WHY I AM A (lower-case, uncapitalized “e”) eVANGELICAL, Part 2

Why I Am a (lower-case, uncapitalized “e”) evangelical, Part 2
(Luke 24.13-35 and “Let Us Stay Together for a While” by Bruce Woodcock)
A reflection by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ,
Sammamish, Washington,
The 22^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time: August 29, 2011 The eleventh in a summer series on topics you’ve asked to hear reflections about.

This morning’s topic: What are the differences & similarities between evangelical and mainline and progressive Christian churches?

I wanted to offer a word of explanation about the title of this reflection for those of you who weren’t here last week for the first part of it. These days when we hear the word evangelical, most of us think of people who say every word in the Bible is literally true. And say people who don’t believe the “right” things about Jesus are going to hell. And God made men to have power over women. And God made everyone heterosexual. And anyone who says otherwise isn’t a real Christian.

There are more and more people who call themselves evangelical who don’t believe these things. Some of them call themselves “lower case, uncapitalized e” evangelicals, to distinguish themselves from the traditional “capital E” Evangelicals who divide the world so easily into saved and damned. It is these lower case, uncapitalized “e” evangelicals, also called emergent Christians, whom I find myself at home with. And this morning I’ll say why.

Let us pray.

God, you who walk with us every moment of every day, may only your Word be spoken. And if I do not speak your word, may only your word be heard. Amen.

To celebrate Thanksgiving in 2002, Peter and I went to Washington, D.C., to visit his sister and her family. By that time, Peter and I had been pastors I’d been pastors at University Congregational United Church of Christ in Seattle for over eight years. I still felt incredibly thankful the members of that church had taken the risk to call Peter and me as a couple to be their pastors.

At the same time, on that Thanksgiving-eve flight nine years ago, I felt restless. Instead of feeling filled by good work and a good life, I felt empty. I felt like dry, waterless ground. And I didn’t know what to do.

Like I do every time I’m in Washington, D.C., I went to National Cathedral. And I found myself heading downstairs to a chapel that’s in the bowels of the Cathedral. It’s a damp and musty place that feels like a tomb. Which makes sense. Because the front of the chapel has a painting that shows people carrying Jesus’ body from the hill of the crosses to his tomb.

After praying in that chapel for about two hours, I heard a voice that said, Come and die with me, Dave.

What does a mainline, progressive Christian do when he hears the Risen Jesus Christ speak to him?

Five hours later, Peter and I were on a plane back to Seattle. And I was writing the sermon I had to preach the next morning at University Congregational UCC. Here’s what I said in that sermon about this experience:
Die with me, Jesus said. Die to all that keeps God from tearing open your life and claiming you fully as her beloved son. Die to your fear of disappointing people, your desire to please, your cautious engagement with the injustices of this world. Die to your safe religion and your moderate faith that seduce you into believing you can be a Christian without sacrifice and [into believing] God can be served without cost. Die to these, Jesus told me….

All my adult life, I loved reading and talking about Jesus. But now that Jesus had spoken to me, I couldn’t keep him at arms’ length. I needed to talk to him as well. But that meant I had to do what mainline, progressive Christians never talk about in polite company. Talking to the Risen, Living Jesus means forming a personal relationship with him. And that sounds so evangelical.

So I didn’t talk about this experience in National Cathedral with many people. How could I? What would they say? I feared I was losing the “faith home” I’d had my whole life.

Which is why I think during this time I kept going back to the Road to Emmaus story in the Gospel of Luke. In this reading, Cleopas and his companion are lost. It’s the evening of the first Easter. They’re walking back to their home in Emmaus. They’d been so sure who Jesus was. And now their certainty shattered. Their walk with the Risen Jesus broke open and changed their lives forever. Because Jesus refused to stay dead. And God refused to let anyone limit the Mystery God could cause to break into the world. And refused to let anyone tell God what was and was not possible.

Listen for a word from God as Paula reads this morning’s Gospel lesson. And as the choir sings the same story.

On the day Jesus rose from the dead, two of Jesus’ disciples were walking to the village Emmaus, about seven miles out of Jerusalem. They were deep in conversation, going over all these things that had happened. In the middle of their talk and questions, Jesus came up and walked along with them. But they were not able to recognize who he was.
He asked, "What's this you're discussing so intently as you walk along?"
They just stood there, long-faced, like they had lost their best friend. Then one of them, his name was Cleopas, said, "Are you the only one in Jerusalem who hasn't heard what's happened during the last few days?"
He said, "What has happened?"
They said, "The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene. He was a man of God, a prophet, dynamic in work and word, blessed by both God and all the people. Then our high priests and leaders betrayed him, got him sentenced to death, and crucified him. And we had our hopes up that he was the One, the One about to deliver Israel. And it is now the third day since it happened.
But now some of our women have completely confused us. Early this morning they were at the tomb and couldn't find his body. They came back with the story that they had seen a vision of angels who said he was alive.
Some of our friends went off to the tomb to check and found it empty just as the women said, but they didn't see Jesus."
Then he said to them, "So thick-headed! So slow-hearted! Why can't you simply believe all that the prophets said? Don't you see that these things had to happen, that the Messiah had to suffer and only then enter into his glory?" Then he started at the beginning, with the Books of Moses, and went on through all the Prophets, pointing out everything in the Scriptures that referred to him.
They came to the edge of the village where they were headed. He acted as if he were going on but they pressed him: "Stay and have supper with us. It's nearly evening; the day is done." So he went in with them.
And here is what happened: Jesus sat down at the table with them. Taking the bread, he blessed and broke and gave it to them. At that moment, open-eyed, wide-eyed, they recognized him. And then he disappeared.
Back and forth they talked. "Didn't we feel on fire as he conversed with us on the road, as he opened up the Scriptures for us?"
They didn't waste a minute. They were up and on their way back to Jerusalem. They found the Eleven and their friends gathered together, talking away: "It's really happened! The Master has been raised up—Simon saw him!" Then the two went over everything that happened on the road and how they recognized him when he broke the bread.
(Luke 24.13-35, The Message Re-Mix © 2003 Eugene Peterson).

“Let Us Stay Together for A While”

Words & Music by Bruce Woodcock, © 2003 Bruce Woodcock

Let us stay together for a time, let us stay together for a while.
When the evening is approaching and the day is almost spent,
Let us stay with one another for a time.
All we have in common is a road; all we have in common is a journey:
we are simply fellow travelers who are passing in the night.
Let us stay with one another on the road for a time.

Dare we trust a stranger with our dreams? Dare we trust a stranger with our story?
If we cannot hide out tears, let us share out hopes and fears
as we stay with one another, with our dreams.
All we have to offer is our Word; all we have to offer is a Bible.
Let us open it between us till the fire burns within us,
as we stay with one another in the Word for a time.

He was nothing to us but a name, and we thought our road would never find him.
He was with us all the while and he’s walking every mile
as we stay with one another in his name.
All we have between us is a loaf; all we have between us is a table:
as we break the bread together we will recognize our brother,
and we’ll stay with one another, breaking bread, for a time.

Shall we stay for ever in this place? Shall we go back home and tell the others?
If we stay on holy ground, we’ll lose the miracle we’ve found
and we’ll be left with one another in this place.
We don’t need a special place or time; we don’t have to travel to Emmaus:
any road and any table, we can meet you, Lord, again;
we can stay with one another any place, any time.

Hearing Jesus in National Cathedral broke me open to discover what Cleopas and his companion discovered. And what the choir just sang.

We don’t need a special place or time; we don’t have to travel to Emmaus:
any road and any table, we can meet you, Lord, again;
we can stay with one another any place, any time.

As I looked around for Christians like me, I found home with a these lower-case, uncapitalized “e” evangelicals I talked about at the beginning of this reflections. These folks who call themselves emergent Christians. Many of these former capital “E” Evangelicals had been expelled from their faith homes because people told them they were way too liberal. Because emergent Christians said the Bible isn’t a scientific text that tells us exactly how things happened. Emergents refuse to say God needed Jesus to bleed and die so sinful humans could be forgiven. Emergent churches celebrate women and gays and lesbians as pastors.

They have built a bridge toward mainline and progressive Christians. A bridge that tries to pass over all the things that have divided Christians from each other. A bridge that tries to bring Christians together.

Why? Because, more than anything else, what emergent Christians care about is relationship. An emergent church leader says, “When people ask emergent Christians, ‘What do you all hold in common?’ the answer is most likely ‘We’re friends’.”
(Tony Jones, The New Christians, Jossey-Bass, 2008, p. 56)
Emergents say, when we allow ourselves to make our home in the love of Jesus, we know we are “surrounded by an envelope of friendship” (Jones, p. 78). In this envelop of friendship, we help mend what has been broken and heal what has been hurt.

What is emergent Christianity? One way to answer this question is to look at what the word emergent suggests.

One of the people who began the emergent Christian movement is a former very capital “E” Evangelical named Brian McLaren. For a while he worked with what are called emergent wetlands. There are wetlands with plants “whose roots are in the soil underwater but whose shoots grow up through the surface of the water to take in the full, unfiltered sun. In this sense,” Brian McLaren explains, “emergents are plants that live in different worlds [at the same time]” (McLaren, p. 276). And emergent Christians do the same thing. They try to live in both the capital “E” Evangelical and the mainline/progressive worlds.

Imagine the cross section of a tree. Each ring represents new growth. But that new growth was only possible because the new ring embraced the older rings and included them in the new. The tree can only continue to grow strong if it integrates the previous growth that has gone on before. Simply rejecting the old will cause the tree to die (McLaren, p. 277).

That’s what emergent Christians are trying to do. They start with Jesus. They ask, How did Jesus live? What did he live for? Why was he executed? What does his rising back to life mean? When we look at these fundamental questions, we see how easy it has been for Christian to focus on the part of his life we’re most comfortable with. And ignore the rest. Capital “E” Evangelicals ignore how Jesus told us God’s kingdom is a place where there was no violence, no poverty, no separation between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. And the mainline and progressive Christians ignore how the only way Jesus could live his radical way was because he shared a living, intimate, deeply personal relationship he had with the God he called Father. It was his personal relationship with God that filled and watered him, and kept him clear about why he was alive.

So emergent Christians invite us to cross the bridge to them, so we can talk and work and pray together to follow the whole Jesus. Not just the Jesus of either personal relationship and personal salvation or the Jesus of social justice.

Which means we will have to do some hard self-examination. Our ancestors thought it was “reasonable” to own slaves and to deny women the right to vote. For centuries scientists believed it was “reasonable” to assert that sun rotated around the earth. These are fruits of human reason that we have seen fit to throw away. Our emergent Christians sisters and brothers ask those of us who are so attached to our faith being reasonable, Why do you limit what God can do by what you believe is reasonable? When will you learn how much you limit God’s power in your life and how much you limit passion and joy and justice by trying to force God to play by your rules?

We mainline, progressive Christians often reject biblical teachings like resurrection and God becoming a human person in Jesus as untrue or impossible. They don’t fit with how we think the world works. But what if we changed how we see truth? Emergent Christians invite us onto this bridge they’ve built toward us, and they ask, “Is the truth a question to be answered, or it is beauty to be sought” (Jones, p. 157)? I hear the Emmaus story Paula read. I listen to the words the choir sang. The story of frightened, discouraged people who were so sure they knew the truth: that Jesus Christ was dead and could not and would not break out of the tomb alive. The story of this Jesus Christ who did exactly that. And lit these frightened, discouraged ones on fire, and gave birth to us who 2000 years later still tell the story. We who worship reason may not believe this story is true. But I believe this story is too beautiful not to be true.

John Howard Yoder was a Mennonite. He was one of the most famous and most radical writer about God in the 1900s. He said the work of Jesus was not a new set of ideals or principles for reforming or even revolutionizing society. Instead, Yoder said the work of Jesus is to a new community, a people that embodied forgiveness, sharing, and self-sacrificing love in everything that community did. When followers of Jesus come together as friends to build that kind of community, Yoder says the church is not the bearer of Christ’s message. The church is Christ’s message (Jones, p. 178).

We can read stories about Jesus. We can talk about Jesus. But that keeps Jesus as an arms’ length. That limits how much the story can claim us and become us. But when we talk to Jesus. When we walk and break bread with him … when we make ourselves at home in his love, then we become his message. We become his forgiveness, his anger, his non-violence, his joy, his justice, his bottomless well of love.

And isn’t that why we’ve been coming together all along? …

Why I Am A (lower-case, uncapitalized “e”)eVANGELICAL

Why I am a (lower-case, uncapitalized “e”) evangelical, Part I
(John 15.9-12)
A reflection by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington.
The 21^st Sunday in Ordinary Time: August 21, 2011

The tenth in a summer series on topics the congregation has asked to hear reflections about. This morning’s topic: What are the differences & similarities between evangelical and mainline and progressive Christian churches?

Three years ago, if someone had told me I would ever offer a reflection called, WHY I AM A (lower-case, uncapitalized “e”) eVANGELICAL, I would have smiled and said, “I hope you have a nice trip back to earth.” I knew I’d never preach anything with that title because I knew what evangelicals were like. And I was dead sure I wasn’t – and never would be – one of those Christians.

So what happened?

I’ve changed. And some people who call themselves evangelical have changed. These “new” evangelicals and I have found each other. These “new” evangelicals have called me out of my safe and reasonable faith that loved the stories and teachings of Jesus. They’ve called me into a “delightfully terrifying” love for Jesus Christ himself (phrase in quotations from Tony Jones, The New Christians, Jossey-Bass, 2008, p. 234). And for me, that changes everything. That’s why I am a lower-case, uncapitalized “e” evangelical.

Imagine we’re playing a word association game. Someone says evangelical. I imagine that, for most of us, the first word that comes to our minds wouldn’t be terribly flattering. We hear the word evangelical. And we think Religious Right. We think Jerry Falwell or James Dobson. We think of Christians who proclaim with utter certainty that women should have no leadership roles in church or society. Or that same-sex marriage is an abomination in the eyes of God. We hear evangelical, and we think of people who say people who don’t believe certain thing about Jesus are not saved and are going to hell. That’s what many Christians who don’t call themselves evangelical associate with that word.

But since 1998, the Holy Spirit has been causing quite a stir among capital “E” Evangelicals. Some religion scholars go so far as to say the Spirit is stirring up a revolution among them. Next week, I’m going to talk about a group of revolutionary lower-case “e” evangelicals whom I find myself powerfully drawn to. For now, I just want to say these lower-case “e” evangelicals, who are called emergent Christians, are building bridges out to mainline and progressive Christians. And I believe if we step onto those bridges and get to know these emergent Christians, our lives would change. And the world would change. But more about that next week.

This morning, I want to invite you to take a brief walk with me through the past 200 years of Christian history in this country. So we can see where we’ve come from. And see where we are now. I believe where we are now is a place where mainline and progressive Christians have a lot less faith, hope, and love than we need, and that is possible

Our historical walk begins with the revolution in Europe that occurred between 1650-1800. That revolution is called the Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason. Very simply put, one of the things the Enlightenment did was put everything religions said about God, the Bible, and faith under a microscope. It challenged everything that couldn’t be proven or that violated reason. Up to that point, traditional religious teachings and ways of understanding the Bible had been widely accepted as true. Now all of this was examined closely under the clear light of reason. Were these beliefs and teachings rational? Did they make sense? Could things really have happened the way the Bible says they happened? If the answer was “no”, then Enlightened thinkers concluded these teachings and beliefs should be rejected as irrational superstition. Thomas Jefferson, an avid student of the Enlightenment, took a razor blade to the Bible. He sliced away all the parts that he felt asked Christians to believe things that were superstitious, irrational, and unreasonable. So angels, prophecy, miracles, the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, and the resurrection all disappeared from the Bible. For some reason Jefferson decided the story of the flood passed the “reasonable and rational” test. But Jefferson’s actions showed the power of Enlightenment thinking. It showed what happened when people decided Reason was the best way to measure what was true. They wouldn’t admit this, but many Enlightenment thinkers simply replaced the capital “G” God with the small “g” god of Reason. Reason was the god they worshipped. Because Reason told them how the world worked, and what was true, and what kind of life makes sense.

Of course many Christians were horrified by what Jefferson and others were doing to their religion and their sacred stories. So some Christians decided it was time to draw a line in the sand. These Christians are the capital “E” Evangelicals. The word evangelical comes from the same Greek word that gives us the words angel, good news, and gospel. So, evangelicals are any people who have something to do with being messengers of the good news. These Evangelicals came up with five things they believed anyone who was a real Christian had to believe. So today, what we associate with capital “E” Evangelicalism didn’t grow out of a long period of calm, non-anxious prayer and study. What we associate with capital “E” Evangelicalism grew out of a deep fear and anger that the faith and the sacred stories they loved were being destroyed by so-called enlightened people.

Here are the five fundamental beliefs that capital “E” Evangelicals in the early 1800s decided all “true” Christians had to believe:

1. there are no mistakes in the Bible, but each word is literally the true word of God;

2. Mary became pregnant with Jesus without having sex, so she gave birth to him as a virgin;

3. Jesus’ was brought out of the tomb alive with a body, and, when the Last Judgment comes, all who believe in Jesus Christ will rise from the dead with bodies. So the resurrection is physical, not just spiritual; and the resurrection isn’t just a metaphor or symbol that says new life can grow out of death;

4. God sent Jesus to earth to die for the sin of humankind; his blood washes us clean of sin and restores our shattered relationship with God; and

5. at any moment, Jesus Christ will return to earth to judge all people, and become the Lord of creation for all time
(Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, Zondervan, 2004, p. 197).

That these are the five absolutes evangelicals in the early 1800s decided were the mark of real Christians shows how threatened they felt. Jesus never even mentioned some of these. His resurrection is the only one among these five he talked about more than a couple of times. Evangelicals picked these because they were the teachings “liberal” Christians with Enlightenment tendencies were challenging – or rejecting altogether (McLaren, p. 197).

And what about “mainline” Christians? Mainline Christians are those Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Congregationalists, Quakers, and the like, whose ancestors brought their “religions” with them from Europe when they migrated to the United States. Pennsylvania was the colony that welcomed people of all Christian backgrounds. These religions got the name “mainline” because a number of immigrants who were members of these established religious groups ended up living in a group of Philadelphia suburbs that were on the Pennsylvania Railroad Main Line.

Though there were clear differences between the ways Evangelical and mainline Christians believed and the ways they thought, they worked together in some amazing ways. In Britain and in the United States, Evangelicals and mainline Christians worked together to make slavery illegal and to fight for the right of women to vote. Of course there were lots of Evangelicals and mainline Christians on the others sides of these issues as well. But today it’s easy for non-Evangelicals today to assume capital “E” Evangelicals have always had the same conservative political beliefs. But that isn’t the case at all. Indeed, it was the explosion of evangelicalism in Britain in the mid-1700s that really got Christians fired up to oppose slavery.

From the colonial period into the 1970s, the vast majority of Christians in this country belonged to mainline churches. The twenty years after World War II was the period when mainline Christianity held a particularly powerful role in society. Millions of soldiers returned from fighting in that war. Millions had been traumatized by it. They filled the churches. And though they couldn’t have know this is what they were doing, they shaped these churches in ways that created environments in which they could heal from their trauma. The ways the churches were run and the ways worship was run reflected how much these returning veterans and their families needed and valued order, structure, safety, and predictability. For the 20 years following the end of WWII, mainline churches became even stronger supporters of the U.S. government and its policies. Leaders of all levels of government and industry were part of mainline congregations. This tended to keep mainline churches relatively conservative, and unable to respond creatively to the changes brought about by the revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s around civil rights, the Vietnam War, and the trustworthiness and value of institutions. Now only 13% of people in the United States say they are part of a mainline church.

The term progressive Christians grew out of a movement in the early 1900s called the Social Gospel movement. It was a clear reaction to the growth of evangelicalism. The key figure in this movement was the Baptist preacher Walter Rauschenbusch. In the early 1900s, Rauschenbusch said he didn’t believe God made Jesus die so we could be forgiven. Instead, he said Jesus died "to substitute love for selfishness as the basis of human society." He explained the Kingdom of God "is not a matter of getting individuals to heaven, but [a way to] transform…life on earth into the harmony of heaven" (Wikipedia entry, “Walter Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel”).

During the 1900s, we Christians did an odd and tragic thing. Evangelical Christians began to focus almost entirely on personal faith. What was most important is if Jesus and I are friends. If I believe those five fundamental things about Jesus, then that’s all that really matters. Because what matters most is being saved, which means going to heaven when I die and living with Jesus there forever. Progressive Christians began to focus almost entirely on the social gospel. They said being Christian means working for civil rights and environmental protection, and against war and poverty. And the mainline Christians kind of floated between the two. Since the 1970s, progressive and mainline congregations have been losing members at an alarming pace. And capital “E” Evangelical churches, along with the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Church of God, and many Pentecostal congregations, are increasing at healthy rates.

While Christians have broken into our various camps, and gone our different ways, I think most of us have forgotten about the Jesus we say we want to follow. We’ve ignored the Jesus of the Bible in his complexity and radicalness. And instead created Jesus in our own image.

One of the “new” lower-case “e” evangelicals I’m going to talk about next week is a former capital “E” Evangelical named Tony Jones. He points to the ways capital “E” Evangelicals and mainline/progressive Christians use the Bible to show how both kinds of Christians don’t let the Bible speak for itself. We don’t let the mystery of scripture take hold of us. Instead, we bring our biases and our small “g” gods to our reading of it. So we limit the power of the Spirit to enfold us in love and send us forth as bold, imaginative, compassionate followers of Jesus. Here’s what Tony Jones says:

[T]he Bible is not an object, to be read and studied dispassionately. In my experience, evangelicals read the Bible like a science book, looking for clues that would establish its truth, in order to prove that the events recorded in the Bible actually took place and to justify what they say it says about women’s roles in the church and the abomination of homosexuality. I knew mainliners, on the other hand, who read the Bible with a healthy dose of skepticism, almost visibly uncomfortable with the extraordinary claims of miracles and items of faith like the resurrection. But I had started to think that either of these approaches is a misappropriation of the Bible. It is a living, breathing document that makes a claim on its readers’ lives
(Tony Jones, The New Christians, Jossey-Bass, 2008, p. 45).

A lot of mainline and progressive Christians struggle with letting Bible stories of mystery and miracle have power in our lives. Do a lot of us still worship the small “g” god of Reason that Thomas Jefferson and others seemed to worship?

Let’s take a look at the Easter story, and the resurrection of Jesus as an example.

Why does the resurrection seem unbelievable to so many Christians? It’s because a lot of Christians believe something that violates physical laws is probably not ‘true’ (at least not in a factual, historical sense). Many mainline and progressive Christians are not willing to hold together at the same time two ideas that seem like they can’t both be true. As far as the resurrection goes, these Christians have a hard time believing (1) that the physical laws of the universe operate everywhere all the time and (2) that events that break those laws – such as resurrection and miraculous healings – really did happen. Most mainline and progressive Christians reject that resurrection and miraculous healings happen because they place for faith in reason than in the power of God.

Why is it better to say that our reason should be stronger than the power of God? The problem with reason is that what we human beings have considered ‘reasonable’ (a universe where the earth is at the center, slavery, healing with leeches) are fruits of human reason humans have had to throw away. When we decide our reason is the way we’ll decide if something is really true, we force God to play by our rules. Which means we throw away one what people who have a living faith need to be able to hold together: mystery. So lots of us Christians decide we have to choose to have faith and trust in either the rules of physics or God’s freedom to do what God wants to do. Which means lots of Christians end up squeezing all the mystery out of God. Instead of deciding there are some things we can just never know and never be in control of. What would it take if mainline and progressive Christians decide not to fear mystery but embrace it? What if we decide God can be the creator of the universe and God can the breaker of the rules of physics? What if God can be Lord of the universe and not be the one who creates or uses evil (adapted from Jones, p. 154).

What would happen if more of us mainline and progressive Christians allow ourselves to fall into the arms of the God of Mystery whose actions we cannot control and whose ways we often do not understand? What if we stopped deciding what in the Bible could and couldn’t be true, and instead let these teachings and stories be the strongest force in shaping how we see the world, what we dream of, what we live for, and how we build community together?

If we were really able to embrace the Mystery of God, and let go our decision that what makes sense and what fits with how we think the world works, then I think more of us could hear these words of Jesus … and let ourselves truly make our home in his love.

Jesus said to his disciples,
"I've loved you the way my Father has loved me.
Make yourselves at home in my love.
If you keep my commands, you'll remain intimately at home in my love.
That's what I've done -- kept my Father's commands and make myself at home in his love.  
I've told you these things for a purpose:
that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature.  
This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you.  
This is the very best way to love."
(The Message Re-Mix © 2003 Eugene Peterson)

Amen.

How Does God Answer Prayer?

(Mark 10.17-25)
A reflection by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington.
The 20^th Sunday in Ordinary Time: August 14, 2011

The ninth in a summer series on topics the congregation has asked to hear reflections about. This morning’s questions stem from last week’s reflection on the Bible story in which the Holy Spirit tells Peter, “God plays no favorites” (Acts 10.34-36). That reflection led two people in the congregation to ask:
If God plays no favorites, how does God answer prayer? Does God intervene at certain times (when two or more are gathered, when we pray especially hard, when we really believe, etc.)? Or is God just present with us, guiding us, comforting us, but not intervening in the world. How does God answer prayer?

We live in a society that’s all about outcomes. And having the power to make things happen. I put my 4 quarters in the vending machine, push the button, and I get my Reese’s peanut butter cups. I click my computer mouse, “complete order” lights up on the open window, and three days later, UPS delivers my book. I turn in my high school science project, and I get a grade. I leave a voice-mail message with a friend, and he calls me back. Or I get upset if he doesn’t. In our society, when we do our part, we expect a response. We expect an outcome. We expect some deliverable.

So it makes sense that’s how a lot of us think prayer works. We pray, “God, heal my dying sister.” “God, stop those kids from bullying my son.” “God, please have someone hire me.” “God, save this planet from all the ways we’re destroying it.” We feel like we’ve done our part. And so we say, “Now it’s your turn, God. Show up. Show us you can deliver.”

As I grew up, that’s what church and Sunday School taught me about prayer. God and Santa Claus became the same person. Sometimes I think I do that now. I ask God for something. God checks over the cosmic list of who’s naughty and who’s nice. God sees my name under the “awesomely nice” column. So God gives me what I pray for. Which means this Santa Claus God clearly plays favorites. Because when it comes to God answering their prayers, the poor folks in the “naughty” column end up empty-handed.
I think that’s what a lot of Christians have learned about how God answers prayer.
And I believe that’s a lie.

A professor of preaching and theology tells a story that shows why it’s a lie.

Years ago…a…friend of mine...did everything in his power to ease the suffering of his lover, who was dying….One afternoon near the end I listened to the rawness of his prayers – pleading with God to do something, to work a miracle that would save his partner’s life….[W]hen the time was right I asked him to tell me about those prayers.
“You want to know whether I really believe God will intervene like that?” I think he asked me. “You wonder if I am really that naïve?” Then he told me something…I had…forgotten…. [T]hanks to him I am not likely to forget again.
“Honestly,” he said, “I don’t think it through, not now. I tell God what I want. I’m not smart enough or strong enough to do anything else, and besides, there’s no time. So I tell God what I want and I trust God to sort it out.”
(Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World, HarperOne, 2009, pp. 181-2).

If prayer isn’t about outcomes … if God doesn’t play favorites by rewarding people who pray and ignoring people who don’t … then how does God answer prayer?

This week, I’ve had a marvelous “conversation partner” on this topic. Her name is Sister Wendy Beckett. Some of you know her from her art appreciation programs on public television. Sister Wendy always shows up in her nun’s habit and her very large glasses. She has those front teeth orthodontists the world over fantasize about introducing to a set of braces. Sister Wendy unveils the mysteries of art, often using highly erotic words one doesn’t expect to hear from a nun. But that’s what makes her so beautiful. She radiates inner peace. She’s totally herself.

In our “conversations” this week, Sister Wendy unveiled the mysteries of prayer for me. She did it by saying prayer isn’t a mystery at all. All her book does is ask me to unlearn everything I learned about prayer most of my life. Here’s what she says:

It may seem to us that [when we pray] we are asking God to give us something – goodweather, good health, good exam results – and, of course, that is our explicit intention. [But] God is not a puppeteer who will stretch out and change the weather, adjust the cells of our body, or jiggle with the examiner’s markings (and at a deeper level we know this)[. T]he essential nature of our plea is not that God will change the real world, but that [God] will strengthen us to bear the impact of it
(Sister Wendy Beckett, Sister Wendy on Prayer, Harmony Books, 2007, p. 59-60).

God doesn’t answer prayer by changing the real world. We can’t pray to God, “Destroy nuclear weapons” or “Reverse global warming.” Humans created these problems and it’s up to humans to correct them. It’s not God’s job to save us from ourselves. Of course the person whose partner was dying in the story I just told wanted God to heal his partner. He wanted that more than anything. And he also knew that he couldn’t count on God adjusting the cancer cells of his partner. So while he was praying for God to heal his partner, he was also asking God to fill him with the presence of the Holy Spirit. So he could begin to imagine how to keep living in a world where his partner was dead.

If true prayer isn’t asking God for what we want and expecting God to give it to us, how do we pray? Sister Wendy says this: “The essential act of prayer is to stand unprotected before God. What will God do? [God] will take possession of us. That [God] should do this is the whole purpose of life” (p. 38).

Reasonable Protestants like us don’t talk about “standing unprotected before God”. The reasonable God reasonable Protestants worship doesn’t do things like take possession of us. But maybe what Sister Wendy is telling us is that trying to make prayer reasonable is what’s kept us believing lies about prayer.

How do we pray? We stand unprotected before God. Which means we come before God empty-handed and open-handed. We come before God with only one desire: to hear God’s will and follow it. To do what God asks. Without a list of excuses about why what God wants me to do is too hard or too unrealistic.

It’s risky to stand unprotected before God. Because, then we give God room to take possession of us and fill us with Holy Spirit. When God fills us with Holy Spirit, God changes us. So we can respond to whatever the real world brings us. And bring God’s healing love to it. Sister Wendy says the whole purpose of life – the reason for living – is to let God take possession of us. So Spirit can fill us.. And change us. And share God’s healing love with this world.

Jesus has a conversation with a certain man that shows us what it looks like when we refuse to stand unprotected before God. And all we lose when that happens.

Listen for a word from God.
17As Jesus went out into the street, a man came running up, greeted him with great reverence, and asked, "Good Teacher, what must I do to get eternal life?"
18-19Jesus said, "Why are you calling me good? No one is good, only God. You know the commandments: Don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't lie, don't cheat, honor your father and mother."
20He said, "Teacher, I have—from my youth—kept them all!"
21Jesus looked him hard in the eye—and loved him! He said, "There's one thing left: Go sell whatever you own and give it to the poor. All your wealth will then be heavenly wealth. And come follow me."
22The man's face clouded over. This was the last thing he expected to hear, and he walked off with a heavy heart. He was holding on tight to a lot of things, and not about to let go.
23-25Looking at his disciples, Jesus said, "Do you have any idea how difficult it is for people who 'have it all' to enter God's kingdom?" The disciples couldn't believe what they were hearing, but Jesus kept on: "You can't imagine how difficult. I'd say it's easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for the rich to get into God's kingdom."

I think this guy really wants to know the answer to his question, “What must I do to get eternal life?" Like any question, it’s a statement. His prayer is, I want eternal life. And Jesus answers his prayer. But this man can’t receive it. Because he doesn’t stand unprotected before God. He’s protected in a big way. Jesus hears his prayer for eternal life. And he tries to answer it. With a deep love for this man, Jesus says, Let God possess you. For Jesus sees that this man’s wealth possesses him. That’s what he worships. His wealth gives him his security, his identity, his status, his power. So Jesus says, Let go, my friend. Eternal life is yours if you stop worshiping your wealth and what it can bring you. And start letting God possess you. Let the Spirit fill you with God’s love. Then you can truly follow me. Walking with me and my friends, bringing God’s love to this world, is the eternal life you seek.

But this man is possessed by his wealth. The story says he walk away holding on tight to a lot of things, and not about to let go. And we never hear from him again.

How does God answer prayer? God doesn’t change the real world. God fills us with Holy Spirit. And Spirit’s healing love changes us … so we can change the real world.

We pray for the healing of a loved one who is dying … and God answers that prayer by saying, Let me take possession of you. So I can fill you with my Spirit. And She can strengthen you to face the reality of what life will be like without this person. Perhaps that person will get better. Mysterious healing happen. But we can’t pray with the assumption God will heal our dying loved one.

We might pray, “God, reverse the effects of global warming and climate change.” But God doesn’t answer our prayer by saving us from ourselves. God doesn’t answer our prayer by saving us from our immoral standards of living or our epic levels of denial. God answers that prayer by saying, Let me take possession of you. Let me help you imagine a different way to live. And let me give you the will to do it. Let me bring alive in you a calling to become an ecologist, and let me give you the passion to do it. Let me show you how your choices are killing the poor of this world.

How does God answer prayer? The song the choir is going to sing for us offers a painful and powerful answer. I hear it as God’s invitation to come before God unprotected. And to let God take possession of us. So we can walk through this world filled with Holy Spirit. So we can walk through this world as bearers of God. And let that love change it.

God weeps at love withheld, at strength misused, at children’s innocence abused,
and till we change the way we love, God weeps.
God bleeds at anger’s fist, at trust betrayed, at women battered and afraid,
and till we change the way we win, God bleeds.
God cries at hungry mouths, at running sores, at creatures dying without cause,
and till we change the way we care, God cries.
God waits for stones to melt, for peace to seed, for hearts to hold each other’s need,
and till we understand the Christ, God waits.
(Words by Shirley Erena Murray, © 1996 Hope Publishing Co.)

This song speaks to the last question Steve and Cynthia raise: Does God intervene at certain times? Or is God just present with us, guiding us, comforting us, but not intervening in the world? The assumption seems to be that if God is present with us, guiding us, and comforting us, that God is not intervening in the world. But I believe that is exactly how God intervenes. As creatures of this culture of power and outcome, we think God intervening means God stopping the cancer or getting us the job or ending the war in Afghanistan.

But that’s not how God intervenes. God intervenes by taking possession of us. God intervenes by filling us with the Holy Spirit. We carry this Spirit into the world. As She weeps and bleeds and cries through us. We feel the Holy Spirit waiting for us Christians finally to understand Christ. And as we understand who Jesus is and what he wants us to do with our lives, we change the ways we love and win and care. Because the Holy Spirit is so restless in us … and She will not let us be at peace until we find different ways to love and win and care.

Amen.

A Tongue-Burning Word

(Acts 10.34-36)
A sermon preached by Dave Shull,
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ.
The 19^th Sunday in Ordinary Time: August 7, 2011.

The eighth in a summer series on topics the congregation has asked to hear reflections about. This morning’s reflection is based on the questions: “What do the Scriptures show us about how to make peace with nations and about violence?” and, “Why do we not learn lessons from history, but have war after war, unable to settle our differences in sane ways?” “What do the Scriptures show us about how to make peace with nations and violence?” and, “Why do we not learn lessons from history, but have war after war, unable to settle our differences in sane ways?”

At the theology book group last Monday night, four words from the Bible grabbed us. We spent a chunk of time talking about what they mean … and what it would be like if followers of Jesus really believed them. Though none of these four words is “peace”, “violence”, “war”, or “history”, I believe they directly address the questions for this morning.

Wars are supported by the tax dollars of Christians. The votes of Christian citizens and legislators. And the service of Christian soldiers. If more Christians believed the four words we’re focusing on today, and we gave them the power to change us, then our government couldn’t assume Christians will just go along with policies rooted in violence. When our government assumes it has our blessing when it carries out acts of military and economic violence, maybe words like these four words might lead us to resist in more powerful and effective ways.

Here’s the setting for these four words: Cornelius is captain of the Roman Guard in a beautiful city called Cesarea. It’s on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea in modern-day Israel. Cornelius is a Gentile, which means he was not born a Jew. An angel tells Cornelius to invite Peter to his house. Though Peter kept letting Jesus down while Jesus walked this earth, Peter is now a leader among these early Christians. Cornelius sends some people off to bring Peter to his home. While they are on their way to get him, Peter is praying on the roof in a house down the coast. In his prayer, Peter has a vision. He sees a tablecloth drop out of the sky. The tablecloth is filled with animals Jewish law says Jews cannot eat. For Jewish law says these animals are unclean. But in Peter’s vision, a voice from heaven tells him, Take these and eat. Peter protests, “Oh, no, Lord. I’ve never so much as tasted food that was not kosher.” The voice says, Do not call anything unclean that God has made clean (Acts 10.11-15).

This story points out an ugly truth about human nature. If we start calling certain foods unclean, it won’t take long before we start calling certain groups of people unclean. That’s exactly what the religious communities in Peter’s day did. Lepers, menstruating women, Samaritans, non-Jews: religious law said to these people: You are unclean. And you don’t have to look far in our country’s history to see how white people in this country have looked at slaves, and Native Americans, and communists, and Arabs, and said, You are unclean. For centuries, right up to the time of Peter, Jews believed God had divided the world between clean and unclean.

And now God is turning this pillar of Judaism on its head. As the Spirit gives Peter a new word. Nothing…no one…is unclean.

The messengers from Cornelius arrive where Peter is staying. And they travel to Cesarea so Peter can be with Cornelius and his family. Peter arrives. Just in time to announce the Spirit’s tongue-burning word.

Listen for a Word from God.

Peter fairly exploded with his good news: “It’s God’s own truth, nothing could be plainer: God plays no favorites! It makes no difference who you are or where you’re from – if you want God and are ready to do as God says, the door is open. The Message God sent to the children of Israel – that through Jesus Christ everything is being put together again – well, he’s doing it everywhere, among everyone” (The Message © 2003 Eugene Peterson).

[A parenthesis about this new truth Peter explodes with: God plays no favorites. There’s a member at Recovery Café where I also work who at times asks, “What are you preaching about this Sunday?” This week she asked me. And I told her, “I’m preaching on the place in the Book of Acts where Peter says, ‘God plays no favorites.’ Which to me means God doesn’t hate some of people and love others. We’re all God’s chosen people.
She looked at me and said, “I don’t believe that. God plays favorites.”
“What do you mean?” I asked her.
“Dave,” she said, “After my second miscarriage, it seems everybody else I knew was having kids. And they were so happy. I tried to be happy with them. But I kept asking God, ‘What did I do wrong? Why are you blessing everyone else with kids and holding that blessing back from me?’ So don’t tell me God doesn’t play favorites.”
I had to be in a meeting in five minutes, so I’ll have to continue this conversation the next time I see her. Last week what I told her was this: “I don’t believe everything that happens is God’s will. I said, “I don’t believe God decides who’s going to have kids and who isn’t. I don’t believe God says, ‘Oh, I’m going to make this person have two or three miscarriages.’ I believe God grieves deeply when people who want to have a child have miscarriages … or for whatever reason can’t have a child. I do not believe people who seem to have such blessed lives are people God loves more than everybody else. God holds all people in God’s embrace.”]

So back to this tongue-burning word…

I don’t know if you and I can grasp how terrifying it must have been for Peter to say, God plays no favorites. Say you have a dream. And God says, “Go tell Christians, ‘Jesus doesn’t care how you treat people who aren’t Christians. He only wants you to love Christians.’” To tell Jews, God plays no favorites, was telling them to forget everything they’d been taught for centuries. The last thing this good Jewish fisherman expected when he dropped his nets to follow Jesus was to find himself eating shrimp and sleeping in the house of someone who’s not even a Jew
(Justo L. Gonzalez, Acts: The Gospel of the Spirit, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press, 2001, p. 134).
Peter may have been fairly exploding when he finally got these radical words out of his mouth. But before he snap, crackled, and popped with the Spirit’s explosive word, he made this classic understatement to Cornelius: “You know, I’m sure that this is highly irregular. Jews just don’t do this – visit and relax with people of another race” (Acts 10.28, The Message).

After his vision, Peter may have been tempted to forget about the tablecloth-full of food formerly known as unclean. And head back to the safe world of his fishnets. But Peter stays faithful. Irregular as it is, shocking as it is, Peter allows the Spirit to form these radical words in his throat. He feels the words traverse his tongue, and pass through the space between his upper and lower plates. And before he knows it, he is allowing the Spirit to speak through him.

God…plays…no…favorites.

And 2000 years later we still tell the story.

We have this world-changing, tongue-burning story to tell because Peter made room for the Spirit to make a home in him. Jesus has followers today because Peter and the other disciples didn’t surrender to the fear they felt right after Jesus was killed. How couldn’t they have been terrified? A Bible scholar tells us what happened to help them walk through their fear and step out onto the path Jesus called them to walk:

The Spirit came to them. And from the upper room they went into streets and public places, into turmoil and crowds and the lurking presence of the law. Their resource, an inwardness, a disposition toward prayer, self-understanding, solitude. And a word burning on their tongues (Daniel Berrigan, S.J., Whereon to Stand: The Acts of the Apostles and Ourselves, Baltimore: Fortkamp Publishing, 1991, p. xxviii).

The Holy Spirit gave Peter a tongue-burning word that changed the world.

What is the tongue-burning word the Spirit wants us to fairly explode with? Where on this Plateau and in this area can we embody the promise? Where do people experience things that say that God does play favorites? (Here, the congregation shared what they hear and see. Among their comments: “We are all connected.” “I help people.” “Economics.” “The first thing my daughter said after we adopted her is, ‘Why did God put me in a birth family that didn’t love me?’” “We have no right to decide a child of God deserves to die.” “ Some people get lots of job offers; others keep looking and get nothing.” “Love your neighbor as yourself”.)

My hope is that we listen to the tongue-burning words the Spirit has placed in our mouths. Because I believe these can help us see the kind of hands-on mission ministry the Spirit has placed before us. So we might step out as followers of Jesus … who have been transformed into those who know God plays no favorites.

In your bulletin, underneath the Bible reading from Acts, you’ll find words by Ruth Wiebe in bold-faced print. These are tongue-burning words which remind us how Jesus calls us who want to follow him to live. Let us read them together as a closing prayer.

we show wisdom by trusting people;
we handle leadership by serving;
we handle offenders by forgiving;
we handle money by sharing;
we handle enemies by loving;
we handle violence by suffering;
we repent, not by feeling bad but by thinking differently.
(Ruth Wiebe, The Blue Mountains of China, 1970, pp. 215-16, adapted)

Amen.