Blog Archives - St Pauls UCC New Orleans

The Truth of our Experience

3/28/2017

At the present moment, our society, our nation, is engaged in a debate about the meaning of Truth, about the importance of facts. For months now we’ve been hearing people throw around phrases like fake news, and alternative facts. This debate revolves around our understanding of Truth. What comes first, what is more essential, our ideological framework, our worldview, or the facts of our existence as we experience them? Should our experience change our worldview, or should our worldview change our experience of reality? The present example, the source of our new phrase, “alternative facts,” was the size of the crowd at this year’s inauguration. If you are convinced that Donald Trump is leading a historic popular movement with broad based support, you may, like Mr. Trump himself, believe that the crowd was the biggest ever. If the facts, the photos, the official counts, don’t support your belief, then you simply look for alternative facts to support your conclusion. What is true is what you already certain of, and if the facts do not support it, then they must be rejected.
The Pharisees were the dominant Jewish sect in first century Palestine. The worldview of the Pharisees included the belief that the Mosaic law was final and absolute. Furthermore, it was adherence to this law that brought salvation to individuals and to the nation of Israel. They had based this worldview on their holy texts, on the traditions of the elders, and on their own well-reasoned arguments and interpretations of these texts. The Pharisees were well trained, well educated, and they possessed a great a deal of authority in judging the political and religious questions of the Jewish people. If there was a question, the Pharisees knew the answer. It had already been given in the law, and they had been trained to properly understand and apply this law.
Jesus was not a great respecter of human authority. In fact his habit of going around challenging the authority of the Pharisees and the scribes, and the Romans, ended up getting him in a great deal of trouble. Jesus had a great many conflicts with the Pharisees but the story we heard this morning from John is a great one.
As Jesus and his disciples were walking one day, they came upon a man who was born blind. The disciples asked Jesus to weigh in on the contemporary Jewish debate, about whether physical ailments were punishments for the sin of the person, or for the sin of their parents. “Rabbi, who sinned,” they asked, “this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus responds by rejecting the premise that the man’s blindness was any kind of punishment. Rather he says, “It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him.” And right away Jesus brings confirms the truth of his statement, by spitting in the dirt, making mud, spreading on the man’s eyelids and sending him to the Pool of Siloam to bathe. There at the pool, when the man washes the mud from his eyes, he is able to see. The darkness in which he has lived is lifted, through the light of Christ, the work of God, this man, born blind, now sees.
In 2010, I was a confused, somewhat lost graduate student, contemplating if ministry might be the calling on my life. After a year of studying religion with the idea that I would become a professor, I had begun to explore changing to the vocational track, training to become a minister instead. I took the plunge, switch programs, and was immediately thrown into the fire. In my very first semester on this vocational track, I had to find a church to work in as an intern. This prospect terrified me. Not that I’m scared of churches, rather, I was insecure about my calling. And working at church made that calling to ministry feel real. I was not sure that I was up to it, not sure that I was supposed to be there, not sure that I was worthy of pursuing and practicing ordained Christian ministry. And then I met, my new mentor, the Pastor of New Spirit Community Church, where I work for a year as an intern. In one of our first meetings together, Rev. Jim Mitulski, told me something that I will never forget. He told me that there was nothing that I could do, that would make him not want to work with me. He offered to me the unconditional love and acceptance that we preach comes from Jesus the Christ. It was a revelatory moment me. Here I was, a sinner, a deeply flawed and conflicted young man, trying to build up my belief that I was worthy, and Jim, without studying a resume, without interrogating me, had simply begun our relationship by accepting me just as I was. I still didn’t know if I was up to ministry, if I could hack it, but I knew from that moment that I loved Jim Mitulski and I that I would do just about anything for him. And if he could see in me the potential for ministry. than maybe I could too. Jim kept believing in me, he kept supporting me, kept teaching me, kept loving me. And by the end of that year there wasn’t a doubt in my mind about what I was called to do. Jim had loved me into ministry, he changed my life, he helped me to see myself in a new light, the light of Christ.
As incredible as the healing of the blind man had been, it nevertheless stirred up a fair deal of controversy. You see, it just so happened that Jesus had performed this little miracle on the day of the Sabbath, the day of rest commanded by the law. So, the people presented the man born blind to the Pharisees, the authorities on all legal matters. The Pharisees asked him how he had received his sight, and he tells them what happened, how Jesus healed him. But this is just too much for the Pharisees to believe. They have already come into conflict with Jesus, have already decided that he is not from God, but is rather a blasphemous sinner. And then, this supposed healing, took place on the Sabbath, in violation of God’s law. Certainly then, Jesus was a sinner, and God would not do good works through one that broke His law. The facts that the man born blind presented to them could not accepted, because they contradicted the Pharisee’s worldview, their ideology. And so the Pharisees began searching for “alternative facts.” They decided that man must be lying, that he had never been blind at all.
So, they call his parents forward, who of course, confirm that he is their son, and that he was born blind. Again, the Pharisees call forward the man born blind and question him. This time they ask that he agree with them that Jesus is indeed a sinner. To this the man responds, “Whether he is a sinner or no, I know not; one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.” The man sets aside their concern about Jesus’ sinfulness, focusing instead on the surpassing importance of the miracle. He is essentially, I don’t know if he is wrong or right, but if getting my sight is wrong, I don’t want to be right. Gaining his vision was a work of God, of that he was sure. To this the Pharisee’s fall back upon their certainty, their Mosaic law, their authority. “We know that God spoke unto Moses, as for this man, we know not where he comes from… You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us.” The man was a sinner, as was Jesus, as such they had no authority with which to question the Pharisees. And with this the Pharisee’s cast him out, dismissing his testimony, dismissing the miracle that was worked in him, refusing to see the work of God right before their eyes.
There were and there are still, a great number of Christians who would dismiss my testimony about Rev. Jim Mitulski as well. Rev. Mitulski is HIV Positive. He is an openly gay Christian minister. For many, this idea, that of an openly gay minister, is a contradiction in terms. There are prohibitions against homosexual relations in the book of Leviticus, there are also parts of Paul’s letters, which seemingly condemn same sex relationships as well. There is also a long tradition of interpreting this texts as an authoritative and final prohibition on homosexuality in any form at any time. There are many among my collegues in ministry, and our fellow Christians, who would dismiss Jim as a sinner, as an abomination. There are many who would call his practice of ministry as an openly gay man blasphemous. They would likely question, what, if anything, I could have learned from such a sinner.
I’m aware of the tradition of excluding and condemning gay people in the church. I’m also aware of the prohibitions against homosexuality in the Bible, though I would debate their authority and their common interpretation. But my belief in God’s working through Rev. Jim Mitulski, has little to nothing to do with these things. My belief in Rev. Mitulski’s Christian ministry is the fact that he gave me sight. I was blind to my potential, and now I see. I was blind to my calling for ministry, and now I see. I was unaware of how to practice ministry with integrity, honesty, and humility and now I see. Through the love and acceptance of Jim Mitulski I have come to be what I am today. And I am certain that such love, such acceptance, and the miracle of my new vision, are the workings of God in Christ Jesus. If that love, that acceptance, that miracle, are wrong, then I don’t want to be right.
After the Pharisees had cast him out, Jesus looked for the man and found him. He asked him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man was apparently unaware of this Messianic figure, ignorant of the prophecies about him, but nevertheless willing to believe whatever Jesus told him. “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” “You have seen him, and it is he who speaks to you.” And the man said, “Lord, I believe.”
You may not agree with me on my stance about homosexuality in the church, and that is alright, we can disagree and still be in fellowship with one another. But I want each of you to remember the end of this story from John. Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Messiah, reveals himself not to those who rely soley on their holy texts, on their traditions, and on their own expertise. Instead, Jesus the Christ, reveals himself to the man who was daring enough to trust his own experience of God. Jesus reveals himself to the man that defied the certainty of the authorities, the man who recognized the miracles of God in his life. We are all in the same situation, we all must decide for ourselves what is the will of God for us and our lives. Tradition and scripture are indispensable guides in this effort. But so is our life experience. So too is our own understanding of God’s working in our lives, the ways in which God reveals Herself to each of us. The Bible and the tradition of the church can, as they did to the Pharisees, blind us to God’s miraculous workings in the world. It is my prayer that we will find the wisdom to discern God’s workings in our lives, that we will find the faith to trust our experiences of God’s love, acceptance, and liberation, and that we will be granted the courage to stand on our convictions, on our experience of God in Christ, and speak our truth to the world. May it be so. Amen.

Transcending Temptation and Sin

3/9/2017

You may have noticed that the devil plays a rather prominent role in our scripture readings this morning. If you worship here regularly, you may also have noticed that I don’t spend a lot of time preaching about the devil. I preach about love, joy, peace, and hope, a lot. I preach about God’s love for all the world and all people. I preach often about how Jesus Christ has called us to humble service for our neighbors and for the most vulnerable among us. But, I don’t spend much time at all talking about the devil.
One reason that I don’t speak much about the devil is that the devil plays a very minor role in the books of scripture. Apart from these passages, only one of which specifically names the devil, there is also a mention of Satan in the book of Job. However, in the popular imagination, in our cultural understanding of Christianity, the devil looms very large. Despite having no physical description in the bible itself, the word devil, immediately brings to our minds a short, red, hooved fellow, holding a pitchfork, and sporting horns and a tail. In our modern western culture this cartoonish character is widely assumed to be a central character in the Christian story, he is elevated to the role of arch-enemy of God, a sort of evil counter to the Holy Trinity.
Personally, I don’t believe that this cultural understanding of the devil as a rival power to God is at all biblical, or for that matter, particularly Christian. The Christian faith is monotheistic, there is only one God, and that God is good. Christianity does not pose a dualistic theology: there is no rival power to God. In the vast majority of Christian thought, evil does not have an independent existence, it is simply the distance from, or the absence of God.
However, the devil does indeed appear in our readings today, so he is indeed, a part of the bible, and of the Christian faith. How then, should we understand this character? If he is not the red-clad arch enemy of God, who is he? And what are we to learn from him?
Reinhold Neibhur was one of the most important theologians of the twentieth century, and he also happens to be a part of our history, he was a member of the German Evangelical Church, a graduate of Eden Seminary, both now part of the United Church of Christ. In his writing on the character of the devil in scripture, Neibhur claims that the devil is a metaphor representing the fact that sin posits itself. What does this mean, that sin posits itself? Sin is generally understood as missing the mark, doing something in such a way that puts distance between yourself and God. So to say that sin, posits itself, is to say that sin proposes itself, it positions itself in our lives, it somehow is already there, already possible, already an option for us, without our having to bring it into the situation.
I’ve got a little story to illustrate my point here. Mr. George once told me a story about visiting his nieces and nephews. There were three little ones, the oldest a toddler, the youngest an infant. And as Mr. George was speaking to their parents, one of the older two took a toy from the youngest. Soon the two oldest babies were passing the toy back and forth and keeping it away from the youngest, who began to cry and scream. Not more than two years old and all by themselves they had come up with the idea to take something from another, to tease and taunt another person. These babies didn’t have to learn this behavior, they didn’t have to see someone else do it first, it was enough simply to see another baby with a toy. The idea of taking it, or taunting the baby, posited itself. Sin posits itself. So it is in the story of the serpent and Eve in Genesis. The serpent, often thought to represent the devil here, puts the idea of taking the fruit into Eve’s mind. There is no-one to teach Adam and Eve how to sin, how to misbehave, for they have no ancestors, no parents. But nonetheless the idea that they can do wrong, that they can distance themselves from God, the idea that they can sin, is already there with them in the garden. The serpent illustrates how sin, posits itself.
There is another piece of the popular conception of the devil with which I am not overly fond. This is the conception of the devil as the warden of a supernatural hell to which we may be condemned in the afterlife. Again, this idea of a supernatural punishment for sin in the afterlife, and the devil as the warden of this hell, has scant biblical evidence. Most of what Western Christianity envisions of hell comes from Dante’s Inferno and not the Bible itself. I don’t spend much time talking about this hell either. That is because I believe that it has most often been used to strike fear into people’s hearts, to scare them into believing. This practice seems greatly at odds with the God of the Bible who repeatedly tells us not to be afraid, the God who grants strength and courage. However, just as the devil can be understood in a healthy and helpful way, so too do I believe we can come to understand hell in a more productive fashion.
Hell describes what builds within a person the more they turn away from God, the further they fall into sin. Hell describes the way in which sin, builds upon itself, how one sinful action can lead to another, and another, and another, until sin becomes like a prison cell locking us away from God, from life, from truth, from beauty, from joy, and from God. One of the greatest illustrations of this human tendency is given in Fyodor Dostovesky’s novel, Crime and Punishment. In this book, the main character, is a poor student named Rodhya, who is struggling to pay his rent and keep up with his studies, and feeling pressure from his family. One day he makes a trip to pawn something to an old woman in the neighborhood, when the idea to rob her enters his mind. The entire novel is an exploration of how this evil thought begins to grow into an obsession, and then how Rodhya deals with himself after committing the crime. This one crime, of course, requires that he lie to cover his tracks. He becomes increasingly suspicious of others, and paranoid. Not only of the police, but also his friends, and eventually his family. His mental state deteriorates, he begins lashing out at his loved ones. His paranoia and his guilt overcome him and he is completely miserable. This is what I primarily understand Hell to represent: the tendency of sin to build within us, to warp our personalities and our lives, and to ultimately destroy us. Understood in this way, hell is an experience in this life, it is the ever increasing distance from God that results from our sin.
So, maybe the devil isn’t a short red hooved cartoon character, but rather an illustration of how sin is always already present in our minds. And maybe hell isn’t a fiery pit in the afterlife, but rather the epitome of human misery in this life. But when you think about, I haven’t actually given us much good news yet. Sin is ever present with us, it is a possibility in every moment of our lives, a possibility that we cannot eliminate. And to sin is to risk sinning more and more, and imprisoning yourself in a hell of your own misery. Ouch! That’s some dark and depressing stuff.
However, there is more to the Christian understanding of what it means to be human than just sin and evil. The Christian understanding of the human being, is that we are inherently contradictory, we are paradoxical beings. As a creation of God, human beings are good, just as all of God’s creation is good. Yet we are also capable of evil. In each and every moment of our lives we are capable of choosing to sin or not to sin. There is no person so good that they do not experience temptation, that they do not have the capacity for evil within them. At the same time, there is no person so evil, so enslaved to sin, that they do not have the capacity for good within them. Each and every human being is capable of incredible good, and unbelievable evil.
The Good News is that we have not been left to our own devices in this life. We have not been left to our power in making these choices between good and evil. The Christian Church proclaims that in Jesus Christ, God has taken on flesh and shared our common lot, our human lives. Immediately after he is baptized and before he begins his ministry, Jesus is taken into the wilderness where he begins to prepare himself with prayer and fasting. There in the wilderness we are told that devil visits him. There in the wilderness, God in Jesus Christ, experiences the human temptation to sin. Jesus is tempted to care only for his own well being, his own food, shelter and wealth. He is tempted to arrogance, to claiming the entirety of God’s prerogative to himself, and finally he is tempted with power, the power over others, the power of domination. In each instance, Jesus is able to resist the temptation, to defeat sin. Having experienced and overcome the temptation to sin, Jesus, and God, are now intimately familiar with sin, with the desire to miss the mark, to harm oneself, to place distance between yourself and God. From this point forward, the devil leaves Jesus, and his ministered to by angels. From here he goes on to preach repentance and forgiveness for sins, to offer the grace necessary to bridge the gap between the sinner and God, to proclaim a kingdom where God and the people are in perfect harmony.
This repentance, this grace, this kingdom are the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is not that sin does not exist. It does today and all days. It exists as a possibility for each of us in every moment, and it always bears the capability to drag us ever further from God. Rather the good news, is that God has promised us that the Holy Spirit, the very power of God, will be with us whenever we call upon it. The good news is that Jesus Christ, has defeated sin and death, and offers us grace in abundance. The good news is that whenever two or three of us are gathered in the name of Christ, Jesus is there with us. Empowering us, walking with us, loving us to greater life with God.
We come to church on Sunday, not because we want to celebrate our perfect goodness, our freedom from sin. Rather we come to church on Sunday to be reminded that sinners though we are, we are nevertheless loved by God. That God so loved us, that God took human form, experienced sin and death, defeated them, and promised to always be with us in our own struggle. We come here to be reminded that God has promised always to forgive us, always to show us mercy, always to lead us back to her. We come here on Sunday to be refreshed and renewed by the power of God so that we might meet the challenge of living our lives to the fullest. We come here on Sunday to remember that with God we need not fear sin, nor death. That with God we may bravely live lives full of joy, peace, hope, and love for our fellow human beings. That is the good news of the gospel, and that is my hope for us here at St. Paul’s during Lent: that we might use this season, to reflect on our own temptations and sin, that we might remember that temptation and sin are parts of human life, and that together with God and one another we may transcend temptation and sin, and we may live in and work towards the fulfillment of that glorious kingdom where all live in loving harmony with God.

Amen.