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May 23 2012
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Articles and Ponderings

Q&A on Pentecost

Q: What is Pentecost?
A: I’m so glad you asked! We’ve finally bumped into a Christian festival that isn’t adapted from a pagan one. It’s adapted from a Hebrew one!

Q: Which is?
A: Pentecost.

Q: Thanks. That clears everything up.

A: Hey, it’s what I do. The ancient Jewish festival of Pentecost, also called the Feast of Weeks, is when the Hebrews brought the first fruits of their harvest to the Temple. To this day, Jews use this festival to celebrate and remember the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai.

Q: So what’s with the name?
A: Pentecost happens the day after you count seven weeks from Passover, hence “Festival of Weeks”. Seven times seven is 49, which means the feast falls on the fiftieth day, hence “Pentecost”.

Q: What does that have to do with the Christian celebration of Pentecost?
A: The disciples were Jews. And like all observant Jews, the gathered together to celebrate Pentecost. But this time, it was different. This time, instead of bringing their gifts to God, God gave them the gift of the Spirit. Instead of receiving the law on tablets of stone, God wrote it on their hearts.  That’s why Pentecost is called the birthday of the Christian church.

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May 14 2012
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Articles and Ponderings

Pics or it Didn’t Happen

Online communities require habits and courtesies, just like face to face communities. But since this is all so new, we’re making them up as we go.  We’re newcomers to this strange land, but our kids will be natives. By then, they’ll either have a solution, or be used to the problems, of online life and it won’t be a big deal.  In the meantime, us tourists (or pioneers if you prefer) need to learn some new habits. One of them is: pics or it didn’t happen.

Suppose a friend tells you a story, face to face or over the phone. You automatically know how much credence to give it, and how freely to share it, based on a whole slew of context cues we take for granted, like shared history and tone of voice. The text-based, relative anonymity of the internet means that verifying a story needs to become a is a much higher priority, a habit.

Therefore, from today until something better comes a long, when someone tells you a story online, you knee-jerk response  is going to be, “pics or it didn’t happen.” Which translates, “Verify your story, or I refuse to engage in this conversation.”

It’s actually not a bad guide for real life. Don’t say something is true. Live in such a way that it’s obvious.

 

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May 07 2012
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Sermons

Sermon on the Golden Calf: The Worst Excuse Ever

“They gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!” This has to be the lamest excuse in the history of excuses. It was cast in the shape of calf. Which means, first he built a model. Then he built the cast. Then he cut off the cast, and put it back together empty. Then he melted down all their gold and poured it into the cast. Then he broke off the cast, revealing the golden idol, and added the finishing touches by hand, with tools. And after all that, he says, “Well, I just threw their gold in the fire and out popped this calf!  It’s a miracle!”

How many here have been pulled over for speeding? What’s the best excuse you came up with? “I’m late. I’m in a hurry. I have to go to the bathroom. I was scared.” I did a quick search online and found two stories that take lame excuses to a whole other level. These were written by the police officers after the fact.

“While running traffic late one night, I had a pick-up truck pass my spot going 72 MPH in a 45 zone. I took off. I declared a pursuit at about 4 miles into following this subject with lights and siren going. After about another 7 miles the truck signals and pulls over. I had a Deputy Sheriff show up just as I began to approach the vehicle. Upon reaching the driver, I recognized him as one of our town’s residents. He looked at me and said he was sorry for going so fast, and he didn’t stop, because he didn’t know I was back there, because…… ‘I’ve had ALOT to drink!’”

That’s good, but I like this one better. “One night many years ago I was on patrol, and observed a vehicle blow through a red light at a major intersection. There had been plenty of time to stop, yet the vehicle had not even slowed down. I stopped the car and asked the young female driver why she had done that. The girl told me she had just had her brakes repaired, it had been very expensive, and she DIDN’T WANT TO WEAR THEM DOWN!”

Before we even got the rules, we were already breaking them. It starts at the very beginning. God makes Adam and Eve, plants them in a garden and says, “You can do anything you want, just don’t eat the fruit of this one particular tree.” So what do we do?  Of course!  And God says to Adam, “What did you do?” And Adam says, “It’s not my fault, this woman you made told me to do it.”  And Eve says, “It’s not my fault, this snake you made told me to do it.” And the snake says, “It’s not my fault…” Actually no he doesn’t. Isn’t that a little disturbing that the only person in the whole story who doesn’t try to shift the blame is the devil?

“I didn’t do it. It’s not my fault.” We swim in these excuses every day. We use them ourselves and we hear them from each other. And the only thing anyone really knows for sure is that most of the time it’s a lie. Maybe it’s a lie we tell ourselves in order to feel better, but it’s still a lie, and deception is the simplest, surest way to stop any real growth in your life. We have to face the hard questions if we’re ever going to change lives.

Let’s start with, “Why in the world would Aaron do something so dumb?” God just led them out of Egypt with ten plagues, and the first Passover, and the rescue through the Red Sea. That all happened three months ago. Three months ago he saw miracles happen with his own eyes, and now he’s hand-crafting an idol?  What is he, stupid? It’s not as dumb as you might think.

Back in Egypt, there were many gods. One of the oldest, most popular, and most powerful was named Hathor. She was pictured in two ways: as a beautiful woman, and as a cow. You can tell it’s her because she carries the sun on her head, just like the little calf does on the front of our bulletin, because the sun god, Ra is her child. She’s associated with the Milky Way, the goddess of the sky, the one who nourishes with milk, hence the cow. She’s also pictured as a woman because she is mother to gods, a goddess of love and childbirth.

Now imagine you’re Aaron. Your brother, Moses, is seeing visions and hearing voices, but he’s gone. He’s up on the mountain somewhere and he’s left you to deal with all these people.  They’ve been living in Egypt for 400 years, and they’re running scared. They don’t know where they’re going or when they’ll get there. They don’t understand this invisible God Moses is talking about. They want a god like back in Egypt, a god you can see and touch. So Aaron takes this old familiar image and he twists it. It’s not a cow. It’s a golden calf. It’s a new god. A better god. This isn’t Hathor, goddess of the heavens. This is God of all creation. This isn’t the mother of Ra. It’s the God above all gods. This is the one who rescued you from Egypt. This is the one who led you through the red sea. And the people are excited! Now we can be just like everyone else, only better! So they throw a huge party to celebrate their new private little Hebrew god.

And the sound is so loud that Moses and Joshua hear from on the mountain. Joshua says, “It sounds like a war in the camp.” And Moses has this great line. He says, “It is not the sound of victory, it is not the sound of defeat; it is the sound of singing that I hear.”  Thousands of years later, it’s still true. We’re not living in victory. We’re not learning from defeat. We’re too busy partying to fight the battle at all.

If you go through AA, they’ll teach you a little acronym to remember. HALT, before you do something you’ll regret. Watch out when you’re Hungry, Angry, Lonely, and Tired. H-A-L-T. Because those are the times when you are most likely to relapse. I love AA because it recognizes that addiction is not a moral failure, it’s a lifestyle built on habits, habits acquired through diligent effort over years of time, habits that take equal time and effort to rewrite.

That was Aaron’s failure. He underestimated the power of patterns. When I was a youth minister, we talked about peer pressure all the time. But now I think we were missing the point. We ought to be talking about pattern pressure.  It wasn’t like Aaron was getting a lot of pressure from his peers. He had none! His brother was the prophet of God, whose word was literally law, and he was 2nd in command. While Moses is away, Aaron was the man.  The problem wasn’t the peer pressure. It’s the old pattern he was stilly carrying in his head.

Can we all agree that God is bigger than us? Can we all agree that God’s plans are deeper than our plans, that Truth with a capital T is truer than our personal understanding? Then we also have to admit that every time we are confronted by a living God, we are confronted by our own need to change. Every glimpse of God drags us deeper into the unknown. Every time we grow, our old self has to die. It’s as if God is cramming new ideas in our heads and waiting for our brains to stretch. This is the constant reality of a relationship with a living God, and it’s not always easy, and it’s not always fun. It’s so much easier to settle for a golden calf. It’s so much easier to distract ourselves with show and sound. It’s so much easier to stick with the patterns we know.

If that’s fight we’re facing, then how do we win? If Aaron is not an idiot, just human, then how do we learn from his example? First, recognize the power of patterns. Accept that old patterns will resurface in times of stress, when we’re hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.  In this case, it was definitely lonely. Moses was gone for 40 days up on that mountain, leaving Aaron to carry the weight of leadership alone.

Second step in winning victory over our old patterns is to own up to our failures. The Bible tells story after story after story about human beings who mess up and a God loves them anyway. Grace is The central story of the Bible! But it is impossible to learn from a mistake as long as you’re saying, “It’s not my fault. I threw in the gold. Out popped this calf.” We’re not fooling anybody. Half the time, we’re not even fooling ourselves, and we’re certainly not fooling God. Owning up to it is the only way to get to step three. Consequences.

We hate consequences. Did you hear what Moses made them do? He burnt the idol, ground it up, spread it in the water and made them drink it. Why? So they’d feel bad and hate themselves? Or so that they’d remember? Every consequence is an opportunity to learn, if we’ll take it.  Look at all the things they had to do before they could get back on track: they had to drink that nasty water, they endured a plague, Moses had to cut new stone tablets, go back up the mountain, and the people had to wait another 40 days. They couldn’t just say, “Sorry,” and go on like everything was fine. And God wasn’t going to let them hate themselves and quit. They had to get it right.

Back in my old job as a youth minister, I heard about a youth event that didn’t go so well. One day, the older kids decided they wanted to see a movie. So the parents made a deal. You can go as long as you take the freshmen, since they can’t drive.  Everyone had a great time, but at the end of the movie the upperclassmen drove away. They left the freshmen stranded, outside a movie theater, late at night, in a tough neighborhood.

Dad gets a phone call at midnight. It’s his freshman son. “Dad, we need a ride. They left us behind.” So Dad has to go downtown, pick up the kids, drop them at their parents’. It’s 2am by the time he gets home. And his daughter is already there. He’s walking in the door and she’s already making excuses. “It wasn’t me. I told them not to. They wouldn’t listen. They thought it was funny. I told them it was wrong.” Dad said, “Then why are you here? You should have been standing there with them.”  She’s all grown up now, with kids of her own. And if you asked her, she’d tell you she’s made a lot of mistakes in her life, but she never made that one again. Failure isn’t the opposite of success. It’s a prerequisite.

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May 03 2012
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Sermons

Sermon on Church Family: Propaganda!

family

This picture is shared on a creative commons license by the More Good Foundation

This picture is propaganda.

I grew up in an Evangelical Christian home, and there were two things I knew for certain I needed to do in order to be a good Christian: daily quiet time, and family devotions.

Of course you need to go to church. Anybody can go to church. But daily quiet time and family devotions? That meant you took your faith seriously.  Which is how I came to know with certainty that I was not a great Christian. If I ever forgot, pictures like this would remind me.

There’s only one problem. This picture is propaganda. It is not an authentic moment from the life of an authentic family. How can you tell?  Heads tilted, all on one side of the table, everyone’s smiling. Specially designed stand just to hold a ring-bound workbook. Little girl pointing to the picture, teaching her big sister, and they’re both smiling gently. No one’s really teaching. No one’s really learning. Everyone just knows… and smiles… because just knowing is so good. This is not a real family. It is a carefully crafted image designed to make you feel something.

Look how happy they are. Wouldn’t you like to be that happy? And they’re all together, spending time together instead of running around stressed and crazy. See how Dad is actually home instead of at work, or down at the bar? And the kids are so well-behaved. And look at the wife. See how she sits so nicely with her hands folded and her mouth shut? Wouldn’t you like that in your life?

It’s easy to poke fun at someone else’s work, especially since most advertising isn’t really meant to be looked at. It’s meant to be glanced at. It’s designed to plant an impression in your mind, not to make you think.  But I’m betting there’s still something you missed. Because I missed it the first time I saw this picture too. I didn’t notice it until I sat down this week to focus on our reading.

The Pharisees were challenging Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples wash their hands before they eat?” Hand washing was one of many rituals the rabbis had recommended through the years. It wasn’t really in scripture, but it was definitely in the commentaries. Imagine all the reasons why washing your hands before you eat is a good idea. It looks better. It smells better. It’s got good symbolism. It gives you time to transition so you don’t just mindlessly stuff your face. Good hygiene leads to a healthier, longer life. They didn’t understand germs, of course, but they weren’t stupid. They had eyes and brains. There were lots of good reasons to wash your hands.

But Jesus’ disciples are just backwater fishermen. They don’t have much in the way of learning, and probably less in the way of manners. They just grab the food and chow down. That’s fine for fishermen, but Jesus is a rabbi. The habits of the student reflect on the teacher, and in this case it’s not good.

Jesus comes back at them by quoting one of the Ten Commandments: honor your father and mother. That’s almost as basic as you can get. It’s not the greatest commandment or the golden rule, but it’s close. It’s the kind of thing we teach to third graders in Sunday School.

It would be kind of like challenging a math professor to a debate and he says, “Well there are these things called numbers and when you add them together you get a result.”

Jesus tells them “The law says honor your father and mother, but you tell people if they dedicate their money to the church, they don’t have to take care of their parents. You nullify the law with your traditions, and you do it all the time.”

That’s your clue. Now go back and look at the picture, and see if you can spot what’s missing. “You tell people to dedicate their money to God so they won’t have to take care of their parents.”

family

This picture is shared on a creative commons license by the More Good Foundation

Are these kids responsible for taking care of their parents? Their parents are still taking care of them. Which means Jesus wasn’t talking to kids. He was talking to adults, who should have been taking care of…  Exactly, their aging parents.  So who is missing from this picture?

Yes!  Where’s grandma? Where’s grandpa? Where are the aunts and the uncles and the cousins? We read the Bible and whenever we see the word family, this pops into our head.  But this is propaganda! This didn’t exist in biblical times. So here’s a trick. Whenever you read your Bible and you see the word “family”. In your head, say “tribe,” and see if it makes more sense. It’s not a perfect fit, but it’ll shock your brain out of its usual way of thinking.

The root unit of culture is not the nuclear family. The root unit of culture is the extended family. We, as a culture, have forgotten the extended family, and the results are predictable.

Each generation feels isolated from the one that came before, and our elders live in nursing homes. Only the very lucky receive visitors. We have trimmed the family until all that’s left is this, and this is propaganda, because when in the world does this actually happen?

When he’s got a job, and she’s got a job, and both of the kids have after school clubs, and homework, and if they’re old enough, jobs of their own, when exactly is this supposed to happen?

There was a time when Grandma and Grandpa could have helped with babysitting, or your cousins with your homework. There was a time when you turned a certain age and your parents magically transformed into the stupidest people on the planet, when you could run away to an aunt or an uncle’s house, and you would be safe, and warm, and fed until your teenager-y brain finally reset itself, and you could go home.

But most of us don’t have those resources anymore. We’ve spread our families all over the map, cutting ourselves off from each other, until all that’s left is this. Or something we feel vaguely guilty doesn’t look quite as good as this.

Brothers and sisters, guilt is not the answer to our problem; a loving extended family is the answer to our problem. Well, gee. Where, O where, could I find some extended family? Where in the middle of America’s homogenized individualist culture, could you still find something that resembles a tribe?

Yup.

When you don’t have family, you make family. Jesus took 12 guys who didn’t even know how to wash their hands properly, and turned them into a family. In him, we become adopted members of the family of God, and by the power of his Spirit, we are one.

At the bare minimum, that means we take of each other. We watch out for each other. We encourage and support one another. Whatever we do, we strive to do it in an intergenerational way. Because the adopted grandparents in this room need the kids just as much as those children desperately need grandparents. Just as much stressed out parents need help, that’s exactly how much brother and sisters in Christ benefit from becoming aunts and uncles.

Have you ever noticed how much of the Bible is centered on the outsiders? The widow, the fatherless, the stranger? Some people say that’s because God has a preference for the poor. But  Jesus says that the sun shines on us all, and the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. So there must be another reason.

Perhaps God teaches us to take special care of the widow and the fatherless and the stranger specifically because they do not have families to take care of them. They are alone and therefore vulnerable. What we call the Old Testament is founded on the assumption of extended and loving family.

Yes, we should care for the outsider. How could you possibly follow Jesus and do anything else? And maybe that ends with a new law, or social program, or a gift sent to some far-away land. Maybe. We can have a great argument over what to do, and when, and how much. But that’s not where it starts.

Unless our definition of the word “family” expands beyond the edges of this staged picture, our children will be orphans, we will be strangers, and our elders will die alone. That’s where it starts. Build a family, a real family, an extended family. Then you’ll be able to critique culture instead of just flowing along with it. You’ll have a firm place to stand if you want to pull someone up. And you’ll have something to give if you meet someone in need.

Stop chasing someone else’s picture. Look around you and be grateful for all you have received.

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May 01 2012
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Articles and Ponderings

Bible Interpretation Tip: Remember the Readers

Here’s a tip that has transformed the way I read scripture. Any time you read Paul say, “Don’t do this…” what it means is, someone is already doing it. Any time you read John say, “This is how we know…” what is means is, someone isn’t sure.

What difference does this make? All the difference in the world for me. Instead of feeling like I’m not good enough, or my faith strong enough, I realize that the first readers of these words were just like me.  Christians have been fighting these problems for 2000 years!

Does this mean we should quit? Of course not, but it does mean we can cut ourselves a little slack. The authors are not writing to beat us into the ground but to pick us up and get us back in the race.

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Apr 26 2012
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Sermons

Sermon on the road to Emmaus

Text: Luke 24:13-32

Our two disciples from today’s story, Cleopas and the other one, are about to experience a mind-shift. They see the world. They have a conversation. They see the exact same world, but it looks completely different. Obviously, they didn’t do it on purpose. But reading the story, we see three things that they did right, three practices worthy of imitation.

First, they shared the road. They were sad and angry. They could’ve gone their separate ways. But they chose to walk together. Same direction. Same speed. Living in relationship means you don’t always get what you want. But that’s ok. Because what you want more is having someone to share the road, someone who loves you enough, and knows you enough, to call you on stuff. You want to share the road with someone you love enough, and trust enough, that when they tell you something that’s hard to hear you don’t just blow it off or blow up.

Cleopas and his friend didn’t just share the road with each other. They welcomed a stranger. Everyone thinks they have a friendly church. But what most people mean, is they have a church full of friends. Which is great. It’s a thousand times better than a church divided, or no church at all. But the problem with a church full of friends is the same problem Cleopas and his buddy had. Because they were friends, because of their shared experience, they were blind to the same problem. If you want to remain forever exactly as you are today, then surround yourself exclusively with people just like you.

The second thing they did right, is they let the man talk. We like to imagine ourselves as rational creatures. We walk into a store. We look at the merchandise. We balance cost vs. benefit. Then we make a logical choice. Brain imagining tells us reality is much messier than that.

We see something we want, and the “get stuff” part of our brain says, “Want want want!” And then we look price tag, and the “keep stuff” part of our brain says, “No! No! No!” And whichever one yells the loudest, wins. If you see something you already have three of, the want side of your brain says, “Eh.” If you see something for half price, the save money side of your brain starts doing its best “want, want, want” imitation.

And this is just the simplified version! Each of us is built out of arguing shards of personality. And scripture says that in the middle of all that mess, there is a still small voice. Scripture says the Holy Spirit lives in each of us. Perhaps that’s what Paul means when he describes the internal war of the soul, “The good I want to do, I do not do.” By the power of God’s Holy Spirit, Christ lives in us.

But it’s not enough, just to read your Bible and pray. Look at these two. They heard Jesus teach. They saw him crucified. They heard he was risen. They listened as he opened the scriptures to them, and they still didn’t recognize him. But this is when they did their third brilliant thing.

“As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.”

This is hospitality, the most ancient of virtues. You see it in the Hebrew Scriptures, in Homer’s Odyssey, in the myths and legends of a hundred cultures. They didn’t know what was happening. They didn’t know who he was. They didn’t know why their teacher had to die. But they did know the right thing to do. You don’t leave a stranger to walk home, alone, in the dark. You extend hospitality.

Like most good things it’s simple and hard at the same time. Do the right thing. Live the truth you know. You know what the word companion means? It comes from the Latin: cum panis, with bread. We find Christ, not just in here (congregation), not just in here (Bible), not just in here or here (heart & head), but out there. We meet Christ when we make his kingdom real in this world. We meet Christ when we speak the words he would speak, go where he would go, and live as he would live. Because the instant we step outside ourselves and help another human being, when we look them in the eyes, we will see Him looking back.

When that happens, when we see the same old world in a completely new way, we will realize we already have more than enough money to get started and we already have all the time we are ever going to get.

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Apr 24 2012
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Articles and Ponderings

Being a Dad is Awesome!

One of my favorite parts of being a dad is when my eldest gets up early and sneaks into bed next to me. He’s already awake, so he can’t help it. He has to start talking. “Daddy, why do go to work? How’d you meet Mommy? Why is the sky blue? What is it mean, you’re half Dutch?” But the game is, I’ll only answer one of his, if he’ll answer one of mine.

“Hey, buddy. Can you move a mountain?”
“No.”
“You’re right. Now ask me.”
“Can you move a mountain, Daddy?”
“Yup.”
“Cannot!”
“Wanna bet?” (He won’t bet me anymore because he’s lost too many times.)
“How?”
“If I wanted to be boring I’d use a spoon. If I had enough money, I’d use a laser. That would be awesome! If I didn’t want to move it very far I’d use explosives and make it jiggle. If I wanted to be funny, I’d tell the entire world that world that rocks are cool, and the very coolest rocks of all come only from this mountain. Then they’d come and take all the rocks away for me. If I had a long time, I’d just sit on top and wait. And if I didn’t have any time at all, I’d remember that the earth is spinning, and the mountain already moves. There are a billion ways to move a mountain. But first you have to believe you can. As soon as you say you can’t, you’re right.”

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Apr 17 2012
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Sermons

Holy Humor Sermon: Things That Make You Go, “Huh?”


Text: 1 John 1:1-2:11

“It has been said long ago that there were three classes of people in the world… The first is that large class of people who talk about people; the next class are those who talk about things; and the third class are those who discuss ideas…” (H. J. Derbyshire, “Origin of Mental Species”, 1919)

“That’s because small minds don’t want to be wrong. Average minds want to be right, and great minds want to be true.” (Pastor Rob Brink, “This sermon”, 2012)

A few people have suggested I get my doctorate, but the fact is, I’ve never been a great student, because more than anything I wanted to be right. You wouldn’t have liked me. I was that annoying kid who always raised his hand. If I could go back now, I wouldn’t like me.

I had, hands down, one of the coolest Latin teachers, ever. Every Friday, we would ask Mr. Grogan, “Can we go buy some Dunkin’ Donuts for the class?” And he would say, “Of course not. What are you thinking? This is a school. An institution of higher learning. I can’t let students just go off and buy donuts.”

“Sorry, sir. Can I have a bathroom pass?”

“Here you go!”

Coolest. Latin teacher. Ever. And yet to this day, I can’t do Latin. Because every night, instead of translating in my head, I would use the conjugation chart. Match up the ending, find the part of speech and you’re done.  Until you have to take a test, when you won’t have a conjugation chart in front of you. Most students would have given up and, I don’t know, learned Latin. You know what I did? Memorized the conjugation chart. I wrote it out from memory on the back of my test, and then used it to decode the test. Got all the answers write, never learned Latin. Because I was more interested in being right, than being true.

In spite of my best efforts, I had a few amazing teachers who forced me to truly learn. I didn’t realize until much later, they all used the same method.

I didn’t learn about writing; I wrote. I didn’t learn about editing; I edited. I did learn a bit about Western Civ, but the tests were not multiple choice. They’d project a painting on the wall, or some architecture, or play a bit of music, and you either knew what it was, or you didn’t. There was no hiding in these classes, there was no gamesmanship or influence. It didn’t matter if you were cute or funny or smart. In those places, the light of truth revealed reality.

An ancient church tradition calls this Bright Sunday. Lent is work, and Easter is solemn, but Bright Sunday was a celebration.  People might tell jokes or play pranks, let the kids be in charge for a day. Some modern churches have restored this ancient custom, calling it Holy Humor Sunday. And underneath it, there’s some very good theology.

Have you ever noticed that the very best comedians are storytellers? And they don’t make up fantastical tales. They talk about real life, just regular stuff: growing up, falling in love, getting old. And it doesn’t have to be big stuff either, just everyday things like watching TV, going to the store. It’s all the same things we do; yet somehow when they tell it, it’s hilarious! How does that happen?

They see the absurdity we’ve learned to ignore. If every Sunday, Christians are celebrating Jesus rose from the grave, why do most of them act like they’re at a funeral? Because that’s the way we’ve always done it. That’s the way we were taught.

Imagine you’re 8 years old, and you go to church with your family, sitting right next to your mom or dad, all dressed up in your Sunday best. And the preacher starts reading about Jesus. You like hearing about Jesus so you lean forward and listen. And the preacher says, “Oh you Pharisees, you strain out a gnat and you swallow a camel.”

And in your head you imagine a bible times guy, with the robe and the flip flops and the bandana thing, and you imagine him leaning back and opening his mouth wider and wider, and the first thing to go in is that ugly slobbery camel face, and then that long floppy neck, two hairy humps, four big knobby knees, and the very last thing you see is that big floppy camel foot. Sllllluuuurp!

And you’re 8 years old. You do the natural thing, right?  *snort!*  And what happens next? You know what happens next!  *smack!* And heaven help you if you get the giggles. Keep picturing those knobby camel knees. *glump* You better not get the giggles, because you know what happens then. Walk you right out the back door.

“What. Do. You. Think. You. Are. Doing?! This is church! And that’s the day you start to learn. You learn not to see it. You learn not to hear it. Because if you really heard it, if you really pictured it in your mind, you would laugh. You can’t help it!

Adam and Eve eat the fruit, and they hid from God, and God goes for a walk in the morning and says, “Where are you?” Like he doesn’t know? The only two people on the planet and God forgot where he put them? Or maybe it’s those new clothes. They just blend in.

Abraham hears that God is going to destroy Sodom and Gomorra because it’s full of evil. And Abraham starts to bargain, with God. “But what if there are innocent people in there? You don’t kill innocent people. What if there were 50 innocents, would you spare the town?

Yes, for 50 I would spare the town.

What about 45?

For 45 I would spare the town.

40? 20? 10?

For 10 I would spare the town.

God is the worst bargainer ever! It’s like when the Women’s Fellowship runs the Christmas Bazaar down in the basement, and they’ve got the little tchotchke table with all the little trinkets on it, and they’re each marked at a buck. And you know what happens every single year?

Some little old lady picks up a tchotchke, brings it over. “It says a dollar on here. Would you take a quarter?” You think I’m kidding. This happens every year! “How about a dime. Would you take a dime?” And then they pull out a little change purse and hand you the dime like they just made some major purchase. I’d wrap it up for you, but the tissue paper costs more than ten cents!

This stuff pops up all over the place in the Bible. Not from Paul so much. Paul is one intense man. But Jesus was funny. Not silly, stupid funny. Sarcastic. Fiercely intelligent.

The Pharisees complain that he runs with a rough crowd, and he says, “John the Baptist lived like a hermit out in the desert, ate nothing but locusts and honey, and wore clothes made from camel’s hair. And you said, “He has a demon!” I live in town, wear regular clothes, eat regular food, hang out with regular people and you say, “Oh, look!  A glutton and a drunkard.”

“You’re all proud of yourself because you give ten percent of everything even down to your spice rack, and yet your parents starve. You know all 613 laws of the Torah, and you’ve read all the commentaries, but you skipped the Ten Commandments”

“You keep saying these people need help. I’m a doctor. Where am I supposed to go? Hang out with all the well people? You keep saying you’re not sick. You know the truth. Fine! You don’t need me. Get out of the way!”

That’s Rob’s translation. “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light.” God reveals the truth of what is. Yes, that can be painful. Yes, that can be embarrassing. Yes, it would be much easier to just hide in the darkness. But that’s not joy; that’s ignorance. That’s like not going to the doctor because you might find out you have cancer. You know what stinks worse than finding out you have cancer? Finding out you have stage-three cancer and it’s now too late to operate. We know it’s dumb. But we do it all the time. Because we’re afraid.

“I write this to you to make your joy complete. God is light. In him is no darkness at all.” Let me ask you something. This may be important to you. This may help some of you. So pay attention.

Has a candle ever made you feel guilty? Ashamed? Embarrassed? Show of hands. How many of you have nice bright lights right above your bathroom mirror? Whose dumb idea was that? You get up in the morning. You got pillow creases on your face. Sleep in your eyes. Drool dried onto the side of your chin. You come stumbling into the bathroom. Turn on the light. “Oh! Good. Euuhhh! Just. Turn it off! Go take a shower. Try again later.”

Actually, that’s just the girls. You know what they guys do? *pose* *flex*  “Yep. Still got it.”

It’s never easy to see things as they are. We’re afraid. We’re biased. And frankly, it’s just plain work. Because once you see it, you can’t un-see it.

For example, when you put a key in a door why do you always have to guess which way is unlock? And batteries. I know there has to be some electrical engineering reason why they all have to go flip, flop, flip, flop. Is it really so much work to run a little wire up to here so you can go pop, pop, pop, pop? And gas tanks. Why don’t car companies just pick a side? That way, whenever I borrow my wife’s car, I don’t have to pull into the gas station, get out of the car, realize I’m an idiot, get back into the car, turn around so everyone else knows I’m an idiot too. I bet the people inside the gas station are going, “Heheh. Got another one. Oh look, it’s Pastor Rob. Again.

Yeah, you laugh now, but I’ve infected you. Now every time you unlock a door and then pull on it and it’s still locked, or change batteries twice because you put them in wrong, or a see snarled mess at the gas station with cars all blocked in and facing each other, you’ll know. It doesn’t have to be this way. Someone, somewhere just doesn’t care enough to fix it.

That’s the real problem with light. That’s the real power of humor. It takes the truth you’ve learned to ignore and makes it funny enough you can’t help but look at it. And once you see it, you can’t forget it.

Stupid humor mocks people.

Good humor sees people.

Great humor changes people.

John is called the Apostle of Love. “I write this to make your joy complete… I write,” he says, “so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin…” You hear the gentleness in that? See the light of truth? And feel the lack of shame? God knows who and what we are. And his verdict is love.

You know what other book John wrote? Revelation. And when Jesus comes at the end of Revelation to wipe out the enemies of God, he slays them with a sword that comes from his mouth. Our weapons are not of this world. Words are our only sword, and humor is its edge.

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First preached at First Congregational Church of Saugatuck on April 15, 2012.
Creative Commons License Things that Make You Go, “Huh?” is licensed under a   Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.  Link to RevSmilez.com.

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Apr 09 2012
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Sermons

Easter Sermon: Love Letters from God

Texts:  Mark 16:1-8, John 20:1-18

Once upon a time, a shy young man was absolutely love struck by a beautiful young lady. Every day, he tried to get up the courage to speak to her. Every day he failed, until one day he had an idea. He’d write a love letter.

So that’s what he did. He wrote a beautiful, romantic letter, and with shaking hands he dropped it in the mailbox. It felt so good to finally give voice to these secret feelings that he wrote another next day, and the next, and the next. For two years, he wrote a letter every day. And then it happened.

She married the mailman.

It’s an old joke, and it’s made its rounds in various holy humor preacher manuals, because it’s got an obvious moral, ready to preach. The Bible is a series of love letters from God, but as individuals and as a nation, we’ve run off with the mailman instead. Greed and godlessness destroy our homes and our country. We need to get back to our first love.

Not a bad moral. Not a bad sermon. It is Easter after all, and some people just don’t feel like they’ve been to church unless they’ve been yelled at. If you don’t feel guilty at the end, how do you know it was a sermon? If that’s you, and that’s what you need to hear today, there you go. “Dear Lord, please forgive me for ignoring your love letters.” Not a bad prayer. If that’s as much church as you can handle today, and you just tune out the rest, I won’t hold it against you. But you’d be missing the best part.

Because in this particular story, I’m a big fan of the mailman.

I say, if the letter writer liked this girl so much, he should have gone over and said so to her face like a man! Ladies, correct me if I’m wrong, but if a complete stranger sends you one love letter a day for two years, is that or is it not creepy stalk-land material?

Exactly. I bet that’s how the whole thing with the mailman go started! She asked him if he knew this guy and how to put a stop to it. And every day, when a new letter came, he was there. He made her feel safe. The words on the paper were heartfelt and inspiring, but they were nothing next to the warm smile of a flesh and blood human being.

The letters showed remarkable consistency and dedication, but so did the mailman, and you know what else he had? A job! Something more to do with his life than write love letters to strangers. The letter guy never had a chance, and rightly so.

From a certain point of view I made a big mistake allowing you to hear both those readings right next to each other. Because even a child can spot the inconsistencies.

Was it Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome who first went to the tomb, or was it just Mary Magdalene? Did they see an angel and then report, or report and then see an angel? Did they go and tell the disciples, or keep silent because they were afraid? Did they see a resurrected Jesus, or just an angel in an empty tomb?

Why can’t the Bible writers get their story straight? Scientific studies tell us that Mark’s gospel was probably the earliest, and John’s the latest, and Mark’s doesn’t even have a resurrection account. So John obviously added that part himself to explain how his hero, the messiah, could possibly die.

See all the troubles it brings up, reading them right next to each other? The easy way would be to only read one version a year, so  you have time to forget the inconsistencies. But if we liked things the easy way, we wouldn’t be Congregationalists, now would we?

Years ago, it was common to assume that all the gospels were written hundreds of years after the events took place, but most modern scholars disagree. The earliest gospel fragment that we have is called the Rylands Library Papyrus because it’s stored in the John Rylands University Library in Manchester, Great Britain.

Most scholars date it to around 125AD in Egypt. If we add in a few decades for the document to get copied and passed around from its point of origin all the way to Egypt, then the most common guess at John’s original writing is around 90-100AD. Obviously, we’re guestimating based on two thousand year old evidence here. There’s room for disagreement. But it’s an educated, scientific guess, and this is the general consensus.

And in this case, science and church tradition line up. Church tradition says John was the only disciple to die of old age, so it’s possible his gospel was written by one of the last of the eye witnesses to the next generation of believers.  He hints at this when he says, “I write this so you might believe.”

If we accept that Mark is the earliest and John the latest, that means Mark had to write his gospel even earlier, in the living memory of eye witnesses. His purpose wasn’t to get them to believe, it was to get them to act.

Suppose you’re a first century believer. You go to church one Sunday, and the preacher begins reading this new gospel from Mark, the first of its kind. And the gospel confirms all those stories you’ve heard, and fills in gaps you never knew. The narrative gives the story flow and makes it easier to remember.

Then you get toward the end, and you walk with Jesus through his last days. And your excitement starts to build because you know what’s coming, and you get to Easter morning, and the angel tells the women, “He is risen!” And then the preacher reads, “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” And he closes the book and sits down. How would you feel?

Yes! “That’s the end? That can’t be the end!  How can that be the end?!” Which is the whole point. The book is not meant to be consistent. It’s meant to get you to move, out into the streets where the people are.

The inconsistencies don’t bother me. They show flesh and blood people recalling flesh and blood memories for a flesh and blood audience. Perfect consistency? Now that would bother me, because it would mean they weren’t experiencing it. They were copying it.

God didn’t just send letter after letter. He hand-delivered the message. God put on flesh and lived among us and experienced every part of what it is to be human: the helplessness of birth, the dependent frustration of childhood, the sting of cruelty and betrayal, even death. And if we take his words on the cross at face value, he even knows what it’s like to feel forsaken by God.

That’s the promise of Good Friday, and on Easter Sunday, we see the promise hand delivered. Death is not the end. Good can conquer evil. Suffering for the sake of another is not a fool’s game; it is our only hope. Such a thing can only be accepted by faith.

Faith is wondering and hoping and believing and trusting someone. Not some thing. Some one. Even though you’re not certain, even though the cost is high, faith chooses to believe his story is true, not because the scientific probability of its truth outweighs the scientific probability of its falsity, but because of who he is out there (world), in here (Bible), in here (heart), and in here (mind).

And faith is not content to believe it here (mind), here (heart), or here (Bible). Real faith follows his example, and makes it real out there, where the people are. Because letter after letter, sermon after sermon, guilt trip after guilt trip is not enough. Just like Peter. Just like Thomas. Just like all the disciples, hearing the good news is not enough. They have to see it with their own eyes. They need that message hand-delivered. They need to see it in you.

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First preached at First Congregational Church of Saugatuck on April 8, 2012.

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Love Letters from God is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Link to revsmilez.com.

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Apr 06 2012
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Articles and Ponderings

Easter: Yet another messed up Christian “holy” day

Q: Isn’t Easter supposed to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection? How in the world did we get from resurrection to egg-hiding chocolate rabbits that cluck?

A: The answer is in the question. It’s precisely because we’re in the world that all of our holy days have become cultural holidays.

Q: For example?

A: First, early missionaries co-opted ancient festivals to explain Christianity using forms and traditions they already knew.

Q: And second?

A: When the Roman Empire fell and the church stepped into the power vacuum, church custom became the cultural norm. Entire nations full of Christians in name only? That’s a recipe for half-baked theology.

Q: Then why not ditch all those holidays and only do the ones in the Bible?

A: Some folks do, and I don’t hold it against them. But I think being “in the world” is one of Christianity’s greatest strengths, growing from one of it’s deepest mysteries.

Q: Huh?

A: The incarnation means that God wasn’t content to hang out in heaven and wait for us to figure out how to climb up. God come down to us, entered our lives and our times. In Jesus, God explained himself in a way we could understand. Every time we do that, every time we step into someone else’s culture instead of stepping on it, every time we stand in the gap when things fall apart, I think God smiles. And when it results in clucking, chocolate, egg-hiding bunnies, I think God laughs.

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