"Living Out Loud" Pastor's Steve Meditation for August 30

Introduction

Pastor Ray began this series on “Tending the New Creation” by reminding us of Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthian church that, in Christ, there is a new creation; everything has become new!  Today, we will continue to follow Paul as he exhorts the Corinthian church to live into this new life.  

Paul has had a rocky history with this church, which he founded.  Through his surviving correspondence with them (we know there were other letters because he refers to them), he has described them as a contentious, carping group that include a few wealthy members who disregard the needs of the poor members, even to the point of eating the best food and getting drunk when they come together, before the poorer members can get there.  In Second Corinthians, it appears that the relationship between Paul and the Corinthians has become strained and Paul is at pains to defend his ministry.  In the course of describing his own ministry, he puts it in the context of his understanding of what God is doing in the world through Christ.  In Chapter 5, he says that God as reconciled the world to himself through Christ.  Today we will read Chapter 6.  We will read today’s scripture in the contemporary translation of The Message.  So, as Paul might say in his affectionate exasperation with the Corinthians:  Pay Attention! as we read 2 Corinthians 6:1-13.

Meditation

There has been much attention given this summer to relations between black Americans and the police.  And rightfully so.  The prevalence of social media has exposed pervasive practices of prejudice and oppression that many of us in privileged communities had thought were only aberrations. There are two common responses.  Both are dualistic, us-them, responses.  Some respond by putting the blame on the black community.  But those with eyes to see and ears to hear can not accept that.  There is a second, common dualistic, us-them, response; this time putting the blame on law enforcement while we try to stand back and separate ourselves from those behaviors and attitudes.  In this response, we pretend that law enforcement (or those “bad” departments or officers of law enforcement) have nothing to do with “us.”  But officers in law enforcement are simply us in uniform.  Reform is required, but it is not simply reform of law enforcement; it is reform of societal values and biases that are reflected by some in law enforcement.  If you are of a certain age, you will recall the old Pogo cartoon strip; and perhaps, in particular, one strip in which Pogo stands looking at the reader and says, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” 

 

On Friday, August 21, the Dallas Morning News reprinted an article from the New York Times which they, somewhat questionably, included in the “personal finance” section.  This article, without the angst and drama and emotion of events that make the headlines, is still chilling.  The title of the article was, “College degree isn’t equalizer among races.”  The article cited a recent Federal Reserve report that found, as expected, that people with college degrees fared better economically than similar people without degrees.  This was consistent across all demographics.  Hispanics with a college degree were better off than hispanics without a college degree.  Blacks with a college degrees were better off than blacks without a college degree.  Whites and Asians with a college degree were better off than whites and Asians without a college degree.  However, if the data is compared across races, the picture is troubling.  In the period under study, from 1992 to 2013 (which included three recessions, including the severe 2007-2009 downturn), the median net worth of whites with a degree increased about 86 percent.  Asians did even better, gaining nearly 90 percent.  In that same period, the median net worth of blacks with a college degree not only did not match the increase of whites and Asians, but actually declined nearly 56 percent.  The report’s carefully worded conclusion is that “higher education alone cannot level the playing field.”  What the authors apparently were not willing to say is that, for the vast number of people of color, there is a pervasive pattern of discrimination and oppression within our society that no amount of individual effort at “bettering oneself” can overcome.  What it did not say is that pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps can only get you so far when factors unacknowledged by the majority culture are standing on your feet and holding you down by the shoulders.

This is not the issue that the apostle Paul is addressing in Second Corinthians.  However, his approach is instructive.  In Second Corinthians 5, leading up to today’s reading, Paul says, “From now on - meaning since the death and resurrection of Christ - we regard no one from a human point of view.”  In The Message, this is translated as, “Because of this, we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look” - the human point of view.  Paul goes on to say that, “in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself.”  These are not limited statements.  Paul does not say “from now on we regard no fellow believers from a human point of view” or, in the Message version, “We don’t evaluate fellow believers by what they have or how they look.”  What Paul says is that from now on we regard NO ONE from a human point of view; we don’t evaluate ANYONE by what they have or how they look,”  because, Paul says, in Christ God has reconciled the world to himself, has put the world square with himself.  We are all square with - equal before - God.

In essence, Paul says, all people are of equal value before God because of Christ.  Christ died so that all people and all of creation are reconciled to God.  Because of God’s action, because of God’s love, all people have equal value.  There is no rational, humanistic worldview that can consistently support a claim that all people are of equal value.  Only a worldview that is based in the love of God for all people and all of creation, as evidenced in the life and death of Christ includes that recognition for all.  [There is a good, if difficult, book study topic there if anyone is interested.]  So, Paul says, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old has been made new.  And having been made new, we are called to live, not in the old worldly reality, but in God’s new reality that all people are of equal value and are to be reconciled - made square - with one another.  We are called to act toward each other in light of the value that each one of us is given by being equal recipients of God’s love; of each one of us being one for whom Christ died.  

Further, in Paul’s view, this is not merely a moral imperative:  that we are being told to treat others fairly.  If we choose not to live in this reality, then, Paul says, we accept the grace of God in vain, we squander this marvelous new life God has given us.  If we are in Christ, we can live in this world, this new creation that God has given us, in which all people are of equal value to God - and all of creation is of value to God -  or turn our back on it.  Either way is a way of being in the world -  a practice of living in the world.  If we choose to live in this new reality that God has created, we are square with one another - we treat one another as being of equal value - because that is the way the world in Christ is.  For those in Christ, sin and evil are the pretense that we can live outside of God’s reality.  

Last week, we looked at Mark 6.  We talked about the parable of the mustard seed.  Jesus asked, “To what can we compare the kingdom of God.  It is as a mustard seed that grows into a great shrub and provides shelter for the birds of the air to make their nests in.”  We remembered that Pastor Ray began this series by observing that you don’t have to tell a lion how to be a lion.  Similarly, you don’t have to tell a mustard seed how to be a mustard seed.  When it is planted, it grows.  It simply does what it was created to do.  And it does it in the context of gift:  all that it needs; soil, water, air, light - is a gift of God.  And though it uses these gifts for its own growth into a mustard plant - a shrub - it also returns gifts to the world, as Jesus so neatly demonstrates with reference to the birds of the air being given shade to nest in, and we would now add, returning oxygen to the air and providing an abundance of seed for the feeding and enjoyment of other of God’s creatures.  It receives by gift and it returns by gift.  The kingdom of God is gift: all the way down and all the way through.  

And then we observed that human beings, as creatures of God, share in that same potential - to live “like” the kingdom of God.  I characterized our failure to do so fully as one of “distraction.”  Because we are self-aware, we see our need to grow and flourish; but we have difficulty seeing beyond that; we become distracted with receiving God’s gifts (though we may not acknowledge them as such) and fail to live into returning gifts.  Our concern for self distracts us from our natural and intended role not only as the receiver of gift but as creatures that return gift for gift; using that which we have been given, our reason, our talents, our faculties, to tend the new creation, including our brothers and sisters.  

And I suggested that we needed a practice of living that pulled us out of our distraction with self.  In Paul’s terms, if we are in Christ, we need to open up our lives to the new creation.  

At the center of the parable of the mustard seed was Jesus’ invitation to see differently.  What Paul sees is that, through the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus, God was making the world different.  Paul sees this as new creation and he calls the Corinthians, as brothers and sisters in Christ, to live into this new reality by squaring themselves with one another.  Paul was dealing with specific problems in a specific group of people; and he tailored his message to them.  But if scripture is to have meaning for us, it must be interpreted in light of our problems in our context.   In our context, we might say that we have been reconciled to God and in that reconciliation, we are released from our bondage to self, the paradigm of the old worldview - and called to be reconciled with - squared with - one another.  We are released from being oppressors of the poor and oppressors of the planet.  We are released - redeemed - to live into the life that God has always intended for us.  And in the life and ministry of Jesus, we see what we are meant to be; who we truly are if we will live into it.  I started this morning with a specific concern because it it has been lifted up for us by current events. 

Black men and women are dying on our streets and in our jails because they do not receive the same treatment that most of us receive.  Black men are incarcerated at a rate disproportionate to the crimes that are committed in comparison to the rest of us. Black men and women who hold college degrees - who have earned the credentials that we, as a society, have established as our bar to economic success - are denied that success disproportionately.  Is it any wonder that many black children grow up without hope?  They cannot see that they are part of the kingdom of God where gifts are shared profligately.  They cannot see that there is a new creation where all people have equal value and black lives matter.  And they cannot see it because not enough of us have lived it and made it visible.

Too often our lives are small and circumscribed, structured to protect us form anything uncomfortable or unfamiliar.  We are self-protective.  And I acknowledge that I am as guilty as any.  Paul says, “The smallness that you feel comes from within you.  Your lives aren’t small but you are living them in a small way.  Open up your lives to the new creation; to God’s reality.  Live openly and expansively.” 

Paul declares that all things are made new in Christ.  You, me, and all of creation.  The kingdom of God is real and it is present.  We are called to live lives that make it visible.  

We don’t know how the Corinthians responded to Paul.  Quite honestly, if you cannot see the new creation, if you do not have faith in the kingdom of God, his litany of hard times, tough times, bad times; of being beaten, jailed and mobbed; of working hard, working late, working without eating (sounds like a corporate job); of being blamed, slandered, distrusted, and ignored, is not very appealing.  It certainly is not designed to appeal to our sense of self-interest and self-protection.  

It is not easy to live in the kingdom.  It was not easy for Jesus.  It was not easy for Paul.  We have to let go of ego (no mean feat for Paul!), of exclusive self-interest, of self-preoccupation.  We have to allow the Spirit, the incarnational Christ within each of us, to govern our lives and our behavior.  It is a way of living that we have to grow into as we grow in faith and immerse ourselves in God’s presence.  This is a radical idea.  It was a radical idea then and it is a radical idea now.  We may squirm because letting go of our preoccupation with the self is frightening.  We may also squirm because we have, perhaps, lost the ability to distinguish between “passion” and “fanaticism.”  What sort of Christians will willingly endure the scorn of others for the sake of faith; for the sake of living a life that exhibits the reality of the kingdom?  Extremists.  Fanatics.  We have become frightened of passionate faith, faith that engenders our total trust.  Sometimes we seem to have, at best, a gospel of moderation. 

But the good news that Paul relates is that we don’t have to change the world.  God, through Christ, has already done that; is already doing that.  We, who are in Christ, simply have to live in that reality in a way that makes it visible to others. We need to live out loud.  That does not require fanaticism.  It requires passion; a passionate love of God and of God’s creation, including all people who are created by God and who Jesus died to redeem - and that is all of us.

And we don’t have to do it alone.  It is why God calls us together as church.  To learn from one another, to support one another, to rely on Jesus’ promise that wherever two or more are gathered in his name, he is there.

Now, Paul says, is the right time to listen.  Now is always the right time to listen; the day to be helped to live “out loud” lives that recognize that we are a new creation, released, redeemed, to live lives that are reconciled - made square - with all God’s children; lives that make the kingdom of God visible to all God’s children.

May it be so.  

"Planting with Care" ~Pastor Steve's Meditation for August 23

Today’s reading is Mark 4:26-34

Seeds and growth.  Birds and shelter.  These are the elements of the parables.  In the first sermon in this series on Tending the Creation, Pastor Ray reminded us that you don’t have to tell a lion how to be a lion.  You don’t have to tell a giraffe how to be a giraffe.  And today, you don’t have to tell a mustard seed how to be a mustard seed.  Plant a seed and it grows.  You don’t have to tell it to send down roots, to send up a stalk, to branch out, to leaf out.  You don’t have to tell it to gather nutrients from the soil, to transport the nutrients to the leaves, to gather CO2 from the air, to gather in the sunlight and transform all of these into new growth.  You don’t have to tell it to provide shade for the birds to make their nests in.  You don’t have to tell it to return oxygen to the air; to produce seeds in great abundance so that there are enough for other creatures to eat, use and enjoy.  The mustard seed simply does what it was created to do.  And it is all gift.  Seed, soil, air, water, sunshine.  Shade, oxygen and back to seed.  Gift all the way down and all the way through.  It receives by gift and it returns by gift.

For the seed, that potential is there from the beginning.  It is a natural part of how it was created.  And that, says Jesus, is like the kingdom of God.  Although we may not be intended to take these stories literally, Jesus’ stories are always literally down to earth.  Seeds, mustard plants, fig trees, planting, harvesting, birds of the air.  Common stories; ordinary people doing everyday things.  Hardly an exalted vision of the kingdom of God.  And, of course, that is the point!  Jesus puts the incarnational focus not on himself, but on those around him; on the world around him.  To what do we compare the kingdom of God?  It is like a mustard seed.  The kingdom of God is like the most common things around us - that is how they were created, that is why they were created; if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

So what does that say about human beings and the kingdom of God?  There is a strand of Christian thought, from Augustine through Calvin, and down to modern interpreters, that says that human beings do not have the potential of a mustard seed; or at least they argue that, if humans had it originally, it has been corrupted.  This strand of thought holds that there is a concept called “original sin” that is irreversible.  The best that can be happen is that God will look past our permanently corrupted nature and will accept us anyway, which he graciously does for some because of Christ.

There has always been another strand of Christian thought, often less prominent, that says that human beings are created in the image of God and that nothing that we have done or could do, can change the potential that God creates inside of us.  

We may, and I, at least, usually do, fail to realize that potential, but it always exists.  But if God created us with such potential, why can we not be like the mustard seed?  Unlike a mustard seed, God also creates us with consciousness, with awareness.  We are consciously aware of our surroundings and of our ability to manipulate our surroundings.  But we are not solely aware of our surroundings, we are also self-aware.  In our self-awareness, we look for meaning - for a full life - in what those around us are doing.  What we see is a constant striving after material things.  This is natural.  It is even, to an extent, necessary.  We do have to make our way in the world.  And we have been given the ability to make choices about how we do that.  But because we are self-aware - focused on the self - what we perceive is that self-interest governs.  We know, somewhere within our heart and our soul, that we are created for more than satisfying the needs of the self; but we are distracted and that is not what we see and hear.  We know that we are not self-sufficient, but  we are distracted and that is not what we see and hear. 

We have even developed explanations for why the interests of the self are our highest calling.  Modern economic theory says that the cumulative effect of each of us, pursuing our own self-interest, will lead to the achievement of the greatest possible common good.  In a world without God - and that is the world that many now believe we live in - that may be true.  If there is no God, then self-interest may be the only reliable principle around which we can organize our common life.  And in a world without God, it may be the best we can do to maximize the common good - even though it will leave out many.

I think about the story, told in the three gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, of the rich young man who came to Jesus asking what he needed to do to inherit eternal life.  Sell everything and give to the poor, Jesus told him, and follow me.  Based on this scripture, many sermons have been preached about the problem of wealth.  But maybe that is not the primary point of the story.  Maybe the point of the story is that “eternal life” - a meaningful life, a fulfilled life, a true life - is a gift.  You cannot do anything to earn or inherit a meaningful life.  That life is a life lived like a mustard seed - as gift.  All of our striving to achieve what the self wants to achieve is a distraction.  If eternal life, a meaningful life, is what you are looking for, you need to give up the preoccupation with self.  You need to let go of it.    That doesn’t mean that you do not take care of yourself; the mustard plant does what it needs to do but it is all within the context of gift.

The rich young man already had what he could gather on his own.  But he knew there was something he was missing.  He characterized that as “eternal life.”  I don’t know exactly what he meant by that, but I think Jesus is making it clear that whatever that is, it begins in this life.  And it begins by knowing that where we began and where we end is “gift.”  And if we let go of our striving to achieve on our own merits and look at what we have been given and what we have to give - we will understand that we are already part of the kingdom of God - operating under God’s economy.

There is a story about three researchers who work in the area of genetics and DNA research.  After many years, they believe that they have figured out all the secrets of life.  They are standing around talking amongst themselves and decide that they can create a human being from scratch.  So God sends an angel to them and the angel says, “So, we hear that you think you can create a human being.”  They are, of course, initially surprised, but explain their research and all the progress they have made in understanding genetic structure and they assure the angel that, yes, they can create a human being from scratch.  So the angel looks at them a minute and says, “Well, let’s see.”  So they gather all their equipment together and gather up a handful of dirt and the angel says, “No, no, no.  You have to start with your own dirt.”

It is gift all the way down and all the way through.  Before we can begin to find fulfillment in our lives, we must understand where we come from and what a gift that is.  This is not solely a Christian insight.  The Zen teacher Kobun Chino Roshi, when asked why Buddhist’s meditate, said it this way, “We sit . . . to make life meaningful.  The significance of our life is not experienced in striving to create some perfect thing.  We must simply start with accepting ourselves.  Sitting brings us back to actually who and where we are.  This can be very painful.  Self-acceptance is the hardest thing to do.  If we can’t accept ourselves, we are living in ignorance, this darkest night.  We may still be awake, but we don’t know where we are.  We cannot see.  The mind has no light.”

In this parable, Jesus is leading us to see who we are, where we come from, whose we are - and that it is all gift.  He is asking us to be self-aware in a sense different from that which we learn from watching the striving of others.  But awareness of the gift we receive is not the whole of the parable.  

Being part of the kingdom of God is not solely receiving gift.  After the mustard seed has grown and flourished, that flourishing results in gift, as well, for God’s other creatures, so neatly demonstrated by the birds.  The shrub “gifts” back; shade for the birds to make their nests in; and we would add giving life-giving oxygen back to the air and an abundance of seed that sustains and makes more pleasurable life for others.  God did not create human beings independently from the creation of the world; but as part and parcel of that creation; that we, like the mustard plant, might tend it and shelter it, including our brothers and sisters.  

But it isn’t easy.  Distraction comes easily.  We need a practice which pulls us out of our distractions.  We need a practice, not simply an intellectual understanding.  We need a practice in which we intentionally open our hearts to ourselves and God while simultaneously and intentionally opening our hearts to others and to life.

It isn’t easy - we live in physically and psychically noisy times - technologically connected, electrifying, distracting and complex.  But whether we are in a cubicle, a cafe, a kitchen, or a classroom, our lives are our principal paths and our spiritual work.  If we can turn away - you will recall that the term “repent” means turn away - if we can turn away from our distractions we are like the mystics and holy ones, walking on this altar of the earth.  

Is there such a practice of turning away?  Not just a one-time “decision” - but a continuing practice that can become part of our lives?  Buddhists call it mindfulness.  Paul calls it “praying without ceasing.”  It has always been part of the Christian life, but often felt to be reserved for contemplatives who could live away from the world.  It is not that limited.  This is practice that you won’t get solely listening to a sermon or attending a seminar. It is a practice - a way of living - that turns one toward God.  Contemplation that turns in so we can see the kingdom of God and then turns out so we can participate in the kingdom of God.  We can begin here.  We can learn and practice together.  [You will hear more about this.]

We have heard the parable, so let’s not waste time.  Let’s recognize and usher in the kingdom of God now. I know who I am.  I know who you are.  We are part of the kingdom of God.  We are like a mustard seed; planted in the soil of God’s love, nourished by the living water; inhaling the air of God’s mercy; bathed in the sunlight of God’s grace.  And all of those are taken up in our roots and through our leaves.  We grow and spread our branches and give shelter to God’s creatures.  We tend God’s creation.  This is who we are; it is who we are created to be.   And, praise God, it is glorious!  Let us together develop the eyes to see and the ears to hear.