Green Sins?

April 22 is Earth Day.

I remember the first Earth Day when I was a young adolescent and Boy Scout. We pulled a red, Radio Flyer wagon around our neighborhood collecting newspapers that our fathers helped us take to a recycling location. In return, our county government planted dogwood trees along a major route in the community.

Recycling was actually a rather popular activity in the county. We had neither public nor private curbside garbage service and on Saturday mornings citizens loaded their garbage cans in the back of their station wagons or in their car trunks and took all their rubbish to a public school parking lot where county garbage trucks waited. You had to dump it yourself into the chomping, mechanical maw of the truck and then you could put newspapers in a walk-in dumpster. No matter who you were, rich or poor, this was how you had to get rid of your trash and recycling was part of the deal. It was quite a community gathering.

Sometime in the 1980’s we seem to have lost interest in do-it-yourself environmentalism. We went for more powerful automobiles at the expense of fuel efficiency. We began to recycle less and consume more disposable goods and power- whatever the cost. Today, the lessons of financial conservatism and frugality learned during the great depression are unknown to generations of young Americans.

What role does religion play in all this?

At one time, the social philosophy known as the “Protestant Work Ethic” taught that prosperity is a sign of God’s favor on account of an individual’s personal righteousness. While we still adhere to the importance of work ethic, religious Americans don’t often see prosperity as a sign of righteousness any more. But at the same time, many Americans don’t hold the old time religion view of personal sin either. A common view now is that we are all basically good people who are misled into bad choices. It’s a kind of therapeutic view of human sinfulness.

So, the Vatican, not the expected spokesman for Reformed Protestantism, is getting tough on sin.

They’re even getting tough on environmental sin. In March, Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti listed some “new” sins during a newspaper interview in Rome. Among the social sins on the Vatican’s updated list are: stem cell research involving embryo destruction, human cloning, and ecological offenses. It isn’t exactly clear what environmental sins are from the Reuters report of this story, but apparently they are generally classified as acts that cause harm to the environment and therefore threaten the human race.

The question is: in a global culture in which people decreasingly define human nature as sinful, will the Vatican proclamation have any impact at all on the faithful?

On Faith and the Environment

Warmer days with longer periods of sunlight have been distracting my kids from homework lately and I can’t really blame them. But, Spring weather hasn’t distracted my attention from the price of gasoline or how quickly it drains out of my Volvo wagon at a paltry 17 miles per gallon around town.

According to the business magazine Forbes (www.forbesautos.com), one burned gallon of gas translates to 20lbs of CO2, a greenhouse gas contributing to global warming. So, driving just the U.S. average of 15,000 miles in a year makes me personally responsible for over 17,647lbs of carbon dioxide. You can figure your particular carbon footprint at www.epa.gov/greenvehicles.

Let’s see: 15,000 miles divided by 22mpg (average fuel efficiency according to Department of Transportation statisticians based on 55% city and 45% highway miles) times 20lbs per gallon times 247 million U.S. passenger vehicles. Well, you do the math.

Of course, maybe you’re a global warming skeptic. Maybe you think that a single cold winter disproves long term, statistical data. Some would-be debunkers of human contributions to warming even cite, as primary causes, clinically immeasurable, naturally occurring events such as volcanoes and flatulence from bovine and teenage boys.

On the other side of the argument, practical observers in business have concluded otherwise.

John Hofmeister has taken a pro environment stand as President of Shell Oil’s North American operations. In a Charlie Rose interview (see the video at www.charlierose.com), Hofmeister affirmed his industry observation that human efforts do significantly impact on global warming based on the amount of carbon emitted each year and the scientifically calculable effect per ton of carbon in the atmosphere.

Ray Anderson, Chairman of flooring maker Interface, Inc., has been guiding his company toward a goal of zero negative environmental impact for decades. Disgusted by the sheer amount of waste and rate of extraction of carbon resources, Anderson has innovated to drastically reduce waste, use fewer raw materials and decrease emissions from manufacturing. Anderson’s personal commitment even includes the swapping of out his executive luxury vehicle for a compact hybrid.

Are these guys are just kooks? If so, they’re highly successful kooks. Interface gross sales in 2006 were just over $1 billion and Shell USA revenues topped $26 billion. These are not tie dye wearing granola munchers but savvy industrialists whose agendas are productivity, efficiency, return on equity, profit margins, and shareholder value.

That said, Anderson has a serious indictment of the religious community.

In his book, Mid-Course Correction (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2000), Anderson stated that he was turned off by the church specifically because, in his experience, its views did not support environmental reality. It’s true that the environment has been a divisive, hot potato issue for the religious community in the last decade but if you want to make value choices informed by faith, environmental concern need not be a dilemma.

Simply put, human beings have a mandate from God to be stewards of creation.

Creation’s problem isn’t the debate between evolution and the book of Genesis, but our dismissal of inconvenient Biblical truths like God’s absolute claim over all of it. However it got here, we think it’s our creation, not God’s. We’ve got the mineral rights, the surface rights, and the air rights too.

Well God has made us many promises, but has never given away the farm.

The famous line in the first chapter of Genesis: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over… every living thing that moves upon the earth” is not a license to freely exploit natural resources for profit. It’s a gracious provision of sustenance. Moreover, we Christians should re-acquaint ourselves with Leviticus 25:23/24 which commands: “… the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants. Throughout the land you hold, you shall provide for the redemption of the land.”

You don’t have to be a tie dye wearing, granola muncher or liberal theologian to make ethical value choices about the environment. Just read your Bible thoroughly. All of it.

21st Century Spirituality

One of the biggest changes in American religious life in the last 100 years is the decline in mainline church attendance and the tremendous increase in non-traditional religious worship groups.

Maybe that’s not so astonishing. After all, society has clearly fragmented compared to other times of social stability. Our consumption based economy thrives on impulsive searches for consumer satisfaction in everything from fast food to music to sources of news and opinion. Religion is based on voluntary associations, which means that in our society impulse driven desire for gratifying participatory events is as strong in religious trends as it is in any other.

Out there in that consumer satisfaction based environment of religious options there seems to be a surging interest in spirituality. Like other forms of impulsive consumption, this new spirituality has more to do with personal emotional and psychological nurture and empowerment than traditional spirituality which emphasized a self-emptying discipleship.

So what are the essential tenets of this new spirituality? Is there any place for traditional Christian characteristics such as confession of sin or grace, or salvation through Christ or revelation through scripture and liturgy?
What’s the relationship between God and a 21st century spiritualist? Has God become the big, Zen master therapist in the sky?

What do you want from your religious associations and practices? Are you seeking enlightenment? A community where you feel included? A bridge over troubled water?

What's it all about?

Endurance In The Race Of Life

Hebrews 11:29-12:2

Presenting Engagement: The race as metaphor for life.
Every Fourth of July, the Atlanta Track Club hosts a ten kilometer footrace down Peachtree Road in the center of Atlanta. They’ve been putting on this race for over three decades and the 2007 race attracted 60,000 runners.

When you register for this race, you have to predict how long it will take you to run the race based on your record in other equally long races or in previous Peachtree races. Runners receive a placement number to pin on the front of their shirts and the first two digits of that number indicate which section you are eligible to start from. You can understand that if, based on your speed, you are runner 59,999 then you are going to be at the back of a very long group of participants!

I have personally never been in a group any closer to the front than halfway and it takes ages to even get up to the starting line. So there you stand, shaking loose the muscles in your calves and thighs and arms, stretching your back and stomach muscles for maybe twenty to forty minutes. It’s hard to stay loose and it’s even harder to stay focused. There are spectators on the curb and spectators peering out of hotel windows overhead. The loudspeaker up ahead announces the start of faster groups. The excitement climbs. You want to get going.

Finally you begin trudging forward with stunted steps. You are packed like a sardine with hundreds of other anxious sardines beside you, behind you, ahead of you. Two hundred yards to the starting line. One hundred yards. Fifty yards. Twenty five yards.

Finally you reach the line. The race officials call out. Radio stations broadcast live some kind of thumping, heart pumping, heavy jamming music. A starter pistol barks.

So off you go into the July sunshine. You’ll have stretches where the road descends and other points where you’ll encounter places with names like “heartbreak hill.” You’ll get leg weary. You’ll get thirsty but you won’t want to drink for fear of stomach cramps. You’ll get hot. And close to the finish you’ll slow back down to a stutter step as thousands of runners attempt to navigate two narrow chutes at the finish line. Finally, if you’ve made it all the way, you will flow out into the broad expanse of Piedmont park.

You did it. Or at least some of you did it. The reward, the big pay off? It’s a T shirt and a popsicle and the knowledge that you made it all the way.

How did you make it through to the end? What got you from the pre-start warm up and anticipation to finish line?

I can tell you from experience that the thing that keeps you going through it all is the support of spectators. It’s a far bigger reward than either the Tshirt or the popsicle! They cheer. They wave banners. You see people you know standing on the sidewalk and they call out your name. Even if they don’t know you they yell: “looking great!” or “you’re gonna make it!” or “way to go!”

All in all, this race, in fact any race, is a great metaphor for life itself. We all need the encouragement of others to make it from pre-start to finish. We all need those cheering hollers and smiling faces to bouy us up in times of distress and heartache and illness and grief and loneliness.

We need a community and if we have a faith community that is strong and loving, then perhaps we can live strong lives no matter what life throws at us.


Biblical Context: What's going on?
The scripture lesson today talks about just such a community of faith.

The reading is from a portion of the New Testament known as the Letter to the Hebrews. It was added to the cannon, which is the body of scripture that we speak of as the Bible, in the 4th century specifically because it was thought to have been written by the Apostle Paul. Scholars after that time, however, decided it wasn’t written by Paul. They also don’t think it was written to Jewish Christians as the title implies. And there’s no greeting at the beginning that would have been standard in an epistle so it probably isn’t even a letter either.

Now, with all that contradictory scholarship you might wonder why this “letter” stayed in the Biblical cannon and why it continued to be keep its title. But then, Hebrews is a difficult text to get to know. It’s one of those texts that defies any attempt to read it simplistically or literally because if you read it that way you will come away with some very dark considerations about the relationship between Christianity and Judaism that contrast very strongly with the teachings of the Gospels.

The basic theology of this “letter” is that Christianity is superior to and supercedes Judaism. It proclaims that the Old Testament is inadequate testimony to the powerful redemption of God. It claims that God’s covenant with Abraham is an inadequate revelation of God. It claims that the faithful patriarchs of the Old Testament could not achieve salvation without Christ no matter how faithful they were.

Hebrews was very likely a sermon written late in the first century and sent out to be read to various congregations. At that time persecution of Christians was widespread and there was a strong impulse among new converts to either abandon this persecuted religion or fly under the official radar of the Roman governors by claiming that they were Jewish instead of Christian. It’s the same God, after all. Isn’t it?

This sermon intends to dissuade these frightened congregations from leaving the faith by specifically demonstrating the superiority of Christianity.

This was an age when the apocalypse- the end of time- was expected to occur at any moment. So the writer of Hebrews wanted to show that being faithful to Christ was the only way to be certain of immortality. The writer says: “Look, if you convert to Judaism then you are abandoning true salvation in Christ for a mere foreshadowing of salvation through the law of Moses. If you accept life under the flawed covenant of Abraham then you are giving up on the true covenant in Christ which promises resurrection from death.”

It’s a powerfully written argument heard by a frightened and imperilled group of believers whose new found faith was tenuous and susceptible to threats from Roman authorities.

Explication of Text: What’s it all mean?
The section we read today tells of the mighty deeds that Old Testament heroes performed because of their faith in God. These are impressive accounts. Gideon, David, Samson, the prophet Samuel. Through their faith they were able to “conquer kingdoms, administer justice, obtain promises, quench raging fire.” The Jewish martyrs described in the Maccabean writings suffered mocking and torture, and even endured excruciating death at the hands of stone throwing mobs and sadistic Roman soldiers. The faith of these heroes was powerful and they were steadfast in their beliefs even in the face of torture and death.

This is a strong testimony of what faith can do. When we read this, we’re set up to admire these heroes and count them as lion hearted role models. We understand that. We accept it and we’re ready to imitate those role models. But then the writer twists the narrative around and tells us something that is inteded to make us see that no matter how faithful these heroes were, their achievements were imperfect because they did not know Christ.

The writer says: “Yet all these… did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.”

What in the world can that mean? Just when we get scripture figured out there’s something that throws us of course again.

The answer lies in the claim that our faith is different than the faith of these Old Testament heroes because we have the revelation of Christ and we have Christ’s death on the cross that gives us salvation. It’s a fine point of theology but it says that since Christ’s covenant is perfect and Christ’s revelation is perfect and since Christ’s saving death is perfect then our faith in Christ fulfills the imperfect faith of the patriarchs and martyrs who lived before Christ.

Our faith in Christ fulfills the faith of our Old Testament ancestors.

Our faith in the possibility of eternal life through Jesus Christ brings eternal life to our Old Testament ancestors.

And yet, this writer also calls all those Old Testament ancestors a “great cloud of witnesses.” It’s as if two things are happening at once.

On the one hand, our faith is making perfect the faith of those who came before us. On the other hand, those who came before us, the witnesses who surround us, were the pioneers in faith whose mighty acts of heroism made our own faith possible.

We fulfill them but we need to stand on their shoulders to claim that fulfillment for ourselves.

Listener Context: How does this relate to my life?
I think that as we go through life’s experiences, as we run the race of life, we tend to think of ourselves in that good old American way: we think of ourselves as lone pioneers forging our way through the challenges of the wilderness, combating the storms and floods and wild animals, climbing over the lofty mountain passes. And like those early pioneers we sometimes we think God is on our side because we stand for what is morally right and our successes prove how right we are. Conversely, we sometimes think God is against us when we meet catastrophic setbacks.

But actually, we’ve got that all wrong. That traditional folklore promotes a false reality.

First of all, God is on our side because God loves us and not just because of the moral talk that we talk. And more than that, God does not stop loving us just because we fail to walk our talk. That’s what divine forgiveness is all about as long as we are honest about our human nature and the human capacity for moral failure.

Second, if God loves us despite our human nature, then God can never be against us. God is never the cause of our setbacks.

Third, we are not the pioneers that we think we are. Behind every Horatio Alger story of a self made man there is some un-named and unacknowledged individual who gave that self made man a crucial opportunity. In every Peachtree Road Race, there are volunteers who hand out unlimited cups of water to hot and dry and thirsty participants. Every mile there is someone who shouts to thousands of anonymous runners: “Come on. You can do it. I have confidence in you!”

There is a great cloud of witnesses around us at all times urging us on. They have travelled the road we travel. They know the challenges we face. They have faced persecution. They have faced illness and loneliness and grief. They have fought cancer. They have lost loved ones and they have cried with joy over photographs of new babies. They have loved life.

You are not alone.

You stand on the shoulders of those witnesses to claim your triumphs and by boosting you up, they fulfill their own triumphant destinies. The joy is twofold. It is the joy of completing the race as well as the joy of helping others to complete their own race.

This is a joy that we can never find on our own. This shared triumph is far more glorious than any single handed achievment because it is the achievment of a whole community.

Conclusion: What’s the Point?
Whatever else the writer of this “letter” to the Hebrews is telling us, he is telling us that Christian believers have something unique that sustains us for the long race of life.

We have the community which is a great cloud of witnesses who have prepared the way for us and who urge us on to the finish line.

And we have faith in the enduring presence of Christ Jesus who is the true pioneer in faith and leader in this race of life. Christ Jesus, who faithfully suffered on the cross for our sake, gave us a salvation that is the ultimate encouragement for us. Christ Jesus is the ultimate proof of God’s love for us.

With God’s love, we are capable of any good thing. AMEN.

THE VALUES OF POWER

Presenting Engagement: the wheel o’ wisdom.
In a variety store, on a shelf stockpiled with eye catching nic-nacs, somewhere between the rubber chickens and the spring loaded packs of gum that snap your finger when you try to extract a juicy stick, somewhere in there I happened upon a rather unusual spiritual resource one day.

In this age of sophisticated electronic gizmos, its low tech simplicity caught my eye. It’s just a wheel centered on top of another wheel and as you rotate the top wheel an arrow points to labels along the perimeter of the bottom wheel. Windows display various attributes of the subject that you have selected by the positioning of the arrow. The title of this nifty cardboard object is: “Wheel O’ Wisdom” and it describes itself as a tool for choosing one’s religion, a guide for the savvy convert.

Say you want to find out if a particular sect is for you. Don’t get crow’s feet wrinkling your brow pondering deep thoughts about what all it would mean for your life. Just point the arrow and read the description, the drawbacks and the perks. Read about the accessories you’ll need. In one particular window labelled “potential new friends” you can find out how many card carrying members there are.

Take the Protestant religion for instance. Actually, I didn’t know before that Protestantism is a distinct religion rather than a branch of the Christian religion. The wheel describes Catholicism as the original Christianity.

But Protestantism is described with a two sentence summary of the Reformation. You learn that faith and grace are enough for salvation plus you can commune with God without an intermediary. For accessories, you’ll need a Bible on your night stand and a pro-Jesus bumper sticker. The drawbacks are that Protestantism is easily confused with de-spiritualized Christmas consumerism. The perks are that this is a mainstream religion that is part of the social power structure with flexible worship practices. If you join this group you can take the moral high road and will gain 465 million new friends.

Of all the thirty religions listed on the Wheel O’ Wisdom, the other one that grabbed my attention most was Consumerism. It’s described as a belief that one can be fulfilled by consuming and that self-worth is defined by economic value. Drawbacks include the fact that overused credit leads to spiritual bankruptcy. The perks are that there are few rules and plenty of toys for folks with ample disposable income. This is the religion that Protestantism can lapse into when it becomes de-spiritualized.

But that de-spiritualized religion sounds an awful lot like the social philosophy of many people- even Christians, whether they are Protestants or followers of that original Christianity.

Well, that’s very interesting but you’re wondering what all that has to do with a first century centurion and Jesus’ healing of a slave. Aren’t you?

Biblical Context: what is going on in the text?
We’ve read today how Jesus healed a Roman centurion’s slave because of the centurion’s faith. But what is this story is really all about? Let’s look deeper into the details.

In the Greco-Roman society of the first century, patronage was the order of the day. Clients supported the power of their patrons and patrons rewarded the loyalty of clients with material benefits. Our centurion occupied a particular rung in a very precise social order. He was a client of elite Romans farther up the ladder and below him were clients of his own.

Centurion was the rank of an officer who comanded one hundred soldiers so he was a middle level patron in the big picture but in his small, garrison town of Capernaum he probably wielded significant power. The Jewish elders who formed the delegation were his clients and in return for their loyalty this patron built them a synagogue.

The remarkable thing about this centurion is that without ever having met Jesus, without even being a Jew himself, he understood that Jesus was a powerful figure. And having recognized him as a figure of power, the centurion placed Jesus within the patron/client social order well ahead of himself.

In the first century this would have been scandalous.

So why does Luke give us this narrative with all the details? Why does Luke tell of the centurion’s remarkable act through the social setting of patronage?

Matthew relates a shorter version of the same tale but without all the social details.

He speaks of the centurion’s unquestioned military power and how when he orders something it happens. Matthew’s centurion seems to have faith that Jesus has the same power to produce an immediate, obedient affect in healing the slave.

Matthew’s account sets this absolute faith of a Roman over against the lack of faith Jesus has found in Israel among people of his own faith tradition. Matthew concludes with strong conviction that the gentiles are the ones who have faith and will inherit the kingdom of God. Matthew emphasizes that the Hebrews will never believe that Jesus is the Messiah.

But I think Luke is emphasizing something different, something less obvious, something more subtle, something a lot more significant. Luke is telling us something about faith and the value and values of power.

Explication of Text: What’s it all mean?
One of the more intriguing aspects of scripture is that God’s truth is often presented as a reversal of what the reader expects or perhaps considers normal.
What makes the Bible so enduring is that these reversals still work thousands of years after oral accounts of divine witness were first handed down. That means that human nature has remained consistent for thousands of years because what readers expect and what readers consider socially normal has remained consistent over all that time.

Truth can still be recognized just as it was in the first century.

And the truth-revealing reversal in this gospel reading is the scandal of the centurion giving up power to someone who should be considered a client according to the social order of the day.

Jesus might be a powerful Jewish healer but he is still a Jew. He is still a subject of the Roman military occupation of the Eastern Mediterranean. He might be more powerful than the Jewish elders of Capernaum but not more powerful than the least Roman soldier.

But the centurion seems to realize that Jesus is not just another local Israelite who wields some kind of local political or social power. Jesus’ power is other worldly. Jesus commands supernatural events. Jesus has the ability to heal. Jesus commands unclean spirits to depart from people and they depart. Jesus commands the cleansing of lepers and they become clean. Jesus forgives the sins of a paralytic and the man gets up and walks.

In the face of this other worldly power, the centurion understands a truth about the value of his own power. His own power in the chain of patron/client has strict limits and cannot heal anyone. It can’t do anything supernatural. It can’t do anything miraculous. It can build a synagogue or a church or a civic center but it can’t get you into heaven.

When it comes to saving the life of his servant the centurion’s power has absolutely no value at all.

The centurion recognizes the truth that Jesus’ power is the only power that has value and so the centurion lowers himself in esteem before the Hebrew prophet. “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof… only speak the word and my servant will be healed.”

Listener Context: How does this relate to my life?
The limits of power are a hard truth to comprehend and maybe harder to accept.

Remember the meeting between Jesus and the wealthy young man who wanted to know how to inherit eternal life? The young man had kept all the commandments since childhood and yet he went away sadly because he realized he could not do the one thing that was required. He could not give up his wealth.[i]

He could not give up the very thing that gave his life value and meaning. The very thing that gave him high standing in the patron/client social order. Yet the thing this young man cherished most had nothing to do with faith in God and his personal righteousness in terms of obeying the ten commandments was not enough to gain him eternal life.

The societies that the Roman centurion and the wealthy young Jew lived in were separated by ethnicity and religion but they had great similarity. Both societies placed power and status as the center of value.

The theologian H. Richard Niebuhr talked about centers of value in religious societies and church congregations. He said that the center of value is the thing that is worshipped above all other things. He showed how religious people can claim to worship God and yet actually emphasize other elements of their culture more.

It’s important to identify what thing occupies the center of value in our own lives.

It’s an important question because it’s so very easy to live our lives according to centers of value that have only limited power. The power to command people. The power to accumulate material possessions. The power to build things or tear things down.

Sometimes we even label these centers of value with the title of “God.”

That’s what I like about the simple little cardboard wheel. By offering descriptions, perks, and drawbacks of various religious philosophies, the wheel identifies the value of each one as it is defined by our society. It defines religions based on relative centers of value.

If you value self-fulfillment through material consumption then consumerism is for you. If you value rational pragmatism and self-determined moral rules then atheism could be your thing. If you choose your religion because you value friendships above all else then without a doubt Islam offers the most value for you. It has over a billion and one quarter members.

It’s a big, wide world out there and there are lots of social and religious choices.

Conclusion: What’s the Point?
But before you spin the wheel and make your choice, consider one thing. Consider the truth that the centurion realized.

Human power is severely limited.

It cannot change your life. All the technology and science in the world cannot heal your spirit. Human power cannot forgive your sins or bring you peace. No power from this world can do any of those things.

Only the power of God in Christ can do that.

And what must we give up in order to feel the affect of this power in our lives?

Well, Jesus does not ask us to give up everything of this world. He is not asking us to live impoverished lives or become a hermit. He is not asking us to abandon joy or put aside human relationships or beauty crafted by a human hand.

He only asks us to put the things of this world second.

And that is exactly where things of this world belong because the power of God does something unique. It imparts to us certain divine values by empowering the human spirit.

It empowers spiritual health and spiritual prosperity.

It empowers goodness, kindness, and mercy.

It empowers joy and human fulfillment.

It empowers the love that binds wounds and quells human divisiveness. It spans the divide of hatred.

The power of the love of God through Jesus is the one thing we human beings cannot manufacture or engineer and yet it’s the one thing we cannot live without.

So today, right now, let us resolve to value the power of God’s love over all other things in our lives. And let us resolve to live with joy as disciples of Christ Jesus.

AMEN.

[i] Luke 18:18-30; Matthew 19:16-30

Ruth's Beautiful Faith

Ruth 1:6-18

Engaging Image: lost letters of lost souls.

I don’t know if you happened to see the Associated Press news story this week about a grocery bag full of letters that was found washing up on the beach near Atlantic City, New Jersey. It seems that a father and son who were fishing on the beach noticed this plastic bag, opened it, and found around 300 letters addressed to a Jersey City, NJ Baptist minister and marked “altar.”

The minister died several years ago at an advanced age and mysteriously this collection of letters ended up in the ocean over 100 miles away. Most were unopened.

Each writer hoped that his or her letter would be prayed over in a kind of prayer of supplication. Some of them dated back to 1973 and while a few writers asked for divine intervention in some matter like a lottery ticket, most were scribed in anguished ink.

There was a convict claiming innocence who desired liberation and the embrace of his family. Another was from a woman who suspected her boyfriend of abusing her young daughter. One woman prayed that the father of her soon to be born child would fall in love with her so they could marry and form a complete circle of family.

These were truly lost letters of lost souls who put their total confidence in the intervening action of a divinity they could not see or touch.

This story reminded me of the prayer practice of this congregation and many others in which specific concerns are given voice, specific children of God spoken for, specific anguish raised to God in the gathering of a worshipping community. Surely God Almighty already knows of these things, has already peered into all of our hearts, has laid a hand on our foreheads and gathered our thoughts.

A rationalist might interject that vocalizing our concerns is an entirely superstitious and irrelevant act. And yet there is something especially sacred about this practice of naming the pain of those among us in worship.

It is a beautiful practice. It is a confident practice. It is a practice of faith in the power and engagement of a god that we cannot see. As the writer of Hebrews declared, it is faith in what is unseen rather than in what is seen. It is like the faith of Ruth. It’s that beautiful faith of Ruth.

Application of Text: What’s happening inside the text?

Think about Ruth and Naomi trudging out of a land of tragedy into a land of uncertain peril. They live in a time when women have the social standing of property. They live in a society in which paternalistic patronage and the solid relationship to a clan and a tribe meant the difference between life and a destitute, certain death without identity.

With their husbands dead, Naomi, Ruth, and Orpah stand little chance of survival. So Naomi strikes out for Israel where her clan resides. Ruth and Orpah begin to follow her, but Naomi recognizes that going to Israel puts these Moabite women in even greater danger. Their families and clans are in Moab. Custom dictates that they should stay there.

Orpah, whose name translates as “back of the neck,” turns away to find her father’s people. Her name predestines and foretells her action and her adherence to the tangible and familiar social custom. She’s the obedient one.

Ruth, however, clings to Naomi and will not leave despite all urging and reasoning. By loyally staying with Naomi, Ruth puts her faith in what is intangible. She sacrifices the tangible and familiar in her life.

But what is she sacrificing the familiar for? Why would she possibly do it? What is to be gained? Her sacrifice is for the sake of companionship with Naomi. For the sake of something that has little benefit for herself. Ruth’s act is a selfless act of love drawn out of her own moment of despair and desperation.

Listener Context: How is the text beautiful?

You might say that Ruth’s devotion is certainly commendable and perhaps even noble, but how is it beautiful?

On one hand, the literary style of the story is beautiful. The symmetry is beautiful. Naomi has two daughters in law and their decisions are symmetrically opposite: one decides to stay in Moab while the other decides to leave with Naomi.

In the narrative that follows, Naomi and Ruth become an odd pairing on the road. Naomi, a foreigner in Moab traveling home. Ruth, a foreigner in Israel traveling away from home. How strange that in this perilous moment Naomi and Ruth remain symmetrically divergent according to their ethnicity even though they swap ethnic standing in society as their location changes.

This kind of stylistic organization is the beauty that the Greek philosophers described in the order and harmony of physical relationships. It’s the beauty of Greek architecture, its spacing and dimension and proportion. For them, beauty was the harmony of the designed function of every thing in the cosmos and the conformity of every thing to its designed purpose.

For us, it’s the harmonious order and proportion of the created world. It’s God’s organization of the light and the darkness in Genesis, the separation of the waters and the dry land. It’s the rotation of the planets in specific relation to one another. It’s the ebb and flow of the tide, the progression of the seasons, the cycle of life and death in nature. We’re struck by this beauty in our hearts, our feeling senses, our emotions.

But there is another kind of beauty in this story. We find it in Ruth’s speech of self-sacrificing loyalty to Naomi. It’s not the literary style in her prose. It’s not a matter of the eloquence of her vocabulary. Instead it is her benevolence toward Naomi that is expressed in that speech that we find beautiful:

“Where you go, I will go.
Where you lodge, I will lodge.
Your God will be my God.
Where you die, I will die.”

The beauty of what Ruth does is different from the objective beauty of the harmonious functioning of the order of things. It’s more than that. It’s more subjective than objective because it requires a decision.

Ruth knows that returning to her people, like Orpah, is the course that will benefit her the most. But she doesn’t do it and by stepping outside of her own best interests, she beautifully transcends herself. Her choice transcends her own security, her own sense of identity as a Moabite woman, transcends her own fear of going to live in a country where she will be considered an outcast.

This disposition to transcend herself for the benefit of someone else is real beauty because Ruth makes a moral decision that goes beyond the natural order. Goes beyond the designed harmony of natural relationships.

Listener Context: How does this relate to my life?

It’s a beauty we don’t usually see in daily life where people seem to be so caught up in protecting their own best interests. Where people vocally defend their right to a parking place. Where members from one political party demonize members from another political party. Where people judge and distrust each other. Where people do things for others because of a reward or expectation of return benefit.

But Ruth establishes a different relationship. She starts a community built on transcending personal interest. By devoting herself to Naomi’s welfare, Ruth starts a community that promotes the same mutual benefit. Not the individual benefit of two individuals but the mutual benefit of two people who depend on each other and support one another.

And there’s one significant thing further. Ruth accepts Naomi’s God, our God, as her God. She not only transcends her own interests for Naomi’s sake but transcends her own beliefs. She puts her faith in something beyond herself. She puts her life on the altar to be prayed over to Naomi’s God not knowing what will happen. This new community that she builds with Naomi dances around a central understanding that these women are part of something bigger than themselves. That mutuality, that community of common faith is beautiful.

Conclusion: What’s the Point?

So what’s the point? Why is it so important for us to take heed of Ruth’s story?

For one thing, we should pay attention to Ruth’s transcendent act of devotion, her beautiful act of faith because we need beauty in our lives. We need something to counter the base impulses of society. We need something to counter violence and pain and grief and the mundane toil of the day that can suck us in and steal the joyous essence of life itself.

And we need something to remind us of the true nature of the triune God- creator, redeemer, sustainer. In theology, there is a description of the holy trinity as an ideal community. Three equal members in one single godhead. No part of the trinity acts alone, no part has existence outside the others. This description is called perichoresis which comes from the Greek image of people dancing in a circle: creator, redeemer, sustainer joined in sacred dance.

This is a beautiful image that we can look to and model in our lives. It’s an image of what God wants for our lives. What God wants for our communities:

Worshipful communities whose members reveal God to each other in selfless acts of beautiful faith.

A beautiful faith that embraces a holy relationship through which we might live fully, joyfully, and with hope.

AMEN.

What'll It Be: Twinkies or Carrots?

Acts 5:12-32

We live in an era when the word of God has circumnavigated the globe.

What began as a branch from the root of Jesse and was preached to the Jerusalem masses under the Portico of Solomon on the east side of the Temple, came to be spread throughout the world on the wings of European empires and American foreign mission boards. And now, now as the world grows ever smaller and ever flatter, Christianity is finding its own way back to the west.

The word of God has always been on the move.

Now it finds us here in North America in the beginning of the 21st century - even right here in our Presbyterian pews where we thought we had already heard the word of God and where we thought Jesus was already among us. Right here amid the familiar and the reliable and the comfortable.

But this returning word of God stirs us out of those comfort zones with an Asian hallelujah or hymns with Caribbean or African rhythms. This rebounding word of God makes us anxious and confused because it isn’t our European tradition. We feel like the first apostles alone in a sea of competing theologies and spiritualities.

More than anything, we feel as though we’re being left behind but we can’t quite understand why. Why?

We’re educated. We’re faithful. We’re giving and we’re loving. But the culture that embraces the multitude of spiritual voices, the culture in which our footsteps fall every single day, doesn’t care. No it doesn’t. What our culture wants is only a simplistic maxim to live by. Something easy to digest, easy to remember, not too taxing for the brain or the soul. Too often, what we offer is the full 14 volumes of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics.

So, in the face of this swirling ocean of voices we’ve found ourselves in a crisis of relevance as a people loyal to the one gospel yet surrounded by a society whose values are the reverse of gospel values.

A society which reveres competition over compassion.

A society which seeks revenge rather than justice.

A society which promotes individual empowerment over connectedness and fellowship.

A society which finds in its soul absolutely no need for forgiveness.

A society which, as the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, puts it: feels no need for “adoption into God’s initmate presence.”

The well known and admired Barbara Brown Taylor has chronicled that she entered ministry with a strong desire for in depth religious dialogue. But she notes that her first parish required more of her attention in the arena of sustaining the congregation than challenging her congregation. It had more to do with questions of functional immediacy than questions of eternal meaning.

Well, maybe that’s as it should be - to some degree. Maybe faith within the parish is all about strengthening and sustaining, nourishing and nurturing. After all, if you want to teach your congregation about the theological undergirding of belief you’ve got to do a good job of pastoral care first. You’ve got to deal with real life before you can deal with theological structure.

But as important as feeding and caring for the parish is, it’s not the totality of Christian discipleship. More than that, those basic life issues are fundamentally connected to that theological structure. If we’re not careful, the parish can become isolated and insulated. It can live for years there inside the Temple and never breathe the vibrant air of openness.

But God calls Peter and the Apostles, indeed God calls each of us in every pew, in every parish to take our faith outside the Temple and be with the crowds beneath the columns of the Portico. We ‘ve got to out into the public square.

My country cousins might have said: “You can’t stay in the kitchen. You’ve got to get out on the porch.” While I may be too much of a city slicker to make that sound authentic, the sentiment is entirely accurate.

Suffice it to say that Peter and his pals make good role models for us. They got out of the kitchen and went out on the porch and when people began to listen and believe, Peter and the others got arrested. That’s the cost of discipleship. But we’re told that the Holy Spirit was with them and they were freed from captivity and directed to go back to the public square and teach some more.

Again the Apostles were arrested and made to appear before the Sanhedrin, the council of Temple authorities, arbiters of religious custom, validators of socio-religious practice.

And the council chastised these Christ followers and said: “Look! We told you people not to teach and preach anymore to that clamoring crowd out there. You’re just stirring them up telling them all manner of things that contradict what we know is best for the Hebrew people. We make the rules here and you can’t upset the established order of our society by talking about that false prophet, that crucified phony.”

Peter could have said: “We’re sorry. Okay, you’re right. From now on we’ll just teach about the prophets of old. We’ll talk about the glory days of David and the importance of adhering to the accepted laws of religious authority. Oh yes, and we’ll give the people some simplistic maxims that are easy to follow.”

But Peter did not say that. He didn’t say that at all. The Holy Spirit had commanded the Apostles to teach something far more meaningful than conventional ritual that would appear holy but would in truth offer no real sustenance to humanity nor honor to God.

Peter wasn’t willing to go along with the pronouncements of these human authorities when the Creator wanted so much more for the world.

Peter understood that societies built on the policies of human authority always fall short of the Kingdom of God.

A report just this spring connected obesity among the poor to that disfunctional bastion of American policy- the Farm Bill. In its contemporary form this familiar lesigslation supports farmers by subsidizing certain cash crops. Some $25 billion worth of subsidy goes to three products: corn, soybeans, and wheat – the very commodities that yield the fats and carbohydrates essential to the commercial manufacture of processed foods like, well like Twinkies.

By contrast, the Farm Bill does extremely little to encourage the production of healthy, fresh produce such as carrots. Every processed food, every sports drink, every quick snack, every corn-syrup enriched food product on your grocer’s shelf is Federally subsidized so that the most filling yet fattening and artery choking foods bear an artificially low price while unsubsidized, healthy, fresh foods don’t.

If you want to get the most for your food dollar buy those Twinkies. They’ll fill you up and you’ll feel that pleasing rush of corn derived sugars and soy derived fats. If you want something life sustaining, well then, you’ve got to pay full price for the carrots.

Societies built on the policies of human authority always fall short of the Kingdom of God.

But we’ve got to remember that the word of God is always on the move. And we've got to get going or else get left behind. We’ve got to get ourselves out on the porch.

You see, we can’t retreat inside the insular sanctuary of the parish because the Holy Spirit commands us to live our faith among the crowd of the Portico in that a mixed up world where the economic values of agricultural subsidy dominate the moral values of public health.

We’ve got to get out on the porch and talk about it.

But then when we get out there, out in that broken and fearful world, what will we say? Whose voice will we use? Which set of values will we say is truth? What will you and I say to the world?

Will we subsidize processed truth rich in social carbohydrates and cultural sugars so that we won’t get chastised? Will we say that mercy is an un-necessary social ingredient in civilization as long as our group can be powerful? Will we say that God just wants us to fulfill our independent, individualistic, personal goals and ignore others living obese lives on a thin economic margin?

Or will we witness some truth that supercedes sanctified cultural folklore and the disfunctional accumulation of social norms? Let us be witnesses to Christological values and divine truth.

let us witness that the last shall be first.

Let us witness that the meek shall inherit the earth.

Let us witness that the peacemakers, yes the peacemakers, are the children of God.

Let us boldly claim that adoption into the intimate presence of God, the need for self-awareness and forgiveness of sin are critical ingredients for healthy human life and spiritual well being.

I’m asking you these things today just as I’m asking myself. I’m asking us both to make a choice that will define our relationship with the world, a choice that will define our relationship with creation itself.

Will we give the crowd some cheap liturgy of popular cultural values?

Or will we live costly yet truthful discipleship to the God of our ancestors. The one true God, who on an Easter morning long ago raised up Christ Jesus, the one true hope for all people?

Glory be to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

AMEN.