Like a Mother

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The scripture reading is Isaiah 49:8-16a. The audio can be found here.

If I were to ask you to tell me what God looks like, I can probably guess that most of us would describe the image we see all the time. God is an older man, white of course, with a long white beard, maybe, like Michelangelo’s famous portrayal in the Sistine chapel, he is incredibly buff, but he’s floating in the clouds, or maybe sitting on a throne, looking powerful and all knowing. If we had video capability I would show you that picture, but when you go home if you do a Google image search this is the first image that comes up and, and in seeing it most of us would all shake our heads and say, “yep, that’s what God looks.” But is that really what who God is and what God looks like?

The scriptures give plenty of metaphors for God and most of them are male, not necessarily of someone who spends all their time in the gym as Michelangelo would have us believe, but male nonetheless. Now, some of the male images of God are not very flattering. The prophets Hosea, Jeremiah and Ezekiel all picture God as an abusive husband, but its okay because his wife, who is Israel or Jerusalem depending on the prophecy, “was asking for it.” How we think about God and what metaphors we use for God matters. Is the image of an abusive husband the image of God we want to hold onto and someone to whom we want to pray? If we were to always conceive of God as abusive, I strongly suspect that most of us would not be sitting here. That that would be a God we would not want to follow or worship.

Jesus, of course gives us the masculine identity of God as father. But, the word translated as father might be better translated in most cases as daddy. It’s not a title as it is a deeply personal relationship. So when we pray to God as father, do you conceive of that as someone who is an authoritarian figure, who is sort of around but not intimately involved in our lives, who is more there as protector or provider or disciplinarian, or do you conceive of God, as daddy, someone carrying you on his shoulders, teaching you how to throw a ball or slide into a base, or sitting down and having a tea party with you? These are two radically different images of God from the same metaphor.

In today’s scripture passage from Isaiah, we have God conceived of not as father, but instead as mother and this is not at all unusual for the writer of this portion of Isaiah. Chapters 40-66 are thought not to have been written by the main the prophet Isaiah, but instead by writers who are referred to as deutero-Isaiah and trito- Isaiah, meaning second and third Isaiah. I won’t go into all the reasons, but beginning at chapter 44, there is a change from proclamation about the coming destruction of Israel to the post-exiling existence of the Jewish people, and there is also a change in the style of the writing, including the metaphors for God used. In fact, female images for God occur more frequently chapters 40-66 in Isaiah then they do in any other book in the Bible. And like today’s passage, most of these metaphors refer to God as being a mother.

Perhaps that is appropriate since the author of these passages is seeking to let the people know that God has not abandoned them, that God is faithful and still cares for them and will always continue to care for her children. “Can a woman forget her nursing her child,” God says, “or show no compassion for the child of her womb?” And then God says, even though earthly mothers may forget that God will not, that God will always remain faithful to her children, that God will be a more faithful of a mother than we can ever possibly conceive. This is a very different image than what we are probably used to hearing about God, and because we are so used to hearing God using only male imagery I would guess that many of us probably did not even notice it when female imagery was used.

Now this imagery may work for you or it may not work for you, but don’t reject it simply because you don’t think that this is who God is. The problem with many of the metaphors given about God in the scriptures is that we often forget that they are metaphors and instead we treat them as if they are saying this is who God actually is in God’s character. That is not what metaphors do or their purpose. Metaphors relate one thing to another, but they are not saying that the two things are the same. When I say that on our wedding day Linda was as beautiful as a rose, I am not saying that she is actually a rose or even that “roseness” is somehow part of her make-up, the same as if I say that the Red Sox are now being managed like the Yankees, it does not mean that they are the Yankees, and I know many of you are very glad they are not the Yankees.

Metaphors, when properly constructed, must show similarities and differences, so that we can say “yes, God is like that,” and also at the same time say “God is not like that.” When we say that God is a rock, it does not mean that God is an actual rock who has no thought, no movement, no growth, etc. Instead it implies some characteristics that we associate with rocks, like steadfastness or strength or perhaps immovability, so that we can say God is like a rock while at the same time understanding that God is not like a rock. Metaphors make comparisons so that things which might otherwise be incomprehensible, like God, become more comprehensible.

At the same time, our imagery of God needs to match our understanding of God. If you believe that God has given us total free will and allows us to do whatever we want and to be whatever we want without interference from God, then our metaphor for God needs to match that understanding. We cannot hold that belief and simultaneously imagine God as a potter, because if God is potter then we are the clay being formed and molded by God which would imply that God is doing most of the work and God is therefore interfering with the life of the clay. The potter does not allow the clay to do whatever the clay wants to do. And so that metaphor of God as potter does not work with a conception of God in which we have total freedom. (1) If you find that your prayer life is not working, or if you find you once had a wonderful prayer life and it has suddenly stopped working perhaps it is because your metaphor for God is no longer applicable.

Rev. Carolyn Jane Bohler, author of God the What? What our Metaphors for God Reveal about Our Beliefs in God, which has greatly helped me greatly expand my metaphors for God, says that after the birth of her first child, she found herself exhausted, physically, emotionally and spiritually, which I think every parent in her can identify with, and she found her prayer life working for her at the time she most needed to be sustained by something bigger than she was. And then she came to use the metaphor, like today’s scripture, of God who was a nursing mother who would feed her and give her sustenance at the time when she felt her weakest and was most vulnerable and dependent, just like her infant. As Dr. Jane Vennard tells us you will find that what you pray for and how you pray will be impacted by the metaphor of God that you pray to, and so to help illustrate this, we are going to try a little experiment and be a little interactive this morning.

In your bulletin, you will find a two sided insert with a series of metaphors for God followed by lines after, which I know many of you were wondering about, please take that out now. This will also be available on the website with today’s bulletin. At the center aisle of the pew you will find a basket of pens so please pass that down so that everyone has something with which to write. And then we are going to do some praying. What I am going to do is to read one of the metaphors for God and then you are going to write whatever comes into your mind as a pray that matches that metaphor. All we are doing is writing just one line. So here’s an example. If I say, God the physician, which is not on your sheet, I might write, may your healing hands calm and sooth my troubled soul. Or I might say, write a prescription that will heal me of my doubts. Do you get the idea?

There is no right or wrong way to do this. There are no right or wrong prayers, and you don’t have to share them with anyone else unless you want to. Listen to each metaphor and respond as you feel called. Listen to what the metaphor says to you and write that down, if you think about it too hard you’ll find it harder that it should be, just let the spirit move you, I will give you time to write your prayer down. We’re only going to do a few of them. Everyone clear on what you are supposed to be doing? Here we go:

God the father, my daddy….
God the nursing mother….
Weaver, spinner God
God of the stillness….
God the baker…. (2)

If the Spirit has moved you the way it normally does on this exercise you found that your prayers were very different for each one, that praying to God as father is very different then praying to God as nursing mother, which was very different from God as baker or stillness. I’m sure that you also found that some of the prayers came very easily and some others were hard, which would indicate that some of the metaphors work for you today and others don’t. However, just because a metaphor works for you today does not mean that it will work for you tomorrow, and what does not work today may work for you next year. Our metaphors must change to the realities of our lives, but make the metaphor your own, find what works for you.

If you are using only one metaphor for God, you are too limited. Find new ways to address God and I guarantee you you will find new ways to pray and new things to pray for. If you are getting stuck coming up with new metaphors to try, there are a number of recommendations on the insert which can be used or expanded upon, or do a search on the internet where you will find thousands of recommendations, and when all else fails go to the bible where you will find lots of metaphors for God. You might also just answer the simple question, what do I need for God to be for me right now, it could be nursing mother, it could be strong father, or it could be, as one six-year-old-girl said, God as bright night light.

If you are looking for something to take on during Lent, I might suggest that you take on a new metaphor for God each day and work with that image in your prayers. But don’t take on the ones that are most meaningful for you. Take on the ones that are hard or challenge you as well. Maybe imaging God as feminine might be difficult because you’ve never conceived of that as a possibility before so work on that, or maybe you have trouble with God in the masculine or maybe it’s even conceiving of God as non-gendered. If you are used to working with a very personal, knowable God, pray to the unknown, mysterious or unknowable God, and vice versa by praying to a God who is personified and personalized for you. Sometimes the things that are most helpful in showing us who God is for us is by working through who God is not for us.

Our metaphors for God matter and make a difference in our lives, they guide us and lead us, they shape us and form us. It is impossible to think about God without metaphors, and as Rev. Bohler writes “If we settle for only one metaphor for God, we limit our potential experience of God. I believe the converse is also true: if we expand our metaphors of God, we expand our experience of God.” May it be so in our lives. Amen.

(1) Bohler, Carolyn Jane. God the What? What Our Metaphors for God Reveal About Our Beliefs in God.
(2) These metaphors for God come from God the What? and from a seminar on prayer led by Dr. Jane Vennard.

Academy Awards

Yesterday was the Academy Awards, and I have to say that even though I love movies we saw only one of the films nominated for the major awards and that was The Social Network. Today, after it was shut-out of the major awards, although it was considered to be a serious contender, people are wondering why. I can give you a simple reason. It wasn’t all that great of a movie. Was it good? Yes, but I my opinion it was not Oscar worthy. In fact, after the movie was over I turned to my wife and said “If that’s one of the best movies of the year, it was not a good year for movies.”

But, to show you how far behind I am, we just watched The Dark Knight for the first time a couple of weeks ago, which won Heath Ledger the Academy Award, and I honestly didn’t see what was so great about his performance. I want to be blown away by the performers who win. I want it to be like Charlize Theron in Monster or Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball or even Kathy Bates in Misery. (I know it seems like there is a pattern there, but there isn't. These were just three that I can name off the top of my head.) I want to walk out of the theater, or turn off the DVD which is more likely now, and say “that was incredible. That should win an Academy Award.” Am I alone in that?

I want my movies to wow me, and often the best I can now exclaim at the end of a film, even ones that are heralded, is “well at least we only paid a dollar for that.” I know great films are out there, they are still being made, I suspect that even some that were nominated this year are absolutely fantastic, but I want the smaller films that are incredible lifted up as well. Films like The Station Agent or The Sweet Hereafter, two small independent films that are extraordinary. I would much rather watch films like these than most of the big blockbusters any time I am given the choice.

(I’m not including animation as one of the major categories, but I have seen Toy Story 3 numerous times, and why wasn’t it nominated for best picture?)

Speed Linking

It's been a while since I've done speed linking, so this is a little long:

• I've written in the past of my extreme dislike of airlines nickel and dimeing us for everything. Here is a list of the worst offenders.
• Arizona has become the battleground, literally, for lots of the issues the country faces. Time did a good job of looking at my home state and their issues. And to think that Arizona was split off from New Mexico because they were considered too progressive for New Mexicans.
• Last week former NFL player Dave Duerson died by suicide, but let his family know that he wanted his brain to be donated to BU to be studied for damage as a result of his football career. Here is a great article from The New Yorker on football and concussions. Why is it the the rest of the media is not doing as good of a job of asking the tough questions about this issue that The New Yorker is?
• As the first group of people who have been dependent on 401ks approach retirement age they are finding that they don't have enough saved. This story will continue to play out and will become bigger and bigger, and as we discuss slashing pension programs it should already be a major issue.
• This is an older story, but goes to show you how out of alignment booster support of colleges has become. Robert Burton wants $3 million he gave to the University of Connecticut back because he was not consulted about the hiring of the new football coach. He says that because he is the program's top donor that he "earned" the right to have his voice heard. Wow! That takes things to a whole new level.
• The quarterback of my Arizona State Sun Devils has just announced that he is leaving football because of concussions. He has been told by doctors that his next concussion, which would be his fifth, could be devastating to his long-term health (if the first 4 haven't already been).
• In honor of President's Day, the "blackest" name in America is Washington, for many different reasons.
• This past week Clarence Thomas past the five-year mark without asking a single question from the bench. No one in history has ever gone longer than a single term without saying anything, let alone five terms.
• In the wake of the shootings in Tucson, the University of Arizona has started the National Institute for Civil Discourse. I hope it is a great success but suggest they don't discuss the rivalry between the U of A and ASU.
• And, on the other end of the collegiate spectrum, Texas has passed a bill to allow students and employees to carry guns on campus.
• Every year the t-shirts for the non-winning team in the Super Bowl (among other events) are donated to be given to people around the world. Some wonder whether this is being done for all the wrong reasons with all the wrong outcomes.
• Wondering how the economy is doing? Just follow the ordering of desserts and Starbucks coffee, according to this article.
• Say it isn't so! In order to cut costs, the Girl Scouts are cutting back on the number of cookies they offer.
• We all seem to know someone who is always insanely lucky. Here is the story of one person who not only wound up with free tickets to the Super Bowl several times, but even got an onfield pass this year.
• The idea that we are close to reaching peak oil has been around for awhile, but has widely been ridiculed. Wikileaks has revealed that the some in the government believe that Saudi Arabia is over promising their oil supply and production.
• And finally, have you ever thought, "I'd love to own a Ferrari, but I really need it to have room to carry around all my stuff?" Well your prayers have been answered with the Ferrari station wagon (I'm serious). Only 1.5 million and it's yours.

Church DNA: Don't Be A Monkey

I am currently making my way through Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko, which I strongly recommend. He has this analogy about assumptions that I love:

Imagine a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stair, spray all the monkeys with ice-cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result – all the monkeys are sprayed with ice-cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, turn off the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and will want to climb the stairs. To his surprise, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.

Again, replace a third monkey with a new one. The new one goes to the stairs and is attacked. Two of the four monkeys that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing the fourth and fifth monkeys with new ones, all the monkeys that have been sprayed with ice-cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs. Why not? Because as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been around here.

Don’t be a monkey. Challenge all assumptions.

Any organization we join has its own DNA, its own way of doing things. Even within organizations, different groups will take on different characteristics, and what makes these things unique is that this DNA is not really dependent on the people. Like the monkeys, the DNA will last long after those who started the pattern have left unless something is done to change that pattern, and then what's likely to happen is that you will be attacked.

Even though the new monkeys don't have any idea why they can't go near the stairs, they never try because they learn the culture of the cage. Sometimes this culture is learned through being attacked and sometimes its learned through observation or more nuanced approaches by gently being told "that's not the way we do it here." I'm sure we've all experienced this learning.

The same is true of churches. Every church has its own unique DNA, its own unique way of doing things and its something that you have to learn, and over time everyone learns it whether they recognize it or not. Most of the arguments and conflicts that churches get into are linked to patterns that are sometimes generations old.

In this congregation a common refrain from past conflicts is "We felt like it was being jammed down our throat and no one was listening to what we had to say." I have heard this said about conflicts only 5 years old, and about those 20 years old and older. I suspect if we talked to people who were here sixty years ago about about conflicts then, the same phrase would be repeated. We learn and adapt to the culture we are in, and we operate and act by those rules, and if you don't then be aware that your missteps will be brought to your attention.

So how do we get passed this and change the DNA. The first answer is, very carefully. Systems do not like to change, and they will always revert back to the status quo. It is the path of least resistance, and its also the path that everyone knows. But, if you are going to change the system, you start by challenging the assumptions. You ask "why can't we go near the stairs?" And when you ask that question, remarkably you will hear two things. The first is because that's the way it's always been done, of course, and the second is that people have no idea why it's always been done that way.

There will be people who object to you even asking the question because it's assumed that the answer is self-evident, even if it's not even evident to them, and also because they assume that you want to change the system. Challenging assumptions and asking about them does not mean you have to change them. There might be a completely good reason why things are done the way they are and reasons to keep them that way. But it's just as likely that the reasons have run their course and no one has asked any questions about them and so they haven't changed.

I remember hearing a story from a professor about a church she visited in which when the Apostle's Creed was said everyone turned around and faced the back wall and recited it then turned back to the front of the church when it was over. She asked why they did this, and of course no one knew, it's just the way it was done. In digging more through the church archives she found an old picture of the sanctuary in which, as you might have guessed, the Apostle's Creed was written on the back wall, and so everyone turned around to read it. It had long since been painted over but the pattern still remained.

Don't be a monkey. Challenge assumptions. Change those things which have long since past their necessity and keep what needs to be kept, but don't stay away from the banana simply because that's the way it's always been done.

Mediocrity

Mediocrity. It’s not a word we hear a lot about these days, and certainly not something we often apply to ourselves, unless we’re saying something like “it’s good enough for government work” (which I object to, but that’s another post). Even though it’s not something we strive for, if you can even strive to be mediocre, it certainly drives a lot of what we do.

We end up getting into ruts and come to believe that because our past performance has been “acceptable” that it is all we need to do. Think of all the times you’ve been in a business that was clearly mediocre, where the service wasn’t good, where the items where a little disheveled, maybe there was just a little bit of dirt and grime, where everything said “we’re doing just enough to get by.”

The problem with that behavior is that it will infiltrate the entire system. Sociologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling put forth their broken windows theory which says that if a window in a vacant building is broken and not fixed that more windows will be broken. The one broken window will become a catalyst to more destruction. If, however, the broken window is fixed then the building will not be vandalized more.

I think the same holds true with mediocrity. If mediocrity is allowed to exist in one area, then it will expand to other areas because it becomes the norm. Mediocrity becomes the accepted level of behavior and performance and it will eventually impact everything else. I remember being in a restaurant one time with my boss and there was a napkin laying on the ground and one of the employees walked right by without picking it up. When he saw that he said to me that he could guarantee that it would still be there when we left, because a pattern of behavior had been established, and sure enough it was. Mediocrity had entered the system, and mediocrity is much easier to achieve and requires a lot less effort then excellence, and so it becomes the path of least resistance.

When we moved to Boston, my wife and I were looking around for a church to attend. One Sunday we went to a church and there was just sort of general clutter up in the chancel area of things totally unrelated to that Sunday’s service. Then I noticed that there were crayon drawings in the two hymnals we were using, which led me to notice lots of other things that conveyed the attitude that they didn’t care about the appearance. Even though the preaching was good, it was not a church we ever went back to. I don’t know which thing came first, but metaphorically the church was full of broken windows, and who wants to worship someplace like that?

Another church I recently attended had its organ, which is at a major focal point in the sanctuary, covered in music and books giving, again, a generally cluttered look and feel which then matched other things in the church. A third church which I also recently attended had significant troubles getting their PowerPoint slides to work which added chaos to the system and made everything a little disorganized. They would have been better off shutting them down then to try and keep fighting with them and causing a distraction to what was going on in the rest of the service, because what I can clearly feel about the service was that it seemed rather disjointed. Was the entire service disorderly or was it just the slides? I don’t know, and in fact it doesn’t matter, because I walked away with the feeling that the entire service had this characteristic.

I can even see this on this blog. On week's in which I update the scripture readings for the week, you can be sure that I will also write a post. But on week's in which I don't even make that simple change then I usually won't write either. I have set the standard for myself on these weeks that this blog is not important, and so it isn't and it moves to the back burner.

Now I am not saying that everything has to be perfect, but what I am saying is that we must do the best with what we have. Mediocrity cannot be the norm. One church planter I heard speak said each week in his welcome he says to the congregation that he is glad they are there because that day’s service is going to be the best worship service they have ever done. And the week after that is going to be the best, and the week after that, and so on.

They are constantly striving to correct their mistakes, improve where they can and to keep moving on. When that is our goal and we honestly undertake that process then mediocrity cannot set in, because the constant review will not allow it. It also pushes us to look at the smallest, most minute things, which often are the ones that make the biggest difference.

Would we trust a business, or go back to a business, that was cluttered and dirty, that had boxes just laying around, or looked as if they didn’t respect what they were doing, or that they even knew what they were doing? Not likely, and yet we see this in our churches all the time.

What would our church look and feel like if we constantly pushed ourselves to excel? What would it be like if we were to say each and every week in everything we did that it was going to be the best we had ever done it? Would we always succeed? Of course not, there are going to be times when things happen, but recognizing those things, learning from them so they don’t happen again, and then pushing ourselves to do better will make everything better. It will also make people want to be a part of what we are doing.

People don’t want to be involved or go to places that are mediocre, that are just going through the motions. They want to be involved in places that excel, that do things better than everyone else, and that in turn push them to excel as well. People will rise to the expectation level set for them, and, conversely, they will also lower their behavior and performance to the expected level. If we hope to change the culture of our church we need to raise our level of expectation and our performance.

The church has settled for mediocrity in far too many places, and we are paying the price. We need to raise our level of performance in all levels of ministry and in doing so I believe we will see profound changes in what we do and how people respond. As Jesus said, we are called to be perfect as God is perfect; we are not called to mediocrity.

The Option to Fail

Recently I saw a bumper sticker which gave me some pause. It said, “Failure is not an option.” Underneath that was some type that was too small to read, so I don’t know exactly what they were saying couldn’t fail, but that statement got me thinking.

I am writing this from Albuquerque where I flew on Saturday. Certainly I don’t want failure to be an option when I’m flying, but how do airline pilots make sure failure is not an option? They practice and fail constantly in flight simulators, then study and rehash their mistakes so that they don’t make them again. In other words, in order to make sure that failure is not an option they fail a lot in order to learn from their mistakes.

Most people work to avoid failure as much as possible. There are usually two paths to this. The first is a reluctance to try new things or to take any risks, thereby keeping our lives limited only to the things we already know. The second is that we will often continue things long after they are effective, if they ever were, because to stop them means that we will have to admit that we failed.

But here’s the problem with both of these positions. When we are afraid to fail we are also afraid to succeed, because it is only through admitting failure that we can face our mistakes, learn from them and teach ourselves to be better than we are. It is through embracing the possibility of failure that we are able to take the risks necessary to advance ourselves, those around us and the institutions and groups with which we are affiliated. Indeed, there are few advancements in the course of human history that did not take significant trial and error before succeeding.

When asked by a reporter for the New York Times how it felt to have failed 700 times in his attempt to create the light bulb, Thomas Edison is reported to have said, “I have not failed seven hundred times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those seven hundred ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.” Edison learned from what did not work, and kept pushing forward until he finally found the right answer. Had he been afraid of trying new things he would never have been successful.

I have written in the past that I believe there are a series of questions that every church must answer. One of them is “If there was one thing you believe your church should do, but have never done, and you could be guaranteed it would succeed what would you do?” The follow-up, of course, is what is keeping you from doing it?

The only way we can get better is to be willing to take risks. Being afraid to push ourselves to try new things is a much bigger failure than trying things and not having them work, because, as someone else once said, “Failure is not an outcome, it is an attitude.” Maybe, in that sense, failure is indeed not an option.

Random Sports Thoughts

Yesterday was national signing day for high school football players to choose the school they would like to attend. ESPN dedicated 10 hours of live coverage to this event. Can someone please tell me why this is necessary? We’re treating high school football players signing scholarship papers like it was the NFL draft. Is it any wonder that so many elite athletes think they are above normal rules? And why are we putting so much pressure on 17 and 18 year old young men? This also totally distorts player/booster interactions leading to some of the many problems we have seen in the last year.

This Sunday is the Super Bowl, and I’m a little puzzled by one thing. When it looked like there was a real chance that Michael Vick would be in the Super Bowl people were talking about how he would be received and what the NFL would do about dealing with someone convicted of animal abuse playing in the biggest game. Would there be protesters? Would advertiser refuse to place ad? Or worse, would animal rights groups try and place ads?

The NFL never had to face that, instead they have a quarterback who has twice been accused of rape. No charges have ever been filed, although there is a civil case currently making its way through the courts. Why are people not up in arms about this? Is violence against animals somehow worse than violence against women? Why is Big Ben not being held accountable for this despicable behavior? Where is NOW on this issue? It seems to me this should be a much bigger issue than it is, and I wonder why.

A think part of it might have to do with a recent poll which found the 10 most disliked people in sports. The list is:
1) Al Davis, owner of the Oakland Raiders
2) Michael Vick
3) Jerry Jones, Owner of the Dallas Cowboys
4) Tiger Woods
5) Manny Ramirez
6) Terrell Owens
7) Albert Haynesworth
8) Mark McGwire
9) Bob Knight
10) Randy Moss
I can’t help but notice that the majority of these people are black. No whites who are current players make up the list. Why is that?

We have two whites in the top five. But they also happen to be NFL owners who are known for running teams with “thugs” as players, who also happen to be black. Coincidence, I don’t think so. Of the other whites, Mark McGwire, has become the poster boy of sorts for steroids in baseball, and Bob Knight known for his terrible temper. Big Ben’s dislike rate dropped from 57 to 39 percent over the course of the year, and so he is not in the top ten.

Can someone please tell me how what Tiger Woods did is worse then what Roethlisberger did? I’m not going to defend Woods’ behavior, but I do not put adultery on the same level as potential sexual assault. I think there are several things which separate Woods out. The first is that people expected more of him for some reason, and felt betrayed when everything came out. But I also believe that a lot of the animosity has to do with the fact that he was a black man, married to a white woman having affairs with other white women.

As white’s its really easy to believe that race doesn’t matter because it’s not something we really have to think about. Our color is to our advantage. People of color do not have that same advantage, and we as a society have lots of assumptions, conscious and unconscious, that impact how they are viewed. Among these are two of the major taboos of black men with white women and blacks getting too “uppity.” I believe that these two beliefs play very much into this list.

Only 11 more days until pitchers and catchers report, and 21 until the first game. Yeah!

Blessed Be

Here is my sermon from yesterday based on the Beatitudes, Matthew 5:1-12. The audio version can be found here.

It was just about one year ago that I stood up here and read to you what Luke says was Jesus’ first sermon. You may remember it, Jesus stands up in the synagogue and reading from the prophet Isaiah, he says “the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has sent me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Today we have the beginning of Matthew’s version of Jesus’ first sermon, which is of course commonly referred to as the Sermon on the Mount, and today’s passage is, to a degree, based on the same Isaiah passage used in Luke. Jesus’ ministry began when he had previously announced “repent for the kingdom of God has come near,” and then through this sermon we are given a glimpse of what that kingdom looks like, a view that is radically different from what the world considers important.

Jesus gives us a list of people who will be blessed, which is the reason these called the Beatitudes, but these are not the people we would normally consider blessed. If we were to make a list of those in the world who we think are blessed, I don’t think that our list would include those Jesus’ includes, even if we knew we were supposed to think that way, which the original hearers did not. In hearing who was blessed, they would have expected him to name the people everyone thought were blessed, the rich and powerful for example, who have these characteristics because they are blessed by God, and because they are blessed by God they also have these characteristics. It’s a circular argument. But that, of course is not what Jesus’ say, and that is where some of the difficulty of this passage arises.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure in heart, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are those persecuted for righteousness and blessed are those who are persecuted because they are followers of Jesus. Are those on any of your lists of those who are blessed? If we were to make a list of those who are blessed in our culture, just like in Jesus’ time, we would probably start with those who are rich and those with power, those who are popular, those seem fairly easy, and certainly the ones who gather the most attention and accolades. From there maybe we add those with an education, maybe heterosexuals, and others would include those who are white, and or males, again groups that have higher social positions, those who often are the ones who get to establish and determine societal structures and rules. Those are the ones that society blesses, but that is not whom we are told that God will necessarily bless.

In the movie version of A Chorus Line, which tells the story of 17 dancers looking to earn a part in a Broadway show. At the end, when the final cut of the dancers is going to be made, the director, played by Michael Douglas, asks the dancers to come to the line and then he calls some of the dancers by name and asks them to step forward. As they do, they begin to smile thinking that they have won the competition. Diana Morales, one of the dancers, is called forward and then sent back and as he sends her back, her face drops and she is crestfallen as she thinks she has been eliminated, but then the twist comes as all those who thought they had been chosen, all those who had heard their name called and who had stepped forward, are told “dancers in the front, thank you very much.” And they are dismissed. They thought that had been chosen only to find out they were not, and those who thought they were the worst found out, instead, that they were the best. They were the ones chosen. They were the ones elevated. Such is it for those lifted up by Jesus.

Now I think one of the problems in hearing what Jesus is trying to say here is that we don’t understand the meaning of blessing. One of the participants in a sermon discussion group I follow said this week “when my father died this fall, I didn’t feel blessed; I just hurt. I woke up on the morning of the funeral and said to my husband, ‘So this is what a broken heart feels like.’ Yet Jesus tells me I was blessed, and still am, even in my mourning, and so I have to ask myself, ‘since when did blessedness and happiness become synonymous?” I think that is part of our problem in hearing the beatitudes, we make the mistake that being blessed and being happy are the same thing. This is actually how some versions have translated the Greek word used here. But there are two problems with this translation.

The first is that happy is a rather subjective state. What makes me happy, like seeing the Yankees win, might make you miserable, and vice versa. Happiness is in the eye of the beholder. Whereas blessed is objective. Either God blesses you or God doesn’t. While we might say someone has clearly been blessed by God, our opinion has nothing to do with the actual blessing. Blessing has nothing to do with what we think about it. The second, and bigger, problem is that the opposite of blessed is not unhappy, which it might be if blessed and happy were synonymous. Instead, the opposite of blessed is cursed. This becomes very clear later in Matthew’s gospel when Jesus issues a series of woe statements, that begin “woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.” There are 13 such statements in Matthew. Luke, the only other gospel to include the Beatitudes, has 14 woe statements. To compare this, Mark has two woe statements, and John contains none. So to be blessed is a gift from God and is a statement of relationship with God, it has nothing to do with happiness or unhappiness.

In addition, what separates this giving of a set of laws from the mountain top, like Moses did, is that whereas the Ten Commandments are about doing, or not doing depending on the rule, the beatitudes are about being of who we are in the world. But, the other mistake we often make when we hear the Beatitudes being read is that we begin thinking am I meek enough? am I pure enough in heart? do I thirst and hunger for righteousness? am I merciful? Am I a peacemaker? That too misses the point. While all of these are positive attributes, Jesus is lifting them up after all, but Jesus is not telling us to go out and seek to mourn or to be poor in spirit, nor is he saying to be meek. Have you ever tried to be meek? You either are or you are not.

As one commentator said, “these are not practical advice for successful living, but prophetic declarations made on the conviction of the coming-and-already present kingdom of God.” They are not commands of how we should be living, but statements about how things are already. Notice that each blessing begins in the present tense to the future tense. Blessed are those who are x, for they will y. Blessed are the meek, current, present tense, for they will inherit the earth, future tense. To which Monty Python adds, in their immortal portrayal of the sermon on the mount, “Oh, I'm glad [the meek] are getting something, they have a hell of a time.” Jesus takes the blessings found in the Old Testament, which are located in the prophetic literature, like Isaiah, and in the wisdom literature, like the Psalms, and he combines them into one. They are both wisdom and prophecy.

One final problem we encounter when we hear the beatitudes is that many of us are so familiar with what they say, and the rhythm that they are too familiar. Because we know them we begin to miss entirely what they are saying, so listen to this version from Eugene Peterson’s The Message:
"You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.
"You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.
"You're blessed when you're content with just who you are—no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.
"You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat.
"You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being 'care-full,' you find yourselves cared for.
"You're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
"You're blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That's when you discover who you really are, and your place in God's family.
"You're blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God's kingdom.
"Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don't like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble."

Did you hear something different in that reading? The Beatitudes are not about nine individual characteristics or human virtues, in fact they stand in opposition to what we traditionally hold as virtuous. I challenge any politician to adopt these as their platform. They would be destroyed in an election. Instead, they are about the blessing that God gives to us, “contrary to all appearances” in our lives. We cannot look at each statement individually, they must be seen as a collective whole. They build on each other and Matthew, through his literary genius book ends them so that we understand them as a collective piece. This is what a Christian community looks like when they are oriented toward the Kingdom of God.

The Beatitudes are about the foolishness that Paul is talking about in the passage that we heard from 1 Corinthians this morning. “For God’s foolishness,” Paul says, “is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” Consider your own call,” Paul says. Consider your call, “Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” But God chose you.

Matthew says that Jesus sat down and taught the disciples, but he cannot mean the twelve, because he has only just before this selected his first four disciples. So who is Jesus teaching? We should hear Matthew saying, he is teaching us, the called disciples of Jesus the Christ. God has called us and blesses us, even us the broken and foolish, the meek, the mourning, and the poor in spirit. God blesses us. I want you to turn to the person next to you, or on both sides of you, and say “You are blessed.” No matter where you are in your life, no matter what is going on, God is there with you and wants you, even you, to participate in the Kingdom. God’s blessing is available for each and every one of us, not just the people that people think God should be blessing, but even us. May it be so. Amen.

Challenger

Twenty-five years ago today, I was in the 8th grade and standing in a computer room waiting for the class that I assisted to come in when the librarian came in and told us that the Challenger had just exploded. I, and the other student in the room with me, rushed to the next room where she had a TV going to watch the coverage. We were the first students in our class to know about the tragedy, and when we got back to class we proceeded to tell everyone what we had just seen.

In my memory we spent the rest of that school day doing nothing but watching the coverage of the event. I don't know if that's actually what happened, but that's what I remember. It is one of those events where most people can answer the question "where were you when you first heard the news?"

My brother and I loved the whole idea of space and space travel. Our mom would even allow us to stay home from school in order to watch the shuttle launches. We would always go later in the day, but there was something special about those events for us. But like the rest of America, shuttle launches had become routine. There was nothing special about them anymore, and so we were not at home watching that morning, we were in class with everyone else.

For some reason this event was seared into my mind, and the fact that Christa McAullife was there was not terribly important to me. I actually think that I was more struck by the fact that there were multiple races and both men and women that made it important. I created a little shrine of sorts to the astronauts in my room featuring newspaper articles, a patch for that mission and a cartoon by Benson, the political cartoonist of the Arizona Republic. It featured a drawing of that iconic image of the explosion and the two plumes of smoke from the rockets continuing into the air, and the caption read "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for." Even thinking of it now it brings tears to my eyes.

When I was doing public relations work I met a photographer who was there that day covering the launch because one of the astronauts was an alum of the college he worked for. He was the one who took the picture of McAullife's mother with the sort of stunned, bewildered look on her face, knowing what she had just witnessed and praying that she hadn't just witnessed it all at the same time. I also dated someone who's father, who was a rocket scientist, was fired because before the O rings were found to have been the cause, it was believed that he and his team were responsible. He could not get a job in the aerospace industry for more than a year, and ended up driving a garbage truck.

Twenty-five years later, it is still one of the touch points of my life. It is an image and a time that is seared into my mind, and my thoughts and prayers go out to the friends and families of those astronauts today. For a good book on NASA at the time from an astronaut who was there I recommend Riding Rockets by Mike Mullane.

Where were you 25 years ago today?

Speed Linking

• Zach Bennett, an 11-year-old battling a life threatening disease, was a devoted fan of the Albany River Rats hockey team until the team moved to North Carolina. The family has decided to follow the team by selling their house, and the team is helping them out.
• The NFL is willing to let you pay $200 for Super Bowl tickets that won't even get you into the stadium, but you can watch it on television next to the stadium. Greed is good!
• Here are some very good email etiquette and technique rules. I have to say I have violated some of these, especially forgetting the attachment.
• In my sermon last Sunday I specifically mentioned Simon Cowell being allowed to be as nasty as he wanted to be on American Idol. Apparently his leaving the show has made a difference not only in how people are being treated but who is advancing.
• You cannot buy a toy that might be mistaken for a real gun, because we have no problem regulating toys. Nicholas Kristof wonders why don't we do the same with guns?
• The new governor of Alabama quickly got himself into trouble by saying that those who are not Christians are not his brothers and sisters, leaving many groups wondering what that meant for them. He later apologized for anyone who "may have been offended." Which means he actually didn't apologize. Why can't anyone just say they are sorry anymore?
• Some journalists are now trying to watch what they say after the shootings in Tucson.
• A North Carolina fan was removed from his seat at a game at Virginia because he was sitting too close to the Virginia bench and wearing the opposing teams clothing, which was against the rules.
• Once upon a time I was in public relations. When I began my boss told me to always make sure to proof the most obvious things, like headlines, because these are often overlooked with the assumption that everyone else has looked at them because they are so obvious. Here is a perfect example of why that rule is so important.
• A teacher in New Rochelle, NY once told one of his students that if she did well in school that he would pay for her college education. She did and he is now keeping his promise by selling his beloved baseball memorabilia collection.
• Mark Twain once said "It is better to remain silent and to be thought a fool, then to open your mouth and remove all doubt." It is a lesson that someone needs to relay to Sarah Palin who has now come out to defend her blood libel claim.
• Real Estate developers are concerned that gen y are not interested in the types of houses they have been building. This might be true long-term, but I think it is way too early to make this assessment, as the oldest gen y are only in their late twenties and most cannot yet afford McMansions. A better decision point will be when they reach their thirties and start having children. Are they still going to be wanting to reside in the cities or are they going to want to have the same thing their parents had? Only time will tell.
• A poll on the state of the nation says that religious affiliation is likely to determine how you view the current political rhetoric. White mainline Protestants are the most likely to blame those on both sides.