July 2010

September 2010

What is truth?  Well, who can say?  There are so many claims, so many ways to see things, so many good people who see things in different ways, it’s hard to pin down truth.
And we’re wary of anyone who claims to have a hold on truth.
Ours is a pluralistic world, where tolerance is the only virtue that can bring peace.
Anyone who has been in school, or in ministry, or really spent much time at all in Chapel Hill knows about the discomfort of being around someone who claims to know hold the truth.  They call him “The Pit Preacher.”  You can find him on occasion standing in the middle of Campus, screaming at people passing by.  He’s usually saying something to the effect of, “Hey, you!  You are going to hell if you don’t immediately make Jesus your lord and savior.”  He doesn’t know those people, or their situation, or belief, or lifestyle, or backgrounds, and he doesn’t really seem to care all that much about any of that stuff.  He certainly is not tolerant of diversity.  He just wants them to hear what he has to say about how he sees life and the world, and thereby them and their wretched existence.  He is the polar opposite of hospitable.  He’s intolerant.
In other words, he represents everything that most of us mainstream Christians try to distance ourselves from.
If a student is foolish enough to try and engage in conversation with him, the student immediately receives an onslaught of Bible verses that are strung together in no coherent form and is told repeatedly that the only way to avoid the fiery pits of eternal damnation is to submit to the Jesus the king of the Universe.
Christ the King Sunday can seem like the Pit Preacher of the Christian Year.  What arrogance the church has, to say that Christ is king of all.  How intolerant!  What an egregious, disharmonious claim to make.  What kind of proclamation is this, to say that Jesus Christ is king of everyone and everything?  How is a Muslim supposed to hear this?  Surely the Inquisition would come to mind.  What about the Jews?  Surely the holocaust would be the first thing that springs up.  What about those people who have never even heard the name of Jesus?  Are we going to impose our views and religious preferences on them, too, like some kind of sick religious and cultural Manifest Destiny?
A Sunday like Christ the King Sunday smacks of imperialistic presumption that most of us learned, slightly socially liberal (even if fiscally conservative) Christians would rather distance ourselves from.  Yes, we would list ourselves as Christians, but not that kind of Christian.
We’re enlightened.  We’re sensitive.  We know that we live in a pluralistic world where tolerance is required.
Someone in our Gospel reading today was all for tolerance, too.  His name is Pontius Pilate.  Tolerance was the name of the game in Pilate’s world, too.  His was an ever growing pluralistic world, where cultures were colliding together, and people of different faiths were being forced to coexist.  Who knows who Pilate had upset in his political career, but for some reason, he had been sent to the very outskirts of the Roman Empire.  His job was to somehow manage the ever growing tensions between sects and religions and political views that were crashing together in his territory, which included Jerusalem.  “Keep the peace, Pilate” said Cesar.  “Don’t let me hear of any religious fanatics stirring up trouble.”
That’s how Jesus wound up in Pilate’s courtroom.  Frankly, Jesus was making claims on people that just seemed intolerant.  He had said things like, “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”1
You can almost hear Pilate responding to Jesus.  “Look, you can’t claim to have a handle on the truth.  We all have our own versions of the truth, and we all are trying to live into that truth the best we can.  You go around claiming to be the truth, and the only way and people are going to be offended.  You’re going to turn people off.  You’re going to cause trouble.  Don’t be so intolerant.”
When Pilate tried to rationalize with Jesus, tried to get him to enter the discussion of what was truth, and Jesus refused to enter the debate, Pilate, for the sake of tolerance, had him killed.
That’s how Pilate dealt with pluralism.  Frankly, I’m not sure that we’ve moved much beyond Pilate.
We are heirs to this liberal theological enterprise that claims that plurality of religions is just representative of humanity’s variance on truth.  We all have our versions of the truth, and some call it Buddha, some call it Allah, some call it Jesus, but basically they’re all getting at the same thing.  Religion is primarily an experience that is expressed in different ways, but behind those expressions is some vague truth that is shared by all religions and transcends all expressions.  And anyone who doesn’t see that, who doesn’t fall in line with that line of liberal religiosity, well, they’re just being unreasonable.
This liberal tolerance, despite its claims openness, is really quite imperialistic in that it claims that all must be judged by some universal criteria of truth that cannot really be defined, but somehow we should just know it when we see it.
What is truth, asks Pilate, the king of Tolerance?  The answer, as we see in the crucifixion, is that truth for him is whatever he wants it to be, and he’ll kill anyone who threatens it.
It’s interesting that minorities, and the oppressed, are wary of this approach to pluralism.  They have seen, for the sake of tolerance, their own peculiar and cultural distinctiveness washed away.  In the name of tolerance, African slaves were stripped of their names and given more Western sounding, tolerable names, names that wouldn’t make them stick out so much.  In the name of tolerance, Jews were rounded up in Germany in World War II and sent to live in Ghetto’s, where they wouldn’t disturb the sensibilities of good, God fearing Christian Nazi Germans.
Tolerance becomes the modern day method of crucifying the distinctions of humanity.
One of my most interesting friends growing up was a Muslim named Shafi Mustafa.  His father was a professor at the local Methodist college, and his mother taught Elementary school at the same school as my mom.  Shafi and I played together every day after school on the playground as we waited for our mom’s to finish up for the day.  We continued to be friends into High School, where we played soccer together.
I remember one day, during Ramadan, I decided that I was going to pep Shafi up before practice because he was hungry and tired.  I told him how glad I was that he was my friend, and said, “I don’t see your religion when I see you.  All I see is a good friend.”
Shafi replied, “A good friend wouldn’t have to look past my religion to be my friend.”
He refused to let me dismiss his difference.  I wanted to kill him.
Tolerance is too often the vehicle for condemning those who demand that their differences be taken seriously.  Christ is not Buddha.  Jesus is not Allah.  Jesus Christ is God, we claim.  The one and only God.  And Christians are those people who love Jesus too much to let Pilate or any other champion of tolerance pound out of him his distinctions so that he can fit some vague notion of a “divine experience.”
We do this primarily because of how God has treated us in Jesus.  God does not tolerate us.  He loves us. (If you want to know the difference, go home today and tell your spouse or family member, “I tolerate you.”  See how that works out.)
God loves us too much to just tolerate us into some sort of bland similarity.  God delights in diversity, and loves us for it.  God does not just tolerate our brokenness, but loves us enough to show us where we need to change.  God, as revealed in Jesus Christ, is not tolerance, but love.
So when we claim Christ as king, we are saying that we love our Muslim bothers and sisters too much to dismiss their distinctiveness, and say that we’re all the same.
When we claim that Jesus is king, we are saying that he is as much of God as we ever hope to see, and we don’t think you can get this just anywhere.  He’s not just some philosophical teacher who’s teachings were true.  His teachings were true because they point to him.  He is truth, in the flesh.  And there are a whole company of people, called saints, who’s lives are grounded in sharing in his life until their lives are shaped into truth.  Christ is king of all.  No cross can crush that distinctiveness.
Now I understand why that would make a Muslim or a Jew or an Atheist nervous.  All I can do it point to the fact that because I believe that Jesus is lord of all, I must treat all as my brother or sister. I am bound to serve him as king, and not any other king who insist that I kill or squash out someone else’s differences can rule my life.  Because Jesus is our king, we will not just tolerate someone who is different…we will love them.
This is our way of hospitality.  Rooted in love, not tolerance.
Because Christ is king of all, we believe that all…all…all…all are in the family.

{Those of you who are regular worshipers here at All Saints’ have never seen me preach from behind the pulpit.  You know that as your pastor, I prefer to preach out there, close to you, with nothing separating me from you.  That’s where Greg the pastor is comfortable preaching.
Today’s sermon is a little different.  We are baptizing my son today.  Today, the sermon is from Greg the father, who is a bit more timid than Greg the pastor.  And, instead of the sermon being written to you, this morning it is only written to one person, my son.  So, I hope you forgive Greg that father for needing to read the sermon from behind the pulpit this morning.}
To my son, on the occasion of your baptism:
You have no idea what is about to happen to you.  There you are, blissfully unaware of the wonderful and terrifying adventure that is about to wash over you.  In a few minutes, you are going to be surrounded by a crowd of people whom you don’t really know all that well, yet.  Your mom and dad, the people whom you know the best and trust the most in this world, are going to hand you off to these people, these strangers.  When the time is right, one of those strangers is going to hold you over a bowl, and pour water over your head.  Another is going to use oil to mark you with the sign of the cross.
You’ll hear the familiar voices of your mom and I making promises to God and the church concerning your life, saying that we will raise you in the church, and do our best to practice the faith with you at home.  And then you’ll hear a chorus of stranger’s voices, making promises to us, and to God saying they will help your mother and I raise you well, care for you no matter what and teach you the faith of Jesus the best they know how.  Listen carefully, my son, for in this sacred chatter, you will hear another voice joining ours, making promises of its own.  This is the voice of God, echoing off the waters of baptism, promising that no matter what, from this point on, you are his and he is yours.
Of course, you won’t know what any of it means right now.  It will probably take the rest of your life to figure it out.  To be honest, I’m still figuring it out, what all that means.  I’m still trying to figure out what it means that your grandparents did that to me when I was about your age.  I’ve got degrees in religion and divinity, I’ve read countless works on baptism, been swimming in pages of ancient and modern writings on the subject and I’m still far from figuring out what it all means.
I can tell you this much, though.  This much I do know.  You are about to be in over your head.  You are about to be plunged into a life that is bigger and deeper than you are.  Today, as we baptize you, as the living God claims you as his own and you are joined with all the saints into the eternal life and love of Christ you are about to be shoved in the deep end, my boy, way over your head.
At first, you might not like this.  You might not like the feeling of the water washing over your face, or the crowd of people pressing in to see you, the sense of losing control of your own life.  This may not feel like good news to you today, being pushed in the deep end.  Why would your mother and I do this to you?
It’s only fair.  Since the moment you came into our lives, you have pushed your mother and I in over our heads.  You know better than anyone else that you have complete rookies for parents.  We have had to figure everything out on you, like you were some poor little guinea pig in our 24/7 parental experiments.
Especially me.  You know that I have no idea what I’m doing as a dad.  You have pushed me in over my head since the day we brought you home from the hospital.  Before you, I had never changed a diaper, never given a bottle, never tried to line up the buttons on a onsie only to find that no matter how many times you try, there is always an extra button or two.  Before you, I had never felt the weight of the responsibility of someone else’s life resting in my hands.  I don’t know how to do half the stuff that I have to do as your dad.  I’m in over my head.
Before you, I never knew what it was like to have my heart walk around outside of my body.  I have never listened to every sound from another room through the echo of a little speaker beside my bed as though my life hung in the balance.  I’ve never had my whole being light up with a smile, or fall apart with a cry.  Sure, I’ve got the pastoral empathy thing, but you have taken that to a whole new level.  You have taught me love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control in a whole new way.
In other words, you have pushed me in over my head with tasks that are bigger than me and with a love that is deeper than me.
Today, son, your mother and I return the favor.  Today, in your baptism, you are being pushed in over your head into tasks that are bigger than you, and a love that is deeper than you.
The purpose of your life, from now on, is to join Christ in serving God and changing the world.  That’s a big task.  The joy of your life from now on is to get lost in the love of the God of all creation.  That’s a large love.  Today, you are in over your head with tasks and love that are as big as the world.
And here’s the mystery of today: as we stand on the edge of this bottomless pool of life and love and stare into the terrifying and beautiful water together, we will see the reflection of someone else joining us here.  There is another One to whom these waters belong.  There is another One who is the primary actor in this sacrament of love, who invites us into these waters of life and love.  His name is Jesus, son.  He is why we are here.  He is the source of love that I feel in you.  He is the depth of service that I share with you.  Without him, life and love would be shallow and fleeting.  He will never ask you to do his work by yourself.  And you will never reach the end of his love.  His work and love are never ending because they are wrapped up in his own eternal being.  The mystery of this place is that in it we are welcomed into God’s being.  You are now in the very heart of God.
Today, the creator of all life and the source of all love, claims you as his own.  From this day forward, your life is his life and his love is your love.  Today, you join these strangers in the divine journey of participating in the life and love of Jesus Christ, who promises that no matter what life holds for you, you are his, and he is yours.
You can’t earn your way to this place, into these waters.  You can only receive the gift of being called his.  This life and love is never earned, but it’s always given.  As wonderful as I think you are, the love in this act does not begin in you, but in the heart of God.  This divine love, that we share in today, is not earned, son.  It’s a gift.
More than anything else, your mother and I want you to learn to receive this gift of life and love.  And so, today, we join countless parents all across time and space who have offered their children up to God in the hopes that their children, through the grace of Christ, will discover the joy of God offering himself back to them.
Like Hannah, from our Old Testament reading this morning, your mother and I waited for you to come for years.  We thought you would never get here.  We prayed for you, watched for you, yearned for you.  And now that you are here, we find ourselves in way over our heads.
And so, like Hannah, and Mary, and countless men and women before us who watched, yearned, prayed, and then found themselves in the deep end, we offer you back to the source of depth from which you came.
We want the absolute best for you.  My son, this is the best we have to give you.  These strangers, whom you will learn are saints, these are the best hands we could put you in.  This water, which you will learn is grace, writes your name into the best story ever written.  The One who will meet you in this place with these people, in this water, at this table, whom you will learn to call: Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, this, my boy, is the best of all.  Here is this watery offering place replete with saints and sacrament, you will discover nothing less than God offering himself fully to you.  Learn to receive this gift, son.  For this is the best of life.
There’s so much more for us to tell you:  The books of the Bible, what it means to pray, the joyful work of subversively turning the world upside down with Jesus, how to wage peace with the simple tools of love and joy, how to get lost and find yourself in service to others, how to discern the real Jesus from all of the false saviors that parade around our world, how to take communion, how to sing a hymn, when to stand and when to sit, when to remain silent, and when to shout out.  There’s so much, it’s hard to know where to begin.
So we take you to the place of our beginnings.  The place where we first were showered with the divine life and the love of Christ.  We take you to the timeless and bottomless pool of baptism.  Here, you begin your life in Christ.
There is so much more that God has to show you, and for God to show the world through you.  From this moment on, son, you are in over your head, joined with the best life and the deepest love there is.  Your life is no longer your own.  You are now God’s beloved child.  And you no longer belong to just your mother and I.  You belong to all the saints.  You are the newest saint, God’s chosen one to continue the revolution of lovingly turning the world upside down until kingdom come.
Today, we watch God make room for you at the table, in the water, in God’s very self.  As we do, we watch God stretch our hearts a bit more, too, and make room for God’s self to reside in us, just as he promised he would do on the day of our baptism.  There is room for you here, son, with God and the saints.  There will always be room for you here.  This is divine hospitality.
You’re with us, now.  In over your head, joined with Christ and all the saints in the best life there is.  I can’t tell you what the future will hold for you.  I have no idea what God has in store for you.  But I do know that no matter what, from this point on, God will give you nothing less than his very self.  And God will require nothing less from you, than for you to offer your very self back to God in return.
Enjoy God, son.  Love all, my boy.  Resist evil, injustice or oppression in any form that it presents itself.  Change the world through the power of the Holy Spirit.  This is the gift of being welcomed into the heart of God.  It’s wonderful.  It’s the best.
My dear son, welcome to your baptism.
Welcome to the family.

Believe it or not, the holidays are almost upon us.  In a couple of weeks, the annual parade of families will begin again in earnest, as our homes and highways fill with people heading home for the holidays.  It’s a time to reunite, to reconnect, to remember the joys of family and friends.
The holidays are the time of year that the art of hospitality is most practiced and tested.
It’s fortuitous that the church has us read the book of Ruth a few weeks before the holiday season.  The book of Ruth is primarily about hospitality.  And the holiday season is our annual test in the art of hospitality.  And, if we’re honest, most of us fear the test.  The holidays can be the most anxiety filled days of our year.  We know that our house is about to be taken over by family, many of whom are pretty much strangers, or we are about to go and take over someone else’s house, and we are going to either practice, or demand, hospitality, and, well, frankly, we’re just not all that studied in the subject.  We feel like we fail the test every year.
This year, I want to us to practice the ancient art of hospitality with fresh lenses.  I want us to try a grand experiment together in hospitality.  We are going to set up a discussion board linked to our website for us to check in, and share ideas and experiences together along the way.  Especially if your holidays are usually marked more by feelings of being perturbed than peaceful, this experiment is for you.  And if you are someone who, perhaps, thinks of yourself as being particularly gifted in the art of hospitality, this is a chance for you to share with the rest of us your secrets, and to see if you can hone the gift God has given you.
Are you in?
    As I said, it’s fortuitous that the church has us read the book of Ruth just before the holiday season because the book of Ruth is primarily about the art of hospitality.  It’s a short book, only 4 chapters long, easily read in 15 minutes whenever you need a break from your house guests.  I’ll tell you the story, but before I do I’ll go ahead and give you the punchline.  In this short little book lies the secret to the art of hospitality.  Hospitality is all about posture.  The secret is this:  the proper posture when practicing the art of hospitality is one of receiving, not giving.  Hospitality is the art of receiving, not giving.  Here’s the story.
Ruth married into a pretty rough situation.  Times were hard, and so Ruth, a Moabite, found herself surrounded by all these Israelite boys who had come to her neck of the woods looking for work.  It’s just like them to come around when they wanted something.  Usually, Israelites have nothing to do with Moabites.  Ruth has even heard somewhere along the way that their law (in the book of Deuteronomy, she thinks she remembers) demands that good Jewish people not consort with dirty Moabites.  But now look at them, here looking for work, and something else by the way they keep coming around.
Eventually, Ruth falls for one of these Jewish boys, and she decides that there’s nothing to fear, and that she could make some space in her life for a husband.  About that time, one of Ruth’s friends does the same.  They get married in the equivalent of Vegas.  Some people stare.  They always do in mixed marriages.
But before long, tragedy hits.  Ruth’s father in law dies.  Then Ruth’s brother in law dies.  Then, Ruth’s husband dies.  There’s no one left to care for these women, which spells disaster.  The hospitable women suddenly find themselves in need of hospitality.
Ruth’s mother-in-law releases her daugher-in-laws to go find other men, and Ruth’s friend catches the first bus out of town.  But Ruth knows what this means for her mother in law.  Certain death.  So, she decides to do it again.  To not be afraid, and to make room for her mother in law.  The two of them stick together, and move back to Bethlehem, the home town of Ruth’s in-laws.  When they get back in town, it becomes apparent that there is one viable bachelor in town who would be able to take them in.  His name is Boaz, and he is loosly related to Ruth’s mother-in-law.  Well, to make a short story shorter, Ruth, with her mother-in-law’s coaching, goes down one night and “convinces” Boaz to give her a shot.  This, again, is dangerous for Boaz.  He could lose everything, consorting with a Moabite.  But, Ruth is very “persuasive”, and Boaz is “pleased.”
He receives her, makes room for her, drops his fears and takes her as his wife.  The outsider, who first received her husband, now is received into safety by her new husband.
In every instance in this story, time and time again, hospitality is shown, not in order to “be nice” or “do the right thing” but in an almost selfish act of receiving.  The one practicing hospitality is seeking to receive a gift from the one they are entertaining.
The art of hospitality is one of reception.
This is counter to the normal way we try to practice hospitality.
For Christians, hospitality is not an option.  It’s not a commandment, per se, “thou shalt be hospitable” isn’t in the top ten.  Nevertheless, hospitality is so essential to those who seek to follow Christ, that without it, following Christ is nearly impossible.
Let me explain.  We are people who fundamentally experience God in the stranger.  St. Paul says that we should not neglect to entertain straingers, for by doing so we
The story of Ruth.

Especially when it comes to family.
My family has a place that is the address for hospitality in our family.  It’s a little, cinder block house on a lake just outside of Charleston, South Carolina.
Business.
Fear.

This icon of Mary is based on a traditional Byzantine icon of the Madonna and child, but made with cut-out Christmas ads. That's the Gospel at work, taking the profane and commercial and materialistic, and turning it to something holy.