The Jazz of Justice

Amos 5:14-15, 21-24

25^th Jazz Communion

9/4/16

William G. Carter

Seek good and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you, just as you have said. Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Four years ago, some of our Presbybop musicians were with me in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Methodists had invited us down for worship, a concert, and a seminar. When our chores were concluded, we put the drummer and the bass player on a plane, and Al and I had a little time to kill before we caught a later flight.  

So I suppose that’s how we came to drive by Central High School. The school is still there, as it was in 1957. That was the year that Governor Orval Faubus stood up against the Supreme Court of the United States, and the centerpiece of his rebellion was Central High School. The Supreme Court declared it was unconstitutional to separate black from white into different public high schools.

Faubus said, “I don’t care what they think. I’m the governor of Arkansas. I’m not going to let nine African American teenagers into Central High School.” So he ordered the state’s National Guard to prevent it. News got back to Washington, and President Eisenhower was slow to react. The law was that people of different skin colors could study together, but Faubus said, “Not in my state.”

Looking at some of the news footage of the day, it got pretty ugly. People said terrible things about those who looked different from themselves.  They were saying that for years before, just as they have whispered it ever since, but they were pretty blunt about it then. It took the president twenty days to get around to sending in troops to defend the law. Maybe he was hoping Governor Faubus would be reasonable.

But most racists have no interest in being reasonable, especially if their so-called “way of life” is being challenged, called out, or disturbed. Faubus resisted, just as Florida resisted, Mississippi resisted, and George Wallace’s Alabama refused. Racism has been the “original wound” of the United States. This is a country that mostly began as a nation of European immigrants and outcasts, some of whom got the bright idea that they could capture, sell, and enslave Africans as a cheap labor source. Even after slavery was declared illegal in 1865, many African Americans were still largely treated as if they were less than human.

The weight of all of this fell on my conscience as I looked upon Central High School in Little Rock. 

If we are going to play jazz, we have to have a talk about race, about justice and race. Jazz music begins as a musical conversation between the races. Some say it originates in New Orleans, in the gumbo of French, Spanish, Creole, Black, and White. Others hear the creativity emerging from New York or Chicago. It’s hard to say specifically, because the music’s origins are such a mixed stew.

There are certain things we know. If people are oppressed, they learn to sing the blues. If all they have is a two string guitar, they can learn to bend the notes to witness to their broken hearts. If the burdens of life become heavy, there is the human (and perhaps divine) inspiration to stand up and say, “I count for something,” and that might break out in an unexpected songs of exuberance. If those in power that life must lived by a certain script, there is the holy possibility that some might interpret that script, dance with it, even improvise upon it. And so, jazz arises. Jazz bubbles up in America about the same time that the Holy Spirit bubbles up in the Pentecostal revivals of the early 1900’s. It was seen as illegitimate by those in power, but it has never gone away.

So it is no wonder that jazz musicians have often spoken or acted prophetically when people were mistreated for the color of their skin. I offer three brief vignettes:

Billie Holiday, an African American singer, found a song written by a Jewish teacher who called Lewis Allan. Allan wrote that song, “Strange Fruit,” after seeing some ghastly photographs of African Americans being lynched in the South. There was “strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.” It became Billie Holiday’s signature song, her way of speaking up and speaking out. Columbia Records, her recording company, didn’t want her to record it, fearing that sales would drop, especially in the South. She recorded it for another label and it sold one million copies. In 1999, Time Magazine named it the best song of the century. The song told the truth – and it stood up to evil.

Dave Brubeck put together a jazz quartet that gained international acclaim. They were big. Columbia Records didn’t want to release one of their records, fearing it was too “far out.” That album, the Time Out album featuring “Take Five” became the all-time best selling jazz record. The quartet was so big that the US State Department sent them around the world on a peacemaking mission.

But when they came home, some American concert promoters blanched when they discovered Brubeck had an African American bass player. In one venue in South Carolina, the promoter demanded that Eugene Wright, the bass player, play behind a curtain so the white audience wouldn’t see him. Do you know what Brubeck did? He cancelled the concert at the last minute, and twenty-two more like it, because if “all of us aren’t going to play on stage together, none of us are going to play at all.” Imagine the shock of those concert promoters if they read the fine print and discovered the prepaid concert fee was nonrefundable.

And then, Charles Mingus, son of an African American soldier and a white-skinned woman of Chinese, English, and Swedish descent, among others. “My father was always ashamed of his skin color,” Mingus once said. Charles himself was light skinned, but growing up in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, he knew what it was like to be disrespected and disregarded because of how he looked. He dealt with racism every day of his life.

So when he heard about Governor Faubus of Arkansas rejecting the law of the land, refusing to let African American teenagers into a segregated school, he put together a song to make fun of him. That’s the song, “Fables of Faubus.” The melody sashays and simpers to ridicule the governor for his bigotry. Behind it is a lyric that Columbia Records (once again) refused to let him put on the recording. They knew it would be terrible for sales. But the year was 1959, the issue was civil rights, and within a year, Mingus would record the song on another record label with these words:

Oh, Lord, don't let 'em shoot us!  Oh, Lord, don't let 'em stab us!
Oh, Lord, don't let 'em tar and feather us!  Oh, Lord, no more swastikas!
Oh, Lord, no more Ku Klux Klan!

Name me someone who's ridiculous, Governor Faubus!
Why is he so sick and ridiculous?  He won't permit integrated schools.

Then he's a fool . . .  [lyrics (c) Charles Mingus]

As a way of standing up to racism, Mingus made fun of it.

So what does this have to do with the scripture lessons we heard today? Plenty! Psalm 2 says that God looks at the powers, the principalities, and the politicians of this world, and God laughs. It’s the only time in the entire Bible where it says God laughs. And the reason God looks upon them to laugh is because these people think they are so high and mighty, and they are missing the boat in a hundred different ways. God is “amused at their presumption” (The Message), but then God comes to set things right.

That’s the definition of justice: it is the judgment of heaven to establish fairness among all of God’s people. Justice is not voting for the person who will appoint the judge you happen to like to the Supreme Court. No, justice is the establishment and maintenance of shalom, of God’s rule of peace. Justice is the regarding of one another as neighbor, for that person who is different from you is still created in the image of God.

So along comes the prophet Amos, about eight hundred years before Jesus. It was a time when the few people who were very, very rich were getting infinitely richer, and it came at the expense of those who had no access to the basic gifts of life. Does that sound familiar? Sure it does. Amos is in our Bible to address the way that human beings keep mistreating other human beings, all to fill their pockets, feather their beds, and keep clawing onto their own sense of power.

Amos gives it to us straight: people are forgetting about God, people are forgetting about one another. They go to worship to sing their happy songs, then stomp over their neighbors on the way out. So Amos declares, “Don’t give me your happy songs.” Some go to worship God and make sizable, significant contributions, ignoring that they have made their money by refusing to pay a living wage to the very people who make them rich. “Don’t give God that dirty money,” Amos said.

And then with the voice like a trumpet, Amos says the line that everybody from Martin Luther King Jr. to Bernie Sanders has repeated, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” That’s more than poetry. That’s an invitation for how to live. “Do good and live,” says the prophet. “Hate evil, love good, establish justice” . . . for that kind of living is the way that the grace of God becomes real.

So there we stood, in front of Central High School in Little Rock. It was a quiet fall day. The bell rang, and we watched black and white students stepped out into the sunshine. I am sure it’s not a perfect situation for all of them, but because of those who have been courageous enough to speak up, for those who will step across the invisible lines that still divide us, there is still the possibility of receiving the grace of God which is truly a gift intended for everybody. And maybe we don’t have perpetuate the damage and the divisions. Justice, as someone said, "is a cleansing, surging stream."

Charles Mingus was an imperfect prophet. He was a complicated soul, he could be difficult, he didn’t make a lot of friends. Years ago, Tony Marino and I played a couple of concerts here in town with Jimmy Knepper, the great trombonist who was part of Mingus’ band for a while. He told how Mingus flew off the handle one day, punched him in the mouth, and knocked out a couple of his teeth. That’s how he treated one of his friends. He was not an easy man.

But there was this other side of him that was determined to tell the truth. He often revealed this in his song titles, titles like, “Lord, Don’t Let Them Drop That Atom Bomb on Me.” “Remember Rockefeller at Attica.” Or my favorite title, “All The Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud’s Wife Was Your Mother.” Even “Fables of Faubus” – he retitled it later to call it “Fables of Nixon.” He was yearning for something greater than the same old nonsense that people do to one another, just as we come to the communion table yearning for something holy and true. We are hungry for the bread of God’s justice.

So here’s one more story. Charles Mingus was diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease. The disease devastated him quickly. One day, he called his son Dorian into his sick room, looked into his face, and said, “You are no color.”

Dorian thought, “What? I have a white mother and a black father. Well, he’s not really all black himself…Irish, English, Welsh, Greek, Swedish, Chinese, Black and German.”

Charles said, “You are no color. That’s the trouble with the world, that everybody gets caught up in what they are, and where they’ve come from, and that’s not the point.”

So what is the point? That all of us are the children of God, and all of us have to work a lot harder at getting along, helping one another out, and overcoming evil with good. That’s what God’s justice is all about. Let that justice roll down on us like waters. Let's get drenched.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

Inspiration and Artist

Weekend in the Woods Retreat

Psalm 104

August 14, 2016

William G. Carter

If we’re going to spend some time together in the woods, we need to talk about God. We speak of God as Creator.

That’s the first thing that all the creeds and confessions have to say. As we’ll say in a little bit, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” Or in the Nicene Creed: “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.”

However we say it, God makes the world. We didn’t build the trees or construct the sky. We did not manufacture the oxygen or ignite the sun. God did all of this long before we ever appeared on the scene. Long after we’ve turned back to dust, God’s creation will still exist. Perhaps there’s a small corner of this planet that will be affected by our lives and the time we’ve spent there, but it’s just as likely that the world will proceed along fine after we’re gone.

A proper reverence begins with the knowledge that this is Somebody Else’s world. We spend a lot of money building houses, or a lot of time cultivating gardens, but we are always squatters on Somebody Else’s property. It was third grade Sunday School teacher who taught me to keep this straight. She said, “Billy, repeat after me: Know that the Lord is God. It is God who has made us and not we ourselves.”

Our lives were given to us; we didn’t ask to be created. Our planet was given to us; we weren’t given a lot of choices. The atmosphere and sunlight are gifts for human life. The earth brings forth food to satisfy our stomachs. We never had to worry about any of that. God provided for us by making a good creation and setting us within it. The first lesson in life is keeping this straight.

As we heard from Psalm 104, Israel celebrates a Creator of incredible diversity, power, and beauty. There are seven stanzas to the psalm, one for each day of creation. The verses move from the sky (vv. 2-4), to the earth (vv. 5-9), to the water (vv. 10-13), to the vegetation (vv. 14-18), and back up to the moon and sun (vv. 19-23).The section of the Psalm that we heard takes us back down to shore and points to the Loch Ness monster who’s out there dancing around the ships. God has made all of this by sending forth his Spirit, and all creation is renewed as God’s Spirit continues to hover over the earth.

There’s no question that God had a good time when the world was made. “May the Lord rejoice in his works,” says the psalmist. Bless his heart, even Max Lucado says so in one of his books. He says:

Now imagine God’s creativity. Of all we don’t know about the creation, there is one thing we do know – (God) did it with a smile. [God] must have had a blast. Painting the stripes on the zebra, hanging the stars in the sky, putting the gold in the sunset. What creativity! Stretching the neck of the giraffe, putting the flutter in the mockingbird’s wings, planting the giggle in the hyena. What a time! Like a whistling carpenter in a workshop, God loved every bit of it. (No Wonder They Call Him Savior)

And at the very end, when God had every reason to stop, God scooped up a useless lump of mud and began to shape it into something beautiful. And then God did something very surprising: God blew breath – God blew his own breath – God’s own ruach, God’s own spirit – into that mud creature. It began to twitch, and think, and feel, and breathe. And God called it “Adam,” which means “Dirt Boy” or “Dirt Person.” According to the old story, that’s how we began. Ever since, God has always had a good laugh when the dirt people start acting high and mighty, because God remembers where we came from and where we’re returning to.

Psalm 104 portrays a God whose primary characteristics are delight and creativity. To put it simply, God gets a kick out of making things.

Now, there are a lot of different directions that we can go with this insight. We remind our teenagers that, “God doesn’t make any junk.” Not just teenagers, of course, but anybody who’s feeling down or belittled. If God created you, there is some inherent beauty in your being. The psalm would suggest at least that much.

And it pushes us to extend our arms to embrace the world. Like Father Zossima, a character in one of Dostoyevski's novels. He kisses the soil and says,  

Love all God’s creation, the whole every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. (The Brothers Karamazov, Book 6, Chapter 3)

The psalm would suggest that, too.

But we are the people of Pentecost, celebrating how the Spirit that gives us breath and awakens our human spirits. What really interests me is the whole issue of God’s creativity. As we experience a world we did not make, it’s easy to think of God as the Creator. At some point, sure, God made all of this, and us as well. But what really intrigues me is to think of God as the ongoing source of imagination, in whose presence and under whose power new creations are generated.

Like most of you, I was schooled in the old Enlightenment ideas from the 18th century. Voltaire, Locke, and most of those other dead white guys had to admit that there was a God somewhere who established the world by a series of principles. Their whole intellectual project was to study these principles, to the point where they could explain the world through them. That way, it could emphasize their own expertise and equip them to manage the world without needing God.

That’s how modern science developed. Somebody realized, for instance, that if you toss a rock into the air, it might come back down and hit you on the head. The principle is called gravity. Isaac Newton named this as one of the divine principles for how the world works, and eventually somebody dropped the word “divine” so that they wouldn’t get in trouble for mentioning “God” in public school.

In short, all of those principles are created, fixed, and settled. They were a done deal, or so we thought. And then Chuckie Darwin sailed off to the Galapagos Islands, and discovered in that isolated environment that the Creator has kept creating. That perhaps, through the creative work of the Spirit, the creation continues to evolve.

Well, you know what happened. Some of the Christians went ape (so to speak). They had been spending all their time defining God with the same kind of scientific thinking as the philosophers. They were certain that God could never make something that didn’t fit their categories. They were convinced that God had made the world way back then, and that was that. God was supposed to be unchangeable, unmovable, immutable, and inscrutable.

What does it mean that God might be a creative artist who is still making something? We’ll have to talk more about that tomorrow night, because there are a lot of people who would like to keep God in the past tense rather than in the present tense. It reminds me of that time when Jesus got some serious criticism when he said, “My Father is still working, and so am I.” (John 5:17). The Gospel of John says they tried to kill Jesus when he started talking like that. It’s a lot safer to keep God in the past, or as a principle or a feeling, than to confront a living God is free to act right here and now.

God is the creator. Not only “was the creator,” but “is the creator.” Remember the very first verse of the Bible?  “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” That’s the English translation. Actually you can also translate the Hebrew words to say, “When God began to create the heavens and the earth...”

The point of all this is to suggest that creativity is a central attribute of God. God is creative, and God takes delight in making the world. Not only can God make things happen; when God makes something happen, it’s often something that we wouldn’t have expected.

You see it in church on that miracle day when our babies get confirmed. You see these kids, and you remember when they were born, and here they are, standing up, and preaching, and praying, and acting mature. And you realize that the faith entrusted to us is now taking root in our children. Now, how did that happen? God is still making it happen.

Somewhere early in the story of creation, the Bible says we bear the image of God. When we were made, God put holy fingerprints all over us. In each one of us, there is some resemblance to our Maker. I want to suggest that divine resemblance may be reflected in our creativity. By definition, God is creative; and in making us, God gives us the capacity for creativity. That’s part of what it means for us to be made in the image of God.

You don’t have to be a painter or a composer or a poet to be creative, although I do think more of us could be painters, composers, and poets if we gave it a try. Maybe you are good with numbers or electrical circuits or sewing machines. Everybody in this room has to solve problems every day, whether it’s repairing a shoelace to making a cake without a measuring cup. Bringing our resources to bear on the situations before us is a creative activity, and when we come up with a solution to a problem, it usually feels pretty good.

But it need not be so. Look around this place, and you will see what just a little bit of encouragement can begin. The church can (and should) encourage creativity and the arts, because our God is creator. We don’t need to always do the same old thing in the same old way, because God makes all things new. When we are surrounded by ugliness or mediocrity, we don’t have to settle for that, because we have a God who takes delight in beauty, color, and excellence.

I guess I’ve been thinking about this sermon for a long time. I have a mother who paints watercolors and had a father who fixed things. As children, we were always encouraged to create, and it’s only dawned on me recently what a profoundly spiritual activity that is.

Today we worship a God who creates a world . . . and another, and another, and another… What a blessing it is, to have some measure of God’s own spirit within us. Many different cultures talk about the Muse, that is, some supernatural presence that teaches and enlivens the human imagination. We hear it when somebody says, “I didn’t know what to do, and then suddenly it hit me…”

It’s worth asking what that means: “something hit you.” Was it a breakthrough in human insight? Was it a dose of the Holy Spirit, the hidden breath of God? For my money, I’d bet on a blend of both. I have come to believe that the human imagination can, and should be, the domain of the Holy Spirit. When something “hits us,” it might very well be through the dotted lines between God’s creativity and ours. And quite frequently that is a moment to be honored, savored, and explored, particularly if it benefits the world and leads others into the delight of God.

Something of this is what it means for God’s Spirit to dwell among us. As we live in the light of Pentecost, we claim how the many ways that God’s Spirit has come to us. God’s Spirit infuses our life. God’s Spirit enlivens the life of this church. Above all, God’s Spirit testifies that the Holy One of Israel and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is an imaginative creator. And maybe the first way to understand this God is by creating something ourselves. The second way is just we are doing: stepping outside to enjoy the home God has created.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

Where's the Treasure?

Luke 12:32-34

Ordinary 19

August 7, 2016

William G. Carter

Jesus said, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

 A brief text from the Bible usually means a brief sermon, isn’t that right? Time will tell. But when the text is as rich as that final line from Jesus, we might be here a while.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” It is a proverb. Proverbs are portable. You can take them anywhere. “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” That is equally true in Poughkeepsie and Piscataway. “A stitch in time saves nine.” That’s good advice about planning ahead, whether it plays in Atlanta or Algiers. “Pants get shiny even on the throne.” I like that one, in the middle of an election year. It’s a proverb.

A proverb is a wise one-liner, distilled from years of experience. It is true because it is true. The wise person goes around the track many, many times, and begins to see the truth about everything. So Jesus says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Let’s make sure we understand the nouns. “Heart” is a venerable Bible word. The words of Jesus are translated into English from the Greek, although he probably spoke them in Aramaic and was conversant in Hebrew. Whatever the language, “heart” has always meant the same thing. It’s the center of a person’s life. Just as the heart is in the center of the chest, the spiritual sense of “heart” signifies the center of our souls. It’s where we give our devotion.

And the biblical word for “treasure” has to do with the things of ultimate value. It’s what we accumulate and preserve. It’s what we keep safe. The treasure includes those resources that we live out of, the stockpile of gifts and graces that we expend.  

So Jesus is saying what we already: we devote ourselves to the things that matter the most to us. So the proverb begs the question, what is the most important thing in your life?

A week ago, on a Friday night, I was in the center of Kalamazoo. I had to look it up on a map to find out where I was. It was a beautiful night. The park in the center of the city was filled with young people. What a wonderful thing, to have the under-thirty crowd filling a city park. But then I noticed everybody had a cell phone and they were chasing Pokémon in the park.

Have you heard about the game? One kid was so obsessed he walked onto the street in front of a moving car. The driver hit the brakes, laid on the horn, and the kid didn’t even look up. I walked up behind somebody else. His gaze was focused on a four inch screen, so I said, “Hey, there’s one right behind you.” He turned around to look. “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

When you have a treasure, that’s where you put your energy. It’s where you focus your attention. It’s where you put in your time. Ask the man on my street that has a perfect lawn of green velvet. Not a wayward stick, not a dreaded dandelion, not even a leaf of clover. He’s out on that lawn all the time. The neighbor walking by would say, “That’s his treasure.” If you look at my lawn, it’s obviously not my treasure. But it’s his.

Where do we put our value? It’s a good question. I heard a story about a missionary in China, in the middle of the last century. He lived there with his wife and kids, and the Chinese government put him under house arrest. They didn’t want a Christian missionary wandering around loose and preaching the Gospel.

One day, the soldiers came and said, “You can go home.” Then they added, “But you can only take two hundred pounds with you.” Well, that forced a lot of decisions. They had been in China for many years, and had accumulated a lot of nice things. There was hand-carved furniture, dazzling art work, a beautiful vase. And being a preacher, he had a lot of books. So the family got out the scale and began to talk about what they would take.

They weighed this, they weighed that. Finally they got it down to two hundred pounds. And the soldier said, “Did you weigh the kids?” And in a moment, all their other treasures became trash.

Should we have to make those kinds of decisions: what comes before everything else?

As Luke reports this proverb, he drops it in the middle of a chapter on money, possessions, and all the glorious stuff that people buy and possess. Of course he does. For a lot of people, money and the stuff that it buys comprise the treasure. It’s where they devote their heart.

Just remember the parable that precedes this text, which some of you heard last week. Jesus said there was a wealthy man who made even more money. Leave it to the rich to get richer, while others are paying late fees on their mortgages and credit cards. The rich man has crops that produce abundance. So he says to himself (and only to himself), “What am I going to do with my extra stuff?” He decides to tear down his storage facilities and build bigger ones.

That’s what happens when money and your stuff insulates you from other people. You fall into the foolishness of hoarding and increased accumulation. You give as little as possible to help anybody else out. You contribute as little as possible for the public well-being. You vote for the leaders whose politics will keep you rich. You structure your whole life to save your assets. Just think of Ebenezer Scrooge; the Jesus of the Bible would call him an “idiot,” a fool (Luke 12:20).

Isn’t life more than our stuff, asks Jesus? The clothes we wear, the food we eat? Is that your treasure? Is that where you devote your heart?

Just the other night, I was talking to my friend Bob. He spent some time in Haiti earlier this year with the Methodists. He said, “It was overwhelming for me was to see how happy were the people that I met in Haiti, even when they don’t have very much.” Their hearts seem to be devoted to something else.

So where is the treasure in your life? To what will you give your heart?

If it’s money, well, someday you can’t take that with you. Money is only a temporary thing, and it does no good if it’s not doing good. Our riches should not be digging moats around the castle, but building bridges. That’s the wisdom of Christ, not the insulation of a fool.

And do you give your energy to buying more stuff, to piling up more stuff, to protecting more stuff? Again, Jesus wisely says, if you have a lot of stuff, the thief can steal, the moth can destroy. And one day, if you try to relocate, it’s really difficult to unload what you really don’t need.

I know this first-hand. When I merged households with my wife twelve years ago, we filled up the living room with so much excess that it took us a year to unload it. And we’re still working on purging the basement.

So Jesus gives us a proverb about our priorities. “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” He does not specify heart or treasure, but leaves it open-ended enough to raise the question. What is it that gives us the fullness of life? What is the one true pursuit that is worthy of our hearts? How would you answer?

While we are pondering the question, leave it to Jesus to turn the proverb on its head. According to the paragraph, he’s not merely referring to money. He’s talking about the kingdom of God. “It is God’s great desire to give us the kingdom,” he says.” The kingdom is not a place, it’s a situation. The kingdom is wherever God is ruling our lives. The “kingdom come” for which we pray is now here in Jesus, and the kingdom is wherever anybody puts God first, listens for God to speak, and does what God wants to get done.

To have God rule over us – that is the greatest treasure. He has to tell us this, because the world is full of a lot of other distractions. If you walk through the store, there’s always something calling out for your attention. It will never satisfy you. In fact, enough of it may enslave you.

So the holy antidote, according to Christ, is to be generous. Sell you possessions and give it away, he says. In that delightful Semitic euphemism, “Make purses that do not wear out.” You know, he’s talking about the kind of purses that empty themselves for the needs of others.

I bet you could make that kind of purse today. Most of us here could empty our wallets into God’s offering plate and we’d still have enough to share. If we did it, we might begin to feel how good it is to give generously, how good it is to free ourselves from the tyranny of having to have things.

It’s like my friend Bob said: “I made friends in Haiti who don’t have much, but they are really happy.” He took a lot of musical instruments down there to jam with them. He ended up leaving all the instruments behind, and coming home with a full heart.

Do a little survey of your heart today. Are you fearful or are you generous? What’s it going to take for you to claim the love of God for all people, and to make that your treasure?


(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

Better Than a Scorpion

Luke 11:1-13

July 24, 2016

William G. Carter

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray."

To be a disciple is to be a student. So it’s good to hear that the twelve disciples of Jesus were still teachable. They see Jesus praying, wait for him to say Amen, and then say, “Lord, teach us to do that. Teach us to pray!”

It’s a striking request, for a couple of reasons. According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus was always praying. On the day of his baptism, he was praying when the heavens opened and the dove came down (3:21). It was his custom to slip away from the crowds to pray (5:16). The night before he selected the first twelve disciples, he went up on a mountain and spent all night praying (6:12).

Another time, in the middle of a prayer, he looked up at the twelve and asked, “Who do people say that I am?” And then he told them how he would suffer, die, and be raised (9:13). Shortly after that, he took three of them up a high mountain where his appearance changed – his clothes were dazzling white, his face was transfigured – and it happened, says Luke, while Jesus was praying (9:29).

His was a vital prayer life. Jesus was always praying – and the twelve said, “Teach us to pray.” They wanted something of what he had. They knew he could teach them.

But it’s a striking request, because every one of them was a Jew. They had a book of prayers called the Psalms. They committed these prayers to memory. With the prayers inscribed in their liturgies, the Jewish disciples had prayers for every occasion: when you rise to begin your day, when you lie down to hand over the night to God. If you need help with an enemy, the Psalms offered the prayers. If you wished to thank God for safe passage through the mountains, or an abundant harvest, or the success of a child birth, the Jews already had the prayers. They knew the life of faith is filled with prayers, prayers for every possible occasion.

But these twelve were looking for something even deeper. “Teach us,” they said to the Master. “Teach us to pray.”

So he gave them the words. “Father…Abba, Daddy…” He addresses God with affection. “Hallowed be your name.” Hallowed is Holy, apart from us, guarded and distinct. God can be addressed with affection, but God stands apart from you, holy and completely Other.

“Your kingdom come . . .” This is the heart of the prayer, a request that the God who rules over the solar systems and the barn swallows would also come to rule over the situations that we know: the broken bones, the wounded hearts, the fierce injustices. We want the God who rules over everything to rule over us.

Then it gets specific: “Give us each day the bread we need for today.” That is a request as old as the story of manna in the wilderness.[1] (Exodus 16). God sends food from heaven for the Israelites as they wander in the wilderness. It comes every day, twice on the day before the Sabbath. But it cannot be hoarded or else it rots. It is only bread for today. We need it. We don’t have it. We ask God for it.

“And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.” Luke takes the edge off of Matthew’s version of the prayer. In Matthew, the forgiveness we request sounds conditional on our ability to forgive. Recall: “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” But in Luke, Jesus assumes that we are already forgiving others, in the name of a God we wish to forgive us.

“And do not bring us to the time of trial.” That sounds ominous, as if the Father to whom we pray is the One who can also test us. It’s like that story in the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel. After Jesus is baptized, the Spirit of God hurls him into the wild places to be tested by the Devil. God sends him to confront evil on its own turf. That is going to be a decisive test! Do you want God to test you? Jesus says, “Pray that you are delivered from this.”

Here is how to pray, says Jesus. With simple words, with direct speech, focusing on the life and death issues before us every day, always praying for God to come and rule over us and our lives.

Yet the instruction is not complete. It’s not enough to merely write down the words, to recite them every day, and to mumble them when prayer becomes a habit. Jesus goes on to say some more.

Suppose you find yourself in need of daily bread, he says. A friend has come to stay with you, and both of you need the food. Now, suppose you went to a neighbor, knocked on the door, and said, “Can I get borrow some food for my guest and my family?” The neighbor is not going to turn you down. He’s a Middle Easterner. Generous hospitality is the name of the game. He’s not going to yell, “Go away, I’ve already gone to bed for the night” – especially if you persist in asking.

With this, Jesus leans over the pulpit to wink and say, “And how much more generous is God than your sleepy hospitable neighbor?”

He is still talking about prayer. Prayer is something more than saying the words. We have to stay at it, we have to persist. We have to make it real. Prayer is asking for bread, not cake. It is staying at matters of great urgency, not flaying at thin superficialities. It is swimming from the shallow end of our need to the depths of God’s great mystery. To a great extent, when we pray, we are always in over our heads.

Even the apostle Paul - schooled as a rabbi, trained in scripture, well experienced in the grace of God – could exclaim in one of his letters, “We don’t know how to pray as we ought” (Romans 8:26).  He’s clear about that. We don’t know how to do it perfectly. We ask for small needs to be met by a God who directs the comets and plants the giant sequoia trees. We ask for justice when we are busy perpetuating injustice.

Sometimes life is so confusing. At the peak of the Civil War, with North against South, gray against blue, brother against brother, President Lincoln stood to say, “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other… The prayers of both could not be answered, that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”[2] Or as the prophet Isaiah speaks truth, “God’s ways are not our ways.”

We don’t know how to pray perfectly, because we often make it all about us.  “Lord, give me this. Lord, give me that.” Prayer is not about getting what we want – it is about opening ourselves to what God wishes to give us. God desires to rule over us: thy kingdom come! God creates us to live in peace: forgive us our sins, including the sin of being incapable of forgiving others, much less ourselves. God calls us to live holy lives: Lead us not to the test, Lord.

We pray for God to provide what God has already desired to provide. Prayer is so much more than reciting a little formula or asking for magic. It is participating in the holy life of God, staying with the divine joy that carries us even when life looks bleak and the road ahead is foggy. Prayer is daring to go into the deep end, where the mysterious waters of grace are way over your head, and trusting that whatever happens, you are met – you are loved – and there will be daily bread upon your table. Not because you put it there, but because God is behind it, giving it to all who ask.

“Teach us to pray.” To learn about prayer is to learn all over again about God.  God is generous, providing everything that the world needs to flourish. God is creative, planting dandelions in the cracks of concrete, giving life where no one expects to find.

And God is inclined to love us. “What father,” asks Jesus, “will give a snake to the son who asks for a fish? Or a scorpion to the daughter who asks for an omelet?” No father would do that, no mother could do that. Not if the parent loves the child.

Now we are getting to the heart of it. To pray is to participate in a relationship. It is entering and re-entering the dominion of God’s Love that lies at the center of all things. It is drawing near a Table we did not set, to appreciate a sacrifice that we did not make, to receive a mercy that we did not imagine, to welcome the Breath that filled the lungs of Christ into our lungs, into our bloodstream, into our very lives. Prayer is communion with God, the verbal sacrament before all other sacraments. We ask God to fill our silences and inhabit our words, until God’s desires for us are greater than our own desires for ourselves.

Want to learn how to pray? Do you really want to learn? Stay at it. Ask, knock, keep asking and knocking. Search for God until God finds you. Be willing for God to change you. Know in advance that, as you pray, God’s Spirit will work in you. This is the essence of the relationship.

So here is a parable from the early Christians who went to the desert. There were two leaders, Lot and Joseph. Both were honored as spiritual leaders, and given the name “Abba” – Abba Lot and Abba Joseph.

Abba Lot came to Abba Joseph and said: Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation and contemplative silence; and, according as I am able, I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts: now what more should I do?

The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said: Why not become fire?[3]

Now that is where prayer promises to take us: to fill us afresh with the Spirit of God.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] See Exodus 16:1-31.

[2] Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address.

[3] Told in many accounts.

It's Not That Simple

Luke 10:38-42

July 17, 2016

William G. Carter

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

It is a bit of surprise to come across this story when we do. Jesus has just told the great story of The Good Samaritan, with all the energy it took to tell it, and all of the feedback he undoubtedly received for telling it. Immediately Luke tells us about a squabble between two sisters, one of them diligently preparing a meal for Jesus while the other skips the hard work, sits and listens to him.

The story starts here, a domestic squabble between two siblings. If you are not an only child, you know something about this. My dad would lace up his work boots on a Saturday morning and call out, “I need some help out in the yard.” My sister and I reacted in different ways. She would lace up her junior work boots, run outside, and say, “Here I am, what can I do?”

As for me, I was a bit more reflective. I would contemplate the philosophy of doing manual labor. Usually I was sitting down somewhere in the bathroom, with the door locked, as I read through the biography of a famous person like George Washington. I spent a lot of time pondering if famous people ever did yard work. In time, someone would pound at the door and declare in a piercing cry, “You need to come outside and help me and Dad.” I would ignore her, I was busy. She would pound again. Then she would take her dispute to a higher authority.

Isn’t that what’s happening here?

So I feel vindicated when I hear Jesus soothe the hard-working sister, “”Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; Mary has chosen the better part.” It’s not an exact parallel, but it works for me. And it’s a surprise that Luke would tell a story like this, a story of two siblings, one of them annoyed at the other.

Of course, there is that other story he tells, “Once upon a time, there was a man with two sons.” The Good Son stayed home and worked hard in his father's fields, while the other son ran off and squandered his share of the family fortune. In that story, we are invited to sympathize with the Good Son, who watches his wayward brother stumble back to a “Welcome Home” banquet while he had worked hard and done nothing wrong.

Today we have a story of Two Sisters. One is in the kitchen and the other is not. Martha is the diligent one and she is perturbed. She’s working hard and she doesn’t have any help. So she says, "Lord, tell my sister to come and help me." I bet she is cooking up one enormous meal while Mary's just sitting there. Can you blame Martha for being annoyed?

And then we have Mary, who sits at the feet of Jesus. She listens to his voice, sets her agenda aside, receives his instruction, and presumably ponders these things in her heart. This is the Gospel of Luke, after all, and Jesus is always on center stage. He is the one we are to be listening for, and listening to. If Jesus came to your house, wouldn’t you want to sit at his feet?

Now, you know the usual way that this story is used. It’s held up as a mirror, and the question is asked: “Which one are you?”  Are you hard-working Martha, focused on the tasks at hand, doing the necessary preparations behind the scenes, watching the clock, tending to all the necessary details? Or are you devoted Mary, gazing into the face of Christ, free from worry, focused on the deep significance of the moment, and not bogged down with the unnecessary details? Some are drawn to Martha, others attracted to Mary. That’s often how the issue is posed.

But it’s not that simple. The Marthas who love details need their Jesus-time too and they intend to get it, but first the potatoes must be peeled and the meat has to be cooked. The Marys can’t merely float on air, either; there are necessary life tasks that simply must get done.

Parker Palmer, a good Quaker, says you can’t divide life into action and contemplation. For us to be fully alive, we have to hold both together. There’s always work to be done and there is also necessary reflection to find wisdom and meaning in what we do. Palmer says one can’t exist without the other. As he puts it,

When we fail to hold the paradox together, when we abandon the creative tension between the two, then both ends fly apart into madness. That is what often happens to contemplation-and-action in our culture of either/or. Action flies off into frenzy – a frantic and even violent effort to impose one’s will on the world, or at least to survive against the odds. Contemplation flies off into escapism – a flight from the world into a realm of false bliss.[1]

So we need both, doing and being, working and being still. The necessary skill is to hold them together. That’s easier said than done.

The cheaper way is what many people do, to work hard and then go on vacation, to alternate between labor and rest, to put in your time at the office and keep your weekends free. But what I notice is that a lot of people don’t know how to keep their weekends free. Every free moment is jammed full by people who are gasping for air. All Martha, no Mary – and the healthy person is both.

When my daughters were small, they would run around and be busy. When they ran out of things to do, they would come in and declare, “We’re bored.” I learned to respond, “That’s good. It’s good to be bored, because it means that you’re not busy. Pure busyness is evil.” They would look at me strangely. I’m sure they told their friends that they had a really weird father and I’m OK with that.

After they grumped around for a while, declaring how bored they were, I would pour them some lemonade, and say, “Come here and sit under the tree for a bit.” Then I’d give them Speech # 73. It goes like this:

“You can’t sustain an active life without also developing an interior life. Read a book, learn some poetry, walk in the woods, write in a journal, do some art, listen to a big piece of music, sit by a crackling bonfire and think about your day, or best of all: immerse yourself in some silence. Let these things deepen you. Put some pauses in every day. Don’t just do something – stand there.”

That’s Speech # 73. Do you know why I’ve memorized it? So I can recite it to myself.

This is hard work to be like Mary and Martha at the same time, to get the work done and to be still, to stay contemplative while active, active while contemplative. It’s difficult because we live in such a distracted age. People are playing thumbs with their smart phones, always have to be connected, always have to have the TV on, always on the computer, and always have to bounce from one activity to another, always have to keep the calendar crammed full.

So I think what Jesus is saying is a situational corrective. Martha storms out of the kitchen with her dirty apron, demanding that Mary get off her tail and help out. He makes it a teaching moment. He turns to her, and with the gentlest voice possible, he declares to the Marthas in our midst is that there is a time for hard work, but there is never a good time to be distracted by many things, never a good time to be anxious.

Jesus knew how to work hard – he healed one person after another, spoke to enormous crowds, never had a minute’s rest from his own disciples, was always “on” when people were around. And yet, he could say, “Which one of you, by being anxious, could add an inch to the quality of your life? Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap, but your heavenly Father feeds them. Look at the lilies of the field. The most opulent king in Israel’s history was not dressed as gorgeously as them.”

So Martha, if you’re burning the candle at all three ends, here’s a good time to look at the birds and admire the lilies. That pause, that sacred pause, is the essence of Sabbath. It is God’s gift of time for the restoring of our souls, an invitation to rest in the Lord and to let God run the world for a while. You could take that time today, but you have to do it. You could take that time every day. It’s not always simple, but it really comes down to that.

My friend Debbie is an executive administrator in Alabama. She’s the lady with the clipboard, always on top of the details. She schedules meetings, oversees the payroll, watches the budget, deals with the contractors. You get the idea. I have never known someone so well organized, so capable in so many ways.

She was invited to join the staff of a church training conference, to be led by Presbyterians and Episcopalians. This involved a week of training in Memphis, and each day began with worship. Sometimes the Presbyterian ministers led it, other times the Episcopalian priests.

At the end of the week, she said the final worship service promised to be very long. There were lots of readings, standing and sitting, more standing and sitting, some genuflecting – and then a gentleman stood to share the sermon. He was well up in years, long into retirement. He looked a little disheveled, like an absent-minded professor. He spoke with a southern twang. The man spoke without notes, and seemed to have a hard time gathering his thoughts.

Then he began to tell a story about being raised by his grandparents. They were good, solid country folk. His granddad would go get the Thanksgiving turkey. He stuffed a live turkey into a burlap sack and took the trolley back home.

This was where the story got really good, as seen through the eyes of a nine year old boy. He went out to the back yard as granddad came back. The axe would fall, the turkey’s head was gone, and that turkey would take off running. It would run and run, and stumble and get up, and run some more. It was pretty cool stuff for a nine year old kid: a headless turkey running around the yard!

By this time, Deb said she was totally confused as to where this man was going with this story. Here they sat with a bunch of robed-up clergy in all their high church finery and this guy’s talking about a headless turkey.

But then he paused and said, “Let me give you the moral of this story: activity is not a sure sign of life.” Did you get that? Activity is not a sure sign of life.”[2]

Jesus said, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by all you think you have to do, yet here I am. Come, sit with me.”

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Parker J. Palmer, The Active Life: Wisdom of Work, Creativity, and Caring (New York: Harper Collins, 1990) 15.

[2] Thanks to Debbie Hamrick and her sermon, “Where Am I Going?”