@EUCC Sermons

Contemplating all of these realities leads me to cry out with my Hillbilly relatives and country music singer, Carrie Underwood, “Jesus, take the wheel!”

Jesus, take the wheel, because our lives and our world are out of control. We are spinning around like an old Chevy with no snow tires on an icy stretch of highway in West Texas, and when we end up in the ditch there isn’t going to be anybody coming along for days to find us, because no one in their right mind would be out on the roads in these conditions.

And yet, when we zoom in on Mark’s gospel lesson today, we discover — perhaps for the very first time — that the wilderness of Lent was and is not the godforsaken place that we may have assumed it to be. Listen again to Mark 1:12-13:

“...the Spirit immediately drove Jesus into the wilderness. He was there forty days, tempted by Satan; and Jesus was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”

Did you hear that?

The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. The Spirit, not the devil, drove Jesus into the wilderness. And Jesus was there forty days and forty nights, and he was tempted by Satan. And, he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him.

To be sure, the wilderness is not “the happiest place on earth,” but neither is it the godforsaken place that we may have thought it to be.

Mark says, the Spirit sent Jesus into the wilderness, and the Spirit accompanied him through the wilderness, and the angels — the good angels, not the bad angel — flapped their wings around him and attended to his needs.

If you let these verses seep into your soul, and if you believe like I do, that God is good, and that, as the prophet Jeremiah says, “God has plans for us--plans to prosper..and not to harm [us], plans to give [us] a hope and a future. “ (Jer. 29: 11) Then, you, like me, may come to believe that the wilderness is a good place--or at least a place where good things can happen.

Wrap your mind around those thoughts for a moment, and ask yourself: “What good could lay ahead in this wilderness of Lent? What good surprises may God have in store in the final chapter of this damn demic?” These are some of the questions that I encourage us to ponder as we travel through this season of Lent. These are questions worthy of our reflection, and that hold the potential for strengthening us in the struggles that we encounter, and prepare us for the final chapter that God has in store for us.

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Regardless of our party affiliation, patriotic Americans in general, and humanitarians and people of all faith traditions have to ask ourselves, “How have we come to this?” How have we come to this time and place in which so many people question so much? Furthermore, how is that we have come to this time and place when many not only question or flat out reject scientific truth, but they do so to their own detriment and the detriment of others?

Answer: I think many of us have been “Trumped.” We have been trumped into someone else’s self-serving agenda; because we are suffering so much and feeling so vulnerable, and it’s easier to blame someone else or something else than it is to face our own needs and our sense of loss and grief. We don’t like feeling weak. We don’t like losing. We don’t like living this American nightmare. We want to be living the American Dream!

So, many of us are sucked into someone else’s lies, which only builds someone else’s power, and only serves someone else’s future. And, when we do, the symbolic boil of our suffering is lanced, the infection is released, and for a few minutes, we may feel a sense of relief. But, then, sadly, the relief does not last long, because the cause of our suffering has not been appropriately addressed, and the process repeats itself.

Social scientists and historians alike will be busy for a long time studying, mapping, and describing how Donald Trump hijacked the American airwaves and manipulated a significant number of U.S. citizens into believing his lies, fanning his xenophobic agenda into flames, and drinking his toxic Kool-Aid.

They will be reviewing and analyzing this mess for generations to come--and they should. And when they’re done, I hope that we and our posterity will have learned from what we have endured, and I hope and pray that we will find a better way for all of us. But how?

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Consider the mess that unfurled in our nation’s capital this past Wednesday, as Congress began to count the Electoral College votes and that ugly mob stormed the Capitol building. That scene was and is a crucible for showing us just how much work we have to do in order to name and dismantle racism in our nation and world, and how much work we have ahead of us.

Some folks just want to pin all of last week’s drama on Donald J. Trump, but blaming this all on him is way too simple. He is one in a large number.

Every person who has benefited from white privilege, every person who has enjoyed the fruits of oppressed laborers’ work, and every person who has naively thought that what happened last Wednesday couldn’t have happened has some serious work to do to understand white privilege, to discover how we got in this mess, and to begin to make amends.

Donald Trump couldn’t have incited the mob that busted into the Capitol if there had not been like-minded individuals in that hoard. Furthermore, that mob could never have made it into the Senate chambers and Nancy Pelosi's office if there hadn't been sympathizers amongst the Capitol Police.

Think about it, when’s the last time you’ve seen news footage of the Capitol Police backing away from a crowd, opening doors for vigilanties, or taking selfies with people who were breaking the law? Never. Compare that behavior with the way that AIDS activists, Immigration Reform advocates, and Black Lives Matter demonstrators have been treated over the years? See the difference? I bet you do.

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Christmas has a way of shining a bright light on the injustices of our world, and Christmas 2020 is no exception.

In fact, Christmas 2020 might offer the penultimate example of light shining in the darkness, and highlighting the stark disparities between rich and poor, fed and hungry, housed and homeless, white and darker, colonizers and indigenous, temporarily able- bodied and persons with different abilities, the followers of Christ, and followers of every other prophet and deity known to humanity. And the list goes on.

Christmas has a way of shining a bright light on the injustices of our world, because the Christmas message projects God’s vision of how things ought to be right next to the way things really are, and so doing, illustrate the profoundly skewed nature of the two.

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One doesn’t have to be a senior in quarantine or a person living gutting out this pandemic to know the value of personal touch--but these experiences are significant reminders of these truths that we already know, but sometimes take for granted.

Twentieth Century family therapist Virginia Satir who wrote for and spoke to popular audiences frequently noted that human beings need at least 12 healthy hugs a day in order to thrive. Twelve healthy hugs. Think about that fact. There are a lot of people who living with far fewer than 12 healthy hugs through this pandemic.

And, yet, these privations aren’t just artifacts of the pandemic. The irony of our lives in the 21st Century lives is that we have more technology, more ways of communicating with each other than ever, and yet this technology doesn’t afford us the same semblance of connectivity that is possible through in-person gatherings and personal touch.

This is why, I think, God sent a person and not an email into the world. This is why God sent Immanuel and not an IM. This is why God sent the little baby Jesus, and not a tablet of stone. God sent a person, because God knew that there was no suitable substitute to remind us that we are loved beyond our wildest imaginations. Now let that Good News seep into your soul. Merry almost Christmas! Amen.

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Wanting to live, not die; wanting to thrive not just survive, these are the sentiments that inspired Isaiah, too.

Retrace the steps of Joe Buck’s life and you will find a trail map that resembles the treacherous path that Isaiah described. Joe’s military service and his fight with cancer are just two of the formidable and formative experiences that shaped his spiritual journey. These hardships tested and strengthened him, and his commitment to work for a better world. They taught him the necessity and the veracity of hope.

Joe, like so many other veterans whom I have known, became an ardent proponent of peace. Joe never forgot what it was like to be a medic on the battlefields of Europe and have to run from body to body trying to decide how to ration morphine, tie tourniquets, and choose which soldiers to carry back to the M.A.S.H., because there weren’t enough medics or time or doctors to save everyone who was wounded. These grim realities of war galvanized Joe’s commitment to work for peace.

I served in Upstate New York during the Gulf War. The younger generations dressed like beatniks headed to Peace Park for a Vietnam War protest. They were quick to organize marches around the town square, and they planted a peace pole next to the church entrance. Joe was solidly behind them. He regularly showed up with his votive candle and sturdy walking shoes ready to go the distance for peace—no matter how long and winding that road seemed to be--and he inspired others to do the same.

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While I do think that God sides with the vulnerable, I think that taking a literal interpretation of The Great Judgment is wrong. And, it’s wrong because the larger heuristic of the New Testament teaches that we are saved by God’s grace, not by our works.

New Testament scholar Douglas R. A. Hare, who is an expert on Matthew, has helped me understand that The Great Judgment is an apocalyptic vision in which the visionary imagines “all nations” gathered together on the last day, and that “all means all”--not just people who were affiliated with Israel.

If all means all, and Matthew says it does, then the “sheep” include Roman pagans who care for the most vulnerable, and the “goats” includes anyone who doesn’t care for the vulnerable--including so-called followers of Christ.

So The Great Judgment story prompts hearers to a life of self-assessment, and it encourages us to look for “sheep” and join their herd.

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I don’t know about you, but the Parable of the Talents has always been a bit unsettling for me.

I have empathy for the guy who buried his money in the ground. I was taught to be very careful with money, and even more careful with someone else's money. In addition, I was taught that being careful meant being conservative and that being conservative was synonymous with being faithful.

But, then, I was told this Parable of the Talents and its lesson seems to fly in the face of what I was taught. Rather than teaching the value of conservatism, and that conservatism is next to godliness, I hear Jesus teaching that we should “Go big or go home!” That’s right, Jesus teaches us to take bold, strategic risks. And, that, my friends, is a good thing, and it’s good news!

The Parable of the Talents invites us to ground ourselves in the knowledge that we worship a generous God who offers abundant blessings, rather than a stingy God who withholds favor.

Making this shift from a conservative approach to investing that fosters stinginess to a strategic approach to investing that leads to abundance requires that we accept more risk.

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Sadly, human history is filled with examples of potentates blaming their victims for problems that they create or are unable to alleviate. But the good news for us as Christians, which we celebrate today, is that suffering is not our purpose. Death is not our end. There is a life beyond this life, where even death itself has died. And, until we arrive at heaven’s gates, and experience that peace that passes all understanding, we continue to experience a mixture of happy/sad days.

All Saints Day provides us with a special occasion to carve out and create a safe space for us to acknowledge these facts, and to attend to our grief so that we might also express our gratitude for those whom we have loved and lost, and experience the hope that comes through faith that our loved ones have gone to God, and where they have gone, we will one day go too.

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Moses mentored and commissioned Joshua, but the two were cut from very different cloth. Moses led the Israelites like an 18th century wagon train leader on the American frontier, while Joshua led the Hebrew people into Canaan like a 15th century Spanish conquistador landing on the shores of a continent they colonized. Moses was a nomadic shepherd. Joshua was a charismatic military leader.

Both prophets had to unite and inspire their people, and both faced a myriad of unanticipated challenges. But the challenges that each faced were very different. Moses led indentured slaves through the wilds of the Wilderness, while Joshua had to turn a band of shepherds into soldiers to conquer Cana. Both leaders were successful in their roles, because their respective gifts and graces for leadership were well matched for times in which they were called to serve.

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