Deciding To Be Fair

Voting on Amendment A continues this week. Seattle, Nevada, and West Jersey vote. These presbyteries will provide a challenge. Here is how they voted last time:

Voting Yes in 08-09:

• West Jersey 88-80

That will be an important presbytery to hold. Get out the vote!

Voting no in 08-09:

• Nevada 13-59
• Seattle 91-155

Odds are steep, but it would be nice to get a surprise flipper in one of those. In any case, don't think it cannot happen. Regardless, we can work to change minds and hearts in every presbytery by telling the truth.

Every. Vote. Counts.

Here is the article in a Pennsylvania paper about Presbyterians and the struggle for equality,

In York County and the region, Presbyterians take up gay clergy issue again.

Sigh.

It isn't the "gay clergy issue".

It's about ending discrimination against one category of people and allowing for the freedom of presbyteries to choose their leaders.

Anyway, according to the article:

Momentum nationwide is favoring the advocates of gay ordination, although the vote "might go down to the wire," editor Jack Haberer recently wrote on the blog of the independent Presbyterian Outlook magazine.

As of March 8 , 106 presbyteries had voted with 67 left to go, including Donegal and the nearby Carlisle presbytery, which narrowly rejected the change two years ago with 51 percent of the vote.

For ratification, a net total of at least nine presbyteries would need to switch from opposing gay ordination to favoring it. Thirteen have already done so, while one presbytery switched the other way.

If the remaining 67 presbyteries vote as they did two years ago, the amendment would pass by a narrow margin. Some votes have been close, so it's too early to predict the outcome, Haberer said in an interview.

"People aren't moving from pro to con, or con to pro, but passionate to dispassionate," Haberer said. "That's in part why conservatives have lost so much ground."

A factor in the shifting momentum could be the dozens of congregations that have left the denomination for smaller Presbyterian bodies, taking their conservative votes with them. Others suspect the influence of a culture increasingly tolerant of gays in the military, employment and other churches.

"I think it's also ... more people knowing gay and lesbian folks," said the Rev. Tricia Dykers Koenig , an organizer for the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, which supports gay ordination.

"More people are understanding the realities of being lesbian or gay. It's not just something people wake up and decide to try today."

That's right, Tricia! Presbyterians can, however, wake up and decide to try to be fair.

According to the above article, Donegal Presbytery will vote on Saturday. We are hoping Donegal will flip as it voted no last time, 63-87.

The tab so far on the way to 87 is 67-46.

Don't miss your chance to make history and vote for equality in the PC (USA)!

Stop Calling People Sinners--A Sermon

Stop Calling People Sinners
John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church
Elizabethton, Tennessee

March 13, 2011

Gospel of Jesus 8:1-11

On one occasion Jesus happens to recline at table, along with many toll collectors and sinners. (Remember, there were many of these people and they were all following him.) And whenever the Pharisees’ scholars saw him eating with sinners and toll collectors, they would raise the question: “What’s he doing eating with toll collectors and sinners?”

Jesus responds, “Since when do the able-bodied need a doctor? It’s the sick who do. I did not come to enlist religious folks but sinners!”

Now the toll collectors and sinners kept crowding around Jesus so they could hear him. But the Pharisees and the scholars would complain to each other, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

John’s disciples and the Pharisees were in the habit of fasting, and they come and ask him, “Why do the disciples of John fast, and the disciples of the Pharisees, but your disciples don’t?”

And Jesus said to them, “The groom’s friends can’t fast while the groom is around, can they? So long as the groom is around, you can’t expect them to fast.”

Jesus said, “Nobody drinks aged wine and immediately wants to drink young wine. Young wine is not poured into old wineskins, or they might break, and aged wine is not poured into a new wineskin, or it might spoil.”

Robert Funk and the Jesus Seminar, The Gospel of Jesus (Santa Rosa: Polebridge Press, 1999), p. 43, 45. Mark 2:15-17, 22; Matthew 9:10-15, 17; Luke 5:29-34, 37-39; 15:1-2

One of my favorite chapters in Robert Funk’s book, A Credible Jesus, is the one on celebration. Jesus preached about the kingdom of God or the domain of God. Funk calls it

“a fiction to be embraced on trust. To trust means to act as though something were true even when the evidence is ambiguous or marginal….Celebration is the by-product of that trust. In other words, celebration is the endorsement of trust. Celebration nourishes trust. Celebration is the heart of liturgy in God’s domain."p. 38

Later in the chapter Funk writes:

“The affliction of much contemporary religiosity, especially of the moralistic variety, is that it is humorless. If we cannot laugh at ourselves and even about the things we hold dear, then God’s reign has eluded us.” p. 41.

Jesus partied with sinners. He was criticized for doing so. He was called a glutton and a drunk and his companions were reviled with the generic label “toll collectors and whores.”

Jesus eats with them.

Jennifer Wright Knust in her new book Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire writes about the slut. She begins her book by recalling a painful time when she was in middle school. She was new to the school and the mean girls started calling her a slut. They made up stories about all the slutty things she supposedly did.

This is a common phenomenon in middle schools and high schools. She said in her case she was lucky. Her parents were supportive, reminding her that she wasn’t a slut and to hold her head high. By eighth grade the popular girls had moved on to someone else. She writes:

“Still, every time I hear people accuse one another of sexual misdeeds, I have to wonder: what is really going on here? My experience at twelve taught me that, when it comes to sex, people never simply report what others are doing or even what they themselves are doing. Those girls called me “slut” not because I was one—whatever that might mean—but because they were afraid of being labeled the slut themselves or, worse, of being asked to become one too. Sex, I have since discovered, can be used as a public weapon.” P. 2

While “slut” is the preferred weapon against girls, “queer” is the preferred weapon against boys. Misogyny and homophobia working in tandem. It is an old, old story that goes back to the Bible itself. For instance, we all know of two characters in the Bible, Queen Esther and Queen Jezebel. We know without even knowing the stories that Esther was good and Jezebel was bad.

However, when we do read their stories, we realize that they were far more alike than different. Both were strong women. Both wanted to hold on to their faith and to the integrity of its practice in a foreign land. Both defended their people. Both had to use their "feminine wiles to advance their goals." Knust, p. 15.

What was the difference between Jezebel and Esther? Jezebel played for the wrong team. The way to slander, dismiss, and ruin the opposing player in biblical times and in the present is to call her a slut. Then, as in Jezebel’s case, have her eaten by dogs. Sexualize your opponent.

Opponents to ordination, marriage equality, and civil rights try to make the argument about sex and so-called moral standards when it has nothing to do with sex. It is about equality and fairness. It is about treating people with dignity and decency and providing equal protection under the law. The tactic of sexualizing one’s opponent is as old as dirt.

With whom is Jesus eating? Who are these people? Who are these toll collectors, sinners, and prostitutes? Scholars have gone to work to identify these people. Robert Funk says that this collection of terms is a generic expression for outcasts and outsiders, for so-called riff raff. It was a way of dismissing Jesus and his mission.

Toll collectors collected taxes for the Roman government so no one liked them. It was a profession that was inherently dishonest. Not only did they work for the Romans, but they became rich doing it, by exploiting fellow Jews.

Prostitutes would be women and perhaps men who were sex workers. I wonder if that term was spread widely like “sluts” is in high school to refer to all women who kept company with Jesus. The most common way to slander your opponents is to sexualize them. Included in Jesus’ retinue were women of means who provided for his needs. Perhaps these were the ones slandered with the label "prostitute".

What about sinners?

From our vantage point, we tend to think that Pharisees are being hypocrites because they are calling people sinners as if they themselves were not sinners. One of the lessons we have learned from church is that we are all “sinners”. Even as there are some a little bit more sinful than I and thou.

But the word “sinner” probably means something more specific when it is used in the gospels.

From the perspective of Marcus Borg, “sinners” were the perpetually “unclean”. That means, they did not or would not keep the purity laws. These were the religious codes outlined in the Torah, especially Leviticus, for being “holy as God is holy”.

There were rules about preparing food and preparing utensils and preparing oneself. Impurity clung and was contagious. An observant Jew, a Pharisee, would eat with those who were also observant.

Eating with those who were ritually impure would make you be contaminated as well. The accusation that Jesus eats with sinners is an accusation that he is not a true teacher of the law. He doesn’t even observe the basics of ritual purity.

But there is another view. A book that has challenged my thinking on the “sinners” is James Crossley’s Why Christianity Happened. He argues that sinners were more than simply the outcasts or the ritually impure. They were not necessarily the poor, exploited, or uneducated. They were actually the exploiters. They were “the lawless rich”. Jesus was associating with people

“deemed to be exploitative, rich, unjust, and possibly in cahoots with the Romans and/or Antipas. Many might not have shown any signs of reforming.” P. 95.

Crossley writes that Jesus focused his mission on provoking these people into repentance and to observe the law on behalf of the poor. A “sinner” would be someone who is behaving beyond law and covenant.” Of course, Gentiles would be “sinners” by default. Jesus mission to Jewish “sinners” eventually resulted in the inclusion of Gentiles.

Jesus practiced an open table as opposed to a closed table. One can imagine that resulted in exciting meals. Imagine if you had at the table, Governor Walker of Wisconsin, film-maker Michael Moore, the owner of Massey Energy, an eco-feminist environmental activist, Rev. Pat Robertson, Richard Dawkins, Rachel Maddow, and Muammar Ghaddafi. That would be an interesting dinner for eight.

Imagine the criticism. Look who Jesus eats with! According to Crossley, Jesus wanted Jewish “sinners” to repent, that is change, and to do justice. His method was to connect with these sinners and change behaviors from within.

From the point of view of Jesus’ opponents, he was sleeping with the enemy. The danger would be that they would not repent but influence him. What happens when the idealistic young politician hobnobs with corporate executives? Maybe she changes the executives. Maybe the executives change her.

When I started this sermon I was under the impression that the Pharisees are snobs and hypocrites and they criticize Jesus for embracing the outcasts, the poor, the hoi poloi, and the untouchables. To some extent that is the case. But what really angers the Pharisees is that Jesus hangs out with oppressors of the poor, those who take advantage of the poor through usury and toll-collecting.

The biggest scandal regarding Jesus is not that he hung out with the poor, but that he hung out with the rich. That actually gives me a little bit of hope. I and perhaps everyone in this room, compared to the population of Earth, would fall into the “rich” category. I am glad that Jesus might come to our dinner parties.

While at our party, he would remind us to do justice. He might tell us a few parables such as the one about the rich man and Lazarus. Or maybe he would tell us the story of the fool who built bigger and bigger barns to hold all of his stuff that he wouldn’t enjoy because the grim reaper was to visit him that night. He might tell us not to worry about what we will eat or drink or what we will wear, but to live with the care of a sparrow.

Jesus held out hope for us. He held out hope that folks could change and that they could develop a conscience on behalf of justice and compassion. Apparently, he did have followers, wealthy and poor, who were inspired by his vision. Think of Zacchaeus the toll collector. Regardless of whether or not that story is historical, it does tell a memory of Jesus being able to transform the most hardened exploiter into a generous and compassionate man.

It is likely that Jesus was an itinerant without a home and in exchange for his wisdom and perhaps a healing or two, he would get a meal. The meal might have been kosher, maybe not. As Robert Funk writes,

“He seems willing enough to take a handout wherever he can get it.” P. 40.

He was grateful for every meal and for the company he shared when he ate and drank. Perhaps he felt that celebration was the way to transform hearts.

I titled the sermon, “Stop Calling People Sinners” and I think we should. The Church has caused a lot of pain by putting people into categories by deciding who is righteous and who isn’t. If Crossley is right, “sinner” probably applies more to me than anyone else.

In actuality, we are all human beings. We get one ride on this celestial ball. How will we ride it?

We could do a lot worse than Jesus who spent his time having meals, healing, making connections, and telling stories about something he called the kingdom of God, where no one is an outsider.

Amen.

Two Out of Three Ain't Bad

No flip today.

But Cascades and Grand Canyon held on to their YES from last time and Muskingum Valley improved its yes/no percentage even as it voted no.

• Cascades YES 106-39 (150-48-22 last time)
• Grand Canyon YES 84-53 (98-93 last time)
• Muskingum Valley No 44-58-1 (44-70-2 last time)
  

The reckoning so far is 67-46.

Twenty more to go!

Abingdon a No

Abingdon Presbytery voted 'no' on amendment A, 26-34 (closer though than last time).

Also, Covenant Network of Presbyterians reported that Noroeste voted No in February.

The tally is 65-45, I think, with Cascades, Grand Canyon, and Muskingum to vote Saturday.

Hoping for two holds and a flip!

Let's do this.

The Long Descent

Gasoline is $3.50 per gallon. State governments are turning unions into eunuchs. Oil-supplying countries are erupting in social chaos.

We are experiencing the beginning of the downward slide of Hubbert's curve.


It will be a long and bumpy ride. But...it can be interesting...





According to John Michael Greer, this ride won't end for a couple of centuries. We are on a Long Descent.






Greer in his book points out that we generally live by two myths, both of which are misleading: the myth of apocalypse and the myth of progress. We are not necessarily headed either for a huge collapse next month on one hand or for a Jetsons future (onward and upward forever) on the other.

Civilizations rise and fall. The industrial age took a long time to rise. It will take a long time to fall. Greer says that we need more stories to frame our reality other than apocalypse or progress. We need some better myths, some better stories to help us cope with this long descent.

I think Peak Oil is a spiritual problem. Since I became aware of it, I have been trying to find metaphors, symbols, and narratives that can help me make sense of it. I think that is my job. I don't think I have been very successful at it. But I keep trying.

I am grateful for Greer's book. I would hope that my religious colleagues might take up this interesting challenge. After all we are all about myths and stories and yet we (that is clergy) seem to be avoiding reality.

We need an Ash Wednesday service for civilization. We are dust and to dust we shall return. But in the meantime, we live life.

We have a little book group that meets Thursday mornings and we are going to read this book beginning in April. It is an open group and anyone is welcome to join us. Whether you can be with us or not, I think you will appreciate this book.

Janaia Donaldson found John Michael Greer and talked with him for Peak Moment.

This interview was recorded in December 2008. It is your midnight movie.

Ash Wednesday Sermon -- Impermanence

Impermanence
John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church
Elizabethton, Tennessee

Ash Wednesday
March 9, 2011

Remember, you are dust and to dust you shall return.

Throughout human history spiritual teachers and generally smart folks have been telling whoever would bother to listen that life is impermanent.

We are born. We fall ill. We grow old. We die.

Not only us, but every living thing and everything we build goes through a cycle of birth to death. It is not as if anyone would deny that, except it always seems to come as a surprise. It can happen to others, maybe, but if it happens to me or to the ones I love it is somehow unfair.

Maybe it is unfair. Nevertheless, it is life. Life is change.

Both Buddha and Jesus taught that if we cling to that which is impermanent, we will suffer needlessly and cause others to suffer needlessly as well.

Let it go they tell us. Let it go.

We will be happier if we accept our mortality and live in this moment. Our wise ancestors taught us this same thing. Those pithy sayings of common lore remind us of our mortality and the futility of agonizing over it. Sayings such as:

“There is no use crying over spilled milk.”

And…

“This, too, shall pass.”

Those are wise grandmotherly sayings that remind us to “keep our chin up” and get back to work because those “cows won’t milk themselves.”

Many religions and philosophies don’t think it is quite right or quite enough to say that life is impermanent and leave it there. So many religions have fostered doctrines and beliefs suggesting that something will be permanent, “God” perhaps or the immortal soul. Reincarnation and Resurrection are put forth as solutions to the impermanence of life.

I don’t find any of these speculations particularly convincing, but I don’t know. I don’t insist. Whatever the case, this life, this particular incarnation if you like, appears to be a one-time ride around the track. We may get another ride or we may not, but this is the one we are on now, so we ought to take notice of it.

I have to say, though, that I do need to be reminded of the simple truth of impermanence. When I am not cognizant of my mortality and when I am not reminded that I am impermanent, I tend to

• Take things (and people) for granted,
• Wish precious time away,
• Worry over things that will pass,
• Take myself too seriously,
• Not take Life seriously enough,
• Spend too much time on things that are not that important,
• Spend too little time on things that are important,
• And cry too much over spilled milk.
  

That is why the Ash Wednesday service and the imposition of ashes is a ritual I find helpful. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

Remember, you are dust and to dust you shall return.

Remembering that forces me to take responsibility for the breath I have now. There are things I cannot do much about.

I cannot stop myself from dying.
It will happen.
I can’t make myself live forever,
no matter what I believe.
I cannot stop myself from aging,
no matter how many anti-aging products I buy.
I cannot stop myself from becoming ill,
no matter how healthy I eat.

The best I can do is prolong life a little bit, and even then longevity for the most part is the result of genes and luck.

I can’t keep civilization on its endless quest for growth.
Everything that is born eventually dies including civilizations.
Then, something new is born. Such is life.

The mark of the cross on our forehead is a simple reminder of what is real. It is also a reminder of what we can do. It is a summons. It is a calling and an invitation to live with full awareness.

The Christian tradition has made much of the word, “sin.” It is not a bad concept, but it has been misused in my opinion. It has been used as a weapon against others in order to control or exclude them. We call others sinners or reduce sin to a list of peccadilloes that others commit or if we have internalized religious abuse, we turn on ourselves and heap on the guilt and shame.

I think of the word sin as a synonym for clinging or grasping. It isn’t something to beat ourselves up over, but it is something to name and to own. When we grasp on to those things that are impermanent, we are unable to love others as they are and life as it is. That is sin.

We grasp on to a way of life that is destructive to ourselves, others, and our planet because we want our lifestyle to last forever or at least as long as we are around. That is sin.

We cling to our possessions and worry that we won’t have enough and in so doing neglect the lives and needs of others. That is sin.

We all are in this together. Life is not easy. We learn as we go. We do things and we say things we wish we hadn’t. That is all part of clinging and grasping too. That is sin.

But if there is sin and grasping, there is grace. Our failings, real and perceived, are impermanent too. We can let them go.

Ash Wednesday is also a ritual of forgiveness. The ashes remind us that each day is new. This day won’t come around again. Grace allows us to let go of old stuff and embrace what is before us.

Ash Wednesday is an invitation to start again. It is an invitation to a courageous life. A life that knows it is not here forever and doesn’t need to be. A life

• that soaks it up,
• that embraces,
• that gives,
• that cherishes,
• that preserves,
• that loves,
• that blesses,
• that laughs.
  

Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.

And that is as it should be. Amen.

Ash Wednesday 2011

Today is Ash Wednesday.

We are having an Ash Wednesday service at FPC Elizabethton. You are invited. It will be a nice service with nice music, poetry, the imposition of ashes, and we will change the paraments from green to purple. The youth are helping with the liturgy.




I find this day to be helpful in honoring mortality and impermanence. I will offer a brief reflection on that topic.




We will hear some Kansas, hear a reading from the Bhagavad Gita, and honor the four elements (Earth, Water, Wind, and Fire).

Join us tonight at 7!

A Tale of Three Presbyteries

UPDATE! 10:08 pm

I thought they weren't going to vote, but New Brunswick voted and with flair, 88-10-3 in favor of Amendment A. So three YES votes today!!

Score? 65-44. Or maybe 65-43. Little unclear on that.

Here is the updated post!

Three presbyteries voted today.
Three presbyteries voted YES.

Transylvania a solid YES, 78-48.
Eastminster a nail-biter, YES 46-45.
New Brunswick a strong YES, 88-10-3.

Eastminster skidded in the wrong direction. That should have been an easy win as last time it had voted in favor of equality 60-39. This is a good reminder that every vote counts and that no presbytery can be taken for granted. We were lucky.

But a YES is a YES!

The score is 65-44.

Twenty-two more YESes to get to 87.

Thanks to all who worked hard in Transylvania, Eastminster and New Brunswick!

A good day!

Three presbyteries voted today.
Three presbyteries voted YES.

Observe a Holy Lent with the Jesus Seminar

The United Religions Initiative (URI) is hosting a series entitled "Our Neighbor's Faith". The first session is on Christianity this Sunday. I am one of the presenters so you'll be happy to know that the heretics will be well represented.

Later we will be hosted by our Muslim friends. Other faith traditions represented in our cooperation circle will also make presentations throughout the year. Here is an article about it in the Johnson City Press:

The Northeast Tennessee Co-operation Circle of United Religions Initiative will host the first of a series of conversations on Tri-Cities religions and faith traditions on March 13 from 4-5:30 p.m. at the Johnson City Public Library.

The first conversation will focus on Christianity, Lent and the Easter season.

According to a release, non-Christians are particularly invited to this neutral and information only event for learning of some of “Our Neighbor’s Christian Faith.” Christians of all denominations are invited.

The Rev. Hal Hutchinson of St. John’s Episcopal Church, 500 N. Roan St., will speak on Episcopalian beliefs and practices, and the Rev. John Shuck, of First Presbyterian Church, Elizabethton, will speak on the scholarly work of the Jesus Seminars. Other speakers also may be featured

Following the speakers there will be time for questions and answers, and an optional walk through at 5:15 of St. John’s sanctuary with explanation of the different areas of a Christian sanctuary.

Planned future URI conversations on “Our Neighbor’s Faith” will be on Buddhism, the summer solstice, United Nation’s World Peace Day and Islam’s most holy period, Ramadan.

URI is an internationally recognized interfaith network active in 78 countries with its global office in San Francisco. According to the release, the group seeks to cultivate and connect grass-roots change-makers across religious, cultural and geographic boundaries, harnessing their collective power to take on religiously motivated violence and social, economic and environmental crises that destabilize regions and contribute to poverty.

Scraps for Dogs--A Sermon

Here is the sermon for today. We played some good tunes that folks had requested for "Music to Live By."

Any Major Dude, Steely Dan
Old Friends, Mary McCaslin
All This Joy, John Denver

Scraps for the Dogs
John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church
Elizabethton, Tennessee

March 6, 2011

Gospel of Jesus 5:21-28

From there he got up and went away to the regions of Tyre.

Whenever he visited a house he wanted no one to know, but he could not escape notice. Instead, suddenly a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him, and came and fell down at this feet. The woman was a Greek, by race a Phoenician from Syria. And she started asking him to drive the demon out of her daughter.

He responded to her like this:
“Let the children be fed first,
since it isn’t good to take bread out of children’s mouths and throw it to the dogs!”

But as a rejoinder she says to him,
“Sir, even the dogs under the table get to eat scraps dropped by children!”

Then he said to her, “For that retort, be on your way, the demon has come out of your daughter.”

She returned home and found the child lying on the bed and the demon gone.

Robert Funk and the Jesus Seminar, The Gospel of Jesus (Santa Rosa: Polebridge Press, 1999), p. 35. Mark 7:24-30; Matthew 15:21-28.

Any major dude with half a heart surely will tell you my friend
Any minor world that breaks apart falls together again
When the demon is at your door
In the morning it won't be there no more
Any major dude will tell you
--Steely Dan

This story has been a bit of an embarrassment for the church.

Jesus, I mean really!? We have written songs about you.

Jesus loves the little children,
all the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white,
They are precious in his sight.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

Well, except for those children you call dogs.

In my first church a woman was very upset with me after I preached on this text. How could I accuse Jesus of being prejudiced? He’s Jesus. He is a major dude. He’s the man, the Son of God. He didn’t call this woman a dog!

Well, according to this text, yes he did.

Maybe he means it affectionately. We like our dogs. They are our pets. They are like children to us. I don't think that is the case here. Jesus is reported to have said to her:

“It is not right to take food out of the children’s mouths and throw it to the dogs!”

That definitely would be an insult.

Most commenters on this text come to Jesus’s rescue as any good press secretary would.

“Of course, Jesus didn’t mean to call this woman and her daughter, ‘dogs’”. That is just a figure of speech. He was just using a phrase that other prejudiced people use to make a point. What Jesus was doing was testing her faith. See?”

The Jesus Seminar had a struggle with this story too. 57% voted red or pink that this story had an historical core, largely because it was an embarrassing story. It is not likely that early Christian evangelists would invent it. The Jesus Seminar thought that Jesus probably did have a conversation with a Gentile woman and that they did exchange witticisms. The idea of an actual demon leaving her child would be in the realm of legend. Yet in this pre-modern society steeped in supernaturalism, demons were believed to be the cause of many ailments. Jesus likely was considered to be an exorcist and a healer. The story as a whole was regarded by the Fellows as pink but the specific details couldn’t get more than a gray rating.

The interesting part of this story to me is that Jesus had his mind changed by his encounter with another human being. I think this is a story of the humanity of another shattering our prejudice. The church has had a theological problem because it assumes that Jesus was perfect in every way. So he couldn’t possibly be prejudiced since that is a bad thing. So we have to make an excuse or explain this obvious behavior away.

But what if we don’t?

What if we don’t let Jesus off the hook?

What if we allow that Jesus was a human being and that he had inconsistencies, warts, clay feet, and blind spots like all of us do?

What if we allow him to be prejudiced as all human beings are?

Personally, I think it makes him much more interesting.

It also allows the story to speak to us in a different way.

The thing about prejudice is that no one has the corner on the market. We all have prejudice towards people to some degree. We all prejudge based on our assumptions about others. Prejudice is the flip side of taxonomy. It is helpful in life to categorize, to make sense of our world. We put things and people in categories and classes. We name and we label.

We do this for the purpose of survival. Those who are not kin or not a member of our tribe are potentially dangerous. There are times when, for the survival of the tribe, that boundaries need to be reinforced building upon the edifice of prejudice.

Legends, fables, pseudo-science, and jokes, are created to reinforce these barriers of prejudice. We need to justify our views and our actions toward these "others". These people are inferior. They don’t deserve the same treatment that we give to our own kind.

Usually it comes down to justifying who gets access to the limited goods that are available as illustrated by Jesus's comment:

“Let the children be fed first, since it isn’t good to take bread out of children’s mouths and throw it to the dogs!”

Access to marriage, to employment, insurance, ordination, all of these things that are contentious within civil and ecclesiastical circles have to do with goods and power. That is why prejudice is such an important and widely used tool in the hands of those with power. It provides a rationale for not sharing with the other.

If you are in a position of power, you want to keep the prejudice stirred up. Especially in times of perceived scarcity, we can see the powerful using prejudice to pit one group against another.

When the Tennessee legislature is in session, I never lack for sermon illustrations. The Tennessee legislature is a comedian’s and a preacher’s best friend. I said the same about the Montana legislature when I lived there. It isn’t a West/South thing. Folks is folks all over.

Here is the illustration for today. A legislator from Murfreesboro thinks it will be important for Tennessee to make the practice of Sharia Law illegal.

The Sharia Law is religious literature and law that has developed over the centuries and is interpreted and applied to life by those who practice the Muslim faith. It is similar to the Torah and the Talmud for Jews. It is similar to the Gospel and the Creeds for Christians.

Obviously, civil laws trump religious codes. So if you are going to sell your daughter as a slave according to the instructions of Deuteronomy, a book Presbyterians regard as “Word of God”, you might meet resistance from local law enforcement. The point is you don't need a civil law to make following Deuteronomy illegal. The same is true for Sharia Law.

Nevertheless, according to today’s Johnson City Press:

A bill introduced in the state Senate by Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, would punish organizations that follow Sharia as Class B felons, subject to a fine and a prison term of up to 15 years.

Apparently the concern is that unless we do this before you can shake a stick all Tennesseans will turn into Muslims. All these little Baptist churches will suddenly become The Free Will Church of Muhammad. The message on the church signboards will say things like:

The Qur’an is the Only Book God Ever Wrote.
Allahu Akbar.

Now I am showing my own prejudice aren’t I?

The legislator wants us to be concerned.
There is a big danger in Tennessee.
The Muslims are going to take over.

The Johnson City Press talked with Taneem Aziz and reported on that conversation in today’s paper. Taneem is the president of the Muslim Community of Northeast Tennessee. They have a prayer center in Johnson City. Taneem patiently explained what Sharia Law is as well as the dangerous practices he participates in such as praying, being generous, and honoring parents.

Taneem nailed it though. When asked what this bill in the legislature is all about he said it is “politics as usual”. He said:

“It’s politicians getting ready for 2012….They’re looking at ways to ... well, I call it the politics of fear.”

The politics of fear.
The politics of prejudice.

How do we deal with that fear?
How do we deal with prejudice?

The story of Jesus and the Phoenician woman is a story of how that is done. The important figure here is this woman. Her reply is a classic lesson in non-violent creative confrontation.

She refuses to be snubbed.
She rejects the dehumanization.
She doesn’t bow her head and slink away.
Also, she refuses to return insult for insult.

She knows that the power relationship is in Jesus’s favor, so

• rather than take that power imbalance head-on,
• rather than raise her voice in righteous indignation,
• rather than call Jesus names as he called her names,
  

she uses her wits.

She disarms Jesus. She doesn’t act in an expected way. If she responded in an angry way or returned his insult with another insult, Jesus could have dismissed her by saying,

“See, these angry dogs are all the same.”

She pretends, for the sake of argument, to agree with his assessment that the “dogs” shouldn’t take the children’s food. And she adds,

…but even the dogs get the scraps from the children’s table.

What can Jesus do to that?
He has been taken off balance.
Jesus knows this woman doesn’t think of herself as a dog.
He knows that she is not accepting his characterization for herself.
She demonstrates to Jesus that she has a brain.
She has forced Jesus to recognize her humanity.
She shows herself to be capable and cool.

Prejudice loses its power when we recognize the humanity of the other, or if we are a victim of prejudice, when we show our humanity to the other.

Suddenly there is recognition. I can imagine Jesus saying to himself:

She and I have much more in common than I thought.
She is one of my own, too.

I want to say one more thing.

I want to talk about the demon.

After the woman creatively and non-violently confronted Jesus, Jesus responded:

“For that retort, be on your way, the demon has come out of your daughter.”

I have to think that Jesus was impressed. Impressed enough to change his mind and to recognize that something powerful had just happened in that exchange.

The story concludes:

She returned home and found the child lying on the bed and the demon gone.

Demons in the gospels function on a number of different levels. The least interesting level is that they are supernatural beings. They are more interesting in these stories as symbols of social dis-ease. They are symbols of oppression, injustice, and inequality. I am thinking of the demon called Legion that left the man and went into the pigs earlier in Mark’s Gospel. That is an obvious reference to the occupation of the land by the Roman military.

In this morning’s case, the demon that afflicts this woman's daughter is the demon of prejudice and enmity between the two ethnic groups that Jesus and the woman represent. If these people are going to form any common resistance, they are going to need to move beyond their tribalism. They are going to need to throw away these old narratives and come up with some new ones. They will need to recognize and appreciate each other as human beings, not as dogs. When they do, the demon vanishes.

That is the story I take home. The demons of racism, homophobia, sexism, religious intolerance, and all forms of prejudice will leave us, “in the morning, it won’t be there no more”, when we, like the woman, stand up, use our wits, and show our true colors.

Now as far as Jesus is concerned,
he is still my hero.

It isn’t because he was perfect.
It is because he could change.