Near the Cross Stood His Mother

Posted on May 13, 2012 by Ken Corder

Mary near Jesus at the Cross

Title:  Near the Cross Stood His Mother

Text:  John 19:25-27

A talk given at Overdale United Methodist Church, Louisville, Kentucky, on May 13, 2012.  Click here to listen to the talk.  Right click to download the talk as an MP3.

What a beautiful but piercing image of motherhood, Mary standing near the cross of her suffering son Jesus.  Her son is assailed by a system and a people who know only violence, hate and greed, and his mother stands with him to the painful end, near the cross. 

Mothers are defenders of their children and go to great lengths to protect their children.  One woman in Memphis, Tennessee was a bit excessive last year.  Monika Spraggins observed a neighbor selling weed to her 12-year-old son, and she decided to take matters into her own hands.  Police say Spraggins broke a chair and then used a leg to beat the drug dealer.   Police say she “went Old Testament” on the dealer.  The drug dealer was seen bleeding from the head outside the home and was sent to a hospital for stitches and swelling.  Though I don’t recommend her tactics, this mom was  just acting out the frustration that mothers today feel as they stand by helplessly and see their children ripped apart by drugs, alcohol, consumerism, and violence.

Our children are suffering.  Many look at their lives, their families, their communities and their future and see nothing but a dark, hopeless, desolate future.  The alarming statistics on teen suicide reveal the hopelessness and despair many of our youth experience today .  An Indiana Attorney General study reports that youth suicide is the third leading cause of death for young people ages 15 – 24 and the second leading cause for college-age youth. Suicide even affects pre-teens and is the fourth leading cause of death for youth ages 10 – 14.  When asked if they had experienced a feeling of hopelessness and sadness for a constant period of two weeks or greater during the past 12 months (the possible beginning of clinical depression) – 27.5% of youth said they had felt that way.  That is one of every four youth.   When asked if they had seriously considered suicide in the past 12 months, 15.8% of youth reported they had.  That is almost out of every six.[i]

Oh, but suicide is just the beginning.  Throw in rising pornography addiction, rampant teen sex, unquenchable consumerism, rising teen-committed rape, increased drug and alcohol use, and it seems that our children and youth are hurting and lost at every turn.  While we adults have been preoccupied with chasing the dollar, destroying the planet, waging endless wars, and trying to buy our way to happiness, we have discarded our children and youth.  We have sacrificed our children so that we might satisfy our greed, our envy, and our lust for more and more.  Suicide as the third leading cause of death for young people is nothing less than the logical outcome of the single-minded pursuance of the American Dream.

No home is exempt from this troubling plague on our youth.  A few weeks ago I attended a drug alliance conference that Hillview Mayor Jim Eadens hosted.  At this public forum, Mayor Eadens spoke about how the drug problem had affected his own family.  He said he took his children to church every Sunday and had a strong, loving family and yet drugs infiltrated their home and family.  There are so many evils that are threatening our children today, even those families that seem to have it all together.

In ancient Palestine, the Caananite people concocted a god whom they named Moloch to whom they sacrificed their children.  In order to satisfy the greed, the lust and the violence of this god of civilization, a child was occasionally thrown into the fire at Moloch’s temple, which was located in the valley of Gehenna.  Jesus would later refer to Gehenna as hell.  It was the worst possible place he could imagine, a place where children are thrown into the fire to satisfy the people’s greed and lust and violence for more and more and more.  Though the sacrifices to Moloch had ended by Jesus’ day, children in every generation are discarded, neglected and sacrificed, as adults go about chasing possession and power.  Jesus arrives on the scene as part of a long scriptural tradition that condemned such violence against children.  Leviticus 18:21-23 says to the Israelite parents, “And you shall not let any of your children pass through the fire to Moloch.”

Society’s violence against our sons and daughters continues today.  When

Moloch, Ammonite god to whom children were sacrificed

16% of teens have seriously considered suicide in the last twelve months we must realize that the society we have created and the institutions we have put in charge of our society are failing our children.  We have thrown our children into Moloch’s fire.  And our spiritual and scriptural tradition demands that we do something about it.  Proverbs 24:11-12 instructs, “Rescue those who are unjustly sentenced to die; save them as they stagger to their death. Don’t excuse yourself by saying, “Look, we didn’t know.” For God understands all hearts, and he sees you.  He who guards your soul knows you knew.  He will repay all people as their actions deserve.”

For countless ages mothers have played a crucial role in saving our children from the fires of Moloch, from the greed, lust and violence of civilization in every generation.  As the State and religious representatives of Moloch crucified Jesus, it was Jesus’ mother and other women who stood by him at the cross.  The “sincere faith” and commitment of mothers is celebrated as “far more precious than jewels” (2 Timothy 1:5, Proverbs 31:10).  I want to suggest today that our mothers play an important role in directing our children away from the violence, greed, lust and desolation of Moloch and toward the way of Jesus and his beautiful kingdom of God.  Our children our hurting terribly and searching for a world they can live passionately into.  That beautiful place is the kingdom of God, and mothers have a critical calling of pointing our children to the Jesus who will lead them there.

Jesus taught of a way of living he called the kingdom of God, which was a place of freedom, simplicity and compassionate community.  Those who found their way into the kingdom of God were free from their violent tendencies to dominate over others and to acquire ever more and more things.  Instead, they would live simply and in harmony with each other.  They would live in compassionate community, not in the grasp of an insidious individualism that seeks only after personal concerns but also those of brothers and sisters in the community.

How do we save our children from a society that is literally killing our children and introduce our children to the kingdom of God?  Well, we could try to fight the institutions that are destroying our children.  Like Monika Spraggins, you could take a baseball bat and hit everyone who is harming our children.  All of you mothers could drive a caravan to Madison Avenue and smash the windows the advertising agencies while demanding they stop creating irrational desires in the souls of our youth, desires to look a certain way, to wear certain clothes or have a particular kind of skin or hair or waist size.  Of course, they would throw you in jail.  Hopefully someone would come and visit you while you were behind bars.  For those of you still left, you could drive to Washington D.C. and storm the White House and the Capitol Building demanding that the State stop supporting insidious policies that are destroying families, oppressing the poor and engaging us in endless wars that are killing children and youth in this country and in other countries.  For those few of you still not behind bars, you could drive up to fast food restaurants and destroy the drive-thru windows while telling them to stop fattening our children with their super-sizes and extra-obesity and early-onset diabetes meals.  Then for the few of you still not imprisoned, you could drive to the church, turn over its pews and cry out against the hypocrisy of churches that sing and preach of Jesus’ love but who have driven away the children.  Mothers, you could do all those things, but you would not change much.  Your violence against the system will not bring it to its knees.  It always has more money and more power.  Jesus knew this, too, and told us to not pick up our swords because those who live by the sword die by the sword.

A second option is this.  You could pick up your children and run for the hills and hide.  You could grab your children, drop out and try to run away from the madness and hide.  At one point, that is what Mary wanted to do with Jesus.  Jesus was teaching about the kingdom of God and resistance to the empire and Mary came to the crowd and tried to whisk him away.  You mothers could put your money together and buy a hundred acre farm start a commune to get away from it all.  You could call it Mothers Against Despair and Desolation.  You could grow hummus and sing kumbayah every night, create your own paradise and leave over the other suffering children behind.  There have been many times I wanted to pack the kids in the van and get away from the violence, the consumer madness and the insanity of civilization.  But Jesus said we are to be lights in the world and salt of the earth.  Our light was not meant to be put under a bushel but to shine in the world.

So mothers are to neither fight nor run and hide, so what is your option to protect your children from civilization’s angst and despair?  The Gospels repeatedly offer one answer: Point your children to Jesus, because in Jesus there is an answer to the despair and desolation that our children are experiencing today.  If you can point your children to Jesus, the Jesus who took on Moloch and his minions, you will point them to a way of living that is full of passion, life, purpose and beauty.

Jesus’ response to the violence, greed and lust of Moloch’s civilization was not to fight it or run from it but to simply ignore them, ignore their claims to legitimacy and authority.  Who did he ignore?  First, the lords of the State.  Give Caesar his coins and give everything else to God.  Don’t put your hope or trust in the lords of the State, because all they do is try to lord it over each other in endless fighting and corrupt laws that favor the few elite on the backs of the poor.  He simply ignored them.  He also ignored the consumer trap.  We call it the American Dream.  He called it Mammon.  He rejected it as a worthy life endeavor.  He also ignored the religious elites of his day. He called them hypocrites and oppressors of the poor.

So what is left when you have ignored the State, the consumer trap and the hypocritical, lazy religion?  People have poured their lives and hearts into these three institutions for centuries.  What is there for our children to do if they do not worship the State, chase the dollar and practice lazy, corrupt religion?  What else is there to live for?  All that is left is Jesus and the kingdom of God, and Jesus offers so much more than the lords of the State, the consumer trap and the religious hypocrites could ever offer.  Jesus refused to live in a society that sacrificed its children to Moloch so that Moloch could grow in ever greater influence.  Growth is all the lords of the state, the money people and the corrupt established religion people want.  They want to grow more power, wealth and influence at the expense of our children.  But growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.  Jesus refused to succumb to the cancer.  Instead he pointed us and our children to a new community.  It was a new kingdom not built on war, domination, wealth, possessions or religious legalism.  It was a community of peaceable living, simple living and compassion and mutual care.

Mothers, point your children to Jesus, the radical Jesus who will lead your children into a fiery, passionate, liberating, compassionate way of living called the kingdom of God.  It is a way that snubs its nose at Caesar and says we will not play by your oppressive, violent rules anymore.  We will not worship you, Caesar.  It is a way that does not chase after money and things as the purpose of life but rather lives simply, neighborly and kindly.  It is a way where our children will not like sheep follow the practices of a church that is selfish and hypocritical.  It will ignore all of these and seek first the kingdom of God.  But most people worship all three of these entities, the state, the dollar and legalistic, lazy religion.  So if teach your children to ignore these three sacred cows and to turn to Jesus and his kingdom, you are also offering your sons and daughters the cross of Jesus.  For they will be rejected, seen as radicals, seen as enemies of society.  But I would rather my children be viewed as enemies of a corrupt, violent society that is sacrificing our children to the fires of Moloch than as a patriot, a rich man or the average “churchgoer.”  Point your children to Jesus, and stay near the cross, mom; Your child’s life depends on it.

 


[i] Overview of Report on Teen Suicide located at http://www.in.gov/attorneygeneral/2612.htm.  Retrieved on May 12, 2012.


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What’s In a Name?

Posted on May 6, 2012 by Ken Corder

Those who overcome have been given a new name (Rev. 2:17)

Title:  What’s In a Name

Text: Acts 9:26-31

A talk given at Overdale United Methodist Church, Louisville, Kentucky, on May 6, 2012.  Click here to listen to the talk.  Right click to download the talk as an MP3.

In some Native American cultures at a certain age the community gathers together to give children who are coming of age a new name.  One man remembered his renaming ceremony as a spiritual rebirth.  His godmother, his uncle and some close friends gathered together. A pipe was filled with tobacco, and offered to each direction, as they called out his new name. They called it out to the east, the south, the west, and the north. They called it out to the sky and to the earth. They called it out to the plants. They called it out to the animals. “In other words,” he recalls, “I was introduced to the universe” with my new name, which was White Deer. “That was my rebirth,” he recalled.  “Receiving a new name was a healing experience.”[i]

There comes a time in life when we sense a deep need, even a desperate desire, to become someone new.  We do not like the old self anymore.  The old self just doesn’t work anymore, if it ever did.  We need a new name.  We realize that we must answer a call to a new name and new life for which we were destined.  We must take a new name, a liberating name, a name that sets us free from the old self and gives us free passage into this new life.

There is a famous scene in Romeo and Juliet when the distressed lovers realize their old names don’t work anymore in the new paradigm in which they are seeking to live.  You see, Juliet was a Capulet, and Romeo was a Montague.  The two families had been feuding for years with fatal results.  The history of these two families bars Romeo and Juliet from loving each other.  But they do love each other in spite of the tyranny of their names, names they knew they must now reject.

Juliet calls from her balcony, “O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?  Deny thy father and refuse thy name! “

Shortly thereafter Romeo responds, “I take thee at thy word.  Call me but love…” [Love is his new name; his new calling].  “Call me but love and I’ll be new baptiz’d; Henceforth I never will be Romeo.”

If you want a life different from that one you have, if you’re tired of the old destructive, self-defeatist self, and if you want to live into a new paradigm of new possibilities for your life, you have to lay down the old self, refuse the old name and take on a new name through a second birth.

In the biblical witness, new names given are signs of spiritual conversion, indications to the world of a change heart, a new direction, and a resurrected life.  The new name given you was meant to signify who you were before God and before the community.  Jacob, a name which means trickster (technically “heal grabber” in Hebrew, because of Jacob’s reaching for his older twin’s foot in the womb in an unsuccessful attempt to be the firstborn), became Israel, which means “the one who fought with God.”   Jacob wrestled in his soul with God (a healthy exercise for spiritual growth) and became the namesake of a nation.  In another story, the imperial state renamed the Hebrew Daniel to the state-worshiping name, Belteshazzar.  Belteshazzar means “Protect your King,”, how appropriate for the king to name you that!  But Daniel didn’t want to protect this violent king who had his Hebrew people in captive exile.  Instead, he claimed his Hebrew name, Daniel, which means “Worshipper of God.”  Your new spiritual name describes who you are, what you are in God’s eyes, and who you were meant to be.  It is waited to be claimed.

Our text from Acts today tells of two followers of Jesus who, having encountered the living Christ, were transformed by Christ and took on new names.  And having answered their calling and taken on new names, changed the world.  One was Barnabas, the other Paul.

Barnabas was the son of a Levite from the island of Cyprus .  His birth name was Joses, or Joseph; But somewhere along the way he encountered Christ and received a new name.  He was given the name Barnabas, which means “Son of Encouragement” (Acts 4:36 NIV).  Barnabas, we’re told in Acts 11, was an optimistic guy who, when he looked up, always saw God’s grace working, even in the most unlikely or hopeless situations.  The author of Acts says that, “He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord” (Acts 11:24 NIV) because of him.

Because of Barnabas’ spirit of encouragement he indirectly led thousands, even millions, into the Way of Jesus Christ because of his support of Paul the Apostle.  Until recently Paul had gone by another name, the name of Saul.  A fundamentalist Judean teacher, Saul had zealously persecuted the Christian sect, and was responsible for killing many of them.  But one day as Saul was traveling to Damascus to kill Christians in that town, he had an encounter with the resurrected Jesus Christ.  At that moment Saul saw the error of his dreadful and evil life, his heart was changed and he began living zealously for Christ.  He was given the name Paul. How appropriate was his new name.  It means “small’ or “little”   Paul, the once boastful man who proudly told tales of his murdering of Christians, now say as a follower of the Way of Jesus that without Christ in his life he was nothing more than a pile of manure or dung (Philippians 3:8 NIV).  Now that’s humble.  That’s being small.

Paul through his missionary journeys would spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout Asia Minor and into Europe, a missionary trajectory that eventually took the message of Jesus Christ all throughout the world.  All of this, in large part, thanks to Barnabas, the Son of Encouragement.  Why?  Because shortly after Saul’s conversion to Paul, from Christian-killer to Christian-maker, the Christian communities feared and distrusted Paul.  They did not know if he was the real deal.  Yet, Barnabas vouches for Paul.  Barnabas speaks up for Paul by explaining how strongly Paul had preached in Damascus. Eventually, Paul was accepted within the Church.   Barnabas knew that although Saul could not change his past, a new birth in Christ can create the wherewithal in us to leave our past behind and walk into a new, bright, promising future.   Paul had a new name.  Barnabas encouraged the early Christians to honor Paul’s new name and support him in his new life.

So I have one question I want to ask you this morning?  Do you have a new name?  Do you need to be reborn into a new life, a new direction, and leave your current tired, self-defeating, destructive, sinful life behind?  There is a new name ready to be written down for you.  Will you claim it?

There is an old Gospel song that goes, “There’s a new name written down in Glory.  And it’s mine, oh yes, it’s mine.”  What is the new name ready to be written for you?”  That song comes from a passage in Rev. 2:17, which says, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it.”  Oh, sometimes, I cringe to think what name I will find etched on the white stone handed to me.

It’s time to start considering by what name you want to be known.  So many people here and now, in this world, are impacted by what name is written on that stone.  Your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren, your church, your neighbors, this tiny, humble corner of the world called Hillview, where God has placed you to be the salt of the earth – they all will be affected and impacted by what name you take for yourself.

For most of my life, most people have known be to be easy going, serious but laid back.  But the last two years, with some of the transitions, stresses and challenges of my life, I have become a little grumpier.  My kids have picked up on that, and I’m my wife has, too..  I wonder if there is an angel up in heaven who has taken my white stone and marked through kind and easy going, and scribbled, “Grumpy old man, and getting grumpier and older.”

But the good news today is this.  While there is breath left in each of us, we have time to receive the new name that suits us, the new name that God intended for us all along, the new name that is written down in Glory.  The name you are living by now – “Thief,” “Drunk,” “cheat,” “slut,” “adulterer,” “Greedy,” or “Liar” – that name doesn’t fit you anymore.  There is a new name waiting to be written for you in Glory.  Heaven’s etchers are standing by with chisel in hand, saying, “Answer your calling.  Receive your new name.  Do it right this time.  Live by grace.  Seek first the kingdom of God.”

You and I can both change today, by the Grace of God.  Paul would write, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith —and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast (Eph. 2:8-9 NIV).  Call upon the name of Jesus today and you will leave this place with a new name, and a new beginning.  “And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Acts 2:21 NIV).

If you have never committed to follow the Way of Jesus Christ, giving up your old destructive, violent, self-defeating, alienating, lonely way of living, there is a naming ceremony waiting to take place in the heavenly community today right here in this place.  Tired of your old name?  Tired of the defeat, despair, doubt, fear, regret, loneliness, bitterness and hate that describe your current name and situation?  Call upon Jesus Christ, and you will be given a new name, one written down in Glory for all times.


[i]White Deer, “Native American Names,” located at http://www.native-americans-online.com/native-american-names.html.  Retrieved on May 5, 2012.


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Hayduke lives!….in Cleveland, Ohio?

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Ken Corder

The failed plot of eco-saboteurs to blow up the four-lane bridge across the Cuyahoga Valley National Park outside of Cleveland is reminiscent of similar fictional plots in Edward Abbey’s novel “The Monkey Wrench Gang” and its sequel, “Hayduke Lives!”  I first read “The Monkey Wrench Gang” in 1995, twenty years after its publication.  The novel follows the thrilling movements of river guide Seldom Seen Smith, the billboard-burning Dr. Sarvis, Sarvis’ assistant Bonnie Abbzug, and wild-eyed Vietnam Veteran George Hayduke as they engage in acts of sabotage to defend the American Southwest against ecological destruction.

As in Abbey’s novels, the actions of real-life Monkey Wrench Gangs, such as the Ohio saboteurs, are born out of deep sadness, anger and despair over the relentless destruction of the Creation, alienation from the natural world, and a pallid, lifeless, lonely exile in the “civilized” world.  Exiles find themselves in a world of domination, domestication, standardization, institutionalized inequality, inescapable debt and ubiquitous violence.  It’s the same alienation and utter despair that leads to the now daily murder-suicides and mass rampage shootings in the civilized world.

For some, however, sabotage is not born out of despair but advocated as a legitimate form of protest and self-defense against a megalomaniacal fascist apparatus that is oppressing, poisoning, and destroying not only human life, but also bringing about the extermination of untold species and their habitat.

There is a debate in some radical Christian circles today, especially among those who are deeply concerned about state and corporate violence against the Creation, as to whether violence against property is an acceptable form of Christian direct action in defense of Creation.  In other words is destruction of the property of unjust corporations, organizations and/or the State a legitimate Christian activity alongside preaching, teaching, evangelizing, healing, feeding the poor, and showing hospitality?  One’s first reaction is to answer with an unequivocally no.  But, did not Jesus, at least on rare occasions, engage in the destruction of private property?

Christian blogger Dan Oudshoorn from Van Couver, Canada, in a controversial blog article in November 2010 at On Journeying with Those in Exile argues that Jesus on rare occasions was involved in sabotage in order to “destroy idolatrous and death-dealing private property.”  Though clearly outside of most Christians’ theological radars, it is an intriguing idea, especially when one calls to mind two Gospel stories in which Jesus seems to engage in property destruction.  The most notable event in which Jesus takes direct action against property is when he enters the Temple and overturns the tables of the money-changers, scattering their coins and releasing the privately-owned animals from the marketplace (John 2:13-16; Mark 11:15-17; Matthew 21.12-3; Luke 11:45-46).  The second example is when Jesus exorcises demons out of a man, places the demons in a herd of pigs and drives the pigs into the sea, infuriating the herd’s wealthy owners who just lost their livelihood (Mark 5:10-20).

Oudshoorn argues that while Jesus never advocated harming people (Abbey’s Monkey Wrench Gang members make a similar pact), the Gospels present a Jesus who did not rule out the use of direct action against property, as in the direct actions of the Temple-cleansing and the swine-drowning.  Oudshoorn concludes that:

 …Instead of asking, “Is violence right or wrong?” followers of Jesus should be asking, “What is life-giving and what are the death-dealing things that stand in the way of abundant life for all?” Answering this question requires us to move beyond theory to action, perhaps even militant action. What we may need is a Christian militancy that is willing to destroy idolatrous and death-dealing private property (an enemy not of blood and flesh), while simultaneously holding out the offer of abundant life to all people.

The difficulty with Oudshoorn’s position is that, even if we allow that Christian sabotage is a rare but legitimate form of protest or survival while in exile, who decides what is a just target for the destruction?  The saboteurs in Ohio deemed a bridge leading into the once pristine Cuyahoga Valley a justifiable target.  Others have burned “McMansions” in wealthy suburbs, torched the inventory of car dealerships, broken the windows of predatory banks, and poured fake blood on the walls of military bases.  But at some level we are all complicit in the destructive work of “the powers of this dark world” (Ephesians 6:12).  My home, the car I drive, the food I eat and the clothes I wear are all part and parcel of the imperial system that is destroying God’s Creation, our health, our communities and our sanity.  Am I the next just target of the saboteurs?  No doubt, my righteousness is as filthy rags.  My complicity in the destruction runs deep.  But that is true of all of us to varying degrees.  I and my neighbors are all in need of repentance, of turning around and heading in a new direction that is life-generating.  Any decision to engage in destruction of property would be mitigated by a deep, serious self-examination of one’s own complicity in the destruction of the world, which generally would result in spending more time and energy removing planks of imperial complicity out of one’s own eyes, leaving no time for detonating bridges and torching car dealerships (Matthew 7:3-5).

Still, when I hear the incendiary slogan, “Hayduke lives!” I must admit that a rebellious, angry, despairing part of me wants Hayduke to live, because the Temple needs cleansing, the demonic herds need driven into the sea.  The Creation is being poisoned and leveled at a, literally, deadening pace.   All of Creation is the Lord’s Temple (Psalm 104).  And certainly zeal for God’s Temple/Creation should consume us (John 2:17).  But, Jesus’ ultimate solution was not to destroy the Powers or their property; rather it was to begin the painful but life-giving process of extricating ourselves from this dark world of the Powers and living into the alternative, the kingdom of God.

The one who lives into the kingdom of God understands the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof (Psalm 24) and so lives in kinship with the Creation, which surely means not poisoning our soil, water and air.  Surely it means to refrain from leveling our mountains, eroding our soils, killing our neighbors at home and abroad, financing war machines and the states that maintain them, participating in the usury of the banks, and supporting the consumer economy that keeps the war machine’s destructive capabilities alive.  The first disciples and the early Church left Temple cleansings in the hands of their Savior Jesus and went about the other dangerous, subversive business of extricating themselves from the empire, a lifetime’s work.  Their radical actions – denouncing the emperor, refusing to worship his gods, and resisting service in his war machine – lead many of them to the same prison and criminal’s cross as the violent zealots who resisted the empire with weapons.  If we are faithful, our subversive disentanglement from the Powers may very well lead us to the same jail as the saboteurs of Cuyahoga Valley.


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The Good Shepherd’s Whistle

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Ken Corder

Jesus, the Good Shepherd

Title:  The Good Shepherd’s Whistle

Text:  John 10:1-18

A talk given at Overdale United Methodist Church, Louisville, Kentucky, on April 29, 2012.  Click here to listen to the talk.  Right click to download the talk as an MP3.  Singing at the end of the service is Alexis Tait, grand-daughter of Rachel Bauman, who celebrated her 90th birthday today.

A man took a walk along a railroad track. Not paying attention, he got his foot stuck in a gap in the rails. Just then the whistle of the 10 a.m. train sounded in the distance.  He tried frantically to free himself, but to no avail. Looking up he prayed, “God, please get me free!” The Whistle sounded, again he pulled, no movement. “God! If you get my foot out I will stop spending all my blowing all my money and give to the hungry and poor.” The whistle sounded closer. Still pulling, he only seemed to get more stuck. “God! If you get my foot out I will stop spending all my blowing all my money and give to the hungry and poor AND I’ll start loving my neighbor.  Looking up he could now see the train engineer in the window of the engine.  At that moment his foot slipped out from the rail and he rolled clear of the train’s wheels.  The train went roaring by and quietly faded.  The smoke and dust settled.  The man looked up and said, “Never mind, God, I took care of it myself.”

The Scriptures sometime paint a picture of you and me as lost sheep, God’s children, who are lost and trapped in the claws of a wicked and perverted civilization, a beautiful creation gone bad, a garden that has been ravaged by civilization’s greed and lust for war.  We have too happily participated but now find ourselves ensnared in this desolate, war-torn, poisonous, fearful land that we have created for ourselves.  We are scattered, lost, downtrodden and despairing.  Lost and scared, we easily succumb to manipulative and seductive false shepherds- liars and destroyers- who take advantage of us and lead us ever further into a destructive, defeating sinfulness.

We are so lost in sin by our participation in the sins of civilization that we cannot find our way home.  We remain trapped, hold up behind civilization’s walls of fear, anxiety and depression.  I meet so many people that feel like they are trapped and suffocating.  They cannot find the gate that will release them into a better world, a world of good health, fresh air, peace, neighborliness, compassion and friendship.

But the scriptures also teach that God has not left us orphans in this world; Instead, he has come looking for us who are lost in this world.  He has sent us a Good Shepherd who has come to save what was lost.  “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).  But in order to be saved by the Good Shepherd and brought into this beautiful, peaceful life here on earth, which Jesus called the kingdom of God, the scriptures teach that we must first realize that we have been led by false shepherds down a dangerous, destructive, sinful path.  We must awaken and hear the voice of the Good Shepherd and follows his Way.

Some of us here today have been mesmerized by the seductive calls of the false shepherds of this world so that you can’t hear the shepherd’s voice calling you into the kingdom of God.  There are two false shepherds who, in our day, as in all generations, are especially seductive.  The first is the false shepherd of consumerism.  The second is the false shepherd of redemptive violence.  Together, these false shepherds of consumerism and redemptive violence promise us that peace and happiness and a better world will be ours if we will only spend enough money, buy enough things, and annihilate our enemies.  And together their seductive, clamoring voices are drowning out the one voice that will truly bring us peace and joy in this world and that is the quiet, humble, loving voice of the Good Shepherd, Jesus of Nazareth.

Some of you are easily mesmerized by the false shepherd of consumerism.  You hear the call of the peddlers of various wares say to you, “You must have things to have worth.  You must have more, because what you have is not enough.  You must one up your neighbor or your coworker.”  You have been following this false prophet all your life, and he has brought you nothing but goods that soon become obsolete, end up in your basement or, more often than not, in the trash.  This same prophet has lead you down a road of strangling debt because he whispered into your ear, feeding your irrational compulsion that you just have to have that thing.  He offered you many ways to rationalize your consumerist life.  It’s for the children, he whispered.  You deserve it.  Go ahead; you’ll pay it off soon enough.  And before you knew it you were five, ten, twenty thousand dollars in debt.  This false shepherd jumped over the wall, saw you vulnerable, and led you into a despairing place.

Others of you have been hypnotized by the false shepherd of fear, violence and war.  This is a particularly dangerous shepherd because his way is so destructive.  He jumps over the wall and instills in you an irrational fear. He works you up into a frenzy of fear by his propaganda, then he begins war-mongering and mobilizes you for violence and war against this newly-conjured up enemy.  Those who followed this false shepherd were told by him to be scared of black people, so they kept the black man down by Jim Crow laws and lynch mob.  They segregated their schools, denied black people dignity.  They turned their faces when the black people were oppressed, beaten and belittled.  The false shepherd now says to you fear the Muslim or any non-Christian person from the Middle East, for he is evil and so are his children.  Incessantly occupy his homeland and rain destruction on his families for over a decade, even it means, conservatively estimated, the death of over 300,000 civilians.  Oh, but this war, he said will never end, because we will never be safe.  We will have codes of yellow, orange and red to keep you nervous and fearful.   He also whispers in your ears fear of the Hispanic immigrant in your community and says fear him, stereotype him, treat him poorly, look at him with eyes of hate.  In every generation, this false shepherd conjures up a new enemy in the collective minds of the people. In the last hundred years in America in has been, the German Kaiser’s murdering hordes, the God-hating Communist Reds, the crime-prone illegal immigrants, any person with skin that is not Lillie white, anyone who does not speak ”American.”   This false shepherd convinces so many fearful people in every generation to hate groups of people, to fear them, to run off to war to destroy them.  Then he abandons us with racial tensions in our cities, endless, costly wars, a generation of young men with PTSD, soldiers committing suicide at unprecedented rates   And, with a smirk on his face, the false shepherd of fear waits, crouched, ready to jump the wall again with his next enemy to conjure in our fearful minds.

These two false shepherds – the shepherd of greed’s hateful gold and the shepherd of war’s cruel steel – show up throughout the Scriptures and appear in every generation.  Every generation they climb over the wall to startle the frightened sheep and due horrific damage to humanity.  But the Lord will not tolerate these false prophets for long.  The word of the Lord came to the prophet Ezekiel in chapter 34, and said to him:

 “Son of man, prophesy against the [false] shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock?  You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock.  You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally.  So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them.

False shepherds distract us with their tantalizing lies and perverted appealing promises on which they cannot deliver.  Their seductive voices drown out the quiet, patient, loving call of the Good Shepherd.  But God tells Ezekiel that he will not leave his people without a shepherd.

“‘For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them.  As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness.  I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land. I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and in all the settlements in the land. I will tend them in a good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel will be their grazing land. There they will lie down in good grazing land, and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign Lord. I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice (Ezekiel 34:11-16).

This Good Shepherd is none other than Jesus the Christ.  He is the Gate to life of peace, mutual aid, compassion and friendship that we are hoping and aching for.  He is the Good Shepherd who will lead us through the Gate.

This Good Shepherd, the Lord says in Ezekiel, will create the true peace that the false shepherds of consumerism and war could not deliver.

“‘I will make a covenant of peace with them and rid the land of savage beasts so that they may live in the wilderness and sleep in the forests in safety.  I will make them and the places surrounding my hill a blessing. I will send down showers in season; there will be showers of blessing.  The trees will yield their fruit and the ground will yield its crops; the people will be secure in their land. They will know that I am the Lord, when I break the bars of their yoke and rescue them from the hands of those who enslaved them (Ezekiel 43:25-27 NIV).

He does not say peace will come when we spend enough money and invest enough blood and tears into annihilating the enemy.

The Good Shepherd Jesus says this peace will not come about because he will lead us into pastures of create wealth, unlimited 4G connections on our smart phones, designer clothes or fancy cars.  The Good Shepherd says, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness… (Matthew 6:33 NIV).  Then the peace of the kingdom will be added unto you.  Give up your claim to anything in this world, then you will not be far from the kingdom of God, and the peace that comes with it (Mark 12:33-34).

This Good Shepherd says that this is the way to peace:  “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:43-45 NIV).  Jesus does not call us to annihilate the enemy in order to rid our world of the latest scourge conjured up by the false shepherd of fear and war.  He says, “My kingdom is not of this world.  If it were, my servants would fight…but now my kingdom is from another place” (John 18:36).

But if we do not fight, if we do not spend, how can we know peace and security in our day?!  Jesus says do not worry or be anxious about such things.  Today has enough worries of its own.  Instead, emulate the Good Shepherd.  How will you know the Good Shepherd?  Jesus says:

I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me…The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life —only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord (John 10:14-18 NIV).

We were neither called to destroy nor spend our way to happiness, to neither annihilate nor accumulate, to neither be stirred up by the conjurers of fear nor tantalized by the peddlers of things.  Instead, we are called to follow obediently and faithfully the one lays down his life and calls us to likewise take up our cross and follow him daily.

The great challenge placed before us by this powerful  passage is this:  will we hear the voice of the Good Shepherd, or will the seductive voices of violence, war, spending and accumulation drown out the humble call of Christ to follow him.  In our day, as for all generations, it is not easy to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd.  He does not shout at us, order us, or coerce us to follow him.  The most intrusive effort he makes, according to the prophet Zechariah, is to whistle for us. Listen to this beautiful word given to Zechariah by the Lord:

I will whistle for them and gather them in, for I have redeemed them, and they shall be as many as they were before. Though I scattered them among the nations, yet in far countries they shall remember me, and with their children they shall live and return.  I will bring them home from the land of Egypt, and gather them from Assyria, and I will bring them to the land of Gilead and to Lebanon, till there is no room for them. (Zechariah 10:8-10 NIV).

Isn’t that a wonderful image of our Good Shepherd?!  He whistles for us in order to call us back!  He does so because, he has redeemed us.  He has purchased us from the hell of our lost lives because of the life he laid down for us.  But though many of you will follow, though many of you will see the false shepherds of consumerism, waste, violence and war for the liars and destroyers that they are, the majority of you will remain in imprisoned by the walls.  You will have swallowed whole the false promises of the sophist shepherds.

After describing so beautifully the Lord’s plan to whistle for us and calls us home, Zechariah then offers a reality check:

In the whole land, declares the Lord, two thirds shall be cut off and perish, and one third shall be left alive.  And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested.  They will call upon my name, and I will answer them.  I will say, ‘They are my people’;  and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’” (Zechariah 13:8-9 NIV).

Two-thirds of the sheep, confused and seduced by the false shepherds will not hear the Good Shepherd’s gentle call, but will instead opt for gold and violence and will be cut off and perish, buried in the stench of their suffocating wealth and their bitter vengeance.  But the one third who do hear the voice of the Good Shepherd, the remnant, will be purified through the fire of the Holy Spirit, refined to shine like silver and gold on the backdrop of a pallid, Mammon-deadened world.  “They are my people,” will the Lord say.  And we will respond, “The Lord is my God.”


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Civilization’s “Magnificant Bribe”

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Ken Corder

Lewis Mumford, in his prescient 1964 essay “Authoritarian and Democratic Technics,” warned of a quickly approaching day when all human autonomy would be suppressed or supplanted by modern centralized authoritarian technics.[1]  He described authoritarian technics as the tools of “mechanization, automation, and cybernetic direction” that would destroy any vestige of individual or democratic freedom.  Surely we have seen at least part of this horrific prediction come true as automated processes supplant basic human interactions, as computers have registered, scanned and catalogued nearly every facet of our personal and political lives, as cameras increasingly survey and record our every public move, and as sophisticated military weaponry hover above us that can strike with pinpoint destructive accuracy or bring wholesale annihilation of the planet.  Perhaps no modern-day machine is more representative of the automated, panoptical, destructive reach of the modern authoritarian technics than the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly and grimly known as Reaper or Predator drones.  The presence of UAVs in our skies represents the latest development in the centralized authoritarian technics’ centuries-long  efforts to purchase the human soul with what Mumford called, a “magnificent bribe.” Our toleration of these lethal and invasive drones demonstrates clearly how we have traded our liberty and happiness for the costly and deadly material abundance and security offered by the centralized authoritarian technics.

According to the United State Air Force, the MQ-9 Reaper, is “employed primarily in a hunter/killer role against dynamic execution targets and secondarily as an intelligence collection asset.”[2]  These two purposes are frightening to me and should be to you.  The Orwellian term “Dynamic execution target” defines not only the Reaper’s brick and mortar targets but also its human (including civilian) targets, most notably in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia.  The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports there have been 309 known drone strikes, resulting in upwards of 811 civilian deaths, 174 of those children, a number that is on the rise.[3]  These killings were performed by physically remote (and emotionally removed?) operators thousands of miles away using video game-style joysticks to reach their “dynamic” (i.e., living and breathing) insurgent and civilian targets.

In an eerie online promotional tool to recruit young gamers into their ranks, a USAF website invites visitors to guide a virtual UAV on a mission from their computer.  Excited gamers can fantasize about striking their own dynamic execution targets, while eating Cheetos and drinking Red Bull on their couch.[4]  The centralized, automated technics is creeping into the vapid, empty souls of a lost generation, tantalizing them with video-style remote bloodletting.

Of course, the centralized, authoritarian technics has not stopped with destroying targets overseas.  Though drones have primarily been employed by the U.S. in attacks against non-Christian nations consisting of dark-skinned populations, they are increasingly being used at home.  As Kelley Vlahos noted, “…thanks to 10 years of war and the military’s drive to get increasingly sophisticated equipment to hunt down former sheepherders and poppy farmers armed with old Soviet rifles and cell phones,” law enforcement in the United States will soon be able to operate UAVs over the land of free and the home of the brave.  Drones are now hovering and staring over domestic populations, “engaging enough sensors and cameras – and who knows what weapons – to finally obliterate whatever expectation of privacy Americans had left.”[5]  The drug war and the war on terrorism, wars that are both undeclared and seemingly perpetual, are being used as justification for the ever-widening reach of the centralized authority.

Mumford predicted that the centralized, authoritarian technics would achieve a coup d’état when its “original dependence upon resistant, sometimes actively disobedient” humans could be overcome by carrying out its violent, ruthless, dominating, ever-expanding purposes through mechanization, automation and computers.  In other words, sensate human operators would be replaced with emotionless machines that lack the capacity for critical thought and compassion.  That day, steadily approaching in the past 50 years with the advent of mass communication propaganda, computer databases and weapons with international reach, has undoubtedly arrived with the presence of the UAV.

Who is in charge of the centralized authoritarian technics?  Even in 1964 Mumford recognized that the center of authority for this new authoritarian technics had moved from “the visible personality of the all-powerful king” (i.e., dictators, presidents, multi-national corporation CEOs, popes, etc.) and now resided, “in the system itself, invisible but omnipresent.”  As Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:12, “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world…”(NLT).  All people in society, including those in power, are now in the grip of an “irrational compulsion” to extend their means of control and expand the scope of their authority over everyone and everything else.  All of us, it seems, are submitting or constantly tempted to submit to this irrational compulsion to control everything in our environment.  This move, argued Mumford, sadly “marks control over nature, including man, as the chief purpose of existence.”

Why have we surrendered so easily to the centralized authoritarian system?  Why have we so obediently acquiesced to the presence of Reapers in our skies above and to the invasion below of computers and cameras into our most intimate and personal spaces?  Why have we not resisted the ever growing control of the centralized authoritarian technics over our lives?  Mumford believed we are being asked to accept a corrupt bargain in the form of “a magnificent bribe.”  We have surrendered our liberty and primal happiness in exchange for the abundance of food, durable goods, and gadgets and the illusion of security offered by civilization. He maintained that under the authoritarian system:

…each member of the community may claim every material advantage, every intellectual and emotional stimulus he may desire, in quantities hardly available hitherto even for a restricted minority: food, housing, swift transportation, instantaneous communication, medical care, entertainment, education.  But on one condition: that one must merely ask for nothing that the system does not provide, but likewise agree to take everything offered [including UAVs – I might add]…

Those who have gladly accepted the bargain will object to Mumford’s claim and ask, “Is this not the horn of plenty that mankind has long dreamed of?”  Mumford responded that this very horn of plenty will “poison us wholesale to provide us with food or exterminate us to provide us national security, before we can enjoy its promised goods.”  He wittily asked if it is really profitable to “give up the possibility of living a few years at Walden Pond…for the privilege of spending a lifetime in Walden Two?”  Once  authoritarian technics consolidate its power with the aid of new forms of mass control with its “panoply of tranquillizers and sedatives and aphrodisiacs,” Mumford wondered if democracy could survive in any form.  I would add that perhaps life, at least a life with any meaning or joy, could not survive either.

“What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” Jesus inquired of the crowd that followed him from a distance, wondering what his radical way of simple living, peace, and compassion would mean for them if they chose his way (Mark 8:36 NIV).  The question is more relevant today than ever.  Mumford wanted to make clear that he was not predicting that his outlook must happen, that we would forfeit our lives and liberty in the face of the “magnificent bribe.”  It is not inevitable that we should forfeit our soul in order to gain the “controlled abundance” promised by the centralized authoritarian technics.  It is clear that that the masses have accepted the bribe.  Yet, Jesus called those who would follow him out of the compliant crowd and said, “Follow me.”  Follow the one who has no place to lay his head, who has forsaken all for the kingdom of God. 


[1] Lewis Mumford, “Authoritarian and Democratic Technics,” Technology and Culture, Vol. 5, No. 1, (Winter 1964), 1-8. http://epl.scu.edu/~stsvalues/readings/mumford.pdf

[2] “MQ-9 Reaper Fact Sheet,” January 5, 2012, located at http://www.af.mil/information/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=6405.  Retrieved on April 26, 2012.

[3] Lain Overton, “Analysis: The Covert Drone War,” August 20, 1011, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, located at www.thebureauinvestigates.com.  Retrieved on April 26, 2012

[5] Kelley Vlahos, “Fearing the Reaper (Drone),” February 1, 2011, located at www.antiwar.com.  Retrieved on April 26, 2012.


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Holding It Together in Christ

Posted on April 22, 2012 by Ken Corder

Title: Holding It Together in Christ

Text:  John 17:13-18

A talk given at Overdale United Methodist Church, Louisville, Kentucky, on April 22, 2012.  Click here to listen to the talk.  Right click to download the talk as an MP3.

If you want to be free of accidents and interruptions this weekend, you had best stay away from me.  This weekend has been a weekend for me to come upon accidents.  Friday evening, I told Michelle that we needed to eat out tonight.  Ethan had to work, and Emma was at a school event, so that left Michelle, Brianna and me.  Eating out minus two teenagers equals a cheap night to eat out, so eating out was a no brainer for me.  On the way home, we passed by a small farm and old farmhouse that we often pass.  Michelle and I always admire it when we go by, because it is such a beautiful little farm, a relic from a bygone era lodged in the middle of suburban sprawl.  We often see a little, elderly woman in old farm clothes feeding her chickens or walking in the pasture.  This time, though, we saw something unusual.  The woman was sitting in the grass in the middle of the pasture, a scarf over her hair, with a tobacco stick in her hand, not moving.  We both looked at each other and agreed something did not look right, so we turned around and slowly passed by again.  This time the woman was sitting with her arms behind her and her legs sprawled in front of her.  I told Michelle and Brianna that it looked as if she was just enjoying a welcome rest in the evening shade as dusk was sitting in and a welcome spring rain was approaching.  I had begun to convince ourselves that she was just taking a break and that we not need butt into her peaceful evening.

So we drove down the road to the next driveway, turned around again and headed home, but as we passed by her again we noticed she was holding her leg.  Michelle said to me, “I won’t be able to sleep tonight if I don’t find out if that woman is okay.”  So we turned around the van again and pulled into the farm.  The woman waved us over.  Brianna and I walked over to the lady who was ecstatic that we had stopped.  She explained to us how she had come to be in her present condition.  A cow had kicked her in the leg on the far side of the pasture, and she could not get up.   It had taken two hours, but she had managed to scoot herself across the pasture, dodging cow pies, to where she presently was.  I went back to the van and pulled it up next to her.  Michelle and I loaded her into the back of the van (She could not climb high enough to get in a seat.), and Michelle road with her, their legs dangling over the tail of the van through the barnyard up to her house.   We escorted her into her house, shared introductions, made sure she was settled in and had someone to call if needed and then went on our way.  With dusk sitting in, there is a strong likelihood that that poor lady, easily in her eighties, would have spent the night sitting in a pasture in the rain.  As we drove home, Brianna said, “Sure was a good thing we drove by tonight.”  Michelle was convinced that what had just happened was providential, that God had lead us to eat on that side of town, because we usually eat out in the other direction, so that we could be present in that fallen lady’s moment of need.

She was right, and it reinforced what I have been reading this week from John’s Gospel in Chapter 17, which is known as The High Priestly Prayer of Jesus.  In this prayer, Jesus describes the purpose of his life and how that purpose, because of his resurrection, because he is the Living Christ, perpetuates through us.  Jesus says that he walked on this earth for a short time for one purpose, and one purpose only: to bring glory to God.  He prays, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you” (John 17:1 NIV).  Now it is time for Lord to return to the Father, so he offers up a wonderful, powerful prayer for those disciples he would leave behind and for his disciples throughout all the ages. He prays to the Father in Heaven:

I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one (John 17:9-12 NIV).

You and I come from the Father.  We are in the world for a time.  Then we return to the Father.  In our text this morning, it is Jesus’ time to return to the Father.  But as Jesus is returning to the Father, he offers an eternal, intercessory prayer, one that is not spoken for only one moment in time, but for all ages and for all of Christ’s followers.  As he returns to the Father, Jesus sends us into the world in order to bring glory to God.  And Jesus says he will continually offer up this prayer for his brothers and sisters as they live bringing glory to God. 

How do we bring glory to God?  He bring glory to God, just as Christ brought glory to God, by working to hold together a broken, hurting world.  Through his high priestly prayer, Jesus empowers us to hold together a broken world, with each act of faithful obedience that you and I carry out in the world.  Each kind word, each kind act, each faithful prayer, offered in the name of Jesus is holding together a divided, messed up world.  The Apostle Paul writes, that Jesus Christ is holding together “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable…anything [that] is excellent or praiseworthy…” Our sweet Jesus, who is continually praying to the Father that we would faithfully walk in his way, is holding together a divided world with his nail-scarred hands.  So, while the world crumbles and deteriorates around us, we are called into the world, to hold together the pieces of goodness, nobleness, love, righteousness, purity until Christ’s return.  The writer of Colossians says it is Christ who “holds all creation together” (Philippians 4:8; Colossians 1:17).

The second accident I came upon this weekend was yesterday morning as I was driving Emma to a musical recital at U of L.  W came upon a fender bender at the corner of Brandeis and Arthur Streets near I-65.  No one seemed seriously hurt and the parties involved appeared to be waiting for the police to arrive, so we drove on to Emma’s event.  On the way home, Emma said to me, “You remember that accident we saw on the way in?  The driver of one of the cars was the pianist who was supposed to accompany one of the soloists in my group.  He arrived a little late, but made it just in time.  Oh, and he had broken one of his fingers.  It was swollen and looked “nasty.”  But guess what?  He played.  He played through the pain.”  He played through the pain.

Teresa of Avila, that sixteenth-century saint from Spain, said “Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ looks out on a hurting world, yours are the feet with which he goes about doing good; yours are the hands with which he is to bless now.”[1]

As followers of Jesus in a divisive and broken world, we are called to play through the pain and allow Christ to live through us as Christ holds together the crumbling circumstances in which we find ourselves.  The Christian mother whose household is falling apart because of violence, drugs, lies and all manner of spiritual darkness, yet somehow she manages, through Christ who strengthens her, to hold the family together.  She is holding all things together in Christ.  The Christian brother or sister who does not abandon an addicted friend whose life is coming to ruins because of drugs or alcohol, but, through the powerful intercession of the praying Jesus, walks alongside the friend on the road to recovery.  That Christian friend is holding all things together in Christ.  The Christian who finds himself a soldier but lays down his weapons of the rich man’s wars and sings the old afro-American spiritual goes, “I ain’t gonna wage war no more.”  He is a blessed peacemaker and holding together all things in Christ.  The Christian grandmother who finds herself raising her grandchildren because the mother and father have abdicated their holy responsibilities as parents.  She is holding all things together in Christ.  The Christian student who see her friend partying her life away with cheap beer and cheap sex, yet, through Christ, is emboldened to pray for her erring friend and even  to call her to accountability.  She is holding all things together in Christ.  The young Christian man who plays the piano with a throbbing, broken finger so that the nervous high school girl can complete her recital, he is holding all things together in Christ.  A woman who says, “I can’t sleep tonight unless I know that poor lady is safely home.”  Get the picture?  From the biggest acts to the seemingly smallest of acts, it is Christ, Christ working through us, who holds together all that is good, noble, lovely, right, admirable and excellent.

The world is held together by those who walk in that great distinction – as a child of God, as a brother and sister in the suffering but risen Lord Jesus Christ.  We are alive, not dead!  We are of Christ, not of the world!  We are alive and of Christ only in so much as we faithfully and obediently carry out the difficult, reconciling (literally, calling-together-again) work of our Lord Jesus.  And it ain’t easy work.

There is an old story of a Quaker who is found bathing in the river.  As he was bathing, a boatman came by heading downstream and said, “Ha!  There goes a Quaker.  “How do you know I’m a Quaker?” “Because you swim against the stream; it is the way the Quakers always do.”  That is the fate of we who place our faith, hope and love in Jesus Christ.  It seems we are always swimming up stream.  The distinction of being a compassionate follower of Jesus, is difficult, even exhausting at times, because as the world violently and selfishly pulls apart at the world, creating divisions, bitterness, warring, and tears, yet we Christians are called to be the glue, the salve of cohesion that holds all things together as Christ works through us.

There is a rare letter that still exists from the second century called “The Letter to Diognetus,” in which a man describes the peculiar, distinctive qualities of early Christians in the world.  He compares the cohesive salve, this holy glue of the Christians to that of the soul to the body.  He writes:

In a word, what the soul is to the body Christians are to the world. The soul is distributed in every member of the body, and the Christians are scattered in every city in the world. So, Christians live in the world, but they are not of the world…The soul is locked up in the body, yet it holds the body together. And so Christians are held in the world as in a prison, yet it is they who hold the world together.[2]

Jesus has not yet called us out of this world, but has sent us into the world to be a cohesive salve, a Christ-like glue, who, through Christ living in us and interceding for us, holds this broken, divided world together until Christ returns.  The beauty of this high priestly prayer of Jesus is that, though we are sent into the world to carry out the difficult, cross-bearing healing work of Jesus, yet Jesus prays to the Father, “may they know the full measure of joy within them” (John 17:13 NIV).  As you walk in the world but not of the world, in the difficult, divisive circumstances into which you are and will be called, may the resurrected, present, interceding Lord Jesus awaken, embolden and strengthen you to the great, joyful calling of holding all things together in the name of Christ Jesus.

 

[1] James Howell, “In But Not of the World,” Sermon, May 24, 2009, located at http://day1.org/1256-in_but_not_of_the_world.  Retrieved on April 21, 2012.

[2] “The Letter to Diognetus,” quoted in Vernard Eller, “The Simple Life,” located at http://www.hccentral.com/eller3/index.html.  Retrieved on April 15, 2012.

A talk given at Overdale United Methodist Church, Louisville, Kentucky, on April 15, 2012.  Click here to listen to the talk.  Right click to download the talk as an MP3.


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You’ve Done Too Much Lyin’

Posted on April 21, 2012 by Ken Corder

Here’s a song I wrote this winter called “You’ve Done Too Much Lyin’”, but it is so much better when performed by daughter Emma Mae Corder.  Look out Nashville!  Enjoy.

For other songs, click here.

YOU’VE DONE TOO MUCH LYIN’

When I was a young girl

I dreamed that a man

Like you would come into my life

But dreams are deceiving

And now I am leaving all my dreams and you behind

CHORUS:

You’ve done too  much lyin’

I’ve done too much cryin’

There’s been too much dyin’ in this heart of mine

So now I’ll be goin’

Wherever this cold wind carries me down the road

And I’ve shed a lot of painful tears

I’ve wasted way too many years

All I have are these memories and now fears of life without you

 

But you don’t seem to mind

That we’ve been a waste of time

You act we’ll live forever

But time keeps moving faster

And nothing seems to last, so

I figure it’s now or never

 

Last night I was dreaming

Of two lovers who were scheming

But the fire was missing in his eyes

His boots were still at home

But he was already gone

Then I awoke and said good-bye


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A Call to Compassion

Posted on April 15, 2012 by Ken Corder

The Titanic

Title: A Call to Compassion   

Text: John 20:19-23

A talk given at Overdale United Methodist Church, Louisville, Kentucky, on April 15, 2012.  Click here to listen to the talk.  Right click to download the talk as an MP3.

A call for help unheeded

One hundred years ago today, the R.M.S. Titanic sunk under the icy waters of the North Atlantic Ocean and became a huge tragedy that led to the death of over 1,500 people.  What makes the deaths especially tragic is that they could have been avoided if one man and his crew on a nearby ship had heeded the distress calls of the sinking Titanic and responded with compassion.

Late on Sunday 14 April, 1912, at 19:00 hours, Stanley Lord, the commander of the S.S. Californian, started receiving distress signals in the form of wireless messages and light signals from a nearby ship in the North Atlantic Ocean.  The ship in distress, which was less than ten miles away from the S.S. Californian, was the Titanic.  It had collided with a large iceberg and would soon sink in the icy waters.  Commander Lord dismissed the calls for help from the crew of the sinking ship known as the Titanic.  Had he and his crew heeded the distress messages from the Titanic, fifteen hundred people’s lives would have been spared death in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic that became their grave.

A barrage of S.O.S. signals is being sent to the people called the Church that gather here at 515 Overdale Drive each Sunday morning.  There are children – neglected, abused, hungry, lost, or simply longing for the love and attention of a caring adult in their lives.  There are young adults who are lost but hopeful, hoping that in this messed up, screwy world that they can make a difference.  They are looking for mentors to guide them.  There are young couples struggling to make ends meet, feeling guilty about not spending enough time with their children because of their work schedules.  There are single moms looking for a little help, a little encouragement, a friend as they work and raise their children, all on their own.  There are people coping with disabilities, addictions, guilt and shame.  There are older people living in fear of ailing health, of losing loved ones, of living alone.  Can you hear the cries for help in the neighborhood?  Have you seen the S.O.S. calls?

Who will respond?

Who will respond?  Those who should and must respond are those of us who make up the Church, because as members of the Church we are to be Christ-like, and to be Christ-like, if it is anything, is to be compassionate.   Compassion is the ministry of Jesus, and it must be the ministry of his followers.  The problem is that we worship Jesus, but we do not model Jesus.  We sing praises to Jesus, but we do not follow Jesus.  We cry, “Lord, Lord” but we to not imitate the Way of our Lord.  We make Jesus as idol to worship but not our model to emulate.

Jesus has empowered us for a ministry of compassion

But Jesus has empowered us for a ministry of compassion.  The disciples are holed up behind locked doors for fear of what lurks outside.  Then Jesus appears, shows them his wounds born of selfless compassion, and tells them, “Peace be with you!  As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”  As the Father has sent me into the world to receive these scars and these stripes for the sake of a dying, hurting world, so I am sending you to engage in a life of compassion and bare your own scares and wounds.  Then he breathes on them the Holy Spirit and thereby empowers them to carry out their ministry of compassion, which begins with the ministry of forgiveness.  For you cannot show compassion to anyone against whom you hold a grudge.

So, what are we waiting on?  Why are we still locked behind the doors of fear, ignoring the calls of distress of sinking lives all around us?  Why are we timidly remaining inside the sanctuary content to make Jesus our idol but not our model?  We were not created to live fearfully and anxiously in this life we have been granted.  That is why Paul says in 2 Timothy, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline” (2 Tim. 1:7 NLT).

Overcoming timidity and living a compassionate life

Dave Andrews, a Christian activist who has worked among the poor and marginalized in Australia for many years, wrote of three obstacles to overcome in order to break your spirit of timidity and live a compassionate life.

You must accept that, in Christ, you are forgiven.  Your past life, your past mistakes, your past transgressions don’t mean a thing to God.  You are forgiven.  Now God calls you to go and do likewise, to live out a ministry of forgiving others and of showing unbridled compassion. You are forgiven, in the name of Jesus.  Now go in peace.  You are forgiven, so who do you need to go and forgive?  To whom do you need to go and show compassion?  There are so many broken and shamed people hungry for affirmation and compassion in your midst.  Will you respond to the distress calls?

You must learn to live in companionship and to partner with each other in the church in a ministry of compassion.  As Andrews says, most of us are either too independent, alienating ourselves from others because we think we can go it alone, or we are too co-dependent, growing angry with relationships that don’t give us what we demand they give us.  Jesus sends us out together in a ministry of compassion, by twos and by three’s or more, eagerly desiring to show compassion to the hurting.  Find you a network of friends in the church and start doing compassionate ministry.  Go to lunch when them, discuss the S.O.S. calls in your neighborhood.  Then get creative and start taking action.

Finally, we must learn, to “turn interruptions into opportunities.”  There is no perfect time or perfect conditions in your schedule to show compassion.  You cannot wait until your life is in perfect order or harmony before you begin living compassionately.  Embrace each difficult problem that you come across, every frustration you encounter, as “a wonderful opportunity to express the spirit of compassion, the power of love and the possibility of justice.”

As Andrews says that, “Every single one of us should expect to be able to care for people, with compassion, as Christ did.  And we can learn to be like Christ in that sense, only by following Christ, who will himself, he says, show us the way.”[i]

Bearing our scars

But know this, when we follow our model, our teacher Jesus in the life of compassion, we will also bear scars.  Jesus appeared before his disciples and show them his scars and his impaled side.  And it was cause for celebration, because the scars proved to be the source of life.  The compassion and love of Jesus, though it was costly, costing even the grave, brought new life.  And it still does today.  Andrews says that all followers of Jesus bear scars.  They may be scars of personal sacrifice, resources donated, rejection, disappointments, failures along the way as you seek imperfectly to follow Jesus.  But, listen to this.  “The only ones who bear no scars are those who believe there is nothing worthy fighting for.  Everyone one of us who believes there is something worth fighting for…will inevitably be scarred for life.”

The Kingdom of God is worthy fighting for.  Do you hear the distress calls in your neighborhood?  We can no longer ignore them? Move beyond timidity and reservation.  You are forgiven in Christ; go and forgive others.  Join with one or two others and begin a ministry of compassion.  Do not wait for the “perfect” conditions to begin.  Go, as Christ as sent you, even though you will be scarred and wounded as you suffer alongside the suffering.  Then, the distressed community you serve, having experienced God’s love through you, will proclaim in reply: We have seen the risen Christ!


[i] Dave Andrews, “Christi-Anarchy: Discovering a Radical Spirituality of Compassion,” Wipf and Stock: Eugene, Oregon (2012).


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Who Moved My Jesus?

Posted on April 8, 2012 by Ken Corder

Title of Talk: Who Moved My Jesus?          

Text: John 20:11-18

A talk given at Overdale United Methodist Church, Louisville, Kentucky, on April 8, 2012.  Click here to listen to the talk.  Right click to download the talk as an MP3.

Has this scenario ever played out in your household?  Someone walks into the room and says, “Who moved my car keys?!  I put them right here and now they are gone.  The person starts blaming everyone in the house for moving his car keys.  Then, suddenly, he remembers that he laid them down in another place and finds them exactly where he had left them.  I had a similar experience in my life with Jesus.  In my young adult years, I laid down Jesus, walked away from him, but then eventually came looking for him again.  I want to spend the short time we have together this morning to share with you the story of how and where I found Jesus.  Not because it is especially unique or spectacular, but because I think it is more and more typical of those who leave the church, as I did, and find their way back.

I spent my whole childhood in the Church.  Some of my earliest memories are of me sitting between my parents during morning worship.  On the one side of me was my dad in his tan, polyester suit, singing hymns and occasionally offering up an “Amen!” when the pastor spoke to his spirit in a sermon.  On the other side of me, was my mom, big puffy seventies hair and bright red lipstick, charged with keeping me and my brothers in check during the service.  Dad singing, and mom pinching me while giving me a “you’re going to get it” look.  That’s what I remember from my early church days.  Oh, but it was great.  I made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ when I was nine years old at that church.  I loved the Church and loved Jesus.  I had found a Jesus who was a kind, strong good shepherd who watched over me and protected me from the evil in the world and would keep me out of trouble.  I was introduced to a Jesus who was kind, gentle, compassionate and generous, who gave sight to the blind and who healed the sick.

But as I grew older, of college age, I began to lose interest in the church.  I had come to view church as old-fashioned, outdated, and irrelevant, and I had become aware of hypocrisy in some of the upstanding members in the church.  And, I must say, the Church was not doing much to win people like me back to the fold.  As a young man, I saw the downfall of adulterous televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Baker.  I read about the scandalous behavior of certain Catholic priests.  I saw denominations split over controversial social issues and say hateful things to each other in the process.  And there were the hypocrites in my own local church who I realized, as I grew older, were not the holy men and women in private whom they professed to be in public.  There came a point, probably around age 21 or 22, that I basically washed my hands of the whole thing and said goodbye to the Church.  Oh, I still attended Church occasionally, mainly to appease my staunchly religious mother, but my heart was not in it.  Besides, I did not want to completely reject Jesus.  I had enough fear of hell instilled in me as a boy that I thought Jesus would be a nice card to have in my back pocket on Judgment Day.

So I started my adult life without Jesus.  I became a little arrogant and conceited, too, that I had been progressive and enlightened enough to give up Jesus, while so many of my friends and relatives sheepishly clung to him.  So I went off and pursued my education, my career, my dreams, my own selfish goals.  But after a while, the rat race and the way of the world got old and stale.  I became disenchanted with life in general and did what any rational man would do in such a situation.  I moped.  For about a decade of my life I moped, with a bad attitude about work, people and the church.  Basically, I was experiencing what the philosopher Nietzsche said happens to all of us at some desperate moment in life.  I looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked back.  That is where Mary was in our gospel lesson today.  She had poured her life, hopes and dreams into Jesus and now he was gone, dead, buried.  So she stood there, gazing into the abyss and wailing.

Every person faces this existential crisis in life, and most people can’t deal with it, so they medicate themselves: with endless entertainment on TV, with the religion of sports, the religion of the state with its warring, with shopping, consumerism, careers, or drugs and alcohol.  Of course, these don’t satisfy, so eventually I gave the Jesus of my childhood another try.

The difficulty people have when they go looking for the Jesus of their childhood is that Jesus has been moved.  Certain people, groups and institutions have moved Jesus into their own corner and used Jesus for their selfish purposes.  It was not easy to find the authentic Jesus, the Risen Christ who is proclaimed on Easter Sunday.

Some people have moved Jesus into the marketplace.  Jesus has become a multi-billion-dollar industry.  Televangelists with their prayer cloths saying just send me send money and God will give you a bountiful harvest.  You’ll be filthy rich.  Problem is there the only ones getting rich off the proposition.  Besides the Jesus of our childhood said to the rich young ruler that if you want to find joy and salvation, give all of your wealth to the poor and follow me.

Others have moved Jesus into the halls of government and the Pentagon to sanction their policies and their wars.  They wrap Jesus in the flag and sing, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!”  Anyone can claim Jesus is in their corner.  In World War II while we proclaimed God is with us, the German soldiers had inscribed inside their helmets, “Gott ist mit Uns.”  So it’s a dangerous proposition for us to force Jesus into the halls of political power and state war-making.

Others have moved Jesus to a certain place and time in their church and locked him there.  They act as if Jesus showed up for the first time along with Elvis and Eisenhower.  They invite anyone to come and worship with them as long as they agree to act like it is still 1957.  In this setting Jesus has grown musty and dusty.

Finally, others, experiencing the hypocrisy and mean-spiritedness that so often shows up in church have moved Jesus to the privacy of their own homes.  They say, I don’t need the church with all its hypocrites, I’ll just worship Jesus in solitude.  Just me and Jesus.  You can see the problems with that in its title.  It is selfish, aloof and unconcerned with engaging and transforming a hurting, dying world, which is what the Jesus of the Gospels calls us to do.

I did not find Jesus in any of these places.  Like Mary Magdalene, I was looking into the abyss and crying out in anguish and was giving up on there being any meaning or purpose to life.  I thought I would never find Jesus. Just when I was about to give up, Jesus found me.  Standing next to me, and he had been there all along, was a old, tired, worn, smelly gardener – the poor, humble, dismissed and discarded gardener, the one charged with pulling weeds and picking up trash.  The gardener represents in John’s story all that has been overlooked, dismissed, discarded, ignored.  He is the poor, the suffering, the old, the lonely, the alcoholic, the drug addict, the trouble-maker kid, the single mom, the person of color, the mentally challenged, the physically disabled.

And the gardener called my name:  Ken.  And, oh my God, I saw Jesus again.  Jesus was in the face of the poor, the widow, the orphan, the dismissed and the discarded, the one whom I have overlooked in my search for Jesus.

I heard again, like I had never heard it before, Jesus’ parable of the Sheep and the Goats:

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.   “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’   “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’   “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (Matthew 25:31-20 NIV).

With Mary I was able to proclaim, “I have seen the Lord!”

So my original question of “Who moved my Jesus?” turned out to be a question of self-righteous indignation.  No one, had moved my Jesus.  He was there all the time, right where he said he would be.  He was in the face of the unemployed whom I had not helped get by, the fatherless child whom I did not mentor, the lonely widow whom I did not visit, the hungry family whom I did not help feed, the prisoner whom I have not visited.  In a moment of guilt and shame, I realized that I was the hypocrite, and I confessed to this Jesus that I had found again.

Jesus is not in the grave.  But, he cannot be found in the hallowed halls of government.  He is not in the church of the hypocrites.  He is not in your private religion.  He is among the poor, the suffering, the hurting, the lonely, the anguished, the fearful, the hopeless.  And Jesus said where two or three gather in my name, where two or three gather in the name of the poor, the suffering, the hurting, the lonely, the anguished, the fearful, the hopeless, there he would be.

Have you misplaced Jesus?  Have you discarded him?  He is right where you left him, among the least of these.


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The “Fool” on the Hill

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Ken Corder

The cross is the fate of the Holy Fool

Title:  The “Fool” on the Hill

Text:  Isaiah 50:4-9

A talk given at Overdale United Methodist Church, Louisville, Kentucky, on April 1, 2012.  Click here to listen to the talk.  Right click to download the talk as an MP3.

Shane Claiborne is not your everyday Christian.  He is a fool for Christ.  After working a short stint with Mother Theresa among the lepers in Calcutta, he flew to Baghdad in 2002, where he ministered to the Iraqi civilians while that city was being bombarded by US military forces.  Later, he returned to the US and established a small community of foolish, radical Christians who decided to live among the poor and minister on the violent streets of urban Philadelphia.  Claiborne has been known to regularly turn up at the scene of gang violence in Philadelphia and begin juggling and clowning to distract the angry gang members gathered there.  He establishes community gardens in the concrete jungle of Philadelphia.  And in a world obsessed with fashion and designer clothes, Claiborne makes his own clothes to speak out against destructive consumerism.[i]

Claiborne shares much in common with the prophets of the Old Testament, who also did some crazy, seemingly foolish things as they sought to live obediently before God.  Hosea married a prophet, a prophet named Gomer, no less.  Isaiah, who we read from today, went naked through the streets to illustrate Egypt’s shame.  Ezekiel made a model of Jerusalem and built little army men who attacked the city to warn his people that God was angry with their disobedience.  Then Ezekiel lay on his left side for 390 days for every year of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God and another 40 days on his right side for the sins of Judah.  The mainstream Jews thought these guys were fruitcakes.  Then there is Jeremiah, who cried to his people to repent, and they put Jeremiah in the stockades, threw him in underground cisterns and finally kicked out of the Temple and burned his sermons.[ii]  And of course, don’t forget John the Baptist, the wild man out in the desert eating honey and locust, dressed in camel skins crying repent!  All of these fellows were seen as madmen, fools.

And when we read the Gospels, we find that Jesus follows in their footsteps and does and says foolish things by the world’s standards.  The Gospels present Jesus as something of a fool in his own right.  Some hearers of Jesus’ teachings suggested Jesus was a madman.  “Many of them said, ‘He is demon-possessed and raving mad. Why listen to him?’” (John 10:20).  In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is depicted as a poster child for “humiliation, mockery, derision, and powerlessness.”[iii]

People criticized Jesus for just about everything, even eating and drinking too much, and for having too much fun.  He teaches that the poor will be blessed, those who mourn will laugh, the meek will inherit the earth, the hungry and thirsty will be filled.  He says to love your enemies, not hate them.  He teaches his followers to turn the other cheek, to walk the extra mile, to not only give your outer clothes to the rich creditor who sues you for payment but to strip down and give him your underwear as well.  He says give it all away, and you will receive so much more.  He says die to yourself and only then will you find yourself and the good life.  Finally, Jesus takes on the authorities of his day, the religious hypocrites who play religion but don’t care about the poor, the widows, and the orphans.  And he criticizes the political leaders for their violence, warring and destruction and tells them to lay down their swords.  It was on these last two accounts that Jesus, the fool, is pursued by the religious, the well-connected, and the political elites and hung on a cross.  By the world’s standards, Jesus is mad.  He is a fool.

Yet, the writers of the Gospels and the early apostles, like Paul, insist that Jesus is no fool in God’s eyes, but a force to be reckoned with.  He is a fool, by worldly standards, but he is a holy fool.  And, in the end, the Scriptures call for you and I to be fools as well, “fools for Christ” who walk through life with the same radical hospitality, crazy compassion, disregard for worldly things, anger for hypocrisy and disgust at the violence of the State and its leaders, whatever party they might be.  The Apostle Paul said that “the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God” (1 Cor. 1:19).  Paul called himself “a fool for Christ’s sake.”

When we believe and follow the way of Jesus, faithfully imitating Jesus, as we are called to do, when we play the fool, we, too, will carry a cross of our own.  It is a cross of shame and reproach, but one that we will gladly bear, as the old hymn says.  We will be labeled as fools, fools for Christ.  John of Chrystostom said, “Let them call me…foolish in Christ and I will be proud of this name as a victorious crown.”  Chrystostom goes on to say that, foolishness according to Christ is when we “harness our musings, which are in a state of inappropriate raving, when we cleanse and liberate our minds of the fruits of [our] mundane upbringing…”[iv], and walk in the humble, compassionate, peace-making, loving, forgiving, wealth-shedding, power-denying, foolish Way of Jesus.

The Prophet Isaiah knew a little bit about playing the humiliated fool as a faithful follower of God.  Isaiah perceived that God was telling him to strip down naked and going barefoot and bare-bottomed for three years, to protest against the warring Egypt (Isaiah 20:1-6).  And he did.  So when Isaiah writes in chapter fifty about the price of the obedience, the suffering and, ultimately, the joy of the suffering servant of God’s way, he knows what he is talking about (especially when the temperature drops below freezing, in his case!).

Isaiah writes, and many believe he was writing about the future suffering of Jesus, about how the fool for Christ survives in a world that mocks, persecute and rejects him.  And from this short passage we learn three things I want to mention briefly to help strengthen you in your walk with Christ as a fool for Christ.

First, Isaiah says that the fool for God will have the tongue of the learned, or the tongue of one who is taught.  Every day, he says, God awakens him to an ever deeper understanding of the ways of God, so that he become more and more in love with God and his Ways.  Every day he is a receptacle for the Word of the Creator God to fill him.  “The Lord opened my ears, and I was not rebellious” (v. 5).  In other words, Isaiah shut his trap and listened for the word of God.  You can’t hear God’s truth and Word for your life if you are incessantly yapping and repeating the tired old lines of the culture.  You have to enter into the silence, contemplate on God’s Word, receive the Word from the Spirit and be daily renewed, enlivened and emboldened by God’s truth that will enter into you if you will only stop spinning and shouting.

This Word that you will receive from God is not licorice and gumdrops.  It will be a powerful force that will fill you, illuminate you, embolden you, and it will question and critique everything that you formerly did outside of Christ.  Then it will turn you to the world to share this new Word that has transformed your life. “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12 NIV).

Second, when you take the Word to heart and start to live it out in your life, it will be viewed as foolish by the world, so we must remain strong and accept the price of playing God’s fool.  The world will even question your sanity!  If you truly practice the way of Jesus you will be called a fool.  If we are not viewed as fools by our family, friends and neighbors, then perhaps we are probably not fully living out the Way of Jesus in our lives.  Start criticizing your local churches for not taking care of the widows and orphans up and down your street.  Start criticizing your government for their warring an destruction by their sword.  Start giving things away to the one who ask to borrow it.  You forgive your worst enemies.  See what happens.  People will start looking at you funny.  They will get offended.  They will shun you.  Then you know you are a fool for Christ.

Michael Frost tells a story of some homeless people in Phnom Penh, Cambodia who were evicted by the government forces from their slums and moved out into the swamps.  With no way of living or supporting themselves they were likely to die or be resigned to extreme poverty.  That’s when Abraham Hang moved into the swamp.  He was a Bible College graduate with “a foolish entrepreneurial streak.”  He arranged for Christian doctors and dentists to conduct mobile clinics among these homeless, and through an American missionary he raised money to build thatched buildings for hundreds of families.  He even purchased a truck so that the men could get to town and earn daily wages.  The local governor protested, but Hang stood up to him, even though he was visited by thugs and threatened by the government.  Frost says that even today Hang, “foolishly remains loyal to the vulnerable people to whom God sent him.”[v]

Hang is a fool by worldly standards.  Who would dedicate their lives to a group of dispossessed people in a Cambodian swamp?  A fool for Christ would.  And he was prepared to suffer for it.  Isaiah says, “I gave my back to my smiters, and my cheeks to those who plucked off my beard hair.  I did not hide my face from shame and spitting” (20:6).  The prophet goes on to say, “I will not be disgraced…I set my face like flint [or like a rock]” (20:7).  You must be tough as nails to be a fool for Christ, just look at the nail-scarred hands of Jesus.

How can the fool for Christ be so strong and steadfast under such persecution and rejection?  Isaiah says, “I know I will not be put to shame” because “he who vindicates me is near.”  With God alongside me, who will condemn me? (20:8-9). Thirdly, Isaiah says that fools for God are a powerful force because they walk with God and with all the power and promise that brings.  You and God make a majority.

The Roman guards spat upon Jesus, taunted Jesus while he hung on the cross; they gambled for his robe and they pierced his side.  Yet Jesus, because he had ears to hear the Word of God and daily received the Spirit’s in-pouring of truth and wisdom, during his life, does not condemn his enemies.  He remains faithful and obedient to the end.  He even prays to his Father in heaven, “Forgive them, Father, for they do not know what they do” (Luke 23:34 KJV).

So, we are called to be fools for Christ.  Perhaps you will not be called to marry a prostitute, strip down and walk the streets in protest of a warring nation or be thrown in a cistern to shut you up, but if you follow the Way of Jesus, you will be called to walk the way of the fool.  We are fools for Christ.  And, it won’t be pretty, this “fools for Christ” life, but it will be beautiful.  Bernard of Clairvaux said that the holy foolishness of we who follow Jesus is “ridiculous to men, but a very beautiful spectacle to the angels (cf. 1 Cor. 4:9).”[vi]

In the book Sister Freaks: Stories of Women Who Gave Up Everything for God, you can read about a fool named Karen Watson.  Karen entered a war zone because she loved Jesus. News reports in early 2004 were riddled with American casualties in recently liberated Iraq. Car bombs blew up convoy trucks. Suicide bombers targeted civilians. Ambushes occurred weekly.  But a Scripture burned on Karen’s heart-one that propelled her to Iraq: “Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?’” Her answer echoed Isaiah’s: “Then I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’” (Isa. 6:8 NASB).  Karen sold her home and car and submitted her resignation to the Kern County Sheriff ‘s Department, where she had worked for eight years as a detention officer.  Not long after arriving in Iraq, the UN building was bombed there, killing several civilians. Karen called home to California to say she was okay. After that day, however, she made it a point to call her family and supporters after every act of violence, just to assure them she was all right.

On March 15, 2004, Karen, along with several other missionaries, headed to Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city. They were involved in humanitarian aid, developing a water purification system for the area. Partway through the missionaries’ journey, Iraqi militants in a passing car assaulted them with automatic weapons and rocket-powered grenades.  When friends at home heard about the violent car ambush, they expected another satellite phone call. But this time Karen didn’t call. She had died instantly, a casualty of bullet and shell fragment wounds.  After her death was confirmed, one of her pastors opened a letter she had written before she left for Iraq-to be opened if she were killed. It read:

You should only be opening this letter in the event of [my] death. When God calls there are no regrets. I tried to share my heart with you, my heart for the Nations. I wasn’t called to a place. I was called to Him. To obey was my objective, to suffer was expected, His glory was my reward, His glory is my reward.  One of the most important things to remember right now is to preserve the work…I thank you all so much for your prayers and support. Surely your reward in Heaven will be great. Thank you for investing in my life and spiritual well being. Keep sending missionaries out. Keep raising up fine pastors…In regards to any service, keep it small and simple. Yes, simple. Just preach the gospel.[vii]

Jesus was a fool, a fool on the hill of Mt. Calvary.  But he is a fool to be reckoned with.  And he calls for you and I do be fools for Christ.


[i] Michael Frost, Jesus the Fool: The Mission of the Unconventional Christ, Baker Books: Grand Rapids, MI (2010), 13.

[ii] Ibid., 36-37.

[iii] Ibid., 18.

[iv] Quoted in Frost, 18.

[v] Frost, 15.

[vi] Quoted in Frost, 19.

[vii] Rebecca St. James, Sister Freaks: Stories of Women Who Gave Up Everything for God, Time Warner Faith: New York (2005), summary located at http://www.christianbookpreviews.com/christian-book-excerpt.php?isbn=0446695602.  Retrieved on March 31, 2012.

 


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