How Rosa Parks saved us

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church on October 30, 2005.

In 1994, a young black man broke into Rosa Parks Detroit home and stole $53 from her and beat her. When I heard that it broke my heart. I remember thinking “didn’t he know what she had done for him?” Since her death last Monday, newspapers across the nation have recounted her story – a quiet unassuming woman who was simply too tired after a long day at work to comply with the insulting Jim Crow laws that said she had no right to sit if a white person was standing. Her subsequent arrest and conviction led to a boycott of the Montgomery Alabama buses for 381 days. It took all of the ingenuity and commitment of the black community to pull it off – they walked, rode bicycles, shared rides and the buses sat idle. The next year, 1956, the Supreme Court handed down their ruling making segregated buses illegal. It was the same year that President Eisenhower signed legislation that added “one nation under God” to the pledge of allegiance and made “in God we Trust” our national motto. Isn’t it ironic?

One of the players in the drama on the bus in Montgomery is an elusive character. Nowhere I looked could I find the name of the man who expected Rosa Parks’ seat. Was he the one who complained or was it a witness, maybe the bus driver? We have no record of how he felt about what was set in motion that day. I’d like to think that his story is one of enlightened redemption but he may not have seen Mrs. Parks courage as a blessing. It’s probably as well that we don’t know his name, because in his anonymity he became the white Everyman. Did he know what Rosa Parks did for him – do we know what she did for us? There is as much need for oppressors to be liberated from their efforts as there is for the oppressed to be set free. All things considered, Mrs. Parks did at least as much for white Americans as she did for black Americans.

I’ve never been really big on “Jesus saves” kind of language – partly because I’ve never heard it explained in a way that makes sense – until reading Brian McLaren’s wonderful book A Generous Orthodoxy. He has a chapter entitled “Jesus: Savior of What?” He starts with the crucial point that salvation is never just personal, it is for the whole world. He says, “God, throughout the Hebrew Bible, repeatedly saves from danger and evil, so to say that God saves means that God intervenes to rescue. God compassionately and miraculously steps in, gets involved, intervenes, and protects his people from their enemies and themselves.” God does that in three ways; by judging, forgiving and teaching.

Judgment has something of a bad reputation. It’s the only topic that we hate hearing about more than tithing. Inherent in the idea of judgment is the inescapable presence of guilt, of being wrong. We don’t like that and we really don’t like getting caught at it. But judgment is not only a good thing – it is a blessing. In a faith context, judgment means the return truth and justice. To be judged is to have your sins named and exposed. It’s an icky feeling but without it we do not repent and then there is no forgivenenss and then there is no reconciliation – in other words, we are stuck. Having the mirror of judgment held up to reflect our behavior is what makes us change and then forgiveness is possible. Judgment and forgiveness need each other. Either alone is insufficient but together they break the vicious cycle and we are free – we are saved. Rosa Parks was the mirror of judgment for white America. That’s what she did for us. The Civil Rights movement would never happened if the sin of racism hadn’t been so clearly exposed and convicted – laid bare for all to see.

The world is better off when the things that separate us and cause fear are uncovered and exposed to the light. The Civil Rights movement wasn’t about saving any one person but about saving us all. It’s ongoing work. Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks and many others became blessings to our nation. We are a better nation for having begun the work of deconstructing racism.

Back to Mrs. Park’s young assailant. One article around the time of the assault said that, right before he beat her, Mrs. Parks said to him “Do you know who I am?” He replied that he did, but that he didn’t really care. In that moment, Rosa Parks was once again where Harriet Tubman found herself – alone in her freedom. I’ve been to the east side of Detroit and I have some idea of what his life was like on a daily basis. By no stretch of the imagination, do I excuse what he did – if he were capable of shame, he should consume a double portion. But Rosa Parks was alone her freedom because he wasn’t there with her. However life has improved for our black brothers and sisters since Harriet Tubman’s walk to freedom in the 19^th century and Rosa Parks bus ride in the 20^th the world is still needs to be saved.

I want to share a story from Brian McLaren’s book that may help illustrate how what Rosa Parks did was an act of salvation for all of us. She opened up a future for us that one day we might just realize.

“Some people I know once found a snapping turtle crossing a road in New Jersey. Snapping turtles are normally ugly: gray, often sporting a slimy coating of green algae, trailing a long serrated, gator-like tail and fronted by massive and sharp jaws that can damage if not sever a careless finger or two. This turtle was even uglier than most: it was grossly deformed due to a plastic bottle top, a ring about an inch-and-a-half in diameter that it had accidentally acquired as a hatchling when it, too, was about an inch-and-a-half in diameter. The ring had fit around its midsection like a belt back then but now, nearly a foot long, weighing about nine pounds, the animal was corseted by the ring so that it looked like a figure eight.

My friends realized that if they left the turtle in its current state, it would die. The deformity was survivable at nine pounds, but a full-grown snapper can weigh 30. At that size the constriction would not be survivable. So, they snipped the ring. And nothing happened. Nothing.

Except for one thing: at that moment the turtle had a future. It was rescued. It was saved. It would take years for the animal to grow into more normal proportions, maybe decades. Perhaps even in old age it would still be somewhat guitar-shaped. But it would survive.”

Great story from Brian McLaren. Did the snapping turtle try to bite the helping hands – probably. Was it grateful afterwards? Of course not – snapping turtles aren’t wired for complicated emotions. It didn’t even know what they had done for it.

Some things never change

A sermon preached in the construction site that is Faith Episcopal Church, October 23, 2005.

The French have an oft-used saying Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. It means, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” A more down home version might be “nothin’ new on God’s green earth.” Jesus sparring with the Pharisees and Sadducees is more like the pages of today’s news than you might think. A little back ground…to start with who were the Sadducees and the Pharisees? They were the two main religious parties of Jesus’ day. In modern lingo, they would be the conservative and liberal voices of the day – both trying to get a damaging quote out of Jesus.

As much as I appreciate our Lectionary cycle, here’s a time when it creates a problem. We’ve been working our way steadily through Matthew’s account of Jesus in the Temple teaching and being challenged by his opponents. But between last week and this week, we have skipped his run in with the Sadducees – it’s referred to today, but we didn’t read it. It’s the trick question posed to Jesus about a woman whose husband died, leaving her without children. According to the Jewish law and culture, it became his brother’s responsibility to marry her and have kids. In their test scenario, this deadly woman runs through seven brothers without having children. They’re all dead and then she dies. Their question is “in heaven, whose wife is she?” What they are really asking is “are you saying there is an afterlife?” To their mind, such a belief was unsupported by the Torah. They are trying to lock him in to an admission that would undermine his credibility. Of course, Jesus doesn’t take their bait and his response sends them away sputtering.

The Roman historian Josephus wrote about the Sadducees as strict constructionists in their interpretation of the Torah – they were the literalists of the day. They understood God as uninvolved in the affairs of the world and denied any life beyond this one. The critique of them was that because they had not fear of divine retribution in the afterlife, their ethical lapses went unchecked. Their ideas maintaining the status quo were favored by the wealthy land owners and the families of the High Priests. It is thought that it was the Sadducees who were most interested in the silencing of Jesus. New Testament scholar Douglas Hare says that “the God of the Sadducees is too small, little more than a theoretical principle to be honored in formal worship but safely ignored at other times.” Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

The Pharisees were more of a popular voice than the Sadducees and known for their accurate and authoritative interpretations of the Torah. The great rabbis of the Jewish tradition come from the ranks of Pharisees as well as the apostle Paul. They believed in living simply, in harmony with others. They believed that our lives are affected by both providence or fate and free will. On the subject of the afterlife, Pharisees accepted that the soul continues after death and is punished or rewarded with another life. In other words, they believed in reincarnation. As a movement, Pharisees sought to renew fidelity to scripture as well as social and political change which put them into opposition with the Sadducees. This is such a soap opera. Much of what Jesus taught is right in line with the Pharisees’ tradition. These close ideological ties are probably the reason that the Pharisees are cast as Jesus’ main opponents in the Gospels – particularly in Matthew. We struggle the most with those in whom we see ourselves. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

In today’s reading, the unexpressed little trap set by the lawyer comes from the idea that all of the Torah is equally important – no commandment has more weight than any other. He is asking Jesus to violate that. So what does Jesus do, well he repeats the often connected commandments to love God and your neighbor. What this says is that, no law is important alone. You can’t separate a law from its context because they are all interrelated. You cannot love God and ignore your neighbor and you cannot love your neighbor without loving the God who made him. This is the biblical theory of relativity. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

It’s good to pay attention to Jesus’ response to the Sadducees and the Pharisees. None of them can successfully trip him up and none of them can successfully coopt him to their side. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. Jesus will not be a shill for any particular point of view. We don’t get to flaunt him as a spokesman for our politics – I know, I’ve tried hard enough. When ever I think I can score an “Aha! What would Jesus do” moment it doesn’t work or actually get me anywhere.

The previously mentioned Douglas Hare points out a really tantalizing question – can love be a commandment? Bonnie Raitt, that fine, rockin’ country woman was right when she said “I can’t make you love me if you don’t. You can’t make your heart feel somethin’ it won’t.” Love, like faith, is not of the head or any other part subject to a command; it is of the heart. God can command us all day long to love back but we have to want to. We have to want to love something that challenges us to go where we don’t want to go and do what we don’t want to do! On the face of it, God has a pretty faulty gameplan. It would be much easier if loving God meant that we all won the lottery and had perfect bodies and more hours in the day to enjoy total success and fun in the sun. Love God with all your heart, soul and mind – no problem!

My good friend and professor Clark is fond of saying that God loves us into freedom and frees us into loving. The 1^st Letter of John says “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear…We love because God first loved us.”

Was there ever a time when you didn’t want to pray for something because you were afraid to get it? It’s safer to pray, “God, please let me be happy” rather than “God, show me what you want me to do.” The latter can take you places you never intended. “God, keep me safe” is less risky than “God, open my heart to truly love my neighbor.” or “God, open my heart to love you completely.”

The bottom line truth for Christians is that when you do truly open your heart to God, as Jesus did, what ultimately awaits you is freedom from fear, a much larger view, abundance and love and peace that surpass understanding. It’s a promise made at the beginning of time, made flesh 2000 years ago, and, then, you guessed it… Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

All dressed up...

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church, October 9, 2005.

One of my life-mottos has always been “Overdress, whenever possible.” Not that I haven’t taken frequent and full advantage of “Southern California casual” to wear jeans to the office but I love to dress up. I love to have reasons to dress up. While my “Sunday-go-to-meetin’” clothes are somewhat proscribed by my profession, I always feel that going to church is one opportunity to make a statement that coming before God should be worth the effort. As a kid, it was always dresses and black paten leather shoes. Nostalgia for those days identifies me as a throw-back but maybe that style will come around again and I’ll be retro!

It really surprised me that people don’t even dress up in Paris. While you see gorgeous evening wear in the shop windows – there really isn’t much occasion to wear them. One event to which I was invited was an American law firm’s 150^th anniversary celebration. The Paris office was doing it up right – they had rented museum for the evening, champagne, foie gras, cigars on the veranda, live music, the whole deal. It was quite a soiree. I chose to wear a sexy little black dress with a perfectly Parisian fitted jacket, black suede pumps and tasteful jewelry. Boy did I look great! Boy did I stick out! Many of the women were young associates of the firm and they had come straight from work in skirts and blouses. To me the elegant evening and effort that the firm had put in called for effort on my part – it was my way of respecting the occasion. I’m glad I did it.

Today’s gospel reading is all about accepting invitations and putting on the right clothes. It’s a fairly harsh parable because on the surface reading it has people pulled in off the street for a party and then some poor schmo is told that he’s not dressed right! Well, that would appear to me to be bad manners on the part of the host. But unless we are only willing to see this merely as a confusing story, we will know that God is the host. Let’s look in a little closer detail.

First this parable comes right on the heels of last week’s parable of the violent tenants who killed the emissaries and eventually the son of the vineyard’s owner. Here the same thing happens again over an invitation to a wedding banquet. We have an enraged king and then a war and then a destroyed city. Finally the wedding hall is filled with guest brought in from the streets, both good and bad.

This is a parable of judgment – served up on a very broad platter. Those who ignored the invitation – presumably those who chose not to recognize and celebrate Jesus as the bridegroom suffer God’s wrath by having their city burned. Now Matthew’s community would certainly connect the dots of this story to the destruction of Jerusalem. This passage in the Gospel is used to date it to at least after the year 70 ce when the city was indeed destroyed by Rome. But from there we have a banquet hall filled with a raggedy bunch of folks – good and bad – that’s how Matthew was describing his church. So, the broad strokes of judgment are also meant for Christians, not just for those who didn’t go for Jesus.

The dangerous part of this parable is to think (as has happened in the history of Christianity) that it is judgment on all Jews. It is not – it is for those who have always ignored the invitation to relationship with God and killed the messengers because they didn’t want to hear the message. Righteous people – those living in such a way that is pleasing to God – were not the target of wrath. Even this can lead to dangerous, smug “we’ve got the truth” thinking so the parable finishes with the plot twist. Even if you came to the banquet, if you haven’t put on your righteous robes, don’t think that you can fool God.

Every Sunday, we pray the Collect for Purity. “Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid.” God knows what you are wearing and what’s hanging in your closet. And you still get invited to the banquet. The relationship that you chose to have with God is revealed in your choice of garments.

This parable of judgment meant very specific things to its first audience. We are not that first audience so we have to work with this a little bit to see what it means. I hear in this a parable of coherence. It’s not about identifying those within a community that don’t measure up but about all the parts of yourself – the community within your skin. Does your dress match your heart? Do your actions live up to your words? When you heard your invitation to God’s banquet, it was for all of you. It was for the broken parts, the immature and undeveloped parts, the parts that haven’t yet learned how to forgive, particularly the parts that are frightened of being recognized.

The parts of you that are uncertain, that question and doubt find themselves in good company. At the Anglican table, doubt and questions are all the rage. But dressing them up like something they’re not will not fool God. After all, the banquet isn’t a masquerade party. But choosing new clothing and then living up to it – that “clothes make the man” sort of thing is work worthy of the Host.

The best dressed people are those who wear the garments of humility, not trying to force a fashion on others. If we come in the best we have, always prepared to shed old garments and trade them in for new ones that fit our healed and redeemed selves we will not be displeasing to God. The garments of authenticity that say, I’m here and I’m trying. I’m not wearing clothes that fit someone else, but the ones that are genuinely mine.

One easy to overlook idea in this parable about dressing right is that all the other people pulled in off the street – good and bad were acceptably clad to God. God is obviously not looking for perfection, but our willingness to show up humbly. What if we showed up all the time as if life were the wedding banquet? It’s what we pray – make the banquet happen here as it already happens in your hall. Amazing things occur when you look at everyone around you as fellow guests at God’s party. Know that they are also welcome – the things that make them different from us make it a great party.

Trying to describe the banquet – or Heaven or God’s realm – however you call it, helps us to identify those places and situations in need of transformation. I attended the diocesan Peace and Justice Conference yesterday and speaker talked about what we know about God’s banquet. It’s a gathering of peace, and shared blessing, respect, wholeness, trust – all the good things. It’s a good thing to ask – what do I bring to this – how do I prepare for it? What surprises will I find? And of course, what’s the dress code - what am I supposed to wear?

Velvet Elvis

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church, October 2, 2005.

I have a new favorite book – it’s called Velvet Elvis. You’ll understand the title by the time I’m done. As excited as I got about Marcus Borg’s The Heart of Christianity, I couldn’t put this down and all I could think about was sharing it with you. The author is Rob Bell, a former rock musician. He’s the pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Mars Hill is young, born in 1999. Begun with house church meetings and Bible study Rob and his wife and team held their breath on the first Sunday as they waited to see how many people would come to the school gymnasium they were renting. They had done no advertising, had no signage – only a dream and a prayer. Needless to say, they were gratifyingly stunned when 1000 people showed up for their worship gathering. The church now has 10,000 members.

Those big numbers do not appeal to me – as I know they don’t appeal to lots of you and they are not why I’m so excited about this. What I find hopeful in all of this is that people are flocking to hear the way Rob Bell approaches the Bible and Christian life. This is not a church that is growing thanks to a surface level, literal reading of the scripture. Their website says this – “We believe the Bible to be the voices of many who have come before us, inspired by God to pass along their poems, stories, accounts and letters of response and relationship with each other and the living God” In this short book, Bell packed more good, tantalizing information about the Bible than anything I’ve ever encountered. His grasp of Jesus’ Jewishness and the reality of the Roman Empire in his life and the life of the young church put my seminary educated self to shame.

Along with Marcus Borg, this way of understanding of the Bible and Christian life is that of always being made new – fresh perspectives shake the established way of thinking and being and people are continually inspired. Life in God is a process, not meant to stay the same while never letting go of the roots. Calcifying the Bible into a set of facts and dearly held assumptions is spiritual negligence as far as I’m concerned. As time passes, people and culture change, the Bible reveals something new about itself – the stories in the Bible are our stories, meaning newer and deeper things each time we wrestle with them.

Paul said it today in his letter to the Philippians. “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind, and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you.” This statement to me says that faith is a relationship and what we know at any point in time is not all there is to know. That’s the exciting part of the walking along the way – the view looks different as the path turns and rises and falls. From far away you can discern patterns and designs made by how things relate to each other, up close you see little things, details you never noticed before.

Now I’m not completely clear about how 1000 people found out about Mars Hill for their first Sunday. I’m fairly convinced that it had to do with coming together around the Bible – something that has not been a raging part of the Episcopal tradition. Why is that? Partly (I think) is because of our strong roots in the Catholic tradition that kept the Bible somewhat out of reach. I still have Catholic friends who are closet Bible owners because they were brought up to believe that the church told them what they needed to know. The Anglican tradition has incorporated scripture into our liturgy and sometimes we think that that is enough. Well, I will tell you it’s not. As Anglican Christians, we need to engage the Bible more than we do. You can be an American without knowing what’s in the Constitution, but it’s not a good idea. Just the other day, an official representative of our government stated on a diplomatic mission that “even our Constitution says “one nation under God.” Actually it doesn’t, that in the pledge of allegiance. Ignorance of your foundation can set you back.

The Bible is the Word of God. That doesn’t mean that it is the “words” of God. It’s not divine dictation. The Greek word logos is indeed translated “word” but it means much more than that. “Idea” is a better way to think of it. If we approach the Bible as the ideas of God as told through stories and writings, we can approach it in such a way that it can inform our lives. Rob Bell spent his entire first year teaching the book of Leviticus which is not exactly a rousing adventure story and the church kept growing. The reason it kept growing is that Bell helped people see that the basic ideas of their religion as presented in the Bible are about their lives. He says it in a straight forward way;; “The Bible is not pieces of information about God and Jesus and whatever else we take and apply to situation as we would a cookbook or an instruction manual. And while I’m at it, let’s make a group decision to drop once and for all the Bible-as-owner’s-manual metaphor. It’s terrible, it really is. When was the last time you red the owner’s manual for your toaster. Do you fine it remotely inspiring or meaningful? You only refer to it when something’s wrong with your toaster. You use it to fix the problem, and then you put it away.” I really like this guy!

One particular lesson that Rob Bell teaches well is from our Gospel reading a couple of weeks ago about interpreting the scripture in new ways. You remember Jesus saying to Peter, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” This is really an important point in understanding the life of the Bible. Rabbis have historically been called upon to interpret scripture for their communities. The idea of binding and loosing was to determine which previous teachings would be maintained, held in place – a process called binding. A new teaching was proclaimed with the formulaic phrase “You have heard it said….but I tell you….” This new interpretation was allowed, given the proper authority of the teacher, in the process called loosing. I think of it as setting a bit of scripture free extending the boundaries to encompass new meaning. The history of our faith is full of decisions to loosen the words of the Bible to be heard in new ways. My ordination was the product of long debate over reinterpretation of comments in Paul’s letters, the historically male rabbinate and priesthood, and even the idea of full ownership of the image of God. A new definition of priest was let loose.

The people of God make decisions all the time about what scripture says and how they order their common life. It’s growth and change. Any time we think we can nail scripture to the floor and keep the interpretation safe and comfortable it’s because we think we can do the same to God. We can’t and we shouldn’t want to because when you do that all you manage to do is to declare the mystery solved. And where would we be without mystery. Here’s how that sounds in Rob Bell’s words in Velvet Elvis. These are words I want us to take to heart as we contemplate this time of new beginning for Faith….

At this point, the first page of Velvet Elvis was read. However, the Vicar would never infringe on the copyrights of Pastor Bell, so - go buy Velvet Elvis! as well as Marcus Borg's The Heart of Christianity.