The Advent of Hope (Sermon #2)

Good morning, friends. I know, I know, I can’t believe it either. They let me back up here again. Just when you thought it was safe to come back to church. 

But, we gather together this morning on the second Sunday of the Advent season. For us Christians, Advent is a season of great hope. In it’s etymology, the word advent is derived from the Latin adventus, meaning arrival. Each consecutive Sunday brings with it a greater sense of hope than the last as we come nearer and nearer to Christmas day when we commemorate the arrival of our savior 2000 years ago and celebrate in hope his promise to arrive again. And on this morning of the second Sunday of Advent I would like to talk in depth about our conception of hope. It seems to me that with our economy in utter turmoil, with America’s sons and daughters dying on foreign soil in a war that is far from over, and our day to day lives filled with struggles both big and small, hope is something we need to talk about more often. 

 

After 21 months of stump speeches you may be surprised to find that hope is not a thing reserved solely for political campaigns for presidency. You may also be surprised to find, as I know I was, that our beloved President-elect Mr. Barack Obama is not the inventor of the notion of hope. In fact, as a professed Christian in general and a United Church of Christ-er in particular, Mr. Obama is heir to a tradition steeped in hope all the way back to its roots in ancient Israel. If nothing else, we Christians are a hopeful people. 

However, in the course of his campaigning Mr. Obama bandied the word hope about as if it was in need of no further definition. I take issue with this. Hope, if left undefined, can easily become confused and conflated with words like wish, dream, or aspire. Hope, hope is different. It has added dimensions, added layers – it is a good deal more complex. Gustavo Gutierrez, a Peruvian priest and social activist, defines hope as a not-yet-consciousness that seeks to be made manifest in the future through human action in the present. Let me run that by you one more time. Hope is a not-yet-consciousness that seeks to be made manifest in the future though human action in the present.

Let me tell you a story to illustrate what he means by this. There is ship halfway through its journey from Morocco to Miami in the middle on the Atlantic Ocean. The trip is going smoothly, the coast is clear as they say, when all of the sudden a storm system moves in from the west trapping the ship and its crew near the northern edge of the storm. The ship is being tossed about in the brutal fury of the sea. The crew knows that if they don’t do something to get out the storm they will perish beneath the frigid waves of the mid-Atlantic but they are so disoriented they don't know where to begin. Then in a crack in the clouds the captain spies the North Star, and visions of the calm sea beyond the northern edge of the storm fill his mind. What does the captain do? He is the captain so of course he spurs his crew to action by ordering them to batten down the hatches, to man the rudder, and to pump out the bilge and to shiver me timbers, whatever that may mean. The crew springs to life, taking all the actions necessary to propel their ship through the storm and into the safety of the north, where eventually they arrive, shaken, but unscathed.

Now, where was the hope in this situation? According to Gutierrez, the hope is not located in the sighting of the North Star alone, nor in the calm seas it represented. Nor was the hope singularly located in the exertions of crew. Rather, the hope is located in the synergy that occurred when the vision of the calm sea met with the action necessary to get there. That is to say, where the crew’s not-yet consciousness met with the corresponding action necessary to make it happen, there was  hope. In the specifically Christian sense, hope usually arises in recognition of some aspect of God’s goodness not yet fulfilled in our lives. As faithful believers we are called to hopeful action to bring that goodness about. It is just this kind of active, lively get-up-and-do-something, God-inspired hope that we see in today’s scripture reading. Enter John the Baptist. John is introduced to us as an ascetic who lives in the wilderness, who eats only locusts and honey, and who wears only a loincloth of camel hair and a leather belt. Although, I have no personal experience wearing one myself Rev. O’Brien informs me that they chafe a great deal – adding the perfect complement to John’s already uncomfortable lifestyle. Brother John was obviously not one to be concerned with material comfort. Rather, he awaited with great longing the coming of the messiah who had been prophesied about for generations. A messiah that would rescue the Jews from the oppression of the Roman occupation of their lands / and usher in an age of prosperity for the Israelites. John understood with great clarity that waiting was not enough. John, the paragon of hope that he was, realized that his longing for the messiah called for immediate action in the present to make that which was not-yet come to be. And so it was that John cast off all worldly comfort and went out to the Jordan preaching and cleansing the hearts of men, women, and children through water baptism, making straight the path for the coming messiah.

And in talking about John the Baptist’s ministry we encounter one more property of hope that I didn’t bring up before, but deserves mention; that is, to co-opt Mr. Obama’s descriptor, the utter audacity of Christian hope. We often find ourselves surrounded by seemingly insurmountable evils and obstacles in our lives. And even when the deck is seemingly stacked against us, even when nothing in life seems to be going in our favor, we as Christians have the unrelenting audaciousness to envision a future much brighter and much Godlier than our present condition. 

John preached of the coming messiah but he did not know, however, when this messiah would come or what this messiah would even look like. To the best of our knowledge, John didn’t even know who Jesus was. Although the Gospel of Luke asserts that John is in fact Jesus’ cousin, most scholarship indicates that this relationship is, in the words of one, actually kind of pretentious, theologian, “of dubious historicity.” That is to say, John and Jesus were probably not related at all. Moreover, John the Baptist was certainly not aware that he was the “one crying in the wilderness” of whom Isaiah spoke. We know this only because in his gospel Mark has woven these strands of history together for us. Isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing? We know what’s going to happen in verse 9: Jesus is going to show up at the banks of the River Jordan wanting to be baptized by John. But poor John living out verse 8 / didn’t have a clue. John had no visible, no tangible reason to expect that his ministry could actually help pave the way for the coming messiah. The Israelites had lived under Roman rule for over a century and had no reason to expect it to end anytime soon. Rather, John’s ministry sprung forth as a necessary component of an absolutely audacious hope that recognized a goodness not yet fulfilled in the world for which he strived to help bring about. Not knowing if he would even see it in his lifetime. Not knowing if his actions would even be effectual. John the Baptist believed against all logic and rationality that he could overcome his present condition and take action to aid the future fulfillment of a messiah, who, as it would turn out, would provide the world with hope for generations to come. 

But it is often the case nowadays that our hope is maligned by society as naïve, as childish. We live in a world that is critical of religiosity of any sort and wants to hear little of a hope animated by the good that God intends for our lives. There is a famous critique of religion by the philosopher Karl Marx that gets quoted all the time, especially on college campuses / especially toward upstanding young men who come out saying that they want to be preachers / (not that I’m bitter… OK maybe a little). But you’ve all probably heard this quote before: “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” If I understand this quotation correctly, we stand accused of being pacified by our religion even when surrounded by manifold injustice and evil in our lives. If I understand this quotation correctly, we stand accused of being so focused on the otherworldly that we are rendered unable to function in our present reality. If I understand this quotation correctly, I would say that the role of hope in our Christianity is being completely mis-understood. 

Pithy as it may be this quote does not take into account the action that so defines our hope as Christians, action that can be attested to by biblical and also by historical witness. I want to take you back now if you’ll join me. I want to go way back, way back to the captivity of the Jews in ancient Egypt. Slaves to the Egyptians for 430 years, the Israelites were oppressed, mistreated and forced to do labor under pharaoh’s regime. They had very little going for them, nothing really to live for, their day-to-day was filled with pain, sorrow, and punishment. But then God appeared to Moses in a burning bush and told Moses that God had heard the Israelites’ cries, was concerned about their suffering, and would set them free. Upon learning of this goodness that God intended for them, the captive Jews did not sit and wait for their freedom to happen unto them. It was the Jews who hoped for their freedom from Egyptian bondage who got themselves to their feet in the middle of the night and headed for their homeland, trying to make that goodness which was not-yet, come to be. Theirs was not a passive hope, as Marx would like you to think. It was a 600,000 person, mass exodus, Red-Sea parting kind of hope. 

Let’s fast-forward now a few millennia to the 17th century at the beginning of the slave trade in America. After being captured in their homelands Africans were forced into ships with room only to sit, were beaten and were starved for months on end. If they survived the cruelty of the Middle Passage they were put on an auction block and sold into slavery not as humans but as property. And then, after being sold, in an attempt to “civilize” them, and I use the word civilize in the most ironic sense possible, they were forced to convert to Christianity and were preached a most pernicious version of the gospel that quoted over and over Ephesians 6:5, “Slaves obey your earthly masters with respect and fear.” And yet, the stories they heard were not the same ones being preached to them. Because in this Christianity they found a Jesus that gave them hope that their present condition was not as God intended and that God had goodness in store for God’s children. And so theirs was not a passive hope. It was an Underground Railroad kind of hope. It was a Civil War fighting kind of hope. And after much struggle and bloodshed when they eventually gained their freedom only to find themselves confronted with the evils of Jim Crow and segregation their hope did not turn did turn into a docile, whimpering kind of hope it remained a Rosa Parks white-only seat sitting, Montgomery bus-boycotting, nonviolent protest marching kind of hope. 

We continue to engage in this active Christian hope even today. Everyday of our lives we bear witness to people struggling with debt, people in relationships that do not honor their personhood, people fighting drug and alcohol addictions, people fighting evils of all sorts who do not lay down to die but rise to the challenge and effect change in their lives because they hope to move beyond the present into the goodness that God holds for them.

So in short what I’m saying is that religion is NOT the opiate of the masses and most certainly not of the Christian masses. Our hope as Christians is the great motivator of goodness in our lives and our world. As you go forth from this place today, please keep in mind that you are an essential participant in the process of hope that is embodied in this season of Advent and that the goodness that God holds for you is not just to be waited for but is to be acknowledged and to be strived for, trusting that ours is a good God and that we are loved. Amen.

Tom Loves the Little Children

No, you freaking pervert. I do not like little children in the Catholic Priest sense. 

I mean instead that this past Sunday I was bestowed with the  job of giving the children's sermon. After having heard horror story after horror story of the misdeeds of the youngsters as they gather around (read: gang up on) their beloved pastor (read: cursed play toy) during this special time (read: absence of God's love) I have actively avoided doing being saddled with the responsibility by demonstrating great eagerness in doing everything else BUT it. 

I am sad to report, however, that the head pastor's father passed away unexpectedly last week and he consequently had to be out of town and would be unable to give his sermon. SOOOO... the assistant pastor had one day to come up with a sermon on a theologically weighty passage and in order to ease her burden I took on the children's sermon.

The experience went smashingly well, mainly because we did not allow the children to come to the front to abuse me in ways that only small children can. Rather I walked down the center aisle and addressed with the safety of a few feet of wooden pews between us. 

The sermon itself made use of what I call "pastoral fiction." Basically, I made up a story to make a point. Here is text:

This morning I want to tell you about my Aunt Gladys. My Aunt Gladys was a tiny woman, about this big, had big round glasses like this and she always had a big frown on her face. Have you ever seen an iguana? Yeah, she kinda looked like that. Aunt Gladys lived out of state so I didn’t see her much. But EVERY Thanksgiving she came to our house for Thanksgiving dinner. And on the night before EVERY Thanksgiving I used to get down on my knees next to my bed and I would pray. I would say, “God I thank you for my family. I thank you for giving me Thursday and Friday OFF from school. I thank you for all the yummy food I’m going to get to eat tomorrow. Oh, and God, I have a request. Please, please, please don’t let Aunt Gladys sit next to me tomorrow.”

You see Aunt Gladys was like the Grinch who stole Thanksgiving. "Tommy sit up straight. Tommy, straighten your tie. Tommy, don’t eat so fast. Tommy, don’t talk with your mouthful. Tommy, eat your vegetables."

I was thankful for many things, but not for Aunt Gladys. What I didn’t understand was that Aunt Gladys loved me. She loved me soooooo soooooo much that she wanted me to grow up to be polit and have good manners. I'm not sure if she was too successful, though.

Maybe some of you have relatives like my Aunt Gladys and I know it may be very, very, very hard, but lets try to thankful for them this year. This Thanksgiving when we say our prayers, let’s thank God for loving relatives like Aunt Gladys. Wanna practice? Let’s try:

“Dear God. Thanks you so much for our families. Thanks you so much for all the yummy food we are going to get to eat on Thanksgiving. Thank you for giving us Thursday and Friday off from school. That's pretty cool god. And God, thank you also for relatives like Aunt Gladys who love us even though its sometimes hard to see. AMEN.” 

I thought the name Gladys would signal to the non-adolescent members of my church that the story was made up, but the comments I received afterward would indicate otherwise and make me feel like a liar.

I was also informed during the passing of the peace directly after that in this neck of the woods they pronounce it "ont" and not "ant."

I dun reckon these is mighty fancy folk.

Sermon

After many hours of writing, practice, and prayer, I at last had the opportunity to preach my first sermon to the congregation at the church where I'm interning - just a few hours ago in fact. The sermon was a beefed up and sexyified remake of the social gospel sermon I posted about a month ago. What I intended for it to be was an affirmation of the church's social outreach and a call to further action. I am left now only to hope that that's how it went over. All in all I suppose the the delivery and response wasn't too bad – we laughed, we cried, and only one person fell asleep. 

But now thinking it over, how absurd is it that a young preacher (50 years younger than the average parishioner) would pick a verse from one of the most provocative books in the Bible (Isaiah) and more or less tell people they need to get off their arses and do something for other people? Though of course it was not couched in those terms exactly, it is still a fairly audacious thing to do. And I did it and am now have mixed feelings over it. No one seemed outrightly offended. There remains, I guess, the distinct possibility that they weren't listening. 

Time will make their opinion known, I can be sure at very least of that. It usually takes about a week of ringing phones and commentary (a.k.a. gossip)  for a general consensus to be made in any congregation. Come next Sunday, if I am still allowed back, I will know I have a favorable verdict. 

Here's hoping.

Preach it!

My God, my God, my God is good.

This week brought with it the first day in a long long series of days (2,847) where I can truly say I am proud to be an American.

Regardless of your party affiliation, President Obama knows how to give a nice little speech.

Let us observe greatness:



AMEN.

UCC Conference

This past weekend I attended a statewide conference of the UCC in Worcester (pronounced: WUSS • tah), MA. It was indeed an excellent opportunity to see the inner workings of my denomination and get a grasp of the denominational move toward a process of "congregational discernment" for decision making (as opposed to using the Robert's Rules of Order), but it also left me a little bit anxious about the future of the church. 

You see, of the 600 some people gathered in that sacred space, I was the youngest by about 40 years. In fact, in the keynote address on the first evening, the speaker posed the following question to the crowd: 

"Did your children ever watch that television show Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?"

!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

No!!!! I MYSELF watched the show and owned and played with a great many of their action figures, thank you very much.

If the crowd had been more honest, however, I would not have been alone in my negative response. Given the demographics of the audience I would suspect that most of their children grew up watching Andy Griffith in black and white and that their GRANDCHILDREN were the ones who watched TMNT. 

That just goes to show that you can't trust church folk.

All joking aside, the question of where all the young folk have gone is a big concern for the church. I part from Palin and McCain considerably and maintain that this conspicuous absence has naught to do with homosexuality or a timetable for leaving Iraq. I think I would actually argue the opposite: that the religious right's conflation of politics and nationalism with Christian values and identity has created for most people my age a perception of Christianity as an out-of-touch ideology for fanatics. I see where they are coming from and must admit that it is an accurate depiction in many cases. 

I am also led to wonder, alternatively, whether Jesus pop/rock/heavy metal and other attempts of American Christianity to appropriate secular culture hasn't led to a cheapening and misdirection of faith. Whereas Christian faith of old seemed to be oriented away from the secular and materialistic by providing an orientation toward deep, enduring principles, it would seem that Christianity today wants to be part and parcel of the capitalist enterprise.  

Or, maybe it's just that I can't stand Jesus pop. 

Either way, I just don't know. Tell me, where are all the whippersnappers?

Offertory Escapades

So today was my first day taking the offertory (the part of a church service where the congregation grudgingly coughs up some change for the collection plate). In addition, it also marked the first time I had to something other than just stand at the pulpit and talk (with great eloquence). 

Before the service I had talked things over with my advisor and thought I understood the process: 

1) I go and grab the collection plates that are sitting on the altar. 

2) I walk down to the chancel to between the pews  aisle and hand said plates to the ushers. 

3) I then read a "Call to Offertory" which in laypersons' terms means a "plea for cash." 

However, much to my bemusement, as I passed the ushers the bowls, one of them says, "You were supposed to say something" to which I replied with my usual articulateness, "Duuuhhh..." and watched them turn around and start handing out the plates. 

At this point my advisor interceded on my behalf by standing up and shouting, "Wait! He has something to say!" The ushers then regathered the plate which were already halfway down the first pew and returned to the front so I could give my 30 second spiel and then let them go at it again. 

I am happy to report that I was not summarily smitten at any point during the service thereafter so I can only surmise that the Lord took kindly to the "Prayer of Dedication" I read after they returned with the collection plates. 

Lord have mercy.

I Wonder

I have been wondering a lot lately whether McCain's whiteness will triumph in the end over Obama's obviously superior vision, intellect, and charisma. There is a very good chance it may, and what that says about American society is a little disconcerting. I think the following article really captures the essence of this issue. I hope you find it as eye-opening as I did: 

By Tim Wise

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll “kick their fuckin' ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”


White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s--while if you're black and believe in reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), you're a dangerous and mushy liberal who isn't fit to safeguard American institutions.


White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.


White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto is “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.


White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college and the fact that she lives near Russia, you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.


White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”


White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.


White privilege is when you can take nearly twenty-four hours to get to a hospital after beginning to leak amniotic fluid, and still be viewed as a great mom whose commitment to her children is unquestionable, and whose "next door neighbor" qualities make her ready to be VP, while if you're a black candidate for president and you let your children be interviewed for a few seconds on TV, you're irresponsibly exploiting them.

White privilege is being able to give a 36-minute speech in which you talk about lipstick and make fun of your opponent, while laying out no substantive policy positions on any issue at all, and still manage to be considered a legitimate candidate, while a black person who gives an hour speech the week before, in which he lays out specific policy proposals on several issues, is still criticized for being too vague about what he would do if elected. 

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.


White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.


White privilege is being able to go to a prestigious prep school, then to Yale and Harvard Business School (George W. Bush), and still be seen as an "average guy," while being black, going to a prestigious prep school, then Occidental College, then Columbia, and then Harvard Law, makes you "uppity" and a snob who probably looks down on regular folks. 

White privilege is being able to graduate near the bottom of your college class (McCain), or graduate with a C average from Yale (W.), and that's OK, and you're still cut out to be president, but if you're black and you graduate near the top of your class from Harvard Law, you can't be trusted to make good decisions in office. 

White privilege is being able to dump your first wife after she's disfigured in a car crash so you can take up with a multi-millionaire beauty queen (who you then go on to call the c-word in public) and still be thought of as a man of strong family values, while if you're black and married for nearly 20 years to the same woman, your family is viewed as un-American and your gestures of affection for each other are called "terrorist fist bumps."

White privilege is when you can develop a pain-killer addiction, having obtained your drug of choice illegally like Cindy McCain, go on to beat that addiction, and everyone praises you for being so strong, while being a black guy who smoked pot a few times in college and never became an addict means people will wonder if perhaps you still get high, and even ask whether or not you may have sold drugs at some point. 

White privilege is being able to sing a song about bombing Iran and still be viewed as a sober and rational statesman, with the maturity to be president, while being black and suggesting that the U.S. should speak with other nations, even when we have disagreements with them, makes you dangerously naive and immature.

White privilege is being able to say that you hate "gooks" and "will always hate them," and yet, you aren't a racist because, ya know, you were a POW, so you're entitled to your hatred, while being black and noting that black anger about racism is understandable, given the history of your country, makes you a dangerous bigot. 

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism and an absent father is apparently among the "lesser adversities" faced by other politicians, as Sarah Palin explained in her convention speech.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain…


White privilege is, in short, the problem.

Click here for the original text

An Email Anecdote

As a young minister in Kentucky, I was asked by a funeral director to hold a grave-side service for a homeless man, who had no family or friends. The funeral was to be held at a new cemetery way back in the country, and this man would be the first to be buried there. I was not familiar with the backwoods area, and I soon became lost. Being a typical man, I did not stop to ask for directions I finally arrived an hour late. I saw the backhoe and the open grave, but the hearse was nowhere in sight. The digging crew was eating lunch. I apologized to the workers for my tardiness, and stepped to the side of the open grave. There I saw the vault lid already in place. 

I assured the workers I would not hold them up for long, as I told them that this was the proper thing to do. The workers gathered around the grave and stood silently, as I began to pour out my heart and soul. As I preached about 'looking forward to a brighter tomorrow' and 'the glory that is to come,' the workers began to say 'Amen,' 'Praise the Lord,' and 'Glory!' The fervor of these men truly inspired me. So, I preached and I preached like I had never preached before, all the way from Genesis to Revelations. I finally closed the lengthy service with a prayer, thanked the men, and walked to my car.

As I was opening the door and taking off my coat, I heard one of the workers say to another, 'I ain't NEVER seen nothin' like that before, and I've been puttin' in septic tanks for thirty years!

Church Fair

This past weekend was a busy one church-wise. Saturday there was a "Church Fair" which called for setup on Friday night and was followed by a special bluegrass gospel service on Sunday. 

Setup was a generally good time and gave me a chance to claim some junk before the hardcore bargain hunters arrived the next morning. You can debate the morality of my purchase in relation to my position as Ministerial Intern at the church, but I for one am extremely pleased with the set of margarita glasses I got for the low, low price of only two dollars. To preserve my reputation, however, I told everyone I was going to use them to practice giving communion to my friends and family. There's nothing like a little salt and lime with your blood o' Christ.

The fair itself was little more than a community garage sale that, in the end, amounted to a redistribution of junk between members of the church. Somehow though the selling of this, honestly put, crap, brought in about $1500 dollars for the church. That is pretty amazing. I appreciate it even more as I, being the youngest church member by 20 years and thus the go-to man for lifting anything and everything, personally handled almost every item that was sold and knew its exact "quality" all the better. Luckily there were church mothers there with crazy delicious baked goods to restore my vital energies. 

Sunday's bluegrass gospel sermon was truly a sight to behold. The preacher (also my professor at Harvard) apparently had a grandfather who was a southern baptist minister in Louisiana so was able to bust out a twangy sermon full of the AMENs and HALLELUJAHs one would hope for. He even went so far as to describe Jesus as a guy who "knew when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em." 

This is my kind of church. 

The Whacky Bible

While I knew that the bible was a work heavily edited while handed down over the years, I was not aware of both the historical and editorial extent to which it has been altered. i thought the whole interpretation and editing thing was a post- Jesus phenomenon. It was not.

Did you know that the Old Testament as we know it is actually the synthesis of about four separate documents that were oftentimes contradictory to one another? I sure as hell didn't. But it's pretty wild. 

For example, the editor (or more technically, the redactor), had two conflicting (at least for modern readers) accounts of the creation story. Rather than combining them, the dude just lays them out one after another in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. However, for the flood story, he divides up two separate, conflicting accounts, and then mixes them together to make a single, cohesive story. Then elsewhere, he takes two versions of the same story and presents them as separate events, like the story of Mo-dawg (known as Moses in some circles) getting water from the rock (Exodus 17 and Numbers 20). Whoa.

And to blow little Tommy's mind even further, it turns out that the whole Christian conception of God as "master of the universe who at the same time is intimately concerned with the individual" does not rise out of a single community's encounter with God, but is rather due to this redactor guy's parsing job. One Jewish community understood God as a distant, cosmic, lawgiver while another community thought of God as being an up-close-and-personal kind of deity. Basically what happened was the redactor said, "Sweet" (that is a direct translation from the Dead Sea Scrolls) and combined the two views into the notion of God we hold at present. Whoa.

So then, one might ask, what does it mean to be authentically Christian in the face of learning that all the "knowledge" we have have about God handed down to us through our "sacred"scripture is largely the result of editorial decisions?

That, my friend, is a good question.

Sermon

So the sermon went as well as could be expected. It's really quite a strange thing to be in a room full of up and coming young preachers all nervous about giving their sermon. There was a lot left to be desired in the execution of my own, but I hope I can work on it to use it later on. Though I may regret doing it, here is the text from which I spoke:

 Low Interest, No Interest

I want to enter today’s text by way of an experience that most of us have probably had. So the other day I went to the Coop in Harvard Square. You know, I had some overpriced books to get for class. I find my books, grudgingly pull out my wallet, hand over debit card, and visualize my dollar bills evaporating by the second. Anyhow, I have my books in hand and am on my way home and on my way I pass a guy sitting on the ground with a cup in front of him asking for change. He’s obviously poor, in need of shower, food, and a lot of other things. And I am walking by and I think to myself, “Psshh. Dude, I can’t afford to you any money. You know how many loans I have to pay off.”

You see, it wasn’t so long ago I got out of undergrad.  $39,000 dollars a year. Before I even got to Harvard my brain was already worth $156,000 dollars, much of that funded by student loans and leaving me sitting on a big fatty pile of debt. This concerns me greatly as I’m told that ministry is not the most lucrative field out there – but I am told that these loans are the lowest interest loans anyone will ever see in the course of their life. I’ll still be paying a good amount when all is said and done, but comparatively speaking, I guess they’re low interest.

Now here’s the ironic part, while I am walking by this guy, moaning about these low interest loans keeping me down, this guy on the road is suffering from a much greater problem, no interest. If we were talking about no interest loans, he wouldn’t be sitting on the cold pavement, he’d be up, clicking his heels and in the Coop with rest of us buying Harvard paraphernalia. It would truly be a beautiful thing. But we are talking about a different kind of no interest. The kind of no interest in which a good probably 500 people walk past this dude during a day, and out of those 500, maybe 2 or 3 people pay him enough notice to give him a dime. They have no interest. He’s been on the street for years now, addicted to drugs, addicted to alcohol, with no access to facilities to help him break this cycle of abuse that is killing him and leaving him destitute on the street. The government has no interest. I am on my way to get a Harvard Divinity School sweatshirt that costs around half a year’s tuition itself and pass by this guy thinking I have no money. I have no interest. We think we suffer from our low interest loan payments; this guy is suffering from a no interest existence.

But today’s text, however, points us in a much different direction than most of us are walking. 
It does not say give alms to beggars.

It does not say to cloth the naked. 
It does not say give food to the hungry. 

This verse differs considerably. Read it with me one more time.
It says, “if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday.”

This verse commands us not to spend our money, nor our food, nor any of our other material resources. There is any number of other verses that will direct you as such. Here, however, the prophet Isaiah commands us to something much more. We are not to give just of our money, not just of our food, but here he calls us to give of our of souls… “draw out your souls to the hungry.” We must spend ourselves, our physical, mental, and spiritual energies on those afflicted by the injustices and cold inattention of this world.

         In other words, we are called to be a high interest people. We are told we should have our interests so highly staked in the downtrodden of this world that we can be said to be drawing out our souls. Now here is where the metaphor gets really good because I know that there is someone saying “With all this drawing out of my soul, the credit line of my heart will be tapped about a week’s time.” Now take a look down at verse 11 it says: and the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.” What Isaiah is saying here is that when you give of your soul with such generosity and good will, with such interest, when you invest in those lower down on the economic and social ladder than yourself, God will keep your dividends coming. God’s economy of love operates on a philosophy much different than our current failing capitalist economy. It’s not a plus minus proposition. If you expend love on the afflicted it does not mean you will have less love or energy to expend elsewhere, rather, through God we have an infinite surplus of love. God throws our sense of economy on its head, proclaiming that the more you give, the higher your interest, the more you will have to give.

What does this mean for you as you walk down Mass Ave? Well, you do have loan payments and may be living off of pinto beans and rice and may not actually have a lot of money to spare. Instead I ask you, as you go on in whatever form of ministry you choose, be it in a parish, NGO, or branch of the government, to spend yourselves, to draw out yourself to those in need. We don’t need people to just give dimes to those in need, we need people to draft laws, head institutions, create programs, and increase interest in the have-nots of this world. That is to say, we need people willing to change ours into a high interest society… for ours is a high interest God.

 

First Sermon @ Haavaad

Tomorrow I will be giving my first sermon as a Harvard Divinity School student. It's for my "Preaching for Social Change" class and has to be a social gospel sermon. The social gospel, for those of you who like me before last week have never heard of it before, was an intellectual movement in the Protestant Church in the early 20th century which emphasized social salvation over personal faith. That is to say, one can sequester oneself away and pray all the live long day but it doesn't do a bit of good unless one goes out and does something with that faith to combat social ills like poverty. It's really good stuff.

Anyhow, I will be preaching Isaiah 58:9b-11 from the King James version which reads: 

9b If though take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity; 10 And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noon day; 11 And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not."

I thought these verses were interesting in that they don't say to feed the hungry or cloth the naked or anything of the like. I find the whole "give thy soul" concept fascinating. Let's just hope the prof finds it equally as intriguing. 

Achoo!

You know you're in seminary when...

...you sneeze in class and every person in the room, including the prof, responds with a "Bless you." 

This is a true story.

Thank you for listening.

Internship

After a couple frustrating weeks of phone calls, interviews, and impatient waiting, I finally found a spot to do my field education placement at! From this past Sunday on, I am the official Pastoral Intern at the North Prospect Union UCC in Medford, MA. The church has about a 70 member congregation and is located a quick 10 minute train and 20 minute walk from my apartment.

At this point, you, being a person not of the cloth (does that make you naked?), may be wondering what exactly it is that a Pastoral Intern does.

Well you see my bare-bottomed friend, in the position of Pastoral Intern one simply interns pastorally. That is, he partakes of all things all things pastoral/ministerial in nature. So, during the course of any week I may be preaching, leading worship services, assisting with communion (in a capacity other than finishing off the leftover Blood of Christ mind you),  organizing bible studies, helping set up for church events, making pastoral visits to hospitals and retirement homes, or even giving children's sermons (in some circles known as contributing to the delinquency of minors). 

Basically, I will get a crack at all aspects of being a minister with the exception that I don't get to wear one of those fancy collar things :( Despite that sad fact, the people at the church seem friendly and have been gracious about having a large-schnozed young minister-wannabe in their midst. 

Whew ;(o_O)'

It is with great relief after many hours of worry, a placement test sprung on me last minute (OK, so I had two hours), and a reassuring meeting with my advisor, that I can report to you my official courseload for this semester:

• Introduction to Ministry Studies 
• Histories, Theologies, and Practices of Christianity
• Preaching for Social Change
• Meaning Making (a course to make us "think theologically" about our internships)
• Advanced Japanese

I would like to add that this whole shopping for classes thing is not as grand as I had imagined. As you attend each class you gather assignments from books you don't have for classes you aren't sure you will even continue on in. Case in point: I had to learn the Greek alphabet overnight for Elementary Greek, a course I ended up not taking. Lest I be overly pessimistic, the silver lining to be found in this cloud is that I can now fully grasp the awesomeness of God as portrayed in Revelations 21:13, in which He (God has a penis you know) proclaims, "I am the alpha and the omega." Truly, our God is a mighty God. Those letters were hard to learn.

Too Funny

The pastor of Harvard's very own Memorial Church, the Rev. Dr. Peter J. Gomes, made an appearance on Stephen Colbert's Colbert Report. I do believe that he is funnier than Stephen himself. Check it out:

Class Shopping: Day 1

Today marks my first official day of class as a Harvard student. I will not lie, there was a good deal of nervousness and perhaps even a little nausea today before the very first class. However, it proved to be spectacular and one I believe will stay on the schedule this semester. It is called Preaching for Social Change and is taught by the esteemed Rev. Charles Adams. Although most white people may have never heard of him, Professor Adams was named by Ebony magazine as one of the top 15 Black preachers in America and one of the 100 most influential Black Americans. This guy is so big he actually preached at Rosa Parks' funeral. 

Whoa. 

Here is the YouTube clip of it:

His lecture style is sermonic and his insights profound. In the class itself we will look at sermon upon sermon to see what it takes to incite change at a societal level and how to ask as catalysts for that change. We also have to actually preach two sermons throughout the semester. Though that proposition is a scary one, it promises to be an amazing class

My second and only other class of the day was Introduction to Ministry Studies. If the title of the class wasn't enough to remind me that I was in seminary, the fact that we began and ended in moments of silent contemplation rung in and out by a Tibetan singing bowl certainly was. As today was just a class overview, we only went over the syllabus. But, as all 60 incoming master of divinity students are required to take this course, I think it will turn into a bonding experience for us all.

Class Shopping

Orientation is finally over! It was a seemingly endless week of one informational meeting after another. The tedium, however, was divided up nicely with gourmet lunches and eclectic conversations with my fellow classmates. I suppose I should not be surprised (this is Harvard and all,) but everybody here seems to be nurturing at least one grand idea. Be it one about phenomenological anthropology or one about the church's approach to domestic violence, everyone has a pet theory and can wax eloquently about it at length. This has got me thinking I should perhaps be fleshing out an idea of my own. If you have any I could borrow, let me know.

Anyhow, with the end of Orientation Week comes class "shopping period," a longstanding tradition of the Ivy League. Whereas at a normal school you sign up for classes by looking at a catalog, at Harvard you are given one week to sit in on as many lectures as you care to and THEN choose those which you would deign to take. It's a pretty interesting system methinks. Here are the courses I'll be test driving this week:

• Public Christianity: Poverty, Aids, and Criminal Justice
  
• Preaching for Social Change
  
• Introduction to Ministry Studies
  
• God, Human Suffering and the Minister
  
• Introduction to the Histories, Theologies, and Practices of Christianity
  
• Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures
  
• Religion Reconciliation and Peacemaking

New Blog!

If you are here, you probably realize that I have a new blog! Welcome!

The point of this blog is to try to keep friends and family up to date on what exactly it is that I am doing at Harvard. 

I head out Boston way on the 1st and school begins on the 8th so the adventures are soon to begin!