Ash Wednesday Meditation

Ash Wednesday Meditation

                Hypocrites.  That is what Jesus called them.  When we say that word, “hypocrite,” it calls to mind many notions.  It conjures up images of people who say one thing and do another, of a selfish person playing two sides of the same coin.  In democratic elections I’m sorry to say we see no end of such people, of candidates who act one way in front of people and totally different when around each other.           But that isn’t the kind of hypocrite we are talking about today.  You see words tend to change meaning over time.  Just as gay used to mean happy and the prefix “anti” as in the words anti-American and Anti-Christ, the prefix was used to not to describe something opposite but something fake.  When John talks about anti-christs in his revelation he is talking about taking on a fake Christs, a cheap imitation, a faux Messiah instead of the real deal.  And just as those words have changed over time so the word hypocrite has changed.  A hypocrite, you see, was what they called the actors in one of those Greek tragedies everyone has heard so much about.  It was a technical name referring to a specific kind of profession, a profession that most certainly was less than known for its ethics and piety.

                It is this meaning of the word that gets lost, and yet is so essential to understanding what Jesus is doing in our gospel text. "Beware of rehearsing your piety before others in order to be seen by them;” Jesus says, “for then you have no payment from your Father in heaven. Whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you.  As the Greek actors do in celebrating the Greek god Dionysius, so do our own Pharisees in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be applauded. Truly I tell you, they have received their payment.  But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that your alms may be done behind the scenes; and your Father who sees in secret will give you your wages.  And whenever you pray, do not be like those theatre actors; They love to turn their synagogues into stages, their street corners into amphitheatres, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their payment.  But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door as your ancestor Nehemiah did and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.  And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like those who only act like Jews do, for they disfigure their faces as stage makeup so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.  But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, appear to all the world like the one going to the play and not the one performing it so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
                God, you see, is the theatre manager in this parable, and knows everything that goes on behind the scenes, and it is important to note that in Greek theatre all the actors were unpaid.  There was no such thing as professional acting back then, the audience’s love and adoration was indeed their payment.  Only those who actively work for the manager will get paid, but all their work will be done where no one else can see, quite literally off stage and behind the scenes.

                And so this story’s full impact in the first century might be felt.  Jesus, you see, is not being so nice to the religious establishment of his day.  Those that parade around making a show of God and piety are less than praiseworthy in his sight.  You see that Pharisee, that hypocrite, that supposed religious elite.  He only plays at being a Jew and then only when he is onstage.  He announces his performance with trumpets, he gives alms with drama, he rehearses his prayers like lines in a play, and even puts on costumes and make-up to let the world know that he’s fasting.  Like any actor, however, you will find the person and the part they play to be two very different things.  The fact is he plays at being a righteous Jew when you are looking, but when you are not he is anything but.  However, ladies and gentlemen, since we have turned God’s religion into little more than an allegory for theatre,” Jesus says, “then let us at least be honest and bring the allegory to its only possible conclusion.  These people perform all these deeds to gain your applause, and yet you all know very well that in theatre the applause is the only thing the theatre owner allows them to keep.  Do not be actors, but be workers behind the scenes.  That is who gets paid when the curtain comes to a close.

                 Ladies and Gentlemen, in a country that praises its actors, whose celebrities are paid more than some national governments, this gospel story should be enough to give any American pause.  To be American is to inevitably have Hollywood in your soul.  Everything is entertainment, everything a play.  What does it say about a nation and a culture when we get our heroes and role-models from works of fiction, a story written and filmed for no other purpose than its authors knows exactly what we will buy?  The question that I see that needs to be asked is this, am I truly a Christian or, in a culture of Hypocrites both old and new, have I just learned to act like one?

                The fact is we as Americans do so much to act like the Church.  Yes we’ll give to people on the street, the person that happened to catch our eye, the person who found ways to make me feel guilty and so I gave them money to make me feel better, but give to an organization?  Give to a shelter that helps dozens if not hundreds?  Do something that actually fights poverty rather than relieve my ego for the moment, no we don’t do that.  Do I feel concerned for the wounded, will I go on about a pet charity, will I tell people how terrible I feel over this or that but will I actually do something about it, especially when no one is looking?  No very often we don’t.

                The reality is, ladies and gentlemen, we need to put our money where our mouths are.  Sure we talk a good game, but when the time comes to actually do what we say…  You see, ladies and gentlemen, as a country we became anti-Christian, falsely Christian, a cheap imitation meant only to fool those who didn’t know any better.  The thing is, God knows better, and it is no defense simply to act faithful.  We must be faithful.  Now you say to me, how can anybody possibly live up to this?  How can anybody fit these impossible standards of being what we are truly supposed to be?  Well, I am here to give you the good news.  This is Ash Wednesday.  And while we cannot live perfect lives we can be sorry when we don’t.  We cannot help but make mistakes on every level, both practically, morally and spiritually, but I do have the ability to repent of them.  And while we as Christians cannot and will not live perfect lives we can resolve to live better ones.  Let us repent.  Let us take off the costumes and the masks we put on before others and before God, they fool so very few these days.  Let us be who we are, ugly and unseemly as we are, and live lives of repentance so God can turn us into something better.  Amen

Lawful Good Does Not Equal Lawful Nice

A slap to the face.  No one really likes them.  They are insulting, degrading, maddening sorts of things, but perhaps what is most enraging about them is that we as human beings need them.  We as sinful prideful creatures need to be brought up short from time to time no matter how much we may dislike it.  

Many years ago now, there was a coworker I very much had the displeasure of knowing.  He was a belligerent sort of fellow on the best of days.  However, in addition to being highly unpleasant normally he also just so happened to personally despise the ground I walked on.  He made no bones about not liking me, in fact once he was almost violent, threatening to punch me despite me literally having no idea what I could have done to set this man off.

This abuse went on for months, and as so often happens in the workplace, I learned quickly that we receive very little help from management in dealing with a workplace bully.  But that wasn’t the worst of it.  That wasn’t the worst by far.  As co-workers we of course had a job to do.  It was a job I worked hard at and had experience in though it had very little to do what I went to school for.  Well, one day I goofed up.  I made a mistake of procedure – I thought the rules said one thing when in fact they said quite another – and Mr. Sunshine himself called me out on it.  Oh, he was gleeful.  That spark that he got in his eye, that predatory looking smile he shot at me.  I was, shall we say, less than pleased at life and God in that moment.

My mind immediately went into lawyer-mode.  I started marshalling the arguments I would use, going over everything I’d seen him do trying to find something – anything really – to accuse him of in return.  After all those months of abuse, of me killing the man with kindness and him returning nothing but anger and hate in my direction for it, to have to admit that he was right and I was wrong was an indignity beyond anything I could comprehend…but then God stopped me.  God stopped me and said, “Keven are you really going to do this?” And we argued it out there in an empty hallway for awhile.  I told God everything that had been happening, I laid my anger and my frustrations out, and the honest injustice of it all.  That I should be handed over on platter to a man who did nothing but insist on being my enemy was, quite frankly, galling.  But, when I had gotten all that off my chest, I said to myself, “But he’s right.  I made a mistake.  He was right and I was wrong and no matter how else I choose to slice it, no matter what arguments I want to make or how I might want to assign blame, that was the reality.  

So of course my boss got called in about the matter.  He sat me down and asked me for my side of the story.  I said that one of the other workers on site asked me for what the rule was on given thing, working from memory I told them it was x but now I have been informed that it was actually y.  I admitted my mistake and apologized.  My boss tapped his pen on the table, looked me straight in the eye and said, “ok then.”  And that was the end of the matter.  Oh Mr. Sunshine was not pleased at all.  To God’s glory he was so mad at me over this he couldn’t speak to me for weeks.  But it was hard.  In that moment it was so hard to let my ego go.  To not be incensed and turn to self-righteousness in that moment was so incredibly difficult.  It was God slapping me in the face.  It was insulting, it was degrading, and it was absolutely the only way for me to rely on my God to get through the situation rather than my pride.

And this is what confuses many people about our gospel story for today.  They read that Jesus is in the synagogue, he reads from the scroll of Isaiah, announcing that he is here to preach good news to the poor, he is here to release prisoners and restore sight for the blind.  The people speak well of him and are amazed by his gracious words, but then it seems like Jesus deliberately blows it.  The words that follow next make it seem like he is trying to enrage them, like he wants to be insulting.  Oh, let me assure you, there is no seeming about it.  It looks like Jesus is slapping his audience in the face because Jesus is, in fact, slapping his audience in the face.

Jesus says to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me, ‘Physician heal thyself!  Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.”  I tell you the truth no prophet is accepted in his hometown.  There were many widows in Israel during the time of Elijah, and yet Elijah wasn’t sent to any of them, but rather to a gentile woman living in Sidon.  There were also many with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet only the gentile Naaman from Syria was cleansed.”  “Yes, I am here to proclaim good news to the poor and give sight to the blind, I am here to release prisoners and give hope to the oppressed.  I am here to do all these things, it’s just a pity that none of it will actually apply to you.”

And so the people are incensed, they are absolutely enraged.  Within moments of hearing this they as one body get up and drive Jesus out of town in order to throw him off of a cliff.  You see, ladies and gentlemen, this story is according to Luke and according to Luke, Jesus is as much the S-U-N as he is the S-O-N.  He is indeed a purifier, healing the sick and setting this broken world aright, but Jesus is also very much a revealer, a light that casts away the shadows and exposes things for all the world to see.  And in this instance, the true nature of the crowd is made very clear.  Yes, when they hear something they like they’ll praise your name all day long, but one unpleasant truth and they go from praises and accolades to having murder on their minds just like that.  They were a people who for all the world looked Jewish, acted Jewish, praised God in the synagogues and acted faithful when the public eye was on them but in-truth their hearts harbored violence, and their faith was far more about their own egos than it was about a truthful and loving relationship with God.  They thought they knew Jesus, but the truth was that Jesus knew far more about them.   

And so this begs the question, if this is what Jesus revealed in his fellow Jews, what will Jesus reveal in us?  What will our Lord, who sees us so clearly and we so dim, what will he unveil about us this 2016, not only personally but as a congregation.  I have no doubt that it will be some really good things.  As a new pastor here I have been nothing but impressed with you.  For November, you collected over 200 lbs of personal care products for the poor and the needy.  When you’re talking about feminine hygiene products and bars of soap, 200 lbs is a lot.  I took a picture of it all on my phone and I still show it to people at my other job.  Their reaction?  Amazement.  They look at all that got collected and they say to themselves why am I not going to church, why am I not giving to people that need help?  In seminary you hear all sorts of horror stories, about how people treat the poor on their doorstep.  You hear about people who dress up as homeless and come to church in dirty jackets and hats.  They act as someone who has trouble with things going on upstairs and often they are treated like dirt and shown the door.  But you didn’t do that, I know you didn’t do that because I saw it up here from this pulpit only a few weeks ago.  You welcomed such people.  Maybe some of you were worried, maybe some of you didn’t even know, but at the end of the day you passed a test that churches 5 times this size fail on a regular basis.  This building has stood here ministering to God’s children for 110 years and I have no doubt that we will be here for at least a hundred and ten more.

But … there’s a catch.  You see, ladies and gentlemen, the fact that we aren’t remotely done yet means we aren’t remotely done yet.  And being proven worthy of a job doesn’t mean we get to excuse ourselves from doing that job.  In fact it means we’re going to get pruned further so we can do our job better.  I will save the majority of this information for my pastor’s report downstairs, but I tell you this stands to be a banner year for us.  2015 had many problems, but to the surprise of many researchers it ended up being a turning point for small congregations in this country.  Church closures were down last year, and for the first time since I decided to go to seminary this country saw more church starts than church closings.  People are becoming interested in going to small churches again.  Small congregations made up less than 50% of this country’s religious institutions just five years ago.  Last year it jumped to 59%.  Given all the violence America observed in 2015, people are seeing a need in their lives that everything else is just failing to fill, and they know they can try to find that in the megachurch, in the most fantastic shallow Jesus that money can buy, or they can decide to find that within community. 

There are opportunities like we haven’t seen in over a decade if not longer.  If I know God at all, I believe he’s been orchestrating all this from the start and he’s not going to allow human pride to get in the way of bringing salvation to his children.  In this environment we have the opportunity to bring the good news in ways we couldn’t imagine just a few years ago, and if so Jesus is going to say a lot of things to us, a number of which we aren’t going to want to hear.  Jesus is going to point out rather unhappy things, like that we give to Starbucks far more than we give to ministry, that when it comes to financial support we are apparently far more concerned that McDonald’s and Arby’s be successful.  He’s also going to point out that we’ll direct far more people to a mechanic than we will to Him.  If we see someone in need we’ll gladly refer them to someone who will charge them hundreds if not thousands of dollars for a car that’ll just break down again, but will we direct them to a place that gives hope, peace, and joy for an eternity? And these are just things I can think of off the top of my head, these are the challenges God has given me for this year – more is coming.  It needs to.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is my offering envelope.  In this envelope is not only the rest of my pledge for this month, there is enough in here to double it.  My family and I have decided to double our pledge for this month.  That’s how much I believe in this church and what Christ is going to do through its ministry - and that’s how much were going to try to give going forward.  As one of many ministers that this congregation is blessed with and I am blessed to be among, I want you to know we don’t just talk a good game, here, we walk it.  We up here on this pulpit are not immune to Jesus’ critiques anymore than anybody else, but we will tell you his critiques are coming, and while they will always be loving they cannot always be light.  The question only remains how will we react to them?  Will we reject them outright or will we look ourselves in the mirror and say yes?  Will we avoid them, will we refuse to grow, will we respond in vitriolic anger as Jesus’ hometown did so many centuries ago, or will we respond in repentance and in faith?  The church has a glorious future ahead of her and God can absolutely take us there.  Let us not be too afraid to listen.             

Peace on Earth?

               Good Morning!  This year seems to have just whizzed by hasn’t it?  Indeed, every year I find the months seem to go a little quicker and the days fly by just a little faster.  And, in all honesty, though, ladies and gentlemen, for every year that goes by I wake up and find the world is just that much harsher, and the people in it just a little more cruel.  This year was certainly no exception, was it?  In 2015 so many names were brought to our attention, names like San Bernadino, Umpqua Community College, Planned Parenthood at Colorado Springs, and Charleston, North Carolina.  2015 also brought up other names, names like Islamic State and Boko Haram, the latter an African Extremist group who proudly proclaimed that they would marry nine-year olds, abducted some 270 school girls and forced them into marriages.  While we got those children back, our 6 month response time to that kidnapping was of little use to the young women who were victimized and the vast majority of whom are now pregnant.  And indeed, adding to this list that is already too long, we find also the names of Kim Davis, Missouri University, the Baltimore Riots, and finally Paris France.  It makes me just want to hide.  Yes, when confronted with the shear immensity of how violent and ugly our world is becoming it is easy to just want to lose myselves in the holidays, to envelope myselves in Christmas lights and tinsel, in presents, and carols – anything really.  Anything so I don’t have to admit to myself that this day there is not peace on earth and even on Christmas there is no goodwill toward men. 

                But in light of all the conflict and ugliness we have experienced this year, be they racial, religious, or otherwise, there is hope for all of this.  The good news is the world doesn’t have to be this way.  It doesn’t have to be angry, hurt, and confused and we do not have to respond to hate with hate, and in these regards I want to introduce you to someone.  He is not here right now, though I keep him with me.  You see, as I mulled over all that the world has been through this past year, my thoughts kept returning to my old mentor in seminary.  Now, as your pastor I want to affirm again that for us as Christians the answer is still Jesus, but I think there is a place for the people God puts in our path, and that our teachers and fellow humans often have important lessons to teach us about Him.  My mentor, as he referred to himself, was the right reverend Dr. Wilbur P. Stone.  He was a farmer, a businessman, a missionary, a pastor, and a professor.  He was a self proclaimed Congregationalist Baptist Pentacostal who also enjoyed the occasional Roman Catholic Mass. We didn’t agree on a lot theologically, but the loving heart of this man always struck me to the core.  As a Baptist minister he did not think a number of things were proper, homosexuality and homosexual relationships being one of them, but his response to his brother when he came out of the closet was just phenomenal.  When his younger brother told his family he was gay and in a gay relationship, much of his family left the dinner table never to speak to him again.  Wilbur just sat there, and in his fifties no less, as his brother turned to him through terrible tears. He asked Wilbur, “Aren’t you going to disown me too?  Aren’t you going to tell me what a sinful human being I am and tell me I’m going to burn in hell?” Wilbur turned to his brother and said, “I don’t know what your destiny will be, that is not for me to decide.  But I do know this, I am never going to abandon you, and wherever you are bound there will not be a day when you are not tripping over my love for you.”

                After my own study of the Scriptures and the history of the church, I disagreed with him that homosexuality was a sin.  Indeed, there is no evidence the church had much to say on the subject for its first 1100 years and had no problem producing wedding liturgy for same-sex couples.  But while we disagreed in theology we were in one hundred percent agreement over how that theology ought to be applied.  However, this is not the story I want to tell you about the man.  The story I am reminded of in these turbulent times is the story of Wilbur at one of his yearly Peace talks with Muslims in Eastern Africa.  While Israel and Palestine get most of the news coverage for peace talks in that part of the world, the fact is, as Wilbur and many others have found out, other places need them too.  And for many years Wilbur participated in these talks, addressing Muslim peoples pushed out of their homelands by their own Islamic brothers and pushed into tents where they had to rely on other peoples for food and water.  These talks of course had varying degrees of success but the time Wilbur remembered the most was one of the most recent. 

                These peace talks were always respectful, always non-violent, but this particular time a hard lined conservative Muslim imam found out about the talks and he butted his way in.  He was rude and he was quarrelsome.  He interrupted Wilbur’s points constantly, seemingly having a quote from the Qu’ran for everything Wilbur had to say.  At the end the imam got up and made a speech to Muslims in the crowd.  The word of God in the Qu’ran was clear, he said.  Wilbur and these Christians were infidels and even simply sitting here listening to them was nothing less than a show of disloyalty to Allah.  He called on the Muslim men listening to repent, to rise up and denounce these Christians as the faithless deceivers that they were.  Within moments some the Muslim men arose from within audience.  Steel in their backs and righteousness in their eyes, they stood up before Wilbur could even react.  Boldly they rose up and pointed their fingers at the Imam and said, “would you please just shut the hell up.”  They got up and told him that after being chased into the wilderness so many years ago by their own supposed Muslim brothers and sisters that they now knew why the Prophet himself sought refuge with the Christians when he was chased away by his own people.  Ugliness and hate in fact did NOT win that day, and years of hard work building peace amongst two very different peoples was not undone by one man’s self-righteous bigotry.  There was Peace on Earth in that little corner of the world and it was there because there was good will toward men.

                Our gospel lesson today is found in John, but today I want to talk about Luke’s gospel.  I want to talk about the Christmas story that tells of censuses and inns; of shepherds and angels.  I want to talk about that gospel, because in that gospel goodwill is absolutely the point.  When we hear Luke describe Caesar Augustus’ decree, we hear merely words of history, of a man just chronicling down facts as an accountant crunches numbers.  But what Luke’s gentile audience would know that perhaps we would miss is that the Jews revolted at every census.  Unwilling to be tracked by their government and unwilling to be recorded so they could be taxed, the Jews would be stirred up in Judea and would engage in violent riots.  As a Gentile Theophilus, a gentile friend of God, you would be constantly confronted with the often deadly actions of God’s people.  And while yes the Caesars and Rome were hardly above critique, that tax money supported the country in ways that people really benefited from.  It went to roads that kept trade healthy, it went to the courts so people could submit their pleas, and it kept the lands policed and crime down – in all except Judea.  That is why the story of Joseph and Mary obeying the census would be so shocking and yet so very vital.  Greek Historian Diodorus Siculus commented that the Jews considered all the world an enemy, but not these Jews.  These Jews did not revolt, they did not make war, they did not turn to violence.  For a Gentile believer in God this news was the world to you, for the long foretold and awaited Messiah did not come through the self-righteous and the war mongering, but through the peaceful and the obedient.  It came from Jews who obeyed the edict of their country, risking not only estrangement from their fellow kin, but risking their own lives and the life of their child in traveling the dangerous Judean countryside.  This was the Holy Family, the family that bore you as a gentile no ill will and was willing to burden itself, even endanger itself, for your benefit.

                And we find as we read into Luke’s story further that the goodwill shown by Mary and Joseph that day God would simply outdo.  We find that though His own people were typically inhospitable, that though none would share or even give up their own room for a pregnant woman and her family, that though it was amongst a people who had no more room for their king than a stable and a feeding trough, God bore them no ill will.  He came anyway.  Though the Jewish faithful had been groaning for centuries for a return of the Davidic King, it is both shocking and despicable the only honor reserved for those of the line of David was apparently that of a shut door.  But when God sent his angels it was not to punish, it was not to rebuke, but it was to proclaim the coming of the Messiah with Joy.  And the shepherds, unclean vagabonds and thieves to a proper Jew of the city, it was to them that the angels came.  Those who had been ostracized, those who were looked down upon, they were not missed.  In fact they were given a special invitation.  Though there was many a reason for God to be angry and incensed, rightfully indignant and in a mind to punish, it is the Incarnation, the birth of God as a human being, that we find God’s true character – Love.  God bears mankind no ill will, it is we who bear ill will for one another.    

         And so our gospel is like our lives this Christmas season.  We too live in a world that chooses to be harsh and inhospitable.  We too live amongst an unforgiving people who seem to always find a reason to have no goodwill for their fellow man, people who see the lives of their brothers and sisters as worth so much less than even the briefest false feeling of righteousness.  These people are absolutely in the world, but the good news is that we don’t have to be like them.  Just as God chose not to make mankind his enemy that fateful night 2000 years ago we can do that too.  We can choose to be like God, we can choose to leave the world of anger and fear and pride behind, we too can enter our suffering world with both love and joy.  We can choose to love people different than us, to respect and show kindness to people with whom we do not agree.  Through this we can have Peace on Earth!  This is not merely a numb and impotent phrase we tell ourselves this time of year.  It is not a set of tinsel-colored blinders we put every December the 25^th, it is a promise made by the Maker.  Peace on Earth is not only possible, but because of the work of Christ it is the inescapable reality. 

                Ladies and Gentlemen, the world is in turmoil.  It is suffering and in despair.  The violence and the hate of this past year have made it forget the very real hope we have for a better tomorrow.  It threatens to turn the Peace and the Joy of this Day into a mockery.  It will not succeed.  It will not succeed because we know of a better way, a way that answers anger with kindness, hate with love and fear with Peace, a way that began with God extending a hand of friendship and goodwill to an undeserving people that 1^st Christmas morning.  May we inject the world with that same Christmas grace every single day of the year.      

Amen and Amen.