August 23, 1998
Rev. Eugene Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
Marcus Borg is the professor of New Testament at Oregon State University. He has written a couple of very popular books about the historical Jesus and by way of commercial, will be preaching here in November and also giving a public lecture. You won't want to miss that. One of Borg's main themes is what he calls the subversive wisdom of Jesus. As he sees it, Jesus basically turned things upside down - inviting people to see things differently than they had ever seen them before - inviting people to imagine things differently than they had ever been taught to imagine. And so in our text today, we hear Jesus suggest to a Pharisee, a righteous man and a keeper of religious law that ritual washing before a meal might not be all that important. It is not simply an issue of sanitation here. Why?Well, in Jesus' words, and he speaks rather harshly, "You Pharisee's clean the outside of the cup and the dish. You are real good at externals and appearances, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness." Says Jesus, "External cleanliness doesn't make much difference, it's what's inside a man or woman that truly counts in God's eyes. This is far more important than any ritual required by a religious law."
Now hearing this in the late 20th century, this might make sense to us, but in first century Palestine, these were radical, indeed subversive words. Jesus was taking on and challenging word and custom, which had existed for centuries. Clearly he did not come to give his blessing to the status quo. Perhaps that is why those on the outside, the poor, the marginalized, were drawn to him, while those on the inside, the powerful, the rich, the influential, plotted to get rid of him.
The subversive wisdom of Jesus. When I reflect on that phrase, a couple of images come to mind - one from that well know theologian, Garth Brooks, who sings "Blame it all on my roots, I showed up in boots, and ruined your black tie affair. I got friends in low places, where the whiskey drowns and the beer chases my blues away." The Pharisees didn't like the fact that Jesus had a lot of friends in low places.
A second image from the world of country music comes to mind and that's Patsy Cline who wore pants when she was asked to wear dresses and who always wore her cowgirl suits instead of formal gowns. She said she would not rise above her bringing up, would not rise from her roots. She refused to be molded in anyone's image of what a country singer should be or look like, even a famous one.
Years later, K.D. Osland expressed some of that same rebellion when she sang "We are eighties ladies and there ain't much these ladies ain't tried. " I kind of think Jesus might smile at those words. I think the idea of country music and the subversive wisdom of Jesus go together, because if you listen to it, country music has its own kind of subversive wisdom. Really, I think, there is kind of a contradiction in the heart of country music because it seems to both want to embrace and critique conventional wisdom. - the social practices of America.
Tex Sample, a Professor of Religion at St. Paul Seminary in Kansas City says, "Country music tends to reflect society and also take it on." "Blame it all on my roots, I showed up in boots." If you listen closely to a lot of that music, there is an unmistakable element of defiance and protest - a subversive element, an attack on conventional wisdom, a refusal to play by somebody else's rules. I suppose one of the country singers who does this the best is Johnny Paycheck. We will have a little Johnny Paycheck concert here. First is "An Outlaw's Prayer" and the second is one that has become Paycheck's anthem, "Take This Job and Shove It." (plays songs)
Several years ago you may have seen a poster which had a picture of Jesus on it. Across the picture in large print were the words, "WANTED - JESUS OF NAZARETH". In smaller print it read "Relevant information is requested that might lead to the arrest of Jesus Christ accused of sedition, anarchistic tendencies and conspiring against the state. No known address. The wanted man preaches the equality and freedom of all people, represents utopian ideas and must be described as a dangerous agitator. Members of the public are asked to report any relevant information to their nearest police station."
Now I realize this whole theme of defiance and protest and subversive wisdom may not play well in Sebastopol. I mean we are not exactly a subversive community. We are pretty much overwhelmingly white, middle class, status quo kind of church so defiance and protest are not necessarily our standard mode of operation. Hopefully we are not the kind of church that Johnny Paycheck talks about in his Outlaw's Prayer, but when we hear this text and listen to the music, I first think we need to ask ourselves how might we be like the Pharisees of Jesus' day. Are we as committed to the cause of justice and equality, compassion and peace as we are to outward appearance and status quo? How much are we willing to allow our boat of comfort and safety to be rocked?
Paycheck's song asks us who's welcome here - who's excluded - who might we be excluding without even realizing it? The problem for a church like ours is that we have this Lord who keeps insisting that everyone is welcome at his table - no boundaries and no barriers. He seems to think that we are the ones who in his name must extend his invitation. There is also a second aspect of this theme of defiance and protest which we need to take to heart and that is that the cherished status quo may no longer be all that healthy for us.
We heard Paycheck's lament about his dead-end factory job. There is another song that Garth Brooks sings titled simply "Wolves". Some of you have mentioned it to me before I even heard of it. We'll just take a listen to that one. (plays song)
Working class songs about working class anxieties and yet I wonder if they aren't becoming everybody's songs. A couple of years ago when Well's Fargo Bank and First Interstate merged, Alan Sloan who does the Wall Street Beat for Newsweek Magazine wrote a column which he called "Take This Job and Cut It!" He said the reason Well's Fargo finally won the bidding wars was that it promised to cut more jobs - about 9,000 and close more branches. I am sure some of those were early retirements, but an awful lot of families were thrown out of work. Sloan went on to say that Wall Street then drove up the price of Well's Fargo stock because, in his words, the more blood, the more Wall Street likes it. Thousands of jobs are lost and stockholders rejoice. "Lord keep me from being the one the wolves pulled down."
But, I am not telling you anything most of you don't already know. What over the years many of you in this church have painfully experienced firsthand. In an age of increasing insecurity when we seem to be running faster and faster just to stay in place, when it often feels that the wolves are nipping at our feet, it seems to me maybe we could use a little of the defiance, a little of the subversive wisdom we find in the words of Jesus. But let's be clear, this is not a defiance expressed in scapegoating or bigotry in angry sound bytes designed to pit us against one another or to leave us blaming one another.
It just seems like in recent years in California politics, every election becomes a new opportunity to find someone else to blame for our troubles. This politics of scapegoating dominates, it seems to me, our initiative process. No, this is a defiance expressed in the Gospel demand for justice. A defiance which enables us to see that we truly are in this together not against each other - rich or poor, male or female, black, brown or white, whatever color you happen to be, not enemies, but partners if we're ever to create another future. We shouldn't be afraid of each other's power, we need each other's power.
Tex Sample tells of a woman who is being mercilessly harassed by her boss. Finally she went to her minister. He told her "Quit your job. We in the church will find you a new one. She did and they did." What would it take for us to be able to do that for one another. That's what I hear in the Gospel and in much of the music - a call for new connections between people, for joining each other in the struggle, for an alternative wisdom where compassion and injustice count just as much as profit and a good return for stockholders. We must get on with the task of building communities that work for everyone.
For a closing prayer, we'll play another Garth Brooks song which expresses the spirit of the Gospel. We Shall Be Free: (plays song)