When the Dream Comes True (Matt. 3:1-17)

Sunday, January 17, 2016

           Two sinners, flawed people who make mistakes and fall short of God’s glory. 

Two extraordinary men – there have never been any like these men and their contributions to humanity are greater than can be measured.

Great men?  Sinners fallen short of God?  These men are both.  Consider their lives, their words, and the profound importance of each as I hold each up alongside the other. 

            First, Martin Luther King Jr.   In 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, he said,

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

                       

“I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”

            Has his dream been realized? 

            However accurate or inaccurate or partially accurate, the perception of many, maybe most black people is that they can’t get a fair shake in business, in education, in health care, in housing, and in numerous other ways in every day.  Statistics bear this out.  Black Americans are less likely to be admitted to the highest universities, less likely to be identified and put in academically gifted programs, and more likely to be suspended from school for offenses that if done by whites often go unpunished.  In nearly every formal institution in our country, blacks get less opportunity for advancement; and, they suffer more harshly and more frequently than whites who commit the same offenses and rules infractions.

            Has Dr. King’s dream been realized? 

            Many African Americans have achieved incredible success.  Condoleezza Rice is a brilliant academic, a political scientist, and former secretary of state.  Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of America’s leading astrophysicists.  Colin Powell is one the great generals in U.S. army’s history.  Ben Carson is a brain surgeon and a presidential candidate.  Clarence Thomas is a Supreme Court justice.  And of course our president, Barak Obama is an African American who has achieved the highest office in the land.  No matter what your personal opinion is of these named, they all merit respect.  This high level achievement and leadership among persons of color had not happened when Dr. King gave that speech.

            On a more personal level, in our day biracial families are accepted as the boundaries for what is considered normal expand.  I did not imagine when we adopted H__ and M__ that we would meet other families just like ours in preschool and then again in our neighborhood, but we have.  Chapel Hill is progressive town and there are places in North Carolina and in other parts of America that are less-welcoming of such diversity.  However, I think across America, there is now a social consensus that racism is evil.  Since Dr. King gave the “I have a Dream Speech” things have changed.

            They have not changed nearly quickly enough.  His poignant phrase “the tranquilizing drug of gradualism” needs to be taken to heart.  Right now, most of the perspectives I get from black people in my circles are different than the perspectives of white people in my circles.  I hate saying “black people think …” or “all white people …” do such and such.  I think the generalizing is unfair.  However, I do feel safe in saying that most black people expertience the world differently than most white people. 

            Dr. King’s context was America, embroiled in racial conflict.  The man I have thought about alongside Martin Luther King Jr. is John the Baptist whom we meet in Matthew’s Gospel.  John burst upon the scene calling the people of Judah to “Repent!  For the Kingdom of heaven has come near.”  He allowed no margin for the luxury of cooling off.  Repentance is a turning – to turn from looking and living in one direction to looking and living in an altogether different direction.  God is over here, but you are oriented over there. You have to radically turn your lives because the way you are currently headed is away from God. 

            Essentially, this was John’s message.  As America today needs to turn away from greed, materialism, racism, elitism, and xenophobia, John said the people in the first century needed to turn away from sin and turn to God. 

Otherwise, we will miss the presence of Jesus even though, he is here.  This season, epiphany, the time after Christmas – this is Jesus’ ‘coming out party.’  We won’t see it, not now, not if we aren’t watching.  To miss it is to live apart from God.  If we live apart from God now, we will be apart from him at the Judgment.  When Jesus returns in the Second Coming to call his own into the Kingdom, we will not be among those counted as his own.  We need to turn. 

We need to turn because currently our gaze is fixed by human wisdom in the direction of today’s definition of success.  Philosophies like individualism, naturalism, and patriotism do not appear inherently evil, but when one of these ways of thinking and seeing define our worldview instead of Jesus defining our worldview, it pull us away from the God who wants to saves us from self-destruction.

“Repent!”  Turn from where we are looking, from what we are thinking, from who we are admiring, from how we are living; turn from this to God. 

In the Gospels are stories of people who met Jesus in person and still could not turn to him because they could not turn away from the allure of wealth or the entrenched racism of their day.  In the New Testament world, the segregation was Jew-gentile.  Today it is white-black, or English speaking-non English speaking; or it is citizen-immigrant; or it is Christian-Muslim.  Whatever divides people by objectifying those not-like-me as “other” – whatever that division point is, it is evil and we must turn from it.  We must in humble confession turn to God.  John preached that.

            Dr. King claimed that God showed him a vision of life – the life to come if people could learn to live in peace and harmony and love for each other; people from all backgrounds.  He said,

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

           

            John also had a sense of what would it would be like when the words he preached became reality.  He said,

¹¹ “I baptize you with^[b] water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with^[c] the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹² His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

            So, two prophets; one condemned racial inequality, the other sin run rampant among the chosen people of God.  King’s denouncing of racism is a damning of sin – a specific arena of sin and for us in 2016, one that arena, racism, continues to trouble our communities because it exists and people of color continue to suffer injustices.  Likewise John the Baptist issued a call that we must heed; we must turn from the ways of the world to the ways of God as we know God in Jesus.

            These two prophets who preached with force and drama had vision.  They imagined the fulfillment of their dreams.  John the Baptist spoke and it was electric; he baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  He will gather the grain, and the chaff. The chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.  People from all walks of life abandoned the comforts of Jerusalem and flooded out to the wilderness to be baptized by him and hear him talk about the one who was to come. 

Who was this Savior John forecast?

What would life be like upon his arrival?  John offered the stark call – repent!  And, he offered the promise of baptism by spirit and fire.

Dr. King named the evil of racism and imagined a world without it. 

So what of it?  What do we make of the preaching and the vision of either man?  Were their dreams realized?  Today we have Travon Martin and Michael Brown and Tamir Rice.  Today secularism is on the rise; Christianity it so politicized, it is stripped of anything in it that resembles faith. 

John was anointed by God.  Dr. King awakened America to God’s compassion for the downcast and God’s hatred of racism and injustice.  Both spoke with power as they cast compelling visions.  So, what do we do with the world as it is?

Imagine John there in the Jordan.  Everyone is spellbound.  In those flowing waters, he appears to be the most powerful man in the world and all who come defer to his passion and his fiery teaching.  The royal official, the temple soldier, the priest, the Roman centurion; before John, they all shrink.  Submissively, they go to the waters.

Then, Jesus comes.  His eyes meet John’s.  John finds himself tongue-tied.  Matthew writes, “Jesus came … to be baptized by him [but] John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’”

He who had cast the pre-vision of the Kingdom fell to pieces when the Kingdom stood before him in the person of Jesus.  John would have stopped Jesus at the start of his ministry.  Why?  I believe seeing Jesus is so overwhelming, we forget everything.  At the same time, we see everything.

We inherit John’s call to repentance and the 1960’s iteration of it in Dr. King’s call to end segregation and build harmony and love across racial lines.  We repent and we work for equality recognizing that when one group of people is wounded by prejudice, we all are.

We anticipate the dreams of these prophets.  God gives glimpses and so we can say with John, Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit.  With MLK, we get glimpses of the Promised Land where black boys and girls and white children and Jewish and Syrian and Chinese and Mexican children all laugh and run and play together, without fear.  We can imagine it.  We spend our lives working for it, reaching for it.

Still we know that we won’t finally reach it until Jesus meets our gaze as he did John’s.  In that moment, face to face, completely exposed before him, completely vulnerable, we feel ourselves wrapped in his arms of love.  Then, we are finally home.

We know that day will come.  Until it does, we honor the prophets who have gone before us by working for love and brotherhood and sisterhood as we understand things in light of the way of Jesus.  We can’t fully say what it will be like when the dream comes true.  So, we imagine, we work for it, we pray for it, and with hopeful expectation and full readiness, we wait for it. 

AMEN

One More Step - Acts 10-11

Sunday, May 10, 2015

            Can anyone withhold the water?  The questions hits at the climactic moment that began when Peter was praying and in a vision was told that God would open his promises to all people, even non-Jews.  God would do this through Jesus.

            Can anyone withhold the water?  Somehow, Peter and other Jews present who had put their trust in Jesus could see as Jesus’ Holy Spirit fell upon these Romans – the centurion Cornelius and his household.  They could see it!  They couldn’t believe their eyes, but they could see it. 

            Can anyone withhold the water?  The Spirit’s work began in Peter as he responded even when God led him beyond boundaries he thought he would never cross.  The Spirit’ work began when Cornelius, lacking the benefit of a Jewish heritage, nonetheless sought God.  The Spirit’s driving of these men and the people around them inexorably led to this moment when they stood before each other and seeing with Spirit-filled eyes recognized they were brothers in Christ.  The baptism confirmed it.  The baptism sealed it.  The baptism served as testimony to all that new birth had taken place.

Peter had not fully grasped that Jesus would reach to the world beyond Israel.  He knew this in his head, but it did not register in his heart until he prayed on that rooftop and God changed his view.  Jesus would shatter the barriers that stood as walls dividing people and Jesus would do this through his, Peter’s, preaching.  As Peter prayed, there was a knocking at his door.  Emissaries from the Roman Centurion Cornelius were looking for him and the Holy Spirit compels Peter to go with these men. 

These Romans brought Peter to Cornelius, a man seeking the truth.  The truth found him.  He and Peter came together and shared their visions.  Peter preached.  He said,

“I truly understand that God shows no partiality, 35but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. 36You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all.

            Jesus is Lord of all and faith in him rips down the structures humans erect to keep a few in positions of prestige and power while most are kept at heel in the dust, powerless in poverty.  Jesus the Lord, lifts up the downtrodden, freeing them from their disadvantage.  Jesus the Lord gives the privileged the humbling they need.  Without it, often the wealthy, privileged class – including many of us – fail to see how much they need God and need their fellow human beings.  In baptism, we testify to the truth that no matter who we are, we have died in sin and been resurrected in Christ.  What is great about us is Him alive and at work in and through each of us. 

            Peter’s speech is interrupted by the Holy Spirit dealing not with him but with Cornelius, and the other Romans there.  The Holy Spirit fell on them.  The Christian Jews with Peter couldn’t believe it.  To this point, the message of Jesus had been taken to the far reaches of the world, but to Jews who lived in the far reaches of the world.  Now, a mere 50 miles from Jerusalem, the great divide had truly been bridged.  God’s Spirit was poured out on Gentiles. 

            The movie The Fellowship of the Ring, is the first of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Hobbits are the main characters.  The Hobbits were small people physically and they were small in perspective.  Their entire vision of the world was limited to the simple farming villages where they lived.  And they didn’t mind keeping it that way.  They were happy. 

            But the job of delivering the ring of power fell to a hobbit, Frodo.   Frodo would have to travel many miles through the darkest, most evil parts of the world.  His best friend, Sam, was determined to go.  Even through Sam was a simple man who would just as soon stay on the farm and never leave, he was going with Frodo.  As they walked, he stopped and said, “Well, this is it Mr. Frodo.”

            “What is it, Sam?”

            “This is the farthest I have ever been away from home in my life.” Sam took the next step and it led to places he had never imagined.

            Peter stood before Cornelius who was full of the Holy Spirit and he had a decision.  In mileage he was not far from home at all.  But in understanding and in terms of perspective and in faith, he was about to go father away from home than he had ever been before.  He would never go back.  And, he took that step.

“The Peter said, ‘Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?’  So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.”

Having received the Spirit, in baptism we take that step.  We go father from home than we ever have gone.  And there is no going back.  Nothing ever looks the same.  No relationship, no person – we see with Spirit eyes.

When a paradigm shifts, everything changes.  The availability of automobiles led to the near extinction of passenger railroad travel.  People don’t cross country by train.  As TV’s entered every home, we went through a paradigm shift.  It changed radio forever. 

Peter’s step to baptize Cornelius is the greatest paradigm shift in history.  He did it because he could see that the Holy Spirit was operating outside of his established boundaries and if he wanted to be where the Spirit was at work, he had to step outside those boundaries himself.  He saw where God was at work and he joined him there. 

For us to feel the full impact of Easter and resurrection, we have to practice the Spiritual discipline of Reconciliation.  This means we accept all people – white and black, rich, poor, and middle class, from every country, with accents we find different – we welcome all people.  It goes beyond that. 

Each one of us like Peter must take that step, go beyond our frontiers, experience that great paradigm shift of history.  Each one us has to reach that point where we are farther in ideology, expectation, understanding, perspective, and faith than we’ve ever been.  Then we take the next step. That point might be in another country, but, it might be in North Carolina, or in a neighborhood in Chapel Hill.  It might be in this room.  The place is in a person. 

There is someone we cannot love.  We’ll gladly spend the rest of our lives in a filthy, disease-ridden third world prison cell for the sake of the gospel.  But we will not go and in the name of Jesus love with that person.  That person is different for each of us. But we each have that person.  It would astound us to see the Holy Spirit poured on that person.  The hatred, the bitterness, the animosity is too great.  Who is that person for you?

Years ago, I was very new in the ministry.  I looked around for mentors – people who would give me advice and opportunities.  I was lucky.  Several veteran pastors took me under their wings in my first decade of ministry.  They gave me opportunities, so when I became a senior pastor myself I had already visited hospitals.  I spoke at funerals and did baptisms.  I was indebted to these seasoned church leaders because they helped me greatly by inviting me into their churches and letting me try out pastoral tasks.

One of these beloved friends, however, floored me with something he said.  He was telling me how he had to explain to one of his church members that he could never baptize a black person, not in his church.  I was stunned.  The way he told the story, it was as if he were spewing common sense that once explained would make sense to everyone.  He told it to me in a knowing way as if it would be obvious to me.  He could never baptize a black person.

My trusted mentor had not taken that step beyond his frontiers.  Sunday after Sunday, he preached the Gospel.  Year after year, he baptized new believers.  But the heart of the Gospel called for a change he was not ready to make.  He had to keep the Gospel small enough for him to maintain control.  That never works.

I did not confront my mentor.  I did not say to him, “Hey, what you just said is totally racist and antithetical to the way of Jesus.”  I should have.  I regret that I did not have the readiness or courage to confront the evil that is racism.  I maneuvered adeptly, moved on, and became a senior pastor who within my first two years of ministry had baptized Sudanese people, whites, and Hispanics. 

I remained friends with my mentor.    We don’t dump our friends just because they say foolish things. We love them.  But I did not love him enough to name an evil that lurked in him.  I do not mean he was evil.  In many ways, he was a good pastor.  And he did a lot for me.  However, His need for control and his refusal to follow Jesus beyond his own comfort zone created space in him for an evil – in this case racism – to set up shop and corrupt the good work he did.  Late in his career, he realized his errors.

In Maya Angelou’s book I know Why the Caged Bird Sings, a dentist in Arkansas refuses to help 8-year-old Marguerite even though she is doubled over in pain with a tooth ache.  He declares he would give dental service to a dog before he put his hand in a black person’s mouth.  That dentist will never get it – the fullness of Jesus’ resurrection – until he loves someone who is black.  For him persons of a certain race represent that person.

Who is it in your life?  What boundary is God calling you to cross?  Where do we need to go to truly live the Gospel?  This is the farthest from home I have ever been.  There – that is where we see the Holy Spirit come down and baptism confirms the story. 

It might be someone who hurt you.  You’d rather see that person suffer than to be saved by grace as he comes faith in Jesus.  Loving the one who injured you is going farther than you’ve ever been.  You won’t bask in the full glow of Easter until you forgive that one and pray that Jesus would come to him.  If you are there when the Holy Spirit is poured out on that person and if you say Peter’s words, ‘Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing this one I hated but now love because of Jesus,’ then you’ve been through the paradigm shift.  You and that person will embrace at the cross and stand in the light of the empty tomb together.

            I saw Peter and Cornelius meet.  It was a worship service where we joined three congregations: a Spanish congregation, our English congregation, which was comprised of people from Asian, black, and Latino backgrounds, but was 70% Caucasian; and a primarily black church.  The preacher was a woman from the black congregation. 

            She preached the gospel as powerfully as I have heard it.  A woman from Argentina translated into Spanish.  The black woman would say a few lines, and the Argentine sister repeated them for the Spanish speakers.  It worked well – both women had done this before.  However, just as the preacher was hitting the high note, describing the unconditional love and limitless grace of Jesus, the translator stopped cold.  She couldn’t speak.  Her heart was pierced by the preacher’s words and the love of Jesus.  Her throat choked up and tears flowed.  She was overwhelmed by grace.

            The preacher stopped and came to her.  There they stood.  The larger than life African American woman preacher, embracing a small Argentine woman being showered by the grace of Jesus; I don’t know what it looked like when the Jewish Christians were astonished to see the Holy Spirit rain down on Gentiles that day in Cornelius’ house.  I bet it looked similar to that day when those two women were wrapped up in Jesus’ love.  I got to see it.  I was astonished. 

            I believe we can be astonished again as we step farther than we’ve ever been.  We step to that person.  We do, and we are there to see the Holy Spirit poured out.  We see God bring people together right here, in Resurrection reconciliation. 

AMEN

Pain

Pain

            I had a periodontal procedure.  #cringealert!! 

The periodontist scraped flesh off the roof of my mouth and then grafted it onto my receding gums.  I had the same procedure in 2007.  That was long enough ago and it worked well enough that I only remembered the success, not the pain.  This past fall, I had procedure, and it didn’t quite work.  So I had to have it again just a little less than two weeks ago.  Let me tell you, right now, the pain is very present.

            I had visions of using this as a season of spiritual discipline.  I knew what I was getting into and I hoped the throbbing on the roof of my mouth would push me deeper into prayer.  That has happened – a little.  I have prayed more lately.  The throbbing has also pushed me to codeine and ibuprofen and lots of it.  

            Philip Yancey and Paul Brand wrote a great book called The Gift of Pain.  Pain is a messenger.  It tells the body something is wrong.  The thing that hurts the lepers Dr. Brand worked with in India was lack of pain or feeling of any kind.  Numbness in their extremities prevented these poor people from realizing their hand was burning in a fire or being gnawed by a rodent or becoming infected from a wound.  Small injuries festered until digits fell off because of a lack of an alert system – pain!

            Our nation has been awakened by one of our “pain-induced alert systems” – the pain of our citizens of color who have been abused and murdered by the police who are supposed to protect and serve.  Ferguson and the backlash; Staten Island and Eric Garner; Cleveland and Tamir Rice; and now Baltimore and Freddie Gray; each case is an instance of societal pain.  Are we in America nearing some kind of tipping point?

            Do whites in America (people like me) feel this pain?  Middle class whites can pretend that these stories are not relevant to them.  But we are all part of the human race.  If a person’s skin color or income or zip code makes him feel immune to this pain and thus renders him indifferent to the situation, he is like that leper who cannot feel his numb fingers as rabid rats chew on them.  The screams of pain from persecuted communities will eventually bring serious hurt to us all. 

            We need to react to the alerts the pain is sending.  We need to pull our hand away from that which bites or burns it.  We need to see that when unarmed people are targeted and killed just because of their skin color, it hurts us all.  We need to link black arm in white arm.  We need to stand shoulder to shoulder, brother to brother, and sister to sister.  We need confront injustice in tangible ways: law enforcement injustice; educational inequality; lack of economic opportunity.  We need to say a resounding no to it all.

            I know how clichéd this all sounds.  I know how easy it is to sit at my keyboard and type.  I know how hard it is to transfer these true but tired bromides from wishful thinking into real action.  I don’t exactly know how to do it.

            So, I am starting with what someone else is doing.  May 9 is the Million Mom March on Washington (http://www.mothersforjusticeunited.org/p/march3.html).  I know I am not a mom, but I ache for those who have lost their children because their children happened to be African American and caught in the path of the wrong policemen.

            There are thousands of good men and women who are officers of the law.  One of my best friends in the world going back to when I was 13 is a law enforcement officer.  I trust him to be fair and honest, and I hurt for all the honest cops whose names and reputations have been tarnished by the actions of a few of their racist, bullying peers.   So many law enforcement officials are heroes who would put their lives on the line to protect the public – everyone in the public.  But, a few bad apples have inflicted enormous pain on America.

            And it is more than a few bad apples.  The bad apples are able to ruin the bunch because our system in America is set up to advantage one group and hold back another.  The strongholds that perpetuate this evil are systemic. 

Systemic racism is also aided by the lazy, cowardly silence from people like me – middle class whites not interested enough to get involved.  But to ignore the problem is to turn my back on Jesus.  When Jesus Christ died on the cross, he numbered himself with the abused and the disenfranchised of society.  Where was Jesus when death visited Freddy?  And Tamir?  And Eric?  And Michael?  And Trayvon?  With nail holes in his hands, he wrapped his arms around them and continues to wrap his arms around their families and the communities afflicted by our 21^st century manifestation of racism.

            I cannot call myself his follower and then now follow.  He stands with the victim.  So too must I.  On May 9^th, I will march because I feel the pain.  I am part of the body and I feel the creeping of the infection – the infection of violent racism.  I cannot ignore the pain nor I can I turn a deaf hear to the wailing of mothers in mourning, nor can I pretend my Lord has not commanded me to step forth.  I must join in.

I pray you will join me.  If you have plans this Saturday, change them.  Come march, and add your voice to chorus singing for justice, equality, and love.  Come, be part of a new declaration.  Be part of the moment when America declared racism would lose its voice in the 21^st century.