GETING DIRTY WITH JESUS
A sermon by Rev. Dr. Jack E. Skiles

November 15, 2009

Samuel 1:4-20; Mark 13:1-8

All of us in this room are technological pioneers.  When history turns around to focus on the impact that the internet has had in human history, our lives will be those first examined.  Perhaps our generations are going to be meaningfully and correctly compared to the first generations of those following the invention of the printing press.  Newsweek Magazine is running an article this week entitled, “How the Internet Has Ruined Everything.”

One has only to look to newspapers to see one major reality of daily life that has changed dramatically due to the internet.  Where once major cities had three or four daily papers, morning and evening, most cities, our own included, barely can sustain one newspaper.  I am a news hound.  But, apart from reading the obituaries in the Herald Times, I get all of my news online.  Online news is most often updated faster than CNN television, which is on 24/7.

A vast amount of my reading of books happens electronically, thanks to internet technology.  I shop online for the books that I want; they are then wirelessly transmitted, whole books, within sixty seconds, to my Kindle reading device.  It is one of the best ways to gain bookshelf space, as all of my books are now stored electronically.

Access to knowledge in all of its forms, the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly moved into our world with the advent of the printing press in 1503.  In comparison, when Al Gore invented the internet (sarcasm) there was an explosion of information that has saturated our world as never before; we have yet to know, because it is happening now, what structures of our lives are changing, disappearing and being created because of the advanced access to knowledge by so many as never before.  We are pioneer people.

This new technological age is having tremendous impact on spirituality and faith as well.  When I went through seminary inter-library loans were a phenomenal step forward.  I could within two weeks have any book in North America shipped to my study carrel.  Today, even the most obscure text of any faith system is a mouse click away with translations easily available from any number of reputable sources.  The internet has made it possible for the most oppressed people to have their voices heard alongside the most obnoxious privileged voices of conservative fundamentalism—who do not want to share and use hate, racism and nationalism to foment disdain for those actively and purposefully oppressed in our world.

You and I have a tendency to be a people, a church, who have agreed to struggle faithfully, with fortitude and a ferocious tenacity, to bring our lives and spirits into a meaningful intersection with our historic faith and our contemporary situation, neither shrinking in fear from new and challenging knowledge or resting apathetically in the face of global environmental concerns and societal distress.  You and I have agreed to seek to follow, not the ways of societal and church tradition, as much as to follow the ways of this guy, Jesus, who loved tradition, who loved his Jewish faith, but who loved even more those hurt by tradition and unreflectively abusive power structures.  We have agreed in this faith community to bring into our awareness the best that evolutionary- and micro-biology, psychology and philosophy, sociology, ecology and mathematical cosmology can bring to our awareness as we seek to ensure a safe life, a good life, a fair and equitable life for those most suffering in our world, who need our strength of spirit and faith to offset their powerlessness.  We have agreed that this is the way of Jesus that we understand to be at work at First United Church.

We are pioneers that will and must continue to struggle well with making Christianity relevant to the third millennium. 

In February we have invited a world renowned leader in the progressively charged movement to keep the Bible stories and themes alive and meaningfully interpreted in a world that has grown seriously smaller with internet connections and that has brought all faith systems to an equal playing field of exposure and critical analysis.  When he speaks from this pulpit twice on February 14, Bishop John Shelby Spong will encourage us to become fully biblically literate.

If our faith systems are to survive and thrive in the next many decades, it will be because progressive communities of faith like ours will refuse to live in the past, but will actively and joyfully pull our faith toward a future in which we know how to interpret our Biblical stories forward, creatively, meaningfully with a world that will be actively struggling with population burdens, wars based on a lack of forgiving and lack of sharing, and with huge environmental changes never before seen  in our human existence, based on lack of forgiveness fueled by a hundred different fundamentalisms, all of whom have forgotten that ours is a God who makes all things new.  In order for Christianity, our faith, to be seen as an active player in the world, our faith must be and must be seen as dynamic and open to the expanding knowledge base around us.  We must counter religions of fear and exclusiveness with love, compassion and radical fairness.

It is going to be our task to take Jesus out of the stained glasses of Christendom and reorient him with the hard work of the masses of this earth.  A.J. Levine put it,” for most Christians, Jesus is too clean.  The historical Jesus preached the racial abandonment of self interest, radical fairness and a shared world, not a greed world.” 

For vast numbers of our overseas Christian workers—in places like the mountains of northern Thailand, trying to save girls from the sex trades, or in the deserts of Arizona, seeking to leave water and food for desperate and illegal immigrants from Mexico, for those faith based folks like you working at MCUM, in homeless shelters, with Habitat, working at Community Kitchen and serving meals for the shut-ins connected to Area 10 programs, who are committed to distributive justice-compassion—we all know that the real Jesus is dirty, bone-tired, deeply afraid, blood-drenched and watchful at night.  Progressive men and women of faith need to bring our dirty Jesus, our deeply-embedded-in-poverty Jesus, our sick-with-no-way-to-afford-a-doctor's-visit Jesus into all our arguments for health insurance reform, against rapacious mining and oil drilling; recovering water resources, including wetlands, bays, lakes and fishing grounds; civil rights including marriage for GLBT people, fair immigration policies and universal education.

For the better part of two centuries, readings like the one from Mark's Gospel about the end of the world have been used to bully or frighten people into believing that this life does not matter, and that anyone who does not believe that Jesus came back from the dead to save us from hell in the next life will spend eternity there.  I was saddened to tears of anger this past week as I listened to my son recount a true story from his grandfather, my first wife's father.  Aaron's grandfather is a marvelous man.  He has worked hard his entire life and been an active worker in his church and community.  His 95-year-old sister died this past week and as he held her hand, amongst his last words to her were, "I'm sorry you are spending eternity in hell for not accepting Jesus as your savior."

I knew this woman and she was, like her brother, a good person who held much wider views than he did.  I don't blame this man as much as I blame the wider Church of Jesus Christ which has not been more theologically and personally astute and has failed to educate  people to be loving and compassionate toward those who are different from us.  Threats of damnation do not work.  Love, compassion, empathy, turning the other cheek, forgiving our enemy, serving people's basic needs....those are the markers of faith that encourage people to want to join us.  Vincent van Gogh once said, "To believe in God for me is to feel that there is a God, not a dead one, or a stuffed one, but a living one, who with irresistible force urges us towards more loving."

The next few weeks of reading from our gospels will include apocalyptic end of the world stories.  We are at the end of the lectionary cycle and therefore and forthwith we are given end of the world stories.  A new year starts with the first Sunday of Advent, November 29th.  In Mark's reading this morning, we are even told to expect the end of the world, a violent overthrowing of the world by God, and one of the signs of end is environmental disasters.  That catches our attention, doesn't it?  But, it suggests that God is causing the destruction as a sign of the times and that God has even further destruction ahead for us.

We know about wars and rumors of wars and we participate in far too many of them.  It is not God's plan ever for there to be war or for us or anyone else to threaten war.  I reject that God is coming again to destroy our life on this planet.  We are doing destruction very well all by ourselves.  One of the beliefs that I hold at the deepest place in my soul is that God is the author of life and God would never seek to destroy.  God believes in life and loves life and calls us to take responsibility not only for our own lives, but for the very life of our planet and all the creatures therein. 

No matter that the film “2012” currently out in the marketplace has joined the long list of end-of-times scenarios.  Jesus said that he did not even know the time for the end of the world.  So, why do we remain silent in the presence of those crazy fundamentalist preachers who boldly proclaim that they have discovered something that even Jesus didn't know?  Scaring people and making money doing it in the name of Jesus is a bad thing to do.  We need to be telling our friends, our neighbors, our work associates, and our internet audience that God does not work that way and that those end of time preachers are false teachers. 

The truth most likely is that we live, you and I, in personal and planetary vulnerability.  We always live between the twin and contrasting poles of security and vulnerability.  There is no future in passivity and despair in regard to the needs of our globe and those most impacted by environmental disasters. 

The time is now, to join the dirty Jesus and dirty ourselves, to immerse ourselves in the hard work of bringing wholeness and healing to our planet.  Destruction is not the final word for us or the planet.  God will not magically rescue us from our mess.  But what the gospel of Jesus Christ affirms is that we can trust that God is with us, energizing us and calling us to life-saving and planetary-transforming action in our own perilous times. 

We are part of a larger Divine and Holy Adventure in which our actions shape the future of the planet and our own futures.  We are active players with a God who says all things are possible.  As we allow ourselves to trust clearly in God's luring, loving pull upon our lives, we will reach out and heal not only ourselves, but those we share this planet with and the very earth herself.  There will be plenty of time for getting clean after the work is done.

You know it is always later than we think.  It is nearly time to go join Jesus, the spirit of the Living God, and go get dirty.