A Matter of Heart...

          What is this?  Is this Church?  Why isn’t everybody in pews?  Where’s the organ, the chancil, and the altar?  What about the sanctuary and all those other hard to remember terms they don’t teach in seminary?  And what about those funny guys in the long dresses?  How can this be worship?  How can this be Church?

                Well, sometimes things are not always what they seem, and just because it isn’t what we are used to, doesn’t mean it isn’t just as true.  But mistaking something for its trappings, getting fooled by the outside and not looking within is something we as humans will always struggle with.  We don’t like change, we don’t like it when differences crop up into our lives.  Between bills, work, family, and all the drama that gets put into that mix we like things to stay the same, we like things the way we are used to, the way we can handle them.  Humanity’s been like that since Adam and the fall, and it was no different for people living in Jesus’ time as it is today.

                Most people don’t really appreciate how different Jesus’ ministry was, how so very radical  compared to what was going on at the time.  I want you to imagine yourselves as Israelites living in Palestine, as 1^st century Jews living within walking distance of the Holy City. The temple and the synagogue are the biggest contact points of your faith, the places where you fully embraced your identity as Jews.  The synagogue was where you learned about your ancestral religion: Your learned what to eat, what to wear, and what to do.  The temple, however, was where you most publicly proclaimed your identity and where you performed the most important rites as an Israelite.  Here the Day of Atonement was performed, here the sacrifices and the various offerings were made to absolve all Israel of her sins.  Here was where you were supposed to meet God.

                But not all of your fellow Jews are happy with things the way they are, indeed the strife with your countrymen is almost equal to the strife you feel with your Roman conquerors.  In the first century there are four major divisions of the Jewish faith that you must contend with, all quite different from one another.  There were the Sadducees, the ruling class of Israel.  Surprisingly secular believers, they do not believe in angels or spirits nor do they really believe in an afterlife.  They pick and choose from their Bible, taking the verses they like and conveniently excluding what they don’t.  Only the first five books of Moses were Scripture to them, you see.  Cutting out ¾ of your book means cutting ¾ of your responsibility and where life would be at odds with the Prophets, the Prophets could simply be discarded.  Still, while deeply flawed by power and compromised by convenience, it must be noted that these are the only Jews among your people who are not racist, that do not believe Gentiles are bad simply because they are gentiles and by extension they do not believe Jews are good only because they are Jewish.

In addition to the Sadducees, however, there are the Pharisees and they are not so far from our evangelical movement.  They are a Scripture driven movement, a missionary movement, and a grass roots association interested in keeping the Scriptures central in the daily lives of their fellow Israelites.  No one person leads it, no organization heads it, rather it is rallied by its charismatic preachers who often decried their government and were quick to advocate war against foreign powers.  Their adherence to the whole of Scripture often makes them legalistic, obeying the bare words on the page but caring little for the spirit in which those words were given, but at the same time you will be hard pressed to find a Jew more openly living their faith or more interested in relieving the suffering of their people than this group.  

After the Pharisees are the Essenes, Puritans and End Time Believers.  They believe most of the country has fallen into horrible sin, so they do not mix with the common Israelite, seeing them as too tainted, too unclean for Holy Living.  They have removed themselves from society and live in the desert far away from the false government and the false religion that have taken on God’s name.  When God comes to judge their nation, it is their intention to be “Left Behind”, looking forward to the destruction of the temple and the coming of a great teacher.

There are also the Zealots, a group of Jews who feel that the only response to an unclean and gentile ridden government is its violent overthrow.  They were inspired by the Maccabees, the Jewish generals who threw off gentile oppression and foreign entanglements by the sword.  These are your constitution party members, the liberty lovers and the militiamen seeking to return their society to its perceived origins.  They are believers in their weapons and are fervent in their opposition to their government, but they are also the Jews most willing to give their lives in defense of their friends.

But finally, there are the people like you and me.  People who are somewhere in the middle, perhaps seeing one side or another but in all honesty just trying to eek out an existence that both gives credence to your people and shows faithfulness to your God.  You know the Temple isn’t perfect, you know the flaws of your leaders, and you know the dangers of losing your way of life, but it’s also all you’ve got to work with.  And so you work, you live, and you wait.  You endure the times and raise a family, doing your best with what you have…that is until someone comes along and shows you a better way.

And that someone comes…a man, a lowly carpenter’s son, rumored to be of illegitimate birth.  He is a rabbi, but he is not like the other rabbis.  He has no education, no formal training.  He didn’t apprentice himself to another teacher like the others did, he simply took up the mantle one day and, shockingly, people listened.  But people did more than listen, they followed.  They followed by the thousands.  And when this rabbi took disciples, he didn’t take the cream of the religious crop.  He didn’t go to the Scriptoriums, the religious schools for their best students, he took everybody.  He took fishermen, tax collectors, Zealots!  He even taught women!  And what did this man teach?  He taught that the root of all evil was neither Sadducee nor gentile, but the love of money and power and any Jew was quite susceptible.  He taught that gentiles were not an enemy of the religion or the state and they were indeed capable of great faith.  He taught the Temple was about to be judged and replaced with nothing, that the new holy community could be comprised with just two people without any buildings or sacrifices for sins.  He taught that there are no unclean foods and that working on the Sabbath is not necessarily against the law if those works are for good.  He taught that the Scriptures are Holy and Good, but they need filling to be complete.  But more than any of that, in a land of schisms and disagreements, in a land more and more given to violence this rabbi taught that Peace was the answer, that love for neighbor was the solution, that simple faith in God even unto death was the way.

                Now, all of you may be wondering, what in the name of the Holy of Holies does this have to with our gospel text?  Well, I’ll tell you.  As a Jew or even a Gentile in the first century the question arises, indeed begs to be asked how then is this Jesus still a Jew?  How can this sect of Christians still consider themselves part of Judaism when they will eat any food, have no use for temple or sacrifice, are willing to include gentiles into the people of God, and understand their Hebrew Scriptures as now secondary to the message of the gospel?  Yes, this Jesus might be important, indeed he might be the most important man who ever lived, but how can Christianity be thought of as having Jewish roots?

                And the answer is that appearances can be deceiving.  What looks one way can in fact be another and THAT is a theme that Luke deeply addresses in his gospel.  Luke begins his tale as a Gentile would.  Important people, people of divine importance, are often heralded before-hand.  So important is this Jesus, however, that even Jesus’ herald John is heralded beforehand.  Yes, this all occurred as a gentile would think fit, but these heralds are not gentile, they are Jewish.  Jesus and John are born to Jewish parents.  John’s father is a Jewish priest and Jesus’ parents have him circumcised and presented at the Temple according to Jewish law.  The inherent Jewishness of the Jesus story is hammered home time and time again and the relevance of the Jewish scriptures and their filled-full-ment in Jesus is not some outlying afterthought or a tangential footnote, but is central to the fulfillment of God’s promises to his people.  Indeed, where the story seems least Jewish, it in fact shows quite the opposite.  Joseph and Mary are recorded in Luke as obeying the Roman census.  Most jews rebelled at every census, but Joseph and Mary did not.  Their scriptures told them to obey the gentile king, to pray for them and indeed intercede for them while under their rule.  The Prophets proclaimed this, and Mordecai in Ruth lived this, even to the point of seeking royal permission to defend themselves against Haman and their enemies.  Joseph and Mary were not less Jewish for obeying Caesar; they were in fact more Jewish than all the rest of their countrymen.  And so it is for this part of the story, Jesus having just proclaimed the faith of a centurion now goes into Nain and raises a widow’s son, just like Elijah the Jewish Prophet did so many centuries before.  But unlike Elijah, who raised a gentile widow’s son, Jesus goes to the Jews and returns a Jewish widow’s only son back to her.  God has indeed returned to bless his people.  They were not left out.

                So yes, things changed.  The trappings of the past, the trap-things, the outside appearances that ensnared, yes they were discarded but the heart was no less true to its heritage.  God is not an exclusive God.  Claiming the Gentiles did not mean dismissing the Jews, and the blessings of the future in fact did not include the cursing of the past.  Both were upheld and one did not happen at the expense of the other.  So it is with us.  So often we look at the future and we see great cataclysmic change.  We look at our society and our children. We say “look how different it’s all going to be”…except it’s not.  2000 years from now we will still be silly, ridiculous humans in need of Jesus, but I will not lie to you, my friends, things will look different.  We will have a different president, we will live in a different world.  Our children will grow, they will not be exactly like us and our church will look very different in the years to come.  It’s only looks.  God is the God of the old and the new, and he gives the same heart to them both if we ask Him.  So yes, things will change, just not really.  And we can take heart in that.               

The Quality of One's Friends...

          A miraculous itinerate rabbi, a Roman soldier who loves his slave, Jews that value the gentile that built their synagogue, and a miracle completed just because of one man’s belief.  I must admit my friends, this is one of my favorite texts in Luke, superceded only by the parable of the prodigal son.  It is such a brief, odd, but incredible little story.  It is unfortunate, however, that we as a culture have lost just how odd and incredible this story really is.  We read it and see merely a soldier, a servant, and Jesus; only a tale about the ultimate power of belief.  Make no mistake, all those elements are there, but they are not the only ones.

                In seminary and law school, you learn very quickly about the incredible importance of context.  It can mean many dull hours at books too dusty and too old for reasonable humans, and it can mean a lot of discomfort as old understandings need to be tilled up and the seeds of new understandings get sown.  But this is no mere mental exercise.  For those of us called to this path it becomes very clear how important this work is because in the end you realize there are real people going to be affected by it for weal or woe.  Whether a man borrows something or is stealing something depends on the context, and whether someone kills in self defense or will be found guilty of murder depends on the knowing the exact situation in which it happened.  If context means so much, then it is clear we as faithful people are going to have to master it.

                So what is our gospel lesson in context, what did it mean to a first century Gentile living within the confines of the Roman Empire?  We’re going to find out, but instead of my usual means, instead going into the Greek, instead of talking about first century Judean history, I am rather going translate our lesson culturally, changing only the names and the setting in which the story occurs.  Listen, and see if you can’t hear the difference.

      “After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Civil War era Georgia as a black preacher.  A white plantation owner there had a female slave whom he loved dearly, and who was ill and close to death. When he heard about Jesus, he had the elders of the African- American community come to him, asking him to come and heal his slave.  When they came to Jesus, the elders appealed to him earnestly, saying, "He is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our church for us." And Jesus went with them, but when he was not far from the house, the Plantation owner sent his friends to say to the black preacher, "Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.  For I also am a slave set under authority with people under me; and I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes, and to another, 'Come,' and he comes, and to my servants, 'Do this,' and they do it."

When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, "I tell you, not even in all the South have I found such faith."  When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health.

                A little different isn’t it?  Let’s try something more modern.

“After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered modern day Palestine as a rabbi.  A Hezbollah soldier there had a gay partner whom he loved dearly, and who was ill and close to death. When he heard about Jesus, he had other Israelis ask him to come and heal his partner.  When they came to Jesus, they appealed to him earnestly, saying, "He is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us." And Jesus went with them, but when he was not far from the house, the soldier sent his Muslim friends to say to him, "Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my love be healed.  For I also am a servant set under authority with soldiers under me; and I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes, and to another, 'Come,' and he comes, and to my lover, 'Do this,' and he does it."

When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, "I tell you, not even in all Israel have I found such faith."  When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the man’s partner in good health.

                Beginning to see how really shocking this story really is?  Are we starting to see the elements we have been missing?  Let us now go back to the original text, filling it in with what would have been unwritten but obvious to an ancient audience. 

After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum, a Jewish fishing village under gentile control.  A centurion, an enforcer of the Roman governor’s whims, had a male slave lover who was ill and close to death.  When he heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, asking him to come and heal his slave.  They came to Jesus without hesitation, appealing to him earnestly, saying, "The centurion is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us." And Jesus went with them, but when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent his Roman friends to say to him, "Lord, do not trouble yourself, for despite my station I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.  For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes, and to another, 'Come,' and he comes, and to my slave, 'Do this,' and the slave does it."

When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, "I tell you, not even among Jews have I found such faith in God." When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health - without Jesus having to say a word.”

                Reads a lot differently now doesn’t it?  Yes there is the faith of the centurion and the power of belief, but there is so much more to it.  Each character in the story is defying the supposed order of things, recognizing the era in which they live but also loving past it.  There is the centurion, a Roman soldier, the very kind of person who in but a generation will put every Israelite in Jerusalem to the sword.  But he is not cruel to the Israelites, he does not force them to worship the emperor or the Roman gods, indeed he builds their synagogue for them.  He has such a relationship with the Israelites that he can ask the Jewish elders to go talk to this dangerous new rabbi for him.  The elders, who by all accounts know that even being seen talking to this upstart, this rabbi with no formal education who constantly challenges the religious elite, could get them into real trouble, but for this centurion they do it.  And this needs to be explored further, the risks they are taking are no less phenomenal than the reasons they are taking them.  They approach this Jewish radical, this rabbi who does miraculous works on the Sabbath and that declares all foods to be clean, a man who is upsetting every Jewish authority at a time when doing so would literally get you killed.  Not only that, they are approaching this rabbi as a favor for a man viewed as a Jewish oppressor so that man can continue a relationship many Jewish leaders would not consider legitimate.  But the elders didn’t care about any of that.  This centurion had developed such a friendship, had such a meaningful impact on their lives, they approach Jesus without a second thought.  They don’t come to Jesus saying, we have to relay a message to you.  NO!  They say “this man is worthy of having you do this for him.”  In a world that would be all too quick to brand you a traitor, they knew the price of compassion in this instance and they didn’t flinch for a moment.  Their friend’s well being and joy meant so much more to them.

But after the Jewish elders show the quality of their character the Romans in Capernaum show theirs.  Jesus, of course, would know the repercussions of entering into the house of an unclean gentile, but He doesn’t care.  He goes anyway.  But the centurion, the centurion sees Jesus coming and has his Roman friends meet a conquered Jew and tell him not to come.  “Our friend knows the stigma that will be attached to you if you come to his house,” they say.  “But this is his message, ‘My Lord,’”… Incredible!  His friends see that this man of military station is debasing himself, calling a conquered Israelite My Lord, but they don’t care.  They relay the message anyway.  “My Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof and so I did not presume that I was worthy to see you.  Do not trouble yourself on my account.  Simply say the word and I know he will be healed for I myself am a man who both is a master and has a master, just like anybody else.  Just as when I give a command my will is done, I know when you issue the order thy will be done.

Jesus is astounded, amazed by this, and the story ends by Jesus doing something equally shocking.  He turns to his fellow Israelites and says, “I wish Jews had this much faith.”

Ladies and gentlemen, if the world needs anything it needs this story.  In a day and age where Christians mix with Muslims, Hindu’s, and Neo-Pagans, where those in the fishing villages of the world must live with the whims of the Caesars of the world, this story of risk-taking love and borderless compassion shows us the world as it could be.  A world where politics and disagreements mean so much less than one another’s happiness and the miracles that can happen when we do not let other people’s discomfort and disapproval rob us of our care.  But we don’t choose that world, ladies and gentlemen.  Instead we only love those like us, love when there is no cost to us.  One of my heroes, a German Lutheran Pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer, coined a term for this: He called it cheap grace.  Ladies and gentlemen, I look upon an America more fractured than I have ever seen it, I look upon a world more ready to burn than I have ever seen it.  This is the answer, my friends.  If you don’t like somebody –befriend them.  If you are concerned about a social movement -  host their rallies.  If you despise an entire religion – build their synagogue for them.  Scream at the top of that mountain that no matter how different we are, how much we disagree or how much you don’t like me there will NEVER be a time when I don’t have your best interests and your happiness in my heart, that under no circumstance will I EVER be your enemy.  That is how we change the world, ladies and gentlemen, and that is how we make the miracles fly. 

Because if we only love those who love us, how is that to our credit?   

Post-Charleston Sermon

      

          ”Who then is this?” indeed!  A man who cures leprosy with a touch; who casts out demons, and calms the sea just by speaking to it?  It is a pity, but as modern readers of the ancient text, we often miss out on a lot that the gospel writers wanted us to know and to think about.  Indeed, in first century Judea all of these things - all of these miraculous powers - screamed of Jesus’ inherent divinity.  To a Jew, Leprosy was the worst of all possible curses: a punishment for sin that was literally living death.  As ruler over both life and death, it was believed that only God could bestow leprosy and therefore only God could cure it.  So when Luke describes Jesus as healing 10 lepers and then proclaiming to the crowds “Did only this Samaritan come back to give thanks to God?”, it is not on only a challenge to the people’s views about Samaria, but it’s also a challenge to recognize and accept Jesus’ true nature.

            And the fact is the Gospels are literally filled with these kinds of references to Jesus’ divinity.  Despite modern beliefs that ancient people were superstitious and stupid folk - believers of literally anything up to and including that miracles happened all the time - the surprising reality is that we find rather the reverse.  Many Jews of this era thought the age of miracles was behind them, and what few wonderworkers they believed were real weren’t really how we would envision them.  People like Hanina Ben Dosa and Honi the Circle Drawer didn’t really perform acts of power, they were what we would think of as just really effective at Prayer.  Much like today, yes we find the ancient world had its version of Palm readers and weavers of magic spells, but in all of ancient history the miracles ascribed to Jesus are singularly unique.  Then as today if somebody walked around our cities and towns, bringing sight to the blind and making the infirm stand up with a command, the people would not ask just “Who are you,” but “WHAT are you”. 

            As such, you can imagine my confusion when I heard a former pastor of mine said that the real Jesus was just a human being, that his divinity was manufactured centuries later and of the four gospels only John ascribes any divinity to Jesus at all.  As I was interning at a very progressive Church, It didn’t shock me that they thought that way, I simply found it tragic.  I found it tragic that even Christian clergy could know their own books so poorly.  So when Mark writes “Who is this that calms the seas with his very voice?” What on earth or in heaven could create order out of chaos with but a word?”, well, rest assured he had one Being and one Being only in mind.

            I say all this to you because I want to talk to you about the power of Jesus, and to talk to you about the power of Jesus I first need to make that power very real to you.  When the earliest Christians quote stories from Jesus’ life, it is from these gospels.  When the earliest Christians were martyred for their faith, it was over what was in these books.  We live centuries apart from the founders of our country do we not?  Even today, we would know whether George Washington was real or a  myth.  Even today, if somebody ascribed miraculous abilities to Thomas Jefferson, we would know whether or not it was true.  If these stories were false, we might laugh at them, but we certainly wouldn’t die for them.  And yet that is exactly what our Christian forbears did for the Jesus in our gospels.

Now why is this important?  Why do we need to understand Jesus’ power as real?  Because I need you to take it seriously.  I need you to take Jesus’ power seriously because we all need to take Jesus’ use of power very, very seriously.  That God became a human being and had the power to shape the very elements of creation itself and that He would sooner die a criminal’s death before using that power on another human being, this needs to be central to our Beliefs as Christians…and it’s not.

            In America, we have an addiction to power.  No, not an addiction, we are having an adulterous affair with it.  We chase endlessly after wealth, fame, and political office.  We say to ourselves as Christians if I only I can get my hands on more money, if only I were famous, if only I had a title that would make people do what I say life would be better.  Brothers and sisters, how can this be? 

Now, there is nothing wrong with these things in and of themselves.  There is nothing inherently evil with having money, there is nothing bad about being famous or holding political office.  Jesus’ life shows us that Power does indeed have a godly place, my complaint is as Americans we have absolutely no wish to find out what that place is.  We want so desperately to keep our myths that somehow power solves our problems, but the fact is it doesn’t.

            If you need proof that we do this, I can only point you to how we as a society accomplish everything.  We punish.   An out-of-work single mother thrown in jail because she couldn’t find babysitting while she went to an interview, a man thrown into jail for legally marrying his 16 year old wife because of a poorly worded statutory rape law, a twenty year old walks into a South Carolina church with a gun, we continue to believe that having power over another human being no matter the circumstances somehow magically makes the world a better place.   But it doesn’t. 

We value power to the point of insanity.  We indoctrinate our kids to value strength, to be strong and never to be pushed around - but we are outraged to find children get bullied to the point of suicide.  We insist on our rights, we demand not to have our time infringed upon, so much so that every time when see our spouses once work is done, we blow up and make all these ultimatums about their behavior -  And when our spouses finally won’t see us anymore , we have the gall to ask why.  This obsession with power, this need to force other people to do what we want even goes to the very core of the way we do religion.  When Craig (our pastoral associate) gave his sermon last Sunday, he called out our Bible Publishers and our Bible Commentators for not translating what was actually there and let me tell you I applaud him.  As a seminary graduate, I can’t emphasize enough how important a job our Bible translators have and yet despite this there is next to no accountability for what they print.  The publishers have learned how to sell Bibles and what sells Bibles to our American Culture is to fill it with words like “Obey” even when the text clearly doesn’t call for it.  Because homosexuality is such a hot topic, they make sure put in verses decrying it when anyone fluent in the language knows differently, and finally to sell Bibles they make sure to twist as much as possible to talk about the end times even to the point of ridiculousness.  Many Christians believe in a Rapture, the taking up of all true believers before God punishes indiscriminately everyone else.  Whether you believe in it yourself or not we need to realize that belief in the Rapture is very recent.  17 centuries passed in the common era before any Christian believed in the Rapture, almost two millennia of Believers pouring over the same Scriptures we have today and yet not one of them ever believed in it.  Yet we find it in our Bibles today don’t we?  Well, in actuality maybe we aren’t pouring over the same Scriptures after all.

            But this is who we are as a culture.  Publishers learned long ago what makes Americans buy Bibles and that is simply to make a product that helps us lord it over our neighbor. Bible’s that let us thrust our fingers into its pages to tell the other person to obey, Bibles that let us critique and discriminate against how God made them to be, Bibles that let us envision a world where God finally kills everybody but us.  It…has…to…stop.

            After spending two years in a very liberal church, I know I don’t agree with much of their theology, but they do have one thing over the rest of us.  A fair critique they have is that more conservative theologies make Christ into a cog, nothing but a wheel in some grand inexplicable scheme of salvation.  In Liberal Theology Christ is an example to live by.  They don’t just pour over his words looking for something that might be a command, they try to see what he was doing and the example he wanted to set.  In our gospel story for today, Power is Jesus’ last resort – not his first.  In the middle of the storm, even when it was at its worst, even when the boat was flooding and about to be capsized, he decided endurance and faith in the Father were far better choices than to simply command the world to do his bidding.  Indeed, if it were up to him he would not have used power at all.  But when the disciples cried out to him, in their panic and on the verge of their utter despair, it is then that Jesus calms the seas and brings order to the chaos of that moment.  Even then, however, it was power used for God’s children, not against, and indeed afterward Jesus still proclaims that faith was still the better option of the two.

            Power, you see does not accomplish what we think it does, and when I hear atheists from our culture scoff… when even they think so much of Force and Violence that they ask “how can you believe in an all-powerful God when there is so much evil in the world,” my answer to them is why do you think that power accomplishes anything?  A stone thrown violently into a pond brings the water down for second, but in the end the stone just sinks out of sight and the consequences of our actions end up rippling everywhere else, including back to us.   If history has taught us anything, it is that bullets and bludgeons do little to change men’s minds and forcing others to be good people in fact has never once made them into good people.  Indeed, if the goal is to create a better world to live in, Peace and Perseverance prove far better, and taking a bullet instead of spending one is a far more incredible show of strength.

            So what are we to do?  How can we, tiny and insignificant as we are, remotely take on the incredible violence and ugliness of our world?  The first step is we stop pretending it is the big and powerful things that matter.  Every big thing happens because of a multiplicity of small things.  It is the consistent little choices that build up to the evil or the good that we do.  And in that vein we come to step 2: If we are to change the little things, we must change our attitudes that are turning the little things bad.  We must do things like control our worry.  Our worries and our frets make mountains out of molehills, it makes us focus on ourselves rather than actually solving the problem.  God sees our situation and has already provided a way out of it.  Worrying about it only makes our responses to the situation selfish and poorly thought.  Worry makes us into ugly people and ugly people make ugly decisions. 

But we must not only control our worry, we must not only keep constant vigilance over our fears, we must also stop our blaming.  When we worry, when we give into our fears, we automatically concoct a reason for those fears and those reasons are usually anything but reasonable.  We saw the results of this in Charleston South Carolina, where a young man who worried that despite that white people were ¾ of the population and that we constitute 90% of the people in political office, he still felt that his race was somehow in jeopardy.  And because he believed his race was in danger he decided the only option was to shoot people praying in a church, and now 9 of our brothers and sisters have been taken away.  Parents will no longer have their children, and their children will no longer have their parents.  I am sure we don’t have the full story, in fact I am absolutely convinced that we don’t have the full story, but what I can tell you no matter the state of his mind that one act of hate will now create chances for thousands more, and that is what brings us to our final step.  We need to be involved. 

After living less than 40 years on this planet, I can tell you these tragedies have one thing in common.  Very, Very rarely are plots like this kept so secret that nobody could have truly stopped it.  We live in a society that is so apathetic to violence we have to tell our young women to yell fire when they are being assaulted, because that’s the only thing that makes us pay attention.  Jesus did not hide away his entire career, he lived amongst the people – it is why he is called Emmanuel: God with us.  He comforted and protected the wounded in his midst and He challenged the powerful that did the wounding.  He brought healing to the desperate and peacefully brought the ridiculousness of His enemies back on their own heads.  We need to learn to do the same.   Like Jesus we need to learn to have faith instead of fear, we need to learn to craft solutions instead of making people into the problem.  People will be the problem all on their own, believe me we don’t need to do it for them.  Finally, we must realize the teachings of Christ are worthless unless they are embodied.  We, too must live amongst the people and we must be the power of Christ in a world that so desperately needs it.  May we do so lovingly and in Christ’s Name.  Amen.