Waves of Madness

I have gotten hooked on (and highly recommend) Deborah Crombie’s series of British mysteries featuring Scotland Yard sleuths Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James.

In Leave the Grave Green, a character James is interviewing reminisces about the past. He notes that those who survived the first World War “had looked into the mouth of hell, and they knew how fragile our hold on civilization really is.”

So it is today.

“A wave of madness is sweeping the globe,” says United Nations General Secretary Antonio Guterres.

He senses “growing instability and hair-trigger tensions,” and with them, “a heightened risk of miscalculation.”

Trump and Netanyahu have unveiled what they call a “peace plan” for the Mideast, though it was created without any involvement by Palestinians and involves a huge land grab by Israelis.

What do you call a “peace plan” that is unilaterally imposed? How can such a thing ever result in peace? What else could you expect from two national leaders who are facing charges of corruption?

Moscow Mitch is wrapping up his show trial on Trump’s impeachment. No witnesses allowed, no evidence beyond an endless parade of boring speeches and PowerPoints. Just power politics, which Mitch is handy at.

The invertebrates in the Senate (read: Republicans) will give Mitch what he wants, of course. And since Chief Justice Roberts presided over it all, you can say that all three branches of the government have now conspired to cover up Trump’s misdeeds and pave the way for more.

Is this how it ends? The American experience in self-governance, I mean. This is why so many people stay away from the ballot box. They know the game is fixed. Doesn’t matter who you elect. Power and money seem to always win.

Trump contrived to give Rush Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. One liar honoring another. The gift so demeans previous recipients of the medal. They actually did something to deserve it.

I found the Super Bowl halftime show featuring Shakira and JLo frenetic and exhausting, and I was surprised both had the energy to stand upright when it was over.

They’re catching a lot of flak, of course, for the sexuality of it. Some from Franklin Graham. But he insists that Trump is America’s gift from God, so he obviously is unqualified to speak about morality.

Some people don’t understand Shakira’s “tongue thing.” It was a ululation, a cry of joy or despair, depending on the circumstance. She learned it from her Lebanese relatives. It’s an ancient cry, heard in many cultures all around the world.

Those who condemn her for it probably would be OK with a Rebel Yell.

People around the world are frustrated, for good reason. Our leaders are idiots or worse. Betraying their own infantile insecurity, they belittle Greta Thunberg of Sweden and Licypriya Kangujam from India. In seats of power around the world, Nero fiddles a horrid tune.

Follow – 1

I’m sure that you’re familiar with the story of the calling of these four disciples. I’m going to talk about it in ways that you may not find familiar, though, because I think the way it’s usually told is very misleading.

The way it’s usually told is that Jesus walks up to these four fishermen he’s never met before – like a vacuum cleaner salesman making a cold call at your home at 9 in the morning – and he invites them to follow him. If that’s not hard enough to swallow, the really astounding thing is that they do it!

They literally drop everything and follow him. Two of them even leave their father behind in their fishing boat. They don’t even say, “Bye, dad, off to be with Jesus.” They just leave. Tough luck, old man. Your boys have gone and enlisted in the salvation army.

Do you buy that? Do you think that’s what really happened? Don’t you find this story, the way it’s usually told, to be so otherworldly and unrealistic that you can hardly give it any credence at all? Don’t you want to dismiss it as just another one of those fantastic Jesusy Bible stories – you know, loaves and fishes and water into wine and walking on water and all that?

So when the preacher then says, “You ought to be like these fishermen and follow Jesus,” don’t you suppress a smirk or a gag and think, “Yeah, right. I really am gonna drop everything and follow Jesus. Spouse and kids and career and hopes and dreams for the future, I’ll chuck it all, just like that, and never look back.”

Are you with me on this? Isn’t there something fundamentally wrong with the way we’re usually expected to interpret this story?

The first thing that’s wrong with it, of course, is that it’s simply not true. It’s not true to our experience, and it’s not true to the Bible story either. You are right to be suspicious of the usual telling.

Jesus does not walk up to four guys he’s never met before and somehow – almost magically, as if by force of his charismatic manner, magnetic personal charm and irresistible divine will – somehow he entices them to walk away from their former lives and follow him. That is just not how it works.

He knows these guys. He already has a relationship with them. They know what he wants, and they are ready to respond. In fact, they’re eager for him to come calling. They’ve already got their bags packed. All they need is the word. “Let’s do it.” “Let’s roll.” “Follow me.”

* * * * *

Let’s back up and tell the story a different way, filling in some blanks with details from other gospel accounts.

A few weeks ago, we celebrated Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptizer. Jesus hears a voice saying, “You are my Beloved Son, and I’m pleased with you!” It’s a powerful affirmation from God the Father of who Jesus is and what his mission is to be.

But Jesus does not launch his mission immediately after his baptism. First, he spends 40 days in the desert being tested. Then he hangs around the banks of the Jordan, mingling with John’s disciples – and from them he chooses at least two he wants as his own.

John is standing one day with two of his disciples. One is named Andrew. We’re never told the name of the other one. Jesus walks by. John exclaims, “There goes the Lamb of God! He’s the one we’ve been waiting for.”

It’s as if John is telling these two disciples, “You ought to follow him now.” So they do – and the first chance he gets, Andrew runs to tell his brother, “We’ve found the Messiah.” His brother is the fellow we know as Simon Peter. (The story is told in John 1:35-42.)

Andrew and Simon are the Johnson brothers. You may think it odd for me to call them that, but that is precisely how the Bible identifies them. In Matthew 16:17, we’re told that Jesus says, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjonah.”

Some versions of the Bible translate that as “Simon, son of Jonah.” That’s accurate enough. That’s what the words mean. But it’s misleading. It’s just not right. “Barjonah” is not a description of who Simon is. It’s his surname. It’s his family name. It’s the Aramaic equivalent of “Johnson,” or “Jackson,” or “Johansson.”

The Johnson brothers, Andrew and Simon, and apparently this other fellow who’s never named, are among the first followers of Jesus. As soon as Jesus meets Simon, he gives him a nickname. He calls him Rock. In Aramaic, the word for “rock” is Kephas. In Greek, it’s Petros. From that, in English we get the name Peter.

The name loses a lot in that transliteration. The name “Peter” tells us nothing about the essence of the man, whereas “Rock” potentially tells a lot. Even though Peter fails to live up to his nickname much of the time, the nickname does stick, and Peter does eventually live into it. He becomes a Rock of the early church.

The Johnson brothers are commercial fishermen. We might imagine them as dull fellows who have no higher aspirations than a bigger catch of fish than they ever got before, but whatever else they are, they are spiritual seekers. They are among the disciples of John the Baptizer. The first time we meet them is not long after Jesus has been baptized. It’s possible that they even witnessed Jesus’ baptism without realizing, at the time, what they were seeing.

Now they want to follow Jesus rather than John, and Jesus is willing to accept them as his disciples. But he isn’t quite ready to launch his public ministry, so after awhile the brothers return to what they know best: fishing on the Sea of Galilee.

They are simply marking time. They know that when the time is right, Jesus will fetch them. The time comes when word gets out that John has been put in prison. Jesus moves his home base from Nazareth to the fishing village of Capernaum, and one morning he comes calling.

Peter and Andrew are in their fishing boat not far from shore. They probably have fished all night and are letting down their nets for the last cast of the day. They look up, and there stands Jesus on the shore. “Follow me,” he says, “and I will make you fish for people.”

It’s the call they’ve been waiting for. They pull up their nets and row for shore.

Not far away, Jesus encounters two more fishermen, James and John. These are the Zebedee brothers. They’re business partners with the Johnson brothers. (Luke 5:10) We’re never told how Jesus first meets them, but he knows them well enough right off to call them Sons of Thunder. Whether that’s because old man Zebedee is loud, or his sons are, or all three of them, we can’t be sure.

The brothers are sitting in a boat with their dad, doing what fishermen do in their down time, mending their nets. “Follow me,” Jesus says, and they’re gone. We might imagine them saying, “Keep bringing in those fish, Dad. We’re off to bring in people.”

We also might imagine Zebedee feeling abandoned and resentful, but that’s unlikely. Soon, in fact, his wife will join his sons traveling with Jesus, and the income from Zebedee’s fishing business will help support their ministry. We never learn the name of Zebedee’s wife, but she is a loyal follower and companion of Jesus, and she is there when Jesus goes to the cross. (Matthew 27:56).

Retold this way, what does this story suggest about following Jesus?

One thing it suggests, right out of the gate, is that none of us has any business engaging in the stereotypical style of “evangelism” where you grab ’em by the collar and demand “Do you know Jesus?” That’s not evangelism. That’s spiritual abuse. Evangelism must be an extension of relationship. If a call to follow Jesus does not arise from a relationship, it’s most likely an abusive ego trip.

And we’re looking for far more than a stereotyped prayer accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior. We’re calling people to new life. They must be allowed to give this serious consideration.

The Johnson and Zebedee brothers understand this already. They know that Jesus is calling them to an adventure that has several dimensions. First, he is calling them to a special relationship with him. He is calling them to discipleship.

A disciple is an apprentice, a learner, a student. Jesus will be their master, and they will follow him. Literally, they will follow his steps and his actions. They will imitate him and learn from him. If they do it right, as an ancient saying goes, they will be covered with the dust of their master. They will follow him so closely that any dust he kicks up will cover them as a mark of their dedication.

They won’t understand it at first, but Jesus also is calling them to a new relationship with God. Through Jesus, they will meet God face to face. Through Jesus, they will learn what God is really like. They will learn that God loves them with a burning, passionate love, and that God yearns for them to respond in kind.

Jesus also calls them to a new vocation. Before, they cast nets for fish. Now, they fish for people. They are evangelists, proclaimers of the Good News of God’s friendship and love. Whatever else they may do in their lives, their primary task now is to live for Jesus.

They will always be disciples, learning from Jesus. But they also are apostles. That is, they are sent out in the name of Jesus to recruit and train other disciples. Though we sometimes try to separate apostleship and discipleship into two entirely different roles, apostolic action is always the logical extension of discipleship. Apostleship always springs from discipleship. At home or abroad, disciples always act to make new disciples.

So when Jesus calls these men to follow him, he’s calling them to a new relationship, new identity and a new vocation. That call extends to us as well. Jesus also calls us to new relationship, new identity, and new vocation. He calls us not only to be his disciples but also his apostles. That means that we are called to not only learn from Jesus but to help recruit and train other disciples.

We don’t have to drop everything to do that. If you think that an apostle is sent out into the mission field, consider that the mission field is probably as close as your back yard. You don’t have to go to Africa or China to find people who don’t know Jesus. All you have to do I look down the street.

And you don’t have to make a career out of it. Jesus calls only a relative few to serve in that way. To most people, Jesus simply says, “Whatever you do, do it for me, and for the glory of God. If you’re an Uber driver, drive for me, and treat your passengers as if they were me. If you provide care for children, care for them in my name, and treat them as if they were me. If you farm, farm for me, and treat the land and the animals as if they were mine. If you’re retired, accept your leisure as God’s gift to you and find some way of using your time to be God’s gift to others.”

That means, too, that we are all evangelists, tellers of the Good News of Jesus. Most of the time, we don’t preach sermons. We preach with our lives. We preach with our actions. We preach with the love we show others.

And when the moment comes that people inquire, “Why are you such a caring person?” we are ready to make our simple testimony. We are prepared to say, “I’m a Christian. I’m a disciple of Jesus. I follow him.” And then tell why you follow hi.

I’ve said that we don’t have to drop everything to follow Jesus, and that’s true. But there is a cost that we must weigh. That’s where we’ll turn next week. We’ll tail Jesus as he goes about proclaiming the Good News of God, while his disciples dog his dust. “Turn your lives around,” he keeps saying, “because I am bringing God’s kingdom right to your door.”

And that’s where it is. Right at your door.

A message delivered February 2, 2020, at Edgerton United Methodist Church, from Matthew 4:12-13, 17-23.

It’s Still God’s Dream

On August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington for Civil Rights, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial. During the speech, his wife Coretta Scott King said, “it seemed as if the Kingdom of God appeared. But it only lasted for a moment.”

It only lasted for a moment.

Fifty-seven years later, we need to ask why the moment did not last longer. Fifty-seven years later, we need to ask how far we have come on that long road to racial reconciliation and what King called “beloved community.” Fifty-seven years later, we need to ask why the dream remains only a dream.

Surely we have made progress. When you remember the time, or read accounts of it or watch newsreel footage of the marches and the vicious opposition to them – the beatings, the bombings, the lynchings, the cold-blooded murders, and the almost inconceivable torrent of hatred …

When you consider all of that, it is hard to believe that this is the same country, so primitive and so backward do some of the attitudes appear by contrast to the apparent openness of our society today.

And yet this is the same country where many Americans still cannot abide the notion that for eight years we had a black president. It’s time to take back our country, they said, and by that they meant that it was time to get that black man out of the White House. So they replaced him with a slick white demagogue with orange hair.

That Obama fellow, you know, was hardly a proper president, because his African-born father committed the unpardonable sin: He married a white woman from Kansas.

Martin Luther King Jr. called racism “the hound of hell that dogs the tracks of our civilization.” It was his dream that even this hound might be redeemed by God’s love. Nearly sixty years later, the dream remains unrealized because of the power of human sin. But King knew, and we know, that the Hound of Heaven won’t give up until the hound of hell learns to heel through the power of God’s grace.

King’s dream was not only that people of color would find social justice in America but that all people of all races would be reconciled and live in harmony in beloved community. What he dreamed of, simply, was the Kingdom of God made manifest on earth. That is our dream, too, because that is God’s dream planted in us.

King new that racism and segregation are wrong because they are destructive to all of God’s people. They are physically and morally destructive to the people of color who are victimized, and they are morally destructive to white people who unfairly benefit from their victimization. Even more, racism and segregation are wrong because they are counter to God’s will.

God’s will is what God wants, what God pursues, and what God wants us to pursue as well. What God wants, what God pursues, and what God wants us to pursue, is reconciliation – reconciliation with God and reconciliation with all other human beings.

What God wants, what God pursues, and what God wants us to pursue, is the creation of beloved community.

This is community where people can live together without fear. This is community where people are valued not for the color of their skin or who their parents were or how much money they have in the bank, but rather for the content of their character – and that is determined primarily by their relationship with God.

This is community that is attentive not to the interests of a few but to the interests of all; community that is dedicated to the flourishing of each and every one of its members; community that defines itself not by who it keeps out but by who it keeps in.

The goal of such community is true integration – not merely the members of various groups living side by side as separate but equal partners but rather living together, as one, in an inclusive society bound together by love.

The only way to create such community, King said, is to make love the center of our lives. The only way to achieve beloved community, King knew, is to make God the center of our lives.

God has to be the center of beloved community because it won’t work without God, and because it is, in fact, God’s community. It is nothing less than the Kingdom of God established on earth, as it already is in heaven. It is the New Jerusalem that comes down to earth from heaven. It is the goal of human existence. It is God’s dream for humanity.

We tend to agree with the dream, but we have reservations, don’t we? So many of us object, “I’m not racist.” And we may not be, as individuals, one to another.

But we live in a society that is racist to the core. We have inherited and internalized belief in white supremacy. Based on that belief, our social system kept black people in chains for hundreds of years, and in the century and a half since slavery was abolished, has devised new and more devious means to keep them in bondage.

Whether we acknowledge it or not, we who are white benefit from that system. We can be satisfied merely to feel guilty about that, or we can work to fix the system. That’s a daunting challenge. We know what happens to people to try to fix the system. See what happened to Jesus. See what happened to Martin Luther King Jr. See what happens to so many others, every day.

Still, we know that a gospel that accepts this status quo is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.

A gospel that fails to confront racism is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.

A gospel that fails to confront the causes of poverty and inequality is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.

A gospel that fails to confront social and political systems that are designed to keep people in lifelong servitude is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“I have a dream,” Martin Luther King said. When you read the Bible with open eyes and without racist blinders, you know where that dream comes from. You know where King got that dream. He got it from God.

Because God has a dream.

God dreams that every child will be loved.

That no child will go hungry.

That no child will be abused.

That no child will be used in any way.

That all children will be allowed to grow strong and true.

That all children will learn to exercise their minds as well as their bodies and that all will be allowed to become valuable contributors to their communities.

God has a dream.

That every person who is capable of labor can seek and find dignified and rewarding work.

That every person is appreciated because of who he or she is as a child of God.

That no person is appreciated more, or less, than another because of family or racial or ethnic background, or any other artificial barrier we can erect against them.

That every person treats every other person as lovingly as he or she wants to be treated.

God has a dream.

That parents are honored by their children.

That no lives are cut short by murder.

That spouses are faithful to the one they’ve promised to love and cherish all the days of their lives.

That no one attempts to gain by theft, or fraud, or deceit.

That no one gossips about another.

That no one desires what belongs to another.

God has a dream.

That people give God glory, and God alone.

That people find their true identity in God and are fulfilled in God and happy and complete in God.

That people honor God by living the way God created them to live.

God has a dream.

That God will dwell among us, at home with us, in intimate communion.

That God will wipe every tear from our eyes.

That death and destruction will be no more.

That mourning and crying and pain will be no more.

That we will so live by God’s light that we won’t even need the light of the sun or the moon to guide our steps at night.

God has a dream.

That we will respond lovingly to God’s love.

That we will love God so much that we will let God transform us into the very likeness in which we were created – the image and likeness of God.

That we will learn to love others so much that we will live with them, cheek by jowl, in beloved community.

That we will so yearn for this community to become real in our lives that we will pray for it and work for it and keep on praying for it and working for it until it becomes a reality.

God has a dream.

That every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain and hill made low.

The uneven ground shall be made level and the rough places a plain.

We will build a highway in the desert for our God.

Justice will roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Messengers of good news will proclaim, “God reigns!”

The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together!

God has a dream.

The road toward that dream is long and often hard. It’s easy to become discouraged and lose hope. But because we know the dreamer, we know that one day the dream will come true.

And so we remember the words of an old song from the black church tradition.

I don’t feel no ways tired.

I’ve come too far from where I started from.

Nobody told me that the road would be easy.

I don’t believe God brought me this far to leave me.

I’ve been sick. I’ve been in trouble.

I’ve been friendless. I’ve been lonely.

But I don’t believe God brought me this far to leave me.

God has a dream, and God won’t give up until that dream is made real for us all. Work for it, wait for it, believe in it!

Amen!

This message was delivered Jan. 26, 2020, at Edgerton United Methodist Church, from the texts Isaiah 52.7, Isaiah 40.3-5 and Amos 5.24.

Now on Kindle

I am happy to report that a Kindle version of my book Keeping Christmas is now available at Amazon.

Amazon lists it at $9.99 for the Kindle version and $14.83 for paperback.

That’s especially good because Amazon’s original price for the paperback was $17, or list price. The new price is a lot more reasonable.

Meantime, Cokesbury (Cokesbury.com) still has the best price — $12.29 for the paperback.

Cokesbury also sells the hardback version for $25.29, a substantial reduction from list price.

Christmas 2019 is past, and even the 12-day Christmas season is over — but that’s no reason to stop buying or recommending the book!

There are, of course, a few things I would change, and some typos that sneaked through the proofreading team. But it’s a good book, and I’m proud of it, and (he said modestly), you oughta read it.

Time to Split? Part 2

A plan is in the works to save the United Methodist Church by splitting it – saving us from never-ending wrangling over human sexuality by separating the warring camps entirely.

Nobody is dancing for joy about this proposal, not even those who put it together. But it has a couple of things going for it.

Number one, it’s a negotiated settlement involving key representatives of the major constituencies: so-called traditionalists, centrists and progressives. These people are formally committed to making it work. So this thing might actually lead us to an “amicable” division.

It puts some hope in our hearts. It’s a light at the end of a long tunnel.

Number two, it gets the fundamentalists out of the UMC, on their own, where they’ve always wanted to be. Now they can mess up their own church and leave mine alone.

It should let us say goodbye to Good News (always bad news), the Wesleyan Covenant Association (almost as Wesleyan at heart as Franklin Graham), and the Institute on Religion and Democracy (a right-wing hate group whose mission is to destroy all faithful Christian witness in the U.S.).

Sure, we have to pay a huge bribe to make them go away – $38 million in all. (That’s $25 million directly plus $13 million for missions, made possible by their decision to “forgo” receiving those funds directly.)

But it may be worth it to be rid of them. Since its inception, Good News and its allies have been looking for some issue – any issue – to split the church. They finally settled on homosexuality as the best wedge to do it. The ploy appears to have worked.

So the big tent of United Methodism will shrink into two (or, possibly, but not likely, more) smaller tents. The UMC will have to scale back its mission and ministry efforts drastically. But we were already going to have to do that anyway, because the bureaucracy has just gotten too big to support, and we are still losing members at a frightening pace, partly because of the prolonged sexuality debate.

Remember the “Imagine No Malaria” campaign? Already it’s been reduced to “Imagine Less Malaria.” We won’t be able to eradicate disease any more than we were able to eradicate division. But we will continue to do what we can. Our global mission impact will suffer, but it will not disappear. We will be a smaller United Methodist Church. But we will continue to serve our world parish in the tradition of John Wesley.

It’s beyond sad. I have been a part of this church since 1974, when I was introduced to it by Linda, my wife to be. Since then I have served it as an active lay person, and since 1993, in various roles as clergy. If you can love an institution, I love this church.

But it’s not the church it used to be. It has been infiltrated by insidious forces that have brought about this schism for their own agenda. It is no longer possible living with these people. They want their way and only their way. Maybe this way, they can have it, and the rest of us can serve faithfully without their distracting influence.

Yeah, we might have to fiddle with the name. We were never really fully “united.” So the name no longer seems appropriate, does it? Will the other side really call themselves “Traditional” Methodists? Aren’t there truth in packaging laws anymore? How about “Radically Separatist Methodists”?

There’s a long way to go before this thing gets settled. In the meantime, as always, pray for the mission and ministry of the United Methodist Church.