Declaring What Others Rejected April 20, 2008

I Peter 2:1-10
Acts of the Apostles 7:1-8 & 7:51- 8:1

As a Christian people, we are CALLED to be SELF-CRITICAL.

Not to be critical, there are already too many Pessimists, Nay Sayers and Doubters looking to tell you how many wrongs there are in everything you try to do that is right. Niether to be a Pollyanna who blythely goes through life ignoring the wrongs and abuses, as if they do not matter. But to be SELF-AWARE, to become SELF-CRITICAL so as to become more and more intentional and committed, knowing we cannot attain perfection that is not our goal, but living one's life so that we could die for something other than old age, and if dieing for what we believe, then Living Committed Lives, as if what we say and what we do actually matters.

Christian faith is not a PASSIVE VOICE. Christian faith calls us to perceive the world CROSS-EYED, looking at everything through the perspective and witness of the Cross and Resurrection, as if we had different eyes seeing life POST-EASTER, different because of the RESURRECTION, different because we are now SELF-AWARE and SELF-CRITICAL which allow us the POWER to choose differently.

What a POWERFUL IMAGE, being SELF-AWARE, SELF-CRITICAL, living in a POST RESURRECTION Reality we have the POWER to choose differently, we have the Power to choose what and who we want to be. This week, I was filling out one of those Anonymous surveys we always have to fill out, and the first question was RACE. Thinking about this passage from I Peter, I recognized we are no longer JEW or GENTILE, MALE or FEMALE, we are A ROYAL PRIESTHOOD, a NEW CREATION, able to have a whole new and different identity and relationship, so instead of Caucasian, WHITE, Western European, NORTH AMERICAN, under the category OTHER: I wrote in “CHRISTIAN”.

Suddenly, this became liberating. We no longer have to live according to what has been. We are no longer GENETICALLY PREDISPOSED, no longer does it matter that parents were abusive, or you never fit in as a child, or you were raped, or you had cancer... ALL THOSE THINGS HAPPENED, but we choose to not allow them to DEFINE and limit who we are. INSTEAD we choose to live life DIFFERENTY, to DECLARE who we are and what we want to be.

This year's PESIDENTIAL Primaries have done more to call attention to issues of RACE and EQUALITY AMONG SEXES than any in history. Never before have we had a Woman Candidate, or a Candidate of Color, and a Traditional Candidate with long and distinguished career. In recent weeks, REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT became a catalyst for controversy, because as a Black preacher in a Black Church he was critical of our Nation. But if we are to be SELF-CRITICAL, if we are no longer to be PASSIVE then we need to question why we allow a world where a child who is Afro-American stands a higher probability of dieing than graduating 6th grade. That an Afro-American Man stands a better chance 8 times over of going to Jail than going to College. It sounds different doesn't it, coming from a Black Preacher in Chicago, than a Western European One from Skaneateles, New York. The one we anticipate to be Critical of our Society, the other I hope makes us SELF-CRITICAL, makes us wonder what might we do?

In addition to serving as the Church in this community, addressing this community's needs, we have created a clinic in the Sudan of Africa, proividing medicines and trained health care professionals to a village living in mud huts without technology, without electricity. But I would tell you, as difficult and expensive as this mission has been, being SELF-CRITICAL and TRYNG to DECLARE a new vision about Race in America will be more difficult and threatening.

After years of having the KODAK INSTAMATIC Cameras we grew up with, we have changed to DIGITAL and Single-Lens Reflex, part of the fun of photography is experimenting with the ZOOM LENS, because with the ZOOM you no longer POINT & SHOOT taking what comes, but focus on one thing rejecting everything else that is too close, or depending where we focus, rejecting what is too far away. Part of the fun of photography, the fun of life itself, is that no two of us are going to focus on the same things in the same way at the same time. Our perspectives alow each of us to choose to DECLAE and EMPHASIZE as important FROM WHAT OTHERS HAVE REJECTED.

In the story in ACTS, we shift from focus on Jesus to focus on the Disciples, who without Jesus to teach them have been commissioned as APOSTLES to call others, baptizing and preaching and teaching, healing and praying for others as he did. Like them, we are CALLED to be APOSTLES, praying for others, teaching, healing the wounded and broken, making a difference in the lives of others, as Jesus Did. AND they recognized there was too much, far too much for them to do. The APOSTLES appointed and ordained others, a larger circle, who could extend the ministry, and do whatever is necessary for the Apostles to be able to do their work. This is the role of DEACONS. If we take Peter at his word, as Baptized Believers we are all CALLED to be ministers, a ROYAL PRIESTHOOD, A Priesthood of Believers, so the role of Deacons is to do whatever is necessary for others to be able to minister.

The camera lens zooms is on the ACTIVE PASSIONATE VOICE of Stephen, the SELF-CRITICAL voice who recognizes and names what others had rejected that the COMMUNITY OF BELIEVERS has NOT been FAITHFUL. God gave to Abraham and Sarah The PROMISE, the Hope and dream of a future, not in your lifetime, not for your children or their children. They had been BARREN, unable to succeed, unable to leave their mark on the world, unable even to biologically conceive. The PROMISE was of 400 years of Abuse for their descendancts, but after that, 400 years from now, your descendants will have a future. To Abraham and Sarah this was a PROMISE OF HAVING DESCENDANTS, HAVING A FUTURE. But 1000 years went by. 400 years after Abraham, the people had come into the Land and taken possession of it, living in prosperity, and they rejected everything that was critical of what they had, so the PROMISE shifted and was taken away. The ELECT, God's Chosen People became EXILES in a foreign land. And the people took up stones and killed Stephen for what he had said. PANNING the Camera away, the focus of the NARRATOR falls on Saul of Tarsus, Saul who stood PASSIVE as everyone laid their cloaks and baggage at his feet in order to take take up stones to kill. The Passive Voice is not a presence of Faith, and Saul gathered up all the hate and prejudice that was laid at his feet by those who had taken up stones to kill STEPHEN because he had DECLARED what they had Rejected. And Saul began PERSECUTING the Believers.

Last evening, I had the joy of being part of he QUATRO-SESQUI-CENTENNIAL, the 175th Anniversary of our Village and the Volunteer Fire Department. Hearing the history of our Village, this Church has played a powerful and dramatic role in the community's heritage. Powerful and dramatic, because as you enter this brick edifice with towers reaching into the heavens, pipes and arches that seem to go on forever, there are grand subtleties, DECLARATIONS OUT OF WHAT OTHERS REJECTED. For many generations we along with St.James stood as a stallwart gate at the eastern end of the Village.

I am told that in 1890 the former Church on this site was structurally unsound, and was collapsed into its foundations. And a Banker from Manhattan, Thomas Wells Hall, who was not a member of the Church, not even a resident of this community stepped forward. He described that as a boy he had come to Skaneateles every summer to visit his grandmother. She had now died, and out of love for her, he wanted to give a gift to build the new Sanctuary. How easily we could have become the Wells Hall Presbyterian Church, or HALL HALL, but this man of faith said NO. The only indication of the Donor's name is on the back of one of the pews, the only pew in this church that is named, which describes this as “THE PEW FOR STRANGERS in OUR MIDST.” Witnessing his example, the congregation did not put their own names in the windows, but instead the names in these Memorial windows are the names of the first pioneers in this community. Some were Catholic, some were Anglican, some Baptist, some Unitarian Universalist, several Quakers, Lutherans, Methodists. And in the midst of these, one that Larry Weiss helped us to understand. That in the 1890s the hot political issue was not Sexuality, or Abortion, or Euthenasia, or the War, but the FREEDOM OF HUMAN WILL. On the one side were the Universalists who championed what was called Arminianism, belief in FREE WILL. At the other extent was Presbyterian Calvinism, and the historic belief in PREDESTINATION. And his window declares that YES here is a Divine Order, a Set Plan for human history based on what we have done to one another, the rise and fal of cultures and societies. But that also, there is Freedom of Will, and BELIEVERS ACTIVELY RISE UP TO DECLARE a new vision, new hope and possibilities which change the Plan of Human History. SO instead of choosing to go this way or that, to recognize in faith that we have the POWER TO CHOOSE, the RESPONSIBILITY to DECLARE what WE BELIEVE.