A Day to Celebrate

(January 10, 2007 Edition)

Next Monday, most of us will celebrate a day that we probably take for granted most years. The observance of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday was established as a federal holiday in 1986, 18 years after his untimely death on the balcony of a Memphis hotel. Sadly, to most of us it has become simply a day off from work, school, or whatever we do on a normal basis; certainly not a day to celebrate the life of a man who made a profound impact on his century.

King was a controversial figure during his own lifetime, and still remains a controversy today. Like many historical figures who are no longer able to defend themselves, King today finds his legacy threatened. He has posthumously been called a Communist and, ironically enough, both a Republican and a Democrat. He was either in league with the government or secretly trying to overthrow it. Some allege he cheated on his wife. He has been accused of plagiarism.

But no matter your opinion of King’s political and private activities, his was a life to celebrate – not just for the racial message he preached, but for the spiritual lessons he taught us. Two such lessons come immediately to my mind.

First, as a pastor, King was able to help Christians of all races see that God does not look on us as black, white, Hispanic or Asian. When God looks at us, he does not see our accomplishments or our failures. He sees us as beloved creations made in his image, as children who need his love and care. And if that is how God sees others, that is how we should see others as well.

Second, King chose a surprising way to fight the inequality faced by black Americans of his day – a way that endures as an example of Christ-like resistance. Rather than join in the violent attacks that others had launched against an unfair system, King chose to lead his followers to resist by non-violent means: sit-ins, marches, protests and boycotts.

King did this because he took to heart a lesson Jesus has tried to impress on us time and time again: When we use violence to combat violence, the only result is more pain and death. While war is sometimes necessary (and how thankful we are for those who fight for us), Jesus showed us that in the end, love and forgiveness are the only ways to break the cycle of sin and hatred.

Have we learned these lessons ourselves? They are not sideline issues. I am constantly confronted with both of these decisions on an almost daily basis. Will I strike back when I am attacked, continuing the cycle of violence and sin that has consumed the human race for millennia? Will I look at and treat others according to the things they appear to be – black or white, rich or poor, success or failure, Christian or other? Or will I see and treat people as the precious children of God, whom God has given to my care? No matter what I may think, I really am my brother’s keeper.

Let’s take a moment this MLK Day to celebrate the work of a man who gave his life – figuratively and literally – to fight the unjust and unequal treatment of all God’s children. And let us, like him, learn the lessons of Christ and allow King’s spiritual legacy to live on through us.

Long time no blog…

Sorry it’s been so long! I’ve started a religious editorial in the local paper called, “Speaking of Faith.” Strangely ironic, since the last post I put up here had the same title…

Anyway, I’ll at least try to get my articles up here from time to time. If I get more, I’ll do more. If not… well, you get the point.

Article one:

Making God

I have a candid confession to make: I have never enjoyed watching American Idol. This is true even though my wife and I lived in Birmingham – home to Reuben Studdard, Bo Bice and Taylor Hicks – during the early height of the Idol era. I know this is shocking, and it places us in the small percentage of Americans who don’t spend those hours in front of the TV each week.

It’s not that we’re against it for any particular reason – we just have better things to do, like play with our young daughters (who are infinitely more entertaining). And it’s not that I have some hangup on the idea of an “American Idol.” Fact is, whether or not we have a television show to tell us who our cultural idol is, we’ll find one anyway – even though those idols rarely turn out to be worthy of our “worship.”

A few years ago, listening to a sermon on idolatry, I experienced one of those rare moments in which I actually remember something I heard in a sermon. I, like most of my fellow audience members, had been used to thinking of idolatry as some ancient sin that only involved wooden carvings or ancient statues in pagan temples. Or maybe we were used to hearing it used in connection with Christian symbols that have taken on a life of their own – the cross, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. However we define it, idolatry is a serious sin… but none of us modern folks really do it.

That’s what I thought, until I was challenged with this simple but frighteningly clear definition of idolatry: “God created us in his image, and we sometimes return the favor.” It reminded me that idolatry is not limited just to the worship of things that are blatantly not-God, but extends to the worship of our own limited views of God as well. Whether it’s a statue or an ideology, idolatry is finding a god to worship that’s not really worth worshiping.

How often do we try to re-make God in our own image? I find myself doing it all the time, and I imagine it’s a pretty common practice for most of us. We imagine Jesus as a white (or black) handsome, middle-class kind of person who hung around mostly folks just like us. He was calm and serene, never angry, never laughing. We envision God to be a Republican or a Democrat, urging us to vote along political lines. We make God an American, a pro-choicer or pro-lifer, a Baptist or a Methodist. These labels conveniently place God on “our side,” and allow us the freedom to withhold love (or “fellowship,” or help) from those who are not exactly like us.

More dangerously, I think, when we do these things we run the risk of forgetting that, while you and I must usually be “either-or,” God can be “both-and.” We hold to our little re-fashioned gods despite the fact that all of scripture points to a God who is complex: showing love and compassion while threatening judgment; showing favor for one people while bestowing blessings to all; bringing peace while bringing division.

And so we commit that ancient sin over and over again – not when we bow down to a little wooden statue, but when we bow down to our own tiny and limited view of God at the exclusion of the many other things God is. When we think we’ve got God figured out and have him placed firmly “on our side,” we don’t need a wooden idol – we’ve built one in our minds and hearts.

As a New Year resolution, let’s commit ourselves to rediscovering the true God in the days ahead. When we do, we’ll be reintroduced to a God who, while warm and familiar, is also mysterious and holy – who is infinitely more terrible and yet compassionate, more peaceful and yet dividing, more dreadful and yet more wonderful than we ever imagined. That’s a God worth worshiping!

Following the Signs

After all these months… I’ve finally written a sermon down again!  Actually, I’ve had a good bit of several sermons written down, but this is the first one I’ve had completely written out.  Call it a New Year’s Resolution!

Following the Signs

Sermon: Epiphany 2 (C)

January 14, 2007

John 2:1-11

 The lectionary this week takes us headlong into the season of Epiphany.  Epiphany begins with the celebration of the coming of the Wise Men, but in the church year, Epiphany celebrates the life and ministry of Jesus. 

 We’re used to looking at the bookends of Jesus’ ministry: We’ve celebrated his birth, at lent and Easter we’ll lament his death and celebrate his resurrection.  But here, in Epiphany, we can settle down and look squarely at this man Jesus and what he did in between those bookends… what is, to me, one of the most important things about Jesus coming at all – the fact that he was HERE.

 The Gospels agree on the first act of Jesus’ public ministry.  Although the accounts differ, the writers agree that Jesus’ first public act was his baptism.  We celebrated that last week on Baptism of the Lord Sunday, and celebrated in an appropriate way, by baptizing three young ladies into our church.

 After Jesus’ baptism, however, the Gospel accounts are jumbled.  Jesus goes on to do a lot of different things.  But in John, where the lectionary takes us this year, we see that Jesus ministry is organized around a series of “signs.”

 Now we’re used to signs, aren’t we?  We see signs all over the place, every day.  Signs on the road tell us what’s coming up – a curve in the road, a highway splitting off, a railroad crossing, a traffic light.  Signs in towns and cities tell us what’s inside – a gas station or a library.  We have a sign outside that tells what this building is used for.

 In fact, there are so many signs in our world that we sometimes miss them.  It’s not that we’re ignoring them on purpose… they’ve just become commonplace, and we forget to pay attention.  Like the speed limit signs I told you about a few months back.  They’d become so ordinary that I forgot to pay close attention to them – and there were consequences.

 I had several good passages to choose from this morning, but the one I chose is the passage from John’s Gospel about Jesus turning the water into wine.  It’s not the specialness of this passage that drew me to it, but the ordinariness of it – the fact that there’s so much commonplace about it.

John makes a big deal out of this miracle.  You’d think it was David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear or something so significant as that.  John uses the word “sign” here, a phrase he uses very carefully.  Other signs include:

• Healing a boy who was about to die
• Feeding five thousand people
• Raising Lazarus from the dead

 So how does this one fit in?  This miracle, in comparison with the others, is surprisingly ordinary.

 First, it is an ordinary event, a wedding banquet.  Weddings, in the ancient world and in Jewish culture, were a big deal.  Jewish weddings are still events that last several days, and are full of traditions and rituals that are central to Jewish society.  When you got an invitation to a wedding, it was almost an insult to turn it down.  And it was almost FOOLISH to turn it down: When you went to a wedding, it was something like going to an all-inclusive resort or spa for a few days.  The host of the party was required to find a place for everyone to stay, made sure everyone was fed for the duration of the event.  Sometimes, the host even provided clothing for the guests to wear during the wedding.  It was a BIG deal, and the reputation of the host and his family rode on how well the guests were taken care of. 

 That’s why it was such a big deal that the wine ran out.  When you had all these guests that you were supposed to take care of, when you fell down on the job, it was almost an insult to THEM.  The host’s job was to make sure everyone had EVERYTHING they wanted, and if the host failed, it would reflect on his family’s reputation for weeks, years… even generations.  And when something ran out, you couldn’t just run down to the supermarket or the ABC store to get some more. 

 Commentators have deduced that because Mary knew about the wine running out, and because she was so concerned about it, that she and Jesus might have been related to the host in some way.  Her concern wasn’t that people have more to drink so they could get drunk.  Wine was to the ancient culture like sweet tea is to modern Southern culture – you just HAVE to have it.  Her concern was not that people are having a good time and getting drunk – her concern was for the reputation of the host and his family.

 But the point is, it was an ordinary event.  Jesus doesn’t come here to do a miracle.  This is not a speaking engagement for him.  For Jesus, this is an everyday event – a time to sit back, chat with friends, laugh with family, have some good food and drink together.  It was a normal, everyday event.

 Second, it was simply and quietly done.  It’s almost done “under the table,” in fact.  There is no dramatic flourish, no dramatic pulling the veil away to uncover something.  Jesus doesn’t stand up and give everyone the best wine, “on the house.”  There isn’t a big deal made at the time, and in fact it seems that hardly anyone knows about it.  The steward and host know something has happened, but don’t know who has done it or how.  Only Jesus, the disciples, the servants and Mary know what has happened.  And yet John records it as a significant “sign.”

 Finally, it was ordinary in that, like the rest of normal life, it was unplanned.  Mary comes to Jesus with the problem, and he says something like, “That’s none of my business.  It’s not time yet.”

 It’s not that Jesus’ time came between the time he said this and the time he did the miracle.  He didn’t say, “My hour has not yet come…” and then, BEEP BEEP, his watch goes off and he says, “Oh!  Now it’s here!”  Jesus didn’t come here to do a miracle.  He didn’t expect to do anything special at all.

 In short, this was an ordinary event that suddenly became extraordinary… but there was no huge deal made out of it.  This first sign came and went as calmly as the steward tasting the new wine and shrugging his shoulders.  But obviously, since it’s recorded here, this “sign” had significance to someone.

 Which leads us to look more closely, perhaps, at the meaning of a sign.  Because I believe that “signs” are not just something that happened a few times in John’s Gospel.  I think God places signs in our lives today.  In fact, I think there are lots of them… so many that we may tend to miss them from time to time.  You may have written down one of those signs just a few minutes ago, and as we talk about signs I want you to think of that sign you wrote down, and the other ones in your life.

 First, a sign is a neat thing, but it’s not the most important thing.

 But signs do serve, especially in pictures, to encapsulate an event for us.  If you go to a National Park, you’ll see a beautifully carved sign at the entrance.  And these signs have become so popular as tourist attractions in themselves that the Park Service has put parking lots by the signs.  There’s something strange about that.  But if you went to the Grand Canyon with some friends, and took a picture together with them in front of the sign, it would be a reminder to you of a greater experience.  You’d put that picture in a frame in your home or on your desk, and when you see it you remember the experience.  You don’t just remember the cool sign – you remember the whole trip, just by looking at that sign.

 Now imagine you’re opening one of Tanya’s scrapbooks, and you open to a page and see one of those pictures of us in front of a sign.  And you turn the page… and there’s nothing more from the trip.  “What about the pictures of the canyon?” you ask.

 “Oh, we didn’t actually GO to the canyon.  We just took a picture at the sign.”

“You didn’t go to the canyon?!”

 “No, we went up to the sign, felt the intricate carvings.  We thought about how talented someone must have been to carve such a sign.  Then we took lots of pictures of it and went home.”

 You’d think we were not quite right.  The sign is not the point.  It’s what the sign points TO that’s important.

 In the same way, the signs Jesus did are not things for us to stare and wonder at.  We don’t have records of the miracles just so we can say, “Wow, Jesus turned water into wine!  How cool is that?”  We look BEYOND those miracles and see what God is saying: 

 “I provide for all your needs, even the little ones that make a big difference.” 

 “I can use anything to do something special.”

 “Despite what you think sometimes, I really am working in your world.”

 And it’s the same way with the signs God places in our lives.  God doesn’t just heal us so we can say, “look, God can make me well again!”  It points us to something else God is telling us, something greater.

 The second thing about signs is that they make something special or significant out of something ordinary.  The signs point out that what looks like just an average highway is really the entrance to a National Park.  What looks like a normal road is really the road we turn on to get to Victoria.  What looks like just another brick building is Kenbridge Baptist Church.  What looks like an average home is really the home where so-and-so was born.  Then suddenly, what was ordinary becomes extraordinary. 

 God uses the ordinary to do something extraordinary.  God places signs in our world and in our lives, but they’re buried in the ordinary.  In fact, sometimes they may even seem hidden, and we’ll miss them if we’re not looking.  Look at some of the ordinary ways God placed signs in people’s lives:

• Burning bush
• Water from a rock
• Water into wine
• Fishes and loaves

 There are so many signs that we probably miss lots of them along the way.  And Jesus did so many signs that we don’t have a record of them all.  John records a few, but then at the end of his Gospel he writes that Jesus did so many other signs that the world could not contain them if we wrote them down.  But what made these signs significant, probably, is that they were significant to John himself – who certainly seems to have been an eyewitness.

 Which leads me to the final thing we can see about signs – they are personal.  They don’t mean the same thing every time, and they likely don’t mean the same thing to every person.  They are personal and individual. 

 When I look at the picture of me and my family standing in front of the Grand Canyon sign, I don’t remember how beautiful that sign was.  In my mind, I look beyond that sign to the beautiful vistas, the gorgeous sunsets over the canyon.  I remember how arid the landscape is.  I remember the first time I’d been looking down with a little surprise, then suddenly caught perspective of how BIG it really is.  That’s what I see when I look at that sign. 

 If you haven’t been to the Grand Canyon, you probably think of pictures you’ve seen.  If you have been, you have your own wealth of experiences and memories.  That sign means something different to every one of us – something significant and special that is ours alone. 

 Notice that John doesn’t say what this sign means.  It means something different to each person who was there.  To Jesus, it may have been confirmation – maybe his hour HAD come.  To the disciples, we see that they came to believe and trust Jesus a little more strongly.  Who knows what it meant to the servants who poured that water?  It was the same sign, but it meant something different to each person.  It didn’t have the same effect on everyone.  In fact, Jesus’ later signs produce dramatically different effects – Jesus’ raising Lazarus from the dead inspired true faith in some, but to the Pharisees it was the nail in the coffin… they begin making plans to kill him.

 In fact, there are many signs that seem to be made just for us – signs God places in our lives that others may not see. 

 So my question for myself this morning, and my question for you as well, is this:  What do we do, what HAVE we done, with the signs God has given to us?

 We can react many different ways to signs we see on the road.  We may see that “curvy road” sign, but do we ignore it, driving straight ahead into the river?

 Or do we commit the opposite error, and stop and stare at the beautiful and perfect sign sitting by the road?

 Or, more dangerously, do we see it, but stop paying attention to it?  Do we turn the extraordinary back into the ordinary – turn the wine back into water, as William Willimon has put it?  Do we stop paying attention to the signs God places in our paths and allow them to become ordinary again, losing the power they have to guide, teach, and inspire us?