Liturgical Art

I just finished putting up the liturgical art for the season at Fairfax Community Church, where I'm doing one of my internship. The pastor, Rev. Katharine Harts, wanted some kind of structure that we could hang things off of, sort of like a wooden grid, but not ugly like a grid. As I was perusing the items at Goodwill for inspiration, I had the idea that a large branch would be perfect! But, it had to be the right size and have a pleasing shape. Where to find such a branch?

The next time I ran into Katharine, I told her about my idea, and she told me that a moving van had just hit one of the trees in the parking lot the day before and broken off one of the branches! She took me outside to go look at it, and they were perfect! There was a nice big one that we could hang in the middle of the chancel, and two slightly smaller ones we could hang off to the sides. We figured out when the moving van must have hit the tree, and we realized that it was right when the idea had come to me to use branches! It's one of those weird coincidences that I have a hard time believing is just a coincidence. Sometimes, God has a strange sense of humor.

Anyway, I finished hanging everything up today, and I think it turned out very nice! The pictures don't do that great of a job conveying how the artwork occupies the space, so if you want to see what it really looks like, stop by for a Sunday morning worship service sometime this month!

I'm Looking

I'm looking for you,

But you're hiding.

It would be one thing if you knew you were doing it,

But you don't,

Because you don't know that I'm looking.

You don't know that I'm looking,

Because I haven't told you,

Because when you were there,

I hadn't realized that I'd found you.

You were there,

And then you weren't.

But, for a moment,

You were there.

And, I wish I had known then,

That I was looking for you,

But I didn't,

Because I hadn't told myself,

That I was looking,

Because that would have been too scary.

Not that I'd know what to say if I found you.

"Hi," maybe,

Or, "So nice to see you again."

"Such nice weather we're having today."

Because, it's important that you don't know,

That I've been looking,

Because I'm afraid that is would change somehow.

It's the coward's way out,

It's why you don't know,

And why you may never,

Ever,

Know,

That I've been looking.

Eat the Crumbs

About a week ago, I listened to someone tell the story of a church in Seattle called Northshore that was trying to help some of the homeless people in the area. A lot of these homeless people were living in a tent city, and the law required that this tent city be moved every 90 days. The place that the tent city was going to move to next backed out at the last minute, and so the people at Northshore decided that they needed to step in to help, and so they submitted paperwork to the city in order to get a permit. What they didn't know was that about a month prior to that, the city had put a moratorium on these permits and refused to even look at their application.

So the people at Northshore had to make a choice. They could follow the law, and not get into any trouble. Or they could follow their hearts, and offer the people living in the tent city a safe place to stay, so that they wouldn't have to go back out onto the streets. They decided that the only real choice they had was to help. And so, they welcomed the tent city onto their property, even though they didn’t have a permit for it. And, as they feared, the city filed a lawsuit against them. The superior court ruled in favor of the city, and the city was awarded damages which totaled more than the entire operating budget of the church. There is often a price to pay when you openly disregard those in authority.

We learn this at a very young age as we battle with our parents over our bedtimes and the foods they try to make us eat, our allowances and curfews. As children, we have to do as we're told, or else suffer the consequences: being sent to bed without supper, having our allowance taken away or not being allowed to hang out with our friends. As we go through our lives, we have to learn how to deal with teachers and principals, supervisors at our jobs and sometimes the cops. And of course, there is the ultimate authority figure of all.

Our gospel reading today describes one such encounter with that divine authority. A Canaanite woman is asking Jesus to help her because her daughter is being tormented by a demon. His disciples wanted her sent away, she was bothering them and she was after all, a Canaanite, a foreigner. And here is where the text gets tricky. A lot of people don't like this part, and I have to admit that I had and still have difficulty with this part of the text. Jesus says, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs. Can you believe that? What kind of answer is that? It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs. It's no wonder that many scholars question if this scene is historical at all, if Jesus ever said anything like this. Not only is he refusing to help this woman, he insults her! He calls her a dog!

After hearing Jesus say this shocking and insulting statement, she answers him. I mean, who wouldn't respond to something like that? But, she responds with humility. She says, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table." She is humble in her reply, and yet she is still pushing back. She doesn't just take what Jesus says sitting down. She's not going to just let him call her a dog! She knows who she is; she is a beloved child of God, just as worthy of God's saving grace as the other men in the room, the Israelites, the Isrealites that are asking Jesus to send her away.

This story reminds me of the story of Abraham and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. God was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of their sin, but for some reason, God decided to tell Abraham about it first. Abraham wonders if completely destroying two entire cities is such a good idea, after all there could be some innocent people living there. And so, he asks God, "Are you going to destroy the cities, even if there are 50 innocent people there?" God tells him that if there are 50 innocent people, the cities will not be destroyed.

Abraham thinks about this for a few seconds, then asks, "What if there are 45 innocent people?"

God says, "If there are 45 innocent people, I will not destroy the cities."

Abraham mulls it over, then asks, "If there are only 40 innocent people, will you destroy the cities?"

In this story, God has taken the form of a man and is actually standing there talking to Abraham, so you can picture God, however it is that you picture God, shaking his head and smiling at Abraham indulgently, like a parent would smile at a child. "No Abraham, if I find only 40 innocent people, the cities will not be destroyed."

"30 people?"

"No."

"20 people?"

"Nope."

"10 people?"

"If I find but 10 innocent people, the cities will not be destroyed."

Apparently, this answer was good enough for Abraham, because he stops bargaining with God after 10. The point of this is that Abraham had a strong enough sense of who he was in relation to God that he could challenge God's decision, give his own opinion on the situation and expect that God would take his opinion into consideration.

I remember one of my professors saying that Abraham's act was the defining moment in Jewish history, when the Jewish people established themselves as Jews, when they established their relationship with God. Abraham had the gumption, the courage, enough sense of himself that he felt he could essentially talk back to God, to have a dialogue with God on a level that no one had ever had before. You could say that this was the moment that he became Jewish.

See, God wants to be in relationship with us. There's a lot going on in these two stories. We could talk about the nature of God or whether or not these events actually took place. We could argue about whether or not God might have known ahead of time how Abraham or the Canaanite woman were going to respond. We even might wonder if these stories are allegories for the way that God tests us. What I do know is that these stories are about relationship.

God does not expect or require blind servitude. God gave us free-will, so that we could make our own decisions, so that we could choose to love God and follow God's laws, or to choose a different path, even if that would mean breaking God's heart. God gives us that choice.

And, God gave us brains to reason with, so that we could think things through, to weigh the merits of one action over another, one choice over another. So that we could out figure what all the possible consequences of our actions might be. So that we can take a rule, or a law or a decree and figure out whether or not it's right or wrong, good or bad, or perhaps, somewhere in between. And, that is usually the case with things that are difficult. There are often no easy answers in the decisions that we make in our lives.

So, how do we choose when there is no clear-cut answer? We have to rely on our relationships, our relationships with God and with each other. We have to make the choices that will make our relationships stronger with each other. Not just with the people that we know, our friends and family, neighbors and colleagues, the people that we go to church with and the people of our race, nation or tongue. We have to make the choices that will strengthen our relationships with all of humanity; the choices that will ultimately strengthen our relationships with God.

See, when the Canaanite woman said that the dogs eat the crumbs that fall off the master's table, she was not trying to interfere with Jesus's relationship with the people of Israel. She just wanted to be a part of it. She was willing to take the smallest of crumbs, because she knew that it would be enough. Don't forget that these are God's crumbs. God's crumbs are more than we could ever need. They are more than enough. And, this woman understood that. She did not want Jesus to spend less time with "the lost sheep of Israel," to do anything that might hinder his relationship with them.

But, she knew that in Jesus, there is more than enough to go around. And, above all, she knew that she was just as worthy as they to receive it. So, she said that she would take the crumbs. And, Jesus immediately answers her with joy! He says, "Woman, great is your faith! Your daughter is healed! By your faith, your daughter is healed."

The people of Northshore made a choice that showed their faith in God. They chose to honor their relationships with God and humanity by helping the homeless people of Seattle. They allowed the tent city to move onto their property, even though they knew that they were going to get into trouble. And, they received a judgment against them that they could never hope to pay. And, for the next three years, as they fought against this judgment, they didn't know whether or not the church was going to survive. They had to come to terms with the fact that Northshore might not be around anymore. But, they went through with it, because they had to do what they felt was right, what God was calling them to do. They had to be good neighbors to their fellow human beings. They had to honor, and foster, and strengthen those relationships. And, they had to create new relationships where there were previously none.

The state supreme court eventually ruled in favor of Northshore, saying that the church had the right to exercise their religious freedom on their own property. And in 2010, new legislation went into effect in an effort to prevent something like this from ever happening again. Local government could no longer prevent a religious organization from getting a permit in this way. The hope was that these new laws would help local governments and religious organizations resolve their conflicts over services provided to the homeless without resorting to litigation. The relationship is changing, and it's changing for the better. And, it can all be traced back to that single act of compassion by the Northshore congregation.

As human beings, we have to question things that we think are wrong. We cannot blindly follow laws because "that's the way that it's always been" or because "whoever's in charge told me so." God gave us reason and free will, and wants to live in relationship with us. God wants to know how we feel about things. I'm not telling you to openly defy God whenever the mood strikes, but if there is something going on that you don't agree with, approach God in prayer, humbly and with the faith and understanding that God loves you. Question God the way that Abraham and the Canaanite woman questioned God, with humility and love in your heart, and listen to what God has to say. God wants to live in relationship with us, because that is the nature of God. God exists as three persons, all living in harmony. God's existence is based in relationship, and God wants to share the wonder and the love and the beauty of that with us. So, love God. Question God. And, live in relationship with God and with each other. Amen.

Ghosts from the Past

I you're reading this blog, you are probably aware of what happened to me last Fall. Just to rehash, I left the PCUSA because the congregation that was sponsoring me decided that they could no longer back me because of our fundamentally different theological views on homosexuality. Even though the PCUSA is beginning to move away from that direction, I no longer felt comfortable participating in a denomination whose governmental structure allowed so many people to remain in a state of oppression for so long.

I sent an email letting Santa Barbara Presbytery and the congregation that was supporting me know that I was leaving the PCUSA. After a few emails back and forth with both parties, I came to a point where I simply could not allow them to hurt me anymore, and so I left the last email from each of them unread in my inbox for the last 7 months.

I finally read them today, and they were just as insulting and close-minded as I had expected them to be. There are two main problems here, and I don't know if there are any solutions for them. The first is that there are still a great many people in this world that believe homosexuality is a choice. I don't understand why this belief has persisted for so long, perhaps because being gay just opens so many doors for people and ensures your instant celebrity status, but it just isn't true. Given the way so much of the world views homosexuals, what possible advantage could a person possibly gain by choosing to be gay? Is it rebelliousness for rebellion's sake? A repressed belief that my life deserves to suck, or that I'm subconsciously hoping that somebody gay-bashes me or kills me? Please, somebody explain this belief to me so that I can become one of the enlightened.

The other problem, and this one is probably the more difficult one, is the very legalistic take on Christianity that quite a few people in the Christian community have. Without getting into a huge theological debate on this, the part that specifically applies to this situation is that these people don't care whether homosexuality is a choice or not. If it is a choice, it is obviously wrong. If it is not a choice, then is is something akin to a birth defect or mental disorder that needs to be corrected, lest a person fall to homosexual sin and be condemned to the fiery pits of Hell. I think an excerpt from one of the emails that I got could best explain this:

"It is devastating to confront the possibility that the great desire of our heart may in fact be simply a false and misshapened idol. You feel now that this church has not shown grace to you. But what kind grace would let you go unwarned into danger to your soul? You may disagree with the perceived danger. So be it. You may find another avenue for Christian service. God will use you as He pleases. But please do not proceed without understanding that true grace often comes in the form of opposition, and that it is a dangerous thing to follow only the counsels of our own heart.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it? (Jer 17:9)"

My understanding of Christianity is not legalistic. I think Jesus came to us to teach us how to love each other, not how to judge each other. Oh, well. To each their own.

So, there it is. I am going to do my best and try to put this business behind me because I just don't have the energy for it anymore. I'll be joining the United Church of Christ (UCC) next month where I will hopefully not run into any people who try to make me feel less that human, that my sin is somehow greater than theirs. This isn't to say that the UCC is perfect, only that I will hopefully have to deal with this particular brand of evil a whole lot less. To all who remain in the PCUSA, I wish you the best of luck, and I sincerely mean that. This was simply not my fight, and I hope you can all understand.

Oh, For a Bowl of Soup

Here's the sermon I preached last Sunday at the church where I'm doing my internship while the pastor was on vacation. She's not back until Monday, I get to preach again this coming Sunday as well. The sermon went well, but I got a little lost in the bulletin in the middle of service. Oh well, you live, you learn...

Oh, For a Bowl of Soup

For pretty much my entire childhood, I hated school. Part of it was just that I thought it was boring; I hated being trapped in a classroom all day. And, knowing that I had absolutely no control over how I got to spend my days was annoying. And then there was the homework; I hated homework, even though I never actually did it. And, this caused a lot of problems for me as a kid: this not doing my homework thing. I couldn’t answer the teacher’s questions about it and then I would get all embarrassed. A lot of times, I couldn’t go to recess because the teacher would have me sit at the lunch tables doing my homework from the night before, while all the other kids got to run around and play.

I would get in some serious trouble for it, too. My dad was old school, so when the teachers sent home notes about me not doing my work, or my report card came, which would always be C’s and D’s, out came the belt. Now, I do not in any way approve of disciplining children this way, but I have to admit that I probably deserved to get some kind of punishment for my behavior back then.

But, it never worked as motivation for me to actually do my homework. I was more interested in playing outside with my brothers or reading or drawing or any of the thousands of things that kids can do when they just don’t want to do their homework. I remember one time when the report cards came, in order to avoid the punishment that I knew was coming, I convinced my brother and sister that we should burn the report cards in the fireplace, because I had gotten C’s again. My sister, who always got straight A’s and never got into any kind of trouble at all, was not happy about this, but she agreed to go along with it, because she didn’t want me to get into trouble either. To this day, my parents have no idea that we used the living room fireplace to destroy evidence of my academic failure.

About the time I got to junior high, something changed and I actually started to care about the grades that I got. I started getting A’s and B’s, but I still didn’t really like school. It was also about this time that I started getting the feeling that God maybe wanted me to go into ministry. Now, this is kind of a problem for someone who doesn’t like school. In order to become a minister in most of the Reformed traditions, you need to get a bachelors degree and then you have to get a Masters of Divinity. That’s eight years of school! Eight years of school, on top of the already thirteen years of school that are required by law. That’s twenty-one years of school! For someone who doesn’t want to go to school in the first place, that’s asking a lot.

So I had a very frank discussion with God about this, and I said, “No way! No way are you making me go to school for eight more years!” I didn’t want to do it! I did what any self-respecting person in denial would do. I decided to interpret God’s call in a way that would better fit into how I wanted to live my life. God didn’t really want me to become a minister. God just wanted me to be in ministry. I can be involved in ministry in so many different ways! What God really wanted was for me to be active in the church, to spread the message of God’s love, to reach out to people in need. I decided that’s what God was asking me to do. I didn’t need to go to seminary for that!

Because, that’s what we do when we come up against the wisdom of God. It’s so different from what we understand; it’s so alien to us! We negotiate, even though we know, deep down inside, that we are absolutely wrong. We somehow manage to convince ourselves that we know better than God. Because God’s way is not our way.

When Isaac’s wife Rebekah became pregnant with twins, the babies where wrestling around inside of her, rolling around this way and that way, using her insides as a boxing ring. She prayed to God, “Why? Why is this happening to me?” And God said to her, “There are two nations in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.”

The older will serve the younger? That’s not right. We all know that it’s the firstborn that has the special status. It’s the firstborn that inherits the largest portion of the estate when the parents are gone. All throughout the world, throughout the history of the human race, with only a few exceptions, it has always been the firstborn son that basically got everything. No matter what a person’s culture, religion or ethnicity was, this was just the way things worked. The oldest would get most of the sheep from the flock or cows from the herd. The oldest would get most, if not all of the land. The family trade would get passed down from firstborn son to firstborn son, generation after generation of bakers, carpenters and tailors. Even kingdoms and empires would get passed down this way.

So, imagine Rebekah’s surprise when God tells her that the older will serve the younger. That just wasn’t the way things were supposed to be. You see, it kind of makes sense that we’ve adopted these traditions of the oldest inheriting everything. The firstborn would start learning the family trade as soon as they were old enough and would help to teach any younger children that came along after. Even while the parents were still alive, the oldest child would have a lot of responsibility.

As an oldest child myself, I happen to know some of things that oldest children have to put up with. A lot of times, I felt like my parents didn’t really know what they were doing when they were trying to raise me, like I was some kind of experiment. They were really strict with me and I had to practically beg to do anything fun. But, by the time my youngest brother came around, they had pretty much figured everything out. By then, they had seen it all, and the crazy things that kids do just didn’t faze them anymore. My youngest brother also had two older brothers and an older sister to look after him. He pretty much got away with whatever he wanted to. He wasn’t taught responsibility!

For three separate individuals, I had some kind of responsibility for them. None of my siblings can say that. In a lot of ways, it’s as true today as it was in the past that the oldest is responsible for taking care of the family. It’s part of our tradition; it’s part of what is expected. And even if we don’t agree with it, we still need to understand it and know that it’s part of our cultural make-up, and that it influences the decisions that we make and the things that we do.

Of course, times are different now, and we don’t always follow the traditions of the oldest getting everything. But, back in the days of Isaac and Rebekah, that was the rule. And when Rebekah’s twin sons were born, it was a very close race. When the older son, Esau, was born, his younger brother, Jacob, was holding onto his foot. They were literally seconds apart. But still, one was the oldest, and the other was not. As they grew, each boy developed different skills. Esau became a great hunter, and Isaac was so proud of him because he would bring home wild game. Jacob, on the other hand, tended to stay at home with his mother and help with the household chores.

One day, Esau came back from hunting, hungry and Jacob was cooking some stew. Esau was so hungry that he sold away his birthright for a single bowl of the stew that Jacob was cooking. All of the rights and privileges that he enjoyed as the firstborn son, gone with the dip of a spoon and a swipe of crusty bread. And here’s the thing that Isaac and Rebekah could never have foreseen when the two boys were born. That Esau could be so reckless with his future.

Of course it’s possible that he was just so hungry that he couldn’t think straight. Or, maybe he thought that his brother was just kidding around, or wouldn’t hold him to his word later, because it was after all, it was just a bowl of soup. Or maybe Esau just wasn’t very bright and he actually thought that it was a fair trade. He does say at one point that his inheritance will do him no good if he starves to death. Either way, what God had told Rebekah when the two boys were still wrestling around inside of her, came to pass. “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.” According to biblical tradition, Esau eventually went on to become the ancestor of the Edomites. And, the Edomites were eventually defeated by King David, who was one of Jacob’s descendents, and the Edomites had to live under King David’s rule, and the rule of his son Solomon, after him. The older will serve the younger.

So here we are today, and I think it is quite obvious what happened to me. I spent a lot of time running away from seminary, trying to find other ways to serve God. I did youth group for seven years, thinking that it was a perfectly acceptable ministry. And it is, youth ministry is as much a ministry as any other. But, that’s not what I was destined for. I had a bakery for a while, thinking that if I was successful at that, I would be able to give lots of money to the church. That didn’t pan out. Then, one day, my pastor asked me to go through a lay leader-training program. It was a one-year intensive program, one eight-hour Saturday a month. They were basically trying to condense seminary down into twelve days, with a month’s worth of independent study in between. I jumped at this, because I knew it was my last chance to avoid going to seminary.

By that point, I had been out of school for seven years. And in that time, God had changed me. God had instilled in me a love of learning that was impossible to ignore. I didn’t hate it anymore. And so, as much as I had fought it, I went back to school. I first had to finish two years of undergrad, but I finally made it here, and I just finished my second year of seminary. It’s hard. I have to sit in classrooms all the time, and I have way more homework than is even possible for me to do. But, I’m happy, because God knows me better than I know myself, and God knew that seminary is where I was supposed to be, even if I thought that couldn’t possibly be right. God’s way is not our way. God’s way is the best way. And, learning to trust that can be hard. But, somehow, some way, God will get us there. God will always get us there. Amen.

Small and Mighty

I preached my first sermon at Christ Lutheran today. It went pretty well, but in retrospect, I kind of wish I had spent more time revising my sermon.

Small and Mighty

The Mainline Protestant denominations are in decline. If you were to look at membership numbers for the last few decades, you would see that there have been significant drops in the size of the Presbyterian Church, the United Church of Christ, the Methodists, the Lutherans, and yes even the Baptists. Our world is changing, and this has many church leaders worried. They’ve begun asking questions like, What is happening to us? Is there anything we can do about it? Will there be a future for the church?

It used to be that the church was the center of the community. Every neighborhood would have its own little neighborhood church, and this was the place where everyone would gather every Sunday. People would have picnics there, bake sales, cub scout and brownie meetings. Maybe you would go there Wednesday nights for Bible study. More and more, we see churches standing empty during the week. And on Sunday mornings, we sometimes struggle to fill the pews.

There has been a shift in the way people see the church. It used to be expected that people would go to church every Sunday. Nowadays, instead of going to church, men and women will put in extra hours at the office. Parents take their children to soccer games that have been thoughtlessly scheduled during that time when most people used to be in worship, and chores that have been accumulating throughout the week are being taken care of on what was once considered a holy day. For many people in today’s society, this is a completely normal thing to do.

We like to talk about the good old days, and how many people used to take part in church life. I remember one time when I was in youth group, some friends and I were looking through the books in the church library and we came across some photo albums. So, of course, we opened them and started looking at the pictures. We passed them around, and made fun of the clothes that people used to wear. We tried to find people that we might know. There was a funny tension in the church library that day, a kind of heaviness almost. It was hard to look at those pictures, those little windows to the past and see how vibrant and full of life the church used to be.

The pictures were from different events that the church had had over the years, going back to the 70s, maybe even before that. In one of the pictures, the church courtyard was filled with tables and every chair was full. There were streamers and balloons and lots and lots of food. There were young families, and elderly couples. There were even a few babies. There were probably over 400 people at that potluck or barbeque or whatever it was. Everyone looked so happy. They were part of something. They were part of something big.

This problem that we face, of a church in decline, is not new. I can’t even tell you how many meetings that I’ve been in where the discussion eventually came around to this idea that church is dying. But, nobody knows what to do. We talk about it and talk about it, but we don’t know what to do about it. There aren’t any answers out there. You can read studies and reports, and examine the issue until you’re blue in the face, but these studies just don’t show us how to fix it.

It’s hard, this feeling of helplessness. This isn’t what we expect the church to be like. We come to church to worship God, and if church is really what God wants us to do, if that is really where we’re all supposed to be on Sunday mornings, why is church membership declining? Why isn’t God doing something about it?

It’s kind of like the question that Jesus’ followers ask him right before he ascends to heaven. “Is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” They didn’t get it. They still didn’t understand what Jesus was doing. See, when they thought of a Messiah, they imagined a warrior king that was gonna take back the kingdom of Israel for the Israelites. They wanted their independence. They were tired of living under somebody else’s laws. They wanted a Messiah that was gonna lead their armies and rain destruction down upon their enemies. They couldn’t imagine the radically different idea of Jesus saving us from our sin through love.

It wasn’t only that the idea was too foreign or too different for them to understand. It was the fact that this idea was something radically new, something that they had never heard of before, something they’d never thought of or imagined. Jesus had to explain it to them over and over again throughout his life, and still, even at the end, right when he is about to leave, they ask him, “Is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”

So Jesus answers them, saying, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” God was going to restore the kingdom. But, God was not going to restore the kingdom by the sword, the way that the disciples expected. God was going to restore the kingdom, the world, in the way that God intended. God was going to restore the world with love, and God was going to use them to spread that message of love to the ends of the earth.

That message has been going around for a few thousand years now, and that message has already changed the world. It’s still out there, going from person, to person, to person. God is still doing the good work, and God is still using faithful people to bear witness to the message.

So, how do we at Christ Lutheran witness to the people of the world? I am new here, but already I have heard so many beautiful stories about the work that you have done here. I have heard about the money that you collected to help provide disaster relief. I have heard about the food distribution that you did to help feed the less fortunate people in the neighborhood. I have heard about the warming shelter program that you participated in to provide food and shelter for homeless women. I have heard the message of love that is being broadcast from this church. These are mighty works and I know that God is here and that God is using this congregation to restore the kingdom.

This group may be small, but it is mighty. Don’t forget that the Israelites were a small tribe. Just look at what God did through them. They interacted with God in way that God had never interacted with a group of people before, and as time went by, those stories of how God worked through that tiny desert tribe were passed down from generation to generation, as they tried to figure out who God was and what God meant to them. Eventually, those stories were written down, and today, thousands of years later, we have books of the Old Testament.

And then, when it came time for the big reveal of God’s plan, once again, God went to the Israelites, who were still a small desert tribe, and through them, came into the world as flesh and bone. Jesus was born as a human being, whose life, and death and resurrection led to even more stories, and more writings that irreversibly changed the hearts and minds of a few Jewish people giving rise to the faith tradition that we call Christianity today. The Jewish people have always been a small tribe, but it didn’t matter, because they were a people of faith, and God decided to work through them.

People are always longing to be part of something. We get all wrapped up in the excitement of participating in something we know that a lot of people are gonna be part of. We want to be part of something that people are going to remember, we want to be part of something that people are gonna talk about at the water cooler, we want to be part of something that could change the world. Well, I have news for you. We are part of something. We are part of something big. We are part of something huge! It’s the biggest thing that has ever happened in the history of the planet.

So, while the talk continues over how the Mainline Protestant denominations are shrinking, I want you to take a look at what you’ve done. God is active in this church. God is living in this community and radiating outwards into the streets of Fairfax. God’s love is pouring out from these pews and meeting those people in the streets that need God’s love the most. You are all the messengers of God’s love. You are small, and you are mighty, and you belong to God.

Amen.

Let Us Rejoice (2nd 15 Minute Sermon)

We, as a nation, set our sights on killing a man. On Sunday night, we accomplished that goal. Osama bin Laden is dead, and with his death comes a sense of relief, a sense of peace, a sense that justice has been done. For some, there is a sense of joy, a sense of celebration, a sense of accomplishment. We killed a man. This is the week that we killed Osama bin Laden, let us rejoice, and be glad in it.

I don’t want you to misunderstand my words or my tone; I understand the deep need that we felt as a nation to dispose of this human being. Yes, Osama bin Laden was a human being, but he was a human being that had gone so far off the rails of what it meant to be a human being that he just wasn’t safe to keep around anymore.

And so, with the hard work of countless individuals, years of planning, gathering intelligence, risking lives upon lives upon lives, we finally found out where he was, and we killed him. Let us rejoice.

There are people rejoicing. All around the world, people are raising their hands to the sky, screaming Halleluiah! Praise God because we finally did it! We finally got the man responsible for all of the deaths of September 11^th. One woman who was the mother of one of the firefighters that died at the World Trade Center said that she knew that her son was cheering in heaven when Osama bin Laden was killed. Cheering in heaven over a person’s death. That’s what she believes. Now, I’m not claiming to have all of the answers, but I have a hard time believing that anyone in heaven would be cheering anytime another person dies. Death is a tragedy; death is always a tragedy.

But, even though I might not agree with rejoicing over another person’s death, I am forced to acknowledge the horror that was September 11th. The thousands of people that died at the World Trade Center. Those people that died at the Pentagon. The brave souls of United Flight 93, who crashed their plane into a field in Pennsylvania before the men who hijacked it could crash it into our nation’s capital. I was just so senseless! The complete disregard for human life. The utterly warped beliefs of the men who hijacked the planes. I will never understand it. I just can’t get over the level of hatred these men must have felt to do these horrific deeds. What could drive them to hate us so much that they would willingly, joyfully, enthusiastically sacrifice their own lives to rob us of ours?

It’s one of the oldest sins in the world. It’s a sin that blinds us. It blinds us to the truth. That blinds us to common sense. It blinds us to our conscience, to compassion, to the whisperings of our soul that keep us close to God. That keep us human. It’s the worship of the tribe, the belief that only those who look like you and talk like you, and perhaps most importantly believe what you believe, are the only people that you can trust. The only people that you can be around. The only people that you can allow to live. Worship of the tribe. What it boils down to is worship of the self. It’s pride; it’s the deadliest sin in disguise.

Osama bin Laden and the men that hijacked those planes were worshipping their tribe instead of God. They held God’s love at a distance, and in doing so warped their view of the world. They could no longer see us as people, as brothers and sisters, as parents and children and friends.

We became demons to them. They couldn’t accept us and how different we were, and so they took it upon themselves to destroy us. And so, we set out to destroy them. An eye for eye, a tooth for a tooth, just like the Bible says. Or does it?

In Paul’s letter to the Colossians, chapter 3, verses 9-13, he writes, “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator, where there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all! As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as Christ has forgiven you, so you must also forgive.”

Paul is urging the Colossians to put the old ways behind them, the old legalistic ways of keeping the tribe separate from everybody else. Paul explains that there is a new way. He tells them that Christ is all and in all. He tells them that all people are God’s people.

It’s a message that’s told over and over again in the Bible. But, it’s a message that needs to be told over and over again, because our natural tendency as human beings is to separate ourselves into tribes, into groups of us and groups of them. We have no problem pitting tribe against tribe, Protestant against Catholic, North against South, Christian against Muslim.

This conflict isn’t about Christians and Muslims. It’s about a nation defending itself against an extremist terrorist group. This extremist group has killed Muslims as well, but people keep forgetting that. Because it’s so much easier to blame this huge group of people for the actions of a few. It’s not because we’re lazy. It’s because we will latch onto any reason that will give us an excuse to hurt another tribe. It’s in our nature; it’s written on our sinful DNA. Protect the tribe! The tribe must survive! Kill all outsiders!

And so, we set out to kill Osama bin Laden. To protect the tribe. A lot of people say that we should have brought bin Laden in alive so that we could try him in court, make him face his crimes.

I think agree with that, only I don’t know how realistic that is. I have to believe that Osama wasn’t a person that was going to just come along quietly. I wouldn’t be surprised if the only outcome of any attempt to bring him to justice would end up with him being dead. I just wish that wasn’t the way it had to be. Because I really do understand, that’s just the way that it is.

Only it’s not supposed to be this way. The world isn’t supposed to be this way. This isn’t supposed to be an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth world. Paul tried to give us a hint of what the world is supposed to be. What the world could be, if only we could trust God and let the world be the way it’s supposed to be.

The world the way it’s supposed to be is a world were we can talk about our problems. There are no terrorists in this world. There is no need to protect the tribe, because we can all trust that God will protect us and provide for us, not to mention that there is only going to be one tribe, which will be comprised of everyone.

But, I want to let you in on a little secret. We already are all one family under God now. These labels that we use to divide ourselves, these boxes that we put ourselves in, they are not real. Anything that keeps us separated from each other, keeps us separated from God and is not of God. We need to let God tear down these walls so that we can see each other for who we really are. So that we don’t go flying planes into buildings. So that we don’t rejoice when another human being dies.

Death is a tragedy. Death, even when it seems like it might be necessary, is always a tragedy. It’s lost possibility, the removal of any chance for that person to ever do good, and the removal of any chance that someone might do good to that person and perhaps change the world. And so, I do not rejoice over the death of Osama bin Laden. He was a terrible man. He did terrible things. And now that he is dead, I know there are millions of people who will sleep better at night, knowing that he is not around anymore to plot some crazy scheme that ends up with thousands of people dead. As for me, I too have to admit that the world does feel a little bit safer without him in it. And so I am relieved to not have to worry about him anymore. But I will grieve for the world that made him into the man that he was, and I will grieve for the world that had to kill him. This isn’t the way the world is supposed to be.

Ordinary People (15 Minute Sermon)

I preached this sermon yesterday in class. It's the same one that I preached for the preaching contest. The theme is that although none of us is perfect, God can still use us to do miraculous things. God must have realized that although I wrote the sermon, I had yet to learn the lesson, and so proceeded to make two of the pages stick together in the middle of my sermon delivery, prompting several seconds of awkwardly frustrating silence. This, however, was not as bad as the fact that the final page was missing.

Afterwards, the substitute professor asked about my strange interpretation of the text, which, to be fair, is a legitimate question. I told her that I had not been able to find any information on the particular verse I was working with, and she told us that if we are going to go with an unusual interpretation, we should first find 3 sources that agree with the way we are interpreting it. In some ways, I appreciate this Presbyterian "gate-keeper" mentality, as it prevents preachers from going off the wall by delivering sermons about men "pissing on the wall," but after careful consideration, I would have to disagree with her assessment. What she basically said is that the Bible has nothing new to tell us. I'm sure that isn't what she meant to say, but if you must find three sources to back up your interpretation of the Bible, that means everything we can learn from the Bible has already been discovered, and I don't think you could be further from the truth. I personally think that the Holy Spirit is working in us every single time we read the Bible, and especially so when we are preparing sermons.

Anyway, here it is, its full-length glory. I had to start winging it after "David wasn't perfect, but David loved God." Everyone said they would never have known the last page was missing if I hadn't told them, but I know the sermon suffered pretty significantly because of its absence. Oh well. As God seems keen to point out to me, I'm not perfect. But, that's okay.

Ordinary People

When I first started to work on this sermon, I have to admit that I was pretty disappointed in myself. To help you understand why I was so disappointed in myself, I have to take you back to the beginning of this process and highlight some of the things that happened along the way to bring us here today.

The first thing I had to do was find a text, and I found myself being drawn to Psalm 23. Now, I was hesitant at first, because my last sermon was on a Psalm and I didn't want to fall into some kind of pattern, but the more I thought about it, the more it felt like the right text, so I got to work. I got out my tools, my Hebrew Bible, my Hebrew Dictionary, my Hebrew grammar book, all excited 'cause I was gonna do this right!

Now, a lot of people don't really see the value in preparing for a sermon in this way, anymore. After all, we have dozens of English translations available to us now, many available on the Internet. There's Bible programs and websites that basically translate the passages for you; all you have to do is click a button, and it's done. The translations come with definitions for different Greek and Hebrew words, there's parsing for the verbs, sometimes the nouns. There's even references to other biblical texts related to the ones you're looking at, and commentaries to explain to you what other scholars have pulled form the texts in the past. Why not rely on all of this when there's just so much available?

But, there's something about the original language that still intrigues me. If there's one thing I remember from my language classes, it's that when you translate something from one language to another, there's always something that gets lost. There's always those subtle nuances and culturally specific connotations that just can't be translated. And on top of that, I don't like feeling like I have to rely on another person's work to figure out what the Bible says. I mean, that's a big part of why I came to seminary, so that I could rely on myself, to figure out on my own what the Bible says. I don't wanna use someone else's work and just hop that I'm not being lead astray by someone who might have some kind of agenda, or who might have a radically different theology than me, or maybe even worse, someone that just got it wrong.

So when I started to work on this sermon, I opened my Hebrew Bible, and I started flipping through the pages to find the Psalms. And, I'm flipping through the pages, and flipping through the pages, and flipping through the pages, and I'm not finding it, and I finally get to the end, and the heading at the top says, "Genesis?" And, I blink a few times and shake my head because isn't Genesis supposed to be at the front?

And then, I remember. Hebrew doesn't read left to right, it reads from right to left! I had just flipped through the entire book, not to the end, but to the beginning! This did not bode well for me. See, it's been almost a year since I've done any real work with the Hebrew, and over a year since the actual language classes themselves. I remember, on the last day of class, my professor begging us to keep on top of it by translating just one verse a day. just one verse a day! I think she said it knowing it just wasn't gonna happen, but you know, it's kind of her job to try to get us to be the best biblical scholars we can be, so she had to say it. It probably won't come as much of a surprise to any of you, but most of us didn't listen to her advice. And, I'm paying for it now.

I really struggled to translate the Hebrew text into English, and I was even using one of the free websites that do most of the work for yo. It just wasn't coming to me! What you need to understand is that I was really good at Hebrew. I mean really good! I helped other people study. I go t A's on all the exams. I loved Hebrew! There's just something so magical about the Hebrew language! I felt like an explorer discovering new things whenever I dove into the Hebrew text. I just loved it!

So, as I started preparing for this sermon, I could feel this sense of dread settling over me, this feeling of helplessness, hopelessness as I struggled with the language that I had loved so much. Did I really go through an entire year of Hebrew, only to lose it all? I mean, if that's what happens, that what's the point? Why even bother taking the classes at all if just a year later, I won't be able to remember anything that could actually help me? I was so disappointed in myself, all I could do was shake my head in disbelief as I continued to struggle with the passage.

It got so bad, that I just kind of gave up at one point and decided that I would just try to translate one verse, the one verse that I thought had the most potential for a sermon. It was verse 5, which says, "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows."

Psalm 23 is a beautiful Psalm that, over the centuries has somehow seeped into our cultural consciousness. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside still waters. He restoreth my soul." I have to apologize for the King James, but I tried to write this in NRSV and the Psalm is just so familiar in its King James version, it just didn't sound right any other way.

It continues on, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."

These are classic Biblical texts that many people go to for comfort, for proof of David's piety and artistry, sometimes even as an example of how beautiful scripture can be.

But, if you just continue on to the next verse, he says, "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies." What? Provide for me, comfort me, protect me, and spread out a lavish dinner table for me in front of my enemies so I can thumb my nose at them while they watch me eat? What is this? Was David six when he wrote this?

The whole Psalm is this beautiful poem, except for this one weird, and jarring, and really out of place line. But, David really isn't know for being level-headed and rational, is he? I mean, this is the guy, who, when he was a child, slew a giant with a slingshot and a stone. I mean, we're talking about a guy that dances naked in the street. This is the man who was spying on the naked woman who was bathing on her rooftop. Then he seduced her, got her pregnant, and sent her husband off to war, hoping that he would get killed so that he wouldn't find out about it!

I mean, come on, this isn't someone that we should be modeling our lives after! He's brash, he's arrogant, he's impulsive to a fault and he wants things that are bad for him. Is David really supposed to be an example for us?

I mean, we all want things that are bad for us. It's just kind of how we are. There's this horrible TV show that I was kind of forced to watch one time called "Hoarders." It's about people who have a kind of compulsive disorder that prevents them form throwing things away. They save everything, and I really mean everything. There was this one woman who refused to throw away food. So she just had these mountains of food all over her house. She had a fridge in her basement that wasn't working anymore and it was full of rotting, moldy food! I mean, this stuff was getting ready to crawl out of the refrigerator by itself.

The premise of the show is that people come in a clean all this stuff out. There's a therapist there to make sure the person is handling everything okay and to make sure they actually go through with the plan to clean up their house, and really clean up their lives. I mean, these people are in all kinds of trouble, beyond the fact that they're living with mice and rats and cockroaches, and that their houses have turned into fire hazards and that many of them are becoming physically ill because of their living environments. One woman was a compulsive shopper whose debt was spiraling out of control. There was a family on the verge of being evicted form their home. There was a couple that was about to lose their children to child protective services.

Now obviously, these are really extreme examples of people wanting things that are bad for them. But, we all want things that are bad for us. I eat things I shouldn't eat. I don't study as much as I should because I want to watch movies or hang out with my friends. I buy things I don't need. I'm not trying to come down on myself or tell you that I have this huge sense of guilt over who I am or the things I do, only that I recognize the very obvious fact that I am not perfect.

But, David wasn't perfect. Adam and Even weren't perfect. Abraham and Sarah, and Moses and Miriam, and Samuel and Saul weren't perfect. Esther wasn't perfect. Mary and Joseph, and Peter and Paul weren't perfect. There's only one person in the Bible, in the whole history of humanity that was perfect, and that was Jesus. So, we're in good company. The Bible is full of stories of imperfect people. God loves imperfect people. God can use imperfect people.

David wasn't perfect, but David loved God. Now, I'm not saying that this excuses any of his bad behavior, just like loving God doesn't excuse our bad behavior, but David really loved God! And God was able to use David to do some truly miraculous things, just like God uses all of those people on that list of imperfect people to do miraculous things.

Looking back on it now, I can see how the whole time that I was struggling with the Hebrew text for this passage that God was leading me. God used my frustration to help me interpret the psalm, to lead me to this message. I was so disappointed in myself because I wasn't perfect, because I had forgotten how to translate the Hebrew texts. I'd been holding myself up to this ideal, that I would have these Bible languages down, that I would always be able to go back to the Hebrew, to go back to the Greek, to translate the scripture for myself, and that this would always be the starting point for every sermon that I would ever write. I'm not giving up on that dream, but I am admitting that I am not there right now, and that I may never get there. But, that's okay. God doesn't expect us to be perfect. We don't have to be perfect. We couldn't be perfect, even if we tried. And, that's okay. So, no matter what we might think is wrong with us, God will always love us and can use us, even in our imperfections, to do miraculous things. Amen.

Pictures from the Vagina Monologues

The SFTS production of the Vagina Monologues were a couple of weeks ago, but I hadn't had a chance to put up the picture yet, so here they are!

Setting up the bake sale before the show

Waiting for the show to start

Our directors!

Seniors

Middlers

Trinity House Represent!

Lucas stage managing

The women did a cool processional while singing and holding candles

Stills from the show

The show was one of the most amazing things I had ever seen! The acting was so powerful, provocative, and inspiring! The purpose of the monologues is to bring to light various women's issues, including violence against women. The idea is that these things continue to happen because no one is speaking up about it. The monologues is a very loud and even celebratory way for women to speak out and claim their power.

I've been playing with the idea of coming at this issue from the male perspective. Yes, women need to speak out, but maybe we also need to look at why men perpetrate tis violence in the first place. A friend of mine thought we should call it The Penis Papers. I'm not sure when we'd have the time to write it, but I think it would be a great complimentary show to go with the Vagina Monologues, with the money going to similar causes.