Preaching and Teaching

Western Presbyterian Church

Washington, D.C.

August 22, 2010

Text: Luke 13:10-17

I’m on Twitter. In fact, I engage with it a lot. Maybe it’s a side effect of having a dad who was a rocket scientist, but I love technology and I think it’s a fascinating social phenomenon. It is a place where people write, in 140 characters or less what they are doing. And people talk to each other. The other day, when I was reading the feed, the list of things that people had posted, someone wrote, “If you mix hate with theology, you have religion.”

Hate and theology make religion.

Right there is a reflection of what so many people in our country think. Religion is full of anger. Religion is full of resentments. Religion is full of hate. They look at the different wars that are being waged around the world, and they see how religion often fuels the violence and they want nothing to do with it. There are so many things happening right now when we study American religious life. There are the “non’s,” the SBNRs, and the cafeteria-style religious. Now these are not names that I came up with, and I find that some of them are derogatory, but let me explain who they are.

The fastest growing religious group in our country is the “non’s.” They are the people who, when they are asked what religion they are a part of, and they write down that they are non-religious. I don’t mean that they atheists, agnostic, or godless in any way. They are just not religious.

Many people go further in their designation and say that they are spiritual but not religious. In fact there are a lot of people in our congregation who are spiritual but not religious. This is such a large trend that sociologists study them often, and we even have an acronym for the spiritual but not religious in our business. We call them SBNRs. Spiritual but not religious.

Then there are some people who like to pick and choose what they like from different religious practices, and sociologists have likened the way that we think about religion as being in a cafeteria line. We pick up what we like. We pass over the things that we don’t like. We might like yoga, and so we practice it, but we are not interested in  learning about the particular philosophy of Hinduism. Some people appreciate the almsgiving of the Muslim tradition, but they don’t understand why women would wear the burqa. Others like praying in the Christian tradition, but they don’t like going to church, so they will skip that practice. And so they pick and choose from a buffet of practices. I found out this week, that a family member, who cannot bring himself to darken the door of a church and has not gone to church in thirty years, and yet he faithfully gives twenty percent of his income to the church.

We see this buffet-style of belief and practice in the popularity of Eat, Pray, Love. A woman, who is recovering from depression and a divorce, decides to travel the world to eat, to pray, and to love. She grew up Christian, but she decides to go to India to learn to meditate. In the Ashram, she explores her internal landscape, and she learns to find peace from her anxiety.

Because of our pluralistic society, because there is such a rich diversity in our religious life, people admire different practices. We have neighbors who are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Atheist, and we learn from all of them.

The “non’s”, SBNRs and cafeteria-style religious—I understand the feeling behind these shifts. I mean, in the last couple of decades, our news has been awash with high-profile scandals. Sometimes they make us laugh, and other times they make us cry, or even tremble with horror. Televangelists have been shady with their money and sex lives. Religious politicians set themselves up high, and fell low. There are the pedophile cases. We have heard religious hatred spewed against Muslims for a Community Center in New York City. In our own tradition, as Presbyterians, we are usually in the newspaper because we fight. Right now the struggle is over gays and lesbians becoming ordained. In the past, it has been over women ministers or civil rights. Or theological issues like the virgin birth.

In my own life, as I grew up in the conservative Bible belt, I saw that the church could be very damaging to women. Many Christians have grown up in traditions where women have been subjugated in their homes, told that they need to submit to the authority of their husbands, even to the point that they stay with an abusive spouse. At the same time, people who have had sex outside of marriage were shunned. I grew up in a tradition where sexual purity was supposed to be the norm. But it wasn’t. Young women were often not empowered to say “no.” Young men and women would be too ashamed and embarrassed to get birth control, the woman would become pregnant, and an abortion was not an option. I have watched the young lives of young women—of my friends and family—become doomed to poverty and a lack of education, because of the religious milieu in our country. It’s heartbreaking.

And there are a lot of people who are looking at all of this, yearning for spirituality, longing for a life of prayer, peace, grace, and goodness, but feeling that the bounds of our religious constructs do not promote these things, but keeps us from them. And so they declare that they are “non’s;” they say that they are spiritual but not religious; or they come to appreciate different practices and shun others. When I first started hearing these trends, I thought they were a fad. But now, we know that it is more than that. It seems to be a sure shift in the way that we understand religion.

I had a conversation with Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist who wrote How God Changes Our Brain, and he suggested that our brains might be evolving away from religions, into something else. He says that it’s fair to estimate that a quarter to a third of Americans believe in a non-traditional view of God. 

It may be true. We are, as a culture, moving away from our religious loyalties, as the particularities of denominations lose importance. I grew up Southern Baptist, but when I got older, I decided that I didn’t agree with much of what my tradition had to say, so I became Presbyterian. Now, I don’t always agree with everything that Presbyterians say, but I do for the most part and so I stay.

I empathize with people who have been hurt by religion. I have been wounded by religion. But I would be a big hypocrite myself if I said the same thing. After all, I’m standing before you, as a woman who has been ordained in a historic tradition. I know people who have begun preaching and started churches, without the confines of religion. But I would have never been bold enough to do that. I needed affirmation from a community and a tradition. I am, by definition, a religious woman. And though I am sometimes embarrassed or ashamed by what religion can do, but I am here.

I appreciate the fact that my practices of prayer and meditation have a coherent system of beliefs behind them. I like the fact that I am stepping into a tradition that has practiced spirituality for two thousand years. I realize that this flowing river has some poisonous waters in it, but for the most part, they have been life-giving. They have preserved the voices of men and women, talking about the internal landscapes of their prayer. I know that our religion has caused people to give up their lives to serve others, to dream that our society might be a better place.

But I also know that we cannot serve religion for religion’s sake. Religion makes us better humans, and when it doesn’t, we need to stop and question.         

It seems that Jesus is saying much of the same thing in this passage. He has just healed a woman on the Sabbath. The Sabbath was a time when men and women were to refrain from all work and commerce. It was a time for everyone to rest. And yet Jesus healed on the Sabbath, which was clearly against the laws. When he was reminded that it was against the laws, Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for people; people were not made for the Sabbath.

Sabbath is made for people. This is so true. This ancient tradition of taking one day off from work and commerce is something that we could all benefit from. The ecologist Bill McKibben often dreams of what we could do as a society to help save the environment. And one of the main points he brings up is that we reach to our Sunday school lessons of keeping the Sabbath. He says that if we all observed the practice of taking one day off completely, it would help preserve our environment. 

It would not only be good for our environment, but for ourselves. I wonder, as our culture becomes more and more anxious and depressed, if much of it is because we have forgotten the importance of taking time off. It’s hard right now. We are not sure about the security of our jobs, we worry about getting laid off, or we have been let go from one job, and we are worried about losing another job, and so we work and work and work. With our smart phones, and our instant emails, we never quite leave the office. And when we’re not working at our jobs, we are working on our back-up plan—what we might do if we lose our job. I heard that productivity has gone slightly down recently, and I wonder if it is because we are working so many hours. A bit of rest can make us more productive. But we have forgotten how to do this.

Yet there is wisdom in not only letting ourselves rest, but also letting our earth rest. This is how we were made. The Sabbath is for us. It is a practice that has been passed down from the ancient wisdom of our tradition. It is a teaching that leads us to wholeness.

I also think that we can understand the changes in our religious landscape in the light of Jesus’ words. Our religious practices are to make us healthier people. They are to make us more whole. We do not serve religion just for the religious institution’s sake. We do not allow religion to keep us bound, but this tradition is alive and moving and breathing and changing. Religion–its teaching, its practices, its thought–shows us how to love God, love ourselves, and love our neighbors. It draws upon thousands of years of wisdom and whispers to us how become better humans. And religious practices are made for us.

Now, I realize that I’m straddling a fine line here and I want to be clear. I am not saying that we should have a selfish religion that only caters to our own particular desires, and upholds our own internal beliefs. I am not saying that we construct a religion for our own comfort, as we ignore the suffering of others. I believe that a community of faith is extremely important. History and tradition are vital for our understandings.

Yet, this is a particular moment in history, when we are confronting the serious damage that religion has caused. How are we, as spiritual people, going to respond? It seems that we will have to do it very carefully. Will we seek out practices of love that lead to wholeness? We will need to draw from our religious traditions, sort out what is damaging to humans, and seek what is good. We will need to have compassion for those who seek healing, instead of upholding religious laws for their own sake. We will need to keep longing for passion and empathy that Christ displayed over and over again as he upheld the rule of love. 

And may we do that this week. As we go out to our workplaces, our schools, and our world, may we do so with that goal in mind. To the glory of God our Creator, God our Liberator, and God our Sustainer. Amen.

Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, DC
25 July 2010

Text: Matthew 6:9-15

The rainbow scarves fascinated Libby Shannon. Throughout the Assembly, she saw them, hanging proudly over the necks of men, women, and teenagers. People over the age of seventy wore them, as well as those in their twenties, as a witness to their support of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender men and women in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Libby was attending the 219^th General Assembly of the PC(USA) in Minneapolis, a biennial gathering of pastors and lay people, who make decisions on behalf of our two million-member church, which took place a couple of weeks ago. They pray and study together, seeking guidance for their work together and making declarations about social justice issues that will focus our energy and mission. 

I also noticed the scarves, even though I was not in Minneapolis. I first saw them hanging from the crochet needles in our Wednesday night dinner and coffee time, as Jean Ackor and other women knitted them at our church. Then I saw them at the General Assembly. I was in my living room, watching the Assembly as it was livestreamed over the Internet. There were many issues discussed and brought before the gathering—motions on gun violence, discussions on Israel and Palestine, initiatives on the environment, and changes to our church government. In all of this, the ones that always garner great attention are around the inclusion of LGBT people. Would our insurance begin to cover gay or lesbian partners? Would we redefine marriage from “a man and a woman” to “two people”? Would the church allow people who are open about their same-gender relationships become ordained?

Our denomination works a bit differently than other denominations. We do not have powerful bishops who decide the will of God and the people. It’s a much more democratic system, with laypeople and clergy represented in our decisions. At the heart of many of these decisions, we would be pointing to a deep cultural shift, one that not only acknowledges same-gender relationships but says that God blesses them.

It ended up that the Assembly approved the insurance coverage of same-gender spouses. They tabled the discussion to redefining marriage. And they removed an amendment to our constitution that would restrict gays and lesbians from being ordained. But since the last action was a change to our church constitution, it needs to be voted on by the Presbyteries (our local bodies) before it becomes ratified. And so the struggle begins again. The amendment will go out to the Presbyteries, and the Presbyteries will vote. In the last years, the vote has failed when it’s gone to the Presbyteries. But every year, we gain a few more Presbyteries than we did before. 

Libby Shannon is a student who graduated from seminary. She’s young, she’s in her twenties, and she believes strongly that LGBT people should be ordained and that they should be able to marry. Many studies have been done on the religious habits of people in their twenties and thirties, and a lot of us have difficulty filling out the religion section on our Facebook page. There are not many who are committed to a denominational church. So I asked Libby, if we’re people who believe in inclusion of LGBT people, why do we stick around? Why don’t we just leave?

In response, Libby pointed in two directions. She directed my attention backwards and reminded me of all of the women and men who fought this very same battle so that women could be ordained. “What would I be saying to the legacy of those women, if I just gave up? What would I be saying to them, if I didn’t fight for what I thought was right in our church, and just took the easy way out?”

And then she pointed the other direction. She looked to the future and told me about the about the youth group that she worked with. “I’m doing it for them. I’m doing this so that they can have a church that loves everyone, no matter what his or her sexual orientation might be.” I was inspired by Libby’s words. She knew that we are imperfect, earthbound people, but she still had a longing for the ideal and a hope for something better.

I do not want to characterize the struggle in our denomination in terms that are too simplistic. But to quickly explain what is happening, I will say that there are those in our denomination who point to the six passages in Scripture that condemn same-sex relationships, and see those passages as so important that they feel as if we back off from them, then we are no longer seeing the Bible as a guide for our lives. It is very important for them

Then there are those, like me, who read about love, marriage, and sex in the Scriptures and we see that relationships have evolved dramatically with culture. As a woman, I cannot point to the authority of the Bible when it comes to marital relationships. I cannot look at the Scriptures and say “Ahhh. That is what marriage ought to be like.” Because when I read about marriage from a women’s perspective (frankly) it’s filled with horror stories. Women are bought and sold like property. There are many wives for every husband. Men have sex with their slaves if they cannot bear children with their wives. Marriages are arranged for political alliances. Kings keep harems of women. There does seem to be one loving relationship in the Song of Songs, but the lovers are sneaking around in that book, and they’re clearly not married. And so, as someone who takes the Bible very seriously, I can’t see it as an ideal authority on love and marriage, between one man and one woman, because I just don’t see it in the Scriptures.

When I point out how oppressive and abusive marriage is for women in the Bible, people can be quick to defend. They say, “Those were cultural practices, so we cannot take modern our view of marriage and superimpose it on an ancient view.”

And I agree. Our cultural definition of marriage has changed since biblical times. So if we cannot take our view of marriage and expect for biblical marriages to live up to our standards, then we should not be taking the biblical standards and imposing them on our culture. Culturally, we believe that loving relationships are between two people who commit themselves to one another. We know that no marriage is perfect, people are earth-bound, but we still hope for the ideal. We know how the world is, but we long for the world as it ought to be.

The struggle reminds me of the time I was reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, a story that took place in Savannah, Georgia. In the book, they were going to trial and they were trying to weed out those who might be prejudice against a gay man, and so they asked a series of questions, trying to detect any homophobia. And the last question they asked–the very last litmus test that they pulled out was, “Would you mind if your pastor was gay?” The lawyer determined that if they said no to that question, then the final barrier was removed.

I wonder if that’s true. And if it is, it puts this struggle into a bit more perspective. Are we trying to remove the last barrier for the next generation? I know that gays and lesbians face discrimination all over our culture. I’m not saying that the struggle is over when LGBT people can be ordained. But I wonder, is that the reason we stay in this historic denomination, even when we know it’s not right? Is it because we know that people are earth-bound, but we still dream and strive for the ideal, the heavenly? 

In a strange way, Libby’s words reminded me of Jesus’ prayer, the one that we say every Sunday morning. We read the context for it this morning. Jesus is teaching the disciples how to pray, and he gave them these words. And I always pause at that bit about “On Earth as it is in Heaven,” because I do not know what heaven is like. None of us do. We have ideas of it from the Bible, but really, we don’t even have that many of those. And the authors never experienced it, except through visions. I believe in heaven, and not just because it gives people incredible comfort when their loved ones come to the end of their lives. I believe that in our birth we emanated from God’s love, and in our death we return to God’s love. And there is a very real sense in which heaven is what we wish for and long for, where suffering will melt away.

And so I wonder, as disciples of Jesus, when Jesus invites us to pray, “On earth as it is in heaven,” if we are not being invited to dream a bit. It is as if we are being told, “pray for the perfect world. Even when what is surrounding you is far from perfect, keep hoping and keep dreaming for a world that is.”

Prayer is an incredibly powerful exercise. And one of the most important parts of prayer, is that we verbalize what we want. If you are like me, this doesn’t always come naturally. You know, often times we are taught to be happy with what we have, rather than dreaming of what we want. And it is extremely important to be satisfied with the things that we have, but in the last few years, I have just discovered how important it is to imagine what I want. It is important that we write it down carefully, and ask God for it.

A business is typically not going to be successful if that business does not have a plan. A non-profit organization may not be effective if they do not have a vision statement. A church will flounder if the congregation does not have a mission. As citizens, we will need keep imagining what a just society looks like, and work for that end. And as humans, we may never understand what our purpose is in this life, if we never ask ourselves what we want out of it. Some people have no problem with this at all, but there are many, many people in this world who do not know what they want. They feel as if they are at the mercy of everyone’s desires, and they do not know how to fight for their own vision of what might be good and right.

This may seem like a completely selfish venture, and it can be. Often it is. I mean, the “prosperity gospel” is unique in our country and history, and it is often born out of selfishness and greed. And I don’t think that the American prosperity gospel is what Jesus had in mind… but it is a wonderful thing to imagine, “What if earth was like heaven? What would that look like? What would a just society look like? What would the world look like if every barrier to God’s love was lifted?” We can imagine it on a global scale and a local scale, and even in a personal sense. What would the ideal state of things, where there is no separation from God’s love, look like? It reminds me of the words of Walter Rauschenbusch, a wonderful pastor and writer from the turn of the twentieth century, who worked with the poor in New York City. He said that our struggles as Christians is “a great revolutionary moment, pledged to change the world as-it-is into the world as-it-ought-to-be.”

The world as-it-is into the world as-it-ought-to-be.

On earth as it is in heaven.

I wonder if that is what keep Libby from giving up on our historic denomination, not content with allowing it to look anything less than God’s unbounded love. I wonder if “on earth as it is in heaven” is the prayer that worked through each stitch, as women and men crocheted rainbow scarves, in the hopes that the next generation will have a church and country that is free from discrimination. Even though they know what the world is, they will continue to work and hope for a world as it ought to be. They will continue to be a witness to Gods love.

It is a prayer of great power, when we begin to pray it. There can be a great humility if we ask God to bless our hopes. Let us go out, with that prayer on our lips. To the glory of God our Creator, God our Sustainer, and God our Liberator. Amen.

Western Presbyterian Church

Washington, DC

July 18, 2010

Text: Luke 10:38-42

I have a friend who is a stay-at-home mother. Her husband makes a lot of money, so she was able to have a choice about whether she worked or not, and she decided that she wanted to be home. She puts a hundred percent of herself into her children and she is happy and satisfied doing it. But there was one day where she hit the breaking point (as I often do as a working mom). She was trying to decorate her house for a party, and so she bought a Martha Stewart book. She fell in love with this garland in those shiny pages. It was made out of nuts, and it was photographed, strung across a fireplace mantle. She looked at the clean, pastel pictures of happy Martha with a drill, creating the garland, and she was sure that she could pull it off.

She bought the nuts and fancy ribbon, she got her drill from the basement. And she tried, and tried, and tried. Then she bought more nuts. And it was one of those crafts that the more she failed, the more determined she became about it. Until after the day was wasted, she was exhausted, she had a few nuts on her garland, and a pile of cracked and discarded ones. By the time the actual party came around, she was a wreck from trying to make everything perfect.

It’s strange how our society works. We are a culture that longs for hospitality. We yearn for a comfortable place where we can listen and tell the stories of our lives. We want to sit with good food, drink, and friends. We long for a community where we can breathe deeply. Yet we end up stressed out and busy. We work hard so that we can keep our homes, in the hopes of being hospitable some day.

As I open my mailbox, I realize how consumer-driven our hospitality has become. We have to have just the right plates, napkins, and silverware. Everything must match everything else. Plus, it all needs to match the season. We shop until everything looks perfect, we growl at our family as we put the event together, and then we are exhausted by the time the guests arrive. Hospitality has grown into a major industry in our country—from annual Christmas gatherings, to sweet sixteen birthday parties, to weddings, it’s like we have a national longing for the perfect party. There’s something good at the heart of it. It is a human yearning to share our lives with friends.

Since I’m one of those people who gets completely stressed out in order to host, so I take comfort in this Mary and Martha story. When Martha’s worrying about the nut garland and the matching plates, Mary’s enjoying the company. I like that. It also seems that there is something that grows deeper in our Christian tradition when it comes to hospitality. When we stop and listen to the words of Jesus, we can hear a vein that has pulsed throughout our tradition.

Perhaps it came from Jesus’ life; he seemed to be a perpetual stranger. He was born out of town. His mother couldn’t find a decent room, so he was born in the hay and paced in the feeding trough. Soon after that, they found out that Herod had a plot to kill the baby, so they began to flee for their lives. We don’t hear much about Jesus for a while, but as soon as we do, we hear about how he is traveling again.  “The birds of the air have nests, but the son of humanity has no place to put his head.” As he walks, he teaches and heals. And many of his words have to do with how to treat a stranger, or how to react when you are a stranger and you’re treated poorly. Jesus identified with that person who had needed food, shelter, or clothing. He didn’t just teach about the stranger, we was the stranger.

There is a lot in our Christian tradition that teaches us about hospitality. I began to delve deeper in the subject as I read a book by Diana Butler Bass entitled, A People’s History of Christianity, a wonderful book that reveals the historical roots of many of our progressive beliefs and practices. At the heart of hospitality in our tradition, is what John Chrysostom preached, that hospitality is “not merely a friendly reception, but one given with zeal and alacrity. [It is] this idea that we are receiving Christ himself.” For us, as Christians, hospitality grows a whole lot deeper than the dishes and accessories. It means sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening to his words. It means a deep community, where people share what they have. They divide their resources and property, giving to those who are in need, because they have the conviction that Jesus Christ was in need.

We have a tradition in which wealthy widows opened their homes for poor people on the street, and created communities of prayer. We have a history where working men and women could get a coffee and some soup in Houses of Hospitality. In the heart of who we are as a people, we know that we should welcome the stranger, care for the needy.

In this moment in time, this is a pressing issue for American Christians. We know the economy is difficult, and all sorts of people are having difficulty finding a job. We also know that when the poor face hardships, it is particularly difficult. There is a fear that undocumented workers are taking jobs away from US citizens. And perhaps that is why our sense of hospitality is strained right now in our country.  

Arizona passed Arizona Senate Bill 1070. The Bill says that people who are from other countries must have registration documents in their possession at all times. The Act additionally makes it a state misdemeanor crime for an alien to be in Arizona without carrying the required documents, bars state or local officials or agencies from restricting enforcement of federal immigration laws, and cracks down on those sheltering, hiring and transporting illegal aliens. This law demands that anyone who doesn’t look like a citizen needs to provide proof of citizenship or they will be deported. Which is amazing to me. There is no template for what an US citizen looks like. That’s what makes our country great! In my daughter’s generation, Caucasians are the minority, and her friends come from all over the world. How can we possible identify someone who does not “look” like a US citizen?

In parts of the country, men and women are gathering the names of undocumented workers, and reporting them to the police, expecting that law enforcement officials to round them up. Other states are now considering immigration laws that look like Arizona’s.  

The religious community is responding, upholding our tradition of hospitality. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops denounced the Arizona law, characterizing it as draconian and saying it “could lead to the wrongful questioning and arrest of U.S. citizens.” The National Council of Churches also criticized the law, saying that it ran counter to centuries of biblical teachings regarding justice and neighborliness.

United Methodist Church Bishop Minerva Carcaño who serves in Arizona’s Desert Southwest Conference opposed it as “unwise, short sighted and mean spirited.” Our General Assembly (2010) that met a couple of weeks ago agreed to refrain from holding national meetings in states where travel by immigrant Presbyterians or Presbyterians of color might subject them to harassment due to legislation.

In this crucial time, we need to stop, as Christians, and reach back to our heritage of hospitality. We need to understand the true meaning of it. Because hospitality does not simply mean nut garlands, fancy dishes, and beautiful tablecloths, but it means that we share what we have. It means that we see each individual that comes in our midst as Jesus Christ. We sit at the feet of Christ’s teachings as he proclaims a radical hospitality that reminds us “I was hungry and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” It is the type of hospitality that is written in stone in our courtyard room, that encourages us always show hospitality to others because you just might be entertaining angels. It is written there to remind us that this is not just a place where we eat refreshments and drink lemonade, but we serve the homeless, we provide medical care in Ethiopia. It means that we hold fast to the traditions of our faith. 

A friend of mine, Delle McCormick, is a pastor and she was the Executive Director of BorderLinks, an educational organization in Arizona that helps people understand issues of immigration. Some of you have been to BorderLinks. Our church has taken trips there. She said that one Christmas, she got a message saying, “Baby Jesus needs you at the hospital.”

When she received the message, she laughed and thought well, that’s an interesting way to get a minister to work on Christmas day. She went to the hospital and met Baby Jesus and his mother. The mother explained her story, how she was in Mexico and there was no work for her husband, so he crossed the border to get a job. She didn’t hear from him again, and she was sure that he died. Then she realized that she was pregnant. She was facing a terrible dilemma, because she was also sure that she and her baby would die if they stayed in Mexico. So she figured out a way that she could get to the United States through the border of Arizona. At nine months pregnant, she traveled. Going onto a train cart, she found herself so packed in with other humans, that her belly and arms hung out of the sides of the cart.

She gave birth in the desert. The border patrol found her and even though she gave birth in Arizona, the men refused to pick up her placenta—the only accepted proof that would give her child US Citizenship.

Jesus and his mother spent a couple of days in the hospital, until the mother was sure that her baby was not dehydrated. Then she left, slipping out with her child, escaping so that she might find work, so that her baby might have some sort of future.

It is hard not to make some parallel to this baby’s namesake—especially as we understand that he is traveling through the desert, afraid for his life.

This is the sort of story that is playing out over and over again on the border. And in this time, we need to become aware of our tradition of radical hospitality. It is a time when we need to begin looking at a comprehensive immigration reform that protects human dignity, keeps families together. This is the moment when we need to think about our deep tradition that calls us to invite the stranger into our midst, to feed and shelter them. This is a moment when we can realize that our longings for love and community will not be fulfilled when we buy matching dishes and napkins, but when we welcome one another in the name of Christ.

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

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
11 July 2010

Text: Colossians 1:1-14

I had to find a new doctor a couple of weeks ago, so I did a Google search. I typed in my zip code and the kind of doctor I needed into the computer and a list came up. I looked at a few of them near our home, and came up with a name, and by the name was a starred review. It was a two star review. Two out of five. That would be like a D. I started to read the reviews, and as I scrolled down, I stopped myself. I decided to make the estimation on my own.

So, I made an appointment (she was really easy to get into), and met the doctor. She was wonderful. She spent a lot of time with us. She was thorough, thoughtful, and funny. And as I was leaving, I remembered that Google review. I was sure that I would go back on the Internet, and give her five stars and write up what a good experience I had. But, I didn’t. I went about my day and I forgot.

A man wrote a book. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime books–the kind that takes decades to write. He put his heart and soul into it. When he had it published, he proudly watched as it went up on Amazon. Then a few weeks after the book was out, he got scathing reviews on it. He had poured his life into this book, he fully expected that it would become the great American novel. And he watched as it was torn apart in a public fashion by anonymous commenters. It drove him into a deep depression, which in turn ripped apart his family.

The professor begins teaching a college class for the first year, finds that she is being graded by her students on an Internet site. And she realizes the ugly things that they are saying about her are not only about the kind of gr she gives, but it’s demeaning. They’re talking about how “hot” she is.

This is the kind of world that we live in. There are exciting things about it. A couple months ago, I preached a sermon about how people now have the ability to talk back and question, how people in our culture no longer blindly accept things without wrestling with it. I presented most of that transition in a fairly positive light. But I didn’t have time to delve into the negative aspects of this shift. I wonder what all of this is doing to our self-worth. I wonder, when so many things can be picked apart and criticized, what makes a worthy life?

An artist can no longer create publicly without being criticized—sometimes in an extremely harsh manner. Men and women go about their jobs, and they can become skewered by an on-line evaluation. People can put everything that they have into starting a new restaurant, and they not only have to worry about the Post’s reviewers, but now everyone is a critic, reporting on the slight indignities that they might have endured during their dining experience. And the worst part about it is that most of the time the critiques are made by anonymous people, so while they can easily ruin the reputation of the professional, they do not even have to soil their own reputation at all.

Someone in our congregation told me once that reviews, polls, and customer service feedback is almost always skewed toward the negative. When someone is angry about something, they are much more compelled to speak out about it. When people are content about an experience, they are less likely to put the energy into commenting on it. That’s pretty much how life works, doesn’t it? It’s the wheel that needs oil that squeaks. It’s the man who endured a bad experience who ends up at the customer service desk. It’s the woman who’s annoyed by the waitstaff who has the energy to write the negative review on Yelp. It’s the one customer out of thousands who felt like he was treated poorly who complains about an employee. It’s the party that’s not in office who protests on the mall.

So I wonder, how do we determine a worthy life now, in this time of constant critiques? It is not only the reviews and critiques that are reflected in a new way. We can also build our identities and reputations in a new way now.

It was about five years ago when a man told me about his wife and confided, “She is a very important person. If you google her name, you’ll come up with thousands of hits.” Sure enough, I tried it. I put her name into the Internet search engine, and found thousands of articles, written by her and about her. 

It’s affected the way we form romantic relationships. In that short time, while working with college students, journeying with my pastor colleagues, and mentoring seminarians, I have become very aware of how an online presence can hurt or help a person’s chances of getting a job.

I have been with a lot of people who have found their spouse on Internet dating sites. (Dating sites really handy for single clergy who can’t date members of their church or synagogue and don’t want to troll the bars.) People of all ages are using the Internet to find romance. Sometimes men and women have re-connected with loved ones from high school. Other times they have met someone new. In each case, we seem to be constructing our selves in this virtual manner.

I read an article in Wired magazine about etiquette in a new day and age. They asked if you should Google your date before going out with them. They determined that you should not. After all, part of the dating process is the joy of discovery, and you take a lot of that away if you know everything before you go out. The article reminded me of how much has changed.

In our congregation, as we have a group of kids who are going into junior high, I start to wonder about what it will be like as our personalities take shape and are formed in our particular culture. My daughter learned to type her name before she learned to write it. Her stuffed animals come with identical avatars so that she can play with them in virtual worlds. In other words, when she buys a pink poodle from the store, the poodle has a tag with a code on it. She can take the poodle home, register the code on a website, and manipulate the character to eat, drink, or play games in an animated world on the screen. She has been setting up anonymous profiles of herself on the computer since she was three years old. I have encouraged this, and closely watched it. She needs to understand what she’s doing. There’s a bit of education that’s important for her development. Depending on what field she goes into, she probably won’t be able to manage without knowing something about computers, but I wonder about how people are being formed. How will all of this affect a child’s self-worth as she develops?

When I was in Junior High, I remember the painful reality of knowing who was popular and who was not. It was painful, because like most kids in Junior High, I was never as popular as I wanted to be. Now teenagers have sites where they can literally count the number of friends that they have. I wonder how it will affect them.

Some people are not affected by these on-line developments at all, but many of us are. How we work, how we socialize, how we build our professional reputations, how we meet our lovers, and how our children construct their social lives can be affected by these developments. And all of this happened in just a decade or so. I wonder if we have had adequate time to sit back and wonder how this affects us. Have we been able to think about these developments theologically? When our work is judged and criticized constantly, when the proof of a worthy life is shifting and changing so rapidly, how do we have any bearings? How do we know that our lives have value, meaning, and worth?

In our scripture this morning, the author of this letter to the Colossians is praying for the Christians in that seedling church. He is praying that they might have a worthy life. There are things in this letter that are bound to a particular cultural context, but there are also things that hold true–even with all the changes in technology around us and the rapidly evolving nature of our culture. There are reasons why we gather in this place week after week, and this question is at the heart of them: How can we live lives that have true value, meaning and worth?

In these Scriptures the author points out some ingredients of a worthy life: to be wise, strong, and thankful. And it seems that in our context these three ingredients to a worthy life still make a lot of sense.

Wisdom is something that flows throughout our Scriptures. And it takes so many different forms. Sometimes personified as a woman who calls out to us on the street corner, beckoning us, to take heed. And she reminds us that gaining wisdom is an active process. Wisdom can come to us through words—as we consume and read and gain as much knowledge as we can.

And other times wisdom calls us into stillness. It also comes to us just a strength comes to a tree that grows next to flowing waters. Wisdom can come as we sit, pray, meditate. As we invite the Spirit into our lives. It takes root when we can stop and open ourselves up to how we might be used by God. When the noise of conflict and struggle and despair dins all around us. When we feel eaten up by criticism, when we can be led around by everyone else’s opinion, wisdom is what calls to us to be still and know that God is God. Wisdom is what whispers to us in those small moments of the morning, telling us the solution to the problem that has been plaguing us.

And then there is strength. Strength is the courage to speak out, no matter what our people are saying. It is that God-given boldness that calls us to do the right thing, even if it is not the most popular thing or the most profitable avenue. Courage is that fruit that grows when we blow the whistle on corruption. When we stand up for those who are suffering, and when we defend the earth and its resources. Strength helps us to speak as the prophets spoke, even when everything is against us. Even when we are tired and worn, we know that we will not stop looking for those who are in need.

And there is thankfulness. In this world, where we are constantly told that we are not enough unless we have this product, and then the moment we buy the product, it becomes obsolete, we are taught to be thankful. This often helps with anxiety and depression. When we feel overloaded, go for a walk, and with each step name something for which you are thankful. Keep a steady rhythm, listing those things. If you cannot think of anything, begin with the ground that is supporting you and the air that you are breathing, and work from there. Creating gratitude lists can change your life. Your worth becomes hinged upon what you have and who you are, even while everything around you is reminding you of what you do not have.

There are so many things that have changed since this letter was written—so many ways that technology has formed. So many cultural changes. But it remains that three things are so often keys to those times when we feel overwhelmed and we are just longing to live a worthy life. These things have not changed. They teach us some of the ingredients—wisdom that comes from learning as much as we can, and it also comes from sitting in stillness and silence, waiting for that still small voice to bubble up within us; strength to speak out for those who are vulnerable and needy; and thankfulness.

It is my prayer for our church this morning. For each one of you, as you go out into this world that can be so harsh and so critical. When your value is often determined by what you do not have. I pray that God will give all of us wisdom, strength, and thankfulness.  

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

Western Presbyterian Church

Washington, DC

July 4, 2010

Text: Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

One of my first years as a pastor, I was coming out of a nursing home room, wearing my collar, and the person at the desk yelled, “Hey! Reverend!” I turned and found a woman who was about my age, working as an attendant. She stood up and I saw her swollen belly. She looked like she was about nine months pregnant, and she was eagerly waving me over. “Yes?” I responded as I walked to the desk.

“Will you give me a blessing? Will you bless my baby?” she asked.

I was startled, for a short second. I realized that I often blessed congregations after the service. I often received blessings from homeless people. And when it happens I try to receive it. And sometimes it can be the most welcome blessing. We blessed people when they sneezed. But I had never been asked for a blessing. I said, “Of course.” Even though it felt weird, I asked her if I could touch her belly, because that seemed to be what she expected.

She answered, “Yes! Please!”

And so I did. And I prayed a blessing upon this stranger and her baby, one that was a lot like what I would say at the end of a service. She thanked me and it was over. But since that day, it’s happened several times—especially when I’m wearing a collar, and I’m around a pregnant stranger. And I’m a lot more comfortable with it now than I was the first time it happened.

I bring up these blessings, because there has been this interesting string of blessing and cursing in the last few lectionary Sundays that we have picked up and dropped and picked up again, and my ears have perked up each time we have read it, or when I thought about the story in its fullness, I knew that it was there, even if it was not in the passage that we read aloud. In the Old Testament, as we have listened to the stories of Abraham and Sarah, God blessed Abraham and said that he would have the power to bless and to curse. In the Gospels, as we have heard Jesus’ instructions to the disciples, and in the epistle readings, when we have heard the instructions to the churches, there has been this idea that not only God can bless or curse, but that God’s followers can as well. It seems to be the case in the New Testament, that the disciples and the apostles are being sent out to spread the good news

I don’t like this idea. I know how nasty Christians can be, and I don’t like the thought that they have the ability to bless and curse. But, if we think about it, we all have the ability.

Scripture reminds us that we have the power to bless and to curse (Gen. 12:3). This may seem like a foreign concept, but any father who hears the words “I love you” from his child knows the power of a blessing. The words create a reality. And when we remind each other of our love, the power of those words makes it so that we live, move, and breathe in that love.

Parents also often have the power to bless and curse, and indeed we are typically the first ones to create our children’s realities. Many times in a child’s actions, he or she is asking over and over again, “Who do you say that I am?” And our answers to him or her have a lasting effect on them, for better or worse. When children are formed under the constant drone of disparaging words, it can damage them for their entire lives. Men have been told by their mothers that they are failures, and they live with that, trying to prove their mom wrong. Women who were abused by their fathers can create lives in which they are victims, and they relive that victimization in every relationship that they have. It is like both are living under a curse, one that has to be broken in order for us to move forward.

Whether disparaging or affirming, others’ words form our attitudes, shape our ability to trust, and model for us how to give and receive love. Our lives are often formed by the truths and lies we’ve been told throughout our years. When a mother tells her daughter she needs to lose weight, even when the daughter is completely healthy, that story that sticks with her, and often haunts her as she looks in the mirror. When a father tells her she’s just like her great aunt in her ability to make everyone feel at ease with her humor, it connects her to a long tradition. Even if it is not a mother or a father. Even if it is a neighbor or a friend, we realize that what we say to one another is important.

Words matter. And this biblical idea of blessing and cursing reminds us that our words even have a bit of power over us. And as people who are made in the image of God, we understand that we have power over one another with these words.

In the same way, as people of the Word, we are connected through words to a larger history and tradition. In the story of creation, we recall how God created out of nothing, through the use of words: “Let there be light.” And there was light. The words formed and created us, separated the dry land from the crashing oceans. The Word then became the history of a people. As the story unfolds, we read of the fiery and comforting words of the prophets. Words are eaten. Words blacken the mouth. Words become as sweet as honey. Words are set in stone, and carried around in a dramatic covenantal ark. They are lost and they are found.

Jesus Christ is understood as the Word made flesh, who dwelt among us. Over the centuries, as the church formed and continues to form, the Word becomes central to our lives. We read the Scriptures and its stories form our lives. We say and hear, “This cup is the new covenant,” and we know these words signify a new reality, a new relationship of promise, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Through those words, we learn we are children of God, and we grow into deeper community with one another. Through sharing the cup, through our words and our teachings, we come to understand we are the body of Christ—and learn to live out of that reality.

When we pour the water of baptism over a sweet infant and promise to guide that child in the faith of Jesus Christ, we know we have entered into a new relationship with her. We have become a part of her, and she a part of us through those waters that connect us also to a long history of saints who have gone before us.

All of these words bind us to a story, a purpose, a community; they form us as they inform us. Most of us never grow out of that longing to listen and be shaped. One of the reasons that we come together in this place is to form a new reality with our words. In a time when we are told that our self-worth is based on what kind of job we have, how powerful we are, or how much money we make, we can step into this place where we can discern that we might want to give up our high-paying job, and become a non-profit worker. In this world where prestige is built on how many people we boss around in a week, we enter this place where we are encouraged to serve and be served. In this world where we are taught to evaluate and criticize each other, we stop to build up, love, and bless one another. May we go out, remembering to do just that.

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

Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, DC
27 June 2010

Text: 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14

When I was in Cajun Louisiana, serving as a pastor, I learned about traiteurs. When people would get sick, they would go to the doctor and to the traiteur, just to make sure all of their bases were covered. Many of my neighbors, friends, and members of my congregation would say, “I was suffering from arthritis. I went to the doctor and I went to the traiteur, and now I’m healed. You can decide which one made me better.” And as they said it, I always got the feeling that I was voting for the doctor, and they were voting for the traiteur. The traiteurs were healers who lived in the swamps. I tried to research them, but there was very little written on them. They have a few pages in Cajun history books, and now there’s a wikipedia article on them. I never went to one, but I was pretty fascinated by them, so I was always asking people for stories.

They seemed to have combined some of the religious voodoo practices that are common in New Orleans with the liturgies of the Catholic Church. Some of the herbal treatments reminded me of the medicine men in Uganda. And then there were some interesting practices that seemed more magical. Like if you came to be healed from a wart, they would rub a dime over the wart, then they would tell you that when you spent the dime, then the wart would be transferred from your hand to the person you gave the dime to.

Their hands often radiated heat. When they were healing a dislocated shoulder, the patient could feel the burning coming from the palms of the traiteur’s hand. For the most part, traiteurs were men and women of prayer. They had a book of prayers that they would whisper, hardly audible for the person who came for healing. People didn’t pay them with money very often. They paid with food–chicken, shrimp, fish, or vegetables from the their gardens.

And one of the most interesting things that I learned about the traiteurs is they had an intricate system of passing down their magical knowledge. According to wikipedia, if the traiteur was a man, he would teach a woman. If the healer was a woman, she would pass down her knowledge to a man. One by one, the healer would teach the prayers to the apprentice, and when the apprentice would learn the prayer completely, then the teacher would lose power over that particular prayer. The prayer became the student’s, and no longer the teacher’s. Through many years, they would go through this ritual, until all of the prayers belonged to the apprentice. For almost 250 years, since the Acadians settled Louisiana, this ancient tradition has been kept alive through this process.

The magic tied to this process reminds me of the idea of legacies and inheritance in our Scriptures. There were two offices in the Old Testament, two kinds of religious jobs. One was that of a priest—and the priest would maintain the temple or the synagogue. He would keep the offerings burning on time and made sure that the rituals were followed correctly.

Then there was a prophet, a person who often caused chaos. When everyone was fat and happy, the prophets were there, reminding them that God’s punishment was just around the corner. When people were lamenting and in anguish, prophets were there, tearing their clothes, sitting in ashes, telling people about the mercy, grace and love of God.

In the Old Testament, there was a system of identifying and training prophets, usually within a family. They would look for the next generation of leadership, and they would anoint their predecessor. When a prophet found another prophet, he or she (there were women prophets. We know about Deborah, the judge and prophet, so there were probably more) would take a horn of oil, and pour it over the head of the predecessor to mark them. Often when a holy person died, he or she handed down their “mantle.” Or there was a blessing that was passed on. There was a sense that something miraculous was exchanged between the two people. And this is what we are reading about in our lesson this morning—the exchange of power between Elijah and Elisha.

Elijah and Elisha are incredibly fascinating characters. Elijah was a prophet, and Elisha was his apprentice. They’re kind of funny, kind of magical, and kind of scary.

In many ways I was lucky to start my ministry in South Louisiana, because this idea of apprenticeship was not only alive in the Cajun culture, but also in the African American culture. And so as I began my first years as a minister, several Methodist pastors took me under their wing. I was a 26-year-old feisty feminist, and these men who had been pastors for fifty years. And yet they took time with me, once a week, for an entire afternoon, to study Scriptures and give me advice. I was, at first, infuriated by what was happening. I thought it was pure patriarchy! I was always respectful to the men, but every week after we met, I told my husband that I wasn’t going back. I felt like just because I was a young woman, they were going to sit around and tell me what to do all day long. As if I had nothing to contribute to the conversation. But I kept going back.

Then I really started needing their help, and they were there, teaching me how to navigate the difficult terrain of a small church. Telling me when to take sides in a congregational conflict, and when to act as the mediator. Pretty soon, I became less angry about the injustices that I had to endure as a woman, and I began to empathize with my colleagues who served faithfully in communities where segregation and abuse was still very much alive. And, I’m not sure how to explain it, but they put recordings in my head that I’ve played back for a dozen years as I’ve served as a pastor. They established a foundation for me that I walk on every day. And I’m incredibly thankful that they took the time to drink thick black coffee, and teach me how to be a pastor.

I don’t know what I would have done if I started out here, in D.C. It is a sink or swim place, in our profession. There is rarely the expectation or vision among colleagues that we mentor each other. And, our schedules are so packed that it takes weeks to get a lunch appointment. It seems that it is not just in this particular religious community, but it can be all over.

We have lost the sense that something magical happens when we share our knowledge with someone who is starting out. We have lost this sense that we have a mantle, a legacy that we can pass on. Sometimes we do not know how to look at the next generation, not as a threat or competition, but as a hope that they will achieve greater things than we will. That they will make the world a better place. Sometimes I worry that we have lost the art of teaching the next generation in our country.

I am not sure why, but maybe it’s because we used to be an agrarian based culture, where the hard labor had to be shared—especially with those who were younger and stronger. Therefore, knowledge needed to be passed down as well, or we could not eat. There were family farms and family businesses, and so it was important for each generation to entrust their knowledge to their sons. Then, as the industrial revolution replaced the agrarian culture, and the tech and service industry replaced that, we entered into a time of competition. Instead of sharing the work so that all might be fed, we entered an economy that realized that keeping secrets was much more important than sharing them. Professions were not passed down from one generation to the next in the same way. People began to go to college to become trained. And sometimes, the academic pursuit of a profession was removed from the practical implementation. It seems that apprenticeships were replaced by internships.

This city is run with interns. We’ve had interns at our church. It seems that internship are highly competitive to get into. But they are too often about young, college graduates who have way too much student loan debt, are yet they expected to work for free without health insurance, paying rent in expensive cities, and going into more debt. Often it sets up a system of privilege so that people who have parents who can afford the internships, can do them. Many times internships are about doing the grunt work, and not learning the important skills and knowledge that the organization has to offer.

Don’t get me wrong. A good internship is a wonderful thing. Yet, for many college students in our country, they are expected to work for free for at least one year in order to get a decent job. Imagine if you had to live in DC, when you’re just starting out, without any income, for at least one year. (I’m sure many of you don’t have to tax your imagination too much, because you’ve already been through an internship, or you’re in one now.) This system is putting students into debt, and it’s eating away their parent’s retirement savings.

Now, I know that our city would probably shut down if there were no interns, but in this difficult economy, could it be time to start thinking about what we are doing to people in these situations? They’re in no place to complain, because they typically need to get a job out of it. But in this time when recent graduates face rising school debt, stagnant salaries, high rents, and lack of jobs, should we be expecting that they work without pay for so long? Often, it seems like an undue burden for those who desperately need a lighter load. We may need to ask some questions. If an intern is, in essence, contributing to the politician, office, church, or NGO a year’s salary, are we giving them more than just a foot in the door? Are we training them, mentoring them, and spending time with them? Are we setting up a system where people who do not have families with means are getting that much farther behind than those with means?

It’s not just in D.C. When I was teaching at a conference for campus ministers this week, we started talking about internships, many of the pastors agreed that this has become very damaging to young adults in our country. One campus minister even compared it to slavery.

Too often, we have lost the sense of building up new leaders, of leaving a legacy to the next generation. And I don’t just mean money, but I mean investing the time, the wisdom, and the secrets. I mean taking that metaphorical bull’s horn of oil, and seeking out that particular person. The one who will become greater than you are. And when you look back at your career, you can point to that person and know that a double portion of your blessing is still living in them.

The idea of anointing, of passing down our knowledge from one generation to the next, is very much alive in the church. As we baptized Max, we surround him with promises. He is part of a community where we will tell him the stories of our faith, encourage him to question, and teach him about the love and mercy of God be being loving and merciful to him.

And may that Spirit of blessing that runs from one generation to the next, pour out upon every area of our lives, to the glory of God our Creator, God our Liberator, and God our Sustainer. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church

Washington, DC

6 June 2010

Text: I Corinthians 10:12-33

Almost anytime in the news, we can unfold the paper or scroll down the screen and see that someone has been caught in some outrageous act of hypocrisy. Right now, the person in the news spotlight is on Ted Haggard, the antigay pastor, who was the head of the National Association of Evangelicals, and was caught hiring a male prostitute. He’s in the headlines, because after being removed from his church and spending a couple of years of public soul-searching, he is starting a new church, and he has toned down his rhetoric against same-gender couples. Of course, Haggard is just the flavor of this month. There are many others. The details are often different, but the stories stay the same. A man who gains notoriety for keeping American families on the straight and narrow, who spews hatred against gays and lesbians, gets caught with a sex worker in his car. Politicians who come into town, espousing family values for our country, destroy their own families by having an affair with their staffers. A preacher rails against sexual immorality, until we find out that he is having inappropriate relationships with women in his congregation.

We won’t go through the names. We don’t have to. You probably know who most of them are. We seem to love those scandalous details, as the media spotlights them for days. And then there is the ripple effect of social media, as the blogs become outraged, and the Facebook sites follow suit. I suppose there is a part of us that should respond with righteous indignation. And when a person perpetuates hatred against homosexuals, it makes me furious. But it was not long after becoming a pastor that the stories of blatant hypocrisy exhausted me. There are a lot of these indiscretions that happen quietly, without media attention, and when it’s found out, they just ruin people’s marriages, relationships with their kids, and often careers. The bigger the person is, the harder he or she falls, but in our profession, it is nothing short of heart-wrenching to watch the damage.

Recently, a high-profile hypocrisy occurred, as well as the deluge of angry newsletter articles and blogs. As I was sorting all of it out, I noticed that it was like this vicious cycle: The politician, in his righteous indignation rants against the eroding moral fabric of our society. He gets caught breaking his own rules, and then we spew righteous indignation about that other person’s righteous indignation.

People become infuriated by the hypocrisy, and I understand that. Often times they are working from their own personal hurts of being betrayed in a relationship or men and women who work for the rights for same-sex couple get fed-up when they see that the person on the other side of the issue has a closet the size of a five-car garage. Some people will see a famous preacher, and they reject Christianity altogether, because they say that it’s just full of hypocrites, and they want nothing to do with it. Other see lying politicians, and they lose complete faith in our political process. But I’m wondering if we can get beyond the cycle of heaping righteous indignation on top of righteous indignation. Is there a more constructive way that we can do with these situations? What fuels this hypocrisy in the first place?

The text that we read this morning from I Corinthians gives us a clue. “Let the one who thinks they stand take heed lest they fall.” There’s some wisdom in there: when we think we have it all together, when we think that we can do no wrong, when we put ourselves in a position where we are pointing fingers at someone else, that’s when we need to be careful. Most of us are hypocrites, in one way or another. I was at a gas station, cleaning out my car the other day. I mindlessly put recyclables in the trash. And as I was driving away, I thought about the bottles, then I remembered all of the articles, book chapters, and sermons I wrote on environmentalism in the last year. Not to mention all of the impromptu mini-sermons that I have forced my family of origin to endure for decades. And I took a deep breath, realizing that in my hurry to get something done, because it was convenient, I was a total hypocrite.

I wonder what fuels hypocrisy. There are three things that I often see.

First, it could be that the very thing we struggle with ourselves, we hate seeing in others. This happens with our character defects. We see it in families all the time, parents are often the most frustrated by their children when their children start to exhibit the character defects that they themselves have. I knew a father, who became infuriated that his son procrastinated on every homework assignment. The son never planned ahead, and always spent the last hour, stressed out and panicked over the deadlines. Of course, the son learned how to manage his assignments from his father. But it still made his father furious, precisely because it was something that he himself. The father wanted the son to learn from his mistakes, not repeat them. There are things within ourselves that we hate, and so we hate even more to see them in others.

Second, it seems to be a product of our human nature to crave that thing which is restricted. I remember when I was in college, I used to diet a lot. Too much, in fact. I would have intricate lists of foods that I could and could not eat. But, then I realized that I would actually gain weight when I dieted, because I became obsessed with food. While compiling the list of things in my head that I was not allowed to eat, I began to crave them.

I know a mom who restricted certain toys for her child. She didn’t allow her daughter to play with Barbie dolls because she thought that they were oversexualized and would lead her daughter into an unhealthy body image. But her daughter really, really wanted the doll. Then when a grandparent snuck Barbie dolls into a Christmas package, and the child had the toy within her grasp, she no longer craved them. In fact, she never played with them at all, and they sat ignored.

It’s the truth of our great myth of the Garden of Eden, playing over and over again. When the couple was told they could eat of any tree in the garden except for one, they craved the one fruit that they could not have. When a person spends his or her life, talking about the one fruit that is restricted, thinking about it on a constant basis, then perhaps it is human nature to start craving that thing.

The third thing that seems to be at play—and this is perhaps the most damaging one—is when a delusion exists. We often see this with addiction. Individuals and families can spend so much time hiding an addiction, convincing themselves that it does not exist, or lying about it, that it cam come to a point when it seems like the family truly believes that the addiction does not exist. Everyone in the whole town may know about the addiction, but the people who are living with it, or closest to it, have learned to excuse it so often, that they begin to live into an alternative reality.      

So how can we become more constructive in our conversations about hypocritical actions? I think a good place to start is where the author of this letter to the church in Corinth started. It seems like the congregation was dealing with a whole lot of unhealthy behavior in their gatherings. And the early church was having some strong debates over whether they should eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols. In the midst of all of this, the author sets up lists of things that the communities should and should not do. And he says, “So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.” I take that to mean, we should look within ourselves. We need to be careful about judging other people for the wrongs that they commit, because it could happen to us. We need to take heed in our righteous indignation, because we can get caught up in the same mire. The author still sets up lists of things that the community should and should not do. There is still a sense of right and wrong in their life together, but there is this also this reality that we should watch our own standing. We can take care of our own families, before condemning the families of others. We can look closely at our shadow side, the things in our lives that we would rather hide, and understand that it is a part of who we are, so that we can have a healthy realization of our own proclivities.

Many times that understanding will lead us into accepting behaviors that we have in the past seen as sinful—such as homosexuality. If a person is lesbian or gay, and she or he has understood that to be sinful, then the person may grow into a different understanding, one that realizes that God loves and accepts them. Or if a woman feels guilty about being career-minded and ambitious, and everything in society has informed her that she is sinful because of it, she may learn that it is not a sin.

Other times looking closely at our shadow side means getting the help and support that we need to overcome our character defects, so that we are not caught in those strange delusions about ourselves. As a community, that is why we come together and confess our sins together. It is a way of stopping, and turning ourselves over, realizing those things that we have hidden, confessing all of those things that fuel our hypocrisies, and embracing a God-given newness.  

May we go out, and learn to live examined lives, to the glory of God our Creator, God our Liberator, and God our Sustainer. Amen

Western Presbyterian Church

Washington, D.C.

16 May 2010

Text: Acts 16:16-34

There are some prisons in the United States that do not allow hard soap. They stopped permitting it because the prisoners would take the hard white blocks, and they would carve it. Or they would mold it into sculptures, soaking the pieces in a bit of water, they would make the soap just soft and pliable enough that it would conform to the fingers like clay does. In this case, they might take several bars of soap, so that they can adhere together. Or they might take coffee and use it to stain the soap into different shades of brown.

It is not so much the molding, but the carving that is the problem, because often the prisoners would need to steal some sort of contraband for a carving tool. Sometimes they would take paperclips and hide them in their ballpoint pins, or they would carefully remove the staple from a National Geographic magazine, and make carving tools from the small pieces of metal. Some prisons ignore it, while others try to stop it.

Through the miracles of Internet, you can find men who made intricate dioramas by carving soap.  What may look like a simple white square to some have been sculpted into Our Lady of Guadalupe. Often the soap is molded into a prison, and when we look closely we can see different things behind the bars. One sculpture had a man praying in his cell, and there was a poster that said, “Do not pray that your life will be easy, but that you might have the courage to face the life that you have.”

All of these pieces of work testify to the fact that even when we are confined or imprisoned, humans have an impulse for freedom. Even when every moment of our day is scheduled and every surface that surrounds us is concrete, gray, hard, and unpliable, we have the longing and urge to make something. There is something within us that longs to exert our own will, to work, and to form something that is uniquely ours, even if that means creating with a bar of soap.

The theologian Paul Tillich connects our very “being” with creativity. He explains that no matter what our jobs might be, when we do our jobs, and do them a bit differently, we are being creative and as we do, we are acting in the image of God, as a reflection of our Creator, we have this freedom.

Of course, most of us are not in prison. In our jobs, innovation can be easily squelched by an over-active boss, someone who micromanages his or her employees. When there is a culture of criticism and people feel like they do not have the ability to do something different without hearing complaints, that chokes the creativity out of us.

Even though we can make spaces and environments in our work and in our lives that nurture our creative impulses, and there are some places where these when are strangled, at the end of the day, no matter how hard we squelch the creativity, the soul keeps calling out in its innermost yearnings. Tillich connects creativity to our being, and I wonder if creativity is also an expression of freedom. Even in times of confinement, people learn to express their freedom. They learn to create. Poems have been written on scraps of paper and stuffed between the bricks in prison walls. When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned for being critical of Stalin in a letter, he wrote extensively. Within forced labor camps, he created. There are some stories that say he would write down the pages of his book, on small strips of paper, and then he memorized the words as he ate the scraps. Then when Solzhenitsyn would pray the rosary, he would actually be reciting pages of his book to himself so that he would not forget. He wrote the narrative poem, The Trail, without the benefit of paper or pen, but he painstakingly conveyed his intellectual and spiritual journey nonetheless.

Maya Angelou knows why the caged bird sings. And our hymnal is heavy from the melodies of enslaved men and women who met in prayer houses and learned to repeat complicated choruses in a minor key. In some plantations in Louisiana, you can see where slaves scratched pictures of Br’er Rabbit and the Briar Patch on the walls. Telling the stories of Africa to their children, and embellishing them with new details of courage and cunning.

During World War II, our country interned American citizens who were from Japan into camps. Many families were torn apart by these camps. Sometimes a son would be fighting in the war while his parents and sisters were imprisoned by the U.S. government. Right now, there is an exhibit at the Renwick depicting the art of Gaman. Gaman is a Japanese word for bearing the unbearable with dignity and patience. And so they did. They used the common, found objects all around them to make beautiful pieces of art. Oftentimes they were not artists by trade, but they were shop owners or workers. And after their imprisonment, they went back to owning their shops, or working their trades.

Within our Christian tradition, we have that impulse, to tell the stories of freedom even in times of deep physical, emotional, psychological imprisonment. The liberation comes in different ways, but it has been happening since the formation of the church. We hear the narratives echoing from Acts. We have been hearing the stories, detailing how our church began. Not only has John preached on it, but we’re also digging deeply into Acts on Wednesday night. It’s such a fascinating book. We read about these men and women, and these stories form us individually, as a church, and as people of faith. We read about these men and women who courageously spoke out about Jesus, even when their lives were often in danger. They were smart, going to the port cities, the ancient hubs of information, to spread their message, so that the stories could travel all over the world. They were opinionated and passionate, and they struggled with one another, fighting over things like whether new Gentiles believers needed to be circumcised or if they could eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols.

This morning, we read a story of liberty that seems to touch upon to mind, body, and soul. It is the story from Acts that Reuben read, a story of freedom in that miraculous sense: the prison doors are opened. But in these short verses, there are numerous narratives of liberation.

We can begin by focusing on the girl who is enslaved. She is a fortuneteller, and her owners are making a great deal of money from her. And she is following Paul and Silas, completely annoying them. It is interesting that she is calling them slaves, slaves of the Most High. Finally, it gets so irritating that Paul casts the spirit out of her. And she is no longer able to tell fortunes any longer.

Has her life has gotten worse now? She was a slave girl with a special talent, and now she is simply a slave. But surely whatever condition was torturing her, she was now healed and whole. She moved from a muddled mental illness, to having clarity. When she could not control her outbursts, and she would yell at complete strangers on the top of her lungs, now she was able to constrain herself. I imagine that her thought became organized and she found peace. And though there is no indication that she was set free from slavery, perhaps she was able to find a bit of liberation–freedom and wholeness for her mind.

I would like to say that Paul and Silas risked their lives to free this little girl, but I’m not sure that’s what happened. It looks more like they were annoyed by her, than concerned with her freedom, but nevertheless, this story of liberation remains. She walked away with a clear mind, without the torments which previously haunted her.

Her owners, enraged by this, because she could no longer tell fortunes had Paul and Silas tortured, beaten, and thrown into prison. And the story of imprisonment moves and focuses on Paul and Silas. After the brutal beatings, when the men had a few moments in prison, they started singing. Paul and Silas, in their confinement, with open wounds and welts covering their bodies, began singing hymns. It’s an act of defiance, clearly stating that no matter what they have to go through, they will not stop proclaiming their message. I’m pretty sure there was no law against casting out a spirit, there was no law against restoring a child to sound mind, and yet they were in prison. But even in their innocence, no matter how many beatings they had to bear, no matter how much confinement they had to endure, they would not keep silent, they would find freedom, their voices would rise up amongst the shackles. Though an earthquake shook the prison doors open, it seems that they found their liberty before the quake, and so when the gates were opened wide, they did not move.

Then our attention shifts to our third story: the jailer. Did he participated in the abuse of Paul and Silas? Did he often flog his prisoners? He had a family. What did it feel like for him to go from watching these brutal beatings to holding his children? When he was angry at home, was he tempted to use those brutal techniques? Was he an abuser? Was he imprisoned? The first time that he thinks his job is in jeopardy, the jailer decides to kill himself. Though he has so many options before him, it’s as if he could only see one. He could only see violence as a way out.

Until his freedom came, and he led Paul and Silas out of their confinement. He brought them to a source of water. He took their welts and torn skin, and he gently washed the dirt out of them. What remorse he must have felt, as he cleansed the wounds that his hands must have inflicted. It seems as if this unjust jailer, was living in his own prison–until that moment. Because he not only cleansed that skin, but he allowed the water to be poured over his own head. Paul and Silas baptized him and his family, letting us all know that God gives even the captors liberty. God’s eternal love would surround him, cleansing him, making him new.

These stories of enslavement are often difficult to hear. Many of us live in lovely homes, and the thought of imprisonment, or concentration camps, or slavery seem so far away from us. And yet, it is not too far away. Most of us know someone who has been confined, in one way or another. We have known someone close who has been enslaved in their addiction or abuse. And we read the news. We know what is happening globally, how women in Haiti are being raped and violated. We know how history repeats itself, and we cannot move away from these dark places in our histories, until we can begin to tell the stories of liberation and work for freedom.

And so we tell one another. Through our art, poetry, writing, and through our faith, we remind ourselves where we have been, and that justice will not prevail until all are free.

To the glory of God our Creator,

            God our Liberator,

                        and God our Sustainer. Amen.

Western Presbyterian Church

Washington, DC

April 25, 2010

Text: John 10:22-30

Five years ago, when I was interviewing at this church, I met the committee who was making the decision. I heard about the history here, and took a tour of the building. And, I had a lot of decisions to make, especially since the cost of living was way out of my range. And, I really appreciated that the committee both loved and knew the church well, and while they did a beautiful job of representing the best aspects of it, they didn’t try to sugarcoat the flaws here either. They were honest about the struggles I would have here, and about what kind of pastor that they needed. They were clear about the challenges of working with John. (And John asked me to add that there are great joys as well.) One of the main things I was told was, “This is a wonderful congregation. But, there are lot of leaders here, and not a lot of followers.”

In that statement, they were telling me many important things about what kind of person worships here and what kind of pastor they needed. They needed someone who would not be easily intimidated and they needed someone who would not be autocratic. They were letting me know that they wanted a pastor would not bend to every opinion around the table, but would try to discern with the church what was important. This is a congregation that needed someone who was resilient. Someone who would not give up when an idea was challenged, but would help the church sort through the options and opinions, before helping them move forward.  They were telling me that this is a place that appreciates discussion and a challenge, so they needed someone who was not threatened by a good debate, but excited by it.

They wanted me know that you would not respond well to someone who said, “This is the way that it is going to be” and expected everyone to step in line. There are many pastors like that. I have a friend who is a priest from another religious tradition. One afternoon after he listened to me sort out an important decision in the church, shook his head, and said, “The problem with you Presbyterians, is you actually care what the people in the pews think.” He thought that it was ridiculous to get the input and opinions of the congregation when making an important decision. In our leadership, he thought that we wasted far too much time negotiating with the congregation.

Another friend, a Presbyterian minister who pastors a church of thousands, also thinks it’s strange how we lead. He said, “Imagine if a pilot flew a plane the way that we run our churches. If there was a warning light going off on the control panel, the pilot would stand up and ask the physician in First Class what do, and since he was a respected member of society, we would expect him to know the answer. Then we would ask the woman seated in 15A, and she would have an opinion, because her cousin was a pilot, and so she had a vague idea what would be necessary. And we would take extra care to hear from the passenger in 22B, because she had never even been in a plane before, and so she would have outside eyes. And before you know it, the plane would crash, because everybody’s opinion was more important than the person flying the plane!”

I think that it is clear that neither of these men would have done well at Western Presbyterian Church. But, I was thrilled about the church. And, something that attracted me the most, they were letting me know that you like to be challenged, so you did not expect someone to stand in the pulpit and hold up a mirror that reflected the general mood, opinions, and attitudes of the congregation. You expected that the pastor would say things that you did not agree with; in fact, you enjoyed it when you did not agree with everything. In the end, the committee decided that I was the right person for the position, and I felt like it would be a good place for me.

I suppose, now that I have been here for a while, I would not say that the church doesn’t have a lot of followers, but I would say that you are skilled in the art of following. And in this time and place in history, that is an extremely important gift.

The word “pastor” means “shepherd” in Latin. And many of the metaphors of the Christian life in our Scriptures are ones of sheep and shepherds. Often they are extremely comforting. When a person is going through a life-threatening illness, there can be nothing more soothing than knowing that we are being led through dark valleys, that God knows our name, and God is calling us home, where we ought to be.

I am someone who has never had any exposure to sheep, except at the petting zoo. I have this general idea that they are stupid animals, without minds of their own. And so I don’t like this metaphor when it is used to describe the relationship between clergy and the church. But, then when I would talk to ranchers in my first congregation, they would let me know that herding was not such an easy task, and animals have a mind of their own.

Whether we like the metaphor or not, it gets to the relationship between leading and following. I am always reminded of this when I talk to men and women who are from different generations. I travel across the United States and ask groups of people, “What sort of events formed your generation?” Older men and women tell us about the Great Depression and how frugality shaped everything they did. People learned to open up their homes for family members and tenants. Even though many years have passed, even though they are far away from the trauma, those who lived through the Great Depression distinctly recall the scarcity, and therefore continue to rinse out plastic bags, reuse coffee grounds, and stretch one meal for a week of leftovers.

I often hear the stories of World War II, as men and women remember what it was like to live on rationed food, milk, and gas. The feminist movement bloomed as white women rolled up their sleeves during the war effort and went to work in factories. They joined many African-American women who were already working. After the war was over, the spirit of sacrifice and hard work did not end, but men and women redirected that energy and the nation’s resources to build many of the institutions of this country. Older generations are known as “Builders” for good reason. They constructed the infrastructure of our country and provided the bricks and mortar of many of our institutions.

At the same time, a sense of entitlement characterized the wealthiest families in our country. Educational institutions made admission decisions based on legacy. So if your father went to an Ivy League school, then you could probably make it into the same school. Success in one’s professional life often had to do with whether one belonged to certain social clubs, and many of those clubs did not allow for ethnic minorities. All of this ensured the dominance of particular families and buttressed a White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant culture. Our mainline churches were often made up of the educated elite, the ones who ran the banks, the businesses, and the law offices. People respected parents, teachers, and pastors; men and women trusted the government. One time a man in his seventies told me that he almost got kicked out of college because he needed a note from his mother to miss a class, and he had his girlfriend write it. When the school discovered the forgery, he was very close to being expelled.

Then, people relate stories of huddling terrified under school desks as small children. The boys and girls were enacting mandatory bomb drills, using the tiny tables in a meager attempt to shield themselves from an imagined nuclear attack. If they were in hallways, the children learned to back up to the concrete walls for safety. In other exercises, boys and girls ran home as rapidly as they could so that their mothers could time their arrival. It is no wonder that these same children began to question what was happening around them as they grew up. A culture of distrust was piqued during the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, and Richard Nixon’s resignation, and they began to promise themselves that they would “never trust anyone over thirty.”

At the same time, the Civil Rights movement called into question many long-standing assumptions of the White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant culture, and new voices arose, giving us great possibilities and new visions for our country. Even when fire hoses and angry dogs threatened, men and women continued in the blazing sun of the South to march for dignity and respectful treatment of African Americans. Women began to demand equal money for equal work. It seemed like a new progressive era would be ushered in, and yet our country made a tragic turn.

The assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. dashed our dreams and shook our nation’s confidence. One of the many casualties in this time seemed to be our trust in institutions. With this sense that institutions and governments could no longer be depended upon, the foundations of all we had built began to crack.

Many things were negative, but there were positive things as well. The Immigration Act of 1965 abolished the national-origin quotas and opened our borders to a rich variety of people from non-European countries. In our academies, a subtle shift occurred, with entry into colleges becoming based on special exams as opposed to legacies. Suddenly, something wonderful occurred as men and women of all ethnicities began to make up the elite in our country. Although we know certain families still had definite advantages in our country, we moved away from having an established ruling class in the way that we once had.

Students began to learn differently. They formed teams and worked on group projects. They began to rely more and more on the scientific method, questioning assumptions and testing them. Even in third grade, my daughter’s class is learning to evaluate their curriculum and their teachers. In the business world, we can see the shift, as businesses are trying to figure out how to manage in teams, and be more collaborative. In technology, we see how much social media flourishes, because it allows for discussion, conversation, and network building. Right now, we are questioning many of the assumptions that we have made in the financial sector. After the impact of the last economic crisis, we are beginning to look closely at the way that our mortgages are put together. We are beginning to look at our business in a different light. In almost every area of our lives, we are having conversations and discussions and evaluating things from different perspectives.

And, the church is not immune from these changes. We are not in the center of church and society. Frustration with religion rises in our society, as people proclaim that “religion poisons everything.” We’ve watched with concern as new issues arise over pedophilia in the Roman Catholic Church. It has been heartbreaking to read about the cover-ups.

All of these shifts remind us that there is an art to following. It is important to question what we believe. It is important to doubt. It is vital for us question those who have gone before us. And so we are learning the art of following, being sure that we listen for God’s voice, as we move ahead in God’s work.

            To the Glory of God our Creator,

                        God our Liberator,

                                    and God our Sustainer. Amen.

Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, DC 20037
March 28, 2010

Text: Luke 19:28-40

I was in New Zealand last summer, working with the Anglican Church, and one of the wonderful things that I learned about was the customs of Maori people. The Anglican church seems to have done a pretty good job, with including the diversity of people in New Zealand. They had a strong Maori presence and we worshiped with Maori liturgies. But there was one thing that made the Maori people distinct in their denomination, and that was their funerals. The white Anglicans appreciated a tidy service that lasted about 45 minutes. But the Maoris had funerals that lasted for days. Every family and friend would gather together to sing, and cry, and eat, and sing some more. They would stay awake for nights in a row to be with those who mourned. The grieving rituals were long and elaborate.

My friend, Bruce Reyes-Chow, is the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. He’s from San Francisco, and he’s part Chinese and part Filipino, and his grandfather on the Chinese side just died. He said that there were so many traditions in the grieving process, so many details about what colors to wear and places to sit, and they were so foreign to him and his cousins. When I asked him how they kept all the details straight, he responded that when his grandmother was in the middle of explaining them, he and his cousins started a Google spreadsheet and made lists of everything that they needed to do. I guess every culture has its ways of cherishing its traditions.

I have to admit, when my New Zealand pastor friends told me how difficult it was to spend days grieving, and I heard about the complicated Chinese rituals, I was kind of glad that I was here, in D.C., where our funeral services last an hour. Rituals from the South (where I’m from) can be complicated, but that’s only because you’re trying to avoid the caustic barbs that are thrown on behalf of the ex-wife or the new wife. You almost need a Google doc to remember who’s on which side. But, mostly our grieving process is about going to the funeral, and then attending a big party to consume more fried chicken than you’ve ever seen in your life.

But I wonder if we are missing something. Do we spend enough time with those who grieve? Do we spend enough time with those who suffer? So often when our loved ones go through deep sadness, we don’t like to see them in pain, so we want them to “get over it” quickly. I have seen people look at Kubler Ross’ stages of grief, and treat them like Olympic hurdles that they need to jump as quickly as possible.

When I was a little girl, when I was upset about something, the automatic response from people surrounding me was always, “Don’t cry. It’ll be okay.” They would say it over and over. Then when I got older, I still got the same response when I cried. And I even caught myself saying it to my own daughter the other day. Then, in mid-sentence, I realized that I was saying that, not because I wanted to soothe her. I was saying it because of me. I knew that she had a good reason to cry; I was just uncomfortable. I didn’t want her to have to go through the suffering.

I have heard widows explain that their friends ask them, within months of their spouse dying, “When are you going to get over this?” And that is how we tend to deal with heartache. We like to think about people being resilient, overcoming their hardships, but then we have a difficult time seeing people suffer, especially for long periods of time. We’re uncomfortable sitting with them. We’re afraid we will say the wrong thing, or do the wrong thing, that we’ll cause more pain. Or else, we don’t like to be reminded of their mortality, because it makes us remember our own impending death. It makes us sad, so we shift our focus.

And on the other hand, for those of us who suffer, we don’t want to be pitied or feel dependent. We like to have ourselves put together, and if people see us in a devastated emotional state, we apologize to them, as if we’ve done something wrong by expressing our emotions.

I overheard two friends talking about Haiti recently. In the middle of the conversation, one friend interrupted and said, “I am so sick of hearing about Haiti. Can’t we talk about something else?” I was shocked when he said it. But I suppose that I shouldn’t be. We are a culture that has an incredibly short attention span when it comes to personal sorrow, or even national disasters. We can stick with the story as long as the headline is hot. As long as we’re still interested in rubbernecking at the disaster, we’ll listen, but our attention span ends with the commercial break. We don’t want to hear about the suffering when the bodies start smelling on the street.

We don’t really want to hear about New Orleans now. Katrina was a long time ago. We are not so interested in the painstaking actions that men and women must go through to rebuild Iraq or Afghanistan. We tire of it.

And yet, we gather here and read this story. It’s a happy one this morning, but we know what on the other side of that parade. We know that the crowds who are singing and waving branches will soon be replaced by those inciting anger and frustration. Other people will come on the scene, yelling “Crucify Him.” This week is full of anxiety, as Jesus sweats blood and prays for another way out.

And yet, we read this story. We enter into this time and we allow the heaviness of it to surround us and envelop us. As we enter Holy Week, what does that mean for Christians? In this particular time in history, our understanding of why Jesus died on the cross doesn’t always resonate with us. The cultural and biblical understanding is that Jesus dies on the cross to pay for our sins. But that makes many of us pause. Did Jesus suffer so that a sacrifice was paid for our sins? Ancient traditions are full of sacrificial systems. There is this notion that there is a cosmic reckoning that needs to occur. We sin and make mistakes, and so we need to pay a price for those wrongs. There is something within us that longs for the ability to pay for these mistakes, to wipe our record clean. So it is an ancient idea that the lifeblood of an animal needs to flow, or crops need to be burned in order to pay for our sins. And on Holy Week, we have said that Jesus Christ has paid the final payment for our sins.

But what does that say about God? Do we serve a divine being that needs blood to atone for sins? And, even more disturbing, would we worship a God who would require the sacrifice of God’s son to atone for sins? That sort of reckoning may have made sense in ancient times, but now it puts into question the nature and character of God. Is God vengeful? Does God need payment for wrongs that have been committed? Is God bloodthirsty? Is God some sort of divine child abuser, a divine being who would need to see God’s own son suffer so that our wrongs might be paid for? This idea of God is quite disturbing, this divine reckoning says something about the character of God, so many people have begun to question these notions.

I spoke to the neurologist Michael Newberg recently. He wrote the books Why God Isn’t Going Away and How God Changes Your Brain. He explained how religion has played an important part of our brain’s evolution. Thinking about, meditating on, and praying to a loving God can activate those things in our minds that give us internal peace and motivates us to compassion.

Yet, when we begin to imagine a vengeful God, that can lead to anger and frustration within ourselves. We can begin to ruminate and our minds begin to grasp hold to vengeance and hatred. So, it’s important to remember the very important truths of Scripture, that God is love. That God is full of mercy and truth.

So what is the importance of Holy Week in all of this? If we understand the idea that people needed this divine sacrifice at one time in our history, if we understand that this is a very important theme in Scripture and in our tradition, but we also know that it may not resonate with us. Then, what is the importance of Holy Week?

It is important because we set aside time to think about suffering. Jesus suffered, even though he did not have to. He could have taken the easy way out. He could have shut his mouth, he could have skipped the donkey ride, he could have left the temple instead of knocking tables over and making a whip with cords. But he didn’t, he rode through the city, spoke the truth courageously, and ultimately faced his death.

So what is the importance of this time for us? Holy Week is a time when we shift our focus as Christians. As we remember the suffering of Jesus, then we begin to think about the hardships of other humans. There are so many who agonize around us. We take the time to remember the suffering of those in Haiti who still do not have homes to live in, those who are living with that stench. We stop, and we think about those who have been bombed in their cities. We take time out to imagine what it is like to live with the threat of Malaria or with AIDS. We pause and think about the homeless that we would ordinarily ignore on our streets. We remember those who have been thrown out of their houses because they have lost their jobs, and they cannot make their mortgage payments, and they cannot sell their homes, because the value of their houses have dropped off. We stop to think about those who do not have health insurance.

In this culture where we spend so much time thinking about the sex lives of celebrities, our portfolios, and what sort of power and affluence we could have we worked longer and harder and smarter. In this culture where we think mere moments about the suffering of others, we stop. We reflect. We raise money for people who face disasters, and those who are hungry. We teach our children to remember those around the world who are without food.

There is something very powerful about that focus. It moves us to compassion and stirs our imaginations, and compels us to act. For we cannot help until we have heard. We cannot respond to injustice, unless we have seen it. And traveling with Jesus, among the people singing hosanna, into the upper room where he washes the disciples feet. Moving through this powerful story where we remember the brutal assassination of our God has given Christians the ability to see suffering not as something that happens to the weak, but something that happens in unjust societies, something that happens to all of us. And the act of focusing our attention on it just might save our souls.

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