On the Death of Osama bin Laden

I learned late last night of the US armed forces raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden.  This morning I'm thinking about how Christians around the world might be thinking about this.  Some people (US forces) killed other people (bin Laden et. al.).  Should Christians rejoice in this killing?

Imagine that a rabid wolf is attacking pets and threatening humans in the St. Germain / Sayner area.  This goes on for some time and affects the daily lives of people -- as they send their pets out into the yard, or their children go out to play.  One day an intrepid hunter from a state agency, having received a waiver on the wolf's protected species standing,  tracks the wolf down and shoots it.  How will people react?  They will rejoice.  People are safer.  Their pets are safer.  And a sick animal's suffering is ended.  This is just another example of the circle of life.

But wait!  We're talking about a human being.  Isn't that categorically different? 

The Christian community, according to Jesus, is to serve the larger community, as salt, or as leaven.  Both salt and leaven are minority elements in any recipe.  Neither one can serve as the entree.  They are powerful chemicals that make profound changes in the bread dough.

It is the salt and leaven within the Christian's conscience that makes us stop and ask, "Is it proper for me to celebrate this death?"  (We have salt and leaven that was never available to Osama bin Laden.)  The fact that we even ask the question is to our credit.  Having asked the question, here is my answer.

The mental health of the nation requires at least a short period of celebration.  Our grief and horror at the events of 9/11, and the grinding 10-year-long feeling of near-hopelessness at bringing bin Laden to justice has finally broken with the first rays of relief and closure at this news.  I believe we would be showing MERCY to New Yorkers, or families of 9/11 victims, or the nation as a whole, to take some satisfaction in the news of bin Laden's death.  The jubilation at Ground Zero and outside the White House will not last long.  The hard work of making the world safer from terrorism will continue.  We will quickly return to the sober work of disarming those who want to murder innocents.

In the mean time, let us give ourselves permission to take a deep breath, and with heart-felt relief, let it out with a loud, "Phwew, thank God that's over!"

Good Friday sermon 2011

“Finished… Completed… Accomplished” Good Friday 2011 Eagle River Ecumenical Svc.

I think I’m ready to start. I brought my sermon. It’s done. Or course, it could probably use a little touching up. There’s that long part in the middle—I’ll apologize for that right now. Or course, it IS Holy Week. I don’t know, if I’d just had a couple more days…

Do you recognize this feeling of regret, gnawing worry, guilt—that something you’ve done isn’t as good as it should be? Maybe it’s a test you should’ve studied harder for. Or something you did at work that wasn’t up to your own expectations. Maybe it was that difficult conversation you had to have with a relative that you think could’ve gone better? Sure, we all know that feeling. That’s a normal part of life for us. It’s human nature.

Today as we look at Jesus upon the cross I wonder what regrets, second thoughts, or wishes he might have had. Do you suppose he hung there thinking “I coulda healed more people. I coulda fit in a few more healings… a few lepers, maybe another exorcism.”

Do you suppose he was wishing he could have had a second shot at the Sermon on the Mount? Maybe put a little polish on the Beatitudes? A few rewrites here and there?

Maybe he was thinking about something he could’ve said to get through to that thick-headed Peter – something to help Judas see the light; maybe something helpful he could’ve said to Caiaphas, or Herod, or Pilate.

But Jesus doesn’t speak about those things from the cross. He doesn’t show us any regrets, self-doubts, second guessing or self-pity. Instead he says, “It is finished.” It is completed, accomplished – everything necessary has been done.

During the season of Lent we give ourselves opportunity for reflection, self-examination, confession, perhaps rites of penance. Lent is definitely the right time for that. Those things have their place. And we know that Easter joy follows. We are always Easter people, even on Good Friday. We never forget Jesus’ resurrection. That too is good.

But there’s a place in between that we need to pay special attention to as well. It’s the place where guilt is finished; where salvation is completed; where all that we need is accomplished. It is a place where we are called upon to set aside our normal self-absorption. A place where we are confronted by our guilt at its more profound level. A place where we can see that EVEN THAT GUILT does not separate us from the love of God. There is a place where, in the face of the most unearthly love, the most divine self-giving, there is nothing we can say. There is a place between Lent and Easter, so to speak, where we are called (for lack of a better way of putting it) to shut up; to stand in silence and just look at Jesus on the cross. There is a time for looking God in the eye. Here, at the cross, is where we do it.

Several years ago I was a chaplain at Northwest Memorial Hospital in Chicago. On the orthopedics ward I met a young man, maybe 20, named Dave. Dave spent several weeks sitting in a hospital bed because after his right leg was amputated above the knee, serious infections had set in. So he just sat around waiting. I came to visit him each day and one day he told me his story. He had been drinking heavily, got into a fight with his wife, got on his motorcycle, tore off down the road and blacked out. He’d been in bed for many days and had not yet been able to bring himself to look at his injury. One day I walked into his room. It was so quiet I though he was sleeping. But he was awake, tears streaming down his cheeks. Without looking he knew it was me at his side. He stared at his stump and said, “I didn’t think I’d ever be able to look at it. Every time I thought about it it just reminded me of the accident and how stupid I was. I was so ashamed. I’d come close to losing my life. I thought about my wife, my baby girl, my mom. I couldn’t bear the thought of how close I came to losing everything—how close I came to hurting them. It scared me. I just couldn’t look at it.

Just now for the first time I had a sudden impulse to look at my leg. I don’t know why. It was like God was telling me it was time. And you know what? It’s not like I thought it would be. When I looked at it I didn’t hate myself. I didn’t think about how close I came to dying. When I looked at it I realized I’M STILL ALIVE! I still have my wife, my daughter, my mom. And he wept. That day Dave was healed. I mean, it was a couple more weeks before the infection left him and he could go to rehab, but that day – that moment – is when he was healed. That day Dave started a new life. It started… when, in silence… he looked.

It’s hard for us to look at the cross. To see anyone suffer that cruelty, the humiliation and the torture of the cross, is so hard. To think that we’re responsible for that suffering only makes it worse. Some just can’t look at it. And yet, there is healing in that sight. We can sing Alleluia on Easter as loud as we want, but until we’ve seen the sight of Christ on the cross we don’t really know what it means.

By the grace of God you have been given the opportunity for healing. You have been promised eternal life. You have been promised new life right now. Don’t be so afraid to look at the suffering of Christ that you wake up tomorrow still beating yourself up with regrets (I should’ve done something more; I still don’t measure up; I’m still just me and that’s not good enough). Look at Jesus on the cross and look and look until your self-loathing melts away. Remember, Jesus died without regrets. Nothing had been left undone. He fulfilled his mission to show us God – to show us what he called the Kingdom of God—a way of life that people live when they recognize that God is God. All that has been done. When Jesus was lifted up on the cross his mission was FINISHED; his work COMPLETED; our salvation ACCOMPLISHED.

Your new life begins when you look at Christ on the cross, then stop thinking about your own worthiness or unworthiness – stop thinking about yourself at all – but accept that all is accomplished, and give thanks to God. Amen.

Making Tough Choices

The news these days has been filled with politicians talking about making "tough choices."  It's in every other sound bite.  Pols are insisting that they must make tough choices and brag that they're willing to do so.  But if one listens carefully you are compelled to conclude that these braggarts are not making tough choices at all.  If I come to the table with my mind made up, insisting that I won't compromise, and won't listen to any other opinions, isn't it clear that I'm not making a choice at all?  My mind is made up!  I'll make demands, but I won't make a choice.

Making a fist is one of the easiest things to do.  Unclenching a fist is a lot harder.  It's no challenge going through life in a monotone "I'm tough, I'm tough, I'm tough."  That's easy.  Someone with no maturity, no imagination, no guts, and no soul can do that.  It's actually a lot more difficult to unclench one's fist, one's face, one's mind.  Only when we LISTEN to one another, and seriously consider each others' views are we able to make a tough choice or any choice at all.

A sermon on John 11:1-45

 Pay Attention!

Why did Jesus stay away? Why did he stay away from Lazarus's house when he learned that Lazarus was sick? Was he careless? Was he cruel? Was he showing off? Why the cryptic language about what he was doing? “This illness is not unto death; it is for the glory of God.” “Lazarus is dead; and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe.”

At first reading it sounds as though Jesus might've played a cruel trick on his good friends Lazarus, Mary and Martha. It sounds as though he used them-- “oh, here's a dead person I can raise back to life. Watch this; this is going to be great!” Does that sound like the Jesus we know? No, it doesn't. I don't think that's what he was doing.

When we look a little closer at this text, it seems to contain a lot of little details about the timing and geography of this event. It suggests to me that Jesus was well aware that he was going to go to Jerusalem and do it soon. And he knew darn well what was going to happen to him when he did. He's thinking quite a lot about his disciples: Are they ready to be on their own? Do they understand who Jesus is and what they're supposed to do? Jesus has to be wondering--Are the disciples going to freak out? Are they going to run away? Are they going to assume that the mission is all over and there's nothing left for them to do but go back to fishing?

Jesus is thinking about these things as well as other aspects of his showdown in Jerusalem when he discovers a way to give his disciples some timely experience with life and death; an opportunity to see for themselves that death is not the final word. Jesus wanted them to see a stone rolled away from a tomb door and the dead raised. Lazarus presented Jesus with that opportunity.

Jesus talks to Martha about her faith in him. He talks to his disciples about their faith in him. At first glance it sounds as if he's talking about their faith in his ability to raise Lazarus. Instead I believe he's talking about their faith – or not-- in Jesus' ability to rise from the dead himself.

Why does Jesus grieve just before he raises Lazarus? Doesn't that seem odd? He knows Lazarus isn't going to stay dead. But he's looking around and seeing Mary and Martha grieving, their friends from the city grieving (some of whom Jesus must've known), and he sees his own disciples grieving – because certainly they had met Lazarus and his family before. Jesus cries when he sees how these dear ones will grieve for him.

How could Jesus have made this lesson any clearer? In both cases, Lazarus and Jesus, there was mourning and crying. In both cases there was a body in a grave for days. In both cases there was a cave to serve as a tomb, with a stone rolled in front of the entrance.

It doesn't appear that anyone received the intended message, namely, that if Jesus raised Lazarus surely he could rise too. No one got it. But, honestly, I can't say that I blame them. I've heard about resurrection all my life, but for the people there – Jesus' disciples and all the folks in Bethany – they'd never heard of such a thing before Lazarus. And death is hard. You can't expect someone experiencing the death of a loved one to believe and trust and hope for something as strange and new as the defeat of death. I believe Jesus knew that. That – in part-- is why he cried, because he saw that despite all that he'd said and done, when it was his time to die, his friends and followers would assume that death had won, and they would cry.

We're no different. We tell each other the stories of Lazarus' and of Jesus' death and resurrection year after year, from generation to generation-- because we need to hear it, as often as we can-- because the idea of life after death still strikes us as...dubious.

What happens if we don't keep ourselves immersed in these stories? What happens if we don't teach them to our children? What happens if we don't pay attention? Then pretty soon we start to lose our familiarity with the idea of life after death. It's hard enough as it is, to keep ahold of that idea.

You know, this event, the raising of Lazarus, is a turning point in the Gospel of John. Up to this point, Jesus' popularity grows, his enemies get more upset, his miracles become more pronounced, he popularity grows, his enemies get more upset... but Jesus crosses a line here. When Jesus displays power over death his enemies stop just talking about Jesus and start putting a plot into play. This was just too much.

• Raising up the status of children was bad;
• raising up the status of foreigners was bad;
• raising up the status of women was worse;
• saying that he was the doorway to God and not the Temple and its priests – that was a frontal attack against them; that's bad!

But raising the dead? Really? Erasing the lines between life and death changes everything. It's too much. The priests have nothing like this. This makes the priests... irrelevant. Who is going to care about sacrifices in the temple when one with god-like power is walking around the suburbs? Who knows, maybe people will even turn on the priests! They never gave the people hope! They never raised the dead! Someone with the power of life over death could defeat the whole Roman Empire. Keep in mind that in the Gospel of John, Jesus is killed just before Passover. The Lamb of God is killed while the priests are killing the Passover lambs. It's all part of their plot to avoid a riot during Passover.

What they didn't know was that Jesus was bigger than Passover, bigger than the Temple culture, bigger than the Roman Empire. What they didn't know is that Jesus was the Christ, Israel's God-with-us, the long-awaited Messiah.

But we know. And knowing that we have hope in which to die. And just as amazing... hope in which to live.

Born Again

Sermon 3/20/2011 A2Lent

You must be born again. What, exactly, does that mean?

I was at a party once, during my seminary years, and a friend of a friend approached me and asked, “So you're in seminary?” “Yes,” I replied. “So you've been saved, right?” “Yes, I believe that I was.” “So when were you born again?” Now at this point I knew that what was expected of me was to tell a story about how I was living a life of sin and then something happened and I had a revelation and at a certain time and place and moment I could name, that then and there I made a decision to turn my life over to Christ and in that moment I was saved.

But that's not my story. That's not my answer. So when she asked when I was born again I said, “Somewhere around the year 30, outside of Jerusalem, Jesus was crucified for me and that's when I was saved.” I knew, before I started, that this answer would be deemed unsatisfactory. “No, that's not what I meant,” she protested. “I mean, when did you make your decision for Christ?” I said, “That doesn't matter in the least. I make decisions for Christ all the time. I can't save myself by deciding anything. I was saved when Christ made a decision for me!”

At that point the conversation ended. She decided that I was the poorest excuse for a Christian because I didn't have a cookie-cutter salvation story to tell that matched the parameters of her myopic vision.

Are we Born Again Christians? It all depends on what you mean by that? Nowadays that term is almost like a brand name. Most people use it to mean one specific thing although, technically, we are all Christians who understand ourselves to have been born again in baptism.

Evangelical is another tricky term. Nowadays it's commonly used as a brand name. Evangelical actually means one who shares the Good News. The Greek word for gospel is evangel. We are all Evangelical, technically, although we wouldn't consider ourselves that, according to the way most people now use the term. To say Christian Evangelical is redundant. But newscasters use it to mean a certain demographic and we're all supposed to know who they mean. It's what people say when they don't like the sound of “Fundamentalist.”

There have been two waves of Christian Fundamentalism. The first was during the 1920s and 1930s. Women had just received the right to vote. Churches were all but devoid of men. You couldn't find enough men to teach Sunday School or preach so women started doing it and when that happened, there was a tremendous backlash. Men decided that they had to reassert control over their uppity women. The Jesus who had been emasculated by exhibiting too much love and tenderness, was hijacked by the frightened men and made over into a butch cartoon of Jesus, 8' tall and wearing boots. In fact, Jesus was largely replaced by an angry and vengeful picture of God. This was when many of the “blood, blood, fountains of blood” hymns were written. It's when militaristic marching hymns became popular.

One of the main features of the first wave of fundamentalism was an idolatry of the Bible. Bible, Bible, Bible. Well, that alone doesn't sound so bad, until you realize that by focusing the saving power in the Written Word you can greatly de-emphasize the Living Christ. If you believe that you're saved by the Bible and you live and die by the Bible, then the control freak preaching the Bible suddenly has all kinds of power over you. Ironically, it was a woman who began preaching this message-- Amy Semple McPherson, a California tent preacher whose life wasn't so much fraught with scandals as it was one long continuous scandal!

The rise in Christian Fundamentalism is linked with the rise of women's power. The second wave of fundamentalism was essentially 1975-1985. And what happened in the late '60s and early '70s? The sexual revolution, MS Magazine, the Equal Rights Amendment, the N.O.W., bra-burning feminists in the street! It's the Whore of Babylon! (Do you know what a feminist is? A feminist is one who believes that women are fully human and fully adult. Jesus believed that.)

And while the worst of that whole episode of popular fundamentalism may be over, there is still more than enough of it to go around: the use of the Bible as a weapon, the down-playing of the role of Christ in salvation, the general put-down of women... Personally, I have never met a self-described fundamentalist who:

• could tell me what the fundamentals of Christianity are.
• knew the difference between prophecy and prediction;
• could name anything older than 20^th century ideas that were being conserved in his/her conservatism;
• understood that the Biblical portrait of “family” includes almost every imaginable configuration except the modern nuclear family;
• understands that no one, none of us, has a right to life. We always receive life as a gift;
• understood that there is no such thing as a literal interpretation of the Bible. No two fundamentalists agree. Poetry does not allow literal interpretation, nor does prophecy, or parable, nor anything translated from another language. Categorically, it cannot be interpreted literally, if it is interpreted... at... all.
• Understood that his/her arrogant nationalism bears a frighteningly uncanny resemblance to the nationalism of Israel, just before it was over-run, just as the prophets had warned.
• whose primary orientation to life was not one of fear-- fear of being “left behind.” Fear is what draws people to demagogic leaders who profess to offer clear, black-and-white answers from a magical, infallible rule book. Now, I am sometimes afraid. I have compassion for those who are afraid. We live in a world where there's much to fear. Fear, however, is not a Christ-like lifestyle or message. (It is no way to run a church!) Jesus was not fearful, nor was he a manipulative fire-and-brimstone preacher who sought to control people. Jesus' primary orientation to life and the world was one of love, not fear. Jesus taught that love casts out fear.

So we're in a strange place when we try to talk about ourselves and what we believe. We are born again, but we are not Born Again. We are evangelical, but we are not Evangelical. We practice the fundamentals, but we are not Fundamentalists. Our congregation belongs to a very liberal denomination that understands that God is not done speaking yet. The acts of Bible Study and preaching still reveal more and more about the Living Christ who can be found in the Written Word. We are invited to discuss, disagree, argue, agree to disagree – to walk with each other in love as together we prayerfully seek a life together under the saving cross of Christ.

It's all about trusting God, walking humbly, respecting each other, giving each other the benefit of the doubt when it comes to adequate belief. It's about being honest about our own limits and giving God the glory. It's about having the guts to look at each other without belittling and judging. It's just like it's always been: the hardest thing for us is to unclench, to open up, and to let the love of God in.

Every time we let that love in we are born again.

Stuff Happens

I once had the privilege of working two summers at a nuclear fuel processing plant in NY.  They didn't generate power there, just store and repackage nuclear waste.  I often joke that what I did there was cut radioactive grass with a radioactive lawnmower -- but that's a pretty apt description.  So one day I'm mowing along when I see something shiny in the grass.  I stop the mower and just before I pick up the plumber's wrench (lying 50 feet from the nearest building) I had a better idea.  I called over a safety tech to look at the wrench.  It pegged his Geiger counter!  It was hotter than blazes, throwing off rads like crazy and it's lying in the middle of the lawn.  How did it get there?  Even though all tools were supposed to be marked and traceable, we never figured out how it got there.  Things like that happened there with some frequency.  Things happened that weren't supposed to happen.

Naturally some of those memories are coming back these days as I see the damaged power plants in Japan.  The question of safe power will be back on the table now for awhile.  No one expected tsunami damage on the scale that NE Japan received last week.  But it happened any way.  Things happened that weren't supposed to happen.

Whatever forms of electrical power generation or motive power we use in the coming years had better  make allowances for human error, acts of nature, or other things that aren't supposed to happen. Because things happen that aren't supposed to happen.

Isn't it time we learned to expect the unexpected?

Imagine my surprise to find I have something in common with Charlton Heston.

I've been amazed in recent days at how many ways there are to lead people, represent people, and legislate people as if there were no people.  We can talk about markets, free trade, unions, jobs, deficits and budgets as if they were tidy, sterile, even theoretical things, removed and above the grubby, messy world of people and their day to day lives.  It's handy to use such clean comfortable language when discussing things like bumping people out of the middle class and into the ranks of the working poor.  Or refusing to sit at the negotiating table with them to work things out.

The problem with our neat and tidy language and our oblique discussions about our nation's attractiveness to business or our state's real-or-imagined budget crisis is that nations and states don't exist in a theoretical ether.  Behind every market, union, job, deficit, and budget is PEOPLE.  Real people.  More to the point, OUR people.  Governors and congresspeople are not elected to serve budgets.  They are not elected to serve their parties.  The are elected to serve the people who have so graciously -- and so temporarily -- given them the power they enjoy.

I may be well served by having my state's budget cut and my nation's deficit cut.  But no one is served if these things take place while robbing people of dignity, a voice, and rights.  No one is served by having their schools gutted and their public servants vilified. 

Remember the last scene in the movie Soylent Green?  Chas Heston announces his shocking discovery that "Soylent Green is people!"  Someone needs to smack a lot of our elected officials upside the head with a reminder that behind all their numbers and stats and million dollar this and trillion dollar that -- there are people!  The numbers represent people: Americans!  And none of them are our enemies!

There is an explosion in the number of Americans who aren't worried that their representatives' econonic theories aren't pure or tidy enough.  They aren't concerned that they may lose a few dollars out of their mutual funds.  They are struggling, fighting, to pay for their housing, their transportation.  They want decent clothes for their kids and food on the table.  They don't want this year's new Audi.  They want to put brakes on their 10-year old Toyota so they can  get to their three jobs!

Compassion, kindness, a little human decency -- these things are free.  And they're overdue.