We have met the crazies, and they are us! Mark 1:21-28

Mark's account of Jesus dealing with the man who was possessed can cause flashbacks for anyone who has dealt with an individual who has seemed less than sane at one time or another. For pastors or church people, stories of the congregational "crazies", like the people to whom they refer, are legion. My first parish consisted of two churches, and both had at least one person who made my life, well, more interesting. A woman in church #1 called me often for help with the latest crisis at home. Sometimes it was a need for food, another time I accompanied her to a hearing for her son who was being sent to jail for attempted robbery. I visited him while he was in prison, only to sense that he was already planning to misbehave when he was freed, and that is what happened. Often, my wife and I returned home to find a message from her on our answering machine. She always ended her pleas by saying "Amen." In church #2, there was a woman who sometimes filled in as pianist. She had a look in her eyes that was troubling, as if one could see into the torment that she dealt with in her mind. One woman warned me to not ever be alone with her, because she had thrown a can of cling peaches at said woman's husband. Of course, the very next time I went to the church for a meeting, I arrived early and she was the only other person there! She once called my home, screaming because someone had kicked her goat and she also suspected that someone was stealing gas from her car. She felt that the world was out to get her. I remember so well the day she told me that she felt called into ministry, and that she would need the recommendation of the church to get past the district committee. In my mind I panicked, because I knew that I could never recommend her as a candidate for ministry, and I feared that such a declaration would impel a can of fruit to come speeding my way.
Yes, we have all dealt with the less than sane folks, so we can relate to Mark's account. But we often miss a salient point that is stated in the story: the demon within the poor fellow is the only being in that gathering who recognized Jesus as the Son of God. What are we to do with that bit of information? Perhaps we should pause and think about those times in our own lives, and we have all had them, when we have been one of the "crazies," even if just for a moment. Sometimes it is during such times that we most keenly feel the need for God's presence to reassure us that all will be well. Might it also be true that at such times we are most able to recognize when God's representatives are in our midst?
There was nothing noble about the demon's recognition of Jesus, because there was a tradition at that time that taught that speaking one's adversary's name first granted one power over that person. So, the recognition may have been a scheme to gain the upper hand, not to pay tribute to the Son of God. Jesus cast out the demon, which had become violent within its host's body. Jesus was not fooled by the power play, nor was Jesus insensitive to the pain of that poor man. So, what are good Christian people to do? The story seems to offer no alternative but to deal with such folks honestly and compassionately, but not to be manipulated by them.
I made a difference in the life of the family of the lady in church #1, even though her constant calls for assistance exhausted me. Her life's situation made escape from her poverty impossible, but a compassionate presence helped her to endure. I performed the wedding for one of her sons, and he and his wife were baptized and joined the church a few years later. The lady in church #2 eventually left the congregation and I never heard from her again. But I cannot clear her image from my mind to this day. That look in her eyes was almost a plea for someone to free her from the prison of her torment. I was not able to do that, but I hope that, eventually, with God's love and compassion and professional intervention, someone did.

When God's Mercy Really Ticks Us Off! Jonah 3:1-5,10

I once read a commentary that stated that if we do not think that God has a sense of humor, we ought to read the book of Jonah. Sadly, the only part of the the story of Jonah that most people claim to know is the story about the fish. Note that the story describes a fish, and nowhere states "whale!" Jonah hated the behavior and attitude of the people of Ninevah, who were especially offensive to the Lord. The Lord would have destroyed the city outright, but then decided to give the people another chance. He asked Jonah to go and preach to the populace and to warn them to turn from their wickedness. Most folks don't know that the reason that Jonah ended up in a fish story is because he was running away from the directive that he had been given to preach to the citizens of Ninevah. So, with nowhere else to go, he went into the city and preached the need for repentance. And lo, and behold, the people repented. Though the rest of the story is not contained in the pericope for Epiphany 3, Jonah was so upset that the Lord forgave the people of Ninevah that he went away and sulked, and the humorous part of the story ensues. Go and read it for yourself.
I will never forget the time in my life when this passage came around in the lectionary cycle and I knew that I had to preach on it. I was serving as a college chaplain in rural Virginia, and was also filling the pulpit of a church who's pastor had been called up into the first gulf war. The first President Bush was posturing and talking tough about the need to get Sadaam Hussein (Some things never change, do they?). It occurred to me that, as hell-bent as the country was on going after Hussein, it would be very difficult for someone to stand up and call for peace. So, I stood up in the pulpit of a church that I had been serving for just a few weeks and asked if we as a people would relent of our desire for war if Hussein was to miraculously repent and turn away from his violent ways. I stated that I did not think that we would relent, and that we really wanted to get him. We were experiencing the kind of feeling that Jonah was having regarding Ninevah. He wanted them to get what was coming to them. And then I uttered the most frightening phrase I had uttered from a pulpit up until that time: I told that congregation that I was opposed to the war and that war is a symbol of humanity subverting the will of God. I also told them that it was difficult for me to say those words, with their pastor's family in the pews and him serving, though not in a war zone.
The service ended and I greeted folks at the back door. The first gentleman through the door extended his hand, but would not look at me. Others greeted me in their normally friendly way, but did not comment on the sermon. And then a man about my age, a school teacher, came through the line with tears in his eyes and hugged me and sobbed and thanked me for my words. Immediately, I felt that I had done the right thing. Looking back on it, one would think the incident was of a very minor nature. But we forget how silent the church was about that war, and how few people were speaking out against it. The next Sunday, the man who had thanked me for my words was in charge of the children's sermon. He had cut up pieces of paper and had asked the children if they could assemble them. When they put the pieces together, they formed the image of a dove, and he talked about peace. On his way out, he looked at me and told me that the children's sermon was offered because of me and what I had said the week before.
I haven't always said the right thing at the right time. As a matter of fact, I have been known to suffer from "foot in mouth" disease. But never have I been more certain that I was being directed to speak truth to power than when that lesson from Jonah jumped off the page at me. If you have not read the book of Jonah in a while, or ever, do it now. Who knows what God has in store?

While We Wait

I am writing this exactly one week before the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States. Having driven in Washington DC this past weekend, I do not envy anyone who has to get around the city in the coming week. But more importantly, I don't envy the new president and the world of problems that he will inherit. He presents a breath of fresh air, even if his choice of Rick Warren to offer the invocation caused understandable consternation among progressives.Obama is a person of faith and I want to believe that he will rely on his faith and wonderful family to keep his sanity. Make no mistake, lots of people of faith will come after him with the long knives out, because he will not have moved in a way that they would have preferred. I was dismayed by the Warren pick, but I have moved beyond it, even if I am thinking of muting the TV during the invocation!
I have a radical idea: what if we all agree to give the new president some time to find his bearings and, in a paraphrase of words from I Corinthians 13, "believe in him and always expect the best of him?" Next week my musings on the lectionary texts will return to this space. Right now I am reading some stuff on the Gospel of Thomas and the Secret Gospel of Mark. What fun!

A Deafening Silence

All of us have heard of the tragic events in Gaza over the past week. Hamas provoked Israel and Israel responded. Four hundred Palestinians have been killed as well as four Israelis. And yet, the news media, the churches, the public, has been uncomfortably silent. Yes, Hamas has been run by crazies for years and they will never accept Israel's right to exist. This is not about whether something should be done about Hamas, it's about proportionality. The biblical rule of lex taliones, an eye for an eye, was about not exacting more than was done or taken. Take no more than an eye, is what it meant. Israel, with massive funding by the US, has taken upon itself to be judge and jury. They have now moved to ground assault. We need to remember one salient fact: the Palestinians did not go along with the United Nations mandate in 1947 that effectively took half their land for a Jewish homeland. In response, Israel began an expansionist policy that continues to this day. Yes, some people in Gaza act more like animals than people. Could that be because one and one-half million people have been walled in to an area that is barely more than a few square miles and not been allowed to travel freely? Israel lumps all Palestinians together as terrorists and thinks of them as less than human. Jimmy Carter was roundly criticized when he referred to what is going on in the middle east as "apartheid." I have been there, and that is exactly what is going on. When I was there, we were told that we could not return home and tell about what we had seen, because we would be perceived as anti-Semitic. I acknowledge Israel's right to exist and to be secure, even though I think the creation of the state of Israel was done less than honorably as far as the Palestinian people are concerned. It's time for people of faith to cry "enough" to this slaughter. Most of the Palestinian people are not members of Hamas. Why do they express loyalty to that group? Because Hamas took care of medical and community needs as it was building itself up. They were wise, they knew how to win the hearts of the people. If Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza had been treated as human beings all along, we may have been able to avoid this crisis. It's time for Israel to be held accountable for their blatant disregard for the lives of the majority of the Palestinian people. The people of Palestine deserve human rights as much as anyone, don't they?

On the Way to the O.R. - Psalm 121

Last week I had surgery to remove a non-compliant gall bladder. Apparently, in my gene-pool, the gall bladder has much more of a limited warranty than other body parts. Both of my sisters have also had theirs removed. So, it was my turn. The thought of going under anesthesia gave me a few moments of feeling my mortality. Everyone has heard the stories of people who have had trouble coming out of the drug-induced sleep. A former parishioner of mine worked as a surgical nurse in a local hospital, and she talked about having to attend a deposition, because they had "killed" a thirty-two-year-old man while removing his tonsils. He had been given too much anesthetic, apparently. I have noticed a relationship between the telling of such stories and the increased rate at which they are told the closer that one gets to the date of surgery.
So, as I was being wheeled to the operating room, I searched for some scripture to be of some comfort. I had been doing really well about all of this, and even imagined how my family would react if I did not survive the surgery, telling everyone, "You know, he never acted as if he was scared at all." I was, to a degree, more peaceful about the whole thing than I had thought that I might be. But, as I was being wheeled down the hall, I retrieved the words of Psalm 121, "I will lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence comes my help." I was surprised at my choice of passages, as I had not given any thought to what passage I would recite. Why not Psalm 139? Certainly it would have been very comforting to think that the one who had "knit together my innermost parts" was also the one from whom I could find no separation. Why not some good stuff from Matthew, about the lilies of the field, etc? I cannot say. What I do know is mountains have always held an almost supernatural fascination for me. I was raised in the foothills of the Chestnut Ridge of the Allegheny Mountains, so my frame of reference for my very existence has always been tied to mountains. The times in my life when I have been least happy with my living situation have been those where I was surrounded by coastal plain. We lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia for several years, and it was an other-worldly, wildly beautiful experience. When I finally visited the city of my birth in Utah, when I was in my forties, I was awestruck by the site of the Wasatch Range. Though the hospital where I was born is long gone, a park sits on the site, with a plaque commemorating the hospital that once stood there. From that vantage point, one has a breathtaking view of the mountains. It occurred to me at that moment that mountains have been the touchstone of my mortal existence; for most of my life, the mountains and I have co-existed in a most peaceable way.
I am very happy that the words of Psalm 121 came to my conscious mind that day, just as I was about to place my living self in the hands of others. For me, the mountains have always been, and will always be, a symbol of God's presence and care in my life. At that moment, lying flat on my back while viewing the blandness of the fluorescent lights overhead, I was given a vision of the mountains that have been there since I took my first breath. My life will have its perfect ending if I am allowed to see them as I take my last breath. Thanks be to God.

Why Is It So Difficult to Say "Not Me?" John 1:6-28

The Gospel of John presents an interesting take on John's appearance. Whereas Matthew and Luke have John baptizing Jesus, which then opens up the whole discussion of why John is doing that instead of Jesus, John does not seem interested in that little detail. Instead, he spends much ink writing about John's testimony of Jesus being the messiah. There is no doubt as to John the Baptizer's identity in John's gospel; John's is the voice crying in the wilderness, he is not the messiah.
I am a casual observer of long-tenure pastors and their congregations. It sometimes appears that the longer a pastor serves a given congregation, the more that congregation takes on the personality traits of the pastor. Some of this in inevitable, since the pastor's teaching and leadership style will affect the congregation's identity. A problem arises when the pastor becomes high and lifted up, and the pulpit may begin to "block out the altar," to quote a divinity school professor of mine. I have known of churches where the pastor insisted on being involved in all decisions. I once filled in for a pastor to perform a wedding. The pastor had already completed most of the pre-marital counseling. However, the pastor offered to sit in on the first part of my first meeting with the couple, and I agreed that such an idea was a good one. It served to break the ice for the couple who had never met me. However, it became apparent quite soon in the interview that I was expected to tow the line and style of the resident pastor, to the letter. I was surprised at the vehemence with which the pastor emphasized this point.
Sometimes we pastors need reminding that many are called, and many prophetic voices may be heard on the journey. There is no doubt among modern scholars that John the Baptizer had his own following, and those poeple might have gladly given him their allegiance over Jesus if it ever came to that. But John would have none of it,at least in John and Matthew's accounts. "I am not the messiah" can provide a corrective for those of us who have been serving a particular place for a long time. Truth is, it's not about us; it's about the one whom we claim to follow. This Advent season, we should be standing on "the tiptoe of expectation", anxiously awaiting the one who called us.

Another Advent

Before I tackle the texts for the second Sunday of Advent(being on a college campus, I had the first Sunday off..Thanksgiving break, ya know!)I wanted to think just for a moment about the season of Advent itself. I have a friend, a pastor, who once confided to me that he never knew what to preach on in Advent, because he did not find it to be a particularly exciting season. I was surprised at that comment, because Advent has always been an exciting time for me. If I could not find another reason to be excited about the season, I would choose to give thanks because the season of Pentecost is finally over! Remember when United Methodists used to call it "Kingdomtide"? Yuk! But I have a larger reason for looking forward to Advent. John Michael and Terry Talbot recorded a song entitled Advent Suite on their joint album, The Painter. The suite contains the phrase "Can you believe in the miracle coming, can you believe it will take you away?" I think these lyrics capture well the excitement of the dawning of the new church year. How do pastors who do not follow the seasons of the church year deal with the Sundays of December? Do they not have the same evil joy that their more liturgically-minded brethren share by denying the free ranging singing of Christmas carols until Christmas Eve? Do they not follow the lectionary and paint a vision of expectation and dreaming that is so tangible in Isaiah's writings? What would this time of year be like if we did not talk about the time in-between, and the tension of waiting while also looking back? So, for those who have not yet figured out where I stand on the matter, I stand on the tiptoe of expectation!