Living Dangerously -- FPC sermon excerpt

Supergluing your fingers together. Smashing a penny on a railroad track. Burning stuff with a magnifying glass.

Not particularly constructive activities … but fun.

Especially if you are a kid. If you are a child, or if you have ever been a child, you know what I am talking about.

According to a new book, these are three of the fifty dangerous things that parents should let their children do. The title of the book? Not surprisingly, it is Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do). In response to the overprotective style of parenting that seems to dominate our culture today, the authors are urging moms, dads, and kids to live dangerously!

Go ahead: Lick a battery! It will teach you about shock and electric currents.

The dangerous activities in this book are not deadly and destructive. Instead, they are fun and engaging, and should only be attempted with adult supervision. When done properly, these activities help children to explore the world around them, learn problem-solving techniques, and expand their creativity.

Has your child ever played with fire? Why not? Such an activity can teach a kid about risk and safety and controlling one of the most elemental forces in the universe.

So live dangerously. But don’t burn the house down.

The prophet Jeremiah takes a big risk when he buys a field during the siege of Jerusalem. In the 32nd chapter of Jeremiah, the Chaldean army is surrounding the city, the prophet is in prison, and in the middle of all this upset and uncertainty he takes the unexpected action of purchasing a piece of land in his hometown of Anathoth.

I think the Book of Jeremiah should be subtitled Fifty Dangerous Things (God Should Let a Prophet Do).

So what is going on here? The word of LORD comes to Jeremiah through a cousin named Hanamel, saying, “Buy my field that is at Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, for the right of possession and redemption is yours” (Jeremiah 32:8). Hanamel is offering Jeremiah a piece of land that seems to be worthless, since the Chaldeans are about to crush King Zedekiah and the Israelites and take them into exile in Babylon. But Jeremiah jumps at the opportunity — the LORD speaks to him and says, “Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land” (v. 15).

Jeremiah takes a chance and makes a risky investment. Why? Because the LORD has spoken to him. He does a dangerous thing, because God has promised that the land of Anathoth has a future, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Sure enough, the people of Anathoth do eventually return, after the exile (Ezra 2:23). God’s word is revealed to be reliable, trustworthy, and true.

What looked risky turns out to be right.

We worship the God of Security -- USA TODAY, October 18, 2010

We live in a culture of fear, and since 9/11 we have grown increasingly anxious about terrorism, pandemics, environmental disasters and nuclear annihilation — anything that can injure or kill us. Our method of coping is to make an idol out of any activity, agency or technology that will promise us security.

Sociologist Robert Wuthnow has written a new book Be Very Afraid that examines how we respond to the constant threats we see around us. His conclusion: Instead of freezing when they face a threat, Americans get busy and buy duct tape. Nothing frustrates us more than terrorism alerts such as the one recently issued by the U.S. State Department for travel to Europe. It warns us of potential danger but gives no specific guidance.

I believe that this idolatry of safety is a very unfaithful response. Whether one is Christian, Jewish or Muslim, the challenge of faith is to put trust in God, not in security precautions. Nor is it a sensible response. Atheists realize — right along with people of faith — that we cannot control every aspect of the world around us. Security is a false god.

Access rescinded

On May 4, the front doors of the Supreme Court were closed to the public permanently. The reason: security concerns. "In one swift, final fiat," wroteWashington Post culture critic Philip Kennicott, "the architectural logic of Cass Gilbert's magnificent 1935 neoclassical structure, which dramatizes the open access to justice, has been rescinded."

We are turning into a society in which access to so many public places is being controlled by metal detectors and security guards, and we tend to go along with these precautions. Few people ask questions about checkpoints and closings, and most seem to accept full-body scans, metal detectors and restricted access to public buildings.

Why? Because we worship the god of security.

The alternative is to accept that life is fragile, and to realize that we cannot eliminate all threats to our physical well-being. Over the course of my 24 years in the ministry, I have seen children die of cancer, young men perish in traffic accidents, and healthy women lose their lives during routine surgery. Tragic deaths, every one of them. But religion teaches that death is not optional, and that no amount of duct tape, metal detectors and advanced medical technology will grant us immortality.

Every Ash Wednesday, the beginning of a season of spiritual preparation for Easter, I put ashes on the foreheads of my church members and say to them, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." One longtime member of the church cherished this service and always responded by saying, "Yes, I remember." Her funeral was last fall, and I told this story at her graveside.

One of the goals of religious faith is to fashion a life that is not consumed by fear of death. This can be done by looking for eternal value in each day on earth, eternal salvation in heaven, or some combination of the two. But these approaches are difficult to sustain in our advanced liberal society, where there is little consensus on eternal life, or even on what makes for a good life on earth. "But we can agree on things that we ought to fear," says Thomas Hibbs, professor of ethics and culture at Baylor University. The result is that "the pursuit of happiness gets transformed into the pursuit of freedom from unhappiness."

When we can agree only on what we ought to fear, the stage is set for the idolatry of security. After 9/11, we established a Department of Homeland Security, and borrowed billions from our grandchildren to fight two overseas wars in the name of national security. "We say, on our money, 'In God we trust,' " observes William H. Willimon, bishop of the United Methodist Church in North Alabama, "but our military budget suggests that this is a lie." Our trust is in the federal agencies, military campaigns and cutting-edge technologies that promise to protect us.

Faithful, but ready

Such an investment in national security is to be expected in a country that prizes separation of church and state, and does not use religious principles as the foundation of its defense budget. We are not a nation of pacifists, and our spirituality has long followed the practical wisdom of the saying, "Trust in God and keep your powder dry."

But if the vast majority of us claim to trust in God, then we need to be prepared to put our money where our faith is. In 2008, we Americans put far more money into the Department of Defense and war on terrorism ($623 billion) than we voluntarily gave to all of the churches and charities across the United States ($308 billion). Based on spending patterns alone, the message is that we value national security more than spiritual security.

No amount of money can buy us complete safety, however, because we cannot achieve it by human efforts alone. "We live in an insecure world, and for Americans no other event has brought home that fact as has 9/11," says Miroslav Volf, professor of theology at Yale Divinity School. "Anything could happen, any time. Our lives could change, our way of life disappear. Ground Zero is the scar on the wound of our vulnerability."

Does this mean that we should abandon all screenings at airports? Of course not. Sensible precautions make us all safer, and deter those who want to perform evil, violent acts. But unless we, as a nation, want to descend ever deeper into debt and fear, we need to manage our risks instead of constantly attempting to eliminate them, and accept the fact that being vulnerable is a condition of human life. Remember, we are dust, and to dust we shall return. No further wars on terror or increasingly intrusive high-tech checkpoints are going to change this fundamental fact of life.

We also need to assess what our worship of the false god of security is doing to our souls. If we could somehow achieve invulnerability as a nation, what would this do to our national character?

"We would likely walk through the world with a John Wayne swagger," predicts Volf, as the nation becomes oblivious to the interests of others and comfortable with the prejudices about them. "Living in a secure but unreal world," he concludes, "we would be a danger to others."

National security is an expensive religion to practice, and it tends to increase our insecurity as we become more zealous about it, whether we are people of faith or atheists. We will never eliminate every threat to our personal and national well-being, and our efforts may strain our relations with neighbors as we make our barriers ever more impenetrable.

I believe that it is better to put our trust in God than in metal detectors, and to accept that our greatest security is always found in a power much higher than any branch of the federal government.

Henry G. Brinton is pastor of Fairfax Presbyterian Church in Virginia and author of an upcoming book on Christian hospitality.

Extravagant Generosity -- FPC sermon excerpt

You all know Stephen King as the popular author of a string of horror novels, many of which have been made into movies. But if you read his books carefully, you are going to see some Christian themes. And when King gave the commencement address at Vassar College a few years ago, he sounded a bit like a preacher.

In fact, his speech could have been a sermon based on Paul’s letter to Timothy. In particular, the verse, “For we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it” (6:7).

While walking along a country road one day in 1999, Stephen King was struck and severely injured by a passing minivan. In his speech, he made a connection between his accident and the earning potential of the Vassar graduates:

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing you’re not going to do,” he said, “and that’s take it with you. I’m worth [many] millions of dollars ... and a couple of years ago I found out what ‘you can’t take it with you’ means.

“I found out while I was lying in the ditch at the side of a country road, covered with mud and blood and with the tibia of my right leg poking out the side of my jeans .... I had a MasterCard in my wallet, but when you’re lying in the ditch with broken glass in your hair, no one accepts MasterCard. ...

“We all know that life is ephemeral, but on that particular day and in the months that followed, I got a painful but extremely valuable look at life’s simple backstage truths: We come in naked and broke. We may be dressed when we go out, but we’re just as broke. ... And how long in between? ... Just the blink of an eye.”

King went on to discuss what the graduates could do with their earnings in the time they had in that blink of an eye: “For a short period,” he said, “you and your contemporaries will wield enormous power: the power of the economy, the power of the hugest military-industrial complex in the history of the world, the power of the American society you will create in your own image. That’s your time, your moment. Don’t miss it.”

But then he added something that could have been inspired by the apostle Paul. After all, Paul says to Timothy, “As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches …. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share … so that they may take hold of the life that really is life” (vv. 17-19).

What Stephen King said to the graduates was this: “Of all the power which will shortly come into your hands ... the greatest is undoubtedly the power of compassion, the ability to give. We have enormous resources in this country — resources you yourselves will soon command — but they are only yours on loan. ...

“I came here to talk about charity, and I want you to think about it on a large scale. Should you give away what you have? Of course you should. I want you to consider making your lives one long gift to others, and why not? ... All you want to get at the getting place ... none of that is real. All that lasts is what you pass on. The rest is smoke and mirrors.”

That’s a pretty powerful sermon, isn’t it? “All that lasts is what you pass on,” says King. “The rest is smoke and mirrors.” He describes in a personal and passionate way what it means to “take hold of the life that really is life.” And his insights have weight because he gained them while he was lying in a ditch, covered with mud and blood, knowing that he had millions of dollars in the bank … but none of it could do a single thing for him.