What's so funny 'bout peace, love, and understanding?

How is it that our hearts do not break beyond repair? The loss of life in Las Vegas - can it still penetrate us? Or, have we grown so accustomed to mass shootings, our pervasive violence, and the fear we have others, that this day of grief - like so many before - will pass into another day of normal?  If I do not give into fear, or political arguments, or media punditry, can I take time to grieve?  I will not give into fear.  I would rather grieve and pray, trusting God for strength and peace than to arm myself against others. 

Mutually Assured Destruction

I remember living in Philly during the pinnacle of the Cold War.  There was, from time to time, a pervasive nihilism.  Some would succumb to the inevitable feeling that death was waiting around the corner.  Each day, for some, was a day to work for justice and to turn the evil away.  For others, it was a release to hedonism and just party until the world ends. 

The most insane policy for nuclear safety evolved between superpowers.  “If you bomb us, we’ll bomb you. And there will be no spoils of war for anyone.  Everything, and everyone on earth, will be gone.”  Leaning full tilt into the insanity, the major world powers manufactured and stockpiled arsenals that would destroy the world several times over.  At the time, even those who supported these policies believed they were dangerous and ridiculous. Insane.  There was no better acronym than M.A.D. Mutually assured destruction was madness.

This is not a political rant. Nor a history of the Cold War.  Last night’s shooting of hundreds of innocent people in Las Vegas is one more step toward a nihilistic reduction of our humanity.  Not only in the violent action, but also in the frightened hearts of people without hope.  While the world was still in shock from the devastation of dozens of deaths, and many more wounded, pre-market trading of stocks of gun manufactures rose. 

Nasty, Brutish, and Short

As one friend posted on Facebook this morning: “Nothing will change. If a bunch of dead children in a school couldn’t provide the political will to change the law, nothing will.”  While I cannot challenge that assertion, I have to try.  Of all the inane and useless statements in the gun debate is the old standard, “Guns don’t kill people, people do”.  I hate hearing this statement, like nails on a chalkboard, this statement makes my soul cringe. While I have strong feelings about gun and the proliferation of guns, I have greater concerns about the broken people and damaged souls who cannot find alternatives for their fear, desperation, anger, and pain. 

And into these helpless feelings many more flee with each shooting.  Like Mutually Assured Destruction, when there is a mass shooting, more guns are sold.  With each outbreak of violence, fears are raised.  This cannot realistically be an endgame strategy in which we all become armed, all the time, on guard against everyone.  Are we in an arms race with each other?  In the 17th century, arguing for a form of civil society that would heal the experience of unending civil war, Thomas Hobbes described our present trajectory:

"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is Enemy to every man.... In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." (Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Chap 9). 

Love Casts Out Fear

If people kill people, then can we not gather our strength to love and to care for one another?  Into this war of all against all, my faith tells me still to love God and love people.  Not fear, but to love, since love casts out fear.  And when faced with violence, to resist the temptation to respond in kind.  These are all things I find in the wisdom of the church in the Bible.  These are not words of personal faith, solitary piety, or individual self-help buoyancy. These are words of creation to remake the world.  To create new cultures and societies in the reign and realm of grace, peace, and love. 

Maybe that's a big hope. But, what's so funny 'bout peace, love, and understanding?

You keep using that word...stop it

“Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.”

— http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=370874032

I was impressed by the work of Mark Davis, Left Behind and Loving It, for his work with nuances of the New Testament Greek text in Matthew 16:13-20.  In verse 13, the conversation begins with verb in the imperfect tense. Without getting too geeky on the Greek grammar, the point is that it changes everything.

Who do you say that I am?

Jesus asks Peter, "Who are the people saying that I am?" After Peter lets Jesus hear the gossip, Jesus points the question to Peter.

And this is where Mark Davis adds new depth.  In keeping with the imperfect tense of "saying" in verse 13, we now here Jesus' question to Peter completely different.  The question is not a pop quiz to see if Peter has been keeping track of the lecture and taking good notes.  No the question, in the imperfect tense becomes...

Hey Peter, with all those conversations out there about who I am, what are you saying I am as you join in? Peter, "who are you saying that I am.?"

Peter gets more than a little pat on the back which might make us think the point was for Peter to have come up with the "right" answer.  Jesus says, "God told you that".  Then, with that little bit of praise in his ears, Peter is then told to stop it.

Stop It!

Jesus tells Peter, and the other disciples, sure, I'm the messiah, that's a good answer.  But do not tell anyone. Stop telling people that I am the messiah.  As you join these conversations with others and they start talking about who Jesus is, don't use those words life "christ" or "messiah." Stop it. Just stop it.

Why? Because Jesus, doubts that the idea about Jesus identity and mission is clearly communicated by these titles.

What words communicate communicate is so affected by context and history. Jesus seems to encourage us to move our conversations fromwhat titles do we use, to what does Jesus do?

So what do we say if we don't use the titles, "christ" or "messiah"?  It isn't that these titles are not right, or untrue, or unorthodox.  The questions is, do they communicate anything? The term "messiah", the Hebrew form of "christ" was used for powerful kings and rulers in Israel's history.  Those previous uses were for people like David, the Patriarchs, and Cyrus of Persia.  But Jesus is different.  When these terms are applied to Jesus, the royal and warrior-like traits do not work. The term "christ" does not mean what you think it means. 

“When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.’ ”

— http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=370876484

What if in our conversations about Jesus we talked about, and pointed to Jesus' active work as one still healing blindness, enabling people to walk, outsiders to be welcomed into community, for excluded people (cognitively and physically delayed, racial minorities, gender minorities, and anyone else left out) to receive hospitality, and news that is good, welcoming, and loving given freely?

That is the answer that the disciples can keep stating.  Stop saying who Christ is. Show it.

Incomplete Thoughts on Charlottesville

Incomplete thoughts on Charlottesville

This week I was horrified. 

The weekend events of Friday and Saturday in Charlottesville only put a period at the end of bellicose and derisive week. 

Growing up, I remembered watching news footage of civil rights marchers attacked.  There were post-apocalyptic fears of the Russians and the West annihilating each other.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.  The historical perspective can make you wince or smile when old fashions come back.  Someday, even mullets will come back.  But the news of this week has gone beyond a wince.  Without a smile in sight.

In one week, two angry toddlers with power to destroy the planet hurled insults and threats at each other.  Each one, both emotionally driven, self-centered, and focused on their own agenda, poised to bring “fire…fury…power” down upon each other. 

In this same week, as an old historical monument of Robert e. Lee was being superseded by the march of time and justice, the unfinished business of America’s original sin came crashing in.  As culturally powerful white-supremacists, fearing their loss as the lone creators of their own future, playing a role as victims for having their place of prominence in society threatened by justice, fueled not by a simple misguided sense of injustice but by a misanthropic hatred, of an anti-life, anti-Christ movement gathered to say they are not done and they will not go away quietly.  They choose to see justice as a zero-sum game: the increase in justice and opportunity for some means the loss of justice and opportunity for them. Inspired, or at least in step with the Redeemers of the Reconstruction period, these forces will not go away easily.

Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images, August 12, 2017

I want to be on the side God chooses.

I have no doubt that as I read the biblical testimony of the people of God, they were abused, humiliated, and overpowered.  But the story shows God choosing the side of the broken, the exiled, the stranger, the weakest over and over again.  Not those who whine that their prominence is being diminished.  But the cry of the poor who have no advocate. 

I have not yet found a scripture telling my that God listens to the whining of oppressors losing influence.

I know these are human battles waged in every generation.  The personalities, locations, and catalysts change.  But the willingness to destroy in “fire and fury” speaks to the nihilism of our day.   Rather, we need to amplify of conviction of a love that claims allegiance to no empire, Phil 3:20.  A love that is willing to face the enemy, Matt 5:43-48.  And a love that does not hit back since our fight is against a pervasive spirit, Eph 6:12 always willing to ensnare and enlist broken people to fight its wars.

For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places, Ephesians 6:12

I’m not done trying to exorcise these forces from our shared lives as neighbors, friends, fellow-citizens.  I want us to redouble our efforts at demonstrating what a gospel of peace looks like: hospitality shared, kindness extended, sins confessed, humble service practiced.  We have held to a confession that believes that justice and peace are not only sought, but can be practiced.

Please, join us. 

What?! You Messin' Up My Garden?

He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.  Matt13:31-32

---

The lectionary passage for today was a warning.  Meant to make us stop and reconsider that biases we hold in our hearts, the plans we aspire to, and the brokeness to which we've become too accustomed.

We jumped into Matthew's gospel just after Christmas, beginning with the Sermon on the Mount.  From the outset, we established an interpretive filter through which everything we read in Matthew must pass.  That filter is hospitality, radical welcome, and removal of the walls separating insiders and outsiders.

The Filter is Hospitality

When Jesus reoriented the disciples with his, "you've heard it said...but I say unto you," (Matt 5:17-48) each time he used that rhetoric, his point was welcome.  You have heard that there are those who because of one thing or another are not to be included on the "inside", in our group, or on our side the wall.  But with each "but I say unto you" Jesus dismantled the wall and created the possibility of welcome. 

How do we welcome weeds?

In Matthew 13:31-32, Jesus tells a story of a weed growing in someone's garden.  In the garden grew food for the well-being of the household. This was not a hobby garden for pretty flowers, but a field in which grew food.  It would be precious, and protected. 

Then comes a breeze and in blows a seed.  As the mustard seed takes spouts and takes root, it grows.  It grows large enough to become a home for birds.  To gardener, the weed becomes a home for pests.  Birds will nibble on seedlings, young sprouts, or simply dig up the seed that the gardener just planted.  Aside from the pesky birds, the weed grows, taking light, water, and soil.  The weed robs space in the garden.

That annoying weed - that thing which takes over our plans, our garden, our agenda - that is what the kingdom of heaven is like.  An intrusion. A challenge. Something which may oppose us.  Even good folks like us.

I love this song by The Brilliance, Turning Over Tables. I'd love to use it in congregational worship. Besides having a good message, if we sang things like this, we'd be more familiar with the idea that Jesus and his reign and realm enter our lives by turning things over - and not just little things like gardens.  But Jesus enters to topple everything which separates us, and which we use to separate others from the gift of God's reconciling love.  

Turning over Tables (Abridged lyrics)

Fear runs deep
Spreading like a virus
Hate is cheap
From afar it cost you nothin'

Sister take my hand
Brother we will stand
Open up your heart and find
Love is turnin' over tables
Breakin' off chains
When I see you in the stranger
I'm no longer a slave
Turnin' over tables
Tearin' down walls
Buildin' up the bridges
Between us all

Let courage be
My willingness to listen
So I can feel
The wound inside my heart
Let seeds of peace
Grow in hearts around us
That trees of hope
Give shade to all mankind
Sister take my hand

Brother we will stand
Open up your heart and find
Love is turnin' over tables
Breakin' off chains
When I see you in the stranger
I'm no longer a slave
Turnin' over tables
Tearin' down walls
Buildin' up the bridges
Between us all

Jesus brings a reign of grace, mercy and peace, even when we have other plans. It comes without merit; shared without restraint or distinction or bias.  Grace, mercy, peace, and acceptance is the form and substance of this amazing weed in our gardens. Perhaps, this weed is even the tree whose fruit will heal the nations (Rev 22:2).

Excess Verbiage: Strangers

The Great Commandment on a Mission: Matthew 28: 16-20

I've gotten behind in writing down those thoughts that could keep a sermon going for many, many more minutes. So here is one thing that's been chewing on me for the past few weeks.

What happens when the Great Commandment (love God, love people) goes on a mission?

In preparation for preaching on Matthew 28: 16-20, I had listened to one of my favorite podcasts, The Pulpit Fiction Podcast.  One of the host’s shared this insight with which I, in normal fashion, agreed and disagreed whole-heartedly.

Anja Wülfing, Moorente. Oil on Photo, 20 x 13 cm, 2016

“Jesus is commissioning his followers to go out and save the world. Right now churches are hoping that people will come and save the church. They’ll come and be good church members, good volunteers. Jesus didn’t tell the disciples to go out and build great churches. He told them to go out and make disciples.”

— https://www.pulpitfiction.com/notes/trinitya

Powerful Ambivalence? Or, not and either/or

I couldn’t agree more. 

               Wait for it…

I couldn’t disagree more.

I love these oil paintings on vintage photos by Anja Wulfing.  The mixture of tradition, the expected, and monochrome with a colorful avian relative (i.e. bird) is both jarring and humorous.  In our churches I wonder how willing we are to welcome a colorful and unexpected messenger of God?  In case you want to do additional meditating on God and birds, there's Jesus' baptism and the dove.  But there's also Garrison Keillor's description of Val Tollefson's attempts to get people more involved in church, with Gospel Birds.  Perhaps Wulfing is on to something.  

The church needs outsiders to save the church

We do need outsiders to save the church.  Jesus, in fact comes to us as an outsider.  But not on our terms to satisfy our agenda.   I am confident that Jesus would bring joyful challenge, creativity, and spiritual and intellectual parables that would leave us unsure of correct answers.

I am left feeling challenged about welcoming the stranger.  Do we have the opportunity to remain connected to our vintage monochrome traditions? Does the flamboyant feathered family member eventually add color to us all? Or, do we dampen the hues and turn our new found family members simply into shades of gray?

(The images for this blog are from Anja Wulfing’s Instagram page. Wulfing’s images bring “the stranger”, in this case birds, into the family. Read about her work also at: thisiscolossal.com.)

Excess Verbiage

Spirit of Truth

Fascinating days to be living in when truth, facts, and news are used as such flexible, malleable, and vague terms.  We used to know what truth was.  Or, did we really?

In this past week’s lectionary reading, the gospel reading continued from the farewell discourse of Jesus found in John 14:15-22.  Jesus makes a promise that God’s presence will abide with us in the person of the Holy Spirit, referred to as the Paraclete, Counselor, or the Advocate:

“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. ”

— http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=362551263

It is as the “Spirit of Truth” that the Paraclete will be present.  In these days when truth seems weaponized, we are need of reconsidering what we mean by truth.

The prevailing ideas of truth fall into two fundamental notions or definitions of truth.  There is correspondence truth and correlation truth.  Correspondence truth points to something in the empirical world. Such as, it is true that gravity pulls things down.  The statement of the truth corresponds to something that can be perceived or experienced in the world.  Correlational truth, on the other hand, may not have a real-world thing to point toward, but has a meaningful logic.  When considering the logic of Euclidean geometry, or mathematical logic, we are using correlational truth.  We all agree that 2+2=4, but none of us have ever seen a “2” or a “4” in the world.  We see things. But the logic of math still holds because it correlates, or hold true to its own set of rules.

But when John records Jesus promising the presence of the “Spirit of Truth” (John 14:17), Jesus is speaking of a very different kind of truth.  The Greek word used as “truth” is aletheia (ἀλήθεια).  Using the vowel at the beginning implies the opposite.  The opposite of aletheia is lethe, from which we get not the word “lie” or “untruth” or even “doubt”.  Rather, lethe is the root of the word “lethal”.  Lethe implies that which is obliviated, hidden, done away with, or destroyed. The Spirit of Truth is the opposite of lethality.

Truth, like art, creates from love, life.

Freak Alley, Boise Idaho

In the 20th century, the philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote about the word aletheai (Heidegger, 1972).  The truth of aletheia was that which was “unconcealed”, “disclosed”, “truth”.  In further reflection Heidegger likened the process of art as this kind of truth.  Art, which speaks and engages us, speaks a truth we could not otherwise know or experience.  But the art emerges as a thing unconcealed.  Sculpture, dance, comedy, paintings, and many other arts are the outcome of creative imagination, but are not fantasy, or unreal.  They are aletheia, truth.

Truth is about life.  Truth is about creation, about art.

How do we live in the power of the Spirit of Truth?

1. When was the last time you engaged in a debate about the truth of a news report? How could truth as a creative life-giving power change those disagreements?

2. We have heard too much about "fake news".  This seems to be a criticism of the truth or veracity of a report.  How would the Advocate, whom Jesus leaves for us, help us to react in creative, loving, and life-giving ways amidst propaganda and "alternative facts"?

3. The Spirit of Truth is a creative force first of all (see Genesis 1:1-2).  How might we begin our days, our interactions with others, and the way we work in the power of the Spirit of Truth?

today's excess verbiage

There are times when the time for a sermon just isn't enough.