Living on the Other Side of the Mountain

A Sermon by Greg Ledbetter preached on February 3, 2007 | Mardi Gras Sunday | Transfiguration Sunday, Year A

Lectionary Texts: Exodus 24:12-18; Psalm 99; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9

Mountains are remarkable things. Native peoples have always considered mountains to be sacred places, places where the spirit of the divine brooded, places where the great transcendent spirit of creation could be encountered. Certain mountains were viewed as “God’s footstool” as the Psalmist describes it.

Shell Ridge may be a modest geological feature on the map, but back in the day, I would take our youth up to a high point on the ridge behind the church where we would perch ourselves above the surrounding valleys. And from that vantage point and with the wind gusting up the face of the ridge, the ancient tugging of God’s spirit seemed very real.

Every time I drive up Mount Diablo, I am aware of some primal impulse that is being stirred. As the surrounding landscape falls away and the vegetation grows sparse and the wind mounts, there is something within me that gets tickled and thrilled. I’m not inclined to give a name to that something or that experience—to forcibly capture the experience in words or to name it “God”, but I can certainly attest to the opening within that I feel that makes an experience of God and God’s Spirit all the more likely and all the more real.

I’m not the first in my family to feel this way. While my maternal grandfather was no Edmund Hillary—the recently departed conqueror of Mount Everest, grandpa, too, was drawn to mountains. In the same way that Mt. Diablo is a bit of a modest lump in the world of mountains, so, too is Mount Spokane which is on the horizon of the Northeastern Washington landscape where I grew up. When I was back in Spokane recently for the funeral, I tried in vain to get someone to join me in a drive to the top of the mountain where I had spent so many days of my youth skiing. It is the same mountain that drew my photographer grandfather to ascend the mountain on skis on New Year’s Eve for some thirty consecutive years—from the 1930’s well into the 60’s. And it was when the mountain experienced the wildest of wild wintry weather that he would go out with his camera and capture the fantastic shapes the trees had been sculpted into by the wind and the driving snow and ice.

For Grandpa Leo, the snow sculpted trees seemed almost to possess a life of their own. He would often give names to the trees that seemed implied by their forms. Such was the power of mountains and the extremes that seemed to hint at the powers and energies that drove them.

Our own times in the mountains can easily evoke memories of Biblical encounters on the mountain. Most likely we’ll remember Moses on Mt. Sinai and Elijah on Mt. Horeb. Each of these encounters were fantastic … visually full of the “terrible goodness” of God … clouds and shadows and thunder and lightning and fire and even the shaking of the foundations of the mountain. There was POWER in those mountains and if you wanted to meet God “face to face”, you had to go up to the mountain where God’s presence was enthroned.

These mountain encounters also signified turning points in the lives of these individuals and their communities. For Moses, it was both a validation of his leadership as well as an occasion for receiving the law—the Ten Commandments. For Elijah, it was a time for a direct encounter with God that reaffirmed his role as God’s prophet. By the way, let’s not miss that each of these stories are accompanied by references to forty days and forty nights—the classic Biblical number that refers to a time of spiritual journey and preparation. Forty days and nights the earth was baptized in the time of Noah … Forty years the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness … and forty days and night Jesus dwelt in the wilderness as he prepared for his ministry.

It’s with all of this in mind: mountains and legendary prophets and leaders and times of great challenge and deep revelation—consciously and sub-consciously this was all present as Jesus and his hand-picked trio, Peter, James and John ascend the mountain. They were not simply “climbing a mountain”.

And then the story takes on the patina of a dream … a vision … a “not of this world” kind of experience as, perhaps, you might expect of something you could only describe later as a divine encounter. Matthew, as you may remember, is very concerned with making his readers understand that Jesus not only stands in the long prophetic line, but more importantly even, is the new Moses. There are all kinds of ways that Matthew tells this in his gospel, but none, perhaps, as direct as the transfiguration of Jesus. In Exodus 34, Moses came down from the mountain of meeting with the tablets of the covenant—the Ten Commandments. And he didn’t know it, but his face shone from having talked with God. And just so the slow-witted don’t miss the connection between Moses and Jesus, before the glow of the transfiguration has faded, Moses and Elijah appear and speak with Jesus. I suppose they were divided among themselves as to just who WAS the greatest quarterback of all time … Joe … Terry … Troy … Tom.

Let’s remember that in the time of Matthew, history was not being kind to either Jews or Christians. The way to “easy street” was to pay homage to the emperor, otherwise you might become grisly entertainment for the emperor’s friends. After the fall of the temple some 15 years earlier, Judaism and Christianity drifted rapidly apart and many were caught with one leg on each path. It was a true Robert Frost moment: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and being one traveler long I stood …”.

Which path do I take? Whom do I believe? Whom do I follow? Sounds like a REALLY current, REALLY modern dilemma, doesn’t it?

Judaism was in the process of trying to redefine itself apart from the Temple which was no longer … and Christianity was trying to understand itself as in the tradition of Judaism, yet something altogether new. By reminding his readers throughout his gospel that Jesus was the new Moses, Matthew was saying to all who would listen—but particularly fence-sitting Jewish Christians: “Jesus IS the new thing of which Isaiah had spoken. Jesus is the new fulfillment of the very old prophecy.

By writing in Moses and Elijah joining Jesus on the mountaintop, Matthew has pulled out the biggest of the big guns. This is called: “endorsement by association”. We’re all very familiar with how it works. When Obama shares the stage with Ted Kennedy, you’re supposed to “get” just whose tradition he stands in … and when Hilary shares the stage with Cesar Chavez’ children, you’re supposed to get just whose tradition she stands in. Whenever we do a little “name-dropping”, we kind of hope that the names we drop will reflect favorably on us. But we must be careful, remembering Dan Quayle’s ill-fated mention of Jack Kennedy around someone who actually knew Jack Kennedy.

The gospel of Matthew is written using stories from Jesus’ life and ministry, including the story of the transfiguration. But the gospel is being written for people concerned with making choices for their lives in their time. For Jesus, the high and lifted up view from the glorious mountain top was of Calvary, of a path of suffering that led to death. This was his path of discipleship and Matthew joins Mark in telling us that for all of Jesus’ followers as well, the path up to and back off of the mountain is one that leads through a discipleship that is willing to tread the shadowed valley of death … and one that is willing to follow the crooked path of sacrifice that can place great demands and great suffering on those who are willing to follow.

It seems to me that Matthew is speaking for the church and Christians of every age when he has Peter—newly anointed as the rock on whom Jesus will build his church—when he has Peter try to freeze this moment in time. “It’s a nice day, we’re in such lovely company, what say I just pitch us some tents and we’ll … live here.” We’ve mocked Peter’s absurd suggestion many times over the years.

But who can blame Peter for wanting to preserve the experience? We know how hard it is to hold on to extraordinary moments … singular experiences. Once the story’s told, it can’t help but grow old … And, perhaps more significantly, we know how easy it is to defer the undesirable, to put off to another time, another day, what we know will be painful. Who hasn’t done that with taxes or with matters related to one’s own health. Jesus has hinted to the disciples what will follow the descent of the mountain and they want nothing of it.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer had friends like Peter. As the winds of World War II were rising, Bonhoeffer’s American friends found him a teaching position at the great Union Theological Seminary in New York City—it’s where nearly all the theological luminaries of that time had gathered. Bonhoeffer was viewed as a troublemaker by the Third Reich and so any return to Germany in the late 30’s was sure to be dangerous. To Bonhoeffer’s friends it seemed a slam-dunk of a decision: stay in America far from Hitler’s grasp and ride out the war. “Save yourself,” they pleaded. “Two roads diverged …” Bonhoeffer never did think of himself as particularly courageous, but he did wish to be faithful to the deepest parts of his faith and conscience—no matter the cost. And in the end, back home in Germany before the war ended, the cost was: his life.

As a community of faith, we enjoy some glorious, light-filled times together. Like this second annual celebration of Mardi Gras. Collectively we ascend and re-ascend the mountain together and create rich memories that seem to grow even richer with age. And there is always the temptation to build our lives around these moments, around this rich fellowship. But we do well to hear Matthew’s words of caution to us as daily we confront diverging roads, diverging paths, diverging calls upon our time and energy and resources and loyalties. The mountain is a glorious vision and God knows we need glorious visions. But the path of Jesus leads up over the mountain and back down into the valley … the crooked way … the seamy street … the hard city … the oppressed people … the languishing soul.

Our Forty Days and Forty Nights will soon be upon us. And more than most days of our faithing, we will be aware of divergencies in our path, places of parting, places of choosing, places of committing. In the days ahead … with Ashes on our foreheads … with tokens of our faith hung around our necks … we’re going to be saying that we are “friends of Jesus” … he of the mountain … and he of the cross. It’s both … and … it’s BOTH.

The preparatory time of Lent gets us ready for our own Baptisms—it’s always been that way in the traditions of the church. But when Jesus talks about Baptism, we know that it’s a whole lot more than the dunking he received from Cousin John. It’s a putting of the hand to the plow of the kind of ministry that both animated Jesus and ultimately deprived him of his life.

William Willimon speaks of this kind of baptism. He says: “On the banks of some dark river, as we are thrust backward, onlookers will remark, ‘They could kills somebody like that.’ To which Old John might say, “Good, you’re finally catching on.”

The days of Lent are all about the pathways of Jesus and implication of being a friend of Jesus … finally catching on with us. It’s more than a smudge of ashes … it’s more than a Lenten symbol … it’s more than sprinkling the name of Jesus in our conversation, like seasoning in an otherwise bland salad.

While we’re dropping names … let me drop the name of Alan Boesak. Alan was a significant figure in the tearing down of the wall of apartheid. He is a powerful minister and preacher. He is also a foibled soul as I think he would admit. Following Jesus into the shark-infested waters of apartheid and on into the wrenching and uneven process of truth and reconciliation in South Africa took an enormous toll on Boesak. His enemies had a field day spinning foibles into major failures. He lost a lot of blood and credibility.

Alan taught for a time at our seminary in Berkeley and during that time preached in our church at Micky’s ordination. Alan said something in his sermon that has always stuck with me … WILL always stick with me. They are words that he has had ample opportunities to live out truthfully in his own life. Alan said: “At the end of time, when we arrive at the time of judgment, we will be asked: “Where are your wounds”? And we will say: “We have no wounds.” And we will be asked: “Was nothing worth fighting for?”

Another freedom fighter, Martin Luther King said, even more troublingly: “If a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”

In the days ahead, in and beyond the season called Lent, may we each and may we all find something worth fighting for, to risk dying for and, ultimately, to commit to living for.

Amen.

Baptism: Waters of Cleansing, Calling & Care

A sermon by Greg Ledbetter preached on The Baptism of Christ | First Sunday after Epiphany | First Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
January 13, 2008

Sermon Texts: Isaiah 42:1-9; Psalm 29; Acts 10:34-43; Matthew 3:13-17

So … where are we? Time seems to go so fast, these days, that it seems like we overshot Christmas and landed somewhere in February. And if you think I’m exaggerating, we are just over three weeks out from Ash Wednesday. Keep your seat belts fastened, your tray tables stowed and your seatbacks in the upright position. There will be no beverage service on today’s flight.

Three weeks ago, we were anticipating the holy birth … two weeks ago and last Sunday, Jesus was already a toddler of an unspecified age being greeted by wise men from the east and fleeing Herod’s wrath with his family. And now this week, suddenly Jesus is “all growed up”. If the gospel writers paid scant attention to Jesus’ birth and its exact chronology, they cared even less about his growing up … from the terrible twos to the truly terrible teens. You know, they say when your child turns 13, put ‘em in a barrel and feed ‘em through the hole. And when they turn 16 … plug the hole. Might Jesus have been a precocious and difficult teenager? I don’t know what the ancient Palestinian equivalent to piercings and tattoos might have been, but it’s possible that Jesus had them.

Only Luke’s gospel takes any interest in that gap between infancy and adulthood, concerned as he is to “write an orderly account.” It is Luke who describes Jesus as a young teen, left behind by his parents, and found in the temple teaching the elders.

From the perspective of the gospel writers, what matters most of all is that Jesus made it to adulthood … and made, ultimately, it to the river where his cousin, John the Baptizer, was engaged in his own ministry.

Reading the descriptions of John reminds me of descriptions of itinerant ministers on the American frontier … stalwart and rugged souls who may have been out of social circulation a bit too long and had, perhaps, a bit too much exposure to the sun and the elements. Actually, I have a feeling that most prophets of any age come off that way. Martin Luther King, dapper and eloquent, may be one of the striking exceptions to this generalization.

Matthew tells us at the beginning of the chapter we read today, the third chapter, that in this time of Jesus’ adulthood, that John appears in the wilderness east of the Jordan River preaching a sharp-edged message of repentance. To Matthew it was clear that Jesus was fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy that before the anointed one could come, there was some preparation and “remodeling” that had to be done.

It seems that John understood well who he was and how he figured in God’s plans. John was the precursor and the preparer. You’ve seen these massive earth-moving machines that carve up the landscape in preparation for laying down the asphalt that will become roads. That’s sort of how John was functioning. The human landscape was rough and crooked, it had drifted from its creator’s intentions and was in great need of smoothing and straightening.

It’s kind of like Highway 24 between Walnut Creek and the Caldecott tunnel. For years it has been the roughest and the loudest section of highway in the Bay Area. But the recent resurfacing has left the pavement so smooth, you almost forget that you’re driving.

John the Baptizer is preparing the human landscape, not for himself, but for the one whom God would send to follow John … the Lord … the Messiah … the anointed servant of God. John understood his relative place in the scheme of things. He was simply a laborer doing the work that had been laid upon him.

If you’ve seen some of these “extreme makeover” home shows on TV, or if you’ve done your own remodeling, you’ll know that before the new kitchen can go in, there’s some demolition work to be done. The metal edged vintage WWII Formica countertop has got to go, the matching avocado green stove, refrigerator and sink—they’ve all got to go, the curling linoleum that was new when the “new deal” was new—it’s got to go.

John is not being wasteful or just trying to keep up with modern spiritual times … he knows the drift the human spirit is capable of … he knows the dirt and debris that can accumulate. John knows that if the people of Israel have any chance at all of welcoming and embracing and, ultimately, following the one who is to follow him, that he’s got a lot of cleaning up to do before that one comes. Haven’t you ever heard yourself say to someone: “Let me know when you’re planning to come so I can get the house clean.”? John is cleaning house and he’s not a very gentle housecleaner.

Baptism is a part of the housecleaning and the remodeling and the landscape makeover that is John’s vocation. And while we may think in our more urbane moments that baptism is simply “the bath that cleanses,” any even more appropriate image of baptism is “the flood that drowns.” Baptism was, to be sure, a cleansing and purifying “bath”, but don’t we know that the things from which we human beings need to be cleansed can be so stubborn, so ingrained, so staining that it’s going to take more than “Mr. Bubbles” to make us right. And when we look out at the world around us and the cumulative effect of human sin … human brokenness … it’s not hard to understand why the ancient Biblical writers told of a time—Noah’s time—when it got so bad that God decided to drown the world. A world-wide deluge and flood that was, for all intents and purposes, a global baptism.

When we read of John’s baptizing, we naturally view it through our Christian and, for many of us, our Baptist lenses. The preacher standing in the water, the baptizee in a white robe picking his or her way down to where the preacher stands, a mournful choir singing in the background. Mom and dad standing by with the instamatic camera getting ready to capture the magical moment. In fact, John and Jesus were both observant Jews. There weren’t no Bab-tist church around. What John and Jesus were engaging in was a common Jewish ritual was used for sacred occasions or for cleansing from defilement. It could happen in a pond or a pool or a river … it could even happen in a courtyard with a basin of water.

That Jesus chooses to go to the river to be baptized is very significant. First of all, the Jordan River figures significantly in the history of Jesus’ people. It was the Jordan River that the people of Israel crossed to claim the land they believed God had promised them. It was a river that reminded them of other difficult “crossings over” such as the crossing of the Sea of Reeds in Egypt. Being baptized in the Jordan meant identifying yourself with that struggle and that long journey that has such ancient roots and so many modern counterparts. Some modern spiritual tourists often return to the Jordan for these reasons.

As a river, the Jordan River was also “living water”. You may remember from John’s gospel that “living water” was water that was significant because it moved … it was not a brackish pond or a puddle, but water that flowed. In the Judaism of Jesus’ time, there were six descending orders of ritual baths that were used to cleanse or purify a person. Living water was required for the highest order of ritual bathing and cleansing. It is in the living water of the Jordan River that Jesus seeks out John for his cleansing and purifying bath.

And as the Jordan River represented a kind of “crossing over”, so being baptized in the Jordan represented a “crossing over” for the individual … the leaving behind one bank of the river and the part of one’s life it represents and emerging washed and renewed on the other. In fact, in ancient practice, you may have entered and exited on the same bank of the river, but there were two sets of steps, one by which the defiled person entered the living water, and another by which they took their exit.

Matthew understands Jesus’ entry into and exit from the water, if you’ll forgive the mild pun, as the “watershed” moment of Jesus’ life. It represents a choice he is making to enter the water and to be cleansed by John who is God’s servant and prophet and the preparer of God’s way. But it also represents a time when God’s Spirit comes to dwell in all fullness on Jesus and it is a Spirit that will accompany him for all the rest of his life and his ministry. Jesus may ultimately give up his own spirit on the cross, but the Spirit of God broods even over Jesus’ body and over the dispirited souls who followed him.

It’s hard to think of Jesus’ baptism without also thinking of baptisms we have known:

· I remember being scandalized by reports out of California about people being baptized in hot tubs … talk about “only in Marin”. I struggled for the longest time to wrap my mind around this bizarre merging of an ancient sacred ritual with this symbol of modern hedonism. By the way, we’ll be holding this year’s baptism service at the Hogans’ hot tub with a wine and cheese reception to follow. The colors of our swimsuits will, of course, be appropriate to the liturgical season. Woe is me.

· I remember visiting a river site in central India, some years ago, where 3000 people were baptized in one day … it must have been like a modern day of Pentecost.

· In Vermont, we could only get a few people at a time to enter the waters of Baptism. It may have had something to do with the fact that the lake in which we performed the baptisms had only been free of ice for a few weeks. You may have been “on fire” for the Lord, but that Vermont lake water could practically put it out.

· My own baptism, in my memory, is a kind of murky affair. I was so young and so little did I know or understand at the time. It would be years and many more “crossings over” before the implications of what I had promised began to be clear.

For Matthew, the implications of Jesus’ crossing over, his cleansing bath, his ritualistic drowning were absolutely clear. Jesus was God’s servant who had come to bring justice and peace and healing hope to the people of Israel. Jesus’ baptism was a fulfillment of the prophecy

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;

I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,
I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
a light to the nations,
to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness.
See, the former things have come to pass,
and new things I now declare;
before they spring forth,
I tell you of them.

Jesus’ baptism represented a fulfillment of Isaiah’ prophecy and God’s promises. We know how Jesus’ story turns out … how after a difficult sojourn in the wilderness, he began a ministry that was full of grace and wonder.

If Jesus’ baptism was a fulfillment of both his own human promise as well as the promises of God … how do our lives today fulfill the baptismal promises we made or, in some instances, that others made for us, but we later confirmed? If Jesus’ baptism was the advent of a servant ministry, for what have our baptisms prepared us? What new thing continues to spring forth out of our baptized selves?

This week several of us from Shell Ridge were privileged to sit at the feet of two modern prophets who live out their baptismal promises with extraordinary vigor. Elaine Enns and Ched Myers are two foot-soldiers in the “restorative justice” movement which is a movement based on Jesus’ own clear preference for the gospel of reconciliation and forgiveness instead of the far more common practice of violent retribution. Those of you who were at Peace Camp last summer will remember that Elaine taught a week long elective course on restorative justice. As nearly as I can tell, their every waking moment and every life resource goes into trying to bring the social ethic of Jesus’ own life and practice into the practice of our culture which is so horribly addicted to the things that make for … war and the “descending spiral of violence” of Martin Luther King warned us and which ultimately claimed his own life. Being baptized into Christ for Ched and Elaine means to place their whole lives into the service of the same God who called Jesus into his servant ministry.

Sometimes our servant ministry has widespread, public implications such as the ministry of Ched and Elaine. At yesterday’s Coordinating Council and Ministry Team planning retreat, we played the “forced choice” game as a way of getting to know one another a bit better. You know …

One of the forced choices was: would you rather feed the homeless or would you rather work to end that which causes homelessness. That isn’t exactly how I put it, but that was the intent. Some of us are called and gifted in our baptized lives to work at the roots of the ills that surround us … sort of like John who said “the axe is at the roots”. Others of us are called to give the cup of water, to soothe the wounds, to calm the anxious. Jesus lived out both of these callings in his own life and ministry.

I am thinking of two other baptizees who have, like Jesus and like Ched and Elaine, taken their vows with great seriousness, with great gravity, no matter where it might lead, no matter what it might cost.

Mark and Connie Williams are two people of whom you’ve probably never heard. They’re just regular folk … like us. As Christians, also like us, they have chosen a variety of ways to live out their calling, the servant ministry that is implied by their baptisms. Connie is an educator, but more recently she has become concerned for the least of these in our world, for those who suffer the effects of poverty and oppression. Twice now, she has traveled to Africa as a volunteer missionary so that she can minister face to face with those who were baptized by their own births into lives of hunger and disease. Connie’s husband Mark is a musician and a composer and music educator. He has emerged as a nationally know composer and arranger and chances are that if you played in a middle school band any time in the last fifteen years you would have played several of Mark’s compositions and arrangements. Our choir has even sung one of Mark’s arrangements of “Amazing Grace”.

While Mark and Connie have devoted a part of their energies of loving ministry to far off places, they always knew that their was a closer need that claimed even higher loyalties. Mark and Connie have three wonderful children, but the middle child, a 24 year old son, was diagnosed in the last year with paranoid schizophrenia in addition to being bi-polar. People who suffer these conditions of the mind can be dangerous and unpredictable. Common sense and common wisdom often dictates that these sufferers be institutionalized. But the love of a parent and servant love in the way of Jesus is often guided by instincts that are not easily calculated.

Mark and Connie chose to keep their afflicted son in their lives and in their home no matter the risks he posed. It was a conscious part of the living out of their faith and the vows they had made when the old was drowned and the new was birthed. Which of us could say they were wrong in their ways of compassion? Who would say that Jesus was wrong in his ministry of love?

On Thursday, January 3rd, 10 days ago, Mark and Connie’s son’s illness exploded into a blind, murderous rage that left Mark dead and Connie seriously wounded. Connie is my cousin. I grew up with Connie. Mark and Connie played at Jan’s and my wedding.

Later today I will fly to Spokane to join my grieving family as we gather to ponder the power of compassionate love that holds more regard for the other than itself. Connie told on the phone this week that as Mark’s lungs filled with the blood in which he would ultimately drown, he said to his son, Brian: “Brian, don’t forget that we love you … and we forgive you.”

Forgive us, as we forgive

Forgive us, as we forgive

Forgive us as we forgive each other.*

What is this power of compassionate love that forgives and embraces and holds out hope that love is stronger than death, and that the forgiving and merciful love of God is stronger than hatred, stronger than the vengeful spirit.

If the waters of our baptisms can speak of our servant callings, let us also say that those same waters can be for us in our time of need, waters of healing and hope.

If our baptisms and our faithful witness lead us into times of struggle and conflict, let us live in the assurance that it ends in hope and in healing and in peace.

Sometimes what’s holy is so true
It’s standing right in front of you
There’s nothing you can really do
There’s nothing you can say
Except to humbly take your place
And in every trial that we face
May we somehow find the grace
To live the words we pray:

Forgive us, as we forgive

Forgive us, as we forgive

Forgive us as we for-give each other.*

Amen.

*From “Forgive Us” by John McCutcheon. Greg sang this song during the morning offertory.

Never Cease to Explore

A sermon by Greg Ledbetter preached on Epiphany, Year A
January 6, 2008

Sermon Texts: Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12

Realizing he was lost, a balloonist dropped down to ask directions. "Excuse me, but I'm a little off course," he shouted. "I promised to meet a friend an hour ago. I don't know where I am."

A woman on the ground yelled back, "You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're at exactly 40 degrees, 22 minutes and 21 seconds north latitude and 70 degrees, 30 minutes and 33 seconds west longitude."

"Amazing," the balloonist replied. "You must be an engineer!"

"I am," she replied. "How did you know?"

"Well, everything you told me is technically correct, but I can't use your information. I'm still lost, and you haven't been much help at all. If anything, you've delayed my trip."

The woman thought for a moment, then replied, "You must be in management."

"I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?"

"Well, you don't know where you are or where you're going. You've risen to your position due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. In fact, you're in exactly the same position you were before we met, but somehow it's now my fault." (Source: Jon Carroll/San Francisco Chronicle – December 4, 2007)

This may be the most whimsical Sunday of the year, particularly when Epiphany falls on a Sunday and we get to pull out all of the Epiphany stops. It’s hard to think of a New Testament text that has gathered more curious attention than the story of the wise men from the east. And it’s hard to think of a New Testament story that’s been more spoofed.

And on this Sunday following the Iowa caucuses, one might be tempted to create yet another spoof featuring this haggard group of presidential wannabees questing after the ultimate in dubious prizes. We can at least hope that a few of them are in church this morning and are listening to the reading of the Psalms where the psalmist calls upon the rulers to be just and to embrace those who are usually left out.

We grew up singing: “We three kings …” and found ourselves wondering about the location of “Orientare”. Of course, some spoil-sport scholars (and I’m one) have to go and remind us that Matthew doesn’t note just how many wise men came. As Doug reminded us at our Christmas dinner, it is the number of gifts brought that has helped shaped the popular understanding of “three kings”. And, of course, they’re not kings at all, but seers and visionaries … and very possibly priestly advisers in the court of the rulers of the kingdom from which they’ve come.

The wise men—or the magi, as we’ll call them—show up in Matthew’s version of the birth story which, you’ll recall, bears no resemblance to Luke’s far more familiar version. In Matthew’s birth narrative, Jesus is born with a minimum of fanfare. The angels and shepherds Mary’s magnificat are all a part of Luke’s telling.

The magi are something of a plot device in Matthew’s storytelling. They are in the story, in part, to help point out that Jesus was born “under the radar”. Until they show up, no one seems to have known. King Herod doesn’t know there is a competing ruler growing up nearby until the magi speak of him. The chief priests and scribes know WHERE the child is supposed to be born, but seem to have no knowledge that the blessed event has already occurred.

So … a sign in the heavens was visible, the child was born and growing … and yet, until the wise men from East of Eden came looking, NO ONE SEEMS TO HAVE NOTICED! The wrong people took note of the star and seemed ready to follow this sign to the ends of the earth. And the right people—the seemingly wise and the seemingly powerful—the right people missed it altogether. Well, OK, in Luke’s version, the shepherds took note … but did anyone else? And did the shepherds tell anyone? And would anyone have believed them if they did?

In the mind of Matthew the storyteller, I wonder what it was the magi saw in the heavens that so moved them that they chose to travel to an obscure village in a backwater corner of the Roman empire? Further, what moved these magi, to take expensive gifts and offer their homage to the infant and as yet, unrecognized and uncrowned ruler of a foreign and insignificant people?

As I understand them, I have to think that the magi are like some of the meteor observers that I have known. Told of impending meteor showers, I know people who have repeatedly scanned the skies in vain for that little skyward spark that indicates a bit of space rock racing through earth’s atmosphere. I know people who claim to have NEVER seen a meteor. I imagine the magi as being like my poor, meteor-less friends. The magi are those whose job it is to scan the heavens for glimmers of the divine … for messages from the cosmos … for signs of something other than divine indifference or divine absence. And it’s not hard for me to imagine that these magi have seen —if they were to be completely honest—nothing … simply faked the evidence to keep the ruler happy … and then … and then after all that fruitless searching of the skies, an honest to God sparkle of the divine in the heavens. “This we gotta see …”.

In some scholarly circles, there is speculation that the Jews in exile in Babylon in earlier generations had spoken so compellingly of their God, that hints of that promise such as we heard in Isaiah this morning had lingered in the minds of Babylons high priests, the magi.

And so they mounted their camels … well, OK, no camels in the story either. But get this, on the eve of Epiphany—yesterday—as Jan and I drove the back roads of Merced for reasons completely unrelated to this day or this sermon, I suddenly slammed on the brakes and stared out the window. There in a pasture were three two-humped camels—they’re called Bactrian camels I now know … three camels looking like they were fresh from a re-enactment of the journey of the three kings. I am not making this up. There was also a hissing, grinning llama and an extremely tiny burro, but that’s another Bible story.

Well, by whatever means, the magi left their own land and followed the sparkling and twinkling sign in the sky. Their journey passes through Jerusalem and through the courts of Herod, and finally to Bethlehem where they locate the child. And having found that for which they had journeyed so long, they are overwhelmed with joy, they pay homage to the toddling goodness of God and they spill gifts at his feet. Who knew that foreigners of such suspicious origins could thrill to the hope of the ages? Who knew that the light of the world could shine so brightly in such foreign places? And who knew that God’s own chosen people would miss the signs and miss the wonder of it all. Matthew knows these things; Matthew wishes his readers to know them as well.

Epiphany, this manifestation of God, Epiphany humbly begs of us not to miss the star, not to miss the birth, not to miss the wonder, not to miss the opportunity for overwhelming joy, not to miss the chance to offer our own selves as gifts in service of that child. Epiphany also begs us to stand shoulder to shoulder with any and all who appreciate the birth of love and kindness, goodness and hope into the world and who believe the promises of God that continue to be made manifest. Don’t miss it! Asks Epiphany. And don’t try to go it alone.

You’ll recall that in the opening story the arrogant balloonist explains to the woman on the ground that he is a “little off course”. The truth is, he was not only “off course”, he really had no idea where he was. It’s the western explorer Kit Carson all over again who explained that he wasn’t lost, exactly, he just didn’t know where he was for three weeks.

Situated as it is at the beginning of our calendar year, Epiphany offers us the chance to recognize that we can drift off course, that we can lose our way. It’s a long journey—normally—from the cradle to the grave and there are plenty of ways to drift from the path.

And what is “the path” exactly? It’s a fair question to ask of those who would be modern magi. There are many ways to answer that question, but one poetic way that I think of comes from a song by Rod Romney, a retired Baptist minister and friend. In his song “Bring Us Home” there is a little snippet that sings of coming home “to the truth we are”. The course … the way … the journey … the path: all these, which are unique to each of us, could be simply described as “the truth we are”. I also like Howard Thurman’s take on it: "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

What is the truth of who you are? What makes you come alive? These are hard questions … deep questions. Do you know yourself well enough and have the courage to try to answer these questions?

I get the sense that the encounter in Bethlehem brought the magi alive and that they were never the same. Even the phrase “and they went home by another way” is suggestive of the change that had wrought in them. You get the sense that the magi learned in great measure who they were while kneeling at the feet of Jesus.

What is the truth of who you are? What makes you come alive? We would probably agree that some of life’s significant moments can offer us a chance to reflect on the truth we are. We also know that some of life’s significant moments can FORCE us to reflect on the truth we are.

Health – Too many close friends to name have serious and/or odd ailments which have given them serious pause and shaken up their sense of themselves. How does our health help us reflect on the truth we are?

Retirement – That which had defined you for so long, that which had consumed so much of your time and energy and very being … over. Now what? What next? How does retirement help us reflect on the truth we are?

Aging – Just the other day my dad was reflecting on being nearly 80 … “I won’t be here forever”. Thanks, dad. Or Sue Smith at 102 saying: “I won’t be here forever”. Of course, none of us will be, but as we draw nearer our end, it can give us pause. How does aging help us reflect on the truth we are?

Crisis – I’m thinking, just now, of the crisis of incarceration because two people who are significant in my life, one a friend and one a young relative, are in jail. And having never been incarcerated, I can only imagine the ways you would be forced to consider the truth of yourself while cooling your heels. How do times of deep personal crisis help us reflect on the truth we are?

And in the midst of these challenging life paths that inform the path of our own journey, for those of us who go by the name “Christian”, there is also the path to Jesus. Epiphany invites us to not only stay on the path that is the truth we are, but that a part of the truth we are is bound up in the child whom the magi worshipped. Part of the challenge of this time past Christmas is to continue to seek and to find Christ beyond Bethlehem … on every step and at every turn in this path of our life and faith.

At the risk of quoting every week from our collective supply of refrigerator magnet and bumper sticker wisdom, I would suggest that the phrase “Wise Men Still Seek Him …” while kind of trite and exclusive in its language, still may have a kernel of truth for us. It is to say that the journey in search of one’s self in meaningful relationship to Jesus is a journey well worth taking. The implication of the phrase—which I also have emblazoned on a mug—is that there is a danger that we may stop seeking, stop searching, stop combing the heavens and the earth for signs of God’s continuing incarnation.

There was a special on PBS on brain health the other night. Jan watched the special and I watched Jan watch the special, if that makes any sense. The program spoke of the importance of actively stretching and exercising the brain which, in turn, helps to forge new neural pathways. The brain that is settled and unchallenged, the brain that is “un-seeking” is the brain that atrophies and, ultimately, the body with it. What is scientifically true of the brain is observably true of our journeys, the paths we are on, the truth that we are.

There are many examples of elders in our midst who have demonstrated what I’m talking about. But just now I’m thinking of Jane Bishop. Jane, I continue to marvel at your remarkable engagement with this stage of your life. You have faced loss and many challenges and growing limitations … yet, you refuse to “cease in your exploration” of the truth that you are, to echo the poet T.S. Eliot. Later today, at her request, I will be giving Jane a couple of books from my library because for her the journey of exploration continues. I would suggest that our Sunday night gatherings with Angela and Linda and Terry and our books are also evidence of journeys of exploration, of seeking and finding.

Have any of us ceased in our exploration? Have any of us stopped seeking, stopped searching, stopped combing the heavens and the earth for signs of God’s continuing incarnation?

I think one could argue that an interesting corollary or companion to “Wise ONES still seek him” could be the United Church of Christ slogan: “God is still speaking”. This is to say that God has not stopped seeking us … God has not stopped reaching out for us … God has not stopped wooing us or seeking to speak to us in fresh ways God’s language of love and compassion, including the flowering of love and compassion in the lives of ordinary human beings like you and me.

You know, stars may guide us for a time, but even stars can be obscured by clouds and by daylight. Might we say today that the star is not in the sky but on the ground on two legs. Maybe the star is no longer a heavenly body, but now an ordinary human body that knows the truth it is, that will not cease in its exploration and is willing to seek with all its being to know “the mystery of the ages” revealed in Jesus the Christ.

One of T.S. Eliot’s contemporaries was another poet, W.H. Auden. His wonderful poem “For the time being” graced the back of last Sunday’s bulletin. Reflecting on the sacred journey of the wise ones from the east, Auden reflects also on our journeying:

To discover how to be human now
is the reason we follow this star.

In this season of Epiphany and in the year ahead, I pray that you discover how to be human, that you discover the deepening truth of who you are, that you forge new pathways into the heart of God and that you only cease in your exploration of these things when you cease to be.

Amen.

Goodness Born with a Gasp & Cry

A sermon by Greg Ledbetter preached on the First Sunday after Christmas Day, Year A
December 30, 2007.

Sermon Texts: Isaiah 63:7-9; Hebrews 2:10-18; Matthew 2:13-23
Somewhere in our old boxes of things we have photos and even 8mm videotapes of Christmases past. You know the kinds of photos and videos I’m talking about … everyone in their pajamas … wrapping paper everywhere … the kids looking joyous and energized and the adults rumpled and tired and looking as though a good shot of espresso would help. On-camera, there are usually lots of smiles, plenty of Christmasy show and enthusiasm … items being held up and displayed for whoever it is that will be viewing these visual archives years hence. Off-camera, it can be a different story. The actors in the photos and videos turn down the wattage of their smiles … best behavior is set aside for whatever fits the reality and the moment. Off-camera, the knee-deep wrappings are being carted off to the recycling bin—or carefully folded for re-use as in the home of my childhood. Off-camera, one can begin to assess this day of days … this long-awaited time. Were everyone’s hopes and dreams realized? … the gifts the children begged for? … the family harmony and togetherness that mom or dad prayed for? Did two millennia of singing about “peace on earth and good will among men and women” bring the ancient dream any closer to fruition?

The lead-up to Christmas gets us pretty well-acquainted with the on-camera details of the story of Jesus’ birth as the writers of the gospels of Luke and Matthew describe and/or imagine them. Shepherds … singing angels … mangers … grouchy inn-keepers … stars in the sky and odd-looking and sounding foreigners who follow them.

Perhaps it’s the off-camera realities that hit the holy family so swiftly, so soon after the birth that keep the gospels of John and Mark from caring about trying to describe the cozy scene at all. The un-coziness of the historical realities of the time intrude so quickly that it is only the luxury of later times that allows painters and poets and composers to imaginatively fill in the details that the gospel writers failed to provide.

Christmas Eve, as we drove home, as you likely did also, we drove by many homes that were beautifully lit and decorated. Christmas lights and decorations area like the winter equivalent of summer fireworks displays—it’s nearly impossible to be unmoved by evening the simplest of them. Gorgeous symbolism of the light that is entering the world, the light that is fragile and beautiful. If you’re a true Christmas light observer, you also take note of the outdoor Christmas decorating trends. For years, big, fat energy-sucking colored light bulbs were all we had, and so that’s what we hung on our homes each year. Some families, like Jan’s, went all-out and cut out plywood and painted versions of Santa and the Reindeer … or painted plywood nativity scenes. Then came the mini-bulbs … first in strings … then the strings started blinking and racing around … then came the strings of icicle mini-lights in white or rainbow colored versions. The latest fad in Christmas lawn decorations are these inflatable plastic and nylon snow-globes and back-lit figures. I’m sure you’ve seen them. Perhaps you’ve even seen the inflatable Santa on an inflatable motorcycle. Perhaps, like me, you wonder if this trend in Christmas decorating will last. And what will come next.

On Christmas day, we took a drive and I noted as we drove through the same neighborhoods through which we’d driven the night before that what had been these tightly inflated, lighted displays were now just sloppy piles of wet nylon and plastic in the yards. Such a depressing contrast with the night before.

You may have heard us speak of “ChristmasTIDE” … this is another way of referring to season of Christmas that extends from Christmas Day to Epiphany. These are the “Twelve Days of Christmas." By that reckoning, this is day six. As with the word “-tide” in Christmastide, there are almost tidal qualities to these days … possibly a heightened awareness of the ebb and flow in our lives and in the world around us. The light that is seeking birth in a back and forth struggle with that which would put it out. The same Christmas evening that we drove back home among the now re-inflated yard decor brought news of a tiger attack at the venerable San Francisco zoo. Two days later as Lura was leaving the office, she paused at my door and said, “Oh, and you did hear about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, didn’t you?”

All around us … before and after the joyous season … all around us … before and after the holy birth … the light that is seeking birth is locked in a back and forth struggle with that which would put it out. Goodness that seeks to be born with a gasp and a cry … always fighting the odds … always fighting an uphill battle. Hope in a deadlock struggle with fear. Joy going to the mat with terror.

When I was eight years old, my family and I joined my grandparents from the Central Valley on a summertime trip to San Francisco. One of my memories of that visit was reaffirming the great truth of Mark Twain’s observation that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. We went as a family to Candlestick Park and watched the Giants squeak out a win over the “Bums” … the hated Los Angeles Dodgers. Willie Mays was in center field and Juan Marichal was on the mound. We may have frozen our buns off in the cheap seats, but all was right with the world on that night at Candlestick. The next day we paid a visit to the San Francisco zoo. The father-in-law of my dad’s associate pastor was one of the zookeepers and so I had the kind of access to the zoo that other kids could only dream about. We got to go IN the cages. In particular, I remember getting to go in the ring-tailed lemur cages and feeding these wonderfully exotic mammals. We also got to go amongst the llamas with arms full of hay while they plucked at the hay and our hair and our clothing. It was a dream day at the zoo. It was a day that has become gilded in my memory, a golden day that has made a visit to the zoo a kind of comfy walk down memory lane.

And then the Christmas Day tiger attacks which were awful enough in themselves—this horrific reminder of the danger of sentimentalizing these gorgeous, but lethal beasts of the wild. I have these awful images of the two surviving brothers running back to the zoo café and wondering where in the dark the dangerous beauty was. Would that it had been the lemurs and llamas that had escaped their confinement.

Let me say again: All around us … before and after the joyous season … all around us … before and after the holy birth … the light that is seeking birth is locked in a back and forth struggle with that which would put it out. Goodness that seeks to be born with a gasp and a cry … always fighting the odds … always fighting an uphill battle. Hope in a deadlock struggle with fear. Joy going to the mat with terror.

This is Matthew’s message to us this morning. That the birth of THE child and perhaps the birth of every child is delight mingled with danger. Danger and delight. We’ll recall that this morning’s text follows immediately upon the heels of the visit of the magi whom Matthew describes as wise men from the East. Our singing of the “We Three Kings from Orient Are” may dull us from remembering that Herod the Great sought to manipulate the magi. Herod attempted to trick the magi into leading him and his soldiers to the place of Jesus’ birth so that they could destroy the threatening goodness of God that had been born.

After the visit of the magi, Herod gets wind that it is he that has been tricked … and he is furious. Herod goes into a murderous rage that results in a vast blanket of death being cast over the region where Jesus was expected to have been born. We may remember that the first attempt on Benazir Bhutto’s life killed 140 of her followers. Then and now, such is the tragic cost of being too near perceived greatness. The Roman historian, Josephus, makes no mention of Herod’s “slaughter of the innocents”, but we know from the simplest reading of history that tyrants and despots put no value whatsoever on human life when it comes to maintaining their power and pursuing their ends.

All through the ages
the wise men and sages
have said there are dirty deeds that
simply must be done.

To keep society growin'
and the benefits flowin'
there's a simply necessity
of hurting someone.

It takes strength and agility,
takin' responsibility,
it's the core of what leadership's
really about.

When the red blood starts comin'
just think of it as plumbin' --
if you've got a problem you must
flush it out.

Apparently this is the thinking in Pakistan and in far too many other devastated places and times on this planet.

The foregoing is a song written by Harry Chapin that comes from the delightful and dangerous musical, Cotton Patch Gospel. The song is Herod’s song and later in the song, it is sung against the backdrop of Rachel’s lament from Isaiah whom we heard quoted by Matthew this morning.

'A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.'

Chapin’s song continues:

Rockabye sweet angel, momma is here,

Hushabye sweet baby, there’s nothing to fear.

Close your eyes sweet darling, all through the night.

Momma will hold you tight, ‘til the morning light.

Momma will hold you tight, ‘til the morning light.

All around us … before and after the joyous season … before and after the holy birth … the light that is seeking birth is locked in a struggle with that which would put it out. Goodness that seeks to be born with a gasp and a cry fighting an uphill battle. Hope and joy in a struggle with terror and fear.

How do we emerge from this “joyous season of the holy birth” with its tigers and Herods and Bin Ladens—to say nothing of partly deflated Christmas hopes and family dustups—with our hope intact, with our resolve to continue giving birth in ourselves to the goodness of God?

For Matthew, it is that the same God who haunts our world with visions of Shalom, will habitate our dreams with visions of God’s protective grace. You may remember that Joseph really only gets a good part in the drama of Jesus’ birth in Matthew’s gospel. In this morning’s reading, Joseph plays a key role in protecting his little family from the wrath of Herod. Three times God appears to Joseph in his dreams and three times Joseph heeds God’s message of protective grace assuring that baby Jesus would live to be baptized by John in the river Jordan and live out the adult life that the world has never forgotten. Whether dreaming while sleeping or waking, God’s grace is ALWAYS with us and always WITHIN us.

In recounting the “gracious deeds” and “praiseworthy acts”, Isaiah said that is was in their time of distress that God became their savior:

It was no messenger or angel
but God’s presence that saved them;
in God’s love and pity God redeemed them;
God lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.

Not to get too maudlin, but Isaiah’s words can’t help but remind one of the “Footsteps in the Sand” poem that is stuck on the sides of so many refrigerators. In the poem, the deepened single set of footprints serve as an indication of the times when it was God’s strength alone that carried the struggler.

The author of Hebrews tells us that God’s servant, through whom we have received back our lives, was perfected by his struggles … his sufferings. The baby born to Mary and Joseph was no hermetically sealed seed of humanity protected against the “scuffing up” the rest of us have to endure, but one who was like us “in every respect”. “Because he himself was tested by what he suffered,” the author of Hebrews preaches to us, “he is able to help those who are being tested.”

So here at year’s end and mid-Christmas is where we are and what we have:

• A suffering savior who knows well our suffering.
• Carried safely in God’s arms as one would carry a child.
• Waking and sleeping dreams of God’s protective grace.

It may not be a Currier and Ives engraving with which we’re left with this day, this sixth day of Christmas, but I pray it is enough to lead you into a new year and a new day in your life with hope and resolve … a new year and a new day in your life where the goodness of God’s great love and mercy will be given birth, gasping and crying and thrust into your arms and your being to care for, come what may.

Amen.

No One Left Behind

A sermon by Greg Ledbetter preached on the Third Sunday of Advent, Year A
December 16, 2007

It was well over a year ago that I began to wonder if quilts had anything to say to the season of Advent. Around the time I began my ministry here, I picked up a beautiful little book by Berkeley resident, artist and writer, Sue Bender. I also note, looking at the back cover, that I bought it at “Whole Earth Access” in Berkeley which tells you how long ago it was. Sue Bender’s book is entitled “Plain and Simple: A Woman’s Journey to the Amish”. At its simplest, the book describes how an encounter with an Amish quilt in a Long Island men’s clothing store, of all places, led her on a major journey of discovery and self-discovery.

Bender’s journey was a meandering one that led her, ultimately to a sojourn with two Amish families, “visits during which Bender enters a world without television, telephone, electric light, or refrigerators; a world where clutter and hurry are replaced with inner quiet and calm ritual; a world where a sunny kitchen ‘glows’ and ‘no distinction is made between the sacred and the everyday.”

The book itself is a wonder: simply written, gently paced, full of truthful insights about living our lives more honestly and authentically. The book is to the mind and spirit what a good cup of tea is to the stomach and the soul. I thought of the book because I am forever seeking antidotes to the hyper-kinetic energies of the Christmas season. Christmas in the stores and on the streets seems always to be urging you to “hurry up, hurry up, catch up, stay up.” It is partly a desire for self-preservation that makes me resist those hastening energies. But it is also the counter-weight of the season of Advent which, for me, is the most beautiful and gently solemn of the liturgical seasons. Advent invites us to slow down, step aside, watch, wait & pay very close attention. Where I and we need to be careful is to remember that in the end, Advent is not a season of “self-help”, but a time of sharpening our awareness of God’s great activities of goodness & hope that are not only glimmers on the horizon, but are already at work among us.

So … Advent and Sue Bender’s book “Plain and Simple” and Quilts … what’s the connection? It is that Amish quilts and quilting serve as the thematic thread with which Bender stitches together her thoughts. Bender describes her own life as a crazy quilt—and to that I can relate. But the book more nearly resembles the Amish quilts that first inspired her: thoughtful, subdued, carefully patterned. She writes:

Twenty years ago I walked into Latham's Men's Store in Sag Harbor, New York, and saw old quilts used as a background for men's tweeds. I had never seen quilts like that. Odd color combinations. Deep saturated solid colors: purple, mauve, green, brown, magenta, electric blue, red. Simple geometric forms: squares, diamonds, rectangles. A patina of use emanated from them. They spoke directly to me. They knew something. They went straight to my heart.

It was the quilt of her thoughts in her book that spoke to me and made me think that perhaps quilts and quilting had much to say to us in the beginning of our liturgical, worshipping life together. And, in fact, as we have seen in our Fall stewardship campaign where our theme was “Quilted Together in Community and Common Ministry”, quilts and quilting are richly symbolic and suggestive and have lent themselves marvelously to the thematic flow of this season.

If you have stepped outside in recent days, you’ll know that there is a new chill to the air that the ever-shortening days and lengthening nights have brought. We are now only five days away from the winter solstice on December 21st, but winter’s chill is only starting. Looking at the thermometer and the trees being whipped by a frigid wind the other day, I remarked to Jan they were conditions sure to deepen the misery of anyone who was already homeless. And homelessness is only one of many ways that human beings can feel naked and exposed.

Maybe you’ll remember that amazing poetic cry from the pen of William Shakespeare put on the lips of King Lear who says:

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these?

When King Lear bellows into a storm about the “poor naked wretches”, it is not just the tumultuous weather on the heath to which he is referring. It is the whole stormy human condition with all its threats and endangerments, the indignities and humiliations, the losses and injuries and defeats. It is the cancer ward and the lethal danger of inner city streets … it’s the darkness of depression and every damnable war ever fought … it is the accidents that befall us and enormity of nature’s wrath that can undo and unglue us. “Oh the weather outside is frightful …” and inside it can often be no better and it’s sometimes all we can manage to huddle for a bit of warmth and commiseration.

On Friday, I stood and spoke in front of about a hundred people in a beautiful jeweled box of a building in San Francisco. All in that place were there because in the past year they had lost a loved one. That’s a lot of loss all gathered into one place. For the second year running, I had been asked by the Neptune Society of San Francisco to lead a service of remembrance for those whom they had served in the previous year. And there were a lot of tears that flowed in that place and in that hour—including my own. And in that time and place, we who were strangers to one another, were not only bound together in common grief, but served in an odd way as a comforting blanket warding off the chill of our losses.

Looking around the Neptune Society columbarium, it’s clear that we’re not the only ones who are thinking of quilts this year. Surrounding the mourners in a “clothy” and comforting embrace were four enormous panels of the national AIDS quilt. In between songs by the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus—some of whose former members were memorialized on the quilts, I led us on a path that tried to lead from loss to hope. And though I did not speak of it—it was not yet the time, I had a conscious end in mind, a conscious vision toward which I tried to direct us. As I had mentioned in our own service two weeks ago, I alluded to the stages of grief as described by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. I read the words of poetry written by Peter McWilliams that were evoked by Kubler-Ross’ descriptions. Kubler-Ross’ stages end with “acceptance”, the sense that the griever has healed enough to feel ready to face whatever comes next. But McWilliam’s poetry adds a stage past acceptance, and that is “HOPE”. That was last week’s advent theme and candle you’ll recall. McWilliams says of HOPE:

And through all the tears
and the sadness
and the pain
comes the one thought
that can make me
internally smile again:
I have
loved.

Speaking to the mourners in the columbarium, I said that if one stays faithful to the path of healing, that past hope there may be even one stage more: JOY. That what begins in denial, anger, bargaining and depression can end in acceptance, hope and JOY.

And the vision I had in mind was based in this morning’s words from Isaiah 35. Isaiah’s vision is so bright, so sparkling, so joyous that they did not feel like quite the right words to speak to feelings so raw. But my hope and prayer is that the time of remembrance contained hints and glimpses of that vision so that when ready, those mourners would seek the vision and its fulfillment—in their lives and, perhaps ultimately, in the world around them.

And my hope and prayer is that our observance of Advent, though muted and solemn, will contains seeds of hope and joy that when planted faithfully in the chilled winter soil of our souls and our world will, in the warmth of spring, give rise to new seedlings of hope and joy and fruitfulness.

Such is the power of Isaiah’s joyful vision that it was to Israel in exile in their loop'd and window'd raggedness like a warm coat, a good meal, a soft bed covered with a thick quilt. If words could be food, nourishing and warm, Isaiah’s joyful vision of the coming of God that brought life to the wilderness and health to the people gave the people in exile new hope and new strength—hope and strength for the journey home they would soon be taking.

Isaiah 35:1-10

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,
and rejoice with joy and singing.
The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,
the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
They shall see the glory of the Lord,
the majesty of our God.

Strengthen the weak hands,
and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
'Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God.
He will come with vengeance,
with terrible recompense.
He will come and save you.'

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;
the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water;
the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp,
the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

A highway shall be there,
and it shall be called the Holy Way;
the unclean shall not travel on it,
but it shall be for God’s people;
no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.
No lion shall be there,
nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it;
they shall not be found there,
but the redeemed shall walk there.
And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Part of the incredible beauty of Isaiah’s vision is that no one has to wonder if the “good news” of the vision includes them. “What about me?” In Isaiah’s vision, when God comes to save, NO ONE GETS LEFT BEHIND. The weak and strong, the able and the challenged, the fearful and the confident—all shall partake in the God’s enactment of healing and homecoming.

Homecoming … Restoration … Healing … Joy … for ALL PEOPLE. Kindling a passion for these things is our Advent work … our Advent duty. Choosing to live by Isaiah’s vision is where Advent leads and guides us. Allowing our imaginations to grow ever more inclusive and ever more restorative and ever more equitable is a part of shaping our minds and hearts of faith in the Advent time of watching and preparing.

It’s a glorious vision AND … it’s a HIGH VISION. It’s a high vision in that it sets the bar to a lofty height of what everyone ought to have a right to expect in life and in this world. Once you hear this and others of Isaiah’s visions, you’re not to be faulted if you think to yourself—or even say out loud—this is the way it should always be … this is the way it should be for ALL people.

This week the general secretary of our American Baptist churches, Roy Medley, sent out an e-mail drawing our attention to an Op-Ed piece written by Jimmy Carter that appeared in last Monday’s Washington Post. Carter suggests, in his editorial, that certain amendments are critically needed to the 1933 Farm Bill so as to correct some horrific imbalances and injustices that affect small farmers with such dire consequences both at home and abroad. I sense hints of Isaiah’s vision in Carter’s words.

Isaiah’s vision has to do with justice and fairness and equitable distribution … it has to do with an end to oppression and violence and politics of fear … it has to do with a place at the table for all that no one has to earn--that all deserve by simply existing … it has to do with a time where all our human energies, joined with divine wisdom, come together to create all the healing and hope that is possible for those afflicted with mysterious and debilitating illness.

How are we choosing to live by Isaiah’s vision? In Advent, we are invited to wait and watch for God’s patient activity of homecoming, restoration, healing and joy on behalf of all people—and then to encourage and join that activity with all our hearts, minds and souls. The coming of God signals a time when NONE WILL BE LEFT BEHIND.

Just now I am thinking of a former member of Shell Ridge, Andrea Allmon. When I first met Andrea, she had been worshipping for two years or so in a Presbyterian church, hoping against hope that she would be accepted just as she was. Then came “the sermon” … the pronouncement from the pulpit bashing the love that dare not speak its name … and with the pronouncement, Andrea knew that she was not fully welcome and her heart and her hopes sank. The next week she found herself at Shell Ridge, though we hadn’t yet taken our new name. And after worship she pinned me down about having a cup of coffee, and by the way she asked for that time, I knew it wasn’t the coffee she was most interested in. If you remember Andrea, you know she can cut right to the chase. “I’m gay!” she said. “Will you and the people at the church accept me or reject me?”

How are we choosing to live by Isaiah’s vision? The full vision and not just the parts we can live with. I told Andrea that I would accept her and that many in the church would accept her, but that I could not speak for all. In time we accepted Andrea into our membership—and in time, there was a small exodus, sadly, of a fashion of church friends who lived by different visions.

About a year ago, a small minister’s support group to which I belong traveled to the new DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park. Our group is not only a place of mutual support, but we are also gathered by our common interest in the art of worship. And it’s hard to discuss the art of worship without ultimately coming ‘round to art itself. There was a rather singular kind of artwork on display at the museum that we had gone to see. On display were some 70 of the quilts of Gee’s Bend, last weeks featured quilts. And if you remember last week’s bulletin cover, you’ll remember that Gee’s Bends are quite different than the extreme mathematical precision of today’s Amish quilts. Gee’s Bend quilts are pieced together from whatever is lying around … nothing … NOTHING goes to waste. And it seems to me that this is one of the implicit messages of quilting: “No scrap is unusable … there is a place for each and for all.” It’s Isaiah’s vision all over again.

Whether we are lobbying congress to make laws that are fair and equitable for all … or … if we are making our way to dark and difficult places seeking to breathe a new word of hope and healing … or … if we are simply creating a new place at the table for one whose simple existence makes them worthy—we are choosing to live by Isaiah’s vision which is coming to pass in small, but noteworthy ways.

Those who lived in the time of Jesus saw in him, unmistakable signs of the flowering of Isaiah’s vision. And as always, Jesus’ claims for himself were modest … understated. One of this morning’s lections that we did not read this morning, tells of John the Baptist, the one who was to prepare the way, wondering from afar about this Jesus … and the stories that were coming to him. Matthew’s gospel says:

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.’

If we are and if others are choosing to live by Isaiah’s vision, what will the world around us hear and what will they see? If they hear and see what the disciples of John could see so plainly in the work and ministry of Jesus, then you and I might not fault them if, with no irony at all intended, they begin to whistle or sing: “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.”

Advent, as I hope you can see, is not a bland lead-in to Christmas, but a robust time of preparing and visioning and, ultimately, acting. If we can ever speak about “Christmas faith” as some do, then it will be a Christmas faith rooted and grounded in the faith and the visions of Advent. The faith and visions of Advent have always been rooted and grounded in the expansive and hopeful visions of Isaiah. And more than one latter day Isaiah has reached back to the old prophet when seeking strength for current challenges.

On December 10, 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr., a 35 year old African American--and American Baptist!--preacher, was awarded the Alfred Nobel Peace Prize in Stockholm, Sweden. Near the end of King’s acceptance speech, he spoke of the faith that moved him that was rooted in Isaiah’s vision of a world at peace with justice. King said:

This faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.

Isaiah couldn’t have said it better himself.

Amen.

Stewards of Self & Substance

A Sermon by Greg Ledbetter preached on November 11, 2007
24th Sunday after Pentecost/Year C

Sermon Text: Psalm 145

What is it that would cause you to break spontaneously into song? Are you like that at all? Have you ever camped in the mountains and woken up just as the sun is beginning to paint the sky and the surrounding peaks and you crawl from your tent, stand straight, fill your lungs with pure mountain air and channeling Gordon MacRae, you suddenly belt out: “Oh what a beautiful morning, Oh what a beautiful day …”.

A beautiful fall morning can inspire as well … and if not a song, exactly, coming face to face suddenly with a spectacular blaze of crimson and orange and yellow can set everything inside of me a-jangling. Jan and I like to stroll with the dogs in a nearby park where crepe myrtles and scarlet maples put on a display that can leave us literally stammering.

One of our number here sent my family and me a seasonal greeting card the other day … inside was a handwritten note in the card that described the view from her living room window. The writer of the note exulted over the way the sun was lighting up the lower branches of a fall-colored Raywood ash … “red, gold, green, and orange shades of leaves with pots of chrysanthemums below reflecting all the same colors as the ash. “It is really NEAT!” said the writer of the note. “That is how I also praise God and feel so blessed to live here.”

Perhaps latent within us all is the impulse to praise God for the beauty of creation … mountain mornings, sunsets at the ocean, the unique beauty of changing seasons … the impulse to spontaneously voice our thanks links us to the psalmists whose great prayers of thanksgiving and praise have moved people of like heart and mind and spirit for thousands of years.
Psalm 148: Is a psalm of praise for God’s Universal Glory

1Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord from the heavens;
praise God in the heights!
2Praise God, all God’s angels;
praise God, all God’s host!

3Praise God, sun and moon;
praise God, all you shining stars!
4Praise God, you highest heavens,
and you waters above the heavens!

7Praise the Lord from the earth,
you sea monsters and all deeps,
8fire and hail, snow and frost,
stormy wind fulfilling God’s command!

9Mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars!
10Wild animals and all cattle,
creeping things and flying birds!

11Kings of the earth and all peoples,
princes and all rulers of the earth!
12Young men and women alike,
old and young together!

13Let them praise the name of the Lord,
for God’s name alone is exalted;
God’s glory is above earth and heaven.
14God has raised up a horn for God’s people,
praise for all God’s faithful,
for the people of Israel who are close to God.
Praise the Lord!

The psalmists were the praying, singing poets and composers of sacred verse and song in the worship of Ancient Israel. Onto parchments and skins they would scratch out the words that would guide the congregation of old in their worship of God.

When we worshiped at Congregation B’nai Tikvah recently and shared in their musical Shabbat, it felt to me closer to how I imagine the worship of Israel was in the time of the psalmists … closer certainly than the propensity of modern Christian worshipers to praise God with loud clanging electric guitars and PowerPoint. To be fair, there are Jewish congregations who also employ all the modern gadgetry in their worship … Christians do not have the corner on liturgical “kitchiness”.

There is a snippet from traditional Christian liturgies that is calling to me, just now … a snippet that many of you grew up praying every week, every time you worshiped. Just saying the opening words will trigger an automatic response in many of us. But as you respond in a moment, be especially mindful of the third phrase … the third response. And emphasize, if you can, the third word of that third phrase. I think you’ll understand when you get there:

The Lord be with you // and also with you.

Lift up your hearts. // We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God // It is right to give God thanks and praise.

It is indeed right and good to give you thanks and praise, almighty God … continues the familiar Eucharistic prayer.

This is entirely consistent with the praying sentiments of the psalmists … it is RIGHT and GOOD to give God thanks and praise. The psalms of praise exhort the people of God to give thanks to God, to sing praise to God, to bless God’s holy name.

It’s a little bit like Halloween where candy-laden fairy-princesses and pirates and ghouls traipse up the walk, offer you the choice of their trick or your treat … and then, on the occasions that they silently turn away from your door there is often a voice that speaks from the surrounding darkness:“Don’t forget to say ‘thank you’.” At which the little ghoul turns back and says: “Thank you!”.

It is indeed right and good to give almighty God thanks and praise.

Of all the things that moved the psalmists to voice their praise, it was, perhaps, God’s very goodness and God’s activity within history that moved them most of all. Praise for God’s mighty acts and God’s mighty works was at the heart of Israel’s praise of God. Israel understood God to be profoundly intermingled with human history and Israel’s history, profoundly intermingled with the doings of creation that God so deeply loved.

To sing praise to God’s mighty works and mighty deeds was to acknowledge God’s loving activity that ranged from the outer reaches of the cosmos to the inner reaches of every heart.

This joyful psalm that we sang together this morning praises God’s reign over the world. God has created a world of wonder and acted powerfully to save Israel. The psalmist says that faithful people declare to the next generation the wonderful works of God. The God of creation and history is a God of justice, hearing the cry of those who are oppressed and saving them. God watches over all. It is not only Israel who will be saved, but “all flesh” will come to know God’s greatness. This is the God who we follow as disciples, working to bring about God’s reign of justice and peace.

There is, in the psalms, a profound linkage between the “praise-worthiness” of God and God’s fiercely loving pro-activity on behalf of the weak and the poor and the oppressed. Those who would presume to offer their praise to God OR to lead God’s people in praising God would do well to remember this linkage, to remember, God’s bias on behalf of those denied access to the earth’s bountiful table of provision as our friend Ken Sehested has put it in our hearing so many times.

But … is it possible to praise God too much? Or to praise God wrongly? Is it possible for our praise—our worship—to become a hindrance to our wider responsibilities as God’s children and disciples of Jesus?

Apparently old prophet Amos thought so. To hear Amos describe the liturgical landscape of his day, you get the sense that the worship of Israel had pretty much reached its zenith. The simple spontaneous praise of God and God’s good works had evolved into a whole minor industry of worship … it’s kind of like some of these made for TV worship services that you can stumble across when channel-surfing. If only you could channel the preacher’s allowance for clothing, jewelry and hair-gel into a charitable cause.

Amos’ feelings about the worship of Israel as he observed and experienced it could be described as “less than charitable”.

Amos says:

21I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
22Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
23Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
24But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

And reading the gospels you get the sense that Jesus is no less critical of Israel’s worship industry in his day, turning over the money changers tables and driving the worship merchants from the temple.

The prophet Amos speaks so loudly, so stridently that reverberations of his ancient prophetic tirade can still be heard today. And it serves as a reminder that prayer and praise separated from compassionate activity and pursuit of justice obstructs God’s work and thwarts God’s intentions for the human family.

Of all the sermons preached on the subject, I’m not aware of any more powerful than that preached by Isaiah, the prophet. In the 58th chapter, the prophet distinguishes between false and true worship.

Isaiah 58: False and True Worship

58Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
2Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practised righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgements,
they delight to draw near to God.
3‘Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?’
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast-day,
and oppress all your workers.
4Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
5Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?

6Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
7Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
8Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator* shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.
9Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
10if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
11The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
12Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.


13If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,
from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
if you call the sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the Lord honourable;
if you honour it, not going your own ways,
serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;*
14then you shall take delight in the Lord,
and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

[Preacher’s note: “At this point, I spoke away from the script for several minutes about two modern figures who are living out Isaiah’s vision: Dr. Paul Farmer (featured in Tracy Kidder’s “Mountains Beyond Mountains”) and Greg Mortenson (in his own account, “Three Cups of Tea”)].

CONCLUSION:

People of Shell Ridge Church: If, upon, rising, we are moved to sing “Oh what a beautiful morning …”, let us likewise be moved to labor on behalf of those who awake to hunger … to violence … to oppressive conditions … to despair … to war.

If, when we gather to worship, we are moved while singing “How Great Thou Art” and “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”, let us ground our praise and ground our adoration of God in re-committing ourselves to serve God’s creation, God’s family, our neighbors and friends throughout this good earth.

In the Stewardship of our selves and our substance, our persons and our plenty, and in the larger scheme of life, witness, worship and work: there is no higher praise to God that we can offer than the nearly wordless praise of:
loving … giving … and serving.

Amen.

Stewards of Grace

A sermon by Greg Ledbetter preached on November 4, 2007
23rd Sunday after Pentecost/Year C

Sermon Text: Luke 19:1-10

What is it that drives a person up a tree?

For Stephen Sillett, it was the chance to prove that the tree he was currently in was the world’s tallest. Stephen Sillett is a botanist at Humboldt State University in Arcata. Last year on the northern California coast, Sillett climbed a coastal redwood recently named “Hyperion” and proved that it was the tallest tree yet known to exist at 379.1 feet. On an earlier climb in another 300+ footer, Stillett fell from a height of around 28 stories and only saved himself by grabbing a branch on his way down. His shoulder was painfully ripped from its socket, but his grip held and he was saved.

What drove Julia Butterfly Hill to climb a 180 foot, 600 year old Redwood and not return to the earth for 738 days was a desire to prevent the Pacific Lumber Company from cutting down this old-growth giant. It is the same desire, as I understand, expressed by the tree-sitters who, even now, are perched outside the stadium on the Cal campus in Berkeley.

For any young girl or boy, it doesn’t take a noble cause to send you skyward. Just ask any one of a number of Shell Ridge kids who just can’t seem to stay out of our Sycamores.

When I was a young boy growing up in Port Angeles, Washington, there was an old Atlas Cedar across the street. We would ride our bikes and play with our matchbox cars in the dirt at its base. But sometimes when I was alone, I would climb the old tree’s branches almost like you would climb a ladder. Some 50-60 feet in the air where the top thinned out and swayed in the breeze I would perch and look out over our town. Had my mom known that from time to time I ascended to the wobbly top of this old tree, this mild-mannered pastor’s wife might have become prone to violence. There are some things your parents are better off not knowing. And there is something about climbing a tree for clearing your head or changing your perspective.

So what drove Zacchaeus up the sycamore tree as the author of Luke’s gospel tells it? This is one of the most familiar stories in the Bible for those of us who grew up going to Sunday school. Possibly it is because someone turned it into that snappy little song of which the Ramblers earlier reminded us: “Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he …”.

You know, as I try to shape a mental image of Zacchaeus, it’s not hard for me to imagine that a similar song was sung tauntingly and disparagingly about the once diminutive boy and now diminutive man. What is it about human beings that makes us want to exploit the perceived weaknesses of others? Zacchaeus’ vertically challenged condition was well-known enough that Luke notes that it is what drove Zacchaeus to climb that sycamore tree.

And isn’t it just like Luke’s gospel that all the wrong people seem drawn to Jesus. All the wrong people seem to “get” Jesus while all the right people fight him all the way to the cross. Zacchaeus is one of the “wrong people”. And it’s not his short stature that is what’s wrong in the sight of the good, respectable folk … it’s that he’s short on scruples and short on compassion and short on anything that makes a good person “good”. He’s the chief tax collector and as such had made himself rich on what he has forcibly extracted from residents of Jericho on behalf of the hated Roman government. If Zacchaeus had been wronged as a child, he made it up in spades as an adult.

He’s a bit of a Richard Nixon character. When Nixon lost to Pat Brown in the California governor’s race in 1962, he purportedly withdrew from politics and blamed the media for his loss saying: “You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more …”. When people start talking about themselves in the third person, it’s time to get worried.

Zacchaeus knows what it’s like to be kicked around. And while he’s had some measure of revenge, so it seems, something about Jesus drove him to want to get closer and have a look at this man that some were claiming to be a fulfillment of God’s promise to send a messiah, God’s representative on earth. If Jesus really did represent the goodness and mercy of the God of Israel, Zacchaeus wanted to see it for himself.

While Zacchaeus had long been judged by what people thought they knew about him, his tree-climbing reveals that there was more to know. And presumably “the more” that there was to know was that this heartless thug yet had the capacity to change … to transform … to discover a capacity for generosity and kindness.

As children we are warned not to pre-judge … not to judge a book by its exterior, yet on the other hand, paradoxically, we’re told—warned— that “we never get a second chance to make a good first impression”, that the initial seconds of every first meeting create an indelible image of a person that is almost impossible to erase. It’s possible to spend much of one’s adult life trying to outlive the old and often false myths of one’s childhood … the names we got called, the caricatures of our true selves that we got saddled with. Some of us have fled our families of upbringing because of our families’ refusal to let us change, develop, transform and their determination to tell the old stories of childhood as though they still define us. As odd as it seems for the son of a pastor who is himself a pastor to say it, this is in part my own story.

What did the good people of Jericho think they knew about Zacchaeus? Bad man. Cheater. Collaborator. Opportunist. Clear case of Napoleon complex. A neat little box. And it serves people’s own ends … their own needs to keep others in little boxes. As long as “bad people” behave like “bad people”, then perhaps the extremely modest goodness that I am capable of won’t seem quite so modest. This is partly what’s at stake in the story of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in the previous chapter of Luke who are both everheard praying at the temple. Here’s how Eugene Peterson describes the two prayers and their pray-ers in his translation, “The Message”:

The Pharisee posed and prayed like this: 'Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, crooks, adulterers, or, heaven forbid, like this tax man. I fast twice a week and tithe on all my income.' "Meanwhile the tax man, slumped in the shadows, his face in his hands, not daring to look up, said, 'God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner.'"

Do you not find it interesting to note that Jesus said that is was the tax man and NOT the Pharisee who went home made right with God? Luke tells us that Jesus told this story to “some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people.”

Last night, several of us from Shell Ridge attended a celebration at San Leandro Community Church. We celebrated together the widening circle of inclusion on behalf of our lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgendered sisters and brothers in Christ. But reading the ancient and awful prayer of the Pharisee should remind us that widening circles of inclusion don’t likely happen easily or overnight.

Last night, my longtime and very dear friend and colleague, Jim Hopkins told a story I’d never heard before. During his admission into seminary, Jim was asked if there was anything that might ever cause him to ever leave the ministry in the American Baptist denomination. Jim quickly and confidently replied that if ever the denomination permitted homosexuals to assume pastoral leadership, that would be the time for his exit. This story was told in the midst of his description of his long, full circle of healing from the homophobia with which he’d been raised. He described how his parents had left the Southern Baptist church of his childhood because the Southern Baptists had just gotten “too liberal.” If you don’t know it, Jim has pastored for 18 years the congregation that has helped lead the healing of homophobia and helped widen the circle of inclusion for LBGT folk for a couple of generations. It is the congregation where I received my pastoral training. It is the congregation that aided in my own healing from homophobia.

I learned something else last night. George Barna is the leading pollster on behalf of Evangelical Christianity, in other words, on behalf of fairly traditional and conservative Christianity. He’s the Southern Baptist equivalent of the Gallup Poll. In a recent poll whose results have just been released, Barna asked both churched and un-churched young adults to describe in a single phrase what it was that summed up Christianity. A single phrase. Churches like us take a crack at that from time to time. We say about ourselves things like: “friendly … caring … welcoming … peacemaking … justice-seeking” … inclusive … any others? _____________________???

So, a large sampling of young adults from age 16-29, both self-described non-Christians as well as avowed churchgoers, were asked: “In a word, what describes Christianity?” 91% of the non-Christians and 80% of the regular church-goers, the Christians, said