Politics and Civil Religion

The First Amendment was a way for the Founding Fathers clearly and unambiguously to insist that the USA would never be subject to the mistakes Europe, especially England, had made in adopting state-sponsored versions of Christianity. An officially-recognized religion of any sort anywhere is guaranteed to satisfy only a minority of the people of that state or nation, and they are the people who are actively engaged in that religion. Other believers who don’t approve of that brand of religion are always unhappy, as are all the people who refuse to identify with any form of religion, and they may constitute the majority of people in almost every modern nation. Civil religion, in which a civil government and a whole society supposedly endorse a particular kind of religion for their own political purposes, is and has always been a very bad idea.

The Communion of Saints

Nobody knows for certain exactly when or where the Apostles Creed was first adopted by the Early Church. Whenever it was, it came into wide usage by no later than the fifth century. That almost certainly suggests it was not actually composed by any of the twelve apostles. In its last declaratory sentence, the Apostle Creed says this: “I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” It is only on the four words in the center of that creedal statement, “the communion of saints,” that we shall be concentrating this morning.

Breaking News!

Cable news networks have changed America. Indeed, they have changed the world. Some of the American networks are shown worldwide 24/7, with news from other nations liberally spread between the American news stories. Hundreds of millions of people in western democracies, and many other millions of people in autocracies, have become addicted to televised news.

In Praise of an Amazing Man

The man of whom I speak is, of course, Abraham Lincoln. In my opinion, our two greatest Presidents were both born in February, and both deserve to have Presidents Day named in their honor. Lincoln was born on the 12th of February and Washington on the 22nd. If I were forced to choose which of the two was the greater President, without hesitation I would say Lincoln. Washington was an amazing leader too, and as a nation we were especially blessed to have him as our first President. He led us through some very uncertain times, and he established the important precedent of no more than two four-year terms. That policy was followed until FDR came along. Historians have argued whether it was wise for Roosevelt to have run for the nation’s highest office four times. Because he did, however, the Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution was passed, which now limits a President to two terms.

Believing and Knowing

At least fifty years ago there was a popular song by Elvis Presley. I didn’t know it was Elvis until I Googled it to make sure I had remembered the lyrics correctly. He sang, “I believe for every drop of rain that falls/ A flower grows/ I believe that even in the darkest night/ A candle glows.” Those are nice, sentimental thoughts. And anyone who believes them is also a hopeless sentimentalist. I am convinced there are far more drops of rain than there are flowers, and there is not a candle glowing for everyone in the darkest night. Would that it were so, but it isn’t.

Life is a Fatal Condition

Let me begin this sermon with an important admission. The older I get, the more concerned I get about death. It isn’t my own death I’m concerned about, however. It is the nature and the prolonged difficulty of the deaths of increasing numbers of people I have known personally. The end of life for a growing number and percentage of people becomes a long, slow slide into mental or physical oblivion which continues for months or years. If people want that to happen, or if they allow it to happen, that is their choice, and it is a valid one. But if they don’t want that to be the nature of their last days and years on this earth, there are ways to prevent it.

Three Minutes of Wonderful

The title of this sermon is a partial quote from one of my all-time favorite movies. But before I give you the whole quote, I want briefly to fill in the background out of which the statement was made. The line is from Steel Magnolias, starring, among others, Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, Sally Fields, Julia Roberts, and Daryl Hannah. The story was first a play, and later it was made into a movie. I saw the play a few years ago at the Arts Center of the Lowcountry. The play and movie are both excellent, but they are not exactly alike.

Legions of Demons

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all agree that Jesus encountered a man then known as a “demoniac.” He lived on the eastern shore of the lake. That was not Jewish territory; it was Gentile country. From this we may deduce that Jesus did not spend all of his time among Jews. He also went among the Gentiles from time to time. Luke tells us that the man didn’t have a home but that he lived “among the tombs.” Mark corroborates that. If we didn’t know this man was a Gentile otherwise, we know it now, because no Jews would never live among tombs, not even crazy ones. Jews buried their dead in cemeteries, but other than those rare occasions, they avoided graves like death itself. They regarded graves to be ritually unclean.

The Worldwide Challenge of the Young

There are no scripture passages which refer directly to the issue which shall be addressed in this sermon. I shall be talking about a growing problem throughout the world, namely, that there are increasing hundreds of millions of young people, from age 18 through 30 or 35 years of age, who are unemployed or grossly underemployed, many of whom have excellent educations. Some of them are people with bachelors or masters or doctoral degrees who are driving taxis (until Uber and Lyft take their jobs from them) or are flipping hamburgers at McDonalds or are employed in offices or factories at minimum wages. In many countries, a minimum wage means a dollar or two per hour, if it even means that.

Time and Chance

Our text for this morning may be familiar to you. “Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all.” Those sentiments do not echo most of the other parts of the Old Testament, especially the Psalms. Again and again we hear that those who follow God’s laws will be particularly blessed. And because they do what they should do, they shall win the race, and the battle, and more than enough bread, and riches, and the favor of both God and humanity. “Uh-uh,” says the Preacher, “time and chance happen to them all.”

The Exalted King Of The Lowly

This is the third in a series of four sermons about the poetic Songs of the Messiah which are found in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke. Previously we looked at two songs which were sung by the angel Gabriel when he announced to the virgin Mary that she was going to be the mother of the Son of God. Mary was a young teenage girl when she was confronted by the angel and his astonishing announcement. No matter how mature Mary may have been, she was still a young girl, presumably of very recent puberty. In her culture, she would have been thinking about marriage and eventual motherhood, because girls of thirteen or fourteen typically were given in marriage by their parents, so they likely thought about it.

The Overshadowing God

Let me postulate a theory for you. There is no way of corroborating or “proving” what I am going to say, but I want you to think about it. Here is my thesis. The life and teachings of Jesus had a major effect on those who knew him and heard him during his lifetime, but the effect of Jesus was infinitely greater in the first fifty years after he lived than it was before he died. By the year 80 CE, when Luke wrote his Gospel, there were probably at most twenty or fifty or a hundred thousand Christians in the entire world. But those people were so transformed by a peasant carpenter from the Galilean town of Nazareth that already they had developed a system of worship not only for the God who sent Jesus into the world but also for the one who was sent, Jesus himself. Likely included in that liturgy were songs or hymns which the Church had created for every season of the liturgical year: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and the long period leading back to Advent once again.

The Unique Monarchy Of The Messiah

The Gospels and the other parts of the New Testament are not really history. They are relatively brief glimpses into the most radically transformative century in the western world. A Galilean peasant was born somewhere in the Roman province of Judea. Two New Testament writers, and only two, say he was born in Bethlehem, which is the town where King David had been born a thousand years earlier. According to both of those writers, the angel Gabriel appeared to Joseph (in Matthew) and to Mary (in Luke). Gabriel is mentioned only twice in the Old Testament, and both times in the prophecy of Daniel (8:16 and 9:21). Daniel does not even refer to him as an angel, but in both instances as “the man Gabriel.” However, we may naturally infer that he is a special messenger from God (which is what the word “angel” means: messenger.)

The God of Inexhaustible Optimism

If your politics run in one direction, you need to know that this is not the beginning of an entirely new world. If they run in another direction, you need to know this is not the end of the old world. This is still the same world as it was on November 7 of 2016, or on November 7, 1916, or 1816, or 716 BCE. Human beings have always shaped the world, but God is ultimately in charge: ultimately. That is what Isaiah told the people of Judah when his heart ached for them because of their blunders and their blindness. We can say with Katharina von Schlegel, a lady whose name suggests she might possibly be German, “Be still my soul, the Lord is on thy side.”

Is Humanity Destroying Our Planet?

Whether you believe the Genesis explanation for why God created the universe and our planet in particular or you believe that every species of every animal or plant in the world is important in and of itself, we are all brought back to one key phrase in Genesis 1:28: we humans are intended by God to have dominion over the earth. We are in charge! God put us in charge. No other species is capable of having dominion. We are God’s stewards on behalf of God’s Earth! A steward is someone given responsibility to care for the possessions of someone else. Bankers are stewards of our money. Publicly-held corporations are stewards of the funds people invest in them. Government officials are stewards of the taxes people pay into the government. And, according to Genesis 1, we are the stewards of Planet Earth. God gave us that responsibility.

The Deliberate Subversion of Truth

White lies have become widely acceptable as a form of social discourse. “We’re having a dinner party, and we want you to come,” someone says to you. But if you come, you know that So-and-So will be there, and So-and-So is such a revolting so-and-so that you don’t want to have to abide him again. So you say, “I’m so sorry, but we will be at another function.” And the other function you’ll be at is to watch the Green Bay Packers lose yet another close game on your TV at home. It isn’t a white lie, exactly, but it definitely is misleading, and it isn’t true.

The Poverty of Rich Nations

The mid-eighth century BCE was a boom time in the land of Judah. The Judean Dow-Jones Industrial Average was at 24,853 points one Friday afternoon in 745 in the month of Aviv, and it never again got any higher, though it didn’t go down quickly either. Hedge fund managers were making money faster than they could bank it. The CEOs of the banks had huge town homes on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and vacations homes on the Mediterranean beaches and also among the date palm trees of Jericho. Times were never better.

The Divinely Appointed Nudzh

The purpose of prophecy was to speak what was believed to be the will and word of God to the social, political, economic, and religious situations in which the prophets found themselves. Their words were almost always “present-centered,” not “future-centered.” And whenever the prophets made predictions about what would happen in the future, it was always based upon what was happening (or not happening) in the present. Prophecy is not fundamentally prediction; rather it is the proclamation of whatever is perceived to be the will of God regarding whatever is going on at any given period of human history.