Presbyterian Heritage Sunday

Today in church, we celebrated Presbyterian Heritage Sunday. This morning, Presbyterian churches across the country took a minute to sit back and remember who we are, who we as Presbyterians claim to be, and what we have done for the world and in the world.

All of which leaves this a prime Sunday for some Presbyterian jokes. Now, perusing the internet, there aren’t as many Presbyterian jokes as one might think – most seem to be reserved for the Catholics and the Baptists, but I’ve put together a few of my favorites. So here goes:

What is a Presbyterian? A Presbyterian is a Baptist who likes to drink but doesn't have enough money to be Episcopalian.

During a Presbyterian worship service a man began to be moved by the Spirit.

Out loud he said "Amen!" People around him were a little disturbed.

Then louder he said, "Hallelujah!" A few more people were becoming disturbed.

Louder still he shouted "Praise Jesus!"

An usher moved quickly down the aisle. He bent over and whispered to the man, "Sir! Control yourself!"

The man exclaimed, "I can't help it. I got religion!!!"

To which the usher responded, "Well you didn't get it here!"

How many Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb?
10. 9 to form a committee and 1 to change the bulb.

All great jokes, and they all highlight a sense of the priorities we might find in our Presbyterian congegations. Presbyterians greatest strength is our sense of community. More than anyone else, Presbyterians are all about community. From the local church, to our Presbytery regions, to our national General Assembly, Presbyterians go out of their way to be in community with one another – for better or worse, to be a family.

I’ve always thought of Hebrews 12 as kind of the Presbyterian identifier. More than another other Bible excerpt, this passage tells us who we are as a community of believers. The author of Hebrews, who some scholars believe was a female Jew, has just recited a litany of Isreal’s past, of heroes important to the Jewish faith – people like Abraham and Jacob, Abel, Enoch, even the prostitute Rahab.

According to the author of Hebrews, each of these people bring something unique to their community.

The people who have gone before, the people who are with her community now, those who share with her in this newly formed Christian faith, all of them make up her cloud of witnesses. These heroes of the faith are the bystanders along the race of her life – cheering her on to the finish line where God calls her to be.

The author Hebrews, reminds her community that each individual brings something unique to the party. Each person’s background, each voice brings something special to their family. For her, it’s the differences that make her group stronger.

To put it another way, Presbyterians are like a large scale version of the Breakfast Club. The breakfast club is one of the quintessential bad 80s movies we all love. The plot follows five students at a fictional Shermer High School in the suburbs as Chicago as they report for Saturday detention. While not complete strangers, the five teenagers are each from a different clique or social group.

The five students, who seem to have nothing in common at first, come together it seems, only to be harassed by the antagonistic principal,  who orders them not to speak or move from their seats They are forced to remain together, despite their protests, in a locked library. In fact, The principal leaves them mostly unsupervised, returning only occasionally to check on them. The students pass the hours in a variety of ways. mostly of the movie arguing and fighting with each other. The students call each other names and belittle one another.

Through this argument and disagreement, they also discover some eerie similarities. These students who are seemingly so different discover that they all have strained relationships with their parents and are afraid of making the same mistakes as the adults around them. In the end, this divergent group of thinkers make out their own unique little group – strange, quirky and unusual – but all together a club that’s special only to them. Like a big dysfunctional family, the breakfast club disagrees, but end up loving each other anyway.

This is our Presbyterian legacy, what makes us unique. We accept different viewpoints, we seek out people from different places, with different stories, with unique backgrounds. We are community who comes to support one another, to be witnesses for each other in midst of struggle and strife.

For better or worse we are family. That’s what makes us unique. We say, that in the end, if all we can be as a church is a cloud of witnesses for each other than that is enough. For Presbtyerian being a community is the highest calling. We are unique, we are each of us different. It is through the combination of our voices, through the harmony of our lives that we become stronger, in our faith, in our life, in our walk with God.

We are Family. We are Presbyterians.

God Loves a Loser

Americans don’t really like losers. I mean, that’s probably a pretty obvious statement. Our society doesn’t like people who lose - and we don’t like losing very much ourselves. American lives are, to quote Charlie Sheen, about winning.

There are people whose entire careers are dedicated to avoiding loss. It’s not called “not losing” of course – we call it risk management or “shrink avoidance” or industrial security. Or, as I’ve come to appreciate – insurance adjusting. Some people will spend their entire lives calculating risk vs. reward. In other words – if we try this, what’s our chance at losing?

Our societies avoidance of losing goes beyond the business sector, however. Ask one of our teenagers about the last time they “lost” a video game? It actually can’t be done. Video game producers have taken the chance of losing out of games entirely. You can quit, sure. You can just stop playing the game. But you can’t lose. And if, by chance, you do almost lose (that is, the game gets too hard) there are a number of websites and books poised to help you win by revealing the games secrets. It’s is virtually impossible to actually lose a video game.

All of this is because Americans don’t like losers. When people lose, we avoid them, we degrade them. Our society is structured so that we can always be winners.

This winning obsession is not so bad, except for when we turn to the Bible. God’s redemption story is all about people who are screw ups, who make mistakes, who – in essence – are losers. God loves the loser.

And nobody is a bigger loser than Stephen. Stephen is known for many things – perhaps Stephen’s most famous for instituting a vital ministry in Jerusalem dedicated to caring for the poor in money and spirit. Stephen was one of the first Christian mission workers – a losing cause to be sure. How could one person possibly feed all of the hungry in the world?

I guess you could say that Stephen was a sucker for a lost cause. And so, when the chief priest’s bring him in front of the court – when all they want is for Stephen to say, “you know what? Maybe I didn’t really mean that the way it sounded.” Which would have been the risk conscious way to respond– As soon as the Chief Priest appears, there’s a sense this situation isn’t going to work out well for poor Stephen.

And in the end, as the reader knows must happen, Stephen loses. I don’t know that there is a definition of winning in the world that includes being stoned to death by an angry mob. Angry mobs are usually a sign that someone’s not on the right strategy. And Stephen, from a risk vs. reward perspective, was definitely not on the right track. In the end, he lost. Stephen dies, beaten, bleeding, dragged down a street by his friends and neighbors.

God’s redemption story is all about people who are screw ups, who make mistakes, who – in essence – are losers. God loves the loser.

Which leaves us, the church, somewhere in the middle. We in limbo between a society that preaches safety – personal, financial, emotional, psychological safety – and a God who says “Risk everything. Take a chance at losing.” It’s a choice, between a society of winners and a God of losers.

Many of you may have been following the rapture story this week. Harold Camping, an evangelical radio host and “pastor”, had decided he could calculate the exact date – and time – of the rapture using both biblical and archealogical evidence, despite there being almost no reference to a rapture in the Bible (It’s 1 Thess 4, if your interested) and literally thousands of scholars contradicting his assumptions.

Mr. Camping was convinced.

So, His church promptly went out and put up bill boards. Behold, the judgment day is here – they said – be prepared. Like a weird town crier, this church declared
The Rapture is coming! And They stuck by their account. May 21^st, 6pm. Kiss your loved ones goodbye – cause the rapture is upon us.

Now, looking around this morning, I’m going to boldly predict that the rapture didn’t happen. Or, it did – and we were all left behind, in which case this should have been a different blog post.

It’s easy to poke fun, to ridicule the idea and the people who have it. The jokes almost write themselves.

And yet, the rapture believers persisted. The whole world – literally – was laughing at them, ridiculing them. And yet they stood by their belief, perhaps misguided, they stood up for what they believed to be true.

I wonder how willing we are to do the same. I wonder how many times in a day we diminish or downplay our faith. How many times do we hide or disguise what we believe to make others comfortable, so others won’t lump us in with the losers like this doomsday cults or the idiots who handle snakes.

Are we really that afraid of risk?

Are we really that afraid of being called names?

We don’t even believe anything that radical, really. We’re Mainline Protestants! Our church reflects the mainstream of religious belief. Few of us are declaring rapture. Yet, we hide.

It is safer to hide then it is to venture out into the world.

We are less likely to lose if we stay inside our four walls.

But it not losing actually winning?

Stephen lost.

Stephen lost big time.

We won’t lose if we don’t play the game.

God loves the loser.