Wednesday, June 30, 2010

"To Do" Lists

Galatians 5:1-25 ; Luke 9:51-62
June 27, 2010

“To do” lists are not inherently bad. Without them, I would forget everything, not just some things like I do now. Most of us could not function without a “to do” list. But even as they are helpful in some ways, they often work in a more nefarious way for me as well. In addition to helping me get things done, my “to do” list sits there, judging me, taunting me, pointing out all my failures every day. For example, I received a letter a while back that I want to respond to – I need to respond to. So, I put that on my to do list. Now, every day that goes by that I don’t do it – and it has now been an embarrassing amount of time – it just sits there staring at me. I get a fresh dose of guilt and shame every time I look at my “to do” list.

It would be one thing if guilt and shame worked as motivators. But, I have found guilt and shame to be particularly bad motivators. I’m pretty sure they actually impede my getting things done. The longer I go without writing the letter, the worse I feel. And the worse I feel, the more I am sure the person is judging me. Then, I feel awkward about writing a letter after so much time has passed. So finally, I feel even worse than when I began, and I still haven’t written the letter. Each time, the guilt gets heavier, and the likelihood that I will actually do it seems to decrease.

Paul liked “to do” lists. He also was pretty fond of “not-to-do” lists. But his are lists of moral behaviors: don’t fornicate, get angry, quarrel, be jealous, get drunk; do be kind, patient, generous, faithful. And I believe these lists as people generally use them are not at all helpful to us, because they have produced more than their fair share of guilt and shame, and they don’t even have the more useful aspect of helping us remember the things we need to do each day.

At the same time, I think we have become obsessed with Paul’s lists. People fret and fuss about what is on his “to do” lists. They memorize them, recite them, insist people live by them, reject them, rephrase them, apologize for them. The problem is that this obsession distracts us over and over from Paul’s main point; we totally miss the forest for the trees. Today, his main point is: When we live in Christ, we are freed from the moral “to do” lists.

In Paul’s day, the list of laws – the 613 commandments – were not helpful to the people he was writing to…the gentiles. In fact, they were a massive burden. Yet people were obsessed with this list. They judged everyone by whether or not they followed every single commandment. The example Paul used was circumcision. Some were saying that before non-Jews could be a part of those carrying on Jesus’ ministry, they had to be circumcised – which then meant, by the way, you were subject to the other 612 commandments as well. Paul says this doesn’t make sense, especially given the fact that part of Jesus’ ministry was to free us from what these lists were doing to them – namely crippling them with shame.

So Paul is actually talking about how to be free from this massive burdensome 613-line “to do” list. But because we are obsessed with Paul’s lists of moral “dos” and “don’ts”, this passage about freedom quickly turns into a passage about all the things we’re not supposed to do lest we go to hell. Paul’s radical message was about freedom…if all we feel after we read this passage is a greater burden brought on by the to do lists, we are missing the point.

For Paul, the opposite of freedom was what he called, “works of the flesh” – sadly a phrase that today signifies all of the things people do that we think are shameful. And unfortunately, Paul uses a list to help people understand what he means. Darn that Paul. But given his primary message of freedom, we have to understand his lists not as a moral code, but as serving the purpose of making people free.

To do this, we first need to update this phrase of Paul’s – “works of the flesh”. We need a new phrase more appropriate to our context and more illuminative of Paul’s point…we need a word other than “flesh” because that word means very different things to us than it did to Paul. For him, it wasn’t just the title of the list of moral don’ts. It was a description of the dynamic that keeps people enslaved. He’s thinking about the things and behaviors that keep us from changing and choosing who we want to be. In our day and age, a better way to describe that dynamic is that there are forces that keep us trapped in cycles of guilt and shame – forces that come from all sorts of things.

I did a little experiment this week. I read through this passage substituting the word “shame” for Paul’s word “flesh”, and when I did, it took on a new life for me:

“Live by the Spirit and do not gratify the desires of shame. For what shame desires is opposed to the Spirit; and what the Spirit desires is opposed to shame. These are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want…Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified shame with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.” It’s true: I do think shame has its own purposes, and they are at odds with what God desires for us. Shame wants to convince us that we are unworthy and, as Paul says, that prevents us from doing what we really want. Shame wants to keep us stuck in old familiar ways. Shame hates change. When we substitute shame for flesh in this passage, we hear Paul saying don’t feed shame with more shoulds and reasons to judge yourselves and others. If you do, you will never be a new person – free to change. Something will always hold you back.

This is Jesus’ point as well. In our passage, he is on his way to Jerusalem and people say they want to follow, but it turns out they can’t – not until they are freed from what holds them back. And what holds them back are the shoulds and shouldn’ts – the lists of dos and don’ts. Look at the would-be followers. First, James and John. They were held back by the need to judge others. They held tight to the 613-point list and insisted others be shamed and punished they failed to live up to the moral code. They knew the Samaritans were not followers of the commandments, so they were ready to bring down the hammer. Jesus rebuked them for this, and if they were going to continue on with Jesus, they had to give up on that judgment.

The next person was held back by a need for security. There are things we are told we should have in order to be safe and secure in this world. This person wanted to follow, but in the end, when Jesus explained he had no home, no headquarters, no security, they couldn’t go.

The last two would-be followers were trapped by rules, tradition, notions of right and wrong. The list of societal expectations said they had to bury the dead within a certain time frame – and it said you must get permission from your family before you can move forward. That was just how things were done. Jesus told them they needed to let go of these rules if they were going to be free to follow him.

We are trapped by these same things: we love our lists and need to judge others by them. We need security and we trust those people who tell us what we need to be secure. And we believe that we and others must adhere to cultural and societal norms. Because of this, we are not always free to follow Jesus – we don’t have the freedom Paul knows. We stay locked in the world of guilt and shame, of fear and judgment.

So, how do we get this freedom of which Paul speaks? How do we become free to live as we want to live? How do we break out of the cycles of guilt and shame?

First, let go of lists – the lists that only make us feel guilt and shame. This is not easy. It seems counter-intuitive. We think having our lists is the only way to get everyone, including us, to behave as we should. After all, if I throw away my list, won’t I be condoning such things? Won’t I be assuring the very behavior I want to prohibit? It seems like letting go means letting go of being “right”.

Plus we all believe some lists are truly important. We are like Paul. Even as we want the freedom Paul talks about, in the very next breath we are enumerating the things that really should stay on the list. I know there are things on my list I am not willing to give up. I definitely have lists for others and lists for myself. Don’t accept poverty, take care of the environment, don’t be cruel, treat everyone as equal and other noble things, if I do say so myself. And I’m sure you have your own lists. We believe there are some things we and others must do and should never do, and we have to make those things clear. We have to judge people against them.

But when we tear up the lists, the things that were only obligations and didn’t belong on the list will fall away. The unrealistic shoulds and shouldn’ts will be revealed as having no place on the list to begin with. We will be free from those. And the things that were originally on the list that do constitute appropriate Christian behavior will now be possible for us and others. We will be free to choose what we want, but only when we know we will not be punished if we don’t.

It takes courage to throw out the list. But, Paul says because Jesus threw out the list, we can as well. Jesus refused to condemn people who didn’t follow the rules, and he tried to get the list keepers to let go of them. And lo and behold, when he refused to condemn people, when he freed them from lists, then they could and did follow him, live like him. They proclaimed the kingdom of God, and they forgave and freed others. If I really want certain behaviors, paradoxically, I have to stop judging myself and others for not behaving as I think we ought.

Even though I know I should take care of the environment, if all I feel is the weight of obligation, causing me shame every time I drive my car or leave the light on, I will never be free to choose to change. I have to free myself from the notion that if I’m not perfect, I’m a bad person. If I don’t find this freedom, feeling ashamed will demand more of my time and energy than doing what I can to help restore God’s creation.

So tear them up – the lists we make for ourselves and others. Then, on a post-it note, make a list of one: Love your neighbor. Paul says clearly that, and that alone, is the route to freedom. You probably already know this from your own experience. The more you love others, the more you love yourself and the more free you feel. The more you love others when they are guilty of violating something on your list, the less guilt you will feel when you violate the list yourself. And then everyone will be free to live by the Spirit.

Order is everything. Paul is often talking about the order of things. He thinks starting with the law and hoping that will lead to right behavior is simply the wrong order. He doesn’t think all of the law is bad. It’s just that he thinks the only way to fulfill the law is to stop using it as the guide to our behavior. The only guide is “love your neighbor.” That comes first, the freedom to choose comes next. Start with God’s love and forgiveness, then you will be free to choose love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. But freedom must come first. Releasing ourselves from the lists that cause shame and guilt will free us up to live guided by the Spirit. Order is everything.

What’s on your list? What do you think you should do and shouldn’t do? What do you judge others by? Maybe write it down this week. Then tear this list up and write, “love one another. Love yourself.” The bottom line is God does. God tears up the lists. God loves us. And that makes us free. Amen.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Prophets Then and Now

1 Kings 19:1-18; Luke 8:26-39
June 20, 2010

I have to admit, I think Elijah is daunting. The stories about his life and work are extraordinary and surely, I tell myself, exaggerated if not entirely made up. He takes on the most powerful people of his day, challenging oppressive systems, endangering his life by speaking truth to power. And then there are things like defeating thousands of worshippers of the god Baal by himself in one moment up on a mountain top. He brings rain after years of drought just by saying the word. He raises people from the dead. In terms of trying to put myself in the biblical stories in order to learn how to be more faithful, I’m reluctant to place myself in Elijah’s shoes, to say the least.

Elijah was a prophet who lived over 800 years before Jesus. This was after the reigns of King David and King Solomon – in other words, after the glory days of the united kingdom. What had been one, grand Jewish nation was now two: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. The books of First and Second Kings tell the “royal history” of these two nations. They trace the ups and downs of the kings all the way from the death of David in 962 to the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon in 587, when the people were driven into exile.

But these books are not just an historical account of things. They doesn’t even remotely pretend to be. These books are meant to be a commentary on history. The authors are evaluating all of the kings from a very particular perspective. All of the kings – and often the queens – are evaluated based on whether or not they embrace the principles of the Torah in their governing. Or put another way, they are evaluated based on their loyalty or disloyalty to Yahweh – the God who brought the people out of slavery in Egypt into their promised land.

Elijah is an agent of this evaluation during his life time. A large part of his job description is to condemn the current administration of Israel in the North – King Ahab and his wife Jezebel. They have not passed the test of Yahweh loyalty. They had chosen a way of life, a way of governing, that defied the covenant God made with God’s people. Last week, when Pat preached, you heard a prime example of this in the story of Naboth’s vineyard. We learned they valued power over others, taking what was not theirs for political and economic gain, ignoring the needs of the poor, and pillaging the land as if they could do whatever they wanted. And Elijah was the lucky messenger who not only told them they were doing things wrong, he predicted their demise because of how they were treating the people for whom they were responsible. He basically announced a Yahweh-led coup.

Our passage begins with a death threat because of this treasonous act of Elijah’s. Jezebel, the action oriented one of the royal couple, promises that she will have Elijah killed, and so he flees, heading south to get as far away from Ahab and Jezebel’s reach as he can. When he comes to the vast wilderness in Judah, the southern kingdom, he realizes the desperate situation in which he finds himself, and so he falls into a deep depression. He has no food, no water, no resolve left, and no one to lean on. He is so desperate that even though he had been fleeing the death threat from Jezebel, he prays to God that he might die.

Like I said, it all feels so dramatic. It feels otherworldly enough that we are tempted to think these are stories for different people in a different time. Prophets were only for the days of old. But what if we gave it a shot anyway? What if we tried to see ourselves as the Elijah’s of today? What would our lives look like? Let’s just try to imagine it for a few minutes here this morning.

We know Elijah demanded complete loyalty to Yahweh – to the ways of the Torah. This includes things like caring for the widow and orphan, welcoming the stranger, keeping Sabbath and eradicating poverty – things that were apparently as difficult then as they are now. If we’re honest with ourselves, our country, our world for that matter, would probably not get a good grade from Elijah based on how well we live out, or rather don’t live out, the principles of the Torah.

In his book, “Journey to the Common Good,” Walter Brueggemann lists some of the most salient points of the torah way of life – especially in terms of economics:
• Debts owed by the poor are to be canceled after seven years, so that there is no permanent underclass.
• No interest is to be charged on loans to members of the community
• No collateral is to be required on loans made to poor people.
• No injustice toward a resident alien or an orphan.
• The economy is to make regular provision for the needy and the marginalized:
In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses – another great prophet – is speaking as God’s intermediary, laying out the commandments. He says, “When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow. When you beat your olive trees, do not strip what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan and the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan and the widow. Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’”

If we were Elijah, what would God be calling us to say to our present world, our present administration, our present rulers, bankers and CEOs? Where are our un-stripped fields and un-harvested portions? Where are the grapes that we have not gleaned for profit so enough would be left for the poor? Where are the loans without interest? And exactly what person, bank, or nation cancels debt every seven years?

The gods of today that compete for loyalty with Yahweh are different than the gods of Elijah’s day. Today we can imagine it as capitalism, or individualism, nationalism, and on and on. And when we look at these gods and how thoroughly we bow down to them, the situation is really no less dramatic now then when Elijah took on the rulers of his day. To defeat these gods would take nothing less than a miracle, and to lead such a charge would require our entire lives.

If we are going to try and be modern day Elijah’s, luckily there are a few things we can learn from this story. First: Yes, it’s hard. You are not imagining it. Elijah had had magnificent successes in his life, but with Jezebel’s death threat he felt like a failure. The powerful were still powerful, still in charge and still doing everything they could to hold on to that power. They seemed to be winning even after Elijah had done everything God had asked of him. Speaking truth to power; living life differently than most; fighting the gods of our times: To take these things on can certainly leave us feeling alone, parched, worn out, despairing, and even if we have a victory here and there, it always feels like there’s so much more to do. Not to mention, Elijah teaches us that sometimes this work puts you at great odds with other people. It is hard.

But the second thing we learn from Elijah is that God brings life and resources even in the driest places. Elijah had given up, but God hadn’t. Elijah went into the wilderness, a place in the bible that signifies being cut off from all things – people, food, and all other basic necessities of life. But God doesn’t let him despair. Elijah was given food and water and rest. Elijah had what he needed to come back from the brink – even in the wilderness.

The next thing we learn is that even though we might say we want to be modern day prophets, it can be extremely hard for God to get our attention in order to give us our marching orders. We’re busy, we’re afraid of what God might say, we’re tired, we’re hiding, or any number of other things. So, like Elijah, we need the “sheer silence”, as our passage says. Not just quiet moments, but the stunning, stop you in your tracks silence. This silence is what brought Elijah out of his cave. Not the tornado, the earthquake, or blazing fire, but the sheer, holy, scary silence. This is the kind of silence when you hear things you might not want to – including God calling you back into the world, back to the life of a prophet. This silence comes when you realize that God can’t be found in all the noise and clatter out there, so we need to just stop. We need to let the silence wash over us, and then, like Elijah, we are ready to step out of our lives to the edge of the mountain to hear what God has to say. Also, by the way, not easy.

But fortunately, the last thing we learn is that we’re not alone. We might think we are. We might complain like Elijah did, “I alone am left”. But God tells Elijah at the end of our passage, as Elijah is sent back out into the dangerous world, “there are 7,000 faithful waiting for you”. Seven is a great number in the bible. It signifies wholeness, perfection, completeness. In other words, in each other we have all that we need.

It’s hard to imagine ourselves as modern day Elijah’s. It’s daunting. As one author says, “the effectiveness of Yahweh is carried by people like Elijah who refuse compromise and who appear to others as genuine fanatics. Elijah is not terribly winsome or attractive. It is a stance that is faithful, but it is not pretty.”

So maybe we are justified in not striving to be like a prophet who lived 2800 years ago. But even if we can’t quite relate to Elijah, we claim to be followers of Jesus. And the truth is, his life is just as daunting – something we see clearly in Luke’s story of Jesus casting out the demons from a man who had lived as an outcast, a freak, his whole life. In our constant attempts to make Jesus less daunting and less fanatical, we read this as just another story where he does something kind for someone. He helps out this possessed man so that he can be healed and become a part of the community again.

But, it’s not just that Jesus cast out the demons from this poor man and then sent him on his way. Notice the name he gives the demons and what he does with them. A legion the designation for one of Rome’s armies. He equate these armies with demons, then sends them off a cliff to their demise. Jesus is taking on the Ahabs of his day. I don’t think Jesus ever actually sent armies into the sea to drown. But the message of this story was clear. Rome was like a demon possessing the people and leaving them poor, destitute, and naked, just as the demons had done to the man in Geresene, and Yahweh did not approve. Like Elijah, Jesus got to be the lucky messenger, and it finally cost him his life. Following Jesus is daunting too.

Because the stories of Elijah and Jesus are filled with fantastical events – miracles, demons, angels, earthquakes, God’s voice – we can easily distance ourselves from their lives. In doing so, we distance ourselves from the idea that prophets are as needed today as they have been since the beginning of human kind. Maybe we’re not all called to be Elijah’s. I do actually think – like Paul says in Ephesians – that some are called to be teachers, some healers, some evangelists and only some prophets. We all have different gifts and all are needed to build up the body of Christ. But, some of you are Elijah-like. Some of you are called to be prophets. I don’t know exactly who (although I have some ideas if you’re interested ). But because we might generally shy away from the idea, it’s good for all of us to at least ask ourselves the question. It’s good for all of us to let our lives be interrupted by the sound of “sheer silence”. It’s good for all of us to ask ourselves where prophets are needed today and if we might be the ones called by God to suit up.

Yes it’s hard. But remember, God will tend to you along the way, and you have the 7,000 faithful surrounding you all the time. Prophets were needed then, prophets are needed now. Who among us are the prophets? Amen.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Vital Signs

1 Kings 17:8-24; Luke 7:11-17
June 6, 2010

I am surely not the first to imagine the church being connected to one of those machines in the hospital that measure your vital signs. I think it’s natural to wonder how we’re doing. What is our heart rate, blood pressure, how regular or irregular is our heart beat. Are we alive and well, or is the line flat, the beeps long since silenced?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard or read the phrase, “the church must change or die.” People say or write this in response to perceived problems with organized religion today – especially mainline churches that are thought to be “stuck in the past.” They believe the answer to declining church membership is for churches to change to “match the times,” to be “be more relevant,” and to be more appealing to people who don’t already come to church. But every time I hear it, it raises more questions for me than it answers. To being with, I have questions about what is meant by “church,” “change,” and “death,” in this phrase, and ultimately what does a living church look like to those who believe the church is on its way out?

“Church” in this phrase often means a particular kind of church. Almost invariably, they begin by quoting statistics on declining church membership in mainline denominations over the past 2 or 3 decades. All of these denominations are hemorrhaging members, they point out. Then, after establishing the decline, the author or speaker goes on to describe the churches within the denominations they think are guilty of causing this decline; In other words, the churches that must change or die. They are generally small churches that used to be bigger. And you can spot them because they still use organs and music from the hymnals. Their worship services are largely filled with words. They do archaic things like observe the liturgical calendar, pass an offering plate, say old creeds and prayers – all things, they argue, that alienate the young, un-churched folks out there that are needed to grow the church…to keep it from dying. So that’s what is meant by “church”…basically, us .

Next what is meant by “change”? The problem with trying to figure out what people mean by “change” is that it’s pretty amorphous. We have to ask, change what? Of course, the “what” depends on who is quoting this phrase, and it usually has to do with something they find particularly offensive, hurtful, or meaningless. If they don’t like a church then, they argue, others won’t and so the church will die. So “change” to these folks means “change your church to make it more appealing to people like me”. Stop observing the liturgical calendar, stop passing the offering plate, stop saying prayers and creeds, stop preaching from a manuscript, stop using old hymns. Change seems to mean throw out the old and embrace the things that are attracting people to other activities in the world – technology, coffee, music, high quality entertainment, etc.

Finally, it seems the definitions for death and life are pretty simple: Death means shrinking church membership, life means more people in the pews.

There is truth in the notion that change is necessary for life. Things do die, or at least stagnate, if newness is not a part of it. But I want to rethink church, change, life and death in light of our passages this morning. I think we need new definitions of these things, I think if we want to know our vital signs, we should look at the bible and how it defines life and death and what kind of change is needed.

Both passages are weighted with death. To begin with, there are two dead bodies. But that’s not all. There’s spiritual death and there is death that is caused by the dominant systems of that day. We can see someone spiritually dead in the widow Elijah visits. She had completely resigned – her fate was sealed, she thought. When Elijah finds her, she is ready to use up the very last of what they have and then, she assumes, with nothing left, she and her son will die. Essentially because she believed so strongly in the principles of scarcity, the idea that there wasn’t enough for her and her family, she was already dead to the world.

Then there’s death that is brought about by an entire system, an entire culture that fosters death for certain segments of society. Our two widows did not count as people at that time. If there was no male to care for her, she was left to her destitution, with no way to support herself economically. That’s how the system worked – that was the reality beyond their control. For these two women, their sons were their only hope for making it in their culture. Now their sons are dead. Their deaths cannot be far behind their sons’.

That is the death with which Jesus and Elijah are concerned, not the death of the institutions around them. It’s the loss of human life, spiritual wholeness, and death fostered by oppressive systems. And if this is death then life is a reversal of these different aspects of death. Life is a world of abundance of resources, not scarcity. When the widow trusted Elijah and gave over her last food, there was more than enough to go around! Life is an alternative system that cares for the widow – for the weak ones, the ones beaten down by systems they can’t control. It is care for those who are usually ignored. Life is resurrection of people and systems that restore relationships of safety, nurture and economic sustainability.

With life and death redefined not in terms of church membership but the life Jesus and Elijah bring, we can look back at how churches must change in order to be a part of this life. And I think we come out with a different understanding of what a living church looks like than those that define it in terms of numbers.

Many, if not all, mainline denominations – certainly ours included – are trying to reverse the decline in membership. They see the decline as a sign that death is on its way, and so life must be signified by the number of members each church has. Or by the number of youth, or by worship attendance. This is what defines, they think, a vital church. And then, they give lots of things a church can do to increase membership, youth participation and worship attendance.

Yes, mainline Protestantism is losing members, but I have problems with declining membership being the definition of death and the only catalyst for change. The “goal” of church is not gaining more members. The “goal” is to live out God’s reign in our lives here and now. That may attract throngs of people, or it may be completing uninteresting to most people. Even if it scares people away, a church must do what they can to live out God’s call to care for the widow and bring new life in places of death. Church membership is not the criteria we use to judge the “life” of the church.

Worship attendance and total membership measure nothing other than how many people have joined and how many people come to worship. They are numbers. I think both of those numbers can be very high in churches that are dying – and both can be low in churches that are alive. As one person put it, “we count because counting is easy, not because it tells us what we need to know.”

The much more compelling measurement in vital churches is the percentage of active participants (members and regular “friends”) engaged in some form of ministry each week. How many people are served and how many lives are touched both within and outside the boundaries of the congregation?

In the same way, the number of children, youth and young adults in worship and Sunday school is just a number. There can be hundreds of youth, but we may know nothing of the vitality of their faith or the church that is trying to shape their faith. Is the church doing a good job not only getting them in the door, but also helping them grow into people that go out and bring new life into the death-filled places in the world? And even if a church has only a few young people, are they not alive if they are touching the lives of dying children in the world: working for peace, better schools, safer streets, better health care – in short, creating systems that bring life. Change so often means making the church more appealing, a place kids will feel comfortable and entertained. If that’s all the church changes, it is doubtful the life Elijah and Jesus brought will define that church.

Missing from these discussions about growth is an evaluation of what the people of the church are doing in the world and how much that work reflects the life Jesus lived. For example, how much of the church’s budget goes to benevolence verse institutional maintenance or programs meant to attract members? How many people in the community know the church as a place they can count on when they are at the end of their rope? How loud is a church’s voice when it comes to the death of the environment, the senseless death through war, and systems that keep people down, poor, desperate and forgotten? Those are good vital signs. Those will give us a sense of whether a church is dying or alive and well.

Life is what we give people. It’s not whether we are alive as a church – as an institution – as measured by growth in numbers. It’s whether we offer life to those who most need it. Things must change in the church if that work is in decline, not necessarily if their membership is in decline. But we should only change those things that will lead to an increase in life-giving ministry when we leave this place on Sunday, not the things we think will “attract” more people for the sake of just getting them through our doors.

So given the lack of a machine capable of reading our vital signs here at First Pres, how do we think our church doing? Well, I can say with great confidence, we are not on life support. I have no doubt about that. We give away something like 22% of what we bring in. We can always do better. I suppose the goal is not just 20 or 30 percent, but rather spending more on mission than salaries and building maintenance put together. Obviously we have a long ways to go with that, but the percentage has been increasing every year since I’ve been here, and that’s been true for long before I got here as well. I know it has been on a steady trajectory from the time we actually received mission money from the denomination until now. That is life – that is vitality, because it contributes not just to the ongoing life of the institution, but to life in this world as well.

I also think about how many people in our congregation – friends and members alike – touch lives, change lives, and work to change the world. Can we do better? Of course. But, one of our strengths as a church, I believe, is how we care for those in need in our congregation and in our community. Those who are ill, those who are dying, those who are in need of food money to make it through the month, those who need rides, those who need regular visits as reminders that they are a part of this community. That is one of our strengths! A big one. And in a fractured world where people are increasingly left to their own devices, increasingly left without community support and family close by, like Elijah’s visit to the widow who had been failed by her community, that is counter-cultural. That is powerful, life giving and a sign of vitality. We care for the modern day equivalent of the widow.

I think there are many more vital signs that show us we are alive and well here. We’re small, we still believe in the wisdom and transformative power of tradition and liturgies like communion, and we do things radically different in here than in the world which so often caters to people’s desires only to sell them something. We may look to others like a dying church in a dying denomination. But it’s not the denomination’s life or even our life as an institution that really matters. If people think we’re dying, they are misreading our vital signs.

We can do better; we can do more; there’s room for improvement. And we should think seriously about things we can change in order to do better at bringing life not to our institution, but to the world. It’s true that we must continue to change or die. But far more importantly, we must change and grow so we can bring more life into this dying world. Amen.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Just Who Was Where When?

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8; John 1:1-4
Trinity Sunday: May 30, 2010

Today is Trinity Sunday. Just the sound of that probably makes some of you think, “Darn it, I wish I would have stayed home to garden.” You might care as much about the trinity as you do the score of a cricket match between Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. Maybe less. But I’m hoping when you leave here you might care a little bit more about the Trinity.

You probably know me well enough to know that I’m not a big defender of church doctrine. But, the truth is my feelings about doctrine are more complicated than just wanting to throw it all out. I am not a fan of doctrine being used as a test that people have to pass in order to be considered a true Christian. My problem isn’t really the doctrine itself – it’s how it has been used to judge the authenticity of someone’s faith. But, the doctrine is not necessarily inherently bad. In fact, I think some of the long standing Christian doctrines are still around because those folks who originally came up with them might have actually been on to something.

In other words, it’s not always a bad starting place, as long as we remember that a doctrine is always contextual. It was formulated in a particular time and place and that time and place affected how things were said, the language that was used, how it was applied in the world, etc. It’s much like the constitution. The constitution as it was first written – without amendments – is a document most, if not all, of us are unwilling to throw out altogether. We have a relationship to it we would be loathe to sever. But without the amendments over time, most of us would no longer find it helpful. The amendments protect rights we would not be willing to give over to the votes and whims of Congress. They are rooted in the original document, as true to the intention as the original words. This is why the framers wisely allowed the constitution to be amended. Things change – core principles might endure, but they have to continually be reinterpreted in order to be applied to new, originally unimaginable, situations.

So, back to the Trinity. I’m not ready to toss out the original idea. But I do think it needs some rethinking, reinterpreting, reshaping for this time and place. It needs amendments, but the core idea is sound. I think it had great wisdom at its inception – in about 400 AD – and we still need that wisdom in the church today, even if it’s daunting to delve into it.

I want to try and show how this doctrine can reveal some things about God, about ourselves, and about our creation. Then hopefully offer some ways I think all of that is relevant today.

One way to understand the doctrine of the trinity is to ask, “who was where, when and what were they doing?” It sounds a little bit like the board game Clue. It was Mrs. Peacock in the library with the candlestick. Of course, in seeking the answer to those questions when it comes to God, we find out it’s not as simple as Clue. For starters, we have this three people equaling one thing we have to deal with. Coronal Mustard, Professor Plum and Miss Scarlet were three distinct characters, not three aspects of the real murderer.

By answering the questions of who was where when doing what – according to the authors of both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures – we start to uncover some of the wisdom of the Trinity. Now, we can get at the “who” question when we realize that the “where, when, and what” questions lead us to the Creation story in Genesis. Understanding the Trinity – this symbol that we use to talk about the nature of God – means understanding how the bible imagines God creating the universe.

When we think about the creation story, most of us don’t think it is a scientific explanation for the beginning of the universe. But, most of us do think there is truth in the idea that something divine was involved in creation in some way. And the Trinity is an attempt to understand that “divine” entity that created the world around us and continues to participate in the ongoing creation process.

Our passages from Proverbs and John are both attempts to describe that divine essence. And they are clear – whatever the divine being is, it is most definitely multi-dimensional. God is not a sole, solid, unchangeable, thing that wished everything into being, like a magician who makes a quarter appear out of thin air. Creation happened and happens because of the relationship that is part of God’s nature.

Proverbs gives us one dimension of God present at creation along with the God the Hebrew people knew as Yahweh, and John gives us another. Wisdom and the Word. Proverbs has Wisdom, personified as a woman, retelling the creation story, recounting all that was created as described in Genesis. And with each step of creation she says, “I was there.” I was there before the creating of the world began. And the passage from John tells us about the Word: In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. All things came into being through the Word, and without it not one thing came into being.

The key thing here is that Yahweh, Wisdom and the Word were all there. The answer to the question of “just who was where when” is Yahweh, Wisdom and the Word were present when everything was created and according to John, without Wisdom and Word, nothing would have come into being.

They all create together – things come into being because of relationship – because of a God that simply is relationship…that is the nature of God. That is what the Trinity is trying to say. In answering the question who was where when doing what, the Trinity declares that while it was God, and God alone who created…the nature of that God is relationship between different ideas, different qualities, or in the language of those that first articulated the Trinity, different persons. And together they equal God.

We get hung up on what we call these “persons”; we get hung up on language, and we certainly get hung up when we try to assign once and for all a name for God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That’s it. We can never use other names. If we do, we are not talking about God. That doesn’t make any sense to me. John doesn’t use those words at the beginning of his gospel. Proverbs doesn’t use those words when describing how Wisdom was present at the beginning.

It’s true, Father is used to describe God, Son is used to describe Jesus and Spirit is used to define an ongoing presence of God that guides us. But so is Yahweh used to describe God, and Word is used to describe Jesus, and Wisdom is used to describe the nature of the holy spirit. And I feel pretty confident that the authors of our scriptures, who freely use other words to describe God, did not mean to give God permanent names. Their concern was that they and us understand that God is multiple within God’s self. God is relational. God is movement and mutual love and union with others. That’s the “who” God is.

And why is it so important to tie this all to Creation? Why do the where and when matter? Because relationship causes creation. It takes more than one to create. We know this in a literal sense – procreation, making babies. But we’re talking about far more than procreation. God in relationship created something out of nothing! And that something included humans, but it also included mountains and streams, animals and oceans, flora and fauna, atoms and quarks. In other words, the relationship within God’s self creates new worlds, new possibilities and new life.

Remember that Genesis is not scientific explanation, this is a myth that describes how creation happens, how new worlds come into being, how new possibilities are born. And as a myth it can continue to help us understand the creative process today. The truth of the myth is that creation – creativity – only happens through relationship. New things are only possible through relationship. And we want to continue to create new things and new worlds and new possibilities, lest the world be forever stuck exactly as it is now.

The relevance to us is found in the creation story as well. We learn that we are a part of the Trinity. We are created in the image of God, who is relationship. In Genesis when it describes how human kind was created it says, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness. “Us” and “our”. The Trinitarian God…that is the likeness we bear. And because we bear the likeness, we are part of the very act of creation itself. The language the bible uses is that when humans are created in the image of the relational God, they are given dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

We’re not mere bystanders to the work of the Trinitarian God. We’re smack dab in the middle of it. This is what Genesis says, and that is what the Psalmist reminds us of: “You, Yahweh, have given human beings dominion over the works of your hands.” The Psalmist is trying to say something about who we are in relationship to God – the God who creates.

But dominion is another one of those words that gets in the way. It’s not power over something, just as none of the members of the Trinity have power over the others. Dominion is the ability to continue creation, to participate in what God started. It’s an invitation to relationship with God and with one another so that creation will continue and so that there will always be new possibilities for us and for our world. In fact, when we think dominion is some kind of power over nature and creation, we do the opposite of create. When we think dominion gives us the ability and permission to manipulate creation for our own purposes, we find that we actually destroy parts of creation, we diminish the creative power in the world. Think oil spill in the gulf.

We are made in the image of the Trinitarian God and so when we are in relationships that reflect God’s nature, we create! We do have an effect on what Yahweh-Wisdom-Word-God created together. We are invited into the ongoing project of creation.

There is a 15th century of the Trinity by Andrei Rublev that is based on Genesis 18 – the story of when three strangers come to tell Abraham and Sarah that they are going to have a son. Without knowing who the strangers were, Abraham called on Sarah, and together they showed the visitors extraordinary hospitality. While the visitors hung out under a tree, Sarah baked bread and Abraham prepared the meal. In the process of sharing the resources of their household, the identity of the visitors was revealed to be Yahweh. Three visitors, yet Abraham calls them by one name, Yahweh. And when Yahweh as three makes Abraham and Sarah the mother and father of all the nations for generations to come, they become agents in the process of creation.

The position of the three figures in the painting is suggestive. They are gathered around a communion table, and although they are arranged in a circle, the circle is not closed. You get the idea that you are not only invited into this communion but that you are already a part of it. The Trinity is portrayed as God in communion inviting us to commune as well.

God is not far from us, but lives among us in a communion of persons. The Christian community is supposed to be a reflection of God’s triune life. When we are – when we join the communion feast and choose relationships of love and self-sacrifice – then creation happens. New worlds and new possibilities are born. This is why the trinity is important. It serves to remind us of who was where when doing what. And so, it reminds us of who we are, how we are to be and what kinds of things are possible in this world when we choose to reflect the divine three persons. Amen.