Reformed, and Always Being Reformed

Luke 12:49-33

"I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!

I have a baptism with which to be baptized, 

and what stress I am under until it is completed! 

Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? 

No, I tell you, but rather division! 

From now on five in one household will be divided, 

three against two and two against three; 

they will be divided: father against son and son against father,

mother against daughter and daughter against mother,

mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law

and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

My wife and I moved this summer to an out of the way place, Whitehall.

This was where we found a home at a low cost on water, 

on a creek that feeds into the champlain canal.

We live on Williams Street, Washington County road 12.

It’s pretty busy.

If you follow Route 12 south out of Whitehall, 

It ends in a wide spot on the road, named Truthville.

That’s right, I live on the road to Truthville.

In our time when Truth is so controversial, I thought about that.

Not much is known about Truthville, not even a village, 

but identified as a hamlet by the state of NY, 

absorbed long ago into the village of Granville.

How did it get that name? We don’t know.

So what is out there in Truthville and on the road there?

The Amish are out there.

I see and hear them go by my new home in their black horsedrawn buggies

with the tan canvas covers.

The Amish belong to different “orders,” and I haven’t yet learned 

    which order to which my new neighbors belong.

They are seemingly locked in an older time before major industrialization.

Amish are a small group that came out of the Reformation in the 16th century.

Today is Reformation Sunday, 

when we remember Martin Luther nailing to a church door, 

95 demands for changes in the Roman Catholic Church.

The Amish struggled then and struggle now with living the Christian faith, 

and maintaining their traditions, truthfully and honestly.

They oppose what is “modern,” by which they mean anything 

that promotes sloth or luxury, which is contrary to the Bible.

They quote Psalm 119: 

Turn my heart to your decrees, and not to selfish gain.

Turn my eyes from looking at vanities; give me life in your ways.

That’s enough about the Amish today, 

although I was going to pick as a hymn

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight. [not in the current Presbyterian hymnal]

The Truth down County Road 12 may just be “simple living.”

I always thought and said about the Reformation that it failed.

The Church in Rome was not Reformed; it was split and divided.

The wisdom of the Roman Church was always to find a place

for those within it who objected to one thing or another.

That is why they created Catholic “orders,” such as the Jesuits, 

the Benedictines, and the Franciscans

(who have some similarities to the Amish).

Catholics named us Protestants, protesters

We have always split up when we disagreed, 

so that there is a plethora of denominations and sects, 

each with its own take on the Truth.

I have used an old Presbyterian Sunday School from 1950 

to teach the history of the church. 

Fire Upon the Earth by Norman Langford

It has a simple outline that is easy to learn.

The story of the Christian Church in 4 parts:

The church conquers an empire

[up to Constantine, who adopted Christianity as the religion 

of the Roman Empire, a period we often date to 325.]

The church becomes an empire

[When it became rich and powerful, up to the Reformation;]

The church shakes the world

[The Reformation, usually dated to 1517 

when Martin Luther shook the church and the world,]

and finally,

The world shakes the church

[The American Revolution in 1776 is a good time 

to date the beginning of the shaking.]

This was the time of the Enlightenment and its new ideas, 

followed by the science and new thinking of the 19th century, 

and finally all of the inventions and horrors of the 20th century.]

Another important book was written about the same time, in 1948: 

The Shaking of the Foundations, by the theologian Paul Tillich. 

It is a book of sermons, one entitled “The Shaking of the Foundations,”

based on Isaiah, who said: 

“The foundations of the earth shake. Earth breaks to pieces.”

What troubled Tillich was the development and use of the atomic bomb, 

    which from 1945 onward signaled a new and terrifying world 

because we have the power to destroy everything and all of us.

Think about this: 

No longer did we need God to destroy the world; 

it was now in our hands.

And yet most people in the church during my life

have looked back to the 1950's as a golden era for the church

when new members appeared without anyone making an effort,

when church buildings overflowed with children and youth,

when there was a social contract in which almost everyone

belonged, believed, and behaved in approved ways.

But the truth was otherwise.

In 1953 I was 9 years old and scared to death of atomic warfare.

And yet this was the decade of conformity,

the time when nothing was supposed to change,

but everything was changing.

We didn’t see the changes that were percolating

until the Civil Rights movement exploded in the ‘60's.

Tillich wanted the churches in 1948 

to know of all the changes that had been impacting 

the church and its faith for many decades and centuries.

Discoveries in astronomy, geology, biology and botony had changed 

the ways in which we view the world, our origins, and life itself.

This was forcing people to think in new ways about God as creator.

From 1776, developments in philosophy changed the ways in which 

people understood reason and faith.

Writers of history critically changed the ways in which we viewed the past, 

including the writing of the Bible, 

and the origins and development of Christian faith and doctrine.

New fields of study, such as anthropology, sociology, and psychology

challenged the ways in which we thought of human origins, 

religious community, our humanity, and our personal lives.

Medicine began to reduce suffering and early death. 

Technology brought us ease from backbreaking work 

and it brought the terrors of world wide war to civilians, 

and created the possibility of the destruction of life on earth. 

Langford wrote a wonderful last chapter on the modern world, 

but there is no mention here of the killing of 6 million Jews and others 

by the Nazis. 

It wasn’t until the 1960s that the holocaust entered media consciousness.

But Tillich acknowledged the Holocaust, writing:

“What answer shall we give, what answer can we give 

to such a crucial problem —

a problem in which Christianity as a whole is at stake, 

a problem which has nothing to do with a theoretical criticism 

of the idea of God, 

but rather which represents the anguish of the human heart 

which can no longer stand the power 

borne by the daemonic forces on earth?”

The atomic bomb and the holocaust intensified the questions about the love,

power, justice, providence, and even the existence of God.

For all of these reasons the very foundations of the churches 

have been shaken badly during the past 80 years.

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Now the churches are in a terrible crisis.

I don’t have to tell you about membership loss.

What has happened is that many thoughtful people have concluded 

that the church is teaching things

that belong to a world which no longer exists.

In the old world spirits filled the air – that’s where Halloween comes from –

the earth was the center of the universe

human beings were privileged creatures;

ministers and priests had authority over people’s lives,

church leaders and politicians were respected, or at least feared.

The US was an exceptional nation, 

the Pilgrims were kind and peaceful, 

and the founders were perfect men.

No one seriously believes these things now.

We live in an age of rapidly increasing 

knowledge and communications.

We know so much more about everything. 

And so we are re-evaluating everything about our world and our history. 

25 years ago we did not think of the Kingdom of God as The Empire of God,

as a political declaration by Jesus against the oppression of Rome.

We thought of the Kingdom as future, not here and now, 

and not as a vision for a better world, 

which it is in the Lord’s prayer when we ask 

that God’s will “be done on earth as in heaven.”

We didnot see it as an alternative lifestyle to the system of Roman slavery,

We didn’t see how Jesus and Paul were opposed to the classism 

and economic inequalities, the racism, and the sexism.

But it is all there.

 

Just in the past two years, partly because of political divisions, 

partly because of the pandemic, 

partly because of events such as the police killings of people 

like George Floyd,

we now know things about the Bible, the churches, our nation 

that we could not admit to before.

Our understanding of ourselves and our world is changing fast, 

and the impacts of technology and economic globalization 

have changed the lives of millions of people.

What is worse is that the changes are not over.

*When there are many changes around us, accelerating in speed,

affecting more and more of us, personally,

fear and anger rise, and hate follows, 

as people look for someone to blame.

In such conditions societies begin to fall apart.

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I think that 911 was so shocking 

that many Christian Americans ceased to believe in a providential God, 

and in an America that was so exceptional 

that he (God) would protect us from attack.

Think about that: God will no longer protect us, and maybe never did.

We began to see how racism was baked into the Constitution.

We now understand that Lincoln’s dream 

“that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom” 

failed just as the Reformation of the church failed.

We now see how President Grant’s efforts

to heal our divisions and fix the Constitution failed.

After 911 we began to ask 

“Why are there so many monuments of Confederate heros?”

And “Why didn’t the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960's change much 

for Blacks, and make much difference in our life together now?”

That question is the core of CRT, so badly misrepresented 

across the country this year.

I think January 6 has made us realize that the America of John Wayne movies

and television shows that were a big part of my childhood, were a lie.

Church news in recent weeks shows that conservative, evangelical churches

are now collapsing as they become more politicized. [The Atlantic]

Following Jesus has nearly disappeared from many of these congregations.

To be a member in some of these churches now 

requires not confession of faith in Jesus but in the former president,

who was viewed as chosen and called by God.

Following Jesus has nearly disappeared from mainline churches, too, 

but for different reasons:

Most of us are too comfortable and have too much invested 

in our material assets for us to concern ourselves much with the poor. 

Even politicians I like never speak of the poor; only of the middle class.

Jesus would have us consider the poor.

Most of us are too busy enjoying our affluent lives and our families 

to give thought to building a better world for everyone.

I tell you today that it is not your fault or mine 

that the churches are failing, 

that our nation is stumbling, 

or that we have difficulty helping the poor.

We inherited a history of systems – 

political, economic, educational, social, religious – 

that determine how we live.

To change or break out of those systems is very difficult, 

and can take centuries.

I took a doctoral level course in 1986 

on how to change and improve presbyteries.

We concluded that the structures and systems we are given

have more impact on us than we have on them.

So the presidency changes a new president 

more than the new president changes the presidency, 

and the Vatican changes a new Pope 

more than the new pope changes the Papacy.

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We have known for some time that the old religion is dying; 

a new one is emerging or being born.

Now we know that what is coming 

will be a great disconnect from what we have known.

Old style churches will continue to exist, 

but the model of paid, seminary-trained ministers 

and buildings like this will be drastically reduced. 

Some seminaries will close.

What is taught in one congregation 

will have little similarity to what is taught in another.

The number of people who believe in the God who takes care of us 

and rules the world will continue to shrink.

The Christmas story, the Easter story, the Exodus from Egypt 

will become more and more simply old myths known to some, 

studied by a few, and not believed by the larger populace.

Twenty years ago I warned the presbytery I served 

that when the greatest generation that had fought WWII died off, 

church membership would fall off a cliff.

That has happened.

But here is the hope: People will still gather together, 

perhaps in twos and threes, to read the words of and about Jesus, 

and they will study what he meant in his context

and they will discuss what they might mean for them in their time.

These will be younger people than any of us in this room today.

Christianity as we, the Boomer generation, have known it, will die with us,

and that’s OK, even a good thing, 

because many good features of the modern, secular (non-church) world 

grew out of the gospel and the church.

The modern secular world is the inheritor of the old world and its churches.

The younger Christians who come after us

will accept and welcome and include people

who are different and other from themselves.

They will not accept the racism, misogyny, and xenophobia 

that we have inherited from our parents and grandparents.

Christian faith has always been changing, and it is changing now.

We are quickly and sometimes slowly discarding 

some of the fear and hate and control that are present in scripture 

and which have been a major feature 

of church structures for 2000 years.

We are slowly adopting new language, new symbols, 

and new metaphors for that which gives us meaning in life.

Members of churches are experimenting 

with practices from other places and times.

We learn from Buddhism and borrow spirituality from Native Americans.

So much is happening that no one can fully understand it.

But perhaps we are growing up, as Jesus wanted us to when he said

“No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back 

is fit for service in God’s Empire.” Luke 9:62

 Or as Paul wanted us to, when he said:

“Speaking the truth in love, 

we must grow up in every way into Christ.” Ephesians 4:14-15 

The Reformation is important because we all need to be reformed, 

and our 500 year old motto requiring us to continue to reform,

reminds us of our need not to rest on the past.

We need to be converted from the errors of our thinking and believing.

This is a time for wandering and it will take 40 years. [A long time]

The writer Diana Bass bluntly says “We thought we were in exile 

but now we have to actually go there. 

[The] Slavery and exile [of the Exodus story] suck; 

so [the lesson is that we must] make a home where you are.”

Meanwhile, she says “We need to detox from domination systems.”

We are all burdened by the domination systems of the church, 

of racism, of misogyny, and of capitalism.

One example is the real estate system of zoning, credit, and 

mortgage approvals, 

which excluded women and people of color from home ownership.

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Several times in recent weeks I have seen a man or a woman

begging at an intersection, often with a sign that says 

“Help - Homeless” or something like that.

I have wanted to give to them, but I was in the wrong lane 

and the light turned green so that I had to move on, 

or I couldn’t get my hand into my pocket because of my seatbelt.

So last week my wife and I pulled up next to such a man 

and I asked Carol to get some money out. 

She pulled out a $10 (more generous than I) 

and I gave it to the man with a few words of encouragement.

The light turned, I went on and the driver of an on-coming semi-truck 

honked, waved his fist at me, and shouted at me.

He was obviously upset that I had encouraged a beggar by giving to him.

I give to beggars to show myself that I am not selfish; 

that I do not think that what is mine is so important 

that I have to hang on to it, 

that I do not want possessions to control my life.

Mostly I have to give to beggars because Jesus said to do this.

“Give to everyone who begs from you, 

and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.” 

(Matthew 5:42) 

This was made real to me by Bob Funk, 

founder and leader of the Jesus Seminar.

He was a great Bible scholar, who had left the church as a young man

because he realized he could not follow Jesus’ teachings.

The rest of his life he studied Jesus’ teachings and gathered other scholars

around him to analyze what Jesus said and didn’t say.

Give to everyone who begs from you 

is in the top ten most likely true sayings of Jesus.

I heard Bob speak of this verse several times. 

Each time he lowered his voice as if the saying was special, even holy.

But he described it partly as a comic saying of Jesus, 

because those following this teaching would become penniless

themselves within a short time.

[Like the saying about giving your coat and your cloak,

which would leave a first century Palestinian naked, 

a laughable image.]

Giving to beggars is impractical, even stupid and impossible, but it is true.

They are the great victims of the systems we enjoy and support.

In the second century, Christians were excused from this command 

because we don’t know if the beggar was deserving of the gift.

I suppose that there were angry, individualistic, moralistic wagon drivers 

even in the second century. 

All Who Wander Are Not Lost!

 Matthew 6: 24 – 30

“No one can serve two masters; 
for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, 
or be devoted to the one and despise the other. 
You cannot serve God and wealth.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, 
what you will eat or what you will drink, 
or about your body, what you will wear. 
Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 
Look at the birds of the air; 
they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, 
and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. 
Are you not of more value than they? 
And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?
And why do you worry about clothing? 
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; 
they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, 
even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.
But if God so clothes the grass [or grain] of the field, 
which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, 
will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 

Gospel of Thomas, Saying 42– “Be passersby/wanderers/itinerants”

There is a lot of scripure on my mind today.
We began our worship with words from the book of Ecclesiastes.
Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite books in the Bible.
It is often linked with Psalms and Proverbs as Wisdom Literature, 
and there is much wisdom to be found here.
It was the first book in the Bible to attract me as a teenager
and it is often the favorite of young people.
probably because of its search for wisdom 
and candid expression of doubt about most everything.
We learned in the past that Ecclesiastes meant "the preacher," 
but the newer Bibles translate the Hebrew to "the teacher," 
more appropriate for a book of wisdom, not sermons.
This teacher was searching for the meaning of life 
three centuries before Christ.

He said that “all is vanity” or “all is meaningless” and
"there is a season and a time for everything."
We conclude that he was a practical man 
who tried many life-styles and occupations:
He entered the business world and sought and gained wealth.
He studied the learning of his time 
and found all that he could about truth.
He found satisfaction or happiness in none of these 
or in any other way of living.

\We could say that Ecclesiastes was a passerby 
who observed and gathered information, as passersby often do. 
He kept moving on to new areas of study. 
He concluded (and he repeats it three times in the book) that we should "eat and drink and enjoy our toil, for they have been given to us by God."
He was one of the first perhaps to see that we should enjoy each day 
and live one day at a time, 
and enjoy what we have rather than striving for what we do not have.
This sounds a lot like what Jesus says about eating and drinking.

He was accused of profligate living:
“John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, 
and you say, ‘He has a demon’; 
the Son of Man has come eating and drinking, 
and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, 
a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ 
Nevertheless, wisdom is vindicated by all her children.” [Luke 7:33-5]
Jesus seems to have thought that there was great value 
in eating and drinking together with sinners and outcasts.
It was the setting for his teaching of wisdom through sayings and parables.

When I look at the passage in Matthew, about serving two masters,
I ask “Why does Jesus go from serving God or wealth
to not worrying about food and clothing?”
And how is it that we quote these verses about our not needing to worry
and “the lilies of the field” without remembering that 
they are the antidote to seeking wealth?
As we approach Thanksgiving, this is important.

TG is a national holiday with religious overtones.
Rather TG is primarily a ritual gathering of extended families 
who eat together in homes.
It is a secular holiday about our national origin, 
tied to the stories of a 1619 TG in Virginia, 
and the more famous Pilgrim landing at Plymouth Rock.
We have been taught to remember their first good harvest
and the help they received from natives.
So it is about gratitude and fortitude, and it ignores 
the murder of those same natives soon after that first gathering.

When we have enough food, even when we have more than enough,
we are not much inclined to share with others.
The Amish, as I mentioned last week, saw in Jesus’ teachings 
the need to live modestly without luxury or too much ease.
Many scholars who study Jesus now see that he was 
more of a teacher of wisdom than a religious leader.

The Gospel of Thomas, discovered in 1947, opened this door
to understanding Jesus as a sage rather than a savior.
Many of the sayings of Jesus in Mark, Matthew and Luke
are found in the Gospel of Thomas, now often called “the fifth gospel.”
Some of the sayings there that are not found in our four gospels
are strange to our ears.
This shortest saying of two words, #42, is most puzzling.
As I said earlier, the meaning or translation of the word is unclear.
“Passersby” is a translation of a Greek verb which means 'to go past (something or someone)' 

        so it is “one who goes past.” 
I have the picture of someone walking past my house.
They may speak to me when they are in front,
but as they walk away they cannot speak to us or we to them, 
And they appear smaller as they walk finally out of sight.

This reminds me of the euphemism we often use for death,
that someone has “passed away,” or simply “passed.”
I used to not like that phrase, but as I get closer to passing,
I find that I like it a lot.
I will pass on from this life in the world and I will be gone.
This is my time for living, and my time will pass by.
Others will fill my space and have their time.
It is as if I walk or pass through history, as billions have before me.

A great philosopher, Heidegger, wrote about our sense of “thrownness,” 
Of our being arbitrarily “thrown into” ongoing existence 
without answers concerning our existence and fate. 
He noted that history was already running when we entered it
and it will continue on after we are gone.
In this sense the world will pass us by
but the verse suggests that we pass by the world.
All of the world will continue without me, 
so I should let go of the world and all its things
at least those things that I have accumulated.

When the people of Jerusalem 
were taken as slaves to Babylon 
in the sixth century before our common era,
the writer of the short prophetic book of Lamentations 
speaks for those who remain, saying
“Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? 
Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow,”
[Lamentations 1:12]
I know this verse because it appears on the front of an episcopal church 

on laSalle st in Chicago; 
The verse is below a great crucifix of Jesus on the cross, 20' high.
Many days we passed by it driving into the Loop.

I learned that Epitaphs on Greek tombstones often saluted the 'passerby' 
as if spoken by the one in the tomb. 
Some suggest that we should view ourselves as passing by the world, 
waiting to move on to the next. 
Move on, don't build your spiritual house in this world.
I think we should each contribute what we can 
to the on-going life of the world, or as Jews say, to repair the world.

It is a fact that Jesus was an itinerant; a homeless wanderer.
A scribe approached and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; 
but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” 
Another of his disciples said to him, 
“Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” 
But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” 
[matthew 8:20f] 
He asked his followers to do the same.

Luke 9:62 – “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back 
is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Matt 10 - Jesus sent out the 12
“Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, 
but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 
As you go, proclaim the good news, 
‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’
Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. 
You received without payment; give without payment. 
Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, 
or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for laborers deserve their food. 
Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, 
and stay there until you leave. As you enter the house, greet it. 
If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; 
but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. 
If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, 
shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.

In Luke 10 Jesus sends out 70, two by two, with similar instructions.
In each case the disciples are asked to be radically dependent 
on the grace of others.
We are asked to do this.
All the disciples are asked to Trust, share resources, 
accept and give hospitality.
They are dramatically unequipped, 
followers of Jesus must be resourceful.
Jesus said, “I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; 
so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”

Last week I mentioned that Jesus was like a stand up comic,
and I talk about him giving us parables 
as puzzles which raise deep questions.
This may be comical.

Here he is asking the impossible: 
“Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves?”
How do you do that?

Paul tried.
He was an itinerant with his mission to the Gentiles, 
but as a follower of Jesus, 
he felt a need to be as free as possible from worldly cares.
The call of ministers in the Presbyterian Church used to say 
that the pay package for pastors should be sufficient for ministers 
to be “free from worldly care.”
Somewhere along the line the church concluded that in modern times 
that requirement was not needed.

I have been wandering through scripture this morning
I leave you with this song from Lord of the Rings by Tolkien:

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say”

The last verse reverses the uncertainty of the journey.

Now there is hope of returning home, even when that is unlikely:

Home is behind, the world ahead,
And there are many paths to tread
Through shadows to the edge of night,
Until the stars are all alight.
Then [it is imagined] world behind and home ahead,
We’ll wander back and home to bed.

Live the Resurrection! Don't Wait for It!

After preaching the following sermon I thought it should be more pointed: Resurrection today could be called "wokeness." For Romans chapter six to speak to us today, we must say: We have died with MLK, with all who have been lynched, with George Floyd and all who have been executed without trial by the police. We rise with them by being “woke.” We can't understand resurrection without "dying" to racial injustice. 

To translate or paraphrase the text, Romans 6:1-13, which appears below within the sermon, I had to work through chapters 3-8 with Greek, the NRSV, the Message, and the Jesus Seminar's Scholars' Version. I struggled with what Paul meant by sin and grace and justification, what Bonhoeffer and Barth meant by "religion," and what Tillich meant by "acceptance." 

New life for Paul is definitely "wokeness" in today's vernacular. 

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For all the 5 years I have preached here I have been writing my book, a memoir that became an entire autobiography of more than 500 pages. 

As I wrote I came to realize that I was writing not just my story but the story of the mainline prot churches to which I gave myself during my life.

Also it is the story of national and world affairs during the time of my life, from WWII to Vietnam, Watergate, through the cultural wars of civil rights for POCs, abortion rights and the rights of gays and lesbians and now transgender persons.

I thought the book was about me and that the last chapter would be the one about what I now believe, but I was wrong.

The last chapter is what happened in the church and the world and how in last few years we have learned that we did not understand who we were and are; how much we did not understand, and how fragile the church and the Christian faith have been. 

We didn’t understand our nation, or what killing native Americans, and what racism and slavery had done to our country and even to you and me in the 21st century. 

We didn’t know how delicate our democracy was and is.

Some of us now speak of being “woke” to these realities and truths, and hope that we are done with fake news and false narratives. 

Being “woke” is a way of talking about resurrection.

“Sleepers, Awake” could be my call to resurrection today.

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I re-wrote in my memoir last month about my becoming Christian in 1966. 

I was thinking about how strongly I was affected then by the teachings and death of Jesus.

But I don’t remember thinking much then about the resurrection of Jesus. 

Now I realize that my strong feelings of being deeply renewed in my own life was perhaps the intended purpose and meaning of the resurrection stories. 

In other words, our emotional experience of faith has something to do with resurrection itself.



When I was first reading the gospels 55 years ago, I was also reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who thought Hitler was destroying both Germany and Christianity, who joined a plot to kill Hitler, and who was imprisoned and executed for his opposition to the Nazis.

Bonhoeffer wrote in prison: “To live in the light of the resurrection – that is the meaning of Easter.” [LandP, p. 207] 

Sharing in the resurrection of Jesus wasn’t about life after death, which is how we usually think of resurrection.

Rising from the dead was not about life after death, but about new life now. 

New life can rise from immersion in Jesus’ teachings and the stories of his life and death, so that I didn’t have to think about the resurrection of Jesus; I was experiencing it for myself. 

This I think is the meaning of being born “again,” or born “anew,” or born “from above” in the Gospel of John.

“Unless you are born again you cannot see the Kingdom of God,” John says.

Bonhoeffer would say with John, “If you live in the light of the resurrection, you can see and participate in the Kingdom of God.

Paul was writing about this experience of resurrection long before John wrote about being born again. 

[read religionless text of Romans 6] 

So how do we end our bad behavior and guilt?

Should we continue to live as before so that we can experience acceptance again?

That would be ridiculous! How can we who have “died” to the seductive power of corruption continue to live as if we were still in its grasp?

Or do you not get it that we who were baptized as a way of identifying with Jesus, were symbolically immersed into his death?

When we went under the water, we left the old ways behind; and when we came up out of the water, we entered into a new life in a new world!

If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in rising to a new kind of life like his.

Our old self was crucified with him, so that we would be free of the demands of our old life! 

Christ has been raised to new life and is not going to die again; death no longer has any power over him.

We, too, have been raised to new life so that the old ways of living will no longer rule us.

He died to end hate and hurt, to live for love and good.

So you also must think of yourselves as dead to hating and hurting yourselves and others, and alive to love. 

Therefore, do not let the seductive powers of controlling behaviors lead you to submit to worldly desires.

Don’t let any part of your body or mind be an instrument for doing wrong, but make yourself an instrument of justice as one who has been brought from death to life. 

Treating others badly will no longer be your style of relating to others, not because you ignore the rules, but because you will know deep inside that you are acceptable and have been and are accepted.

This is a paraphrase and translation. I have expanded words like “sin” and “grace” to make them more understandable to us moderns.



And likewise we read in 2nd Corinthians 5:17: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation:  everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”

Paul speaks often of being “in Christ” which means to participate in his death and risen life. 

Before we can speak of resurrection, we have to speak of death.

Studying Romans 6 helped me understand the meaning of the slogan, “Christ died for our sins.”

This means nothing magical or supernatural, as in a trade with the devil, or as if God made a sacrifice to pay a debt of sins that we have run up.

Those are metaphors about old Hebrew practices of blood sacrifice and scapegoats which I read to you from Leviticus some months ago.

Instead, let us say that Jesus died in solidarity with all others who suffered and were killed by the Romans and other Empires.

Someone said about Bonhoeffer what was true of Jesus: Hitler could only kill Bonhoeffer once; No more could be done to him. 

Nothing could stop his teachings or end the stories of the friendship and love others experienced from him.

The Romans could kill Jesus only once, but not his words or the memories of him.

Resurrection is a kind of resistance by God and those who proclaim it against Rome and all empires like it.

We can say that Christ died because of our sins, as if our sins of rejection and hate and omission killed him.

His death in itself does nothing for our sins which are PAST; Forgiveness of sins is about cancelling the past  so that we can live into the future,

If we forgive others we allow them to rise from their past which is like a living death to them.

Resurrection is how we live from here on.



We experience those who have died as present to us, and so we tell stories about how we experience their presence,

The more powerfully we are affected by the loved one who has died, the stronger the sense that they are not gone from us forever.

Resurrection has become the symbol for the possibility of our transformation, in this life as well as afterward.

Before the war Bonhoeffer had written that we don’t say the words of the creed because we believe them; we believe them because we say them. 

I think this needs explanation: Because Christian faith may be understood as responding to what is perceived or identified as a call from Christ, it is only necessary for the one called to respond by saying “I believe.” 

I see that when I came to faith many years ago, I declared not exactly what I believed, but I was declaring that I believed, which became real and true by speaking it and by repeating it. 

Bonhoeffer also said: “No one wants to know about your faith or unbelief, your orders are to perform the act of obedience on the spot. Then you will find yourself in the situation where faith becomes possible and where faith exists in the true sense of the word.”

For Bonhoeffer this became ultimately true when he was martyred for his participation in a political action of revolt against Hitler as an act of Christian faith. 

When I was born in May, 1944, Bonhoeffer was in prison writing words that should concern us on Easter Sunday, 2021.

In prison he was thinking about the Christian faith and the Christian churches and how they had failed to prevent or stop Hitler and the rise of nazism.

So he said: the churches and the old ideas about God and the gospels  had become corrupted by becoming “religious.” 

What did he mean?

When trust in the God of Jesus becomes written beliefs, and when anything other than what the church teaches is considered “heresy,” and rules replace “good news,” then we are looking at “religion,” not faith. 

Commitment to following Jesus had become commitment to churches and leaders, and to one way of interpreting the Bible, with rules and rituals that only touched the surface of life and not its depths or heights.

When religion becomes just a part of life, one commitment among many,  when the Gospel doesn’t apply to the rich and powerful, then Christianity has failed, and we need, as Bonhoeffer said, a “religionless Christianity.” 

A religionless Christianity he said would require a new language and new ways of being church more honest to Jesus and to God and to each other.

It was in reading Bonhoeffer again and thinking over my entire life in the church, and being invited to preach here, on Easter Sunday, that I learned something new about the meaning of resurrection, not just what it means in the abstract, as a word or a concept, or a story from the Bible, or something we are supposed to believe.

What Bonhoeffer taught, and what some others had thought before and after him was this: What we believe or say we believe when we recite the creed, doesn’t matter.

Faith isn’t about believing anything. Being a Christian should be about rising to new life.

How do we do that? By walking away from what we thought was important and taking Jesus seriously and simply as a way to live, in community, marked by love.

This is the resurrection. We should live the resurrection, not wait for it.

On a personal level we will give up:

Wanting things, thinking they will make us happy.

Wanting success or power to control other people.

Manipulating or even paying others to do or not do what we want.

Wanting other people to live the way we want them to.

Giving in to the desire to argue or strike back at those we think have wronged us.

Ignoring those around us, even those we love, because we don’t want to be involved.

On a public level it’s political because Jesus’ death was political.

How we live together and treat each other are the business of both church and state.

It’s a bit like the show Law and Order, the Church should teach how to live, and the state should make it possible for us to live together, with equal justice, under law.

Having some Irish roots, I remind you that one of the meanings of “rise” is to rise up in solidarity against oppressors. In Ireland that is called “a rising.”

Now I ask you to rise, to rise up, to say together some semblance of what we believe, but mostly to declare that you believe – by dying to racism.

"Into the Words" or, How Words Become Symbols, How Jesus became Christ, and Why We Like Happy Endings

 John 1:1-5, 9-13, 16-18

Last week I watched the film of the Broadway musical, Into the Woods. It is a web of four fairy tales, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, and Rapunzel, all woven together to present eternal lessons for life.

The phrase “into the woods” is a metaphor for living life. To go into the woods is to take on the risks of living. The song, No One Is Alone, tells us,

"

"Sometimes people leave you halfway through the wood.

Do not let it grieve you, no one leaves for good.

You are not alone. No one is alone.

Though it's fearful, though it's deep, though it's dark and though you may lose the path,

though you may encounter wolves, you can't just act, you have to listen you have to think.

Into the woods - you have to grope, but that's the way you learn to cope.

Into the woods to find there's hope of getting through the journey."

We are going on a journey “into the words,” or rather into the Word from the Gospel of John.

In 1998 I became Executive Presbyter and Stated Clerk of Great Rivers Presbytery in Peoria IL. I was responsible to 20,000 Presbyterians in 120 congregations. It was a great position and honor for me. When the previous executive left, so did the associate executive and the administrative assistant. All that remained was the bookkeeper. A volunteer served as receptionist. I needed to hire an Administrative Assistant first thing. We interviewed six women and one man, and I was impressed with Barb Hartwig.

When I asked how she would plan for a presbytery meeting, she gave us a big smile and a rundown of the dozens of questions, tasks, and people that would be needed. 

She wasn’t even a Presbyterian; she was hard-shell fundamentalist baptist. We would have disagreed about everything religious, but I saw in her what I wanted in an assistant. No one else did. She was extremely overweight and some on the search committee thought her unattractive. I had to argue with my search committee about our choice. I argued that like Samuel choosing David, it was a case of looking not at appearances but upon the heart. They gave in to me because I was the new leader.

She was a competent and creative assistant, who had a Swiss flag on her desk, which she declared to be neutral territory concerning religion and politics. I learned last week that Barb died last year.

This led me to remember an incident a year or so after we hired her.

The six of us who were by then working for the presbyery scheduled a staff retreat. To move the conversation to deeper level than day to day work, I used an exercise in guided imagery. I asked:

“If you entered an elevator in a tall building, and discovered that Jesus was in that                                           elevator, and you knew that you would be with him there, alone, for several long                                             minutes, what would you ask him or say to him?”

Several people wanted to know from Jesus what some of his teachings meant, or what he would think of current day issues. Barb was different. She said she would be overwhelmed by the glory of his divinity, and in tears, she told us that she would kneel before him and ask him for forgiveness, and what he wanted her to do.

The rest of us were stunned. This was not the way most Presbyterians would respond. We are called the “frozen chosen” sometimes, you know. So we talked about what Jesus meant to us and the effect he had on us in more personal and profound ways than we would have if Barb had not been there.

She moved the conversation from Jesus the teacher and leader to Jesus, the Son of God and Savior of the World. She moved us from the historical Jesus to the Christ.

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When I left Peoria in 2001, I left the churches and went to work for the Westar Institute, home of the Jesus Seminar, the world’s center for the study of the historical Jesus. When I went to Westar the scholars were engaged in a Paul Seminar and an Acts Seminar,  Later there was a God Seminar, and a Christianity Seminar, which this year begins anew as the “Christ Seminar.” These studies focus on the third and fourth centuries, up to the time of Constantine when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 381 C.E.  

So now Westar may take Barb seriously in asking when and how did Jesus as a human become “Christ?” Barb would have said that Jesus was always Christ, the Son of God, because that is what the Gospel of John says: He was in the beginning with God. So, what do we see in Jesus and what does he mean to us? What does it mean to call Jesus “Christ?”

We begin with a man, the historical Jesus, and the gospels tell stories that make claims about his mystical abilities to heal, to cast out demons, to bring the dead to life, to multiply loaves, and turn water into wine. The stories tell how he is chosen and called by God to bring in the rule of God on earth. 

This gets at the basic meaning of naming him Messiah or Christ. In a recent sermon here about Leviticus I spoke of the Messiah as one who is chosen or appointed by God, liturgically anointed in a ceremony. A horn or cup of blessed, scented olive oil was poured over the head of the leader who would be a spokesperson or representative of God. It was a kind of ordination and installation service such as we have, but we “lay on hands” rather than pour oil. That would be too messy.

Ancient Israel had priests and prophets and kings, all of whom were anointed. They were the anointed ones, or messiahs. After the rule of Zedikiah, the last king of Judah, ended in 586 BC people hoped for a new king, a special Messiah to come and restore Israel to its presumed greatness. “Make Israel Great Again” could have been their slogan.

Messiah is a Hebrew word. In Greek the word is “Christ.” I used to discourage people from using the word Christ as if it were Jesus’ last name. In the Bible it is mostly used as a title, as in “Christ Jesus,” of “Jesus, the Christ.” After thinking about Barb, I am not so sure. The title Christ is a kind of name and so many people speak not of Jesus, but of Christ. Christ has become his name.

But Christ is not only a title or a name. What has happened is that the stories, the words of the stories about him have turned the man Jesus into the Son of God – not a son of a god, but the Son of the One God. The writer of the gospel of John has transformed these words into “the Word,” so that Jesus is like a word spoken by God, and becomes the Word of God. Jesus is now the message of God, the revelation or revealing of God, so that we finally can know God, in knowing Jesus.

But we “know” Jesus not merely by following him as in the first three Gospels, or through historical or linguistic study as scholars do, but through a new way of seeing and thinking about Jesus, so that now we have a present, mystical relationship with him. Jesus has become a man who embodies the divine or supernatural, who continues to exist as a spirit, who can still speak to us, walk among us, and act among us. 

In this alchemical process of using mere words to turn a man into God, Jesus became and becomes a symbol as “the Christ.” A symbol is an image containing meanings beyond the actual thing or person depicted or named. A symbol may be a person, an act, a place, a thing, a fictional story, or an historical event. When we invest any of these images with profound and intense meaning, they become symbols, pointing beyond themselves. Because it is we who endow them or clothe them with meaning, we can say that we participate in those symbols and have a relationship with them. That is what gives them power and strengthens it.

Symbols, metaphors, and myths are the language of faith. The metaphor is our naming of one thing as if it is another thing. The bread as the body of Christ; the congregation as the body of Christ. Flowing water as life. The cross as the form of human life and death. These are powerful metaphors.

Myth is a fiction that carries a truth. That Jesus was baptized was an historical event. That the HS appeared as a dove makes the event a myth. It is an enhancement of the story that makes it a Christ event, not merely about Jesus the man.

Today we would say Christ is a “meme,” an idea or image with its own meanings, which is imitated and repeated. The meme is understood instantly and spread from person to person within the culture. In many ways all our memes together make up the totality of our culture.

In the gospel of John, and in the faith of Barb, Jesus is spiritualized and is more God than human. To spiritualize something or someone is to make them less material or physical but transcendent, or above and beyond what is real as we normally understand it. I used to think that was a bad thing, because it undermines the human, historical Jesus, but because of Barb I willing to reconsider it. 

As the mystical, eternal Christ, he becomes God personified, the Spirit of God in flesh among us, not only to glorify him, but to help us share in his divinity. To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God. This is not a claim made by John, it is a description of how symbols and myths work. By believing, by entering the symbol and story, we experience the power that it carries.

There are other ways to describe the revealing of God in Jesus. The gospel of Mark tells how this happened in the baptism of the adult Jesus, so that it is as if he was adopted by God. The gospels of Luke and Matthew tell of how the Spirit of God enters Mary and fathers Jesus literally. The gospel of Matthew goes further and tells of the visit of the wise men to the infant Jesus on the twelfth day of Christmas. The wise men symbolize the “Epiphany,” or “manifestation,” or “making known” of God’s new work in the world, because representatives of the world outside the stable and beyond Israel  give him recognition as they would a king. Paul comes right out and says that Jesus was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power... by resurrection from the dead. (Romans 1:3-4). This made the human, historical Jesus nearly irrelevant to him.

What I have said about symbols is mostly from Paul Tillich. Tillich [in Dynamics of Faith] says another important thing about the symbols of faith. A sentence in one of his books has propelled my life in the church: A myth which is understood as a myth..., can be called a "broken myth.” In other words, once we understand what myth is and that a story is a myth, that story no longer works naturally or easily. The symbols are drained of their power.

Philosophers have called this feature of the last two centuries “the disenchantment of the world.” We used to see the world easily as magical or enchanted, a spirit world. Our world is disenchanted because reason and science are the new faith, the current myth of the age. Science seeks to understand the natural world. Those who believe that everything is ultimately understandable, live wholly within the myth of science and with the symbols of a scientific world.

The scientific world has eclipsed the ancient Biblical worldview. One great problem for the churches today is that day by day the Bible is becomes an older and more difficult to understand book. But the old words and stories can still invoke God, as they did for Barb. Life with God grows within the language of God, which are symbols myths, and not literal things or events. Life is best when it is rich in symbolism, rich in metaphor, rich in poetry, and even rich in the myth of the faith. Metaphor, not money, makes the world go 'round.

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A cartoon shows a Mom putting her child to bed. She holds a book and says, “I can’t protect you from everything, but I can read you stories that make you believe I can protect you from everything.” This is the function both of fairy tales and many Biblical stories.

*I conclude that we have to tell ourselves that our stories will end “happily ever after” because if we did not, we would despair. Yet we know that all stories don’t end happily. But because all stories don’t end unhappily, we do not despair, but we go on, into the woods, on our journeys, with hope that our story will end well. In Christian terms, life is symbolized by the cross, but not only the cross. Life ends in death, but life is not only death, it is life and all the joy and pain that it gives and requires. 

Amen.