The following is a meditation on Matthew 5:1-12. It was delivered on Sunday, January 30th
Many of you know that I am teaching a class entitled Our Favorite Jesus during the Christian Education hour this month. The class ends today with a look into the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and 70s. In fact I have a slide entitled “Hippie Jesus” saying that the peace, love and understanding Jesus of the era was born right in San Francisco & his parents were two former druggies named Elizabeth and Ted Wise who raised Jesus and a population of so-called Jesus Freaks. They believed Jesus to be a drop-out like they were. An outlaw and revolutionary on a mission to awaken the disillusioned and open the eyes of the drugged out young men and women who slept in the parks of Haight Ashbury. A well-known Jesus Chant of the time went: “Give Me a J”, they would chant. “Give Me a E, Give Me a S, Give Me a U, Give Me a S. What does that spell? What will get you higher than acid? What will keep you up longer than speed? What does America need?"[1] The answer to each was Jesus, and the folks who embraced Christ as the “Everlasting High” started to take the whole imitation of Christ-thing to a whole new level growing their hair long, wearing robes and sandals, bushy beards, and generally trying to be as Christ-like as they could manage.
From the hilly road of Haight Ashbury San Francisco to the slopes of Southern California, the Jesus Freaks spread carrying with them a Jesus that spoke their slang, knew their vibe, and promised something longer lasting and potent than the drugs that personified their culture. Coffeehouses-slash-Nightclubs popped up wherever the Jesus Freaks went be it The Living Room in Haight or His House in Hollywood, the message spread and these community pads overflowed with the young men and women that later would go on and populate many of the gigantic & mega-churches of Southern California. In His House, which was started by a preacher named Arthur Blessitt (which seems almost too good to be true), marijuana & heroin users seeking to get higher and higher would hear the Word of God translated into their street slang by Blessitt himself. A rite of passage for anyone who sought to “get high” on Jesus rather than drugs, Blessitt had recent converts throw their grass and pipe right into the toilet of the His House bathroom, and as they repeated “I don’t need these anymore, I’m high on the Lord”[2] Blessitt would baptize each and every one there in the toilet. Emerging from the stall, hair wet, the newly minted Jesus Freak was reminded that “Jesus is no namby-pamby character. In fact, Christ really socks it to you with some really heavy stuff.” [3]
That quote, “Christ really socks it to you with some really heavy stuff”, sums up the attitude of those who helped form the Jesus Movement and created the safe-havens Jesus Freaks flocked towards. Back in the Bay Area, a buttoned up, straight laced professor named Jack Sparks moved from teaching at Penn State University to University of California at Berkley. Sparks teaches and is involved with Campus Crusade for Christ, an evangelical organization still present today that in the 1960s wanted nothing to do with the “growing problem” of youth counterculture. Sparks is convicted by the Apostle Paul’s words in the 9th chapter of his First Letter to the Corinthians, “For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them ”[4] and he jettisons the ties and blazers that served as a uniform for the culture the youth who flocked to Berkley rebelled against.[5]
A modern term for what Sparks did might be embed. Like the war journalists that live, breathe, sleep, and eat with the fighting groups they cover, Sparks embeds with the Jesus Freaks, a term he appropriated away from those had only criticism for him and his flock who then wore it like a badge. Leaders like Sparks begin taking the sacred scriptures of our Christian faith and begin translating them into the slang of the streets. By unlocking the message of Jesus Christ from the “words” of a culture that didn’t want these dirty, drugged out hippies, Sparks especially in his New Testament translation, Letters to the Street Christians, allowed the words that we as people of faith hold as sacred to be heard again anew. Behind all the “dig it” and “far out”, Letters to the Street Christians opened new ears and minds to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Toilet Baptisms. Slang Scripture. Hippies and Haight Ashbury. For some of you, you might remember seeing it happen, yet as we sit here it seems like a long time ago, in a far away place. If you were asked to throw your iPhone, or whatever you happen to be addicted to into the toilet by James or myself and be baptized, one of the many things you would probably do next would to find a different church. Imagine being so overcome by the Gospel you found yourself willingly being plunged head first into the toilet of a popular nightclub. Yet this is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a life-changing, mind-altering, world-rocking Gospel and nowhere is this more evident that in the words of our Beatitudes. Great reversals will take place, Jesus tells the crowds. Reversals of the sacred institutions of our very lives, where those made meek and forced to live out meager lives will inherit the very earth that now seems like a prison. A reversal will take place where the hungry will one day dine along side the thirsty at a great & ultimate banquet, and those who strive to make peace in a world of war will be called the Children of God, and those who despite the great injustices visited upon them remain pure in heart, they will be those who see God. A great reversal will take place, a reversal of ultimate things, and with it a day to look forward to; a day to order your lives around and a day to give you courage and strength. Our gospel lesson today provides for us Jesus at his most dangerous, his most radical, his most counter-cultural for he speaks of a Kingdom to come where we will not be seated upon the throne.
This is a message to live by. This is a message to order your lives around. This is a message to live into by reaching out to those who God loves. This is a message that could change the world: that God loves the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, and meek…and a reversal is to come that will bring love and justice. But can we hear it? Or maybe we just don’t know how yet?
In a week, I will once again be heading out to Camp Akita & help direct the Presbytery’s Winter Youth Retreat. This year’s theme is “The Presbyterian Survival Guide.” Our Subscript is “what every Presbyterian needs to know to make it out alive.” With the popularity of Zombies continuing to grow, we are talking about what it means to be “alive in Christ” and not dead to God’s grace. In one of the survival scenarios, the couple that has found themselves at a church filled with “Christian Zombies” spends the sermon time ignoring a bland, boring sermon wondering what to have for lunch and what Jesus would think about the sermon they were hearing. When I wrote the skit, I had this scripture and Jack Sparks in the back of my mind.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the breaking in and reversing of the world that is to come where the poor will be filled up and the rich brought down, needs to be heard again. The message of love for the poor and the hungry, the meek and the meager, the message of what God requires of us, needs to break through the baggage, the waxy build-up of years and years of domestication, and be heard. A message so transformative, so enlightening, so energizing, so empowering that it orders our very lives, sets our feet in the right direction and teaches us how to live with one another. When you hear a message like that, you want to be a part of it, and then maybe toilet baptisms don’t sound so crazy after all.
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