Reformation Sermon: The Giant Rummage Sale

Joshua 3:7-17, Matthew 23:1-12

A lot of people sat on the edges of their seats when game 6 of the World Series went 11 innings. It ended in an upset with the Cardinals scoring in the bottom to take it 10-9. The Cards followed up in a much less interesting seventh game to win their 11th title. But, even as many in the country had their eyes on baseball this weekend, another professional sport has held the attention of others: the NBA. Embroiled in a lockout, players and owners remain in a standoff, both sides hoping that the other will flinch first. In the center of the conflict is how to divide the league’s revenues: the owners want a 50-50 split. The players want a 52.5 take. At their last collective bargaining agreement, players were guaranteed 57 percent. According to NBA players, going down from their 57% to 53%, would transfer $1.1 billion from them to owners over six years. The difference between 50 percent and 52.5 percent totals about $100 million. We are talking huge sums of money, even if the percentage points are not very wide. Because the two sides can’t come to an agreement, games have been canceled for November creating a loss of $350 million, twice the amount of the difference between what the owners and players want.

We seem to live in a world in which immense sums of money are tossed around all the time. Whether it’s Congress discussing the deficit, tax rates and breaks, infrastructure costs, energy costs, foreclosure costs, unemployment costs, war costs, or sports costs, regular people - people like you and me - (we) talk about hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions of dollars as though we can in any way conceive of what this really means. People have become used to having little while moving in a world with a great deal of money.

We live in a time of deep conflict - I don’t mean Conservative-Liberal conflict. I mean, we live in a time when we are constantly told conflicting messages: to be afraid because there isn’t enough to go around and then to live immersed in excess. Too little. Too much. Too little money. Money everywhere. Not enough food. Too much food. Food insecurity. Gas too high to buy, but still too many cars on the roads. Too many people on the planet (7 billion now, I hear). All around us are messages of too little and too much. Because we focus on the too little, we forget that excess is everywhere; it takes force to resist it, to try to live humbly and simply. Sometimes that force comes from the outside in unexpected and unpleasant ways. We are forced to live more humbly because we don’t have enough money. We sell our car. We sell our house (or we try to). We let go off cable. We don’t have a microwave. We make the decisions because circumstances dictate that they are necessary. Yet, sometimes external forces aren’t enough; despite not having enough, we still spend and spend, whether out of wants or due to needs. That is how many of us wind up in deep debt. Other times, we yearn for a more simple and humble life. We try through the force of will to live in ways that deeply resist a culture that continually promotes “more, more, more.” Choosing no cable. Growing our own food. Eating simple, whole foods. Living in smaller houses or condos. Shopping at Goodwill. Using the library. Investing in a local economy. Tying ourselves to a neighborhood. Whether or not we personally choose simplicity, our culture is steeped in a cycle of boom and bust, excess and deprivation. All around us is too little and too much.

This is not new. Throughout history, too much and too little have resided next to each other. When they rub up against each other too much and the friction grows too hot, change occurs. Excess gives way to reformation. Prophets rise. The people revolt. New worlds are made. Jesus ushered in one such time. With his life, death, and resurrection, a whole new way of living in the world was introduced. Author and teacher Phyllis Tickle says that every 500 years, the world and the Church have a giant rummage sale. We let go of conventions, traditions, and institutions that have been the backbone of our world. We get rid of the stuff we no longer need, we keep the stuff that works, and we make something new. Five hundred years after Jesus was born, the Roman Empire fell (at least the Western part did) and a new world order was established. in 1054, the Church split into Eastern Orthodox and Western Roman Catholicism, and political and social structures in those regions reflected that split. Five hundred years later, the Byzantine Empire fell and the Protestant Reformation occurred. We are now 500 years after that. We are living during one of the world’s giant rummage sale, and our culture is feeling the shocks of change. That is why our cycles of boom and bust and our lifestyles of excess and deprivation are being felt so acutely right now. The little is way to little, and the too much is way too much. They can no longer exist in any form of harmony together. Something must give way.

Today is Reformation Sunday on the Church calendar. On October 31, - on the eve of All Saints Day - in 1517 in Wittenburg, Germany, a priest by the name of Martin Luther nailed what has become known as the Ninety-five Theses to the door of Castle Church. While the specifics of his complaint centered around the selling of indulgences - or pardons for sins - Luther’s larger complaint concerned what he believed to be a gross perversion of the gospel as a whole. A gospel of grace had become a mockery. God’s free gift of grace was being peddled by the very institution set aside to safeguard the gospel. Pope Leo X in Rome had mired the church in an outlandishly expensive renovation of St Peter’s Basilica, and pressure filtered down to various regions to put in their share of money to pay for it. This resulted in widespread corruption, the buying and selling of high rank within the church, and the selling of indulgences - letters of forgiveness - for sins. Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses is now considered the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. This act changed history. We have been the beneficiaries of this change for 500 years.

For 500 years, the Protestant Church has grown and expanded. In the United States, Protestantism has become the civil religion of the country. As our country prospered, so did Protestantism. But, no longer. This rummage sale in which we live has us tossing out long held traditions and ways of doing things. This has been necessitated by a rising tide of complaints that the Church has become staid, hypocritical, hyper-critical, and irrelevant. We could just as easily hear today Jesus’ complaints of his own religious world. Just as Jesus castigated the religiously pious for their public displays, the same is happening today. Regularly on television we see televangelists in large megachurches decrying the immorality of others while they lead their own corrupt lives. Mainline denominations have become torn apart over sexual ethics while not protecting the laity from sexual predation from many clergy. We have become ensconced in debates about peripheral issues while neglecting the poor, the vulnerable, and the marginalized - whom the prophets and Jesus called widows and orphans. We are more preoccupied with church structure than with spreading the gospel and bringing people into the presence of the Divine. The Roman Catholic Church continues to make moral pronouncements and denouncements about others without getting its own priesthood in order. Local congregations that for so long existed because they maintained the de facto way of live have found themselves floundering as more and more Americans don’t live the same way - don’t celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christmas or his Resurrection at Easter, that don’t care about Pentecost or the Trinity or the Resurrection. Because we haven’t had to know our story - it simply was a part of the fabric of our culture - we now don’t know how to live it in this increasingly secular and diverse world.

Jesus, though, tells us how to live through this rummage sale. Martin Luther understood how. John Wesley, Methodism's founder, did as well. Be humble. Be humble. Be less preoccupied with your own status and your own well being and your own self and your kind and your own way of living than you are about the least of these. For those who are the least among us, hear these words as comforting ones God. God sees your plight. God knows the wealthy and the powerful, including the Church, do not honor you well. But, God does. Jesus says that the Church will not find its power and its authority in large basilicas. It will not find its redemption is renovated worship spaces. Christians do not find salvation in public acts of religious piety, of shouting “peace, peace, when there is no peace” (Jer 6:14) or “Lord, Lord with malice in their hearts.” Christians find redemption because God gives it. It is that simple. God saves us. The Church finds its power in living the gospel, in returning to the Word so powerful that the ark of covenant stopped the waters of the Jordan. When Jesus decries the use of larger phylactaries, he, in essence, is telling us to live out the wrapping of ourselves in the Law, not simply to do the ritual act. That is where we find our power, by wrapping ourselves in God's saving instruction and to have it inscribed in and on all that we and all that we are. This same instruction stops the waters of the Jordan. This same instruction will change the forces of our world today. Our Old Testament and our gospel lesson tell us that no sum of money, no matter how large, can compare to the vastness and the power of our God. Both scriptures tell us that God’s glory is magnificent and that our proper response to it is humility and service. God claims us. That is good news. But, when God claims us, God puts a claim on us. God forgives. God redeems. God loves. God also sends us to be servants in a broken world. To be voices of peace when there is no peace. To show by our lives and not through empty words that we follow the Lord. To seek not places of honor at banquets, but to eat with the poor in solidarity and in love. Hear these words one more time, “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themsleves will be exalted.” This is the Gospel of our Lord. Thanks be to God.

jesus camp...what the? (finding good things for kids)

if you're like me, you've seen the recent media frenzy around the documentary on a cultic and abusive camp in north dakota called "jesus camp." i am not going to get into my rants and raves against the media who cower in the midst of abusive people who call themselves christian, refusing to ask the hard theological and psychological questions for fear of being called "anti-christian." it seems like people get a pass if they use the word "christian" to self-identify when really most who feel the need to do so are mis-using the faith that means so much to me. if you're reading this blog, then you already believe that it is anti-christian to scare young children into tears over things like abortion, gay marriage, hell, and the military. instead of giving credence to this group by giving them air space, wouldn't it be great it the media covered all of the christian materials that support healthy and whole children, that contribute to good psychological development, and that encourage children to grow into questioning, reflective and caring adults who are deeply committed to a god of love and justice?

church camp can be a tricky thing. camps often reflect the theology and temperment of the person in charge. before i send kids off to camp, i try to find out who's in charge, what kinds of things they'll be doing, how they will worship, and what they will be singing. as a child i attended a pretty fundamentalist and charismatic camp for a few years. it took a lot of work to undo the mess made of my soul. i also attended really wonderful united methodist camps in arkansas. i remember in high school attending a forum where pastors debated sin and hell and all of those things that people get hung up on. this was the first place that i ever encountered adults willing to say out loud that they didn't believe in a literal hell or a literal heaven. it was in this place where i first was encouraged to think about such things in terms of states of being rather than physical destinations. camp can be dangerous; it also can be a place of incredible spiritual growth and formation where life-long friendships are made.

there are lots of curricula and materials out there that seem really good on paper, but i have found many of them problematic to actually use with kids; they're just not practical. one of the difficulties of being a progressive christian is that we want kids to learn a process more than we want them to learn things - dogma, doctrine, rules. i want the kids in the churches i serve to learn to think about and reflect on god, to look beyond themselves and even their faith tradition to the gifts and goodness found in others, and to value the fragile earth which god gave us to tend and protect.

during easter, interestingly, "resurrection eggs" are a hit with my church's kids. there is a book that you can purchase that tells the story along with the eggs. it's a good mixture of kitsch and information. i see adults playing with them on easter as well. because they are funny, it takes some of the edge off of the difficult theology without leaving out the tough parts of the story.

spiritual formation curricula that are interesting to kids are difficult to find. kids also seem to like pockets, a monthly activity magazine (and web resources) published through the upper room. sprouts is a resource in the same series for younger children, but i've never used it. there is a curriculum in the companions in christ series just for children, but the kids that i know have found it a bit boring. by and large, we make curricula work for us at wpumc, but we have never found the "perfect" thing. however, it's clear that kids get more out of indirect learning than we often assume. it's important to engage children in the missions of the church and in the function of worship. i'm always amazed at what gets brought to my attention by the children of this church. they learn as much from how we do church than from what we try to teach them.

here are some books that i like to use with children. some are for small children and others are for older elementary kids. if you have materials that you have used and have found helpful, let me know. i'm always looking.

mama, do you love me? by barbara m joose, illustrated by barbara lavelle
in god's name by sandy eisenberg sasso, illustrated by phoebe stone
in our image - god's first creatures by nancy sohn swartz, illustrated by melanie hall
the harry potter series - by j.k. rowling
easter - by gail gibbons (the pictures are a little uniformly white, but a good book anyway)
claire and francis - by guido visconti and bimba landmann
jesus, the word - by mark francisco bozzuti-jones, illustrated by shelly hehenberger
the last supper - original spanish version by mada carreno, illustrated by bety fischman
on the day you were born - by debra frasier (this is one of my favorites! it also has a list of other really great books in the back)
the story of passover - by norma simon, illustrated by erika weihs
god created - by mark francisco bozzuti-jones, illustrated by jui ishida
creation - by gerald mcdermott
noah's ark - editor, victoria forlini (male language for god, but is a sound book so little kids like to push the buttons and make the sounds...)
becoming me: a story of creation - by martin boroson, illustrated by christopher gilvan-cartwright (my all time favorite!!!! hands down the best!!!)
the story of religion - by betsy and giulio maestro (good overview of world religions)
what is god's name - by sandy eisenberg sasso, illustrated by phoebe stone
god loves you - by kathleen long bostrom, illustrated by elena kucharik

these are just some of the books that i have found to be beautifully illustrated, theologically sound (for the most part), encouraging, and accessible. but my favorite books are all on loan (except for becoming me). as they are returned, i'll add them to this list.