This sermon was heard at St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas on Sunday May 31, 2009, Pentecost Sunday.
Acts 2:1-21
John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen
There’s an old expression, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” We’ve heard it before, it means that it is better to take something certain than it is to risk more where you may lose everything. But when Jesus told the disciples “it is to your advantage that I go away,” we can well imagine the ancient equivalent of this old saw crossed their minds. Then again, the ancient equivalent came from Ecclesiastes 9 where the teacher says, “But whoever is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion.”
A living dog, a dead lion? If the teacher was trying to tell the pupils that life is preferable to death the Apostles were in perfect agreement. They were with the Lion of Judah! Life didn’t get better than that. So the thoughts of Jesus going away, regardless of whomever would follow him would fill their hearts with sorrow. Of course their hearts were filled with sorrow. Jesus knew it and so do we. Oh yes, imagine the Advocate, but a bird in the hand…
Jesus had given them hope. Hope for new life. Hope for life eternal. They had seen and heard much. They had learned much too, but there was still much more to learn. For that, they need the Spirit of truth. What Jesus was giving them here was hope, hope that they could not imagine with his absence. He offers them unforeseen hope, the hope which was yet to come.
In John’s gospel, the apostles were promised someone who would be alongside them when the world prosecuted them and persecuted them. They were promised the Paraclete, one who would serve as their advocate. Outside of scripture, the word Paraclete often referred to a lawyer or attorney. The Paraclete is one who advocates on our behalf not before God but in God’s good creation. At this moment, they needed an advocate.
As the book of Acts begins, Jesus tells the apostles “not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’” This wait could not have been comfortable. Given the events of the Passover, the apostles were marked men. The Romans knew this crew as rabble rousers. The temple leadership knew them as the worst kind of heretics. Yes, Jesus had returned to them, we have just read John’s report on that, but he was gone again. He had promised to return again, but he provided no estimated time of arrival.
They had received great promises. They had high hope. But the advocate, the Paraclete was still a promise, not a reality, not to them. They may have had all of the hope in the world, but with the reality of living in Palestine at that very moment, they would have been foolish if they had not felt fear.
It was at this very moment, on the day of Pentecost, that they were assembled together in one place. It was at this very moment that from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
This must have been even more frightening. They knew to be leery of the princes of this world. They knew the Governor and the Prelate and the Sanhedrin had them in their sights, but now the violent winds rushed down on them. I watched the Weather Channel on Tuesday night, I saw what was happening north of here. I saw Mike Bettis and the Vortex2 storm chasers in North Dallas talking about how difficult it is to chase storms in an urban area. I can’t imagine what it’s like to see that live from the front porch.
We may be talking about this scripture and praising God for the glory of the coming of the Holy Spirit, but on that day, they were in the midst of a violent wind filling the house where they were sitting. We talk about joy, they experienced terror.
Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared on them. By this gift, the apostles were able to communicate with the Jews from every nation under heaven who were living in Jerusalem. The crowd gathered and they were bewildered. Nobody needed a translator anymore. Nobody needed to find a common tongue, not anymore. The apostles spoke to the masses in their own tongues, the curse of Babel was broken for a great shining moment. There was joy and glory was given to God.
The people asked what this meant. And they heard the answer of the informed crowd. They’re drunk. Peter said that they weren’t drunk; after all it was only nine in the morning. Honestly, I grew up in Kansas City, the bars opened at 6:00 am six days a week. I’ve seen drunks at nine in the morning. But none of them could quote the prophet Joel.
In the latest issue of the Presbyterian Outlook Magazine, Jack Haberer writes:
There is a new wind blowing through the sometimes musty halls of American Churches, and it is sweeping away the hypocrisy, lack of social concern, and unnecessary cultural baggage accumulated by the mainstream churches through the years. Thousands of people, young in spirit, are turning away from the anti-intellectuality of separatist fundamentalism and from mainstream ecumenical liberalism…[and to]…a vital, open, and truly revolutionary answer to Christ’s call to “go and teach all the nations.”[1]
The Good News is that these words come to us with a joy and determination to leave unproductive church-ianity in the wake of a spirit led revival. The bad news is that these words don’t come from a new missional group. They don’t come from the writings of the emerging church either. They come from the pen of Richard Quebedeaux and were written 35 years ago.[2] Asking “What happened,” Haberer pines “The young evangelicals [of the 1960’s and 70’s] grew older.”
We know the statistics; the church has lamented them for over fifty years. But here’s a slightly different spin on them from The Mainline Evangelism Project. In 1960, twenty-six million people were members of the seven mainline denominations. That comes to 14.4% of the population. In 2000, the number of people who were members of the mainline churches fell to 21 million folks and the percentage of people who were members of these churches fell to 7.4% of Americans. The fall in the mainstream ranks is in raw numbers and even more so as a percent of the population. Our only consolation is that there is the company in this misery; these numbers pertain to all of the mainline denominations.[3]
Haberer does not see us as hopeless though, he continues in the Outlook, “we all do well to re-read the gospels’ stories. The clarity of Jesus’ vision, the strength of his resolve, the power of his appeal, the cost of his summons to follow … such words and actions have stood the test of time. Let us all catch that vision together and refuse to let it fade.”[4]
To recapture the Spirit of Pentecost, we must again learn to speak so that those who will hear us will understand we have something to say. And what a thing we have to say. We believe that faith makes a difference in our lives; and there are as many reasons as there are people. Some of the typical reasons include:[5]
· A relationship with Christ makes sense, it’s true
· I love God so much I want other people to know this joy themselves
· The church community provides a great way to serve others
· Life in the Spirit is exciting
· I used to be consumed with guilt and through the grace of Christ there is forgiveness
· I have seen miracles and I want others to know it’s possible
· Christ has changed my life
As the apostles shared with the world on the day of Pentecost, we too are called to share. Our stories tell others about who we are and whose we are. We all have stories, but we only share in the Pentecost when we share these stories. We are called to know our stories, the stories of our faith that shows others the difference a relationship with the triune God makes in our lives. And we must be able to communicate this story so that those with ears may hear.
We, we who carry the cross of Christ into the world must learn to speak so that the world may hear. The blessing of the Pentecost is the immediacy of the ability that the Galileans received to speak to the Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, and so on. But going back to what I said earlier, about the decrease in members in the mainline Christian churches, we don’t need to speak to just Asians, Arabs, Egyptians, and Libyans belonging to Cyrene; we need to speak to our neighbors.
We can gain wisdom on this matter from ancient Celtic Christianity.[6] In 563 AD, about a century after the death of St. Patrick, Columba sought off to an island off of the western Scottish coast. This isle would be his base to reach the Picts of Scotland. Columba took a sizeable corps with him and they learned the culture of the Picts. They chose to pay the price to understand the Picts. Columba’s way of doing mission was the opposite of the model James Michener presented in his novel “Hawaii.” They learned about the people, their language, and their culture. They sent out teams from their island settlement—a little place called Iona—and in 100 years the Picts were significantly Christian.
The lessons we take from this is that there people close to us who do not know the Word of God. We need to learn about how they speak and show them the Gospel in words they understand. Peter and the Apostles did this miraculously; Columba and the Iona community did this diligently. We need to learn how to share the story of faith so that those with ears may be able to hear the word of God.
We talk about speaking in tongues, this gift of the Spirit being the one most accented during Pentecost, but where at Pentecost we talk about speaking in foreign tongues, we have to remember that there is an entire generation of people in America don’t hear the word because we don’t speak their language. In this world of Twitter and Facebook, we need to learn how to take the message of God into the world in a new language, without compromising the cross of Christ.
So today, let us all regain the elemental presence of worship. We come to the font of many blessings overflowing with living water and remember our baptism. We come to the table with the cup and the plate to partake in the food that feeds our bodies and our souls. We hear the Word proclaimed and even more so, we come to know the Word Incarnate, the Son of God, the one who the Lord has set aside since before the creation, Jesus the Christ.
And today, especially today, we need to allow ourselves to be consumed by the fire of the Holy Spirit so that as steel is forged in the furnace, we may be made strong in the Lord for the Lord’s service. And we do this so that in the words of our Lord, “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” By this, our hope is anything but unforeseen.
[1] Haberer, Jack, The Presbyterian Outlook. Vol. 191-20, June 8/15, 2009, page 5.
[2] Haberer cites Quebedeaux, Richard, The Young Evangelicals: Evolution in Orthodoxy. H&R, 1975.
[3] Reese, Martha Grace, Unbinding the Gospel, 2nd edition. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2008, page 25.
[4] Ibid, Haberer
[5] Reese, Martha Grace, Unbinding the Gospel. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2008, pages 19-20.
[6] Hunter, George C. III, The Celtic Way of Evangelism. Nashville: Abingdon, 2000, page 36.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
Another World
This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday May 24, 2009, the 7th Sunday in Easter.
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26
Psalm 1
1 John 5:9-13
John 17:6-19
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen
There is something tempting about escaping from the world. The travel industry and the real estate businesses know this. They spend millions to lure us to take luxury cruises where our every whim is met, to enjoy even fractional ownership in condos at the shore, to buy a second home on the mountains where we can leave our real life pressures behind. The want to leave it all behind is as old as scripture.
Religious faith may intensify the desire for escape from the world. Having glimpsed a vision of what is holy and good, the human spirit may hunger not for the promised splendor of luxury resorts, but for a community and a way of being that avoid the clamor and conflict of the world. The history of Christianity is filled with stories of such arrangements: monasteries, convents, reform movements, communal living, utopias, and retreat centers; small groups centered on prayer, study, and piety. These efforts attempt to create a space unencumbered by the world that allows for a fuller realization of a faithful, holy life.[1]
It appears that the desire to live apart from the world arose in the community addressed by John’s gospel. By the end of the first century, as conflict with the authorities increased, the members of John’s community were understandably attracted to a life of faith that would disengage them from the powers that were opposed to the gospel. How good it would feel to retreat into their own group, to recall the stories of Jesus, to sense his presence in their meals of bread and wine, to enjoy each other’s supportive fellowship, and no longer have to defend their beliefs and practices to a hostile world.
This reading from John’s gospel can be read as a sermon addressed to this desire for a more ingrown life in a separate world, another world of the Lord. The wisdom of this sermon, delivered as the instruction of Christ, is this; it provides an alternative to retreat from the world without giving into the pressures of the world. Again and again, we read that Jesus and his disciples “do not belong to the world,” that is to say the world’s claims do not shape their identity, faith, and values.
But at the same time, Christ is crystal clear that there is no escape from the reality of the world. He says, “I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.” Christ speaks to them in the same world where they live and where they will find joy “in themselves” or in equally valid translation, “among themselves.” Yes they can be a community and yes, they can find joy in that community; but no, Jesus never abandoned the world and the community which is his body is not to abandon the world.
Jesus makes this point over and over. “I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.” Instead of retreat from the world, Christ offers an alternative that can empower the community to live in the world without succumbing to its values and pressures. They are to stay in the world under the protective care of God. They are to live amidst all the knotted complexities of the world without getting themselves entangled.
The holiness they might have hoped to achieve by escape from the world is to be found not through disengagement but through the action of God and immersion in God’s word. “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is the truth.” Christ recognizes their desire to be holy but reorients the direction of their yearnings, turning them to the truth of God’s word that is revealed here in the person and work of Christ and the writings of scripture that are revealed in the here and now of God’s good creation.
This plea to remain in the world rises as Christ prays, “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. “Sent into the world,” the exact opposite of getting out of the world, is key. In one clean, clear verse Christ reminds the church that the pattern of his own life was not escape from the world but engagement in the world, with all of its distorted powers and pressures.
John’s sermon is a strong argument for remaining in the world, addressed to a community that for good reason is exhausted by the world and ready to be done with it. We too live in a world that where we are exhausted with the world’s ceaseless corruption, and frequent feelings of despair over the inability to make a difference.
Who hasn’t returned from vacation looking tanned, rested, and ready to go, still with the mildly nagging thought, “Why can’t I feel like this all the time?” Perhaps the feeling we get after vacation isn’t supposed to last all of the time. John’s gospel would certainly be in accord with this.
Harley Davidson hasn't always had the kind of success or appeal it enjoys now. Harleys were the cycle of choice of the outlaw biker since before the first great biker melee, the July 4, 1947 Hollister biker riot.[2] Because of this bad press and a flood biker films produced from the 1950’s through the 1970’s; Harley chose to distance itself from this image.
But as quality Japanese imports and poor domestic product flooded the market, Harley Davidson stumbled close to bankruptcy. It was well into the 1980’s before the company leadership embraced the hard-core biker group that was showing incredibly faithful brand loyalty. To ward off the invasion of the Japanese bikes, Harley made a final, desperate bid for survival by focusing on its legendary connection with rebelliousness, sheer vitality and off-the-wall lust for the elemental life.
The strategy worked. Harley saved itself by embracing its outlaw image. Hog riders and cycle lovers want to see themselves as being part of another world no matter the role they play in the 9-to-5 as lawyers, accountants or business leaders. They feel unashamed and unabashed as they strap on their leathers and rumble off on their “Milwaukee monsters” to Sturgis.
The Sturgis Rally seemed to try to feed from both sides of the hog trough. At The Roadhouse in Eureka Springs, there is a lithograph from the 1999 rally. On it you will see thousands and thousands of bikes parked shoulder to shoulder with the GEIKO Gecko selling insurance across the street from a local store selling vital motorcycle accessories like leather bikinis.[3]
True riders have little time for the new breed of bikers out there; the growing cotillions of polished and well-paid professionals who have discovered that while they were bred to be businesspeople, they were born to be wild. While they make a living writing legal briefs, they really live to ride. They clatter away on computers in their corporate cubicles, and want to be outlaws on weekends, riding the roads with cup holders for double-decaf cappuccinos.
Bottom line? At the soul of the Harley is a rumble and a roar, an outlaw attitude that is positively otherworldly. To be a true renegade rider, you've got to put your hope of hog heaven above everything else.
There’s a message for us here, whether we're bike buffs or not. Jesus, in his great prayer in John 17, hopes his disciples will be willing to be of another world, to strap on the leathers of a countercultural spiritual life. Herein lies the problem.
Although we are called to a radical Christianity, too many of us are practicing a pastel Church-ianity that has lost sight of its original vision. We've become a gaggle of weekend riders rather than the gang of road warriors Jesus refers to in the prayer of our text. Our primary identity is an outlaw identity; outside the law, that is, and inside God's grace.
On our way to hog heaven, we've got to strap on the leathers: jackets, chaps, gloves and other protective pieces - a rebel getup that the apostle Paul describes elsewhere as the whole armor of God: A belt of truth around the waist, a breastplate of righteousness, a shield of faith and a helmet of salvation. The early history of the church is nothing if not a gallery of outlaw Christians ready to rumble: Paul, Peter, James and John, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, Cyprian, Tertullian, Anthony, Athanasius and Augustine. These are not cappuccino Christians.
Fortunately, their breed still exists. The church has Chuck Colsons who work in prisons; Mark Yaconelli who, with a Lilly Foundation grant, is introducing teens to Lectio Divina at Sleepy Hollow Presbyterian Church in San Anselmo, California; Bart Campolo, an evangelist with a buzz cut and combat boots working with the homeless and fatherless in the crack-sophisticated ghettos of Philadelphia; John Dilulio, a Princeton professor who has created a new project to help teens escape the cycle of poverty, crime and drug abuse; Eugene Rivers and his Azusa Christian Community in the inner city of Boston.
Committed Christians have got to hang tough, and be Real Riders; not just the “wannabees” so disdained by die-hard hogsters. Jesus knows that this is not always easy, especially when he is not physically present to guide us or when evil threatens to throw us off course. The challenge is always to remember who we are and whose we are: citizens of another world, a breed apart.
In the end, it's a trip to be an outlaw: to live outside the law of human expectations, and inside the grace of God. Harley Davidson got it right when it discovered that hog riders are tapped into another reality, one that fills them with joy as they slip on their jackets and rumble off to Sturgis. We, too, are part of another world: the countercultural, convention-confounding kingdom of God.
Not to mention rowdier, and a whole lot more joyful.
Resources
Troeger, Thomas H., John 17:6-19 Homiletical Perspectives article. Feasting on the Word, Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, Vol. 2. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, Editors. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008, pages 547-549
Hog Heaven, http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=2692, retrieved May 17, 2009.
[1] Paragraph edited from draft regarding Utopia:
Ironically, the word Utopia gives us a clue that this life of perfection cannot exist on the earth as we know it. This English word has two different and opposite Greek renderings. One of these, the one we like best, means “good place.” Utopia is a good place where all is right in the world. The other, the one which brings the irony, means “no place.” In this rendering, Utopia is found no place on earth.
[2] Holister Bike Riot, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollister_riot, retrieved May 23, 2009.
[3] Honestly, it’s the print by the door to the deck.
This paragraph was edited from draft regarding the 50th anniversary rally:
The 50th anniversary rally in 2000 hosted an estimated 633,000 participants, who created almost 770 tons of garbage, records according to the organizers. The 2008 only had 415,000 attendees and generated just 543 tons of trash. The 50th anniversary rally also recorded record numbers of parking tickets, traffic violations, and drug arrests. Unfortunately, arrests for non-traffic-and-drug violations are on the upswing along with calls to the Sturgis PD, Meade County Sherriff’s office, and Emergency Room visits. (http://www.sturgismotorcyclerally.com/questions-stats/images/rallystats.pdf)
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26
Psalm 1
1 John 5:9-13
John 17:6-19
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen
There is something tempting about escaping from the world. The travel industry and the real estate businesses know this. They spend millions to lure us to take luxury cruises where our every whim is met, to enjoy even fractional ownership in condos at the shore, to buy a second home on the mountains where we can leave our real life pressures behind. The want to leave it all behind is as old as scripture.
Religious faith may intensify the desire for escape from the world. Having glimpsed a vision of what is holy and good, the human spirit may hunger not for the promised splendor of luxury resorts, but for a community and a way of being that avoid the clamor and conflict of the world. The history of Christianity is filled with stories of such arrangements: monasteries, convents, reform movements, communal living, utopias, and retreat centers; small groups centered on prayer, study, and piety. These efforts attempt to create a space unencumbered by the world that allows for a fuller realization of a faithful, holy life.[1]
It appears that the desire to live apart from the world arose in the community addressed by John’s gospel. By the end of the first century, as conflict with the authorities increased, the members of John’s community were understandably attracted to a life of faith that would disengage them from the powers that were opposed to the gospel. How good it would feel to retreat into their own group, to recall the stories of Jesus, to sense his presence in their meals of bread and wine, to enjoy each other’s supportive fellowship, and no longer have to defend their beliefs and practices to a hostile world.
This reading from John’s gospel can be read as a sermon addressed to this desire for a more ingrown life in a separate world, another world of the Lord. The wisdom of this sermon, delivered as the instruction of Christ, is this; it provides an alternative to retreat from the world without giving into the pressures of the world. Again and again, we read that Jesus and his disciples “do not belong to the world,” that is to say the world’s claims do not shape their identity, faith, and values.
But at the same time, Christ is crystal clear that there is no escape from the reality of the world. He says, “I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.” Christ speaks to them in the same world where they live and where they will find joy “in themselves” or in equally valid translation, “among themselves.” Yes they can be a community and yes, they can find joy in that community; but no, Jesus never abandoned the world and the community which is his body is not to abandon the world.
Jesus makes this point over and over. “I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.” Instead of retreat from the world, Christ offers an alternative that can empower the community to live in the world without succumbing to its values and pressures. They are to stay in the world under the protective care of God. They are to live amidst all the knotted complexities of the world without getting themselves entangled.
The holiness they might have hoped to achieve by escape from the world is to be found not through disengagement but through the action of God and immersion in God’s word. “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is the truth.” Christ recognizes their desire to be holy but reorients the direction of their yearnings, turning them to the truth of God’s word that is revealed here in the person and work of Christ and the writings of scripture that are revealed in the here and now of God’s good creation.
This plea to remain in the world rises as Christ prays, “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. “Sent into the world,” the exact opposite of getting out of the world, is key. In one clean, clear verse Christ reminds the church that the pattern of his own life was not escape from the world but engagement in the world, with all of its distorted powers and pressures.
John’s sermon is a strong argument for remaining in the world, addressed to a community that for good reason is exhausted by the world and ready to be done with it. We too live in a world that where we are exhausted with the world’s ceaseless corruption, and frequent feelings of despair over the inability to make a difference.
Who hasn’t returned from vacation looking tanned, rested, and ready to go, still with the mildly nagging thought, “Why can’t I feel like this all the time?” Perhaps the feeling we get after vacation isn’t supposed to last all of the time. John’s gospel would certainly be in accord with this.
Harley Davidson hasn't always had the kind of success or appeal it enjoys now. Harleys were the cycle of choice of the outlaw biker since before the first great biker melee, the July 4, 1947 Hollister biker riot.[2] Because of this bad press and a flood biker films produced from the 1950’s through the 1970’s; Harley chose to distance itself from this image.
But as quality Japanese imports and poor domestic product flooded the market, Harley Davidson stumbled close to bankruptcy. It was well into the 1980’s before the company leadership embraced the hard-core biker group that was showing incredibly faithful brand loyalty. To ward off the invasion of the Japanese bikes, Harley made a final, desperate bid for survival by focusing on its legendary connection with rebelliousness, sheer vitality and off-the-wall lust for the elemental life.
The strategy worked. Harley saved itself by embracing its outlaw image. Hog riders and cycle lovers want to see themselves as being part of another world no matter the role they play in the 9-to-5 as lawyers, accountants or business leaders. They feel unashamed and unabashed as they strap on their leathers and rumble off on their “Milwaukee monsters” to Sturgis.
The Sturgis Rally seemed to try to feed from both sides of the hog trough. At The Roadhouse in Eureka Springs, there is a lithograph from the 1999 rally. On it you will see thousands and thousands of bikes parked shoulder to shoulder with the GEIKO Gecko selling insurance across the street from a local store selling vital motorcycle accessories like leather bikinis.[3]
True riders have little time for the new breed of bikers out there; the growing cotillions of polished and well-paid professionals who have discovered that while they were bred to be businesspeople, they were born to be wild. While they make a living writing legal briefs, they really live to ride. They clatter away on computers in their corporate cubicles, and want to be outlaws on weekends, riding the roads with cup holders for double-decaf cappuccinos.
Bottom line? At the soul of the Harley is a rumble and a roar, an outlaw attitude that is positively otherworldly. To be a true renegade rider, you've got to put your hope of hog heaven above everything else.
There’s a message for us here, whether we're bike buffs or not. Jesus, in his great prayer in John 17, hopes his disciples will be willing to be of another world, to strap on the leathers of a countercultural spiritual life. Herein lies the problem.
Although we are called to a radical Christianity, too many of us are practicing a pastel Church-ianity that has lost sight of its original vision. We've become a gaggle of weekend riders rather than the gang of road warriors Jesus refers to in the prayer of our text. Our primary identity is an outlaw identity; outside the law, that is, and inside God's grace.
On our way to hog heaven, we've got to strap on the leathers: jackets, chaps, gloves and other protective pieces - a rebel getup that the apostle Paul describes elsewhere as the whole armor of God: A belt of truth around the waist, a breastplate of righteousness, a shield of faith and a helmet of salvation. The early history of the church is nothing if not a gallery of outlaw Christians ready to rumble: Paul, Peter, James and John, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, Cyprian, Tertullian, Anthony, Athanasius and Augustine. These are not cappuccino Christians.
Fortunately, their breed still exists. The church has Chuck Colsons who work in prisons; Mark Yaconelli who, with a Lilly Foundation grant, is introducing teens to Lectio Divina at Sleepy Hollow Presbyterian Church in San Anselmo, California; Bart Campolo, an evangelist with a buzz cut and combat boots working with the homeless and fatherless in the crack-sophisticated ghettos of Philadelphia; John Dilulio, a Princeton professor who has created a new project to help teens escape the cycle of poverty, crime and drug abuse; Eugene Rivers and his Azusa Christian Community in the inner city of Boston.
Committed Christians have got to hang tough, and be Real Riders; not just the “wannabees” so disdained by die-hard hogsters. Jesus knows that this is not always easy, especially when he is not physically present to guide us or when evil threatens to throw us off course. The challenge is always to remember who we are and whose we are: citizens of another world, a breed apart.
In the end, it's a trip to be an outlaw: to live outside the law of human expectations, and inside the grace of God. Harley Davidson got it right when it discovered that hog riders are tapped into another reality, one that fills them with joy as they slip on their jackets and rumble off to Sturgis. We, too, are part of another world: the countercultural, convention-confounding kingdom of God.
Not to mention rowdier, and a whole lot more joyful.
Resources
Troeger, Thomas H., John 17:6-19 Homiletical Perspectives article. Feasting on the Word, Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, Vol. 2. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, Editors. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008, pages 547-549
Hog Heaven, http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=2692, retrieved May 17, 2009.
[1] Paragraph edited from draft regarding Utopia:
Ironically, the word Utopia gives us a clue that this life of perfection cannot exist on the earth as we know it. This English word has two different and opposite Greek renderings. One of these, the one we like best, means “good place.” Utopia is a good place where all is right in the world. The other, the one which brings the irony, means “no place.” In this rendering, Utopia is found no place on earth.
[2] Holister Bike Riot, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollister_riot, retrieved May 23, 2009.
[3] Honestly, it’s the print by the door to the deck.
This paragraph was edited from draft regarding the 50th anniversary rally:
The 50th anniversary rally in 2000 hosted an estimated 633,000 participants, who created almost 770 tons of garbage, records according to the organizers. The 2008 only had 415,000 attendees and generated just 543 tons of trash. The 50th anniversary rally also recorded record numbers of parking tickets, traffic violations, and drug arrests. Unfortunately, arrests for non-traffic-and-drug violations are on the upswing along with calls to the Sturgis PD, Meade County Sherriff’s office, and Emergency Room visits. (http://www.sturgismotorcyclerally.com/questions-stats/images/rallystats.pdf)
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