Gary Brinn’s Blog

I’ve been on the road the last couple of weeks. I wrapped thing up at Vassar College and with First Congregational in Poughkeepsie, and last Thursday appeared before the Ecclesiastical Council, where I was approved for ordination. So now it’s search time!

On Sunday I lead worship at First Church in Needham, the second time they’ve been kind enough to invite me. Below is the sermons and some of the liturgy.

This summer I won’t be at camp, so I’ll be posting of the material from the last year…

Blessings
Gary

Contagious Cleanliness: Mark 5:21 ff 
The last few days have been absolutely lovely. I’ve been out and about, Inman Square where I live, Harvard Square where I meet friends and where my Ecclesiastical Council was held on Thursday night. Everyone getting out, the sun shining, dozens of languages, and a mix of the well-to-do, the vastly over-educated, and the just-hanging on. I suspect this is a bit what it was like in the scenes recounted in today’s gospel. Galilee was in some sense a rural backwater, reclaimed by the Judeans only a century before Jesus. But in other ways it was a thriving cosmopolitan region. The Roman cities of the Decapolis, trade routes, Greek culture… and of course the various sects of the Judean religion.

There’s a lot going on in this particular reading just as there was probably a lot going on in the streets on Galilee’s shores. Jesus already has a band of disciples and already has a reputation as a healer. A leader of the local synagogue asks Jesus to heal his daughter, making us question what we think we know about “the Jews.” The scare quotes were on purpose, because there was no such thing as Rabbinic Judaism, and the Judean religion was complex and far from unified. And a woman who is well-to-do enough to have consulted many physicians without relief, who is willing to grasp at any straw, any cloak, for relief. And notice that Jesus doesn’t say “I know who touched me” as those who over-emphasize his divine nature would have him. No, he has to ask, and the disciples don’t wither before their master. “Please, look around you. How are we supposed to know?” And the little girl, did she die because Jesus was delayed or would she have died anyways? Does he leave most of the disciples behind so he can move faster? And of course, there’s the whole secret thing Jesus does. Shhh, don’t tell anyone.

We have here stories that are interwoven, a pretty good sign in my book. You see, tradition recorded in the earliest texts about the gospels tells us that the author of Mark wrote down stories as Peter told them, and was never quite sure about the chronology. The author of Matthew is desperately re-ordering the contents of the gospel message and story to cast Jesus as the new Moses, complete with five sermons representing the new Torah. And Luke is very consciously a historian, trying to tell the story accurately. But the author of Mark, well he’s just telling it like he heard it. He doesn’t re-arrange, doesn’t make it into a nice story, its not literature. So for my money, this is a pretty reliable re-telling of an actual event. Jesus was asked by a local Judean leader to heal his daughter. And on his way there, he was touched by a woman and she was healed.

But this isn’t just any woman, she was an unclean woman. Hemorrhaging is code for menstrual problems and this woman is as unclean as you can get short of leprosy. So before we talk about what Christ did, let’s think about the purity code.

The purity code is part of the very complex six-hundred plus rule system referred to as the Law. The Judean myth was that it was given to Moses by God and that it reflects God’s will. The truth is that the Law was composed over five centuries, combining the customs of the Tribes with the needs of the Kingdom, and with the needs of the conquered remnant. Many things went into the code. There was the need for a complex system of sacrifices to support the Temple economy and its many priests. There was the need to regulate disease and contagion. And during the Exile there was the need to create complex rules to insure the Exiles were not assimilated, to mark them as distinct. After the Exile there was the need to justify marginalizing and dispossessing the non-Elite Judeans who had been left behind. There was a whole lot of human strategy that went into the lines and rules and categories of the code. And the biggest weapon in the Law’s arsenal was uncleanliness.

Now, here’s the thing about the state of being unclean, about uncleanliness: it was contagious. If I have become unclean, maybe I’ve touched a corpse or a leper or a hemorrhaging woman, and then I touch you, then you are also unclean. It is a bit like the cooties, but without the circle-circle dot-dot shot that makes it all better.

When the woman touched Jesus’ cloak, she made him unclean. Simple as that. I mean, you might argue that the cloak was unclean, but then we’d be missing the point and besides, the purity code is pretty OCD. So when she came into contact with Jesus, certainly enough for healing to move from him into her, he became unclean. But not really, because that’s not what happened. Jesus did not become unclean, she became clean.

Here is this complex system of rules that takes as its basic premise that the bad, uncleanliness, idolatry, sin, is contagious, and Jesus flips it on its head. It is not uncleanliness that is contagious, it is cleanliness. The cleanliness flows out of Jesus and into her, for she is not just healed, her illness carries moral freight. We miss this message when we flatten the story to Jesus’ magical mystical Messiah powers, or when we focus on just her faith, though faith certainly comes into play. We often miss a major theme throughout the gospels. Jesus encounters the unclean and makes it clean. He orders the disciples to do the same. Corpses, tax collectors, adulterers, all unclean, all cleansed by Jesus. The man-made system that controls and taxes and protects and oppresses is divinely reversed.

Just to drive home the point, Jesus dies in the most ritually unclean manner. Yes, he is severely beaten by Gentiles, by the conquering Romans, but that’s not enough. And yes, he’s in a killing field where hundreds of other Jews have been executed. But the real uncleanliness comes from what, from the Roman point of view, was a happy coincidence. See, the Romans used crucifixion throughout their empire. It was a brutal form of torture execution that was quite effective at quelling political dissent. The victim slowly and painfully died, then the corpse was left there, rotting, a sign to any others that might challenge Rome. There were dozens if not hundreds of crosses visible in every major town controlled by Rome. And as it happens, the Law says that it is unclean to die on a tree.

Jesus took the unclean symbol of brutal Roman oppression, the most unclean way to die according to the Law, and defeated it, made it a symbol of triumph over all of the oppressive systems of humankind.

Now let me be clear, this is not just about Jesus and magical mystical Messiah-power. “Oh, well Jesus is God, but that’s just him.” Nope, wrong, absolutely wrong. The disciples are meant to do the same, they do the same. And then there are the Gentiles who decide to follow Christ, there’s Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, well, you get the idea. I’ll let you decide whether Jesus simply reverses the old purity code or whether he informs us that it was bogus all along, though you can probably guess where I land in that debate. But when it is all said and done, contagious uncleanliness is no more, what is contagious is cleanliness.

Thanks, Gary, you might be thinking, thanks for the historical-critical-theological lesson, but what does it have to do with me? After all, we know all about disease and contagion these days, and we’ve long abandoned the idea that women and childbirth are inherently unclean. Okay, dead bodies and IRS agents still give us the willies, but it’s not about contagious uncleanliness. So why do we care about a divine reversal of a system we’ve long since abandoned?

Well, here’s my question: Have we really abandoned the idea that the bad is contagious? Okay, you don’t want your child hanging out with the bad kids. I get it. And while you were friends with both of them, only one of them cheated, so you were happy with how the friends were divided in the divorce… But really, you don’t worry that the bad is catching… well, but your partner shouldn’t be socializing with philanderers.

Nope, you don’t belief badness is contagious… or do you? I know I do. I am sometimes amazed at what a prude I am. I don’t think we should buy products from bad companies, watch exploitive television shows, idolize scoundrels. I see everything as connected and am constantly thinking about how I am contributing to systems of oppression, injustice, evil. Okay, at least I’m not obsessed about my own salvation, at least I’m not a complete Pharisee. But, and it’s a pretty big but, I also don’t act as if cleanliness is contagious. I don’t carry Jesus with me into sinful places. I’m a good post-colonial post-modern progressive liberal kind of guy, so I don’t want to interfere with other people’s beliefs or lifestyle, even if I believe that lifestyle is self-destructive, even if I believe that people can find liberation and joy in a life shaped by Christ.

I am too polite to share the good news of Christ, too post-whatever to carry contagious cleanliness, contagious salvation, into the world.

Todays’ gospel is really a kick in the pants if you think about it. It’s a little more subtle than the Great Commission, you need to actually study the text to get the meaning, but the meaning is still there. Goodness is contagious, cleanliness is contagious. We are supposed to be the leaven in the loaf, which means getting out of our little jar in the refrigerator and getting in the loaf. Mixing with the unholy, the dirty, the immoral. Touching them. It gives me the willies just thinking about it.

I have my own purity code, its very convenient, keeps me out of uncomfortable situations, insures that I am socially acceptable. Ouch! I’m okay with the fact that Sunday morning and Monday morning don’t always seem to connect. Yikes!

Does Jesus reprimand the woman who touches him? Does he avoid the unclean dead little girl? Talitha cum! Get up and walk. Carry God’s cleanliness into the world. I have no idea how we do that, but I’m sure willing to try. With God’s grace and the power of the Spirit we have all we need to go out and change lives, to change the world. May it always be so! Amen.

Pastoral Prayer

Loving God, we praise and thank you for this amazing creation, for this living, beautiful, growing and shaking and terrifying earth. We ask for the wisdom to care for it, to love it, as you love it, as you love us.

Creator God, we thank you for these bodies, healing and growing and thriving and failing, we are truly fearfully and wonderfully made. We ask for comfort for those who suffer, in body and spirit, for those who have lost and those who provide comfort. May we all find our way home to you.

Saving God, we thank you for the Kingdom proclaimed by your Son, for the challenge and example of his life, death and resurrection. We ask for courage to step out into the world as witnesses, charged with the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.

Calling God, we thank you for bringing us together in this church. Grant, we pray, your wisdom in the deliberations of this congregation and of our sisters and brothers at Synod.

God, you are very real and know that we live in a world that is very real, with destruction and conflict. We pray for our sisters and brothers threatened by war, for all who long for justice and liberty. We pray that the power of the your Spirit will touch the hearts of leaders, leading us on a path of wisdom, a path of love.

We offer these words of praise and of petition in humility, in love, living into the dream that is your kingdom. Amen.

Call to Offering

Our Savior asks for nothing less than our whole hearts, bound in love of our God, of one another, and of this church. Our monetary gifts are but a small part of what we give, but they are a necessary part, one whether it is the widow’s mite or the riches at the Needle Gate. The offering will now be collected and received.

Prayer of Dedication

Let us pray. Divine Source, Loving God, these gifts represent our time, our talent, our tithes, represent our whole hearts given over to you. Bless the gifts and the givers, strengthening the missions of this church and of this denomination, helping us to spread this good news, that life in Christ is life in full, that death is defeated, and that our God is great, amazing, agapè. Amen.

Benediction
Our God asks much of us. Go out into the world and change it. But God offers us in return life in full, the power of the Holy Spirit, our companions in Christ. Go forth, blessed by God, reconciling Sunday morning with Monday morning and being as contagious as you can… cleanliness and love spreading across our world. Amen.

This coming Sunday I will officiate from the Invitation to Communion through the Words of Institution. Below is the material I’ve put together for the service. Sometime next week I will post the Ecumenical Maundy Thursday service I’ve been working on for the campus setting.

Invitation to Communion

Officiant: Jesus broke through barriers of race and tribe, through class barriers and gender barriers, through human-created barriers of clean and unclean, holy and sinful. Jesus broke bread with all who came to him. In the same way, the early Christians violated social custom by breaking bread together, rebelling against all that would divide.

All: We come to the table of Jesus, ignoring those things that would divide us, united in our love of God and our salvation in Christ. We join this morning our sisters and brothers in this congregation, down the block, and around the world, that rejoice and that celebrate.

Officiant: This table is open to all that love God, to all that follow Jesus. Are you ready to come to the table of our Savior?

All: We are ready to come to Christ’s table, lifting our hearts and voices in thanks and praise.

The Great Thanksgiving

Officiant: We gather together as your people, God, called by you, comforted by you, bathed in your grace. You move towards us in love, and we respond with thanks and praise.

We thank you, Holy Maker, for this amazing creation, for complexity and chaos, and birth and death, for the winding of DNA and the rush of wind.

We remember the great story of our salvation, how you called a people to faithfulness, led them to freedom, blessed their leaders. We remember the prophets, women and men who challenged the people of God, calling them always, making faith in you a living faith, a dynamic faith.

We recall how your Son lived among us, taught and prayed. We recall his willingness to ride into Jerusalem, knowing where that journey would end. In the crucifixion and resurrection of our Savior, death and sin have been defeated.

We have no words to adequately give thanks for this gift of new life, for our freedom in Christ. We join with those who have gone before us, called to you as saints, and with heavenly choirs, in singing your praise.

All: Holy, holy, holy God,
God of Creation, God of Love,
the whole universe is witness to your glory.

Blessed in the one who came and who still comes in the name of our God!
Hosanna in the highest!

Words of Institution

Officiant: We remember that on the night he was betrayed and arrested, on the night that those who loved him deserted him, Jesus gathered his beloved community together to celebrate the feast. Jesus took the bread, gave thanks, and broke it, and gave it to his beloved saying “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

In the same way he took the cup of wine, saying “This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

Let is proclaim the mystery of our faith.

All: This is our Good News: Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, has died, has risen from the grave, defeating death, and will come again. Glory to you, O God.

The following article was written in support of the adult formation class I am teaching in January on why progressive Christians should care about apocalyptic.

Article for January Spire
J. Gary Brinn
Pastoral Intern

On the Death of Batman

The news media has recently reported that DC Comics will be killing Batman in a coming issue. This might not seem like a big deal to you. After all, while Batman has become an icon in the American Media Culture, our children no longer read comic books. Only a handful of adults continue to care about this medium, with its mixture of the visual and textual, of archetype and narrative. This has resulted in books with an adult aesthetic, with gritty, violent and profane stories, which in turn makes the books less accessible to children. An excellent and recent children’s novel, Mascot to the Rescue, bemoans the state of comics while still showing how the books create meaning in the life of one little boy.

I should be upfront and say that I am part of that small group of adults who still cares about comics. To be fair, I stopped collecting when I entered Divinity School, but my collection covers three of decades and thousands of issues, the majority of which feature Batman.

Today’s Batman is as gritty and complicated as its adult readers, but the heart of the story is still simple. Batman is dedicated to making justice when the standard systems of the world cannot do so. He sweeps in from above, mysterious and outside of the law, and he makes things right. One moment the bad guys are terrorizing the public, and two pages and a few “ka-pows” later, they’re hogtied, turned over to authorities, and Batman is back in the manor.

We all want justice to sweep in and make things right. Sometimes we allow our frustration, individual and collective, get the best of us. That was certainly the case in the painful weeks after 9/11. We want justice, whether it comes through the Divine or through a missile. And we make up stories to justify our execution of justice.

This is a pretty tough problem, faith-wise. We are expected to turn the other cheek. God moves to us with irresistible grace. The thief is forgiven and the table fellowship is open to all, even the sinner. The landlord pays all the workers the same wage, and it doesn’t seem fair. Our stomachs hurt when we see the guilty go free, when we see the innocent perish. We want a God like Batman who protects the innocent and punishes the wicked. And we want it now.

During the month of January I will be teaching a Christian formation class on our own version of Batman, the tradition of apocalyptic in our scripture and tradition. There won’t be pretty pictures, and the readings are a bit more complicated than the comics, but it will be just as exciting. I invite you to join us in wrestling with this topic, and I promise that we will make it relevant to how you live today.

As for the Death of Batman, well you can never trust comics’ writers. The dead just won’t stay dead. Sounds like another story I know…

Blessings,
Gary

I haven’t been posting much this year. My day job, as the Inter-Religious Fellow on a college chaplain staff, doesn’t require much writing, and my congregational service this year does not require sermon writing. I do bang out the occasional newsletter article or worship element, so i’ll try to get some of those up…

Here is the pastoral prayer for tomorrow’s service. The pastor is using the Marcan apocalypse for the sermon!

Let us join together with the people of God in all nations, in all places, as we offers our prayers of praise and petition:

Loving God
We are on a schedule
We are a temporal people
Chained to our watches
In control

And then there is you
Your time surprises us
Like a thief in the night
Like the pangs of birth

We thank you for your time
For your kingdom
For the Son of Man

Bless this day the church
Millions who are committed to your time
Who let go for moments
Who sit before you in prayer
Bless especially those who serve the church
Fill them with Spirit
Fill them with love

Bless this day those who lead nations
Ours and others
May they not rush to judgment
But await your time
Fill them with patience
Fill them with peace

Bless this day those who serve our communities
Those who protect, those who teach
Those who reach out when others turn away
Who embrace what is broken
Grant them time to heal
Fill them with wisdom

Bless those who have died this week in religious conflict
For Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew,
For those in Mumbai, in Orissa, in Nigeria
Bring the innocent into your kingdom
Overwhelm them with your grace
Comfort those left behind
Those scarred
May these pangs give birth to renewed love
To forgiveness
To reconciliation

Bless those who hunger and thirst
Those in pain
The broken-hearted
If it is your will
Let the surprise be healing
On your time
A divine ambush
The shock of love

[insert prayer requests here]

We offer these spoken prayers
And the prayers buried in our hearts
Hearts in the kingdom
Hearts directed by your time
May it always be so. Amen.

“Borderlines”

Jeremiah. 23:5-6 The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.
In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: “The LORD is our righteousness.”

You might have noticed that the two scripture readings don’t seem to go together, that in fact they seem to contradict one another. Now, in case you were momentarily distracted, let’s recap. In the first reading, taken from the First Book of Samuel, the loose confederation of Israelite tribes come to Samuel, judge and prophet, and ask for a king. They have good reasons, the Philistines have moved into the region with advanced technologies and are putting pressure on the western border. Samuel warns them that a king is not God’s plan for the people, but they insist. Even though this text was written in the centuries after a monarchy was established, it records the uneasiness the people still felt about loyalty to anyone other than God.

The second reading was written five centuries later. The United Kingdom of Saul, David and Solomon had been torn in two. The Northern Kingdom called Israel had fallen, and the Southern Kingdom, Judah, was at risk, with invaders at the gate. In this reading, God promised through his prophet Jeremiah to raise up a new king for his people. Monarchy had become the theological model from which the Judeans operated. So when the people were in trouble, it was up to a great king, an anointed one, a messiah, to rescue them. Unlike the people of the exodus, these people believed that God worked indirectly, through others, through chosen kings.

The readings suggest that God changed plans, though we have adopted from Hellenism an unfortunate notion of a God that cannot ever change. The truth is that the Israelite religion is a trajectory of change. God creates a covenant with one small tribe through one man, Abraham. Then God creates a new covenant with that tribe through all members when he frees them from bondage, a covenant mediated by Moses but executed by the people. Then God changes models again and creates a covenant with a single household through one man with the Davidic covenant. We could fall back on the oft repeated trope “God planned it all that way,” but that would leave no room for human freedom, only a puppet-master God, one that seems less than worthy of our love. So what are we to make of all of this change?

Its actually amazingly simple. The world changes. God created for us a dynamic universe. The planet earth, the Milky Way, the universe itself, flinging out into the cosmos at incredible speeds. Humans, free and growing, dynamic, miracle. And when the world changes, when we change, we adapt our beliefs, our values, our practices to the new world. This doesn’t mean that God has changed, if you insist you can stick to your Hellenistic security blanket. But it does mean that we humans encounter God and understand God in different ways at different times.

In fact, contradiction and change are part of our religious DNA, they are the dynamic threads of a living faith that flows from Abraham to Moses to David to Jesus, and yes, even to Paul. Our understanding changes if we are open to God, if we listen to God, for as our own denomination has declared, God is still speaking. In fact, we are in a position today to know more about the biblical people and their context than they were 1500 years ago as the fifth century Christians attempted to freeze our faith, to determine once and for all what would be acceptable or orthodox belief and what would be considered heretical. We have used the amazing gifts of God, reason and intellect, to learn. We have dug up ancient ruins and texts, we have deciphered ancient languages.

This is pretty uncomfortable. We are humans, we like stability. Sure there is change, just please, not in our back yard. We’re happy that our Christianity came to reject slavery. We’re fond of the Protestant Reformation. That women have a voice in our faith, well we wouldn’t have it any other way. Gay and lesbian people are no longer burned to death by Christians, at least not in the United States and Europe, and we think that’s a good thing. But please, God, can you make sure the next change happens after I’m gone? I like the way things are, they work for me…

Of course, they don’t work for everyone, but we can do just enough social justice work to ease our collective conscience and move on. But things change because God made it that way. We change because God made us this way. The universe is not going to stop because we are comfortable.

So where do we turn for guidance when things are changing? There is only one place we can consistently look for God’s voice, and that is the scriptures. We can look at the historical and theological trajectories of the Word of God and discern answers for our own time. Though, as we all know, misused the Bible can become a weapon that destroys lives. As I challenged the children, so I challenge you. Study the Bible. Read it. Pray over it.

And when you turn to the Bible to hear the voice of God, know that that voice is most consistent, is most clear, in the words of our savior, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. The core teachings of Christianity are not the teachings of Paul, though we have much to learn from him. They are the teachings of Jesus. Which brings us back to the problem of change.

You see, the world was changing when Jesus walked the streets of Galilee and Judea. And as the world changed, people adapted. But like us, they weren’t happy about it, so they created structures and systems of belief and defended them with their whole lives. The Pharisees sought an answer to the changes of life under an occupation army by clinging to the Law, by self-righteousness and legalism. The Zealots sought an answer by arms, they hoped that a military rebellion would reveal the messiah-warrior-king. The Sadducees and Herodians decided to compromise, to make the Judean and Greco-Roman worlds co-exist. The Essenes moved to the desert, rejecting the world all together. Then there were the Gentiles, but who cares about them? Each group was busy drawing borderlines. On this side you are on God’s side, you are good, holy, you are right. This is the border between us and them.

Then Jesus came along. Jesus who healed and exorcised Judean and Gentile alike. Jesus who brought Matthew the tax collector, the agent of the brutal Empire, and Simon the Zealot, enemy of that Empire, together. Jesus who rejected Sadducee and Pharisee alike. As busy as everyone was drawing borderlines, Jesus was busy smashing them. Even the boundary between in-group and out-group was smashed. The radically open table fellowship at the heart of Jesus’ ministry smashed social boundaries, but it also smashed boundaries of righteousness. You didn’t even have to repent, to be bathed in the Jordan, to come to the table. You only had to believe.

We still draw boundaries. I still draw boundaries. We are, when we get right down to it, inclined to Social Darwinism. It is at the heart of our socio-economic system. Those people over there are not like us. It’s no wonder they are impoverished, suffering under a dictator, hungry. Feed, cloth and visit Jesus says, ignore the boundaries. Jesus calls us always to move beyond, to be more, to do more, to love more. Hitch a ride on this amazing ongoing creation, smash through the borderlines, and do it now. What are you waiting for?

The message of Jesus could not come at a better time. Petroleum is running out. All life in the oceans will be gone in our lifetime. These are not the lunatic ravings of some crackpot scientist. These are facts. We are destroying the planet just as we have always destroyed one another. Economic and political systems are broken beyond repair, including our own. The plans we are busy making for those little miracles in our Sunday School are not going to be realized if they are based on a world that looks like this.

This is not the first time in the history of humankind that there have been sweeping changes, great trauma. The world has always changed. Great plagues, colonialism, the scientific revolution, the dawn of modern democracies. But in the last half century man has developed the ability to wipe out life itself. This is new, this is unheard of in the entirety of human history.

Of course, we can stick our heads in the sand and pretend none of this is happening. We can call such realities apocalyptic, or offer it all up to God. We can keep doing the same old things. But the world is going to change. And someone is going to recognize that change, is going to bring to that change a value system, and they are going to act. We can sit back and let them do it. But Jesus wasn’t a very sit back kind of guy. Jesus didn’t preach a gospel of sit around and pretend. Jesus preached a gospel of get up off of your rump and go do something. Go change the world. If the world is going to change, then maybe we should be the ones envisioning that change. Would you rather have progressive Christians taking the lead, Bible in hand, or would you rather leave it to extremists, busy with their borderlines? Or maybe our future should be decided in corporate board rooms?

Am I the only one who dreams of a new economic system that is grounded in the message of Christ? Surely there is some Christian economist out there who can think outside of the current box! Because our current system is, in the words of Brian McLaren, a suicide machine. It is destroying us.

Lead or follow. It’s up to you. Take the Bible in hand, study it, pray with it, work together as communities of love and faith and change the world. Or let the world be reshaped by intolerance and greed, by the keepers of the borderlines.

I am asking us to do three things. One, admit to ourselves that the world is changing, stop pretending like everything is okay. It’s not. It never will be. Jesus knew that. Even John Calvin knew that! White middle class life in a North American democracy is not the model of God’s kingdom found in the scripture. Two, get serious about the Bible. As individuals and as a congregation. In classes and study groups. With commentaries and with scholarship. With one another. Because the life that keeps you too busy to read and study the Bible is crashing down around your ears. And finally, three, armed with the Word of God, I am asking you to take action. Don’t sit back and let others decide the shape of our world. Change your life. Then change the life of one other person. Then change our life as a church. Get up, Jesus says. Get up and walk. Get up and go out. Get up and feed and clothe and visit. Get up and do.

Let me end with this one dream. Imagine a world in which we put as much time into the Word of God as we put into our love of professional sports, of the Patriots and Celtics and yes, even Red Sox. If we were that serious about our faith! We could save the world through the power of Christ’s saving Word.

May we make it so!

Many of us are concerned about Burma. We were concerned when democracy was yet again suppressed by the military dictators. We were concerned when the monks protested against the junta and were brutally attacked. And we’ve been concerned that the junta is obstructing relief to those effected by the recent cyclone, tens of thousands of people dead, even more still at risk of disease and starvation.

I am surprised, however, that no one has compared this situation to the one in Nicaragua after the great Managua earthquake. You may remember it as prompting the relief flight that killed baseball great Roberto Clemente. You may not know the eerie parallels.

Nicaragua was ruled by a military dictatorship. As relief supplies rolled in after the earthquake, the military stole significant amount of the aid. The regime didn’t rebuild Managua, it was still a wreck when the Sandanistas overthrew the dictatorship. The new rulers set up schools and began to rebuild, as much as they could while confronted with an illegal war by proxy waged by the US.

There are important questions here. Did the confiscated aid help prop up a corrupt regime? Did the civil war take longer to come and longer to win because of the aid?

I don’t have the answers. I just remember how bad Managua still looked over a decade later. And I remember listening to those who suffered under the old regime, suffered during the civil war.

What a moral dilemma! We give aid, it gets confiscated by the regime, but some might get through… but we help prop up a brutal junta. We don’t give aid, maybe the liberation of Burma comes sooner, but there will be deaths, more from the disaster, maybe less from the civil war.

In the end, only one nation can force the junta’s hand. Only China can bring sufficient pressure on the Burmese generals. And China, with its own disaster and its own track record of genocide, has no interest in this affair. And yet we will consumes untold millions of dollars in Chinese goods this week. It does make you wonder…

The second sermon going up tonight is the one I preached in the Divinity Hall pulpit on Thursday (where Emerson gave the Divinity School Address!) as part of the 2008 Billings Preaching Prize competition. It is really just a shorter version of a sermon I preached at First Cambridge last April. I made the finals this year, which will be held April 23rd, but I honestly don’t think I’ll win. I’m up against my dear friend Sheila, or as I like to think of her, “the Rev.” She’s a grandmother from Brooklyn, and wow does she have the Spirit!

(Update: Sheila did, in fact, win the Billings Prize, one of Harvard’s oldest awards, for “eloquence in the pulpit.” I am very happy to have been among the finalists, as the finals sermons were all amazing, and filled with God’s Word.)

The Sermon

The standard sermon for the story of Doubting Thomas goes something like this: Poor Thomas, he just didn’t have enough faith. It’s a good thing we have enough faith. Yeah us! Or maybe, I know you’re having a hard time believing the teachings of the church in light of the real world, but don’t be a doubting Thomas. This is not going to be that standard sermon.

Now, let’s imagine for a moment that I’m an author, and the Gospel of John is in manuscript form, and here I am sitting before my editor waiting to hear the magic words: cash advance. But instead what I hear is: “Let’s talk about the motivation of Thomas in the final chapter. I’m not sure you’ve made your case. The man has seen Lazarus raised from the dead, the storm stilled, walking on water, miracle after miracle. Why doesn’t he believe now? It’s just not plausible.”

We probably all feel a bit like my fictional editor. Just because something happened while I was out getting the milk and bread doesn’t mean I don’t believe it. Judas Didymus Thomas has been with these folks, these women and men traveling with and learning from Jesus, for several years. They’ve been through some amazing times together. And they’ve seen miracles, they’ve seen death defeated. So why doubt now?

It probably helps to think a little bit about what was going on when this text was written. Early Christians didn’t know what to believe about Jesus. Christianity was moving towards orthodoxy, but it wasn’t there yet. The authors of the Gospels were deeply involved in a struggle to understand. Jesus mattered, they knew that, but he always seemed to be just beyond their understanding.

One area of conflict was how were they to understand the resurrection? Was the resurrection bodily, with flesh and blood? Or was it a resurrection of spirit. This was a question not just about Jesus, but a question about what it meant to be human. This gospel story affirms the physicality of the resurrection, flesh and blood, stuff you could touch. One hint of the counter-argument can be seen in the story of the appearance on the road to Emmaus.

Another struggle was between those who would come to define orthodox Christian belief and those who adopted other understandings of Jesus. The apostles most commonly associated with the heterodox group called the Gnostics were Mary Magdalene and Judas Didymus Thomas. Our text is about confirming that Jesus was resurrected in the body, and it is about deciding whose understanding of the Christ event is correct. That is not to say that these events did not happen. But it helps us to see the humans involved in the gospel story, in the creation of the gospels, in the decisions about which stories were written down and which were not.

So what are we supposed to do with the story of Doubting Thomas? If this text is very much about doctrinal struggles, what can a Christian today learn from it? Well, we can all admit that Thomas comes off looking like a knucklehead. But they all look like knuckleheads. Let’s start with Simon Peter. In the Lucan version of his call, we always skip to the line where Jesus says “I’ll make you a fisher of humans.” We ignore Peter’s first response. “Dude, I’m unrighteous. Go away.” I suspect Peter gets nicknamed Rock not because he is “the Rock of the Church” but because he is about as smart as a box of rocks. Who can forget the three denials? Of course, he gets it right sometimes too.

Then there are James and John, so rowdy that they get nicknamed the Sons of Thunder. I like to think of them as the biblical Bash Brothers. If you’re the right age to know the Mighty Ducks movies, you know what I’m talking about. “Dude, let us be your top two guys?” they ask Jesus. And Jesus’ response? “Dudes, you so do not know what you are asking.”

These guys don’t know what’s going on, don’t know what to believe, the gospels writers tell us that Jesus isn’t even trying to make it clear, because it will become clear on resurrection morning. The preaching and teaching and miracle, the feast in the Upper Room and the murder on the tree, it will be clear. The Holy Spirit will comfort them and inspire them and they will change the world. But they’ll still be a bunch of knuckleheads! Even after the resurrection. After he has assumed a leadership role in the early church, Peter still blunders at Antioch. “Unclean food? What unclean food?” They don’t know what to believe, what to do, how to act. But they do know this. Jesus changes everything!

They tried to explain Jesus in terms of his own Judean religion. They took up term of the Roman Emperor. They used many terms trying to describe who Jesus was, what he did, what he meant. And in the midst of this confusion and this grasping for meaning, they did an amazing thing. They changed the world.

No doubt, the mixture of sheer terror and overwhelming hope of that one weekend in Jerusalem stayed with the apostles, women and men, for the rest of their lives. The confusion, the shock. But they took their evangelion, literally the good proclamation, and they went out there and said this: Jesus changes everything.

Today, the name Jesus is controlled by the neo-Pharisees who have the audacity to speak for God. They’ve reduced Jesus to death insurance, to an excuse for self-righteousness, to a nationalistic warrior. Many of us sit back ashamed of what has been done in the name of Jesus, afraid to speak it in public. Jesus has been co-opted by Empire, by the individualism of the Enlightenment, by the thinly disguised selfishness of our economic system. You don’t have to be a theologian or a biblical scholar to see what is at stake. You don’t even have to be certain. You can be a knucklehead and spread the good news!

When I get up in the morning, a week and three snooze-buttons behind schedule, I can do so knowing this. God is good. Jesus changes everything. Even a knucklehead can get that! Do you know that Jesus loves you? That God is good? Does knowing Jesus change your life? We must be the ones to proclaim it. Jesus lives! Reclaim the name. When others preach hatred and division in the name of Christ, confront them, tell them they are worshipping idols of their own creation. If progressives are silent then Christianity will die a slow irrelevant death.

The world today wants Jesus, a real authentic mysterious Jesus. Easter Jesus is always just beyond our grasp, and that’s okay.

If we prayerfully engage the world, if we bring sacrament and Scripture and love with us into the world, we can change it. We can be the leaven in the loaf, not because we can do it on our own, but because Christ is with us when we are gathered in his name, because the good news is the tree and the empty tomb, because Easter is joyful hope, stunned confusion, it is fear and love , it is life in our amazing God.

We must reach back to that original Easter morning, and tell the world! Change the world. Proclaim the good news. Christ is risen indeed. Jesus changes everything. If Peter with his head of stone, if the Bash Brothers and Thomas and Mary Magdalene, if they could go out and preach, so can we. They didn’t know what they were doing either. They lived in that Easter moment. So can we. So must we. Welcome my knuckleheaded sisters and brothers. Welcome to the joy of life in Christ! Proclaim the name! Jesus the Christ, our salvation. Amen.

I’m putting up a couple of short sermons. First is the sermon I will be preaching tomorrow, Baseball Sunday. We’ve invited folks to wear their uniforms, team colors, etc, and to bring their equipment. We’ll be having a special blessing for the season. Brian Packham is leading the music, and will be serving up some baseball flavor of his own… BTW, Brian is an amazing musician. Check out his website: http://www.okihikoki.com/

The Sermon

Sermon
Baseball Sunday- April 13, 2008
Gary Brinn, Pastoral Intern

You might be wondering what baseball has to do with being a Christian. Well you could say that our whole story starts in the big inning, that Eve stole first and Adam stole second, and there was that incident with Gideon and the pitchers. But that would be silliness, and we’ll have none of that!

Actually baseball, or at least the ideas behind the sport, have a lot to do with being a Christian, and no, I don’t mean the competition, nor do I believe that God cares whether my overpaid professional athlete beats your overpaid professional athlete. But I do believe that baseball calls on us to celebrate this amazing creation, nature and ourselves, these amazing bodies. Sure, we sometimes have a disagreeable relationship with these bodies. They break down, ache, eventually they all will fail. But life is good, and these bodies, these amazing miracles, are a gift from God, a gift that Jesus took on himself when he walked among us. Of course, Jesus had a task in mind when he became human like us, but imagine the sensory delights of being one of us, the caress of his feet being washed, the taste of the salted fish, the texture of the sand as he bent down and wrote while challenging those who would throw stones. These bodies are amazing, and at their best they are agile and swift like David with his sling, the young athlete facing the great adversary.

But this sermon is not about the miracle of the body. It is about the infield fly rule and our covenant through Christ. To begin with, I’ll need to explain the rule. If a ball is hit and pops up so that it is a fly ball that will come down in the infield, the batter is automatically out, the umpire simply signals that the rule is in effect. Now you may ask why, after all, a pop-up that is in foul territory must be caught, even if it requires that the catcher run into the television cameras, that Jeter dive into the stands. The reason for the rule is this. If a ball is popped up in the infield and there is a runner on base, the infielders would be rewarded for NOT catching the ball. You see, if they catch the ball, only the batter is out. But if they drop it, they stand a very good chance of making a double play, getting two outs for NOT performing to the best of their ability. And every player, after a certain level of play, CAN make that catch. So without the infield fly rule, players are not rewarded for doing their best, they are rewarded for failing. It may not surprise you that the leagues with the youngest players do not have the infield fly rule, because there is no guarantee that they’ll make the catch, and if they hit a fly ball in the first place, its likely as not to come down in the infield.

Now Paul, in Romans, spends quite a bit of time on the difference between our covenant in Christ and the old covenant, what he calls the Law. This is tricky ground, our Christian story is marred by a history of anti-Semitism that finds its basis in supersessionism, the idea that the new covenant with Christ replaces or supersedes the old covenant completely. Theologians and scholars have argued this point for two millennia. In fact, the question of Paul and his relationship to the old covenant is the topic of much current research and debate. And the horrors of the Holocaust have made us keenly aware of the evil that can be done with a wink and nod from bad theology. So I’d like to avoid being tarred with the brush of supersessionism, but I will risk suggesting that there is a fundamental difference between the old covenant as it is portrayed in traditional Protestant theology and the new, and that that difference looks a little like the infield fly rule. Like the game of baseball without the infield fly rule, the old covenant did not reward you for doing your best. It rewarded you for doing enough. There were benchmarks you needed to meet, over six hundred rules regarding everything from social structure to honoring God, rules about purity and sacrifice and financial dealings. It didn’t matter what you felt, what your motives were, and there was no reward for going beyond the standards set by the Law. You just had to do enough. And if you kept the rules, as tough as that might be, if the nation kept the rules, there would be immediate reward. Like so many in the our nation today, there were always individuals looking for loopholes, for ways around the laws, the Sadducees for example. The various parties were in constant dispute over how to live in the law, or get around the law, to throw out the law, with only a tiny handful saying “the Law isn’t enough.” This nation is in the financial state it is because of this tendency to believe law is enough, is the boundary for appropriate conduct, and that whatever you can do to get rich is okay. You can skirt the law, regardless of whether it is ethical, right, or good, in fact you can even break the law. You are only foolish if you get caught.

Then, in the midst of the Judean system of Law came Jesus. And the message of Jesus was this. You think it is about the Law? You thought it is about obeying some set of rules, and if you just obey, you’ll be rich? Israel will be free again? Think again. It’s not about ticking off the right boxes. There is no such thing as enough. You can’t say I’ve obeyed enough Laws, I’ve honored God enough. There is no enough in the kingdom of God. Never enough love, never enough honor. The Law, Jesus asks? Really? Did you miss the whole spirit of the Law? It is love and justice, not a simple “enough.” What God is asking of you, what I am asking of you, has no limits. There is never enough. You’re not going to be rewarded for doing anything less than your absolute best. And that absolute best has only one limit, the boundary which separates this life from the next.

In fact, Jesus tells us, there is no greater love than to sacrifice your own life for another. And to prove that he meant it, he did it. Jesus was willing to carry the amazing, boundless good news of the boundary-less kingdom of God all the way to Golgatha, all the way to a grave that could not hold him. The message of Christ is the same message again and again… the Law is not enough. The law is a thing, and I don’t want a thing, Christ says, God doesn’t want a thing, God wants you. All of you, infinite you, nothing less.

What an exhausting challenge! You’re not there yet, whether you’ve served Christ for eight days or eight decades. Christ tells us repeatedly that we need to be willing to give up everything. Follow me, he says. Follow me to where the sick and contagious are housed. Follow me to where sinners join together. Follow me to the table, where we will break bread and share the cup in a way that transcends all of the old boundaries, all of the old divisions, that will not replace the Law but that will transcend it, that will fulfill it, that will make the Law all that it was supposed to be. Follow me, Christ says, on the road to Jerusalem, up the slope of Golgatha, into horror and sadness. And follow me, in love and shock and miracle, on the road to Emmaus.

You’re not done. I’m not done. How exhausting! But God HAS actually provided for that feeling of being incomplete. God has given us Sabbath, a day that God intends for us to rest. Not many of us do, and if you have kids you may feel like you can’t even choose Sunday as a day of rest, because the very sports leagues we celebrate this morning schedule practices and games on Sunday, even as we speak there are teams practicing, children missing church, missing Sabbath, for fear that their absence will land them on the bench. I know, having a Sabbath is hard. But you need that rest if you are going to give everything. Everything in love, of God, of your fellow humans, of yourself. And yes, to fulfill the Great Commandment, you must love yourself too.

The new covenant does not reward enough, it rewards excess. It rewards hearts that are opened, floodgates of love and compassion. It rewards your desire to do more, your efforts to do more, even if you don’t always live up to what you might hope. Christ doesn’t call for you to be perfect, Christ calls for you to try!

Paul’s letter to the Romans could be the pep talk of any coach. You are all part of a team. You all have a part to play. Outdo one another, do not lag in zeal, rejoice, persevere. What can you respond to such instructions but amen, let’s get out there and play in the fields of the Lord! Paul knows a thing or two about tough losses, about perseverance, about love. Paul is a pastor coach calling on the churches, ones he started like that in Thessalonika, and those he did not start, like the church in Rome, and ones today like First Congregational to go beyond, to go out there, to stand on the edge of what we think we can do, and to do just a little more. No reward for enough, Paul says. Give your heart. Give your possessions and your money. Give yourself.
And again I say, how exhausting! Jesus and Paul and God, our amazing God, may grant us Sabbaths, but never, on this side of the grave, will we have arrived, will we be sure that we have done enough. The check boxes have been erased, the tick marks are gone, no one is keeping score in this game, because it ain’t over until its really over, and we have loved beyond this life.

To be fair to the old Law, we must admit that the prophets got it right. They kept telling the people of Israel, the people of the Exile, the people of occupied Judea, that the Law wasn’t about check boxes and tick marks. But it took Jesus, it took God to say enough with your petty fighting about the Law, and enough, more than enough, with your efforts to get around the Law. I’m writing a new Law, writing on your heart. Play all out. Never stop until the final out. Never drop the ball because skirting the rules will give you an advantage! I know you can get that out. What I want to see is that amazing beautiful diving catch. What I want to see is that leap of faith. What I want to see is you best. Because I love you, more than you will ever know, more than you can ever measure, beyond all limits. Love one another as I have loved you. As my son has loved you. Run, and jump, and sing and love, and do so without measure. It’s never enough. It’s divine love!

Amen.

Below is my sermon for the ecumenical Easter Sunrise Service tomorrow morning. There might be nothing new under the sun, and there is certainly nothing new in this sermon, but some of these folks will not have heard me drone on about the same old things, read from the same old texts…

Easter Sunrise Sermon 2008
J. Gary Brinn

The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 24, Verses 1 to 11.

On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them:
“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”
Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the women with them who told this to the other apostles.
But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.
This is the Good News of our Savior, Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God. Amen.

Under the old Law, under the purity codes and sacrifices designed to sustain the economy of the Temple’s bloated bureaucracy, uncleanliness was contagious. If I were to touch a dead body and then touch you, I would become unclean and you would “catch” the uncleanliness, which you could then spread to the others, an epidemic of impurity. To be sure, prophets consistently argued against this system of sacrifice and artificial purity, offering instead a religion of humility and love, but it just didn’t take. Humans were, and still are, all about creating categories and rules to decide us versus them. To be sure, John the Baptizer suggested a spiritual purity, a cleansing repentance, but most people still thought of uncleanliness as contagious. And then Jesus happened and reversed the whole system.

Let’s think of one encounter that illustrates the reversal of the purity system in Jesus. In the fifth chapter of Mark’s gospel, a woman touches the hem of Jesus’ garment and is cured. The women has been hemorrhaging, I don’t need to spell it out, she is about as unclean as a person can get under the purity codes, yet Jesus does not become unclean because she has touched him, in fact, she becomes clean. Women were by their natures carriers of uncleanliness under the old system, and here was an unclean woman, and it was not her uncleanliness that was contagious, it was his cleanliness. Jesus touches the dead, touches the unclean Gentiles, Jesus surrounds himself with what is unclean, and he makes it clean.

And then there is Good Friday, where Jesus is executed by an occupation army of unclean Gentiles, who drag him out to Golgotha, the garbage dump, which is unclean, and crucify him as they had done so many others, as they would continue to do to hundreds. And Paul tells us that to be hung on a tree is the most unclean death. Thrice defiled, our Savior is buried in filth. The man who has reversed the purity system by making cleanliness contagious has been made ritually unclean. His corpse is left unclean, unwashed, for the Passover feast, and it is only on the third day that the women, already the bearers of uncleanliness under the old system, come to wash the battered husk of their beloved.

And what do they find? Not Jesus, but two dazzling young men and an empty tomb. Dazzling. Let’s think about that word- we want dazzling smiles and buy toothpaste and whiteners to accomplish this goal. We want dazzling whites and eye popping colors in our clothing, and buy detergents to that end. Dazzling, cleanliness, purity. Jesus has been buried in filth, has been murdered by the occupation army, and has even transformed that victimization into cleanliness, has left behind two clean beings, two angels to announce the good news. The first to proclaim the good news of the resurrection were the angels, the first to receive it were the women, were humans who were not able to legally testify, who were a continual threat to the purity of the community. Mark ends with them running away afraid, telling no one. Luke makes clear that the male members of the group of apostles did not believe their good news.

Here were humans, always one step away from impurity, always one step away from an imperfection that they believed would cut them off from God, always fighting a losing battle against an absurd ideal, and then comes Jesus. You’ve got it wrong. You don’t have to be perfect and pure to approach God, you’re never going to be perfect, to be pure. God approaches you, and when God comes, cleanliness happens. You are washed clean, not because of something you’ve done, but because the goodness of God, the dazzling cleanliness of God, overflows. Centurions and women and thieves on a cross and you, yes you, become clean when you encounter Jesus. And it’s contagious! It is catching, if, and only if, you carry the cleanliness of the Tomb, the cleanliness of the Risen Christ, the cleanliness of our God with you into the world. In the world but not of it, not because we are better, but because we are the carriers of holy contagion, because we carry love and cleanliness, we carry God with us into the world.

This cosmic reversal, this being transformed in Christ, is captured by the 19th century Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who, after lines detailing how impermanent, imperfect, how defiled we humans are, writes:

Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping, ‘ joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. ‘ Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; ‘ world’s wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, ‘ since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ‘ patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.

Immortal diamond, miracle! But we insist in re-creating the old system of laws and rules, of clean and unclean, we re-inscribe division, create us versus them. We have become the same self-righteous legalists that Jesus condemned during his own ministry. He calls us now as he called us then. It’s not about your rules, its not about your purity. It is about a love that overflows, that makes all new, all clean, that even death, even a degrading horrifying death cannot defeat. Life and love that never ends!

Today I will be made clean by prayer, by sacrament, by amazing grace, and I will be made clean by you, and you will be made clean by me, and we will dance and sing in a world transformed. We will be made immortal diamond, we will be made clean and pure, in Christ. Jesus has changed everything! It is Easter again this morning, it is new life, rebirth, it is miracle again! From the muck and filth of our despairing hearts, from our petty self obsessions, from our fears, God has made beauty, has made us vessels of grace, filled with divine love, filled with God’s spirit! Okay, we’re still sometimes despairing, sometimes self-centered, sometimes afraid, but Easter is always there. It is no surprise that we associate Easter with the early dawn approach of the faithful and clean women, for every dawn is Easter all over again, every day is miracle, is a call from God to go out into the world, carrying the love virus, the grace virus, the God virus, into the world. Are you contagious? How might you become contagious? With tomorrow’s dawn, when so many of us will trudge off to work, will you feel “eastered”? Will you carry God with you? Will I? For we can, and we will, with faith, with grace, and with our Risen Savior. We can be vectors not of uncleanliness, of dis-ease, but of contagious cleanliness, of ease and comfort in Christ. May it be so tomorrow, for a thousand tomorrows, may it be so until the world has been transformed, until we are in the Kingdom of our amazing God. Amen.

Those who will stop at nothing to win power have been spreading the rumor that Barack Obama is a Muslim, and some Americans would hesitate to vote for a Muslim. I’d like to correct that mistaken belief.

Barack Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ. In many parts of the country, this denomination may be little known, and if it is known, it is known as a group of liberals. While it is true that the denomination is progressive, it is as old as the Protestant Reformation.

The denomination itself was formed in the 1950’s with the merger of several smaller denominations. The way of thinking that allowed this merger is captured in the traditional phrase “Unity in essentials, diversity in non-essentials, and charity in all things.” The groups that merged included:

The Congregationalists- located primarily in New England, were themselves a coming together of the Puritans and the Pilgrims,

The Christian Church- a loose-knit movement originating in Virginia and committed to Christian simplicity,

Reform churches- Most Mainline denominations grew out of the Reform movement, driven by Swiss Reformers Zwingli and Calvin. The UCC includes German and Hungarian Reform traditions, as well as strong ties to the Dutch Reformed Church,

The Evangelical and Reformed Church- this movement brought together followers of the Lutheran Reformation with followers of the Calvinist Reform, and included many German immigrants of the 1700-1800’s.

Is the UCC Christian? Absolutely! It is one part of a group called Churches Uniting in Christ, an organization of cooperating denominations that include Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Lutherans. Its roots are as old as Protestantism itself. It has an agreement to share clergy with many major denominations.

Obama has been criticized because his pastor has questioned some of the policies of the modern nation of Israel. Since when do we need to agree with everything our pastor says? And since when does the Israeli government have divine protection from criticism?

Obama has been criticized for being interested in his Kenyan heritage. How many of us are interested in our own genealogy? In the country of our origin? Obama has been successful enough to travel to his father’s land, to visit Kenya. That does not make him less American, anymore than my European heritage and my visits to Europe make me less American.

Obama has been criticized for spending a small portion of his childhood in Indonesia . His mother divorced and remarried. We’ve had divorced presidents, orphaned presidents. Does this disqualify him? In a time when our jobs have been exported overseas, when understanding the world is essential to our national security, it may be that time spent in other cultures is a great asset. And it’s not like he had a choice as a child… He went where his mother went… He obeyed his parent. There’s a commandment about that.

If you are going to vote against Obama, do so because you disagree with more of his policies than with those of his opponents. Not because of nasty fear mongering.