John's Musings About Whatever

What I Learned in a Decade

2012-02-26T15:47:00.000-05:00

What I Learned in a Decade
Text: Isaiah 55:10-12
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
February 26, 2012

Today, after Worship, we are having lunch and a party next door. If I say that I learned ‘nothing’ in the last decade, we could end Worship early and go have fun. That would be a bad idea, on one hand, because when people come to Worship, they expect to actually have a Worship Service, but additionally, it would be very untrue. I have learned a good deal in the last decade, some of which I’d like to share with you this morning.

In many ways the most critical role a pastor plays is as a preacher. Preaching is a 15 minute event on Sunday mornings to the average person. For those of us who are ministers, and who take preaching seriously, preaching is the most time consuming thing we do each week. It requires reading, praying, thinking, feeling, and writing. A professor at Lancaster Theological Seminary, in a sermon, once said that theologians think about everything all the time. That is acutely accurate and pretty much summarized preaching. Life is one long sermon illustration.

In today’s scripture, from Second Isaiah, the prophet is speaking about preaching from God’s perspective. God sends rain and snow down from Heaven to water the earth. That water does not return until the earth has been nourished and brings forth plants which generate the energy that puts moisture back in the air. Today’s choir anthem is based on this text and it is my favorite anthem of all. It is a powerful statement about preaching. Preaching means something.

Eugene Peterson in his book, The Pastor: A Memoir tells a wonderful story about his son, Leif.

Leif said to him one day: Novelists only write one book. They find their voice, their book, and write it over and over. William Faulkner wrote one book. Charles Dickens wrote one book. Anne Tyler wrote one book. Ernest Hemingway wrote one book. Willa Cather wrote one book.” I wasn’t quite sure I agreed, but he obviously knew more about the subject than I did, so I didn’t say much. A few days later, he said, “Remember what I said about novelists only writing one book? You only preach one sermon.” I protested. “I don’t repeat myself in the pulpit. I work hard on these sermons. Every week is new, the world changes, the lives of these people are changing constantly. And each sermon is new, these scriptures personalized into their language and circumstances. I live with these scriptures; I live with these people. My sermon is a way for them to hear their stories integrated into God’s story, or God’s story integrated into their stories. Either way it’s a story in the making—new details every week, new in the telling, new in the making.”.

Not long after that, after Worship, they were having lunch and Leif said:

“Well, Dad, that was your sermon. I’ve been listening to that sermon all my life. Your one sermon, your signature sermon.”
When they were taking their son back to the airport his son said he was changing churches as he was tired of the church he was attending. About three months later they asked him if he had found a new church and his response was, ““No. I tried a bunch of them but I’m back at First Church. None of those other pastors had found their sermon.” After his son told him this, Peterson got it, he understood.

The art of preaching, I think, for most of us, is finding that sermon. Not all that long ago I was thinking that there are things I say a lot, themes that run through many of my sermons. I was not able to articulate what that was until someone shared what Peterson had said, and until I read this section in Peterson’s book. One of the things I’ve learned in the last decade about preaching was this. I found my sermon.

The second thing I have learned is the spiritual gift of hospitality.

In traditions shaped by the Bible, hospitality is a moral imperative. There is an expectation that God’s people are people who will welcome strangers and treat them justly and well runs throughout the entire Bible. This theme begins in Genesis and runs through every book of the Bible in a variety of ways. Calling ourselves a people of God demands that we offer hospitality.

St. Marks has taught me about the gift of hospitality in ways that I never saw before.

In my first church, a congregation where I received 10 years experience in 19 months, there was a festival called Hartslog Day that took place every year. My church was on the main road in a downtown with only two roads. Right next door to our church was a United Methodist Church. There was a debate in the Church Council about having our doors open so people could use the rest room. There was one over-riding question in the room: What were the Methodists doing? If they were keeping their doors open, we’d have to so as not to look too bad. If they were staying locked, we could. The goal of the group was to keep the building closed.

I was furious and argued that it didn’t matter what any other church in town was doing. We had to do the right thing because it was the right thing. They argued back that all their visitors would run up the water bill and may steal the bathroom tissue.

It turned out the church next door was more hospitable than our church was so the doors were kept open. Several years ago when withdrew from the United Church of Christ because they felt the denomination was too welcoming. Hospitality was something that church struggled with. Actually, gaining 10 years experience in 19 months demonstrates there were other struggles as well.

St. Marks, on the other hand, demonstrates incredible hospitality. When we made a concerted effort to assure everyone was welcome, people left. That was difficult on everyone, but people hung together. Hospitality is a spiritual discipline we do not take lightly, even if it means we have had bathroom tissue stolen and higher water bills.

Yesterday was the Neighborhood Health Fair. Hundreds of people came and were treated with dignity and respect and were served in a variety of ways. It was hard to do, but Hospitality is a spiritual discipline we do not take lightly.

Our Clothes Closet is now up the road as our renovation is taking place. With the help of Central Christian Church, we are able to keep this ministry going. Hospitality is a spiritual discipline we do not take lightly.

The Soup Kitchen is moving across the street next week as our renovations keep going forward. We cannot stop feeding the hungry as Hospitality is a spiritual discipline we do not take lightly.

While I have always understood the importance of hospitality, St. Marks has made me realize who crucial it is as a spiritual discipline.

Hospitality is often confused as being about rules as to how to do things. Do we shake hands well? Offer coffee? Greet people nicely? All of these things are important, but they are not the core of hospitality. Hospitality is a spiritual discipline that is a way of being.

One of the core things in Judaism is the Law, but often people don’t realize that the concept of Jewish Law was not so much about the rules, but about a way of being. The Hebrew word for law is Halakhah which is translated as either a way of being of a path that one walks. It is not translated as RULES, but attitude.

I believe this has been something we have learned together. Keeping one’s rest rooms open or welcoming people comes from a way of being, a path a church is on more than a set of rules for hospitality.

In the recent newspaper article by Dale Moss about our Clothes Closet he said that we were a smaller church with the heart of a mega-church and that is because of the heart of hospitality that drives us. It is something we have grown into together.

So these are two things I have learned in a decade. It is about finding my sermon and growing together in a spirit of hospitality.

If you’ve been here a long time you’ll know that there is usually always a third thing. But this time, in this sermon, the third point is going to be left blank. It will be for all that we have to learn from one another in the future.

.

Love and Disclaimers

2012-02-24T10:21:00.000-05:00

Ever notice how we LOVE to use disclaimers to give ourselves breaks from really loving others.

I’ve often thought about this and how easy it is to become disrespectful of others. I’ve done it, and I’m sure most everyone has done it.

I love the use of disclaimers, like using disclaimers make things okay.

Sometimes we’ll say something like, “With all due respect,” and then show a complete lack of respect for a person; presuming of course, by saying, ‘with all due respect,” made it okay.

Or, “I don’t mean to offend you, but,” and then they offend you.

Or, “I really shouldn’t be saying this, but,” and then they say it.

My favorite, of course, is when people say, “I say this in all Christian love,” and then they eviscerate whoever they were speaking to.

The premise of course is this. If you say a disclaimer, you can be as disrespectful as you want to be. This is, of course, completely bogus. Love is patient and kind. Patience and kindness demands we be respectful of others. It doesn’t matter if they are a spouse or partner, child, friend, relative, classmate, church-mate, stranger on the street. Paul’s words yell out to us to be patient and kind. It means that whoever we meet in life, whoever we interact with, is a person we must treat with respect. That is what the mandate of love means.

Maybe we need to be cautious about how we use the word, 'but.'

Okay, that's all. I didn't mean for this post to be so personal, but....

Ash Wednesday Meditation

2012-02-23T10:50:00.002-05:00

Every year this day, Ash Wednesday, rolls around and we begin the season of Lent. This is a season of 40 days plus Sundays that we remember Jesus’ 40 days in the desert preparing for his ministry to the world.

The number 40 in the Bible is a very symbolic number about testing.

When it rained and Noah took to the ark, it rained for 40 days and 40 nights.

When Moses went to the mountain to receive the 10 Commandments he stayed there for 40 days.

The Israelites wandered through the desert for 40 years.

And Jesus went into the desert for 40 days to prepare for his ministry. In each and every time, the number 40 was a time of testing and, in so many ways, a time of preparation for a new life on the other end.

Lent is ultimately about three things.

It is a time of repentance.

In verse 3 of Psalm 51 it says:

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

Most of us are aware that we sin. In our heart of hearts we all know what we do well and where we fall short. Lent is a time to really reflect on this and try and grow away from sin. Often we look to turn away from sin, but often it’s easy to turn back. Growing away from sin often seems to a better way to approach it. It’s taking one step at a time toward a new life. Lent is a season of repentance.

Lent is also a season for renewal and renewal is a part of living a life of ongoing conversion. How can we make ourselves better?

Maybe it’s reading more or praying more or taking up a new hobby. Or exercising more. I heard something recently that was sort of a unique way of looking at things. We have become a society well versed in energy conservation----but that energy conservation is not what you are thinking. We conserve our OWN energy. We rarely ever have to run and even don’t have to walk very much any longer. Maybe one step we can make is to begin to use more of our energy and make ourselves move more. I know it’s something I’m planning on doing.

Lastly, Lent is a time of community. It is a time to get together, pray and study and spend time with your family of faith. It is a time to love deeply and grow together.

I watched a video on the Internet about Ash Wednesday and it had a clever little thing in it. It said that the classic American hero is the Lone Ranger. He is alone. He is self-made, and he is independent. The classic biblical hero, however, is Tonto. Tonto is part of a tribe, community minded, and dependent.

We often like to think we are clever, self-made, and independent, but when we do so we leave God out of the picture.

There’s a wonderful story set in the future when a group of scientists approach God and tell God that God is no longer needed. They scientists have figured out how to make human beings from the dirt, just like God did.

So God said, “Okay, make a person for me out of dirt.”

The scientists said, “Well, we need some dirt.”

To which God replied, “Create your own.”

This is the season we are beginning. It is a season of repentance, renewal, and community. It is also a season of dirt. The dirt, the ashes remind us that we are dust, and fully reliant on God.

The Power of Negative Thinking

2012-02-22T14:50:00.002-05:00

Years ago one of the most popular books was written by Norman Vincent Peale, and it was entitled, The Power of Positive Thinking. Years later, another minister, Robert Schuler wrote about possibility thinking which was, in essence, an updated version of Peale’s positive thinking. The most current offshoot of this in religion has been instances of the prosperity Gospel which gives a sense that if you have faith and are positive, you will be successful. Positive thinking is, if nothing else, a popular concept.

It’s difficult to say, however, that positive thinking has much power. In fact, it often seems like it’s quite the opposite. Negative thinking, getting people to be negative appears to be the path of power.

Some years ago, when Bill Clinton was the American President his administration was watching events in Russia with a sense of horror. Boris Yeltsin, the non-Communist President was behind in the polling to his opponent who was an avowed Communist. The fear was that if Yeltsin lost the election Russia would become a Communist country again----and no one wanted that. A decision was made.

Clinton sent a group of political advisors to Russia to run Yeltsin’s campaign. They essentially kept Yeltsin from view and ran a brutally negative campaign against his opponent. Yeltsin began to rise in the polls-----so much so that he began to make speeches again only to see his poll numbers collapse. They kept him from view and ran their negativity against Yeltsin’s opponent. When the election was over, Boris Yeltsin who, by any stretch of the imagination was not a good President, was re-elected. It had nothing to do with his skill or talent, but only the skill and talent of those who tore his opponent down. It was an example of the power of negative thinking.

There is great power in negative thinking. Negativity wins elections. Often the secret of winning elections is not so much promoting how good your own candidate is, but how bad the opponent is. There is no need for honesty either. Most people, when given negative information, tend to believe it and are willing to overlook little things like facts.

Being fair, let’s look at the two previous Presidents. President George W. Bush was given the label of being less than intelligent. He was mocked for this and often taken lightly. Truthfully, he didn’t speak well, but there are well spoken fools and mumbling geniuses, so that doesn’t tell us much. There is something, however, that may give an indication of his intelligence. He graduated from Yale University and then received a graduate degree from Harvard University.

Yale and Harvard are two of the most academically challenging universities in the nation and he graduated from both of them. Pass this information on to people and they will make a comment that either Yale and Harvard are bad schools or Bush was ‘passed’ because of his Dad. Despite the fact that he went to these two universities and graduated, his intelligence is still challenged because of negativity pointed in his direction.

Then there is President Barack Obama. A significant number of people believe that he was born in Africa. The so-called ‘birther’ movement became a real and significant movement of which there are still a large number of people. He provided a document of live birth, typically given from Hawaii and produced newspaper birth announcements. Not good enough. He finally produced a long form sent to him specially from Hawaii and it showed, TA DA, that he was born in Hawaii. Despite proving it he is still considered to be a foreign born President by many.

It is widely thought that he is Muslim. His father was a non-practicing Muslim but there is no evidence Obama ever was. There is evidence, however, that he was Baptized and married at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago by Jeremiah Wright. Whether one approves of Wright or not, Wright is a United Church of Christ minister and, if one takes the time to read some of his book and listen to most of his sermons, a very committed Christian. Obama is a Christian but popular opinion often seems to be otherwise. Like Bush, this is still challenged because of negativity point in his direction.

Sadly, within Christianity this kind of negativity is also rampant. It is breathtakingly easy to bash people who are not like us. It is easy for people who are not Roman Catholic to bash Catholics for what they perceive Roman Catholics to believe, as opposed to what they really believe. It is easy for people who are Mainline Protestant to bash people who are unlike them and very easy for Evangelical Protestants to bash other Protestants. There was a recent debate on whether members of The Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints were Christians or not. Many Mormon theologians were shouted down by people who did not really want to hear what was being said about Mormonism. Facts have no relevance in the face of negativity.

Negativity has power that even facts cannot overcome. Negativity is ecumenical and bipartisan. No matter what one’s religious background or lack thereof, or no matter what one’s politics happen to be, trashing ‘other’ is acceptable and popular and has great power.

But power can be fleeting. Power is having the ability to coerce people to do what you want them to do. If you coerce people to love tenderly it’s a positive thing; if you coerce people to hate with a passion, it’s a negative thing. But all power is external. Power is given over to people or to ideas by others. By us. If people respond to negative thinking and are willing to be negative, no matter what the facts may indicate, they give in to power that is hurtful and often destructive. The only way to make negative thinking powerless is to cease giving in to it.

The change begins by listening and listening some more, and doing research beyond what we normally presume. The change begins by not maintaining our thoughts contrary to evidence. The change begins within our own hearts and minds. It is a challenge for everyone. In all honesty, it is a challenge for me, too. But it’s a challenge worth taking on.

Being Definitive About God (or lack thereof) is a Risky Business

2012-02-21T10:54:00.002-05:00

This past week has put God in the news.

Magician, comedian, and entertainer, Penn Jillette wrote a column in which he firm states, ‘there is no God.’ His premise, of course, is that belief in God is irrational and because of all the evil done in God’s name, it places the responsibility of evil on God without blaming on a non-existent entity. He states that such things as forgiveness come to us because of human charity or forgetfulness and that when people suffer we do not need outside explanations as to why things like this happen. Needless to say, if one has faith in God, Mr. Jillette’s statements can be seen as a personal affront.

Former Pennsylvania Senator, Rick Santorum, who is a current Presidential candidate first bashed Mainline Protestantism and then stated that President Obama’s theology is a phony theology. Considering that when President Obama has spoken of faith his theology has sounded very much Mainline Protestant and very United Church of Christ, which makes sense since his church background was in the United Church of Christ. Needless to say, if one is a Mainline Protestant and, more specifically, a member of the United Church of Christ, Mr. Santorum’s statement can be seen as a personal affront.

Having said this, I cannot say that I am going to lose any sleep over the fact that neither Mr. Jillette nor Mr. Santorum agree with my theological worldview. Mr. Jillette sees me as believing in little more than a fairy tale and Mr. Santorum seems me as having a phony theology. They are both entitled to their opinions as I am entitled to my opinion. I will also not attack either of their theological worldviews for the same reason I don’t believe they had any right presuming mine is a fairy tale of phony. Religious faith, it seems, has some rationality with a great sense of irrationality. And irrationality is not always a bad thing.

In Carl Jung’s personality type functions judgment is either seen as Thinking or Feeling. Thinking is often seen as objective, totally rational, and fact based. Feeling is often seen as subjective, personal more than rational, and on values. While theology is a rational subject it often uses faith, which is actually more irrational, as its starting point. Theology often attempts to articulate what faith cannot.

In stating this, I am not stating that only crazy irrational people have faith. Many people of faith are highly educated and can articulate, theologically, very serious issues concerning faith. The thing about faith is, however, is that it ultimately boils down to personal values. It always does. At some point, all people of faith come to that spot in the third Indiana Jones movie when all he can do is to step out in faith. That ‘leap of faith’ is a reality.

Which brings me to my point----No one can be definitive about God. We cannot even be definitive about a lack of God. Jillette says that you cannot prove a negative which is true; but with God you cannot prove a positive either. If one believes in God, and I do believe in God, that last step always needs to be a step out in faith. We can reason our way to a limited understanding of God, but we cannot definitely prove that God exists and we cannot prove God’s definitive will or worldview on anything. There is no one of any particular religion or denomination of any particular religion who can speak definitively about God. Christians claim that the only one who could ever do that was Jesus Christ as God’s Son, who was, according to our faith, God Incarnate. Anyone who believes they totally understand the totality of Jesus by reading the Gospels is missing the key point of the Gospels. Much of Jesus is beyond our comprehension.

To me, as a Christian Minister, this is good news. I like and appreciate a God who is beyond human understanding. To me, a God who I can totally understand is not worth having as a God. God is bigger and wiser, and better than any of our projections. That is, in my mind, a good thing.

For Mr. Jillette my faith in God is only a fairy tale and he is entitled to his opinion. Mr. Santorum believes my faith to be phone and he is entitled to his opinion. People who disagree with them, however, are also entitled to their opinions without ridicule as being fools or phonies.

Radical Hospitality

2012-02-17T21:37:00.000-05:00

I haven't been blogging enough and think I need to get back to doing so. Bear with me.

I have been working on a sabbatical grant proposal through Lilly. The process has been really good for me. I determined I wanted to develop a them of hospitality and spirituality. My goal is to visit several Benedictine monasteries and spend time there learning about their hospitality and spirituality. St. Benedict saw a great spiritual benefit in hospitality and the monasteries all extend hospitality to visitors----and have done so since their inception.

Churches ought to be places of hospitality. Sometimes we do so by providing nice places to sit, some places offer coffee or snacks, the temperature is comfortable, and the bulletins are readable. All good things. Oh, and someone shakes your hand and says, "Hi! Welcome!"

But do we really welcome people? I have been told that my church is RADIAL and that I belong to a RADICAL denomination and that RADICAL label is usually always about one thing. We welcome everyone. Period. Slam dunk. And some of the 'everyone's' happen to be gay. This makes us radical and unusual because we accept everyone as they are and don't feel a need to 'fix' people who really don't have any desire or reason to be fixed. We accept people as they are and extend radical hospitality to everyone.

This is what makes us radical or odd or unusual. I wonder why, however, we are so unusual. I have been lectured, over the years, by people angry that we, I, am promoting sinful behavior. Of course, all the lecturers were, like me, sinful people also. I never felt and do not feel we promote sinful behavior. We simply promote the Gospel of Jesus Christ which embraces and loves everyone. We extend radical hospitality even though it's really not all that radical. We are simply doing what Jesus asked us to do.

Too Wonderful to Be Silent---Sunday's Sermon

2012-02-12T23:51:00.002-05:00

Too Wonderful to Be Silent
Text: Mark 1:40-45
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
February 12, 2012

It was 1873, and Dr. Armauer Hansen of Norway had astounding news for the world: leprosy was caused by a bacterium (Mycobacterium leprae). Until then, the disease was thought to be from a curse or sinful ways. The disease was renamed and called Hansen’s disease and is now readily treated----but it rarely afflicts people.

Modern medicine knows that leprosy is spread when an untreated infected person coughs or sneezes (but not by sexual contact or pregnancy). However, leprosy is not very contagious; approximately 95% of people have natural immunity to the disease. People with leprosy who are treated with medication do not need to be isolated from society. (Historically, people with leprosy were sent to "lepers' colonies" on remote islands or in special hospitals.)

In Jesus’ day, however, leprosy was a cursed disease.

People were isolated and shunned by society.

People suffered greatly because their nerve endings died and they couldn’t feel anything, making them prey to all sorts of parasites, etc.

They were also condemned by society because leprosy was seen as a curse which was a punishment for sin, dreadful sin. A person afflicted with leprosy was perceived as a horrible sinner----at least to the people around them. There was never any thought that it was a random affliction and had nothing to do with the moral conduct of a person.

So it is that a leper comes to Jesus begging to be healed. Jesus is moved with compassion and heals the man and tells him to go give thanks to God according to the prescriptions of Moses. But Jesus also has a warning----don’t tell anyone who healed you.

Two things were at stake because a healing like this was going to cause a huge response.

For one, any chance of Jesus going anywhere quietly was going to end. People would swarm him, asking for help.

Secondly, there were going to be questions. Lepers were sinners. Lepers were recipients of God’s harshest judgment. No compassion was in order towards lepers. They were outcasts to society----they were the people no one loved----they were God’s most hated people. Who did Jesus think he was to offer compassion?

But...

The man who is healed cannot hold it in. He announces to the world that Jesus had healed him. When the news is too wonderful to be silent he can’t do anything except share it with the world.

There are all sorts of lessons in this story of Jesus healing the leper.

The first lesson is about the overwhelming generosity and compassion of Jesus. Jesus loved people first and foremost. On occasion, sometimes we get it.

Here's a story about Fiorello LaGuardia who was mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression and all of W.W.II. He was adored by many New Yorkers who took to calling him the "Little Flower," because he was so short and always wore a carnation in his lapel.

He was a colorful character -- he rode the New York City fire trucks, raided city "speak easies" with the police department, took entire orphanages to baseball games, and when the New York newspapers went on strike, he got on the radio and read the Sunday funnies to the kids.

One bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter's husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving.

But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges. "It's a real bad neighborhood, your Honor," the man told the mayor. "She's got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson."

LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said, "I've got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions. Ten dollars or ten days in jail."

The fine, by today’s standards, would have been in the neighborhood of $165.00 which, for a person with no money, is an impossible amount.

But even as he pronounced sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill and tossed it into his famous hat, saying, "Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents, eight dollars in today’s money, for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr.Bailiff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant."

The following day, New York City newspapers reported that $47.50, a bit more than $775.00 in today’s money, was turned over to a bewildered woman who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren. Fifty cents of that amount was contributed by the grocery store owner himself, while some seventy petty criminals, people with traffic violations, and New York City policemen, each of whom had just paid fifty cents for the privilege of doing so, gave the mayor a standing ovation.

Someone beautifully said:

"Sympathy sees and says, 'I'm sorry.'

Compassion sees and says, 'I'll help.'

When we learn the difference, we can make a difference. When we learn the difference, we begin to understand Jesus.

Jesus reached out with great compassion, a compassion filled with justice, but always a justice based on love.

A second lesson is about the leper. He has to share the good news with people. He is so filled with gratitude for what Jesus had done for him, that he began to proclaim it to anyone and everyone who would hear him.

I think, at times, our approach to the issue of faith and gratitude to God is an attitude that response to God is good, response to God is appropriate, but we shouldn’t get carried away.

Think about this for a second. Who have you shared your faith with of late?

If you like it here at St. Marks, have you invited someone to come with you----or is that getting carried away?

If you saw someone you didn’t know sitting in the pews around you, did you talk to them, and get to know them as a brother or sister in Christ, or is that getting carried away?

If you like St. Marks, and so many people tell me they love their church, who have you invited lately, or shared with friends and family about how much you love your church?

Ponder something for a moment. If you eat at a good restaurant do you tell people about it? Do you invite friends and say, “Hey let’s go to dinner there?” Of course!

Or, if you see a great movie, do you tell everyone? Of course.

Or if you love football, do you tell everyone that you love football and that you love your favorite team? I know I do. I drive people crazy talking about the Giants, but you already know that. Of course, sports’ fans always love to talk about their teams.

My point is, of course, that we share excitedly about so many things in our lives but often we don’t share much about church.

Here, however, in the Gospel of Mark is an opposite example. Jesus does not want this man he healed to share this news. For Jesus there were all sorts of reasons for not wanting the leper to share often reasons beyond our comprehension.

But for this man who was healed by Jesus this was too wonderful to be silent. He HAD to share the good news.

The lessons of this story are two-fold.

One is about the goodness and love of God; the other is the fact that the news is too wonderful to keep silent. Let us rejoice in God’s goodness; and share that Good News with others.

It Takes a Church (Sermon Sunday January 29, 2012

2012-01-29T16:11:00.001-05:00

It Takes a Church
Text: 1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
January 29, 2012

You may have come to Worship this morning and listened to the scripture reading about consuming the meat sacrificed to idols and were bewildered. You have never been confronted with worrying about eating food sacrificed to Zeus, Apollo, or Baal. It doesn’t really seem to apply to us very much.

Underlying all of this was a complex issue.

In Corinth there were many temples to idols and people made animal sacrifices to those idols. The temples would then sell the meat to people to consume in a meal or something like that. For followers of the idols the meat was sacred; for others it was merely good meat. People often sacrificed their finest to the idols and so the meat sacrificed to the idols was merely a delicious commodity. So there was the question. Was eating this food a sin?

Many of the Christians in Corinth availed themselves of this. Many things in life change, but people’s love of a good steak hasn’t changed all that much over the centuries.

The problem was, for some within the Christian community, this had become a problem. They saw Christians eating this fine meat and they thought that the people were somehow sinning by worshiping multiple gods. So Paul was presented the problem. Is it a sin to eat this meat that was sacrificed to the idols?

His answer is a brilliant one. Since people had the knowledge that these idols were false idols and since people weren’t worshiping those idols, theoretically they were doing nothing wrong. They were merely enjoying a fine cut of meat. However....

If the people in the community were scandalized by this, if people in the church family didn’t have the knowledge or understanding of this, and if it threatened people’s faith, Paul goes on to say, don’t eat the meat that had been sacrificed to the idols. It was, he states, the responsibility of the strong to support the weak. The church was a family and everyone was responsible for the well being of one another.

There are several lessons in all of this. The first lesson is this. It takes a church to raise a Christian.

There is an old African proverb that says it takes a village to raise a child. This imagery became somewhat controversial because Hillary Clinton used this proverb as a title for her book and the concept became politicized. I will leave that issue up to everyone to discuss among yourselves or debate over lunch.
However, whatever your opinion is about children and villages, please note that it takes a church to raise a Christian. In 2000 years of Christianity, this hasn’t changed very much.

St. Paul wrote this letter to the people in the city of Corinth around 55 AD. The Christian Church of that era bore very little resemblance to the Christian Church of now.

Any organization of the Christian Church would not come until the beginning for the 4th century, almost 250 years later. Early Christianity did not have much of a structure, no real hierarchy, or organization. There was no set way to Worship, there were no hymnals and the New Testament didn’t exist. In fact, the Gospel of Mark, the first Gospel to be written, was actually not even written yet when St. Paul wrote these words. Whenever Christians of our era compare themselves to Christianity of that era, we need to do so recognizing the world and the Christian Church was vastly different.

But there was a constant and it was the need for a community, a family of believers. People needed to take care of one another then, and they need to take care of one another now. The people who are strong in faith are responsible for the people who are weak in faith. That is Paul’s point. We may be people strong in faith, but we are responsible for the well-being of those who are weaker than we are.

It is one of the reasons we raise children in church. It’s interesting to note something.
Several years ago someone wrote to an advice column written by Billy Graham. They said that their 18 year old daughter was going away to college. The parents confessed that they had not paid much attention to their daughter and had not done a really good job raising her. What, they asked, could they do now to assure that their daughter would do well and conduct herself well, when she was out of the nest.

Billy Graham’s answer was really pretty jolting. He said, “Nothing.” They had missed their opportunity to do this. It was now too late and their only hope was to pray that their daughter had learned good values along the way.

One of the reasons we raise children in church is because it is a place where values are taught and lived out. It takes a church to raise a Christian. If we want to live out our Baptismal promises, however, and if we want children to grow up with the values we can teach in church, then it’s important that we see the value of it taking a church to raise a Christian.

And, of course, Paul’s point is this. We are responsible for one another, in church, and responsible for not doing things that negatively impact the faith of others. Which goes back to the food sacrificed to idols.

If the people in the community were scandalized by this, if people in the church family didn’t have the knowledge or understanding of this, and if it threatened people’s faith, Paul goes on to say, don’t eat the meat that had been sacrificed to the idols. It was, he states, the responsibility of the strong to support the weak. The church was a family and everyone was responsible for the well-being of one another.

The second aspect of this is a lesson from St. Paul to know what we are about as a church.

The Christian Church exists and has always existed for one reason. We exist to bring people to Christ. Our Mission Statement about reaching up, out, beyond, and within is built on the premise of bringing people to Christ. Every church in the world, if it’s remotely faithful, exists to bring people to Christ. When we forget this, we forget who and what we are. The world of commerce has taught us huge lessons.

Eastman Kodak, a historic blue-chip American company, recently filed for bankruptcy. The problem is that the company failed because it didn’t adapt to the digital age. Ironically, it was Kodak who developed digital photography but they failed to capitalize on it because they forgot who and what they were.

The problem with Kodak is that they were the leading manufacturer of film. Eastman Kodak thought they were in the yellow film box business. In truth, they were in the picture business and people stopped buying film because most of the cameras on the market were digital. Kodak fell so far behind in making digital cameras that they got crushed. The forgot who and what they were.

They weren’t the first to make this mistake. In the late 1800s, no business matched the financial and political dominance of the railroad.

Then a new discovery came along — the car — and incredibly, the leaders of the railroad industry did not take advantage of their unique position to participate in this transportation development. The automotive revolution was happening all around them, and they did not use their industry dominance to take hold of the opportunity. They couldn’t figure out why people would ride in a car when they could ride on a train instead. They forgot their real purpose----transportation.

In the 1980’s one company in the United States was primed to be the largest manufacturer of computers and software. If I told you that you had to guess, there would be three probably answers over and over again. They would be Microsoft, Apple, and IBM. Microsoft and Apple benefited from the mistake of this company and IBM completely missed the boat.

The company that was primed, however, was Xerox. They had developed the graphic interface system that became the underpinning for the Windows operating system and the Mac operating system. They developed a Word Processing software with a design that was ‘what you see is what you get,’ along with the machines to run it.

They, however, got rid of it because they saw themselves just as a copy machine company instead of a document producing company.

Which brings me back to a point of this lesson.

Paul was making a point that, as a people of Jesus Christ, our priority is to win disciples for Christ. It is not about pushing the envelope of our lives, but living our faith as an example for others. When we cause scandal for others, just so we can have fun, we are missing the point.

This passage is not about Zeus, Apollo, or Baal or even just the people in Corinth. It is not just a lesson for a people in a church vastly different from our’s, but a lesson for all generations, reminding us the joy of being together, but also, more importantly, the responsibility of being a family of faith who never loses sight of who and what we are about.

Honor and Shame and A Poor Choice

2012-01-12T15:29:00.000-05:00

There is a video which has surfaced with is alleged to have several Marine urinating on the bodies of killed Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. It is unconfirmed, at this time, that these were, in fact, Marines. Most people are hoping this is not the case, but that may just be hopeful thinking at this time.

Our military does, for the most part, an amazing job. Many of them suffer grievously for being placed in harm's way and even after they come home they often suffer trauma. They deserve our utmost respect and gratitude. The vast majority of those who serve our country in uniform do so in a way that makes and keeps us proud.

The Marine Corps has had a long and incredibly proud history. I have had the privilege of knowing many people who served in the Marines. No branch of the military seems to inspire more loyalty than the Marines. The are the proud and the few..deservedly so.

And then this video showed up.

Combat and war inspire hate. Engaging in mortal combat is not a dispassionate event. Combat is personal with people aiming and shooting at one another. The combination of fear and violence and mortal combat inspires hatred in most human beings. That hatred often continues when white flags of surrender are waved or even upon the death of one's enemy. We have cringed seeing the bodies of our troops desecrated and now we cringe again. It appears like American soldiers are desecrating the remains of their enemy.

It's bad and I wish the Marines, if if turns out they were Marines, had thought about their brothers and sisters in arms. They have raised the temperature of battle and inflamed people against them and against their colleagues.

In the Middle East, among those we are fighting, there is a world view of honor and shame. We can be humiliated and often overlook it, but their culture does not. It is a culture rooted with an ancient concept of honor and shame. Their is nothing worse than being dishonored and being shamed. Nothing. By bringing shame to the bodies of their enemy, these soldiers have brought shame to the people they fight. It was a bad decision and a bad move.

We can only pray for peace to prevail and for God's grace to remind us to never demean others. Even our enemies.

Taking the Plunge: Baptism (Sermon for 1/8/12

2012-01-08T13:37:00.000-05:00

Taking the Plunge: Baptism
Text: Mark 1:4-11
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
January 8, 2012

Several years ago I was at an ecumenical clergy meeting and one of the ministers in the group announced that he had never been Baptized.

The group was, needless to say, quite surprised. Here, after all, was an ordained minister, a man who had Baptized many people, who presided at weddings and at funerals, a man who was a leader within the Christian community.

And he had never been Baptized. His parents were not church goers and he had never gone to any kind of church until he was in college. He joined a church and became involved and no one ever asked him if he had been Baptized. As time went on he decided he wanted to attend seminary and was interviewed extensively and asked 1001 questions, but was never asked if he had been Baptized. He went to seminary and was ordained three years later, again, without anyone ever discussing Baptism with him. And, in every church he ever served, lots of questions asked, but never asking him if he had been Baptized.

So here he was, years later, the pastor of a church, and he had never been Baptized. And he shared this information with a group of clergy.

The group all decided that we had to Baptize him.

Some of us wanted to sprinkle some water on him and say the words--after all, that was a part of our tradition. The Roman Catholic priest in the group wanted to pour water, as was the Roman Catholic tradition.

There were a couple of ministers from the Church of the Brethren. They wanted to immerse him, facing forward. Two Baptist ministers in the group wanted to immerse him falling backwards, as was their tradition.

We laughed a lot and remarked on how we all had different baptismal traditions--some we somehow missed something.

Our colleague left the meeting and was not Baptized. We were too busy debating on how Baptisms should be done, that we never got around to Baptizing our colleague. I look back on this, some 27 years later and think about how we had failed our colleague and friend so badly.

Sadly, that is what Baptism is often about. Several years ago I was called by a member of the clergy in another state where a person who grew up at St. Marks was now attending. The pastor of this church wanted to know the exact wording of the Baptism performed by Rev. Trnka in 1980 would have been because if Rev. Trnka had not used the precise wording, the Baptism didn’t count and the person would have to be Baptized----correctly this time.

My thought was, really? This is all Baptism means? We have to get the method and the words exactly right in order for it to count?

We debate on how to do it and when to do it, to the point that we miss exactly what Baptism actually is all about. Let’s look at what some of these things really are about.

The first is about submission to God.

Now I say this, take a breath and a pause, because we in the United Church of Christ are not noted for being great submitters. We generally answer theological questions by starting, “Well, in my opinion….” Submission does not come easily for us but when we look at this passage, we note something that is incredibly profound. Jesus submitted to John the Baptist in order to be Baptized. It is an action of God submitting to a person. Jesus did it again when he washed the disciples’ feet. God submitted to people in order to serve people.

And God invites us to submit to His will. This, of course, requires time, patience, prayer, and study. A lot of what passes for God’s will is our own wills that we give God the credit or the blame for. Not everything that we say or anyone says is God’s will is really God’s will.

I’ve used examples like this before, but it’s worth repeating.

When we lived in Ohio there was a bakery in town with wonderful jelly doughnuts. I’d often say to myself, if it’s God’s will for me to have a couple of jelly doughnuts today, there will be a parking space open in front of the bakery. In every case I wanted jelly doughnuts there was a space open. It often took three or four trips around the block for God’s will to show forth, but it always did.

And that is often how we deal with God’s will. WE want something, WE desire something, and WE do everything we can to make it happen. And then we give God the credit….or the blame. God’s will is something we all grapple with a great deal and we need to learn to submit to it when it requires us to change and grow. Sometimes God’s will is not consistent with our own desire or our own will. Submission is something we need to learn and grow into.

The second aspect of Baptism is about cleansing. It is a time of cleansing us of our sins and our short-comings.

There’s a great story about a church, a Roman Catholic Church, where the pastor, Father Jones, was celebrating his 10 Anniversary as the pastor of the church. They planned a nice dinner and one of the speakers at the dinner was one of the state’s two Senators who was a member of the church and was flying home from Washington to help honor the pastor.

There were several people scheduled to speak with the Senator being first. However, his flight was delayed so he had not yet arrived when people began to speak. After a while, the pastor spoke. He said:

“When I arrived here one of the first things I did was listen to confessions from people. The first person who came into the confessional told me that he had cheated on his wife repeatedly during their marriage; he had embezzled money from two businesses, and double-crossed his partners in another business. I was wondering what kind of place I had come to. It turns out, whoever that first person was, turned out to be an exception and that the church was filled with wonderful people.”

Everyone applauded and it was all fine. After a little while, the Senator finally got there and was invited to speak. He stood up and said:

“I have always had a special place in my heart for Father Jones. He doesn’t know it, but he and I have always had a special bond. I was the very first person to go to confession to him although I’m sure he’s long since forgotten.”

Reality is, most of us aren’t as bad as this Senator, but we all struggle with issues, short-comings, and sins and the reality of life is that we all want and all need to be forgiven of sin.

There have been parts of church history where people waited until the end of their lives for the cleansing action of Baptism. Their aspiration was to have their sins forgiven without having to make any changes in their lives. They wanted the forgiveness aspect of Baptism without the submission-----whereas both are significant.

Baptism is a reminder that this cleansing God gives to us is not a one-time thing, but something we ought to seek over and over again. We don’t need to come to the water for forgiveness, but come to God praying for forgiveness. We don’t need to confess to any person, but we need, on occasion, simply to come before God’s presence and unburden ourselves. Baptism is an ongoing reminder that God offers us cleansing and we need to avail ourselves of this. No one is perfect and God’s grace offers us forgiveness every day.

The last thing is this. Baptism gives us a gift that most people seem to miss or ignore. Baptism gives us a family; a group of people who claim us as one of their own.

I have noticed something about myself over the years I have lived. Whenever something good happened to me, I had to talk to my family and whenever something painful or difficult took place, I had to talk to my family. Families gather for celebrations such as weddings, and heartaches such as funerals. We need people who love us around us in joyful and difficult times of life.

When we are Baptized we are Baptized into a family of faith. And it’s not just the family of faith where we are Baptized; it is a family of faith that stretches to all the ends of the earth. Baptism is a reminder that we are part of something far bigger and far greater than ourselves.

We are part of a family that has lived in this house for many years. The DNA of the people of faith, who have founded this church and whose memory and spirit live with us, is something we are bound too. It is a family that stretches into every church in every nation, both far and close by. It is a bonding to a family of faith that goes back to the apostles, and to Jesus standing in the river, submitting to John the Baptist. St. Paul says it so beautifully in Galatians when he says:

27As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.”

Baptism reminds us we are not alone. We have family and nothing is more beautiful than that.

Baptism is a rare and special gift to us from God. Let’s move beyond petty debates, and celebrate it is a chance to submit to a magnificent God, be cleansed from the times we fail, and delight in being part of God’s family.

Letter from Queen Elizabeth

2011-12-15T20:35:00.002-05:00

To the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II:
by Jorge Rodriguez on Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 10:54am
In light of your immediate failure to financially manage yourselves and also in recent years your tendency to elect incompetent Presidents of the USA and therefore not able to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. (You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas , which she does not fancy).

Your new Prime Minister, David Cameron, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated sometime next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour,' 'favour,' 'labour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix '-ize' will be replaced by the suffix '-ise.'Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary'). (I love that one)

Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as ''like' and 'you know' is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as U.S. English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated letter 'u'' and the elimination of '-ize.' ' (I love that one too)

3. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

4. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not quite ready to be independent. Guns should only be used for shooting grouse. If you can't sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then you're not ready to shoot grouse.

5. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. Although a permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

6. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left side with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

7. The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly $10/US gallon. Get used to it.)

8.You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

9. The cold, tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. New Zealand beer is also acceptable, as New Zealand is pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth - see what it did for them. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

10. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie Macdowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

11. You will cease playing American football. There are only two kinds of proper football; one you call soccer, and rugby (dominated by the New Zealanders). Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).

12. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America . Since only 2.1% of you are aware there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the Australians (World dominators) first to take the sting out of their deliveries.

13. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.

14. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

15. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 p.m. with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.

Becoming the Light----Being a Voice of Hope

2011-12-11T14:52:00.002-05:00

Becoming the Light----Being a Voice of Hope
Text: Isaiah 61:1-4
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
December 11, 2011

Last week I said in my sermon that there were three prophets named Isaiah and last Sunday the sermon was based on a passage from Second Isaiah. In First Isaiah the people were living well but not focusing on God----and they were going to be in serious difficulty.

In second Isaiah, the people were in captivity and the prophet offered words of hope. Now, in Third Isaiah their captivity is over and they return home, but their homeland has been devastated. Over the span of years three different prophets named Isaiah have witnessed people who were unfaithful and subjected to being conquered; a conquered people in need of hope; and now a people in a kingdom in need of being rebuilt.

It is amazing how this prophet begins and the words he uses:
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

The words, in many ways, are timeless words. They are repeated by Jesus as he comes home to Nazareth and unrolls the scroll and reads these very words to the people in the town in which he was raised. He has come and he brings something God has brought to every generation of people who have had faith. Hope.

Isaiah comes full circle. The people had sinned and God sent the prophet to bring warning, but a warning edged with hope. After the people had fallen into captivity, God sent the prophet to bring words of comfort filled with hope. And again, now they are home in a shattered land and God, once again, assures them that God is present and God’s hope is alive and well.

As Christians, as people in St. Marks, we have a part in this. We too are asked, like all Christians, to be a message of hope to the world. The world we live in is unlike the world of the Isaiahs in so many ways, but so very much like their world too.

There have been times when things were good, but we weren’t paying attention to God.

There were times when we felt exiled.

There are times when we have ventured home to find things broken.

And there is one prevailing message that is always there. It is the message of hope and a challenge on how we can be the light of hope to others.

The first way we become voices of hope is learning to see the past as prologue to something else.

For me, Christmas has changed. When I was a child I was irrationally in love with Christmas, the colored lights, the smells, the bells, the carols, and the giving and receiving of gifts. It was, for me, the most exciting day of the year. Okay, I really LOVED receiving gifts. I grew up in a largely Jewish area of New Jersey and had many Jewish friends. I heard that Chanukah last for eight days and the idea of eight days of presents sounded good. I told my parents I wanted to convert to Judaism. When my Dad, a very good evangelist it turns out, told me I generally received more than eight gifts, my faith in Christianity was restored.

Then when we had small children at home it was that exciting again. The joy of watching my children experience such fun and such joy at Christmas and the gleeful wonder they had, much as I had when I was young, was invigorating.

My children are now adults and while they find Christmas to be exciting and fun, it is different. Then the thoughts of Christmas past, and I think of my Grandmother, my parents, my in laws, and so many loved one’s who are no longer with us and I feel the sense of loss. But that past is, in many ways, a prologue of hope.

Jesus came into the world on Christmas and that story, and the retelling of that story from generation to generation reminds us that Christmas is always bigger than ourselves, our lives, and our memories. In many ways, however, it is the journey we make through our lives, and the reflection of life past and present that enables to truly see, understand, and embrace the specialness of Christmas. It is a story of hope.

A second thing is this. It is putting things into perspective and keeping faith as rational as possible in an often irrational world.

Every year, at this time, there is a declaration that there is a ‘war on Christmas.’ This so-called war on Christmas always seems to revolve around the fact that some stores and some people use the expression, “Happy Holidays” instead of Merry Christmas. Where I grew up, with a large percentage of the population was Jewish, this was a common practice so no one would be rude to one another, but that is now deemed to be the war on Christmas.

The thing about this is that people use this to demonstrate that this is persecution against Christianity.

I have often thought this perception is insulting to Christians who were persecuted over the centuries.

Picture this. You are a modern day Christian and you are taken in a time machine to ancient Rome where you have a chance to talk to a person who is about to go into the Coliseum to fight a hungry lion bare handed. The person knows they are about to die, brutally, in front of a cheering crowd and be eaten by the lion. They are going to die, barbarically, because of their faith in Jesus Christ.

And it is your job to tell them about persecution of Christians in 21st century America where you are able to attend Worship without fear, read your Bible any place you want, but are forced to listen to Happy Holidays in some stores.

I don’t know about you, but I’d feel profoundly foolish. Talk about perspective.

Hope is often about perspective. When we keep things in perspective, we become voices of hope in an often irrational world.

A third way we are a voice of hope is keeping Jesus in the center of things.

I used to live in a town in New Jersey that had an awesome town square. At Christmas, every year, they decorated the square elaborately, and in the center of the square was Santa Claus. Way off to the side of the square, hardly noticeable was a crèche scene. In that town, at that time, when you went to the square, you knew who was the center of Christmas, and it was not Jesus.

Many people, every year, clamor about keeping Christ as the center of Christmas, and, of course, we should. But before we ever get to Christ being the center of Christmas, we have to make Christ the center of Christianity. Often this is not the case. Perceptions of Jesus are often the center of Christianity, not so much Christ.

We have a tendency to make things the way we want to make them.

When I was in college I used to make a collect phone call home every Tuesday evening. For those people here, who are old enough to remember what ‘collect phone calls’ were, the routine was always the same. I’d dial and say that I was making a collect phone call from John Manzo.

Something about my last name, ‘Manzo’ must be really difficult. It is pronounced just as it is written, but it has been botched over the years. Pretty much every telephone operator botched it, and 90% of the time, my parents would hear that they had a ‘collect phone call from John Manville.”

So one day I decided it was easier to join this so I said, “I am making a collect phone call from John Manville.” The operator said, “Wow, that sure is a common name!”

I was stunned because, I figured THEY had made it a common name.

To my point, however, Jesus often becomes what we want Jesus to be as opposed to who and what Jesus actually was and is. Jesus’ name is often invoked by people excusing us from being less than charitable to others; less than loving to one another; killing one another; stealing from one another; or not taking care of one another.

Part of the problem is that we often view Christianity or the Christian Church as a source of hope. We are, can be to the extent we don’t allow ourselves to get in the way of Christ, but when we begin by too finely filtering Jesus, or adjusting Jesus to fit our own needs, we become impediments to hope as opposed to bringers of hope. The only true source of hope is Christ himself.

The words of this third Isaiah are these:

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

They are words Jesus himself used to proclaim who he was to his home town, and what he was about. They are, in and of themselves, amazing words of hope to be embraced by each and every generation of believers.

Sermon for Sunday October 23: The Greatest Commandment

2011-10-26T08:12:00.005-05:00

The Greatest Commandment
Text: Matthew 22:34-46
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
October 23, 2011

Sermon

Movements and Mayhem

2011-10-07T15:15:00.000-05:00

Not too long ago we had the Tea Party rallies. They were an organized, ‘grass-roots’ movement that was heavily promoted on Fox News and bashed by MSNBC. They were people rallying against taxation. At first, most politicians on the right, were incredibly wary of them. A few joined with them and many give the Tea Party credit for the Republican wave of 2010 and the blame for the budget standoff.

Now we have the Occupy Wall Street movement. It is difficult to say if they are organized as of yet or if they are truly grass roots. They are, however, being promoted by many at MSNBC and bashed by Fox News. At first, most politicians on the on left were wary of them but not they are beginning to cozy up. It’s impossible to say where this movement will lead, if it continues.

I was thinking of these movements and mayhem. People on either side do not like to be compared, but they have a lot more in common than anyone involved would like to admit.

The first thing is this. People are not happy with the direction the country is moving in. Unemployment is high and investments are down. The disparity between those who have and those who do not have has widened. Speaking locally, our Soup Kitchen is more crowded than every before, the Health Fair will be crowded, and we are giving away more clothing than ever. Many people who are employed would consider themselves under-employed. They have jobs that pay too little and many folks are over-qualified for the jobs they are seeking. Our foreign policy and the war on terror remain question marks as they have for many years.

The second thing is this. Our political system is broken. The two parties are further apart than ever before. In New Albany the Sherman Minton Bridge remains closed. As this bridge connects two different Congressional districts, served by people of opposing parties, there was a question: Have John Yarmuth and Todd Young spoken to each other? When queried their answers were the same. “Our offices have spoken to each other.” Neither of these men have bothered to speak directly. Rules are used to stall political process and neither party will budge.

If people are unhappy and the political process is broken people take to the streets. The people taking to the streets may not agree how to solve problems, they they agree on two things: they do not like the state of the nation and they do not trust elected officials. Politicians of both parties may sneer at the ‘other group,’ but they ought to sneer at themselves in the mirror. Much of the blame falls at their feet.

Often these movements turn into mobs and create mayhem. When this happens, things happen.

In my lifetime I never expected the Soviet bloc and the Soviet Union to collapse. Mobs brought them down.

Algeria. Same thing.

Egypt. Same thing.

In the 1770's an English King scorned mobs as well and thought they would come to nothing. He was breath-takingly wrong.

Political leaders on both sides may need to open their eyes and ears and hearts because the movements afoot may not bring good tidings to them.

Frighteningly, I don’t know if they bring good tidings or bad tidings to any of us, Tea Party or Wall Street occupation alike.

October Newsletter

2011-09-28T15:29:00.001-05:00

http://www.box.net/shared/ganvg8thh76xr6ftxqbp

October Newsletter

2011-09-28T15:28:00.001-05:00

Real Social Security Reform

2011-09-27T17:07:00.001-05:00

Love Wins: Sunday's Sermon

2011-09-18T13:22:00.001-05:00

Love Wins
Text: Matthew 20:1-16
September 18, 2011
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo

A Conversation

2011-09-12T17:08:00.002-05:00

I don't know who reads this or not. I've been wondering if there would be interest in having a theological conversation on my blog. A respectful theological conversation. I am unconcerned if you are a Christian or not, or a believer or not to participate in this. It can be a respectful forum of exchanging ideas, beliefs, feelings, and thoughts.

I will put up a topic tomorrow. Please let me know either on here or via Facebook if you'd like to participate in this.

Thanks,

John

An Observation about Infrastructure

2011-09-12T15:50:00.003-05:00

There is nothing more boring than infrastructure. No one really likes talking about it and over the decades no one has really worried about funding it. There is nothing sexy or glamourous about fixing sewage systems, water mains, roads, and bridges.

As a result infrastructure is largely ignored. It’s sort of like having to replace the roof or commodes in our homes. No one really wants to do it. People would prefer to spend money on other things than they do replacing the leaking water heater.

That is until it’s a bad leak and the basement is flooded. Or the roof really gets bad and destroys the living room. Then it’s ‘what were we thinking when we didn’t...’

Whether people want to admit it or not, the American infrastructure is rotting. The WPA built things in the ‘30's during the Great Depression. The interstate highway system was built in the ‘50's and ‘60's. Since then we’ve done virtually nothing. Cities are dealing with water mains built by people in the WPA and many highways and bridges are much the same. Things are not being replaced and things are not being maintained properly.

Sometimes I think in our worries about our problems outside our borders, we miss that we have a huge problem that is destroying our nation from the center in. We have a rotting infrastructure.

Recently, in Louisville, there were two major water main breaks near the University of Louisville. They were old, antiquated systems that had not been properly maintained. In the region the Sherman Minton Bridge is closed indefinitely plunging the region into chaos. Commuters now have to face the daily nightmare of getting over the river each day. The three bridges we had were inadequate and now there are two. Inspections have been put off on them because, well, we cannot reduce the traffic flow any more than we have.

Why don’t we address infrastructure? The answer is always the same. We can’t afford it.

The President recently outlined ‘some’ of this but carefully avoided using the word infrastructure. It has become a dirty word. Perhaps, instead of avoiding the word, he should have used the word, emphatically, and explain how our nation’s infrastructure is rotting away. And use those words: rotting away. It is rotting away.

People try to dismiss this and say it’s overstated and everything is really okay. It is not overstated and it is not okay. Our infrastructure is rotting away. If you want to know if it’s okay ask commuters sitting in bumper to bumper traffic because of a closed bridge if things are okay.

Ask people who have no water or sewage if it’s okay because water mains have broken.

Ask commuters in St. Louis if the detours they have to take around sections of rotted interstate if things are okay.

But we can’t afford it. Fine.

But ask this question instead. Can we afford not to?

Manuscript of Sermon for September 11, 2011

2011-09-11T16:55:00.001-05:00

491 and Counting
Text: Matthew 18:21-35
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
September 11, 2011

As I was preparing to write this sermon I began to wonder what I was doing a year ago on September 11th. I don’t remember. But I do remember where I was and what I was doing ten years ago on this date. Most of us do. It is a day etched in our memories and our hearts.

There are days that always remain etched in our hearts and minds. I remember my wedding day and the days my children were born vividly. I also remember the days my parents and in-laws died. We remember days of joy and days of sadness.

September 11th is a day of so many memories for us. It is a day of shock, of sadness, of anger, and a day of terror.

It was a blatant act of hatred and terrorism and filled with innocent victims.

The people on the planes that had become instruments of death and destruction; and one heroic band of passengers who sacrificed their lives to protect others.

There were the people in the buildings many of whom talked to loved ones and said tearful good byes waiting to die. So many of their remains were never found.

And there were the amazingly heroic fire fighters and police officers who, despite overwhelming odds, went into the buildings that people were fleeing, in an attempt to save lives before losing their own lives.

And since that day, in a war against terrorist thousands of soldiers have lost their lives and so many have been wounded and disabled for life. And so many families have suffered the loss. Additionally, our economy has been devastated paying to carry on this campaign against terrorism.

And it should not be forgotten that there has been a death toll, so often dismissed as collateral damage, of so many people in far off lands who have been killed, wounded, and/or lost their homes. War is not just about soldiers, but is also about those caught in the crossfire and who have the misfortune of having their homes and their lives in the midst of battlefields.

So we remember that day ten years ago which impacted all of our lives so much.

As we gather in the presence of God at Worship today, we encounter an interesting passage from the Bible.

Within a large sector of Christianity there is something called the Revised Common Lectionary. Mainline Protestant churches have the option of using it and you’ll find that many do. I for one, sometimes use it and sometimes I don’t use it. This Fall, however, I decided to focus on it.

Beside mainline Protestant churches the Roman Catholic Church uses it as well. Chances are good, if you were attending either a Roman Catholic Church or a mainline Protestant church, the Gospel passage would be the same today.

The Lectionary goes on a three year cycle that was set decades ago and set for decades from now, so today’s Scripture reading was set long before September 11, 2011.

And it’s this. How many times should we forgive?

Peter asks a question and it is a good question. Peter often comes off as clueless but there are many times he is the one apostle who has a grasp on what Jesus is saying.

It would be inaccurate to say that in first century Judaism there was no concept Fo forgiveness. Jesus however was saying it was larger and bolder than ever before. Peter gets this and so his question of asking seven times was bold. To forgive someone seven times was remarkably generous.

But Jesus is radical. The answer is seven times seventy. If you take him literally it means that we forgive others 490 times. However Jesus seems to be speaking figuratively so it seems more like 491 and counting. As most of us would not count slights that high forgiveness is more or less an unlimited gesture.

Jesus goes further. He tells a parable about a slave who seeks forgiveness from the king for a debt and receives it. However, when this same slave will not forgive a fellow slave for that debt, the forgiven slave is now condemned. Jesus is not speaking of forgiveness as optional; it is part of our faith. It is something we profess every time we say the words in Jesus’ prayer, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

And this is the Scripture of the Revised Common Lectionary for today.

These are words of grace on a day when we remember an act of pure evil, of terror, and ponder how the world has changed as the result of the evil. They are not words of political leaders or commentators, or even of any member of the clergy. They are, in the words of Tony Campolo, ‘red letter words,’ the words of Jesus.

And this text is really difficult on a day like today.

One scholar within the United Church of Christ who really does a wonderful job wrestling with Scripture texts is Kate Matthews Huey who works in the national office of our denomination. In her reflection this week she cited Thomas Long, a professor in Atlanta, "We know too well that the little boat in which we are sailing is floating on a deep sea of grace and that forgiveness is not to be dispensed with an eyedropper, but a fire hose."

It’s a great image because our impulse is to dispense grace and forgiveness carefully and judiciously and rarely as an eye dropper drips sparingly. But Jesus dispenses grace with a fire hose and tells us to do so as well.

But here is the dilemma. When we think of September 11th and the horror of the day and the sheer evil of the day ideas like forgiveness and grace do not come to mind. Instead we generally think of revenge, retribution, and justice. Truthfully, on the day Osama Bin Laden was killed most of us did not mourn his death.

But then there are the words of Jesus talking about forgiveness and grace.

We can probably talk about all of what this means politically and theologically, and I really don’t want to get political. As for the theological, there is something also very personal about this.

At Floyd Memorial Hospital there is a wonderful little chapel. I often use it after visiting people to pray and reflect. It is a nice quiet space and it’s usually empty when I get there.

About a month ago I went in the chapel and a man was sitting in there. I sat down and began to read and pray Psalms which is my usual endeavor. Soon, another man came in and they both took out Islamic prayer rugs and began to pray. They were both physicians at the hospital and both appeared to be of Middle Eastern origin.

Truthfully, I had a horrible thought; a thought that embarrassed me at the time and still does. Images of September 11th danced in my mind and I wondered----and my thoughts all danced with the word ‘terrorists’ in my mind.

And, as I watched them pray another thought came to mind. These were both doctors who healed people in our community each and every day. And they were pious men who were praying out loud in a public chapel something I would be reluctant to do. I left that chapel that day filled with shame and it caused me pause.

Living lives of faith is difficult.

The twentieth century German theologian, Pastor, author, and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote of a world where the will of God would one day lead to a world reconciled to love, justice, and peace, and where oppression would end. He left Germany in 1938 to get away from Nazi oppression but returned because he believed, as a person of faith, he could not run away from evil. He returned and spent his last years in a concentration camp and was executed for his belief.

He said that there is a cost and joy of discipleship that all people must grapple with. Those words, his words, are forever remembered in our United Church of Christ Statement of Faith, always reminding us that being people of faith is never easy and will always force us to ask difficult questions.

Diana Butler Bass, a modern day theologian and author made one very simple observation about how we, as Christians, deal with this day. She said, perhaps the day is best approached in silence. It is a day that should be met with a pause; with a time of somber and sober reflection.

There is the well known story in the Bible of the woman caught in adultery. She is taken before Jesus and he is asked what should be done. Jesus’ action was very simple. Before he said a word, before he came to any conclusion, he got down on the ground and began to write. Her sin and their judgment caused him to pause and be silent.

So in the midst of today, I ask you to do one thing to remember this day. Take some time during the course of this day and take pause and be silent and sit in God’s holy presence.

491 and Counting Sermon for September 11, 2011

2011-09-11T12:41:00.002-05:00

491 and Counting
Text: Matthew 18:21-35
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
September 11, 2011

The Songs of Israel: A Joyful Noise

2011-08-28T12:53:00.003-05:00

Today’s Sermon Concludes the Sermon Series on the Psalms.

The sermon is an audio file but within the sermon is a link to a video. You can hear the video (a bit) on the audio file but my recommendation is to listen till I announce the video then watch the video, and go back to the audio file.

Text: Psalm 98

Psalm 98

1 O sing to the Lord a new song,
for he has done marvelous things.
His right hand and his holy arm
have gained him victory.
2 The Lord has made known his victory;
he has revealed his vindication in the sight of the nations.
3 He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness
to the house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen
the victory of our God.

4 Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth;
break forth into joyous song and sing praises.
5 Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre,
with the lyre and the sound of melody.
6 With trumpets and the sound of the horn
make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord.

7 Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
the world and those who live in it.
8 Let the floods clap their hands;
let the hills sing together for joy
9 at the presence of the Lord, for he is coming
to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with righteousness,
and the peoples with equity.

The Songs of Israel: A Joyful Noise

Audio File of Sermon
http://www.box.net/files#/files/0/f/108569946/1/f_888682578

Video File
http://www.box.net/files#/files/0/f/108569946/1/f_888685812

She Made it on Dr. Phil

2011-08-24T11:48:00.001-05:00

A woman in Alaska was convicted of misdemeanor child abuse for squirting hot sauce in her adopted son’s mouth and putting him a cold shower as a punishment for lying. What made her story so public was that she had her daughter shoot a video of the entire thing and then sent to be on the Dr. Phil show. She was successful and the show aired last October. The video of her doing all of this went viral on You Tube, and outraged people reported her to the authorities.

People have debated about this. Lots of parents have been known to use the ‘soap in the mouth’ for lying or obscenities, etc. We’ve all laughed at the scene of Ralphie with the bar of soap in his mouth in the movie A Christmas Story, and didn’t find it outrageous. Many of said that a squirt of hot sauce was no worse. Others have argued that they’ve ordered food that was spicier than this. One can make all sorts of arguments about this.

There is, however, one issue that stands out. She sent the video to Dr. Phil. The punishment, it appears, was done in this manner to demonstrate that she was having difficulties with her child and that she wanted ‘help’ from Dr. Phil.

This one takes my breath away. Seriously.

Perhaps she does have legitimate difficulties with the rearing of her child. Maybe she is not really a bad Mom, but had an over the top day and perhaps she really does need assistance from a counselor. But she sent it to Dr. Phil because she wanted to be on her show. Just writing to the producers of the show saying she was looking to be on because of difficulties wasn’t enough. They needed a video of punishment. In fairness to them they didn’t say what kind of punishment, but her perception was that they needed something over the top. She provided something over the top and got on the show. I don’t know if Dr. Phil was helpful or not.

The disturbing part of this whole thing is that it is frighteningly reflective of a whole wave of issues. The show Survivor is one of the first ‘reality’ shows and it, from the beginning, was very unique. People were placed on a remote place and had to survive and win the game. It is unique and very different and, in its own way, very much a classic in television and is, in and of itself, pretty harmless.

But now there are shows based on heart break and degradation. All of the “Bachelor” shows have depicted deceit and seduction and manipulation in order to find a spouse. Rarely have these things worked out and often have people been hurt. And they’ve been hurt and humiliated on national television.

I don’t know if Dr. Phil is a good therapist or not. Oprah introduced him as one of her experts and he gave advice to people on her show. I found him pretty mean at times, but I’m not a therapist so I’ll withhold judgment.

Now he has his own show and people come on there and confess all sorts of things seeking help. And a woman from Alaska demonstrated her punishment technique on national television.

She was convicted of a crime. Her son is immortalized on You Tube being humiliated and punished not just in his own him, but for all the world to see. Dr. Phil’s ratings, however were good. And our society is eating it up. Humiliation is entertaining.

And that is, in and of itself, very sad.

The Songs of Israel: A Second Look at Familiar Words

2011-08-22T13:59:00.002-05:00

The Songs of Israel: A Second Look at Familiar Words
Psalm 22
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
August 21, 2011

One day a man came home from work and walked into the kitchen. He saw the cat on the floor covered in red. He looked up and saw his wife who was holding a knife and also covered in red. His thoughts were dire....but then the cat stood up and began to walk across the room....

His wife explained that she was cutting vegetables for the salad and spilled a bowl of spaghetti sauce on herself and the cat. What the man thought he was looking at turned out to be something very different.

Which brings us to a scene in the Bible we are all very familiar with.

Jesus is dying on the cross and he says the words:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

We read the words and presume something. Jesus appears to be saying he feels abandoned and forsaken by God. And it seems shocking.

Jesus could have fled Jerusalem or hidden, but he made no effort to flee and he made no effort to hide.

Jesus could have stood before Pilate and offered a defense, but he offered no defense. He even seemed to goad Pilate into crucifying him.

He professed his willingness to die and predicted that he would suffer and die.

So why is he professing a belief that God has abandoned him?

Or maybe he is not. What if he said these words:
All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the Lord;
and all the families of the nations
shall Worship before him.
For dominion belongs to the Lord,
and he rules over the nations.

To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down;
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
and I shall live for him.
Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord,
and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn,
saying that he has done it.

Now, if Jesus had said these words we’d say, he was proclaiming that he was victorious and his death on the cross was a victory for God and him as the Savior of the world.

Which brings us to Psalm 22. This Psalm begins with the words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” and ends with the words I just read, “future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.”

Jesus, as he hangs from the cross, is not professing a belief that God has abandoned him. In fact, it is quite the opposite. He is proclaiming citing a Psalm that begins with a sense that there is apparent defeat, but ends in triumph and victory. He is making a statement-----this death on the cross is not a defeat, but a triumph.

Psalm 22 is a victory Psalm. The words of Jesus on the cross are a direct reference to this Psalm.

Truthfully, we don’t always see that because we don’t know the words to all the Psalms. But ponder a moment:

If I said the words, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,” fill in the next line of words.

Or if I said, “Silent night, holy night,” fill in the next line of words.

Or if I said the words, “O beautiful for spacious skies,” fill in the next line of words.

They are songs and we know them. There are things we do each week that we do not need the words for. We pray the Lord’s Prayer each Sunday and the words are not printed in the bulletin. We know them. The Commission is printed in the bulletin but the majority of people do not read them. We know them.

When Jesus said these words from the cross the people around him would have known the words of the Psalm as well as we know the words of familiar hymns. Actually, they would have known them better. The average person did not read, they memorized. Every Jewish child would be taught the Psalms and would know how to sing every single Psalm in the Bible by heart.

So when Jesus said the words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” they would not have heard words of despair but would have known Jesus was declaring victory.

Which is why we have to have this second look at familiar words. Often what we think we are seeing may not be what is really there.

A second point that needs to be made is context. You probably read stories and have listened to sermons or gone to Bible studies and listened to me talk about ‘context.’

Here is what context is.

Perhaps you read a restaurant review.

“If your idea of a wonderful meal is eating canned ravioli that was burned, and canned green beans that were obviously on sale 10 cans for a dollar, then come to John’s Bistro for an amazing meal.”

So John’s Bistro advertises the next day quoting the restaurant review: “Come to John’s Bistro for an amazing meal.”

Or you read a movie review: “Adventures with John is one of the most tedious and boring movies ever made. John’s endless puns destroy any sense of enjoyment you can ever have. If your idea of a great evening is listening to bad puns and being bored, go see Adventures with John for a great time.”

And of course, the next day on an Adventures with John ad, it says, “Go see Adventures with John for a great time.”

One word. Context. Context is taking something and editing it or moving it, or using some words out of money, to make a point or prove a point.

The Bible is a library of books and songs, like the Psalms, that exist together in a coherent fashion. It is, however, not unusual for people to list a series of Bible verses, very often taken out of context to prove a point and demonstrate that this is what the Bible says. Often, however, if you put the verse back into the Bible, and read it as part of the larger whole, you see something else.

That’s the case with the words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” when spoken on the cross. Taken strictly by themselves we say Jesus feels abandoned by God. But placing them back into the context of where those words are originally found in Psalm 22, we find Jesus declaring victory from the cross instead of expressing abandonment. Context is important.

The last thing that needs to be said is this. With God there is always hope and there is always victory. God’s love always comes through and God’s love and goodness always win. Always.

The four Gospels can be very different from one another in many ways. They all, however, lead to the cross and seeming defeat-----and to the resurrection where there is the ultimate victory and the ultimate triumph.

The four Gospels mirror Psalm 22. From apparent defeat and abandonment by God, there is a proclamation of victory. There is always hope and even in death there is life.

These opening words of Psalm 22 are familiar words and many people do not know where they are from and what they mean. When taken in context they are triumphant and loving words of hope spoken when there is apparent despair. They are the ultimate reminder that as long as there is God, there is always love, and always hope, and always, ultimate triumph.

The Songs of Israel: The Good Shepherd

2011-08-07T14:49:00.000-05:00

The Songs of Israel: The Good Shepherd
Text: Psalm 23
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
August 7, 2011

One of the most beloved images in the Bible is the image of the shepherd. Shepherds pop up all over the place.

David, who was Israel’s most beloved king, started out as a shepherd.

Moses, after he fled Egypt was a shepherd.

Jesus called himself the ‘Good Shepherd.’

The word ‘Pastor’ is derived from the Greek word poimen which literally means ‘shepherd.’

And, of course, the most beloved Psalm of all is the 23rd Psalm where we say, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”

The image of God as our shepherd and Jesus as our good shepherd touches and warms our hearts immensely.

But it is a bizarre image. While we think of tranquil stained glass windows and church art showing Jesus holding a baby lamb or the shepherd in the field in the moonlight holding his shepherd’s staff, we often miss the reality of the shepherding profession. On the job status ladder, they were pretty much at the bottom rung of the ladder. We are talking dishwasher at the Waffle House kind of status. It is hard, honest work, but not one of great status.

Yet it’s an image that shows up repeatedly in the Bible and one we need to really look at with great seriousness. Shepherds give us a couple of very compelling images.

For one, this image of God reminds us that God is our guide.

Two men in a truck, neither one very bright, were passing through a small town. They came to an overpass with a sign which read, "Clearance: 11'3". They got out and measured their rig. It was 12'4" tall. As they climbed back into the cab, one of them asked, "What do you think we should do?" The driver looked around, then shifted into gear saying, "No police in sight. Let's take a chance."

Many people regard God as some kind of cosmic police officer whose rules are designed to cramp our style and cheat us out of good times. So if they get a chance to beat the rap, they go for it. But the opposite is really true. God is a loving shepherd who gives us guidance, and leads us from harm.

Think for a moment at the story of these two fools. Were they going to benefit? Their future was, obviously, going to be that their truck was going to get stuck under the overpass, they would tie up traffic for hours, they would receive citations, and ultimately be fired for their stupidity. The rule wasn’t there to restrict their lives as much as it was to keep them from harm.

The 10 Commandments, all those “Thou shalt nots” are seen as restrictive----and they are; but they aren’t because God is a cosmic police officer, but a guide who tries to keep us from getting into trouble.

For example. “Thou shalt not steal.”

Most people who steal learn this lesson. They find themselves in legal trouble, they lose jobs, they have criminal record, they often become estranged from families, and do great damage to their lives. The rule is there, more often than not, to protect people, often from themselves.

“Thou shalt not commit adultery,” is much the same. The oft running joke is that this is the commandment that is there to keep people from having fun----but it’s not a very funny joke. Many people who have committed adultery find that it has dramatically impacted their lives. Marriages are destroyed as, all too often, are families. Many women and children, after a divorce, have not been treated fairly and, sadly, there is a rising poverty rate amongst women and children following a divorce----and so many divorces come as a result of adultery.

It may be a rule, but it’s not a rule put there, by God, to keep us from having fun as much as to protect ourselves from ourselves.

Secondly, in dealing with the concept of God as our shepherd there is also the image of scarcity and abundance.

The United Church of Christ Scripture Scholar, Walter Bruggeman speaks to us about the beginning of this theme in the book of Genesis. The first 46 Chapters of Genesis speak to us about abundance, the creation and the abundance of God’s love, power, and grace. The, in Chapter 47, the Pharaoh begins to become stressed about famine and the idea of scarcity shows up in the Bible.

This conflict between scarcity and abundance works its way through much of the Bible.

Peter and Jesus walk on water. It’s a story about Jesus’ abundance of faith, and Peter’s scarcity of faith.

The multiplication of the loaves and the fishes; there appears to be a scarcity of food and Jesus makes it abundant.

The turning water into wine; there was a scarcity of wine and Jesus turned it into an abundance.

The idea of love and grace is a story of scarcity and abundance. Often God is viewed as one limits how much love God shares, yet grace teaches us that God’s love is abundant beyond our wildest imagination.

The story is much the same through the entire Bible. People see a scarcity where there really is an abundance.

In so many ways, the 23rd Psalm is a reminder, to us, of God’s amazing generosity, love, and sense of abundance to all of us.

In the first eleven days of November, this year, the United Church of Christ will embark on a project entitled Mission 1, which is an eleven day mission focus on feeding the hungry. It will be an opportunity for us to join with United Church of Christ congregations around the nation to provide abundance where there is a scarcity.

And today, as we gather at the table of the Lord, this Sacrament, Holy Communion, is a demonstration of abundance in an age of scarcity. Our Closing Hymn today, one of my favorites, reminds us It is a time to share a blessed meal, bread for the journey, to fill our hearts with God’s grace.

The 23rd Psalm is a Psalm that celebrate God’s guidance and celebrates the grace of God, leading us to safe places, and giving us the abundance of God’s love and grace.

A Spiritual Crisis Perhaps?

2011-08-04T11:32:00.002-05:00

Recently the nation went through the great debt limit debate. It was partisan and politically charged and angered the average person. Eventually the debt limit was raised with a bill that no one really like a great deal and everyone said was the best compromise possible. One can say there were winners and losers, but even the winners essentially have to deal with the fact that this was, at best, a Pyrrhic victory.

Let’s put the politics aside on this one, however, and look at something else. Is this perhaps a symptom of a spiritual crisis?

People are willing for there to be changes to Social Security, as long as those changes do not effect them.

People are willing for there to be cuts in Medicare, as long as those changes don’t effect them.

People are willing for taxes to be raised----on other people.

People are willing to cut Medicare for the poor until they learn that Medicare covers Mom in the nursing home and then they don’t want it to be cut any longer.

Entitlements, however they come to us, in terms of benefits from the government or tax loopholes exist and the people who receive them want them. Paying for them, however, is a whole different story.

Before we blame our politicians, however, we need to look at ourselves. Those in office attempt, it would seem, to do the will of the people. They all spoke about speaking to the American people, and listening to those people, and those people told them to do what they are doing. I suspect this to be true.

Our society has become a society of lust and desire and want, and I’m not talking in terms of sexuality. We lust, we desire, and we want for more.

Houses are bigger and more expensive than ever before. Many of them are empty because people over bought.

We want really nice, very fancy cars that cost more money than houses used to cost.

We go to restaurants and eat monstrous sized portions of food. It is not unusual for people to go through the drive through and have, in their bag, a pound of beef, a lot of cheese, a great deal of bread, a half pound of fries, and a quart of soda. It is called ‘lunch.’ And who really needs that much?

We have the latest computers, the latest versions of Windows, Ipods, Ipads, smart phones, 900 cable channels and high speed Internet. We are connected to everyone in the world 24/7. Televisions can be purchased that are the same size as the screen in a small theater with a resolution so great that we can see a zit on an actor from 30 feet away.

And I write all of this and profess my own guilt. In grappling with my own weight issues, what I know call ‘lunch’ has changed and, to be honest, I miss what I used to call ‘lunch.’ I love the technology and indulge myself in it. My home is nice, but modest by today’s standards and I drive an older car. But I’m as guilty as anyone in my consumption of stuff.

In recent years even much of Christianity has changed. Christianity is based on love and sacrifice. Now, it is easy to find churches that preach a Gospel of prosperity. If you have faith, God will bless you with riches... Several years ago a prayer uttered by Jabez, a very obscure character in the Bible to say the least, became a prayer of profit rather than opening one’s heart.

We desire much for ourselves. We believe we are entitled to it for whatever reason. We want what we want; we just really don’t want to pay for it. We lust for it all, but have little desire to sacrifice.

We can lament we have a political crisis. At its core, however, I think we are really facing a spiritual crisis. We are a culture that wants it all at no cost, no price to ourselves. We can blame others all we want. Perhaps it is time to look in our own mirrors to discover the problem.

The Songs of Israel: A People of the Covenant

2011-07-24T12:43:00.000-05:00

The Songs of Israel: A People of the Covenant
Psalm 89: 1-6; 28-30; 34-37
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
July 24, 2011

One of the words that is used in the Bible is the word covenant.

In form, a covenant is an agreement between two people and involves promises on the part of each to the other. The concept of a covenant between God and His people is one of the central themes of the Bible. In the Biblical sense, a covenant implies much more than a contract or a simple agreement between two parties. The Biblical notion of covenant is amazingly profound.

Psalm 89, the Psalm we look at today is very long. One of it’s most common themes, however, is celebrating the concept of covenant, a covenant that exists between God and people, and people to people.

The first thing I want to look at is the covenant between God and people. In terms of covenant, in the Bible, there are numerous ‘little’ covenants made between God and people. There are, however, three really large, over-arching covenants.

The first is a covenant of identity. It is made between God and Abraham and is quite simply, “I will be your God and you will be my people.” It is a simple identification that there is the God of Israel and a people who are committed to God.

The second covenant is a covenant of law. It is made between God and Moses and builds on the first covenant. It embraces the identity of God and people, but now adds the Law. As a people of God, living within the parameters of the Law is the way of showing faithfulness unto God.

The third covenant is a covenant of grace that came in the person of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. It is the new and everlasting covenant and one we live in right now.

The Psalmist reminds us, over and over again, about the steadfastness of God. God keeps the covenant. God is our God and we are God’s people. God has given us parameters that not only demonstrate not only an obedience with God, but an ability to live in harmony with one another; and God has sent Jesus to save us because we fall short of God’s glory.

The covenant reminds us that living out covenant keeps us connected to God in special ways.

The second thing is the covenant we have with one another and I want to specifically talk about us as a church within the United Church of Christ.

As a church within the United Church of Christ, we are a church that has a special connection to the word and concept of covenant. The United Church of Christ is not a denomination built on being theologically doctrinaire ideals, but on a mutual covenant to walk together in faith not fighting over diversity and differences, but embracing them.

We are a very unusual denomination.

I was thinking the other day about the United Church of Christ, a denomination I serve as a minister and love deeply and something struck me. Before I tell you what struck me, please know you may need to stretch your theological imagination to keep up with me on this one. It is a stretch, but please hang in there with me because you hopefully will see the connection.

In 1978 a classic movie was released and it remains a classic movie. The movie was Animal House, and at its core, it was a movie that spoke of an intense rivalry between two fraternities and the mind set of the two groups. The conflict was between Omega House and Delta House.

It really, to me, in my admittedly strange view of the world, speaks of differing theological world views, one that is rigid and unbending, and one that speaks of connection to others as paramount.

The United Church of Christ is often the Delta House of denominations. I say this with a huge asterisk attached. We are not a place of drunken parties or of decadence and depravity not do we promote that in the least, though, in all honesty, the toga party idea sounds good...

But there are a couple of underlying things that were actually very interesting that were pointed out in the movie.

The first was the initiation process. Omega House had an ultra formal, rigid, and even painful and humiliating initiation that demanded the complete submission of its new members with an acknowledgment that there were people in charge, and others had little to no voice. At Delta House, they welcome their new people into their family, warts and all.

The second was, to me, something that very much describes us. One of the people in Delta House referred to his ancestors and the people in the room and said, “Our ancestors were thrown out of some of the finest nations in Europe.” Many of you have heard my semi-joke when I say, “Our members have been thrown out of some of the finest churches in town.”

We, in many ways, demonstrate there is more than a little truth to this. Many of us were raised in other traditions and many of us really could not go back into those traditions with great ease and or acceptance. Many of the traditions were grand and good in so many ways----but life has brought us to different places and we may or may not be welcomed back.

Except we are welcome here.

I was struck last week reading and seeing things about Holy Communion. I recognize that the average person does not read article on the Internet about such subjects, but I do. I found a contrast.

One denomination was concerned that reverence was being lost with how people participated in Holy Communion and who was welcome at the table. Clergy were being encouraged to vigorously defend the Table of the Lord so that people would not treat the Table of the Lord casually and the wrong people did not come.

On the other hand, the United Church of Christ has a video online that was called Flash Mob Eucharist. Flash mobs are those groups we see sing or dance or perform a scene from a play in the middle of malls, train stations, or what have you. In this, at the recent General Synod, there was a flash mob that celebrated the Sacrament of Holy Communion and assured EVERYONE they were welcome.

And it reminded me of the initiation in Animal House, living by rules, or by love and an embrace of one another.

To me, this is what covenant is all about, for us. It is an embrace of one another, everyone of God’s people as brothers and sisters.

I read a lot of religious blogs all written by Christians. The vast majority of them are about how to be stricter, harsher, and, frankly, more exclusive as Christians. I doubt the desire is to intentionally drive people away as much as it is to get people to conform, but the result us usually the same. We, as Christians, do have the ability to drive people away and it’s often because we want them to conform.

What struck me is that the problem is never God in covenant with God that is the problem. Sometimes it’s our ability to covenant with God that is the problem; but the biggest problem we have is our covenant with one another. So let us strive to be faithful not only to God and each other; let us strive to not only be steadfast to God, but to one another. And let us embrace one another and every single one of God’s people as our brothers and sisters.

Toga parties are optional.

Extremism and Terrorism

2011-07-23T14:55:00.002-05:00

As I have watched the news stories come out of Norway they are speaking over and over again about the extremism of Anders Behring Breivik who is responsible for murdering over 90 people. The damage and death toll with the bomb was seven. At the summer camp 85 children and youth were murdered in cold blood. Early reports are saying he is a right winged extremist who wanted to destroy government buildings and kill people in the Labor Party in the city, and he murdered the children and youth at the summer camp as this was a camp sponsored by the Labor Party.

His ideology is really of little consequence to me. I know nothing about politics in Norway and his disagreements are not fodder for discussion now. He murdered at least 92 people and that’s all that really matters.

When Timothy McVeigh murdered so many people in Oklahoma City he was also referred to as a right winged extremist. Again, ultimately, his ideology was not fodder for discussion. He was a murderer and died for his crimes in 2001. Even people like me, who really disagrees with the death penalty, could muster little opposition to his death. He was, in so many ways, a walking argument for the death penalty.

Something was striking about McVeigh when they captured him. I don’t know if this will be true about Breivik, but it sounds like it might be. McVeigh was not crazy. He was a true believer in his cause and believed that people had to die and a violent war had to be waged. He saw himself as a soldier for what was right. The fact that he chose to make war on innocent people made little difference to him. His extreme views were, in his mind, principles that allowed him, even compelled him to commit violence.

Over the years these people have come out of the woodwork and committed grave acts of violence. There have been left winged extremists who have killed and right winged extremists who have killed. And, over the years, many have attempted to justify the actions because they are for the ‘cause,’ and there were issues...

Please.

The actions of McVeigh and Breivik are much like the acts of the people who bombed the World Trade Center or put road side bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. We call those people terrorists. And they are. But so people like McVeigh and Breivik. There is no cause that justifies acts of terrorism. None.

We need to stop referring to these people extremists. It gives others an idea that these people are justified. They are not justified. We all know that. We all accept that. No matter how fervent people may be about their political beliefs, it is a very, very rare individual who is willing to kill others to put their view forward. For this we can be thankful.

But frankly, we need to stop calling these terrorists extremists. Their ‘extreme’ views are of little consequence. And act of terror is an act of terror and it should be called for what it is.

Random Thoughts

2011-07-18T14:16:00.000-05:00

Wow. Brinksmanship is alive and well. There is the debt ceiling debate which is being played out to the final seconds; the NFL labor dispute is being played out to the final seconds. The NBA has a lock out and they probably won't even negotiate a settlement to the final seconds. Do good decisions ever get made as the result of brinksmanship?

Justin Rigali, the Cardinal/Archbishop of Philadelphia is resigning amidst numerous sexual abuse scandals in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Some of these Bishops really need to be criminally charged for covering up the crimes that were overlooked, covered up, or ignored. It's tragic when people are abused by clergy. Beyond tragic, really.

The women's soccer team should make us all proud. They probably inspired more people to sit down and watch a soccer game, in the United States, than ever before. Getting into the final game was amazing. And, hat's off to the young woman who was the goalie for Japan. She was outstanding and probably one of the biggest difference makers in the game.

It's probably not a great time to own News Corp. stock...

I think the Mets should trade Reyes to the Red Sox for some top flight minor league talent. They can either trade him to the Sox this year and get something back, or he'll sign with the Yankees as a free agent next year. The only NY hat he should ever wear is the Mets' cap.

Ever want some interesting reading, check out the Fox News website and compare it to the MSNBC website. They are diametrically opposite of one another. For all the abuse CNN takes, their website is dedicated to, ahem, news. The other two are busily doing their own thing. Any semblance to news either of them have is strictly because they had to include a couple of facts before spinning them.

Recently the United Church of Christ General Synod was held in Florida and it looks like it was an amazing event that I regret not having been at. We have a 2030 group of clergy, the younger clergy, who are really dynamic and amazing. It makes me wish I was that young again! We have a very cool denomination. We have a long history and tradition, but it's great to be part of a church that thinks beyond our own prejudices of here and now.

2011-07-17T15:08:00.002-05:00

The Songs of Israel: Seeking Forgiveness from God
Text: Psalm 51
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
July 17, 2011

Rev. Michael G. Clark is a Lutheran Minister in Wichita, Kansas. Some years ago I saw him on television and my heart went out to him.

While no group of people can ever be totally lumped together or said to be all the same, most clergy have several tendencies.

A lot of us tend to be a bit on the neurotic side. We tend to take a lot of things personally, tend to take a lot of the issues of the world on our shoulders, and tend to be more critical of ourselves than people are of us. And the fact that we spend most of our lives in the line of fire, that’s saying a lot.

The other tendency many clergy seem to have is a need to be affirmed and liked. We want people to like us.

And thus, it was, Rev. Michael Clark was in a room and the previous President of his Church Council was praising him on national television, saying how Pastor Clark was his ‘main man’ and was a great inspiration to him and the Council President explained he wouldn’t be the man he was today without Rev. Clark in his life.

Rev. Michael Clark’s facial expression was one of horror because the speaker, the former Church Council President, was Dennis Rader, the infamous BTK serial killer. And Clark sat there, mortified.

But, in Clark’s lap, the entire time, was an open Bible turned to Psalm 51 which he was praying over and over again. Psalm 51 is a Psalm of repentance and forgiveness----and that was all Clark felt he could do. Pray for forgiveness that this monster before him had come from the congregation that he, Clark, was serving. And Clark never knew... and the guilt of being connected to this monstrous man was consuming him.

So he prayed a Psalm, a very specific Psalm of forgiveness.

Forgiveness and the stark, even harsh beauty of this Psalm.

Psalm 51 is an amazing Psalm that has the author begging God for forgiveness. When we ask forgiveness, it’s the ultimate way of saying, I’m sorry or apologizing. In the words of the Psalmist what God seeks is not a burnt offering or any other act. God wants one thing:

The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart

A broken spirit, a contrite heart is a way of saying “I’m sorry,’ in a profound way.
It is learning to say “I’m sorry,” when we are wrong.

I have found that there is nothing as character building as apologizing. Having the humility and courage to admit that you are personally wrong and have made a mistake, is liberating. Often a good apology clears the air between people. Families who learn to apologize to one another, live healthier and happier lives.

One thing that is crucial, however, is learning to truly apologize as opposed to pretending to apologize.

There is several words in the English language that ought never be in an apology. The word is ‘but.’

When we say, “I am sorry for offending you, but....” When we say this, we are putting the issue of offense on the person we offended. We are trying to justify our actions.

“I’m sorry for hurting you, but...” You deserved it.

“I’m sorry for stealing from you, but...” I wanted the money more you needed it.

You get the point.

Or when we use the word ‘if.’

“I’m sorry IF I offended you, “ and we’re really saying you need to have thicker skin.

“I’m sorry IF I hurt you,” and we’re really saying you need to be tougher.

“I’m sorry IF you needed that,” and we really saying I needed it more.

True apologies end with “I’m sorry.” We can add, “Because I offended you, or because I hurt you, or because it was uncalled for, but we can’t use the word ‘but’ or ‘if.’

The words of this Psalm are a real apology to God and seeking forgiveness and it does so in gut wrenching ways.

And sometimes that forgiveness comes hard.

I was pondering the words from the Psalm:

Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.

Sometimes this is hard, teaching others God’s ways.

William Self, a Baptist Pastor in Georgia tells a wonderful story about Corrie Ten Boon.

Corrie ten Boon was a Dutch lady who during World War II hid the Jews from the Nazis in her home. When the Nazis found out, she was taken out of her home and placed in a concentration camp. When the war was over, she went around the cities of Germany and Holland preaching that everyone should forgive one another for what had happened during that terrible time.

One day Corrie was preaching her sermon on forgiveness in a Hamburg church. When it was over, the people were lined up to speak to her, and in the crowd of faces around her, she saw one particular face and a hand reaching out to her.

The man said, "Corrie, can you forgive me?"

This was the man who controlled the shower room for the women. Once a week the women were herded into a communal shower, they were disrobed, the water was turned on, and this man was perched above them on a platform where he could observe and control the room. He rather enjoyed the indignity of this moment as the cold water hit the bodies of the very frightened women.

Corrie said that of all the people in that prison, he was the one she hated the most.

She said she couldn't get rid of the hate she had for him and the look on his face as he leered at them in their humiliation. That's the face that possessed the hand that came to her, and he said, "Corrie, can you forgive me?" And she said, "I stopped and prayed and asked the Lord Jesus to give me the power and strength to forgive this man."

She said it was the hardest thing that she ever did.

This Psalm confronts us with the issue of sin, but more than that, apologizing to God, and asking forgiveness. It invites us to ask for forgiveness by breaking our spirit and will and apologizing, profoundly to God with know and’s, it’s or but’s. It reminds us of the power of being forgiven and healed from the burdens of our own failures.

And there is its beauty.

The Songs of Israel: The Myth of ONLY Human

2011-07-10T14:10:00.000-05:00

The Songs of Israel: The Myth of ONLY Human
Text: Psalm 8
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
July 10, 2010

Have you ever heard or used the expression, “But I’m only human?”

Chances are, we all have used that at some point because we use it to express our limitations at something. We are not God, so we are only human.

We sang a little in the Psalm today, using it as it was written, as a hymn of sorts.

We did things responsively, demonstrating the Psalm as a prayer of sorts.

And we saw the words.....and the words give an indication that being ONLY human is something of a myth. There is nothing ONLY about being human.

The Psalm begins as a song of praise to God for the creative power of God and then it asks a question:

What are human beings that you are mindful of them;
mortals that you care for them?

The Psalm goes on to tell us three things and all three things are pretty amazing.

The first is this.
You have made them a little lower than God;
and crowned them with glory and honor.

We are made a little lower than God. A LITTLE lower than God.

Genesis 1 tells us that we, people, are made in the image and likeness of God. At our best, we are much like God. It means we have the capacity to make choices and do things the way God would do things. It demands of us that we live lives with a sense of dignity that God has.

French novelist and playwright Alexandre Dumas, the author of such classics as, The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, once had a heated quarrel with a rising young politician. The argument became so intense that a duel was inevitable. Since both men were superb shots they decided to draw lots, the loser agreeing to shoot himself. Dumas lost. Pistol in hand, he withdrew in silent dignity to another room, closing the door behind him. The rest of the company waited in gloomy suspense for the shot that would end his career. It rang out at last. His friends ran to the door, opened it, and found Dumas, smoking revolver in hand.

“Gentlemen, a most regrettable thing has happened,” he announced. “I missed.”

Somewhere, when faced with his mortality, it dawned on him that he had fallen prey to anger and envy and foolishness and none of these were worth losing his life over. Human dignity is something that makes us more like God.

People are like God because we can often do the opposite of what nature would seem to have us do. Birds fly north for the winter and south for the summer. Yet people have the capacity to travel south to beaches and Disney World in the summer, and travel north in the winter to ski and have winter vacations.

The Psalmist reminds us that human dignity is a godlike quality that we should never lose.

The second thing the Psalmist says is this:

You have given them dominion over the works of your hands.

Over the years people have misunderstood the use of having dominion over the earth as a license to do what we want with the earth. The premise was that the earth was going to one day be gone, so we might as well use it and abuse it while we still can.

But this came from a dualistic world view which saw earthly things and godly things as separate. There was the realm of God and the realm of people and nothing in the twain shall meet.

Instead of a dualistic world view, we need to have a holistic world view. The environment is a spiritual issue. There are issues of justice. My abuse and neglect of my environment has huge negative consequences for my neighbor not just down the street but around the world. My waste shows that I don't really care for what is right. I don't care about what is the Lord's. I don't really love my neighbor.

Dominion means to be in charge of something. It means to be responsible for something. The world is not our world, it is God’s world. God has given us dominion by giving us responsibility.

And, like we need to have human dignity, we need to treat God’s world with dignity and respect. That is what having dominion really means.

The last thing is this. The Psalm begins and ends the same way with the prayer:

O Lord our God, how majestic is your name over all the earth!

This is a little reminder of something.

There are two things that give me a sense of faith and security when I walk into the pulpit each Sunday.

The first is the strong faith there is a God; the second is the secure knowledge that I am not God.

I sometimes think of miracles that Jesus did. Turning water into wine and doing so quietly. Only his mother and the chief steward knew. If I had done that I’d have made sure everyone knew so that I would constantly be invited to dinner parties to provide the wine.

The feeding of the 5000? Only the apostles really knew what had taken place. If I had been Jesus I’d rent out our facility for banquets since it would take so little effort and expense to provide food for everyone.

And the really big ones like raising people from the dead, curing blindness, deafness, and people being lame.

Plus the self serving things. The Giants would go undefeated and the Dallas Cowboys would go winless. The New York Mets would be the first undefeated baseball team and the New York Yankees would be the first winless team ever.

You get the point. I thank God that I am not God; and really, we all should. God is pure goodness and pure love and we, despite being much like God in so many ways, are not.

Psalm 8 is a tribute to the dignity and goodness of humanity, but it is also a reminder that, as people we are always people. We are never ONLY human, we are grandly human----with a constant reminder that we are not God.

The Songs of Israel----Choosing God’s Heritage

2011-07-03T15:11:00.002-05:00

The Songs of Israel----Choosing God’s Heritage
Text: Psalm 33
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
July 3, 2011

One of my favorite parts of the Bible are the Psalms. The Psalms are usually called the Songs of Israel because they were, at their heart, songs or hymns about people’s relationship with God.

Psalms are not, like so much of the Bible, stories or things happening to people or explicit teachings about God. Psalms are more a reflection of where people were at in their journeys in their relationships with God. Years ago they were all attributed to David, but in reality they were songs that evolved over a period of time.

Last week I preached on a Psalm of lament, and this week is a Psalm of praise and petition. And the praise in this Psalm is really sort of unique because it speaks of the glory of God while asking for a blessing of a nation.

in many ways, about being a nation dedicated to God.

The Psalmist says, Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage and earlier states, simply how this happens by stating: For the word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness. 5 He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.

The Psalm says some other interesting things. Listen to these words: “The Lord brings counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the people.” In short, the opinion of people of God’s plans is of no significance; we most often interpret God’s plans according to our own will, not according to God’s. So God frustrates our plans.

I was thinking about this and I began, of course, thinking about the 4th of July.

July 4th, 1776 is the nation’s birthday and the marking of the reading of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. The 4th of July, however, in American history has an other interesting thing connected to it.

On July 4th, 1787 Philadelphia was again a gathering place and again, a place of crisis and change. The country was young and the guiding document of the nation, The Articles of Confederation, was, to be kind, a mess. So during a four month period of time a group of people, many of them leaders in the Revolution, were in Philadelphia and having clandestine and illegal meetings to overturn the Articles of Confederation and develop a new constitution. July 4th was a break day and they gathered for a prayer service at Race Street Church, now known as Old First Reformed Church, United Church of Christ, in Philadelphia. Many people from St. Marks have toured that historic church.

But what is telling is, that in 1787 the people in Philadelphia had come to a realization. In their yearning for independence and more rights, they found something out. They realized with freedom came responsibility. In many ways, when I read this Psalm and ponder what it reflects about asking for the blessing of a nation, it implies something very deep. It implies responsibility. And it implies, from a Biblical perspective, two kinds of responsibility.

The first is personal responsibility.

Sometimes it seems that we can be tempted to overdo faith. I say this very carefully, because it would probably be better to say that we often have a tendency to under do personal responsibility. There is really no way to have too much faith, assuming we understand faith the way God does. Often people view faith is doing nothing in order to let God do everything for them. For example, there is a story of an out-of-work man who believed that God was going to provide a new job for him.

An friend asked the man, "So, have you been looking for a job?"

The man said, "Nope."

"Well, do you have a resume?"

"Nope."

"Are you networking? Out trying to meet people?"

"Nope."

"Well, uh . . . what exactly are you doing?"

"I'm trying not to freak out while I'm hoping that God will bring me a job."

People do this all the time on so many different ways. It is so easy to pass off responsibility to another. Famous people say something really, really foolish or untrue and then claim they are victims of those who reported that they said something foolish or untrue. It is easier to blame others for our mistakes than it is to take responsibility for them.

But, one way we honor God and live as a nation that honors God is by taking personality responsibility.

The second part of responsibility is recognizing that we have responsibility for others.

One of the first stories of responsibility for others comes in the story of Cain and Abel. We all know that Cain killed Abel but that’s not where the story ends. God queries Cain as to the whereabouts of Abel and Cain asks one of the foundational questions in the Bible? “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

The rest of the Bible is the answer to the question. It’s a very long answer, but it is an answer that can be summarized in one word. “Yes.”

We are keepers of our brothers and sisters. We are responsible for one another.

Some people have difficulties through their own actions or inactions. Some people have difficulties because of health, bad luck, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, etc. Some people don’t take the responsibility they ought to. The reasons really do not matter. The Bible never speaks of helping the ‘deserving’ poor; just those in need and it calls us into account when we do not.

Often this responsibility for others morphs into a political issue but it is not. The political issue is HOW we care for those in need, HOW we live that responsibility out. That we do is a matter of faith.

Tomorrow is the 235th birthday of our nation and amid the patriotic songs, the fireworks, and the cook outs, we hear the words of the Psalms:

Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage

We choose God’s heritage when we take responsibility both for ourselves and our brothers and sisters. That is the way we do and live lives of justice.

Matthew Fox's Book, "The Pope's War"

2011-06-29T13:42:00.000-05:00

I recently read the book, The Pope's War: Why Ratzinger's Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved , by the theologian Matthew Fox.

Fox was a Roman Catholic priest and a member of the Dominicans and a prolific author and theologian who mostly covered the topic of spirituality. He was widely read and widely admired and was one of the favorites of many of us while attending the seminary.

When John Paul II was the Pope he revived a critical view of theological teachings and appointed Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the current Pope, to be in charge. In the mid 1980's seminary faculties were purged of professors and dozens of theologians had their work condemned and many of them were silenced. Fox ended up being one of them. Ratzinger ordered the Dominicans to review Fox’s work and they cleared the theologian. Ratzinger dismissed their work and ordered a new review and then, instead of allowing the new review to take place, banned Fox’s writings and eventually forced the Dominicans to oust Fox.

Matthew Fox was invited to join the Episcopal Church where he serves as a priest and continues his theological writing.

Fox’s book is essentially a chronicle of what happened to him and many others and how the traditional scholarly religious orders of the Jesuits and Dominicans were largely marginalized, and groups such as Opus Dei and the Legion of Christ, were thrust into prominence. Fox makes the argument, and I believe validates the argument, that John Paul and Ratzinger, in tandem, narrowed the diversity of Roman Catholicism, silenced talk of real ecumenism, and, with their leadership selections, assured that such Popes as John XXIII and Paul VI never appear again.

Fox, in my mind, makes some very compelling points. The Roman Catholic Church has lost a great deal of theological credibility by silencing, in many cases, its most brilliant theological minds, and has very much lost its moral credibility in terms of sexuality. Their silence, John Paul’s and Ratzinger’s ignoring of the many sexual abuses coming to them for a very long time, and ‘rescue’ of Bernard Law from Boston authorities when it was becoming painfully obvious that Law would be justifiably charged with a criminal cover up, are, in and of themselves criminal. Additionally, groups like Opus Dei and the Legion of Christ, raising money for the ‘poor’ and using it for political influence is obscene.

I had several thoughts.

One, while Matthew Fox is an Episcopal priest right now, and is grateful for the freedom he has now, in his heart, one has a sense he is still a Dominican friar who laments the loss of a lover who dumped him. I have seen this in a number of estranged Roman Catholic clergy who long to be clergy in Roman Catholic churches and no longer can be because they committed the unforgivable crimes of falling in love with women or men and chose to be honest about it.

Secondly, it is sad, tragic really, how these theologians have been silenced. While God is perfect, people are not, and our views of God are not. It really does not matter if we are a learned theologian, a member of the clergy, a random person, or the Pope, we all have imperfect views of God. It strikes me as impossible to condemn people for their points of view. Difference is not deficience, it is more about creativity and learning. Thomas Aquinas opened his mind to EVERYTHING that was written in his era. We should be able to do the same.

Thirdly, it reminds me that when I left the Roman Catholic Church, I left it. There are things about it I still love and cherish, but I am, at heart, a United Church of Christ minister. It was reminded, reading Matthew Fox’s book, how appreciative I am of m own denomination.

Ultimately, having said all this, there are many Roman Catholic people who are very happy with their denominational family and tradition. While many view the prospect of early sainthood for John Paul II as a travesty, others view it as wonderful. The Roman Catholic Church and Roman Catholic people have a right to who they are and what they choose to believe. Some of us are long gone. Matthew Fox reminds us that there are many people, standing on the outside looking in, and wishing it could be very different. While my heart ultimately breaks for Fox in reading this, down deep, I would invite him to embrace the people who have embraced him and not look back.

The Songs of Israel---Longing for God Sermon 7-26-11

2011-06-26T14:32:00.002-05:00

The Songs of Israel---Longing for God
Text: Psalm 42
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
June 26, 2011

One of my favorite parts of the Bible are the Psalms. The Psalms are usually called the Songs of Israel because they were, at their heart, songs or hymns about people’s relationship with God.

Psalms are not, like so much of the Bible, stories or things happening to people or explicit teachings about God. Psalms are more a reflection of where people were at in their journeys in their relationships with God. Years ago they were all attributed to David, but in reality they were songs that evolved over a period of time.

What they are, at best, is a reflection of the journey of God’s people in relationship to God. Sometimes they reflect thoughts about God, most often they reflect feelings about God. Often they refer to feelings of joy or sorrow, or total frustration. They can be songs of joy or songs of comfort, or songs of despair----and this is what makes the Psalms so real. They reflect the real thoughts and real feelings of God’s people.

I knew a minister colleague years ago who, whenever you asked him how he was, would say, “Wonderful! This is the day the Lord has made!” He was either the most upbeat person of all time, or he, somehow refused to admit how he felt or was unwilling to admit how he felt. So I stopped asking him how he felt. The same goes for people who, when you ask them how they are, give you a 30 minute lecture on how miserable their life is. For some people, perhaps this is true, but most of the time when the response is a 30 minute lecture on how miserable life is most of it is just whining. I stop asking them how they are as well.

The Psalms reflect real thoughts and real feelings of real people. Today I’m starting a sermon series on several Psalms.

We begin with Psalm 42. It begins very poetically with the image of a dear longing for flowing water as the writer’s soul longs for God. Behind the poetry, however, there is the Psalm composer who feels very remote and isolated from God. Three times the writer asks the question, “Why are you cast down my soul?” Within the heart of the Psalmist there is pain and the pain is a sense of bewilderment asking the question: Where is God?

The author of the Psalm was probably in exile and he was recalling the days of life when life was good in Jerusalem. Now, he is far from the good life in Jerusalem and surrounded by people who hold him captive and mock him about his God. “If your God is so good, how did you end up as our captive?” The question would be asked mockingly, and the writer of the Psalm himself wonders, where is God?
There are several things to be observed in this Psalm.

The first is this. God allows us, even invites us, to be real.

First, this Psalms is a Psalm of lament. It is bemoaning what seems to be the absence of God in the Psalmist’s life. He laments and asks over and over again, where is God. He even says that the people who are tormenting him are asking him the same question. Where is your God? If your God is so great, how come we, with our allegedly inferior gods, have defeated you and that you are our captive???

Of all the things the Bible tells us one of the things the Bible never once tells us is that life is fair. In the Book of Ecclesiastes the writer tells us that the rain falls on the just and the unjustice; on the righteous and the sinners.

We live in a world where God’s will does not always prevail. We all pray for God’s will, but so often God’s will does not take place. The wrong people get jobs, some people do not get better, and injustice triumphs over justice.

In World War II, Arthur Harris, often known by his nickname, “Bomber” Harris, was the head of the Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command. He hated Hitler and Nazi Germany with a passion and was determined to bomb, and fire bomb, Germany into a pile of rubble. In 1945 he ordered what most historians would one day call a ‘raid too far,’ when he ordered the fire bombing of the German city of Dresden. Dresden had no military value. Germany was defeated and the city of Dresden was clogged with refugees attempting to flee the oncoming Russian Army. The city was destroyed and over 50,000 German civilians were burned to death in the bombing.

During this one man asked the question, “Why is God doing this to us?” Another man responded, “God is not doing this to us. People make wars.”

God allows us to lament because there are times when it is all we can do. We are allowed to be real with God.

Secondly, there are times when long for God because God seems to have been taken away from us by others. Often, there is injustice in the world and that injustice is blamed on God.

Most people are very aware that in the years leading up to the American Civil War there was a great deal of political tension within the United States. The country was being torn apart over the ethical issue of slavery. Was it legal for human beings to actually own other human beings? Did people of color have less rights than white people?

That debate took place in churches. Tragically people used the Bible as a battering stick against people of color. They found several passages and narrowly defined them to argue that slavery was God’s will, while overlooking the rest of the Bible that spoke of equality and justice for all people. It was tragic. Christians argued for inequality. Churches were split over it and many people abandoned churches where equality and justice were preached.

In the early part of the 20th century the debate lined up in exactly the same way. This time it was over the issue of the rights of women.

They found several passages and narrowly defined them to argue that misogyny was God’s will, while overlooking the rest of the Bible that spoke of equality and justice for all people. It was tragic. Christians argued for inequality. Churches were split over it and many people abandoned churches where equality and justice were preached.

And now, the debated has lined up in exactly the same way over the rights of all people to marry and have civil rights as couples. The legalization of marriage for all people that was passed in New York on Friday night was preached against, again, by many churches.

They found several passages and narrowly defined them to argue that being anti gay was God’s will, while overlooking the rest of the Bible that spoke of equality and justice for all people. It is tragic. Christians argue for inequality. Churches have split over it and many people abandoned churches where equality and justice were preached.

So there is a longing for God by people who are oppressed because, like the writer of the Psalm, they believe they have been abandoned by God.

The reality is that they are not abandoned by God; they have been abandoned by many of God’s people and it is tragic.

The last thing is this. When we lament, at its core, a lament is a cry of hope.

The Psalm is a calling out for God. It is a longing for God. It is a yearning for God. It is based on the premise and the heart felt belief that God is there, listening and caring. It is a recognition that there is a God who longs for us just as much as we long for God.
The last verse of the Psalm is this:

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.

It is a song, a reminder that our hope is always in God; and God will be our help.

God Bless Craig (Sermon for Father's Day!)

2011-06-21T14:16:00.003-05:00

God Bless Craig
Text: Ephesians 6:1-4
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
June 19, 2011

In the Manzo family lore, there is a story, a true story, that has been passed on and it’s about my Dad.

My brother was born in August of 1957. Several weeks after his birth, my brother was Baptized and people were coming to our home for a party after the Baptism was held at church. My Dad went to the bakery and ordered a special cake in honor of the day. On the cake, he had the baker put the words, “God Bless Craig.” The baker wasn’t really sure how to spell ‘Craig’ so my Dad spelled it out for him.

The day of the Baptism came and the cake was taken out, and there, perfectly written on the cake were the words, “God Bless Craig.” Everything was great except for one tiny little detail. My brother’s name is Mark. I do have a cousin named Craig and evidently my Dad, who was legendary at messing up names, was thinking of ‘Craig’ and not Mark.

We never really knew how far this piece of family lore had gone until many years later when my Grandmother died in 1993. At the funeral home my sister’s childhood friend, Kelly, came to the funeral home and my sister was introducing her to family members. When she introduced Kelly to Craig, Kelly’s eyes lit up and she said, “Oh wow. God bless Craig!!!”

Dad died in 1997 and at the funeral home we were standing around talking and laughing, and thinking about his immortal blunder that lives on in the life of the Manzo family.

Sometimes, in life, the role of being a Dad is to bring comic relief to a family. The story of my Dad and the cake, however, is a story with humor, but underlies something much bigger. My Dad was a really good Dad. He cared for and loved every member of his family and took care of everyone with everything he had. That is why we found the story so much fun and endearing. It brings back great memories.

Sadly, fatherhood is a tough subject. If there is a parent who bails on a family, most of the time it’s the father. If there is a parent who fails to take responsibility for the care, raising, and loving children, it’s usually the father. I read a statistic the other day that 47% of families with children at home are single parent families, with the largest percentage of the single parents being mothers. Often fathers make themselves the people out of the family picture.

And society doesn’t always treat fathers seriously.

In the early 1980's there was a movie made entitled Mr. Mom, and it was about the unemployed Dad staying home as the homemaker while Mom went to work every day. Mom, despite some starts and stops did just fine in the world of business, but Dad was seen as a total moron at home who could do nothing right. Dad was not taken seriously.

Recently AT&T has had a commercial that really drives me crazy. The Dad, in the commercial does not understand the wireless Internet service in his home and spends most of the commercial being lecture by his wife and daughter like he’s a total moron. Dad is not taken seriously.

St. Paul, in some interesting ways, helps redefine fathers, and in doing so helps redefine families.

Ephesians is, for many, a troubling letter when St. Paul begins speaking about family life. He precedes his words today with the famous passage on women submitting to their husbands----but it is, in many ways, a stunning passage.

When the letter hit the Ephesians they must have been shell-shocked. They wouldn’t have been shell shocked by women submitting to their husbands. Women were, at that time, property of their husbands. They had as many rights as a goat or a cow. Life for women in that era was, in a word, grim. Submission and often even abuse were part of their lives. It was a dreadful time for so many women.

But when the words of Paul came and read, “husbands, love your wives,” and later, “do not provoke your children to anger,” St. Paul was walking on new ground. People did not tell men, in that day and age, to live in a family in such a manner. Men were in charge. Real men didn’t eat quiche, didn’t love their wives, didn’t have to respect their children, or even have any emotional bond with their families at all.

But Paul is saying the opposite. Real men, do all these things. Real men do love their families and have emotional bonds with their family members. And quiche is optional.

But this day reminds us of things beyond Dads. It is a reminder to us about how we adults interact with children in our society.

This whole concept of ‘bringing them up,’ is not a passive process. It’s an active, every day kind of thing. Children do not raise themselves.

Here is one of the great myths of society. I have heard, many, many times, people make the statement that they were not going to raise their children in a church tradition; they want the child to grow up and make the decision for himself or herself.

It sounds good in theory but, in essence, when we raise children in nothing, they will choose nothing. If a child has never gone to church before then there is no reason to believe they will start going later. Increasingly, the younger generation is not only unchurched, but not even close to having a comprehension of a life of faith.

Every time we Worship and we pray, we end the Morning Prayer with the Lord’s Prayer. It is not printed in the bulletin and people do not ordinarily go looking in their hymnals for the prayer. We know it. We have been raised with it. The words are used in church so often that we pray the prayer by heart.

After Funeral Services, most Committal Services at the grave side end with the Lord’s Prayer. Most of the time, for these services, I have the words printed in the program because many people in younger generations do not know the words.

The Lord’s Prayer, the Prayer of Our Savior, the prayer Jesus taught us, is becoming less and less known. Increasingly, in our society, more people know what is on a Big Mac than they know the words of this prayer from Jesus.

The problem is at home and in church because we have forgotten to direct children to God as Paul reminds us. And part of the way we assure children are here is to be here ourselves.
A church in Florida had been having monthly family events for the whole community in an effort to reach new people. They were having a problem, however, with some parents dropping off children but not coming themselves.

To combat this problem, they issued the following announcement: "The Magic of Lassie, a film for the whole family, will be shown Sunday at 5 P.M. in the fellowship hall. Free puppies will be given to all children not accompanied by parents."

For the past several days I have been pondering being a Dad.

On my Facebook page I posted a picture back from 1977 when I graduated from college. My sister, who was just finishing the 8th grade was there along with my parents who, at the time, were both 46. At age 46 they were 10 years younger than I am now.

It was a big day for me but, I suspect, an even bigger day for them. Their oldest child had graduated from college, something neither of them or anyone in their families had done before. I had an opportunity they did not have and they supported me through it, as they did my brother and sister after me. It was a big deal.

My parents are both gone now. Dad died in 1997 and Mom died 5 1/2 years ago. It's hard to believe. You never really ponder life without your parents until they are no longer with you.

The biggest lesson I learned from them is this. Love your children. My daughters are now adults and neither one lives at home with us now. One lives in town and one lives 7 hours away. But they are still, in so many ways, at the core of my being, deep in my heart. I love them dearly and profoundly. And I learned to love them from my Mom and Dad.

In many ways, days like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are universal days that remind us of love. Sometimes, for many people, the love of their parents was lacking or deficient or even gone. For others, it was profound. For each of us, no matter what our circumstances in life, we are challenged to love others. I learned about love, the love of God, the love of other people, the love of my wife and children, from my parents. And on this day, I celebrate and remember their love, as I attempt to love as well as they did.

Pondering Being a Dad

2011-06-17T14:20:00.000-05:00

For the past several days I have been pondering being a Dad.

On my Facebook page I posted a picture back from 1977 when I graduated from college. My sister, who was just finishing the 8th grade was there along with my parents who, at the time, were both 46. At age 46 they were 10 years younger than I am now.

It was a big day for me but, I suspect, an even bigger day for them. Their oldest child had graduated from college, something neither of them or anyone in their families had done before. I had an opportunity they did not have and they supported me through it, as they did my brother and sister after me. It was a big deal.

My parents are both gone now. Dad died in 1997 and Mom died 5 1/2 years ago. It's hard to believe. You never really ponder life without your parents until they are no longer with you.

The biggest lesson I learned from them is this. Love your children. My daughters are now adults and neither one lives at home with us now. One lives in town and one lives 7 hours away. But they are still, in so many ways, at the core of my being, deep in my heart. I love them dearly and profoundly. And I learned to love them from my Mom and Dad.

Be Careful Sermon for June 12, 2011

2011-06-13T15:05:00.002-05:00

Be Careful
Acts 2:1-8, 11-13
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
June 12, 2011

The Gospel writer Luke, in his sequel to his Gospel, Acts of the Apostles, recounts for us a wonderful story of the coming of the Holy Spirit. On the day of Pentecost, they were all gathered and the Holy Spirit moved through their midst. People were filled with energy, enthusiasm, and great understanding. People could actually understand other's speaking on foreign tongues.

Luke says that they were ‘amazed' and ‘perplexed' by all of these remarkable happenings.

We, in Christianity, have something of a dilemma with the Holy Spirit..

We officially like and approve of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, of God, and we officially like and approve of God.

We read such things of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, such as charity, joy, peace, etc., and they all sound good to us and we approve of them.

We read about gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as wisdom, knowledge, understanding, etc., and we approve of them.

So, Christianity officially approves of the Holy Spirit. Obviously. Easiest thing ever said from this pulpit.

Except.

Here’s the thing. Unofficially Christianity has worked hard to keep the Holy Spirit from running loose. Churches organize themselves so that the Holy Spirit doesn’t run amuck in them.

Popes surround themselves with people who will protect the Pope from people saying crazy, Holy Spirit inspired things, and the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church is established in a way that they don’t have to worry too much that the Holy Spirit is going to run amuck.

The United Church of Christ often seems to be the opposite of this because we are so loosely structured. But down deep, in churches, we work hard to structure and organize ourselves in such a way that the Holy Spirit doesn’t get loose. After all, when the Holy Spirit gets loose, strange things begin to happen. And churches don’t like strange things to happen. In all honesty, pastors don’t like strange things to happen at church.

For one, when the Holy Spirit gets loose, the Holy Spirit proves to be disruptive.

We don’t often like disruption in the church. I found a collection some time back of things to do during boring sermons. Listen to these for a moment:

See if a yawn really is contagious.

Slap your neighbor. See if they turn the other cheek. If not, raise your hand and tell the preacher.

Sit in the back row and roll a handful of marbles under the pews ahead of you. After the service, credit yourself with 10 points for every marble that made it to the front.

Using church bulletins or visitor cards for raw materials, design, test and modify a collection of paper airplanes.

Start from the back of the church and try to crawl all the way to the front, under the pews, without being noticed.

When you sing a hymn, sing the wrong verses and see if you can confuse everyone around you. Or, make up new words for hymns. Being in a Roman Catholic seminary we were not allowed to date or get married. There was a psalm response that went, “Arise, come to your God, singing your songs of rejoicing.” A few of us got creative and changed it to “Surprise, there is no God, you left your girlfriend for nothing.”

They stopped using that song.

Most of us wouldn’t do any of that stuff because we’d be afraid of disrupting the Worship Service.

The thing with the Holy Spirit is that the Holy Spirit is disruptive, and not always predictably so. Sometimes the Holy Spirit messes with long held beliefs and such.

In the latter part of the 1940's a Christian ethicist named Bernard Haring began writing about Christian ethics in a way many people found troubling. Haring has been a Roman Catholic priest who was drafted into the German Army to serve as a chaplain. He spent most of the war in Poland as a chaplain to soldiers, but also serving several small churches as their Pastor.
Haring began to write after the war. He began to write that morality was not based on obedience but on personal responsibility and conscience. His observations of what happened in Nazi Germany, where people followed with blind obedience, was that blind obedience was never good. People had to develop their own consciences.

Since much of Christian ethics, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, was based on some sort of concept of obedience, his words fell like a bomb. As time went on, people began to realize the Holy Spirit was at work and individual responsibility and learning about conscience began to pervade teachings. Of course, Haring was loudly condemned by many because he was seen as disruptive. The Holy Spirit disrupts.

Today, two young women have made a decision. They allowed the Holy Spirit to disrupt their lives and they join with us, in celebrating the disruptive presence of the Holy Spirit.

So my words to them are simple. Be careful. When the Holy Spirit lets loose, things happens. Chaos reigns and the world is disrupted.

But God is served!

Is There One True Church? If So, Which One?

2011-06-09T09:58:00.002-05:00

There has been a great deal of effort made, over the centuries, to define ‘the one true church.’ Many groups have, at times, defined themselves as being the ‘true church’ because of various doctrinal items, historic precedence, and biblical interpretation. One of the things I appreciate about being a minister within the United Church of Christ is that it’s not a road we choose to venture.

I don’t believe there is such a thing as ‘one true church.’ I think every church, in some way, illuminates the truth of God; and every church, in some ways, falls way short of God’s glory. The Roman Catholic Church often sees itself as the ‘one true’ or, at least, original church. Early church history, however, is way too nebulous to make that claim with a straight face. Christianity morphed, in time, into what we now call the Roman Catholic Church, but there are many incredibly valid arguments which demonstrate a massive straying from the early church. But, in fairness, they are not the only ones.

The Orthodox Churches, however, not unlike the Roman Catholic Church make the claim they were ‘founded’ on the day of the coming of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost. Others point to 1054 when there was a split between East and West, both claiming to be the ‘true’ church.

Both the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches practice exclusive Holy Communion; only if you are part of that denomination may you come to the Table of the Lord. Within Protestantism, it varies. Most Lutheran Churches welcome everyone, but some do not. Several Protestant denominations have, throughout history, deemed themselves as being founded, also at Pentecost, and are the ‘true’ representation of Christianity.

I don’t believe there is any ‘true’ church and I think trying to demonstrate one truth at the expense of another. There are, however, certain aspects of Christianity that I believe to be important.

First is faithfulness. Often in our desire to be ‘true’ Christians, we forget, first, to be faithful Christians. Years ago the New York Giants drafted a running back who was not working very hard. He was very talented but was a great underachiever. The coach sneered at him one day that the road to the Hall of Fame started by playing well on the field.

Faith is a great deal like that. Often the desire to be ‘true’ means we take it for granted that we are right, that we are correct, to the point that we no longer reflect what Jesus taught.

Secondly, we are driven by real biblical values. Often what passes for biblical values are our opinions with scripture verses attached. Instead, perhaps we need to read the gospels and see where the Bible actually drives us. The gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John speak often of a radical inclusion of all people and a caring for those in need. Until we live those callings, we are not really living biblical values.

Lastly, there needs to be a great sense of humility. There are two eternal truths that are real to Christians. There is a God, and we are not God. Presuming any of us are the real vessels of TRUTH is a foolhardy presumption. Only God is the Truth and we need to be humble enough to accept that.

Sermon for Sunday June 5, 2011

2011-06-05T13:01:00.002-05:00

The Presence of Christ
Text: Acts 1:6-11
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
June 5, 2011

Up in the sky;

It’s a bird;

It’s a plane,

No, it’s------the Son of God being lifted up into Heaven, ascending into the clouds.

The apostles are standing there, mouths hanging open, gawking, looking at the sky and we have to cut them a break. It was the first time they had ever seen a person just float up into the sky. They stood, absolutely transfixed and bewildered until they are told by that Jesus was taken into heaven, but will come back some day. Of course, earlier in the passage, Luke, the write of Acts of the Apostles contradicts good old Harold Camper when Jesus tells us that no one knows when all will be restored. I’m guessing our rapture friend is missing this chapter from his Bible, but that’s a whole other story.

But they are asked, “Why do you stand there looking up toward Heaven?”

It’s really an amazing question that is pretty much a timeless question. Why are you looking for Jesus up there?

A little boy named Billy, who was quite a handful, by his parents, to a Christian school in the hope that they would be helpful in discipline. After the first day of school the boy came home in deep distress and went to his room, closed the door, and was hiding under his bed.

His Mom went and asked him what had happened. Billy said, “Well, in religion class the teacher began asking where Jesus was. I guess he’s missing. But then she asked me, ‘Billy, where is Jesus? Mom, she thinks I took Jesus!!!!”

It’s a silly story with many variations. One thing, however, is always a constant. People are always searching for Jesus. People try a variety of churches, read books, and take on spiritual practices in search of Jesus. And often we miss the fact that while we are searching the clouds for Jesus, Jesus is always in our midst.

There are two places we fail to look.

The first place we fail to look is around us. Every person here is a child of God and has the presence of Christ within them. Every person here.

If you go out to lunch, look around the restaurant. Every person in the restaurant is a child of God with the presence of Christ within them. As you drive your car and pass by people and have them pass you, take note every person you encounter on the road is a child of God with the presence of Christ within them. Even the one driving below the speed limit in front of you.

One of the great plights of civilization has been the plight of racism. If we had the ability to view every person, no matter what color, what nationality, as God views them, we’d see children of God with the presence of Christ within them.

If you are a Democrat, all the Republicans are children of God with the presence of Christ within them. If you are a Republican, all the Democrats are children of God with the presence of Christ within them.

When we look around us, everyone is a child of God with the presence of Christ within them. It does not matter if we are old or young, gay or straight, male or female, short or tall, bald or hairy, funny or serious, right handed or left handed. Everyone is a child of God with the presence of Christ within them.

Every year, when we have our faith statements, I’m very much reminded of this. Our young people get such a grasp on the presence of Christ in our midst that it inspires me. Today was no exception listening to these two remarkable young women share their journeys with us.

So don’t look at the sky. Look around you and you’ll encounter the presence of Christ.

The second place we look for Christ is when we serve others in Jesus’ name. The presence of Christ is so strong when people are served.

Jesus said that whenever we do something for the least of God’s people, we do it for Christ.

This corresponds with the first point of seeing everyone as children of God. When we see others as truly being children of God, we recognize that no one should go hungry; no one should be without clothing, no one should be without loving care. Every time we have Soup Kitchen, Christ is in our midst in a special way. Every time we have Clothes Closet, Christ is in our midst in a special way. The Health Fair, the trip to Kentucky, Repair affair, Operation Santa Claus, Thanksgiving Baskets, etc., etc., etc.

The presence of Christ is in our midst, in one another, and in our service to others. So don’t look in the sky! Look around you! The presence of Christ is here among us.

Journalistic Integrity?

2011-06-04T14:40:00.000-05:00

I often wonder what has happened to journalistic integrity.

During the past week there were major issues in the news, but they were largely overlooked by other things.

Mitt Romney announced that he was going to run for President. Whether you agree with Romney or like him, or not, Romney is a serious man with serious credentials and serious money behind him. His announcement is a big deal and his opinions on things are a big deal.

But, his announcement was overshadowed by Sarah Palin. We know that she ‘tweeted’ about the Statute of Liberty, ate pizza with Donald Trump (who used a knife and fork), and she did whatever one calls it with Paul Revere’s ride.

Sarah Palin did not announce where she was going on her special bus family vacation. She wanted to keep the news media in the dark. The news media, in their infinite wisdom, instead of NOT following her, followed her like a pack of lemmings. Of course, she ended up in New Hampshire on the day Romney was there and completely overshadowed him. So the journalists covered nonsense instead of the news.

Of course, this was overshadowed by Anthony Weiner’s alleged or hacked ‘tweet’ of a bodily appendage to a college student. Over the week, the news media covered Weiner’s appendage like it was the biggest story of the week; and Weiner’s incredibly bizarre responses helped keep a nonsensical story on the front pages. Of course, journalists covered all of this with vim, vigor, and glee.

Of course, we had side trips with the indictment of John Edwards and more stories into his sleazy affair and inept and potentially illegal cover ups. Despite all efforts of the people covering this story, this may actually be a big story.

Tim Pawlenty is trying to run a serious campaign from Minnesota, his home state. He is a thoughtful, serious guy. Again, whether one agrees with him or not, he brings some stature to the table. Michele Bachmann is also from Minnesota and she is the Bizarro World version of George Washington. She cannot tell the truth. She is an amazing dispenser of silliness. Pawlenty, of course, gets no media coverage whereas she gets a great deal.

Meanwhile, American soldiers are still in an active war, in an occupational action, and participating with NATO forces in Libya. The job reports was disappointing. The debt ceiling has been fodder for mostly ridiculous commentary by politicians on both sides of the aisle who never get called out for their ridiculous commentary because everyone is following Sarah’s bus and lamenting Trump’s eating of pizza with silverware.

It makes me wonder of journalistic integrity has become an oxymoron.

Amazing Heroes

2011-06-02T21:13:00.002-05:00

I just finished reading Jonathan Jordan’s amazing book, “Brothers, Rivals, Victors: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley and the Partnership that Drove the Allied Conquest in Europe.” The book is even longer than the title. I am a big admirer of Omar Bradley and his book, “A General’s Life,” is a classic on my bookshelf. I have read it numerous times.

First off, all three are amazing heroes. Ike and Bradley with classmates at West Point and Patton and Ike were old friends and former next door neighbors. The two of them were ardent supporters of armor and Bradley had a background in the infantry. They were all really amazing people who were very human and all made their share of mistakes.

Eisenhower had one of the most difficult jobs of the war. He was the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. He had some amazing bosses. Winston Churchill was, well, Winston Churchill. President Roosevelt was more patient than Churchill, but there was General George Marshall, who, in my opinion is the truly great American of the 20th Century and if you don’t know who he is, shame on you! Marshall was the brains behind the American military operations in both theaters and his confidence in Eisenhower was well placed.

But part of Ike’s problem wasn’t his bosses but his subordinates. Bradley was, in so many ways, the perfect general. He was quiet and unassuming and was, in so many ways, the finest American general on the ground in Europe in terms of combat operations. Patton was brilliant but often reckless. Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton could irritate each others and often did. They never lost focus, however, of their two great enemies: the Germans and Bernard Montgomery. Monty’s ego, portrayed in this book and many other places, was amazing. He made Patton look humble----and that’s saying a lot.

I learned some interesting things. Despite his gruffness, of the three, Patton had the most tender heart and was deeply sensitive. He was prone to fits of rage and tears. When the three visited a concentration camp, Patton was so overwhelmed with grief, he was the one who sobbed and vomited. He had a very big heart----something not always seen in portraits of him.

Bradley was a lot tougher than often portrayed. Unlike the others, of his subordinates failed, he sacked them. He felt war was truly a dreadful event and failure had to be addressed and soldiers had to be led by experience, capable leaders and not those learning on the job. And Bradley was the planner of Cobra which was one of the most devastating attacks on the Germans in the war.

Ike was the guy who held everyone together. He lived on coffee and cigarettes, and very little sleep. When he was President he had terrible health and, wow, you can really tell why. The poor guy was physically almost destroyed by the war and the stress. Interesting to note, that Bradley, in his book, dismissed Eisenhower’s planning ability militarily, but, in this book, we see his ideas very much come to light. Ike was quite a man.

It was awe inspiring reading about these three amazing heroes. They truly were brothers, rivals, and ultimately victors!

Random Thoughts

2011-05-31T15:59:00.002-05:00

Random Thoughts

Okay, first thought I’m going to share is one where I’m going to duck. I watched Oprah’s last show and her final monologue. She’s very accomplished and done well in life and I felt that she reminded us over and over again about this. I know many people were moved by this. I wasn’t. But perhaps that’s just me.

Sarah Palin is playing catch me if you can with the news media and her whirlwind tour. I’d say ‘why bother.’ She said she hates coverage from the mainstream media, so I’d say don’t cover her. Simple solution.

I don’t agree with him about much, but I think Tim Pawlenty is a pretty good candidate. I think the Republicans don’t have their strongest field, but I think he’s the best of the lot by far. Of the group right now, I think he and Romney are the only really serious one’s, and I think Romney has a problem with the base and will struggle in getting the nomination. As for Palin, I think she’s looking to run as a Tea Party candidate and morph that into a third party, but I could be way wrong on that.

I would not be overly excited about this if I were President Obama, however, George H. W. Bush, at this time, was facing a weak Democratic group and Bill Clinton came out of that. In politics, things change rapidly. And the economy is still bad.

I think Amanda Knox would have been acquitted had her first trial been in the United States and her appeal trial is demonstrating that she was railroaded. Could be wrong, but...

Snookie was arrested in Italy. Seaside Heights, New Jersey is praying she stays...

Tiki Barber compared himself to Anne Frank. Tiki used to be a smart guy. Notice the word ‘used’.

Adrian Peterson said that NFL players are treated like slaves. Peterson is an African-American running back who, perhaps, has ancestors who were, in fact, slaves. I wish they could have coffee or something so he could see the difference between being a multi-millionaire running back in the NFL and a slave.

And maybe, while he’s having coffee, Tiki can lock himself in an attack every day in fear for his life.

My patience with the moronic is getting smaller and smaller. You probably can tell...

The Real Lawn King

2011-05-19T09:44:00.000-05:00

God said: "Frank, you know all about gardens and nature. What in the
world is going on down there on the planet? What happened to the
dandelions, violets, milkweeds and stuff I started eons ago? I had a
perfect no-maintenance garden plan. Those plants grow in any type of
soil, withstand drought and multiply with abandon. The nectar from the
long-lasting blossoms attracts butterflies, honey bees and flocks of
songbirds. I expected to see a vast garden of colors by now. But, all I
see are these green rectangles."

St. FRANCIS:
It's the tribes that settled there, Lord. The Suburbanites. They
started calling your flowers 'weeds' and went to great lengths to kill
them and replace them with grass.

GOD:
Grass? But, it's so boring. It's not colorful. It doesn't attract
butterflies, birds and bees; only grubs and sod worms. It's sensitive
to temperatures. Do these Suburbanites really want all that grass
growing there?

ST. FRANCIS:
Apparently so, Lord. They go to great pains to grow it and keep it
green. They begin each spring by fertilizing grass and poisoning any
other plant that crops up in the lawn.

GOD:
The spring rains and warm weather probably make grass grow really fast.
That must make the Suburbanites happy.

ST. FRANCIS:
Apparently not, Lord. As soon as it grows a little, they cut
it-sometimes twice a week.

GOD:
They cut it? Do they then bale it like hay?

ST. FRANCIS:
Not exactly, Lord. Most of them rake it up and put it in bags.

GOD:
They bag it? Why? Is it a cash crop? Do they sell it?

ST. FRANCIS:
No, Sir, just the opposite. They pay to throw it away.

GOD:
Now, let me get this straight. They fertilize grass so it will grow.
And, when it does grow, they cut it off and pay to throw it away?

ST. FRANCIS:
Yes, Sir.
GOD:
These Suburbanites must be relieved in the summer when we cut back on
the rain and turn up the heat. That surely slows the growth and saves
them a lot of work.

ST. FRANCIS:
You aren't going to believe this, Lord. When the grass stops growing so
fast, they drag out hoses and pay more money to water it, so they can
continue to mow it and pay to get rid of it.

GOD:
What nonsense. At least they kept some of the trees. That was a sheer
stroke of genius, if I do say so myself. The trees grow leaves in the
spring to provide beauty and shade in the summer. In the autumn, they
fall to the ground and form a natural blanket to keep moisture in the
soil and protect the trees and bushes. It's a natural cycle of life.

ST. FRANCIS:
You better sit down, Lord. The Suburbanites have drawn a new circle. As
soon as the leaves fall, they rake them into great piles and pay to
have them hauled away.

GOD:
No!? What do they do to protect the shrub and tree roots in the winter
to keep the soil moist and loose?

ST. FRANCIS:
After throwing away the leaves, they go out and buy something which
they call mulch. They haul it home and spread it around in place of the
leaves..

GOD:
And where do they get this mulch?

ST. FRANCIS:
They cut down trees and grind them up to make the mulch.

GOD:
Enough! I don't want to think about this anymore. St. Catherine, you're
in charge of the arts. What movie have you scheduled for us tonight?

ST. CATHERINE:
'Dumb and Dumber', Lord.. It's a story about....

GOD:

Never mind, I think I just heard the whole story from St. Francis

Justice without Delighting in It

2011-05-13T13:18:00.002-05:00

Like many others, I have spent a great deal of time contemplating the demise of Osama Bin Laden. There has been a great deal of discussion about the event, the morality, and the credit.

First off, I think most of the conversations about the credit are misplaced. The Intelligence Services, the Navy Seals, and the Army helicopter pilots obviously deserve a ton of credit. Three American Presidents have been trying to get to Bin Laden and he has been one of the most elusive people in the world. All three, Clinton, Bush, and Obama deserve credit for the hunt. Ultimately it doesn’t matter who was the President when the job was finished; they all deserve credit. Obama was the one who made the final call; a call any of them, I believe, would have made. So, enough about the credit.

As for the morality of all this, there is a simple fact to be viewed: Osama Bin Laden made war on the United States. He launched attacks against us in the Middle East and on our own soil. Many have wanted to call him a criminal and I greatly appreciate the desire to do so as what he did WAS criminal. He was an avowed enemy, however, of this nation as he made war on us. It was and is a deplorable kind of war that sinks to the lowest form of human behavior, but he made war on us.

In classic morality, when one makes war on another, one loses one’s right to life. It is a harsh reality of war.

In 1943 the American military had learned that Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto of Japan, the man who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, was going to be in an airplane flying from one base to another. The approximate route was calculated and a group of American fighter planes were launched with the hope of finding Yamamoto’s plane. They did and he was shot down and killed. He had made war on the United States and our military tracked him down and he died.

Interestingly enough, the stories of getting Yamamoto and Bin Laden are a great deal alike. Justice, it can be said, was served.

But justice should not be celebrated.

Again, during World War II, there was another battle in another continent.

After D-Day on June 6th, the often untold story is that the United States and the British were trapped in Normandy for weeks. After a devastating attack to break out, the British were north and the American Army was south. General Omar Bradley was the overall ground commander and he watched how things developed.

The German Army was told by Adolf Hitler to not retreat and not give up an inch of land. That always sounds ‘tough’ but it’s an incredibly stupid strategy for victory. In fact, the ‘never give an inch’ mentality generally is a successful model for defeat as a strategic, well planned retreat often allows people to regather and come back.

In any case, the German Army was staggered and pushed back and they finally came up with a really amazingly bad plan. They counter-attacked into the center of the American and British line. The German Army believed the best trained, best disciplined, and best equipped army would prevail. The Germans were correct. The best trained, best disciplined, and best equipped army did prevail when the American Army stopped the German Army after the Germans had pushed themselves into a deep pocket.

Bradley, who is vastly under-rated and often unknown, saw that the Germans were in a deep but narrow bulge trapped by Americans and British in the west, the north, and the south. There was only a gap near Falaise, France. The American and English Armies began to close the gap. Estimates say that 10-20,000 German troops got out, but the bulk of the German Army was trapped. 50,000 German soldiers surrendered, and between 20-30,000 of them died in the center of the trap.

The German Army in France was essentially destroyed and an entire Army Group was wiped off the planet.

General Dwight Eisenhower, Bradley’s boss, was thrilled and toured the battlefield where so many German soldiers had died. What he saw appalled him. There were no signs of life. French life stock was dead. Horses that pulled German Army items were dead. Thousands and thousands of young German soldiers were dead. It was said that even the flied had not survived the carnage. There was nothing but death.

It had to have been done. The dead soldiers would have done that to American soldiers if the shoe had been on the other foot. But Eisenhower was greatly disturbed. There was no elation----just the grim reminder and fact that was is a brutal business.

Osama Bin Laden was a man of brutality who died brutally. Jesus observed that those who live by the sword die by the sword. If one calls violence on another, that violence will be returned. But we must not delight in it.

In the Jewish Seder Meal there is a moment when people dip their fingers in the wine and drop drops of wine on their plates ten times to remember the ten plagues against Egypt. It is a reminder of the blood of one’s enemy that was shed so the Israelites would be freed. The drops of wine are dropped but there is a command. You must not lick your fingers afterwards to delight in it.

Sadly, sometimes people die for justice to prevail and that is part of the world we live in. But let us never delight in it.

Random Thoughts

2011-05-12T10:12:00.000-05:00

It's always fun coming back to work after being away. Graduation and moving my daughter to Cleveland was exciting, fun, sad, and exhausting all in one. I have a bunch of random thoughts.

Newt Gingrich tossed in his hat to run for President. I think there are two groups of people seeking to get the Republican nomination, at least in theory:

The jokers. Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump, Sara Palin, and Newt all fall into this category. For all of them there are serious character issues, most especially in terms of honesty. Frankly, the more time, energy, and money focused on them is good for President Obama.

The really serious people. Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and potentially Mitch Daniels. I may not agree with them but these are serious people who have good character and actually have leadership skills. They also have a history of honesty.

I pretty much dismiss Rick Santorum who has the charm of a gila monster, but I am intrigued, always, but Ron Paul. His is a wile card as I don't consider him to be a major player in getting the nomination but I do see him as a person who may actually help focus the agenda on real items.

A part of me, by the way, thinks either Trump, Palin, or both will run as a third or fourth party candidate.

I am becoming short tempered over the feuding over which President deserves the credit for getting Bin Laden.

First, off, between Intelligence and the Navy Seals, that is who 'got' Bin Laden. President Obama gave the order. Would President Bush have given the order? Of course. I have no reason to believe otherwise. End of story.

Thinking about parenting. You are a successful parent, it seems, when your children grow up and leave home and begin to make their own mark on the world. I'm proud of both of my daughters because they are doing this right now. It does make me sad, however, because I miss having two little girls in my house. It is a reminder how fast life flies by...

Random Musings

2011-05-06T11:44:00.000-05:00

My daughter graduates from college tomorrow. I'm very proud of both my daughters. In my family they are only the second generation of college graduates. It is a big deal.

I read that some of the 'birthers' are now becoming 'deathers.' I mean, what can you say. Cognitive dissonance is not easily cured.

I have been reading the most excellent book, "Brothers, Rivals, Victors: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley and the Partnership that Drove the Allied Conquest in Europe." It's a very unvarnished and honest portrait of these three incredible man. If you are a person interested in World War II, this book is a must read.

Of the three, the most interesting, to me, has been Eisenhower. The others were great generals, but Ike had the weight of the world on his shoulders and was often the ball in a soccer game. His easy smile and public charm often gave the portrait of a shallow man who seemed to know less than others. Actually, the opposite was true. He definitely had an easy smile and charm, but he was very, very smart and insightful. He had to deal with the politics of two nations, Generals with massive egos, and hounding news people. He also had to deal, regularly, with the very formidable George Marshall who was probably the most influential (and largely unknown) American of the 20th Century. Ike proved himself to be an amazing man whose influence on American society is largely ignored.

Oh yes, and by the way. There was an American General whose troops were the first to reach Paris, France, and he led them through Germany. His troops fought the Battle of Hurtgen Forest and had a major role in the Ardennes Offensive, other...wise known as the Battle of the Bulge. The First Army was the first unit to cross the Rhine River, by using the still standing Ludendorff bridge at Remagen, and to meet with the Soviet Red Army near Torgau, on the river Elbe. Most people, if asked, would presume this General to be George Patton who loved the limelight and is often the star of highlight reels. But, one would be wrong. It was General Courtney Hodges, who was probably the finest ground commander of the war and led the 1st Army. (Patton) led the 3rd Army in Europe, and the 7th Army in Sicily and Tunisia.

And unlike the others, Hodges did not graduate from West Point. He enlisted in the Army as a private and went through the ranks the hard way.

I think George Patton would have loved George C. Scott's portrait of him in the movie "Patton." The persona is very real except the 'real' Patton was very emotionally and easily came to tears. He was far most sensitive and fragile than often perceived----some of which Scott nailed perfectly. One thing Patton would have loved, however, was Scott's deep voice. Patton had a high pitched squeaky voice and he hated it.

World War II had some of America's finest generals. I often wonder if they were great generals in the right place at the right time, or if the events of history made them great. Or a combination of both. Who knows? In the end, it matters little. They were great men at a time the world needed great men.

Human Decency

2011-05-04T10:40:00.002-05:00

Human Decency.

I recently read this article:

PITTSBURGH – Police have arrested a 17-year-old boy accused of robbing an usher who worked at the baseball stadium where the Pittsburgh Pirates play after he stopped his car while having a heart attack on his way home from an extra-inning game.
Police aren't identifying the suspect because of his age. They said Tuesday he approached the car and pulled out 58-year-old driver Michael Schacht, who had been slumped over and in distress. They say he stole the man's wallet and drove off in his car, leaving him on the ground.
Police were puzzled by the man's death because he had only a superficial head injury when he was found April 10 a mile from PNC Park.
The suspect doesn't qualify to be charged as an adult. He's being taken to a juvenile detention facility.

When we use words such as depravity, this is the kind of behavior I see. There is an amazing lack of human decency.

I can imagine the conversation with the 17 year old boy would have gone something like this.

He needed the money. He needed the car. He really didn’t do anything wrong. The man was dead and he wasn’t going to be using her car or needing the money any more. But I keep coming back to the belief that the young man probably didn’t believe he did anything wrong.

Where would he have gotten such an idea? If the man was dead, why didn’t the youngster call 911? What was it about his lack of human decency that made him not think that Mr. Schacht may have had a family who loved him and would be devastated by his death, but also even further devastated that this man’s body, this man who they loved, was left on the ground, dead?

Why did he think that Mr. Schacht, even in death, deserved human decency and dignity?

It often makes me think that we, as a society, need to begin re-teaching dignity and respect, and living our lives in a way that facilitates this.

As for Mr. Schacht, I hope he received the kind of funeral he deserved, filled with love and respect.

And as for the young man. I’m not convinced he need to be in prison. Where he needs to be is someplace where he can grow a heart and be taught lessons in decency----in a place where he will be treated with such decency, that he desires to live in that manner toward others.

Bin Laden is Dead

2011-05-02T15:46:00.000-05:00

Osama Bin Laden is dead. Three Presidents have been seeking this to take place as he was considered to be the most dangerous terrorist in the world. President Obama was the President when this finally took place which demonstrates that the perseverance of those who have held that office has paid off. The President is not running around patting himself on the back saying, “I did it,” but instead of graciously pointing out to a long line of work that has taken place. It is correct that he do so. This is an American accomplishment that neither party can take credit for. It is an accomplishment of the United States.

It is, of course, a huge accomplishment by our intelligence services and the Navy Seals. The Seals, despite some last minute mechanical difficulty on one of the helicopters dropped in and did their job efficiently and well. While I hate the fact that, at times, killing seems to be a necessity, it is amazing how well these brave Navy folks worked. They dropped in and did their job well with as little collateral damage as they could, and left. They had no casuals and the only ‘innocent’ person who died was a poor woman who was used as a human shield. This woman’s death is a reminder to everyone as to the character of the terrorists happens to be.

As for Bin Laden’s body, he was buried at sea using Islamic traditions. His body was washed, wrapped in a white cloth, placed in a ‘weighted bury at sea bag’ and the ritual prayers were done. It was the right decision. A grave with him in it would be a shrine to terrorists and would, in and of itself, be a place of violence for too many people. Bin Laden has been the cause of enough people’s deaths. In a moment of being personally evil, the fact that fish are feasting on his remains as I write this does not disturb me. This man was evil and deserves no honor and neither does his death. What happens now is between Bin Laden and God.

I’ve been thinking about how awful this kind of decision is to make if one is the President. In the movie, “The American President,” after President Andrew Shepherd orders a military action which will lead to the death of others, an advisor tells the President how proud he is as the President had never been more Presidential. The President’s response is that he had never been ‘less Presidential’ in ordering the killing of others. I would imagine many Presidents have laid awake at night wrestling with the fact that, on their orders, deaths took place. Even when those deaths, those killings seemed like the right thing at the time. Whether we like to acknowledge it or not, the Sixth Commandment is very short and does not offer much in terms of wiggle room. But, alas, people choose to run for this position and so they choose to make these decisions and pray to God they are correct.

Of course, as difficult as this is for the President to make, I think of the Navy Seals who actually carried out the mission. As they headed into Pakistan on the helicopters, these incredibly well trained and brave people did not really know what they would encounter and if the intelligence was correct. Would the mission be a success? Who would live and who would die? Amazing.

And, I think of the people who died on 9/11. Over 3000 people either burned alive or caught in a collapsing building, or jumping to their deaths. When I think of the phone calls made from people at the top of the Twin Towers, telling loved one’s that they loved them and had to say good-bye, before they vanished into the smoke of that day, my heart breaks.

The deed is done. God help us we are glad a man has been killed; but we know he was evil and now we move on-----and pray for peace.

Observations About the Royal Wedding

2011-05-01T16:32:00.002-05:00

I admit it, I watched the Royal Wedding. I wasn’t hardcore enough to get up early, but I watched the recording of the event. And, I doubly admit that I really am glad that I did. I came away with several observations.

The comparisons between Kate and Diana are almost endless. The thing is, there are actually very few comparisons. When Diana got married she was a 19 year old girl in what was essentially an arranged marriage to a relative stranger. William married a 29 year old woman who is the love of his life and best friend. From a ‘health’ perspective, there is no comparison. Additionally, let’s let Kate be Kate and not Diana.

I liked the very attractive and very modest wedding gown.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has about the best speaking voice I have ever heard and the wildest eyebrows I have ever seen.

Fergie’s daughters have very strange taste in hats.

The Worship Service was amazing. I think many people were amazed at the beauty of a well done Liturgy. Considering that so many people attend Worship Services that are more like infomercials for Jesus than they are real Liturgies, it was not a surprise. The beauty of an ages old Liturgy is still amazing.

I love, love, love, the English hymn Jerusalem.

It is very obvious that the English people still love their royalty. It’s also obvious that Americans love the English royalty as well. We might not want them as ‘our’ royals, but we seem to like them just fine.

The Mother of the Bride is always such a pivotal character in weddings. However, when the Grandmother of the Groom is the Queen of England, the rules change a little bit.

The siblings of the couple did really well and it is obvious that there is great sibling love on both sides of the family.

I think Prince Charles gets a bum rap on how well he helped raise his sons. I think he did a very fine job along with their mother; and carried it on after her death.

The tragedy of Diana’s life and death still looms. I think the longness of William and Kate’s dating and seemingly slow decision making came, in part, as a result of William not wanting tragedy to befall two women he loved and loves so much.

I found the experience to be incredibly moving and am very happy I watched this moment in history.

The Embracing of Ayn Rand

2011-04-28T11:48:00.000-05:00

About 15-20 years ago I began to make what people perceived as startling statements about Ayn Rand. Most of the my statements were met with “Who the heck is Ayn Rand?” My observation at the time was that many of the people who were calling themselves conservative were not really conservative but Randian in their approach. American conservatives most often viewed the philosophy of Edmund Burke as their guide, whereas 15-20 years ago Rand’s philosophy began to prevail. And there are consequences to this.

Rand’s philosophy comes as a result of a series of massive novels. It is no doubt that she was a gifted writer who made some valid and interesting points in her books. Some of her points, made in novels like Atlas Shrugged, which are not inconsistent with Burke’s philosophy are quite valid. But, in the spirit of intellectual honesty, some of the points Upton Sinclair made in his books like The Jungle, which would come from a drastically opposing perspective of Rand’s are valid as well. I am focusing on Rand right now, however, because virtually no one is reading Sinclair.

Rand’s philosophy premise is based on something she calls objectivism. There is an objective nature to life. Much as paper burns and water makes you wet, there are objective realities in life.

Reason, for her, was everything. And the reasoning has to be clear, objective, and totally rational with no sense of feeling. One’s feelings would lead a person astray.

Religion, to her was a fraud. God was a delusion and not an objective truth.

For her, selfishness is a virtue and altruism is seen as a crime against human excellence. For her, self-sacrifice is a contemptible weakness that people have. She said,

“The Objectivist ethics, in essence,hold that man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice himself to others, nor sacrifice others to himself.” Her thought was this. “Man is a heroic being with his own happiness as the moral purpose of life with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

She was very anti-Christian. She felt that Christianity demonstrated the opposite of every human value. Her view of Christianity, which so often lies at the foot of the cross, is this: “The cross, the symbol of the sacrifice of the ideal to the nonideal. . . . It is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors. That is precisely how the symbolism is used. That is torture.”

People are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors....

When one uses the expression, ‘Class warfare,’ one needs to begin with Rand. For her, class warfare was not only tolerable and acceptable, it was a moral absolute. For her, the people at the top deserved to be at the top and had no responsibility for those at the bottom as, from her world view, those at the bottom deserved to be there.

Rand’s impact is alarming.

Congressman Paul Ryan with his “Roadmap for America’s Future,” addresses issues like Medicare and Medicaid by majorly cutting them back while reducing the tax level on the highest earners in the country. For him, this is more than a budgetary proposal, it is a way of viewing life in the United States. Ryan, who is an admirer of Rand and requires all of his staffers read Atlas Shrugged, is greatly impacted by her philosophical world view.

To Ryan’s credit, he is being honest about his Randian world view. He admires her and he’s not afraid state it. His “Roadmap” is a clear example of a Randian world view.

If people listen to Rush Limbaugh, Limbaugh espouses a Randian philosophy. I’m not sure that he ever mentions her by name as he seems to like to express her world view as HIS world view and he seems to have too much hubris to give another person credit for ideas. Interestingly enough, I suspect Rand would approve of this as he has been amazingly successful.

Something else very evident is that the poor have been demonized by society.

With the release of the recent “Roadmap” many people have given it a great deal of scrutiny. The cuts on Medicare are incredibly unpopular. The vast majority of Americans are opposed to this. People like Medicare and it ultimately benefits everyone age 65 and over. The cuts on Medicaid, however, aren’t nearly as unpopular. The fact that Medicaid is mostly used for the poorest Americans often indicates that caring for the less fortunate is not the highest priority for most people.

The greatest impact of Ayn Rand, however, is not only politically, but also religiously. The philosophy of Ayn Rand, in the most ironic of twists, is that Ayn Rand’s philosophy has impacted religious life in America.

Michael Gerson, a speech writer for President George W. Bush did a recent ‘take down’ of Rand from a conservative Christian perspective and called her objectivist philosophy merely a move toward societal adolescence.

Roman Catholic author, Vincent Miller recently wrote in the Roman Catholic publication America, these words which I quote extensively:

It’s an appropriate topic during Holy Week. Gerson outlines the conflict between Christianity and Rand’s “Objectivism” which could not be more fundamental. In Rand’s words, her ethics held “that man exists for his own sake, that his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice himself for others, nor sacrifice others to himself.” She disdained the Cross: “It is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors.”

Rand's novels sell more than 800,000 copies a year. Her influence goes far beyond “Who is John Galt?” posters and t-shirts at Tea Party rally’s.

Congressman Paul Ryan is a Rand devotee. He calls her “the reason I got involved in public service” and requires his staffers to read Atlas Shrugged. Indeed Ryan’s celebrated budget proposal reads like it was written by John Galt himself. It is one grand shrug of the wealthy--combining further upper income tax cuts with slashes to Medicaid and the conversion of Medicare to a shrinking voucher.

It is worth noting that Ryan is Catholic. I wonder if he knows that both his principles and policies are fundamentally opposed to the social teaching of the Church? Perhaps if his Rand-inspired libertarianism leads him to a pro-choice position, his bishop might take note. But otherwise, he will likely not only be free to pedal his society-shredding fiscal policies, he will never be challenged by his Church to consider the profound error of Rands views. This is a profound failure in teaching the faith.

One wonders if he even knows of the existence Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. It’s wisdom sounds so foreign in the contemporary climate.

354. Tax revenues and public spending take on crucial economic importance for every civil and political community. The goal to be sought is public financing that is itself capable of becoming an instrument of development and solidarity. Just, efficient and effective public financing will have very positive effects on the economy, because it will encourage employment growth and sustain business and non-profit activities to help to increase the credibility of the State as the guarantor of systems of social insurance and protection that are designed above all to protect the weakest members of society.

Public spending is directed to the common good when certain fundamental principles are observed: the payment of taxes as part of the duty of solidarity; a reasonable and fair application of taxes; precision and integrity in administering and distributing public resources. In the redistribution of resources, public spending must observe the principles of solidarity, equality and making use of talents. It must also pay greater attention to families, designating an adequate amount of resources for this purpose.

With libertarianism now fully embraced by a major political party and the social safety net being shredded in states following decades of Rand-ian tax cuts, this seems a worthy topic for the exercise of the Bishops teaching authority. Recall Glen Beck’s urging his listener’s to flee any church that preaches “Social Justice”?

One wishes it weren’t such a fantasy to imagine the Bishops Committee on Doctrine responding to such a widely influential ideology.

Ryan remains unchallenged by his own church. The only Christian bodies that have expressed a concern over his budgetary plan are the churches of the small and mostly ignored Christian Left, and what are perceived as ‘out of step’ Evangelicals.

It should be noted that Vice President Joe Biden and Senator John Kerry, while running for the Presidency, were refused Holy Communion for being personally opposed to abortion but publically voting to keep it legalized. (I can argue about refusing anyone Holy Communion, but that’s a different issue) While Biden and Kerry were denied Holy Communion, nary a word has been spoken about Ryan’s proposal which is as clearly opposed to Roman Catholic church teaching as abortion.

Another interesting aspect of Rand and Christianity is this.

Recently Lawrence O’Donnell ran clips of Rush Limbaugh denouncing the Left for citing Jesus in reference to Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap” and Limbaugh made the statement that the only time the Left was interested in Jesus Christ was when they felt they could use Jesus to bash a Republican proposal. Limbaugh, who does not attend church and does not publically espouse any religious convictions other than when it’s convenient to him, went on to say that Jesus would have nothing to say about Ryan’s proposal. He then went on to say that the appropriate thing to address would not be WWJD, What would Jesus Do, but instead be WWJT, What would Jesus take?

O’Donnell addressed Limbaugh’s question by reading something Limbaugh was obviously not familiar with: The Gospels. Limbaugh, who went on and on saying that Jesus didn’t bash the rich went on and articulated a position that was completely inconsistent with Christianity. And Jesus did bash the rich. A lot. In fact, Jesus’ two primary moral teachings were about caring for the poor and his opposition to self-righteousness.

And most of Christianity in America did nothing in response to Limbaugh’s statements. Albert Mohler who consistently has things to say about American society and how we are all going to hell, said nary a word when the most popular talk show host in America completely mis-represented Christianity.

Interestingly enough the majority, not all, but the majority of mega-churches say very little to caring for the poor and outcast, cast out gay members, and are quick to condemn homosexuality and abortion as well as societal ills like pornography, but are painfully slow at condemning programs that bash the poor. In fact, so many of them promote personal prosperity and the benefits of personal relationships with Jesus and personal salvation, that they appear to be less based upon Jesus Christ and more based on a Christianization of Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand’s philosophy was a morally bankrupt philosophy that was, and is, totally contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The more we embrace it, the less we embrace Christ.

And we are embracing more and more...

Politifact Grades

2011-04-18T12:57:00.000-05:00

Politfact has become one of the most important websites on the Internet as it unflinchingly rates people’s honesty in their speeches and comments. I decided to search out Politifact and give politicians grades. Politfact has certain categories and I decided to assign a number to each score.

If a statement is True, I gave the person 4 points, an A.

If the statement is Mostly True, 3 points, a B.

If the statement is Half True, 2 points, a C.

If the statement is mostly Barely True, 1 point a D.

If a statement is False, 0 points, an F.

If the statement is Pants on Fire, I gave them -1 points for pure deceit.

Like a normal grade, I counted up the total number of points and divided by the number of actual statements the person has on Politfact. The President scored the highest with a 2.2 but this can be attributed to a lot of things. For one, he has, by far and away, the most number of statements because he is the President of the United States and, because he is also the most scrutinized person, he has to be incredibly careful with what he says because he will be called out on it. Or, perhaps he is more honest than most. People can come to whatever conclusions they want. Having said all that, a score of 2.2, in my opinion, is nothing to be proud of.

On the bottom end of the scale is Michele Bachmann who had a score of 0 in True or Mostly True. Her total score was 0.2 which can only mean she’s one of the most overwhelmingly dishonest politicians in the United States. Interestingly enough, she professes herself to be a Christian. If she really is, I’d presume she’s a Christian for whom only 9 Commandments count.

The results are disturbing. Two well known people failed miserably, one beyond miserably. The highest scores were C’s, not even C+. Really awful stuff if you ask me.

President Barack Obama Score 2.22 C

Speaker John Boehner Score 1.97 C

Senator Mitch McConnell Score 1.9 C

Senator Harry Reid Score 1.8 C

Cong. Nancy Pelosi Score 1.86 C

VP Joe Biden Score 2.0 C

Sarah Palin Score 1.6 D+

Mike Pence 1.4 D

Rachel Maddow Score 1.27 D

Glenn Beck Score .86 F

Michele Bachmann Score .2 F

Calming Down

2011-04-09T16:22:00.000-05:00

I'm finding that calming down after the recent budget fight, potential shut-down has been difficult for me.

Truth be told, while I obviously lean left, I'm really not an ideologue. I actually don't really trust ideologues. I tend to think hard and fast ideologies are simplistic attempts to solve complex problems. I tend to believe that the truth is found in a variety of ideas and that pragmatism is more important than holding fas to some ideology. But, obviously, I find myself in the minority.

Several things made me angry.

The Democrats failed to pass a budget when they had control of Congress, both houses, and they also passed the health care legislation that had some good things in it. It is mislabled as 'Obamacare' to make it appear like it was the brain child of the President. Sadly, it was the brainchild of committees in Congress with a bunch of modifications made to make it more palatable. The Democrats passed it and ran away from it like scared children. If you pass something good, stand up for it and promote it. They failed and lost the House. Deservedly so.

Some of the Republicans used the current budget time to attempt to make cheap political points. Michele Bachmann and Mike Pence gave speeches practically demanding a shut down and the more radical people in the party made life difficult for John Boehner. I think, of everyone, Boehner has the most difficult job. He's the 'cat herder' in Congress. While I disagree with Boehner on most things, I've come to greatly respect him. I do think he has a lot of integrity.

I'm not sure about the President on this one. He pretty much stayed on the sidelines and tried to be 'Presidential.' From what I've heard, however, he was very much a player and was on the phone constantly.

But the biggest issue is this. It shouldn't have come to this. We elect people to behave like grown ups. Some did----or tried to, but everyone was let down by incompetence and untruths.

I hope I do eventually calm down.

The Gospel

2011-03-28T08:36:00.000-05:00

I keep coming to this harsh realization that much of what passes for Christianity these days seems to boil down to two things.

The first is 'sin management.' People sin. People fall short of God's glory. No one lives even close to perfect lives. As a result, God needs to be a God who provides sin management. How do we manage the sins we have committed in life?

The second is 'ticket to Heaven.' The Gospel seems to have been shrunken down to Jesus coming, living, and dying on the cross to pass out tickets to Heaven. Too often the Gospel and our lives here on earth as worthless unless we get a ticket to Heaven.

A big issue with Christianity right now is that it has made God too small to be God. And people wonder why churches are shrinking. When we make our God so small; when we diminish God into one who simply manages sins; when we eliminate the Gospel unto the point of a ticket giver, why are we surprised that Christianity is losing steam in the modern day world?

Sermon for March 27, 2011

2011-03-27T18:39:00.000-05:00

Reflecting on Commitment
Text: John 15:18-25
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
March 27, 2011

If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you.

These chapters from the Gospel of John are what is usually called Jesus’ Final Discourse. It is a theological rationale for who he was, what he was, and an explanation about his ministry. It is, in so many ways, a classic apologia, a discourse telling the world, who and what he was.

And there are the words. If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. These are words that cannot have mad the apostles jump up and say, “Wow, we’re really excited about this!!!” These are words to the effect that Jesus is saying, “If you follow me, people will hate you.” Jesus was also correct about this.

Jesus was warning them that following him, being a Christian, was going to be difficult. Making a commitment to follow Jesus is one thing; living out that commitment is an entirely other thing. Sometimes reflecting on the commitment we make to God is worthwhile.

The commitment to Christ has never been an easy one.

In the early Christian church being a Christian was illegal. The Romans persecuted the early Christians, the ancient Jews struggled the early Christians, and the early Christians persecuted each other because they didn’t all agree with one another.

As time went on the persecution of Christians was mostly done by other Christians. The Spanish Inquisition pre-dated the Protestant Reformation and it was Christians persecuting other Christians for often minor variations of belief.

After the time of the Protestant Reformation there was widespread persecution of Christians by other Christians. There was, of course, conflict between the Protestants and the Roman Catholics, but there were also internal conflicts among Roman Catholics and among Protestants. If you lived in Geneva at the time of John Calvin and disagreed with him, you were in mortal danger. Christians not only argued with one another, they persecuted and killed one another.

So being a Christian has never been particularly easy.

In recent years things have changed in so many ways, but in other ways, the same problems that Christianity has wrestled with still remain.

When North Korea became a Communist country they were officially atheists. One day the government announced, however, that all Christians could practice their faith openly and encouraged everyone who really believed in God to attend Worship on a particular Sunday. On that day people excitedly went to Worship and the churches were packed. And in all the churches around the country, the doors were bolted and the churches were burned to the ground filled with worshipers. It was a horrible display of persecution. Christians throughout the world have suffered at the hands of those who hate people who have faith in Jesus Christ.

In our nation and place in time, we celebrate a freedom of religion that is good. But it doesn’t mean that Christianity is thriving. In fact, if you research it, Worship attendance across the country has been on a downward turn for years. The largest religious growth group in the United States are people who call themselves ‘spiritual, but not religious.’ Some are on a journey real of faith and some are not. But one of the biggest problems so many people have is Christianity is seen in a variety of ways, and many of those ways are not very helpful.

People like to blame the government or the news media, or science, or 1001 other things, but, as throughout history, the biggest problem with Christianity has been the way it’s been practiced. A major factor in the diminishment of Christianity has not been from outside of Christianity, but within ourselves.

I want to reflect on two things.

The first is this. Author Scott McKnight argues that one of the primary sins that hinders the progress of the gospel is individualism.

“Individualism is an intentional march away from Eden, away from God and away from others. When the gospel is packaged as attractive to individuals instead of a community, the problem is only compounded. Individualism makes God and others into commodities we choose to further our own ends”

One of the most common words used in the Bible is the Greek word koinonia. It is most usually translated as communion, association, fellowship, sharing, common, contribution, or partnership. Christianity from the very beginning existed as a corporate reality, as a community. To be Christian meant just to belong to the community. Nobody could be Christian by himself or herself, as an isolated individual, but only together with others.

The dictionary defines individualism as, "the leading of one's life in one's own way without regard for others." The definition and recognizing that the church is about community, demonstrates that individualism and Christianity have little in common.

Yet, in recent years, individualism has arisen in Christianity a great deal. In recent weeks I’ve been reading about people attacking a new book by Rob Bell entitled, Love Wins. A pastor in North Carolina was fired by his congregation because, horror of horrors, he agreed with Bell that God’s grace is all pervasive. One critic of Bell said that we are nothing without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Funny thing about that expression, a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. If you ask older people they’ll tell you that they never recall that being talked about in church. The reason is, it wasn’t. It’s usage became more and more popular in more recent years when individualism began to permeate society and Christianity. The expression a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is not in the Bible. When people say we are nothing without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ they are not citing te Bible and they are not citing anything prevalent in historic Christianity.

Christianity has always been communal and being around others and serving others. While I would never tell anyone that they should not develop a personal relationship with God or personally pray or personally make choices about their faith, I would never say that we are nothing without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

And the more Christianity embraces the concept of individualism, the idea that it’s all about me, the more we will diminish.

The second thing is this.

Over the years we’ve come to diminish God.

The other day I was doing some research for this sermon and I was listening to sermons about God and people’s perceptions on God and salvation. One man in Arizona really stood out.

He preached a sermon about Joel Osteen, the Pastor of the largest church in the country and a proponent of the so-called prosperity Gospel. This guy said that Osteen was going to hell.

He preached a sermon about Billy Graham. We’ve all heard of Billy Graham. He’s going to hell as well, according to this guy.

If you read or use any Bible besides the 1611 King James Version. Hell. If you are a woman who wears a head covering----most especially if you are an Amish woman wearing a head covering. Hell. If you’ve ever practiced birth control. Hell. Gay? Hell. Every said hello to a gay person. Hell. Went to college. Hell. The Pope. Hell. Roman Catholics. Hell.

He never mentioned the United Church of Christ, but if I had to guess I’d guess his perception is that our futures are warm.

His perception of God strikes me as being a God who views human life as a Pass/Fail course, and most people Fail. It seems like a really small image of God.

Or there is the image of God as a cosmic Santa Claus. If we ask God for something, we’ll get it. Want a pony----then pray for a pony and God will give you a pony.

If someone is sick and you really have faith, then pray for them and they will get well.

At the casino and want to win big? Just pray and it’ll come true.

Want your team to win the big game? Just pray and they’ll do it.

Again, this is a small image of God. Most of us don’t get the ponies, everyone ultimately dies, and despite the fervent prayers from up the road, most people don’t beat the casino’s odds. And Lord knows I’ve prayed for the Giants during games as so many people have done for their teams, and have had my heart broken.

But my point is this. Whenever people who are Christians make God small, when we make God exclusionary, when we make God into little more than a cosmic Santa Claus, or do whatever it is we do to make God smaller, we make God less Godlike and when God is no longer God, when God is no longer beyond our comprehension and ability to fully understand, we make God easy to dismiss. And when we make God easy to dismiss we make it easy for people to not really have a need to commit----and we make ourselves have an easier time not committing.

What made commitment difficult in Jesus’ time was danger. What made commitment difficult in later times was confusion and danger. And what makes commitment difficult now is losing the communal emphasis of the Gospel and diminishing God down to our size.

The Gospel is not easy. God is not easy. As we travel this season of Lent, let’s not embrace a God who is easy to embrace and easy to understand, but let us together, as a community, embrace the Gospel, and embrace God, for what is really there.

Random Musings

2011-03-27T17:03:00.000-05:00

I keep thinking I really need to get back to this and so I'm going to try and be better about my blogging.

Basketball is on. I'm not a basketball fan. I never have been and living in Southern Indiana it seems like I really should be. I am excited, however, that Butler is doing so well again. They are a small, very fine academic school and not a classic basketball factory. Good stuff.

I read a person's Facebook post the other day and the writer cited Barack Obama and his statements about a President going to war. At the time those comments were, in my mind, very critical and appropriately critical, of President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq. Sadly, President Obama seems to be doing the same thing with Libya. This puts is in THREE wars, and frankly, I'm not convinced we should be in any of them right now. I understood the initial incursion into Afghanistan, but that is all. The continued, even escalated war there bothers me. Iraq always bothered me and Libya does not seem to have any sort of real goal or strategy.

Michele Bachmann may be running for President. To me, her ideological beliefs are not relevant. The woman is a flat out liar. She's been caught in more lies than Peyton Manning has thrown touchdown passes. Liars like her should not hold public office. Period. End of rant.

I have been reading Rob Bell's wonderful book, "Love Wins." I've read a great deal of criticism about his book written by people pre-publication. It makes me wonder if half the people who 'hate' his book have read it. I'm guessing not because half of what I've read is bad about the book doesn't seem to be actually in the book. It strikes me that people who love to ask questions and ask the big questions about God and faith will love this book. The people who demand absolute answers will hate this book. I suspect there will be very few people in between. I just hope people actually read the book before rendering judgments about it.

As an aside, I hope Amanda Knox is found not guilty. I think she's been treated horribly. That's just my opinion....

I saw a news story about a woman rape in Libya by Libyan police officers. When she was crying, weeping with the press, she was arrested. The injustice of this is heart breaking. I'd be surprised if she is still alive. She was guilty of being a rape victim and speaking about it. This kind of injustice is intolerable.

Newt Gingrich seems to believe that telling people he cheated on his previous two wives because he was a 'patriot' is a good excuse and a good rationale. This may rival "a wide stance."

Japan. My heart breaks for the people there. The devastation and suffering are beyond my comprehension. The people of that land need to be held close to our hearts.

Being a Zesty Christian, audio file

2011-03-06T19:08:00.001-05:00

http://home.insightbb.com/~johnmanzo/

Mountaintop Experience: Being a Zesty Christian Text: Matthew 5:13-20

2011-03-06T16:11:00.000-05:00

Mountaintop Experience:
Being a Zesty Christian
Text: Matthew 5:13-20

Over the years I have heard many people tell me that one of their favorite things in the Bible is the Sermon on the Mount. I’ve often wondered, however, if the people who like the Sermon on the Mount so much have ever read it. It has strange stuff in it like the Beatitudes which are often difficult to explain, a notion of turning the other cheek, and what we read today.

Being salt. Being light. Living so that others may say our good works and living a life according to the way God wants us to live. These commands from the mountaintop are, in so many ways, inviting us to being inspired Christians, potent Christians, zesty Christians, if you will.

As I was contemplating this week, however, I was vexed. I wasn’t quite sure what, exactly, Jesus’ point was.

Does he mean standing on the street corner and preaching the Gospel, loudly, to everyone who passes by. I’ve heard people do this and, frankly, most of them struck me as lunatics and, to be honest, not very interesting.

Does it mean standing on the pews while singing a hymn and singing louder than everyone else around you? I guess it’s possible, but I also would imagine you’d annoy everyone around you, especially if you sang badly.

Or do you hang out at the mall and tell everyone you meet that Jesus is really cool and awesome. Again, I’ve seen this done and felt more annoyed by the people doing it than inspired.

But what might Jesus’ point be?

Within the tradition of Judaism and adopted by Jesus there is a command to love God with all our heart and all our mind. The more I thought about this, loving God with my mind and my heart, fully, is a way of being a zesty Christian.

First, loving God with our minds.

God does not call us to be stupid. God does not call us to check our brains at the door of churches. God does not call us to live bad psychology, speak in poor English, embrace bad science or rewrite history to the way we want it to be as opposed to how it is. God does not call us to be stupid because loving God, fully, requires our minds.

One thing we do well here is have Sunday School classes and Bible study where we want people to ask questions. A questioning faith is a stronger faith.

Centuries ago if you went to a Puritan church their Worship Service was very different from our’s. The men would sit on one side and the women on the other. They would sit in benches with no backs. Hymns would be sung with only the accompanying of a drum. The sermon would be either a one turn or a two turn sermon.

The Pastor would preach with an hourglass on the pulpit. A real hourglass with a full hour of sand in it. A one turn sermon was when the Pastor preached for an hour and turned the hourglass over and he’d preach for another hour. A two turn sermon was he’d turn it over again and preach for a third hour. Imagine coming to church and having a two to three hour sermon! But that’s not all they did. They would spend the next hour or so asking the Pastor questions about the sermon. They expected the Pastor to be able to defend any arguments he made in the sermon. If they didn’t like his Biblical interpretation, they asked him about it. They expected their Pastor to know what he was talking about and they had no qualms in questioning him.

And that is a great thing. Seriously. An unquestioning faith is a faith not being fully lived out.

One of my favorite stories is about an old, very wise Rabbi who was on his death bed. His twelve students were next to the bed, lined up from brightest to dullest, waiting to hear his final words.

He whispered, “Life is like a mushroom.”

The brightest student whispered, “Life is like a mushroom,” to the next student until finally the dullest student was told, “Life is like a mushroom.” To which the dullest student said, “Life is like a mushroom? That doesn’t make any sense!”

So the chain started back, whispering from student to student with disdainful faces at the dullest student for saying such a thing. Then finally the brightest student in the class whispered to the Rabbi, “Life is like a mushroom? That doesn’t make any sense!”

And then the Rabbi said, “So maybe life isn’t like a mushroom.”

That’s an old story and one thing I’ve always wondered about is this. I’ve often thought that, perhaps the dullest student was actually the brightest and most faithful student because he was the only one willing to question things.

The second part of being a zesty Christian is loving God with our hearts. Loving God with our minds us what we think about God; loving God with our hearts is what we feel and how we feel about God.

Let me make a confession about this. This part of the sermon is really difficult for me because my approach to God is mostly through my mind and mostly intellectual and even academic. I can easily talk about what I think about God, whereas what I feel about God is a lot different.

This past week I started my 10th year at St. Marks and I was recalling something that took place not long after I arrived here. I was told that there was a criticism of me that I wasn’t emotional enough at Worship or in my sermons. To be quite honest, even though I remembered the criticism I didn’t take it all that seriously. I’m not really a very emotional person and being emotional during Worship is not my style. I am what I am, and when you see me get emotional, it’s genuine.

But what is striking to me is that it makes it difficult to talking about feelings about God and passion.

But there are things I get very emotional and passionate about. I’m emotional and passionate about my family. And I’m emotional and passionate about what is best for children. I really love children and the other day I found myself in emotional knots.

Years ago I was asked by a math teacher to justify having things like music and art in school. He said that he saw little to no value in having them in school because, after all, who in society really needs music and art. My response to him was that in church we greatly need, appreciate, and utilize music and art all the time. We see it, hear it, and appreciate it all the time.

The other day it was announced that one of the potential cuts was cutting out Phys-Ed, Music, and Art from the grade schools. I’m no athlete, I’m not a musician, and I’m not an artist, but I found myself and still find myself raging. I cannot fathom the devastating this impact will have on churches in the long term.

Imagine, if you will, St. Marks without art and music. Look around out at the amazing stained glass windows. Art. Imagine we removed them and anything artistic in this building.

In addition we will remove the organ, throw away our hymnals, have no pianos, have no choirs, no hymns and no music.

Right now, in our church our organist, Sara, is a retired music teacher. Laura, our minister of music is a music teacher. Susan Adams, one of the people who compiled our hymnal is a music teacher. Sandy Carter who has worked miracles with children has been playing and working with school children, in schools, for years. Ricky Case is a music major.

When does this passion arise?

I learned this lesson many years ago. My daughter Danielle majored in Art Education at Hanover and teaches at Community Montessori and does all the art education there as well as teaching in her classroom. We found a diary of her’s when she was in school and she wrote that she was excited because tomorrow was her favorite class. Art. She was in the second grade.

I realized in the midst of all this angst my passion level was going up and up and up and it dawned on me that when I feel this strongly, and when we feel such strong passion about God and serving God and praising God, we are loving God with all our hearts.

Jesus’ words, in the Sermon on the Mount, challenge us to be zesty, even salty Christians. It doesn’t mean we have to cover ourselves in lemon juice or use salty language. It means to really love and serve God, fully, with our minds and our hearts.

It is being unafraid to question, to challenge, and to think. It is learning to capture our passion and use it in God’s service.

Spiritual But Not Religious.

2011-02-24T12:03:00.000-05:00

Social media, such as Facebook is fascinating. Recently, I asked a question.

The largest 'religious' growth group in the United States right now is a group that calls themselves 'spiritual but not religious.' It strikes me that there is a belief in the divine, leaving the divine undefined. Recognizing there are more groups than Christians, but as a Christian my question is this. Has the failure of Christianity to reach or retain people been a result of a rejection of the Gospel or of Christianity's presentation of the Gospel?

There were many compelling comments that were made. Here are some of them:

As someone who has recently become a member of this growing group, it's not that I do not consider myself a Christian, but I have a serious disconnect with organized religion. I have a very strong relationship with God and I have tried very... hard to live my life based on the teachings of Christ, but during some of the lowest points in my life I have felt rejected by the church rather than lifted up.

I am a long time believer who has been on both sides of the issue--I have embraced Christianity and I have rejected it, on both cases because of how I felt treated in whatever church I was involved with at the time. I am again feeling out of touch with God because of how I feel I am being treated in my church. What really makes this sad is that I just graduated from seminary. It bothers me that I was once so on fire to be in the ministry, but now I hate the thought of setting foot in my church.

When I began identifying myself as "spiritual... but not religious," I did so because I vehemently opposed the actions of the church and the folks that perpetuated anger, judgement, and hate. I also respected the beliefs of practitioners of all religions and didn't want to make a "truth claim." A decade later, I realized that I could participate in a faith practice that felt comfortable to me without judging the faith practice of others. It turns out that spiritual community makes all the difference, for me anyway.

Those that do hateful things in the name of Christ leave a bitter taste in many mouths. As many have evoked, if Jesus came today, he would most likely be in a homeless shelter or jail. Whether one believes him the son of God or a great prophet, he preached what so many of us need to work on today...love your neighbor, do unto others, etc.

I don't think it's a matter of rejection at all but rather an opening up to other points of view. Im no expert, but maybe it's enlightenment itself breaking down the lines drawn between different faiths. I myself believe God (or whate...ver one chooses to call Him) is love. Love is the goal and maybe many are choosing to just pursue the goal without the restrictions imposed by ideology. Concentrations of ideology seem to be a product of isolation. Isolation is becoming more impossible to use as a way to concentrate faith in a path to the real goal.

Simple: biblical literalism and fundamentalism make Christians do and say crazy things. The church is more interested in conversion and doctrinal purity than in helping people ponder the wonder and mystery of the God and the universe (and the teachings of Jesus). Thus, the church often fails to meet spiritual needs.

It is a PR problem. Requiring people to believe things that they know can't be factual a la The Creation Museum. The truth in the Gospels is profound, but insisting that the narrative is "factual" is a deal-breaker for most. The selling ...of the Gospels and Old Testament as fact by the "Church" has so damaged it, that I fear the church as a social institution is in real trouble. Following Jesus instead of rule-making, condemnation, is the only hope to reverse the PR nightmare. Jesus commands us to DO. He doesn't give us a list of things to BELIEVE. GET UP and go, your faith has healed you.

I think it goes beyond liberal and conservative. I have felt ostracized by both ends of the continuum for questioning the way a "good liberal" or a "good conservative" might view things. When Christianity is not being actively persecuted, it seems that more and more cultural baggage gets layered on top.I think the recent anti-intellectualism in Christianity has led to a poor presentation of the Gospel and a degrading understanding of it. Now we have a fundamentalism unable to interact productively with other groups on one end, and the rejectors of fundamentalism who have no standard for developing a coherent worldview on the other end--they know what they don't want to be, but what model do they have remaining?

The opinions are, of course, not exhaustive; they are merely illustrative. Whether we agree or disagree with people’s comments, no one is really wrong. They are responding from their own personal thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

I have been reading and listening to a good bit of people about this and I’ve come to some conclusions.

First is this. The failure is never God’s and can never really be the fault of the Gospel. If the Gospel is truly a reflection of God, it stands as what it is. People may choose to believe it or not believe it, but the Gospel is the Gospel. But if we believe God is perfect, this is not God’s fault.

But, Christianity has some huge faults.

First off, the Gospel may not be the problem, but how the Gospel is represented often is. In another recent poll I asked people if they thought the language of Christianity had gotten more mean spirited. The answer was overwhelmingly ‘yes.’ And it truly has, I believe.

Often when the news media chooses to interview people of faith they choose the most controversial people who often use harsh language on people with whom they disagree or choose to not associate with. There is an old Christian adage that says, “Hate the sin but love the sinner.” I have come to believe it is an adage we can no longer use as it has slipped deeper into the ‘hate’ portion. In the New Testament the Greek word for hate is actually a word used in comparison to something else and not used the way we use it in English. Sadly, Christianity is often seen as a religion of hate rather than love.

Secondly, I was distressed by the number of people who have felt rejected by churches. Somewhere, collectively, Christianity seems to have forgotten that Jesus came to embrace everyone. We begin each Worship service with the words “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here,’ and we do mean those words. It doesn’t mean, however, we are always successful. There are people who have not felt welcome for a variety of reasons.

The last thing is really a question for people within Christianity. How do we respond? Dallas Willard’s great line, “The system we have now is perfectly designed to produce the results we are now getting,” is totally appropriate. If the results of Christianity right now are producing more people who are ‘spiritual but not religious,’ what do we do now?

What Would I Cut?

2011-02-12T12:35:00.002-05:00

What would I cut?

If they named me King and told me to cut the Federal Budget, here is what I would cut:

• I would cut, by half, Congressional and Senate salaries. In an effort to reduce the terms of these people without having a Constitutional Amendment for term limits, I’d cut their salaries in half to make this more and more about service rather than benefit.

• I would eliminate Congressional pensions. Same reasons as above.

• Cut Congressional staffs by half.

• Cut the White House staff by half.

• Cut the Supreme Court staff by half.

• I would limit Congressional Postage for free except in responses to constituents’ mail.

• Half of all money donated to political campaigns would be allocated to repair and replace infrastructure within the United States which would allow necessary repairs to take place without raising taxes or increasing the debt.

• I would remove all armed forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and using Intelligence agencies and the military, I’d fight terrorism more in specific instances rather than invading nations. We have to stop pretending these wars have not contributed significantly to our current budget crisis.

• I would raise the retirement age to 70. The only way to address the money issues facing Social Security and Medicare is to actually face the issues. The age of 65 was chosen when the vast majority of people did not live to age 65. People can retire earlier if they have pensions, etc., but they cannot collect Federal benefits until age 70 except for in cases of disability.

WWJC? I’m not sure, but I don’t think he’d object to these.

This is Too Much Fun NOT to Share

2010-12-08T14:56:00.001-05:00

LETTER FROM GRANDMA

I Got a letter from Grandma the other day. She wrote:

The other day I went up to a local Christian bookstore and saw a "HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS" bumper sticker. I was feeling particularly sassy that day because I had just come from a thrilling choir performance, followed by a thunderous prayer meeting, so I bought the sticker and put it on my bumper.

Boy, I'm glad I did! What an uplifting experience that followed!

I was stopped at a red light at a busy intersection, just lost in thought about the Lord and how good He is... and I didn't notice that the light had changed. It is a good thing someone else loves Jesus because if he hadn't honked, I'd never have noticed! I found that LOTS of people love Jesus!

Why, while I was sitting there, the guy behind started honking like crazy, and then he leaned out of his window and screamed, "For the love of GOD! GO! GO! JESUS CHRIST, GO!" What an exuberant cheerleader he was for Jesus!

Everyone started honking! I just leaned out of my window and started waving and smiling at all these loving people. I even honked my horn a few times to share in the love!

I saw another guy waving in a funny way with only his middle finger stuck up in the air. Then I asked my teenage grandson in the back seat what that meant, he said that it was probably a Hawaiian good luck sign or something. Well, I've never met anyone from Hawaii, so I leaned out the window and gave him the good luck sign back. My grandson burst out laughing... why, even he was enjoying this religious (Toronto) experience!

A couple of the people were so caught up in the joy of the moment that they got out of their cars and started walking towards me. I bet they wanted to pray or ask what church attended, but this is when I noticed the light had changed. So, I waved to all my sisters and brothers grinning, and drove on through the intersection.

I was the only car that got through the intersection before the light changed again and I felt kind of sad that I had to leave them after all the love we had shared, so I slowed the car down, leaned out the window and gave them all the Hawaiian good luck sign one last time as I drove away.

Praise the Lord for such wonderful folks!

Grandma

Advent Soon Begins!

2010-11-22T11:37:00.002-05:00

A Nativity Scene was erected in a church yard.
During the night someone came across this scene.
An abandoned dog was looking for a comfortable, protected place to sleep. He chose baby Jesus as his comfort.
No one had the heart to send him away so he was there all night.
We should all have the good sense of this dog and curl up in Jesus' lap from time to time.
This is too good not to share.
No one mentioned that the dog breed is a "Shepherd!"

The Elections Are Over! Thanks Be to God!

2010-11-03T19:21:00.002-05:00

I am so happy the elections are over. Congratulations to those who won their elections yesterday. Whether our choices win or lose is less important than embracing those who did win and keeping them in our prayers. My great prayer is that all those who serve our nation choose nation over party and always attempt to do the right thing. And be honest. Please be honest. Please let the lying season be over.

A piece of historical reality that many people fail to realize is that while the United States is considered to be a young nation, our system of government is amongst the oldest and enduring systems in the world. The vast majority of nations have had major changes in government long after ours. We have our bi-annual 'revolutions' called elections and those elections often change the course of the nation.

Several things I've observed are these:

It is difficult to get really good people to run for office. It is expensive, grueling, and painful for someone to listen to the attacks on you. I found myself cringing at the attacks people launched on each other. Most candidates were guilty of this; some more than others. I can't imagine having to endure the slander and vitriol hurled.

Being the President is a really dreadful job. I guess it has its perks, but in listening to an interview of George W. Bush today and watching Barack Obama at the press conference, being the President has its own special agony. No matter what you choose to do or not do, you will be vilified for it. Yuch.

It also reminds me of something about myself. So many speak of 'no compromise' and being, by nature, a consensus builder, I find such speech uncomfortable. Maybe that's what drives governments but I don't find it something I'd be comfortable with. I, for one, would love to see everyone sit down and actually try and solve the problems of our nation together instead of hurling insults at each other.

But that's just me.

What Disappointments Me About This Year’s Election

2010-11-02T10:22:00.001-05:00

I decided to write this before the results are in. I am incredibly disappointed in this election cycle and it has little to do with the results.

Here is why.

First off, there seems to have been epic lying and dishonesty in this year’s election. People were assaulted by Republican commercials stating that there Democratic opponent voted to reduce Medicare. Actually, the healthcare plan voted to increase Medicare but was removing funding from privatized Medicare Advantage. The Democrats, not to be undone, were equally bogus with their 23% sales tax ads leaving out the little detail of this tax being in lieu of other taxes. The lies went on and on and on and there are no innocents in this one.

Secondly, the smearing and the defense of smearing. “Oh, there have always been smear campaigns.” Perhaps there have always been smear campaigns but now we have mail, Facebook, E-mail, and endless phone calls telling us that our opponent is the worst person who ever walked the planet. In this part of the country no one was willing to sink deeper and dirtier than Jack Conway in Kentucky. His ‘Aqua Buddha’ ad was disgusting.

Thirdly, there are some really bad candidates. The people of Nevada have to be really, really angry at Harry Reid to consider voting for a Sharron Angle who may be one of the all time worst major party candidates in the history of the universe. Of course, she is running at the same time as Alvin Greene in South Carolina so this may actually be a toss up. If you were to ask, I’d vote for Christine O’Donnell over either of these two. If I lived in Kentucky I’d vote for “None of the Above” in the Senate election. In my own district Todd Young’s major campaign platform is that he’s not Baron Hill. He made me long for the days of millionaire Mike Sodrel who is at least from here and seems to be a sincere man.

Fourth, there is really bad party leadership. I have not been a huge fan of Nancy Pelosi. She does get things done, but she’s a diehard partisan and ideologue. I tend to see myself as a consensus builder and a pragmatist so I have an innate distrust of partisans and ideologues. I have to believe the Democrats could have done better than her. Sadly, the quality will not improve when the balance of power shifts. John Boehner shares two of Nancy Pelosi’s worst qualities. He’s a diehard partisan and ideologue. Harry Reid was terrible and if he loses the election and the Democrats maintain control of the Senate, one of the people who wants to be the new Senate Majority Leader is Chuck Schumer from New York. God help us all. If the Republicans gain control the new leader will be Mitch McConnell. God help us all.

Fifth, in an era when things are very difficult and solutions need to take place, more and more ideologues win elections and pragmatic people are cast to the sidelines. I do not trust ideologues to solve problems. They busily try and follow the same path and plan no matter what the world is doing around them. It’s nuts!

Lastly, we still have a major healthcare crisis; we still have a lot of people who do not have jobs or are underemployed. Our national infrastructure if rotting away and we will have major education issues. We still have a major presence in Iraq; are fighting a war in Afghanistan, and terrorism is still a major problem around the world. Despite a lot of rhetoric and posturing by both sides, no one seems to be seriously discussing real solutions to real problems.

Maybe next time....

Sermon for September 26, 2010

2010-09-26T15:43:00.001-05:00

Profiting from the Prophets----Of Dry Bones Dancing
Text: Ezekiel 37:1-14
September 16, 2010
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo

Sometimes we read about things in the Bible and what you see is what you get.
Jesus turns what into wine and the story is about Jesus turning water into wine. We can discuss it and speculate as to the why's and the wherefore's, but ultimately the story is pretty straightforward.

Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and, again, it's about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.

But then we have this very familiar passage from Ezekiel; the valley of the dry bones. God commands Ezekiel to preach unto the dry bones so that they might be reformed into bodies and then given life. And Ezekiel does what God has commanded him to do and the bones go back into bodies and become alive again.

The passage seems to indicate that these dry bones were very old; people who had died, probably in a huge battle many years earlier. If taken totally at face value they are brought back to life and Ezekiel is left standing there with a huge army in front of him; for no apparent reason. This would seem to indicate that this passage means something symbolic.

The trick is trying to determine what this actually does mean.

I read one person’s take on it. He said that it was a prophesy that Israel would be brought make to great might and have a great army, etc. He went on to indicate this is why American foreign policy must always favor Israel so that this prophesy would one day come to pass. Without getting too technical here, I can’t fathom why God would be giving Ezekiel a prophesy to determine American foreign policy in the 21st century. To me there had to be a deeper, more theological rationale.

To me the dry bones symbolize people of faith who keep the bones of religion alive, but lose everything else. From this perspective, I can see a great deal of this prophesy being played out over and over again.

The dry bones symbolized people of faith who keep the bones of religion alive and lose everything else.

There is a difference between faith and religion. Faith is our actual belief in God; religion is how we practice that belief. Faith is what we have in our hearts and minds and religion is the structure in which we live out that faith.

It can be said that faith without religion, or some sort of structure, is inclined toward chaos. Over the years I have heard numerous people make the statement that they don’t need the church to Worship God. Theoretically this is true, but I live by an adage that we really do need the church to grow in faith. It is very difficult to maintain the discipline and the presence of others to grow in faith.

But having said all that, the issue of the dry bones speaks of religion without faith.

One of the issues of ancient Judaism, an issue that was central to Jesus’ ongoing people with the Pharisees, was this very issue. It was a religion without faith. Judaism had been reduced from being a vital, faithful response to God into an organization of rules and laws. It had morphed into a religion without faith and Jesus was attempting to renew it.

It is, of course, easy to say that Judaism in Jesus’ day and age had difficulties, but it can be said of Christianity here and now. Christianity is, at its core, a movement, and not an institution. The biggest problem Christianity has had over the centuries has not been Jesus, has not been the message of Jesus, but has been the institutional church. Over the centuries on Church History there are stories that plague virtually every tradition within Christianity about something that the Christian Church was doing wrong.

In the Amish tradition the second most revered book of all, behind the Bible, is the Book of Martyrs. The Amish, who come out of the Anabaptist tradition, read about their forebears in faith persecuted and killed for their beliefs. And there are a lot of them; and mostly all of them were persecuted and killed by other Christians. The institutional church got in the way of faith. When we allow that to happen, the dry bones show up.

A second thing that leads to dry bones is when faith loses its heart. Unless we have a heart for God and a heart for God’s people, our faith drys up into dry bones.

Having heart is important.

One of my favorite stories is the story of two brothers, one very sensitive and one less so. The very sensitive brother went away and left his dog with his less than sensitive brother. After a few days he called home and asked his brother how the dog was.

The less than sensitive brother said, “The dog died.”

The very sensitive brother said to him, “Oh no. I’m crushed and you just made it worse! You need to learn to be more sensitive to give a person warning.”

The other brother said, “I don’t understand. What did you want me to do?”

Well first, the sensitive brother said, “When I ask how the dog is, you say, ‘Well, he’s not looking so good. I’m going to take it to the vet tomorrow.’”

“When I call back the next day, you say, ‘the vet kept the dog and said it’s not looking very good,’ then the next day you say, ‘The vet did everything he could, but the dog died.’”

“Okay,” said the other brother. “I’ll be more careful next time.”

“Great,” said the sensitive brother. “So how’s Mom?”

“Well,” the other brother said, “She’s not looking so good, so I’m going to take her to the doctor tomorrow.”

You probably get the point. Sensitivity and heart are important. And they really are! If a people of faith have no heart, we miss the heart of God.

We begin each Worship Service with the words, “No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.” In theory, those words are easy to say. In theory, every church since the beginning of time believes they say those words. We all want to, deep down, say those words.

But when we say those words we open ourselves up to saying ‘yes,’ to everyone. And everyone is a lot of different types of people.

St. Marks has attempted, over the years, to be a ‘yes’ kind of church. When this church was founded over 170 years ago everyone was German and the Worship Service was in German. At some point, in this church’s history, in order to welcome people who weren’t German, they had to stop doing the Worship Service in German. They did.

When we started to do the Soup Kitchen and later, the Clothes Closet, it meant opening our doors to a lot of different folks. It was a big ‘yes.’ A lot of churches don’t want those folks in their building. They’d never tell you that, of course, like we wouldn’t have said it years ago. But when you open the building you open your hearts and say ‘yes’ to people very different from most of us most of the time.

The United Church of Christ and St. Marks made intentional efforts to welcome people who are gay as they are. Every church welcomes gay people, but a lot of churches escort gay folks to classes where they are going to get ‘cured’ from being gay as if it were a disease which needed to be cured. Everyone is welcome, as long as they are willing to be ‘fixed,’ even if they didn’t consider themselves broken. Even if God doesn’t consider them as broken.

The United Church of Christ was the first mainline Christian denomination to determine that ‘gay’ was not a disease and people who are gay are welcome. We, as a denomination, and then as a church, decided to say ‘yes,’ to everyone, and welcome everyone as they are. There are no distinctions between any person here. We say ‘yes’ to everyone. That is having heart.

The last thing is equally crucial. We become dry bones when we no longer see our intellect as an important component to our faith.

Michael Jinkins, the new President of the Presbyterian Seminary in Louisville recently gave a convocation address entitled, “The Life of the Mind in the Service of God: Why a Thinking Faith Still Matters.” He begins by citing the columnist Nicholas Kristof who bemoaned a loss of an intellectually rigorous faith. Kristof makes the observation that “The heart is a wonderful organ; but so is the brain.”

Jinkins cites Thomas Long, a preaching professor, who made the observation that the greatest heresy of modern day Christianity is not atheism, but superficiality.

In recent years there has been a resurgence in atheism. Most of the arguments made for atheism are about how superficial and illogical Christianity is.

People like Bill Maher made the movie Religulous, in which he interviewed religious people and made fun of them. Christopher Hitchens wrote the best selling God is Not Great in which he blamed virtually every ill in the world on people who believe in God. God, he argues, is not real.

Both authors, and many others like them, do the same thing. They take the most simplistic arguments made by Christians and Christianity and put holes in them. They attack the most superficial arguments and use their own superficial arguments to refute people of faith.

Interestingly enough, Maher and Hitchens do the same exact thing as they people they are critical of. They use superficial examples and interview superficial people who give them superficial answers. They attack a shallow faith with their own shallow arguments.

But Christianity, at its core, is not a superficial faith. Actually, no world religion really is superficial. Any religion is at its best when it is vigorous intellectually and challenges the minds of people. Jinkins makes a great statement when he overses that the greatest antidote to such people as Maher and Hitchens is not retrenching ourselves against their ideas, but engaging their overly simplified and often silly statements with far more sophisticated, self-searching, and even self-critical observations.

A non-thinking critical faith is a superficial faith, and a faith that leads to dry bones.

The philosopher Socrates once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” It can easily be said that an unexamined faith is not worthy of God.

This passage from Ezekiel is a passage that challenges us deeply. We are either a living, vital people, living a living and vital faith filled with heart and mind; or we are dry bones. There is no happy medium on this. God created us to be a people of faith; and so we are challenged to have that faith. And God gave us hearts and minds and challenges to use both in celebration and faithfulness.

The Answer!

2010-09-10T21:31:00.003-05:00

Here's the answer to the question as to what Jesus would do:

The Price of Religious Freedom

2010-09-09T14:30:00.002-05:00

Most denominational clergy are ordained after scrutiny from their respective denominations after having received a Bachelor's Degree and a 90 credit Master of Divinity degree. Religious freedom indicates, however, that any group of people can start a church and clergy can be ordained by a group of people within that church or receive mail order certificates of ordination. People can start their own churches and set their own belief patterns. As a result, unlike physicians or attorneys who have a standard of education that everyone must have, clergy do not. We live with this because of religious freedom. It is better to have the freedom to live like this than it is to not have this freedom.

Here is what else if means. If people want to build an Islamic Center in downtown Manhattan, blocks away from Ground Zero, they can. They have as much a right to do this as the people from Westboro Baptist Church have to protest at funerals because other Christians happen to believe Jesus loving everyone, and if some fool in Florida wants to burn the Quran, he also has that right.

The right to do something, of course, does not mean that one ought to do something. There are some things that are ethically dreadful that people have the right to do. There is some practice of religion that is deplorable and even objectionable to most people. Religious freedom is worth all this, however, because it enables each of us to practice our faith (or not) the way we so choose.

Ponder for a moment. We ban a mosque. That means when a Baptist Church wants to open a congregation we say, "No, because Westboro Baptist Church calls themselves Baptist and they are dreadful." The fact that Westboro is not representative of most Baptist Churches would be lost. The move goes further when we begin to believe we can ban ALL churches because, well, we can.

The price of religious freedom is that we live with stuff we don't like so that everyone has the right to their own faith. The price is actually pretty high, but, I believe, well worth it.

A Loss of Faith in Institutions II Refinding Faith in Institutions----The Government

2010-09-01T23:04:00.000-05:00

The upcoming elections are going to be interesting, but it’s certainly not something to relish. Sadly, many of the people running are no great shakes.

The people of Nevada have a choice between an incumbent Senator who will say and do anything to keep his job. It’s very difficult to see him as a man of great convictions and he was a surefire loser in the upcoming election. He has a burst of hope, however, because the Republican nominee is pretty fair out there. There are no good choices in Nevada.

Barbara Boxer is running for re-election in California against Carly Fiorina. Boxer’s career has been the definition of mediocrity; and people at Hewlett Packard, where Carly was the CEO are quick to tell everyone what a disaster she was in that role. No good choices there.

The House of Representatives may easily change hands from the very partisan Nancy Pelosi to the very partisan John Boehner.

And this is just to name a few. We will all experience the joy and wonder of modern technology as mud and manure are flung far and wide around our great land. All of this brings me to some points.

First is this. There is a reason candidates throw mud and manure. Generally the person who throws the must mud and the most manure, and makes it stick on his or her opponent, wins the election. Dirty campaigns and dirty tricks are used because they work.

The problem is that the winner himself or herself, wins, covered in manure and mud and with the label that he or she was even nastier than his or her opponent. Off they go to Washington, DC lacking a great deal of respect. And, of course, when they arrive in our nation’s Capital, the same thing goes on. In time there is an erosion of trust for these people and it impacts everyone. Why would people respect a government that looks like a mud pit and smells like a pig’s stye?

Add to this how we deal with Presidents. I’ll use the last two as examples.

Whether one liked or disliked President George W. Bush he was demonized on a regular basis. Many, me included, did not agree him and allowed that disagreement to fester into dislike and often into ridicule.

Many carried it way too far. I believe, fervently, that ALL Presidents are patriots. No one would put the amount of energy, angst, and personal danger they put into being President if they had any questions about their own personal love of nation. As a result, I also believe most every President does act on what he (hopefully one day soon she!), believes is right for the nation. Bush was called a traitor, a fascist, a Nazi, etc., on a regular basis. As a result he was so vilified that people stopped taking him seriously. How can one respect a villain?

Much the same is taking place with President Obama. He, like his predecessor, is demonized on a regular basis. Whether the overtones are racial, religious, or ideological, the ending result is much the same. Again, like ALL Presidents, he is a patriot and regularly accused of not loving America and is regularly called a socialist, a Nazi, and a fascist. And, like his predecessor (and others before him), he becomes so vilified that people begin to not take him seriously. Again, how can one respect a villain?

So, where does this leave us?

It leaves us with many people who hold extreme positions and people with demonstrated incompetence as out leaders. This does not reflect, everyone, of course, but a growing number. It also leaves us with people who are callous and ruthless in keeping their own jobs and keeping power for their party; or getting power back from the other party. In short, we are not sending our best and our brightest to our nation’s capital because our best and our brightest have too much dignity, ability, and self-respect to go there.

It is very difficult to respect institutions when we demonize the people in them and the people in them make it so easy to do because they are busily demonizing one another and being demonized by people who hate them.

As a result, the re-finding of faith in institutions begins with us. Who we choose as our leaders, and how we tolerate them to behave is on us. Until we expect and demand more, we will get what we have.

A Loss of Faith in Institutions I

2010-08-30T13:04:00.000-05:00

There is something striking taking place that is, at this point, under-reported. It does not take much to connect the dots to come to this conclusion as it is painfully obvious that people have lost faith in institutions.

There is anger toward our leaders in Washington, D.C. This is not new. People were angry at the government and tossed Republicans out of power. President Bush left office with very low approval numbers and Vice President Cheney was a little less popular than phlegm when he left office. There was a major power shift in Congress. There was a rebellion on those in power. We were in two wars with uncertain outcomes and the economy was bad.

Times have changed but people’s anger has not subsided. President Obama’s approval ratings have dropped and Congress is as beloved now, in Democratic control as it was in Republican control. Combat troops have left Iraq but over 50,000 American soldiers remain there and no one really knows the future of Iraq. Afghanistan remains a mess and the economy is still bad. The strategies for dealing with the economy changed, but far too many people remain without jobs.

People are angry. Democrats rallied and supported the non-establishment candidate, Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton and followed this through to the election.

People have lost faith in government in a big way. Both parties have attempted to take advantage of this, but if either party had the courage to really deal with this they would find that the problem is that both parties have failed the country miserably. Ideologies are not principles; ideologies are simply ideologies that, when followed blindly lead into an abyss. As our political parties become increasingly ideological, they become increasingly less pragmatic and increasingly less interested in serving people.

People have lost faith because they are being sold a bill of good by both the Democrats and the Republicans. Both parties are living by the same credo: Party First!

But, alas, there is more. People have also lost interest in church. Increasingly people are identifying themselves as atheists or spiritual but not religious. By the end of the next decade I suspect that at least half the churches in existence across the country will have closed. Many will have run out of people and money and will cease to exist. Others will have run out of clergy.

The problem isn’t God. God remains the same. People’s need and desire for God remains the same at gut level. The problem has been the Institutional Church. The child molestation issues within the Roman Catholic Church have been devastating to everyone. If people cannot trust their children, their precious children, with clergy in the church, who can they trust? That lack of trust is devastating.

But it is far more than the Roman Catholic Church. The Institutional Church, on every level, has been in a civil war. Conservative versus liberal. Prosperity Gospel versus Liberation Theology. Traditional versus contemporary. When the author Anne Rice made the observation that the Christian Church was more interested in fighting amongst itself, her words were an honest indictment on Christianity. Denominations, often seem more interested in determining how to survive than how to serve. Local churches are often trying to figure out how to stay alive for even five more years than to serve the communities around them.

I love the words St. Paul wrote to Timothy so many years ago:

I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.

In watching Glenn Beck ‘preaching’ it was startling. His ‘theology’ was bogus nonsense. He had nice pious platitudes wrapped around the Prosperity Gospel and seemingly Messianic ambitions of his own. But there are a lot of itching ears embracing his words and believing in him. As a member of the clergy who does try to embrace the truth of God, it was chilling and frightening.

Yet, I don’t blame Beck. He’s filling a void and his coffers. I feel badly that people embrace this nonsense, but I’m also recognizing that they are embracing it because the Institutional Church has failed and is failing on so many levels.

People have lost their faith in institutions because those institutions are failing them on a regular basis. I’m going to continue to wrestle with this over the next days and share my wrestling match with others. I’d love to hear others’ observations as well.

Monday Random Thoughts

2010-08-16T14:20:00.001-05:00

I watched the news this morning. A second person from “Jersey Shore” was arrested for something. These people are going to give the impression that people from New Jersey get in trouble or something. What bugs me about “Jersey Shore” is that Seaside Heights is a family place that most people from New Jersey have been going to all their lives. The television show makes it look like it’s this awful place.

“Jersey Boys” is a play and a lot of people have been going to see it. Whenever I want to see a Jersey boy, I look in the mirror. (For those who are wondering, this is a joke.)

The whole mosque controversy in New York troubles me. Seriously. To be perfectly honest, I am not feeling warm and fuzzy toward Islam. I sincerely believe that moderate Islam and moderate Islamic nations need to be more pro-active in addressing the abuses of radical Islam. As for the mosque in that area of New York City, again, I’m not feeling warm and fuzzy about it. I’d greatly prefer an Interfaith Center where all faiths can come together. I believe the symbolism of that would be important and good.

But, I don’t believe that it ought to be stopped. The President’s comments the other day were, in my mind, right on. We do have a freedom of religion in the United States that cannot be trampled by anyone. Newt Gingrich recently said that Saudi Arabia does not have any churches or synagogues in their nation. That’s dreadful, but I has nothing to do with us other than make us happy we are not like them. I’d hate to go down a path of denying religious freedom. It’s just wrong. Nothing is more American than allowing a place of Worship to be built; even if we disagree with who they are and how they Worship.

While I am ranting, the immigration debate is obviously hot and heavy. An underlying problem in this debate is this. There are actually two ‘signs’ up for the people crossing over from Mexico. One sign says, ‘Keep Out.” The other sign says, “Help Wanted.” There is a great deal of energy spent in wanting to keep people out and to toss the people who are here illegally; but there is virtually no energy at penalizing the people and businesses who hire illegal immigrants. If those hiring the illegal immigrants were targeted and illegal folks had no place to work, the incentive to cross the border would diminish greatly.

I have a modest budget balancing proposal for Congress that would address term limits and the budget deficit. Eliminate all Congressional pensions. The money the nation would save would be huge and people who limit their terms without having to change the Constitution.

Speaking of the Constitution, it is always entertaining how the party out of power always speaks about the other party not following the Constitution. The Democrats screamed it when George W. Bush was the President and the Republicans are screaming it now.

And if it’s so good, why do people always want to amend it?

The Giants and the Jets have their pre-season game tonight. I have my DVR ready to record it. I’m not expecting a great deal. Pre-season football is pretty awful. From the looks of the weekend the Colts will be terrible and the Redskins will be a powerhouse. I doubt both of those premises a lot. But speaking of the Colts, I hope they do well, but lose the second game of the regular season on a last second winning touchdown pass thrown by Manning. For those who are wondering, there is a way for Manning to lose this game and for Manning to win this game...

Bristol and Levi are turning into the new Jon and Kate. And one Jon and Kate was enough. Please. Stop!!!

And lastly. Brett Favre retired. Again. If I express skepticism at this, please forgive me.

Audio Sermon 7/25/10

2010-07-25T14:37:00.001-05:00

Why Pray?
Luke 11:1-13
http://www.stmarksucc.org/sermon72510.mp3

Some Interesting View Points of Honesty

2010-07-13T16:28:00.000-05:00

In looking at PolitiFact, which is non-partisan, it checks out statements made to see if they are honest or dishonest. They have six categories that I have summarized into three.

The first are either totally true or mostly true statements. The person is speaking the truth or they may have one small insignificant piece of information of no consequences that throws off their total.

The second are half true or barely true statements. It is not a lie, but sometimes to make it true you have to take several pieces of information and stretch them in an unnatural way.

The third things stated that are totally false and, in their words, liar, liar, pants on fire lies. However one parses it, the person ought not to have said this as what they are saying is totally false.

It should be stated that PolitFact is non-partisan and unbiased. In each case they validate, beyond doubt, by proving the person to be right, half-right, or dead wrong.

I chose a wide range of people and there are people who are clearly more honest than others. Barack Obama is the President and Sarah Palin is one of the leading Republican spokespersons at this time.

John Boehner is the House Minority leader, and Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House and interesting as are several other pundits and political leaders.

I have no editorial comment to make on anyone other than the fact that I was appalled at many of the percentage figures for dishonesty. The Ninth Commandment must not be in a lot of Bibles...

Barack Obama
Truthful 47.5% of the time.
Halfway 34.7% of the time.
Dishonest 17.7% of the time.

Sarah Palin
Truthful 37.5% of the time
Halfway 30.0% of the time
Dishonest 32.5% of the time.

John Boehner
Truthful 50.0% of the time.
Halfway 25.0% of the time.
Dishonest 25.0% of the time.

Nancy Pelosi
Truthful 20.0% of the time.
Halfway 60.0% of the time.
Dishonest 20.0% of the time.

Rush Limbaugh

Truthful 8.3% of the time.
Halfway 41.7% of the time.
Dishonest 50% of the time.

Keith Olbermann

Truthful 28.5% of the time.
Halfway 43% of the time.
Dishonest 28.5% of the time.

Glenn Beck

Truthful 12% of the time.
Halfway 44% of the time.
Dishonest 44% of the time.

John McCain

Truthful 39% of the time.
Halfway 34% of the time.
Dishonest 28% of the time.

Rachel Maddow (in fairness, only four comments, but not a good start)

Truthful 0
Halfway 50% of the time.
Dishonest 50% of the time.

Joe Biden

Truthful 40% of the time.
Halfway 39% of the time.
Dishonest 21% of the time.

Mitch McConnell

Truthful 40% of the time.
Halfway 30% of the time.
Dishonest 30% of the time.

Hillary Clinton

Truthful 46% of the time.
Halfway 43% of the time.
Dishonest 11% of the time.

Harry Reid

Truthful 17% of the time.
Halfway 50% of the time.
Dishonest 33% of the time.

Monday Musings

2010-07-12T13:44:00.000-05:00

BP is evidently close to putting a better cap on the well and the goal is to collect 100% of the oil being leaked. I do hope they are able to do this and the Gulf is able to be cleaned. This is a disaster of monumental proportions. The well is close to a mile underwater. I can’t fathom how it was drilled in the first place. I would think we need to be assured we can manage wells that deep.

Trading spies with Russia sounds weird to me. Evidently the spies in the United States had information mostly findable on Google and didn’t do a lot of damage. I’m wondering what the American spies found out. I’m not really sure any of us can really analyze if this was a good trade or not as we don’t know all the details; and never will.

The perfect ending to the story was LeBron James having a press conference at an inner city gym in Akron or Cleveland telling people he would never leave his home area and was committed to the people of the hard-working Midwestern area that has always been his home. It would have been the right thing to do and it would have been a good thing to do. Unfortunately, in this day and age ‘good’ and ‘right’ only seems to happen in fiction.

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich says he's considering running for president in 2012 and expects to make a decision by early next year. I’m sure people are holding their breath in excitement waiting for him to make his decision.

There is something striking, to me, in the immigration debate. For all the comments about the Arizona law, it is difficult for me to make a lot of comments. I do not live in Arizona and have never been to Arizona and I don’t really have a grasp of the kind of problems the people of Arizona are facing.

But here is what I do know. The border between the United States and Mexico has been porous for as long as I can recall. The problem, at least to me, is that we have two competing signs up on the border. One says, “Keep Out!” The other one says, “Help Wanted!” People come across the border because people not only hire them, but people want to hire them for illegally low wages. We will not be able to enforce the “Keep Out” until we stop people from hiring illegal people for illegal wages. And, this little detail is the one that never makes the news and the root problem of the whole problem.

Speaking of illegal immigration, there is also the human slave trade issue. Increasingly, more and more people are smuggled into the United States from Asia and Eastern Europe especially, to work for slave wages or to ‘pay off’ their trip. Many end up abused in the sex trade. Not a lot of clamor about this in Washington, D.C. these days.

Jesse Jackson criticized Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert on Sunday, saying Gilbert sees LeBron James as a "runaway slave'' and that the owner's comments after the free-agent forward decided to join the Miami Heat put the player in danger. Jackson indicated that Gilbert saw himself as the owner of James and not the team. Jackson also conveniently left out all the money Gilbert offered James and all the perks that James received by Gilbert over the years to reward James for playing for Cleveland. Referring to a modern day professional athlete as a ‘slave’ dishonors those who actually were and are slaves.

Recent tapes are demonstrating that Mel Gibson is a racist and a sexist, and all around nasty guy. People are shocked the world over. Next thing they may do is tell us that the artist formerly known as Prince, Prince, and the artist formerly known as Prince is now known as Prince, is odd.

Lindsey Lohan is incredibly talented and beautiful and in trouble. I’m wondering of the judge was overly harsh on her because Lohan is a celebrity, or if the judge is actually going to save Lindsey’s life with this? I really hate to see young people like her go down the tubes.

Barbara Walters is 80. That is difficult to believe.

Jonathan Alter writes that Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner should have to debate on national television. Have them debate on what their role as the Speaker would be and how they would guide the House of Representatives, and what their ideas are for the future. I agree.

Revolting Comments

2010-07-09T14:52:00.000-05:00

This was a recent Letter to the Editor in the Louisville Courier-Journal

The other day, a local talk-show host said people who get unemployment should be ashamed, and use that shame to motivate themselves to get a job. Isn't being poor, and having the family you love do without because you can't get a decent job, motivation enough?

I didn't choose to be poor, but I have been most of my life. My mother and I were by ourselves. She made 35 cents an hour as a stenographer and rode a bus to work; we had no car. I picked up bottles and cans for refunds until I was big enough to rake and mow yards. When I was a staff sergeant (E6) in the Army, with a wife and two kids, we qualified for the subsidized lunch program in public school and our kids were treated badly by kids with more money. My pay to die for my country was below the poverty level set by our government, and my wife and I both had part-time jobs to try and have clothes, food and shelter.

I am not ashamed. I have been poor, and I'm proud that we persevered through it all. The shame falls on the shoulders of the politicians who let our jobs go overseas, while the products are sold back here to those who lost their jobs. God bless the people who help the less fortunate in any way that they can. I've yet to meet a person who chooses to be poor because he or she is too lazy to work.

LARRY COPPALA
Fairdale, Ky. 40118

I am on a crusade to find out who said this. The radio talk show host should himself or herself be terminated and join the ranks of the many unemployed and, perhaps, receive some lessons.

The first lesson is this. The sin of poverty is a sin of the impoverished, but a sin on those who do not care for them. There are many debates on how to aid the impoverished. Those debates are political and valid. But aiding the impoverished and caring for them is actually a Gospel imperative.

If a person who had never read the Bible and new nothing about the history of Christianity were to listen to modern day Christianity the thing the person would presume Jesus spent the bulk of his time discussing was human sexuality and most especially homosexuality. The reality is that Jesus barely glanced on the subject of human sexuality and spent as much time discussing homosexuality as he did nuclear physics, namely none. There were two topics he spoke about a great deal.

The first was the sin of self-righteousness. The second sin most often addressed by Jesus was the sin of poverty. Often, when we see poverty, we blame the impoverished. Jesus consistently turns the tables on this way of thinking. When we see poverty, we are called, as Christians, to address it. When we care for those who are less fortunate to us, we are doing what Jesus calls us to do. When we walk on by, the sin is not on the guy laying in the ditch, it’s on us.

When there are people in our community who are hungry and we do nothing to provide them food, the sin is on us.

This radio talk show host demonstrated little knowledge of poverty or poor people. In our church’s Soup Kitchen and Clothes Closet and Health Fair we’ve really seen that a significant number of people who are poor have jobs. I see our clients all the time. They often work at local fast food restaurants, some in small family run restaurants, and large chain stores. Many work hard, have little to know benefits despite their long hours, and make close to minimum wage. All the manufacturing jobs people like this used to have are now gone. These people are hard working, proud, and poor.

When these folks become unemployed or have spent time on unemployment it was not that they were lazy or didn’t want to work. No one would hire them. Sadly, many went back to work taking jobs that not even didn’t pay what their previous job paid them, but the job actually paid less than their unemployment benefits did.

The comment by the talk show was ignorant, at best.

Secondly, this person needs to have a heart. Was the comment heartless? It was beyond belief heartless!

Often the stories of people who are home, out of work, are heart breaking. Self-esteem dies. Shame does come, but comes because the person is unable to find a job. Sadly, many people apply for dozens, even hundreds of jobs and never even receive the courtesy of a rejection letter. People are home, waiting, and praying, and hoping, and dying a little bit inside each and every day. This person wants them to feel MORE shame? Heartless.

My last point is this. I hope this person does not attend church. Seriously. I would be greatly depressed if this person is a Christian. It would mean, either, the person was ignoring the message of Jesus or that the person was in a church that was ignoring the message of Jesus. If the words came from a person who was practicing Christianity, I would be greatly distressed.

People all have different perspectives and I can live with many of them. This person’s perspective on this topic, frankly, sickens me. It makes my heart ache that there is this kind of cruelty and ignorance being shared with others.

Taking America Back

2010-07-06T19:51:00.001-05:00

The other day a Facebook friend had a status update wondering about people who want to ‘take America back.’ He was wondering where they wanted to take America back to.

Sometimes I hear people speak about taking America back to when it was a Christian nation. I have often wondered when exactly that was.

Often people refer to the Founding Fathers and their Christianity. If one looks at the first four Presidents it is nebulous. George Washington worshiped in Anglican/Episcopal Churches, also known as the Church of England of that era. He was very quiet about his religious faith.

John Adams was probably the most religious having been raised a Calvinist Congregationalist (when Congregationalists were Calvinists) but rejected Calvinism, the Trinity, and the Divinity of Christ and became a Unitarian.

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were both Deists who were avid supporters of separating church and state. The Colonial Era was many things religiously, but actually the vast minority of people attended church. It was like that through the 19th century as well.

The high point of church going in the United States was post-World War II, and through the 1950's. Again, the majority of people didn’t go to church but churches were at their largest.

So I’m not sure when we were a Christian nation. There have been Christian principles in much of our history, but we have never really been a Christian nation. And, unless George Washington’s letter to the Tauro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island was a forgery, Washington encouraged that congregation and promised it religious freedom to practice Judaism without interference.

So, where are we going back to?

Through much of the 19th century life was hard and there was slavery through the first half, a brutal war, and reconstruction. The latter part of the 19th century was great if you were rich and terrible if you were poor, and women had no rights or right to vote.

The first half of the 20th century had two World Wars, prohibition, the rise of organized crime, and a difficult fight for women to gain the right to vote. The second half of the 20th century had Korea and Vietnam, racial riots, and a war with Iraq-----as well as many other things.

So, what are people looking to go back to? Or when?

Makes me think we ought to learn with the world we live in right now. Right now doesn’t seem to bad...

Monday Random Musings

2010-07-05T15:51:00.001-05:00

I decided I need to get back to blogging. I’m going to start with my Monday Musings.

Independence Day, to me, is an awesome day.

We remember the heroism and the hardships of the troops. George Washington was never noted as a brilliant strategist. He actually lost more battles than he won. Of course, he won the last battle, so.....

The thing about Washington was that he was a man of tremendous character and tremendous courage. He suffered, along with his troops, through difficult times. The only way to win the war was to keep at it for a long time. The British were will trained and an outstanding army. He had to make it a war of attrition and he did.

Conversely, we ought also honor the ‘thinkers’ of the day. Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Madison, etc., were not noted for battlefield courage, but they were noted for their philosophical courage and intellectual genius. We might have never have had the wisdom of group of individuals again. They were the architects of the nation we now love.

Speaking of serious:

In reading about the conflict between Turkey and Israel, there is something nagging me. In the early part of the 20th century, Turkey afflicted upon the Armenian population one of the most horrific blights of the 20th century. While we speak of the Holocaust and of Stalin’s murders, we also need to include this. The Turks slaughtered the Armenians. President Obama promised to recognize the Armenian Genocide and stepped back from this in light of Turkey’s protestations. President Obama was wrong in backing down. Right now it is difficult to be excited about Turkey’s protestations about Israel...

The arrest of the Russian spies fascinates me. They were busy living the ‘American dream” and were spying for Russia? If they were so interested in the “Russian dream” then go back to Russian. It’ll be interested to see how well they live their ‘dream’ in prison.

The Reds and the Mets have a series in New York starting tonight. They are both in the thick of it. Who’d have thought this???

Toy Story III was wonderful.

I’m thinking that, whichever Democratic strategist who got Michael Steele his job as the head of the RNC deserves a raise...

I might be in the minority of this, but I hope LeBron James stays in Cleveland. Struggling Midwestern cities, like Cleveland, deserve a break. And, it’s not like he’s going to be poor if he stays there.

I’m looking forward to the Harry Potter movies. I LOVED the books. They are works of genius. And, for people who refer to them as demonic, I say only two words: READ THEM!!!

Apple is ‘stunned’ to have learned there was an IPhone 4 flaw. Who do they think they are? Microsoft?

Mel Gibson went on a racist, sexist tirade and it was all caught on tape. Now people are saying that Gibson is a racist, sexist guy. What a surprise...

Takeru Kobayashi was arrested because he’s in a contract dispute and was not part of the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest. He charged the stage, I guess, wanting a hot dog. I love Nathan’s hot dogs, but he was in Coney Island where they are readily for sale. He just needed to wait in line like everyone else.

Anthony Bourdain, a real hot dog afficionado, (he really is), recently decreed that Chicago has better hot dogs than New York. I also love hot dogs and was surprised he said this. Makes me have to truly respect the hot dogs coming from the Windy City. I mean, Anthony Bourdain is a world class chef and LOVES hot dogs. He, to me, is a credible voice. And, for those who know me and know that I tend toward sarcasm on occasion, please note. I am not being sarcastic about this. For once, I’m being totally serious.

I Am So Lucky

2010-07-04T14:52:00.000-05:00

I am so lucky that I will soon receive my fortune. It's only going to cost me a half million dollars!!!

FROM LEE CAMPBELL

ATTN MY GOOD FRIEND, I AM MR LEE CAMPBELL. THE FOREIGN EXECUTIVE COMMITEE ON DEBT RECONCILIATION. I'M WRITING YOU THIS MESSAGE BECAUSE COOL PENNY IS BETTER THAN MILLIONS OF DOLLARS.

IT'S BETTER FOR ONE TO LIVE AND DIE A POOR HONEST MAN THAN A RICH DISHONEST ONE. I AND THE CHIEF SECURITY OFFICER (CSO) OF OUR BANK HAVE ARRANGED WITH AN OFFICER IN THE COMPUTER SECTION OF THIS BANK, ENGINEER MIKE DAVIES TO BRING OUT PART OF YOUR TOTAL CONTRACT SUM AMOUNTING TO FIVE MILLION US DOLLARS.

WHY WE DID THIS. ACCORDING TO INFORMATION GATHERED FROM THE BANK COMPUTER, YOU HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR A LONG TIME TO RECEIVE YOUR MONEY WITHOUT SUCCESS, AS I FOUND OUT THAT YOU HAVE ALMOST MET ALL THE STATUTORY REQUIREMENTS OF THE CBN IN RESPECT OF YOUR CONTRACT PAYMENT, BUT YOUR PROBLEM IS THAT OF INTEREST GROUPS.

LOTS OF PEOPLE ARE INTERESTED IN YOUR PAYMENT AND THOSE PEOPLE ARE MERELY DOING PAPER WORK WITH YOU AND THAT EXPLAINS WHY YOU RECEIVE FAX AND PHONE MESSAGES FROM DIFFERENT PEOPLE EVERYDAY. ALSO WE FOUND OUT THAT SOME OF THE OFFICIALS OF VARIOUS PARASTATALS HAVE BEEN EXHULSTING A LOT OF MONEY FROM YOU IN RESPECT OF HELPING YOU RECEIVE YOUR MONEY, BUT I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT THIS MAY LAST FOR SEVERAL YEARS, YET NOTHING WOULD HAPPEN IF YOU DO NOT MAKE UP YOUR MIND TODAY AND STOP ANY TRANSACTION WITH THOSE OFFICERS THAT YOU CALL YOUR PARTNERS.

I AM WILLING TO HELP YOU GET YOUR MONEY, BUT PLEASE FOR SECURITY PRECAUTION, DO NOT TELL ANYBODY ABOUT THIS UNTIL YOU RECEIVE THE CASH AT YOUR DOORSTEP. THE MONEY IS IN TWO SECURITY-PROOF BOXES WEIGHING 10KG EACH, THAT IS 20KG FOR THE TWO BOXES. YESTERDAY, WE WENT TO FOUR COURIER SERVICE TO MAKE ARRANGEMENTS ON HOW TO SHIP THEM BY COURIER SERVICE TO YOU. DHL, EMS , FEDEX AND ISA, BUT WE WERE NOTISFIED THAT THEY WILL HAVE TO OPEN THE BOXES FOR INSPECTION BY THE CUSTOMS BEFORE SHIPMENT.

THIS IS SOMETHING WE WANT TO AVOID BECAUSE THE BOXES WERE PADDED WITH MACHINE. WE TOLD THE COURIER SERVICE THAT THE BOXES CONTAINS PHOTOGRAPHIC AND FILM MATERIALS AND WHEN OPENED WILL LOOSE ITS EFFICACY. WE DID NOT DECLARE MONEY BECAUSE COURIER SERVICE DOES NOT CARRY MONEY.

TODAY, A FRIEND OF MINE WHO WAS A CHRISTIAN LIKE ME NOTIFY ME THAT THERE IS A COURIER SERVICE THAT DO SEND PACKAGES AND INFORMATION FROM ONE COUNTRY TO ANOTHER, AND THE COURIER SERVICE CAN DELIVER THE PACKAGES ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD WITHOUT ANY INSPECTION FROM CUSTOMS. THE NAME OF THE COURIER SERVICE IS IAZ COURIER COMPANY.

I WILL MEET WITH THEM AS SOON AS YOU HAVE PERMIT ME TO GO AHEAD. THE COURIER SERVICE WILL HELP US NOT TO HAVE ANY PROBLEM. AND YOU WILL HAVE TO COMPENSATE US WITH FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS AS SOON AS YOU RECEIVE YOUR MONEY. TO THIS EFFECT, YOU WILL SEND US A PROMISSORY NOTE FOR FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS ALONG WITH YOUR ADDRESS FOR SENDING THE BOXES BY COURIER. AND PLEASE MAINTAIN UTMOST SECRECY AS IT MAY LEADS TO A LOT OF PROBLEMS IF FOUND OUT THAT WE ARE USING THIS WAY TO HELP YOU. DO NOT EVER TELL ANYBODY ABOUT THIS UNTIL YOU HAVE RECEIVED YOUR MONEY.

I AM WILLING TO HELP YOU DUE TO THE PERCENTAGE YOU WILL GIVE ME WHEN WE ARE DONE, AND PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU SEND OUR PERCENTAGE TO US IMMEDIATELY WE'VE HELPED YOU SHIP YOUR MONEY.

DO RE-CONFIRM THE UNDERLISTED DETAILS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE FOR ONWARD SHIPMENT OF YOUR OVER DUE CONTRACT FUND:

YOUR FULL NAME:
PRIVATE TELEPHONE NUMBER:
FULL ADDRESS WITH ZIPCODE: {where you wish the consignment delivered}:
PRESENT OCCUPATION:
AGE:

GOD IS WITH US, AS WE AWAIT YOUR SOONEST REPLY.

YOURS FAITHFULLY,
MR.LEE CAMPBELL

Faith Debate on Bill Maher's Show

2010-05-15T14:18:00.002-05:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/15/bill-maher-why-cant-liber_n_577346.html

The headline on this video clip is actually pretty misleading. It is a question that Bill Maher raises, but the longer conversation is on faith and atheism. Maher’s guests were: Newark Mayor Cory Booker, author John Avlon, and author S.E. Cupp. A centerpiece of this conversation was Cupp’s book, Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media's Attack on Christianity.

On one level, Maher, a staunch and zealous atheist, attacked the premise of Cupp’s book and, frankly, did an effective job. Cupp, who is an atheist herself and does not seem to have a very good grasp on what religious faith actually is, strung together pieces of anecdotal evidence to write her book and was dissected by Maher. It was painfully sad, actually to see him pick her apart, but her book is a book with a political agenda rather than a spiritual agenda and the dissecting was pretty ugly and effective. It also demonstrated that people of faith ought not to rely on non-believers to defend them. Part of her problem is that she was cherry picking some attacks on the ‘fruits’ of ‘some’ ideas, but never really proved her point. Maher used an allegory to describe her research and it was like picking one raisin out of a large loaf. It is a good reminder that anecdotal evidence is not very effective. Anecdotes make good reading and great stories, but they do not really prove anything.

In fairness to Cupp, before they really discussed her book, the three guests were arguing with Maher over religion and war. Maher said that most wars are caused by religion and they countered that there are many things that cause war. Cupp used the examples of Pol Pot, Hitler, and Stalin, and Maher dismissed this by saying they promoted state religions. I think she made a good point and Maher is just going to call anything he doesn’t agree with a religion.

Booker and Avlon, however, were a different story. My sense is there two people, both of who are actual believers, made the best arguments. Avlon argued that the greatest factor in everything, believer versus believer or non-believer is the issue of arrogance. No one position owns God. Booker than affirmed that one of the truest demonstrations of faith if humility. From that point on, in my opinion, the Mayor of Newark carried the day. Maher was left with little more than his own personal talking points.

Booker spoke of having a collection of Holy Books that Maher decreed all contradicted each other. Booker, most appropriately pointed out the great fact that they mostly do not; Maher semi cited Jesus ‘only through me’ from John’s Gospel----an often misinterpreted passage.

Booker observed that many churches in Newark, New Jersey are doing amazing, transformative ministries, and changing people’s lives. Of course, Maher didn’t want to hear about that, this is not what he wanted to talk about.

I walked away from this exchange with some real thoughts.

First, religious faith is, at its best, apolitical. Neither American political party could safely invite Jesus to their convention. They might claim that they could, but they really couldn’t. Considering Jesus’ moral teachings centered on caring for the poor and a promotion of the outcasts of society, Jesus talking to an exclusive crowd and the biggest downers would not go over well. Jesus would pick the meat off every bone in the room at either convention. Jesus, in his own life, lost his life after appearing to two different political leaders, Herod and Pilate. Politicians didn’t love him then and only love him now as long as they are able to only promote the parts of him they like. The real and total Jesus? Not hardly.

Secondly, Booker was right about humility. It requires humility to believe. Maher arrogantly kept calling Booker arrogant because Booker ‘believed’ (in Maher’s mind) that he, Booker, knew all the answers. Booker did not know all the answers and explained why. It didn’t convince Maher but Maher was beyond being convinced. He was right and everyone else was wrong. True faith does require humility.

Thirdly, S. E. Cupp is an interesting person. I’ve watched her interviewed by Bill O’Reilly who loved the book (it’s a political book that agrees with him, so he would love it) but kept trying to convert Cupp to being an actual person of faith. She was also interviewed by Bill Maher who hated the book (it’s a political book that doesn’t agree with him, so he would hate it) and kept trying to convert Cupp into being an actual atheist. She just finished a Master’s Degree in Religious Studies and understands that religion is good for people, but she doesn’t, herself, believe in God. My sense, with her, is that her arguments really do fall way short of the goal because she genuinely doesn’t understand religious faith. It is not something she has an experience of, and she’s stuck writing on things about faith, while missing the point of faith.

Lastly, whatever one things of the three guests, Booker, Cupp, and Avlon, they were all better than Maher. Of course, Bill Maher is, first and foremost, a comedian and he sees, first, to bring great folly and laughter to his show by making God and religious people, the butt of his humor. Faith is not irrational, it is not the domain inhabited by stupid, poorly read people, but it is a domain that is filled with a vast cross section of individuals with a wide variety of beliefs. Bill Maher’s mocking of things, of beliefs, of deeply helped values built on faith, is not particularly funny.

"Boys" Need to be Men

2010-05-12T14:25:00.000-05:00

University of Virginia student, Yeardley Love was founded murdered, beaten and killed by blunt force trauma to her head. A young man, a fellow University of Virginia student and fellow Lacrosse player, George Huguely, was arrested and charged with the murder. This is not the first time Huguely has been in trouble for a violent offense. Police in Lexington, Va., about 70 miles from Charlottesville, said that in November 2008, Huguely was shocked with a stun gun by an officer there after resisting arrest for public intoxication. He pleaded guilty to two charges last year, was placed on six months of probation and given a 60-day sentence, which was suspended.

The arresting officer, R.L. Moss, said in a statement Tuesday that she felt it necessary to use the stun gun because Huguely became abusive and his size was no match for her.

She said in the statement that Huguely was "yelling obscenities and making threats."

News reports state that people were shocked and dismayed because Huguely was a star lacrosse player. Actually, so was Yeardley Love, but people haven’t paid that much attention to that. The University of Virginia is going to grant to Love her diploma on graduation day----post humously.

Ben Roethlisberger is a major star in the NFL. He has been the quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers and, even as a young player in this league, has two Super Bowl rings. In his second Super Bowl appearance many said that he was the real MVP of the game, though he didn’t win it. He is noted for being a great player and a great athlete.

He has also been accused of sexual assault by three different women. Thus far no charges have stuck because of the intoxication level of the women and lack of physical evidence. Roethlisberger had body guards who probably do know what really happened but claim they know nothing, other than talking in derogatorty language about the intoxication of the victims. Roethlisberger’s behavior and own intoxication levels were of no concern to them.

Lawrence Taylor was the great linebacker for the New York Giants. If people saw the movie, The Blind Side, it was his legendary hit on Joe Theissman that changed the game of football and began the movie. Taylor was the greatest player ever to put on a New York Giants uniform and arguably the greatest player even to play defense in the National Football League. He is accused of raping a 16 year old girl who he paid $300.00 for a sexual encounter. She had been beaten up before seeing him and had a bruised eye, forced by a pimp into this encounter. Taylor is claiming that he’s innocent of rape because he did, after all, pay her $300.00 for the sex and thought she was 19.

There have been warning signs about Huguely for quite some time. He was growing increasingly obsessive about Love, a girl he had dated and was breathing violent comments to many people around her and threatening violence toward other boys who found her attractive or showed her any sort of attention. He had demonstrated earlier that violence toward women was not something he was reluctant to do and that going into a drunken rage would not be a first time event. Many of his actions and words were dismissed with the comment, “Boys will be boys.”

Ben Roethlisberger has been cruising toward a disaster for quite some time. Three allegations and a motorcycle accident, sans helmet, later people have taken notice. Some have suggested he might have brain damage from so many blows to the head. Up to now his behavior has been dismissed wit the comment, “Boys will be boys.”

Most fans of the New York Giants (myself included) loved Lawrence Taylor on the field and have been willing to forgive many of his drug-related transgressions. He has, however, been notorious and quite open to the fact that he was a frequent customer to prostitutes. His association with a well known pimp seems to indicate that his behavior has not changed. Often his conduct has been overlooked using that old, weary line, “Boys will be boys.”

I have some thoughts on this whole subject.

The first is about sports, and I say this as a sports fan. We’ve gotten carried away with sports. Athletes often ‘get away’ with a great deal. They get through high school and college for being the star player and become professional athletes and then they do something really bad and end up in jail----wondering why no one was there to get them out of trouble. The list of athletes who are or who have been in prison is large and getting larger.

Our sports culture has become almost overwhelming. Sitting outside of Louisville I’ve become deeply disturbed by the fact that coaches for the University of Louisville make huge salaries and I’m wondering how their salaries compare to the professors, in let’s say, the medical school. What does it say about our society when we are willing to pay coaches untold millions of dollars while we pay professors teaching those in who we entrust our lives so much less? I find this troubling.

Secondly, there is an increasing concern that women are less and less safe around many of these men who play the games. George Huguely was praised as a great lacrosse player while Yeardley Love’s significant contributions to the University of Virginia’s women’s lacrosse team were pretty much ignored. Increasingly, we are learning that he spoke violently a great deal and no one was taking him seriously, despite the fact that Yeardley Love, herself, was growing increasingly concerned.

Ben Roethlisberger had bodyguards whose main job did not seem to be protecting anyone other than Roethlisberger’s reputation and hide. The women he was so cruel and crude to in the bar, and there were many, were simply seen as fodder for him. They were not safe.

And Lawrence Taylor was callous to overlook the fact that the girl he was with was beaten up to force her to service him. She would not tell him anything about being beaten up (despite being badly bruised) because she was afraid of him. And she had no reason not to be afraid of him.

Three men, all callous. One man callous to the point of murder. Two others, callous to the point of believing these women were there strictly to amuse them. They gave these women no respect and they were all unsafe----tragically unsafe. The University Virginia sees fit to honor Yeardley Love with a degree, but didn’t see fit to protect her from harm.. In a society that boasts of the equality of the genders, we are seeing women moving higher in careers than ever before, while often being in greater danger. Increasingly, a woman in the presence of the ‘star’ player is in grave danger. This should not be.

And, lastly, there is that comment: “Boys will be boys.”

What exactly does this mean? Does it mean that if you are the male of the species intolerable behavior is allowed? Does it mean that if you are the male of the species that you may say or do anything you want because you are a boy? How many free passes are men ‘allowed’ because boys will be boys? Does this mean, if you are a male, gross, improper, crude, and even illegal conduct is overlooked because boys will be boys?

As a male of the species, as a man, I find it offensive to think that less is expected of me because I am a male. It is a reminder to us that low expectations yield low results. It is time for us to demand better----and begin making that demand on ourselves. It is time to recognize that boys need to grow up and learn to be men.

Mother's Day Sermon

2010-05-11T08:38:00.001-05:00

God’s Peace! Here? Are You Kidding????
Text: John 14:27-29
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
May 9, 2010

Jesus speaks of peace, God’s peace, the kind of peace the world cannot give.

In looking at the Common Lectionary the passage we had to read today was on God’s peace and my initial reaction was to laugh. It’s the Festival of the Christian Home; Mother’s Day and, the concept of peace on a day about family sounds, if nothing else, amusing. I mean, most people, if asked about God’s peace and home would say:

God’s peace? Here? Are you kidding????

In 1983 one of the great all time movies about family life and family fun was made. It was National Lampoon’s Vacation. It was the adventure of Clark and Ellen Griswald driving from Chicago to Florida to visit Wally World. The movie was about their trip. In one short conversation between Clark and Ellen we learn a lot:

Clark: I'm just trying to treat my family to a little fun.
Ellen Griswold: Oh spare me, Clark, I know your brand of family fun. Tomorrow you'll probably kill the desk clerk, hold up a McDonalds, and drive us 1000 miles out of the way to see the world's largest pile of mud!

And later:
Clark: Despite all the little problems it's fun isn't it?
Ellen Griswold: No. But with every new day there's fresh hope.

Family life, is, in a word, interesting. And to the mix Jesus speaks quite earnestly and seriously about God’s peace. The more I have been thinking about this, the more I’ve come to realize that to understand and receive God’s peace, so much depends on us. For God’s peace to live, for God’s peace to thrive in the world, in church, and even in our homes, it requires each of us to come to a sense of peace within our own lives.

In light of this, from my own personal experience there are things that keep people from peace within themselves. There are things we can do to help ourselves.

The first is learning to say “I’m sorry,” when we are wrong.

I have found that there is nothing as character building as apologizing. Having the humility and courage to admit that you are personally wrong and have made a mistake, is liberating. Often a good apology clears the air between people. Families who learn to apologize to one another, live healthier and happier lives.

One thing that is crucial, however, is learning to truly apologize as opposed to pretending to apologize.

There is several words in the English language that ought never be in an apology. The word is ‘but.’

When we say, “I am sorry for offending you, but....” When we say this, we are putting the issue of offense on the person we offended. We are trying to justify our actions.

“I’m sorry for hurting you, but...” You deserved it.

“I’m sorry for stealing from you, but...” I wanted the money more you needed it.

You get the point.

Or when we use the word ‘if.’

“I’m sorry IF I offended you, “ and we’re really saying you need to have thicker skin.

“I’m sorry IF I hurt you,” and we’re really saying you need to be tougher.

“I’m sorry IF you needed that,” and we really saying I needed it more.

True apologies end with “I’m sorry.” We can add, “Because I offended you, or because I hurt you, or because it was uncalled for, but we can’t use the word ‘but’ or ‘if.’

And I’m sorry IF this bothers you BUT, it’s true.

The second thing is learning to forgive. One of the greatest causes of people to not be at peace with themselves is because they carry grudges, carry anger, and never really learn to forgive. Not forgiving others, carrying around permanent burdens, causes people to be totally overwhelmed by their grudges.

One of the great models of forgiveness is, believe it or not, God.

In Chapter 15 in the book of the prophet Jeremiah, there is an interesting and unusual scene. And a troubling scene. Things have not gone well for Jeremiah and he is angry and frustrated. In a moment of anger, in a moment of frustration, Jeremiah tells God:

Truly, for me you are a deceptive stream with uncertain waters!

The words are poetic and elegant and they have one consistent meaning. In the heat of anger and frustration at God, Jeremiah indicates that God has been lying to him; that God has been dishonest to him; that God is a liar.

Harsh words, most especially to speak to God.

And the moment just hangs there. God’s prophet calls Him a liar. The heat of anger has come and the most vile words Jeremiah could think of saying have come out of his mouth. The mood hangs.

And God responds, and you can almost hear it as a whisper: “If you come back, I will take you back.” Jeremiah has called God a liar and God, in those simple words, “If you come back, I will take you back,” forgives His prophet.

What I love about this passage is this. It’s so real. This is the kind of exchange that takes place in life all the time. It happens a lot in homes. Anger and frustration builds up and heated words are spoken. Often the words are less poetic than Jeremiah uses, but they are equally harsh. Resentment and anger build up. Yet, God models how to respond. Forgive. Forgiveness brings peace not only to those around us, but also to ourselves.

The last thing is this. Do not judge.

Let me tell you a really stupid story. What makes the story so incredibly foolish was the judgmental behavior of one person in the story, namely me.

Years ago Janet and I were out to eat in a restaurant in the town we where we lived in Pennsylvania. We went to a small restaurant we used to frequent a great deal and they had a small salad bar. I was following a man at the salad bar and, instead of taking some lettuce, tomatoes, and the usual stuff for a salad, he filled his entire bowl with onions and then pour French dressing on his 100% onion salad.

I do not, for a variety of reasons, eat raw onions and I watched this guy in horror. When I went to sit at the table I pretty much ignored Janet and watched this guy eat his bowl of raw onions and I sat there and fumed. Janet tried to engage me in conversation and I was short with her and I was short with the server who came by. I sat, watched the guy, and fumed because, to put it simply, I did not approve of his choice of salad.

In the great picture and scope of the universe, this meant nothing, but I was all worked up. I judged this guy’s salad. That’s it. And I fumed. I realized, after a while, how incredibly stupid I was. The guy’s salad might not have been to my approval, but so what?

We do this kind of thing all the time in life. We judge. Someone does something or makes choices that we do not approve of. So what?

Jesus spoke of judgment a great deal. It accomplishes nothing good; it just estranges people from one another and sows disharmony in the world. And it accomplishes nothing.

Peace? There’s an old hymn, Let There Be Peace on Earth, and it begins with the words, “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.”

Jesus offers us the gift of God’s peace; and God’s peace is not available until we make peace within ourselves. Learning to apologize, forgiving, and not judging others is a great place to start. And the best place to begin is the place we all begin and end each day. At home.

Random Rants

2010-05-07T10:33:00.000-05:00

What Makes Me Sad....

What makes me sad is that culturally we have fallen into an intellectual abyss. Signs show up of this abyss in all different ways.

Lawrence Taylor was the greatest on field football player to ever play for the New York Giants. He was the greatest on field defensive player in the history of the NFL. His off field stupidity, ongoing issues with drugs and prostitutes is legendary. It has also been criminal. His celebrity has kept him out of prison. Raping a 16 year old girl, who had been beaten by a pimp, is the height of stupidity and is downright evil. Whatever defense his attorneys can dream up for him now is no good. There is NO defense for this. None. Zip. Jail awaits and it is a sentence he richly deserves.

A recent poll indicates that 14% of the country believes that Barack Obama was born abroad. To these folks I would like to offer you a great opportunity. There is a bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn seeking a purchaser. You can own the bridge and charge tolls. It is a highly profitable venture for you. The real estate agent is B. Madoff....

I’m not sure why McDonalds won’t hire me as the leader of their ad campaign. My motto for them would be: McDonalds: I’d Rather Eat Dirt. (Sorry, a rant)

Speaking of such things: White Castle now has candles that provide the aroma of their famous sliders. I cannot imagine...

Wall Street plunged almost 1000 points for a short time on a bizarre ‘sell order’ for P & G, one of the most stable stocks. It may have been the result of a typo. AGH!!!!! The stock market is vulnerable to typing errors????? At this level?????

Michael “Heck of a Job Brownie” Brown announced that President Obama was thrilled about the oil leak off the coast of Louisiana. Of course, this is a week after President Obama decided to allow off-shore drilling... Of course, this is also a national disaster... I’m not sure what Michael Brown is doing these days, but I may suggest a course in “Logic” from a local community college.

JaMarcus Russell. Says it all.

Ray Lewis, NFL thug, has long associated with thugs, disapproves of Tim Tebow namely because people speak so well of Tebow. Tebow, who, whether you agree with him or not, is about as non-thug a human being there is on the planet and Lewis disapproves of him. This says a lot more about Ray Lewis than it does Tim Tebow.

England decided to become more ‘American’ in their Prime Minister election and held, for the very first time, televised debates. The end result is very American as well. A hopelessly hung government.

BP is putting a dome over the leaking oil well. Their hope is that this dome will stop the oily scum. I doubt this will work. The Capitol Dome hasn’t been very effective at suppressing oily scum from what I’ve seen.

The show “Man Versus Food” is amusing, but, frankly, grotesque. Why do we find it amusing to watch a man eat a 10 pound hamburger and see his face covered with grease, ketchup, and pickle chips.

And finally, when people watch “Real Housewives of New Jersey...” My Mom was a real housewife from New Jersey. My Grandmother was a real housewife from New Jersey. I grew up surrounded by wonderfully great women who were REAL real housewives from New Jersey and they had nothing in common with these fools on television.

The Art of Apology

2010-05-05T13:33:00.002-05:00

Ever apologize?

One of the best things on the planet is the apology. It makes you feel better and it makes the person you have apologized to feel better.

Apologies are heartfelt and sincere as long as they exclude one word: But.

When we say, "I'm sorry, but..." we are not apologizing. We are making a justification. We are explaining ourselves but not apologizing.

Sometimes people in public moments say unkind things. Whatever one thinks of Elisabeth Hasselbeck, she made some statements about Erin Andrews. We can debate on whether she was right or wrong, but her words went over the top and were hurtful to Erin Andrews. And she did it publicly.

Then Elisabeth Hasselbeck did something very classy. She apologized.

She set an example for her 5 year old daughter (who she speaks about) and set an example to others. Whether you like her or not, or agree with her or not, she showed great class and demonstrated the art of apologize well. I am impressed.

Discovering Love Again for the First Time (Sermon)

2010-05-04T22:37:00.001-05:00

Discovering Love Again for the First Time
Text: John 13:31-35
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
May 2, 2010

Love. Love is probably one of the most used words in the Dictionary. It refers to everyone from people, to vacation spots, to food, and to favorite horses in the Derby.

Love is the topic of most movies, most novels, most songs, and most greeting cards. We read such things as:

Love is the irresistible desire to be desired irresistibly.
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
Love is the unity of two hearts beating together as one.
Love is not finding a perfect person, it is seeing an imperfect person perfectly.

And they’re all fine and nice. For greeting cards. But there always seems to be something missing, something more.

Jesus, toward the end of the Gospel of John, speaks a great deal to the apostles about what is going to happen next and what his hopes, dreams, and aspirations for them are. He summarizes everything he has to say quickly:

4I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

But here it is. If you’re like me, you like to know the definition.

Sometimes people say, “I had a really good time,” and I’ll wonder, how they define a really good times.

Or people say some place is a great restaurant and I want to know why and how they define a great restaurant.

Or, preaching sermons. “That was a great sermon!” I like people to define what they mean by a great sermon.

So Jesus tells them to love one another. It makes me want to ask one question. How does Jesus define love?

Jesus’ definition of love has one overwhelming requirement. Sacrifice.

Jesus states this bluntly in Chapter 15 when he says: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 15:13

Of one mother’s profound sacrificial love, the preacher Michael Milton from Chattanooga, Tennessee shared very profoundly.

A young mother had to give up her daughter to be raised by the mother’s sister. The child’s mother had been burned horribly in a fire and despite many, many operations, never really recovered and was placed in a nursing home.

The little girl grew up but never met her mother. She lived in another part of the country, but her aunt showed her pictures of her mother and spoke often of the girl’s mother.

When the girl had grown up and was a young woman she made the journey across the country to visit the nursing home where her mother lived. She was taken to her mother’s room, with her heart beating with excitement and anticipation. When she walked into the room and saw her mother, she screamed. Her mother was dreadfully and horribly disfigured and nothing at all like the pictures of the beautiful woman the girl had seen as a child. The young woman went screaming from the room and was sobbing uncontrollably.

A nurse followed the girl and sat her down. Then the nurse told the young woman the story of how she, as an infant, was trapped in her bedroom by a fire that was sweeping rapidly through her home. But her mother had risked her own live and had run through the flames and the smoke to rescue the baby. She did, indeed rescue the baby, but was horribly burned, disfigured that she would never be able to function in society again. The nurse said, “The wounds are wounds of love for you.”

The mother had sacrificed it all for her child.

We use the word sacrifice all the time. Ever ask yourself the question, “What would I die for?” Friends, family, country, God? All good questions.

I have been watching The Pacific on HBO. It’s about the Marines fighting the Japanese in World War II. It is very realistic, based on real people, and shows us what it was really like. I hate it. It is almost unwatchable to see what really happened; it was dreadful. But I keep watching it because there were young men who were willing to die for their country and sacrificed so much to do what they did.

Jesus defines love as sacrifice.

In the early Christian Church people confronted sacrifice on a daily basis. It was illegal to be a Christian. If you were caught worshiping God, professing faith in Jesus Christ, you were put to death, often brutally.

Every day people flock to the city of Rome and tour the Coliseum. It was a massive stadium and the winners of the games lived and the losers of the games died. So many of those who lost were placed, unarmed in the center of the Coliseum, and slaughtered while people cheered on the animals or the humans who were putting them to death.

We come to Worship every Sunday and see the cross in the Sanctuary and I wear one around my neck. In the early Christian Church so many people lost their lives, they sacrificed their lives for Christ.

In 2010, within Christianity, we are not in danger by coming to Worship on Sunday morning. Which is good. But we’ve also lost the concept of sacrifice.

One of the barometers of congregational health is by the percentage of a church’s membership in church on Sunday morning. If a church averages at least 40% of its members, it’s health and good. That is four out of ten people. Which means if the majority of people miss Worship most Sundays, the church is healthy. Sacrifice is not important.

The Biblical joy of giving is tithing, which means people give 10% of their income to charity, often the church being the largest recipient. Most churches are ecstatic if people give 3% of their income to charity and/or the church. Sacrifice is not important.

The last time the United States was fighting a war in two fronts, like we are now in the War on Terror, was World War II. Men were drafted into service. Items were rationed at home to support the war effort. Taxes went up and war bonds were sold to fund the war. Everyone spoke of sacrifice.

We are now fighting a war on two fronts. We are not encouraged to sacrifice. Taxes have been cut, there are no war bonds, there is no draft, and we are encouraged to consume items. In fact, the government gives rebates on certain items for us to purchase.

The cost of the war? We’ve put it on VISA. It’s someone else’s problem for another day. Sacrifice is not important. At least to us, here and now.

Oh, and before anyone says I’m sounding political, I’m really not. There is no politician of any political party, in 2010 who will ever utter that horrible word ‘sacrifice,’ unto the American people. So many of our political leaders are so willing to profess their faith in Jesus Christ, but not one person will ever speak of sacrifice.

And sacrifice is the center of Jesus’ definition of love.

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

If we want to truly speak of love in the name of Jesus Christ, we need to ask ourselves questions:

Who or what are we willing to die for?

Who or what are we willing to sacrifice our time for?

Who or what are we willing to make financial sacrifices for?

If we want to love, we need to learn to sacrifice because “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Not a Joke

2010-04-24T09:36:00.001-05:00

On Facebook this week there was a group that people were becoming fans of. It was ‘a prayer,’ that really mocked what a prayer actually is. It goes like this:

DEAR LORD, THIS YEAR YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTOR, PATRICK SWAYZIE. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTRESS, FARAH FAWCETT. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE SINGER, MICHAEL JACKSON. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT IS BARACK OBAMA. AMEN

As of Saturday morning, April 24th, at 9:54AM the group has 1,093,107 fans.

I visited the group’s page and there are, as would be expected, numerous comments. Some call the ‘prayer’ appalling and want it removed. It is tasteless.

Some say, “Well where were you when people mocked George W. Bush???”

Some say, “It’s just a joke.”

I have several observations.

My first is this and this is one of those things that drives me crazy. They spelled Patrick Swayze’s and Farrah Fawcett’s names wrong. I mean, please, if you’re going to use people’s names, learn to spell them.

My second point is this. People did mock George W. Bush. People mock every President. There is fun mocking and there is tasteless mocking. Did people mock George W. Bush tastelessly? Of course. Were they right in doing so? Of course not! Does the fact that people were tasteless in mocking George W. Bush give people a right to mock Barack Obama tastelessly? Of course not. To defend this by saying that people were unfair and even mean to Bush is not really an argument based on any credibility. Wrong is wrong. Period.

Is it a joke?

I, for one, don’t like using a prayer as a joke. This one is pretty tasteless and cruel. It implies that the prayer wants Barack Obama dead. In the history of the United States, the death of a President, in office, has always been seen as a tragedy. It took many years for the nation to overcome the death of John F. Kennedy. His assassination touched off a turbulence in the 1960's that took decades from which to recover. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln had a devastating impact on rebuilding the nation after the Civil War.

Lest people forget, the last President to be shot while in office was Ronald Reagan. While he was in surgery, and recovering, the events that surrounded that day, and the consequences, were discussed a great deal and the consequences of his potential death from an assassin’s bullet would have impacted the nation greatly.

Whether we agree with a person’s politics or not, praying for the death of a President is destructive to the nation. Presidents can only serve two terms and if we do not like a President, they have this thing called an election that takes place every four years. Presidents can be re-elected or voted out. We do this routinely. If you don’t like someone, don’t vote for them.

Many people on the fan page of this ‘prayer’ are using it as a point of debate about the policies of Obama. Again, if you don’t like his policies, no problem. Just don’t pray for his death. Vote him out or vote for people from the other party to block his policies. Do not pray for his death.

Seeking the death of another is the highest form of rage. In listening to the Timothy McVeigh tapes, it is painfully obvious that he thought himself, and his violence, to be justified because of his hatred for the government. Killing was an expression of his rage.

Praying for someone’s death should never be in a prayer, and least of all, never be a joke.

The Consequence of Hatred is Death

2010-04-20T10:40:00.001-05:00

In listening to portions of the Timothy McVeigh tapes there is one thing that is very chilling. I believe he was sane.

Insanity is often seen as the inability to differentiate between right and wrong, good and bad, with no basis in rationality. McVeigh knew exactly what he was doing.

I found it chilling that he had no real guilt over what he had done.

I found it chilling that his only regret was that there was more ‘collateral damage’ than what he was anticipating. The military, at war, speaks of minimizing collateral damage during battles and air strikes. Within the military there is no desire to massacre civilian populations and so there is restraint----and decisions are weighed carefully.

McVeigh found it amusing, very amusing, that he was on the most evil people of the millennium list, just behind Vlad theImpaler who had, in McVeigh’s mind, a cool name, but McVeigh had no idea who he was. (And how evil Vlad was!)

And is ‘oh, children and people die all the time in accidents,’ kind of rationalization for not feeling all that badly about killing so many innocents.

When McVeigh was executed, I happened to be teaching a college course on Ethics and we discussed capital punishment in depth. I am, as most people who know me, opposed to capital punishment; but McVeigh was the poster child for capital punishment. It is difficult to come to any reasonable conclusion that the world would be better if he was still alive in it. Perhaps if a longer life would have given him a sense of guilt or remorse, but I’m doubting this. Sadly.

Timothy McVeigh was a man who grew to hate and that hate drove him to evil. St. Paul wrote that the consequences of sin is death and I strongly believe that the consequence of unrelenting hatred is also death. When hatred, no matter what drives is, is left to do nothing other than grow, then it ends up being completely destructive. And kills.

Timothy McVeigh was a man who became evil and did evil in the name of hate. Let us hope and pray we never encounter another one like him.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Damascus

2010-04-19T14:37:00.000-05:00

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Damascus
Text: Acts 9:1-8
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
April 18, 2010

Have you ever noticed how often we use the word funny and how often it ends up meaning very different things?

For example, sometimes we use the word funny to mean humorous. A funny person is a person who enjoys laughing and making other people laugh. I love funny things and even attempt, on occasion, to be funny. Humor is important to me.

But we use the word funny in other ways.

If a person gets up in the morning and says, “My stomach feels funny,” they are not saying that their stomach is now starting a new career in stand up. It means that they are not feeling well.

If we say that we’d feel funny about doing something it means that we’d feel awkward about something which we are undertaking.

And if we say something funny happened on our way to someplace, well, it can either be that we had an entertaining event or something completely unexpected took place.

And then there was Saul. A funny thing happened on the way to Damascus and it wasn’t amusing.

Saul, the one we’ve come to know as St. Paul, was persecuting Christians. He was building up a case and was on his way to Damascus when a funny thing happened. Luke tells us that a light appeared and a voice came down from Heaven and asked Saul why he was persecuting me. And Saul wants to know who ‘me’ is. And Saul encounters Jesus on the road to Damascus. And Saul turns from being a persecutor of Christians to the person who is most important in the history of Christianity of anyone other than Jesus.

For many, this story is vexing and offers so many ways to approach it.

Let’s focus on Paul for a moment.

When we think of St. Paul we think of the great Christian. When the people Paul was first interacting with thought of him, they thought of him as this horrible person who was persecuting everyone in the early church. And they were correct. This is who he was.

And so there was the question. Why did God use this bad man for such a noble purpose? Or maybe better asked is wondering why God doesn’t use better people than Paul.

But there was more to Paul than this and one thing we often miss about St. Paul. He changed. He changed big time, and change is difficult.

Paul was not the average guy. He was incredibly accomplished. He was fluent in writing Greek and used many images from the philosopher Plato which means that he was highly educated by Greek philosophers-----this was reserved for only the best and the brightest, so he was one of the best and the brightest.

But in Acts of the Apostles Luke tells us that St. Paul was educated by the famous Rabbi Gamaliel who was the well known and highly renowned teacher of the best and brightest Rabbinical students.

Paul was brilliant. Seriously brilliant. When we speak of the great minds in history, Albert Einstein, Thomas Aquinas, Galileo, and Isaac Newton, we need to include St. Paul. He was in that category.

And he changed.

For a person of Paul’s brilliance and accomplishment and achievement, change would have been difficult. Very difficult.

It is easy to say that it would have been easier for him than most. After all, God spoke to him, God knocked him off the horse, and God made him blind. This would have been enough. But that’s not all together true.

Reread Exodus some day. God makes war on the land of Egypt. Ten plagues fall upon the people. Ten. The water turns to blood. Pestilence. Boils. Death of the firstborn. Horrible, horrible plagues. God was not getting the people’s attention in Egypt. God was picking them up by their feet, spinning them around, and launching them high in the air.

Yet, the Pharaoh still sent his troops after the Israelites. After so much, after TEN incredibly destructive plagues from a God he obviously could not defeat, he still kept up the fight. It was hard headed and hard hearted beyond all recourse. Yet, the Pharaoh keep it up.

But Paul changed.

Change is sometimes difficult because it may challenge our deepest principles. Saul was Jewish. He believed that Judaism was the one true religion, the one true faith. He did not believe the Christians were right; he believed they were wrong strongly enough that he was putting them to death.

Yet he changed.

In 1803 the President of the United States was Thomas Jefferson and he had a problem.

Before him was the offer of a huge parcel of land; the land we now call the Louisiana Purchase. Historians called this Jefferson’s finest moment, but Jefferson was vexed.

Jefferson did not really believe in a strong, central, national government. He was a huge advocate for state’s rights and believed that the Federal Government should be small and weak. But...

It was going to require a huge effort by the Federal Government to make this purchase. It would require taxation to pay for it and it would require Jefferson to move in a manner contrary to every political principle he had. His choice was simple: stick with his political principles and not purchase the land; or go against long held beliefs and make the purchase and transform the young nation.

He changed his mind. It was not because he was unprincipled, but because Jefferson determined there was something greater at stake that his principles.

For Paul it was a great deal like this except for one big thing. His principles were wrong. Everything he believed, his core set of beliefs, he came to understand, was wrong.

Truth is not something that always accommodates our own ideas. Truth is what it is. The fact that we have a set of beliefs or opinions or ideas contrary to the truth does not make our ideas better because we hold onto them. We are challenged, at times, to put everything we have at the core of our being at risk to be open to God.

We honor Paul because he did.

There is something else at work here.

At the stoning of Stephen, Luke seemed to note that something jarred inside Paul. That jarring was the beginning of respect for another.

We cannot grow, we cannot ever change, we cannot really experience instant or ongoing conversion unless we can learn to respect people who might have different perspectives than we do.

Sometimes I think we are a nation and a people in the midst of a great crisis. It isn’t economic or political or international as much as it is something amongst the people itself. We have, as a society, lost the ability to respect one another.

We see this all the time. We are probably all guilty of it.

I know I am guilty of it. You all know me. I am quick-witted, often make quick, sharp comments. I love sarcasm. Sadly, I can be sarcastic at the expense of others. I’d like to say that I’ve never been guilty of this, but I have been. I look forward to the day when I outgrow this!

But our society seems to be on the verge of a national nervous breakdown. People are so tense about the fact that people cut into each other quickly.

In the recent health reform issues in Washington D. C., I think many people watched in distress as something happened. There really was no debate. There really was no debate. I can say that 1001 times. There were contrasting monologues of posturing and speeches, and no debate. It was not about right or wrong, good or bad, it was about winning or losing. Or winning by making the other guy lose. When it was all over, there were no innocent parties.

But that was just a grand and glorious display of the nation. People are willing to cut into each other with vim, vigor, and glee, regardless of how much they hurt each other. Respecting one another has become lost.

I am reminded, however, that this is not the way God calls us to be. In 1 Peter it is written:

Let your love for one another be intense, because love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaining. As each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace." 1 Peter 4:8-10

And that respect and intense for others is so key to conversion.

Perfection is often defined as the inability to improve.

You cannot make a perfect circle more perfect.

You cannot improve a perfect square.

You can write a perfect sentence. “John sees Mary.” If John sees Mary, it’s a perfect sentence.

Two plus two equals four. You cannot improve the answer.

We always have to ask ourselves: Am I perfect? I always know the answer to the question when it pertains to me. I suspect the answer is the same for everyone.

And unless we are perfect we are challenged to grow and to grow requires change, and to change requires learning from others and learning from others means first and foremost, to respect others. And the opinion of others.

We have a societal crisis because we cannot grow because we cannot respect one another.

St. Paul was an amazing man. Despite his great education and knowledge, he was humble enough to change. Despite his own person beliefs, even anger at others, he was able to respect and that respect enabled him to grow.

A funny thing happened on the way to Damascus. And Christianity was transformed by the greatness of the man knocked off his horse that day.

When Churches Profess to Welcome and Accept Everyone----And Live It!

2010-04-16T14:24:00.002-05:00

Every church in the world professes to welcome and accept everyone. And everyone will be loved, except you need to....

People have been hearing that for years.

God's Church should be a place where everyone has a seat at the table. No exception or exclusion.

The Things I Don’t Care About But End Up Having to Hear or Read About

2010-04-15T21:49:00.001-05:00

I do not care about how many people Tiger Woods had an affair with. His marriage is between he and his wife.

I don’t care to hear any more about Michael Jackson. I have heard enough.

I don’t care that Sarah Palin wants bendable straws. If she likes straws that bend, my universe is not going to be shaken.

I do not care that Ashley Dupre has posed for Playboy and I don’t care that she thinks she’s now a marital expert. Anyone who thinks she is might be interested in a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.

Jon and Kate. I don’t care.

Jesse James. I don’t care. (But I think he’s an idiot!)

I don’t care that President Obama sneaks smokes.

I don’t care about American Idol or Dancing with the Stars.

I don’t care how many times Larry King has been married.

I don’t care about Joe Lieberman’s opinion on anything.

I don’t care about the Ipad. Or the Mini-IPad or the Maxi Ipad.

I don’t care what people’s speculations about Tim Tebow happen to be. He’ll get drafted and will play. We’ll find out then.

I don’t care what Jerry Jones thinks about anything.

I don’t care what Hugh Hefner thinks about Kate Gosselin. Actually, I don’t care what Hugh Hefner thinks about anything.

I don’t care what Levi Johnston’s opinions are about much of anything.

I don’t care who is on Survivor or who Donald Trump is going to fire next week.

Thus endeth my current rant.