CATCHING GERMS OR DREAMS
A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Jack E. Skiles

December 28, 2008

Some of you may remember a movie from a few years back entitled, Tucker: The Man and His Dream. His dream remains so very pertinent to us today for Tucker's dream is to build the car of the future. He enlists to help him Abe, a designer who is very reluctant to join up with Tucker. Abe explains his reticence saying, “When I was a little kid maybe, five or six, in the old country, my mother used to say to me, she'd warn me, “Don't get too close to people, you'll catch their dreams.” Years later I realized that I had misunderstood her. “Germs,” she said, not dreams, “You'll catch their germs.” Germs are more easily caught than dreams.

We have joined together this last Sunday of 2008, an artificial determination to be sure, but we have joined together never-the-less and I would be so bold as to suggest why we have gathered once again in this First United Church sanctuary and it may be for a reason that none of us woke up this morning pondering.

I would suggest that we come to church on this final Sunday of this calendar year to allow ourselves to re-focus our vision, our hope for not only the rest of today but for the year 2009 ahead. We come here to First United to be informed, inspired and to find new vision, new or renewed vocation in relationship with God in the midst of faith community. We are gathered to renew a vision of God's Realm and to step courageously forward in our individual relationships and as a faith community that understands itself as an expression of Jesus, our Christ. We dare allow ourselves to be named followers of Jesus, informed by Jesus and those who risked being lured forward to be the living presence of Jesus. It is a most sacred and holy task we are involving ourselves in this morning.

There are several of us here this morning who are news junkies. We need our ten to twenty daily fixes of new and updated and multiply repeated news stories. We are to be pitied most surely and most probably need a support group. Only occasionally do we find things worth calling additional attention to. I found one of those this week. I listened to recently famed Saddleback pastor of “The Purpose Driven Life” Rick Warren at a gathering of Muslims. Warren is Obama's c hoice to give the invocation at his inaugural event in three weeks.

Rev. Warren was appearing at a LA Muslim event to discuss what it means to be a bridge builder as opposed to Rush Limbaugh, radio personality who favors destruction and narrow political confines who continues to push on the public airwaves the song of obvious racial slur, entitled “Barack the Magic Negro.”

Racism, sexism and all the other “-isms” are, of course, alive and well and we are about to embark on a truly wild ride in ou r culture as we assimilate into the highest office of our country a man, a family of mixed racial heritage. We run the risk of rising to some of the most profoundly healing times in our country and world, if we are, as Rick Warren claims, to become bridge builders rather than being narrow parochial bipartisan bigots.

I rather enjoyed Rick Warren before a group of Muslims gathered for a civic event as he said that he loved Muslims and that he loved people of all races and nationalities. He loves Buddhists and Hindus, he said. Now he left out the Mormons and the Roman Catholics and the Seventh Day Adventists. Further, “For the press,” Warren said, “Let me say this, I love all gays and straights.” Rick Warren, our newest Billy Graham, was in a very loving mood.

I still have not found my way to love Rush Limbaugh. I have a lot of appreciation for Rick Warren as he struggles within conservative religious circles to hunt for a bridge between very polarizing positions held by so many. Warren loves gays and straights but was a most significant naysayer in the California Proposition 8 success that disallowed gay and lesbian people equal rights to marriage. His position doesn't sound at heart to be very loving. To say, “I love you” and then to go forth and be mean to them, sounds more like bridge destruction than bridge building.

This morning, I would have us ponder what it means to be dis-satisfied with mere political posturing and political correctness and to embrace the world of all creatures as God does, and to most sincerely love everyone, every thing without reserve, without hesitation and without having to make everyone else be just like us.

In God's realm there is more than mere neutral love and acceptance of the vast diversity of all of creation. In God's realm, in God's kingdom, in God's way, there is an embracing, a passionate love that brings all diversity not to sameness, but to a cohesive whole whose most divergent forms express the reality of God's presence with as much completeness as the center. The Bridge between Rich Warren's neutral love of everyone and God's passionate embrace of diversity is found, most probably for us, through the mind of Christ.

I find in my own personal salvation journey, that it is the mind of Christ that I reach into in prayer. It is the mind of Christ, the cosmic nexus that calls me to stretch out beyond my Hoosier hide, my geographic place on the globe, to allow my spirit to expand beyond my sacred religious biases to enter into the spiritually of my Jesus who is bigger than my personal savior, but who remains personal while at the same time is so great, so big, so cosmic in scope.

What I am seeking so hard to find a way to say is that when Rev. Rick Warren said that he loved all those Muslims, he wasn't believable. I would even go so far as to suggest he was attempting to build a bridge without honesty and the integrity of also saying what he believes in his heart: that Muslims and Hindus and gays and Catholics and all the rest need love so that they will find Jesus and then they will change and be like Rev. Rick.

I've never believed in political or religious correctness just for the sake of sounding good. If I tell you or someone else that I love you, it needs to be believable because deep down in my soul I have joined with God in finding you lovable because in your essence you are, like I am, like all are, just as we are without one plea. I cannot deny someone I love basic human rights. I cannot deny someone I love the same recognition of their faith that I demand for my own. I cannot go to war to change someone's government just because it is not a democracy, such as it is in our land and nor can I find it in my faith to support governments or dictators in my so called national interest versus true peace and prosperity and development for everyone, especially the most poor and destitute of this planet.

In God's vision, in the eyes of Christ there is no peace in our land unless there is peace in Somalia , in India , in Pakistan and Afghanistan and in the deepest poverty stricken alleyways and highways and rural farms throughout South and Central America . In God's eyes there is no peace in Israel unless the Palestinians have the same rights to determination and freedom as the Israelis. In God's realm there is no national defense born of missiles and tanks and hand held weapons. It is a lie that peace comes from having the best weapons. Peace in God's realm comes from men and women of all positions freely sitting like Christ's disciples at the same table, dipping bread into the same shared cup.

In God's realm, there most probably is a preference for religious pluralism as long as it is loving and life enhancing. Surely one of the things God most values is what God created. And God created diversity billions and trillions of times over. The deeper that we search into this planet of ours what we find is life in an ever-widening diversity. The more we look beyond ourselves into the 14 billion some years of the Universe beyond us in all directions what we find is a diversity that is mind-staggeringly beautiful and we have yet to understand anything but a fraction of what we can see and we know we don't observe the dark matter that we can't see.

I have grown in my spiritual path to be rather unashamedly Christian. That is not always easy, mind you. There is a lot within traditional Christianity and a lot that has been done in the name of Christianity that is and has been shameful. I try hard not to hold God or Jesus responsible for what people have done unjustly and cruelly in the name of God or Jesus. The essence of God found in the Christ is every bit as real and provocatively challenging today for you and for me as it was in the life of the Apostle Paul and his female partner in ministry, Thecla. Thecla is a woman, if you don't know her; she is someone that has been greatly forgotten in the patriarchy of Christian history.

I can only be unashamedly Christian by first being actively aware of and honestly shamed for what Christianity has done to others that has been wrong and cruel and unloving. We live surrounded, you and me, by thousands of people who could easily be Christian if they found us earnestly humble enough and loving enough rather than sure we are right and demanding of respect. Jesus and the faith movement that followed him grew because it had the respect and the love from the multitudes that the world's powers only used and abused for their national interests.

Quite possibly in today's power politic realm, we need 100,000 faithful followers of Jesus to go to Israel and the Palestinian Territories and rather than invest our dollars in tacky religious tourist destinations we need to go and sit and demand justice for the oppressed. It could be that 100,000 Christians faithfully putting our lives on the line for nothing more than peace and justice for the multitudes would not only bring about enemies coming to sit together at a shared table, but also serve to enhance and make the reality of God that we have found in the Christ be seen as something more than a smoky filled church over a cave in Bethlehem that allows Priests to come to physical force over who has liturgical rights to observe the non-historical birth place of Jesus.

Perhaps we need as a congregation to invest ourselves in building a school in Afghanistan or Iraq or in the Palestinian territories, a Muslim area. Because God does not care which name plate we wear. God does not care if we drive a Hindu, a Buddhist, an Islamic or Christian variety life. By and large I would want to faithfully argue that all faith systems are at their heart seriously seeking to understand the divinity from any number of cultural climates.

In God's realm, in the vision of Jesus, my Christ, the great diversity of life is first to be honored and then loved, shared into a peaceful co-existence. We are naturally competitive. It is natural to smack somebody who does us wrong or who does not give in to our wants. But, it takes refinement, it takes faithful struggle to move beyond just being natural and instead, like an artist, creating a picture of what could be, if we but dedicated ourselves to allowing the peace and the love of God to guide our brush strokes.

I didn't even come close to where I thought I was headed this morning. If I am so privileged, I will be standing here again next Sunday. You have called me to lead you spiritually and I want you to remember that part of leading is creating and inviting forth new and inspired leaders who know that God is calling you forth to move our lives closer to the reality of Jesus in 2009. Every one of us are called and expected to be the presence of Christ, the reality of God, the nurture of God, the peace of God, the rejecter of all things evil and manipulative. We are the ones; you and I, who are called from 2420 E. 3 rd Street in Bloomington to demonstrate not moral superiority, but loving justice toward those whose human rights are not honored, to bring healing justice to those whose bodies and souls have been injured by war, to bring peace to a planet that is literally being torn asunder. We are called to reach out to the multitudes, not to make them Christian, but to be the very real presence of Christ and then they will choose whose they want to be.

God is found as fully in Islam as in Christianity, as in Hinduism, as in Buddhism, as in any other faith system that seeks to bring peace, harmony, justice, fairness, equality and compassion to our world. God's realm is not about fighting between ourselves, but sincerely loving with as much diversity as the creator made diversity.

It could be that we need, you and I, to die for our faith. There are many kinds of death. I would ask that you join me in this last week of 2008, as we anticipate 2009 and being lured by God to be more:…where are you willing to die, to give up and give God reign in your life? Where are you willing to stand up for Jesus and be not a Christian but simply the loving presence of God?

God is calling. Are you willing to follow into this New Year?