1 Corinthians 6;12-20 - Can we say those words in church??

After much prayer and study, I felt the Epistle was what I should preach about Sunday. Thanks to the brave soul on RevGals who first suggested it as a possibility. In any case, here's my sermon for Sunday.

When I was about 12, my dad came home one day about as angry as I ever saw him. Dad was directing a Methodist Church choir at that time and had become close to those folks. They were a second church community for him.

Well, one of the sopranos had a daughter who got pregnant and had to get married. I already knew about this, of course, as scandals of this kind were not all that common so the grapevine worked overtime to get the news out quickly. Most of the gossip seemed focused less on the pregnancy and more on the fact that the father of the baby was Roman Catholic. Horrors! What on earth was a good Methodist girl doing dating a Roman Catholic? And then to get pregnant with his child? It was too much to bear.

And, for the soprano, it was too much too bear. She was so distraught that she ended up being hospitalized in the state-run asylum. And that’s what made my dad so angry. This daughter had not honored her family. She had brought shame and sorrow to the point of a mental breakdown on those who loved her best. Bev and I were read the riot act about what we could expect if we treated our own mother that way.

My dad’s anger on that occasion is as close as I can get in my own experience to feeling what Paul must have felt when the Corinthians took his teaching about being free from the Law just a little too far. They interpreted what he said to mean that all things were lawful for them. When we read this passage, which is specifically addressed to the issue of using pagan Temple prostitutes, we scratch our heads and wonder where they ever got the idea that sleeping with a prostitute could possibly be a good idea. And so we tune out. Besides, we really don’t like to read words like fornication and prostitute in church anyway. It just isn’t polite in this place and in a family of men and women, adults, young adults and children.

So what words would make it relevant and acceptable to speak of? The Corinthian argument that food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food makes me think of all the times I have said, “I know I shouldn’t eat any more but it is just so good and besides – this is the clergy argument – the people who prepared coffee hour went to a lot of trouble and it would be rude of me not to try everything.”

Or we could talk about not looking at someone else’s test in the hope of seeing a correct answer. And there’s always taking pens home from the office “inadvertently.” How about buying more than we need or want?

There are all sorts of situations we can substitute for fornication and prostitution. Pick the one that helps you to hear the rest of Paul’s teaching here.

Not all things are beneficial and I will not be dominated by my desire for those things that are not beneficial. Shun that which does not honor the body – our individual bodies and our corporate bodies of family, friends and church community – and finally, “Glorify God in your body.”

What we do, how we use our body as well as our spirit affects our life in Christ. Hear Paul say that our bodies are united to Christ in our baptism and that to use them improperly is to damage that connection in terrible ways. We are to take care of this gift of body/life so that we can glorify God.

And that means avoiding extremes. Just as it is wrong to eat more than I need to eat, it is wrong not to eat enough. While it is a good thing to exercise, it is not a good thing to spend all my time exercising and working on physique or external beauty.

“O Lord, you have searched me and know me. You are acquainted with all my ways.” Psalm 139 reminds us in wonderful images that God is always with us. But even though the psalmist says that God hems us in, behind and before, and lays hands upon us, the psalmist does not say that God tells us exactly what to do and when. We have choices to make but we make them in God’s presence.

This community is one place we experience that presence of God. I grew up in a close church community like this one. Any of the adults felt free to admonish or guide as the situation warranted and I, mostly, did what they told me to do because it usually sounded like what my parents would tell me if they were standing beside me. But it never occurred to me to wonder if the decisions I made would affect any of those kind, loving people.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians encourages us to look out for one another because we are all one in Christ and part of the body of Christ. That makes good sense to me. I do, mostly by virtue of my position here, consider that what I do will affect all of you. But we are all ministers, all called by God to do particular things for the good of the Kingdom. So, just as I have to consider all of you in my actions, you all need to consider one another. Family members make a difference in the lives of each member of the family.

Of course, we cannot be extreme in our care of one another or we will end up tearing this place apart. But we can be mindful of the needs of others here. We can greet the stranger in our midst. We can pray for one another. Have you ever thought of the parish directory as a prayer list?

Jesus called his disciples into community with him and each other. Long after he ascended into heaven, they were still a community. They had their ups and downs, their squabbles and moments when they longed for the restrictions of the old Law. But they glorified God in their bodies. They proclaimed the Good News by word and example every single day. How can we do anything less?

What needs doing before Christmas?

RevGals ask what five things need to be done between now and Christmas?
Well, it would be nice if a magic fairy would appear and clean the house. The choir party is here Sunday night and it has been raining all week. That means there are muddy paw prints everywhere even though I try to wipe all eight paws when they come in the house. And of course, my housekeeper doesn't come until Tuesday!
I need to get Christmas cards mailed to family and friends. The debate is whether to include a xerox letter or not. Probably not.
I could use a sermon for this Sunday, although I have some ideas.
There's grocery shopping to be done. The Charlotte/Memphis family will arrive Christmas Eve.
I need to make the final donations online to Second Harvesters. My family gives small gifts that are edible/drinkable or finite is some way. We sometimes give books and then pass them through the extended family. But most of our gift giving is charitable donations. Heifer and Episcopal Relief and Development have been my organizations of choice for several years; however, this year I feel a need to give locally as well.

There's really not much to be done, especially when I look at all that's been done in the last three weeks. If the cards don't go out until after Christmas, that will be fine. But all the other things definitely have to be done this weekend. Then I think I'll take Tuesday off.

"What do you long for this advent? What are your hopes and dreams for the future? What is your prayer today?
In the vein of simplicity I ask you to list five advent longings...."

I don't know whether I am having trouble limiting myself to five longings or if I can't think of even one. Most of the time, it seems to me, there is no time to long for anything except perhaps an end to the busyness that is life for lots of us. But even when I do have time, I still don't think about what I long for the most. Well, not in a serious way.

I long for the end of division within my denomination. I don't understand it and it is taking so much time away from the proclamation of the good news and the work of the kingdom. It grieves me to hear us hurling labels and turning our backs on all of God's children in favor of a group that thinks and acts in a particular way.

I long for time with my children, time I don't seem to make any more than they do now that we are all adults and have very different lives taking us in many directions.

I long for the coming of the Christ, not because I need to see it in order to have my faith validated or rewarded - I naively said once that this was the one event that would convince me of faith (ah youth!) - but because I don't think humanity is ever going to get it right. I don't think we can conceive of life without war and poverty and bigotry. Only God can straighten out this mess that we have made again - history is full of stories of our predecessors who didn't do any better.

So my prayer is one of gratitude, a cry for peace and a plea for guidance in what or how I am supposed to play a part in making peace happen.

That's all I have today. It is my day off and I really don't have anything to do other than ponder the sermon for the early service on Sunday. I've built a fire in the fireplace and I'm going to stretch out on the sofa with my dogs and an Ivan Doig novel. Then I'm going to dinner with a friend and a concert afterwards. Right now, this day is probably what I long for most.

Peace to you all.

Sheep and Goats

I don't know about the rest of you but sheep and goats stories don't really work for me. True, I have parishioners who keep one or both and I've read - and preached - all the stuff about sheep behavior, goat warmth issues, scapegoats and even shepherds.

The only reason I can think of for Jesus to use sheep and goats is that you don't house them together. They can go to the same pasture but they sleep in different places. So his listeners would have been caught up in the familiar, I suppose.

But then it gets a little weird since neither sheep nor goats do much talking that we can understand and it is clear that Jesus has moved out of the pasture and onto the judgment seat.

So there we all are, milling around the great conference center in the sky. In order to get into the meeting area, we have to show our badges. But the folks guarding the doors seem to be sending some people in the doors on the left and others into the doors on the right. When we get inside, there's a big net separating the room and no one can get by it.

Jesus addresses us all and says that the left half have served him and the right half didn't. Shock and surprise are present in both groups. Both ask, "Lord, when?" but get very different answers.

It's the surprise that gets to me. Faithful Christians ought not to be surprised. At least, I'm sure that's what I was taught somewhere along the line. And most of us, especially given that we know this parable by heart, usually notice when we pass someone by or stop to help them, don't we? If we don't help someone, we have good reasons for our non-action, of course. We rationalize it or at least say that helping would have put us in danger. If we help, we may well do so gladly and willingly but often, there is that little voice in our heads reminding us how good we are being, the points we are scoring.

Here's why I think the sheep and goats are surprised. I think the sheep automatically, without thinking, stop to help, move over to share the grass and water, cuddle up to keep the shorn one warm. To be told that every time they did this, they did it to the Lord is a surprise to them because it was the natural thing to do.

The goats don't stop for anyone ever. Life is all about them, making sure they have enough, they are warm enough, they are safe and are receiving God's bountiful grace. But it never occurs to them to make sure others are taken care of. That's a sheep thing and goats are not, simply not, sheep. So they, too, are surprised to hear that they have systematicallly, all their lives, rejected the Christ even though they thought differently.

I don't think many of us are goats. My guess is that even the tycoon with the hardest of hearts has a little sheep in him/her somewhere. But I'm equally sure that most of us haven't reached sheep status yet. Kindness, generosity, giving are things we still have to work at, especially if it means I might feel shorted by helping someone else. But I know we can get there. I have role models who are/were great sheep, nary a goat gene anywhere. I'll bet you do, too.

And when we get pretty good at being sheep, let's convert the goats. Let's show them how to be short-haired, butting-headed, omnivorous sheep. Still goats but different. And I'll bet goats have some good things to teach even all those surprised sheep!

Pharisees

I don't know exactly what I will preach tomorrow - especially since I have a children's homily at the second service instead of a "real" sermon - but it will be something like the following. And, of course, who knows what the congregation will, in fact, hear!

Pharisees: just like us?

I know it seems such an obvious thing to say but Pharisees didn’t come fully formed. When we encounter them in the gospels, they are grown men and, somehow, it never occurred to me before to think of them as anything else.

But they were children once just like we were. Okay, not *just* like us but certainly the first century equivalent of that. They were helpless babies, learned to roll over then crawl and finally stand up, graduating from walking to running in what probably seemed like a blink of an eye to their mothers.

Most likely, their fathers were Pharisees before them but Pharisee wasn’t a job like being a carpenter or tilling fields or tending sheep. No, Pharisees worked like everyone else. A Pharisee was more like being an Episcopalian or Baptist, Republican or Democrat. In those days, politics and religion were so closely connected it was hard to tell them apart, a lot like it still is in the Middle East today in fact.

Pharisees were one party within Judaism. They might be described by others as liberal but I doubt we would use that word. Pharisees believed their authority could be traced all the way back to Moses by way of other prophets. They stressed a single verse of Exodus: you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. Second Maccabbees says it this way: God gave all the people the heritage, the kingdom, the priesthood, and the holiness. So you might say the Pharisees promoted democracy. They established schools and synagogues all over the country and encouraged fathers – all fathers – to see that their sons were instructed in the Law. The Pharisees became the most learned of all people and saw Torah rather than Temple as the central focus of Jewish life and faith.

The Pharisees opposed capital punishment. The Sadducees were strict in observing “an eye for an eye” but the Pharisees believed in making financial restitution instead. They wrapped up the laws that led to the death penalty with so many restrictions and qualifications that they were almost never applied, almost being the key word.

But the Pharisees were also a fairly exclusive club. Calling themselves habirim, they would swear an oath in front of at least three other Pharisees that pledged strict adherence to the laws of Levitical purity, promised to avoid associating with anyone considered an ignorant boor, and guaranteed payment of tithes and other fees to the priests and the poor. And those laws included all of the oral law derived from the Decalogue. All 613 laws, not just the basic ten.

“The aim and object of the Law, according to Pharisaic principles, are the training of man to a full realization of his responsibility to God and to the consecration of life by the performance of its …duties….” (JewishEncyclopedia.com – Pharisees). That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

Then why does Jesus rail against the Pharisees so in today’s passage from Matthew? Why does he heap woes upon their heads?

Because in the pursuit of responsibility to God, the Pharisees put too much emphasis upon their own importance and knowledge. They became the message rather than the messengers. It was more important to be *known* as a Pharisee than it was to actually *be* a Pharisee.

They were no longer true to who they were. Image trumped reality. They stopped being compassionate. They stopped being strict observers of the Law unless someone else was looking. They became, to a certain extent, the ignorant boors they were supposed to shun. Being better than the Sadducees and others became more important that dedicating their lives to God.

We can say this is about pride and humility but I think it goes deeper than that. Pride is not always a bad thing. We can be proud of what we accomplish but we cannot take all the credit. We cannot say “I did it all by myself” when we know that we are given our talents, we are given opportunities to use them.

Humility is not always a good thing. People have turned themselves into doormats in the name of humility when perhaps God was calling them to stand up and take action. We can “aw shucks” ourselves to a point where no one will consider asking us to help because we have convinced them we aren’t useful.

Before we can be proud or humble, we have to be honest. We have to know ourselves well, understand our worth or usefulness and be willing to take on kingdom work.

There is an old derogatory maxim that says, “Those who can do and those who can’t, teach.” That’s a terrible thing to say about teachers, isn’t it? But I would guess that we have all encountered someone who hasn’t the ability for something who is more than willing to tell us how we should do it. How many of you parents have had childless people try to give you sage advice on raising children? How many of you kids have had adults tell you how easy you have it these days even though they never had the homework you do and weren’t required to learn all the world throws at you today?

Honesty about ourselves includes being honest about our faith. We can’t tell someone how to be a Christian when we don’t spend a lot of time at it ourselves. If we haven’t got a prayer discipline, we can’t hold others to that standard. And yet we do that sometimes, don’t we?

I read an Easter sermon the other day that made me want to stand up and cheer. Dr. Fred Craddock, a Disciples of Christ pastor, once told a congregation that they couldn’t begin to have Easter if they hadn’t been to the funeral. You don’t get to Easter Sunday by skipping Holy Week and especially Good Friday. Dr. Craddock could say that because he hasn’t ever skipped it! His congregation could hear it because they knew without a doubt that the man was not saying “do as I say, not as I do.”

Never lose sight of the being that God has made you. Pop psychology says be comfortable in your skin and that’s good theological advice, too. If we can do that, then we can – along with our Father – be proud of what we accomplish and – because of our brother – be humble in those same accomplishments.

Coins and the Friday Five

For those of you who haven't heard of it, the Friday Five happens every week (duh!) on revgalblogpals. This week's list is inspired by the coin in Sunday's gospel. So here's my answers.

1) When was the last time you flipped a coin or even saw one flipped in person?
I went to a football game the first Saturday in October. I'm pretty sure I saw the coin toss. It might have been the highlight of the game. The bands were the highlight of the afternoon.

2) Do you have any foreign coins in your house? If so, where are they from?
I have some Euros left over from the last trip to Italy. I'll be taking them back with me next April when we travel to Umbria.

3) A penny saved is a penny earned, they say. But let's get serious. Is there a special place in heaven for pennies, or do you think they'll find a special place in, well, the other place?
When I was a child, we had mite boxes. The boxes were handed out at the beginning of Lent and collected the Sunday after Easter. We were supposed to earn the mites/pennies we put in those boxes.
Then I grew up and got my own United Thank Offering box. Now I know that the UTO people suggest putting in a quarter every time you want to give thanks but I have a strong mental image of my dad putting all the loose change from his pocket into that box once or twice a week and that's what I do, too. So I just turned all my pennies, nickles and dimes in last Sunday when we had our fall Ingathering.
Pennies, then, have always been vehicles for giving thanks. I'll stick with the old song and say pennies are from heaven. ;-)

4) How much did you get from the tooth fairy when you were a child? and if you have children of your own, do they get coins, or paper money?
I got a dime per tooth. My kids got quarters. Our daughter had a lovely tooth pillow that a friend made. When she lost her first tooth, we got out the pillow, she put the tooth in the little pocket and we explained about putting the pillow on her bed so the tooth fairy could come get it and leave a surprise in its place. Well, Heather was having none of that. No alien being was coming into her bedroom for any reason whatsoever! We finally convinced her to leave it in the hall even though she would have preferred outside the front door. Now that I think about it, I may still owe my son for his teeth!

5) Did anyone in your household collect the state quarters? And did anyone in your household manage to sustain the interest required to stick with it?
I have a sister who collects them and I think she stayed the course. Alas, I'm not all that interested in what's on a coin to consider collecting it. Haven't they begun changing nickles now?

THE election

I've been on vacation for ten days. I had a great time and, yes, politics came up in conversation more than once. But we didn't take my car and so I was cut off from XMradio and the POTUS08 station - all election all the time.

Considering that I did my best to ignore all of the primaries - it was two years long! - I find it really amazing that I am now really interested in the election itself. Don't get me wrong, I have always exercised my right to vote but in the last decade, I haven't been excited about that. Now, I am listening to reporters, pollsters, commentators, speeches - XM plays them from start to finish without comment - and even morning conference calls from both campaigns. This is crazy! But it feels really good. It feels like this year we get to vote *for* someone. I've been going to the polls to cast a negative vote for far too long. Even the show hosts on the station sound excited.

I'm a Democrat mostly and will surely vote for Obama/Biden this year. That doesn't mean that I think either of them hung the moon or that there isn't room for improvement. For instance, I'd like candidates to really answer questions at debates rather than twist the questions to fit the prepared responses. I may have to go back to The West Wing and see the debate camp episode again to make me feel better about debates.

This afternoon, I had an email from the Obama campaign about the debate - okay, it came last week but I've been ignoring email on vacation - and the subject was "How do you think I did?" Alas, there was no way for me to answer the question! It was merely another request for money. It's not that I haven't contributed but I would have liked a chance to tell Obama that he needs to answer the questions directly so they really sound like answers and not "here's a piece of my campaign rhetoric that almost speaks to that question."

Ah well, I'm still excited about the election even though I live in a state that is so red you can't get an Obama bumper sticker here or a yard sign. Maybe by the next election, all states will be in play and everyone will campaign in all states rather than only in those where campaigning might make a difference. Even better, maybe by the next election, the parties will have discovered that the obscene amount of money spent by each campaign would have been better spent on anything else and we can just have a few televised debates, email flyers and skip all the racing around the country giving the same speech a zillion times. I don't know how they do that last part and instill life into that speech. If I have to preach the same text three times on Sunday, the folks at the third service get a pretty dull sermon. ;-)

So get out and vote for someone who you want to win! I may even have an election night party if I can find enough Democrats to do more than make a foursome for bridge or golf.