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Sermon January 18, 2009

January 28, 2009

Known and Loved

Second Sunday After the Epiphany ~ Psalm 139: 1-6, 13-18

Kenwood UMC ~ January 18, 2009

You can’t run away. You can try. I did, when I was about eight. I can’t remember what I got upset with my mom about, but I packed my bags and decided to run away. My grandmother, who was visiting at the time, was horrified when my mom said, OK, and started to help me pack. But I couldn’t do it. All I could do was try.

We can try to run away from God. We can try and try and try. But no matter how hard we try, we eventually come face to face with that unavoidable truth—God knows us better than anyone. No matter what we try and hide or disguise, God sees through it all. God has known us from the beginning—from before the beginning.

God knows us. A small-town prosecuting attorney called his first witness to the stand in a trial — a grandmotherly, elderly woman. He approached her and asked, “Mrs. Jones, do you know me?”

She responded, “Why, yes, I do know you, Mr. Williams. I’ve known you since you were a young boy. And frankly, you’ve been a big disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you’re a rising big shot when you haven’t the brains to realize you never will amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you.”

The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what else to do he pointed across the room and asked, “Mrs. Williams, do you know the defense attorney?”

She again replied, “Why, yes I do. I’ve known Mr. Bradley since he was a youngster, too. I used to baby-sit him for his parents. And he, too, has been a real disappointment to me. He’s lazy, bigoted, he has a drinking problem. The man can’t build a normal relationship with anyone and his law practice is one of the shoddiest in the entire state. Yes, I know him.”

At this point, the judge rapped the courtroom to silence and called both counselors to the bench. In a very quiet voice, he said with menace, “If either of you asks her if she knows me, you’ll be jailed for contempt!”[1]

God knows us. Whether we like it or not, God knows us. But, you know, we should like it. Because there are lots of people in this world who think they know us—but don’t. There are lots of people in this world who want to know us for all the wrong reasons—what we can do for them, how we can enhance their lives.

But God? God knows us just because we are. And, God loves us just because we are.

Sometimes it takes something momentous for us to realize God knows us. A life or death diagnosis that leaves us fighting for health. A job loss that leaves us grasping for professional identity. A terrifying moment that strips us of all that we use to identify ourselves. All of these are situations where it becomes very clear that God knows us—and loves us.

One of those moments happened this week for the 155 crew and passengers of US Airways flight 1549, which encountered trouble during take-off. We presume that was trouble related to birds in the engines. And that trouble led to a miraculous emergency landing in the frigid Hudson River with no loss of life.

Passenger Alberto Panero said that immediately, he smelled smoke.

“All of a sudden, the captain came on and said brace for a landing, and that’s when we knew we were going down,” he said.

As the plane headed down toward the river, the cabin was mostly silent, he said.

“After he told us prepare for impact, it was pretty evident we were not going to make the runway.”

At first, it felt like the plane was gliding, [another passenger, Fred] Berretta said, as if no engines were working.

People started praying, and there was a lot of silence, and the realization that we were going in was really hard to take in at that moment,” he said.

“I think a lot of people started praying and just collecting themselves,” Berretta said. “It was quite stunning.” He said he was expecting the plane to flip over and break apart, but it didn’t. “It was a great landing,” he said. [2]

You have to wonder what they were thinking. It’s a “life flashing in front of your eyes moment” if there ever was one. And maybe in that moment when it seemed like all was lost, they were thinking of loved ones and lost opportunties and missed chances. But in the next moment—the moment when they realized all will be well—they were thinking about how lucky they were and how much they were loved. Not only by their families and friends, but by God, the God to whom they prayed while desceding to the icy waters, the God who they might not have totally bought until that moment, but the God who has known them since the moment they were knit together in their mother’s wombs.

And did you hear what came next? Praise. “It was a great landing” said passenger Beretta. The pilot is praised for a heroic act. Mayor Bloomberg of New York hands out keys to the city. Praise. Praise and thanksgiving.

And that’s what disciples do. The first response of every disciple, the response to being claimed in the waters of baptism, is the response of praise. We see it in the Psalm. The psalmist writes

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.

Why does the psalmist know how wonderful God’s works are? Because he has had one of those face to face moments, one of those moments when he has realized that no matter how hard he tries, he cannot run away from God. God knows him more imtimately than anyone ever will. And that is not a source of fear, but a source of praise.

God knows us. Our shortcomings. Our potential. Our unrealized moments and our real moments. And God loves us. In spite of everything and because of everything. We are known and loved. We belong to God.

[1] Homiletics Online, January 15, 2006, Soulift.

[2] CNN.com accounts of the crash of flight 1549.

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Sermon December 14, 2008

December 16, 2008

Rejoicing In Hope

Third Sunday Of Advent, Year B ~ Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

Kenwood UMC ~ December 14, 2008

This season we’ve been talking about hope—how to have hope in the midst of a world where it is sometimes scarce. And that task of talking about hope, of believing hope, of creating hope has often been the task of the prophets. The prophets of the Old Testament have both held God’s people accountable for their mistakes, and also offered a new vision for what is yet to be.

We find this new vision in Isaiah today. It is a vision of these words written behind me—liberty, good news, comfort, glory, salvation. It is a vision of a better time, and a Savior upon whom God’s spirit rests. And we heard this good news interspersed with headlines from our world, and the despair and mistakes and corruption of our world. This is the same way that Isaiah’s people would have heard his news—in the midst of despair and mistakes and corruption.

The question before us today is, how do we respond? How are we able to rejoice in hope, to celebrate the ways that our Savior is coming into the world to bring liberty and release, to usher in a reign of peace. We have an image of one possible response on our bulletin cover today. It was drawn by Luke Saunders, who is 3. Luke is going to have a baby brother in the next couple of days. Back in November in Children’s Church, children were asked to draw images of rejoicing in hope, and this is what Luke drew. Without any conscious thought or planning, he drew what I believe is an image of rejoicing—of color and movement and expression that demonstrate joy.

We will all demonstrate joy in unique ways this Advent season. And sometimes it will not come as easily to all of us as it does to a three year old. I want to share a story with you this morning about one member of our congregation and her journey towards rejoicing this season.

Many of you have come to know Joyce Lachut over the last year as she has gotten involved at Kenwood. You know her as friendly, caring, compassionate and enthusiastic. You probably know that she has a large family, and is from upstate New York. But I am willing to bet that there are some parts of her story that many of you do not know about.

Joyce has spent the better part of the last decade caring for her husband who died in 2006 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s. She moved to Virginia in 2007 to be closer to some of her family who had relocated to this area.

If you are familiar with Alzheimer’s and related diseases, you know that when you are caring for someone in advanced stages that you have to be careful with their physical environment. Moving furniture, moving their bedroom, anything like that can cause horrible confusion because they often cannot see well and cannot remember the changes. That includes putting up a Christmas tree. So Joyce did not have a Christmas tree in her home in either 2004 or 2005 while her husband was alive. In 2006, and again last year, in 2007, she could not bear to put up a tree, because her grief was too raw, too fresh. The tree’s presence only reminded her of her husband’s absence.

But this year, she put up her tree. She got out all the ornaments that she had moved down here from New York. She got out the nativity. And in her home she erected this symbol of the season—a symbol of hope. She relates that she had to sit down and weep after putting it up, but she also realizes that this tree is a symbol of how far she has come, of the rejoicing she is able to claim now, rejoicing which was absent for many years.

Joyce’s headlines were sickness, caregiving, Alzhiemer’s, death, moving. We all have different headlines. We all have different realities that define us personally. We are all a part of a community, a nation and a world with headlines that we share as reality. And we all have a reason to hope. Christ is coming. The light of Christ is being revealed in our world and in our lives even now. We can rejoice. We can look beyond the present reality to the words of Isaiah. We can turn away from the cruelty of the headlines and we can give the world a gift—the gift of a new reality, a reality born in hope and defined by love.

Dedication of our hearts at 11:00.

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Sermon December 7, 2008

December 12, 2008

Messengers of Hope

Advent 2, Year B ~ Isaiah 40:1-11

Kenwood UMC ~ December 7, 2008

I just signed up for Twitter this week. Twitter is a free service that links people through text messaging on their cell phones…I am thinking that I may regret telling you all I signed up, now that I think about this….but at any rate, you “tweet” or write short messages to people who follow you answering one simple question: “What are you doing?” For instance I might twitter right now, “leading worship at Kenwood.” Twitter is a messenger that helps people keep up with one another.

Messengers come in many different shapes and sizes. The come in the form of the postal

worker who puts mail in your mailbox. They come in the form of the employer who calls you into the office to tell you about a policy change. They come in the form of the person who sends you an instant message or a text message. I could go on and on….

But messengers are not always messengers of hope, are they? Sometimes they are messengers of doom and gloom. So how do we recognize the messengers of hope among us? The words of the prophet Isaiah this morning give us some clues.

This passage from Isaiah contains words spoken to the Israelite people when they are in exile. Their homeland has been destroyed, they have been separated from all they know, they are in financial and emotional ruin. It is not too farfetched to make the leap from those people to people today, feeling in exile because of financial uncertainty, job loss, deployment to remote parts of the world, and many other reasons. What kind of message does Isaiah offer to the exiles?

A message of comfort and a message that looks toward the future. Let’s take comfort, first. Isaiah acknowledges the suffering of his people, the long term of exile they have endured. And he speaks tenderly to them, offering a word of comfort. When people are in exile we begin with comfort. We don’t begin with blame, we don’t begin by telling them to snap out of it. We begin with comfort. We acknowledge their pain and tell them we know they are hurting.

And from comfort Isaiah moves toward painting a picture of the future. A voice is crying in the wilderness with a message of hope. And the word shall is the important word in that message. Every valley shall be lifted up, uneven ground shall become level, the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. Messengers of hope know that their job is to paint a picture of a new future, a new reality. And that picture shows what shall happen—not what might happen, or what could happen, but what shall happen.

There’s a certainty in that shall, a certainty that the future will happen, a certainty that implies that we can trust this messenger. And that is what people in exile need to know—not just that hope might be present, but that hope is present, that a new day is coming.

We have a challenge this morning. It would be easy for us to say we need to look for messengers of hope. It would be easy for me to lift up some messengers of hope in our world today. What is more difficult, and more important, is not to look for messengers of hope, but to become messengers of hope. If we believe that Christ is coming and brings a new future, a new kingdom, then we can become messengers of hope. If we believe that the baby who was born in Bethlehem makes a difference, and ushers in a new era of hope and salvation, then we can share that message of hope. We can be the ones who speak to those who are in exile in our community and our world. We can be the messengers who say to ShyAnne Shane and her family, the day is coming when you shall feel better and your dad will be able to go back to work. We can be the messengers who say to the one who is out of work, the day is coming when you shall have a new job. We can be the messengers who say to those who are afraid, the day is coming when you shall be secure.

In this Advent season, as you prepare for the celebration of Christ’s birth, let your heart be changed by becoming a messenger of hope. Proclaim hope on Twitter or Facebook, in your Christmas cards, in your phone conversations or over coffee or lunch. Proclaim the promise of a new future, and I can promise you that the more you proclaim it, the deeper you will believe it, and the easier it will be to live into it.

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Sermon November 30, 2008

December 4, 2008

Looking for Hope

Advent 1, Year B ~ Mark

Kenwood UMC ~ November 30, 2008

You are checking into a hotel in a foreign country, on a routine business trip. Suddenly masked gunmen burst into the lobby, and you take refuge with others in a ballroom. You wait, in the dark for 6 hours, hearing gunfire all around you and waiting to be rescued. Finally, the group smashes through a glass window and shimmies to the ground on curtains when they realize the building has caught fire. These are people looking for hope.

You have worked for your company for 5 years. Economic times have gotten tough. You keep hearing rumors of trouble, difficulty making payroll. You watch stock plummet. And one day you come into work knowing in your heart that today is the day. Before lunch, you and 699 others are let go. These are people looking for hope.

You have known this day was coming. For months you have watched your beloved family member, knowing they are slipping but not quite being able to put your finger on it. You’ve watched the behavior change, the symptoms increase. But today is the day where you know, beyond a doubt, that you must get them to the doctor. This is a family looking for hope.

This is a world looking for hope. Each of these situations is real, each has happened in the last month in our world—and most have happened more than once. And everywhere I turn I hear hopeless words. People shake their heads at the economy. People shrug their shoulder at governmental unresponsiveness. People stop responding to stories of poverty and violence because they are too difficult to hear and truly absorb. It is almost too much to bear. We find ourselves walking around with this sort of uneasy feeling in the pit of our stomachs waiting for what is next. That’s hopelessness, friends. It is a feeling, a reality, a way of life.

It’s a feeling that’s a lot like the Jewish people in the time of Christ. They were worn out, burned out, shut out and out of luck. And into that hopeless existence came Jesus, saying to them that after days of darkness and angst there will be a coming, a coming of the Son of Man. After those days a new day will dawn. We don’t know when that new day will come. We have no way of predicting it. Jesus simply tells us to be watchful for it.

But in order to be watchful, we have to believe it will actually happen. We have to have hope. We have to believe that this time of darkness and loss is not the end. Brothers and sisters, we have a choice. We can choose to live another way, to live as people of faith. Now, making that choice is not logical—but hope is not logical. We don’t think our way into hope. We don’t plan our way into hope. We live into hope.

If, this Advent season, you really believe that God’s salvation is coming into the world, then live like you do. Refuse to surrender to the discouragement and hopelessness of the world around you and chose hope. Chose to live into the new reality that God has promised. Choose to look for that reality every moment of every day. Be a person who looks for hope.

How can you look for hope this Advent season? Change your mindset. Refrain from telling people how terrible the economy is, and tell people how you believe that there will be an end to this downturn. Refrain from watching or reading the news obsessively to hear of the stories of loss and angst. You know, I find that the more I read about the terrible things that are happening, the more convinced I become that they are terrible. When I am able to step back—and by that I do not mean to ignore what is happening in the world but to put it in proper perspective—well, they are not nearly as terrible any more.

Take time to share hope with friends and family. Take time to tell them you believe God will bring better days ahead. Take time to share hope by investing in hope if you are able—giving financially to those in need, spending time with the poor or the sick, adopting a Fox Holiday Sock or a Salvation Army Angel.

This season, look for hope. But do one thing more—become the hope you are looking for. Become a part of God’s plan of hope and salvation for the world. Expect that it is happening, and live into that expectation. Love, the Lord, is on the way.

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Sermon November 23, 2008

November 24, 2008

How Do We Work Together?

Christ the King Sunday Year A-Off Lectionary ~ Romans 8:18, 28

Kenwood UMC ~ November 23, 2008

On Wednesday I flew down to Atlanta to participate in a research project which my seminary is conducting. I flew down and back that day, and got into Richmond about 11:15 Wednesday evening.

Now, I would not say that I am a frequent flyer—but I usually fly a couple of times a year, often enough to be familiar with airport security procedures and know to wear slip on shoes and not take the bottle of water through security.

There’s a common experience that we all share when flying, and no matter how long ago you flew, I think you are going to identify with this moment. The flight ends, you’ve landed and taxied to the gate, the fasten seat belt sign has gone off, and all of the sudden everyone on the plane is filled with the same feeling—this flight is over, and it is time to get off the plane.

Now what you’ve got in this situation is a lot of people, one very narrow aisle, and one door. And even though we are all strangers, and some of us are on our way home and some are not, some are here for business an some for pleasure, at that moment we all share one goal that we have to work together to accomplish—getting off that airplane.

And what you see is people letting one another out into the aisle, people helping each other with carry on baggage stowed in overhead compartments, people telling the flight attendants thank you—people working together.

It grieves me that people who do not know one another can work together to get off an airplane, but not to relieve poverty, care for the sick and dying, or feed the hungry. These are the sufferings of the present age which Paul speaks of in Romans.

And if we, as a global community, or even as the county of Hanover or city of Richmond are going to accomplish any of those things—which I think Jesus would want us to work toward–we are going to have to set aside our differences and work together. And often one of the things which gets in the way of working together is a fear or resistance to working with people of other faiths.

We’ve spent the last couple of weeks talking about the reality of living in a world of multiple faiths, and finding evidence in Scripture that this has always been a reality for God’s people. We’ve discovered that God created the entire world and called it good, that God has promised that all nations of the world will be blessed. And those promises of scripture indicate that we need to work together with people of other faiths.

But friends, we do a lousy job of it much of the time. Just in the last 2 weeks in Henrico County we’ve seen an example of our failure. The Muslim community wanted to develop a mosque on an undeveloped area of property in Northside. Zoning had to be changed in order to do it. Recent zoning changes of a similar nature had been granted to Episcopal and Catholic congregations. When the Muslim community met resistance from the Henrico County Board of Supervisors, the interfaith community came out in force. Protestant and Catholic clergy and laity, Jewish rabbis and laypeople all wrote letters and petitioned the supervisors to let the Muslim community build. But the rezoning failed, 3-2.

Why? We could all speculate. But I suspect that it has to do with the extraordinary difficulty we have as a society in working together with people of different faiths.

Paul says “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”

Do we love God? Can we honestly believe that Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs love God? If we do and if we can, then we also have to believe that when we work together on the goals we have in common, we will work together for good.

To do that we have to set aside a need to prosteletyze or convert people of another faith to our faith. And I think that’s OK. You see, I am far more worried about the faith life of the hundreds of thousands of non-practicing people out there than I am worried about the faith life of a practicing Muslim. We will still have plenty of work to do sharing out faith in other areas. For this area—work with people of other faiths—we don’t need to worry about conversions—just conversations.

In order to work together we also have to set aside our fear, and that is very important in a post 9-11 world where we have been conditioned to fear. Are there radical Muslims out there? Sure. But so are there radical Christians. Remember the Atlanta Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph, also responsible for abortion clinic bombings in Kansas? Or Randy Weaver who sequestered his family at Ruby Ridge? I don’t know of a faith out there that does not have some radical element.

But those radical segments of faith are so small that we cannot afford to label all people of faith by that example. What we also cannot afford to do, given the desperate situation of our world, is build walls that isolate us from one another. We must work together.

“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”

Bono, the leader of the rock band U2, has also been a leader in global efforts against poverty and AIDS in Africa. In 2006 he spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington D.C., a gathering of people of all faiths hosted by members of Congress. He gave a stirring speech about the need for all faiths and all nations to work together to address issues of AIDS and poverty in Africa. Here, in part, is what he said,

“…whatever thoughts you have about God, who God is or if God exists—most will agree that if there is a God, God has a special place for the poor. In fact, the poor are where God lives. Check Judaism. Check Islam. Check pretty much anyone.

I mean God may well be with us in our mansions on the hill…I hope so. He may well be with us in all manner of controversial stuff…maybe, maybe not. But the one things on which we can all agree, among all faiths and ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and the poor.”[1]

I am clear, as a Christian, when I read scripture, that we have a lot of work to do when it comes to reaching the poor among us. And I am also clear that if we are to do it, we will have to work together—regardless of the faith we practice, all faiths with a heart for the poor can work together. We can work together for justice, for mercy and for peace. And I believe that when we do that, if makes God’s heart very, very glad.

[1] Bono, “On the Move”, 2006. A Speech given at the National Prayer Breakfast, Washington, D.C., February 2006.

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Sermon November 16, 2008

November 21, 2008

Will They Be Saved?

27th Sunday After Pentecost, Off Lectionary ~ Genesis 21:9-11

Rev. F. Elizabeth Givens

Kenwood UMC ~ November 16, 2008

It was the first day of February, 2003. By then Space Shuttle flights had become routine, something we might notice on the news but not usually a huge deal. Until….until the space shuttle Columbia disentigrated upon reentry over Texas killing all seven crew members aboard. Many of us remember the search for debris, the investigation of why the tragedy happened, the focus on the insulating foam which had peeled off during lift off and punctured a hole in one of Columbia’s wings.

But do you remember the crew? And do you remember that the group of heroes was incredibly religiously diverse? We might be most familiar with the faith of the Baptist, the Roman Catholic, the charismatic Christian, and the Episcopalian who died on that tragic day. But did you know about Ilan Ramon, the son of a Jewish Holocaust survivor who was an Israeli astronaut on the mission, and now a hero in Judaism? Or Kalpana Chawla, an Indian-American who grew up in a household with Sikh and Hindu influences, and attended Hindu temples in the San Francisco area. Or Laurel Clark, a practicing Unitarian Universalist, who wrote in an e-mail to her mother on that shuttle flight “Whenever I do get to look out, it is glorious. Even the stars have a special brightness.”[1]

All seven faithful people died on that ill-fated day. All were hailed as heroes, scientists and astronauts who had followed their dreams and all done great things for the advancement of humankind. And their story brings home what can be a sticky question for us as Christians. Were they all saved? Or to put it another way, are they in heaven?

I often have people come to me asking that question on a more personal level, as they have a close friend or family member of another faith whom they care about deeply, but wonder whether they will be in heaven or be saved. It is a very personal question and one which can be very troubling for us as Christians.

I want to begin by talking about what it means to be saved. Salvation, for us as Christians, is what Jesus has done for us by covering our sins and dying on the cross. What we are offered in salvation is a right relationship with God—no matter how badly we’ve messed up, we can have our relationship with God restored. That is the offer of salvation. But in order to receive it, we have to do something. We have to have faith.

So, for us as Christians, salvation is the gift made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus, which we receive through faith. But does that mean that someone who does not know Christ and who does not have faith in him cannot have salvation and receive the gift of eternal life in heaven with God?

There are three common answers to that question. The first answer is, no, someone who does not know Jesus cannot be saved. That is a view called exclusivism.

Another opposite view is a universalist view, which says that God will love and save everyone, no matter what.

For me, and what I understand about God, both of these views are somehow incomplete and not helpful. I am grateful to my colleague Adam Hamilton, pastor of The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas for some of the writing he has done on this subject over the last few years for helping me clarify what I think about this.

I have to start with what I know about God. The Bible teaches us that God is love. That’s the most important way we understand and explain God. And characteristics of God which are a close second to love are justice and mercy. And it seems to me that a God of love and mercy would not exclude good, faithful people from salvation. It also seems to me that a God of justice would not extend salvation to a completely unrepentant sinner—for example, Hitler.

So I believe when we wrestle with this question, we have to look at these charasteristics of God—love, justice and mercy. And then we have to ask ourselves—is there any place in Scripture where it seems that God reaches beyond those who believe in Jesus to extend love and mercy and justice?

And the answer is yes. This story from the Old Testament which we shared today is one of the most powerful of those instances. God has promised Abraham that all of the nations of the earth shall be blessed through him. All the nations of the earth.

And then Abraham and his wife Sarah have trouble conceiving, and his first child is Ishmael, born to Hagar, one of the couple’s slaves. A few years later, Abraham and Sarah miraculously conceive, and have Isaac. Isaac and Ishmael play together as brothers….until Sarah has a fit of jealously and insists that Abraham send them out into the wilderness to fend for themselves. This scripture reports that Abraham struggles with the decision, but does as Sarah asks only after being reassured by God that Hagar and her son will be cared for by him. And as they go into the wilderness, there is a remarkable story of God saving them from starvation, and promising Hagar that he would make a great nation of her son. This would ultimately be the nation of Islam.

Here we get the clear message that God’s love is for all nations and all people. Not just the descendants of Isaac, but also the descendents of Ishmael. That message is reinforced in the New Testament when Jesus extends his message beyond the Jewish people to include non-Jews, or Gentiles. The clear and consistent message is, God loves those who are faithful—not just Jews, not just Abraham’s children through Ishmael, but ALL who are faithful.

And I think that brings us to a place of understanding. Salvation, as we understand it, comes through Christ. But salvation can also come to those who are faithful believers in other traditions. There are Muslims who have a much better prayer life than I do, and Hindus who are more faithful in serving the poor. And they have never had a chance or opportunity or persuasive means to receive Christ as their savior. But I believe that our God, the God of Abraham, and the God of Jesus Christ, is big enough for that to happen. In the words of Billy Graham in a Newsweek interview, “It would be foolish for me to speculate on who will be there and who will not….The love of God is absolute. He said he gave his son for the whole world, and I think he loves the whole world no matter what label they have.”[2]

Our hymn of response is about how we have received out salvation—following Jesus. Our prayer is that however salvation comes, those who are faithful will never turn back from a way of life which is holy.

[1]“Seven-Heroes,Seven- Faiths,” http://www.beliefnet.com/News/2003/02/Seven-Heroes-Seven-Faiths.aspx?p=1

[2] Adam Hamilton, “Will There Be Hindus in Heaven?” in Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White, Nashville, Abingdon, 2008; p.111.

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Sermon November 9, 2008

November 21, 2008

Exploring Other Faiths: Why Are There Multiple Faiths?

26th Sunday After Pentecost, Off Lectionary ~ Matthew 2:1-2, 5b-12

November 9, 2008 ~ Kenwood UMC

Rev. F. Elizabeth Givens

The next few weeks we are going to be tackling a very sensitive set of questions, questions about why there are other faiths, what that means for salvation, and how we relate to people of other faiths. I think it is important to begin by noting that this is not a series explaining what other faiths believe—there will be touches of that, but not a comprehensive look. If you are interested in that, let me know and I will be glad to set up a small group study of that topic. It is also important for us to begin by confessing that we all carry a certain amount of prejudice toward people of other faiths, prejudice usually not born of hatred but of lack of understanding. Most of us have lived in a Christian culture and a Christian context all of our lives, even if we have not always practiced our faith. And so, when it comes to exploring other faiths, that is as much an exploration of cultures different from our own as it is anything. And we need to acknowledge that this is an area which is unfamiliar—and even risky for us.

But we must address this question, now more than ever, because we live in an increasingly diverse religious world. I did not know people of others faiths when I was growing up as a child. In my elementary school, people were either practicing or non-practicing Christians. That was it. If there were Jewish or Muslim or Hindus in my community I sure wasn’t aware of it.

And then in 1984, a Muslim place of worship was built on Buford Road in southside Richmond, the road I traveled 2-3 times a week to get to church. A mosque in the middle of the community that had nurtured me. “Why?” I wondered. The answer was simple—the community was no longer the same one I had grown up in as a child. There was a growing Muslim population in that community, and they wanted a place to worship.

Today, the diversity of the world that my children live in is almost incomprehensible to their grandparents, and surely would be to their great grandparents. Our children live in an America where Protestant faith hovers at just 51.4%, almost a minority.[1] They go to school with people of other faiths—Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and others. And those children will become our children’s friends, they will come to sleepovers at our homes, they will play soccer together and in 30 years they will lead our country together. Religious diversity is simply the reality of our community today, and so we need to learn about it!

So, why are there so many faiths and how do we fit that reality into our Christian understanding? To answer that question we have to take off the hat of faith and put on the hat of a sociologist. Sociologists study the dynamics of society and culture in the world. And what we learn from sociologists is that religion has been a very cultural thing. Until people began to move more easily around the globe in the last hundred years or so, religion was very dependent on the culture you grew up in. Islam was practiced in the Middle East, Christianity in Europe and the West, the Jewish faith in Israel, Hinduism in India and so forth. The faith which you might practice was often very connected to the culture into which you were born.

Now that we are a more mobile society, those cultures are beginning to blend and interact, which makes us ask these questions more urgently. And I think the place we need to begin when we ask ourselves why there are other faiths is with our understanding of God as creator.

As Christians we believe that God created the world—and not just the world, but the universe in it’s entirity. And that means that God created all people, not just Christian people. I am a part of a Disciple Bible Study class which meets on Thursday evenings, and we have been studying the books of Genesis and Exodus so far this fall. It has become clear to us in these earliest stories that God created everyone. And that means that from our perspective God created not only those who practice Christianity, but those who practice other religions. And so then the question becomes, how does God value those other religions in scripture? Does God exclude or include them?

And that at long last brings us to our scripture from this morning, the story of the wise men arriving at the birthplace of the Christ Child. As this scripture was read this morning, you may have felt that I was just as bad as Target and Home Depot at pushing the Christmas season! But we read this scripture because it has some central information for us about how God treats other faiths.

In this central story of the Christian faith, the incarnation, when God comes among us, he is worshipped not only by his own culture in Bethlehem, but also by people from the East—wise men from afar.

Now there is nothing in scholarships which suggests that these wise men were of some Jewish sect that had gone east. They were from aother culture, and practiced another religion. They followed stars—this was also not a practice of the Jews of Jesus’ day. Clearly these are people from another culture, people who do not necessarily believe in the God of Israel, but who nonetheless come and worship.

I believe this part of the Christmas story begins to suggest to us that our God might be bigger than the story, greater that our human constraints and constructions. Our God, the same God who created us, the same God who sent us Jesus, is beyond our understanding and comprehension. And as I read our Holy Scriptures I find that this God who I do not and cannot understand seems to include in his story people who are different from me. And that suggests to me that God’s mercy and grace are not the exclusive property of us Christians—but that they might indeed extend to the whole world.

Why are there multiple faiths? Because we live in a multicultural world which only recently has communicated on a global level. These faiths developed largely in isolation from each other, not in competition with each other. What do we do about the fact that there are multiple faiths? It seems to me that the model of the baby at whose cradle the whole world came to worship is that we need to embrace those multiple faiths, listen to one another, and look for ways to love and serve one another as faithful disciples within our different traditions.

[1] Source: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, 2007. www.religions.pewforum.org/reports.

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Worship in November to Explore Other Faiths

October 31, 2008

Beginning November 9, for three Sundays our worship will focus on exploring the relationship of Christianity to other faith traditions, such as Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, and Sikh, to name a few.

November 9   Why Are There Other Faiths?

November 16  Will They Be Saved?

November 23  How Do We Work Together?

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October 26th Sermon

October 27, 2008

How Should A Christian Vote

Sunday After Pentecost, Year ~ Off Lectionary, Philippians 2:1-11

October 26, 2008 ~ Kenwood UMC

I can still remember the first presidential election I voted in. It was 1976, I was six years old and in the first grade at Crestwood Elementary School in Chesterfield County. The school had a mock election that fall when Jimmy Carter was running against Gerald Ford. Now, I cast my vote very carefully and thoughtfully. I weighed the options and I made an informed decision to vote for Gerald Ford. What decided my vote? My parents, perhaps? No. My understanding of the issues? Not hardly. My faith? Nope. What made my decision was that my best friend at the time was named Christie Ford, and so I decided that if her character was good enough to be my best friend, his character was good enough to be President of the United States.

We can’t look at this just as humorous—some of the same kind of logic is at work in politics today. And as responsible, thoughtful people we want to make a choice that matters, that is based on something. And as Christians, we also want to make a choice which is in line with our faith. But how? What are the criteria we should use?

Well, we might initially say, we can look at a candidate and if they are a Christian, we should vote for them. A candidate’s faith certainly plays an important role in politics today—we don’t have to look any farther than President Bush, or Mike Huckabee, or Mitt Romney or Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama to discover that faith has become an issue. But what kind of an issue should a candidate’s personal faith be—should that be the deciding factor in our vote?

I would argue that it should not—because the qualifications for being the President of the United States are not primarily about faith—they are about leadership, and judgment and wisdom and lots of other things, but not primarily faith. And we all know that just because a person says they are a Christian, or just because a person says they attend church, that doesn’t mean that we understand them. They might not profess the same kind of Christian values that we do. They might, for instance, think very differently about whether the communion table is open—some churches don’t invite everyone to the table. What kind of relevance does that have? Well, it has relevance for political issues which deal with hospitality, such as immigration issues.

We also can’t issue vote on things such as abortion or the death penalty, and say, well, here is the Christian perspective on these issues, so I vote with the candidate who shares that perspective. These kinds of issues are complicated, and there are faithful believers on all sides of social issues such as this. So, again, it is not as simple as saying, well, this candidate believes the “Christian” thing on this issue, so I’ll vote for him or her.

So I don’t think figuring out how to vote is as simple as saying, OK, here’s the candidate who is the best Christian, I’ll vote for them. And that’s why I think it’s not helpful for me, as your pastor, to pass some sort of judgment on candidates, and tell you who to vote for. I think we have to dig deeper.

And when we dig deeper, I think we have to look at scripture and at the values we hold as followers of Jesus, and let those values guide our decision making. And the baseline value of Jesus, as it is presented in the scripture from Philippians that we read this morning, is humility.

What exactly is humility? Humility is putting others first. Humility is realizing it isn’t all about me—or us. Humility means our motivation for something is not selfish conceit or ambition—instead our motivation for doing something is that it will make the world a better place for others. Humility, as Jesus lived it, means doing what he promised to do early in his ministry as he read the scroll of the prophet Isaiah in the temple in his hometown of Nazareth. It is recorded in the 4th chapter of Luke that Jesus promises to offer good news to the poor, pardon the prisoners, set the oppressed free, and offer sight to the blind.

Now, these are not political promises which will make one popular. When we follow in Jesus’ footsteps and look out for the interests of those who are oppressed and held captive, it is difficult to win an election. Why? Because when someone who is relatively stable asks the question, “what are you going to do for me” the honest answer is—not much. But the humble leader can help us realize that it isn’t about me—it is about us, about our world, about how we live together as brothers and sisters.

Now, let me be clear—we are not looking for a Messiah here. We’re not voting for a Messiah. But if we are Christians, when we vote, we should cast our vote for those who look out for the least, the last and the lost. When we are Christians and we vote, we don’t look only at what policies the candidates stand for that will make our lives better—we need to look at others’ lives as well. We need to embrace the humility of our Savior and look beyond ourselves. And when we do that, we will find the candidates who are better able to look beyond themselves. And that is how I believe we can most responsibly cast our vote as Christians.

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