Last Sunday it was hot.
Let’s be honest, its been hot just about all this month, and try as we might, sometimes it is hard to get this sanctuary comfortable for worship. Because the choir was singing this old fan right above me was flipped on to blow some relief to the members of the choir. Depending where I stand up here I can feel the breeze it produces, and last Sunday I really enjoyed having it on. But something funny happened.
Did you ever have one of those memories that just shows up, out of nowhere, and hijacks your thoughts? Maybe it was triggered by a smell, a sound, a song, or in my case, from the breeze from a blowing fan. Standing up, singing the opening songs and hymn, I was transported back to my early high school years and there before all of you I stopped singing and I was terrified to realize I could think of only one thing: Baywatch.
The fact that my mind flashed back to Baywatch when we were worshiping the Holy, Everlasting God may be counted as further evidence of my depravity, but there is was: Baywatch. With it’s red swimsuit beach bunnies, and slow motion running; hair constantly being blown to and fro, and its almost universal appeal to my former demographic of 14 year old, puberty riddled high school freshmen. I say “almost universal appeal” because even at 14 I didn’t like the show. Now, I understood why my friend David did. Shoot, I understood why everybody did (I am not sure if you can see me but I am raising and lowering my eyebrows suggestively), but I needed something a little more than buxom beach babes to require my attention. But then again, I have always been the holder of minority opinions.
I don’t like Bob Dylan’s music, I like Oatmeal Raisin cookies over Chocolate Chip, I unabashedly wear white after Labor Day, I voted for John Kerry, I think Pete Rose should go into the Hall of Fame, and on that summer day in high school I told my friend David I didn’t like Baywatch. Actually I told him I thought it was dumb, and he was being a jerk for running the ol’ bait and switch. I rode over to David’s with a 12 pack of Mountain Dew under my arm, for promises of pizza & a night of video games. When I arrived the pizza was there but the video games were replaced by the blondes of Baywatch bounding across the aptly named boob-tube. What happened next was what I think it was what the fan was trying to get me to remember as I had our scripture floating around in the back of my head. I got up, and made sure that David, and really anyone within ear-shot heard my thoughts on his shenanigans, Baywatch, and a few choice remarks on friendship, and left. Riding home that night, sans my Mountain Dew, I knew that standing up, and speaking out was going to affect my friendship with David, and it did.
Maybe for you it isn’t Baywatch, or TV at all. Maybe for you it is politics, or your work situation. Perhaps you and your brothers and sisters don’t agree on how best to care for aging parents. Then again, maybe it is TV, but it is here that you make your stand. You lend you voice to an issue, you debate, engage, enrage, isolate, alienate; your cautioned that you are making a scene, coming too close to the 3rd rail. So you abdicate, regress, confess, readdress the issue softly, jokingly like it never was a big deal, and hearing the words of Rodney King echoing somewhere in the corner of your mind, you decide “yes, I think that we can all just get along.” Certainly Baywatch, Bob Dylan, or Pete Rose isn’t worth the social equivalent of the Alamo – an ill-fated last stand that everybody seemingly wants you to remember.
“Can’t we all just get along?” seems like a worthy goal, doesn’t it? For many of us it might even be a prayer. Wars rage, genocide is a word our children will grow up knowing all to well, and in the crucial moments of history, when a glimmer of hope shines in the darkness of terrible situations it seems that we always find men and women arguing rather than coming together to effect change. Wouldn’t it be easier, or rather, wouldn’t it be better if we put our partisan bickering aside and got to work? Rolled up our sleeves and helped people without all the hot-air and blue ribbon committees? What if we all just got along? If this is indeed our dream, the passage from Luke today is profoundly upsetting.
"Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” Father against son, daughter against mother, and while I didn’t need Jesus to tell me that I wouldn’t always see eye to eye with my in-laws, the hard truth of this message is that disagreement will be a constant companion for anyone seeking to live out the Gospel. Families, communities, groups of people all the world around exist in some way due to the harmony that comes with the status quo. The perpetual predictability, the entrenchment in safety, and the elimination of the stress of doing something new, trying something different is built into the fabric of society & we are taught at an early age that individuality is ok but conformity is better. Schools reinforce it, companies exist by it, but the “voice crying out in the wilderness” was not proclaiming the coming age of business as usual.
Like John the Baptist before him, Jesus raises his voice to offer a new way, a different way; a minority-report on how to live, love, show grace and mercy, and to care, and respect the stranger. It is from Jesus that we hear “you have heard it said, but I say unto you”; words that help us understand that Jesus sees his mission not to ordain and validate the status quo but rather to show a new, a better way. Jesus was, and still is the voice of dissent. The Gospel that we believe in and seek to live our lives by should never be put on the back-burner in favor of conformity, in favor of the status quo. The Gospel is by definition something different, something loud and obnoxious to be lived out in the very communities that tend to favor everyone getting along. It requires decision and commitment, and therefore families will disagree about it, communities will splinter along issues, and churches will have its factions but ours is the faith of a “new way” and silence is never golden.
The world today, the Present Time, needs your voice. The divisions that come will one day lead to a true reconciliation, but first we need to divide, to set apart – not by splintering and forming new churches and institutions but by grabbing the 3rd rail, and speaking out when it isn’t popular, or perhaps even welcome, but we grab the 3rd rail confident that its there that we find all the power. Power to be part of the Kingdom of God breaking into the world. A world where evil goes unchecked because as Edmund Burke famously remarked good people “do nothing.” Power to stand on faith though our voices may still shake. Power that by speaking out, we inspire others to lend their voices, just as those who came before have inspired us. The Book of Hebrews speaks of the “great cloud of witnesses”; generations of the faithful who have gone out before us, inspiring us, and giving us a model of how to live faithfully in trying times. From their ranks we find those who spoke up against tyranny, slavery, injustice, and oppression when the culture wanted to hear none of it, but it is there too that we find men and women much like yourselves who have stood up for what they thought was right, and have paid the price. My relationship with David wasn’t ever the same, and many of you have paid far worse but in that moment I hope you can see that you were not alone.
We need men and women to speak out and show that faithful, intelligent, passionate people disagree over the fundamental, the elemental building blocks of life – human rights, law, the poor, the oppressed, and more – and in so doing crave out place where with respect, grace and love we engage the issues that define our life. I remember the first time I had a fundamental disagreement with my Mom. Neither one of us would concede, and I remember thinking “My mom is kind of crazy.” Around and around we went, and it wasn’t until she paused and told me she understood what I was saying, why I said it, and why it was important to me but she just didn’t agree with what I had to say. She went on to suggest that perhaps we could start over, this time with an understanding that we didn’t come to our views casually but they were born out of something deep and impacting.
I am found of a story I heard from a Rabbi, who told of two men who both worked in a mine, and whose job it was to carry heavy loads of rocks from the valley to the top of the hill. One day, one of the workers lingered too long at the top of the hill and overheard the men who took his rocks that what he carried contained diamonds. What an honor he had been trusted with, especially when the other man carried only rocks. The next day he lingered at the top of the hill and overheard that the rocks the other man carried contained emeralds, and so each and every day thereafter the man walked up the hill with deep respect for his fellow worker. If we, brothers and sisters, know of the diamonds we carry, it is easy to see the emeralds in the basket of others.
It will not be easy.We cannot do this alone. We must lean into the witness of those who have come before and into the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.We pray that our voices be strong, our convictions steady, and may we walk in the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ with confidence that the Kingdom of God is indeed near, and with it comes a true reconciliation.
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