Rogue Reverend

Don’t Believe the Hype

When I was in high school, I was afraid of Russians. I had seen Red Dawn. I knew about the Cold War. I knew that Reagan had warned us, even the joke he told as he was doing a mic check, “My fellow Americans. I’m pleased to announce that I’ve signed legislation outlawing the Soviet Union. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

And although I had heard of it, I wasn’t afraid of AIDS. Yes, I knew that there were hundreds of people dying from it. Yes, I knew that it was contagious. But I was neither a homosexual nor a hemophiliac, so I thought I was safe. I do remember wondering what HIV was, and begin perplexed about how it began as a disease. I was taking biology at the time, so understanding the makeup of the disease was fascinating to me. But I didn’t have an opinion about the supposed justness of the disorder. I just thought that the people yelling about it being a gay disease were jerks.

I was certainly more afraid of Russians than I was of AIDS.

Now, 30 years later, I find that I’m not afraid of either Russians or AIDS. I know some lovely Russian people. They have their own economic woes. And, what do you know? They love their children, too. I also know some lovely people with HIV and AIDS. They, too, have their own woes. But AIDS doesn’t have to be a killer anymore. Now you can live with it, rather than die from it. Life with HIV and AIDS is about managing your health.

But wait. Is it true that HIV and AIDS are manageable? Or is that the same hype that we faced with Russia?

It is true that HIV and AIDS are manageable with medication and healthcare. I know people who have been diagnosed with HIV for 20+ years. Praise be. But they have access to medication and healthcare. And they are willing and able to wade through the bureaucracy that (even in this country!) it takes to have good healthcare.

But what about the ones who can’t do that? What about the individuals who don’t have a doctor down the street? What about those for whom the drugs aren’t available, and even if they were, are too expensive? What about the individuals where medical care is available but who have too many other issues to wade through to take a regular regimen of pills each day?

The CDC would have you believe the hype: that HIV and AIDS are under control. But it’s just hype. It’s as important as ever that there be access to medical care, access to drugs, and especially, access to HIV prevention services. It’s important for us to not believe the hype.

You can prevent HIV. Here’s how:

• Use condoms, consistently and correctly, every time you have sex.
• Do not share needles for intravenous drug use.
• Limit the number of sex partners you have.
• Get tested regularly and make sure your partners are tested, too.

You can help others prevent HIV, too. Encourage your local and state governments to provide needle exchange services and condoms through the local health department. Give out condoms on your own! Donate money to the International Women’s Health Coalition and Society for Women and AIDS in Africa-Cameroon (SWAAC). You can be the difference, if only you don’t believe the hype.

Advent-ure

I receive a letter from the Universe each day. Honestly, some days I totally miss it, not even paying attention to the chips of wisdom that show up in my inbox. But today… today…

Taking massive action on massive dreams amidst massive uncertainties, Lia, is pretty much where everyone had to start.

And yep. I’ve got ‘em.

Massive uncertainties. Massive dreams. Which means I have to take massive action.

I can’t help but ask myself, all during Advent, “What would Mary do?” She certainly faced massive uncertainties—would Joseph put her away, would the baby be normal, would her parents disown her, would everyone think she was crazy? But did she ever have a massive dream—to be the mother of a special child, the one who the angel said, “will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High,” who would reign over David’s kingdom forever.

The massive action? It was just to say yes, wasn’t it? Mary didn’t have to really do much, but she had to agree to move forward, to go where the Advent-ure led her, to show up every day to her life.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And Yes.

A Tale of Two Idols (a sermon)

Exodus 32:1-34; Luke 18:18-27

Our gospel lesson is the story known as the rich young ruler. This young man has wealth and power, and thinks that he is faithful. He’s followed all the commandments, or at least the ones that Jesus has listed here. Did you note the ones that Jesus listed? He listed adultery, murder, stealing, honoring parents, and lying. That’s important because it makes us ask why did Jesus leave out the others? Can you remember them? According to the Jewish understanding, it would be no other gods, no images, honor the name, and the Sabbath. So the commandments that the Rich Young Ruler was good at was the relational ones, but not the ones about his relationship with God.

But what does Jesus ask him to give up? Jesus asks him to give up all he owns, and the security and power that go along with wealth.

The sin of the rich young ruler is idolatry, putting something in front of his relationship with God.

Idolatry is a sin we don’t talk much about. What is it exactly? The dictionary says that it is extreme adoration, love or reverence for something. Maimonides, the great Jewish physician, scientist and philosopher, who lived from 1135-1204, holds that idolatry is the worst sin, partly because it is the first in the 10 Commandments (You shall have no gods other than me), and that idolatry is another name for ignorance. And ignorance is the prime source of evil.

Let’s look at our Hebrew text a little more deeply.

The Jews are in the wilderness, eating manna everyday. They hate the austerity measures under which they are living. Moses is on the mountain, ostensibly receiving the 10 Commandments, and the people are grumbling. Moses is late returning home. Talmudic response says that Moses had told them he would be away for 40 days, but they counted the day he left. The idea is that he may only be one day late. But their assumption is that they have lost their leader. So they go to Aaron. And they ask him to lead.

One thing that Jewish scholars believe is that there were only about 1,000 people who gather their gold, who worship the golden calf, and who move from there to the partying afterwards.

They beg Aaron, make a god for them. And as soon as he fashions one out of their gold, they exclaim, “It’s this god who has lead us out of Israel.”

Talk about revisionist historians! They don’t even remember that just a few months prior to this, their God was Jehovah, God above all Gods!

I’d like for you to note something about this 1% of the population—they have wealth, and they are easily swayed into idolatry. Perhaps we can even make the argument that they were worshipers of the Egyptian gods back in Egypt, which may have helped them accrue their wealth.

So these Hebrew people have traded in the God in a whirlwind, the column behind them, that split the Red Sea, set them free, gave them manna, and has promised a promised land for a golden calf. A golden calf. According to scholars, though, this may not be a “trading in” of their god, at all. It may be a summoning of God. The Egyptian gods always had an animal to sit upon, and perhaps these few people are building an animal for God where God can sit.

Ultimately, though, the Hebrew people were looking for a quick fix. They were scared, tired of eating manna, worried about their leadership, and crying out for God to fix everything. Or for Aaron to fix everything. So they made for themselves an idol.

And where are the 99%?

When Moses returns, this is what the text tells us:

When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. And he took the calf the people had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it.

He said to Aaron, “What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?”

“Do not be angry, my lord,” Aaron answered. “You know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’ So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”

Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the LORD, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him.

Then he said to them, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the LORD today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.”

The next day Moses said to the people, “You have committed a great sin. But now I will go up to the LORD; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.”

So Moses went back to the LORD and said, “Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. 32 But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.”

The LORD replied to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book. Now go, lead the people to the place I spoke of, and my angel will go before you. However, when the time comes for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin.”

And the LORD struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made.

The 99% suffered because of the 1%.

I think that the 99% suffered because they really wanted a share of the idol. Even though they didn’t have gold to help make the calf, or get to join in the bacchanalian revelries, I think they wanted to. Because it’s fun to be part of the 1%. Now the Hebrew people are not nearly as sophisticated as we are. So when they reach for an idol, they’re happy with a little golden calf and a party. What about us?

We want a computer screen that’s tiny, a million songs in our pocket, a new car, a brand-spanking new house. And we’re not happy with manna either. We want boutique foods, boutique brands, boutique entertainment.

Here’s the deal, folks. I’m going to put it as clearly as I think I can.

We, as a nation, have become the rich young ruler, unwilling to give up our creature comforts, our greed and our desire for things. We have become the Hebrew people, seeking a quick fix to a much larger problem. If we build an idol, God will come and save us. If we have a new computer, we won’t feel so bad.

Stuff is our new idol.

All week I’ve been thinking about this. All week I’ve been thinking about myself as POOR. And trust me, I’m poor. At least cash poor. But really? I live in a very nice home. I drive a very nice car (if it has a bit of mileage on it). I have new clothes. I eat very well, perhaps even too well. And I, too, am looking to Aaron, my government, to help me deal with this little bit of discomfort.

What am I willing to give up? What am I willing to do without?

As I sifted through this tale of two idols, what do they have in common? The rich young ruler? First, is to quiet the insecurity and fear that they both feel. The rich young ruler fears that he won’t have a relationship with God, The Hebrew people fear, too, that their God has gone away. They both are missing their security.

Going back to the the Jewish scholar Maimonades, who explains that idolatry is, at its heart, ignorance, and out of ignorance comes evil. The rich young ruler was ignorant of his relationship with God, and so therefore enthralled with his money. We have seen what happens with people who are enthralled with money. The Hebrew people were ignorant of who their God was, so they abandon God, and worship a golden calf—with no power and no strength, what would a golden calf do? And out of that golden calf, the people start to “eat and drink and revel,” meaning they turn from their work and their centeredness to party instead.

And we? We turn to government to fix all our problems, to help us avoid austerity, and instead to keep our fancy things. We look to corporations to make us happy, to help us avoid suffering.

What I would tell the rich young ruler and the Hebrew people? That suffering is part of life, and avoiding suffering always causes more pain. That although things are not what they were before, they may still be good, in a different way, again.

Trust the process. The Hebrew people face a much leaner life for 40 years after the golden calf incident. And while we don’t know what happened to the rich young ruler, we can bet that he felt more loneliness and worry about his life. But the process eventually wins out. Things may be bad for a while, but they will get better.

And mostly, to trust God, even when it seems as if God isn’t there. God was still with the Hebrew people. They just didn’t notice, because there weren’t any big lights, miracles or loud crashes. God was still with the rich young ruler. He just couldn’t see it for the objects of desire around him. And God is still with us.

May it ever be.

Easter: I Believe

Matthew 28:1-10
Colossians 3:1-4

A church member and I had a conversation about Kathy Kelly’s talk on Afghanistan that influenced me greatly this week. He said something like, “I thought she was right about getting out of Afghanistan, but she didn’t give us a clear directive of how to accomplish that, how to assist the Afghan people in getting out from under our occupation.” That conversation led me to think about how frustrated I am in doing small acts for justice that don’t seem to add up to anything big.

How can I, short of vandalism and violence, stop a corporat-ocracy? And even a bit of vandalism won’t make much difference. And the war machine could probably easily quell the violence. That is my frustration. Perhaps we are so numbed out to the pain of others, we are so happy being entertained by our televisions and the internetz, that we don’t even believe that we can make a difference in the big picture. We don’t even believe that our individual lives matter.

If we don’t believe that our lives matter, then can our deaths matter?

And if our deaths don’t matter, can resurrection matter?

I believe in resurrection. I actually believe in The Resurrection. I believe that Jesus died on a cross. I believe that he laid in a tomb for three days. I believe that Mary went to the tomb to take care of the body, and that she saw Jesus standing outside of it, and that he called her name, and she knew it was him. I believe in The Resurrection.

There was a day that I didn’t know that I believed in the resurrection. I thought that perhaps it wouldn’t matter. I thought that perhaps Jesus, the Christ could have significance without the resurrection. I thought that perhaps his life could have meaning without his death and his death could have meaning the resurrection. Mind you, I believe that you can be a Christian and not believe that Jesus died on a cross and not believe in the resurrection.

I know you can.

I just don’t.

I believe in resurrection.

I think it’s built into my bones. I see it in the seasons, from winter’s death to spring’s life. I see it in the way I cry when a character in a book or a movie is so close to death, then comes back. (and, yes, I always cry). I see it in the way people cheer for the team that is on the bottom when they come back to when the game. I see it in our myths, like the Green Man who represents the coming of Spring, which may have morphed into the story of the Green Knight, who comes back after death.

I even see it in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In Season 5, she says:

Dawn, listen to me. Listen. I love you. I will always love you. But this is the work that I have to do. Tell Giles… tell Giles I figured it out. And, and I’m okay. And give my love to my friends. You have to take care of them now. You have to take care of each other. You have to be strong. Dawn, the hardest thing in this world… is to live in it. Be brave. Live. For me.

Then she enters the pit of hell instead of her little sister Dawn. But she comes back. She resurrects. It’s a myth that is so deeply in our souls, that it makes me think that we need it. We need to believe that resurrection happens.

I think we especially need it here and now.

This week I read a book called Married to Bhutan. The author, Linda Leaming writes:

The Bhutanese are more comfortable with death than Americans, and Buddhism teaches that we should think of death at least five times every day. We in the U.S. are less likely to think about death, even when we see it in the movies, because what we see of it is not really death. We get our death simulated, or pumped with embalming fluid, dressed up, and laid out for viewing. It’s on television or YouTube. As a result, we’re not on very good terms with death. This is understandable–it’s about our fear of the unknown–but the experience of death is exactly the opposite in Bhutan. It is embraced as a natural function, a positive step, a way to move on to the next life, a chance to spin the big karmic wheel. (p. 187)

Don’t we desperately need to know that death isn’t the end? And yet, knowing that it’s not the end is not enough. Pie-in-the-sky theology, meaning that it’s not just “Life sucks here and now, but soon and very soon you’ll feel better because you’ll be in heaven, and all the terrible things that people did to you will be over, and you’ll experience heaven, even though your life on earth was so tough,” well, it is just not sufficient. The fact that I’m going to live on after this life doesn’t mean that THIS life can be unjust, unhealthy, sinful, and evil for anyone.

But what does it mean?

Linda Leaming says that one of the things believing in reincarnation means is that you don’t have to work so hard here. You can work hard at what you can do, but there’s plenty of time to finish the work.

She also says that believing in reincarnation means that we can really take time to learn, because learning in this life will help our work in the next life. Whatever we learn in this life, we will have already learned in the next.

And also, she says that believing in reincarnation teaches us to prepare for the next life— there’s a saying that indicates that people who meditate the most are the ones who will reincarnate a little better.

Now, mind you, I know that reincarnation isn’t resurrection. The resurrection says to us that God has conquered death, once and for all. Jesus’ resurrection also says to us that there is life after death. The Bible is not very clear about what kind of life that will be, other than Jesus telling us that there will be mansions, and John telling us his revelation that there will be streets of gold and gates of pearl. And many have interpreted John to be talking about heaven when he says, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” At the most we can garner from that is that at some point pain and injustice ends.

But is that heaven? Can we be in heaven if our loved ones, and even people who we don’t love, are suffering here?

We see from Jesus’ resurrection that life goes on after death. But Jesus’ work from the earth isn’t finished at death. In his afterlife, he comforts others, he exposes the Scripture to them, he teaches them what kind of work to do. Heck, he even does one miracle. All things that he had done here in his life before death. It’s a different kind of work, but it’s still work.

What if our work isn’t done at death? And what if we have more time? More time to help justice happen, more time to love. More time to understand.

Buddhism teaches that we should talk about death 5 times a day. How would this change us? Would it convince us that we have work to do in this life? Would it also give us a reprieve that we don’t have to do it all in this life? Would it push us in our commitment to do justice? Would it help us understand that our lives are too short to fix everything? Can it give us hope?

Pete Rollins, a theologian from Ireland writes:

Without equivocation or hesitation I fully and completely admit that I deny the resurrection of Christ. This is something that anyone who knows me could tell you, and I am not afraid to say it publicly, no matter what some people may think…

I deny the resurrection of Christ every time I do not serve at the feet of the oppressed, each day that I turn my back on the poor; I deny the resurrection of Christ when I close my ears to the cries of the downtrodden and lend my support to an unjust and corrupt system.

However there are moments when I affirm that resurrection, few and far between as they are. I affirm it when I stand up for those who are forced to live on their knees, when I speak for those who have had their tongues torn out, when I cry for those who have no more tears left to shed.

But I’d like to add more to Pete’s words.

I deny the resurrection when I don’t take a Sabbath, breathing in the beauty, love, and life around me.

I deny the resurrection when I take myself too seriously, and I forget that joy and laughter are an important part of living day to day.

I deny the resurrection when I spend all my time looking for the big action that will make a big difference in the world, and forget to do the small actions that bring peace to individuals.

I deny the resurrection when I believe that it is on my shoulders to make the world a different place, and forget that God can’t even make it whole. I can only do my part.

Jesus came to this world, walked among the women and men of the first century and changed their lives in a huge way. He changed their lives in such a way, that at the end, some were willing to follow him to death. Instead, he died for them. And then he came back, to prove to them that death is not the end. It is the beginning of something different—not wholly different, but different enough.

May we go forward this Spring, when new life is all around us, not denying the resurrection, but confirming and affirming the resurrection.

Married to Bhutan, a review

I have to confess that I bought this book because I have a six-degree separation from Linda Leaming, and I felt like it would be the nice thing to do. My so-called good deed turned into a learning experience, a spiritual journey, and a book that I just couldn’t put down.

Leaming writes:

We get our death simulated, or pumped with embalming fluid, dressed up, and laid out for viewing. It’s on television or YouTube. As a result, we’re not on very good terms with death. This is understandable–it’s about our fear of the unknown–but the experience of death is exactly the opposite in Bhutan. It is embraced as a natural function, a positive step, a way to move on to the next life, a chance to spin the big karmic wheel. (p. 187)

The magic that Leaming sees in every moment in Bhutan, whether in death or in daily events is contagious. I’m not so sure I want to go to Bhutan (mostly because of their lack of creature comforts), but I want to share in that magic.

Read this book!