Which is funnier?

The original:

NOM Gathering Storm - The most amazing bloopers are here

Or the parody?:

Oy Vey

Although it is not my main reason for entering the ministry, I have to admit that having only one day of actual work a week (and that for 2 hours) is certainly an added perk of the job. That being said however, when one becomes accustomed to such a light workload it is all the more jarring when one is confronted with a week heavily laden with all sorts of services. I am now learning that Holy Week is to a minister what tax season is to an accountant.

In this coming week my church will be putting on a tenebraé service for Maundy Thursday, a Taizé/labyrinth-walking service for Good Friday, and two pretty standard worship services on Easter Sunday. Although I am only doing readings for the Maundy Thursday service and one of the Easter services, I have a lead role in putting together the Good Friday service and am completely in charge of one of the Easter services. It wouldn't be so bad I suppose except that because these are the "High Holy Days" of the Christian year, church attendance will be way up and we have to put on a crazy good showing or else risk turning the twice-a-year churchgoers off from coming even as little as they already do. Let us all pray that I don't say anything too blasphemous. 

Latest Sermon

Here is the link to my latest sermon (to be preached tomorrow):

Copyright. Wrong!

I am off to practice more. I'll let you know how it goes.

Style

I found this video while I was randomly looking up sermons on youtube and was overjoyed to find a black preacher whose style could actually be used in a predominately white, UCC church. This guy is just cool. He has serious style and serious class. So much so in fact that I, true to preacherly form, "borrowed" his opening routine for a pastoral prayer I did two weeks ago.

Here is the clip:



And here is my prayer:
Oh eternal loving God.

We join together today in this house of prayer because you have sustained us and ordained and appointed it to be so.

You have sustained us in our waking this morning, sustained us that we had clothes to put on our backs, sustained us that we had the energy and the will to travel to this place. Truly Lord you have brought us from a long way and willed this moment into being. We know you didn’t have to do it, but we know that you chose to and did do it.

And because you have chosen to sustain us, we can fully and heartfully understand the words of the psalmist, “I rejoiced when they said unto me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’”

You have given us our very being sovereign God and it is cause for much rejoice. But in our being you have endowed us with freedom, freedom that we too often waste in jealousy, in hate, in greed, and in anger. We lift up to you today all the pain and grief caused by these sins we commit one against another and we pray for the strength to free ourselves from these shackles with which we bind ourselves.

We pray likewise for all the sorrows and concerns of our community today.
We lift up to you all in our lives that falls short of the future glory you’ve promised us and for which we continue to strive. Through hardship and trouble, through pain and through fear Lord we struggle but we know we do so with the vision of a better world and a better humanity you provided us through Jesus the Christ.

And so dearest God, we thank you, we praise your holy name today, and pray to you in the name of your beloved son, Jesus the Christ. AMEN.

Sermon #3 - Humanity Overcome

The study of psychology tells us that our recall of a story or event revolves entirely around its climax. The climax acts as a mental peg on which we hang our recollection (Sadoski, 2001). Ours minds are tuned to remember first the key features of a story and then just to fill in the blanks from there. What this feature of our psychology means for us today is that if we ended the service at this very moment - which we're not gonna do - all that you would be likely to remember from today's passage is that Jesus performed a miraculous healing of a leper. That's the climax after all: Jesus cures the incurable. Like I said, it's very natural for us to to focus on the more exciting or interesting parts of a story. But to focus on these more dramatic aspects of today's scripture reading, I believe, is to miss its actual point. The good news of the story is not located in the performing of a miracle, but in the short exchange that precedes it.

Our passage begins with the leper coming up to Jesus, and saying to him, "If you are willing, you can make me clean." The Greek verb form used in this passage tells us that there is no sense of presumption in the leper's question as to whether Jesus will heal him or not. He did not come demanding a miracle. In fact, as a leper, he had no right to demand much of anything. At the time lepers were treated as the living dead. As if having a disease which deforms the body, eventually rendering the carrier unrecognizable, as if that wasn't enough, the social stigma attached to leprosy was perhaps worse. The Levitical code called for lepers to keep their clothes torn, their hair unkempt, and to live in isolation, cut off from all social interaction, even with their families. The code further demanded that when a stranger approached, a leper was to call out, "Unclean! unclean!" to warn of his or her presence.

So this leper undoubtedly went to Jesus with no expectations - his very existence was a lesson in rejection and disappointment. He perhaps had heard rumors of a healer and teacher traveling throughout Galilee casting out unclean spirits and preaching in the synagogues. He likely went to Jesus on the very off chance that this healer would even deign to come near to him. We can imagine the leper's shock when, upon his approach, he yelled "Unclean! Unclean!" and Jesus and his disciples did not run away / but stood unmoved. We can imagine the internal struggle going on in the leper's heart as he tried to fend off a sense of elation and a hunger for restoration, feelings that he was likely well practiced at extinguishing but were coming to surface because of the unlikelihood of the situation in which the he found himself. We can imagine the leper was even more surprised as he made his way up to the group, maybe his first human contact in years, to find the disciples not preparing to accost or assault him, but parting so that he could present himself to their leader. 

So overwhelmed was the leper at the situation unfolding before him that the Gospel reports him dropping to his knees before Jesus. The leper knew there was something different about this man, a man who would disobey even the most stringent purity laws by allowing a ritually unclean person into his presence. The leper knew something was up and this understanding is reflected in his words because the leper says, "If you are willing, you can make me clean." The question was not "Jesus, can you heal me?" The question was "Jesus will you heal me?" The question was not one inquiring into Jesus' ability but into his volition. In essence the leper was saying, " I know you have the power Jesus, but do you have the desire." "I know you have the ability to heal me Jesus, but do you have the empathy." "I know you have the capacity to make me whole again Jesus, but the question is do you have the compassion?"

The leper presents Jesus with a choice: Jesus can choose either heal him or choose not to. But when we read about these kinds of stories in the Gospels, these times when Jesus is confronted with the sick, the afflicted, the outcast and other, we don't think about him actually having to make a choice - we just expect him to do the right thing, to do the Godly thing. We like to imagine that these acts of mercy and love were no-brainers for Jesus. That when he saw an outcast, he knew he should should comfort that person, that when he came across a person who the the world said was lesser, that he knew should lift that person up. But it seems the leper had none of the same expectations that we do. The leper understood quite clearly what we oftentimes forget today - Jesus was a human. To suggest that Jesus knew instinctively what was right in all these situations is to deny him his human nature. Author Paulo Coelho suggests that Jesus only felt his divine nature in his heart because if he knew intellectually, if he was absolutely sure that he was divine then Jesus couldn't have been truly human. Being truly human is to live in doubt and uncertainy. Being truly human is to be unsure about our actions and our decisions. 

I submit to you the situations that Jesus encountered were anything but self-evident. Jesus had lived his entire 27 years in the same culture that had condemned this leper to a life of poverty and denied him of his very personhood. Jesus was very much a product of this culture. Had Jesus allowed this culture define him completely and had he conformed to the strict rules of 1st century Israelite society, he would never have even allowed this man within 100 feet of him. We see Jesus had already come over much of the social and cultural conditioning that we rarely do. But before he could perform the work of mercy and of love attested that forms the climax of our story, Jesus had to overcome everything his culture, his society, and indeed everything that humanity had taught him was right. He had to get over what his humanity told him was right so that he could do what was right in the eyes of God.  

Notice Jesus' reaction to the leper. His reply isn't just a knee-jerk response. If it was he most likely would have shuddered and run away - leprosy is not a pretty thing. Instead his reaction is twofold. Mark reports that before answering the man, before making his choice as to whether he would heal him or not, Jesus was first moved with compassion. The first part of his response was inward not outward. Before making his choice Jesus allowed compassion to work over his heart and OVER his humanity. Once his heart had steeped in compassion, then and only then could Jesus see past and through his human nature and act in his divinity. Once his heart had been thoroughly immersed in compassion THEN Jesus could say to the leper, "I AM willing." These are beautiful words. "I AM willing." Where the rest of the world had said I am not, Jesus acted in compassion and said I am - and healing, restoration, and wholeness were made to flow over the leper.

We must ask of ourselves too what kinds of healing, restoration and wholeness would manifest around us if we were to incorporate Jesus' two-part response to this leper into in our own lives. What if as a precondition to all of our decisions and all of our choices we allowed our own hearts to be moved with compassion. I'm not talking about just big decisions either, I'm talking about the small, mundane choices of everyday life too. Life isn't always going to just drop a bloodied up body in front of us so we can play Good Samaritan. Everyday of our lives we are confronted with hundreds of tiny decisions that, were we to approach them with a compassionate heart, would very much change the world in which we live for the better.

What if in our relations with our coworkers, our friends, and our family  - before we said the crass, callous, and hurtful things that we are, or at least I am,  prone to say - before we said all that what if we let compassion have its way with our hearts. Would our humanity be overcome and instead of hurting the ones we love would our relations flourish with new fullness and new wholeness?

What if before we went shopping we let ourselves be moved compassion - would we patronize stores like Wal-mart who refuse their workers a living wage or would we forgo our gallons of pickles and mountains of paper goods and instead support businesses with upright practices that seek not just financial gain but also to build up and give back to our communities? 

What if our preachers, before getting up into the pulpit would let their hearts be moved by compassion - would we have as many churches as we do fostering hate and homophobia or would we hear from our pulpits preaching that affirms our common identity as God's children above and against the sins of greed, gluttony and intolerance that threaten to tear us apart?

 

What if the leaders of the world's nations, before declaring war on other countries, first let compassion work over their hearts - would so many lives throughout the world be continually lost in ego driven battles or would we fight to the bitter end for the peaceable resolution of our conflicts?

Each of us, young and old, black and white, rich and poor, mighty and meek, are all confronted with opportunities to act with compassion and usher healing into an often fractured and hurting world. Like the question put before Jesus by the leper, The question facing us today is not, "Are you able?" The question is "Are you willing?" I want you to look at your neighbor and say, "Neighbor, are you willing?" Because if you are willing, if the world is willing, one day once and for all love will triumph over hate, acceptance over intolerance, peace over war, generosity over greed. And on that day our humanity will be overcome. 

A Favorite Prayer

Breathe into Me the Courage to Make Something New

by Ted Loder

Thank you for all we forget are gifts, 
        not rights. 
Forgive us for all the grievances 
        we remember too well. 
Save us from the self-pity, 
        the self-seeking,
                the fat-heartedness
                       which is true poverty.
Guide us, if we're willing,
        (drive me if I'm not),
                into the hard ways of sacrifice
                       which are just and loving.
Make us wide-eyed for beauty,
        and for our neighbor's' need and goodness;
wide-willed for peace-making,
        and for the confronting power
                with the call to compassion;
wide-hearted for love
        and for the unloved,
                who are the hardest to touch
                        and need it the most.

Dull the envy in us
        which criticizes and complains life
                into a thousand ugly bits.
Keep us honest and tender enough to heal,
        tough enough to be healed of our hypocrisies.
Match our appetite for privilege
        with the stomach for commitment.
Teach us the great cost of paying attention
        that, naked to the dazzle of your back as you pass,
                 we may know we are always on holy ground.
Breathe into us the restlessness and courage
        to make something new,
                something saving,
                        and something true
that we may understand what it is to rejoice.

 

 

Inaugural Prayers

Before discussing the inaugural prayers of invocation and benediction, I would like to take a moment to thank Rick Warren for his great courage in standing up to the great threat posed to families, kittens, and democracy by homosexuality. Verily, he is a man who knows an abomination when he sees one. In the true spirit of Jesus he has chosen hate over love and intolerance over acceptance. I personally can think of no one I would rather have representing American Christianity to the world than he. 

Furthermore, on behalf of white preachers everywhere, a community long characterized as inarticulate in word and bland in delivery, I would like to thank Mr. Warren for not being at all dull or uninspiring and for using a tone entirely appropriate to the gravitas of the historic moment the inauguration represented. 

That is enough from me - I could go on about how amazing this guy is all day. Without further ado, I present to you Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in California delivering the prayer of invocation at President Obama's inauguration: 



Little needs to be said about the benediction. The Right Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery is simply not a person of note. Sure, he loitered about with that Martin Luther King Jr. fellow. Sure, he was was a lead orchestrater of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. But seriously, civil rights - so cliche. Who wants justice and compassion when you could be hating on homosexuals? Not I, for one. Also, what's up with his words being all poetic and the cadence of his speech being pleasing to the human ear. Nancy boy. My fellow white preachers, DO NOT TRY TO PRAY LIKE THIS GUY. It will be the end of your career.

Here he is: