The Road to Character: Daniel's Friends Take Some Heat

Since this particular "installment" of the sermon series used a skit, there is no particular scripture to link to.  This is also Family Worship, so the sermon is accessible to a younger audience.  Next week is my sermon!

Sermon:  Daniel's Friends Take Some Heat.  By Rev. Dr. Penny Nixon, delivered at the Congregational Church of San Mateo on October 4, 2015.

Pope Francis

"

You see that the love [the Apostle] John speaks of is not the love of soap operas! No, it is something else. Christian love has a particular quality: concreteness. Christian love is concrete. Jesus Himself, when He speaks of love, speaks to us about concrete things: feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, and many concrete things. Love is concrete… .

And when this concreteness is not there, you can live a Christianity of illusions, because you don’t understand where the centre of Jesus’ message is. This love does not arrive at concrete being: it is a love of illusions, like the illusions the disciples had when, looking at Jesus, they thought He was a ghost.

"

—

Pope Francis, from today’s homily (via qcq)

THIS.  THIS RIGHT HERE.  Your nice thoughts aren’t saving you any more than they are saving starving children.  DO SOMETHING WITH YOUR LIFE.  If you believe in God and Jesus’ ministry, then ACT LIKE IT.  Jesus fed the hungry and healed the sick.  Stop getting mad at gay people for being gay and act like your religion is more than a reason for your moral superiority.

Jessica Williams

comedycentral:

Jon Stewart and Jessica Williams discussed catcalling on last night’s Daily Show. Click here to watch.

Process Cosmology

"The waters wear a dark face: we are mirrored mysteriously back to ourselves, deformed and aswirl. We are out of our depths. Faith does not mean “you can be anything you want to be.” The world is not your oyster. It is your ocean."

— Catherine Keller, On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008), 66.

Yes

"But the divinity of the truly divine God is to be displayed neither in a display of magic by Jesus or his heavenly Father, nor in the secret hope that the Father is going to square the accounts for him in an afterlife and give these Roman soldiers their comeuppance in the world to come. The divinity is rather that his very death and humiliation rise up in protest against the world, rise up above power…"

— John D. Caputo

Hey Kids, Maybe Don't Call People Heretics

Hey so I just saw someone throw out the word “heretic” in a way that sort of offended me.  

I claim “heretic.” My worldview is fairly different from most of the people I know who like to claim the title “Christian.”  I feel, however, that folks should not call OTHER people that word.  If I want to tell you I’m a heretic and explain my belief system, that’s cool.  If YOU are going to tell me that I’m a heretic by virtue of whatever belief or because I’m Protestant (or because anyone’s not what you’re considering “orthodox”), then you are throwing around hurtful words.  People have bee told since the 200s that because their views didn’t reflect a powerful majority that they were damaging to the Christian movement and that their voices could be violently destroyed.

My name’s Joliene.  I am a panentheistic Christian with a low Christology and from a low church, Protestant tradition.  My community is noncreedal and I love that because no self-righteous individual at my church can call me a heretic.  I don’t believe in resurrection or trinity beyond metaphor, Heaven or Hell, the infallibility of the Bible, the authority of the Pope or any other dude-in-a-robe, and while I believe that Jesus was a unique person whose ministry has profoundly changed my life and expanded my thinking, I don’t think he was made of more “God stuff” than you or me.  I don’t believe in a virgin birth, transubstatiation, or that baptism, Eucharist, nor confession are required for salvation.  In fact, I think salvation language is bankrupt.

It is entirely likely that we think differently about these things and I intend to respect and value the way that different cosmologies are meaningful to different people.  

If you're in one of those high church traditions that are fond of dogma and doctrine, don’t call me a heretic.  This tradition is just as much mine as it is yours.

Catherine Keller

"Theology that does not attend to the fecund multiplicity, porosity, and shiftiness of its sources and modes of reasoning can only succeed at aversion and an arrogant narrowness of spirit, neither of which are sufficient to the actual complexity of the world."

— Catherine Keller and Laurel Schneider, eds., Polydoxy: Theology of Multiplicity and Relation (New York: Routledge, 2010), p.20.

150 CE

The Road to Character: Joseph Rises Above His Dreams

Read: Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

Listen:  Joseph Rises Above His Dreams, sermon by Rev. Dr. Penny Nixon at Congregational Church of San Mateo on September 27, 2015

My blog reflection:

Yesterday we continued Joseph’s story and watched him climb up the “U-Curve” or “parabola” of his continuing narrative. When we left Joseph the week before, he was in a pit, both literally and metaphorically. He found himself in one of his life’s low points, forced to consider his trajectory. Hopefully the stories of our own lives are a bit less dramatic than Joseph’s, but no matter how grand or small our narratives are, most of us can identify with the story. Life brings hardships our way… and sometimes we are culpable. As Penny pointed out, though, the things that nearly destroy us are often the things that save us. Such experiences often build strength that we carry onto our next challenge. Sometimes we need to feel like we have failed in order to develop further.

When Penny talked about the song she sang as a child (about being a weed in God’s garden), it was obvious to most of us that we needn’t develop an extreme response to our own human failings. None of us should go through life feeling like a blemish on the face of God. However, I think much of society’s reaction to this “beating-down” kind of religion has been equally extreme. I’m reminded of my nephew’s middle school promotion ceremony, at which every student received an award regardless of their accomplishments or lack thereof. While no 5-year-old should be told they’re a weed, it seems irresponsible to celebrate academic mediocrity and to validate laziness. I think David Brooks is calling us to a middle path: humility, which he articulates as “radical self-awareness from a distance.” Self-awareness doesn’t require us to beat ourselves up for sins we don’t have, nor does it celebrate mediocrity. Humility isn’t obsession with our flaws, but honesty with them in a way that allows us to see ourselves as part of the web of humanity. We can reject obsession with sin without thinking we are exempt from it. Adam and Eve’s story may be one of original blessing, but they were still capable of failing.

Developing our characters is hard work that for many of us, requires an experience that may parallel that of Joseph. A strong character requires more than the vague morality that society often sells us. Penny suggested that working on your moral core can be like working on your physical core (like at the gym). Holding a plank pose might look easy, but it’s not. True moral strength requires us to confront our low places, humble ourselves, and operate with a sense of radical self-honesty, which can be very hard work. As Penny used the metaphor of the plank exercise at the gym, I thought of how I eliminated that very exercise from my own home workout-- it was too hard! While I can forgive myself for deciding that my physical strength is not a “core” (ha?) value, I had to extend that metaphor. In what ways might I be giving up on moral strength? As much as enduring the discomfort of exercise has its rewards, so does enduring self-criticism. Am I trying to improve myself, or am I allowing my faults to go unchecked? When someone tells me I’m being difficult or suggests ways I might improve, am I willing to hear it, or do I respond defensively? When I feel badly about something I’ve done or the way I said something, do I confront those feelings within myself, or do I brush them off and “not let them get me down”? Am I being honest with myself, or trying to protect my ego?

Joseph, ultimately, owns his strengths and uses them for great good, but he was only able to do so because he confronted his misuse of such strengths and the ways that he used them to build up his ego. By the end of his story, he wasn’t using his talents to leverage his position in his family, but to help his family and the nation. I hope to return to his story to remind myself of the perseverance necessary for developing character.

Preach

Charles Adams, "Faith Critiques Faith: Isaiah 58:6-9" in Power in the Pulpit: How America's Most Effective Black Preachers Prepare Their Sermons, ed. Cleophus J. Larue (Louisville: WJKP) 2002, 18-28.

Truth

Scotosis

"Scotosis results when the intellectual censorship function, which usually operates in a good and constructive manner to select elements to give us insight, goes awry. In aberrant fashion this censorship function works to repress new questions in order to prevent the emergence of unwanted insight."

— Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: the Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse, 10th ed. (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2002), 13 - 14.

Christian Feminism

"

[The perspective of Christian feminist theology] claims the fullness of the religious heritage for women precisely as human, in their own right and independent from personal identification with men. Women are equally created in the image and likeness of God, equally redeemed by Christ, equally sanctified by the Holy Spirit; women are equally involved in the ongoing tragedy of sin and the mystery of grace, equally called to mission in this world, equally destined for life with God in glory.

Feminist theology explicitly recognizes that the contradiction between this theological identity of women and the historical condition of women in theory and practice is glaring. This leads to the clear judgment that sexism is sinful, that it is contrary to God’s intent, that it is a precise and pervasive breaking of the basic commandment ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself’ (Lv 19:18; Mt 22:39). It affronts God by defacing the beloved creature created in the image of God. Faced with this sinfulness, church and society are called to repent, to turn around, to sin no more, to be converted.

"

— Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: the Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse, 10th ed. (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2002), 8 - 9.

The Road to Character: "Joseph and the Big Me"

Please watch/read/listen to these in order:

Scripture: Genesis 37:1-11

Poetry: Last Night as I Was Sleeping by Antonio Machado

Sermon: Joseph and the BIG ME by Rev. Dr. Penny Nixon, Senior Minister at the Congregational Church of San Mateo

Penny’s sermon on Sunday (“Joseph and the Big Me”) offered a unique interpretation of Joseph’s story.  Our traditions often celebrate Joseph in a somewhat one-sided way.  He ultimately rose to greatness, but his hubris made him not-so-great to be around, at least in earlier stages of his life.  His brothers’ violent overreaction is one that Bible interpreters often (rightly) suggest was wrong, but it is less frequently that we hear people ask what leads folks to such desperate acts.  Without condoning their violence, we understand that Joseph’s unexamined privilege led him to act in ways that ultimately fomented an extreme reaction.

In order to make sweet honey out of our past failures, we need to work on them.  Joseph was capable of great things, but not when he thought he was.  His arrogance led him to mistreat his brothers, but furthermore, to do so while oblivious about the impact of his words and behaviors.  That Joseph-- egotistical, oblivious, and overly-confident-- was not the Joseph who rose to greatness.  

One of my professors, Rev. Dr. Boyung Lee, says that we become arrogant when we stop asking questions because we think we know all the answers.  Understanding arrogance as a lack of questioning allows me to see how slippery that slope can be.  To believe I have mastered something can be the route to that mastery slipping away from me.  There is a thin line between confidence and overconfidence.  

Penny’s sermon ended on quite the cliffhanger: we left Joseph at his low point.  While that point was a beginning of upward trajectory for him, Joseph needed to sink that low in order to be humbled.  Penny suggested that true humility is seeing ourselves in the perspective of the whole.  Joseph, at the beginning of his story, truly lacked that perspective.  He was unable to see his privilege, the ways that others perceived him, and his hubris.  

This week, for me, will be about self-examination.  After the cliffhanger ending of the sermon, we heard our choir offer a beautiful rendition of “Down to the River” and we meditated on the rivers of our own lives.  As I spend this week at my internal river in prayer, confronting my own reflection in its water, I am reminded that a river is in continual motion.  To draw from the Disney movies of my childhood, I’m reminded of a line from one of Pocahontas’ pieces of music-- “you never step in the same river twice.”  Each of us is in the process of becoming.  While confronting our reflections is important work, it is done with the confidence that change is not only possible, but inevitable.  

This week I hope to pray at my river and meditate on humility.  What does it mean to see myself from the perspective of the whole?  As David Brooks asks in his book, “What are my circumstances calling me to do?”  

Altar-ing the World

"The ethical implications of a shared narrative require critical attention on the part of preachers, practitioners, and teachers of the Christian community. What we revere as holy can assume profane dimensions. Tradition can lead to idolatry, the antithesis of the esteeming of the being of God and the other."

— Heather Murray Elkins, “Altar-ing the World: Community-forming Word and Worship,” in Preaching in the Context of Worship, ed. David M. Greenshaw and Ronald J. Allen (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2000), 19. (via seekinguncertainty)