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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
January 28, 2007

There is no question but that if Jesus Christ, or a great prophet from another religion, were to come back today, he would find it virtually impossible to convince anyone of his credentials ... despite the fact that the vast evangelical machine on American television is predicated on His imminent return among us sinners.

―Peter Ustinov

Scripture Lessons:
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Luke 4:21-30

                                          The Prophetic Voice

The first time I ever preached on the call of Jeremiah, I was attending a week-long course at the College of Preachers at the National Cathedral in Washington DC.  They typically bring in guest faculty, and the students are generally parish clergy who spend the week in residence at the college.  The courses are limited to around thirty or so, which makes for easy access to faculty.  This first course I attended was co-taught by William Sloane Coffin and New Testament scholar Walter Wink.  It was a stimulating and heady week in DC. 

A few times during the week, we would break into small groups led by adjunct faculty to work on our preaching in a more intensive and practical way.  We were told to bring a sermon we had already preached, which we delivered to the small group.  Then, in the course of the week, we would write a new sermon and present it to the group.  That way, you return to church with a sermon done.  On the date I was scheduled to preach upon my return to New Hampshire, the Lectionary called for the two scripture lessons we read this morning from Jeremiah and Luke.  That was nine years ago.

At the time, Jane was pregnant with Oscar.  The week before I left for Washington, Jane and I went to an imaging clinic and got our first grainy glimpse of Oscar on the screen of an ultrasound.  So when I read “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations,” (Jeremiah 1:5)  I immediately associated the passage to the image of my unborn son on the ultrasound screen.

An Episcopal priest from Boston said that the ultrasound reference made him uneasy at first, when he heard the first incomplete draft of the sermon that I shared in our small group session.  He said what made him nervous was that the Jeremiah passage was a favorite proof text of anti-abortion activists who claim it as a sign that the Bible defines human life as beginning at conception.  Of course, that is not where I ended up going with the sermon.  I took it as an opportunity to reflect upon the kind of world my then unborn son would live in. 

As I arrive at this text again in the ongoing Lectionary cycle, this passage has caused me to reflect on abortion.  Many Christians like to paint the issue more straightforward in terms of biblical ethics than the Bible itself reflects.  Many quote the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” when the Hebrew is more accurately translated as “you shall not murder.”  (Exodus 20:13)  Modern English translations (such as the New Revised Standard Version) bear that out.  You might think this is splitting hairs, but the Bible does not see killing in warfare, murder or manslaughter as the same thing.  In the case of abortion, for any of these terms to apply, it is essential to define what constitutes human life.

Many Christians, especially those who oppose legal abortion, insist that human life begins at conception.  Various poetic references to God forming an individual in the womb, as in the first chapter Jeremiah or Psalms 71 and 139 might lead one to conclude that the Bible equates fetal life with human life.  I believe the Bible makes a clear distinction.  The Jeremiah text speaks of God knowing the prophet, “Before [God] formed [Jeremiah] in the womb…” (Jeremiah 1:5), which precedes pregnancy itself, which would argue against its relevance to the abortion question.  The Bible does, in fact, address the termination of pregnancy in legal terms and prescribes specific sanctions.  It does not address abortion as such, but a careful reading of Exodus 21 leads to the logical conclusion that the book of Exodus does not view a fetus as a full human life.  Exodus contains extensive sections of legal thought that go into much greater detail than the Ten Commandments.  Exodus 21:22 specifies what the penalty should be when a pregnant woman is injured in a manner that causes a miscarriage.  That penalty does not rise to the same level as murder or manslaughter.  Causing a miscarriage is taken seriously, but it would be hard to argue that biblical legal thought defines a fetus as a full human life.  Causing a miscarriage calls for financial remuneration, as opposed to murder or manslaughter, which call for death or banishment. 

When I was a student at Andover Newton, I studied Christian Social Ethics with Max Stackhouse, a highly respected and fairly conservative ethicist within the United Church of Christ.  He now teaches at Princeton.  Though I often disagreed with him, he was an important voice for disciplined thinking on moral and ethical issues.  His reasoning on legalized abortion pointed to a distinction between sin and crime.  He felt strongly that abortion was a sin.  Though I do not recall his reasoning for that conclusion, for the vast majority of women I have known who have undergone the procedure, it was an emotionally grueling experience.  I think most of us could agree that abortion is a worst-case-scenario form of birth control. 

Stackhouse reasoned that if abortion is a sin, it should not be a crime.  He recognized that, in the context of the United States, criminalizing abortion would perpetrate an economic injustice, placing an unfair burden on poor women.  He argued that as long as safe and legal abortions were available offshore, people who enjoyed economic privilege would have access to safe and legal abortions, while poor women would not.  This would put poor women at risk of resorting to potentially unsafe illegal abortions.  Stackhouse’s reasoned and systematic approach takes biblical morality into account, not simply in the area of reproductive rights, but also weighs repeated prophetic mandates to economic justice.

 I would also point out that it is not unusual for ardent opponents of legal abortion to support the death penalty.  This seems ethically inconsistent.  Either life has an absolute value, or it does not.  This is where Roman Catholic teaching is consistent, condemning both abortion and capital punishment.  There are, of course, the most militant cases, where abortion opponents have killed doctors and bombed clinics, which is the most naked and extreme kind of hypocrisy.  Thankfully, those cases are rare, and most rational opponents of legal abortion condemn violence in the name of their cause.

I want to say that this is not intended as a pro-choice sermon, though I would guess that my own views come screaming through.  More than anything, the point that I want to get across is that abortion is a complicated issue on which decent and intelligent Christians, people of all faiths and no faith may disagree.  Further, the best of both camps have entered into dialogue for the common purpose of enhancing conditions that would make abortion unnecessary. 

As I said, abortion is a complicated ethical issue.  Many would have you believe it is a simple, black and white question.  Many on the Christian right would have you believe that the Bible says things that it does not.  I do believe that a good and faithful Christian could come to an ethically defensible argument against legal abortion.  But supporting that argument biblically will require several interpretive leaps.  The abortion debate is a useful example of why post-enlightenment mainline Protestants like us need to become more biblically literate.  While I am not one who argues that the United States was founded as a “Christian nation,” I would say that the Bible is a foundational and perhaps the most influential document in Western civilization.  As such, every educated person should read it, just as every educated person should read the Qur’an as well.  As Christians we should know the Bible, and not allow others to tell us what it says and what it means. 

I strongly believe that every Christian, indeed people of all faiths, should seek moral guidance from scripture and prayerful reflection such that it informs our actions as citizens and guides our political engagement.  At the same time, we must be mindful that our religious freedom is largely dependent on a clear separation of religion and state.  It is important to distinguish when the moral imperatives of our faith traditions should guide public policy, or simply inform our personal conduct.  That is why the distinction between sin and crime is an important one. 

If we are convinced that our faith demands that we advocate for a specific public policy, the language of faith should remain within the faith community.   In order to protect and defend the separation of religion and state, wider policy discussions should be framed in secular terms.  If our faith-based conclusions have merit, we will be able to articulate them in ways that are persuasive across religious boundaries in the public sphere.  My fervent prayer is that our faith will be a means of strengthening the wider community and enhancing our common life, not a wedge to divide it.  That is what it means to proclaim the good news of God’s steadfast and unconditional love, in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
January 14, 2007

Religion is a means, not an end.  It becomes idolatrous when regarded as an end in itself.  Over and above all being stands the Creator and Lord of history, [The One] who transcends all.  To equate religion and God is idolatry.

―Abraham Joshua Heschel

Scripture Lessons:
Isaiah 58:1-12
James 1:26-27, 2:14-18
John 2:1-11

                                       All Religions under God

 On my first full day in Egypt, I saw a demonstration of how papyrus is made in a gallery near Giza.  The demonstration lasted about five minutes.  Our tour group was left to shop the gallery and view the hand painted reproductions of ancient and religious art on traditionally-made papyrus.  Some were scenes from pharonic tomb paintings, ancient temple art, pages from the Book of the Dead as well as Quranic inscriptions and even some Christian subjects.  It was all beautifully rendered, and there were artists at work throughout the large, modern showroom.  The young man who had demonstrated papyrus making earlier sidled up to me and asked me if saw anything that interested me.  He asked what I do, and as soon as I told him I was a minister, he walked me over to some of the Christian paintings. 

I pointed to a nearby piece with Arabic calligraphy on it and asked if it were from the Quran.  He said it was.  I asked if he were a Muslim, which he was.  I pointed to other paintings depicting ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses, and asked why making and selling paintings of these gods was not shirk.  This was a bit cheeky and perhaps a little daring on my part.  Shirk is the Arabic word that translates literally to mean “association.”  In Islam it is a grave sin.  Mentioning it in a sermon, I wanted to be sure I had this right.  So I logged onto islamfortoday.com, and clicked on “Major Sins.”  Shirk was listed number one on a list of seventy major sins and was defined as “Associating anything with Allah.”  Shirk is the term used for the sin of idolatry, and its gravity underscores the centrality of iconoclasm in Islam. 

I hasten to point out that I did not accuse the man of shirk, but asked him why selling pictures of ancient Egyptian gods was not shirk.  The man said that this enterprise did not constitute shirk because these were essentially fictional characters.  They were not gods at all, nor did anyone still worship them.  Such images were not always viewed that way.  When I visited ancient temples from Aswan to Luxor, later in my trip, I saw where early Christians and early Muslims had chiseled away at the stone images of Horus, Isis and other deities that offended their pious sensibilities.  But I could accept his reasoning.  It was theologically nuanced, and enabled him to take the dictates of his religion seriously while making a living celebrating his rich national heritage.

At the other end of the room from where we were having our conversation, there was a young man and a young woman seated at a table.  They were about the same age; I’d guess in their mid-twenties or so.  He was modestly dressed in slacks and a cotton shirt, with the cuffs buttoned neatly at his wrists.  You could describe his clothes as western.  She was dressed in a floor length dress and a headscarf.  I can only guess at their relationship: brother and sister, husband and wife, sweethearts.  But there was an intimacy about their ease together that I can only describe as loving.  It was very sweet. 

The reason they attracted my attention was that the young man had an open Quran in front of him and he was chanting verses from it.  The woman sat and listened, her head resting on her arm which was stretched across the table.  The young man chanted beautifully, and the sound worked on me much as when I hear Gregorian chant or when Torah is chanted in Hebrew.  The combination of sacred text, music, and devotional reverence arrested my attention.  I could not help being moved by their seemingly unselfconscious focus on scripture.  I guess what moved me the most about those two young Egyptians was the beautiful way they engaged and expressed their faith.

In a crowded world of many faiths, it is important for all of us to find ways to appreciate all faiths.  Our appreciation need not be uncritical, but it must be respectful.  Within Judaism, Christianity and Islam, there are glimmers of universalism.  Rabbinic Judaism teaches that, though the Jewish people have specific obligations under the Covenant, gentiles can obtain righteousness by observing the commandments God gave Noah after the flood.  Jesus said, “Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.” (Mark 9:40-41)  The Quran states, "Let there be no compulsion in religion. Truth stands out clear from error; whoever rejects evil and believes in God hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold that never breaks. And God heareth and knoweth all things." (Surah 2 [al-Baqarah], Verse 256 [Yusuf Ali Translation])

A lot of attention is paid to the conflict, often deadly conflict that has arisen among and even within religions.  European history is riddled with war among Christians, Catholics and Protestants as well as centuries of pogroms and persecution of Jews.  The Indian subcontinent has seen strife between Hindus and Muslims, and in Iraq today, the escalating civil war has drawn battle lines along ethnic and religious divisions.  And yet, I am convinced that this is not evidence that religion itself is the problem.  Even when skeptics cite religious strife, they generally recognize the irony that religion is supposed to elevate the human spirit, inspire moral behavior and compassion for others.  The reality is that religion does have real power to elevate and inspire. The fact that religion is abused is not proof that religion is bad, it is proof that religion is powerful.  Human beings have always abused power, however it is manifested.  Religion becomes dangerous when it becomes an end in itself, which Abraham Joshua Heschel described as idolatry.

That is why it is so important to live in a secular and pluralistic society where there is a bright line between religion and the state.  I recently heard E. L. Doctorow point out that the separation of religion and government in the United States is probably why religion flourishes in such abundance here.  That is unusual for a modern industrial nation.  Doctoreau argued that where there is official religion, the people are either oppressed by it (as in places like Iran or under the Taliban) or largely indifferent to it, as in much of Western Europe.  Here in the United States, the vast majority of Americans profess belief in God, and a variety of religions flourish, enriching our culture and democracy.  Our democracy enriches our religion as well.  Great leaps in religious thought and practice have occurred on our shores in our theological schools and houses of worship.  Just last year in California, a mosque was built without a physical barrier separating men and women during prayer.  Reza Aslan has said that Islam is at the threshold of its own Reformation, and I think American Muslims will be at the forefront of that movement.

By saying that we must appreciate other faiths, I do not mean to suggest that all religions are the same, even if we do seek the same, living God.  When we do reach out to people of other faiths, it will be most fruitful when we have a firm grounding and fluency in our own faith.  Heschel also pointed out that the basis of interfaith dialogue is faith.  Ultimately, the most important thing about our faith is the lives it inspires us to lead in relation to God, our neighbors and the earth.  How we worship has always been less important than how we serve the God we worship.  God asked through the prophet Isaiah, “Is this not the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?  Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house…” (Isaiah 58: 6-7) 

James reminded the early church, “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?  So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” (James 2:15-17)  This weekend we remember a man of faith for his work on behalf of justice and equality.  Dr. Martin Luther King was a Christian pastor who pointed to a Hindu, Mohandas Ghandi, as his ethical and tactical inspiration.  And to remember Martin Luther King is to remember the movement he led, which depended on the efforts and commitment of people of every race and faith.  Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose 100^th birthday was last Thursday, marched alongside of King and was key in enlisting interfaith collaboration in the movement.  Heschel wrote a famous letter to President Kennedy saying that moment in our nation’s history demanded “Moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.” 

The power of faith can be seen in other quarters of the struggle for racial justice.  Malcolm X was at times more of a separatist than an integrationist.  He said that, as a black man, he did not simply want to sit at the lunch counter, he wanted to own it.  His rhetoric was often hostile and racially prejudiced for much of his ministry with the Nation of Islam.  But his faith also led him to temper his angry rhetoric, and break from the corrupt demagoguery of Elijah Muhammad.  Malcolm X’s experience of meeting Muslims of every race when he made his pilgrimage to Mecca caused him to reject his own racial prejudice. 

Religion is a means, not an end.  Religion is a means of discovering God and God’s intentions for us.  Religion is a means of discovering righteous relationship with all God’s children and the planet God allows us to share.  We best proclaim our faith and most beautifully glorify God with the works that flow from our earnest and humble search for God, in a world without end.  Amen.    

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
December 17, 2006

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

―Philippians 4:4-7

Scripture Lessons:
Zephaniah 3:14-20
Luke 3:7-18

Let Your Gentleness Be Known

Unquenchable fire!  Now that’s good news!  Reading the oracle of the prophet Zephaniah, together with Luke’s account of the John the Baptist’s preaching, gives us an opportunity to challenge a common Christian misconception about Hebrew Bible relative to the New Testament.  At the bank of the Jordan, John warned sinners that unless they repented they would face God’s fiery wrath.  By contrast, the prophet Zephaniah assured his community of God’s grace, forgiveness, enduring love and compassion.  The contrasting tones are worth examining.  Ever since the early Church, Christians have broadly characterized the New Testament as Good News of God’s love and forgiveness, versus the wrathful God of the Old Testament, who dealt out harsh retribution.  Some early Christians proposed that the Hebrew Bible be abandoned entirely.  Marcion, a second century church leader, formulated his own canon made up of one Gospel, the letters of Paul, and no Hebrew Scriptures at all.  Marcion was a heretic.

Throughout my ordained ministry I have heard Christians voice fundamental agreement with Marcion’s over-simplified view of Hebrew Bible.  Today’s readings show that both the New Testament and Hebrew Scriptures are more varied, nuanced and complex than forgiveness and love versus wrath and retribution.  That said, John’s confrontational manner was well placed when you consider to whom he was speaking.  It was rather courageous.  John told a bunch of presumably-armed soldiers of an occupying army to stop shaking down the locals just because they could. He told them live on their wages like everyone else.  John both called his community to repentance while he rebuked those who contributed to their misery.

Zephaniah spoke to a beleaguered community in Jerusalem roughly six hundred years before John.  They had seen their people in the northern kingdom of Israel conquered by the regional superpower Assyria, and were uncertain as to what the future held for Judah.  And yet, the prophet exhorted the people to remain faithful and hold fast to their ideals.  He assured them they could rely on God’s grace and steadfast love, even in dangerous times.  Both prophets, Zephaniah and John the Baptist lived out their sacred vocation with a profound sense of vulnerability yet strengthened by their faith.  With disaster on their northern border, Zephaniah counseled the people to trust God.  As his people were being exploited by an occupying army, an unarmed John the Baptist confronted soldiers for their abuse of power.  Ultimately, vulnerability is not a matter of choice but a recognition of its inevitability. 

Last week, I had a couple of nagging reminders of my own vulnerability.  On Tuesday morning I received the first hate mail of my career, via email.  Actually, the term “hate mail” is a tad melodramatic.  There were no threats and the authors did sign their names.  But it was not exactly cheery correspondence, either.  They were responding to a piece I published nearly a month previously, and were outraged by a statement I did not even write.   Having written in a TAB column, “Mindless devotion to a Leave It to Beaver mirage of ‘traditional family’ is simply idolatry,” I was accused of calling traditional marriage idolatry.  The first email was mildly amusing, but as I received several others throughout the day, I started getting nervous.  Apparently, these emails were part of some sort of organized response. 

The most belligerent of them read:

Pastor Malmberg:

Please retract your false and misleading statement that traditional marriage is “idolatry”. Traditional marriage, according to the scriptures, is the foundation upon which our culture is built. Alternative family structures such as polygamy, and “homosexual marriage” were conceived in the mind of Satan and need to be completely eliminated from our society.

Please conduct yourself as a leader in accordance with the Holy Bible or get out of the ministry. 

Best Regards, [name omitted] 

I could honestly see these emails as being earnest efforts to exhort a member of the church to desist from what they believe to be unworthy behavior, according to the guidance of the eighteenth chapter of Matthew, which states: “If a member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault...” (Matthew 18:15) 

The problem is, the fault they pointed out, that I called traditional marriage “idolatry” was false, and their biblical reasoning was deeply flawed.  I cannot retract something I did not say.  And, while I have never claimed to know the mind of Satan, I can tell you that polygamy is thoroughly biblical.  Jacob (also named Israel) had two wives, Leah and Rachel.  King Solomon, the builder of the first Temple in Jerusalem, had hundreds of wives (1 Kings 11).  Yet polygamy has simply been abandoned by most Christians, just as Open and Affirming congregations have abandoned isolated purity codes prohibiting homosexuality as being anomalous to over-arching biblical ethics of justice, and compassion.  For that matter, we’ve also rejected slavery, which is tolerated and regulated in both testaments.  My biggest worry concerning the emails I received (and did not answer) was due to the organized nature with which they arrived.  I wondered if their authors or their associates might come and picket the church.

The other nagging reminder of my vulnerability came Thursday morning as I was just starting to work on this sermon.  I did a fresh read through of the lectionary passages, and a little research in the Interpreter’s Bible.  I got up and paced around the study, and noticed that my bass wasn’t on its stand.  I checked the case, and it wasn’t there either.  Then I saw that my acoustic guitar was gone altogether.  The bass had particular sentimental value.  I’ve had it more than fifteen years.  I turned thirty playing it at a gig in Concord as the clock ticked past midnight.  I played it at my ordination party and my wedding party.  I’ve played it here in worship.  It was a vintage American-made Fender Jazz bass.  I had always thought it would be the last bass I would ever own.  It was the first good one I ever bought, at a time I was playing regular gigs in a band.  I can only assume the instruments were stolen.  There were no signs of forced entry.  I think someone came in the building during business hours or while meetings were going on, found the back entry to my study and slipped out a side entrance with the guitars. 

The loss of those instruments left me feeling a little sad and a little creeped-out. But, ultimately, they were just things.  No one was hurt and things can be replaced.  As a church, we have lost things in the past, like silver, even had antique lighting fixtures stolen off walls, and yet we have not compromised our hospitality by locking down the church.  We have added a security system, and we can probably take other common sense precautions.  But we will not live in fear of our neighbors, even when we are at times vulnerable to some of their lower impulses.  I will take every precaution to keep people safe and secure in our building, but things can be replaced.  Accepting a certain level of vulnerability is part of who we are as a church.

Likewise, I will not let a few intolerant emails keep me from taking public stands on moral issues, especially when a neighbor is publicly attacked in the press.  I will discuss my views, in person, with anyone who is interested in a reasonable and mutually respectful exchange of ideas.  I will not be intimidated by people who use the relative anonymity of email, who misquote and distort my statements to enforce their intolerant and intolerable theology that, quite frankly, misrepresents and distorts the essential message of the Bible itself.  Sometimes believing something means speaking up and speaking out.  Sometimes it means being vulnerable to disagreement and disparagement.  But silence in the face of injustice is a sin.

My own petty experiences of vulnerability are nothing compared to what the people of Darfur face in the ongoing genocide that is now spilling from Sudan into Chad.  My inconveniences are nothing compared to what the homeless face on the streets every day.  Losing a couple of guitars and getting a handful of nasty emails pales in comparison to the vulnerability of the son of God, born into a broken and dangerous world as a homeless infant.  And yet, vulnerability in and of itself is not a virtue.  It is just that no meaningful relationship ever formed without it.  To love and be loved we must risk getting hurt.  We must be vulnerable.  And loving our neighbor as ourselves has everything to do with speaking out and acting when our neighbors’ vulnerability is exploited or abused.

Vulnerability is central to the meaning of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany.  Vulnerability is central to the Gospel.  From the time of Christ’ birth, there were those who wanted to destroy the one who came to teach and to heal.  Eventually one of his own disciples betrayed him, and another denied him.  And yet, we still await the arrival of that vulnerable infant.  Like him, we must be vulnerable to the pain of a broken world, even as we heed the words of the apostle: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near,” in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
Thanksgiving Sunday
November 19, 2006

Scripture Lessons:
Daniel 12:1-3
Mark 13:1-8

                                           Matters that Matter

I have to admit to being somewhat humbled by the experience of writing a guest editorial in the Newton TAB last week.  I was moved to respond to what I saw as intolerable intolerance expressed by both TAB columnist Tom Mountain and an irate parent whose cause he took up.  I was humbled in a couple of ways, first of all, by the direct, no-nonsense power of letters, much shorter than my 800-plus word editorial, printed on the facing page.  In a single paragraph, five sentences long, Paul Lewis put Mountain’s column into sharp moral perspective, by pointing out what the columnist takes to be a nightmare.   The letter asks what seems to keep Tom Mountain awake at night anyway. Lewis wrote, “Was the columnist awakened by visions of rising sea levels, dying coral reefs or burning rainforests?  By visions of homelessness in the United States, the killing of civilians in the Middle East, or genocide in Africa?  Not so much.  Mountain has been tossing and turning over the following horror: in a lesson on the family in a third grade class at the Franklin School, an instructor answered a student’s question honestly.”  In just a few sentences, Lewis was able to focus the issue in terms of what really matters.  As it was, I had to trim a hundred words from my op-ed piece before the TAB would run it.

As you can imagine, my ego got pretty puffy from the nice things many of you and some of the other parents at school said about the piece.  Someone clipped it out and brought it to the Church Council meeting on Wednesday night.  As the clip was passed around before the meeting, someone asked about the incident at Franklin School that led to Mountain’s column.  I gave a thumbnail history, in which I referred to the parent using a disparaging term.  What I said, in a throwaway remark was thoughtless, unnecessary, inappropriate and unkind.  Later that night, I received an email from someone at the meeting, saying that, though not approving of that parent’s behavior, it would be appreciated if I would refrain from name-calling.  Said parent was a neighbor and a friend and also deserving of compassion.  My email reply was a swift apology and complete agreement. 

I bring these up, not so much to extend my fifteen seconds of fishbowl notoriety (though maybe just a little).  What struck me about the earnest corrective email I received as well as Paul Lewis’ letter was the ability to recognize the significance of little things within a larger picture.  Lewis set a self-righteous tirade in context when there are so many outrages needing more attention.  In the email I received, I was reminded that one can attempt to do something constructive and go about it the wrong way.  The email I received expressed concern for a neighbor, a call to more civil discourse, and enough regard to admonish me when I was wrong.  It was a case of the biblical ideal of speaking the truth in love.

I think what Jesus was getting at, as he left the Temple with his disciples, was to try to focus his disciples’ priorities.  He wanted them to be able to recognize what matters most.  Rustic country boys from the north, they were astounded by the architecture of the Temple.  Indeed, the Temple built by Herod the Great was impressive by any standard.  It was the tallest building in the known world at the time.  It was a landmark with gilded pinnacles built on high ground that could be seen from miles away.  For someone, like one of the disciples, who had grown up in the belief that this was the holiest place in the world, to walk in the courts of the Temple must have been overwhelming.  We can sense the scale of the building by the way one of the disciples marveled at the size of the stones from which it was built.  That was when Jesus predicted the sacking of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. 

And while the prediction of ultimate calamity must have been incredibly jarring to the disciples, Jesus did not want his followers to fixate on it.  He told them to keep the faith, even when times get tough.  He did not want them to be guided by their anxieties or misled by leaders who might exploit their fears.  He told them, “Beware that no one leads you astray.  Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray.  When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place; but the end is still to come… This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” (Mark 13: 5b-7, 8b)  This is so interesting, given the fact that the history of Christianity, from the very beginning to the present, has always known charlatans who would exploit fear and claim to know when the end was coming.  Though they frequently proof-text their predictions with scripture, scripture itself provides the corrective, as we see here and can find in many other instances.  The Bible’s value is divine truth, not divination.  Biblical prophesies are about proclaiming God’s justice, not prognosticating events.

The book of Daniel is filled with vividly surreal apocalyptic imagery that is wide open to a variety of interpretations.  Daniel has in fact, been wildly and imaginatively interpreted to explain and predict contemporary phenomena throughout the centuries.  I can remember a kid in high school telling me that a particular verse from Daniel describing fire from the sky and burning flesh was “obviously” talking about nuclear war. That’s not to say that, as religious people we should not be concerned about nuclear war, nor am I saying that Daniel’s prophesies have nothing to say to us in our time.  What I am saying is that there is a lot more to living a faithful life than trying to be on the right team when the end comes.  I am saying that God only knows when the end will be. 

The passage we read from Daniel this morning does, in fact speak to us in our situation, in biblical proportions:  “At that time, Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people shall arise.  There shall be a time of anguish… But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book.  Many who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life…” (Daniel 12:1,2a)  When I read this, I am not looking for heavenly princes, though I do not rule them out either.  What is important to me in this passage is the assurance that, in good times and bad, in life and in death, we can rely on God, whose justice will ultimately triumph.  And because we can rely on God, we should get on with life in the meantime. 

Trusting God to take care of the big picture, our job is to sweat the small stuff.  Yet we must also think about the big picture.  We should pray and contemplate biblical ideals of a healthy planet at peace, justice for the poor and oppressed, healing the sick and sheltering the homeless.  Those are overwhelming enough without worrying about fire and brimstone from the sky.  But I have always believed in the maxim: think globally and act locally.  Be informed.  Cast your vote.  Recycle.  Pray for our leaders and one another.  Speak the truth in love.  Deal righteously with your neighbor.  Give thanks to God for the good things we enjoy, and rejoice in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
November 12, 2006

The future is just as much a condition of the present as is the past.

―Friedrich Nietzsche

The future is inevitable and precise, but it may not occur. God lurks in the gaps.

―Jorge Luis Borges

Scripture Lessons:
Genesis 1:26-30
Revelation 21:1-3
Mark 12:41-13:2

The Visionary Community

Larry Freeman, a saint of Second Church, who was known as “Uncle Larry” to the children of his neighborhood, gave me grief whenever I allowed Veterans’ Day to pass without acknowledging it in worship.  Larry served as a Seabee in the South Pacific in WWII.  He was the first to tell you that the John Wayne film The Fighting Seabees was inaccurate, though he put it more colorfully. He was old enough, when the US entered the war, that he did not need to worry about the draft.  He enlisted all the same.  He saw action and he saw horrors.  Most of the stories he told were the funny ones.  So on this Sunday, a day after Veterans’ Day, I would like to ask all the veterans here today to stand and be recognized.  Thank you for your service and your sacrifice.

I sometimes regret that I never served in the military.   I know that may sound strange coming from a minister.  After all, we gather in the name of the Prince of Peace.  We look forward to the day the prophet Isaiah promised, God, “…shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” (Isaiah 2:4)  That is our sacred vision of a world at peace, more concerned with bringing food from the land than fighting over it. 

The longer I live, and the more veterans I know, the better I understand that this is a vision shared by the vast majority of the men and women who serve.  I don’t think anyone values peace more than someone who has seen war.  My father-in-law was in Normandy on D-Day, sending decoy radio transmissions with the Free French, before the invasion landed.  Frank was present at the liberation of Dachau, received a Silver Star, and has since been generally suspicious of the use of military force. 

A couple of years ago I gave the prayer of invocation at a dedication ceremony for the Viet Nam War memorial at Newton South High School.  There were a lot of men wearing American Legion hats.  I talked with one Korean War vet who stood at the edge of the crowd, leaning on a cane.  I listened as he spoke about his concerns for troops in Iraq, their vulnerability to terrorist bombings.  Many older Legionnaires made a point of telling the Viet Nam vets present, “Welcome home” knowing they rarely heard it when they returned from the war.   Someone introduced a young soldier home from Iraq on leave.  Several of the veterans gathered around him and told him to be sure to come to the lodge after he was discharged.  One said simply, “You’re going to need your brothers.”  The tenderness I witnessed among these warriors was not something I anticipated when I agreed to offer the invocation that Memorial Day.

Now, this is the Sunday of the year when I always preach about the theological underpinnings of Stewardship.  Next week is Thanksgiving Sunday and Stewardship Sunday.  So why spend so much time talking about veterans?   What about the Prince of Peace and swords into plowshares?  What better way to talk about commitment and sacrifice?  What better way to consider redemption in a broken world?  What better way to talk about fidelity to principles?  No matter what we feel about a given war, the men and women in uniform all swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all threats, foreign and domestic.  They make it possible for us to worship God in freedom, disagree with our government openly, and overthrow the government with ballots and not bullets.  They made a commitment to a vision, to principles and ideals, from a variety of motivations, but a sacrificial commitment in any case.  We all benefit.  Yes, our religious ideal is peace, but we live in a broken world where few choices are clear.  We may debate the decisions of our leaders, but we owe a debt of gratitude to everyone who serves, whether as a career, for a few years, in the reserves, all give generously of themselves, sometimes making the ultimate sacrifice. 

Now, every comparison has its limitations.  But when we talk about sacrificial stewardship giving we are talking about a disciplined commitment in service of visionary ideals.  We are talking about a generous response to God’s generosity.  In the passage from the first chapter of Genesis, we see that God has placed us in a bountiful creation, given us everything we need and more.  “God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of the earth, and every tree with its seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.’” (Genesis 1:29) 

That is only the beginning of the story.  We know from scripture that not everything went smoothly.  Therefore, we are called by God to live lives of service and righteous relationships that bring the world closer to the goodness for which God created the universe and all of us.  The first book of the Bible speaks of the goodness of creation, and the last book of the Bible articulates a vision of the ultimate goodness to which we are headed.  “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth… And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See the home of God is among mortals.  He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them…’” (Revelation 21:1, 3)

At the moment, we find ourselves somewhere between Genesis and Revelation, grateful for the bounty of God’s gifts, fixed on a vision of a world that can be better than it is now.  Our situation is more like where we find Jesus and his disciples gathered in the Temple.  We are a faith community, talking about how we financially support our common work and worship life.  Jesus took note of a poor widow who placed a penny in the treasury, and praised her for giving what she could even though she had so little.  Notice that they were living in uncertain and dangerous times.  They were living under foreign occupation, and Jesus alluded to the impending destruction of the Temple by Rome.  Rich and poor alike had every reason to clutch what they had.  And yet, rich and poor gave of what they had.

I should tell you that a part of me squirms every year when I get up to talk about the theological and biblical underpinnings of stewardship giving.  I squirm because there is no way around the fact that this is a self-interested pitch.  My compensation, as well for everyone on staff depends in part on your pledges.  I say “in part” because annual stewardship giving doesn’t even cover staff salaries.  But that is beside the point.  My livelihood is tied directly to what you all give in support of our church.  The point where I say, “our church” is where I stop squirming.  Yes I am the pastor of this church, but Jane and I are also members of this congregation.  As members, we pledge.  We stretch to give proportionally and this year we are increasing our pledge significantly.  I thought you should know that.  I am not talking about anything we are not committed to doing ourselves.

I keep talking about sacrificial giving as a spiritual discipline, and it is.  It is how we bring the material and the spiritual together.  We dedicate a significant portion of our money to a vision of what God wants the world to be.  I have always said that the Church is, at its very essence, a visionary community.  Our life as a congregation should, in every way we can, mirror our vision of a new creation in all its goodness.  We need to find every way we can to live out our vision boldly and fearlessly.  We need to move from simply maintaining a building and an institution and live as if we are in a new heaven and a new earth with God in our midst. 

The Christian Education Board and Church Council have challenged us to fund a new, full time CE position with benefits.  This is overdue, because the part-time staff we had didn’t stay long.  They could not afford to work for us.  I commend the CE Board and Church Council for their bold vision and courageous decision.  I also commend the rest of the staff and all the volunteers who give of their time and talent and make our modest budget work miracles.  And its not just about the kids, it’s also about caring for our elders.  What if we were able to send a van to everyone who needs a ride to church?  We have a wonderful Parish Visitor, but we are still compensating her at our part-time staffing model. 

Year after year we worry about how bad the winter is going to be and if we can afford to heat this big, beautiful sanctuary.  That doesn’t even begin to address issues of what all the oil we burn does to the environment.  Instead, we could embrace a bolder, greener vision.  We are meant to be stewards of the earth as well.  What if we installed cleaner, renewable energy technologies like geothermal heating or solar energies that are currently available and in use right here in Newton?  We have been part of this community for 225 years, and we should be thinking in terms of being around a lot longer.  I am not here to give hospice care to a dying institution; I want to start building the Kingdom of God in this Village of West Newton.

We are here, I trust, because this is the church we love and these are people we love.  We have responded to God’s love and, hopefully, when we are here, we feel loved.  We love to be in this beautiful sanctuary on a Sunday morning.  It is all about relationships.  Relationships don’t just happen.  They take time and commitment.  We must give of ourselves, time, talent and our money, in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
November 5, 2006

Not for nothing does it say in the Commandments ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any image’ ... Every image is a sin.... When you love someone you leave every possibility open to them, and in spite of all the memories of the past you are ready to be surprised, again and again surprised, at how different they are, how various, not a finished image.

―Max Frisch (1911–1991), Swiss author, critic

Scripture Lessons:
Ruth 1:1-18
Mark 12:28-34

                                              You Shall Love

אחד׃ יהוה אלהנו יהוה ישראל שמע

ובכל־םאדך׃ בכל־לבבך ובכל־נפשך׃ אלהיך יהוה את ואהבת

 The Hebrew above was contained in Jesus’ answer to the scribe who wanted to know which commandment was first of all:  “Hear, O Israel:  The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.  You shall love the Lord your God with all you heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”  (Deuteronomy 6: 4-5)  If you looked inside a mezuzah, you would find those words in Hebrew, as well as several other verses from the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy.  A mezuzah is the small tube or box you often see attached to the doorway of a Jewish home or other dwelling.  A year before Congregation Dorshei Tzedek made the chapel their sanctuary, Rabbi Spitzer rented an office in our lobby.  To make her feel welcome as a colleague and a neighbor, I gave her a mezuzah for the doorway of her new office. 

Before she installed it on the doorframe, Toba invited the Second Church staff to gather around.  She explained that the reason a Mezuzah is mounted at an angle is because the Rabbis could not agree whether it should be hung vertically or horizontally, so they compromised.  Inside the Mezuzah is a small, hand-written scroll on kosher parchment.  It is interesting that the question in our Gospel Lesson came to Jesus from a scribe, because the apprenticeship of the scribes who hand copy Torah scrolls begins with the copying of these verses from Deuteronomy onto the small scrolls that are placed into mezuzahs.  Quite literally, a Torah scribe starts small. 

The rationale for placing mezuzahs comes from this same passage, in which God commands the people, “Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day.  Impress them upon your children.  Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up.  Bind them as a sign upon your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead; inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”  (Deuteronomy 6: 6-9)

Many Gospel accounts portray Jesus pushing at the boundaries of his faith tradition, and in some cases, crossing those boundaries.  Here, discussing which is the greatest commandment in the Torah, Jesus appears in the mainstream of first century Judaism.  Jesus’ first citation from Deuteronomy calls upon two verses that are at the very heart of Jewish faith and practice.  Not only are they posted on doorways and gates, but they are repeated three times a day by pious Jews. 

Mark’s Gospel is the oldest of the four.  His account of this conversation differs slightly from the versions in Matthew and Luke in a small but significant detail. Both Matthew and Luke identify the questioner as a lawyer, who is described as asking the question to test Jesus.  In Mark, the questioner is a scribe, who appears motivated to pose the question out of esteem for the wisdom Jesus has displayed.  I prefer Mark’s version, because it paints a picture of learned men gathering on common ground.  Matthew and Luke’s accounts are characterized by an air of contention.  In Mark, Jesus and the scribe praise one another.

When asked what is the greatest commandment, Jesus answered with two.  After reciting two verses from Deuteronomy, he quotes part of a verse from Leviticus, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:31, Leviticus 19:18)  Jesus then added, “There is no commandment greater than these.”  (Mark 12:31)  The common thread of the two commandments Jesus cited is the phrase, “You shall love,” and it is the same Hebrew word in both cases, v’ahavtah (ואהבת).  I find that quite striking.  We are commanded to love.  The phrasing, at least in the NRSV translation sounds like an assumption as much as it does an imperative, as if to say, “of course you shall love.” 

The very idea that we are commanded to love may seem a bit odd.  In the light of our modern notions of romantic love, we tend to think of love as an involuntary phenomenon, like lightning.  It strikes when and where it will, and we do not have any control over it.  But romantic love is only one kind among many loves.  There is the love of family, the love of friends, the love of country and land and the love of God.  It is a mistake to reduce love to mere emotion.  Love is something you do.  Love is lived out in words and deeds, not just a feeling.  In a certain sense I do think that love is involuntary, because it is our nature.  We cannot help but love.  Sometimes we do it badly, sometimes love can be sick and hurtful in its expression.  But love is an innate human capacity.  In that sense, the commandment, “You shall love,” is descriptive.”  It is how God created us.  Our ability to love and our need for love are the essence of the divine image and likeness in which we were created.  We were made from and for love.

The story of Ruth and Naomi is a beautiful illustration of love and how it is lived out.  The story starts badly with three women losing their husbands.  In an ancient patriarchal society, a childless widow without property is about the most vulnerable person imaginable, and this story takes place during a famine.  Orpah and Ruth are the daughter’s in-law of Naomi.  Knowing that the two younger women have another chance at life, Naomi generously and courageously released Ruth and Orpah to return to their families.  The loving bond between the three women is evident by the tearful goodbye and their unwillingness to leave Naomi.  Naomi insisted, and Orpah reluctantly kissed Naomi and left.

Ruth, however, refused to leave her mother-in-law.  The text tells us that she “clung to her.” (Ruth 1:14)   She implored Naomi saying, “Do not press me to leave you or turn back from following you!  Where you go, I will go; where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.” (Ruth 1:16)  Ruth’s passionate appeal to Naomi was characterized by the same selfless love and commitment that Ruth showed her.  Their love embodies both of the two great commandments that Jesus cited: the love of God and love of neighbor.  “Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.”

I doubt it will surprise you that the story does have a happy ending.  Naomi took Ruth with her when she sought help from her dead husband’s family near Bethlehem.  There Boaz, Naomi’s kinsman grew to admire and love Ruth.  They married and had a son.  At the end of the last chapter, there is a genealogy which informs us that Ruth and Boaz are the great grandparents of King David.  This is the greatest king of Israel, who established Jerusalem as its capital and reigned over a united kingdom.  Two of the four Gospels include genealogies that trace Jesus to David’s line.  You’ll notice that Ruth and Boaz met in the vicinity of Bethlehem. 

This tells us that at the heart of our sacred narrative is a willing act of love and commitment to God and a community.  “Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.”  You shall love the Lord your God with all you heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”  (Deuteronomy 6: 4-5)  “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18)  “There is no commandment greater than these.”  (Mark 12:31)  You shall love.  That is what we do.  We love God and we love each other.  Because God created us with the capacity and commanded us to love, we covenant faithfully with one another.  Our six new members did so this morning and we reaffirmed our commitments by word and song.  “Affirming [our] love for God and [our] faith in Jesus Christ, [we] joyfully enter into the membership of this church…  [We] pledge to be loyal to The Second Church, to share in its work and worship and to walk with its members in love and faithfulness.”    That’s what we do and what we shall do.  We shall love, in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
October 29, 2006

Help us to respond
as we go from this place
so that we become vessels
of healing and grace.

 ―Martie McMane (b. 1943)

United Church of Christ pastor and hymn-writer

Scripture Lessons:
Job 42:1-6, 10-17
Mark 10:46-52

A Spirit of Wholeness

Let me tell you a little bit about my midlife crisis.  Confession is good for the soul.  Don’t be alarmed, as midlife crises goes, mine isn’t as destructive or evil as betraying my wife for a young girlfriend.  It does have all the comic pathos of a forty-something mild-mannered bureaucrat deciding he needs a Harley to complete his life.  In my case, you’re looking at a forty-five year old suburban minister with thinning, gray hair and crow’s feet, becoming a skate-punk wannabe.  Max gets most of the credit for my descent (or ascent) into skateboarding.  He led the way at our house.  He got the first good skateboard and started working on the fundamental moves like pivots, ollies, manuals and grinds.  Oscar and the kids at the house next door soon contracted the obsession.  I am merely the latest to succumb. 

During the winter, when the weather was no good for skating, Max became quite the skateboard mechanic.  He spent hours working on his board, cleaning the bearings, upgrading hardware and wheels, tweaking the bushings on his trucks so they’d carve a turn without risking wheelbite.  Because he spent so much time and money working on his board and upgrading components, he soon had the spare parts to upgrade a toy store skateboard Oscar got as a birthday present.  When Max bought a new board, he handed down his old Birdhouse deck to Oscar.  He built me my own board, using the old toy store deck.  The board itself is pretty ratty, its original grip tape peeling around the edges and the graphics have worn off the bottom.  But it has quality Thunder trucks, Lucky bearings, Doh-Doh bushings and Autobahn wheels.  It’s a great board, good enough that the neighbor kids prefer it to their own, and incessantly ask to use mine.  When Max gave me the reanimated Frankenboard, I felt like I had just won the Dad Lottery. 

Predictably, as the latest arrival at the party, I have the weakest skills.  For the most part, the kids encourage me.  I say, for the most part, because Elena, a fifth grader next door, always seems to be nearby snickering when I wipe out.  But as the lone girl in the Upper Randlett skate crew, she’s entitled to a little attitude.  As I have waded around the shallows of suburban x-treme sport, even though the tricks appear almost suicidal, and the associated anti-fashions many of the kids wear cultivate an intentionally dangerous look, I have witnessed some really nice moments among kids that skate.  When a kid falls, they generally check to see if they are all right.  I’d feel better if I saw more helmets there, but they seem, for the most part, to be good kids.

When time and weather permit, we like to go to the skate park on Moody Street in Waltham.  On a nice day you’ll usually see about a dozen skating there, mostly on boards, but some rollerblades and scooters as well.  Bikes are banned from the park, and can be a problem.  I’ve seen cyclists riding the ramps knock over skaters and laugh.  That’s when I am glad to be a grown up.  I’ll whip out my cell phone and threaten to call the cops.  I’ll take the rap for squealing, and the kids don’t have to. 

One day in September we were there, and there were a couple of guys who looked to be in their late teens or early twenties.  They were really good, grinding up ramps, flipping their boards in mid-air and landing jumps.  They had the whole skate punk look going on, with radical hair, baggy grungy clothes, tattoos, and multiple piercings.  I was there with Jane, Max, Oscar and the three kids next door.  I had yet to acquire a real skateboard helmet of my own, so I was looking like the middle-aged geek that I am in my bike helmet, on toy store deck, practicing pivots, blunt stops and gingerly venturing down the more modest ramps.  Near the quarter-pipe there are a couple of gentle curved rises in a row.  I sucked up my courage and made for them.  I didn’t even make it over the first rise when my board went out from under me, and I landed flat on my face.  One of the older guys skated over to me and asked, “Dude, you all right?” 

I muttered sheepishly that I was more embarrassed than hurt.  His buddy, called over to me, “Dude, you gotta pay to play!”  Later, as I sat on the sidelines with Jane, having relinquished my board to one of the kids next door, one of these elder skatesmen advised me on his way out of the park, “Dude, ice that up when you get home.”  It was a really sweet instance of compassion, concern and connection between strangers who chanced to share a moment on the sculpted concrete terrain of the Moody Street skate park.

By now I suspect you are wondering if the truth of the pastor’s midlife crisis is that he has abandoned preaching real sermons and given himself up to undisciplined reveries about his latest pop culture obsession, so he can gratuitously flaunt his incomprehensible skate punk lingo (that he has to run by his thirteen-year-old son for correct usage).  Maybe.  Maybe not.  I am certainly not above such stylistic self-indulgence.  This sermon is, in part, an unabashed open love letter to Max and Oscar.  But in terms of my pastoral office as preacher and teacher, my hope is to share something of an epiphany on wholeness and redemption, which has everything to do with this mornings scripture lessons. 

In the final Chapter of Job, we see that God’s long-suffering servant may not know any more than he did at the beginning, but he has come to some kind of recognition of what he does not know.  There is wisdom in understanding and accepting one’s true limitations, and in Job we have a man who has pressed or perhaps been dragged to his most extreme limit.  The cosmic drama of Job is played out in existential real time in the midst of human relationships.  Job’s family and friends are key players throughout the story.  Wholeness and restoration come about only by the grace of God and in the context of community.

In Mark, we find Jesus and his disciples moving through Jericho, attracting a crowd.  This, too, is an image of wholeness, brought about by active engagement.  Think about it.  Though Jesus moved in a crowd of friends, his disciples did not constitute a clique.  Unlike an entourage, they did not insulate but rather attracted and gathered others to them.  Even when a desperate, blind beggar sought Jesus’ attention by yelling out a messianic title that might have brought unwanted attention from the authorities, Jesus engaged and healed the man.  Jesus modeled a vision of wholeness that was, and is, born of relationships. 

Wholeness is discovered when we move about our world with the assumption that God loves us and wants us to share that love by engaging the people around us.  We cannot find wholeness alone.  Our faith is rooted in the promise that when we gather together we can know God’s presence.  All it takes is two or more.  But to know God’s presence, we have to be present to one another.  We have to be engaged.

That’s how I had a vision of wholeness at the skate park.  I joke that it is my midlife crisis, but it is really a means of finding my place in midlife in relationship with others at different stages of life.  I hope I am not clutching desperately to my past.   While you might occasionally see me in the office wearing baggy jeans and sneakers on a day when I plan to take the boys to the skate park after school, you won’t see your pastor turning up with purple hair and a pierced face.  I have accepted and kind of like being the oldest novice at the park.  I can’t think of a time when I wasn’t the oldest person skating, though I have seen other parents out there.  And there is value to being there and filling out the age range.  Being a vaguely responsible adult on the scene makes the park a little safer for all the kids there.  When I remind a biker, who is becoming a hazard to the skaters that bikes aren’t allowed, I show my boys that we are all responsible for keeping an orderly and safe community, even if it sometimes means “squealing.”  When the older, more accomplished skaters make sure I haven’t hurt myself, I am a little safer.  Hopefully my boys see that, just as you look out for the little kids, you look out for the old guy, too.  They do.

By getting in there and enjoying myself, by being willing to struggle out in the open (looking anything but cool) I show my boys that you have to put in the time and take risks if you are going to be good at anything.  “You have to pay to play,” as one of the sages of Moody Street put it.  By trying and struggling, I get to appreciate how accomplished my boys and their friends have become.  Young men and boys need to be appreciated by older men.  I once heard Robert Bly tell a group of men that if any of them were not being appreciated by an older man, they were being cheated.  Even though we have fun skating in the driveway at home and on the sidewalks, going to the skate park is special. There we are forced to interact and coexist with other skaters.  It is one of the few true Public Squares that I have experienced in recent years.

This is what the church, at its best, can be.  We must be a place for people of differing ages, backgrounds, abilities to come together and share an experience on common ground.  It is a place where we must be aware of one another and come to appreciate one another.  It’s where we look out for one another’s well-being.  The church should be a safe place to challenge one another to move out of our comfort zones, to learn from one another, and grow.  A church should be a place where we have fun, get excited and surprise ourselves.  It is a place where we look out for the young ones as they spread their wings, even as we keep an eye on the well being of our elders. 

Unlike the skate park, what we do as a church is not an end in itself, not for mere sensation.  In the end, the wholeness we seek in church is what God wants for us.  The wholeness we seek in church is the wholeness that God wants for the entire world.  Like the skate park, we are practicing at what looks beautiful and seems impossible.  We’ll never know what is possible unless we take chances, put in the time, take our lumps and keep at it, in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
October 22, 2006

It is God in the house when the curtains lift gently at the windows, and a young child sucks his itching gums.  We do not understand the mysteries of God.  God the winter.  Summer, Septembers.  Moody dark tones of fathers dying.  The splash and laughter.  Children playing.

―Ellease Southerland

Scripture Lessons:
Job 38:1-7, 34-38
Mark 10:35-45

                       The Mysteries of God, the Frustrations of Life

Jim Carey, as far as I can tell, is nothing like Job.  Neither is the character he plays in the film, Bruce Almighty.  Bruce has none of the patience, humility, faithfulness nor anywhere near the reverence demonstrated by Job of biblical renown.  The title character in Bruce Almighty is a petty, self-absorbed local broadcast news reporter in Buffalo, NY.  The film opens as he is about to arrive at a moment of career crisis by being passed over for the anchorman position on the evening news.  Then he gets fired by the station where he works.  From there, Bruce descends into a frenzy of bitter whining and self-pity. 

To be fair, Bruce isn’t all bad.  As he leaves the station, Bruce comes to the defense of a homeless beggar being harassed by a group of thugs, then gets beaten up and his car vandalized for his trouble.  That night, he reaches for a rosary on his rearview mirror, and fervently prays for a miracle.  He drops the beads, and as he fishes around on the floor for them, he crashes his car.  Unlike Job, Bruce does not refrain from sinning with his lips.  In a moment of peak blasphemy he shouts to the heavens, daring God to “smite him” and indicts the Almighty’s administrative skills.  From the depths of his frustration, Bruce tells God, “You’re the one who should be fired.  The only one around here not doing his job is you!”

Bruce’s challenge is answered, but not out of a whirlwind as in this morning’s Hebrew Bible lesson.  Bruce’s pager begins to beep persistently, showing an unfamiliar number.  A voice mail summons him to an empty industrial building.  There, Bruce meets God in Room 7 on the seventh floor, in the person of an old African American custodian mopping an empty office building.  Morgan Freeman provides enough dignity and unflappable wisdom to be a convincing screen version of the Supreme Being, at least as much as George Burns.  Slowly, it dawns on Bruce who he is talking to.  Though he plays along, he does not really believe.  He is a bit surprised when the old custodian casually meets every challenge Bruce puts up.  In the end, God endows Bruce with divine powers, since Bruce thinks he can do a better job anyway.

There are some great comic gags that emerge as Bruce discovers his newly granted divine powers.  Bruce’s beloved but poorly house-trained dog is miraculously given the ability to use the toilet.  When he heads to work, Bruce causes traffic to part before him and gets a clear shot to the station, green lights all the way.  But, as stand-in Supreme Being, Bruce also has to answer prayers.  He quickly finds this overwhelming.  At first, the prayers arrive as a hum of voices only he can hear.  When he tries to organize them by turning them into post-it notes, he finds his apartment, his whole body and his dog covered with the little yellow slips of paper.  He then hits on the idea of using email.  When, checking his inbox to discover the millions and millions of prayers awaiting his attention, he clicks “reply all” and types “yes” to answer all the prayers.  Well-intentioned though it may have been, such a blanket response has consequences of its own.  For example, everyone who prayed to win the lottery gets their share of the jackpot, worth about $2.

As you might have guessed (and I’m not spoiling the ending, I promise), Bruce discovers that he cannot do a better job than God.  He also realizes that he allowed the frustrations in his life to obscure the blessings he enjoyed, like having a woman who loved him in his life.  And while I began by comparing Bruce to Job, I think Bruce Almighty has more in common with James and John, the disciples mentioned in the Gospel Lesson.  Like Bruce, James and John were looking for prestige and a promotion. 

By asking to be seated at Jesus’ right and left hands, the sons of Zebedee were not simply looking for good seats at a dinner party.  They were pretty audacious, too, when you consider the way they prefaced their request: “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you,” (Mark 10:35)  Jesus was suspicious right away, and asked them what they had in mind.   They used an interesting choice of words in their request, asking, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” (Mark 10:37)  That phrase, “in your glory” could mean different things.  Their sense of Jesus’ ultimate glory might simply have been political, based on certain messianic hopes of their time.  Expecting Jesus would restore the Davidic monarchy, they may have been putting in their bid for a good position in the royal court.  It may also have been that they were thinking bigger than that, looking for heavenly honors for all eternity.

Whatever the case, James and John mistook position with privilege, and Jesus told them to be careful what they asked for.  Jesus made it very clear that those who would aspire to greatness in his community would seek the greatest responsibility.  The greatness Jesus described was based in humility, service, and ultimately, vulnerability.  Here we are, roughly two-thirds of the way through the Gospel According to Mark, and yet again, the disciples prove to be slow on the uptake.  Yet again, Jesus had to explain to the ones who should know best, that the greatest among them would be the servant of all.  Jesus told his disciples that he did not come “…to be served but to serve.” (Mark 10:45)

The exchange between James, John and Jesus makes an interesting contrast to the whirlwind that Job faced.  Job, as scripture tells us, was a man who had pretty much everything.  He had health, wealth, family and friends, which by the time he stood before God speaking from the whirlwind, he had lost pretty much everything.  His wealth was gone, his children were dead, he has serious complexion problems and his so-called friends assumed he must have done something wrong to deserve such bitter misfortune.  Through it all, Job maintained both his own integrity and his faith in God.  But Job wanted some answers, and all he got was more questions.  With what God hurled from the whirlwind, Job came to the limits of human understanding and confronted one of the great existential mysteries.

The mystery that Job confronted has dogged us throughout the ages.  Poets and artists have wrestled with it from Gilgamesh to Bruce Almighty. The Bible addressed it repeatedly.  Jeremiah asked, “Righteous art thou, O LORD, when I complain to thee; yet I would plead my case before thee. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?” (Jeremiah 12:1)  The question was raised when Jesus was asked about a man who had been born blind, whether he or his parents had sinned (John 9:2).  The question is this: if God is good and just and in control, how can it be that there is such abundant suffering in the world?  All I can say is say that it is a mystery to me.  I know that’s not very satisfying, and life can be frustrating enough, I know. 

God’s answer to Job (in the form of more questions) is that the mystery of suffering is beyond us and we generally put the question in the wrong way.  When Job asked about suffering and order, God asked Job about the complexity of creation, the wonders of the mind.  Jesus took entirely the wrong question from his disciples and told them to stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution.  There is far too much status consciousness and tyranny and far too few people wanting to serve a higher good. 

That is where we come in, and that is how we can live with the mystery.  We know that the status and power James and John sought do not bring happiness to our lives; they do not, ultimately, satisfy.  We also know that there is way too much suffering and injustice in the world.  The only way to live with it is to confront it.  God invites us to be part of the solution, to tease out the inherent goodness in creation by seeking to live good and compassionate lives of service.  We may not get answers, but we will discover purpose and meaning in our lives.  Rather than frustration in the face of overwhelming mystery, and heartbreaking suffering and injustice, we may discover peace in the knowledge that we made the world a little bit better, that our lives have been a blessing to others.  With that, we might move from mystery to wonder, taking in the glory of trees alive with color, the music of a child’s laughter, the wisdom of an elder, and the movement of God’s Spirit in a world without end.  Amen.

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The Second Church in Newton
West Newton, MA
The Rev. Richard E. Malmberg
October 15, 2006

The Covenant which the Church of Christ in the West Parish entered into in order to impress their minds with a due sense of the obligations they laid themselves under to God and to one another to walk as becometh saints… ―Opening words of the Founding Covenant of Second Church

Scripture Lessons:
Amos 5:6-15
Mark 10:17-31

To Walk as Becometh Saints

Happiness has been in every age the desire of mankind.  Multitudes, having looked for it in wrong objects, have sought it in vain.  Many have sadly overlooked the important thought that the soul is the seat of comfort, that it cannot be found in external objects.  “The good man,” says Solomon, “shall be satisfied from himself.”  “Great peace,” observes King David, “have they that love the law.”  Though the apostles experienced peculiar sorrows, they found a consolation within, of which the malice of their enemies was unable to deprive them.  It was the language of St. Paul, “Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world.”  At another time he writes thus: “As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.”

The soul is the seat of sorrow.  How unhappy the man who feels the censures of a guilty, condemning conscience!  How insufficient are the riches and honours of the world to calm the tumult of his troubled mind!  “The wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest…”

Those were the words of a sermon the Reverend William Greenough, the first pastor, ordained to the pulpit of the Church of Christ in New Town’s West Parish 225 years ago.  Our first Meeting House stood roughly where the police station is on West Newton Square and The Reverend Mr. Greenough led this congregation for fifty years, his only pulpit.  In fact, he died just days after preaching his fiftieth anniversary sermon. 

We celebrate our history and heritage in the spirit of contemplation and seeking edification, not to worship the past itself or our own history.  And, I think we know the difference.  There is great value in contemplating the congregational life, worship practices and ministry in which we have our origins and owe our existence as a church.  Such reflection allows us to experience the mystery described by an ancient Christian doctrine.  The Communion of the Saints asserts that we live in mystical relationship with all Christians of every age, in every land, in the Body of Christ.  I think then, that we are in special communion with our predecessors here in the West Parish, who 225 years ago this week covenanted with one another in the sight of God “…to walk as becometh saints.”

Unfortunately, there is little recorded of what happened in worship in the earliest years of Second Church, though we do have some descriptions of worship services.  Thanks to the hard work of Joan Rosser, we have been able to catch the occasional glimpse in the nuggets she has mined from the various histories of Second Church that have been published at milestones on our journey.  Much as we do today, worship included prayers, the singing of hymns, the reading of scripture, and preaching on the week’s scripture lesson.  It was noted in one of our histories that The Reverend Mr. Greenough was accustomed to wearing knee britches and shoes with buckles long after that fashion had been generally abandoned.  In worship our first pastor wore a black pulpit gown, much like the one I am wearing now and wear most Sundays.   These have been the norm in Calvinist traditions for centuries, though not the colored stoles I generally wear and are more common these days among clergy in the United Church of Christ.  Pastor Greenough would likely have rejected such garb as popish excess.  The somber black robe is academic in origin, and underscores the pastor’s role as Teacher.

While there are some constants, many changes have been good.  A few days ago I dropped in on Bill Herzog, the new Dean at Andover Newton Theological School, to welcome him to the community and talk to him about coming here to preach sometime.  I told him about the worship service we were planning for today.  I mentioned that we would read from the King James translation of the Bible, and that all the prayers, hymns and responsive readings would be written in the gender-exclusive patriarchal language of the period.  He observed that by simply doing that, we would demonstrate how far we have come in our use of gender-inclusive language in worship.  While our god-talk is currently in a transitional moment, I hope we will come to a point where we can comfortably use both masculine and feminine language and imagery to describe a God who is both male and female and neither male nor female.  I am glad that we are no longer bound to an idolatry of masculinity that defined our sacred vision.  Still, I look forward to the day when we can move beyond our neutered language and embrace more integrated sacred speech.

On the other hand, there are things that are predecessors may have done better than we do.  I think immediately about how they observed the Sabbath and kept it holy.  I don’t mean that I pine for the days of three hour worship services and hour-long sermons, and I know you don’t.  But, in eighteenth century Massachusetts, work and commerce stopped on Sunday.  People came together to worship God, to give thanks and praise and to knit together a community of faith in fellowship with neighbors they did not likely see much during the week.  Simply getting to the meetinghouse would, for most, involved a long walk, saddling a horse or hitching up a carriage or wagon.  More often than not, the congregation would share a meal after worship, perhaps not returning home until dark.  Sabbath was a day devoted to relationships, with God and neighbor.

We could rationalize that those were simpler times, but what does that really mean?  Perhaps times were less complicated, but they weren’t easier.  These were people who worked from daybreak to sunset, six days a week.  Consider their homeland security.  For seven years, they had been at war with one of the most powerful empires in the world at the time.  A sliver of thirteen states were perched between the Atlantic Ocean and the vast North American wilderness, and they had yet to invent a government.  We might be tempted to write off our forbears’ devotion to weekly worship as understandable, given the scarcity of entertainment.  We have cable TV.  We have the internet.