Stewards of the Mysteries

1 Cor. 4:1-5

May 25, 2008

I spent the better – or, more accurately – the “worser” part of last Wednesday beaten up by a bad headache. By Friday, when head and schedule had cleared up, I was ready to sit down and write out this sermon. Then, as I was sitting in Murky Coffee alternately writing and chatting with Bud, somebody stole his bike from the rack in front of the coffee shop. I was, I promise you, pretty ticked off, and, as I stewed I considered the texts in front of us this morning and the setting of the Memorial Day weekend, and I found myself like Dorothy in Oz – all in a muddle.

This is neither news nor a play for your sympathy. I’ve been muddled before. I’ve had things stolen before, and I’ve been a chronic headache sufferer for more than 30 years. All of these are just part of life and, over the years, a source of quite a bit of reflection.

For example, having inherited this tendency toward headaches from my father and having passed it along to at least one of our children, headaches have pushed me to consider genetics, history, guilt and that question asked of Jesus, “who sinned, this man or his father, to cause such suffering?”

Jesus’ answer, “neither sinned; this suffering is an occasion for the glory of God to be revealed,” is, frankly, of less comfort to me than that the glory of aspirin and caffeine may be revealed. Of course, God works in mysterious ways, and who is to say that aspirin and caffeine are not among the greater glories of creation?

Suffering, on whatever scale, often gives rise to questions about responsibility and causation. My own small suffering, like a pebble in a shoe, has led me to understand that much suffering is simply part of the human condition – common on some level to each and every one of us and not an occasion for ethical or moral consideration unless we are speaking of the suffering we inflict upon one another through slights and crimes both petty and pathological in scale.

But suffering does, properly, give rise to theological consideration. After all, if suffering is simply part of the human condition, is it proper then to say that the suffering of creation is the will of the Creator? If so, then it is really not too much of a stretch to find yourself wondering down strange paths like those of pastor Hagee and speculating about Hitler and history. If you wonder down such paths, then what kind of God are we talking about? Or, as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy puts it, “who is this God person, anyway?”

If God is the One who wills shalom – wholeness, healing, peace, communion – for creation, then either God is lousy at the job of being God or we have not done such a good job of being stewards of the mysteries of God. In other words, either God is not worthy of the name nor of our worship, or we have neither understood God nor told God’s story in such a way that others will understand it either. Then strange stories of God and history take hold of popular imagination and stake their claims to power.

We find one reaction against such claims these days in the work of the so-called “new atheists.” They look at the great crimes committed in the name of God or for the sake of religions and declare, as does Richard Dawkins, that the biblical God is a monster, or argue, as does Samuel Harris, that God is evil, or say simply, as Christopher Hitchens does, that God is not that great after all. Variously basing their arguments on biology and evolutionary sciences and the history of faith-based crimes against humanity, the new atheists put God in the dock and condemn him.

I could, at this point, offer the expected preacherly move and defend God against both bold new atheists and bad old pastors. I could base the defense on scripture or the history of the church. I could build a case for God out the numerous passages of scripture that lift up the loving and creative attributes of God, or, in a slightly different tack, I could cite passages on the healing power of God. But while scripture may be a lively word, the living God is not confined to it, so simply looking at the sacred texts is inadequate. I could then go on to lift up the lives of the saints from Francis to Martin Luther King, or speak of the transcendent experiences of spiritual giants; but I don’t think God needs defense from the likes of me.

Mostly, when it comes to the arguments of the new atheists, I don’t think God needs defense from me because the god these writers take aim at has been dead for a very long time anyway. Indeed, the best 20^th-century theologians put this god to rest in the middle of the last century in the works of Paul Tillich, John A.T. Robinson, and Rudolph Bultmann – to name just three widely divergent lines of thought. Alas, too many Christian leaders have ignored their insights and cling stubbornly to the god currently in the cross hairs of the new atheists.

The god at the center of the diatribes of the new atheists is confined to holy books and holy wars; a capricious god at work outside of history and one whose death, thus, changes very little of history. Indeed, my own biggest criticism of the work of the new atheism comes down to this: “who cares?”

Or, as Georgetown theologian John Haught much more eruditely complained in The Christian Century,

“The blandness of the new soft-core atheism lies ironically in its willingness to compromise with the politically and culturally insipid kind of theism it claims to be ousting. Such a pale brand of atheism uncritically permits the same old values and meanings to hang around, only now they can become sanctified by an ethically and politically conservative Darwinian orthodoxy. If the new atheists' wishes are ever fulfilled, we need anticipate little in the way of cultural reform aside from turning the world's places of worship into museums, discos and coffee shops.” [1]

Still, I do not blame Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and the like for taking on this long-dead god with a shotgun blast that hits every kind of faith from every imaginable faith tradition including those of us who do not see a contradiction between faith and science, who embrace religious pluralism, and who honor honest doubt while embracing a God of depth more than a god of height. No, I don’t blame the “new atheists”; I blame us – the mainline church, heirs to the Reformation. We have been lousy stewards, and we have let others – fundamentalists of various traditions, including the tradition of a-theism – tell the story of faith framed to fit their own social and political agendas.

Now we sit on the increasingly smaller sidelines as the religious loud and the often equally bombastic anti-religionists seek to define the field. We find ourselves marginalized by a kind of fundamentalist theism and equally fundamentalist atheism, squeezed out of the frame by conservative evangelical Christians, ultra-Orthodox Jews, fundamentalist Muslims, and cranky Western intellectuals.

As Douglas John Hall, one of the most thoughtful theologians of the past quarter century, puts it,

“Statistics will confirm that so-called true-believing forms of Protestantism have been particularly conspicuous in U.S.-American life, not least of all in the arena of politics” – and here we can think both of the Religious Right and of the related phenomena of megachurches – “but [statistics] will not tell us what sort of Christianity this allegedly successful Protestantism is, nor why it appeals to a frightened public, nor how it stands vis-à-vis Protestant origins and the evolution of Protestantism. Nor will such analyses convey to us very much about the causes of the diminishment of the formerly most “established” churches in the United States and Canada. For instance, they will not help us understand the factors that have brought about our loss of nerve, our failure to educate our laity beyond the most rudimentary clichés of the tradition (if that), our assumption that we could carry on business as usual long after the whole Constantinian framework of our culture-religion had collapsed, and so forth. Statistics will not show how predictable it ought to have been decades ago that the automatic churchgoing of yesteryear would disappear as soon as the social structures and public moods that held it in place had been altered, as they were (vastly), nor how, in consequence, an alert Protestantism ought to have been working long ago to articulate for itself the “reason for the hope that is in us” (1 Peter 3:15).

“In short, statistics will not demonstrate that the primary cause of the humiliation of classical Protestantism on this continent has been the failure of these old denominations to be “stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 4:1) as these mysteries have been testified to in the traditions of the Reformation and its faithful interpretation in the best scholarship of the past four or five centures.”[2]

Hall has argued for more than 25 years that the only Christian theological perspective adequate to the demands of our time, of our disestablished, post-Constantinian, global, religiously pluralistic, consumerist, post-Auschwitz, nuclear, postmodern age will focus on the cross of Jesus Christ.

Thus, on such a weekend as this one, as I struggle to understand that strange confluence of memory, suffering, and faith, let me suggest that we will draw close to the living God only as we focus on the passion and death of Jesus. In lifting up the suffering God we come to understand that God is in intimate solidarity with a suffering creation. God knows our suffering; indeed, God suffers with us. That has always been, to me, the final meaning of the cross. We worship a suffering God.

The god at the heart of the bland and insipid theism that passes for too much of Christianity these days skips quickly past suffering to triumph and leaves behind a broken humanity huddling fearfully in the face of a social compact fractured by petty thefts and high crimes, hiding behind gates of sprawling suburbs built to submerge differences and hide suffering under an architecture of sameness housing a bursting balm of consumer goods, and wandering rootless in a culture that denies its own history in a never-ending quest for a newness more glorious than anything Solomon knew.

Only a suffering God is adequate to the pain of such a people. A clock-maker god-above-history will not do and neither will a triumphal god-over-history. The good news of the gospel, however, is precisely this: and we are invited to enter a relationship with just such a God-in-history, God-with-us.

This is good news … as far as it goes.

Why that caveat? Because God-with-us, Emmanuel, only comes as good news if we have the courage to meet this God in history, to be present with God, and, ultimately, to be present with ourselves.

To be stewards of any kind – stewards of creation, financial stewards, stewards of mysteries – requires being present. Too often we are too fearful to be present.

Why? Because the present moment is all too often full of suffering and fearfulness. As we gather on a weekend dedicated to the memories of those who served our nation in times of war, we must be particularly mindful of fear and suffering. It does not matter what you think of war – the present one, or any other one – to appreciate and honor the suffering and sacrifice of those in the midst of war. And it does not matter what you think of war to grasp it horror and fearfulness.

Nor does it belittle that particular fear, suffering and sacrifice of warriors to acknowledge the fear, suffering and sacrifice of those who do not fight. To come full circle from where we began: fear, suffering, and sacrifice are universal human experiences.

Yet most of the time we do not wish to remember this. We do not remember our own fear, suffering and sacrifice.

Why? Perhaps it is simply too painful. Perhaps we simply wish to forget.

Perhaps we do not wish to make much of it out of fear that our own suffering somehow pales in comparison to that of others.

I was channel surfing one night last week and caught the famous scene from Jaws when Robert Shaw’s old sea captain is comparing scars with the young whippersnapper played by Richard Dreyfuss. They are rolling up their sleeves to see who has suffered the most, boasting about who bears the biggest scars, as if suffering is a competition.

But, like the scars they show off, they never go beneath the surface to touch the real wound that they are dancing around: the fear of their own death. Without touching it, attending to it, that primal fear will never be overcome nor the ancient patterns – social, historical or individual – the ancient patterns that reproduce such fear will never be transformed. As our own suffering testifies, there is much that needs to be transformed.

If the god dismissed by the new atheists fades from history’s stage, we will not have failed in our charge to be stewards of the mysteries of God. Quite to the contrary. For as John Haught noted, the death of that god changes little or nothing in the present arrangement of things.

All of us carry around ancient fears and wounds from old hurts, losses, abuses, guilts, shame. Unless those deep fears and wounds are touched, tended, they never heal. Thus, the scar never goes away; it remains there to be irritated from time to time, to dredge up ancient wounds and fearfulness, and to keep us from living fully present to the moment. If such wounds are merely memorialized but never healed, ancient traumas continue to hold power over us and, with a calculus almost exact as that of genetics, we will pass them along to our children and spread them through our communities in ways best described as demonic.

If, on the national day of memorial we truly recalled our own past, perhaps we would not be so likely to repeat it again and again and again. But we are far too full of fear for such encounters, and in our fear we turn too often to a triumphal god who knows no suffering.

Only a God who knows suffering is adequate to the healing of such deep wounds.

Only a people willing to acknowledge our own suffering, to recall it, to remember the places where we have been dismemebered, will ever be able to enter fully into relationship with such a God and to be stewards of divine mysteries.

None of this will add a day or even an hour to our lives. It will not rid me of headaches nor return Bud’s bike.

But it will draw us into deep relationship with the loving and creative power at the center of all that is, and allow us to live from the lofty heights of that love and creativity rather than within the narrow valleys of our own suffering. It will free us from the prison of our own pain and its deep darkness.

Only a God who knows suffering can promise us that,

In a time of favor I have answered you, on a day of salvation I have helped you; I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages; saying to the prisoners, “Come out.” […] Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the LORD has comforted this people, and will have compassion on the suffering ones.

Amen.

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[1] John F. Haught, “Amateur Atheists,” The Christian Century (February 26, 2008); http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=4497.

[2] Douglas John Hall, Bound and Free (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005) 107-8.

Good News x3

2 Cor. 13:11-13; Matt. 28:16-20

May 18, 2008

On the liturgical calendar, we mark this Sunday at “Trinity Sunday,” and the lectionary traditionally places before us some of the readings that name the Godhead in Trinitarian forms. The apostolic benediction from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians and the concluding words to Matthew’s Great Commission are among the few places in scripture that offer anything like the Trinitarian formulation of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Thus, on the one hand, there is an invitation, on this particular Sunday, to ponder the nature of God in terms of the mystery of the Trinity.

On the other hand, the best reflection on this mystery that I have recently come across says simply this: “blah, blah, blah, blah, love.”

To translate: any way we look at God, we see love. No matter what theological explanations we use to describe God, we are talking about love. Or, as one of my favorite buttons puts it, “God is Love is enough theology for today.”

The good news is that whether we are talking about the creative breath of Genesis, the Word made flesh of John’s gospel, or the wind and fire of the holy ruah – the spirit of Pentecost – we are talking about a heart of love at the center of all that is beating for all of us. Good news times three!

I was thinking about this last week, during the incredible service we had here, as I listened to the wide variety of scripture passages read in 10 different languages. In every language, the message was the same: God loves us, cares for us, and calls us into loving relationship.

At the same time, the images of God named in the wonderfully imaginative texts of our scripture push us to broaden our understanding, and to be hospitable to a variety of such understandings.

In other words, the witness of scripture itself warns against a straightjacket of orthodoxy.

Why does any of this matter?

Because we share a common longing to be touched by the spirit.

As Jackson Browne put it in one of my favorite songs,

“Hunger in the midnight, hunger at the stroke of noon.

Hunger in the banquet, hunger in the bride and groom.

Hunger on the TV, hunger on the printed page.

And there’s a God-sized hunger underneath the questions of the age.”[1]

There’s a God-sized hunger underneath the questions of the age. I understand that lyric that same way I understand the notion that there is a God-shaped hole in each of our hearts. That hunger demands to be fed; that hole demands to be filled.

We will feed it and fill it with something: entertainment, food, sex, drugs, sports, risk, money, power. The question, as the many authors of scripture seemed commonly to understand, is not whether or not one believes in god, but, instead, which god do you believe in? Which god will you worship? Which god will you center your lives on?

The lectionary passages on this particular Sunday – a Sunday that calls us to reflect for a moment on these fundamental questions – tell us that the maker of heaven and earth is a God who calls all of creation “good.” The Genesis passage, with its plural reference to God – “we will create them in our image” – suggests that God is essentially relational; that God is revealed in relationship as inherently communal, or in community and communion. Thus, we learn also something essential and decisive about ourselves.

The apostolic blessing from the conclusion of the Corinthian correspondence reminds us not only of the essential nature of “God-in-community,” but also underscores the fundamental desire of God that we experience peace, that we participate in shalom.

Likewise, the Great Commission at the end of Matthew underscores not only these essential aspects of the nature of God, but reminds us quite clearly that we are charged with inviting others into the same shalom, the same communion with the Creator and with creation.

Taken together – with special attention to the charge to “teach them to obey all that I have commanded” – we hear in these passages an invitation to be clear first for ourselves about who this God is, about the nature of God’s presence with us as spirit, about the way of Christ.

In order to gain such clarity, it is incumbent upon us to share our lives together such that we are, indeed, pilgrims on a journey – learning from each other through sharing our own experiences of God, studying the long tradition of the story that shapes us, growing together as we endeavor to live out the love and justice of the gospel of Jesus Christ as best we can in our own time.

Toward this end, I want to invite each of you in a general way to begin thinking right now about ways that we might do this better among ourselves. In more specific ways, let me invite you to participate in one or more of four quite specific opportunities to learn, to grow and to serve.

First, to get started right away, join us for an impromptu “mini-brunch” and conversation among the various ministry teams of the congregation this morning following worship. Come on down stairs to Wilson Hall and gather around one of the tables and join in the conversation.

Second, almost as quickly as the first, come down to South Arlington tomorrow evening and join in a time of service to the least of these as we bag groceries for the Arlington Food Assistance Center. Then come over to our house for a simple meal and some good conversation as we strive to deepen the relationships at the heart of this community of faith.

Third, respond to this invitation – details of which will come soon – to participate in a study group in the fall entitled “Saving Jesus.” It will be one of the ways that we learn more about our own tradition, and about the way that tradition is being articulated for the 21^st century.

Fourth, consider the opportunity to join the next CALL group that will begin in the fall – again, details will come soon.

There is a God-shaped hunger whose pangs each of us experience. How we fill it depends, to begin with at least, on how we imagine God.

We’ll close this morning with a bit of conversation around that question: how do you imagine God, or, if this wording works better for you, what does God feel like to you?

To prompt your thinking beyond my own head-heavy language, I want to share a song with you. It’s called “Metaphor,” and was put together by my good friend, Noah Budin. I arose out of a workshop in which participants were asked to think of metaphors for God. As you listen, I invite you to think of your own metaphors, to think about the images of God in our scripture that speak most powerfully to you, and to ponder what God feels like to you.

So, as it were, listen for words from God this morning through this psalm:

A voice on the shore calling your name;

A hand outstretched light the flame;

Water at the dam waiting to burst;

Water in the desert quenching your thirst;

A lamppost, a beacon when the night isdark;

And when the hammer strikes ignites six-hundred thousand sparks.

I am that I am that I am and will be,

But you are everything to me.

An arrow that flies straight to the core;

A lover who cries but leaves you wanting more;

A rolling river, a bright morning star;

An unstoppable rain speeding right to your heart;

A humble house where the wind blows through;

Your window is open, let me occupy you.

I am that I am that I am and will be,

But you are everything to me.

It’s a trip of the tongue,

It’s a turn of the phrase.

I will open your lips

That your mouth may

Bring you close to love.

It’s what you remember and what you conceive;

What your revere and what you believe;

What you let go and what you forget;

What you relinquish and what you regret;

A melody playing on a whispered breath;

And harmony in the garden at the moment of death.

I am that I am that I am and will be,

But you are everything to me.[2]

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[1] Jackson Browne, “Looking East,” on Looking East, 1996, Elektra.

[2] Noah Budin, “Metaphor,” on Metaphor, 2006, Hands and Hart Music.

Why Are You Looking There?

Acts 1: 6-14; John 17:1-11

May 4, 2008

Have you ever found something completely unexpected when you were looking for something else? This happens to me all the time when I go searching through old files looking for something that I just know is in there someplace, but I find something else altogether – an old photograph, a note stuffed away years ago that carries me back to some far away place and time, an undergraduate essay that I have no recollection of writing and no clue why it’s been saved all these years but why toss it now. Or I go looking for a book on a shelf and find one that I forgot I had. Or go searching for information on the web and wind up finding such fascinating – and completely unrelated – information that I forget what I was looking for in the first place.

People who live more orderly lives probably don’t understand this at all, but I assure you: it happens more often than you’d think.

It seemed to happen with Jesus’ followers with surprising regularity.

As we’ve mentioned a time or two already this morning, next Sunday is the Sunday of Pentecost – the so-called “birthday of the church”; the day when the Spirit descended upon the first disciples in the midst of their fear and grieving, and empowered them to begin the Jesus movement.

We know why they were afraid. Jesus has been executed by the empire, and the hunt is on for any of his trouble-making followers who might try to continue his work. We know why they are grieving. Their beloved friend is dead.

None of that is any surprise at all. But what were they looking for? Why were they looking where they were looking? And, most important of all, what did they find instead?

This scene from Acts is so typical. Amidst the post-resurrection rumors and sightings, Jesus is in their midst. What are they looking for? What is the trajectory of their search? The limit of their imagination? What, again, are they looking for?

A sign that their time has come. “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom of Israel?”

Listen to that question again – “is this the time when you will restore the kingdom?” In other words, “are we going to win now? Are we going to take over? Are we going to reclaim the throne of David? Are we going to kick out the Romans? Are we going to clean up the temple? Are we going to win? Are we gonna kick some butt?”

Sigh. Deep sigh. They still haven’t found what they’re looking for; indeed, they’re still looking for the wrong things.

It’s as if Jesus says to himself, “oy, vey. I can’t deal with these guys right now.” And so he leaves them; simply disappears.

And the disciples look around as if to say, “what just happened? How’d he do that? Where’d he go this time?” They’re all craning their necks, looking up, and then, in the midst of them, on their own level but not where they’ve been looking, two men appear and say, “uh, dudes, why are you looking up there? Jesus? Well, he’s coming back the same way he went.”

One of the great and historic errors of the Christian church arises right there, in the historic misinterpretation of this small message. “Why are you looking to the heavens? Jesus will return to you in the same way that he was taken up.”

For the better part of 2,000 years – at the very least, since the time of Constantine and the birth of the imperial church – Christians have looked for a triumphant return from on high, for a restoration of the kingdom, just as the disciples anticipated. It’s as if they, as all of us since, missed out or forgot all of Jesus’ teaching about the nature of that kingdom. In our search for the kingdom of God, we’ve been sidetracked, distracted and bogged down in the various and sundry kingdoms of earth.

It’s as if we googled salvation – seeking salvation (that is to say, wholeness, communion with God, healing, shalom) and found a visual programming software, a business that can find your lost data, or a German microbrew. I actually did that: the beer sounded delicious: “… luscious apricot and peach aromas delicately interwoven with spicy suggestions of nutmeg and cinnamon. This heavenly soft, champagne-like elixer is cellarable for 3 years.”

Uh, where was I? Oh yes, looking for Jesus.

Sometimes, when we are searching for something lost, it helps to go back to the beginning. Of course, sometimes – and certainly in this case – the beginning and the ending get confused.

Why are you – why are we – looking to the heavens? To the places of power and prestige, of affluence and achievement, of dominion and authority? How – and where – was Jesus, in fact, lifted up?

On a cross … between two thieves. Amidst the lowest and the least, the outcast and despised, the poor and dispossessed. Precisely there, Jesus was lifted up. Precisely there, Jesus was glorified. Precisely there, Jesus found his kingdom.

If we seek it still, if we seek him still, that’s where we have to look.

Of course, we don’t want to go there most of the time. It’s really not too pleasant, and it certainly does not feel like triumph. There are no “mission accomplished” banners. There are no fawning crowds of admirers. There are no bright lights of celebrity.

Indeed, sometimes, the people in such places are neither pleasant nor pleased to see you. I got a call the other day from someone seeking food assistance. I explained that we work through the Arlington Food Assistance Center to provide that help, and then told him where AFAC is. I was going to offer him help in getting down there, but he simply said, “oh, that’s down there where the niggers and Mexicans live,” and hung up on me.

Whether we are feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, clothing the naked, visiting the imprisoned, making peace in the empire, doing justice with the outcast and marginalized, healing those with AIDS, welcoming and empowering GLBTQ people of faith – that is to say, when we are trying to follow Jesus and do the work of his kingdom – chances are pretty good that we are going to encounter human ugliness. Whether it is in the anger of those impoverished and cast aside or the anger of those whose power and authority are called into question by our witness, chances are pretty good that we are going to run into opposition, anger, resistance, or, perhaps at best, apathy, cynicism and sheer exhaustion.

So, why bother? Because those shades of resistance are not all we find when we go to the margins as a disciple. Indeed, we go to such places as disciples – as followers – because we know that’s where Jesus went before us, and if we want to encounter him again, risen and decisively powerful in our own lives, we have to go to such places ourselves.

“Men of Galilee – sisters and brothers of Clarendon – why do you stand looking up to heaven? This Jesus … he’s out there now in the places where he always was; go there, and you will find what you are looking for.”

Always Be Ready

1 Peter 3:13-22

April 24, 2008

I’ve been reading a pair of completely unrelated texts that came across my desk in recent days. One is a now-classic book by Quaker activist and writer Ched Myers entitled Who Will Roll Away the Stone? It’s one of those books I’ve seen and heard referred to for a number of years, but only just recently decided that, with a title like that, it would make excellent reading for Eastertide. Indeed, it does, but more on that in a bit.

The second text is a six-page, hand-written piece headed, “The Church is a Theocracy Not a Democracy,” that was sent to me and a handful of other clergy who were mentioned or quoted in a recent Baltimore Sun article on same-sex marriage. The writer, a clergyman from southern Maryland, wrote to explain to us that we are leading our flocks astray with our un-Biblical teachings and ecclesiastical waywardness.

With those two disparate texts on my desk, I opened the Bible to read the lectionary passages for this Sunday and read these words:

Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame.

Always be ready to give an account of the hope that is in you, scripture charges those who would call themselves followers of Jesus, disciples of Christ, people of the way. Always be ready to give an account.

I want to give you just such an account this morning, but first let me share with you why I bothered to wrestle at all with a long-winded screed attacking me and, to be sure, by extension attacking this congregation for, among other things, “seeking to help same sex couples sink deeper into the pit of sexual perversion.” I receive such stuff somewhat regularly. I suppose it comes with the territory, and most of the time I just throw it away. But last week, when Peg mentioned the “Unbinding the Gospel” event, I asked myself, “what is the gospel, the good news, that needs to be unbound at Clarendon?”

Then I read this letter attacking us for leading people into sin. Then I read Ched Myers’ reflection on a line from Native American author Leslie Silko’s novel Ceremony:

Stories, Silko’s elder says, are all we have to fight off illness and death. Christians finds such Stories in scripture – what I call the narrative of biblical radicalism. The problem is, the North American church has been fooled into thinking our Stories are just entertainment, or it has forgotten them altogether. At the same time we have been seduced by stories spun by the imperial Dream: the official narratives of the National Security Council and the six o’clock news, the fabulations of Madison Avenue and Hollywood. These tales promise prosperity, power, and prestige, but deliver only captivity. Worst of all, we Christians have confused our Stories with the narrative of empire, thus allowing scripture to be expropriated into the service of oppression.[1]

Be prepared to give an account of the hope that is in you. Unbind the gospel. Tell your stories. Share the good news. Let the chips fall where they may? Perhaps. But also, trust God with the outcome.

In the lectionary passage from Acts this morning, Paul is standing in the Areopagus proclaiming to the Athenians the good news about Jesus. He stands ready to give an account of the hope that is within him. The source of that hope comes to us clearly in the reading from John’s gospel: “I will not leave you orphaned, I am coming to you. … Those who have and keep my commandments are those who love me, and those who love me will be loved by my Father.”

That’s the good news, sisters and brothers, that we are loved by our Creator God, that we are graced by the continuing presence, the accompaniment of the risen Christ, and we are empowered by the Spirit to live out the commandments of Jesus: namely this – that we love one another just as he loved his disciples.

Unbind this gospel and share it with a world that so desperately needs to know itself as beloved. Give an account of the hope that is within us. Share our stories.

So, let me then give you an account of the hope that is within me by way of two stories from last weekend.

Last Sunday afternoon we went up to Rockville for the installation of our good friend, Leann Hodges, as associate pastor at St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church. Some of you may have heard us tell tales of Bud’s babysitting adventures with Alex. Alex is Leann (and Ray’s) four-year-old son. Alex is adopted, and he is a biracial child. He is, in the way of every child, extraordinary and also perfectly ordinary, and he was energetically hosting us in his home Sunday evening as we sat around telling tales of family and church, and breaking bread and sharing wine.

Simple, sacramental gifts of shared time and purpose. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in any of it, except for the fact that Leann and Ray are white Southerners, from Kentucky, and I am another one, born in Alabama, and at the time when I was a four-year-old boy an interracial couple would have been grounds for violence in our home states and the marriage of any such couple would have been against the laws of those states, and this one, and any child born of such a union would have been spurned and shunned by many if not most good Southerners.

Nothing out of the ordinary in any of it, except for the fact that such a child would not likely have found a home in very many southern churches not that many years ago. Nothing out of the ordinary in any of it, except for the fact that the infamous “way of life” defended for so many years in our part of the world saw itself as based on Christian scripture but that was, in fact, much more accurately understood as imperial court theology than as any faith in Jesus seeking new understanding for a new time

As I hopped on the Beltway to drive home last Sunday evening, I thought of Alex and wondered, “is that what people were so scared of?”

Second story from last weekend:

Last Saturday, Cheryl and I had dinner at Mike and Clark’s house. We had a wonderful time, sitting out on the back deck watching the birds splash in the birdbath, talking about our gardens, telling tales of growing up small town or Southern. We shared a delicious meal, breaking bread and sharing wine.

Simple, sacramental gifts of shared time and purpose. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in any of it, except for the fact that I am a minister of the word and sacrament in a denomination that still has so far to come toward welcome and embrace and empowerment of Mike and Clark and millions of other gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered sisters and brothers in the faith. Nothing out of the ordinary in any of it, except for the fact that we are living in Virginia, where the rights and privileges that Cheryl and I take utterly for granted as a straight, married couple are constitutionally denied to Mike and Clark. Nothing out of the ordinary in any of it, except for the fact that those civil restrictions – civil wrongs, as it were – are based in a theology that calls itself Christian but that is, in fact, much more accurately understood as imperial court theology than as any faith in Jesus seeking new understanding for a new time.

As Cheryl and I turned onto to Rt. 7 to head home, we asked one another yet again, for the thousandth time, “is that what people are so scared of? Mike and Clark?”

The hope that is within me this morning is simply this: that we might move the broader church and culture beyond such fear; that we might live into the day when there truly is nothing out of the ordinary about any of this; that such a day might be soon and very soon. That hope is based on nothing less than an utter conviction that God created us all and loves us all, and that we are called to love one another in that same unbounded way.

Why do I believe this, when the vast majority of Christians around the world see it differently? Because my faith is in a God made known to us through the lived experience of Jesus, who had love for all beyond all the bounds and borders his culture, his faith community, his ecclesiastical authorities erected in defense of the imperial status quo of his day. And because Christian theology ought to teach us that truth is not first and foremost propositional, but is rather relational and incarnational. We shall know the truth, as Christians, to the extent that we know Jesus and walk in his way, and to the extent that we know and love one another. To precisely that extent, we shall be set free from all that binds our hearts and minds in fear.

Finally, I believe this because human beings do not think our way into new patterns of living; we live our way into new patterns of thinking. And we share these patterns of living through the weave of stories that bind us together and make sense of the often chaotic, incoherent scraps of life. As Ched Myers puts it, “while logic can often persuade us to change what or how we think, only the circle of Story has the power to transform what we live by.” [2]

Those may seem contradictory claims at first, but I believe not, in the end. For it is the stories of our ways of living that move us to think differently about a new time. Without the experiences of breaking bread with folks not like me, I might live in fear. Without sharing the stories of those experiences, I might live in silence and fail to live into the calling to give an account of the hope that is within me.

Without the gospel witness of the transformative and revelatory power of breaking bread, I would have no context for explaining how the experience of breaking bread fills me with a faith, hope and love that casts out all fear.

We are all witnesses here. We are all called to share the good news that we experience together in this good place. We are called to unbind this gospel of love, precisely because the world is bound by fear. Sisters and brothers, always be ready to give an account of the hope that is within you.

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[1] Ched Myers, Who Will Roll Away the Stone? (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1994), xxi.

[2] Ibid. xxiv.