Row, row, row your boat

June 12th, 2011

Last week I told you there was no such thing as “original sin.” I take it all back. There is an original sin, but it didn’t come about because of a talking serpent and a gullible Eve, so women, you’re off the hook. A millennium and a half of guilt, right off your shoulders! No, if there was such a thing as “original sin,” I believe it would be fear. All others sins find their origin in our fearful nature. Somewhere pretty early in the development of our minds we discover that there is a lot in life that we don’t control, so we set about the task of controlling what we can, and making up stories about the things we can’t. We create little mental systems and categories to convince ourselves that we understand and exert some control over our world. It’s a silly game, mostly lies, but we can’t help ourselves. Fear drives greed and tribalism, violence and lust. It even shows up in communities of faith when they are too fearful to trust God.

Don’t believe me? When Moses went up the mountain to get God’s commands, how many did he get? [wait for answers] Okay, most of us would agree with ten, though Mel Brooks suggests fifteen. But let’s stick with ten. Now, by the time Jesus came along, about twelve hundred years later, how many were there? Well, we could take out our Bibles and read through the Pentateuch, the first five books later authors pretended that Moses wrote. So let’s start with Leviticus, a bit further in but full of laws… [read some laws from Leviticus]

This is going to take way too long, so let me give you the answer. There were six hundred and thirteen laws by the time of Jesus, a significant number of which Jesus broke, and more than a few he labeled complete donkey poo, or whatever the Aramaic or Greek equivalent of that would be. Jesus told the Scribes, the Sadducees, and the Pharisees, the group Jesus was actually closest to, that they had over-complicated everything, that they had created so much bureaucracy and so many rules that they had lost the Spirit of God completely. Let me repeat that so there can be no mistake. Jesus made clear that humans had overcomplicated everything when it came to following God, that elites and sects and bureaucrats and countless laws were not only not helping the people follow God, that they were obstructing the people from doing God’s will. Of course, all those rules created the need for all that bureaucracy, and not incidentally, provided employment for all of those bureaucrats, scribes and priests. The whole situation reminds me of John Kenneth Galbraith, who famously said that economics is very useful to modern society as a way of keeping economists gainfully employed.

Now I want to be perfectly clear: some of the folks over-complicating things, some of those who were obstructing God’s work, were probably well intentioned folks, good people who said things like: “we have to make sure of X” or “we’ve never done Y around here before” or “Z is an important tradition.”

Most of you know the line in scripture that says “Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I will be also.” And some of you know the next line that was edited out: “Where three or more are gathered in my name, there there will be politics.” But few of you know the super double secret next line: “Where four or more are gathered in my name, there will be a policies and procedures manual. And a five year plan. And an org chart.”

Seriously, I know a congregation with well over a hundred and thirty pages of rules. They have rules for how many nails to use on the stable and how many pins to secure the cloaks when they do their live nativity scene at Christmas! It’s insane, I know you’ll agree, but it’s human nature. Even when we don’t obsessively write them down, there are still hundreds of rules, though we call them tradition or the way we do things around here or what makes us happy, and often, just like the Spirit killing Pharisees, we get in God’s way.

We have to have some rules in order to live together, we have to have some plan, some direction to get going, and org charts can be helpful tools. That is, until we become slaves to these things, just as the Scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees and others in the priestly castes became slaves to those life-draining six hundred and thirteen laws.

But here is a little secret: for all of our rules and policies and plans, we’re still not in charge. We serve a living God and we say we invite our amazing God into our midst, and we say we want God to surprise us with blessing, but we sure don’t act like it. It’s as if we are trying to row the boat ourselves when the Holy Spirit has been there all along, blowing away. All we have to do is put up a sail! Yet we row on, toiling at the oars, trying to go in our direction at our speed, ignoring the direction and speed God has in mind. We don’t have to be Rick Warren and believe that God micromanages our purpose-driven lives, but we must believe that there is something of God present in this covenant community, and that present and active presence has a name, it is part of our understanding of God as Trinity, or more accurately our un-understanding of God as Trinity, something we’ll consider net week, and that active presence of God is the Holy Spirit, it is fire and passion and courage and daring. And it is love and compassion and a gentle nudge. Most of you know that the Hebrew word for Spirit also means wind, and also means breath, and having breath meant being alive, so it all got wrapped up together. To have breath was to have Spirit was to be alive. The same is true today for the church. Churches that are thriving, and believe me, there really are churches that are thriving, they don’t do so because they know the best tips and tricks or because they have the best five year plans. They thrive because they respond to the Spirit.

Most Protestants, and especially those of us in the Protestant Mainline, find the Holy Spirit incredibly frightening. In fact, by and large, Protestant America follows a religion that is one part vengeful and harsh God of the Hebrew Scriptures and one part Paul, and at times we might mix in a little Jesus, as long it is a tame Jesus, you know, the wimpy fellow with the lambs and children and Breck shampoo hair. We do not follow a religion of in your face Jesus, and we certainly don’t follow a religion of the Spirit, for the Spirit refuses to follow our plans, and we hate not being in control.

It is a razor’s edge we walk, being faithful to the Spirit that is in our midst, to the Jesus who calls on us to be bold, to the Creator who made this ever-changing crazy-wild-ride that is existence, to that very God who dreams for us dreams we dare not dream for ourselves, and all at the same time trying to offer enough stability that we don’t all go mad. That is the challenge before us as a congregation, or maybe I should say the adventure that is before us, because it doesn’t have to be framed as a negative, we don’t have to run  around all the time freaking out, in fact, if we’re not mostly having fun, if we are not mostly joyful, then we are doing it wrong… for remember, Christ offers us freedom from fear. The Way of Christ, the way of his disciples, the way of the church when it is at its best, is a way of adapting just enough to respond to the Spirit, but not so much that it makes us insane.

We are going to be talking about the Spirit a lot in the coming year. Like the students down the road at Wet Pants Sailing, we’re going to strap on our life-jackets, buddy up with trusted partners, and head out. Sometimes we’ll end up in the drink, sometimes we’ll sit there going nowhere fast. But sometimes, just sometimes, we are gonna fly, the wind whipping in our hair, well… well, for those of us who still have hair… bow spray soaking us… it is going to be joyful and exhilarating. And when the storms roll in, or worse, when we create our own storms, we’ll remember that we follow a savior who can calm the storm, who reminds us again and again, be not afraid. Be not afraid. We have Jesus and we have the Spirit and we have one another as companions along the Way. Be not afraid!

Do you insist on being in control? Do you insist on having things your way instead of God’s way? Are you trying to row this boat like some Viking galley powered by a chain-gang? I invite you to stop grimacing, to stop fighting God. The Spirit is here, you can see it in the love this community has for one another, you can see it in the courage that has allowed you to pick yourself up, dust yourselves off, and keep going, even when the going got rough. If we let go of the things that hold us back, we can change lives, we can fulfill God’s call… not a call to maintain an institution, but a call to deepen our faith, to make disciples, and to build the just and caring Kingdom of God. Call me silly, but I believe in you. That’s why I am here.

Drop your oars, let’s run up our sails. Let’s have an adventure. Amen.