30 March 2008   I Was Wondering: Whose Life Is It?(Or, do we have freedom to choose?) Galatians 4:21-5:1; John 8:31-38
Bill McGraw

A couple of years ago I had a form in the bulletin - at the top: "I was wondering?" - invited folks in attendance that day to write their questions. Addressed four of them in a series - about a year ago. I've pulled that list of questions out again - will for the next few weeks (except April 13^th) look at some more of those questions. They certainly aren't easy!

First question: do we have freedom to choose? Which I've subtitled, "whose life is it anyway?"

Personal experience:

I grew up the son of a grocer and independent business man who was himself the son of a grocer and independent businessman. My dad actually went to college to study for the ministry at the thenSchool of Religion at Butler University. Into his first year he knew that wasn't for him - he returned to the family business which he essentially ran for 40 years. From sixth grade I worked regularly following the expectation that I would enter and eventually take over the business. I went to school to major in economics - the logical major for someone planning to go into business.

Until I spent my junior year abroad. With much inner turmoil I came to the conclusion that I did not want to return to the family business. Came back to my senior year with little sense of direction - applied for a Rockefeller Foundation trial year fellowship - got it and headed off to seminary. Obviously ultimately deciding to enter the ministry.

If I were to describe that decision, I would say that it was a personal, independent decision.

Until a conversation with a psychoanalytical psychiatrist over dinner. He had asked how I ended up in the ministry. In the course of answering him I mentioned that my dad had gone to school to be a minister and ended up in the grocery business and I want to school to be a grocer and ended up in the ministry.

His comment, "It's amazing how those subconscious wishes of fathers get passed on to the sons!"

We certainly know how predetermined many of our life choices seem to be.

We know the power of subconscious wishes of parents being passed on to children.

We know about genetics.

We know about how upbringing shapes our behavior.

We know about social forces that impact us.

We've seen those twin studies - identical twins separated very early in life - raised in very different circumstances - united decades later wearing the same clothing, married to people with the same names, with dogs having the same names, with many, many similar likes and dislikes.

And we certainly hear lots of comments that suggest people believe that everything is pretty much laid out.

Poignant comment by the Taylor University student who was thought to be dead while being confused for another student - in intensive care - survived - book came out this week - on TV: "I don't know why the Lord chose me to live and not the others who died."

Biblical support:

Psalm 139:16     In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.

Isaiah 49:1 The LORD called me before I was born, while I was in my mother's womb he named me.

Romans 8: ²⁸We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. ²⁹For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. ³⁰And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.

Ephesians 1:4 he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world

Seems pretty heavily loaded - as in Jesus Christ, Superstar: "Everything is fixed and you can't change it."

Except?

The best-laid plans of mice and men - and God - "gang aft agley."

We have to include human stupidity/laziness/selfishness.

Any discussion of human nature has to include the freedom to screw up.

Story:

A man brought his boss home for dinner with the family. At the end of the meal the 10-year-old son says to the boss, "My dad tells me you're a self-made man." "Yes," replies the boss swelling up with pride. "Well," said the son, "I'm glad to hear that because I don't think the good Lord would want to take credit for you!"

Of course, much that we do is determined -

            by race/gender/age/era in which we live/life experience/genetics/everything else you can mention.

And the good Lord knows us better than we know ourselves - which means the Lord's not often surprised.

But there are those moments - have to be, in my opinion - when the Lord pauses, folds arms and waits, "I wonder what Bill's going to do with this one."

Moses to Israelites:

"I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, (Deuteronomy 30:19)

Paul to the Galatians: ^5:1For freedom Christ has set us free?

Jesus: you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free?

if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

We need lots of help:

We have indeed inherited the energy of sin; it is part of our instinctual make-up; it is, almost literally, in our bodies and nervous system?.Sin is not simply a weakness that we can overcome but rather a condition from which we have to be saved. (Robert Barron, And Now I See: A Theology of Transformation, p. 50)

And what we've celebrated on Easter - we are not alone in our sin.

There is an energy toward wholeness, renewal, rebirth, forgiveness - life

            that will not ultimately be lost or defeated.

And who - in their freedom - would not want to be a part of that??!!

*    *    *    *    *

6 April 2008    I Was Wondering: Why Do We Have Such Terrible Wars Based on Religion?          Isaiah 2:1-4, Luke 6:27-36
Bill McGraw

·         In India, we've seen Hindus and Muslims fighting one another.

·         Buddhists and Hindus have been fighting in Sri Lanka.

·         decades-long struggle between Muslims and Jews in the Middle East

·         attacks by violent Muslims on 9/11

It's particularly interesting when all of the world's major religions at heart seem to have little support for war or violence. At heart the world's religions seek to help people find peace and comfort in individual life and to live in community in public life.

Too many times I've quoted Huston Smith's summary of a lifetime of studying and practicing the world's religions: "we're in good hands and in gratitude for that we would do well to bear one another's burdens."

How do we get from that to a Christian priest in Iraq with a gun on his desk, Jewish seminary students shouting death to Muslims, the Left Behind series glorifying in the violent deaths of the enemies of Christ, and suicide bombers crying ?God is great' as they take themselves and forty other people out???

The first drafts of this sermon sounded like lectures based on lots of analysis of social movements, politics, economics, psychology.

Yawn!

Then it hit me: we as much as anyone know about sin.

Last week we talked about the question of human freedom - are we truly free to make decisions?

And while recognizing that there are lots of forces that influence and even determine much that we do,

            there has to be a place for human sin.

We spent many of the Sundays before Easter thinking about the forces of resistance in all of us

               that prevent us from hearing and truly practicing the faith of Jesus.

The question of wars based on religion is a question of how we use the religions of the world

            which  have received and developed marvelous insights into overcoming

                                     the things that separate human beings -

                         that can and do help people live together in peace,

in the hands of sinful humanity - people like you and me - blending together our own self-interest with the teachings of religion.

For a TV show about war & religion the BBC invited some scholars at the Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford in England to do a ?War Audit' to try to determine how many wars were purely or even primarily based on religion. They came up with:

1. Islamic expansion beginning in the 7th Century,
2. the Crusades starting in the 11th Century
3. the Reformation wars beginning in the 16th Century.

Beyond that: We must recognize that armed conflict is rarely, if ever, solely about religion or religious differences. Although armed conflicts may take on religious overtones, their genesis is found in a complex matrix of crisscrossing and mutually exacerbating factors such as economics, politics, resources, ethnicity and identity, power struggles, inequality, oppression, and other historical grievances. God and War: An Audit and an Exploration, Compiled by Greg Austin, Todd Kranock and Thom Oommen, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/world/04/war_audit_pdf/pdf/war_audit.pdf

In the end the way we read the scriptures of our faith say more about us than about the faith.

"If their commitment is to generosity and charity, then they'll highlight the passages that affirm this, and they'll either allegorize or bracket or explain away the dark visions of intolerance and violence." (from Regina M. Schwartz author of The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism)

There is nothing so pure it cannot be distorted.

When our survival is on the line - we'll do just about whatever it takes.

"The selfishness of human communities must be regarded as an inevitability." (Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man & Immoral Society, p. 272)

When our lives and/or our way of life is threatened, we'll react. And, if necessary, find religious reasons to justify it.

The fact that we have such terrible wars based on religion says more about us

            than it does about God - by whatever name we call?.her.

As one ethics scholar notes: "if we are trying to save our skin, pacifism is a very poor strategy!" (Richard B. Hayes, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, p. 343)

Violence is such a part of human history/experience.

I seem to remember an analysis of human history that had something like 40 years when there was not war.

It has been pointed out that violence was so much of Old Testament history that is was noteworthy for one writer to point out the times of peace.

We human beings have the capability as well as the tendency to bring down incredible violence upon one another - and our need to justify ourselves will use every argument at its disposal - including religious ones.

Fortunately the vision of peace among humankind is still at the heart of our religion:

Isaiah 2:4: they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

Luke 6: ³⁵But love your enemies, ?  ³⁶Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Nancy Sehested is a prison chaplain in North Carolina, and she was speaker at the Disciples Peace Fellowship breakfast at the recent General Assembly.(2003)  She is chaplain of 850 men in a medium security prison, and so spends her days with men named Mad Dog and Porkchop:  murderers, and rapists and child molesters, and guys who just messed up over minor things and got caught by mandatory sentencing laws.
  Nancy Sehested talks about the Department of Corrections being a place of unrelenting hopelessness, a place of darkness, where it is hard to see the light shining through.  The first day on the job, the Lieutenant stopped by her office.  "I'm not glad you're here, women don't belong in a men's prison, they only make more work for me and my guards," he said.  And thus their working relationship began.
  A few months later, the chaplain and the Lieutenant stepped into an altercation between prisoners, together stopped a fight.  Later, when things had quieted down, the Lieutenant stopped by the chaplain's office again.  "I know that you need me here," he said; "what I hate to admit is that I need you here."
  "You're right, Lieutenant, I do need you here, to keep order on the floor; but how do you need me?" she replied.
  "I need you here to restrain my inclination to physical violence," he answered, "I need you to show me another way, another kind of force."(As recorded by Bob Reister in the newsletter of the Allisonville[Indiana] Christian Church)

Indian Christian woman Pandita Ramabai: "People must not only hear about the kingdom of God, but must see it in actual operation, on a small scale perhaps and in imperfect form, but a real demonstration nevertheless."

*    *    *    *    *