A Sermon About The American Dream And Being Loved By God

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Grace, Mercy, and Peace to you from the Holy Trinity. Amen.

As I was thinking about Jesus' words to sell everything, give the money to the poor, and follow him, I thought to myself "Well, it's a good thing I'm in Urban Servant Corps where a major tenant of the program is simplicity...I don't have anything I COULD sell...so Jesus obviously really likes me and I'm definitely getting into heaven. And for those people in the congregation who don't make only $75 a month like I do...well, I'll just re-iterate the words of Jesus to go, sell everything, and give the money to the poor...or the church. There we go. Sermon done.

Then, an ad campaign popped up on my newsfeed. It was a series of "First World Problems."

Problems like "When my mint gum makes my ice water taste too cold."
And I hate it when my neighbors block their WIFI
And I hate it when I tell them no pickles, and they still give me pickles.

Which are all funny, when we tweet them. But they're not quite as funny when, like in this ad campaign, they are read by Haitians. Who don't have easy access to clean water, let alone ice water. And my first thought was...well, I guess I'm not getting into heaven now, even though Urban Servant Corps means relative poverty for the year...$75 a month and $60 a month for food...I still have ice water, and an iPad, and a heated house. Things that I'm not particularly keen on giving up to follow Jesus, because I'm pretty content with my lifestyle.

Which puts me pretty much right in the same place as the rich man, who comes to Jesus seeking justification for his piety, and hoping Jesus would just ignore the financial part of his life. I, being confronted with my possessions by a youtube video, had to rethink what Jesus' words to the yuppie really meant.

A few years back, the New York Times had a series of articles they published into a book called "Class Matters." It is primarily a book about class and social difference and the gap which exists within American culture. And it's about the American Dream. A notion that is distinctly American in nature...when was the last time you heard about The Chilean Dream? I've been pretty obsessed with the concept of the American Dream since college, where I took a class that scrutinized American idealism, and looked into the gap created between the ideal of the American Dream and the reality of life in this country.

We considered that "The Pursuit of happiness" and "climbing up the ladder" and "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and making something of yourself" all sound like really nice things to be able to achieve. And these ideas my very well be what gives people hope during economic recessions, and draws millions of immigrants to our shores, and gives small town kids big city dreams.

Only, we have come to realize that the so called American Dream, is in reality never attainable...since once a new level of financial or material security is reached, if that's even possible at all, it's time to get up to the next one. And we can end up sacrificing part of ourselves to get there...working longer hours, getting another credit card, trading in the old promises of the iPhone 4s for the new promises of the iPhone 5. We end up in a cycle of trying to "trade-up", sometimes not even knowing how or why we got there in the first place.

I get it. The new iPad calls my name, buying clothes at the Gap instead of Buffalo Exchange makes me feel good when I'm carrying that blue bag around the mall, taking out *another* student loan so I can go to Ikea and buy a new sofa...all these things are daily temptations...that just feed my vanity. Even if the American Dream isn't real, and even if we know we can't attain that sort of made-up ideal, it's nice to feel comfortable, and to want a future, and to make sure that the kids can go to college.

And then Jesus comes along talking about camels, and needles, and giving up your fields, which generally makes people who have any money or means or electricity feel uncomfortable.

And feeling uncomfortable is not particularly Good News, nor is it what I think Jesus is really getting at in this story. He starts out with a discussion of commandments, which the rich man has kept to a T. The guy is pretty proud of that, and he strokes his ego by telling Jesus what all he's done, and what he's accomplished. He's done and said everything he's supposed to do and say. This guy had fallen for the dream of something better from what he DID...the same dream we like to fall for.

It doesn't particularly matter wether what we do is materialistic, or altruistic...neither one will help us experience a future, or a present, with God.

Now, I don't want to imply that doing things is bad, or wrong...I'm all about Operation Turkey Sandwich, and giving money through offerings to the Lutheran Malaria Campaign, and giving away food from the community garden to those people who don't have access to fresh vegetables. Those are all great.

But they won't exactly earn us anything in God's economy...they won't exactly help us get the grace of God any faster than anyone else. Because God grace does not come on our schedule...or through our actions.

See, when we read the story of the rich man and the camels and needles, it's easy to skip over something small...but something that entirely changes the story, in my view. Before Jesus tells the man to do anything...before the man runs away crying because he is afraid of giving up his 401k...Before any of that, Mark tells us that Jesus loved the man.

God's love for us isn't something we get after we do the right thing. The grace of God...the mercy God has for us when we want to look into the mirrors of our lives and congratulate ourselves instead of looking past that to those around us...That is what Jesus showed the man, and what God shows us. For God, the eternal and unending gift of love for us means that we don't need to be afraid of not doing enough, or not thinking the right things, or not selling enough of our possessions. For God, loving us means that our self righteousness about our work and how we're changing the world doesn't matter. For God, the very act of loving us is more important than wether we give 20% of our salary to the poor or wether we give nothing.

Mark tells us that Jesus loved the man...before anything else. I wonder if the guy felt that. Or if he, like us, was taken aback by Jesus' command so much that he wouldn't let himself feel the unending and unfaltering love of Christ in his life. Jesus shows the man, by loving him, that God is not some angry parent who wants to take our toys away so we'll behave and be good. Instead, we see that those things we put our trust in...security, wealth, twitter can't love us like God can. God's desire for us is to be free of that stuff that we trust more than God, and to simply experience God's love.

It's easy to get so caught up in ourselves that we don't see God's love in our lives. And Jesus today reminds us that before anything else, God shows us love. God shows us love in those gathered around us in work and worship. God shows love to us through the resurrection of Christ from the dead, reminding us of the resurrection we too experience daily. God shows us love in God's very presence in the bread and wine which we eat and drink together. God's love, in every way we experience it...though people, through nature, through sacraments...surrounds us always. God's love, shown through Jesus' love to the rich man, means our vanity, our attempt to one up our neighbors, our busy-ness, doesn't matter, for nothing can compare to the love of God shown to us through Christ Jesus.

A sermon about cracked ribs, fainting goats, and connections

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So, we just heard Jesus talking to the Pharisees and his disciples about divorce. Or maybe marriage. And...well...it's pretty hard to preach a sermon that will speak good news to every single person here when marriage and divorce become the focus of what I say It becomes especially hard to preach when I and others in this room can't get married and so aren't legally allowed to experience what Jesus is saying. It is hard to preach when there are people who have heard this text and stayed in abusive relationships for fear of going to hell. It's hard to preach this when there are broken marriages which have, at least tangentially, affected everyone here. I don't particularly want to preach about the beauty of marriage, when people are content with being single, for fear of alienating them. And then there are people who are in happy and beautiful marriages that might just tune out since this doesn't apply to them. In fact, this story about divorce and marriage has taken on such a life of its own that we might forget what marriage really was back in Jesus' time.

First Century marriage was not about white dresses and flower girls and the love of your life and 'happily ever after'. That came to us much later, through the likes of Leave it to Beaver and the Disney corporation. Marriage in first century Palestine was pretty much just a legal contract, in which the families of the two people being married gained the most benefit. It was helpful to marry off your children to avoid enemies, and to have a bunch of people to be at your back when enemies did come knocking. And then the worst part, after the marriage, the guy owned the woman...like I own a printer.

And my printer...I love it...but if it ever stopped spewing out warm pages full of toner, I'd have to get rid of it. Marriage was that way as well, one school of rabbinic thought stated that a man could divorce his wife if she so much as burnt the toast for breakfast. Imagine the state of the world if that was the norm...I'd imagine there would be very few people still married.

After this burnt toast fiasco, the husband would simply dismiss the wife and she'd be out on the streets. Alone. With absolutely no legal protection or The Gathering Place or Dolores Project to help her find some dignity and a new life. Divorced women in the first century were sort of like first century children...they were often unwanted, and generally subjected to isolation and vulnerability because of their status.

After hundreds of years of the church telling us what relationships should and shouldn't look like, and making judgements about the state of relationships, we've begun to read Jesus' words a bit differently. We forget that Jesus is almost exclusively concerned with the wellbeing of the outcast in the gospel of Mark.

It's clear to me that this is a morality story, but not in the way we like to think about it. The morals being shown might not be about marriage...maybe they're about looking out for marginalized people...and women and children happen to be primary object lessons for the pharisees.

So, let's harken back to Genesis for just a minute. Again, this sermon has been preached to hurt people, especially those who identify as LGBTQ since 'obviously' God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. It's easy to want to focus on gender...because it ignores some pretty disturbing things that might not be that easy to talk about. The most disturbing of which is that God somehow divinely rufies Adam and cracks out his rib one night. For a loving God, that's pretty violent, and I'd imagine Adam was in a lot of pain the next day, considering God had not yet created Vicoden.

And the Truth about this story is that God cares so much about us. God cares that we have connection in life. It took a lot of work on God's part to find the right connection, because Adam kept not being interested in porcupines, sea lions, or those fainting goats. But God kept trying because God knew that Adam needed a connection, a way to see and experience and love God through something else. So God finally created a creature that was part of Adam.

Adam and Eve...or whoever they really were...were connected to one another through their very being. And connected to God through each other. And it was good.

So back to Jesus. Jesus understood how important connection was. And how relationships were not only legally protective, but protected the fragile emotions that live within each of us, and that those emotions are often dependent on other people. Jesus got it when he read Genesis, people were literally made from and for each other.

We are people made for connection, for relationship with others. And Gods will for us is connection, God's will for us is relationship, be that romantic or platonic. Yet we do a pretty good job of screwing that up. We live in a culture obsessed with disposability and individualism. And we are a people who abuse ourselves and others because we try to jump out of our role as creature and into the role of creator, which doesn't work for us. You see, when we're busy disposing of relationships or running along in our own world with disregard for others, we don't recognize that we are all created by God, and that God sees us as good, and valuable, and relational.

Thinking that church should be a club instead of a place where all people are welcome and valued as part of a community. Climbing the corporate ladder to get more, to be higher, and ultimately, to reach the top of the Norman Rockwell version of the American dream without thinking of those we leave in the dust. Being self righteous as an activist while alienating others who might have different opinions about issues. These things are pretty commonplace, and pretty far from God's will for creatures that were pulled from the ribs of each other.

The hurt we cause at the expense of others, and at the expense of ourselves and our relationships puts people in the same state as first century divorced women, and outcast children...vulnerable, scared, feeling isolated. And so Jesus calls us to remember that the kingdom of God is countercultural to his society, as well as ours. Certainly the alienation people feel looks different...and the same...as when Jesus talked about broken relationships, but God's will for people has not changed. God lamented for broken relationships and children, and God laments for us when we find ourselves thrown out due to someone else's refusal to see our sameness to them as created and good....AND God laments for those people that we throw out on the curb because we think that their God given goodness is threatening ours.

Jesus word's to the Pharisees and to us point to the goodness of God, who created all things good, and has a deep commitment for the created order. Jesus' words point us to the truth that God is invested in our commitment to each other. Jesus' words point us to a new way of living, one that is deeply concerned for our neighbor and one that recognizes that we too are neighbors of someone...we too are in need of concern, and of love.

So maybe...instead of a lesson that is cut and dried about marriage, Jesus is calling us to a way of discipleship, a way of seeing the world differently, and a way of interacting with people differently. We aren't perfect. We hurt people...deeply...when we break our relationships with them. We get hurt by those same people when they fracture relationships. Walking through life is so often about avoiding the broken glass shards left by our shattered relationships with others. And Jesus is telling us that God wants more from us. God wants us to see others as humans, created from the same flesh as us, from the same bones. God wants more from us about relationships.

Because God wants more FOR us. God's will for us is wholeness in our relationships, our friendships, our aquaintences, because we exist as children of God, all created perfect, all created good. God wants more for us so badly that God's own kid, Jesus, came to restore our relationship with God and with one another. God wants more for us, because the kingdom of God is full of beautiful, healthy, good connections, and we are the beginnings of that.

Surprise support

I was getting ice cream with a parishioner a few days back as part of my 'meet the vicar' campaign.  Typically these conversations have been much more about me getting to know the people in my community than about them getting to know me...that's partly because I find other people fascinating, and I find myself rather dull.  But regardless, we were chatting about hopes and dreams for HFASS, what the kids were up to, how vacation was, and all sorts of other things when she stopped me and asked:

what can we do to support you?

Um....what?  Support me?  Wait....

I didn't speak for a couple minutes because I was so shocked at what she offered me.  I had been spending the previous 5 weeks knowing in the back of my mind that this was a learning experience, and that I was in a classroom without walls, or an office, but yet had forgotten that.  I had forgotten that I was not a lone ranger in this ministry thing, and that people wanted to support me, and to see me succeed, and hold me when I failed.

This might not seem like the most amazing of revelations, but for me it was a great reminder that ministry is not just a one way street, with clergy doling out all the support, and not receiving any in return (except for text study groups, and other clergy, etc.).  Instead, at least on internship, there is an entire congregation of people here to support me, and foster my formation as a pastoral leader.  It was pretty incredible, and I remind myself of what my parishioner said every day, even as I try to figure out what that support can and might look like.

I'm pretty blessed to be here, and I don't want to leave in a year.