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SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Today’s scripture Mark 2:13-17

Jesus went out to the lake shore again and taught the crowds that gathered around him, As he walked along he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, sitting at his tax collection booth, come be my disciples Jesus said to him. So Levi got up and followed him, that night Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to be his dinner guests along with his fellow tax collectors and many other notorious sinners. There were many people of this kind among the crowds that follow Jesus but when some of the teachers of religious law who were Pharasisee saw him eating with people like that they said to his disciples why does he eat with such scum? When Jesus heard this he said healthy people don’t need a doctor, sick people do. I have come to call sinners not those who think they are already good enough. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Two things at the end of the sermon on responding to those outside of the household of faith. I hope you take this with the right spirit in which I mean it, but you all need to take better notes….I mentioned several times last week that what I really wanted was invited along to the playoff game in Indianapolis. There were about two dozen people here going to Indianapolis for the playoff game and a number of you emailed me and you said you appreciated all the jokes about going and you thought of me as you went to the game. That was not what I had in mind. I have heard from one couple going to the Super Bowl, don’t you feel sorry for them. I do not want to hear about it unless you are inviting me.

I have also been receiving a lot of emails on the sermon series probably as many as I have gotten on any other sermon. One person was responding to the first weeks where I encouraged us to be in conversation with those outside the household of faith. With atheist and agnostics, not to argue or find ways to convict or convince them but just to be in conversation with them. One person wrote they found out especially helpful that they had a long term friendship that they cherished and they always felt guilty that they weren’t somehow convincing them. It is helpful to be in relationship with and she said she is to be a dim reflection of Jesus in this relationship.

I heard from a number of people about last week’s sermon about the scriptures and the weird things in the Bible that are bloody and hateful. Last week the emphasis was on the purpose of scripture is to point us to Jesus because when we know Jesus we know God. Then we looked in light of that light and the word of God which is Jesus we interpret the rest of the word and scripture. Some of these we have to do what Jesus did, he fulfilled them. Remember how he said you have heard it said of old and he quoted the Bible. He said love your neighbors but hate your enemies, Jesus said, but I tell you, love your enemies. So we interpret the other things, we don’t take it at face value, we interpret it in the light of the spirit and the light of Christ.

I received an email and it leads right into today’s sermon. This person said “hi Pastor Dave, I have a member of my family who is an atheist and he won’t talk to you”. I don’t think I am that hard to talk with but he didn’t want to talk with me. He said he could not be a Christian because of other Christians. He was married to a very religious woman who is a prominent member of her church and does the most hateful evil things and then says “God is leading me to do that.” So, here is the issue for today, I wasn’t surprised by this, I expected to hear from those outside the faith that one of the reasons they could not believe in God or be part of a church was because of hypocrites.

When I read this and then heard it from someone else I really wanted to argue about it. But I want us to hear it. That is what a conversation is to hear. Here is a quote from physicist SteveWeinburg , he speaks from science as a faith perspective. He is what I would call a very evangelistic atheist, he argues against belief in God. In fact he claims there is no God and he wants other people to join him in that belief. Here is his statement

Good people will do good things.
Bad people will do bad things.
But for a good person to do bad things requires religion.

I really wanted to argue with that but we keep providing so much evidence for it. There is example after example of Christians and people of faith doing bad things. The thing that surprised me, again not that they thought the church was full of hypocrites, I thought I would hear a lot about Ted Haggard, a prominent preacher and yet he had a private life in direct contradiction to his preaching. It eventually came out that he had committed adultery with another man and his ministry fell down. I thought I would hear about the scandals in the Roman Catholic Church and stuff. They don’t have trouble with people being human. Sometimes when I hear people say the reason they don’t belong to a church is because it is full of hypocrites I want to say well I agree with you, that’s how you know you will fit right in. We are. This was my surprise:

Good people will do good things
Bad people will do bad things
But for good people to do bad things requires religion.

This is what shocked me, the basic belief among atheist and agnostics that Christians are narrow minded, judgmental and just mean. That surprised me. Until I went looking for the evidence. Some of these things are from my conversations with people and a number of them are from the book by Richard Dawkins, Scientific perspective on faith as he claims it, he calls it the God Delusion. I came across this information on a web site that does all but elicit violence against pedophiles. So their crusade is to protect children which is a good thing. So they are encouraging retribution against pedophiles. So this group in a church became so incensed about this ministry movement against pedophiles that a bunch of them demonstrated outside of and vandalized the home and office of a pediatrician. They didn’t know the difference between a pedophile and a pediatrician and I look at that and say….that is wrong. That is ignorant. Consider this Ann Coulter is a cultural critic and a spokesperson for the religious right, she said this in an editorial after our invasion of Iraq. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. People will look at this and get an idea about Christianity. About two months ago somebody finally got the hint and took me to a Colts game. We were walking into the RCA dome and a group was handing out these little cards, on one side was the schedule of games for the Colts and on the other side it said:

People are lined up to get in
The roar is deafening
The crowd is seemingly innumerable
That is when things really start heating up
No I am not talking about the game
I am talking about hell…

Then it went on to tell you why you are going there. (handed out by Soundly saved)

It pains me to think that people outside the house of faith will look at that card and say that is what Christians are. Except we keep giving them so much evidence for it. Congressman Bob Dornan is affiliated with the religious right, said don’t use the word gay unless it is an acronym for Got Aids Yet? General William Boykins, the upper echelon of our military said this “George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters of the united states he was appointed by God.” I was surprised how incensed a quote like this made those outside the house of faith. For the first four years that statement is true. For the second term he was. The very idea, to oppose a political viewpoint is the same as opposing God, just drove them to distraction. I can’t blame them. This one drove me nuts, James Watt, secretary of interior for Ronald Reagan said “we do not need to protect the environment.” (that’s his job) “because the second coming of Jesus is at hand.” Non- Christians will look at that and say if that is what it means to be Christians I don’t want any part of that.

I was surprised at this, a survey was done about who do you respect as a Christian leader and out in the culture among Roman Catholics the Pope was first. He has to be, I think it is a requirement. But second for Catholics and first in the general population was Bono. He is the lead singer in the rock group U-2, he does a lot of great philanthropic work, he is a Christian, kind of a bizarre one. Here is a quote from Bono and why he is so widely respected:

I never had any problems with Christ, but Christians I have had problems with. I used to avoid Christians if I could; I found them to always be completely disinterested culturally and politically. I found it hard to relax with them. They seem strange to me and I must seem strange to them. Christians can be very judgmental particularly about the way people look. They judge people on the base of surface appearance and sexual immorality. These things are historically the preoccupation of the church. While corporate greed may never even be mentioned by the church. I grew up very suspicious of Christians but determined to know more and more about the life of Christ. Bono

His suspicion of Christians is a pretty pervasive view of those outside the household of faith. Is that what Christians are? When Jerry Falwell states that Aids is not just Gods punishment for those who are homosexual, it is also Gods punishment for a society that tolerates homosexuals. Is that the voice of the church? Is that what Christians are narrow and judgmental?

Let me tell you this story…a woman who would be in her 70’s now, she was born into a Roman Catholic household but her parents didn’t really observe through her first grade year, which is when they take first communion, they saw that the kids got to church but they never personally went. So when this lady, Patty got up through the first grade, all of a sudden her folks said we are done. This young lady would wake up every Sunday and get her younger sister ready for church and escort them walking to mass. While her parents stayed in bed sleeping off the night before. There was something knit into this young lady that she hungered for God and she didn’t get it from her parents. She would try to get to stay with her grandmother who went to church all the time at a Brethren church and she loved to go with her. So she grew up with nonobservant parents but somehow always hungry for God. When she came of age she decided to marry someone the opposite of her father. So he was not an alcoholic, he was faithful, but he was not Catholic. In fact he didn’t want to become Catholic. They got married outside the Roman Catholic Church in a Brethren church. When her nonobservant parents realized she was going to get married outside the Catholic Church they refused to go to her wedding. Is that a picture of what Christians are? It broke her heart. I never knew that story about my mom until I was going through her stuff after my dad died. I realized that her uncle had escorted her down the aisle because her parents had boycotted it. It was there in her papers. She never told us that part. She prayed all of us into the kingdom. Is that what Christianity is?

Now before I tell us two things that are a challenge for us that I think are authentic responses to those who level that criticism. That good people do good things, bad people do bad things and for good people to do bad things requires religion. Let me tell you two things that don’t work. One….it really doesn’t work to point out all the good that Christians do because there is so much evidence to the contrary. I was really tempted to point out all the universities founded by churches. Most universities in the country were founded by churches, three of them in this state by the Methodists church. Most hospitals were started first by churches. The three major hospitals in Fort Wayne were established by churches. The Roman Catholic Church, the Lutheran and the Methodist church. The only totally state run hospital is kind of teetering on the edge. Most of the public school systems started as Sunday school movements in the basement of churches.

I thought about arguing with all the good the church does. For instance we have a United Methodist committee on relief and when a disaster happens we have people, faithful people, on the ground helping people before those outside the church even get a chance to write out a check and figure out whom to send it to, we have people there. I can go on and on about changed lives and marriages put back together and people who stop the cycle of addiction and dysfunction like my mom did.

But that argument doesn’t really carry water. It is a little bit speculative to argue about this that their contention with us is that the world would be better off without religion. I am a Beatles fan and a John Lennon fan even though I don’t agree 100%. With that song called “Imagine” . “Imagine there’s no heaven, imagine there’s no religion, no hell below us, above us only sky, imagine everybody living in peace.” Is that what would happen if there was no religion? That we would all live in peace, that there would be no 9/11, that there would be no Sunnis and Shiites killing each other, that there would be no Protestant root Catholic battle in Northern Ireland, that there would be no Jews being persecuted as Christ killers, that there would be no violence in the future. If we could just do away with religion.

I don’t believe that is true, there is something in us that is knit into human nature. There is probably a helpful thing in it that helped us survive at some point, that we would draw back into the tribe and trust only our tribe and regard those outside, who are strange to us, with suspicion, if not with hostility. And that is just a part of human nature. Some of the biggest killers in the 20th century are people who didn’t have a religion, they had an ideology. Stalin, polpot in Cambodia, and on and on, killed millions of people. Mao Tsa Tong, millions, 10’s of millions of people because of ideology, regardless of religion.

It is true, that bad things come from religious people and it is true that bad things come from non-religious people. It is just a truism, that people are suspicious, judgmental and even violent.

I like to read science fiction, I don’t know how many of you do, I like hard science fiction, not fantasy stuff but where the laws of physics actually apply to the science. I have read a lot of stuff that projected out into the future and what struck me about science fiction is that, except for a few stories by Isaac Asimov, who is really the grandfather of science fiction, they all envision a future without religion. There is no chaplain on the starship Enterprise. But, the future that they envision isn’t one of peace and harmony because it doesn’t have religion. No, they envision just ongoing conflict; it is knit into us.

So, what do we say about this? That religious people, especially Christians, are narrow and judgmental. I think we do a couple of things, first we can agree with Jesus because he found religious people to be narrow minded and judgmental. That is what the story was about the scripture today. That Jesus called a tax collector to get up and follow him. Tax collectors were a, they sympathized with and served the Roman occupation and tax collectors since they were in league with Rome were considered to be impure and if you ate or went into the house of a tax collector you were impure for seven days, you couldn’t go to synagogue, you couldn’t pray, God would consider you impure. Jesus called a tax collector to come follow him. Then he actually went to their home and ate with them. The Bible says there were a lot of people like that following Jesus at that time.

Remember what the religious people did? I like to called them religious people instead of Pharasis or scribes, because it includes us. They stood outside the door and looked longingly through the door at Jesus but said why does he eat with such scum? Jesus spoke out of the door to them and said it is not the healthy people that need a doctor but sick people. I have come not to save those who think they are already good enough, they don’t need a savior. I have come for sinners. So the folks Jesus had the most conflict with were good respectable, pew sitting, and religious people.

So what do we say to this charge of Christians being narrow minded and judgmental? Well, first we can agree with Jesus. The second thing is this….we need to renounce those who speak for bigotry, have a condemning, non Christ like attitude. Let me name some names…when CNN goes and speaks to Jerry Falwell for the religious perspective on a news event and I see his smug face on there I want to puke. Because he does not speak for me. Sometimes Christians have been reluctant to say that.

I talked with more and more folks outside of the house of faith I want them to hear that he does not speak for me. One of the atheist I spoke to I asked her, what do you want me to say about atheist and one of the things she said is “tell them that Madeline Murray O’Hare," (who is that very confrontational atheist woman of the 1960 and 1970’s, by the way she has been dead for 25 years. So you don’t need to send me anymore emails about her being in cahoots with the Federal communications commission to outlaw religious broadcasting….She is dead. I don’t know where she is but she isn’t with the FCC doing anything.) She said," I want you to tell people that the attitude and spirit of Madeline Murray O’Hare does not speak for me."

I want them to hear that the Jerry Falwells of this world does not speak for me and I don’t think he speaks for our church. The scary thing is he does speak for some churches and for some Christians. I think that breaks Gods heart. I wish they wouldn’t ask him anymore comments on what he thinks. But he makes for great quotes for them. Sayings like “Got Aids Yet?” speaks so much better than a graceful answer about the great mercy and forgiveness mixed with the holiness of Jesus. One of our responses needs to be we agree with Jesus, religious people can be narrow and condemning. We need to say these people do not speak for us.

The last thing we need to do. We need to reflect the light and the love of Jesus and not the legalistic stands of these folks. Will Rogers is one of my favorite writers and he had a great saying once he said he is not a member of any organized political party, he was a democrat.

I think an appropriate response when it is pointed out that Christians can be narrow and judgmental is to say yeah, I know who you mean and I am glad I am not a part of that, I try to be a Jesus follower. This is a harder thing to be. I am also a member of an organized religion, a church, that I hope will be a church that reflects the light of Jesus. That strange mixture of mercy and grace with holiness. That we would acknowledge that Christians aren’t perfect we just seek forgiveness that we stand in need of a savior, that’s why he came. Reflect the love of Jesus.

On the backside of the sermon note sheet is some scripture for the coming week. I would like you to take those with you and carry them with you, keep them on your bureau and pray those scriptures through the coming week. They are a great expression of who we are supposed to be. Not the narrow, judgmental attitude, but a real spirit of Christ. Here is what it boils down to.

“Oh how I love Jesus, Oh how I love Jesus, Oh how I love Jesus because he first loved me”

Colossians 3 helps us to understand the spirit of Christ. It is a marvelous collection of scriptures where the apostle Paul encourages us to personify the spirit of Christ.

Let’s pray. God we confess that there have been times when out of our mouths have come words that we want to take back. We confess that there are times when we have drawn hard lines that have excluded some of the people you call your children. We cringe to think about the sayings and attitudes that those of the household of faith that paint such a harsh negative image of what it means to be a Christian. Lord, forgive them and forgive us when we don’t speak up for Him. Help us to personify the very spirit and love and grace and mercy and holiness of Jesus. We would ask God that as we come into contact with those who place themselves outside of a faith relationship with you that they would be drawn to you by what they see in us, not repelled from you by what they see in us. Draw us close to you so we can speak words of grace and mercy and truth. Help us to know when to speak and when to be silent. Help us always to follow in your footsteps. Amen

Scripture and Prayer Guide

January 29- February 2, 2007
"Conversations with an Atheist: The Misuse and Abuses of Religion"

Those outside the faith often think, rightly or wrongly, of Christians as exclusive, condemning and self-righteous. This week use the scripture as a jumping off point for praying about our interaction during the coming week with those outside the household of faith, recognizing they/we are all God's children. Colossians 3 is one of the best statements of holy living, of Jesus-living. Let's pray it together.

Monday, Colossians 3:1-4
1 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Tuesday, Colossians 3:8-11
8 But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. 11 Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

Wednesday, Colossians 3:12-14
12 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Thursday, Colossians 3:15-16
15 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.

Friday, Colossians 3:17
17 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.