Lux Lucet in Tenebris

Lux Lucet in Tenebris

Psalm 134

            St. Stephen Episcopal parish began its life the way many of its neighbor churches did.  The concrete floor laid mostly level by volunteers supporting four cinder block walls.  The roof began as metal, but was finished with palm fronds when the money ran out.  And, like its neighbors, St. Stephen has seen better days.  The roof was taken by hurricane Thomas; the south wall by Martha.   What remains stands open to the world and subject to the elements.

            The agent sante’ or local parish nurse lives in a small house near the church.  She helps the medical staff set up early.

Pews are moved out to the makeshift waiting room.  Tables are rounded up for exams.  The children will be weighed and the mothers taught about hygiene. 

There will be simple colds and severe malaria.  Some will get referred to the hospital in Leogane.  Everyone goes home with vitamins.

            It’s all in a day’s work in a medical mission clinic in Haiti.

            With the doctors and nurses occupied, the preacher is left with the remaining tasks; traffic cop, travel advisor and, perhaps most dubiously, pharmacist.  It is the pharmacist’s job to dole out the simple medicines the doctors prescribe and explain their use in, at best, pidgin Creole. 

            Troi foi shak ju.  Three times a day.

            After a few hours the words begin to echo in your head.

            At night, after the last patient is seen, when the medical staff have gone off to bed and the translators have gone home, the make shift pharmacist is charged with sleeping in the make shift pharmacy to ensure that no one makes off with the medicines.  On the black market they are worth a fortune, so someone has to stay with them.

 Laying on the floor, looking up at the black Haitian sky, the reality of night sets in.  There is no electricity for 50 miles in any direction, so no city lights.   A light covering of clouds keeps the moonlight from filtering through with any real force. 

There are no birds rustling because there are no trees in which they may roost. 

            There are no cattle lowing, because there are no cattle.

            There is only the silence of the desolate landscape of this ravaged island.

            The night is quiet.

            Deep.

            Dark.

            And still.

            There on the concrete floor of St. Stephen church, the darkness is complete.  

            “Come, sing the LORD, all you

            Servants of the LORD

            Who stand by night in the house of the LORD.”

The psalmist says, calling upon the people who stand in the darkness, sing praise to God.

            But in the deep blackness of the Haitian night, no song comes.  There is only the completeness of the dark.  It surrounds you and there seems no escape from its grasp.

            One of my good friends is a child psychologist and she is fond of saying to nervous parents that God has not made the person who cannot benefit from a little therapy.  I would wager to say that God has also not made the Christian who has not spent the night in the darkness of St. Stephen’s floor.

            Psalm 134 is a psalm for those times of darkness.   Historically, it was likely written as instruction to the Levitical priests who would remain in the temple after the worshipers had gone home.  Like so much of scripture, though, if we press down on the margins of the text there is more to be found.  

The night that follows day, yes, but also night in its many forms is encountered in the psalmist’s words.   Night may come stealing slow or crashing down.  Night has many faces and many voices and it can overwhelm us if left unchecked.

            Not long ago I was in a discussion with a friend in Little Rock who is a professor of information technology.  His specialty is the internet and how to make it more efficient and effective.  During our discussion, he kept trying to convince me that the internet and electronic media technologies represent the future of civilization and the model of communities to come.  They are, in short, the most important places for us to invest our time and energy and intellect.

            At first, I took on the posture of indignant theologian, supremely put off that he would have the temerity to assume that his work was of greater significance to humanity than that of we who serve the intellectual life of the church.  After all, we pastor-theologians spend our time contemplating the metaphysical realities of human existence in relationship to the creator God, while he spends his time perfecting a more efficient delivery system for pornography, Paris Hilton news and Viagra ads!

            In hindsight, what he was telling me had implications beyond what I was able to see in that moment.  There is a new language and new community surrounding us.  It is a seductive and tempting new voice for an old familiar place.  Paul called it “the world” and its powers are still clamoring for our attention.  

            The language and voice have changed with the times, but the message is as old as time itself.   Eat of the fruit of the tree and you will be like God.  

            It is the commercial that reminds you that happiness is shopping with your Visa.

            It is the voice of the announcer who proclaims that if you take this drug, you will live, if not forever, at least long enough to run along this beautiful beach with this beautiful woman.

             It is the image on the page that tells you that your car is good, but this one is better.

            It is the payday lender who says he is going to do you a favor and, for a small fee, will give you an advance on that paycheck.

            It is the voice of a leader who keeps telling you that your safety will be assured if only a few thousand more families will sacrifice their sons and daughters on the altar of military domination.

            The voices grow and grow, they clamor louder and louder promising to keep the dark at bay if only you will

Buy to be happy,

Medicate to stay young,

Consume to be fulfilled,

Refinance to look successful,                    

Conquer to be safe!

Until finally  in the midst of it all, with the darkness closing in when you feel surrounded and that there is no means of escape, your soul cries out, “what am I to do?”

            “Lift up your hands to the holy place, and bless the Lord.”

            From amidst the din of noise from the world, when life is not a dewy garden path and the darkness of the world threatens to consume, comes the whisper of the Psalms bringing the word of authentic Christian practice.  

When you find yourself in the darkness, “Lift up your hands to the holy place, and bless the Lord.”

            Each summer, my mother and I have camp for my niece and nephew.  It is a chance for us to spend time with them and a break for their parents and it is absolutely my favorite week of the year. 

            Over the course of our week together we do everything, from the alphabet song to the zoo.   Each day is packed and each night sleep is a welcome gift. 

            One night this summer, when I was walking past my niece Mary Chandler’s room I heard what I thought was her crying.  I peeked in the door to see her sitting on the bed, holding her doll, singing Jesus Loves Me and crying.  I went in and sat next to her and asked what was wrong.

            With absolute sincerity, she looked at me with those five year old eyes and said, “I was sad, so I am singing to Jesus.” 

            Even in a moment of darkness and sadness in her five year old life, she sang that Jesus loves her and she meant it and knew it.

In that moment, I was witnessed to and indicted by my five year old niece.

            You see, unlike Mary Chandler, when I have a night like that, I get out of bed.  I clean the house.  I catch up on email.  I shop on Amazon. I alphabetize the spice rack.  Anything…anything at all to keep myself busy so the darkness will go away; to take my mind off of it!  If I can only stay busy, I can forget whatever it is that is bothering or occupying or indicting me.

            How often we have bought the myth sung by the world.  The myth that salvation and redemption are just a trip to the mall away; that eternal life is found in a pill or a face cream; that we are the authors of our own salvation, our own redemption, our own sure fortress in the face of danger. 

How many of us fall back on I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke, when the words we need to hear and the words we need to sing are Jesus Loves Me?

We sing, but too seldom is our song to the God of heaven and earth.

            And, when we fail to sing praise to God, it is so easy to forget to listen for the singing voices of God’s people all around us.

            This will come as a surprise to most who know me at all, but I have a deep and abiding belief in angels.  In fact, I have trouble imagining belief without them. 

            Angels are those heavenly gifts from God who remind us that we are not alone.   Who sing the words we have forgotten.

            Those singers of the songs of God who, speaking through men and women and children, remind us…

            …that a dollar is good for more than a shot of vanilla in your latte,

            …that in the face of war, there is yet a Prince of Peace,

            …that in the darkest moments of the night, Jesus Loves Me.

            Angels are the leaders in the songs of God, and we are invited to lift our hands and voices to the LORD and join in the sacred practice of their chorus.

            Laying there on the floor of St. Stephen church in the pitch black of night, thinking the night would never end, I remember the feeling of great relief when I heard the distant song of the women readying themselves for the walk down the valley to the river for the morning’s water.  With their song came the promise that the dawn was not far away.

            So it is with us.  When the darkness of the world is closing in and there seems no escape from the night, the voices of angels come to carry us into the dawn.    For if there is one irrefutable Gospel truth in the middle of the darkest night it is that, in Jesus Christ…

 …morning happens.

            May the LORD, maker of heaven and earth, bless you from Zion.  AMEN.

Let's Talk About Sex

Let’s Talk about Sex

Leviticus 15

This sermon was written as part of my study group’s project on the book of Leviticus.  It was intended to be preached at a retreat and later at a conference on emerging understandings of sex and sexuality.  Unfortunately both were cancelled. 

Many of my closest friends have, as their lives have progressed, chosen not to live as a part of the church.  At least not the church visible, as Calvin referred to we who gather on the Lord’s Day for worship and every other day for committee meetings.  Some grew up in households where the church was not a priority and faith was little more than a generic background score for childhood.  Others grew up as churched as I and many of you did, yet in adulthood they have drifted in some cases and run in others away from the church.

There are two chief reasons I hear for people to stay away from the mainline protestant churches of their youth.  First, the church is not relevant anymore.  We, as a body, fail to speak out about the things that most occupy human society today.  While the world deals with important social issues, we debate the number of angels standing on the head of a pin.  The second complaint I often hear is that the bible, the record of God’s ongoing story with humanity, is antiquated and has little to say to us today.  WWJD and all that aside, the bible is just an old book that has had its day.

These complaints are not unique to my friends.   They are likely true of many of yours and of scores of our contemporaries.  And they are not unknown to the community of the church.  Go to any Christian bookstore and you will find shelf after shelf of books on preaching, evangelism and community ministry that purport to have found the answer to making the church “relevant” again.  Inevitably these books focus on overcoming objections and persuasive means of convincing the un-churched to become the churched.  They are sales manuals for the gospel giving advice on talking around rather than against objections.  Like a creative technician facing a glitch in the works, these books don’t fix the problem but find a work around.

I propose to take a somewhat different tack this morning.  I would like to spend some time with you discussing a topic that is at the center of our contemporary world and do it through the lens of a truly outdated and antiquated portion of scripture.  This morning we talk about sex and we read from the book of Leviticus.  Standing here saying that sentence, I think I finally realize how uncomfortable my father was when he came to give me the talk!

The book of Leviticus is divided into two general categories: instructions to the priests and instructions to the people.  The text we have today, Leviticus 15, is the concluding word of the priestly code.  The priests were responsible for preparing the people to come to the temple and for the preservation of the temple as a holy place.  This text concerns cleanliness and uncleanliness and preparation for entrance to the temple.

When it comes to this text, I have to confess that I too find it antiquated and outdated.  We no longer worship in the temple.  Ritual cleanliness is not a condition of entrance to this place.  And I for one would rather go back to managing department stores than follow the detailed instructions for the priestly class found in the first 15 chapters of Leviticus.  I leave your ritual cleanliness to you and need no further information.   There is not much that this text has to say to us today. 

Not directly, at least. 

However, like so many other parts of scripture, this text has something to say beyond what it says.  In other words, in its very irrelevancy, could this text have something to say to us?

It is no mistake that this chapter on ritual cleanliness follows immediately the chapter on leprosy.   The fear of all things physically different is not terribly surprising.  Keep in mind that this text was written nearly 3000 years before medical science had evolved to such advanced techniques as bloodletting and leaches and the drawing of impurities from the bodily humors!  

Although we live several millennia after these words were first put on paper and in an era of medical science that is based more on, well science, some part of us still resides in this Levitical mindset; this relationship of sex, disease and uncleanliness.   Despite the fact that we now know that this relationship is based not on science but superstition, some part of us clings to it.  Some part of us still sees sex as dirty.

Perhaps nowhere in our contemporary society has this enduring belief in the tenuous relationship between sex, disease and uncleanliness been revealed than in the reaction of the Christian community to the reality of AIDS. 

It seems like a lifetime ago that the word AIDS entered our lexicon.  Throughout the mid 1980’s debate raged over whether AIDS was a public health issue or just punishment for the gay population who were, in America at least, its most visible victims.  In the early days of the disease, AIDS patients who were often in frequent need of medical attention could often not find it.  Their IV medication would go unmonitored because no one wanted to risk exposure to their blood.  They would lie helpless in bed because the nurses did not want to come near them.  And far too often they died alone because no one would risk sharing the air in the room.

We know better now.  We know that AIDS is not a gay disease any more than it is an African disease.  We know that it is an equal opportunity killer.  We know that it cannot be spread through casual contact- a hand shake, a shared glass, a toilet seat.  We have seen significant portions of the church move from a posture of judgment and even revulsion to one of compassion and grace.  To be sure there are still corners of the Christian community where ignorance and hate still reign, but thankfully those are the exception rather than the rule.  For most of us, that Levitical relationship between sex, disease and ritual uncleanliness has been supplanted by knowledge of medicine and public health and we are the better for it. 

Here we find the witness of this text in its very antiquity.  It presents an idea, a concept, a prejudice that has no place in our contemporary society.  In witnessing against itself, the text speaks to the community of faith reminding us that it is to the Word of God and not the words of the bible that we owe our faith and our allegiance.  Though the words on the page tell us one thing, the word of God written on our hearts and in our midst by the Holy Spirit has shown us a different, but no less faithful path.

Is that the only message this text has for us today?  Is there perhaps something lurking beneath the words that will, if we allow it, speak a good word to us today on the topic and question of sex?

When churches do talk about sex theologically, we normally turn to the Song of Songs.   Let’s face it Song of Songs is a lot more appealing than Leviticus when it comes to a vision of sex.   “My beloved is to me a bag of myrrh that lies between my breasts” sounds much better than “all who touch the one with discharge from his member must wash their clothes and bathe in water.”   Like so many themes of human life in scripture, if we spend all of our time on the pretty parts and none on the difficult bits, we risk missing the point.  

Taken together, the Song of Songs with its poetic, romantic and often erotic image of love and sexual congress and the Levitical admonitions to keep our bodies holy bear witness to God’s vision that sex should be sacramental rather than merely recreational.   That is the message of scripture.  The message of society is exactly the opposite: sex is meant to be recreational rather than sacramental.  It is little more than an enjoyment or an indulgence. 

We who occupy the church today must have the same courage as the writers of the Levitical law and the Song of Songs to bear witness to God’s care for the fullness of how we use and care for our bodies not only as physical beings but as sexual beings as well.  God has something to say about sex and because God does, the church should as well.  In a culture that glorifies sex in ways that demean rather than affirm, there is both room and need for a word on the holiness of sex and sexuality.

Unfortunately, when we do broach the uncomfortable topic of sex in the community of faith, we do so in one of two general ways:  the guilt model that seeks to shame young people from having sex at all and brands sex something dirty or dangerous and the don’t let this happen to you model that seeks to scare them by being focused on preventing bad consequences rather than making good decisions.

If we are to engage and encounter this important part of what it means to be human and to be a child of God, we must shed the comfortable veneer of our Puritanical avoidance and think beyond terms of “should I or shouldn’t I.”  The very nature of our sexuality is central to who we are and who God calls us to be.  

Before this sermon becomes more uncomfortable for you or for me, let me make clear that I do not plan to talk about my own sex life or ask you about yours.   What I do want to do is pose a question to us all, is the way we are living our lives, sexual and otherwise, honoring God and who God has created us to be?  Is the role of sex and sexuality in our lives being lived and practiced honestly and with respect for our own lives and bodies and those of a partner?

That is, I believe, what this text from Leviticus is really about: honoring and respecting the gift of sex and sexuality and remembering that God does not turn away from this part of our lives and being just as God does not turn away from any other part. 

Honor and respect are not words frequently associated with sex and sexuality in our culture.  In tv and film and even in our daily discourse, sex has been reduced to recreation and entertainment.  It has become about fulfilling my needs, my desires, my wants.   What is valued in a partner is frequently not a sense of the unity of two people or two spirits but the fulfillment of base and purely physical desires.   Here in this old and dusty Levitical code, we are reminded that even the physical has a dimension of the holy and the holy deserves better than we often give it. 

While the detail of the code of cleanliness and holiness may have had its day and passed from both practice and relevance, the message of the text that how we treat or mistreat our bodies and the body of a partner is very much of concern to God.

What do you know?  This tired old useless disposable text had something to say after all.  And as long as the world remains as focused and centered on questions, issues and debates on sex and sexuality, so does the church.

Amen.

Donuts, Divine Promise and the Devil Inside

John 11

First Presbyterian Church, Clarksville

and

Harmony Presbyterian Church

The Reverend Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

            When I was in third grade in Putt Robinson’s Sunday School class at Second Presbyterian Church the time came for us to receive our gift bibles from the church.   Over the years the expectations on the third graders had changed.  As my grandmother was fond of pointing out, when my father got his black leather King James Bible signed by the pastor and the clerk of session and ceremoniously presented during worship, the children were required to learn the first ten questions of the Westminster Shorter Catechism.  Itself a requirement she thought somewhat lax. 

            By the time I and my cohorts arrived on the scene the process had ceased to be one of memorization of the historic catechism to receive your bible and become a game; memorize a verse of scripture and get a donut.  Oh, and while we are at it we will give you a bible in worship one day soon as well.

            As the day approached and I had yet to memorize my scripture, I asked my mother for advice.  She suggested that if I was not keen to learn a long passage I might just learn the shortest verse in the bible which, in the King James Version, is of course John 11:35,””Jesus wept.” In an exquisite feat of parental manipulation, she did not tell me where to find it.  “Somewhere in John,” she said.   And after reading the preceding ten chapters and thirty-four verse I learned that indeed she was right.  And the following Sunday, Jesus wept and I got a donut and eventually a bible.

            That story is a family favorite and gets told from one perspective or the other from time to time.   It is a sentimental childhood moment.  I suppose there is something to be sentimental about in that story since the genesis of it is in a story long romanticized and sentimentalized by the church.

            Lazarus, the brother of faithful Mary and Martha, has died.  Jesus, their friend and comforter, comes and before raising Lazarus from the dead, weeps with them.  Jesus joins them in their sorrow and shares their grief. 

            It is a good story.  The stuff of pretty stained glass, Sunday School lessons and gentle accessible sermons for gentle nonthreatening Sundays in a placid and sentimental world.  There is a place in the church for a story that illustrates a moment of tender and genuine human connection between a grieving family and a loving Lord.

            There is room for those texts, the sentimental favorites, and there is much that commends them to us.

            After all, ours is a culture increasingly defined by conflict, division and the widening gap between peoples and nations.  One of the great ironies of the present age, and I am hardly the first to make this observation, is that as trade barriers and borders disappear, as technology allows us to stay in closer touch with loved ones, as 24 hour news makes world events available with the click of the remote control, we have become more divided as communities and nations, more distant in our relationships and more disengaged from the world than at any time in recent memory.  And those realities lead to a fever pitch of anxiety, especially in the church.

            If ever there was a time for a story of gentle presence and simple human kindness, it is now.  That those needed things come wrapped in a miracle of resurrection makes them all the more cherished.  

            In the context of our world, it is no wonder that we cling to these moments of human warmth afforded by sentimental stories of the ministry of Jesus.   We need these stories.  They help calm the anxious waters of our lives and our world.

            Like so much in scripture, though, there is yet danger lurking beneath the surface.   When Lazarus is raised and we get our happy ending, part of us wants to stop reading there.  We want to learn this story, get our donut and let that be it.  Yes, it is far too easy to stop there.  To let that be all there is to the story.  But just as there is no manger without the cross, the story of Lazarus is not complete without what comes next. 

            I suppose we should have seen this next bit coming.  After all, John loves to use those pairs of contrasting realities to paint a more fulsome picture of the world we share.  Yes, there is light, but there is also darkness.  We who experience the fullness of the spirit must also know the emptiness of the soul.  Those times of great abundance must never cause us to forget the very real experience of scarcity.  

            Even here, in this heart-warming and spirit-filled story of resurrection and new life, there is yet death or at least the plotting of a death.

            Yes, Lazarus is raised and Jesus has wept and there is reason to celebrate this moment of miraculous importance.   But all the while, lurking behind the portrait of reunion and miracle, there are conspirators at foot. 

            Caiaphas, the chief priest, and the council gathered to talk about what to do with this Jesus.  He had been a thorn in their collective side for a while, but now things have gotten out of control.  He has raised a man known to have died.  There was no explaining away this one.  It was a miracle, he did it, and this needed to be dealt with.

            Captured by their fear, the chief priests and Pharisees began to chatter nervously, “what shall we do?  If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him.  Then the Romans will come and take away both our nation and our temple!”

            The text implies that this hand wringing went on for quite a while until a solution presented itself in the person and voice of Caiaphas, the chief priest.   The answer, he says, is quite easy.

            Kill him.

            “It is better that one man die for the people than the whole nation be destroyed.”

            In other words, it is either him or us and I vote him!

            In many ways, Caiaphas begs to be caricatured.  Standing there in all of his Machiavellian glory, he is the stock villain.   He is as easy to dismiss as he is to stand up as a straw man for all that is blind and in darkness about the truth of Jesus. 

            Standing there with Jesus, Mary and Martha-and let’s be honest, that is where we put ourselves in this story- we can look at old Caiaphas and the rest of his ilk and shake our heads and say, “tsk, tsk, tsk.  For shame!”

            It is here that I think we get a glimpse into the brilliance of John’s Gospel.   John writes, like all biblical writers, within the context of his time and experience.   He had no concept of life in Johnson County nearly 1900 years later when he penned these words, but he did have a keen awareness of human nature; of the spiritual commonality of the species.  It is no mistake, I believe, that John tells the story of Lazarus the way that he does with such sentimental and emotional force or that he caps it off with this encounter with Caiaphas and his brazen willingness to sacrifice the Prince of Peace for the preservation of power. 

            The proximity of these stories in John’s gospel mirrors their proximity in the human spirit.  Within each of us is a yearning for the kind of connection that Jesus shared with Mary and Martha; the sort of vulnerable, gentle and genuine connection that brings light out of darkness and life out of death.  Still, for every moment of spiritual illumination, of resurrection and new life, there is a part of us, a voice of Caiaphas, saying, “this is too disruptive.  This will cause problems.  If you allow this to happen, if you allow the light of resurrection to shine in your life, if you allow yourself to stand in the light of Christ, there is the risk that the same light may just do what light does.  It may illumine those places and those parts that we would just as soon leave dark.

            When Caiaphas realized that Jesus was the real thing, he knew then and there that this was a light he could not destroy; it was a power he could not control.

            So he tries to shove the light back into the darkness.  He resisted the light and what it mIght mean in his carefully protected world.

            What does the light of Christ threaten to illumine in your life?

            Let me ask that another way, what about your life makes you want to end the story at the happy part, get your donut and go on about your Sunday?

            If you are anything like me, there are some dark and dingy corners that you would just as soon leave in the darkness.  Unfortunately for you, unfortunately for me and certainly unfortunately for Caiaphas and his clever plans, the light that is Jesus Christ refuses to be extinguished.

            It will not be put out by the machinations of our fears and it will not be confined to the sentiment of a moment. 

            That story of third grade Sunday School has two occasions when it comes up in family conversation.  The first is when my mother feels the need to knock me down a peg and remind me that my journey to ministry began in no small part with her conning me into reading half of the gospel of John just to get a damn donut.  The second is when memories get a little too difficult and we need to draw close the curtains of sentiment.  This and other sappy family stories make the more difficult parts of growing up stay in the background.  But in the end, they are still there. 

            Sentimentality cannot erase the past any more than it can silence the Caiaphas, the little voice of fear, in each of us.

            Still, it is right that we embrace this story.  So let us celebrate with faithfulness of Mary and Martha; let us know the pure spiritual peace that comes in that moment of connection in Jesus’ tears for his friends; let us even be swept up into the sentiment of the moment.  But let us also be aware of the Caiaphas in each of us, plotting and prodding us to hedge our bets and keep the light at arm’s length.  

            Both the faith of the women and the fear of the high priest live within us. 

Thanks be to God that it is Jesus Christ who lives for us.

Sola deo Gloria!