Believe or Do, Is That The Question?

This was a wild and unruly message to write. I didn't mean for it to be - I thought it would be a tidy little thing to share with my friends at Be Church in Alamance County, NC. I know many of the Be Church people from FaithWalk UMC (The Walk), where I did my first field education at Duke Divinity. It's the place where I got connected to Peacehaven Community Farm. It's the place I first had an inkling that preaching might be something I could do. It was very important to my formation! The Walk is closed now but I was thrilled to visit Be Church and see all those wonderful people again.

But there were other wonderful people this week, too. Lisa, Jenny, and Holly especially. I was sick with pneumonia all week and these people filled my thoughts and my computer screen. Their fingerprints are all over this message. It grew and grew and as I write this on Saturday night I am wondering how it will come out tomorrow morning. Hopefully I will get a good recording so you can compare the text below with what I actually said.

The lectionary texts for the week are:
Exodus 24:12-18
Psalm 2 (or you might prefer Psalm 99?)
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9 (the Transfiguration story, and the basis for the message below)

Come Holy Spirit. Transform us from believers to doers, from doers to believers. Tickle our ears, touch our hearts, and make us more like you. Amen.

TRANSFIGURATION.

What a word. I told someone who is not real big on church that I was working on a Transfiguration Sunday message and she sent me a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon… about transmogrification. Another word tossed into the bin of long words best used in special situations like cartoons. And church.

But this is Transfiguration Sunday, and that is a big deal because it is the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, and Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, and Lent is a very big deal in the church year. So…

What on earth is Transfiguration?

Is it the same as transmogrification? Or the more familiar transformation?

Well, first of all, transmogrification is transformation IN A SURPRISING MANNER. So if we know what transformation is, then we can know what transmogrification is… same thing, just in a surprising way.

But transformation is something you probably kind of know about. Take a moment… think about it. What is transformation? Turn to somebody near you and tell them what you think it is.

And transfiguration. I will put aside the coyness and tell you that transfiguration is a change in form - in the figure - but not in the actual thing. It’s like taking off a mask. When Jesus was transfigured in today’s Gospel lesson he showed something real about himself that he had not shown routinely. Jesus did not become a different person or thing, Jesus just showed all the way who he really is – something he could not do before because people would be too weirded out.

And it freaked Peter, James, and John right out – even though they were the three that Jesus thought MIGHT be able to handle it:  his best friends.

And it transformed them! Proof?  Jesus said “don’t tell anybody” and even Peter, who could never stay quiet about anything – DID NOT TELL. At least not until a long time later.

Transformation. Changing. Becoming another thing – not just a revision, but a change in who we actually are in some way.

And that made me think of Creation. And The Fall. God created us in some way. You might say God DEEMED that we be a certain thing. But then The Fall came. The brokenness of the world. Regardless of the details, somehow we went from being good and in close relationship with God to being broken, and in broken relationship with God.

The same, but not.

But something else keeps happening, too. God does not leave us broken. God comes and DEEMS us again.

You might say, God REdeems us. Declares that we are another new thing.

So there is something constant in us, and for today’s purposes I’m going to say it is the image of God. If God is constant, and if we are the image of God, then that image in us must also be constant.

But everything else? Everything else is up for transformation.

The whole world – constantly being transformed.
                Constantly breaking – abuse, political games, sex trafficking, homelessness
                                 Constantly being redeemed – healed relationships, new loves, creative arts

Everything looks different from moment to moment, day to day, week to week.

But in people, the image of God is constant. We might bury it. We might decline to look for it. We might do everything we can to deny it in others. But it is there, and it is constant because God always stays the same.

*****

But what happens when churches forget that God – and the image of God in us – is the only thing that doesn’t change?

I’ll tell you what happens. People get very scared. They worry about losing the transformations they’ve already experienced – often in beautiful meaningful ways. And I can’t be certain, but I suspect that sometimes people like the way they’ve been transformed and they are afraid that God cannot love them as much if things change. That maybe somebody else will get loved better in that new system.

So they work hard to keep the shell constant and forget to notice the ways that we are all the same in the image of God. That God’s image can stay constant in us even if everything external changes.

And when that fear takes over, and a group feels things have to stay the same (in any way!) then that congregation stops living the transformation. The lose out on the gifts that a loving God shares with a much beloved people.

HERE’S AN EXAMPLE of how that can happen:

Before World War II there was a movement in Christianity called Liberal Christianity. It was very modern, very up-to-date. The leaders, like the Niebuhrs and a dude called Harnack were all about social justice, loving each other, getting to the KERNEL of God’s will in the world. Sounds great, right? But they went a little too far. They essentially opened the door to rejecting Jesus entirely.

They were convinced that humanity was evolving. That The War To End All Wars had, in fact, ended war. That people were going to just keep getting better and better.

But then… World War II. The Holocaust. Hitler’s people experimenting in horrific ways on human beings that it had deemed less than human. Rationing. Shortages and orphaned children. Horrors so terrible they were unimaginable, and in some people not imagining them, other people were exterminated in the most thoughtless and careless ways.

So much for human beings getting better and better.

So the fashions of theology shifted. A different group of European men, the most famous of whom was Karl Barth, called people to a deep sense of repentance. A move away from the agency of human beings to the complete sovereign nature of God. A move to God being the one who was important, and human beings always being in need of God’s love and grace.

As time passed, though… the wounds and horrors of WWII because less raw, less painful. But that idea of “it’s all God!” turned out to be kind of handy. “It’s all God, so I’m off the hook!” “It’s all God, so there really isn’t anything I can do.” Or my most un-favorite… “It’s all God, so go read the Bible and leave me alone.”

Younger people would come along with questions but the questions went unanswered. One of my friends, I’ll call her Holly, tells a story that she went to a church and was INTO it. But she became a teenager and had questions. Nobody seemed interested in engaging with her but they said “Go read the Bible!” So she did. But it didn’t help. For lot of reasons, reading the Bible on her own just wasn’t enough.

In fact, she realized at some point that Google had more answers to her questions than the people at her church. So she decided that what the people at her church called God was actually just people being kind, and that the God of the church was not interesting to her. She would go straight to people and skip all the inconveniences that God brought.

She also told me that she wondered what might have happened if somebody HAD answered her questions and engaged with her. But it seemed, at least when we talked, that the time for those conversations was over.

For Holly, the church was a place that had forgotten that it was being transformed. It got stuck. In not allowing the church to transform with the people, some people like Holly were left out.

The thing is, Holly HAD actually read the Bible. She had been faithful to her congregation until they stopped being faithful to her. So all the things that church offered – the history and community, the opportunity for repentance and forgiveness – was lost to Holly and to many others of Holly’s generation.

Holly and many others in her generation decided they were atheists. That the God of those churches was not really relevant. That the God they were supposed to “believe” wasn’t doing the things Jesus modeled (they read the Bible, remember? Knew all about Jesus.) That was being done by people. And if people are the ones doing it, why put up with church?

But I wonder… are the folks who agree with Holly God atheists? Or church atheists? Did the church have such a tightly sealed grip on God that the people could not see God’s transforming work? What Holly and her friends will tell you is that they were suspicious of a church that would not be in relationship with them, that did not act like Jesus acted, that did not wander around in the community loving whomever they bumped into. They didn't understand how a church could only be for themselves when Jesus was so generously attendant to the people around him.

The people whose faith had started in a deep belief and repentance that God can always REdeem us had forgotten that Jesus also did a lot of things. That Jesus didn’t only believe - although he did, in fact, believe. He prayed. He spent time alone with God. He knew God intimately.

Jesus lived a faith by raising people from the dead, feeding hungry people, crying, being available to poor people, and meeting every need – physical, psychological, emotional, mental – EVERY NEED that people had.

Similar to the way years before when people had thought so much of what Jesus did that they forgot that Jesus was the only human being who was not broken apart by the Fall.

*****

Here's the thing: this dichotomy between BELIEVE and DO is going to continue to be with us. And no matter how edgy and exhilarating it is to be in our cool new ministries (Be Church… South Durham Connections… Emmaus Walk… Farm Church… I could go on!) we live in the same danger of forgetting that we too will be transformed and REdeemed.

We will always be broken and in need of God’s love, love that was brought, demonstrated, and slathered all over everyone by Jesus.

Our broken selves can never completely and rightly hold the image of God.

We will never be who Jesus revealed during his Transfiguration.

So the question is not… IS IT BELIEVE OR DO?

What it is, is GOD. It’s both. It’s neither. IT’S GOD.

God is not limited to BELIEVE or DO. To say God prefers one or the other is like saying that a single piece of paper can accurately represent this huge beautiful three (or more) dimensional universe.

And it was all made possible when Jesus went down from that mountain and walked to his death on the cross.

It was made possible because the Transfigured Jesus who needed no more transformation could not be held by death… because death is only for people who are broken, who need transformation (or even transmogrification), who cannot live up to the high standards of who and how we were originally deemed to be at the Creation.

And because Jesus COULD live up to that standard, the Resurrection happened. Jesus did not stay dead, and now invites us into that life.

As we follow Jesus, BELIEVING that Jesus is the one, and DOING the things to show love in the way that Jesus showed us to be – we will get it wrong. We will make all the mistakes. But because of the Resurrection we are REdeemed. Deemed anew in every moment of faith.

In every moment of every day, in the wake of the Resurrection, we are called to be believers instead of doers, doers instead of believers, being transformed and shaped, REdeemed and renewed…

Until one day when Jesus brings us home to where no more transformation is needed.  Where we can live bathed in the eternity of God’s infinite love, finally and fully who we were created to be.

AMEN.

Justice

My friends at Peace Covenant Church of the Brethren asked if I would preach on February 2. I wasn't sure if it was a good idea but then I looked up the texts, and I would have gladly written three messages from those texts. Then I realized that the date - 02-02-2020 - is a palindrome and somehow that seemed to clinch the deal. I was in.

The congregation is discussing some weighty topics and I thought I would address those in the message but it kept veering off. I suppose I addressed the same underlying concepts but all I could think about is how, if everyone had gotten even a little closer to God's justice the people of McDougald Terrace would be in their own decent homes tonight. But they aren't, and they won't be for another month. And bizarrely enough, God still loves us and encourages us to keep going, to do a little better. To live out God's particular love-centered brand of justice.

There was a recording but it will need some editing to make it online. If it does make it online it will be on SoundCloud here.

The texts for this week (some beautiful ones for sure!) are:
Micah 6:1-8
Psalm 15
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Matthew 5:1-12

Come, Lord Jesus. Speak your riches and goodness into our lives and our hearts. Encourage and love us. Amen.

In today’s revised common lectionary, one of the passages that we did not read is that much-beloved passage from Micah 6:

8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good;

    and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

    and to walk humbly with your God?

I have a sense that this congregation has a deep and ongoing relationship with this passage so I am not going to preach about it directly, but I can’t let it go entirely, either, because there is a bit of a conundrum in those words for me. Let me give you an example:

My brother is an attorney. When he was still young in his career and before I had any notion of becoming a pastor, he and I had an exchange that has stuck with me. He said that he was seeking justice. I envisioned his privileged, high-income life and thought …. Oh …. No … I don’t think justice would work out well for you.

I was taken with the thought that justice would mean I would have to give up a lot: my access to top educational institutions, my financial stability, even my privilege to decide where I would live and do pretty much anything I wanted. I claimed that I did not want justice, because justice would not be good for me. I wanted grace.

But now I *am* a pastor and things seem less clear. And here’s Micah saying “oh, yes, definitely do justice.”

I realize that I was afraid of justice because of how it would affect me personally. I wanted grace so maybe I did not have to suffer from the justice that would surely not improve my lot in life. Sure I wanted others to have nice lives… but I was afraid that justice meant I would have to live the not-so-nice lives of people who do not have my privilege and access to resources.

It’s hard to figure this stuff out, y’know? So today I have turned to Matthew’s Beatitudes.

****

Let me begin by saying the Beatitudes certainly do not seem to point to a Me-First kind of justice.  Not an America-First justice. Not a European-First justice. Not any justice that puts anyone or anything other than God first.

The justice of the Beatitudes appears to be about something else entirely. It isn’t just a shift of who is in charge. It is a completely different thing than our human structures with their hierarchies and winners and losers. There is no unevenness in God’s justice because it is a completely flat hierarchy:  God above, everyone else exactly equally not-God.

In God’s justice there is no space for suffering among some so others can accumulate more. In fact, God’s goodness and grace and riches go to people who seem to be suffering by worldly standards.

If God’s justice was our justice, there would be no McDougald Terrace situation. Because in God’s justice it is not possible that maintenance would be delayed in a way that leads to sickness and death. Because God’s way never leads to sickness and death. The McDougald Terrace is a situation of suffering for all of us, regardless of whether we have ever lived in a carbon monoxide tainted home.

The effort to have financial savings deferring maintenance over the last six decades are now resulting in massive outlays of money, time, and energy.

As a beneficiary of the lower taxes, and the luxury of not thinking about the lives of people in public housing, and the privilege of thinking that my life among people who are educated and comfortable in material things is reasonable and fair, I find myself in the position of some discomfort:
* Working longer than usual hours
* Carrying in my body the frustration and sorrow of so much pain and clear injustice
* Struggling to distinguish between a cry for help and a scarcity-bred greed
* Trying to determine what is reasonable to ask of others

For example, some of the women at one of the hotels suggested they might like to learn to knit or crochet. I know of a group and thought perhaps they could meet at the hotel and include McDougald Terrace residents in their group, and somehow build some relationships in that way.

As I was wondering whether they would be open to that potentially inconvenient change to their routine I realized that nobody had asked the residents of McDougald Terrace about their routine change. And then I realized that if there had been something like God’s justice many decades ago, we would not be thinking about the inconvenience to a knitting group now.

Even if taxes had been higher.
Even if some comfortably wealthy people had less wealth.
Because other people would be living in decent circumstances and there would be no need for inconvenience for anybody now.

***

We are so accustomed to thinking primarily of our own little sections of humanity that we miss how our “normal”, how our “reasonable expectations” cause harm to those outside of our own communities.

So much so that when a McDougald Terrace situation invades our community we are shocked. We are outraged. We are surprised to find out that this situation has been growing for decades. We cannot stand it. We want to give food and toiletries, diapers and plastic bins. Maybe even show up with a hot meal. Anything to fix it.

But we are less likely to dig deeply into how this happened, how we are complicit, how a 400+ year history of enslaving and disrespecting some groups of people has led to this moment.

How this situation cannot be fixed by donations, or new stoves, and certainly not in two months, even if that is when the residents will be able to start going back home.

How the need is on every level: individual relationship, small- and mid-scale relief efforts, local, state, and federal political levels, spiritual, emotional, mental, physical levels. Need upon need upon need.

And we certainly are not eager to consider what it would take for the problems to actually be fixed. That it would require something of us and not just of the people who – even in their particular kind of brokenness – are not the only ones responsible for their situations.

We have created human systems built on a redefinition of justice, a devaluing of kindness, and no place at all for walking humbly with or without God.

***

Given all that what does Micah 6:8 even mean? What hope do we have?

Well, I have an answer. We have exactly one hope:  GOD

I believe that in the Beatitudes Jesus is saying “God will have it ALL – justice and kindness, richness and life for everyone.” And in order for us to stop being complicit in all this pain, in order for us to walk humbly with God, for us to participate in those riches we will need to

* Mourn our complicity in creating this situation
* Meekly realize that what we consider power is not
* Hunger and thirst for righteousness so strongly that we admit and redefine our own relationship with what is righteous –
* And in so doing… with each other.

It will mean taking the deep dive

* Into mercy for the evils our eyes are opened to see
* Into not beating up ourselves OR blaming others

Into the reality that when we try to walk humbly with God some people will be threatened and outraged.

That those who perceive they have the most to lose will take big steps to squash that threat.

There will be sanctions and rumors.

We may not fit the mold of denomination or political party.

And we will not be able to declare our innocence, because none of us are ever innocent, never completely right.

AND YET…

In seeking the universal richness of God’s justice you will find yourself rejoicing and being glad because you will be living God’s call for your beautiful life.

You will no longer be bound to earthly patterns and structures and organizations that diverge from God’s patterns.

You will be freed to encourage others to seek God’s riches for their own beautiful lives.

Because once you have God’s richness
Once you have embraced God’s justice and kindness
Even if there is persecution and mourning, meekness and mercy
     Recognition of your own spiritual poverty

ALL WILL BE WELL.

Because you are truly and infinitely blessed.

AMEN