What's Wrong with Being Right?

September 24, 2006 Readings: Psalm 54 & Mark 9:30-37

The problem with claiming to be righteous is that we don’t know if we are righteous. Sometimes not. Probably not. The problem with claiming to be the greatest is that we have no idea how great we are. Sometimes not so great. Not very great.

The word “righteous” means that we are right with God. Aligned with God. Aligned also with God’s created universe. And aligned with what God’s wants. If we are righteous, things are smooth. No swimming against the stream. No splinters in the walkway. No squeaks. Being righteous is moving in parallel with God.

The problem with thinking we are righteous is that we think that we are right. Righter than most, in fact. So much righter that the others who are not right are in fact wrong. And the problem with that is this: that if we think we are right because we are doing exactly what God wants, then people who are wrong are against God and people who are right, like us, are with God. And so whatever we do, God is right behind us every step of the way. God is on our side and we know it for absolutely sure. And since God is in our corner—not, please note, that we are in God’s corner—then we can do pretty much what we think without restraint. We are the greatest. We come first.

Some of you may have noticed that the psalm that we recited today was missing a few verses at the end. That’s for two reasons. The first reason is that I wanted us to hear clearly the words of comfort in the psalm. The words of the last verse we read: “God is my helper. God alone guards my life.” God is committed to helping us. And only God guards us. That’s good to hear.

And the second reason is that I wanted to talk about the next verse here in the sermon. The next verse after these nice words in Psalm 54 goes like this: “Render evil to those who spy on me; in your faithfulness, destroy them.” The person who wrote this psalm is calling on God to destroy the person’s enemies. To render evil to them, which is perhaps worse. The writer is wishing evil on his enemies. You can tell that the writer of the psalm considers himself to be pretty much in the right and that he is confident that God agrees with him and that God will therefore kill his enemies and send evil their way. I wonder what makes him think that God would make evil happen. I thought that evil was someone else’s realm.

Jeremiah calls on God, too, in the first reading. “I was like a gentle lamb,” he writes. But not so gentle that he doesn’t hesitate to call on God to send retribution on those who have insulted him. Because the prophet has tried to be faithful.

The trouble with being right, the troubles I guess you have to say, the troubles with being right are two. The first trouble is that you can hurt people in your righteousness. You know what’s good for them, or if not for them then for the world. This is the sort of thing that ends with someone saying “no gains without pains,” or “this is hurting me more than it hurts you” or “you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs” or “the end justifies the means.” It leads almost inevitably to all sorts of sorrow.

The second trouble is that it is very tiring to be right. If you are right and others are wrong then you have to be vigilant. For your sake and the sake of the world. For if the others succeed, or win, or prevail, or take over, then, since you know they are wrong, things will be bad. Unlike if you win or prevail or what have you. So you have a moral obligation to watch out for the un-righteous, the un-right, and when you see them, to fight them. Maybe even to call up evil on them. For the good.

Now the alternative to all this is what Jesus said. First, he wasn’t very big on people who thought they were right or righteous. Second, he preached pretty much the opposite: turning the other cheek and all that stuff. Loving people. Loving your neighbor. Loving even your enemies. Not calling out evil on them. Not calling on the wrath of the Lord God to smite them or to bring vengeance or even to protect you. Some of what Jesus preached made people nervous. Still does.

The trouble with claiming that God is your particular powerful champion is that the other guy can just as easily say God is his particular powerful champion, instead. In fact, that happens all the time. And both of you claim to be right, to know the truth, to speak for God, and to know God’s private cell phone number. Who is to judge? So you fight it out in the usual way: through aggression and violence and intimidation and in oppression and pre-emption. You outdo each other in destruction and pain.

The other way, the way Jesus seems to talk about, is to outdo each other in love. That is a win-win situation. Because no matter who is right, you are competing, if you want to call it that, in being loving. Who can be the most loving. Who can be the most compassionate, the most forgiving, the most generous with your time and possessions; the most helpful. Who cares? It is all good.

The disciples were arguing about who was the greatest. They had the good grace to be embarrassed when Jesus asked them, what were you guys arguing about? That certainly shut them up. They knew it was stupid. Then Jesus tells them that to be first they have got to be last.

The fruits of trying to be first are sorrow and exhaustion. The fruits of trying to be last are joy and freedom. There is a kind of wisdom, writes James, that is earthly and devilish. But there is a kind of wisdom from above that peaceable, gentle, full of mercy, willing to yield. Such wisdom bears fruit, he says, and the harvest is peace.

The opposite of right is not wrong. The opposite of right is to be humble. To not be so darn sure you know what is going on, that you know just what God meant, that you are such a better interpreter of God’s signs and words than someone else. Your neighbor or your enemy or your fellow disciple.

Loving your neighbor and your enemy, praying for them even though you can’t stand them or are afraid of them, is not some sort of trick. Not some magic moral martial art thing. It is a way of being humble. It is also a way of acknowledging that maybe God knows a lot more than we do. Maybe we could admit we are wrong. Maybe we could stop and ask for directions. Maybe we could spend time, resources, and energy to outdo each other in love.

A Mind on Human Things

September 17, 2006 Text: Mark 8:27-38

Jesus had a lot on his mind.

Lutherans are adamant about the incarnation of Jesus. Jesus was God in the flesh. More than others, even, Lutherans insist that Jesus was 100% divine and 100% human at the same time. That balance is even. Not mostly divine and a little bit human. Not mostly human with a touch of the divine. Not a god in human disguise, walking incognito on the earth. Not a good teacher and radical blessed by God. But God and human both.

Not everyone likes this approach. You might think the hardest part would be claiming that Jesus was God. And for sure that was the issue during the life of Jesus, where people thought he was being blasphemous by claiming even a special connection—a family connection—with God. And maybe for you that is the hard part even now.

But after 2000 years of the teachings of church and tradition, the problem is often the opposite. In our liturgy and our classrooms we easily claim that Jesus was divine, son of God, sitting even now at the right hand of the Father, visiting us in our times of trouble and listening in heaven to our prayers. What often tempts modern Christians is to forget that Jesus was a person. That he did person things. Drink water, stub his toe, get annoyed, feel passionately, complain about the weather. Whatever it is that people do, Jesus must have done a lot of the same (in his time and circumstances).

There is nothing that Jesus skips over, nothing that he as God is too squeamish to do as unbecoming of a divine creature, nothing that he skips out on and avoids, even despair and death. We can say he knows us as we know ourselves and speaks for us as one of us and we let him advise us on our own lives and the state of the world.

These verses from Mark that we just heard are so full of hot topics of doctrine—Messiah, salvation, sin, for example—that it is especially easy to read them as pronouncements and theological truths. Sort of like a campaign speech, highlighting important points and issues. But I think we can just as easily read them as a story. A story about an important time and event in the life of Jesus, a man called to a mission. And that’s what I’d like to do today.

Jesus has reached a turning point in his ministry. Up until now he has been a teacher, a recruiter, and a healer. But it doesn’t take a genius to see that if things go on as they have so far, Jesus will be in big trouble. He speaks to his disciples, but it is almost as if throughout this passage he is really speaking to himself.

Who do they say that I am? he asks. Let’s not imagine this is a trick question posed by an all-knowing divinity, but an urgent need by a man wishing to know how he stands. They think I’m Elijah, they think I’m John the Baptist come back from the dead. They gather in big crowds around me and they talk about me even though I ask them not to. Jesus is famous, infamous, popular with the masses. He’s in demand.

And my disciples, what does this motley crew think? “Who do you say that I am,” Jesus asks them. “The Messiah,” Peter speaks for them all. You are the Messiah. They think I’m the king, the leader of Israel, the savior of the nation. In your imagination you can hear Jesus sigh. It is a good answer, but a hard answer.

The crowd thinks Jesus is a prophet, the disciples think he is a savior king. Either of these roles leads to almost certain death. Jesus knows he is going to be arrested and killed. And he tells the disciples so. Things are going to get bad.

But Peter can’t stand it. “Don’t let it happen,” he says in another account. Don’t do it. Jesus turns on Peter. Not very compassionate, here. He doesn’t say “there, there, Peter, what will be has to be.” He rebukes Peter, turning on him. And he calls to Satan, “get out of here.” Satan in the Gospels is the symbol for temptation, and it seems that Jesus is tempted. Is he tempted by those human things? Things like a long life with friends, perhaps, sitting on the porch with Peter years later, talking about their grandchildren, days at the beach and in business together. Things that people get to do, some of them.

There is a choice here, or at least Mark makes it sound that way. Jesus’ choice. And he puts it in those terms. “Those who want to save their life will lose it; those who lose their life for my sake and the sake of the gospel will save it.” A or B. The left fork; the right fork. A fantasy of a long and pleasant life. A near-certain short and violent mission.

Yet what kind of life would it be if he abandoned his call? If he chose the rocking chair over the cross. If he ignored his mission. What would it profit, he wonders aloud, to gain the whole world and forfeit one’s life?

Jesus is called by God and by the world to a mission. He sees sure risks ahead. He is tempted to avoid his call. Yet in the end he comes to understand—or you might say he always understood—that if he were to embrace that pleasant life he would have no life worth living. And so off he goes, meeting with Moses and Elijah in the next passage in Mark, and then on to the cross.

What Jesus does is a human thing. To choose between the one life and another is a human thing. To be at a turning point. To be called (though maybe not as Messiah) and to take risks (though maybe not to be crucified), to see danger, to be tempted to turn aside. These are human things. Jesus’ story here is a human story. Our story.

You have a chance to work on improving infrastructure in a developing nation / it will be uncomfortable and unhealthful / you are tempted to stay home. You are approached by someone begging on the street / you’ll have to give up a little time and money and it will be awkward / you are tempted to walk on by. You long to set up a studio and be a photographer / it will mean a drastic cut-back in salary that will affect not only you but your spouse / you are tempted to keep your old job.

Jesus says Peter (or is it Jesus?) is setting his mind on human things. Of course he is! Peter (or is it Jesus?) is human. It is a human thing to avoid pain and trouble and sadness and loss. It makes sense to do so.

But it is also human to feel called by God. To feel that there is a life for us that feels in synch with the universe. We know in our bones that we can be at peace with ourselves and others. That there is a way to live in trust and fearlessness. That we are destined not to be like Gods but to belong to God and loved.

Jesus calls the people in the reading an adulterous generation, a word that in the Bible usually means idolatrous. And it is not just Jesus’ generation that turns to idols, but every generation. No generation has been free from idols. The biggies: power, wealth, security, relationships; and all the little other ones. They are energized by our fear. Idols offer to keep us well and satisfied. They offer to keep death away. But idols lie. They don’t give us life. They take away our lives in service to them. If we try to save our lives through idols we will surely lose our lives to them.

“If any would be my followers,” Jesus says, “let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” This is not an invitation to suffer. Why would God hope you would suffer? It is an invitation to spit in the faces of our idols, to hear the call of God, and to follow it, come what may. To turn our backs on fear.

What God wants for us is what we mostly deeply want for ourselves. We and God are related; we are made in God’s image. We share the same genes, so to speak; we are related by blood. What God hopes for us is what we most urgently and truly hope for ourselves.

Our lives are full of little turning points, times of choice. I put before you life and death, says Moses, choose life. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, God asks in Isaiah, listen … to me, and [choose to] eat what is good. Follow me, invites Jesus, and claim your life.

Father of All Law, Mother of All Sin

September 10, 2006 Text: James 2:1-17

My neighbor tries to start his old, rickety truck, whose springs are shot and whose bed always is full of some kind of junk or other. The truck won’t start. Urrm, urrm. The starter turns. Urrm. Again. And again. Finally it catches. He backs up, just missing clobbering the car behind, then surges forward, just missing mine in front. I surprise myself by thinking: “what is wrong with that person?”

What is wrong is that he is poor, that he needs his truck for his work but can’t afford to fix it, that he has a bushy mustache, that he dresses oddly, that he looks strange. What is wrong with him is that he is not me, not like me. What is wrong is that he is different.

I have sinned. There is no sin in seeing this man. There is sin in judging him.

We are creatures blessed with sensitive detectors. The rods in our eyes can detect a single photon. Our ears if any more sensitive could hear the random motion of the molecules in the air. Our brains are pattern detectors. What impinges on our consciousness is change, motion, and edges. We are creatures designed to detect borders. To detect differences.

Isaiah promises sight to those who cannot see. Hearing to those who cannot hear. In the golden age, when those who are injured and wounded will walk, when those who cannot speak will speak, when the wilderness produces fruit, then perception will be restored to those whose eyes and ears are broken. It is occasion for rejoicing.

And yet, our abilities and propensities for distinguishing one thing from another get us in hot water. In the hottest water. We see other people as different than we are. We see them as “not people.” So we can buy and sell other people without seeing them as people, as real people. People, that is, like us. We can put other people in camps. We can bomb other people’s cites and kill them. We can keep other people in poverty, or not rescue them from poverty.

We can do this because something is broken in us, some other kind of detector, that would detect the anguish and despair that we know we would feel if we were them, those other people. We don’t see them as we see ourselves. We don’t see them as we see those whom we know well—our friends and family, for example—those whom we love.

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” James reminds us, reciting this half of the basis of all law in scripture. You do well if you really fulfill this fundamental commandment, he says. “But,” he says, “if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.” The emphasis here is on the second part of the commandment. “Neighbor as yourself.” The opposite of “love your neighbor as yourself” is not “hate your neighbor.” It is “see your neighbor as different than yourself.”

“Love the Lord your God will all your heart and soul and mind,” is the first half of the commandment. But the second half does not just say “and love your neighbor, too.” The prime commandment is not “Love God and your neighbor, too.” The second half has this kicker: “… as yourself.” “…as yourself” is the unexpected part and therefore the powerful part.

For James, loving one’s neighbor as oneself is the father of all law. And for James, partiality—judging some folks to be better than others, to treat some people differently than others, to show deference to some and to show others disrespect—for James this is the mother of all sin. From this all sin towards others flows: covetousness, murder, dishonor, theft, the human side of the Ten Commandments.

And this fundamental commandment is a necessary part of being a follower of Christ. “Do you,” he asks in his letter, “Do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?” He cannot conceive how treating others in any way differently than we hope to be treated ourselves can be reconciled with Jesus for those who follow Jesus.

Maybe this is the original sin. In the garden, after eating the apple, Adam’s and Eve’s “eyes were opened, “it says in Genesis, “and they knew that they were naked,” and as a result, they put on some clothes. It is not their nakedness that is the issue. The sin, or maybe it was the result of the sin, was that they recognize a distinction that was not there before. It is not that they suddenly noticed a difference in each other than they had been blind to before. It is that the difference was suddenly important.

Ever since then, our difference detectors have been working overtime. A writer in New York, writing for tomorrow’s anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, wrote that in the days following the attacks, “a single source of solace emerged amid the dread and grief: a great upwelling of simple solidarity. Here in New York, and in … Washington, that solidarity took homely forms. Strangers connected as friends; … political and civic leaders of all parties and persuasions stood together [and, I should add, religious leaders, too], united in sorrow and defiance.” And he goes on to say that that solidarity was not confined to New York City but extended worldwide.

Yet within months all this unity, all this recognition of common humanity in suffering, vanished. It shattered into thousands of distinctions, between good and bad, east and west, Christian and Jew and Muslim, and between one kind of Christian and another and between one kind of Muslim and another. Now the world stands in splinters. It is if we cannot bear for long to be the brothers and sisters that God created. We have walked out of the garden.

We are really good at seeing differences, even where there is nothing to see. Catholics in Ireland detect Protestants, Shiites detect Sunnis. Lutherans used to detect Mormons but evidently have forgotten how. Thank God.

Do we see what God does not? Is God, all knowing, blind to things we see so clearly? Are God’s eyes less sharp than ours? Or is it that God chooses not to see? That through some kind of Godly moral strength God pretends not to see?

Or is it that we see and then we judge. “What is wrong with this guy?” I say. That’s a judgment. But when God sees God does not judge. That the differences that seem so big to us seem to be nothing of import to God. They are not important. They do not make a difference to God.

The psalm tells of the salvation of the world, an age—the kingdom of God, we would say—when the people who are oppressed and live in sorrow are restored. This is the same world that James writes about in hope. What kind of world is it, he asks, when someone can see a “brother or sister naked and lacking daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your full,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs”? What kind of world is it when the rich are respected for being rich and the poor despised for being poor? What kind of world is it where I mock my neighbor for his troubles? This is a world where we do not treat our neighbors as ourselves for we do not see them as like ourselves.

This is our world, but it is not God’s kingdom. It is not the kingdom that Jesus preaches. Or promises.

In God’s kingdom, the kingdom we hope and pray for, James says, mercy triumphs over justice. Our eyes are opened and our ears unstopped and our “neighbor as ourselves” detectors begin to work.

James saw in Jesus a constant reminder that we are all in this together, brothers and sisters. As we announce in the words of Paul each week: There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. We are all one in Christ Jesus. All neighbors, like ourselves.

A Gospel Life

September 3, 2006 Text: Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 Preacher: Pastor Seitz

Today’s Gospel text presents Jesus in a very common situation. He is being challenged by “Pharisees and teachers of the Law.” They gathered around Jesus. They sat and watched the disciples and some were eating without washing their hands.

The Pharisees and teachers of the Law ask: Why don’t your disciples live according to the traditions of the church instead of eating with unclean hands?

Jesus gives a very strong answer, “you hypocrites! You have let go of the commands of God and are holding onto the traditions of men.”

Jesus is being challenged by his peers and his elders because he is not living according to what they expect. In their eyes, nothing is more important than the traditions of the church and the Laws when it comes to how one is supposed to conduct oneself while following God.

Those of you who know me may not be surprised to learn that while at seminary I was called up to the Dean’s office, once. I had a good idea at the time what it was regarding because there was something going on at the seminary apartments where I lived.

Wherever I live I get to know some of the homeless community on a first name basis. I like to talk to people when they ask for change and find out who they are because I feel a little personal contact and understanding can go a lot farther than some spare change sometimes.

I went to seminary in Berkeley, California and there was a fairly large community of young people who were homeless living there. One young man’s name was Andrew. He had lived in Berkeley, on the streets, since he was 16. He was probably 18 when I met him.

As often happens to homeless people, he caught a serious cold that turned into pneumonia. He went to the hospital and they released him into some of his friend’s care. They were homeless too so they called me. Andrew had pneumonia, could he stay with me for a few days while he takes his medicine and gets well enough to stand again?

So Andrew stayed in my seminary-owned apartment with my roommate’s consent, just until he could make it on his own again. It was not long before out neighbors started complaining that the person locked up in Tim’s apartment could get everyone else sick. I made no effort to send Andrew away before he was well enough and just when it looked like things were settling down, I received a notice that the Dean wished to see me.

So I went to the Dean and he asked me if I was housing a young homeless person in my apartment. I answered, yes. Well your neighbors are concerned that you will get sick and that they will get sick. They are concerned for your safety. What exactly to do you think you are doing with a sick homeless person on your couch?

I answered him with one of those classic one-liners that you always wish you could think of in a situation like this. I answered, “I am doing exactly what the book we came here to study has told me to do.”

In the lesson from Deuteronomy today, God warns the people after, after admonishing them to obey the Law, only be careful and watch yourselves closely so that you don’t forget the things your have seen nor let them slip from your heart.

The truth is that Law is for experience – if it is not true or good in experience than what good is it?

In James Chapter. 1 from the 2^nd lesson today, we are given direction which should still be central to our teaching today. “Brothers and sisters, everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for peoples anger does not bring about the righteous life God desires for us.”

How many Christians are quoting this scripture in their arguments and complaints? Just watch the “Christian” portrayed on T.V, nearly every televangelist is angry. Most denominations today are defined by what we disagree with. Name any hot topic: war, abortion, homosexuality, etc. Seems like anything controversial in society there are Christians lining up to do their part and voice their anger and disapproval.

Jesus cuts through the argument with these words “Listen to me everyone and understand this. Nothing outside a man makes him ‘unclean’ by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him unclean.”

We are not unclean because we have dirty hands and eat! Woe to you who sit in judgment of others for their shortcomings while the habit of sitting around and judging others is the greatest shortcoming of all.

God tells His people in the 1^st lesson, Follow my Laws in order to serve me – but do not forget your experiences so you remember why the Laws exist. In the 2^nd Lesson, James tells us – Do not merely listen to the Word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

In the Gospel Jesus reminds us that there is danger in defending the Law if it leads you to forget who we are and what the Law is for. The Law is to guide us and, as James states, “But the man who looks intently into the perfect Law that gives freedom – and does not forget – will be blessed.”

As James says, the Law is designed to give us freedom.

My other favorite story about this topic took place not long ago in my previous call. I welcomed a couple of new members to the church. They were an older married couple, an old blues musician and his wife—also a musician. They invited me to play with them. Eventually they asked me to perform with them in a bar.

Between sets some members from the church that had come to listen were giving me a hard time. “It’s hard to believe that our very own man of the cloth is playing drums in blues band. Pastor, I wonder what Jesus would make of this?”

There was a man sitting alone at the only table near our group. When he heard the name Jesus, he said, “Jesus!? If Jesus was here he wouldn’t want anything to do with a guy like me!”

So I dropped down into the chair next to him and said, “No way, Brother! If Jesus walked in here right now you are exactly the guy that Jesus would be hanging with.”

When this story was retold at a congregational meeting people complained that their pastor was hanging out in a bar and inviting other members to come and setting a poor example for our youth.

The disciples needed to eat more than they needed to worry about what the teachers and the Pharisees thought about their hands. The homeless young man needed a place to get well more than my neighbors at the Seminary needed to feel comfortable about housing a sick stranger. And the guy in the bar needed to hear that Jesus loves him more than my parishioners needed to certain that their pastor was not going to the bar.

The Gospel leads us to go out and serve anyone, anywhere, at any time. The Law reminds us we are forgiven along the way. We are called to live lives of service more than lives of obedience to the Law and traditions of the church. That in fact is what the Gospel is all about.