All You Need Is Love

Jan. 31, 2010
1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30
How many times do we hear Paul’s words from the Corinthian correspondence read at weddings? His riff on love is probably the most common scripture used in nominally Christian weddings, and it probably gets read at services of other faiths and no faith at all.
That’s understandable: Paul could write a bit and these famous words about love are beautiful and powerful.
But I’m willing to bet that no wedding service has ever paired Paul’s words in the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians with the strange little story from Luke’s gospel.
After all, nobody wants to leave a wedding thinking about an angry mob trying to toss someone off a cliff – no matter what the circumstances of the wedding.
So why bring them together now? What word from God can this odd pairing of ancient texts have for us today? On a joyous day when we welcome new members to this community? Does anybody want to leave this service thinking about an angry mob and a cliff? Is that what it means to join the church?
Perhaps, to begin, we ought to own up to two truths: First, we’re not Jesus, and, second, Paul is not talking about us at all.
Paul’s words on love were never meant for weddings because they do not describe erotic love nor, to push the point, human love at all. Paul is talking primarily about God’s capacity to love, and how that love for creation can shine through human interaction and give meaning and weight and purpose to our actions.
“If I speak in tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers and understanding and knowledge and faith but do not have love I am nothing. If I give everything away and practice great piety but do not have love I gain nothing.”
In other words, I can lead a conventionally moral and ethical life but be nothing save a lot of noise if I do not ground that life in God’s love.
Why?
Because that love – the love of which Paul speaks – is steadfast and unfailing. It is the foundation upon which we build lives that matter, it is the faith that sustains us and the hope that we cling to when those lives are shattered by circumstance.
That foundation, that faith, that hope, guides Jesus journey, and it can guide ours as well.
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus preaches a prophetic word and the crowd wants to throw him off a cliff.
Why?
When he speaks of Elijah and Elisha, Jesus tells the stories of a widow and a foreign military officer, and he suggests to the hometown audiences that God’s love is not their private property. Indeed, Jesus tells them that God loves other tribes who are not their kin at all. According to the generally accepted moral codes, it was perfectly acceptable to dismiss the needs of other tribes altogether because their concerns were not of vital nation interest – to employ a phrase that I hope suggests clearly that we are not that different from Jesus’ first audience.
This initial public pronouncement prefigures the entire trajectory of Jesus’ ministry. He will reach out to those on and beyond the margins of polite society, he will touch the untouchable, he will break bread with the undesirable, he will embody the love of God for the ones most hated or feared by the conventionally moral and acceptable citizenry of his home town. Is it any wonder when they try to toss him off a cliff?
Still, I confess that I’ve always found this story difficult to fathom. Why would merely demonstrating that God has always had concern for ones unlike you lead you to violence?
Thomas Jefferson famously said, “it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
Why should it matter to say that the God you worship loves someone else, too?
Of course, the “someone else” that Jesus indicates is, in fact, a despised outsider; and the declaration that God loves this despised other carries with it also the conviction that now we must walk through the broken barriers and reach out to the despised other ourselves.
I did gain a small bit of personal insight into this dynamic about a decade ago when I preached, on the Sunday of the Martin Luther King holiday, a sermon suggesting that Dr. King would include “straight and gay” in his litany of those who would join to sing their liberation along with “black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics,” and that same-sex marriage was a civil right worthy of the concern of the church.
No one threatened to throw me off a cliff, but they did ask me to resign about two weeks later.
And when we announced our same-sex marriage policy at Clarendon about five years ago the stack of hate mail was impressive, as were the calls promising that I was going to hell and it could be sooner than I anticipated.
Why does suggesting that others be regarded as equal to ourselves – no matter how we define otherness – bring out the tribal instinct to mark territory and punish any who would transgress the boundaries?
Moreover, why does this instinct seem all too prevalent among communities of faith, and especially among those who call themselves followers of Jesus?
It’s easy to point out the most egregious examples: the Pat Robertsons declaring that Haitians are being punished for following the wrong God, or the U.S. General who claimed that America would win in Iraq because our God is bigger. It’s more painful to point out the examples that look back at us from the mirror: the times we demonize someone who has the temerity to disagree, or the cynicism that invades our conversation, erodes our faithfulness and blinds us to the gifts of others in our midst.
Jesus’ entire ministry was about boundary breaking love, and if we confess our faith in Jesus and commit to follow in his way we, too, are called, in spite of ourselves, to be ministers of boundary-breaking love. That’s what it means to be a follower of Jesus. That’s what it means to join his church.
Consider Paul’s audience. He writes his stirring words on love to a congregation clearly divided. He opens the letter with an urgent request:
Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you should be in agreement and that there should be no divisions among you, but that you should be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul’, or ‘I belong to Apollos’, or ‘I belong to Cephas’, or ‘I belong to Christ.’ Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
Even among the faithful there are divisions of insiders and outsiders, of Cephas’ people vs. Apollos’ people. In our own time the divisions are just as readily apparent, and it is all too easy to dismiss those who disagree with us, too easy to mistrust and then to abuse them.
Where is love in this?
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels when urging the church to change its ordination standards or its views on marriage, but do not have love for those with whom I disagree, I am a noisy gong or clanging cymbal or self-righteous gasbag. Quite quickly, the temptation to view myself as Jesus in this story gives way to the truth that I am but another in the crowd wanting to toss my opponents off any convenient cliff.
Play the scenario out in your own situation, your workplace or neighborhood, your family even. When the situation calls for speaking or hearing a difficult truth how do you speak it? How do you receive it? Are you able to speak the truth in love? Do you want to toss the one who speaks the truth out the nearest window?
Obviously Jesus does not back away – ever – in his ministry from speaking a word of faithful, loving agitation. After all, he does call his opponents within the religious establishment a “brood of vipers.” At the same time he weeps for Jerusalem, the seat of religious power, and the city that kills the prophets, and he prays for those who spitefully use and abuse him, even those who hang him on a cross to die.
Clearly, speaking truth to power and speaking the truth in love is a profoundly difficult balancing act, but it is what we are called to do.
One of the reasons that I am passionately committed to the work of Christian Peace Witness is the ethos of love that guides the work of this ecumenical coalition, and why I still believe that CPW’s work is worth my time and yours even in the midst of seemingly endless war. There are clearly policies with which we utterly disagree and policymakers with whom we have profound differences, but we are clear in spirit, in worship and in action that we are rooted and grounded in love. And, we are equally clear that we are not up to that task left to our own devices, our own limited vision and our own constrained capacity for love.
That is equally true for the broader ministry and mission at Clarendon, to which we welcome new members this morning. We can do so with joy because this difficult ministry is not up to us alone.
The good news in all of this lies precisely where we began this morning: in the recognition that the love in which we root and ground our speech and action is not our love but is, rather, the love of God.
The plain and simple truth is this: we are not capable, on our own, of love that is patient, kind, never envious, boastful or arrogant or rude; that does not insist on its own way or become irritable or resentful; that does not rejoice in wrongdoing but in the truth; that bears all things, believes all thing, hopes all things, endures all thing, and that never ends.
We don’t love like that, even in our best moments. God does, even in our worst moments.
When we stand rooted and grounded in the love that comes from our creator God, then we can begin ministries that break down barriers, that right ancient wrongs, that create bonds of community where once there were walls of mistrust and fear, that speak gospel truth to the powers that be, and speak that truth in love. Amen.

First Steps

Luke 4:14-21; 1 Cor. 12:12-31a
January 24, 2010
A long time ago … in a galaxy not that far, far away, Time magazine carried a cover story headlined, “God Is Dead.” The story quoted, among others, a young Harvard Divinity School professor named Harvey Cox.
I’ve been reading Dr. Cox’s most recent book this month. I’ve got to confess, that when I heard it mentioned, my first reaction was, “I thought he was dead.”
Well, it appears that rumors of Harvey Cox’s death – and of God’s – have been greatly exaggerated.
Back in 1965, Cox was asking "Is it the loss of the experience of God, the loss of the existence of God in Christianity, or the lack of adequate language to express God today?" that generates the God-is-dead talk.
Today Cox is asking not about the future of God or God-talk, but about the future of faith.
The beginning of a new year, the early weeks of the lectionary cycle of readings, and the occasion of Jesus’ first public sermon as Luke reports it, provide compelling invitation to explore together the future of faith and to ask after first things.
So, to begin with, what does it mean to have faith? Today?
Well, to begin with, having faith does not mean offering intellectual assent to a series of statements concerning the ontological status of Jesus, the nature of his birth, of his mother’s sex life, his super hero powers or a single authorized description of what happened after the man, Jesus of Nazareth, was put to death by Roman imperial authorities.
It bears repeating: having faith does not mean offering your intellectual assent or consent to a series of propositional statements about God, about Jesus, about the church.
Faith is about so much more than that; and it is so much more challenging than that.
Faith is not primarily concerned with what your head believes to be true; faith is primarily concerned with what your hearts trusts. Faith is about what theologian Paul Tillich called the matter of ultimate concern.
Faith, in other words, is not a head trip though it has room for deep reflection and inquiry, for all the questions that confront us and for deepest doubt.
Faith is a whole-body experience and commitment.
Moreover, authentic faith redefines us – takes all of us and makes us new, reclaiming us as God’s own for the world.
Paul understood this in offering up the metaphor of the gathered faithful as the body of Christ in the world.
It takes all of us to make up that body, and it takes all of all of us.
From time to time I’ve quoted an African American woman who called the offering at the gathering of Presbyterian Women in Louisville some years ago. She said, “Jesus don’t want your five and tens; Jesus wants your twenties and fifties.”
Well, in the same way, Jesus doesn’t want part of you; Jesus wants all of you. Bring your best, the best of who you are, to this body. That’s what faith is all about. Your best, meeting the best of one another, so that together we can meet the needs of all at the worst moments.
St. Teresa of Avila puts it something like this:
Christ has no body on earth but ours, no hands but ours, no feet but ours. Ours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ looks out upon the world. Ours are the feet with which he goes about doing good. Ours are the hands with which he blesses his people now.
Paul uses the metaphor of the body to underscore the variety of gifts, of resources, that we share together to give flesh and blood to the words of compassion, love and justice that Jesus speaks. Paul also uses this metaphor to remind us that faith is earthy, gritty, and involves our frailty and brokenness as well as moments of awe and wonder and sublime beauty.
Much of the work of faith takes place not in beautiful sanctuaries such as ours, but in the rubble of Port-au-Prince, the slums of Calcutta, the Ninth Ward of New Orleans – places of deep and desperate need where God is already at work and calling us to be as well.
Of course, most of us have neither the gifts nor calling to work in those place, and that is as it should be because there are plenty of places of need all around us right now, and God is already at work in such places as AFAC, Doorways for Women and Children, the sites of Rebuilding Together, the Arlington Free Clinic, the DC Pride Parade, Arlington Hospital, Whitman Walker or any of the myriad other places that you – that we, together – have gone in ministry and mission over the years.
The first step of faith often leads us directly into such places. Ours are the feet with which Christ goes about bringing healing, restoring hope.
If we take seriously the notion that the church – the whole church – truly is the body of Christ, then we understand how intimately connected we are. As Dr. King put it, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
“Moreover,” as Vinoth Ramachandra says, “if the church is truly the global body of Christ, and the body of Christ is qualitatively present in every local assembly, the way we become truly global Christians is not by detaching ourselves from local commitments in favor of a globe-trotting lifestyle (or spending more time on the Internet!), but rather by seriously engaging with the local as members of a global community that has re-defined our identities.”
None of that effort, that walking with Christ into local food pantries because we understand that we are first and foremost children of the same God – none of that requires intellectual assent to a set of abstractions by which some people have built walls around the faith.
When Tom Hull led our Rebuilding Together crew last spring the homeowner did not ask us to recite the Apostles Creed before we painted, plumbed, and basically restored her house. When we gather down at AFAC each month to bag groceries for our neighbors in need, no one stops us to ask if we believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. When we donate to the people of Haiti, the relief agencies will cash our checks without reference to the Westminster Catechism.
Faith is how we live; it is not how we believe. Faith is about the Spirit of the Lord, not the letter of the law. Faith concerns the concrete rather than the creedal.
Faith is about being fully alive. As the great Howard Thurman put it, "Don't just ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and then go and do it, because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
None of which is to say we should be blissfully ignorant in our faithful living. There is content to our faith, and that content has specificity as well. We hope that the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts draw us into deeper relationship with God. Words matter. Thoughtfulness is important.
Coincidentally, I think that faith’s first steps and their content form the theme of Jesus’ initial public speech in the text from Luke this morning.
Faith is about the Spirit of God – that same Spirit that upholds Jesus in the wilderness and the one that falls upon him when he returns to Galilee to teach. He does not stand up in the synagogue to teach anything about being “begotten not made” or “very God from very God,” as the council of Nicaea agreed. Nor does he say anything about God “Who is eternal, infinite, immeasurable, incomprehensible, omnipotent, invisible; one in substance and yet distinct in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” as the Heidelberg Confession puts it.
But he does say this:
‘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.’

Good news! In which authentic faith takes the form of liberation, restoration and mercy.
Ah, but consider that good news and Jesus’ proclamation alongside Paul’s assertion that we are the body of Christ. The Spirit is trying to say something to the church through this ancient set of texts. That same Spirit is trying to say something to the church in contemporary texts like Harvey Cox’s. That Spirit is telling us this: “you are anointed to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind and liberation to the oppressed in this the year of jubilee.”
You and me, all of us together, the body of Christ in the world. When was the last time you brought good news to the poor?
As Jim Wallis says, “the coming of the Spirit always has to do with God's purposes of justice, liberation and reconciliation in the world--not just within the believing community but in the world.”
Such first steps require deep trust in the One who calls us and sends us forth into a world that does not share such trust and that often greets authentic faith with soul-killing cynicism. Nevertheless, the essence of our faith is trusting in the One who calls and sends such that we are able to take those first steps.
As William Sloan Coffin often said, “I love the recklessness of faith. First you leap, and then you grow wings.”
And we creatures know that what we grow – all those body parts that Paul lists – they do not come from any power of our own. The parts of our bodies – formed in our mothers’ wombs – are not the work of our hands.
Nor are the wings to hold us up when our first steps of faith become leaps. They are gifts of the living God.
By grace alone we have these bodies, and by that same grace we are invited to be, together the body of Christ in the world. Let’s take the first steps together. Amen.

Living the Dream

Isaiah 62:1-5; I Corinthian 12:1-11
January 17, 2009
A few weeks ago, after I’d been luxuriating in a hot shower after a cold run, Cheryl commented that turning a knob and having hot water delivered to pour down over you is one of the most miraculous luxuries imaginable in all of human history.
Talking with Suzanne Matula yesterday in Tajikistan I was reminded just how miraculous it is. Suzanne’s water is usually cold, brown and smelly.
As I said to Cheryl, “it certainly makes me glad that I was not born 150 years ago; and that I’m lucky enough to have been born in America.”
She said, “yeah, and perhaps not 150 years from now either given the ways things are going.”
Does that make this moment Candide’s best of all possible worlds?
Are we living the dream?
Well, I suppose that depends upon whose dream we’re talking about, but the very question raises some interesting possibilities and some difficult challenges.
If it’s the American Dream that we’re talking about, then we are certainly living some version of it. Despite being mired in the Great Recession, we still live in the most affluent society in the history of the world. So much so that we simply take for granted the miracle of clean, plentiful water delivered directly into our homes. So much so that we take for granted that getting around town and across the country is not only our right but that we should be able to do it in our private vehicles should we so choose, driving on smooth and open highways with food and fuel at the ready and on the cheap. So much so that we take for granted the miracle of mass communication, of cell phones, web pages, instant connectivity to friends on the far side of the globe.
We are living that American Dream.
As we gather here on this Sunday of the King Day holiday, it’s clear that we are also living into some aspects of Dr. King’s dream – in fits and starts and much too slowly and incompletely to be sure, but we are closer today than we were in 1963 to living in a society that embraces its own founding ideal that all of us are created equal and share common human rights. I was reminded of that yesterday when we stopped at a burger joint out near the Blue Ridge. Their staff was multicultural, and as we waited for our food, a middle aged African American man was casually chatting with a middle aged white guy at the counter. No way that happens there in 1963.
We are living that American Dream, as well.
Given that, we could all just pat ourselves on our backs, go home and watch some football.
Mission accomplished.
Hm …
There is something about that phrase that sounds a warning.
I’m going to guess that when Isaiah spoke there were many who felt strongly that they were living in the best of all possible worlds. Our text this morning comes from what Biblical scholars call Third Isaiah. Walter Brueggeman argues that this section, comprised of the final 15 or so chapters of the Isaiah arc, is intimately connected to the passages that immediately precede it, and that Isaiah is providing an answer to the either/or questions that hang in the balance in the section known as Second Isaiah.
The first section of Isaiah is clearly written to the Hebrew exiles in Babylon. The words of promise that we Christians read and sing in our Advent season – a shoot grows from the stump of Jesse … a little child shall lead them … he shall be called wonderful, counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, prince of peace – those texts are words of comfort to sustain an exile people.
The later part of Isaiah, including our text this morning, rings out with words of challenge to the returning exiles. Who will they be?
This is the either/or that Isaiah poses. As Brueggeman puts it, “Either be a community of like-minded people who are convinced of their own purity, virtue, orthodoxy, and legitimacy, excluding all others, or …” or heed the prophet’s warning and follow his invitation to a future otherwise.
Either believe that this is the best of all possible worlds, and that our American dreams have been realized fully and exclusively for us to the exclusion of all others, or … or read Isaiah.
Now I’m no Isaiah nor any Martin Luther King, but I have been reading both of them for a long time now, and I fully believe and am deeply committed to the call that echoes everywhere through their words.
For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,
and her salvation like a burning torch.
Those words of Isaiah are for us.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Those words of King are for us.
In those words lies our calling as church right now. My dream for us arises out of that calling and is shaped by the words from Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth.
Let me spell it out, then. I have a dream today for the church at Clarendon in 2010 and beyond.
My dream for us can be described under three simple words: charity, compassion, and Christ.
There are some people, folks who are deeply committed to social justice, who sometimes belittle the notion of charity. They will tell the tale of the man who came upon the bank of a river where people were desperately pulling out broken bodies and said, “it’s great that you are rescuing these people, but shouldn’t we go upstream and find out who is throwing them in the river in the first place?”
The thing is, the people in the river need to be saved, too. So the work of charity is as desperately needed as the work of justice. In fact, the two should never be separated in the first place.
As we give this morning to assist the people of Haiti who are in such desperate need right now, let us not forget that years of neglect helped create a society in which a major natural disaster becomes a humanitarian disaster of staggering breadth. The bodies must be bandaged, but the system must be repaired as well. There were starving children in Haiti before CNN landed to cover this disaster; there will be starving children after the cameras go home. So over brunch this morning, let’s live into the dream of a community of charity and plan our own best response to this tragedy.
Being repairers of the breach and restorers of the city’s streets to live in – Isaiah’s dream – requires that we be willing to work on multiple levels at the same time, each according to his ability. Paul knew this. To some is given the gift of wisdom – which enables them to speak truth to power. To others is given the capacity to work miracles – which enables them to stand in the crucible of suffering and minister to those in deepest need.
A young man came into church Thursday afternoon. He is deaf and was in pain due to sickle cell anemia. I don’t sign, but I knew that right across the street lives a member of this community who possesses what to me is a miracle – and must have seemed so to the young man in my office Thursday – fluency in American Sign Language. We were able to provide a band aid in that moment because we have been given such gifts. I have a dream that we will be a community that feeds the hungry and binds up the broken.
And I have a dream that we will be a community that speaks truth to power, calling the church to justice with regards to ordination issues, for example, and calling the commonwealth to justice as well with regards to marriage rights, adoption rights, the rights of the poor and the imprisoned.
As I look around this morning, I know that we are already living the dream. And I know that we can live it more fully and completely when our spirits are more fully open to the gifts of God’s spirit.
We can be a more generous people. When I talk, for example, about tithing to the church, I am not concerned with keeping our lights on – even though in a meeting Thursday evening we talked about what it might mean to the young adults in the Clarendon corridor if our lights were on from 10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights as they pour out of the bars and restaurants, thirsts quenched but spirits parched. Still, I’m not so much concerned with keeping our lights on and doors open as I am concerned with keeping our spirits open so that light can shine into them.
Surely if each of us contributed 10 percent of our incomes to the church most of the institution’s financial concerns would be taken care of. But far more significantly, most of our spiritual concerns would be taken care of as well.
Why? It’s not a simple transaction: you give to God and God takes care of your spirit in return. No.
It’s far more complicated, but Jesus understood it well and made it plan: where your treasure is there will be your heart also. When we open our wallets to give, we open our hearts as well. When we give away enough to make a difference in our own finances – and only when we do that – then we have opened ourselves up to ask the foundational spiritual questions: what really matters to me? What do I really need? What do I desire – and why do I desire it? What is the true source of all I have received? What am I called to do with what I have been given?
Charity begins at home, and it begins when we give enough of our time and our talents and, yes, of our money. I have a dream that we will be a community of deep and authentic charity.
I have a dream that we will be a community of compassion.
I love that word, compassion, with its Latin roots that mean literally with suffering or suffering with.
I do not love it out of any strange desire to suffer. Not at all – I do not desire to suffer. In fact, I am a wimp, as my family will attest.
No, I love the word compassion because it reminds me of the desperate seriousness of Christian community, of what Dr. King called “the fierce urgency of now.”
You do not have to look past the headlines of the week – Haiti, of course, but also unemployment, whose true level in this country hovers around 15 percent, and all of this against the dull background drone of seemingly endless war. You do not have to look beyond these headlines to know that the world is filled with suffering, and often we do not have to look beyond our own neighborhoods or families to confront deep suffering. Some of that suffering is physical; much of it is also spiritual, and you do not have to look beyond the great Metro corridor right outside our stained-glass windows to find thousands of our sisters and brothers desperately longing to connect, to find community, to give themselves to something larger, to make a difference, to know that they are loved.
The question Is not, “is there suffering.” The question is not even the age-old question of theodicy, “why is there suffering.”
No, the question for a community that would call itself Christian is this: what are we doing about suffering? Where do we stand in relation to suffering sisters and brothers? We are called to stand with them. To be alongside them in their suffering. To carry the light of Christ into the darkest corners so that people who dwell in deep darkness know that they are not alone, and that the darkness is not the end of the story.
I have a dream.
And when we go into such places – to rebuild together the homes of our neighbors in need or to travel together to places far distant to lend a helping hand there – when we go into such places we put flesh on that dream. When we go into such places – to feed the hungry in Arlington, perhaps by extending our hospitality even beyond our work at AFAC – when we go into such places we put flesh on that dream. When we go into such places – to meet the spiritual wayfarers all around us and invite them into deep community and deeper communion with the One whose love breathed life into creation – when we go into such places we put flesh on that dream.
I have a dream this morning.
And when we do these things, when we put flesh on the bones of an ancient dream, we begin, in fits and starts, with missteps and misjudgments to be sure, but when we do these things we begin to live into the incarnation of Christ in the world, we begin to live into the Beloved Community.
Christ stands at the center of such a community, calling us together – not to agreement on ancient creeds or theological statements – but to deep relationships: with God and with one another, such that we are able together to respond to God’s invitation to bear one another’s burdens and share one another’s gifts, to bind one another up, to love one another. It really is all that easy … and all that hard. That is my dream for us. Now let’s build a common dream together.

Our Needs and God’s Desires

December 20, 2009
Micah 5:2-51; Luke 1:39-55
Let’s hear some good news for a change! Oh, to be sure, the news of these days continues to be mostly bleak: wars rage; politicians argue; major issues loom undecided and seemingly undecideable.
But let’s hear some good news!
Maybe it’s the time of year, but I’ve been attuned to good news this past week. Did you hear the story of the 83-year-old woman who, just a few weeks ago, took her first solo flight after having decided, at age 80, that she wanted to take up something to keep her mind active. Some folks choose cross-word puzzles; she decided to learn to fly. Nothing particularly profound in that story, but simply joy is always worth sharing.
Or did you see, from the other end of life and far more profound, the story in the Post on Thursday morning about the 20-year-old woman who just found the two people who, when they were high school kids, had found her, a 12-hour-old baby abandoned on a suburban stoop? The kids – now in their mid 30s – had never forgotten that moment, and long wondered what had become of the baby. They were both overjoyed to hear from her after all these years, and are planning a reunion which the man called, “the best Christmas present” he’s ever received.
It’s always nice to hear a bit of good news.
So listen for a word from God in this news that is so good it moves a young girl in decidedly difficult circumstances to sing praises to her God:

“In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord."
And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever."

Mary’s soul cries out to God who is doing great things in her!
I love the readings for this morning. We are reminded in Micah and in Luke that God chooses what is lowly to make manifest what is great; God chooses what is weak to incarnate what is most powerful; God chooses the least of these to share the best of news.
Through Micah, God says, “I’m going to work through one of the little clans, one of the unimportant backwaters of the empire, to speak a word of liberation.” Through Mary, God says, “I’m going to work through a poor, unmarried teenage mother from the suburbs of Jerusalem, to bring good news to the poor of the entire earth.”
And, of course, the story doesn’t end there. Jesus chooses the most ragtag group of disciples upon which to build a movement of good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, liberation to the captives. Then God chooses Paul, the young movement’s harshest critic, to become its greatest apostle.
But the story doesn’t end there, either. Think of those whom God has called to bring good news to the poor, the marginalized, the outcast of history: a rather funny looking little Indian man to liberate his people and bring down an empire; an African-American preacher to bring down a century of Jim Crow laws and turn a nation’s self-image upside down; a middle-aged camera store owner to lead a movement the opened the nation’s closets and set a people free.
And all of these folks – back to Micah and Mary and Paul and on through Gandhi and King and Milk – are just the famous ones; the ones whose names are known. For each of them, there are millions who labored and who labor on in obscurity.
Maybe they are a pair of teen-aged friends who find a baby and figure out what to do to give an abandoned child a chance at life. Maybe it’s simply being able to find new life and new purpose as you age. Maybe it’s being a faithful member of a community such as ours and working to feed the hungry, house the homeless, liberate the captives, end the wars, empower the powerless, proclaim good news to the poor, and preach the good news that God so loves the world as to address and embrace it on our own level – if not on our own terms.
And that, in and of itself, is the good news! God does not address us on our own terms, because our terms are terms of distance when God desires intimacy, disbelief when God desires trust, disobedience when God desires discipleship. Moreover, we operate on patterns of domination where God desires cooperation, hierarchy where God desires relationship, and empire where God desires community.
It is clearly good news that God so loves us as to gather us in as a mother hen does her chicks, and it is just as clearly great good news that God does not offer us our own terms but rather challenges us – through the manger and the cross – to embrace new terms.
As Peg suggested so powerfully last Sunday, Christ confronts us on terms that are not always the most comfortable for us: the beggar at the door, the drug addict in the family, the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and abandoned on a stoop, the unemployed teenager on the street corner who might just be a savior.
And Christ calls us to respond. If we have two coats, then give one away. If we have more than enough food, then feed those who are hungry. If we stumble up someone in need, don’t turn away – turn to help. If we have more money than we need, share it with those who do not have all that they need.
In this season, in particular, separating out what we need from what we desire is profoundly difficult. Or, not so much. I was Christmas shopping last week over at Potomac Yard. There’s a Porsche dealer on the corner of Glebe and Rt. 1. Every time I sit at that light I ask myself, “Now, do I need the red one or do I need the black one?”
Confusing or conflating need and desire leads us into strange places – like the kid who ate his homework because the teacher told him that he needed to do the work and, anyway, it was a piece of cake.
I really do not need most of the things that have ever been on my Christmas lists. I know this because my life is rich and full already, and I don’t have many of the things on my list. Food, clothing and shelter are not on the list, unless you include chocolate, cashmere, and a beach house.
The story that touches us in this season – the manger, the young couple, the unexpected baby – this story knows the difference between need and desire, and the story reveals what we really need.
Of course the wise men get it all wrong. We do not need the gold – and we don’t even know what frankincense and myrrh are.
God confounds the wisdom of the world with this good news. And through this good news God’s desires are revealed as our deepest needs. Intimacy, trust, discipleship. Cooperation, relationship, community. God’s desires. Our needs.
What we need, beyond food, clothing and shelter, is connection and meaning. We need to be loved just as we need to be fed. We need to be loved just as we need to be sheltered. We need to be loved just as we need to be protected from the wind and the rain. And we need to love just as we need to breathe. That fundamental human need – love – is at the heart of all that God desires.
Mary understood, far beyond her years, that such love can turn the world around. She heard, with her heart if not her ears, good news in this unexpected pregnancy. She trusted, beyond her fears, that such love could be for her because it is not the exclusive property of those who possess the world’s treasure and think that thus their needs are met.
Mary’s song underscores the difference between needs and desires, and in her life they meet. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in her singular desire to magnify the Lord. In her desire, our needs are met.
That is the gift that awaits us and for which we are always preparing in our Advent lives. The question of Advent is really quite simple, then: When you meet the Christ child – on a stoop, at the manger – will you open your heart?
Amen.

The Message

December 13, 2009
The Rev. Peg True
Zephaniah 3:14-20; Luke 3:7-18; (Luke 1:1-24)
We just heard and saw the story of John’s birth, and what fits this season better than such a new beginning? Today we will consider the story of John, known to us as John the Baptist, who was born a special child. An angel predicted his birth to a mother beyond child bearing age. Sound familiar? The same was true of Isaac born to Sarah and Abraham centuries before. So we know John was chosen from the start.
He was six months older than his cousin, Jesus, and his mother, Elizabeth, was the relative that Mary searched out when she found she was pregnant as a young teenager. So the lives of John and Jesus were intertwined from the beginning.
We don’t hear about John again until he is a man living in the wilderness. Then he is called to preach. And he did – preach. He knew how to get people’s attention. Listen to Luke Ch.3:7-18:
John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?’” He said to them, ”Do not extort money from anyone by threats, and be satisfied with your wages.”
As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
So with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.
John the Baptist preached good news to the people – a gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins – in preparation for the Messiah, the one who was and is and is to come. It is like the message of Zephaniah that we heard, a message of salvation and joy, of a time when every evil will be abolished and God’s righteousness will be established. He talks about what happens when we truly live life with God here among us, with us, in us, a time of great peace - even if he began by calling the crowd a brood of vipers!
John’s message was one that was direct and simple – what you have been no longer matters. It’s what you are from now on that counts. It does not matter if you have been a solid person, a child of Abraham – your past goodness will not save you now. It does not matter if you have been a scoundrel – your past sinfulness will not bar you from salvation now. Actions tell who are people of God not bloodlines – children of Abraham are not automatically included – others not automatically excluded.
Repent now you who are both good and bad – and receive the harvest of God. Repent – turn around – refocus, reorient your life, acknowledging God’s goodness and your need – and the salvation of the Holy Spirit will be yours.
This kind of message always stirs people up – all but the hardest of heart – but then we are left with the question, like those who listened to John, we ask, “What then shall we do?” There is nothing to grasp, nothing to do with the phrase - repent and turn around. We can look inward and decide what we need to change but that is only half of turning around – actions are the other half.
Last week when David was talking about turning our lives around I immediately personalized looking inward, the first part of repentance, to my Niece. As some of you know Maria died the end of October, probably from drugs – the autopsy results aren’t back yet. She was 42, an adopted child whose birth mother was an alcoholic. Maria had Fetal Alcohol Effect, meaning she never understood the possible effects of her decisions. Cause and effect just weren’t there. She was influenced by drugs for over 20 years and managed to leave them behind twice – turned her life around. Both times were in extensive rehab programs. I don’t believe she ever really felt God’s presence in her life, or if so, it was brief – she could not maintain the actions necessary to really turn herself around. That’s what all our lives are like – except we don’t so obviously harm ourselves and others – As we work again and again to turn ourselves around we know we have God among us as we try to sustain our efforts to do as John asks.
John’s ethical injunctions to the crowd are notable in their modesty and their clarity – share what you have – play fair in your dealings with others – and don’t use your power unjustly. It is interesting that tax collectors, who were sinners by definition, and soldiers who were almost all gentiles were included as ones who could respond to the Gospel with true repentance, and change their lives in accord with their salvation. Everyone was included in John’s challenge.
But however modest John’s suggestions are – they certainly are not easy – sharing what we have with those who have nothing is not just doling out some money now and then. It means living simply enough, one coat instead of two, so that those who have none will be covered. Do you have two coats? Who here does not?
It’s hard to keep standards of simplicity in a society which considers number and quality of possessions a primary indictor of success. It’s hard to be aware that there is need around us and keep life simple as we make shopping lists, look online and in the mall for the latest and best to bestow on our friends and relatives. We are now deep into the bustle and rush of Christmas 2009, won’t writing a check be enough? Apparently not – it must be a lifelong commitment.
It is also hard to play fair, not cheat when we get a chance – especially if we won’t get caught. This is not just money but words, painting ourselves just a little better than we are – claiming a little more for ourselves than is our due. We’ve seen two extreme national examples of publicity seeking going to extremes this fall – the balloon incident in Co and the State Dinner crashing several weeks ago. It’s hard to be content with what we have – to be fair in our dealings with others – even when people aren’t watching – to help others get their fair share even if it means giving up the lion’s share for ourselves. It is difficult to give up our pride and power and, under God, to hold ourselves equal with our sisters and brothers – equal in our salvation. But this is what the message of the gospel is all about.
I had the equality of all brought home to me by a scruffy man who rang the doorbell early one Sunday morning at my church in downtown Baltimore. There were a lot of street people in that part of the city. It was a man who said he’d just gotten out of the hospital two blocks away and was diabetic and needed money for insulin. He showed me his card and prescriptions. My first inclination was to say no – but then I thought – what if he was telling the truth and my actions put him back in the hospital or worse. So I told him I’d walk to the drug store with him and buy him insulin if his card was legitimate. We walked down the street together and when we got to the Drug Store the druggist knew him and gave him insulin, I bought it. I learned that morning that that ragged man was equal to me in the sight of God – he helped me realize that I could do God’s work but must fight against society’s stigma of other people and my own erroneous perceptions.
The coming of Jesus means we are called to change out lives – John – that wild man from the wilderness who was reported to wear a camel hair coat and eat honey and locusts, asked those who came to hear him to play fair, take no more than is ones due, give to those without and begin today. This challenges the standards of the world. William Sloane Coffin says in all in two sentences, “We don’t have to be ‘successful,’ only valuable. We don’t have to make money, only a difference, and particularly in the lives society counts least and puts last.”
We are involved with AFAC, helping feed some people that society puts last. When food is given to those who are hungry all sorts of questions arise, questions that are insulting and degrading – Are they really hungry? Are they truly in need? Are they legal? Do they deserve our care? Are they lazy? In the standard of the gospel giving is the thing and hunger is its own justification. It is the standard of the world that judges those who are poor, homeless, hungry or sick.
Honesty and fairness - sharing and kindness, love and justice when lived out daily, challenge the principalities and power of the world – and they may react with anger and oppression and violence.
John was shut up in prison by Herod and later beheaded – an ominous precursor of Jesus’ fate. Goodness is always opposed by evil – and the good news is always met with ridicule or hostility in the world and even in ourselves. What then shall we do?
When we do as we are called we cannot expect reward in the world – but a life of goodness is its own reward – for it reflects the glory of the one who came to be with us, among us and in us. This is our challenge for Advent as we wait and make ready – this is the challenge of our lives – God walking with us as we turn around.
May it be so. Amen

Prepare the Way

Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 3:1-6
December 9
We all know this passage – prepare the way! We are all familiar with the phrases from Isaiah that Luke quotes here: “make the way straight, every valley will be exalted, make the way smooth.” Prepare the way.
So I want to ask this morning, what “way” do we mean? Which way?
It would be easy, timely, and even quite defensible to preach this morning about the way of nonviolence as we prepare to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, the nonviolent Jesus.
But such a gesture strikes me this morning as, in fact, too easy, and if there is one thing that we should be quite clear about it is this: the way of Jesus is not easy – ever. Even as we prepare ourselves to travel again to the manger, we must know that the way of Jesus is, ultimately, the way of the cross. Thus the way of Jesus is a way of transformation.
So if we are, these days, to be about the business of preparing the way of the Lord, then we are to be about preparing a way of transformation – of our lives and of the life of the world.
This, then, is no simple matter. It is not gumdrops and tinsel and packages, boxes and bows, no matter how much we might try to domesticate it and subsume it to market ideology or consumer culture.
Rather, this is, as Bonhoeffer knew, about the great turning around of all things. Bonhoeffer knew that there are two places that the mighty and powerful fear to go: to the manger and to the cross. As we prepare the way of the Lord, we are preparing ourselves to go directly into the midst of those places that the mighty and powerful fear to go.
I am neither particularly brave nor particularly risk averse – an odd and perhaps contradictory combination. So as I considered the places that I fear to go I thought first of places that I don’t particularly fear – caves, the tops of tall buildings, planes, the Beltway at rush hour, the woods, youth group road trips, roller coasters, zip lines, climbing walls, whitewater.
None of that strikes me as particularly brave – with the possible exception of youth group trips. The rest of it falls in the category of things I will do for fun.
But when I consider the places I do fear to go, well an interesting list quickly arises: jail cells; hospital rooms; sites of familial confrontations.
Like the manger and the cross, the places I fear to tread all have something to do with a fundamental fear of going too deep.
Sure, there is a certain innate unpleasantness to each of these places. For example, I simply do not like the smell of hospitals. Jail cells are not much better, and there is the threat to freedom that comes along with them as well. And, who, really, walks willingly into family confrontations?
But there is something deeper at stake in the fear of going into such places, and it is the same thing that is at stake at the manger and at the cross.
Hospital rooms are places of transformation. They may be places of great healing, but they are first and foremost, places of sickness and the fear that comes along with serious illness or injury. Jail cells are also places of transformation, and while there may be some hope of redemption in their midst, they are primarily places of the fear that comes with surrendering freedom and control. Family conflict? Again, they are sites of transformation – or, at least, of the possibility of transformation, and the fear that comes with emotional vulnerability.
As I considered my own list of places I fear to tread, I recognized quickly that what they hold in common is the possibility of transformation – and, more pointedly, transformations that I do not control.
That is what we open ourselves up to when we gather at the manger, or the cross.
When we go into the places where we fear to tread, and when we look within ourselves to find what it is that we are so afraid of, then we have begun to prepare the way of transformation.
These are places and moments of stepping into the refiner’s fire, of submitting to the harsh cleansing of the fuller. They are not easy, not comfortable, and most of the time we do our best to avoid them.
I have limited experience with jail cells, though I have been on both sides of the door, as it were. About 10 years ago, I found myself serving, for several months, as the designated spiritual advisor to a man who had committed a rampage killing, gunning down five people.
Sitting with this man, listening to his story, was a strange and fascinating experience that culminated for me when one of our final visits was actually face to face without the intervening glass and with no one else in the room with us. I was talking with him that afternoon – and I can vividly recall looking beyond him into the common room of the wing he was housed in and making sure that the guard there could see us through the window. As I was listening to him talk about jail life, his upcoming trial, his parents and his psychiatrists, I was struck by the ordinariness of his story, by the many touchstones of commonality between us – Presbyterian kids, raised in suburban households, college and grad-school educations. There but for fortune – in this case, paranoid schizophrenia and hallucinations and resistance to medications, among other things – there but for fortune could go you or me.
Coming face to face with that realization drives one to one’s knees in gratitude, and in repentance. For, as Bonhoeffer recognized, there is something about drawing close to the manger that brings us to the realization that God loves our worst enemies – and also those among us who do the most awful things – just as much as God loves us.
Therefore, we are called to extend mercy far beyond what is comfortable or acceptable or reasonable or safe, because we are called to come face to face with ourselves, and to recognize that which is of God in every other one we encounter – even the mass murderer who may, for a while, occupy the same room with you, or, even the same pew with you. For this is the way of Jesus – and such is the way we are called to prepare. No one ever said that the way would be easy; and no one ever promised that work of preparation would be welcomed with open arms and garlands and huzzas.
I was the on-call chaplain at the hospital about this time of year – Advent – a dozen years or so back. I was paged to surgical ICU, and told at the nurses’ station that a post-operative heart patient had coded and was not going to survive. Her family – husband and three grown sons – were in that little room where they send you when they think they are probably going to have to deliver bad news.
I knocked on the door. When it opened I introduced myself as the chaplain, and one of the sons immediately said, “we don’t need no stinkin’ chaplain.”
I’m sure that dozens of come-back lines ran through my mind; fortunately I said simply, “if you change your mind, I’ll be right outside.”
A moment later, the father came out, made the unnecessary apology and asked me to join them. We talked for a while and prayed together. They were Pentecostals, so the praying was quite an experience for a decent, orderly Presbyterian.
It turned out that the son who did not need a chaplain, was a Desert Storm vet with, well, a lot of anger-management issues, and he was taking out the anger stage of grieving on a poor nurse who happened to be in the room when the mother had coded. He all but accused her of murdering his mother, and his brothers and their father – in the midst of their own shock and sadness – were caught up in the stress of family conflict.
I’m not sure how long we were together in that small room, the five of us, awaiting the final word that we all knew was coming. We probably spoke together and prayed together for more than a half hour before the nurses called me out to speak briefly with the surgeon and we went in together so that he could break the news.
More tears were shed; more angry words spoken; and then, more prayers. I asked a nurse if the family could see the woman’s body and say goodbye, and we were led into the room. We prayed again, and I stepped to the doorway to leave them alone, and as I did, they joined hands around the hospital bed and sang the most mournful, poignant, hope-filled version of Silent Night that I have ever heard.
When they finished, the angry son stepped over to me and asked me if I would find the nurse at whom he had directed so much anger. I said that I would, but I wondered fearfully what he was going to do or say.
She was at the nurses’ station and I asked her if she was willing to speak with him, knowing full well how much venom had been spit in her direction. She said “yes,” with no hesitation, and we walked back to the family. All of this happened in one unit, so there was never much distance between anyone, and I think the entire nursing staff was paused in their work to watch and see what was about to happen.
The son looked her in the eye and said, “I am sorry. Will you forgive me?”
In the midst of bearing a most difficult cross, “will you forgive me?”
At the cross, at the manger, the places where we fear to tread in our strength, where our egos do not want to be for they are no longer in control.
But a way has been made there for us to come in our weakness, in our most vulnerable moments, to find grace and mercy, forgiveness and love.
John came preaching repentance, because he knew that such coming clean is a necessary first step in preparing our hearts, our lives, our world for the way of Christ. But he also came quoting Isaiah, because he knew that while the way is not easy, there is a balm along the way, there is mercy along the way, there is hope along the way.
So this Advent season, where are the places you fear to tread? What transformations await you?
Prepare the way.
For there is, even now, a voice that cries out: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'
Amen.

These are the days

November 29, 2009
Jeremiah 33:14-16; Luke 21:25-36
These are days you’ll remember
Never before and never since, I promise
Will the whole world be warm as this
And as you feel it,
You’ll know it’s true
That you are blessed and lucky
It’s true that you
Are touched by something
That will grow and bloom in you

These are days that you’ll remember
When May is rushing over you
With desire to be part of the miracles
You see in every hour
You’ll know it’s true
That you are blessed and lucky
It’s true that you are touched
By something that will grow and bloom in you

These are days
These are the days you might fill
With laughter until you break
These days you might feel
A shaft of light
Make its way across your face
And when you do
Then you’ll know how it was meant to be
See the signs and know their meaning
It's true
Then you’ll know how it was meant to be
Hear the signs and know they’re speaking
To you, to you

Among the problems I have with our fundamentalist sisters and brothers is their tendency to read apocalyptic literature as literal, historical prophecy. That doesn’t really help. You wind up with things like the movie 2012 – it just doesn’t get you anywhere unless you are the film maker. Apocalyptic literature, at least in the Bible, is intended to be a word of hope, and certainly those passages that we read this morning are filled with hope if we understand the promise within them.
But I find that flat-footed interpretation of such strange texts are less helpful than more artistic impressions. Now I do not pretend that Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs had Advent in mind when they wrote and recorded “These Are Days,” but the song still strikes me as an anthem appropriate to the season, for the signs and wonders the Biblical writers point toward are for you, and they are full of laughter and of light shining across your face.
Sometimes a song or a poem or a painting or a gesture or a tradition or a ritual can speak volumes more than even the best-chosen words. So, this morning, as we consider the promise implied in these ancient texts, as we light a single candle – to remind us, to prepare us, to curse the darkness – and as we gather at this table, remember: these are the days, our days, our moment to live in God’s time and to experience and receive some small part of the promise that a shaft of light will make its way across your face – that a light will and does shine still in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.
Let that let dwell in you these days of waiting and preparing, of longing and listening, of hope and wonder.
These are the days that we have been given. Let us rejoice and be glad in them. Let us do our part to make them days of justice and of peace. Let us do our part to remember the promises of God, and to live into them with faith, hope and love.
And let us begin these days in the breaking of bread.