Author: The Rev. J. Gary Brinn

15 October 2023
Exodus 32:1-14

At times, I have mentioned Martin Luther from this pulpit, one of the key figures in the development of Protestant Christianity, though with some reservation, for Luther was a raging antisemite and a political reactionary. He was willing to challenge the power of popes, but not the power of princes. 

When the poor revolted against feudalism in the 1520’s, partially inspired by his rebellion against Rome, he wrote “Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants,” which included this instruction: “let everyone who can, smite, slay, and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel.” 

And smite, slay, and stab they did, with peasant deaths estimated somewhere between a hundred and three hundred thousand…

Luther’s reform was the first to have real staying power, a fact we will celebrate at the end of this month, but his idea of the two kingdoms, which separated faith from secular governance, laid the theological foundation for the Holocaust.

I have been more supportive of Luther’s contemporary, Huldrych Zwingli, the Protestant Reformer in Zurich, directly connected to our own theological trajectory as Reform and Congregational, but also not without fault. He supported Protestant Reform, and was small “d” democratic in that he operated in the Swiss system of councils and cantons, but he was an advocate of theocracy, and he might have lived a little longer if he had been a bit more pragmatic. As I have shared, he died on the battlefield. Then there was that whole murdering Anabaptists thing.

I have spent considerably less time on Jean Calvin, though he is truly the third voice so critical to our theological heritage here at the Park Church, for while Zwingli started the Swiss form of Protestantism, it was Calvin who codified it. Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and members of the German Reform movement were all expressions of what is fundamentally Calvinist Christianity.

Calvin operated in Geneva, a French-speaking Swiss canton. He was eight-years old when Luther nailed his famous Ninety-five point challenge to the door in Wittenberg, and was just barely a teen when Zwingli challenged the Lenten fast.

Like Luther and Zwingli, Calvin operated in the framework of Christian Humanism, which wasn’t entirely bad. In fact, some might accuse us of being Christian Humanists, while others believe that we aren’t even Christian. 

But Christian Humanism in the Age of the Protestant Reformation believed you could think your way to an understanding of God, with help from the biblical canon studied in the original languages. This was the start of modernity, of the scientific method. Reason gave us a powerful set of tools, but also made us a little cocky, both in assuming humans were rational, and in assuming God could be clearly understood or defined. That all came unwound in the early Twentieth Century, with the quantum and post-modernity, which still freaks people out.

Calvin, for my money, was absolutely the worst of the Reformation Christian Humanists, for it is at his feet that we must lay the TULIP, which in this case is not the flower, but is the acronym for five key points in Calvinist theology. They are: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints. These all boil down to some form of what we call predestination, in all of its poisonous iterations.

Continue reading “Reluctantly Calvinist”

A local Facebook administrator intent on trolling me, called me out to make a public statement on the terror attack in Israel. Here is my response:

I was in lower Manhattan, fortunately north of the blast zone, on 9/11, so I have some idea what the people of Israel are experiencing. Hamas, like ISIS, is a terrorist organization, in this case funded by a state sponsor of terrorism, Iran. Right now, the attention should be focused on the people of Israel, and those handling the humanitarian, diplomatic, and military response, not political posturing thousands of miles away in the Southern Tier. Though I spent Sunday afternoon with Jews, Muslims, and Christian on our annual Abrahamic Path Walk.

Personally, I believe Hamas must be destroyed, and that Iran and the network of allies supporting it, including Russia, must be isolated. I also believe that a just peace will involve a sovereign territory for the Palestinians, as well as the preservation of the State of Israel.

One of the Christian martyrs who inspires me, the Rev. Dr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, took part in an attempt on Hitler’s life, and was executed. And like so many others who have visited Auschwitz, I was deeply impacted by the visual witness to the Holocaust… especially the mountain of children’s shoes. So as a pastor and teacher relatively well-informed in both history, world religion, and current affairs, I condemn all forms of terrorism, sectarian violence, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Frequently these days, the victims of those crimes are actually Muslims, in Myanmar, India, and China, among other places.

But I speak only for myself. The Park Church is Congregational, which means the Church Council or Congregational Meeting makes formal decisions for the church, just as the Coordinating Committee of the Southern Tier Interfaith Coalition, which I serve as chair, makes decisions together.

Philippians 3:4b-14

Child actors don’t always make it very far into adulthood. For every Zendaya, there is a River Phoenix. 

It seems to be especially bad for the boys, with overdoses and suicide taking the lives of so many. It is refreshing, then, to see Frankie Muniz driving around the track in Nascar’s D-league, and to see a heavily-bearded Haley Joel Osment still making a living acting. 

Both appeared in a number of television series and films as boys, though it was Osment who was the most successful on the big screen, with his breakout role in M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Sixth Sense,” for which he received an Oscar nomination, and his turn as an android in Spielberg’s “A.I.” His co-stars over the years are a “who’s who” of the top actors at the turn of the century, Tom Hanks, Whoopi Goldberg, Bruce Willis, and of course, Chuck Norris.

Still, there is a whole other level when you are part of a leading trio that includes Michael Caine and Robert Duvall. Such was the case in 2003, with “Second Hand Lions,” about an awkward teen sent to live with eccentric and possibly rich uncles. I won’t offer any spoilers, but there is an actual lion involved, and the uncles do go to the “seed and feed” for bags of Lion Chow.

Now, I can’t find any reference to a real product called Lion Chow, but there are certainly stranger things in this world. Still, we know the preferred food for lions is Christians. Just spend ten minutes in the prevailing narrative about early Christianity, and there you are.

Sadly, Christians in America today are constantly persecuted. Can you imagine the horror of having someone say “Happy Holidays” right in your face? Or of having to use preferred pronouns?

So let’s spend a few minutes thinking about persecution and martyrs.

The first Christian martyr, someone killed for their faith in Jesus, was Stephen, as described in the Acts of the Apostles. But this was a mob egged on by Jewish factionalism, not an execution performed by the state. 

The Roman Empire took in a vast number of cultures and religions. Everyone was expected to participate in the imperial cult, offering sacrifices to deified emperors. This was critical, because failure could result in divine wrath, crop failure and earthquakes. In fact, if there was an inexplicable disaster, and most disasters were inexplicable, there was always a search for the responsible party.

In addition to the imperial cult, there were a large number of other religions. The Romans tolerated these, as long as they were ancient. Most people practiced religious syncretism. They might sacrifice to a deified Augustus, then participate in the mysteries of Mithras, a major religion that had spread from the eastern end of the empire. Jews were an exception. They had a long history of refusing syncretism, of serving a God who demanded exclusivity. Their literature was filled with stories highlighting this fidelity, the faithful thrown into a furnace in Babylon. The authorities mostly tolerated this obstinancy. 

Christians were originally just one more problematic group in the maelstrom of Jewish sectarianism. But after the First Jewish War in 70 C.E., it became clear that Christianity was a whole new and separate thing. Roman tolerance waned, and Christians often became scapegoats for ignorant mobs and prefects who were losing control of their jurisdiction.

One of the earliest documented persecution came before the Jewish War. Like despots in every age and place, Nero had plans to construct a massive complex in Rome, including a 30′ statue of himself. Inconveniently, people lived and did business where he wanted to build. On the night of July 18^th in the year 64 C.E., a fire broke out in Rome. When we think of ancient Rome, we think of buildings like the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the remains of the Forum, but that is because those stone structures mostly survived. In reality, most of Rome was wood, and high winds drove the fire, which burned for seven days, then flared back up for three more. Ten of ancient Rome’s fourteen districts were damaged, and three were destroyed. People immediately began to suspect Nero, meaning he needed a scapegoat, and quick. He found that scapegoat in Rome’s Christians.

Persecution of Christians, sporadic and episodic, grew during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, better known for his “Meditations.” This was when Justin the Philosopher, a convert to Christianity, became Justin Martyr. The first widespread and systematic persecution did not begin until the reign of Decius in 250. The emperor had ordered everyone to offer a sacrifice to the Roman gods. Jews were exempted, as an ancient religio licita, or permitted religion, but Christians were not. Those who fulfilled the requirement received a certificate, called a libellus. We know that some Christians performed the sacrifice, some refused and were martyred, and some went into hiding. Persecution of Christians would continue for the next six decades, until Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, granting Christianity religio licitastatus.

A major schism would eventually develop as a result of this brief period of persecution. The Donatists argued that sacraments performed by those who had recanted under pressure did not count. In other words, the validity of sacramental grace depended on the purity of the priest. St. Augustine would be deeply involved in that theological conflict, and the Donatists eventually died out. Today, we recognize that the church, including the clergy, is a rag-tag band of saints and sinners, with some of us being a little bit of both.

Today, ancient texts embracing and even celebrating martyrdom might seem perverse. These were not folks dying heroically to save others, rushing into a burning building or fighting against an invading army. 

Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, writes to the Christians in Rome, insisting that they not intervene on his behalf, saying “Let me be fodder for wild beasts – that is how I can get to God.” In other words, Ignatius wants to be lion chow.

This all hinged on a series of beliefs. Remember, the gods sent that drought to punish someone. You just needed to figure out who that person was and punish them yourselves. This is the most primitive form of religion, purely transactional, with divine reward and punishment in this life, not unlike today’s Prosperity Gospel heresy. But folks started to notice it didn’t always work this way, that sometimes the good suffered and the wicked thrived. They decided that in order for the system to work, there must be some existence after death where ultimate reward and ultimate punishment would occur. This is what the martyrs believed. This is what Jesus believed. Ironically, the competing Jewish sect that shared this belief was the Pharisees.

Unfortunately, the promise of eternal reward and the threat of eternal punishment has all too often been misused by the powerful. The poor were to be content in their poverty, as they would be rich in heaven. We see this in Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes, in Luke’s story of poor Lazarus at the rich man’s gate, in the sale of indulgences by the medieval church, and in the lonely and elderly sending off for miracle water from some television charlatan.

But I’m agnostic about life after death, and I see neither spiritual nor evolutionary value in suffering purely for the sake of suffering. There are things I’d be willing to die for, but they better produce some real good, tangible effects, in this world, not some maybe next. I don’t need to find the holy and good in heaven when creation is already filled with holiness and goodness.

And if I believe that there is more than enough holiness and goodness in creation, then it is my job to share that holiness and goodness as widely as possible. Instead of Matthew’s Beatitude crowd hungering and thirsting for righteousness, I’ll focus on Luke’s folks who are just plain hungry.

And lest we think these are all obscure considerations from an ancient age, consider this: the moral complexity we experience around service members killed and wounded in disastrous and often misguided wars is an analog to this question. What did they die for? Justin Martyr. Ignatius of Antioch. Pat Tillman.

What will we live for?

Amen.

Philippians 2:1-13

My hometown was and still is a B- market when it comes to professional sports. 

When I was a kid, there was semi-pro football – the Norfolk Neptunes, AHL hockey – the Norfolk Admirals, Triple A Baseball, then called the Tidewater Tides, and even an ABA basketball team, before that league merged with the NBA. The Virginia Squires featured a kid from New York named Julius Erving who would go on to have a bit of success in the sport. 

But that short-lived ABA franchise was the closest we came to the majors. There were pro teams up in D.C. and Baltimore, several hours north, or all the way down to Atlanta to the south. Panthers, Hurricanes, and Hornets did not yet exist, at least not as sports franchises. So I really don’t have a “hometown” team, and even if I did, half of my life has passed since I lived in that area.

Today, my sports tastes are eclectic if not eccentric. I’m okay cheering on the Bills, though I like Toronto for hockey, and Milwaukee for basketball. The team I have rooted for the longest, though, is the New York Yankees. Yeah, about that…

What a miserable year from those multi-millionaires working for multi-billionaires! And to be honest, I just didn’t have the Baltimore Orioles winning the division on my bingo card.

I like the Orioles. I mean, they play in the same division as my preferred team, but the owner is not as repugnant as Daniel Snyder or James Dolan, the ballpark at Camden Yards is great, and most of us are old enough to remember Cal Ripken Jr.’s amazing streak of games played, 2,632 in a row. 

He was payed very well to do a job, and he did that job very well, making the All-Star team 19 times. Ripkin had a great role model with the Orioles, the legendary Brooks Robinson, who died this week at the age of 86. Playing in the age before free agency, Robinson only made $35k one year when he was the league MVP. He was an 18 time All-Star, and won the Golden Glove a remarkable 16 times in a row. He was inducted into Cooperstown in 1983, receiving 91% of the votes in his first year of eligibility.

And here’s the thing: Brooks Robinson was good. Not good at baseball, though he was remarkable at baseball. He was a good human being. 

These days, sports broadcasters spend time, maybe too much time, on what players are wearing when they enter the stadium. Half of the country seems obsessed with Traylor, the supposed match-up of Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, though we all know how that love story ends. College football players change teams almost as often as their schools change conferences. So we might be romanticizing a bit, toying with that addictive drug nostalgia, but there is something to be said for athletes like Brooks Robinson.

Continue reading “1 October 2023”

Jonah 3:10-4:11

Twelve years ago, the Disney corporation premiered a television series on ABC that attempted to bring classic fairytale characters into the modern world. There were obvious tie-ins to Disney intellectual properties, since many of those fairytales had been turned into classic animated films. Characters included Cinderella by the 17^th century Italian author Giambattista Basile, though with roots in ancient Greece, and Rumpelstiltskin, collected by the Brothers Grimm in the 19^th century. 

The television series lasted seven seasons, though I grew bored and didn’t make it much past the first. I’m sure it “jumped the shark,” to use the phrase taken from “Happy Days,” probably some point after adding Pinocchio, Elsa, and Cruella DeVille.

The show was named after that classic line that starts so many fairytales, “Once Upon A Time.”

The phrase “once upon a time” serves as a marker, telling the reader or listener or couch potato that we are in the world of story. It does not mean everything you hear will necessarily be false. It just means that the narrative is the point, not the facts. The story is meant to entertain, and maybe to teach a lesson, like a fable, for good stories often depict a struggle between good and evil, and lean into the good. Except for like anything by the late Cormac McCarthy, because in his world, people mostly suck, the end, cue the fire and ashes.

The ancient Hebrew equivalent of “once upon a time” is “vayehi,” something like “and it happened,” though we are used to the more fanciful King James, which renders it as “Now it came to pass.” There are quite a few texts in scripture that bear this literary marker, entire books like Esther and Ruth, and narrative sections of other books. 

The Book of the Prophet Jonah begins with “vayehi.” And it is a story about a prophet, though I suspect it is only listed that way because the Book of the Twelve, a traditional way of thinking about the minor prophets in Hebrew Scripture, would be the Book of the Eleven without him, and “eleven” just doesn’t have the same meaning as twelve in ancient Hebrew numerology.

We are in the world of story, and a story that lends itself to Sunday School and coloring pages. Never mind that the text says “great fish,” not whale, because again, fact is not the point.

But let’s start with some facts. The Book of Jonah was probably written after the Babylonian captivity, but uses a known prophet from an earlier period, the final century of the Northern Kingdom, as a character. We see something similar happen with Daniel, a historical figure from the time of the captivity who is written into an extraordinary fiction in the 2^ndcentury before the Common Era, another coloring book classic with the prophet in the lion’s den.

The ancients did not read pious fictions like the Book of Job or the Book of the Prophet Jonah and ask themselves “did this happen.” They understood that they were reading a story, and that the proper question was “What can we learn from the world of this story?”

This particular story, the story of Jonah, resonates across all three of the great monotheisms. Originating in the Jewish Bible, the Jewish reformer Jesus of Nazareth references Jonah, and Muhammad would include Jonah in the Qur’an. Our sisters and brothers in the Rabbinic Jewish traditions will read the story of Jonah tomorrow afternoon as part of their Yom Kippur observance.

In the story, Jonah is from Israel, which was the Northern Kingdom after the once united kingdom of David and Solomon fell apart. When God calls Jonah to deliver a prophetic word in Nineveh, he flees. 

His destination is Tarshish. Biblical references to this location are unclear, but it was across some portion of the Mediterranean, and many scholars today believe it to have been Sardinia, the island off the west coast of Italy. This gives us the dramatic scene of the boat in the storm, and the sailors eventually throwing Jonah overboard, only for him to be swallowed by the previously mentioned large fish.

Cue the millions of sermons that have been delivered about God’s call, God’s very specific call. But we are not Rick Warren’s “Purpose Driven Life” sort of folks that see God as a puppet master and our call as being extremely particular. We’re more the God’s call to love, justice, and creativity sort of folks, though we do fudge a bit at times, especially when we are trying to explain call and authorized ministry.

Let us turn for a moment to Nineveh itself. It was a major Assyrian city on the bank of the Tigris River, though maybe not quite as big as described in scripture during the time in which the story is set, the 8^th century before the Common Era. 

Today, Nineveh is part of the greater city of Mosul in Iraq, a city that had a significant Jewish population until the 1950’s, and a significant Christian population until the misguided Iraq War destabilized the region, leading to violent sectarianism, and the eventual occupation of Mosul by Daesh, a terrorist group that used rape and execution to control people in areas they occupied as they pursued fundamentalist jihad. 

Even before the Iraqi Army retook Mosul after an extended siege that destroyed most of the city, Daesh had waged its own war on the region’s cultural heritage. One of the buildings they destroyed was the Mosque of the Prophet Yunis, which is to say Jonah, which had replaced an Assyrian Christian Church, with a history and archeological connection all the way back to the age of the prophet.

Nineveh/Mosul was in Assyria, the enemy that would eventually conquer and destroy the Northern Kingdom, not in that Northern Kingdom of Israel which was home to Jonah. The prophet Amos goes from the Southern Kingdom of Judah to the Northern Kingdom to deliver the word of the Lord, but both of those kingdoms are depicted as worshipping Yahweh. Assyria does not worship Yahweh. 

Jonah was sent to proclaim the divine destruction of Nineveh because of the city’s great wickedness. And a remarkable thing happens. The people of Nineveh listen to the prophet, which doesn’t always happen in scripture. See Jeremiah in the well, or Elijah hiding in a cave.

In this story, the king and all the people observe a fast of repentance. They set aside their evil ways. And the Lord relents and forgives them. That is where we come in with today’s reading.

Jonah is infuriated. The Hebrew literally reads that he is “burning up.” He was sent to declare divine punishment, an orgy of destruction not unlike that eventually visited upon the city by Daesh, and instead, there is contrition and reconciliation. Jonah heads out of the city, in a huff, the setting for this exchange with God, in which Jonah complains about divine mercy.

And I’d like to lift up two things from this story, violating the rule that you never try to make more than one point in a sermon. So we’ll just pretend I only made one point, and you pick the one you like.

First, Yahweh is concerned about the behavior of the people in Nineveh. This is interesting and unique.

In the prophetic books, God is often said to be using other nations to punish Israel or Judah, or to be punishing other nations because they did something to Israel or Judah, but it is always about Israel or Judah. 

The sinful behavior in Nineveh is not connected in any way with the Israelites, and while it is an Israelite prophet who brings the word of God, the salvation of the people of Nineveh has nothing to do with Israel.

The dominant narrative throughout the Hebrew language scriptures and in the Judaism that is constructed after the Babylonian Captivity, often known as the Second Temple period, is framed around the idea of a divinely chosen people that is racially pure. But the text is subversive of its own claims if you are paying attention. Christian supersessionist theology, so necessary as the foundation of antisemitism, then takes this one step further, claiming that through Jesus, God transfers the exclusive covenant with the Jewish people to Christians, who are not one singular people, but are “ethne,” the nations in the Koine Greek.

But here is God pre-Jesus who cares about Assyrians. What if God was always the God of all peoples? Which, now that you mention it, makes me sound like a universalist. Because a god, lower case g, who would select only one tribe, permanently and always, a people Christian jihadis believe will be the last to convert before Armageddon, that god does not love all humans equally, and is not worthy of my worship. That is the god that works for racists and nationalists, always in competition with the god who loves some other race or nation. 

But a God, upper case G, who cares about Jerusalem and Nineveh? Now that I can get behind.

And the other thing worth noticing, the second thing which you are now free to ignore, is how mad Jonah gets. I know exactly how he feels, and I bet you do too. There is a part of me that is not interested in reconciliation. I want destruction. I want that traitor in an orange jumpsuit, humiliated. I want them all behind bars, not to prevent their continued attacks, not just as a warning to others, as deterrence, but as punishment. Would I have been part of the crowd during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror as the guillotine claimed one prize after another? I want murderers to be murdered, at least part of me does, and not the best part.

Mercy and forgiveness are hard work, while judgment is easy. And scripture says crazy thing like “judge not, lest ye be judged,” and don’t look for the splinter in your neighbor’s eye when you have a two by four in your own. 

Our story is the story of a man who calmly challenges the one who is without sin to cast the first stone, is the story of a healer who says “Your sins are forgiven. Now, take up your mat and walk.”

That doesn’t mean I want Payton Gendron, the white nationalist terrorist who murdered ten in the Buffalo Tops to go free. It does mean that I need to be honest about my own blood lust, and lean into grace, for I want God to lean into Her grace, right here in our modern day Nineveh. 

Once upon a time, there was a God, a God of grace and glory, a God who called people, all people of every nation, to a life of love justice and creativity. Once upon a time… this time… right now. Amen.

Exodus 14:19-31

Back when they still taught things like history and literature in public schools, before “no child left behind” left most children behind and white supremacists gutted public education, preferring indoctrination, I learned a little bit about English history, the Magna Carta, the War of the Roses, and their Civil War in high school World History class, though world history really only meant white history back then.

But most of what I learned about English history I learned from Shakespeare, whoever that might have been, for I am among the many who believe the guy from Stratford-upon-Avon probably didn’t write the plays.

The history plays feature memorable figures, like the evil hunchback Richard the Third and the party-boy Prince Hal who becomes the courageous Henry the Fifth over the course of three plays. The former, Richard, has been portrayed on screen by Ian McKellen and Benedict Cumberbatch, while the latter, Henry, by Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh, three British knights of a different kind, and one in the making.

It turns out, while Shakespeare’s history plays are great theatre, they are less than great as history. In fact, they are thinly-veiled Tudor propaganda, for the playwright’s career started during the reign of the final Tudor monarch, Elizabeth the First. Richard was not as grotesque as portrayed, the Tudor kings not nearly as righteous and wise. 

But remarkably, Shakespeare’s “Henry the Fifth” gets it right about the Battle of Agincourt.

Most of us only know of the battle, if we know of it at all, from the Shakespeare play. Americans don’t spend a lot of time on the Hundred Years War, though this particular battle is well known to military historians. 

The English had invaded France to press Henry’s claim to territory and titles in places like Brittany, Normandy, and Flanders. This was the age of chivalry, which is to say an age when a powerful few exploited the poor many, and threw lives into the buzzsaw of war for profit and for vanity. Not that that ever happens anymore…

Henry’s troops arrived in France in mid-August, already late in the season, and immediately besieged a town called Harfleur. The siege took longer than expected, and diseases like dysentery were running rampant among the English troops. 

Henry had hoped to provoke the French crown prince, the Dauphin Louis, into a decisive battle. When that didn’t happen, the English moved back toward the coast, fearing the onset of winter and the sizable French mobilization. The two armies finally clashed at Agincourt.

The English had around 8500 fighting men, the French three times as many. It should have been a slaughter, in which case we would not know Henry’s speech on the eve of battle, rallying his “band of brothers” as imagined by Shakespeare.

When the battle had ended, around 6000 French soldiers were dead, including three dukes, nine counts, and even an archbishop. The French had attacked the English baggage train, generally understood as bad form, and the English had executed French prisoners, also considered bad form, and possibly caused because the English had captured more prisoners than they could control.

Quite apart from the fact that the English were superior humans, and Henry the finest of them all, at least according to the propaganda, how did the English win?

Continue reading “17 September 2023: Agincourt”

Matthew 18:15-20

A little over a week ago, the highly-anticipated video game Starfield was released. Its success is critical to both the studio that produced it and to Microsoft’s XBox platform, which needs a new high profile game. There were articles and reviews in the major newspapers, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, though I suspect many of you skipped over them. I did not. You see, I am a gamer, spelled both g-a-m-e-r and g-a-y-m-e-r. 

The first personal computer I used was a friend’s Commodore 64 in the barracks while serving in the Army. The first personal computer in my home was an Apple IIc. I’ve been playing video games ever since. 

The early games were on big floppy discs, the kind that were actually floppy. School kids in those days were cyber-trekking on the Oregon Trail, though we weren’t using the term cyber yet, while I was exploring the universe in Hitchhiker’s Guide, based on the Douglas Adams novels, or engaging in more earthy explorations as Leisure Suit Larry. 

You don’t want to go there. Trust me.

Computer games back then were all text-based, nothing more than choose-your-own-adventure decision trees, though there might be some primitive graphics in blocky green and black. These days, my watch has more processing power than those early personal computers, and the top-tier games, on computer or console, are a whole new world, quite literally, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter or a galaxy of space colonies. The games are immersive and interactive entertainment with scripts and actors. 

Folks who are not gamers often imagine that all games are first-person shooters like Call of Duty, or simulation games like Sim City, but role-playing games like Starfield are plot-driven, more like movies where you change the outcome. Some games are narratives without any violence at all, and some are immersive environments with no discernible plot.

And while snowflakes in Florida are terrified that reading a book is going to make their kid gay, one of the first important characters their kids are meeting in Starfield is a gay widower. 

Today’s best role-playing games are morally complex, asking you to make tough decisions. Even in a game like Red Dead Redemption, where your character is part of a gang of outlaws, you have opportunities to do the right thing, to show compassion, and to reap the karma of your decisions.

Sometimes in role-playing games, as in real life, you are faced with a version of the Trolley Problem, a classic exercise in ethics. It comes in a number of variations, but the most common elements are this: You see a trolley coming down the track. If it continues on the current track, it will kill five people who are stuck on that track. Maybe they are tied up by some Dastardly Dan, or are stuck in a vehicle that has broken down, or are simply construction workers jackhammering away with ear plugs in and backs turned to the oncoming trolley.

But you happen to be standing next to the switch that can send the trolley to a side track, where only one person is on the track.

If you do nothing, five people die. If you take action, you will have made the decision that killed one.

There are no other choices in the exercise. This is not the Kobayashi Maru, and you are not Cadet James T. Kirk.

Continue reading “10 September 2023: Trolley Problem”

Romans 12:9-18

The world is weird, pretty much every day. One recent example… Last Sunday, after our discussion of the 8th Phoenix Affirmation, a guest asked me about a line from Paul’s letter to the Romans, one you’ve all heard: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 

And of course, that passage would turn out to be in this week’s scheduled lectionary reading, one I selected months ago. You didn’t hear it today because I cut those last verses of the reading. So let’s talk about why, why Paul falls into the category of a necessary problem, why assumptions he made, and to some extent Jesus also made, have skewed Christianity, and where Paul gets it right and is worthy of study.

We can reasonably claim that Christianity would not exist as a world religion without Paul. What we think of as ancient Judaism, the religion of John the Baptizer and of Jesus, really begins to take a shape we recognize after the Babylonian Captivity in the 6th Century Before the Common Era, six centuries removed from Moses and four centuries after David and Solomon. Some even place the formation of a familiar Judaism as late as the Maccabean revolt in the 2nd century BCE, not much further removed from the time of Jesus than we are from the formation of this church. 

The Judaism of the 1st century of the Common Era was diverse, with many competing movements, some led by charismatic leaders like John with his ministry of baptism, and Jesus with his ministry of healing and teaching. 

The Sadducees and Pharisees are mostly accepted as the major players in the Jewish Council that served as a civilian administration under Roman control, and were closely connected with the Temple authorities. But there were also Essenes and Sicarii, social banditry and just plain old banditry. 

It was chaos, and pretty much every sect was mad at every other sect, because it was easier to be mad at one another than to be mad at the Romans, who were the real problem but also very dangerous, kind of like the way America’s minorities and impoverished stay mad at one another rather than at the corporations and billionaires who are destroying our democracy and our planet.

The followers of Jesus were one weird little sect among many weird little sects, because much of the Roman world found the Judaism of that age weird, the idea of one God, the dietary restrictions, and especially circumcision.

Paul tell us he was a Pharisee. We have no reason to doubt this. And not just a Pharisee, but a bit of an extremist. He is the one holding the cloaks as the crowd stones Stephen. But then he has this episode on the road to Damascus, when post-Ascension Jesus appears to him, and he converts.

Skeptical? Me too. 

There is no way to test claims of direct revelation, claims that often turn out to be mutually exclusive, filled with contradiction, the claims of a Paul or a Joseph Smith or any number of other self-proclaimed seers and prophets, each offering the one true and final word from God. 

But on the other side of his vision or psychotic break, whichever you think it is, Paul ends up being the bridge between the insular world of Judean Judaism, the broader world of Diaspora Judaism, the many Jews who already lived in places like Babylon and Alexandria, and the Roman and Hellenistic non-Jewish world. For despite being deeply involved in religious sectarianism, Paul is also a merchant, at the very least bilingual, speaking Aramaic and Greek, and a citizen of Rome. We can assume that he is well traveled.

Paul knows people who knew Jesus, at the very least Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, but Paul never heard Jesus teach and was not part of the inner circle. He had no contact with Jesus or his followers before the crucifixion, as far as we know. Yet, Paul is the earliest authentic source we have. None of the gospels and none of the letters were written by actual disciples. Paul’s letter to the church at Thessaloniki, written around 52 CE, is the earliest surviving Christian text. 

The seven authentic letters of Paul contain some beautiful stuff, but they lack some of the gritty populism of the gospels, which is sort of amazing, because Paul was already the most influential figure in the movement before the gospels were written. 

So influential is Paul that we cannot surgically remove him despite the fervent desire of so many. We can guess about Jesus in his historic context, but we cannot be sure Paul hasn’t influenced our view.

Continue reading “Paul Right and Wrong: September 2, 2023”

Exodus 1:8-2:10

I came out of the closet during the worst years of the AIDS crisis. Folks were dying, including people I knew, co-workers and members of my social circle. Some courageously went out in public with Kaposi’s sarcoma, an opportunistic form of cancer, visible on their bodies like a latter day Scarlet Letter, while others hid from public view. People died alone, or without the comfort of longtime companions, as families and hospitals refused to acknowledge same-sex relationships. 

It is no surprise, then, that the late playwright Larry Kramer led others in founding ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. Socially-acceptable hemophiliacs like Ryan White aside, AIDS was most common among gay men, and gay men did not fit social constructs of gender expression and affectional orientation. Many believed the disease was divine judgment.

ACT UP followed in a long tradition of direct and disruptive action in pursuit of justice, an approach used by Suffragettes and activists in the Civil Rights movement, and still used by Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, and the particularly controversial and diverse Stop Oils collectives.

Legal equality for the LGBTQI+ community is at-risk these days, but at least for now, legal equality is the law of the land, even in neo-fascist Florida, the state of hate, even in liberal California, where small business owner Lauri Carleton was gunned down just nine days ago for displaying a Pride flag. 

There is still no cure for HIV/AIDS, though retroviral drugs have slowed disease progression and extended lives. Among those are treatments developed by the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, a company named after a play that is itself named after a passage in the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, when the cranky man of God asks if there is no balm in Gilead. The balm in Gilead was a rare perfume used for medicinal purposes and derived from the terebinth tree. The prophet essentially asks “Is there no medicine for this?”

Gilead’s HIV treatments, the medicine for this, use a drug they developed called tenofovir. Like all of the antiretroviral therapies developed to manage HIV/AIDS, tenofovir came with awful side effects, was extremely expensive, and incredibly profitable for the company.

According to New York Times reporting on a current lawsuit, as early as 2004, Gilead had created a version of tenofovir that was safer for patients. They shelved that new treatment for over a decade. The existing version of tenofovir was under patent until 2017. Gilead continued to sell the more dangerous form of the drug for another decade, only rolling out the new version in 2015, allowing them to extend the life of the patent. An extended patent meant no competition, and a continued monopoly meant more profit.

Gilead Sciences knew the newer form of tenofovir was less toxic to patients, doing less damage to kidney’s and bones. They didn’t care. Corporations, originally intended as a structure to allow people to partner in business creation, now function as a facility for amoral and often immoral conduct.

Continue reading “27 August 2023: No Balm From Gilead”

Matthew 14:22-33

When I arrived at that particular congregation, I was told it was part of my job to select the hymns for worship. This was not welcome news for a whole bunch of reasons, including the fact that I am not even slightly musical, as well as the fact that the congregation, like the Park Church, used the New Century Hymnal, which was a great idea in the abstract all those years ago, but there are far better hymnals out there today. 

But the real real problem of me picking the hymns was best captured by an exchange when I’d been there about a month. I don’t know whether the sermon was any good that Sunday, probably not. It certainly wasn’t on the mind of the congregant who made a beeline for me after worship. “Pastor,” he asked, “Why don’t you choose hymns we know?”

The answer, which I gave, was obvious. “I just got here. I don’t know what hymns you know.” 

For the record, that was not the right answer. 

Pretty much everyone in those pews, and pretty much everyone in these pews, has hymns they know and love. Which would be great if you all knew and loved the same hymns, if every hymn spoke to every one of our guests who comes through the door, if every hymn was suitable to every season and occasion and reflected our theology as progressive Christians engaged in the world. But you do not all know and love the same hymns, and as our church becomes more diverse, the variety of musical expression and taste only grows.

So yeah, hymnals can be an issue. 

Continue reading “Flip the Script: 13 August 2023”