“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.

First preached at First Congregational Church of Saugatuck on April 15, 2012.
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.

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.

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

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

“I have one! Let’s put a sign in every church that says, ‘Beatings will continue until morale improves.’”

“No, Spain already tried that. It didn’t work so well.”

“How about we fine people for not showing up at church. And if they can’t pay the fine, we’ll throw them in jail until they make enough money to pay up.”

“No. England did that already. Come on, something original.”

“I’ve got one! Let’s do Lent!”

“What’s a Lent?”

“It’s forty days of prayer and fasting in preparation for Easter. Extra church services, no meat, and we’ll tell everyone to give something up so they can focus on God. Count back from Easter 40 days. Don’t count Sundays. That means we’ll kick off on Wednesday with a ceremony of ashes, symbolizing repentance.”

“Sounds great. Let’s do it!”

You all know how it turned out, right? The preachers told their congregations to prepare for 40 days of prayer and fasting starting Ash Wednesday. So the people did the only reasonable thing. They crammed 40 days worth of partying into Tuesday. Great plan, guys. Way to honor Jesus with beer, babes, and beads.

And can somebody please explain the logic behind Fish Fries on Friday? “No meat? No problem. We’ll eat fish instead.” Whoever came up with that little loophole deserves to work for Goldman Sachs.

Try explaining Lent to your neighbors.  “Well, it works like this. Think of something you really love to do, something you do a lot. And you make a promise never to do that at all for forty days.  Sound like fun?”

And yet, we still do it. I sat in my office this week, thinking about what I should give up for Lent. And you know the first thing that sprang to my mind? Hot dogs. Every Wednesday night, I have hot dogs, and not just regular hot dogs. I get two steaming hot 1/3 lb. all-beef franks, piled high with Chicago-style fixings, on bed of crispy golden french fries. I love my wife’s cooking, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I look forward to Wednesday night.

So I’m thinking about Lent and the first thing that pops in my mind is hot dogs. You know what the second thing was?

“No way!”

I love hot dogs! I wrote this sermon on hot dogs! Forty days? You gotta be kidding me. And then I think, “What? Jesus died for me, and I can’t give up hot dogs?” So now I’m stuck either way. Either I lose my hot dogs, or I feel guilty for forty days! Who’s dumb idea was this?

As a marketing ploy, Lent makes New Coke look like a good idea. But as a discipline, it’s gold. We talked last week about what Charlie Sheen and Jesus Christ have in common. Namely, that they’re both human. The way we lift up celebrities is a twisted shadow of the way we put Jesus on a pedestal. We miss the fact that he had fears and doubts, just like us. He was fully human. He identified with us completely, so that we could identify with him. We are to be little Christ’s. As he was for us, we are to be for others. Which is fully true, but it’s not the whole story.

Many scholars believe that the word Christian was first used by our enemies as a way to mock us. “Oh look at them. They think they’re little Christs, mini messiahs running around saving the world.” In fact, that “ianos” ending that they stuck on the end of Christ, Christ-ianos can have another connotation, slave of Christ. As in, “Look at them. They don’t think for themselves. They’re just little slaves of Christ. ‘Yes, master. Whatever you say, master.’” And the Christians said, “Thank you. That’s perfect.”

There’s online web-comic that I really enjoy. It’s called The Order of the Stick. The main characters are little stick figures who know they’re in a Dungeons and Dragons roll-playing game. One of the characters is a very devout follower of Thor, whose is name is Durkon. In one of my very favorite scenes, Durkon gets in over his head. He’s incapacitated in a dungeon full of monsters that want to eat him for supper. So he looks down at his little necklace that says WWTD, and thinks to himself, “What would Thor do?”

And in his little thought bubble, Thor steps down from the sky and says, “With my ultimate power of the thunders, I, Thor, smash this entire dungeon to shattered ruins, each piece no larger than a man’s fist. Then, I return to Asgard to woo goddesses and drink an ocean’s worth of beer. Huzzah!” And Durkon says, “Somehow, that “W.W.T.D” thing is never really as applicable to my situation as it’s supposed to be.”

Try as we might, there are things Jesus did that we can’t do. Jesus healed the sick. He touched the outcast. He fed the hungry. He humbled the mighty, and died on the cross an innocent man. I can’t even give up hot dogs!

People complain about hypocrisy in the church, but that’s not the real reason people reject Christianity. Hypocrisy is everywhere. If you’re waiting for a perfect club to join, you’re going to be looking a long time. And when you find it, they’re not going to let you in. Hypocrisy is just the convenient excuse. Who’s in favor of hypocrisy?

No, the real reason is that we hate coming to the table as anything less than equals. Jesus is the great physician, the good shepherd. He’s here for the lost and the hurting. Grace implies a benefactor. Forgiveness implies a wrong. The graffiti on the wall says, “Jesus Saves.” And in our hearts we reply, “From what?”

That’s where our Psalmist is. He tries to keep silent, doesn’t want to ask forgiveness. But he says that in his silence it’s as if his bones are on fire. He’s sapped of strength, as if God were pressing him down. So he changes his mind, and the song becomes a prayer.

“You are my hiding place. You always fill my heart with songs of deliverance. Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in you. I will trust in you. Let the weak say, ‘I am strong in the strength of the Lord.’ I will trust in you.”

And God responds. He says, “I will instruct you and teach you. I will lead you with my eye.” How do you lead someone with your eye? The second half of the couplet explains, “Don’t be like a mule that needs a bit and bridle.” God does not use force to control us. We are children of the king, not beasts of burden. We are co-heirs with Christ, citizens of the Kingdom of God, and it’s high time we acted like it.

There’s a lot of argument over Genesis. Is it a literal 7 days, or is it metaphorical? Frankly, I don’t care, because for preaching purposes, it doesn’t matter which way you read it. The point of the story is the same. Adam and Eve don’t want to be disobedient. They want to be like God, knowing good and evil.

And what’s the immediate result? 1. They feel shame at their own bodies. 2. They hide from God. 3. Adam blames Eve. Eve blames the snake. 4. An animal has to die so they can have skins for clothes. The point of the story is that sin breaks our relationship with ourselves, with each other, with God, and with nature. Sin is a tangling vine that starts as a seed, grows into a prison, and ends in death. If you eat this fruit, you will surely die, not immediately die, but surely.

Lent may be horrible marketing, but it’s great discipline, because it all comes from here. As your pastor, I don’t get to choose what habit you give up, or what new one you start. What am I going to do, check up on you? It all happens here.

We give something up, or start something new, and in the process we learn something about ourselves, about how we treat other people, about our relationship with God, about the hold that mere things have over us, and the carelessness with which we treat the world we’ve been given. It’s a great discipline, because it only takes 40 days to realize we don’t have it all together. We really could use a good shepherd, or a great physician. It’s a great discipline, because the only way God can lead you with his eye is if you keep your eyes on God.

Lent: Let’s get miserable is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Link to revsmilez.com.

This one

Why do I like this particular comic so much?   The kid, Slick, starts out sad because the world sucks so much.  He gets ticked and starts screaming at God, and God throws up a hand puppet and mocks him.  Isn’t that horrible?  Some of my conservative friends are offended that I used the word suck, and they’re more offended that this kid is yelling at God.  Some of my liberal friends are offended because God is pictured as a sarcastic jerk who mocks our pain.

Me?  I love it.  Look at that last frame, where God pulls out the sarcasm.  Look at Slick’s face.  He’s smiling!  That’s me.  Totally.

The world sucks.  If you’re not seeing that, then you’re either amazingly sheltered or willfully blind.  Lots of good stuff too, for sure, but nothing to counterbalance hatred, disease, poverty, and death.  It’s not even close. Yet here I am, raised to believe that a loving God is ultimately in charge. So I say to God, basically, “Life is SUCKING!!”  Except I say it nicer than that because, you know, he’s God.  God knows what I was going to say, but I think he appreciates the effort.  (And yes I know God isn’t male, stop being pedantic or go away.)

And you know what God says back?  Well, nothing really.  Nothing I could point to and say “Thus sayeth the Lord.”  (Part of me would love to be that kind of prophet, and part of me is still too scared to ask.  Read the book. It sucks to be a prophet.) It’s just feelings, intuitions, coincidences, thoughts, scriptures, insights, even the odd dream and it all adds up to something very like that comic.

God is funny.

And sarcastic.

And some days, exactly what I need to get myself off my whiney butt and back in the fight is for God to go, “Boo hoo hoo.  Life is soooo hard for you.  Booo hoo hooo!”  Maybe I’m weird.  Ok, I know I’m weird.  But that’s the God I know.