Sticks and Stones

15 minute sermon for preaching class:

It doesn't take a lot for someone to hurt you. One of my earliest memories is of riding in a car with my mom; I couldn't have been more than six or seven. As we rounded the corner of our block, there were these two girls standing there, maybe a few years older than me. They looked at us through the window, then pulled at the corners of their eyes, the way kids do when they're pretending to be Asian, and they screamed, "Chinese!" and then burst out laughing. Even at that young age, I knew that what they had done was wrong. I knew it somehow in my gut, even if I didn't understand it in my head.

I had a similar experience a few years ago. I was working for a medical supply company, and I had gotten a patient's wife on the phone. I can't remember exactly how the conversation ended up going where it did, but she ended it by saying, "Okay, gay guy!" and hanging up on me. I was a little shocked, and I yes I wondered if I was sounding especially gay that day, but I had never experienced anyone saying anything like that to me before. I was so stunned, that I actually left my desk and started walking around the office telling everybody about it. But, the interesting thing was after each time I told the story, the person I was talking to would say, "Oh my gosh! Are you okay?" And each time, I would say, "Yeah, I'm fine." I thought it was weird that they all kept asking the same question, because the only reason I was telling people the story was because it was so crazy, and I actually thought, at least at first, that it was a funny and shocking story to tell.

After I had made my way around the office, I was telling one final person, and again, after I was done telling her about it, she said, "Oh my gosh! Are you okay?" Only that time, I wasn't. I walked out of that office so fast, and I sat down in the lobby and I just burst into tears.

Labels. We love labels and we love labeling things, especially people. I'm guilty of it; we're all guilty of it. And, as our passage shows, we have been doing this for a really long time. Circumcised and uncircumcised, Jew and Gentile, clean and unclean. It's so easy to lump people into a group, and slap a label on them letting us know that they are different. It's a world of us verses them, a world of tribes, a world of othering, where we turn people into "others." It helps us to feel more secure in our own positions, to know that we belong, as defined by the fact that others do not. And as we can see in this passage, it even happens within the family of God.

When Peter comes back from Caesarea, the other disciples kind of give him the side-eye, because they had heard some things about what he had been getting up to over there. Hanging out with the wrong crowd, sitting down with them for dinner, the uncircumcised! And, the passage makes it very clear at the beginning, that the disciples knew that these "uncircumcised" were believers! These were people who had accepted the word of God! But apparently, that didn't make them acceptable company for one of their own.

Human beings have a tendency to form tribes. If you want to look at it in evolutionary terms, the people that were the most tribalistic were the ones who survived. They looked out for each other, gathered together for protection, made sure that everyone had enough to eat, even if it meant that anyone outside of the tribe wasn't going to make it. The people in the tribes, the successful ones, were the ones who passed down their genes. Every single one of us is in this room here today because our ancestors survived. They were part of the tribe, and we are their legacy. Tribalism is part of our genetic structure, part of who we are, and as much as we try to fight it, as much as we try to tell ourselves that it's wrong, it's something that we all do, even if it's only a little. Even if we try and hide it deep down inside.

It almost seems like the whole of human history can be boiled down to us vs. them. We have Christians fighting Muslims, Israelis fighting Palestinians, even Catholics fighting Protestants. Republicans and Democrats. Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, this gang fighting against that gang, lines being drawn around geographic and ethnic differences. Male and female, gay and straight, the 1% and the 99. A lot of people really don't like the idea of original sin, but, if there is such a thing, then I think this is it, or at least part of it anyway. We have this deep, ingrained need to turn people into others, just to make absolutely sure that we aren't the ones that don't belong.

I like to tell people that I am from the Chinappines, because my dad is Chinese and my mom is Filipino. It's my own little tribe, and I'm actually kind of proud of it, plus it's fun to say, and I love the look of confusion that people get when I say it. It's a tribe that I wholeheartedly embrace and love.

But, I know what it's like to be pushed out of a tribe. I was raised in the PCUSA, and for thirty years, that was the church that I belonged to, proudly belonged to. But, when it came time for me to start thinking about ordination, it suddenly didn't matter that I had been Presbyterian for thirty years, that I was baptized in a Presbyterian church when I was a baby. All that mattered was that I was gay, and gay people weren't part of the tribe. I wasn't part of the tribe.

Since I was born and raised in Southern California, I didn't have to deal with a lot of this. The two stories I told earlier are the only two "name-calling" incidents that really stick out in my mind besides the silly schoolyard stuff that most kids have to unfortunately deal with. But, what really stands out for me when I think about those two times when it did happen, is the types of words that were used: the first one being "Chinese" and second one "gay." These are technically neutral terms, neither positive nor negative, so it wasn't the words themselves that were cutting. It was the intention behind them that made the words so hurtful.

In the case of the girls calling me Chinese, those girls weren't making an observation about my ethnicity. They were reducing me to a single descriptor, as if that was all that I was, and not only that, but mocking it, because it was so beneath them that mockery was okay. You don't have to use slurs to hurt someone. You just have to let them know that who they are is insignificant, and the simple descriptor of "Chinese" accompanied with some childish laughter is all it takes to do that.

Now, the woman that I was talking to on the phone when I worked for the medical supply company, even though I'm sure she didn't put very much thought into what she was saying, affected me more in three words than all of the hateful speech I had ever heard. "Okay, gay guy." In those three little words, she managed to convey the fact that she thought there was something wrong with being gay, that she didn't agree with what I was trying to tell her about her husband's medical equipment, and that she didn't need to listen to me because I was gay, and therefore, not worthy of consideration or respect. It was probably the most condescending and dismissive thing I had ever heard, will ever hear, in my entire life.

When I try to explain this incident to people, the only way I have to describe what it felt like is that she stabbed me with a psychic knife to the heart. It was so swift and awful and devastating, that it's hard to think about even now. But she felt entitled to use such a horrible weapon because I wasn't part of her tribe, and furthermore, the tribe that I did belong to, in her eyes, was so far beneath her own, that it didn't matter what happened to me. That is the nature of tribalism, of othering. When someone is an other, they are suspect, unacceptable, and dangerous.

Which is why the disciples confront Peter about his activities, when he returns. He was consorting with others, people who were not part of the tribe, and they were worried that Peter was going to be contaminated somehow, that they would be contaminated. So, Peter tells them this story: He tells them that he had a vision of a sheet coming down from the heavens, and upon that sheet was every kind of unclean animal, and a voice from above told him to kill and eat. He protests, saying that nothing unclean has ever passed his lips, but the voice says that what God has made clean, he must not call profane.

And after that, three men from Caesarea came and brought him to a man's house, who told him that he had seen an angel who said him that Simon Peter had a message for him by which his entire household would be saved. And as Peter spoke, the Holy Spirit descended upon this man's household, just as the Holy Spirit had done with the disciples.

The Holy Spirit has descended upon each of us in equal measure so that no one can claim that anyone is not a part of the tribe. No matter who we are, or where come from, or how much money we have, or how we vote, or even what faith we profess, God loves us. We belong to the human tribe, and God's grace is big enough for all. Come, be part of the tribe. Open your arms and welcome everyone that you see. 

Double Rainbow

There's a phenomenon in nature known as the double rainbow. Regular rainbows happen when water in the atmosphere, usually rain, reflects sunlight back to the viewer. That's why you always have to look away from the sun to see a rainbow, because the light is actually bouncing off of the water, and then back to you. The color of light that you see from each raindrop depends on where the raindrop is in relation to you and the sun, so you'll see red from some raindrops, and blue from others, and so on. And when you see the light bouncing back at you from all of those millions of raindrops, it forms a rainbow.

When the conditions are right, you will sometimes see a second rainbow over the first one. It won't be as bright, and the colors will be reversed, but if you're ever lucky enough to see one, it's an amazing sight. This secondary rainbow is formed when light is reflected twice inside of the raindrop. You need a lot of sunlight and lots of water in the air for this to happen, so it's pretty rare.

A couple of years ago, there was a video on the Internet that everyone was talking about that featured a double rainbow. Now, the reason that everyone was talking about it wasn't because of the double rainbow. Though double rainbows are rare and beautiful, the fact that this man had captured one on film wasn't what everyone was all excited about. No, the reason this video had gotten so much attention was because of the reaction that this man had to seeing the double rainbow. As the camera pans across the sky, you can hear him reacting to it. He is ecstatic, he's laughing and crying, and he keeps asking, "What does it mean? What does it mean?" You can hear him sobbing. I mean, he really kind of goes over the top. The first time I tried to watch it, I couldn't even finish the video because I was having too much secondhand embarrassment. I just thought this guy was making a fool of himself.

Which is kind of what I thought Peter was doing when I first read today's lectionary. Jesus appears to the disciples on the shore, and Peter is out on a boat with some of the other disciples, trying to catch some fish. One of the disciples on the boat says, "Hey, that's Jesus!" And, without any hesitation at all, Peter, puts on some clothes, because I guess they sometimes fished naked back then, jumps in the water, and swims to the shore, while the other disciples, much more calm about the situation, bring the boat. Was Peter wrong to do this? I'm going to say no. But, did he have to do this? Did he have to kind of go crazy, throw on some clothes and jump into the water in his excitement over Jesus showing up? I'm going to say no to that, too. I don't think Jesus needed him to be quite that enthusiastic, or expected him to put on quite a show when he appeared, but I'm willing to bet that it brought a smile to Jesus' face.

I have to admit that when I first started looking at this text, I had a hard time with it. This image of Peter, hearing that Jesus was there, and then getting all excited about it, throwing on some clothes and jumping in the water; bless his heart, the poor guy literally didn't know what to do with himself. Swimming to the shore while the others brought the boat in, I mean the guy literally went overboard. It's too much! Some people think that maybe he decided to put the clothes on because he didn't want to greet Jesus naked, you know, as a sign of respect, or maybe it was a special type of clothing that would help keep him dry, although if I had to guess, I'd say that clothing technology probably wasn't quite that advanced back then.

I actually kind of like this image of Peter, just kind of flipping his lid, running around like a chicken with its head cut off, saying, "Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness! Jesus is here! What do I do? What do I do? Uh, throw on some clothes and jump in the water!" I mean, this is Peter we're talking about! "Fly by the seat of his pants" Peter, "cut off some guy's ear with a sword" Peter. This is Peter's M.O. The "acting before thinking" Peter, the "guy who screws things up, but still somehow manages to wind up being the rock that the church is built on" Peter, and I think this is why so many people just find him so endearing. He's not perfect. He's expressive! He's exuberant! He loves Jesus, and he's not afraid to show it! Except for that one time…with denying Jesus three times and the rooster crowing…

But, we get it, right? We know Peter! We know that person who gets too excited about things, overly enthusiastic about things, that person that's the life of the party. We love that person! And sometimes, a lot of us wish we could be that person.

Like I said, when I was first looking at this text, I had a hard time with it. Usually, the first thing I do when working on a sermon is try to think of a personal story that I can relate to the text. That's my M.O. I like using the stories from my life as illustrations because I can be the most authentic when I'm telling one of my own stories as opposed to when I'm telling someone else's. But this time, I just couldn't think of one. As I sat there at a loss, trying to figure out what to do, I suddenly realized that the reason I couldn't think of a story was because I am basically the complete opposite of Peter! I couldn't think of a story because I don't have an equivalent "throw on some clothes and jump in the water" moment in my life. So far, I've just been too reserved, too cautious, too worried about what people might be thinking of me.

For example, I really like praise music, and a lot of times, when people are singing praise music, they'll lift their hands into the air. Even when I am in a setting where everyone is raising their hands to God in response to some really awesome praise music, I'll only raise up one hand, and I'll only raise it about halfway. I'm too self-conscious, too worried about what I look like. Even when I'm in a situation where it's totally okay, and I know, rationally, that no one is going to look at me weird, I still can't do it! And now that I think about it, it makes me sad. I want to get excited for God! I want to know what it feels like to just let go and not care if I'm making a fool of myself! I don’t even know where this hang-up comes from, but it is so deeply ingrained in my character that I don’t know if I'll ever be able to shake it, and I'm guessing that some of you might be able to sympathize with me.

The first time I saw that double rainbow video, I was a little judgmental. I mean, I had been primed for it; the only reason the video was making the rounds was because everyone was making fun of it. People couldn't understand why this guy was making such a big deal out of seeing a double rainbow! I mean, it was just a matter of physics, right? Light coming into contact with water and bouncing off of it, no big deal. People were ridiculing him; video responses kept popping up making fun of the things that he said and the way that he said them. I actually felt bad for him, and like I said, embarrassed because of his grand display of emotion that he was making and all of the horrible things that people were saying. I mean, what possible reason was there for this guy to be gushing over the Internet like that, laughing and crying and carrying on, trying to find some deeper meaning to this perfectly natural display of rain and sunlight.

Only, it turns out there was a reason. I didn't know it at the time, but right before he saw the double rainbow, he had just finished writing an email to a friend saying how he felt like he was Noah, because he was trying to live off the grid and how he was growing his own organic food. He was feeling separated from the rest of humanity, and he thought that maybe that was what Noah might have felt after the flood, after the waters had subsided and he had to start making a new life for himself without all of the social structures that he had lived with all of his life. This double rainbow guy had been seeing a lot of rainbows, and he had been wondering if it was some kind of sign from God. And after he sent his email, all of a sudden, his room was filled with color and light, and he went outside, and there was this amazing double rainbow, right outside his front door! He said it looked like God's eye, because only God could have an eye that big. He was having a God moment, an experience with the divine, and unless you've been there, unless you've felt the presence of God for yourself, then there is no way to understand it. There are literally no words. All you can do is laugh and cry and humble yourself before the presence of God and look in awe and wonder at the glory of the Spirit.

Peter wasn't afraid to love Jesus, to love God and love God extravagantly. I want to get excited for God, like that! I've had too many God moments in my life to not have a "Peter jumping in the water" experience. How can I, as a Christian for basically my entire life, not have a moment like that? I want that! I want to get so excited that I can't even handle it and do something so crazy that people have to write it down and still be talking about it 2,000 years later! We should all dream like that. There's a reason Jesus said that Peter was going to be the foundation of the church. He wasn't afraid to love God!

I watched that double rainbow video again, so that I could prepare for this sermon. And, I have to say that I didn't feel like it was embarrassing this time. Maybe it's the three years of seminary that I had between viewings, or maybe it's because I've been working with this image of Peter jumping into the sea with his clothes on, but when I watch that video now, I feel inspired. I hear the voice of a man who isn't afraid to tell the world that he loves God. I want to be like that. I hope that we all have the chance to be like that, to fill the world with goodness and love, hope and joy, tears and laughter. May we all get the chance to be that excited over God. And, may our lives be filled with rainbows. Amen.

Hope Is Not a Plan

12 minute sermon for preaching class:

The disciples were afraid. Their leader, their teacher, the man who had taken care of them and loved them and showed them the way of God, was dead. Jesus was dead. And, for all they knew, they were going to be next. And, so they barricaded themselves into a room and locked the door.

Can you imagine what it must have been like in there? That paranoid feeling, jumping at sounds? How were they supposed to move forward from this? I imagine they spoke in hushed voices about the different possibilities that lay before them, fear piling upon fear, their worries feeding upon each other until eventually one of them was gonna snap. It wasn't good.

Michelle Walker always used to say, "Hope is not a plan!" I think most of you knew her.

Well, as far as we know, the disciples didn't even have hope. We don't know if they really had a plan beyond locking themselves up in that room. They were afraid, and their situation was looking a little grim.

But suddenly, suddenly, Jesus was there! And, they were so happy to see him! He showed them is hands, and he showed them his side, and he said, "Peace be with you." "Peace be with you."

I was doing a Lectio Divina with my youth group last week on this text, and that was the phrase that stood out for me. "Peace be with you." I kept seeing this image in my mind of Jesus looking at the disciples, with his hands held out in this kind of claming manner as he said it. "Peace be with you." "Peace be with you." My understanding of this image was that I was worrying too much. I needed to put my faith in God, and allow God to do what God was going to do. And when I realized that, this feeling of peace just welled up inside of me. I was able to let go.

And, I really needed that peace. Jesus, holding his hands out like that, that was the exact image that I needed to see. Because, as graduation draws near and I keep thinking about all of the things that I need to do, it just freaks me out! I think about it, and I honestly don't know how I'm supposed to do it all, and I get stressed, and my blood pressure goes up, and in all seriousness, I really think that all of this worrying might, at least in a small part, be why I ended up in the emergency room three weeks ago. My blood pressure had gotten so high that I had to be hospitalized, pumped full of drugs to bring my blood pressure down to a safe level. They ran all kinds of tests, it was nuts. I don't want to go through again.

Which is why I need what this text is telling me so badly. That Jesus is with us in the midst of our trouble, and our worries, and our anxieties. Jesus is with us, his arms open and welcoming, and he is saying, "Peace be with you." Right now, I need that peace almost as much as I need air.

Most of you know that I am currently trying to finish a 34-foot tile mosaic mural in Holy Grounds before I graduate, as part of my Spirituality Concentration. It's mostly done; I'd say maybe a good 70-80%. But, that leaves, at the very least, 20% of the mural to go, which I calculated out to be about 200 hours worth of work. Now, I have a history of over-extending myself and of procrastination, but this situation that I've gotten myself into might actually be the winner. So, of course, I've been worrying about this, and add to that the classes I have to take and church things and ordination, and it's no wonder I have to worry about my blood pressure.

But, an interesting thing happened last week. I mentioned earlier about the Lectio and this image of Jesus, standing there holding his hands out, but the next day, the day after the Lectio, I was sitting in Holy Grounds, not working on the mural 'cuz I was still getting over this cold and I just didn't feel very well, when this horde of people just descended upon me, insisting that we have a mural work party. None of these people had ever helped me with the mural before, and I had no idea that they were coming. We blasted some music, broke some plates, and stayed up late into the night, some of us not leaving until past three in the morning, and all together, we must have put in at least 20 work hours into that thing. It was amazing! It was beautiful, and it reminded me of why I love being here so much. The kicker though, what made me really realize that this was not just some coincidence, but really a God moment, was the fact that one of the people who came to help was a prospective student. I had only met her earlier that day, shaking her hand after chapel, and I honestly thought that I was never going to see her, ever again. But, there she was, pretty much a complete stranger, smashing plates with a hammer and gluing the pieces onto the wall. I didn't have a plan for how I was gonna finish the mural, other than last minute, extreme crazy panic, and at this point, I don't even know if that was gonna work. But, God had a plan. God always has a plan.

I think I needed this little reminder about the ways in which God can work in our lives. I had gotten so caught up in thinking that I had to do it all by myself, that I had to figure this out, make a plan, execute it. Little did I know that God was gathering a group of people together to help me, and maybe I should have been asking for help all along. Being part of the church means being part of a community, part of a family. And, we need to be open to the ways in which God is working through us and through community to bring wholeness and healing into our lives.

This isn't to say that we shouldn't make plans. Michelle was right. Hope is not a plan. We can't just walk through life, aimless and wandering. God wants us to do things, to help people. Plans give our lives structure, so that we can actually get things done. But, sometimes we find ourselves in a situation where a plan just isn't going to cut it. And, we have to have faith that God is going to help us. Because the choice is either to keep trying, to work through it, trusting that God will see us through, or to fall into despair and hopelessness, where we can't really help anybody. Where we can't even help ourselves.

But, I also want to add that planning does not mean a rigid adherence to a set path. No matter how carefully we plan, no matter how many contingencies we have, life will find a way to mess things up. Life is complicated, and we have to allow for course correction. And, we need to have the humility to understand that our plans won't always be God's plans, and that to stand in the way of God's plan is the way of folly and futility.

As for the disciples, we know a bit about happened to them. Their lives weren't easy. They were ridiculed for their belief, persecuted and killed. But, they lived their lives doing God's work. And they were filled with joy and love, knowing that their purpose was God's purpose. And, while I'm not going to say that I'm an advocate for martyrdom, I will say that I am an advocate for living into God's will. Hope is not a plan. But, hope should be a part of every plan that you make. And, my hope is, that in whatever plans you make for the future, you will take a moment to look and listen for God. Because, while hope may not be a plan, God's will certainly is, and we can have hope in that. So, make your plans, and try not to worry. And, peace be with you.

The Flood

The Flood section of the mural is finally complete! Just two more sections to go!!! XD

The Wages of Love

One of my dad's favorite things to say is, "When it's your time to go, it's your time to go." He says this phrase anytime someone dies, whether we knew them or not, it could be someone on TV, a celebrity, politician, whatever. He also says it whenever the subject of death comes up. So despite the fact that even though to this day, my siblings and I have had very little experience with the people in our lives dying, we all grew up with morbid personalities. We think about death, a lot!

I remember these conversations that I used to have with my sister. We would talk about how if our parents ever had to fly anywhere, we would have to make sure that they flew on two different planes, just in case one of the planes went down. That way, we'd only lose one of them. I mean, we'd kind of say it in joking a way, because we never actually thought our parents would die in a plane crash, but jokes almost always have a kernel of truth. Death is part of the world. It has a way of creeping in, and reminding us that it is there.

Which may be appropriate, given today's text. We're coming up on Good Friday and Easter, so our text today is setting the stage. Jesus has just been whipped, tortured, and despite the fact that he's innocent and has already been punished for his alleged crimes, the crowd continues to demand his execution, and so Pilate decides he has no choice, and sends the soldiers away with Jesus to crucify him.

As they made their way to the hill, a large crowd of people was following, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. Jesus was their teacher. He was kind and wise and took care of them. They loved him. And now, he was gonna die. But, Jesus doesn't turn to them to offer words of comfort. Instead, he says this is just beginning. It only gets worse from here. What he says, as written in the gospel is this: "For the days are surely coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.' … For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?"

Here, Jesus is referring to himself as the "green wood," as a living tree that is healthy and capable of producing fruit. He's not dry, seasoned wood that's dead and ready for the fire. He's the last piece of wood that you would reach for to stoke your hearth, and yet he had been marked for death. How much worse for those of us who are dry, dead, not as perfectly good as Jesus is?

We live in a world where death happens every day. Here in good old the 21^st century US of A, a lot of us have actually managed to push that fact out of our minds. We have Microsoft and Apple, The Food Network (don't get me wrong, I LOVE The Food Network!), Jersey Shore,  all glittering lights and glossy photo spreads telling us that if we just have this, we'll be happy, if we could just look like this, we will be fulfilled, and we believe it! Because, if we can just focus enough on something else, then we won't have to think about the real problems in this world. These are the false promises that tell us that the only consequences of our actions are our own happiness or sadness. The false promises that tell us that we don't have to think about how our actions and our greed have warped the planet into something that God never intended it to be.

Romans 6:23a "For the wages of sin is death." This isn't because God has decreed it arbitrarily, or because God is vindictive, but because it's the nature of sin. We see it every day: pride, greed, envy, sloth, sin is killing us! And we, in our sin, are killing each other. "For the days are surely coming when they will say, "Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.'" How bad would things have to be for mothers to wish that their children had never been born? We can ask the mothers of the Native Peoples who were here when the Europeans first colonized this land, and disease and war obliterated their numbers and destroyed their way of life. We can ask mothers had to watch their children being born into slavery, into a life where they would be treated as less than human. We can ask the mothers who experienced the holocaust and had to watch their people being rounded up like animals, starved to death and slaughtered by the millions. We can ask the mothers of wartime and genocide, things that should not be, but are still happening today. We can ask the mothers of famine and plague, injustice, and inequality. The world is filled with sin, and the wages of sin is death.

But, there is good news! God is stronger than sin. Jesus came down to dwell among us, to become one of us so that he could divert those wages onto himself. He saw us standing on the train tracks and he shoved us out of the way before the train could hit, but the only way to save us was to be hit himself, because that train was gonna hit something. Jesus died an unjust death, so that we wouldn't have to die a just one. Jesus died so that when he was lifted up, when he was brought back to life, we would be brought back with him. God is a God of love, and Jesus has thrown in his lot with ours, because the wages of love is life.

We no longer have to fear death, because in Christ Jesus, we have love, and we have life. And, with the Holy Spirit inside of us, we are empowered drop the false promises of this world, to take action, to be the people of God and be a force for good. We don't need to listen to the lies anymore, because Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. Praise God, and Amen.

Quote of the Day

Here is the sermon I preached today at Christ Lutheran Church:

          Before I came to seminary, I worked for a company called Nationwide Medical. One day, one of the owners asked if I'd be willing to put up a "Quote of the Day" on the board in front of the office. This sounded like it would be a fun, so I agreed, and that same day, I put up the very first quote. I can’t remember what it was now, because it was so long ago, but it was probably something that I thought would be inspiring, something along the lines of Ralph Waldo Emerson saying, "If you would create something, you must be something." Some kind of dripping saccharine, super cheesy statement like that, you know, the kind that you normally find on an inspirational poster or something. It was fun; I liked doing it.

This went on for a few weeks, and I would have to find a new quote every day. I started tracking them on a spreadsheet so that I wouldn't reuse the same quote twice, and then I just started collecting quotes from all kinds of places, books, magazines, the Internet, and I added them to the spreadsheet, putting future dates on them so that each day, I would just have to pull it up, and write the quote on the board. After doing this for a while, it started to get kind of hard to find new sources for the daily quote, so I started wondering if there were sources that I hadn't considered yet. And, this naturally led me to think about the Bible.

Now, Nationwide Medical was and is a very secular company in a very secular area, not unlike Marin, so I knew that I couldn't just throw Bible verses up on the board. I had to pave the way, make sure everyone was prepared for it so it wouldn't be a complete shock. So, I started looking at the texts of other religious traditions, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and so on. For some reason I thought that religions other than Christianity would be less threatening to the non-religious people of Nationwide Medical. I'd sneak a religious text onto the board about once a week, and then after about a month of that, I put up a verse from the Bible. I chose the Old Testament because 2 out of the 3 owners were Jewish and top of that, there were a lot of Jewish people working there, so I just thought it would go over better if I left the New Testament out of it, at least for now. And so I put the Bible verse up, and I held my breath. And at the end of the day, no one had said anything bad about it. So I thought, okay! I guess there was nothing to be worried about.

I got a little more brazen after that. I only waited about a week and a half before I put another Bible verse on the board. Again, nothing happened, and I thought everything was fine. But the next day, when I got to work, the office manager called me into her office, and asked me to close the door.

"I need to talk to you," she said.

"Okay," I replied, sitting down.

"We've gotten some complaints about the 'Quote of the day," she said.

"Really?" I asked. "What are people saying?"

"They're complaining about the Bible verses being put up on the board."

At first I thought she was kidding, because we did joke around with each other sometimes. But then, I realized she was serious. So, I started to defend myself.

"I'm not just putting Bible verses on the board," I said. "I put up quotes from Buddha and Mohammed, too, and the religious quotes that I put up aren't pushing any kind of religious beliefs, they just happen to come from religious text. And, I purposely used the Old Testament because those are the same texts that Jewish people use. And, the vast majority of the quotes are from secular sources, anyway."

"Well, people don't like it," she replied. "They don't want to have religion shoved in their faces when they come to work."

"But, I'm not shoving religion in anyone's face," I argued. "That's the whole reason I've been using lots of different religions. I'm not favoring one over the other."

"It would be fine if you were just putting this up on your desk," she said, "but those kinds of things can't be put up in front of the whole office."

"So, does that mean we're not having a quote of the day anymore?" I asked.

"No, the quote of the day is fine, you just can put up the religious stuff anymore."

I didn't feel like there was anything left for me to say at that point, so I just said, "Fine, I won't put up religious quotes anymore."

She smiled and nodded, and I got up and went back to my desk. For a brief time, I had been given the opportunity to be a source of enlightenment and truth for a small group of people. But, when I got too close to the truth, that opportunity was taken away.

Our New Testament reading today tells a similar story. 2 Corinthians is an interesting text, and there's a lot of debate about it. In fact, very few Biblical scholars believe that 2 Corinthians is a single letter. Most scholars believe it's actually multiple letters, somewhere between 2 and 6, that have been chopped up and rearranged into what we now call 2 Corinthians. The section that our reading is from today is known as Paul's First Apologia. In it, Paul is writing to defend himself from people who are trying to take over the church that he had established in Corinth.

See, it was around this time that the church was just starting to form, and there were 2 distinct factions. One group wanted to hold on to the old traditions, the purity code and the dietary laws. These were the rules that governed every aspect of life, what you could eat, what you were supposed to wear, the people you could associate with, all kinds of things. The other faction, the one where Paul was one of the most prominent leaders, believed that since it is only God's grace that saves us, the purity code was no longer a requirement for salvation, and new converts to the faith should not be forced to adhere to them.

The followers of Paul were being called imposters, unknown, dying, punished, sorrowful, poor, and having nothing. And so Paul argues with them. He says, "We are not imposters! We are true!" because they know the truth of God's saving grace. "We are not unknown!" he says. "We are known," because they are part of that community. "We are not dying!" he says. "We are alive!" because they live in the light of Christ. And even though they are being punished for who they are and what they believe, they are not killed, for God was with them. "We are not sorrowful!" he says. "We are always rejoicing!" because they know the joy of God's love. "We are not poor!" he says. "We make many rich!" for through their witness, they are storing riches in heaven. And they posses all that they need, because they have faith in Jesus Christ.

These men that were denouncing Paul were afraid of him. They feared him because he was too close to the truth and he was drawing people away from the traditions of their faction, the traditions that brought them comfort, the traditions that brought them power. These men were not ready to yield that power to a person they perceived as an outsider, someone who refused to tow the party line. And, the more people he was able to bring to his way of understanding, the less influence they had over the followers of Christ. This was a political battle. This was about power, who had it and who didn't. What Paul was teaching, what Jesus taught, was too radical. It changed everything, and it meant that they would have to give up control of their lives and their community to God. This was huge, to think that they were not in control of their destinies, and that other people besides those that looked like them and thought like them could be saved. It was too much, they couldn't handle it, and they refused to believe it. So they had to remove from power those who were trying to share that message.

But, Paul fought back. And, it wasn't easy, but eventually, he prevailed. Now, no one ever said being a Christian was easy. In fact it says right in the Bible that those who follow Christ will be persecuted. And, even though it seems like the ultra conservative religious right are the ones who are doing the persecuting through politics and the media, you have to wonder if it's only because they feel persecuted too, by a society that rejects the base message of what they are trying to share: that Jesus loves us, that God loves us. And so they lash out, drawing their communities in on themselves, and creating groups of "us" and "them." You are imposters. You are unknown. You are dying.

It's easier to follow a set of rules than it is to put our trust in God. And it's easier to be afraid, than it is to share the Good News when people don't want to hear it. After I talked to the office manager about the "Quote of the day," I got really sad. I felt like I was being persecuted for what I believed, for doing something that I thought was good and fair. But, then I realized that I have just as much of a right to not have atheism shoved in my face every day when I come to work, and a "Quote of the day" without equal representation is exactly that. And, so I went back to the office manager the next day and I stood up for myself, and I told her that it wasn't fair to exclude religious text just because some people don't want to see it. And, she agreed with me. But unfortunately, the only solution to the problem was to no longer have a "Quote of the day," and that was too bad, because by then, people had started looking forward to seeing it every day. And it could have been a good thing, a shared thing that didn't push religion, and didn't push atheism, but it was too close to the truth, and some people don't like that.

I like to think that I made some kind of difference working at Nationwide Medical. I didn't always feel comfortable sharing my faith with the people there, because I knew what a lot of them thought about it. I'll never understand why it's okay to question a person's sanity or intelligence because they are a person of faith, but that's the world that we live in. But, everyone there knew that I went to church every Sunday and that I lead the youth group there. And, they knew that the only reason I was going to school was so that I could get a degree that would get me into seminary. And, they knew that I wasn't stupid. They knew me; I was a part of that community, and they knew that I believed in God.

We don't have to beat people over the head with our faith, but it is important that people know that we do believe. We are the body of Christ; we are true, known, alive, rejoicing and rich. No one can hide that. We have to let the light of Christ shine from us so that the whole world can see it and be blessed by it. And, if we let that light shine brightly enough, it will remove any doubt as to who we are and who we belong to, for God is with us and God is in us. Let the world see it. Live for God, as Jesus lives for us. Amen.

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.

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.