Oh really, O'Reilly?

Radio and TV host Bill O'Reilly is in hot water for saying what some are claiming were racially insensitive remarks.

He was talking about a rather pleasant experience he had during recent visit to a restaurant in Harlem named Sylvia's. Here's a quote from the Washington Post article:

"There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, '[Expletive], I want some more ice tea.' It was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there ordering and having fun and there wasn't any craziness at all."

O'Reilly seemed to be trying to be positive and emphasize the fact that in spite of what a lot of white America might think most of black America is civilized. But how he said that came off sounding a lot like a back-handed compliment. No craziness? In a black restaurant? Oh really, O'Reilly?

What he said was silly. Worse, it hurt people. He deserves to be told that. Straight up.

He does not deserve to be harshly chastened however. If we are going to get serious and start having some frank dialogue about race in this country (which I applaud O'Reilly for attempting to do) then we are going to have to give each other some grace. All we have are these words and we are trying to put very complicated and very pregnant feelings into those words. If we continue to jump on someone the moment they say something that isn't quite right then we will soon discover that most people will not feel like its worth the risk of talking at all.

That's the tragedy of political correctness. It started off as a boundary for what is exceptable in discussion but ended up eliminating discussion altogether. I hear it all the time. Someone will say, "Well, you know these days you gotta be PC." And they quit right there. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The truth is most people don't know how to be PC. They're not PC at home around the dinner table with their kids. They're not PC in bed with their spouses. So when they get out in the public sphere and something heated like race comes up they simply don't know how to talk. And that's the end of discussion.

And the end of reconciliation also.

So, let's tell Bill we don't like what he said. But let's don't tell him to shut up.

Sermon: The Lost and the Found

I haven't posted in a while. Sometimes I think I'm just going to quit this thing. Then I'll get a random email from someone saying I should write more or an old friend will call out ofthe blue and say they found me here and enjoy reading about my life. That gets me to wondering about calling - like does this thing honor God and edify others enough to keep putting blood, sweat and tears in? If it does then I probably ought to pour more in. So that' were I am today.

Anyway, today I am posting a sermon I preached a couple of Sundays ago. I think it says a lot of important things about church and community and God's longing desire for the lost. I pray that it does indeed honor God and edify someone.

Sometime last month I marked my fourteenth anniversary of being a Christian. It’s never really a big deal. The day just comes and goes with little fanfare. No note from Billy Graham. No card from the Pope. Jesus doesn’t come down and take me out to eat at the Outback Steakhouse.

Nevertheless, sometime around the first of August each year I remember back to when I made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and my life changed forever. It was a great week at Frontier Ranch Camp just outside Buena Vista, Colorado. We were in the Rockies and I don’t know, perhaps it was the Rocky Mountain high, but I fell in love seven times that week. That’s once per day. That’s enough to give even Bill Jocelyn a run for his money. The first six didn’t work out — thankfully. But the seventh did. The last night of camp we had a party and dozens of kids stood up to share about what happened to them at camp. I stood up too. “This week I fell in love with Jesus Christ,” I said. When it was all done I remember what the camp preacher said to us. “Tonight,” he said, “the angels in heaven are rejoicing.”

I remember exactly what it was that got me that week. I’ve told you before. I was circled up with a group of guys from my hometown and Scott Travis our leader had us reading a passage from the book of Matthew. Jesus was having dinner at a tax collector’s house and there were all kinds of people there who didn’t quite have their lives together. The Pharisees, the religious authorities of the day, took exception. They began to grumble. “This man eats with tax collectors and sinners,” they said. Jesus discerned their thoughts. “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick,” he told them. “I have come to call not the righteous, but the sinners.” I remember reading that and then looking up with a grin on my face and twinkle in my eye. “Jesus has come to call sinners? That means he’s has come to call me.”

The gospel got me that night and though I have read the story of Jesus over and over it has been getting me again and again over these last fourteen years. The gospel got me in a new and fresh way this week and I want to share that experience with you.

Today’s story sounds a lot like that story in Matthew that I read for the first time in that circle fourteen years ago. Luke says that Jesus had amassed large crowds that among those gathered around Jesus were some tax collectors and so-called sinners. Again the religious leaders began to grumble. “This man not only has attracted sinners and tax collectors, but he lets them stay. He welcomes them.”

This time Jesus did not answer with a story about doctors coming for the sick. Instead he answered them with two parables. The first is a story about a lost sheep. “Which of you,” Jesus said, “if he had a hundred sheep and lost one, would not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go in search of the one that was lost. And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices and returns home. Upon his return, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me,’ for I have found my sheep that was lost.”

Then Jesus tells his followers a second parable. It is a parable of a woman with ten silver drachma coins, who loses one. Jesus says, “Will this woman not light a lamp and sweep the house and search diligently until she finds that lost coin?” And when she finds it, Jesus says, she runs and calls all the neighbors. “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I have lost.”

I read these stories and think, “My goodness, these people Jesus dreams up really need help.” First the woman. I see her lighting the lamp and sweeping the floor and digging inside the trash. She’s really quite eccentric. Finally she puts her hand down one of the corners of the couch. “Is that my lost drachma? No that’s a stale Post-Toastie flake.” Then, when she finally finds the coin she loses her sense. She runs and tells all the neighbors in her apartment. Knock-knock-knock. “Hey. . .I just want you to know that I lost my drachma, but now. . .I found it.” Finally she throws a party and gives everyone a t-shirt. “Shirley found her drachma, and all I got was this stupid t-shirt.”

And the shepherd. The one who leaves the ninety-nine others in the wilderness, where they are not quite safe and sound, and goes out to look for the one that is lost. He leaves ninety-nine to go and find one? Is he just really remedial in math or is he absolutely crazy?

Crazy I think is the answer. They’re both crazy. And that is Jesus’ point. If a woman can be this crazy about one lost coin, and a shepherd this crazy about one lost sheep, then how much more crazy is God about one lost child? And so, Jesus says, the angels rejoice more over one sinner who repents, then over ninety-nine who need no repentance.

Jesus is saying something really profound about the economy of God’s kingdom. There is an incredible extravagance about Jesus, the good shepherd, who leaves the found in order to go and find the lost. That means we as a church should do some pretty extravagant things for those among us who are on the margins. Yet here is where the gospel got me this week. I have always read that to mean that there are times when one is more important than the rest. But it is not so much that the one lost sheep is greater than the other ninety-nine, but that rather ninety-nine is less than the one hundred. What Jesus is trying to communicate about the kingdom of God is that it as a place where everyone is valued, not because they are special or good or deserving, but because they belong.

Belonging to each other is not always easy. On Tuesday I was talking with a friend in our church and he described the people here as a bunch of individual puzzle pieces. I imagined large jigsaw puzzle spread across a table in someone’s living room. There were all kinds of pieces of assorted sizes and shapes, yet they came together seamlessly. Where one zigged the other zagged, where one curved in another curved out. In my mind I could see one breathtakingly beautiful picture of Jesus Christ. He was carrying a lamb upon his shoulders and an angelic chorus was welcoming them both home. It was perfect. But before I could fully take it all in my friend added an odd twist. “Except,” he said, “all of the pieces are from separate puzzles.” The picture suddenly became a lot less breathtaking. It was . Very postmodern, but not exactly perfect. And then it hit me, that was just the point. This church, the United Church of Colchester, is really just a big box of spare puzzle pieces. The lost and found of puzzle pieces. Put us together and we’re not very beautiful. Certainly not perfect. We’re really not sure how we ended up here really. But we are here, and that’s the important thing. We’re all here — together.

We come from different backgrounds and different viewpoints. Today in these pews next to you there are conservatives and there are liberals. Some voted for Bernie and some voted for Rich. And some didn’t vote at all. Some of us here were born and raised Baptist. Some are died in the wool Congregationalists. I think of Joyce Sweeney who had me and Irie over to dinner the first week we were in town. “Now, Joyce,” I said, “You were a Congregationalist is that right?” “I still am a Congregationalist,” she said. OKAY. There are also Episcopalians here. And Catholics. And some who wouldn’t consider themselves anything, but who are just interested in this man Jesus, who welcomed sinners.

You know what this all means don’t you? If that image is at all true it means we’re headed for T-R-O-U-B-L-E. We aren’t all going to get along always. Even your pastor is going to have a hard time coming together with some of these pieces he has wound up in the same box with.

Pastor Robert McCracken told of the young minister who could not make peace with one woman in the church. The two argued about everything from the meaning of justification by faith alone to the color of the altar cloth. Finally, when she just quit returning his phone calls, he decided to pay her a visit at home. He knocked three times and could hear her making all sorts of noise inside, but the door remained shut. Finally the young minister decided to peek through the keyhole and there was another eyeball staring right back. “Well, Mrs. Smith,” the minister said, “I see we have finally come eye to eye on something.”

We aren't always going to see eye to eye. Earlier this month I was in a meeting here at church. Because Irie had class I had Gabby and unfortunately I was unable to coordinate a sitter for the night so Gabby had to tag along. As everyone piled in I told each of them, “Tonight, we are kid friendly.” We were real friendly until about halfway through the meeting I said something that someone disagreed with. A semi-tense cloud fell over the rest of the meeting. Things suddenly felt about fifteen degrees cooler in the room. It seemed like the perfect prescription for global warming.

After the meeting adjurned I followed the person who had disagreed with me out to the door. We both argued our points for awhile when suddenly we heard a loud scream from within my study. It was Gabs. “Well,” I said, “I gotta go.” I took a half dozen steps toward the study, paused at the door, and turned back around. Tears flushed to my eyes. “I want you to know that I love you,” I said. “I really do love you.”

We embraced and then I made my way back toward the screams. I walked into the study and there Gabs was standing up on the conference table, completely bottomless. A host of church people were huddled over her working on changing her diaper. Tears were flowing in her eyes too. And then the person with whom I had disagreed came in also.

So there we were. The old and the young. The saints and sinners. The Pharisees and the tax collectors. The lost and the found. We were all there. Ninety-nine plus one. We were all there. And we all belonged there together.

And the angels were rejoicing.