OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

I had a friend in college who was visited one night by a couple of evangelical Christians. I think many of us were visited one night in college by a couple of evangelical Christians. They kept pestering him to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior. They kept badgering him, “Don’t you want to get to heaven? Don’t you want to get to heaven? Don’t you want to get to heaven?” Finally he said, “Will you guys be there?” They said, “Well, yes, we will.” He said, “Then, well no,” he didn’t want to get to heaven.

Does heaven exist? If heaven exists, what is heaven like? Is heaven somewhere over the rainbow? Does God exist? If God exists, is God a white-bearded man sitting on a cloud someplace in heaven? Where is heaven? Is it out among the stars? Is it on Neptune? Where is heaven? What will heaven be like for us?

I heard a preacher say once that in heaven we’ll have the body we had when we were eighteen. But I’ve heard others say, “No, we won’t have that, we’ll be disembodied spirits.” I guess we’ll kind of be like Casper the friendly ghost in heaven.

I like to watch the Oscars, and the Emmys and the Grammies, all the awards shows really, and you always hear about the after party. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are going to this after party and Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes will go to that after party. Is heaven the after party of life?

I’ve heard Christians say that heaven will be one eternal worship service, where we’ll all sing praise hymns to God. But I know people who don’t even like to go to church for one hour a week. To have heaven be an eternal church service with praise hymns to God, that wouldn’t be heaven for those folks; that would be hell. Now I don’t know anybody in this congregation who believes in hell. Except me. I believe in hell whenever I’m opening a CD. I believe that there’s got to be a special place in hell for whoever created packaging for CDs.

Steve Jobs died a few months ago. Steve Jobs was a genius, of course. Brilliant! Created Apple Computers. If it wasn’t for Steve Jobs, I don’t think I’d ever use a computer. I can’t really use a PC; I’d rather type on my grandmother’s old Royal black typewriter. But I can use an Apple, my Macbook Pro. He created ipads and ipods and iphones. He’s been called the Thomas Edison of his day. But I think people have that backwards. I think that Thomas Edison was the Steve Jobs of his day. I think if Steve Jobs had lived, ten years from now he would have created a flying car.

Steve Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a few years ago. His doctors wanted to immediately operate, to cut out the cancer. But he wanted to try to cure himself, so he ate lots of fruits and vegetables, and whole foods. And then he went back to the doctors nine months later. The cancer had grown and spread. They got rid of it then. Some say that if the doctors had operated when they had originally wanted to, Steve Jobs might be alive today. We don’t know.

A few years ago, after he knew he had cancer, he gave the commencement address at Stanford University. He said these fine words, “Your time is limited; so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” I don’t know about you, but I’ve tried to do that over my life. When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be Bret Maverick, the James Garner character in the old Maverick series. Then when I was a little older, I wanted to grow up to be Jim Rockford, the James Garner character in the old Rockford Files series. (I think there’s a pattern here.) But now I humbly submit, I kind of like being…me. I hope you like being you. I just want to be the best me that I can be. I hope you want to be the best you that you can be. I think Steve Jobs was the best Steve Jobs that he could be.

At his memorial service, his sister, Mona Simpson, an author, described Steve Jobs last moments. She said he looked at his loved ones. Then he looked past his loved ones in the distance and said, “OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.” What was that? What did he see, if anything? Did he see heaven?

I sometimes get the feeling that if I could reach out just beyond my grasp I could kind of split open the real world and see the spiritual world. If I could just reach a little farther. That sounds a little crazy, I know, but is that what Steve Jobs saw? Did he see beyond the real world into the spiritual world? Did he see what the Nicene Creed calls (and I don’t usually quote the Nicene Creed), but did he see what the Nicene Creed calls “the seen and the unseen.” Did he see the unseen that none of us can see? I don’t know. It’s a mystery.

A couple years ago, one of my parishioners asked me if I’d read “90 Minutes in Heaven.” I said I hadn’t. So the next week he gave me a copy and I read it. It was written by Don Piper. Don Piper is a Southern Baptist preacher. About ten years ago or so he was at a Southern Baptist Conference. When he left the conference, he was driving along and a semi-truck crossed the center line and drove right over his car and right over him. Paramedics showed up, but there really wasn’t anything they could do. They pronounced him dead at the scene.

Then a little while later another Southern Baptist preacher came from that conference. He didn’t know the man in the car was a Southern Baptist minister who had come from the conference. He just stopped because he saw the accident and he thought he’d see if he could pray for the man. So he asked the paramedics, “Could I go pray for the man in that car?” They said, “Sure, but it won’t do any good. He’s been dead for about 90 minutes now.” The minister said, “That’s OK. I just want to pray for him.” Now when the semi drove over his car, it flattened the car, but opened up the back end of it somehow. So the minister crawled in through the back of the car and touched Don Piper and prayed for him. Then he sang a hymn. As he was singing the hymn, Don Piper started singing along with him!

As you can imagine, the man kind of freaked out and scrambled out of the car, ran to the paramedics and said, “That guy’s still alive in that car!” They replied basically, “You’re crazy. He’s been dead for 90 minutes.” “No, no, he’s alive! He’s singing a hymn! Go hear it for yourselves!” “OK, we’ll go hear it for ourselves.” They heard it! They called for the Jaws of Life! They opened up the car! They got him out of there; they took him to the hospital! The hospital he went to – Coincidentally? Providentially? – had a doctor on staff who had worked on the problems that Don Piper had. What happened when the semi drove over his car, the femurs in his legs somehow flew out of his body. He did not have thigh bones. I don’t know any more about it than that. I tell people I have an MDiv degree, not an MD degree. One of the doctors on duty that day at the hospital had been part of an experiment where they grew bone in the body. So they grew his thigh bones back. Don Piper can now walk and talk. And he wrote a book about his experience; he lectures about it.

He said that when he died, he went up to heaven and he saw his relatives, who he’d known, who had passed on. He also saw other relatives, who he’d never met, but he’d seen pictures of them. Then he kind of hovered over to a gate. He didn’t know how he got there, but he all of a sudden was at this gate. The pearly gates? (Heaven is apparently is a gated community!) He looked into the gate and that’s when he woke up.

What do you think of that? Did that really happen? Scientists would say that when our brain is dying we have hallucinations and that’s what this was, an hallucination. Maybe he made the story up. But what fascinates me is, this guy’s a Southern Baptist minister. Who didn’t he see when he went to heaven? He didn’t see Jesus! You would think that if a Southern Baptist preacher is going to make up a story about going to heaven, the first person he’d say he saw in heaven is – Jesus! But he doesn’t say he saw Jesus. For me that adds a little credibility to the story. But again, it’s a mystery.

A minister friend of mine e-mailed me when she heard what my topic was going to be. She said that she had had a life after life experience. That’s all she said, so I wrote her back and asked, “Would you tell me about it?” She wrote back and said that many years ago when her kids were little and they were off to school and her husband was at work, she was home alone. All of a sudden she had an asthma attack, a severe asthma attack, the worst asthma attack she’d ever had. She passed out. And she woke up and she said it was the classic story you always hear about near death experiences. She went through a tunnel, she saw a light, she saw a figure in front of her and the figure indicated she had to go back. Obviously she did. She said that she felt so peaceful, so calm, so serene that now she doesn’t worry about death, she doesn’t worry about life after death, she’s not anxious about it at all. What do you make of that? Did that happen or was she hallucinating or what? I have a tendency to believe her, but I don’t know. It’s all a mystery.

A few years ago, I was asked to preach in a church and I did. After the service an elderly woman came up to me and said that her husband had died a few years before. She said that in life he couldn’t move his right arm. But at the moment of his death he looked up at the ceiling? The Sky? The Heavens? Heaven? And he reached up with his right arm and then he was dead. What was that?

A couple months ago, on the tenth anniversary of 9-11, the New York Times printed a picture they’d printed ten years before, after the planes had struck the towers. They had a picture of a guy falling to the earth, to his certain death. What struck me about the picture then as when I saw it a couple months ago was how peaceful, how calm, how serene the man looked. If that had been me, I would have been flapping my arms, trying to learn how to fly. But he was just falling, with no expression on his face, nothing. I wonder, I have no idea but I wonder, was that just his body falling? Was his spirit already rising to heaven? It’s a mystery. And not a mystery like “The Rockford Files.” A mystery like we won’t know the answer on this side of the rainbow.

A couple of years ago, Los Lonely Boys recorded a hit song, “How Far Is Heaven?” Los Lonely Boys sing: “How far is heaven? Lord, can you tell me, how far is heaven? I just gotta know how far it is.” How far is heaven? Is heaven just in the hereafter or is it in the here and now?

I did a funeral for a woman a few years ago. When I prepare for a funeral, I talk to the family, like most ministers do and find out what her life was like and what her spiritual life was like. Then, during the funeral, I talk about her life and celebrate her life and mourn her loss. (I don’t use a funeral as some ministers do, as an excuse to get people to come to Jesus.) I said that I didn’t know whether heaven exists or not. Out of the corner of my eye I could see one of her daughters wince. I quickly said, “But if heaven does exist, I have no doubt that she is there.” Then I said, I didn’t get the impression that she waited until she died to get to heaven. I said that she was in heaven on earth whenever she was with her loved ones. I said that she was in heaven on earth whenever she was doing what she loved. I said that she was in heaven on earth whenever she was helping someone, whenever she was acting compassionately, whenever she was seeking justice for more than just us.

Jesus told his disciples, “As you go, proclaim the good news, the kingdom of heaven has come near.” I think I mentioned before that what I think he was saying was: the kingdom of heaven is all around us. We just have to have eyes to see it and ears to hear it. It’s not just Jesus that said that, I think many spiritual leaders say that. Ram Dass, “Be here now.” This is all that matters. This is all we have. Eckhart Tolle talks about the Power of Now. We have to be aware of it, to appreciate it, to be grateful for it. So I don’t know whether heaven exists or not. I’d like to believe it does. But we can have heaven on earth when we’re with the ones we love. We can heaven on earth whenever we do what we love. We can heaven on earth whenever we act compassionately, when we seek justice for all. We can heaven on earth if we just have eyes to see it and ears to hear it. [Looking off into the distance and reaching up with his right arm] OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

Beginning. Becoming. Belonging.

One of my few brushes with fame came several years ago. I was vacationing in England and around nine o’clock at night I was walking out of a pub. As I walked through the door, a man who was bald with a big long cigar was walking in. I recognized him immediately – at least I thought I did – and I said, “My goodness, aren’t you Telly Savalas?” He didn’t break stride, he just did one of those (in a growling voice), “Yeah.” Now why I didn’t run in there and get his autograph or go in and say the famous line from Kojac, “Who loves ya, baby?” I don’t know. I guess I was just in shock.

I was reminded of that this week when I read that Harry Morgan had died at the age of 96. Harry Morgan was from Muskegon. I did not know that. He was a longtime actor, of course. Probably his most famous role was on M.A.S.H., where he played Colonel Potter. As far as I know, his first name in that series was not Harry, so he was not Harry Potter. Colonel Potter’s right-hand man was Radar. Radar would bring Colonel Potter things before he even realized he needed them. I remember one episode where Radar was going to make a little extra money by selling shoes. He sold shoes for a company that had the slogan, “If your shoes aren’t becoming to you, you should be coming to us.” I thought that was cute. Obviously I remembered it after all these years. Maybe that should be our slogan, “If your church isn’t becoming to you, you should be coming to us!” Maybe not.

I want to talk with you about being a part of this congregation. My sermon is titled, “Beginning, Becoming, Belonging.” I think we all begin to come to a place like this and then eventually feel that we’ve become part of it and then eventually we feel like we belong here. Why do you come here? How do we fit into your spiritual journey?

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says some statements that are statements of dichotomy. You have heard this, but I tell you that. You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth , but I say to you, turn the other cheek. You see what Jesus is doing there? He is proving himself not to be a scriptural literalist. You have heard that it was said, in the scriptures, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you, turn the other cheek. This is the way it was hundreds of years ago, but now it’s a new way. There’s a new way of thinking. Jesus is demonstrating that, I think to all of us, that the scripture can be changed over time. I think maybe Christians would say, well of course Jesus can change the scriptures, he’s Jesus. But I think what Jesus is doing is demonstrating to all of us that we can do that, too. You have heard that it was said in the scriptures this homophobic passage, but now we should be loving of everyone. So Jesus was showing those people how to change the way things were. I think the people of this congregation can and do appreciate that.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, a great writer and Unitarian minister, says, “Be not a slave to your past.” In other words, just because your parents and your grandparents and your great-grandparents believed something, you don’t have to do that, you don’t have to believe that. Just because they believed in some dogma or some doctrine, or code or creed or rule or regulation, that doesn’t have to apply to your life today. I think the people of this congregation can and do appreciate that.

Michael Servetus was killed, martyred, murdered in John Calvin’s Geneva. He didn’t believe in the Holy Trinity. He said, “Do not be surprised if I see God in humanity.” I think some people’s heads would explode today if they heard that. Imagine what it was like for people several hundred years ago. He saw God in people. He was considered a heretic and they killed him. But he’s a hero to people in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. I think people here can and do appreciate that.

A man grew up feeling like he was an orphan in his family. He was an odd duck. He didn’t really fit in. His family took him to church, but he didn’t believe the things he heard there. He didn’t believe in the virgin birth or a resurrected human being or a Son of God. He was skeptical; he wouldn’t accept easy answers to complex questions. Today he feels like he’s all alone in the world. It’s too bad he doesn’t come to a congregation like this, where I think he’d feel right at home.

A woman, as a child, felt like she didn’t fit in with her family and friends. They seemed to all accept the theology that was handed down to them. She wouldn’t accept that. She didn’t believe in the authority of the Church. She didn’t believe in the authority of the minister. She didn’t believe in the authority of the Bible. She didn’t accept pat answers that everyone around her seemed to. She felt like she was alone. It’s a shame she doesn’t find a place like this. We can hope that she does, because then I think she’d feel at home.

A teenager is just beginning to be aware, to be aware of herself, of her surroundings, of how she thinks differently than her parents, her siblings, her friends. She too is skeptical. She doesn’t accept all that she was taught in Sunday School. She thinks that there must be other truths out there, but she feels like she is all alone. No one else in the world thinks the way she does, she thinks. If only she would find a place like this congregation, I think she’d finally feel at home.

Some of you may know that I co-host a radio show with Fred Wooden, senior minister at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids. It’s called “Faith and Reason.” It airs on Friday mornings from 10 to noon. We talk about religious issues, current event issues, anything. We’ve been doing it for about two and a half years. Shortly after we began, we invited a couple of atheists to be on the show, to have a dialog with us. I think that they thought we were kind of fundamentalist Christians or something because they would say things like…

“Well you all believe in the inerrancy of the Bible.”
“No, not really. We believe the Bible is poetical in places. We believe it contains some truth, but we don’t believe it dropped out of heaven.”
“Oh. Well you believe in the resurrection of Jesus.”
“No, not really. We think Jesus lived on in the hearts and minds of his followers as he does today,”
“Oh. Well you believe in miracles, that he turned water into wine, walked on water.”
“No, not really. We think that those stories were made up and told about Jesus so people would think he was the Son of God and certainly somebody special.”
“Oh.”

I’m Facebook friends with one of the atheists that we had on and he wrote on his Facebook page that “trying to pin down liberal ministers is like trying to nail Jello to the wall.” I like that. I don’t like to be pinned down theologically because I sometimes change week to week. I don’t like to be nailed to the wall. I wouldn’t like to be nailed to the cross either. I think that’s what this congregation is like, too. We don’t like to be nailed down.

[Loud] The people of this congregation believe in JESUS! [Soft] Or Buddha.
[Loud] The people of this congregation believe in GOD! [Soft] Or Goddess.
[Loud] The people of this congregation believe in EVERTHING! [Soft] Or nothing.

It’s up to each person to use their reason, their rationality, their mind, their heart, their spirit to decide what to believe. We don’t have doctrines and dogmas or creeds and codes or rules and regulations that you have to submit to. If you want to believe in Jesus because he said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” go right ahead. If you want to believe in Gandhi because he said, “Be the change you want to see in the world,” go right ahead. If you want to believe in the Dalai Lama because he said, “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness,” go right ahead. You can believe what you want to believe here. That’s the beauty of this place.

When I was a kid we lived in the Detroit area for a couple of years. There was a TV weatherman on a Detroit
station that I really liked. Sonny Eliot. What a great name for a weatherman, isn’t it? Sonny Eliot. Like Storm Field. Sonny Eliot’s schtick or technique or the way he did things was to take two words describing what the weather was going to be and then combining them into one. He would say, “Tomorrow it’s going to be sunny and warm, or SWARM,” or “In the morning it’ll be foggy and cold, or FOLD.” Or “tomorrow we’re going to have freezing drizzle, or FRIZZLE.” I would like to do something similar to describe this congregation. This is a congregation that has common unity or community around the idea of freedom. People here have freedom, the common unity of freedom to think what they want to think, to believe what they want to believe, to forge their own theology. It’s up to each one of us to do that.

The other day I saw an old tape of a “Nightline” program from around ten years ago. It featured Christian high school students – just boys, not girls – because they were preaching and of course we all know only boys can preach [said sarcastically]. But anyway, they had a national contest for the best high school preacher. The contest was held at Bob Jones University, so you know where they were theologically, evangelical and fundamentalist. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. These kids, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old, preached about sin and salvation, heaven and hell. They all preached about it. Each of their sermons was about how, if you don’t accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, then you’ll face eternal damnation. But the good news is, if you do accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, then you’re good to go for all eternity. You’ll spend eternity in heaven with God. The even better news is that’s all you have to do – accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. You don’t have to feed the hungry or house the homeless or clothe the naked or help the hurting. You just have to believe in Jesus. Now even many Christians would call that “cheap grace.” They believe and I believe and I think most of you believe there’s more to it than that.

But I think that idea isn’t just restricted to Christianity. I think there are people in other faith traditions who believe all they have to do is go climb to the top of a mountain and contemplate their navel. They’re spiritual people. All they have to do is meditate for a couple of hours a day and they’re good to go. I call it “cheap spirituality.” I think everybody here knows it’s more than just that. It’s more than just cheap spirituality. We do need to work for justice and act compassionately and seek peace in our lives and in the world.

Olive Garden, the “authentic” Italian restaurant chain, had an ad campaign a couple of years ago that said, “When you’re here, you’re family.” Maybe that should be our slogan. “When you’re here, you’re family.” Maybe not. But if you’re just beginning to come to this congregation, welcome home – you’re family. If you’ve been becoming part of this congregation for weeks and months, welcome home – you’re family. If you feel like you belong to this congregation because you’ve come here for months and years, you have that sense of belonging, welcome home – you’re family. If you want to have a deeper commitment than you already have at this congregation, see me after the service.

This congregation cares about people’s spirit, about nurturing people in body, mind and spirit, about helping people along their spiritual journey. Maybe a slogan we ought to adopt, is one that is well-known because it’s associated with the United Negro College Fund. But we need to change it just slightly. We care about helping people’s spirit along because: a spirit is a terrible thing to waste.

Everyday Should Be Thanksgiving

They celebrate Thanksgiving in Canada on the same day we celebrate Columbus Day. I did not know that. This past Columbus Day I heard that the way we were supposed to commemorate Christopher Columbus discovering America was we were supposed to pick a house at random, and walk inside and say, “I declare this is my property.” It would probably be best if you chose a house where you knew they didn’t have a gun. That would be wise. I’ve heard that the problem that Native Americans had was they didn’t have a very good Office of Homeland Security. They didn’t have a very good immigration policy either. But I don’t like to make jokes about the pain suffered by people who were almost wiped out.

This coming Thursday, as we celebrate every year, the fourth Thursday of November, we will celebrate Thanksgiving. Now that wasn’t declared a national holiday until Abraham Lincoln’s time, but the first Thanksgiving was celebrated about 400 years ago. Native peoples helped the Pilgrims learn how to plant seeds and learn how to fish. Back then, as now, it was a celebration of the harvest, and so many of us will sit down to a feast on Thanksgiving Day. Turkey, or for vegans tofu turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, green bean casserole (so thank God for Campbell’s mushroom soup), stuffing, dressing, perhaps a pumpkin pie, if there is a God: pecan pie.

Comedian Jim Gaffigan makes jokes about pretty much all the holidays we celebrate. He says of Thanksgiving, “It’s like we didn’t even try. Let’s have a holiday where we overeat. Oh, we do that every day. Ok, let’s have a holiday where we overeat and invite people over who annoy us.” That’s probably not very nice. I like Thanksgiving. I like having people over who are loved ones and I enjoy all the food. My only problem with Thanksgiving is we only celebrate it once a year. I think we should celebrate Thanksgiving every day of the year. I think we should give thanks every day of the year, 365 days a year, not just one day.

Meister Eckhart, the Christian mystic from hundreds of years ago says, “If the only prayer you ever pray is ‘Thank you,’ that will suffice.” I think the first step to saying thank you is awareness. I think awareness is the first step along just about every spiritual path. It’s the first step to forgiveness. It’s the first step for loving your neighbor and loving your enemy. But it’s definitely the first step to thanksgiving because you have to be aware of what you’re thankful for. You have to be aware of all your blessings.

One of the best known psalms in the Hebrew Scriptures about Thanksgiving is Psalm 100. “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness. Come into His presence with singing.” Tradition holds that this was written by King David, who says to give thanks and praise to God. The only problem I have with the word Thanksgiving is it’s as if you’re saying thanks to someone or something – God. So it might leave atheists out of the picture. The word I like better is gratitude, because you can have a feeling of gratitude, gratefulness, an attitude of gratitude, without being thankful to a Supreme Being or somebody. We could all be grateful or have a feeling of gratitude.

I think one of the best expressions of gratitude, one of the best calls to worship that I’ve ever heard was written by Duncan Littlefair, a longtime minister at Fountain Street Church. In fact, it’s all around the walls of the narthex of Fountain Street Church: “This is indeed a day which the Lord has made. Let us then rejoice in it and be very glad, and let us count our many blessings. Let us be grateful for the capacity to see, feel, hear, and understand. Let us be grateful for the incredible gift of life. And let us be especially grateful for the ties of love, which bind us together, giving dignity, meaning, worth and joy to all our days.” I think you’d be hard pressed to come up with a better call to worship or invocation than that. I know; I’ve tried. It tells us what we should do, too, we should count our blessings because we do have the capacity to see, feel, hear and understand. We are blessed with the incredible gift of life and we are blessed with the ties of love that bind us together. We need to count our blessings sometimes; maybe every day.

When I was a kid I remember watching a cartoon about a Canadian Mountie (I seem to have a Canadian theme today), Dudley Dooright. Dudley Dooright’s nemesis was Snidely Whiplash. Snidley Whiplash would plot and plan some evil scheme every time, usually involving kidnapping Dudley Dooright’s girlfriend, Nell, and tying her to a railroad track. Then Dudley Dooright would come along and thwart Snidely Whiplash’s evil plan by rescuing Nell. Snidely Whiplash would say, “Curses, foiled again!” Maybe a curse is the opposite of a blessing. But sometimes what seems like a curse can turn out to be a blessing.

Some of you may know my first church when I graduated from seminary was this little church in this little town about a half hour northeast of Grand Rapids, called Belding. When I took the call to that church, my daughter was in the ninth grade and I thought: this will be perfect; I’ll stay in this church for four years until she graduates from high school and then she’ll go off to college and I’ll go someplace else, if I need to. That was my plan. Their plan was to get rid of me after a year and three days. At the time I was devastated. I thought it was a curse. I thought, what am I going to do? Then I thought about the Sunday School class I’d taught, a Bible study, and I remembered one Sunday we read the story in the first chapter of Genesis, the creation story about how God created the heavens and the earth in six days. When we were done reading that I said something about how of course this isn’t a scientific textbook, this is a poetic way of describing the beginning of time, but scientists tell us about the Big Bang theory and Evolution. The moderator of that church, who was in the class, the highest ranking person in the church, like the president of this church, said, “Well I believe in creationism; I don’t believe in evolution.” [Noise of disbelief]

So maybe it wasn’t a curse that they fired me after three days, maybe it was a blessing, because if they hadn’t and I’d been there four years I was afraid that I’d be a Stepford pastor or something; I’d be a dead spiritual man walking. I’d be preaching sermons about “I don’t believe in evolution; I believe in creationism, that the earth was built in six days.”

Labor Day weekend was my last weekend there. I knew they were going to fire me the day after Labor Day. So Labor Day, when I still thought this was a curse, I was worried, what am I going to do? Now for whatever reason, Labor Day is a big deal in Belding. They hold a big parade – marching bands, floats, police cars, fire trucks, the whole works. I’m standing along the parade route going, “God, show me a sign! I’m going to lose my first church, this little church in this little town. Show me a sign!” Just then a fire truck went by. On the back of the fire truck were the initials: BFD. [Laughter] Now of course that stands for Belding Fire Department, but some of you seem to realize that in my mind it stood for something else. As I was asking God for a sign, there were the initials BFD, “Big Freakin’ Deal. You’re going to lose this little church in this little town, don’t worry about it.” I looked up to heaven and I said, “Thank you!” Now I don’t know if it was a providential thing or a coincidental thing, but it was a blessing for me. Sometimes what seems like a curse turns out to be a blessing.

Rick Warren is the pastor of a mega-church out in California. I read something about him once where he said he can’t tell if a song is Christian until he hears the words. I thought, really? Didn’t Bach write all kinds of Christian music that didn’t have any words? And Beethoven and Mozart? It seems to me that the most joyful songs of praise and thanksgiving to God or whatever that I’ve heard, I hear outside my window in the spring, birds singing. Now I don’t know what they’re saying, but it seems to me they’re saying thank you. They’re expressing gratitude. Now scientists would probably say they’re saying something else, to each other, but I prefer to think they’re expressing gratitude. And it’s beautiful.

Now I myself love music. I think many of you know that. I can’t hardly carry a tune and I can’t really play an instrument, except maybe a Davy Jones tambourine or something like that, but I like music; I like to sing. So every day, or almost every day, I do sing. I sing a song of thanksgiving and praise and gratitude. [Singing] “Oh, what a beautiful morning! Oh, what a beautiful day!” It drives my wife crazy, because sometimes I’ll sing that at night when it’s raining. She doesn’t understand that. My grandsons say, “Opa, it’s raining out,” or “It’s evening, not morning!” But that’s not the point. The point is expressing gratitude, expressing thankfulness, and I think we all need to do that as often as we can.

Now I’m not naïve. I know that not everything is something that we should give thanks for. I know that there are wars and rumors of wars; I know people have sickness and disease. I know people die. Obviously we’re not thankful for that. But it’s because of those calamities and tragedies in life that I think that when we do see something we’re thankful for that we should hold onto that, we should cling to that, that we should give thanks for that, that we should have a feeling of gratitude for that, because we know we have joys and concerns, but when we do encounter those joys, let’s be grateful.

What is it you’re thankful for? What blessings do you have? What expressions of gratitude do you make? I hope you’re thankful for life. I hope you’re thankful for love, for loved ones. I hope you’re thankful for the clothes on your back, a roof over your head. I hope you’re thankful for the earth that we walk on. I hope you give thanks as often as you can. I hope you don’t wait until the fourth Thursday of November to give thanks, but that you give thanks every day, or at least almost every day, that you find something in your life that you’re thankful for and you either say it within yourself or you speak it or maybe even sing it. That you’re thankful, that you’re grateful, that you appreciate life.

An Oxygen Tent In West Michigan

I thought of the title for today’s sermon a few weeks ago. “An Oxygen Tent in West Michigan.” But I couldn’t remember how to spell the word “oxygen.” My wife was in the next room, so I called out, “Honey, how do you spell ‘oxygen’?” She spelled out, “O-X-Y-G-E-N.” I said, “Thanks.” Then she said, “Why, are you having trouble breathing?” I said, “Yes, I’m having trouble breathing and I thought: if only I could spell the word ‘oxygen,’ my lungs would clear up.”

I told my daughter that story, she’s a sophomore at the University of Michigan. I thought she’d find it amusing, but her reaction was, “You didn’t know how to spell ‘oxygen’?!”

Back when I was in college, I didn’t go to church much at all. Then for a few years after college, I didn’t go to church much at all either. Even when I got my first job right out of college (does anyone get a job these days right out of college?), I was hired as the news director at a Christian radio station, even with that, I didn’t go to church every Sunday. Just about every Monday, my boss would ask me how things were yesterday at my “Bedroom Baptist Church.” Yeah, I slept in, what can I say?

I did get invited a couple of times when I was in college to go to church with some folks and I went. The first time I went, the minister talked about, “a Lutheran theologian, if you can imagine such a thing,” and everybody laughed. I thought, are they making fun of Luther? At that time I didn’t know a whole lot about church history, but I thought: well, if it wasn’t for Luther, wouldn’t we all be Catholics? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I say that because I’m an interfaith, ecumenical kind of guy.)

Later I got invited back to that same church and the preacher talked about, “those heathen Jews in Hollywood.” What? Did I hear that right? What was even worse was that people were taking notes in their Bibles – “those heathen Jews in Hollywood.” Oy vey!

A year or so ago I was meeting with some Christian ministers. One of the Christian ministers said, “We all have something in common!” Another minister piped up, “Yeah, we preach what we don’t believe!” I thought, we preach what we don’t believe? I don’t preach what I don’t believe. I’ve never preached what I don’t believe. Now granted there are times when one Sunday I believe one thing and then a week later I believe just the opposite, but I believe each one. But I knew what they meant. They meant that they had to preach an Easter sermon in which they said that Jesus was physically resurrected. Well, I would never preach that. They meant, I think, that around Christmas time, they had to preach about how Jesus was born of a virgin. Well, I don’t preach that either, which is probably why I am no longer a Christian minister. But I can’t help wondering, how many ministers are there who preach what they don’t believe? They have to preach a Sunday School theology, but they haven’t believed that since they were in Sunday School. But they have to preach it to keep their jobs.

Then I got to wondering how many people in the pews listen to sermons that they don’t believe. They hear sermons about a Sunday School theology that they left behind when they left Sunday School years before.

Then I got to thinking that well, there are other preachers who preach, unfortunately, what they do believe – things like God hates gays, things like women are inferior to men. Or they preach that God loves the rich and hates the poor. Or they preach that the earth is 6,000 years old. Really? They obviously don’t believe scientists that tell us the earth is billions of years old. They obviously don’t believe the Big Bang theory. They obviously have never even seen “The Big Bang Theory” on CBS on Thursday nights.

After I didn’t go to church during college and a few years after, I found a church that I did go to, faithfully. Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, where I went for fifteen years before I went into the ministry. Fountain Street Church has been, as you probably know, a liberal church for 150 years. For the last 60 years or so the senior ministers at Fountain Street Church have been Unitarian Universalists. I don’t think a minister at Fountain Street Church has ever preached what he or she doesn’t believe. I thought when I was there that Fountain Street Church was, for me, an oxygen tent in West Michigan. It was a place I could come every Sunday after breathing the religiously repressive air that permeates West Michigan. I could come and get my spiritual lungs filled up with intellectual enlightenment and spiritual sanity.

William Ellery Channing, as you know, was a guiding light in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. William Ellery Channing says, “I call that mind free, which accepts light from whencesoever it may come.” We all need to do that. That’s what a church should be all about, is to be the light of truth for everyone.

Jesus said, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under a bushel basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.” That’s what a church should be, is a light: A light of honesty and truth and love and peace for all the world.

Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave, a great orator and writer, a leader of the anti-slavery movement back in the 1800s. Frederick Douglass said, “Freedom is not a gift. Freedom is won through relentless effort.” A church should be about freedom for people who are enslaved in dogma and doctrine they no longer believe in.

The Dalai Lama says, “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.” That’s a value I think this church could embrace, a religion of kindness. This church, this spiritual community, does not require people to recite doctrines or dogmas or creeds or codes that they don’t believe in. This spiritual community gives people freedom to believe what their conscience, what their reason, what their intellect tells them is right. That’s a basic value of this spiritual community. It doesn’t matter what we say so much as what we do. It’s not so much what we believe, but how we act. It’s not about the talk we talk, it’s about the walk we walk. That’s a value this spiritual community holds dear, I think.

A church is not a museum for dusty old doctrines and dogma; it’s a living, breathing spiritual place for people to live fully alive, for people to live fully aware, for people to live fully awake and free. I used to be a news reporter and occasionally I would report on a house fire. Every now and then we’d hear about how somebody would go running into a burning house to save a family member. But I’ve never heard of anybody, I’ve never reported on anybody, running into a burning house to save a family Bible. That’s another value I think we hold, I think everybody holds, but they really won’t admit it because they’re afraid they’ll be struck by lightning or something, that people matter more than a Bible, that a human being matters more than words on a page. That’s a value, I think, that we hold dear.

Jesus said to his disciples they should go proclaim the Good News: the kingdom of heaven has come near. What he meant by that, I think I’ve mentioned this before, was that heaven doesn’t just exist somewhere over the rainbow, it exists here below the rainbow, too. That it doesn’t just exist in the hereafter, but in the here and now. That there aren’t two separate worlds – the world of heaven and the world of earth – it’s all one, it’s all sacred, holy, divine. If that’s too religious for folks, it’s all precious, special, wonderful. Either the priest and the prostitute live in the holy, the sacred, the divine world, or neither of them does. There isn’t a secular and a sacred world; it’s all one world. We’re all one. I think that’s another value that we hold dear.

I get a kick out of it when people say that I do what I do before the Holland City Council when asking them to pass a gay rights ordinance because I’m looking for free publicity to grow my churches. Let me tell you, if you want to grow a church, you don’t do it by proclaiming gay rights. If I wanted to grow a megachurch, I would preach on Sunday morning, “God hates gays.” And I’d have people hanging from the rafters, as other megachurches do and TV churches do. If I wanted to grow a megachurch, I’d preach on Sunday morning that God thinks women are inferior to men, and I’d have people hanging from the rafters. Unfortunately many of them would be women. That’s what other megachurches do, that’s what they do on TV churches. If I wanted to grow a megachurch, I’d preach that God loves rich people and hates poor people. That’s what megachurches and TV churches do and they have people hanging from the rafters. If I wanted to grow a megachurch, I would proclaim that the earth is 6,000 years old and I’d have people hanging from the rafters. That’s what megachurches do, and TV churches, too.

But if I did that, I’d be preaching what I don’t believe. So, I’m stuck with a couple of little churches, but I’m OK with that.

This church, this spiritual community, is a beacon of freedom in West Michigan for people who feel they are enslaved by doctrines and dogmas, that probably even their preachers don’t believe. This church, this spiritual community, is a life preserver in the waters of religious repression that people are drowning in. This church, this spiritual community, is an oxygen tent in West Michigan for people whose spiritual air is polluted by hatred and ignorance.

When I was finished writing this sermon, or when I thought I was finished, I realized that I didn’t quote a song and I usually quote a song in all my sermons. But one didn’t come to me. But then it did and I’ll tell you what it is in a second. If this spiritual community is something that you value – because of the music, the beauty, the silence, the education, even the words spoken in the sermon – tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your co-workers, tell your family. Invite them to come here if they’re stuck in a pew listening to words they don’t believe, listening to a Sunday School theology they gave up back in Sunday School. Invite them here. Tell them that this is a place for them to think for themselves, where we don’t ask them to leave their brains at the door, where we invite them to forge their own theology using their intellect, their reason, their heart, their soul. If you find this place valuable, I imagine that you know other people who would, too. Invite them to come here. In other words, “Go, tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere.”

We All Could Use A Gelman Sometimes

David Letterman says of Regis Philbin that he’s the hardest working man in show business. Of course, you all know and I know and David Letterman knows that the hardest working man in show business is James Brown. Bur the argument could be made that Regis Philbin is the hardest working man in show business. He set a Guinness World Record for the most times in front of a television camera – sixteen thousand plus hours. He started back in the 50s in television. In 1962 he was Johnny Carson’s announcer. He was Joey Bishop’s sidekick in the sixties. For the past couple of decades, he’s been on the show “Live with Regis and” somebody – Kathie Lee or Kelly. He’s eighty years old. He looks better at eighty than I did at forty.

His producer on “Live with Regis and Kelly” is Michael Gelman. Regis is going to retire later this month. Whenever Regis needs something or whenever something goes wrong on the show or whenever he has a question, he shouts to the guy who would know, “Gelman! Gelman! Gelman!”

It’s like a catch phrase. Regis would be probably best known for the catch phrase he said on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” the prime time game show he hosted. “Is that your final answer?” When he yells for Gelman, it gets somewhat comical in a way. It was for my daughter a few of years ago when she was younger. If I needed the table set or something, I would yell, “Gelman, the table needs to be set!” She thought it was funny back then. I don’t think she’d think it was funny now.

We all need a fall guy sometimes. We all need someone to turn to for help. Regis turns to Gelman, The Skipper turns to Gilligan, “Gilligan!” Sometimes people turn to God, “God! Why is this happening in my life? God?” Gelman! Gillegan! God!

Sometimes we yell at ourselves. I didn’t realize this until a few weeks ago, but I do this. I went golfing with a parishioner, so, you know, I was working. When I missed a shot and the ball went into the woods or something, I would yell, “Willy!” Willy? Who’s Willy? I have no idea. My Gelman I guess. “Willy!” We all need a fall guy, somebody to yell at sometimes. And I thought that that was what this sermon was going to be about. But then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it’s about something deeper, something more meaningful.

According to the Hebrew scriptures, God called Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt into the Promised Land. But Moses objected. “God, you don’t want me, I’m not a very good speaker, I stutter. Take my brother Aaron.” But God wanted Moses. So Aaron helped out Moses. Aaron was Moses’ Gelman, I think, at least for a while. He was the guy Moses turned to. But I think over time their relationship evolved from a Gelman-like relationship to a friendship. They were friends. Moses need the friendship of Aaron to do what he had to do.

Jesus had a dozen Gelmans, people he yelled at sometimes. Perhaps no one more so than Peter. Their most Gelman-like encounter was when Jesus told the disciples that he was going to have to die, The authorities were going to kill him. Peter took Jesus aside and said, “Jesus, that can’t happen to you. They can’t kill you.” And Jesus uttered those famous words, “Get thee behind me, Gelman!” No. “Get thee behind me, Satan!” But their relationship evolved, too. Jesus himself said, “I no longer call you servants, I call you friends.” Jesus became friends with his disciples, including Peter.

When my daughter was three, four, five, six years old, we loved watching “Winnie the Pooh” and reading Winnie the Pooh books. Winnie the Pooh had all kinds of friends, Christopher Robin, Kanga and Roo, Tigger, Rabbit, Owl, Eeyore. Winnie the Pooh said, “If you live to be a hundred, I hope that I live to be a hundred minus one day, so I’m never without you.” That’s what friendship is all about. We want our friends to be there, always, with us.

Walter Winchell was a media figure even before my time, so I’m sure he was before many of your time. He was a newspaper columnist, radio commentator, television commentator back in the thirties, forties, fifties. He wore a hat and he had an unusual sign on for radio. “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. North and South America, and all the ships at sea. Let’s go to press.” It was a little weird. But Walter Winchell knew about friendship. Walter Winchell said, “A friend is one who comes in when everyone else goes out.” In other words, when everybody else deserts us, a friend stays with us or comes to our aid, helps us out.

I guess most of you know that a couple of weeks ago I was arrested for civil disobedience in the city of Holland. I said I was going to occupy Holland’s City Hall for gay rights after they locked up the building. They locked up the building and I occupied it for about a minute and a half before the police arrested me, put my hands behind my back, handcuffed me, put me in the back of a patrol car, where I had about this much space [indicating a small amount of space with his hands]. Ugh! Very awkward situation. We were driving to the police department and I remembered what we tell our grandsons to say when they don’t have their seatbelt on. I didn’t have my seatbelt on. So I said, “I’m not buckled!” The police officer said, “I think you’ll be alright.”

We got to the police station where they asked me some questions, took a mug shot or two, took my fingerprints, my palm prints, the side of my hand prints, everything. They said that my bail was set at a hundred dollars and I could get out if I could produce a hundred dollars. All I had with me was sixty-four dollars. I left more money at home because I thought I might get arrested. So I called a friend of mine who’s a retired lawyer, and asked if he could come and bail me out. And he said, “Yeah, I can be there, I’m driving back from Grand Rapids, I’ll stop and get some money.” And he did and he bailed me out. We all need somebody like that in our lives. Somebody to literally or figuratively get us out of a sticky situation.

The next day, I got a call from another friend, Helen, who thought maybe I was still in jail and just wanted to find out how I was doing. We all need a friend like that, too. Somebody to check up on us and see how we’re doing.

Now I don’t want to brag, but I have hundreds of friends. On Facebook. I even know several of them. One of my Facebook friends sent out a story about this dog, who had some kind of disease of the eyes and it made him go blind. The dog just stumbled around for awhile until another dog showed up and helped the blind dog go wherever it needed to go, led that dog around. It was a friend. That dog was the eyes of the other dog. And we all need that in our lives, too. We all need somebody to help us along, whether we’re physically blind or spiritually blind, to help us along life’s path. We all need that sometimes.

In the movie, “Little Miss Sunshine,” a little girl wants to take part in the Little Miss Sunshine Contest in California. Her family tries to help her. If you haven’t seen “Little Miss Sunshine,” you should rent it or borrow it or go to Amazon and buy it so you can see it. It’s very, very good. She wants to go to California and her family, who are just a little quirky, they decide to go with her. So they pack up their rickety van that they have, and they take a road trip. Along the way, the little girl, who is about seven, wants to play a game. She plays different games. One of the games she plays is this eye test that she finds and she gives it to the other members of her family, including her older brother, who is in high school, whose dream it is to become a test pilot for the Air Force. She gives him the test and discovers that he’s color blind, so he can’t become a test pilot for the Air Force, it would disqualify him. His world came tumbling down. He was devastated. He freaked out. He made them stop the van. He walked twenty yards or so from the van and sat down. Nobody knew what to do for him or say to him. Then the little girl walked over to him, sat down, put her arms around him, didn’t say a word. She knew that’s what he needed. He needed someone to show him they cared. Someone to show him compassion. Someone to show empathy for his situation. We all need that sometimes. We all need somebody, not to say anything, but to come beside us and put their arm around us, show that they understand, show that they care, show that they have compassion for us in our situation.

One of my favorite songs is a song sung by four superstars – Dionne Warwick, Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder, and Elton John. The song is, “That’s What Friends Are For.” They sing, “Keep smiling. Keep shining, knowing you can always count on me. Oh, for sure. ‘Cause I tell you that’s what friends are for. For good times and for bad times, I’ll be by your side forever more. That’s what friends are for.” That is what friends are for. People who tell us “Keep smiling, keep shining,” People who will always be by our side.

When Regis retires later this month, he’ll leave “Live with Regis and Kelly,” but I don’t think he’ll leave Gelman. I think I know enough about their relationship to know that they go out to lunch together, they go to dinner together, they socialize together with their wives. I think they are more than just “Star” and “Servant.” They’re friends.

I think we all need a friend. We all need somebody to be there for us, to bail us out – actually or metaphorically, to call us up and see how we’re doing, to help us along life’s path, to put their arm around us and show us compassion. And we all need to be a friend. We need to be the ones who bail someone out, call somebody up to see how they’re doing, to help lead someone along life’s path, to put our arm around them when they’re down and troubled. We all need to be a friend too. We all need a Gelman, and a Pete, and a Helen. We all need to be a Gelman and a Pete, and a Helen. We all need a friend and we all need to be a friend.

Two Executions. Two Reactions?

In the Monty Python movie, “The Life of Brian,” Brian lives a parallel life to Jesus. At the beginning of the movie, three wise men come from the East, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. They go into the barn where Brian and Jesus were born. Jesus was in one stall and Brian was in another. They go into the stable with Brian and they give his mother gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. She is overjoyed. Then they walk out and they look down the way and see a heavenly light coming from another stall, so they march back in and take the gifts back and give those gifts to Jesus. At the end of the movie, just like Jesus, Brian is executed. He is crucified, hung from a cross. He’s there with a couple dozen other people. One of the people hanging from a cross sings a happy song, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” and they all begin singing the song. That’s how the movie ends, with all of them, hanging from the cross, singing this happy tune.

I remember when the movie came out, reading a column written by the late conservative writer, William F. Buckley Jr., who was a devout Catholic. He was outraged by the movie. He said it was blasphemous to take something so sacred in the Christian story and make light of it. I came away from that scene though, realizing that the crucifixion of Jesus wasn’t unique. Jesus wasn’t the only person crucified by the Roman government. That’s how they executed people. It wasn’t just Jesus or Jesus and the two robbers on either side of him. Hundreds of thousands of people were executed by the Roman government in that way. Unfortunately, two thousand years later governmental executions still take place.

In one of the Republican Presidential debates a few weeks ago, NBC news anchor Brian Williams asked Governor Rick Perry about the 234 people who’ve been executed in his state during his time in office. When Brian Williams asked that question, the audience applauded the deaths of those 234 human beings. I think Brian Williams was a little taken aback, so he asked Rick Perry what he thought about that reaction of people applauding about the executions. Rick Perry said something like, (with a Texas drawl) “Now look. If you come to Texas and you kill somebody, you can rest assured we’re gonna kill you,” or words to that effect. That wasn’t a very good impression, but you get the idea. There was applause for that as well.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a letter to the paper in response to a state legislator who had introduced legislation in Lansing banning Sharia law from Michigan. He was responding to nothing in particular, nobody has offered to bring Sharia law to Michigan. I think he was answering those islamaphobes among us, perhaps including that legislator, who have an irrational fear of Muslims. So I wrote a letter in response to that assuring the state legislator that Sharia law, at least in the form of capital punishment, wouldn’t come to Michigan the way it is exercised in Saudi Arabia, because way back in 1846 the people of Michigan banned capital punishment. It was the first governmental body in the world to do that. So I mentioned in the letter that the legislator didn’t need to worry about that aspect of Sharia law coming to Michigan, but if he wanted to, he might contact Rick Perry and alert him to the fact that Texas exercises Sharia law, like they do in Saudi Arabia. I suggested Rick Perry might not be aware that his state takes part in Sharia law and that he might want to change that law to make sure his state is not exercising Sharia law. I had, of course, my tongue deeply planted in my cheek when I wrote this, although a letter writer or two in response to my letter didn’t realize I was being sarcastic and thought I was being serious and wanted to correct me, saying what they do in Texas isn’t Sharia law. But it is. That’s what they do in Saudi Arabia.

A few weeks ago on the same day, two men were executed in America, one in Georgia, one in Texas. In Georgia, Troy Davis, an African American, was put to death for the murder of a police officer many years ago. Troy Davis contended he was innocent up to just about his last breath. Many of the witnesses against Troy Davis recanted their testimony, said that what they’d said under oath wasn’t true. Several famous people came to speak on behalf of Troy Davis and to plead for him not to be executed, including former President Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Their pleas for mercy unfortunately fell on deaf ears, both in Georgia and in the U.S. Supreme Court. Troy Davis was executed.

On the same day in Texas, white supremacist Lawrence Brewer was put to death. Lawrence Brewer was one of three men who beat up an African American named James Byrd Jr. Then they chained him to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him two miles. Then they took his decapitated body and dumped it in an African American cemetery. Lawrence Brewer never apologized for what he did, never expressed remorse, said that he wasn’t the one who killed James Byrd, but I think what he meant by that was that he wasn’t driving the pickup. As far as I know, there were no pleas for mercy on his behalf. Lawrence Brewer was executed by the state of Texas.

When I heard about the death of Troy Davis, I was saddened. My initial reaction to the death of the white supremacist Lawrence Brewer was one of “Good riddance.” But afterward I regretted my response to Lawrence Brewer’s death and I’d like to explore that with you this morning.

Jesus could have executed someone. Jesus was teaching in the temple, as you might expect a rabbi to do. Jesus was, after all, Jewish. While he was teaching, some scribes and Pharisees brought a woman before Jesus and told Jesus that she had been caught in the very act of adultery. Since it takes two to tango, where the man was in all this we’re not sure. They asked Jesus what he would do, since the law, the scriptures, the Bible, said that she should be stoned to death. Jesus uttered the famous words, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” The scribes and the Pharisees walked away. Jesus asked the woman, “What happened to your accusers?” She said, “They left.” Jesus said, “They did not condemn you and neither will I. Go and sin no more.”

I find a few things interesting in this story. One of them being where the adulterous man was. I wonder if the man wasn’t one of the Pharisees and scribes. It also seems that Jesus proved himself to be not a Biblical literalist. If he was a Biblical literalist, he would have stoned the woman to death. Or at least started the stoning. So Jesus doesn’t take the words of the Bible literally. I wonder what he thinks of those seven passages about homosexuality? But I digress. I wonder about people, also, who wear those WWJD bracelets, who are in favor of the death penalty because Jesus seemed not to be. How do they square that?

At least one Christian follows Jesus when it comes to the death penalty – Sister Helen Prejean. She wrote a book called, “Dead Man Walking,” in which she wrote about her experiences counseling inmates on death row. The book was made into a movie by the same name, starring Sean Penn, who played the inmate, not Sister Helen. He is put to death and there is no doubt he has committed the crime of which he was convicted. I read the book; I saw the movie, and I was privileged to interview Sister Helen Prejean several years ago when I had a radio talk show in another life. She said that none of us should be defined by our worst act. We should be defined by who we are. I like that. I wouldn’t want to be defined by my worst act. I don’t know about you.

Jerry Givens was the executioner for the state of Virginia several years ago. He was the one who flipped the switch that sent the electric current to the death row inmate or pushed the button that allowed the poisons to flow into the inmate’s body. He was responsible for the execution of several people. He noticed on the death certificate where it said, “Cause of death,” it was listed as “Homicide.” Murder. He wondered: does that make me a murderer? Does that make the state of Virginia a murderer? Jerry Givens no longer executes people. He is, in fact, against the death penalty now.

I never have understood people who believe that the government can do nothing right, except when it comes to the death penalty. Then the government can do nothing wrong. Really? It just might be that Troy Davis down in Georgia was an innocent man put to death. We’re not 100% sure. According to a study, from 1973 – 2010 one hundred thirty-eight people on death row were exonerated by new evidence. They could have been put to death. Thankfully they weren’t. How many people were put to death who didn’t commit the crime and weren’t exonerated by new evidence? We don’t know.

Two states, side by side. One employs the death penalty, the other does not. I researched this back when I was going to interview Sister Helen Prejean and I updated my research for this sermon. The two states are Kansas and Missouri. Somewhat similar. They both actually have the death penalty on the books, but Kansas hasn’t exercised the death penalty since 1976. Missouri, on the other hand, has executed at least 66 people since 1976. The argument is that the death penalty will reduce the number of murders in the state; it will act as a deterrent. The logic being (I think it’s a little faulty, but anyway), the logic being that before somebody kills someone, if they live in a death penalty state they’ll think, “Oh, wait a minute. I’m not going to kill this person in an act of passion. I’m not going to premeditate the death of this person because I might be killed myself.” That’s the logic, that’s the reasoning, that the death penalty will reduce the number of murders. So you’d think in Kansas where they don’t exercise the death penalty, they’d have more murders. Not true. Missouri, per capita, has almost twice as many murders as Kansas. So that whole argument is wrong. For those who care about budgets, how much government spends, it costs more to execute someone than it does to incarcerate them for the rest of their life, because of the cost of court appeals.

I am pro-life, at least when it comes to the death penalty. I don’t believe government should have the right to kill somebody. Now that’s just how I feel. You may feel differently. I don’t speak for this entire congregation. I just speak for me. So if you disagree, obviously you have that right. If you agree, what can we do? If you think the death penalty is wrong, what can you do? Well, you might write to the governors of the thirty-plus states that have the death penalty on their books and urge them to get rid of it, because it’s barbaric, because it puts the United States as the only country in the western world that still executes people and puts us on the same level as countries like Saudi Arabia. You might write members of Congress and ask them to pass an amendment to the Constitution banning capital punishment. We might hope that one day five of the nine members of the Supreme Court will outlaw capital punishment because it’s cruel and unusual and therefore unconstitutional. Maybe what we need is the wisdom of Solomon, or the wisdom of Gandhi.

In the movie “Gandhi,” a civil war breaks out. Muslims and Hindus are killing each other. Gandhi goes on a fast to try to persuade the people involved to stop fighting. As he’s lying on his bed, a Hindu man comes to him, weeping, and says that he just killed a little Muslim boy. He believes that he now faces eternal damnation. He wonders what Gandhi can do for him. Gandhi says, “I can help you.” He tells the Hindu man to go find an orphaned Muslim boy like the one he killed and adopt him and then to raise him as a Muslim. The man goes away, presumably to do what Gandhi has said.

I wonder in the case of white supremacist Lawrence Brewer, if instead of being put to death he would have been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and then sentenced to share a cell, for the rest of his life, with an African American. I wonder if in ten, twenty, thirty, or even forty years, whether Lawrence Brewer’s heart might have been changed, might have been transformed, might have been renewed. I wonder if he wouldn’t have seen that we are all one – black people and white people and all people – are all one. We’ll never know because, of course, he was put to death.

I regret my initial reaction to his execution, of “Good riddance,” because I recognize that Lawrence Brewer is a fellow human being. He is a person of dignity and worth. I agree with Sister Helen that none of us, none of us, should be defined by our worst act, but by who we are.

Disturbing the peace or promoting it?

Country singer Alan Jackson has a song called, “Where I Come From.” He sings, “Where I come from, tryin’ to make a livin’ and workin’ hard to get to heaven, where I come from.” Well, where I come from, you don’t get arrested.

On October 19, after being inspired by Occupy Wall Street, I occupied Holland City Hall. It didn’t last long. They locked the doors, the police came, asked me to leave, I refused and they arrested me. “What Was I Thinking?” (That’s the title of another country song, by Dierks Bentley.)

I was thinking about how I asked the Holland City Council in May 2010 that the words “Sexual orientation and gender identity” be added to the city’s anti-discrimination ordinances in housing, employment, education and services. I was thinking about how the city’s Human Relations Commission studied the issue for nearly a year and unanimously recommended that the council approve changing the ordinances. I was thinking about how the council voted 5-4 in June of this year against the recommendation. I was thinking about how I and others have spoken at every regular council meeting since June, urging the five “no” voters to reverse their opinion. I was thinking about how, at the last meeting, one council member told us to come up with a new tactic, because what we’d been doing wasn’t working. I was thinking, “Hey, I could occupy city hall, draw attention to gay rights, maybe others would eventually join me. Nobody would have a problem with that, right?”

I asked one of the officers at the police department what I was being charged with. He said there were several possibilities, including disturbing the peace. Disturbing the peace? I thought I was promoting peace. While I may have been violating the law, I think 5 members of the council are violating a more serious law, or at least a more serious principle, by allowing LGBT people to be treated unfairly, unjustly and unequally.

Over the past few months, many speakers told the council how they’ve been discriminated against for being gay in Holland or how they or a relative have moved away because they didn’t feel welcome in the city of tulips. If your heart didn’t go out to them, you needed to check your pulse. After hearing their stories, I’m glad I became a minister following a career in the media. Even if I got in trouble with the law.

If I’m not a follower of every law, it’s because I’m a follower of Dr. King, who said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” If I’m not a follower of every law, it’s because I’m a follower of Gandhi, who said, “There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience.” If I’m not a follower of every law, it’s because I’m a follower of Jesus, who said, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” All three were arrested for what could be called promoting peace and all three were eventually killed. What I did was nothing compared to what they did.

I’m to be arraigned in Holland District Court on November 8 at 9 a.m. After that I may again promote peace, even if some say I’m disturbing it. And if I get arrested again, I’ll welcome it, because I now realize that being arrested for promoting peace is a good thing – where I come from.

Thine, Mine and Ayn

Ronald Reagan had a guaranteed applause line in many of his speeches. He would say, “Government is not the solution; government is the problem,” and people would applaud, “Yea, Ronnie, way to go!” I imagine this little scenario that I play in my head now and then. There’s a flood that hits a place in, let’s say, the south. A guy is perched on the roof of his house, water all around, when up comes a rowboat, being rowed by a Federal Emergency Management Agency worker. The FEMA worker comes up to the guy on the roof of his house and says, “Hey, buddy, you’re in a bad way.” The guy says, “Yeah, come give me a hand.” The FEMA worker says, “Just a minute, I want to ask you a question first. Ronald Reagan used to say, ‘Government isn’t the solution; government is the problem.’ What’d you think of that?”

“Oh, that’s great! Ronnie was right! Right on, Ronnie, I love that! ‘Government isn’t the solution; government is the problem.’” Then the FEMA worker rows away, saying, “OK, good luck to you, buddy! Take it easy. See ya!” Now I don’t really want that to happen, but it just reminds me that, when it comes to government help, some of us are schizophrenic. Many people don’t want the government to be very large at all, but when they’re in need, they want the government to help. I think I’ve figured out the way people feel. If I’m in need and the government helps me, well, the government’s just the right size. But if you’re in need and the government helps you, the government’s too big!

I found out in researching this sermon that the government is the largest employer in the country. It employs 2.3 percent of the work force. That makes sense when you think about it – when you think of all the military people and postal workers and teachers and everybody – that the government would be the largest employer. Some people have a problem with that though. They have a problem with the government employing people.

At the recent Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, sponsored by CNN and the Tea Party, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked a question of Ron Paul, a Libertarian, about a hypothetical 30-year-old guy. Now, as you probably know, when you’re thirty years old you think you’ve got the world by the tail. You’re going to live forever. You’re going to be healthy forever. You’re going to have your job forever. So Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul about this 30 year old, who, because he felt so healthy, decided not to buy health insurance. But then the guy gets catastrophically ill. He has to go in the hospital for six months. Wolf Blitzer asked, “What should happen with that guy? Who should pay for it?”

Ron Paul said, “Well, that’s what freedom’s all about.” The crowd went wild, “Yea!” Then Wolf Blitzer asked the question heard ‘round the world, “Should the guy be allowed to die?” And a couple members of the audience, presumably Tea Party members, yelled out, “Yeah!” I don’t know about you, if you watched that, I watched it and kind of cringed. I imagine some people gasped. Some people probably said, “Who are these people?” Tea Party members, as I understand it, are mostly made up of Republicans and many of them are Libertarians.

Libertarianism has been around for hundreds of years. It used to be called “anarchy.” But then people said, “Well, it’s about liberty,” so they became Libertarians. Libertarians believe in a limited government and unlimited personal freedom. They don’t want the government telling them what to do. They want to be able to do whatever they want to do, and while Libertarianism as I understand it runs a spectrum of different beliefs, most of the Libertarians think that the government should only pay for the military to protect us and then we’re kind of all on our own. We can hire our own security guards, I guess, and take care of ourselves and pay for our own health care, do everything on our own.

There are many famous people who are Libertarians or have Libertarian leanings. Drew Carey, the host of The Price is Right, is said to be a Libertarian or have Libertarian leanings. Penn Jillette, the speaking half of the magical duo, Penn and Teller, is said to be a Libertarian or have Libertarian leanings. John Larroquette, the Night Court actor and an actor in many other things, is said to be a Libertarian or have Libertarian leanings.

Believe it or not, I am a Libertarian, at least when it comes to some issues. I’m a Libertarian when it comes to same sex marriage. I don’t think the government should tell two adults in love, even if they’re the same sex, that they can’t get married. That should be up to the two people involved.

I’m a Libertarian when it comes to drugs. I don’t think the government should be in the drug enforcement business. Haven’t we learned anything from Prohibition? Prohibition is a PBS documentary by Ken Burns. I saw him interviewed a few weeks ago by John Stewart on The Daily Show. He said that before Prohibition alcohol wasn’t that big of a deal to people. They drank some, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. Once Prohibition hit, then people said, “I’m not going to let the government tell me I can’t drink! I think I’ll put a still in my back yard.” Then after Prohibition people kept on drinking. I don’t think the government should tell people they can’t grow a marijuana plant in their backyard. I certainly don’t think that some college kid should be shot by mistake by drug enforcement officers because he’s suspected of selling a little marijuana to college students as happened two years or so ago in West Michigan. Now I don’t want you to think I’m some sort of a big druggie. Or even a little druggie. I am almost embarrassed to admit I’ve never tried marijuana. I had the opportunity in high school and college, but I didn’t do it, I think, because I believed the propaganda films they showed us when we were kids that said it killed brain cells. I was smart enough to know that I didn’t have any brain cells to spare. Now if you think that my position is radical, then you must think that the late conservative writer William F. Buckley Jr. was a radical, because he believed in drug decriminalization.

I’m also a Libertarian when it comes to capital punishment. I don’t think the government should have the right to kill someone, to execute criminals. I wish Timothy McVeigh had lived out his days in a prison cell, surrounded by pictures of all his victims in the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing, so that every morning he would wake up and see pictures of his victims, including many children, because I’m in the redemption business, the transformation business. I would’ve hoped that one day Timothy McVeigh would wake up and go, “My goodness, what have I done?” But instead the government killed him. I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think the government should be in the execution business.

I’m a Libertarian when it comes to women’s reproductive rights. I don’t think the government should tell a woman what she can do with her body. I think there’s nobody better to decide what’s best for her health than the woman herself in consultation with her doctor. Certainly she’s better able to decide that than some bureaucrat or politician in Lansing, or some bureaucrat or politician in Washington, or members of the U.S. Supreme Court. If the government can tell a woman that she can’t have an abortion, then the government can tell a woman that she has to have an abortion, as they reportedly do in China. So I’m a Libertarian when it comes to that as well.

Ayn Rand is considered the godmother of Libertarians. Ayn Rand was a Russian immigrant. Presumably, she was a legal immigrant. She came to this country in the early 1900s and went to Hollywood where she was a Hollywood screenwriter. She was a writer of novels and a philosopher. She wrote Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, in which she detailed her philosophy. She said that people should be able to decide for themselves what they do and not depend on a nanny state, not depend on the government to help them out. People should be rugged individualists. Libertarians like Ron Paul liked her so much that he named his son Rand, Rand Paul, who is now a U.S. Senator. Ayn Rand’s philosophy is said to be rational egoism as opposed to ethical altruism: Everybody taking care of themselves and not worrying about anybody else, which I think I’d call rational selfishness as opposed to ethical selflessness.

Now I think many Libertarians would consider themselves Christians, although Ayn Rand was an atheist. It seems to me that many Tea Party members are Libertarians or have Libertarian leanings. For the life of me, I can’t reconcile Libertarianism and Christianity. It seems to me they are diametrically opposed to one another. Now I suppose somebody could be a Libertarian and be a traditional Christian and say, “I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior,” but that’s it. But I don’t know how you could be a Libertarian and a follower of Jesus, somebody who believes that you should house the homeless and clothe the naked and feed the hungry and help your neighbor. If you’re a Libertarian, your neighbors should take care of themselves. Perhaps the Christian ideas about ethical altruism are best described by James, the brother of Jesus. James said, If someone comes up to you naked and hungry, you can’t say to them, “Well, peace be with you. Have a good day. Be on your way.” You can’t do that. If somebody comes up to you naked and hungry, you can’t use the wonderful line that Garrison Keillor uses at the end of the Writer’s Almanac, “Be well, do good work and keep in touch.” You can’t do that. If somebody comes up to you naked and hungry you can’t give them a religious tract and say, “This will clothe your soul and this will feed your spirit.” You actually have to help them if you can. You have to clothe them if they’re naked and feed them if they’re hungry, according to James, who said, “Faith without works is dead.”

Elizabeth Warren speaks to this somewhat. She’s a law professor at Harvard; she’s a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. She said in a campaign gathering a month or two ago that nobody got rich on their own. Nobody. If you built a factory and make a lot of money, good for you. But you send your goods to market on roads that all of us paid for. You hired workers that all of us paid to educate. You are protected by police and fire departments that the rest of us paid for. Elizabeth Warren says that nobody does this on their own. If you made a lot of money, fine, keep a big hunk of it. But also, as part of the social contract that we all should live by, you need to pay part of that forward for the kids coming up in the next generation. In other words, we all need to pay our fair share of taxes. The factory owners, they need to pay their fair share. Libertarians have a hard time hearing that, or at least they have a hard time accepting it.

Also at that Tea Party/CNN sponsored debate, a young man stood up and asked a question. I think it was kind of a smart-alecky question. He was maybe 30 years old. He said, “How much of the money that I make should the government allow me to keep?” Cute. But that was the wrong question. He should have asked, “How much of the money that I make should I gladly pay in taxes to live in – what I have to believe he believes is – the greatest country on the face of the earth? How much should he make and gladly pay in taxes for the privilege of living in a free-market capitalist democratic country that allowed him to make that money? How much should he gladly pay in taxes from what he makes to live in freedom and liberty? Those are the questions he should have asked.

I get a little sick and tired of people who complain about paying taxes. Not that I don’t do that around April 15 myself. I really shouldn’t, though. But whether you pay 10 or 15 or 25 or 36 or 39 percent in taxes, that’s just money. There are thousands of people – our military men and women – who have laid down their lives for this country, who paid the supreme sacrifice, who paid the ultimate tax. They paid 100 percent and they don’t get a refund after April 15. They died for this country. How dare millionaires and billionaires, complain about having to pay 3 percent more in taxes? They should be ashamed of themselves. If a millionaire has to pay 3 percent more in taxes, that’s $30,000 compared to a soldier on the battlefield who laid down their life for this country and who paid the ultimate tax.

It seems to me that today’s Libertarians were born a couple hundred years too late. If they would have been born a couple hundred years ago they could have blazed their own trail. They could have created their own path. Instead, Libertarians today have to travel highways that we pay for. If they could have been born a couple hundred years ago, they could have killed their own food, and maybe many of them still do. But they could have killed their own meat and known that it was fresh. Instead, I imagine many Libertarians go to the grocery store and they buy meat inspected by the USDA, the United States Department of Agriculture, the U.S. government. If they would have been born a couple hundred years ago, they could have been their own weather forecasters. They could have looked out on the horizon and said to themselves, “Red at night, sailor’s delight” or “Red in morning, sailors take warning.” Instead, they’ve got the National Weather Bureau telling them what the weather is. They’ve got the government putting up sirens in towns warning of an oncoming tornado. They’ve got government workers evacuating places in Florida because a hurricane is coming. Libertarians were just born a couple hundred years too late.

Whenever I think of Libertarians, I think of one of my favorite songs ever, by Bill Withers, Lean on Me. Bill Withers sings, “Lean on me, when you’re not strong, and I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on.” Now there may be some Libertarians who believe in helping their neighbor, doing for others, maybe they don’t want the government to help their neighbor, but they do. But, as I understand Libertarianism – and I understand Libertarianism about as well as I understand Christianity – as I understand Libertarianism it’s not about helping your neighbor. It’s about taking care of yourself and your neighbor taking care of him or herself and then the world will run perfectly. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. One of the Republican candidates for president, Herman Cain, who is a Libertarian or at least has Libertarian leanings, says, “If you’re not rich, it’s nobody’s fault but your own.” That’s Libertarianism in a nutshell, I think. And I think that what we need to be about is selflessness, not selfishness.

Oh, one more thing, I almost forgot. Ayn Rand, who wrote all those books about Libertarianism and taking care of yourself and not relying on the government, she died in 1982. As far as I could tell, after she retired, she collected Social Security and she was on Medicare.

Baby You're A Firework

My favorite television commercial these days is about a car company. A dad is leaning into the passenger side window of a car. He’s talking to his apparently little girl. She looks to be about three years old. He has a set of car keys in his hand. He’s telling her things like, drive carefully, buckle up, stuff like that. She says, “Daddy, OK!” Then he hands her the car keys and of course she turns out to be a teenager, apparently driving alone for the first time.

I am that dad. My daughter is a sophomore in college and yet I see her as a little girl. I’m trying not to. I’m working on it. But I think of her like I thought of her when she was two or three years old and I thought, OK, she’s the President and I’m the Secret Service; it’s my job to protect her. I know I shouldn’t do that now, but I still sometimes do. I’m working on it.

I heard somebody say once that a two year old is willful and that what we need to do is break the will, break the spirit of a two year old. That’s sick! You don’t need to break the will, break the spirit, of a two year old, we need to lift up the spirit of a two year old. We need to nurture the spirit of a two year old. We need to enhance the spirit of a two year old, and a four year old, and a six year old, and a sixteen year old. We need to nurture our children in body, mind and spirit, not break their spirit, not tear them down, not belittle them. We need to give them everything that we can.

In a previous life I was a radio talk show host. I interviewed a state lawmaker one time. We were talking about education funding and how he was going to support cutting funds for public schools. He said, “Bill, you can’t solve the problem by throwing money at it.” I said, “Well, that’s how they solve the problem in rich school districts, they throw money at it and it solves the problem.” It’s not right, it’s not fair, it’s not just to spend sometimes twice as much per pupil in a rich school district as is spent in a poor school district. But if we’re going to do that, then we shouldn’t wonder why students in poor school districts don’t do as well as students in rich school districts. It should be pretty obvious.

The only state that I know of that is fair about all of this is the state of Vermont. A few years ago, I believe it was the state supreme court in Vermont, that looked at educational funding and saw a disparity between rich school districts and poor school districts, between kids who live in rich districts and kids who live in poor districts, and said, as if it were the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, separate and unequal is unconstitutional. Now I believe in Vermont the same amount of money is spent on every child for public education, as it should be. I wonder when Michigan will come to that same conclusion, that it’s unconstitutional to apparently care more about students in rich districts than students in poor districts. We need to raise up all children, to nurture all children in body, mind and spirit.

I never have understood the Christian doctrine of original sin. I know it, you probably know it, the whole idea that in the beginning of creation, in the mythological story of Adam and Eve being told by God not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and they did it anyway and when they did that they disobeyed God, they sinned and it led to the fall of humankind. Sin was ushered into the world when they did that. I understand all that, I mean I know it, I just don’t believe it. For one thing, the definition of the word “sin,” really means missing the mark, making a mistake, making an error. It’s not some sinister thing. It’s just making a mistake. I don’t get it. I don’t think Jesus got it.

A couple thousand years ago, according to the Christian New Testament, people would bring their children to this apparently holy man, to this prophet, to this Jesus. They would just want Jesus to tousle their hair, say a little prayer over them, but the disciples said, “No, no, you can’t do that. This is Jesus. He’s got more important things to do than mess with kids. He’s got to walk on water, and turn water into wine. He’s got to tell people to love their enemies and love their neighbor. He doesn’t have time for your children.” Then Jesus caught wind of this and said, “You guys just don’t get it. Let the little children come to me and do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” Then the children were brought forward and he laid his hands on them.

I agree with Jesus. If heaven exists, at least on this side of the rainbow if not somewhere over the rainbow, then the kingdom of heaven, heaven on earth, belongs to little children. They are such a joy. They aren’t some bundle of sin. I just don’t understand this whole concept. You know it’s one thing to think of adults as inherently sinful; I don’t believe that either, I believe we are inherently good. But to hold a little bitty baby in your arms and to look at that little baby and see, not a bundle of joy, but a tangle of sin, I just don’t get it. A child is not some vessel of the devil. A child is a joy to behold.

I can’t even think that when little Adolf was in his parents’ arms, or somebody’s arms, that they looked at him and saw anything but a bundle of joy. Now he may have grown up to be Hitler, but as a child I think he was a bundle of joy, not a vessel of the devil. I think Jesus knew that, too. Certainly philosopher and author Jean Jacques Rousseau knew that. He said in one of his novels - don’t begrudge children the chance to be children. Let them be little children. Let them have the hardest job they’ll ever have: playing all day, having fun from morning until night. That’s what we expect from them.

Little children are not miniature adults. I think some people have the exact opposite of the problem I have with my daughter, seeing my adult daughter as a little child, some people see little children as miniature adults. They’re not. You can’t tell a two year old something and then expect them to salute as if they’re a recruit and do it. They’re not fully mature, they’re not fully grown, they haven’t grown up. They haven’t physically and spiritually and emotionally grown up. I think part of the problem of child abuse and neglect is because some people see little children as miniature adults or vessels of sin and they have to have sin beat out of them or shaken out of them. It’s a shame that we don’t treat little children like little children.

I saw a comedian named Emo Philips years ago in a comedy club. If you know him, you know that he’s very strange, but wonderfully funny. He said that when he was a kid, his parents always told him, “Don’t go near the cellar door!” That’s all he ever heard as a child. “Don’t go near the cellar door!” Almost every day: “Don’t go near the cellar door!” But one day the door was open and he did go near it. He went through it and he said he saw some amazing things on the other side, things he’d never seen before – green grass, blue sky, trees!

Some people, some parents, some churches see little children, not as a blessing but as a bother. I don’t think this congregation does, but some churches, some parents, some adults do see children as a nuisance, not as people to be nurtured. Children are a blessing. Children are full of joy, full of playfulness, they show us wisdom and fairness sometimes. The things that come out of the mouths of children are amazing. We need to see them as a blessing, not a bother.

I used to baptize children. I don’t do that anymore; I bless children, but I used to baptize them. But I would try to turn baptism on its head. I would say that the church doesn’t confer or convey anything on the children when they are baptized that they don’t already have. We don’t make children sacred or holy or divine by baptizing them. They already are. I said that baptism is when the church realizes that children of creation are really children of God. Sacred. Holy. Divine. Then I changed the words you’re supposed to say at a baptism. I’d say, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, who is a Mother to us all. I baptize you in the name of the Son, who is a Brother to us all. I baptize you in the name of the Spirit, who is a connection to us all.” That’s probably why I am no longer a Christian minister. I don’t baptize children anymore, I bless them. But really, when you think about it, we don’t bless children, they bless us. They bless us with their playfulness and their joy and their sense of fun and sense of humor and their sense of fairness and their wisdom. They bless us; we don’t bless them.

One of my favorite songs these days is a tune by Katy Perry. It’s called “Firework.” Katy Perry sings, “Baby, you’re a firework. Come on, let your colors burst. Make ‘em go ah, ah, ah.” The video that goes with it shows fireworks coming out of the middle of Katy Perry and the children and the young people who are in the video. It’s wonderful. It kind of reminds me of the old Christian song, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.” That’s what Katy Perry is saying to children and young people. Let your light shine. You are a divine spark. Don’t be ashamed of who you are or embarrassed of who you are. Be thankful for who you are. We should all be thankful for who they are. They are a firework. They are a light to the world. We don’t want them to hide that light under a bushel basket. We want them to glow and grow.

I’ve seen a couple of movies about the life of the Dalai Lama. Maybe you have, too. One of them stars Brad Pitt. And I’ve read several of the Dalai Lama’s books about happiness and the four noble truths and other ideas and ideals. So I know that the Dalai Lama, before he was recognized as the Dalai Lama, when he was about two years old, Buddhist monks were traveling back and forth across Tibet, looking for the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, looking for the reincarnation of the Buddha. They came upon this little boy and he was inquisitive and intelligent and they thought This might be him! They put him through a battery of tests, including spreading out several sacred and secular objects and having him pick out the sacred ones and he did. They came to believe that this was the new Dalai Lama, this was the reincarnation of the Buddha. So with his parents’ permission they whisked him away to a mansion or a castle and they gave him everything a child would need. They gave him the best education, both sacred and secular. They gave him food, all the food he would need. They gave him toys and games to play with. They nurtured him in body, mind and spirit and he grew up to be the Dalai Lama because they saw him as sacred, holy, divine.

What if we, what if society, saw all children as the reincarnation of the Buddha or the Christ child? What if society saw all children as sacred, holy, divine? There would be no more child abuse. If we saw all children as sacred, holy, divine there would be no cuts in education funding. Children would get the best education. There would be no more poor children. There would not be a quarter of the children in America (not some third world country), living in poverty. There would be no more poor children. Every child would be nurtured. Every child would be seen as sacred, holy, divine. And then every child would feel like they were living in the kingdom of heaven. Every child would feel like they were living in heaven on earth. As every child should.

9/11 At 10

I co-host a radio show with Fred Wooden who’s the senior minister at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids. He’s a Unitarian and he’s probably one of the brightest guys I’ve ever met. Fred knows everything about everything. I kid him about it. He kids himself about it. He calls himself “Mr. Know-It-All” from the old “Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.” Listeners know how smart Fred is. One listener called up a few weeks ago and said, “Well, as you know, Fred…” And I said, “What am I? Chopped liver?” And he said, “Well, no, but I think Fred would know something about this.” A month or two before we got Osama bin Laden, we were talking on the radio about how come it’s taking so long to get him. I said that I just don’t understand why we don’t send a Navy Seals team to take him out. Fred said, “Well, there’s a simple explanation for that Bill. Osama bin Laden is on land and the Navy Seals only operate in the water.” As you know, it was the Navy Seals that got Osama bin Laden on land. I will never let Fred forget that!

I was home sick on that day, lying on the couch, watching television when the news report came on. President Kennedy had been assassinated. They say you never forget where you were when you heard the news on November 22, 1963 if you were alive when President Kennedy was assassinated.

I turned on the computer that morning about nine o’clock. At the time I was the editor and publisher of a little political magazine in Grand Rapids and I wanted to read the morning papers. I was on the USA Today website and there was a little blurb about a plane that hit the World Trade Center. My first thought was, it must be a foggy morning and it was a little Cessna or something. As I went to turn on the TV, I remembered that a few months before I’d taken my daughter to New York City and we went to the top of the World Trade Center during spring break. We saw a video that said the World Trade Center buildings were constructed in a way to take a hit from a 707 and keep standing. As I turned on the Today show, the second plane hit the second tower. Matt Lauer and Katie Couric were saying we could no longer say this was an accident. It was obviously a terrorist act, a terrorist attack. As the day went on, as probably all of you know, we heard about a plane that hit the Pentagon and another plane that went down in a field in Pennsylvania. About 3000 people were killed in those 9-11 attacks. They say you never forget where you were if you were alive on 9-11-2001 when you heard about the worst terrorist attack ever on American soil.

Later we’d hear from loved ones of the victims and their heart-wrenching stories. We’d hear about the heroes and heroines of that day, the police officers and firefighters who, while everyone was running from the buildings, went into the buildings before they collapsed. Some of you may know that I felt called to the ministry on that day, which happened to be my 47th birthday. I just knew that one day I wanted to preach love in a sometimes hateful world. So I moved from the media to the ministry to pursue a path to pastoring. I get the feeling sometimes when I tell people that, that they think I’m bragging or something. You know, mere mortals are called to the ministry on any other day of the week or of the year, but me, I had to be called to the ministry on 9-11-2001, my birthday, the worst attack on American soil. I get the feeling people think that I think I’m somebody special because of that. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Forty years before that, give or take, when I was about seven years old, I set up chairs in my basement and I had my siblings and my neighbors sit in those chairs and I conducted a worship service. If that was my first call to ministry, I ignored it. When I was in high school, I read Norman Vincent Peale’s book, The Power of Positive Thinking. I came away from that book not really impressed with the positive thinking aspects of it, but I was taken by what I now know is called the pastoral care aspects of it. Norman Vincent Peale was the minister of Marble Collegiate Church in New York City and he traveled around the country and made speeches and talked about how after he made a speech somebody would come up to him and say how they needed to talk to him about some personal problem and he took the time to talk to them. I was taken by that, I was impressed by that, I was moved by that. But if that was my second call to ministry, I ignored it. When I was 35 years old, I was sitting in my then church, Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, listening to my then minister, David Rankin, a Unitarian, talk about having just turned 50. He preached about looking back on his life and how he was so grateful that he became a minister because the ministry gave his life purpose and meaning and I was so impressed by that, I was so taken by that, I was so moved by that. But if that was my third call to ministry, I ignored it.

Moses felt called to the ministry when he saw a burning bush. For me it took two burning towers before I finally felt it, after what I think was a lifetime of being called to the ministry. Now don’t think that I think that God caused 9-11 so that I would become a minister. No, I don’t believe that.

In the Hebrew Scriptures King David reportedly wrote Psalm 140. Psalm 140 begins, “Deliver me, O Lord, from evildoers.” But it’s difficult sometimes to know who the evildoers are. Oh, sure, the people who flew those planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and into a field in Pennsylvania, they were obviously evildoers. Osama bin Laden, who masterminded 9-11, was obviously an evildoer. But some people take from that, because they were Muslims, that all Muslims, therefore, are evildoers or terrorists or at the very least all terrorists are Muslims.

But a moment’s reflection tells us that can’t be the case. Timothy McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building, at that time the worst terrorist attack on American soil. Timothy McVeigh was a Christian. But we don’t conclude from that that therefore all Christians are terrorists or that all terrorists are Christians.

Eric Robert Rudolph blew up an abortion clinic in the south, killing an off-duty police officer who was a security guard there. Eric Robert Rudolph was a Christian. But we don’t conclude from that that therefore all Christians are terrorists or that all terrorists are Christians. It’s hard sometimes to know who the evildoers are.

Natalie Maines is the lead singer with the Dixie Chicks. Before the war started in Iraq, as you probably remember, she went to Great Britain and gave an interview in which she said she was embarrassed by her fellow Texan, who just happened to be the President of the United States. Immediately country radio stations across America banned the Dixie Chicks’ music. I know this because I called one up just for kicks and requested a Dixie Chicks song. They never played it. Natalie Maines said that after that she received death threats. One woman wrote her and said she hoped that she’d die. It’s difficult sometimes to know who the evildoers are.

On the night of March 20, 2003, I was supposed to be studying for a prophets test in my seminary class the next day. Instead, probably like many of you, I was glued to the television, watching as bombs were bursting in Baghdad. Even though I wasn’t studying for a prophets test, I feel like I was acting like a prophet. I didn’t respond to that attack with shock and awe. I responded with sadness and anger that my country attacked a country that hadn’t attacked us and had nothing to do with 9-11. As the war went on, we heard that thousands of American military men and women were killed and thousands more were wounded and that tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent Iraqis were killed in that war. We heard about how America doesn’t torture, but it engages in something every other country calls torture – waterboarding – but we call it enhanced interrogation techniques. We heard about Abu Ghraib, where our military personnel acted horrendously. It’s difficult sometimes to know who the evildoers are.

When you look back on 9-11, it’s hard not to ask, “Why did they do this? Why would anybody attack us?” In part, it’s difficult to ask that because if you ask it, you’re sometimes branded in some circles a traitor for asking such a question, or at least un-American or unpatriotic, because there could be no reasonable explanation. And I don’t think there is a reasonable explanation why they attacked us, but they must have some reason that they hate us so much. And I’ve got to believe it’s more than just they don’t like our freedoms. I don’t think it’s the other pat answer that you hear. They don’t like our Western way of life; they don’t like our lifestyle; they don’t like our Hollywood movies. Because if that’s why they hate us, then we should put all the members of the religious right on a terrorist watch list, because they hate us for the same reason. They don’t like our Western ways, they don’t like our lifestyle, they don’t like our Hollywood movies either.

It’s got to be something deeper than that. I wonder, along with others, if it isn’t because we have boots on the ground in their countries. We have boots on the ground, as you know, in dozens and dozens of countries. We have hundreds of military bases in countries around the world. How would we react if Russia had boots on the ground in Florida? Or China had boots on the ground in California? If Russian tanks rolled into Orlando or Chinese tanks rolled into San Diego, how would we react? You don’t have to think about that too long or hard to imagine it. We know how we reacted a couple hundred years ago, when the British had boots on the ground in America. In part, we had a revolution because of it.
After 9-11 we came together as a country. We responded to certain voices. I wonder, though, what America, what the world, would be like today if we had responded to other voices, less militaristic voices. Voices like Gandhi, a holy man from India who through civil disobedience convinced the British to turn over sovereignty to the people of India. Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.” What if we responded to the voices of people like Dorothy Day? Dorothy Day was a devout Catholic, co-founder of the Catholic Worker, an activist for peace and justice. Dorothy Day said, “The challenge of the day is to have a revolution of the heart.” What would America or the world be like today if we would have responded to voices like Desmond Tutu? Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as you know, was one of the leaders of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. When the white government was finally driven from power and Nelson Mandela took over, Desmond Tutu was named the head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “Forgiving is not forgetting. It’s actually remembering, remembering that we have the power to hit, but choosing not to.”

On 9-11, after watching all those horrific images on TV, I walked the three or four blocks to my daughter’s school. I thought I could offer some comfort to her and maybe some of her classmates. She was in elementary school. When I got to her classroom, her teacher was wondering whether to turn on the TV to allow the students to see the images that we’d all seen. The teacher asked the students how many of them would be going home to an empty house and therefore to a waiting television set. I think more than half the students raised their hands. So she decided to turn on the television and she and I were there when the students saw the terrible images of that day. It didn’t dawn on me until I was working on this sermon that on November 22, 1963, I was nine years old and in the fourth grade. On 9-11-2001, my daughter was nine years old and in the fourth grade. We try hard to protect our children from the horrors of life, but we can’t always succeed. Perhaps all we can do is be with our children as they face the horrors of life, to help them cope. And maybe that’s all we can do for each other is to walk together, to help each other cope with the horrors of life. Whether it’s on November 22, 1963, or on 9-11-2001, or on 9-11-2011.