, however asleep she had been, she would pop-up, dart to them and weave her tri-colored body around their legs and purr so loud that the neighbors – half a mile away – could hear it.

In the few days that she had been there, they could not help but to fall in love – to care deeply about this cat.

And so, when they noticed Hank approaching the garage, they began to worry for the safety of this loving and kind creature. They had watched as this black dog, had, on more than one occasion, tore out after cats of much greater strength and quickness. They believed that their new love was about to be destroyed. They tried to quietly call the Calico beauty back to the safety of the garage and the top of the car; but, Hank continued to purposefully make his way toward the house and the cat ignored the warning calls.

What happened next is still incredulous and unbelievable – but they continue to tell anyone who will listen about the power of love and kindness.

You see, that Calico cat saw Hank coming. In her excitement about another living soul,  she darted out to greet him – not knowing that this was really his territory and he was not about hospitality.

To his surprise, because he could not get his growl on fast enough – he wasn’t prepared – he didn’t see her coming, before he knew what was happening, this calico thing was rubbing her lithe, soft body around his legs.

He didn’t know what to do.

She was touching him.

She wasn’t scared of him at all.

Who was this cat? What was it doing — being so nice, kind and loving to him.

Nothing had ever been this nice to him. They had all been just a little afraid of him. He stood there frozen and still until he began to realize that it felt really good to be loved, to be caressed, to be cared for without request.

Hank’s stiffness began to soften and he found himself leaning into the caress of a cat. His growl and his bark were silenced by the unexpected love of this strange, unpretentious, too skinny – cat.

This story is true.

Charlie and Samantha – their love was true. Charlie knew that his heart was entwined not just with Samantha; but, that God’s love was also present in that relationship. Thus, when he had a dream telling him that Samantha was to give birth to the Messiah – that he – just a blue-collar carpenter from Indiana was to raise a son and name him – Jesus – meaning “salvation” – he knew it was true.

He could not find it in his heart to raise a big fuss nor to leave Samantha, the love of his life, to raise their son as a single parent. He swallowed his pride, he kept the secret to himself and he married his bride.

Preston is a whole different story. He grew up to be a mean and cruel adult. But one day, you see, he was out looking for some chinks to hurt and destroy when a blinding light came from above sending him down to his knees as he heard a voice asking, “Preston, why do you continue to hurt my people?”

There was no eye for an eye, nor tooth for a tooth – only the reconciling and grace filled love of a creator who believed in its creation. This reconciling love transformed this bully into one who now can only utter the same greeting to all he meets — -To all God’s beloved in Rome and around the world, who are called to be saints:
 Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We are waiting with longing for this kind of love to permeate our world.

We are watching.

We are hoping.

We are praying

We are believing.

We are being this kind of love.

Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Visions of Peace”

Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Matthew 3:1-12 and Isaiah 11:1-10

Transcript coming soon…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“The Hope of Everlasting Sanity”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Isaiah 2:1-5 and Matthew 24:36-44

“Come!  Let us walk in the light of the Lord,” says the prophet Isaiah.  This is what Isaiah hopes for, that all the nations would walk in the light of the Lord, that all the nations would acknowledge the sovereignty of God, that all nations would consequently learn a new way of life, and that all nations would live in peace.  Sounds a little crazy, doesn’t it?  Isaiah’s shooting for the stars here.  He’s being too idealistic.  That’s what today’s about, though: hope.  This First Sunday of Advent is about hope.

So, I thought I’d start this morning by sharing with you a few of my hopes.  Consider it my pastoral Christmas wish list.  Take note!  I hope that December in Bryan-College Station will see less warm, humid days and more cold, clear days, with some scattered showers here and there.  I hope for curbside recycling pickup in our city.  I hope that the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs miraculously leap frog Auburn and make it into the national championship football game.

I hope that in our mad, last-minute gift-buying frenzy that starts in about three weeks that we will not allow it to overshadow the greatest gifts of the season: the gifts of time and friendship and family, the gifts of Sabbath and rest and reflection.  I hope that the approximately 400 children in Bryan-College Station who are homeless would be given a place to live, wherein their bodies and minds and opportunities for the future could flourish.  I hope that we as a people would learn to live more sustainably so that aquifers might be replenished, and ecosystems might thrive, and wildlife might not be endangered, so that the wonder and beauty and vastness of this world will still be available for our children’s children.  I hope that despite the city ordinances that keep homeless people from being even remotely visible in our everyday inner-city routines that our community’s attention would shift to the hundreds of hungry and homeless people who live day-to-day, scarce meal to scarce meal, dangerous situation to dangerous situation, location to location in Bryan-College Station.

I hope that our public discourse would move away from fear and anger and antagonism, and that politicians and picketers and pundits who use such methods would be held accountable and shut down by women and men who yearn for peace.  I hope to never see another sign that depicts our president with a Hitler mustache.

I hope that my two kids will always be safe and happy and encouraged and nurtured, that they will grow into confident, secure adolescents and then adults who don’t let fears keep them down, and that no harm would ever befall them.  I hope for an end to this war.

Those are my hopes.  Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?  Sounds like I’m being to idealistic, right?

Isaiah hoped that everyone would walk in the light of the Lord.  Isaiah hoped for peace.  It’s tempting and easy to write Isaiah off as being too idealistic.  “Peace?  That’ll never happen.”  But I came across a biblical commentator who talked about Isaiah like this.  He said, “It is not high idealism but the everlasting sanity of Isaiah’s prophecy that should strike us.”  Everlasting sanity.  Maybe our world is insane, and peace is the result of sanity.  And what is the definition of insanity?  Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting to get a different result.

I have seen mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, siblings and friends fall apart because of insanity.  Our stubborn unwillingness to budge can cost us the very ones we love and who we want to love us back.  It’s insane.  And no peace can come from insanity.  This is important for us to hear because sometimes we can get so caught up in our routines and normalcy that we overlook how those routines and normalcy are shutting out any chance for a greater good to break in and grant us something that our heart, mind and soul truly crave, something that we truly need, something that we really do hope for.

Stacy and I used to watch the TV show West Wing.  We own all seven seasons on DVD.  Yes, you may borrow them.  In the show, the president, who’s played by Martin Sheen, has three adult daughters.  And in this one episode, his middle daughter, Ellie, a medical professional of some sort in the field of research, goes on record saying something that contradicts her dad’s policies.  It becomes obvious to the president that his daughter did this on purpose.  The president is furious.

As the episode goes on, the audience learns how Ellie is the daughter who never had a good relationship with her dad.  Ellie always favored her mother.  The president complains to his wife about how Ellie spent her entire life making decisions just to make her dad angry, and how she did things on purpose just to get under his skin.  But the president’s wife explained to him how she did those things because she wanted his attention, and that was the only way she knew how to get it.  All those years of running away from him and making decisions contradicting his best wishes and pushing him away were in an effort to win his love.  And what did Ellie doing the same thing over and over and over again accomplish?  And what did her dad’s refusal to veer away from that same frustration he always had with her evasive behavior yield?  An angry dad, a rebellious daughter, and a rift between father and daughter.

At the end of the episode, Ellie and her dad are watching a movie together.  Other people are scattered around the tiny theater.  But Ellie and her dad are the focal point.  Ellie has a look of discomfort on her face that seemed to say, “Well, here we are again and nothing’s changed.”  Father and daughter look intently at the screen like it is their only escape from dealing with one another.  But finally, her dad says, “All I ever wanted at the end of the day was for you to come home.”  And as the movie keeps playing, a smile breaks in on Ellie’s face.

God’s peace is like that.  God’s shalom is like a thief that breaks in on our lives.  And if we are not ready and waiting for that thief to break in on the normalcy and routine of our lives, then we are left in shambles, broken, disheveled.  Never at peace.  In other words, if our lives are so insane that God has no room to break in and grant us peace, then we will always be at war with ourselves, with each other, and with God.

Jesus talks about how the people in Noah’s time were steeped in normalcy and routine.  They were busy eating and drinking and marrying when the flood waters broke in on their lives.  Meanwhile, Noah and his family were carried safely to new life.  The issue wasn’t their routine and normalcy, it was that they were so immersed in it that they could not hear God’s voice, let alone obey it.  They weren’t ready and waiting.

So, what makes up our everyday routines?  What are the normal things we do to feel busy, to feel like our time isn’t being wasted?  Well, there’s cyber communication: email, Facebook, Twitter, blogs.  I’m thankful for email, but sometimes when I count up the hours in my pastor’s log of time that I spend in a given month responding to emails, it’s alarming.  It makes me wonder if that’s what I’m supposed to be doing.

What else?  Well, there’s football games and choir concerts and band concerts and barbecues and dinner parties and graduations and weddings and recitals and ceremonies and committee meetings and conference calls and check-ups and appointments and retreats and lectures and yoga and cardio and home improvements and grocery shopping and the list goes on.  Some of these things are necessary and some of them are not.  For the most part, though, all of them promote a sense of routine and normalcy.  But in all of that normalcy, in the midst of that routine, do you hear any room for God the thief to break in with the peace that our hearts and our minds and our souls truly need.  Where is there room in all of this for our hopes?

There is a fine line between healthy, constructive living in our everyday routines and insanity.  When it comes to normalcy and routine, we can become so absorbed in our livelihood that we forget life.

This is what the Prophet Isaiah hopes for in Isaiah chapter two, verse three.  He says, “God will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.”  And I love Eugene Peterson’s translation of this verse in The Message.  He writes, “God will show us the way he works so we can live the way we’re made.”

Wow!  To live the way we’re made!  We’re not made to live lives that are so filled with our concepts of normalcy and our kind of routines that our hopes are just side dishes of high idealism that we pay lip service to once a year.  We’re called to live lives of everlasting sanity.  We’re called to live lives that are ready and waiting for God’s guidance.  We’re called to live lives that always hope, because that is how we are made.  We can’t afford to be so caught up in our busy livelihoods that we overlook the importance of life!  We need to make room and have a posture about us for God the thief to break in and steal away the things that keep us from truly living—insecurity and self-loathing and fear and apathy and an inability to forgive—so that God can provide us with the power and the strength and the tenacity to hope; to hope for justice, to hope for mercy, to hope for kindness, to hope for peace.

Since September I’ve done five weddings, and before the end of the year I’ve got two more to do (one of which is my little brother Mikey’s wedding).  I’ve been performing weddings for over ten years now, and, yes, there have been a few of those couples in that decade that have since gone their separate ways.  Looking back on those couples that didn’t make it I found a common thread.  Basically, it’s like this.  If a couple engage in a kiss during the ceremony that resembles the kiss exchanged between Stephanie Seymour and Axl Rose in the Guns n’ Roses “November Rain” video, that couple will not last.  Youtube it after the service, you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

But in the handful of weddings I’ve done just this year, I worry for some of the couples.  It doesn’t have anything to do with the kiss in the ceremony.  It has to do with the frenzied normalcy and routine that goes into wedding planning.  Working with couples in counseling and planning the ceremony and doing the rehearsal and all that, sometimes I witness a couple that is so overwhelmed by the planning that they have no room to celebrate.  They are so consumed by what color paper the invitations should be printed on, and what should be served at the reception, and how many flowers should be in each flower arrangement, and what color dresses the bridesmaids should wear, that they have no time, no room, no posture for love to break in and set them on a new path.  Weddings can be cause for celebration and commitment and change, but sometimes they’re just insane.  I feel like part of my roll as a minister is to call a couple to a mutual foundation of everlasting sanity.  That’s something they can bet their life on.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent.  Today we uplift hope.  And this sermon is just the beginning.  It all starts here and now for us, because today is also our New Year.  The First Sunday of Advent marks the day of New Year in the Christian calendar.  We begin anew today.  So, this sermon serves as a kind of prologue for what is to come, because here’s the thing: Next Sunday we uplift peace, and we cannot strive for peace, let alone accomplish it, if we do not first hope for it.  And we can’t do that if our lives are choked by insanity.

So, sisters and brothers, live the way you were made to live.  Walk in the light of the Lord.  Because living the way we were made to live and walking in God’s paths is to live a life of everlasting sanity, a life that is ready and waiting for God, a life that always hopes.  That’s our starting point.  Now, what do you hope for?  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“The Ritual and the Rivalry”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon and Rev. Tamara Franks
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Psalm 46; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; 1 Corinthians 12

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Playing Hard to Get”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, November 14, 2010
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 and Luke 21:5-19

I want to start this morning by pointing out the two taglines on today’s texts.  Beth read from 2 Thessalonians and I read from Luke’s gospel.  The last verse that Beth read, 2 Thessalonians 3:13, says, “Never tire of doing what is right.”  And the last verse that I read, Luke 21:19, says, “By standing firm you will gain life.”

Never tire of doing what is right.  By standing firm you will gain life.  These verses are about more than endurance and perseverance.  What Paul and the apostles are getting at in 2 Thessalonians, and what Jesus is describing in Luke’s gospel is apocalypse.  And beyond that, what they’re witnessing to is God’s vision.  These verses are about the vision of God.

We’ve got to have vision.  Vision, what we see, affects our actions, what we do.  Today is Stewardship Sunday.  And for a lot of us, what that means is a call to commitment, specifically a commitment of our money.  But in our Western world and our capitalist society, how we spend our money is an articulation of power.  Our use of money is something we do.  So to talk first about how we spend our money would be putting the cart before the horse.  It would be compromising the message of stewardship.

Stewardship and this morning’s Scriptures and this sermon deal first with God’s vision.  Because if we have no grasp of that vision, no appreciation of that vision, , no trust in that vision, then everything that we do, including how we spend our money, is the equivalent of a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

Tamara gave an energetic, interactive sermon about community on Wednesday night.  She talked about how in community we’re called to serve one another with radical love.  And, offering an analogy, she talked about how when we find someone that we really like, we’ll automatically do anything for them.  She said, “We find that someone and we think they’re hot!  Ooh, they’re hot!  And so we want to give them whatever they want.”  She said, “If they like pecan praline ice cream, then we’ll go get them a gallon of pecan praline ice cream.”  And I could see where Tamara was going with this message, and my heart was saying, “Amen,” but my ADD brain was going somewhere else.  I thought, “Well, what if I find out that they like pecan praline ice cream and I decide to withhold it.  I hide the pecan praline ice cream, I keep it from them.  That’s my strategy to get close to the one I want.”  And I thought, “So, is withholding playing hard to get?  And what does that mean about how we relate to one another and treat one another in the bond of community, playing hard to get?”

I came down from that cloud a second later and got back into the message and God was praised and Jesus was revered.  Alleluias all around.  Amen.

But is that playing hard to get?  Is withholding my gifts from the one I love—be it the faith community or the church or God—is that playing hard to get?  Maybe.  Or perhaps withholding our gifts is a symptom of what’s really going on in our lives.

Forget about our money for a moment.  Forget about our hours of volunteering for a moment.  Forget about our gifts of creativity and labor for a moment.  Let’s focus instead on what’s happening inside, what’s stoking our hearts and churning our souls.  And if we discover that we have no grasp of God’s vision, no appreciation of God’s vision, no trust in God’s vision, that’s how we know that we are really playing hard to get with God.

I’m going to change the name in this quick example I’m going to give you.  In a church where I once served, there was a man with deep pockets named Jim Bob Jones.  I have no idea how much money Jim Bob gave to the church, but it’s pretty safe to say that a significant portion of the church’s budget relied on Jim Bob’s offerings, which meant that Sunday School curriculum for children and youth, and the music for the organist and choir, and the funds to pay the utilities bills and to pay guest preachers on occasion, and the landscaping dues, and the cleaning costs, and the discretionary money set aside for walk-in assistance, and the gas money to fill the church vans for camps and mission trips all relied, in part, on Jim Bob’s offerings.

There came a time in that church’s life when the pastor started saying things from the pulpit with which Jim Bob did not agree.  And this pastor began taking a stance on something that he felt passionately about as a matter of the church responding to God’s call to justice.  Jim Bob didn’t like that.  So, Jim Bob kept attending the church, because that was where his parents and his children went, but Jim Bob stopped giving money.  The offering plate went by Jim Bob and he wouldn’t even flinch.  And within weeks, days even, the church budget began to suffer.

And one day during this time period, I was making small talk in the office with a woman who had volunteered to answer the phones that morning.  She’d attended that church for years.  And, of course, she started talking about the pastor and what he was preaching about and the direction he was attempting to take the church in, and how Jim Bob took issue with that, and specifically how that affected Jim Bob withholding his money.  And the woman said to me, “The pastor ought to know better than to mess with Jim Bob.”

That conversation stuck with me and it continues to trouble me even today.  I don’t know what’s worse: Jim Bob not sharing his gifts with the church because of a disagreement he had with the pastor, or the church office volunteer finding that to be an acceptable and just action on Jim Bob’s part.  Jim Bob and the church volunteer appeared to be playing hard to get with the church budget, but I’d venture to say that was symptomatic of what was really going on: they were playing hard to get with God.

Jim Bob and the church volunteer are examples of what Paul and the apostles call busybodies.  2 Thessalonians 3:11: “We hear that some among you are idle.  They are not busy; they are busybodies.”  What’s the difference between being busy and being a busybody?  Busybodies are always doing stuff, and on the surface what they are doing might appear to be good, but they have no vision.  And when busybodies have no vision, they tire of doing what is right.  When they have no vision, they cannot stand firm to gain life.  When they have no vision, they are putting the cart before the horse in always doing, doing, doing stuff.  When they have no vision, they are just playing hard to get with God.  Busybodies.

But, on the other hand, those who are busy have vision.  They are about what Jesus preaches in the Sermon on the Mount.  They are always seeking first for the kingdom of God and all of its righteousness, and the consequence is that all of those things come to them.  They have a firm grasp of the vision of God.  So the result is that everything that they do is a witness to that vision, God’s vision.  And witnessing to the vision of God isn’t always a walk in the park.  But that kind of busyness never tires in doing what is right.  That kind of busyness stands firm and it gains life.

A friend of mine, Kyle Childress, is the pastor of Austin Heights Baptist Church in Nacogdoches.  He wrote an article for the Christian Century magazine that’s a testimony of real busyness.  It was the spring of 1963 in Birmingham, and it looked like the civil rights movement would suffer yet another defeat.  The powers that be had more jail space than the civil rights workers had people.  But then one Sunday, 2,000 young people came out to worship at the New Pilgrim Baptist Church, and there they prepared to march.  The police were shocked.  How much longer was this going to go on?  How many more people were they going to have to arrest?  The line of young people marching was five blocks long.  And as they got closer to the line of police officers and dogs, that was when the notorious Bull Connor walked out to confront them.  He shouted for the firemen to turn on their hoses.

But the line of young people kept coming.  They came close to being face-to-face with Connor and the firemen and the police.  And when they did, they knelt and prayed.  That was when the Reverend Charles Billups stood and shouted, “Turn on your water!  Turn loose your dogs!  We will stand here ‘til we die!”  And after a few moments, Billups and the young people walked forward, and the firemen parted for them to pass.  Onlookers said it was as if the Red Sea had parted for the children of Israel.

Faithfulness and endurance under threat, under arrest and under penalty of death; those are the qualities of Christian disciples during the time of witnessing to the vision of God outlined in the gospel of Luke that we read from this morning.  So how does the Christian witness to the vision of God suffer today?  How is the Christian witness threatened today?

Muslims in America are threatened every day by propaganda and media spin that encourage us to despise them.  Just last month a student group called Texas Aggie Conservatives handed out fliers for Islam Awareness Month that said, “Your choices if you are not a Muslim: Pay the religious tax for being a non-believer, convert to Islam or go to war.”  And the pictures accompanying this wording were despicable.  Now, if part of our Christian witness calls us to stand up in defense of our Muslim sisters and brothers, we might endure persecution alongside them.  We might be called unpatriotic.

If our Christian witness calls us to stand up for the rights of gay and lesbian peoples who are shunned from churches, forbidden to serve openly in the military, denied the right to marry, bullied in our schools and so forth, we might be called queer.

If our Christian witness calls us to advocate for access to health care for all people, we might be called socialists.

If our Christian witness calls us to seek inclusion, empowerment and justice for undocumented immigrants in our country, we might be called irresponsible.

If our Christian witness calls us to stand outside the walls of a prison in protest of the death penalty in Texas, we might be called weak.

Those accusations are the empty voices of the busybodies, the ones who love to appear busy, but who lack vision.  Call us unpatriotic.  Call us queer.  Call us socialists.  Call us irresponsible.  Call us weak.  We will stand here ‘til we die.

We will not play hard to get with the vision of God.

The late, great Johnny Cash, is often called “the man in black,” and he even has a song called “The Man in Black.”  It’s not one of his biggest hits, but it is a testimony of vision.  (Incidentally, he has the same initials as our Lord and Savior!)  Some of the lyrics to “Man in Black” go like this:

You wonder why I always dress in black…
I wear it for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he’s a victim of the times.
We’re doin’ mighty fine, I do suppose,
In our streak of lightnin’ cars and fancy clothes,
But just so we’re reminded of the ones who are held back,
Up front there ought ‘a be a Man In Black.
I wear it for the sick and lonely old,
For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold,
I wear the black in mourning for the lives that could have been,
Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.
I’d love to wear a rainbow every day,
And tell the world that everything’s OK,
But I’ll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
‘Till things are brighter, I’m the Man In Black.

Until things change for the better, he’s the Man in Black.  And likewise until the day when justice is done on earth as it is in heaven, until the day when love is evident on the hearts of all of God’s children, and until the day when inclusion is the mantra of our communities as it was Jesus’ mantra; until that day, we give and we give and we give and we give.  Because that is the vision of God that we are called to embrace, and we must never grow tired in doing what is right.

So, if we water down the vision of God, and if we do not speak out fervently from the authenticity of our faith—from what stokes our hearts and churns our souls—and if we use whatever power our cultural context provides us to maintain a position in society and a way of living that suits what we want over and above what God wants, then we are playing hard to get with God.  And the heart that runs from God never can fully trust God.  Jesus and the prophets tell us time and again that that’s all that God wants: our hearts, our trust.  Because the heart that trusts gives and gives and gives and gives.

So, on this stewardship Sunday, instead of thinking first about how much or how little we’re able to give to the church this year, instead of thinking about how much or how little of our time we can give to this community of faith, instead of worrying about how much creativity or spiritual gifts we have to donate to the church, let’s envision the world as God sees it.  Let’s seek first the kingdom of God and all of its righteousness, and all of these things will be added unto us.  Can you see the vision of God this morning?

This church is a gift from God.  And it is the vision of Friends Congregational Church to offer God’s extravagant welcome to all.  It is the vision of Friends Church to offer God’s extravagant welcome to all.  So, until that vision is fulfilled, let us give and give and give and give.

Never tire of doing what is right.  By standing firm you will gain life.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“What Difference Does It Make?”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Job 19:23-27a and Luke 20:27-38

A seminary peer of mine who’s now a UCC pastor in Miles City, Montana, called me up this past week and said, “Dan, I need some spiritual sorbet.”  I didn’t know that was something I had to offer, but okay.  My buddy, Darryl, had just left a meeting of his local interfaith minister’s alliance.  Their group is made up of a rabbi, a Unitarian Universalist, a New Age Spiritualist, a Native American Spiritualist, and my buddy, the UCC minister.  (It’s not a joke.  I know it sounds like one.)  Darryl said, “Man, they were driving me nuts!”  And I thought, “Gee, all that diversity and differences of opinion in one room, coupled with that gray post-Election Day cloud looming over their liberal heads?  I can’t imagine the conversation being anything but harmonious and joyful!”

What happened was this group was gathered to discuss the upcoming Interfaith Thanksgiving Meal in their community.  It’s all in an effort to raise awareness about food scarcity and to promote their local food drive for the poor.  So, initially, ideas are going back and forth like popcorn: Oh, we should get this group to provide the music.  We should get so-and-so from the local food bank to deliver a key note speech.  We should have the event at such-and-such church, because their facility is so well-known and inviting.  And so forth.  The enthusiasm and energy were palpable.

It was about this time that the Unitarian minister, who had only been at her church for a few weeks, and who was a first-timer to this interfaith minister’s alliance, gets this concerned wince on her face.  Finally, she blurts out, “Wait a minute.  Let’s back up.  I don’t know if you all have thought about this but not everyone celebrates Thanksgiving.  In our church we recognize what we call Thanks-grieving.”

And Darryl thought, “Okay, I know where she’s going.  For a lot of people the holidays are not the most joyous of times.  Sometimes the holidays are the anniversary of a loved one’s death or it can be a pretty lonely occasion.  I appreciate that.”

But the UU minister proceeded to say, “When we recognize Thanks-grieving, we grieve for our country and how it came about in large part by oppression and by the assault of terminal diseases, and how this land was essentially taken from those who were here before us.”

Wow.  Never before had a room full of do-good ministers felt guiltier for trying to put together a Thanksgiving meal to help the poor.  Darryl says that the wind was taken out of everyone’s sails, and that he was frustrated with this newcomer from the UU Church.

He said, “Dan, the worst thing about it is that we always recognize the past injustices that are woven into the history of Thanksgiving in America.  That’s a part of our observance at this thing every year.  But no matter what we say or do or sing or eat at this thing, we’re all there to make a difference.  We’re all there to help people who have no Thanksgiving to celebrate even if they wanted to.”

And I said, “There you go, brother!  She told you what she believes, and the way she said it shut everyone down.  But what you’re saying is that regardless of what you all believe, that you’re all united in an effort to make a positive difference.  Whether you believe in Thanksgiving or whether you believe in Thanks-grieving, your belief has to make a difference.  Isn’t that the point of your whole interfaith minister’s alliance?”

The point rings true for all of us: We need to be less concerned with the differences in our beliefs and more concerned with the differences our beliefs will make.

The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wandered around the streets of his native Copenhagen like a field reporter for a news station.  Everywhere he went, he asked people if they really believed that Jesus was raised from the dead.  Almost everyone did.  Then he asked them what difference that belief made in the way they went about their business.  Their answer by and large: Nothing.  It’s not that important.

Outside of calling myself a Christian and using that label to set myself aside from others who believe differently, what good is it to believe in something as awesome and incredible and transformative and triumphant as the resurrection of Jesus Christ if that belief doesn’t make one lick of difference in my life, let alone the lives of others in need of justice and mercy and love?

Jesus is on the way up to Jerusalem.  He’s surrounded by a group as diverse as the Miles City Interfaith Minister’s Alliance: Sadducees, Pharisees, teachers of the law and, of course, his disciples.  The controversial topic of the time is resurrection.

The Sadducees were an aristocratic and wealthy bunch who were theologically conservative.  For them, no teaching held any authority if it didn’t appear in the Pentateuch: the first five books of Moses, or the first five books of what we refer to as the Old Testament.  The Pharisees, on the other hand, had different beliefs.  They included the prophets in their Scripture, and they included the authority of the oral tradition from Moses, which provided a basis for belief in the resurrection.  So, back and forth and back and forth the Sadducees and the Pharisees would debate in sort of a controversial stalemate where nothing would change except for maybe the details of their talking points.

They were like democrats and republicans arguing over whether global warming is real or a hoax, but doing nothing one way or the other while the polar ice caps continue to melt and China keeps doling out job after job to its citizens with the construction of the most innovative sustainability infrastructure in the world.

Rabia of Bastra, the 8^th century female Islamic saint out of the Sufi tradition, has a simple poem that I adore called “Troublemakers.”  Her poem comes to mind when I think of the Sadducees in this morning’s scripture.  It goes like this:

Since no one really knows anything about God,

Those who think they do are just

Troublemakers.

So, the troublemakers approach Jesus with a nonsensical question based on their beliefs and their culture.  Because of the patriarchal context of the ancient Mediterranean world, women who were married lost status if their husband died.  So, it was customary for the deceased husband’s brother to marry the widow in order to maintain her status, and, to be painfully blunt in this respect, to maintain her worth to the family as a potential mother.  Marriage was all about the propagation of the race.

So, the trouble-making Sadducees ask Jesus: If a woman’s husband dies and then she remarries her deceased husband’s brother, and he dies; and then she remarries the next brother, and he dies, and so on until she has been married do all seven of the brothers, in the resurrection, who will be her husband?  And Jesus’ answer is basically, “What difference does it make?”

We’ve been debating for years about resurrection.  And over the centuries our human beliefs have crept into the notion of resurrection making it into something where we say that we will live forever.  But Jesus says that resurrection is about God giving life to the dead; that even though we die, God raises us into new life.  The resurrection is not some old life stretched into eternity—we’re not vampires—the resurrection is the transformation of the world as we know it into the world that God intends for it to be.  Resurrection is everything dying, including our beliefs, and God giving us new life.  It means that in the resurrection, the beliefs that we have about the institution of marriage, be they procreation or maintaining our morals or getting into a more beneficial tax bracket, disappear!  And women and men become equal to angels, Jesus tells us, and they do not die anymore.  And the Apostle Paul tell us that in this Jesus, who rolls his eyes at the troublemakers of this world, that in this Jesus the Christ, we are no longer slave nor free, Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, we are all one.  We are all transformed.  We are all raised to new life that reflects the vision of God, not our simplistic, divisive beliefs.

And after that, this morning’s Scripture reads, “No one dared ask him anymore questions.”

Jesus doesn’t tell us exactly what to expect in the resurrection.  He doesn’t tell us exactly what we are supposed to believe when it comes to the resurrection.  He just tells us that resurrection makes a difference.

I wonder, when we breathe our last and we meet our Maker, will we be asked a series of questions about theology and eschatology and ecclesiology and doctrine, and depending on how many answers we get right on that exam that will determine our place in heaven; or will our Creator God, our relentlessly loving Shepherd, our Rock and our Redeemer, will that Divine Parent instead ask us, “So, my beloved, all of your beliefs—your virtues, your ethics, your moral compass—in the time that you were given, what difference did they make?”

Verna J. Dozier, says this, “The important question to ask is not, ‘What do you believe?’ but ‘What difference does it make that you believe?’” Does the world come nearer to the dream of God because of what you believe?

The dream of God where the widow and the orphan and the foreigner are welcomed and cared for and loved; the dream of God where swords are beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, and no one trains for war any longer; the dream of God where the hungry are fed, and the thirsty receive water, and strangers are invited in, and the naked are clothed, and the sick and imprisoned are visited; the dream of God where everyone is delivered into a land of promise flowing with milk and honey, and everyone has the hope of health and happiness and length of days.

I caught a glimpse of this dream yesterday morning at the Brazos Church Pantry.  People had come from all over, women and men, Black and White, young and old, English-speaking and Spanish-speaking, to get food assistance.  They were packed into the lobby area like sardines, moving in and out of the interview rooms where volunteers received them with smiles.  And in the back more volunteers moved around like worker bees stuffing food donations into grocery bags, breaking down boxes to make more space for more provisions, moving carts of food to the lobby area and into the cars of those who had come in need.  And in the middle of this beautiful frenzy, the back door of the place flies open and three people walk in with arms full of food to donate to the church pantry.  And no one misses a beat, they just come right in and give what they have, and the work continues until the lobby is empty and the worker bees are spent.

That’s a vision.  That’s something that you never see on the news.  That’s something that people never tweet about or post on Facebook.  That’s something the million-dollar campaigns of our dutiful politicians who get all of our attention every two years rarely mention.  It’s something that looks unlike most anything in this world that we have crafted by our human beliefs, and it’s something that makes a difference.  Maybe that’s what Jesus was talking about when he told us about this thing called resurrection.

On this day that the United Church of Christ has dubbed “friend-raising Sunday,” we celebrate our diversity and our many different beliefs that pour into this community of faith.  But when it comes to this diversity and all that we hold dear and all that we believe, what difference does it make?  Whether the world can see the dream of God depends on our answer to that question.  Are we troublemakers, or are we imperfect believers united by the hope and the possibility that we are making a difference?  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Putting First Things First”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, October 31, 2010
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12, and Luke 19:1-10

The Apostle Paul wrote a lot of letters to a lot of churches.  And those letters make up the bulk of what we know as the New Testament in the Bible.  Those letters are chock full of language that is altogether sentimental, exposing, constructive, passionate, contradictory, faithful and loving.  Paul reaches out to church communities that need comforting and guidance.  He admonishes churches for where they are flubbing their calling.  He gives churches instructions on how to be strong and healthy communities of faith.  And he thanks God for churches that are growing in faith and love.  This is where the church at Thessalonica is doing a stellar job.

Now, Paul’s letters always take an editorial turn on how a church is doing in the area of growth.  He always has something to say about how churches can do better in this respect.  But Paul writes two letters to the church at Thessalonica—1 and 2 Thessalonians—and in the first letter, the Thessalonians are doing such a good job growing in faith and love that Paul doesn’t even mention it.  He doesn’t go there.  In his second letter he goes there, but not in his usual admonishing, finger-wagging fashion.  The Thessalonians are increasing in Christian faith and love so exponentially and rapidly that Paul writes in his letter about how he is boasting to other churches about the Church at Thessalonica.  He writes, “We ought always to thank God for you, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing.  Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith.”

Paul is boasting.  This is so out of character for Paul.  In his other letters, he talks about how boasting and pride are of no use to the church and how they cloud a life of faith.  But he is just so happy, so joyful, so elated about this church at Thessalonica that he can’t help himself.  He has to make an exception.  He’s just got to boast.  He is that excited!  He’s like a Baptist so filled with faith and love for God that they stand up and say, “What the heck” and start dancing in church.  He’s like a heady, intellectual UCC church member who is so filled with faith and love for God that they can’t help themselves during the sermon, and they shout out, “Amen!”  Can you imagine that?

When it comes to the church at Thessalonica, Paul has a lot to boast about.  And on this Lord’s Day, October 31^st, 2010, we certainly have a lot to celebrate, a lot to be joyful and excited about; maybe even a little to boast about.  After the second round of New Member Classes in just seven months, we come to our third New Member Sunday this year.  And today Cheri, Lucy, Tyra, Leigh, Wolfgang, Victor, Noe, Izzy, Rachel, Beth, Audrianne, Lynn an Jim, De Ette and Alma and their three children, Javier, Elena and Carlos, are coming forward to join this congregation.  It’s a joyful day in the life of this community of faith for which we give God thanks.

But as I reflect on the letters that Paul writes to the churches in biblical times, I wonder, if Paul were to write a letter to Friends Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, today, would he boast?  Would he be so happy and excited that he would have reason to boast?  And what would he boast about?

In 2 Thessalonians, Paul is boasting about growth.  Measuring church growth is so tricky.  Measuring church growth is about as clear and straightforward as trying to explain the Trinity or the virgin birth.  Whenever I have a conversation with someone about what I do for a living, one of the first questions they always ask is, “How many members do you have?”  It baffles me that even when I get together with other clergy, my ministerial peers, for conferences and retreats that they’ll ask the same question: “So, how many members do you have?”  That’s not a really healthy reinforcement among my peers of what matters most in terms of church growth.

Now, the other question people always ask me in this community when they find out that I’m the pastor of this church is, “Where is your church located?  Where’s that?”  So, I tell them we’re on 2818/Harvey Mitchell Parkway close to the Wal-Mart.  And half the time they can’t picture it.  So I give them the Goldilocks answer to help them visualize our location in terms of size.  I say, “We’re Baby Bear.  You’ve got First Baptist Church, they’re Papa Bear.  Then, you’ve got Peace Lutheran Church, they’re Mama Bear.  And then you’ve got Friends Church, we’re Baby Bear.”  But another way to think about it is that Papa Bear’s porridge is too hot.  And Mama Bear’s porridge is too cold.  But Baby Bear’s porridge is just right.

I say that playfully.  We have only love for our neighbors at First Baptist and Peace Lutheran.  I remind us that we share the Family Promise ministry to homeless families in our community with our Baptist and Lutheran sisters and brothers in Christ.  And for so many different people from so many different walks on life on this Christian journey, the porridge might be just right at First Baptist or at Peace or here at Friends.  And we thank God for the variety in our churches.

But the point of the porridge remains true:  It’s all about the porridge.  The porridge, what we cook up together in our shared church life, is the true measure of growth.  If what we are cooking up together is making us more open and ready to receive the grace of God, if it’s making us more open and ready to receive the love of Jesus Christ, if it’s making us more open and ready to receive the power of the Holy Spirit, then that’s good porridge.  Because the grace of God and the love of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, they change us, they transform us.  And the more we strive for that grace and love and power to transform us, then the more equipped we become and the more postured we become to change this broken world.  We can’t do that unless we set aside the temptation to put second things first; things like the size of our church membership.  The porridge is the first thing.  It has the power to change us, and we need to put first things first.

The same thing is true for our individual lives.  We can’t be putting second things first in our daily living and expect for the seed of God’s transforming love to ever take root in our lives.  Now, we all come to church for different reasons: Some of us are here because the UCC is our denominational background; some of us are here because we love singing in the choir; some of us are here because we need a place for our children to learn and grow; maybe we’re here because of a small group ministry of this church or a Sunday morning class or because we like the open windows and the friendly faces.  But what we all hold in common that keeps us coming to church is our desire to be better people.  We want to be better people.  And here is our beautiful challenge: We can come to church every Sunday morning and every Wednesday night for the rest of our lives, but it will only be a nice place to go and it will do nothing to make us better people unless we put first things first.  That’s how we ready ourselves to become better people.  That’s how salvation happens.

Zaccheus had been putting second things first for far too long.  All he knew was his job and doing his job well, and he certainly did that.  Zaccheus was a tax collector, and he had prioritized that job so much that it was all he had.  The story from Luke’s gospel suggests that Zaccheus had no friends, he lived alone, and he was despised by society.  The Greek word for ‘tax collector’ is translated to mean ‘publican.’  And we find that word in various places in the New Testament, but this translation of the Greek ‘publican’ in Luke 19:2 is only found once in all of Greek literature.  It’s that incendiary.  And this one-time-only use of this form of the Greek ‘publican’ means ‘chief tax collector.’  Luke wanted to point out how deeply embedded Zaccheus was in the corrupt Roman government system of tax collecting.  He was the lowest of the low, but he wanted to be a better person.  Even though the story tells us how despised Zaccheus was, we get the sense that he was an endearing person in some way.

So, Zaccheus heard that Jesus was coming to his town.  And he heard that this man, Jesus, ate with sinners and tax collectors.  That was good news for Zaccheus.  That was good news for his heart, mind and soul.  And he had faith in that good news, so he did everything he could to catch a glimpse of this Jesus, and as a result of his efforts, Jesus sees Zaccheus high up in that sycamore tree and he says, “Come down from there right now.  I must stay at your house today.”

And once Jesus is in his house, Zaccheus takes another step toward being a better person.  He puts second things in their place and puts first things first.  He stands up and he says to Jesus, “Lord, I’ve been going about life all wrong.  I’ve been on a misguided track.  But I’m ready to set all that aside.  I’m done counting the number of coins in my purse.  I’m ready to change.  So, right now, Lord, right now, Jesus, I’m going to give half of my possessions to the poor.  And if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay them back four times the amount!”

That’s huge!  Roman law required that if you stole anything from anyone or if you cheated anyone out of anything that you had to pay them back four times the amount what you took.  Can you imagine if that law was enforced on everyone who has been complicit in stealing at Goldman Sachs, and everyone who has been complicit in cheating among big insurance companies?  We’d see some change.  We’d see some salvation.

The moment that Zaccheus makes this pronouncement to Jesus, he says, “Today salvation has come to this house.”  When we hear ‘salvation,’ we might think in terms of saving one’s soul or getting into heaven.  But the writer of Luke’s gospel meant salvation to be more than that.  Salvation means a change of direction.  Salvation means that one’s life is changed and set in a new direction.  Salvation means putting first things first.  Salvation means that the human heart and mind and soul are ready to receive the transforming grace and love and power of God.  And the Good News that we find in this story about Zaccheus the wretched tax collector is that everyone is worthy of God’s grace and love and power.  Everyone can receive salvation.  No matter who we are or where we’ve been or what we’ve done or what we haven’t done, we can receive salvation; we can change, we can be transformed.  And it is not until we are transformed by the grace and love and power of God that we can change God’s world one act of love at a time.

So, I know it sounds preachy, but I would love it if instead of asking me about the number of church members we have that people would ask instead, “So, has salvation come to your house?  Is the porridge you’re cooking up as a congregation helping you to yield your lives to God’s salvation?”  That’s the growth that Paul was boasting about!

When I was a youth minister at another church, every year our Church Administrator would ask me some questions to help her complete our church’s annual report.  We would then submit that report to our conference.  Some of the questions she’d ask me were: How many teenagers joined your youth group this past year?  How many of them were baptized?  How many of their parents joined the church?  How many show up for Sunday classes each week?  If you attend a summer camp, how many of them were in attendance?  How big is your youth group budget?

One year when I was asked how many teenagers had joined our group, I couldn’t think of a one.  And initially that made me feel uneasy; like I had failed in some capacity, or like our group was underachieving or not good enough.  But also that year, our high schoolers spent their entire fall semester doing fundraisers and saving their own money to buy school supplies, school uniforms and toys for children living in an orphanage in Camargo, Mexico.  And those high schoolers then sacrificed two days of their Christmas break, the two days right before Christmas in fact, traveling down to Mexico in a crowded church van to make sure that those children received their gifts.  That was a pretty amazing Christmas; one that I’ll never forget, and one that those teenagers whose weddings I now perform still speak about with joy and excitement.  Something like that happens as a result of faith and love.  Where is the blank for that in the annual report?

Paul measures growth by faith and love.  Is that what we are cooking up at Friends Congregational Church?  Is that what we are cooking up in our individual daily lives?  Are we putting first things first so that Jesus can spot us in our efforts of faith and love and say, “Child of God!  You!  Come down from there!  I must stay at your house today!”?

Scripture tells us that God loves us so much that if God were a shepherd and we were just one lost sheep that God would leave the other 99 to go in search of the one.  That is how relentless God’s love is.  It’s when God’s search for us finds us and transforms us into hosts—as Zaccheus was transformed from the unworthy outcast to the host of Jesus Christ—when that transformation happens we can be agents of God’s change in this world one act of love at a time.  That is growth.  And that, I believe, is something Paul can boast about.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“This or That!”
Delivered by Rev. Tamara Franks
Sunday, October 24, 2010
2 Timothy 4:6-8; Luke 18:9-14

Transcript coming soon…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Bothering God”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Jeremiah 31:31-34; Luke 18:1-8

Taking apart a playground is a daunting task.  About six summers ago, when I was a youth minister, our group was preparing for a mission trip.  We were getting ready to go to the Borderlands try to do some good work in the name of Christ.  We had spent two summers before helping a tiny church in a border town called San Isidro to get off the ground.  We’d offered Vacation Bible Schools for kids and done a “Flip this House” on a nursery and a youth room.  Now our group wanted to up the ante and build a play-scape on the church grounds.

Well, our Deputy Moderator of Trustees, Kathy Slater, and our Property and Grounds Chair, Kent Schuster, will tell you, play-scapes aren’t cheap, and our group soon discovered that.  So, one guy in our youth group who was a junior in high school got the idea that he would donate his play-scape from his own backyard to the youth group mission trip.  His name was Philip.  It sounds endearing, I know.  How wonderful for Philip to donate his childhood play-scape to a youth group mission trip.  But when he brought that idea to the table, all I could think about was how difficult it would be to get that thing from Austin to San Isidro.

Phil said, “Don’t worry!  I’ve got all the tools I need to take it apart and we can load all the parts in a trailer and take it with us!”  So, the next thing I know, I’m standing in Philip’s backyard on a blistering hot summer day, ankle-deep in grass from a lawn in dire need of mowing, mosquitoes eating me alive, watching Phil and a couple of other guys from the youth group climb all over this wooden play-scape.  Tools are all over the place.  But piece by piece, hour by hour, the guys and I take this thing apart.  And all the while I keep rolling my eyes in my mind and thinking, “Why bother?  Something’s going to go wrong with this thing.  We’re not going to have enough room for it in the trailer.  We’re going to lose some hardware along the way.  Something’s going to break.  And there’s no manual, so how in the world are we going to reconstruct this monstrosity when we get to San Isidro?  Why bother?”

If it’s true that CO2 emissions are increasing at an alarming, exponential rate every day, and that other countries, like China and India, are doing almost as much damage to the atmosphere as we are in this respect, and if what scientists predict this means for our world is true, then catastrophe appears inevitable.  Why bother doing anything about it?  I’ll recycle to ease my guilt, but that’s about all I can do.  Why bother?

My church asks me for donations to the local food pantry, and it seems like every month they’re asking for money to help with this and that; but children still die by the thousands every day because they can’t get access to clean drinking water or food, and children in Bryan-College Station who are homeless still number in the hundreds.  In the end, what difference do my donations make?  Why bother?

I went with a couple of people from my church over to Sheridan the other day, a retirement community down the street.  We read Scripture and prayed and sang songs for a room full of elderly people, and I sat down with one man who was hunched over and could barely open his eyes.  I must have talked with him for a half hour with no response whatsoever.  So, what good am I doing?  Why bother?

I know my family would cringe if they ever found out that some of my best friends are gay, and their heads might explode if I told them that I go to a church where I hear words spoken from the pulpit like ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ and ‘transgender’ alongside words like ‘God’ and ‘love’ and ‘Christ.’  They’ll never get it.  They’ll never understand.  So, why bother?

It may not seem like it, but even though we don’t say these things with heads bowed and eyes closed, or even out loud for that matter, these are our prayers.  These are the things we include in our prayers.  And, sadly, our prayers often stop right there.  When our hopes feel like a sprinkle of water dashed at a hot skillet, then our prayers stop right there: “Why bother?”

Jesus responds to that rhetorical prayer with a parable.  And the meaning appears obvious.  It’s a parable about the importance of persistent prayer.  Jesus teaches us about the need for prayers that don’t stop; prayers that don’t give up and fall silent when their first attempts fizzle and vaporize.  The point is clear: Jesus contrasts an unjust judge with God.  He talks about a man who is apathetic and indifferent about life in general, and about how this unjust judge grants justice to a woman, despite his Ebenezer Scrooge outlook, merely because she won’t stop bothering him.  And if that’s the case, then how much more and how much quicker do you think God will grant you justice, God who is all things good and righteous and antithetical to apathy and indifference?

Okay, that message is there.  Sure: be persistent in prayer.  God is 100 times more gracious than the unjust judge.  But we miss the richness of this parable if we overlook who is praying, who is doing the bothering.  And who is bothering the unjust judge?  A widow.

In the Hebrew Bible, what we commonly call the Old Testament, God and the prophets are always talking about certain people that God holds in highest regard.  The ones that God speaks out for more than any others when it comes to justice: the orphan, the alien and the widow.  These are often typical representatives of those who need to be defended against exploitation.

John Pilch tells us that the “word for ‘widow’ in Hebrew means ‘silent one’ or ‘one unable to speak’.” In the patriarchal Mediterranean world of antiquity, males alone play a public role. Women do not speak on their own behalf.  So this widow, this “silent one,” is acting outside the normal bounds when she finds her voice and dares to speak up for herself.

So, the person praying in Jesus’ parable gives us another lesson: that we only get half the point if we focus on the persistence of prayer alone, because the prayer itself needs to represent a just cause.  Our prayers need to be just.  Otherwise, maybe we’re just bothering God.

So, how are we supposed to know whether our prayers are just?  In the parable, the unjust judge says, “Because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!”  The literal translation of that last part of the verse from Hebrew says, “Lest she come at last and beat me.”  This woman is verbally beating down the unjust judge with her voice and with her words, and the unjust judge is Jesus’ contrast with God.  But then Jesus’ point in that contrast is that God will not change, and God will not go down, and God will not give up on us, and God is filled with love and righteousness that even the purest human heart can never fully know.  So, that leaves a question: Who is being beaten down by the persistence of prayer?  When we bother God with our laundry list of prayers—our joys, our concerns, our desires, our hopes, our anger, our frustration—when we bother God with these prayers who changes?  Who relents?

The existentialist, Soren Kierkegaard, wrote in the 19^th century, “Prayer does not change God, but it changes the one who prays.”

The widow is someone who sadly has no voice in her time and context, yet by her persistent cries for justice she finds her voice.  Barbara Brown Taylor says about the widow:  “She is willing to say what she wanted, out loud, day and night, over and over—whether she got it or not, because saying it was how she remembered who she was. It was how she remembered the shape of her heart.”

If what the Prophet Jeremiah says is true, that the spirit of God’s law is written on our hearts, then like Jesus’ example of the widow, we need to get in touch with that spirit.  And a discipline for getting in touch with that spirit is the persistence of prayer.  Bothering God with our ongoing prayers helps us find our voice.  It puts us in touch with who we really are as made in the image of God, who is love; it puts us in touch with the person God hopes for us to be, and with the identity and the voice that God hopes for us to have.  In other words, bothering God helps us retrieve prayers of justice.  That’s why we bother.

A few years ago some members of our church attended a spiritual renewal weekend called The Journey.  The weekend offered a host of speakers that talked on various topics.  And one of the speakers was a minister who shared his testimony that I think speaks to us this morning, too.

The minister shared how he had an adult son.  He talked about how much he loved his son and about how he prided himself on raising his son to be a good man.  But when his son became an adult, he shared something with his father that was painfully difficult for him to hear.  He came out.  He told his father that he was gay.  And the minister said that this news was too hard for him to accept.  Like so many painful stories that many of us in this place know firsthand, and that I’ve heard more often than not, this minister’s response to his son’s news was to shut him out, to give him the could shoulder of silence and not accept who his son was.  Maybe that would make his son think again about what he had shared with his father.  Maybe his father’s gruff treatment would encourage the son to change into someone his dad could accept.

But then the minister said that in his bout with all of his anger and sadness and frustration, he couldn’t find peace for himself; he couldn’t reason a way around it.  So, he said to our group on that retreat that he gave up trying to make sense of the situation for himself, and he turned to God.  He prayed and he prayed and he prayed.  And this is the prayer that he prayed, “God, change my son or change me.”  And what do you think happened?

Bothering God with our prayers does not change God; it changes us.  And the more we are changed by that persistence, the more our voice is formed and the more we remember who it is that God made and intended us to be.  With that voice crafted by our persistent bothering of God, we are equipped to ask God boldly for more justice in this world.  And having a voice of conviction gives us the strength and confidence to live justly.  And the more we live justly, the more we witness things that we need to bother God about.  We become a bothersome people (praise God).  It’s cyclical.  It’s faithful.

We dragged Philip’s old wooden play-scape from Austin to San Isidro piece by piece.  And when we got there we unloaded it piece by piece.  And every morning that we were there, we re-constructed the play-scape right there on the church grounds piece by piece.  No instructions.  No manual.  Just time and tools and faith.

All week long children from the community would flock to this little church for Vacation Bible School.  And on the last day of VBS, Philip put the finishing touches on that play-scape.  And as soon as lunch was over, the back door of the church opened and a sea of children poured out of that place and went straight to the play-scape.  And right there under a blistering hot sun in the middle of rural Texas, I looked at children sliding down a slide and swinging on swings and climbing the walls that only a few days before belonged to a teenager in Austin, Texas; and I saw the elation on their faces and the excitement bursting out of their bodies as they ran and played, and I finally heard it as if God the righteous judge were speaking to me in a whisper: “That’s why bother.  Do you see it?  That’s why bother.”  I share this with you because Philip and that play-scape were a step on my faith journey that changed me just a little.

I like to think that God relishes in those prayers that we bother God with, because those prayers give God’s hands more ability to shape our lives into the vessels of justice and mercy and love that God needs for us to be.  So, for your sake and for the sake of this world that needs God’s justice and mercy and love like a child needs room and space to play, bother God.  Bother God without ceasing.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Build, Plant, Pray”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Psalm 111; Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Luke 17:11-19

Last week the sermon took a page from the Prophet Habakkuk and asked the question he cries out from the watchtower: “How long, O Lord?  How long must I call for help and you do not listen?”  This is the question that is foremost in the exiles’ minds.  Jeremiah 29 finds the people of God being held captive by King Nebuchadnezzar.  The Jews are in a foreign land.  They’ve been deported from their homeland of Jerusalem in Judah off to this place, Babylon; plucked up from the familiar and drop-kicked in a land that seems altogether strange.  And from this daily walk in unfamiliarity, the people of God are constantly thinking, “How much longer do we have to be here?  How much longer do we have to live in this strange environment?  How much longer do we have to associate with people who are different from us?  How much longer do we have to listen to their language that makes no sense to us?  How much longer do we have to live out of these suitcases?  When, O Lord, can we get our lives back together?”

This is the situation that we find in Jeremiah 29 that John read from a moment ago.  Biblical scholars say that Jeremiah 29, the “Letter to the Exiles,” is one of the most significant documents in the Old Testament.  And here we thought it was Leviticus 18:22.  Whatever we want to justify by our own biases and standards and, worse yet, even our own prejudices can be hunted and gathered from the pages of Scripture and labeled significant.  But here we find in Jeremiah 29 something that is painfully significant in the lives of God’s people, the ones who carry out a significant example for how we are supposed to live out our life of faith today.  So, let’s see what we can learn from this text.  Let’s see if we can find out what is so significant about Jeremiah 29, the “Letter to the Exiles”?

In thinking about the exiles’ situation here, and in thinking about their relentless desire to get back to normal and constantly asking that question, “How long?,” I wondered, “So, what do we ask that question about in our day and age?”  What makes us as a society cry out, “How long?”  Last week the sermon asked that question about injustices ranging from child deaths to racism, but as a society, we aren’t really asking how long those injustices must stand unchecked.  No, when it comes to something that has been going on and on and on, something that we desperately want to end so we can get back to normal, what comes to mind is war.  We think of war in Iraq (that has supposedly ended), we think of war in Afghanistan, we think of drone attacks Pakistan, and we think, “How long?  How long?”

Now, when we ask that question, “How long,” about the wars that our country is engaged in, some of us might think about it in terms of injustice going unchecked.  Some might think, “How long must we kill each other?  How long must innocent Iraqi and Afghan and Pakistani people die in the crossfire of these wars?  How long must their lands that could be used for agriculture and infrastructure be bombarded with bombs?  How long must our young women and men go through tours of duty that leave them crippled with PTSD?”  Good questions to ask.

But the questions that we are quicker to ask in our public discourse, the questions that we are quicker to ask as a society, have to do with returning to what’s familiar, getting back to normal and getting our lives back together.  When it comes to these wars, we as a people ask, “How long do we have to see these images on TV and read these awful headlines and see movies like The Hurt Locker win best picture?  It’s annoying!  How long do we have to spend billions of our tax dollars on these wars when we are already mired in debt?  It’s so inconvenient!  How long do we have to focus on the well-being of the Iraqi people getting back on their feet when we’ve got an unemployment rate that looms just under 10% (16%, by the way, for African Americans)?  How long until we get the job done and get back to normal already?”

I know it seems strange, but those questions sound more like the questions being asked by the exiles in Babylon than those other questions about injustice.  What biblical scholars point out is that the exiles aren’t experiencing the bondage of slavery like they did under Pharaoh in Egypt.  What they’re experiencing in Babylon by comparison is more of an inconvenience than anything else.  This isn’t to belittle the fact that they’ve been uprooted from their land and moved somewhere else, but we should notice that in a time of tribalism and war, the exiles are fairing quite well.

In Babylon they have real estate for building, lush land for planting, and let’s not forget freedom of religion.  But in the midst of this new opportunity, albeit forced upon them, the exiles just want to get back to what they know.  They want to get back to the familiar.  They want their land back and their Temple back. They want life to get back to normal.

And there are prophets crawling out of the woodwork telling them exactly what they want to hear: “Don’t worry, folks!  Pretty soon Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians are going to fall and we’ll get our lives back together!  Keep your suitcases packed.  No need to change course.”  But along comes Jeremiah, God’s prophet, and his message is not what the people want to hear at all.  Jeremiah says, “Yeah, we’re going to be here awhile.  Count on it being a good 70 years at least.  So, get comfortable, people; dig some roots.  Get planted and make the most of it.  Oh, and don’t listen to all those prophets.  They’re selling you a car.  I’m giving you the Word of God.”

The exiles want a quick way out.  They want to get back to normal ASAP.  They don’t want to worship God on this foreign soil.  They just want to get back to their Temple, the only place where they understand God to be.  They don’t want to learn about Babylonian culture, they just want to get back home to what’s familiar.  And here’s this so-called prophet telling giving them a message that contradicts everything that they want.  The message of Jeremiah to an annoyed, frustrated, inconvenienced, dislocated people is simply this: Build, plant, pray.  It doesn’t matter if you’re in Jerusalem or Babylon, America or Afghanistan, Texas or Mexico; wherever you are, God is imploring you, children of God, “Build, plant, pray.”

We want to get back to normal, too.  We want to get our lives back together.  We want these wars to end, but even for those of us who lean heavily on the ideology of peace, we as a society look at this situation through an old, tired lens that knows nothing but war.  And if that is all we know and that is all we ever do, then nothing will ever change.  So, like the exiles before us, we would do well to listen to the Prophet Jeremiah who tells us, “Yeah, there’s no quick way out of this situation.  We’re going to be here a while.  You can fight it if you want to, but you’ll soon find that in fighting your neighbor, you’re really just fighting yourself, cutting your nose off to spite your face.  So, let’s learn from this.  Let’s grow from this.  Build, plant, pray.”

The exiles were looking at things through a tired, old lens.  They listened to all those false prophets who assured them that this was all temporary, that it would all be over soon, because war would cause things to shift in their favor, and they’d go back to the familiar; back to normal.  But the opening verse of Jeremiah 29 addresses that outlook.  It says, “This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles.”  They sound like wise people; but an older, more accurate translation of this verse reads, “This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the residue of the elders…”  They don’t sound so wise anymore.  They’re way of looking at things and doing things was viewed as residue by God’s prophet; something to be scrubbed off to allow for newness of life and a change in direction.

Here’s a thought for us to ponder: I want to suggest that we as a society turn to war as quickly as we as people of faith turn to Christianity.  And perhaps we as a society turn to war for the same reasons that we as people of faith turn to Chrisianity.  We think that it will solve all of our problems.  We think that it will help us finally get back to normal, to get our lives together.

In his book, Testimony: Talking Ourselves into Being Christian, Thomas Long writes about an encounter between another author named Dan Wakefield and the great Catholic theologian and spiritual writer Henri Nouwen.  Wakefield was a seeker.  He sought salvation for years through drugs and alcohol and promiscuity.  But in the 1980’s he began to experience a spiritual awakening, and he described it as his quest for God.  He wrote in New York Times Magazine about his slow and timid return to church, and about how he connected with the minister there.  The minister turned him on to the writings of Henri Nouwen.  This was like rain on the parched earth of his soul, so Wakefield read more and more of Nouwen’s stuff.  But then he happened upon a book by Nouwen called A Cry for Help: Prayers from the Genesee.  And in that book, Nouwen shares how he, too, sometimes experienced anguish and confusion in his own spiritual quest.

This sent Wakefield reeling, because how could he have any hope of finding salvation for his life when this incredibly devout man of faith and spiritual purity, Henri Nouwen, talks about having struggles, too?  So, Wakefield reached out to Nouwen and arranged for the two of them to have lunch together.  And while they ate, Wakefield confessed to Nouwen that his book, A Cry for Help, discouraged him.  He said, “If someone as spiritually mature as you still wrestles with his doubts and anguishes about his faith, then what hope is there for a mere beginner like me?”  Nouwen could have patted Wakefield on the hand and said, “There, there.  Give it time.  It will happen!” or he could have given him some prayer exercise or a spiritual devotion to follow.  But instead, Nouwen, in his innocent wisdom, just said, “Christianity is not for getting your life together.”

Christianity is not for getting your life together.  That myth-buster hits us like a hammer in the face.  How many of us troubled souls with our tattered lives have darkened the door of a church hoping to find a quick path to familiarity, a quick means of getting our lives together?  How many of us have wandered in the Babylonian captivity of drug addiction or being scorned by someone we love that we thought we had all figured out or an unexpected divorce or dealing with the torment of what family members have done or said to us or our parents ailing or our children not reflecting the personhood or the values that we tried so hard to instill in them or losing that job or…?  And after wandering in that wilderness something in us says, “Well, maybe if I get back to church, my life will get back in order.”

Nine of the ten lepers that Jesus healed thought that they needed to abide by the law, to abide by what was familiar and normal, or things might just go off course.  So, when Jesus miraculously heals them of their leprosy, they do what he says and they go back to the Temple.  That’s where you’re supposed to go after all.  That’s where they are welcomed and embraced as normal, familiar people now that their physical blemishes no longer exist.  But for the Samaritan, for the one non-Jewish leper Jesus healed out of the bunch, for the one person in this story who does not fit in a category of familiar law or normal orthodoxy, where does he go?  Where is there for him to go?  Only one place: He returns to the place where he was healed, the feet of Jesus, where his life was changed forever, and he thanks him.  And Jesus says, “Your faith has made you well.  Now, get up and go on your way.”

Here’s the good news, people: Christianity is not for getting our lives back together.  It’s for disrupting things even more than they were already disrupted in our lives.  It’s for breaking through our anxiousness and our anger and our frustration and our stubbornness and revealing to us a new way to live our lives.  It’s for changing us right where we stand, no matter where we’ve been, no matter what’s familiar to us, no matter what baggage we’ve got, no matter what our circumstances may be.  Christianity not about us getting our lives put together, it’s about God taking our lives apart and using our lives for something more than what we think we need to be happy and all-together.

Christianity is about doing the same thing that the Prophet Jeremiah said: “Build, plant, pray.”  Wherever you are, whatever your context, whatever your skill set, whatever your geographic location, whatever Babylonian captivity you might be in right now, God is calling you: Build, plant, pray.  Don’t keep your bags packed.  Don’t keep the kingdom of God at bay.  Don’t keep your light hidden under a bushel basket.  Build, plant, pray.

Where you are right now isn’t a pit-stop or a rest station on the way to something bigger and better as far as God is concerned.  Build, plant, pray.  As Johnny Cash sings to the evangelistic Christian who is always looking to that sweet by and by as a quick way out of the Babylonian captivity of this broken world, “What on earth will you do for heaven’s sake?”

You may know from our newsletter or from being here for our reception on September 12^th, I have been serving the pastorate of Friends Church for five years now.  I’m still processing that, but in light of this morning’s message, something comes to mind.  A little over five years ago when I started announcing to friends of mine in Austin that I would be starting a new vocation at a UCC church, they’re response was, “Wow!  Pastor!  That sounds great!  Where is the church?”  And I’d tell them it was in College Station, and they’d say, “Wow, how long do you plan on being there?”  And my response was always something like, “We’ll see,” or, “As long as it takes,” because I had no answer for that question.  I was still waiting on the details of my calling.

And five years later, some of those same friends approach me and they say, “Wow!  Congratulations on five years!  Now, how much longer to you think you’re going to be there?”  I love my friends who ask me these questions, and they mean well, they really do.  But they just don’t get it.

I am here.  We are here.  And right here, right now, is where God needs us.  Sure, some of us in this room have thoughts about where the job will take us after our studies are finished, and some of us have thoughts of retiring or moving one day to a different part of the country, and some of us look at this community as home and a place we have no intention of leaving.  Regardless, right now, today, we are here.  And wherever we are, that’s where God needs us.  God needs us to unpack the suitcase and do God’s will.  Whether we’re going to be here for one month, ten years or the rest of our lives, today is when God needs us to build the kingdom of God’s love.  Today is when God needs us to plant the seeds of God’s justice.  Today is when God needs us to pray for the peace that God seeks for this broken world.  Build, plant, pray.

Whether we look at this time and place right now in our lives as Jerusalem or Babylon, the truth remains that God needs us.  “But I’ve got too much research to do and deadlines to meet.”  Build, plant, pray.  “But I’ve got to wait for the house to sell and get that storage unit unpacked in my new place.”  Build, plant, pray.  “But I’ve got to get that nest egg fluffed up enough so I can really pull away and help out.”  Build, plant, pray.  “But I’ve got to get my life figured out and see what I’m really supposed to be doing for a living.”  Build, plant, pray.  Today, right where you are, just as you are, God needs you.

So, today, now, right where you are in your life, no matter the circumstances or the details of it, what is God asking you to build for the sake of love, what is God asking you to plant for the sake of justice, and what is God asking you to pray for the sake of peace?  Build…plant…pray.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“The Burden of Faith”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Psalm 137; Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4; Luke 17:5-10

If you had willpower, you’d get the job done.

If you had experience, you’d know what to do.

If you had smarts, you would be doing something else.

If you had sense, you wouldn’t fall for that scheme.

If you had guts, you would stand up to that boss of yours.

If you had patience, you would be able to find a job.

If you had better luck, you wouldn’t have so many problems with your relationships.

Anyone ever tried to size you up like that?  Point out what you don’t have?  As if that’s going to help you out.

“Thanks, Mom.  Thanks, Dad.  Thanks, best friend.  Thanks, Bro.  Thanks, Sis.  Thanks co-worker.  Thanks for pointing out yet again an area where I’m lacking.  It’s not like I don’t already know that!”

It’s a good thing, then, that we have a friend in Jesus; because Jesus will only point out things that build us up, right?  Jesus lifts us up out of the miry clay and sets our feet upon the rock.  Jesus is all about affirmation and encouragement.  Jesus is the Fairy Godmother to our Pinocchio; the Snuffaluffagus to our Big Bird; the Mr. Miyagi to our Daniel Larusso; the Yoda to our Luke Skywalker.

That’s not always the case.  The disciples are worried that if they don’t have faith that they won’t be able to do all these things that Jesus is saying that must do if they’re going to truly follow him.  And in this vulnerable moment, Jesus turns to them and says, “You know what?  If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea, and it will obey you.”

“Thanks, Jesus.  We weren’t already worried enough about how much we’ve sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Now you go reminding us of how much better off we’d be if we had faith!”

There’s something interesting, though, about that word ‘if’ in the Greek New Testament.  There are two “if” clauses in Greek: those that express a condition contrary to the fact (“if I were you,” “if pigs could fly,” “if money grew on trees”), and those that express a condition according to a fact (“if the Pope is Catholic,” “if the sun rises in the East,” “if Glenn Beck lacks common sense”).  I mention this to point out that Jesus’ response to the disciples in verse 6 of Luke 17 is the second type of those two “if” clauses.  Jesus isn’t pointing out what the disciples don’t have or something contrary to the fact, he’s affirming what they do have, what all of us have.

If you have faith, which you do, and that faith is as small as a mustard seed, that’s all you need.  That’s enough.

Take that example that Jesus gives about the mustard seed and the mulberry tree and update it, and Jesus tells us, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, which you have, you can tell those guns and those bombs and those WMDs to be uprooted, deactivated and constructed into foundations and frameworks for schools and universities and hospitals and churches, and they will obey you.”

Okay, well, if faith has the power to do that and everyone has faith, then why is the world still a big mess?  Tragically, the Church’s response to that question throughout history has been, “Well, it must be that all those people out there, all those different-looking and different-acting people, don’t have faith.”  Sounds like that other Greek “if” clause: “Well, if you had faith, the world wouldn’t be in this mess!”

We were reminded of an interesting fact about history Thursday night.  We watched a documentary called Papers about undocumented youth in America.  One of the interviewees in the documentary mentioned how throughout our history, whenever we have fallen on hard times, instead of looking at our financial system and our government and ourselves, we blame groups of people for our hardships.  We blame others for no other reason than they are just that: others.  Jews, the Irish, the Japanese, African-Americans, Gay and Lesbian peoples, Muslims, illegal immigrants.

On this World Communion Sunday, a day that is about unity and diversity, a day that reminds us that all are welcome at the table of God’s abundance, and that all are welcome at this feast of thanksgiving; on this day we would do well to remember what Jesus teaches us: that everyone has the gift of faith.  Everyone, no matter their age, race, religion, culture, or country of origin, has the gift of faith by the grace of God.

And we would do well to remember that the grace of God transcends human understanding.  The grace of God bestows the gift of faith on each and every one of us in beautifully different ways.  We may all have the gift of faith, but that gift takes shape differently in each of us.  So, when we try to hem faith into the confines of religion, to try and put faith into a box that we can label and understand, we run the risk of being obstacles to God’s grace and not conduits of it.  Churches do this by spending more time trying to convert people to their interpretation of faith than they do nurturing the gift of faith that everyone has, whatever shape that faith might take, for the sake of all of God’s creation.

I may have shared this example with you a few years back: During seminary, I was on a trip to the Holy Land, and we went to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.  Hasidic Jews were sitting on the ground all along the wall rocking back and forth, eyes closed, mouths moving as fast as a hummingbird’s wings, praying.  A few yards away there was a bar mitzvah taking place; family and friends dancing in a circle and literally hoisting this come-of-age boy into the air.  And as our group came closer to the Wall, there was a man holding a rope that he would pull to one side to allow people to pass through.  The purpose of this check point was to make sure people’s heads were covered.  We could not approach the wall unless our heads were covered.  I didn’t have a hat that day, so I had to grab a paper hat out of a bin that was available to everybody.  I put this thing on my head, and while I was doing that, the guy holding the rope commented on my shirt.  It was a shirt from a Baptist youth camp I’d attended in the past.  And the guy said, “Baptist, huh?  We like you.”  So, I said, “Thanks.”  And then the man moved the rope aside so I could pass through, and as I was walking by him, he said to me, “Just don’t go trying to convert us.”

Faith does indeed take so many different shapes, thank God.  And we must remember that everyone harbors this gift of faith.  But something else we should acknowledge on World Communion Sunday is that faith can be a burden.

It’s often said that faith is believing in what you cannot see.  Last week the sermon mentioned that heaven has to do with what we see in this time between the already and the not yet.  To love God and to follow Christ and to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit calls us to see justice, to see the Promised Land, to see heaven, to see the realm of God, to see the utopia that Jesus is always talking about.  And in those areas of our every day lives where we cannot see it, then faith calls us to be agents of change so that what we see by faith will become a reality for everyone to believe in.  That can be a burden, you know?

This is the burden that the prophets in the Old Testament carried with them all the time.  Nancy read about the Prophet Habakkuk a moment ago.  I’m going to go out a limb here and guess that very few of us in this room know much about Habakkuk.  I told someone in our congregation recently that I would be preaching on Habakkuk, and he said, “Really?  I didn’t even know there was a Book of Habakkuk in the Bible.”  Yep, it’s there.

But we really don’t know much about Habakkuk.  We know he’s a prophet, but the only background we have on him is from the Apocrypha, the Catholic canon of the Bible that’s wedged between the Old and New Testaments.  In Bel and the Dragon, found in the Apocrypha, Habakkuk is asked by an angel of the Lord to take dinner to Daniel in the lion’s den in Babylon.  And Habakkuk has the audacity to say that he’s never seen Babylon; so the angel of the Lord grabs Habakkuk by his hair and wisps him over to Babylon and says, “There!  You see it?” and then the angel takes Habakkuk back to where he came from.  End scene.

But now Habakkuk is standing on a watchtower.  He’s looking out over God’s whole creation, and then the Book of Habakkuk begins: “The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet received…”  The oracle, the divine revelation, the vision of the world as God sees it is what Habakkuk received.  And in older versions of this text that word ‘oracle’ is translated from Hebrew to mean ‘burden.’  In seeing the world as God sees it, Habakkuk received a burden.  He was called to see the world in terms of justice and mutuality and love, but it didn’t look that way from where he stood on that watchtower.  Everything looked bad.  Times were tough.  Hardship was everywhere.  And this burden was more than he could bear.  But did this mysterious prophet blame others for this predicament?  Did this prophet turn his burden against his neighbor?  No.  He turned to God.  He gave his burden to God.

And he cried out: “How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen?  Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not save?  Why do you make me look at injustice?  Why do you tolerate wrong?  Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds.”

That sounds like our world.  That looks like our times.  And Habakkuk looks pretty lonely up there on that watchtower.  Maybe we need to get up there with him, share our burdens, make some noise that God might hear as joyful.

Because the message is this: Each of us has faith, and it can indeed feel like a burden sometimes.  But the more we keep that burden to ourselves, the more we swallow that burden and do nothing about it, then the more it eats away at us, and the more tempted we become to resent our neighbors and to even resent ourselves.  And that flies in the face of Jesus’ command, that we love one another as we love ourselves.

It’s time to give Habakkuk some company.  We need to climb up onto that watchtower and share our burdens so that we can cry out to God in one voice; one voice that grieves for the brokenness of all of God’s creation, for all who suffer under the yoke of injustice.  We, people of faith, must cry out together:

“How long, O Lord?  How long must we call for help but you will not listen?

How long must wars be fought over money and greed and territory?

How long must women the world over be choked by the hands of patriarchy?

How long must children die by the thousands every day due to hunger-related diseases?

How long must undocumented immigrants in America, two million of whom are children, be labeled alien threats in order to keep them silenced and invisible?

How long must classism and racism be tolerated under the guise of a political banner?

How long must we find it acceptable in our churches to love God and exclude gay and lesbian people?

How long must we embrace a myth of equality in a country where the chasm between the rich and the poor is greater than any gap in any industrialized nation in the entire world?

How long must we allow fear to manipulate our decision-making when it comes to how we treat one another?

How long, O Lord?  How long?

God’s will cannot be done, justice cannot be done until injustice is called out for what it is, and this is the burden of faith.

Every one of us has received an oracle, a divine revelation, a vision of the world as God sees it, because everyone has the gift of faith.  Every one of us has the ability to see the world in terms of justice and mercy and love, because each of us has the gift of faith.  And, yes, this gift of faith can be such a burden.  It can make us pour out tears of grief for a world that often times looks very little like the world that God hopes for us to share.

But isn’t it a tremendous comfort to know that everyone has this burden; everyone has this gift of faith?  With that assurance in mind, the question for us on World Communion Sunday is: “What will you do with your faith?”

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“What Do You See?”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16, 1 Timothy 6:6-19, and Luke 16:19-31

I want to start this morning’s sermon with a simple yes-or-no question for us to ponder.  But I think this question is much more complex than that: Do you believe in heaven?

It’s a pretty serious question if you think about it, but we’re never really asked about that in church.  Why is that?  When we take our vows as new members of the church or when confirmands take their vows at confirmation, or even when we state what we believe on the occasion of someone being baptized in this place, we say out loud that we believe in the Creator God, the son, Jesus the Christ, and the Holy Spirit, but what about heaven?  When it comes to this life of faith, if heaven is the supposed endgame, then it seems like there should be some accountability there when it comes to what we believe.

When I was a child, I was led to believe that heaven was a beautiful place; not so much up in the sky or somewhere in the clouds, but it was a place beyond here.  And I believed that heaven was where my loved ones went when they died, and that I would be reunited with them when I died.

So, when I was a boy and my Grandpa Mack died, even though I was very sad, I took comfort in that thought.  That was what I believed.  But, as the Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13, when I was a child, I thought like a child, I acted like a child, I reasoned like a child.  And then I grew up and left all of my childish ways behind…almost.  Almost.

With the passing of time comes a multitude of abstract thoughts and abstract questions.  Since I was only a boy when Grandpa died, and I’m now an adult, and I hope to live many more years, if Grandpa and I are reunited in heaven, will he recognize me, this adult I’ve become?  And who’s to say that Grandpa is going to be the age that he was when I’m reunited with him?  Grandpa had to have one of his legs amputated because of his diabetes.  I like to think that in heaven he’s relocated that leg.

We can have so many different ideas about heaven.  There are myths and legends and stories and folklore—all kinds of things that give us a taste of what it might be like.  A seminary professor of mine had open heart surgery; nearly died on the operating table.  He once shared with me the details of that surgery, where he went in that near death experience.  He talked about when the doctors feared they were losing him; meanwhile, he was somewhere else.  He talked about seeing a radiant light, and about how there was peace all around him; but that despite all of this, he was still terribly afraid.  Sounds like when the angels appeared to the shepherds watching their flocks by night.

Many of us have heard stories similar to his one that help us visualize heaven, but for every one of these inspirational stories is the skeptic’s tale of that near death experience where there is nothing but a void.

Our abstract human minds need simple answers.  We want to be assured that what we believe in is true.  Surely, the Bible can tell us about heaven.  Well, kind of.  The Bible mentions heaven quite a bit: Heaven is created by God.  Heaven is where that whirlwind carried the Prophet Elijah off to.  It’s where Jesus ascended after the resurrection.  It’s where righteousness can be found.  The New Testament tells us that as Christians our citizenship and our treasure are located in heaven.

But Scripture doesn’t really tell us what heaven is.  What is heaven?  It’s hard for me to believe in heaven when I have no earthly idea of what it is exactly.  So, maybe the more appropriate question for us to ponder this morning is: “What does heaven look like to you?”  Because, really, this endgame of heaven is what we are able to see now.  We need to get to the bottom of what we see before we go jumping to that question, “Do you believe in heaven?”

Now, here’s how the Pharisees of Jesus’ day saw things.  They studied the same Scriptures that Jesus studied; in other words, they read the same Bible that Jesus read, but they saw those texts in an entirely different way than Jesus did.  Sounds a lot like what we deal with today, doesn’t it?

The Pharisees saw certain passages from the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament as justification for their way of life.  They believed that Deuteronomy, for example, stated that wealth equals being blessed by God equals obedience to God’s commandments equals wealth equals being blessed by God equals obedience to God’s commandments, and so forth.  Basically, what they saw in God’s Holy Word was, “Hey, if the shoe fits, wear it, and wear it well.”  But Jesus saw God’s Holy Word as saying, “Hey, make sure that everyone has shoes to wear before you go critiquing how yours fit.”  Do you hear what Jesus is saying here?

Jesus saw those texts as a call to equality, a call to justice, a call to mutual love; as in the year of jubilee that we find in those ancient texts, where everyone cancels debts and everyone gives land back to those who are lacking and so forth.  That’s how Jesus needed for the Pharisees to see things, and that’s why he aimed this story we hear this morning about the rich man and Lazarus at them, and that’s why this story is so dramatic.  Sometimes you need a little drama if you’re going to change how people see things.

So, here’s the story: A rich man lives a charmed life and has everything he needs and more, while a poor man named Lazarus sits at the gate of this man’s house emaciated and hungry with dogs licking his sores adding to his misery.  The rich man dies and ends up in hell, while Lazarus dies and goes to heaven.  But there’s more to this story than a reversal of socioeconomic values.

The drama of this story shows us that the rich man ends up where he ends up because his lifestyle blinded him from seeing what God needed him to see.  While he enjoyed good things all day every day, he could not see Lazarus.  He was right there at his gate begging and suffering all the time, and the rich man couldn’t even see him.  So the jujitsu of this scene is a description of heaven, where a guy like Lazarus is seen, Lazarus is noticed, Lazarus is recognized, and in that recognition, Lazarus receives comfort.

For centuries, churches have seen things the way the Pharisees saw things.  Churches have viewed social outcasts of any kind as being punished by God for something they’ve done wrong.  It’s that whole wealth equals being blessed by God equals obeying God’s commandments thing.  Stay on that path and everything will be fine many churches have believed.

That belief is what has kept many churches from really making a difference and really helping people in need.  It’s going on today in our own backyard.  Did you know that there are some churches in our community that refuse to give money to Habitat for Humanity or to support Habitat for Humanity in any way, because Habitat for Humanity will provide housing to families with a divorced parent and families where the parents are not married and families where the parents are gay or lesbian?  I honestly don’t think that those churches have refused to help everyone in need in our world over the years because they’ve been following their theological views to the letter; I think that those churches’ theological views have made them blind to other people.  And when we can’t see our neighbor, when we can’t see our sister, when we can’t see our brother, then our heart goes cold to them.

Our church sign this morning says, “You cannot hate your neighbor and love God.”  Amen.  And perhaps another way to say it that gets more to the heart of the matter is, “You cannot be blind to your neighbor and love God.”

When I was nineteen years old I volunteered to be a counselor for a church camp.  This was during a time in my life that a lot of college students go through.  I didn’t have much use for the church and I preferred sleeping in on Sunday mornings.  Consciously and subconsciously I was exploring, I was seeking.  And somehow I ended up volunteering for this church camp.  It was a week of heaven.  It was a building block in my journey of faith.

But at the end of that week as we were driving back to our hometown, for some reason the youth minister for this group decided that it would be a good idea for us to attend a youth rally in Houston at the former Astrodome.  I’d never seen anything like it.  From the moment I stepped foot in that place I was uncomfortable in my skin, and I was relieved to notice from our group’s body language that they weren’t very comfortable either.  There were youth groups from all around Texas packed in this place.  There was a praise band cranking out tunes that I didn’t know the words to.  But this auditorium full of teenagers seemed to be enjoying it, so I thought, “Okay, I’ll play along.  Maybe I’m missing something.”

Eventually, a minister got up on stage (good-looking guy in a suit), and he starts talking about abstinence and sexual purity.  At one point he pulls his wife onto the stage and puts his arm around her and gawks for a little bit about how beautiful she is, and then talks about how she and he saved themselves for each other until after they were married.  And they had this way of talking about it where they were almost gloating.  And I wasn’t thinking, “Yeah, I agree with what he’s saying or I disagree with what he’s saying,” I was thinking, “This is weird.”

But then this minister launches into a tirade about HIV/AIDS as a means to scare us young people into abstinence, and he went even further saying that HIV/AIDS was God’s punishment for such sexual immorality and for homosexuality.

I can’t really explain how I felt at that point, but I can tell you that something inside me just snapped.  And I got out of that place and I never went back.  After a week of seeing nothing but heaven, that place looked more like hell to me.  Fifteen years later I can say that minister sounded like a Pharisee, and he was encouraging those young people to justify their indifference and apathy, and dissuading them from ever seeing anyone who is different from them in any way as their neighbors or as children of God.

That moment in that auditorium was building up hell.  It seems to me that we have choices.  Every day have choices to either build up hell, or to help the world see heaven; and the more heaven the world sees, the more of it they’ll want to establish on earth as it is in heaven.

It all comes down to what you see.  Do you see heaven?  Martin Luther King, Jr. saw it.  Remember?  That night before he would be assassinated, he spoke in a church to a room full of garbage workers, people that the local authorities and powers refused to see, refused to recognize, and he said to them, “I have been to the mountain top!  And I have seen the promised land.”  And then he started preaching prophetically.  He said, “I may not get there with you.  Everyone wants to live a long life.  Longevity has its place, but that doesn’t concern me now.  Because I not fearing anybody.  I’m not fearing any man.  I just want to do God’s will.”

I want to do God’s will, too!  Don’t you want to do God’s will?  If we want to do God’s will then we’ve got to see God’s realm.  We’ve got to see the kingdom, we’ve got to see paradise, we’ve got to see heaven.  And that starts when we see each other.  It all comes down to what you see.

Jesus’ dramatic point he is making to the Pharisees is simple, and it’s a point we people of faith must awaken ourselves to in these desperate times.  Jesus’ point was that wherever some eat and others do not, there the kingdom of God does not exist; there heaven does not, cannot exist.

So, taking a page from Jesus’ dramatic example, let me propose an extreme antithesis to maybe change how we see things.  If wherever some eat and others do not heaven does not and cannot exist, then is that hell?  Is hell where some eat and others do not?  Is hell where some are given access to education and others are not?  Is hell where some children have so much water that they can run through a sprinkler and other children die of diarrhea because they have no water to drink?  Is hell where some are given the right to marry the person they love and others are not?  Is hell where some receive healthcare and others do not?

I could give more examples, we all could.  And I know that these examples are modern, but when there are disparities in those contexts, disparities of any kind, then people go hungry; emotionally and spiritually and physically hungry.  And wherever some eat and others do not we find hell.

The more we see one another as children of God before we see each as anything else, then the more those disparities are bridged and reconciled by the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.  It all comes down to what we see.  What we see determines the world we make, and we are called to make this world look like the heaven that our abstract minds want so passionately to believe in.

Isaiah 66:1: “This is what the Lord says: ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.  Where is the house you will build for me?  Where will my resting place be?  Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?’”

The world we build up determines the heaven that we can truly believe in.  And that starts with what we see.  Jesus came to bring sight to the blind.  So, what do you see?

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Prayerful Living”
Delivered by Rev. Tamara Franks
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Psalm 113, 1 Timothy 2:1-7

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Certainty is the Opposite of Grace”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Psalm 51:1-4, 10, Exodus 32:7-14, and 1 Timothy 1:12-17

The great existentialist, Soren Kierkegaard writes, “To want to give a logical explanation of the coming of sin into the world is a stupidity that can occur only to people who are comically worried about finding an explanation.”

The Israelites appear to be comically worried about finding an explanation.  They have been delivered from bondage into freedom by this so-called Jehovah, a God that they don’t know much about, except for what little Moses has shared with them.  So they’re anxious.  They want to know more about this God, and they want to know whether this God is the right God for them to worship.  But Moses is up on a mountain top conversing with this God that they don’t really know; Moses is out of reach, inaccessible.  So the Israelites move quickly from being anxious to being comically worried about finding an explanation.  They’re scrambling around like ants after someone just stepped on their mound.  So they make their own explanation.  They build their own certainty.  They build a golden calf and they worship this idol, all so that they can be certain that they’re doing the right thing.  It turns out that all that certainty made God upset; it pushed them further away from God instead of drawing them closer to God.

So, here’s the opening lesson for us this morning: Human certainty has a way of projecting assumptions on the Divine.  And we all know what assuming makes out of you and me.

This is what I mean: About 13 years ago, a friend of mine from grade school tragically took his own life.  He overdosed.  His parents asked me to be a pallbearer at his funeral.  I cried more that day than I had in years.  It was one of the most difficult things I’d ever experienced.

Some time later, I was talking to another one of my buddies about this, and he asked me, “Didn’t that make you mad?”  I said, “What do you mean?”  He said, “Well, he did it.  He did it to himself.  Doesn’t that make you mad?  All the heartache he caused his family and his friends; doesn’t that make you mad, that decision that he made?”

I said, “No.  No, it doesn’t make me mad; because I don’t know what he was going through.  I don’t know the burdens that he carried around in his mind.  I don’t know what it feels like to be in that painful place where he was when he made that decision to take his own life.  I don’t know what that’s like, and I’ll never have an explanation.”

Nine years later, we do not have an explanation for why the men who orchestrated and carried out the attacks on 9/11 did what they did.  We will never know the broken place those men were in emotionally and spiritually when they made those tragic decisions.  Sure, we know it had to do with Islamic extremism.  Sure, we know it had to do with a reaction against injustices on the part of the United States (if we can be humble enough to acknowledge that).  But we will never have an explanation for why those attacks happened that will give us comfort.

Now, going back to Kierkegaard’s quote, it seems like for nine years we’ve been getting more and more comically worried about finding an explanation.  It’s not comical anymore, because now our lust for explanations that will never come has morphed into angry certainties.  And we project those angry certainties onto our neighbors near and far who are Muslims.

Just last month, Ron McNeil, a candidate for Congress in the Florida Panhandle, told a group of high school and middle school students that Islam’s plan “is to destroy our way of life.”  Ron, are you sure about that?  Are you certain?

“To want to give a logical explanation of the coming of sin into the world is a stupidity that can occur only to people who are comically worried about finding an explanation.”  People who are hell-bent on giving logical explanations of sin in this world (an oxymoron in and of itself), people who are comically worried about finding explanations are always one step away from loud, angry, fear-filled certainty.  And look where that got Paul, who once acted like, in his words, the worst sinner.

Before the grace of God knocked Paul off his horse on that road to Damascus, Paul was certain.  He was certain that Christians were evil and that their churches were sinful, and that both needed to be destroyed.  Really, Paul?  Were you sure?  Were you certain?  The details are different in our present context, but the same thing is going on now.  That same kind of certainty that drove Paul to kill Christians then is what appears on the evening news in Gainesville, Florida now.  So a three-year-old Muslim girl sees this news on TV, and she innocently asks her parents, “Why don’t they like us?”  That question sounds like God’s heart breaking.

By now we’re all familiar with this story.  I emailed a friend of mine to let him know about the reception we’re having after the worship service today.  He’s a Methodist pastor here in town.  And he replied in jest, “Are you going to burn the Koran?  I hear you get national media attention for that!”

Just to get us all on the same page: Terry Jones is a Christian pastor in Gainesville, Florida who was planning on burning copies of the Koran on September 11^th.  Who knows why he didn’t do it.  Maybe it was the bombardment of emails telling him not to, or the phone calls from the Secretary of Defense and the President.  But Jones argued that he had a right as an American Christian to burn the Koran because, as he said, “It’s full of lies.”  Are you sure?  Are you certain?

Now, I want you to follow me on this.  Jones said the Koran is full of lies.  And when he’s asked about his knowledge of the Koran, he says, “I have no experience with it whatsoever.  I only know what the Bible says.”

He knows what the Bible says.  Do you know what the Bible says?  According to Jones, the Bible says that Islam is of the devil.  Yet the word ‘Muslim’ and the word ‘Islam’ appear nowhere in the Bible (That’s kind of impossible!).  Apparently, it’s widely believed that the Bible says that homosexuality is a sin, and that gay and lesbian peoples are going to hell.  Yet, the words ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ and ‘homosexuality,’ appear nowhere in the pages of Scripture.  (Now, one could assert that the word ‘homosexual’ appears in 1 Corinthians 6:9, but the word ‘homosexual’ is a word of our own modern invention and it bears our own cultural interpretations and unfortunate stigmas, and applying that word to the translation of that text is a tragic misfire, but that’s another sermon for another day).  Nowhere in the Bible do the prophets or Jesus or Paul talk about prayer in schools.  The word ‘abortion’ can’t be found anywhere in the Bible.  And on and on and on…

Yet, Christians who have the loudest, angriest, most fear-filled rhetoric in our country put those topics at the forefront of Christian priorities.  I told a friend of mine yesterday that sometimes I imagine Jesus residing among the poor and the oppressed and the marginalized and those on the fringes of society, and he’s shaking his head and twiddling his thumbs and saying, “I’m waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiting.”

God doesn’t need our certainty.  And Jesus isn’t waiting for us to fall on the right side of our culture wars.  Timothy is a teenager who is trying to start a church during a fragile time for Christianity.  Paul is a church veteran, but his letter to Timothy doesn’t boast about what he knows.  The most important lesson he offers Timothy in that letter is equally important for us: He says that even though he was the worst kind of sinner, God’s grace saved him from his certainty.

So, here’s the second lesson for us: Grace is the opposite of certainty.

Now, I’ve preached a lot of sermons, every last one of them based on the Bible.  And in my ordination vows I vowed to study the Scriptures constantly.  I like to think I’ve upheld that vow pretty well.  I try to teach the Bible to our children in children’s messages and to our youth group in our Sunday morning classes.  But I have to tell you, I don’t know what the Bible says.

There’s so much in there.  No sooner do I memorize a few verses than I forget a handful of others.  But even if I could memorize the words of the Bible, I still wouldn’t know what the Bible says.  It’s always surprising me!  Water springing out of rocks, she-bears mauling teenagers, a talking donkey.  Who needs Harry Potter when I’ve got the Bible?  I may know these stories and I may know these parables and I may know these letters and commandments and oracles, but every time I read them, they bear new meaning; they say new things.  And every time I read them, I have new questions.

It seems to me that I have a choice: I can regress into my own certainty about what the Bible says and I can stay there, or I can ask those questions.  I like to think that God delights in our questions, no matter how controversial or incendiary we think they might sound.  It’s in asking questions that we seek God, and therein we find grace.  Grace is what prompts our questions, and grace is the questions.

In these times when fear is escalating over religious pluralism, the last thing God needs is our certainty.  Certainty divides us one from another.  Certainty distances us one from another, and the further we drift from one another, the further we drift from God.

I have an old friend that I hadn’t talked to in nearly ten years.  But she was struggling with something.  A friend of her family’s husband had died in a horrible accident, and the wife was the one who found his body.  Not only that, this woman had lost two sons in separate car accidents in the past.  So, here was this friend from my past reconnecting with me for no other reason than to ask me a question because she knew I was a clergy person.  Her question was: “How can anyone find peace after something like that?”  I don’t know that I gave her the answers she was looking for, but our reconnection and our conversation was a moment of grace.  It was an in-breaking of God’s grace.  And in that conversation, I can’t explain it exactly, and I can’t measure it, but we both changed just a little bit.

Asking those tough questions has that effect.  That’s what grace is, and that’s often where grace begins.

We can find that in the Bible.  There are people a lot like you and me in the pages of Scripture who ask questions seeking God, and the result is that they are changed.  Those same questions that we find people asking in the Bible are what weigh on our hearts every day, so why don’t we ask them now?

What must I do to inherit eternal life?

How many times do I forgive someone when they sin against me?

Who is my neighbor?

When my friend Kyle and I were invited into the home of three Muslim friends of ours to share a meal during the holy month of Ramadan a couple of weeks ago, we asked each other questions about friendship and about faith and about our sacred texts.  We were all changed just a little in that shared moment of grace.  Since the pastor in Gainesville says that the Koran is full of lies, I asked a few questions about it.  I didn’t ask, “So, is it full of lies?” but I did ask, “Do you have any favorite passages or stories?”  And my friend Arhan said, “The Book of Mary.”

So, as an act of Christian faith that seeks God in our questions, and in an act of Christian solidarity and love, instead of burning the Koran this morning, how about we open it and see what it has to say.

From the Book of Mary: “And make mention in the Book, of Mary, when she went apart from her family, eastward, and took a veil to shroud herself from them: and we sent our spirit to her, and he took before her the form of a perfect man.  She said: ‘I fly for refuge from thee to the God of Mercy!  If thou fearest Him, begone from me.’  He said: ‘I am only a messenger of thy Lord, that I may bestow on thee a holy son.’  She said: ’How shall I have a son, when man hath never touched me? And I am not unchaste.’  He said: ‘So shall it be.  Thy Lord hath said: “easy is this with me;” and we will make him a sign to mankind, and a mercy from us.  For it is a thing decreed.’  And she conceived him, and retired with him to a far-off place…Then came she with the babe to her people, bearing him.  They said, ‘O Mary! now hast thou done a strange thing!  O sister of Aaron! Thy father was not a man of wickedness, nor unchaste thy mother.’  And she made a sign to them, pointing towards the babe.  They said, ‘How shall we speak with him who is in the cradle, an infant?’  It said, ‘Verily, I am the servant of God; He hath given me the Book, and He hath made me a prophet; And He hath made me blessed wherever I may be, and hath enjoined me prayer and almsgiving so long as I shall live; and to be duteous to her that bare me; and he hath not made me proud, depraved.  And the peace of God was on me the day I was born, and will be the day I shall die, and the day I shall be raised to life.’”

Wow.  I don’t know about you, but that brings up a whole lot of new questions for me, thanks be to God!

So, if you came to church this morning wanting answers, I’m sorry that I can’t give them to you.  But I can tell you that I am certain of only one thing: I am certain that I am a sinner.  But God grants me redemption in the midst of my sin every day, so I change a little bit every day, and I’m emptied out a little bit every day so that I can be filled with the abundance of God’s goodness and righteousness.  And that goodness and righteousness that overflows from my cup convinces me of a truth more and more every day, a truth that I would devote my life to, a truth that I would hang my entire life on: that there is nothing in this world that will be able to separate us from the love of God.  I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, no burning of any sacred text, no anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda, no fear-based political punditry, no exacerbation of Islamophobia, no racially charged strengthening of our borders will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord, who was and is and evermore shall be.  Amen and amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Freedom in the Message”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Psalm 1, Luke 14:25-33, and Philemon 1-21

^1-3I, Paul, am a prisoner for the sake of Christ, here with my brother Timothy. I write this letter to you, Philemon, my good friend and companion in this work—also to our sister Apphia, to Archippus, a real trooper, and to the church that meets in your house. God’s best to you! Christ’s blessings on you!

Paul is a prisoner.  He spent time in and out of jail because of his ministry, and from that outlook he wrote a whole lot of letters.  Some of those letters make up the New Testament of the Bible; so they inform our Christian faith and matters of church practice.  Paul had a lot to say.

I have a friend who is a prisoner, as well.  He and I have been corresponding since April when he started his jail time, but that has come to end since he will be released in a few days at this point.  But I love how he closed his last letter that he would write to me from prison.  He wrote this: “Theologically right now I am on two tracks: 1) the deeper meaning of the Bible; and 2) seeing a distinction between Paul and Jesus.  Conclusion: Paul was kind of a jerk.”

Amen.  Paul can certainly sound that way in his letters, especially in Romans.  But he doesn’t sound that way in this letter.  Reading on, here are verses 4 through 7 of Philemon:

^4-7Every time your name comes up in my prayers, I say, “Oh, thank you, God!” I keep hearing of the love and faith you have for the Master Jesus, which brims over to other believers. And I keep praying that this faith we hold in common keeps showing up in the good things we do, and that people recognize Christ in all of it. Friend, you have no idea how good your love makes me feel, doubly so when I see your hospitality to fellow believers.

That sounds pretty gentle and kind, pretty enthusiastic about friendship.  In the New International Version of the text, verse four reads: “I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers.”  Paul doesn’t sound like a jerk there; but if he wanted to sound like a jerk, he easily could have.  Here’s the thing…

In the early church, apostles were considered to be Christ’s envoys.  Their words were virtual law.  Remember, Paul is an apostle of Jesus Christ.  So, he could have thrown his weight around.  He could have just written a letter that said, “Paul here.  Okay, I’m going to cut to the chase.  I need something from you, and since I’m an apostle, you’re going to give me exactly what I want or you will burn in God’s pool of fire!”  (Thankfully, that’s not the text we read today.)

Verses 8-9: ^8-9In line with all this I have a favor to ask of you. As Christ’s ambassador and now a prisoner for him, I wouldn’t hesitate to command this if I thought it necessary, but I’d rather make it a personal request.

Paul speaks gently and kindly.  He speaks with love.  What compelled him to do that?  If he was, in fact, a law-wielding apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, what in the world compelled him to speak with gentleness and kindness and love?

Being an apostle of Jesus Christ may have given Paul the authority to bark orders, but at the same time, it is because Paul is an apostle and because Paul acknowledges and appreciates that he’s an apostle that he speaks the way that he does: gently, kindly and with love.

Paul is not speaking on behalf of himself; he’s speaking on behalf of Jesus Christ.  So this letter sounds more like an appeal than a command.  Thank God for that, because we all know that it’s really hard to hear the message of Jesus Christ—a message of justice and mercy and love—when the person delivering the message sounds like a jerk.

It’s like that scene in the movie Saved, where Mandy Moore’s character, this extremely pious Christian girl, thinks that another girl at her high school will see things her way if she’d just be converted to Christianity.  So, Mandy Moore and her Bible-thumping friends pull this poor, unsuspecting girl into a van, where they proceed to pray over her to receive Christ.  And when the girl figures out what’s going on, she jumps out of the van and says, “You don’t know the first thing about Christ’s love!”  And Mandy Moore takes her Bible, throws it at this girls head and yells back, “I am filled with Christ’s love!”

It’s a funny scene in a movie (a pretty awesome movie, I might add), but that scene captures a lot of our reality.  I’ll put it to us like this: Are we filled with Christ’s love or are we filled with our culture’s brand of Christianity?  Are we filled with Christ’s love or are we filled with popular depictions of Jesus?  Are we filled with Christ’s love or are we so imprisoned by loud, authoritative voices boasting Christianity that we cannot hear the message of Jesus?

And what is the message of Jesus?  Can we sum it up in one word?  Let’s do that right now.  Say it loud enough for everyone in this room to hear.  In one word, what is the message of Jesus?

Jesus came into this world with a message.  He said, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, for I have come to bring good news to the poor, to set free the captives, to bring sight to the blind, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Where in that message do we hear a charge to antagonize people who are Muslim or to boast that their religion is “of the devil”?  Where in that message do we hear a charge to “pray the gay away” from gay and lesbian peoples?  Where in that message do we hear a charge to not include or even to discriminate against others based on their sexual orientation or their gender identity?  Where in that message do we hear a charge to murder doctors because they perform abortions?

If we put on the mantle of Jesus Christ and then hear message like these—messages that would place boundaries between our neighbors and us, messages that would push anyone into a societal prison—then we are, in effect, throwing Bibles and people’s heads and shouting, “I am filled with Christ’s love!”  In other words, we come off sounding like jerks.  So, while we’re tempted to go out there and change people by way of some message we think we have all figured out, maybe we need to stop and let the message change us.

Now, last Saturday was August 28, a date that marked the 47^th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr. delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, a speech that one could testify as being the words of an ambassador for the sake of Jesus Christ, words that were spoken with fervor and passion, but that were founded on gentleness and kindness and love.  And on that date, just eight days ago, a cable TV and radio personality spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Glenn Beck delivered a speech where he read from the Gettysburg Address and called on Americans to turn to God and be more charitable.  I don’t know whether he had his chalkboard out there or not.  (One can only hope.)  But in Beck’s defense, he did acknowledge the significance of the date.  He talked about Martin Luther King, Jr. and he affirmed King’s message and how King spoke out against racism.

But Jim Wallis heard Beck’s speech.  Jim Wallis is the founder of the progressive Christian magazine Sojourners.  Wallis wrote an open letter Beck responding to the August 28^th speech, where he asked Beck about the parts of King’s message that he left out.  What about King’s legacy of speaking out against poverty and war?  Wallis didn’t hear that in Beck’s speech.  So, Wallis said to Beck, “We can’t claim the mantle of King without also embracing his message.”

Can you imagine how Brother Beck might be changed if he were to listen to that message, embrace that message, be changed by that message?  He might have to speak about different things.  He might have to change the tone in which he speaks about certain things.  That is the nature of speaking on behalf of something greater than you rather than speaking from your own agenda.  The message changes you.

So, I want to put Wallis’ words in a slightly different context this morning, because there’s a lesson in it for us.  How about this: We cannot claim the mantle of Jesus Christ without also embracing the message of Jesus Christ.

When we claim the mantle of Jesus Christ we become prisoners, prisoners for the sake of Jesus Christ.  And in that prison, we wrestle and we struggle and we, by the grace of God, ultimately surrender to the message of Jesus Christ, and we are changed by the message of Jesus Christ; a message that tells us that we are no longer Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free, we are all one in Christ Jesus our Lord; a message that tell us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, comfort the afflicted, heal the sick; a message that tells us to share God’s goodness and to not withhold an ounce of that abundance from our neighbors, for to do so is injustice; a message that tells us to place love of one another over and above economic systems and political structures; a message that tells us that we are put on this earth to do one thing above all other things for the entirety of our days: We are put on this earth to love one another.

And when we love one another, regardless of who we are or where we come from, then we are set free from all the prisons of this world: prisons of ageism and sexism and elitism and bigotry and homophobia and misogyny and entitlement and territorialism and gossip and passive aggressive behavior; prisons where the walls are dense with indifference and the bars are cold with fear.

Death leads to resurrection; being lost leads to being found; living in prison for the sake of Christ leads to freedom in all things.  There is freedom in the message.  There is freedom in the message.

I think this is what it looks like: Pius Kamau grew up in impoverished colonial Africa, but he struggled and worked his way into the profession of a doctor in a hospital in America.  Kamau recalls a night in 1999 when a 19-year-old patient was brought into the hospital coughing up blood after a car accident.  He was a white supremacist, an American Nazi with a swastika tattooed on his chest.

The nurses told him that the kid wouldn’t let Kamau touch him.  And when Kamau came closer, the kid spat on him.  In that moment, Kamau didn’t want to have anything to do with this kid either, but none of the other physicians would take him on.  So, Kamau realized that he had to do it.

Kamau writes about that experience and says that all patients, all human beings, are equal, and that he must try to care for everyone…even those who would rather die than consider him their equal.

That’s the consequence of realizing that being a physician is bigger than our own human agendas of right and wrong, greater and lesser, insiders and outsiders.  That’s what it looks like.

So what do the consequences of realizing that the message of Jesus Christ is bigger than our own agendas look like?  What do the consequences of a life devoted to the message look like?  Freedom.  Freedom.  That’s what it looks like.  Why?  Because freedom is the message.

Verses 17-21:  ^17-21So if you still consider me a comrade-in-arms, welcome him back as you would me. If he damaged anything or owes you anything, chalk it up to my account. This is my personal signature—Paul—and I stand behind it. Do me this big favor, friend. You’ll be doing it for Christ, but it will also do my heart good. I know you well enough to know you will. You’ll probably go far beyond what I’ve written.

The Word of God for the people of God.  God is still speaking.  Thanks be to God!

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Guests in the Kingdom of God”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Psalm 112:5-10, Luke 14:1, 7-14, and Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Transcript coming soon…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Strength In Surrender”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Psalm 103:1-8, Isaiah 58:9b-14, and Luke 13:10-17

Jesus was a troublemaker.  Jesus broke the rules.  Jesus acted up.  Jesus challenged the status quo.  Jesus was a radical.  All of these things are true.  In a community like ours, Aggieland, so devoted to tradition, you’d think that Jesus wouldn’t stand a chance.  But we love him.

But a lot of times we love him for the wrong reasons.  It’s a common misconception to think that Jesus took everything about the Old Testament and rendered it null and void; as if Jesus’ mission was to be born of God’s very being in order to be some prophetic Eddie Haskel: “Hey, good people!  Now that I’m here, it’s a new day!  Rules have no meaning and tradition is bogus!”

The tradition that Jesus supposedly debunks in this morning’s Scripture is the Sabbath.  He heals someone on the Sabbath; he works on the Sabbath, and that is a legalistic “no no.”  And when the authority, the ruler of the synagogue, the enemy of the Millennial Generation, stands up and says, “This guy, Jesus, has broken tradition by healing on the Sabbath,” Jesus responds like a good rebel should and says, “What’s the big deal?  So I healed on the Sabbath!  So what?”  Looks like that Sabbath Day we’re supposed to keep holy isn’t so sacrosanct anymore.  Rules have no meaning and tradition is bogus!

But let’s remember that Jesus was what I’d call a traditional purist.  He went regularly to the synagogue on the Sabbath.  He took reverent joy in the temple worship.  And what we should carefully note is that Jesus never broke the Sabbath; he broke only the law concerning the Sabbath.  He broke the legalism that bound the Sabbath.  He challenged the rules that kept the Sabbath as crooked and out of whack as the woman’s spine that had been bent over like that for 18 years (according to Luke’s gospel).

So, what is the Sabbath?  What is a pure Sabbath?  And why is it so important for us to keep it holy?

Sabbath goes back to the time of the Israelites.  Moses founded it.  It’s a product of the exile.  Sabbath became such a huge deal, because you could celebrate it anywhere, including on foreign soil.  No matter how lost they were or where they might be standing, the Israelites could always celebrate the Sabbath Day.  Celebrating the Sabbath, or keeping it holy, was a way for the Israelites to remember who they were and where they came from.

Who were they?  God’s chosen people.  Where did they come from?  They came out of the oppression of slavery by the deliverance of God’s liberating hand.  You remember something like that and even your most devastating problems will just look like a bad hair day.

Sabbath is a holy time.  It’s holy ground.  And the Prophet Isaiah calls the people to return to that good and important and pure tradition.  He says, “If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on God’s holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lord’s holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find your joy in the Lord, and God will cause you to ride on the heights of the land.”

That sounds huge!  That sounds so sacred!  It sounds like we’re leaving out a vital piece of our faith if we put a low priority on the Sabbath.  But what’s worse: The person who forgets all about the Sabbath, or the person who observes the Sabbath the wrong way?

Our culture is all about taking care of yourself, protecting your assets, and maintaining good emotional and physical health, and keeping your life in order.  And we witness tragedies like Hurricane Katrina and the oil spill in the Gulf and the earthquakes in Haiti and the floods in forgotten cities throughout the United States, not to mention the floods that have swallowed up a fifth of Pakistan; and we see how these events often have the most catastrophic effects on the people who already were struggling with so very little, and we think, “Well, I’d better protect mine or that will happen to me.”

And so our Sabbath becomes a day devoted to me.  It’s a day for working out the kinks, for smoothing out the rough edges.  It’s a day for straightening ourselves out.  Why?  So that we can maintain; so that we can keep going.  Sabbath is spent doing the chores, running the errands, paying the bills, catching up on the reading and studying, refuting the latest ridiculous quote our old friend from high school has posted on Facebook.  Sabbath is spent mowing the lawn, cleaning the house, buying the groceries, doing the laundry.  And then we go back to the same routine, the same schedule, the same relentless work load, and some times the same group of friends and the same drama from which we are trying to take Sabbath.  I thought that Sabbath was supposed to be a day of rest?

I don’t think we’ve forgotten that the Sabbath is supposed to be a day of rest.  I think we’ve forgotten what rest is.  Just like the Israelites that the Prophet Isaiah was admonishing so many years ago, we have forgotten what rest is and the strength that can be found in that rest.

Mary Cook works on the ground crew for an air taxi company in Gustavus, Alaska.  It’s a town of 400 people that’s surrounded by Glacier Bay National Park.  And in addition to loading and unloading planes, she handles the mail and tends the town’s only coffee house.  She also serves as a hospice volunteer.  She’s a hardworking woman who looks like she has things well-in-hand.

But one November day, her fiancé was working on the roof and he fell.  Mary found his body lightly covered with snow.  It kept snowing for four months, and that entire time she sat in her home and watched it pile up.
But one morning Mary came downstairs and was startled to find a snow plow clearing out her driveway, and a woman with a broom bent over and sweeping out her front porch.  Mary was mortified.  She crawled back upstairs, and her first thought was, “How can I repay them?  I don’t have the strength to brush my own hair right now, let alone clear out somebody else’s driveway!”

Before this tragedy came her way, Mary prided herself on being self-sufficient and independent, a go-getter who was able to get the job done.  And doesn’t our culture herald that kind of person being the strongest there is?

But now Mary was receiving help from neighbors and friends.  People cooked for her and set the table for her, and she would wail, “I’m usually not this lazy, I swear!”  And those good people would say, “It’s my pleasure to help you.  What you’re doing is harder than what I’m doing.  You’re grieving, and that might be the hardest work you’ll ever do.”

Mary says that now that she has endured this experience that she is not the person she once was, and that in many ways she has changed for the better.  She says, “The fabric of my life is now woven with gratitude and humility.  I have been surprised to learn that there is incredible freedom that comes from facing one’s worst fear and walking away whole.  There is strength in surrender.”

We’ve all got problems.  Every single one of us has problems: circumstances, conditions, contexts, calamities, quirks, pitfalls, disorders, diseases, debts, stress, trials…and that’s okay.  Every single one of us in this room has a bubble in the wallpaper of our past, a pea under the mattress of our life, a stone in the shoe of our dreams…and that’s okay.  We’ve all got problems.

But perhaps the worst problem we can have is thinking that we can straighten ourselves out by our own efforts.  And if we use the Sabbath Day to straighten out our own lives by our own efforts, then we are not keeping the Sabbath holy.

The story from Luke’s gospel this morning says, “There was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity for 18 years; she was bent over and could not fully straighten herself.”  That is human helplessness in phrase, and we fear saying it because we think it sounds weak: “I cannot fully straighten myself.”  Sisters and brothers, here is the Good News: there is strength in surrender, and surrender is the rest that keeps the Sabbath holy.

Some of us find rest in the practice of worship.  Worship is so important.  This hour is a part of our Sabbath.  Why is that?  Do we come into this place and into this hour to delight in the Lord, to glorify God, or do we come here to straighten ourselves out?

Maybe before the experience that Mary went through, she would be the type of person who would come to worship to straighten herself out, to fix her own problems.  Maybe she would come to worship to find some inspiration from the preacher to help her get by, or maybe the music gave her an emotional lift to face the week ahead.  But now Mary might be coming to worship from a different perspective.  Now she might be coming to worship to surrender herself to God.

When we come into this place, and we get over ourselves, and we surrender ourselves to God, then we see each other as children of God.  And when we see each other as children of God, we see as God sees; we get a glimpse of God’s vision.  And in that moment worship becomes the Sabbath Day that isn’t about taking care of me, but about taking care of others, all of God’s children.  We surrender ourselves to one another, and there is strength in that; there is healing in that.  As James 5:16 says, “Pray for one another that you may be healed.”

Isaiah this morning talks about God causing us to ride on the heights of the land if we help the hungry.  Well, I can do that.  If I help the hungry, then, will I be healed?  If I do those good deeds will I be straightened out and have a good life?  Not really, because the Scripture doesn’t tell you to help the hungry by your own efforts.  It says to pour yourself out for the hungry, because the gift without the giver is bare.  There is strength in surrender.

Hear the voice of the Prophet Isaiah still speaking to us this morning: On the Sabbath Day, pour yourself out for God, surrender yourself to God, and you will be placed on the side of all of God’s children.  Surrender yourself to God and you will no longer be held captive by the fear-filled conscience of this world that tells you that you have to be perfect to be strong.  Surrender yourself to God and you will no longer be in bondage to the fear-filled conscience of this world that says that if you are going to be strong, then you must hate Muslims and their mosques.  Surrender yourself to God and you will no longer be in chains by the fear-filled conscience of this world that says that if you are going to be strong you must despise brown-skinned, Spanish speaking people and their children.  Surrender yourself to God and you will be liberated from this world’s weak, tired vision and into God’s marvelous light that shines on everyone with the same transcendent glow of justice and mercy and love.  Surrender yourself to God and you will be placed on the side of the same ones whom God reaches out to help and empower: those suffering injustice at the hands of authorities, those imprisoned for acts of conscience, those denied their fair share of the land’s produce, those denied housing and proper clothing, those turned away even by their own relatives.  Pour yourself out for these children of God and you will be healed, and the Sabbath Day will be made holy.

Ezekiel 20:12 says, “I, the Lord, give them my Sabbaths as a sign between me and them.”  In that case, whether the world knows that God is love and that we are a redeemed people by that love relies on this question: Are we living our Sabbath Days for ourselves, or are we surrendering our Sabbath Days to God?  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Following the Kung Fu Jesus”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Hebrews 12:1-2; Jeremiah 23:23-29; and Luke 12:49-56

“…that they may all be one.”  This is the motto of the United Church of Christ.  And it’s also a quote from the Gospel of John where Jesus prays to God the Father that all of God’s children, all of us, would be one: forgiven by God’s grace, reconciled by Christ’s redemption, unified by the Holy Spirit.  If that isn’t a Christian recipe for peace on earth, I don’t know what is.

But when we read this morning’s Scripture from Luke’s gospel, our hopes get a little doused.  Jesus is speaking in that assertive tone again, and this time he’s saying, “You think I came here to bring peace on earth?  Boy, were you wrong.  I came to bring division.”

How can this be?  How can those words come from the same mouth of a Messiah who prays, “…that they may all be one”?  In the lectionary from two weeks ago, Jesus is approached by a man who wants Jesus to tell his brothers to give him his share of an inheritance.  And Jesus replies by saying, “Who made me a judge or an arbiter over you?”  I pointed this out when I preached that morning in Austin: the Gospel of Thomas, which doesn’t appear in our Bibles, mentions this same story, and it records Jesus’ response as being, “Who made me a divider?”  And then Jesus turns to his disciples and says, “I’m not a divider, am I?”

Well, not two weeks ago, but apparently today that’s exactly what Jesus is: a divider.  He’s come to bring division.  He’s come to bring what 1 Peter 4:12 calls “a fiery ordeal.”  And that’s exactly what this kind of division sounds like: households divided against themselves; fathers against sons, mothers against daughters, and in-laws against children-in-laws.  It’s a fiery ordeal, this kind of division.

But let’s get to the heart of that division that Jesus was talking about.  In Jesus’ time, the division he spoke of had to do with spiritual alignment.  Jesus was talking about the divisions that would occur if one member of a household recognized him as the Messiah and another in that same household did not.  Those were the anxious times of the apocalyptic age when everyone anticipated the end times, and here was this Nazarene, Jesus, claiming to be the Messiah, and calling for people to align themselves spiritually with him.  There would inevitably be divisions.

Well, that Messianic age of apocalypse came and went (yet the Left Behind books are bestsellers, go figure).  So, now we’re left with Jesus the Christ still saying, “I came to bring division,” in a post-apocalyptic, supposedly postmodern era.  Today, our households are held together by ethics and morals and virtues and values, not so much by cultural background or religions affiliation.  In one household today, you might find an Agnostic, a Christian and a two Buddhists.  In another household you might find two Jews, a Muslim and a Taoist.  Maybe another household might have an atheist and a Hindu living under one roof.

I’ve been performing weddings for ten years, and in a handful of those ceremonies, I’ve co-officiated them alongside a nun or a Methodist minister or a Catholic Priest or a Rabbi.  Professing spiritual allegiance to a Messiah these days isn’t going to divide a household as easily as it did during Jesus’ lifetime.  But this text still speaks to us today.  This text still reminds us that Jesus comes to bring division.  What kind of division?

Well, enter Kung Fu Jesus.  Did you notice the picture of Jesus on your bulletin cover this morning?  That picture is the artist’s rendition of Jesus based on this morning’s Scripture.  The artists hears about Jesus bringing fire on earth and how he’s come to bring division, and the artist hears Jesus’ assertive tone, so what we have is a drawing of Jesus where he looks like he’s skilled in Kung Fu.  And Kung Fu Jesus is here to shake things up.  He’s here to divide.  And today we are being asked to follow this Kung Fu Jesus.  We are being asked once again to align ourselves spiritually with this Jesus.

What I’m saying is that aligning ourselves with Jesus in our times means that we have to make tough choices that could pit us against enemies as well as friends and family and loved ones.  To be on the side of Jesus today means that we must align ourselves with who Jesus is and what Jesus stands for.  And that will certainly lead to divisions that have the potential of breaking us apart one from another.

It may be a different age and different context, but Kung Fu Jesus is still going to break apart our households.  There’s an old Chinese proverb that says, “Nobody’s family can hang out the sign that says, ‘There’s nothing the matter here.’”  Any family that thinks that there’s nothing the matter probably thinks that way because they aren’t talking about those things that might divide them.  Enter Kung Fu Jesus.

There’s a reason why they say that at family functions you’re not allowed to bring up politics or religion.  Do that and everyone’s divided.  Or to put it another way, at family functions, you’re not to bring up Jesus.  Bring up Jesus and watch the cracks appear in the mortar of a household’s supposed perfection.  Bring up Jesus and watch those lines get drawn in the sand.  Bring up Jesus—who he is and what he stands for and the choices he calls us to make—and see all the divisions.

Jesus is still dividing our households.  Four lifelong friends from grade school through high school move to Aggieland to start up at A&M.  They live in a house together, share great times together, and they all have the same interests and hobbies, they love the same movies and music.  But one of them discovers this campus ministry called United Campus Ministry.  He grew up going to church, but now he’s seeing Jesus in a new light.  He’s seeing a Jesus that crosses denominational lines, and a Jesus that identifies with the poor and the hungry and those who do not have access to things he’s appreciated blindly his whole life, things like education and healthcare and the safety and security of a home.  And based on his encounter with this Jesus through United Campus Ministry, this one roommate starts making life choices, tough choices, that affect where he shops and how he spends his money, what he does for recreation and how he spends his time, what he finds life-giving and what he finds intolerable when it comes to how those around him talk about women and LGBTQ peoples and international students and Muslims.  And suddenly, because of this roommate aligning himself spiritually with Jesus, he is making choices that divide him from his roommates, his lifelong friends; choices that divide his household.  Indeed Jesus came to bring divisions.

A professor taught for years at a seminary preparing people for ordained ministry.  And to his dismay he noted a sad number of divorces among the students.  He’d try to reach out to some of the students to offer them help, because he knew that divorce could be a wrenching experience.  And time after time he heard the same story repeated from these students that went something like this: “God called me to go to seminary and to prepare myself for pastoral ministry, and when I told my spouse about this, he left.  He said that he had no intention of being married to a pastor.”  Indeed Jesus came to bring divisions.

And in my household I often joke that Stacy and I have three incredible children, all of whom are always demanding our time and attention; three: Mac, Ruthie and the sermon.  I wish I could show you the countless cracks in my heart from those times when I’m typing feverishly and on the cusp of sermonic conviction that I feel might change someone’s life for the better when they hear it, and at that very moment I hear my son say, “Daddy, will you draw me a picture of Spider-Man going like this [insert action noises]?”  Those moments are when I pause and make touch choices.  Indeed Jesus came to bring divisions.

C.S. Lewis says somewhere that the Christian faith is a thing of great comfort.  But it does not begin in comfort.  It begins in distress.  There is something about the way of Jesus, something about following the Kung Fu Jesus, that leads to peace but only through disruptions and divisions and distress.  As a Christian, I am aware of this in ways that are brought to my attention every day.

This morning’s Scripture still makes me uneasy.  It makes me wince every time I read it.  Jesus talking about divisions and breaking up households makes me cringe.  But I when I was in seminary I was a part of a discussion that helped me see what Jesus was talking about in a bold new way:

I was in an ethics class called The African-American Experience in Social Ethics.  We read a lot of books and had a lot of discussions.  Our class was about 20-strong, and it was made up of students who were Black, White, male, female, young, old, gay, straight…a really diverse group given our modest numbers.  And one morning we were having a discussion about church politics.  I forget the details of the conversation, but the gist of it was this: We were talking about what we as spiritual leaders might do if we were placed in a situation where the church might be divided on a difficult issue.  And it didn’t take long in that conversation for the reality to be brought up that a lot of people might leave the church over something controversial.

At one point, someone spoke up and said, “Come on.  Let’s be realistic.  We may have a prophetic role, but our pastoral role makes it important for us to keep the peace, to keep the family together.  You go in a radical direction and the next thing you know the offering plate is empty and the church is broken into pieces!”

And a woman sitting just a couple of seats away from me looked over at him and said with calm conviction, “Yes, but sometimes things need to be broken to be blessed.”  I think of this often when we observe Holy Communion and remember the words of Jesus when he said, “This is my body that is broken for you.  As often as you eat this bread, do this in remembrance of me.”

The Church is a household.  We are a family of faith.  And sometimes the Church is divided: parents against children, in-laws against children-in-laws, generation against generation.  These divisions take place when we align ourselves with Jesus the Christ and make tough choices based on that alignment.

In the history of the Church, children have been divided from their predecessor generation by proclaiming to their elders, “What is wrong with you?  Why do you discriminate against people based on the color of their skin?”

And a generation later in the Church, children were divided from their predecessor generation when they proclaimed to their elders, “What is wrong with you?  Why do you discriminate against women and gay and lesbian peoples?  Why do you say that they can’t be ordained, and why do you strip them of their ordination credentials when you discover that they are gay?”

And these divisions run so deep that generation after generation, these children leave the household.  Has the church returned to the time of antiquity where Jesus is outside with the masses shouting, “Let me in!”?  Is that how deep our divisions are becoming?

Friends Congregational Church, progressive Christian church in a highly conservative environment, Open and Affirming congregation that identifies with the United Church of Christ, we would do well to pay attention to those divisions.  We may have a good thing going, but we are no different from any other church out there where the truth is constant, that the children and youth are the future of the Church.  And I believe that our children and our youth are those who are most clearly aligned Jesus the Christ, who he is and what he stands for.

So, I want to wrap up this morning’s sermon by sharing an excerpt from a letter that was written and read by a 12-year-old girl named Sevrin Suzuki.  She read this letter at the 1992 Earth Summit in Brazil, and the video of her speech is now shared at similar environmental conferences and summits today.  I share this with us because another one of our identifiers is our Earth Stewardship Covenant.  To many of us, that might mean a Christian articulation of being green, but to this young girl it means so much more.  Listen to this girl:

“Hello, I’m Sevrin Suzuki.  I’m speaking for ECO, the environmental children’s organization.  We are a group of 12- and 13-year-olds trying to make a difference.  We raised all the money to come here 5,000 miles to tell you adults you must change your ways.  Coming up here today, I have no hidden agenda.  I am fighting for my future.  Losing my future is not like losing an election, or a few points on the stock market.  I am here to speak for all generations to come.  I am here to speak on behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard.  I am here to speak for the countless animals dying across this planet because they have nowhere left to go.  I am afraid to go out in the sun now because of the holes in the ozone.  I am afraid to breathe the air because I don’t know what chemicals are in it.  I used to go fishing in Vancouver with my dad until just a few years ago when we found the fish full of cancers, and now we hear of plants and animals going extinct every day, vanishing forever.  In my life I have dreamt of seeing the great herds of wild animals, jungles and rainforests full of birds and butterflies, but now I wonder if they will even exist for my children to see.  Did you have to worry about these things when you were my age?  All of this is happening before our eyes, and yet we act as if we have all the time we want and all the solutions.  I’m only a child and I don’t have all the solutions, but I want you to realize, neither do you.  You don’t know how to bring the salmon back up a dead stream.  You don’t know how to bring back an animal now extinct.  And you can’t bring back the forests that once grew where there is now desert.  If you don’t know how to fix it, please, stop breaking it.  At school, even in kindergarten, you teach us how to behave in the world.  You teach us not to fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures, to share, not be greedy.  Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do?  Don’t forget why you attend these conferences and who you’re doing this for.  We are your own children.  You are deciding what kind of world we are growing up in.  Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying, “Everything’s going to be alright.  It’s not the end of the world, and we’re doing the best we can,” but I don’t think you can say that to us anymore.  Are we even on your list of priorities?  My dad always says, “You are what you do, not what you say.”  Well, what you do makes me cry at night.  You grownups say you love us, but I challenge you: Please, make your actions reflect your words.”

In other words, for us, align yourselves with Christ and make the tough choices that demonstrate that allegiance.  But the good news is that making choices based on our discipleship, those choices really aren’t tough.  Jesus says, “Take my yoke up on you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

So says the Kung Fu Jesus.  As we make choices in our individual lives of discipleship and in our shared life of faith, let us take comfort in the assurance of Jesus, who ultimately came that we would have peace and that we would all be one, that sometimes things need to be broken if they are ever going to be blessed.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Connected in Giving”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Psalm 33:18-22, Genesis 15:1-6, and Luke 12:49-56

Elizabeth Myer Boulton is the Minister for Discipleship at Old South Church in Boston, and in a recent edition of Christian Century Magazine, she remembers her grandmother, Nellie Caroline Myer.  I read the article with our congregation in mind and I thought, “Maybe we have a grandmother like Nellie.  Maybe we have a parent like Nellie.  Maybe we have a spouse or partner like Nellie.  Or maybe we are like Nellie.”

Boulton writes about how in the 1950s and ‘60s her grandmother Nellie obsessed about the threat of nuclear war.  Nellie would stockpile her basement with cans of tomatoes, tuna and bean salad.  Then came the sugar shortage of the ‘70s, so Nellie filled her cupboards with sugar: brown, refined and raw.  And when the energy crisis came, Nellie made sure that the needle of her Buick’s gas gauge was always above three-quarters of a tank.

Every day she would wait in long lines to fuel up.  Boulton’s grandfather, Nellie’s husband, could never understand this.  One day he was at his wit’s end, and he said, “My goodness, Nellie!  Do we really need to wait in line for gas again?  We’ve got three-quarters of a tank!”  Boulton says that every member of her family can recite Nellie’s answer word for word: “Well, Jimmy, of course we have to wait in line.  We’ve got to get that gas before the hoarders do!”

Cans of food.  Bags of sugar.  Tanks of gas.  When is it ever enough?  We all have loved ones who resemble Boulton’s grandmother, Nellie, and we are all a little bit like Nellie ourselves.  Because we all have a tendency to ask from the depth of our desire for fulfillment, “When is it ever enough?”

When will there be enough military action to assure our safety and security?

When will there be enough jobs, enough education, enough healthcare?

When will there be enough peace in Iraq and Afghanistan?

When will there be enough justice in the oil-ravaged waters of the Gulf?

In the midst of ethics violations in government and scandals in the Church, when will there be enough healing?

These are the kinds of questions we ask God every time we pray whether we realize it or not.  We pray to God asking for practical things, asking for that job to open up, or that estranged loved one to pick up the phone and call us, or for that school to be a safe place for our kids, or for that boss to get off our back.  And we pray to God asking for virtuous things, asking for the patience to endure budget cuts, for the strength to maintain during hard times, for restraint in dealing with our enemies, for hope to see beyond the cancer, for the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

In all of these things we are praying for enough: enough money and job security, enough time, enough hope, enough strength, enough serenity, courage and wisdom.  And God’s silent yet still-speaking response that is and was and evermore shall be remains, “It is enough.”

What is at the heart of Christian worship?  Why do we worship and praise and revere God?  Is it so that God won’t smite us, strike us down?  Well, that’s scarety-cat worship.  We can’t worship God from a heart of fear.  That can’t be it.

Do we worship God because God loves us?  Well, that sounds much better, but then it sounds like we might be worshipping God to earn that love.  And then we’re back to square one: When is it enough love?

At the heart of Christian worship is the simple, simple notion that we worship God first and foremost because God gives, because God is a giving God.

Whether you believe the Creation stories in Genesis literally or allegorically or somewhere in between, the message remains true that God gives us all that we have.  The fruit of all creation is ours to enjoy and, in many cases, to manipulate however we please.

And God so loved the world that God gave God’s only begotten son that all who believe in him would not perish but would have eternal life.  And this freely given gift that came from the selfless being of God, Jesus the Christ, this gift says to us in the Gospel, “I came to give you life, and to give it to you to the fullest.”

And on Pentecost we gather to celebrate God’s gift of the Holy Spirit and Christ’s gift of the Church, these things in which and through which we can do amazing things.  God gives.  That is the very nature of God, and that nature is at the heart of Christian worship.

We pray and we pray and we pray asking God, “When will it be enough.”  And God’s persistent response is, “It is enough.”  And so in worshipping God we give thanks for these many blessings, but the blessings we find are not so much in what God gives or how much we think God gives but in the giving itself.  The blessings are not in the gifts that we can measure and weigh and compute, but in the giving itself.

Here’s a testimony about that: Isabel Allende is a novelist who’s written more than a dozen novels.  But she says it all in an essay titled “In Giving I Connect with Others.”  She writes about how her 28-year-old daughter fell ill and was in a coma for a year, and how she took care of her during that time, all the way up until Allende’s daughter died in her arms in December of 1992.  Allende writes about the experience in these words: “Paralyzed and silent in her bed, my daughter Paula taught me a lesson that is now my mantra: You only have what you give.  It’s by spending yourself that you become rich.”

We heard this same powerful message in last week’s Scripture where Jesus teaches his disciples to not store up things for themselves, but instead to be rich toward God.  David Manuel did a magnificent job reflecting on that text, and reminding us that we are all rich in some way or another.

But this week Jesus continues in this line of teaching and takes it to what I feel is an even more powerful level.  He says that we should give to the poor and that this practice assures us treasures in heaven.  But the very next thing he talks about is how important it is for us to be watchful and prepared at all times for anything and everything that God might bring our way: “Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning.”

Could it be that the very nature of giving that reflects the very nature of God is the way for us to always be watchful?  Could it be that the continual practice of giving is what keeps us prepared at all times for the blessings and challenges that God places upon our lives?

It makes sense when you hear how Allende concludes her essay.  She writes this: “Give, give, give—what is the point of having experience, knowledge, or talent if I don’t give it away?  Of having stories if I don’t tell them to others?  Of having wealth if I don’t share it?  I don’t intend to be cremated with any of it!  It is in giving that I connect with others, with the world, and with the divine.  It is in giving that I feel the spirit of my daughter inside me, like a soft presence.”

Did Allende love her daughter enough?  Did she give her daughter enough attention before she got sick and fell into that coma?  Did she give enough motherly time in the final days of her daughter’s young life?  There’s no answer to those questions.  And what would be the point of trying in vain to measure her motherly attention and time and love?  The connections that Allende has, as she describes, with others, with the world, with the divine and with her daughter, are not in what she gives or how much; the connections are in the giving itself.

Allende calls them connections, but this morning let us call them salvation.

Jesus tells us that if we lose our lives we save them.  So it is in giving that we receive; it is in giving ourselves to God and letting God take hold of our lives that we gain freedom and new life.  It is in giving our lives and our trust to God that we are able to overcome the possessive powers of this world; the possessive powers of our addictions and disorders, the possessive powers of property ownership, money, accumulated wealth, social status, and hierarchical competition, the possessive powers of relationship control and perfecting our children before loving them.  Indeed, and praise God, it is in giving that we are saved.

Did you ever think that passing the offering plate in church could be so powerful?  Don’t worry.  I’m not going to end this message by telling us to give more money to the church.  That’s not the point.  But do you ever think about the part of the worship service called the Offertory?  Do you ever think about that part of the service when we pass plates around and take up tithes and offerings and Friendship Forms, and do you wonder what that has to do with everything else?

I doubt that for very many of us in this sanctuary that the Offertory is the most moving part of the worship service.  When we think of worship we think of prayers and music and children’s messages and moments of silence and sacraments and sermons and looking out the window into the vastness of God’s creation.  Those things come to mind, because those things are how we feel that we connect with God the most and connect with each other the most.

But perhaps it is the offering—the overlooked ritual of passing the plates—perhaps it is the offering that resonates most with the very nature of God the giver.  And perhaps the most powerful thing that we do in here as the church gathered is this ritual of giving.  And it’s powerful not because of how much we give, but because of the giving itself.  Giving changes us.  It reshapes us.  It makes us always watchful, always prepared, for God’s involvement in our lives.  As one biblical scholar says, “What we are doing, in offering, is transformed from the mere making of a living to the living of a life.”

We give so much in this place not only to the maintenance and mission of this church, but to so many different efforts.  In the recent past we have given to World Vision’s 30-Hour Famine, the Texas A&M GLBT Resource Center Endowment Fund, the Elijah project of Faith United Church of Christ in Bryan, the Haiti relief effort of the UCC, and our men’s ministry gave to the Brazos Valley Food Bank’s Feast of Caring.  And we give to the quarterly mission efforts of the UCC, giving to the Strengthen the Church Mission offering, Neighbors in Need, the Christmas Fund and One Great Hour of Sharing.  And let’s not forget all the times we give to our children and youth doing fundraisers for band, social clubs and sports teams.

Is that enough?  Is it enough?  The good news is that it doesn’t matter whether it’s enough, because the message is not about giving more money, it’s about giving more deeply.  The message is to give deeply and completely to God, because the practice of giving teaches us to trust in God instead of our own limited, easily tempted, often thwarted will.  And when we place our trust in God, then we truly can do all things through God’s gift of Jesus the Christ who strengthens us and connects us and saves us.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Reflections on the Scriptures”
Delivered by Rachel Boenigk, Walter Bertsch, and David Manuel
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Colossians 3:1-11; Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23; and Luke 12:13-21

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Wrestling with Truth: The Struggle of the Bald Cypress Tree Roots”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Luke 11:1-13 and Colossians 2:6-19

Friday morning I was waiting for the first sentence of this sermon to pop into my mind when the phone rang.  Someone from our church was calling me back, and he said, “What can I do for you?”  And I said, “Well, honestly, I’m looking for the first sentence to get this sermon going.  Anything come to mind?”  And he said, “Yeah: Don’t jump to conclusions.”

That’s a good starting point.  “Jumping to conclusions” means that we leave a lot of crucial stuff out.  We don’t want to mess with process, we just want to get to that finish line of certainty; because it is so fun to bask in the glow of being right.

The trouble with that is that we run the risk of becoming what our sister, Robin Miller, coined two weeks ago: a flaming ball of righteous indignation.  It doesn’t sound so good to be right when we think of it that way, but when it’s easy to be right, when it’s convenient to be right, that’s all we want.  I just want to be right!  Let me be right!

You ever get off the phone with a family member or someone you’re close to and you’re so mad you could spit, because they’ve said something that really gets under your skin.  So, you go in a huff to find another one of your friends or maybe even your spouse, someone you know will see things your way, and you say, “I can’t believe what so-and-so just said.  They are so out of line saying that to me.  It’s like they’ll say whatever pops in their brain.  Well, I don’t need to hear it.  I don’t need their advice.  They’re all up in my Koolaid and they don’t even know the flavor.  It’s so patronizing!  I know what I’m doing.  I’ve got a handle on things.  I’m just fine!”

And then the person you’re venting to says, “Well, maybe they’ve got a point.  Have you thought about what’s going on with them lately?  Maybe they’re speaking from a place of stress or hurt.  They’re just trying to help.  Have you thought about that?”

And then you say, “No, I haven’t thought about that, Mr. Rogers!  I don’t need to think about that right now.  I just need for you to agree with me.  Tell me I’m right!  That’s what I need from you!”

Sometimes we just need someone to help us be right, someone to reinforce our certainty; because it’s easier to justify our own opinions, even if they might be wrong, than to wrestle with truth.

Paul has visited the Galatians at Galatia, and now he’s visiting the Colossians at Colossae.  And from one location to the other, Paul flips his decrees based on the cultural context.  Good ol’ Paul…  In Galatia, Paul recognized circumcision (I’m going to pause right there and say that this is the first time I’ve ever talked about circumcision from any pulpit anywhere.  Thank goodness Paul gives us the chance to talk about it in the church.  What fun!  But I digress.)…

In Galatia, Paul recognized circumcision as Jewish propaganda.  To Paul it was a purely religious rite that meant nothing outwardly.  So, he used that interpretation to perpetuate the message of Christianity.  He propels the message of circumcision not being a big deal, saying that circumcised or uncircumcised, it doesn’t matter—we’re all one.  Galatians is where we get that wonderful Scripture that heralds inclusiveness: “There is no longer slave nor free, Jew nor Greek, male nor female; for we are all one in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Sounds good, right?  But when Paul gets to Colossae, suddenly he’s singing a different tune.  Somewhere between Galatia and Colossae, Paul decided that he couldn’t let go of the notion that something about circumcision was important.  And when he saw how sacrosanct circumcision was to the culture of Colossae, he said, “You know what?  It is important.”  And so we get the Scripture today about what circumcision means in a spiritual sense: the removing of the body of flesh.  I’ll come back to this in a minute, but the point remains that we will sooner scurry and scramble to justify ignorance than we will ever struggle with and sacrifice for truth.

Kathleen Kennedy Townshend spoke as a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California, and she said: “The churches have failed America because they’ve narrowed faith to three issues: abortion, same-sex marriage and stem cell research.  And I thought that my faith tradition was that we should care about the least among us.  We should care about the poor, health care, immigration.”

Well, that sounds passionate and gets the emotions churning, but that’s harder.  That demands more.  That makes Christianity hard work.  Well, to quote Tom Hanks in A League of their Own, “It’s supposed to be hard.  The hard is what makes it great.”

Now, back to Paul: The Apostle Paul wrote the letters that make up the bulk of our New Testament.  His letters are what inform our Christian education, they are what we study and dialogue about; they are what we preachers turn to in seeking the Word of God to offer from the pulpit.  But what is perhaps most important for us to recognize this morning is that Paul’s letters—Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians—those letters were not written for society in general in those places, those letters were written for the churches in those places.

But time and again, churches in America that are more concerned with being right than being truthful will use Paul’s letters to justify antagonism and malice and oppression toward anyone who does not fit their definition of a morally pure person who is walking the straight and narrow with God.  And that tragic articulation of Paul’s letters solidifies the stereotype that so many in our culture have of the Church: that we are about judgment and division and misogyny and homophobia, that we are a flaming ball of righteous indignation.

So, in order for us to keep the number of youth who hold that view of the Church from growing (and, believe me, that number is growing), it would be in our best interest to look at Paul’s letters with their original intention.  Let’s look at this Scripture to the Church at Colossae as a gut check for us: the Church.

The Church at Colossae was on the verge of social disintegration.  They were becoming fragmented and socially irrelevant.  Enter Paul.  Paul recognizes that the practice of circumcision is a hot button issue in that time and context.  He sees how precious and precarious this simple practice is, so he uses it as a metaphor saying that if the people are ever going to bounce back, they must remove the body of flesh that is leading them toward disintegration and irrelevance.  They must remove the body of flesh that keeps them from acknowledging where they came from; the body of flesh that keeps them from embracing and celebrating their rootedness in Christ.  They must remove the corruption of their human personality.  That’s the body of flesh Paul was talking about.

Paul may have changed the details of his message between Galatia and Colossae, but the metaphor worked.  The point was made.  And the message remained true.  But, oh, we church-goers love to focus on the scandalous metaphor of the flesh.  We love to narrow the message down to all things carnal when Paul talks about flesh.  But that just makes our religion all about sex.  And the next thing you know, our churches spend all their time obsessing about what good folks like Townsend lament: abortion, same-sex marriage, and stem cell research.

But if removing the body of flesh was a metaphor that spoke boldly and unabashedly to the Church at Colossae about their need to shed their corrupt human personalities, how does that metaphor continue to speak to us here and now?  What is so corrupt about the human personality in the twenty-first century Western World, and why do we need to remove it?

Perhaps the corruption of our day and time is our relentless need for instant gratification at any cost.  An economy in turmoil because of a housing collapse.  An oil spill in the Gulf killing an ecosystem and driving people into unemployment and homelessness.  At the heart of all of this, isn’t it just about the corruption that lusts for instant gratification at any cost?  And we feed, foster and support that corrupt human personality with any news that will support our opinions.  We just want to be right.  Let us be right!

Barbara Mikkelson and her husband, David, co-own Snopes.com, which is a debunking internet site.  Barbara says, “Rumors are a great source of comfort for people.  When you’re looking at truth versus gossip, truth doesn’t stand a chance.”

The details of Paul’s message may have changed, but the message remains true.  If we remove the body of flesh, if we shed the corrupt nature of the human personality that craves instant gratification at any cost, we will discover truth:

1. Truth about the root causes of poverty
2. Truth behind our involvement in war
3. Truth about the consequences of our dependency on oil
4. Truth about reasons why certain relationships in our lives are broken
5. Truth behind our jealousies, resentments and countless destructive tendencies

Mikkelson’s right: Truth doesn’t seem very comfortable.  But Jesus tells us that once we experience truth, once we struggle with it and sacrifice for it, once we bask in the resurrection and new life it gives us, truth makes us free.  Truth wipes out poverty.  Truth ends war.  Truth relinquishes destructive addictions.  Truth reconciles and mends relationships.  Truth soothes all forms of human brokenness.

But struggling with truth doesn’t come instantly.  Sacrificing for truth means that any and all costs must be considered for the sake of all in the human family.  So, it’s a good thing that Jesus gives us instructions for grappling with truth.  Jesus says, “Ask and you will receive.  Seek and you will find.  Knock and the door will be opened to you.”

Jesus is preaching about persistence and ceaselessness, struggle and sacrifice.  Ask.  Seek.  Knock.  Ask.  Seek.  Knock.  Never grow weary in doing these things.  Ask.  Seek.  Knock.  Don’t put these words on the backburner.  Don’t take comfort in gossip at the expense of these words.  Don’t store these words away to dust off only when times are tough.  Don’t put these words aside for something you’d prefer to hear.  Ask.  Seek.  Knock.  And you will be blessed.

What will that look like?  I don’t know.  But I have a pretty good idea.  For those of you who’ve been to Slumber Falls Camp in New Braunfels before, you have experienced that picture on your bulletin cover firsthand.  Confirmation Camp and the All-Church Retreat are held there.

I took an instant liking to the place when I co-led a youth camp there in the summer of 2007, and I’m so glad that my family loves it, too.  Mac likes to go down to the river and throw rocks into the water, and Ruthie likes listening to the water talk.

What caught my attention at our last All-Church Retreat were the bald cypress trees on the banks of the river and even out in the water.  These majestic trees are shooting straight up to the sky, standing as living reminders of how small we really are, how limited our time really is, and how beautiful this life is that we get to enjoy.

But what are even more powerful are the roots.  The roots of the cypress trees at Slumber Falls look just as timeless and wise as the branches shooting upward.  Those roots cascade all over the rocks like they’re a snapshot of the water’s movement.  They twist and turn and reach until they get to the soil and drink up the nutrients that the cypress trees need to grow and to remain strong.

I think of those tough roots, their tenacity and their relentlessness, their persistence and their ceaselessness, and I believe that’s what our prayers look like when they heed the words of Jesus: “Ask, seek, knock, ask, seek, knock.”  And those captivating trees, those trees that cause us to pause, those trees that our children can climb, that is what our blessings look like.

When will we get blessings that look like that?  I don’t know, but I do know that it’s in God’s time.  And I do know there’s no room for instant gratification in there.

Psalm 1:1-3: “Blessed are they who do not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.  But their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in season and whose leaves do not wither.  Whatever they do prospers.”

The psalmist writes not about our hopes, not about our desires; but about the hopes and desires of God.  Let that be our vision, and let us struggle with truth to see it come to fruition.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Bread and Words”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Psalm 15, Genesis 18:1-10a, and Luke 10:38-42

Every week I receive emails from the United Church of Christ’s website having to do with congregational vitality. Each of these emails offers vital resources for the vital congregation: webinars, retreats, books and curricula. And there’s a lot of slick stuff in there. But why is the UCC pushing vitality? What’s so important about vitality in our churches?

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, here are the definitions of ‘vitality’: the peculiarity distinguishing the living from the nonliving; the capacity to live and develop; the power of enduring.

I want to be a part of a peculiar church that is alive and thereby distinguished from the nonliving! I don’t want to go to Friends Congregational Church of Transylvania or Friends Zombie Church!

But vitality is about more than just, as the Bee Gees would say, staying alive. It’s about more than just getting by. Vitality has to do with the capacity to live and develop, and it has to do with the power of enduring. Translation: the church that has vitality is always learning and becoming and growing, and that constant growth is what gives the church endurance, the strength to endure any storm that this anxious world might throw at us.

Every church needs vitality. So, what are the components of vitality? I want to share those components with you by introducing you to Sarah and Carson: two teenagers who were actively involved in the youth group I served in Austin for six years. But first a little background…

Sarah and Carson were high school teens in a church that was struggling. Animosity and infighting over hot button issues were causing their congregation to dwindle in numbers. Town hall meetings were held where people would often get up and leave in a huff and never be heard from again inside those church walls. It was a devastating time.

But in that same church was a youth group of about 20 to 30 kids (sometimes more than 40 when we went to summer camp). And Sarah and Carson were pillars of that group.

Now, Sarah was a busy bee. She was on the lacrosse team, she volunteered at a nursing home teaching Spanish to the elderly after school, and she worked circles around pretty much everybody in our church’s youth group. When it was time to make banners for the worship services at summer camp, Sarah was on the floor gluing piece after piece of multicolored fabric onto a mosaic design of a cross. When we needed to prepare Vacation Bible School for children in orphanages and churches in the Borderlands, Sarah made sure we had all the materials we needed for every day of arts and crafts according to that day’s Bible story.

For one mission trip we planned to buy as many groceries as possible at the HEB in Roma, Texas before crossing the border into Miguel Aleman, Mexico, so that we could give those essentials to families in need: flour, sugar, rice, beans, lard, personal hygiene items, and even diapers. So, before we left on this trip, Sarah went to every HEB in town soliciting gift card donations from them with a letter from this youth minister explaining what we would be doing. And every one of those HEB’s gave Sarah a gift card for our youth group to use.

Her work ethic was contagious, and many others in the group followed her lead. We got a lot done as a group and were almost always well-prepared for any situation thanks in large part to Sarah. That’s probably why Sarah and others would roll their eyes at Carson.

Carson was another pillar of the group, but Carson was antithetical to Sarah. Carson was always present, but rarely would he roll up his sleeves and help with all the work that needed to be done. When it looked like I was about to ask someone in the group to do something, Carson would slip into the bathroom for a few minutes to avoid being picked. When I would say, “Okay, crew, I need somebody to do me a quick favor,” Carson would say, “One, two, three, not it!”

But despite his reluctance to help with the essentials, Carson was always present, always involved, and everyone loved Carson’s sense of humor. When we were sorting clothes at a mission site in Arlington, Carson would find muumuus and ridiculous hats and put them on to distract us from working. But he used his humor to do more than entertain and get attention. He used that humor to remind everyone that our youth group was important.

We had what were called Touch Cards, little postcards where you could write a note to someone in the congregation, leave it in the offering plate with that person’s name on it, and then the Touch Committee would address it for you and mail it to that person. The congregation would use Touch Cards to respond to prayer concerns or to offer words of encouragement. Carson, on the other hand, used the Touch Cards in a slightly different way. He would notice who was missing on a Sunday morning from the youth group. Then, he would grab a Touch Card, draw a picture of Jesus crying, and write to the person absent that morning, “See what you did? Way to miss church and make Jesus cry. Hope you’re having fun sleeping in and having a late lunch with Satan! Love, Carson.”

As that church was struggling to find its way, as the pews got emptier and emptier every Sunday and the offering plate got lighter and lighter, it was the youth group that gave the church hope. I don’t want to go so far as to say that the youth group saved the church in their time of doubt, but I am certain that the youth group was vital to that church.

Sarah and Carson had a lot to do with that vitality. But remove either one of them from the group, and the vitality crumbles. Our group rallied around Sarah’s ethic of compassion and hard work, and we always got so much done, but Carson’s presence and humor made a lot of the work worth it.

Four biblical scholars put a commentary together on this morning’s story from Luke’s gospel, and they offer this powerful quote: “Without bread, one cannot live; but without the words that give meaning to life, why should one desire to live?”

Bread plus words equal vitality.

Sarah plus Carson equal vitality.

Martha plus Mary equal vitality.

The Methodist theologian, William Willimon, refers to this as the bifocal nature of Christian discipleship.

Martha is described in this morning’s story as the busy bee, the one who’s always concerned with organization and structure and getting things done, making sure everything is in order and being properly maintained.

Mary is described as the one devoted to listening and learning, to living fully in the moment, to purposeful meditation and calm discernment and devotion to the thought process.

Now, a show of hands: How many of us relate to Martha in this story? How many of us relate to Mary in this story? Did you notice how I put up one hand for Martha and another hand for Mary?

I want to remind all of us this morning of how much our community and our world need this church. And those of you who relate to Martha, I want you to know how much this church needs you. And those of you who relate to Mary, I want you to know how much this church needs you. We are essential to one another for the sake of vitality, and vitality is what will keep us strong, growing, and alive.

But what I want to point out is that there is a little bit of Martha and a little bit of Mary in all of us! (And I know that my gay brothers in Christ who might articulate their sexuality with the slang term ‘Mary’ are really excited about that: “Oh! There’s a little Mary in all of us!”)

What I’m saying is that both parts are blessed. Jesus does tell Martha that she is distracted and worried by a great many things, yes, but he does not condemn her work. It, too, is blessed. Jesus says that Mary has chosen the better part, yes, but other parts are no less true, no less essential.

Both parts are blessed. We have gifts that resemble Martha in this story, and we have gifts that resemble Mary in this story; and those gifts do more than merely complement one another, they are essential to one another; essential to vitality.

The preacher and Harvard professor, Peter Gomes, reminds us of the Marthas that he says are both the advance and the rear guard, and the unsung heroines of any movement. He says, “The civil rights movement of a generation ago had its headliners in the likes of Dr. King and other clerical leaders. It had its strategists like Andy Young and Jesse Jackson, but it would not have gotten to first base, let alone to Washington or to the statute books, without that invisible army, composed mostly of women, who cooked the endless meals in dreary church basements, made the coffee, managed the supplies, and provided for the necessities of life.”

When I have the opportunity to visit our fellow church member Ikie Cooper and her sister Estene in their home, I often pause and take in the pictures in her living room: family and friends, blood and church, black and white, old and young. And on top of Ikie’s TV is a picture of Barack Obama commemorating his inauguration as the 44th president of the United States. Sometimes Ikie will look to that picture of the first African American president in our nation’s history and she’ll say with an unmistakable glow in her eyes, a glow that, as Jesus says, “cannot be taken away from her,” “I never thought I would’ve seen it happen in my lifetime.” Were it not for the Marthas, she wouldn’t have seen it happen.

Deuteronomy 8:2-3 says, “Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep God’s commands. God humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” Jesus quotes this lesson later in the gospels, and we witness to it today, but we fumble the message if we find God and Jesus Christ condemning the bread. Bread and words are both needed: bread to live and words to make life worth living.

The bread of actions and activity and busyness are needed for the sake of the gospel message, for the sake of God’s love being shared so that the world would be transformed. Jesus is always telling us to offer a helping hand to those in need. Just look at the story of the Good Samaritan, where a man is injured on the road to Jericho. Kevin Graham offered a wonderful reflection on that last week. Jesus is constantly reminding us, calling us, charging us to give the bread of love and kindness to those injured on the cruel roads of society: the marginalized and the oppressed, the poor and the afflicted, the widow and the orphan, and the most vulnerable in our communities.

I would venture to say that our Creator God, Creating Still looks on this kind of work today and calls it good, as does our Christ. But, from time to time, as today’s story points out, Jesus reminds us of the need to prioritize. Work is good, but we need to also stop and sit at the feet of Jesus to hear the words that give us direction for that work; the words that tell us what the bread is to be used for!

We pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” and every day we are blessed with bread at Friends Church, are we not? Our choir needs a summer sabbatical, so musicians and singers step up and provide. Our preacher needs time and space to study, so congregants step into the pulpit and provide. Mission offerings and utility bills and a mortgage need to be paid, and our offering plates provide. Communion needs to be prepared, and our sign’s message needs to be changed, and the chairs needs to be set up for worship every week, and our cans need to be recycled, and the coffee needs to be made, and people in this congregation volunteer and provide (although we could use a few more greeters!). We have so much bread, and for that we must always be thankful.

But, servant leaders of Friends Congregational Church, this is where you come in. We need you to remind us of how essential it is for us to pause and sit at the feet of Jesus. We need you to pause in your own life and listen for the words that God in Christ has to offer us, because while bread gives us continued life, words make the life worth living—the words of Jesus that tell us how to live, where to go, who to serve, what to do, who to be for this community and for this world in the name of our still-speaking God. We are counting on you to listen to the words of Christ so that you might offer us vision, offer us direction, offer us hope and offer us a clear path to where God is calling Friends Congregational Church. We’ll keep praying for the bread. We need you to start praying for the words.

Children of God, sisters and brothers in Christ, we are made of many spiritual parts, and each of us has different gifts. So, let us be reminded this morning that each of those parts that make you who you are is blessed by God, and each of those gifts that have been bestowed upon you are loved by God. Everything that makes you who you are, every single precious part, is loved by God…and it is vital to the Church and essential to the world.

Bread and words; for both of these things we are thankful, and we say together, “Amen!”

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Reflections on the Scriptures”
Delivered by Stephen Loonam, Robin Miller, and Kevin Graham
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Deuteronomy 30:9-14, Psalm 25:1-10, and Luke 10:25-37

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“I Love You Back, Part 3: Membership”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Psalm 16:5-11; 1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21; Luke 9:51-62

From time to time, I get the opportunity to sit down with different people who have visited our church.  Sometimes we get together in my office, but most times we have lunch or meet up for coffee somewhere.  A college student asked if I’d be okay meeting up with her to visit at that place Spoons where they have a toppings bar where you can sprinkle Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal on your frozen yogurt, and I said, “Well, twist my arm!”

It’s one of the unique blessings of being a pastor where I get to know so many different people and hear their stories and faith backgrounds.  And often what ends up happening in those encounters is that we let our guard down and talk about things that maybe we wouldn’t talk about so readily in our every day lives.  We ask questions that we struggle with, but might be hesitant or too afraid to ask in the workplace or at school or even with some of our family members.  Jesus says, “Where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”  I’d easily say that’s true.  I have experienced the presence of Christ in many of those conversations with visitors to Friends Congregational Church.

One couple shared pieces of their faith journeys with me recently (and I’m so glad to call them my friends).  One of them talked about how she had developed a strong Christian faith within the church, but that her faith had also led her to become very passionate about gay rights.  She talked about how she had a hard time advocating for justice toward gay and lesbian peoples when that particular view doesn’t really mesh with the views of most Christian people.  It’s something I’ve heard quite a few times before, and it’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot in light of today’s sermon topic on “church membership.”

There is a widespread assumption that because many religious institutions say that homosexuality is immoral and that gay and lesbian peoples are less than that Christian people hold that same belief.  But I want to suggest that it is more accurate to say that advocating for gay rights doesn’t really mesh with most Christian churches than to say that advocating for gay right’s doesn’t mesh with most Christian people.  Peel away those layers of doctrine and we find women and men who struggle with that tension that exists between doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with our God, and the hot button issues of our day that inform our common narrative and that steer our public discourse.  In other words, here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the door, and here’s all the potential gay rights advocates.  It doesn’t rhyme but it’s still fun to say!

A buddy of mine told me about a new social media campaign called Believe Out Loud, so I looked into it.  The purpose of Believe Out Loud is to encourage silent supporters of gay rights to speak out in civic and church settings, and it’s primarily targeted toward 40 million Mainline Protestant people in seven different denominations.  But, when this thing gains traction, it’s expected to get the attention of a significant number of Roman Catholics and younger evangelicals, too.

An article about Believe Out Loud in ReligiousDispatches.com said this: “Part of the idea is to remind individual Christians who totally embrace LGBT equality that there are millions more like them.”  Research shows that roughly 40 percent of Mainline Protestant clergy are in what’s called “the uncertain middle,” and that those clergy might be willing to show more leadership on LGBT issues if they felt that their congregants would welcome it.  And other research shows that many Mainline Protestant church goers have been waiting for their pastors to initiate a dialogue.

Rev. Robert Chase is the former communications director for the United Church of Christ, and he now heads the organization responsible for administering Believe Out Loud, and he says, “By reaching out to those who are still uncertain about homosexuality in the church, we expand the conversation.  As individuals begin to move from fear to empathy, from ignorance to understanding, and from apathy to action, a new space is created for extravagant welcome to all.”  And what is the vision of Friends Congregational Church?  “…to offer God’s extravagant welcome to all.”  That vision becomes clear when we, like Rev. Chase says, move from fear to empathy, from ignorance to understanding, from apathy to action, and, I want to add, from spiritual death to abundant life.

The anti-LGBT doctrines and teachings that are stereotypically associated with the Christian church need to be peeled away to see what’s living under there, because, as Edie Brickell would say, “You’ve got a lot of living to do with that life.”  And what does all this have to do with joining a church?  The members of a church family help one another, by the grace of God, to peel away any layers of spiritual death that keep our light from shining, be it homophobia or grudges or self-doubt or holier than thou feelings of any kind.  And when we help one another as sisters and brothers in Christ who are accountable, one to the other, to peel away those layers, what is revealed is new life.  That’s discipleship that leads to resurrection that leads to the transformation of this world, and that’s the hope of church membership.  It starts here.

The text from Luke’s gospel finds Jesus moving swiftly through a Samaritan village.  The people there don’t offer him an ounce of hospitality, and the disciples are so appalled that that they ask Jesus if he wants them to do a little retribution, put the bad Samaritans in their place.  But Jesus just rebukes them and moves on.  No story.  No parable.  No lesson about vengeance being wrong or withholding hospitality being bad.  His face is set toward Jerusalem.

The writer of Luke’s gospel wants the reader to see the heaviness on Jesus’ shoulders.  His face is set toward Jerusalem because he sees his preordained fate.  His face is set toward the betrayal and trial and crucifixion and death and resurrection.  He’s purposeful in his direction, and he’s curt with the disciples when they ask him questions.  His mood is serious and his tone is convicting.  So, this text gives us one of the hardest sayings of Jesus for us to deal with: “Let the dead bury their own dead.”

Jesus said to another man, “Follow me.”  But the man replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”  Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead.”

That’s razor sharp.  Even though many of us cringe at the though of attending funerals, we need those rituals to cope, to find fresh hope, and to move on.  So, it seems odd that tender and mild Jesus would say to a man who has just lost a loved one, “Let the dead bury their own dead.”  But when we get hung up on Jesus’ curt tone or the rudeness of his statement, we miss the point.  Jesus wasn’t mocking funeral arrangements, Jesus was mocking death.  He was talking about those who are spiritually dead.  He was talking about those of us who spend our lives dwelling on all those times that we have been wronged, all those things that we cannot forgive, all those things that we feel we cannot be forgiven for, all those mistakes that we have made, all those opportunities that we have missed, and all those hateful, unjust, loud things that have been said on the radio, on TV, or even from a pulpit that we have indifferently accepted as the norm.

About ten years ago, a woman named Jennifer started coming to this church.  I don’t know how she came across it, but, by God she showed up.  She was curious.  She was seeking, and now here she was.  Jennifer participated in the worship service, and when it was over, she walked over to the fellowship area to have a cup of coffee.

Jo Hudson was the pastor of Friends Church at that time, and she noticed this visitor.  Jennifer was holding her coffee in both hands and looking around the place like a kid on a field trip with that hesitant smile where it looks like she’s thinking, “I really want to smile and get excited, but I don’t know if that’s cool!  I’m a little nervous!  This is so unfamiliar to me.”

Jo approached Jennifer and thanked her for visiting, and then the two women launched into what I’ll call a sacred conversation.  Jennifer told Jo, “Well, I came here and I sat down and looked at the bulletin and saw that a pastor named Jo was going to preach, but then a woman got in the pulpit and I was surprised!  I’d never experienced that before.  And this church is Open & Affirming, so people who are gay can be a part of the church’s life.  That’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard.  And I’ve never been to a church that has coffee after the service, and good coffee at that!  This is just so unfamiliar to me!”

What Jennifer told Jo was that she knew all these things to be good and true, but that she was completely unfamiliar with them.  A female pastor, ministry to LGBT peoples, eye-to-eye conversations over coffee after the worship service.  These things were not normal to Jennifer, and she wanted Jo to help explain that to her, to make this new perspective okay, to keep her from having to struggle.  But Jo just said, “Tell you what: Why don’t you come for a few more Sundays and we’ll go from there.  Let’s see where this journey takes us.”  It didn’t take long for Jennifer to join the church after that.

Jesus says, “Let the spiritually dead who obsess about all those dead things waste their time in the minutia of burying all that dead stuff.”  Jesus is on a journey toward life, and we can follow him if we peel off that layer of dead stuff that’s been weighing us down and leave it behind.  Because to follow Jesus means that we ask the tough questions and we struggle with those meaning-of-life questions and those justice-and-peace questions, and we wrestle with those questions like Jacob wrestled with the angel of the Lord all night long until we are blessed, until we are changed, until our face is set on a new way of living, an abundant way of living, a way of discipleship living that makes it imperative for us to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God in every aspect of our daily lives.  And inclusion of and justice toward our LGBT sisters and brothers is an imperative piece off that discipleship.  But it doesn’t stop there.

For the last few weeks I’ve offered a series of sermons that follow the theme of “loving God back.”  Two weeks ago I preached on the sacrament of baptism, last week on the sacrament of communion, and today’s sermon is about church membership.  So, what does all of this have to do with joining the church?

Well, let’s hear one more time that snippet from the UCC’s Statement of Faith: “God calls us into the church to accept the cost and joy of discipleship, to be servants in the service of the whole human family, to proclaim the gospel to all the world and resist the powers of evil, to share in Christ’s baptism and eat at his table, to join him in his passion and victory.”

That sounds like a tall order, and parts of it sound just as harsh as that tone Jesus took with the disciples.  But the truth is that this invitation into the church is liberating and inspiring and empowering and, above all, loving.  As Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Maybe it wasn’t that the disciples had such a hard time with Jesus not letting them go back and make funeral arrangements, and make sure their homes were in order.  They knew what they’d be missing if they couldn’t take care of those details.  So, maybe what they had such a hard time with was Jesus inviting them to do something new, something they hadn’t ever seen before, and that they could not see without taking that step toward following him.

And maybe what Jesus was saying with his direct words and harsh tone was that no one is truly fit, perfect, ready for discipleship; but by grace, God still sees it fit to love us anyway and to redeem us anyway, so that we have that invitation into new life every day no matter what.

I’ve shared parts of conversations in this message that took place between different people who are essential parts of the life of Friends Church.  The people make the church just as much as the people make the message after all; so I want to close this morning’s sermon with one more conversation shared between two people who make up this Body of Christ.  It’s those sacred conversations where we let our guard down and we listen and we struggle that are truly at the heart of church membership and discipleship and Christianity itself.

Toward the end of our recent Confirmation process, it was time for our confirmands to make decisions for themselves about whether they wanted to be confirmed.  Being confirmed makes one an official member of the church, so that was a big piece of their decision: “Do I want to take on that responsibility?  Am I ready to take more ownership of my faith?”  And I talked to different mentors and parents who wanted to know what to say during such a precious time.  One parent shared this exchange with me that I now share with you…

This particular confirmand said, “Dad, I’m having a really hard time with this decision.  I don’t know if I’m ready to join the church.”

“Well, what are you having a hard time with?”

“Well, if I don’t decide to join the church, they’re still going to love me, right?”

“Oh, yes, son!  They’ll never stop loving you!  But think of it this way: This is your chance to say to them, ‘I love you back.’”

That stuck with me.  And that conversation is the reason I named this sermon series, “I Love You Back.”  Because whether it’s the sacrament of baptism or the sacrament of communion or the celebration of church membership, we are saying to each other in all of these things, “I will never stop loving you.  I will be present with you and I will ask the tough questions with you and I will struggle with this ongoing life of faith with you and I will continue on the journey with you.”

And every time we participate in this journey, be it through baptism or communion or church membership or sharing our tithes and offerings or bringing our dish to the potluck or helping with Christians Under Construction or gathering around the table at Murphy’s Law or singing different music on a Wednesday night or getting in a sled and going down Mount Aggie, we are saying loud enough for the world to hear, “I love you back.”

That’s what God is telling us all over again this morning, church family.  Can you hear God speaking, through the choir, through our litanies, through our children, through this sanctuary, through this building, through this pulpit, through that piano?  I love you!  Can you hear it?  And when God says, “I love you,” what can we say?  I love you back!

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“I Love You Back, Part 2: Communion”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Psalm 22:22-28; Mark 14:22-25; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26

Do this in remembrance of me. Do this. That’s what is so important about the sacrament of communion: It’s not something we learn. It’s not a concept that we contemplate. It’s something we do. That’s what the Apostle Paul was getting at when he said, “Do this in remembrance of Jesus.”

So, in light of that charge, it seems counterproductive or even foolish for us to talk about communion this morning. If communion is something we do and not something we learn, then why talk about it?

I hope that this message about communion will not so much give us concepts to contemplate as it might give us a conception to enact. In other words, let this morning’s sermon help us not only remember the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, let this message compel us to respond to that love and charge us to act; because that is what the sacrament of communion is all about.

There are many different names for the sacrament that is on our altar this morning: communion, Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper, Eucharist, the feast of thanksgiving, the banquet of eternity. And there are so many different ways to understand and describe and relate to that sacrament. But let’s try to find a common thread in the midst of our diversity this morning.

Laurence Hull Stookey is a professor of preaching at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. He’s written books on Christianity and baptism and communion, and his word for communion is ‘Eucharist.’ He writes this about it: “Instead of being something to save (or damn) us individually, the Eucharist’s more important function is to teach us to share, to demonstrate before our very eyes the interconnectedness of life in a universe created by a gracious God.” That is the blessing that is on our table this morning. This is the harvest of God’s abundance. And it teaches us about the importance of sharing by inviting us to do just that: to come to the table and share.

In May of 2006 I participated in a 10-day trip to Turkey hosted by the Institute for Interfaith Dialog. When I returned from that trip I shared this memory with our church family that I want to offer again right now. For breakfast one morning, our group was invited into a family’s home: a couple with a 13-year-old daughter. This family appreciated the IID’s mission to foster constructive relationships across religious and cultural lines, and based on that appreciation, this family, prior to meeting us or even knowing our names, invited our group to breakfast in their home.

Their home was wasn’t very big, and the weather was beautiful, so we gathered outside the family’s home where the couple invited us to sit. Instead of chairs, we sat on pillows; and in front of us was a long, rectangular table with enough space for all 8-or-so of us to have a spot. When I sat down I had to pause and take in the abundance of everything in front of me and everything around me.

A few yards away from us there was a garden where the family had anything from produce to flowers. On the table were cut flowers, and fresh tomatoes and cucumbers picked and washed from that garden. There were cheeses and sausage and olives and bread, and the strong Turkish tea in curvy glasses was still hot enough that steam was rising off of them. And right before the couple invited us to dig in, their daughter came bouncing outside and stood at the head of the table next to her father. He proudly introduced her to us, and she stood confidently and smiled at our group, getting eye contact with each of us in a gesture of welcome. Her name was Malík, which I later discovered means “angel.” We ate until we could hardly stand, and then our hosts presented us with gifts for us to take home to remember our trip to Turkey.

We were not in Church. But what I experienced at their home that morning was the abundant love of God. And although we were not observing the sacrament of communion around that table, I experienced the reality and the truth of what we do in that sacrament in remembrance of Jesus. To put it in Laurence Stookey’s words, the interconnectedness of life in a universe created by a gracious God was demonstrated before my very eyes that morning; demonstrated before my very eyes by the hospitality and love and grace of a Muslim family that didn’t know me from Adam.

I will always remember that day with fondness. But to remember it in my mind doesn’t really do the story justice. That’s where communion comes in.

Paul offers us Jesus’ words: “Do this in remembrance of me.” Remembrance is at the heart of communion. And that’s what makes communion so difficult for us to just think about, or even to just talk about. Paul says, “The Lord Jesus, on the night that he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.’” But that word in 1 Corinthians 11, ‘remembrance,’ is nearly impossible to translate from its Greek language and ancient context into our Western World, 21st century English.

The Greek word for ‘remembrance’ is anamnesis. ‘Anamnesis’ cannot be translated into English without looking at remembrance the way that ancient Jews and the earliest Christians and the Apostle Paul understood remembrance. For them, remembrance involved something deeper than mere mental recall. It involved actually doing what was being remembered. When they remembered something, they didn’t just think about it, they did it!

So, in that context, if I were to ask you to remember your high school graduation, you would have to do more than just close your eyes and try to conjure up the details in your mind of what happened that day; you’d have to do more than just talk about it.

In remembrance, in anamnesis, of your high school graduation, you would have to go out and purchase a cap and gown or dig up the one that you held onto and put in storage (for some reason). And you would have to put on that cap and gown over that itchy tie or those uncomfortable heels. And you would have to go to the football field or auditorium or gymnasium where your graduation ceremony was held. And you would have to hire a brass ensemble to play Pomp and Circumstance over and over and over again while sitting in a chair waiting for your name to be called and pronounced incorrectly. And you would have to then walk across that stage and receive your diploma from someone playing the part of your old high school principal. And you would have to endure a speech from your valedictorian who quotes Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, Dr. Seuss, UB40’s “Red, Red Wine,” and Bill Pullman’s speech as the president in the movie Independence Day. And you would have to physically move your tassel to the other side of your square cap, remove the cap from your head and then throw it in the air with reckless abandon.

Now, does anyone care to remember their high school graduation? It’s a good thing I’m not asking you to remember your first kiss. I’d have to put braces back on. Yikes.

The good thing about this ancient practice of remembering is that it shows us the blessings of growing up. Maybe it demonstrates those things that are best left behind and out of our conscious minds. But, on the positive side, this ancient act of remembrance, this anamnesis, also shows us what never gets old, and what never goes bad.

When it comes to the sacrament of communion, this ancient ritual of remembrance shows us again and again God’s faithful ways of justice and mercy that we tend to forget in the chaotic mix of our everyday life. Eating the bread and drinking from the cup show us again and again that what we receive at the table of communion is meant to strengthen us for responsible and faithful service to God.

Simply put, we do this in remembrance of Christ in here to be reminded of our call to do this same sharing out there. We receive these elements of justice, mercy and love in here so that we can enact these elements out there. This is what we do in remembrance of Jesus who offers us God’s love without record of wrongs, without concern for misdeeds, without condition of social status, cultural history, sexual identity, ethnic makeup or income tax bracket.

That was what the problem was at the church at Corinth, and that’s why we have this scripture today. If you read on in 1 Corinthians 11, Paul writes, “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and the blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body eat and drink judgment against themselves.” Thanks, Paul. That makes me feel welcome at Christ’s table. It sounds pretty intimidating and unwelcoming to me, but here’s the thing: Paul isn’t talking to the individual. He’s talking to everyone—the whole church, the Body of Christ—when he says, “Examine yourselves. Give yourselves an honest gut check.”

Here’s what was going on at the Church at Corinth: The people would get together and have these huge feasts where church members would bring food for everyone to share, like a potluck. But some members of the church were wealthier than others, and they had more lucrative schedules than others. So, they would show up on time for church gatherings, or even early, and they would get the first choice of the best food at the banquet.

And slowly other church members that were lower in social status would trickle in whenever they got off work, bringing whatever lackluster food items they could spare based on their meager budgets. And the well-to-do folks who had shown up on time would eat that, too.

Finally, people at the lowest tier of society got off work late, because they had to work longer hours for less pay, and they couldn’t afford to bring anything at all to the meal. And what’s worse, when they finally showed up, there was no food left, because their fellow church members, who had gotten there before them, had eaten everything that had been brought to supposedly share.

Paul recognized this, so he admonished the folks at Corinth Church, and he said, “You’d better check yourselves. You’d better examine yourselves as a church body and make sure no one is being left out, that there is enough sustenance for everyone, and that everyone is equal at the Table of the Lord.”

Paul was reminding the Church at Corinth that “Do this in remembrance of me,” means, “Look for brokenness and inequality in your midst, hold it accountable, and see to it that justice is done in the name of Christ Jesus.” In other words, share. Share! And when you do this, you will demonstrate before the world’s very eyes the interconnectedness of life in a universe created by a gracious God. You will remember Christ by what you do, and you, the fragmented church that is called to be united by the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, will be re-membered. And in that unity we will be able to say to God in one voice, “I love you back”! That is what we do at the table of communion, because as Thomas Aquinas said, “Anyone who says he loves God but hates his neighbor is a liar.”

During the Civil Rights movement there were beautiful homes built along the highway next to the beach in Gulfport, Mississippi. The beachside property of these homes was not owned by the homeowners, it belonged to the public. But because this neighborhood of homes was a “Whites Only” neighborhood, the residents there pronounced that the beachfront property in their backyards was to be segregated. Their supposed land would not be shared with anyone who did not look like they did.

But there was a United Church of Christ congregation there in Gulfport who shared in the same sacraments of baptism and communion that we share throughout the UCC and Protestant Christianity. And the diversity of Christ’s body of people gathered around their table for communion reminded them that, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

So, this UCC church in Gulfport organized what was called a wade-in on that beachfront property one day. They got Black and White women, men and children together, put on their swimsuits, grabbed their beach towels and sandcastle buckets and headed to Gulfport Beach to demonstrate; to demonstrate the interconnectedness of life in a universe created by a gracious God. They were saying by their actions, “This land doesn’t belong to you; it is the abundance of God that’s intended for all to share.”

Sure enough they were arrested, and the “Whites Only” beachfront neighborhood residents took their hateful complaints all the way to court…and they lost…and justice was done…and Christ was remembered.

I’d love to end this sermon on a high note, but I can’t; because here’s what happened later: Joe UCC who demonstrated that day at the beach worked at the local fishery. And when Joe when to work that next week, his boss said, “Don’t you go to that church that organized the demonstration?” And Joe said, “Yep.” And the boss said, “Well, you keep going there and you’re fired.”

And, slowly, this new injustice spread to other local business where other demonstrators and UCC congregants worked. People had to feed their families. What could they do? Pretty soon that UCC church in Gulfport had to close its doors, and to date there is only one UCC church in the entire state of Mississippi (It’s an ONA church outside of Jackson was founded in the 1800’s).

So this takes us back to where we started last week: The UCC’s Statement of Faith says, in part, that “God calls us into the church to accept the cost and joy of discipleship, to be servants in the service of the whole human family, to proclaim the gospel to all the world and resist the powers of evil, to share in Christ’s baptism and eat at his table, to join him in his passion and victory.”

As we gather at this table to share this morning, as we respond to God’s loving invitation, let us be united by a common question: “What are we, this community of faith, doing as a corporate body to accept the cost and joy of discipleship? How are our actions saying, ‘God, we love you back’?”

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“I love You Back, Part 1: Baptism”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Luke 7:36-50

Last summer I attended General Synod, the national meeting of the United Church of Christ in Grand Rapids. Our church’s Moderator, Ruth Schemmer, was there, too, as a delegate. Every night and every morning during General Synod, we all met in a large room of a convention center to worship. Thousands of us from UCC churches across the nation gathered twice a day to worship God in this place that looked nothing like church, but that at times felt more like church than in our sanctuaries.

The theme for Synod was “Immerse Yourself,” so there was a lot of imagery dealing with water, and a lot of references to baptism. At the front of the room there was a big, ankle-deep wading pool about three times the size of our altar here. And at one of the worship services, they had thirty-or-so lay volunteers divvied up into pairs. Each pair had one person holding a bucket and the other person holding a large palm branch. And, one-by-one, the bucket people would go to the pool, fill their buckets and start walking into the congregation with their palm branch partner. Then, the palm branch partner would dip their palm branch into the bucket, pull it back out, and sprinkle the congregation with this water.

I was sitting toward the back, so it was fun to watch this unfold and to see the different reactions people had to the water droplets. Some people received the water with a serious reverence; their eyes closed as the water touched their faces. Some people were really excited about it; smiling with their hands open, acting like children seeing rain for the first time. And some people were obviously annoyed or they just didn’t know what to make of it: “Harrumph! What’s the meaning of this water hitting me in the face? This is so unorthodox! We don’t ever do this in my church. How am I going to get this water stain out of my pressed oxford?”

But just so you know, this water-sprinkling wasn’t some whacky thing that only happens when the national UCC gets together. Sprinkling the congregation with water is a practice that has been taking place in the Christian church for centuries. It’s an act that calls us to remember our baptism.

So, for me, that means I’m supposed to remember that fateful Sunday morning in the merry, merry month of May when I was fourteen years old, and my brother, Ben, and I were getting ready to be baptized. I’m supposed to remember putting on a white robe and walking over to the baptismal pool. And I’m supposed to remember thinking when I put my foot in that water, “This might be pretty cold,” and then getting about waste-deep and thinking, “Yeah, yeah, this is really cold!” I’m supposed to remember my pastor standing in the water next to me wearing a white robe instead of a suit for a change, and him asking me ‘yes-or-no’ questions, the details of which I cannot recall. And I’m supposed to remember that moment when I was immersed in the water, and how I heard the dense sound of silence, and how I exhaled to try to keep water from going into my nose. And I’m supposed to remember standing up again, water dripping from my hair, and the robe suddenly feeling as heavy as those lead aprons they make you wear at the dentist office when they take pictures of your teeth, and how the congregation and the pastor were smiling at me as I traipsed back to the changing room to get back into my street clothes.

Doesn’t seem like that profound of a memory. But I would also be called to remember how anxious I was to get my dry clothes on and return to the balcony where the friends from my youth group were sitting. And I’d be called to remember brushing my wet hair before leaving the changing room, and then feeling that cool sensation on my scalp as I walked through the church. And in that moment, that walk from the changing room to the sanctuary, I felt something that I still can’t describe even years later.

There’s a song by Kyle Matthews that helps me describe it, though. Some of the lyrics go like this:

I’ve been through the water and I’ve come out clean

And I’ve got new clothes to cover me

And you don’t wear your old clothes on your brand new feet

When you’ve been through the water

The act of remembering our baptism isn’t so much about remembering the details of what happened that day as it is about remembering the implications of baptism and just what baptism means, what it calls us to be and to do. I doubt that little Ethan Jones is going to be able to remember the details of this day if and when water sprinkles his face in a worship service, but this church family hopes and prays that he might remember what his baptism implies.

During the confirmation process, our young people learned that our denomination, the United Church of Christ, is founded on a statement and not on a creed. A creed is final, whereas a statement leaves itself open to future additions and changes by the people of God who continue to seek God’s guidance and vision in all things. This is where we get the mantra in the UCC, “Never place a period where God has placed a comma.”

I want to share one section of the UCC’s Statement of Faith with us this morning. It reads: “God calls us into the Church to accept the cost and joy of discipleship, to be servants in the service of the whole human family, to proclaim the Gospel to all the world, and resist the powers of evil, to share in Christ’s baptism and eat at his table, to join him in his passion and victory.”

Now, let’s do something before we go any further this morning (and this might be harder for some of us to do than others, because we all have our traditions): Set aside the belief that baptism is required for us to make it into heaven. Set aside the belief that baptism is required if we are going to be legitimate members of a church. Not all of us have been baptized, after all, and when we share a message that is based on our cooperative hearing of the Living Word of God that is still speaking, we must be intentionally inclusive. And baptized or un-baptized, we testify that we are all one in Christ; and that in that unity there is no male or female, slave or free, Jew or Greek, black or white, old or young, gay or straight, citizen or immigrant…we are all one.

When we turn to this story from the Gospel of Luke this morning, we find Jesus, yet again, scolding the Pharisee. Simon the Pharisee is a man who is morally upright and who knows and practices Jewish law to the letter, and it’s on that law that he bases his beliefs. But Jesus, who is known as a rabbi and a master of that same law in his own rite, teaches us in today’s story that love presupposes belief, love comes before belief.

The story from Luke this morning suggests that we must love Christ more than we believe in Christ. It is more profoundly important to love Christ than to believe in him. This isn’t to say that our beliefs don’t matter. Beliefs are important, but love leads to belief, not the other way around. Loving Christ molds our lives in such a way that beliefs can then be formed.

And this is what baptism implies. God reaches out to each and every one of us through the love of Jesus Christ. And baptism is that leap of faith when we say, “Jesus, I don’t know what to think. And a lot of times I really don’t know what to believe, but I love you back.”

How are we supposed to love Jesus back?

The woman in this morning’s story, she has no practical business intruding into Simon’s home. She has no business sitting at the feet of Simon’s guest. That flies in the face of etiquette, of mores, of social beliefs.

But one thing is certain: she loves Jesus. And out of that love, she does the only thing she has left to do: she cries. Her tears fall all over Jesus’ feet, and then, maybe out of gentleness, maybe out of shame, she wipes the tears away with her own hair. Then she kisses Jesus’ feet. And if that wasn’t enough, she takes a prized possession, her bottle of perfume, and pours it over Jesus’ feet. It sounds weird. It might look strange, but she loved Jesus. What else could she do?

Simon the Pharisee witnesses this and thinks to himself, “Wow, that’s absurd. What a spectacle. What a joke.” And Jesus says, “Simon, I know what you’re thinking. You think you’re doing the right thing here. You think you’re being a good host. That’s what you believe. But I came into your house and you didn’t give me any water for my feet. She wet my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You did not greet me with a kiss, and from the time I entered your home, she has not stopped kissing my feet. You have not anointed my head with oil, but she has poured perfume on my feet.”

When our religious beliefs get in the way of the love of God, that’s when we miss the mark. The Greek word for ‘sin’ is ‘hamartia,’ and hamartia literally means, “to miss the mark.” This is what we must keep in mind when it comes to the sacrament of baptism. As it says in the United Church of Christ’s Statement of Faith, “We are called into God’s church to share in Christ’s baptism,” not to draw boundary lines because of it.

A man stands restlessly in the NICU of a hospital. His wife has just given birth to their daughter, and the man is now standing over this baby watching over her with helpless eyes. The doctors have informed the couple that the child does not have long to live. She was born with a condition from which she will die in a matter of hours. Somehow, in the midst of their shock and grief, the couple decides that it is important to them for their child to be baptized.

The chaplain on hand is an un-ordained Catholic lay person. He approaches the man standing next to his baby girl. The man gives his request to the chaplain: “Her mother and I want her to be baptized before she dies.” But the chaplain hesitates.

He is not ordained, so he feels unworthy of this important task, or maybe he would be breaking the rules. He explains his hesitation to the man. And suddenly the mighty father, towering over his infant daughter’s tiny bed, gives up. He can’t do it anymore. He stops being the strong protector whose supposed job it is to see to it that no harm ever comes to those he loves. His lip quivers, his posture bends, and he begins to cry.

And in that moment, all the chaplain sees is love; pure, exposed, radical, abundant love. So, the chaplain reaches his hand out to the man. He touches the man’s cheek and catches a tear on his finger, and then he reaches over to the little girl, touches her head, and, with her father’s tears, he makes the sign of the cross and baptizes her.

What is the perfect baptism? Maybe the answer to demonstrate that we are ready to be baptized is “I don’t know.”

We respond to the love of God in Christ Jesus out of our imperfect self, and it is that imperfect self that God has always loved and that God will never cease to love. It’s that imperfect self that Jesus is drawn to when he defends the woman in Simon’s home, and it is Simon’s insistence on perfection that keeps him from understanding the love of God that Jesus offers. To put it simply, we do not become worthy of the love of God when we reach perfection. God doesn’t start loving us the moment that we are perfect. If that were the case, God would never love us.

Baptism is one way that we can embrace our beautiful imperfections and say to our loving God, “I love you back.” And it is never too late and it is never too unorthodox to come to the waters of baptism.

Now, those of you who know that I come from a Baptist background might think that I’m speaking from that background when I say that it’s never too late to be baptized. But this is not a revival, and there will be no exhaustive altar call when the service concludes. And on a side note, that is not the Baptist tradition that I came from. But even if it were, it would not be that tradition that I speak out of when I say, “It’s never too late to be baptized.” I speak from the truth that is in the love of God offered in Christ Jesus, from which nothing can separate us…, not even death.

Because when we baptize our children, we are in effect saying, “God, we know that as parents, godparents and guardians, even our best efforts to raise this child will fall short at times. And we know you love this child as much as you ever loved us, and we pledge that we will love this child with all that we have and all that we are, but we release our imperfect control to your perfect love, and we bring our child into this family of faith and into the holy waters of baptism as our way of saying, ‘We love you back.’”

And when we decide to be baptized in our adult years or our adolescent years, we are in effect recognizing our limits, our finitude and our imperfections. We are striving toward wisdom, and we are saying with all of our being in the sacrament of Baptism, “God, I have tried to find love in many things. I’ve tried to find love in the approval of my family. I’ve tried to find love in the acceptance of my peers. I’ve tried to find love in the abyss of addiction, in the egotism of impressing my co-workers, even in the euphoria of flooding my brain with knowledge and experience, like the Prodigal Son in Jesus’ timeless tale before me. But despite all that, I’m lost sometimes; and something tells me, something in my heart tells me, that you have always loved me and that you will never stop loving me despite my limits and my accomplishments, despite my finitude and my accolades, despite my imperfections and my greatest achievements. So, I come to the water to give my limits and finitude and imperfections and my false sense of control to you. I come to the water to say, ‘God, I love you back.’”

But, sisters and brothers, if baptism is only a part of the journey and but one way to say to the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, “I love you back,” how else are we living that out? In what ways are our lives saying on a daily basis, “Jesus, I love you back?”

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Dead Is Dead”
Delivered by Rev. Tamara Franks
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Psalm 30:1-5; 1 Kings 17:17-24; and Luke 7:11-17

What follows are my notes, thoughts and questions from which I let the spirit move as I offered words without a manuscript.  May you hear God’s message for you as you “listen” to the words.

Focus Statement: Life comes from death when we are compassionate, find ourselves empty and open to God’s nourishment, and engage those in need.

Life comes out of compassion for another – especially the strangers among us—

Camps are gearing up for the summer – low paying, in the heat with a multitude of interesting children of all shapes, sizes, like/dislikes, beliefs, etc. – Why do folks engage in these programs? the food normally is “camp food” with bug juice for the daily beverage – the sweetest, syrupy thing I have had in a while – miserable . . . but at that camp they are in tune with safety – the staff must sign in/out everyday stating that they have followed every foreseeable precaution . . .because as their sign in the staff parking area speaks – Safety is no accident!  Life is no accident. It is the lived out, sought after life of steadfast love for our neighbor, known or stranger, and our enemies, righteousness that becomes wisdom as last week’s sermon by Dan tells us.

Life comes out of hope despite death, despite desolation, despite the worst of suppositions—–

Why did the woman obey and cook for Elijah? Hope – a glimpse or glimmer of hope??

Why did the woman not put Jesus away from her dead son and the solemn funeral procession?  hope? or was there too much despair to even fathom what he was doing?

We have choices – do we only see the despair, the loss, the relationship that is no more, the hurt, the grief, are we consumed with the sheer weight of loosing something so precious to us that we can’t even see the life that is present in the very death of the situation.

Bogged down by the despair, we miss the chance for newness that death can bring.  Bogged down by our own full plate that looks much too large to reach out and help another – we miss the life that comes when we spend only 45 minutes driving a van from this church to the Family Promise day shelter – a van that might have an exhuberant 4 year old that wants to tell you about the joy of his day

Elijah – man of God – helped/fed by birds of the air and a very poor widow – not by the powerful Ahab

Are we the ones called to offer resources needed to live?

Life comes when faith may or may not be displayed. In the first story with Elijah, both the widow and Elijah cursed God essentially  . . . asking, why have you done this?  The lady has only displayed compassion through generosity and her hospitality – why? In the story of Jesus – for once, he was not sought out – instead, he had compassion for the widow whose only son was now dead –

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Taking a Step Toward Wisdom”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15; and Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

A couple of years ago, on a bland evening at the end of a difficult week where the multifaceted nature of pastoral ministry was getting to me, Stacy and I were talking.  And I said with playful innocence, “What if I joined a rock band or something, or if I sold all my old comic books on eBay and made a bunch of money.  Then I could read whatever I wanted to read, watch whatever shows I wanted to watch, do whatever I wanted to do week in and week out.  What’s to stop me from doing that?”  And Stacy said without flinching, “You wouldn’t be happy.”

She’s a wise woman.  But the happiness she was talking about wasn’t some feeble human emotion.  There are brief moments of happiness, like:

1.      meeting our friends after work for a drink

2.      taking our dog to the park

3.      completing a crossword puzzle successfully

4.      going on a good vacation

5.      being found by a long-lost friend on Facebook

6.      going to a killer party

7.      watching the series finale of our favorite TV show

8.      our favorite menu item coming back to our favorite restaurant

But just as surely and as quickly as the sun goes down every night, those moments of happiness fade.  And no matter how successfully we might be able to manipulate those moments, to string those moments together in a succession of euphoria, they will never make us truly happy.

That’s what Stacy was getting at when she said, “You wouldn’t be happy.”  The happiness she was talking about had more to do with fulfillment than those sandbag moments of happiness we throw on the dam that holds back the raging waters of real life.  And to put it in church speak for us this morning, that happiness that Stacy was talking about was something called righteousness.

Righteousness is volunteer workers scrubbing oil off a heron found helpless on the Gulf coast.  Righteousness is a tutor helping a student at no cost, her payment being the possibility that this child might be the first in his family to make it through high school.  Righteousness is looking out for people, praying for those who are hurting, offering kindness and generosity to what our antagonistic culture would label a fault.  It’s basically loving others and serving your neighbor; or, as Jesus might say, it’s doing God’s will and not our own.

Robert William Dale preaches these words: “To count it all joy when suffering comes upon us, and suffering that tests our faith, how is this possible?  It is only possible when we come to think of righteousness as being infinitely more precious than comfort, happiness, or peace; when we come to see that the great thing for us in this life is not to enjoy ease and prosperity, to get rich, to rise in the world, but to become better people.  And for this,” Dale says, “we require wisdom.”

Wisdom was a great word in the Jewish world, especially during the centuries right before Christ.  (The Hebrew word for wisdom is ‘hokmah.’)  Today we hear about wisdom from the Book of Proverbs.  Proverbs, alongside two other Old Testament Books of Ecclesiastes and Job, comes from a distinct class of Jewish literature called Wisdom Literature.  This Wisdom Literature was the result of certain wise people in that ancient time who took for granted the main points of Israel’s creed.  They focused instead on human character.  They sought to analyze conduct and to establish morality based on the principles common to humanity at large; Golden Rule kind of stuff, treat one another as you desire to be treated kind of stuff, justice and peace kind of stuff; real meaning of life kind of stuff.  These wise people were the Humanists of Israel, and the practical aim of their teaching related to conduct and education.  Stir up this kettle and the wisdom that is ladled out is a true understanding of human life.  As Paul Tillich says, “Wisdom is insight into the meaning of one’s life, into its conflicts and dangers, into its creative and destructive powers, and into the ground out of which it comes and to which it must return.”

We tend to think of wisdom in terms of old age, because over time we accumulate knowledge.  The assumption is that the more we know the wiser we are.  But we are living in an age of relentless information.  We can click a mouse and discover how many species in the world are presently considered endangered?  1,556.  We can touch a screen and find out how many casualties have been suffered by the military coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last eight years and six months of war in those areas.  6,506.  And we can turn on our TVs and a talking head can tell us how many gallons of oil are gushing into the Gulf each day.  Approximately 210,000 gallons each day.  That’s a lot of information and it sure can give us a lot of knowledge, but does it give us wisdom?  And is that kind of wisdom going to encourage us to live lives of righteousness?

Perhaps in this present time of relentless information when we can’t take our eyes off the computer or the TV or the Blackberry or the iPhone, the Scripture that we hear from Proverbs is that much more appropriate.  Woman Wisdom is crying out to the crowds swarming in and out of the gate of the city, and they aren’t paying any attention to her.  The image of Woman Wisdom on the cover of our bulletin this morning is composed of some of the simplest, most beautiful elements of God’s creation, but do we stop to notice those beautiful simplicities often enough?

I was at a wedding reception for two dear friends of mine last month, and there was great food and wonderful company, and my little brother Mikey’s honky tonk band was playing right on the edge of this scenic view of South Austin; but all along this sidewalk that stretched around the house were people sitting in chairs, holding their iPhones and Blackberries, with a soft blue glow covering their faces.

I love how Eugene Peterson’s version of the text shows Woman Wisdom shouting to the point of annoyance.  In The Message, the Scripture reads: Right in the city square where the traffic is thickest, she shouts, “You—I’m talking to all of you, everyone out here on the streets!
Listen, you idiots—learn good sense!  You blockheads—shape up!  Don’t miss a word of this—I’m telling you how to live well, I’m telling you how to live at your best.”  How to live our lives at our best…how to be better people…how to live righteously.

You might say that wisdom is the art of Christian conduct, and that conduct results in righteous living.  So we would do well to heed the call of Wisdom and be drawn that much closer to God’s will and way.

Spending all our time stringing together moments that we perceive to be happiness in an effort to fend off the inevitable fact that life is tough; it seals our ears off from the cry of wisdom.  And when our efforts fail to achieve unending happiness on our terms, then how easily we fall to destructive human behaviors and disorders and diseases and addictions.

And spending all our time gathering knowledge that we perceive to be wisdom; it shuts out opportunities for insight into the meaning of our lives.  And when those efforts fail to help us understand why bad things happen to good people and why good things happen to bad people, deep questions that are at the heart of the human condition, then how easily we fall to the destructive human tendencies of jealousy and violence and betrayal and apathy and indifference.

But when we encounter the mystery of life, we have reached the source of wisdom.  And that encounter is a journey that starts with the simple, decisive step of accepting our limits.  Deciding to accept that we are finite, and that our efforts to reach unlimited power and knowledge are finite; it’s a step toward wisdom, and we have to choose it.

I wish I could be two places at once this morning.  If I could, the other place I would be is sitting in a pew at the First Baptist Church of Austin where my brother, Ben, who is a fourth generation member of that church and a deacon there, is giving his testimony from the pulpit.  Ben’s my brother who a lot of you know for receiving the Big Brother of the Year award and getting to go to Washington with his little brother, Anthony, to meet the president and the First Lady.  He has quite a testimony to share, but it goes back much farther than a trip to the Whitehouse.

Ben was the starting nose guard on the high school football team that won state in 1996.  He played alongside a quarterback by the name of Drew Brees.  Ben graduated at the top of his class, went to “the other university” over in Austin where he graduated with honors, and he graduated from UT Law School with honors.  After law school, Ben got married, got a job in a good law firm, and then his wife, Shannon, shared the joyful news with Ben that she was pregnant.

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?  Ben would tell you otherwise.

I had a precious moment with Ben yesterday.  You might call it a holy moment.  Folks familiar with Journey speak would call it a “closest-to-Christ” moment.  We were sitting on my parents’ front porch in the late morning, and Ben told me a little of what he would be sharing the next day in his testimony.

You see, my brother, Ben, is an alcoholic, and on August 4^th he will have been sober for three years.  I have often looked at the way Ben lives many aspects of his life as being righteous; not self-righteous…righteous.  And crafting this sermon on the topic of wisdom helped me see his struggle with alcoholism in that light.

Yesterday I asked him, “Why did you stop drinking?  What made you choose to stop?”  He said, “Well, the obvious reasons were that if I didn’t stop drinking I’m confident that I would’ve lost my marriage and I probably would’ve lost my job practicing law.  But in hindsight, I recognize how I used to feel, how I used to look at myself, and, consequently, how I used to look at the world.

“I always focused on what I did wrong, and not what I did right.  No matter how good our football team, I focused on the mistakes I made in every game.  If I made a 98 on a test, I beat myself up for that ‘A’ being two points shy of 100.  No matter what I did, nothing made me feel happy.  I was never comfortable in my own skin, and drinking became my way of coping with that.”

My brother’s a driven guy and he’s also very gifted, but he’s also human; and when he recognized the destructive effects of his alcoholism, he got sober and got involved in Alcoholics Anonymous.  And that’s where he learned the crux of the testimony that he’s sharing today.  Ben turned his life over to God.  He stopped living for himself and started living for the Giver of Life.  And the next thing you know, Ben was going down personal and vocational paths of serving others instead of trying to make his own life perfect.  And it all started when he quit being foolish enough to think that he was all-powerful.  It all started when he quit rebelling against his finitude.  It started when he acknowledged limits.

I would say that every day that Ben walks down this path is a step toward wisdom.  And recognizing our limits is a step that each of us can take today and tomorrow and every day that follows; because here’s news: We weren’t born to make our lives perfect and our purpose in life isn’t to save the world, but the selfless love of God has given each and every one of us the gift of Christ Jesus, who came and lived and died and rose again that we might have life and have it to the fullest.

Ben is now a proud father of two beautiful girls, the second of whom was born a couple of months ago.  He’s doing good work in the practice of law.  He was recently named one of Austin’s up-and-comers by the Austin American Statesmen, and he’s about to finish a year of service on the Austin Planning Commission.  And next month his little brother, Anthony, and he will return to Washington where they will get to stand in the Oval Office and visit with a man who everyone would do well to continue praying for so that he might receive abundant wisdom upon wisdom.

Ben says those accolades are nice, but that they pale in comparison to the fact that he is now comfortable in his own skin.  That comfort, that happiness, that fulfillment is righteousness that flows from a life whose direction is steered toward wisdom.

Sisters and brothers, experience is not wisdom.  Age is not wisdom.  Intellect and knowledge are not wisdom.  But turning our troubles and brokenness and fear over to God who loves us without ceasing and beyond condition, no matter who we are or where we’ve been or what we’ve done or haven’t done…that’s a step in the right direction.  May it be so.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“From Individualism to Community: A Brief History of Confirmation on the Day of Pentecost”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, May 23, 2010
John 14:8-17; Genesis 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-21

Transcript coming soon…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“From the Human Drama to the Great Drama”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Psalm 97:15; John 17:20-26; Acts 16:16-34

That was a lot of drama!  We’ve got enough drama in our lives already, don’t we?  The last thing we need is to get up early on a Sunday morning, come to church, and be subjected to more of it.  But that’s what the Word of God brings us today from the book of Acts: drama.

In fact, when I was talking with Chris Hoffman this week about how the choir could help us illustrate this Scripture, I said, “Yeah, it’s the story about Paul and Silas going to jail because they heal a soothsaying slave girl, and when her owners find out that she’s been, quote, healed from her fortune-telling abilities, they drag those guys to a kangaroo court where their found guilty of, basically, being outsiders.  So, they’re stripped and beaten and taken to jail, and then an earthquake opens the prison door and the jailer freaks out and tries to kill himself; but then Paul and Silas tell them it’s okay, and he gets baptized and everything’s great.  End scene.”  And Chris goes, “Wow!  That sounds dramatic.”

So, what do we do with this drama that we find here in the church setting on a Sunday morning?  Well, the same thing we do with drama out there!  Let’s obsess about it!  We spend hours each week obsessing about what Tiger Woods is going to do next; about what Olberman said about what Rush said about what Holder said about what the latest alleged terrorist said; about whose fault it is that there’s an oil slick in the Gulf 2,000 square miles wide; about Kurt’s fabulous solo on Glee (It was fabulous!); and, of course, we obsess about the ever-unfolding drama of Facebook.  That’s a lot of what Facebook is: A bulletin board for the human drama.

We spend so much time getting caught up in that drama.  Why don’t we spend a few moments getting caught up in this drama?

You have Paul and Silas, you have a fortune-telling slave girl, you have the owners of the slave girl, you have an angry court, and you have a jailer.  The climax of the story happens when Paul and Silas get thrown in jail.  But in the midst of all of this drama, who is in prison?  Who is not free?

You could argue that the slave girl isn’t free by nature of her tragically being a slave.  But then we find her outraged owners dragging Paul and Silas to court, and for what reason?  Do they want to be compensated for their loss because their slave can no longer predict the future?  No.  They want these two outsiders, these two Jewish men, to be punished and done away with based on the fact that they are Jewish men who are not from around their parts.

Their judgment, the accusatory men, and their cheap interpretation of justice come from their own imprisonment.  They are imprisoned by racism, territorialism and violence.  And you can say the same for that angry mob of a court that sentences Paul and Silas to being stripped, flogged and thrown in jail.

At this point in the drama, you could argue that Paul and Silas are not free, because they are, literally, in prison.  But in that prison they sing hymns to God!  They’ve been stripped of their dignity.  They’ve been physically abused.  And now their singing?  How can they be singing when they’re not free?

A friend of mine, Reverend Kyle Childress, is the pastor of Austin Heights Baptist Church in Nacogdoches.  He and I and a few members of both of our churches stood together outside the prison walls in Huntsville last year when we protested the 200^th execution to occur on our present governor’s watch.  Kyle shared a testimony to a room full of teenagers in June of 2005 about how he had marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Civil Rights Movement.  He was a very young man at the time; a young white Baptist kid marching alongside his Black sisters and brothers when the hoses came on and the dogs were let loose.  Kyle was arrested and sent to jail, thrown in a cell with the other protest marchers.  And when the prison door slammed shut and the chaos quieted down, someone started singing…and then somebody else sang with them, and then someone else jumped in, and someone else, and someone else.  Pretty soon Kyle and the whole cell were singing hymns together, singing songs of freedom and praise to God.  It was dramatic.  It was a moment of grace.  And it was a cell full of souls obsessing about the unending drama of our still-speaking God.

In this dramatic storyline, who is not free?  Who is really in prison: the protest marchers behind bars, or the antagonists that put them there?  I believe that Kyle and the marchers were just as free as Paul and Silas.  Paul and Silas are free and their jailer is not.  When an earthquake throws the prison doors open, the jailer is so overcome with fear that he takes out a sword with the intention of ending it all.

It’s nice to not be confined to a cell, but if our spiritual self is in prison, the next thing we know, we’re reaching for a sword.  As Walker Cronkite once said, “There is no such thing as a little freedom.  Either you are all free, or you are not free.”

A few weeks ago, Stacy bought a new jar to hold our cooking utensils; it sits on the counter next to the stove.  We’d had the old one for years.  It was a glass jar that was always too small to hold all our kitchen gadgets.  So, when I noticed the new jar, my first question to Stacy was, “What did you do with the old jar?”  And she said, “It’s right over there.  I’m going to put it in the church garage sale.”  So, I went over to the old glass jar and I picked it up, held it for awhile, got sentimental and said, “Really?  We’ve had it for so long.”  And she gave me a look I love so much that’s equal parts comfort and give-me-a-break, and she said, “Babe, it’s just a jar.  Let it go.”

It’s a simple example, but do you ever feel like your stuff owns you; like you’re imprisoned by your stuff?  Sometimes we get so obsessed with drama, the human drama, that we can’t get enough stuff.  And it’s not just material things.  It’s everything…and it’s never enough.

If I make enough money, I’ll be secure.

If I get the right job, I’ll be worthy.

If I find a romantic partner, I’ll be complete.

If I wear particular clothes, drive a particular car, and live in a particular neighborhood, I’ll be happy.

If I show my academic intellect by always pointing out other people’s ignorance, I’ll be important.

If I flaunt my patriotism, I’ll be heralded.

If I endure the abuse of certain family members or people I feel are more relevant than me, I’ll be loved.

And if I do all these things and never look back, I’ll be saved.

Wow.  That sounds dramatic.  And that kind of drama is never going to satisfy us.  It’s never going to fulfill us.  It’s always going to keep us in prison.  And when we breathe our last, we can’t take any of that stuff with us.

But Jesus came to give us abundant life.  John 10:10: “I came that they may have life, and have it to the full.”  And when the jailer asks Paul and Silas, “What must I do to be saved?” they tell him that he need only believe in this Lord Jesus Christ.

I could offer an entire sermon series on what it means for us to believe in Jesus.  But let me offer this thought from Cole Turner.  He says: “Believing in Jesus means becoming decisively aware that our small lives are swept up into a great drama, God’s story line.”

Ah.  So to believe means that we have to switch allegiances.  We have to remove ourselves from the human drama so that we can be swept up into the great drama.  That’s how we break out of prison.  That’s how we become truly free, all free.  And it’s only when we seek this freedom that our will shifts from pursuing emptiness and instead becomes conformed to the will of God—the will of God that offers us abundance in the Lord Jesus Christ.

I have a friend who is incarcerated right now.  We keep up with each other through correspondence.  I want to share something from one of his letters I received just a couple of weeks ago.  (And please excuse the gender-specific language.  I’m just reading the letter as it’s written.)  From prison, my friend scribbles on notebook paper: “Faith is simple, but it is not easy.  Most of my behavior on the ‘outside’ would surely not indicate that.  I believed in a loving God and that I was trying to follow His will and not my will.  If the preponderance of my behavior was any indication, the only thing I do have faith in is my own will.”

And he goes on to quote James P. Gills in his book The Unseen Essentials: “Have you ever agreed with God?  Or are you still at odds with Him?  That’s kind of like being on the opposing team.  You may have been trying to come to [God] on your terms instead of His.  In the Old Testament, Amos 3:3 says it better than I can.  It goes like this in the King James Version: ‘Can two walk together, except they be agreed?  Think about that while.”

Are we in agreement or are we in conflict?  Are we free or are we in prison?  Are we swept up in the great drama or are we obsessed with the human drama?

Human drama, our drama, keeps us from really believing in Jesus, really giving our will over to God, because our drama is a prison.  Turn on the radio and listen to the personalities froth at the mouth.  Look at the theatrical headlines moving across the screen on any 24-hour cable news channel.  Look at the outrage unfolding in our local paper’s letters to the editor and the shame of our public discourse.  And then look at how this drama keeps us so filled with fear that we hate our neighbor—we don’t love them.  We strike the cheek of our neighbors in Iraq and Afghanistan before they have stricken ours—forget turning the other cheek.  We justify racism by saying that aliens are threats to our national security, and that aliens are coming to take our jobs and livelihoods—forget inviting in the stranger and providing justice for the alien.

This is the self-imposed imprisonment of our human drama, and we NEED, O Holy God, we need to be set free.

The human drama spins a storyline of envy and competition, glamour and greed, hierarchy and status, locale and materialism, self-indignation and self-preservation.  And this morning there are certainly pieces of each and every one of our lives that are shackled to it.

But we hope and we pray to be set free from that prison cell little by little.  That’s what a faith journey is all about.  And along the way there are moments of grace when we—who love each other as Christ loves us—we say something simple to help ease open the prison door; something like, “It’s just a jar.  Let it go.”

So, whatever is keeping you in prison, whatever is keeping you from being all free—addiction, self-doubt, fundamentalism, homophobia, insecurity, worry, resentment, grudges—let it go and give it to God.  Swing wide the prison door and let it go, because it’s difficult for our God of justice, mercy and love to work in and through us when we are in prison.

Sisters and brothers, players in our shared human drama, fear not, only believe, and the peace of God that transcends all human understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Back to Essentials”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, May 9, 2010
John 14:25-27, Revelation 21:10, 22, 22:1-5, Acts 16:9-15

In a book called Landscapes of the Sacred, Belden Lane writes, “Who we are is inseparably a part of where we are.” This quote was brought to light for me just yesterday morning on the All-Church Retreat at Slumber Falls. But I have to go back for a moment…

A couple of years ago when our son, Mac, was only three, he was having fun on the playground when he spotted an asp. An asp is one of those thick, fuzzy caterpillars that sting. Mac was overtaken with curiosity, so he picked up the crawly creature and the asp stung his pudgy little hand. He cried and cried. And the wound from that sting didn’t physically go away from his hand for weeks; left a purplish mark there for the longest time. Later, I thought, “If I could get my hands on that little thing that hurt my boy!”

Yesterday morning, Stacy and Ruthie were already up and about, and Mac and I were getting ready for breakfast. That’s when Mac noticed a thick, fuzzy caterpillar making its way across the floor. His mind immediately went to that sting from two years ago, and he got my attention quickly: “Daddy, look at that on the floor!” And as soon as I saw that fuzzy caterpillar, I remembered the time when Mac was stung.

But something about being in that cabin nestled in the woods with the cool morning air whispering us awake caused me to pause. And for a precarious, precious, pregnant moment, Mac and I stared at the creature crawling across our floor.

I pulled a piece of construction paper out of Mac’s bag, and he said, “Are you going to swat it, Daddy? Are you going to kill it?” And I said, “No, I’m just going to pick it up, like this…” And I scooped up the caterpillar, walked a few yards out of our cabin and put him back on the ground.

Who we are is inseparably a part of where we are. Our surroundings have a pretty strong say in how we will behave, how we will speak, how we choose, and how we will view one another; consequently, how we will treat one another.

Talk around the water cooler is heating up these days about Immigration Reform, and our Theology on Tap discussion group chose to delve into that topic this past Tuesday night. Great discussion. I think we’ve got it all figured out now. And speaking of environments, we should all be so blessed to have places of diversity where we can share our mixed opinions and even our mixed fears without being shut down or shut out. I’m so grateful for our Theology on Tappers.

We, of course, talked about the recent legislation out of Arizona that legalizes racial profiling. And, as a group, we wondered why such an extreme measure? And why in that particular neck of the woods?

In light of this, one of us offered an example. He and his partner would often have brunch most Saturdays at a Mexican Food Restaurant here in College Station. And if they were to look around the room any given Saturday morning, the mix of Anglos to Latinos was good. It was a healthy blend of people.

I love a good breakfast. Breakfast, for a majority of people, is comfort food; so when we go out for breakfast we want to eat in a comfortable place, a safe, healthy place that resonates with the familiar.

Well, our Theology on Tapper went on to share how his partner is familiar with at least a section of Arizona. Apparently, in that part of Arizona, most Mexican Food Restaurants located in predominantly Anglo neighborhoods will not even open for breakfast. They just can’t get any business; reason being that Anglos are simply uncomfortable having breakfast in that environment. That mix, that blend, is not where they want to be when they’re enjoying their comfort food.

Who we are is inseparably a part of where we are, and if where we are is not open to the abundance and diversity of God’s creation, then chances are we won’t be open to that abundance and diversity either…at least that’s the thinking.

But on the surface that sounds accusatory, doesn’t it? It sounds like perhaps our surroundings here are better, and therefore, we’re better! But as Martin Luther King, Jr. says, “A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” And here is where we are…

We are in an environment wired together by emails, instant messages, texts, tweets, and Facebok. Our public discourse and how we relate to one another is informed by the relentless 24-hour news cycle of cable news, where the information is secondary to the spin. Our bumper stickers let other drivers know what they can’t talk to us about, and they draw lines in the sand as to who we can and cannot associate with. This is where we are.

Who we are is inseparably a part of where we are. And it seems like we’re in the middle of nowhere. We’re lost. And here’s one more thought from Belden Lane’s book. He writes, “Without a sense of place there is no centering of the human spirit.”

Anne, Maggie and Matt were reading from the Book of Revelation earlier. They were talking about a place where it is always light, and where a river, bright as crystal, flows, and there are fruit trees on either side of it, and the leaves of those trees serve to heal the nations. Can you picture a place like that? We need to be in a place like that.

But here’s the hang-up. Revelation 21:27 says, “But nothing unclean shall enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood.” In other words, no sinners. *snap* Well, we all sin. But the Lamb of God, Jesus the Christ, suffered and died so that the sins of the world, yours and mine, would be redeemed. So, what is that verse talking about: “anyone who practices abomination or falsehood”?

We all sin, and we all want to do good and be good. But when we make evil our good, when we make it our norm, then we are blinded by the very things we think are good. When we make evil our good, we are lost. It’s not about counting up sins; it’s about taking a good look at where we are, and consequently who we are.

Making evil our good means our instincts become: “See that creepy, crawly thing? Kill it! See that brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking guy in the dirty jeans and the tee shirt from Good Will? He’s got to be an alien, so don’t give him the time of day! Shut him out! Shut him down!”

Well, on this Mother’s Day, here’s another quote to help us get out of that place. Meryl Streep says, “Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.” Thanks, moms.

Getting back to essentials puts us in a better place. Getting back to essentials makes our good truly good. And that Bible verse we heard last week in the Mission Moment for the Back Bay Mission hygiene kits gives us the essentials. Micah 6:8: “God has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

The good essentials: justice, mercy and humbleness.

That’s what Lydia is focused on when the Jewish Rabbi, Paul, wanders into Philippi trying to make his way. Lydia is a Gentile woman who has made a good living for herself as an entrepreneur. And she’s become quite the community leader, gathering people on the banks of the river to pray. By her custom, by her culture, by her career, by her gender, Lydia should have nothing but disdain for the likes of Paul, the wayward apostle from Lord-only-knows where. For the sake of the common good, Lydia should avoid Paul.

But when Lydia hears Paul talking with the other women on the bank of that river, she pauses. And in that precarious, precious, pregnant moment, God opens her heart and she receives the blessing of what this wayward messenger has to offer: the Good News of God in Christ, forgiveness of sins, reconciliation for our life’s brokenness, redemption of our very being, and new life that lives like the leaves of those fruit trees, striving always for the healing of the nations.

Right there on that river, Lydia breaks down societal barriers and instead focuses on the essentials. She forgets the common good and embraces justice, mercy and humbleness. She’s baptized, her entire household along with her, and then she looks the Jewish Rabbi in the eye, she looks into the face of the wayward alien, and she insists, “If you have judged me to be faithful to God, then, please, come and stay at my home.” And just like that, the whole environment changes.

After breakfast yesterday morning, the adults met outside on the open air basketball court. We sat in a circle and the cool wind blew through our hair. The tops of the trees were a sea of green dancing like the ebb and flow of the ocean waters. In that stillness we could hear the cardinals and woodpeckers calling back and forth, adding to the symphony of creation coming to life all around us. We were there for a workshop on something called Lectio Divina, which means ‘divine reading.’ You should get some of our campers to share what they learned with you.

In the middle of our speaker’s presentation, one of us said, “Margie, you’ve got one of those big, fuzzy caterpillars on your foot.” And she looked down and said, “Oh, thanks.” She quickly but gently took off her sandal, set it on the ground next to her, and the caterpillar crawled off.

Later in the workshop, I looked down and noticed that the caterpillar had crept its way over to my feet. If I hadn’t been paying attention, if I hadn’t noticed him crawling around down there, I might have crushed him. Now I was mindful that he was there, so I kept one eye on him until he crawled away.

And then, as our workshop was wrapping up, Justin Dudo, sitting to the right of our speaker, noticed the caterpillar had crawled up onto his shoe. That caterpillar had crawled all the way around the circle. And as soon as Justin notices it, half the group turns their heads to look at what’s going to happen next. Justin took a piece of paper, invited the caterpillar to crawl up onto it, and then he set the paper on the ground until the caterpillar crawled away.

What was once a tiny symbol of angst for me became a blessing. Something I had looked upon with uneasiness and even disdain had become a source of hope and new life for me. It’s a good thing I noticed that tiny blessing before I might have killed it. Often times that’s how God speaks to us: through simple blessings that are a beautiful part of creation, simple blessings that are just trying to make their way in the world.

Who we are is inseparably a part of where we are. We can’t always go to places like Slumber Falls, but we do have each other. We do have the beloved community of the church. And it’s in places like this that God seeks to open our hearts to the abundant blessings of God’s love, like Lydia’s heart was opened on the bank of that river. And the more open our hearts become, the more we change the environment—our society, our culture, our public discourse—like Lydia did, getting back to essentials and making our good truly good. Imagine if we were to view things like Immigration Reform in that kind of environment.

Sisters and brothers, each of us is a blessing, and each of us is just trying to make our way in the world. Just trying to make our way. That’s all Moses was trying to do when he stumbled on a burning bush that told him to deliver God’s people from the bondage of slavery. That’s all Joseph and Mary were trying to do when they went to town for the census and knocked on an innkeeper’s door on a cold night. That’s all our Latino brothers and sisters are trying to do when they set out from home and end up wandering in the Arizona desert with no food, no water, no help. And that’s all we’re trying to do when we come to church seeking the living God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This journey we share is simple. God is the journey and God is the journey’s end. We would do well to simplify things, then, and get back to the essentials of justice, mercy and humbleness so that no creature, no child of God, in all of creation would ever be lost. Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Taco Soup and Other Miracles”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, May 2, 2010
John 13:34-35; Revelation 21:1-6; Acts 11:1-18

Taco soup is a wonderful thing. But I want to tell you this morning that the taco soup I enjoyed yesterday afternoon was nothing shy of miraculous…

I don’t think you heard me. Sisters and brothers, I said the taco soup I had yesterday was a miracle. Now, do you want me to tell you about it? Do you want me to tell you about it? Now God’s people are listening.

Our intergenerational group of 14 headed out to Camp Kappe in Plantersville, Texas yesterday morning to experience the global village. And after a morning of hiking and exploring in the tall woods of Camp Kappe, and learning about food distribution in this global village that we call planet earth, we were getting hungry (This was about 11:30). Lunch itself would prove to be a learning experience.

We separated into about four different groups and were given instructions on how to prepare lunch. A few people were assigned to Guatemala, a few to Thailand, a few to Appalachia, a few to Africa; my group was assigned to the barrio. Barrio, translated from Spanish, means ‘neighborhood,’ but the term barrio refers to areas all over our world, and even areas in our own community of Bryan-College Station, where individuals and families live in, essentially, squalor: homes with only three walls held together with cardboard and cinder block patchwork, a leaky roof, and a stove made of basically some coals literally on the ground and covered with the rusty surface of a grill. That grill was the best commodity we had in our barrio, because one by one, the groups began gravitating toward our community with their lunch materials saying, “Can we cook here at your place?”

So, all of a sudden, our makeshift global village was sharing our beans and corn and water and rice and meat in a big stockpot to make taco soup (It was about 11:50 when this all came together).

Then it was time to start a fire. We began with small pieces of wood being stacked for kindling, doused in lighter fluid and lit with the strike of a match. The only coals we could find looked older than dirt, but we put them on the fire anyway, and then the fire went out. So, here we were on all fours, our faces mere inches away from the embers, blowing on the wood and coals until we got lightheaded. One of us has gathered an armload of twigs from the woods and she’s trying to light it with a match that the wind blows out every time she strikes it. Daniel, Katelyn, and Alex start fanning this thing with all their might hoping for a spark to catch. Mac, my son, by far the youngest one there, has his sweaty little body heaped in my arms like a sack of potatoes, and he’s whispering in my ear, “Daddy, I’m hungry. I want to go home.” Some of us are sitting on logs a few yards away in a symbolic gesture of defeat. And at this point, Spencer Williamson, broom in hand, says, “Well, I’m going back to my village over there in Guatemala. Holler at me when lunch is ready.” (It’s now about 12:45)

Suddenly, the constant fanning and kindling pay off. The fire catches and stays lit. And then we put this stockpot of ingredients on the fire and wait for it to cook. And around 1:15 everyone in our global village enjoyed delicious taco soup in abundance. It truly was a miracle.

I share this story of the taco soup with you this morning in appreciation of miracles in general. We really don’t appreciate miracles much these days. Miracles don’t do a lot for us. They don’t feed us in mind, body and spirit, like taco soup feeds our bellies. Given that our world is overflowing with abundant miracles, like simple taco soup on a makeshift flame, the fact that we don’t appreciate miracles is very telling. It reveals a lot about us.

Two quick stories that a lot of us have heard in the somewhat recent past: A US Airways plane is malfunctioning. One of the pilots, Chesley B. Sullenberger, “Sully,” manages to land the plane in the Hudson River. The Wall Street Journal says, “For the first time in 50 years of commercial jet flight, the pilots of US Airways Flight 1549 successfully executed one of the most technically challenging maneuvers, landing a jetliner on water without fatalities.”

Another story from May of 2008: There’s an earthquake in China and a student named Li Ke is trapped under the debris of his school in Wudu. His family finds him within hours after the tremor, but all they have to get to him is their bare hands. Nearly 24 hours later, doctors are able to attach a drip to Li’s arm. And another 24 hours later he is pulled from the rubble, unconscious, bruised and scraped, but alive and eventually well. The entire community is overjoyed.

Let’s say that these two stories are miracles. What do they do for us? Do they feed us, and how do they feed us? Do they change us in any way? Do they affect our beliefs, change our outlook, spur us to response? Miracles are supposed to do that, aren’t they?

Captain Sully landing the plane in the Hudson River is quite a feat. It is proof of grace under pressure, teamwork and great skill. But what else does that story really do for us?

The student being pulled from the rubble is amazing. It’s proof of a community’s tenacity in the face of the unthinkable, and perhaps even proof of one student’s strength under devastating odds. But does that story do anything to change us?

I want to suggest to us that if stories like these make us think, “Wow,” and then a week later, “Meh,” then maybe the problem isn’t that these stories lack the miraculous. The problem might be that we are incapable of appreciating them that way. The problem isn’t the stories, the problem is us.

God is still speaking, but are we listening?

I was in my kitchen a few weeks back pacing around, praying and pondering, reflecting on a few days of chaos in my life, and I got so frustrated that I yelled out loud with my arms up and hands open, “God, are you talking to me?”

And after a few minutes of silence, I shook my head, picked up my iPod, and put it on shuffle, and it randomly pulled up a sermon from a few years ago, and the title scrolled across the screen, “Are you listening?”

The German theologian and longtime rector of the University of Hamburg, Helmut Thielicke, preached a sermon on the miracle of the Easter resurrection. He said, “The disciples could never have believed that the dead Jesus had risen from the dead if they had not believed His Word.” He goes on, “The empty tomb did not bring the disciples to faith. Something very different happened. In the Easter light of the third day they suddenly saw that all the words and acts of Jesus pointed to the fact that death could not hold him. It was of these words and acts that they had now to think.”

We are in the season of Eastertide. It’s the time when we in the Christian Church celebrate the Easter story. And in this season, we recall that the story of the resurrection, the miracle of the resurrection, was revealed to women and men who followed Jesus before the Easter story took place—women and men who had faith in the words and acts of Jesus before his crucifixion, death and resurrection. To them was revealed a miracle; and because of that miracle, they continued to follow Christ, continued thinking about his words and acts, and that led to the Christianity that we believe and that we practice.

So, now we’re the disciples. We’re the followers of Jesus. How often and how reflectively do we think about the words and acts of Jesus? Our ability to experience the miracles of God hinges on that question.

This story out of Acts is about a miracle: It’s the miracle of God breaking down barriers that human beings cannot fathom being brought down. In fact the Eugene Peterson title for this chapter in Acts is called “God Breaks Through.” The Gentiles had oppressed the Jews for years, considered them outsiders, and because of that God had declared them to have no part in God’s story throughout the Old Testament. But now this vision from heaven that Peter experiences has God saying, in effect, “It’s okay now, Peter. My salvation is for all, and that includes the Gentiles.” It’s a miracle.

But before this miracle can take shape, Peter has to get his peers in the church to buy into it and make it happen. That’s where things get tricky. When he comes to them with this miracle, they don’t appreciate it. They call him to the carpet on it: “Why have you been out there associating with the Gentiles? Why have you been sharing God’s goodness with ‘those people’?”

Peter testifies to God’s vision of including all people in the church’s life of justice, mercy and love. And his testimony is met with skepticism and even antagonism. It’s interesting to note that the skepticism and antagonism that Peter endures here is the same stuff that Jesus endures twice in the New Testament: Luke 15:2 and Luke 19:7 when they say, “Jesus eats and hangs out with sinners. How dare he?”

We hear this story this morning and we say, “Aw, come on, people! Listen to Peter! Give him a break! He’s just talking about the same stuff we witness in the words and acts of Jesus.” But, church family, this story is for us. This story is imploring us to not give into the temptation of forgetfulness. Because when we forget the words and acts of Jesus, then our hearts, souls and minds become incapable of experiencing any kind of miracle. When we forget the words and acts of Jesus, we cannot see God’s miracles all around us. And miracles are the spiritual sustenance that keeps us going.

Think about it this way: God presents Peter with a heavenly vision about including all people, and this vision is a miracle. We have a vision at Friends Church: to offer God’s extravagant welcome to all. When was the last time that we paused to really think about the miracle of that vision?

Look around! People from all walks of life who reside in this area of Bryan-College Station and our surrounding communities, a highly conservative area of Texas, where like is expected to stick with like; here we are worshipping together in a simple sanctuary with windows open to the challenges, blessings, joys and possibilities of God’s will; young, old, male, female, couples, singles, families of all kinds, different races and classes, all sorts of denominational backgrounds, here singing and praying and worshipping and sharing the words and acts of Jesus through the experience of God’s Word: That’s a miracle!

This place, this hour, is a miracle. And each of us here who make this church what it is are miracles. So, if we come to church and from time to time go, “Wow, and then Monday morning go, “Meh,” then maybe we have grown forgetful. Maybe we need to think more intentionally on the words and acts of Jesus: Jesus who washes his disciples’ feet and then looks them in the eye, each of them, these men from all walks of life, and says, “Love one another as I have loved you. If you love one another, then the world will know that you are my disciples.” If we love one another, 21st century disciples of Jesus, then the world might witness a miracle that it so desperately needs. We can’t afford to take that for granted.

So, may God bless us with souls that hunger and thirst for righteousness and minds that think day and night about the words and acts of Jesus. May God bless us with the miracles of abundance and diversity, covenant and community, friendship and fellowship. And may God continue to open the eyes of our hearts so that we might see a miracle in something as simple as taco soup. Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“I See You”
Delivered by Rev. Tamara Franks
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Genesis 1:11-12, 22-25; Song of Songs 1:16-17; Genesis 2:4b-8; Song of Songs 2:14, 5:6, 2:15; Jeremiah 12:10-11; Isaiah 3:14

I see you

I see you

I see you

If any of you have seen the movie Avatar, you will hear this simple sentence not as a fact or in a peek-a-boo type of way but as a greeting of intimacy.

I truly see you. I know you. I feel you. Just by being in your presence and acknowledging you, I connect with you deeply. We are one even though there are two entities. WE are both parts of one great whole.

I see you.

The main reading for today comes from Song of Songs . . . a text in our canonized scripture, which for some dear souls is just over the top. It sensuous language and the images it portrays can be a little too intimate for some our brothers and sisters of the faith. They tend to stay away from it.

In joining it with both the creation narrative of Genesis and the prophetic calls of Jeremiah and Isaiah, we come to hear this text as a redefinition of our relationship to our planet. For many, we have named earth – Mother – the one that is the creative life force. The one who feeds us, clothes us and provides what we need.

Our liturgy today – though – names earth Gaia. Gaia – Greek word for Earth – the living cosmos that is our planet and all that dwells therein. In this context, Norman Habel[1] redefines our understanding of Earth – no longer mother – but instead – Earth says, “I want to be your partner, your beloved, not your mother.”

I don’t know about you, but I confess that I treat my beloved different than my mother.

In a true understanding of interconnectedness and understanding that the web of life if vast – too often I wonder if, like a spider web, a variety of things get moved to the outer rings of our web. The farther away from our center core these things move directly relates to the attention given by us.

I propose that we move our relationship with Gaia back into the center rings of our web where it once was many generations ago and still is in some cultures. Here’s why.

We say we are a Social Justice church. We pride ourselves on our stances toward issues of justice. We name ourselves this on our sign for all the folks moving past to see. We like the word justice around here.

Did you know that

• Approximately 100,000 synthetic chemicals are now on the market, with one thousand new chemicals added yearly. Although companies test the toxicity of their products individually, they do not exist alone in the environment. Compounds are altered in combination with others, but the effect of these combinations are not tested or studied.

In my younger years, I was in charge of cleaning the bathroom. I decided if ammonia smells this bad it must be a great cleaning agent. And, if I mix it with a little bleach, all the better.

If you know how dangerous chlorine gas is to humans (it was used as a chemical weapon during World War I and later by Nazi Germany in World War II), this will be very apparent. This entry will tell of a few reactions that can occur when bleach and ammonia are mixed in various proportions – the release of chlorine gas is just one of these.

• The World Health Organization reports that 3 million people now die each year from the effects of air pollution. This is three times the 1 million who die each year in automobile accidents.[2]

Air pollution is not just exhaust from our automobiles – but it is all sorts of gases and particles set loose into our air that we breathe from mowing everything that we can mow because we like the neatness of how it looks to all of the small engines that we use to blow, cut, pump, stir, you name because it is easier using this machine.

And then we wonder why we have an obesity problem.

And God saw that it was good.

Have you ever wondered what God really saw in the beginning of creation?

This past month I have been overjoyed by the abundance of wildflowers. From the fields of the bluest bluebonnets ever to the fields of red clover and now we are moving into Evening Primrose and the deep richness of Winecups. Without us doing one thing, theses flowers break through the soil, sprout their small green shoots up to get as close as they can to the gorgeous blue sky and take in all the air that they can muster and then respond in glorious color.

Only days into the splendor of a swath or red clover along the road, on a drive into town I realized that it had been mowed. The spring cleaning had begun, the unsightly chaos of these weeds had been organized into a smooth, green carpet that could hide no snake or other varmint.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said more than once, “Some are guilty, all are responsible.”

We name ourselves a church concerned with justice. The sticky-wicket here is the need for our voices and our hands and our feet to act.

I love coke – it’s the real thing. My own beloved has promised to give me her last coke in a bottle if the time ever necessitates. A cold coke in a bottle is for me an elixir of life.

But this soda, like all sodas that we consume, depletes the resources of our neighbor countries in ways unfathomable to me. India, which produces many of our Coke and Pesi products, is in dire water shortage that has been directly linked to producing our sodas.

And God saw that it was good.

In the wee hours of this morning as I attempted to find the voice for this sermon and to not let it be too long  — because you know we have a congregational meeting afterward – I listened to the amazing bird songs out my open windows. The chorus was a symphony of harmonies, staccato rhythms, and even humming.

Living in the East Texas Piney woods right now as the blue birds flit over the open, mowed areas, the brilliant red cardinals grace our backyard and the red-bellied woodpecker knock out their rhythms on the trees around our house, I know a connection to life that is unparalleled – Coke in a bottle doesn’t touch it.

What our creator God has created –  oceans, rushing rivers, gentle breezes, rich, dark soil, even fire, dry dust, and cactus – in  Genesis 2 we intended to be the caretakers of it. Stewards. Gardeners.

Not all of us likes to get dirty or sweaty. Some of us will keep specifically focused on the social aspect of justice and not the eco-justice aspect. Some of us are called to till the soil. Some of us are called to be the voice. All of us are responsible to pray and to remember our connections to what is a part of us – for from dust we have come and dust we will return.

If you are not yet one converted to eco-justice – I offer a question from Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas[3] – a recent convert to eco-justice  . . .

What needs to happen inside us in order for us to place care for the earth at the center of our moral and spiritual concern?

Can we decide to[4]

• recycle
• buy our food products in degradable paper containers instead of plastic
• repair and reuse instead of trashing and buying new
• patronize the used-goods market more than we buy new
• drink less soda
• walk or bike if the distance is less than 2 miles
• reduce the amount of chemicals we use
• carpool or combine driving errands
• share magazines or books with friends or a library
• use natural light and ventilation when possible
• learn about vegetation and wildlife in my area
• accept that we share our lands, neighborhoods, lawns with squirrels, deer, raccoons and other God-created critters
• encourage retailers to reduce/simplify packaging
• use less paper
• use only the water we need to wash, brush and rinse
• think about collecting rainwater
• think about gardening
• hear the birds sing
• see the wildflowers
• feel the earth as it sings and as it groans

John 3:16 begins with For God so loved the world – the world here may be more closely translated cosmos – or Gaia – the totality of the realm in which with live. And God has called us to be partners in loving this world as our partner or beloved.

And God saw that it was good.

And I believe that we have seen the goodness as well or we would not have entered into our own  . . .

Earth Stewardship Covenant

We, the members of Friends Congregational Church, understand that we are part of God’s Creation. As human beings, we see God’s charge of our dominion over the whole of Creation as a call to stewardship that is founded on nurture and care.  As people made in the image of our Creator, we affirm that we are God’s co-creators on this gift of the earth, and that we have a shared mission to respect and maintain the inherent value of the natural world.

We acknowledge the living interconnection of all creatures, and we believe that caring for our neighbors and caring for ourselves is to care for our environment.

We commit to raising awareness of our impacts on creatures, species, ecosystems, and, indeed, the earth itself. In the face of global challenges, we strive toward harmony and peace. In all of our decisions, large and small, we shall be mindful of God’s vast creation.

May it be so today, and the next and the next . . . for our beloved sees us and wants to be seen as well.

Amen.

[2] http://www.webofcreation.org/restore-the-earth-transforming-soceity/our-ecological-problems

[3] Cohen-Kiener, Andrea, Claiming Earth as Common Ground: The Ecological Crisis through the Lens of Faith, (Woodstock, VT: Skylight Paths Publishing, 2009), 132.

[4] Ibid., Taken from and expanded upon the list found in Appendix I, pp 146-149.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“The Discomfort of God’s Way”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Revelation 5:11-14, Acts 9:1-6, and John 21:1-19

According to 1 Maccabees 15:15, which is found in the Apocrypha, that part of the Catholic canon withheld from the Protestant canon of the Bible, the Romans had granted permission to the high priest to extradite to Jerusalem Jewish offenders of the law. This included those offenders who had fled to Damascus. That’s where Saul was headed.

But his task was more of a witch hunt than an act of dutiful citizenry. Saul wasn’t out to round up every offender of the law. Saul was out to get all the Christians, because in his estimation they were the worst kind of malefactor, and they had to be done away with by any means necessary.

And why did Saul and the opponents of Christianity want so loathsomely to see its demise? Why did Saul and people who shared his views froth at the mouth at the thought of a Christian genocide? They didn’t really. Christianity wasn’t what bothered them so much; it was the way of Christianity that got under their skin. The Way made people uncomfortable.

The heresy that the opponents of Christian people saw in the way of Christianity was that this Way was a matter of practice and not mere opinion. The Way of Christianity was about discourse and dialogue and action, not the usual enshrinement of words. It was about walking the walk, not just talking the talk.

Jesus, the rabbi from Galilee, preached and taught about the realm of God and how this realm did away with kings and wicked bureaucracy, and how this realm was founded on justice and righteousness so that every creature would receive equal and abundant provisions from God’s love, that love that is like no other. This Jesus, with all his rabble-rousing words, was crucified in public view and done away with, but the Way that followed Jesus, the Way committed to the direction of the resurrected Christ had the power to bring down empires and celebrate justice and reconcile the brokenness of a divided humanity.

Our Social Justice Sunday School class was out changing the sign this morning to read, “We are a social justice church.” There are some in our community—and I use ‘some’ generously—who will drive by that sign, notice the words, and froth at the mouth with the same antagonism that those early opponents of Christianity felt. Upon seeing the words ‘social justice’ on a church marquee, some will feel the same kind of steering-wheel-gripping frustration that I feel when I see bumper stickers that boast messages of ridicule and hatred toward the other, whoever the other may be.

My two-year-old daughter and I were stopped at a light behind a truck that had the “saw em’ off” depiction of the Longhorn with the horns detached and facing downward. Ruthie saw it and she said, “Uh oh, Daddy! What happened? It’s broken!” And I said, “That’s OK, baby girl. We’ll fix it.” (There’s nothing like dads making playful promises to their children that they can’t keep.)

I have a question for all of us, not just our Social Justice class. I want to ask us, “What are we doing in the way of social justice? What are we as a community of faith doing in the way of social justice?”

Many of you are aware of the story from a little over a week ago: A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church was torched on April 8th at about 11pm and burned to the ground. Servant-Savior is a “More Light” Presbyterian church, which is the Presbyterian version of being ONA: Open and Affirming. Servant-Savior is also a social justice-oriented church, carrying out such ministries as tending their own organic garden and donating the produce to a local food pantry.

Needless to say, we bear a lot in common with Servant-Savior. Our similarities seemed most prevalent to me in this quote from the news story about the church fire. A ten-year-old girl named Rosy Murphy, who was baptized at Servant-Savior said this: “Some churches say sit down and we’ll tell you a story, but in our church we say, ‘Do you have any questions? Would you like to learn about this?’”

Investigators have ruled that the fire was intentionally set. That church could have been burned down because it is a More Light church. It could have been burned down for being devoted to social justice ministries. For all we know that fire could very well have been set by an aloof individual out of their mind on narcotics. But the question for us is not about who did it and why. Our focus this morning and always when it comes to the Christian message is not blame or antagonism of any kind. Our focus is on reconciliation and healing.

In our Wednesday night worship service this week, we uplifted Servant-Savior in the message and our prayers, as well. Together we pondered whether their church appears ready to heal.

Is A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church ready to heal? It certainly appears so. They’re church members are quoted in the news coverage saying that God forgives the arsonist and they do, too. They say, “You can destroy our building, but you can’t destroy the way we feel.” Bold words. Inspiring words. But those words are given their strength by the Way. The way of their discipleship will determine how quickly they can heal, and all signs continue to show that they will heal quickly (praise God).

What I’m saying is this: Regardless of the reason why A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church was torched, their church is a More Light, social justice church. The extent to which they are now able and equipped to heal depends entirely on how much they have been devoted to acting out what it means to be a More Light, social justice church. In other words, all signs show that Servant-Savior has been walking the walk and not just talking the talk of their identity, so they will certainly heal quickly (praise God).

Evelyn Frost says it like this: “The temperature of the spiritual life of the church is the index of her power to heal.”

So, another more serious question for us this morning: “What if, like our sisters and brothers at Servant-Savior, we lost this place?” Given the leaks in our roof and the utility problems we have on occasion, I know there are some long-time members of this church who think a fire would be great on account of the insurance money we would receive. True. But joking aside, what if we lost this pulpit and the window benches that were recently refinished by one of our own church members? What if we lost these windows that give us a glimpse of the beauty of God’s creation? What if we lost our hymnals, each of them dedicated to the memory of someone we love? What if we lost the countless pictures and certificates and drawings and various pieces of memorabilia that chronicle our church’s life and all who have been a part of it over the years? How ready might we be to heal?

We look to the unfortunate loss of the congregation of Servant-Savior and we are compelled to respond with hope however we can. But before we can offer such a response to them or anyone who is suffering, we would do well to check the temperature of our own spiritual life.

Are we red-hot with vitality or are we ice-cold with indifference? How can we know? How can we check the temperature of our spiritual life? Well, Friends Congregational Church has a lot of words: We’ve got a Covenant, a Statement of Purpose, a Vision Statement, a Mission Statement, an ONA Statement, and Earth Stewardship Covenant, mottos and mantras, like ‘seeking God, sharing journeys, serving others,’ and, ‘grow deep, love wide.’ So, how are we acting those words out? What are we doing in the way of those statements and covenants and mottos and mantras?

Jesus asked Peter once, “Do you love me?”

“Of course I do, Lord.”

Jesus asked Peter again, “Do you love me?”

“Lord, you know I do.”

Jesus asked Peter a third time, “Do you love me?”

And at this point Peter is getting uncomfortable. The Scripture says that he’s even hurt.

“Yes, Lord, I love you.”

It’s one thing to profess a belief in Christ; it’s another thing entirely to live in the Way of Christ. Believing in what Jesus taught so much that we are compelled to do those things…it sounds bold, it sounds inspiring; but the reality is that it can make us uncomfortable. The United Church of Christ’s Statement of Faith, established in 1959, says in part, “God, you call us into your church to accept the joy and the cost of discipleship.” The joy and the cost is the consequence of following Jesus. It’s the discomfort of discipleship; the discomfort of a life devoted to the Way.

A couple of folks I’m glad to call my friends were talking with me recently about how they love coming to this church because they don’t leave worship feeling guilty. Many of us have had our share of guilt when it comes to our past experiences of church. Our life-giving, abundantly-loving God certainly does not want for any of us to be saddled with guilt. But from time to time, God needs for us to be blessed with discomfort.

The great Catholic writer, Flannery O’Connor, professed her fondness of living in New York and how she really enjoyed going to Mass at the Church of the Ascension on West 107th Street. She writes about this in a book called The Life You Save May Be Your Own. Appropriate title given her experience.

O’Connor would have to take subways and buses to get to the church, weaving in and out of strangers all along the way. But her surroundings at Church of the Ascension weren’t much different: people at the church didn’t know her and she didn’t know them. She wrote about that experience at Mass with imperfect candor: “Although you see several people you wish you didn’t know, [getting there] you see thousands you’re glad you don’t know.”

This church stuff, this following Jesus stuff can make us uncomfortable sometimes. It can make us do things we might not want to do, go to places we don’t want to go, or even be in community with people with whom we might not otherwise associate. But like our sister, Flannery O’Connor, over time it builds us up and gives us joy that we would otherwise not have, joy that no one can ever take away from us, joy through which we can do all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things.

So, if we cannot embrace the joy as well as the cost of discipleship, if we are unwilling to accept discomfort, then we have no business putting a message on our sign that causes others to be uncomfortable. And besides, if you really want to irritate people who have a hang-up with terms like Open & Affirming or social justice, don’t just wear the t-shirt, don’t just put the bumper sticker on your car, live it. Let your life speak it. Such is the joy and the cost of Christianity. Remember that after Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved him, Jesus said, “OK, then follow me.”

So, I leave you with this charge from my childhood pastor: May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, superficial relationships, so that you will live deep within your heart. May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from panic, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you will reach out your hand to comfort them and change their pain into joy. And may God bless you with the foolishness to think that you can make a difference in the world, so that you will do things which others tell you cannot be done.

This is the way and the truth and the life. Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Follow Me Exactly!”
Delivered by Student Lay Minister Ana Deter
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Psalm 118:14-16, 25-29; Acts 5:27-32; and John 20:19-31

It was a great day – just last Sunday – a great day and if you were here, at one of our services, or if you were worshipping someplace else, you know that it was a filled with “alleluias” and hope and celebration. There is something about Easter Sunday that just embraces life, brings us together with family and friends.

Ok, I will have to admit that it’s also all about chocolate, bluebonnets, and the smell of the spring air. I remember one Easter Sunday when I lived in Corpus Christi, Texas. I loved the sun, smelling the gulf breeze, and feeling the ocean mist on my face. Easter was the time of year which marked the beginning of summer and the smell of sun tan lotion.
On this particular Easter, we all went out to the beach. Some of the guys brought a boat and was going to take it out for the first time that season. I remember it was an incredible day to be out on the waves. For those of us that went out on the boat, we weren’t out there but 10 minutes and we ran the boat into a sandbar.
This was not a good thing! The more we revved up the engine, the deeper the boat dug into the sandbar. So, we got out of the boat, had to physically eye-ball the engine to actually believe that this was happening. Realizing this situation was a little out of our expertise, we started pushing the boat … where I do not know, but it just seemed like the right thing to do.
A few minutes went by and we heard a small trolling engine, and sure enough it was coming in our direction! As it got closer, this older gray-haired gentleman was just a waving and as he pulled alongside us asked “are ya stuck?” We looked at each other with a where’s your sign kinda look… The old man just gazed up at us with a smile and said, “I can get you out of here, but you have to follow me exactly”.
Ok… OK… how hard can that be right? He maneuvered out in front of us and began to head out slowly. Finally, we were out enough to drop the engine, and began to follow him. So … you know that got old very quick and as we looked beyond him it looked clear, so we passed the old man and just waved. We weren’t even 5 feet away and we hit another sandbar. We could hear the putter of the trolling boat and a small voice rising from the side of the boat …. “Girls, what part of follow me exactly did you not understand? I said to follow me exactly! Where I go you go”
Once again the trolling boat pulled up in front, and we followed him EXACTLY until he waved us on.
I share this story with you this morning because you know the disciples on more than one occasion heard Jesus say to them — what part of follow me exactly do you not understand? Needless to say, the faith of the disciples was tested on the days to follow the resurrection of Jesus. As a matter of fact, as our scripture describes today, the disciples were found hiding in Jerusalem, behind locked doors trying somehow to make sense of this whole situation.
Jesus, their teacher, the one they had followed for so many months, the one who led them, motivated them, gave them purpose, was gone. Not only was Jesus gone, but even they deserted him in his hour of need. And now, if things couldn’t be any worse than they already are — there was word that Jesus was alive; a resurrection, if you will, a miracle, but to the disciples huddled in confusion, the resurrection was meaningless and certainly didn’t become personal till Jesus appeared to them. I am thinking for a moment, the disciples thought Jesus was angry with them for abandoning him. Again, those words rang out, “what part of follow me exactly do you not understand?
But that’s not what happened. The first words Jesus said to them was “Peace be with you.” He knew the shame in their hearts. He knew they were battling with what their next decision would be and how powerless they were in moving forward without Him. In the midst of their fear and confusion, He stood before them and not only forgave them but breathed his own life-force into them. He gave them the power of the Holy Spirit, and tells them to go be peace and forgiveness and love for all the world.
The days to follow changed everything and challenged everything they thought they believed. As a matter of fact, we read in today’s gospel, the disciple Thomas, who had to see before he could believe!
So where was Thomas anyway that first Easter evening? We all know the story, when the other ten disciples told him that Jesus was alive after his crucifixion, Thomas refused to believe it. He separated himself from the others and demanded to see Jesus for himself. In short, Thomas is describes as a dull, doubting follower of Christ. The moral of the story is clear — Don’t be like Thomas! Believe! Don’t doubt!
Doubting Thomas has a certain appeal to all of us because Thomas is honest and we admire that trait in people. Thomas did not believe just to believe. He wasn’t the kind of person who blindly accepted the faith without question. He was not the type of guy who would follow exactly unless he knew where he was going!
This wasn’t the first time Thomas questioned Jesus. When Jesus was teaching about going to prepare a place for them, a heavenly mansion, it was Thomas who did not understand what Jesus was saying so he asked questions. None of the other disciples raised their hands…you know the feeling, you want to raise your hand but you don’t want to appear clueless.
We are a lot like Thomas. Even in this incredible Eastertide celebration, we, too, have doubts and questions. Believing by faith is what we would hope would happen, but struggling to believe is a perfectly normal human phenomenon, and may even end up strengthening our faith in the long run, because by wrestling with our belief in good faith, we are forced to develop a deeper relationship with God through prayer.
Thomas symbolizes more than just plain doubt. Thomas symbolizes the deep human need for rational and empirical validation of our beliefs. The fact is, if we took the place of the disciples, we would likely betray Jesus as Peter did, and doubt as Thomas did, and it seems as if the Scriptures often go out of their way to remind us how human the disciples were.
God created us to ask questions, to inquire, to think, to sort out, and during our lifetime we will have many questions for God, Jesus, the Bible, the Christian faith. We have big questions such as to the validity of other world religions. Is the Bible, without a reasonable doubt, the truth?
People often ask me why I am studying to become a licensed lay minister. It’s a question I sometimes ask myself. Perhaps I thought that if I knew God better, if I understood the mysteries of the bible, I wouldn’t have doubts and questions … that I would believe beyond a doubt! Doubts and uncertainty frighten us. That’s why we reject Thomas — he dares to bring doubt into our lives of faith.
Now, don’t confuse doubt with unbelief. There is a theologian named Henry Drummond who makes a distinction between a doubter and an unbeliever. He states that a doubter is a person who searches for God and struggles to live the godly life; this person is on a journey, a quest, a search to find God and the love of God. However, an unbeliever simply struggles with life itself. An unbeliever is not searching for God or the god question or the love of God but for situations in life which will bring happiness. A doubter is a person who has a thousand questions for God; questions about life, love, God’s existence, purpose, the divinity of Christ and many other questions. Not the unbeliever. An unbeliever isn’t asking questions about God. The unbeliever is apathetic to God and the God question doesn’t really come up in their lives. So there is an enormous difference between an honest and questioning doubter and a secularized unbeliever who does not struggle with the God question and the divine dimensions of life.

When we gather together to worship every Sunday, we are at many different stages of our Christian journey. But, we are all on a journey. We are like the disciples, on a journey to discover the living Christ. Like the women who came to the tomb, we only see that the stone is rolled away. Some of us are like John, we believe, but we don’t understand – we just can’t wrap our minds around the big picture, and some of us have been in the room and Jesus has appeared to us, we have seen him and rejoiced.
To some extent, we have to give Thomas credit. He managed to keep a measure of faith even in the midst of his doubts. Better yet, he remained with the disciples. His doubts had not driven him away from the community and community had not driven him away because of his doubts.
My brothers and sisters, this is where we belong – in our church communities, with our doubts, so that we can learn together how to keep faith in our doubts. So where are you in your faith this second Sunday after Easter? I wish that I could say to you that I am absolutely 100% certain of all this – but I’m not! But I have chosen to believe anyway without absolute clarity.
John Kavanaugh was a missionary that went to work for three months at “the House of the Dying” in Calcutta, India. The first morning there, he met Mother Teresa. She asked him, “And what can I do for you?” Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him. “What do you want me to pray for?” she asked. He voiced a request that had long burdened him – a request that had motivated his journey to India. He said, “Pray that I have clarity.” To that simple but sincere request, Mother Teresa said firmly, “No, I will not do that.” When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.”
When Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have the clarity he longed for, she laughed, and then she said. “I have never had clarity, what I have always had is trust.”

This sounds to me like keeping faith in our doubts. In closing, do you remember what Jesus said to Thomas? “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Sometimes the demand to see is not doubt…sometimes to follow exactly is to have trust in our faith.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Heroes On the Way to God’s Shalom”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010
1 Corinthians 15:19-26, Isaiah 65:17-25, John 20:1-8

Happy Easter! And what exactly are we celebrating? Certainly we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But the resurrection is not an ending. Resurrection points to something; resurrection leads us somewhere: the fulfillment of God’s shalom.

Shalom is a Hebrew word that means completeness, welfare and peace.

And Judy read about God’s shalom from the book of Isaiah a few minutes ago. Isaiah 65 tells us that shalom is:

New heavens and a new earth
Cancellation of debt
Non-stop rejoicing
God-intended wholeness
The culmination of God’s eternal purpose
Universal salvation
World peace

Wow! Did you know that was what you were celebrating this morning? This is huge! We shouldn’t let today’s opportunity to slip through our fingers. Let’s milk this Easter Sunday for all it’s worth and cry out, “Alleluia!” We have been made to appear before the Lord without blemish. Cry out, “Alleluia!” Death has no more sting than a mosquito, and the grave has no more victory than the whimper of fear in the kingdom halls of God’s love. Cry out, “Alleluia!”

That’s what we celebrate today…but what about tomorrow?

Tomorrow we will wake up once again to news about violence, hatred and war. Tomorrow we will rub our eyes and see images of hunger, malnutrition and rampant poverty. Tomorrow we will open our ears to rants about political corruption and the oppressive powers that be. Tomorrow we will wake up to the world as we knew it before we darkened the door of our churches on Easter Sunday, a world that looks very little like God’s shalom.

I think that’s why Easter is so attractive. It’s not just that the news out there is bad, it’s that it’s so relentless (and as a side, this pastor feels that cable news is the downfall of civilization, but that’s another sermon entirely). We are so accustomed to chaos and scarcity and intolerance and competition and violence that we not only have no room for the good news of shalom, we flat-out don’t understand it. Our human psyche can’t fathom God’s shalom. We don’t get it anymore. We just can’t.

So, when it comes to Easter, we’re not so much celebrating a victory as we are making an exception to the rule for an hour or so. Easter is a kind of “timeout.” For a few brief moments of trumpet blast and hand bell rings and choir voices all covered in white and sprinkled with lilies, we can celebrate the Easter cries of ‘alleluia.’ Tomorrow’s going to have to fend for itself I guess. Tomorrow it’s game on!

This past week I talked with a few pastor friends of mine. Pastors love to check in with each other during Holy Week every year. We ask each other what the other person is doing in his or her church. And we sound genuinely curious, but it’s really just a subtle means of one-upping each other. Call it pastoral gloating: a brief departure from the whole “first will be last and last will be first thing,” all in good fun.

So, I’m talking with a Baptist pastor, and I ask, “So, what is your church doing for Holy Week?” And he says, “We’re just doing a service for Maundy Thursday and an Easter service. How about you guys?” And I said, “Well, we’re doing a Tuesday night Theology on Tap discussion of the crucifixion, a Maundy Thursday Seder Meal, a Good Friday Cantata, a Holy Saturday Taize Vigil and two Easter services. What!”

But then I backed up and asked, “No Good Friday service?” And my friend said, “Nah. The Baptists in my church are afraid of Good Friday. They worry that if we go to the tomb that Jesus will never make it out of there, and that would certainly ruin Easter.” (And for some reason at that moment of listening to my friend talk, I pictured Winnie the Pooh stuck in the whole in Rabbit’s house, and a line of Baptists holding his hands trying to pull him out of there in time for Easter morning. Maybe when my children get a little older my mind will stop going to places like that.)

And then my friend took a more serious tone. He said, “The truth is that we build tombs as rigid and as strong as we can to keep Jesus locked up, to make sure he can’t get out of there with all of his radical truth-telling and liberating and justice. That’s the irony of being too afraid to even go to the tomb in the first place.”

My buddy’s right. We build tombs to keep Jesus restrained, manageable, vulnerable; tombs layered with bricks of intolerance and hatred, racism and classism, misogyny and homophobia, held together with the toxic mortar of our human apathy and indifference and fear. Indeed, these tombs are built into the powerful institutional life of our culture that we live in every day.

I had the privilege to attend a portion of a conference this past week at A&M: the It’s Time conference. It marked the 25th anniversary of the court ruling that A&M had to recognize GSS (Gay Student Services) as an organization of the university.

One of the keynote speakers was a man named Chuck Middleton. He’s the first openly gay male president of a university in the country: Roosevelt University. He shared with us how he had climbed the ladder of distinguished offices in the academy, served on boards of regents, and about how all the while he was in the closet, hiding his orientation and identity.

But Middleton also talked about the gay and lesbian students he witnessed, and he said those students had a pesky habit of getting voted into the highest levels of student government. And then Middleton noticed that those same young people would not hesitate to bring their partners to student government events and parties. He said, “Those students were my heroes.”

I wonder: If it weren’t for those young heroes offering Chuck Middleton a lead to follow, or if he hadn’t been looking to them for leadership in the first place, would he be the first openly gay male president of a university in this country? Or would he be absent from the lineup of conference speakers we heard this past week, still closeted in the shadows of the institutional tomb?

Chuck Middleton chose to follow the lead of students he calls heroes. And now one might say that Middleton is a hero himself for not accepting false, unjust limits as to who he is allowed to be when placed under the limelight of University President. I would certainly argue that. Now, are those students and Chuck Middleton exceptions to the rule? Are they living, breathing examples of crafty timeouts from the tomb’s status quo? Or are they more than inspirational flashes in the pan?

We all have different understandings of hell. We might think of hell as a destination for the damned or a situation in which we find ourselves in our every day life. But whether we understand hell literally or metaphorically, most all of us have heard the accusatory phrase: “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” If that’s true, then perhaps the road to heaven is paved with heroism. (The road to heaven is paved with heroism: It’s the progressive Christian answer to the fire and brimstone sermon.)

For all Christians, heroism is discipleship. Heroism is discipleship because it requires that we follow Jesus all the way to the tomb, and then we follow Jesus out of the tomb and into the world, the world dense with injustice to which we have become far too well-adjusted, so well-adjusted that the Good News of resurrection just doesn’t make sense. We need a transformation.

The acclaimed Hebrew Bible scholar and author, Walter Brueggemann, writes, “That Jesus is risen is not a statement about heaven, but about the transformation of earth.” The transformation of our world requires heroism. And for us it requires discipleship; following the resurrected Christ every day; Easter every day, until we reach the fulfillment of God’s shalom: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

It comes down to this: When we hear the words of the prophet Isaiah about how God hopes for the world to return to its original integrity, providing for all of God’s creatures abundantly and equally, as God originally created it and pronounced it “good,” do we take those words seriously or not? Do we take the prophetic vision of God’s shalom seriously or do we sell shalom short?

The Christian relief worker in Haiti drives through earthquake-rattled devastation and unloads truckload after truckload of food to wailing masses of men, women and children because he is committed to a world in which “no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,” as it says in Isaiah 65.

The Christian activist devoted to immigration reform witnesses children of illegal immigrants born in America being deported after they graduate high school, and she writes letters to her representatives, and organizes her community in support of these young people and their families, because she is committed to a world in which “they will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune.”

The Christian missionary, utilizing funds generated by such offerings as the UCC’s One Great Hour of Sharing, travels to Uganda and digs wells for villages to have access to clean drinking water because he is committed to a world in which “never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days.”

Discipleship means that we don’t settle. We raise the bar a little bit each day, we raise our human expectations a little bit each day until we believe in the world that God created and called good, until we can see the path of resurrection, until God’s shalom makes sense to us again as God intended for it to at the beginning of all things.

Jesus instructs us to be like little children if we’re ever going to be able to raise the bar of our human psyche. Children get it. Listen to one of these random letters written to God by school children:

“Dear God, maybe Cain and Abel wouldn’t kill so much if they had their own rooms. It works with my brother. –Larry”

And one of this church’s former members who now lives in Laurence, Kansas wrote on her facebook page about her daughter, who was baptized here only a couple of years ago, “Keira tells us at bedtime tonight with a serious face, ‘Instead of a bike for my birthday, I want a train that brings me food!’” Why not? Shoot for the stars, girl!

But even children have their limitations. Here’s one more letter to God from another child:

“Dear God, I bet it’s very hard for you to love all of everybody in the whole world. There are only four people in my family and I can never do it. –Nan”

It is hard to love everybody, isn’t it? Especially when the world can be so cruel sometimes. But we remembered the words of Jesus during Holy Week, the words he shared with his friends only moments before he would be taken away: “A new command I give you, that you love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this the world will know that you are my disciples.”

When we disregard this new command that the resurrected Christ gave us, then we sell Shalom short. And grand days like this Easter that we celebrate become exceptions to the rule; timeouts from the norm rather than emphatic cries of alleluia victories and empowerment to continue this resurrection journey of discipleship. If we really want to celebrate the resurrection, then we will strive together toward God’s shalom tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day. We get to observe Easter only once a year, but we’re called to live Easter every day.

I’ll leave you with this memory that I have of discipleship. It’s a simple memory that I had never really shared with anyone, so now I offer it to you. About ten years ago I was a youth minister, and I was making a hospital visit to someone in our congregation who was in very poor health. And I wasn’t very excited about it. It wasn’t because I didn’t like hospitals or something like that. It was because I felt under-qualified. My area was teenagers, not hospital visits to the ill. How was I supposed to give this person I was visiting any kind of believable blessing, something to offer them hope.

So, I kind of moped into the lobby area of the hospital and started looking around. I didn’t know where I was going. There was an African American woman standing behind the information desk. I walked up to her to find out where the patient was that I was visiting, but I procrastinated with a pleasantry. I said, “Good morning. How are you?” And the woman said, “Oh, I’m very blessed.” She said it without flinching, without pausing. And she said it in a way that sounded like I had asked a silly question: “How am I? Well, don’t you know? I’m very blessed. That’s how I am every day. That’s the norm. I am very blessed.”

She convinced me. She made me believe it. And I can tell you that the person I visited that day received a confident, joyful blessing from that young youth minister as a result of her conviction. She helped me strive that much more for God’s shalom: completeness, welfare, peace. I guess, after hearing Chuck Middleton’s testimony this week, I can say that the woman behind the information desk is one of the heroes in my life of discipleship. She helped me raise the bar.

You might be the hero that someone out there is looking for so that they can take a bold step in their own journey toward God’s shalom. Your discipleship brought you here this Easter morning. What is your discipleship calling you to do tomorrow?

Happy Easter and shalom. Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Whooping: An Important Lesson in Royalty”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Psalm 118: 1-2, 19-29, Mark 11:1-10, and Luke 19:28-40

It was a seminary class of about 25 students, and we were a diverse group: black, white, male, female, gay, straight, intergenerational and multi-denominational.  That night our class was treated by a guest speaker, a thirty-something African-American ordained minister.  He had come to offer us a presentation on a style of preaching that came from his tradition.  And he did so by giving us handouts and explaining how this preaching style was a remnant of old-time religion in the Black Church, and how it was an art form with roots in the African storytelling and call-and-response traditions.  (And you Aggies will appreciate this: Do you know what that style of preaching is called?  Whooping.)  He spoke about it, gave us reading materials on it, but he didn’t actually do it.  Without experiencing it, our class really didn’t have a shared understanding of the power of that kind of preaching.

I can’t do it adequate justice, because whooping wasn’t really a part of my faith tradition.  But I can try to give you a glimpse of it.  It involves a lot of rocking back-and-forth on the part of the preacher, and sometimes even strutting around the altar.  It’s more emotive than cerebral in style.  And it usually starts off in a reserved manner that explains the message of a particular biblical text.  And then it builds up to a response that testifies to the Good News we have in Jesus Christ.  And it talks about how our lives are just a big, old wheel spinning, and about how this Jesus…ha…is the hub in the middle of the wheel…ha!  And we might not be able to see him or touch his face, but he is always there, our ever-present source of help and hope and holiness, our rock and our redeemer, our companion and shepherd in times of fear and chaos and doubt!

Do you feel joy?  Then we are starting to experience it.  We are starting to share, what that classroom could not; because in that classroom, a preaching style was explained to us and presented to us, but it wasn’t activated.  It wasn’t shared.  It stayed silent.

And maybe our professor or the presenter wanted to keep it that way.  Maybe they were worried that this young preacher whooping in a classroom full of seminary students would cause too much of a ruckus, it might be too loud, make too much of a scene.  Well, when it comes to responding to the gift of Jesus Christ and all of his teachings, the gift of Jesus Christ and his sacrificial love; when it comes to responding to the gift of the Church that we share and the gift of discipleship freely given for each and every one of us to carry out, isn’t that the idea?  Aren’t we supposed to cry out?

The Methodist theologian and preacher, William Willimon, writes that “Christians are those who proclaim Jesus as Lord, who shout to the world that a new King has come and a new reign has been initiated.”  And we understand that new King to be a savior who delivers us all into royalty, and we understand that new reign to be one of equality, peace and love.

Well, the world doesn’t look much like that these days, does it?  So, maybe we people of faith need to shout a little louder.  But in our progressive circles of Christianity, the trouble is that we hear this kind of invitation to shout and cry out, and we say, “I don’t think so.  I’ll pass.  Christians have been loud enough already, thanks.”

That’s true.  The loudest Christian voices in our land have certainly caused their share of harm.  The world has heard a lot from the voices of hatred that claim the cloak of Christianity, and those voices have shouted about Muslims being reprehensible, about divorce being unpardonable, about marriage being off-limits for interracial and same-gender couples, about the poor deserving their lot on account of their actions, about the murder of doctors being justifiable if it’s done in the name of the pro-life politick, about women being second-class to men, about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people having no place in the church.  With all that noise going on, why would we want to cry out?  Why would we want to add to that chaotic volume?

We understand that the Christian way of life demands justice, mercy and love, so when we hear those voices to the contrary we get annoyed, frustrated.  What’s worse, our frustration morphs into an indifferent belief.  We start thinking, “Well, there’s more hatred out there being shouted than there is peace, so I guess that is the real Christian message.  It’s louder, so I guess it’s true.”  And over time we slowly begin to resent our own Christianity.

Let’s remember the words of a Christian prophet who shouted out in the name of justice, mercy and love.  Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “We shall have to repent in this generation, not so much for the evil deeds of the wicked people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

When Jesus came into town riding on that donkey, the crowds were singing his praises, waving palm branches, and crying out, “Hosanna!  Hosanna!”  And the disciples were relishing in it.  They were his entourage.  And this drove the Pharisees crazy.  The Pharisees were seeing Jerusalem’s wheels of political stability and order come off right in front of their faces.  They wanted to keep things calm, so they told Jesus to keep his disciples in line, to shut them up.

The Pharisees might have been trying to help Jesus out, too.  They had warned him earlier in Luke’s gospel about Herod wanting to kill him, so maybe they were urging the disciples to keep quiet for Jesus’ sake.  Who knows?

Regardless of the interpretation, the point remains that the Pharisees had good intentions.  They wanted to maintain order, keep things calm, and their suggestion for keeping things orderly and calm?  Shhhhhh.  Keep quiet.

This month marks the 45^th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” that Sunday back in March of 1965 when civil rights advocates were tear-gassed and beaten by the batons of state troopers when they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.  It was a march in support of voting rights, and it took three tries before they finally reached their destination.  But on that third try, people from all over the country who’d been hearing those loud shouts for justice joined the cause and helped push the march over the bridge.

One of the civil rights marchers from Bloody Sunday is a now a United States congressman.  His name is John Lewis.  And just last Sunday he marched again.  He marched up to Capitol Hill through an angry crowd so that he could cast his vote on Health Care Reform.  And as he marched through the crowd, people called him and one of his Black colleagues the N word.  They spit on another Black congressman.  They shouted anti-gay epithets at an openly gay congressman.  And they called Representative Ciro Rodriguez of Texas a “wetback.”

Lewis said it reminded him of how he felt on Bloody Sunday.

The Southern Poverty Law Center reported this month that hate groups have surged by 55 percent in the past decade.  There has also been a surge in vigilante organizations called “nativist extremist” groups.  They go a step farther than advocating strict immigration policy by actually confronting or harassing suspected immigrants.  Nativist extremist groups grew from 173 groups in 2008 to 309 in 2009, a rise of nearly 80 percent.

If Bloody Sunday was supposed to move us in a direction that would see hate-filled injustice frowned upon and shunned, why such an alarming rise in hate groups?  Is it because the ethnic makeup of our country is rapidly moving toward us all being minorities?  Sure, that’s an obvious catalyst for hate groups forming among those who with fearful hearts and minds.  But perhaps they’re gaining traction because when they say something or do something that is violently hateful, those of us who find it shameful keep quiet.

Jesus, your disciples are making a scene!  They’re waking the people of this town up to the courage and empowerment and freedom they’ve always had in God.  They’re reminding the people of God’s timeless promises and God’s steadfast love in the face of oppression.  Jesus, tell them to be quiet!  Your disciples are calling the hand of an imperialistic Roman government that is only powerful so long as the people stay orderly, stay in line, stay quiet.  Shut them up, Jesus, or the Roman Empire will shut them up for you!  And Jesus says, “Even if they bite their tongues, the stones at your feet will cry out for them!”  Even the stones would cry out; that’s how powerful the justice and mercy and love of God is.

So, what does a rise in hate groups have to do with us church folks?  If the Christian message is about our deliverance and our redemption and our salvation and the freely-given grace of God, what does a rise in silly hate groups have to do with us Christians?  Well, go back to that seminary classroom.  Why was a classroom full of seminary students, studying to be Christian ministers in various capacities, devoting an entire class on a guest presenter teaching us about a preaching style called whooping?

I mentioned William Willimon earlier.  He and one of his Black clergy peers were participating in a three-hour worship service in a large African-American church in one of the poorest parts of the city.  Willimon asked his friend, half in jest, “Why do black people make so much noise when they worship?”  His friend had just preached a long sermon involving a lot of shouting and strutting and whooping, even some screaming.  And the music was thundering throughout the service.

When his friend replied to Willimon’s question, he looked sad.  He said, “It really makes you white people nervous when we get happy doesn’t it?  Why is our worship so loud?  We’ve got people here who have spent their whole lives keeping quiet.  They are expected to silently wait on tables, to make up rich people’s bedrooms and clean their houses for low pay without complaint.  They’re never asked what they think about anything.  They’re never invited to come to the microphone to render a verdict on what’s going on in the world.  They are the voiceless.  Silent.  So, we get them down here in the church, and we give them a microphone.  We tell them that here, this is free space, God-created space, and if they want to strut, if they want to shout, they can because Jesus has made them royalty.”

We don’t need to angrily fight back against the rise of hate groups in America out of some fear that we’re losing ground or losing some campaign or losing some cultural argument.  That’s simply not true.  Not only is it not true, it’s not real.  We church folks who strive to live out the Christian message, we celebrate the truth that Jesus has made us all royalty, and the powerful grace of God that can never be kept silent has made us all equal: equally important, equally beautiful, equally loved.

But if we keep silent about this truth, if we do not take time to celebrate and remember this truth, then fear and hatred seep in and make our fickle human souls forget the power of God’s steadfast love that endures forever.  It makes our troubled human minds forget that God judges the people with equity and righteousness and justice, and that Jesus has come to town on a donkey to bring the world’s institutions of oppression and evil to their knees.  But the good news is that there is time for us in this generation, right now, today, to repent, as Dr. King says…to turn around.

So, let’s take a page from the tradition and history of the Black Church’s whooping and testify out loud about the liberating power of God.  When I think of a devoted group of people meeting in a school here in town in 1977 to worship, I smile and praise God.  Because those people made this church possible—gave Friends Congregational Church its foundation, gave our church its roots in justice and mercy and love, gave our church its name, and gave our church its physical frame in this building.  We have much to celebrate.

When I think of the brief history of this church—only 31 years old—and that in that time this fellowship of believers has given resources and money to countless mission efforts, been a source of activism in our community through the former Just Peace Institute, gotten involved in local efforts to battle the effects of homelessness and hunger, carried out a capital campaign, adopted an Open and Affirming Statement and an Earth Stewardship Covenant, and become involved in a truth-telling ministry called Family Promise that reveals the reach of homelessness in our community, my soul cries out in praise and thanksgiving to God.

When I see children playing and learning in this place, when I see our teenagers serving as lay leaders and taking part in confirmation, when I see weddings and baptisms being celebrated in this space with a vast makeup of families, when I read our newsletter and find straight and gay couples alike celebrating anniversaries, when I look in our parking lot on a Sunday morning right before service is going to begin and I see cars parked on the grass in anticipation of our lot overflowing and children racing ahead of their parents to get in here and a lesbian couple holding hands and exchanging a sweet kiss that they simply cannot share in so many other places in their lives, I praise God.

And when I stand in this pulpit and look out into a sea of people from so many different walks of life, an unmistakable diversity of God’s children that I would not have the blessing of knowing and learning from if it weren’t for the gift of this church, when I look at this congregation my soul is at peace, because this is proof, incarnate love, palpable testimony that there is hope for our broken world.

Do you feel joy?  Then share that joy with the world to the glory of God, to the folly of injustice, and to the testimony of a Savior who has come to make us all royalty.

Hosanna.  Hosanna.  Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Reflections on ‘The Color Purple’”
Delivered by Rev. Kimberly Banks-Brown
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Psalm 126, Philippians 3:4b-14, Isaiah 43:16-21

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“The Grace of an Offensive God”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, March 14, 2010
2 Corinthians 5:16-21 and Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Transcript coming soon…

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“I’m Here for Dinner”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Isaiah 55:1-9 and Luke 13:1-9

My mother volunteers in the kitchen in the church where I grew up. Every Wednesday night they serve dinner there. The kitchen crew works for hours on Wednesday afternoons to prepare this meal. They have the whole congregation in mind while they’re chopping and stirring and putting huge casserole dishes in the ovens. They’re even thinking about the chance visitor, the stranger, who might come through the serving line that night. That’s what motivates them. It’s what inspires Mom and the crew to work in the kitchen together.

But if you want to bust Mom’s bubble, if you really want to get under her skin, duck your head into the kitchen close to serving time on a Wednesday night and yell, “What’s for dinner?” Oh, that makes her so mad.

Mom says, “I can’t stand it when people ask us that! It makes me want to say, ‘Does it matter? Are you not going to come through the serving line if it’s not to your liking?”

I know that on the surface, Mom’s frustration with people asking “what’s for dinner” is because she wants her crew to be appreciated and not questioned. But behind my mother’s pet peeve is something impossible for her or anyone to put into words. The kitchen crew wants people to know how much time, devotion, and thoughtfulness have gone into preparing that food. So, when someone asks, “What’s for dinner,” the kitchen crew, at a loss for words, just wants to say, “Does it matter?”

Jesus gets frustrated like this. The people hear about two terrible things happening, neither of which we know many details about from the Scriptures: Pontius Pilate orders the execution of some Galileans (this is the only other time in the Bible we hear about him outside of his conversation with Jesus after he’s arrested), and a tower falls on some unsuspecting people and kills them. This is terrible.

So witnesses anxiously run to Jesus and tell him all about it (a foreshadowing of 24-hour cable news reporters), but they’re anxious because they want to know about something that Jesus thinks is a petty waste of concern. They want to know, “Did those people who died, did they have it coming because they were worse sinners than most?” And Jesus, frustrated, perhaps tired of trying to put the will of God into words that human beings can understand, says, “What does it matter? They’re dead!”

People who heard Jesus’ response might have been thinking, “Well, someone woke up on the wrong side of the fig tree!” And then Jesus keeps on ranting, “They’re dead, and that’s terrible stuff, yes; but what you need to know is that unless you repent, the same thing will happen to you!”

Jesus is frustrated with Israel, and rightfully so. They’re being occupied and oppressed by the Roman Empire, and God has promised them all they need to get through it. But instead they’re giving priority to wealth and power as a means of confounding their foes. This frustrates Jesus.

And we hear these words from Isaiah intermingled with Jesus’ frustration: “Why do you spend your money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.”

Isaiah 55:1-9: Those words that Alex read for us a moment ago, those words are written to console Israel, to coax the exiles back to Zion. And the consolation and coaxing are offered through a question: “Why do you spend money on what is not bread and your labor on what does not satisfy?” The exiles were engaging in commerce with their captors, doing business with their oppressors, and God is warning the exiles about how those pursuits bear with them an inherent danger of adopting the habits and practices, the very lifestyle of the ones who’d conquered them.

So what practices, what habits have we adopted as a result of our commercial pursuits? What lifestyle have we assumed because of what we’ve bought?

I ask us these questions this morning because maybe what God is reminding us of in the words from Isaiah, maybe what Jesus is frustrated about in his words from Luke’s gospel, is that the things that we buy, the things that we prioritize, the things that we acquire, collect and horde, the things that we possess have conquered us. Like our biblical ancestors before us, we have become enslaved by our stuff, enslaved by our desire for self-preservation and status. And that self-imposed enslavement keeps us from even hearing the invitation from God that Alex read for us this morning:

Come, all you who are thirsty! Come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come buy wine and milk without money and without cost!

Do you hear that? Do you hear that invitation from God? You don’t need to find out where the couples’ registered. You don’t have to pick the perfect attire for the occasion. You don’t need to print out a map. You don’t even need to check the date and time. The only requirement for us to accept this Divine invitation is to be hungry and thirsty! But if we’ve convinced ourselves that we’ve got it covered, that we’ve got our most precious needs handled, then why even listen to God’s gracious invitation, let alone accept it?

No wonder Jesus is frustrated!

Now, we’ve heard this before. We’ve heard this Lenten message about how we need to let go of certain things in order to follow Jesus, how we need to be liberated from certain things if our ears are going to be open to God’s voice. But what these passages from Isaiah and Luke charge us to consider this morning is what our life might look like if we don’t do those things; and consequently what the lives around us, what our society starts to look like when we don’t do those things.

Why is immigration reform such a touchy issue. I think that it’s because on a spiritual level (which I contend is the most powerful level) we have convinced ourselves that we have our basic needs covered. Those things that we’ve acquired, all that stuff that we’ve horded, all this property and territory that we’ve fenced in gives us the illusion of peace of mind. And as a result, that self-imposed enslavement becomes the lens through which we view our neighbor, a lens that convinces us to look with hatred and fear upon those who don’t speak our language and those who don’t look like us. Call it racism. Call it elitism. Whatever you want to call it, at the heart of it is a spiritual hunger, a spiritual thirst that we cannot satisfy by our own proud means.

It’s no wonder that we see stories more and more often (like the one that appeared in yesterday’s Austin American Statesman) about how faith communities are working to elevate awareness and the need for immigration reform. It seems that the faith that is nurtured in our churches empowers us to recognize our self-imposed enslavement for what it is, and to cast off those chains, unstop our ears, and hear the Divine invitation to life abundant and life eternal: “Come, everyone, who thirsts! Come to the waters, come buy and eat without money and without cost!”

Everyone can come! Everyone is welcome! And once we hear that invitation and respond to it little by little with each day of our lives, we begin to see the abundant, limitless nature of the love of God. Our eyes are opened to each other, and we see the blessed and beautiful diversity of everyone who has been invited.

Have you ever been on your way to a party, or maybe even you’re throwing a party, and a friend of yours who’s contemplating whether they should show up calls you and they say, “Hey! So, this party…do you know who’s going to be there?”

And you just want to say, “Well, does it matter? Are you worried that so-and-so’s going to be there? And what if they are there? What are you afraid of? What about their presence makes you uneasy?

“Is that person being at the party going to force you to face up to certain things? Is their presence going to make you to look inward, to own up to the possibilities that you don’t have it all figured out, that you don’t have every base covered in your life, that you aren’t right about everything? Are you worried that their presence might reveal your own need to forgive and your need for forgiveness; your need to repent?”

“Jesus, this kingdom of God you preach about, who’s going to be there?” No wonder Jesus is so frustrated.

One of the classes I took in seminary was “The African American Experience in Social Ethics.” The subject of slavery came up quite often, and one morning our class discussion brought up how slave owners would often allow and even encourage their slaves to read the Bible. That puzzled me, so I shared: “The Book of Galatians in the Bible says that in Christ Jesus we are no longer Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free. We are all one. If that is one of the key principles of the Christian faith, then how did those slave owners reconcile the notion of a heaven where everyone would be together as equals with the practice of slavery that essentially stands on a principle that everyone is not equal, and everyone does not have the right to the things that I’ve got?” It’s puzzling, isn’t it?

We may not be slave owners, but we certainly have things we need to repent of. And remember that to repent doesn’t mean to feel guilty or worse yet to feel ashamed. To repent means to change directions.

So, this morning, as we prepare to take up our One Great Hour of Sharing mission offering that works in part to fund wells being dug in Third World countries, and to provide clean drinking water to those who go without, I want to offer us an exercise in spirituality. (Our confirmands have an assignment nearly every week, so think of this as our assignment). The next time you wash your hands, as the water flows out of that faucet for five seconds, thirty seconds, a minute, think of a child living in Uganda whose village does not have a well and has not had rain for weeks. Think of this child lying down to sleep at night and wondering in her innocent dreams, “Is it true that in America every home has running water?” Perhaps spiritual exercises like this will open our eyes to our need for repentance, our need to change direction, our need to reassess our priorities, our need to take into account the multitude of simple things we have to be thankful for, our need to accept God’s invitation no matter what the consequences.

Because here’s the Good News: Accepting God’s invitation to the waters where we can buy and eat without money and without cost means that all we have to do is accept the invitation. And we are offered that invitation every day. Each day is an opportunity for repentance, for a gradual change in direction. This is our journey of faith. And wherever that journey leads us, God will see us through.

Now, despite all the work and devotion and thoughtfulness that go into preparing those Wednesday night meals, it’s not just about the Wednesday night meals. The kitchen crew knows that. And they know that even though they’d love for people to always acknowledge their hard work that the food on the plate isn’t what it’s all about. The Wednesday night meals are an invitation. They’re a call to the church family to get together and share in the abundant blessings of God.

Maybe my mom would tell you differently, but I think that’s at the heart of what bothers her when people ask, “What’s for dinner!” Maybe what the kitchen crew would prefer to hear more than anything are four simple words that could make all the difference in the world every Wednesday night: “I’m here for dinner.”

God, we’re here for dinner. God, we’re hungry and we’re thirsty and we’re here! Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“What Are You Looking All Mean and Evil For?”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 and Luke 13:31-35

Jesus, do something! Do you ever feel that way? Things aren’t going your way. None of your plans are working out the way you’d hoped. Or maybe you’re watching a close football game with only seconds left, so you look around to make sure no one’s looking at you, and you mutter under your breath, “Come on, Jesus. Do something.”

I feel this way sometimes when I read the Bible. I read about Jesus and his ministry, and as I read, I discover Jesus being chastised by teachers of the law. I see the Son of Man being antagonized by the Sadducees. I see the Savior being cornered by the Pharisees. I see the Messiah being taunted by the Devil. I see Jesus the Christ being yelled at, threatened with violence and run to the outskirts of town, and nearly being thrown off a cliff. And with all the authority and might and power this Jesus possesses, I read these stories and I just want to yell, “Come on, Jesus! Do something!” It’s like watching Superman mope around with Kryptonite shackled to his ankle, and you just want to say, “Come on, man! Just take that thing off and do something!”

That’s why reading today’s text from Luke is so rewarding. First of all, you have the Pharisees, who are usually depicted as antagonists who are always out to get Jesus, coming to Jesus and giving him a kind warning about pending danger: “Herod wants to kill you.” They’re helping Jesus for a change. Call it a moment of bipartisanship. Who knew?

Then, Jesus responds. Usually, Jesus would hear something like this, maybe take a moment to gain his composure, and then offer a parable: “Ah, yes. Herod wants to kill me. That reminds me of an agrarian illustration of a peace-keeping shepherd who went wandering the fields with his flock scattering seed hither and thither…”

But this time Jesus snaps back, “Herod wants to kill me, eh? Well, you tell that old fox that nothing’s going to stop me from carrying out my ministry.” And you go, “Yes! That’s what I’m talking about! You tell him, Jesus! In your face, Herod!”

But before we get too excited this morning, let’s be careful. Let’s make sure that our bias isn’t getting in the way. What I’m asking is: “When we yell, ‘Yeah, you tell him,’ are we rooting for Jesus, or against Herod? When we yell, ‘Yeah, you tell him,’ are we rooting for Jesus, or are we rooting against someone or something else?” Our fist-pumping, in-your-face excitement are small, proud victories that are more often than not projected against someone or something.

A friend of ours who started hanging out with someone outside our circle of friends gets hurt or mistreated by this other person, and we think, “Yeah, I told you so.”

We’re friends with a couple who’ve been together for years, but suddenly one person in that couple wants out of the relationship and they start dating someone else. And we see that person who has strayed being shunned by their friends, shunned by people in their church, maybe even shunned by their broken-hearted family, and we think, “Yeah, serves them right.”

We see political figures that we disagree with being defamed, their character being ruined, and we think, “Yeah, they had it coming.”

Some times even our life choices are just ways for us to yell “in your face” at a parent or a sibling or a former mentor or an ex.

But all that “yeah, in your face” living is so exhausting, isn’t it? All that keeping track of who’s got it coming, it’s tiring, isn’t it?

I’ve got a friend who doesn’t have opinions, he has arguments. He thrives on exposing what he views as people’s lack of perspective, and he loves making people who disagree with him sound like idiots. This friend of mine, like they say, is seldom wrong and never in doubt. Some times I just want to put a hand on his shoulder and say, “Doesn’t it get lonely being right all the time?”

I think Jesus knew better. I think that’s why we hardly ever see things like this from Jesus in the Bible. He knew better.

When we hunger and thirst only for those moments when we can point at someone or something else and yell, “Yeah, in your face,” then no amount of indulgence will satisfy us. No matter what, we’re going to be left hungry and thirsty.

And when we exhaust ourselves like this, it’s easy to look at the injustices of the world around us and just stop caring. To not care is a decision. It’s a decision that says, “Oh, well. If you can’t beat them, join them!”

But look at this banner (The banner says, “Follow Me,” and there is a picture of the cross). Jesus instructs those who follow him to be in the world, but not of the world.

Here’s some of what I hear the world sounding like lately: Ho hum. Our representatives in Washington can’t get anything done, so what’s the use thinking about the world’s problems anymore? All this crazy weather has me paralyzed as to what to do about Climate Change, and it’s become such a touchy subject that I guess I’ll just keep quiet. We’ve been at war for over eight years now, so I guess it’s the right thing to do, or else we wouldn’t still be over there. Trying to fix healthcare is something that I just don’t understand. It seems exhausting. I can’t put my head around it, so I guess it’s okay that I’ve got healthcare. Something will eventually come together for those other 47 million people. And that gray cloud has been hovering overhead for so long now; I don’t see much point in doing anything even in my own backyard. Volunteer work, philanthropy, charity, getting to know my neighbor, forgiving someone who did me wrong. Too much energy for too little reward. At least I’ve got my DVR. I’ll just watch whatever’s on TV until there’s another moment when I can yell, “In your face,” again.

It’s my prayer that that is not us. If it is, then we certainly don’t have any business telling Jesus to do something. Aren’t we a redeemed people?

Do you know what being redeemed means? It means that you’ve given up something—let go of something—and then opened your arms to something new. You’ve given up on hording possessions and giving unnecessary energy to what others think of you and keeping score all the time, and you’ve opened your arms to things that you can’t control, but that lead you in constructive efforts—lead you in paths of righteousness. You’ve opened your arms to faith, hope and love. That’s what you’ve done, redeemed people!

Just being here this morning is an act of redemption. Because it’s in this place that we remember Jesus of Nazareth who gave up self-deprecating things, like political clout and spiritual temptation and sin, and who instead gave his life to the will and way of God, so that we would all know, once and forever, how much God loves us, and how that love will not let us go.

We are a redeemed people! It is tempting to get excited about Jesus putting Herod in his place, but after Jesus calls Herod an old fox he gives us more important words, redeeming words: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem…how I have longed to gather you all together and comfort you under my wing as a mother hen!” We are a redeemed people, but how quickly we forget.

There’s a four-piece rock band called Living Colour that’s been around since 1989. They play anything from jazz fusion to really heavy rock. And all four members of the band are Black. They’re not your usual all-white, spandex-clad hair band.

So, one day when I was 19 years old, I was listening to Living Colour in my apartment when my neighbor, who’d just moved in from San Saba, knocked on my door to shoot the breeze. When I told him what I was listening to, my neighbor said, “Aw, them’s just four N words playing the wrong kind of music.” I’ve been listening faithfully to Living Colour ever since.

Anyway, they have a song from 2003 that sums up our forgetfulness. It’s called Great Expectations. Here are some of the words:

once I was

but now I’m not

once I would

but now I won’t

Once I could

but now I can’t

Once I did

but now I don’t

once I tried

now I’m giving up

once I cared

now I’m giving up

I’ve lowered my expectations

The more we lower our expectations, the more forgetful we get. The more forgetful we get, the more we lower our expectations. And then we start looking more like mean and evil zombies than people redeemed by the love of God.

When I was a teenager, my family went on a vacation to Williamsburg, Virginia. Mom and Dad thought it would be a great trip for all of us: my brothers and me. How fortunate we all were to have the time and opportunity enough to take a trip that far away, all five of us, together!

But I wasn’t very happy about it. Taking me along on a vacation to Williamsburg meant time away from my friends, my MTV top ten video countdown (they played videos back then), my room, my space, my stuff. And what could be more important than all that?

So, there we were, checking into this hotel. My brothers were giddy as could be. A porter was showing us to our room, dressed in colonial garb and as happy to see us as my grandparents would be, telling us about places to eat and places to check out. And there I was, sulking, enough Dep Gel in my hair to start a forest fire, probably wearing a tee shirt advertising Body Glove surfing equipment (I have never surfed), and listening to something on my walkman at far-too-loud a volume (most likely Guns n’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction for the millionth time). Mom and Dad had been trying to engage me in conversation the entire trip to no avail so far. And then the porter said, “Hey!” I snapped out of it, looked up at him and cut off my walkman (which was probably the size of a hymnal). And the porter said, “What are you lookin’ all mean and evil for?” (That was my parents’ favorite moment on that trip.)

My parents remind me of that moment to this day. And I share their fond memory with you this morning because almost 20 years later, I hear the voice of Christ in that porter’s words.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem…how’ve I’ve wanted to gather you all together and comfort you under my wing as a mother hen, but you’re too busy hungering and thirsting after false sustenance that does not nourish. Jerusalem, don’t you know that you are being redeemed? Jerusalem, what are you looking all mean and evil for?

In these days of Lent leading up to Easter, we celebrate God’s redeeming love. We anticipate God’s redemption filling the whole world. And the only way for the world to know that it is being redeemed is for us to point to the Redeemer by being a redeemed people; as Gandhi would say, for us Christians to act more like our Christ.

I know a redeemed person. I’m not going to share his name, but he enthusiastically gave me permission to share his story with you. When he moved to our community he wanted to find a church; a place where he could worship and share his gifts. And he found a church. And after a while he thought it would be a good idea to inquire about joining that church. So, he approached the pastor about joining, but he felt that such an important, crossroads moment required honesty. So, he told the pastor that he was gay. He felt that this was something the pastor should know. The pastor said he would have to repent of that lifestyle or he wouldn’t be able to join the church.

Knowing that was impossible, he left that church and found a church home here at Friends. He says he’s met wonderful people here, that he enjoys being in this place, and he looks forward to continuing his journey of faith here (and I look forward to sharing that journey of faith with him).

I don’t tell you his story to put down another church or for us to look this church’s identity with a sense of pride. I tell you his story to share the good news that we have a redeemed person in our midst. We have redeemed people in our midst. We are a redeemed people, and we have much to be thankful for and much to celebrate. So, what are we lookin’ all mean and evil for?

The world is now too small for anything but truth and too dangerous for anything but love. So, redeemed people, do something!

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“What IF?”
Drama play performed by;
Rev. Dan De Leon & Rev. Tamara Franks
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Luke 4:1-13

Transcript not Available

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Turning Jesus Loose”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Exodus 34:29-35 and Luke 9:28-36

This account of the transfiguration of Jesus is basically about a word that makes all of us uneasy: change. As Dana Carvey’s character, Garth, in Wayne’s World says, “We fear change.” We want things to remain exactly as they are. Not only that, we expect things to stay exactly the way they are.

Earthquakes, hurricanes and floods shift the very landscape of Haiti and New Orleans; yet we close our eyes, cover our ears and sing, “La, la, la,” holding onto our finite, temporal and flat-out naïve expectations.

We expect natural resources to never run out.

We expect food of all kinds to always be available at our local grocery store.

We expect Toyota products to always be reliable.

We expect that our representatives in Washington will eventually hear us and do the right thing.

We expect for Mark Zuckerberg to not tamper with our Facebook settings.

It’s this perspective that makes it impossible for us to understand the story of the Transfiguration.

I was excited about seeing Walter Brueggemann and hearing him speak this past Thursday night, so excited that when I got close to Marlin on my way to Waco and the roads were icing up and the snow was blasting against my windshield, I kept going.

(That’s right: snow in central Texas in February. Heretofore, I hadn’t experienced those kinds of driving conditions at night in my adult life. My headlights projecting onto the snow that was coming at me made it look like I was in a time warp; like when Han and Chewy make the jump to light speed…only I was going about 40 miles per hour. But that was okay, because I was going to hear Dr. Brueggemann.)

I got to the chapel where the lectures were taking place just in time. But when I sat down, one of the faculty members got in the pulpit and said, “Dr. Brueggemann is stuck in Dallas. He won’t be with us until tomorrow morning.”

I heard the words, but they didn’t register. I still expected to hear Dr. Brueggemann. And those expectations made it difficult for me to embrace his substitute.

Dr. Brueggemann was replaced by a New Testament scholar on the Truett Theological Seminary staff. This tall, well-groomed gentleman, clad in a dapper suit looked and sounded like a Billy Graham / Joel Osteen hybrid. He emphasized…every consonant…at the end…of every pause…in a sentence. He wouldn’t stand in the pulpit, but rather he would orbit around it. And he would often get eye contact with folks in the congregation and nod emphatically as if to drive the point home.

I wasn’t having anything of it. I expected to hear Walter Brueggemann. I wasn’t about to entertain this change.

But then I started to listen, not just looking for catch phrases or things I might disagree with. I really listened. And, lo and behold, the substitute speaker had some interesting things to say. He was speaking on the book of James, and as we unpacked the first two chapters in that book, my eyes were opened to refreshing interpretations of the text. This speaker was helping me look at something I’d seen many, many times before in a new way. New understandings were revealed to me when I let go of my stubborn expectations.

That is ultimately what transfiguration implies: looking at something you’ve seen hundreds of times before and suddenly seeing something different…something new!

Many of us are familiar with the portrait of Jesus where he is depicted from the chest up. He looks meek and mild; his straight brown hair flowing over his shoulders, his eyes looking up longingly, as if seeking the very love that we long for when we turn to Jesus.

That picture is on the cover of our bulletin today. But there’s a detail that’s different about this picture. You may have noticed that Jesus’ skin is a bit darker than that picture usually illustrates.

We sing, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face.” But have you ever looked on the face of Jesus and seen someone who is Black?

Never mind the historicity, the historical understanding of Jesus where one could legitimately assert that given his geographical context and genealogy, Jesus’ skin, hair and facial features were probably much darker than the white-skinned, blue eyed Jesus we find on many children’s Christian activity books. Set the historical perspective aside for a moment and turn instead to your faith perspective—your faith perspective that invites us and even demands us to look for Christ Jesus in the many different lives and situations and contexts of this broken world today. Leaning on that faith perspective, look at the Jesus on your bulletin cover and ask yourself, “What is Jesus asking me to do today?” Like Saul asked on his road to Damascus, “What do you want with me, Lord? What do you need for me to let go of? What stubborn expectation is keeping me from seeing the world as you see it? What do I need to let go of in my life in order to see your truth magnified?”

On Friday morning, Brueggemann was there. He mentioned a few books he was reading at that time. One of them is a book called Imperial Cruise. The book exposes the racist prerogatives of Teddy Roosevelt. It suggests that because the former president was so outwardly and vocally racist against the Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos and the Japanese, it made the United States entering into war that much more readily and widely acceptable.

In retrospect I recall in my early childhood watching an old black-and-white film reel on TV of young American troops being interviewed. They were asked why they were volunteering to fight, and one of the responses was, “Well, I just don’t like [insert derogatory name for the Japanese].” And upon hearing that response, my elder family member who was watching this with me on TV threw his fist in the air and yelled, “Yeah!”

They say that war is hell on earth. And for those who take the words of Jesus to heart when he says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they are children of God,” we believe that war is sin. That sin is fueled in part by yet another sin: the sin of racism. And that sin is founded on a terrible sin—the sin that is the opposite of love: fear.

We are involved in two wars, one of which is clearly unwinnable. And if we go back eight years to find the reasons for why we remain at war, we find that one of those reasons is the rallying cries of racism. And what poured gasoline on the brush fire of that racism? The fear that we allowed to take over our hearts and minds on 9/11.

These wars are not popular. No one likes to hear about how many lives are being lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. We don’t like to hear about the environmental injustice being done to lands riddled with bombs. We don’t like to hear about the millions of troops returning home with burned skin, missing limbs and life-scarring PTSD. But what if the news tomorrow told us that we were winning? That the enemy was on the run and victory was in sight? Would this make us suddenly change our tune and be pleased with the war?

I want to suggest to us that if we were to let go of the very thing that got us in this mess in the first place, if we were to let go of our fear and embrace a fresh, powerful view of Christ Jesus, then even news of imminent victory would make us despise these wars. Even news of us being in the final throes of war would only outrage us to the point of marching up to the forces of military might as Moses marched up to Pharaoh and cry out, “Let my people go! Let this millstone of fear go.”

Why can’t we let go of that fear? Why can’t we let the love of God in Christ Jesus guide us instead of the finite, temporal, naïve powers of this world’s fears? Maybe it’s because we have grown too accustomed to looking at Jesus the same way over and over and over again, and that picture of Jesus we have formed in our hearts and minds only allows our Savior to go so far when it comes to peace, justice, mercy, forgiveness, faith, hope and love. If that’s the case, then we need to let that picture of Jesus go. We need to turn him loose. It’s only when we look at Jesus in a new way that we invite him to run freely in our lives, bringing us to new epiphanies of God’s love. That’s the Good News of the Transfiguration.

The Transfiguration that we read in Luke’s gospel today precedes Jesus’ crucifixion and death, but many biblical scholars think that the Transfiguration is actually a resurrection appearance of Christ to the disciples, that it happened after Christ’s resurrection; but Luke put it at this point in the story to show Christ’s divinity before the Passion.

Whether that’s true, the point remains: that Jesus’ ministry cannot be understood without looking at it through the resurrection. “Behold, I am making all things new,” pronounces the resurrected Christ. Seen through resurrection, Jesus ministry is all about newness of life, about looking at things that we have seen so many times that we have grown to ignore them out of our comfort with indifference or even our comfort with injustice and suddenly crying out, “Lord, what do you want with me?”

We had a chance for Q&A with Dr. Brueggemann after one of his sessions, and I wanted to follow up on something he’d said. So I asked, “Dr. Brueggemann, you mentioned that church members will not approach their pastors and say, ‘I’m having trouble with this tension between the dominant narrative and the alternative narrative of God.’” (The dominant narrative has to do with what we consider normal in our world, and the alternative narrative of God has to do with God’s desire for justice and righteousness in all things—God’s hopes.) “But you said that a church member will approach their pastor and say, ‘I’m having trouble with the fact that my niece is a lesbian and I love her, but the Bible as I understand it says that she’s wrong for being so. What do I do with that tension.?’” My question for Dr. Brueggemann was, “How can preaching prophetically address that tension?”

His response was kind, thoughtful and just, but I want to share only a tidbit of it in this sermon. He said, “I don’t think that all the fights in our churches over gay and lesbian people is over gay and lesbian people. It’s really over an anxiety of the old world passing away. We who fear that change cling to whatever we can find, and for whatever reason, many of us in our churches cling to this topic as a way to hold firm to the moral high ground, and thereby resist inevitable change.”

Jesus, what would you have me let go of? Maybe it’s the fabled moral high ground.

Peter, James and John see Jesus talking to the dead prophets, Moses and Elijah, and they say, “This is great. It doesn’t get any better than this. Let’s just build memorials right here for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. We can hold onto this forever.”

But Jesus can’t do a whole lot when he’s stuck in a memorial. And we who follow Jesus can’t change much in this world if we’re stuck memorializing Christ instead of liberating Christ, turning Jesus loose on our lives so that our eyes would be opened anew to God’s prophetic hopes.

I’ve been recording radio devotionals for Navasota News for over three years now, and a couple of months ago the radio station received a complaint about one of my devotionals from a local clergy person. I told my friend Andy Tag about this, and he said in a very complementary way, “I’m surprised it took them this long to complain about you.” “May the Lord bless you with discomfort,” I always say.

The complaint said that I was advocating homosexuality and therefore the radio station was doing the same.

(I thought that my wearing this wedding band in a society where marriage is founded on patriarchy that whether I want to or not I’m advocating heterosexism, but that’s another sermon entirely.)

I’m not going to share what I said in that devotional right now. You can hear it online via the church’s website whenever you want. That’s not the point; because although the complaint was about the radio station advocating homosexuality, the clergy person who registered the complaint wasn’t upset about the topic of homosexuality. He or she was upset about change. He or she was clinging to a fabled moral high ground and clinging to a picture of Jesus that needs to be turned loose.

Is there something that you need to let go of, something you need to set free so that Christ Jesus can work freely in and through your life? Or is the dominant narrative, the dominant world of stock market priorities and hot button moral high grounds keeping you too afraid to let go of anything? Is this world’s status quo so powerful that God’s hopes for justice and righteousness seem tired and empty? If that’s the case, then God help our confirmands who look to us adults for wisdom.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face. And the things of earth (war, racism, greed, arrogance, commodification, homophobia, violence, economic injustice), those things will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“What Do We Do with All These Fish?”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, February 7, 2010
1 Corinthians 15:1-11 and Luke 5:1-11

When I was about seven years old I was living in a young boy’s utopia. We had a tree house in the backyard that my dad’s buddy from his National Guard days made for my little brother, Ben, and me. There were wooded areas, forest areas, behind the neighborhood houses; plenty of space for a boy to explore. And if you went far enough into the forest, it opened up to a construction site. That’s like striking oil!

And a few houses down from our house there was a creek that ran under the street. I spent a lot of time at that creek; running through the tunnel under the street and listening to the echo of my feet slapping the concrete; seeing how far from the tunnel in either direction I could hike before getting scared of the unfamiliar surroundings and turning back around.

And when there was water in the creek, there was life in the creek: crawdads, snakes, turtles, frogs. Exciting stuff! On one of those days when water was trickling down the creek, I sat down at the edge of it and picked up a rock. And under that rock was a legion of these little, round, black, slimy things: tadpoles. How cool is that?

I had learned about where frogs came from; that they were amphibians that started out as tadpoles. But I had to see it to believe it. You have to understand that it was about this time that I was fascinated with Bill Bixby becoming so angry that his eyes would turn green and his clothes would rip and he’d become this big, body-building green creature called the Hulk that looked like Lou Ferrigno. Transformations fascinated me, and I had to see this tadpole-to-frog transformation.

So, I took a bowl and scooped up maybe fifty of those tadpoles out of the creek and took them home. Within days, their tales got shorter and they started sprouting limbs. But when those tales disappeared and they got some strength in those limbs, the tadpoles started jumping up and out of the bowl. So, I had this bowl of amphibian popcorn exploding right before my eyes, and I started to panic: “Wait! What do I do? The tadpoles are all over the place! I can’t control them! I can’t contain them! What do I do?”

This is the detail that gets glossed over in the story we hear out of Luke. Simon Peter and his crew have been fishing all night and haven’t caught a thing. And when they follow Jesus’ advice to push out into the deep waters and cast their net out again, they catch 153 fish; more fish than their net can hold. That’s a lot of fish.

The story moves on from there, but do you wonder what was going through the minds of those fishermen? More fish than their net could hold. More fish than they anticipated. They’d set out into those deep waters in a last ditch effort to get a modest catch, but maybe now they were thinking, “Wait! What do we do? There’s fish all over the place? What do we do with all these fish?”

Today is the start of Women’s Week in the United Church of Christ. One way that is celebrated is through a UCC publication called Common Lot. And in the most recent edition of Common Lot, UCC women from all over the country offer their reflections on this passage we have read today: Luke 5:1-11.

Katherine Huey is one of the contributors. She’s the UCC Minister for Covenantal Stewardship. In her reflection on today’s passage, she talks about how we in our churches might have apprehension when Jesus asks us to push out into the deep waters. She says the deep waters might represent those places we would rather not go.

She gives examples of those deep waters, like calling a woman to be our minister and becoming an Open and Affirming Church. I’ll add a couple of other examples of deep waters: inviting homeless families into our church home and taking on the new ministry of a Capital Campaign.

It’s pretty fun to open the Bible, read a passage and feel affirmed. Sounds like we’re doing something right. We should pat ourselves on the back! Go ahead; give yourself a pat on the back. Feels good! Now…have we got that out of our system? Because it’s time to move on.

Yes, we have called women to be ministers at Friends Congregational Church. Yes, we are an Open and Affirming congregation. Yes, we are a part of Family Promise, inviting homeless families to share our church home. And, yes, we are embarking on a Capital Campaign that seeks to expand on these ministries and more relying on God’s grace.

But in all of this excitement, have we stopped to take a look at what this deep water-fishing has brought into the boat? Have we spent time being good stewards of our catch? Have we stopped to look around and assess the situation? If we did, we might find ourselves crying out, “Wait! There’s fish all over the place! I don’t know how to handle this? What do we do with all these fish?”

It’s one thing to have faith strong enough to direct our lives into deep waters. It’s quite another thing to have faith humble enough to embrace all that our abundant God might pour into our boat as a result of that direction.

Calling women to be ministers means that we have cracked open the patriarchal grip of the church, and that crack opens a floodgate of questions that lead to dialogue and shared growth and understanding, all for the sake of progress that bends toward the realm of God on earth as it is in heaven.

Becoming an Open and Affirming congregation means that people of different races and ages and sexual identities have come into this place longing for diversity and inclusiveness, and with each of these has come their views and experiences of relationships and marriage and child-rearing and social justice and ecclesiology: the practice of the church.

Beginning the Family Promise ministry means that we have opened our doors to guests who put a face on homelessness, and who draw our attention to the reality of economic injustice and what it’s like to be a parent raising a child in the clutches of that reality.

Taking on a Capital Campaign means that we are breaking our lives open to new levels of faith and trust in one another, which means that we usher in the blessings of heightened friendship and Christian intimacy. What do we do with all of this? It’s a lot!

New questions. New lives. New perspectives. New testimonies. New understandings. New priorities. New people and new ministries. What do we do with all these fish?

If we do great things for God, then we must expect great things from God, and that great expectation is hospitality.

Another contributor to Common Lot for Women’s Week is Denise Mason, who has been the pastor of Community of Reconciliation Church in Pittsburg since 2000. Reverend Mason points out that Jesus is like so many women, because he sets his work based on the needs of those around him. Hospitality.

He recognizes that Simon Peter and his co-workers have prioritized catching as many fish as possible in their jobs, so Jesus shares with them exactly how to get that job done. He goes with them in their boat and helps them with each step of the process so that some day they’ll be able to do it themselves. (Sounds like Family Promise.)

“And at the same time,” Reverend Mason points out, “Jesus is like so many Christ-minded women all over the world, because he reaches out to others in an effort to widen the community.” He invites others into the circle, and once we’re in the circle, Jesus reminds us of the importance of sharing. Hospitality.

Reverend Mason calls this devotion to hospitality “life in the deep.” She says, “Putting others first, teaching others to serve by serving ourselves, widening circles, empowering others and teaching any who are willing to learn the art and gift of sharing, that’s life in the deep. That’s hospitality.

It’s good, it’s vital, it’s necessary, and, yes, it’s exhausting. And many more women than men in our churches are acutely aware of this. But thank God our sisters in Christ are responding without fear to the still-speaking voice of God that asks, “Who will go for us?” and the response is, “Here I am, Lord. Send me!”

Did you know that when it comes to the number of times men are mentioned versus women in Luke’s gospel that men outnumber women 13 to one? Yet there are so many more women than men in our church circles who respond to Jesus’ invitation to follow him and become fisher’s of people. Take that, Paul! Reverend Mason might say that our sisters in Christ are embracing “life in the deep” with courageous and passionate hearts.

Did you notice that all of the essential volunteer duties for today (changing the sign, greeters, lay leader, communion steward), all of them were done by women? Did you know that the main governing body of this church, the Steering Committee, is made up of six women and one man? Did you know that with the exception of confirmation class for our middle school youth that all of our Sunday School classes are taught by women? Did you know that the powerful, life-changing ministry of Family Promise that requires all hands on deck whenever we have a host week is co-coordinated by women?

My dear sister, Linda Coats, told me one time, “Pastor Dan, I think God made us women incapable of having children after a while so that you would have people to do all this stuff!”

Now, I don’t mention all of this to shame my brothers in Christ. I mention it for the same reason I mention anything in a sermon: I mention this so that all of us can learn from it. I mention this to say, “Praise God for the women of our church. Praise God for their discipleship, for them dropping their nets to follow Christ and be fisher’s of people.” Because as Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, “Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.”

Praise God for women, because we can all learn from their lives, this Women’s Week and always, that it’s nice to do a good thing for God by fishing in deep waters, but the good thing stops there if we don’t also expect great things from God, if we don’t make it our priority to live in the deep, if we don’t rely on God’s grace to make us into living sanctuaries of extravagant hospitality.

You’re going to hear me talk a lot about hospitality from time to time this year for a couple of reasons. For one thing, I feel really convicted about our need to reassess what it means to have a vision of offering God’s extravagant welcome to all. We welcome our guests into the door of this church, but do we invite them into the life of this church? Once they’re here, do we offer God’s extravagant hospitality?

And the other reason is that hospitality is the topic I’m focusing on in my Doctorate of Ministry that I have to have finished by this time next year!

So, since I’m getting personal to wrap up this message, I’m going to heed the charge of one more of my sisters in Christ: Renita Weems. Reverend Renita Weems challenges preachers to get up in the pulpit and speak from their own personal experience of Jesus showing up and surprising us like he did with Simon Peter and the gang. And with that challenge, Reverend Weems says, “Don’t just make dry homiletical pronouncements that evaporate in the sanctuary air as soon as you utter them because they are spoken devoid of passion and personal witness!” So, OK, here we go.

When Stacy and I came home on a Sunday night in January of 2005, there was a message on our home machine from a woman I wouldn’t meet for a few months. Ruth Schemmer said, “Our search committee got your profile. We’re interested. Could you provide us with some more information? Get back to us when you can.” In hindsight I can say that was the voice of Christ saying, “Push out and cast your net into some deep waters.”

I haven’t reflected as much as I probably should on all that’s happened as a result of responding to the call to be our church’s pastor over four years ago. I can tell you that it certainly was joyful, but that it wasn’t easy. Stacy and I moved away from family and friends. We moved out of the first home we’d made together in our married life. No sooner was the first grandchild born to both Stacy’s and my parents in Austin than we plucked him up and moved him away…plucked up and moved into a community where when he wears anything burnt orange, perfect strangers will often remind his parents, “You’ve got that boy in the wrong colors.”

I was a fourth generation member of First Baptist Church of Austin and had served Baptist churches in my ministerial path. And I sat across a table from my parents and told them that I was moving to serve the pastorate of a United Church of Christ congregation. And they both said in their own words and with tears in their eyes, “Go and serve God.”

I do take far-removed and modest comfort from Jesus saying that “a prophet is not accepted in his hometown,” but I have to confess that I have also found myself like Simon Peter at the feet of Jesus like we find him this morning saying, “Master, leave. I’m a sinner and I can’t handle this holiness.”

But those moments are when I need to practice what I preach, not by relying on the discipline of my words—the dry homiletics that Reverend Weems talks about evaporating in the sanctuary air—but by relying on God’s grace. As Paul said in the Scripture Anne read for us this morning, “Not I, but relying on God’s grace…”

We all have our own testimonies of times when we have travelled to deep waters to go fishing, but what have we done with all the fish? Have we been Christ-minded enough, have we relied on God’s grace enough to live in the deep?

I was once asked in a committee meeting at Friends, “Do you have what it takes to help us grow?” Well, not I, but Christ in me. Not I, but relying on God’s grace…

Can I help this church grow? Let me respond to that question so that we might all learn: Yes, I can, only to the extent that we all expect great things from God. Expecting great things from God is the beginning of hospitality.

And let me say to my church family that has a seasoned history of tremendous pastoral leadership, “It’s not the good pastor that makes a great congregation; it’s the great congregation that makes a good pastor.”

We have done great things for God at Friends Church, and we have a lot to celebrate and be thankful for. We have pushed out into deep waters and caught more than we could have imagined. But when the disciples caught those fish, Jesus said, “That’s just the beginning. You haven’t seen anything yet. Now, follow me and I’ll make you fisher’s of people.” What do we do with all these fish? Let’s expect great things from God and see what happens. Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Words Are So Important”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Jeremiah 1:4-10 and Luke 4:21-30

Only say the word, Lord

Only say the word, Lord

Only say the word

And I shall be healed

It is amazing that God speaks—God uses words—and Creation is spun into being. And we sing, “Only say the word, Lord, and I shall be healed.” The word ‘heal’—‘to heal’—comes from the word ‘salve.’ And ‘salve’ is at the root of the word we long for in our communities of faith; it’s at the root of the word that sums up the story of the Bible; salve is at the root of ‘salvation.’

God speaks words in the beginning and the result is Creation. And God speaks words along our journey ever since, and the result, time and again, is salvation.

Now, when we frame it like that, what words do we use to speak salvation to one another? When we think about salvation, what words come to mind?

We’re wading in the water a bit together right now. We’re not too deep just yet. But don’t worry. We’re going to get deeper than that this morning. We just want to wade in the water a little bit before we get deep.

But if we listen together this morning, if we are still long enough and peacefully enough, we might hear the warm words of God calling us into the deep waters; like Jesus calling his disciples to cast their nets into the deep waters for a bigger catch; like a Lover calling to their beloved: “You are my beloved. My favor rests in you.”

Norman Corwin is a huge baseball fan. He also teaches writing and journalism and USC. He’s also in his nineties. Norman Corwin remembers something that happened along his journey that shaped his passions and deepened his love for baseball. He was watching a game on TV years ago. Orel Hershiser was pitching for the Dodgers. And he threw a fastball that hit a batter. The camera was on a close-up of Hershiser’s face, and Corwin says he could read Hershiser’s lips mouthing two simple words: “I’m sorry.” The batter nodded back at Hershiser in a friendly way, took first, and the game went on. Corwin says that those two words were all it took for him to feel good about the pitcher, the batter and the whole game all at once. And those two words spoken in that moment left an impression on Corwin that lasted a lifetime, enough of an impression that he recalls them with reverence even in his twilight years.

Words are so important. But we tend to ascribe power to words based on the hurtful impact they have on our lives. It’s like a preacher once said, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will surely kill me.”

Psychiatrists and therapists and counselors and pastoral caregivers; what they often encounter are women and men with layers of these hurtful words shrouding the core of who they truly are. Their work is about reconnecting this person with their true self that’s buried under there.

But once those layers are peeled away, there is yet another layer hiding the true self: The layer of words we put up like a barricade to shut out those powerful, hurtful words that we think can surely kill us.

And the funny thing is that layer of words we put up for our own defense drains and depletes and saps our souls just as much as those hurtful words that we’re running from. How is that possible? Because the words we use as a buffer are typically not authentic. They don’t come from within, from our true selves. They are empty, banal, lost.

You ever use some words so much that you forget about what they mean or you lose all sight of where you stand on the issues they represent? It’s like that Episode of the Simpsons where Bart’s friend Millhouse plays Radioactive Man’s sidekick, Fallout Boy. And they’re shooting scenes for this movie over and over and over again. And a star-struck Bart Simpson finds his friend Millhouse on the set and asks him how it’s going, and Millhouse sighs and says, “I don’t know, Bart. I’ve said ‘Jiminy Jillickers’ so many times, it’s beginning to lose all meaning!”

The wordsmiths at Lake Superior State University released their 35th annual List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness. Here’s the complete 2010 list:

1. Shovel-ready
2. Transparent/Transparency
3. Czar
4. Tweet
5. App
6. Sexting
7. Friend as a verb
8. Teachable Moment
9. In These Economic Times …
10. Stimulus
11. Toxic Assets
12. Too Big to Fail
13. Bromance
14. Chillaxin’
15. Obama as a prefix

Words, words, words, words, words. A friend and mentor of mine often begins his sermons by praying this simple prayer: “Words and Word, O God. Among the many, find us with the living Word of Christ this day.”

God speaks to us in a still, small voice. We profess that God is still speaking. And God gives us words…powerful, powerful words—words that can transform lives, words that can move mountains, words that can stand up to the so-called powers of the world and cry out, “Let my people go.” And these words can only be heard in the deep, deep regions of our self: who we truly are as made in the image of God.

So, if we only ascribe priority and power to words that range from the empty, banal and lost to the antagonizing, hurtful and fearful, how can we ever hear the words that God gives us? And if we are running away from God’s voice—God’s beautiful, wonderful, powerful, transformative, liberating words—aren’t we, in effect, running from ourselves?

In the fall of 2001, I was asked to preach at a church that’s now a part of the United Church of Christ: Church of the Savior in Austin. Church of the Savior was without a pastor at the time, relying on interim preachers and guest preachers to fill the pulpit every Sunday. I wanted to get a sense of the life of the church at that time—what was going on in their congregation—so that my sermon wouldn’t be out of touch. I didn’t want to sell them short. So, some of the deacons on the church council invited Stacy and me over for dinner the weekend before the Sunday when I would preach.

9/11 was still painfully fresh on all of our minds. And when we got to talking about all of the hatred and fear-mongering that had surfaced since the events of that day, the mood turned somber. One woman at the table talked about all of the anti-Muslim rhetoric that was coming from pundits on TV, and with a sad but hopeful face, she turned and looked at a magnet on the refrigerator. It was a peace symbol with a cross on it. And looking at that symbol she said, “What about ‘forgiveness’? What about ‘peace’? What about ‘love’?”

I heard her words, but they didn’t have any effect on me. I have to confess that my gut reaction, which I of course kept to myself, was: “She’s being naïve. That can’t happen. No one’s ever going to listen to that.” I’d become too adjusted to words like, ‘vengeance,’ and, ‘hunt them down,’ and, ‘let’s roll,’ and, ‘bring it on.’

In hindsight, I can say that my hesitation to embrace her words was just me running. And in light of today’s Scripture, I look back at that moment as a Jeremiah moment. Maybe I was running from God’s words…like Jeremiah tried to do.

God’s words were so precious and powerful that God touched Jeremiah’s mouth and said, “There. Now my words are your words. My words are in your mouth.” And Jeremiah says, “Oh, not me Lord…not now. I’m too young! I’m just a child.”

This doesn’t just happen in the Bible; it happens all the time! Augustine is noted for praying, “Grant me chastity and continency, but not yet!” And last week we recalled how certain white clergy in the South during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s pleaded with Martin Luther King, Jr. to call off the organized marches saying, “We understand your struggle, brother, but now is just not the time for racial equality. Let’s wait awhile.”

Jeremiah. The white clergymen of the South. Who is ready to hear God’s words spoken in their lives? Who is ready for God’s words to come to life, to be fulfilled? Where is our true self? Where is the person we are as made in the image of God? If that person is so far buried underneath layers of useless words that he or she has died, then it’s time for a resurrection.

Jesus stands up in a synagogue and says, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” And he goes on to talk about what that fulfillment means. He reminds the people of the foundational stories of their faith. He stands up and uses simple words to remind them of God’s justice; about how Elijah gives food to a Gentile widow and her son, and about how Elisha heals Naaman, a Syrian officer, of leprosy—foreigners, aliens, outsiders. He uses simple words to wake their sleeping souls up to God’s salvation.

But the people don’t want to hear that. The ears of their true selves are plugged up. They have become walking dead who have no use for Jesus’ healing words. So they turn into an angry mob, and they run Jesus to the edge of a cliff threatening to kill him…threatening to kill those powerful words that came out of his mouth before they have any chance of taking hold.

When we take stock in the words of this world so much that we believe that there is no room for forgiveness and there is no path to peace and there is no sense in love, then, like our predecessors in that synagogue, we are doing the same thing. We are walking dead in need of a resurrection.

In these present times that are crippled by war, economic uncertainty, a housing collapse, cultural prerogatives shapes by the loudest TV and radio pundits, and a shamefully vast chasm between the poorest poor and the richest one percent, the world needs the powerful words of God like a fish needs water.

And it starts with us. It starts with you and me; one voice using simple words, like the woman at the table saying, “Forgiveness, peace, love.”

But let’s remember that Jesus tells us we can’t go taking the speck out of our neighbor’s eye before we take the log out of our own. Maybe it’s time for us to go out to the cliff where we left God’s words for dead, and put our arm around Jesus and say, “Come on back in this house and do some preaching.”

Jesus, come back into the synagogue of my life right now and preach. Come in this house layered with the banality and emptiness of apathetic words and preach words of truth. Give me words like forgiveness and peace and love so that little by little those layers of apathy would peel away from the inside out, and I would come to not only believe those words but live those words.

The more flesh we put on those words, the more they become the Incarnate Word of God’s love in Christ speaking and living in and through our lives. And as we put flesh on those words, our life choices are affected, our priorities are shifted, our path is altered for the better, and the example of our life—who we are as made in the image of God—shines. As it says in Galatians, “Yet not I, but Christ in me,” because to die from our false selves is gain, and to live is Christ. Words are so important, and in God’s living Word we find salvation.

Words and Word, O God. Among the many, find us with the living Word of Christ this day. Amen.

Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“If They Reopen the Canon”
Delivered by Rev. Dan De Leon
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 and Luke 4:14-21

Today is Ecumenical Sunday. Today we celebrate that common threat that binds us in our diverse garment of Christianity; our coat of many colors…and nationalities and ages and traditions. That common thread is love. Love links us one to the other.

One of the most prominent scriptures that tells us about love is 1 Corinthians 13, where it says, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”

The sermon this morning reflects on the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr. This past week we observed MLK Day. But this week has offered us memorable glimpses into the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., glimpses into his teachings and his vision. So, today the sermon utilizes those teachings and that vision to seek out the common thread that links us one to the other: love…love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

We look to Haiti this week and we see an outpouring of generosity. Make-shift hospitals and healthcare providers and materials and food and clean drinking water and millions of dollars are pouring into Haiti. And this is all so very good. But without love this generosity has limits. Without love this generosity has conditions. Without love this generosity has the potential for resentment.

Without love, these resources quickly become sand. And we all know what Jesus tells about the house that is built on sand.

So listen to these words spoken by Martin Luther King, Jr. on November 4, 1956: “… Americans, you may give your goods to feed the poor. You may give great gifts to charity. You may tower high in philanthropy. But if you have not love it means nothing.”

Let’s reflect on these teachings this morning. Let’s clear out the cobwebs of our souls and shake the dust of injustice off the scriptures so that we might embrace love: love of ourselves and love of our neighbors, no matter who that neighbor might be.

So, here is a prayer that was written in preparation for the Ninth Assembly of the World Council of Churches. It’s from an unnamed church in Germany. And we share it this morning for Ecumenical Sunday. Shall we pray?

When I behold the problems of our world, O Lord, I pray not to be tempted to quick answers. When every tongue declares a different truth, when every people praises its own righteousness, let me pause before I speak or praise or hope. Let me look inward seeking to discover eternal truths implanted there by you, truths greater than those heard in the outer multitude of voices and words. And let me remember always that to be loud is not to be right, to be strange is not to be forbidden, to be new is not to be frightful, to be honest is not to be ugly. Thus let me find truths true to you, that I may live with them, and you, and myself in peace. Amen.

Luke 4:14-21: Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Our confirmation class has spent the last two Sundays talking about the Bible. What is it? Where did it come from? How do we use it? We tend to call the Bible a book: the Good Book, the Big Book the Holy Book. But our class is discovering that the Bible isn’t just a book (or as Mike Myers would say in Wayne’s World, “A book”).

The word ‘bible’ means ‘booklets’ or ‘little books.’ The Bible is a collection of books. And to set a good example for our young confirmands, exactly how many books are in the Bible? Sixty-six. Right! Is 66 enough? Don’t we want more?

My granddad used to have a box of paperback books by his bed, and most of those books were Louis L’Amour books. Louis L’Amour was known for writing stories about outlaws and cowboys and the Old West. He wrote 89 books…but that wasn’t enough for my granddad. He read every single one of them and he had to have more!

Have you ever gotten so enamored with books by a particular author that you can’t get enough of the stories? It used to be Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and Encyclopedia Brown. Now it’s Sookie Stackhouse and Edward and Bella. You people who like those Twilight books, you really like those Twilight books. I know this because Stephanie Meyer, the author of the Twilight books, hasn’t written a new book in that series since 2008. And without a new book, Twilight fans read the four books in the series over and over and over again. It would be pretty exciting if Meyer would write another one. “Oh, please, please, please, write another one! Maybe Bella will leave Edward and meet a nice mummy.”

Bearing this in mind, you’d think that there would be hysterical excitement over another book being added to the Bible. It’s the number one seller among books in the entire world. Generations of people read it over and over and over again. It’s been printed in multiple versions and languages. So why don’t they add another book to the Bible? Keep the excitement going!

The difference between a series of stories and the Bible is that the books of the Bible are not in a series, they are in a canon. I wish that it were like it sounded, because there are some books that we want to shoot right out of there to make life simpler.

But books cannot be added or subtracted from the Biblical Canon, because the canon implies authority. The folks who chose the books of the Bible centuries ago asserted that the books from Genesis to Revelation are all we need to witness the awe-inspiring story of God. But I had a professor in seminary who said one time, “If they ever reopen the canon of the Bible, they should put the Book of King in there.” With very passing year I understand more and more what he meant.

The educator and philosopher, Cornel West, was on A&M campus Thursday speaking at the annual MLK Breakfast. There was time for Q&A at the end, and one of the questions that he received had to do with Christianity. The question written on a note card recalled how Dr. West had spoken about MLK’s teachings through the lens of Christianity. But it went on to ask how that can speak to all peoples with justice when religion has been guilty of preaching and solidifying hatred in our culture (And the question even cited evidences of that hatred: segregation and homophobia).