That's a Mistake. It's a Perfect Ten.

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Matthew 5:43-48:

Just a week short of a year ago, as we made our way through Genesis, our passage was God’s call to Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac, whom he loved. And I said that when we dealt with that story that we had to deal with the reality that we sacrifice our children for many, many lesser reasons. And I quoted Russell Baker writing in the New York Times who said, “Parents who make their children's lives hell in order to make the parents proud of themselves are a commonplace of American life.” Especially when it comes to sports and then I also reminded us that we also see our children sacrificed as victims of sexual and physical violence, neglect and homelessness, child labor and poverty. And I don’t think we can actually talk about the Olympics without naming those realities, especially as we look at the film Nadia, which came out in 1984 as a made for TV movie about Nadia Comaneci. While some of you may have seen it at the time, I doubt that it touched many of you with its cinematic brilliance. There is actually a Facebook page for fans of the movie and it has a whole 128 people who like it, so not at the top of the Olympic movie pyramid.

But, I choose it for several reasons. The first is that I wanted a film that featured a female athlete, and there just aren’t a lot of them out there. The second was that I thought Nadia’s achievement of perfection in the 1976 Olympics could provide us a good perspective to talk about perfecting our faith, as hear in the gospel passage we have for today. And third, it could also provide us some perspective on Olympic achievements and their aftermath, which are not always pretty, nor is the path to get there. Although today’s message is going to be very different than what I had thought it would be because of the events of this week in women’s gymnastics especially as they surround Simone Biles. If Biles is not the greatest female gymnast of all time, she and Nadia Comaneci are certainly in the conversation. And it turns out that they actually have a lot in common.

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.

The Handmaid's Tale

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The texts were Genesis 16:1-16  and Genesis 21:8-21:

Last week after we looked at the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, several people said to me that they had never heard a sermon on that passage. I’m willing to bet that is even more true in hearing about the story of Hagar. But, we ignore these stories, and Hagar in particular, at our own loss, because, to name just a few things, Hagar is the first woman that God talks to, she is the first woman that God makes a proclamation to about a pregnancy, she is the only person, not just the only woman, but the only person who names God, who gives a name to God, in the Bible, and she is the only woman to arrange a marriage for her son in scripture, and those are certainly not insignificant events.

We don’t really know all that much about Hagar, except that she is a slave, she is Egyptian and she is owned by Sarah. And just an editorial note, although in chapter 16 they are still named Abram and Sarai, for simplicity sake, and to make it easier on me, I am going to refer to them as Abraham and Sarah regardless of which chapter I am referring. While there are some translations that try and soften the reality of Hagar by calling her a maiden, or a handmaid, like my title today, the Hebrew words used to describe her all mean slave. We know that there are many slaves in the family, and presumably most of them are owned by Abraham, but Hagar belongs to Sarah. It’s possible that they received Hagar as a gift from the Pharaoh, but that’s just a guess.

It's Not About What You Think It's About

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Genesis 19:1-26. Trigger warning for victims of sexual assault and/or sexual abuse.

Last week I said that the early stories in Genesis were etiological stories, that is stories that explain why things are the way they are, but then we transition to the stories of Abraham which begin the story of the people called the Israelites, which are very different. Well, that’s not really a hard and fast rule, because today’s passage is also an origin story. As we heard in the introduction, we are told that the land occupied by Lot had been extremely fertile, it actually says it was like Egypt, but now it’s a waste land, with high temperatures, where little grows, where there are tar pits, it smells like Sulphur and then there are pillars of salt, so what made it that way. Well the story from chapter 19 would seem to answer that question. It’s uninhabitable, it sounds almost as bad as Phoenix, because God destroyed the area raining it with fire and Sulphur, and of course Lot’s wife looked back and was turned into salt, and so this story explains all of that and so we can move on and be done right? I wish it were that easy, but what I can say is that this story is not about homosexuality, which is the most common interpretation, at least for the last 1000 years, but before we get into that, we do have to take a step back.

Lot and Abraham originally travel together to the Promised Land, but as they accumulate possessions, they eventually go their separate ways because their underlings are fighting. As we heard, Lot goes to the cities of the plain, which were Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zoboiim and Bela, sometimes called Baor, and they had been vassals to King Chedorlaomer but then they rebel for some reason. So, King Chedorlaomer gathers some other kings together and they attack and defeat the five cities, taking all their possessions. And while some people fled, we are told that Lot was taken into captivity. When Abraham finds out about this, he goes off and defeats the other kings and returns Lot and his possessions, and the possession of everyone else as well.

As Long As Those At The Top Don't Get In Trouble...

Earlier this week I wrote about what has been happening at Baylor University and their cover-up of sexual and domestic abuse claims against athletes at the university (including retaliating against at least one victim), and I wondered why Ken Starr wasn't showing the same moral outrage on this as he did against then President Clinton.

The results of the report submitted to the Baylor board of regents came out today, and while there were firings the people at the top were largely not included.

This included Ken Starr who, while he is being removed as president, will now become chancelor of the university on terms "still being discussed." I'm guessing that means he will be getting a raise?  He will also still be a professor of constitutional law at the law school, because nothing says you can teach constitutional law like overseeing people covering up law breaking.

This includes the athletic director Ian McCaw who has been "sanctioned" and put on "probation" but will still be retaining his job, because why would you remove someone who oversaw programs that lacked institutional control?

Art Briles, the head football coach, is being suspended with the intention of seeking his dismissal "according to contractual procedures." Does that mean he might still be retained? Or is it another way of saying he will be dismissed but with a nice compensation package on the way out? Since they are a private institution they are under no obligation to report any compensation package unless they want to, which they are clearly not going to want to do.

Now there were some firings that did take place from the administration and the athletic department, but they say "Neither these individuals nor the disciplinary actions will be identified publicly." That's even though they did just say what the disciplinary action was, they were fired, we just don't know who they are. Which means these are people way down the totem pole, people that were clearly expendable, people not covered by million dollar salaries and contracts, so people that are easy to scapegoat and push out into the wilderness.

So, once again, we all learn the lesson that if you are at the top and things go badly, rarely is the buck going to stop with you.  Instead it lands on those way down at the bottom. What does this teach anyone, and what does this say about our understanding of leadership? Or, I might ask again: Where, Mr. Starr, is the moral outrage?

Where Is The Moral Outrage?

In the mid-90's, Ken Starr led a moral charge against Bill Clinton for his affair, even though that was not what he was hired to do. Of course that action led to Clinton's impeachment.

Since 2010 Starr has been the president of Baylor University.  During that time, the Baylor football team has moved from mediocrity and obscurity, to a national powerhouse. Perhaps that rise came with the cost of overlooking, or maybe even enabling, illegal behavior by it's football players including assault and sexual abuse.

There have already been several investigations and allegations of what the school did not do, and the way it treated the victims of these crimes. ESPN's Outside the Lines has uncovered even more cases that had never been reported before and that included the Waco police department working to make sure these cases never saw the public light. The accusation is being made that at the very least that the football coaches knew about these events, and perhaps even known by those at the top.

So, my question Mr. Starr, is where is your moral outrage? Where is all the work you did to bring down the President in order to make sure those who are committing violence against women are brought to justice? At least you will be able to say that you had a winning football program.