The Near End

Joel 2:23-32; Luke 18:9-14

October 23, 2016

When I was a teenager there was a man in Chattanooga who used to walk back and forth on Market St. down town carrying a sign that proclaimed “the end is near.” Seems that so many towns had people like that with signs like that that it became a meme before memes became, well, memes.

I was only a teenager at the time, so I didn’t have a great deal of experience to judge whether or not the end felt particularly near in the mid 1970s. I suppose some combination of Vietnam, Watergate, and disco may have made it feel more apocalyptic, but I wonder how often, over the countless years of human history, it has felt like “the end was near.”

Some people seem to think that our present times feel like end time. Knowing that, I tried to do a bit of research to find some history of end-times prophecies, but I got stuck quickly upon discovering that, according to Armageddon News – which is apparently a thing – the end will be October 31 of this year. I reckon there’s no real need to worry that there are only 62 more days until Christmas. Never mind that, according to those same folks, the world was supposed to have come to its end back in July, and, before that, some time last year, and before that some other time and date.

Of course, the end has always been near in the human imagination. The text from Joel this morning is a fine reminder: “I will show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.”

Not a single word about this fall’s presidential campaign.

That human beings have always harbored apocalyptic visions about the near end of everything is not news, and, in and of itself, it’s barely even interesting. No, the run-of-the-mill end-time prophets of doom can be occasionally entertaining, but their predictions don’t much concern me.

Their motivations, on the other hand, can be fascinating. For example, the predictions at Armageddon News are clearly designed to be click bait for the advertising embedded in their YouTube content. Apparently there’s money to be made in end-times predictions.

That makes a bit of sense if you think about it. After all, most of us wish we knew more about the future than we do, and fixing an end point to it all limits the amount of time about which we know so much less than we wish we could. If it’s all coming to an end on Halloween I don’t even need to worry about trick-or-treat candy … unless the end is coming after 9:00 p.m. or so. Dang, I’m going to have to go back and check on that!

Or not. Seriously. There’s a ton of bad biblical interpretation out there, and probably none more unfaithful and, well, just plain wrong than that which has been wasted on end-times prophecies. Sure, scripture is filled with apocalyptic warnings about the wrath of God or the final salvation of the faithful, but the same scripture also always assures us that we cannot know the time.

As I said, there’s a ton of bad interpretation out there. Most of it has one thing in common: it is used to maintain an unjust status quo. It’s pretty easy to see this when it comes to the use of scripture to, for example, uphold patriarchy or slavery or heterosexism. But the same patterns hold true in end-times prophecy.

Indeed, the pattern of using poorly interpreted texts to maintain the status quo around particular issues of injustice often intersects with end-times prophecy. We’ve all heard about preachers who tell their followers that women in places of power or gays getting married are sure signs of that God is fixin’ to destroy the earth. To be fair, I guess they’d call such things “causes” rather than “signs” of the end times.

But such preaching is pretty much exactly what Jesus is calling out in this parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector.

Luke tells us straight off why Jesus told this story: there were some people who trusted that they, themselves, were righteous, and they regarded others with contempt. There were, apparently, some folks who believed so strongly in their own righteousness that they could never possibly be wrong. There were some folks who believed themselves to be so much on the straight-and-narrow that they could never be crooked. There were some folks who believed themselves to be so pure that they could never possibly be … oh, it’s so tempting to say “nasty” here, but let’s just go with “unclean.”

Moreover, these same folks were in positions of power and influence. They were leaders in their communities, and, in particular, in their religious institutions.

Now, despite the obvious allusions I’m making, let me rush to assure you that, when it comes to self-righteous self-deception, this really is one of those cases where both sides do it. Indeed, all sides do it.

We do not want to see ourselves as the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable, but that leaves us with only one option: the unclean, sinful, deeply compromised, deceitful, duplicitous, collaborating tax collector.

Hm … self-righteous prick or deeply broken human being? Isn’t there a third choice?

Truth is, no. There’s not. This is the muck in which we are mired. This is the human condition that Paul understood so well when he observed, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

However, Jesus’ parable does over an invitation to a way through. It’s not a way out. There is no way out of the human condition. But there are various paths.

Jesus names the path he offers as a way of justification, and it begins with acts of repentance.

The Greek word translated as repentance in the New Testament is metanoia. It’s a fascinating little word that means, literally, to turn, as one might do on a path in order to see other possibilities, as well as to see the road already travelled. In other words, repentance involves understanding honestly where one has been and seeking out a path forward that may well include, or even require, a change in direction.

Self-righteousness, on the other hand, is self-delusional because it does not bother to look around. In its certainty, self-righteousness blinds one not only to one’s own brokenness, but also to other ways of living in the world. Moreover, it blinds one to others and to the gifts they might bring to one’s life if one could only see them.

Blind to others is not quite right, though. It would be more accurate to say that, in self-righteousness, we are blind not only to an accurate view of ourselves, but also to an accurate view of others. We can see them, but mostly what we can see of others is how wrong they are.

It’s easy to grasp this pattern in a hyper-partisan political season, and a story I saw on Facebook last week illustrates it so well. While this example will be recognizably partisan, it doesn’t take much imagination to flip the script in terms of liberal and conservative characters.

Heath Rada, who is the immediate-past moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) shared this story of standing in line to vote last week:

Well, I just voted. What has always been a wonderful and rather exciting outing was not this time. Here's why. A conversation in the long line with the three people standing behind us -

Them - Hillary is so crooked. She is really the devil. And Democrats are all cheaters. 

Me - (having been listening to this type of banter from them for 10 minutes already, with references to the faith included) I wish you wouldn't say that about Democrats. Neither all Democrats nor Republicans are all cheaters and that just isn't accurate. 

Them - Oh yes they are. And Hillary is evil.

Me - Well, I think there are issues and concerns in many camps around this election, and we really need to look at facts.

Them - The facts are in the Bible, and Hillary is not born again, so she is not a Christian.

Me - Silence for a bit

Them -( to each other but obviously so I could hear them) - I went to a Presbyterian Church recently and they were friendly but the sermon was milk toast. They didn't preach the Bible. In fact, I understand all Presbyterian sermons are canned and read.

Me - (couldn't be quiet any longer - despite my wife's pleading) No, you are wrong. I’m a Presbyterian, and our preacher's sermons are not canned. But you know what, this conversation isn't healthy. Let's agree that we are all God's children, and try to look for ways to show our love and care for one another.

Them - No that is absolutely untrue. Hillary and you are NOT God's children. 

Me - Then who created us?

Them - God is your creator but until you are born again you are not claimed by him as his children.

Me - I'm sorry you feel that way. I beleive that God loves each person in this world, and claims them as his own. I am going to love you even if we disagree.

Them Are you a politician?

Me No

Them Well you sure talk like one and look like one.

In the lengthy comment thread, Heath’s godson shared this:

Isn't it interesting how mystery and certainty play out in our faith stories. When we are completely certain we know who God is, we don't have to keep reaching and changing. The world makes more sense because we can organize and categorize people and action. With mystery, we approach the stranger with hope and humility, we mold and remold ourselves as we stretch towards new understandings and ways of being. I desperately hold on to the mystery of God, because in mystery I find my only path of spirituality and humanity.

There is so much that we do not know, that we cannot know. Creation is unimaginably vast, and the depths of the human heart are unfathomable. How can we possibly, credibly claim to know the fullness of the Creator of all of that? How can we possibly claim to know if – much less when – that profoundly mysterious God will call an end to it all?

What we can know is this: Jesus points a way through the living of these days. It is a way of honesty – with ourselves, with one another, with our God. It is, thus, a way that requires honesty about our own limits, our own faults, our own failures.

But it is also a way that teaches us, over and over and over again, that those limits are not the final limit. What feels like the end – apocalyptic nightmares and all – is not the end. God is not finished with us yet.

We may feel often timid, fearful, and utterly alone. That’s paranoia, and paranoia is part of the human condition. But the way through paranoia is not self-righteousness – that denial of mystery which is, ultimately, a denial of self and of the God of all righteousness. No, the way through paranoia is metanoia – that ongoing and transformative journey of repentance that leads us, ultimately, into koinonia – another rich New Testament word that means community.

That is our purpose. That is our goal. That is the chief end of humankind: to live together in harmonious community in the joy of the One who calls us together. The end is near. If we want it. Amen.

In the Meantime

Jeremiah 31:27-34; Luke 18:1-8

October 16, 2016

Reading this parable from Luke during the week my mind kept running to Psalm 27. It’s my favorite of the 150 songs that comprise the psalms in scripture. I am moved by its lyrical opening affirmation: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” And I take comfort always in its closing lines: “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”

But then I am reminded by Tom Petty that “the waiting is the hardest part.”

Most of us, most of the time, do not enjoy the waiting, no matter what we’re waiting for:

·      Children looking at wrapped presents beneath a Christmas tree;

·      A patient waiting impatiently for test results;

·      Candidates on election night waiting for the returns.

The waiting is the hardest part.

So, what are you waiting for these days? For what do you long? I trust that it’s pretty clear that another way of putting this question is, simply, what are you praying for? I invite you, in a brief time of silence, using one side of the slip of paper you received when you came in this morning, to write down one or two responses to those questions: what are you waiting for? For what do you long? What are you praying for?

silence

The parable that Jesus told his disciples according to Luke is about the waiting, about the hardest part. The parable underscores the difficulty in stark terms: there was a widow who came to the unjust judge to petition for justice.

Whenever a widow shows up in scripture we should imagine the most powerless figure. She is a woman in a patriarchal society who has no man, and thus no economic power, no social power, no standing in the religious community, no voice, and no champion.

Justice in Luke is always about turning the economic and political tables, and about the restoration of right relationship. The widow wants to be heard, and she wants to have legitimate power within the social, economic, and religious systems that define her life.

The judge refuses to listen, and refuses to listen, and refuses to listen. Until he does.

As Gandhi said, “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

And into each comma in that series one pours countless hours of waiting: waiting for the calendar to turn, waiting for minds to turn, waiting for systems to turn.

Jesus spoke to a community that understood waiting. Israel had been waiting for the messiah, for the return of King David or of one like him to take his thrown and restore the glory of the nation.

Luke tells us that this parable is about prayer and faithfulness, but, as always, if we listen for voices from the underside our exegesis will be more faithful and more enlightening. That is to say, if you want to grasp the depth of scripture – or, all the more so, to be grasped by it – listen for the interpretive voices of those long silenced or marginalized.

One African-American pastor, speaking of this passage in Luke, remarked simply, “unless you’ve knocked on a locked door until your knuckles are bleeding you don’t know what prayer is.”

It helps to understand the nature of the doors that we bang on in life, lest all we get from the knocking is bloody knuckles.

In her chapter of Faithful Resistance, my colleague Annanda Barclay names a few of the doors: guilt, shame, complacency, comfort. She argues that these patterns perpetuate injustice, and, in particular, white supremacy. “Guilt, shame, complacency, and comfort act as emotional and physical barriers inhibiting our ability to create change.”[1]

Certainly these are barriers, but they are more like locked doors than stone walls. In other words, they may be locked, and it may take years of banging on them, or, perhaps, of searching for they key that fits, but however long it takes, it remains always possible to open them and, thus, to get through them.

Therefore, Jesus parable becomes also instruction for how we wait, for how we live in the meanwhile this side of the locked door that we so desperately need to get through.

A few minutes ago, I asked “what are you waiting for?” and did so understanding the question to be about the outcome, as it were; about the “what” that awaits on the other side of the waiting.

I’d like to pose the same question again, with a different emphasis: what are you waiting for? In other words, what reason do you have to continue waiting? Why are you waiting?

More to the point of Jesus’ parable, what is going to be the nature of your waiting? How shall we live in the meanwhile? Are there actions, or, perhaps, practices we can engage that make of the meanwhile something worthwhile.

For, you see, how we wait makes all the difference in how we ultimately receive that for which we have longed. Indeed, how we wait for the door to open goes a long way toward determining what we’ll discover on the other side.

Put a bit differently, how we choose to spend the many and lengthy seasons of waiting in our lives determines, to an almost complete extent, how we live our lives on both sides of whatever doors we long to open.

For example, as we wait on pins and needles for the outcome of next month’s election we can spend our waiting time consuming all kinds of rhetoric designed, primarily, to make us fear the outcome – whatever the outcome may be.

You know the stuff I am talking about. It is almost unavoidable in every conceivable form of media. The worst of it arrives as conspiracy tripe or rank bigotries.

We have choices in all this. We can actively engage by volunteering our time with the campaign of a candidate we support. We can get involved in local groups working on the issues that are of deepest concern for us. Perhaps most importantly, we can turn off the stream of commentary.

Let me introduce you all to your new best friend: the off switch!

Seriously, the most important theological advice I can offer you on waiting is this: turn off the streams of vitriol that rain down all around us. This is true no matter what you are waiting for. Do not fill your head with ugliness. Turn it off. Shut it down. Avoid the people in your life who fill your mind with it.

This is not, of course, merely about politics. It is about every aspect of our lives. Choose with care what you put into your mind, into your soul. While we are not computers, that old programmer’s adage is as true for us as it is for our computers: garbage in/garbage out.

I experienced this in a small, insignificant, but instructive way last week. I spent about an hour or so one afternoon re-writing the old Stone Soup folk story for last week’s e-blast. I had a blast in researching the roots of the tale and then in re-writing it for you. It put me in a frame of mind I’d simply call open.

Then I walked over to the post office to drop something in the mail. As I walked up Irving Street toward Liberty Tavern I noticed a man u-turn his scooter into a parking spot on the side of the street I was walking up. He took off his helmet, and, as I approached, he called to me saying, “I am sputtering out of gas and I don’t have my wallet. Do you have a dollar?”

I actually only had a ten dollar bill, so I said, “let me get some change.” I went into a sandwich shop – where I had to buy a chocolate chip cookie to get change … whoa is me – and took the guy a buck.

Was he pulling a really cheap scam? Was he poor or merely careless? Was he “deserving”? I don’t know, nor do I care. What I’m pretty sure of is this: if I had spent the previous hour perusing ugly news and views I would have walked right past the guy. Instead, we enjoyed a brief conversation about scooters and motorcycles and the beauty of that afternoon. I gave him a dollar. I ate my cookie.

As I said, an insignificant little moment, but one that brought a little joy into the world. Joy – the deep joy of true shalom, the joy that we sing about when we proclaim that “God will delight when we are creators of justice and joy” – joy is what lies on the other side of the door that I will keep knocking on until my knuckles bleed.

The color of my own waiting that day was to engage in something creative – re-writing an old folk story after re-reading several versions of it in the midst of reading several commentaries on Luke. In other words, my waiting, my meanwhile, was being shaped by the practice of study, of prayer, of creative work.

Those are among the ways I can keep knocking on that door that the whole of creation longs to pass through.

I invite you to take that piece of paper you wrote on a few minutes ago, and on the other side, jot down a word or two that describe for you a way of waiting, a practice for the meanwhile, that shapes you and sustains you as you knock on whatever doors need opening in your life. In other words, as you consider what you are waiting for, ask yourself what you can do about the waiting by way of either hastening the time when the door swings open, or of shaping your own life such that you can keep on knocking with the same steadfastness of the widow, trusting that “surely we shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”

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[1] In Rick Ufford-Chase, Faithful Resistance, 2016, p. 45.

Faithful Resistance

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Matthew 25:1-13; Luke 17:11-19

October 9, 2016

How many of you are familiar with Godwin’s Law? It’s the internet adage, coined in 1990 by American author Mike Godwin, that “as an online discussion grows longer the probability of a comparison involving Hitler or the Nazis approaches 1 in 1.”

It is the law that spawned my own internet serenity prayer, “God grant me the wisdom to avoid the comments.”

In this particular political season, Godwin’s Law has been proved over and over and over again – and, oh my, what a workout it’s getting this weekend. Both major parties, if you believe the comments – that you should never read – have nominated spawn of Hitler.

Sadly, such overheated rhetoric has become the norm in what passes for political discourse in the United States these days. The fact that we all recognize Godwin’s Law, whether or not we can name it, speaks volumes about the sorry state of our public conversation about anything that matters.

Indeed, when every conversation winds up in the same place – Nazi Germany – then none of the conversations can be taken seriously. Alas, most of our public conversations these days take place on the internet, and when the content of those conversations gets reduced, not to the least common denominator but, instead, to the most commonly named dictator, then we are getting dangerously close to becoming just like the five foolish bridesmaids: we’re wandering around in the darkness with no oil for our lamps, unable to see beyond our own narrow vision and thus completely unable to read the signs of the times.

When we have no light by which even to read then we cannot engage text or context, and thus we cannot even begin to grapple with the deadly serious questions of our time much less illuminate these questions for the broader community.

There’s talk in some theological circles about a “Bonhoeffer moment” presented by the circumstances of this fall’s presidential election. I believe that we are, in fact, in just such a moment, but I believe that most folks who are talking about it are blind to the depth of the chasm on whose brink we stand.

That is to say, I have been asked, specifically, if we are approaching or have arrived at a point when, as a matter of faith, one must oppose the candidacy of Donald Trump. Frankly, I believe that the challenge to the church in the United States is far deeper than any single candidate in any particular election. So, contrary to Godwin, I will have no truck with comparisons of Mr. Trump and Adolph Hitler.

When one speaks of a “Bonhoeffer moment” in Presbyterian circles, one turns immediately to the Theological Declaration of Barmen. Written in 1934, primarily by Bonhoefer’s friend and colleague, Karl Barth, Barmen declared that the so-called German Christian movement was fatally contaminated by Nazi ideology and had ceased to be faithful to the gospel. Through Barmen the confessing church declared that by following Nazi principles the German Christian church had ceased to be the church of Jesus Christ.

If we are at a Bonhoeffer moment for the church in the United States, the overt support from certain conservative evangelical pulpits for Donald Trump is but a symptom of a far deeper disease, and, more to the point, conservative evangelicals are not the only part of the church who suffer from it.

It’s appropriate that today’s lectionary includes one of the classic healing stories. I was going to say that we’re like the nine lepers who don’t bother to express gratitude, but actually, I fear that we in the church today don’t even know that we are sick. In our delusion, we don’t bother to cry out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

Instead, we just shuffle merrily along not noticing that we are rotting away.

That may sound overly harsh. After all, we have a rich, vibrant, caring, and compassionate circle here. But we are just one small part of a much larger body. It doesn’t mean much to have a healthy pinky finger when your heart is failing.

Speaking just for the Presbyterian part of that larger body in the U.S., the last year the church actually gained more members than it lost I was eight years old. You could tell a similar tale for every single major part of the church in the United States, including the conservative evangelical part of it and the Roman Catholic part of it. The only difference in the stories of declining membership, finances, and social influence would be the dates that mark their respective beginnings.

Numbers are not the end-all and be-all, and membership and money were never part of Jesus’ ministry model. Nevertheless, such metrics are not meaningless. The challenge comes in understanding what they imperfectly point toward.

I believe that the vast decline in the U.S. church actually points toward a state of affairs that Jesus would have recognized quite well, and one that the brief text from Jeremiah can help us address.

The church in America is captive to American culture. A movement whose source lies in the explicitly anti-imperial project of Jesus has become captive to the American empire, and, as such, we have lost our voice. We have lost the capacity to speak an authentic critical voice condemning the none-too-subtle racism, sexism, and heterosexism of the Trump campaign because we have, historically, given the church’s blessing to precisely these attitudes that the gospel calls us to condemn.

We have lost the capacity to speak an authentic critical voice to the casual militarism of the Clinton campaign because we have ceased to read even our own confessions and ignore the words of the Confession of 1967, which explicitly demands of the church that we call upon the nations of the world – including our own – to “pursue fresh and responsible relations across every line of conflict, even at risk to national security.”

We have lost the capacity to speak an authentic critical voice because we have deceived ourselves into believing that the American Dream is somehow synonymous with the Kingdom of God, and that what passes for democracy in America bears some connection to God’s election. We deceive ourselves, and, as New York City AME pastor Andrew Wilkes wrote last week for Religion Dispatches:

American elections, as we can see so clearly this season, are exercises in deception. The prevailing frame of the ideal voter as middle class and the excessive attention given to our presidential candidates’ tax returns (or lack thereof) and Goldman Sachs speaking fees have obscured more pivotal realities on the other side of the asset and income scale: there is a class of citizens and residents who endure taxation without effective political representation.[1]

We suffer an imperial disease, and yet, like the citizens of Rome in Jesus’ time, we don’t know we are sick because we are so comfortable. At least, that is, until we are not.

I read the gospels, and it makes me uneasy. I read Jesus saying to Peter, “put down your sword,” and it makes me uncomfortable. I read Jesus saying, “sell all your possessions and give your money to the poor,” and it makes me uncomfortable. I read Jesus saying, over and over and over again, “follow me,” and it makes me uncomfortable.

It makes me uncomfortable because I am complicit, and deeply so. I am an incredibly privileged person. I stand in a lengthy line of college-educated white folks. My father’s father was a law-school graduate. My father’s mother was a college graduate who began her higher education career before women could vote in the United States. Oh, and her grandparents in Georgia owned slaves.

I’d like to believe that had nothing to do with my life, but then I read my own sacred texts calling for justice to roll down like a mighty water, and for good news that includes release for the captives and let the oppressed go free, and it makes me uncomfortable in my complicity.

You see, we have a history and that history has a claim on us even if we remain willfully blind to it. We live in the heart of a sprawling empire, yet we claim to follow the call of one whose very life was such a threat to the empire of his day that it put him to death on a cross. That should make us uncomfortable.

As Rick Ufford-Chase writes in the introduction to Faithful Resistance:

We are culture-bound: unable to see the ways in which we have twisted the meaning of our sacred text to justify our complicity in the Empire project. We are so caught up in all that it takes to survive in a globalized world, and so desperate in our search for meaning, that we miss the answers that are right in front of us in the sacred stories of God’s people who have struggled with similar questions across millennia.[2]

Jeremiah wrote to God’s people as they wrestled with their own relationship to an empire. They were captive to a culture that was foreign to them, to their identity as God’s people. Yet Jeremiah told them to build homes, plant gardens, raise families, and seek the welfare of the city where they were.

In other words, do not turn your back on the world nor even on the empire that has enslaved you. Instead, engage it. Live your lives where you are, and do so with the welfare of all in mind. Seek shalom – peace, right relationship, the well-being of those who live in the city where you are, for in their welfare lies your own, in their well-being lies your well-being.

But, as you build, as you sew and reap, as you pass along to the next generation, do so with another world in mind. As followers of Christ, our ultimate allegiance is not to the American empire nor to whomever we elect to lead it; our ultimate allegiance is to the one who calls us to build the Beloved Community.

We cannot build it well so long as we suffer the diseases of empire: racism, sexism, unbridled materialism, unquestioned militarism. These diseases rot away the body politic, yet it is not too late to cry out: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

Our healing will not happen overnight. It will take generations, so we really ought to begin now.

Indeed, what we are building in this small part of the body is a beginning place, a small site of healing, and provisional glimpse at what shalom might look like.

When I experience even this small taste of healing, I hear a faint echo of a call and an invitation, and thus I return to this remnant of the church, this echo of Jesus’ call, if nothing else, to say “thank you.”

It is not much, but it is not nothing, for, as Henri Nouwen reminds us, gratitude is the fundamental attitude upon which all authentic religious expression rests. Gratitude, saying “thank you” pulls me out of myself as it draws me into a relationship with another upon whom I rely.

If I were to try to articulate an opposite to Godwin’s Law it would sound something like that because the project of gratitude takes one about as far from the totalitarianism of the Nazis as one can possible go.

So, here I am; here I pitch my tent; here I build; here I plant; and from here I cast my glance toward another world that remains, even now, still possible. Amen.

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[1] http://religiondispatches.org/doing-political-theology-in-an-election-season-howard-thurman-on-deception/?utm_source=Religion+Dispatches+Newsletter&utm_campaign=b428a9d501-RD_Daily_Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_742d86f519-b428a9d501-42411801

[2] Rick Ufford-Chase, Faithful Resistance, 12.