Grace Comes First

A supersessionist view of the Christian covenant might have made some little sense in a mythic worldview, but never made any moral sense. The time has long since come for Christians to drop such an arrogant claim. It has contributed to extraordinary suffering and eroded any moral authority we might think we have. In that sense, it never made any just sense of the work of God we’ve come to know in Jesus Christ.

Confessing Christianity’s Corporate Sin Against the Jewish People (Audio right-click to download)

Romans 11
“But if some of the branches were broken off and you, a wild olive shoot (meaning you the Gentile Christians) were grafted in their place to share the rich root of the olive tree, then don’t boast over your branches. If you do boast, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root who supports you. You will say branches were broken off, (that is to say the Jews who don’t believe in Christ), so that I may be grafted in. And that’s true enough. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand only through faith, so don’t become proud. Instead, stand in awe, for if God did not spare the natural branches, perhaps God will not spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God. Severity toward those who have fallen away and God’s kindness toward you, provided you continue in God’s kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off and even those of Israel, if they do not persist in unbelief, will be grafted in for God has the power to graft them in again.”
You know, the old saying, “some of my best friends.” Well some of my best friends, four in particular, are Jewish. Barbara and I are helping to raise our surrogate Jewish grandson, very Jewish grandson. He’s not quite three years old. I spoke with his father a couple of weeks ago; we were talking about Zion’s future. I’m a preacher’s kid so I am perhaps a bit over-sensitive to Zion being free to choose his own way in the world. So his father, humoring me no doubt said, “I’m not trying to narrow the scope of Zion’s vocation at all. He can be any kind of rabbi he wants to be.”
When I talk to my Jewish friends I am sometimes stunned and astonished by the level of pain and suspicion that lies just underneath the surface of our relationships – Jews and Christian -  and these are people I love, who love me, who know me. Maybe you know what I mean if you have close Jewish friends. I might say something about the politics of Israel, something that from where I sit, seems pretty balanced, then wham, the suspicion rises above the surface. Anything that might be misinterpreted is misinterpreted. That is not to suggest that I think I am right in all those moments; there are times when I’ve simply not understood the consequence of my “balanced” position. But this is about more than a position that can be debated. I can hear the pain, maybe even the fear, in the voices of my friends. This is not just one Jewish friend either.
I recently told a friend, “I think maybe I’m going to edit the series of sermons I did on the Gospel according to St. John, into a book.” The response I got was, “Well if you want to write about an anti-Semitic text which has inspired persecution for thousands of years, I suppose that’s up to you.” (When I preached this line, it got an unintended laugh. Not sure what to make of that. I looked and felt very uncomfortable.) Wow.
This is a sermon about Jewish-Christian relations because today’s text seems to demand it of me. I think about that moment, talking about the Gospel of John with my friend. On the one hand I can defend the Gospel of John. About half the references in that Gospel are indeed about Jews that have rejected the growing Jewish sect that eventually became Christianity. The text is not complementary about “the Jews” who are opposed to their faith.
The scholarly consensus is that John’s Gospel was written at a time when the local synagogue is splitting with this “Christian” sect. The Gospel is written from the point of view of those being thrown out of the synagogue.(1)  So it’s really a gospel about one group of Jews splitting from another group of Jews and there are fairly equal references to each of those groups in the Gospel. I know; I counted them that night, so I can defend the Gospel of John but that is really not the point, is it? The point is that the Gospel of John has been used, over and over and over again, to justify persecution of the Jewish people.
This is a deep wound, the kind that travels from generation to generation. For Jews what is embedded in that text is a story of damage done when this “gospel story” is told. This is particularly true of the Gospel of John because of its language about what the author calls “the Jews.”  It is bad enough when it is read, but it gets worse when it’s enacted. Throughout history, when the story of Jesus’ crucifixion is enacted, it is followed by acts of terrorism and persecution. When that movie, The Passion of the Christ, (and every time I mention that movie I have to also say that it is such a horrible movie in so many ways, I hardly know where to start), but when it was on the screen, there were synagogue burnings. Yes, synagogue burnings right here in the good ol’ US of A . . . just like history would teach us to expect.(2)
It’s not unreasonable, this suspicion, this frustration, this pain expressed in my direction – even though I’m talking about people who know me, and love me, and know that I love them. It’s the nature of the relationship between Christians and Jews. And I think we can actually understand why if we take even just a cursory glimpse at the history of our interaction.
(Attached to the end of the sermon is a Calendar of Jewish Persecution that reviews the best known atrocities. I read random phrases as I clicked through the six slides it took to show it all.) Just a little history of the major incidents when society, mostly Christian society persecuted Jews, starting in 70 AD, . . . moving through the second century . . . the fourth century, persecution in Spain, bloody persecutions in the first Crusade, driven out of Flanders until they repented the guilt of killing Jesus Christ. (See footnote 2) Renewed persecution of the Jews in Germany in the twelfth century, it keeps going, in England, Rome, Bavaria, Austria, France . . . would you look at this . . . This isn’t just last century, you understand, Christians have been persecuting Jews for thousands of years. Is it any wonder that suspicion and fear lie just below the surface of our relationships? Of course not.
I imagine that some might suggest that since we abhor what’s been done, since we abhor the attitude of past Christians towards the Jewish people, we’re not responsible. We might think we can distance ourselves from this history, but we can’t. We can’t because as long as the impact is felt generation to generation in the Jewish people, we carry the responsibility generation to generation in ours.  I may not like it, in fact I don’t, but I’m part of that lineage. In the same way that my Jewish friends today carry the wounds of the past, I carry responsibility for that past.
This is a sermon about Jewish-Christian relations, but it’s also a sermon about forgiveness and reconciliation and what makes it possible. So right now, let me acknowledge our collective sin, the collective distortion of a lineage, my lineage, that has treated the Jews as enemies of God rather than the people who literally gave us our faith, our understanding of God.(3)
You see, it is not just secular governments that perpetrated the abuse of the Jews. No, it’s at the heart of the reformation. Martin Sassa a Lutheran bishop in the thirties, wrote up a pamphlet about Martin Luther’s writings concerning the Jews. My “second Dad,” Frank Thorne, found it in a garage sale and gave it to me. I think he wanted me to remember our history.
This pamphlet is said to have inspired the Kristallnacht attacks against the Jews. I won’t page through it, but I will tell a couple of things that Martin Luther said.  “The Jewish people are liars and vampires . . . the synagogues are Satan’s lair . . . it’s a cursed, vile race.” That’s  Martin Luther, the founder of the reformation.
It’s not just the Lutherans either. I come from the Calvinist, “reformed” branch of the reformation. Generally speaking the reformed theologians have more respect for the Hebrew scriptures than do our Lutheran friends. I thought for a while that maybe we were off the hook – comparatively – but then as I was preparing for my class on the Presbyterian Book of Confessions I read this from the Scots Confession dated 1560: 
. . .  Since Satan has labored from the beginning to adorn his pestilent synagogue with the title of the Kirk of God, and has incited cruel murderers to persecute, trouble, and molest the true Kirk and its members, as Cain did to Abel, Ishmael to Isaac, Esau to Jacob, and the whole priesthood of the Jews to Christ Jesus himself and his apostles after him.  So it is essential that the true Kirk be distinguished from the filthy synagogues by clear and perfect notes lest we, being deceived, receive and embrace, to our own condemnation, the one for the other . . .
My God, what is that doing in our Book of Confessions? We can change it with a two thirds vote of Presbyteries you know; I’ve written it up; we ought to at least try to get it removed.(4)
We’re inextricably wound up in this identity. It’s a part of our past and if we’re going to heal the relationship between us and the Jews at both a personal and a corporate level, we’ll need to acknowledge our sin and repent of it. And we can begin by dismantling interpretations of texts, like the one we read this morning, that suggest the Jewish people are religiously inferior enemies of Christians. The text doesn’t say it, but the history of interpretation has. So let’s start by saying that any such interpretation is just plain wrong. It distorts the meaning of Paul’s thought; the man was a Rabbi. The whole point of this text is that Paul worries about the fate of his kinsman. Using his thought to hurt them is ludicrous. So, I thought I’d do a little Bible study here – walk through this passage and hear what it has to say on its own terms.
The Apostle Paul had a conundrum. He understood that God had promised to the Jewish people, the chosen ones, the ones who are to bring God’s covenant, God’s grace, God’s salvation to all the nation’s of the earth – he understood that God had promised those people that God would be faithful to them, draw them into God’s presence, that they would be made whole. Then the Apostle Paul met the risen Christ and, right or wrong, believed with every fiber of his being,  that Christ was the way in which God was going to accomplish that. But most of Paul’s relatives, most of the Jews, right or wrong, had decided that Jesus was not the messiah, that Jesus was not the way God was revealing God’s work in the world.
So Paul had to figure out what to do about the fact that it appeared as though a whole segment of God’s people were being excised, rejected by God. That was his conundrum. Is God’s promise not to be trusted? Is God not to be gracious to God’s people? If God is not going to be gracious to the people of Israel, then can we trust God to be gracious to us? This is Paul’s problem. Are God’s promises reliable.
He imagines an olive tree, an olive tree with a strong trunk.(5)   Let’s understand this tree as the covenant that God has with the people of Israel; it is a covenant of grace which is to say, it is a promise that God will unfold God’s creative power in them. It is not a covenant of works. It does not mean that you need to follow the rules in order to get God to love you and work in you. The Jewish people have – at their heart – a covenant of grace. I know you weren’t told that in Sunday school, but it’s true. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you can tell they preach a covenant of grace because the ten commandments are in Exodus chapter twenty and not in Exodus chapter one.
God did not look down on God’s people, see them suffering at Pharaoh’s hand, and say to Himself, “Oh I know what I’ll do, I’ll give them ten rules. If they follow them, then I’ll save them.” No, God took them out of bondage and brought them into the wilderness. God gave them the ten commandments so that they would know how to live a life that was at peace with one another and at peace, complete with God. A covenant of grace. It is that faith they gave us.
So there it is, that one covenant of grace, growing up out of the ground. But it seems as though some Jews, and these are the Jews we keep reading about in the Christian scriptures, (often identified as the Pharisees),  lost track of the idea that it was a covenant of grace and instead sought a system where, if they worked it just right, they would be able to claim for themselves the salvation of God; they would not have to rely on God’s grace. Whether or not that is true, that some Jews thought that is I suppose open to debate, but it is certainly true that the Christian sect of Judaism at the time, thought so.
And it is not to hard to believe since after all, it’s a human tendency. We’d rather be in control. In fact, you’d have to say that right now the majority of Christendom believes, at least in practice, that you earn your way into the presence of God. The majority of Christendom takes the Pharisaical approach, that God is not a God of grace, rather a God that will do you in if you don’t follow His rules.
But for Paul, those who reject this grace, many of his people are then necessarily cut off from God’s saving grace. Then we have a new covenant of grace that grows out of the same trunk, another branch, a predominantly Gentile branch. But all from that one trunk, you understand. If the trunk represents the covenant of God’s grace then the people grafted into this trunk are those who live lives of trust, lives oriented toward that gracious God, the God who seeks an opening from within us to express God’s love and God’s creative power into the world. And so for Paul, these early Christians in latching hold of that grace, are grafted into the trunk.
This was important to Paul because he recognized that the dignity of all people was at stake; that’s why he was insistent that the Gentiles be brought into the covenant of God’s grace. Whole groups of people simply cannot be set aside. The notion that whole groups of people can be set aside for God’s purpose is the dangerous idea that drove the final solution in the Third Reich. Any time you care more about the process, the “big picture” than you do an individual life, horrifying things happen. Paul couldn’t imagine that God was doing that to God’s people. He knew that God’s promise had to come to all people and so he was absolutely convinced that one day soon, the rest of his people, the rest of the Jews would be grafted back into the tree.
So here is what’s important about that. What is means is that the trunk of the tree is not Jewish, but it is equally clear that it is not Christian. It is not a Christian trunk – never has been. The trunk represents life given by God, a life filled with the near, expressive love of God – near to them, near to you, near to whoever is living a life trusting in the nature of God’s gracious, creative love – no matter the tradition. I would grant that Paul was not thinking in such terms when he wrote, but he also wrote from within a mythic worldview with its exclusive claims on truth. He thought that the end of was coming and that soon God’s chosen people would be grafted into the tree thus bringing shalom, peace, wholeness to the world. At this point I think it is safe to say he was wrong about that.
But he was pointing towards something true. His perception about the nature of God and God’s interaction with the world remains. For in a world that sees beyond the exclusive claims of mythic religions, we can see in Paul’s vision, branch upon branch upon branch, from whatever tradition, or whether you have none, grafted into this same tree. We can see that the grace of God knows no boundaries for as people live lives oriented towards the gracious, unfolding, creative power of God, they will know the love of God sourced from that tree.
It’s not a Christian trunk. It’s in God’s nature to draw everything together into perfect harmony, Jews and Christians certainly, but everyone else as well. The trouble comes because the Apostle Paul was writing with a mythic focus struggling to make sense of what he knew about God from within his exclusive, mythic frame.  From that a horrifying misinterpretation of this chapter has come. It goes something like this: There was initially an  old covenant, we call it the Old Testament, and then Jesus came along and superseded that old covenant. God then made a new covenant, a New Testament that is superior to the old one. That interpretation is wrong, just plain wrong.(6)
It is in God’s creative nature to bring about shalom in all creation, of that I am sure. The movement from the chaos and horror of our past to the beauty and hope of our future is and will be painful for it is always a move from death to new life.
Our Jewish friends are justifiably suspicious and afraid. The wounds run deep. It requires us not only to acknowledge, but to understand the depth of what we Christians have done. It requires us to sit ready to listen to the pain and the suspicion, even from our closest friends, to know it, even feel what we can. If we cover it over, we are covering the opening through which the Spirit of God expresses itself into the world. So we open our hearts to God and seek God’s healing because if Paul was sure of one thing in this entire confused and confusing chapter, he was sure that God would one day graft all people together into one glorious covenant sourced by the creative love of God. It is from that place, with that desire that we seek the gracious creative power of God to make something holy and beautiful of what we have wrought.

(1) For all I know they should have been thrown out. I am not discussing that one way or another right here.

(2) By the by, a great deal of this intense hatred is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. “The Jews,” no matter who they are identified with in the story, did not kill Jesus. Crucifixion is a Roman punishment; the Romans did it. In fact in my view a point of the story is that even the Jews were involved in this horror; it goes without saying the rest of us would be. We’ve made the Jews a scapegoat for our own behavior.

(3) Christianity is after all just a renewal movement. Did or does the religion of the Jews need renewal? Of course, but certainly no more so that the Christian religion. My God, look what we have done in the name of our faith!

(4) Really, it comes down to this: the Presbyterian church has absolutely no moral authority to speak on matters of justice as regards the Jewish people and their relations with the Palestinians, period. No Moral Authority Whatsoever. Until we show ourselves to be repentant we need to keep our filthy mouths shut.

(5) Picture can be found at http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QdyXbhK13IQ/TaNTIt2ywdI/AAAAAAAAARQ/kNZfgQ-RfZ8/s1600/teaching+tree5.bmp

(6) Have you noticed over the last couple of years that I’ve tried to get out of the habit of referring to the “Old Testament” and the “New Testament,” and instead refer to the Hebrew scriptures and the Christian scriptures? That is because I do not believe in a supersessionist covenant. I can’t see it that way. Join me in the effort. It’s not an easy habit to break.

(7) http://www.hearnow.org/caljp.html

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A Calendar of Jewish Persecution(7)
70 A.D.
Destruction of Jerusalem 1,100,000 Jews were killed and 97,000 taken into slavery and captivity.
115
Rebellion of the Jews in Mesopotania, Egypt, Cyrene and Cyprus. Jews and Romans inflicted many barbaric atrocities on each other, causing the death of several hundreds of thousands of Romans and Jews.
132- 35
The Bar Kochba rebellion (Bar Kochba was a false Messiah). Caused the death of 500,000 Jews; thousands were sold into slavery or taken into captivity.
135
Roman Emperor Hadrian commenced his persecution of the Jews. Jerusalem established as a pagan city. Erection of a Jupiter temple on the temple mountain (Moriah) and a temple to Venus on Golgotha. Jews were forbidden to practice circumcision, the reading of the Law, eating of unleavened bread at Passover or any Jewish festival. Infringement of this edict brought the death penalty.
315
Constantine the Great established "Christianity" as the State religion throughout the Roman Empire; issued many anti-Jewish laws.
379- 95
Theodosius the Great expelled Jews from any official gate position or place of honor. Permitted the destruction of their synagogues if by so doing, it served a religious purpose.
613
Persecution of the Jews in Spain. All Jews who refused to be baptized had to leave the country. A few years later the remaining Jews were dispossessed, declared as slaves and given to pious "Christians" of position. All children 7 years or over were taken from their parents and given to receive a "Christian" education.
1096
Bloody persecutions of the Jews at the beginning of the First Crusade, in Germany. Along the cities on the Rhine River alone, 12,000 Jews were killed. The Jews were branded second only to the Moslems as the enemies of Christendom.
1121
Jews driven out of Flanders (now part of Belgium). They were not to return nor to be tolerated until they repented of the guilt of killing Jesus Christ.
1130
The Jews of London had to pay compensation of 1 million marks for allegedly killing a sick man.
1146- 47
Renewed persecution of the Jews in Germany at the beginning of the Second Crusade. The French Monk, Rudolf, called for the destruction of the Jews as an introduction to the Second Crusade. It was only because of the intervention of Emperor Conrad who declared Nuerenberg and a small fortress as places of refuge for the Jews, and that of Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, that the result was not quite as devastating as at the time of the First Crusade.
1181
French King Philip banished the Jews from his domain. They were permitted to sell all movable possessions, but the immovable such as land and houses reverted to the king. Seven years later he called the Jews back.
1189
At the coronation of Richard the Lionhearted, unexpected persecution of the Jews broke out in England. Most Jewish houses in London were burned, and many Jews killed. All possessions of the Jews were claimed by the Crown. Richard’s successor alone, relieved the Jews of more than 8 million marks.
1215
At the IV Lateran Church Council, restrictions against the Jews by the church of Rome were issued.
1290
Edward I banished the Jews from England. 16,000 Jews left the country.
1298
Persecution of the Jews in Franconia, Bavaria and Austria. The Nobleman Kalbfleish alleged that he had received a divine order to destroy all the Jews. 140 Jewish communities were destroyed, and more than 100,000 Jews were mercilessly killed.
1306
King Philip the Fair banished the Jews from France. 100,000 Jews left the country.
1320
In France, 40,000 shepherds dedicated themselves for the Shepherd Crusade to free Palestine from the Moslems. Under the influence of criminals and land speculators, they destroyed 120 Jewish communities.
1321
Jews were accused of having incited outlaws to poison wells and fountains in the district of Guienne, France. 5,000 Jews were burned at the stake.
1348
Jews were blamed for the plague throughout Europe, especially in Germany. In Strausberg 2,000 Jews were burned. In Maintz 6,000 were killed in most gruesome fashion, and in Erfut 3,000; and in Worms 400 Jews burned themselves in their homes.
1370
Jews were blamed for having defiled the "Host" (wafer used in the Mass) in Brabant. The accused were burned alive. Again, all Jews were banned from Flanders and until the year 1820, every 15 years a feast was kept to celebrate the event.
1391
Persecutions in Spain. In Seville and 70 other Jewish communities, the Jews were cruelly massacred and their bodies dismembered.
1394
Second banishment of Jews from France.
1453
The Franciscan monk, Capistrano, persuaded the King of Poland to withdraw all citizens’ rights of the Jewish people.
1478
The Spanish inquisition directed against the Jews.
1492
The banishment of Jews from Spain. 300,000 Jews who refused to be "baptized" into the Church of Rome left Spain penniless. Many migrated to the Muslim country, Turkey, where they found tolerance and a welcome.
1497
Banishment of the Jews from Portugal. King Manuel, generally friendly to the Jews, under pressure from Spain instigated forced baptism to keep the Jews. 20,000 Jews desired to leave the country. Many were ultimately declared slaves.
1516
First Ghetto established in Venice.
1540
Banishment of Jews from Naples and 10 years later, from Genoa and Venice.
1794
Restriction of Jews in Russia, Jewish men were forced to serve 25 years in the Russian military. Many hundreds of thousands of Jews left Russia.
1846- 78
All former restriction, against the Jews in the Vatican State were re-inforced by Pope Pius IX.
1903
Renewed restrictions of Jews in Russia. Frequent pogroms (massacres); general impoverishment of Russian Jewry.
1933
Commencement of persecution of Jews in Hitler Germany. Inception of the systematic destruction of 6,000,000 Jews throughout Nazi-occupied Europe.

Romans IX – It’s Very Close  (Audio Right Click to Download)

Beauty and new life emerge out of the chaos of the cross. Beauty and new life emerge from the challenges and chaos of creation itself – same thing. But how are we to live into that possibility? How are we to live with hope as we develop and evolve? The entire Gospel of Mark was written to answer that question. At then end, after the cross, the women come to the tomb. They are stunned. How will they and the other disciples live into the challenge before them? How will they live after the cross? Jesus has one answer: Meet me in Galilee. But what does that mean? 

Evolution and Faith VIII – Meet Me in Galilee (Audio right-click to download)

Mark 16:1-8
When the Sabbath was over, [that is to say when the time out of time was over], Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices so that they might go and anoint Jesus. Very early on the first day of the week when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another who would roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb. When they looked up, they saw that the stone which was very large had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side. They were alarmed. The young man said to them, so not be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He has been raised. He is not here. Look, there’s the place where they laid him. Go now, tell his disciples, tell Peter, that he is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him exactly as he told you. So, the women went out, fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.
The dance of creation is an extraordinary thing, don’t you think? From the far reaches of the cosmos, to the tiniest little microbes, this dance plays out. You know, the year my father was born we didn’t know there was more than one galaxy. 1917 was the year when we figured out that Andromeda, that little fuzzy spot, was actually a whole other galaxy. Think of how much we have learned about this incredible creation since then.
The beauty – extraordinary – sometimes even when we get our hands on it. Elizabeth says in Pride and Prejudice that in managing the great estate of Pemberly, Darcy did nothing that would “counteract nature with an awkward taste.” It’s what I think of when I look at that photograph.
You know there are whole worlds and creatures that go on about their lives, go on their journeys, without our having any conscious awareness at all. It’s an extraordinary beautiful world.
Understand though that the process of life and death, the process that makes up this creation, makes this creation somewhat dangerous. These little fish seem to know that. It is a brutal world, don’t mean to shock you with this next photograph, but it can be brutal. It’s a dangerous and brutal world, this world that moves from death into new life, this world that moves through cross to resurrection, this world that evolves and unfolds into a glorious future, and it is astonishingly beautiful.
Consider the length and breadth of human travail, the sorrow that we feel, the number of things going on in the world that simply don’t live up to the unity and hope, don’t live up to the gorgeousness of creation. Millions of people do not have enough food to eat, and it’s not because there isn’t enough food in the world, either. It’s because human society has failed to find ways to distribute that food. Human society has failed to find ways for every human being to work productively in such a way that they can provide for their needs. Or consider the clash of world views on this earth. The world’s become small at a time when there isn’t a world big enough for radical Islam and fundamentalist Christianity to co-exist. When they run up against modern sensibilities self-righteous rage fills the cultural space between us, anger and violence erupt because of it.
There’s not much we can do about that. The internet has made the space between us so small. Everybody hears what everybody else says. Somebody wrote a comment on my blog about a month ago. Whoever it was, he was pretty angry about what I’d said – something about my being a heretic, I ought to not call myself a Christian and so on. Okay, that’s the way that is. But all I could think was that I wish they hadn’t read it. I even wrote that up in the next couple of posts. “If you don’t like what I’m saying, then stop reading. I’m not writing this to make you angry.” Clash of worldviews.
I think of Pope Francis. First of all, what a great name! But I think of Pope Francis. What an incredibly difficult job he has. He’s supposed to be leading a church where some adherents  believe in magic and some don’t really believe there’s any God but go through religious motions anyway. An enormously difficult task, at a time when starvation of the human spirit is endemic to our society. Choked off because a flourishing spirit requires silence, the kind of silence that allows you to live into emptiness, for “if one is able to stay perfectly in that Emptiness, there is a quality that begins to manifest right above the surface. It has something to do with the source of all life, with Love, and with the evolutionary impulse.” But the noise of society, the “entertainment,” the frenetic pace, the fake pleasures drown out that creative silence.
But let’s not focus only on the difficult, on human finitude for there are moments of redemption, right? There are those moments when someone can come back from horrible injury inflicted by the desperate violence of guns and find the embrace of colleagues, the joy that people feel when you get well again. But it doesn’t always happen. There are these cross moments, moments of destruction in creation and that fact provides the anxiety and the fear that plague us.
This is what it’s like for us in the world right at the edge, always at the edge of creation’s next step. That’s where it happens, that’s where evolution happens, always at the edge – the edge of life and death, the edge of our emotions, the edge of our oceans – that’s where it takes place.
We’ve been talking about evolution these last six weeks or so, talking about how it operates, how it responds to stress and chaos as it unfolds, each moment transcending and including the moment that went before, each step more complex, more unified, than before, always moving towards Shalom, towards wholeness, towards a just peace where each person plays their unique and vital role. This evolving creation cannot be complete without you. God cant’ get it done without you.
Everything evolves – internally and externally – individually and as a group – everything evolves. The structure of human economies evolve, and those structures affect the evolution of internal cultural values, which in turn affects the way individuals develop morally and spiritually, which in turn affects how we develop physically. Around and around it goes; step by step, always at that moment of chaos we await that creative Word, that creative moment from God. And that moment brings something surprising into being – new life, a life we can’t conceive of in the midst of the chaos.
Do you have those moments? We all do and when they come we often confront a moment of choice. We human beings, self-conscious of our own development, have some choice. In that chaotic moment we can repeat the deadly cycle that’s brought us to this moment of history, or we can move ahead and let the new emerge.
My son Matthew was home from college this week. We’re very proud of him. One of the things we’re proud of is that he earned his black belt. Each time he went through a belt test – and believe me I don’t have them memorized – white to yellow to orange to green to maybe purple with a green stripe, I’m not sure. But what I do know is that each belt test meant another step forward. There was always a ceremony, a time to celebrate what had happened. He’d kneel with his eyes closed; his Sensei would ask him to remember or reflect upon everything that had gone on since the last belt test – all the things he’d learned, all the disappointments he’d felt, all that sense of accomplishment when he learned a new form, a new move. As he did that his new belt would be placed in front of him. Then, at the right moment, when he was ready, he took off his old belt, put it behind him, and put on the new one. A new step of evolution was about to take place.
That’s the way it is. Evolution steps forward, human beings step forward. That is exactly what the story of the cross and the resurrection is about. Not only are evolution and faith not at odds, they are two sides of the same coin. When Christ died the old passed. When Christ was raised something fresh and new emerged, emerged out of the chaos of death. The old is left behind and the new comes forth. That’s the good news, you know. The good news of the gospel, is that no matter how low you feel you’ve gone, no matter flaw, no matter what burden you carry, no matter what the dream left unfulfilled, there is a next. There is a next  because the Spirit of God that hovers right above that Emptiness drives creation forward.
The women came to the tomb that day; they had to be wondering what was next. Had to be wondering how they’re going to emerge past this crisis, this horror. Their dear friend and teacher, the one that had given them solidity and identity, had been crucified, was dead and buried. They didn’t know whether anything could emerge from this moment so they came mourning.
The interesting thing is that the Gospel of Mark, the whole thing, was written for to tell you and to tell me how to go about growing into that next step, how to go about evolving into that new resurrection moment instead of remaining stuck in the cycle that brought us to this place. It’s what the whole book is about.
We’re going to go through it in some detail coming this fall but for now listen to the broad outline, the broad map offered for our journey. It begins with Jesus being baptized; the Spirit of God fills Jesus the Christ and drives him into the wilderness to be spiritually formed – spiritually formed. And it continued throughout his life. There was a cadence in the Gospel of Mark, a cadence between Jesus moving out into the world and moving back into the emptiness where his Spirit could be renewed.
Spiritual formation is key to growing up and growing through chaos into new hope. There are any number of ways to do it. Some people meditate every day. My spiritual director has recently challenged me to twenty minutes a day for one hundred straight days. But there are other ways. I have a pastor friend who carries seven smooth stones in her left pocket. Whenever she feels one, she stops and thinks to say a quick prayer of thanks, then transfers it into the right pocket. It’s her goal to make sure all seven stones make it into the right pocket by the end of the day.
There are many things that you can do to stop, remove the fake pleasure that fills our world and instead be in that place where the Spirit can be nourished. I know there are a lot of people in the room who love to study and read about science. Study is one of the classic spiritual disciplines. It’s been part of our faith tradition from the start. But study is more than just learning. At the end of learning comes a moment’s reflection about the power of God that makes creation unfold, about the power that nourishes the Spirit within.
The Gospel of Mark shows us a Jesus who wrestled with a living tradition. He wrestled with the Jewish traditions, the Jewish God and was trying to describe this God to an entirely different society than had known it before. He’d faced the greco-Roman world, as did the disciples following him, and looked for a way to talk about the same God, using different words, words that would communicate to them.
Isn’t that what we need today? To talk about the same God, but to find ways to talk about that God that make sense to the world around us. I’m convinced that the reason the church is failing is because we have not found those words. We’re looking for words that are as different from classic Christianity as Christianity was from Judaism; we’re looking for words that are every bit the same as Christianity was to Judaism. Same God, one God, gracious, unfolding, loving.
In Mark’s Gospel Jesus served the people on the edge of society and sought to change the systems and structures that created injustice in the world. That is what got him in trouble. He went in and cleared out the money changers in the temple because he was interested in changing the structures of that society, so that both the poor and the rich could be met by the strength and the power of God.
Mark shows us a Jesus who formed a group of people that could work together – each playing a unique and vital role. The reign of God could only become a reality when all are woven together in unity. 
The whole Gospel of Mark is there is to tell us how Jesus moved from Galilee, all the way to Jerusalem, through the chaos of the cross and through to that moment of resurrection. What did he have to say to the women? What message did he leave at this moment when they longed to find their way through to what is next? Meet me in Galilee when you’re ready, he said. Meet me in Galilee; the Spirit of God will drive you into the wilderness and your spiritual formation will begin. Meet me in Galilee; you and I can wrestle with a living tradition that points towards the God of love; you and I can find the words that communicate clearly in this time and place. Meet me in Galilee he said, and we will serve those at the edge of society. Meet me in Galilee where you, and you, and me, and he, and she, and she can be woven together into a perfect whole. Spirit can’t get it done without you. Meet me in Galilee; but be prepared because it is in Galilee, on the edge of chaos, hovering in emptiness, that I will ask you to take up your cross and follow me.
But know this: when you take up that cross, when you are willing to take that step into the chaos and trust God’s power to bring about the next, you will see beauty emerge. The new life will surprise you and Easter morning will finally make sense. Meet me in Galilee, when you’re ready, and put on your next belt.

Evolution and Faith VII – Death of the Church (Audio Right Click to Download)

Mark 15:33-37
The Fourth Word at the Good Friday Service
When it was new, darkness came over the whole land until it was three in the afternoon. At three o’clock Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabbachthani,” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “Listen he is calling for Elijah.” Someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Let’s see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” Then Jesus gave a loud cry, and breathed his last.
I’d like to invite you into a conversation we’ve been having at the First Presbyterian Church of San Rafael these last weeks of Lent, a conversation about evolution and faith. We’re not talking about a six day creation, with God resting on the seventh. I really, really hope that argument’s over and done with. No, we’re talking about evolution as the way in which everything unfolds in all of creation. We are looking at a creation that evolves and opens towards unity, or shalom, in the presence of God.
Evolution happens right at the edge of things. That’s how it works. In the midst of the chaos when a system ceases to function, there is a new step forward in the evolution of creation. Take the first ecological crisis on earth for instance. Early in the evolution of life there  were colonies of bacteria that lived on the boundary between the oceans and the land. Some bacteria had evolved to perform a simple photosynthetic process; they were able to take light energy and turn it into chemical energy which they could use to flourish. The byproduct of that photosynthesis is oxygen. Enough bacteria produced enough oxygen that it polluted the atmosphere. I say polluted because these bacteria could not live in an oxygen rich atmosphere. They were poisoning their own environment.
As they biological system came under this stress, as resources became scarce, bacterial colonies in effect attacked other colonies in search of a food source. One might have expected that over time an equilibrium would develop with just the right number of bacteria able to live with just he right amount of oxygen being produced. But something novel happened. I say novel because it was unpredictable, a surprise. That’s how evolution happens, new, novel creative moves emerge from the chaos and stress as a system breaks down. In this case, as bacterial colonies “collided” some came together in a way that produced the first eukaryote cells, the first animal cells. They were able to use the oxygen; they could thrive in this “polluted” atmosphere.
A surprising move forward. It’s how evolution works, right at that moment of stress and there are three characteristics to these moves forward. First, an old form is transcended, the original bacteria, but it’s constituent parts are included into the next. Second, each step produces more complexity and yet also greater unity. Finally, each step is a surprise, it is novel, like when two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom came together. You probably could have figured out from their valances that they might stick together, but if you’d never seen it, you never would have predicted the property of flow. Step by step in the midst of chaos, right at the edge of things, this is how evolution moves forward. But what is really interesting to me is that this is exactly what happens in the cross and the resurrection.
When Jesus dies on the edge of society and rises, an old life form is transcended and yet included in what is next. That next is a novel moment in creation. Jesus rises as a new creation, a new human being and that new human being, is infinitely more complex while being unified with all that is. To what degree this is a metaphor and to what degree an ontological reality is a subject for another time, but either way, cross and resurrection point right at the process of evolution. They are not only, not in conflict, they are in fact, two sides of the very same coin. It is how God’s creation unfolds towards unity and shalom.
It happens in all facets of creation. Our bodies evolve yes, but the internal landscape of our life does as well. Researchers have shown for instance, that human beings evolve morally from an egocentric sense of the self, to an ethnocentric sense of the self, where we identify with a group, to a world-centric sense of self, where we see ourselves connected to all people, to a kosmocentric sense of self, where we identify with all that is and recognize our unique role in a unified whole.
The structures of society evolve as well. Researchers have traced economic and technological evolution. Human society was one time supported with the technologies of the hunter and gatherer. Then we evolved into agricultural communities, then became an industrial society. Each step of the way, transcending and including that which went before, always moving toward greater complexity and unity, always surprised by the unpredictable next. (I mean really, do you think Mary Magdalene with all her insight, could have predicted the personal computer?)
This same process takes place within the inner, religious and cultural values of human society. Our worldviews have evolved. Again, researchers have traced our development from a magic orientation to creation where spirits of all kinds control what is happening and we offer gifts mountains and such to appease them. This was a typical orientation for tribal societies, but as tribes banded into nations, they needed something other than blood to hold them together and so came the birth of the mythic worldview. Stories are told that bring coherence and purpose to human society. In our tradition, twelve tribes came together and saw themselves as carrying the blessing of God for all people. Of course at a certain point those myths break down. They are deconstructed in a modernist worldview and our cultural values shift. We seek truth through by experimentation until the post-modernist comes along and says, “Truth? You’ve got to be kidding me. No such thing because all truth is perspectival.”
Each time a moment of chaos yields new creation, new forms of complexity and unity. But on Good Friday I mention it because it is a painful process. There’s always cross before there’s resurrection. There’s always death of the old before emergence of the new. When I look at the death of Jesus, I see a moment in cultural history, a moment when the old was passing and the new was emerging. When Jesus died upon that cross, the old passed away and the disciples waited for the new to emerge, the body of Christ was on the cross at the moment when Judaism met the Greco-Roman world and they were awaiting the next.
I’ve said it before in this room, exactly seven years ago today in fact. The body of Christ is on the cross again today. Every time the mythic church meets modernism, it begins to shrink and die. Perhaps that’s not a fair thing to say at Calvary Presbyterian, still a relatively thriving church with a new dynamic pastor. And yet seven years ago there were at least fifty percent more people in these pews. When the church meets modernism, it loses the framework that gives it life and begins to die. It’s the way things unfold in an evolving creation and so we await the next. So my question for this text, as we look at the cross on this day is how can we be faithful to the God who drives creation forward? How can we serve what is next?
And the Gospel speaks loud and clear. In fact, it’s the reason the Gospel of Mark was written, the entire Gospel was written to help us understand how to be faithful at the moment of death, at the moment we wait for new creation to emerge. Jesus made it clear to the women when they came Easter morning. There was no victory lap in the Gospel of Mark you understand. He wasn’t even there. He simply sent them a message. Go tell the disciples to meet me in Galilee, meet me on the edge of the sea, right at the boundary of chaos where something new can emerge.
Meet me in Galilee when you’re ready, Spirit will drive you into the wilderness and your spiritual formation will begin.  Meet me in Galilee and we will find ways to re-describe a living to a very different culture. We’ll find a way to describe our faith that is as different from Christianity as Christianity was from Judaism. We will find a way to describe our faith that is as much the same as Christianity as Christianity was to Judaism. Meet me in Galilee and we will serve people on the edges of society, we will open our hearts and welcome them into the unified whole. Meet me in Galilee and you and I, and he, and she, and she, and he will join together. We will show the world an alternative to the fractured, lonely, suffering society with its fake pleasures and hollow dreams. We will be woven together into a new body of Christ, a new whole.
Meet me in Galilee, but be prepared, be prepared for chaos to overwhelm and for something unpredictable to take place. Meet me in Galilee, but be prepared because it’s there I will ask you to take up your cross and follow me.

Evolution happens in all facets of life, but let’s take personal growth for a moment. The shame we hide – that we all hide – keeps us from the creative love we need.

Evolution and Faith VI–Evolution Happens in Stress  (Audio Right Click to Download)

Evolution and Faith VI – Stress Drives Evolution
Luke 19:28-44; 23:44-46
28 After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, 30 saying, Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, Why are you untying it? just say this, The Lord needs it. 32 So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, Why are you untying the colt? 34 They said, The Lord needs it. 35 Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 36 As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. 37 As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen,  38 saying, Blessed is the king  who comes in the name of the Lord!  Peace in heaven,  and glory in the highest heaven!  39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, Teacher, order your disciples to stop. 40 He answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.  Jesus Weeps over Jerusalem  41 As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, 42 saying, If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. 43 Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. 44 They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.
23:44 It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, 45 while the suns light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 46 Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. Having said this, he breathed his last.
This was among the more difficult sermons I’ve written in the six years I’ve been here – page after page this week – just kept trying, kept working, almost there. Difficult because it deals with a fairly deep subject, the shadow or the shame that we carry in our own lives. I think in many ways that’s what this story in Luke is addressing – which is not to say it is addressing only one thing. And I’d grant that it may seem like a stretch to take a story that’s political in nature and suggest it as something to do with what goes on within us, but I think if we focus on it for a bit, you may see what I mean . . . I hope.
When Jesus entered Jerusalem, he was entering a high stakes, unresolvable, no way out conflict. I mean everybody was locked into their positions. The Jewish people were locked into their positions in this story, they hated Romans. Rome was oppressing them, draining them. This is a people who hadn’t had any meaningful self rule for hundreds of years. They were living under the thumb of the Roman empire and this fact undermined their very self-identity as they people of God, chosen to bless all of the world. How could they possibly do that when under the thumb of the Roman empire, an empire who drained their productivity through taxes?  Poverty was rampant.
Locked in to their position and that, as it does when there is so much injustice, created a spirit of revolt and revolution. But each time a revolt rose up in Israel, the Roman empire crushed it – brutally cruched it. There were times in the history of this relationship between Rome and Israel when Rome was crucifying five hundred people a day – five hundred people a day. Jesus was not unusual in that context.
What they wanted then, was the power, the raw power that it would take to turn the tables and overcome the Roman empire. They knew of the “powerful deeds” that Jesus had done in the countryside so as he came into Jerusalem they cried out, “All hail the King, hallelujah Messiah.”
But this king looked at life and relationship much differently than they. If we didn’t know that from the earlier chapters of Luke’s Gospel, we certainly know it when Jesus weeps over the City of Jerusalem, weeps because even now they did not know “the things that make for shalom. Even now after all he’d done and taught they did not understand what it takes to bring about the unity, the shalom God seeks. God had called this people to bring blessing and unity to the world, shalom, and even now they could not understand the nature of the violent cycle they were in. They could not see that the raw power to subjugate Rome would simply perpetuate a cycle of violence, a cycle of power, and could not possibly lead towards the blessing and unity this “people of God” were called to offer to the whole world.
Jesus did not want that cycle to perpetuate; he was looking for a different shift; he was looking for an adaptive change. An adaptive change is one that shifts the way people conceive of their positions or relations to one another. He was looking for an adaptive change that moved outside the confines of and us versus them, Roman versus Jewish identity. Such an adaptive change requires that people break free of their locked position and so rather than gathering the raw power needed to overcome the Roman occupation, Jesus turned his focus to the Jewish leadership and looked for adaptive change by shifting their identity in the presence of God.
Their rituals had turned into a farce, so he walked into the temple and gutted the infrastructure surrounding the sacrificial system. Those rules they were following, the laws and rituals, were intended to provide a process through which they could examine their own lives and develop and grow. The Torah, the law, was intended to move the people towards shalom, but they used it instead as a way to hide from themselves. They used it to identify themselves as God’s people – as the people who are pure and righteous – and the Romans by extension as all that was unrighteous, hideous and evil. Instead of using them to uncover what was breaking them apart and keeping them from shalom, from unity, they used them to hide from the truth and blame Rome for their situation. Were the Romans righteous? Absolutely not, but neither were the people of God and Jesus knew that for adaptive change, a change that would move them to shalom, to occur they must come to terms with that fact.
But worse still, worse than moving them to examine their own lives, Jesus pushed them to re-humanize the Roman people. Jesus simply couldn’t work up the self-righteous outrage that a people locked in their position can do. In chapter 13 someone came and told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He was supposed to be scandalized, outraged, for the righteous, good people of God had been horrifyingly ill treated, God himself had been blasphemed and the Roman governor was responsible. “Stone him,” is what they wanted Jesus to say, but intead he asked them, Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.
“Look within your own heart,” he was saying, “find the horror that pollutes your life, and when you turn your eyes on the Romans you will see them in a different light. Instead of investing your energy in hatred, invest your energy in offering them a blessing for you are called to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth.” That’s what Jesus was getting at. “Crucify Him,” was their response. Now the violence is turned on him. But what’s his crime? He revealed their shame; he showed them just how far they’d wandered from the purposes of God, just how far they were from offering unity and shalom to the world.
Of course they wanted to get rid of him. Their violent anger towards Rome and their violent anger towards Jesus had the same motivation: do anything to hide the rot and pollution that keeps you from the presence of God. Why? Because looking at that is painful. From death to new life, that’s how evolution works. If we are to grow towards shalom, towards unity, then we’ll have to know the pain of a cross experience as our shame is exposed to our eyes. That is the adaptive change that Jesus was looking for and it is exactly what is demanded of us today.
Suppose we were to update the story just a bit. Suppose we were talking about radical Islam and the US. Should we view radical Islamists as human beings who come from a particular time and place with their own set of expectations, identities and wounds, in need of the same love of God as we, or does it serve our needs better to identify them as evil so that we needn’t bother to examine our own lives, the way our nation relates to the rest of the world? We are locked in a cycle of violence in that part of the world; adaptive change is the only way to move towards shalom. Does it raise your ire just a little bit? Does mine.
But adaptive change is how and evolving creation responds to stress and pain. It’s the way the world works; when a no way out stress point develops, when the system can no longer be sustained, that is when evolution happens, and it always requires an adaptive change. It is the way it works in cultural and political evolution, it works that way in spiritual evolution and it works physically as well.
I read a story recently about the way the most rudimentary forms of animal life began on this planet. The oceans were full of bacterial life. At some point bacteria evolved a rudimentary process of photosynthesis. They were able to process light energy into chemical energy and draw upon that to grow and thrive. In fact they did so well that the first ecological crisis on our planet brought the system to a stress point. The byproduct of photosynthesis is oxygen and while that is good for you and me, it’s bad for bacteria. They were literally poisoning themselves. As the atmosphere became more dense with oxygen bacterial forms of life competed for the shrinking resources they needed to survive. But in the end, this was a no way out situation. Either bacteria had to change their identity so to speak, either they had to become a different sort of life form that processed energy differently, or they would not survive.
Over time something surprising began to develop, something novel. Biologists think that as the resources depleted various bacterial colonies in effect attacked other colonies. (I’m not thinking they did this consciously you understand.) In that process some forms of bacteria found a way to combine, and together they made the first animal cells – cells that were able to process oxygen. They gave up their individual identities and made an adaptive change in order to evolve. It’s the way the world works. Jesus had a handle on that when he was talking to the people of Israel; he sought adaptive change.
Now why would I tell you that? Because it’s also how it works among individuals and even more to the point, it is how it works within individuals. Relationships grow and evolve through adaptive change; individuals grow and evolve through adaptive change.
I teach preaching at a seminary and some time ago one of the students preached a sermon on a passage in Judges. I’m not going to tell you where it is. Phyllis Trible, a scholar at Union Seminary in New York, called it a “text of terror” and terrifying it is. It’s the story of a Levite who was traveling towards home. He was traveling with his concubine. He stopped at a city and one of the residents invited him to be a guest of his house. Apparently the men of the city found out that he was there. They came to the door of the house and demanded that the stranger be sent out so they could rape him, use him sexually. The owner of the house, who was honor bound to give hospitality to the Levite said to the men, “Here are my virgin daughter and his concubine; let me bring them out now. Ravish them and do whatever you want to them; but against this man do not do such a vile thing.” When they refused, the Levite through his concubine out the door; she was “raped and abused all through the night.” If it is possible the story gets worse; I’m not even going to tell you the rest of it; that’s enough to make my point.
I ask my students to “preach about what God does; find out where God’s grace is and tell us about that.” The person preaching suggested that the grace in the passage comes as it raises our ire against the perpetrators of such horror and atrocity. Such things continue to happen in our world today and this story gives us the focal point to stand against this horror and say, “No more!” It is certainly true that we should stand against such unspeakable horror in the world, but I wonder if our self-righteous ire will provide the adaptive change necessary to eradicate all forms of sexual violence or whether it masks something within.
It is easy to identify ourselves as righteous and good when we see an abuse perpetrator. He, it’s usually a he, is evil, wrong, bad. But there was a young woman in class who said something quite beautiful. She had served an internship at a local agency for domestic peace. She trained to work with victims of domestic abuse. She said the training was hard, very hard, because she found that the only way to break the cycle of abuse was to re-humanize the perpetrator; it simply doesn’t work, doesn’t improve the situation to identify him as irredeemably bad, an aberrant being to be tossed out, left for nothing.
We’re talking about totally horrifying and unacceptable behavior to be sure. We are talking about a stress point in human relationship, a system that cannot be sustained. It requires and adaptive change, one where the victim no longer identifies herself as worthless, at fault for what happens to her, but one where the perpetrator is drawn out in a safe environment, one with clear boundaries on behavior for absolute sure, where the darkness and shame in his life can come into the light to be healed. Anything thing short of that – even a break up (which is, absolutely granted, sometimes the only thing to do) – runs the risk of starting the cycle all over again with different partners.
Now it gets personal. We sit in judgment at the Roman’s cruel use of power; we recoil, horrified at the spectacle of sexual violence; our self-righteous ire rises within us as we cast our eyes on a woman abused by her husband. It is true that all these behaviors are part of a world gone mad, a world that does not know unity, peace, shalom. Certainly our moral judgment should move us to put systems in place that keep such things from happening, but when our self-righteous ire grows within us, something else is going on, for that’s when we are covering the polluted shadow living within us.
When we identify ourselves as “good” and the other as “bad,” we are not looking through the eyes of the one who said, “Let there be light and there was light.” That’s not how it is in the eyes of God. God is much less interested in who is “good” and who is “bad,” and more interested in seeing each one of us grow and develop. Everyone of us has a role to play in the unified whole that is God’s creative purpose. The only way that’s going to happen is if we ferret out the shadow of shame, the part of our internal life that generate violence, hopelessness, emptiness. The only way it will happen is if we expose it to the light of creation so that it can be destroyed, thus making us whole. Any moment our self-righteous anger rises, any time it has juice, it is a sure sign that “shadow work” is needed – not because we are wrong and that the other person is actually good. No, because it exposes something within us.
It is neither the alleluia we express when we see someone “get there’s,” nor the “crucify him,” we shout to deflect attention from our pain that are the way to unity. No, the way to unity is the way shown by Jesus on his life journey; it is the way that exposes the emptiness of a world separate from the presence of the powerful, creative, evolving love of God. That is what we see on the cross.
The text calls us to unity. In order to be unified within ourselves, we must know that we’re neither good nor are we bad in the eyes of God. We behave badly or behave well and that fact exposes our need for God’s healing love. That’s what the story of Palm Sunday calls us to examine. In the end, the way that Jesus chose leads to the next; it leads to the novel, new life moment of resurrection. That is the hope that drives creation towards its unified beauty.

In the Exodus texts which Matthew’s story of the Temptations alludes to, the people are learning to trust that God will provide their perceived needs. For Jesus, this training exercise is about stepping back and trusting God to give life meaning and purpose by playing our unique role in the story of God’s universe. This may mean that our individual perceived needs may not be met.

Evolution and Faith–Progress of Meaning   (Audio – right click to download)

Our gospel text is another one of those familiar texts. The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 4, the first eleven verses. It’s Matthew’s version of the temptation story. It makes a difference whether it’s in Matthew or in Luke. It makes a difference because gospel author writes for a different reason. When Matthew writes his Gospel, he’s interested in telling us this story to set a standard that disciples will live up to. Not just the disciples who walked along the shores of Galilee but those that walk the streets of San Rafael as well.  This isn’t a story about Jesus the superman. This is intended to be the life of a teacher who people can follow. With that in mind would you listen for a creative word as Spirit brings it to you.
1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 3 The tempter came and said to him, If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. 4 But he answered, It is written, one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. 5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 saying to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you, and On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. 7 Jesus said to him, Again it is written, Do not put the Lord your God to the test.  8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; 9 and he said to him, All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me. 10 Jesus said to him, Away with you, Satan! for it is written, Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him. 11 Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.
Delightful fable, yes? Jesus goes off for forty days and forty nights, (not an accident that it’s forty days and forty nights – like the forty years in the wilderness for the people of Israel). It’s amazing what happens in a wilderness. Wilderness is sometimes thought of as a dusty, hard, dry place. I guess when I think of the Middle East wilderness, that’s what I think of. But I’ve been in other kinds of wildernesses. The week between final exams and graduation from high school my friends Tom, Ted and I, took off for Nova Scotia; we drove all night long up Route One. It was a great deal of fun. Then we parked Ted’s old Cougar and off we went into the wilderness.
We were initially using paths, but then we realized several days later that we were late and needed to get back to the car soon. So we decided to leave the paths and instead use our compass. Believe it or not, we did not get lost. Lost was not the problem. The Hemlock forest was the problem. Dense, scratchy forest; it was all we could do to put one foot in front of the other. We came out of it exhausted, tense, dirty, sweaty, scratched up, scraped up. Some provisions we thought were important get left along the way.
We’d gotten through the wilderness, but it was a formative experience for us. You know when you’re pushed out to your limits, you have to let go of everything that’s not important? That’s the wilderness, that place of formation. Even if it’s not a literal wilderness, it’s still that place where a spiritual quest happens, a place of challenge.
That’s why the story of the people of Israel, moving through the wilderness is told. They become formed as the people of God – in the wilderness. It is why Jesus moves into the wilderness following being called the son of God. The Spirit was seeking to form this “Son of God.” In each case, be it the people of Israel or the story of Jesus, as they enter their formative moments, these wilderness moments, they do so after something has happened to change how the people see the world.
So, in the case of the people of Israel, God had saved them, God had brought them out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. They were no longer slaves; they were free. That is a bigger transition to make than we might think. It’s in the wilderness where these things are worked out, where they are formed into the people of God, where they figure out what to do with the change that has taken place.
Jesus was driven into the wilderness by the Spirit just as he was responding to a clarion call from the heavens, “This is my Son, the Beloved.”  That is to say, Jesus is called to be the one who’s responsible for the rule of God. As in any agricultural society he, as the oldest son, his character, his wisdom, are what determine the texture and the character of the estate, in this case, the rule of God. He moves into the wilderness to be formed.
Some people think about these temptations are about Jesus being tested, as though it is a test you could pass or fail. But it’s not that kind of test. It’s the kind of test that forms someone. There’s no worry about whether or not he’s going to fail it or succeed at it, but rather he has to go through the experience to grow into the person God is calling him to be. That’s the kind of test this was. Jesus’ character needed to be set in place in order to do the work of the Son of God.
Disruption and then growth, that’s the way the evolutionary process works. These fundamental stories in the scriptures, the Exodus in particular, but Jesus’ story too, stories of moving into a new kind of life, are stories about the evolutionary process? Not biological evolution necessarily, (though it is how all evolution works), but in this case cultural evolution, and in Jesus’ case, an evolution of character. There is some disruptions, something that happens that shifts the balance of things the created order, then adjustments have to be made to set things back into an equilibrium. In the biological process, biologists talk about punctuated equilibrium – some startling change takes place in the created order, and then creation goes through an entire wilderness of time where species need to adapt, move, adjust. This dynamic evolution takes place internally for individuals, internally for groups, and externally for individuals and groups. Everything evolves, period.
Which means that the meaning of Scripture stories evolves as well. It means that the Exodus story and the story of Jesus in the wilderness, while pointing to an evolutionary process, describe different moments in the evolutionary story of creation.
Scholars compare these two stories. They recognize there are reflections of the Exodus in this story about Jesus, all the quotes from Deuteronomy are a clue.  They deal with moments when the people of Israel had failed one test or another. It is easy to think that the point of Jesus’ story is that he got it right where the Israelites got it wrong. But let’s not be lulled into that simple interpretation.
There are different lessons being dealt with for Jesus is in a different place consciously that the people in the story of the Exodus. To assume that nothing has changed in human consciousness is to fall into what some have come to call the Flintstone fallacy.  People sometimes assume that the cave men were just like us; they were just cave men and so did not have the same kind of technological advantage we do, but that’s about the extent fo the difference. Really?
Remember the Flintstones and the Jetsons? They are identically characters to us, same level of conscious development. It’s a fallacy. It’s not how it operated. If we look at these two stories as dealing with the same issues, we’ll miss something. Oh, there were some elements that were the same. But there are differences too.
Let’s take the stones turned to bread temptation. This comes from a time in the Exodus story when people were complaining. God had saved them, brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage and as they moved into the wilderness there wasn’t enough food to eat; they started complaining to Moses. “Oh, you just brought us out here to die.” Absolutely no trust in the movement and power of God – even after all God’s done. This story is about learning to trust.
That’s not exactly what Jesus was learning. Jesus was tempted to misuse power. It wasn’t about trusting God to fill his perceived needs. In this story Jesus had the power to turn stones into bread. He could use his own power to fill his own needs. The question was what kind of an impact would that have on the world around him. The question is, will he use his power to serve himself, or will he use it to further the way and purpose of the creative Word of God? Jesus chose the higher consciousness, Jesus stood where he could see what God was about in the created order, he sought to further God’s work, so he said, “No.” No, human beings don’t live by bread alone, they live on the word of God, they live on that word that goes forth and makes beauty out of chaos.
Next the Devil brings Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple and tells him to jump off. “Don’t worry, the angels will save you; it says so in the good book, really.” In response Jesus refers to an incident when Israel was in the wilderness at Meribah. In that situation the Israelites didn’t have water. God’s given them food, God’s rescued them from Egypt, God’s been faithful to them, but they’re scared there’s not enough water, so once again, they complain to Moses: “Take us back to Egypt. We’d rather go back into slavery than die out here of thirst.” Again, they’re learning how to trust, learning whether or not God will give what’s needed, what they perceive as needed.
But this second time around, this raises a question for me, “What would it take for them to trust God? What would it take for them to trust that God was going to take care of them?” Or maybe more to the point, never mind them, let’s ask ourselves, “If God was a wish fulfilling machine, if God could fill all your wishes, what would God have to do to get you to trust that God would care for and love you? I know what it would take for me. It’s pretty neurotic. The way I was brought up, saddled me with a psychological dilemma that some preachers kids deal with. I was in competition with Jesus for my parent’s time and love. He was the overachieving older brother in my life. What would God need to do to convince me that I was loved by God? I’d literally have to start a new religion . . . and it would have to be pretty darn successful too, otherwise my small, neurotic self can’t trust that God’s power is unfolding within me, loving me in the same way as Jesus.
Crazy I know and I hope I’ve grown beyond that, (I know I have to a point, but there are lots of layers for growth don’t you think?) But when we get down to that place of fear, wondering whether or not God is going to take care of us, whether or not the universe can be trusted to fill our perceived needs, what would it take to make you trust God?
That is the question which comes to Jesus. The Devil’s challenging him: find out. Find out whether or not you can trust. But Jesus wasn’t going there. Jesus knew that he would be jumping into the abyss soon enough. He was learning to trust God at the moment when life is forfeit. He wasn’t even looking to God to save his life at that moment. His consciousness was bigger, he took a step up in consciousness, saw the entire sweep of God’s creative project and sought his own place within it. He wasn’t going to jump off to serve his own neurotic need, but he was preparing to jump at a moment that would give life meaning. He would jump in the context of God’s creative project. That was the moment he faced on the cross that day several years later in Jerusalem.
The third temptation is really about idolatry. You know, the “Bow down to me and I’ll give you all the power the world can muster.” It’s more tempting than you might think. What would you decide? The Devil says, “I’ll give you all the power you could possibly need to get the things done that you want to get done. You could right so many wrongs. You’d get your way. I’ll give you everything you need to be able to pull it off. Jesus had an agenda; he actually thought there should be a just society. He thought that poor people should have what they needed in order to survive and thrive. He thought kindness and compassion should be operating in the world, not war and death.
He was offered the power to do that and turned it down, why? The question is this: are you going to buy into the notion that power is the ability to make people do what they do not want to do, or are you going to live by the power of God that moves through death to a new and surprising life.
Idolatry is about power. The Israelites who first lived with these stories as Scripture were a practical lot, which is to say they were human and smart. If your crops weren’t doing well and your neighbor, two tribes over said, “We worship this other God and our crops are doing fine.” It’s going to be really tempting to pray to this new God at that moment, especially since you don’t understand weather patterns, or soil conditions, or whatever else might go into this. It’s like using whatever technological power we have at our disposal to serve our needs and desires. The Christian’s in Matthew’s time had the same issues. There was always that question of whether or not to bow down to Caesar.
Now in the Roman Empire you were pretty much allowed to worship whatever God you wanted just so long as you also worshiped Caesar. In fact, Caesar’s cult, the religion that was wrapped around the Emperor’s worship was also the banking system. So we’re talking about Christians who were facing a life on the outside economically. It would have been like living here without a credit card. They couldn’t participate in the economic structures of the time in order to get ahead if they did not bow down to Caesar. There was a real temptation to go ahead and use those unjust structures to make the world fit into your vision of what’s right and what’s wrong. That’s the temptation here.
Instead, Jesus said, “No, I’m not going to take that kind of power, I’m going to trust in the nature of God’s creative power.” He was trusting in the unfolding of spirit through evolution – cross and resurrection.
This is a difficult temptation because there are things happening right now that should not be in God’s creative order. We’ve talked about that before. How far do we go in using the coercive power at our disposal to construct a just society? It’s a question, I think, of the psychic space from which you act. On the one hand, we can say, “Everything is wrong; it’s awful and I have to fix it.” From that space it is our ego, our power that is being exercised to satisfy our desires – however high-minded they may be. 
But there is another approach, a trusting approach that forms you when you live connected to the source of the creative love that powers creation. In communion with that, we can say, “In this moment, everything is all right, exactly as it should be. There are next steps, but in this moment, I can trust the creative process, trust God for the unfolding of creation.” It is a very different place from which to act.
There’s a spiritual teacher whose name I have sadly forgotten who says that, “Problems did not come about in the world because people sat down to have a meeting to make some problems. Problems come up because people sit down to have a meeting to discuss solutions before they have dealt with their own internal suffering.” Before they have come to know that in the moment everything is all right, we can rest in the power of God to drive creation towards that perfect unity we long for.
It’s hard, but Jesus calls us to this different kind of trust. In this passage we’re asked to become disciple, to follow, rather than take hold of the power that will adjust the world in ways that we judge it ought to be. Everything is all right in this moment. But everything is dynamic and will change, because the power of God is unfolding and making all things new.
The progress of meaning: the stories of Scripture point the way as we grow into trusting God ever more profoundly. We learn to trust as consciousness develops and our understanding of humanity’s place in the Kosmos evolves. We come to know that it’s not about me, it’s about the power of all creation. It’s about the unity that each one of us is part of.
It’s that unity that we serve; in fact it can’t be achieved unless you show up. I love that. God can’t get it done without you. You have a unique roll to play in trusting the powerful creative Spirit to unfold within you. Joy and freedom are ours when live our lives in the creative arms of God.
So in the quiet, let these questions and temptations form you. How much would it take, what would God need to do for you, to make you trust the universe as it unfolds? What’s important to you? What gives your life meaning? Is it the living out of a secure individual life or being part of that larger, gorgeous project we call God’s creation?

The creative power of God is operating in the evolution of all things – Cultural Evolution, Biological Evolution, Spiritual Evolution, Moral Evolution, Economic Evolution, just to name a few. Spirit responds to stress or pain in a system and creates what is new out of the death of the old, transcending and including what went before. This is the same thing as the power of the cross and resurrection. This is the creative love of God. The world is in enormous pain and this requires a conscious response of enormous love. We are awake and aware that we participate in our own evolution and are called to expand the way we act in creative love for the world.

Evolution and Faith V – Ethical Imperative
Matthew 5:1-12; 15:29-31

Introductory Reading: We find ourselves ethically destitute just when, for the first time, we are faced with ultimacy, the irreversible closing down of the Earth’s functioning in its major life systems. Our ethical traditions know how to deal with suicide, homicide, and even genocide; but these traditions collapse entirely when confronted with biocide, the extinction of the vulnerable life systems of the Earth, geoside, the devastation of the earth itself. . . . The human is at a cultural impasse. . . .  Radical new cultural forms are needed.
Our text of scripture comes from two places in the Gospel according to St. Matthew today. First in the fifteenth chapter, beginning in the twenty-ninth verse and then the familiar passage of the beatitudes in the fifth chapter in the very beginning, what we call the Sermon on the Mount. Would you listen as the spirit of God brings a live Word to you.
15:29-31 After Jesus had left that place, [that place being the encounter with the Canaanite woman where he offered blessing and healing to her outside the place of Israel]. After he left that place, Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee and he went onto a mountain where he sat down. Great crowds came to him and they brought they lame, maimed, lined, mute, many others. They put them at Jesus’ feet and he cured them so that they crowds were amazed when they saw the mute speaking and the maimed whole and the lame walking, the blind seeing and they praised the God of Israel.
5:1-12 When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up upon the mountain and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak and he taught them, saying blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted, blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy, blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God, blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice, be glad, for your reward is great in the heavens for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who went before you.
The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God lives forever.
We have been talking about evolutionary theory and its interface with Christian faith. When you say the word “evolution,” I suspect most people in our culture start to think, “Yeah I know what that means, we’re descended from apes.” If they’re slightly more educated, maybe what they think is that we have a common ancestor with the apes, and maybe some people, especially if they’re well traveled, know something about the birds on the Galapagos Islands and evolution. Others who read and study it recognize that the theory is about the evolution of all life. It’s just how it works.
You see, evolution moves in steps. Life grows and develops in steps. It responds to stress and it responds to pain. The response transcends the current system. “Lower,” or let’s call them “less-evolved” so as not to be judgmental, forms of life are transcended, become more complex. The complexity is surprising, can’t really be predicted – like the property of flow that came from the union of 2 Hydrogen and 1 Oxygen atom. So, single-celled organisms left to their own devices don’t survive as well as a group of single-cells in cooperatives. Slime mold as we’ve been saying over these last weeks, is an example of how a single-celled organism has transcended itself by entering into a cooperative arrangement, but it is also included. Similar to a book made of paragraphs, which are made of words, which are made of letters. 
And as that cooperation continues, as evolution proceeds, what we find is that some of those single cells, (or at least their progeny) take on a specialized role, maybe they even get together in groups and perform specialized functions, like eyes for eyesight. Think about it, it’s really quite remarkable; responding to stress and pain, to some problem confronting creation, something new emerges from what Disney called the “circle of life,” the movement from death into new life and that very process, from the death to what’s new, not to just a repeat of what’s old, is the very same thing as the movement from cross to resurrection. When Jesus died on the cross, he was risen, not as the same old human being, but as a new humanity, more evolved.
I’ll say more about that on Easter, but I don’t take that to be just a metaphor. I take that to be something very real. I believe that human beings can grow and evolve and do in fact make steps forward. We continue to evolve, internally, culturally, economically, physically and Jesus was a part of that process.
So, why does any of this matter? It matters because the world is in outrageous pain. We all know it. The world is in outrageous pain and longs for creation’s evolutionary response. Spirit is calling to us to be part of that response. That’s what Jesus was about. He was all about that in our first passage in Matthew as he healed the lame,  maimed blind and the mute; everybody came to him. But Jesus was about more than healing the body because evolution is about more than growth in the body, it is evolving all of life.
Consider where homo sapiens came from. Species we evolved from had just a reptilian brain, the brain that responds to fear, that raw sense of protecting life and grabbing hold of what will sustain life. But we are also ancestors of creatures that developed a mammalian brain, able to process emotion. But we developed further, we eventually develop that neo-cortex, that frontal lobe that makes us able to have a sense of self-consciousness.
So, physical evolutions, yes, but it’s more than the physical brain that is evolving. For this moves us into the evolution of consciousness. Jean Gebser, a German researcher, mapped out the way consciousness evolved from archaic to magic, to mythic, to mental and into an integral frame. Researchers have been tracking the way human consciousness has in fact evolved. Fowler, a researcher at Harvard, looked at the way our faiths, our beliefs, evolved from magic into mythic, into a mental state, into a more coherent integral state. Researchers are mapping the evolution of our cultural values. Clare Graves, Beck and Cowan have plotted the way culture evolves. They’ve mapped how tribal consciousness and values evolve into a mythical consciousness that supports nations, and how that evolves into modern values that provide the engine for industrial growth. We are able to recognize that human beings evolve. Our culture evolves, our internal lives evolve, our brains have evolved, even the structures that hold us together evolve. Once upon a time all we did was go out, hunt and gather, poke around, until finally we figured out that if we plowed and stayed put we would be able to grow crops more efficiently. That set the stage for invention through which industries came and now the information age.
My point here is this: human beings evolve and when we evolve, we evolve internally and externally and we do that both as individuals and as a groups of people, and each of these four areas of development effect the others. They evolve together. In fact we get in trouble when evolution gets out of balance – consider a tribal warrior with modern, (read nuclear), weapons.
What we know is that Spirit, (however you might wish to define it), drives us forward. Christians describe that work of Spirit as we see it through the lens of the Christ. The Christ nudges us forward towards that moment of complexity, of unity, of shalom. Christ inspires us to become whole step by step each step responding to the pain, the dysfunction of the level of development before it. 
The world is in outrageous pain. And what shall be our response? If the Spirit of God who we come to know in Scripture is indeed unfolding within us, what shall be our response to this outrageous pain other? It can be none other than outrageous love. But let’s be clear, this is not a “wrap it up and hold it close” kind of love. No, this is a productive, creative kind of love, the kind of love that seeks to put value into the creation. The creative Spirit of God is unfolding within us right now; that love is unfolding within us right now; the world is in outrageous pain and needs our response of love to evolve.
A new step is right on the horizon, because evolution responds to enormous pain and those conditions have been met. But at this critical moment in development, consider what’s happened to our internal understanding of the presence of Spirit. If it is true that we develop spiritually and religiously, what has happened since the advent of modernism? Modernism has done a good job at developing technologies, which allow us to become more and more productive, but it has deconstructed any notion about an active presence of God in our lives. Our “technological line of development” has grown enormously while our “spiritual line of development” has atrophied. That is a problem because it is the spiritual and religious line of development that gives life its purpose, that give us the ground of being on which we walk. Without the active presence of God in our lives, without any sense of purpose, we’ve placed our technological inventiveness at the service of our lusts and desires. In so doing we have brought the world to the brink of ecological destruction.
That’s what happens when that spiritual line of development atrophies. But even more worrisome is the post-modern deconstruction of truth. “All truth is perspectival,” the post-modernist sentiment says. And with that statement, without the moral foundation it provides, we have lost the ability to hold anyone accountable for their behavior. Of course those in power can hold others accountable, but the truly disturbing thing is this: if there is no truth, if there are only competing perspectives about what is true, if that’s all that’s possible, then whose “perspective on truth” wins? Answer: the one with the biggest gun. That is a recipe for disaster. “The one-two punch of modernism and post-modernism,” Ken Wilber calls it. It creates outrageous pain, pain that demands an immediate response of outrageous love.
The marks are right there. Jesus called his disciples to respond to the outrageous pain of his time. He didn’t know the mechanism of evolution, but he understood how to participate in Spirit’s creative activity. From the moment the Spirit descended upon him at his baptism, the Spirit was moving his future forward. From the time Spirit drove him into the wilderness to be tested and formed, to the moment he gave his life to establish shalom, Spirit was unfolding in his life. Yes, he healed people on the mountainside that day, but he went further and imagined what an evolved world would look like. He could see a human community unified in the presence of God.
Scholars argue about whether or not the beatitudes are intended to set forth a realistic vision of human community. Was Jesus just pointing the way, or was he idealistic enough to want that community to exist. I’m clear on that one; he meant it. Blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure in heart, blessed are the peacemakers. He was imagining a world unified in the presence of God, a world loved, that is driven by the power of the Spirit of God, a world unfolding within us. It is real; it outlines what’s next. It calls us to live and to love one step larger than we live right now.
So imagine living in that world, in a world where you attend to your own life, to the evolution of your own Spirit, attend to the evolution of the culture around you. Can we finally engage in the marketplace of ideas as though it matters what we think, what is true and what is false? Can we take care of our bodies in a way that makes us more effective? Can we go to work on the structures of this world such that they support unity? Spirit is calling. We don’t know what the next will be; it will surely surprise us. But it is clear that what will be will emerge because the love of God is on the move. The winds of Spirit are blowing. The days of a deconstructed faith are done. It’s time for you and for me to reconstruct our faith because it matters. People are waiting.
People wonder aloud to me about the success of evangelical churches. How can seriously educated people – doctors, lawyers, professors – how can they remain in a faith community that talks about God as though He exists as a being who can and does alter the laws of nature at will to accomplish His will. How can they do that?
You know that I don’t look at the world that way. But I get it. I get why people – educated people in tremendous numbers stay in such communities and seek to believe those myths. They look at the modernist and the postmodernist deconstruction of faith and they see the vast spiritual wasteland left in its wake and they say, “That’s not for me. I’m staying right here.” Can we blame them?
What is needed is a reconstruction of our faith and that is happening. Spirit is moving. When we see so many identifying themselves as “spiritual but not religious” we know Spirit is on the move. When I hear of evangelical pastors spending time in meditation at Spirit Rock I know Spirit is on the move. Do you feel it coming? Could it be that we are reaching that tipping point, that moment when some new thing emerges out of the outrageous pain in our world? Can you love one step larger?
That’s what Jesus is about in the Gospel of Matthew, from chapter one, right to the end when he tells all disciples, everyone awake to God’s power to create what is new and beautiful, tells all of them to go out and make disciples of all nations. The Spirit of God is calling you, the outrageous pain of the world is demanding that you love one step larger – now.
Think you can’t do anything? Think you can’t have much impact? Paul Tillich, a theologian of the last century, was fond of pointing out that when we talk about the great era of the Renaissance, that moment in human history when ideas grew up and carried humanity out of the darkest of ages, when we talk about that era in human history we do well to remember that only about one thousand people were involved. One thousand people educated enough and wealthy enough to participate in the Renaissance. One thousand human minds.
Think you can’t do anything? With the Spirit of God unfolding creation within and around you, you have power to change this world. The outrageous pain requires outrageous love. Will you love one step larger?

Evolution and Faith V–Ethical Imperative (Audio – right click to download)

Evolution and Faith IV – Why Care About Other People?

Evolution and Faith IV – We Are in This Together

Luke 6:12-16

The text of scripture for this morning’s sermon is the Gospel of Luke, the whole thing. I’m not going to read the whole thing, instead I’m going to read just a few verses in Chapter Six about Jesus calling the disciples. During the sermon I’ll cover the scope or plot, not only of the Gospel of Luke, but of it’s sequel, the (so called) Acts of the Apostles. Those two books cover one third of all the New Testament writings. So, would you listen for a Word from the Spirit of God as it comes to you from within this reading.

During those days, (that is to say those days when Jesus was wandering through the countryside, healing people and teaching), during those days he went out to the mountain to pray and he spent the night in prayer oriented towards God. When the day came he called his disciples and chose twelve of them whom he named apostles, (that is people who are sent). Simon whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew, and James and John and Phillip and Bartholomew and Matthew and Thomas and James the son of Alphaeus and Simon who was called the Zealot and Judas son of James and Judas Iscariot who became a traitor.

I feel pretty fortunate to live in Marin County. I think most of you do too. It’s rare, rare indeed that I meet somebody who lives here who is just, oh so sorry, that they live here and wishes they could move somewhere else – you know, back to Iowa maybe? Admittedly, New Jersey is a draw. But nevertheless, I just don’t meet people who long to leave this place. It’s gorgeous. The weather’s great, the economy is reasonably reasonably solid, there’s a lot of opportunity here. In fact one of the opportunities we have, one that Barbara and I have taken up in the last year, is to attend the Marin Speaker’s Series.

It’s not everywhere that you have remarkable, nationally known and influential speakers coming to town and sharing views and giving an opportunity to ask questions. Last month, Jeb Bush was here. I didn’t expect to like Jeb Bush. Fortunately, he chose the only two topics on which he and I can find some agreement and so I was able to enjoy what he had to say. He’s had some success in education reform and believes it is a key to closing what has come to be called “the mobility gap.”

On Thursday Zanny Minton-Beddoes, the economics editor for the Economist magazine came to town. After giving her speech, a speech that covered the financial picture of the entire globe – no small thing – she was asked a question that stunned me. I just couldn’t believe it. She’d been talking for an hour about the economic conditions all over the world. She’d been talking about what’s happening in China. Right now they have five young people for every one adult, but twenty years from now they are going to have two young people for every one elder adult. What will that do to an economy to lose that many jobs? She, like Jeb Bush, talked about the mobility gap between rich and poor. If you are rich, then your children are nearly certain to remain wealthy, but if you are poor they are nearly certain to remain poor. The American dream is bankrupt.

One of the reasons for that is that our schools are funded by property taxes, so it figures then that locations where the property is highly valued, there is money for education. Places where that’s not the case, well, they’re out of luck. In thirty years the gap between the test scores of  rich kids and poor kids has increased by forty percent – forty percent in thirty years.

She talked about these various conditions all over the world. She covered Europe and Asia,  our country, South America and so forth. Then it came for question time. I think it was the first question, some of you may have been there. “We are living in Marin County where unemployment is low, housing prices are strong; we live in the bubble you talked about. Why shouldn’t we just enjoy it and not worry about the other people in the world?” Really? There it was, the worst of Marin stereotypes on display.

I’m hoping that I can give the questioner credit. Maybe the questioner was trying to throw a slow pitch over home plate and just wanted her to engage the question. But even then the question would have to come with an awareness that some people asked it sincerely. It would come with an awareness of some deep spiritual disease that exists in our culture. I say a spiritual disease because it bespeaks an emptiness on the inside that can’t be filled.

Our speaker was taken aback. She stumbled for the first time in her entire talk, and then came back a little. She talked about how all of us are interconnected; that’s why we should care. The fact that the Chinese economy may get into serious trouble over the next three decades is a serious problem for us as well because it’s the Chinese economy that puts the floor underneath the bond market. If that floor isn’t there economies all over the world collapse. She spoke about why it matters that there’s a gap between rich and poor mobility.

She pointed to the fact that in this country, we too have the same problem China has – not enough young people to take care of, or pay for retirees – not enough money for health care.  If there’s really no opportunity our economy will not sustain us in the future. We can’t just waste young people. We don’t have enough of them. We’ve got to educate them to make things happen. She talked about our interconnectedness.

If she know she could have brought it even a bit closer to home. You know, that smart train it has taken so long to approve? The biggest reason for building it is to provide transportation for people to work here and care for this aging population when they can’t afford to live here. They’re going to have to be coming by train from the north to take care of us and be with us. Interconnected, that was the reason to care for others – enlightened self-interest.

But I looked around the audience, (and she made a comment about this too), and I saw that a lot of the audience were retired. I was one of the youngest people in the room and I’m 58. They were older. If that horrifying question came from one of the older people in the room, that enlightened self-interest,  we’re all interconnected, won’t be an adequate answer because it is looking twenty years down the line. What difference would it make for such an individual, one who has this spiritual disease, one who is focused only on their own pleasure and wonders why anyone should care about others?

The remark comes from a particularly perverted and self-centered view of evolution I’d say. “This is a dog eat dog world, right? We pay attention to ourselves.” That’s the worst of Darwinism, the worst of evolution. Survival of the fittest, I think it’s called. So interconnectedness is not much of an answer to the person who just wants to enjoy the bubble and forget about it.

So what do we say? We’ve been talking these last few weeks about the interface between evolutionary theory and faith. The central claim of these sermons is that the evolutionary process, that is the way evolution operates is described beautifully by the cross and resurrection. What’s more than a little interesting to me is that evolutionary meta-theorists and the scriptures that undergird the Christian conversation about God, come up with very similar answers to that horrifying question. It has to do with directionality. It has to do with the direction of creation, where it’s moving; it is moving towards unity – not uniformity, but unity.  It’s in the nature of things.

It’s what Jesus’ concern was in the Gospel of Luke. Luke is all about unity. The antagonists in Luke’s story are[1] the Pharisees, and the Jewish hierarchy. This is a character in a story that plays a particular role and the role they play is that of a group at an ethnocentric level of development. They are focused on themselves, their own nation, their own people, and don’t care a great deal for the broader community. Sound a little like that questioner? Jesus is very concerned that the nation of Israel has not lived into it’s promise, has not lived into its covenant to become a blessing to all the peoples of the earth.

In the story, Jesus chooses twelve because he has every intention of starting a new reign, a new kingdom if you will, a new kingdom of God.[2] This reign that comes from God has a character – unity. It shows up in the very first sermon Jesus preached in the Gospel of Luke. He stood in the synagogue in Nazareth and read portions of Isaiah – he then talked about Zarephath, the widow Elijah helped; then he referred to Naaman, the Syrian general Elisha had cured of leprosy. He was referring to the only two Gentiles God’s power had healed in the entirety of the Hebrew scriptures. Worse still, when he read Isaiah he left out the part where Isaiah declares judgment against the Gentile nations. Jesus is saying God cares for all people, not just us. He’s pointing towards unity, he’s worldcentric is you will, not ethnocentric, not only caring for his tribe.

The Jesus of Luke seems to have a particular concern or sensitivity for the feminine. That doesn’t mean that the author of Luke wasn’t buried in a patriarchal culture. He was and feminist Bible scholars have appropriately pointed that out. But nevertheless, as compared to the other Gospel authors, the concerns of the women are raised – again, seeking unity.

Further, Luke is the one who told the story of the Good Samaritan, where a Samaritan cast in the role of generosity; the Samaritan is the one who understood what it meant to be a neighbor, to bring unity to the world. Luke also had deep concern for the poor – more than any other Gospel. It started in the Magnificat, that wonderful song Mary sang as she imagined what wonder it was to carry the Messiah in her womb. She sang knowing this child would bring hope to the poor, would reverse the power structure so that the poor might be lifted up – so that the mobility gap might be narrowed so to speak. And it’s Luke who cares about anyone who’s lost. He showed that care in the stories of the lost son, the prodigal son we sometimes call him, the lost sheep, the lost coin.

That’s always the way it is in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus is moving towards creating the reign of God,  a new nation, a new land of promise, by bringing unity into the world, by drawing people together instead of splitting people apart. As he marched inexorably towards Jerusalem, he gathered more and more people into the project and the Spirit of God drove it forward. Each time Jesus prayed, some new move would carry this good news forward, the nation would grow, the promise would grow. It moved from Nazareth to Jerusalem in the Gospel of Luke. Then, right when you think something like the cross might stop it in its tracks, a new life emerges from the grave. Not the same kind of life – that is key for in evolution what emerges is new and novel – a surprise from the creative power of God. That new life emerged from the grave and moved then in the Acts of the Apostles from Jerusalem to the capital of the known world, Rome.

In that “sequel” Luke continues to be all about unity. Each time something got in the way of moving the promise of God from moving forward the Spirit of God, that which drives evolution forward, moved through the obstacle and the movement continued on. In Acts you may remember that the biggest issue, (it was Paul’s issue as we learned from Herman Waetjen’s class these last weeks), was whether one needed to be a Jew first before being included in this new promise of God’s reign. Peter faced it in a dream and knew that the Holy Spirit was sending him to baptize Cornelius, a Roman. He spoke clearly about it at what’s called “the council at Jerusalem,” a meeting of the leaders of this new Jewish sect, and so it was decided that Jews and Gentiles would live side by side in this new reign of God. Unity is the promise of the future in Luke and Acts; that’s the beginning of the answer Jesus would give when asked, “Why should we care for others?” Because creation is moving towards unity. It is God’s direction.

What’s interesting is that evolutionary theorists would say the same thing. Elizabeth Sartouris made this chart, but many other theorists have come to see something similar.

The chart on the next page talks about the way evolution operates. It charts the history of evolution. As creation takes another step forward on its evolutionary path, it moves from unity to individuation. Individuation leads to tension or conflict which through the process of negotiation and resolution comes back to unity. It’s the way of things in an evolutionary world and it works for bacterium, for ants, for mammals. It operates in us.

In fact it operates in us in many ways. This tension between the individual and the cooperative element, bringing us towards unity. Consider what happens to us internally when we engage the presence of God in prayer. We move back and forth between a sense of our own self, growing in the presence of God and the sense that the total number of true selves is one. When we work on our bodies, we recognize that our legs must be strong enough, our bodies must be healthy in order for our minds to work well. That’s unity among the individual cells of our bodies. Human society, the way our economy works is a balance between the individual striving of creative souls and the unity that must evolve for those economic systems to survive. It’s the nature of things. As we evolve our view of the world, we find that the circle that defines who we care for expands – expands from ethnocentric to worldcentric to kosmocentric. One time it was just the family you cared about, then the tribe, then the nation and now we see the worldview growing that cares for the whole world as a unified system. It is how creation works. We’re young yet as a species, we don’t have the unity thing figured out as well as the ants yet, but it is moving in that direction.

We’re just coming to a place where we are aware of our own evolution, where we are aware of the direction that creation is moving, a direction intuited by the ancients and experimentally observed by the modernist. And so it is that the Gospel of Luke and evolutionary meta-theorists point the same direction. Which brings us now back to the question of why we should care for others.

What I say is this: you can say you’re enjoying life, you may even think you’re enjoying it, but anytime you find yourself in silence, the emptiness will scream at you. To live without purpose, to live without direction and value, is to live so far outside creation, that in the silence the emptiness of your life will erupt into a blood curdling scream. Why do you think our life has become one of constant noise and distraction, a life of entertainment and addiction. The answer to why we should care about the other is that we cannot actually live life any other way. “Get a life,” is what I’d say.

We are fortunate; the universe has unfolded in a way that places us here in Marin County in 2013. Enjoying it is part of the deal, but integral to enjoying it is recognizing that we have something to offer the world. Integral to enjoying is taking up the call and responsibility inherent in the beauty we enjoy everyday. For when we engage life in that way, it is not emptiness that screams in the silence, it is the melodies and harmonies, the discords and the resolutions that lift us into life’s presence.

When we open our hearts, when we recognize that we are not alone, that we are an essential face of the unity of creation, the we know what life is and we live from our connection in love with the presence of God.

That’s why we care for other people. Would you want it any other way? Spirit can’t get the job done without you. That’s been the message all the way through. That’s the message of unity. Unity requires individuals that enjoy the life they have and enjoyment means applying all of who we are to the creative movement of God’s creation.

It can’t be done without you and would you want it any other way?

In the Exodus texts which Matthew’s story of the Temptations alludes to, the people are learning to trust that God will provide their perceived needs. For Jesus, this training exercise is about stepping back and trusting God to give life meaning and purpose by playing our unique role in the story of God’s universe. This may mean that our individual perceived needs may not be met.

Evolution and Faith III – Progress of Meaning   (Audio – right click to download)

Matthew 4:1-11

Our gospel text is another one of those familiar texts. The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 4, the first eleven verses. It’s Matthew’s version of the temptation story. It makes a difference whether it’s in Matthew or in Luke. It makes a difference because gospel author writes for a different reason. When Matthew writes his Gospel, he’s interested in telling us this story to set a standard that disciples will live up to. Not just the disciples who walked along the shores of Galilee but those that walk the streets of San Rafael as well.  This isn’t a story about Jesus the superman. This is intended to be the life of a teacher who people can follow. With that in mind would you listen for a creative word as Spirit brings it to you.

1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 3 The tempter came and said to him, If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. 4 But he answered, It is written, one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. 5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 saying to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you, and On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. 7 Jesus said to him, Again it is written, Do not put the Lord your God to the test.  8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; 9 and he said to him, All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me. 10 Jesus said to him, Away with you, Satan! for it is written, Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him. 11 Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

Delightful fable, yes? Jesus goes off for forty days and forty nights, (not an accident that it’s forty days and forty nights – like the forty years in the wilderness for the people of Israel). It’s amazing what happens in a wilderness. Wilderness is sometimes thought of as a dusty, hard, dry place. I guess when I think of the Middle East wilderness, that’s what I think of. But I’ve been in other kinds of wildernesses. The week between final exams and graduation from high school my friends Tom, Ted and I, took off for Nova Scotia; we drove all night long up Route One. It was a great deal of fun. Then we parked Ted’s old Cougar and off we went into the wilderness.

We were initially using paths, but then we realized several days later that we were late and needed to get back to the car soon. So we decided to leave the paths and instead use our compass. Believe it or not, we did not get lost. Lost was not the problem. The Hemlock forest was the problem. Dense, scratchy forest; it was all we could do to put one foot in front of the other. We came out of it exhausted, tense, dirty, sweaty, scratched up, scraped up. Some provisions we thought were important get left along the way.

We’d gotten through the wilderness, but it was a formative experience for us. You know when you’re pushed out to your limits, you have to let go of everything that’s not important? That’s the wilderness, that place of formation. Even if it’s not a literal wilderness, it’s still that place where a spiritual quest happens, a place of challenge.

That’s why the story of the people of Israel, moving through the wilderness is told. They become formed as the people of God – in the wilderness. It is why Jesus moves into the wilderness following being called the son of God. The Spirit was seeking to form this “Son of God.” In each case, be it the people of Israel or the story of Jesus, as they enter their formative moments, these wilderness moments, they do so after something has happened to change how the people see the world.

So, in the case of the people of Israel, God had saved them, God had brought them out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. They were no longer slaves; they were free. That is a bigger transition to make than we might think. It’s in the wilderness where these things are worked out, where they are formed into the people of God, where they figure out what to do with the change that has taken place.

Jesus was driven into the wilderness by the Spirit just as he was responding to a clarion call from the heavens, “This is my Son, the Beloved.”  That is to say, Jesus is called to be the one who’s responsible for the rule of God. As in any agricultural society he, as the oldest son, his character, his wisdom, are what determine the texture and the character of the estate, in this case, the rule of God. He moves into the wilderness to be formed.

Some people think about these temptations are about Jesus being tested, as though it is a test you could pass or fail. But it’s not that kind of test. It’s the kind of test that forms someone. There’s no worry about whether or not he’s going to fail it or succeed at it, but rather he has to go through the experience to grow into the person God is calling him to be. That’s the kind of test this was. Jesus’ character needed to be set in place in order to do the work of the Son of God.

Disruption and then growth, that’s the way the evolutionary process works. These fundamental stories in the scriptures, the Exodus in particular, but Jesus’ story too, stories of moving into a new kind of life, are stories about the evolutionary process? Not biological evolution necessarily, (though it is how all evolution works), but in this case cultural evolution, and in Jesus’ case, an evolution of character. There is some disruptions, something that happens that shifts the balance of things the created order, then adjustments have to be made to set things back into an equilibrium. In the biological process, biologists talk about punctuated equilibrium – some startling change takes place in the created order, and then creation goes through an entire wilderness of time where species need to adapt, move, adjust. This dynamic evolution takes place internally for individuals, internally for groups, and externally for individuals and groups. Everything evolves, period.

Which means that the meaning of Scripture stories evolves as well. It means that the Exodus story and the story of Jesus in the wilderness, while pointing to an evolutionary process, describe different moments in the evolutionary story of creation.

Scholars compare these two stories. They recognize there are reflections of the Exodus in this story about Jesus, all the quotes from Deuteronomy are a clue.  They deal with moments when the people of Israel had failed one test or another. It is easy to think that the point of Jesus’ story is that he got it right where the Israelites got it wrong. But let’s not be lulled into that simple interpretation.

There are different lessons being dealt with for Jesus is in a different place consciously that the people in the story of the Exodus. To assume that nothing has changed in human consciousness is to fall into what some have come to call the Flintstone fallacy.  People sometimes assume that the cave men were just like us; they were just cave men and so did not have the same kind of technological advantage we do, but that’s about the extent fo the difference. Really?

Remember the Flintstones and the Jetsons? They are identically characters to us, same level of conscious development. It’s a fallacy. It’s not how it operated. If we look at these two stories as dealing with the same issues, we’ll miss something. Oh, there were some elements that were the same. But there are differences too.

Let’s take the stones turned to bread temptation. This comes from a time in the Exodus story when people were complaining. God had saved them, brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage and as they moved into the wilderness there wasn’t enough food to eat; they started complaining to Moses. “Oh, you just brought us out here to die.” Absolutely no trust in the movement and power of God – even after all God’s done. This story is about learning to trust.

That’s not exactly what Jesus was learning. Jesus was tempted to misuse power. It wasn’t about trusting God to fill his perceived needs. In this story Jesus had the power to turn stones into bread. He could use his own power to fill his own needs. The question was what kind of an impact would that have on the world around him. The question is, will he use his power to serve himself, or will he use it to further the way and purpose of the creative Word of God? Jesus chose the higher consciousness, Jesus stood where he could see what God was about in the created order, he sought to further God’s work, so he said, “No.” No, human beings don’t live by bread alone, they live on the word of God, they live on that word that goes forth and makes beauty out of chaos.

Next the Devil brings Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple and tells him to jump off. “Don’t worry, the angels will save you; it says so in the good book, really.” In response Jesus refers to an incident when Israel was in the wilderness at Meribah. In that situation the Israelites didn’t have water. God’s given them food, God’s rescued them from Egypt, God’s been faithful to them, but they’re scared there’s not enough water, so once again, they complain to Moses: “Take us back to Egypt. We’d rather go back into slavery than die out here of thirst.” Again, they’re learning how to trust, learning whether or not God will give what’s needed, what they perceive as needed.

But this second time around, this raises a question for me, “What would it take for them to trust God? What would it take for them to trust that God was going to take care of them?” Or maybe more to the point, never mind them, let’s ask ourselves, “If God was a wish fulfilling machine, if God could fill all your wishes, what would God have to do to get you to trust that God would care for and love you? I know what it would take for me. It’s pretty neurotic. The way I was brought up, saddled me with a psychological dilemma that some preachers kids deal with. I was in competition with Jesus for my parent’s time and love. He was the overachieving older brother in my life. What would God need to do to convince me that I was loved by God? I’d literally have to start a new religion . . . and it would have to be pretty darn successful too, otherwise my small, neurotic self can’t trust that God’s power is unfolding within me, loving me in the same way as Jesus.

Crazy I know and I hope I’ve grown beyond that, (I know I have to a point, but there are lots of layers for growth don’t you think?) But when we get down to that place of fear, wondering whether or not God is going to take care of us, whether or not the universe can be trusted to fill our perceived needs, what would it take to make you trust God?

That is the question which comes to Jesus. The Devil’s challenging him: find out. Find out whether or not you can trust. But Jesus wasn’t going there. Jesus knew that he would be jumping into the abyss soon enough. He was learning to trust God at the moment when life is forfeit. He wasn’t even looking to God to save his life at that moment. His consciousness was bigger, he took a step up in consciousness, saw the entire sweep of God’s creative project and sought his own place within it. He wasn’t going to jump off to serve his own neurotic need, but he was preparing to jump at a moment that would give life meaning. He would jump in the context of God’s creative project. That was the moment he faced on the cross that day several years later in Jerusalem.

The third temptation is really about idolatry. You know, the “Bow down to me and I’ll give you all the power the world can muster.” It’s more tempting than you might think. What would you decide? The Devil says, “I’ll give you all the power you could possibly need to get the things done that you want to get done. You could right so many wrongs. You’d get your way. I’ll give you everything you need to be able to pull it off. Jesus had an agenda; he actually thought there should be a just society. He thought that poor people should have what they needed in order to survive and thrive. He thought kindness and compassion should be operating in the world, not war and death.

He was offered the power to do that and turned it down, why? The question is this: are you going to buy into the notion that power is the ability to make people do what they do not want to do, or are you going to live by the power of God that moves through death to a new and surprising life.

Idolatry is about power. The Israelites who first lived with these stories as Scripture were a practical lot, which is to say they were human and smart. If your crops weren’t doing well and your neighbor, two tribes over said, “We worship this other God and our crops are doing fine.” It’s going to be really tempting to pray to this new God at that moment, especially since you don’t understand weather patterns, or soil conditions, or whatever else might go into this. It’s like using whatever technological power we have at our disposal to serve our needs and desires. The Christian’s in Matthew’s time had the same issues. There was always that question of whether or not to bow down to Caesar.

Now in the Roman Empire you were pretty much allowed to worship whatever God you wanted just so long as you also worshiped Caesar. In fact, Caesar’s cult, the religion that was wrapped around the Emperor’s worship was also the banking system. So we’re talking about Christians who were facing a life on the outside economically. It would have been like living here without a credit card. They couldn’t participate in the economic structures of the time in order to get ahead if they did not bow down to Caesar. There was a real temptation to go ahead and use those unjust structures to make the world fit into your vision of what’s right and what’s wrong. That’s the temptation here.

Instead, Jesus said, “No, I’m not going to take that kind of power, I’m going to trust in the nature of God’s creative power.” He was trusting in the unfolding of spirit through evolution – cross and resurrection.

This is a difficult temptation because there are things happening right now that should not be in God’s creative order. We’ve talked about that before. How far do we go in using the coercive power at our disposal to construct a just society? It’s a question, I think, of the psychic space from which you act. On the one hand, we can say, “Everything is wrong; it’s awful and I have to fix it.” From that space it is our ego, our power that is being exercised to satisfy our desires – however high-minded they may be. 

But there is another approach, a trusting approach that forms you when you live connected to the source of the creative love that powers creation. In communion with that, we can say, “In this moment, everything is all right, exactly as it should be. There are next steps, but in this moment, I can trust the creative process, trust God for the unfolding of creation.” It is a very different place from which to act.

There’s a spiritual teacher whose name I have sadly forgotten who says that, “Problems did not come about in the world because people sat down to have a meeting to make some problems. Problems come up because people sit down to have a meeting to discuss solutions before they have dealt with their own internal suffering.” Before they have come to know that in the moment everything is all right, we can rest in the power of God to drive creation towards that perfect unity we long for.

It’s hard, but Jesus calls us to this different kind of trust. In this passage we’re asked to become disciple, to follow, rather than take hold of the power that will adjust the world in ways that we judge it ought to be. Everything is all right in this moment. But everything is dynamic and will change, because the power of God is unfolding and making all things new.

The progress of meaning: the stories of Scripture point the way as we grow into trusting God ever more profoundly. We learn to trust as consciousness develops and our understanding of humanity’s place in the Kosmos evolves. We come to know that it’s not about me, it’s about the power of all creation. It’s about the unity that each one of us is part of.

It’s that unity that we serve; in fact it can’t be achieved unless you show up. I love that. God can’t get it done without you. You have a unique roll to play in trusting the powerful creative Spirit to unfold within you. Joy and freedom are ours when live our lives in the creative arms of God.

So in the quiet, let these questions and temptations form you. How much would it take, what would God need to do for you, to make you trust the universe as it unfolds? What’s important to you? What gives your life meaning? Is it the living out of a secure individual life or being part of that larger, gorgeous project we call God’s creation?

Abstract

Building on the first sermon of the series, which claimed that the core of Christian faith – cross and resurrection – is descriptive of the evolutionary process, this sermon suggests how that might impact our theological language. It puts traditional understandings of the Doctrine of Salvation, the Doctrine of Sanctification and Eschatology side by side with the workings of an “evolutionary Christianity.”

A series disclaimer of sorts: There is a lot to be said for the traditional-mythic understanding of the faith. If that theological framework is working for you, that is OK with me. That said, it doesn’t work for a great many people in our culture; I’m among them, and that is why I am exploring other ways to describe our faith. I’m exploring language that is intelligible in our modern or post-modern context. I’m glad to dialogue with anyone about it, but if you find that I’m just annoying you, may I suggest you stop reading? I’m not writing to tick anyone off.

Evolution and Faith – Wake Up, Grow Up, Show Up  (Audio – right click to download)

My text for the sermon this week is the same text as last week, but I’m just going to read one verse in the middle of the prologue to the Gospel of John – verse 12 of chapter 1.

But to all who received the logos, [this pattern or driving force in creation], to all who received him, who trusted in his name, he gave power to become children of God.

____________

¹ Last week I spoke of the cross and the resurrection, the central motif of the Christian religion, as being descriptive of the process of evolution. A movement of death to life, but more than a movement from death to life, it’s from death to a new life, to something novel, something that’s unexpected, something that our imaginations cannot produce or predict. It comes out of nowhere, like when you put two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom together and you get water. We might have predicted that the atoms would stick together, but without having seen it before, I’m thinking we would not have predicted the property of flow.

Once single celled organisms had formed and were floating around in the midst of the oceans, would we have expected them to come together and form cooperative entities? We would not have predicted cooperation and we certainly would not have imagined those cooperatives becoming entities with each cell playing a specialized role. We would not have imagined the development of a brain with so many synapses firing, more than the grains of sands on the earth we’re told. Out of that came the another novel evolutionary event. The development of an entity that is self-consciousness. The universe created something that can see and love the universe and then even that evolves. Cross and resurrection: from old humanity to the new human being, is the way Paul put it.

So this movement from death to new life, from cross to resurrection, I said was descriptive of that evolutionary process. In fact, for me it is part of that evolutionary process. A number of people had questions about that and I thought it might be useful to put this idea up – side by side – with traditional understandings of Christian faith. To do that I’ll take a different approach to preaching than is my normal mode.

There was a gentleman in my first church named Les who used to get upset with me when I preached. He would tell me that the right way to preach is to use the three “tell’ums.” He suggested that the way to preach was to first tell the congregation what I’m going to tell them, then second tell them, then finally tell them what I told them. But I said to Les, “Yeah, but usually I want to sneak up on you and hit you over the head with the Gospel.” That was my normal mode of operation. But today, just for Les, the three tell’ums.

So first, we’re going to talk about how an evolutionary understanding of Christianity will sit with the Doctrine of Salvation, that is, the doctrine that describes how we are saved and what we are saved from. Then next I want to reflect on the Doctrine of Sanctification, that is the doctrine concerning how we are transformed by the power of God. Then finally I’m going to reflect on what scholars call eschatology, that is, the words we use to talk about the end times – Jesus’ second coming. Now I’ve told you what I’m going to tell you.

The Doctrine of Salvation. We are saved the tradition tells us, from something called sin. Often people think of sin as the bad things people do, but traditional Christian doctrine will say that it runs much deeper than that. Sin can be seen as an infection that so alters us that we cannot do the good we want to do. That’s how Paul puts it in the 7^th chapter of Romans. So it’s an infection, something in the human condition that isn’t right and it runs deep. That is a problem because God is just and holy and God’s justice demands retribution, blood must be shed to balance the scales of justice when we break the law of God.

The stories of scripture suggest that there was a point in time, a point in history, when we were not infected by sin when we did not break the law of God. We were perfect, innocent, and whole, connected to God, but then we fell into this condition and so now we need to be saved from it. We need to be healed from this sin, this infection. So what does God do? Traditionally we understand that God, being a merciful God, instead of meting out punishment on us, the guilty, God sent his Son to accept that punishment on our behalf. His Son was crucified on our behalf. When Jesus dies, when his blood is shed, it’s not just Jesus that dies, it’s that fallen, infected humanity that is destroyed. But Jesus does not stay in the grave; the old humanity dies to be sure, but a new humanity, one free of sin, rises from the grave. And if we latch hold of that idea, if we trust that this is what God has done for us, then we are healed of our sin and live in the resurrected, abundant, eternal life of Christ.

If a person thinks that there is a God outside creation acting upon us, if one thinks that there was a point in history when humankind was perfect, if one thinks that blood has magical properties and can satisfy God’s desire for justice, then this way of formulating the Doctrine of Salvation makes sense. But I don’t think that and I would suggest that most in our society do not think that. Is there a way to understand the Doctrine of Salvation that will make more sense of our worldview? I think the answer to that question is, yes.

So, I do not hold to the underlying assumptions of the traditional Doctrine of Salvation, but I would have to agree that the human condition is disturbing. We went over this last week. We say, “I love you,” but we do not mean I love you, I will do whatever I can so that your life flourishes, instead all to often what we really mean is, “You fill my needs perfectly.” Society has built an unjust economic system. We are afraid that resources are scarce, that we won’t have enough and so we grab all that we can to make ourselves secure. But that’s a project with diminishing returns and it creates injustice until finally the trust that binds societies dissembles and it all comes crashing down. The human condition is troubling. We respond to violence in a way that escalate until human cruelty presents a horrifying spectacle.

The human condition is deeply troubling. If there’s no God from the outside who’s going to fix it, can we be saved? What would it mean to be saved? It means that we wake up. We wake up, wake up to the fact that we are not the sum of our biological drives, that this is NOT a static world in which we live; this is a dynamic, evolutionary world. It moves from one thing to another. It develops and it grows. God’s power can be seen in the impulse that drives this process forward. God’s power, the Logos of John, lives within us, expresses itself through us. When our eyes are opened to that fact, when we receive it and trust it, as John says, when our self-consciousness rises above the bondage of the human condition, well then we are saved.

Wake up; you are saved. You are a human being and as such you have what John calls, “power to become Children of God,” that is power to be an integral part of the process of evolution in this place. You have the power to change because the creative impulse that has driven creation forward lo these 13.7 billion years, expresses itself within you. The power of sin breaks when we wake up to that fact.

In both the traditional, and what I might call an evolutionary view of the Doctrine of Salvation, if we trust, if we wake up to God’s way in creation, we are no longer identified by the static condition of sin. In both cases we are free to live an abundant life, intimately connected to the presence of God.

That is who we are. This is our being, but it is not too difficult to recognize that this reality does not express itself in our lives as often as we’d like. That moves us to the Doctrine of Sanctification. In virtually every religious tradition there is this tension between being and becoming. Sanctification is about becoming who we are. In short we need to grow up. In a traditional Christian faith the Holy Spirit is given to us so that we can become who we are. This is what the Apostle Paul calls “working out our salvation.” That kind of language resonates for me, but often the traditional work of sanctification is done in the shadow of a wrathful and judging God. I just can’t get there.

It is true that there are consequences for actions, though to suggest a one to one correspondence stretches credulity beyond the breaking point. The process of evolution moves forward because some element or another is not working in harmony with creation. It is true that the old is destroyed in favor of the next step in evolution, and I can understand how those who thought the world was flat and has a dome over it that holds back the waters of heaven might interpret those things as the wrath of God. But surely we do not did not need to do so now. It’s a sermon for another time, but I think trying to grow up in the shadow of such a god is counter-productive. We grow up in the presence of a God whose creative power unfolds and expresses itself within and around us. We grow up in love, not in fear.

Wake up; Grow up; But to what end? We raise the question here of directionality and with it the question of purpose. These are the issues that eschatology seek to address. Traditionally Christians have spoken about the second coming of Christ – Jesus returns on a white horse, splitting open the heavens re-entering creation and bringing all things to their perfect close. The “new Jerusalem” descends from the heavens, everyone lives in harmony with God and with one another. The whole universe becomes one. That is where this is all going. It is a vision of hope, a statement of trust, one we use as we live our lives with that directionality in mind.

It’s actually a wonderful image. Do I think it will operate that way, Jesus on a white horse? No. But I do believe that creation is moving towards the moment when being and becoming are complete, when all things live in harmony. I emphasize that this is a statement of faith. It’s a conclusion that can’t be built on a foundation of verifiable evidence. Oh there is evidence that says it’s not a crazy notion – 13.7 billion years from the big bang to Shakespeare suggests directionality to me – but that does not constitute proof.

But when we live with that hope, with that directionality and purpose in mind, it means that we have to show up. The reality is that in that unity where all comes together in perfect harmony, you will have to be there. My friend Marc says, “God can’t get it done with you.” Each of us holds a unique profile in that one united reality joined together by the love of God. If you don’t show up, if you don’t play your unique role, if you do not live into your purpose and being, we can’t get it done. You are that important, period.

Wake up. You are a child of God; you are not bound and limited by a static human condition. The power that drives our evolving universe is expressing itself through you. Grow up. Let that reality take hold so that you evolve, so that your life is transformed that the creative love of God. Show up. Each and every one of you is an expression of that love. If you do not play your unique role in this evolving project called life, we cannot come together in perfect harmony. But consider this, as you do show up, you are an integral part of the beauty that opens our hearts and makes us whole.

[1] I thank my friend Dr. Marc Gafni for this three part aphorism, which I suppose may not even be his, but much more for the content of his Unique Self teaching.