Never Bored!

This past week was my first week of my sabbatical.

I read this week a book called, “Choosing our Religion: The Spiritual lives of Nones”.

The book was really great.

It had Nones (meaning N-O-N-E-S, people who do not affiliate with any religion) tell in their own words what it meant for them to be spiritual.

The book starts by explaining why so many people are not affiliated with religion.

It comes down to three reasons.

People are angry, bored, or wounded.

I will leave angry and wounded for another sermon.

I want to talk this morning about people being bored of religion, of church.

Noelle Lamb of Eugene Oregon said, “I feel like [going to church] is not something I need as an adult.

You know, it taught me a lot about being a good person, I guess.

But I don’t need to hear that lesson every week.

I got it.”

As I understand what people like Noelle are saying is that church teaches us to be good people, and once we understand that we are all set.

I am going to try to preach this sermon without being defense.

Because I think that Noelle brings up a really important point.

Preaching and teaching the Gospel is not about making us good people.

However, in a lot of mainline protestant churches this is essentially what people learn and hear.

If that is the case, then I agree with people like Noelle church would be boring, because the Gospel of Jesus Christ would be robbed of its power, beauty, and mystery.

And a good example of this is our Gospel for this morning.

All of us here this morning have heard the story of the Good Samaritan.

And I am going to assume that from it we know the moral lesson.

We have heard the sermon that tells us to be more like the Samaritan.

We have heard the sermon, and I have preached the sermon, to go into the world and look for ways to help people even if they are different than you.

It is tempting this morning not to preach a sermon like that, because our country is going crazy right now.

We have police officers abusing their authority by using excessive force, on black people.

As a result we have demonstrations.

And this week we had a crazy person start shooting and killing police officers.

This is madness.

It tempting this morning for me to get up here and tell all of you to be more merciful.

To find mercy whoever your perceived enemy is.

Whatever your political bent is I am begging you to try to find mercy for the other side.

That was the great message that came from House Speaker Paul Ryan after the shooting in Dallas.

"There will be a temptation to let our anger harden our divisions, let's not let that happen.

There's going to be a temptation to let our anger send us further into our corners. Let's not let that happen.”

And the Good Samaritan story would fit perfect with that idea.

But here is the problem I assume you all know that already.

I assume that you know that to be a Jesus person means to act mercifully in your life.

If Noelle was in our Church this morning she would hear that sermon and tune me out, and roll her eyes because she has heard it before.

And I am here to tell you that as good as a message as that is, it is not the Gospel message.

Let us look at the Good Samaritan story again.

A lawyer stands up “to test” Jesus.

Right there we have a clue.

This person is not interested at all in the ethical implications of what he is asking Jesus.

He is not interested in growing spiritually he is wondering if he can trick Jesus into giving the wrong answer.

It goes on even after Jesus has answered his question.

“Wanting to justify himself….”

Here for me is the key to this whole story.

Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan to break down this uppity lawyer.

This lawyer wants to look good.

This lawyer wants Jesus to look bad.

This lawyer wants there to be good people and bad people.

The lawyer believes that within the law he knows what it means to be a good person.

And Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan to turn this lawyers expectations around.

And to really ultimately teach us something about ourselves and God.

There is no such thing as “justified” people before God.

There are just people who are trying to trick God.

There are just people trying to make themselves out to be better than they are.

No one inherits eternal life by what they do.

They inherit it because God gives it to them.

That is the message of the Gospel.

We are one people.

We are one family.

And we are flawed and imperfect, but we are loved by a God who shows us great mercy.

There are not a lot of answers about what is happening in our country right now.

I don’t even know if we know what we are arguing about anymore.

There are so many angles, and so many people with agendas we don’t even know what to say or do.

And there is no one in any of this that can justify what they do.

What there is a human family that is flawed and we are in need of mercy.

Because mercy means to treat someone kind or forgiving someone even though they don’t deserve it.

And we all are in need of that, because we cannot justify ourselves before God.

We are all in this mess together.

That is the surprising thing about the story of the Good Samaritan is that it cannot be broken down into an easy ethical lesson.

It is not mean to do that.

Even though that is what we do with it.

It is meant to challenge our ideas of who is good and who is bad.

It is meant to challenge us to see ourselves in need of mercy.

It is meant to show us that only when we see that we need mercy can we really show mercy to others.

Only when we stop trying to trick God and stop trying to justify ourselves can we really understand the deep spiritual things of God.

Only then will we understand the Gospel in all of its wonder and beauty.

So coming to church is not about being a “good person”.

It is the opposite of that.

It is about being an imperfect person, a person who doesn’t always show mercy.

That is why we come to church.

Because that message of God’s mercy for us never gets old, or boring.

And it doesn’t because we always forget.

Once we leave here we will go back into the world and once again try to justify ourselves.

We will once again forget what it means to need God’s mercy.

And then we will come to Jesus again, here and hear again that wonderful Gospel message.

I won’t presume to speak for Noelle or anyone else, but I am never bored to hear again about the Gospel.

I am never bored to hear about God’s love taught to us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In fact that message energizes, refreshes, and exhilarates me!

I hope that you were not bored either this morning as we are reminded once again of our need for God’s mercy.

Amen

Chains and Shackles

This is a weekend for celebrating milestones.

Many of us had some type of graduation party to go to this weekend.

Many of us had children, grandchildren that were moving up a grade.

I had my week wrapped around my daughter Phoebe having her last day of elementary school.

Next year she will go to the middle school here in Concord.

On Thursday we went to a small ceremony at her school for the fifth grade.

The principle of the school got up and gave a speech celebrating all the great things that have happened to the students since starting elementary school.

They learned to read, to do math and science, to write, to make friends, to run, to sing, to draw.

Indeed much of my daughter’s time at elementary school was really great.

But I was also thinking about all the unpleasant things that happened to her, the things that we don’t talk about at graduations.

I thought about the times that other students treated her meanly.

I thought about those nights when she would sit at the dining room table crying because someone did something that was insensitive.

How she would come in last every year at the mile run.

How she never got selected to sing a solo at the chorus concert.

How hard it was for her to learn to read.

I thought about how hard it was for us as parents to know when to comfort her and when to push her.

My wife put up these pictures of Phoebe’s first day of kindergarten and her last day of fifth grade.

I love the picture of me walking Phoebe to school on her first day as a kindergarten student.

I think about that picture of me walking her to school and all the excitement of that moment, but also of all the worry of the moment.

Would she be ok?

Would others love her the way that I do as her father?

I wonder if other parents thought that this weekend as they watched their children graduate.

How hard it was.

How worried we were and are for our children as they go off into the world?

I was thinking that this is just the start of it for us.

My kids still have to go to middle school and high school.

They still have to go to college and get jobs.

And I am excited for the ways they will learn and grow, but I am also worried for them, and the evil they will experience in the world.

And that is why I would like to be able to take all the bad things in the world and keep it away from them.

I would like to put it someplace that won’t hurt them.

That is what is happening in our Gospel this morning.

And it is happening on multiple levels.

First, the very idea that Jesus would cross the sea of Galilee and go to the country of Gerasenes is crazy.

Jesus is going to gentile country.

The place is unholy, unclean; no Jewish person would ever go there.

In that place there are demonic spirits and herds of swine.

There are people who are unfit to come in contact with the people of God.

Jesus is risking life and limb to even step foot in that country.

People had done a good job of separating themselves from those they deemed bad.

And then there is the man possessed by demons.

He too is separated from the community.

He is off in the cemetery naked and out of his mind.

He is unsettling to the good folks of Gerasene.

And so in order to contain him they keep him under guard and bound with chains and shackles.

That is exactly what I want to do with evil I want to bind it with chains and shackles.

I want to put it someplace I can see it, and some place I can contain it.

I want to keep it with “those people”.

It is over there, and I don’t have to worry about it.

We once again were confronted this week with evil.

I feel that this is happening more and more.

We are confronted with someone not in their right mind.

Someone filled with hate, filled with self loathing that kills and injures lots of people.

I spent lots of this week thinking about what happened in a nightclub in Orlando.

I participated in a vigil with the Greater Concord Interfaith Council.

And I heard testimony of the pain that this shooting caused so many people.

Pain because it brings up what happens when we hate each other.

I have to tell you this is the third such vigil I have been at since becoming your pastor 7 years ago.

I am tired of going to vigils and reading names of people being killed by guns.

I am tired of going to vigils and reading names of people who are killed because someone doesn’t like the color of someone’s skin, or their sexual orientation, or whatever.

I know that we all want it to stop.

But the answer for me is not to retreat.

It is not to stop trying to be engaged in the world.

It is not to separate out “those people”.

Jesus has gone to Gerasene.

Jesus has confronted the demons, which are many and powerful.

And Jesus has defeated them.

Jesus is not afraid of what he will find among the tombs.

He is not afraid of a man that others have to chain and shackle.

Jesus knows that something else is better for them.

I am afraid for my children.

Because I read the names of the victims this Tuesday and the people killed where young.

They had their whole lives ahead of them.

They had parents who now have to grieve because their child was senselessly killed by someone filled with enough hate to do this.

I am afraid for my children on days like that.

I want to take them and keep them safe.

I want to try and keep the evil of the world in the tombs guarded and chained and shackled.

But I know that is not possible.

I’ve learned that in those six years that Phoebe was in elementary school.

I know that I can’t always protect them.

What I can do as their father is tell them about Jesus.

I can give them something that the world cannot, Jesus.

I can tell them that it is Jesus that goes into the scary places and makes them safe again.

Because we all know that even within ourselves we too have demons.

We have demons that we don’t talk about, or want other to know about.

We all here in this room today have someone we hate, if that word is too much for you, then someone we dislike.

We all have demons.

My children have them because their father passed on his insecurities to them.

And the only way I know to fight those demons is through Jesus.

I can’t keep them out.
I can’t lock them up.

They always come out.

But I know Jesus can do what I cannot.

And the best thing I can do for my kids, and for the world, is to declare how much God has done for me.

How God has helped me time and again fight my demons.

How God has helped me to work my way through the demons of others to find the good in them.

How God has given me the strength to see love even through the hate.

God has helped me have hope when everything seems hopeless.

How God has given me everything I have ever needed to overcome the powers of this world.

Today may Jesus fight your demons.

May Jesus help us all find our way to love and away from hate.

May we be in our right mind, like the man from Gerasene at the end of our Gospel this morning, so we can declare how much God has done for us!

Amen

This Time I Have to Say Something

The shooting at an Orlando Nightclub that killed 49 people and injured 53 more has it all. It has radicalized hate filled religion, LGBT community, guns. It was a mass shooting, hate crime, and a terrorist attack all rolled into one. It has all the social things that we are fighting with each other over for a long time. Just like all the other tragedies of this year and last year. Just like Newton, Aurora, Columbine, and Oklahoma City our politics is what drives our reaction. If you are liberal you will see this as an assault by a crazy person who hated gays. You will call for gun laws. If you are conservative you will blame Islam and say that maybe they deserved it. But what will be lost for all of us is our humanity. We will all struggle to find a way forward that helps to get rid of hatred and violence.

            Because of this I am always trying to find a way to speak out that encourages us to love each other through horrible times of crises. I am trying to build bridges with people who do not share my world view.  I have believed that our politics have been driving our hatred and dislike for each other. I want peace. I want us to get along. I want us to talk to each other, and to listen. I want us to read and listen to those who have done their homework. I want us to use reason, science, and facts to make well thought out reasoned arguments as to why we believe certain things. However, this time I have to speak out. I have been silent for too long.

            Because despite all the evidence that having more guns is making us less safe we will still resist and say that people kill people and not guns. Despite the fact that the United States has a murder rate 15 times higher than that of other wealthy countries, which have tougher gun laws. Some will still argue that we need more guns. Some will still believe that there right to own a rifle designed to kill people in combat is more important than my right to live. No one is talking about taking your hunting rifle. We are talking about making laws to keep guns away from bad people that use those guns to kill people. We are talking about restricting what types of guns you can own. There is no reason to have a military grade gun except if you plan at some point to kill someone.

            As a person who follows Jesus Christ I cannot condone violence. I can see that violence is part of our sinful fallen world. I know that there are times when our country in extreme circumstances needs to go to war. But even in those times I cannot condone it. I cannot say it is OK to do. Jesus Christ told us that “if we live by the sword we will die by the sword”. Jesus refused to use violence to save his own life. Because, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and loose his soul?” Jesus showed us what living in God’s kingdom looks like on this earth. And that kingdom does not include guns or weapons of any kind. Jesus lived a life of inclusion, he lived a life of peace, and as a person who attempts to follow that example I cannot condone using or owning a gun. Especially a gun like the one used in the shooting in Orlando.

            I have been quiet about this issue for a long time. I believed it was one of those issues that was just lost in the mud. I was surprised that even after children were shot and killed in Newton that we didn’t do anything to stop people from buying the kinds of guns that kill a lot of people. If the person in Orlando had a knife do you think he would have killed as many people as he did?

            I know that many people are going to blame the Islamic faith for what happened. We hear all around the world as radicalized Islamic groups kill people. I am not. I have known Muslims who are in no way shape or form murders or killers. I know them as people who seek peace. I know them to be thoughtful caring people. The problem is not Islam. It is religion. It is when we cling to the idea that our religion is the only one. The problem is when we believe that we know all the answers, and everyone else is wrong or bad. It is when we use that religion to make ourselves feel more important. For me as a Christian the end result of my faith is to try and make the world a better place. It is to take this life that I am blessed to live and use it to make others lives better. My faith is what gives me courage to seek peace and love. Religion is a powerful thing. It is why politicians use it to make us vote for them, or so we will go to war believing that we have done the right thing.

            More than this it is the twisting and perverting of religion to make God into a vindictive killer. True religion honors God. And God is love. God is creation. God is hope. God is the one who desires for all of us to “have life and have it in abundance”. God wants life for gays, lesbians, transgendered, no gender, or whatever other groups we can think to name. If you believe that your religion wants you to kill other people. No matter your religion you are doing it wrong. God does not desire that of any of us. All the religions I know are about caring for others, finding compassion, and honoring God by loving the world God created. To say otherwise is to pervert and twist religion to serve our own selfish need to feel superior.

            The thing that I struggle with is that even the people who will hate what I am saying here. Even the people who have totally different views than I have, the people who think that it is normal for someone to have a military grade assault rifle, the people who think that Jesus hates any group or people. The people who have twisted Christianity into something that is anti Biblical. Even those people I care about. I love them. I want to have a dialogue about the issues. I want us to build a relationship. I love them, because Jesus has told me to love my neighbor as he loves me. I know that Jesus loves me through all of my craziness and all of my backward thinking. I can’t just ignore those that disagree with me, or write them off as “Crazy people”. No they are much more than that. They are children of God.

            And that is what has kept me from speaking out in the past my love for those who will read this and hate me for it. I want you to know I still love you. I want us to talk in a way that does not call names. But I also cannot be silent any longer. I have to speak my truth just as you have to speak yours. I can’t sit around and wait for the next mass shooting. I cannot sit and listen to a presidential candidate call for surveillance of all Muslims, or for the US to deport millions of people. I can't listen to another religious person talk about how God hates people who are LGBT. I can’t listen to it anymore and not say something. I have to say this is not what Jesus wanted! This is not how Jesus would act!

            Love is the only answers to these acts of evil! Not more guns. Not finger pointing. Not blaming each other. Love. I rest on that. Because that is the way that Jesus taught us, showed us, and encouraged us to live. Even then our love is always humanly imperfect. However, if we want to stop the killing, and if we want to come together love is the only answer I know. We have to see the best in our neighbor. We have to stop talking bad about each other and start talking to each other. We have to find our way back to our shared humanity. And we have to have laws that stop people from buying military grade weapons!