Who is my neighbor?

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells the religious leaders that the heart of the faith is summed up in two statements: love God with your whole being, love your neighbor as yourself.

One who heard Jesus said this asks: Who is my neighbor?

Jesus replies with the story of the Good Samaritan. It is a story about a man who has been robbed and is left naked, bleeding and penniless in a ditch beside the road. None of the leaders in the Jewish community stop to help the man, but a foreigner, a Samaritan does stop and offer aid sufficient to get the man back on his feet.

Jesus asks who is the neighbor to the man in the ditch?

I have received few complaints since the Nickelsville community moved into our sanctuary. The ones I have received have been most civil. But in each complaint I hear the implied statement that these homeless people are not our neighbors.

At such times this story of Jesus and the religious official comes to mind. The man asks who is my neighbor? Jesus asks, who is the neighbor to the man in the ditch?

The question of the neighbor is a question of perspective. For many of us it is border to our sense of equality. A neighbor is someone life us. For Jesus, a neighbor is someone who helps when help is needed, and therefore someone who sweeps away all borders and limits to compassion and equality.

I am thankful that the Keystone community chose Jesus' definition of neighbor when it came to deciding whether Nickelsville could use our sanctuary.

-Rich

Keystone News

Over a week into our sojourn with Nickelsville and so far so good.

Our broader community of those who use the building has been very supportive.

Some Keystone folks are bringing food. Thanks to them.

If you want to know what to donate to the Nickelsville group, look up their website www.nickelsvilleseattle.org

Feel free to donate to Keystone as well. Our costs for utilities and the like will undoubtedly be increased significantly.

Rich

Keystone News

In case you have not heard Keystone is hosting Nickelsville.

They contacted us late Saturday night and asked if they could stay in our building. I told them that all we had that was available throughout the week was the sanctuary and there they would have to be out all day on Sunday. They said that they didn't have anyplace else to go.

On Sunday they presented their request to the congregation and answered questions. After worship the congregation gathered and decided to offer Nickelsville folks the space for 30 days.

On Monday morning I informed the pre-school folks. They had a lot of questions and concerns which we tried our best to address. On Wednesday afternoon Rich met with the board of the pre-school along with two representatives from Nickelsville. The meeting was very orderly.

Nickelsville folks moved in on Wednesday night. Several Keystone folks were there to greet them.

Since then things have been pretty quiet. They have posted what they need as far as donations on their website www.nickelsvilleseattle.org. We don't have a lot of space to store goods so please only bring them what they need. They have access to our kitchen and dining area some times but not all the time so please call ahead if you want to bring prepared food.

The other news is that Brandon Duran has agreed to accept our call to lead our outreach ministry. Brandon was one of the people who were here on Wednesday to greet the folks from Nickelsville. Brandon will officially start on Oct. 21.

Imago Dei

Pentecost 11 Year B
1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14
Mark 15:16-20
Imago Dei
By Rich Gamble


In today’s passage all those that Solomon murdered to get the throne are long forgotten, Solomon is shown to be pious and humble. He doesn’t wish for power, he doesn’t need wealth he only wants a clear head to see the path of good so that he can lead his people well. God is so impressed that God says, Hey Sol, since your request was so humble, I’m going to give you the wisdom you seek but I’ll throw in the power and wealth stuff as well. And sounding a bit like an infomercial host, God even throws in a special bonus offer of long life.

Understand what is being said here. God is moving to shape the world through powerful people. God blesses the people that God likes with power, and wealth, wisdom and long life. Therefore those people who are obtain power and wealth will be seen as wise and blessed by God. Those who are poor and powerless must by this logic be outside of God’s favor.

I just heard about a book and the movement it documents. The book is called The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet. According to what little research I’ve done about the “The Family” it is described as powerful people who, in the name of God seek the power to control the peoples of the world. They believe that the Christian message is about the power to dominate and that God blesses those who have wealth and power and God wants them to use that wealth and power to implement their vision of the world.

I haven’t researched this book or movement so I cannot tell you whether it is all true but there is truth in it. This image of Solomon blessed by God with wealth and power and wisdom is exactly that sort of world view. Solomon was a ruler who centralized power and wealth into his own hands. And those who wrote the passage we read today believed and wanted us to believe that such actions are the way God operates in the world. So those who seek to centralize the wealth and the power into their own hands are only doing what Solomon did and the Bible says Solomon was blessed by God to do just that.

If this were the only way of understanding God found in our tradition, I would be an agnostic or a Buddhist anything other than a Christian. Because I utterly and completely reject the assertion that Solomon the wealthy, murdering, despot represents an embodiment of the will of God. Indeed I believe that such an image is the exact opposite of the will of God. And the reason why groups such as this must understand the threat to our faith and the world such folks as described in the Book of Kings and in the book The Family truly are.
Though it is not our lectionary text I included the passage we read today from the Gospel of Mark describing Jesus.

In this passage Jesus is mocked, beaten and abused and in his lack of power, in his pain and suffering in his vulnerability is the image of God. A leader embodying the will of God does not use violence and wealth to control people; rather such a leader challenges the authority of that system to the very core. Jesus in this passage in Mark is the Christian image of God’s will. He is shown here living in such a way as to link him with the victims of power and violence. This passage de-legitimizes all those who would aspire to be some form of king or queen, general or titan of Wall Street.

God’s chosen one here is not blessed with the goodies of domination. He is a prisoner of the system, tortured, a victim of a kangaroo court, and in the end murdered. The harsh and painful vision of Jesus’ last day on earth is the ultimate protest against a system that uses violence, twists justice and ultimately murders its enemies.

Solomon or Jesus stand as polar opposites of each other. Solomon is the image of God blessing the domination system’s leaders with wealth and power and long life. Or Jesus is the image of God’s servant in utter conflict with the domination system, Jesus is blessed because he is willing to suffer poverty, torture and murder in order to non-violently oppose Solomon’s system. Only one is the embodiment of God’s will. Only one is God’s idea of a leader.

This plays out in how we worship and how we vote. It plays out in how we think of the Bible and how we think of our economy. Our choice of ultimate meaning has direct and profound implications on all other choices in our lives. If we are not clear about what we believe, if we are not clear about what has authority in our lives, then our muddled faith will lead to a muddled witness in the world. And in the conflict between clear and strongly held ideas of God as dominator and muddled ideas of God as basically nice. The muddled ideas will lose and Christianity will be defined in the public mind as one in which violence is condoned, wealth is praised, and the suffering of the poor is generally forgotten. That is the case today.

In the town hall meetings across the country we see how fear and lies infect a community and get people to stand against their better interests. It is an eloquent argument about the power of propaganda to twist a democracy into the tool of tyranny.

We are called to know what we believe, proclaim what we believe and live what we believe. Only then can the world see in us and in those like us a vision of God that stands against the Powers and with the poor, a God who offers an alternative to judgment and fear and eternal punishment. Only in the clarity of our faith can the power lies to generate fear be confronted at the most fundamental level.

The fate of the world hangs on what happens here, and in similar places all over the globe. Our image of ultimate meaning will determine future history. Fortunately it’s not all up to us. God’s nurturing Spirit is at work in the world and that is good news.

problems

The church computer will not let me cut and paste things into the blog account. That is why nothing new has appeared here. I just discovered that if I use a different computer I can paste copied text. So below is last week's sermon.- Rich

God's Real Estate

Pentecost 7 Year B
2 Samuel 7: 1-13
God’s Real Estate
By Rich Gamble


There is a lot of work done by Christian theologians in their attempt to harmonize various parts of the Bible. For some reason many Christians think that just because something is in the Bible it is an accurate reflection upon God. I think that the Bible is an amazing document and the most important document in human history; but it is not of one mind about the nature of God. Though it may be an oversimplification, I see the Bible as portraying two distinctly different visions of the nature of God. And whenever we say anything about the nature of God, we are also talking about the nature of the human community which strives to embody the values of that God.

Today’s text is at the heart of one of those visions of the nature of God. It is called the Davidic Covenant because God is making a covenant with David. It starts with David fretting because he has a nice wooden house and God’s place (where the Ark of the Covenant is) is in a tent.

God says to David (via the prophet Nathan) you are worried about building me a house, I’ll build you a house. God is using a play on the word house, meaning a permanent establishment of David’s lineage in the role of king. And to tie up the deal David’s son will build God a house, meaning a temple.

So David gets a house and God gets a house and the people of Israel get permanent peace. Sounds nice, who would not like a deal like that?

This is one vision of the nature of God. God here is like a king, but God for whatever reason subcontracts out the work of ruling the realm of God’s particular people. God leaves the running of the nation to the offspring of one of God’s favorites. If they are David’s offspring, that is good enough for God. They don’t have to be intelligent, or nice, or just. Their virtue is inherited. And after God, hands over the keys to the realm to David’s kids, God settles into a nice semi-retirement in an assisted living residence that Solomon will build for God. God just pulls up a recliner in the Holy of Holies in the Temple and people come and tell God what a great Divinity God is, and they offer God all sorts of offerings.

It is a good life for a deity.

It is a good deal for David’s kids as well. They get some peace of mind. Putting God in the temple means that they don’t have to worry about God wandering around and stirring up trouble. God is in God’s house, and the sons of David control that particular piece of real estate, indeed they run the whole city of Jerusalem. That is the weakness of tangible things like real estate, they can be controlled by people with money or guns, or in Solomon’s case, swords. The Jews understood this a little bit. That is why in the first covenant the agreement the people made with God was not to have idols. If you invest a statute with a connection to God, well, then the guys with the guns or gold can take the statue and thereby control that access to God. If God is going to be for the little guy, then God must never be linked to something that can be controlled or manipulated by the mighty.

Human beings, being what they are, the Jews couldn’t get by with no object to link them to the divine, so they built the Ark of the Covenant which wasn’t supposed to be the likeness of God, it was just supposed to be God’s throne. As objects associated with the divine, the Ark was not too bad, it could be moved easily enough and for the longest time it was housed in a tent. It moved with the people. But it was a slippery slope. If the presence of God is in even something as portable as a tent, still some people get to go into the tent, and some people end up deciding who gets to go into the tent. And those people can use the control of the tent flap to set themselves up over other people.

David took the Ark and locked it in his town. Solomon took the Ark and locked it in the Temple. So David and Solomon controlled access to God and conveniently here God gives ultimate political, military and economic power to David, Solomon and his kids and their kids forever.

This sort of thinking happens when people start thinking that God is connected to something tangible like a church, or a religion. The people who control that church or religion have access to all sorts of power over others.

There is another view in the Bible. In that view God is tied to no object, ritual or real estate. God ties God’s self to humanity but to all humanity. To be for all, this God is especially for those who are ignored or abused by other people. This God makes no promises to people because of their ancestry or their geography. God rather stands with those in need whoever they are and condemns those who cause or ignore those needs whoever they are. For the sake of the poor and oppressed kings are condemned, Israel is condemned, priests are condemned.

This God cannot be locked into a particular piece of real estate or religion. This God moves about seeking out those who suffer. This God does not utilize the power of greed and violence to dominate but rather uses love to console those who suffer and empower others to put an end to human suffering.

The Bible doesn’t offer us a vision of God to accept or not. The Bible offers us two utterly different visions of God.

One offers punishment if you fail to follow the rules of the religion, and the orders of people in charge. And offers health and wealth and happiness if you toe the line.

The other offers love to share with no guarantees of health, no opportunity for wealth (as long as there are people in need), and the real possibility of conflict with those in power.

I don’t believe that the text today is a depiction of the God I believe in. It deserves to be in the Bible, so that we have a clear view of the choice between the two primary visions of God.

The Bible also shows us how David’s descendents go on to lead Israel to ruin ultimately even to the destruction of God’s house and David’s house.

If your faith locks God into real estate like this sanctuary, or this nation, if your faith locks God into one particular set of rituals or authorized spokespeople, if your faith locks God into a special relationship with people of a particular race or gender, or sexual orientation. Then the God of this text, the God of the Temple, the God of the many rules is the God for you.

Jesus broke rules to heal and feed people. Jesus argued with priests and condemned the rulers of the Temple. Jesus included sinners, rule breakers, and non Jews into the circle of his fellowship. Jesus stripped away the power of domination by calling on people to love their enemies and give away their wealth.

In the last two thousand years there has been a concerted effort to stick the God of Jesus and Mary, Moses and Miriam back into the box of rules, and priesthood, real estate and nation.

Whenever I hear someone talk about God being linked to a particular religion or nation or people who inherit their virtue, I look for who is gaining by controlling the tent flap.

Whenever I hear about someone who is suffering illness, poverty, loss, or oppression, I hear the voice of God calling me to their side.

The Powers That Be have chosen the god of David, and they seek to hide any other choice from our eyes. Thank God for the Bible, for the people who wrote it, and preserved it. For if we look, we will see that we have a choice. The world has a choice. One choice leads us to the fate of the house of God and David. The other leads us down the path of Christ and the promise of new life. That path and promise are indeed good news for us and the world.

Welcome Aboard

Easter 7 Year B 052409
John 17:6-19
Welcome Aboard
By Rich Gamble

John’s Jesus is a guy with a lot to say. Here he says it in an extended prayer. In the prayer you may have noted that the word “world” comes up many times, thirteen times in the section of the prayer we read today.

John uses the word, not as a synonym for planet, although sometimes people think in such terms. It is often interpreted to mean that we Christians are not really meant for this world we are meant for something else, something not of this world, which for most traditional Christians this means heaven. You can understand why some people in reading texts like this would see our corporeal existence on this planet as something to be endured until we can move up and out of this existence.

One loose interpretation of this passage takes the word world and translates to “godless world.” This way of thinking leads to the embrace of such notions as Armageddon, the notion that the godless world has to be destroyed so the god filled world can emerge; or the idea that life is a veil of tears which we must endure for the sake of the joyous life after death. Such thinking can easily lead folks to be apathetic to the destruction of the planet, since the planet is the site for opposition to God. Earth is godless and doomed, heaven is the destination.

Such interpretations of scriptures as this one from John have lead us to a bunch of bad behaviors and placed the planet in peril.
The word translated “world” here from John makes much more sense if we see it as John’s reference to what we here call the Domination System. If we used that phrase as the way to translate John’s Greek word cosmos it sounds like this:
17:14 I have given them your word, and the domination system has hated them because they do not belong to the domination system, just as I do not belong to the domination system.
17:15 I am not asking you to take them out of the domination system, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.
17:16 They do not belong to the domination system, just as I do not belong to the domination system.
17:17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.
17:18 As you have sent me into the domination system, so I have sent them into the domination system.
The gist of this passage is this. We are in the Domination System. It is the world view of human civilization. It cannot be helped. The Domination System is the default setting for human thinking and acting. No matter how noble the vision, eventually humans will click back to the default setting. We see that in the history of utopian communities. We see that in the history of Israel and in the history of the Christian church. We are in the Domination System and the System is in us.

This doesn’t mean that the system is inevitably going to win out over any alternative. It means that the struggle will be long and difficult and it will never be completely over. We should not be so naïve as to think that if we make some profession of faith in the God of the opposite of Domination (what the Bible calls Agape or self-giving love) and go to church that we are somehow immune to the System’s hold on our thoughts and actions. We are not immune, we are carriers of the power of Domination and the power of Agape. Even if we understand the nature of both we still face the constant effort of identifying the spirit of agape in us and acting out of that truth.

The Domination System’s use of violence and greed and fear is hard wired into us and if we are to be free of it we need to first admit it like people in AA admit continually admit that they are alcoholics. The AA model is a helpful one. That model calls on the alcoholic to admit that he is one but that he will not drink today. Tomorrow he will have to do the same.

We are called by God, not to be transported into some perfect society, but to be faithful in the midst of our fallen civilization. We are called to be in the world but not of the world.

To do this we need each other. We need to gather like this, with fellow believers and confess that the System is still in us. We are still motivated by fear or greed. With a carrot or stick, we still want to force others to accept our ideas. We need to take out our ideas hold them up to the light of our faith and examine them to see if they are formed out of the love of God or the fear and desires of the System. We need to come together to figure out how to help others see the System for what it is and see that there is a radical alternative. We need each other for support and for guidance.

We come together here on Sundays to proclaim our truth, celebrate our hope, confess our struggles and experience the support of each other and the God of agape. We are in Domination System and it is in us. Part of the work is to examine our beliefs and feelings to sort out whether it is the spirit of the System or the spirit of agape which stand behind any particular thought or feeling. But our real mission is not perfecting ourselves but transforming the world. Everyday the Domination System causes a world of suffering and the world needs an alternative. We are called to use the tools of agape, to bring about the healing the world needs.

This passage reminds us that when we strive to bring about a change, the System, will hate us, and those who embrace the system will strive to ignore, slander or destroy us depending on how much of threat we become.

We are in the System but not of the System. That is a difficult distinction. All around us, buried within us, the spirit of the System churns away. We are like people paddling against the current of a powerful stream. It takes effort just to stay where we are. John’s Jesus says that we were placed here, to gather up those drowning in the river of greed and violence. God’s love has called us to be different, to paddle against the current, to struggle against violence and injustice, so that the victims may be rescued and so that others may see that it is possible to oppose the current and so be inspired.

We in Keystone are called to challenge hate and fear, violence and greed. We are called to show the world that an alternative way of organizing the human community is necessary and possible. If we are to follow our calling we need to be honest about the presence of the System within us as well as the presence of the power of God’s self giving love. If we are to follow our calling we need to understand that practicing justice and peace are skills to be acquired and practiced and not just thoughts to be thought. If we are to follow our calling we need to understand that we need each other for this work cannot be done alone.

We have the vision. We have presence of the God of agape and we have each other. We have all we need to change the world around us. And that is good news.