Preaching and Teaching

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
March 7, 2010

Text: Luke 13:1-9

About a month ago, I delivered a sermon in which I described and critiqued the church’s traditional teaching about salvation. These doctrines have what is called an objective view of salvation. We are the objects of God’s redemptive work, basically bystanders while God accomplishes our redemption in the death and resurrection of Jesus. God takes away our sins; sins we are incapable of removing ourselves.

While such a theology has a certain allure (it is always great to have someone else do odious tasks for us) and a certain amount of truth (our sins are greater than our ability to atone for them), this approach to salvation leaves many of us cold. It is rooted in a worldview we no longer embrace. It envisions a judge-like God angrily demanding satisfaction for the sins of humanity, a satisfaction humanity cannot provide. Switching from anger to grace, God is forced to become human to make the sacrifice on our behalf.

An omnipotent, omniscient God can only come up with a plan that entails sending Jesus into the world to die a brutal death on a cross for us? This is simply too weird by half for many of us in the 21^st century. Indeed, it was too weird for many of us in the 20^th century.

While our tradition’s explanation as to how salvation is accomplished may leave us cold, the desire to believe that one is redeemed, saved, made whole, call it what you want, remains at the heart of our spiritual quest. One of my favorite contemporary Gospel songs, a tune by Jessy Dixon, has as its chorus, “If anybody asks you, just who I am, tell them I am redeemed.” A huge part of my self-understanding/identity is that of a person redeemed by God. I am not just John. I am also Redeemed.

So dissatisfied with traditional teachings on redemption but very much wanting an explanation for my profound sense of being redeemed, I have always kept an eye out for explanations of how God redeems us. While I was doing my PhD work in systematic theology years ago, I was pleased to learn that many, many of the church’s greatest theologians had the same dissatisfaction with orthodox teaching. They came up with explanations of how God redeems us that are more consistent with Jesus’ ministry than the traditional teaching on atonement.

During my doctoral program, I was blessed with some amazing professors—women and men who had astounding intellects and hearts filled with faith, hope and love. I have never worked so hard academically. For each of my five comprehensive exams I read more books than I read for all my courses combined in seminary. However, it was easy to work hard when the results were so important.

Among my professors was Elizabeth Johnson, a Sisters of St. Joseph nun who remains a major feminist theologian at Fordham University. Dr. Johnson contends that in today’s world, the questions about God’s redemptive work are no longer oriented toward what God has saved us from. We aren’t as concerned as our ancestors with righting a wrong committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Instead we want to know what God has saved us for. Put in other words, we are not so concerned with undoing past sins as we are with living faithful lives in the present and future.

Why has God put us here on earth? To what end does God forgive us our sins? These are the questions that motivate our spiritual journeys.

From such questions flow the conundrum of human freedom. Are we truly free to live the life to which we feel God is calling us or are we constrained by sin and other realities that limit our ability to act freely? There are many today who believe that, at best, we are perhaps free and, at worst, not free at all. They contend that our freedom, if it even exists, is extremely limited by forces, internal and external, that are greater than us.

For example, some scholars suggest genetics determine human behavior. Following this theory, if we come from a family system inundated with depression, our days on earth are doomed to be covered by the dark cloud of depression. If we come from a long line of alcoholics, particularly males in that family have a high likelihood that they too will become alcoholics. Such theories are sophisticated forms of the biology is destiny argument that has been used to limit and box in women, people of color and others since the beginning of time.

Others say our economic and sociological surroundings, not human freedom, determine our choices and decisions. So they argue: because poor people live in bad housing conditions or their kids attend deteriorating schools, they won’t be able to be able to accomplish much. People who grow up in an abusive family are told they will likely be abusers themselves. According to these theorists, our environment is more determinative of the outcomes of our lives than any other factor. The primary difference between the outcome of a child in a bad neighborhood in Calcutta and a child in Montgomery County is the happenstance of them being born where they were born.

Conspiracy theories are another attack on human freedom. Conspiracy advocates suggest that everything is controlled by dark, insidious forces working behind the scenes. Listening to such disempowering nonsense, we begin to question whether our actions can make any difference in the world.

Modern theories suggesting that we are not masters of our own destiny are the latest form of predestination. Rather than being theologically rooted as has happened in the past, they are rooted in pseudo-science. Their attack on human freedom is a powerful subtext in our culture today.

A gang recruits a kid saying, “Who do you think you can be on your own? You’re a Salvadoran living in the U.S. What chance do you have to succeed in life? If you don’t become one of us, you will be nothing. We can shape your life. You cannot.” The gang claims for itself redemptive power to infuse the young person’s life with direction, purpose and meaning. A company says to an employee, “If you don’t like what we are doing, go and try to find another job. Good luck.” It is a modern version of threatening to cast people into the darkness where they will weep and gnash their teeth. The company suggests that the employee is powerless apart from it.

Every individual in each generation faces the question: “Am I my own person, in control of my own destiny or am I ruled by forces beyond my control?” No one stated the question more succinctly than Shakespeare when young Hamlet wonders, “To be or not to be.” To Hamlet, the choice is ours. Jesus told us precisely the same thing.

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus tells his listeners that the first step to redemption is repentance. Acknowledging our failures is how we start taking control of our lives. Freeing ourselves of the past, we open ourselves to a future in which we have new choices and options.

Jesus then went on to tell a parable about a fig tree that wasn’t fruitful. A landowner told his gardener to cut the fig tree down. The gardener became the tree’s advocate, asking for time to fertilize the tree and give it another chance to grow. Parenthetically, it is a wonderful illustration of how humans can be advocates for the trees, animals, waters and other parts of the creation.

The gardener knew what the landowner ignored. Life is not a simple matter of being or not being productive. Productivity can be increased with application of human will power to a project. As we assert our free will, as did the gardener, things change. The fruitless becomes fruitful.

Redemption is not about some cosmic re-balancing of the scales of justice as traditional theological doctrine suggests. It is not about being washed by the blood of Jesus. It is about God restoring, every day, our ability to make free choices in faithful, hopeful and loving ways. God’s redemptive act is the ongoing re-creation of free will in the midst of a family system plagued with addiction, in the heart of a devastated neighborhood in Haiti, in the center of an organization filled with corruption, in the soul of a person who has just been told that she is terminally ill.

We are free to abuse or be abused. We are free to reject being abusers or victims of abuse. We are free not to care for our bodies, destroying them with an unhealthy diet and lack of exercise. We are free to care for our bodies by treating them as the holy temples they are.

We see this redemptive process at work every day in the choices people freely make here at Western. Volunteers freely and joyfully come to feed the homeless; enable 200 of some of the world’s poorest people in Addis Ababa to receive monthly medical care; create a loving, affirming church environment for our kids here. We see it as people search through the rubble in Haiti and Chile looking for life; as LGBT folks say “I do” in a marriage ceremony; as many members of Congress refuse to accept our overpriced, non-universal health care system as fated to continue as is.

In one of the most beautiful passages in Scripture, the prophet Isaiah records God asking us, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant….” Why do we spend our money on foolish things and work so many hours on matters that ultimately leave us unsatisfied? Why do we eat and drink that which leaves us simply wanting more to eat and drink? The choices are ours.

As we come to the Lord’s Table this morning, let us incline our ear to God and listen so that we may choose life, a redeemed life built on choices freely made and freely lived. Salvation is about God’s offer of freedom. Freedom to live faithfully not sinfully. Freedom to overcome the circumstances into which we are born or live. Freedom to manage rather than be managed by our own genes or health. Let us embrace the freedom with which God blesses us.

Let us pray: Gracious God, you save us by giving us the opportunity to save ourselves. Help us to embrace our freedom and make the choices we see Jesus making, the choices we see his faithful disciples making throughout history. As we do so, may the sense of our own limitless possibilities grow and produce the fruits of faithfulness. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
Text: Luke 13:31-35, Philippians 3:17-4:1
February 28, 2010

In the season of Lent, we focus on what is known as “Jesus’ journey to the Cross.” During this crucial phase of Jesus’ life, the somewhat laissez faire days of his early ministry in Galilee were replaced by equally intense support and opposition to his ministry. Adoring crowds grew ever larger as masses of Galileans sought to be inspired Jesus’ preaching, touched by his healing power and enlightened by his broad understanding of God’s grace. During this period, the disciples intensified their work to spread Jesus’ Word.

At the same time, Jesus’ opponents grew ever more restless as they watched the young preacher’s popularity grow. Roman provincial governments were ordered to be on the lookout for alternate sources of power and authority surfacing in the grassroots. When spotted, Rome squashed any perceived threat quickly and ruthlessly. Jesus quickly showed up on Rome’s radar.

For reasons other than Rome’s, some among the established religious leadership of Israel were troubled by what they heard and saw of Jesus. From where they sat, the peasant preacher seemed to be moving away from the well-defined traditions of their ancestors. He had odd, even dangerous, ideas about what believers could do on the Sabbath, who was included in God’s family, and to whom forgiveness could be extended. During breaks in meetings of the Sanhedrin, a small but influential group of leaders lobbied their peers arguing that Jesus needed to be dealt with as a heretic, reminding the more tolerant in their midst that they were charged with protecting the faith. So there were two forces spinning around Jesus—his personal popularity and opposition to his ministry.

To keep his popularity intact, Jesus faced the temptation to tell the crowds whatever they wanted to hear. Fame has a way of compromising those who are blessed with it. There is a tendency to feed the beast that creates a high approval rating, to give the people more of what they seem to crave.

On the other hand, Jesus faced a temptation regarding his opponents. He could either 1) dismiss his critics as an older generation unable or unwilling to change with the times or 2) battle them tooth and nail. If he did the former, he would have been dismissive rather than inclusive. If he did the latter, his ministry would have been reactive rather than proactive.

I would suggest that many of us face the same type of struggles. Perhaps we are blessed with a certain amount of success at work, in our neighborhood, at church or wherever and we feel challenged as to how to cope with our acclaim. Or we come under criticism for our beliefs or lifestyle and get sucked into an unending, unwinnable debate with our critics. As we do so, these criticisms and our responses to them increasingly define who we are.

I have seen a number of pastors lose their personal integrity when their ministry became highly successful. Falling in love with success, all of their decisions flow through the matrix of whether or not a particular action will increase or decrease their popularity. Paul warned against this in a passage we read this morning where he writes, “their minds are set on earthly things.”

I have also seen clergy colleagues fall into the trap of obsessing over criticism. These pastors become unhinged as they attempt to counter every false statement made about them, rebut every criticism no matter how trivial it may be. It is a deadly trap.

When we fall into these classic quagmires, we lose our focus. Instead of making decisions based on where we want to go and how we are going to get there, we focus on whether or not we are popular or our critics are wrong. In so doing, we allow others to set our agenda. We are always responding to external realities rather than the internal call from God that should direct our actions.

Part of Jesus’ genius that is so abundantly on display during the season of Lent was his ability to stay focused. He didn’t ignore his critics or his fans. But neither would he would allow them to dictate what he did.

In this morning’s Gospel lesson, some Pharisees come to Jesus and warn him about Herod’s intent to kill Jesus. First, it is important to note that it was Pharisees who warned Jesus. Too often, the Pharisees are portrayed as a solid phalanx of opposition to Jesus. The Gospels don’t support such a caricature. The entire Jewish leadership was not set against Jesus.

How did Jesus respond to the threat from Herod? He told the Pharisees to tell the King, “‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way….’” In other words, “I have work to do.” Jesus refused to allow Herod or any other critic push his ministry off target. He knew where he was going and it didn’t make much difference to him whether or not a huge crowd walked with him or critics tried to stop him.

The disciplined focus so evident in Jesus should be a goal for each of us in our spiritual journey through life. When we stay focused, we, like him, can do amazing things. When we lose our focus, we lose our effectiveness as his disciples.

In the context of Washington, D.C., it seems to me that the Republican Party is currently struggling with the temptation of success while the Democrats are dealing with the temptation of battling one’s critics. To rebuild their popularity, the Republicans are jumping on the runaway freight train of anti-government feelings. Without question, there are strong feelings among the American people that our government isn’t working. When we should have been raising taxes to fight two wars, our government spent money lavishly on bridges to nowhere. When we should have been paying attention to various market bubbles, we reduced regulatory scrutiny of those who make financial decisions. When we were facing an obvious job crisis, there seemed to be little concerted response to generate new jobs. People are rightly angry that our government isn’t governing effectively.

However, having seized upon an issue they helped create with their own inept governing during the Bush era, the Republicans now face the temptation of following this volatile message to the darkest side of the body politic. Anti-government crackpots are being given podiums in responsible Republican circles as though they are mainstream. It is a dangerous time for the Republicans.

The Democrats, on the other hand, face the danger of handing over their agenda to their critics. In life, we have to listen to, respect and attempt to work with our critics. People who ignore criticism do so at their own peril and usually suffer severe consequences. However, while we need to listen to our critics, we have to act on our convictions. In an effort to reach reasonable compromises, we can’t compromise our beliefs until they are unrecognizable or dig in for an extended battle just for the sake of the battle.

At some point, leaders have to lead. They have to act on what they believe to be the best course of action. If they are criticized for their actions, so be it. Maybe their critics are correct. Maybe they aren’t. But leaders need to do what they think is the right thing to do and live with the consequences.

For progressives in the Presbyterian Church, our temptation isn’t being too popular. Those of us who favor the full inclusion of LGBT folks in the life of the church will never please our critics. We just won’t. Indeed, to date, we haven’t been able to get a majority of our brothers and sisters to vote with us on this issue over any lasting period of time. So popularity isn’t our problem. But we do face the temptation of getting bogged down in a battle with those who oppose the inclusion of LGBT folks and losing the ability to work on a host of other equally important issues.

We can and should meet with those who oppose the full inclusion of LGBT women and men in the church, talk and break bread with them. In essence, this is exactly what has been happening throughout my 36 years in ministry. Gratefully, the progressive argument has been gaining votes every single year.

Is this a long time to ask LGBT folks to wait for inclusion? Of course. But considering that we are attempting to undo 2000 years of Christian bias and tens of thousands of years of human bias on this issue, we are actually moving quite fast.

However, we can’t allow this debate to consume us or divert us from the broad agenda of other justice, environmental and peace issues that face the world. So let us continue to press our position and vote our consciences. Let those who oppose us do the same. In the end, right will prevail.

So often we turn Jesus into an idealized, romanticized figure. We portray him as being so perfect that it is hard to relate to him. In fact, he was flesh and blood, real as real can be. When we are dealing with the challenges of popularity and criticism, we can learn so much from his pragmatic, realistic approach.

For example, let’s look at how he dealt with his popularity which seems to have peaked on the day we call Palm Sunday. As evidenced by the way the crowds eventually abandoned him, some of Jesus’ popularity was rooted in small and large misunderstandings of who he was. Indeed, most people were drawn to him because they thought he was somebody other than who he was. He was a wall onto which they projected their hopes. They saw him as the instant solution to their problems—personal, political or other problems. In some ways, this fantasy continues today with the many Christians who think Jesus will solve all their problems. When Jesus doesn’t, they turn on him.

But Jesus refused to portray himself as the solution to humanity’s many problems. “Only you can solve your problems,” he said in many different ways. To an adulteress he said, “Go and sin no more.” To a person overly attached to his material possessions, he said, “Sell what you have and give it to the poor.” To people filled with anxiety he said, “Look at the lilies of the field and birds of the air. If God cares for them, will not God care for you as well?”

These answers may or may not have been well received. But they were the only things Jesus could say with integrity. He wasn’t going to sell out his message just to gain a few more followers. So it must be for you and me individually and as a congregation.

Our success at Western hasn’t flowed from a strategy designed to make us popular. It flows from focus. We have done a pretty good job of understanding what we can and cannot do. There are always causes beckoning us to move off in different directions. Often, they are the popular causes of the day. However important they may be, none of them are as important as maintaining our focus.

Rick Warren has made a lot of money with his book The Purpose Driven Life. On one level, I think he misses the point. I have known a lot of people who were very clear about their purpose. But in pursuing that purpose, they lose their focus.

Maybe it is a pastor who tries to grow her or his church by being all things to all people or a teacher who is more concerned about being popular with the students than the students learning all the material or parents whose obsession with their child’s grades causes them not to pay enough attention to the child’s shaky self-esteem. The examples are as numerous as the human race. So many of our problems flow not from a lack of purpose but from a lack of disciplined focus on how we are going to accomplish the purpose.

On the plane down to Mexico earlier this month, a US citizen was sitting near me filling out his immigration form. The form asks for a destination in Mexico. The guy called over the flight attendant and said, “I don’t know what to put here. I don’t know where I am going.” She responded, “Well, put the city where you are going.” He said, “I don’t know that.” She replied, “Well where are you staying tonight?” “At a hotel near the airport.” “Put that down,” she concluded and walked away shaking her head. I just started to laugh. Talk about a lack of focus. For decades, Mexico has attracted Americans who have no idea where they are going.

Knowing where we are going and then staying focused on that destination is at the heart of a happy, health life. It is at the heart of effective, faithful Christian discipleship. In this season of Lent, we see Jesus focused in a way that is truly divine. May each of us learn from him how we can stay focused on who we are, where we are going and how we are going to get there.

Let us pray: Gracious God, it is easy to get diverted in life. There are so many important things begging for our attention, time and energy. Help us to figure out what you are calling us to do. May we then have the discipline to dedicate ourselves to accomplishing our calling. Having said “Yes” to your call, may we have the strength to say “no” to those things that will divert us from that end. All this we pray in the name of our Teacher, Jesus of Nazareth. Amen.

Western Presbyterian Church

Washington, D.C.

21 February 2010

Text: Luke 4:1-13

I’m sure there are some people who were waiting to hear what Tiger Woods had to say this week. The golfer was caught with a text message to a lover a while ago, and it seems that everything has fallen apart in his life since then.

I actually have a hard time following the story. It’s like a bad car wreck and I’m not even tempted to rubberneck. It just reminds me of the frailty of human life. No matter how rich, strong, successful, or talented you are, there always seems to be some weakness.

After 11 years in the ministry, I have talked to a lot of people who struggle with temptations. It’s odd the desires are different for different people. For some, there are sexual temptations–affairs, pornography, or prostitution. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to be about the sex, but more about the affection. There’s a craving for compliments, being held, and being desired. There might be a natural longing that can become destructive when we look to fulfill that yearning in the wrong ways.

For others it’s food, people are tempted to eat too much or starve themselves. For some it’s a chemical dependence on alcohol, drugs, or prescription medication.

For others it is work—they cannot stop working. They are sure that everything will fall apart if they go on vacation, and when they are on vacation, they cannot stop checking emails. Our technology feeds into this sort of addiction quite handily. Our gadgets were often sold to us as a way to get away from the office and still get our work done, but now they’ve turned into a way in which we can never leave the office. The work and the expectation to work are always with us.

Some people are addicted to anger, and they blow up and do things that they would never do in more levelheaded moments. It’s just that their own fears overtake them, and in order to combat those anxieties, they have this anger. When anger is unleashed in our bodies, we can feel a surge of power, and we can make other people afraid. Even though we do not like the consequences, we cannot seem to stop the cycle, because of that seemingly invincible rush of power that takes over.

It is different for different people. I have a friend whose greatest temptation is gambling. When she told me that, I just remembered going to the casinos in Louisiana. They often had the best food, but it was the oddest thing to watch people at the slot machines. They were glossy-eyed and sometimes they would have two machines going at one time.

One time, I decided that I would spend twenty dollars on slots. I wanted to understand the appeal. It did nothing for me. In fact, after ten dollars, I had to quit, because I felt like I could throw the money out on the street and it would do more good.

Gambling is not my temptation, but food depravation and working too much are. You see, I can boldly confess these things to you because these temptations to you, because they’re not shameful in our society. Our society congratulates people who are productive and thin, and it keeps awarding us even when we overwork and starve our bodies. Unfortunately, the two temptations conspire together. I work through breakfast; I work through lunch. I work, and I forget to eat.

I notice these temptations are common sins for women. There is a myth in our society that successful women put less hours into their jobs, because they have a better work/life balance. Especially, younger feminists. We’re supposed to have a good handle on all of this. That may be true for some women. But studies have shown that if you put a successful woman next to a successful man, the woman typically puts in more hours. This is, in part to crack the glass ceiling. It is also because we have to overcome the stereotype that we are going to work less than men. (It’s a vicious cycle.)

It is interesting that right after Jesus was baptized, and the Holy Spirit gently flew down like a beautiful dove, then it says that the Spirit hurled him into the wilderness for a time of testing and temptation. In the Greek, in Mark’s original account, the verb is just that harsh. Jesus was driven into the wilderness, to fast and pray for forty days—and to be tempted.

And it is interesting to see what tempted Jesus. First it was food, but after not eating for that long, anyone would be tempted by bread. It was also power. Jesus was tempted to gain power in inappropriate ways. This is fascinating because Jesus is known for his servant leadership. He is known for washing the feet of his friends, and carrying the cross. But I wonder if Jesus struggled more with all of that–even more than most people. I mean, when the adversary went to tempt Jesus, it was not with slot machines, sex, drugs, but it was with power.

I think it’s safe to say that many of us here in Washington have that in common with Jesus. People want power and they will try to gain it at all costs. Whether that means making up lies, slandering others, backstabbing friends, silencing minorities, ignoring the poor—it is a great temptation. We might be like Jesus, in the sense that we want the power so that we can eventually use it for good things, but we still have to fight the temptation of getting the power in the wrong way.

As we enter Lent, we are reminded of this dynamic in all of our lives. Our temptations may be different, but they are there.

How do we resist them? Some of this might seem completely elementary, but as anyone who has been caught with his or her hand in the proverbial cookie jar, we know that we can end up acting like children. So, I guess it’s good to remind each other of the basics.

First, identify what your temptations are. If your sins are ones that are encouraged by our society, like mine are, they can be hard to identify. But a close friend or spouse can usually tell you exactly what they are. In fact, they probably already have.

Sometimes we can’t hear them, if we’re not ready to identify our temptations. I knew a guy a few years ago who went in for counseling, and the therapist started asking about his drinking habits. He kept telling the therapist, “I don’t have a problem with drinking.” She kept asking the usual questions about how much he drank and when he drank and what sort of social situations he drank in. He refused to answer her and never went back to therapy again.

I don’t know if he has a problem, but I do know that if he does, he won’t identify it. The sad thing is that our problems don’t go away if we don’t name them.

Second, think about the circumstances surrounding the tempting situation. Are there common triggers that you can avoid? Do you overwork when you are receiving a lot of criticism? Do you find refuge at the office when things are rough at home? Do you get angry when you are afraid? Do you seek unhealthy affection when you feel unattractive? Do you participate in unhealthy behavior when you are around particular people? If you have a common trigger, then think about ways to avoid the trigger. Sometimes it’s easier to avoid the entire wilderness than it is to avoid the temptation in the wilderness.

If you feel overwhelmed by criticism, do things to take care of yourself. I often take walks and pray. I even buy myself flowers, on occasion.

If there are problems at home, try to talk about them to your spouse. Or go to counseling, instead of sweeping it under the rug. When you find yourself angry, take a pulse on your emotions. Is there something that you are afraid of? Is there something that is making you depressed?

What about your friends? If there is someone you drink too much with, and you want to quit drinking, then don’t call that person to tell her how you want to stop. That’s just not going to work. You’ll have to find some other friends.

Speaking of friends, that leads me to the third point. Gather some support. Twelve-step groups have saved my family members. I have watched them save marriages, relationships, careers, and lives. I have heard a thousand arguments against them. I have heard the feminist critiques. I know that there have been some pretty severe problems with an AA group here in D.C. But I also know their power to change lives. They are free. They are always available. If you’re creeped out by one, then find another one. But if you need it, then go.

I have watched friends and loved ones come up with every excuse in the world not to go to a 12-step program, while their lives went into a complete shambles. When they finally ran out of excuses, then they were able to get the support they needed. And they rebuilt their lives.

If there is no group, and you’re serious about making a change, then find someone who can support you. A friend you can call, at any time day or night, when you feel like you’re in the wilderness. I know it’s hard to make friends here in D.C. Everyone is so transient and work-oriented. But you might need to reach out to someone, because you need someone whom you can call. No one needs to be in the wilderness, facing your temptation all by yourself. Find someone you can trust. Talk to them. You might be thinking that it could ruin your career if you talked to someone. But it just might ruin your career if you don’t talk to someone.

And look at me, I’m a pastor. Pastors are often the first people to get fired if they have a temptation that they can’t overcome. And I found someone. (The trick might be to find someone who has more to lose than you do!) Pray about it. You’ll find someone.

The beautiful thing about church, about coming together here, the amazing thing about Lent, is that we are called to examine our lives, we are called to look at our wilderness situations, we are called to think about the times when we are tempted. We are called to confess what we have done, not so that we can be judged and condemned. Not so that someone can tell you that you are going to hell. But so that you can find that place of mercy and grace, so that you can be so surrounded by the love of God that it will transform your life. We are held by the embrace of God, who loves us as a mother loves her child, and in this season, we have a chance to be forgiven by God and to change.

Thanks be to God, our Creator,

God, our Liberator,

            and God, our Sustainer. Amen.

Western Presbyterian Church

Washington, D.C.

14 February 2010

Text: Luke 9:28-36

I was at Austin Seminary, and we were having a series of lectures on evolution. It was extremely important for the future pastors at the school to be exposed to the intricacies of these matters. Our seminary was training Presbyterians and Methodists who would be pastors all over the world, but most of us would be concentrated in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas—and these are places where there are often heated debates over evolution.

We don’t always get a sense of it here in the D.C. region, but there’s a strong religious movement to keep the scientific findings of evolution from the textbooks, and to present theories like “Intelligent Design” in the classroom.

Many Christians in Texas saw evolution as a threat to our faith. They took the words of Scripture literally, so they believed that God created the world roughly six thousand years ago, and the entire process happened in 144 hours. They fought long and hard against any scientific theory that might deviate from those presuppositions, because they believed that to question would begin to crack the very foundations of Christianity.

This issue is so important to many Christians that they have set up Think Tanks dedicated to the work of Creationism. They set up powerful lobbies, to make sure that politicians hear their views. They carefully study textbooks, and protest when evolution is taught in schools. Many times parents will even home-school their children, so that there won’t be a chance that their kids would be exposed to evolution.

I have watched Christians ridicule scientific findings for years. We know how the scientific method ought to work. You have a hypothesis, and then you gather data and test that hypothesis. If the data collected supports the hypothesis, then you have a conclusion.

But, sometimes Conservative Evangelical Christians can get it all backwards. Sometimes Christians start with a conclusion (like the world was created 6,000 years ago in six days), and if data that goes against that conclusion, then they try to disprove the data.

This practice points to the awkward relationship that science and religion has had since the 16^th and 17^th century. Now we look at the text and we see stories like the Transfiguration, and we wonder, How could this be possible? How can these men suddenly be on the mountaintop, talking with each other? It’s not scientifically possible for these miracles to occur. So what’s the use of Scripture? What’s the use of religion? Why do we gather together and pray and worship God, when the very first chapter of this book cannot hold up to an eight-grade biology class?

All of this points to this awkward relationship between science and the Bible.

So, our seminary invited some of the professors and academics from University of Texas to talk to us about evolution. They knew that as religious leaders, we would be in the front lines of this debate. We would have parishioners who would come to us with concerns about their child’s eighth grade biology class, and they wanted to make sure that we were ready to answer those questions.

Most of the visiting professors were wonderful. They helped us to understand the scientific findings, and they gave us the tools that we would need as we talked to the ordinary people who might be struggling with what they should believe. 

But there was one man, who presented the Big Bang Theory, who was not so courteous. Just before his lecture was complete, he launched into an extended tirade against Christians. Basically, calling us all idiots.

Perhaps if I were a scientist in Texas, I would have the same reaction to Christians. I can certainly understand when certain groups, have been targeted by certain Christians, why they would make generalizations about all Christians. But, it was still rather unfair, when we were on his side, for him to be making these assumptions about us. And, in my humble opinion, if he was that vehemently opposed to us, then he ought to have turned down the invitation. And the honorarium. Instead of using our hospitality as an opportunity to tell us what morons we were.

But I digress… the point is that when we look at miracles in the Bible, often our modern minds don’t quite know what to do with them. And much of this uncomfortable relationship between science and the Bible is rooted in our ideas of how the world began.

It hasn’t always been this way. The author Karen Armstrong writes and about this in her book The Case for God. She said in an interview that the ancient mind had two different ways of acquiring knowledge. In Ancient Greek, the original language of the New Testament, there are two words: one is logos and the other is mythos.

When we look at the etymology, or the original root of words like Biology, Sociology, Anthropology, we can get a sense of what the term logos means. It means words, but there is something a bit more exact about the term as it was used in ancient culture. Logos pointed to science, reason. Logos helped us to function practically in the world, and logos helped us to accurately reflect the realities of the world around us.

And there was another term: mythos. Mythos was different than logos because the point of mythos was not to give us the words to accurately reflect with reason and science, but it was to give comfort in the midst of sorrow. It was to be there, to help us to get over our egos. It was to inspire us into a life of compassion. It drew us into a silent awe. Mythos was a discourse, it was stories and poetry that helped to comfort us when we were suffering and in pain.

If we have a child who dies, we absolutely want to know the scientific reason why that child has died. But after we know that, we want something else. We need something that will help us to come to terms with the tragedy. We want the poetry of Romans eight, that will comfort us with knowledge that there is nothing that will separate us from the love of God—not even sickness or death. We want the comfort of Psalm twenty-three, which speaks to our soul and tells us that even though we walk through the shadow of death, God will comfort us. God will eventually lead us to the green grass and the waters.

Mythos tries to explain and comfort in the midst of human suffering. When there were no easy answers, mythos tried to give meaning to our lives, with full realization that there are things that we don’t understand. As the Scriptures say, we see through a dark glass.    

I the ancient mind there was the idea of two things. There was no competition between the two ideas. In fact, the early theologian, Augustine, made it clear that if there was a contradiction between science and the Scripture, then the Scripture needed to be re-interpreted.

There was just the sense that both were necessary.

In the 16-17^th century, there was a radical shifting of religions and science. The Protestant Reformation was taking place, so there was this destabilization of religion.

Meanwhile, modern science began to take hold, and there were great strides that were being made–cures for sickness and disease. Science began to explain so many things. And mythos began to look flimsy, it was discredited. Logos became the only reliable, credible means of truth.

We can see how the tension became evident between the time of Copernicus and Galileo. When Copernicus presented his ideas to the Vatican, the Vatican was in nominal support of his finding. But when Galileo presented some of the same ideas, it was in a new time, and the Pope made the terrible mistake of putting Galileo under house arrest.

There was still an idea of logos and mythos. Among the Protestant Reformers, John Calvin said that the Bible did not speak to science. He called people who try to impede science “frantic persons.” If you want to learn about cosmology, don’t go to the Bible, go elsewhere.

Then something interesting happened. Sir Isaac Newton, and Rene Descates said that they could prove, scientifically, that God exists. Newton and Descartes began to point to science and they said that there had to be a divine intelligence to create all of this. There had to be an original source that was skilled in geometry and mathematics. If we look at nature, then there is undeniable proof that there is a Creator.

The church was thrilled by this notion that there would be scientific proof for our religious beliefs. Mythos was no longer discredited, because logos had proved it! And we began to make Newton’s God central.

With the discoveries of the Big-Bang theory and the findings of evolution, this proof that was so central to the church, came into question.

Something happened within conservative Christianity in the midst of all this. With the advent of modern science, many Christians no longer read the stories of Scripture with the same lenses. They began to see the Bible as a literal, factual book.

Again, the story of creation plays a central role in this. In the Bible, there are four accounts of Creation—there are two in Genesis, one in Proverbs, and the other in John. In one of the earliest church councils, it was declared that the creation accounts were metaphorical and should be read as such. Early mystics often came us with different creations myths.

Now, in conservative Evangelical Christianity, there is the sense that the Bible is a book of stories, wisdom and poetry that speaks to our deepest sufferings and stirs us to compassion, but it is more than that, it is also factually correct. Many conservatives believe that if we begin to say that the Bible might have some scientific or factual errors in it, then we nullify our entire faith. And we are doing nothing short of calling God a liar.

There are some people, like Richard Dawkins, who say that with the advent of modern science, mythos is irrelevant, and a movement of new atheists have gained great ground. But even though modern thinkers have declared that God is dead many times, the vast majority of people around the world are still religious. There is still a longing for mythos. There is something about these stories that comforts us in the midst of our pain, there is something about gathering here that stirs our compassion. There is something here that changes lives.

We cannot make scientific sense of why two dead people were talking to a Jesus, a man we declare is divine. We cannot, scientifically, prove that regular clothes and faces are turned into glowing brilliance. We cannot make those things happen in a laboratory. But we have this story of God incarnate, who is learning from prophets of old how to die.

The goal of religion is not to accurately reflect the realities of the world around us in the same way that science does—it is not to gather all of the words and details that will fully encompass the world. The goal of religion is to bring us to a sense of silence and awe. It is a humble understanding that there are things that our human minds cannot explain.

But, on the other hand, we will try to explain those things that we can, with the all of the robust scientific energy and intelligence that we can muster, we will study, test, try and prove.

There is the understanding that God is so infinite and so vast, that we may not be able to scientifically prove the existence of God, but that does not mean that we do not have wonder. And, when we look at this wonderful account of the Transfiguration, we know that lives can be transformed with the humble acknowledgement of God.

For the glory of God, our Creator,

            God, our Liberator,

                        and God, our Sustainer. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
February 7, 2010

Text: I Corinthians 15:1-11

In what I consider the best book on the development of Christology in the church, Roger Haight states “The question of salvation is the religious question” (My underline). Haight is absolutely correct. Put beside the question of the meaning of salvation, every other theological question pales in significance. Doctrines about the church, Trinity, the last days, they are all secondary to our doctrine of salvation. Only the doctrine of God itself rivals our beliefs about salvation.

I am going to devote two Sundays to this critical question—today and a Sunday in March. Today I will talk briefly about the history of the doctrine and why I think it is not terribly helpful to Christians today. In March, I will talk about where we are today on the doctrine of salvation and how it addresses the most fundamental need we have—to know that we are loved by our Divine Parent. Obviously, the two are so inter-related, so there will be a bit of overlap.

In the 15^th chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, Paul states his doctrine of salvation in very simple, concise words: “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.” For Paul and the early church, salvation wasn’t about the meaning and purpose of our lives. It was about sin.

This shouldn’t be surprising since Paul was a person who, by his own account, was wracked with guilt over things he had done. He had done some pretty awful things, including persecuting members of the early church prior to his conversion. Paul was also obsessed with his failure to live faithfully according to the Jewish Law.

We all know Paul’s personality type. We may see it in a colleague at work who is never satisfied with her work product. She always sees the flaws in her work; rarely does she see the positive things she produces. We may see it at home with a family member who can’t satisfy him or herself. Maybe one of our kids can’t be satisfied with a B in some subject that is very difficult or one of our siblings is forever critical of little things he or she does less than perfectly. Or maybe we see this type of hypercritical tendency at work in ourselves. We can please others but not ourselves.

At some point, Paul came to the correct conclusion that he couldn’t forgive himself for his mistakes real and imagined. Judging himself by an external law, he needed an external source to experience forgiveness. Not able to find relief in the world, he rightly looked to God. Once oriented toward and accepting of God’s grace, Paul’s life took a change for the better that also changed the world as he became the lead disciple of a graceful God.

This is the context for what Paul meant when he said that Jesus died for our sins. God, as revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, can do that which we cannot do—liberate us from guilt by forgiving our sins. The grace of God can wipe out, erase, bury forever our sins and with them the guilt that is so debilitating and destructive of our lives.

How is this message of forgiveness connected to Jesus’ death? If God can forgive humanity after we killed the Christ, surely God can forgive you and me. So often, we think we are unforgivable. We basically say to God, “You don’t understand just how bad I have been.” Well, yes, God does understand. And when we confess our failures, no matter how bad they are, God does forgive us. This was Jesus’ core message.

I should add that for Paul, our sins stood between us and life eternal. If we remain unforgiven while on earth, Paul believed the possibility of heaven doesn’t exist. So for us to join God for eternity, in his mind, the issue of sinfulness had to be addressed. Paul felt Jesus did so directly and unequivocally.

Paul’s teaching remained the primary understanding of God’s redemptive work through the first eleven centuries of the church. Augustine in the fourth century began to develop some systematic thoughts. But the church’s teaching on salvation didn’t engender a large debate until the 11^th century when two of the church’s greatest thinkers went toe to toe: Anselm, an Italian Benedictine monk, and Abelard, a French monk about fifty years younger than Anselm.

Picking up on Paul’s claim that Jesus died for our sins, Anselm shifted theology in a direction it followed almost unchallenged until the 19^th century. He decided that Jesus had to die for our sins because humanity, on its own, could not atone for them. Beginning with Adam and Eve and continuing onward, our sins were too many and too awful for any sufficient act of contrition on our part.

Anselm asserted that our redemption could be achieved only through an internal transaction within the Godhead. God demanded satisfaction for the sins of humanity just as a judge demands satisfaction from a criminal for a crime. And yet, no human could make that satisfaction because the crimes were too numerous for any one person to make restitution. Therefore and logically, only God could satisfy God’s need for the debt to be settled. As a result, God became human to do what humanity could not—satisfy the debt. Jesus died for our sins.

Anselm’s theology of atonement has a certain logic but seems bizarre to many of us in the 21^st century. It is certainly bizarre to me. But it wasn’t bizarre in the Middle Ages. It appealed to the “eye for an eye” reality in which they lived. Scores had to be settled with the appropriate punishment. Only God could settle this particular score. God did so by offering up Jesus as the price to be paid for humanity’s thousands of years of sin.

Anselm and generations after him saw this as God’s supreme act of sacrifice. God loved us so much that God gave up God’s only begotten to create the grounds for New Life for humanity. What amazing grace it was, they believed.

Abelard didn’t buy it. He did not believe God’s thinking toward a sinful humanity had to be changed by some act of atonement, a supernatural settling of the score. It felt like an all-too-human a way of dealing with sin.

In opposition to the idea of a divine self-sacrifice, Abelard wrote that what needed to take place was not a judicial transaction in which our sins were negated. No, what needed to change was sinful humanity’s attitude toward God. It was this change that Jesus accomplished. By remaining faithful even unto death, Jesus showed us the proper attitude for humans to have toward God. Forgiven we become grateful for the renewed possibility of a faithful life. From this flows an grateful effort to live as Jesus lived—faithfully, creatively, lovingly.

We confess our sins. They are forgiven. We are restored to the path of faithful discipleship. This sacred progression is the essence of Abelard’s teaching.

Anselm’s notion of redemption is called objective because it happens independent of us. God does it, not us. We receive the benefits unaided by anything we have done. We are the objects of salvation, not participants in it.

Abelard’s concept is called subjective. God can only do what God can do: forgive us. Salvation takes place as we respond faithfully to a loving and graceful God. We make it happen when we repent and rejoin God’s family.

These two theories, objective and subjective, are at the heart of many of the differences between conservative and progressive Christian theologies.

Much of the language of our tradition, especially as found in our hymns, proclaims Anselm’s theology of salvation. We hear about Jesus’ blood, his suffering on the cross and death as being the essence of God’s redemptive act. In a way they are.

However, such an approach also makes no sense to many of us. Why would God kill an innocent, family member to satisfy a debt? There had to be another way. There was and Abelard described it.

As I and many others understand God’s redemptive work, Jesus’ death did not satisfy an angry God. His death satisfied an angry Roman empire and angry religious leaders. Jesus’ death was the result of our sinfulness, not part of a cosmic drama to satisfy God.

We are saved by Jesus because he introduces us to a realm of grace the likes of which we can find nowhere else. He ushers us into a world where prodigal children and adulteress people are forgiven, tax collectors and persecutors of the church become leaders of the church, lepers are embraced and those given up for dead find new life. In this mystical realm, we see ourselves as good rather than sinful; forgiven rather than burdened; children of God rather than children of a struggling world.

God does save us from our sins. As we are forgiven, we are freed, yes, saved to live a healthy and holy life. It is this forgiveness and the new life it engenders, this salvation that we celebrate around the Lord’s Table.

Gracious God, your love for us is, indeed, amazing. Even though we sin and sin again, you forgive and forgive again, refusing to give up on us. In this sacred process, you save us from ourselves. Thank you. Help us to live lives worthy of such love, following the example of Jesus who shows us the Way to you. Amen.

Western Presbyterian Church

Washington, DC

24 January 2010

Text: Luke 4:14-21

I’m starting a new book project. This will be my third book that I’ve written since I’ve been here, at Western. Before I came here, I was a solo pastor for six years. And although I felt an overwhelming love for this congregation from the moment I stepped foot on the sidewalk, I had a lot of worry about being an Associate Pastor. I never imagined that I would be an Associate, because I love the intellectual discipline of preaching so much.

So, when I took the job, I decided that I would not give up my writing schedule that I maintained as a Solo Pastor, and I began to write books.

My next book will not just be for church leaders; it’s a trade book. I’m writing it to a more general audience. I’m writing about the experience of healing from religious abuse. Moving from the conservative religious upbringing and becoming a progressive, female pastor is a huge shift. I’ve spent a lot of time, sorting out my beliefs. Trying to figure out what has been damaging to my self-esteem, my sexuality, my friendships, and attitude toward others.

It’s been painful to write. As I’ve thought back on my history, I hold my breath as I think about the wounds that religion has caused in the lives of so many people, so many of my friends who have suffered abuse from fathers who demanded submission; gays and lesbians who felt that they had to choose between divine love or human love; people who felt emotionally manipulated into a conversion experience, or rejected by their families and friends because of the shunning that was encouraged by churches; women who felt subordinate to men because of the teachings that they learned in Sunday school.

But as I write, I also cannot deny that even though religion wounds, it is often the balm that heals as well. It makes me think of the ointment that was poured over people for medicinal reasons in biblical times.

There was a practice, called anointing. Anointing is an extremely old ritual that is used in all sorts of religions—Hinduism, Judaism. In fact, it’s a practice went back farther than that. It seems that in ancient traditions, there was a sense of life flowing through the blood and fat of animals. There was something sacred about the fat. So when a hunter killed a bear, and he wanted the bear’s courage, he would take the fat of the bear and smear it on himself, welcoming the courage into himself. 

This sense that power or the qualities of a person could be passed from one person to another, is evident in the Bible. In some cases, it’s almost like passing along an inheritance. For instance, when the great prophet Elijah ended his time here on earth, he gave to his spiritual successor, Elisha, a double portion of his spirit.

Anointing is used throughout the Bible, for different purposes. In the beginning of fledgling country of Israel, the act was used to set men and women apart. Prophets were anointed, and prophets anointed the new kings. Even before the king was chosen by the people, he was chosen by God, through this ritual.

Anointing was used in more ordinary ways as well—as an act of hospitality, the smell of the sweet oil would fill the home, inviting and comforting guests. It was used for medicinal purposes, as the oil acted as a soothing balm for wounds. And men and women anointed bodies to prepare them for burial.

It is important in the life of Jesus as well. One of his first acts of Jesus’ ministry (or at least the first that’s recorded in this gospel) was the one that we read, where he stands and reads:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

As we think about this act, as we think about Jesus—especially as we remember how prophets anointed each other and anointed kings in these ancient rituals—it is interesting to note that Mary is the one who anointed Jesus, right before he died. Lavishing expensive perfume on him, and bathing his feet with her tears, Jesus turned to her, and said that the good news that Jesus preached would always be told in memory of her.

And it just might be true. After all, Jesus is called “Christ,” which isn’t his last name. The theologian Paul Tillich says that we ought to saying “Jesus the Christ,” because Christ is his title. It means “the anointed one,” and from what we know, she is the one who anointed Jesus. She gave him his title.

Jesus stood up at the beginning of his ministry and said that God had anointed him and she prepared him for the end of his life, pouring the oil over his feet, weeping tears, in this loving and tender gesture.

I know a little bit about anointing myself. We have similar ancient rituals. In other congregations that I’ve served, I have anointed babies when they were baptized. I marked their heads with oil and the sign of the cross, to note they are a part of the Body of Christ. A Christian, a little anointed one.

We do the same sort of ancient rituals when we lay hands on one another in ordination. When you think about it, it is quite amazing. The hands that surrounded you represent a chain that connects you with leaders who go back decades. The chain of arms connect you with men and women whose courage, creativity, and wisdom have kept this church vital for over a 150 years. It always gives me goose bumps when I think about it.

And I know about anointing on a personal level. This sort of thing happened when I went to my grandmother’s home in South Carolina. I had been called into my grandmother’s room, because she had stopped breathing, her heart stopped beating, and she was dying.

We took each other’s hands, made a circle, and began singing “Amazing Grace” and reading Psalm 23. I looked around at the women who were gathered. I could see them, each one of them were preachers and teachers, in some form or fashion. They had worked hard in their congregations. My grandmother had been a matriarch in her congregation. My aunt had cared for people as a nurse for years. My mother and my other aunt led a ministry with developmentally disabled people.

I’m pretty sure that all of these women, at one time or another, had told me that a woman should not be an ordained pastor. But we were gathered there, nonetheless, with our different ministries.

It was a beautiful moment. There was no oil there. But I could not help but have the sense that the strength that my grandmother embodied was flowing there. The bear-like courage with which she faced life was making its way from her, from generation to generation.

And my mother turned to me and said, “You are an anointed one.”

The scene was so powerful that when it was over, the hospice nurse took my grandmother’s vital signs, looked at us, shook his head, and said, “Y’all just got her all riled up again. What are you doing? She’s not ever gonna wanna leave this room!”

I smiled. And something happened to me in the experience. I am not always proud of the religion that I inherited. I am often ashamed that it is a tradition that often includes hatred and manipulation.

But something happened to me that day, because I was able to embrace my history, and acknowledge that even though my faith has been a source of pain, it has also been a place of healing. Like a balm, that was poured over wounds, that anointed the feet of Jesus. That gave him the title “Christ” and allows me to live as a Christian.

You are anointed ones. You have called out been the good news to the poor, with a warm nutritious meal. God has brought us here to proclaim freedom for the prisoners,  and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed. As you work tirelessly in Haiti, as you serve women in the shelter, as you sort food at the food bank, as you fight for the environment, as you go out and struggle for justice and peace—you are anointed.

Thanks be to God.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
January 17, 2010

Text: John 2:1-11

As told by John, the wedding at Cana is a very funny story. The humor resides in the mother-son dynamics between Jesus and Mary. They are classic.

As the story begins, everybody was apparently having a swell time at the reception until the wine ran out. While most figured the lack of wine meant the reception was over (operating on the millenia-old assumption: no wine, no party), Mary had a solution to the problem—her son. She went to Jesus who was deeply immersed in a conversation with some friends and said “Jesus, we’re out of wine.” Mary didn’t come right out and say “Get them some more wine.” Mother-son communication is much more subtle, most of it implicitly not explicit. But Mary’s meaning was clear: “Son, get busy and solve the wine problem.”

Jesus responded petulantly. “Mom, why are you making this our problem? This is their wedding, not ours. They are responsible for the wine, not us.” With that, Jesus went back to talking with his friends. Mary conspicuously ignored her son’s objections and told the servants (loud enough so Jesus would hear her), “Do whatever my son tells you.” Translate that: “My son will get you the wine.”

What amuses me most is what comes next. Jesus the eloquent preacher, spectacular healer, revolutionary threat to Roman authority melted, absolutely dissolved in the face of his mother’s authority. It reminds me of the thousands of times my defiance evaporated in the face of my mother’s commands. Jesus quickly did exactly what Mary wanted. No more resistance. Pure capitulation. Leaving his friends, Jesus told the servants what they needed to do to make more wine. The party resumed and Jesus returned to his friends.

Jesus was not a philosopher king. Far from it, in many ways, his ministry was intensely pragmatic. When his mother asked him to do something, he did it. When people needed loaves of bread and lots of fish, he supplied them. When people needed to be loved, healed, taught, forgiven, or warned, he did it. Jesus was a pragmatic practitioner of his faith who skillfully identified and solved problems.

In that regard, Western’s ministry historically has very much mirrored Jesus’ ministry. Unpacking our 155-year history, I have found no signs of the pretense and hubris that sometimes fills the lives of Washingtonians and our institutions. Rather, there is one example after another of a pragmatic emphasis on being faithful in humble, real and concrete terms. Pragmatic application of divinely revealed ideals has marked our life together.

When we have built buildings, we have chosen simple, pragmatic architecture such as our current arts and crafts style. When we have called pastors, we haven’t sought famous or flashy clergy but worker-bees who want and know how to get a job done. We have not gone out of our way to lure Washington’s rich and famous into our midst. Instead, we have been and remain a congregation filled with the boiler room type people who make Washington’s infrastructure work.

Jesus wasn’t impressed with his ability to make wine. Mary definitely wasn’t impressed. He didn’t even want to do it. But he made the wine so the party could continue. It is an impressive model for ministry.

I regularly use the prism of a pragmatic, goal oriented approach to life to evaluate our ministry at Western. My bottom line: Are we getting the job done? Using that prism today, I would declare the state of our congregation to be quite healthy. Why? Because we figure a way to get things done.

Because of the deteriorating economy around us, this past year we faced a major fiscal challenge. It certainly wasn’t the worst fiscal crisis in this congregation’s history. When the Great Depression hit, we almost lost our building, barely avoiding bankruptcy. My predecessor, Dr. McKenzie, often didn’t get paid for weeks on end. During the early years of my ministry at Western, making payroll was a relentless challenge. So last year was not our worst financial problem. However, it was serious.

The congregation responded with a wonderfully common sense approach. We started with a noble value: a care for those who care for us—our staff. We didn’t want to cut staff or staff salaries because of the damaging impact such actions would have on individuals who serve us well.

But our historical pragmatism also played a major role in the decision-making. We realized that if we started de-constructing our ministry to save money, it would cost us more than we saved. We would lose members who came here for the ministries that were being deconstructed.

So, combining ideals and pragmatism, we avoided something that would have been bad both for individual staff members and the congregation’s future. By so doing, we reaffirmed Paul’s primary axiom for ministry that the fate of the parts and the whole are inseparable.

That decision made, our pragmatism pushed us in the right direction for solutions to our financial problems. We didn’t try to get cute and employ gimmicks. We didn’t look for some savior of an idea. We looked inward. We asked one another if each of us could give more than we were giving to the congregation. The answer was a resounding and heartening “Yes we can.”

In like manner, we have dealt in a very pragmatic manner with challenges we face in doing mission. For several years, our efforts to build a clinic in Ethiopia had been effectively thwarted by the local government of Dukem. Many congregations would have given up or looked to another nation as a location for their work. We did not. Being good Washingtonians, we hired a top drawer lobbyist (pro bono)!

Robb Watters is a skilled D.C. lobbyist, a former member here at Western and a dear personal friend. He is now an Episcopalian despite my best efforts to achieve another end. Hearing about our plight, Robb generously offered to help us pro bono. He said we needed a meeting with the Ethiopian Ambassador. I said I would try to arrange one.

After much effort and several cancellations, we finally got our appointment. Robb and I arrived at the Embassy a bit early. We waited and waited. Finally, after about 35 minutes, Robb said, “We’re leaving.” I was beside myself. “Robb, we can’t leave. I have worked really hard to get this appointment. Plus, the Ambassador may get mad if we leave.” “We leaving,” he said with the same certainty as when Mary told Jesus to make the wine. “The Ambassador will not respect us if we just sit here for the next hour waiting,” Robb explained.

I frantically went over to the receptionist and explained that we needed to leave, gave her my card with my cell phone, and apologized profusely that we couldn’t wait any longer. “Please tell the Ambassador we are so, so sorry,” I said. As I turned to find Robb, he was already out the door. Gone.

He and I were in the car five minutes when my cell phone rang. It was the Ambassador wanting to talk. I said to Robb, “It’s the Ambassador. He wants to talk. Let’s go back.” Robb didn’t even blink, saying, “Nope. Can’t talk. Not today. Tomorrow. Lunch. My club. I will arrange it.” I told the Ambassador, he agreed and we had a great lunch the next day. Such are the ways of Washington.

Out of that shaky start came an excellent relationship with the Ambassador who is an outstanding person. The Ambassador and Robb worked every possible angle to get the local officials to let us continue with the clinic construction but to no avail. As it became clear that we had hit a dead-end, our group at Western made a critical, strategic decision. We wouldn’t build a clinic in Dukem or anywhere else. Instead, we decided to identify and expand an existing clinic.

This past October, we started delivering healthcare at a clinic in Addis where we are paying to add a part-time physician, nurse and social worker to their staff. The focus of the new staff is totally on low income women and children. The first month we treated about 50 patients; in November about 100; in December 168. The workload is growing fast. As we speak one of our members, Jim Wilson, is in Addis discerning how we can expand our ministry.

Time and again, our success in ministry is rooted in a pragmatic approach to ministry. Using the clinic as an example, our goal is to provide health care to poor women and children. There are many ways to get that done. We didn’t succeed with one model. We are succeeding with another. Getting it done is what counts.

Ministry, indeed, life is all about road blocks and failures that stand between us and the ideals we want to realize. The roadblocks and failures pop up all the time. The only issue that really matters is how we respond to them. Do we allow them to discourage us, imagining God is against us? Or do we look for another means to the same end, pragmatically assessing what is and is not possible? “Maybe there is another way” is the starting point for just about every major discovery and accomplishment in history.

Jesus definitely was pragmatic. When the disciples said he didn’t have to die, he understood the political realities and told the disciples his death was an unavoidable hard fact. In like manner, when out in the desert, Moses said what he needed to say, did what he needed to do to keep the people moving toward the Promised Land.

The ends do not justify the means. But I think too many of us get hung up on the means, wanting our means to be as pure as the ends we seek. Fact of the matter: means are human and anything human is less than perfect. So we should get used to flaws means leading to sublime end points.

Certainly the process for some type of national healthcare reform is a case in point. A lot of people across the political spectrum are upset about the process. But social change is always a messy, tight consuming, error-prone process. It rightly involves a lot of compromises as competing interests are allowed to have a say. However, we can’t let our fear of making a mistake stop us from trying to do the right thing.

I was talking to someone this week about Dr. King’s pragmatism. If you read any of the excellent biographies about him, you realize that Dr. King was goal-oriented, almost goal-obsessed. He felt no need to reach his dream of a fully integrated society by traveling a pristine, perfect path. He knew such a path didn’t exist. His path and that of the civil rights movement was filled with compromise after compromise, compromises made with some pretty tough, nasty foes.

Dr. King’s pragmatism, and that of a pragmatic president named Lyndon Baines Johnson, got landmark civil rights legislation passed. The legislation they generated wasn’t the end. It was a starting point, a framework. So it will be when this healthcare legislation passes. It is a starting point for reform, not the end of it.

Dr. King’s tenacious persistence was directly related to his goal: the society he described in his “I Have a Dream” speech. He was unrelenting in his pursuit of it. His pragmatism was related to the means to that goal. He was incredibly flexible, willing to consider many options that more rigid members of his movement considered unacceptable.

Everyone trying to help in this awful tragedy in Haiti needs to take a deep breath and become very pragmatic about what is possible and what is not. As we sit here, doctors and nurses are doing that in the earthquake zone, making very pragmatic decisions about who may live if they operate, who might benefit most from limited medicines. In the months ahead, relief organizations will have to do the same type of triage. We have to focus on what will work not what should or might be.

As we look at our personal lives, have we become fixated on the means, creating standards for them that are artificially and unnecessarily high? Are we willing to be as flexible about how we get to our personal promised lands as we are inflexible in our determination to get there?

Understanding what can and cannot happen is at the heart of successful ministry and happy living. I have friends who keep banging on the same door expecting it to open. When it doesn’t open, for the one thousandth time, they are still shocked and amazed it remains closed.

Why are they surprised? They know where they are going but haven’t figured out they need to change the way to get there. It is long past time for them to knock on some other door. For behind another door may well lie God’s future for them.

I have seen congregations do the same thing. They stick with a model of ministry and specific strategies in ministry that are proven failures. They have the right vision—to serve God and the world. But they are unwilling to change to the means needed to implement the vision, to inject pragmatic realism into their work.

This congregation has had the same mission for 155 years. We are in Foggy Bottom to serve God and our neighbors. We stand in a wonderful tradition in which people have done and continue to do whatever it takes to keep this congregation moving forward. If we remain focused on our goal, if we think pragmatically about what we need to do and how we need to do it, our ministry will be here 155 years from now.

The state of this congregation is excellent. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to a style of ministry that blends idealism with realism.

Let us pray: Gracious God, you call us into ministry. We give you thanks for models of ministry like Dr. King and the folks who have gone before us here at Western. May we learn from them so we can respond to the needs of people from Foggy Bottom to Haiti to Ethiopia and back again to D.C. All this we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
January 10, 2010

Text: Luke 1:39-45

As I was taught the bible in Sunday school in the 1950s, I thought the Bible was pretty much a book about men, for men. I learned about Abraham and David, Jesus and Paul. I am sure someone mentioned some of the women in the bible. But they were clearly placed in the background, not the foreground.

Fortunately, I went to seminary during the period when feminist biblical and theological scholarship became prominent within progressive church circles. Disciplined, brilliant female scholars probed deep into biblical texts and the history of the bible’s creation, teaching us about the crucial role of women in the bible in new and exciting ways. They documented and exposed the sexism that has infected the dominant interpretations of many important biblical texts.

As a result, it is now impossible for me to read the bible without noticing the sexism in many texts and the key role women play in the narratives. Nowhere are women more important than in the Advent and Christmas stories where men perform, well, rather functional roles. Elizabeth seems to have needed Zechariah only to become pregnant with John. Joseph wasn’t even needed for that purpose. Although Joseph must have later played a huge role in raising Jesus, in the birth narratives, Joseph’s primary function is helping Mary get to Bethlehem.

Bottom line, the men in the birth narratives are accessories. Indeed, how many Christians can name the father of John the Baptist? How many Christians can say anything meaningful about Joseph? The Wise Men carried gifts around. The shepherds were perplexed (We men have had that one down for thousands of years.). Herod is the archetype of a bad guy. John the Baptist was prone to rants and tantrums. All of which leads me to conclude that God did not need an extended casting session to find the men in the Christmas story. These were relatively easy roles to fill.

By any fair appraisal, the focal point of the Advent and Christmas stories are two humble and very young women: Elizabeth and Mary. These compelling women developed a special relationship with God, each other and the children they were carrying in their wombs. It is the trajectory of two women we follow in the Advent and Christmas seasons.

I’m not suggesting that women in the Bible are prominent only at this time of year. Women are at the heart of God’s redemptive story from the beginning. If we drop Eve from the creation story, Adam is just another lonely guy looking for love in all the wrong places. Without Sarah, Abraham is unable to fulfill God’s commands. Without Hannah’s prayers, Samuel is never born and the Kingdom of Israel never created. The list goes on. From the first chapter of Genesis through the New Testament, we see women playing crucial, irreplaceable roles in God’s redemptive drama.

The relationship between religion and misogyny is long and complex. It needs to be well understood by any religious person who wants to live his or her spiritual life with integrity. Because just as religion has been used to affirm slavery, fascism, holocausts and other despicable historical realities, so religion has been and is used by misogynists in an effort to limit the role of women in society.

Religious fundamentalists, no matter what their religion, have some common characteristics. One thing they share is a deeply rooted fear and oppression of women. Whether it be the Taliban, ultra-orthodox Jews or Christian fundamentalists, they all share a belief that women are meant to be subjugated to men. Concocting religious pretexts for their misogyny, they attempt to systematically and thoroughly deny women the right to develop their fullest, God-created potential.

Because of this reality, I am willing to give this Afghanistan military operation a bit more time just because I hope the Taliban can be kept out of power. If these thugs return to power, we know what will happen. They will slaughter moderate Muslims and enslave women. Avoiding that seems to me to be a worthy foreign policy goal, as long as there is some end game in sight.

In contrast to the twisted view of life and God we see at work in religious fundamentalism, the Christmas story is a thing of beauty. Elizabeth and Mary are fully developed children of God, willing, gifted and able participants in God’s efforts to heal the divisions in the world and our souls. Without them, there is no Bethlehem, no Baptist preparing the Way. Without them, you and I aren’t here this morning.

Every line in the stories about Mary and Elizabeth is a sermon. This morning, I would like to spend just a few moments focusing on Elizabeth’s comment about Mary. She says, “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

It is a simple yet profound statement. Mary’s ability to serve God was rooted in her willingness to trust God. God asked Mary to believe that she would give birth to the Messiah. She believed.

Now, let us again remember that Israel expected a Messiah who would lead a battle that would defeat the Romans and restore Israel to a position of primacy among the nations. How could Mary, an uneducated, powerless peasant, possibly raise and educate a child to that end?

Mary could have argued with God, claiming she wasn’t up to the task. There are lots of stories of men doing that in Scripture. She could have flat out refused to do what God asked. There are plenty of stories of people doing that as well. But she didn’t. Despite the seeming absurdity of God’s request, Mary never questioned God. Instead, she responded, “Here I am.”

This is one of the many ways in which Mary serves as a marvelous role model for you and me. God oftentimes asks us to do things that seem to be outside our capabilities. Maybe we are asked to care for a dying or aging family member, basically putting our lives on hold so they can have a better quality of life. Maybe we are asked to challenge an injustice at work, a task that will put our career at risk. Maybe we are asked to make a total switch in our lifestyle—forsaking things we have been doing since we were young. Maybe we are asked to cope with a family member who is totally dysfunctional. Maybe we are asked to serve as elders or deacons in this congregation.

Whatever challenge God places before us, we will succeed in meeting the challenge as we, like Mary, believe that what God has asked us to do is something we must and can do. We succeed when we place our trust in God’s call, not in our evaluation of our gifts.

What I am suggesting is way beyond the power of positive thinking approach. I’m not saying that we can do something simply by willing it to happen. Nor am I saying that we must envision ourselves succeeding in order to succeed. No, I am saying that when we are aligned with God, when we are doing that which God is calling us to do, we cannot be stopped. Because God cannot be stopped.

We have been feeding the homeless for 26 years here at Western because our members have believed that God wants and will help us feed the hungry. We have been growing our membership because we believe that God wants and will help us grow a progressive Christian voice in this neighborhood. We have been effective in ministry in Africa because we believe that God wants and will help this congregation to empower Africans.

What God ordains will happen. It is just a matter of who makes it happen and when. This is what Mary and Elizabeth teach us. These women trusted that God was at work in and around them. So it is with the officers we ordained and installed today. So it is with the children who inspired us with their pageant. So it must be with you and me.

Let us pray: Gracious God, you call us to ministry. Help us to follow where you lead. As we do so, may our lives become instruments with which you fashion a just and peaceful world. We pray this in your most holy name. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
January 3, 2010

Text: John 1:1-18

Last week, as I looked at the opening verses of John’s Gospel for the thousandth time, what struck me anew is the way John explains everything in creation as flowing directly from God. It is especially clear in the third verse where John writes: “All things came into being through (the Word), and without (the Word) not one thing came into being.”

John’s world view is not uniquely Christian. It is the dominant world view of most people throughout history. Overwhelmingly, our ancestors believed that the hand of God was at work in everything. Whether they were animists or Christians, Jews or Hindus, Muslims or Buddhists, most people in prior generations believed they could not understand their existence or the world apart from God.

When a family did well economically, it was a sign that God was pleased with them. A birthmark on a child’s face was a sign that God had a special purpose for the child. The defeat of a nation’s army was a sign of God’s displeasure.

Our generation presents a stark contrast to the God-oriented world view of our ancestors. Rarely, if ever, has a generation been so disinclined to view God as the cause of things in the world as is our generation. We have a determined predisposition to understand things apart from God. Wherever and whenever possible, we look for a cause or explanation for reality in something or someone other than God.

Over the past three hundred years or so, the Western world has slowly but surely detached itself from a theocentric world view—an understanding of reality in which God is at the center of everything that happens. This explains, in part, the problem fundamentalist Muslims have with our society and what we export to the rest of the world. Indeed, it explains why religious conservatives of many different faiths have problems with our culture.

When something surprisingly positive happens, we are inclined to say, “Wow, that was a bit of good luck.” When a person self-destructs, we are inclined to see it as just that—the actions of a self-destructive individual. When nations go to war, we see the causes as geopolitical and economic. When we find a cure for a disease, we praise the brilliance of the scientists.

Are we a happier people because of our decision to marginalize and minimize God’s influence on our lives and history? Are we wiser? Do we better understand why things are happening to and around us? I think not.

The issue is not whether or not God causes something positive to happen to us but what we do with it. As people of faith, we view a positive turn in our lives as a gift, an opportunity to serve God in new and creative ways.

People self-destruct when we abandon God and God’s plan for our lives. We make decisions based on self-interest rather than God’s interests. We follow the laws of the marketplace, not the laws handed down on Mt. Sinai.

Nations go to war when they rigidly pursue national interests rather than thinking of God’s demand for peace and justice. Worried more about the concerns of ruling an empire than God’s Rule, nations fight with one another like angry kids on a school ground—attempting to prove who is the Alpha nation.

There are many reasons why we in the West have increasingly looked to ourselves and the operations of nature to explain our lives; some of them very positive. Two, in particular, have helped to define the modern relationship with God.

First, nature and humans are key actors in the creation of history. So we have felt a need to understand better how and why we do what we do. With increased knowledge about our own behavior (individually and collectively), we gain more control over our lives. The effort to understand human actions apart from any type of divine influence has led to important advances in science, civil rights and elsewhere.

Second, we don’t want to ascribe bad things to God. To do so makes us either fear or hate God for doing or not stopping bad things from happening. When a child dies, we don’t want to ascribe that to God’s will and we shouldn’t. When a tornado devastates a city, we don’t want to ascribe that to God’s will and we shouldn’t.

However, in the process of 1) gaining a better understanding of our own power and the power of the forces of nature and 2) being rightly hesitant to ascribe every good or bad thing in life as a direct act by God, we have pushed God to the margins of history. We have unwittingly transformed God into the deus ex machina of the Deists, a God who creates the world and then steps away from it, leaving the creation on its own to do what it will.

Gratefully, every year in December, the Christmas story presents a very different picture of the world, one opposed to the idea of a universe operating on its own powers. At Christmas, we remember that God so loves the world that God intervenes in history to become human. The God of Bethlehem is the polar opposite of a distant and detached God.

John’s Gospel places the birth of Jesus within a larger cosmic and theocentric context. Says John, “the entire world is a product of God’s will.” Nothing that exists, exists apart from the will of God. Nothing that happens can be considered apart from God’s intentions for the world.

Certainly, this does not mean that God directly causes everything to happen in history. The creation, history, you and I each have our own autonomy. God has given us free will. With that freedom, we can freely create or destroy; love or hate; forgive or seek vengeance; seek peace or wage war. The choices are ours.

However, as we exercise our freedom, Jesus calls upon us to consider what God would have us do. This is the essence of a theocentric, God-centered life. It isn’t about what God does. It is about what we do as followers of God.

As disciples of Jesus, we can’t do what we want to do in every given situation. We do what God calls upon us to do. And when it isn’t clear what God would have us do, we pray for guidance and wisdom; we seek out other people of faith and talk with them to discern God’s will.

This is why the effort to understand human behavior and the inner workings of the creation are not contrary to the journey of faith. They complement one another. As we understand why we do things and how nature works, we have more knowledge. This knowledge increases the likelihood that we will make the right choices God asks us to make.

For example, there is a lot of alcoholism in my family’s history. There is some scientific evidence that alcoholism and opiate addictions are linked to the presence of a certain gene. I could use this new knowledge to explain why a number of my ancestors were alcoholics. However, to do so would be to ignore all the people who possess the gene but do not become alcoholics.

Why do some individuals avoid addiction while others do not? In many instances, individuals avoiding addiction allow God’s Word, rather than a gene, to direct their lives. They are God-centered people who refuse to allow biology to define them. So science and faith come together to give us a more comprehensive understanding of what we are fighting when we are fighting something like alcoholism and how we can win the battle.

After World War I, rather than follow the approach to enemies commanded by God, the victorious allies used an approach as ancient as humanity itself. They imposed punishing, onerous peace terms on Germany. In the years that followed, resentment over the unjust peace terms grew in Germany; anger ultimately exploited by Adolph Hitler.

Following World War II, George Marshall proposed a radically different approach to vanquished foes. His plan was consistent with God’s commandment to love our enemies. Rather than punishing Germany, Italy and Japan, Marshall convinced the allies to help their former foes rebuild their nations and economies. As a result of pursuing this God-oriented approach, we have had almost seventy years without a worldwide war.

A God-oriented approach does not seek to explain every action in history and nature as being directly caused by God. On the contrary, a God-oriented approach recognizes human free will and the constraints it places of God. However, a theocentric approach attempts to understand and see everything as God understands and sees things. Utilizing God’s perspective, it seeks to do what God would do if God was in our position.

It is simply blasphemous to suggest that God causes the death of a child. However, once a child is dead, the living have options. We can become bitter, immersed and overwhelmed by our grief. Or we can do what God asks us to do: “Choose life” and live our days to the absolute fullest.

It is heresy to suggest that God has ordained the United States to be the dominant power in the world. But it is imperative that we attempt to live our national life in ways that are consistent with the Way God has told us to walk.

As we begin not only a new year but a new decade, may each of us become more God-oriented in the way we lead our lives. Let us take better care of our bodies, the environment, those we love, and, yes, those we don’t love. As a nation, let our foreign policy look first to diplomats not weapons; concern for the poor, not special tax breaks for those with lobbyists; relentless efforts to protect the environment, not mindless overuse of natural resources. And of all the New Year’s resolutions we can make, none will be more important than this: We resolve to make our lives God-centered in every way, on every day.

Let us pray: Gracious God, you call us into relationship with you. We pray that we will heed your call. As we do so, may we grow in wisdom and truth. Amen.

Western Presbyterian Church

Washington, D.C.

December 27, 2009

Text: John 1:1-14

I was talking to a friend, another pastor, who had four boys, and the youngest child was very energetic, physical and active. He loved to move his arms and run around all the time. He was like a tiny tornado, destroying everything in his path. Andrew was shocked, because after having three well-behaved children, he and his wife thought that they had parenting pretty much figured out. Then they had this boy who would just beat up everyone who moved. The parents watched, amazed, as this tiny three-year-old guy hit his brothers who were twice his size.

“What did you do about it?” I asked.

They tried everything. Punishing, distracting, and talking–all of it worked a little bit, but they effects were always temporary. They watched how other their other children went through stages, and grew out of them quickly like a pair of shoes. But this seemed different, and they didn’t quite know what to do about it. They realized that they needed to do more than just work on the behavior; they needed to make sure that the boy himself moved in the right direction.

So with care and concern they began to experiment, until they figured out that the best way to work with him was to appeal to his sense of fantasy. They noticed that he loved to play “Jedi.” So they started allowing him to wear his Jedi outfit, they began calling him “Jedi,” and their home became a Jedi training camp. They told him that he needed to be a good Jedi and to work for good things. When he would hit someone, they took him aside and asked, “Is this what a good Jedi would do?”

As a result, the child just might see the age of five.

His parents are teaching him to fight for justice, to defend those who are smaller than he is, to look out for children who might be more vulnerable. He is learning to make sure that good will win over the bad things in the world, so that there will be peace on earth. And around the dinner table.

A Jedi is a Star Wars character. I know this fact, because when he was telling me this story, I remembered my light saber and my Princess Leia outfit. The saber was a large glow-in-the-dark piece of plastic that I kept in the bathroom, over the fluorescent light rod. It rested there, so that it would be charged up and ready when I needed to go into action. I loved playing with it, and saying cryptic things, like, “May the force be with you.”

In fact, all sorts of scenes flashed in my mind as Andrew talked. I thought of all the boys and girls who play, imagining themselves as Superheroes, defenders of justice and good. I never really thought about how that acting can form them into better people, stirring up their merciful imaginations, helping them the construct the framework that they needed to distinguish right from wrong, to be sensitive to others who were in distress or being hurt, to defend those who were smaller or weaker than they were, and to fight for justice.

I found it fascinating that the real world didn’t motivate the child—yelling, counting to three, time-outs, or taking away privileges. He couldn’t seem to make the cause and effect connection between bad behavior and punishment. The fact that every time he hit his brother, he had to stop playing and sit quietly in a room, didn’t seem to bother him. But being plugged into something much bigger concept did. Somehow he could understand this cosmic reality between justice and evil, and appealing to that made the difference.

Which seems so odd to me. I mean, “If you hit, you will be punished” seems simple and straightforward. Wouldn’t that fight between good and evil be a much more difficult concept to grasp? For the boy, it wasn’t. “Fighting for justice” made more sense to him than “don’t hit your brother.”

Andrew was still worried. He was nervous that the child’s playing still seemed too violent, and he was concerned that this would alter the child’s view of God. Star Wars is a great movie, but it’s not like George Lucas is a great theologian.

“We’ll sort out the theological implications later,” Andrew said, “but right now, he needs to identify with the good. He needs to be on the right side. When he hits people, he knows that he is not being a good Jedi.” The child is able to distinguish right from wrong, good from bad, not by appealing to the sensible nature of rules and regulations, of discipline, but of appealing to this more abstract idea–his sense of fantasy.

It’s difficult to understand just how the minds of children work. Of course, each child is different, but as religious leaders, we are concerned about the formation of a child’s spiritual life, and how we can convey a loving, compassionate faith to them. We surrounded Owen this morning in his baptism, and we take those promises to heart. We are to care for our children, providing a nurturing place for their faith to form.

A lot of Christian educators will say that children only understand concrete ideas, and so we should not try to make them comprehend abstract notions about God. They just won’t be able to wrap their heads around them.

For instance, when we are children, we may understand God as our Father. Yet, as we grow older, we begin to realize that this image is a metaphor. It’s incomplete. God may be like a father, but the word “Father” does not encapsulate who God is. God is not a white man on a gold throne. God does not have a white flowing beard. As we get older we can begin to look at these metaphors more critically, and we begin to relate to God in the best way that we can. Realizing that our words cannot capture who God is, that none of our ideas about God are big enough for this divine reality, we can move from a concrete idea of God to something that might be more abstract. And yet, part of the beauty of the spiritual life is this endeavor to catch a glimpse of the beauty of this unfathomable God.

The theologian, Augustine, calls this “faith seeking understanding.” We realize that we are not able to understand the vast complexities of God. We know that God has “thoughts that are not our thoughts and ways that are not our ways.” And yet, think of all the beauty and acts of compassion that spilled out of our human striving to understand God. For thousands of years, seminaries have been filled with theologians who write libraries full of books about God, preachers could expound for centuries, musicians could compose choral works and symphonies, artists could cover canvas after canvas, mystics could pray and try to understand what it means to be one with God, and men and women commit their lives to working with the poor and outcast. We do all of this to try to understand and convey the wonders of God. And even if we worked for the rest of our days, trying to know God, to understand who God is, and striving to live with the compassion of loving Creator, we only come up with a sliver of understanding. We would only know one ray of light that is reflected in that complicated diamond. And at the end of our days, we would realize that the more we know, the greater the mysteries are. We could never capture the enormity, the abundance, the love of our Creator.

And then, we enter this season. This first Sunday after Christmas, we move from trying to grasp the complexities of God, these cosmic realities. And suddenly we are confronted with the opposite! We are confronted with the claim that God becomes flesh, and walked around with us.

It’s hard to imagine. A friend was at the airport yesterday, sitting next to a man who was full of nervous worry from the recent bombing attempt, and he explained loudly, “I’m all for racial profiling,” blurting out a string of racist comments against Middle Eastern men. Then he sat down, pulled out his Bible.

She just shook her head, and debated in her mind whether to inform him that Jesus was a Middle Eastern man who would have fit his profile.

But we forget about the particularities of being human when we move into this cosmic idea of God—until Christmas, when we talk about a God who is with us. We proclaim that God became a child. God was an infant whose neck was so wobbly that he could not hold it up himself. God cried because it was the only way he knew how to say that he was hungry. God reached out for his mother’s milk. God learned to walk. God was potty trained and went through puberty, just like all of us.

And in Christmas, we realize that our writings, and our sermons, and our symphonies, and our paintings and our prayers could not encapsulate God, but somehow, this baby does. This child, in all of his vulnerability.

And somehow, it doesn’t only affect our image of God, but it I think it makes us look at humanity differently. It makes us look at children a bit differently. Because in this season, we understand the fullness of God by glimpsing into that manger and seeing that tiny child, who paws in the air with his clenched fists, all wrapped up like a burrito.

It makes us look at our own flesh differently. Until we learn to be human, we learn the difference between good and bad, we learn to construct systems of justice, not by relating to some Superhero, or fighting the causes for justice with super-human strength. But by studying the works and words of a human who walked alongside us, listening to those who were in need, reaching out to those who were vulnerable, filling the hungry with good things, and thereby bringing about peace and salvation.

May we go out, with the knowledge that Jesus Christ, that baby in a manger, is God with us. And may that reality change who we are.

To the glory of God, our Creator,

            God, our Liberator,

                        and God our Sustainer. Amen.