Wrath Versus Peacemakers

 Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Matthew 5:38-48:

One of my favorite movie characters comes from the movie Inside Out and it’s the character of Anger, voiced by the inestimable Lewis Black. For those unfamiliar with the movie, most of it takes place inside the head of a 12-year-old girl, and features the emotions of joy, sadness, disgust, fear and anger as they sort of battle for their spots in how Riley lives her life. And so anger plays a role as one of her natural emotions, and really has some of the best lines in the whole film, including after Riley and her mother receive pizza with broccoli on it, saying “Congratulations San Francisco, you ruined pizza. First the Hawaiians and now you.” Although I actually like Hawaiian pizza. But, as it turns out that even though Joy is trying to deny sadness a place in Riley’s life, she can’t because sadness belongs, just like anger belongs as a primary emotion. 

And so as we think about anger, we have to understand that there is a natural place for anger in our lives, it’s just a matter of what that place is, and why we are angry. After all, we are even told that God “is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” So God gets angry, and when God is angry it’s normally because of injustice or violation of the commandment to love. We even see Jesus getting angry, thinking of him turning over the tables of the money changers is probably the most prominent of them, but would anyone describe Jesus as being an angry person? No, just as when we talked about gluttony we said that while that was an accusation made of him, it would not be how we would describe him.

Five Reasons Why The Big 10 Is Playing Football

Today, the Big 10 will begin playing football (although they technically started last night). There are five reasons why the Big 10 is beginning and feels justified in doing so:

1. Money

2. Money

3. Money

4. Money

5. Money

The Big 10 was the first of the big 5 conferences to come out and say that they weren't going to play football this fall. They were quickly followed by the Pac-12. Now they weren't the first conference to say they weren't playing. Many of the smaller conferences, I think led by the Ivy League, had already said they wouldn't play. 

But the smaller conferences were honest that it was both the health risk but also the economic impacts. They simply couldn't afford to pay for the testing that would be necessary to do it. Costco is now selling Covid-19 tests at $139, and so if that is a good going rate imagine testing several hundred people several times a week and you can see that would get really expensive really quick and most schools couldn't afford that.

But, the Big 10 didn't make that argument. Instead they said that they were concerned about the safety of their players and employees. They didn't see anyway to keep players safe and isolated so that there wouldn't be outbreaks. And, as it turns out, they were exactly right as we have seen with outbreaks among teams that were playing with games being cancelled or postponed every single week.

But, in seeing the other leagues start, and seeing that they were going to be making all the money that comes from college football, especially for the playoffs, and that the Big 10 would be excluded, they gave in and repented of their ways and set a schedule.

And so they start playing this weekend even as Covid-19 counts spike in nearly all of the states in which they play. They are recording rates we haven't seen since the summer, when it wasn't safe to play football, or in some cases setting new records. And yet they are going to play today.

The Big 10, and the Pac-12 following, cannot make any claims of moral superiority anymore. In fact, their claims of player safety are even worse than those of the ACC, SEC and Big 12 who at least said it was always about the money and decided to play anyways.

So congratulations Big 10 you will get your pay day, but at what and whose expense?

Lust Versus Pure in Heart

 Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Matthew 5:27-30:

After receiving the law from God on Mount Sinai, Moses came down from the mountain and said to the people, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I talked God down and there are now only 10 commandments. The bad news is that adultery is still one of them.” I’ve heard that joke from several clergy over the years, but the one that most surprised me was when conservative theologian and Anglican Bishop NT Wright told it. But I thought it perhaps maybe appropriate for today’s message when we talk about the sin of lust, which is one of the seven deadly sins, and compare it against Jesus telling us that those who are pure in heart are blessed.

Now if you were to just listen to what seems to be emphasized in church, or talked to secular society about what the church emphasizes as the primary sin, it would probably revolve around sexual morality. And yet, Jesus has very little to say about it, especially when compared to other things, like money. Indeed, Jesu eats with prostitutes and says that they will enter the Kingdom of God before the more religious folks. Now it’s not because there aren’t sinful attributes, but because of their desire for salvation not being self-righteous. They know that they have fallen short of the glory of God, and know they need God’s grace in their lives, and so are seeking it out, and Jesus too is seeking them out as lost sheep. But, what we also have to know about sexual morality in the church is that our understanding of, and conversation about, sexuality is extremely narrow. We rarely, if ever, talk about celibacy, for example, even though that was the preferred arrangement in the early church, or at least according to Paul. But it’s completely ignored today.

The other thing to keep in mind is that much of the church’s position about sexuality is not really scriptural, but instead comes to us from St. Augustine, who, to put it politely, had trouble controlling his own urges, his own lust, and so therefore felt that everyone needed to be controlled. Indeed, he even once prayed to God, “Grant me chastity and continence, just not yet.” And the final piece to keep in mind is that nearly all of the moralists over time have been men, and so their views about sex and sexuality have been limited, but have been applied to both men and women, and they harbor many of their fears about women, and we can even see that in the rules surrounding adultery that Jesus addresses in today’s gospel passage. But before we dig a little deeper into that, we need to step back a little bit to look at lust itself.

Pastor Appreciation Month

October is Pastor Appreciation Month. Someone who knows I'm a minister, but doesn't attend my church, came up to me and asked what she could do to show her minister her appreciation during this time. Here is what I told her:

1. Pray for them. But don't just pray, also tell them that you are praying for them and ask if there are any particular concerns that they need lifted up. Knowing others are praying for me always encourages me.

2. Write them a card or a note of appreciation. While emails saying the same thing are nice, they are not necessarily as effective. I keep a collection of these cards on my desk and on my worst days I look at them to be reminded that not everyone hates me or thinks I am doing a terrible job, and it helps to keep me going. (Her church secretary had told her the same thing, but she didn't believe it.)

3. Volunteer to help. Tell them you are willing to assist in some ministry where there is a need, or ask them where they could be of assistance. Please note, this does not mean tell them what else should/could be done and they would assist if the minister will start it, that just adds more stress. Instead, try and take something off of their plate, or someone else's plate, in order to make the church more effective in it's ministry.

There are lots of other things that can be done, but this is a great place to start, and I can guarantee your minister will appreciate it.

Greed Versus Mercy

 Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Luke 16:19-31:

“Ladies and gentleman, greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.” Most of you probably recognize that speech by Michael Douglas from the 1987 movie Wall Street. What might be less known is that the speech was not really the creation of the screen writer of the film, but instead came from the person on whom Douglas’ character was based, Ivan Boesky. Speaking at the graduation ceremony for the business school at the University of California at Berkley, Boesky said, “Greed is alright, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.” That was just a few months before he would be arrested by the SEC for insider trading to which he would plead guilty to one charge and pay a then record individual fine of $100 million. But before all that happened, he turned against his former compatriots and while collecting information against them for the SEC was allowed to continue doing insider trading making millions in profits until the SEC had enough information to also indict Michael Milken who was then forced to pay what is still the record individual penalty of $600 million. In response to the actions of wall street in the 80’s, congress passed a law that called for life in prison for certain financial crimes, and if you are wondering how many bankers or wall street execs have been subject to that penalty, the answer is less than one. What other studies have also found is that the average sentences for financial crimes are half those of other federal crimes. Who says that crime doesn’t pay, and that greed is not good?

And so today we look at the deadly sin of greed. In some of the other seven deadly sins we have looked at, we have talked about different types of sins, or several sins that have been grouped into one idea, but that’s not the case here. Greed is greed, and of the deadly sins this is probably the one that has the most indoctrination and support from the general culture. And of course you can be greedy for lots of things, power, possessions, accomplishments, conquests, but the thing we most often hear about greed surrounds money. And while we often talk about rich people being greedy, greed itself is not dependent upon the amount of money that we actually have. You can be greedy and only have a dollar to your name, and you can be greedy with a million dollars in the bank; the same way as you can be generous as a millionaire and generous with only a dollar, as the widow was with her two mites contributing all she had to the Temple. Money is value neutral, as we heard in that passage from 1 Timothy, which is often misquoted as saying that money is the root of all evil, it actually says that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Therefore, greed is about an attitude of the heart, and most often plays itself off at the expense of others who are around them, with a total lack of care for them. which is why greed made the list of the seven deadly sins because remember that they came out of the earliest monastic communities, and these sins were considered to be the things that would destroy community, and so it’s how greed plays itself out in community, in relationship with others, that makes it so problematic.

Gluttony Versus Those Who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness

 Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Matthew 6:25-34:

One of the accusations that was leveled against Jesus, both by opponents, and even somewhat by supporters was that he was a glutton. This accusation was especially true when compared against John the Baptist. We are told that John was living an ascetic lifestyle wearing a camelhair cloak, which wasn’t very comfortable, and that he ate locusts with wild honey. I’m thinking the honey was a dipping sauce. That is a very different picture than what we see of Jesus, and in fact John’s disciples come and ask why it is that they are fasting while Jesus and the disciples are not. To which Jesus says that someday they will fast, but they should feast while the bridegroom is still with them. The accusation that Jesus was a glutton was a slur used against him to try and denigrate him and his message, more than a reality. But, it does appear that it was fun to be around Jesus, at least most of the time, and as I said in this week’s newsletter, we have lots of stories of Jesus eating with the disciples and with others.

Eating, breaking bread, was important to Jesus and a part of his witness about the Kingdom of God, and we still talk about the feasting that Jesus is preparing for us, and yet what we see in that is the judgments about his behavior could be made. We still see that today because of the seven deadly sins, the one that many people feel comfortable making a judgment about, especially when it comes to others, is the sin of gluttony. Most people just assume that people are overweight because they are gluttonous, and while gluttony does have something to do with overeating, it doesn’t really have anything to do with obesity. The two are not necessarily connected. You can be gluttonous and skinny. And we have to remember that when it was the poor who were skinny that having a little meat on your bones was said to represent divine favor, virtue and nobility. Oh how things change.

The One Thing Trump Didn't Learn From Roy Cohn

Donald Trump learned a lot from his attorney Roy Cohn. For those of you unaware, Roy Cohn had also been legal counsel for Senator Joe McCarthy during the red baiting of the 50s. One of the things he learned was that when you are attacked, you attack back and harder. We can see that happening every day.

But, here is a lesson that Trump didn't learn from Cohn, and he should have. When McCarthy was censured (or "condemned") by the senate and basically went away in disgrace, his popularity rating was still around 40%. That seems to represent the base of Americans supportive of McCarthy, and also of Trump. But, in the end, what Cohn said did McCarthy in was that people got tired of it.

People got tired of the show. They got tired of the chaos. They got tired of the lies and continually changing story. They got tired of seeing people bullied and abused. The show got old and so it got cancelled. 

I am hearing from more and more people, including Republicans who were not never-Trumpers, that they are tired of the show. It's a rule that ever the showman Trump might have learned, should have learned, but never did.