Category: Theological Rant
The Great Riddle
My congregational colleagues are serving in the traditional ministerial roles: teacher, preacher, prophet, and priest. During this pandemic time many have also become directors, producers, film editors, lighting specialists, sound engineers, and they are producing content, written and video, that is double what most would usually do in a year. Clergy are exhausted. I was gifted the trust of the pulpit last month at Disciples Christian Church in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Providing some words for worship enabled Rev. Becker time away.
This sermon, The Great Riddle, seems appropriate for our context. For me, they are old words that I’ve shared during my time in ministry when gifted the trust to preach. They have changed a bit over the years, but given the strife in our Nation, and around the world, these words were the best I could offer. My apologies if you hear them in your setting someday.
I don’t know what you are carrying on your heart or in your mind today. Two decades of dissonance has rend the fabric of commonality, civility, and factual narrative that holds our Nation together as we evolve to be a more perfect Union. This divide has seeped into congregational life in unexpected ways and it matters not what religion one practices. I don’t know what it will take to mend the cloth or which historical lesson can be the best teacher for such a time as this. Search your feelings and reach out with them, the best of them. The work it yours to do. The work is mine to do.
What I do know is that all of us come to worship on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Tuesday afternoon, or whenever we engage our community of faith seeking to hear and experience the gospel, the good news:
that the Lord’s mercies never cease;
that the Lord’s mercies are new every morning;
and that the Lord’s faithfulness extends beyond our ability to see in a mirror dimly, or recognize the image of God in others as well as in our own face.
With good news in our hearts and on our minds, I invite you to hear familiar words from the gospel of Mark.
One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’ Then the scribe said to him, ‘You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that “he is one, and besides him there is no other”; and “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength”, and “to love one’s neighbour as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’ When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ After that no one dared to ask him any question.
Mark 12:28-34
When I was 14, I bought something called a Rubik’s cube. If you don’t remember or have never seen one of these kid’s toys, the Rubik’s cube has one color on each side. When you mix up the colors there are supposed to be ways to work the cube to get the colors back to their right places. It is one of those things that is meant to educate, to stimulate the mind, to frustrate you to a point where you begin to think how you can take it apart or remove the color stickers and then put them back in the right place.
For about a year, back when I was 14, the Rubik’s cube was the fad that anyone, no matter your age, would join. I do everything I can to stay away from fads, but I bought a cube because it looked like an interesting challenge. And there were 8 year olds on the school bus who could work it in less than 5 minutes no matter how jumbled up the it was. I couldn’t do it.
A person could buy a cube, take it out of the package, and carry it around finished if you wanted people to think you had the ability or the secret to work cube. But, there is always that day when you are alone and think, “How hard can this really be?” There is that frightening day when someone or a group of friends sees you with the cube and asks, “Show us you can do it.” “Show us how to do it.” There was even a hint book you could buy to help work the cube. I joined a club to help me get faster at working the cube. To work the cube you had to put in the time. You had to look at it, handle it, twist it, and risk the frustration of not getting it right the first, second, or hundredth time. It was up to you, or you could just carry one around right out of the package already worked for you.
When I read the parables in Mark, and in the synoptic siblings Matthew and Luke, I think of the Rubik’s cube because it is a good image for the word riddle. What is a riddle? The dictionary defines a riddle as:
“A question stated so as to exercise one’s ingenuity in answering it or discovering its meaning. Any puzzling question, problem or matter.”
“Riddle.” https://www.dictionary.com/browse/riddle?s=t accessed June 22, 2020.
At the website, Just Riddles and More, riddles are explained like this.
“Riddles are brain teasers. A riddle is not generally answered by a fact or information found in a reference book. A riddle often uses misdirection – some of the words are there to get you thinking about something else.”
https://www.justriddlesandmore.com/
So let’s try a few this morning to get our brains firing. These are considered classics and though a couple of them may remind you of children’s jokes, they confront the mind to think in three dimensions instead of conforming to the one or two dimensions of our culture.
What animals keep the best time?
A: Watchdogs
What does an invisible person drink at snack time?
A: Evaporated Milk
Where is the ocean the deepest?
A: The Bottom
At night they come without being fetched, And by day they are lost without being stolen.
A: Stars
The beginning of eternity
A: Stars
The end of time and space
The beginning of every end,
And the end of every place.
Two words, my answer is only two words.
A: Your Word
To keep me, you must give me
I hear the parables that Jesus told as riddles. Think about it, so often Jesus began, “You have heard it said but I say to you . . .” Here comes another teaching story, a parable, a riddle.
A wealthy person, someone who has benefited from the tax laws, systems of government, education, and has many possessions, asks the teacher one day, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The teacher responds, “Do you know the commandments?” The person responds, “Know them, I have kept them and lived by them since the days of my youth.” The teacher replies, “You lack one thing, sell your possessions and give it to the poor.” The person leaves crying, shouting, and wondering, “What is the greatest of all the commandments?”
The parables recorded in the gospels are the stories where Christians should spend our time. We need to be wrestling with the teachings of Jesus because that is how one learns a way of faithful living. It is how we experience what the way of Jesus means, how this way leads to Truth about God, and how that Truth leads to meaningful life; even eternal life.
It is the place to dwell if you want to know what it means to live for Jesus or live like Jesus or if you want to know how to be Christ-like. The teachings of Jesus are the place where we begin to figure out what our discipleship means in this time of history. Many of the divisions in the Church are based on a reverence given to the thinking and writing of the Apostle Paul, and early Church leaders from the 3rd and 4th century BCE. Their ideas and faith shaped early Christianity, created the creeds, and brought an order and orthodoxy, “right thinking,” to a religion seeking a place in the world. Those ancient ways and thinking continue to shape Christianity today. Sometimes with a voice of wisdom, but most often with a shouting vote of “No.”
Were the questions in the ancient times so different?
Why are we here?
What am I supposed to do during my life?
Why do bad things happen in the world, and why do bad things happen to good people, to innocent people so often?
Whose prayers does God hear most?
What does it mean to be faithful to God?
What does it mean to be called God’s children?
Our questions are similar, but our context, our experience of the world and in the world is very different. Modern Christianity of all kinds has forgotten that people profess to be followers of Jesus, not followers of Apostle Paul or protectors of a medieval orthodoxy that would have us focus on salvation in heaven, rather than shape and live in justice oriented communities today. And dare proclaim, as Jesus did, the kindom of God in our midst. “Is this heaven? No, it’s Iowa.” No, it’s Oklahoma, it’s Kansas, it’s Texas. It’s . . .
You help create this field of dreams, Disciples in Bartlesville, when you help, when you welcome as you have been welcomed, when you reach out, and when you speak up for the voiceless here in Bartlesville and the surrounding county. The teachings of Jesus still puzzle us because we have spent too much time being Pauline Christians instead of disciples of Christ.
Today, we drop in on a conversation that Jesus was having with some people about taxes, government, and the teachings of Moses. Not really a synagogue school class or a lecture as much as talking over coffee, animal crackers or donuts in the fellowship hall which we can’t do right now. After listening for a while there is a pause in the conversation and someone in the crowd throws out a question. “Of all the commandments, what’s the most important one?” I think this is like asking, “Who is supposed to yield at a four way stop?”
Jesus responds, “The Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.” Well, who wouldn’t agree with that?
But another person presses Jesus for a fuller response before I can speak up. “So I heard you say is, love God and love my neighbor as myself?” “Yes,” Jesus responds. “Is there anything you want to add to that Jesus?” “No, understand that and you are not far from the kindom of God.” That may be the greatest riddle ever told. What kind of soil is needed for this good news to take root in the 21st century?
Prophets and artists have tilled the soil of humanity for centuries providing “hints” to work the great riddle.
“Remember the truth that once was spoken. To love another person is to see the face of God.”
A lyric from the musical Les Miserables.
That is a good hint to working the great riddle.
“My four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, from his “Dream” speech.
That is a good hint for working the great riddle.
Sometimes we look to our sacred stories in the bible and in our national history, and treat them as an answer book or a magic eight ball. We want to ask a question, shake them up and get the answer. That’s not what the sacred stories, religious or secular, are meant to be or meant to do. They are reminders. They are mirrors. They are a glimpse into the culture, struggles, teaching, and worship of historical characters and ancient people who, without radios, cell phones, cars, computers or 24hr cable news channels, Facebook, Twitter, or other social media asked many of the questions we ask today about being faithful to God and living in community with others. Those are real questions about living no matter your culture or how old you are or your time in history.
You can have the stuff that says you are a person of faith. You can even carry around the hint book, but being a religious and a spiritual person that follows Jesus is more than having people think you know the answer or aligning with a particular political party or putting on a label of liberal or conservative.
I think it means working the great riddle every day: intentionally, purpose driven, mindful of those passing through our three foot circles and how we navigate the systems of society.
When we do that we proclaim the kindom of God. When we do that we live as if the empire of God is in our midst in this space of worship, and out there in the sacred space of life where we bump into the image of God in the face of our neighbor.
And someone will ask so I don’t have to, “Who is my neighbor?”
The working poor, the homeless, the refugee, the hungry, the orphaned and widow, the oppressed, the people that believe just like I do. These are easy neighbors to claim. It’s working the easy side of the cube.
It’s those others, you know, that noisy neighbor, the obnoxious opinionated neighbor. The neighbor convinced my Christianity is too liberal and is destroying the church. The neighbor in the other political party, our neighbor who practices another religion or no faith at all. The neighbor standing against your civil rights. The neighbor who is a fan of the team you cheer against. Those neighbors scattered around the cube on the other sides. That’s the greatest riddle working on us while we are working on it.
I struggle with it every day as a follower of Jesus. When we read the gospels closely, we see that is how Jesus lived and struggled with people and systems in his time. It’s not easy. It doesn’t always feel good when you complete the cube. And, you always are called to mix it up and start over.
Disciples Christian Church, may God bless you with ministry to do and Gospel to be today, and in the day’s to come.
a Living Memorial
Last Sunday I was gifted the trust of the pulpit, digital pulpit that is, at First Christian Church in Stroud. It was a digital pulpit because I recorded my sermon at my home, and shared the file with their artist that knits the service together for broadcast on the congregation’s Facebook page. They are a “tape delay worship service” that enables the congregation to have many members participate in the leading of worship. My thanks to Rev. Paul for the opportunity to preach. Check out their worship services and Paul’s excellent “children’s messages” by visiting them online.
Since it was Memorial Day weekend, I thought it would be good to address Memorial Day in conjunction with the Lectionary gospel reading from a couple of weeks ago: John 14:15-26. This is an edited version of my words.
We come to worship seeking to hear and experience the good news:
that the Lord’s mercies never cease;
that the Lord’s mercies are new every morning;
and the Lord’s faithfulness extends beyond our ability to see in a mirror dimly, or recognize the image of God in others as well as in our own face.
Please join me in prayer.
Open our ears and our hearts, O God, that our meditations, words, and living are a reflection of our faith in You, who creates, who redeems, and who sustains our lives. Amen.
I don’t know about you, but this coronavirus separation has felt like equal parts of the movies Groundhog Day and The Day the Earth Stood Still (the original). Some days are a time travelers maze.
How long ago was Easter?
Pentecost, that day when we celebrate that people heard about the good news of God in their own language, Pentecost is just over the horizon.
It is important to remember the distance we have traveled to get to this Sunday. Remember back where the story began with waiting, Angelic choirs, a manger and shepherds returning to the fields giving thanks to God for all that they had seen and heard as it had been told to them. Mary pondered it all in her heart.
The Ashes that mark Lent. Long dusty roads littered with parable after parable all leading toward Jerusalem.
A parade through the city gates to shouts of Hosanna and palm waving crowds. A quiet room around a table with bread and cup, then betrayal, denial, and crucifixion.
Days later we were shocked by the proclamation of Mary Magdalene, “I’ve seen the risen Lord.”
We heard that two people met Jesus when they were on there way to Emmaus and knew it was him when he broke bread with them that evening. Someone told the story about Thomas seeing Jesus, and that helped me with my own doubt.
Today, the gospel of John reminds us that if we love Jesus, we will keep his commandments. We’ve heard beatitudes, parables and seen miracles. What commandments are we supposed to keep? Jesus responds, “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me.”
We’ve heard Jesus’ commandments distilled in at least two ways.
“Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” AND “Love one another just as Jesus has loved us.” Like all of us, the disciples must look confused, so Jesus responds, ‘Those who love me will keep my word and God will make a home in them.’
That sounds like a living memorial.
It all began with a group of women decorating the graves of soldiers during the Civil War. Decoration Day was institutionalized by President Johnson in 1966, and became a recognized Federal holiday by order of Congress in the “National Holiday Act of 1971.” We know it as “Memorial Day.” It is a day of remembering the many that have died when diplomacy failed and ushered in the violence of war. It is a day of honoring the many whose military service lead to their the last full measure of devotion on behalf of the person next to them and a grateful Nation.
For many, Memorial Day is a reminder about the opening of pools, the beginning of summer, a weekend at the lake, discounts on this and that, or an excuse for people of faith to bring civic religion into their places of worship. In this coronavirus separation we have to measure our response: flight, fight, or freeze. And no matter where you consumer your news, or the politicians you think are telling the truth, or ideology you support, there is still that pesky peasant from Galilee saying, “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me.”
This is one of those moments when we need to be leaders rather than participants in our culture. It is one of those times when we need an “Advocate,” and we need to “ad-vo-cate,” for living memorials that turn the other cheek, carry a pack another mile, give a coat when someone asks for a dollar, or pray for our enemies. Ad-Vo-Cate for a common good based in my neighbor as myself.
Maybe it would help to remember that a memorial “is something designed to preserve the memory of a person or event.”Memorial. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Memorial (accessed: May 22, 2014).
Hear some familiar memorial words from Psalm 46:
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with tumult.”New Revised Standard Version
Memorials help us hear the voices of people that can no longer cry out, that can no longer laugh, or be what God created them to be.
Memorials can shame behavior.
Memorials can shout warning!
Memorials can whisper wisdom.
Memorials rise up and out of the ashes of human history as reminders:
Yad Vashem
World War II Memorial
Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Korean War Memorial
Vietnam War Memorial
Berlin Wall Memorial
Oklahoma City National Memorial
MLK Memorial
Arlington National Cemetery
9/11 Memorial
Some memorials are small crosses with flowers along the side of a road. Stained glass windows dot sanctuaries. Some memorials are scrapbooks, photos, a tool or heirloom passed down, a candle lit on a holiday, or china used on the dinner table.
In houses of worship around the world people of diverse faith traditions ask questions. People of no particular faith ask them too. You know, those questions that begin with “W”. Why?
Why, do bad things to happen? Why God?
When? When will war cease and our friends and loved come home?
When will justice be done? When God?
What? What does this mean? What God?
It doesn’t matter what your first language is. It doesn’t matter if you ask in the quick cadence of a northerner, the slow drawl of a southerner, or in street slang. Grief and fear, like the cry of new life, are universal sounds. Sounds that bring you to your knees, punch you in the stomach, take your breath away or let loose a river of tears and thoughts and words.
It is hard to think of our neighbor, or keep the commandments of Jesus, or be a living memorial when you cannot hear the universal sounds or choose to tune them out.
Have you visited a memorial? Do you have a memorial in your home or one that you carry with you?
These words are etched in the stone on my favorite memorial.
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all Nations.”(2)Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865.
Some memorials are meant to inspire us to the possibilities of our existence. Even in the hard times. Even in coronavirus times, we are reminded what others lived through. Some call us to go and do likewise; and do even greater things. Maybe if we can hear the universal sounds, we can advocate for the melody of peace, advocate for our neighbor, and in keeping Jesus’ commandments the words “they will know we are Christians by our love” will be etched on our hearts.
When we do this, we are living memorials not of the Empire, then or now, nor of the violence of the cross.
We are living memorials of the one that taught be salt and light;
the one who fed a multitude with a couple of fish and some bread;
and who commanded, “love one another just as I’ve loved you.”
Disciples gather around a table each week. It is a memorial marker and meal. We share and hear the words, “Do this in remembrance of me.” Remember, if you love Jesus you will keep his commandments and the spirit of Truth will abide in you. Sigh. That’s the hard part. Keep his commandments. This coronavirus is the latest challenge making that a hard thing to do: keep Jesus’ commandments.
But you can do it.
Remember, you are a living memorial in your journey of faith?