University Worship Service - 2/21/16 - Barbara Brown Taylor

32:08 So you heard the gospel lesson. Jesus' lament over Jerusalem is one of the saddest stories in any of the gospels. Right up there with him weeping over the death of his dear friend Lazarus. Or rearing back when Judas leans toward him on the night of his arrest. Judas, is it with a kiss that you betray the Son of Man? There is such sorrow in these stories, such crushing disappointment at the way things have turned out, in spite of Jesus' higher vision of them, his life's labor on their behalf. In the case of Lazarus, Jesus intervenes, bringing his friend back to life. But in the other two, he's more like us, suffering things that he cannot or will not change.

33:11 He laments over a city that has killed people like him before and seems bent on doing it again. On the night of his arrest, he watches the police push Judas aside. Then he stops his friends from trying to save him by force. No more of this, he says, when one of them pulls out a sword and cuts off a trooper's ear. The trooper's not the enemy. The sword is the enemy.

33:42 Just in case anyone has missed that point, Jesus heals the man's ear. Then he holds out his hands for the cuffs, as it were, turning his face to the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. this isn't just a sad story i think it is a scary story at least for those who claim jesus as their exemplar if he's the one we're meant to emulate the implications are chilling open your wings to people who mean to kill you heal the hurt of a guy who's come to arrest you Stop one of your friends from treating an armed posse like the enemy when that's clearly how they see you.

34:33 Maybe I've just watched too many Star Wars movies lately. Or maybe I need to cut back on the news. I mean, it's never good. No one wants to hear how a pit bull bit no one today anywhere. Or how the local school board is modeling bipartisanship at its best. Things like that actually show up in the twice weekly newspaper where I live. In the current issue, I learned that the newly reopened Huddle House on Washington Street just scored 100 on its first inspection by the Habersham County Health Department. Tidings of great joy to the college students who do in fact huddle there. and that one of our local theaters just received a $5,000 Vibrant Communities Grant. In last week's issue, I read about the Valentine's Day cards that showed up on the trays of senior citizens receiving meals on wheels in my county, little frilly things made out of red construction paper and white lace doilies put there by kids from the local elementary school who got the idea from a website called dosomething.org.

35:50 It's not a perfect place by any means. I also like reading the arrest report and the phone log from the sheriff's office. But the newspaper is a fair reflection of a small town where people have a lot to be thankful for and who treat each other pretty well, at least if you overlook the letters to the editor on page four. What a swamp of snark and innuendo. What a smelly pool of venomous enemy thinking, especially during an election year. In light of the total incompetence of, no one who cares for this great country could possibly vote for. If so, then get ready to reap the whirlwind, because who are these people? I know a few names, but 99% of these caustic letter writers are unknown to me, which means they could be absolutely anyone.

36:46 Like the cop who directs traffic in front of the middle school every afternoon. He looks like such a nice guy. Or maybe the school bus driver who waves at him as she pulls out with a full load of kids. I mean, she has the whole middle of the day free to write letters to the editor. Maybe it's my rural mail carrier who has nothing to do all day but listen to talk radio. Or it could be the stooped woman in front of me at the grocery store who's buying so much junk that it has to be affecting her brain. I know I have to stop this. But it's hard to do once I've succumbed to the us or them, you're with us or against us, choose this day whom you will serve, kind of rhetoric that takes over during an election year. We must love it because we keep doing it. Though no one I know has much confidence that anything's going to change anytime soon.

37:44 It doesn't seem to matter whether people are white or brown, purists or moderates, with feel the burn on their bumpers, or gun owners for Trump, there will be hell to pay. Thank you. The refrain I hear most often from all of these people is that our government is broken and no one seems able to fix it. Or in modern paraphrase of today's gospel, Washington, Washington, the city that neuters its politicians and throws stones at those elected to it. Don't worry, I don't think Jesus has a solution for Washington any more than he had a solution for Jerusalem. But I do think he has a word for those of us ripe for our own lament over what we've become.

38:47 Last week I read an interview in the New York Review of Books. It was a dialogue, really, between the sitting president of this country and one of his favorite novelists, Marilynne Robinson. How many of you read that along with me? She's the author of Gilead, and she's an essayist after John Calvin's own heart. The president was in Des Moines for a political event, but he decided to make time for something that he almost never gets to do, and that was to sit down with one of his favorite writers and talk to her about how American culture is shaping our ideas about citizenship and democracy and the direction in which the country is headed. Since Robinson teaches in Iowa City, the conversation was doable. So the two of them sat down and warmed up by talking about John Ames, the country pastor fictional at the heart of Gilead, who says things like, Grace has a grand laughter in it.

39:53 Or, nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense. But it was clear that the president didn't really want to talk about Robinson's fiction. He wanted to talk about her nonfiction, especially a recent essay in which she wrote about the role that fear is playing in our politics, our democracy, our culture. Why was fear an important topic, he asked her, and how does it connect to some of the other work you've been doing?

40:25 Robinson said that her two-part thesis is simple. One, contemporary America is full of fear. and two, fear is not a Christian habit of mind. Even if you subtract Christian, fear is a threat to any democratic nation, she suggested, since the basis of democracy is the willingness to assume well about other people. She said, you have to assume that basically people want to do the right thing. I think you can look around society and see that basically people do the right thing But when people begin to make these conspiracy theories and so on that make it seem as if what is apparently good is in fact sinister, yes, the president said, the idea of the sinister other, Robinson went on, I mean, that's bad under all circumstances. But when it's brought home, when it becomes part of our own political conversation about ourselves, I think that's really about as dangerous a development as there could be in terms of whether we continue to be a democracy.

41:37 Her conversation partner didn't ask her for examples, so I thought I'd supply some from the letters to the editor. One, our mounting fear of people who don't speak our language or who speak it with an accent. Two, widening gap between the decency with which most of us live our lives and the indecency with which we speak of those who oppose our politics. Three, the support we give one another in demonizing those who don't agree with us. Four, the ease with which we assume that they want to do the wrong thing and that our duty is to prevent them from doing it any way we can, even if it demeans both them and us. I think one of the things that's true, Robinson said, is that many Americans on every side of every issue, they think that the worst thing you can say is the truest thing you can say.

42:46 Hmm, that's a problem. Why? I mean, where would CNN or Fox be without the American appetite for tart political talk, not to mention Kimmel or Fallon or Colbert? Am I the only person here who tunes into political debates, not because I want to think more deeply about the issues, but because I have this cringeworthy need to know what you know who will say next?

43:15 The president interrupted my train of thought at this point. He said, tell me a little bit to Robinson how your interest in Christianity converges with your concerns about democracy. Well, she said, I believe people are images of God. There's no alternative, she went on, that's theologically responsible to treating people in terms of that understanding. What can I say? It seems to me as if democracy is the logical, the inevitable consequence of this kind of religious humanism at its highest level. And it applies to everyone. It's the human image. It's not any loyalty or tradition or anything else. It's being human that enlists the respect, the love of God being implied in it. Oh, that.

44:07 Did you just feel a little let down, a little drop in your cortisol level? I did. Image of God. Can't we argue about something? I mean, can't we at least agree on the greatest danger facing the nation right now so we can get all cranked up about it over lunch? Maybe forget about how scared we are for just a little while. How lost and lonely we sometimes feel. It feels so much stronger to focus on a real threat after all. than it does to jump every time a door slams, because there are too many terrors to name, and most of them living above their means inside our own heads.

44:51 Feels a lot better to agree that we can never be too safe, than it does to face the possibility that our safety is not, shall we say, the most Christian of our concerns. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that stones the prophets and kills those who are sent to it. How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you were not willing. If anyone ever had reason to hurl invective, to take arm against the enemy, this is the man. Jesus did not invent the conspiracy against him. His opponents had identified him as the problem, the real and present threat to their safety, the manifest source of all their woes.

45:51 His enemies did not doubt their logic. Their certainty was their strength. They supported one another in drawing a target on his head, and they had no reservations about taking aim. And what did he do? Opened his wings, gave his cheek to his betrayer, healed the hurt of an arresting officer, kept falling for the image of God.

46:22 I'm not saying any of us could do the same thing in that situation, but it does seem to me like we could at least handle a national election without drawing targets on each other's heads. If we could all just turn off the media for a week, Robinson said near the end of the interview, I think we could come out the other side of it with a different anthropology in effect. I wish we could have a normal politics where I disagree with people, they present their case, we take a vote, and if I lose, I say, yes, that's democracy. I'm on the losing side of a meaningful vote. And I'll try to make a better argument next time, the president said. Exactly, Robinson said. But, he said, that does require a presumption of goodness in other people. Exactly, she said.

47:17 so if that doesn't convince you of the complete impractical impracticality of the Christian gospel then I really I don't know what will but if you're looking for a Lenten discipline here's a pretty good one presume goodness in other people put away your sword keep opening your wings to the image of God and friend and stranger, don't watch your back. Just until Easter. Then you can give it all up, since the one who gave it all up for you will be right there clucking at you, looking like a safer bet than any fox you ever feared.