Commandments for Lent

A sermon for the 3rd Sunday of Lent.

We are certainly getting our fill of the Ten Commandments this Lent so I thought it would be a good idea to spend a little time with them. The Talmud is the central text of mainstream Judaism, the work means "instruction, learning", and it is a record of rabinnic discussions on Jewish law, ethics, customs, and history. This story is found in it; “Once there was a gentile who came before (the great) rabbi Shammai, and said to him: “Convert me on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot. Shammai pushed him aside with the measuring stick he was holding. The same fellow came before (the equally great) rabbi Hillel, and Hillel converted him, saying: That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it.”

If Hillel’s teaching was a sound-bite, the Ten Commandments are the bullet points of Jewish law. Allusions to the Ten Commandments are found as early as the writings of the 8th century prophet Hosea but in their present form they are most likely a later construction, from the time of the captivity in Babylon. That dark time in the history of Israel was actually a very fertile period for the development of the theology of Judaism. As the leaders of the community in exile stove to survive, they asked all the big questions, who are we and what does it mean to be a Jew?
The Ten Commandments are a clear statement of what being in covenant with God looks like and that starts with God. Allow only God to be God in your life. This is not as easy as it sounds because while we are not paying attention other things gain momentum and loom large in our hearts and minds and distract us from God in our life. Keeping God at the center of your life doesn’t mean that you have to move to a monastery or go to church every day. It is more an underlying awareness that God is and is in everything. Or to put it differently, everything is in God. When God is your context, how you comprehend your life and surroundings is different.

Once God is your context, you have something against which to measure your passions. If God’s presence is dimmed or crowded by an attachment to anything else you have created an idol. I read a posting on a blog by a young woman who was of a different political persuasion from her father. They were previously able to either overcome or avoid incendiary topics but yesterday her father hung up on her when she expressed an opinion. It was very sad to see an attachment to an ideology crowd out love. That’s what idolatry is, whether it is religion, politics, money (those two together are particularly power). It can be an obsession with how we look or don’t look, how we identify or denigrate ourselves. It’s odd that it’s so hard for us to see idolatry in our attitudes and attachments.

The commandment to refrain from using God’s name with malice reminds us not to try to use God or God’s power for our own use. When we use God’s name as a curse we have usurped something that is not ours The name of God is a powerful thing and it is not for us to use that power for our own ends – particularly to damn something. This commandment is more about maintaining a clear understanding of who is God and who is not.

Sabbath time is like tithing – we are supposed to return a portion of all that we have to God as a way of remembering God as the author of our blessings. How often to we say – I just don’t have the time to … We convince ourselves that our schedule is the prime directive for how we spend our time. This commandment reminds us to re-center on God. Being too busy for prayer and the fellowship of a church community might be construed as arrogance by a God who gave us six whole days for the things we need to do. The idea of Sabbath also brings with it a sense of justice – everyone, even the slaves, are to have a day of rest.
The first four Commandments safeguard our covenantal relationship with God. When we put God first, the rest falls into place. That becomes clear in the next six which safeguard our relations with each other. Since God created us to be in relationship with one another, God has a vested interest in how we do that. Maintaining the integrity of the community is intention behind Commandments 5-10.

The entire history of Judaism is built on the story of one family – the family of Abraham and Sarah. The honoring of father and mother, in its most immediate interpretation would be our own parents, the previous generation but it can also be understood to mean the entire faith tradition. Honor what brought you to this point. Even the worst parents are due gratitude for having brought us into the world and even the biggest scoundrels, like Jacob, deserve a place of honor in the tradition. Honoring them is a way to carry on the best of our traditions. At the same time, we can view our forbearers as products of their culture, not expect them to be perfect and sometimes use them as the negative examples that help us determine our choices. We can do this while still honoring their role.

The rest of the Ten Commandments are an outline for how we live together. God is not just concerned with how we relate to God but how we relate to one another. The small tribal communities that made up the Ancient Near East needed a very strict code of behavior to safeguard the integrity of that community. Everyone was related and interconnected and interdependent. Disputes that flared when someone’s property rights were not respected, when marriage bonds were damaged, when dishonesty threatened trust – all of these had serious ramifications in a community that was scratching out a living in a hostile environment. Today the ripples from our neighbors indiscretion barely even touch us – I don’t know most of my neighbors; our lives are so separate that anything short of their house burning down will go unnoticed in Marina Hills. But, take a community as small and interconnected as this congregation, if these last six Commandments are violated, it will affect everyone.

I was wondering the other day if there were an 11th Commandment, one more added to the 10 Biggies, what would it be? All of the community commandments are presented in negative “thou shalt not” form and while they are all important, I hope that we would elevate forgiveness to their level. Something like, “You shall learn to forgive” or “You shall be slow to anger and quick to forgive.” However it might be worded, the ability and desire to redeem broken relationships is every bit as important as not stealing your neighbors milk cow or prized azalea.

Forgiveness is one of the most difficult relationship challenges and while obeying the commandments will keep a lot of things from going wrong, there are still loads of ways that we injure each other. While trekking through the Lenten desert, I recommend some thought on the ideal community that is safeguarded by the commandments and the forgiveness that is required reconciliation. Jesus didn’t come among us to keep us from stealing and lying to each other, he came that all of our broken relationships might be healed and reconciled. So belong to that dream, behave as if it were already here and in your believing it, it will be real.

Challenging assumptions in Lent

A sermon for the second Sunday of Lent, 2009.

Times have certainly changed from the days when this story of Abraham willingly taking a knife to his son’s throat could be held up as some sort of model of faith. There are a number of assumptions in this story that no longer fit with how we understand things. First is the acceptance of such an act as anything other than shocking. Blood sacrifice is abhorrent; it is repulsive to think that God would be pleased with such violence. Even the arguments that, well sacrifice was a common practice during the Biblical era still make me want to tear this story out of Genesis. If it was good enough for Thomas Jefferson to edit the Bible with scissors, then I should be able to also.
Second assumption – God is a being that speaks to us in such unambiguous terms. This is a very old, image of God and one that is less relevant all the time. However you imagine God, interpreting divine revelation is tricky business. Humility in declaring an understanding of God’s will is prudent. We are rightfully suspicious when someone puts forth a “God told me to do it” defense or “We have God on our side therefore what we do is right.” We address this often and clearly here at Faith, we are content to let God be a mystery and are reluctant to claim definitive knowledge of God’s will.
It is crucial that we understand when we are attributing cultural things to God’s will. The shocking reality of honor killings in the Muslim countries is a case in point. The culture will say, “the place of women is where men want them to be and it is God’s will; Allah be praised.” But Islamic scholars are clear that the Koran does not support such a statement or its extreme expression – it is historical, tribal and resistant to the countercultural freedoms granted to women in Islam’s founding. The idea that patriarchy is somehow God-given or God-approved is generally the position only of the men in a culture and supported by a vision of God as a guy.
Third assumption – Abraham is a good role model. I will grant him some fine moments but they must be seen along side the evidence of his cowardice, his opportunism, and his wretched parenting skills. As his story is written for us, he is incoherent and inconsistent in the application of his faith. In Genesis 18 Abraham argues with God over the fate of Sodom, a place that is a watchword for injustice and cruelty. He champions the few just people who might be living in Sodom and defends the innocent against the tyranny of God’s anger. But where is that outrage on behalf of his innocent son. In today’s reading God says “Take your beloved son and kill him because I ask you to.” Without so much as an “Excuse me, I don’t think I heard you right” Abraham methodically goes about preparing to kill his boy. Now I would think a whole lot more of Abraham if he had said “No God, I love you and if you need a death, I give you mine but this, I will not do.” This is a perfect example of the culture dictating an understanding of God. Abraham’s world was one of blood sacrifice and it was assumed that that was God’s will. The prophets tried to tell the people that it was not. Hosea said is most clearly, “I desire steadfast love, not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”
Another assumption that floats beneath the surface of this story is how sin is understood. The whole premise of a culture of blood sacrifice is that the blood is supposed to make something better, it buys forgiveness. To the religious voices of Israel, sin was like a tear or a wound in the fabric of creation as God made it. It could only be mended by the application of the holiest substance – pure blood. It was on this premise that the Temple in Jerusalem operated, the culture of blood sacrifice was institutionalized, complete with its own economy.
It is through the lens of this culture that Jesus death was first interpreted. Paul drew on the language of his culture and could only see Jesus’ death as a sacrifice meant to mend the tear in the fabric of creation. The idea that killing a lamb or a bull or a pigeon could pay what was owed for your sin becomes “Jesus, the lamb of God, died for our sins.”
In this understanding of Jesus death, the sin that needs to be healed is as old as Adam. Adam ate the fruit offered to him by Eve, apparently without hesitation much like Abraham. The question that needs to be examined for the fingerprints of culture is, was Adam’s disobedience the mother of all sins to which we are inescapably bound and for which Jesus died as a sacrificial lamb? Or is there another way to consider the eviction from the Garden. One could just as easily understand Eden as a nursery in which all needs are met for the infantile humans. They could not survive outside of such a place until there were ready to think for themselves, ready to outgrow the limitations and restriction of the nursery. If the image of God breathed into the humans is to be fully realized they must leave the nursery and grow up. The depth of the gift is only discovered as the humans make their way in the world together. It’s hard for us when our children are no longer sweet, adoring, cuddly little ones but hormonally charged moody adults in waiting. I remember feeling something like anger at Brady and Melanie’s having dared to grow up on me. I don’t believe that the image of God in us is honored by a willingness to remain safely in the nursery, always receiving and never creating.
Now I realize that I am apparently advocating the overthrow of two thousand years of theology. I do have support in this, as old as Ireneaus, that 2nd Century Bishop from Lyon, France and voices along the way in Celtic theology and the great Christian mystics and here is the voice of a Unitarian educator Sophia Lyon Fahs, from her 1952 book, Today's Children and Yesterday's Heritage:

"It matters what we believe. Some beliefs are like walled gardens. They encourage exclusiveness, and the feeling of being especially privileged. Other beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and deeper sympathies… Some beliefs are divisive, separating the saved from the unsaved, friends from enemies. Other beliefs are bonds in universal brotherhood, where sincere differences beautify the pattern. Some beliefs are like blinders, shutting off the power to choose one's own direction. Other beliefs are like gateways opening wide vistas for exploration. Some beliefs weaken a person's selfhood. They blight the growth of resourcefulness. Other beliefs nurture self-confidence and enrich the feeling of personal worth. Some beliefs are rigid, like the body of death, impotent in a changing world. Other beliefs are pliable, like the young sapling, ever growing with the upward thrust of life."
In no way do I downplay the fact that we sin – that the world is bleeding from many wounds attests to the power of our refusal to live in steadfast love with one another. But I encourage you to consider how a starting place of Original Goodness might be more helpful to your journey than the weight of Original Sin. I look at our sweet children from the smallest to the tallest and they are to me, more evidence of original goodness than any of their misdeeds convince me that they are born into sin.
Lent is a good time to challenge assumptions. The time in the desert is well spent in such contemplation.

Into the desert

A sermon for the first Sunday of Lent, 2009.

The desert is a close presence here in southern California. But I grew up in places like Connecticut, upstate New York and Indiana, which is its own kind of desert. I had no experience of a real desert until I saw Lawrence of Arabia when I was in junior high school. The multiple Academy Award winning movie of 1963 told the story of Thomas E. Lawrence, and his role during WWI in the Middle East. The movie won Best Picture, Best Director, Best cinematography, Best Music and nominations for Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif. But as I watched it, for me the desert was the star. I’d always thought that deserts were flat, boring stretches of sand, I had no idea of all that one could find in the desert.
The Judean desert, referred to as the wilderness, is an awe inspiring place – you feel that it could swallow you and not even notice. Having been there, the story of Jesus out in the desert has taken on a clarity that simply reading the Gospels does not impart. Spending any amount of time out there without an air conditioned bus is nearly inconceivable to my pampered, comfort expecting self. I was there in May of 1999 so it was not nearly as hot as it was going to get later in the summer. The day we went up on Masada, the plateau fortress in the middle of the desert, the air temperature was 114. The heat from the rocks burned my skin. You realize that survival is a constant struggle out there. That kind of extreme place focuses your understanding of what is important.
That’s why Jesus went. Today’s Gospel reading says that the Spirit drove him into the wilderness. In Matthew and Luke, he is led by the Spirit, although they use different words. Apparently the writers of the gospels had different understandings of why Jesus went into the desert. The word that Mark uses is ekballai – which gives a sense of being compelled. He wasn’t cajoled or merely invited into the desert by the Holy Spirit, it was that Spirit of Wisdom within him which said, to do what you are going to do, you must go to prepare. You must go so that you may understand who you are for that is what you learn in the desert.
Mark tells us nothing about his time there except that is lasted 40 days; he was tempted by Satan, was with the wild beasts and the angels waited on him. That’s all it says so we have to drill down for deeper understanding. The cast of characters in this drama is clearly listed. There is a Divine Spirit, a tempter, wild beasts and angels, and one human. Psalm 8 asks the question “What is man that you should be mindful of him? The son of man that you should seek him out?” Perhaps the wisdom that Jesus is seeking in the desert is the answer to the question, “What does it mean to be human?” “What does it mean to be the one made in the image of God and different from all the others?”
In 2004 when Max and I drove across the country to come here to Faith and new life, it was a startling drive through the painted desert of Utah. It was a breath-taking drive, the beauty and scale of it were humbling. The rich colors of the rocks and hills were other-worldly for someone who had grown up in the green of New England. It was like being in an art gallery filled with beautiful paintings but dangerous. Driving along in a little car reading signs about how to carry on in the event of a sand storm put things in perspective. I was a speck in that desert and one that could easily be blotted out if I got in nature’s way. The thing that differentiated me from Max, the other life form in the car, was that I could anticipate and respect the wilderness and its demands. And then the most amazing thing happened – it rained. It was early August and suddenly life giving water was falling in the searing desert. It felt like blessing. At that time, I was a fairly fragile human, having been humiliated by a second divorce, hiding out at my dad’s place, needing a job, not knowing what the future might bring. And yet here I was on my way to new life and it was raining in the desert. None of the metaphors were lost on me. I had been driven into a desert yet even in my misery and uncertainty, God was there.
In the Book of Genesis, the one thing that God says is not good is for the human to be alone. We are created to be in relationship, with one another and with God. Relationship is not something that we create, it is, by virtue of our being. We can work on the quality of the relationship, but we cannot create our relatedness, it is a gift from God and it is God’s response to realizing that we should not be alone. Sadly, we bustle through life, on our busy way to success and fulfillment and often miss the wealth and blessing of being with. The desert will clarify that for you. By faith you know that even in its most desolate places you are not alone. God is in the emptiness, too. The mystery of the desert is found in its contrasts.
But beware, if you enter the desert with an agenda or a timetable, your experience may not satisfy. You cannot march out into the wilderness and announce to it your intention to achieve enlightenment, fulfillment and to know peace. The desert will observe you and say, “Is that so?” The lessons of self-understanding are curiously elusive when we pursue them with a vengeance. They wait for us to stop demanding, to still our impatience, to resist the temptation of our ego.
Allessandro Pronzato is an Italian writer with a particular affinity for the dynamics of the desert. He says:
I invite you therefore to the observance of a holy Lent. Let go of impatience to know all things, to be healed of all ills. Let us walk through this desert season respectfully, waiting in stillness for the gifts that the desert will offer. Amen.

Clean out your closet for Lent

A sermon for Ash Wednesday, 2009

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to put on ashes and I’ve come to the realization that there are two ways to do it.

One is to say, I expect ashes, I deserve only ashes, so I will heap them on my head and they are what I will get. I will see the world as burnt and smell the smoke of disappointment. I will surround myself with and hold on to thoughts of that which I do not want. This is the truth behind my favorite teaching that worrying is like praying for what you don’t want.

I don’t play golf but Peter does and he tells me that when you step up and address the ball and say to yourself, “don’t slice it, don’t slice it, don’t slice it” you will perversely slice it into the trees or out of bounds where only poison ivy and rattle snakes live. For some reason, our mind overlooks the “don’t” and goes straight to the “slice it!”

This holds true with small children. How often has “don’t tease the dog” or “don’t me look that way” been followed by a snarling encounter with the family pet or some mutinous, eyes boring a hole through you glare. The child does not process the “don’t”; they hear “tease the dog”, “look at me that way.” You have just prayed for what you don’t want.

The Calvinist strand of Christian thought proclaims the “total depravity of humankind” which means that we are completely and irretrievably sinful, incapable of choosing for ourselves to do or be good. It denies the power of having been made in the image of God. While Anglican thought does not put such teaching forward, many of our lives do. We don’t like ourselves, we assume that no one else does either. We look at peace and joy and goodness and unconditional love don’t see that they are possible for us. So we clothe ourselves in the garments of fear, guilt, despair and hopelessness. We don’t really like the way we look in them, but we don’t seem to know how to buy something that looks different. We just put them on because they are familiar and we hold onto the things we don’t want.

Well, there is another way to accept the ashes of this Wednesday. And that is to see them as all that is left of something that you have released, something that you no longer wrap around you day in and day out. Ashes can be a symbol of freedom. I would encourage you, use this Lent as a time of letting go of anything that limits the most beautiful expression of the image of God within you. Go into your closet, turn on the light and examine what is there. Is there a “nothing works out for me” shirt hanging there? Throw it on the floor. Is there a resentment dress? Every time you put it you look in the mirror and say “I don’t look as good in this as my sister would? Throw it on the pile. Do you see an abandonment sweater? You’ve got one of those, too. I think it’s actually a sweater set, you pile them on and clutch them tight so they won’t leave you. How about anger shoes, the ones that hurt your toes with every step you take? Not knowing how to forgive will certainly cause blisters so throw those on the pile. Maybe you have one of those great big puffy down “I wear this so people can’t really see who I am” coats. You know what to do with it. Now, get a match – it shouldn’t take any lighter fluid because this stuff is pretty volatile. As these old clothes burn, throw anything else that limits you and says that you aren’t good enough into the flames.

If you are like me, after this little ash producing exercise, you probably have a pretty empty closet. No one else gets to choose what you put in there and there only one rule for your new wardrobe. It must all look like some form of “I’m OK. I am loved. I have something wonderful to give to the world and life is a joyous adventure.”

Turning to ashes all of the old, unnecessary stuff that gets in the way of peace and joy and abundance is a good use of the season of Lent. It’s not easy work and therefore worthy of the seriousness of the season.