Susan's blog, This Passage contains a link to the website God Hates Shrimp. It shows what happens if we take the sort of injunctions found in Leviticus literally. It'll either make you laugh or cry.
From the About this Site section:
As you may have realized, this site is a parody. It is meant to poke fun at people like Fred Phelps, and at people who protest against gay people and gay marriage.
The point we're trying to make is that by using the Old Testament (specifically the book of Leviticus) as a basis for protesting gay marriage, you run into a couple of problems. The first is that in the New Testament, Jesus established the New Covenant, which stated that the old Mosaic laws about unclean things were invalid (Jesus in his own person said nothing specifically against homosexuality, although Paul later attributed some remarks to him). The second reason is that if you still want to quote from Leviticus, despite Jesus' doing away with Mosaic law, then you better be prepared to enforce the whole thing, not just the parts you like. This includes not only the injunction against shellfish and mussels and such, but also against wearing fabrics made of blended fibers, cutting or shaving your beard, sowing mixed seed in a field, and a slew of other things nobody but Orthodox Jews take seriously anymore.
28 April 2007
15 April 2007
Sermon, Easter 2
It's good to be back after the Holy Week and Easter hiatus.
I wanted to share this sermon, that evolved in a very non-traditional way. My best friend (and seminary housemate) Sarah woke up early this am to type up her sermon, which had been marinating for days. Her fabulous, but mischievous, kitten Zuko dumped a pint glass of water onto her laptop, effectively destroying it. And so she called me at 4am. Together, we created this sermon, which was so much better than what I'd originally planned to say, that I preached it too. Hope you enjoy it.
Poor old Thomas always gets a bad rap. He’s gone down in history as Doubting Thomas, but he’s just like the rest of us would be in that situation. And it’s not like any of his beloved colleagues completely understood the Resurrection and were waiting at the door for Jesus with their hands on their hips, saying, “Well, it’s about time you showed up! Where you have been?!?”
No, in fact, Thomas was no different from the other disciples; they saw and then believed. Thomas needed his own experience. It doesn’t make him a ‘doubter’. The truth of it is – none of us lives in a vacuum.
Where’ all shaped by the things that happen to us, the things we participate in. This is profound because it means that we are NOT shaped by other people’s experiences, we’re shaped by our own.
That Thomas returned from wherever he was, and the disciples said, “This thing happened to us,” – was not enough for Thomas to be transformed. And, it’s not enough for us, either. We, like Thomas have to have our own experiences.
We can only deeply know, with that sort of knowledge that is in our bones, that knowing that comes from our gut, that knowledge that our hearts can totally embrace – we can only deeply know what we have experienced – some how, some way experienced to be true ourselves.
You see this everywhere.
You see this in the situation that was so funny when you were there, first hand, experiencing it, and yet – as you try to retell it, recapture it, as you try to describe the experience to someone else – it’s not the same. It’s not as funny. Sort of recreating the entire scenario for them, it’s just not the same. And it’s not the same, because humor is one of those things that requires a lot of understanding based on previous experience, and humor is itself experiential. As they say, “if you have to explain the joke, it’s not funny anymore.”
Experience.
Experience is the key to relationships, as well. Take cousins, for example. I have a number of cousins, but I’m not really close to any of them. That is because we’ve not had very many shared experiences. Now, my cousins are blood relations, and I’ve inherited a connection to them that few other people in this world are privileged to, but that doesn’t mean too much to me.
With only one exception, I simply don’t know them from a hole in the wall. I don’t dislike them, mind, but neither could I describe my feelings for them as love. My feelings for these cousins are pretty much neutral. I feel this way because we don’t have a relationship together - we never did.
Relationship isn’t something you can compel. You can put yourself in proximity to it. If you want to have a relationship with someone, you spend time with them. If you want to have a relationship with someone, you make yourself available to them, you have fun with them. You see, we’re back to experience.
The surest way to kill a relationship is to cut off the flow of experiences – to neglect the relationship and the person, or thing you’re having a relationship with, be that a friend, a partner, a project you are working on, your studies at school, or a new creative inspiration you just had.
So, what does all of this have to do with our friend Thomas? It seems to me that all the sermons in the world, all the stories, all the poetry, all the music only takes us so far. Sermons and stories and music and poetry are all ways of coming into proximity with God, but the rest is up to us. We need to experience God for ourselves, just like Thomas. At some level, for this thing called faith in God to take, we need to have experiences of God.
Now, these can happen in a variety of ways, and despite the fact that we need to have experiences as Thomas needed to have an experience, it doesn’t mean our experience is going to look exactly like his.
Depending on who we are and what we need, our experience of God is going to be different. It could be through the sermon, or the music, or the readings, yes. It could be through the bread and the wine. It could be at prayer, it could be in the eyes of the people we serve, when we get out into the community and help other people. It could be in the eyes of the people who help us, who show us spontaneous love. It could be during a walk on the beach or watching a sunset. It could happen when we least expect it. Really, it could be… anything.
But it needs to be something, because we can inherit religion, but we can’t inherit a relationship with God. That, each one of us needs to forge for ourselves. There are relationships that come down through history and land themselves in our laps, but for them to be anything but in name only, that relationship needs to be backed by experience.
And the good news is that God, our Beloved, is ‘here with only a thin membrane between us, and all it takes is a call from our lips, a whisper with no sound, for that veil,” that thin veil, to disappear.
I wanted to share this sermon, that evolved in a very non-traditional way. My best friend (and seminary housemate) Sarah woke up early this am to type up her sermon, which had been marinating for days. Her fabulous, but mischievous, kitten Zuko dumped a pint glass of water onto her laptop, effectively destroying it. And so she called me at 4am. Together, we created this sermon, which was so much better than what I'd originally planned to say, that I preached it too. Hope you enjoy it.
Poor old Thomas always gets a bad rap. He’s gone down in history as Doubting Thomas, but he’s just like the rest of us would be in that situation. And it’s not like any of his beloved colleagues completely understood the Resurrection and were waiting at the door for Jesus with their hands on their hips, saying, “Well, it’s about time you showed up! Where you have been?!?”
No, in fact, Thomas was no different from the other disciples; they saw and then believed. Thomas needed his own experience. It doesn’t make him a ‘doubter’. The truth of it is – none of us lives in a vacuum.
Where’ all shaped by the things that happen to us, the things we participate in. This is profound because it means that we are NOT shaped by other people’s experiences, we’re shaped by our own.
That Thomas returned from wherever he was, and the disciples said, “This thing happened to us,” – was not enough for Thomas to be transformed. And, it’s not enough for us, either. We, like Thomas have to have our own experiences.
We can only deeply know, with that sort of knowledge that is in our bones, that knowing that comes from our gut, that knowledge that our hearts can totally embrace – we can only deeply know what we have experienced – some how, some way experienced to be true ourselves.
You see this everywhere.
You see this in the situation that was so funny when you were there, first hand, experiencing it, and yet – as you try to retell it, recapture it, as you try to describe the experience to someone else – it’s not the same. It’s not as funny. Sort of recreating the entire scenario for them, it’s just not the same. And it’s not the same, because humor is one of those things that requires a lot of understanding based on previous experience, and humor is itself experiential. As they say, “if you have to explain the joke, it’s not funny anymore.”
Experience.
Experience is the key to relationships, as well. Take cousins, for example. I have a number of cousins, but I’m not really close to any of them. That is because we’ve not had very many shared experiences. Now, my cousins are blood relations, and I’ve inherited a connection to them that few other people in this world are privileged to, but that doesn’t mean too much to me.
With only one exception, I simply don’t know them from a hole in the wall. I don’t dislike them, mind, but neither could I describe my feelings for them as love. My feelings for these cousins are pretty much neutral. I feel this way because we don’t have a relationship together - we never did.
Relationship isn’t something you can compel. You can put yourself in proximity to it. If you want to have a relationship with someone, you spend time with them. If you want to have a relationship with someone, you make yourself available to them, you have fun with them. You see, we’re back to experience.
The surest way to kill a relationship is to cut off the flow of experiences – to neglect the relationship and the person, or thing you’re having a relationship with, be that a friend, a partner, a project you are working on, your studies at school, or a new creative inspiration you just had.
So, what does all of this have to do with our friend Thomas? It seems to me that all the sermons in the world, all the stories, all the poetry, all the music only takes us so far. Sermons and stories and music and poetry are all ways of coming into proximity with God, but the rest is up to us. We need to experience God for ourselves, just like Thomas. At some level, for this thing called faith in God to take, we need to have experiences of God.
Now, these can happen in a variety of ways, and despite the fact that we need to have experiences as Thomas needed to have an experience, it doesn’t mean our experience is going to look exactly like his.
Depending on who we are and what we need, our experience of God is going to be different. It could be through the sermon, or the music, or the readings, yes. It could be through the bread and the wine. It could be at prayer, it could be in the eyes of the people we serve, when we get out into the community and help other people. It could be in the eyes of the people who help us, who show us spontaneous love. It could be during a walk on the beach or watching a sunset. It could happen when we least expect it. Really, it could be… anything.
But it needs to be something, because we can inherit religion, but we can’t inherit a relationship with God. That, each one of us needs to forge for ourselves. There are relationships that come down through history and land themselves in our laps, but for them to be anything but in name only, that relationship needs to be backed by experience.
And the good news is that God, our Beloved, is ‘here with only a thin membrane between us, and all it takes is a call from our lips, a whisper with no sound, for that veil,” that thin veil, to disappear.
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