Day1 Weekly Radio Broadcast - Day1 Feeds

Even in a time when many people don't know much about the Bible, it's a verse a lot of us know by heart.  We don't even have to recite it; just the reference will do: "John 3:16."  The evangelically-minded hold up the reference on painted signs at football games.  It suggests the heart of the Christian message, summarizing what God did in Jesus.  "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."  The short form: "God so loved the world."  That pretty much says it all, doesn't it?  It's the good news in a nutshell. Today on this Second Sunday in the season of Lent, I'd like to invite you to go deeper into this familiar passage from the third chapter of John.  To do that, I'd like to ask you to follow me on a journey into the distant past--all the way back to the Old Testament book of Numbers, the fourth book of the Jewish Torah.  The people are in the Sinai desert, half-heartedly following Moses on the circuitous trek toward a land that God has promised these former slaves.  They are following half-heartedly because after all this time they have begun to doubt their leaders and even wonder if there is such a land at all.  Moses' rag-tag band of pilgrims have begun to "murmur"--that is, they are complaining, bellyaching, kvetching over the hard life of the desert, the strange, God-given diet of manna and quail, and the uncertainty of their serpentine route.

Both of the readings from the Bible that you have just heard struggle with the question of who is going to be in charge in our world and, more importantly, in each of our lives. In our reading from Genesis, Adam and Eve wanted to reign God in so they could move on up and be in charge.  They thought by eating the forbidden fruit they would see as God sees.  They thought they would make God obsolete, God would no longer be needed, and they themselves would fill the role of God.  You might say Adam and Eve wanted to cut out what they mistakenly saw as the eternal middleman. On the other hand, in our reading from Matthew, Jesus shows far greater wisdom and faith.  He did not reach for the quick answer to the hungers of life by turning stones into bread, nor did he go for the spotlight of instant fame by defying the laws of gravity and jumping from the pinnacle of the temple, nor did he reach for the reins of power; rather he stated his trust in God over and over again.  He was determined to serve God on God's terms.  He was settling for himself the answer to the question of who was in charge as he set out to begin his ministry, a ministry that was to proclaim good news to the poor and release for the captives, a commitment that would lead him through the journey ahead, a journey that would lead to Calvary. How would you answer the question of who is in charge of your life, of our world?   Of course, you think, I would say God; after all, I just listened to two scripture lessons that reflect that belief, and I am listening to a radio program that is sponsored by churches.  How else could one answer?

The story that we have just heard defies interpretation, although that has not stopped legions of interpreters from trying.  It is the luminous story of a mystical encounter, not only between God and God's Beloved but also between those at the center of the story and those who watch.  Those at the center are Jesus, Moses and Elijah.  Those who watch are Peter, James and John.  And then, of course, there are all of us watching all of them, most of us laboring under the illusion that our job is to figure out what the story means. I am not sure where we got this idea, but it seems to dominate the way that many of us read the Bible.  Give us a passage of scripture and we will put on our thinking caps, doing our best to decipher the symbols, read between the lines and come up with the encoded message that Jesus or Luke or God has hidden in the passage for us to find.  The idea seems to be that the story itself is chiefly a suitcase for conveying the meaning inside of it.  Discern the content of the story and you do not have to go rummaging around inside of it every time it comes up.  Instead, you can pull the meaning out of it and place it neatly folded in a drawer where you can find it the next time you need it. In the present case, the most common decoded message is that Moses stands for the Law, Elijah stands for the prophets, and Jesus, of course, is the Messiah.  By singling Jesus out as "my Son, the Beloved," God sets the gospel over the law and the prophets.  Listen to him, says the voice from the cloud.  There are two auxiliary meanings as well--one about how it is better to keep your mouth shut in the presence of the holy than to blurt things out like Peter does and another about how the purpose of such mountaintop experiences is to strengthen us for the climb back down into the valley of the shadow of death, where our real work remains to be done.  

One Sunday morning last summer, when everyone else was in church--like all good Christians should be--my husband, Toby, and I were at the laundromat, where all of life's sinners apparently congregate. We have a little cabin in the great northwoods of Wisconsin, and our Sunday routine is to get up, go out for breakfast, and then head to the laundromat to wash our clothes for the week.  On that particular Sunday, just as we started loading our laundry, the door opened and a scarily clean-shaven gentleman walked in and said, "A blessed morning to you, brothers and sisters"--a warning sign, if ever there was one.  I could see he had a number of brochures in his hand, but I tried my best not to make eye contact. Sure enough, he came to me first.  "Sister," he asked in the most earnest of tones, "have you met Jesus?" I thought about telling him my full testimony, including the fact that I was an ordained Baptist minister and that Jesus and I were about as tight as you could get.  But I just couldn't do it. "I'm sorry; I haven't seen Jesus at the laundromat this morning." The Jesus-man looked at me with an expression akin to what your elementary school teacher might have offered when you spelled "January" with a "G."  He then handed me a tract with a picture of Jesus on the front holding a tiny lamb, looking a bit queasy, and said, "You know, Jesus can wash your sins away better than any of these machines." 

Our sermon today studies life through the eyes of Moses, Thomas Edison, and the great Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi.  But, first, we must start with a toast, because that is exactly what Moses offered the children of Israel in today's scripture from Deuteronomy.  Standing on the far side of the Jordan waiting to cross over, Moses prepares to give his last sermon to his people.  Think about the import of that moment. The Israelites had just emerged from the rule of a brutal dictator, wandered in the desert for forty days and nights, and were now standing on the shores of the Promised Land.  It was a second chance, a new day for their people. On this momentous occasion, Moses preaches a fiery message to his people, ending with one of the best big bring-it-home sermon lines of all time:  "Choose life so that you and your descendants may live."  Actually, I think it was less of a sermon line than a toast.  I envision Moses raising his glass and giving the great Jewish toast "l'chaim," which means "to life!"  Given what was at stake, I also can imagine Moses mumbling an aside, "And don't mess it up!" Let's look at the scripture a little closer because I believe that it contains deeper lessons for each of us.  First let's consider the words choose life.  What does that mean?  Or easier yet, what does it not mean?  For Moses, choose life did not mean worshipping the crazy idols of the Canaanites, the people who occupied the land where the children of Israel were headed.  As Moses warned earlier in Deuteronomy 29:17, "You have seen their detestable things, their filthy idols of wood and stone, of silver and of gold.  And it may be that there is among you...someone whose heart is already turning away."  In short, Moses was saying stay away from the idols and no one gets hurt!

Do you remember when you were a kid how much you just couldn't wait to grow up? I mean, there were those milestones we all looked forward to, those times when we were certain that if we could just reach that magical age we'd be as happy as we could ever dream. I remember when I was in my early teenage years how much I looked forward to turning sixteen. In fact, I turned sixteen in the year 2000, so I can remember, then, long before I was ever really religious, praying that if God could just hold off the approaching apocalypse until after I had my driver's license and a few months of legal driving under me, I'd be eternally grateful and do whatever it was God wanted me to do. I'm sure none of you has made such an irrational bargain with the Almighty before in your life. You see, I just wanted to drive, to experience the freedom that came with the open road and the feeling of controlling a one-ton metal machine all by myself. I couldn't wait to turn sixteen, to take that driver's test, to receive the little plastic card with my face on it in the mail that said I was a legal driver in the state of Alabama, a card that said to the world I was almost an adult. Well, it seems God heard my prayer and did in fact put off the millennial apocalypse and you're welcome for that. The year 2000 came: I turned sixteen and got my driver's license. I didn't, however, have this great, emancipating experience that I had hoped for. You see, my family couldn't afford to buy me a car, so I had to get a job--which was fine, because I had convinced myself, after all, that I wanted a job--it was one step closer to adulthood, right? So I got a job working in the service department of the local Chevrolet dealership in the afternoons after school. I had a job, so I could have a car, so I could have a job, so I could have a car. You get the idea. I also quickly found out that being able to drive meant I was going to have to do other things, like take my younger sister places she needed to go or drive my grandmother to the grocery store on the weekends. It didn't take long for me to figure out that what I had once thought was this liberating life goal was in fact a mile marker of maturity and an increase in responsibility.

What a spectacular day this is! What a day to pay attention to! And what exactly are we celebrating today? Well, according to much of the United States, today is Super Bowl Sunday. Of course! What else? Even those of us without a favorite team have noticed the drama. And even those of us who don't care for football might care for the annual outpouring of new television commercials. As for those of us who care for neither football nor commercials, well, we still know something spectacular is occurring. But, wait, there may be another reason we are paying attention to this day. Those of us in the Christian Church know this day, February 2, as a special feast day. Today is the Feast of the Presentation, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. Jesus is revealed as a light to the nations, the Light of the World! I, for one, am thrilled at this confluence and coincidence of celebrations. I am glad that the Super Bowl occurs on the Feast of the Presentation this year. The folks in Las Vegas are wagering today. Tell the folks in Law Vegas this: I wager that fewer than ten professional football players have ever used the words "Super Bowl" and "Feast of the Presentation" in the same sentence. Hey! While we're at it, let's throw in Groundhog Day. Not many people realize that Groundhog Day actually falls upon one of the major feast days of the Church: this Feast of the Presentation. Our Church has also called this day "Candlemas."

The great comedian Emo Philips told a story over twenty years ago, which bears repeating today. He was walking across a bridge, and he tells the story like this. I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it! Don't do it!" He said, "Why not? Nobody loves me." I said, "Well, God loves you. Do you believe in God?" He said, "Yes." I said, "I do, too.  ...Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "I'm a Christian." I said, "Me, too! ...Protestant; or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! ...What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! ...Northern Baptist; or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! ...Northern Conservative Baptist, or Northern Liberal Baptist?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! ...Northern Conservative Baptist, Great Lakes Region; or Northern Conservative Baptist, Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist, Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too! ...Northern Conservative Baptist, Great Lakes Region, Council of 1879; or Northern Conservative Baptist, Great Lakes Region, Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist, Great Lakes Region, Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.

I want to start out today with a question.   Are you ready?  WHO WANTS TO BE AN EVANGELIST?  Seriously...wherever you are, raise your hand...if you want to be an EVANGELIST?  I wonder how many hands are raised out there.  Typically when I ask this question in a sanctuary or room full of people, no one raises their hand. On very few occasions one or two people have. I wish I could ask each one of you listening why you did--or I am assuming in most cases, did not--raise your hand? It seems evangelism has become a scary word for us.  In general, it is a word with which we do not want to be associated.  It is not unusual at all in congregations these days for the word not to show up anywhere in their mission statement or organizational chart of ministries or committees.  I wonder what you associate with the word.  Is it some variation of my experience a few years ago? One beautiful fall day in Athens GA, I was marching along with the happy upbeat throng of people pouring into Sanford Stadium for a University of Georgia football game, when we came upon the "Evangelist."  He was a very large man positioned just outside the gate holding up signs about the eternal damnation of drunkards and shouting out Bible verses about the doom of all kinds of people. That was when one of those eternally doomed drunkards confronted the "evangelist."

The abduction of Elizabeth Smart is well-known, as are many of the details of her story.  In mid-summer 2002, Elizabeth was kidnapped from her Salt Lake City bedroom under cover of darkness by Brian David Mitchell, a deranged, messianic drifter.  She was taken to his camp deep in the woods, where she was brutalized by Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee.  For nine months, Elizabeth endured her captivity, until in March of 2003 she was recognized on a Salt Lake City street and freed. These broad strokes have been known publicly since the events occurred a decade ago.  But it was not widely known until more recently how flagrantly Mitchell and Barzee paraded through Elizabeth Smart's own neighborhood with Elizabeth in tow.  Scott Carrier, a neighbor and a parent of one of Elizabeth's classmates, reported in Mother Jones magazine, "Through the summer Elizabeth's photo hung in every window of every shop and on every lamp post.  Her father and her family appeared regularly on local, national and international news programs, begging and weeping for her safe return.  It seemed she was hidden somewhere far away, somewhere just beyond the broadcasting spectrum, or like in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy's family calls to her through the crystal ball.  Then, when she was found nine months later...we realized she'd actually been right here in front of us, walking around downtown, reading in the library, eating in fast-food restaurants...They began coming into the city by day, passing within a quarter-mile of Elizabeth's home...And no one figured it out."[i]

Julius Caesar knew that people wanted to kill him.  There were few men he could trust.  But one was a young man named Brutus, whom Caesar had treated practically as family.  And so when, on the Ides of March--that fateful day when the Theatre of Pompey became place of violence and blood--the mortally-wounded Caesar looked up as this very Brutus turned the knife in his side, Caesar lost the will to resist.  Shakespeare immortalizes Caesar's final words as "Et tu, Brute?" meaning "You too, Brutus?"  But the ancient Roman historian Suetonius reports an even more wilting response.  According to Suetonius, Caesar looked upon his friend and asked plaintively, "You too, my child?" Benedict Arnold was friend and protégé of General George Washington, one of the few with whom Washington could trust his very life.  Except that he couldn't.  Arnold, as you know, was in fact a spy for the British and his most intimate correspondences with George Washington he turned over to Washington's most dangerous enemies.  Arnold's plot to facilitate George Washington's capture or assassination and surrender West Point to the British crushed the proud general.  In fact and in literature, Brutus and Benedict Arnold are both intriguing and loathsome figures.  They symbolize betrayal, but more than that they represent characters whose allegiance leaves one unsteady and unsure.  More recently, fantastic characters like Gollum in Lord of the Rings and Severus Snape in the Harry Potter books are also presented in this way.  Until the very end of the story, we're not sure whose side they're on--and that makes us nervous: What are their intentions?  Will they help or harm?

It is the end of the year, 2013, and the apostle Paul writing a long time ago, reminds us how to end it well: "Make allowance for each other's faults," he wrote to the small church at Colossae, "and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others." I want to end well, don't you? And if that means ending this year forgiving somebody, that also is what I want to do. More recently, another person wrote something about forgiveness that I want to recite. I heard it read in a federal courtroom in Kentucky. I was sitting on the back row watching, listening, praying. A young man was to be sentenced for robbing a bank. It was a bad thing he did, slipping a note pad to the teller, demanding money. He was six foot one inch, rough and rugged, muscles along every limb, shabbily dressed. The teller was about the same age, but smaller and nine months pregnant. The thief did not know that, of course; nor did he know it was her birthday. So much of it was so random. "Do you have anything to say?" the judge asked that day in court. The thief turned to the young woman, sitting with her husband on the other side of the courtroom. With tears streaming down his face, he said, "I am so sorry for what I did. You did not deserve this. I did not mean to harm you. I am sorry." Then it was her turn. She read a letter in response. No, the prosecutor read it and I remember it vividly. "I hate you. I hate you. I hate you." He read for her. "You do not deserve any mercy. You have ruined my life. I was nine-months pregnant that day last summer when you robbed our bank. It was my birthday. I have been in therapy ever since. I hate you."

Walking around Manhattan this week, now that we're in the final countdown to Christmas, I was particularly aware of the wash of Christmas music. Waiting for a subway on my way to visit a friend in the hospital, I heard a version of "What Child Is This?" played by two musicians as a kind of call and response in that intricate and haunting style of classical Spanish guitar. A couple of days ago, while trying to do my part of the list for our girls, I walked past a German oompah band playing "O Tannenbaum" and other favorites on brass--and it was lovely to stop for a moment. On Friday night, hurrying to a meeting I was already late for, I zoomed past one of those little electronic stores with the big "Going Out of Business" sign that tries to lure you in, even though they're not going out of business.  And they were blaring Christmas music out of these immense speakers, and the song they were sending down the length of 26th Street was "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth," which isn't one you hear all that often. It's an oldie and a...yeah.... And all this music, all of my to'ing and fro'ing this week made me remember a sermon I heard several years ago by a pastor I admire. And her sermon was titled "All She Wanted for Christmas...Was a Nap." Because without all that music to keep me going, I think I would have been fast asleep about ten days ago. It's true that Christmas is a time of tremendous expectations, and there's a way in which shopping and cleaning and cooking and wrapping and visiting can take more out of us than they seem to put back into us.

I remember the first time I really thought about Christmas outside of that relatively narrow window between Thanksgiving and New Years Day. I was around eight years old, and it was sometime in August. Those of us who grew up with TV commercials in the New York market will surely remember the August TV ads for the now-defunct electronics store "Crazy Eddie's." The ads always went: "Crazy Eddie's Christmas Sale--in August! Crazy Eddie can't be beat, with prices so low he's practically GIVING it all away! Crazy Eddie: his prices are INSANE." If you didn't get the point, the man was wearing a Santa cap and would take a little Christmas tree and start waving it around wildly before finally throwing it over his shoulder into a giant pile of boom boxes. So...maybe it was Crazy Eddie who first got me thinking about what Santa might be up to in August.  In any case, one day, I think in August, I asked my father something like, "What is Santa doing now?" He paused.  "Santa?" he said. "Yes, Santa." "Doing now?" he said. "Yes." "Well," my father began, matter-of-factly, "at this point he's probably pretty much done with fabrication and assembly except for some end line testing for the electronics. But he'll need to get that wrapped up pretty soon...."  "...Mostly, he's probably confirming routing and scheduling with his different distribution centers and trying to get them squared away for return flow..." 

We continue our Advent journey today with a reading from the prophet, Zephaniah. His very name means God protects. Zephaniah's prophecy is limited to three chapters, just 55 verses. In his signature verse, his lineage is traced back four generations. That's a little strange if you know the prophets! Others go back two generations. Zephaniah goes back four. The text begins:  "The word of the Lord came to Zephaniah, son of Cushi, son of Gedaliah, son of Amariah, son of Hezekiah." Three of those names mean very little to us. But the last one rings a bell. Hezekiah was king in Judah from 725-696 BC. Hezekiah was an outstanding leader. In fact, 2 Kings 18 says of him: "He did what was right in the sight of the Lord. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah." Zephaniah the prophet may have been a great-great grandson of this great-great king!  If so, he had royalty in his veins. He was a blue blood. Hezekiah was followed by two kings who did not follow his lead--Manasseh and Amon, both of whom "did what was evil in the sight of God." Josiah, the boy king, followed Amon and brought great reform to the nation. It was during his reign that Zephaniah preached. Initially, Zephaniah was supportive of Josiah's reform, but he knew in his heart that it was too little, too late. Zephaniah saw exile coming, and he could not keep silent. Eighty percent of his prophecy is bad news. And yet, the concluding verses end on a note of joy. (Zephaniah 3:14-20)