Priorities

Whether or not you worship "God" is your business; we are all on different journeys of seeking for truth. But please don't worship the Bible. I don't know that anyone would readily admit that they do. But I'll give you a clue: if you consider yourself a Christian and don't honor your God-given mind by considering cultural context and modern ethical repercussions regarding the oppressed in your interpretation of Scripture, you are putting the Bible above the God who speaks to you in THIS moment.

Reclaiming Our Strength

“Reclaiming Our Strength”

(Mark 6:1-13, 2 Cor. 12:9-10)
Sermon for Celebration MCC, Naples, FL

July 8, 2012

Rev. Brian Hutchison, M.Div.

If I made a bumper sticker for today’s Gospel passage (and I know from the parking lot that some of you love your bumper stickers), it would be very simple: “Jesus was rejected too.” In this passage from the Gospel of Mark, Jesus returns “home.” Though it is not specifically mentioned, we can assume that home was Nazareth. Nazareth was where Jesus grew up as a normal kid, the son of a carpenter. The gospels in our Bible don’t tell us much about Jesus’ childhood; they instead tend to jump as quickly as possible into Jesus’ ministry. But we can assume from the way the people of Nazareth speak of him, that he was seen as “just one of us, nothing special.”

But Jesus had been away from home long enough, and he had changed enough that people even questioned his identity. They asked, “Who is this? Isn’t that just Yeshua, the son of Mary?” Since we know Mary so well as a major figure in the Christian tradition, some even calling her the Mother of God and the Queen of Heaven, we may easily overlook what these people are saying. In ancient Israel, people were not called children of their mother, but rather children of their father. So to call Jesus the son of Mary (instead of the son of Joseph) was essentially to call him a bastard. After all, his conception was questionable- something the community doesn’t seem to forget.

Perhaps it was this memory or perhaps it was their reluctance to accept a message from a non-traditional source, but they nonetheless rejected Jesus outright. Though he knew the old saying that prophets were respected anywhere but their hometown, Jesus still gave them the benefit of the doubt and tried to teach them the message of the gospel. He did not prejudge them by never going back home because they knew him earlier in life. No, instead, he gave THEM the choice of whether or not to accept his message of unconditional love.

This story is all too “close to home” so to speak for many of us. Many of us left home because we knew we would not be accepted there if we came out at LGBT, feminist, progressive, pro-choice, anti-war, among many other things. Many of us found new homes in other towns where there are like-minded people. In the 1970s, thousands of gay men and lesbians flocked to San Francisco, New York, and other large cities to form communities because it was the first time in U.S. history that we were becoming aware that there were others like us out there. Prior to the gay liberation movement, the standard was to suffer in silence in the closet. Now, we know to create spaces of welcome wherever we go, like here.

Poet Mary Oliver composed this poem that really resonates with me:  (The Journey)

“One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Jesus, called Jesus of Nazareth (Yeshua ben Nazareth) decided to go home and come out of the closet about who he had found himself to be: a prophet. In Jewish society at that time, prophets of old were admired for the work they had done in turning Israel back to God. Their great works were recorded in Scripture. But they could not look past the fact that a prophet is not someone who tells you what you want to hear. Rather, a prophet is someone who challenges people, calling them to change in some way.

The common people of Jesus time were stricken with fear, fear primarily of the power of the Roman Empire. At any time, a Roman official could show up and demand their livelihood, or even take lives. There was no way to fight back. The Empire was absolute. So when Jesus shows up preaching a gospel that is rooted in release from fear, Nazareth was not ready to accept it. Fear made them feel powerful again, as all their power had been taken away from them. Jesus offered an escape from the living Hell of a life of fear into a life of love, but they were just too stubborn. They also could not imagine one of their own as being more wise than any of them. “Who is he to outshine us?” they might say.

I know this is also our experience. Our families and those we grew up with can be envious of our success. “After all, who are you to escape and live a happier life? You were supposed to stay here and be miserable like the rest of us! That’s what family’s about!” I care to differ. I know it has been repeated many times over the past decade or so, but this quote truly speaks to this text. Spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson writes, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Who knows what happened to the Nazarenes after Jesus left. But I do know that when Jesus was home, he gave them his all. He spoke prophetically as God had called him to do. He challenged them to repent, which simply means to redirect attention from fear to love. This is also the definition of a miracle according to A Course in Miracles, which teaches, “Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe” (I:31(42)). Perhaps knowing that the people of Nazareth would just be amazed, bringing attention to himself instead of to the gospel, he was powerless there.

Many Christians today have come to think of Jesus as a superhero with super powers. He was said to have the power to turn water to wine (I’d want that one!), walk on water, bring people back to life, and many other “deeds of power.” But none of this was to glorify him. Jesus always pointed to God as the source of all he did and the gospel of radical love as the reason. Today, let’s separate Jesus from the superhero image. Jesus was not Superman and Nazareth was not his kryptonite. Jesus was limited in Nazareth because of a fundamental spiritual law: God always respects the agency God has given us. God respects our power of choice.

Look at your own life. Have you ever tried to change someone else? (If you have ever had a spouse, I better see your head shaking J.) What happens? They always push back. And then if we’re stubborn, we try to change them again… and again… and again. It’s like hitting your head against a wall. You probably know the old saying, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” Jesus knew that he could lead people to Living Water, but he could not make them drink. If he had spent any more of his time there trying to convince the people, he would have been disrespecting himself and handing over his self-worth to those who didn’t particularly care for him.

How often do we do this? We get into conflicts with people and out of the need to win or the need to be right, we keep fighting until we’re spent. It happens in the church too. (Can you imagine that? J). We preach the gospel of radical inclusivity and some people just can’t receive it. And when they preach an exclusive message, we all too often become doormats because we know that many other people who call themselves Christian preach that message of exclusivity. I’m here to tell you today what Jesus said to this: in the presence of such lack of hospitality, shake the dirt off your feet and walk on. You are called to greater things than to deal with the lie that anyone is anything less than a child of God. Fear-based doctrine has no place in MCC, period. If anyone walks away from MCC because they can’t accept the gospel of radical inclusivity, we simply must release them into God’s hands and pray that the seeds of love that they received while among us will someday sprout.

            Just as Jesus was not a superhero, we are not superheros either. We are human. If you’re in the habit of doing it, stop saying, “I’m just human.” There is no need to compare ourselves to God in all that God is. Instead, we need to look to the divinity within, which is what I think Paul teaches us with his second letter to the Corinthians. To repeat, he writes, “God said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 10 Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” At first, this may seem like an insult. It’s too easy to read this text as saying that humility is the same as being a doormat. That’s not the case at all. Paul is talking here about the ego versus the Higher Self, the True Self. Out of fear as children, we create the ego to protect us. The ego is a mask, a false self. It’s the ego that throws insults back at people when they offend us. The ego can never turn the other cheek. It is the True Self that God created, so it is the true self that holds our power. God is only able to work through us when we choose to live through this self. When we live through this self, we know that what other people think of us is none of our business! Whether it’s your family of origin, your neighbors, or people on the news, their egos do not deserve your energy. You are better than that.

            Friends, rejection does not need to be a roadblock. You hold the power within you to turn rejection into projection- that is projection into the abundant future that God has prepared for you. Take off this day the burden of fear and lay it before the throne of grace. Because I can assure you that hidden under that heavy boulder of fear lays the power to work miracles. Go forward with blessed assurance and holy boldness! Amen.

Interdependence Day

As we in the US celebrate today the independence of our country, I consider our interdependence. We depend on each other within community to survive and to realize our dreams. More than we allow ourselves to believe, we need each other. This is different from codependency, in which the individual denies her/his own value, requiring another to feed the ego. No, interdependence is what Jesus called "the kingdom of God." We can live in heaven on earth when we build families of choice and extended networks of unlikely friends. Declare independence today from the brand of individualism that divides, isolates, and alienates. Diversity is our strength.

What is a feminist?

As a progressive Christian minister, being a feminist means dismantling millennia of patriarchal oppression that I do not recognize as my heritage. As a feminist, I dismiss any notion that women are weaker, less-than, or have a different life role than men. Jesus empowered women and so should the church today. Equality for all!

Sacred Sexuality

“Sexuality is already sacred, for it is part of the glory of the universe... It is sacred because it is so deep a part of creativity and of our human personalities. It is sacred because it is God-given and because sacred beings receive their existence from it… but also [because it is] the sacred being called human imagination, play, communication, love.”  Matthew Fox

For over four decades, MCC has been preaching that sexuality is innately sacred, holy, and blessed. We prophetically continue that message today. Some of us express our sexuality inwardly and others more outwardly. But regardless of how we express it, we each hold a wonderful erotic energy that dances as Divine Eros within us.  Even when you feel your energy diminished, remember that what you may imagine to be a little seed-sized remnant holds the potential to grow into a beautiful tree. Step forward boldly in faith and watch as your inner power expands to let others rest on your branches.

Affirmation

My sexuality is sacred. My erotic energy is good. I remember this gift of God today and I am enlivened by it. And so it is!

Cult vs. Church

The question was posed on Facebook: "How can you tell the difference between a cult and a church?"


My response: I think it comes down to how much freedom of choice a member of a group has in his/her personal life. If the church requires access to your bank account or information about your wages, that's the first sign of a cult. A second and equally disturbing sign is the use of fear tactics to control individual behavior. There is a big difference between accountability to a moral guideline and such oppression. In a church, a parishioner is able to think for herself, make his own choices, and not be ashamed of self-expression (in appropriate ways that respect others, of course).

Wild Trust

“Wild Trust”

Sermon for Celebration MCC- Naples, FL

June 17, 2012

Rev. Brian Hutchison, M.Div.

Would you pray with me? “God, we know you by many names, and yet all of them fall short of capturing all of who you are. Our words fail us. We cannot put you in a box because you are the Great Mystery who breaks through all boundaries. But we remember that Jesus addressed you as Abba, Father. So on this Father’s Day, we remember the positive qualities of all the people who have been father figures for us. Even if our biological fathers have treated us as less than your children, we know that you remain the loving, warm, caring, providing, gentle Eternal Father in whom we put all of our trust. This day, Grandfather God, open our hearts that your word may enter in and give us rest in you. In the name of all that is holy we pray. Amen.”

Who here has ever planted a seed? It may seem like a silly question since many of us had gardens growing up. I know I did. It wasn’t a very large garden, but when I was a kid in the suburbs of Maryland we grew cherry tomatoes, various kinds of flowers, and we attempted to grow other things such as sweet peas but they didn’t quite work out. My family came from Iowa where the soil is dark and rich. My mother’s family was all farmers. They would take me out to one of the family farms and I would feed the pigs and laugh at their flatulence. (My female cousin was not amused. She would say, “It’s not funny. It’s gross!”) I would chase after the geese as my mother chased after me. One day my uncle even threw me on a small tractor by myself when I was only seven years old and told me to drive. I had no clue what I was doing. I inevitably crashed into the cornfield.

When my parents and I moved to Maryland when I was three years old, they realized something- the soil was not the same. Instead of rich black soil, our backyard just had red clay dirt. The only thing that seemed to grow well in it was crab grass and weeds. My parents thought it was the strangest thing that we had to BUY dirt in order to grow anything. “Buy dirt?? That’s like buying air!” they would say.

I think that’s what the disciples would have said too. Unlike many of us who live in suburbs or cities today, they lived in an agrarian world. Their whole existence revolved around agriculture. It was common knowledge when to sow and when to reap, what to plant when, how much water and sun exposure was needed for each plant, and so on. So Jesus uses the parables we heard today (called the parable of the growing seed and the parable of the mustard seed), meeting the people at the root (so to speak) of their life experience.

What we can’t immediately tell from reading this passage is that the parable of the mustard seed is actually a joke. What the text doesn’t tell us is that the mustard seed they speak of is a weed. So the punch line of Jesus’ joke is right up front: a man takes a mustard seed and plants it in the ground. That’s like saying someone planted a dandelion seed or a crabgrass seed. (My parents used to hate it when as a kid I would run through the yard and kick up all the dandelion seeds so I could see them fly around in the wind). Mustard plants multiplied like crazy and were difficult to control. And when they grew into the large shrubs that Jesus describes, they obstructed planting other plants. Obviously, people do not intentionally plant weeds; they pluck them up (unless of course we’re talking about another kind of “weed” that is consumed by a large percentage of the US population, but even that is called weed because when left in the wild it reproduces quickly).

With this humor, Jesus is really saying something profound about the Realm of God here. In this parable, Jesus redeems the unredeemable. He takes as an example something that was considered an annoyance and highlighted its so-called “faults,” calling them assets. We can take several meanings from this. First, Jesus is embracing the outcast and the marginalized. He is saying, “You may be considered a weed, a nuisance in our society, but to God you are a unique and beautiful blessing. You give shelter to those who need it. You surprise the world with your wild growth.” In the words of God in the book of first Samuel that we heard today, “I do not judge as people judge. They look at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart.”

Another meaning is that with a tiny bit of faith (which really is just another word for trust, not specific belief), a seed is planted in our spirit that is designed to grow like a weed. Imagine that we have built up different closets in our hearts, places where we know we can hide when we are afraid. A small mustard seed falls between the floor boards of each poorly built shack of a closet, takes root in the soil beneath, and soon enough breaks through the floor, branches out through every wall, and rips the roof right off! The Realm of God- the power of unconditional love, peace beyond understanding, and joy unspeakable quickly takes over all space within us. When that happens, we no longer hide in fear but rather rest in the branches of the shrub, as the branches are in truth the arms of God.

Perhaps for us the wild mustard seed is the all-inclusive gospel that we preach. We plant a seed with a friend or even a stranger, letting them know that God loves them just as they are and that rumors of an angry God are lies. And with fear moved aside, that seed springs up into a great plant within that person, producing more seeds to plant with others. The radical gospel of Jesus Christ cannot be stopped! It is subversive. It is counter-cultural. It is scandalous. It is indecent. Sometimes it’s even sexy. And stuffy religious types can’t stand it because it can’t be controlled. It can’t be contained by creeds and codes and rules. It’s too free for that. And what does this teach us? … It teaches us that the life of faith is not about keeping our fists clenched tightly onto the seed hoping that it will do something. The life of faith is about trusting that when we open our hand, and drop the seed into the soil, we give God the control. From then, we just trust God that the soil and water will prompt the seeds to grow, all in God’s time.

How many of us hoard our seed of faith, holding it tightly in case of emergency, in case of some tragedy that might happen that might require some more faith? The funny but sad thing about our crazy hoarding is that when those difficult times do come in our lives, if we have not planted, all we have is seed. And what in the world are we going to do with a handful or even a house full of seed? It is the plant that will serve us by giving us shelter, not the tiny seed. All we have done is put our faith in our own hands.

Or how many of us plant the seed but then get up in the middle of the night and mess with it, dig it up to see if it has grown any? Any middle of the night worriers here? I know I’m as guilty as anyone else J. We think that by worrying we can somehow control the situation when all we are doing is making ourselves sick. We struggle so hard to understand life, but I like what protestant reformer Martin Luther said, “If you truly understood a single grain of wheat, you would die of wonder.” In other words, we are trying to grasp what is not ours to grasp, but is rather ours to stand in awe of. Science and a healthy sense of curiosity are good, and a gift from God. But when our wondering turns to worrying, we have lost our way.

Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us this: “Trust in the LORD with your WHOLE heart and do not lean on your own understanding. But in EVERYTHING (somebody say, “everything”!) acknowledge God, and God will direct your paths.” (Some translations say God will make our paths “straight”, but that never really sits right in MCC J ).  I think trust is the greatest challenge of our lives. It comes back again and again when we take our control back again and again. We may keep praying, keep coming to church, keep living a religious life, but still hold onto control.

Again, I know I’m guilty of it. There was a time in my life when I was worrying all the time. I was unhappy with my job, and yet afraid to lose it. I kept asking myself all the “What if?” questions. “What if I lose everything? What if we can’t eat? What if my reputation is damaged? What if all my efforts have been a waste?” I expressed these concerns to a close friend of mine. He doesn’t profess any particular faith, but he respects mine and respects the work I do. So in response to what I told him, he said to me, “Aren’t you supposed to trust God?” That was my epiphany moment. With tears and snot running down my face, I laughed out loud because it was so obvious.

I had lost my patience with life, with God even. I had planted the seed, but I was digging up the soil every day to see what it was doing. And my actions were doing it no good. My friend told me to quit it, slapping my proverbial hand away from the soil. His tough love is just what I needed to awaken from my nightmare of fear.

In her devotional called Faith in the Valley, Iyanla Vanzant writes, “Trust is a decision we make within ourselves when we surrender control to God. If you believe you have been betrayed, used, taken for granted, or in some other way had your trust violated, decide now never to give up on people or yourself… Always remember, no matter what happens, or how bad you feel about it, or how much you don’t like it, God knows exactly where you are and what you need. If you realize that your Creator is in control, there is never a reason to not trust people or yourself. ALL you have to do is trust that God will help you understand the value of your experiences… no matter what they look like.”

We have been conditioned to so quickly put a value on the situations we are in. Waiting in line: negative. A hug from a loved one: positive. A visit to the dentist: negative. A vacation: positive. A rainy or cloudy day: negative. A sunny day: positive. The list goes on and on, stretching over our whole lives. What if we could do what Jesus did with that poor mustard shrub and see it for its beauty?

Of course, it’s not the easiest thing to do to “Let go and let God.” I remember a story Yvette Flunder (Presiding Bishop of the Fellowship of Affirming Churches) told about her Pentecostal upbringing in the Church of God in Christ. When she was a small child, he aunt would get her up in the middle of the night randomly to take her to the church and pray at the altar. She would get down on her knees on the kneeler and her aunt would stand behind her as she prayed. And what confused her is her aunt would first say, “Hold on, Yvette! Hold on!” and then she would switch to saying, “Let go, Yvette! Let go!” It was a bit of a mixed message. How can you hold on and let go at once!

But in retrospect, it now makes perfect sense to her. In order to let go of all our doubts and fears, our regrets and resentments, our hatred and our negativity, we have to hold on- instead… to the hand of God, in trust.

We wake up each morning with the decision of how we will focus our attention that day, with what lens we will view the world. A Course in Miracles teaches, “God and God’s miracles are inseparable. How beautiful indeed are the Thoughts of God who live in God’s light! Your worth is beyond perception because it is beyond doubt. Do not perceive yourself in different lights. Know yourself in the One Light where the miracle that is you is perfectly clear” (3:VII: 60).

Friends, don’t underestimate your ability to sow the seed in this word that will build God’s realm of unconditional love, one heart at a time. You are doing it here, and you are doing it beyond these walls. Keep sowing those seeds of love! Amen.