Branded: So You're Baptized. Now What?

Branded: So You're Baptized. Now What?
Franktown UMC
January 15, 2011

Last weekend I was with the youth in Ocean City for a big retreat. It was great fun. The Renners were very gracious in offering us their condo. The weather was great. We saw some great bands. And we learned some sign language.

Reggie Kapps was the main speaker. Very dynamic. Very funny. Very powerful. And in one of his sessions he was telling the story of Genesis chapter 3 - the Adam and Eve story in which God tells them - "If you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will die." Reggie really wanted to emphasize this point, so he kept saying, "You will die." He got us to say it with him. "You will die."

After repeating it a few times he looked over at the sign language interpreter who was up on the stage for the whole session and he saw that she had been repeating it right along with us - "You will die." So he got us to do the sign language with her. "You will die." Try it with me - "You...will...die." We've been doing it around the house all week. Somebody does something we don't like - "You will die."

It's a good place for us to start this morning because today we're going to continue our "Branded" series and we're going to talk about baptism again and the first thing that I have to say is - "You will die." Wow. Really?

Now just a refresher on what this series is all about and why we're calling it "Branded." I talked about wearing my cowboy boots as I was praying about this and some of you were singing the theme song to the old Chuck Connors TV show last week when you heard the title: "Branded. Scorned as the one who ran. What do you do when you're branded and you know you're a man?" In the TV show Connors plays a disgraced cavalry soldier who is branded with the label of being a coward. His saber is broken in two and he carries that broken saber as a symbol of what others have come to think of him.

Some of you know what it's like to be marked like that. To have other people label you and to treat you as that label instead of as a person. Maybe you've been through a divorce and you've felt like that has marked you. After the sermon last week, somebody told me that that's how she had felt following her divorce - like some scarlet 'D' was marked on her for all to see.

What we talked about last week, however, was how the brand of our baptism marks us in the most important way. It shows us how God claims us. How God reveals to us the reality of who we are. How it gives us our identity. I showed the clip from the movie Toy Story in which Buzz Lightyear discovers that he is not a space ranger but a toy and how that was a crushing blow to his self-image. Then he looked at his foot and there was his owner's name - Andy - written right there on his boot. Then last Sunday night, Lena Gonzalez came to Bible Study and showed us that she had written 'God' on the bottom of her boot. Baptism reminds us that God has a claim on us and the love of God in baptism is a gift that gives us our identity.

Today, though, I want to talk about what it means for us to claim that gift. Why is it important that we accept the gift of baptism and what do we do with it? And the reason it is important is because - "You will die."

Let's start with another movie, though. In thinking about branding, I started to think about the ways that we brand ourselves. So I asked for some tattoo stories...

[Video clip]

Tattoos are not really about putting something on our skin. Tattoos are really about something going on inside of us. They are about an inward journey. Sometimes those journeys are about remembrance and desire and a reaching for something more. Sometimes, though, those journeys are just about pain. They're about drawing blood and letting the world see what is going on. When young people cut themselves it is often about a sense that they are not right...that the world is not right...that there is so much brokenness and hurt that they have to give it some kind of physical expression. When all we see is pain, the voice we hear is the one that says, "You will die."

So let us hear a new word from Paul. We read from Paul's letter to the Romans this morning. And Paul has a hopeful word. Did you hear it? Paul does not say, "You will die." No, what Paul says is, "You are dead." Doesn't that sound hopeful?

Paul is writing to the new Christian churches because they are all trying to get their minds wrapped around what believing in Jesus means. They didn't have youth rallies and a lot of hymns or even a New Testament to tell them about Jesus. So they often got it wrong. Especially the grace side of things. Surely we have to do something to earn God's love. Surely there is a step we have to take to get God's grace.

Paul says, 'No.' What we have, on our side of the equation, is nothing like merit. Nothing like faithfulness. Nothing we can show that gives us a claim on God's love. What we have...what is ours to offer...is brokenness and sin. And what is the fruit of sin? What does sin merit from God? Condemnation. Rejection. Repudiation. God is great. God is good. God is righteous. God is holy. God doesn't have any truck with sin. God doesn't fool around with ungodliness. That's why it's called ungodliness. And we live in an ungodly world and we lead ungodly lives. So what should we expect from God? "You will die." And what does God give us? "Jesus loves you." God gives us grace.

So when Paul says this, the immediate response is - O.K. We sin and God gives us grace. And God's grace is sufficient to cover every sin. So that means the more sin there is the more opportunity God has to offer grace. So why don't we sin more so God has more opportunity to be God? Makes sense doesn't it?

That's how Paul begins this sixth chapter of Romans - with this question hanging in the air. And his response is "Me genoito!," which is Greek for "Are you crazy?" Once you know that sin equals death you can't go back to believing that it's a harmless thing. I mean, you can. There are plenty of baptized Christians who have gone astray. Some of them are named you and me. But when we do that we are not in our right minds. Being baptized in Christ, we have been exposed to the news about who we really are and what the world really is. We have been immersed in grace. When we sin we're just being stupid - putting our fingers in our ears and pretending that God doesn't care.

We can make God out to be the big, bad authority figure when we do that. We can say, "God doesn't want us to have any fun. God is just sitting there with a willow switch waiting to whack us when we do something God doesn't like." But the reality is God is standing there watching us beat ourselves with willow switches when we sin. We can blame God, but it's always been the case that we do the greatest damage to ourselves.

Stephen Dobyns wrote a poem on the Garden of Eden story that ends with the line: "Kicked out, kicked out. Who could believe that lie? We'd begged him for a chance to make it on our own."* Dobyns is playing with the notion that perhaps being kicked out of the garden is not the best explanation for what happened. We can push the blame off on God, but it's really we who want to try to make it own, apart from God's grace.

But here's the thing that's most amusing. Dead people don't have the power to harm God and when we sin we are dead. Do you remember that this was the good news? It's not that "You will die." The truth is "You are dead."

Romans chapter 6 verse 1 - "What then should we say? Are we to persist in sin in order that grace may increase? Me genoito! Are you crazy? We are dead to sin - how can we still live in it? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized to death?" You were baptized to death. You gave your life to Jesus, he sucked you under the waters of baptism, you drowned, you died. I know it seems all sweetness and light when we take a baby in those beautiful white gowns and douse him with water...when we lay hands on her head...but when we give that baby to Jesus...we are baptizing her to death.

Jesus did not come to walk the earth so that we could keep on playing our pretend games. Jesus did not go to the cross so that we could mess around like life doesn't matter. Jesus didn't put on a crown of thorns so that we could fritter away our potential on things that do not last. Jesus came to baptize broken people to death.

The poet Franz Wright was baptized as an adult after facing down many demons in his life. In his poem "Baptism," he writes about how the broken person he was is dead:
I drowned him
and he's not coming back.  Look
he has a new life
a new name
now
which no one knows except 
the one who gave it.**
This is the good news - that we are dead, but, look, "he has a new life, a new name now, which no one knows except the one who gave it."

Paul's way of putting this is that we were buried with Christ through baptism into his death so that we also might walk in newness of life, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. You were baptized to death so that you can walk in newness of life. You were baptized to death so that you can live.

Then Paul says in verse 5, "If, being united with him, we are dead"...that word 'united' there is an agricultural term. "Sumphutoi" is the word. It's what you say when you're planting seeds together in the ground. They are "sumphutoi." That are united in death. The seeds go down into the earth and you cover them up and you think that they're gone for good. But something happens down there in the earth. Some mysterious power brings something forth from those dead, inert seeds. Some new life raises up from the grave. Some new shoots begin to spring up. Some new growth breaks through the earth. Something green is growing.

And it doesn't happen all at once. It's not a full grown plant. It's got a lot of growth ahead of it. It will have to brave the wind and the heat. It will have good days and bad days. It will still have to depend on having the nutrients it needs. The water it needs. The sun it needs. But those seeds that were dead. They are alive. And there is no more miraculous thing on earth than when dead things come back alive.

If you are baptized into Jesus, you are dead. Maybe you forgot that. Maybe you're acting like a zombie and wandering around in some sort of half-life where you forgot that you are dead and then all of your actions have the character of sin. But you have been baptized to death so that you can truly live. The grace that claimed you is yours for the having. You are fearfully and wonderfully made and the Love that made you is waiting for you to claim it. The evil of this world...the sin in your life...has no power over this Love.

Every day that you are alive you have this Love - not because you earned it, but because God gives it. But every day you have this Love, you have the opportunity to live it. You are branded. Thanks be to God.

*from a Facebook post by Mary Karr, 14 Dec 2011. She goes on to say, "Talk about hubris. The human arrogance of projecting onto the place where we imagine God sits all our own fear, malice, dread and loathing."
**"Baptism," Franz Wright, in Walking to Martha's Vineyard [Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2003], pp. 44-45.

Body, Mind and Spirit: Engaging Psychology

Last week we began a series on faith and science and I have to say, it looks like we were ready for it. I have received a lot of comments, most of them appreciative, which told me that this is a topic that is just below the surface for many of us. We live our lives in a world formed by the insights of science and with commitments born of our faith and there are many people on both sides who tell us that we can’t let the two talk to each other. We’re told that they don’t get along. But as I said last week, I think they have to and we ought not to be afraid to create space for that to happen.

So last week we looked at what astrophysicists and biological anthropologists are telling us about the origin of the universe and the origin of the human species. We learned that in the grand scale of things human beings can seem very small, but we were also reminded of God’s promise. Even though we have come so late to the universe and to the earth…even so we have been chosen to play a unique role in the drama of creation and salvation.

Today we’re going to look at a different branch of science. Psychology and neuroscience are making incredible discoveries about the nature of the brain and the way that our thought processes work. They are challenging the notion of who we are as human beings and how we operate, but they are also opening up new frontiers for research into things like prayer and meditation. What does Christian faith tell us about who we are and how might it intersect with this emerging science? It sounds like the intro to a TV show, but it’s really just the intro to this sermon.

I want to start, though, with a picture of mental turmoil from the gospels. In the reading from Mark for today, we see Jesus confronting a man who is, as we would say today, out of his mind. Mark says that he has an unclean spirit. That sounds like a pretty archaic description to us. Nobody goes to the doctor these days and is told, “Well, I’m afraid to say you’ve got an unclean spirit there, Alex. We’re going to have to send you over to Rayfield’s for a prescription of Penicillin to take care of that.” Doesn’t happen.

So how would we describe it? The man tears his clothes. He’s got incredible strength. He breaks the chains that people put on him to restrain him. He lives among the tombs, an interesting place to hang out, and wanders along the mountains. He howls and does injury to himself with stones. And when Jesus confronts him he, or the unclean spirit within him, says, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” So what’s your diagnosis? Schizophrenia? Multiple personality disorder? Dementia? A little bit of depression thrown in? Let’s pull out the DSM-IV, the manual of psychiatric disorders, and see if we can’t put a name on this.

Jesus, of course, doesn’t do this. He recognizes that there is a spiritual battle going on and so he deals with the man on that level. He calls the demons out and sends them into a nearby herd of pigs that go racing over the cliff side to their death. The man is restored in his mind and, maybe just as importantly, he is restored in his relationships as the villagers come out and find him “clothed and in his right mind.” They’re scared at first and the healed man wants to leave with Jesus, but Jesus tells him to stay and to tell his friends what God has done for him.

Now what are we to say to this story? Is this a condemnation of how we address mental health concerns in our day? Should we use pigs instead of Prozac? Exorcism instead of Excedrin? (Actually I don’t think many psychiatrists are prescribing Excedrin for unclean spirits these days but it sounds better with exorcism, so we’ll go with it.)

It seems to me that at least some branches of psychology and psychotherapy have been evolving towards a model of healing that bears some resemblance to what Jesus was doing. It doesn’t talk in the same language that Jesus did, but it recognizes that often what is really troubling us is below the surface and maybe beyond our ability to consciously comprehend. And after a long period when industrialization and mechanization and urbanization and social dislocation and secularization had disrupted and uprooted people in Western cultures, psychotherapy developed as a way to give people what they critically needed – someone to talk to. A relationship with someone who really listened and tried to understand what was happening. What was the Gerasene demoniac except a hopelessly dislocated guy who had lost all of his connections to other people and to God? And what did Jesus do except to confront him where he most needed to be confronted – to comprehend what was going on at the level of his spirit and to restore his relationships?

It’s hard for us to remember that psychology, in its modern form, is a fairly young science. It’s only been a little over a century since Sigmund Freud started to spin out his theories of psychotherapy but think how influential he has been. Even though his method has been fairly thoroughly overhauled and in some ways discredited, all I have to do is say psychotherapy and many of us get images of a therapist with a pad sitting by a patient lying on a couch asking him or her to share their dreams and talk about their mother. It’s the stereotype of Freud’s method, but he touched on something deep. We do have a powerful subconscious. We are not always aware of why we do things. We do have drives – for power, for sex, for acceptance, for survival – that cause us to do things we’re not even aware we are doing.

Actually Freud was onto something that the Apostle Paul had observed almost 19 centuries before. Paul said, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” [Romans 7:15] Paul called it sin working in his flesh. Freud called it the subconscious but they were working in the same ballpark.

Over the last century there were others who advanced the field of psychology. Carl Jung saw the deep power in the archetypes of our ancient stories and in religious symbols and how these archetypes worked their way into our dreams. Jungian psychology introduced deep storytelling into the field. Then there were cognitive-behavioral therapies that emphasize analyzing our thoughts because, the theory goes, these control our feelings and behaviors, not external circumstances. And along the way hosts of other methods – transactional analysis, hypnotherapy, family systems theory, primal scream therapy. All of them pick up on some area of what it means to be a human with this mysterious thing we call a brain.

Psychiatry also contributes a huge number of drugs that have been very helpful to very many people. But we still don’t understand exactly how they work. By trial and error we have found some helpful things, but we have a long way to go to try and understand it all.

Let me be very clear about this. I don’t lift up all these things to say – “Wow, look what a junkyard this history of psychology has been.” I not only believe that there is value in the insights of psychology, I have had some of my most profound moments of transformation and some of my deepest spiritual experiences as a result of being in therapy. As someone who has struggled with depression in the past, I know how valuable the therapeutic process has been for helping me recognize it and deal with it. It should not be a sign of weakness or shame to seek help when we are hurting in our minds, just like it is no weaknesses to see a doctor about a strange pain in your chest.

Here’s the thing, though. I believe psychology works for us because it offers us two things that the modern world has taken away – it affirms the worth and importance of the inner life and it gives us a relationship of deep listening. These are also things that the church cares about and which the church can offer. In fact, we can offer this and something more – an understanding that our lives are only rightly ordered when they are directed toward God.

The first psychologist was actually not Sigmund Freud. It was Augustine of Hippo, the great Christian thinker of the 4^th century. Augustine knew that what was going on in his soul was the most important thing he could listen to. He knew that what the desires of his heart and his body were deep and inescapable and they weren’t to be denied but redirected toward God. And the way they get redirected is to fall in love with God.

Augustine was drawn to Paul’s description of who we are as described in the letter to the Romans. In chapter 12 of that letter, in the section we read for today, Paul says, “Do not be formed by this age, but rather be transformed by the renewal of your mind so that you may test what is the will of God -- what is good and acceptable and whole.” Do not be formed by this age – conformed to the world around you, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. How does this happen except by believing that what this world offers is often deception and lies and that truth and true personhood comes when we love God and what God loves.

Ellen Charry, who has referred to Augustine as the first Christian psychologist, says that what the early Church came to believe was that “God is the origin and destiny of human happiness, that knowing and loving God are the foundation of human self-knowledge and direction, and that life’s goal is conformation to God.”[i] Psychology does not have to be antithetical to this. For me it has been about freeing me from the distortions and the fuzzy thinking that keep me from seeing myself honestly and helping me see how the true desires of my heart can help me love God. But psychology, by itself, will not lead us to God. It takes the Christian story to give us the greater picture. It takes trust in who Jesus is and the love of God to help us look forward to the day yet to come. As 1 John says, “What we will be has not yet been revealed, but we do know this: when Jesus is revealed, we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is.” [1 John 3:2] We shall be like him. We can’t understand who we really are without that God connection.

That’s why involvement with small groups within the church is such a crucial thing for helping us remember that. Our Elijah House Prayer ministry is a great resource for opening ourselves and our wounds to two other Christians who can meet with you and help you remember who you are in God’s eyes. Accountability groups that put you in regular connection with fellow Christians do that as well.

Here’s an exercise to close, though. Dr. Daniel Siegel has written a book recently on the amazing capacity of the human brain to change itself through mindfulness. In Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation he gives a very helpful visual model of the complexity of the brain and you can do it. Just put up your right hand. This is going to be your model of the brain.

If you put your thumb on your palm and fold your fingers over it, you’ve got a good rough model of what’s going on inside your head. Your fingertips are the front of your brain and the back of your hand is the back of your head. So there are three major parts to your brain.

Your wrist represents your brainstem, or what is sometimes called your reptile brain. There are some basic functions going on here. Your brainstem controls basic processes like your heart and your lungs. But it also controls our states of arousal. It’s the part of our brain that says, “I want that,” and moves us to get it. Caveman brain. It’s also the part of the brain that controls the fight-flight-or-freeze mechanism. If all we were were a brainstem, we’d just be pretty much reactive to stimuli – in survival mode all the time. It’s important, because it helps us get what we need to survive, but thank goodness it’s not all we are.

Above that brainstem is the deepest part of our brain, represented by your thumb. This is the limbic system. Here you have a region that helps us evaluate our condition. As Siegel says, “’Is this good or is this bad?’ is the basic question the limbic area addresses.”[ii] It helps us form emotions to answer that question and it is a crucial area for helping us form relationships with others.

Finally, the third part of your brain is the cortex and the cortex helps to keep us from being entirely led by the emotions of our limbic region or the drives of our brainstem. And that most interesting part of this part of the brain is represented by the middle two fingers in the front – your middle prefrontal cortex. Here is where your brain bends back around to touch the brainstem and the limbic region. This area allows us to have ideas and concepts and to develop moral judgments and a sense of self. Siegel says this area is “literally one synapse away from neurons in the cortex, the limbic area, and the brainstem.”[iii] And amazingly this is the region that allows us to connect – to have that feeling that we are in touch with other people, that we know what they are thinking. It is also the region that lights up when we pray or mediate and try to connect with God.

All of this complexity is something that neuroscience is just beginning to understand in the last decade or so. And it might seem from this that all of our experiences, even our spiritual experiences, can be reduced to brain wiring and chemistry. But that’s not the case. The most amazing thing that brain science has discovered is the uniqueness of the human brain. There is something more than biology and determinism at work. We have the ability to think about thinking – to meditate and to pray – to regenerate connections. Through mindfulness we can change our brains. As far as we know, no other creatures can do that. And there is no “place” where this ability resides. We are not just brains – we are body, mind and spirit – we are souls who live in relationship with God and with each other. Brain scans can show us amazing things going on, but they can’t show us our worth and meaning in God’s eyes. They can only lead us deeper into wonder.

Psalm 139 says that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” We are called to love this God with all of our heart, soul, strength and mind. And the more we love God the more we will know our selves. Thanks be to God.

Romans 12:1-3

Therefore I call upon you, brothers and sisters, because of the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, a real evidence of your service. And do not be formed by this age, but rather be transformed by the renewal of your mind so that you may test what is the will of God -- what is good and acceptable and whole.

---

[i] Ellen T. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine, [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997], p. 4.

[ii] Daniel Siegel, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation, [Bantam Books: New York, 2010] e-location 473.

[iii] Daniel Siegel, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation, [Bantam Books: New York, 2010] e-location 552-556.

The City of God at the Time of the Inauguration

Yesterday I was at a conference with Smith and Martha and Emma. Smith had picked up a card that has all of the liturgical colors for the year and I picked one up as well. We noticed, however, that this one had some new days marked for the color red. Besides Pentecost, which is the day we usually think of as red, there were civic holidays. Martin Luther King Day, Labor Day, Memorial Day – these were marked for liturgical observance.

This made me a little uncomfortable. Why are we adding national holidays to our liturgical calendar? Do we really need to observe them in the sanctuary? What does a church owe the country in which it is found?

It’s an old question – as old as the church itself. Way back in the 5th century Augustine, that influential saint of the church, was struggling with the question as he watched troops sack the city of Rome – the capital of the great Roman Empire. It was an unthinkable thing to happen. The greatest city on earth – independent for a thousand years – looted and burned by the Goths.

Augustine was forced to think about the distinction between God’s reign and the reign of the Romans. What he said was that God had worked through Rome, but the city of God was not the same thing as the Roman Empire. The City of God was something more – something behind and beyond the empire. It was wherever God ruled in fullness.

There was an earlier Christian who also looked to Rome with a mixture of emotions. The Apostle Paul, who gave us a good chunk of the New Testament, wrote his most significant letter to the Christians who lived in Rome. They lived in the seat of the empire or in the belly of the beast depending on your perspective.

Paul wrote them at a time when Rome was at the height of its power. From what is now England to Egypt, from what is now Spain to Palestine – Roman roads, Roman troops, Roman trade and Roman government ruled the world. To be a Roman citizen was to have a slate of protections that set you apart. To be a Roman subject was to be reminded continually of who was really in control.

Paul knew both sides of that equation. As a Jew he knew the many compromises the Jewish leaders had made in order to maintain just a puppet state. He also knew the revolutionary tendencies of the Jews in Palestine who were clamoring for a new Israel with a new king not beholden to Rome. Rome was no friend to independence and faithfulness.

Yet Christianity flourished in the empire. Paul was able to move easily from place to place down paved roadways which were kept clear of robbers and bandits. Mail could be delivered. Emissaries could be sent. Roman cities were places of conversation, culture, and religious ferment. Roman law made it possible for Paul to have a hearing in Rome following his arrest. In the end, though, tradition says that Paul was beheaded by the Roman authorities.

So it is that familiarity with the empire that Paul writes with as he tells the Roman Christians, “Let every living person be subject to the governing authorities.” We hear this and we think to ourselves, “Really? Do you really believe this Paul? We know what blind obedience can lead to. We just got out of the twentieth century and in that century we saw people gassed to death in concentration camps because they were ‘subject to the governing authorities.’ We saw people sent to gulags, whole peoples annihilated, whole segments to the population segregated behind walls of Jim Crow laws, massive resistance and apartheid, whole countries starved, all because the governing authorities were obeyed. And the 21st century is not looking a whole lot better!”

There is a school of thought that says that things all went wrong in the relationship between the church and the state when the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and made his new religion the official religion of the empire in the 4th century. Before that time Christians were often persecuted and blamed for everything that was going wrong. We think about the time and we think about Christians thrown to lions and publically executed. But we also imagine a pure church untainted by connections to power.

Constantine gave us something new – Christendom. Christianity became the unifying point of the empire and when Rome fell, it was Christendom that survived. All the corruption and power plays and wars and compromises that were part of the old empire now became part of the Church. The City of God began to look a whole lot like the cities of the world.

That’s the way the argument goes and there is some truth to it. Christians did get seduced by power and they did begin to lose touch with the gospel of Jesus. But it is too easy to fall into the belief that if the Church would just detach itself from the kingdoms of the world and renounce the idea of Christendom that we could once again discover what it was that the early Church was about.

This passage from Romans shows us, however, that the relationship between the church and the authorities of this world has always been complex, even before Constantine made us “official.” We’ve always been mixed. But Paul reminds the Roman Christians that it is not the powers of this world that have control. When order has come out of chaos, when the some sort of justice and rule of law has emerged, it is always because of the work of God. Behind all human systems of authority is a bigger picture. The big story is not the power of Rome but the power of God.

Of course, Paul, as he is writing, is expecting the end of all the powers of the earth. He has taught his followers what Jesus said – that he would come again soon to bring about a new reign. A few verses after this passage we read today are these words: “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” [Romans 13:11-12, NRSV]. Paul’s concern is to help these new Christians to live as people who are ready for Jesus to come. They should not be distracted by arguments with the governing authorities that keep them from being Christians.

So one thing Paul says to the people is: You shouldn’t live in fear of the government if you are doing good. You should always be living right according to the law of God. It’s only when you do wrong that you should be afraid. That’s why the authorities are given the power that they have.

Now we know that the authorities can misuse that authority and they often do. The other scripture passage for today from Luke shows us John the Baptist chastising tax collectors for taking more that they were supposed to take and soldiers for abusing their position and extorting money from the people under their power and protection. John would not have called these folks a brood of vipers if they hadn’t been acting like snakes.

Paul is telling us something more, though. The ruling authorities at least have the capacity to act as God’s helpers. That’s what he calls them. They have the capacity to act as God’s servants. He calls them that, too. These are not good Christian folks he’s talking about here. He’s talking about pagan Roman rulers just as prone to corruption as any Rob Blogojavich we know in our day. Even they can act in ways that reflect God’s will for the world. It’s not that God has given up on the world and is just waiting for a day when a new heaven will replace everything. The new day God promises is one in which there will be a new heaven and a new earth.

Which brings me to Barack Obama and the inauguration coming up this Tuesday. I know that we did not all vote the same in November. I know there are many of us who are unsure about this man from Illinois and from the world and maybe you have a little bit of justified fear about whether he is up to the job. But whatever his politics, this day represents something historic for our country. How many of us thought that we would see a day when we would be electing an African-American as president? We have said the words so many times – “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” – and yet we have to live it out over and over again in moments like this one to know that the promise is for all and that men doesn’t mean just some men and in fact it doesn’t even mean just men.

So our country is living up to its founding words and it is a moment that was brought about, not by force of arms, not by the National Guard, not by a legal decision from the Supreme Court, but by the vote of a free people. That is no small thing. There is a long way yet to go. But on Tuesday we take a big step towards the promise that race does not have to divide us.

In addition to this, we have elected a man who talks about the power of hope. We’ve heard that word before. We are right to be skeptical when politicians use that language. We’ve been burned before. But in these dark days, it is good to be reminded that it is more than just O.K. for us to lead with our hopes instead of our fears. This is what Christians are called to do – to look with open eyes at the future, to know that there is evil in this world and that our leaders, just like us, can fall prey to it, and yet to expect that, for all that, God has plans for us and this world. And God has used broken people before to do amazing things.

God took a murderer named Moses and led a people out of slavery. God took a beauty queen named Esther and saved the people from slaughter. God took a shepherd boy named David, a tender of sycamore trees named Amos, a geriatric mother named Elizabeth and a teenaged mother named Mary, a tax collector named Zaccheus and a bully named Paul and used them to do mighty things. Who’s to say that God won’t do it again? Who’s to say that God can’t do a new thing, even with the United States of America?

So I call you to pray with me today for this country. I have to admit that I have been guilty at times of thinking that we had no stake in this land. As a Christian I know where my allegiance lies and when the interests of a flag stand between me and God I know whom I am called the serve. It’s not George Bush or Barack Obama. It’s the God of Jesus Christ.

But…but what is good about this land is something God blesses. The empire may have ruined us when it coopted Christianity, but empires don’t last – the Word of God remains. The grass fades, the flower withers but what shall stand forever? The Word of God. And as long as we draw breath in this land we are called to let that word shine forth with hope and light through every institution and in every way possible.

We have a responsibility for this land because when this country aspires to be its best, it is looking to values that are gospel values – the sacred worth of every human person, the freedom God calls us to, the common purpose that binds us together in community, the advancement of liberty and well-being from sea to shining sea. So yes, we should pray from this land and pray for its leaders and pray for its promise, because even though God can work through every land, God can work through this land.

Jeremiah the prophet spoke to the people of Judah just before they were taken off into exile in a foreign land. Jerusalem was going to fall. The people were going to live under other powers. But Jeremiah did not tell them to condemn the authorities they were under. Instead he said, “Pray for the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its welfare you will find your welfare” [Jer. 29:7, NRSV].

I don’t like adding new days to our liturgical calendar, but I do think this day in the life of our country needs noting. The kingdom Christians live in is not the same as the nation they live in. The city of God is not the city of Washington. The Messiah we proclaim is not the president. But we pray that this nation can be the best it can be and that it finds its true measure when it seeks the God who gives us life. Thanks be to God and may God bless America.

Romans 13:1-8
Let every living person be subject to the governing authorities. Authority exists under the reign of God and the authorities existing are instituted by God. So the one resisting authority has set self against the direction of God, and those resisting shall bring condemnation on themselves. Rulers, you see, are not a terror to the good deed but to the bad. Do you want to live without fear of the one in authority? Do the good and you will have authority’s praise because the authority is God’s helper on your behalf for the good. But if you do the bad, be afraid; for authority does not carry the sword to no purpose; the helper of God is wrath’s avenger to the one practicing the bad. So you must to be subjected, not just for wrath, but for conscience’s sake. This is the also the reason you pay taxes; because God’s servant’s are devoting themselves to this thing. Give to all their due: taxes to the one due taxes, customs duties to the one due custom duties, respect to the one due respect, and honor to the one due honor. Owe no one anything except love for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

8 Crazy Things Christians Do: Love Their Neighbor

Leonard Stout was just putting his favorite lawn chair back onto the front porch when Paul Hodges stopped by. Leonard had worried it might blow away in the recent storm so he had pulled the chair in but now he was thinking he’d like to take in the fading light of the late summer evening in that lawn chair so he pulled it out again. Reba was fussing over her plants in the back of the house. After decades of marriage they had settled into some comfortable routines. Leonard knew she’d eventually join him on the porch so he set up her chair, too.

Paul was unexpected. Paul was much younger than Leonard, a man in his 40s who ran an upholstery shop in downtown Mattaponi Courthouse – Paul’s Plush Palace. The two had struck up a friendship a few years back when Paul invited Leonard to join him and his son on a fishing trip. It had stuck and now, whenever Paul had things to wonder or worry about, he found Leonard. This was one of those times.

“Leonard,” Paul asked as he sat down on the edge of the wooden porch with his legs dangling off the side, “does Reba ever surprise you?”

“Surprise me?”

“Yeah, you know. Does she ever do something you didn’t expect her to do and catch you off guard?”

“Reba’s been surprising me since 1957. One time she forgot to tell me the Junior Women’s Club was coming over for a meeting and they caught me watching pro wrestling in my boxers. Does that count?”

Paul laughed. “Well, that qualifies as something. But I guess I’m thinking more about who she is more than what she does.”

“Why don’t you just tell me what Belinda did to surprise you, Paul?”

“Right, right. Well, she went on that mission trip with the church, you know. They went out to Kentucky and they were working with kids at a clinic. And she hasn’t been right since she got back.”

“She’s not feeling well?”

“No. I mean physically she’s fine, but…I don’t know. She’s, uh, nicer.”

“Belinda always struck me as pretty nice, Paul.”

“Well, yeah. She was. But this is different. It’s like she has a bigger heart. Like she’s got more space for me.”

“More space?”

“Like you know how we can get so busy with the kids and work and life. She pulls crazy shifts down at the hospital. Weeks can go by and the most we talk about is who’s going to the grocery store. There’s not much space for anything else. But now I sometimes get the sense that she’s actually looking at me sometimes.

“I mean just last night I was sitting down to pay some bills and I noticed she was standing in the doorway looking at me. Made me kind of nervous so I just kept staring at the checkbook. But then she came over and touched me on the shoulder and said, ‘Thanks’ and walked off. What kind of person does that, Leonard? It’s unsettling.”

“So you’re complaining, Paul?”

“No, I’m not…well, yes, I am. The other day I was talking about this problem I was having with a chair Lunker Peabottom left for me. It’s not really a problem with the chair. It’s a problem with Lunker ‘cause he left me no instructions for what kind of fabric he wants to use in reupholstering the chair. And you can’t get the man on the phone ‘cause he’s always out working on his tree stand or working his dogs. So I’ve left like 14 different messages on his voice mail and he never returns my calls. The last message I left I got kind of ugly and I said, ‘Now Lunker, if you don’t call me back I’m going to redo this chair with purple and lime green paisley and it’ll be on you, dawg.’ And I told this whole story and do you know what she did?”

“She listened?”

“Yeah, that’s right. She listened! Not only that, she listened sympathetically. What’s up with that? It’s like there is this woman that I never really knew who has suddenly decided to show up. I blame this mission trip.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that if she changes, I’m going to be under some pressure to change, too. I didn’t bargain for that.”

“Have you talked to her about what you’ve noticed?”

“Yeah, and that’s why I blame the mission trip. She said that what she discovered while she was out in Kentucky was that she had more to give than she thought she did. She fell in love with those kids she was working with and she says she said to herself, ‘If I can love those people in another part of the country, maybe I can love the people right next to me, too.’”

“That’s pretty radical stuff, Paul.”

“You’re darn right it is.”

“You know, I do remember one time when Reba surprised me like that. It was when our daughter Naomi had her little girl, Tara. That was our first grandchild. I knew I was going to be a mess because I’m the sentimental one in this family. But we went up to the hospital that day and we were looking in through the glass in the nursery and we saw that little thing there sleeping with her hands up in the air and I laughed and I looked over at Reba and she was crying. Tears just rolling down her face. That may not sound like much, but Reba does not cry. That just doesn’t happen. This is a woman who thought Walter Cronkite was too emotional when he wiped his eyes after the Kennedy assassination. But there she was looking at that baby and I knew I was seeing something I hadn’t often seen.”

“It’s a funny thing living with these women, isn’t it, Leonard?”

“It’s a strange and wonderful thing. You blame the mission trip. I blame love.”

“Love.”

“It’s the only thing that ever changed anything for good, Paul. I mean we live with friends and spouses for years on end and we call the comfortable feeling love but it’s really just routine. After awhile we start taking the people around us for granted. We start projecting ourselves onto them. They kind of become part of ourselves and we stop expecting to see anything new there.

“But every so often they come back from a mission trip or some such fool thing and you remember, ‘O yeah…this is that mysterious and wonderful person I was attracted to in the first place. And I was attracted to her because she was different than me.’ You know, Paul, if you don’t watch it, you’ll end up seeing God.”

“What are you talking about, Leonard?”

“I’m just saying that the one thing I’ve learned from living as long as I have is that there’s nothing more interesting than people. They can annoy you. They can provoke you. They can do some incredibly stupid things, but they can also surprise you into believing that the world is a miraculous place.

“You know that place in Romans where the Apostle who’s got your name tells the Roman Christians to be ready because Jesus is coming? I believe what he tells them is that they ought to get their armor on. They have been kind of partying and doing their own thing and not really paying attention to what God wants from them. So Paul says, ‘Y’all need to take off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.’

“So what that means is that they are going to start looking different with this armor on. They are going to have to do things to keep them focused on God and Paul tells them what they need to do.” Leonard paused to see if Paul would take the bait.

“All right, Leonard. I give. What did he tell them to do?”

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”

“Didn’t Jesus say that?”

“He did. It was part of the Great Commandment. It’s in the Old Testament, too. But Paul was telling the Romans that if they wanted a shorthand for all the commandments this was it. Love your neighbor and you’ve just about got it.”

“And that helps you understand Reba and see God?”

“Well, in a way it does. Helps me understand you, too, Paul. I reckon Jesus must think a lot of love. You know he says the most important commandment is to love God with all of our heart, soul and mind and then he says this other commandment is like it – love your neighbor as yourself. So if we love our neighbor it’s like loving God. And who’s a neighbor except the person right in front of you? Doesn’t really matter who it is. That person right in front of me is the person I’m supposed to love and I can’t love them unless I see them. I mean, really see them. And if that happens, well, they’re going to surprise me.”

“You’re telling me not to take Belinda for granted?”

“I’m telling you not take any single soul for granted, Paul. Because if you love them you’re also going to learn what it means to love yourself. I don’t have any illusions that I know who I am in full. I need to love somebody to know how to love this mysterious person I am, too.”

Just then Reba came to the door. She opened the screen door and stood there looking at Leonard and Paul. She was covered in potting soil. Her hair was sticking straight up and she looked very perturbed. Obviously something dramatic had happened while she was working in the back. She opened her mouth as if to say something and then turned abruptly around and went back into the house.

Paul looked over a Leonard. “Did that surprise you?”

“No.”

“So what happened?”

“She turned over a pot in the back. It probably broke. She was going to come holler about it and maybe even use a few choice words then get me to come help her clean it up. She came to the door, saw you talking to me, thought better about it and turned around to go clean it up herself.”

“You know all that?”

“Seen it plenty of times. But if I go back there now she might surprise me.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I usually laugh and that sends her over the edge. If I go back and help without a word, she’s likely to be caught off guard.”

“Love?”

“Yep, Paul, I reckon that’s love. If you love people they don’t know how to handle you. It’s pretty unsettling.”

Leonard got up to go into the house and Paul headed back to his house down the street muttering to himself all the way. “Fascinating.”

Last week we talked about loving our enemies as the ultimate expression of what it means to follow Christ’s commandment to love. Jesus says, “What does it show if you only love those who love you? Even tax collectors and Gentiles do that.” But Jesus also sums up the law with the command to love our neighbors. And sometimes our neighbor is the person right next to us…the person right in front of us…the person we take for granted…the person who is right there waiting for us to discover the mystery that is at the heart of the universe. God is waiting for us in our neighbor. Thanks be to God.

Romans 13:8-14
Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For this--Do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, do not covet, and any other commandment--is summed up in this word--You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does not bring about evil for a neighbor, so love is the fulfilling of the law.
Besides this you know the time, how now is the time for you to wake from sleep, for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed. The night is far gone and daylight is growing near. Therefore let us take off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.
As in daylight let us walk about properly outfitted, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual excess and debauchery, not in strife and envy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and do not give your concern to the flesh and its unrestrained desires.

8 Crazy Things Christians Do: Love Their Enemies

Imagine this scene with me. Jesus comes upon you as you sit by the side of the road. You have heard about him. You have been intrigued by him. You even suspect he may be the Messiah – the promised one of God come to bring salvation to a broken and wounded world.

He comes to you. You! Of all the people he could have come to, he come to you and looks you in the eye. You feel addressed to the deepest reaches of your soul. What he asks you will do. You know it even before he asks. What he says is simple: “Come, follow me.”

Then something else kicks in. What does Jesus mean when he says, “Come, follow me”? Does he mean that I should follow Jesus in a spiritual sense, acknowledging that he is who he says he is and trusting and believing in him? And if I do that then I am fulfilling the intent of what he has invited me to do and I won’t actually have to physically go and follow him. That would upset a whole lot of things in my life right now, after all. To actually follow Jesus, I’d have to leave behind my possessions, my attachments, my habits, my family, my friends, my small pleasures and daily routines. Would Jesus really want me to leave those things? Surely what Jesus means is that I should follow him with my faith and with my heart and not with my feet and my body.

No. No. No. That is ridiculous! When Jesus said, “Come, follow me” maybe, just maybe he meant, “Come, you, now and follow me.” Get up off your duff and put one foot in front of the other and take the risk that I mean what I say and that your salvation is bound up in doing what I say. This is Nike theology here. Just do it.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who died in one of Hitler’s death camps during World War II, struggled with this same question in his most famous book, Discipleship. He lamented that Christians in his day were paying lip service to following Christ but had convinced themselves that they could be lived out without changing their lives in any way. “Jesus’ call is to be take ‘absolutely seriously,’ but true obedience to it consists of my staying in my profession and serving him there, in true inner freedom. Thus Jesus would call: come out!—but we would understand that he actually meant: stay in!—of course, as one who has inwardly come out.”[i] And so the Christian Church capitulated to the Nazis and allowed themselves to be co-opted by the structures of evil and to allow the murder of millions of Jews and others, all the while maintaining that they were following Jesus spiritually, even as their bodies followed Hitler. The people who bore Jesus’ name were indistinguishable from the followers of Satan.

So here’s what disturbs me and what made me want to start this new sermon series today: I am wondering what it means to be a Christian today. I am wondering if we believe any longer that it makes a difference to look different from the world. Do we really believe that something like prayer matters? What is the value of worship? Why in the world should we forgive? What is the point of giving offerings to God? Do we really think these things matter?

I know. I know. These things are strange in this world. They don’t talk about forgiveness down at Sonny’s Barbershop. They don’t break into prayer over eggs and scrapple at the Captain’s Deck. When you go to school on Tuesday or Wednesday this week, they’re not going to be encouraging you to witness. These are things that belong to the people of God and the people of God, because they also live in the world, are not always certain they want to be different. It seems a little threatening. It seems a little uncomfortable. To tell you the truth, it seems a little crazy.

But I want us to get a little crazy over the next couple of months. I want to talk about 8 crazy things that Christians do – crazy according to the standards of the world around us. I could have picked more. I could have been more topical. I could have stayed on the lectionary. But I’m feeling a little desperate. I’m feeling a little disconnected myself. I want to know what it means to follow Jesus with my whole self. And I want to know what the world feels like, what I feel like, when I try to live out of the simple obedience Bonhoeffer talks about. This is risky business, you know, and I’m not sure what we’re getting ourselves into, but I want you to come along, because Jesus is still calling.

So today we go to Romans and Matthew and we read this command that immediately takes us to our first “yes, but…” "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” [Mat 5:43-44]. Love your enemies! Yes, that girl in your homeroom class who whispers behind your back and is always texting other people in class with nasty comments about you. Love her. Yes, that businessman who shafted you on a deal. Love him. Yes, that horrible boss who treats you like trash. Love her. Yes, that criminal who beat you up. Love him. Yes, that terrorist who is so blinded by religious ideology that he sees in you only a target for elimination. Love him.

“Yes, but…” There are no “yes, but”s here! Jesus didn’t qualify his statement by saying, “Love your enemies, except those who are truly horrendous.” There are no distinctions. All enemies are alike in the eyes of God and they are worthy of only one thing from you. They are worthy of your love.

“O.K., Jesus, but I don’t have to like them, right? I can love them in the abstract the same way that I love humanity but not have to really associate with them.” No, you can’t love them in the abstract. You must love them in the concrete. Paul makes that clear, "If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink.” There are actions that should be taken. There are things that need doing. Loving your enemies is an active verb. Paul does at least give you a little bit of satisfaction in doing this because he says that when you do these things for your enemies “you will heap burning coals on their heads."

“But Jesus these people hate me.” Of course they hate you. They are your enemies. That’s what enemies do.

“But they don’t deserve it.” Of course they don’t, but they do need it. Who needs love more than your enemy? If your life has really been turned around by Jesus…if you have really experienced the love that God has offered…if you have been saved and transformed…then you will show love. What your enemy does with your love is none of your business, but what you do with your love makes a world of difference. You can love your family and those who do good to you, but how does that show that you have been transformed? As Jesus says, even tax collectors and Gentiles, (pretty low folks in the eyes of his listeners), can do that. Loving your enemy – now that’s radical.

Bonhoeffer, when he talks about this command, says that this command is what separates disciples from nonbelievers. This is what makes disciples different from the world around them. This is what makes them look peculiar or extraordinary. “What are you doing that is special?” Bonhoeffer asks. “The extraordinary – that is what is most offensive—is a deed the disciples do. It has to be done—like the better righteousness—and done visibly.”[ii] It is offensive to human nature and to our standards of justice to love those who wrong us. In that light, the most offensive thing Jesus ever said was uttered from a cross, after he had been battered and bruised and whipped and spit upon and nailed to a bar and strung up on a hill outside the city. And he said, “Forgive them, Lord, for they don’t know what they are doing.” Loving his enemies and dying for them. What an offense. And how many of us would do the same? And yet…it’s not about what our enemies might do with such a display of weakness…it’s about what Jesus has done by going to that extent.

Will Campbell is a crazy man like this. Campbell is a Baptist preacher from Mississippi who spent his life struggling to follow Jesus as literally as he could. In the 1950s that led him to be involved with the Civil Rights Movement. He was one of four people who escorted the first black students into a white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. He worked to integrate schools and to ensure voting rights for blacks across the south. He thought he had a pretty solid handle on what he was supposed to do. He was loving everyone.

When Campbell talked about his work, he always thought about it as a matter more of faith than racial politics. When a friend who didn’t believe in God asked him to describe Christianity in ten words or less, he said, “We’re all bastards but God loves us anyway.”

Then one day he was forced to confront what he really believed. His friend, Jonathon Daniel, a seminarian, was in Alabama helping in a voter registration drive. As Daniel was exiting a convenience store with another white priest and two black civil rights workers, he was shot and killed by Thomas Coleman, a special deputy who was incensed by what the workers were doing. He got the news from his friend who did not believe in God.

His friend challenged him to test his belief. Was Jon Daniel, his friend, a bastard? Campbell was forced to admit, “Yes.” Was Thomas Coleman? That was easier. “Yes.” Well, then Campbell’s friend asked, “Which of the two do you think God loves the most?”

Campbell called it a moment of conversion, a time when he realized that the full implication of his faith was that God loved the victim and, yes, God loved the man who killed him. “That a man could go to a store where unarmed human beings are drinking soda pop and eating moon pies, fire a shotgun blast at one of them, tearing his lungs and heart and bowels from his body, turn on another and send lead pellets ripping through his flesh and bones, and that God would set him free, [was] almost more than I could stand. But unless that is precisely the case, then there is no Gospel, there is no Good News. Unless that is true, we have only bad news.”[iii]

Campbell went on to develop relationships with members of the Ku Klux Klan, something that his civil rights associates could not understand. But for Campbell it was the concrete thing that he could do to live out the love of Jesus. Of course he would love the victims. That was the easy part. Loving the enemy. That was the challenge.

Yes, this is crazy stuff that Jesus calls us to. But he must know something that we find hard to believe. He must know that love works. We pay it lip service. We say that we believe in it. But when it comes to the hard realities of life and the challenges we face we seldom think of love as the answer. Love is all fine and good until we have to face death and murder and war and abuse. Then we have to have recourse to something else. Fear takes over and we reach for different methods and different tools. But love is what Jesus left us. Love is the biblical method for dealing with enemies.

Bonhoeffer says that “Jesus does not promise us that the enemy we love, we bless, to whom we do good, will not abuse and persecute us. They will do so. But even in doing so, they cannot harm and conquer us is we take this last step to them in intercessory prayer. Now we are taking up their neediness and poverty, their being guilty and lost, and interceding for them before God. We are doing for them…what they cannot do for themselves.”[iv]

What I’m asking for you on this first day of this series is no easy thing. I’m asking you to follow Jesus and to follow him in loving your enemy. Think of the person it is hardest for you to pray for. That’s who Jesus is asking you to love. That’s who Jesus is asking you to bless. That’s who Jesus is asking you to pray for. That’s who Jesus is asking you to intercede for. Not because it’s therapeutic. Not because it’s got an immediate payoff. Not because it makes sense. It doesn’t. But because he’s come to the side of the road and picked you out of the crowd. He’s looked you in the eyes and has addressed you at the deepest reaches of your soul. And you know that what he asks of you, you will do. And he’s asking you to love your enemy. Who is it? What are you going to do? Jesus, take me by the hand. I want to follow. I don’t want to be afraid. I want to know that love is the engine that runs the universe and nothing else. Thanks be to God.

Romans 12:9-21 (NRSV)
Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." No, "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

[i] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 4, [Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 2001], p. 79.
[ii] Ibid., p. 145.
[iii] Will D. Campbell, Brother to a Dragonfly, [Contiuum: New York, 1977], pp. 217-224.
[iv] Bonhoeffer, p. 140.