Freaky Jesus Dude; a sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent

Mark 1:1-8

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

2 As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,

‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
   who will prepare your way;
³ the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
   “Prepare the way of the Lord,
   make his paths straight” ’, 

⁴John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. ⁵And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁶Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. ⁷He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. ⁸I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
   be acceptable to you,
   O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

When I was in high school, things were rad.

Mrs. Barth is sick and we have a sub? Rad.

The choir is going to Orlando for competition this year? Rad.

The Reebok Pumps I wasn’t cool enough to get until some neighbor kid outgrew them? Stinky, but rad.

Should anybody ask what rad meant, I knew exactly. It meant radical. Like, gnarly. Need to hear it in adult lingo? Way cool.

Should anybody ask me what radical meant, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have said. So when I started hearing the term in reference to people doing out-of-the-ordinary things, things that pushed the envelope of normalcy, I had to wrap my head around the fact that what I understood as radical was, in fact, something completely different from what the word actually meant.

And let me point out, as a footnote, that this is a serious problem we have in our culture. And I’m not just referring to the tendency of young persons to make up or co-opt words to help differentiate them from adults. That is a relatively innocent form of the rebellion that young persons do and ought to experience on their way to adulthood.

I’m referring to our tendency, as responsible adults, to use language completely absent of comprehension. We take words we hear from somewhere, or ideas we hear from somewhere, and we insert them into our everyday conversation with absolutely no understanding of what the words or ideas really mean or entail.

Now, I know we can’t just understand everything about a word or idea the moment we hear it; and I’m aware that there is always something else to learn about any word or idea; but seriously, folks, can’t we try to be a little more responsible with our language?

As an example to take us out of our footnote, how many of us have held God responsible for something that has happened to us? How many of us have observed that something has gone wrong in our lives, that we’re struggling with something, and we’ve claimed the idea that “God is testing me”?

Let’s be very careful about the kind of power we assume God wields. Let’s not underestimate the effect of God-given free will in creation. Let’s not underestimate the power of people to harm us, the power of disease, of systemic sin in our corporate and governmental structures.

Claiming that God is testing us every time something throws us off our game doesn’t make us better Christians. It just makes us naive.

What makes us better Christians is following Christ.

That’s it.

And what makes us better at following Christ is following Christ.

Some cycles are vicious. Christianity is a cycle that’s blessed.

Following Christ makes us better Christ-followers.

But following Christ makes us weird. Because the world calls us to blame and to hold grudges and to hoard, while Christ calls us to love and to forgive and to bless. Following Christ makes us bizarre, makes us outcasts, even in the Church, even among family and friends.

Because following Christ makes us radical.

Being rad is never cool. I should have known better. I should’ve stopped and studied the word I was using.

Being radical is exactly uncool. It doesn’t make us wealthy or powerful or even respected. Being radical for Christ means being one of those Freaky Jesus Dudes; standing out for the sake of love, stopping for a stranger whom even the “righteous” won’t touch, speaking for truth even when all the world - even when all the Church claims it’s wrong.

Being radical won’t make us look like the rest of the Church. It’ll stand in the face of conservatives and fundamentalists and liberals and progressives alike, proclaiming a Christ that even most Christians aren’t willing to accept. Because most Christians just want to be comfortable. They just want salvation and a La-Z-Boy. They just want enough, even though enough is never enough.

Being radical says, if I have enough, then I need to share. If I have love, I need to love. If I have power, then I need to lift up my sister. If I have a hand, I need to hold a hand. If I have a voice, I need to comfort my brother. If I have eyes, I need to look for somebody who needs a hand up. If I have Christ, then it would be blasphemy for me not to be Christ for the world!

Rad.

Do you want to be fed today? Then come to the table and accept better food than any foolish words I can offer. Come to the table and accept Christ who demands freaky Jesus-ness out of you. Come to the table and become a radical for Christ.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

On Christmas Cards and Traditions

Steve Inskeep shared a story this morning about a woman who had sent contraband-laden, hollowed-out Bibles to prison inmates recently. The linked story neglects Inskeep's closing remark that the "silver lining" of the story is that someone is actually still using the U.S. Postal Service.

I was thinking about that problem last night as Karoline and I stuffed photograph-embedded Christmas cards with a year-review letter and change-of-address card. It would seem that fewer and fewer people are actually sending Christmas cards. Part of me wanted to point to the tight economic situation in which we seem to find ourselves, but another part of me immediately thought: Where on earth did the tradition of sending Christmas cards come from?

Did Jesus send out Christmas cards?

My first guess was that the tradition of sending out Christmas cards was probably about as old as Bing Crosby's collection of Christmas films, which would seem to be about the time that Christmas begins the trend that leads today to most retailers celebrating the season almost a full two months earlier than the twelve-day Christmas season actually occurs.

I seem to have been wrong.

Wikipedia points out that the tradition began a full century earlier than I had expected, which makes me wonder if our commercializing of the season, in fact, started a lot earlier than I had expected, as well. I suspect that I have been wrong about that, too.

I suppose that our changing traditions have a much longer history than most of us usually realize. That doesn't make them more or less meaningful or appropriate, of course; longer traditions are simply easier to hold and harder to relinquish.

I'm not sure I have any epiphany to offer in reflecting on this post. It's just something I've been thinking about. What are your traditions? What is your take on tradition?

Monday Morning: Getting Organized

Barring emergencies, this will be a short week, which means that I'm spending this morning trying to cram as much organization and production in as possible. Folk who wander into my office will probably observe that organization isn't my strong suit, since my desk is littered with boxes, hymnals, USB cables, stoles, a gob of papers, and the detritus of the processes of homiletics and ordering churches.

And, to a degree, it's true: I'm disorganized. But mostly, I have a tendency to leave projects open. I have enough self-awareness to realize that I'm more comfortable with questions than answers; with projects open to change than with finalized products. So when I write a sermon, and even when I post it online, I leave open all the texts with which I've been working. I leave room for edition.

That does not, unfortunately, make me really good at meeting deadlines. I'm rather a fan of an observation made by the late Douglas Adams: "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

But I am aware that in leaving projects and ideas open to change, I am in good company: our Creator is still working on us. I thank God for that, because I'd hate to think that I'm a finished product right now. There's a lot of me that's sub-par. I am thankful (and not just because it's Thanksgiving week) that the One who breathed life into me is still inspiring me today. I am thankful that Christ doesn't expect perfection out of me, but that the Spirit will work through me in spite of, and probably because of all my own brokenness. For today, as I'm facing a two- or maybe three-day work week, that is good news.

Laundry on the Sabbath

In a household of three children and two adults, every day probably should be laundry day. That doesn't happen, of course, and I tend to feel pretty guilty about not getting it done. But today I claim as Sabbath, a break from church work, per se. And even though I look out the front window of the house and see our downtown church across the street, I covenant to myself to stay out of the building and do something different, to step away from that particular kind of business.

Sabbath is about rest, yes. But that doesn't have to mean sitting around and watching reruns of Doctor Who. Part of refreshing the spirit is getting myself into a place in which I can be more comfortable living each day, and not having baskets full of dirty laundry, or baskets full of clean laundry that hasn't gotten folded and put away for weeks, is part of getting myself into that place.

So I claim this Sabbath as laundry day, and I celebrate that God gives me mundane things to do that bring me closer to peace in Christ.

What do you do to Sabbath?

The Pauper Is the King: a sermon for Christ the King Sunday, 2011

Matthew 25:31-46

31 ‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. ³²All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, ³³and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. ³⁴Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; ³⁵for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” ³⁷Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? ³⁸And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? ³⁹And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” ⁴⁰And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” ⁴¹Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; ⁴²for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ⁴³I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” ⁴⁴Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” ⁴⁵Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” ⁴⁶And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’ 

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
   be acceptable to you,
   O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

In 2008 I travelled with a Holston Confernce mission team to the city of Yei in the south of what was then Sudan. I’d been overseas before, but it was my first experience in mission overseas, and my first experience in what we generally call a third-world country.

Mentally, I knew what to expect. I had just come out of three years’ seminary work in a school almost as heavily focused on ministry with the poor as it is on theological training. In fact, I have a hard time differentiating between good theology and ministry with the poor. They go hand-in-hand.

So when I went to the Sudan, I had an idea what to expect. And the team had been trained before we left, and we had spoken with several people who had been to Sudan, and one Sudanese student who was currently studying in the States.

And the journey to Sudan was rather gradual, or rather was graduated. We flew first to Amsterdam, where people rushed from terminal to terminal talking in any number of languages that made us begin to feel like outsiders, strangers in a strange land. But we found our way around because signage was printed in English and Dutch, and announcements made over the intercom always included translations into English.

Add to that the phenomenon that international travelers, to my observation, seem to be either from America or have experience with American customs.

So it was just a little odd spending time in Amsterdam between flights.

The next took us far south to Uganda. We landed at Entebbe International Airport. International. Now, how many of us have been to an international airport? Like Detroit-Warren, or Hartsfield Atlanta, or J.F.K.? What would you say about them? They’re busy, right? And big. Really big.

That’s what I think of when I hear the term, “international airport”. But Entebbe isn’t that. Entebbe is a little bigger than Tri-Cities. Maybe about the size of McGhee-Tyson in Alcoa.

That was probably my first “Oh, I didn’t expect that” moment.

We stayed in the capital of Uganda, Kampala, which is within reasonable driving distance of Entebbe on paved roads. We were in one of the nicer hotels in town. We visited the East Africa Conference office, which is a house, maybe the size of most houses around here, surrounded by a concrete and brick wall with a couple lines of razor wire mounted above.

Now, what does the presence of razor wire say about a place?

That was probably my second “Oh, I didn’t expect that” moment.

We left Uganda in what most of us would consider a puddle-jumper of a plane. I think it held twenty of us, so the mission team was almost all the passenger capacity. The landscape below us was shrub and grass, dotted with occasional thatched roofs and divided by occasional winding rivers.

I didn’t see the Yei airport as we approached, but I watched as trees and shrubs grew larger and larger until suddenly we were sliding down a dirt path with grass whipping just off the wingtips.

Dirt. The runway is dirt. No pavement, no concrete. Dirt.

Oh. I didn’t expect that.

We debarked and I looked around for an airport, or a luggage truck.

There was a building made of cinder block. It was smaller than our house.

Dirt runway. I should have expected the airport to be something like that.

We got into Land Rovers with big plastic pipes coming out of the engine just in front of the window. Now, I knew they weren’t exhaust pipes because you can’t build an exhaust pipe out of plastic. They looked like periscopes. Since then, I’ve seen a handful on four-wheel drive vehicles in the states. They’re snorkels. They’re air-intake mechanisms for driving through water too deep for the grill to work.

Had I known what they were, I might have anticipated what the drive would be like.

Y’all think you have dirt roads. Y’all ain’t seen nothin’.

There is no gravel. Just packed and dried mud. We were there during the rainy season, which meant the roads were cut with gulleys. Seriously. You could stand in them and the road would be above your head. Gulleys.

We arrived in Yei and saw thatched roof after thatched roof, houses made of sticks and mud maybe ten or twelve feet in diameter, each housing its own family broken by years of war, trying to return to the land they’d left as refugees. Or women holding families together after their husbands had left to go to war and never returned.

And children. Children everywhere. Especially at the school where we held our training. Children who lived at the school, were fed by the families who supported the school, who didn’t see their families who had sent them here to learn, to provide something better for themselves than their families could ever hope to do.

And I knew what to expect. I knew what this would look like, what it would smell like, how hard it was. My brain knew it.

But my eyes had never experienced it. My feet had never danced with someone whose life was only heartache and struggle except for the joy of Christ. I had never heard Christ preached by people so desperate for hope. I had never heard singing like that. What did I care if I didn’t know the tune? I just wanted to soak it in, to feel, to capture a bit of that joy, that hope. I just wanted to watch, to share, to sing with them.

I have never seen a church so alive.

And as I looked around, as we worshiped together, my vision was transformed. I’d expected this, but experiencing it was something different altogether. I heard the king saying to the nations, to me:

Come, you that are blessed by my Father,

inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;

For I am hungry

and you bring food,

I am thirsty

and you bring drink,

I am a stranger to you

and I welcome you

and you welcome me,

I am sick

and you are taking care of me.

Come, inherit the kingdom.

Someone grabbed my hand, looked into my eyes, and began dancing with me as we sang. I held her gaze and realized I was dancing with Christ. I was dancing with Christ! And so were my team members, and so was everyone worshiping with us.

And it struck me: The woman holding my gaze was also dancing with Christ.

Caught up in our best moments, offering praise that needed no translation, promising to each other everything the other could offer, each one of us was Christ for the other.

I am still processing that experience. I am still struggling to understand. But what I know is that Jesus’ words in Matthew hold a key to that understanding.

“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

We talk about poverty. We talk about the poor. Sometimes we even send money. In fact, most of the tithe we send, as a church, to the Holston Annual Conference supports ministry with marginalized persons.

But seldom do we get involved.

We leave it to people better qualified, better informed, more experienced.

And we sit in our pews or our Sunday School classes and we say how important ministry with the poor is. We even shelve in our memories stories of the poor pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, or of those who have sharing their blessings with those who have not. We sometimes even remember stories of paupers and princes trading places.

We forget that once upon a time, Glory came down from the greatest throne of all and chose to dwell in the wretchedness and poverty of humanity. We forget that the Almighty still dwells among us today, not in the places of pride and greed, but rather in the places of humility and poverty.

We must remember that it is not in helping out those who do not need help that we help Christ. It is in feeding the hungry, quenching the thirst of the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, visiting the imprisoned that we find Christ. It is in the eyes of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the impoverished, the sick, the imprisoned even that we see the eyes of Christ.

It is not in the eyes of the powerful that we find glory.

It is in the eyes of the pauper that we find the King.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.