Luke 13:1-9—Tragedy’s Calling Card

NOTE: This sermon was originally preached on April 22, 2007. I have pulled it together in manuscript form at the request of Steve and Carroll Luck, whose son Ryan graduated from Virginia Tech last spring.


Last Monday morning, tragedy left its calling card on the campus of Virginia Polytechnical Institute and State University in the mountain town of Blacksburg in the Commonwealth of Virginia in these United States. When I use the word “tragedy,” I mean something more than the popular and trivialized sense of the word as “a sad or terrible event.” When I use the term “tragedy,” I mean it in the technical sense of the word. A tragedy is a sad or terrible outcome that is brought on by what is called a tragic flaw—an inherent weakness or an unavoidable conflict—embedded in the character and greatness of a person or place. A tragic flaw. An inherent weakness. An unavoidable conflict. In a tragedy, a great character is undone in largest part by his or her own greatness. And so it was on Monday morning.

Her own greatness brought a great institution of higher education to its knees, horrified a wonderful college town, profoundly disturbed storied commonwealth and grieved an uncommon nation. The tragic flaw, the inherent weakness, the unavoidable conflict in the very fabric of American society is that at its best, American society is so entirely open and free that it tolerates behaviors and attitudes, individuals and groups who are capable of destroying the very society that tolerates them. The great American poet Nikki Giovanni, who was the Virginia Tech English professor who insisted that Monday’s perpetrator be removed from her poetry class because his attitude and behavior were disruptive to the learning process, said in response to a question as to whether or not the student should have been put out of the university, “If everyone who ever wrote or said anything disturbing were sent home, there would be no one left on campus.” There it is, even after the fact: the inherent weakness that is grounded in our greatness. At its best, American society is so entirely open and free that it insists on tolerating behaviors and attitudes, individuals and groups who are capable of destroying the society that tolerates them.

What happened on Monday is a tragedy in the technical sense of the term because the unavoidable conflict that underlies it is the defining tension in American society at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is the conflict in our culture between the rights and privileges—the civil liberties, we call them—of individuals on the one hand and the safety and security of the citizenry and the nation on the other hand. I happen to know a little something whereof I speak in this case because for several years it was my responsibility to be in that conversation with faculty and administrative colleagues, mental health professionals, and legal counsel concerning some pretty disturbing students, a few of whom were imminent threats to themselves and one or two of whom were imminent threats to others, including their peers and including me and my university colleagues. The tragedy here, you see, is that everyone at Virginia Tech behaved in relation to the shooter exactly as they are expected to in our society. His roommates tolerated his sometimes bizarre and occasionally frightening behavior, saying that in college you meet lots of very different people, some of whom are indeed disturbing to you. They appropriately reported him to police when his behavior crossed the line to stalking friends of theirs. The police appropriately took him in and had his mental stability evaluated. A judge appropriately found him mentally ill and an imminent threat to himself and recommended that he seek professional treatment for his illness. And because mental illness is no crime, he was appropriately permitted to return to society at large and to the Virginia Tech campus. And in accordance with Virginia law, he was permitted to purchase guns. Everything that happened was legal and constitutionally protected until the lethal rampage began.

Here’s the unavoidable conflict at the heart of the greatness of our nation: as long as our society is so committed to protecting the civil liberties of individuals that the judiciary, law enforcement, mental health professionals and in this case university administrators are not permitted to communicate with each other and cooperate together in addressing the problems that individuals present to the safety and security of society at large, we remain only days or hours away from the next tragedy—the next terrible outcome brought on by the tragic flaw in American society: American society is so entirely open and free that it tolerates behaviors and attitudes, individuals and groups who are capable of destroying the society that tolerates them. It is a perennial conflict at the heart of the greatness of American society.

The question at the heart of this conflict over communication is, “Where do the rights to privacy and the civil liberties of troubled individuals end and the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all the rest of us begin?” For some of us this is a theoretical question to be argued out over coffee or some other beverage, while for others of us it is a practical concern with which we must wrestle on a daily basis. You may be surprised to hear that more than once since I have been your senior minister, I or another member of our staff has signed a “no trespass” order that forbid an individual from setting foot on this property or for attending any function of this church that might occur away from this property. This congregation prides itself—which, by the way, “goeth before a fall,” according to the book of Proverbs—on its openness and its inclusiveness. But from time to time, in extreme cases, it becomes necessary to put the safety and security of members of this community of believers ahead of the opportunity for someone to do irreparable damage to individuals and to this fellowship. Those incidents are reminders of the perennial challenge between the tolerance and inclusion of American society at its best and the risks that American society faces from certain individuals and groups.

The words of Jesus in Luke 13:1-9 remind us that the causes and the consequences of tragedy are not simply individual in nature. It was all too easy for Jews in the first century and Christians in the twenty-first century to blame disasters on the sins of individuals. “So you think that those Galileans whom Pilate had killed were any worse sinners than their peers in Galilee?” Jesus asks. “Do you think that the people who died when the tower of Siloam fell were more sinful than anyone else in Jerusalem at the time?” he says. “No, but unless you turn from your own sins,” Jesus says, “your end will be the same.” In the teachings of Jesus, sad and terrible things that happen are more complicated and complex than merely the consequence of individual sin. And at the same time, Jesus uses the examples of terrible and horrifying events as an occasion for his listeners to turn their thinking and their living in another direction. So let me suggest this morning two turnings for you and for me now that tragedy has once again left its calling card on the American psyche.

The first turning is to solidarity with those who suffer. Solidarity with those who suffer. Stephen and Carroll Luck’s son Ryan is one of several family connections in this congregation to the Virginia Tech family. Steve showed me a handwritten note he and Carroll received this week from a Clemson fan. At the top of the note was printed that distinctive “VT,” that italicized capital V, capital T, that everyone now knows stands for Virginia Tech and the Hokies. And underneath it was an orange Clemson tiger paw, which, by the way, is not welcome symbol in the Luck family. But underneath the Clemson tiger paw were the words, “Today we are all Hokies.” Today we are all Hokies. That’s solidarity with those who suffer. I’m told that on the Furman campus this week, hundreds of Furman students signed cards that went to Blacksburg with the words, “We are praying for you,” on them. Clemson University students and staff held a vigil. In fact, did you know that “Solid Orange Friday” was marked by wearing maroon along with orange this week? That’s unthinkable, isn’t it? Solidarity with those who suffer. Solidarity with the suffering of the victims and solidarity even with the suffering of the perpetrators, as in “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” In the New Testament, it is said that the church is “the body of Christ.” And if we are the body of Christ, then at least one aspect of our calling is to take up the sins and the sufferings of the world upon ourselves in solidarity with those who suffer, whether they are victims or perpetrators. Whether we want to admit it or not, today and every day, we are all Iraqis. Whether we want to deny the truth or not, today and every day, we are all Somalis. Whether we want to hear it or not, today and every day, we are all Zimbabweans. It is our calling as the body of Christ to turn to solidarity with all who suffer. We are never fully Christian or Christ-like until we are able and willing to express and live out our solidarity with all who suffer, including even the perpetrators as well as the victims of suffering.

The second turning we must make in response to tragedy’s calling card is repentance and reform. Repentance and reform, as in “Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do.” You see, it takes a village to raise a psychopath. By the end of the week, we have begun to hear the stories from classmates about the teasing and taunting, the baiting and bullying that over the years helped to turn an unhappy and unhealthy individual—of which there are millions in this country and not a few in this congregation—into a pathological specimen. This individual’s personal history is a catalogue of errors, a case study in how a displaced and disaffected child can be transformed into a cold-blooded killer. Do not be so naïve as to think that it could not happen here. Do not be so foolish as to believe that you can take care of your own children by only taking care of your own children. You cannot build a castle wall high enough or a moat wide enough to protect your children from themselves, much less from the displaced and disaffected children of others. There is not enough barbed wire in the world. It is impossible to protect your children by protecting only your children because it takes a village to raise a psychopath. And so we must repent and reform in the realization that all God’s children are our children. The disruptive ones, the hateful ones, the mean ones, the ones we’d like to throw out of school. I have lived and worked in the office where in consultation with faculty and administrative colleagues and mental health professionals and legal counsel we have deliberated what to do about the student who was an imminent threat to himself or herself and the student who was only potentially a threat. I have participated in and participate still in the tragic flaw in American society that we are committed to living in relationship with and tolerating even those individuals and groups who have the capability to destroy us. We can talk about what went wrong in process and procedure that led to Monday’s tragedy, but the complex and complicated reality is that this sad and terrible thing is grounded in the character and the greatness of American society.

But we need reform. We need reform in the mental health establishment so that school officials and law enforcement are better informed about who they are dealing with and how best to help them before they destroy themselves and others along with them. We need reform in firearms legislation so that the constitutional right of individuals to bear arms does not run roughshod over the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all the rest of us as it did in Blacksburg on Monday. And we need to reform our social and theological isolationism because it takes a village to raise a psychopath, and we are that village in Greenville, SC, in Centerville, VA, in Blacksburg, and in every community in these United States. Tragedy’s calling card calls us to repentance and reform as well as to solidarity with those who suffer.

If we do not commit ourselves to healthy bodies, healthy minds and healthy souls of all the world’s children—not just our children behind walls and moats barbed wire, then it is only hours or days before the next tragic episode. We must think and live and minister in new ways, not only to ourselves and our own, but to all whom we meet, even the troubled and the disturbed. That’s our calling as the body of Christ, willing to take up upon itself the sins and the suffering of the world, in Jesus’ name.

Let us pray.
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do. Amen.

This material is Copyrighted © 2007 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Luke 18:9-14—The Proud and the Penitent (Reformation Sunday)

Once upon a time, there was a very proud church. This church was proud of how big it was. After all, it was one of the biggest churches in its town. This church was proud of its worship. After all, it was very well attended. The music was excellent. The preaching was outstanding. And people felt a sense of God’s presence in their worship. They would say something like, “Surely, the Lord is in this place.” This church was proud of its annual budget. Its people were generous, and so it had excellent facilities, a fine staff, and it did many, many very good things in its community with the resources at its disposal. This church was proud of its theology, its way of thinking and believing and the clarity of its purpose and its identity. This church was proud of its missions. It was a leader in its state in both giving to missions and going for missions. This congregation believed that Jesus really meant what he said in the Great Commission, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20). This church was proud of its fellowship. After all, there were children and youth and adults of every age and station—young adults and median adults and senior adults—together sharing in one another’s lives and in the worship and the service of God. It was a very proud church, the kind of church that sometimes said to itself, “Oh God, we thank you that we are not like all those other churches. Struggling in size. Uneventful in worship. Failing to meet budget. Wayward in theology. Weak on missions. Lacking in fellowship. O God, we thank you that we are not like those other churches.” Forty years later, this very proud church is but a shell of its former self. I could take you there to see it, and you would shake your head and wonder what on earth had happened.

Now, it’s not clear to me that in every case pride goes before a fall, as Proverbs 16:18 is sometimes translated. It seems to me that sometimes pride doesn’t precipitate the fall as much as it exacerbates it or accelerates it. It’s not clear to me that in every case pride goes before a fall as much as it goes before a long, slow decline. But however it happens, it is clear to me that this morning’s Gospel lesson from the Revised Common Lectionary applies every bit as much to churches as it does church-goers. It applies every bit as much to congregations and entire denominations as it does to persons and individuals who make up congregations and denominations. And it occurs to me that the message of this passage to congregations and denominations is all that more pertinent on this particular Sunday that is celebrated around the world—at least among Protestant churches—as “Reformation Sunday.”

The roots of Reformation Sunday go back to October 31, 1517, 490 years ago this month, when a Roman Catholic priest and university lecturer named Martin Luther nailed 95 theses or statements or arguments to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. His 95 theses argued against the idea that forgiveness of sin or pardon could be purchased from the church by making a contribution to the effort to renovate the greatest church building in the world, St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. When Luther nailed his arguments to the door, a conflict began that has forever broken and fractured the church. The very proud and very large Christian church in the West came apart, in part, at least, because it was a very prideful church. A church whose size made it difficult for its leaders to be responsible and responsive. A church whose worship, in many ways, was inaccessible to worshipers. A church whose “budget,” so to speak, was so enormous and complex that it was, in fact, one of the primary economic engines of all of Europe, with massive land holdings that led to extraordinary profits from agricultural enterprises. It held a near monopoly on the tithes and offering and giving of the general populous without any accountability to those who were doing the giving. A church whose theology was above reproach by its congregants. A church whose mission was carried out by the relative few “religious,” while others just looked on. A church whose fellowship was strained and tenuous. I know any number of Roman Catholic priests in the United States today who have said things like, “If I had been a Roman Catholic in 1517, I would have been Martin Luther’s kind of Roman Catholic.” The church was in desperate need of reform. But what happened, of course, was not so much reform, as it was fracture, schism, brokenness that has never been repaired.

It’s not clear to me whether pride precipitates the fall or only accelerates and exacerbates it. It’s not clear to me that pride always precipitates a fall; sometimes it is a long, slow decline. But it is clear to me that there are those churches and denominations who to this day play the role of the prideful Pharisee in this morning’s Gospel lesson—“O God, we thank you that we are not like all those other churches”—instead of the role of the penitent tax collector who says, “O God, have mercy on us, for we have sinned. We have fallen in our efforts to answer your call. Have mercy on us, for we have failed you and our world and ourselves in our mission. Have mercy on us.”

In this morning’s gospel lesson we are reminded that the church is always under construction. The church is always undergoing renovation. The church is always in need of renewal. The church must always move toward transformation. The church always requires reformation. We must never be so proud that we do not subject the sacred cows of our size and our worship and our budget and our theology and our missions and our fellowship to scrutiny, to question, to challenge from within and challenge from without, so that instead of taking a fall or entering into a long, slow decline, we are constantly responding to the movement of the Holy Spirit of God among us and around us, sensitive to internal and external conditions that are constantly changing, with the result that our call and our mission in one decade may not be the same as our call and our mission in another. If we fall into the trap of pride, we will keep doing over and over and over again the things we did in the past while the world around us moves on and is filled with needs and opportunities for ministry and mission that we never see or hear because we are so very proud of being such a very good a church.

Instead, we must always be under construction and undergoing renovation. We must always be in renewal, transformation and reformation. The way forward with God lies in our penitence rather than in our pride. It is the penitence of a congregation that together and individually prays, “O God, have mercy on us, for we have sinned. We have fallen away from your call, and we have failed you on our mission. Forgive us, O God. By your grace and power, renovate us, renew us, transform us, reform us, in Jesus’ name and in Jesus’ service. Amen.”

This material is Copyrighted © 2007 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Jeremiah 31:15-17—Weeping and Working Toward Hope (Children’s Sabbath 2007)

Opening Sentences:

Leader: The Lord be with you.
People: And also with you.
Leader: Lift up your hearts.
People: We lift them up to the Lord.
Leader: Every 10 seconds a high school student drops out.
People: Jesus loves me, this I know.
Leader: Every 35 seconds a child is abused or neglected.
People: For the Bible tells me so.
Leader: Every 40 seconds a baby is born into poverty.
People: Little ones to him belong.
Leader: Every 51 seconds a baby is born without health insurance.
People: They are weak, but he is strong.
All: Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.
(Adapted from the Children’s Sabbath at First Christian Church [Disciples of Christ] in Frankfort, Ky., published in Shannon Daley-Harris, National Observance of Children’s Sabbath Manual, vol. 16 [Washington, D.C.: Children’s Defense Fund, 2007], p. 69.)

Sermon:

Call me Rachel. I’ve been called worse. She is crying inconsolably. Her tears will not stop. There is no end to them. At the beginning of this morning’s Scripture lesson from the 31st chapter of the book of Jeremiah, Rachel is weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted, verse 15 says. Have you ever been there? Have you ever known someone who has?

In this morning’s Old Testament lesson, Rachel was there and not for the first time. Rachel was the wife of Jacob and the mother of Joseph, he of the coat she had made him with fancy sleeves or many colors, depending on how you translate it. Her son, you may remember, was reportedly torn to bits by a wild animal, when in fact his half-brothers had sold him into slavery. Rachel did not live long enough to be a party to the discovery and the happy tears that her son was still alive in Egypt. His name meant “he adds,” but he was taken away from her. Rachel was also the mother of the twelfth and last of Jacob’s sons, in whose childbirth she died after naming him Ben-Oni, “son of my sorrow.” Evidently, her husband Jacob was unwilling to live with the constant reminder of his late wife’s grief, so he renamed the boy Ben-Yamin, “son of the south” or “son of the right hand,” depending on how you translate it. Rachel was a woman of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and by the time the prophet Jeremiah invoked her name and her tears, the descendants of her beloved Joseph and Ben-Oni had been exiled from the land of their living into Assyria, modern-day Iraq, for more than a century. Rachel’s tears for children in Jeremiah 31 are the tears of an entire people. They are tears for innumerable children whose days have turned to darkest night, whose dreams have turned to nightmares, whose lives have been cut short by death—or worse. Have you ever been there? Have you ever known someone who has?

One afternoon, thirty years ago this fall, I came home from my job as a classroom teacher’s aide and announced to Bev that I hoped we didn’t ever have children. That was something of a departure from previous discussions we had had, so I had some splainin’ to do, as Ricky Ricardo would say. “I can’t stand the pain,” I told her. She said, “Well, aren’t we selfish? You can’t stand the pain?” I said, “No not my pain, their pain. I can’t stand their pain.”

Some of you have heard me speak of TW. TW was 14 years old and in the sixth grade. You do the math. TW was a disturbed and troubled child. He was a volatile sort. TW was in school each day because he got himself up in the morning, got himself dressed and got himself to the bus stop in time to catch the bus to school. Incredible grief and pain and anger always lay just below the surface of his skin. One day when he was 6 years old, he stood in his family’s kitchen as his mother lay on the floor and bled to death from a hemorrhage in pregnancy. In the intervening years, TW had been institutionalized repeatedly as he tried to come to terms with his grief and his guilt and his failure: his grief over his mother’s death, his guilt from assuming that somehow he had something to do with what happened to her, and his lingering sense that he had failed to save her that day. Other children in the class, one or two of them at least, loved to set him off, trigger his rage and get him sent to the principal’s office. All they had to do was whisper in his ear “yo’ momma.” It was a common street and playground insult, “yo’ momma.” But not for TW. It brought his grief and his guilt and his failure bubbling up to the surface, and he would fly into a rage, at the end of which I would walk him to the principal’s office as he sobbed. I wanted to bring TW home with me, but such things were not allowed.

I probably haven’t told you about Brenna. Brenna was also in that class. She was 15 and in the sixth grade. You do the math. She was 15 years old and had a record for prostitution. Brenna was tall and very dark and very strong. To tell you the truth, I was scared of Brenna. She was taller than I was. She was stronger than I was. And she was faster than I was. There is a lot about Brenna that is memorable, but what I remember most are the three primary looks I saw in her eyes. The first was a dazed and distant look she would wear into class some mornings that made me wonder what in the world had happened the night before that she was trying to ignore or forget or recover from. Her second look was fury. It was a wild fury that screamed out through her eyes even when she stood silent. The third was longing. It was the look of a child who just longed to be loved and cared for instead of used. I wanted to bring Brenna home with me but such things were not allowed, and she would probably take the gesture the wrong way anyway.

What I know now that I didn’t know then about TW and Brenna is that their name is Legion. There are tens of thousands of children in our communities and in our country and millions all around the globe like them in one way or another. We see them. And we hear them. And we persist in ignoring them. They are casualties of AIDS in Africa. They are casualties of political violence and genocide in places like Somalia and Iraq and Afghanistan. They are casualties of war and famine poverty all over the world. Call me Rachel. I’ve been called worse. Rachel is crying inconsolably. Her tears will not stop. There is no end to them.

But this morning’s scripture lesson does not abandon Rachel in her disconsolate weeping. In verse 17, the Lord announces to her—and to all who weep for the children, “There is hope for your future.” “There is hope for your future.” Hope is that thin thread of anticipation that just maybe the future might be better than the present. Hope is not optimism. Hope is what sustains us when there is every good reason for pessimism. Hope is not looking on the bright side. Hope is what keeps us going when we can see nothing but darkness on every side. The goal of hope is not the gratification of our wants, but the fulfillment of our deepest needs and the deepest needs of others. Even others like TW and Brenna, whose name is Legion.

“There is hope for your future, says the Lord.” And the bridge between weeping and hope is work, according to verse 16. Work. “There is a reward for your work, says the Lord.” In the end, the reward is not for our weeping but for our working, even as we weep. So don’t get caught up in the arrogant conservative assumption that the children of responsible parents are not at risk because they’re being brought up in the right way and they will not depart therefrom. Children of responsible parents are at risk as well as children of irresponsible parents. And don’t get caught up in the arrogant liberal assumption that only poor children are at risk because children from affluent homes have everything they need. Children from affluent homes are at risk, as are children from poor homes. In fact, the tide has turned in our culture. Children of affluent families in the suburbs are now statistically at greater risk for drug addiction, alcohol abuse and illicit sexual activity than poor, urban children. And the reason, sociologists tell us, is because affluent children from the suburbs have the money, the transportation, and the unsupervised time necessary to mix the cocktail of drug addiction, alcohol abuse and illicit sexual activity. Arrogant conservative assumptions and arrogant liberal assumptions alike are crippling our culture and killing our children. All children everywhere are at risk.

So don’t just sit there. Start weeping, like Rachel. And don’t just sit there weeping. Start working, like Rachel. For in your work there is a reward, says the Lord. There is hope for your future in your weeping and in your working, says the Lord.

This material is Copyrighted © 2007 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Matthew 16:24-26—The Cross Your Compass, Christ Your Guide

NOTE: This sermon was originally delivered on May 26, 2002, on the occasion of graduation recognition. It is posted here to make it available to interested readers of the forthcoming revised edition of Charles Kimball’s When Religion Becomes Evil. Referred to in his final chapter because of its suggestion that we must account for the theological equivalent of “magnetic declination” in our thinking about God, the relevant portion of the sermon is this.

In his best-selling book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey writes that sometimes “We are more in need of . . . a compass (a set of principles or directions) and less in need of a roadmap. We often don’t know what the terrain ahead will be like or what we will need to go through it. . . . But an inner compass,” he says, “will always give us direction” (p. 101). According to Covey, your inner compass should be a set of core principles that give your life direction. Principles, for Covey, “are deep, fundamental truths that have universal application” (p. 35). Covey cites the following list: fairness, integrity, honesty, human dignity, service, quality, excellence, potential, growth, patience, nurturance, and encouragement. Those are all good things. But I’m not convinced that Covey’s principles are deep enough, fundamental enough. So this morning I’m going to propose a different set, a much shorter one, and a thoroughly biblical one that I believe should serve as the four points of your inner compass that will give you direction no matter what kind of terrain, no matter what kind of conditions, you might encounter in the future.

I have a compass that reminds me of my core principles. It is a simple, tarnished metal cross. I wear it over my robe on Sunday mornings. My mother gave it to my father as a gift when he was ordained as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. When he died in 1984, she passed it on to me. For years it hung in my office at Furman University as a memento, of sorts, and over the years I came to think of it as a compass. This cross is my compass. It reminds me of who I am and who I am called to be, where I have come from and where I am going. And this morning, I’d like to use it as a visual aid to identify four points for a principle-centered Christian life.

At the top point of my compass, instead of putting an “N” there for “north,” I put a “G” there for “God.” Because whatever else happens, whatever goes right or wrong in our lives, we need to take the most fundamental orientation of our direction in relation to God. Your life after graduation is going to take you places and put you with people for whom God is not relevant at all. God does not matter for them. And some of them will even be down-right evangelistic about their godlessness. That doesn’t mean that they are bad people. But what it does mean is that they do not orient their lives by as fundamental a principle as you do. Somewhere along the line, they decided that they would orient their lives by some lesser principle than Ultimate Reality or Transcendence or Holiness Itself or the one who created the world, the one who sustains the world, and the one who redeems the world from its disorientation.

But in putting God at the top point of your compass, there is one piece of wisdom you need in order to protect yourself from a common disorientation that occurs with some people who understand that God is the most important point on their compass. As most of you already know, the needle on a compass points to “magnetic north,” not geographical north. And depending on where you are on the earth, there can be several degrees of difference—sometimes as many as fifteen degrees in the continental U.S—between magnetic north and geographical north. This phenomenon is called “magnetic declination” or “magnetic variation.” And it provides us with a very important warning: Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the needle of your compass points directly to the sum total of the reality of God. In theological terms, the sum total of the reality of God would be geographical north. But your needle only points to magnetic north: who you understand God to be. And there is always more to God than any of us or all of us together can possibly imagine or understand. Your needle points in the right direction, but it is also off by a few—or more than a few degrees—at the same time. There are people in our world who speak and behave as though magnetic declination does not exist on their theological compasses. They think that they understand God fully and completely. Real damage is done in our world by people who orient their lives to God with the arrogant assumption that they have God so completely figured out that the God they are pointing to is God’s own self and Ultimate Reality.

Don’t become one of those people. When you move on from this place, listen carefully before you join up with another Christian community, a church or a student religious organization or a Bible study. Maybe even ask them what they would say about the difference between God as they understand God and the sum total of God in God’s self. If they insist that it is one and the same, or if they don’t understand the question, look for another group, because those folks don’t understand the essential theological equivalent of “magnetic variation.” The “N” on my compass is “G” for God, in primary relation to whom I should always orient my life but whose sum total, whose ultimate reality, lies always beyond human grasp and beyond human understanding.

The entire sermon is as follows:

Welcome to the next stage of your journey! Welcome to the next leg of your life. Whether you are graduating from high school or college or graduate school, the course that you have been following is about to change. In the next few days or weeks or months the territory that most of you will be in will be different, for some of you, quite different, from the now familiar ground you have been covering recently. Now the truth is, the graduates are not the only ones among us who are facing major changes in our lives. Others of us are staring down the barrel of big changes in where we live or with whom we live or where we work or with whom. Some of us we are facing changes in our family or our financial situation or our health. So what I’m saying to the graduates this morning I’m saying to the rest of us, too, but I’m saying it most directly to the graduates.

When you are setting out for unfamiliar territory there, are several things it would be a good idea to have to help you find your way, to help you stay on course, to help you keep your direction. Most of us probably think first of a map. As long as you have a good map, one that accurately represents the territory, and as long as you stay on the roads or the trails represented on the map, it’s a handy thing to have. But the problem with most maps is that sooner or later, you are going to find yourself in an empty spot on your map. When you find yourself in a place you can’t find on your map, your map’s not a whole lot of use to you.

The Bible is like a map. From Genesis to Revelation, it is a triptych from creation to consummation, from the beginning of all that was and is to its end. On the grandest possible scale, the Bible shows us where we come from and where we are going. What the Bible doesn’t always do so well, though, is show us exactly where we are. There are places in the territory of your life that are empty spaces in the Bible. It’s fine to ask, “what would Jesus do?” but the Bible never shows how he behaved on a date or at a fraternity party. If Jesus had just taken one spring break trip, we would have that territory covered in our map. The Bible doesn’t tell us how to pick a college or what to major in when we get there. Should I get married, and if so, when and to whom? There’s a lot of territory that doesn’t show up on our map. That doesn’t mean our map is no good or unreliable. It’s just that the Bible is more like a globe than a topographical map. A globe shows us the big picture, the world and its continents and their countries and a few major cities. Even if Greenville were to show up on a globe, Greer and Mauldin and Simpsonville, Anderson, Easley and Travelers Rest, not to mention Pumpkintown and Possum Kingdom, aren’t likely to be there. The Bible shows where we come from and where we are going, but it doesn’t show us every place along the way that we are going to find ourselves.

So we need more than the Bible; we need a compass also. In his best-selling book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey writes that sometimes “We are more in need of . . . a compass (a set of principles or directions) and less in need of a roadmap. We often don’t know what the terrain ahead will be like or what we will need to go through it. . . . But an inner compass,” he says, “will always give us direction” (p. 101). According to Covey, your inner compass should be a set of core principles that give your life direction. Principles, for Covey, “are deep, fundamental truths that have universal application” (p. 35). Covey cites the following list: fairness, integrity, honesty, human dignity, service, quality, excellence, potential, growth, patience, nurturance, and encouragement. Those are all good things. But I’m not convinced that Covey’s principles are deep enough, fundamental enough. So this morning I’m going to propose a different set, a much shorter one, and a thoroughly biblical one that I believe should serve as the four points of your inner compass that will give you direction no matter what kind of terrain, no matter what kind of conditions, you might encounter in the future.

I have a compass that reminds me of my core principles. It is a simple, tarnished metal cross. I wear it over my robe on Sunday mornings. My mother gave it to my father as a gift when he was ordained as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. When he died in 1984, she passed it on to me. For years it hung in my office at Furman University as a memento, of sorts, and over the years I came to think of it as a compass. This cross is my compass. It reminds me of who I am and who I am called to be, where I have come from and where I am going. And this morning, I’d like to use it as a visual aid to identify four points for a principle-centered Christian life.

At the top point of my compass, instead of putting an “N” there for “north,” I put a “G” there for “God.” Because whatever else happens, whatever goes right or wrong in our lives, we need to take the most fundamental orientation of our direction in relation to God. Your life after graduation is going to take you places and put you with people for whom God is not relevant at all. God does not matter for them. And some of them will even be down-right evangelistic about their godlessness. That doesn’t mean that they are bad people. But what it does mean is that they do not orient their lives by as fundamental a principle as you do. Somewhere along the line, they decided that they would orient their lives by some lesser principle than Ultimate Reality or Transcendence or Holiness Itself or the one who created the world, the one who sustains the world, and the one who redeems the world from its disorientation.

But in putting God at the top point of your compass, there is one piece of wisdom you need in order to protect yourself from a common disorientation that occurs with some people who understand that God is the most important point on their compass. As most of you already know, the needle on a compass points to “magnetic north,” not geographical north. And depending on where you are on the earth, there can be several degrees of difference—sometimes as many as fifteen degrees in the continental U.S—between magnetic north and geographical north. This phenomenon is called “magnetic declination” or “magnetic variation.” And it provides us with a very important warning: Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the needle of your compass points directly to the sum total of the reality of God. In theological terms, the sum total of the reality of God would be geographical north. But your needle only points to magnetic north: who you understand God to be. And there is always more to God than any of us or all of us together can possibly imagine or understand. Your needle points in the right direction, but it is also off by a few—or more than a few degrees—at the same time. There are people in our world who speak and behave as though magnetic declination does not exist on their theological compasses. They think that they understand God fully and completely. Real damage is done in our world by people who orient their lives to God with the arrogant assumption that they have God so completely figured out that the God they are pointing to is God’s own self and Ultimate Reality.

Don’t become one of those people. When you move on from this place, listen carefully before you join up with another Christian community, a church or a student religious organization or a Bible study. Maybe even ask them what they would say about the difference between God as they understand God and the sum total of God in God’s self. If they insist that it is one and the same, or if they don’t understand the question, look for another group, because those folks don’t understand the essential theological equivalent of “magnetic variation.” The “N” on my compass is “G” for God, in primary relation to whom I should always orient my life but whose sum total, whose ultimate reality, lies always beyond human grasp and beyond human understanding.

That’s why a second point on my compass is identified with an “F” for “faith.” In 2 Corinthians 5:7 the apostle Paul says, “we walk by faith, not by sight.” The book of Hebrews calls faith “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” On our compass, then, faith is our complete confidence in God that God can and will see us through, no matter the terrain or the conditions.

The gospel narratives show faith to be an orientation of throwing oneself on the mercy and the power of God to change our lives for the better. In Matthew 9:2, a group of people carry a paralyzed man to Jesus, and Matthew writes that “Jesus saw their faith,” and healed the man. Jesus saw the way they were throwing themselves and this one whom they loved on his mercy and power; that was their faith. Later in the same chapter, “a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years . . . touched the fringe of his cloak, for she said to herself, ‘If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well’” (vv 20-21) . And when she does, Jesus turns and says, “Take heart, daughter, your faith has made you well” (v 22). A third story in the same chapter has two blind men following Jesus and “crying loudly, ‘Have mercy on us, Son of David!’” He asks them, “’Do you believe that I am able to do this?’ They said to him, ‘Yes, Lord’. Then he touched their eyes and said, ‘According to your faith let it be done by you.’ And their eyes were opened’” (vv27-30). Now on the surface of it, these three stories are about physical healing, but in the gospels physical healing is everywhere and always about spiritual realities also. As a spiritual reality, faith is the assurance and the conviction that God is able and willing to give us the capacity to walk on; God is able and willing to stop the bleeding in our lives; God is able and willing to give us the sight we need to see beyond where we are to where we must go. Faith is our complete confidence in God that God can and will see us through in life and in death, no matter the terrain or the conditions.

The third point on my compass I designate with an “H” for hope. Paul says of hope something quite similar to what he says about faith. In Romans 8:24 he says, “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what (is already) seen?” The book of Hebrews calls hope “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (6:19). That’s a great line, and it alone would justify “hope” being one of the principles that guides our lives: “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.” Don’t confuse hope with “optimism” or “looking on the bright side.” Hope is something far more profound. Hope is what sustains us when there is every reason for pessimism. Hope is what nourishes us when we can see nothing but darkness. 1 Peter 1 tells us, “By [God’s] great mercy [God] has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (v 3). Notice the language of “new birth” and “resurrection.” Hope is all about facing death, both literal death and the figurative death of failure and the mess we make of our lives sometimes. Hope is the capacity to see beyond the turmoil, the difficulty, the suffering, the pain of the moment. Hope is the sure and steadfast anchor of our soul that insists that neither the mess we make, nor the failure we experience, nor death itself is the final word. Hold fast to hope, for there is life after mess, there is life after failure, there is life after death.

The final point of my compass, the one which sticks down into the ground, is “L” for love. Like “God” and “faith” and “hope,” love a sermon in itself, a whole lifetime of sermons, but you will be happy to hear that I don’t intend to preach them all this morning. Paul calls love “the greatest of these” three, faith, hope and love (1 Cor 13:13). “Pursue love,” Paul says (1 Cor 14:1). Jesus taught that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God and the second like unto it is love our neighbor as our self. Jesus also taught us that we should love our enemies: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’” (Matt 5:43-44). If hope is the anchor of our soul, then love is the anchor of our ethics, our behavior. It is the fundamental orientation of our attitudes and our actions in the Christian life. Love is the basis of the Christian life because it is the fundamental orientation of God who “so loved the world” (John 3:16). “Let all that you do be done in love,” Paul says in 1 Corinthians 16:14.

So there you have it. The four points of the compass: God, who is always and everywhere the one in relation to whom we orient ourselves, as the needle of a compass points to the north; faith, which is our assurance and our conviction; hope, which is the anchor of our soul; and love, which is the ground of our ethics. So you have your map and you have your compass. But the great news of the Christian life is those are not all you have for your journey. Because when Jesus says, “Let them take up their cross,” he also says, “follow me.” Not only do you have the cross as your compass; you also have Christ as your guide. “Follow me,” Jesus says. Covey’s paradigm of principle-centered living that provides an inner compass is a good idea. But in the Christian life we have more than a map and a compass; we have a guide also.

In Hebrews 12:2 we read these words, “Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,” Jesus the pioneer, the archegon, the Greek text says, “the one who blazes the trail” for us, our guide and constant companion in whatever terrain or conditions we find ourselves. “I am with you always,” Jesus tells us, “even to the end of the age.” The greatest testimony of the Christian life is not that we rely on a roadmap, the Bible, or even on a compass, the cross, but that we make our way through life in the personal presence of the Risen Lord, Jesus the Christ who is our savior and our friend. When Jesus says, “Follow me,” it means that we will never be alone. For there is no place we can go that the presence and love and redeeming power of God in Jesus Christ cannot reach. The trail that Christ has blazed for us leads through life and even through death so that whatever mess we make of our lives, whatever failure we experience, whatever manner of death we die, neither mess nor failure nor death is the final word.

As you go from this place and this time, take up your compass, the cross, and stay close to your guide, Christ, and in all things, may God bless you and keep you, may God’s face shine on you and be gracious to you, and may the light of God’s countenance be lifted up to you and give you peace. Amen.

This material is Copyrighted © 2002 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Dr. John E. Johns: A Legacy of Faithfulness

NOTE: It is a bit unusual for me to post funereal remarks, but in this case, John Johns lived his adult life at the intersection of the church and the academy, and in particular an academy (Furman University) and a church (First Baptist Greenville) in which I have served. These remarks are one of four contributions to the celebration and remembrance of his life in Daniel Chapel on the Furman campus on October 1, 2007. John's successor as Furman's President, Dr. David Shi, addressed John's "Legacy of Leadership." John's life-long friend and former student, Dr. Bernie Cochran, Professor Emeritus of Religion and Philosophy at Meredith College, spoke to John's "Legacy with Roots." And Dr. Jim Pitts, Retired University Chaplain and Professor of Religion Emeritus at Furman called our attention to John's "Legacy of Relationships."

October 1, 2007
Psalm 27; Jeremiah 17:7-8

When I joined the Furman faculty in the fall of 1988, I was surprised and a bit befuddled by the pervasive use of the language of “family” to describe this university. I was familiar with many images for a university (most of them positive), but “family” was not one of them. And as inviting and alliterative as the image of the “Furman family” was, I confess that I quickly became caught up in the suspicion and cynicism that dominates the intellectual and hermeneutical landscape of the academy and the church, and I concluded that the essence of the image of family was the prevailing paternalism and patronizing of “Father Knows Best.”

What I know now that I did not understand or appreciate then is the distinctive formative experience embedded in the metaphor of family for John and Martha Johns. As we have heard, John grew up in a very large family of orphans. His life and his faith were formatively shaped by his nuclear family’s living and loving and working in an institutional setting sponsored by Baptists to take in some of Florida’s most vulnerable children who became to John sisters and brothers, relatives and friends, loved and cherished as his very own and amazingly expansive family. John Johns’ formative experience of family was not the reactionary conservative ideal of the 1950s that I took it to be, or even the much older ideal of the southern plantation that I suspected, Damn-Yankee that I am. John grew up in Florida, remember, and Florida is not a “southern state.”

John’s take on the university as family was not so much paternalistic as it was maternalistic, as in alma mater, where everyone who came to learn or teach or labor or coach or serve or lead was taken in as a sister, a brother, a relative, in an amazingly expansive family, a kinship not built on blood or genes but on love and devotion to alma mater. It turns out that John's vision was not so much patronizing as it was matronizing—enfolding in the wings of alma mater. It is a vision of family that stands as a living expression of the final verse of the great Isaac Watts hymn adaptation of Psalm 23:

The sure provisions of my God attend me all my days;
Oh, may Thy house be my abode and all my work be praise;
There would I find a settled rest, while others come and go;
No more a stranger nor a guest, but like a child at home.

It is a vision of family grounded in the biblical witness to the people of God and the Baptist witness to the gospel that “whosoever will” is taken in. That’s the formative faithfulness out of which and in which John Johns lived and served and led.

But as most of us know, John had an uncanny knack for irreverent faithfulness as well. My friend David Matthews, one of my predecessors at First Baptist Greenville who was John’s pastor during his first ten years as President of Furman, remembers a conversation in which John explained to him that his success over the years in dealing with preachers was largely based on not arguing with them, because after all, John said, “You can’t argue with ignorance.” If you didn’t know John Johns, you could take that statement as an entirely stereotypical reflection of the intellectual arrogance and elitism that is epidemic in the academy. But if you were inclined to make a list of John Johns’ faults, elitism and intellectual arrogance would surely not be among them. John made that statement to his own preacher not in ridicule but in recognition—recognition that rational argument, so highly prized and frequently practiced in the academy and the church alike, is no antidote for agitation and emotion driven by anger, insecurity or ignorance. John was too wise and too secure to take the bait and argue, because John never got caught up other people’s anger or insecurity, much less their ignorance.

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?

Now, for those of you who are offended by salty language, I’m going to suggest that you cover your ears when I cover mine. In January of 1988, when I met President Johns for the first time as a part of the interview process for a teaching position at Furman, he caught me entirely by surprise when he announced, “Now we have the fundamentalists to deal with. Those bastards have been making life hell for some of us.” I can’t imagine what the look on my face must have been when the old bombardier dropped that sentence on me out of the blue. The next fall, my baptism into faculty politics came when I walked into the old mailroom in Furman Hall where a group of more wizened dons than I were discussing the disturbing word that a fundamentalist takeover of Furman’s board was already underway. “What do you think is going to happen?” someone asked the new guy. “I don’t know,” I responded, “but I’m glad John Johns is on our side.” “So, you think he’s on our side, do you?” asked a derisive voice, and everyone laughed. “Yeah, I do,” I said quietly, and I left the mailroom chastened and a bit ashamed that I sounded so naïve and trusting in the face of the gathering storm. And I went back to my teaching and writing and waiting and praying and agitating and emoting and hoping that in the end the old navigator would take the course that would bring this institution and our faculty lives and livelihoods safely through. And in the end, he did.

Though an army encamp against me,
my heart shall not fear;
though war rise up against me,
yet I will be confident. . . .
Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!

My friend and predecessor Hardy Clemons tells the story of how he and John were at a picnic together the first year Hardy arrived in Greenville. In the course of the event, John sidled up to his new pastor and said to him, “Hardy, I don’t know you very well, but if you like, I’ll be glad to bring you a beer in a Pepsi cup.” Now, there’s a friend that many a pastor would love to have: irreverently faithful.

John has left us an invaluable legacy of formative faithfulness, irreverent faithfulness and abiding faithfulness.

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is in the Lord.
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit.

Thank you, John. And thanks be to God!

This material is Copyrighted © 2007 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Isaiah 1:1-3,10-17--"Religion Poisons Everything"?

The summer of my sophomore year in high school, I had the good fortune to attend the Governor’s School for the Arts in North Carolina. One of the memorable characters whom I met that summer, both peers and teachers, was Dr. Howard Bleeker. Bleeker taught at a state university in New York, and he had a special role in the Governor's School in those days: Bleeker was the school’s resident atheist. Now, as you can imagine, some students at the Governor’s School were fascinated and excited to meet someone and hear ideas the likes of which they had never heard before. And as you can also imagine, some students were scandalized and threatened to hear such ideas and meet such a person the likes of which they had never heard before. I was neither one really, perhaps because he was not such a person nor were his ideas such as I had never met or heard before. I remember one evening talking with my father on the phone and laughing together about why it was that the Governor’s School had to go to New York to import an atheist into North Carolina. Was it that there were no atheists on the faculties of colleges and universities in North Carolina? We knew better than that, even in the 1970s. Meanwhile, one of my best friends at the Governor’s School and his father were not laughing. His father was a Lutheran minister, as mine was, but his father wrote an angry and accusatory letter to the Director of the Governor's School and to the Governor himself about how scandalous and threatening it was that high school students were being exposed to such people and such ideas.

What is your reaction when you are exposed to people and ideas that are different from your own, that maybe even stand in direct opposition to your own? How do you respond? Some people respond with fascination and excitement and quickly abandon themselves and their own for the new and the exotic that they are hearing and meeting. Other people are immediately scandalized and threatened by people and ideas such as they haven’t met or heard before. I’ve been thinking about Bleeker and my Governor’s School experience 35 years ago this summer because in the last three years—in fact, in each of the last three years—a book promoting atheism has been on national bestseller lists. In 2005, you may recall, it was Sam Harris’s The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason. Harris writes from the perspective of philosophy and neuroscience, and Harris says religion is what is wrong with the world. In 2006, it was Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion. Dawkins is an eminent evolutionary biologist, and in his book, Dawkins dispenses with the whole idea of God. Based on a particular conclusion of evolutionary theory that he posits as the central doctrine in his atheistic theology (which is what The God Delusion is, it’s a work in theology from an a-theistic perspective), religion is just plain wrong, Dawkins says. And then in 2007, it was Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. “Religion poisons everything,” says Hitchens, perhaps not surprisingly, because those of you who have been following these conversations know that when Hitchens was a young man, he was sexually abused by a priest in his parish. So perhaps you can understand why this bright and articulate journalist would come to hold that religion poisons everything. Religion wrongs people. So how do we respond to a Bleeker, a Harris, a Dawkins, a Hitchens? As individuals and as “a community of believers in God as revealed in Jesus Christ as Lord,” how do we respond? I want to make four suggestions.

The first suggestion is this. We ought not let arguments and attacks and criticisms such as these make us anxious or alarm us. In the long view of things, these kinds of criticisms and attacks and arguments are as old religion itself. The philosophical criticism of religion is as old as philosophy as a way of thinking and being in the world, and that's very, very old. The scientific criticism of religion is as old as science. The emotional criticism of religion is as old as the hurt and pain that people have experienced within religious communities. For centuries, each generation and age and era has seen and often even justified the attacks on religion from philosophical and scientific and emotional perspectives. So the first thing I would suggest is that we not become overly alarmed or anxious because what we are reading and hearing now is as old as religious faith and practice itself. And for every argument, says Donald Phillip Verene, Professor of Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy at Emory University, “there is always a good counterargument.” “Argument,” he says, “is always a partial way of thinking” (The Art of Humane Education, p. 11), and thinking and I won’t keep you here all afternoon engaging in partial thinking by going into arguments and counterarguments. I think I have more important suggestions than that. First, we ought not be anxious and alarmed at yet another round of criticism of religion.

But second, we should listen to and learn from these criticisms. We should listen to and learn from them. Sam Harris is exactly right when he says that religious extremism is one of the most dangerous threats to human existence in the world right now. He says he sat down to begin writing his book on September 12, 2001, as a response to the atrocities of the day before. We can all agree with Harris. We can all agree that religious extremism in whatever religious tradition, even our own, is a danger to the world in which we live. But there is more. Harris is critical not only of the extremists in religion; he’s critical of religious moderates, as well. For example, he says that we moderates are not being entirely honest and truthful about what we think about the Bible. He says we’re not being honest and truthful about what we think about religious authority. He says we’re not being honest with ourselves and the world. And you know something? Harris is right. We moderate Baptists in particular, places like First Baptist Greenville, have talked a lot about what we are moving away from in Baptist life, but we have not always spoken as clearly and truthfully about what we are moving toward. In the way that Scripture is an authority in our lives, we’ll say, “Oh, not like that; not like them.” But then we don’t honestly and completely go on to say, “What we mean is this.” We should listen to and learn from Sam Harris’s criticisms, not just of the extremists, but of us as well.


We should listen to and learn from Richard Dawkins’s criticism. What I would suggest that we learn from Dawkins is that we have done an inadequate job of accounting for the Christian tradition as it relates to the twenty-first century. Not the eighteenth century, not the nineteenth century, not the twentieth century. The twenty-first century. We need to say to our theologians in our seminaries and divinity schools and colleges and universities and in our pulpits, “It’s the twenty-first century!” How do we integrate the scientific and technological lives that you and I live every day into the great traditions of the church and vice versa? Dawkins makes a big deal out of the fact that he knows atheists in the Anglican church. But there’s a long tradition of atheist members and deacons in Baptist churches. That may come as news to you, but it doesn’t come as news to any pastor who has served Baptist churches down through the years. How often are the decisions that we make inside church and outside church only marginally or tangentially related to our theology, to our vision of who God is and what God calls us to? The decisions we make in our daily lives are driven by reasons and justifications and explanations that have nothing to do with God. And then when something happens that we don’t expect, that is unimaginable, that breaks into our decision-making and reasoning and justifying and explaining, we say, “Where did that come from? That wasn’t on my radar screen. I didn’t see that coming.” No, because the truth is, you and lead much of our lives as practical atheists. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing. We don’t need a “God hypothesis” to build good bridges. We don’t need a God hypothesis to make love or to diagnose cancer. But as long as our everyday individual lives and decisions are made based only on criteria that leave God entirely out of the picture, we are living as practical atheists. How do we integrate the practical atheism of our lives into the great traditions of the Christian faith and vice versa? The good news is, the sky is not falling because Harris and Dawkins and Hitchens write such books. And the even better news is that the ceiling isn’t coming down because of you and me. We need to learn from Dawkins how far our daily lives and our scientific and technological understanding of the world—ours, yours and mine—is from our confession of our faith in God, and we must use that reminder as an opportunity to move our faith and practice into the twenty-first century and integrate it with who we already and really are in our thinking and living.

And Hitchens? From Hitchens we should learn never to underestimate the power we have within this community of faith to inflict pain and hurt and alienation. Thinkingly or unthinkingly, we can do or say things to people that will drive them away not only from us but from God. Thinkingly or unthinkingly, we can not say or not do things that will drive people away not only from us but, worse yet, from God. From Hitchens, we should learn to look around us and ask, “Who is hurting, and what am I doing to cause that pain? Who is hurting and what can I do to reduce that pain?” We wrong people in the name of religion and under the disguise of religion, and we must listen and learn.

The third thing we should do in response to these criticisms of religion is that we should be more constantly and consistently critical of our own religious faith and practice. In this morning’s Old Testament lesson, the prophet Isaiah says, “O you rulers of Sodom, . . . you people of Gomorrah!” (1:1). I would remind you that he was not speaking to atheists. He was not talking to “godless” people. He was addressing the leaders and the people of God’s “holy habitation,” as it is called in the Old Testament, Jerusalem. And Isaiah is saying, “You the people of God are so far from who God calls you to be that you are Sodom and Gomorrah.” The internal, self-critical vision of the biblical community of the people of God is something we must never lose sight of. We must not look first to defend our faith or protect our faith from the criticisms of outsiders. We must look first to purge and heal our own religious faith and practice from our own shortcomings and failings from the inside out. Religion's biggest problem is not the criticism of outsiders but the failing--my failing and your failing--to be who God would have religious people in any religion to be. You and I must take up the perspective of the prophet Isaiah and the perspective of Jesus of Nazareth who spoke to religious people of their day, God-believing people of their day, people devoted to their offerings and their sacrifices and their prayers but who were unwilling to see that the character and quality of their lives was utterly inconsistent with the words of their mouths. So along with not being alarmed or anxious about criticism from atheists and along with identifying what we can learn from the criticism of atheists, we must also reinvigorate our own self-criticism, our own confession of our sin, our own recognition not so much of how far from God a Harris or a Dawkins or a Hitchens may be but how far from God we are. Isaiah says to good, religious people a word of correction and criticism: “Cease doing evil.” That was not to atheists; that was to good, “Bible-believing people,” so to speak. “Cease to do evil. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Rescue the oppressed. Defend the orphan. Plead for the widow” (1:16-17). Jesus extended Isaiah’s sermon to additional examples when he said to show hospitality to the stranger, feed the hungry, give a drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, care for the sick, visit the imprisoned (Matthew 25:31-46). Those are words of criticism and correction to people who are so comfortable and complacent in their worship that their lives no longer express who God has called them to be and what God expects of them.

And that brings me already to my fourth suggestion. You can’t be expected to answer the arguments of Harris and Dawkins and Hitchens. You would need to become a philosopher and a neuroscientist and spend the next 30 years taking apart Harris’s arguments. He leaves a lot of arguments on the table to be taken apart, trust me. Study neuroscience--and astrophysics, too, while you’re at it. Those are the two great theological fields of the next fifty years. If you want to be a twenty-first-century theologian, study one of those two fields or both. You would need to become an evolutionary biologist in order to undermine Dawkins’s claims on his own turf. And there are plenty of good arguments on the table. He just leaves them there. Dawkins is a great biologist, but he would have a lot of trouble in a systematic theology class; he makes a lot of basic mistakes. But the force of his argument is still there. You would need to become an evolutionary biologist so that you can argue with Dawkins with knowledge and authority because he categorically rejects the presuppositions and assumptions of every frame of reference other than evolutionary biology. And I certainly hope that none of you ever must go into the blackness of Christopher Hutchens’s experience and life and soul to counteract the pain and the hurt and betrayal that he suffered in the church. You and I can’t do that. We have other callings. And that’s precisely my point. You don’t have to counter those arguments by arguing back. What you are called to do, in the words of the Kyle Matthews song about Albert Schweitzer is to make you life your argument. Isaiah and Jesus and other prophets and teachers of Israel and the church did not call us to be philosophers and neuroscientists and evolutionary biologists and hurting souls. Some us become those things along the way. But what we are called to do constantly and consistently is to make our lives our argument: cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow; welcome the stranger; feed the hungry; give water to the thirsty; clothe the naked; care for the sick; visit the imprisoned. In these things, there is no poison. In these things, religion is not what’s wrong with our world, religion is not wrong, and religion does not wrong. In these things, it’s your life. It is the character and quality of your life and our life together in the presence of the risen Lord and empowered by the Holy Spirit that is our best argument. Let’s make our lives our argument.

This material is Copyrighted © 2007 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Matthew 27:57 – 28:30—The Bones of Jesus

Three years ago, it was “The Passion of the Christ,” Mel Gibson’s dark and bloody cinematographic portrayal of the Stations of the Cross. It opened on Ash Wednesday for our Lenten edification. Then last year, you may recall, it was “The Gospel according to Judas,” a third-century copy of a second-century gospel that once was lost but now is found on a website, in a television documentary, two books and the May 2006 issue of National Geographic magazine, just in time for Christian Holy Week (see, previously, "The Trouble with Judas" http://pulpitbytes.blogspot.com/2006/10/matthew-2647-56-trouble-with-judas.html).

And now for this year’s Lenten sensation: the bones of Jesus. The morning after the Academy Awards, Hollywood producer and director James Cameron was the master of ceremonies at the New York Public Library presiding over the American début of a first-century Jewish bone box, an “ossuary” by its technical name, carved from limestone. On the side of this receptacle for bones was inscribed Yeshua bar Yehosef, Joshua son of Joseph. Now, if Joshua the son of Joseph had been a character in the New Testament, his name would be translated “Jesus the son of Joseph,” a name you may find familiar. At least I hope you find it familiar. James Cameron is hoping you find it familiar as well, because the point of the made-for-news-media event at the New York Public Library was to announce the launch of a website, a book and a television special on “the Jesus family tomb,” as it has been called.

It has been called “the Jesus family” because there was more than one ossuary in the tomb. There were 10, in fact, and one of the other nine was also featured in the Monday-morning announcement. The second bone box had inscribed on it Mariamene he Mara, Mariamne the teacher or leader. Mariamne is a Greek variation of the Jewish name Miryam or Miriam or Mary. And so, according to the website, the book and the television special, Jesus of Nazareth and none other than Mary Magdalene were buried together in the same family tomb in Jerusalem. DNA testing on material remaining in those two ossuaries has indicated that this Jesus and this Mariamne were not related on their mother’s side, and therefore they were married, or so it is claimed. Of course, they could as easily have been uncle and niece, aunt and nephew, cousins or in-laws, but that wouldn’t make for nearly as sensational a story, so they must have been married. It’s a case of DNA testing being used to try to bring some kind of pseudo-scientific credibility to a claim that sounds like news, but it’s not news at all.

You see, these two ossuaries along with the other eight were discovered in 1980, twenty-seven years ago this year. In the course of a construction project in the Jerusalem suburb of Talpiyot, a first-century family tomb was uncovered, not an unusual find in Jerusalem. Archeologists were called in to excavate the site. They documented and photographed it and the materials in it and then warehoused them, and the human remains in the ossuaries were buried in unmarked graves according to Orthodox Jewish stipulations. The professional archeologists working on the site saw the names, documented them and found nothing particularly unusual about them. Yeshua is a common name in first-century Jewish families. Why wouldn’t it be? Joshua is one of the greatest heroes in the Jewish Bible. Yehosef is a popular name in the first century. Why wouldn’t it be? Joseph was the favorite of the twelve sons of Jacob, the ancestor whose name was Israel. And Miriamene, less common than Yeshua and Yehosef, is the name Miriam, the sister of Moses, entirely familiar to the professional archeologists. And so they documented the names, photographed them and warehoused the ossuaries until 1996, when the British Broadcasting Company ran a cunning little misdocumentary on the family tomb and made the proposal that this was not just any Jesus of Jerusalem buried in it but Jesus of Nazareth and Mariamne was Mary Magdalene, Jesus’ wife. In 1996, professional archaeologists and scholars offered their objections to this sensationalist claim, yawned and went on about their business.

Now, eleven years later, it’s back. It’s back as though it were news in a publicity stunt at the New York Public Library. We have to give James Cameron, the executive producer of the television program, his due. He knows how to stage an event and attract the press. The location, the lighting, the ambience, the theatrical removal of a black velvet cover from the ossuary at just the right moment. No professional archeologist or biblical scholar would have thought to do it that well. We have to give him his due. Sharing the limelight Monday morning were several archeologists and scholars who do not agree with what the website and the book and the television program are saying. It would never occur to a professional archeologist or biblical scholar to include in their big announcement people who don’t support their interpretation. Professional archeologists and biblical scholars subject their work to a process known as “peer review,” according to which your evidence and your interpretation of it are not considered credible until they have been reviewed and at least grudgingly confirmed by other experts in your field. Because peer review and confirmation are so important to professional archeologists and biblical scholars, it wouldn’t occur to them that controversy and disagreement over your findings are more desirable than agreement because controversy adds to the publicity, multiplies interest and, most of all, increases sales. Include the outsiders as insiders, and you have a bigger story. Professional archeologists and biblical scholars are so stupid. But James Cameron knew what he was doing.

In fact, he made one of the most honest and revealing statements in the entire press conference when he said, “I’m not a biblical scholar. . . . but it seemed pretty darn compelling.” That’s the high standard for the argument in favor of the Jesus family tomb. The only hurdle it has to pass is that it’s “pretty darn compelling” to someone who is not an archeologist or a scholar. I wonder what would have happened if he had stood up in front of the press and said, “Now, I’m not an astrobiologist, but this Canadian filmmaker has discovered life on Mars, and it’s pretty darn compelling.” Would anyone other than the National Enquirer have run the story? What if he had said, “I’m not a viral epidemiologist, but this Canadian filmmaker has discovered an herbal antidote for HIV, and it’s pretty darn compelling”? Star Magazine might run it, but who else would? It’s sad to say, but when it comes to the Bible and the Christian faith, when it comes to religion and a little bit of sex thrown in, what with Mary Magdalene and Jesus, we are so gullible. We are so easy to shake and to rattle. Tabloid-quality claims cause a stir in religion, while science and medicine yawn and go about their business.

So what do we make of the latest Lenten sensation? I know you didn’t come here for some kind of academic rant. I know you came here to be inspired and moved. You came here for some kind of word from God that will address your life with comfort or challenge, with encouragement or correction to help you get over what you went through last week and somehow get you through the week that is ahead of you. I know that’s what you came for. But the bones of Jesus are important, so bear with me, please.

In 1 Corinthians 15, the apostle Paul says, “If Christ was not raised, your faith is futile” (v 17). Our proclamation is futile, he says, and our faith is in vain if Jesus Christ was not raised from the dead. But if you look at the rest of chapter 15, you will see something fascinating. Paul is talking about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and the relation of resurrection to faith in Jesus Christ precisely because there are people inside the church in Corinth who have questions, doubts and reservations about the resurrection. It turns out that in the church in Corinth there was a diversity of conviction something like the diversity of conviction among the people of First Baptist Greenville, some of whom are at least vaguely uncomfortable with the fact that a central tenet of the Christian tradition and a central element of our faith to which we are called is grounded in an event that is contrary to what we have learned about our world from biological science. Organisms live, they die, they decompose, that’s life. Some of us are at least vaguely uncomfortable with the fact that a central tenet of the Christian tradition and the faith to which we are called violates the laws of physics as we know them. Physical bodies do not simply appear and disappear at will or pass through walls. There are some of us here this morning who come with unassailable confidence that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, and there are others of us here who are fundamentally uncomfortable with Paul’s insistence that our faith hangs on such a singularity, such an unprecedented and unrepeatable phenomenon. And there are people who will attempt to capitalize on those questions and doubts and uncertainties. So while I want you to be inspired and moved, comforted and challenged, encouraged and corrected, I also want you to be informed; and I do not want you to be gullible and ignorant about key biblical, theological and historical elements of Christian faith and belief.

So, the bones of Jesus are on the table—or were in the ossuary and are now in an unmarked grave. Or are they? And what does that mean for you, and what does that mean for me? First, the gospel according to Matthew makes it clear that from the very beginning there were all kinds of questions, doubts and uncertainties about the resurrection among the followers of Jesus. While some worshiped him, others doubted (Matthew 28:9,17). They were filled with fear as well as with “great joy” (Matthew 28:5,8,10). According to Matthew’s gospel, there were rumors and counter-rumors, claims and counter-claims about the disposition of Jesus’ remains from the very beginning. The disciples stole the body in order to claim that he had been resurrected, according to the rumor in Matthew 27:64 and Matthew 28:13. According to the resurrection story in the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene says to the angelic figures in the tomb, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him” (20:13). And then she turns and says to the one whom she mistakes for the gardener, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away” (20:15). The search for the body and the bones of Jesus and the questions, doubts, fears and uncertainties are as old as Christ’s resurrection itself. There’s no news there.

But second, if you look at the gospel narratives more closely, you will see that it was not the absence of the body or the emptiness of the tomb that was the catalyst for resurrection faith among the follower of Jesus. The absence of a body and the emptiness of a tomb prove nothing at all, even to the closest followers of Jesus on the first Easter morning. What catapulted them to the faith on which they eventually staked their lives was their sense of the real, continuing and living presence of Jesus Christ their Lord with them, then and there. Did you hear the chorus of the song that our first-through-third-grade choir sang this morning? “For to me it’s clear that the Lord is near, everywhere I go.” They didn’t sing bones, bones who’s got the bones? They sang, “For to me it’s clear that the Lord is near, everywhere I go.” That was the basis for the disciples’ testimony that Jesus lives. If you have come here to be inspired and moved, if you have come for some kind of word from God this morning, a word of comfort or challenge, encouragement or correction, I suggest to you that the place to find it is right there where the disciples found it first: in the real, continuing, living presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in your life, with you here and now, so that you can sing with the children, “For to me it’s clear that the Lord is near, everywhere I go.”

Now before you find those words too inspiring or moving, comforting or challenging, encouraging or correcting, I have some really bad news for you this morning about the bones of Jesus. The really bad news is that the test of Jesus’ resurrection is not in whether there were bones in that box and whose bones they were. The test of Jesus’ resurrection is in the shape and content of your life. Hear that again: the test of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is in the shape and the content of your life. It is in your faith in Jesus Christ. It is in your baptism. It is in your obedience to Christ’s to call. It is in your living a forgiven and joyful life in spite of whoever you are and whatever you have done. It is in your living a forgiving and joyful life in spite of whatever has been done to you. The test of the resurrection is in the character and the quality of your life because to you it’s clear to that Jesus is near everywhere you go.

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says that the resurrection is not about a physical body at all, a soma psychikon. It’s about a spiritual body, a soma pneumatikon, he says (v 44). So, in the end as at the beginning, Paul says, it’s not about the bones. It’s about the present and active Spirit of a risen and living Lord, so near to you that you have been drawn through baptismal waters, so near to you that you have been drawn into a community of forgiveness and worship and service in Jesus’ name, so near to you that even though you walk through the valley of shadow of death you will fear no evil because the risen Christ is with you. So let this be the Lenten sensation in this congregation: the recognition that the test of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is in the character and quality of your life and mine and all of ours together. For to me it’s clear that the Lord is near, everywhere I go. Thanks be to God!

This material is Copyrighted © 2007 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Luke 1:39-45,56—A Quiet Miracle

I realize it’s quite late to post a Christmas Eve sermon, but a recent request for a manuscript of it has led me to conclude, “Better late than never.”

This particular sermon was set up by the Sunday morning before, as I described in my “First Matters” column in the church News on December 19:

Sunday morning, Ernest Garrett showed me a clipping from Saturday’s newspaper. “I can’t believe it’s been 62 years,” he said, as I read the one-sentence entry in “Today in History,” noting the beginning of “the Battle of the Bulge,” the costliest battle of WWII for American lives lost (19,000). Exposure to the extreme cold caused as many casualties as the fighting, which continued into January of 1945.

Later, I listened in wonder to Lore Johnson's children’s sermon recounting an episode in her life as a teenager living alone in Germany during the American occupation after the war. She told about finding employment in the home of an American officer and his family, cooking, cleaning house and washing dishes and diapers. Lore offered an entirely different perspective on getting “coal” for Christmas when she told about how grateful she was for the big box of it that the officer surprised her with, because it allowed her to heat her otherwise cold room for the whole winter.

Two very different memories of WWII from FBC member-ministers whose lives testify to the love and grace of God at Christmas and all year long.

In January of 1996, Fritz Vincken, a bakery owner from Honolulu, Hawaii, traveled to Frederick, MD, to meet Ralph Blank in the nursing home where he lived. It was not the first time the two had met, but they had not seen each other for more than 50 years. The first time they met was sixty-two years ago tonight, on Christmas Eve 1944. The circumstances of their introduction to each other constitute one of the great Christmas stories of all time.

When Fritz Vincken was twelve years old, he and his mother Elisabeth took refuge in a small hunting cabin in the Hürtgen Forest four miles outside the town of Monschau near the border of Germany and Belgium, after their home in Aachen had been destroyed in an Allied air raid. “When we heard the knock on our door that Christmas Eve in 1944,” wrote Fritz Vincken wrote years later, “neither Mother nor I had the slightest inkling of the quiet miracle that lay in store for us. . . . . as I went to the door, the Battle of the Bulge was raging all around us. We heard the incessant booming of field guns; planes soared continuously overhead; at night, searchlights stabbed through the darkness. Thousands of Allied and German soldiers were fighting and dying nearby. When that first knock came, Mother quickly blew out the candles; then, as I went to answer it, she stepped ahead of me and pushed open the door. Outside, like phantoms against the snow-clad trees, stood two steel-helmeted men. One of them spoke to Mother in a language we did not understand, pointing to a third man lying in the snow. She realized before I did that these were American soldiers. Enemies! Mother stood silent, motionless, her hand on my shoulder. They were armed and could have force their entrance, yet they stood there and asked with their eyes. And the wounded man seemed more dead than alive. “Kommt rein,” Mother said finally. “Come in.”

The soldiers carried their comrade inside and stretched him out on my bed. None of them understood German. Mother tried French, and one of the soldiers could converse in that language. . . . They’d lost their battalion and had wandered in the forest for three days, looking for the Americans, hiding from the Germans. They hadn’t shaved, but still, without their heavy coats, they looked merely like big boys, and that’s how mother began to treat them. Now mother said to me, ‘Go get Hermann. And bring six potatoes.’ This was a serious departure from our pre-Christmas plans. Hermann was the plump rooster (named after Hermann Goering, Hitler’s No. 2, for whom Mother had little affection) that we had been fattening for weeks in the hope that Father would be home for Christmas. But, some hours before, when it was obvious that Father would not make it, Mother had decided that Hermann should live a few more days, in case Father could get home for New Year’s. Now she changed her mind again: Hermann would serve an immediate, pressing purpose. . . . Soon, the tempting smell of roast chicken permeated our room.

I was setting the table when once again there came a knock at the door. Expecting to find more lost Americans, I opened the door with hesitation. There stood four soldiers wearing uniforms quite familiar to me after five years of war. They were soldiers of the Wehrmacht, they were ours! I was paralyzed with fear. Although still a child, I knew that whoever sheltered the enemy would be shot! Mother was frightened, too. Her face was white, but she stepped outside and said quietly, ‘Fröhliche Wehinachten.’ The soldiers wished her a Merry Christmas, too. ‘We have lost our regiment and would like to wait for daylight,’ explained the corporal ‘Can we rest here?’ ‘Of course,’ Mother replied, with a calmness born of panic. ‘You can also have a fine, warm meal and eat till the pot is empty.’ The Germans smiled as they sniffed the aroma through the half-open door. ‘But,’ Mother added firmly, ‘we have three other guests, whom you may not consider friends.’ Now her voice was suddenly sterner than I’d ever heard it before. ‘This is Christmas Eve, and there will be no shooting here.’ ‘Who’s inside?’ the corporal demanded. ‘Amerikaner?’ Mother looked at each frost-chilled face. ‘Listen,’ she said slowly, ‘You could be my sons, and so could those in there. A boy with a gunshot wound, fighting for his life. His two friends lost like you and just as hungry and exhausted as you are. This one night,’ she turned to the corporal and raised her voice a little, ‘this Christmas night, let us forget about killing.’

The corporal stared at her. There were two or three endless seconds of silence. Then Mother put an end to indecision. ‘Enough talking,’ she ordered and clapped her hands sharply. ‘Please put your weapons here on the woodpile, and hurry up before the others eat the dinner!’ Dazedly, the four soldiers placed their arms on the pile of firewood just inside the door. . . . Meanwhile, Mother was speaking French rapidly to Jim. He said something in English, and to my amazement I saw the American boys, too, turn their weapons over to Mother. . . . Despite the strained atmosphere, Mother went right on preparing dinner. . . . one of the Germans had put on his glasses to inspect the American’s wound. ‘Do you belong to the medical corps?’ Mother asked him. ‘No,’ he answered. ‘But I studied medicine at Heidelberg until a few months ago.’ Thanks to the cold, he told the Americans in what sounded like fairly good English, Harry’s wound hadn’t become infected. ‘He is suffering from a severed loss of blood,’ he explained to Mother. ‘What he needs is rest and nourishment.’

Relaxation was beginning to replace suspicion. Even to me, all the soldiers looked very young as we sat there together. Heinz and Willi, both from Cologne, were 16. The German corporal, at 23, was the oldest of them all. From his food bag he drew out a bottle of red wine, and Heinz managed to find a loaf of rye bread. Mother cut that in small pieces to be served with the dinner. . . . Then mother said grace. I noticed that there were tears in her eyes as she said the old, familiar words, ‘Komm, Herr Jesu,’ ‘Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest.’ And as I looked around the table, I saw tears, too, in the eyes of the battle-weary soldiers, boys again, some from America, some from Germany, all far from home. . . . Our private armistice continued the next morning. . . . . The corporal . . . advised the Americans how to find their way back to their lines. Looking over Jim’s map, the corporal pointed out a stream. ‘Continue along this creek,’ he said, ‘and you will find the 1st Army rebuilding its forces on its upper course.’ The medical student relayed the information in English. ‘Why don’t we head for Monschau,?’ Jim had the medical student ask. ‘Nein!’ the corporal exclaimed. ‘We’ve retaken Monschau.’ Now mother gave them all back their weapons. . . . The German and American soldiers shook hands, and we watched them disappear in opposite directions.”

A Christmas miracle, indeed. Not everyone believes in miracles, of course. One online commentator on the made-for-TV movie based on this true story wrote, “This film seems too contrived for me. I can’t believe that soldiers who were indoctrinated to hate their enemy and who suffered years of war and personal loss, would lay down their weapons to have a Christmas dinner. . . . All in all, this film seems too naïve in its premise.” Too naïve, indeed. For centuries, the proclamation of the Christmas story has been dismissed as too contrived, too naïve for the fearful and threatening realities of the world in which we humans live. Take, for example, the unexpected encounter between another woman named Elizabeth and her young relative named Mary in this morning’s gospel lesson. Long after Elizabeth gave up expecting to be expecting, she was surprised to be expecting. And well before Mary expected to be expecting, she is surprised to be expecting. In their joy and in their confusion, these two women stumble into each other’s arms, only to be further surprised by Elizabeth’s announcement that the child she was carrying in her womb, whom the world would eventually know as John the Baptist, kicked when Mary arrived, carrying in her womb the child the world would eventually know as Jesus of Nazareth. “Contrived and naïve,” some would say of this encounter, and I confess that sometimes I have been among them.

But every year the Christmas proclamation reminds me and reminds us all that God is at work in the world of fearful and threatening realities in which we live in ways that often confound our expectations and contradict our sophistication. The Christmas proclamation reminds us that God is present and at work in ways and in places and in lives that you and I aren’t even inclined to consider or see. After all, it was in a fearful and threatening world in a Palestine occupied by the foreign forces of the Roman Legion, while the paranoid tyrant Herod the Great pursued a domestic policy of stability by the assassination of anyone he perceived to be a threat, two women, one too old and one too young, fell into each other’s arms to share the joy and the confusion of the quiet miracles they were experiencing. Centuries later, two knocks on the door of a hunting cabin in Hürtgen Forest turned a lonely hut surrounded by the Battle of the Bulge into an oasis of peace and humanity. “Es ist Heiligabend,” Elizabeth Vincken said, “und hier wird nicht geschossen.” “It is the Holy Night, and there will be no shooting here.” So, too, we come to this place occupied and preoccupied by forces and fears and threats that we cannot control. We come to this place, some of as combatants and some as noncombatants but all of us caught up in wars that rage around us and within us, culture wars, political wars, retail wars, marital wars, gender wars, mommy wars, wars on terror, wars on addiction, wars on loneliness, grief, disease and depression—name your battle. We come here for a respite, a rest, a private armistice in a place where quiet miracles occur when we fall into each other’s arms, when we offer one another a handshake of peace and directions in finding our way.

“Your mother saved my life,” Ralph Blank said to Fritz Vincken, when they met again in 1996, and he showed him the compass that the German corporal had given him along with the directions back to the location of the Allied lines. “Now I can die in peace,” Vincken said. My mother’s courage won’t be forgotten and it shows what good will do.” And like the first Christmas story, it reminds us of the unexpected ways and places that God is present and at work in a fearful and threatening world.

“Now to the Lord sing praises, all you within this place,
and with true love and gentleness each other now embrace;
this holy tide of Christmas all others doth deface.
O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy;
O tidings of comfort and joy.” (English carol, 18th century)

(Note: The first-person account above is quoted from “Truce in the Forest,” by Fritz Vincken, posted at http://www.afn.co.kr/archives/readings/truce.htm, with several variants collated in from the German version, “Winternacht in den Ardennen,” posted at http://www.kreisanzeiger-online.de/new/start.php?id=75. The words of Blank and Vincken in the final paragraph come from Vincken’s obituary written by Rod Ohira and posted on the website of the Honolulu Advertiser at http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2002/Jan/11/ln/ln37a.html, and are used by permission. Additional sources consulted include the Hawaii Oral History project posting, “Interview of Fritz Vincken, February, 1997, in Honolulu, Hawaii, Conducted by Joalena Ashmore, Senior at Kahuku High,” at http://www.ba-ez.org/educatn/LC/OralHist/vincken.htm, and a brief notice in a New York Times article on May 7, 1985, “Reagan in Europe: Speech in Germany, Arrival in Spain; Author of Tale Moved by Reagan’s Telling.” All online sources were last accessed on 12/18/2006. I confess that President Reagan was more trusting than I, as it was not until after learning of the 1996 meeting with Blank corroborating Vincken’s account that I was willing to use this story that I first heard some thirty years ago. For a careful account of a very different experience of Christmas Eve 1944 in the Ardennes, read The Hotton Report, by Robert K. McDonald [Wakefield, LA: Finbar Press, 2006]).