Eyes Wide Open

Isaiah 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8
I’ve got an announcement to make this morning: We are expecting!
Now, before you get all excited and start thinking that Cheryl and I have had a middle-aged Moses and Sarah moment, I mean “we, here at Clarendon, are, this season of Advent, expecting.”
“Expecting what?” you may ask, anticipating the typical churchly response about “the coming again of Christ into our lives.”
But I’m not going to give that churchly response, because I’m not sure I believe it. Let’s be honest about the whole “coming again” thing. I mean, it’s been 2,000 years since Jesus of Nazareth lived and died. When we talk about Jesus coming again, do we really expect that same human being, Jesus of Nazareth, in his first-century garb with a first-century mindset, to show up in our midst?
Sure, in some more or less important sense, we do anticipate Jesus coming again, but do we really expect it?
And what would that look like, in practice?
Well, let’s see, what does it look like, in practice, to expect any particular event? For example, I expected y’all to show up this morning for worship on the first Sunday of the season of Advent. So I prepared: I found the Advent wreath and candles, planned worship, wrote a sermon, got out of bed this morning. I expected you to come, so I took action, I prepared, I made the necessary adjustments and arrangements. I put my faith in you into action. I put my beliefs into practice.
We’ve been talking together all fall about the way we practice our faith together as Christians. We’ve talked about worship, about doing justice, about contemplation, about discernment, about hospitality and about a host of other practices of Christian faith and life that give vitality to the church of Jesus Christ.
As it turns out, this first Sunday of Advent coincides with our look at the final one of these practices that Diana Butler Bass identifies in Christianity for the Rest of Us – beauty.
It is altogether fitting that we should consider beauty this morning, as we enter a season of light, of decking the halls, of filling the sanctuary with even more beauty than it typically shows.
For beauty is not mere decoration, although the idea of decoration is interesting. Like most, if not all, cultures, the ancient Israelites had a word meaning “decoration,” and its root meaning referred to the fruits that grow on the branches of the trees. In other words, to understand the purpose of the tree meant to appreciate its decorations. The decorations pointed to the meaning.
In the same way, beauty in this place points us to God, and often, in our everyday lives – out there in the world where we anticipate the coming again of Christ, perhaps, beauty also points us toward God.
So go into that world this Advent season with eyes wide open, for in a profound sense, that is how we prepare, how we make the necessary adjustments in our lives, how we walk faithfully in the world in expectation that Christ is coming again.
Beauty – whether it is natural or created by us, whether visual or aural – points us toward God as the original creator and artist. Our calling, particularly in this season of anticipation, is to live with eyes wide open.
So, as we prepare to gather at table, let’s reflect together for just a couple of moments on our experiences of the artistry of God, on places of beauty and wonder that we’ve experienced in God’s good creation.

Thinking Outside of the God Box

November 23, 2008
Exodus 3:13-15; Matthew 1:1-17
One of the pieces of wisdom that old preachers pass along to those who follow in their footsteps is, “don’t preach the lists.” In other words, stay away from the genealogies – the long lists of names that crop up here and there in scripture and are, let’s face it, a bit tedious and tongue twisting to read through. But there’s a point to these lists; especially the quirky genealogy of Jesus that Matthew includes full of scoundrels, murderers and harlots. Not exactly the kind of family background to produce the king of kings and lord of lords, but then again, I suppose you can choose your friends but not your family.
Of course, that list of friends that unfolds in the gospels is not a whole lot more reassuring, come to think of it: tax collectors, more harlots, lower-class folks.
It seems as if the entire story of Jesus is about busting out of the mold.
Obviously, I’m going to like that story!
I’m not often accused of having thinking that is stuck inside of “the box.” However, I will confess that my thinking about God was stuck in the God box for quite some time and my thinking about the possibilities of church was stuck in, well, the sandbox.
My sojourn away from church as a young adult was driven by my own inability, and, to be frank, that of the communities of faith I had been a part of, to think beyond the God of height to one of depth, to think beyond a church of institution to one of movement. Perhaps I did not pay enough attention to the lists, and maybe my pastoral leaders ignored them. I’ll unpack the distinctions a bit later, but I want to suggest first that the failure was one of teaching and learning the distinctive and crucially important Christian practice of reflection or of thinking theologically.
I don’t mean by this merely the study of Christian theology or of foundational Christian texts – both Biblical and the texts produced by the post-Biblical tradition such as Augustine, Aquinas, the Desert Fathers, the writings from the Monastic periods, or contemporary classics such as Bonhoeffer, Barth or Tillich.
Although such studies are important and necessary for the living word of God to remain a lively word in our lives, I am more immediately concerned here with our capacity to see God acting in the world around us and to name God accurately in our lives. The ability to imagine God more fully and to name God more accurately for our time is a crucial task for the church in the 21st century, for when the God of love and justice is misunderstood as a God of merciless judgment human beings will call down the imagined wrath of God in holocaust that incinerates the innocent, the outcast, the marginalized and the powerless.
Therefore, our common task of theological reflection is critically important not merely as some esoteric academic exercise, but as central to our calling to live out the love and justice of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
By way of example here are two stories.
First, from one of my favorite theological texts, Sports Illustrated, comes the story of two young professional athletes who were involved, within the same year or so, in separate horrendous automobile accidents. Each of the young men was held up as a role model in his community. Each was a Christian. Each was in the phenomenal physical condition of elite athletes. One walked away from his accident without a scratch. The other was grievously injured and, if I recall correctly at this point, died from those injuries some months later.
Rick Reilly asked the one who walked away without a scratch about the accident, and the young man said, “as the car was flipping out of control I just took my hands off the wheel and called out to Jesus.”
When Reilly asked why he’d walked away without injury when the other guy, who also spoke of praying in the midst of his accident, had suffered such horrible injuries, the athlete responded, “he must not have said it right.”
When I read that story several years ago I remember thinking, “what a strange notion of God that is.”
That God, a God of height, up there somewhere with a private line that requires secret codes to access, answer prayers capriciously and pulls the strings of our lives like some mad puppeteer. As those who follow the bloodiest century in human history – as those living after Auschwitz, Cambodia, Rwanda and in the midst of Darfur – what can be said of such a God other than that he – and I use the masculine purposefully here – he is either not God or not good … or, perhaps, not good at being God.
That God is stuck inside a long, narrow, vertical box – a sarcophagus for a dead idol of our limited imaginations, and yet an image for God that remains dominant in so many churches, synagogues and mosques, in popular culture and imagination, and, significantly, in the minds of so many who call themselves atheists.
But what other images of God are possible if that God is dead?
Here’s another story, one that I posted earlier this week on my blog and beg your indulgence to repeat this morning.
As many of you know, my aunt Ruth died earlier this month after a long battle with cancer. Her memorial service was last Saturday and much of the clan gathered to worship and to honor and remember a life lived incredibly well and faithfully. Ruth and my uncle John, together with a small group of faithful Presbyterians, founded Camp Hanover outside of Richmond in 1957 – at the height of massive resistance to desegregation of schools and public accommodations in Virginia. From its inception, Hanover has been a place that welcomes everyone and its early days as a fully integrated southern institution came in the face of significant opposition.
Ruth died two days after election day and her final words, to my cousin Jo, were “see what we can accomplish when we all work together.”
Aunt Ruth was also an accomplished artist. At her memorial service, at Ginter Park Presbyterian Church near their home in Richmond, a banner that Ruth had constructed graced the sanctuary.
In her reflection, the Rev. Carla Pratt Keyes, the current pastor, told the story behind the banner. It was a story that Robert Fulghum tells about a conversation with philosopher Alexander Papaderos. In response to Fulghum's question, "what is the meaning of life?", Papaderos answered,
"When I was a small child, during the war, we were very poor and we lived in a remote village. One day, on the road, I found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been wrecked in that place.
"I tried to find all the pieces and put them together, but it was not possible, so I kept only the largest piece. This one. And by scratching it on a stone I made it round. I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the sun would never shine -- in deep holes and crevices and dark closets. It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible places I could find.
"I kept the little mirror, and as I went about my growing up, I would take it out in idle moments and continue the challenge of the game. As I became a man, I grew to understand that this was not just a child's game but a metaphor for what I might do with my life. I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of light. But light -- truth, understanding, knowledge -- is there, and it will only shine in many dark places if I reflect it.
"I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have I can reflect light into the dark places of this world -- into the black places in the hearts of men -- and change some things in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life."
Ruth heard that story and produced a piece of art that suggests mirror fragments falling from the Holy Spirit into outstretched hands of every size and color. Like all good art, the piece resists reduction to any single explanation or to words, but as I reflected on my aunt's final words and the testimony of her art, I thought about being one small part of the many who are holding small mirrors these days, trying to catch the light and reflect it into the darkest places of our world.
The God of a thousand shards of mirror is a very different God from the God of puppet strings.
Obviously, both are metaphors, images for a God who is beyond our words, but words and images and metaphors are all we have. More to the point, the words, images and metaphors we choose for God make all the difference in the world to the way we ultimately respond to God.
I don’t want any part of and will have no truck with a God who wills the deaths of innocents for some hazy higher purpose. But the God who, in the resurrection of the Christ, says a final, pleading “no” to such sacrifice, such violence, such murder for so-called “just causes,” well, that God calls me and compels me to act in the world with compassion and justice and mercy and love by means that are congruent with ends, by ways that reflect ultimate purposes.
That is the God I meet in Jesus. That is the God whose light spreads into the world and whose light I am called to reflect into the world’s darkest places. That is the God I meet in all those others who are also trying to reflect light into the darkness. That is the God indicated in the Quaker wisdom, “let the light in you seek out the light in others.”
That God is a God measured not so much in height as in depth and breadth – a God whose dimensions are not confined to the vertical but also include the horizontal, spreading out across creation and incarnate – not fully or completely and, too often to be sure debased – but incarnate nonetheless in creation itself, in you and in me.
That’s why the cross remains for me such a powerful symbol. Not only does it represent God’s “no” to violence, but moreover it speaks God’s final, powerful, undeniable “yes” of resurrection in the face of humanity’s fearful “no” to the love that Jesus embodied. Moreover, in its very construction, the cross draws together both the transcendent nature of God – the vertical aspect, if you will – with the incarnate One and the continuing incarnation in and through us – the horizontal aspect of God, if you will.
Thus it is that I can sing with a faith that is not triumphal but rather that of a servant, “lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim, till all the world adore his sacred name.” Amen.

Why Are We Here?

Amos 5:21-24
November 16, 2008
As we consider that provocative set of suggestions about Jesus, let’s sing together the second verse of “I Love to Tell the Story.”
You might quickly recognize that we just read that famous passage from Amos for the second straight week. Last week, when our focus was “justice” reading about “justice rolling down like water” made perfect sense. But this week? When our focus is worship? How much sense does it make to read “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies”?
After all, we are gathered here to share good news, to celebrate with a certain festive air, are we not? And we are gathered with a certain seriousness of purpose that, while not necessarily solemn – as in dour – is at least decent and orderly as befits good Presbyterians.
So, what are we to make of this prophetic word today?
Why are we here?
Let me propose a way forward: let’s begin with our own Presbyterian heritage.
Our Westminster Catechism asks, in its first question, what is the chief end, or purpose, of humankind?
The answer? To glorify God, and to enjoy God forever.
We are created to worship. That is as good a place as any to begin understanding why we are here.
Then again, why are we here? In this particular space?
Again, looking at our own Presbyterian heritage, our Book of Order reminds us that
Because the identifying reality of Christian worship was neither the place nor the space but the presence of God, the early Christians could worship in the Temple, in synagogues, in homes, in catacombs, and in prisons. Wherever Christ was present among them in the interpretation of the Word and the breaking of bread, that space was hallowed. Yet the Church began to set aside special places for gathering in the presence of the risen Christ and responding in praise and service. To this day, when the Church gathers, it is not the particular place, but the presence of the risen Lord in the midst of the community which marks the reality of worship (W-1.3023).
None of this guidance from our heritage is unimportant. It reminds us, in a theological sense, of who we are and of who God is. It reminds us that God deserves worship, is worthy of our praise, and that we are, in some sense, created for that purpose – to reflect the glory of the creator and to praise the maker. Finally, it reminds us that we stand in a long line of fellow creatures who have worshipped and who have passed along to us a particular tradition.
All of that is good, and right, and appropriate; worthy of our study and respect. But it still does not answer, on a deeply personal and authentic level, the question we began with: why are we here? Put more personally, why are you here? In this very moment, in this space – why are you here?
Consider that question as we sing the third verse of “I Love to Tell the Story.”
So, what is your story this morning? Why are you here?
After several stories have been shared: “Let’s sing the fourth verse.”
Let me tell you why I am here this morning, but first I want to share a brief vignette from the conference I attended early last week up at the Stony Point Center in the Hudson River Presbytery about 30 miles up the Hudson River Valley from New York City. We were gathered for what was billed as a consultation on evangelism that was follow up to the General Assembly’s adoption of a report and strategy called Grow the Church: Deep and Wide. Former moderator Rick Ufford-Chase called the gathering together and three of the past four GA moderators were among the 80 of us in attendance. It was a diverse gathering, drawing folks from across the theological spectrum of the PC(U.S.A.), and at one small-group gathering I found myself seated next to a pastor from a confessing church, that is to say, a congregation that is part of a conservative movement of churches and groups that have reaffirmed 1. That Jesus Christ alone is Lord of all and the way of salvation. 2. That holy Scripture is the Triune God's revealed Word, the Church's only infallible rule of faith and life. 3. That God's people are called to holiness in all aspects of life. This includes honoring the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman, the only relationship within which sexual activity is appropriate. This pastor was interested in outreach – real, authentic, non-judging outreach – to the GLBT community. At that very moment I knew that I was not in Kansas anymore!
But lest I think for a moment that I was somewhere over the rainbow, in a different group someone lifted up the startling factoid that, among Presbyterian clergy, fully 70 percent would not attend the church they serve. In other words, they would not go to the church except that it pays them to show up.
So, let me tell you why I am here this morning.
First, it is not because you pay me, though I am very grateful for your continued generous support of our family both with your tithes and offerings, but also with your prayers, and, most of all, with your love.
But, before any of that was made manifest, I was on my way to this moment and this place because of Jesus, because of his presence in my life.
Now I don’t have any dramatic Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus conversion story. I don’t have any falling-down-drunk-on-my-knees-in-the-gutter-praying-for-salvation story. I certainly don’t have any turn-the-slave-ship-around-Amazing Grace story.
To be sure, I have my own share of broken places, of scars and wounds. I stand regularly in need of repentance and forgiveness. I have been driven to my knees in prayers of anger at God and at God’s church, to be sure.
And I have been reminded that, if we are doing our jobs as followers of Jesus, there will be scars.
Despite that, or because of it, I stand here this morning because of Jesus. Because the old, old story of Jesus and his love is the story that makes sense out of my life.
At the lowest point in my childhood, the morning that my father’s mental illness became horribly acute, the love of Christ was made manifest for my family through our neighbor, the associate pastor of the Presbyterian congregation in which my dad grew up. Jesus was present in the tears and the trembling.
At the most trying points of my adolescence – nothing overly dramatic, mind you, just the typical crap that comes with those years – the love of Christ was made manifest for me by the youth minister in that same Presbyterian congregation – sometimes in words of wisdom, but more often through the great theological medium of basketball and late-night tennis matches. Jesus was present in the sweat and laughter.
In college, in the midst of the typical sorting out of vocation and calling, the love of Christ was made manifest to me by the kids who responded to my leadership at a Presbyterian summer camp. Jesus was present along the rivers and around the campfires.
Are you sensing a theme here?
After the better part of a decade of holding the church at arm’s length and trying my level best to fend him off, Jesus showed me his steadfast love again through a Presbyterian session that said, “we support you” and “yes, you can” to my unsteady and doubt-filled path of decision about going back to school, again, to pursue ordination in a church with which I had and still have a passionate love-hate relationship. Jesus was present in the polity of the PC(U.S.A.).
And when a wounded part of that church lashed out at me out of its own brokenness and left me unemployed and in deep doubt and despair about the future of this entire irrational enterprise, another part of the body – with, of course, its own broken places – reached out and made manifest the love of Jesus in more ways than Cheryl and I could count, and which we could only repay by continuing to follow the call of Christ as it led us to this place five and a half years ago. Jesus was present in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
None of this is particularly dramatic – it may not even be particularly interesting!
But I cannot help be filled with wonder and gratitude as I reflect on the ways that the love of Jesus Christ has been made manifest, made real, been incarnate in and through the lives of so many men and women and children who are connected with the Presbyterian Church. That love of Christ, which calls me, comforts me, and challenges me every day, has taken me to places of far more drama than my own imagination could conceive: to witness Christ’s love among the victims of Katrina; to witness Christ’s renewal in our own worship this past year; to witness Christ’s compassion around the deathbed in a hospital in Kentucky as a broken family sobbed Silent Night and sought forgiveness; to witness Christ’s peace in a DC jail cell; to witness Christ’s forgiveness and grace in so many lives in this community; to witness Christ’s presence with grieving families. Jesus was present.
I have seen this congregation feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and proclaim good news to the poor. Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, here among us. Amazing grace, indeed.
So I am here this morning for that oldest of reasons, that oldest of old, old Christian stories about the love of Jesus. I can tell you, as I learned so many years ago, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” And, what is more, Jesus loves me, this I know, for his people show me so.
May we continue to be that people and to show that love: to one another and to a world filled with people aching to know that they, too, are beloved. Amen.

Just Us?

November 9, 2008
Matthew 25:31-45; Amos 5:21-24
I don’t know if y’all realize this yet, but there was an election last week. Barack Obama was elected president of the United States.
I mention this only because, well, I haven’t said a word from this pulpit about the elections – other than “vote early and vote often” – and I wanted y’all to be reassured that I have actually been reading the news and paying a little bit of attention.
Looking back at the past couple of months of worship here, I think the only direct references to partisan politics have been in reading Psalm 146 on a couple of occasions and reminding ourselves not to put our trust in princes, in mortals whose flesh is like grass and whose plans vanish with their final breath, but instead to trust in the sovereign God of history.
So, with most of the votes counted and most of the contests settled, I’m not going to shift from that scriptural advice on leadership.
Nevertheless, I do not want to suggest, and I do not believe that scripture suggests, that history doesn’t matter, that what we choose to do with this time that has been given us makes no difference.
Scripture does not describe a God indifferent to human history, but rather a God deeply engaged and involved with that history.
Thus, scripture does not invite human indifference to our own history either, but rather a faithful engagement with it.
And through it all, scripture describes an arc of history that bends toward justice, because it describes a God deeply concerned with injustice and a people struggling under the weight of oppression and injustice trying – in fits and starts to be sure – but trying nonetheless to discern and respond to God’s call to right was is wrong, to relieve the burdens of oppression, to set the captives free, to preach good news to the poor and new sight to the blind.
No single election, as I have said many times, will bring all of that about. No single candidate nor elected official will bring about the coming of the kingdom of God. It did not happen in the times that scripture reports, and it will not happen in our time either.
But we, the people of God, can and must participate in the inbreaking of that kingdom in the world in our time.
You see, if scripture is about anything at all, if the story of Jesus is about anything at all, if the history of the church is about anything at all, it is about more than just us – just you and me and our private and personal concerns, our own suffering, our own fear. Oh, that is part of the story, to be sure, but it is only one part of it. The story, you see, is not about just us; it is about justice – for all of God’s children.
Sometimes that story of the journey toward justice plays out on the grand stage of history, on the front pages, and, yes, in the politics of a people.
Last week’s election was such a moment. Whatever your partisan position, the election of the first African-American to the highest office in the land is such a moment. The gracious remarks of President Bush and Senator McCain underscore that, while many Americans will fairly and faithfully disagree with President Obama’s policies, people of good will across party lines recognize that Obama’s election says something profound and good about the long and unfinished journey of America to become a more perfect union. The hands that picked the cotton picked the president; the feet that marched for freedom stood in lines to cast the ballot.
But scripture also reminds us that the story of the long arc of justice unfolds in endless small stories, in moments when the least of these is either treated with mercy and compassion, love and justice, or not.
As a Southerner, born in Alabama when it was governed by Jim Crow laws, I found myself, Tuesday evening, thinking back to my growing up in the South.
I thought about the neighbors we had in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where I was born. We lived, literally, on the dividing line between white and black Tuscaloosa. My parents became friends with the folks who lived right across the street from us, and when my mom needed to get to Birmingham one day to pick up our car that had broken down there she asked the woman across the street if she might catch a ride when her husband went to Birmingham the next day for the Alabama Black Teachers Association meeting. The woman refused to discuss it, and said that her husband would have to speak with my dad about it. After some discussion, the neighbor agreed to give my mom a ride provided she sit in the back seat of the car so that anyone who saw them would think he was a chauffeur.
I thought about those neighbors this week.
I thought about Northside Junior High School, which I entered in the seventh grade as part of the 90+ percent white student body and left after the ninth grade as part of the approximately 50-50 black/white student body. More to the point, I thought about Sterling Brownlow, a kid I played basketball with. Sterling was part of the large contingent of African-American students bussed in from across the river in downtown Chattanooga, a distance akin to being bussed from Capitol Hill to Arlington. I sat with him and his wife at our 25th high school reunion a few years back and, for the first time, asked him what it was like suddenly being removed from the neighborhood school he’d gone to and shipped to what had been predominantly white schools.
He said, “we were scared. I’d only been across the river once or twice in my life at that point, and we heard all kinds of stories about what would happen to us.”
I thought about Sterling this week.
I thought about the Northside Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga where I grew up. When I was about Martin’s age – an early adolescent – our choir director had established connections with the music program at the Seventh Day Adventist college in Chattanooga. Good Adventists worship on Saturday, which freed these voice majors to sing with our choir on Sundays. There was one young African-American man, Jesse, who frequently sang solos for us. He had a beautiful voice and a striking “stage presence.” His singing brought some of the rarest of Presbyterian worship responses: clapping. One Sunday Jesse came to worship with us, but not to sing. He sat in the pews that morning, and, by chance, happened to sit in the pew where some member of the church typically sat. I happened to be standing near the back of the sanctuary when the woman in whose place Jesse was sitting, stomped out the door muttering about “that boy sitting in my place.”
I thought about Jesse this week.
None of those stories will be written large in the history of American racial politics, but the stories of the least of these sisters and brothers are our stories, too. For whatever is done to those who live their lives in history’s shadows is done also to Christ.
I thought, also, about all the good church folks in the white mainline churches in those days who disagreed with racism, but found discussion of it in church to be disagreeable, to be too political. But when the status quo is unjust the failure to address it – no matter how uncomfortable addressing it may make us – the failure to address it condemns us all.
“When I was hungry, you did not offer me food … when I was scared to get on the bus you did not offer me comfort … when I was treated rudely in a house of worship you did not speak up for me … when I was in danger on the country highways you did not risk your safety for my dignity.”
Dr. King’s Letter from the Birmingham City Jail was addressed to the church and its leaders. His words still ring true:
There was a time when the church was very powerful--in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators."' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent--and often even vocal--sanction of things as they are.
But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.
In fact, though my heart soared watching the Obama family astride the stage of history in Chicago’s Grant Park Tuesday evening, my heart broke as I watched the election returns on California’s Proposition 8 show that, despite our progress as a people, bigotry is alive and well. And in the aftermath of that defeat, I have heard people, young and not so young, whose disappointment with the church has turned to outright disgust as leaders working in the name of Christ led the way in inscribing injustice in the law in yet another state.
You see, working for justice is not optional for Christians. It is who we become when we are baptized into Christ Jesus – we become the body of Christ in the world, his hands reaching out to help those in need, his feet walking the long dusty road toward justice, his heart defining justice always in terms of love and mercy and compassion for those who are history’s victims.
Such work in the world is inherently political because it has to do with the way we order life in the city, the polis, and it always involves power. As Frederick Douglas observed, “power concedes nothing without a fight,” and an unjust status quo always favors those who have power. But the redistribution of social power is not the work of any single political party or philosophy.
When God calls us to let justice roll down like a mighty water and righteousness like an everflowing stream, scripture does not specify the plumbing. There will be good and faithful ideas from left and from right and from in between, from those who call themselves Republicans, from those who call themselves Democrats and from those who claim no party – all simply seeking the most effective ways to let those streams run clear.
The measure of our politics, and of the church’s engagement, must not be secular partisanship, but rather spiritual discernment. What is justice? Matthew 25 paints a clear picture: justice in scripture is concerned with sorting out what belongs to whom and returning it to them. It is never perfect and complete, but is rather the journey of faithful living.
To those who are hungry belongs something to eat. To those who thirst belongs clean water. To those who are homeless belongs shelter. To those who huddle cold against winter’s chill belongs warm clothing. To those who are sick and without healthcare coverage belongs healing and compassion. To those who are held in prisons belongs justice. To those who are unemployed belongs an economic system that is fair. To those who love belongs the right to have that love recognized by civil society and by a church that recognizes that God has created us all equal and loves us all. To those whose lives are disrupted and devastated by violence belongs peace. To those who are voiceless and powerless belongs a seat at the tables where decisions are made.
To each and every one of us belongs a seat at the table that is set for us in the center of the beloved community toward which we journey with every step we take toward justice. May God guide our feet in the paths of righteousness, toward a highway of justice, in the ways of peace. Amen.

Come All You People

(This is one of those sermons you can only "preach" in a small congregation. It involved a great deal of moving around and conversation which cannot be captured in the manuscript. But it was a great service!)
Gal. 3:26-29; Gen. 17:15-17; Psalm 96; Rev. 7:9, 11-12
November 2, 2008
Last week it was a bit chilly in here, so I thought it might be a good idea to include some exercise in worship this morning.
So using the center aisle as the plot for our line graph, I want all of you who can do so to spread out along the aisle according to where you grew up. Use the back of the sanctuary as Arlington and the communion table as California, and beyond the table as points further around the globe. If you cannot easily move yourself physically, I want you to look at the line and mentally place yourself in it. Notice who is around you in the line – and make sure to greet those close to you by name.
As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. (Gal. 3:26-29)
Still using the center aisle for our plotting, I invite you to spread out according to age – approximately – with our most senior members toward the back and the youngest ones up by the table. Again, notice who is around you.
God said to Abraham, ‘As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.’ 17Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, ‘Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’ (Gen. 17:15-17)
Now, let’s spread out according to our religious backgrounds. If you grew up in the Presbyterian Church, stand there in the back – where real Presbyterians always seem to sit! If you grew up with no particular faith background at all, gather up near the table. If you were raised Roman Catholic, gather near the front pews, if you were raised in a non-Christian faith tradition stand a bit further back from the Roman Catholics, and if you were raised in a Protestant tradition other than Presbyterian gather a bit further back. Again, notice who is around you.
In God’s family, there are no outsiders. All are insiders. Black and white, rich and poor, gay and straight, Jew and Arab, Palestinian and Israeli, Roman Catholic and Protestant, Serb and Albanian, Hutu and Tutsi, Muslim and Christian, Buddhist and Hindu, Pakistani and Indian – all belong. … God’s dream wants us to be brothers and sisters, wants us to be family. … In our world we can survive only together. We can be truly free, ultimately, only together. We can be human only together, black and white, rich and poor, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jew. (Archbishop Desmond Tutu, from his God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time.)
This time, let’s spread out according to what social concern or issue you are most passionate about. This is not a question about where you stand on an issue, but rather what you are most passionate about. If stopping hunger is your passion, gather up close to the table. If peacemaking is your thing, gather around that front pew. If the rights of women are your primary concern gather near the back. If it’s GLBT concerns, gather close to the back. If it’s children’s issues – education, child health, and so on – a little closer to the front. If you are passionate about the environment, stand here. If immigrants’ rights are your passion, stand here. If you are chiefly concerned about health care, gather here. If I’ve left your primary concerns out, go just beyond the communion table.
Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I. compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. (Letter from the Birmingham City Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr.)
Next, arrange according to musical preferences. If you love classical music – broadly defined – gather in the back. If you are a fan of rock/pop – again, broadly defined – gather in the front. If jazz is your thing, gather here. If you’re into the blues, here. World music, here, and show tunes here. If something else entirely is your thing, come right over here.
There are approximately 140 instance of the word “song” in scripture. Here is one of the best known:
1O sing to the Lord a new song;
sing to the Lord, all the earth.
2Sing to the Lord, bless his name;
tell of his salvation from day to day.
3Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvellous works among all the peoples.
4For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
he is to be revered above all gods.
5For all the gods of the peoples are idols,
but the Lord made the heavens.
6Honour and majesty are before him;
strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. (Psalm 96)
We have arranged ourselves in quite a few ways over the past few minutes. I hope that, at the very least, you’re not as chilly as you were last week! But, beyond generating a bit of heat, what’s the point?
Simply this, to remind ourselves that while we do share much in common here, we are also quite different from one another. There is among us a great degree of diversity of thought, of opinion, of experience.
Jesus did not call his first followers, nor his contemporary followers, to be the same. He calls us, instead, to be faithful. Indeed, he calls us to a faithfulness that crosses all of the various lines of kin and nation that world uses to define and, too often, to divide us from one another.
Thus diversity is more than merely another in a laundry list of progressive political ideas. Diversity is an essential practice of Christian faith and life. As Diana Butler Bass puts it, “A Christian practice of diversity is not secular relativism. Rather, it is the active construction of a boundary-crossing community, a family bound not by blood but by love, that witnesses to the power of God’s healing in the world.” She goes on to say that “diversity is not a capitulation to political liberalism. Rather, it is a deeply biblical and profoundly theological Christian practice – one that is desperately needed in today’s world.”
We are shaped and formed here by that commitment, but moreover, it is our calling to be a light to the nations that demands of us a steadfast commitment to grow in our practice of diversity such that those who are deeply divided by race or creed or social issues or partisan politics can look to us – in our diversity – and say, as they said of the earliest Christians, “see how they love one another.” For in a world that is connected at the speed of the internet yet divided at that same pace, it is more important now than ever that we practice a deep love for one another even and especially in our diversity.
The Christian canon of scripture ends with the apocalyptic vision of John. In that vision of the kingdom of God, John sees this: “There was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages … they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, singing, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever!” (Rev. 7:9, 11-12.)
It is as small parts of that multitude, diverse in kind and tribe, in age and in sexuality, in taste and in talent, that we hear and respond to the invitation of our Lord to gather at table in his name to remember his life, death and rising to new life, to taste and see that God is good, and to experience the renewed reality of grace and mercy and love in our own lives. Amen.