Wizards, Aliens, and Strangers

January 23, 2011
Leviticus 19:30-38; Matthew 25:35
So I finally managed to see the most recent Harry Potter flick last week, and thus the warning from Leviticus brought a smile to my face.
Do not seek out wizards, indeed. I paid good money to see the wizards of Hogwartz, and I figure I got my money’s worth, and, perhaps, some insights more important for us than the wizard warning.
“Do not turn to mediums or wizards; do not seek them out, to be defiled by them.” I’d guess – though it’s only a guess – that this line from Leviticus is one of the passages that certain conservative Christians use to warn against giving J.K. Rowling any more business. It’s only a guess because that kind of narrow mindedness just ticks me off so I try not to delve too deeply into it. I say, give J.K. her due: she spins a good yarn.
In fact, I’d say more than that, she tells a tale enriched with some of the core values at stake in both of our passages this morning.
From the early days of the series, Rowling’s story gives voice to clear concern for outsiders, for the strangers and aliens. As Professor Dumbledore says in The Goblet of Fire, “You place too much importance … on the so-called purity of blood! You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be!”
I suppose it’s all too easy to hear in that single line what certain so-called Christians would fear in such a story. After all, we live in an age when, on the day of his inauguration, the governor of Alabama says it quite clearly:
“Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister.”
In other words, if you’ve not been washed in the purifying blood of the lamb, then you are not my brother or sister. There is so much not to like in that, beginning with the basic civics question of just what office this guy was being inaugurated to last week? Is he the governor of Alabama or theologian in chief? I can’t speak to his governance, but his theology raises all kinds of questions.
Such views, at their worst, reflect a vision of the church as keepers of purity and as guardians of some secret truth revealed only to those worthy of a seat at the table of God’s power. But is that the role of the church? To guard this simple table to keep out the unworthy? That is a theology, but it is not one that the Jesus of Matthew 25 would recognize.
I am always bothered and deeply saddened by the fundamental lack of imagination on display in such comments, whether they come from small-minded politicians or from small-minded wizards.
To be generous to the governor, one could hear in his statement a recognition that followers of Jesus are bound together in a specific, particular way, and thus we are stuck with one another whether we like it or not. In other words, the governor is my brother in Christ whether or not he or I like it, so we are bound together. At our very best – our seldom-achieved very best – the church can be a light to the nation by showing how we can live together in peace and affection, in genuine love, even when we disagree.
Now I’m far from certain that the governor had that in mind, but it doesn’t really matter. Either way, in putting it out there as he did, his statement reflects a profoundly limited theological imagination that we ought to question. For the sake of this morning, I’d argue that it is challenged by the Jesus described in Matthew 25, and, as it turns out, by Professor Dumbledore as well.
Now I didn’t study at Hogwortz Academy, so I’m not conversant with the sacred texts that guided Dumbledore. But I did go to seminary, so I do know the very first thing that we learn about God in our sacred texts. Go back to the first line: in the beginning, when God was creating …. God creates! It’s what God does. It’s who God is. All of scripture points to the relentlessly creative force of the divine who reveals herself to Moses as the one who will be who he will be.
Notice what I did there with gender? God will be who God will be – engendered or beyond gender, spirit, incarnate – God will be who God will be.
As such, God is always about to do a new thing, or is already about doing it. The entirety of scripture attests to this whether it’s freeing the Israelites from Pharaoh or dwelling completely in Jesus, the Christ. God will be who God will be.
Moreover, we learn from the beginning that we are created in the image of this creative God, and therefore we must also be creative.
Perhaps the biggest challenge facing us today, as Christians, as citizens, comes in learning again how to be creative, how to think creatively, how to live creatively, how to see the world creatively, how to see one another creatively. The real problem with the governor of Alabama – to pick on his example again – is that he is not creative enough to see strangers as sisters and brothers unless they see Jesus the same way he does.
What’s at stake is who’s in, who’s out, and how we make those distinctions. It was the same for Harry Potter. Harry’s nemesis, Draco Malfoy, put it this way early on in the series:
“I really don’t think they should let the other sort in, do you? They’re just not the same, they’ve never been brought up to know our ways” (from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone).
But seeing others differently is precisely the move that Jesus made. More than that, even, in the famous passage from the 25th chapter of Matthew, Jesus has the imagination to see strangers as himself, and to insist that his followers treat the least of these – the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the prisoners, the outcast, the widows and orphans – as they would treat him.
It’s a sentiment that Harry’s godfather, Sirius Black, would understand. “If you want to know what a man is like,” he said, “take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals” (also from The Goblet of Fire). We are measured best, he seems to suggest, by how we treat the least of these.
I think Jesus would agree with that. Moreover, in the Matthew text, Jesus does not put up any barriers based on belief either. Thus it is up to us, in our creativity, to extend the list of those we ought to treat as if they were Jesus: the foreigners, sexual minorities, the poor be they Hindu, Sikh, Moslem, Jew, nonbeliever. Whatever we do to them, the least of these who, Jesus says, “are members of my family,” we do to Jesus.
As followers of Jesus, we like to think we know how we’d treat Jesus. We’d welcome him in, and make sure he had a seat at the table. Well, as followers of Jesus that is how we’re called to treat everyone we meet, wherever and whenever we meet them: at the grocery store, in the office, at school, at the 7-11, on Facebook, in the comments section of our favorite blog, in traffic, in staff meetings with disagreeable colleagues, in the governor’s mansion, at the White House, at the little shack way up at the end of the holler. Moreover, it is how we are called to treat those whom the broader culture teaches us to think of as our enemies.
All of which means, also, that as a follower of Jesus I am called to treat the governor of Alabama just as I would treat Jesus. In other words, it means that we are called to treat those with whom we disagree just as we would treat Jesus.
This does not mean that we are called to agree with them, or to sit by silently when they say harmful or hateful things, but it does mean that we are called to be loving in our response to them, in our opposition to them. All too often, this is where our creativity fails us. All too often, this is when we need a wizard to help us out.
It would be nice, sometimes, to have a magic wand. But out there at the end of our creativity and at the edge of the magical is where we ultimately have to part company with Harry and his friends. We part as friends, entertained, and maybe even a bit inspired by their adventures, and we continue on here in the real world without a wizard.
We have, instead, a God who is creative enough to not need magic. We have a God creative enough to live in and through the life of a carpenter’s kid, and show us through that singular life, what it means to be children of God. We have a God, then, who chooses to work through folks like us – indeed, to work through us to fulfill the Divine vision of a world in which we learn to treat one another as fellow creatures sprung from the mind of the same Creator, as children of the same God, as sisters and brothers. Amen.

What Is Power For?

Amos 5:21-24; 2 Chronicles 9:3-8
January 16, 2011
It’s that weekend when we roll out the dream again. That one time a year when we dust off the most famous words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and hear pundits and politicians praise him as reporters speak in hushed and reverent tones of the “slain civil rights leader,” mostly neglecting to mention that he was, first and foremost, a preacher and a man concerned about the community of faith that is the church.
I could join my voice and quote the Dream speech, and talk about living in a nation where we are judged by the content of our characters rather than the characteristics of our bodies. We could measure our distance from that more perfect union in all kinds of ways, and, indeed, we could make the measure in terms of King’s framework of racism, militarism and poverty – the three great social evils that King named as eating away at the heart of that union.
And there would be nothing wrong with any of that. I have, in fact, done pretty much precisely that on this Sunday in other years, but this morning something else concerns me, and it was a central concern of King’s as well.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about power. What it is? Who has it? What is it for? I don’t think we can live faithful lives without getting this question right. All of our lives involve relationships with power, so how can we be faithful in our use of power those relationships?
To begin with this morning, let’s step back and talk about power in general terms. When you hear the word “power” what comes to mind?

In community organizing circles, power is defined like this: organized people and organized money.
That’s a useful description, but I think there’s a more basic definition, more physical, if you will. Power is simply the ability to make something move. In reflecting on power, Dr. King said, “Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose.” He went on to say, in the realm of human relationships, power “is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change.”
It’s an interesting phenomenon in many white liberal church contexts that when the subject of conversation turns to power people begin to squirm.
So my second question this morning is this: how do you feel about power?

I believe people get uncomfortable talking about power because all of us, in every social relationship in our lives, are constantly engaged in negotiations over power. Who has it and how shall it be exercised? It’s true in offices, whether your office sits on Capitol Hill or some location far less lofty – that is to say, less powerful. It’s true in classrooms. It’s true in church. It’s true in relationships and in families.
We are almost always engaged in negotiations – often in struggles – over power.
Frederick Douglas famously remarked, “power concedes nothing without a fight; it never did and it never will.”
In political, economic and social relationships in general and in most personal relationships, as well, I would agree with Douglas, because in those contexts the struggle for power is a zero-sum game. Power comes in limited supply, so sharing it means one party’s power is going to be reduced. Think about your most recent disagreement with a loved one. Where was power at stake? It almost certainly was.
But Dr. King had some instructive words for us about power.
“What is needed,” he said, “is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
King’s words help me to answer my own title question, “what is power for?”
When the queen of Sheba visited King Solomon, she witnessed God’s answer to that question. She looked around at all that Solomon had built, she observed that state of the people, and she said, “God made you king – God gave you power – so that you can do justice.”
Using Dr. King’s standard, then, God gave the king power to correct everything in his world that stood against love.
As a church, we are right to question power because it is so often abused. However, we abdicate our own responsibilities when we pretend that we are somehow above power. When we imagine that we’ll get our hands dirty by engaging power, we are refusing to engage a fundamental question of our faith, indeed, a foundational practice of our faith.
Moreover, I’d argue that we are denying something essential about power, and about God; something essential that ought to turn our understanding of power on its head.
You see, we struggle and fight over power because we believe it is in limited supply. But the reality is, authentic power is a gift from God, and thus its supply is without end.
Let me put that just a bit differently. God gives us authentic power – that is to say, the capacity and strength to change those things in personal, social, economic and political relationships that stand against love. That is a gift from God, because God is love, and God desires transformation of all relationships that are marked and debased by impediments to God’s own self.
God gives us power that we might find our way to God in every imaginable context and relationship.
In the earliest days of the Christian experience, the church, the community of faith, was sometimes symbolized as a boat. Joan Gray, former moderator of the General Assembly, is fond of pointing out that the church at its best is a sailboat, powered by the wind of the Holy Spirit. At our most dysfunctional, we’re a rowboat, powered only by human hands, never certain of our direction. As the church, then, at our best, we open our sails to catch the power of God and move with it into the world.
We do so not for our own sakes, nor for the sake of a good show on Sunday morning. Our passage from Amos surely underscores that truth.
No, we cast off and spread our sails to move with the Holy Spirit that justice might roll down and righteousness might flow forth.
If power is about God’s purposes for justice, then your calling as a Christian comes down to this: open your life to God’s power so that you might be used, in all of your relationships, in every context, to remove everything that stands against love. Live so God can use you, anytime and anywhere. Amen.

Come and See

January 9, 2011
John 1:29-41; Romans 12
So, have you heard the story of the 10-year-old girl in Canada who helped discover a supernova and it’s now named after her? Apparently, after about 10 minutes worth of work, she found something no one else had ever seen, even though it’s been out there for tens of millions of years. Star gazers and astronomers often spend thousands of hours searching the night sky, and most never make the kind of discovery this little girl made in less time than the average 10-year-old will spend avoiding taking a shower.
Sometimes it just works out that way. An epiphany of a lifetime happens in a flash – a flash of inspiration, perhaps, a flash of recognition, a flash of dumb luck.
Take the opening story from John’s gospel. What did John the Baptist see in Jesus that, apparently, no one had seen before, even though Jesus was roughly 30 years old? What did the first disciples see in him that they were willing to leave their lives behind and “come and see”? What did Jesus see in them? What were any of them looking for when they found each other?
Was it a flash of inspiration? Was it some inspired kind of recognition? Was it plain old dumb luck?
What were they looking for? What brought them together?
Well, let’s pause right there for a moment, and test our own experiences. What are you looking for that brought you here? To this place at this moment?

Let me tell you why I am here. I am here, at this moment, in this place, because I heard this voice, calling in the night, saying simply:
Will you come and follow me,
If I but call your name?
Will you go where you don't know
And never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown,
will you let my name be known,
will you let my life be grown
in you and you in me?

Those are, of course, John Bell’s* words, but I think they capture well the essence of Jesus’ invitation to the disciples: “come and see.”
The same invitation resounds for us today. It is an invitation to live our lives differently than we would otherwise, to live them differently than we would absent this summons, this invitation. It is an invitation that Paul heard on the road to Damascus when he was invited to live differently. It is an invitation he repeated to the young church in our passage from Romans:
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
When Jesus says, “come and see,” he invites those who hear to follow him on a journey of transformation that involves renewal, over and over and over again, as we leave our old selves behind to live into lives that are closer to what God has in mind for us.

Will you leave your self behind
if I but call your name?
Will you care for cruel and kind
and never be the same?
Will you risk the hostile stare
should your life attract or scare,
will you let me answer prayer
in you and you in me?

Risking the hostile stare … have you ever felt that way about your faith? Have you ever found it difficult to “come out,” as it were, as a Christian, as a follower of Jesus?
I certainly have felt that way. I have heard the words of condemnation from those who do not understand that the Creator’s love is not limited by the creature’s sexual orientation – and from those who do not believe that any Christian could speak a word of hope to those who have heard so many words of hate.
I have heard the mocking words of those who believe that the present time ordains an identical future, and thus dismiss as naïve efforts to, for one small but certainly profoundly significant example this weekend, do something constructive to address the epidemic of gun violence that plagues our nation.
It is often easier simply to keep one’s mouth shut. But when Jesus says, “come and see,” he calls us also to speak – to speak the truth in love and to speak truth to power.

Will you love the 'you' you hide
if I but call your name?
Will you quell the fear inside
and never be the same?
Will you use the faith you've found
to reshape the world around
through my sight and touch and sound
in you and you in me?

When Jesus says, “come and see,” he is inviting us to bring our best – and our worst – our whole lives to bear for the sake of the world that God so loves. Paul put it like this:
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”
Worship, then, is not something that we do for an hour or so on Sunday morning, when we read some ancient words, say a few prayers, sing a couple of hymns and then go back to the same old, same old. Worship is giving our whole lives to the one who says, “come and see.”
And what lives they are! What glorious, beautiful, creative, joyous, but also broken, suffering, lonely, lives. All of that, is what God asks of us. Our whole lives – lived wholly for the sake of a broken, suffering, lonely world.
When Jesus says, “come and see,” that is his summons, his call, his invitation. It is the one he heard in the voice that said, at his baptism, “this is my son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”
It is a call, ultimately, to live as if death does not get the last word. Think about that: death does not get the last word.
That is the epiphany of the incarnation. That is the singular insight of the Jesus story, and it is not, in the end, a flash of inspiration or recognition, and certainly not just dumb luck. It is the promise that makes possible the lives we are called to lead. You’re not going to get a supernova named after you when you answer this call. You’re going to get something far greater.
For, when we get over that primal fear of our own demise, then the life that Jesus calls us to truly reveals itself: a life of joyous, risky, barrier-breaking, peace-making, justice-seeking, hope-filled, faithful, loving, and worshipful service to the One who gave us these lives in the first place; the One who promises us, in baptism, that we will never be alone, and that nothing in life or in death will ever separate us from the love which is the ground of creation itself.

Lord, your summons echoes true
when you but call my name.
Let me turn and follow you
and never be the same.
In your company I'll go
where your love and footsteps show.
Thus I'll move and live and grow
in you and you in me.

“Come and see,” Jesus says now, to you. “Come and see.”

*(The Summons, words and music by John Bell)