The quest for the kingdom (J. Barry Vaughn, Christ the King Sunday, Nov. 23, 2014)

On Christ the King Sunday, we sing, “Crown him with many crowns…” and “At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow…”

 

I have to confess that the Feast of Christ the King makes me a little uncomfortable. Think about it: If we proclaim that Christ is the king, that everyone in heaven and earth must bow the knee to him, then what does that mean for everyone outside the Christian church? What does it mean for Jews and Muslims? Hindus and Buddhists and Sikhs? What does it mean for agnostics and atheists? Well, I don’t think that Christ the King Sunday is about converting everyone else into Christians. And here is why I believe that.

 

I did a little research. The feast of Christ the King is actually a very recent invention. Pope Pius XI instituted this feast in 1925, only three years after Benito Mussolini became prime minister of Italy. Mussolini invented the political ideology we know as “fascism.” Fascism gave all power to the state. Loyalty to the state was supposed to supersede loyalty to anything else. Mussolini may have invented fascism, but Adolph Hitler and his Nazi party perfected it!

 

So the feast of Christ the King challenges our loyalty to the state, the nation, the tribe, even the family.

 

Pius XI said, “If Christ the Lord is given all power in heaven and on earth; if everyone, purchased by his precious blood, are subjected to his dominion… it must be clear that not one of our faculties is exempt from his empire. He must reign in our minds, which should assent with perfect submission and firm belief to revealed truths and to the doctrines of Christ. He must reign in our wills, which should obey the laws and precepts of God. He must reign in our hearts, which should … love God above all things, and cleave to him alone. He must reign in our bodies and in our members, which should serve … as instruments of justice unto God."

 

The feast of Christ the King is rich with royal imagery: kings, crowns, bowing the knee, and so on.

 

I love this stuff! I think I have always loved it. My friend Rabbi Miller likes to tease me about my love of all things English. When we were in India, we traveled across the country by train. I pointed out that although there had been many bad things about British rule of India, at least they gave the Indians a great railway system. Rabbi Miller said, “It would be more accurate to say that the Indians gave the British a great railway system, because the Indians were the ones who laid the tracks!”

 

Recently, I’ve been watching a movie about Lord Mountbatten, the last British viceroy of India. In one scene, Lord Mountbatten is sworn in as viceroy in the great viceregal palace in Delhi. The Lord Chancellor who swears him in wears elaborate robes and a wig; Mountbatten is in his dress naval uniform; he and Lady Mountbatten are seated on elaborate thrones. The British certainly understand how to do pomp and ceremony!

 

But we live in a world in which kings and queens and the grand ceremonies that accompany them are in short supply (except on the covers of the sensational tabloids in the check out line at Albertsons’s). The United States rejected the idea of having a monarchy, even though many begged George Washington to accept a crown.

 

So Christ the King Sunday requires us to make an imaginative leap. In our day, kings and crowns and thrones and scepters are mostly found in the literature of fairy tales and fantasies.

 

We cannot translate the imagery of Christ the King into vocabulary that makes sense to us.

 

With apologies to Sen. Bryan, when the young girl kisses the magic frog, he turns into a handsome prince, not a handsome senator.

 

Of course not. We want the frog to become a prince or princess, not a congressman or cabinet member.

 

We can’t turn King Jesus into President Jesus or Chairman Jesus. It just doesn’t work.

 

In fairy tales and fantasy, royal imagery is often accompanied by the story of a quest. The princess must embark on a dangerous quest to regain the crown she has lost to an evil usurper. She must climb mountains, slay dragons, and rescue the handsome but dim-witted prince from the clutches of a sorceress.

 

Similarly, I believe that Christians, too, are on a quest. Our quest is no less adventurous or dangerous than that of Frodo and his companions in the Lord of the Rings. But our quest is not for the “ring of power”; our quest is for the kingdom of God.

 

Our quest takes us from this world to the next, from the kingdom of this world to the kingdom of God.

 

Before we start, though, we have to know where the kingdom of God is located. Is it “east of the sun and west of the moon”? Do you go to the North Start and turn left and go straight on till morning?

 

Some would tell you that the Kingdom of God isn’t in this world at all; it is in heaven; it is spiritual; it is incompatible with this physical world in which we dwell.

 

But I don’t buy that.

 

After his baptism, Jesus began his public by saying, “The Kingdom of God is at hand…” In other words, the kingdom of God is near us.

 

I propose that the kingdom is present in this world, that it is close to us. The quest for the kingdom of God takes us from the present to the future. The kingdom of God is something that we are called upon to build.

 

What does the kingdom of God look like? Jesus gives us a vivid picture of the kingdom in today’s gospel reading.

 

He says that when God’s great day of judgment comes, all nations will be gathered before the place of judgment. On one side are the sheep, those who have built the kingdom of God, and on the other side are the goats, those who have been indifferent to or even hostile to the kingdom of God. And the difference between the two will be that the sheep have fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited those in prison, and cared for the sick. And the goats are those who have neglected the hungry and sick, the prisoners and the naked.

 

United Methodist minister Wiley Stephens calls this “heaven’s audit of our souls.”

 

We know that our quest is over; we know that we have arrived at God’s kingdom when the hungry are fed, the naked are clothed, when the homeless poor have shelter, when the unjustly imprisoned are released, when the sick are healed and the lonely are comforted.

 

I know that sounds terribly idealistic and I suppose it is, but so what? I’m tired of hearing the word “idealism” used as a criticism. “Oh, you’re so idealistic!” “Christianity is just too idealistic.”

 

But what’s wrong with being idealistic? Don’t we want to instill idealism in our children? Don’t we want to live up to the highest ideals? The next time someone accuses me of being too idealistic, I’m going to say, “Oh, thank you so much. What a wonderful thing to say!”

 

One more thing about the quest for the kingdom of God: It is not a solitary affair. In literature, the hero or heroine gathers companions around her for the dangerous quest. The quest for the kingdom is something that we have to do together as a church.

 

I’m glad that Christ the King Sunday is this church’s feast day. It reminds us that we are joined together in a great enterprise.

 

So how do we get there?

 

First, we have to be equipped for the quest, and we do that by making this church the best church that it possibly can be. We have to have a great Sunday school program for our children. We have to have the best staff members that we possibly can have. We have to have a strong musical program. But keep in mind that these things are only the preparation for the quest; they are not the quest itself.

 

That is what stewardship is all about. It is about equipping us for the quest for the kingdom.

 

But the goal of the quest is not to stay huddled together in this building. The goal is to go out into the world, to bring the good news of God to the least, the last, the lonely, the downhearted and despairing.

 

Just a couple of months before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., preached a powerful sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, the church in which he had been raised and where he had been ordained. He told them how he would like to be remembered. If Christ is ruler over our lives, Dr. King told them, then my Nobel Peace Prize is less important than my trying to feed the hungry. If Christ is King, then my invitations to the White House are less important than that I visited those in prison. If Christ is Lord, then my being TIME magazine's "Man of the Year" is less important than that I tried to love extravagantly, dangerously, with all my being. (Quoted by Dr. Greg Garrison in “If Christ is King, What Does that Mean?”)

 

Christ the King Sunday is about what is really important. It is about our loyalty to Christ above all things. Hear that again: It is about our loyalty to Christ – not to the church. It is about deeds more than it is about creeds.

 

It is about letting Christ reign in our minds, our wills, our hearts, and about turning our hands into instruments of God’s justice.

A future worth building (J. Barry Vaughn, Nov. 16, 2014)

I have recently been reading Returnings: A Spiritual Journey by Dan Wakefield. It is what I would call a “spiritual autobiography,” an account of Wakefield’s boyhood in the American Midwest in the 1950s, a time of affluence, security, and religious faith, followed by his education at Columbia University when he adopted a superficial agnosticism. The book is about Wakefield’s eventual return to the Christian faith later in life.

 

Wakefield writes of his youthful outrage at the pious platitudes of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, the popular preacher of the 1950s who wrote The Power of Positive Thinking. Wakefield says that Peale popularized a “bland, conformist Christianity” that “not only seemed superficial but downright offensive.” The Power of Positive Thinking asserted “that religion was a ‘scientific’ method of making one’s life better” and that “the Bible contains ‘techniques’ and ‘formulas,’ … “that ‘may be said to form an exact science’.”

 

“Dr. Peale made it seem so simple with his assortment of hints for happiness such as ’10 easy, workable rules,’ ‘7 … steps,’ and so on.

 

A friend of Wakefield’s family took him to New York City’s Marble Collegiate Church which Peale served as pastor. Wakefield described “the vastness of the church and the huge crowd of worshipers…” He said ”there was not an empty pew… at the shrine of 1950s upbeat conformity and assurance. I remember the smile and the gleaming white teeth of the famous pastor.”

 

I had an occasion to meet Norman Vincent Peale several years ago and think that he had a bit more depth than Dan Wakefield is willing to attribute to him. Nevertheless, it is difficult for me to reconcile Peale’s belief that the Bible contains anything like a “science” of “positive thinking” with the words of the prophet Zephaniah:

 

Be silent before the Lord GOD!

For the day of the LORD is at hand;

…

At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps,

and I will punish the people

who rest complacently on their dregs,

those who say in their hearts,

"The LORD will not do good,

nor will he do harm."

 

THEIR wealth shall be plundered,

and their houses laid waste.

Though they build houses,

they shall not inhabit them;

though they plant vineyards,

they shall not drink wine from them.

The great day of the LORD is near,

…

That day will be a day of wrath,

a day of distress and anguish,

a day of ruin and devastation,

a day of darkness and gloom,

a day of clouds and thick darkness,

…

Neither their silver nor their gold

will be able to save them

on the day of the LORD's wrath;

in the fire of his passion

the whole earth shall be consumed;

for a full, a terrible end

he will make of all the inhabitants of the earth

 

The words of Psalm 90 are almost equally harsh:

 

3

You turn us back to the dust and say, *
"Go back, O child of earth."

4

For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past *
and like a watch in the night.

5

You sweep us away like a dream; *
we fade away suddenly like the grass.

6

In the morning it is green and flourishes; *
in the evening it is dried up and withered.

…

The span of our life is seventy years,
perhaps in strength even eighty; *
yet the sum of them is but labor and sorrow,
for they pass away quickly and we are gone.

 

About the same time that Norman Vincent Peale was writing The Power of Positive Thinking, theologian Paul Tillich was teaching at Harvard University’s divinity school. In one of his great sermons Tillich wrote this about Psalm 90:

 

A shallow Christian idealism cannot stand the darkness of such a vision. [But] the Bible… the most universal of all books, … reveals the age-old wisdom about man's transitoriness and misery. The Bible does not try to hide the truth about man's life under superficial statements about the immortality of the soul. Neither the Old nor the New Testament does so. They know the human situation and they take it seriously. [The Bible gives us no] easy comfort about ourselves.

 

There is nothing in Tillich about the Bible or the Christian faith as “a ‘scientific’ method of making one’s life rosier.” I might say that Tillich represents the opposite pole from Peale!

 

I don’t know about you, but I prefer Paul Tillich to Norman Vincent Peale.  I also do not find the words of Psalm 90 to be all that depressing, especially when you contrast them with the words of Zephaniah.

 

Zephaniah tells the people of ancient Judah that they would build houses but not inhabit them; they would plant vineyards but not drink the wine that would be pressed from their grapes.

 

In contrast, the psalmist says to God, “You have been our refuge from one generation to another.”

 

Do you hear the contrast? Zephaniah speaks of the futility of human effort: Nothing we build will last. That’s true, says the psalmist, but we DO have a home, an eternal home, in God who is our refuge from one generation to another.

 

In brief, the human predicament is this:

 

Life is short. Nothing we do or build or make will last forever. So what’s the point? Why try?

 

Not only are we mortal but even our civilization is mortal, finite, limited. According to Psalm 90, we may live for 70 or 80 years. A civilization may last for a few hundred or even a few thousand years, but even our civilizations will pass away.

 

However, there ARE things that are eternal, and Paul speaks of them in his first letter to the Thessalonians: “…since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.”

 

Faith, hope, and love – these are the things that are eternal, the things that last.

 

Today our stewardship drive concludes. We are asking you to make a pledge to Christ Church not so that we can build the things that are mortal and finite such as buildings. We are asking for your financial support so that we can build things that really last, such as faith, hope, and above all, love.

 

This last week I saw the new film Interstellar. Like Zephaniah and the author of Psalm 90, Interstellar can be seen as a pessimistic and gloomy film. For some unspecified reason, life on earth is coming to an end. Humankind must find a new home on another planet. But any planet conducive to human life is an unimaginable distance from Earth, so some way must be found to bridge the vast distance from our galaxy to another. Some way must be found to transcend not only the vast distance of space but even time itself.

 

One of the main characters in Interstellar says something that even the apostle Paul would agree with: “Love isn’t something we invented. It’s observable, powerful, it has to mean something... Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends the dimensions of time and space.”

 

“Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends… time and space.”

 

In today’s gospel reading Jesus tells us of the wealthy man who went on a journey and entrusted one servant with five talents, another with two talents, and a third servant with only one talent.

 

We misread this completely if we think the word “talent” as Jesus used it means anything like the word “talent” when we use it. It does not mean a skill, such as a talent for music or painting or playing football.

 

The talanton was the largest unit of currency in Jesus’ time. It meant something like a huge bucket full of solid gold." You would have to be a weight lifter even to pick up a talanton.

 

I don’t think Jesus was thinking of money at all when he spoke of “talents.” What do you or I have that would be the equivalent of a bucket of solid gold?

 

The word “talent” as Jesus used it meant all the gifts that God gives us.

 

In the parable of the talents Jesus is asking us: What have you done with all the things that God gives you -- the life, the health, the intelligence, imagination, and creativity, and above all the love with which God endows all of us? What have you done with all that?

 

Those are the things that last, the things that will not go down to the dust. Those are the things that we are trying to build here at Christ Church.

 

In his sermon on Psalm 90, Tillich went on to say: “The psalmist does not think that … the truth of what he has been saying will cast man into despair. On the contrary, he believes that just this insight can give us a heart of wisdom -- a heart which accepts the infinite distance between God and man, and does not claim a greatness … which belongs to God alone. …Something new appears in these words: the significance of past and future, the prayer for a better future,…  a future of happiness and joy, of the presence of God…. God … is … the God of the future. The cycle from dust to dust, from sin to wrath, is broken. There appears the vision of an age of fulfillment, after the ages of misery…. The individual no longer stands alone before God. He is included among the other servants of God, in the midst of the people of God who look not toward their return to dust, but toward a life in a new age in which God is present. Hope supersedes tragedy.”

 

That is a faith worth living for and a future worth building: We are mortal but we are not alone. We look not only toward our return to the dust but toward life in a new age in which God is present.

 

So build something that will last: Love others with all your heart.  Counter despair with hope.  Overcome evil with goodness. Because at the very heart of the universe there is a goodness greater than evil; a hope greater than despair; a love which holds us in an eternal embrace. 

Bridesmaids - Wise and Foolish (Rick O'Brien, Nov. 9, 2016)

A wedding.  Everyone has their own interpretation of what a wedding is, or at least what it should be.  Your own, your friends, your children’s and perhaps even your parents.  A wedding is a celebration of life, a union of two people in love who pledge their lives to one another.  In Nevada and in many states, this now includes ALL people, and that is truly a good and joyful thing! 

A wedding is a binding contract tying two people together.  In the church we consider it to be one of the sacraments as we see it as far more than simply a civil contract, but as a gift from God and a pledge of obedience to each other and to God.  It is also often a huge event!  It is a time for celebration with family and friends, a time to eat, drink and be merry.  A time to connect with people you don’t see often and to renew bonds of friendship and family. 

In the ancient world, weddings had some of the same character, but there were some very distinct differences.  It is these differences that make today’s passage from Matthew a bit hard to understand, so this morning I would like to talk about them and see how they may help us with the wedding concept.

Today we think of a wedding in basically two parts; the ceremony and the reception.  Whether in a church in front of a priest, at city hall in front of a justice of the peace, or in a wedding chapel in front of Elvis, the ceremony marks the beginning of the union.  An engagement is an agreement to be married, but it is not until the ceremony that a binding contract is established between the two people. 

In ancient days things were different.  The wedding was actually in three parts.  The first was the betrothal.  This was what we would consider the engagement where an offer of marriage was made and accepted.  It was not typically made by the couple, but by their families.  Arranged marriages were common and were much more about joining of families for economic reasons than for anything as silly as love.  But, unlike our concept of engagement, the betrothal was a binding agreement and the couple were considered to be married at that point, even though they would still live apart.  In some cases this was because the couple were children and had to wait to move forward until they had come of age, while in other cases it was to allow the groom time to earn the dowry called the Mohar that had to be paid to the bride’s family.  Remember the story of the Virgin Mary and her betrothal to Joseph?  Each advent I get asked why Mary would be traveling with him if they were not yet married.  Now you understand that as they were betrothed they were in fact considered to be married.

When the time came for the second part of the wedding, the families would agree on an approximate time, but it was not a fixed point in time. The second part is what we would think of as the consummation of the marriage.  Remember that the couple was already considered to be legally married, but the consummation would establish the virginity of the bride and the commencement of their life together.  It was largely up to the groom to determine the exact date and time.  The bride was expected to make herself ready for the groom, attended by her bridesmaids.  The bridesmaids would prepare her for the arrival of her husband, but since they did not know when he was coming, they were with her morning, noon and night.  Only once the groom had arrived and the marriage had been consummated would the third part of the wedding begin; the celebration. 

Remember that we are not talking about a time and place with 9 channels of HBO and a 4G WiFi connection.  These were small rural villages in Palestine with extremely little in the way of entertainment.  Every wedding in the village was a huge event and all of the family and friends would take part in the celebration; a celebration by the way that would last an entire week.  A wedding was the event of the year and after all, who doesn’t want to be part of a week-long party? But there was of course a catch.  You had to be there when the party started.  If you were not, then you were quite literally shut out.  So it was important to be sure you were ready when the groom arrived because you clearly did not want to miss out on the event.

Which brings us to the story of the wise and foolish bridesmaids.  Those who were wise had planned ahead and brought enough oil for their lamps, while the foolish had not.  I imagine they were very excited for their friend, were flattered to have been chosen to take part in this momentous occasion in her life, and were very much looking forward to the feasting and dancing at the wedding banquet.  But in their enthusiasm for the moment, they had let their concern for the present come before their hope for the future; and in so doing they sacrificed their ability to share in the wonder of the event that was to come.

Now I think we are starting to get a taste of the meaning of the gospel.  The bridesmaids were called to wait with the bride for the coming of her groom; for the commencement of the life that meant, and the celebration that they had long looked forward to.  But they were either too excited about the event to properly prepare themselves for their task, or they were too caught up in their own lives and problems to invest the effort and energy needed for the task at hand.  The wise had been just as excited or just as preoccupied, but in their wisdom they knew the importance of preparing for what was to come. 

The Wisdom of Solomon tells us “Wisdom is radiant and unfading and is found by those who seek her.”  If you seek wisdom, we are told, you will have no difficulty in finding her as she waits for us, graciously appearing in our paths and meeting us in every thought.  But that is the catch isn’t it?  For while wisdom is always ready for us, we must want to find it in the first place.  We must seek wisdom; we must place a value on wisdom and want to open ourselves to what we can learn from it. 

If we don’t value wisdom, or if we aren’t willing to accept that we have things we can learn and be willing to invest the time and the energy, then wisdom will elude us.  The foolish bridesmaids saw no value in wisdom and found themselves on the outside looking in, but the wise were able to accomplish their task and enjoy the rewards. 

But there is another point to be made.  This is not just about the good maids vs. the bad or the wise vs. the foolish.  For what happened when the foolish asked the wise for some oil?  They didn’t tell them, tough luck you should have planned ahead.  No, they told them we don’t have enough, but you should go and buy some and return.  Instead of deriding them for their lack of preparation, they gave them a helpful suggestion and a path to the wisdom that had eluded them. 

If you are not actively seeking wisdom, now would be a good time to consider it.  For as Jesus says, you know neither the time nor the hour when the groom will come.  If you are wise and are preparing for the coming of the bridegroom, good for you.  But remember not to be smug about your preparation.  Remember also to offer help to those who need it so that we all may attend the bridegroom when he returns.  For the bride is the church and the bridegroom is Jesus Christ the Lord.  We know not the day nor the hour when he will return to take possession of his world.  But if that day were today, which of the bridesmaids would you be?

 

Are your dreams big enough? (J. Barry Vaughn, Oct. 26, 2014)

The story of Moses’ death on Mt. Nebo is one of the most poignant stories in the Bible. We have heard stories of Moses all our lives, but I’d like to present Moses in a slightly different light.

 

Moses was an enigmatic and many faceted man. Exodus tells us that he was born an Israelite in a time when the Israelite people, who later became the Jewish people, were threatened with genocide for the first, but certainly not the last, time.

 

At the time of Moses’ birth the Israelites were living in Egypt. The story of how they came to be living in Egypt may or may not be familiar to you, but that will have to wait for another time.

 

The Israelites were strangers in a strange land. They had become slaves of the Egyptians, but Egypt’s ruler was deeply troubled by this strange and foreign people in the midst of his land. So he took measures to make sure that they would die out. He not only gave them hard and cruel tasks calculated to weaken and kill them from exhaustion; he also directed the midwives, the women who assisted in childbirth, to kill all male Israelite children.

 

This story already has a modern ring to it: A wealthy and powerful nation fears the presence of aliens in their midst and takes measures to exclude them. Remind you of anything? I will leave you to draw your own conclusions.

 

But when Moses was born, the midwives spared his life. Moses’ mother placed her baby in a basket and set him adrift on the River Nile, hoping that an Egyptian family would find him and raise him as their own. The desperate mother’s plan succeeded beyond her wildest expectations, because the daughter of Egypt’s Pharaoh found Moses and took him as her own child.

 

But here there is a mystery in Moses’ story: Exodus gives the name “Moses” an explanation that makes it a Hebrew name: It says that Pharaoh’s daughter gave the child the name “Moses” because it resembles the Hebrew word meaning “to draw out” because she drew him out of the water. But actually, Moses is not a Hebrew name at all; it is an Egyptian name meaning “son of”. It is similar to the names gives Egyptian rulers, such as Ramses or even closer Thutmosis. Ramses means “son of Ra” (the sun god), and Thutmosis means “son of Thut”. It is most likely that the name “Moses” was originally attached to the name of one of the Egyptian deities. But when Moses asserted his identity as an Israelite, he rejected the association of his name with Egyptian religion.

 

Moses was an Israelite, a Hebrew, but grew up at the summit of Egyptian power and affluence. Then something happened to make him reject his Egyptian-ness and assert his identity as an Israelite. Seeing an Egyptian supervisor cruelly beat a Hebrew slave, Moses grew so enraged that he murdered the Egyptian.

 

Now a fugitive from justice, Moses fled into the desert where he had a profound mystical experience. The voice of God spoke to Moses from a bush that burned but was not consumed. God commanded Moses to return to Egypt and demand that Pharaoh release the Israelites. Moses did so, and aided by divine power, the Israelites fled into the wilderness where they wandered for forty years before coming to the Promised Land of Canaan.

 

But in the wilderness there was another strange turn in Moses’ life. Moses the Egyptian had become Moses the Israelite. Moses the Israelite became Moses the liberator, the revolutionary. But in the wilderness, Moses the revolutionary became Moses the lawgiver.

 

Revolutions are tricky business. It is one thing to free a people from tyranny; it is quite another thing to impose order on a revolution. The American revolution managed that transition fairly well, but most other revolutions have not managed it.

 

The French revolution descended into the Reign of Terror. The Russian revolution gave rise to the gulag, the chain of forced labor camps, plus a host of other terrors. The Chinese revolution gave us the Cultural Revolution which resulted in perhaps as many as 20 million deaths.

 

Moses was almost unique in both freeing his people and also creating institutions and laws that enabled them not only to survive but to thrive.

 

There is so much more to the story but that is enough to take us to today’s Old Testament story. After forty years in the wilderness, Moses and his people finally arrived at the Promised Land.

 

Imagine the feeling with which Moses anticipated taking his people across the Jordan River into Canaan, the land we know today as Israel or Palestine. But God directed Moses to climb to the top of Mt. Nebo overlooking the land, and there God told Moses that although he had given his entire life to bringing his people out of slavery in Egypt and across the vast wilderness, he would not enter the land with him. And so Moses died after getting one brief glimpse of the culmination of his life’s work.

 

And here again, the story of Moses is reminiscent of the story of so many other great leaders. There are very few leaders who have managed both to free their people and create a stable society.

 

Think of Abraham Lincoln. He led the United States successfully through the Civil War, but a month after the South's surrender, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln before he could complete the task of reuniting the divided states.

 

Or think of Gandhi, the Indian leader who freed his people from British rule and gave them independence. There are many echoes of Moses’ story in Gandhi’s story. Gandhi’s devotion to independence for India began when he personally experienced the cruelty with which his people were treated by the white regime in South Africa. He then worked for more than forty years to create an independent India. He did live to see India become independent but as soon as India became free, civil war broke out between Hindus and Muslims. And Gandhi died by the hand of an assassin, his heart broken by the violence between his countrymen.

 

But perhaps the story with the most echoes of Moses’ story is that of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King invoked the very words of Moses in his last sermon in Memphis, Tennessee on the night before his death.

 

In his sermon, Dr. King said, “I have been to the mountaintop. God’s allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And so I am happy tonight…Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

 

That was on April 3, 1968. On April 4, King died by the hand of an assassin.

 

I think there is a great lesson for all of us in the stories of Gandhi, Lincoln, King and especially Moses.

 

How often do any of us live to see the culmination of our life’s dream?

 

Dreams are the building blocks of our lives. We have the dream of going to college, of being successful in our careers, of buying a home, of starting a family, of seeing our children successfully launched in their lives, of a comfortable and healthy retirement. None of us will live to see all of our dreams come true. All of us will see one or more of our dreams wreck upon the rocks of reality.

 

Someone said that life is completely fair because it breaks everyone’s heart.

 

Life is difficult and often sad. The failure of our dreams can lead to bitterness, but we must not let that happen.

 

But think about this: The larger our dream, the more likely it is that we will not live to see it come true.

 

Lincoln dreamed of preserving the Union and reuniting the divided states 

Gandhi had an enormous dream, the dream that India would throw off the yoke of the mighty British Empire.

 

Dr. King dreamed of a world in which people would be evaluated not by the color of their skins but by the content of their character.

 

Moses dreamed of freedom for his people and a land in which they could live in freedom.

 

I want to urge you to dream great dreams, enormous dreams. I want you to have a dream that will take more than your lifetime to dream. I dare you to have a dream so large that you will not live to see it come to pass. I want you to have a dream to which you can devote your life, a dream so vast and noble that you will invite others to participate in it.

 

The story of Moses is not a story of failure; it is a story of success. Moses’ dream was too big for one lifetime. It was too big for one individual. It was a dream that went beyond his own lifetime out into the future. Moses’ dream has influenced all parts of the world and all times.

 

That is the kind of dream that is worth living for and even worth dying for.

 

Today’s reading from the gospels echoes Moses in an indirect way.  They asked Jesus this question: "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "`You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

 

More than a thousand years after Moses, Jesus and the Pharisees debated his words. The words of the Law, the Torah, that Moses gave to the people of Israel, echo down the halls of time and space. We still debate them.

 

At the end of his life God gave Moses a glimpse of the land that his people would occupy, but I wonder – did God also give Moses a glimpse of the way that his words would influence human history?

 

The words of Moses continue to influence our lives. The words that he gave to a small band of escaped Israelite slaves are written on the very fabric of time. As long as the human race endures, the words of Moses will endure.

 

Here at Christ Church we are called upon to dream great dreams. God calls us to dream of being a place of light for those in darkness, a place of hope for those who live in despair, a place of nourishment for those who are hungry, a place of shelter for those who are homeless.

 

I would like you to think of your pledge to this church in those terms. Do not think only of what we can accomplish today; do not think only of what we can accomplish this  year. Think of what we can accomplish over the next century. A great dream requires great resources. When you make your pledge to Christ Church, I want you to dream big and then give a pledge big enough to make that dream come true.

 

This church is an indirect result of the dream that Moses dreamed. And it is a direct result of the dream that Jesus dreamed, a dream of a world set free from sin and death, a world in which all men and women will live as brothers and sisters.

 

Like Moses and the Israelites, we are a people on pilgrimage who travel from a world of bondage, a world of slavery, toward a world of freedom, justice, and peace.

 

Come and dream with us.

Render unto Caesar (Rick O'Brien, Oct. 19, 2014)

For the past several weeks we have been listening to stories of Jesus teaching the crowds and generally taking the Jewish authorities of the time to task for their focus on life on earth as opposed to life with God in the kingdom to come.  Today we see that the authorities are not taking this lying down and are striking back.  In fact, Jesus has so rattled the authorities that they are desperate to discredit him and generally shut him up.  The Pharisees, as we know were the Jewish authorities of the time.  They were the temple priests, the keepers of the faith, the representatives of God to his chosen people; the Jews.  The Pharisees greatly resented the presence of the Romans, who had taken much of their power and authority away as they occupied the land and imposed the will of the Emperor; even over the will of God.

The Herodians on the other hand, were Jews as well, but they were loyal to King Herod.  Herod was the King of Galilee, who the Romans had installed as a puppet ruler in an effort to appease the Jews and provide the polite fiction that they had some aspects of self-rule over their lives.  The real power of course lie with Rome, but Herod was someone to be feared nonetheless. 

As you might expect, there was no love lost between the Pharisees and the Herodians.  The Pharisees hated all that Rome was and wanted them gone, while the Herodians owed their power and status to the Romans.  For the two groups to unite on any issue should give you an indication of just how much they feared Jesus.

They come together in an effort to trap Jesus into giving an answer to a seemingly innocent question.  Is it lawful to pay taxes to the Emperor?  But this was not such a simple question.  If Jesus answered that it was not lawful, that God, not Caesar was the true ruler, he would have angered the herodians who would have turned him in to the Roman authorities for preaching against the emperor.  If he answered that it was lawful to pay taxes, he would be legitimizing the authority of Rome and recognizing their claim that the Emperor was the lawful ruler and should be worshipped as the God he claimed to be.  To do this would anger the Pharisees and their followers who worshipped no ruler but God.

It was a clever conundrum and they must have felt quite proud of themselves for coming up with such a fool-proof scheme.  Whichever way he went, Jesus was sure to anger one side or the other and, in so doing, dilute his standing as a teacher and Wiseman.  Jesus of course saw the trap right away.  And, as is typical for Jesus, he does something completely unexpected and chooses a third path. 

We all know this story of course.  The King James version says “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”  Jesus frustrates the efforts of both the Pharisees and the herodians by telling them that it is not about the money but rather about God.  Money is an earthly thing.  It is a creation of men and though it holds a huge place in our hearts, it should not be the focus of our lives.  We should focus less on earthly things and more on divine. 

The job of a preacher is to open the scriptures to us; to interpret the words of the earliest times to our life today.  20^th century theologian Karl Barth said that we should read scripture with Bible in one hand and today’s newspaper in the other.  So my task today is to find some current relevance for this gospel story and help us all to see the teaching for us in 2014. 

As I read this passage, I think of the relationship we have with money.  Money was very important to people in Jesus time and is has not become any less important throughout the centuries.  I don’t know about you, but I find myself thinking a great deal about money.  What I have, what I don’t have, what I can do with it and how I can get more.  And as I reflect on this passage, I am reminded that I spend more time thinking about money than I do about God. 

I find that troubling.  Jesus’ message to the crowds to focus more on God than on money was true then and is true now.  It is a reminder that we place too much emphasis on money and have let it become a substitute for God in some ways.  This is not healthy. 

It is also a reminder that no matter how much we feel we have earned it, the money is not ours, but comes to us from God.  We work, using our gifts and talents to earn a living and feel that we are entitled to the fruits of our labors.  But we fail to recognize that our gifts, our skills, our very lives are gifts from God.  Without God we would not have the ability to earn this money. 

This of course leads to the concept of stewardship.  If we accept that all of what we have is ours, not because of ourselves but because of God, we have an obligation to give back to God in proportion to our gifts.  We are called to give of our time, of our talents, and yes, of our money.  Each is a gift we have received and each is important for us to give back to God.  We tend to think that we can be good stewards by offering one of these to God but that would be to diminish the gifts we have been given.  We need to give each to God, our time, our talent and yes, our money.  For each is a gift given to us by God and we must give back in thanks for the abundance of blessings we have received.  For as Jesus tells us “Give to God the things that are God’s”.

Building a foundation, putting down roots (J. Barry Vaughn, Oct. 5, 2014)

Several years ago Roy Moore, the chief justice of the Alabama supreme court, had the Ten Commandments engraved on a huge rock and placed in the foyer of the Alabama supreme court building. Many regarded Justice Moore’s action as an infraction of the constitutional guarantee of the free practice of religion and a breach in Thomas Jefferson’s wall between church and state and went to court to have the monument removed. The case went all the way to the U.S. supreme court which decided against Moore. They not only had the monument removed; they also had Mr. Moore removed.

 

Undaunted, Roy Moore began to take his enormous rock bearing the words of the Ten Commandments from place to place on the back of a flatbed truck. The rock weighs over 5000 pounds or more than 500 pounds per commandment. It was lifted on and off the truck by a 57 foot yellow I beam crane that weighs five tons, and even it sometimes buckles under the weight of the monument.[1]

 

I was living in Philadelphia when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision against Roy Moore and insisted that he remove the monument from the Alabama supreme court building. One night at a dinner party a friend asked me where I thought the Ten Commandments were now that they had been removed from the supreme court’s foyer. I said, “I don’t know where the monument is now, but the Ten Commandments are where they have always been: In the 20^th chapter of Exodus and the 5^th chapter of Deuteronomy. And that’s where they belong.” They belong in our Bibles, in our hearts and minds, in our behavior, and perhaps even on our lips. They do not belong on a 5000 pound rock in a courthouse.

 

Make no mistake: I am a big fan of the Ten Commandments. They are a wonderful guide for our lives. They tell us how to live a genuinely human life, a life that allows us to flourish, not just exist.

 

We may or may not disagree with Justice Moore’s decision to place a monument to the commandments in a government building, but for many of us there seems to be a kind of heaviness around the Ten Commandments; perhaps there seems to be a kind of heaviness around any commandments, around the very idea of a commandment, a “thou shalt not” or even a “thou shalt.”

 

But I would like you to think of the commandments not as a huge stone weighing us down but as a firm foundation upon which we build our lives.

 

Poet Andrew King wrote this marvelous poem about the commandments. The commandments are

 

words that are beacons, words that cast shadow,

words that are firesparks struck from stone,

words that are trumpet, calling to silence,

words that will echo through ages to come,

 

words that are the beating heart of a covenant,

words of requirement, words that are gift,

words that are bones in the body of a people,

words that are blood flowing into their veins,

 

words that are power, spoken to weakness,

words that are freedom because they are fence,

words that challenge us, words that summon us,

words that are song for a life-long dance,

 

words that are dwelling place, words of foundation,

words that are law, given in grace,

words that are signposts, words that are journey,

words that are a pathway pointing to peace.[2]

 

The Ten Commandments create a kind of wall around human life. The purpose of a wall is both to keep things out and to keep things in.

 

The things that the Ten Commandments keep outside are things like lying, envy, murder, unfaithfulness to our spouse. The things that the Ten Commandments keep inside are truthfulness, faithfulness, gratitude, and life itself.

 

Much is sometimes made of the fact that the commandments are phrased in the negative: “Thou shalt NOT…”  None of us likes to be told that we cannot do something. There’s something in us, especially Americans, that likes being forbidden to do something. There’s even something about being forbidden to do something that makes us want to do it even more. I’ve always thought that God made a huge mistake when he told Adam and Eve not to eat that darn apple! That just about guaranteed that they would eat it.

 

Visual artists tell us that one of the best ways to learn to draw or paint is not to focus on the object we are trying to represent. If you do that, you will almost certainly fail. You have to focus first on the space around the object, the negative space. When Michelangelo carved a beautiful angel out of a block of marble, he was asked how in the world he was able to create such a beautiful object out of a cold, dead block of stone. Michelangelo replied that all he did was to take away the pieces of stone that were surrounding the angel and, as it were, liberate the angel from its stone prison.

 

In a sense, that’s what the Ten Commandments do, too. They carve out a space in which real, authentic life can flourish. They take away the things that are ugly and harmful, such as lies, unfaithfulness, envy, and murder and create a space for things that are good and healthy such as truth, faithfulness, gratitude, and life itself.

 

It would be impossible to enumerate all the things that we are supposed to do in life. Every day there are hundreds of tasks that we are supposed to do, such as get up in the morning, get dressed, make breakfast, drive to work, do our jobs, and so on. It would be impossible to list all the things we should do; it is much easier to eliminate the things that we should not do.

 

Let’s give some thought to the things that the Ten Commandments do NOT say. The Ten Commandments tell us nothing about which economic system we should follow. You will find nothing there about whether it is better to be a mercantilist or a capitalist or a socialist. The commandments leave us free to make our own decisions about that.

 

The commandments tell us nothing about the political system that is best. They leave us free to decide how to order our political systems.

 

The commandments tell us nothing about whether or not we should let women serve as political and religious leaders. We have to look elsewhere for guidance on that subject.

 

And the commandments say absolutely nothing about homosexuality. Neither did Jesus. It is time for the church to stop acting as though homosexuality is the worst of all sins. It is perfectly possible to observe every single one of the commandments and also love someone of the same sex.

 

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus quotes Psalm 118: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone…” and goes on to say, “The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls."

 

The Ten Commandments are like ten great foundation stones. They create a foundation on which we can build good lives. If we fail to observe them, then we pretty quickly see the truth of Jesus’ observation that “the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces… it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” A man or woman who lacks the foundation of the commandments or who breaches the wall that they build around human life will eventually find life impossible as lies, envy, unfaithfulness, and lack of respect for life crowd into the space of his or her life.

 

We live in a world full of people who are looking for foundations for their lives. We are in a time of questioning; people are looking for answers. We here at Christ Church know a secret that the world around us longs to share – We have a foundation for our lives. We have found that life becomes richer, deeper, more meaningful, when we build it upon the rocks of truth, gratitude, fidelity, and respect for life.

 

But the stone of offense, the stumbling stone of which Jesus was speaking was not just the foundation of the commandments; Jesus was speaking of himself.

 

Jesus is the “great foundation,” the “cornerstone” of the Christian life. The author of First Peter says that we are “living stones” who are being “built into a spiritual house.” Beneath the foundation of the commandments is the very source of our lives. Theologian Paul Tillich called God the “ground of our being.”

 

This church rests upon a foundation not made of stone. It rests upon a foundation created by generations of people who worked to establish it – Mom and Pop Squires, Bishop Harry Graham Gray, Arthur Kean, Malcolm Jones, Talley Jarrett, Karl and Midgene Spatz, perhaps your parents or even your grandparents.

 

We have inherited both a great tradition and a great responsibility. It is our task now to build upon the foundation handed down to us, to invite all in this community who seek a foundation for their lives to join us, to find here a place upon which they can build strong and flourishing lives.

 

Our annual stewardship campaign begins today. Stewardship offers you the opportunity to share the foundation given to us with others, to maintain and build upon the foundation bequeathed to us.

 

I am asking everyone to consider increasing their commitment to Christ Church by at least ten percent. If we all do that and if those who are able to do even more, we will not only have a balanced budget, we will also be able to continue all our present ministries and even expand some of our ministries.

 

Although I grew up in the Southern Baptist church, I do not preach hellfire and brimstone sermons, but sometimes I have to tell you that our actions have consequences, and if we do not support our church with our pledges and increase our pledges gradually over time, there will be consequences.

 

There’s a wonderful murder mystery set in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. It is entitled Divine Inspiration and is written by Jane Langton. Langton invents the Church of the Commonwealth although it is obvious to anyone familiar with Back Bay that the church she created for her novel is a combination of Trinity Church, Copley Square, and its neighbor Old South Church.

 

The section of Boston known as Back Bay was built in the 19^th century to be a gracious neighborhood. To build it a section of Boston harbor had to be filled in, so Back Bay is built on land fill. Back Bay includes some of Boston’s most beautiful and important buildings, including the Boston library, Trinity Church, and Old South Church.

 

The tower of Trinity Church, a church built by Phillips Brooks – the author of “O little town of Bethlehem” and later bishop of Massachusetts – weighs almost 10,000 tons. That’s 10,000 TONS, not 10,000 POUNDS. In order to build it on the land fill of Back Bay, they had to drive enormous pillars down into the water beneath the land fill of Back Bay. As long as the pillars are surrounded by water, they are enormously strong, but if they ever dry out, they will crumble. There is a system of automatic sensors that measure the depth of the water around the pillars, and if the water level drops, additional water can be pumped in.

 

In Divine Inspiration, the water level is allowed to drop with disastrous consequences.

 

While the church’s organist is playing Bach’s chorale prelude, In Thee Is Joy, he accidentally pulls out too many stops, causing the building to shake with Bach’s joyful music.

 

“The building swayed… the floor rolled beneath him… shaken by the long waves rumbling within it…. The music swarmed… the building shook, the spongy floor sagged…Behind the pulpit the east wall crumpled and caved inward. A single block from the vault over the pulpit pitched down with a crash, and then the rest roared down together in an avalanche of stone…. The church was no longer in darkness. Looking up, [the organist] saw the limpid sky of morning…. Now only one of [the] massive vaults remained, clinging to the high walls south, west, and north, trembling in the empty air to the east, thrusting outward into nothingness its tons of arching stone…. It was Easter morning.”[3]

 

That is what happens when we do not build our lives upon the foundation of the commandments. That is what happens when we do not send the roots of our lives down into the foundation that God provides for our lives.

 

Stewardship provides us with the opportunity to build strong foundations and to invite others to join us under the shelter of the living stones who form the very house of God.

 

 

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[1] Facts about the monument’s weight, the crane, etc. from “Dancing the Decalogue” by Thomas Long, Christian Century, March 7, 2006.

[2] From “Andrew King’s New Weblog,” Sept. 28, 2014.

[3] From Divine Inspiration by Jane Langton.