Category: Main Blog

Hope United Church of Christ
Sturgeon Bay, WI

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Sermon Reading Isaiah 1:10-18 (The First Testament: A New Translation)

He was a man out of time, much like his magician advisor, the actual king at the turn of the 6th century unsuccessfully defending Britain against invading Saxons. Arthur’s story would be fictionalized, lifted from that context, and reset in the Middle Ages, all knights and chivalry, though with a hint of druids and witches to remind us of the ancient. We can see this anachronism in John Boorman’s 1981 film “Excalibur,” in T.H. White’s “The Once and Future King,” required school reading for my generation, in Lerner and Loewe’s “Camelot,” and above all in the greatest Arthurian masterpiece ever, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” which includes a scene where Arthur rides through a town ravaged by the Black Death, the classic macabre scene where the carter cries “Bring out your dead!”

In this swirling space of All Hallow’s Eve, of ghosts and ghoulies, and of Reformation Sunday, commemorating that singular expression of the shift from the medieval to modernity, it seems right to revisit the Black Death, the first and greatest episode of the Bubonic Plague to hit Europe, dropping the world population by an estimated 100 million people during the 14th century. To celebrate the end of the Black Death, Florence, in what is today Italy, decided on new doors for their Baptistry. A grand competition was held, with seven sculptors entering, and Giovanni de’ Medici as the judge. Lorenzo Ghiberti won the competition. Many of us have gazed on those very doors, on Ghiberti’s work, in that city filthy with masterpieces.

One of the other contestants was Filippo Brunelleschi, who, it turns out, was not a particularly graceful loser. His entry drew particular attention, can still be seen today as a Renaissance masterwork in Florence’s Il Bargello. He might have gone on to be a legendary sculptor, but he refused to work in that medium ever again. Instead, he would focus on architecture and optics, designing the groundbreaking dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence’s Duomo. If that is one particular piece in one particular place, his other great gift to humankind is everywhere, still impacts us today, for he is considered the inventor of linear perspective, that art of creating the illusion of three dimensions in a two dimensional drawing or painting, of using technique to invoke more.

Six centuries later, another approach to multiple dimensions rendered in the flat space of drawing and painting would contribute to the development of cubism, the reduction of objects to basic shapes, often seen from multiple angles at once. It was inspired by Paul Cezanne, who was a living bridge between Impressionism and new forms, his paintings attempting to represent three-dimensional form. The Cubist style took its name from words by Henri Matisse, who described a painting submitted for exhibition by Georges Braque as being made of little cubes. Braque, along with Pablo Picasso, would be most closely associated with the style.

There were folks who despised Cubism, still are folks who despise Cubism, and if I am honest, I personally prefer pre-Cubist Picasso, the Blue Period and the Rose period, but you can already see the trajectory, flat spaces creating angles, even there. There were folks who despised Impressionism too. The Académie des Beaux-Arts had no room for the work of the Impressionists at its annual juried art show, the Salon de Paris, so the young artists eventually showed their work at the Salon des Refusés, the Salon of the Refused.

We know how that story ends. The Impressionists included Renoir, Sisley, Manet, Pissarro, and the artist who painted the painting that would give name to the movement, Claude Monet. Paintings by these “refused” artists rarely come up for sale, so the prices reflect the economic insanity of a particular moment, but Monet’s “Meules,” not one of his best known works, sold for $110 million in May, while Picasso’s cubist “Les Femmes de l’Alger” sold for $179 million in 2015.

Then again, Vincent Van Gogh died broke, so maybe folks aren’t always so good at seeing what is happening, appreciating innovation and vision, in the moment. Continue reading “Brunelleschi to Braque: November 3, 2019”

Hope United Church of Christ – Sturgeon Bay

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Ephesians 1:11-23

They include Wang Zhiming, a clergy person who fell victim to China’s Cultural Revolution, that conflagration of Maoist purity that killed only a million or so, far fewer than the 30 million that died five years earlier in the Great Leap Forward, and not really that big of a deal since authoritarian communism takes a utilitarian view human life, no inherent worth, just use.

Then there is Esther John, a Pakistani Christian nurse, Elizabeth, a Russian Grand Duchess, and Archbishop Janani Luwum of Uganda. Others are better known, like Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan friar who gave his life in place of another at Auschwitz. Archbishop Óscar Romero is there, as is the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the Rev. Dr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

They are in a class we might hope to never join, martyrs for their faith, ten men and women of the Twentieth Century carved above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey.

Some have been officially recognized as saints by denominations that have a formal process for that sort of thing, while others are considered saints informally. Lutherans, Anglicans and other Protestant riff-raff like, you know, us, considered Romero a saint long before the Vatican got around to it, that recognition blocked in Rome by conservatives who suspected him of commie pinko leanings, or worse still, of believing in a liberating God, the core concept in the theology that bears that name.

Ironically, Romero was chosen as Archbishop of San Salvador because he was conservative, a milquetoast of a man who would ruffle the feathers of neither the twelve families that controlled all of El Salvador’s arable land nor the assassins and thugs they employed in the nation’s military. His spirituality was heavily influenced by Opus Dei, a Catholic movement with close ties to the Fascist regime of Spain’s Francisco Franco. He was anything but a commie pinko.

But Romero was able to maintain friendships with people who had different opinions on things, something few manage these days. It was the assassination of one of his close friends, the Jesuit Rutilio Grande, that opened the Archbishop’s eyes to the human rights abuses taking place in his country, to the incredible poverty all around him. He went first and always to scripture, to Jesus, was a pastor before all else, and it made him radical, at least in the eyes of the corrupt and powerful. He spoke about justice, was clear that God’s law superseded any earthly power. So those with earthly power did what they did, what they always do.

On March 24, 1980, as he celebrated mass at the Hospital de la Divina Providencia, Archbishop Óscar Romero, like his friend Padre Grande, was assassinated.

He was an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances who found strength in prayer and scripture, a most improbable saint. Continue reading “St. Phyllis: October 27, 2019”

Hope United Church of Christ
Sturgeon Bay, WI

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2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

Like churches, corporations do not always notice the world changing before it is too late. Just ask Polaroid. Oh, you can’t…

Now, on a scale that includes Purdue Pharma, the opioid pushers, razor blade companies are fairly innocent small fry. But a couple of decades ago, the industry entered a sort of arms race. More blades, more gel strips, more skin guards, every feature the latest in technology guaranteeing the smoothest shave, each promise about as real as the ridiculous line of 3D toothpaste being peddled in the super market, as if brushing your teeth in only two dimensions were an option.

At each step, the price of razor blades went up.

Then two things happened to put a dent in that market. Hipsters started growing beards, which became cool. I don’t know whether it was irony, cost efficiency, laziness, or some combination of the above, but razor sales started dropping. In the meantime, folks like me started looking for alternatives. I chose an old fashioned safety razor. I’ve probably saved more than a thousand dollars in the last five years, even if it has cost me a little blood.

Entrepreneurs figured out that consumers were rebelling, and started cost efficient direct to consumer sales on a subscription model. One such company was Harry’s, founded in 2013. The next year they purchased their own razor factory in Germany so they could control the whole process from factory to consumer. In May, the company sold for $1.4 billion, ironically enough, to one of the traditional razor manufacturers.

Alas, I have not figured out how to escape the cost insanity of electric toothbrush heads. I know I could just get an old-school toothbrush, but they just aren’t as effective, and I like having teeth. So it was that I was out spending a ridiculous amount on a new head for my Sonicare toothbrush recently, when I decided to wander over to the book section. And there, filed under non-fiction, I discovered the Bible.

Now, in actual brick and mortar bookstores, the shelf would be labeled Bibles, or Inspiration, or something, anything, may God help me, besides non-fiction. But there it was, as I prepared to preach today’s text about scripture. It was enough to stop a thinking pastor in her tracks, and it did stop this pastor in his. At least I had enough sense not to find an hourly employ and suggest it be moved. Continue reading “Like Literally, Dude – October 20, 2019”

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7, 11

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There has been a running joke of many years that I am just about the least “gay” gay man ever. Now, I take issue with this fake news. It is true that some question my fashion judgment, that I prefer a beer to a Cosmo, that I watch sports, and by that I don’t mean figure skating… and that I go to bed early. But are we really going to traffic in base stereotype? Besides, I always thought it was a one question application, and that question was not about brunch entrees or Judy Garland.

At least I get one thing right. I do like musical theater and opera, no doubt the result of a childhood where Camelot, Fiddler on the Roof, and Mario Lanza played on the giant console record player in the living room. I especially like it when musical theater crashes into other musical genres, because I love nothing more than a good mash-up. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that I love Hamilton, where history and hip-hop collide with musical theater, because I like history and hip-hop too. In the years B.H., that is before Hamilton, there were other beautiful collisions, notably Jonathan Larson’s smash hit Rent, which opened on Broadway in 1996 and ran for twelve years, grossing over $280 million.

Rent is a modern reimagining of “La Boheme,” Puccini’s classic opera, which premiered exactly a century earlier, conducted by a young Arturo Toscanini. In Rent, the Latin Quarter becomes lower Manhattan, the scourge of tuberculosis becomes AIDS, but the issues are still the same: art on the precipice, love among the wreckage, exploitative economics, and the constant specter of death. The protagonists do not know what comes next, so time and the moment are major themes. The second act begins with one of the show’s enduring anthems, “Seasons of Love,” which reminds us that a common year is “Five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes.” Another is the refrain, included in the finale, that tells us:

There’s only us, there’s only this
Forget regret, or life is your’s to miss
No other path, no other way
No day but today

The people in Jeremiah’s time knew a thing about anxiety too. The prophet’s attention was primarily drawn to the macro, to matters religious and political, rather than to the domestic, but people certainly still loved and grieved, suffered disease and hunger and the sort of constant anxiety that comes from one piece of wretched news after another. Continue reading “Present Tense: October 13, 2019”

Sermon delivered at Hope United Church of Christ
Sturgeon Bay, WI

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1 Samuel 21:1-9

Monday was my last day of freedom, though freedom might be a bit prosaic considering I’ve spent several weeks moving halfway across the country, unpacking, and generally setting up a household, which is mostly, but not completely, done, all while taking three classes online. I’m delighted to be here, of course, but gosh, moving is hard work. So there I was on Monday, one day left, with errands to run, a few minor projects I could reasonably hope to check off before starting work Tuesday morning, and I found myself at Target, considering those storage cubes, then walking by the clearance rack.

And Lo! There appeared on the clearance rack bed sheets in a size I needed. “Stranger Things” bedsheets to be exact, a product tie-in with that very successful Netflix series. I’ve slept on them now for several nights expecting totally jacked-up dreams, but not so much, at least not yet.

You see, “Stranger Things,” is an homage to the pop culture of my teen and young adult years, and it is a wicked creepy sci-fi horror, hence my concern that the sheets, one of the last things I see as the lights go out at night, might plant nightmarish seeds, visions of demi-gorgons dancing in my head.

At the start of the first episode of “Stranger Things,” four of the central characters, boys on the cusp of adolescence, are playing Dungeons and Dragons. I know a thing or two about that game. I started playing back when the rules were still in a set of small paperback volumes that might have come from a ditto machine, and were most certainly laid out on a manual typewriter.

It was a game where you could be anything except the nerd that you probably actually were if you were playing D&D. You might be an Elven mage, a Halfling rogue, or a stout Dwarven warrior with his trusted battle-axe.

And this was my conception of a battle-axe, something from fantasy, D&D and Conan the Barbarian, not a weapon real warriors used. Except, it turns out, they did. Continue reading “Battle-Axe: October 6, 2019 World Communion Sunday”

During recent weeks, I have moved halfway across the country, settling in as a first time homeowner, and completing some continuing education coursework in human rights. I’m back in the pulpit starting this coming Sunday. In addition to appearing here and on my public Facebook page, those who wish to will also be able to see sermons, which are webcast. More on that to come…

Colossians 1:1-14
Psalm 25
Luke 10:25-37

Bacteria have been a bit of a thing in recent weeks. Last week our lectionary readings included the story of Naaman, the Aramean general who seeks healing in Israel. Naaman is afflicted with leprosy, a disfiguring and contagious condition, something we hear a lot about leprosy in scripture. But the term was used for any disfiguring or unsightly skin condition, so we don’t know for sure exactly what Naaman suffered. Still, it is sometimes actual leprosy, what we today call Hansen’s Disease, and it is bacterial.

Several weeks earlier, I spoke about the human microbiome, the symbiotic bacteria that inhabit our guts and other parts of our body, that we increasingly understand as essential and even formative of our sense of self, with an unhealthy biome contributing to depression and autism spectrum disorder, among other things.

This is a bit of a paradigm shift, for we have been primarily focused on the eradication of all bacteria. We’ve belatedly come to realize that this has been a mistake, this demonizing of entire class of life form. For example, only bacteria and a family of similar single-cell organisms called archaea can synthesize B12, a vitamin essential to metabolism and DNA synthesis, so without bacteria, there is no us, there is no this, no advanced multi-cellular life forms at all. From your yogurt to C-diff, we find bacteria everywhere, contributing to human culture and sometimes taking lives.

It should not be surprising, then, that scientists continue to study this microscopic life that is part of our lives. So it was that geneticist Rotem Sorek and his team at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science began an experiment focusing on bacterial response to a viral infection. Continue reading “Viral: July 14, 2019”

2 Kings 5:1-14

It is probably not wise to shock people right out of the gate, but I’m a pretty straight-forward sort of guy, so here goes: I like okra. Now I know some folks think it is slimy, but that’s just because they don’t know how to cook it. I make a mean gumbo, and breaded and fried, okra is just dandy, not slimy at all.

You want slimy, how about squash, eggplant, raw tomato? So those who know French cooking will not be at all surprised that ratatouille is not one of my favorite dishes. It is a whole dish of baked slime, slices of eggplant, zucchini, squash, and tomato. But Ratatouille sure is a great movie.

For those who are not Disney fans, or who have not been forced to sit through countless hours of Disney with kids or grandkids, Ratatouille was a 2007 Disney-Pixar film set in the Parisian restaurant scene. In it, a rat with culinary aspirations uses a kitchen boy as a front. Much hilarity, drama, and pest control ensue. The main lesson, for there is always a main lesson, is one that appears regularly in children’s literature and film. You can be anything you want to be, even if you are a rat who wants to be a chef.

Now I’m cynical enough to know that isn’t completely true. Nature and nurture do sometimes work to narrow our field of possibility. My childhood dreams did not include Olympic curling, for example, because Virginia Beach was not a real hotbed for winter sports, with or without a broom. Or at least it wasn’t when I was a kid. These days one of the top players in the NHL is from Arizona, so all bets are off. Continue reading “Ratatouille: July 7, 2019”

Galatians 5:13-25
Psalm 16
2 Kings 2:1-14

When we think of prophets, we might think of the Big Three, the named books we encounter most frequently in worship and Sunday School: Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. We might think of the Book of the Twelve, the minor prophets, sometimes named, sometimes fictional. We might think of other prophets named in the histories that did not leave behind a text, people like Elijah and his student Elisha in today’s reading. But we almost always think of prophets in particularity, mostly singular. Ezekiel isn’t hanging with his homies breaking pots and having seizures. Prophecy is not thought of as a group activity.

This singular conception of the prophet is the result of tradition, our declining familiarity with our scriptures, and our mental tendency to flatten, to simplify. Individual prophets have a name, the groups do not. But Isaiah was not really just Isaiah, but an entire school of religious thought and prophecy that would produce new work in the prophet’s name for at least two centuries after the death of Isaiah Bin Amoz. Jeremiah was closely associated with a major Jewish reform in the decades before Jerusalem was conquered and destroyed by the Babylonians, a reform movement that would produce much of the Hebrew scripture, including the history we read today, and that would continue to expand the book written in the prophet’s name for at least another four centuries. And then there are the unnamed prophets, like those that seem to taunt Elisha in today’s reading, one group numbered in the text as fifty men. Our narrow definition of prophecy does not fit the textual and historical evidence. Continue reading “Lion Bait: June 30, 2019”

Luke 8:26-39
Psalm 42
Galatians 3:23-29

We humans, bipedal thinking animals that we are, operate in one particular time and space, and while we may know that things are often more complex than they seem, we tend toward a mental Occam’s Razor, choosing the easiest and simplest construct whenever possible. So it is that we eat Italian food, take vacations in Italy, maybe brush up on our Italian on the plane, all while thinking that Italian is a thing. But Italy as we have understood it in our lifetimes, is fairly new, emerging during the Risorgimento, the consolidation of many small states, that was not completed until 1871. Even the language we think of as Italian is a construct of that era, drawn from a form of Tuscan that was primarily literary and spoken by the upper class. Neapolitan and Sicilian are not dialects of Italian but instead distinct languages, distant cousins evolved from the same street Latin root. Spain, France, Germany, each was formed as a nation, as an identity, as a language, by distinctly human forces. God forbid I should say it, but the same is true for the United States, what is in and what is out.

If nations can be brought together by force of will, so too can they fall apart. Today, the word used for the dissolution of a nation into small and competing tribes is thought of as Balkanization, something we tend to associate with the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, with horrific war, with genocide, and with the Dayton Accords. In fact, the term first referred to the break-up of portions of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires a century earlier.

The modern nation-state of Israel is a construct. Some of you were even alive when it happened. The ancient state that shapes our thinking and comes to mind isn’t quite what real either We tend to conflate Israel and Judah, to assume the contours of the Holy Land where Jesus taught and healed were roughly analogous to the contours of the Kingdom of David and Solomon. But that kingdom existed for a mere hundred years. Conquest, exile, and immigration made for no clear borders, for cosmopolitanism in some places and for segregation in others.

Our first reading, Jesus and the man possessed, appears in all three synoptic gospels. In Matthew, it takes place in Gadara, a town six miles southeast of the Sea of Galilee in what we think should be Jewish territory. In fact, the town was part of the Decapolis, a set of ten prominent Gentile cities in the region, and had been given to Herod by Augustus. Mark, the source of the story, and Luke, who follows Mark, places it in Gerasa, also part of the Decapolis and a further 27 miles southeast. Gerasa was larger, more grand, and though founded by Alexander the Great, by the time Jesus got there, it was thoroughly Roman.

Of course, we might have known that it was not a Jewish town, whichever town it was, because… well, you know… pigs. Continue reading “Balkanization: June 23, 2019”