Month: September 2021

Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Mark 9:38-50. The YouTube link (click on the image) should take you directly to the sermon.

Why do we make the choices we make? Seems like a simple enough question, right? Since the Enlightenment, we have thought of ourselves as rational creatures who mentally tally up the pros and cons of a given set of options, then choose the one that’s best. The reality is, most of the time, we don’t really know why we make a given choice. We may tell ourselves that we do, but the truth is, we often make a choice and THEN compose the rational justification.

A couple weeks ago, I told you the story about when I moved from Baldor to the University of Illinois. As I tell it, we analyzed our situation in Arkansas, evaluated our options, calculated the possibilities for advancement, and made a rational choice. It’s more accurate, though, to say that we had an emotional and spiritual yearning to be closer to family, and that when I was on campus for the interview, it just felt right. I essentially decided to take the job before it was offered, and then analyzed the offer in a way that would justify that choice.

In a recent column by David Brooks, he wrote, “One of the most unsettling findings of modern psychology is that we often don’t know why we do what we do.” There is on the one hand our conscious self, that part of us that talks and acts and interacts with other people, that we think of as our true self, that we think is in control. But I’ve read other authors describe our conscious self as a rider on an elephant. The rider can give nudges, but the elephant, which is our vast subconscious self, does most of the work and makes most of the choices. Brooks doesn’t like this conclusion. Like most of us, he feels like his conscious self is in control.

So he went looking for psychologists that could confirm this belief. That alone is a little problematic, but maybe a topic for another sermon on confirmation bias. Anyway, much of what he learned is that what we can actually control is our stories. Some stories are better than others, in the sense of being more accurate. Some stories are better than others, in the sense of being more useful for our future selves.

Here’s an example from the column. Suppose a man has a string of failed romantic relationships. One story he could tell himself is that he never got over someone who dumped him back in college. Another story he could tell himself is that he has a high level of neuroticism—a tendency to anxiety and self-doubt—that is disrupting his relationships. Both stories may have elements of truth to them, but they call for different solutions.

We are a story-telling species. What stories do we tell ourselves about this congregation? What story do you tell yourself about why you are here, and not somewhere else? Let me tell you a little bit of mine, and then we’ll see where it might take us in the future.

When we moved to Rolla, we decided it was time to make space in our lives for weekly worship. Sam was 7 and Jesse was 5. New town, new job, growing kids—time for a new approach to God. I had a few criteria, things I wouldn’t compromise on. My sister is a United Methodist pastor, and I grew up Methodist, so any church we attended would have to be accepting of women in the pulpit and be more-or-less in the same theological tradition as the Methodists. I had always attended a traditional worship service, so that’s what I was looking for—but not “high church.” I short-listed this church and First UMC. Our first visit was the Sunday after Christmas, figuring it wouldn’t be too crowded and overwhelming.

The greeter at the door was Rob Heberer. We had already met him—he lived three doors down from us and had come over to welcome us to the neighborhood. So that’s one plus. At some point, I think during the passing of the peace, Lowell Crow asked if I knew his daughter, Mariesa—well yeah, she was the chair of the search committee that hired me. So that’s two. At some point, perhaps during fellowship, we met Bob and Carlene May. We had just moved here from Mahomet, where we lived while I attended the University of Illinois, which is where Carlene grew up and Bob attended college. So that’s three.

There are lots of churches in Rolla. We differ dramatically in many ways: size, demographics, theology, worship style, schedule, programs. I think that’s great. Everyone needs to have a way to connect to God and to be a part of God’s family. Some people like pipe organs while other people like a rock band. Some people need certainty—to be told what to think and believe—while other people need freedom to question. Some people would never attend a church that allows a woman to preach, while others would never attend a church that excludes women from full participation in God’s ministry.

We all have our stumbling blocks, those things that stand between us and God. Often, the root of the obstacle lies deep within the elephant of our subconscious, and we build a story that satisfies us. For example, maybe you grew up with a rigid boundary between the secular and the sacred, and anything that makes that boundary a little squishy makes you feel a little squishy.

As you may recall, I was the chair of the Way Forward Committee for a while. We floated several different proposals, many of which related to restructuring the sanctuary. I’ll try not to get riled up here, but I have often called whoever designed this sanctuary a sadistic madman. Everything is crooked. There are no right angles, but instead things meet at 30 or 60 or 120 degrees. The pews are too long to really use completely, so everyone sits right on the aisle.

The other issue we have with the building is that the fellowship hall is the furthest point imaginable from the sanctuary. Getting to fellowship time after worship is a real chore, especially for the increasing number of congregants with mobility issues. Our fellowship time under the portico has been going OK, but I don’t know what we’ll do in November.

So we proposed to replace the pews with chairs and use the back half of the space for fellowship. Now, I expected there to be pushback over the pews vs. chairs. What I didn’t expect was the objection to the idea of fellowship in the sanctuary space. People would say, “What if someone takes coffee with them into the service?” And I thought, “Uh, then they’ll stay awake?” It took me a long time, and I still don’t completely understand, but it has to do with a certain understanding of proper decorum. It’s probably generational.

What I’m starting to grasp is that the people who objected weren’t making some rational evaluation, but instead had a deep reaction. To them, the only food that is appropriate in a sacred space is the communion elements. Anything else just feels wrong.

A few years ago, a group of us read through Christianity After Religion by Diana Butler Bass. At least I think that’s the book where I picked up this concept, which I also heard her give a talk about this past spring. She talks about the three B’s: belief, behavior, and belonging. Historically, that was the order: a person would come to a set of beliefs that were aligned with a particular church, start attending, start following its rules of behavior, and ultimately become a member. In her books, Bass writes that the order is reversed: first a person finds a church where they belong, then they adopt its written and unwritten rules of behavior, and then they gradually adopt its beliefs. More recently, Bass has said that it’s more of a triangle with multiple entry points and directions of development. Whatever. The point is, belief, behavior, and belonging are all important components of entering God’s realm through its expression in a particular congregation.

What I want to highlight is the importance of belonging. A podcast I listened to recently discussed the difference between belonging and fitting in. Fitting in is like wearing a mask. Not the kind of mask we’re all wearing to protect each other, but a mask like you would wear on Halloween. We all do that in different situations. I mean, I interact with Rhonda’s family much differently than with my own. When I go elk hunting, I’m careful to avoid politics, knowing that most of the guys would disagree with me on practically every topic. When I’m at the Mission, I’m a cook, not a professor, and actually I’ve been asked if I work as a cook somewhere.

Belonging, though, is bringing your whole self, and being accepted for who you are. When I’m here, I know that I’m valued as a beloved sibling in Christ. We may disagree about a lot of things, and there may be things that we just don’t discuss, but I know that you love me for who I am, for all of who I am. At the same time, I hope you all know that I love you, too, for all of who you are, including the parts I don’t know about. That is belonging. That is being a part of the body of Christ.

When we came that December Sunday so many years ago, we immediately felt that sense of belonging. But I think we all need to be aware that there are other people who would not feel that same sense. People who haven’t grown up in the church, and so they are unfamiliar with the music and the liturgy. People who don’t know what to wear, where to sit, or what to expect. People who have been hurt by other churches, for whatever reason, and need to heal in order to truly experience God’s love.

When Jesus told his disciples not to place stumbling blocks, he was talking about anything that creates an obstacle between us and God. Sin is ultimately about separation from God. The things we let come between us and God become idols. Anything that does not enable us to express our love for BOTH God AND neighbor blocks both relationships. What value does it have if it makes us comfortable while preventing us from fully embracing another beloved child of God?

Now, I’m not saying that we’re going to tear out the pews, put in chairs, and have fellowship in the back. I’ve set that aside in favor of other priorities, because that vision was becoming an obstacle between my congregational siblings and me. As long as I was thinking of people as pro-pew or pro-chair, I wasn’t thinking of them as pro-Christ. And that’s who we are, or at least who we need to be. Nothing should matter more than loving God and loving our neighbors. Everything we do should be an exhibition of God’s reign in our lives, and God’s love available to everyone. If anything—anything—is causing me to love someone else less, I need to set it aside. If anything—anything—is preventing people from encountering God through our congregation, we need to set it aside.

The question before us, individually and as a congregation, is this: What is blocking our ability to exhibit God’s reign to the people of Rolla and beyond? Or from another perspective, what is blocking our ability to see God in each person we meet? Those are two sides of the same coin. As members of Christ’s body, we need to enter fully into relationships with all other parts of Christ’s body. We must bring our full selves, and allow others to bring their full selves—even those parts we don’t like.

So, what are the stumbling blocks in your life? What parts of your life are you keeping God out of? What is preventing you from seeing the image of God in each person you meet? And how do you see those stumbling blocks reflected in the life of this congregation? Let us all seek to make our church more welcoming, and the path to God more clear, for all of God’s children in Rolla and beyond. Amen.

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Preached on September 12, 2021, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Podcast linked below. Archived recording of live stream available:

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Yesterday was the 20^th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Do you remember where you were? I sure do. At the time, I was working for Baldor and living in Fort Smith, Arkansas. The day before, Rhonda’s 6-year-old nephew, Zach, stopped breathing when he went in for a tonsillectomy. It turned out he had non-Hodgkins lymphoma. So the morning of 9/11, I took Rhonda and Sam, who was just over a year old, to the airport. Their plan was to fly to St. Louis via Dallas. On the way to Baldor from the airport, I heard the news about the attack. Rhonda didn’t hear until she went to the gate for her connecting flight and found everything shut down.

That was a turning point for my family. I wasn’t terribly happy with my work; we had few friends in Arkansas; and we were an 8-hour drive from the nearest family. I started looking for opportunities to move closer to family. What I found was a job at the University of Illinois as a research engineer. On paper, it made no sense to take the job. As I recall, it was about a 15% pay cut, with little hope of direct advancement. However, Champaign is much closer to where Rhonda’s family lives, and there were other opportunities for me. I went on to get my Ph.D. and wound up here. If I hadn’t taken that chance on the job at Illinois, who knows where life might have taken me?

Professors are generally pretty conservative. Not politically or socially, but in the sense that we don’t like change. I think the reason is that we are expected to take a lot of risks in our research, and so we “use up” all of our risk tolerance. We become reluctant to make any changes to the curriculum because there may be unforeseen side effects. We become hoarders, keeping old papers and journals and equipment that have long outlived their usefulness. We’re even reluctant to move to a better office or lab because it would mean changing our routines.

At some level, I think everyone is a bit like that. Everyone finds the things that make their life comfortable, and hold onto them long after they should. Eventually, though, life circumstances force a change. This pandemic has certainly caused a lot of people to consider changes that they wouldn’t consider otherwise.

Sometimes, our desire for change is brought on by an awareness of injustice, an awareness of the general brokenness of the world becoming particularly acute in a way that touches us personally. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a promising German academic and theologian. He studied in America at Union Theological Seminary under Reinhold Niebuhr, then returned to Germany in 1931 to become a lecturer at the University of Berlin. His career took a dramatic turn after Hitler was installed as Chancellor in 1933. He could not keep silent: he gave a radio address that warned against Germany become an idolatrous Nazi cult. Over the following decade, he worked with other leaders of the Confessing Church, which resisted Nazi efforts to impose their will on the Christian church in Germany. He traveled internationally and developed connections with the German resistance movement. He wrote The Cost of Discipleship, a meditation on the Sermon on the Mount that teaches the difference between “cheap grace” and “costly grace.” Eventually, he was arrested, sentenced to death, and hanged at a concentration camp.

Bonhoeffer’s life was changed because of his faith in God. He began his career as a theologian, an academic, someone like me who lived his faith in head space. After encountering the Social Gospel in his studies and starting ecumenical work to connect with other Christians, his faith moved to heart space. Rather than talking about God in the abstract, he was moved to live out Jesus’s calling to help the poor, the oppressed, the victims of our sinful world power structures.

In today’s passage, Jesus teaches his disciples that they must be willing to take risks for the sake of the gospel. What is the gospel, the good news that he taught? “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.” Jesus taught that it was time for the power structures of the world to be overturned so that everyone would live as part of God’s family. In God’s realm, nobody has power over anyone else. Only God’s authority matters.

Jesus knew that this was a dangerous path, though. Throughout the Gospel of Mark, a key theme is the “Messianic secret.” Jesus confirms that he is the Messiah, but then tells everyone to keep it a secret. He knows that openly challenging the secular and religious power structures of his day would lead to the “prophet’s reward”—that is, they will suffer as Jesus did, as Isaiah did, as so many of God’s messengers have throughout history. Like Bonhoeffer, challenging the authorities led most of the apostles to martyrdom.

History is filled with examples of people who took risks on behalf of the oppressed. Gandhi worked his whole life for the freedom of India, eventually succeeding at the age of 78. Martin Luther King, Jr., led the Black civil rights movement until he was assassinated at the age of 39. The 14^th Dalai Lama has been working for the independence of Tibet throughout seven decades of exile. Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela worked for years to end the apartheid regime in South Africa, succeeding in 1990.

But rarely are there single events that change the world. The reality is that India’s independence was followed by years of struggle, the partition into India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and strife between religious and ethnic groups that continues today. The civil rights movement of the 1960s ended legal segregation, but the struggle for equality continues today, as evidenced by the Black Lives Matter protests of the past few years.

As you know, my personal calling is to reconciliation with and ministry to the LGBTQ+ community. The major turning point in the fight for gay rights was the Stonewall Uprising, a response to police harassment at gay bars in New York City. On June 27, 1969, there was a police raid at the Stonewall Inn. After midnight, tensions boiled over and a riot began. This wasn’t the beginning of the gay rights movement, and certainly wasn’t the end, but it was a turning point: a time when LGBTQ+ individuals refused to submit to persecution. Over the next several nights, there were continuing skirmishes between gay activists and the police. A year later, the first Pride parade was held in New York. Gay activists had decided that the risks brought on by open demonstration were preferable to the risks of living in the shadows.

It was another 45 years, though, before gay marriage became legal, and there are still ongoing legal battles over gay and transgender rights. For example, did you know that it is still legal in Missouri to refuse employment or housing because of a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity? Every year, the Missouri legislature considers the Missouri Nondiscrimination Act, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to Missouri’s Human Rights Act. MONA, as it is known, was first introduced in 1998, and every year it inches a little closer to passing but has never broken through.

Some people that I deeply respect have commended me for the little that I do to support the LGBTQ+ community. As a middle-class, cisgender, heterosexual, white man, I have choices. Should I work for women’s rights, or do anti-racism work, or work for gay and transgender rights? Or help the poor or homeless? Or none of the above? America’s systems and power structures have been built by and for people like me, so I could just live my life and let someone else worry about all of the injustices in the world. But the Holy Spirit is nudging me to act.

My decision to help the LGBTQ+ community wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing, though. Susan started laying groundwork almost ten years ago. Then I educated myself. I went to Pride STL. I read books and articles. I met with gay individuals to learn about their experiences. I attended lobbying days with PROMO to work towards passage of MONA. Eventually, I took a leap and created LGBTQ+ Rolla as a nonprofit organization and attracted some others who had similar interests to get things going.

Now, I have a vision of what this organization could become, but I am trying to stay aware of two basic facts. One, it’s not for me, it’s for the queer community, and they probably don’t need what I think they need. Two, it will only succeed if we grow in the way God intends. The Holy Spirit blows where it will, and like sailboats on the sea, we reach our destination faster if we let the wind take us than if we fight against it to go our own way.

There are risks to creating and helping to lead an LGBTQ+ organization in a town like Rolla. Before our Pride event, I worried a lot about hecklers or protesters or worse. I would like to see us have an LGBTQ+ center, that is, a place where people can go for resources and a sense of community, but such a place could also become a target of hate. I don’t have any serious risk of losing my job, but there is a risk to my reputation. I suppose someday, you all could tell me to stop talking and preaching about it, which would be unfortunate but not the end of the world. One thing I do encounter is people assuming that I’m gay because I wear rainbow jewelry. Well, that just gives me the tiniest glimpse into the world of discrimination that gay and transgender individuals face.

Life is full of risks, though. Our choice, as individuals and as a congregation, is which risks we are willing to take for the sake of growth. John A. Shedd once said, “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” We can stay safe where we are—physically and spiritually—or live into God’s call.

You know what, though? A ship in harbor is not necessarily safe. One danger is that when the storms come, the wind and the surge will drive it into the docks and pilings. Boats are made to survive their encounters with water, not land. Another danger is slow decay. When I was sailing with my dad, each time we came into a harbor, we would see boats tied to moorings that had clearly been there a long time—too long, long enough that they probably couldn’t ever leave.

As individuals and as a church, we can stay safely where we are. We can choose to ignore the needs of the world. We can slowly rot away on our moorings, waiting for the next storm to destroy us. Or, we can invest time and energy into maintaining our spiritual lives, making sure we are ship shape. We can study God’s word, and then put it to work in the world. We can go where the wind of the Holy Spirit takes us. When the storms of life come along, we will find ourselves tested, but ready.

No reward comes without some risk. We may be uncomfortable with necessary changes. We may lose friends who aren’t willing to grow along with us. We may need to let go of ideas, attitudes, activities, and commitments that we thought were serving us well but that are blocking us from going where God is leading. But in exchange, we will experience deeper connections to each other and to all of God’s people. We will become fuller participants in God’s family. We will exchange contentment and comfort for a deep joy in doing God’s will.

Are you ready? The challenge before us is to embrace God’s call, to let go of our past and even our present in order to fully live into the future that God has in mind for us. May we all work together towards that future where this church is a place of renewal and refueling to go do God’s work, to go out into our community showing our love of God by our love of our neighbors, enabling each person to see that they are a beloved child of a God who cares about their whole being: mind, body, and spirit.

We turn now to the Table of our Lord. Work requires energy, and spiritual work requires spiritual energy. At our Lord’s Table, we are renewed and refueled. As we have been nourished by the reading and preaching of God’s Word, let’s now be nourished by a greater awareness of God’s presence, strengthened and energized to follow where the Holy Spirit is leading us, to put the Word to work in the world.

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