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30 March 2008
2^nd Church of Newton
John 20:19-31
Rev. Dr. Howard Cassidy-Moffatt

Check Out the Anteater

             Good morning, really smart guy, here.  Thanks for that introduction, Richard.  Although my fear is that, by the time I get to the end of this, you’ll all be saying, “You know, he’s not so smart after all.”  We’ll just have to wait and see.

            Last summer, during a trip to Texas for Laura’s cousin’s wedding, we had the chance to stop at the Dallas Zoo.  While we were there, we got to see an Anteater.  I had never seen one in a zoo before.  Have you ever seen one?  They are quite unusual looking creatures—with long bushy tails and that incredible snout used for digging the ants out of the anthills—so they can, you know, eat the ants.  They are fairly shy creatures and I wonder how they feel about being stared at all day. 

Have you ever felt that way?  Uncomfortable about being stared at?  Being viewed as the oddest creature in the room?  I had that experience in a Harvard seminar room one time.  In the middle of a conversation about labels and the damaging and reductionist effect the process of labeling can have. 

During the course of that conversation, someone mentioned how “evangelicals tend to label other people.”  At that juncture, I came “out of the closet” as an evangelical.  I said to those in the seminar room that, well, I am an evangelical.  You should have seen the wide-eyed stares.  I decided that, for some people, being an evangelical is the theological and cultural equivalent of an Anteater—so, go ahead and stare if you want, I’ve become used to it.

            All that is a prelude to say that Richard and I have had several stimulating conversations revolving around our perspectives about issues of Christian faith.  I have especially appreciated his clear teaching that we can’t fully know or appreciate commonalities of faith without embracing the particularities of our various faith perspectives.

I think that idea is a recognition that a “particular” message is characteristic of most religions.  In fact, as a teacher of world religions, I would go so far as to say that even the apparently “non-particular” religions are really saying that “non-particularity” is their particularity.

This morning I thought I might try to perhaps dispel some of the myths about us odd, evangelical creatures and enable continued healthy dialogue…or at least give you glimpse at this one particular anteater.

My hope is to always “Speak truth in love” (as Paul says in the Book of Ephesians):  I don’t have all of the truth by any means, but I endeavor to live and speak that truth we have.  I don’t presume to be the sole custodian of truth; I realize (with biblical rationale) that, as St. Augustine said, “all truth is God’s truth.”

So, what are the Evangelical particularities?  There are the obvious ones:  we’re all remarkably good looking, incredibly wise, profoundly compassionate, and possess phenomenal athletic prowess.  Well…maybe not all of us.

            I would like to focus on the main things that identify Evangelicals, at least from where I sit.

            The most basic evangelical affirmation is personal faith in the life and work of Jesus Christ.  That affirmation is inextricably coupled with submission to the Lordship of Christ.  The Jesus we see is not just some wise, moral teacher, nor even some extraordinary personal exemplar.  C.S. Lewis, the prolific Christian thinker and writer (and author of the Narnia series) observed that Jesus could not be just some clever fellow or even a profoundly influential religious wise man.  Lewis insisted, and most evangelicals would agree, that a person who said the things Jesus said would have to be either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord that the Scriptures present him to be.

            Toward the end of today’s Gospel passage, in response to his encounter with the Resurrected Christ, Thomas says, “My Lord and My God”; I am convinced that any encounter with the living Christ will elicit at least consideration of this kind of life response.  And, like Thomas, Evangelicals see themselves under authority--Jesus is God and Lord.  We see our life and our decisions through the lens of biblical teachings…through the grid of biblical truth.  Now, let me be quick to say that we, or at least I, often fail in the execution of that response.  Mark Twain said it well when he observed that it “ain’t the things in Bible that I don’t understand that trouble me; it’s the things I do understand.”

            And that notion of biblical truth leads to the second basic Evangelical understanding:  the idea of biblical authority or perhaps better stated, taking the Bible as it presents itself.  We affirm that Jesus is who He said He is based on the evidence packed into Scripture.  This is not some blind leap of faith, but a carefully informed step of faith that is, in some ways, similar to Thomas’ experience.  We don’t get to see the physical wounds Jesus suffered during his crucifixion.  Instead we have reliable record of those who did--an accurate, trustworthy record based on several elements of confidence.

            Now, I hope that you will forgive me for being slightly technical at this juncture.  I am afraid that sounding somewhat academic is a bit of an occupational hazard.  But it is important to note that evangelical confidence in the Bible is based on sound study of the nature and meaning of the biblical texts.

            One of the issues about the Bible is the age of the manuscripts (early copies of the original text) of the biblical material.  Let me see if I can illustrate this point with some comparative analysis.

In Julius Caesar's history of the Gallic War, the events Caesar writes about took place between 100 and 44 B.C. The earliest manuscript (copy) we have of Caesar's Gallic Wars is dated 900 A.D.  So, approximately 1000 years passed between the time of Caesar’s writing and the copies upon which we rely to say, “Caesar said this or that.”

That’s just one example of most ancient writings and the relationship between the age of the ideas written about and the relative recent age of the writings upon which our confidence in the ideas expressed is based.

But if you were to go to Manchester University library in the United Kingdom, you would find part of the Gospel of John that is dated not 1,000 years after John wrote, not 900 years; not 800 years, like Pliny; not 800 years like Suetonius; not 1500 years like Euripides; not even 400 years; not 300 years; not 200 years, but 40 years after John wrote the gospel, the historical record of Jesus' life. There is a piece of manuscript in the University Library at Manchester from the Gospel of John, dated 130 A.D.

            In addition to the incredible recent age of the manuscripts for the Bible; there is an added factor related to the quantity of manuscripts available for comparative analysis.  There exist over 4000 manuscripts, ranging from fragments to whole portions of the New Testament alone.  The result is that you can compare and contrast the message…you can look for inconsistencies…you can ferret out later emendations and creative commentary.  When that hard work is done, we discover that the New Testament manuscript base is remarkably consistent.  Less than one-half of a page of the New Testament (in its original languages) is in question.  And--no major question of theology or belief is in question.  This attests to the quality of the evidence about the life, work, and message of Jesus.  Those who reported on the Jesus they encountered were bound to accuracy and truthfulness and the evidence they recorded has withstood unparalleled scrutiny.  Not everybody agrees with the message they report, but only the seemingly uninformed (or those with an agenda) question the remarkable manuscript attestation of the New Testament.

I have done all the studies required to understand the issues associated with the questions about the Bible (in the original languages); I’ve evaluated the historical reliability of Gospels; I’ve worked through all the assertions of those who attempt to deconstruct the New Testament.  I have found their conclusions and their methods presupposed and shaky at best.

            With respect to the interpretation of the information in the Bible, here are a couple of points upon which we evangelicals rely.  The first is that we don’t make the Bible into allegory.   Certainly there is a richness and depth and beauty to Scripture that often take multiple readings to enjoy.  And there is power in even familiar Scriptures’ capacity to bring new delight with each reading.  But we try to study history and languages and the culture of times in which the Bible was written in order to make dependable application to our day and time.  That means we interpret and apply the Bible in a straightforward manner (operating under the conviction that it can’t mean something for us today that it didn’t mean for the original hearers--application of Bible ideas might look differently in the 21^st Century, but the essential ideas remain intact.

            I have lived out West and have seen many different kinds of mining operations including surface mining and deep shaft mining.  In each case, the object was to dig deeper for richer ore of the same kind--the miners didn’t expect to dig deeper for gold and stumble across bananas. 

            One final thing is, I think, worth mentioning with respect to the issue of biblical reliability.  That is the relationship between the Bible and science and resolution of apparent difficulties in that relationship.  I don’t embrace what I view to be bit of an intellectual copout that says science and religion are speaking to different realms of reality.  We could spend hours on this but then you’d miss coffee hour (or maybe leave me here alone and go enjoy coffee hour).  Let me say just couple of things…

            I have a friend, an astronaut named Bob Stewart (an actual rocket scientist).  We a have picture in our home that he took from space shuttle--he flew twice.  Bob liked to call the created order God’s 67^th book.  What I try to do is work to reconcile the two (Created order and Revelation).  I prefer to work at and hear hard answers to tough questions rather than squeeze God down to fit my own preferences, preconceived notions, or comfort zone.  You perhaps saw the movie, “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids”; I don’t want to star in a spin off with a title like, “Honey, I Shrunk God.”

The bottom line from all of this consideration of the Bible is that Evangelicals do believe God is still speaking and that he is speaking most powerfully through his trustworthy and reliable Word.

            And from that Word we also get the third Evangelical emphasis.  It’s an emphasis we would call the “missions mandate”…the biblical responsibility and privilege of sharing the Good News (which is what “gospel” means) about Jesus’ life, work, and message.

            From Jesus’ first instruction given to the women at the tomb to “go and tell” that Richard shared from the Gospel resurrection accounts (last Sunday)--through the passage in Matthew 28 called “The Great Commission” wherein followers of Jesus are ordained to the task of sharing Christ’s story, His teachings, and His ethical expectations, to the witness and work of the Church Universal today, to the “so I send you” packed into today’s Gospel passage, Evangelicals embrace the biblical notion that the news about Jesus is Good News (the best news) and worth the effort to share it

Yes the Gospel is God’s message for the whole of humanity (attending to body, mind, and spirit) and yes, Evangelicals have oftentimes not been holistic in their sharing of the message of Christ, but the mandate to share that message is unmistakable in the New Testament, and it is a mandate one that my Evangelical brethren and “sisteren” continue to take seriously.

            It’s a mandate that has taken me from the inner city of Vancouver to the arid plateaus of the Navajo nation reservations of Arizona and New Mexico and to the cities, villages, and bush country of Zambia in Africa.  And here’s what I have found:  people hungry for food, aching for shelter, in need of medicine and clean water (and Christians should be engaged in helping with all of that) but I have also found them hungrier for transformative power of Gospel of Christ. 

I can vividly recall Samuel, a Zambian man who was about 28 or 30 years old walking for four hours in the rain (an African rainy season downpour), sitting through 10 hours of Christian leadership development, and begging for more.  He was always hungry (and we fed him); he lived in a typical bush village straw-roofed home (and we helped him find the supplies to build a more sturdy structure); he was caring for two nephews whose parents had died from AIDS (and we helped him get schooling and medical treatment for his young charges); but he was most invested in the graciousness of God in Christ and Samuel could not get enough of that spiritual nourishment. 

I know that there are, and have been, many, many Evangelical downsides.

There has been a perceived anti-intellectual heritage of fundamentalism (which is not same as evangelicalism, but which often affects the way people view evangelicalism).

            There has often been the worst kind of judgmentalism which comes off as evangelicals having and living less grace than that which is advertised in the life and work of Jesus.  I have been on the receiving end of that; I know how painful it is.  I am sorry for the hurt that some in the evangelical community have inflicted upon those with whom they disagree.

There has been insistence at the expense of winsomeness; a recurring failure to speak the truth (as we know it) in love.  And I am deeply sorry about that.  But I am still convinced that this great news of God at work in Christ is worth the effort to converse, even if it’s with a somewhat funny looking anteater.

            On the bulletin cover today is a quote from that sage of the ages, Woody Allen.  He says, "If only God would give me some clear sign!  Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss Bank."  That’s a sign I could get behind as well.  But Evangelicals like me do think God gave us a sign:  the life, work, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ.

Thomas doubted, then believed (embraced Jesus as Lord and God), then heard Jesus say, “I’m sending you.”  That’s a set of propositions this funny-looking anteater can get behind.

Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
June 22, 2008

Anytime we react to behavior in our children that we dislike in ourselves, we need to proceed with extreme caution. The dynamics of everyday family life also have a way of repeating themselves.

―Cathy Rindner Tempelsman

Scripture Lessons:
Genesis 21:8-21
Matthew 10:24-39

Searching for Family Values in the Bible

Do you ever wonder if maybe some of these families in the Bible could have benefited from a little professional counseling?  Every family has its quirks and its foibles.  Family function and dysfunction are a continuum.  It would be extremely rare for any family to be entirely dysfunctional, and no family is perfect.  The family I grew up in and the one I am involved in raising are certainly far from perfect.  Yet  I managed to survive my upbringing and Jane and I are doing okay… I think.  The crew in this morning’s reading from Genesis makes us look like Leave it to Beaver!

Try to imagine Abraham and his family (as we know them from the Bible), but in a modern therapist’s office for some family counseling.  Picture Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac sitting around a comfortable office, seated on couches, armchairs.  Two young men, one a teen the other is bigger with the beginnings of a beard.  They resemble one another, but the older one has a darker complexion.  The darker of the two women, neatly and simply dressed, sits straight up with a proud tilt to her jaw.  Ishmael and Hagar sit next to each other on chairs.  Ishmael mirrors his mother’s posture and looks around the room and sizes it up.  He is confident, yet cautious.  Sarah sits between Abraham and Isaac on a sofa.  Their fine clothes reflect their wealth.  Isaac, in his late teens, is sullen, and slouches away from his parents.  Abraham also surveys the room, quietly.  Sarah sits with her arms crossed, eyeing the doctor with some suspicion.

Imagine that they had come together for the first time since Hagar and Ishmael had been sent into the wilderness, exiled from the camp that had been their home.  The doctor had asked about the last time they had all been together.  With clipped words and a carefully controlled voice, Hagar recounted taking her son away from the camp, running out of water, hearing him cry and fearing for his life.

“Abraham?”  The therapist asks in a professionally moderated tone, trying his best not to sound judgmental, “Abraham, why did you send Hagar and Ishmael away from the camp?”

Glancing at all the faces looking at him, Abraham considered his words carefully and answered, “Sarah insisted.”

“Sarah?”  The therapist turns to her and prompts, “Why would you insist that Abraham send Hagar and Ishmael from the camp?”

“The boy Ishmael was a bad influence on Isaac, and I could no longer abide having my husband’s concubine sashaying around and showing me disrespect.”

The therapist would suggest, “Certainly you know that the wilderness is a dangerous place for a woman alone with a child.”  Sarah looks off at nothing in particular and shrugs.  The therapist tries a different track.  “Perhaps if you were worried about the influence on Isaac, he should have spent some time on his own with his father.”  Sarah and Isaac both shift nervously and glance at one another.  The therapist offers, “Maybe Isaac and his dad could go camping or something…”

“I am NOT going camping with HIM!” Isaac shoots back with angry conviction.  The therapist is a little startled by Isaac’s vehemence.  He knows he has hit a nerve, so he follows up.

“Isaac, it sounds like you have some pretty strong feelings about this.  Why don’t you want to go camping with your dad?”

Isaac glares at the therapist, not sure whether to take him as a clueless fool, or respond to the question at face value.  He chooses a middle course and starts in with a facetious tone, “Oh, I don’t know.  Maybe it has something to do with the last time we took a hike up Mount Moriah.  ‘We’ll take the donkey,’ he says.  ‘We’ll have a few servants go along,’ he says.  ‘We’ll make a sacrifice to the Lord.’  I asked him where is the sacrifice, and he tells me ‘The Lord will provide the sacrifice.’”

Isaac stops for a moment and looks over at Abraham.  Sarah smirks at the old man’s discomfort.  The therapist senses that something is up, but can’t quite read the situation, so he puts in, “That sounds like a nice trip Isaac.”

Now, dripping with sarcasm, Isaac says, “Oh yeah, it was great right up until he tied me up, put me on an altar and got ready to cut me open.  I was supposed to be the sacrifice!”  They all looked at Abraham. 

After a long, pregnant pause, Abraham exclaimed, “What!?  God told me to do it!”  Ishmael looked sympathetically at his young half-brother.  The two of them would eventually have a relationship on their own terms.  They would, one day mourn the death of their father, side-by-side.  From what I heard, this was the last family counseling session for that therapist.  He sold his practice, retired early and opened a pottery studio.  

It always amuses me when I hear people talk reverentially about biblical family values.  It makes me wonder if they ever read the Bible.  Are we talking about the family value of having concubines or child abandonment as described in Genesis?  What are the implicit family values Jesus was talking about when he said, “…I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.  Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me…” (Matthew 10:35-37)

Those are all very jarring statements, but even in the light of the Hagar and Ishmael narrative, we would be hard pressed to say that the Bible is anti-family.  We can say that the Bible is complicated.  When we find unflattering details of human relationships contained in the Bible, we see honest, unflinching human realism.  When I hear Jesus say, “Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me” I have to remind myself that he was utterly devoted to his mother.  While dying on the cross, in John’s account of the crucifixion, Jesus made sure that one of his disciples would care for his mother. (John 19:26-27)  Long after the crucifixion, Jesus’ brother James remained devoted to Jesus’ ministry and was ultimately martyred for the cause.  That speaks volumes about their relationship.  Jesus taught us to pray to God as Abba, which is the Hebrew and Aramaic equivalent of Daddy.  One can only assume Joseph was a tender and nurturing parent.  As a religious teacher, Jesus found the language and experience of family informative and revelatory.

Jesus knew, and it is a consistent strain in his teaching, that human beings are capable of ruining anything good by becoming fixated on it.  He knew that the Sabbath is good, but when you think it is wrong to heal a suffering human being on it, you’ve lost your perspective. (Matthew 12:9-13; Mark 3:1-5; Luke 6:6-11)  He reminded us that the Sabbath was created for human beings, not the other way around. (Mark 2:27)  Think about any good thing in life, and you can think of ways that people can become obsessed and make it a problem.  We need food to sustain life, and yet eating disorders are a huge problem in our society, from anorexia and bulimia, to rampant obesity.  Sex perpetuates life and provides blessed joy and intimacy within marriage, but our culture is obsessed by it and turned it into a crass marketing strategy to manipulate us into buying all manner of products, not to mention the scourge of pornography and the sex trade.  Work is good, but we were meant to work to live, not live to work, which brings us back to the importance of having a Sabbath.

Family is perhaps first among all of these good things.  Our families should nurture us and sustain us, and provide grounding to engage the world.  But our families should not isolate us or become ends in themselves.  A family must be a living, organic and dynamic entity with flexible boundaries, defined by security and hospitality.  In a sense, a family functions toward its own dissolution, raising children to move out into the world, to make their way and start their own family.  This is not to say that as grown children we do not have responsibility for our parents and elders.   

At every wedding rehearsal, I always tell the gathered families and friends that they have to prepare for the couples’ relationship with everyone there to change, as the wedding couple commits themselves to a shared life together.  At the wedding, I remind the couple not to lose their individuality in their new relationship because that could threaten their marriage.  I also remind them that by getting married they are uniting the two families that raised each of them, even as they begin a new family of their own.

I said earlier that the Bible is complicated, and that is because life is complicated.  That is a good thing.  Life and religion are all about relationships.  Religion helps us find balance, sanctify every aspect of our life, and in that balance we discover wholeness.  We gain our first understanding of relationships in our families.  But Jesus did not stop there.  If our sole understanding and only source of relationship is the family, then there is no community.  Jesus wants us to know love in our families so that we can know God as our parent.  Then we discover our relatedness to the whole of humanity and all of creation is one family, to which we owe love and service in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
June 15, 2008

Laughter and tears may not persuade, but they cannot be refuted.

―Mason Cooley

Scripture Lessons:
Genesis 18:1-15
Matthew 9:35-10:8

Sarah Laughed

I wonder how she laughed.  When Sarah laughed at God, what kind of laugh was it?  Somehow I don’t hear it as lighthearted giggle.  I think it might have been a more rueful laugh than that, the chuckle of someone accustomed to being disappointed.  One of those times when you choose to laugh instead of cry.  Perhaps she was simply aghast at the suggestion that she a post-menopausal, childless woman would conceive and bear a child.  The passage is quite specific about her fertility, saying, “…it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.” (Genesis 18:11)  Sarah’s laughter is the voice of experience that tends to guard against hope.  Her laugh says, somewhat sarcastically, “yeah, right.”  We’ve all heard it and we’ve all said it.  She had known more than a little disappointment in a long and rugged life of nomadic wanderings in a patriarchal world where, should she end up a childless widow, she would be at the mercy of whatever relative or servant inherited her husband’s wealth.  Even her own husband Abraham disappointed when he instructed her, his beautiful bride, to say she was his sister when powerful kings took an interest in her.  Sarah had yet to see that expectations born of human experience do not necessarily match what is possible for God. 

This story is an account of a miraculous occurrence, an encounter with the supernatural in real time.  It must have been the sudden appearance of the visitors that alerted Abraham that he was in the presence of the sacred.  We know that he was sitting in the doorway of his tent and would have likely seen a stranger coming from a great distance.  Either that or a servant would have announced the approach of an unexpected visitor.  Nothing is said about what they looked like to alert us to anything extraordinary, except for Abraham’s reaction and clear certainty that he was in the presence of God.  We would call these messengers angels, and commentators throughout the centuries have.  And yet Abraham treated them as if he were in the presence of God, and offered generous hospitality.

There is an interesting detail to the meal he offered.  Abraham selected a calf, “tender and young” for his servants to prepare.  Perhaps this is foreshadowing of the Binding of Isaac.  Could it be this tender young calf that Jesus referenced in the parable of the Prodigal Son, when a father celebrated the once-lost son’s return?  The third century Christian theologian, Origen of Alexandria, thinks it was, writing in one of his homilies on Genesis, “He is the fatted calf, which the father slaughtered to receive his repentant son.” 

In any case the meal Abraham set before his supernatural guests is remarkable in yet another detail.  Did you notice that Abraham served up milk and curds with the calf?  (Genesis 18:8)  You might not have noticed it, but what is going on here is that the patriarch of the whole Jewish people is serving the angels of God an un-Kosher meal.  Dietary laws prohibit serving any dairy with any meat, and this is about as un-Kosher as it gets, serving milk and curds with calf.  Exodus (34:26b) states, “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk” which is the basis of not mixing meat and dairy.  In the narrative chronology, Abraham’s luncheon precedes this directive that came later from Sinai, and I think we can assume that this story comes from a fairly old oral tradition that was more concerned with the richness of the offering given in generous hospitality.  But the Rabbis of the Talmud were still bothered by it.  They sidestepped the issue by saying that angels would not have actually eaten, but only appeared to be eating.  (BT BM 26b)

Now, as twenty-first century liberal Protestants we don’t often concern ourselves with dietary laws of ritual purity.  In fact, I would be surprised if many of you caught that detail about the food.  But I raise it out of more than just biblical trivia.  I bring it up because it is an issue that Jesus and his disciples would have concerned themselves with.  In fact, what I suspect caught your attention from the Gospel Lesson, was how insistent Jesus was about the disciples devoting themselves only with other Jews.  He was quite clear, saying, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  (Matthew 10:5b-6)

There are different ways of reading that passage, and I’ll start with the least flattering.  One could read Matthew’s account of Jesus’ commission to his disciples to go only to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel” as setting up the doctrine of Supercessionism.  That is to say that the Gospel was offered first to the Jews, who rejected it, so that the more universalist New Covenant offered in Christ, supersedes and invalidates God’s everlasting covenant with Abraham and his descendents.  There are other hints of that theology in the New Testament, such as the statement at the beginning of the Gospel According to John, “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.  But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God…” (John 1:11-12)

But I don’t think that you have to go there, to use Jesus’ focus on his community of origin against that very community.  In fact, when Jesus called his disciples and until well after his crucifixion, the vast majority of the people who accepted his teaching were Jews.  It was not until later that this Jewish movement became a distinct religion that was made up mostly of gentiles.  Further, we have to be careful, given the troubled history of what has come to be called the Common Era.  We have to be careful about making claims about the relationships God chooses and rejects.  The history of the Common Era has shown that our claims of theological superiority relative to the Jews have led to some ugly and horrific chapters. 

Also, if we base the assertion of our own theological relevance on the idea that God breaks promises, we should ask ourselves what the ultimate value and meaning of faith is.  Happily, Christians increasingly reject the whole notion of Supercessionism, and affirm the enduring validity of God’s Covenant with the Jews.  The General Synod of the United Church of Christ did so in 1987, and Pope John Paul II articulated a similar position.

Given that, what we see in the Gospel Lesson is Jesus’ desire to address the needs of his own troubled and oppressed community, those near and dear to him.  Listen how Matthew described Jesus’ feelings toward the people to whom he ministered:  “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matthew 9:36)  And when Jesus commissioned his disciples, he instructed them to heal diseases and cast out demons.  You might say that he set health care as a priority, but what do we moderns make of these demons?  Exorcism can be taken as literally or as symbolically as you like.  I have spoken to a former medical missionary who witnessed a shaman practicing a traditional exorcism in Africa.  This doctor* was convinced that the exorcism served the patient well. 

But we are all capable of exorcism in simpler ways.  We are all capable of confronting evil, and calling it by name.  The first step in gaining power over demonic forces is calling them by name: racism, addiction, exploitation.  When demons go un-named and unchallenged, they often grow more powerful and more subtle.  I will be meeting with a group of clergy later this week, at the urging of one of our city leaders, who wants the Newton Clergy to see if we can find a way to reestablish a more civil discourse in the aftermath of the somewhat bruising and at times ugly override election.  Now that the vote is over we still have to live with one another.  We need to heal our community and stop demonizing one another. 

It is sad that the divisive and polarized political discourse that has afflicted our country for the past few election cycles has affected us here.  But, we do not have to accept it as a permanent reality in our city, or in our country.  By acting faithfully, we can dare to hope in the miracles God works through faithful people.  We can disagree without being disagreeable.  We can differ on matters of substance without abandoning mutual respect.  We start small.  We start with our faith communities, affirming the image of God in one another, and we let those ripples spread.  God gives us to one another because we need one another.  In worship we nurture the visions of the goodness God intends and we gather strength to make known the love of God in concrete works of love and justice, in a world without end.  Amen.

*Dr. Frank Donaldson, a member of Second Church, served as a medical missionary in Zimbabwe.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
June 1, 2008

I found that if we belong to life itself, we are never lost, for life is our home -the world is our home.  By the gift of our lives, we are accepted, included and loved by life itself.  We are found –saved by love– whether we acknowledge it or not.  If we belong to life, we are never lost.  Conversely, if we belong only to ourselves, then we are always lost. 

―Kit Howell

From Little Victories: Tales from a World Without End

Scripture Lessons:
Genesis 6:9-22
Matthew 7:21-29

Love and Judgment

I have probably said it before when we read the story of the flood, or maybe I just think it every time I read it.  Noah’s story begins with one of the most stunning left-handed compliments of all time, of biblical proportions, you might say.  “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.”  (Genesis 6:10)  That phrase, “blameless in his generation” is the kicker.  Noah’s generation is described as “…corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence.”  This was a generation that God saw fit to wipe out and start over again with the best material on hand.  Rabbinical commentators make much of that fact that when God voiced the intention to wipe out the vast majority of life on the planet, Noah did not argue with God on behalf of the rest of humanity.  As we see later in the book of Genesis, Abraham argued and bargained with God on behalf of the doomed inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah.  That, the Rabbis say, is why God established a covenant with Abraham and his offspring and not with Noah.  Noah, it could be argued, was simply the best of the worst.

And yet, should we be so hard on Noah?  Noah, after all, is not the one who wiped out all but a remnant of life on earth.  God did that.  This is the same God that, we like to say, is love.  This is the same God whose steadfast love endures forever as the Hebrew Bible proclaims.  This is the God whom the New Testament tells us, “…so loved the world.” (John 3:16)  The Noah story is really troubling in that it is a stunning example of God’s judgment and God’s violent retribution.  It is not the side of God most of us like to think about very often.  It is not an aspect of God many of us have in mind when we open our hearts to God in prayer at dark moments of our lives or when we ask God’s blessing on a meal.  Most of us want to think of the God whose perfect love casts out all fear.  We don’t want to live in fear of an angry, judgmental or wrathful God.

This year, early on in our monthly Adult Bible Study, we got hung up on the whole notion of the “Fear of the Lord.”  I was talking about the phenomenon of gentiles who were drawn to Judaism, early in the Common Era.  They embraced the ardent monotheism and the ethical rigor of Judaism, attended the synagogues, without making the commitment of formal conversion.  They are mentioned in Acts, and by the historian Josephus.  They are often referred to as “God Fearers,” a term I used in our Bible study session, which sent our discussion off and running about the whole notion of the “Fear of God.”  People didn’t like the idea of fearing God, however ancient and biblical a concept it is. 

I don’t think that sentiment is unusual for modern, mainline Christians like us.  We want to focus on God’s love.  Life in the real world is scary enough.  We want a loving God to rely on to get us through the day.  But of course, if God is God, it really is not up to us.  God, our creator and sustainer from all eternity without end, is going to be complicated.  Yes, we often wish life was simpler, but do we really want a simple God?  Christians are often tempted to differentiate between the God we meet in the Old Testament and the New Testament as if God could be “new and improved” like a brand of dishwasher detergent.  I often hear people say the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath, and the God of the New Testament is a God of love.  

There are a few problems with that.  Last I checked, Christians are in fact monotheists.  That means you can’t have different gods for different parts of the Bible.  Also, the whole of the Bible, both testaments are held to be authoritative and informative for the Christian faith.  Of the whole Bible, the New Testament is only about one-fifth of the content.  A Christian faith without the Hebrew scriptures is not really the Christian faith. 

To be fair, Christians are not the only ones who indulge in the oversimplified characterization of the Old Testament god of wrath and New Testament god of love.  I recently heard a Jewish comedian named Lewis Black say that it seemed like God had learned anger management somewhere between the Old and New Testaments.  Perhaps the biggest problems with that characterization is that it ignores all the wrath and divine judgment described in the New Testament, and the all the divine love and tenderness that is expressed throughout the Hebrew Bible. 

Did you ever read the Song of Songs?  It is one of the shortest books in the Bible, and it is one of only two that does not once mention God.  It is an eight-chapter erotic love poem, a dialogue between bride and groom.  Because the passion is so poetically and vividly rendered, it has been read allegorically as sacred literature by both Jews and Christians for centuries.  Jews read God’s love for Israel and Christians see it as a metaphor for Christ’s love for the church (often called Christ’s bride).

In the morning’s Gospel Lesson we see that the Good News is not without some caveats.  We are offered salvation, but the offer requires some effort on our part.  Jesus warned, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”  (Matthew 7:21)  In the end, we have a responsibility to act on our beliefs, to live lives in accordance with God’s intentions for us. 

Ultimately, we are judged for what we do, and that is an element of biblical theology that continues to be expressed in the practice of both Judaism and Christianity.  The High Holiday liturgy includes the statement: “On Rosh Hashanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed.”  Traditional Christian faith statements like the Apostles Creed state unambiguously that Christ, “…will come again to judge the living and the dead.”

But the good news in all this is that God’s judgment is tempered by God’s love and God’s mercy.  That is why the parental metaphor for God is so informative; a parent must sometimes be a disciplinarian, but within the context of a loving relationship.  We are accountable for our actions, but by the grace of God, we have abundant opportunities to try again to get it right.  Often, we have an opportunity to make right what we have done wrong.  The whole story of scripture, from Genesis to Revelation is the story of falling short and trying again.  God sent prophets to Israel to call them back to their covenantal relationship, and Jesus described himself as a shepherd in search of lost sheep.  He taught us to love and forgive one another.

I cannot shake the poignancy of the story of the flood in Genesis at a time when we finally seem to be waking up to global climate change.  Our patterns of consumption are bringing us to a tipping point.  But there are things we can do, and I have seen encouraging signs.  Recycling has become commonplace.  People are thinking about the environmental impact of the foods they eat, and they are starting to bring their own reusable bags to the store.  Use of public transportation is up.  Though it is painful at the pump, if it leads us to more efficient cars and less driving, perhaps the rising price of gasoline is a blessing in disguise.

Today we awarded scholarships and honored graduating high school seniors from our congregation.  They are our hope and our judgment, as well as our reason to keep trying to get it right as they prepare to assume responsibility and leadership.  The other day I was listening to the radio and I heard some folk singer say that when young people hear themselves called “our greatest natural resource” they should run, considering what we have done with all the rest of our natural resources. 

But as these seniors stand on the threshold of graduation, ready to take on an exciting new stage of their lives, I would not call them natural resources.  They, like all of us, are supernatural resources, created in the image of God.  They are spiritual beings of living flesh and blood, knitted into a web of relationships and part of the fabric of creation.  We offer them our blessings, hold them in our prayers and bid them Godspeed as we send them on their way with our love and our prayers, as we trust them to their own judgment as they make their way in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
May 25, 2008

Man cannot live without a permanent trust in something indestructible in himself, though both the indestructible element and the trust may remain permanently hidden from him. One of the ways in which this hiddenness can express itself is through faith in a personal god.                           

―Franz Kafka

Mistrust makes life difficult. Trust makes it risky.

―Mason Cooley (b. 1927), U.S. aphorist.

Scripture Lessons:
Isaiah 49:8-16a
Matthew 6:24-34

Radical Trust

Do you ever find yourself trying to argue with Jesus?   Actually, I hope you do on a regular basis.  If you argue with Jesus, it means you are engaged with the substance of his teachings, probably in an emotionally invested way.  It means you take the Bible seriously.  The New Testament portrays a number of occasions when Jesus expressed great affection for people who argued with him.  There is the story of a rich young man who came to Jesus and pressed him to say what he really must do for salvation.  The text tells us that Jesus loved him. (Mark 10:21)  Jesus challenged the man to sell all his possessions, give the proceeds to the poor and become a disciple, which he could not bring himself to do.  The Syrophoencian woman, whose daughter Jesus initially declined to heal, contradicted Jesus.  Jesus then agreed with her and healed the girl.  Chuck Carlson, my New Testament professor at Andover Newton called that instance the only argument Jesus ever lost.  (Mark 7:29; Matthew 15:28)

And why wouldn’t we argue with Jesus?  I mean, where does he get this stuff?  “…do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.  Is life not more than food, and the body more than clothing?”  (Matthew 6:25)  Obviously, Jesus was not recommending starvation and nudism, at least that does not seem to be the cue his disciples and the early Church picked up on.  Neither would it be practical advice.  Jesus clearly did not have a mortgage.  Jesus, despite various conspiracy theories, did not have a spouse or children.  He had a trade but for most of the gospels seems to have changed careers.  What did Jesus know about the credit crisis?  What did Jesus know about health care reform?  What did Jesus know about international economics, global terrorism or international relations?  He was speaking 2000 years ago.

Actually, the historical Jesus lived at the business end of a huge and ruthless empire that occupied his country.  Rome brought some advantages like roads, aqueducts, and civil order of a sort, but that order was not tolerant of dissent.  Any hint of rebellion was put down with speed and severity.  Rome’s brand of law and order inspired violent resistance by various local groups such as the Zealots.  International commerce in Jesus’ day was perhaps not global, but it was far-reaching, spanning continents.  Galilee was at the very crossroads of trade routes, evidenced by the various people Jesus came into contact with throughout his ministry. 

As far as credit crisis goes, that’s nothing new.  The lending of money is recorded and regulated throughout the Bible, going all the way back to the five books of Moses, or Torah.  Jesus was certainly familiar with unscrupulous lenders, and spoke about them.  His lesson about giving your shirt when your cloak is asked of you refers to the practice of using a cloak as security for a loan.  Both Exodus (22:25-27) and Deuteronomy (24:10-13, 17) regulate this practice by allowing the debtor to reclaim the cloak to sleep in at night.  According to eminent New Testament scholar Walter Wink, when we read shirt, it really means, give your creditor your underwear and shame him by the sight of your nakedness.  It should be noted that both Exodus and Deuteronomy prohibit the creditor from taking the garment in pledge in any kind of humiliating manner.  Jesus’ teaching does not prohibit the practice itself, but teaches the debtor a non-violent means of protest when the creditor does not meet the obligation to treat the debtor with respect as required by the Torah.

Yes, Jesus lived a long time ago.  Technology and communications were not what they are today.  But I do not really believe life was all that different, because all the elements of life were pretty much in place.  Yes, with cell phones, internet, airplanes and cars life is faster, many tasks are quicker and easier, but I don’t think that means that life is really that different.  We move faster.  We make more noise.  But, I often think that technology has amplified life way more than it has fundamentally changed it.  So, we get our gossip on the internet or on TV instead of while we draw water at a communal well or at a village marketplace.  In the last 2000 years, life has not changed that much because, in the last 2000 years, human beings have not changed very much.  That is not to say the amplification technology brings has not come at a cost, psychically and spiritually.  Isn’t the idea of technology to spare us labor?  Instead, with communications technology being what it is, it is harder and harder to disengage from our work and just be.  We see it in our home lives, and it affects our life as a church.

And yet, even in a world without technology, a world that was slower, Jesus recognized that stress and anxiety took a toll.  He asked, “Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” (Matthew 6:27)  That question comes just as Jesus redirected his disciples’ attention from the frenzied existence of making a living to the innate elegance of the natural order.  “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed as one of these.”  (Matthew 6:28b-29)  This teaching is beautifully and elegantly stated.  He is talking about a kind of radical trust in God to provide.  After all, we are in God’s hands, whether we recognize it or not.  But I have to wonder, are human beings capable of that kind of radical trust, or do you have to be vegetation, like the lily?

The whole discussion began with Jesus’ stark warning, “No one can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and wealth.”  (Matthew 6:24)  This is really tough and hits us right where we live, as a church in a wealthy nation in an affluent suburb.  Probably at this moment, in a recession with gas prices pushing $4 a gallon and grocery prices rising, we may not feel that affluent.  But in a world where billions of people are forced to exist on a dollar a day or less, we have to recognize that we have it pretty good.  But to recognize that we are fortunate should not be another source of anxiety.  We should simply be grateful for and responsible with what God has entrusted to us.

We should recognize, too, that having wealth does not preclude serving God.  In fact, Jesus and the disciples were dependent on wealthy supporters like Mary Magdalene, who funded their ministry.  The important thing is to serve God with what God has given: time, talent and treasure.  Material wealth can be a means of serving God, or it can be a hindrance, as it was for the rich young man Jesus loved.  As a church we are all needed to give proportionally to fund the expenses of this ministry.  But giving time and talent is important, too.  By our baptism, each of us is a  minister, and we lose something if we don’t take on a ministry.  I say this fully recognizing that I have it easier than you.  Ministry is my job.  In a sense, I am the designated practitioner and I stand in awe of the devoted service of so many of you ministering above and beyond your day jobs.

The Board of Christian Education, for most of the years that I have been here, have become the Christian Education faculty.  And while they would not teach if they did not enjoy it, they would like to be with us in worship more often.  If more of us took part in the teaching, we would not run the risk of burning out a small group of devoted teachers.  If more of us taught, more of us would deepen our relationship with the children of this church.  We would become the village that is needed to raise our children.  I am confident that, in the end, by offering such service we will open ourselves to one of those beautiful paradoxes of spiritual life and sacred community:  what may at first seem like a burden becomes a blessing.  The more we dig in and serve God together by serving one another, we come to know what Jesus meant by Abundant Life through the joys of fellowship and shared commitment.

When I talk about time, talent, and treasure, it is not as if they are entirely different things.  Time is perhaps the most important treasure we have.  No one ever said on their deathbed, “I wish I spent more time at work.”  It’s also true that if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.  But what we do does not define us.  What we are defines us.  We are human beings, created by God in the image and likeness of God, placed into a creation that is good.  Woven into creation is a day of rest.  Even God rested after doing a good job.  Sometimes we have to just trust God and just be.  Take time to consider the lilies of the field, in a world without end.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
May 18, 2008

    I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

    I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

    I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

    I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

    I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

―The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., August 28, 1963

Scripture Lessons:
Ruth 1:15-18
Romans 10:8-13
John 4:27-30, 39-42

A Sacred Conversation on Race

You do not have to be a genius to figure out that The United Church of Christ’s call to a Sacred Conversation on Race comes out of the controversy surrounding one of our pastors, The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, some highly publicized remarks he made, and his affiliation with a certain presidential candidate who is also a member of the UCC.  But I do not believe that this call to confront the bedeviling issue of race is an attempt to influence partisan politics.  I believe it is a faithful response to an opportunity to assess progress made and the challenges ahead of us as a racially diverse and politically divided nation.  Jesus called his disciples to be healers and to cast out demons.  If racism is not a demonic force, I don’t know what is.

Because this conversation does arise from the Jeremiah Wright controversy, let me just say that the whole episode has been heartbreaking for me.  For all of my fifteen years of ordained ministry in the United Church of Christ, I have always heard Jeremiah Wright spoken of in reverential terms.  He was held up as an eloquent prophetic voice for justice and a man who took a small struggling church and built it into a thriving congregation with inspiring worship and a strong commitment to serving the community.  When I watched Bill Moyers interview Jeremiah Wright, as he broke his long self-imposed silence, I saw and heard the Jeremiah Wright consistent with the reputation I had known. 

With the interview, Bill Moyers’ program aired longer excerpts of the sermon that contained the now-infamous line “God damn America.”   The context demonstrates that line (shocking though it was) to be part of a rhetorical device employed by the prophet Amos, when he addressed a festival crowd in the ancient Northern Kingdom of Israel.  Amos cursed the sins of all Israel’s enemies and their Hebrew rival kingdom of Judah.  Then, once he got the crowd worked up into a nationalist frenzy, he cursed the kingdom of Israel for their own sins.  The introduction to the book of Amos in The Oxford Study Bible (3^rd Edition) says, “Amos… denounced the Northern Kingdom, Israel, in vivid language, bitterly describing the decadent opulence, immorality, and smug piety of elites who ‘trampled the head of the poor into the dust of the earth.’”  Jeremiah Wright clearly modeled this sermon on Amos’ rhetorical structure and theology.  There was merit in some of his indictments, but Wright’s sermon went sadly off the rails in other ways.  But when he said “It’s in the Bible” he was making a valid claim of biblical precedent for his theological assumption: nations are not counted righteous and blessed because of who they are, nations are counted blessed for their just and righteous conduct.

The days following the Moyers’ interview, as I watched Wright address the NAACP and the National Press Club, I grew increasingly troubled by reckless expressions of what I can only call lunatic conspiracy theories, such as the idea that the government introduced AIDS and crack cocaine into the African American community.  I thought it was irresponsible, incorrect and unnecessary.  Slavery, segregation and racism have a long, well-documented history in America and a toxic legacy that continues to impact our national life.  Surely the Reverend Wright could have drawn from a multitude of factual examples without resorting to fringe conspiracy theories.  That is what, for me, was heartbreaking.  I hope and pray that this fit of acting out in the media spotlight will not be the enduring legacy of Jeremiah Wright’s long, distinguished and productive ministry.

And while we have a long way to go, I know that we have made significant progress toward racial justice in this country.  I see signs of it in my own family.  Once I was driving the boys somewhere, and they were talking about music in the back seat.  They were talking about hip-hop.  Oscar said to Max, “You could be a white rapper, like Eminem.”  Max immediately snapped back at his little brother,   “Oscar, I am NOT white!”  I was stunned.  I was also really proud that Max was clear and comfortable in who he is, and does not feel the pressure or the need to identify with the majority ethnic group. That may be, in part, due to the relative diversity of Newton and its schools’ hard work to celebrate diversity as a resource and not a liability. 

In any event, I am glad my children are not growing up in a country where hate speech is tolerated and segregation is the law in parts of our country, even as both were realities within living memory.  And yet, we have only to look at the overrepresentation of ethnic minorities in our prisons and on death row, and under representation in the upper levels of government, business and higher education, to know that we have a long way to go.  Things are better, but we cannot yet claim that racism is not an operative force in America.  I also believe that if we each search our hearts, no matter how unbiased we believe ourselves to be as individuals, we will find ways in which our conduct and perceptions are shaped by the troubled history of race in America.  I don’t think it is escapable.

Racism is a demon that has haunted the history of this nation since European settlers first came here in the sixteenth century.  From the treatment of the native peoples who were here when they arrived, to the import of enslaved Africans and the tumultuous aftermath of the Civil War, we often used our faith and scriptures to justify bloodthirsty racist policies.  Conversely, scripture was also used to oppose them.  At the end of the Civil War, in his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln said of the two sides, “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”

As far as I can tell, none of the Abrahamic religions, if you look to the totality of scripture, history and practice, could be honestly invoked to promote or justify racism.  That is not to say there are no Jewish, Christian or Muslim racists.  But that is a human failing, not a product of religion.  Islam is Arabian in its origins, and there is clearly a preference for the Arabic language in scripture, prayer and scholarship.  Yet the message has always been aimed at all humanity.  The first muezzin, the one who issues the Call to Prayer, was a freed African slave.  Though the three holiest cities in Islam are in the Middle East, (Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem), the vast majority of Muslims are non-Arabs and live outside the region.  A multitude of world cultures give widely varied expression to the Islamic faith.  Islam continues to be the fastest growing religion in the world.

As we can see from the Epistle Lesson, in Christianity differences of ethnic and cultural background are irrelevant within the unity of the Church.  Paul wrote, “…there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.” (Romans 10:12)  This needed to be said because Paul’s missionary work yielded numerous gentile converts.  As they forged their new identity, they had to decide whether gentiles had to become Jews in order to be Christians.  This controversy points out Judaism’s openness to conversion by people of any ethnic origin.  Though one can be a Jew by birth, one can also become a Jew by conversion.  This has been the case since biblical times.  We see this in Ruth’s profession to Naomi, “Your people shall be my people and your God my God.”  (Ruth 1:16)  Ruth, a convert, was the great-grandmother of King David.  The Israelite royal line descends from a convert.  

It often comes as a surprise that a faith that often refers to itself in familial terms such as “the Children of Israel” is a multi-ethnic community.  You may recall that the Israeli government, a number of years ago, rescued Ethiopian Jews from famine and civil war by airlifting them to Israel.  In Uganda, there is a tribe that converted en masse in the nineteenth century, called the Abuyudaya.  They observe traditional Jewish practices to this day.  The worldwide Jewish community has reached out to bridge their geographical isolation to offer guidance and support.  There is growing appreciation of the distinctly African flavor the Abuyudaya give to their practice of Judaism, especially in music.  Judaism, like Christianity, is a blended family.  Both faiths always have been.

As a stepfather, I recently participated in a panel discussion as part of a Doctor of Ministry project by one of my colleagues. Ute Molitor, pastor of a UCC church in Boxborough, is exploring themes of welcome and hospitality as they are expressed in blended families.  Her thesis is that this kind of hospitality and welcome are models of conduct for the church because the church is a kind of blended family.  I think she is absolutely right.  No matter who we are by birth, we are called together by God’s love and commanded to love one another.  Who we are by birth is less important than what we hold in our hearts, what we do with our lives and how we live with one another.  That is our witness to our nation and that is our invitation to the whole blended family of humanity, in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
May 4, 2008

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green & pleasant Land.

―William Blake

Scripture Lessons:
2 Kings 2:11-14
Acts 1:6-14
John 17:6-11

Left Behind

If you were here the Sunday after Easter Sunday, you heard Howard Moffat out himself as an Evangelical Christian.  In doing so, he reminded us how theologically diverse Evangelical Christians in fact are.  Howard showed us that it is possible to embrace modern biblical scholarship seriously, hold to a scientific worldview and embrace a biblical Christian faith with zeal for the Gospel.  I remember standing with Howard after worship as we listened to the postlude, telling him how I had become increasingly optimistic about a rapprochement between Liberal Protestants and Evangelicals.  Promising signs are appearing for a broad Christian consensus around issues of economic justice and especially environmental stewardship.  Who would have thought that we would see the Reverend Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson sitting together on a couch, acknowledging their differences while affirming their faith-based concern for the health of the planet?  In Christ there is indeed promise of reconciliation and newness of life.

In the spirit of Howard’s example of openness, I want to come clean regarding my own ties with Evangelical Christianity.  Though I now firmly identify myself as a Liberal Protestant, during my childhood in Texas during the 1970s, there was a time when I was part of an evangelical youth movement.  It was roughly from the time I was ten, until I was twelve or thirteen.  The group gathered at a little house church known as the House of Faith which was also a group home for troubled teenage girls and young women who were trying to pull their lives together in the aftermath of drugs, abuse, or other traumas. 

We would not, at the time, have called ourselves Evangelicals, nor was the term Fundamentalist used much.  This was in the early seventies, when the hippie influences of the 60s still held sway on popular and youth culture.  Though we generally referred to ourselves simply as Christians, the wider culture usually called people like us Jesus Freaks.  There’s even a reference in Elton John’s song Tiny Dancer, recorded in that period, where he sings about, “Jesus Freaks, out on the streets, handing tickets out for God.”  It was all very much part of what later came to be referred to as Born Again Christianity.

At age ten, I got sucked right into the whole thing.  There were long-haired hippie types (I was pretty shaggy at the time), guitars everywhere and a sense of purpose.  That purpose was not defined by the drug culture or radical politics, but by the Bible.  Worship was informal, very groovy, ecstatic and participatory.  There I found a welcome sense of belonging, something I had rarely felt since we had moved down to Texas two years earlier.  Though my parents did not interfere with my sixteen-year-old brother Carl’s participation in the group, they had reservations about their ten year old getting involved in what they saw as basically a cult. 

Their concern was not unfounded.  As in movements of many kinds, when they are led by a single charismatic leader, things can go awry.  By the late seventies, the House of Faith moved to a ranch in Valley View, Texas and became something of a commune that operated a restaurant called The Fatted Calf.  Anyone could come eat, pay whatever they wanted for the meal, or take money from the collection jars on the tables if they needed it.  Before all was said and done, Ron, the leader of the group, left his wife, sold the ranch and the restaurant and started a new life with a new wife in Hawaii.  My brother met his wife Kathy while they were both living at the ranch.  She had grown up in the mission field in the Philippines, and they were married at the ranch.  They have been married for nearly thirty years. 

My brother’s evangelical faith survived the blow of Ron’s betrayal, because his faith is grounded in God, not a particular minister.  He is firmly an Evangelical Christian, and like many Evangelical Christians, he defies many of the stereotypes even as he shares some of the characteristics and some of the theology you might expect.  His faith commitments are strong, deep, and complicated.  I have genuine respect for my brother’s religious commitments, even though we do not always come to the same conclusions.

Part of the reason I wanted to share my checkered religious past with you is because of one characteristic theology I embraced during what I like to call my Evangelical sojourn.  One of the first things I was told about at the first Bible studies I attended was The Rapture.  You may have heard the term used to describe a belief that the apocalypse will be preceded by Jesus returning and gathering all the true and faithful believers into heaven, sparing them death as well as the tribulation brought on by the reign of the antichrist described in the Book of Revelation. 

The return of Christ to inaugurate the righteous reign of God at the end of human history is, in fact, a truly biblically-based, orthodox Christian doctrine.  There is a strong apocalyptic strain throughout the New Testament.  Traditional creeds like the Nicene and Apostles’ creeds assert that Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead. Some Communion liturgies include the words: “Christ has died.  Christ has risen.  Christ will come again.” 

But to proclaim the belief the Risen Christ will ultimately return is not necessarily the same thing as some of the elaborate scenarios of The Rapture that have been quite imaginatively interpolated by selectively stringing together disparate verses of scripture.  There are indeed verses in the Bible that talk about the faithful being “taken.”  (Matthew 24:40, 41)  Our passage from Acts this morning says Jesus, “will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”  (Acts 1:11)  In John’s account of the Last Supper, Jesus promised his disciples, “I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”  (John 14:2-3)

That promise is not quite the same thing as saying that people will suddenly disappear and the rest will be left behind to suffer tribulations at the hand of the antichrist until God’s ultimate victory.  Those sorts of scenario’s, most recently popularized in the Left Behind series of books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, are relatively late arrivals to Christian theology, first articulated in the nineteenth century.  The thing I find so absurd about these popularized eschatologies are the way they try to read signs and make predictions based on current events, when there are numerous admonitions in the Bible saying that no human can know when the end time will come.  (Acts 1:7)  History is littered with theologians who thought they could predict the apocalypse, and their deadlines have come and gone.

But if we look at the account of the Ascension in the Book of Acts, we see that we have all already been left behind.  That must have been a stunning moment for the Apostles, glorious and probably more than a little frightening.  They must have wondered why they didn’t get to go along.  And angelic figures redirected their attention with a question: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards heaven?”  Acts 1:11)  The implication was that to be faithful disciples, we can’t just stand around staring at the sky wondering when Jesus will come back or when we get to go.  We have a purpose for being here.

As the Church, we are the Body of Christ in the world.  That means being fully in the world, serving God according to Jesus’ teachings, not gazing into the clouds trying to figure out when he will return.  Yes, Jesus promised he would return and take us to himself, but sitting at the same table he also commanded us to love one another as he loved us, that the world would know we were his disciples if we love one another.  (John 13:34-35)  He prayed that all his followers would be one.  (John 17:11)  I take that to mean that despite differences in our theologies and interpretative principles; we must have love for one another and not work at cross purposes when the world is in desperate need of love and healing.  In the end, what we are about is something much more outlandish than waiting for rescue from the sky.  We have to stick around and change the world in an act of radical love and active gentleness.  We have been left behind with a mission, in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
April 20, 2008

The difference between a man who faces death for the sake of an idea and an imitator who goes in search of martyrdom is that whilst the former expresses his idea most fully in death it is the strange feeling of bitterness which comes from failure that the latter really enjoys; the former rejoices in his victory, the latter in his suffering.

            ―Soren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), Danish philosopher

Scripture Lessons:
Acts 7:55-60
John 14:1-7

What of Martyrdom?

I considered having a stoning in worship this morning.  I recruited a designated blasphemer from the congregation, which was not all that hard to do.  During the Children’s Sermon I was going to haul him out of his pew for uttering such scandalous remarks as “The Red Sox won’t be in the World Series this year,” or “The 2007 Patriots were not the best NLF team ever.”  We talked about the impiety of leaving his cap on in church, and to complete the outrage, the hat was to have been a NY Yankees cap.    I had planned a summary trial and, once sentenced, I was going to have the children stone him with waded-up pieces of paper. 

I thought better of it, though.  First of all, it could easily get out of control and would certainly have made a mess.  The more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I became with trivializing martyrdom.  Our culture does that enough as it is.    Consider how the word martyr has come to be used in conversation, a kind of code word for passive aggression.  “O don’t be such a martyr,” one might say when we feel we are being guilted by someone who has grudgingly agreed to do something no one else wants to do.  But to speak of martyrdom in that way is troubling, perhaps obscene.  Martyrs are people who gave their lives, sometimes torturously, rather than deny their faith or betray a cause.  I don’t think we really know what to do with such deeply committed idealism that motivates a martyr.  That kind of commitment makes us uncomfortable.  It should.

The word martyr falls hard on our modern, Western, Liberal Protestant ears.  It is thoroughly loaded and emotionally charged.  Radical Jihadist Muslims have redefined the term to their own ends to mean suicide terrorists.  In a now-famous videotaped conversation with some of his financial backers, Osama bin Laden referred to the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington DC as a “martyrdom operation.”  It is worth noting that in the vast sweep of Islamic history and scholarship, such use of the term “martyrdom” would be anathema. 

While martyrdom is revered within Islamic theology and can be achieved in battle, fighting jihad, the martyr is chosen by God.  The martyr does not choose his fate.  Also, jihad is not necessarily literal battle.  Suicide has always been condemned within Islam, as has the killing of other Muslims or noncombatants in general.  The 9/11 hijackers violated all of those prohibitions.  Sadly, a once-discredited Islamic theology that justifies such tactics has been revived by radical Jihadis.  I suspect that the vast majority of Muslims worldwide adhere to a more traditional understanding of martyrdom.

History and legends of the Early Church are replete with stories of Christian martyrs executed in the most grizzly means by Romans.  Nero was particularly imaginative, setting Christians alight or having them devoured by lions in the coliseum.  In the passage from the Acts of the Apostles, we read an account of the stoning of Saint Stephen, considered to be the first Christian Martyr.  Stephen was stoned for heresy by the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem.  If you read chapters six and seven of Acts, you get a sense of how confrontational the atmosphere was for the church in Jerusalem.  There was predictable tension between the early Christians who attended synagogues and prayed in the Temple Courts, as they asserted their new faith and proclaimed their Lord Jesus Christ the Risen Son of God. 

There was also tension within the Church itself between Jews who were part of the movement before Jesus was crucified, Jews who had joined it later, and increasing numbers of gentiles who were joining the church.  The conflicts within the church are openly detailed in the New Testament.  As gentiles joined the church, would they have to become Jews before they became Christians?  Would the men need to undergo circumcision and ritual purification, or was baptism sufficient?  As a communitarian society, the Church held all wealth and resources in common and shared them.  There were occasions when Jews and gentiles within the church complained that their particular group was not receiving its share of the resources.  This is to say that inter-ethnic tension was part of Church life from the very beginning.  The first Deacons were ordained to distribute food to the church and settle disputes so that the Apostles could devote themselves to the preaching mission of the Church.  (Acts 6:2) 

Saint Stephen was one of these first Deacons.  Scripture describes him as an inspired orator and persuasive debater:  “Stephen was full of grace and power, did great wonders and signs among the people.  And then some of those who belonged to the synagogue… stood up and argued with Stephen.  But they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke.”  (Acts 6:8-10)

According to the New Testament account, Stephen was brought before authorities on trumped up charges.  Stephen’s response to the accusations is long and pointed.  When asked the simple yes-or-no question “Are these things so?” (Acts 7:1), Stephen went on for fifty-two verses beginning with the covenant with Abraham through patriarchs, the sojourn in Egypt, the Exodus, the wilderness wanderings, into the promised land, the prophets, basically tracing the history of the Israelite Nation up to the coming of Jesus, his betrayal and death.  Stephen summed up his defense with the less-than-diplomatic closer: “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do.  Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute?  They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have become betrayers and murderers.  You are the ones that received the law as ordained by angels, and yet you have not kept it.” (Acts 7:51-53)  It was not a great moment in interfaith dialogue.  This is where our passage for this morning picks up as