Sermons
“POVERTY & DEGENERACY"
Deuteronomy 15: 7-8: 10-11
7 If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. 8 You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be.
10 Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. 11 Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.
2 Thessalonians 3: 6-13
6Now we command you, beloved, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us. 7 For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you, 8 and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it; but with toil and labor we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you. 9 This was not because we do not have that right, but in order to give you an example to imitate. 10 For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. 11 For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. 12 Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. 13 Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.
BORN INTO POVERTY
From the moment you were born, you were in competition against the elements. From your first breath, Nature attacks you with cold, rain, dark, hostile animals, and even more hostile viruses and bacteria. And unlike other animals, we do not emerge immediately equipped with life and survival skills.
Fish and ocean mammals are born swimming. Calves and ponies are on their feet and walking within minutes. But human beings must be taken care of entirely. We are better compared to birds, who spend weeks in the nest doing nothing but eating. Humans do not leave the nest after a few weeks—circumstances may even demand a place in the nest into adulthood. Human beings are weird—we require more care for a longer time than any other species, and yet we are the most intelligent, most advanced, and most accomplished of all the species.
Parenting and education are a matter of preparing one to leave the nest and become self-sufficient, but this too is a complexity, for unlike the rest of the animal world, we don’t simply live off the land. We live in towns and cities, which means acquiring our basic needs—food, shelter, and support—requires that we find a niche in the complex human network we call cities, societies, and nations. There are many baby birds who have difficulty flying, and others who abandon the nest unable to fly. These fall to the forest floor and live on the ground, doing their best to scratch out a life—something to eat, shelter for the night, avoiding danger.
I initially intended to wow you with statistics, but I’ve thought better of that. It may be enough to know that of LA’s homeless population, 75% are unsheltered—flat out on the street. But that isn’t merely a poverty issue; it is a drug issue. The problems we see in cities like LA, San Francisco, and Seattle are predominantly drug-addiction-driven. And yes, that is in and of itself a kind of poverty.
Finding statistics—as seems to be the case with any major issue—is difficult because so much of the information is politicized. You can now find statistics to support whatever it is you’d like to think, so let’s just save time and go to the deeper water.
RELATIVE POVERTY
On the streets of Ventura, a man—apparently homeless—was panhandling passersby when a young man with hipster dreadlocks and surf shorts came by:
“Hey buddy, can you help me out? I’m broke!”
“You’re better off than me,” said the young hipster, “I’m forty thousand in debt from college!”
The homeless man looked like he wanted to say something but didn’t quite dare.
In three weeks we’ll look at the idea of economic justice and the whole issue of prosperity and income disparity, but that is not our interest today. Today, we’re simply focused on poverty and the truly poor.
What does it mean to be poor in the 21st century? Well, it depends where you live. In America, though there is no reason for anyone to starve to death, no reason for anyone to be naked for clothing, and no reason for anyone to die in the streets for lack of care, it still happens. We are the wealthiest society the planet has ever seen. Our poorest poor are financially better off than 85% of the rest of the world.
The U.S. Poverty line is around $12,000 per year, which remains in the top 15% of world income. To be broke in America is still to be in the top 15% worldwide.
The median poor family with children in the United States lives in an air-conditioned home with three color televisions, cable or satellite TV, a DVD player, a video game system, and a computer, as well as a refrigerator, an oven, a microwave, and a coffee maker, according to data from the U.S. Department of Energy. Almost 75% own a car or truck and about a third have two or more. Some 42% own their home.
It’s not the same throughout the world. The top 10 poorest countries are in Africa. Central African Republic, Burundi, The Congo, Liberia, Malawi—all have a per capita income below $1000 per year. That’s twelve times less than America’s poverty line.
All this just to say that poverty is relative.
MOTHER THERESA
Mr. Theresa, when meeting in Calcutta with a group of India’s wealthiest patrons, spoke from Matthew 25— “Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked? And when did we see you sick or in prison?” —and she added:
“Come give them some of your love and your time. They are not starving for food, but for love. They are not naked for clothing, but for dignity. Their prison is isolation and loneliness. Don’t give your money—not today—but give them attention, give them your self.”
The poor are poor for being liked. They are poor for having someone—anyone—who thinks they’re wonderful.
Why else do they—or we—have dogs? The impoverished are those who are poor for dignity—those who feel their own lives are worthless with no value whatsoever.
RELATIVE VS. REAL
When I was in eighth grade, I remember feeling something like shame because I had to wear canvas Converse to play basketball instead of leather Adidas. If white, Chuck Taylor high tops were good enough for my dad to play basketball in every day, they were good enough for me, said he. We weren’t poor, but my dad was a cheapskate—a skinflint—and I suffered the indignities of poverty because I didn’t get the shoes I wanted. That’s America—we’ve raised the bar on relative poverty so high that we have full bellies and luxurious roofs over our head—high tech, 24-hour entertainment—but can still complain that we are underprivileged.
I was a spoiled suburbanite, and like most spoiled Americans, remained blind to my own spoiled-ness for many years.
What helped me more than anything was church. While I grew up attending healthy, relatively wealthy, Presbyterian churches, I always heard the call to care for the poor of the world. In worship, in Sunday School, in youth groups, and even in choir.
When I entered ministry and worked with youth, I discovered the most marvelous secret I could imagine; namely, that caring for the poor is the best antidote to the spoiled, suburban lifestyle.
ANTIDOTE TO SPOIL
First Presbyterian Church of Edmond, Oklahoma had a large youth group. All told, I had between 200 and 300 active youth in my purview. Programming was always a challenge. These included some of Oklahomas wealthier families. I assure you, it is much easier to do ministry to middle class and poor youth than it is richer kids!
One of my first responsibilities was preparing for the annual ski trip to Colorado. It was most popular—sold out every year with a waiting list—it was well known throughout Edmond. What a waste of time! Wealthy and wealthy-ish kids equipped to the hilt in pricey ski equipment on an expensive vaca to the even more affluent Breckenridge, there to be surrounded by people with more wealth, more luxuries—all to the effect of raising the bar of expectation and entitlement. I was miserable. My “spiritual” programming fell on deaf ears as the tired-out skiers sipped cocoa with no interest in anything of the spirit. I had even formulated options—a plan B and plan C—in anticipation of the varying moods for the evenings, but to no avail.
When we returned to the church and I announced there would be no more ski trips, the response was negative in the extreme. Some parents called for my head—they had looked forward to this professional babysitting service each year—but I was resolved—I would rather quit than babysit affluent teenagers again.
Instead, I told them they had to raise the same amount of money, but we were going to start a new ministry among the poor of Nueva Laredo, Mexico. We were going into the border town slums and work with the locals to build school rooms for the children. I promised them the greatest week of their lives. They laughed. I had to pull teeth to get even a dozen kids to go and eventually padded out the trip with nine adults. The Senior Pastor looked down his nose at me like I was a total failure. He reminded me more than once of how 75 kids had gone skiing the year before.
We raised the money, and we went as givers, expecting to find degeneracy and danger, with us as at least a piece of the solution. What we found was virtue, joy, and a healthy community.
There in the colonias, we worked on the school from sun up to sundown, returning each night to sleep on the floor of a fellowship hall in Laredo. Though the work was hard, we had no showers, few tools, and the wind was often strong and filled with dust.
The spiritual program was simple: a plain sheet of paper which said: “Today I saw Christ in the following faces.” That’s it. At the end of day one, there was griping, complaining, and people missing the conveniences of home. No one knew what to do with the sheets; they were tired and grumbly.
At the end of day two, they perked up. They filled out their sheets. By days three and four, they were filling out 3, 4, or 5 sheets.
The colonias, though poor, were not degenerate. The people were kind, the children were happy, and the work was a blessing to all. Kids who had no real idea why they were going there came to life. The cheerleader who couldn’t do her hair or wear makeup became a great friend to the younger guys who were far beneath her league. The adults, too, sprung to life, surprised at the power and impact of the project.
After the last day of work, everyone got to take a shower in Laredo. We put on clean clothes and went out for Chinese food. I had never seen these people happier.
On the way back from dinner, driving through unsavory Laredo neighborhoods toward the church, I had a transcendent moment. Here I was, nearly 30, in a beat-up, unreliable church van full of high schoolers, driving through a crummy town during spring break. I thought, “Why is this my life? Shouldn’t I be married with a couple of kids living in the suburbs driving an SUV? Did I earn two degrees to be doing this?” I don’t know where this came from, but I asked the kids in the van: “You could have been anywhere this spring break—Padre Island, Breckenridge—if you could be anywhere you wanted to be right now, where would you be?”
The posh cheerleader was the first to answer. “Nowhere but here,” she said, “this has been the best week of my life.” The others nodded and chimed in: “Yes, this is the best!” And, weird as it sounds, it was my best as well. Who knew that Heaven would look like Laredo, Texas?
Everyone realized the same thing: we did not travel to Nueva Laredo to help the poor; we went there for the poor to help us. That is the reality: we meet the face of Jesus Christ in the faces of the poor. He waits for us there.
SEEK HIM THERE
Are you hungry to meet Jesus? Do you feel he is at a distance? Would you like to be closer and feel his nearness again? He is waiting for you and he longs for you to see his face. He is eager for you to know and feel his blessing.
Seek him among the faces of the poor and you will see him again and again.
He will meet you when you visit someone in the hospital. He will open your eyes when you give positive attention to someone who is lonesome. He will touch and heal your dissatisfied heart when you abandon the world of excesses—of all the pointless stuff that surrounds and smothers us—and seek to give instead of take.
No Christian should be seen as a taker. All Christians must become givers, or else we risk defaming Christ.
The text says it best:
do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be. †
“LGBTQIA, etc."
“LGBTQIA, etc.” sermon by Noel Anderson at First Presbyterian Church of Upland September 22, 2019
It used to be that polite society was characterized by nice people who would not talk about sex, politics, or religion in public—perhaps not even at a dinner party. I’m going to do all three at once, with only an added suggestion that America might be well improved were it to reinvent the virtue of modesty for itself. Some things should only be discussed by adults behind closed doors(children in another room). Some things don’t need public airing at all, but we are living at the opposite pole for now.
Romans 1: 20-23; 26-27
20 Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; 21 for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools; 23 and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.
26 For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.
What the text does/not mean
Romans 1 suffers abuse. To be brief I’ll say it has been used by otherwise well-meaning preachers to say that because of sexual sin, God is judging the world. Or because of homosexuality, God allows nations to decline into ruin. But this is putting the cart before the horse.
The sin addressed in Romans 1 is the same sin addressed throughout the Bible; namely, the failure to acknowledge the Lord as God. Idolatry—both literal and ideological—is the mother of all other sins. Because we fail to acknowledge God and fail to serve him, our world is broken.
To make very short work of it, Scripture is clear and unequivocal in calling homosexuality and other sexual variations “sin.” There’s no reasonable doubt to this, though scholars have sought to lawyer-out the wording in the past fifty years or so. The Jews despised nudity and called the Gentiles “dogs” (not the good kind, like mine) for their ways. The early church fathers—most of them Greek or Roman—were explicit in condemning homosexual behavior, which was part and parcel of their cultural background.
There is no way to shoehorn something like a blessing or condonation into Scripture, but it hardly matters: we are all sinners, all broken.
I. BROKENNESS
My first point is an easy one to miss and it is most important: we are all broken. We live in a fallen world—a sin-stained cosmos that slides toward death—and we are all so deep in the brokenness that none should dare to say, “I am perfectly whole and well.” To say that is to say, “I am righteous and beyond flaw.”
To claim righteousness is to side with the Pharisees against Jesus. We don’t want that; we are honest about our brokenness and confess it freely. In sin, we are all more alike than different.
This extends to sexuality as well. Inside, you may think, “Well, there’s nothing wrong with me! I’m straight—been straight all my life—no problems here!” but I think this is less than honest—it is reduced and oversimplified. If you give a bit more thought to your inner life and your…reproductive instincts, you know that you are less than perfect. Brokenness manifests itself in every model marriage and every human body.
We live in a unique time. The so-called Sexual Revolution of the 60s and 70s initiated an unprecedented explosion of self-expression, particularly in regard to sexuality. Although last 100 years has seen more scientific research into sexuality than ever, it is still in its infancy, historically speaking. There is still much we don’t know and understand. Human sexuality still contains an enormous amount of mystery and we should approach all our discussions about it with humility.
The Sexual Revolution, at its cutting edge, has given us a cultural movement which adapts the acronym LGBTQIA: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual.
This is meant to cover the panoply of sexualities, particularly “queer” which includes dozens of variations on sexual attraction and gratification.
My personal take: I don’t think God cares what excites or arouses a person. Our brokenness runs deeper than we know, and I don’t think most people on the rainbow spectrum have any idea why they feel the way they do. Let’s be clear here: we do not and cannot hold people responsible for what they feel. The brokenness of this world means we all experience bumps, bruises, blessings, and abuses such that none of us can absolutely say why we are the way we are.
We cannot and must not judge feelings or longings whose origins are beyond our knowledge. Yes, we can and do judge sexual behaviors—we’re culturally unanimous about rape, pederasty, and incest—but it is only shooting the wounded to attack people for having those longings.
I was not married until I was 45 years old. In my singleness, I was chaste (or chased, but not too much) until marriage. Though resolutely heterosexual (whatever that means), my church received a fairly steady stream of gay men. I’m sure many just presumed: “40 and single? Definitely gay!” I came to know several gay men who love Jesus and who sought to make him first and foremost in their lives. Not one of these gay men would say—as many straights do—“I am whole, complete, and perfectly healthy just as I am!” in fact, every one of them acknowledged their lives were chock-full of brokenness.
We all live with differing degrees of brokenness and that makes us all more alike than different. We are all like the Island of Misfit Toys from Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.
We have much to agree upon. We are all against violence, abuse, and mistreatment of anyone because of their sexual orientation. We all defend one another’s right to pursue wholeness as we follow Christ. And we should be agreed that the Body of Christ receives all who trust in Him, no matter what particular brand of brokenness they bring to the table.
The issue is difficult to talk about for many reasons, but this is nothing new. It has always been a touchy subject.
II. SILENCE-SILENCE
25 years ago, the gay liberation group ACT UP made “Silence means death” their motto. The idea was that if you did not come out and “speak your truth,” you are enabling the oppression of other lgbtqia people..
How the world has changed! Today, there is little of that silence, but another silence
That silence has ended, but led to another; namely, the right to dissent and/or disagree. How the pendulum has swung!
If you are not rallying for the cause and utterly supportive, you are on the verge of being accused of homophobia, which can vilify you, even cause you to lose your job, etc.
It’s like Nebuchadnezzar’s statue: when they strike up the band and raise the rainbow flag, we are expected to bow down and show every respect. We may feel afraid to speak an opposing word—even one that is reasonable and well-grounded in our faith or Scripture—for fear of being labelled “hateful.” Is there anything more…well, offensive to a Christian than to call her hateful? When love is our central virtue and highest calling, doesn’t it smart terribly to hear that word hateful?
Part of the problem is that the Church has been slow on the uptake. The Sexual Revolution careened forward and American Culture has fallen in line. Meanwhile, the Church remained mostly silent (because we are either shy or modest), and, in effect, found solace in burying our heads in the sand hoping the libertine world would somehow get over it.
I wonder how history may have been different if the Church had led the way in discussing sexuality openly and pastorally?
What happened instead is unfortunate: sexuality became fiercely politicized.
III. politicized
It has become difficult to have conversations about sexuality without immediate polarization. Most of the mainline Protestant denominations have split over sexuality.
It has become so politicized the rational discourse fails before the juggernaut ideology of progressive activism. It is even hard to gather information, since most sources are affected by the polarization. As we other things we’ve mentioned in this series, it is easy to find whatever information you like to suit your present biases.
Politics have favored sexuality as an identity issue. Sexuality is not just one of very many facets of humanity, but it becomes the center of one’s self, selfhood, and place in society. This, too, is difficult to work with, because it disallows certain questions being asked and expects public alignment beyond any right of dissent.
There are aspects that are most difficult for many people because they violate common sense (I don’t mean the people are not to be taken most seriously, but under the immunity of their cause/identity, they can get away with ideological murder).
I am 6’5”, but you need to know, I’m really a short guy inside. Understand me (don’t laugh!): I was the youngest in a family of six by six years, which means my parents and siblings all towered over me during all my significant, formative years. My family is tall anyway—the runt is 5’9”, which I wasn’t until fourteen-year-old—so I grew up like Jack the Giant Killer, surrounded by far taller people. So: I am really a short guy and expect everyone else to treat me accordingly. In fact, I have come to self-identify as Napoleon Bonaparte, so if you don’t mind, from now on, you shall all speak only French to me—anything else constitutes an unforgivable offense.
Forgive me for slipping into snark mode.
The politicization only increases tension among differing opinions. As for Christians, we’ve long been seen as the judgmental ones with pointy fingers shouting: “You’re wrong, wrong, wrong!” It never does any good.
It kills me to say this, but the Church has lost all moral authority in America. Moral authority in our time is established by some level of victimization or oppression. If you have such mark you have access to the moral high ground. But if you’re a God-fearing Christian and churchgoer—you are the enemy.
The Church is back on its heels in a defensive posture, desperately and ineffectively trying to say that we are the loving ones, the followers and witnesses of a loving God.
We have become the enemy. We are self-righteous repressives with judgmental hearts and bellies full of Chick-fil-a.
What we need to do, my sisters and brothers, is become much better enemies.
IV. Beyond SNARK
Scripture is our authority. Many things constitute sin, but—hear me on this—we don’t have to be the ones who point out the sins of others! It doesn’t work anyway. It is no good.
The problem is that we love “speck picking.” 85-90% of what we call journalism and the media are forms of professional speck-picking. I confess, I love speck picking, and have for too many years. I confess as well that I want to grow beyond speck picking, cynicism, and editorial snarky-ness. I need to get beyond the need to be right, and I suspect a lot of you are with me.
Christians all would do well to evolve out of the need to be right in order that we focus on what helps and heals. We need to move from being right to being helpful.
Yes, you’re free to disagree with pop culture. Yes, you’re free to dissent from the progressive newspeak if you like, but being a Christian is not about self-establishment; it is about lowliness and service.
V. A BETTER CODE
I recommend a simple prescription to guide our acts and attitudes in our changed world. Two words:
HUMILITY
KINDNESS
No, we’re not saying “everything goes,” but it is neither your job nor mine to be picking specks out of the eyes of our LGBTQIA, etc., brothers and sisters and others.
We want LGBTQIA people here, in this congregation, around us and with us—all who are willing to acknowledge that Jesus is Lord and all who are willing to place the trust of their heart and soul in Him belong with us.
We all, in the midst of different kinds of brokenness, seek to be remade by the Holy Spirit into the image of Christ.
The specific kind of brokenness does not matter. What does matter is our willful brokenness—our utter submission—before His rule, His reign, and His kingdom—which is our Heaven.
None of us gets in on our own terms, but only on Christ’s terms, which is grace. We all need and want to be helped and equipped in our spiritual walk. We are all alike—more alike than different.
Let’s not call out one another’s brokenness. Neither do we celebrate anyone’s PRIDE, for pride is that which keeps us from admitting our brokenness before God and one another.
Sexuality is a “century problem”—it won’t be worked out in our lifetime. It will take 100 years or more.
As pride and error go hand in hand, so should truth and humility. We need to be seen as humble and kind. We need to trust in God to reveal his truth in his time. We must seek to be useful and helpful rather than right.
Finally, I want to challenge all the identity movements across the board. Before we were in Christ, we did not truly know who we were—specifically, Whose we were—and so we needed to construct identities for ourselves that enable us to cope, function, and empower ourselves. Christianity is beyond that.
At that baptismal font, not only do we die to ourselves and self-service, but anything we are or think ourselves to be—all of the clever self-identifications we have constructed—all dissolve in that font.
All “identities” are dissolved in the waters of baptism. We are simply “Christ’s” and nothing else matters. There is no other identity. We are not straight Christians, black or white Christians, gay or straight Christians—we are simply Christians. We belong to Christ and find our identity in belonging to him and serving—in humility and kindness—in his name. †
“IMMIGRATION”
Leviticus 19: 33-34
33 “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. 34 You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
Romans 13: 1-3
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval.
CITIZENSHIP
I am an American citizen because I happened to be born in Spokane, Washington. I did nothing to earn it, deserve it, merit it—it is an accident of birth that I am an American. I have friends that have come to America and have become citizens. These friends went to classes, studied, and had to learn American history (and probably know a few things that I don’t know). And before they were confirmed as citizens they had to take an oath: the oath of citizenship. They see their citizenship as something that had to be earned.
In the ancient world, if you wanted to be a citizen of the city of Athens you appeared before the elders and they would ask, What are you going to do to make Athens a better city? You had to demonstrate that you would do something to improve Athens and by that they either would or would not confer citizenship.
This country has an oath—a citizenship oath of allegiance and I want to read it to you:
I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom of which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.
That is pretty powerful stuff and I’ve never had to say it. I know plenty of people born in this country—citizens—who might even disagree with much of what’s in there. I do not. I think it’s a fairly beautiful statement. And it gives me a kind of respect for the people that have renounced their citizenship in another country to become Americans. You have to love this country to be able to submit yourself to the words of an oath like that.
Our issue today is immigration and I should start it off by connecting it with last week, because the media perception of this issue has made it difficult for us to talk about. The way the media has mis-represented or spun statistics (depending on which station or website you prefer) makes it hard for us to get real information.
I’ve been swamped in reading about immigration over the past few weeks, and I want to present at least a few of the basic statistics from the last century.
In the first decade of the1900s—over 8 million people immigrated to the USA. The numbers were up to the 20s were mild—8 million, 6 million, 4 million. In the 1930s, restrictions were placed on immigration, but that’s not the main reason why the numbers were so down. They didn’t grow because of the Great depression—there were too few available jobs. Generally the immigration has historically followed the availability of labor and paying jobs. Up until the 50s the overwhelming majority of immigrants were from European countries—Germany, Italy, and Ireland with the largest numbers. Before that, in the 18th and 19th centuries, most immigrants came from Europe as well. The slave trade brought people by force, which is not the same thing as immigration, but we’ll discuss that later in this series.
NATION OF IMMIGRANTS
I had four grandparents, but I only met one of them and he died when I was four. I often feel robbed for not knowing my grandparents. Of the four of them, none was born in the United States. Two were born in Sweden and two were born in Germany. They came here and they took those oaths somewhere alone the line. My grandfather immigrated through Canada. He learned how to do architecture and building construction at the YMCA in Ottawa and made his way down to Spokane, worked on the railroad and became a builder and an architect.
John F. Kennedy wrote a book and the title of it says it all: A Nation of Immigrants. There is no one here who is truly native. If you go back several thousand years the Native Americans came over the Bering Straits from Russia, through Alaska, and down into North and South Americas, so you can say even they were all a kind of immigrant. And there is absolutely no use, no good, no value, no virtue whatsoever an anti-immigration mindset. To say we—“America”—wants no immigrants is not something anyone anywhere on the spectrum can credibly say. No one is absolutely against immigration other than a complete idiot.
We are a nation of immigrants and we do believe in immigration, but there’s a lot of differences worth considering. Part of the problem in our discussions is that we have over-reactions which are fed by the media. The media presents partial facts and partial information and gets people inflamed. This is what drives me nuts about America right now. Politically we are so divided. We are so divided Washington can’t get much of anything done because every thing a Senator or Congressman says or does is plastered on Twitter and subject to the criticism of trolls in the comments. It is hard to get anything done. It’s hard to believe there’s any common ground because the perception is that we are a country of all far-right or far-left.
THE MEDIA CIRCUS
The media perception seems to stoke aggression. It depends upon it because aggression leads to ratings. The down side of this is that our entire political discourse is being reduced to something like the Springer Show—people yelling at each other in short sound bites on TV; people protesting or on one side or the other and totally caricaturing the opposition. It is becoming hard even to discuss what we hold in common.
There is lots of common ground but it can be hard to see. The media so forces different positions into their extremes so we don’t recognize moderates anymore. You don’t get air time for being a moderate. You don’t get airtime for seeing the virtue on both sides. You get airtime for being radicalized on one side or the other. And it also polarizes the different sides because soon enough one side is critical of people in their own camp because, “She’s liberal but she’s not liberal enough.” And “He’s conservative but he’s not a real conservative—he’s not conservative enough.” And so this is the act—this is the language and the grammar of division. It’s a strict judgmentalism by the people sitting on the couch looking at the screen. And it gets translated online and in polls. And the media love it because…well, come on, who wants to watch the McNeil-Lehrer report? Who wants to watch the Firing line? Nobody wants to see the quiet, dispassionate, intelligent development of a full argument. They want to see headline language slung back and forth by angry people losing their cool. And that’s what we get and that’s what’s out there. That is the main stream out of the fire hose of the media.
We’ve turned politics into the Springer Show or a football game—a bowl game or a soap opera or somehow all of those things combined. We are expected to invest an inordinate amount of emotional energy into a side and to have an identity based on that side. It dumbs us down as well.
FINDING INFO
Immigration has been an issue from the very beginning of this country because this country had lots of English people come over and others from Europe. Thomas Jefferson addressed it at one point very early:
The first consideration in immigration is the welfare of the receiving nation. In a new government based on principles unfamiliar to the rest of the world and resting on the sentiments of the people themselves, the influx of a large number of new immigrants unaccustomed to the government of a free society could be detrimental to that society. Immigration, therefore, must be approached carefully and cautiously.
Who was he talking about? The French! Because after the French revolution they started to immigrate here in large numbers and Jefferson was afraid of their crazy, French…craziness [anarchy] from the French Revolution. He didn’t want guillotines in Washington DC.
I have some statistics from 2018—as recent as I could find—but I’ve been reading all week and there’s no way to compile it all. The funny thing is that even among all the experts there are differences in basic data. This is certainly a source of division: you and I could both study it for a month and sit down and be absolutely at odds, because I could say, “Where did you get your information?” “But I got my information here; is my information better than yours?” So this is a hard thing: it’s hard to get good information because it has all become so politicized.
So what I present is roughly accurate: Right now, living in America we have 42 million foreign-born people. And of that 42 million, 20 million are American citizens. They have taken that vow and made that proclamation or been otherwise naturalized. Of the remaining 22 million there are roughly 11 million residing legally. These are people from other countries that live here, work here, who have visas, and they go back home or may find a way to stay. But 11 million are here legally.
Residing illegally there are 11 million at present. 11 million living in the country not according to American law. And I have to say this in terms of common sense thinking. We believe in immigration. We believe that people should come to this country. We believe that America should be a place where people under oppression can find asylum. We believe that this should be a place where those who are running from a country under a severe push can be pulled and drawn to America. All the statistics have shown that immigration has been very good for America—good for our economy and good for our American character and soul.
Throughout the 20th century there were several times when curbs were put on immigration because of large numbers that were immigrating all at one time. If too many come at one time, it can overstress normal operations. Remember the Mariel Boatlift of 1980? 125,000 Cubans all at once came into Florida. One result was that the wages of Florida’s middle class dropped by 30 percent. It was temporary, but it was a real blow to the people. So some of the anti-immigration sentiment came from the people who were making two-thirds of what they’d made before. There are definitely good reasons to monitor and regulate immigration. But we welcome people in as we can. We believe in that.
And is it not just common sense to say that if we’re going to be a country we should be able to count who’s coming in and going out? Shouldn’t we have some idea of who is here legally and not? We also have policies to provide ways for those who are here illegally to be made legal. We can and do make that happen. Even so, the lines are awfully, terribly long.
CLOGGED COURTS
Right now if you apply for asylum—say you live in Pakistan and you’re being persecuted for your Christian faith and you apply for religious asylum—the process takes roughly 1000 days. It’s closer to 3½ years. A thousand days! That’s a long time to wait while you’re being persecuted. And right now—in 2018 alone—the asylum waiting list is 300,000 deep. That’s people just waiting to get the next round of paperwork. It’s really, really clogged up.
And in our courts in 2018 there are pending deportation cases—for people who are here illegally and awaiting a judgment—690,000 deep. That’s 690,000 cases just still sitting in the courts trying to make their way through or looking at appeal. It is enormous. That is almost as many people as immigrated through the 1930s—the whole decade. There are hundreds of thousands of people just waiting to hear something, and it’s not fair. Wouldn’t you—if you were one of those people who applied for asylum and were waiting and had a court case pending—wouldn’t you want some kind of security while you wait? Even something like an in-transit sticker for your car? Just something to say “in process”?
In the meantime, with the country in such division, there remains the mixed clash of frustrations. Some of that frustration is a feeling that we have a state or a state government that can’t do its job. We’re happy to have people coming here but can the government just do what it’s supposed to do? Count them? Get their name down or maybe have them take the oath and make them citizens—can they do their job?
On the other extreme (and I mean extreme) there are those who say we shouldn’t have borders at all. Let’s just all be one people. I would prescribe for those people to watch some 9-11 videos to remember why we do have to watch. Everyone in our government has a responsibility to defend the people of this country and defend our borders. They as well take vows to that effect.
COMMON GROUND
But aside from the extremes, most of us are somewhere in the middle. And depending on what we’ve read or what we’ve seen on cable news today our opinion may move—our sentiments may shift, if only slightly. The hard thing about all this is how tough it is to get the full picture when all the discussions have been politically spun or otherwise dumbed-down. It makes it hard to locate the center—any center—that common ground position which we require to get things done.
So we have 11 million illegal? We have laws—what do the laws mean? Can we regulate 11 million people? We’re in sad shape. The public discussions become dumbed-down and over simplified; the responses merely political responses. Part of the frustration of this whole discussion is that no one seems willing to talk about things at a deeper level. I think of the song we sang earlier: You call me deeper still, deeper still, into love.
What we have instead is a national discourse that brings a complex problem only down to the level of politics and fights about it there. But isn’t there a deeper level? Aren’t there other levels to talk about this? I sure hope so, because I suspect we seek a Christian perspective, a Christlike and God-honoring position. But part of the problem is that people on the political level are trying to shoe-horn Jesus into their position.
SHOEHORNING JESUS
I saw this billboard and it really caught my eye—I was a stranger and you welcomed me. They’ve crossed out the word stranger and written in the word immigrant. Perfect example of what’s called eisogesis—writing between the words. They didn’t like the word “stranger” so they crossed it out and wrote in “immigrant.” That’s abusing scripture. You can say no, it is a creative interpretation—fair enough. Yes, Jesus would want us to welcome the stranger. Does that include immigrants in violation of the law? Perhaps, but don’t shoe-horn your opinion into an interpretation of Scripture. Let the text speak for itself. On the other side we have another meme—“But what would Jesus do about immigration?” And Jesus saying, “Remember even Heaven has a wall, a gate, and there’s an extreme vetting to get in.”
Another website I found contained an argument over whether or not Jesus was also an immigrant. Accompanying an illustration of Joseph with Mary and the infant Jesus on a donkey, they argued that Jesus was an immigrant as they all were forced to leave Bethlehem and emigrate to Egypt in fleeing persecution. One of the responses reminded them, yes, after obeying Roman law by going to Bethlehem for the census and then to Egypt which was also a Roman province. Asylum doesn’t demand breaking the law, in such a case.
LAW AND GOSPEL
So should we obey the law or simply deal with this as a people issue? Well that’s an either/or we shouldn’t make. I think there’s a both/and that’s a better way forward. What is the Christian view of immigration (if I daresay there is a Christian view)? Is there a Christian view?
I think we would try to get to that by saying something like “What would Jesus do?” And do we know what would Jesus do? I think we do. Jesus doesn’t care about state policies at all. I declare in His name and by the Word of Scripture: He doesn’t really care about what policy a state has. He doesn’t care if the country is pro immigration or against immigration (as are many countries in the world), but he cares about the people and he’s told us Christians — in whatever kind of culture, country of society we’re part of—what our role is. Our role is to feed the hungry, get water for the thirsty, heal wounds, show kindness, and love your neighbors. That is the law that is above every American law.
Does this mean: Well then, you absolutely must, if you’re a Christian, advocate for a policy that welcomes illegal immigrants unconditionally… No, it doesn’t mean that at all. That’s a false conclusion. It means that we look at this from a human point of view and from a Christ-like point of view. It says if we see somebody who’s hungry, we feed them. If we see somebody who’s thirsty, we give them water to drink. If we see somebody who’s hurting or suffering, we try to find a way to help. This is where both political sides in faith come together.
Disagreements remain over how to we solve this larger problem, and we won’t solve that in this congregation. But as long as there are people before us, as long as you in your circle and sphere of influence—and we together collectively in ours—encounter people who are hungry, we have a job. If people need help, we have a role. And we don’t answer to the United States government for that role. We do answer to the Lord God. Can we have a better perspective than the popular perspective? Isn’t there a deeper view than the merely political? Yes, there is, as long as we’re careful.
FANATIC & NOBLE
Finally, fanaticism. Fanaticism is that extreme, passionate, angry, aggression that characterizes much of politics. Fanaticism is only maintainable through reductionism. All fanaticism depends upon an over-simplification of reality. The fact is—and I’ll hold that Scripture proclaims this as well—is that the world is actually complex. We live in a society and in a world that is deeply, deeply complicated. Anyone trying to sell you a bill of goods or anyone that wants you to develop a great amount of passion for their cause is going to do so by putting a lens over reality and telling you it is all quite simple. It may be as simple as elevating one virtue and expecting that virtue to manage the whole complexity, but that is what a fanatic does. Fanatics simplify reality and sell you a dumbed-down version of reality.
This is not the noble life; not what we are called to. The noble life, a better way to live, requires that we live with some unresolved tensions. And this is hard for a lot of people. We prefer every problem solved. Isn’t it okay that there are some unresolved tensions? Can we manage to live with some unresolved tensions and yet be at peace? The theological world is full of this. We are Methodist Armenians and Reformed Presbyterians living together in this congregation. Does God choose us, or do we choose God? The answer is yes. We live with that tension. This is a little bit more what the noble life looks like. You and I don’t have to have the right answer. We have to do the right thing when it’s presented to us, but living in the complexity of the world is not a matter of holding a right position and saber-rattling. As with everything, you have people in your family whom you love dearly who, you feel, are absolutely wrong on issues X, Y and Z. Right?
CITIZENS ALL
This is also the People of God. We are a kinship. Our citizenship is not entirely of this world. In fact our primary citizenship is not of this world at all.
There is no alternative but to care for our neighbor and love our neighbor and put their needs up high. There is no Christian justification for saying I’m taking care of me and mine and forget everybody else—sorry. We are called to generosity. We are called to sacrificial love. What that looks like to each of us God shall put on our hearts.
I felt moved to do this and I don’t know how many of you are citizens of this country, how many of you are citizens of other countries, or how many of you might be here on extended visas and so on—and it doesn’t matter—but I just want to say to those that were born in this country, who never made the oath of allegiance: I would ask you to stand and say this with me, this oath of allegiance. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. If you want to just stand and not say it, that’s fine too, but for all who were born in this country who have never said this, I’d like us to say this together:
I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.
Now I would have everybody stand. We have a higher citizenship, a more important one, the higher law, the more necessary loyalty. So join me in our Apostles’ Creed:
I believe in God the father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate and was crucified, dead and buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the father almighty. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. 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. Amen.
That creed is our citizenship and in Christ there is no American and non-American. In Christ we are one body in many, many countries and nationalities, many statuses. That is our prior allegiance—it must be our number one. May God help us all solve these problems without getting bent out of shape doing so. And may we love across the aisle with those we disagree with, practicing kindness and humility in solving American problems and any problems God puts our way.
“FAKE NEWS (All the)”
Text: Ephesians 4: 11-16
All the news
“All the News that’s fit to print.” That used to stand in the banner of the New York Times with every issue. Which goes to show you, journalism has (or had) a moral compass.
It’s not about newspapers anymore; it’s about “the Media”—a vast array of information sources including diminishing papers, but dominated by cable TV and the internet.
The traditional role of the media can perhaps best be summed up by the BBC, whose working motto is to inform, educate, and entertain.
We can righty question what the balance is between these, and which tend to dominate in our time. Today, unlike any time in our history, news is everywhere, and fake news is the headline of the day.
Newspaper Love
Before I experienced the calling to ministry, I thought I would be a writer. I loved newspapers. I both high school and college I immersed myself in student publications. As a freshman I was a reporter, then the Entertainment Editor, where I amused myself and my friends with extremely snarky music and movie reviews. I wrote a humor column, which was my favorite hobby horse throughout college. As a sophomore, I rose to Managing Editor and was poised to become the Editor in Chief for my junior year, but it was not to be.
Of the 40 students associated with the newspaper, 38 signed a letter to the Publication Board advocating that I become the next Editor in Chief. The Publications Board saw it differently and appointed the two dissenters as the next Editor in Chief and Managing Editor. I was utterly crushed.
Yes, we had made lots of trouble. Yes, we had been threatened by the University with a potential lawsuit. Yes, in protest, we printed an issue with all the ads on the front page. But we also had tripled circulation of the paper extending it into greater Spokane. And yes, I had attended a Trustee dinner where I sat with one of the university’s most generous, multi-millionaire donors and bemoaned the decrepit state of the newspaper’s offices and outdated equipment, and how good it would be to have a dozen IBM Selectric typewriters rather than the WWII surplus tank models handed down for the past several decades. Yeah, that was probably the final straw.
After my defeat, one of the Jesuit teachers spoke some loving truth to me. “Noel, you seem to think there’s a toad under every stone.” “Yeah,” I said, “but I only need one to have a great issue of the paper!” But he was right, I had become filled with scrutiny and suspicion, which tends to fuel much of journalism. Scrutiny and suspicion—point and poke.
I have sentimental thought about my many late nights in the newspaper offices with the old, surplus typewriters. For me, and for the other editors, the paper was everything. It was voice, it was influence, and it was notoriety. I loved the writing, and it became my passion once I realized that there is no such thing as objective journalism.
Nothing Objective
Objective journalism is a myth. It was our motto. Our hero was Hunter S. Thompson, the inventor of so-called Gonzo journalism. Quote:
“So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here--not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.”
It’s true: there’s no such thing really as objective journalism; it’s only relatively objective at best. The moment information of any kind is put into narrative form, the writer—whomever it may be—exercises artistic discrimination over whatever details, words or phrases that will make it into the story.
Truly objective journalism would look like bullet point facts, but even then, someone exercises discrimination over which bullet points make the list, and which are listed above others, and how they are worded, etc.
All journalism is the exercise of personal preferences.
All journalism is political activism.
It’s all fake news.
To train myself to this fact, one of my weekly rituals was to gather a handful of papers every Sunday afternoon into a big stack. I’d have the Star, the National Inquirer, the New York Times, and usually a couple of others. I’d start with the Star and Inquirer so I would be outraged and appalled at the extremity of the spin and sensationalism. That same revulsion—as if I were reading a paper that a dog had confused for a toilet—carried over into whatever “real” newspaper I was reading. What is amazing is how often I had made it into the Times not even realizing it wasn’t still the Inquirer.
With TV journalism, you can experience the same odd feeling by watching Entertainment Tonight and then switching to Fox News or CNN. Inform? Educate? It’s mostly entertainment. Which means so much of what passes for news is merely entertainment.
This brings us to Fake News.
It’s all fake news
The term fake news was coined by a fake news show—the Daily Show on Comedy Central.
In the last election cycle an astonishing percentage of college students, when asked what was their news program of choice, answered the Daily Show.
The Daily Show is honest. They are fake news, they claim it. They are sketch comedy. Stephen Colbert and his Colbert Report was a wildly successful parody of FOX news that, while funny, managed to shape and influence a generation of people who had concluded that this was news enough for them.
Hip culture, in targeting conservative values and center/right Fox News, turned fake news into a real influencer.
One result of this has been the wholesale loss of trust in professional journalism. The days of Walter Cronkite and the dream of objective journalism is gone. What used to be the provenance of a handful of papers and 3 or 4 networks is now a vast and fragmented spectrum of networks and news sources, the credibility of each determined by the preferences of the viewer.
To many—perhaps most—fake news is simply all of those sources they don’t want to hear.
Journalism is in crisis. Newspapers are failing left and right.
President Trump exacerbated and highlighted this reality from the earliest Republican Debates. Personally, I was impressed with his perspective, which was spot on. After the debate, when confronted by a CNN correspondent, his comment was, “You guys had a big night.”
What Trump rightly understands is that all journalism is advocacy. CNN, FOX, msnbc, CBS, ABC, NBC—these are just companies—businesses—and Trump, unlike other candidates, only seems to think of these as competition. They’re all just businesses chasing the dollar (same as him). They have shareholders and profit margins to answer to. They are just businesses.
Trump is the first president—surely of many to come—who has not treated the press like high priests, but as competing businesses. His use of Twitter is questionable judgment, to say the least, but the Rubicon has been crossed. It’s now the way things are done. Thumbing his nose at the press corps, Trump has in effect declared, “Who says I need you? I can just go directly to the people myself.” And so he has, and so we are in a new era.
Where did we ever get the idea that our journalists are some kind of dispassionate, high priests of objective truth? They’re not. Unlike judges, doctors, policemen, or even politicians, they take no vows to defend the truth or serve the public honestly. They simply serve the needs and demands of their company businesses.
While in crisis, the media still wield enormous power. Another year of political debates stands ahead of us. Have you ever considered just how powerful the press is shaping who does and does not get into office? In presidential debates, who asks the questions? Who chooses the questions to be asked? To a large degree, the agenda—what criteria people use to choose their candidates and vote—is set by the press!
We have a proud myth in the States about good journalists—the noble warrior of truth who uncovers corruption and speaks the truth to power. Yes, we need those journalists—our country is built upon free speech and our freedom depends upon it—but how today can we return respect and honor to a network of businesses that has no moral center?
I suggest the Society of Professional Journalists finally, and in truth become a profession by having journalists and publishers make a vow of office, just like doctors, lawyers, and judges—something about serving the truth—something to protect every lowly journalist from business interests from above. Yes, there will still be lots of fake news sources out there, but as a nation, we’ll have separated the children from the adults.
As for you and me, I think it wise that we all read widely. Read news you disagree with. See if you find some good reason there, and follow your favorite news sources critically.
our perspective
As to what this all has to do with your and my growing in Christ and making Him known, and would call you to admit and be mindful of several things:
1. The Church must not be represented by any voice other than its own.
2. For Christians, Truth is neither malleable nor personalized.
3. Truth is not in question; it has been revealed decisively and finally.
4. We do not need to be told what to think, how to feel, or what to do.
5. We must practice humility and kindness as to all secondary truths.
6. We all have preferences, but we must refuse to be divided by them.
7. We must test and retest our own feelings and assumptions under God.
Our text makes it clear in verses 14-15:
We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,
Brothers and sisters, we need to be the adults in the room of this nation. We need to stand on, with, and for the revealed Word of God. Our voice has become a small one amidst the clamoring noise of the Information Age. We need to represent the still, small voice of our Lord. We would do well to be like the eye of the Hurricane—calm when all else around is in roiling turmoil.
Our witness demands that we live credibly.
We must seek to become more credible than our critics.
We must become more credible than our critics.
As for the noise around us, just remember:
It’s all fake news. Let none of us forget it! †
“JESUS JAZZ”
TEXT: PSALM 98
It’s Jazz Sunday! It has been said that the Blues is high school and Jazz is college. I love Rock and Roll, and everything I like about Rock and Roll is owing either to Blues or Jazz. Rock and Roll is probably Preschool or Elementary School. Actually Preschool would be punk rock . Or polka.
We’re going to talk about Jesus Jazz today. As we prepare to come to the table, I’m going to offer just a few thoughts about what Jazz is. And I so love Jazz. I’m a huge fan of some of the Jazz greats and especially those who practice improvisation and invention on the spot. I’m in awe of these musicians. I’ve been playing guitar for nearly 50 years, and I’m still awful. They say that 10,000 hours at a craft makes you an expert. Balogna! I’ve been playing 20,000 hours and I still feel lost with every lick. Yet I remain in great awe of people who play really, really well—Bob Summers among my heroes, of course. We’re going to look at Jazz and I will submit that it plays into what we do here every week. We have music and we give God praise.
So our text comes from Psalm 98. Listen and hear God’s word.
MUSIC STUFF
I’d like us to look at a couple of these verses again. In verses 4, 5, and 6, notice these instruments: the lyre, the trumpet. There are other instruments mentioned in the psalms—the trigon—what is that?. Psalm 33 is made for rock players because it says “play skillfully on the strings with loud shouts.” That sounds like Rock to me, but it isn’t just making noise for our own sake. It has a purpose: the praise and glorification of God.
Let’s go to the next two verses: I love these lines—deeply poetic and wonderful.
Let the sea roar and all that fills it.
Let the floods clap their hands and the hills sing together for joy.
The idea here is once God’s people acknowledge God as God and praise Him—that the whole Creation joins in. When we look at the world around us we can see all of nature struggling, stretching, and longing to send praise back to God—just for the gift of existence—just for being here.
Let the floods clap their hands—let the hills sing together for joy.
When we praise God we become participants and sharers in an enormous chorus of creation and we find ourselves becoming immersed in music that begins now and lasts eternally. And for this purpose—verse 9—it says that God is coming to judge. When it says this in the Old Testament—that he’s coming to judge the earth he will come with righteousness—remember that the Day of the Lord, Judgment Day, wasn’t bad news. On the contrary, It was most excellently good news. The judges were those who brought righteousness—who brought justice and goodness, wholeness, and peace. The longing for God to return was something that the people did with joy; something we, too, do with joy. We long for Christ’s return and we do so with great joy. That Great Day is not a fearsome day, not a frightful day—not for us. It’s going to be the most excellent day, and it is the source of our singing even now.
IMPROVISATION
Jazz is the unique American contribution to world music. There’s nothing more American—musically-speaking—nothing more American than Jazz. I’m sorry marching bands, they’ve got those in Europe. So Souza—you’re right out—kind of boring, frankly. Nazis had marching bands. (Okay, so I’m not Harold Hill, give me a break here, okay?) Jazz is wondrous and it is to us College and even Graduate School because it plays on that edge of constant invention. Ken Burns has a quote that I very much appreciate:
The genius of our country is improvisation and Jazz reflects that.
It’s our great contribution to the Arts.
Invention and innovation, beginning with imitation and then improvisation. And improvisation is the key to great Jazz. We need to talk about improvisation. It is something that doesn’t happen in all music. When most musicians play, you’ll notice they’re watching their scores and playing close to the script. In classical music, people sit down with their instruments and read the notes on the paper, and their role is to adhere to that script as precisely as possible. But with Jazz, we have that thing that happens when people go off-script. It is that amazing, marvelous, magical flight of the spirit among people can improvise and touch our souls.
PAN AND APOLLO
Mythically, there’s an old story about a contest between Pan and Apollo. Apollo played the lyre and Pan played the pipes. It is a musical contest. There are several difference s between these two characters, but some differences are more important than others. First of all, Apollo. Apollo was the son of Zeus and he is the golden boy, the first born, the straight-A student, the athlete, the one who did everything right, Apollo plays the lyre, and when he plays, he plays Classical music. And he plays perfectly—according to the notes—with great technique. When he plays, everybody says: There is a musician’s musician! He is wonderful, his playing perfection. He has mastered the instrument and the gods all marvel at his precision and technical talent. That’s Apollo.
Then there’s Pan. Pan, by the way, looks like our idea of the devil, you know—goat horns, pointy beard, the hooves—this is largely where we got the idea—our comic book idea of the devil. It’s from Pan—as in the word panic. And Pan, he didn’t play by the rules. He played against the rules. But when he played his pipes, the spirits came out from the trees and danced. Even the gods listening couldn’t help but swoon with his playing because it was so utterly charming. It captures their hearts. But Pan is kind of a bad guy—he doesn’t play by the rules, and so the gods always, always, always rule in favor of Apollo—even though you sense they actually like Pan’s music better. But they have to rule for Apollo because you can’t build a civilization on Pan. You have to build it on Apollo. You have to have rules.
THE CHAOS THAT ISN’T
While Jazz music may be closer to Pan than Apollo, there’s a lot more Apollo in it than people would recognize. People who don’t care for Jazz tend to hear Jazz improvisation and say, Ugh! It all just sounds like a mess! As though the musicians are just doing whatever and playin’ all over the place. Well, they are, but it’s not really a mess.
Jazz great, Miles Davis, says:
It’s not the note you play that’s the wrong note.
It’s the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.
That is what makes a great musician—one who can hit an experimental or accidental note—perhaps a note not in the normal scale—and yet redeem it with the next note. That’s genius—and that’s part of the art of improvisation.
Wynton Marsalis says of improvisation:
Jazz is not just, well, man this is what I feel like playing.
It’s a very structured thing that comes down from a tradition and requires a lot of thought and study. You can put a saxophone in my hand and I can’t improvise, ‘cause I don’t know the instrument. You can’t improvise until you’ve done your homework.
Art Tatum, a Jazz pianist, said this:
You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it!
Art Tatum one of the great Jazz pianists. You have to practice improvisation. Really? What sounds so free and loose and playful—how could it be that there’s all of this hidden structure in it? In short, it is hard, hard, hard to improvise. I have been trying for nearly 50 years to improvise. I ain’t close. Still fumbling away at it and looking for lots of help.
Dizzy Gillespie said this about improvisation:
It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.
So it isn’t just about playing the right notes or playing on the scales; it is about playing free and wild. It is about flying to the upper atmosphere with your music, but it’s also about knowing when to be silent and knowing what not to play.
COVENANT MUSIC
Jazz improvisation has something to show us today about the relationship between the Law and the Spirit in the Bible. We have the Old Testament with its rigid laws that must be adhered to note-by-note. And we have this marvelous, strange thing that happens at Pentecost where people speak in tongues and are going off-script. And Paul—Paul’s theology is largely about going off-script. And is that okay? Can we do that? Can we have a Jazz improvisation Christianity? I’m arguing yes, we can. We read in Romans 8 these words:
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you FREE from the law of sin and death.
The key word there is “FREE.” We are not bound to the Law. We are not bound to the old covenant. You must start with the rules and learn the scales to be a good Jazz musician (which is why I’ll never be a good Jazz musician). You have to know the scales and play them over and over. There are famous stories about people like Thelonious Monk and others who spent hours going over the scales, going over them in different keys, and hours and hours of practicing the scales. This is like you and me singing the alphabet to ourselves over and over. You have to have the basics nailed solid, backwards and forwards before you’re going to improvise worth a whit. A fool thinks he can improvise immediately, but no—it requires great background and much practice.
So we have the Law, the Old Testament, that is our background in righteousness. It is the Law, it is to us our scales, it is our ABC’s. But our life in Christ gives us a freedom to fly—to go into that upper atmosphere where we pursue the heart and the Spirit of Love, of Kindness, of Faith that can’t really be written into the rules in the same way. We are like both Pan and Apollo. Apollo, because the Law is still good and must be known. We still have to be able to play the scales. We teach our children what is righteousness and what is wrong. We learn from the Old Testament what it is that God requires of humanity and we also know where and when we have fallen short of the script. And like Pan we have to have some music coming out of our hearts.
There are guitarists I deeply and highly respect. Eddie Van Halen is an amazing technician. He flies all over the fingerboard like noone else—an amazing, amazing technician. But I have to say his compositions—the melodies and particular musicality of his lines—don’t do so much for me. On the other hand there are people who play very simply, like David Gilmour of Pink Floyd or Eric Clapton, whose lines, though simple and even slow, can make my heart soar. Bottom line? It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing. We’re looking for that inner element, that item of soul.
MUSIC FROM HELL
I wasn’t going to tell this story, but I have to. I have an image of hell, And it is of a band that came to Oklahoma—Edmond High School—and they were called the Foggy Mountain Boys or something like that. It was a bunch of guys from Arkansas or Missouri or Branson or something. And they all came and they were a big family band and they converged in the high school auditorium and everybody in my church was like, You gotta come! I’ll buy you a ticket. What I saw was one of my images of hell.
First of all, they had some of our high schoolers who from the school’s “Jazz choir” band open it up. These kids were all made up to look like they were from 40s—which the older folks loved. They sang songs dressed like adults, looking like adults, and I remember they sang (this was the first level of hell)—they sang Roll Over Beethoven but they sang it without any soul. It was awful! They whited it up and took out all the soul to this great rock song! I thought, “And how dare they sing Roll Over Beethoven! Both Chuck Berry and Beethoven have a lot more soul than this!” They blasphemed both Berry and Beethoven in a single stroke!Both these guys had to be turning in their graves! So to me this is hell—the semblance of faith without any of the soul.
And then the Foggy Boys, or whatever they were called, came up and they did three or four measures of every genre of music they could and milked the audience for applause the whole time. “And who remembers the Swing Era? C’mon people, put your hands together!” Put your hands together, they kept saying. I’m thinking, Aaaaghh, I don’t want to do this!
Music doesn’t work that way! Like our Jazz today, it just moves us. It’s supposed to have its own language. It’s supposed to speak to us with a language of its own. It’s supposed to speak to our heart and our soul.
HEART AND SOUL
With Pentecost I proclaim Pan is redeemed. Because what God gave to the Church was not another law to abide by, but his own Spirit. This means heart and soul and flight—that amazing thing we hear when someone like John Coltrane plays — that amazing , soulful, spiritual height. We—you and I—are given that same spirit by God.
We are all called to be able to do jazz improvisation, when it come to our faith. So how is the Christian Life like jazz, particularly like jazz improvisation? I’m going to suggest four ways. First of all, we learn the basics and practice the scales. Practice is key. We rehearse over and over and get it right.
As well, our Faith is something we “practice” the way a lawyer practices law. We practice the Faith. It is central to our life and we should be rehearsing ourselves in the scales of Faith, Hope, Love, Gentleness, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Self-Control with every day. We should work at it.
Secondly, we listen to the other players. The thing about great Jazz Musicians is that they don’t listen to themselves. But something marvelous happens when they’re listening to everybody else in the band and playing into that. And so we are not to experience our faith in the vacuum of solipsism and narcissism and selfhood, but rather in relationship with one another—with people in our family—brothers and sisters in the faith. We listen to the other players in order to tune our song correctly.
Thirdly, we walk by faith, not by sight. I say we play by faith, not by sight. The great musicians—they can go into the wilderness without knowing what note they’re going to play next. And you know something? They don’t need to know! They don’t need to have it written down at that moment. And the brilliant thing about that is that is the perfect analogy to living by the Spirit. We don’t know. We don’t go into the world with a script. People want a script but that’s not the way it works. We live by the Spirit.
If you are ministering to somebody in your family, or a friend, or in your neighborhood who is outside of the faith and relatively lost, Im not going to stick a Four Spiritual Laws pamphlet in your face and have you shove that under their nose. No. You have to play. You have to play and there’s nothing more frightening to a mediocre musician like myself than, when playing with a group and they give me the look that says, "Okay, your time to solo—GO!”—and being able to just relax and play into that. You know something, I can do it with the Faith—I can’t do it with guitar yet, but that day is coming.
In faith we have to play by the Spirit. It means that we step out, simply trusting in the Spirit to work though us. We have to improvise, live in the moment trustingly and find the notes.
And fourthly, we play Soli Dei Gloria (which is how Bach signed every piece). This means To the Glory of God Alone. Another quote from Miles Davis:
Me and my band, we don’t play for audiences ever. We play for the music. We’re playin’ the music. The fact that a lot of people want to watch us play, that’s secondary.
I’m thinking, that’s it! That’s exactly right. We don’t play for any audience other than the Lord. And what we do, what we offer—what comes out of our heart and our spirituality and our life are Love, Faith, Hope—all of those things—and we give them as a form of praise. As we clap our hands with the floods and sing with the mountains—that is what our life is like. We are participating in the music, in the song that God has woven us into.
John Coltrane said it very well:
My music is the spiritual expression of what I am—my faith, my knowledge, my being… When you being to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups… I want to speak to their souls.
“I want to speak to the souls”—and so should we. As we come to the table we are fed for that. It is Jesus Jazz that we are seeking. It is Jesus Jazz at the table that we are seeking to be fed for. The good news, brothers and sisters, is we have it as a promise from God. God says: Open up, I will give you what you need. If you want to improvise, I’ll give you the Spirit. If you want to play off the script, follow me. It’s good news and it’s so much fun. It begins now and ends never.