Radically Available Love

Radically Available Love

by Rev. Scott Elliott

a sermon based on Luke 10:25-37

given at Palm Bay, FL on July 14, 2013

 

I thought I’d start off with a few funny-ish church sayings:

The first one is about a minister of whom it was said: “You could tell he was a great preacher because at the close of every sermon there was a great awakening.”

This one is about a congregation (perhaps that pastor’s) of whom it was said: “If all the people in church were laid end to end they would be … more comfortable.”

This one I think might just be about all of us at one time or another: “The average person’s idea of a good sermon is one that goes over their head and hits a neighbor.” 1 (World Greatest Church Jokes, 240-241.)

We just heard MARY BETH/ROSY read The Good Samaritan, perhaps Jesus’ most famous parable.

And actually that last joke I told about sermons going over our heads and hitting our neighbors applies to how, more often than not, modern Christians seem to hear Jesus’ parables, that is, we tend to hear them as Hallmark card-like moral tales that guide us to root for the application of an obvious moral that we usually hope others will get, because, well . . . we already get it.

So typically we hear The Prodigal Son: as a father welcoming a wayward child home; The Unforgiving Servant: as saying a forgiven person ought to also forgive; The Lost Coin: as teaching each person is of value; The Wise and Foolish Builders: means build things on solid ground; and last but not least, The Good Samaritan: we hear as teaching, help out neighbors in need.

Those are just a few examples, and all of the morals I named are fine. They are simple rules mostly about how to be nice. But really if we think about it they are pretty much just conventional wisdom tagged onto a storyline.

We like to think we’d follow those morals, and that, well, it’s just usually our neighbors who don’t follow them. In this way the morals, and the stories, we tend to hear in Jesus’ parables aren’t very revolutionary or radical or extreme, are they?

And here’s the thing, if we know anything at all about Jesus we know that he was a revolutionary with a radical message. Jesus wasn’t hung on the cross to die because of sweet easy to live by moral tales. Jesus was captured and executed because he was teaching radical love and a revolutionary way of relating.

In and on Jesus’ Way everybody gets loved, not just by God and by Jesus but – gulp– by us!

And not just an “Oh yes, that’s the nice way to do things” kind of love, but a kind of love that calls us to give up our old ways and follow Jesus, including into the dark and lonely, dank and scary places that most people in the culture don’t want to go.

With Jesus we are to bring love and care to scabby lepers, foreign aliens,  bleeding women, scamming tax collectors, begging poor people, unknown strangers, hardened criminals, wildly demon possessed, sad outcast widows, the dying and diseased, adulterers, armed occupying soldiers and despised enemies.

These are not Hallmark, made for TV, G-rated people Jesus tends to and calls us to tend to. They are what the Roman culture, and to much extent our culture, considers the grit and the grime of the world, the outcasts on the edge of society tossed away, often living in appalling places and conditions and they are appalled by others.

Not only are we to get love but we are to make sure the oppressed and loathed are provided love. We are to help them have enough, enough food and health care, enough justice and rights.

That’s not easy-peasy stuff. It’s not soft and fluffy and sweet stuff like we tend to hear in Jesus’ parables. And the truth is Jesus’ parables were not originally intended to be pleasant tales, to entertain, yes, but to also be dynamic and transformative, gutsy and provoking.

One of Jesus’ great gifts is he told parables, but the parables he told were not just nice stories, they were designed and intended to be provocative.

They get softened up because,  see, when something is provocative like a Bible verse, sermon or a parable we tend to like them better when the meaning goes over our head and hits a neighbor.

We are all fine and dandy with neighbors being provoked and changed, but not ourselves.

If we’ve been reading the Bible, picking out the verses that work for us, or if we’ve been listening to sermons or parables thinking that Jesus’ Way is about others changing while we stay the same, we haven’t been paying attention.

Jesus’ life and teaching, and his death and resurrection, were (and are!) about provoking all of us to change, not just our neighbors. All of us need to transform, to be saved from our lesser ways and guided to our better ways as individuals and as a people. And Jesus told parables as a way to help his followers to do this –and yes, that includes us.

So lets talk about parables and how they are provocative and then let’s reconsider the Good Samaritan and see if we can hear it as a radical message of love, because that’s what Jesus’ ministry was about. ///

So what the heck is a parable? A pretty famous Jesus scholar and theologian C. H. Dodd noted that

At its simplest a parable is a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought. (GOJ,120, Lecture 9/28 (quoting C. H. Dodd).

Vivid– strangeness–doubt–teased thought. That doesn’t sound like a simple morals story does it?

Jesus’ parables are not supposed to be heard as earthly common sensical.

Parables shake and rock the boat, they are heavenly sensical, but non-sensical to many on earth.

Staying with the surface earthly sense reading may make us feel good, but chances are it misses most of the meaning of Jesus’ parables, the real sense is lost. The heavenly sense gets buried.

And sure enough, when we start digging a little deeper than our surface “hits” we get provoked and pushed to transformative thinking from Jesus’ parables.

I recently wrote about this in one of my God Matters Hometown News columns. It’s true you can read this stuff at home if you fish it out of the recycling . . . or the bird cage.

Jesus’ parables are stories about the ordinary which draw extraordinary illustrations meant to evoke contemplation and transformation.

Through parables Jesus paints visual pictures of how God connects with us in the ordinary, how heaven’s way could play out in earthly situations.

A great professor of mine, Dr. Stephen Patterson, in his remarkable book The God of Jesus: wrote that through parables, Jesus was suggesting that God encounters people in the concrete everydayness of their lives. The transcendent is immanent. The Empire of God is –or could be– a present reality already breaking into the world as we have constructed it. 1

So lets turn now to Jesus’ parable of  “The Good Samaritan” (Luke 10:25-37), a very good example of his parables, it may just be my favorite.

But we need some background information to get the full meaning Jesus imparts. To begin, Jesus’ original audience would have identified with the Jewish victim, not the good Samaritan. Samaritans were hated and loathed in first century Palestine.

Also the priest and Levite would have been snickered at as hypocritical bureaucrats of Rome’s temple elite government.

To get the impact of how this original context alters the story let’s try and hear it in our context with those ideas. Here’s the story in an  “updated” version. It’s now a the story about a FEMA official; a politician; someone we loath; and a Palm Bay man in trouble:

A Palm Bay man was trapped in a hurricane surge– nearly drowned, he lay half-dead on a street.

A FEMA official happened by, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.

So, too, a politician surveying the damage saw the man and passed by on the other side.

But a known member of the Taliban, hiding in the area happened by; when he saw the man he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured medicine on them. Then he put him in the back of his van, brought him to a hotel room and took care of him. The next day he left paying for the room and asking the hotel manager to take care of the man out of his own debit card.

Wow! That’s a far cry from the sweet-neighbor-doing-a-good deed example that we usually take away from the story. After the FEMA official and politician walk by, the ordinary progression we’d expect is a known rescuer type to appear, a familiar hero, maybe Bruce Willis or Tom Cruise passing by.

But something extraordinary happens instead. A Taliban member, a hated and loathed person, shows up. Our hope for rescue (in the injured man’s shoes) is replaced by fear, anxiousness and confusion.

As we listen the story is not going as expected. We have no clue as to the outcome.

Indeed we fear that this Taliban fellow will stop as we lay there helpless–  he is dangerous. And when he does stop we worry for our health. And then when he moves in to help we worry even more:

Is he looking for a wallet?

What’s in the bottles?

Will he run us over?

Is he going to booby-trap, kill or maim us?

Then when he helps, gives us hospitality and pays for it, we worry for our reputation and what law enforcement officials and Homeland security will think about us. It’s a topsy-turvy tale. (Footnote to Patterson)

This story, understood in this radical parabolic way, makes us think way outside the box.

It’s not a Hallmark card experience, it’s a mind-bending experience.  So many questions are evoked.

What does Jesus mean by having the hated rescue us?

Where are the boundaries of compassion?

Why do we feel guilty for thinking ill of a Taliban member or the Taliban in general?

How is this the Empire of God?

How would we feel if we could not stop someone loathsome and hated from helping?

Would we rather be dead than have his help?

Would we help a Taliban member laying on the street?

Would we take that risk?

Would we pay for his care?

In light of this story, how would we stack up against the hated person in the story?

Could someone the cultural considers loathsome really be more humane than us?

Are the loathsome supposed to be loved and allowed to love us?

Jesus’ story in this light offers a new world view.  It’s a parable drawn from common life that arrests us by its strangeness, moves our mind to sufficient doubt about its application and leaves us wrestling about what it illustrates.

Can God actually be experienced through acts of compassion by someone we loath and hate? And vice versa?

That’s sure not our earthly experience or expectation.

But, wait a sec, the Gospels tell us that Jesus left us– and still gives to us– peace that is not of this world. Jesus calls us to be good neighbors, radically good neighbors.

Are we to be so radical we love even those we are supposed to hate? . . .

Like it or not, that sure sounds like the Gospel, doesn’t it?

And it’s not a soft and fluffy moral, Most of all it’s not a story we can very easily hope to let go over our head and hit our neighbor. It’s aimed at us.

Right.

At.

Us.

Following Jesus means working to change the world-view from one of “us versus them” to one of “us loving them and letting them love us.” And we are supposed to have that view all the time.

As Jesus put it, “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you . . . ” He also taught, Love your neighbors and Love your enemies.

Following Jesus means love is not just for those we are related to or married to or those we like, it means love is radically available to everyone and accepted from everyone, even those we have been taught to hate.

Those we are supposed to hate and loath are instead to get our care and our compassion and our desire for well being. We are to love everyone.

And those we are supposed to hate and loath are to be permitted to love us too.

Jesus’ Way is about radically accessible love.

That’s the good news of the Gospel!

AMEN!

 

ENDNOTES

1. Paterson, Stephen, The God of Jesus, p. 126-127.

2. I got a lot of these ideas from Professor Paterson’s 2005 Fall course “Biblical Studies III” at Eden Seminary, see also, ibid.

COPYRIGHT   Scott Elliott © 2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

If We Ought, We Can

If We Ought, We Can

Luke 7:36-8:3, June 16, 2013

Given at Palm Bay, Florida

by Rev. Scott Elliott

A young boy tried to talk his younger, more sin-resistant sister into lying so he could sneak a frog into the house. When she balked, saying, “Lying’s a sin,” the brother explained “You know how it was Jesus’ job to die for our sins? Well, see it’s our job to sin.”  (adapted from joke in 1001 More Humorous Illustrations, 294)

Most every week a number of churches across America focus on sin.

Most every week this church focuses on love. We also cover sin in relationship to love which I am pretty sure is a different view than many other churches focus on.

Sin is about our failure to hit the target of love God aims humans toward, by and large it is not about failing to figure out this or that religious belief.

Nor is sin about our somehow being naturally depraved, it’s about how in the course of living we fail to be loving. And we talk about it because ultimately it’s about a call to our need – and our God-given ability – to overcome such failures.

The word “sin” (as I’ve noted before) is actually derived from an archery term meaning “to miss the mark,” that is, God’s aim for us.

And actually, in the Bible the sins of ruling elites, of kings and kingdoms, of nations as a whole, are a bigger theme than the individual sins of the “you-s” and “me-s” of the world.

Consequently, conversations about sin from this pulpit are not about how we are going to hell if we sin, but how we can actively work to repent – which means to change direction – to repent and remedy our sinfulness, not through a correct set of religious beliefs, but through actions; actions by us to fix problems we cause as individuals and even more importantly, actions by us as a people to fix problems we cause as a people.

I mentioned two weeks ago how Paul’s theology was primarily based on the sins of Israel and humankind as a whole. But you know what? Individual sins are what most of us think about when the word “sin” comes up – as if the joke I just told is right, that our job is to sin. Many church sermons on Sundays focus on that notion of individual sin.

Of course, it is not our job as individuals to sin, we are to strive not to, but it is also clearly a Biblical edict that corporate and national bodies have a duty to strive not to sin and miss the mark God aims us all together at.

Seriously, the Bible can be heard to be more about that – sin of nations, sins of a people– than it is about the sins of each of us as individuals. That’s why prophets in the Bible speak over and over again to leaders about the corrupt nature of nations and leadership. Nations as a whole miss God’s mark in far worse ways than individuals do.

That mark, simply put, is love; the care, compassion and desire for the well being of all. . . The. Well. Being. Of. All.

We can argue about the means by which the care, compassion and well-being-of-all can be accomplished, but we cannot really quibble that it’s not being accomplished.

Nor can it be fairly said that the Bible does not call nations and leaders and community – over and over again–  to remedy that failing.

And that failing – the failure of our leaders, our nations, and our communities toward the well-being-of-all is a much bigger sin than any individual sin we are likely commit in our lifetime. In fact it’s much bigger than all of our sins combined that we are likely to commit in all our lives.

Today’s story is about a woman of ill repute who washes Jesus’ feet. She does this to the astonishment of community leaders at an elite religious leader’s home who is hosting Jesus’ visit and meal in the community.

The host admonishes Jesus for letting such a woman, a sinner, approach him.

As we heard, to Jesus’ Way of being and thinking, the woman’s sins are easily forgiven, she’s repented and is acting respectfully, she’s honoring Christ, she has no idol before her, but the Son of God. See she has repented– turned onto a new path. The elite did not do that.

It takes monumental effort for the elite to change the sins of a nation, of a people, of a community. The elite derive their power from the status quo (the way things are) and so repenting, changing course is harder for leaders and nations to do.

We can hear the elite patrons, the leaders, in the story grumbling and questioning Jesus among themselves, asking “Who is this who even forgives sins?”

Those community leaders, don’t try and provide or seek forgiveness. They don’t try and stop the sinning that led to the woman being of ill repute. They don’t try and stop their own sinning in failing to love . . . They just grumble and continue to act unloving. Jesus is in their presence and they still don’t get it.

Great courage is needed to alter the path of sinful cultural behavior, and  great upheaval follows that courage and alteration. Moses led the slaves out of Egypt and it took them forty years of wandering to settle down.

Forty years is a lot but our Civil War, that led African Americans out of slavery, took a hundred years before we settled down and dismantled Jim Crow laws.

Non-loving oppression leads to upheaval for the oppressor as well as the oppressed. The enslaved Hebrews suffered horribly, but the Egyptians who allowed slavery suffered too – greatly at the end of the day – with numerous plagues and the loss of their first born, and the loss of an entire army.

The enslaved African Americans suffered horribly in this country, and the rest of the nation that allowed and promoted and participated in slavery, suffered too. There was an awful Civil War. Many a first born was lost by illnesses that plague armies and the violence of war itself. Indeed over 600,000 died in that war, surely an amount equal to or greater than the numbers of Egyptians who died in the Red Sea chasing Moses and the Hebrews.

Sadly the Civil War ending did not end the suffering, there was the brutal and oppressive Jim Crow laws and racism for a hundred more years. And even today our nation suffers from the ugliness of racism born out of our nation’s brutal enslavement of men, women and children.

Our nation still has prophets calling us away from the cultural sin of the awfulness of oppression and disparity of treatment that began centuries ago on the shores of this nation, terrible mistreatment towards those who’s skin is dark. Their skin is dark, that’s the difference.

Of course, there are prophets calling us away from other corporate and cultural sins.  It’s good and right to be proud of our nation and our communities, but it is a sin to make idols of the status quo, idols of a nation or patriotism, especially to the exclusion of God, to the exclusion of love, by ignoring God’s call for us to love everyone and see to the well being of all.

See, the biggest issues facing the world have never been the sins of us individuals. I know that some Christians and Clergy and Churches seem to argue that it is, but it is not. The biggest issues facing the world are created by national and communal sins.

And by sins I mean the failure to seek and provide love. And by love I mean, the care and compassion and the well being of others.

In other words, our failure is the failure to idolize only God, only love. Our failure to focus on doing the things that Love does and calls us to do.

In a chapter on sin in his wonderful book Speaking Christian, Marcus Borg notes that:

For . . . the majority of people who have ever lived – the issue is not so much that they sinned, but that they were sinned against. There are victims of sin as well as sinners. Victims of sin need not forgiveness (though they may need to forgive), but liberation, reconnection, healing, wholeness, and a world of justice and peace. All of this is central to God’s passion in the Bible revealed decisively in Jesus. (151).

Dr. Borg goes on to note that “God wills our liberation from bondage, our return from exile, our seeing again, our healing and wholeness.” (153).

These words of Marcus Borg’s match up with the words of Psalm 145 in verse 9 which reads: “The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.”

That’s the God you likely believe in. It’s the God I believe in with all my heart. And I can believe in no other.

And here’s the thing, the Bible instructs that humans are made in the image of God. We are not made sinners, rotten to the core, as a lot of Christian tradition suggests. That tradition and theology not only makes us feel like worms, but ultimately casts blame on our DNA instead of on our decisions, our choices to act or not act.

We are not condemned to live a life of sin, we are empowered to break from it. We can hit the mark God aims us at.

We are made in the image of God. Jesus’ life and death and God affirming resurrection evidence humans can be good, AND can live a life of love. We can follow God’s call to love, that is to have care and compassion and desire for the well being of others.

Pelagius, a British monk who lived in 5th Century long ago asserted this stuff, that we are responsible for our own sin, and as such he argued Adam was responsible for Adam’s sinning, not God. Consequently, Pelagius reasoned that we – like Adam – are responsible for our own sins. God’s creative efforts are not responsible.

Pelagius did not like blaming other things, especially God, for immoral conduct, in the end (he argues) each person has the ability not to sin.

This is quite different from the notion that sin is a quality of our being. Pelagius argued that sin is a quality of our action, not a condition of our soul.

So his theology understands that God gives the grace of pardon to forgive sins; and that God gives the grace of revelation to show how we are to properly act.

The good news is that since we do not have to sin, we can be like Jesus. Whose life is a revelation as to how we are to properly act.

Like Jesus, we too are made in the image of God. Our lives can have a God affirming resurrection of a sort that ripples through time through our loving acts touching lives for generations.

We humans can be good, we can follow God’s call to love, we can have care and compassion and desire for the well being of others and act on it.

For Christians God’s grace calls us to repentance and baptism which symbolize sinning ways can be broken, but also professes alternatives may be lived out. Humanity has the power not to be sinful, not to miss the mark God aims us toward.

Pelagius put it simply: “If I ought, I can.” Meaning, if Jesus taught us to do something, if God commands us to do something, we can do it.

Can you hear how wonderful that is? If we cannot blame our failings on how God made us, that means we were made in a way that we can defeat sin, not just out own sins, but more importantly the sins of our nations.

The mark of love that God aims us at can be hit by you and me and this nation and other countries too! We can do it. That is good news for sure!

Our job is not to sin; our job is to love.

And it is important that we hear this job is not just something we aim to do as individuals, but something we push and prod and prophetically proclaim in and to our community and larger corporate groupings, such as states and as nations. We need to act for action by our culture and leaders.

One of the most powerful writings on this topic that I know of is Psalm 72. Tradition credits it to King Solomon, listen carefully to just a portion of this thousands of years old prayer calling leaders of nations to lead their nation and their people toward care and compassion and the desire for well being of others:

Psalm 72:1 Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king’s son.  May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice.

May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness. May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.

In his days may righteousness flourish and peace abound, until the moon is no more . . .

May all kings fall down before him, all nations give him service. For he delivers the needy when they call, the poor and those who have no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy. From oppression and violence he redeems their life; and precious is their blood in his sight.

I refer to that section of Psalm 72, that prayer of King Solomon’s to leaders of nations every so often. We need to pray that prayer, that leaders and nations might follow it.

I wish all faith communities focused on it more. I know that I need to mention it more often, it ought to be a prayer we all raise to God on a very regular basis in an effort to end the greatest sins in the world, those done by nations failing to hit God’s target for us, the well being of all – which is the definition of shalom, of peace.

Our job is not to sin.

Our job is to love.

And it is important that we hear it is our job to act with care and compassion and with a desire for the well being of all, and not just something we aim to do as individuals, but something we push and prod and prophetically proclaim as the aim for us as a people.

AMEN!

COPYRIGHT   Scott Elliott © 2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Vistas of God

Vistas of God

A sermon based on 1 Kings 17:8-24

Given at Palm Bay, FL June 9, 2013

by Scott Elliott

I love this story of the Zarephath widow. It’s a story of honoring those of other faiths . . . and it’s a story of God’s care for those who have a faith that differs from ours.

As I was doing some research on this text I stumbled on a sermon I wrote my first year here. I didn’t remember it, but I ended up liking it so much I revised and revamped a lot of the ideas in it for this morning.

The trouble though is that I need for us to imagine a mountain top, and . . .  well, we live in Florida where the highest geographic point, Britton Hill, is only 345 feet above sea level. After seven years here 345 feet actually now seems like an impressive geographic feature, but it’s not a mountain.

In fact, I wonder about the “hill” part of “Britton Hill”– on the real West Coast where I come, from we’d call that a “sand dune.”

I’m going to assume you have seen at least a picture of a mountain, so don’t imagine a hill or a sand dune . . .imagine a mountain . . . I need for us to picture an imaginary mountain. I’m going call this mountain Mount Faith. Picture Mount Faith looming high above a valley, so high that anyone at the top can look in one direction for  forever.

And it’s not easy to get up the mountain, but imagine it can be done by various routes . . . each leading to a different place on the mountain top.  The top of the mountain is vast and rugged and covers more land that a person could hike in a month.

Up there on the mountain top there are places to sit with vistas, all of them different, all of them stunning and awe inspiring.

Now picture this mountain of Faith as a metaphor, for religion and the vistas as a metaphor for how religions experience God. We all go up there and sit with a stunning and awesome and vast vista.

All the faiths of the world are up there, each has a unique view.

One looks out over a winding river snaking though a valley far below.

Another looks at a series of distant blue snow-capped mountains continuing on past the horizon.

Another’s vista is of a lush dense forest stretching for miles and miles– as far as the eye can see.

There are other views on that mountain, I’ve only listed a few. But no two faiths share the same view, rather each has more to look at and contemplate and consider than can be absorbed in a lifetime.

Imagine now that all the world that can be seen is God, so that each one of those faith routes leads to a view of God, even though no faith sees the same view of God from its place on the mountain top.

The God is the same, only the view is different and limited by our perspectives and the great expanse of that which is Divine.

The faith that experiences the river vista would understand God differently that the faith that experiences the forest vista or the one that experiences the mountain vistas. Each view, each experience, would be of God, just not all of God.

If the various faiths would swap stories or share views the people on that mountain could learn a little more about God than their experiences from their own views can provide.

But even then all of God could never be comprehended. God’s existence expands way beyond the view of humans on the mountain called Faith.  No one religion can take it all in.

Despite the fact that God is way bigger than anyone or any one religion could take in, many in Christianity have claimed their view of God is the only view of God. In fact I’ve often heard it asserted that a certain type of Christianity is the only route to God.

This is not only counter-intuitive, the Bible itself suggest there are other views and ways to faithfully experience God. The Bible evidences not only God honors people with different faiths, but that we are to be respectful of such people and faiths.

Honest, the Bible can be understood to teach that God has long respected and honored people of other faiths.

Today’s Lectionary reading from 1 Kings is one such example. All of Israel is in a drought and God sends Elijah not to Israel and not to an elite, but to Zarephath to a poor dying widow and her son. Elijah is sent to perform miracles which rescue these non-Jewish foreigners and himself from starvation. And Elijah actually ends up raising the malnourished child from the dead.

And as we heard, the widow from Zarephath has faith, not Jewish faith, but faith in God, and she has respect for Elijah as one who speaks the word of God through his faith.

God’s nature is Love so it should really not be a surprise that God loves and tends to those of our faith and those of other faiths.  Nor should it be a surprise that God would love those of other faiths, just as God loves us.

We hear often in this church that we are called to love not just God, but everyone, absolutely everyone. Such a comprehensive umbrella of love covers the poor and oppressed to be sure, but it also covers those of other faiths, whether considered neighbors or enemies, or the lowly outcast, such as widows and orphans in places like Zarephath.

The nature of God shown in Jesus includes holding dialogue with other faiths, respecting and loving people of other faiths. For example, when the non-Jewish Canaanite woman convinces Jesus to provide her with equal access to his healing gifts we are told that Jesus helped the Canaanite woman because he respected her faith, not because she converted to his (Mt 15:28).

In addition to rewarding the faith of the Canaanite woman, in the Gospels Jesus otherwise affirms other ways besides following Christianity as viable paths to God and God’s realm.

In Matthew 15 he indicates that he did not come to abolish the Old Testament commandments and clearly validates Judaism and the commandments by declaring that “ whoever does [the commandments] and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

And just to prove to you that sometimes lawyers know what they are talking about, in Luke 10 a lawyer says ‘‘Teacher . . .what must I do to inherit eternal life?’’ [and Jesus] said to him, ‘‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’’ [The lawyer] answered, ‘‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.’’ And [Jesus] said to him, ‘‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’’

To make the point Jesus – and the lawyer– both declare that a good neighbor is the non-Jew whom we know as The Good Samaritan. And it’s no accident that the story requires a Jewish man to let the Samaritan, a person of another faith, tend to his woundedness, to  save him . . . if that is what it takes.

This ties in nicely with Jesus’ claim in Matthew 25 that anyone, anyone who feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, tends to the sick or visits the imprisoned or welcomes the stranger will inherit the Empire of God.  In “The Story of the Sheep and Goats” Jesus declared that anyone and any nation that cares for others in need is on the path to God and will be rewarded for it.

In short, Jesus’ nature as recorded in the Gospels is such that time and again he shows respect and love for non-Christian paths to God.  Jesus’ love, God’s love, extends beyond those we think of as “of our faith.”

That’s what today’s story is about. Elijah is called by God to tend to the non-Jew Zarephath woman. And that lowly outcast to the culture sees through Elijah’s loving actions that he  God’s actor.

Just like when Jesus tended to the non-Jew Canaanite woman who saw through his action – and he through hers– that each is a person of faith for whom we need to have care, compassion and a desire for their well being.

Jesus and Elijah respected people of other faiths, because God does. So should we.

Of course, both Elijah and Jesus also challenged faith leaders. Elijah takes on Baal’s priests and royalty who failed to honor God – they were not you see, being righteous or doing justice.

Jesus challenges leaders of faiths too– temple elite, Pharisees, Sadducees and the representatives of the Roman cult– none of whom’s unloving acts were honoring God.

While they challenged those who did not act lovingly,  Elijah and Jesus both honored and respected those faithful to God.

You don’t have to be a Hebrew for Yahweh to do miracles for you, as the widow in Zarephath finds out. You don’t have to be a Jew or a Jesus follower for God to do miracles for you, as the Canaanite woman finds out.

God is God. In Exodus we are told that when Moses asked for God’s name God responded: “I Am Who I Am.” All our quibbling over what we think God is won’t change that. God is who God is.

And God it seems can be experienced, can be righteously followed, by many different paths and religions.

It’s as if all of God’s people have climbed different paths up a mountain, each way leading to a different look-out over a vast expanse of creation, of God. Each faith has a different view of God– BUT IT IS STILL GOD!

If different bits of God are seen and not seen by faiths of the world, imagine what might happen if religions talked with one another and actually considered what others were viewing. We all might just learn more about God, and certainly more about our neighbors.

People might turn to one another and echo the words of the Zarephath widow: “Now I know you are a person of God, and that the word of the Lord is in your mouth.”

Who knows what might happen if we started honoring other faiths. Hate might start losing ground. Love might start gaining ground. Heaven might start breaking in a little bit faster. We’s certianly get to know God a whole lot better.

Rumi, the great 13th century Muslim poet, did not use a mountain metaphor, but a large animal metaphor to illustrate this idea. Listen to his 800 year old poem called Elephant in the Dark :

Some Hindus have an elephant to show.
No one here has ever seen an elephant.
They bring it at night to a dark room.

One by one, we go in the dark and come out
saying how we experience the animal.

One of us happens to touch the trunk.”A water-pipe kind of creature.”

Another, the ear. “A very strong, always moving back and forth, fan-animal.”

Another, the leg. “I find it still, like a column on a temple.”

Another touches the curved back.”A leathery throne.”

Another, the cleverest, feels the tusk.”A rounded sword made of porcelain.” He’s proud of his description.

Each of us touches one place and understands the whole in that way. The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark are how the senses explore the reality of the elephant. If each of us held a candle there, and if we went in together, we could see it.

Whether we chat on a mountain about what we see, or speak in the light about what we feel, God in the nature of Jesus and Elijah calls us to honor other faiths, those other routes to views of the same Sacredness we view and experience differently.

Our view is a good one, but so is theirs. We are all viewing God.

And as we proclaim here every Sunday, God is good! (All the time!). All the time! (God is good!).

AMEN.

COPYRIGHT   Scott Elliott © 2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Pleasing People is Not Our Task– Loving Them is.

Pleasing People is Not Our Task– Loving Them is.

a sermon based on Galatians 1:1-12

given at Palm Bay, FL on June 2, 2013

by Rev. Scott Elliott

Every once in a while, I preach a sermon that is biographical; that is, I try to discuss in a general fashion a person in the Bible. This summer I plan to do a few biographic sermons summarizing bits of the Bible. I even had this idea that I will summarize the entire Bible later this month . . .We’ll see how that goes.

In researching the summarizing of things in the Bible, I actually found a writing called “The Bible in Fifty Words.” The happy news for you all is that I found it in a resource book called, “World’s Greatest Collection of Church Jokes”1. It’s pretty cool. It actually covers more of the Bible than most people probably know. It goes like this:

God made; Adam bit; Noah arked; Abraham split; Jacob fooled; Joseph ruled; Bush talked; Moses balked; Pharaoh plagued; People walked; Sea divided; Tablets guided; Promise landed; Saul freaked;  David peeked; Prophets warned; Jesus born; God walked; Love talked; Anger crucified; Hoped died; Love rose; Spirit flamed; Word spread; God remained. 1

If finding that was the happy news, the sad news is that I have not reduced my summary of the Bible person I chose for today down to fifty words. So Bob Evan’s and Applebee’s will still have to wait.

My subject today is Paul and I feel fortunate I was able to get the sermon  under twenty minutes.

On our last day of Bible Study we were to select a person in the Bible (other than Jesus) that we thought we’d like to be or who was like us. I picked Paul in part because of what he says in today’s reading “Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people. If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

See, given the somewhat . . .ummm, colorful responses I get to the progressive Christianity this church stands for and I preach and write about, I can relate to Paul’s reminder that a mark of Christianity is that not all people will not be pleased with you when you serve Christ boldly.

Jesus got in trouble for proclaiming love for all, and so did Paul. Why wouldn’t we expect the same when we follow Christ’s call?

Paul’s a hero of mine for hanging in there at a time when opponents to Jesus’ loving Way did more that just make ugly comments. They could, and did, hang you on a cross for it.

I like Paul for other reasons than he plowed forward knowing the message of Christ’s love for all would not please people and be of risk to life and limb. Paul is also passionate in his belief, bold in his service and open in his thinking.

Hear how Paul matches up to our vision statement? He is fearless for Christ’s unconditional love and takes Jesus’ message of good news to the ends of the earth regardless of the consequences.

We don’t know a lot about Paul’s life. We are pretty sure he was born early in the first century in a bustling crossroads city called Tarsus.

Although we don’t know exactly when Paul or Jesus, were born, Paul was probably a few years younger than Jesus but it is thought that they lived at the same time for twenty or thirty years.

Although Paul did not meet Jesus before the resurrection, Paul was alive when Jesus did all that he did in the Gospels.

Paul lived so close in time to Jesus that his letters are the oldest writings in the New Testament. He wrote about a generation before the first  Gospel was written.

We know Paul as a great Apostle and prophetic teacher and Saint of the church, but before he was a Jesus follower Paul was known as Saul and he vehemently opposed what at the time was Jesus centered  Judaism.

We get our knowledge about Paul from two sources, the letters he wrote and the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, but neither of those sources make it clear why Saul opposed the early post-Easter Jesus movement.

It is actually quite possible he opposed the inclusion of non-Jews into the Jesus sect of Judaism. See there was a sense in the movement that Jesus’ promised non-violent world was breaking-in so – as John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg put it– a belief developed that  “Gentiles could now become full members of the people of God without following Jewish conversion requirements, for example circumcision for males.” 2 (69).

This means Saul’s likely to have opposed the inclusion of Gentiles, an exclusionary stance he would have taken zealously, because we know that Saul was persecuting Jesus followers, and violently so.

Keep in mind that Saul’s persecution was not an example of mainstream Judaism; it was an example of religious zealousness. As we know there are religious zealots around today . . . well, Saul was akin to one of those . . . until he had a transforming experience.

One day, while in zealous pursuit of the persecution of the Jewish Jesus Followers, Saul had a profoundly mystical encounter that changed his life and eventually changed the Jesus movement itself. On the road to Damascus, where he was going to persecute Jesus followers, The Book of Acts reports:

[Saul] was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” 5 He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. (Act 9:3-5 NRS)

The light blinded Saul for a number of days until “something like scales fell from his eyes” (Acts 9:18) and his sight returned.

Paul experienced a theophany, a God appearance.

Here is how Paul himself puts it in the texts that follow today’s reading:

I received [the gospel] through a revelation of Jesus Christ. You have heard, no doubt . . . I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it . . . when God . . . was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles . . .. (Gal 1:12-16 NRSV)

The Book of Acts claims that Saul heard Christ, but Paul claims he saw Christ. “It is that sight that makes him an apostle.” 3.

Saul is so profoundly struck by this sight that he does a “180,” and becomes not only a Jesus Follower and an Apostle, but he dedicates his life to bringing the Good News that all are included in the wide embrace of the God of Jesus.

If all of what I’ve mentioned so far happened, then we can hear that Saul, who persecuted to uphold exclusion, becomes Paul who champions inclusion.

Oddly much of  Christianity has claimed Paul teaches exclusion. And when I came back to church, I discovered that this exclusive theology is more like Saul-the-persecutors’s idea of an exclusionary way to an exclusionary God, than Paul the Apostle’s idea of a theology of inclusion, where all are included into God’s love. Where – like Jesus’ table – all-all-ALL- are welcome.

Paul’s letter to the Galatians that we are considering in the Lectionary reading today contains some of the most beautiful inclusionary language in the Bible. In the third chapter Paul wrote the famous lines I referred to last week: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28 NRS).

Although it’s been claimed Paul supported slavery and misogamy, he actually wrote against slavery and wrote and worked for the fair treatment of everyone, women as well as men. The New Testament records that Paul treated women as equal partners and sisters in Christ. And as we heard in the sermon last week Paul considered slaves as equal brothers entitle to love and freedom.

A big part of the problem is that Paul gets blamed for a lot of words he didn’t write. Of the thirteen letters assigned to Paul in the Bible, most scholars conclude only seven appear to be genuinely Paul’s (though even some of those may have been altered in part). The genuine Pauline letters are Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, 1st Thessalonians, Philippians, Philemon and Galatians.

And even those letters are often misunderstood when we fail to consider the context he wrote in. Paul did not write as a modern American Protestant. Paul wrote as a first century Jewish follower of Jesus in the Roman Empire; and he did not write with all the Christian doctrine and traditions that come to us layered on top of everything. 4

Modern Christians tend to come to Paul’s writing thinking he had in mind individual sinners being saved, that’s stuff later theologians layered onto Paul.

When Paul speaks of sin it is his understanding of the transgressions of Israel as a people, not as individuals that he has in mind. 5. For Paul Torah, Scripture, had not helped Israel, which was, as Paul wrote: “as guilty as the Gentiles.” 6 The only grace that counted for Paul was that available – equally to Gentiles and Jews – through Christ Jesus.

And Paul never thought he had been converted to Christianity, he considered himself a Jewish apostle of Christ’s working among the Gentiles, trying to claim and define a place for Gentiles in the Jewish Jesus sect.

Paul’s concern was basically fourfold. First of all, Paul trusted that the Messiah had come in the form of Jesus Christ who offered the  Grace that counted.

Second, Paul believed that the Gentiles needed to be allowed to come into the fold of those who are to be saved by the faith of Jesus, and the resulting grace of God.

Third, Paul understood that a prime barrier to Gentiles coming into the fold to be saved is the Jewish initiation rite of circumcision.

Fourth, Paul also understood that he had to lift the barrier of circumcision in order to open the floodgates of Gentile converts and he does this by arguing a way around Torah.

Specifically Paul argues in Galatians that Abraham who was un-circumcised was blessed by God, and it was through faith–that is trust– in God, not by circumcision that the blessing occurs. Putting it simply, Paul argued that since the founder of the Judaism, Abraham, was not circumcised Gentiles didn’t need to be circumcised either.

Essentially Paul hangs his hat on “faith” as the end run around Torah’s kosher laws for Gentiles. As a seminary professor of mine put it, “[J]ustification by faith is the good news to the Jews first, and also to the Greek. ‘For the just shall live by faith’” 7.

Paul’s argument is that if a person trusts in God as Abraham did, as Christ did, they can be justified, which means saved. Basically Paul sees Torah as a temporary guardian given by God to hold things in place until Jesus showed up. Torah was not faulty, rather sin and flesh were to blame for Israel’s inability to comply with it.

It is not until later that Augustine and his progeny skew Paul’s writings to appear anti-Jewish, but Paul was no such thing. Indeed, if Paul saw our churches today he would ask “Hey, where are all the Jews?” He would also no doubt point out that he and Jesus were both Jewish!

Paul was bringing Gentiles to the God of the Jews, the God of Jesus, through the promise given to Abraham and the trust he and Jesus had in God.

Paul’s primary mission was to figure out and teach how Gentiles could be included in the community of the Jesus movement, and he worked tirelessly toward that end.

Reading through Paul’s intended lens of bringing Gentiles to the God of Judaism spins Paul’s efforts within his churches differently than our notion of Jesus dying to atone individual sin.

Reading through Paul’s lens we see him as working to build up community making God’s table inclusive. Everyone gets to come to it and into Jesus’ community.

In this way Paul’s efforts are similar to what Jesus is remembered as having done. Instead of seeing Paul’s message as focusing on saving individual sinners, he can be seen as including, like Jesus, those the culture considered unclean. And for Paul, the unclean niche he focuses on is Gentiles.

Understanding Paul’s message as an extension of Jesus’ inclusive community makes Paul’s efforts much more cohesive with Jesus’ teachings.

By the time he writes Galatians Paul is defending his apostleship. As the letter unfolds it becomes clear that the primary issue is whether circumcision is to be required in the Jesus Movement or not.

Paul is accused of trying to gain favor with Gentiles by (pardon the pun) cutting out circumcision.

And the issue was not (for Paul anyway) at its heart a question about being law observant in general, but about circumcision, and the existence or non-existence of effective mission work among the Gentiles.

If circumcision was required, the Gentiles would leave or not join the movement and the separation between the Jews and Gentiles would continue. Paul dedicates his life to end that separation.

The Jesus’ followers had continued to include all Jews at the table regardless of their status. Paul takes this inclusiveness to its next logical step by adding to the movement a concerted effort to include all Gentiles at the table as well.

In Paul’s day the city of Antioch reeled from race riots between Jews and Gentiles. Paul’s mission to unite them through Christ was inhibited by the tension and differences.

Paul needed to find a way around the Jewish tradition of strict compliance with the law as the way to Judaism’s God, to Jesus and Paul’s God, to our God, to everyone’s God . . . to the God of love.

In order to get around the tradition, Paul first holds fast to his argument in his letter to those Galatians who began opposing Paul’s teachings.

Paul argues that he taught them Christ’s gospel not to please Gentiles who don’t want to be circumcised, but rather to follow, as he notes in the reading, a direct revelation from Christ (1:11).

Once Paul’s established his authority, the crux of Paul’s argument becomes that justification – salvation – before God comes through the faith (and by faith he means the trust) of Jesus, the trust of Jesus, in God.

It is not trust in circumcision.

It is  not trust in Scripture.

It is trust in God’s Spirit that we – you and me; all of us – are saved by God’s unfettered grace; loved just as we are. And that we are saved from our lesser self and a lesser world when we turn to love through new life in Christ.

Paul’s a pioneer blazing a trail for what later becomes Christianity, the religion of Jesus’ Way, of God’s Way, of unconditional love and inclusivity.

That Way, truly followed, has always been hard.

Unconditional love does not please a lot of people.

But pleasing people is not our task, loving them is.

That was Paul’s way, that is Jesus’ Way and that is our way to the God of love and to salvation for us all.

AMEN.

 

END NOTES:

1. World’s Greatest Collection of Church Jokes, (Barbour Publishing 2003), 208.

2 Borg, Marcus, Crossan, John Dominic, The First Paul, (2009), 69. This book and the Stephen Patterson’s course Biblical Studies III at Eden Theological Seminary (Fall 2005) greatly influenced this sermon and much of it’s factual contents are drawn from those sources as well as Paul’s letters and The Book of Acts.

3. Borg and Crossan,  71.

4 Ibid., 17.

5 Ibid., 81.

6. Ibid.

7. Patterson, Stephen, Biblical Studies Course, Eden Theological Seminary, December 5, 2005.

COPYRIGHT   Scott Elliott © 2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Devil Can Cite Scripture for His Purpose

The Devil Can Cite Scripture for His Purpose

A sermon based on Philemon

Given at Palm Bay, FL on May 26, 2013

by Rev. Scott Elliott

ANITA/RICK just read most of a kind of obscure book in the New Testament, Philemon.

This “book” is a letter from Paul to Philemon, a slave owner.

It is a letter about one of Philemon’s slaves, a fellow named Onesimus, who sought refuge with Paul. Paul sends Onesimus back to Philemon with a letter asking him to see Onesimus “[n]o longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother– especially to me but how much more to you, both in flesh and in the Lord.” Paul goes so far as to ask Philemon to welcome the returning Onesimus as he would welcome Paul himself.

We can hear in this letter a renouncement of slavery. Paul is saying “Accept this slave, not just as a brother, but as your beloved brother, the same as you would accept me.”

Such a renouncement is in line not only with Jesus’ declaration that he came to set captives free and his command to love your neighbor, but also with many comments by Paul himself on slavery. For example in Galatians 5 (1) Paul writes “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore and do not submit to a yoke of slavery.” In 1 Corinthians 7 (21, 23) he writes “whoever was called in the Lord as a slave is a free person . . . do not become slaves of human masters.” . . . And perhaps most famously in Galatians 3 (28) “There is no longer . . . slave or free . . . for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

It probably comes as little surprise that Philemon was often cited and quoted in the Civil War by those who opposed slavery.

It is a surprise, however, that Philemon was also quite often cited by those who favored slavery:   In  The Rights and Duties of Slaveholders George Freeman in 1836 wrote that in Philemon,

we are furnished with one remarkable instance, in which an Apostle appears to have been instrumental, not in setting at liberty, (as some over-benevolent persons in our day are forward to do) but in reclaiming and sending back to his master, A FUGITIVE SLAVE! . . . Phile[m]on, it appears, was a Christian . . . His slave Onesimus had eloped from his master; but meeting St. Paul in his travels, he became a convert to the Christian Faith, and now, under the influence of Christian principle set home to his conscience, doubtless by the faithful exertion of the Apostle, he resolved on returning to his master’s service. . .

Freeman adds this:

“*Footnote: Some strenuous advocates of emancipation, . . . have sought to give this transaction a somewhat different aspect. From the expressions used by the Apostle . . . they have inferred that he did not mean to consign Onesimus again to bondage; confidently trusting that since his conversion he would no longer be regarded by Philemon as a slave, but be received and acknowledged not only as a Christian brother, but as an equal. A candid examination of the Epistle, however, must, it is thought, satisfy every impartial mind that the view [I’ve stated]  is the correct one. ” 1.

Frederick Douglass a 19th Century ex-slave, articulate voice and hero of the anti-slavery movement had, as you might expect– a differnt take. He responded in general to this type of argument on a number of occasions. Here is an excerpt of one of Douglass’ arguments:

The leading Doctors of Divinity in America, and the Professors in the Colleges, were in favour of slavery. There was Professor Stewart, of the Andover seminary, one of the first Biblical schools in New England——that gentleman had committed to him the instruction of the Ministers of a large portion of the congregational denominations, and he was an advocate for slavery. The Rev. Dr. Fisk, who some time ago, was welcomed by the Methodist Church, in Dublin, though they had shut [me] out,——this Doctor Fisk became uneasy, when he heard it said that slavery was a sin, and, not willing to commit himself on the question, wished to have the opinion of Doctor Stewart on the subject. This man, who would have said that sheep-stealing was a sin, and would have decided so at once, had to consult a learned Doctor as to whether man-stealing was a sin . . .. . . Doctor Stewart sent him a reply, in which he referred to the case of Onesimus, whom he stated Paul had sent back to Philemon for life.

Douglass, the ex-slave and abolitionist, then states this powerful argument in reply:

[I] would be glad to know where Dr. Stewart learned that Onesimus was sent back into slavery for life; was it, [I] would ask, from the law? If it was, [I] would tell him that Jewish slavery was not for life; there was no such thing known among the Jews as slavery for life, except it was desired on the part of the servant himself. What did the Apostle say himself? He said, he sent back Onesimus greater than a servant; and told Philemon to receive him as he would receive him, Paul; not as a slave who could be sold in the market, but as a brother beloved. 2

One Christian camp in our nation’s history claimed the Bible supported slavery. Another camp claimed it opposed slavery.

How could the Bible be read to bolster such opposing purposes? How could one book be construed in such drastically different ways?

Didn’t Moses lead the Hebrews out of the evil of slavery in Egypt?  Yes he did.

Didn’t Israel lament the captivity of her people in Babylon? Yes it did.

But the Bible also remembers that Abraham took and impregnated a slave girl and it remembers that Solomon built his great temple on the back of thousands of slaves.

There are stories in the Bible that can be used to support and condemn slavery.

The Bible is a collection of experiences from very distant times and places. It contains the echoes of many voices and cultures.

Among the many voices are those that include support for domination systems like slavery. This is called “Royal Theology.” 3

We can hear this pro-powers-that-be voice particularly strong in the King Saul and King David stories, where God was experienced as appointing, supporting and siding with the monarchy. Royal Theology legitimates power structures including systems of domination like slavery.

There are also many theological voices in the Bible that oppose domination systems, we tend to call this “Prophetic Theology,” the voices that protest and seek to subvert the power structures and systems of domination like slavery. 4 

We can hear these prophetic voices in the Moses traditions and later in the prophets who oppose those in power. And we can hear these protests against power and domination in the prophetic words of John the Baptist, Paul and Jesus –each of whom was put to death by the domination system of Rome because they opposed that system and the religious elite who supported it.

Royal theologies and Prophetic theologies are in tension throughout the Bible.

Despite what we may have heard there are in fact many contradictions in the Bible. Interestingly, there is not a passage in the Bible which claims every word is inerrant without contradiction– that is a doctrine made up by some Christian leaders about 150 years ago.

The words in the Bible are actually from many different people with many different perspectives. The Adult Seminar is looking at this kind of stuff. And if we all think about it,  it really should come as no surprise that not all the voices in the Bible jibe with one another. The stories of those who experienced enslavement in Egypt and virtual enslavement under Rome’s rule of Palestine are going to see things differently than wealthy tribal leader Abraham or King Saul, King David or King Solomon and their peers.

What we have in the Bible are recordings over time of different experiences of God, “witnesses” to who God is. These witnesses come before us in scripture and when they contradict other views of God WE must judge which witness to believe, which witness points us toward the God we know and experience, the loving God of Jesus.

I trust that each of us in this room would reject slavery as acceptable in the eyes of God and to this community.  I trust that we would not accept that God speaking through Biblical sources calls us to support slavery in any fashion anywhere. What we hear is a call to love God, ourselves and our neighbors and we understand that slavery is far, far from that call to love on each of those levels.

Slavery is an easy issue for us to judge today. As a culture we have – THANK GOD! – come to abhor it. When we can bear it we look back at our history and we are rightfully ashamed of our past, of our capture, torture, killing and enslavement of thousands and thousands of men, women and children. How could we have done this? How could churches, clergy or Christians have allowed it? How could the Bible have been quoted to support it?

Shakespeare’s character Antonio, in The Merchant of Venice, notes that “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” It’s true, the devil can do that! Listen to these words of Adolph Hitler:

My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders.5

History evidences that evil doers, like slave owners and even the likes of Adolph Hitler, often turn to scripture for justification of their ungodly acts –the devil can indeed cite scripture for his purpose.

That’s pretty depressing. That’s pretty scary. How can we know when scripture is valid or being used validly?

Well, for starters in this church I can assure you that I always use scripture right, so you should only trust me.  I am kidding of course. You should not just follow my word, but test what you hear against other Biblical texts, church traditions, reason and your own experiences.

John Wesley the founder of the Methodist church came up with this method for theological reflection that mainstream seminaries teach. It’s called the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” what you do is take the Bible, church tradition, reason and personal experience and use them as checks and balances to help determine where Truth can be found in the  scriptural witnesses that come before you.

Let’s take Philemon and seek Truth there: are we called to or away from slavery by God? We all know the answer is we are called away from slavery. We get there intuitively by a short cut.

But we can see how the Wesleyan Quadrilateral works to get us there as well. Let’s begin with the Bible leg of the Quadrilateral. In this church we ground our theology in the Biblical witnesses in 1 John (4:8) that “God is Love” and Jesus commands to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” [and] “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Slavery is in opposition to those Biblical groundings. Our God of Love could never condone slavery. And how could we love our neighbor as our self, if we have allowed her to be enslaved? . . .

Tradition, the second leg of the Quadrilateral, helps in this regard as well, for over a thousand years many portions of the church have called for abolition of slavery and in the last century church tradition has come to almost uniformly abhor slavery.

The third leg, reason – that is rational thinking – tells us today that slavery is an awful, horrid, inhumane and immoral thing to do to another human being.

Finally the last leg is experience: our personal and communal experiences of God tells us that slavery is ungodly and awful.

From these four legs of Wesley’s Quadrilateral –  scripture, tradition, experience and reason – we find that the truth in Philemon is that slavery is not good, that God through the apostle Paul called Philemon away from seeing Onesimus as a slave and toward seeing him for what he was: a beloved brother and a Child of God.

It is easy for us to look back and shake our heads at those in America who claimed slavery was okayed by the Bible and therefore by God. We have the vantage point of history. We have the advantage of living in a culture that has evolved to the point of teaching us slavery is awful.

Before we get too smug in our righteousness on the issue of slavery, what things today do we hear the Bible being touted in favor of that history – and I dare say God– will look back at us and wonder how a people of God could ever have so misused the Bible?

Are there such misuses today?

It’s not an unfair question. We don’t need a crystal ball to know what is wrong. After all Lincoln said “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Lincoln lived during slavery, he knew it was wrong. Douglass and other abolitionists knew it was wrong–for goodness sake Paul knew it was wrong when he wrote Philemon 2000 years ago!

Is the Bible being misused today to support wrongs and how will we know? There is no denying that it is being used on both sides of a number of issues. For example you can hear or read biblical arguments for and against evolution, the death penalty, women’s rights, homosexuality, abortion, war, peace, welfare, Israel, immigration, and environmentalism– just to name a few.

To answer the question: is the Bible being misused today to support wrongs and how will we know? We cannot rely on the arguments of others. When we hear the Bible touted on behalf of one side or another, we have a duty to search for Truth in the scripture and to clearly hear the God-of-Love’s call and act upon it.

One time honored way to do this is to turn to the Bible, to tradition, to reason and to our own experiences and determine where God is calling on the issues of our day.

The devil can cite scripture for his purpose. It’s our job, not to listen to the devil, but to seek out and listen to God’s call– which is always to love, to justice, and to peace.

May all of us seek out and listen to that call.

AMEN.

– Endnotes–

Note: An earlier version of this sermon was preached in 2007. At the last minute a guest preacher for today became very ill and was unable to preach, so I dusted this sermon off and used it.

1. Excerpts from The Rights and Duties of Slaveholders: Two Discourses Delivered on Sunday, November 27, 1836, in Christ Church, Raleigh, North-Carolina, By George W. Freeman, (Charleston: A.E. Miller, Printer to The Protestant Episcopal Society for the Advancement of Christianity in South-Carolina, 1837): p.5-11.

2.Frederick Douglass, “Baptists, Congregationalists, the Free Church, and Slavery: An Address Delivered in Belfast, Ireland, on December 23, 1845.” Belfast News Letter, December 26, 1845 and Belfast Northern Whig, December 25, 1845. Blassingame, John (et al, eds.). The Frederick Douglass Papers: Series One–Speeches, Debates, and Interviews. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Vol. I.

3. Borg, Marcus, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time, HarperSanFrancisco, (2001), 298

4. Ibid.

5. Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)

 COPYRIGHT   Scott Elliott © 2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Wind and Fire and God

Wind and Fire and God

a sermon based on Acts 2:1-21

given at Palm Bay, FL on May 19, 2013

by Rev. Scott Elliott

SCOTT:  The scripture readings today are from the Lectionary text, Acts chapter 2: verses 1 to 21. I will provide a little commentary and Chris is also going to lead us in a song. So think of this as a kinda Pentecost Hymn-sing.  Chris is also going to read the scripture passage a little bit a time. We are using Eugene Patterson’s The Message paraphrase for our readings.  (Patterson, Eugene The Message, NavPress (2003) COPYRIGHT WORK).

CHRIS:  I’m reading Acts 2:1-5: “When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.”

SCOTT:  Wind and fire are often images for God in the Bible. As we just heard, they both appear in the Pentecost story, which is how they became symbols for this day of Pentecost.

Pentecost is a word that means “fifty.” It represents the fifty days from Easter to this day when we celebrate the appearance of the Holy Spirit among Jesus’ followers, and the beginnings, the birthday if you will, of the church.

On Pentecost the Holy Spirit came down to Jesus’ followers and filled them up, motivating them– and now US!– to continue the work Jesus began. It’s the work of bringing God’s unconditional love to everyone in need of it.

As Chris read, God is reported in the Book of Acts as having been experienced in the Pentecost story like wind and fire.

One way to hear this is that the flame of love – God– in each of us is stoked by the Spirit breathing on us. God’s breath causes our God-spark– Christ– to  burst into flames of Love, which we then we spread like wild fire.

CHRIS: There’s a Christian camp song from the 1960s and 70s some of you may remember that captures this spreading the warmth of the fire of love image. It’s called “Pass It On” You can remain seated as we sing it. The words are on the screen.

            Pass It On

       by Kurt Kaiser

It only takes a spark to get a fire going,

And soon all those around, can warm up in glowing.

That’s how it is with God’s love,

Once you’ve experienced it, you spread His love to everyone;

You want to pass it on.

What a wondrous time is spring, when all the trees are budding;

The birds begin to sing, the flowers start their blooming.

That’s how it is with God’s love;

Once you’ve experienced it, you want to sing

“It’s fresh like spring”; you want to pass it on. 

I wish for you my friend, this happiness that I’ve found.

You can depend on Him, it matters not where you’re bound.

I’ll shout it from the mountain top – PRAISE GOD

I want the world to know; the Lord of love has come to me,

I want to pass it on.

                1969 Bud John Songs, Inc. COPYRIGHT

                             Words and Music by Kurt Kaiser

SCOTT: The glowing spark of God, fanned by the flames of the Spirit . . . That’s why we come here each Sunday in hopes of getting that God glow going right?

The New Testament has flames in the stories of “God appearances,” obviously in today’s text, but there’s a more subtle one. We considered it a few weeks ago, the Easter story with Jesus on the beach by a fire that he uses to gather and teach and  feed the disciples.

I really like that image of Jesus. If you have ever sat around a camp fire you know how meditative they can feel. Fire can often be a portal to Sacred, carrying us to a thin place where we are more aware of God’s presence. Fire is a thing that can inspire awe and fascination.

And that is, in part, why it is a really good metaphor for how we experience love. Love is Sacred and inspires awe and fascination.  The writer of the song, Pass It On, got that.

Fire, though a thing, can like love, provide comfort when we are cold or in the dark. Fire like loves warms us.

And love like fire heats up our passion for individuals, and also causes us to help others. The flames of love motivate us to not only be enamored with a spouse or partner, but, to have compassion for others, those who are in need of care or protection or freedom from oppression or bondage.

We know the flames and wind are metaphors in today’s reading because the Bible indicates “a sound like the rush of a violent wind . . .[and] . . . Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them . . . “

If we think about it, wind and flames are common images and symbols in the Bible for God’s appearances on earth. Theologians call an appearance of God a “theophany” it’s a Greek word that translates as “God appears.”

And God does appear in the Bible often as wind or fire. Creation begins in Genesis with a theophany of God as wind, the breath of God,  “ruah” a feminine part of Yahweh, sweeping over the dark void and creating the world.

CHRIS: All of creation is not just created by God but soaked through and through with God. All things are bright and beautiful . . . which just happens to be the name of the next song we are going to sing:

          All Things Bright and Beautiful

                                Cecil Alexander

Refrain:

All things bright and beautiful,

All creatures great and small,

All things wise and wonderful:

The Lord God made them all. 

Each little flow’r that opens,

Each little bird that sings,

He made their glowing colors,

He made their tiny wings.

The purple-headed mountains,

The river running by,

The sunset and the morning

That brightens up the sky.

The cold wind in the winter,

The pleasant summer sun,

The ripe fruits in the garden,

He made them every one.

The tall trees in the greenwood,                                                                                                                                                                                        

The meadows where we play,

The rushes by the water,

To gather every day.

He gave us eyes to see them,

And lips that we might tell

How great is God Almighty,

Who has made all things well.

SCOTT: God is soaking all of creation. But sometimes we have trouble seeing God, or we take God’s presence for granted. Theophanies shake that up with  spectacular experiences. Wind roaring and fire burning are good metaphors for such God’s experiences. . .  Sometimes the experience is so spectacular, that onlookers can also experience our God experiences.

The Lectionary text explains that after the strong wind and fire of the Spirit were experienced on Pentecost and the Jesus followers “started speaking in . . . different languages . ..” others took notice.

CHRIS:   Acts 2:5-11, “There were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. When they heard the sound, they came on the run. Then when they heard, one after another, their own mother tongues being spoken, they were thunderstruck. They couldn’t for the life of them figure out what was going on, and kept saying, ‘Aren’t these all Galileans? How come we’re hearing them talk in our various mother tongues?

Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; Visitors from Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia,  Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene; Immigrants from Rome, both Jews and proselytes;

Even Cretans and Arabs! They’re speaking our languages, describing God’s mighty works!’”

SCOTT: The disciples talking made others stop and think of God’s great works. Which is still one of the goals of the church. And it’s not just for others but for ourselves that we do this. God soaks everything. If we all just stop and look we will notice that Creation is crammed full of God and we’ll notice how Great God is in it all, and in our lives.

CHRIS: Creation is truly awesome. And we are a part of creation, and as Scott reminds us every week, we matter. Join with me and sing that old time song “How Great thou Art”

       How Great Thou Art

                 By Carl Bobert

Oh Lord my God

When I in awesome wonder

Consider all the worlds

Thy hands have made

I see the stars

I hear the rolling thunder

Thy power throughout

The universe displayed 

Then sings my soul

My Savior, God, to Thee

How great thou art

How great thou art

Then sings my soul

My Savior, God, to Thee

How great Thou art

How great Thou art 

When thro’ the woods

and forest glades I wander

And hear the birds

sing sweetly in the trees

When I look down

from lofty mountain grandeur

and hear the brook

and feel the gentle breeze 

SCOTT: The disciples got the neighbors thinking about God. But God-talk and miracles can also cause neighbors consternation and confusion. This can lead to mockery, and it sometimes does. Which is what happens in the  reading we are about to hear. But Peter, responds by letting the neighbors know that Jesus’ Way that they follow is about equality for all and salvation to anyone who wants it.

CHRIS: Acts 2:12-21: Their heads were spinning; they couldn’t make head or tail of any of it. They talked back and forth, confused: “What’s going on here?” Others joked, “They’re drunk on cheap wine.”

That’s when Peter stood up and, backed by the other eleven,

spoke out with bold urgency: “Fellow Jews, all of you who are visiting Jerusalem, listen carefully and get this story straight. These people aren’t drunk as some of you suspect. They haven’t had time to get drunk—it’s only nine o’clock in the morning.

This is what the prophet Joel announced would happen:

“In the Last Days,” God says,

“I will pour out my Spirit

on every kind of people:

Your sons will prophesy, also your daughters;

Your young men will see visions, your old men dream dreams.

When the time comes,

I’ll pour out my Spirit

On those who serve me, men and women both, and they’ll prophesy.

I’ll set wonders in the sky above and signs on the earth below,

Blood and fire and billowing smoke,

the sun turning black and the moon blood-red,

Before the Day of the Lord arrives,

the Day tremendous and marvelous;

And whoever calls out for help  to me, God, will be saved.” 

SCOTT: Saved. The Spirit like wind and fire swirls down from heaven to save us humans . . . all of us humans.

And remember that the Spirit of God has come to God’s people before in fire. . . to save.

Indeed, the most famous theophany in the Bible may just be when God appears to Moses in the flames of a burning bush to save him and all of God’s people.

And the flame theophany motif continues in the Exodus story with God appearing as a pillar of fire at night before the Hebrews as they roam through the desert.

God is also experienced a number of times on mountaintops in fire and smoke as we hear in some of the songs and Psalm today. 1

Fire also symbolizes the Light that God is in our lives. The light of fire – like the Light of God– glows and attracts, it can show us a pathway, and make our way safe. It can be a beacon on a hill for both warning us and guiding us. And we are, of course, supposed to be shining lights ourselves, lights that are not kept under a bushel.

And fire can temper, that is make strong, love does that to our faith. Love can also burn away that which troubles us in the faith, even hate we may arrive with or have been taught. Jesus tells us that all of scripture hangs upon the commandments to love God and others.

God is everywhere and in all things. The loud noise and bright flames of God are everywhere, but sometimes we need to stop and listen. To be quiet and pay attention to see it. To get the message, to learn we are all loved and need to be love, that God is in all of us.

CHRIS: And here’s a song, new to most of us, along those lines. It’s called Hush.

                     Hush

  Words and Music: James F.D.Martin

                 Copyright ©2007

(Refrain)

Hush! The Spirit’s callin’ my name.

Hush! Hush! Can you hear it the same?

Hush! Hush! The Spirit’s callin’ my name.

Hush! Hush! Burnin’ like a flame.

I can feel the pow’r of God.

Oh, Hush! Hush!

The Spirit’s callin’ my name.

Hush! Hush! The Spirit’s callin’ my name.

1.Many the gifts that the Spirit gives, Given to bless one and all. Inside each one the Spirit lives. Helping us to follow the call.

(Refrain)

2. Pour out your Spirit, O breath of God. Breathe in your people today! Strengthen your church in the world abroad, Lead us in Jesus’ way!                                                                                                                                                                                                                     (Refrain)

3. Teach us to live every day! Help us to live in the ways of love, Give us your power we pray!                                                  (Refrain)

SCOTT: This Pentecost, may we all burn like a flame in the wind; and feel the power of God and know that the Spirit calls each of our names. AMEN

COPYRIGHT   Scott Elliott © 2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Christ 2.0

Christ 2.0

a sermon based on Acts 1:1-11

given at Palm Bay, FL on May 12, 2013

by Rev. Scott Elliott

As the lesson Hal/Bonnie just read indicates today we are remembering  the Ascension of Christ.

Perhaps the part that stands out the most in that story for many of us is that Jesus goes up to glory in heaven and two men in white robes proclaim “‘This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’”

Christ will come back, they tell us. In most of our lifetimes the notion of Christ coming back conjures up thoughts of “the rapture,” that purported violent end-time event where true Christians will be swept up into heaven while the rest of the world is left behind in unimaginable terror.

Two years ago a pastor named Harold Camping proclaimed the world would end and the rapture would begin on May 21, 2011. When that day came and went he revised his calculations and moved the date to October 21, 2011.

In case you didn’t notice, the world did not end on that date either. The rapture did not come.

The rapture, generally speaking,  is the notion that seven years before Jesus’ Second Coming true Christians will be pulled up into heaven and those left behind will battle or join an Anti-Christ figure before Jesus comes back in full warrior mode to destroy the Anti-Christ and enemy armies and condemn non-Christians to hell. 1

There were a lot of skeptics of Harold Camping’s dead wrong prediction of the rapture, as right there should have been at that time. Someone even posted a tongue-in-cheek Craigslist ad that read in part:

For all of you planning on being raptured, I am offering my services to you! I’d like to take any and all donations from you before May 21st as you will not be needing these in the afterlife. Donations can include but are not limited to, Blu-Rays, DVD’s, cash, cars, houses, electronics, ETC. . . . I promise to take great care of your earthly possessions in your absence. I can guarantee i will not be raptured so please do not worry about donating to a fellow rapturee as this will not be the case!

I’m with the Craigslist ad poster in at least one respect, I don’t believe I will be raptured. I don’t believe anyone will. I don’t believe in the rapture.

I never have.

I never will.

My reasons are basically this: the rapture is violent, mean and inapposite to the Bible teachings that God is love; that Christ is non-violent; that God and Christ love everyone; and that God’s love is steadfast and forever . . . Oh yeah, and the violent rapture is also not in the Bible.

See despite all the hoopla in our day about the rapture, believe it or not, the rapture was not discussed by the church founders at all. It was not discussed by theologians before the Nineteenth Century.

In fact, until the Nineteenth Century it was not discussed at all, the reason being: it is not (as I said) in the Bible, it is not in Church doctrine, and before John Nelson Darby made it up in the mid-Nineteenth Century no one – no one – had heard of it.

Indeed, even in Darby’s lifetime few heard of it or discussed it. It wasn’t until the Twentieth Century when a 1909 Bible Commentary worked it into some footnotes that the discussions began. 2

And even then most of us would probably not have heard of the rapture if it weren’t for Hal Lindsey’s scary, but popular 1970’s book explaining how the end times were near in his best seller “The Late Great Planet Earth, and of course more recently there has been the very popular “Left Behind” fiction novels.

While the idea of the rapture is not scriptural or church doctrine, much of Christendom has been abuzz about the rapture in our life times, and lots of folks are into the Left Behind books, which are, I must point out again– pure fiction. FICTION.

It’s okay to disagree with me, and you can believe in the rapture if you choose, but, it’s not Biblical, nor a notion from the church fathers, nor is it a church doctrine.

More telling, though, is that the Nineteenth Century image of a warrior-like Jesus obliterating enemies and sending folks to hell is the very opposite of the First Century image of the Jesus of the Bible. Jesus is not only non-violent, but specifically instructs his followers to love – not blow away– enemies.

Furthermore, Jesus’ entire movement was about bringing heaven to earth for the living, the breaking in of heaven Jesus teaches and preaches is one of peace, not war. It is one of love, not violence. It is one of inclusion, not exclusion.

The Jesus’ movement has lived on, of course, as the Church in the religion we call Christianity– a religion whose goal is to cause the breaking-in of that heavenly love and peace. The Gospels in no sense of the word are about bringing a violent rapture about.

Marcus Borg, a fellow non-believer in the rapture, puts it like this, “There will be no rapture, Christianity’s goal is not escape from the world. It loves this world and seeks to change it for the better.

I agree with Dr. Borg. And I want to make it clear that I’m am only addressing the details of Darby and notions of the violent rapture his musings have spawned,  I am not denying the return of Christ described in the Lectionary reading today.

The Second Coming need not be understood as Darby’s Nineteenth Century idea of the rapture.  There’s a difference. I do not understand the idea of a Second Coming as in apposition to Jesus and the Gospels. I do, however, understand the violent rapture of Darby, Lindsey and The Left Behind series to be in apposition to  Jesus’ Way.

So let’s look at the Second Coming without the rapture in mind. Today’s story ends with Christ’s ascension, but also with the promise of Christ’s return.

We are told by Luke in his book, The Acts of the Apostles, that Jesus gathered the disciples together and told them they “will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

In response he was asked one last question by his followers: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”

The risen Lord answers: “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

That’s the risen Lord’s last instruction in the book of Acts “be my witnesses . . . to the ends of the earth.” He does not say look for signs, he does not tell them what the signs will be, he does not tell them to fret about and insist and sell the idea of the signs of the end times. What he says is we are supposed to be Jesus’ witnesses to the end of the earth.

And we have in the story that very interesting promise. A hopeful one. After Jesus gave his last instruction to be witnesses “as [his followers] were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

Please noticed that there is nary a word about the rapture there. No “Jesus is gonna scoop some of you up.” No “Jesus is gonna come back and mow down his enemies.” No “Jesus will come back and condemn non-Christians to hell.” Violent end times are not portended.

In fact it would seem that portending is not supposed occupy our time.  Jesus can actually be heard to make it rather clear that we are not to know the time. He doesn’t beat around the bush. They want to know if the expected sign of the restoration of Israel is coming now that he’s leaving. He says in no uncertain terms, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.” See it’s not our business.

So there’s another reason to stop fusing and guessing end time scenarios, according to Jesus: it’s NOT for us to know!

Again, don’t get confused by my down playing and rejection of the rapture. The Bible, and in particular today’s lesson, does say that Christ will come back: “This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

So, let me make this clear. A belief in the Second Coming does not have to be a belief in Darby’s Nineteenth Century violent rapture, a warrior Jesus or hell for non-Christians.

Christians have long believed and discussed the Second Coming– but not the violent rapture of Darby. Since God is love and Jesus is with God, it seems virtually impossible Jesus’ return will include him unlovingly wiping out his enemies and all non-Christians. Jesus loves everyone. He did back in the day. He does now. He always will. That’s how he rolls.

And of course that’s how God rolls too. We are told over and over again in the Bible that God’s love is steadfast and forever.

“Forever” by definition covers all end times scenarios, and should any  rapture somehow occur, God’s not planning to send Jesus back in an unloving Way.

And God’s not planning to send anyone to hell and break his steadfast and forever love promise.  According to the Bible a scary long rapture is not going to happen.

So what is going to happen?

Well, we aren’t to know the times.

So maybe it’s already happened.

The disciples were told that Christ would come in the same way Christ left. Jesus goes into heaven in today’s story and interestingly in the story for next week the Holy Spirit comes down from heaven in the form of wind and fire igniting the sparks of Jesus’ followers to become the church.

Paul tells us that the church is the very Body of Christ. And we are told in Matthew (18:20) that wherever we gather in Jesus’s name, he is there.

Those appearances of Christ evidence that Christ has at least already returned in the form of the Church, which includes all of us in this community.

If we are the Body of Christ, and if Jesus is where we gather, a pretty compelling case can be made that Christ has returned. Right? St. Augustine, a church father, did make that case in the fifth century.

More recently Marcus Borg – in this century – writes in his book Speaking Christian that the Second Coming can be understood as:

The return of Jesus already experienced as the risen Christ and the Spirit of Christ. It is Jesus coming again in the rhythms of the liturgical year. Advent is preparing for the coming of Jesus–about the coming again of Christ who is already here. Jesus also comes in the Eucharist; in the bread and wine Christ becomes present to us. And what is meant by the second coming is also the ultimate Christian hope–for that time, to use Paul’s language, when “God [will] be all in all”                        (1 Cor 15:28) … Marcus Borg. 3

See, Christ is here now risen in the acts we do as Church, as members of the Body of Christ in the here-and-now. It is no accident that we know Jesus as Emanuel, a name that means God is with us.

In the story today Jesus goes to be with God so wherever God is incarnate on earth there is Jesus the Christ, Emanuel “God is with us.” Christ IS here now.

And we can see that the church as the Body of Christ is doing the very same sort of things Jesus did.

In this second coming:

We are feeding the poor.

We are tending to the sick.

We are siding with the oppressed.

We are providing a welcome and wide embrace to any and all, most especially, the stranger – the ones the culture deems as others.

Our table is open and inclusive.

We worship and love God.

We love others.

We care for God in creation.

That’s the stuff of Jesus who walked in a human body and taught us to do such things.

That’s the stuff of the Body of Christ living and breathing as the Church, as community filled with the Spirit of God who’s wind and fire returned to fan flames of love that have continued on for two thousand years.

Christ is the Church. Jesus is in us. Now. It is undeniable that Christ has returned.

We may shake our head in disbelief because we expect something else. But remember folks were disappointed when the Messiah wasn’t a vengeful warrior king the first time around. What makes us think Christ isn’t something we didn’t expect the second time?

If we think about it, it makes sense that Jesus, a Spirit-filled Rabbi who taught and acted out love and justice and peace in the world continues on in his followers who teach and act out love and justice and peace in the world.

In modern computer speak, the church is the Body of Christ 2.0. Sometimes it has glitches and seems like a beta version, but it’s not. It’s an operating system in human beings and human beings are by design not flawless in their functionality.

Despite such flaws humans are actually a perfect vehicle for the operating system of the Body of Christ 2.0, because there is no finer way on God’s green earth for the tasks of remembering Jesus’ teachings, and acting them out in the world: Tending to the sick; siding with the oppressed; providing a welcome and wide embrace to any and all; maintaining an open, inclusive table; worshiping God; loving God loving others and caring for God in creation.

All of these Christ-like things (and more) the Church does.

And all these things we do as Christians that bring love into the world witnesses Christ to the ends of the earth. Which is exactly what Jesus instructed his followers to do in the story today.

Now, Jesus may be coming yet again in another way, but a return of Christ – a Second Coming – can be understood as the Church, as Christians,  being Christ in the world from the first Pentecost to today.

May we continue this form of the resurrection in every way we possibly can.

Amen.

ENDNOTES:

1. E..g, Borg, Marcus, Speaking Christian (2011), 189-195

2. Ibid, at 191-192.

3. Ibid. At 195

COPYRIGHT   Scott Elliott © 2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Forgiveness is Restoring Relationship with the God-ness of Another

Forgiveness is Restoring Relationship with the God-ness of Another

a sermon based on John 14:23-29

given at Palm Bay, FL on May 5, 2013

by Rev. Scott Elliott

The story today has the very famous words of peace that Jesus tells his followers in his farewell discourse.  Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.”

The word peace tends to conjure up the idea of right and wrong. I found a so-bad-it’s-good riddle on that topic for you . . . If two wrongs don’t make a right, what do two rights make? . . .The first airplane.”  1 I told you it was bad.

Peace is actually not so much about wrongs and rights in confrontation, as it is about God’s righteousness and love and desire for creation’s well-being overwhelming and taking over our way of being.  Last summer I mentioned in my off-to-study-peace farewell discourse that:

The word “peace,” from a Christian theological standpoint, begins with a look at the Hebrew word “shalom” which literally means fullness and well-being.

As a theological dictionary puts it “It’s more than the lack of war and points to full societal and personal well-being, coupled with righteousness.” 2

In that sense peace is when all have enough and are treated justly and with respect.

Studying peace – shalom– is to consider in-depth not just what peace is, but ways in which to bring about personal fullness and well-being; others’ fullness and well-being and communal fullness and well-being.

That’s what I preached last summer. I’m here to remind us of that than to discuss the peace that Jesus left with us is deep and meaningful and many faceted.

We talk about this a lot; Jesus’ teachings on peace. Teachings like:

Loving God in all creation and especially in self and all others.

Caring for those in need and on the margins of the culture.

Turning the other cheek, living non-violently.

Acting for the well being of others.

Praying.

And forgiving.

Those are all awesome and powerful teachings that lead to peace. This morning I am going to revisit and focus on just one of those areas, the last one I mentioned: forgiving. Forgiving brings about the well-being of all.

But forgiveness is not only hard to understand, it is also often very hard to do.  But we need to understand and do it because forgiving is a critical key to the peace Jesus leaves us in a rather unforgiving world.

The earthly way is to not forgive, which is why the peace Jesus leaves is not of this world.

I found a story about forgiveness that can be heard as a metaphor for the earthly way of looking at forgiveness. The story is about kids, but we can hear it as really about all of us . . . at one time or another.

Two little brothers were fighting before bed and were still angry when their mom came to tuck them in. As a part of their bedtime routine they said that familiar prayer “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake. I pray the Lord my soul to take.” When they were done, the mom tucked them in and when she noticed the youngest was still angry, she gently advised “Timmy don’t go to sleep without forgiving your brother.” Timmy thought for a moment and whispered “Okay, mom, I’ll forgive him . . . but if I don’t die before I wake, he’d better look out in the morning.” 3

Forgiveness is not just hard for kids to do, it’s hard for adults to do. Maybe harder.

To be fair, most Christians believe and subscribe to the general notion of forgiveness as a good and Godly thing that we are called to do. But  most of us are not quite sure what it is.

A few weeks ago Bruce and Hal and I read a peace project I wrote during my peace studies. It was a sermon in three voices called “The Breath of Forgiveness, the Face of God.”

And that sermon pointed out Biblical stories about forgiveness, among others, that days’ Lectionary reading from John where the risen Christ first appears to a community of disciples and said to them . . .

“Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” (John 20:21-23)

The reference to “The Breath of Forgiveness” in the sermon title was to that verse.

The title’s reference to “The Face of God” was referring to Jacob seeing the face of God in his brother Esau’s forgiving acts.

The Bible evidences we are called as God’s people to forgive and Jesus’ breath of the Spirit leads to forgiveness, and when we forgive the very face of God is experienced.

But all of that still begs those million dollar questions: What is forgiveness?

How do we forgive?

I have preached on this topic of forgiveness before and in Bible study we have talked about forgiveness in detail more than a few times.

It comes up so often I really need to put together a pamphlet to have in the lobby for us to hand out.

Forgiveness must be at the heart of any pursuit of lasting peace, and so it is part and parcel to Jesus’ Way to peace, and yet truth be told we are often not quite sure what forgiveness really means.

I think part of our confusion stems from a notion in our culture that to forgive is to forget, or to accept a wrong. But of course we cannot forget many wrongs, and it’s not accepting a wrong as right, it’s getting past the past to reconciliation in the present and future.

Here’s the thing, forgiveness is not forgetting an act or a wrong, it’s not about letting go of a memory, or a moral.

It’s about working to let go of that which gets in the way of restoring a relationship with the God-ness of another.

I’m going to say it again: “forgiveness is not forgetting, it’s not about letting go of a memory, it’s about working to let go of that which gets in the way of restoring a relationship with the God-ness of another.”

Forgiveness, when all is said and done, restores relationship with the God spark that resides in everyone, even a wrongdoer, even an enemy, even someone you have been hurt by, or someone you have hurt.

We are called by Jesus to love God. And that person who we injured or who injured us – whether we like it or not – is a part of God, created by the very word of God, as an image of God and filled from the start with God’s own breath. That’s in Genesis.

It’s a fundamental Biblical truth, then, that every person is soaked through and though with God. They may be hiding God, holding God down, not listening to God . . . but God is there nonetheless. Always, in everyone!

You see, God permeates all of creation and that, my friends, includes humans . . . even those we do not like.

Simply put, everyone is made in God’s image, made from God’s spoken word, and is filled with God’s very breath and that makes them of God and a part of God.

As we have heard this Eastertide we are called by Christ to forgive everyone, this means that whenever a relationship with another is broken and in need of repair our call is to do what we can to repair it.

And that is true regardless of whether we are the victim or the wrongdoer.

Yes, the wrongdoer was wrong, but repair is best done with both the parties working at it. Don’t get me wrong it can be done with only one party, but it is best to have them both in the process

And notice I said it’s a “process,” it is rarely an instant happening.

Sometimes the restoration of a good relationship is a short little walk, but often it’s a long hard walk, sometimes even a lifelong trek.

Forgiveness takes work and it takes time. So the first thing to get out of our heads is that when Jesus tells us to forgive in order to get peace that he’s asking us to snap our fingers and instantly forgive and forget. He’s not.

He’s breathing the Spirit on us to fill us with the guidance, motivation, compassion, care, love and the ability to do the hard work of forgiving.

He is not pouring the Spirit over us to instantly wash away harm done.

Instead of instant happenings, think of forgiveness as a process that can take days or weeks or months or years and sometimes, as I said, even a lifetime.

Instead of thinking of a finger snap or short stroll resolution, we need to accept forgiveness as more along the lines of a long uphill hike.

And it’s a hike that always begins with either or both the victim and wrongdoer taking steps toward forgiveness, and ultimately toward the peace that Jesus left and gives to us.

Working at forgiveness can sound foreign to us in this world that prizes retaliation, retribution and revenge, in a culture where talk shows and editorials and elections focus and thrive on belittling, anger and hate. But Jesus’ peace is not of this world.  Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.”

We need to get on Jesus’ other worldly forgiveness path – we need to take that hike, not angrily sit back and promote violence as our response to harm – as the cultural model suggests.

If only the injured person takes steps it Jesus’ peace moving in and moving forward up the mountain toward God. If only the wrongdoer takes steps it’s still Jesus’ peace moving in and moving forward up the mountain toward God.

If both the injured and the wrongdoer take steps the higher the mountain both go. And the more healing there is and the more the God sparks glow and grow in each person involved and in the world, the more shalom – well-being – breaks in.

I like to break the process of forgiveness down into eight steps.

The steps the injured person can take – and is called by Christ to take when able – are:

First of all Let someone know about the harm. The victim recognizes, declares, and details harm. My dad used to call this kind of thing “getting it off your chest.” The victim needs to tell their story to someone. 4

I’ve mentioned before how when lawyers take clients to mediation, settlement is much easier to obtain because finally the injured party’s story gets told, it’s out in the open and a good mediator makes it known that they care about that story. The harm is disclosed and it is known to matter.

The injured person also needs at some point to hike to the point where they can Abandon Revenge. To move on up the mountain to shalom, the victim works toward abandoning their interest in revenge. 5 The earthly way leads us to want to strike back at those who hurt us. Hit them, sue them, crush them.

Forgiveness is a letting go of the right to revenge and retribution. It’s not denying you were hurt, it’s denying the right to hurt back.

It is a turning of the cheek. We don’t deny or forget we were hurt. We don’t have to be best friends or risk being in an unsafe place with a wrongdoer again, but we do need to let go of our longing – often even an obsession – for revenge.

It’s hard. It can take time. It’s a long hike but, we must work on that in the process of forgiveness.

The third and last thing a victim needs to work on in this process is to get to the point where they see the Wrongdoer as Worthful Again. 6

We have to come to a point in the process where the wrongdoer is no longer a worthless so-n-so to us. We don’t have to be their bud. We don’t have to hug or even handshake with them, but we do need to come to the point where we are willing to admit they are a human of worth and of value because they are of God and a part of God.

If you can say that you wish the wrongdoer the best and that they know God loves them, you can be sure you are on the right path to fulfilling the process of forgiveness. That’s hard stuff, but it is the stuff of peace– Jesus peace.

As you might expect wrongdoers have more to do than the victim. They also have to tell the story, that is disclose their wrongdoing. We call it a Confession. The wrongdoer details the  injurious conduct.7

But it’s more than that. The wrongdoer needs to show remorse and promise to refrain from the harm and the misdeeds of this type in the future. 8

And the wrongdoer must express regret through an apology to the victim or victims (9) and ask them for forgiveness. 10

Finally the wrongdoer has to work toward repairing the harm that was done. 11

Wrongdoers have to face their misdeed, swallow their pride, face their fears and get to work to repair what they have broken as best they can. They have hurt someone of God and apart of God. They must fix that. They are called to help the healing, to give as much toward restoring the well-being of the person they injured as best as possible. It’s hard work. It’s scary. But it is absolutely what Christ calls of us as wrongdoers to do.

Those are the eight steps in the process: (1) the victim works to disclose the harm, (2) abandon revenge and (3) see the one who hurt them as worthful. The wrongdoer (4) confesses, (5) expresses remorse, (6) promises not to do it again, (7) apologizes and (8) asks for forgiveness . . . EIGHT STEPS.

I am going to say those again: (1) the victim discloses harm, (2) abandons revenge and (3) understands the wrongdoer as worthful. The wrongdoer (4) confesses, (5) expresses remorse, (6) promises not to do it again, (7) apologizes and (8) asks for forgiveness.

When we take any of those steps or combination of them in any order we further the process of forgiveness.  We follow Jesus on his Way up the mountain to peace. Not peace of the world, but God’s peace, that’s Shalom, that’s our path to well-being.

That hike, that process, can be short or long or somewhere in between.

But whether short or long, or in between, complete or incomplete, with just one step, the process always moves the parties engaged in it up the mountain toward peace. 

I’m going to close but asking all of us to consider what step or steps toward forgiveness we have taken, and especially what steps we still need to take, in a broken relationship.

I’m going to sound this chime and as we hear it ring, let’s visualize what  relationship with another might look like with a step or steps toward forgiveness that we – WE – could take.

(RING CHIME . . .)

Following Jesus means aiming to one day take a step or two in the process of forgiveness, to one day make the hike or trek up the mountain to peace.

Let us give it lots of thought.

Let us give it lots of prayer.

Let us know that God is with us as we do, and that God is calling us up the mountain to peace through forgiveness.

AMEN.

ENDNOTES:

1. Moger, Art, The Best Book of Puns (1992), 78.

2. I was referencing the Westminister Dictionary of Theological Terms

3. Hodgin, Michael, 1001 Humorous Illustrations for Public Speaking, (1994), 78.

4  I derived these steps and the ideas during a course at Eden Theological Seminary on Forgiveness taught by Dr. Joretta Marshall in 2004. The texts I relied on for this section are Augsburg, David, Helping People Forgive, Louisville: Westminister John Knox Press, (1996),  68-72; Jones, Gregory, Embodying Forgiveness, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., (1995),15, 247; Tutu, Desmond, No Future Without Forgiveness, New York: Doubleday, (1997) 27, 165. I derived these steps and the ideas during a course at Eden Theological Seminary on Forgiveness taught by Dr. Joretta Marshall in 2004.

5 Augsburger, 15-16, 123; Jones, 217, 256, 264; Tutu, 272.

6 Augsburger, 15, 28, 96-98; Jones, 195, 246-248, 263, 267; Tutu, 144, 271.

7 Augsburger 17-18, Jones, 15, 19 151(summarizing Swinburne)184, 196, 274; Tutu 50, 270.

8 Augsburger, 65, 15; Jones, 21, 147, 274, 288; Tutu, 50, 177, 271.

9 Augsburger 40-41; Tutu, 50, 181.

10 Augsburger, 17-18; Tutu, 50, 261.

11 Augsburger, 21, 55, 67, 117; Jones, 63, 288; Tutu, 229, 260, 273.

COPYRIGHT   Scott Elliott © 2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

God Commands Christians to Call No One Profane or Unclean

God Commands Christians to Call No One Profane or Unclean

a sermon based on Acts 11:1-18

given at Palm Bay, FL on April 28, 2013

by Rev. Scott Elliott

The lesson that BEV/HOWIE just read is about Peter’s defense of his baptizing a Roman Centurion enemy solider named Cornelius, and his family and friends.

You know. . . Whenever I hear the name Cornelius I cannot help but think of the musical Hello Dolly. I played the role of Cornelius, a hapless Yonkers hardware store clerk who drags his assistant Barnaby on a tour of New York where they fall in love and sing and dance– that’s right, dance.

At one point in the play Cornelius runs to hide from his boss by, at least in our production, hurdling a full-sized dining table. That leap garnered applause and it was actually pretty cool. Back then I wasn’t much of a dancer, but I could run and leap. Alas those days are long gone.

My Cornelius story has a character in a musical clearing a hurdle– a table. And today’s story is about Cornelius a Roman Centurion enemy soldier clearing a hurdle to joining the Jesus following. The hurdle was the exclusion of culturally profane and unclean people. God, through Peter, makes sure the hurdle’s removed.

Let me back up. The Jewish texts of the Bible, what we tend to call the Old Testament, repeatedly claim that God’s love is steadfast and forever. It’s a main theme of Judaism and Scripture, and therefore, you may have noticed, often in my sermons.

And what it means is that we’re loved, and we can’t lose it. Everyone gets loved, there are no hurdles to God’s love. That’s pretty radical, because there are lots of hurdles to human love.

Jesus was Jewish and he glommed onto that very simple and precious theological gem, that God’s love has no strings attached.

And so Jesus sets up this Way to God – to love– that has no hurdles in place for those who want to follow Jesus. It’s really very, very cool.

And for those who wonder why I preach about love all the time, it’s because the God of Jesus is love and the Bible is about that very God and Christianity is supposed to be about Jesus’ Way of the wide open unconditional embrace of the God who is love.

See, Christianity done Jesus’ Way is really all about love. Unconditional love.

It sounds simple, but the work is hard and risky. Jesus’ no-hurdles-to-love ministry got him killed.  Jesus was executed because of his bold and passionate unwavering (OUT LOUD!) commitment to love. It’s risky stuff, love.

I saw the movie “42″ a few days ago. It’s the story of Jackie Robinson. He and team owner, Branch Rickey broke down baseball’s color barrier, the hurdle that kept African Americans from playing in the major leagues.

In the movie, some take action to break the hurdles down, some act to keep the hurdles up, and some take little or no action.

Even though the story’s well known, the movie draws you in and you root for Jackie and Branch, and root against the racists, but the most frustrating thing is the characters who do nothing.

And finally when more and more take action against oppression, things start to fall in place.

Jesus’ movement was about taking action to take down hurdles. It was decidedly not about putting them up. Nor was it about inaction.

The Jesus movement from its inception was about taking action to end oppression.  Jesus’ ministry begins in Luke with Jesus declaring he expressly came to proclaim release of captives and to let the oppressed go free.

Jesus was not afraid to proclaim his no-hurdles-to-love theology . . . and thankfully neither is the United Church of Christ.

The UCC banner in front of our church proclaims the essence of this no hurdles-to-love theology. The banner reads quite simply “Jesus didn’t reject people . . . Then adds “neither do we.”

That last bit’s our putting Jesus’ Way into action, a promise of not being inactive like those who sat back letting Jackie Robinson be threatened and abused, letting racism go unopposed aloud by them.

It’s our promise to be like southerner Pee Wee Reese, the Dodger shortstop, who put his arm around Jack Robinson at first base, and stood with him openly and proudly . . . Whether anyone else liked it or not.

“Jesus didn’t reject people, neither do we.” Why do you suppose that banner is up at UCC churches? Because a lot of churches do reject people and people are leaving churches or not coming to them because of that rejection.

So we have to take action. We have to boldly set ourselves apart from churches that act against Jesus’ Way of all inclusive love.

We have to stand up for that inclusive love, and proclaim it aloud.  Another UCC slogan is: “Wherever you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here . . .”

Our bumper sticker and this week’s church sign proclaim it like this: “God’s love has no strings attached.”

See in this church we want no hurdles, because Jesus had no hurdles to love. It’s the very core of his Way and this church.

Because so many churches in America have gone out of the way to put hurdles up for Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and Transgender folk, Churches like ours and – 1,089  other UCC churches– which have no such hurdles, go out of the way to declare we’re “Open and Affirming,” meaning we are open to all and actually affirm all as equal.

Our ONA statement is really quite wonderful. It was adopted without a vote in opposition. Here’s what it says about everyone:

We are an Open & Affirming church, welcoming all with love into our life, leadership, ministry, community, worship, rites, sacraments, responsibilities and blessings, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, heterosexuals and all others regardless of race, age, gender expression and identity, marital standing, family structure, socio-economic status, profession, faith background, nationality, mental abilities, or physical abilities.

Can you hear how all hurdles are taken down by that proclamation?

One of the greatest moments of my ministry was when an elderly man in tears came up after that vote and said to me “Thank you. My partner and I have been together over fifty-years and this is the first church we could feel be a part of, that we could call family and home. Thank you.”

I told him I was glad he found us. I also apologized to him because every church that beautiful man had ever been in should have been a church he could feel part of. Jesus had no hurdles to God, to love to love on his way.

While the ultimate truth is that God’s love has no strings attached, the reality is that Christianity as a whole has failed to live that truth out by putting hurdles up to God’s love.

I am so glad this church takes the opposite tack, we glom onto what Jesus glommed onto, the belief that God is love and that caring, having compassion and the desire for well being of others is our call.

And make no mistake about it, our beautiful ONA statement is not just about our LGBT brothers and sisters, it’s about everyone.

I’ve heard that detractors claim our church is just about helping Gays.

I’ve even heard that I only preach about Gays.

While we’d be doing great work if tending to LGBT folks was our only mission – since no one other church in South County proclaims to be doing it– it is of course not our only mission, but one of many.

Yet, anyone who claims we are a one issue church or that I am a one issue pastor is on to something, boiled down our one issue is compassion and care and the desire for the wellbeing of everyone, poor, sick, alien, stranger, other, imprisoned, hated and outcast–YOU ARE LOVED HERE.

As our vision statement puts it: we exist to experience and share Christ’s unconditional love by thinking openly, believing passionately and serving boldly.

We aim to love and welcome all, as Christ does, unconditionally. Our theology is like that of Jesus,’ how to relate to God and self and the world with Love. That is actually the whole of the Bible boiled to its essence.

And despite the risk that making Jesus’ Way of love for all our passion and our proclamation, the importance of making sure we let folks know we do just that, that we are open and affirming of all– cannot be stressed enough.

That actor who played Barnaby in Hello Dolly with me, I first met at a church when we were teens. He was Gay. The church  was not Gay friendly.

That friend, Jeff, took his life . . . took his life.  I have little doubt a Gay friendly church would have made all the difference.

Hurdles to church matter. We need to proclaim loudly the truth that there are none at Riviera United Church of Christ.

And I am not off on a tangent. Hurdles to church are exactly what is at issue in the Lectionary lesson today. Hurdles are being taken down. Peter understood God to COMMAND there are to be no hurdles, so he boldly and passionately took action to take them down.

The Jesus Followers at the time were Jewish. Jesus was Jewish. The disciples were Jewish. After Jesus was crucified, after he was experienced as risen, a post-Easter following of Jesus continued, but they still considered themselves a sect of Judaism.

The Book of Acts reports that at least this sect within Judaism had in its early days, prohibitions against eating and gathering with the unclean and profane Gentiles.

Like some churches today, the early church began putting hurdles up to who could choose to follow Jesus’ Way. Perhaps they were worried that following an executed criminal, Jesus’ Way was “out there” enough, so they tried to tow the line.

Whatever the reason, once Jesus is no longer physically present and leading the way, the Apostles in Jerusalem put up hurdles to what had been Jesus’ unobstructed Way. Thankfully, this changes pretty quickly. 

Peter and Paul are instrumental in pushing down these barriers which were erected after Easter. Today’s lesson is about Peter defending this hurdle removal.

Peter’s efforts began earlier in Acts 10 (23-29), where we are told Peter had a vision and met with that Roman Centurion, Cornelius and a gathering of his Gentile relatives and friends. Although they are non-Jewish and enemies, Peter baptized them.

Since they were not Jewish Peter’s hauled before the leaders of the early post-Easter Jesus Movement (what later becomes the church) in Jerusalem to explain what he was doing hanging out with non-Jews and inviting and initiating them into the fold when they weren’t to even be associated with.

Peter knew the rules; he even explained the exclusive rules – the hurdles– to Cornelius and the other Gentiles. In Acts 10 we are told Peter explained to them “it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile . . .” But Peter tossed that hurdle aside. He preached and baptized Gentiles.

Our lesson today picks up with Peter explaining his unseemly conduct.

Again, Jesus let everyone who wanted into his following, but, the Apostles are not so inclusive, at least not at first. They don’t want to rock the boat, wanting to be mainstream they have strict rules that only the Biblically clean can come into the fold.

This is, of course, ironic. It’s ironic since Jesus had no such rules. He let in everyone. Women, men, children, foreigners, rich, poor, tax collectors, Gentiles, Roman Centurions, and the every other clean or unclean person who desired to follow him got in as equals –just like our ONA statement.

It’s also ironic because throughout history we have leaders in Christianity who put up hurdles. They want to make The Way only for those they deem clean and kosher. That’s the nature of the debate in the nation today. Right? That is what is driving many young folks from church or to stay the heck way from it.

Many Christians loudly proclaim our LGBT brothers and sisters are profane and unclean, and churches who stand up and say otherwise are criticized, often vehemently so.

That criticism of letting in those whom others object to happens today and it was happening way back when Peter and other Apostles were alive.  That’s what is going on here in the story BEV/HOWIE just read. Peter has dared to knock down hurdles to those others would call profane or unclean.

The lesson starts off with these words:

Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?”

Peter responds with the only defense needed, that God COMMANDS for such a broad inclusion. Peter had a vision of unclean animals that God tells him to eat. Peter resisted. God argued back “’What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’”

We are told Peter gave in, went to Cornelius, and brought him and his crew into the Jesus movement because the Holy Spirit commanded him “not to make a distinction between them and us.” This is what Peter tells the other leaders. Amazingly they did not respond with anger and accusations, but with silence and then “they praised God . . .” They saw it as a good thing!

Peter risked a lot openly, passionately and boldly welcoming into the church a Roman Centurion enemy and his family and friends. These types of folks were repulsive to many in the culture, they were considered profane and unclean. But God sees no one as profane or unclean.

The culture’s way is not God or Jesus’ Way. So UCC churches, like this one, embrace as equal and welcome as beloved everyone even those others wrongly – WRONGLY! – claim to be unclean and profane, even repulsive.

That Peter was out on limb may be why he only shared with the leaders a part of the defense God gave him. He only asserted to the co-leaders that he was told “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

But, you see, Peter held back the whole story. Acts 10 evidences Peter told the Romans that had assembled, “‘You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.’”

“God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.”  God, GOD COMMANDED that we “should not call anyone profane or unclean.”

That’s in the Bible. It’s in the New Testament. It has been there for two thousand years.  God’s way is that Christians should not call anyone profane or unclean.

Not enemy Roman soldiers.

Not Gentiles.

Not Jews.

Not women.

Not men.

Not children.

Not people of color.

Not disabled.

Not divorced.

Not gays.

Not lesbians.

Not transgenders.

Not bisexuals.

Not aliens.

Not strangers.

Not poor.

Not sick.

Not criminals.

Not anyone.

Although it took the Apostles a while to get this. Jesus taught this stuff to them long before God COMMANDED it in Peter’s vision.

Jesus said don’t judge. Jesus said love everyone. Jesus said do to others as you want done to you. Jesus did not have rules that barred what type of person could choose to come to his table and be part of his following. He helped and welcomed the unclean and profane, the Romans, Samaritans, lepers, adulteresses, Canaanites, the dead and the dying, the criminals and ostracized, the stranger and outcast. All got in.

All.

Got.

In.

And not secretly through a back door, but by Jesus’ loud, bold passionate proclamations. Christ made it loud and clear that all got in. All. Got. In. You see God declares steadfast and forever love and Jesus plays it out boldly and passionately.

Jesus’ open and affirming statement did not just hang on a wall in a church, it hung in the air in all he did, it was proclaimed in his every word and deed loud and clearly!

Like Pee-Wee Reese – if you will – Jesus continuously puts his arm around the oppressed holding them for all to see that they are loved.

See Jesus didn’t reject people.

And neither do we.

Thank Jesus.

Thank God.

May it ever be so.

Amen.

COPYRIGHT   Scott Elliott © 2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Illuminating Every Atom of Creation

Illuminating Every Atom of Creation

 a sermon based on Psalm 148

given at Palm Bay, FL on April 21, 2013

by Rev. Scott Elliott

I am going to talk about the environment this morning even though things like global warming are a heated topic.

That was a bad joke so let me try again, do you realize that if we don’t conserve water we could go from one ex-stream to another.

Okay, here’s the last bad (which means good) pun of the morning: with everything we read about spray cans and the ozone layer it’s enough to sca-aerosol to death . . .

Those are the only light-hearted words I have this morning, as I actually turn to the serious topic of ecology and our environment.

I’m addressing the environment this morning because, tomorrow is Earth Day and because we are involved in a United Church of Christ project called Mission 4:1 Earth. As a part of this project during Eastertide (the fifty days from Easter to Pentecost) we are striving as a church to put in 1,000 hours toward environmental work, plant 30 trees and write 30 letters to politicians on the ecological topics like stopping pollution and the depletion of resources.

This is important stuff and a part of our call. The Bible claims that humans are charged with being stewards of creation. In other words, as a people of God we are not only supposed to take care of our neighbors, but we are to take care of the earth too.

Alas, we do not seem to be doing a very good job of it. From individuals littering, to companies dumping, to our culture– and others– wasting and not replenishing, we are not tending to creation very well.

Earth Day is a day meant to remind everyone – not just Christians – to take care of this fragile little rock we inhabit. Earth is the only, well . . . earth that we have.

The first Earth Day was on April 22, 1970. It was started by a Democrat and a Republican Senator, Gaylord Nelson and Pete McCloskey. This was back in the day when elected officials had the novel idea that politics ought to include now and then doing what’s best for the world.

Earth Day was created in response to the terrible smoke stack billowing, exhaust pipe spewing, and water-way polluting that was going on in the nation. It was the big beginning of what was then often know as ecology, it’s where what we call today environmentalism coalesced into an agreement by Republicans and Democrats and much of the rest of the nation that we ought to take care of creation.

And actually a horrible oil spill in 1969 off the coast of Santa Barbara in my home state of California was a catalyst for the first Earth Day, Senator Nelson visited the spill and was moved to do something, so he proposed an annual day where we celebrate the earth and remember our sacred charge to take care of it.

Earth Day was effective. It led to not only teach-ins, but the creation of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and laws like the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts. 1

I was in elementary school at the time of the Santa Barbara spill, then sadly in 1971 when I was in Junior High School there was another spill up the coast in the San Francisco Bay, not far from my hometown. A bunch of us at the Junior High took a field trip on a school bus with the ecology club and spent the day cleaning up a beach, trying to rescue oil soaked sea life and throwing hay in the Pacific to sponge up oil.

I remember even now the dank, dark murky film of oil in the water, blackening everything it touched, not just the hay we carried out and tried to throw beyond the breaking waves, but sea birds and fish and even us. I remember oil and tar stuck on the pant legs of my Levis and shoes and a sickening smell of oil on the bus on the trek home.

That day even as a young teen, it was clear to me that far from being good stewards of creation, humankind had found ways to take the shine out of the Glory of God which naturally, innately, saturates creation.

And it’s certainly not just out in California that humans have messed up creation.

I came to Florida for a visit in my early twenties and was so impressed with the wildlife, there are lots of extraordinary animals here.

One thing we real west coast people did not grow up with is fireflies. That may seem like a small thing, but, the thing I remember best about my visit three decades ago was all the fireflies. They are amazing and beautiful and fascinating. Sadly, in the seven years I have been here I have never seen a firefly.

And it’s not just exotic flashing bugs of light that are dwindling. There are fifty-six species of animals in Florida that have so diminished in existence that they are listed as threatened or endangered. 2.

Among them, manatees, pumas, sea turtles, crocodiles, jays, rabbits, rats, bats, snails and whales.

And there are endangered and threatened plants in this state too, fifty-five plants in all, among them wild rosemary, mints, flowers, willows, plums and cacti.

Obviously it’s not just Florida and California that have environmental concerns. In fact it’s not like we are the only nation that has been less than kind to our planet. It’s not a national problem, it is a global one.

Humans are destroying the planet.

This is not good from any stand point. It’s also something from a Christian standpoint – as stewards of God’s creation– we have to do something about. . . . Our love of God must include love of God in creation.

My theology includes a belief that God calls all of creation, not just humans, to the best that it can be.

Moreover I believe that God is – as the Apostle Paul indicated – that which we live and move and have our being in.

This matches up with a number of other Bible verses. Genesis tells us that all of creation is made of the very words of God, and that living things have God’s very own breath in them.

Coming from God, ALL of creation is a part of God. We are in a God soaked world.

Psalm 19 (1-4) reflects on the Genesis claim that the word of God is in all things, noting:

The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

Psalm 139 has a beautiful question and answer section declaring God is absolutely everywhere:

Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. (7-10)

Jeremiah (23:24) sums this up too, quite succinctly: “Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the LORD. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the LORD.”

The Apostle Paul says it even simpler in Ephesians “[There is] one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.” (4-6).

God, you see, soaks creation.

And Paul also connects this soaked in God reality up nicely for us Christians with respect to Christ, our name for God incarnate on earth. He writes in Colossians (1:15-17):

[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers– all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Col 1:15-17 NRS).

God is in all of creation.All of creation is in God. The theological word for this is “panentheism” which means all-in-God.

We float in and are soaked by the Sacred. Creation floats in and is soaked by the Sacred.

Every human being I know wants to be the best they can be.

And that pull that we feel to be the best we can be is also felt by every molecule and atom, every proton and electron in the universe. It’s the fluid God particle or wave vibrating in and soaking everything calling all that is to shine the Sacred – what I call, expressing the Glory of God!

And Psalm 148, today’s “lesson” can be heard to be saying just that.

One of my seminary professors, Rev. Dr. Clint McCann, is a renowned expert on the Psalms.  Dr. McCann notes in his wonderful book Great Psalms of the Bible that in Psalm 148 “[a] world-encompassing crowd, consisting of both creatures and features God has made, is invited to praise God.” 3

Dr. McCann goes on to write:

No doubt Psalm 148 lays an impressive theological foundation for what we would call today environmentalism, or ecological responsibility, or more recently, thinking and acting green. 4

The good professor urges that Psalm 148 – along with other Bible texts–  “demonstrate that from a biblical perspective, theology and ecology are inseparable.” 5

Psalm 148 in the translation we heard today is about God getting praise from all of creation, not just humans, but everything– the “creatures and features” as Dr. McCann cleverly calls them in the poignant pages of his book. His assertion is that human mistreatment of creation has muted the praises God wants from creatures and features– from animals and plants and water and geography.

The word translated as “praise” in Psalm 148 is “halal” (haw-lal) it’s a Hebrew word that can also mean “to shine ” or to illuminate.

I actually wrote and asked Dr. McCann a few weeks ago if we could also hear in Psalm 148 creation being called to “shine” God.

Dr. McCanm indicated that it was indeed fair to hear “halal” (haw-lal) as shine or illuminate in the Psalm.

So I am going to read the Psalm again with shine and illuminate in place of praise (and with more inclusive language) so we can hear what that sounds like:

¹ Shine the LORD! Shine the LORD from the heavens; illuminate God in the heights!

² Shine God, all the angels; praise God, all the host!

³ Shine God, sun and moon; shine God, all you shining stars!

⁴ Shine God, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens!

⁵ Let them illuminate the name of the LORD, for God commanded and they were created.

⁶ God established them forever and ever; God fixed their bounds, which cannot be passed.

⁷ Shine the LORD from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps,

⁸ fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling God’s command!

⁹ Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars!

¹⁰ Wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds!

¹¹ Kings of the earth and all peoples, Queens and all rulers of the earth!

¹² Young men and women alike, old and young together!

¹³ Let them illuminate the name of the LORD, for God’s name alone is exalted; God’s glory is above earth and heaven.

¹⁴ God has raised up a horn for God’s people, shine for all God’s faithful, for the people of Israel who are close to God. Shine the LORD!  (Psalm 148:1-14 NRS, with my modifications)

Notice how this way of hearing Psalm 148 fits the theological notion that God calls all of creation, both features and creatures, to its best, that is, to shine God – to express the Glory of God– for all to see.  We should be able to look at earth and see God shining in all things – we should not do anything to dull that shine, rather we should do all that we can to give luster to that shine.

On Earth Day we’d do well to remember that humanity has not only fouled the planet, but part and parcel of that fouling, is we have lessened the shine of God in creation. We are preventing creation from fully illuminating God for all to see. Or to use the New Revised translation, we are preventing creation from crying out praises for God. Instead it cries out in anguish and in sorrow for us to stop abusing and ignoring it, to stop dulling God’s glory in the world and help it shine again.

We can hear the light of God in Psalm 148 wanting to break forth and  be illuminated in every square inch and atom of creation.

And sadly we have hindered that call. In parts of creation we are crippling and dulling the glow of the Divine spark of God with acid rain, global warming, toxic waste, resource depletion, smog, littering and abuse of our waterways and aquifers, by our misuse and lack of care for our flora and fauna and that which we live and move and have our being in. There is no way around it, Biblically speaking parts of God are being fouled by us.

Our church is involved in Mission 4:1 Earth, a UCC effort to make a difference. We have committed to put in one thousand hours of green work, plant thirty trees and write thirty letters to elected officials. Please consider helping us meet, or better yet exceed, those goals by May 19^th.

Lets help creation shine the Lord, just as God intended and calls us to do.

Lets be good stewards of creation just as God intended and calls us to do.

May it be so.

May we help the glory of God shine from sea to shining sea, and not just this Eastertide, but all the time.

AMEN.

ENDNOTES

1.  Earth Day Network at http://www.earthday.org/earth-day-history-movement

2. Endangeredspecie.com http://www.endangeredspecie.com/states/fl.htm

3. McCann, Clint, Great Psalms of the Bible, (2009) 135.

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