Sunday, July 21, 2013

WHOSE SANCTUARY IS THIS?


Methodist pastor J. Cliff Christopher tells the story
            of a young parson fresh out of seminary.
The bishop sent him to a little church in rural Kentucky.
His first Sunday, he preached fervently on the evils of tobacco.
After church, the lay leaders took him aside and said,
            “Pastor you can’t talk about tobacco here. This is Kentucky.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said.

Next Sunday he held forth on the evils of alcohol.
After church, they said, “Pastor, Jack Daniels built this Church
            and Jim Beam pays your salary.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he answered.

Next Sunday, he warned them against gambling,
            especially playing the horses.
After church, the lay leaders said,
            “Son, you’ve got one more chance.”

That’s what happened to the prophet Amos in last week’s lesson.
He had prophesied against the policies of King Jereboam
            at the Shrine of Bethel.
The priest said to him,
            “You’re not from around here, are you?
             Get on back home, boy.
             We don’t have that kind of talk here.
             This is /the king’s sanctuary, the temple of the kingdom.”/

The irony is that Bethel means “house of God.”
But the priest said, “it’s the king’s sanctuary.
We say what pleases the king here.”.
Today we hear a little more of the message
            so we get a better idea what the king didn’t like.


Hear this, you that trample on the needy,

and bring to ruin the poor of the land,

saying, ‘When will the new moon be over

so that we may sell grain;

and the Sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale?

We will make the ephah small and the shekel great,

and practice deceit with false balances,  

buying the poor for silver

and the needy for a pair of sandals,

and selling the sweepings of the wheat.’

The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob:

Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.”

God didn’t like the way the economy ran.
The poor were stuck in poverty while the rich
multiplied their wealth.

But the priest said,
         “You can’t talk about that Amos.
That’s politics. That’s business.
Religion isn’t about those things.
Religion is about our inner feelings.”

But Amos was following the way of Moses.
Pharaoh didn’t much like it when he
delivered God’s message “Let my people go.”
Pharaoh said “Shut up, Moses. That’s politics.
         Slavery is none of your God’s business.”
So when King Jereboam told Amos,
         “Shut up, that’s politics,” Amos kept on.
That memo on what religion can’t talk about,
         Amos didn’t get it.

Neither did Isaiah, Hosea, Mary, or Jesus.
Neither did Chief Albert John Lutuli whom we remember today,
or the women our church commemorated yesterday,
         Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Amelia Bloomer,
         and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Neither did John Wilberforce, Dorothy Day,
         Thomas Merton, Daniel Berrigan,
Martin Luther King, or Desmond Tutu.

My question today is this:
         What is the business of religion?
Or: just whose sanctuary is this?

Christianity has teachings on wealth and power.
The Episcopal Church has gospel-based positions
on matters of wealth and power.
So do our mainline and Catholic ecumenical partners.
We call them the social justice teachings of the church.

But we usually don’t talk about them,
         because our teachings on wealth and power
are not popular with some of the wealthy and powerful.
We’re too afraid someone will say,
         “that’s not the business of religion.
This is the king’s sanctuary, the temple of the kingdom.”

Even the most powerful people in the church sometimes
lack the courage of our Christian convictions.
Despite the strong economic justice teachings of the Roman Church,
Pope Francis recently told the American nuns
         to back off on demanding better care for the poor
         and stick to abortion.
Religion can talk about sex, but not money or power.

But who said that?
Was it Roger Williams, the father of religious freedom
in America?
No. He said the government should not interfere
         in a person’s intimate relationship with God,
         his practices of prayer and worship.
But Roger Williams vigorously applied the gospel message
         to the social issues of his day,
         particularly the rights of Native Americans.

Was it Thomas Jefferson who gave us the 1st Amendment?
Again, no. Jefferson said that the government
         should not establish a religion and make people join it.
But Jefferson did not hesitate to call for days of fasting and prayer
         to support the American struggle for liberty and justice.

Christians have been at the forefront of social movements
         from abolition, to women’s suffrage, to nuclear disarmament.
So tell me what is the business of religion,
         and whose sanctuary is this?

If you want to understand movements in philosophy,
         it’s like a criminal investigation. Follow the money.
American wealth exploded after the Civil War
         and the concentration of wealth increased.
That’s when philosophers turned legitimate love of county
into a state religion, with its own rituals, sacred objects,
secular saints, sacred places and a monopoly
         on questions of justice.
They pushed traditional religions to the sideline.
The distribution of wealth and power were no longer our concern.
Freedom, justice, equality, and peace,
were no longer our concerns.
None of the things that occupy the time, energy,
         thoughts, and passions of most of humanity
         most of the time were our concern.
Religion became irrelevant to most of real life.

What then are we here to do? What will the king allow us to say?
The business of a religion is to stir up certain vague emotions
         in its followers occasionally.
Some want to feel that way for an hour a week.
Others get by on an hour a month.
Others just want that feeling twice a year.
Modern religion is a wisp of an idea
embroidered with sentimental lace.

Even if it’s pumped up and passionate
         during the weekly hour of religious feeling,
         even if it’s a mega-church where everyone
         is happily entertained and high on Jesus.
it doesn’t reach us where we live.
It doesn’t matter on Monday.

But the religion of Moses, Amos, and Jesus
         is mostly about what goes down on Monday.
Amos’s God said Israel was treating the poor badly,
         and there would be consequences.
God said that if Israel persisted in economic injustice
         there would be a famine – but not like we think.
God said,
         “I will send a famine on the land;

not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water,

but of hearing the words of the LORD.

They shall wander from sea to sea,

and from north to east;

t        they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the LORD,

but they shall not find it.”

Recently, God has turned my understanding
         of religion upside down.
This passage sums up that reversal.
I used to think people heard God’s word first.
Then, inspired by God’s love, they went out
         into the world doing justice and loving mercy.
But Amos puts it the other way around.
And it fits what I see in the Christians I know
– especially the young ones.

Justice comes first. Spiritual experience follows.
Serving God’s mission of mercy comes first.
Touching the world’s pain with our bare hands
         opens our hearts to hear God’s word.
If we aren’t at work in the mission,
         we can forget about authentic spiritual experience.
We can forget the peace of God
         that passes human understanding.

The mission is where God shapes our souls.
The mission is where real joy can be found.
The mission is the field where we see our Savior
         -- nowhere else, the mission field.
         

Sunday, July 7, 2013

POLITICAL AND SPIRITUAL FREEDOM


This 4th of July weekend we think about our nation
         and what it stands for.
We like to think America stands for freedom.
When most of the world looks at us,
         they say we are a place of freedom
                  and opportunity
– which is another way of saying freedom.

We may think of freedom as a political value.
And it is.
But it is also a Biblical value.
Judaism was born in the Exodus,
         in God’s liberation of an enslaved and oppressed people.
The Passover celebrates God as the first Great Emancipator.
Christians take that story to the spiritual level.
We call Holy Communion our Passover,
         celebrating Christ’s liberating us
                  from the power of sin and death.

So I invite you to think this morning
         about freedom in Christ.
Jesus said, “The truth shall set you free.”
And he said, “I am the truth.”
Jesus came to set us free.
Paul said, “For freedom, Christ has set us free.”
Elsewhere he said, “If the Lord has set us free,
         then we shall be free indeed.”

When a nation declares its independence
         or when the law protects our liberty,
         we understand that is about freedom.
But what does it mean to say
         Jesus has set us free?
How does that work?
It works in a deeper and better way
         than  any government or political movement
                  ever could.
 I am all for political freedom,
         but without spiritual freedom,
                  it doesn’t do us very much good.

Spiritual freedom is what makes political freedom possible.
Without spiritual freedom,
         political freedom is impossible to maintain.
 Political freedom just protects our right to do
         whatever our passions or inclinations dictate.
The problem with that is:
         our passions and our inclinations
                  don’t always line up with our souls.
 In Romans, Paul says,
         “I do not understand my own actions.
         I do not do the thing I want,
but I do the very thing I hate.”


A young salesmen was peddling books
         on the most advanced new agricultural methods.
He gave his best sales pitch to an old farmer,
         but the farmer was having none of it.
 The exasperated salesmen said,
         “Sir this book can show you how to farm
                  30% better than you are today.”
The farmer replied,
         “Son, I ain’t farming half as good as I know how already.”

A lot of us can relate to that.
We know better than we act.
I can’t think how many times,
in both church and family life,
         the same people have done the same things,
                  to push my buttons in the same way
over and over again. 
 And I have known better than to respond the way I did,
         but I just keep making the same mistake
         like Charley Brown trusting Lucy
to hold that football for a place kick.

Psychologists call that compulsion.
And compulsion is the opposite of freedom.
Our actions are almost never completely free.
There may be 5 different brands of laundry detergent
for us to choose from.
But that means 5 companies have competed to see
         which one can do a better job of manipulating our choice.
We call that the “free market” and it is free – in a sense.

In what we like to think is the freest country in the world,
         we lock up in prisons a higher percentage of  our people
         than any other developed nation.
It takes spiritual freedom to make political freedom work.
And that’s what Jesus offers.
That’s what Jesus shows us how to do.
That’s what the gospel is about.

You see as long as we think freedom
is about getting our own way in this world, 
the part of us in the driver’s seat is our ego.
Now the ego isn’t evil.
It’s just easily manipulated.

It can be manipulated by advertisements,
         addictions, natural human squirrel -iness,
                  and the power of sin itself.
All these things latch on the our ego
-- the pitiful part of us that gets batted
         back and forth like a ping pong ball
         between moments of pride and moments of shame.

As long as we are living by the natural order,
         trying to secure our own well-being,
                  we are not free.
We are at the mercy of all the powers that can affect
         our well-being or bluff us into thinking they do.
 Freedom does not come when the world lets us go.
It happens when we let go of the world,
         when we say “Come what may, I am the Lord’s.”
When we say, rich or poor, sick or well,
         in good moods or bad, it’s all ok.

I am not here to feather my own nest.
I belong to Jesus.
My soul belongs to Jesus,
         and in him, I will be alright.

Let me tell you a powerful kind of prayer.
You place your hand on your heart,
         and let all our fears and anxieties come to mind,
         one at a time, and with each one,
         you say silently or aloud,
“Even if – then fill in the blank –
         I belong to Jesus and it is well with my soul.”
“Even if I lose my job,
         I belong to Jesus and it is well with my soul.”
“Even if this sickness I have is a terminal cancer,
         I belong to Jesus and it is well with my soul.”
Whatever is on your heart, let it come
         and greet it boldly with that prayer.

It won’t guarantee you a calm feeling.
You don’t have to have a calm feeling.
Whether you are calm or afraid,
         it’s all the same.
Even if you feel anxious,
you belong to Jesus and it is well with your soul.

He shed his blood to buy that soul of yours,
         to set it free from the powers
that would dominate you.
“Take my yoke upon you,” he says,
         “for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. . . .
Take my yoke upon you . . . .
         and you will find rest for your souls.”

I won’t deceive you about the price.
This freedom costs us everything.
But it gives us more than we had ever dreamed possible.
God is good, brothers and sisters.
God is good all the time,
         and it is well with our souls