Preaching and Teaching

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church

Washington, DC

October 25, 2009

Text: Mark 10:46-52

Jill was from a long line of innovative people, solid businessmen and women, who made great money. And yet, one year, she found that her husband was without a job. His income was secondary, but their household finances still depended on his salary.

The days of unemployment turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, and the months turned into years. Their savings drained as her husband kept looking. He was open to all kinds of jobs, but it became clear that he did not have quite the right skills, and he was not going to find anything in that area.

They began to cut back all of the extravagances–eating out, posh grocery stores, and nice gifts for their children. Jill made sure not to spend any money on clothes. She was ashamed of her family’s predicament, so she put a happy face on all of it, trying to muster all of that optimism that people need when someone is unemployed.

Until one day, she took her dog on a walk, and she noticed that the air was getting colder. At first she had a burst of excitement, like a kid who is waiting for Christmas, but then the worry set in. How were they going to pay for the additional heating bills? They could easily go without air conditioning, but going without heat was totally different. And before she knew it, her head was caught up in a jumbled game of adding and subtracting, juggling the utility costs, and trying to figure out if she was going to have enough money to feed and shelter her children for the winter. She ran the numbers in her head, over and over again, hoping that she could find some way to make the imaginary columns in her head suddenly add up. It overwhelmed her.

She was exhausted and ashamed that she could not provide for her family. And when her dog had to stop—yet again to sniff the grass—she rested her back on a tree and took a deep breath. When she exhaled, her breath became choppy waves of overflowing, exhausted emotion. It finally overcame her. No matter how hard she tried to make the numbers add up in her mind, they were not working.

And right there, Jill did something that she had never done before. She prayed, “God, this has all become unmanageable. Please. Please help.”

As the words tumbled out of her mouth, she did not know why she had never uttered them before. It was not as if she had never prayed before. She had. But never about money.

In our country, we can be ignorant about or unable to do a lot of things. It is okay if an engineer cannot write well, or if a historian has no grasp of the basics of third grade science. Hardly anyone in America knows geography. But none of us are allowed to be ignorant about money. There are not many places in our society where we can whisper, “I’m not making it. The numbers are not adding up. I’m not sure that I am going to be able to find a job that pays off my student loans.” The American Way is about economic autonomy, and if you don’t have it, then you hide it, or you buy your way out of the shame with a credit card. You just try to hold it together.

But, while running through the numbers, Jill became aware that she could no longer keep anything together. She cried out and asked God for mercy.

For me, the word mercy brings up some very painful memories. You see, it was a game, my brother or sister would get me in some sort of torturous hold where I could not breath, or my limbs were being bent back in a direction that they were never ever supposed to bend. Being the youngest child, with two siblings who were much older than me, I never won at the game, I was just at the “mercy” of my brother and sister. The only power I had in the situation was to hold off saying the “M” word as long as possible. Hoping that they would second-guess their cruelty. But they never did.

I just remember my brother of sister pushing my hand back, until I collapsed on my knees, until tears started streaming down my face, until I could no longer take the pain, and I would cry, “Mercy.” And then sometimes they would relent, but other times they would want me to beg  for mercy, so I would have to say, “Mercy, please.” I gained very flexible wrists through that process.

The lessons I learned through those games stuck with me. I learned many of the defensive moves for the small and weak. Like how to move with the force, rather than trying to fight against it. I learned how to wiggle my way out of things and run fast. And I learned to keep my fingernails sharp (the fingernails eventually stopped the game). But, the main thing I learned was to never cry out for help. Unless it was the very last thing in the world that you had to do.  

Those lessons that we learn as children stick with us. It is a sign of weakness to cry mercy. It makes it so that someone else has power over us. It makes it so that we are no longer in control. I would endure all kinds of pain before I cried the “M” word.

These lessons stick with all of us. Think of how long it takes before the person who cannot get to sleep without drinking so much that they finally black out, goes before she gets some help. Think of how bad a relationship has to suffer before a couple finally has to go to a counselor for help. Think of how much anxiety or depression has to wash over us, before we finally realize that we need professional help. Think of the person who is suffering with mental or physical abuse, how long is takes them before they have to say, “I can’t take this any more. I have to find a safe place.” Think of what a man has to go through before he can finally admit that he cannot quit taking the prescription drugs that he is on. 

I mean, no wonder the first steps of 12-step programs are the most difficult—having to admit that there is a problem, and we can no longer manage it. We are out of control, and we have to rely on a higher power to restore us to sanity.

We become like this beggar on the side of the road. The blind man who realizes that Jesus is passing by and so he calls out to him. And the people around him try to silence him. They try to shut him up, because it’s embarrassing to have someone yelling out that raw and naked cry for help. So they tell him, sternly to be quiet, but he will not be silenced, and he calls out even more loudly, “Have mercy on me!”

And there’s something that happens at this moment. The meaning of the word changes here. Because “mercy” is no longer the desperate call for help—it is no longer the longing plea. A transformation occurs in those simple five letters. Because Jesus hears his call and asks him closer. And Jesus asks him what he needs and says to him, “Go; you faith has made you well.” And the man regains his sight. So the cry of “mercy” becomes the merciful love that heals this man and gives him wholeness.

And even though we do not have any dusty roads to walk upon, even though there is no physical Jesus that we can yell our mercy to, we can also experience this loving flood. The merciful miracles inhabit this sanctuary, overturning our destructive habits, and freeing us from the bondage of oppression.

 “Mercy” is transformed from a call of help and becomes the grace and love of God that pours out upon us. I cannot explain it exactly, because sometimes it seems so ordinary for everyone except for the person who is experiencing it. But it is the fact that Jill soon got a transfer to a city where her husband found a job. It is the fact that there are 12-step meetings all over this region, and they are filled with people who are crying mercy as well. And when you learn to call out, you realize that there is support and encouragement, and an incredible system of mercy. It is the fact that when depression comes over us, and we begin to daydream about ending our own lives, we learn that people have dedicated their lives to helping men and women walk through the valley of the shadow of death. 

As we baptize Jack, we surround him, promising to show the love of God to him. And we will pray that he will grow up to be a man of courage and conviction and love. And with all children, we recognize that Jack will need to learn to grow from the dependence on his mother and father, to become independent.

But the words of Jesus remind us that we are not only to teach children, but to learn from them as well. And we can learn from the cry of a child, that sometimes calling for help and for mercy can be the key to wholeness.

Anne Lamott, in all her wit and wisdom says that the two best prayers that she knows are “Thank you, thank you, thank you” and “Help me, help me, help me.” May we go out, rich in those two simple prayers, and may we find a flood of mercy, surrounding us and holding us, even in our darkest times.

And may we do so to the glory of God, our Creator,

            God, our Liberator,

                        and God, our Sustainer. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
October 18, 2009

Text: Mark 10:35-45

There are very few members left at Western who were here when I arrived in 1983. This could mean that I drove them all away. It could mean that most of them were quite elderly back then and subsequently died. For the most part, it was the latter.

One of the remaining members from those days is a feisty spirit named Margaret Brooks who now lives at the Ingleside retirement community. I went to visit Margaret at Sibley Hospital a while back. When I walked in, she said, “Why are you here?” Knowing Margaret’s sometimes acerbic communication style, I brushed her comment aside and said, “I’m here because all of us at Western are worried about you being in the hospital.” She looked at me for a moment and then said, “Well, tell them to stop worrying.” With our customary jockeying for position taken care of, we went on to reminisce about people who are no longer with us.

For months, I have been laughing about Margaret’s response. But her response also opens a window into the mind set of her generation of Western members. To Margaret and her generation, the church was not here to meet their needs. The church didn’t serve them. They served the church. So she didn’t want the church worrying about her. She would rather worry about the church.

Starting with the boomers (my generation), this equation began to change and it changed rapidly. Increasingly, we started demanding that the church cater to our needs and, in some cases, whims. If the church didn’t give us what we wanted, we picked up our spiritual toys and went elsewhere—perhaps to another church, perhaps for a walk in the mountains, perhaps to an ashram.

Not all of this was bad. Indeed, some of it was quite good. Why should we sit through boring sermons and bad music in ill-kept buildings just because our parents had done so? Why should we attend a church that ignores the needs of our children? Why should we join a church that excludes LGBT folks, people with whom we work and are friends outside the church?

So, yes, some of the logic behind church shopping/church hopping is perfectly fine. We rarely find a church located on the corner in our neighborhood that is a good fit for what we want and need in the way of spiritual nourishment. Furthermore, if we grew up Presbyterian, whether or not we remain Presbyterian should not be a matter of brand loyalty. A decision to join a congregation should be dictated by our ability to find a congregation whose theology and practice help us grow spiritually.

So, on the whole, I think this movement toward finding a spiritual home compatible with our spiritual needs is a positive development. There is no reason to suffer silently through ecclesiastical malpractice or theological lunacy.

However, there are a couple of major problems with this approach to finding a congregation. First, it furthers the divisions in our society. We are not so much segregated by race and class as we have been in the past. We are now segregated by belief systems. Conservatives find a conservative church. Progressives find a progressive church. Centrists look for some place where conservatives and progressives aren’t eating each other alive.

As a result, our congregations are, more and more, communities where we reinforce our beliefs rather than communities where our thinking is challenged by people on all sides of the issues. As such, we further the balkanization of this nation into competing ideological and theological camps. Rather than being a place of common ground, in too many places, the church has become partisan ground.

Second, our current approach to religious life encourages us never to make a full commitment to any community of faith. As we continue to switch congregations whenever something disagreeable happens, what kind of role model are we for the world and our children? Congregations, like all families, are places where we need to work through things rather than walk away when something disagreeable happens.

After we have shopped and made our decision, we need to switch gears. We shift from the shopping gear to the commitment gear. Our focus is no longer primarily about what our congregation can do for us, although that remains important. It is now: what can we do for our congregation?

It is not unlike a love relationship. Once we have looked around and found the right person and the right person has found us, the shopping needs to stop. It is time to make a commitment and deepen the commitment—to focus on the needs of the other person, not just our own needs.

In like manner, congregations don’t exist solely to serve their own needs. They shouldn’t grow for the sake of growth. They exist to serve the needs of their communities and world.

It fascinates me that this congregation was started not so much by a bunch of Presbyterians as by the community. In the mid-1850s, shortly before the civil war, a group of people came together and said, “There needs to be a Presbyterian church in the western part of the District of Columbia”(In those days, Rock Creek Park separated Georgetown from the rest of D.C. So this was viewed as the western edge of the city. Thus, the neighborhood just north of us is named the West End.). The list of donors to the original building campaign includes people such as Jefferson Davis, an Episcopalian, who never worshiped at Western and had no intention of becoming a Presbyterian. These contributors felt the community needed a church to serve the neighborhood.

Today, too often when we plant new churches, we are thinking about the benefits to the denomination, not the community. We wonder, “Where can we plant a church that will attract a lot of members?” Another approach, Jesus’ servant approach, would be to wonder, “Where is there a community that needs a Presbyterian church to serve it?”

When I read church growth literature, almost all of which is written by evangelicals and fundamentalists, it sounds like some of the marketing texts I read in my MBA program. It is about identifying the needs of people in the community and then meeting them. Granted, this can sometimes end up with these congregations including spas and hair salons in their new buildings. But the principle, when guided by the Gospel, is a valid one.

The church was created to serve the world’s needs. Jesus drove home this point repeatedly during his ministry. Sometimes it took the form of him saying, “I didn’t come to minister to the righteous. I came to minister to sinners.” Other times, he said it by asserting that religious rules take second place to human need. “If we have to serve human need on the Sabbath, so be it,” he declared. And, of course, he said it loudly and clearly in the Gospel lesson this morning, “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant.”

There are a lot of biblical scholars who think Mark was out to make the disciples look bad. They contend Mark was part of a Christian community outside of Jerusalem, a community rebelling against the rigid rule of James and the Jerusalem Church. We know Paul had an ongoing argument with James and the Jerusalem church so Mark’s community being in conflict with them isn’t hard to believe.

Mark repeatedly puts the disciples in a bad light. For example, unlike Matthew and Luke’s Gospel, Mark’s Gospel does not end with a resurrection reunion between Jesus and his disciples. Many scholars contend the Gospel ended originally at Chapter 16, verse eight with the resurrection stories being added by a later editor. If they are correct, Mark ends with the disciples still in hiding after abandoning Jesus during his arrest, trial and crucifixion. Not a complimentary picture!

Mark had a choice as to what stories to include and not include. Unless he was trying to make the disciples look bad, why else would Mark include this morning’s story? Because the disciples look really bad in this story.

James and John went to Jesus and said, “Jesus, we want you to do for us whatever we ask.” What? Lest we think they were unique in their audacity, James and John represent every spiritual seeker who wants the church to be what they want without having an accompanying concern to serve the church and the world.

Jesus lets them finish and then delivers a major counter point. “Folks,” Jesus told them, “if you want to be in my company/walk with me, you need to be a servant not a boss, a giver not a taker, a worker not a whiner, a diehard disciple not a fair weather disciple. You need to make the coffee, move the chairs, teach Sunday school, serve on committees, not get discouraged by criticism or swelled heads by words of praise, love people who don’t seem very loveable, and pick up after others. You need to feed the homeless, employ the unemployed, heal the sick. You are servants. Do what servants do.” OK, I added a few things but you get the idea.

To pound home his point, Jesus went one step further, “You are slaves to all.” These are especially tough words. Slavery was a major institution in Jesus’ time and everyone must have been incredibly shocked by Jesus’ instruction. Incredulously, they surely asked one another, “He wants us to be slaves?”

From our beginnings in the middle of the 19^th century, our goal at Western has been to build a servant community. Our mission is to serve the needs of our members and the needs of the world. Our steady growth over the past several decades is testimony to our, at least partial, success in doing so. People see us doing servant work and they want to be a part of it.

To serve the world, we started Miriam’s Kitchen, helped build a large church for Presbyterians in Ghana, started Project Create for homeless children in this city, helped Archbishop Tutu save a school in Soweto, have struggled to get health care to women and children in Ethiopia, helped start the first African American new church development in this Presbytery’s modern era.

To serve our members, we have built a strong group of core ministries. We have a commitment to provide meaningful, inspiring worship. We are growing our ability to educate our children and adults. We have rebuilt the strong sense of community that is a part of our history.

During the stewardship campaign this year, I’d like us to think about our participation in this congregation using Jesus’ concept of servanthood. We all get a lot back from Western Presbyterian Church. You made that abundantly clear with your amazing generosity last winter that pulled us out of a major financial bind. You literally put your treasure where your heart is. Thank you.

The challenge before us now is not to relax and drift backward. I’m not too worried about this because Presbyterians have trouble relaxing. Being called a slacker is one of our greatest fears! If we aren’t working hard on something, we get nervous.

Nonetheless, the tendency to relax after a crisis is happening all around us. With a major economic crisis supposedly behind us, too many people are reverting to business as usual. Certainly Wall Street is doing just that. The immoral, unethical big salaries and bonuses are flowing again. The market reaches for 10,000 despite the huge problems that confront us. People act as though health care is no longer a crisis. The debt piling up resembles the Reagan era. As humans, we have a natural tendency to relax when a gun is no longer pointed at our heads.

In a servant community such as Western, we can’t afford to relax. The needs of our community and world have never been more pressing.

Last month, I had the privilege of meeting with some Afghan and Pakistani tribal and religious leaders. One of the Afghan leaders said, “9/11 changed everything for everyone. However, for much of the Western world, things returned to some semblance of normal fairly quickly. They never returned to normal for us. And things keep getting worse every day.”

“Things keep getting worse every day.” It could have been said by someone from Sudan or Somalia, Honduras or Colombia, Myanmar or Java. This is no time to relax.

We must continue to build this ministry so we can grow our ability to serve the world. This is the challenge we face in our stewardship campaign. This is the challenge we will meet.

You and I are called to be servants. We are called to serve our families, employers/employees/colleagues, neighbors in our homes and residence halls, country, and yes, the church. As we do so, we will gain the pleasure that comes with giving, rather than receiving; of serving rather than ruling.

Let us pray: Amazing God, you call us to serve. As we do so, deep, primal needs of our own are met. For we cannot get the soul-deep satisfaction we want by chasing power and control. It is in the humility of service that we find our true calling. Thank you for the blessing of servanthood. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
October 11, 2009

Text: Mark 10:17-31

Sometimes the assumptions behind our behavior are pretty outrageous. A number of years ago, at Politics and Prose Book Store, I heard author Vikram Seth, a native of India, talking about his life. When he applied to a program at Oxford, he had to demonstrate proficiency in two major languages. He wrote down that he was fluent in English and Hindi. The university responded that Hindi wasn’t on their list of major languages and recommended German or French. Seth looked at us and said, “Now remember, approximately 300 million people speak Hindi/Urdu; less than 100 million speak German.” Obviously, Oxford made some Eurocentric assumptions about what constitutes a major language.

In his day, Jesus continually questioned common but false assumptions driving behavior in his culture. In particular, he questioned why money, power, and violence are worthy of the trust we put in them. “Who says these things will make us happy,” he asked.

A very famous case in point is the man who came up to Jesus and asked for the key to eternal life. When Jesus cited the Ten Commandments as key, the man responded without hesitation, “I have kept all these since my youth.” Now that is quite an assumption; an assumption Jesus couldn’t let stand.

Maybe Jesus was incensed by the man who assumed he was completely faithful. Maybe he just started laughing at his hubris. Either way, Jesus couldn’t let such an assertion go unchallenged. He decided to expose the fallacy of this arrogant, self-righteous fellow’s assumptions about himself, to call his bluff. When Jesus asked the man to give up everything he possessed, the man, in shock, went away filled with grief.

Given interpretations of this passage over the past two thousand years, let me begin with what Jesus did not say. When Jesus told the man to give up his possessions, he did not make, as is sometimes said, a blanket indictment of personal wealth and possessions by Jesus. He did not say we should all give up our possessions.

Jesus was dealing with a particular individual. His counsel was intended for this man, not all of humanity. It is good advice for some of us. But it wasn’t intended to be a categorical instruction for all of us.

Historically, Christianity has picked and taught up some very bad attitudes. Some in the church have viewed everything from human sexuality to personal wealth as the work of the devil. When so doing, we stray from Jesus’ belief structure.

After all, Jesus was a good Jew. As such, he would have viewed wealth for what it is—a blessing from God. Those so blessed are expected by God to share their wealth generously to help people less fortunate. In like manner, Jesus viewed sexuality for what it is—a gift from God intended for our enjoyment as well as the method by which another generation of children is created.

So as we look for the meaning of Jesus’ words in this story, we need to look for a meaning other than a categorical rejection of wealth. I suggest we start where Jesus started in his conversation with the man. Jesus began by telling this fellow that the key to eternal life is following God’s law.

Perhaps Protestantism’s preference for grace and aversion to the law is why we seem to speed right past this clear instruction. But every time we do so, we unnecessarily and unhelpfully place law and grace at odds with one another even though Jesus saw them as complimentary. Jesus’ clear instruction to the man (and to us) is that we follow God’s commandments knowing that when we fail to do so, God’s grace will wash away our failures.

It was the man’s insistence that he had kept the law that forced Jesus to move to the more specific subject of his wealth. The man’s appearance and demeanor must have given away the fact that he was wealthy. I don’t know exactly what. But something tipped off Jesus that this guy was in love with his wealth.

Since the man would not admit his failure to follow the law, Jesus decided to up the ante. “OK, then,” said Jesus, “give away all you possess and then you will inherit eternal life.” While the man was unwilling to admit his failure to keep the law, he immediately admitted his addiction to his possessions. Unwilling to comply with Jesus’ request, he walked away self-indicted.

You’ve heard me say this before so I’ll say it again. If the man had stuck around instead of walking away, if he had said, “OK, I’ll get rid of everything,” I think Jesus would have said, “Never mind, just checking. Keep your wealth. Just be sure you put it to use in God’s service.”

After the man left, Jesus used the man’s decision as a teachable moment for his followers. Jesus lamented the power wealth can have over us, reminding his followers how difficult it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. He could have said the same thing about the addictive potential of power, fame or worldly accomplishments.

Hearing Jesus’ conversation with this man, the disciples wondered how anyone could ever be saved. Their leader set very high standards. Jesus replied, “What is impossible for humans is possible for God.” In other words, God’s grace is more powerful than human failure. God will do what we cannot—redeem us from our failures.

Suddenly getting nervous about their own fate, the disciples, individuals who had left families, jobs, and home towns to follow Jesus, reminded their leader that they had given up everything for him. Jesus, touched by their insecurity, reassured them that people who put their trust in the Good News have nothing to fear. “With God,” he said, “nothing is impossible.”

There is a reason this story is one of the most famous Gospel lessons. It is a tale about misplaced priorities, not wealth. It is a story about trusting our own efforts, our own wealth, our own power rather than trusting the grace of God. Too many of us are busily pouring ourselves into things, clinging to things as if they, not God, will save us.

The great theologian Paul Tillich liked to talk about ultimate concern. To him, our ultimate concern should be God. He described how we oftentimes replace God with other, less-than-ultimate concerns. When this happens, our less-than-ultimate concerns become ultimate. To use biblical language, they become idols.

In the Gospel story, Jesus realized the rich man’s wealth had become an idol to him. Jesus exposed the idolatry by asking him to choose between the Living God and his god—his wealth. The man chose wealth. Before we say “incredible,” let us confess that many of us do the same. We choose wealth or power or anyone of a hundred things over the Living God. If the man’s wealth had been one concern rather than an ultimate concern, he could have kept the wealth and a healthy relationship with God.

I like Tillich’s language of ultimate concern because few of us are willing to admit that we are idolaters. I mean, who wants to say, “Yes, I worship idols.” It just doesn’t sound good. But I think most of us will admit that we become overly concerned, even obsessed about things in ways that are dysfunctional, unhealthy. We turn concerns into ultimate concern. A few examples:

One of the things about which we can become overly concerned are our family members. We all want to be good family members. We all want to be members of good families. However, when our families become our ultimate concern, we and they can get pretty neurotic.

When our 33-year-old daughter comes home for visits, she goes out with her friends. She has a tendency to stay out with these friends salsa dancing until about 3 or 4 in the morning. This makes me crazy. I anxiously wake up in the middle of the night, get up and check to see if her car is there. When I hear her come in, I can finally sleep soundly for the few remaining hours of the night. This is pretty neurotic on my part. I am inappropriately concerned.

While my story only results in me losing sleep and irritating Rachel, parents can make their children the sole focus of their lives, their ultimate concern, to a point where it does real damage to them and their children. The children interpret the over-concern as a lack of trust or too much need to control. The parents interpret their child’s lack of responsiveness to their concerns as a lack of love or respect. Debilitating family dynamics ensue.

Jesus tells us that making anything or anyone other than God our ultimate concern is a mistake—even our families. Over the past thirty years of ministry, I have seen many families where parents become fixated on the well being of their child. But psychologists tell us that being overly concerned, paradoxically, can actually perpetuate the dysfunctional behavior of the child.

The response to a troubled family member isn’t tough love, a phrase I have never liked. The response is understanding the limits of our love to influence or control another person’s behavior. When we remain ultimately concerned only about God, we are much more likely to work our way through the concerns we have with family members.

While this congregation continues to grow, most congregations in our denomination do not. A congregation’s lack of growth is oftentimes rooted in the wrong ultimate concerns. People become ultimately concerned about things such as keeping LGBT people out of power or older generations in power, maintaining buildings or polishing a self-image that is rooted in the 1950s.

When I first arrived here in 1983, the older folks said to me, “John, we don’t have to like everything you do. Just grow the church.” It was a most unselfish gift the last generation of Westerners gave to us. They were ultimately concerned about the right thing.

Too many of us turn work into an ultimate concern. We obsess about our careers, being responsible employees, or various dramas taking place in our workplaces. As we do so, our lives begin to warp, becoming distorted from their God-designed shape.

Furrows appear on our brows. Our families begin to complain that they don’t have out attention. Our physicians tell us our health is deteriorating.

I think if Jesus met many Washingtonians today, he wouldn’t say, “Give up your wealth.” He would say, “Quit your job.” We would all freak out. As the wealthy man did 2000 years ago, most of us would walk away from Jesus choosing to worship our idol rather than the Living God.

In the end, this Gospel story asks us a simple question: What stands between us and a solid relationship with our God? As is written in the Ten Commandments, our God is a jealous God. God does not want us worshiping other things or people, no matter how worthy they may be.

We can spread our love around to all kinds of people and causes. But our ultimate concern has to be about God. We don’t stand before God with our families or our vocational resumes or our wealth or our good deeds. So we can’t let any of those important things stand between us and God. We stand before God alone, children before our loving, evaluating parent.

Am I saying that God doesn’t care if we are good family members, work hard, take care of our health and exercise good stewardship over our finances? Of course not. But our lives must be a product of our faith not an attempt to prove that we are faithful. The best way to make that happen is to keep God as our Ultimate Concern.

The reaction to President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize has been fascinating. Some are happy. Some are enraged. Most are a bit confused. I think the award has to do with prioritizing concerns, ultimate and not so ultimate.

For too long, as a nation we have been thinking small. In my opinion, Mr. Obama won the Presidency and won this prize because he has challenged us to think big once again. He regularly talks about the importance of civility and embracing racial/ethnic/cultural diversity, reaching out to foes with diplomacy and ending the era of nuclear weapons, attacking economic inequality and creating economic opportunity.

These are not Republican, Democrat or Independent concerns. They rise above the political fray. These are issues which, in the political realm, are worthy of being called ultimate concerns.

It is way too early to know if President Obama can practice what he preaches. But that doesn’t invalidate or discount the power of the dream he preaches. The award went to the dream, not the dreamer.

If you and I keep God as our ultimate concern, the rest of the pieces of our lives will fall into place. Hugely important concerns such as family, vocation, financial stability, working for peace and justice and others will be kept in their proper perspective. They will be high priorities but they won’t consume our lives or those in our lives. To the contrary, they will fill our lives with meaning and purpose.

Staying focused on God, not allowing things to stand between us and God, is an enormous challenge, a challenge worthy of a lifetime commitment. As we make that commitment, let us remember what Jesus said: walking with God, nothing but nothing is impossible.

Let us Pray: Guiding God, help us to keep our hearts and minds trained on you for our lifetimes. As we do so, may our priorities fall into place, our efforts align with your efforts, our anxiety be replaced by a peace only you can supply. All this we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
October 4, 2009

Text: Matthew 7:13-21

The great Latin American storyteller Eduardo Galeano, tells the following: “The Bolivian town of Llallagua lived from the mine, and in the mine its miners died. Deep in the shafts in the bowels of the mountains, they hunted veins of tin and lost, in a few short years, their lungs and their lives. I spent some time there and made good friends. The last night, we were drinking, my friends and I, singing laments and telling bad jokes till just before dawn.

When little time remained before the scream of the siren that would call them to work, my friends fell silent, all of them at once. Then one asked, or pleaded, or ordered: ‘And now, my brother, tell us about the sea.’ I was speechless. They insisted: ‘Tell us. Tell us about the sea.’

It was the most difficult challenge in all my storytelling life. None of these miners would ever know the sea; each was doomed to die young. And I had no choice but to bring them the sea, the sea that was so far away, discovering words that could drench them to the bone.”

Imagining the sea for a bunch of Bolivian miners in the Andes mountains. It is a challenge worthy of the most creative of minds. Jesus faced a similar challenge. He also befriended and broke bread with an oppressed people who would die without seeing much of what they longed to see. As a result, over campfires, in small towns, on lake shores and an upper room, Jesus imagined for them a world where liberation and justice, healing and redemption prevailed.

To do so, he came up with images that have soared across the ages and cultures—lilies of the field and birds of the air, a feast for which none of the invited guests would appear, a good Samaritan, a woman searching for a lost coin, an everlasting vine and its branches. With these inspiring images, Jesus enabled people to envision the new creation God is constructing from the ruins of failed human endeavors.

This morning we heard Jesus speak of narrow and wide gates. He used these images to describe a road that passed through a narrow gate to the life he offered his listeners; and another road that passed through a wide gate, a road to nowhere. Many are those who choose the wide gate, said Jesus. Few are those who choose the narrow gate that leads to a life of meaning and purpose.

A year ago, at this time, we were shaking in our boots. Many of us who are older wondered if we were about to lose everything we had spent a lifetime creating. At our ages, we knew we wouldn’t have sufficient time to make up what we lost. Many of us who are younger wondered if we would lose what we worked so hard to accumulate. The budding flowers of our young lives killed off by a sudden, unexpected frost. And with a long life ahead, younger folks wondered, “Has the United States seen its best years? Will we have to settle for significantly less than we expected?” Young, old and in-between, it was a very scary time.

In retrospect, we did what every generation has done, more or less. A lot of us thought the way to a prosperous, healthy and meaningful life went through the very wide, gargantuan gate Jesus described. In our case, we could drive an expensive car without buying an expensive car. We didn’t have to earn a lot of money to live in a house that cost a lot of money. We could buy on credit everything from graduate educations to huge wide screen TVS.

We should have known better. We should have known because Jesus told us about the narrow gate. He said his Way passes through that narrow, not the wide, gate. We should have known because our parents and grandparents told us about their experiences in the Great Depression. They also spoke of a narrow gate—the importance of saving money, living within our means, avoiding debt, being engaged in one’s community and church, holding together our families through thick or thin.

We should have known. But we did what people have been doing forever. We looked at the wide gate, looked at the narrow gate and said, “Am I a fool? I prefer the wider gate.” As we rushed for the large gate, it never crossed our minds we had made the fool’s choice. Over the past twelve months, we have learned who the fools were.

The rush to the wide gate didn’t happen just here. People were doing the same around the world. In Mexico, for decades, the government has been awash with oil money. Going through the narrow gate would have meant their spending oil revenues on crucial things such as their educational system, police force, and hospitals. They didn’t. They ran for the wide gate, the gate beyond which supposedly lies the more exciting, exotic life. As a result, today, with their oil supply running out, they have flashy resorts, ten billionaires and more millionaires than Germany. But their schools fail their children, the police are underpaid and therefore corrupt, their healthcare system is antiquated.

In Russia, the road to unregulated capitalism led to the wide gate. With the fall of communism, black markets and no-holds-barred capitalism made a lot of people rich. It also totally distorted the economy. While we read many articles about the booming Russian economy in the 1990s, we didn’t read that income inequality tripled during that period of time. In other words, a few got very rich while most did not advance economically. During that period, salaries in education, healthcare and science jobs fell behind as salaries in finance, oil, gas and construction escalated rapidly.

Angola, flush with oil revenues, has one of the fastest growing economies in the world. And yet infant mortality and life expectancy rates are among the worst in the world. A few are getting insanely rich while most continue in abject poverty.

So the lure, seductive power of the wide gate is a global phenomenon, as popular today as it was in Jesus’ day. If we are going to turn things around, if we are going to be able to promise our children that their lives will be better than ours, we are going to have to regain an appreciation for, a love for the narrow gate. I also think we are going to have to create strong support groups in which we are reminded of the value of the narrow gate. Because it is challenging to avoid the seductions by ourselves.

No question about it, at first glance, the narrow gate simply isn’t as attractive as the wide gate. While I am saving my money, I see my neighbors getting deliveries for every kind of appliance, technology and toy possible. It makes me wonder why I am saving.

While I am being faithful to my spouse, I see others seeming to have all kinds of fun being unfaithful. It doesn’t make me wonder why I am being faithful. That is simple. My wife, Phyllis, has promised to kill me if I’m not; hunt me down. But remaining faithful to a partner for a lifetime is not for those who love the wide gate.

While I have been working diligently for two decades to help this congregation grow, I have seen some of my peers moving from church to church, always getting a bigger salary and more prestige. At times, I have wondered if I was doing the right thing.

Each of you has your own list like this. You toil in the bowels of some organization, making it effective. Meanwhile, people at the top management level get all the praise and much higher salaries.

You devote yourselves to your children, pouring all your love and treasure into them. And then they end up choosing the wide gate, degrading themselves with substance abuse or failing to utilize their God-given talents or being grossly materialistic.

You make enormous sacrifices for a relationship and then the other person walks away, seemingly on a whim.

No, given these realities and more, we need support if we are to continue our journey through the narrow gate. We need it from God. We also need to be part of a spiritual community, as our new members today have chosen to do, so we can support and be supported by one another.

For ultimately, the narrow gate is about grassroots, very personal decisions. That is why it is so hard. It isn’t about voting for a President and then taking off the next four years. It is about living our faith and political beliefs on a daily basis.

We can have the best national healthcare laws in the world. But if you and I aren’t taking care of our personal health, it isn’t going to make much difference.

We can have the most progressive immigration policy in the world. But if you and I aren’t welcoming in our homes, workplaces and church, we will remain stuck in xenophobic patterns of behavior.

We can get angry about the anger from our political opponents. But if we don’t lower the tone of our own rhetoric, little is going to change.

The beauty of the Christian journey is that brothers and sisters in Christ around the world are on the same journey we have chosen to make. Like us, they see the wide gate, think about how easy it would be to walk through it but, after some prayer and reflection say to themselves, “You know what, I’m going to aim my life toward the narrow gate.”

In little villages from Rwanda to Romania, in large metropolises from New Delhi to New York, in farming communities from the Mekong Delta to the Mississippi Delta, Christians have decided to lead disciplined, discipled lives. They make the tough choice, not the easy one; take the high road, not the wider, low one; follow prophetic not popular voices.

We are living through a time of judgment. We are paying for our intemperate, insatiable ways; reaping what we have sown.

However, the great thing about living and walking with God is the reality that the past is never what matters. God knows we can’t change what is done. No, to God, what matters are the choices we are making today; for they are something we can control.

May each of us choose to direct our lives toward the narrow gate. Paradoxically, narrow as it is, each and every one of us can all get through it if we try.

Let us pray: Gracious God, you call us through the narrow gate. Help us to develop the spiritual discipline we need to do so. As we move in your direction, may others join us in the journey so that all your children may live in your Promised Land. Amen.

Western Presbyterian Church

Washington, DC

27 September 2009

Text: Esther 7:1-6, 9-10, 9:20-22

I’m about halfway through the book, The Time Traveler’s Wife, which I picked up off of the airport shelves this weekend when I was on the way to Peoria, Illinois. Sometimes when I travel, I don’t bring my own book, because it forces me to read something I wouldn’t ordinarily pick up. I stand before the rows of Glenn Beck rants, murder mysteries, and romance novels. I pick up Oprah Winfrey’s latest brutally heart-breaking pick, and realize that I don’t feel like moving into the depths of sorrow there on the airplane, and I start to have a bit of anxiety thinking about a flight with no book, until my eye finally falls on to something that catches my interest.

This time it was the Time Travelers Wife, a book I wouldn’t have ordinarily picked, mainly because the movie looked kind of cheesy to me, but it’s a wonderful book so far. There was a lot in there to make you think as well. A lot about free will and predestination. It played with my imagination until I began to wonder, How much of my life am I deciding myself? How much of what I do is predetermined by forces outside of myself? Am I merely an actor in a script that has already been written for me? Do we pay for the wrongs that we do? Does it come back to us in some sort of divine retribution? 

There was one scene in the book, in particular, when the young woman was horribly abused on her first date, and so she asked her time-traveling boyfriend to beat him up. And he did. And there was something satisfying about the scene. There was a sense that he had to pay.

I thought of all the young women who are victimized in backseats of cars on country roads, and nothing is ever done about it, except that she has to live a particular shame. She has to carry it around, until after the years, the memory becomes numb, and she is able to find some peace in it. And so to read the scene, punishment felt like a great literary achievement. I was reminded of the fact that sometimes it can be satisfying when people get what they deserve.