The End of the World!!!!!!!

For those who did not grow up in the Evangelical Christian subculture, last week's flurry over the prediction that the world would  end on May 21 just seemed like so much craziness.

For those of us who did grow up in that subculture, it was also craziness, but a craziness we recognized. This humorous 6 minute video  describes what it is like to grow up in a religion built more on the fear that God will have to destroy the world in order to "save" it  than on the faith that Christ is at work among us.   I, too, was worried that Jesus would come before I got to get married and have sex (it was always in that order in the old days). On the other hand, when I was facing an exam that I hadn't studied for, having Jesus bring the world to an end didn't seem like such a bad thing.

It's easy to laugh or shake our heads in disgust at those who believe that being a Christian means you get beamed up just when the world needs you the most, rather than, like Jesus, entering into the world's pain to heal it, but I did learn some beliefs and values from growing up with that apocalyptic expectation that have been very useful to me in handling life:

1. I have never bought into the idea that the current arrangement of power is permanent. Wall Street financiers, the NRA and the New York Yankees may appear invincible. But you never know, even the Cleveland Indians might emerge as the team to beat.
2. I have never been completely surprised by apocalyptic events. On August 11, 2001, most of my extended family stayed at the Marriott at the World Trade Center in New York City - a Saturday night - to celebrate our son Jim's wedding the next day at Hebrew Union College Chapel. I remember standing at the foot of those tall buildings looking up until the tops of the towers were lost in the fog and wondering what could possibly take such buildings down? I knew that they would have to come down someday. So, a month later, I can honestly say that I was shocked - deeply shocked - but not entirely surprised. 
3. I don't believe in Messiahs who don't bring the World-as-We-Know-It to an end. Like everyone else, I weigh the claims of politicians who want to be my President, Senator, Governor, State Rep or Mayor and I admit that I tend to vote for those who say they value peace and human rights and caring for the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society. But if, after two and a half years, they haven't closed Guantanamo and the line at the Monday hot meals program at St. Andrews next door is longer than ever,  I am disappointed, but not disillusioned. I don't have illusions about human leaders. The Messiah is the Messiah and politicians, good as they are - and I've had several as parishioners and consider them some of the best people I know - are just people working in the realm of the possible, not creating an ideal. 
4. Even the end of the world is not the end of the world. Jesus said that there would be wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes and famines in various places, but the end is not yet.   I'm not sure what a nuclear holocaust would imply - or a direct hit from an asteroid. It would probably be the end of me - but not necessarily the end of everything. Humbling, but still hopeful. 
5. I may not use a pencil on my calendar, but I am aware that "tomorrow", 'next week", "next year" are myths.  So is the strategic plan that I'm helping our church draw up for 2015. The future is fundamentally unpredictable and it can go either way. Yes, terrorists have blown up skyscrapers, but the Iron Curtain fell down, too. I've often been surprised that other people actually believe that a graph that has headed up or down for months or years can't possibly change direction.
6. Doubt is not the opposite of faith, certainty is. Even most Evangelical and Fundamentalist Protestants were critical of Mr. Campbell's prediction. In their Bibles, like mine, Jesus says, "No one knows the day nor the hour, not even the Son, but only the Father."  
7. I may not equate Big Government or Big Business or Big Religion with the Antichrist, but I do have a healthy skepticism about the motives of institutions that have some kind of power over my life. I thought everyone did, but I've discovered through the years that there are people who really believe that their employer, their government, their local baseball team or Fox or MSNBC, really have their best interests at heart and they are ready to sacrifice their marriages, their children, their money or their reason to these entities and others who demand from us what only (you may enter the Deity of your choice, but I'll put "Christ" here) has a right to demand.

I really didn't appreciate growing up in a climate of fear in which a thunderstorm or a train whistle in the night might be interpreted as a signal that the world was coming to an end. On the other hand, I do appreciate the fact that when I look at my calendar  everything on it is under the caveat: "If God wills . . . "  and that all the tyrants and all the Masters of the Universe, will someday wind up like Ozymandias in that wonderful little poem by Shelley.

Steerage Voyage or Cruise Ship?

Coming up this Sunday are the words of Jesus, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places." (John 14:2 NRSV)



I know these words by heart because I say them so often at funerals. When I started preaching four decades ago, I used to always use the King James Version’s promise of “many mansions”, because the older members of the congregation always heard the old Revised Version’s “many rooms” as a downward revision of their expectations. “Many dwelling places” is a good translation and works for most people today.

So, how do we read this passage the week after the smartest man in the world has said that heaven is a “fairy tale”?

The way we have always read it - sociologically.

Even the wealthy will nod their heads and have a tear in their eyes when I read these words at a funeral. It is a comfort to believe that Grandpa, age 96, has been transferred to that Great Rest Home in the Sky and has his own - not just a room - a dwelling place. The Lord knows he doesn’t need a mansion anymore. Just a “dwelling place”  - a comfortable suite of rooms with a nice view of the heavenly golf course.

These words were not spoken to comfort the comfortable.

They were spoken to the poor, the battered, and the oppressed. They were spoken to people who saw their lives as a journey to a better place - not just where they could eat pie in the sky and wear their shoes all over God's heaven, but a place where God's will is done on earth and everyone has his or her daily bread. They were spoken to people who saw their life as a journey toward a destination rather than just a cruise.

In his review of The Liner: Retrospect and Renaissance, Timothy Larson says that even if we put a “2” next to the storied name of the Queen Mary, we aren’t recreating the huge ocean-going ferries that got people from New York to London  before airliners became the preferred mode of travel. There is a huge difference between a person who is traveling to a destination and a person who is cruising around for a week and then returning to the same port from which he embarked.

Unless you are 100% Native American (or one of the European or Singaporean readers of this blog), your ancestors came to this country on one of these vessels and I’ll bet most of them did not travel first-class. Passengers in steerage couldn’t wait for the journey to be over. They were looking for that first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty, for the Ellis Island gateway to that City whose streets, they had heard whispered, were paved with gold.

So, it wasn’t as good as that, but it was better for most of them than what they had left behind. Those that came in the holds of slave ships didn’t find a Promised Land, but they heard tales about that Land and about how God had called slaves to come to that Land where everyone has shoes and there are no more tears.

If our lives are as comfortable as a cruise ship; if we can get off and tour the markets and see the children begging in the streets and then return to the ship for the buffet and the after-dinner show and if we can stroll back to our comfortable cabin and say to one another, “What could be better than this?” We won’t be able to hear what Jesus is really saying when he says, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

Some Christians believe those words mean that people have to join their private club to get to heaven. They really mean that the Way to Life and the Truth about Life is that there isn’t any real life on board the cruise ship, because the cruise ship isn’t going anywhere. The Way to Life is to get on the liner that is heading toward that place where justice rolls down like water and righteousness like an ever flowing spring, and where, even for the poor, there is no more crying, no more pain and no more death.

Room 101 and the Empty Tomb

Even people who never read George Orwell’s 1984, know about Big Brother. He isn’t a person –he’s a system of oppression that uses two-way TV’s to watch you while you watch them in the kitchen, in the living room, at work in and in the bedroom.

Toward the end of the novel the main character, Winston Smith, is held by Big Brother’s minions for treason. Winston is told that he must betray the person he loves most in this world. This love is the one true thing that Winston has experienced. It is his one claim to integrity. So he bravely refuses.

Big Brother’s enforcers tell him that, if he refuses, he will have to go to Room 101.

What is in Room 101? Winston asks.

The thing you hate and fear the most.

Winston is shoved into Room 101 and finds it filled with rats. He was bitten by a rat as a young child.  He has nightmares about rats. Soon he is screaming that he will do anything to escape the rats – including betraying the person he loves.

What is in your personal Room 101? What do you fear the most? My guess is that you can’t even answer that question because most of us are afraid to even think about what scares us the most. As Orwell knew, what we fear the most isn’t the loss of a loved one. What we fear the most are those things that keep us from loving our loved ones. What we fear the most are the kinds of things we would try to avoid even if it meant betraying  the people we love the most.

In the Passion story, Peter betrays Jesus, the person he loves the most,  because he is afraid of being crucified.

I am afraid of being poor - of being drained of my financial and emotional resources - so I keep my distance from people whom I might love, but for whom I don’t want to be responsible.

Jesus tells me that if I care for the sick, the imprisoned, the homeless, the hungry, I will be doing it for Him. (Matthew 25) The trouble is that  I’m not going to risk getting sick or imprisoned or becoming homeless or hungry.

In every relationship that I have that has become estranged I am convinced that the easiest way to fix it is for the other person to change. However, there are those who tell me that it might work if I changed. That would mean facing aspects of my personality that I spend a tremendous amount of time and energy covering up - stuff I'm so ashamed of that I can't even admit that I do those things.

So Room 101 for me contains poverty, suffering, sickness, failure, shame, and death. That’s exactly what the tomb contained. Jesus suffered pain and failure and poverty and shame and loneliness and above all, he was dead. His tomb is Room 101.

The good news of Easter is that the tomb is empty. Jesus has opened it up and nothing is in there. The Risen Christ and all angels say to us: Fear not!

Squirrels Bite Dog To Death

You may have missed this BBC News item about a pack of squirrels attacking a dog in a Russian park. I wonder if this may be linked to the protests and revolutions against dictators in the Middle East? It’s beginning to feel like the whole world is turning upside down.  Those in power are having the tables turned on them, whether their names are Hosni, Muammar or Fido.

Like most Americans, I haven’t felt too much sympathy for Hosni, Muammar and their brethren in other Middle Eastern capitals. But now, I’m not so sure.  

I just read an article about “The Church as Wikipedia”.  Every day, 13 percent of the world’s Internet users consult Wikipedia. We all know that its information can be a little shaky at times, but if we know something is wrong, all we have to do is register and edit the article ourselves.  That’s the way Wikipedia works. Nupedia preceded Wikipedia. Anyone could submit an article for Nupedia, but it had to be vetted by a team of experts. It usually took a very long time for a new article to appear.  Nupedia is no more.

Let’s compare that to a common problem we have in churches. Our youth sing a hymn at a youth conference that is deeply meaningful to them. They come back to their home church and ask their pastor if we can sing that hymn in church next Sunday right after the gospel reading. 

The pastor patiently explains that we can’t sing that hymn because it’s not in our hymnal and it can’t come after the gospel because the organist needs to get to the piano to accompany the choir. And besides, all our hymns for the next 3 months have been chosen already. So, sorry kids; but, hey, keep bringing in those ideas! We want our worship to appeal to all ages, you know!

What if we had an open-source church where anyone and everyone had a say in how things were done and there was no "authority" who had to approve everything? 

A question like that makes me feel more empathy for Hosni, Muammar and especially, Fido.

I’m all for change as long as it doesn’t threaten my authority (and privileges) as a white, male (very important credentials – try getting anything done without them) fully ordained, graduate school accredited senior pastor. And, I admit, I’m getting a little nervous about the way the world is going. 

The church has a great record of holding on to things like the earth-centered universe, the six-day creation of the world, slavery, racism, homophobia, and male privilege. But anyone who has been in a main-line Protestant church for the past few decades knows that we have completely caved in on the first three and there’s been a lot of nibbling around the edges of the rest.

Our only hope is that we can keep our church members from reading their Bibles and from understanding the real meaning of Palm Sunday.  Luckily, our churches are quite attached to the cute parade of kids waving Palm Branches as they march in during the first hymn. Seminary professors have decided that Palm Sunday should become Good Friday, because so many folks use Good Friday to pick up jellybeans for their Easter baskets.

Therefore, no one points out that Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was a parody of power.  Pilate would have ridden his warhorse in the same gate (or perhaps was, at that very moment, riding in a different gate) surrounded by soldiers carrying spears. The warhorse, by the way, was the battle tank of the ancient world. They may have been playing martial music. And just as Muammar can still get supporters to cheer for him, I suppose Pilate could, too, especially among those who had an investment in things staying exactly the same.

So Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the back of a little donkey, maybe a jenny with a foal running along beside trying to get a drink of milk (Matt. 21:1-6).  Instead of armor and spears, his poor followers hold up palm fronds and blades of grass. Instead of the “Aves!” for military victors, they cry “Hosanna” and “Hallelujah” - roughly translated as "hurray for God". And what does Jesus do when he arrives in town? He goes to church and turns everything upside down.

 Thankfully, it looks like most people don’t have a clue about what that means, but I worry that squirrels attacking a dog may be a sign that anything can happen.

God and Earthquakes

On November 1, 1755 at about 9:40 AM an earthquake centered near the Azores destroyed about 80% of the buildings in Lisbon,  Portugal.  November 1 is All Saints Day, so most of Lisbon's population was in church when the quake hit. No one knows exactly how many people died in the quake and the subsequent Tsunami and fires, but 20% of the population is a likely estimate.  

Portugal was fortunate that it had a superior Prime Minister, who led the rebuilding of the capital and also wrote to every priest in every town surrounding Lisbon asking at what time the quake hit there and for their descriptions of the strength of the quake. The replies laid out on a map began the science of seismology. And modern seismologists studying these letters estimate that the quake may have been close in power to the one that hit Japan last week.  

Some say the Lisbon quake was also the beginning of Europe's skepticism about God. How could God, at least a good God, allow such a thing to happen to people precisely when they were praying to Him?  

The problem of evil is really two problems: Natural Evil or "Acts of God", as the insurance companies like to call it,  and Human Evil. Both call up the question Jesus asked from the cross, "My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?" .  

A  Rabbi who was an expert on the Holocaust once said that we should not say anything about God that we could not say in the presence of burning children.  I might add that words that can't be uttered on a beach filled with bodies that washed up to shore or in a city bombed by its own nation's planes probably isn't adequate either.  

That leaves  us preachers speechless.  

 In a sense, the Bible is speechless, too.  The one person in the Bible who really engages in a dialogue with God on the problem of evil is Job and he finally says, 

"No one can oppose you, because you have the power to do what you want. You asked why I talk so much when I know so little. I have talked about things that are far beyond my understanding".  (Job 42:2-3; Contemporary English Version (CEV),  © 1995 by American Bible Society)  

Instead of words, the Bible gives us two images. One is in the first chapter of the Bible, in which God creates light and order and life out of chaos. Creation is always taking place on the edge of chaos. There is nothing deader than complete stability.  God appears to work when people and history and geology and biology are in a state of change (Isn't that true in your own life?). So, green shoots begin to appear in the first rain after a forest fire; babies arrive in the delivery room down the street from the funeral home; and democracy (sometimes) rises from the dust of tyranny.  

The other answer is in the image of the empty tomb. The empty tomb is a sign that the most unchangeable thing in the world -  death - is changeable. Not even graves will last forever; to say nothing of dictatorships or continents.  Not everyone will buy that - or certainly not understand it literally.  But, frankly, if death does get the last word, then those who wield the power of death will reign forever and ever.

It's a little scary to live in a changing world. One expert points out that there were large earthquakes around the Pacific a couple of years before the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. If, like me, you have loved ones on the West Coast, you don't want to hear that. But, what's the alternative? A world that is as unchanging as the grave. And, as I just said, the Easter story begins with a tomb that won't stay closed.  

As one of the great preachers of the 20th century once said:  

"The resurrection of Jesus Christ tells all who will listen that they are alive in a place that is itself alive, open at both ends, with the winds of eternity blowing through it." (Scherer, Paul. Love is a Spendthrift. Harper, New York 1961. p. 88)

What is Saving Your Life?

Peter Gomes died this week at the age of 68. As the chaplain of the Memorial Church at Harvard University, he managed to combine being both a committed Christian and an intelligent modern person - which is what a lot of people do, really, but they don't make the spotlight as often as those who are only one or the other and even they don't get attention as often as those who are neither.  

In the academic world of Cambridge MA, Gomes was in the spotlight or on the podium whenever some big event took place at Harvard. Being the ceremonial Holy Man is one of those ministerial duties that I neither enjoy or do well, and therefore I admire those who can pull it off. Asked to bless a traditional academic gathering, Gomes once said, "I feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor's seventh husband on his wedding night. I know what to do, but I'm not sure how to make it interesting."  

But those ceremonial duties also got him up close to some of the world's most interesting people, including Nelson Mandela who was honored by Harvard with a rare outdoor convocation. The kind of thing the University did for George Washington, Winston Churchill and very few others in over 300 years. Gomes was impressed with the crowd Mandela drew. Skeptical faculty and students with very short attention spans sat transfixed as the leader of South Africa's peaceful transition from minority white to majority black rule spoke to them.  

Gomes said "Mandela was not an explicitly religious figure; he preached no sermon and made no moral claims, but he didn't have to, for he made the ordinary and the politically extraordinary seem holy, even sacred. We saw transcendence in him, and it was powerful  because it was not a matter of piety, which would have allowed the secular to write it off." 

One student, reflecting on the college's experience that day said: "It wasn't about us, and it wasn't about him; it was about what he believed in that had saved his life, and saved his country." (Gomes, The Good Life: Truths that Last in Times of Need. HarperSanFranciso 2002 p.274).  

In her book, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, Barbara Brown Taylor writes about being invited to speak at a large church in the Midwest. When she asked what she would be expected to talk about, her host said, "Just come and tell us about what is saving your life right now".  

What is saving your life right now?  

What is saving the lives of the people around you? A lot of them probably don't look like they need anything to save them.  We are all pretty good at putting up a front that says, "Everything's fine here!"  A friend who is going through a hard time right now described another friend of hers who "has it all together". What I didn't say, but wish I had, is that she herself looks like she has it all together, too. That's appropriate I think. We don't all need to bleed all over each other all the time.  

But there are some things you can't hide.  

Mandela couldn't hide the fact that he spent half his adult life in prison - most of it in Robben Island's notorious Block D and then managed to lead his nation away from the bloodbath that everyone predicted would happen someday.  

The mother who has lost a child but keeps on caring for her other children can't hide that fact. The once-vigorous woman who can't make her feet move more than a few inches at a time can't hide the fact that she is suffering from a degenerative disease.  The guy who has been out of work for months can't hide the fact that he has to get up every day and put in another application for another job that a hundred other people have also applied for. You know some of these people. What is saving their lives?   

In Matthew 17, Jesus and Peter, James and John climb a mountain and, at the top, Jesus is transfigured - meaning his face shines and his disciples see him talking with Moses and Elijah, who were already legendary figures before the Old Testament was written down.  Whether you want to take this encounter literally or not, the important thing about it is that Jesus was connecting with "The Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah)". There are many summaries of all that Moses and Elijah stand for including the one Jesus gave: "Love God with all your heart, your soul, your mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself". But it is more than piety and ethical action. It is also about hope - hope in the One who sets prisoners free and bends history toward justice and causes nations that have fought each other for months, years, or even centuries to finally beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.  

What saves your life right now? It may not be easy to summarize and it may not sound very religious, but my guess is that you may be fighting a harder battle than it looks to those on the outside. Or you may be looking at what life is throwing at people around you and in your heart you know that it could throw that same stuff at you and you wonder what would save your life if you had to deal with the grief or the pain or the uncertainty that haunts people you know. What saves your life? You may want to ask that question of a prisoner who became a president or of the best oldest person you know, or of a young mom who is juggling a job and kids or of a guy nailed to a cross.

Words we use and don’t use

I”ve just returned from Florida. My wife, Jacquie, is still there dog-sitting for friends who are on a cruise.  The pleasure of being in Key West can be measured mathematically. Take the difference in the temperature between Cleveland and Key West, square it,  and then multiply the result by the number of inches of snow in Cleveland. However, you also have to subtract the number of minutes you spend worrying about your house in Cleveland: frozen pipes? An electrical short causing a fire? Ice building up on the eaves? Leaking roof? Ice and leaks have been problems since we remodeled our attic a few years ago. So, we worried about our house, but the first two weeks in February were so brutal in Cleveland that the pleasure definitely outweighed the worry.

It started to warm up the day after I got home (coincidence? I don’t think so.) And the good news is that we had no damage.

I’ve had a smartphone for a couple of months. It has a talk-to-text feature that I am using more and more. It is remarkably accurate, but it is also pretty revealing when it isn’t. The temperature rose to 50 by Sunday and I sent a text to Jacquie to let her know the roof was OK. I spoke these words into the smartphone: “The ice dam is gone”.  

It came out: “The ice damn is gone”.

I have certainly felt that way about the ice on our roof, but I was intrigued by the fact that the text-to-talk  technology would choose a homonym that will bring an FCC fine for some broadcasters.

It reminded me of an incident a few weeks ago. I was making some notes for upcoming sermons using the smartphone and an app called “Evernote” (which I highly recommend!). I was planning a series based on Micah 6:8: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God?”

The theme for this coming Sunday will be mercy. So, I spoke the words “February 20th mercy” into the phone. “February 20th” - to my amazement - came out perfectly. But “mercy” came out as “Mercedes”.  I tried again. “Mercy”, I said more slowly and clearly. “Mercedes” appeared on the screen.

What does it say about our society (or at least about users of smartphones) that a computer program will confuse “mercy” with the name of a luxury car?  One of the readings for Sunday, Leviticus 19, gives us a picture of the biblical concept of mercy. Landowners were instructed to leave a margin of uncut grain around the edge of their field so that the poor and the landless could glean some for themselves. You could tell how merciful someone was by how wide that margin was.

In a culture that prizes acquisition, we maximize our profits and minimize margins that we consider “waste”.   Ask most Americans where we can cut the national budget and they will say, “Foreign Aid”. Ask them what should not be cut and they will say, “Defense”. The U.S. spends about $1.4 billion to feed hungry people  around the world and to lift them out of poverty. The Pentagon has already spent $3 billion on a second engine for the F-35 fighter jet . The Secretary of Defense and most military analysts agree that the project, plagued by cost overruns, is a complete waste. But political observers give an extension of the program at least a 50-50 chance of passage. I wonder why?

So it doesn’t surprise me that when we say “mercy” it comes out “Mercedes” or that when we talk about a wall that holds back water, it comes out “damn”.