Preaching and Teaching

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
January 29, 2012

Text: Mark 10:17-27

People always ask me how I can believe the stories in which Jesus exorcizes demons from humans and animals. They ask, “Don’t you understand that demons are mythological, a product of a non-scientific age? There are no demons in this world.” Really?

If we don’t believe in demons, why are we so busy finding them just about everywhere in our society? To the far right, President Obama is a demon. To much of the Tea Party, government is a demon. To many in Occupy Wall Street, financiers are demons. To some environmentalists, oil and coal companies are demons. To some on the left, Rush Limbaugh is a demon. Many on both the left and right have decided that the 1% who are richest among us are demons. If there are no demons, why do we seem to find them everywhere around us?

There is a reason Jesus cast out demons. They distort the human landscape. Whether we are controlled by what we call demons, for lack of a better term, or obsessed with demons supposedly in others, the very idea of demons twist our behavior. We begin to misrepresent, misconstrue, and misinterpret the words and actions of others. We, in turn, begin to think everyone is misrepresenting, misconstruing and misinterpreting our words and actions. We need to stop looking for demons among us, exorcize demons from the discussion and start looking for pragmatic solutions to the very real problems we face as a people, none of which are greater than the growing gap between the rich, middle class and poor in this county.

For almost forty years, I have relentlessly and consistently preached about the disgraceful disparities between rich and poor in this country. I didn’t have to be an economist to figure out the problem. I merely had to read the Bible and look at our society. The prophets of the Old Testament railed against the income inequality in ancient Israel. We see many of the same inequities and disparities in our society. Putting the Bible together with our contemporary situation, I have not been able to remain silent.

My words on income inequality have not been uniformly well-received. Criticized by people on the left, right and middle, I have received articles from folks who disagree with me. The articles presented evidence that the income equality isn’t as bad as I portrayed it, was worse than I portrayed it, and some contended that such inequalities are the natural and inevitable order of things.

However, it is hard to find a reputable economist today who will deny that the income inequality problem is, well, a problem, a huge problem. In addition to the injustice of it, the inequalities are impacting buyer demand which, in turn, is negatively impacting our ability to get out of our economic crisis.

The statistics are clear, unequivocal and irrefutable. Using statistics from the Congressional Budget Office, from 1979 to 2007, the real after-tax income of the top 1% of income earners rose 278%. Over the same two decades, the other 99% grew in a range from 18-65%. The income of the top 1% grew four times more than that of the next highest income group, 150 times more than that of the lowest income group.

Another way to see the impact of income disparity is to look at household income. In 1970, 50% of our households were within 50% of the median income level. These folks are the definition of America’s historically strong middle class. Today, the number has fallen to 42%. The statistic demonstrates why people think the middle class is shrinking. Because it is!

The reality that the middle class is shrinking leads to the inevitable question: “Why?” This is where demons are needlessly and harmfully injected into the conversation. Depending on who is talking, the middle class is shrinking because of the demons of globalization, capitalism, over-regulation, taxes that are too high, taxes that are too low, government fiscal irresponsibility, or individual fiscal irresponsibility. Recently, we have heard a chorus chanting that income inequality is the fault of a greedy 1% at the top. The one-percent is the demon that must be exorcized from the body politic.

While identifying the sources of problems is crucial to solving problems, scapegoating has never solved anything. I don’t care if the person or group in question is in some way or another responsible for a problem. Scapegoating is always wrong and becomes a tangent taking us away from effective problem-solving.

Scapegoating is wrong not just because it almost always places too much blame on the entity or person(s) in question. It is also wrong because it lets us off the hook. It thrusts responsibility for problems onto others and makes us feel like powerless victims. In contrast, Jesus emphasized our power over the things that ail us.

Fact of the matter is, the world is not a simple place with straight lines between causes and effects. Paul explained this when he said that we don’t do the good we intend to do and do the harm we don’t intend to do. Somewhere between intention and outcome, between cause and effect, there is a myriad of factors contributing to the outcome. Demonizing always reduces the complexity Paul described, replacing it with a false simplicity.

Are there greedy people among the top 1% of this nation’s income earners? Are some of them manipulating the political process to their personal benefit? Of course. But there are also many people in the top 1% who are contributing enormous amounts of money to religious groups, the arts, educational programs and many other worthy causes. Directing our anger at the top 1% is a fool’s game in a world where being foolish is extremely dangerous. As we focus on the top 1%, we mis-diagnose not only the source of the problem but the possible solutions to the problem.

Rather than playing the blame game or the simplification game, I love Jesus’ approach as described in this morning’s Gospel lesson. When a rich young ruler came to him seeking spiritual advice, he didn’t denounce the man as part of the 1%, although the ruler surely was just that. He didn’t call him greedy. No, Jesus calmly told the young man to share his wealth with those who are less fortunate.

Jesus then proceeded to tell the disciples about the challenges of being rich, saying it is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into heaven. Was Jesus making a categorical damnation of the rich? I think not. If he did, there wouldn’t have been a lot of wealthy people attracted to him and the early church. Any yet, the early church included many wealthy believers.

When speaking about wealth, Jesus stated well-established truths about human nature. Once we start accumulating wealth, it can govern our decision-making in ways that are harmful to our spiritual well-being. It doesn’t have to be that way. But it can be. The poor and middle classes face their own temptations. But the temptations posed by enormous wealth are unique and highly challenging; thus the increased difficulty of entering heaven that Jesus described.

In the face of the income inequality in this nation, it is reasonable to conclude that Jesus would give the same advice to the wealthy in this country that he gave to the rich young ruler two thousand years ago. Namely, he would say, “You need to share more of your wealth with those who are less fortunate.” I do not believe that Jesus thought each and every wealthy person needs to give away all he or she possesses. But Jesus clearly did not think we can simply accumulate more and more wealth while more and more people suffer. Wealth is a gift to be shared, not a gift to be accumulated and stored away.

In these United States, we ask the rich and everyone else to share through our taxation system. In a truly progressive tax system, the rich are asked to give generously from their abundance while the middle class and poor are taxed with lower rates. No one more loved by the anti-tax crowd than Adam Smith wrote, “It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.” Our denomination approved a Social Creed that included the following affirmation: “Federal tax policies are subject to evaluation by the great themes of the Bible….(The progressive taxation system) recognized that ‘of them that have much, much will be required’ (Luke 12:48) and in a practical sense, that the wealthiest profited most from an orderly and developed society.” So whether we look at income inequality from the perspective of Adam Smith or Scripture, progressive taxation seems a fair and just approach to insuring that a society doesn’t end up with grotesque imbalances of wealth, the type of imbalances that are growing by the day in these United States.

I need to give voice to a concern my conservative readers and listeners always point out when I start talking about taxes. These folks are not lacking compassion or interested in maintaining a distorted distribution of wealth. But they are angry about what they see as irresponsible use of our tax dollars. When they read about bloated defense projects, medical service providers ripping off Medicare, or bridges to nowhere, they are enraged, and rightly so.

None of us would give money to this congregation if we thought it was being used irresponsibly. United Way basically got wiped out when people realized they were using our charitable gifts irresponsibly. I think it is not only fair but required that each of us demand that our government be meticulously responsible in using our tax dollars.

When I do management seminars for pastors, I start by explaining that if we can improve our efficiency on the cost side of our budgets, we have, in effect, raised additional money. So for example, if a congregation has a budget of $1 million and can increase its efficiency on the expense side of its budget by 10%, it has created an additional $100,000 for use in mission. That kind of math and thinking gets the immediate attention of my listeners!

Well, the same is true of government. To the extent our tax dollars are used more efficiently, not only will government be more effective; it will also have more financial resources for building the nation’s infrastructure, helping the poor and other priorities. We need to listen to the voices who object not to taxes per se but who object to money being spent inefficiently or ineffectively.

Along with demanding efficiency in government, we also need to demand that the tax code be more fair. As the current presidential campaign is making clear, the current code is anything but fair. There has been a lot made of the difference between Warren Buffet’s taxes and those of his secretary. As interesting to me is the difference between what Mitt Romney pays in taxes and what his father, George Romney, paid. George Romney paid at a tax rate of 44% while Mitt pays at 14%. Remember, George Romney built a fortune paying at that much higher tax rate as did many other wealthy people. A 44% tax rate didn’t hurt him or the country’s economy.

We also need to remember that lowering tax rates for the wealthy goes all the way back to Lyndon Baines Johnson. It has been accomplished with bipartisan votes. There are valid reasons to lower the rate from 44% to something else. But lowering it to today’s rates is hard to defend. Today’s rates are especially hard to defend when we see the resulting and growing gap between rich and poor.

My concern about income inequality over the past forty years has been driven, in large part, by my concern about the impact that income inequalities ultimately have on the body politic. Any student of history knows that as inequalities grow in a society, so does the inevitability of violence between the classes. People will only sit by and watch things get worse for their children for so long. So let’s be clear: raising income inequality as an issue is not playing the class warfare card. Not discussing income inequality almost insures class warfare.

There is not one Christian answer to what constitutes a fair tax code. But there is absolutely a Christian imperative that the tax code be fair. Today, it is not. There is a bipartisan consensus around that fact. If the tax code remains unfair, the anger currently distorting our politics will only grow. Our life together will become even more contentious. The potential for differences of opinion to turn violent will increase…exponentially.

As Christians, we must also resist the temptation to blame the 1% for this problem. It is unfair to draw stereotypes about women, men, gays, lesbians or anyone else. We can’t resort to drawing caricatures of those who are part of the 1%. We need to take the biblical approach and preach that to those to whom much is given, much is expected.

Blaming the 1% will get us nowhere. It will make us feel powerless when we are not. You and I can vote. You and I can demonstrate. You and I can write letters. You and I can run for office. You and I can start a new political party. There are a lot of things we can do to change our current political dynamics. But first, we need to stop playing the powerless victim, stop looking for demons, and instead take control of a very controllable situation, manage a very manageable problem.

Jesus shows us a way out of our current political impasse. He told the rich they need to share their wealth with everyone else, especially the poor. He told the rest of us that we must be extremely responsible stewards of the substantial gifts with which we have been blessed. Most importantly, he told us that we need to love rather than blame each other, work with rather than against each other as we travel through the deserts of life on our way to the Promised Land. May we heed his advice.

Let us pray: Let us pray: Gracious God, when things get tough, we look for people to blame. As we blame them, we feel righteous and oppressed. Forgive us. Help us to take control of our lives and this nation. Enable us to draw on the amazing resources with which you have blessed this country. As we do so, transform each of us into an instrument by which your will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
January 22, 2012

Text: Genesis 7:1–10

Carl Jung differentiated between the immediate and collective unconscious, contending that each of us possesses both. Our immediate unconscious contains information unique to each of us individually, based upon and reflecting our own experiences. The collective unconscious is universal and we share it with all others. It contains memories of the experiences of our entire species. It is like a gigantic psychic aquifer from which we all drink.

Somewhere in the collective unconscious of humanity, there is clearly a remembrance of a catastrophic flood. I say clearly because stories about the Great Flood are found in literature around the world. We read of it in Genesis, in the Epic of Gilgamish where there is a story of the gods attempting to destroy humanity with a flood, the sacred texts of the Hindu religion and elsewhere.

The Judeo-Christian version of the flood is told through the wonderful story about Noah and the ark. Whether we believe its historicity or not, there is eternal truth in the story of Noah’s Ark that only fools ignore. The truths derived from Noah’s saga morph and change from generation to generation as we morph and change. For our generation, the story reminds us in pointed terms that we humans are not the focal point of God’s love. God values the entire creation, not just human beings.

After God warns Noah of the coming flood, God commands him to do two things: one, build an ark and two, fill it with animals. Given our generation’s devastation of the creation, it is hard to miss the implications of God’s instructions to Noah for us. God isn’t focused solely or even primarily on saving humanity. God also wants to save the doves and deer; orchids and oaks.

After all, God didn’t ask Noah to gather two of each of the best and brightest types of humans—scientists and engineers, teachers and doctors, social workers and plumbers (My guess is that God probably should have included a plumber on the Ark). On the contrary, God requested Noah to gather a few humans and a lot of animals. The boat was to be filled with pairs of mice and lions, eagles and snakes, until every species was preserved. Given God’s instructions to Noah, we can safely say that God is, at the very least, as concerned about animals as humans.

There are two versions of the Great Flood just as there are two versions of the original creation story. In one, God orders Noah to gather two of every species for the boat. In the other, God instructs Noah to bring six pairs of clean animals and one pair of unclean animals. Despite the minor differences, both versions are clear that God is as concerned about survival of the animal kingdom as God is concerned about the survival of the human species.

Tragically, what God wants to save, we are busy destroying. As we sit here today, the following animal species are threatened with extinction in the foreseeable future unless something changes: African and Asian elephants, American alligators, grizzly bears, caribou, jaguars, tigers, California condors, five varieties of whales, five varieties of sea turtles, three types of salmon, and red wolves, to name a very small sampling of the animals that will no longer roam the earth unless we stop our totally humancentric decision-making. For those who think such claims about imminent extinction of animal species are scare tactics, giant lemurs in Malaysia, dire wolves, saber-toothed cats and giant sloths are among thousands of species that no longer exist on planet earth because we either killed them all or made the earth uninhabitable for them.

Our second home in Mexico is a few hours from the place where Canada’s monarch butterflies winter. The problem with protecting their migration to and from Canada every year is not so much with what happens in either Canada or Mexico. The problem is what happens in between. In the U.S. , developments are built, forests are destroyed and various other human-generated things happen that devastate the places where the butterflies have touched down for rest as they travel. When we wipe out a pond or field somewhere in Georgia, for example, for the butterflies it is the equivalent of us wiping our Penn Station for human rail travelers on the East Coast. It makes the journey unworkable. Without a concerted and conscious effort to protect these life-sustaining spots for animal and plant life, the butterflies and their magical migration will disappear.

But, in most instances, we don’t think about the butterflies or alligators or condors when we make decisions, do we? Yes, there are some who do, a growing number of people who are concerned. However, their power is very limited in comparison to the economic forces that drive development in this country. Until God’s voice is heard, ordering us to protect nature, humanity will be estranged from its Creator and the creation.

Looking at the supply chain of our food industry reveals an equally distressing picture of our attitude toward animals. I am not a vegan. But every time I do research on this subject, I start to think I should be—not for health reasons but because my faith requires that I show animals respect. The way in which beef, pork, and chicken come to our dinner tables is anything but respectful. In fact, it is filled with violence and suffering.

To provide for our ever-growing appetites, we jam cows, pigs and chickens into unbearably small spaces. Most chickens exist in a cage with a footprint equal to one-half of a piece of legal size paper. The beaks of chickens and tails of cows are routinely removed for efficiency reasons even though both procedures create much pain for the animals.

We don’t have to be vegans or members of PETA to demand that the food we eat is produced in a manner more respectful of God’s creations. Will it cost more? Undoubtedly. But it is a cost we need to bear. Because the relatively cheap prices for meat in our grocery stores today are subsidized by intense pain and discomfort for the very animals God insisted Noah save from the Great Flood.

I should say that we are a little schizophrenic in our attitude toward animals. Most of us treat our pets like they own our homes. Americans spend more than $41 billion on our pets, more than the Gross Domestic Product of all but 64 of the world’s nations. There is a place outside of Guadalajara in Mexico called Lake Chapala where a large community of American ex-pats and retirees reside. In Lake Chapala, a number of Mexican physicians stopped treated their Mexican patients and retrained to be veterinarians because they could make so much more money treating American pets than Mexican peasants!

There is nothing wrong with our love of pets. It is wonderful. What is bizarre is the way our care and love for them are totally disconnected from the way we treat animals in general. We shouldn’t stop loving our pets. We need to start loving other animals as well.

One of the great joys of being at Western is the influence college students have on this congregation. Over the past thirty years, nowhere has their impact been more felt than in Western’s strong emphasis on preserving the environment. For younger generations, the environment is their civil rights, feminist or antiwar movement.

I love to tell other pastors that I don’t get in trouble when I preach a sermon on some controversial political subject. I get in trouble when someone puts out a styrofoam cup at coffee hour or we don’t have a vegan option at a church meal. My eyes/our eyes have been opened by young people to a responsibility we have ignored for too many decades and centuries.

Indeed, as this congregation begins a process of strategic planning, my guess is that the themes raised by the Noah’s Ark story will come up time and time again. I think your leaders will hear people wondering, “How can we live with a smaller carbon footprint?” “How can we become engaged with the groups who are working on environmental issues?” “Shouldn’t our benevolence budget better reflect our commitment to justice for nature as well as justice for humans?”

If Western and other congregations become leaders in protecting the environment, it won’t be the first time. In the garden of our second home in Mexico, I have a stone sculpture of Francis of Assisi with a bird perched on his shoulder. Francis overlooks my efforts to rebuild what was a devastated little piece of God’s creation. For Francis, living harmoniously with nature was as important as living harmoniously with our human neighbors. Legend has it that, on his deathbed, Francis thanked his donkey for helping him in his ministry and the donkey cried; such was Francis’ appreciation for the interconnected work of animals and humans. Who cares if the story is historically true?!? It truly reflects the Word and Will of God.

When we are young, we think we have a lifetime to make a difference. In some ways, we do. But Jesus didn’t want us to wait years to make a difference. He wanted us to create change now, today, this minute.

Jesus didn’t tell the paralytic that he would walk in a few years. He said, “Get up and walk now.” He didn’t tell the adulterous woman to change her ways incrementally. He said, “Go and sin no more.” He didn’t tell people to follow him when the time was right. He said, “Drop your fishing nets and follow me now.”

I don’t think Jesus would buy for one second our approach to the environment. We want things to change but we want them to change slowly so we don’t have to change our personal lifestyles. We want our nation to use less oil and coal but don’t want to do any of the things required for us individually to use less oil or coal. We want to preserve species unless they get in the way of some pressing, time-sensitive project. We want animals to be treated better in the food system but don’t want to pay the higher prices such treatment will entail.

Regarding the environment, I think Jesus would tell us what he told the rich young ruler, “You need to change your lifestyle—not tomorrow or next year but today. Make a decision. Stop trying to have it both ways.” He would see our excuses for what they are—a stubborn, selfish refusal to share this planet with plants and animals. We want what we want and someone else, down the line, can deal with the consequences of our actions.

In perhaps the ultimate expression of our human-centric approach to reality, some say that if we don’t change our ways, the planet will die. Nonsense. The planet won’t die. Humanity will die. Various kinds of adaptable plant and animal life will survive our demise. Without humans to pollute the planet, the creation will slowly but surely cleanse itself just as a river cleanses itself today when we stop polluting it. The cleansed planet will then repopulate itself with a plethora of plant and animal life.

However, with a cleansed and renewed planet, filled with a diverse and growing variety of animals and plant life, the next decision for God would be interesting, very interesting. Would God choose to create humans again? Or would God think, “You know what, I put them in a Garden of Eden and they botched that. I saved them from the Great Flood but they proceeded to make the planet uninhabitable for themselves and many other life forms. Do I try this human thing again or do I let the animals and plants live happily ever after?” An interesting question indeed.

Putting God to this kind of test is totally unnecessary. We have the knowledge and means to save ourselves and much of the creation. But we can’t continue to talk about it. We can’t continue to pollute the air, soil and water as well as knowingly kill thousands of species of plant and animal life. We have to change—each of us, all of us.

Progressives like to take on all kinds of important issues, most of which don’t require us to change our lifestyles one bit. When it comes to the environment, we are part of the problem. We can’t continue to live the way we live. Something has to change. If it doesn’t, things will change in a direction that will lead to the extinction of human beings.

I’m not making a threat or engaging in apocalyptic thinking. I am stating a simple matter of fact. It is what it is. But things don’t have to continue to move in their current direction. We have the freedom and power to protect the planet, animals, plant life and, ultimately, ourselves. May we be wise enough to act now.

Let us pray: Gracious God, it is tempting to think that we can abuse the planet forever and suffer no consequences. However, we know better. Help us to come together as the people of this planet Earth to make whole what we have broken, to heal what we have harmed. As we do so, may the church be a leader in protecting and preserving a creation of which you said, “It is good.” Amen.

Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, DC
15 January 2012

Text: Psalm 139

Ted Kooser got up every morning at 4:30 a.m. and wrote. He always wanted to be a poet, and so he started his early hours with this ritual. Then, at 9:00 a.m., he went to work as an executive at an insurance agency. Kooser worked at his office until he was 65. At the age of 65, he was named the Poet Laureate of the United States. The next year, he won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.

Reading Kooser, the straightforward beauty of his language strikes me. He spends time with the ordinary landscapes of Nebraska and allows us to see—to really see—the mundane that surround us. After having a high school teacher who always said that I was reading poetry “wrong,” I love reading Kooser. There was no way to read his accessible prose incorrectly.

Kooser not only has a lot to tell us through his poetry, but his journey also tells us a great deal about calling and vocation.

In the Psalms, we read how God knit us together and in God writes about all of our days, God forms them for us, before they even exist. God created us for a purpose. We have a reason for being here. Our lives have meaning. And as we search for that meaning, we keep going back to that question, “What was God imagining when God started knitting our lives?” What is our work? What is our vocation?

I’ve learned a lot from listening to men and women from another generation around the country. They tell me about what things were like when they began their careers. When I was in South Louisiana, I pastored a church in one of the poorest regions in the country. I talked a lot to the older members of the parish, and people recalled growing up during the Great Depression. They often said the same thing: “We were so poor. But you know what? We didn’t know we were poor. We had no idea. We would get an orange for Christmas and we were thrilled.”

As the years went by, people could make a living wage, working with their hands, without a college education. Recently, one man from Kansas who is now his seventies told me, “If you had a college degree, then you were pretty much guaranteed a job.” Now he was a white man living in a certain area of the country. Yet, the thought still stunned me. There was a time that if you went to college, you could get a job.

It feels so different now. Young workers and African American men are facing an unemployment rates that rival the Great Depression. We continue to treat immigrant workers with particular cruelty. We have lost the sense of mutual responsibility that we had in our local economies and even in our families.

Many college students have to go into massive amounts of debt in order to get a degree, and then they are far from guaranteed a job. There’s great anger, because young workers feel like they were lied to. They were told that the only way to make it in this country was to get a college education. And for many people, not just any college education would do. You had to get the right education. It became so important that cost of education became more and more expensive.

In our congregation, we have had responsible students who work four jobs, go to school full-time, and feel like they are lucky because they are leaving with an undergraduate degree and “only” $70,000 worth of debt.

Students are smarter than they were when I was in college. They have become very savvy about how much they are going into debt, and how much their starting pay is going to be. Still, it’s very difficult to plan in the midst of economic turmoil, when your calculating starting pay, and you don’t even know if the job is going to be there when you graduate. It’s hard to figure out what you’re going to do. In the beginning of our careers, it becomes particularly important to ask, what did God have in mind when she was knitting together the parts of you?

Unfortunately, once you finally get a job, then you need to get a “real” job. Then you can expect laid-off at least once in your life. Then you have to re-tool and enter the workforce again. Then even if you get your “dream” job, then you come to the realization that you’re destroying your family and your personal life, and the dream becomes a nightmare, and, then you begin to realign all your goals. Then you begin to look toward retirement, and you begin to imagine what your vocation is going to be when you retire.

In other words, the question of vocation is something that most of us struggle with all of our lives. And at each point, we hear voices calling us.

There is the voice of the brazen careerist. The person who is calculated about each and every social event she attends, each position she takes, and every lunch she schedules. She has one thing in mind—her personal success.

You will be her friend as long as she can use you for something. For the brazen careerist, money may not be as important as prestige and power, although they often go hand-in-hand. Even if she is not making money, she looks like she is. Everything becomes a steppingstone for her success. In fact, she will even give up her own integrity to ensure her opportunities.

Then there is the voice of greed. This is the person who whispers to us that “bigger is always better.” That is the voice of unfettered capitalism that tells us that the bottom line is the only thing that matters. It is a call to consumption that drives us not only to consume the material things around us, but eventually, it will call us to consume the people around us.

It is the voice that tells us to lay off employees, because the fear of the remaining employees will cause them the work harder. So we can get more productivity with less workers. It is the lie that says that laying off employees is the same thing as creating jobs. It is the drive that can look at sweatshops and say, “It’s not so bad. Actually, we’re making these people’s lives better.”

I often work with people at the other end of the spectrum: the idealists. They are people who are so committed to working for the good that they never count the costs.

I’ve often seen idealist women who work their fingers to the nubs, fighting for the injustice of women around the world. And they will do it at an organization where they are getting paid one quarter of the man sitting next to them. They are so committed to their ideals that they do not think about the practical reality of their situation.

I’ve seen idealists who will let themselves and their families go into extremely difficult financial burdens, because they want just the “right job.” Working in retail, construction, or the service industry isn’t good enough. So they wait until the “right” thing comes along.

In all of this, it’s important to listen to the best of our Christian tradition. We need to think about what God has called us to in our work. This cannot solely be the job of a high school guidance counselor any more. This is no longer a discussion for one individual. It needs to be a conversation and an undertaking in which we all take part. We need to be speaking loudly, calling out a vocation of wholeness, and drowning out our culture of greed.

We need to be speaking to the brazen careerist, and telling her that having a drive to succeed is extremely important. We need to affirm that, especially in women. But we also need to constantly remind her that she does not have to give up her integrity or her relationships in order to do it. Because at the end of the day, our integrity and your relationships—the fruits that come from a love of God and the love of neighbor—are the things that matter the most.

We can remind the careerist of the need for Sabbath. Of taking a day off—just one day when we do not jump to every command of our email inbox.

We need to be speaking to the voice of greed. This voice is loud out there. It is the one that starts marketing to our children before they can talk. It is the one that creates longings in us that we never knew we had. It is the one that reminds us of how poor we are and never gives us the chance to appreciate an orange.

We can replace it with a voice of “enough.” We can tell it that we are learning disciplines so that we might understand that Jesus came so that we might have abundant life—not a life of constant, perpetual, manufactured longing for stuff.

There is a point where we can make enough. We can have enough. My generation, and those who are younger than I am, know that we will not be as well off as our parents. And it’s not un-American to understand that reality, because when we can talk back to the voice of greed, we will know that we have enough. And when we have enough, then there will be enough for all of us.

We can talk back to the voice that says that working with our hands no longer has dignity or value—the lie that keeps sweatshops productive around the world and heightens the abuse of immigrants in our country. Because our Scriptures tell us, in Thessalonians, to “live a quiet life… and work with your hands.” We can talk back as we learn to rip up our yards and green spaces and plant gardens. We can talk back as we encourage our children to become plumbers, car mechanics, and carpenters. We can affirm our need to labor and sweat and know that, at the end of the day, we have produced something and we have done well.

We can talk back to the lie that says that the global economy should open up new ways for us to exploit another, with the truth that the Samaritan is our neighbor, and we are called to love our neighbors.

We can talk back to the lie that says if we are having difficulties, we should turn to our high-interest credit cards instead of our families. We can talk back to the lie that says a parent is over-indulgent if they allow their adult son or daughter to live in one of their three empty bedrooms as they work themselves out of debt.

And we can talk back to the lie that says that our only purpose in life is tied up with our nine-to-five job. Our work is much, much more than that.

The most profound American theologian on this issue is Martin Luther King, Jr. He said that “Work is love made visible.”

Work is love made visible. As we go out, as we celebrate the courage of King, may we speak that truth to all of our careerism and all of our greed. May it be the standard by which we measure our vocations. Because that is why God knit us together—it is for love made visible.

May we do so to the glory of God our Creator, God our Liberator, and God our Sustainer. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
January 8, 2012

Text: Genesis 3

At times you have heard me talk about the “hermeneutical prerogative of the preacher” or “the preacher’s prerogative.” By this I mean that I reserve the right to deviate from the assigned lectionary texts from time to time as deemed necessary by a particular occasion. Well, in this my retirement year, I am going to assert my preacher’s prerogative for the entire year! In the months ahead, I plan on preaching on some of my favorite texts. In thinking about how I would do this, it seemed appropriate to begin at the beginning with the book of Genesis and the creation.

This morning I want to focus on the famous scene which finds Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden as they faced their first moment of temptation. To start, I have to say that I think the serpent has taken an unfair bad rap over time. Many interpreters equate the serpent with the devil. He is supposedly the presence of evil in the Garden. In fact, the text merely says that the serpent was more crafty than other wild animals.

There is nothing intuitively negative, let alone evil, about being crafty. On the contrary, in many circumstances, crafty equates with brilliance. Nelson Mandela was more crafty than his jailers. The suffragettes were more crafty than their misogynist foes. Apple has been more crafty in seeing marketplace trends than Blackberry.

The serpent wasn’t evil. It simply did what God’s creatures have been doing forever: the serpent gave some really bad advice. Rejecting what God told the couple, the serpent advised Eve, “Go for it. Eat the fruit.” The serpent’s advice was foolhardy and arrogant, not evil.

Like the serpent, we have all given bad advice to people at some point. Like Eve, we have all acted on bad advice in our lives, ultimately causing us and others a lot of trouble. The giving or receiving of bad advice doesn’t make us evil.

I remember the reaction of my parents when I would tell them I had done something wrong with the lame excuse that one of my friends suggested it. My mom and dad didn’t say, “That kid is stupid.” They didn’t say I was stupid. They said, “You should have known better.” I should have. So should Eve and Adam.

What happened in the Garden wasn’t the serpent’s fault. It was Adam and Eve’s fault. But it doesn’t make any of them evil.

When God asked Adam and Eve about their actions, we observe the first use of the famous “the devil made me do it” strategy. Instead of saying to God, “We should have known better,” Adam pointed to Eve and said, “That devil made me do it.” Eve pointed to the snake and said, “That devil made me do it.” As Jerry Seinfeld used to say “Newman” about Newman, the snake surely said about Adam and Eve, “Humans!”

No one made anyone do anything in the Garden. What Adam and Eve did, they did as an act of free will. When it came to eating the fruit, they had no one to blame other than themselves. Following their disobedience, God was simply looking for the couple to assume responsibility for their act, not attempt to dodge it. My guess is that had they “fessed up,” they might have lived out their days in the Garden.

Transforming the serpent into the devil is consistent with humanity’s ongoing attempt to avoid the underlying truth in the Garden of Eden story. Namely, we are free. Free to follow God’s rules. Free to break them. Free to create. Free to destroy. Free to love. Free to hate. We don’t need a devil to tempt us. We are perfectly capable of messing things up ourselves.

As a theologian, I argue that the Garden of Eden story is not about original sin. It is a compelling revelation about free will. We have it. And God knows it. Therefore, no matter who we try to blame for our actions, God will hold us, not somebody else, accountable.

Over my forty years in ministry, defending free will has been one of my consistent responsibilities and challenges. There are lots of people, principalities and powers who want to convince us that we don’t possess free will. A heated debate over free will has been raging within the church for two thousand years because some theologians have been at the forefront of the efforts to convince us that we have no free will. They have written that our fate is predetermined by God. Whether we are saved or damned is already a done deal, they contend.

The battle over free will also takes place in non-theological circles. Sexists have attempted to rob women of free will, claiming that women can’t do certain things men can do. Racists have attempted to rob various people of free will saying that they are born inferior. Some social scientists have attempted to rob poor people of free will, claiming that they cannot overcome the challenges of their socio-economic environment. Conspiracy theorists of all varieties attempt to convince us that we are not in control of our own fate. The government or corporate America or the media run everything.

Ironically, some in science would also limit our free will. I say ironically because the scientific method itself is rooted in free will. And yet, there are some in the scientific community who assert that our behavior is mechanistically controlled by our genes and/or biochemistry. They claim that if we have certain genes we are more likely to be addicts or criminals, for example.

Then again, maybe it isn’t ironic. It is a mistake to think that the attacks on free will are mounted by the ignorant. Some of the most infamous racists, theologians, and sexists who denied the free will of various people were and are incredibly well-educated. Their tomes have been published in respected journals. Their conversation has been highly valued in certain prestigious social circles. But regardless of their highly educated non-sense, free we are. The Bible tells us so.

As a pastor listening to people describe their problems, I hear the battle over free will expressed constantly in the comment, “I can’t do this or that.” “Why?” I respond. “My family won’t let me.” “My boss won’t let me.” “I don’t have the education.” “I’m not good looking enough.” “I don’t have enough money.” “I can’t control my addictive impulses.” In other words, “I’m not free.”

God created Adam and Eve free and there is no indication God has stopped creating humans free. We are free to do as we please. Like Adam and Eve, we continue to live in a Garden of Eden. Have we polluted the Garden? Yes. Freely. Have we created massive inequities within the Garden? Yes. Freely. But a Garden with everything we need to succeed, it remains.

Jesus challenged one person after another to exercise his or her free will. To the adulterous woman, he said, “Go and sin no more.” To the paralytic, he said, “Get up and walk.” To the rich young ruler, he said, “Free yourself of your attachment to wealth.” To a couple of fisherman he said, “Follow me and become fishers of humans.” His message was a challenge for people to embrace their God-given freedom.

If we are watchful, we will observe an unending series of truly inspiring stories in which people use their free will to overcome enormous obstacles. Every day there is someone who overcomes an addiction; someone who is told they are going to be totally incapacitated physically because of a health issue who, nonetheless, chooses to find a way to carve out a meaningful life. There was a wonderful article last week about some members of the untouchable class in India who have become millionaires and are now returning to help other untouchables realize their dreams. In ways few of us dare imagine, our destiny is in our own hands.

I cannot conclude without addressing a common abuse of the doctrine of free will. It amazes me how we turn a positive concept like free will on its head and use it to beat up people. For example, some accuse those who are unemployed or under-employed of being lazy. “They are free to get a job just as I am free to get a job. Why don’t they?” these voices ask. Well, in fact, our freedom can be prescribed by powerful systems that deny us opportunities. This results in a form of slavery but not a lack of free will. Give the unemployed a chance to work and most will work as well as the next person.

We can’t just wish away inequality, injustice and inequity. Their presence in history and their impact on individual lives is writ large across stories in Scripture and history. God is aware how these evils can limit and prescribe our ability to develop our full potential. But even as we acknowledge the damning impact injustice can have on people, we need to affirm free will. For it is only as people understand their freedom that they can act upon it.

Think what you will of Jesse Jackson. I will be forever grateful for the way he goes into one public school after another to encourage young people. There are voices telling these kids that they can’t succeed. They can’t succeed because they are black. They can’t succeed because they are poor. They can’t succeed because they aren’t in excellent schools. But Jackson tells them, “Keep hope alive” and gets them chanting “I am somebody.” He tells them to study, work hard, stay away from drugs. It is manna straight from heaven.

If we are feeling as though we can’t do this or that, we need to take a step back, say a prayer for strength and then act like the free people we are. We won’t always succeed because sometimes we hit a barrier built by human sin or the barrier of our personal limitations. Much as I dreamed of it, I will never be a power forward on a hockey team. However, I can be a power preacher!

Regardless of the barriers we face, try we must. Challenge ourselves and challenge those who stand between us and our dreams, we must. Because one thing we know for sure, if we act as though we have no free will, if we act as though we are limited by this or that, we will, most definitely, be limited by this and that.

The world is not shaped by people who buy the idea that they are limited by their genes, society or gender. It is shaped by people who realize one of the most fundamental truths of our faith: we are free. Thank God Almighty, we are free.

Let us pray: Gracious God, it is almost as if we are afraid of our freedom. Indeed, maybe we are. Help us to overcome our fears and act like the free men and women we are. All this we pray in the name of One who is the definition of freedom—Jesus of Nazareth. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
January 1, 2012

Text: Luke 2:22–40

Over the years, I have watched the problematic way people hang on to things that need to end. Thirty five years ago, I observed this human tendency writ large as I helped start a program for abused and battered women in Montgomery County. Everyone involved in these relationships agreed that the abuse needed to end. But getting it to end was incredibly difficult and, in some cases, well nigh impossible.

Many abusers acknowledged their problem, promised to change but then inevitably returned to their violent behavior almost immediately. The abused would say they needed to leave the relationship. However, time and again, many returned to the abuser and suffered more physical and mental violation.

The reasons these abusive relationships are so difficult to end has been well studied and documented. However, it is relatively easy to sit back in the abstract and figure out why and how things need to end. Actually ending such a relationship or behavior, however, is a monumental task.

I have known of congregations that love to fight. If they don’t have something over which they can fight, they will invent a reason. Ministers often call such congregations “clergy killers.” Such a label is inappropriately clergy-focused. In fact, these congregations are “spirituality killers.” Because no one who worships in these conflict-filled congregations can experience the peace we should derive from our faith.

In order to stop fighting, someone needs to change their behavior. Someone needs to refuse to strike back. However, as with abusive relationships, it is easier said than done. One false step and the congregation descends back into conflict.

Our nation is in a self-destructive loop where conflict feeds itself. No one is willing to call an end to the debates over taxes, abortion, or deficits, among dozens of other issues. There are well-meaning people on both sides of the arguments. They each have legitimate points to make. And yet, unwilling to compromise, they keep kicking the can down the road. Doing so, they simply create another round of bickering in which everyone is at each other’s throats. It needs to end. Now. Not six months from now. Not after the fall elections. Now.

People locked into abusive relationships can’t live healthy lives. People locked into congregational conflict can’t worship and serve God. Nations locked into perpetual ideological wars can’t get out of economic downturns. The ability to end something is just as important as the need to start something new.

In fact, one usually cannot start something without ending something. For example, I have no idea what God wants me to do with the next chapter of my life after I retire. What I do know is that unless I retire, I can’t find out. Therefore, I need to risk ending something I enjoy tremendously in order to start something which remains a mystery. Nonetheless, it is a mystery into which I feel called to move.

Occasionally Carol reminds me about how often I go back to the story of the Hebrew people leaving Egypt and their subsequent journey to the Promised Land. She is absolutely correct. I got hooked on it when I did my dissertation on a Latin American liberation theologian, Juan Luis Segundo, who found it similarly fascinating. Like Segundo and many others, I find it to be perhaps the most perfect metaphor for the human journey ever recorded.

The Hebrew people wanted their slavery in Egypt to end. They prayed for it to end and even plotted to make it end. However, within them as individuals and as a people were voices warning against the journey. These voices worried that the Egyptians would follow and kill them before they even got out of Egypt. They questioned whether a Promised Land even existed. They recalled the horror stories they had heard over the years about failed attempts to cross the deadly Sinai Desert. As much as the people wanted a new beginning and freedom, many were afraid to end their current reality.

Once in the Desert, these voices became louder, so boisterous that they are included in the biblical narration. These good but scared people denounced Moses saying, “Why did you bring us into this desert? To die? Let’s go back to the devil we know.” There must have been a part of Moses that resonated with his people’s unwillingness to end the Egyptian experience. He surely had his own doubts about the decision to leave. But he insisted they put an end to their slavery even if they died in the process.

As we begin a New Year, most of us are filled with good intentions. There are many new things we want to start. We want to start diets, exercising, reading more. We want to start spending more time with our families, improving a skill that will help our careers. Some of us may want to meet a person with whom we can fall in love. The list is as long as the human race is large.

But before we can start the new, we need to consider what we need to end. To lose weight, we need to stop eating bad food and sitting around so much. Are we willing to stop eating food that gives us so much pleasure? Are we willing to stop sleeping in and instead take an early morning walk or go to the gym?

To start spending more time with our families, we need to end our practice of spending so much time at work. Are we really ready and willing to do so? Can we tell ourselves and our bosses that we need to stop the work patterns which stand between us and a healthier home life?

To improve our skill sets for work, we need to end something so we can devote the time needed to learn something new vocationally.

A friend of mine who is a therapist gave me an insight that has influenced my perspective on human affairs ever since. He said, “John, when we keep doing the same thing over and over again, at some level, we are getting some satisfaction from it. We tell ourselves and others that we hate it and want to stop. But there is something else inside us that gets pleasure from our self-destructive behavior.” It is so, so true.

Despite all the complaining about our national political gridlock, we are getting some sick pleasure out of it. Surely commentators ranging from Chris Matthews to Bill O’Reilly get pleasure as well as fat paychecks from our national turmoil. But as we curse the headlines proclaiming the latest failure to reach a political consensus, we must be getting some satisfaction from it as well. It may be as perverse as feeling good that our foes don’t get what they want even if we don’t get what we want. Until we identify the source of our pleasure and decide to give it up, this nation will remain politically immobilized.

So it is with us. No matter how much we say we want to lose weight or strengthen our family bonds or build our career, until we end the behaviors that stand in the way of those worthy goals, we will fail. We cannot start down those roads until we end our journeys on other paths.

In the Gospel lesson this morning, we read of two prophetic individuals, Simeon and Anna, who had been predicting the imminent arrival of the Messiah. Upon seeing the baby Jesus, Simeon announced, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed….” I love the part about “inner thoughts.” Like my friend the therapist, Simeon realized that many would oppose Jesus because of inner motivations, some of which they understood but some of which they didn’t know existed and, if asked, would deny.

Simeon knew that Jesus would ask us to end some of our behaviors, behaviors that stand between us and a faithful life. He would ask us to stop trying to destroy our enemies and begin to love them; stop judging one another and start dealing with each other compassionately; stop withholding forgiveness and start dispensing it; stop trying to prove ourselves worthy and accept God’s declaration that we are worthy and good. Those who are able to end such behaviors walk into the New Life on earth which Jesus offered. Those who are unable to end their self-defeating behaviors remain stuck in the Old Life, tired and troubling as it is.

As the start of every New Year, God offers us the opportunity to begin anew. To grasp this incredible opportunity, let us end the things that stand between us and new beginnings.

Let us pray: Gracious God, you invite us to new life. Help us to put an end to the things in our current lives that stand in the way of our moving forward. As we do so, may we grow in wisdom and truth in the year ahead. All this we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

December 24, 2011
Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.

Text: Luke 2:1-18

“A decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.” The need for a census reflected the huge changes taking place in the Roman Empire during the first century. For more than a century, Rome had undergone enormous internal upheaval, going from a vibrant, lively Republic to a dictatorship under Julius Caesar to complete centralization of power in the Emperor Augustus. In the process, power in the Roman Empire ominously shifted from the Roman Senate to the Roman military. With the arrival of Augustus’ new regime, a census was required not so much to determine the size of the population as to ascertain the potential revenue from the Empire’s tax base. As empires from Rome to America are inclined to do, Rome was living beyond its means, spending more than it was taking in. Wars, after all, are expensive.

Amidst all the major cultural, economic, and political changes of the First Century, changes which, in many ways, mirror those of our own time, people still got engaged to be married, had babies, and created meaningful lives in towns large and small. They got up in the morning and went to work in the fields of Galilee, the fishing boats on the coast and the stores in Jerusalem. They came home at night to the love and dysfunction of their families. Their daily routines were occasionally interrupted by complications such as a census, economic depression, new taxes and military service. But through it all, people did what people have done since Adam and Eve—enjoyed life’s good times and struggled to survive life’s inevitable tough times. In the part of the empire known as Israel, the people also were well known for their deep and abiding faith in a just God.

Over the past two thousand years, each otherwise pedestrian element of the Christmas story has taken on a life of its own, manifesting enormous symbolic meaning. The great theologian Paul Tillich defined a symbol as something pointing beyond itself to a greater truth. Nowhere is that more evident than in the Christmas story. Whether it be a young couple in love or a stable in Bethlehem, the natural points beyond itself to the supernatural workings of our God.

What started as an ordinary trip to a hometown from Nazareth to Bethlehem became something extraordinary. It triggered a tradition of sacred pilgrimages re-enacted every December by hundreds of millions of people. Traveling to be with people we love has become of the rhythm of life for many in the month of December. But the journey home is more than a plane ticket or car ride. It points beyond itself to something greater. As we travel in this season, we, like Mary and Joseph, wonder about the meaning and direction of our lives. We ponder opportunities missed and opportunities yet to be seized.

Unexpected developments in the life of a young couple, Joseph and Mary, threatened to destroy their marriage before the marriage began. Could Joseph live with Mary’s unbelievable tale of an immaculate conception; an explanation for her pregnancy that flew in the face of both common sense and science? Could Mary live with Joseph questioning her story? Their moment of truth is symbolic of similar moments each of us experiences. The way these two young people kept their love alive in a trying situation is a revelation of how we can love each other even when we don’t necessarily understand each other or know what is happening to us.

The inability to find a room in a crowded town has become symbolic of every homeless person and family in the world. Societies from the beginning of time have been and are callously indifferent to the struggles of the poor in their midst. People without homes and food are daily reminders that if we don’t provide for ourselves, no one else will. Those who can’t provide for themselves? Well, they end up in stables, Hoovervilles or refugee camps in the Horn of Africa.

The wise men following a star in search of ultimate knowledge are representative of humanity’s search for truth and wisdom. Indeed, many of us equate knowledge and wisdom with salvation. Why else would we pay such extravagant amounts of money for higher education? The wise men of the Christmas story made a dangerous, difficult and expensive trip from their homes in Persia to a seemingly God-forsaken stable in Israel. It turned out the spot was not God-forsaken at all. It was God-filled. It is a discovery many of us have made as we search for truth and wisdom in our lives and times. The divine appears in the most unanticipated spots.

The shepherds? In a town like Washington, D.C., they may be among the most compelling characters in the Christmas story. In this city of power, we are inclined to think that history is shaped by Presidents and Generals, CEOs and Nobel Prize winners. It is. But just as important are the factory workers in China and farmers in Nebraska, fishermen in Vietnam and people working in call centers in India, nomads living in the Sahara Desert and goat herders in the Andes. Like the shepherds, these humble, every-day people play a crucial, indispensable role in God’s redemption of the world.

In the Christmas story and every other story in which God is present, there is no distinction between the wise and uneducated, scholars and day laborers, the 1% and the 99%. God weaves them together to produce a story only God can create. Our D.C. obsession with the rich and powerful is why our efforts to change the world fail. Without engaging and respecting the shepherds of the world, we will never succeed.

The roles of Mary and Elizabeth lift up God’s determination that every woman should play a prominent role in God’s work in the world. There is so much to love about the story of these two women. They supported and mentored each other in ways that have been a role model for women ever since. Almost every woman I know who has been successful in business, government, academia or elsewhere tells a story about another woman who lent her a hand, provided her with an opening, listened to her complaints and responded with encouragement. Such support among women didn’t start with Mary and Elizabeth; neither did it end with them.

Joseph’s willingness to go along with something he neither understood nor liked is a message to all but has special significance for men. We males are used to thinking that we rule the world. As happens to rulers who usually get what they want, many men don’t like it when things don’t go the way we planned. We either refuse to believe the people telling us what we don’t want to hear or we just toss them out of the room.

Joseph got a message few men could handle gracefully: “Your wife is pregnant and she is not pregnant because of you.” I mean, come on! Seriously. I can guarantee you that there are some reactions by Joseph that have been edited out of this story. Even if he wasn’t given to profanity, this would have been a moment to curse.

However, somehow, Joseph calmed down; regained his composure. When he did, he thought, “OK, what do I know for sure? I love Mary. I trust Mary. She has never, ever lied to me. So what do I do?” Joseph did what truly wise men do, he trusted the person he loved. He went with his heart, not his head. There are numerous positive role models for men in Scripture. But none are more impressive or inspiring than Joseph, a humble carpenter from Nazareth.

Finally, the Christmas story reveals God prevailing despite the best efforts to the contrary by the principalities and powers of this world; in this case, a self-absorbed ruler named Herod. It is an incredibly important message for our place and time. We tend to think that if the government is dysfunctional, the nation is dysfunctional. Certainly there is a ripple effect. But right now, as we sit here in the darkness, God is at work in the lives of people around this country, setting right that which is wrong; freeing those who have been oppressed; creating opportunities fo those who think they have no chance.

As absolutely crucial as government is, it is not the beginning or the end of the story. If we do what God is calling us to do, no Herod, not even a powerful Empire such as Rome or America can stand in our way. Because God’s story isn’t written by the rich and powerful. It flows from the lives of faithful women like Mary and Elizabeth and open-minded men like Joseph, from wise travelers and humble shepherds. God’s story is written by people who raise their children faithfully, an adulterous woman who goes and sins no more, a tax collector who decides to serve God rather than an Empire, individuals like Peter and Paul who allow God’s forgiveness to transcend their failures.

The Christmas story is about many different parts and people coming together to work for good. This is how God works—through millions and millions of little, seemingly ordinary acts. Like drops of water coming together to form an ocean, all of our small, faith-filled actions coalesce to form a gigantic ocean of good. Through this sacred process, God creates peace on earth.

This year, two wonderful young men from Iran became members of Western Church. They grew up in Islam so had little knowledge about Christianity. Desiring to learn more, they asked me for help. So I decided to offer a weekly class for them and anyone else on the basics of Christianity. As I talked about doctrine and particularly the Trinity, Incarnation and Virgin Birth, I observed an expression of concern spread across the faces of Soheil and Maziar. Clearly, my little theological discourses were not leading down a path to deepened faith! It was a wonderful reminder, a revelation of sorts, of what is important and not important in our faith.

And so I switched gears. Instead of talking about major doctrines, we spent a couple of weeks reading the Christmas stories in Luke and Matthew. The concerned looks disappeared from Maziar and Soheil’s faces, replaced by fascination and joy. The everyday people in the story, the gentleness of Mary, the calming words of the angels, a tyrannical ruler lurking in the background, the mysterious way in which life unfolds—it all made sense to these two wise young men from Persia.

So it does for you. So it does for me. Merry Christmas.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
December 18, 2011

Text: Luke 1:26-38

Before starting my sermon, we cannot worship God this morning without giving thanks to God that the war in Iraq is over. We have prayed for its end for almost a decade. We have prayed for the safety of the troops serving there, their families and the many innocent Iraqi civilians caught in the crossfire. So this is a day to proclaim that our prayers have been answered. While a complete and lasting peace has not come to Iraq, at least, our troops will no longer be sent there en masse. For the end of the American involvement in the Iraq war, we give thanks to God.

During Advent and Christmas, we celebrate the birth of a holy child. As a global family, we celebrate the birth of a holy child every eight seconds somewhere in the world. Here at Western, the births come at a somewhat slower but nonetheless steady rate.

Therefore, let me begin with an absolutely fundamental, basic theological assertion: Every child is holy—in the eyes of God and, at least initially, in the eyes of the parents. I say initially because as the birth day turns into years of life, any child can wear on any parent to the point that the child no longer seems quite so holy. Most children have problems. I certainly did.

Using one of thousands of possible examples, when I was about seven or eight years old, I went to the corner of our block where, as was normal in those days, there was a fire alarm box. I brought something to stand on so I could reach the lever and pulled the alarm. When the trucks arrived, the firemen asked me if I saw the person who pulled the alarm. I said, “I did.” Puzzled, they said, “Why didn’t you run? Don’t you know you are going to be in trouble for pulling the alarm?” I calmly explained that the whole point of me pulling the alarm was so I could see the fire trucks and firemen. Therefore, “Why would I run?”

It was one of many problematic episodes during my childhood and youth, some of which were humorous (although my mother never much appreciated the humor) and some of which most definitely were not funny at all. And yet, through it all, my parents always gave me the message that I was a good, indeed, a holy child of God. Their refusal to give up on my holiness is what saved me from myself.

Last week our parents got together to talk a bit about how to respond when their kids do something bad. I absolutely adored the conversation and values reflected in it. They laughed about the behaviors of some of their children, worried about others, offered various strategies that worked for them as well as a few strategies that haven’t worked so well. It was really the church at its best—people sharing stories of how we can love one another and especially, in this case, our children. Throughout the comments, one thing was crystal clear: our parents think of their children as holy and a sacred responsibility.

Unfortunately, as a society, the same values and sense of responsibility are not so evident. Too often, we are looking to shift rather than assume responsibility for our kids. When it comes to the state of our children, I hear lots of blame being laid—on the children themselves, parents, school systems, teachers, and unions. But I don’t hear many people assuming responsibility for the state of our children. And the state of our children is deeply disturbing.

Every year, the Children’s Legal Defense Fund gives us an unvarnished look at what is happening with our kids and youth. The statistics found in their latest report haven’t improved. They remain a devastating critique of our society’s parenting of our children. Among the small group of the world’s most highly industrialized nations, the United States ranks 17^th in reading scores, 23^rd in science scores and 30^th in math scores. It gets worse. We are 30^th in infant mortality rates; last in relative child poverty and last in protecting our children from gun violence.

In America, every eight seconds a child drops out of high school; every 21 seconds a child is arrested; every 34 seconds a child is born into poverty; every 42 seconds a child is confirmed as abused or neglected. In America. Every eight minutes a child is arrested for a violent offense; every three hours a child or teen is killed by a firearm; every five hours a child is killed by abuse or neglect. People who think these statistics are solely driven by low income children or children of color need to think again. For example, every day in America, 2,722 white children are arrested. Every day.

These are not the statistics of a country that considers its children holy. They are the tragic profile of a society consumed by almost everything other than taking care of our children. These statistics should make us do more than cringe. They should fill us to the core with shame. We have a fundamental responsibility to care for our children and the children of others. If we do nothing else in life, we must make sure our kids are loved, safe, housed, fed and well educated. As the statistics demonstrate, these are responsibilities we refuse to accept—year after year after shameful year.

As the political debate in this country centers on wars, budget deficits, taxes and immigration, the situation of our children deteriorates. Our children are buried somewhere down the list of priorities behind taxes, deficits, pipelines, and Afghanistan. Our unwillingness to place children at the center of our politics reflects our unwillingness to place them at the center of our lives. Taking children for granted, as we obviously do, is why they are at so much risk in our society.

I refuse to place the blame for the plight of our children on parents. Are their bad parents? Of course. But for every bad parent, there are ten parents getting their kids to school, taking care of them when they are sick, encouraging them when they are discouraged, loving them when they feel unlovable. It is nonsense to think that if every parent in this country became a model parent, the plight of our children would suddenly and totally reverse itself. Improve? Yes. Change dramatically? I’m not so sure.

It will take more than good parenting because some of the values in our society are as responsible as anything else for the plight of our children. We protect the rights of gun owners rather than protecting thousands of children who are injured and killed by guns every year. We create an overly sexualized view of reality in the media and then wonder why twelve year olds act like eighteen year olds. We glorify the rich and then wonder why some kids drop out of school to get rich, momentarily, selling drugs. We use foul language at home that wasn’t acceptable even in locker rooms forty years ago and then wonder about the lyrics in the music our kids love. We value the football program of a university more than the safety of the children in and around that program.

Try and raise kids in a society with these kinds of values. Try to teach them in a school. Gratefully, parents and teachers do just that every day. But with the values we support and perpetuate, we make their work as absolutely difficult, as close to impossible as we can.

On this day when we have been delighted as only children can delight us, let us recommit ourselves to changing the values of our society. In our own personal lives, let us replace spinning things with honesty, harsh language with loving language, short cuts with hard work, hyper-sexuality with healthy sexuality, winner-takes-all with winner shares, giving people the shaft with giving people a break. As we proclaim and practice the fundamental values of our faith, a sea change will take place in the lives of our children. They will see adults they can respect; adults they want to be; adults they can be.

Every generation, God gives us another opportunity to get things right when it comes to our children. May we be a generation remembered for our eager willingness to embrace this sacred opportunity and responsibility.

Let us pray: Gracious God, in this joyous season, nothing gives us greater happiness than watching children enjoy the magic of Christmas. As we celebrate the birth of Jesus, help us to love, respect and nurture these precious and holy treasures you have placed in our midst. As we do so, bless us with the parenting skills you exhibit as you help us grow into spiritual maturity. Amen.

 Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, DC
Text: Isaiah 40:1–11

A couple of years ago, the Anglican church of New Zealand invited me and my family to talk about how their denomination could reach out to younger generations. So we went to Aukland, and while we were there, we visited the forests where Kauri trees grew. Winding up the hills for a couple of hours, we finally got to a wooded canopy of mist and hail, until we eventually made it to a parking lot. We got out and walked for a mile on a boardwalk. The tree trunks seemed to get larger and larger until we met two massive trees.

They were marvelous. I could understand why ancient religions thought of trees as sacred. Only 10% of the Kauri’s were left, after a brutal deforestation had taken place. There were estimates that the trees were thousands of years old. As we took our photos next to the massive trunks, I turned to my daughter, Calla, and said, “This tree might have been planted on the same year that Jesus was born!”

And it struck me. I thought how unfair it was that a tree could be thousands of years old, but our life expectancy was about 80 years.

It’s unfair, but as the words of Isaiah remind us: The grass withers and the flower fades. Even the ancient Kauri trees won’t last forever.

I am chairing a General Assembly committee on the Nature of the Church in the 21^st Century. And by “General Assembly,” I mean it’s a national committee,” and by “church,” they mean our denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA). We are to assist members in forming faithful plans for our common future.

It has been really interesting to think broadly about the denomination. Every church I’ve served has been a growing church—whether it’s been here in DC, or nestled in a bayside town in New England, or in the midst of the swamps of Cajun Louisiana, or among the laid-back hipness of Austin—I’ve been able to serve congregations with vital ministries that flourished. I’ve witnessed the amazing revitalization of our congregation.

So, when I started doing working with the larger church, I thought that we could do a little tweaking here and there, we could learn how to reach out to younger people, and since the Millennial generation is as large as the Boomers, we would be fine in the next fifty years.

As I’ve looked more closely at our denomination, however, I realize that it won’t be as easy as that. Three things have affected our church: (1) location, (2) immigration patterns, and (3) generational shifts.

As we look at the location of our churches, we made two tactical errors in our history. One was when our country first began. It has been said that the Presbyterians and the United Church of Christ (it was the Evangelical and Reformed Church at the time) took out a map. They decided since they were so much alike, the UCC’s could have the north and the Presbyterians could have the south. So, we didn’t start many churches in some densely populated areas.

In other parts of the country, we made almost the opposite mistake. We had a goal to plant a church in every county seat. Which means that in sparsely populated areas, to this day, we might have an intersection with a Methodist, an Episcopal, Lutheran, and a Presbyterian congregation. As a result, all four churches are struggling.

On one hand, we don’t have many churches in New England, where there is a steady population base, and on the other hand, we have all kinds of congregations in rural areas.

This worked out okay as long as we had farmers, but then our economy shifted. We moved from an agrarian-based economy, to an industrial-based economy, and now we are living in an economy that has technology, service, and creative-based industries. (I say creative-based industries, because it seems like our country is in the midst of trying to figure out what we will be producing in the coming years). Since people follow jobs, younger people tend to move to urban areas, and there has been an exodus from those rural towns.

Second, there are immigration patterns. In 1965, the Immigration Act passed, which abolished the quotas that barred non-Europeans from immigrating into our country, and now we have a richly diverse society. In my daughter’s generation, white people will become a minority. Our denomination, in contrast, is over 90% white.

The third is generational shifts. I mentioned that the Millennial generation is at least as large as the Boomer generation. Yet, the median age of a Presbyterian in the pew is 61. Half of our membership is over the age of 65, and four out of five worshipers are over the age of 45.

 The bottom line is that our society is increasingly young, urban, and diverse. Meanwhile, our denomination has stayed largely rural and white.

So, it’s almost like we planted a large cornfield, and we were getting so much corn from that field that we were fat and happy. We didn’t diversify our crops, we didn’t rotate the crops, we didn’t plant new crops, and now that cornfield is coming to the end of its season all at the same time. I’m coming to realize that in this century, we’re going to have to do a little more than tweaking the system. For obvious reasons, when we have a largely rural, 90% white denomination, where only one out of five people are under the age of 45, it’s time for a robust strategy for revitalization and new church developments. Get younger pastors to work, start ministries in urban areas, encourage diverse congregations, and recognize immigrant fellowships.

I have found the most excruciating part of this sort of long-term planning, and communicating all of this to the larger church, has been the inability for people to understand the mortality of congregations or even the mortality of human beings. Even though 88 churches in our denomination were closed last year, people still have a difficult time believing that congregations may not last forever.

I’ve tried all kinds of approaches. I’ve been direct about it. I’ve been delicate about it. I’ve used all kinds of metaphors and euphemisms. But I have been in discussion after discussion of people telling me that a church of 25 members with an average age of 70, that is not willing to reach out to a new generation, will last forever.It is extremely difficult for people to hear the words of Isaiah, “The grass withers and the flower fades.” This material life is not permanent. Churches close. Economies shift. Rural areas hollow out. Thousand-year-old trees can be cut down in an instant. Each and every one of us has a certain number of days.

But the words of Isaiah do not stop there. “The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of God will stand forever. What does the word of God refer to? There was no bound leather Bible, with the Old Testament, New Testament, and the words of Jesus written in red, when Isaiah spoke.

The word of God means different things theologically. It means the scriptures. It means Jesus Christ (we often describe Jesus as the “word made flesh”). It means the word that’s preached in a congregation—not that we believe that the every word of the sermons that John and I preach are the “word of God.” But we recognize that sometimes, when certain words are discerned, distilled, and affirmed by the body that is present, then God can speak through a sermon. The book of James talks about the word of God being something that we do, not just something that we hear. “Be doers of the word,” the author says.

And I think that just might be our word for today. The grass withers, the flower fades. We are all mortal. Our buildings become dust. Our churches close. Our economies fail. Countries rise and countries fall. Forests are cut down into lumber. But we gather here in this place in this season of Advent, because we know that the word of God somehow lives beyond our mortal flesh.

The words of the prophets were proclaimed before us and will be proclaimed after us. Jesus Christ was born, and as our brother, he somehow walks with us through the sorrows of our lives and constantly moves us to dream and imagine the Kingdom of God—the world as it ought to be. We whisper things in this place. We encourage one another to become a part of something bigger than ourselves. And we remind ourselves, here and now, that we don’t just hear the word of God, but we do it.

We want to live lives that reach beyond our years. We want to change things. We want to make sure that all are sheltered and fed. We want to struggle for a just society. We want to speak for people who have been long silenced.

That is our Advent hope. We know that we are mortal, but the work and the word of God will last far beyond our years. May we all live into that hope, and may we work—not for our selfish endeavors—but for those things that will last.

For the glory of God our Creator, God our Liberator, and God our Sustainer. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
December 4, 2011

Text: 2 Peter 3:8-15a

Peter’s two Letters to the church may or may not have been written by Peter. Some scholars contend they were written by one of Peter’s closest proteges. Church tradition holds that Peter wrote them while he was Bishop of Rome. Regardless of their authorship, the letters are rarely used in Presbyterian worship, even though they are occasionally included in the lectionary texts.

I chose the passage this morning because of its profound wisdom about patience. Whether it was written by Peter or someone else, the passage reflects what the early church had quickly learned: namely, that things were not going to happen as they had expected. Jesus’ death and resurrection were supposed to trigger the end-time, Last Days. In a matter of days, months or, at most, years, history was to come to an end and the Final Judgement Day take place.

Peter certainly hadn’t given up that hope for a quick end to history. After all, he asked Christians to live as though God will appear like a thief in the night, an image also used by Jesus. However, in his letter, Peter clearly began the process of preparing Christians to live for a long time before the Judgement Day took place. And so he wrote the beautiful words, “with God, one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like one day.” With those words, Peter paraphrased a concept used numerous times in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Peter then talked about how we should behave while we wait. In addition to being patient, he asked us to lead holy, patient lives. Wrote Peter, “Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by God at peace, without spot or blemish; and regard the patience of our God as salvation.” We should be found “at peace, without spot or blemish.” What an image. What a life.

How many of us feel unblemished by life, unspotted by the toil and travail of life in this world? Not many, I would guess. My life is certainly blemished and spotted. I have done some things in my life of which I am deeply ashamed. I am more than willing to stand up here and confess that I have done them. I am not willing to stand up here and supply details! My guess is that each of you have some significant blemishes as well.

Calvin suggested that we are born blemished. I am more inclined to say that we are blemished as we pursue normal drives. We want to succeed in life. However, at times, our intense desire for success causes us to do things we should not do. We want to be safe. But our quest for safety can cause us to inflict harm on others whom we wrongly perceive as threats. We want to have the good things life offers. We sometimes obtain them at another person’s expense.

As I have experienced life and watched others experience it, it is not the pursuit of success, safety or material goods per se that corrupts us. We are corrupted by the impatience that drives our pursuit of these goals. We don’t just want these things. We want them immediately. As a result, we speed up processes that require time. We force things to happen before their time.

As we attempt to speed up our personal times lines, we become like a car driver who starts going too fast, in hopes of making it home early. Going too fast, the car spins out of control. In the crash, caused by our speeding, casualties take place.

Another analogy would be farming. Successful farmers plant things and then nurture them to maturity. When the plants are ripe, they reap the crop. We, on the other hand, are inclined to plant things and want to reap the harvest the next morning. We are then surprised that when we taste the unripened fruit we have prematurely harvested, it doesn’t taste the way it should taste.

Marriage is certainly not an institution for the impatient. If we want a relationship that works great immediately and every day thereafter, don’t get married. Marriage requires time, decades, to learn how to live with and love someone fully. It takes times of sickness and health, plenty and want, joy and sorrow to understand the complexity of a partner’s soul; the complexity of our own soul.

Neither is ministry a vocation for the impatient. When people ask me how we have been able to grow Western Church while so many congregations in this city and our denomination are struggling to survive, I say, “Thirty years.” This congregation has a systemic understanding of the importance of long-term pastorates. It took Dr. Hugh Dunham thirty-three years to help the congregation grow to 600 members by the time he retired in 1940. Ministering during an era when every congregation in D.C. suffered significant membership losses due to people moving to the suburbs, Dr. Stewart McKenzie watched Western’s membership decline dramatically during his 32 years as pastor. But had this congregation not been blessed with the continuity and patience of his leadership, it wouldn’t be here today. My thirty years have been marked by membership growth, a transformation of our calling into a social justice ministry, and a new building. It wouldn’t have happened with a series of five to ten year pastorates. The learning curve is too steep. It took thirty years.

Three thirty year plus pastorates have filled 94 of the last 109 years of this congregation’s history. As I have reflected on that history, it dawned on me that Western has a history of calling pastors in their early to mid-thirties. You can’t have thirty year pastorates when you call older clergy. Dr. Dunham, Dr. McKenzie and I were all in our early to mid-thirties when we were called. So not only have you, the people of Western Church, put your trust in young pastors, you have had patience with us as we made the inevitable mistakes of youth, learned from them and matured as leaders. It is one of the most charming and graceful attributes of this congregation.

Patience that lasts thirty years or a lifetime is key to happy, holy living. Because life cannot be forced. Push too hard and life will push back and flatten us.

I’m not suggesting we simply go with the flow. Jesus told us to direct the course of our lives, not drift aimlessly down a river. But as we move from childhood to youth adulthood to middle age to retirement, we mature. As we mature, we need to allow things in our lives to evolve and develop at their own pace—our relationships, careers and sense of financial security. For those of us who are intensely results-oriented and results-driven, allowing basic processes to run their natural course is a very, very challenging reality. Many are the folks who have wanted this congregation to change dramatically one way or another in a rapid manner. It never happened. It didn’t happen because I put the brakes on change. Rather, there is something within this family system that understands the value of a patient, long-term approach to growth. This congregation changes incrementally, not radically. Our style and content of worship today are radically different from what they were thirty years ago. But there wasn’t one radical step along the way. Small changes were made here and there that added up to big change. But most people never even realized our worship was changing.

Back in the 1962, long before the book The Tipping Point was written, historian Thomas Kuhn wrote a very influential scholarly book entitled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, describing the way change happens. It was still required reading when I was doing my PhD program twenty years later. Kuhn demonstrated the time lag between the moment when a change becomes inevitable and the time when the change actually is recognized by most people.

So, for example, during the end of the 19^th and beginning of the 20^th centuries, there were many attacks on the dominant Maxwellian electromagnetic scientific worldview. The seemingly unsuccessful attacks insured that by the time Einstein made his breakthrough, the ground had been laid for Einstein’s thinking to be accepted.

We are inclined to think that the civil rights movement started in the late 1950s in the South under Dr. King’s leadership. A more nuanced study of history shows the groundwork creating the inevitability of change happened earlier. In 1948, President Truman ordered the military to be integrated. Integrating a foundational institution like the military was one of many steps that made the integration of the rest of our society inevitable.

This doesn’t mean Einstein didn’t need to write his papers or that people didn’t need to sit at lunch counters, register voters and walk over the bridge at Selma. They did. But they were putting the finishing touches on something that was already fundamentally a done deal.

A mentor of mine put it this way: As it died, a dinosaur lay on the ground. Its death was a certainty. But the dinosaur could still kill you if you got too close. Segregation was dying even as it was still killing people in the South.

Kuhn’s insight is huge. Often times, the change we want, the change we demand is already taking place. We don’t recognize it. But it is happening. Indeed, it may already have happened! To think like Kuhn, Dr. King or Jesus requires patience. We have to believe in and understand the inevitability of change. God’s will shall be done on earth as in heaven.

In the days following Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, many were the people in Israel who were saying prayers asking for the Messiah to appear. They didn’t know he had already been born. Even when he grew up, they didn’t know the Messiah had been born. They missed the change that was taking place before their very eyes.

In this season of Advent, we commit ourselves to not losing hope. Working for justice, loving our families, building our careers is not in vain. It is part of the inexorable, relentless, unyielding process by which God is creating the new heaven and new earth of which Peter wrote.

God is at work today in ways of which we are unaware. Things are happening that, when they reach maturity, will lead to new liberation and opportunities for all of God’s children. Like seeds growing below the surface of the soil, we sometimes will see no signs of life. But life there is—life abundant. Such is the hope that brings us back to the communion table in this precious season of Advent.

Let us pray: Wise and wonderful God, we hope; we wait; we pray; we plead. Give us the patience to move through the deserts of life so that we might reach your Promised Land. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
November 27, 2011

Text: Isaiah 64:1–9

Let’s see, is Wall Street to blame or is it Washington’s regulations? Should we blame the anti-tax legislators for killing a budget deficit compromise or those who want to protect government programs? Are greedy unions or greedy CEOs draining profitability from companies? Should we blame our denomination’s loss of membership on congregations that don’t address social issues or those who address them too forcefully? Should we blame the demise of a marriage on the spouse who cheated or the spouse who promptly ended the marriage after being cheated upon? Should we blame little Johnny and his parents for not knowing enough math or the school system in which he is enrolled?

Whether the system be a family, congregation or nation, one of the first signs of a dysfunctional system is blame casting. After all, what is blaming someone else other than a refusal to accept one’s own responsibility for a situation? By blaming someone else, we don’t have to own our role in causing a problem.

In a fascinating book written by two business psychologists and entitled The Blame Game, the authors comment, “One of the great dangers of the tendency to scapegoat is that it diverts attention away from broader, deeper problems in societies or organizations, such as the structural, cultural, economic, demographic, or technological shortcomings of a system or an enterprise.”

Indeed, over the past decade, parts of the media, some politicians and much of the public have been searching for scapegoats to blame for our current problems. In so doing, they are causing us to mis-diagnose the basic problems that ail us. We keep thinking that putting another party or President in power will solve what ails us. However, our problems are so systemic that it will require both parties to unite in order to solve them. As important, it will require each of us to put aside our personal favorite issues and to focus laser-like on the common good.

Of course, our national search for scapegoats also allows us to absolve ourselves from any culpability in creating our problems. If it is somebody else’s fault, they are to blame. Better yet, we can claim to be the victim of their bad decisions.

In our readings of our Advent prophecy this morning, I noticed something I have missed in the past. Perhaps I noticed it because of what I am reading. Perhaps it is because of our national malaise. Or perhaps it was just the right time. Whatever, I noticed Isaiah playing the blame game with none other than Almighty God.

The prophet begins with an inspiring description of God’s awesome nature. He then switches gears: “But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.” Think about Isaiah’s cause-and-effect sequence for a minute. “Because you (God) hid yourself, we transgressed.” Two verses later, the prophet continues in the same vein, “for you (God) have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.”

So, actually, it was not the fault of the people of Israel that they sinned? The fault lay with God who played hide-and-seek with them? As Isaiah describes it, had God been a good and visible parent, the people wouldn’t have transgressed. Sliding further down this incredibly slippery slope, Isaiah contends that God handed Israel over to its enemies, causing even more problems for the people of Israel. With the volume of thunder rolling down from the heavens, you can hear God responding, “Really?!?”

As angry as this blame-casting must have made God, I am sure God didn’t dwell on it. God, after all, understands that getting blamed comes with parenting. Any of us who are parents have had the experience of our kids telling us something is our problem, even though the kids created it. “Dad, I have no money and it is all your fault.” “Mom, my girlfriend broke up with me and it is your fault because you never taught me how to maintain an intimate relationships.” “Mom and Dad, I lost my job and it is your fault because you encouraged me to take it. I told you it was a reach and you said, ‘Reach for it.’”

We human parents struggle with being blamed by our kids. It pushes every button that triggers our built-in parental guilt. But God can handle the criticism. Thank God. After all, Isaiah’s complaints weren’t anything new under the sun. Since the beginning of time, every minute of every day God hears criticism, complaints and accusations flowing from humans on earth up to heaven. “God, why have you allowed cancer to invade my body?” “God, why didn’t you stop me before I became an addict?” “God, why didn’t you save my marriage?”

In the face of an onslaught of critical blame from the children of God, God responds calmly, asking us to look in the mirror. As we stare in the mirror of God’s love, God calmly asks, “So I ruined your marriage, let cancer infect your body, caused you to consume until you became addicted? Me? It is my fault?” There is no sarcasm in God’s questioning. It is an honest question being asked by an honest God. But God knows that if we stop looking for someone to blame and start looking at our own behavior, we will begin looking for ways to solve what ails us.

A lot of pastors fail in ministry because they can’t handle being blamed. “The congregation isn’t growing and it is your fault Reverend.” “Because of your uninspiring sermons, I don’t have a good spiritual connection.” “Contributions are down because you pick the wrong hymns.” By the way, everything in ministry comes back to the hymn selections.

Non-defensive pastors will respond by asking, “OK, let’s place your criticisms in a larger, strategic perspective. Was this congregation growing before I arrived? If not, why not? Are any of the congregations in this community growing? If not, why not? If yes, what are they doing that we aren’t doing? Do we want to imitate the things those growing congregations are doing or do some of their ministries and beliefs run counter to our theology?” The list goes on. With such questions, instead of scapegoating the pastor or someone else, the congregation will get to the roots of why it isn’t growing. Such a line of critique is one of the reasons it is crucial for congregations to engage in regular strategic planning processes. Blame evaporates under the sun of analysis. Criticism is replaced by identifying real, not imagined, problems and constructive options to resolve the problems.

The renowned family systems theorist, Rabbi Ed Friedman, wrote that when we start casting blame, thinking that we are trapped by factors beyond our control, our anxiety rises and our ability to create change decreases. In his classic book Generation to Generation, he wrote, “Instead of focusing on the toxic impact (of external factors), we need to focus on ourselves. What can we do, given the toxic environment in which we find ourselves?”

To make his points, Ed, who taught me most of what I know about systems theory and some of the most important things I know about myself and relationships, loved to cite extreme examples such as the people who were trapped in the holocaust. These prisoners’ understanding of their situation depended on whether they focused on the power of their hostile environment or their own personal power. Some sat in the Nazi camps, awaited death and cast blame on God and others for their situation. It was a pretty understandable response because there was lots of blame to cast. However, even in that hell on earth, other individuals tried to find a reason to live and love. Focused on the still considerable power they possessed to find meaning in their final days on earth, many of them succeeded.

As a therapist, Ed liked to be playful in pointing out to people how they were placing blame on others. A partial verbatim of one of a counseling session with a couple goes like this: Husband: Every time my wife gets angry, her voice becomes shrill. When I hear that shrill tone, I just go ballistic. Therapist: Hmmm, so you are willing to give her total control over your behavior? Husband: What do you mean give her control? How am I giving her control? Therapist: Well, if all she has to do is sound shrill and you lose your temper, she can cause you to lose your temper any time she wants. Right? It sounds to me like you have given her total control over your emotions.

Indeed, whenever we posit the source of our problems outside ourselves, we hand over control to that external reality—be it a person, a government, or a job. If we think our boss has total control over us, she does. If we think we are trapped in a bad relationship, we are. If we think our self-esteem is determined by our career success, it is. In all of those situations, we will end up blaming the boss, our relationship partner, or career issues when things go south. We will feel increasingly sorry for ourselves and angry at others. It is only as we stop dodging responsibility and start accepting it that we gain control of our lives.

Can we imagine how enraged the slave owners used to become when they heard slaves singing spirituals that expressed an inner peace they couldn’t obtain? Or how incensed the Brits became when Gandhi’s followers refused to fight back when rifle butts cracked down on their bodies? Or how frustrated a sexist boss becomes when a female employee won’t respond to his anger with greater anger? In each of these situations, the individuals look inward to what they control rather than outward to who or what is trying to control them. Rather than placing blame, they assume responsibility for the most important thing over which we can assume responsibility—our personal behavior and emotions.

Am I saying that there is nothing blameworthy or we shouldn’t hold other people responsible for their behavior? Of course not. But we will be severely challenged to assign blame in a healthy manner if we don’t simultaneously assume responsibility for our own behavior.

In this season of Advent, we practice the spiritual discipline of patient waiting. For many of us, it is the single most difficult and challenging thing God expects us to do. We want what we want and we want it now. We want our careers to move upward more quickly. We want our health to improve, quickly. We want a source of love to appear quickly. We want financial problems that were decades in the making to disappear quickly.

But quick is not how God works. God has an eternity to do what God wants. When it comes to humanity and God, we are dealing with two radically different time lines. Unfortunately, when we get anxious, the results are rarely positive. We miss opportunities and/or we force things to happen before it is time for them to happen.

I think one of the reasons God selected Mary as Jesus’ mother was because she was a relatively non-anxious person. She was willing to work with God on God’s time line. She was prepared to do what God needed, when God needed it.

Stuff happens in life—unfortunately, sometimes really bad stuff. If we respond to bad things happening to good people by placing blame, we will remain mired in the stuff. If we respond by looking inward and outward for the resources we possess to deal with our problems, eventually, God will help us work our way out of the jam.

Lest we fall into the trap that snared even a profound spiritual person like Isaiah, we need to avoid blaming others. So in this Advent season, as we wait for God to appear on Christmas Day, let’s take a step away from the blame game. Actually, let’s take a lot of steps away from it. Instead, may we use this sacred time to consider the resources with which we are blessed. And then, in the New Year that will be upon us shortly, let us put our resources to work solving the problems our generation is called to solve.

Let us pray: Parent God, as we wait, we hope. We hope that we will be proactive in our personal and national lives, accepting responsibility to change what needs to be changed. Keep us from feeling sorry for ourselves or blaming others. Instead, may our voices always be expressing gratitude for the gift life is, the gift your love is. Thank you. Amen.