Sympathetic

This morning, we begin a new sermon series on what it means to be marked for good. We are not perfect, by any means. Not even close. But what is strange is that our imperfection doesn’t seem to matter to God. God doesn’t wait for us to be perfect before engaging us. God meets us where we are. And in meeting God, we cannot help but be changed. We will learn and grow. And somewhere in the middle of all that, way before we have gotten close to any kind of perfection, God sends us out into the world: changed, marked, but still imperfect.

This morning we look at the mark of sympathy. Sympathy is a normal human emotion. With all the advances in neuroscience recently, we have learned a great deal about human emotions. With sympathy, what we have learned is that our sympathy for another person increases with proximity. In other words, the closer a person or a tragedy is to us, the more likely we are to be sympathetic. This isn’t really earth-shattering information. We know that news of a Tsunami half-way around the world is tragic, but doesn’t affect us nearly as much as word of a national tragedy. And these are both minute compared to a local emergency or, even worse, a family agony. The closer we are to something, the more time we have invested in it, the more likely it is that it will affect us.

And yet, the same is true when we’re simply talking about physical proximity, and even when we’re talking about complete strangers. There’s an experiment that illustrates this quite well. I don’t think I have shared this story before from the pulpit, but if I have, please indulge me. It’s an experiment by Joshua Greene, professor of psychology at Harvard University. He asked respondents two simple questions.

You are at a train yard. There are five men working on one track, and a train is coming, but they can’t hear or see it because of the work they’re doing, and you only have one option to change the situation: you can flip a switch which will move that train to another track. On that track, one man is working, and he cannot see or hear the train either. So the choice is: do you throw the switch or not? 9 out of 10 people answer yes.

Second question: same train yard, same situation. Except this time, you are above the track, and your only option is that there is a man standing next to you. If you push him down onto the track, he will be killed, but the five men will be spared. Do you push him or not? 9 out of 10 people answer no.

The arithmetic is the same. Five dying is worse than one dying. But there is something within us that would be willing to make that choice if it’s a mechanical one (throwing a switch) but not if it’s a physical one (pushing a person).

And here’s what’s particularly interesting about Greene’s experiment: the moment of decision in each question activated a different part of the brain. The first question, in which you choose whether or not to throw a switch, activates the part of the brain that deals with simple calculations. The second question, in which you choose whether or not to push someone, activates an older part of the brain (biologically speaking), one that has more to do with survival, with our fight or flight response.

When it comes to the arithmetic of lives, I came across a shocking chart the other day looking at casualties as a result of September 11 and the War on Terror. We all know that close to 3000 died on 9/11. And in the ten years since then, we are probably aware that almost twice as many American military lives have been lost. Here is where it gets troubling: the Afghani civilian casualties have been twenty times that, at about 60,000. And in Iraq, the numbers are mind-boggling: since 2001, 300 times as many Iraqi civilians have died as Americans who died on September 11, approaching 1,000,000.

Most of us can grasp that, intellectually, the tragedy of Iraq is far greater than our own. But do our emotions reflect our mathematical calculations?

As much as we would like to think of sympathy as a choice, it’s far more likely to be based on a natural reaction deep within us.

Sympathy itself is a Greek word. It means, at its most basic level, to feel with someone. And in both of our lessons this morning, sympathy plays an interesting role.

In the passage from Mark’s gospel, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue when a “man who was deeply disturbed” interrupts and confronts him. Even though we may be centuries removed from the context, we can get our minds around the fact that such a man would’ve been an unwelcome embarrassment, an intrusion.

Given this, Jesus’ response is intriguing. He doesn’t rebuke the man, but, in the language of the time, “casts out the demon.” The man who had been, no doubt, a sort of local curiosity or village idiot is now free of the very thing that kept him on the outside of respectable society. We do not know for certain what happens to the man after this story, though we can certainly take some guesses. It is not likely that he was immediately welcomed in. Societies tend to appreciate a certain stability, and the movement of someone from the fringe to the inside does not happen with ease.

There is, in Jesus’ act of healing, a threat to the Capernaum status quo. And for Jesus, this threat quickly becomes a constant theme of his ministry. There’s no mention of sympathy or feelings in this particular story, but we know from other episodes of Jesus’ life that his compassion for others is often what leads to dramatic healings as well as clashes with the religious authorities. Sympathy, when acted upon, can be very upsetting.

And it’s sympathy that’s at the heart of what Paul is writing to the Corinthians. The church in Corinth is quite the mix of people. Predominantly gentile and poor, the congregation nevertheless had a mix of Jews and gentiles as well as some prominent members of society. And the bulk of Paul’s writings to the church are an effort to bring these various factions together into one community. If we can take Paul’s letter as any indication, it is a lack of sympathy which marks these divisions.

In our passage this morning, Paul writes to those who have come to the more enlightened understanding about this new Christian community’s relationship to other gods. Corinth was a cosmopolitan city, and so it had full representation of the Greek polytheistic practices. Temples to various gods abounded, and sacrifices were regularly made to these gods.

For those who had been at this “Christianity thing” a while, they knew – rightly – that these gods were powerless, and the sacrifices were meaningless. So eating meat that had been sacrifices to these gods was also without power. It literally meant nothing, beyond the consumption of meat. But, Paul reminds this diverse community, there are those in your number for whom sacrifices to the gods meant a great deal just a short while ago. They are relatively new at following Jesus. Intellectually, they may be able to grasp that these sacrifices are powerless. But at a gut level, it is still too new for them.

So, the message is, you may be correct in your practice, but the right thing, the sympathetic thing to do, is to let it go. Don’t eat this meat that is up for review. Give these new brothers and sisters time to adapt. You needed time to get used to that idea. Give them the same time. I love the way the Message we’ve been using recently in worship translates the verse: “Real knowledge isn’t that insensitive.”

Sensitivity to the feelings of others, sympathy, is one of the marks of discipleship. At its heart, sympathy is the very gospel itself, the idea of the divine God taking human form, experiencing what we experience, feeling what we feel, suffering what we suffer, and loving us all the more.

How’s your sympathy? Do you, like the Corinthians, indeed, like most of us, have room to grow? When you hear news stories from around the world, how do they affect you? Is your sympathy affected by the tribal lines that have been drawn in your life? Are you willing to let your heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God?

I’d like to suggest an exercise. When you hear stories of tragedy, gauge your reaction. What’s your typical response? Is it to turn the channel? Is it a heartfelt sadness? Does the closeness of the story affect your response? If it does, then pause for a moment. Close your eyes. Imagine what it would be if that story that took place in Syria, or Sudan, or China, or Peru was a local story. What would it be like to walk in that other person’s shoes?

And when you do this, when you imagine yourself experiencing the aches and pains of the world, know that this sympathy is its own form of prayer. It is a response to Paul’s call for unity. It is the confronting of a societal demon that afflicts us all. May we all be marked by its healing power.

Amen.

Justin Bieber has 16.7 million followers on Twitter. He has tweeted almost 13,000 times. I, on the other hand, have tweeted 1800 times, and my followers number in the dozens, at just shy of 200. It’s game on, Bieber!

Twitter is, of course, just one of the multitude of social networking tools that has taken over the world of communication in the last few years. From a service that started just five years ago, it now numbers users that rival the population of the U.S. It is being credited with the overthrow of dictators in Egypt and Libya and with populist movements in places as far flung as Syria and the United States. If you can edit your thoughts down to 140 characters or fewer (that’s about 25-30 words), then Twitter might be the tool for you.

Like all technology, it’s a double-edged sword. The short length of messages seems to play into and contribute to the sound byte culture which plagues us so – and if we had forgotten that, another round of elections is here to remind us that content most certainly isn’t king. Critics attack Twitter for feeding into our unhealthy narcissism, where people feel compelled to share what they’re having for dinner and why they think “Two and a Half Men” is better with Ashton Kutcher.

And yet, at the same time, it has given people who have long been disenfranchised access to information. We need look no further than the Arab Spring for evidence of that. And for truly breaking news there is no better source than Twitter. While Fox and CNN try to fill the void of the 24-hour news cycle with vapid information and pointless commentary, if you really want to know what is going on at the moment, Twitter gives you instant access to eyewitness accounts.

What strikes me as curious about Twitter, alongside everything else, is the language choice of “follow”. Unlike Facebook, where you “friend” someone, in Twitter, you “follow” them. And they can also “follow” you – which sounds a bit like everyone is just going in circles. And that is one of the dangers of our technological boom. We are self-selecting for the information and relationships that agree with what we already think we know to be true. We are less and less likely to seek out friendships and websites and news channels that challenge our assumptions about the way the world works. We are feeding our own self-righteousness, and becoming more and more siloed from folks who aren’t like us.

And that’s where the Scripture texts today come into focus. We first heard the dramatic tale of Jonah, skipping over the introduction where Jonah tries to run away from God, gets caught in a storm, then thrown overboard, eaten by a giant fish, and spit back up onto dry ground. Now God is telling him, yet again, “Go to Nineveh and tell them to get straight.” And they do. The people of Nineveh fast and pray. And God relents from the promised destruction.

For Jonah, following God meant doing something he didn’t want to do. Nineveh was a big, bad city, and the last thing he wanted to do was to go there and tell everyone how big and bad they were, like Pee Wee Herman trying to use the phone in a biker bar.

For the people of Nineveh, following God meant doing a 180, spinning on their heels, putting a stop to their ways and starting off on a new path. For the people of God, following breaks us out of our silos and can often bring us into uncharted territory.

No one knew this fact better than the disciples. Today, we heard the familiar story of the four who simply dropped their nets and followed Jesus. Simon and Andrew were drawn by the promise of catching people in their nets instead of fish…the same with James and John, the sons of Zebedee.

We’ve talked before about this story and the weight of the decision these disciples made. Bethsaida, their home town, meant “the place of fishing.” There’s little doubt that this was work that had been handed down for a multitude of generations. This was a great deal more than a simple career change; to follow Jesus was to turn their backs on everything they had known. Fishing was practically in their DNA. And while Jesus promised they would still fish, it would be unlike anything they had experienced before.

To become a disciple means quite simply to become a student, a pupil. But there’s one key difference: the student can eventually become the teacher. The disciple remains a disciple. And for the disciples, following Jesus meant heading off into the unknown.

What about us? What does it mean to be followers of Jesus?

Like Jonah, are we being asked to do things that we don’t want to do? Are there places in our lives where we know that the faithful thing to do isn’t always the easy thing to do? It’s never as easy as saying that the right thing to do is always the hard thing to do. God expects much of us in terms of our own wisdom and discernment as we think and pray through choices in our lives. And yet, we all know of moments where we know what we ought to do, and that this obligation may have a cost that we’re not quite willing to pay. Is that where you are right now, facing a decision that may take you somewhere you’re not sure you want to go?

Or do you find yourself more in line with the people of Nineveh? Is God asking you to turn away from choices you have made which have been, time and time again, the wrong choices? The churchy word for that is repentance, which means turning to face God and owning up to mistakes. If so, then the invitation today is to take the opportunity to start over. It’s still January, and though the calendar is an admittedly arbitrary tool, it may just be the tool you need to make that 180 and begin afresh. The road may feel uncharted, but the truth is that God goes before you every step of the way.

Or is it the story of fishermen which resonates with you today? Is there something nudging you, calling you to a bold new adventure in faith? Is it a change in careers or a leadership role here at OPC? Is it downsizing your lifestyle to make more room for the things that you know are of ultimate importance?

Maybe none of this strikes a chord with you today. Maybe you’ve already heard this message before loud and clear, and so the text today is meant as an encouragement to stay the course.

In any case, to follow Jesus is to break down the walls of our silos. We are brought into relationships with those who are unlike us. Jesus is not the ultimate “yes man”. There is, always, a word of challenge at work. In our afflictions, we will be comforted; and in our comforts, we will be afflicted.

And to follow Jesus puts us very much in the here and now. We care about this world because it is God’s world. We are invested in our community because, in Christ, God’s own self became deeply invested in a world of material, fleshy reality. To be followers of the incarnate God is to be, ourselves, the incarnate body of Christ, the hands and feet of the one who calls us to drop our nets, follow, and fish in a whole new way.

Amen.

Friending Jesus

Sometimes it takes an outsider to remind the insiders what they’ve got.

Question: When was the last time you went to the Woodruff Arts Center? Or took the Stone Mountain Scenic Railroad? When was the last time you visited the King Center or went to the World of Coke? It was probably the last time you had guests in town, wasn’t it?

Elizabeth and I lived in Chicago for seven years. The only time we ever went to the top of the Sears Tower was when our families came to visit. Seven years we lived there, a quick ten minute train ride away; and we probably went there three times.

Sometimes it takes an outsider to remind the insiders what they’ve got.

That’s the essence of the lesson from Matthew this morning. There are two competing theories about where these Magi are from. The word “Magi” is a Persian word, referring to the Zoroastrian priestly class. And the three gifts – the gold, frankincense, and myrrh – never appear in Biblical literature together, but were common Persian temple sacrifices. On the other hand, the text we read from Isaiah talks about Midian and Ephah and Sheba, all regions of Arabia. The phrase “the East” in Scripture usually means “the other side of the Jordan River”. And frankincense is native to the Arabian Peninsula.

Whatever the reality, whether these visitors to the Christ child are Persian or Arab, in the eyes of the Jerusalemites, they ain’t from around here. It was every bit as unimaginable then as it would be today: Persians and Arabs paying homage at the feet of a Jewish infant.

Let’s back up the story a little bit. For four hundred years the people have been awaiting Messiah. All the learned scholars of Jewish Scripture had deciphered the texts, ready to read the signs. They knew what to look for, and where to find it. Out of the blue, these foreigners come to Jerusalem looking for an infant king. Herod, who is a mere figurehead king, holding onto his pitiful power so that the Romans can continue to rule, consults these scholars: “Where is the Messiah supposed to be born?”

“Bethlehem,” they tell him. And they even recite the text from Micah, something about this little town of Judah who will bring forth a ruler.

Four hundred years they’ve been waiting for Messiah: yearning, pleading, hoping, begging, waiting. And as soon as the possibility arises that the Messiah is here, all they can do is tell Herod how to MapQuest Bethlehem. Meanwhile Herod, supposedly the protector of his people, decides that this Messiah person must be wiped out! Why would they do this? Why wouldn’t they go with the Magi, pay homage themselves, and welcome the Messiah for whom they have waited so long?

I do want to give these folks the benefit of the doubt. I’m guessing that this wasn’t the first time that Herod or the religious scholars heard these claims. The “boy who cried Messiah” was probably a pretty familiar occurrence around Jerusalem. In the modern day city, in fact, there is an illness called “Jerusalem Syndrome” whereby visitors to the holy city become so overwhelmed with the emotion of being in the place that they become convinced that they are the Messiah, or Jesus returned, or the rightful heir to King David. In the ancient longing for deliverance, it is fairly likely that Messianic claims were a dime a dozen.

But I don’t want to let them off the hook too easily. After all, the text lets us know that all of Jerusalem was terrified. If this kind of thing happened regularly, it’s doubtful that it would have thrown the whole city into panic. Instead, there must have been something markedly different about this time. Foreign visitors, priests of another religion, had come at the beckoning of the heavens themselves to meet the Savior of another tribe, another nation.

It causes me to wonder if this has more to do with the fact that Herod and his coterie of scholars and functionaries have everything to lose. If these Magi are right, if they have read the stars correctly, then it won’t be long before Herod is replaced by the rightful heir to David’s throne. And all of the knowledge that the scholars have accrued – and the power it has brought them – it will soon become completely irrelevant. We are no longer waiting for Messiah; Messiah has come!

Sometimes it takes an outsider to remind the insiders what they’ve got. But that doesn’t mean that the insiders will pay attention.

What does that mean for us? Is there something for us in this lesson of the Magi who seem know the truth more readily than those who ought to grasp it? Could this be a warning for those of us inside the church to pay closer attention to what those we have considered “outsiders” have to say?

We live in a radically changing culture. This is a familiar refrain in my preaching, I know. The place in society for churches like OPC is up for grabs. The days are long gone when you can simply build a church in a neighborhood and expect people to show up because you have opened the doors.

And folks, we are not alone in this challenge by any means. The size of a church doesn’t matter a whole lot. The only thing a larger community gets you, it seems, is a little more time. In a way, we have been like those religion scholars sitting in Jerusalem, hanging onto the minutiae of religious life, with our own language of narthexes and intinctions and benedictions while the world outside has ceased to care what we have to offer, more eager to scan the horizon for heavenly signs that might point them to a living, breathing, yet vulnerable reality of God at work.

I come to you with this not as one of the Magi, but as a fellow Pharisee who sees a world that is very unlike the world I knew as a child. I am unsure of what is to come, but I am convicted of two things: it won’t be like it was, and it will be in the hands of God.

I don’t have a magic star to point to as a guiding light; but I am convinced that OPC is a unique community, one that can ride the waves of a changing world, be changed by it faithfully, and come out stronger and more committed to the ministry Christ has called us to.

It has been a few years since we started using the tagline “the community is our congregation.” But the truth is that this self-identity is in the DNA of this place. For 62 years OPC has lived by this conviction, seeking to make this little corner of God’s world a better place.

And the ability to adapt is particularly remarkable. When I talk to colleagues in ministry about the creativity and openness about OPC, they are stunned. By way of example, I relate one story that happened about a year after I arrived here. It was All Saints Day, and we decided to sing “When the Saints Go Marching In” in worship. Not only were we singing a hymn that wasn’t in the hymnal, we were doing it with drums! As I stood at the door shaking hands, Ralston Woods – some of you remember him, I’m sure – greeted me in the line: “There was only one thing wrong with that song…” I braced myself…“It was too short!”

You do know that churches split and ultimately collapse under their own weight over things we have done without much fanfare at all. Drums? Guitars? LCD projectors? Coffee in the Sanctuary?

And that leads me into what I love about this church the most: you are not people convinced that we’ve got it all figured out. We may have some glimpse of it, but we are more likely to struggle through it together, knowing we don’t know it all, but willing to try and figure it out. Especially in the world we live in, that’s a kind of Christian community that is desperately needed!

And I’m also convinced that it is this collective wisdom which is going to help us read the signs in the sky as we continue our journey toward a thriving faith in a world that is, much like Jerusalem, terrified at the possibilities.

We have posted a congregational survey online. And as you do, I especially invite you to read the initial letter from the Session. It gives a concise summary of our current situation and how we can find our way forward. We will also hold a town hall forum three weeks from today on January 29 immediately following worship.

Above all, I invite your prayers for our church – not for our own sake, but for the sake of our calling as God’s people. At times like this, the temptation can be strong to turn inward: to treat surveys as customer service evaluations, to circle the protective wagons against “them”, whoever “they” might be. Instead, I trust that we are being nudged to keep an eye out for the Magi. May we have the wisdom to hear them!

Amen.

God 2.0

The pace of technology is mind-boggling. From the dawn of the internet to the introduction of power-packed cellphones and tablet computing devices, the way we interact with each other has changed dramatically in the span of a generation. And like most things, this evolution is a double-edged sword.

Global Positioning Systems on our smartphones have rendered maps, directions, the yellow pages documents of a bygone era. Programs like Skype allow us to video chat for free across continents, a thought that was mere science fiction not that long ago. Platforms like Twitter have even been at work in unseating dictators in the Middle East.

But wait: there’s more!

For the iPhone alone, you can get the following apps:

• Payphone locator! Have an iPhone? Want to know where the nearest payphone is? Love irony? Then this is the app for you!
• How about Beer Opener? You can enjoy the experience of opening a virtual beer without the hassle of having to drink it!
• And my personal favorite: HangTime. This app measures how high you can throw your iPhone. And it only costs 99 cents. Plus the cost of a new iPhone.

For every device that might save us time, there are tons that would love to waste it. When you embrace technology, you have to take the bad along with the good.

We might as well say the same thing about our current sermon series. The basic idea is that, as we face the dawning of a new calendar year, we might consider the ways we might like to start over. And the beautiful thing about our faith is that it constantly gives us the opportunity, no matter the season, to begin again.

Now the title, Ctrl+Alt+Del, is taken from technology. If you own a Windows computer, you have, at some point, had to use this little combination of keys to restart your device. So if you understood the title of the series without the explanation, then you are a fellow lover – and hater – of technology.

Today’s sermon pushes the technological conceit one step further. It’s a play off of the idea of Web 2.0. If you know anything about this concept, then you will know that I understand it only in part. But here goes:

The world wide web began as a one-way communication technology. Sure, you could send emails back and forth, but these were not interactive in the way that, say, a face-to-face or a telephone conversation is. And websites took this approach as well. Websites started as kind of a virtual brochure. For your company or your organization or yourself, they were places you could post information that you wanted the user to know about you: your history, location, telephone number, email address, etc.

In tech circles, this approach is now referred to as Web 1.0 – kind of a rough draft version of the internet.

We have now moved into a phase known as Web 2.0, which has added the interactive component to internet activity. Rather than a model in which the owners produce the content, the reality now is that the user has a great deal of say in how the content is received. It has introduced a level of participation to the internet.

Anyone can start a blog. For free. And anyone can respond to that blog. For free. Anyone can post a video on YouTube. Again, for free. And anyone can respond to that video. For free. If you have a website that is of the 1.0 “information only” model, people will not be interested. You have to open up your site so that people can tell you what they think of your content. And that reaction helps to shape your future content in conscious and subconscious ways.

Another aspect of Web 2.0 is syndication, or the ability to share the content you find. Through social media, like Twitter and Facebook, among a hundred others, you can let other people know what you’re reading, seeing, thinking, engaging, and let them know what you think about it. And they, too, can share that content with others. When a piece of information spreads rapidly, it is said to “go viral” – that is, it has taken on a life of its own and spreads further than the creator of the content could ever have imagined.

At the risk of stretching my metaphor well beyond its breaking point, could it be that the birth of Jesus ushered in a new era of God 2.0?

This may not sit well with some of us. The very reason that we find God to be worthy of trust is that we trust that God is unchanging; that the same God who created the universe is the same God whom we meet in Jesus Christ and is the same God whom we worship here at OPC.

I do believe that this is true. But there is something earth-shattering that happened at the birth of Christ: incarnation…the human embodiment of the divine…God in baby form. As human beings ourselves, our best possible understanding of the nature of God comes through our understanding of the nature of Christ.

In our texts today, we moved from the almost fatalistic quality of Ecclesiastes to the sublime awe of Anna and Simeon. The author of Ecclesiastes lets us know that everything good and bad has its place: birth, death, planting, sowing, crying, laughing, killing, healing, holding on, letting go. And we see all of these things in the life and ministry of Jesus himself.

What springs forth in the lesson from Luke is in the echoes of Ecclesiastes, but in an incredible way. We meet these two characters who fade from the scene as quickly as they arrive. Both have been waiting a lifetime for the promises of their faith to come true: that God would deliver the Messianic goods. Simeon seems to channel the author of Ecclesiastes, saying of Jesus that he “marks the failure and the recovery of many, a figure misunderstood and contradicted…but his rejection will force honesty.” The infant will be a double-edged sword, bringing both division and the possibility of healing to the people.

For Simeon, this is enough. He doesn’t have to see the results. It’s enough for him to know that the child has arrived, that hope is on its way. Anna, too, is stunned by what she experiences. She had been faithfully waiting in the Temple for decades. As soon as Jesus arrives on the scene, she departs – both from the Temple and from our story – to sing God’s praises for the birth of this baby.

God is the same, the alpha and omega, the first and the last. And yet, there is a newness in the form of this infant Messiah. We now have the opportunity to know God more fully than ever before. Rather than dealing with a divine abstract, we now see God as a concrete reality. This is, no question, something new. And if we choose to embrace that concreteness, we must embrace it for the double-edged sword that it is. Christ comes to comfort us in our woes. And Christ comes to heal us, in the fullest possible sense of that word. And part of that healing means the shaking of our assumptions to the core.

How was your 2011? Are you happy to see it in the rear view mirror? Are you ready to start over completely? Or was it, like most years, a year of ups and downs? Are there those moments that you’d like to have another shot at? Then this is your year.

My invitation for all of us for 2012, beginning this week, is simply this: interact with God. Reflect on those places where your faith-life still exists in a 1.0, rough-draft kind of world. God wants your engagement! God wants your participation!

Amen.

Do You See What I See?

Acoustic Christmas tends to be a more intimate service. As such, rather than a formal sermon, we watched several brief YouTube videos and had good conversation. The gist of it is this: we tend to domesticate the birth of Christ, when in reality it happened in the real world – a world that contained its fair share of animal poop. Today, we trust that this living, breathing faith is every much as real as it was then.

Merry Christmas.

The Tune of Christmas

Isaiah 9:2-7
Psalm 96
Luke 2:1-20

I love Christmas music. It probably had a lot to do with being raised in the family I was. My mom is the singer, and my dad was obsessed with Christmas. One of my most enduring Christmas memories is sitting in the balcony at First Presbyterian Church. And as the lights were dimmed and the candles were lit, and as we started singing “Silent Night”, a lump would rise in my throat. I was convinced that there was nothing more beautiful in the whole world.

I still love Christmas music, which is why I was particularly intrigued by an email I got from my sister yesterday, which has Christmas songs in code. Let me read a couple and see if you can guess them:

• The slight percussionist lad is…The Little Drummer Boy.
• Far back in a hay bin…Away in a Manger.
• Do you perceive the same longitudinal pressure which stimulates my auditory sense organs?…Do You Hear What I Hear?
• Sir Lancelot with laryngitis…Silent (K)Night.
• The apartment of two psychiatrists…The Nutcracker Suite.

There are about fifty of these, each more absurd than the last. And some of them are just downright impenetrable, but I’ll spare you those. You can find them easily enough online yourself.

It’s harmless fun, of course, but the exercise is actually counter to the whole point of Christmas. Tonight is not about a story that is available only to the select few. We’re not here because we’re “better” than anyone else, or because we have decoded the meaning of the manger. The story is available to all. From the first to the twelfth day of Christmas, we are reminded that the birth of the Christ child is something that all can celebrate: Judean shepherds. Persian Magi. There are no barriers between us and the child who was born far back in a hay bin.

That’s the gift of the ridiculous email: it takes songs that are deeply – perhaps too deeply – familiar and gives us a new way to hear them. Because let’s face it: our favorite Christmas songs tend to touch on the same things: a baby, Mary, Joseph, animals, shepherds, angels, Bethlehem, a star, and three kings. The verses may change up the order, but the song essentially remains the same. That has done nothing to shake the power this music holds on me. The danger, however, is that we domesticate the story to the point that we neglect the earth-shattering nature of it.

This year, as my iTunes worked through the familiar litany of Christmas songs, there was one that stood out in a brand new way. It’s of the pop music brand of Christmas music, released by John Lennon in 1971, just a year after the Beatles had disbanded. There’s no mention of the familiar Christmas themes whatsoever; but for some reason, it hit me in the gut right out of the gate: “So this is Christmas. And what have you done?”

A whole year has gone by since the last Christmas. Am I any different this year than I was last year? When next year comes around, will I be exactly the same? Or will the power of Christmas grab hold of me in more than just the emotionally resonant ways, shaking me to the core of my being?

And then the song hits its “of its time” chorus, which sounds awfully Pollyanna nowadays: “War is over…if you want it.” Surely we’re more sophisticated now than we were forty years ago. We know that war is never over. American troops have just left Iraq; and so, for us, that war is over. But “war is over” isn’t just about war being over for “us”; it’s about the end of war. For Iraqis, there is still a war raging. For soldiers battling the traumas of war, the battles are still aflame within. And there are plenty of places in the world where war most certainly isn’t over.

So what does it mean when we say that we celebrate the “Prince of Peace” tonight? Does the adorableness of a resting baby overtake the aspirations we hold as disciples of Christ, that we yearn, to the very fiber of our being, that war is over – not just for us, but for all? Or have we convinced ourselves that this, too, is a idealist’s dream of years gone by?

My prayer for us this night is that the music we sing and the words we proclaim would shake us, would move us, would cause us to tremble like the shepherds under the angel-lit sky. And that this Christmas would be one that would change us forever.

Amen.

The Christmas Light

Reflections on our Advent Cantata, The Christmas Light.

What do you trust more: what you see, or what you hear?

We know that both sound and picture can be manipulated. Photoshop has changed the way we see the world: any two celebrities can be stitched together seamlessly for the supermarket aisle. The same is true of sound. In the era of 24-hour news cycles, the sound byte has the power to make or break political careers.

So which do you trust more?

Daniel Barenboim, conductor and pianist, points out that the ear has an advantage over the eye. Sight doesn’t have a chance to develop until after birth; but studies have shown that we can hear in utero. We can also, he says, control the eye: “If you don’t like the way I look…you close your eyes and I disappear. But if you don’t like the sound of my voice…then you cannot shut your ears in a natural way. Sound literally penetrates the body.”

Sound, music in particular, has a powerful hold on us, even for those of us who can’t carry a tune in a bucket. We associate certain memories with songs. We may not remember important dates, but a song can find its way into our ear where it will set up residence and stay forever. If you’ve ever been on the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disney, you know what I’m talking about.

There is probably no time of year more intimately associated with music than Christmas. We sing carols, tune into the radio stations that play 24-hour Christmas music, put on Vince Guaraldi. But today, as our worship service centers around music, we are reminded that song has a purpose for us as a people of faith. The Psalms, after all, were the hymnal of the people of God. Scripture is full of references to singing praise: “Make a joyful noise…” “I will sing a new song…” “How long to sing this song?”

St. Augustine, the influential theologian of the fourth century, wrote that “to sing is to love.” And Martin Luther, the Reformer and hymn composer, said, “As long as we live, there is never enough singing.” Music is praise. When we sing, whether we are making a joyful note or a joyful noise, we join our voices with the choir of angels whose song filled the sky that holy night: “Glory to God in the highest!”

As we move through these final days of the Advent season, as we continue to prepare the way of the Lord, may the songs that we sing be ones of prayer and praise to the God whom we know in Christ, the incarnate, reverberating, eternal Word.

Amen.

The Finger and the Moon

There’s a Chinese proverb that says, “When the sage points at the moon, the fool looks at the finger.” Does this resonate with you? We see it with dogs all the time. You point at the ball you just threw: “It’s over there! Go get it!” And they couldn’t be more excited as they stare at your finger, completely missing your greater point about direction and purpose.

Have you ever played the fool, focused on the finger that’s trying to point out the moon?

Last Sunday, we picked up on the reality that faced John the Baptist. Upon his arrival, he was consistent in his message that it was time to get ready for Messiah. But the problem he constantly faced was that the people’s expectation of Messiah was part of what got in the way. They knew the prophecies, especially those of Isaiah, pointing to the coming of Messiah. But they had gotten so wrapped up in the prophetic finger that they completely missed the heavenly reality it was trying to draw their attention to.

Today, the question turns to John himself. Now the people think that he hangs the moon, that he is the Messiah arrived. But in reality, he’s just one more prophet trying to get the crowd’s attention so that they can see what really deserves attention.

And the hard truth is that we are not that different. We, too, get trapped by the layers of tradition and interpretation that build up over time. It’s like the scar tissue that covers over an old wound. It’s harder than the skin that used to be there, limiting our range of motion. What started out with good intentions ends up confining our imaginations.

We all know how churches can end up fighting – yes, really fighting – over things like Sanctuary carpet colors and hymn selections and musical styles and PowerPoints and who can and can’t be a minister or an elder or a deacon. The truth is that, each of them, even at their best and most perfected, is just a finger – not the moon.

I’m reminded of stories I’ve heard of John Calvin. Having become a leading figure in the Reformation, Calvin had led his church in Geneva to what they saw as a purely Reformed way of worship. They destroyed the religious artwork, because they saw it as idolatrous. They tore out the pipe organ, because pipe organs weren’t Biblical instruments of praise. They elevated the pulpit up close to the ceiling, because the word of God took precedence over everything else.

When Calvin would preach, he would do so in academic robes, not priestly attire. He would ascend the high staircase. But because he knew that he wasn’t meant to be the object of attention, one legend relates that he would dress head to toe in black cloth, even wearing gloves and a kind of mesh over his face to be sure that the congregation wasn’t tempted toward the wrong focus.

What has happened to the church in Geneva since that time is fascinating, a lesson in the difference between the finger and the moon. There is still no artwork, just plain stone – even though the original intent was not to draw focus to the art itself, but as a way to point to God. There is a pipe organ, however; but because the original works were torn out, the massive bellows that feed air to the pipes are exposed, snaking under one side of the pews. It was not an object of devotion itself, but was a wonderful instrument for focusing the people’s devotion on toward God.

Being Presbyterian, being part of this Reformed family of faith, puts us in an odd kind of middle ground. We are, by heritage, a people who look upon our traditions with healthy skepticism. It would be one thing to hold onto traditions because they are simply that – traditions. It would be another thing to toss them out because they are “old”. It’s another thing altogether to examine them for what they are, fingers pointed at the moon. It’s when we treat them as the objects of devotion that our faith calls us to re-examine their importance in our lives.

How many of you are familiar with the old British comedy group Monty Python? I was reading an interview with Terry Jones, one of the members, talking about when they were considering ideas for their second film:

“We thought we were going to do just a funny version of the life of Christ,” he says, “but then we read the Gospels again, which we hadn’t done, I suppose, since we were tiny, and we all realized that what Christ says in the Gospels were actually great things. The humor wasn’t there; it wasn’t in any of that. The humor is more in how people interpret it.”

No doubt with the violence in nearby Northern Ireland, Jones goes on to say, by way of illustration:

 “Christ talks about peace and love, and two thousand years later people torture and kill each other because they can’t quite agree on how he said it – what hats you should wear, how you should dress, or what services you should have in church.”

The film that came out of that encounter with the Gospels was Life of Brian. The film was banned in some locations, because it was assumed that they were mocking Jesus. But the true object of their ridicule was religiosity.

In the movie, the title character Brian has been mistaken for the Messiah, and is constantly being hounded by would-be disciples. He has fled into the mountains after telling them he’s not the Messiah at all. Even so, they track him down, because, after all, “only a true Messiah would deny that he was the Messiah.”

Once they find him, in their confused efforts to figure out the proper way to follow him, he gives them the slip. In his hurry, Brian leaves behind a sandal. One of the crowd is convinced that this is a sign, a sign “that we should hold up one shoe and let the other be upon our foot.” Another is confident that they are meant to “gather up shoes in abundance.” A debate breaks out between those who want to call it a shoe or a sandal.

Meanwhile, yet another follower is sure that the shoe isn’t the proper focus, but rather his gourd. “Follow the Gourd!” she says, “The Holy Gourd of Jerusalem! Come, all ye who call yourself Gourdenes!”

There’s an uncomfortable truth in the silliness of this satire. We are heirs of similar interpretations. And at our worst, we become convinced that the battle over the gourd or the sandal or the shoe is more important than anything else we do as a people of faith. At our best, we consider these things prayerfully, examining the ways they point us toward God and also the ways they can distract us by drawing attention to themselves.

This is one of the things that I love about OPC. There is a thoughtfulness in our life together that gives our faith a level of intentionality and integrity. It would be the easiest thing in the world to say, “We worship this way, we have these programs, our church does this because we always have…” It would also be easy to say, “We’re changing everything because they’re all outdated. The world has moved on, and we should, too.” What I consistently see here at OPC is a faithful struggle to live in the middle, struggling with what it means to be God’s incarnate people in 2011, shaped by traditions that have pointed us toward God, and yet aware that there may be other practices and forms that can do the same to people who are very different from us.

Ultimately, as we move into the end of the season of Advent, we concern ourselves with these questions: what is it that distracts us from God? What is it that helps us focus our attention on God? And what is the difference?

Start Choppin’

It can be hard to know what to leave behind.

I was a Boy Scout for less than a year. I made it to the rank of Tenderfoot only because they gave it to you automatically once your check cleared. If there had been a merit badge for “not good at scouting”, it would’ve been my only merit badge. In short, it was not an illustrious career. I will not be asked to do public service announcements for scouting any time soon.

In my defense, I didn’t have a lot of help in that regard. I was ten years old. No offense to my parents, but it’s not like camping was in their wheelhouse, either. My Dad had been a Boy Scout, but he liked to say that his version of roughing it was a black and white TV.

On my first (and only) Boy Scout camping trip, I was well-stocked. I had my bright orange pup tent, my duffel bag full of clothes, my canteen and aluminum pots and pans, my sleeping bag and air mattress, my igloo cooler filled with ice packs, canned drinks, a couple of potatoes for baking, a few eggs for frying…you get the picture.

We arrived at our camp site. Before we could unpack, our scout leader announced the first activity: an orienteering exercise. All of the Tenderfoots would be driven, blind-folded, a few miles away. We would be given a map, but wouldn’t be told where we were, and had to find our way back to camp. And: we would be carrying all of our supplies with us.

I still remember the chaperones’ attempt to hide their look of horror at what I had brought. I didn’t even own a backpack. One of them came up with the clever idea to put as many supplies in my air mattress as possible, roll it up, tie it at both ends, and then drape it around my neck like a cobra. I then carried my tent in one hand and my sleeping bag in the other. The cooler stayed at the camp site. Apparently even scouting has its limits.

Everything else from the trip is a blur. I remember crying a lot, needing help to get my tent pitched, unable to catch my breath to inflate the air mattress, failing to get my fire started. It was not an auspicious start. And, probably not too surprisingly, I ended up quitting scouts before the next meeting.

In short, I was ill-prepared; which, it turns out, is not the Boy Scout motto.

In retrospect, it’s so clear to see where we went wrong. One look at the others’ supplies made that obvious. There was only one air mattress and one cooler among us: mine. Powdered drinks and powdered eggs were the norm. My family’s frame of reference for what was “needed” was clearly way off. But we didn’t know any other way…

Part of the purpose of Advent is an effort to shift our frames of reference. As a church, we set aside the four weeks leading up to Christmas. And in doing so, hopefully we root ourselves and each other in the ultimate purpose of this season. It is so easy to get caught up in what we think we need to do. But how can we strip away all that is unnecessary, all that distracts, all that tempts us, all that leads us away from what God desires for us and for all of creation?

It’s a similar challenge that confronted John the Baptist. By the time he arrives on the scene, Messianic expectations had been built up from Isaiah’s prophecy. Someone was coming to cry out in the desert, Prepare the way of the Lord! Move those mountains! Fill those valleys! Straighten out the curves! Once that highway is built, ya’ll, that’s it. The Lord is coming! In power! Ready to repay enemies and reward allies!

A few centuries pass, and John comes along, doing his best to get the people’s attention. He dresses funny. He eats funny. He probably smells pretty funny, too. And there he is, calling out to anyone who would listen: “Prepare the way of the Lord! Get to work on that highway! We need to clear this place! Start choppin’!”

The people are ready for the Messiah. They know the prophecies well – or at least, they think they know what they mean. After all, they’ve been taught what they mean. And that’s the paradox. Part of John’s message is to tell them that, among everything else they need to clear away, their expectations are part of what needs to go. But it is by virtue of his preaching that those old expectations are re-kindled, re-invigorated, re-calcified. And John will ultimately pay the cost with his own life.

We paint ourselves into these corners by thinking that we know how things ought to be when we often put the focus on what we have known rather than whom we have worshiped.

In her popular book Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert relates the story of an Indian guru who had a beloved cat. The problem was that when the people were called to meditation, the cat was so affectionate that it would enter the temple, too, rubbing up against the worshipers, driving them to distraction. So the guru ruled that when it was time for meditation, the cat would be tied to a pole outside the temple so as leave the worshipers free to focus.

Years passed. The cat outlived the guru. And one day, the cat died, too. The first thing the community did was to search for another cat to tie to the pole. The cat had become part of the ritual – a necessary part, so they now thought. They had become so wrapped up in the practice that they had forgotten the purpose.

Friends, what about us? What are our cats? What are the things we do because we are so used to it, but really aren’t necessary? What are our igloo coolers? What are the things we have packed in good conscience, but are ultimately going to weigh us down for the journey ahead?

Yesterday marked the six years since I was installed as your pastor here at Oglethorpe Presbyterian Church. And like many of us do when such occasions arise, I have spent the better part of this past week reflecting on what has happened over those six years.

There are three traditional markers of church that are intriguing to note. In membership, we’ve had slight growth. In worship attendance, we’ve dropped slightly. In financial contributions, we have seen virtually no change. I’ll refrain from quoting Mark Twain on statistics, but you can take these numbers for whatever you think they’re worth.

I have my own take, of course. But my concern ultimately is that, if we focus so tightly on what’s happening here at OPC, we miss the bigger picture of a world that is shifting dramatically all around us. The question we ought to be asking is: because the world is different, how do we live out a faith that calls us to incarnate God’s desires? How do we stay faithful to what is really important while we necessarily adapt to the new realities that confront us in the 21^st century?

Like many, I’m convinced that what is happening worldwide is no less historic than what gave way to the Protestant Reformation several centuries ago. Just as movable type and circumnavigation changed science and politics and religion in ways that still resonate out today, the internet and extra-terrestrial exploration are doing the same thing in this day and age. And we will not know the result for years to come.

The great church Reformers, like Martin Luther and John Calvin, wrestled mightily with their own cats tied to poles and igloos filled with ice packs. They made some bold decisions, like translating Scripture and liturgy into the languages that people spoke, or putting hymnals and Bibles in the pews. From where we stand now, these seem like no-brainers. But at the time, they were literally declarations of war.

What are the choices we face? What keeps us from preparing the way of the Lord? What distracts us, tempts us, weighs us down, ties us up in knots and ends up binding us to the pole outside the temple?

Friends, today is just the beginning of the conversation. So let’s be honest: there is work to do. Are we ready?

Getting on God’s Good Side

How do we get into heaven?

There’s an age-old debate about this topic. And basically, it boils down to two options: by works, or by faith.

“Works” means that if you do enough good deeds, you will earn your way into heaven. Whether we know it or not, that’s the way that most of us operate. We like to think of heaven as populated by nice people. It’s the basis of every single “pearly gates” joke.

I always think of Don Novello’s character Fr. Guido Sarducci whose theory was that when we got to heaven, St. Peter would tally up all of our days, and then pay us accordingly. Then, he would go through our sins one by one, and we would have to pay for our sins. And if you still had some cash left over, you were in. Sarducci says he has this dream where he’s “just 35 cents short…”

That’s works’ righteousness. If we do enough good, if the good outweighs the bad, if we measure up on the divine tally, then we’re in.

During the Reformation, our theological ancestors took another route. It was faith that achieved our salvation for us. They particularly saw this in Paul’s writings, especially the verse from Ephesians: “By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”

If Scripture was to have any place at all in a church being reformed, then the weight of this text mattered far more than church teaching.

There are, of course, problems with both. Works righteousness tends to put the judgment in our hands. Think about our judicial system. Some things are obviously bad: murder, theft, deception. But then there are many other acts which aren’t so neatly delineated. Take war, for example. We’re not supposed to kill. But then there’s this stream of Christian thought called “just war”. And then there’s another Christian heritage of pacifism. So which is right? Or are they both equally so? How can two faithful people make the opposite choice about the same question?

Works righteousness isn’t nearly as straightforward as we think it might be. And this paves the way for faith. But faith righteousness can quickly become a kind of cerebral works righteousness. There is only one correct baptism. There is only one true church. You have to be born again. You have to accept the tenets of the Nicene Creed – but which one? The one where the Spirit proceeds from the Father, or from the Father and the Son? Don’t hesitate, because your salvation might just be hanging in the balance here!

The truth is that both sides have their flaws. And either one pushed to the extreme is a recipe for disaster. If it’s all about works, then we better get on the same page about what is good and what is not. And once we’ve done that, we need to be sure to keep folks from falling off the right path, restricting their freedoms. After all, it’s for their own good, so that they can get into heaven.

If it’s all about faith, then works matter not at all. We can cavort wildly, because ultimately what we do doesn’t matter; it’s what we believe. So let’s eat, drink, be merry, lie, cheat, steal, kill! If it’s about faith and faith alone, we’re either in, or out. So let’s not sweat the details.

And that’s where this morning’s lesson comes in. At first glance, it’s a perfect proof-text for the works folks. The righteous sheep are the ones who fed the hungry, sated the thirsty, housed the homeless, clothed the naked, visited the sick and imprisoned. The unrighteous goats, on the other hand, don’t do any of these things. They ignore the vulnerable: the hungry, thirsty, homeless, naked, sick, imprisoned.

The moral of the story is: do the right thing!

Or is it?

There are two key moments in this text. The first is that Jesus puts himself as the object of their compassion: “I was hungry. I was thirsty. I was homeless, naked, sick, and imprisoned. And you either did or didn’t take care of me.” This is not a simple moral question of how we treat our fellow human beings. This is a much bigger question of how we, by extension, treat the God-given dignity, the Christ within them. It’s about how we honor the divine, the sacred, the holy.

That’s the first moment. In other words, when we ignore those on the margins, we’re not just ignoring them. It is as though we are ignoring the very presence of God! And if that’s the basis of our works righteousness, can any of us stand up and believe ourselves worthy to be counted among the righteous?

Which brings us to the second moment: the surprise of both the sheep and the goats. Those who seem to pass the test don’t even know that they have done it. But neither do those who have failed. They are both equally confounded that they have or have not made the mark. It is, simply put, an extension of who they are. Those who feed and serve and clothe and house and visit do so because they wouldn’t know any other way to be. And those who don’t, well, they probably don’t see any point in doing those things.

Which are we? Sheep? Goats? A little bit of both? Have you ever helped someone without knowing it? Have you ever stepped on someone’s toes without realizing it?

When it gets right down to it, I’m not sure this is a story with an easy either/or message. If we read it that way, then we try and figure out who we are. If you’re convinced you’re a sheep, then you might just be a narcissist. And if you’re convinced you’re a goat, then you’re probably no less in need of therapy than the sheep. But if you recognize elements of both in who you are and what you do, then you’re probably just a plain old human being, swinging between sin and grace on a daily basis.

What that means, I hope, is that we begin to recognize that this whole question about whether or not we’ve achieved the right level of righteousness has more to do with God than with us. It’s Jesus who separates the sheep from the goats, identifying them as such. It’s God who is the shepherd Ezekiel preached about, and it is that same God the shepherd who gathers the sheep from the hillsides where they’ve been scattered.

Friends, every day we are in need of that God-given grace. And every day we live out that grace. Which, at least to me, is the most freeing possible scenario! We’re never going to get it 100% right; but rather than sulk in failure, let’s feel free to try and succeed! Listen for the voice of the shepherd, calling to you. Dedicate both time and space to recognizing the God-given dignity within yourself, as well as within your fellow human being.

Don’t sweat the thirty-five cents. Trust the riches of grace that overflow: today and always.

Amen.