A Sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

October 31, 2004

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

My kids can’t wait for Halloween. On Friday alone, we went through three costume changes for four Halloween parties. Us parents know that there are sugar-related holidays from now through Easter. We’re bracing ourselves for a winter of highs and lows.

In addition to the candy, all of us like the foolery that is dressing up and play-acting. It allows us to try on a different persona and to break out of our staid selves, if even for a brief moment in time. We make fun of our leaders and make them into caricatures.

That’s exactly what Aaron and Moses do to Pharaoh in today’s scripture. The snake handling of Aaron and Moses was a neat trick, but it was only a trick. Beneath it was an indictment of Pharaoh’s power. Pharaoh wore snakes on his clothing and it was his sign of power. Moses and Aaron made it something to laugh about. They demystified the illusion of power.

Today, we have done this to our candidates. I laugh and shake my head when I see the letters to the editor. They say the same things about their candidates while mocking the opponent. Over and over and over again. Nothing is sacred anymore in the political process, and this is perhaps as it should be. It also means that we believe everyone is a snake handler in one way, shape or form. And what we long for is someone we can trust.

We have learned not to trust politicians. We are suspicious that we are being snake-handled.

This is Reformation Sunday. In times like this when it’s hard to tell the difference between fact and fiction, the church if it is to be relevant needs to be the champion of reform. The Protestant Reformation was, in part, a corrective to the way the church had over-controlled belief and practice. The Protestant Reformation and every reformation since then has happened because a group of people wanted to either return to the authentic Christianity modeled in the New Testament or to make sure that the church was contemporary and authentic. The Baptists grew out of this process and were part of the Radical Reformation where they recognized no authority aside from Christ. This is why all Baptist churches are autonomous and every Baptist believer is free to believe what she or he feels called to believe. We take the right and responsibility of our faith very seriously, too seriously to give it over to someone else to determine our beliefs and practices. How we live and move and have our being in the midst of this sometimes seems a bit odd. At the same time it is who we are and how we live.

The people who broke away from the Catholic Church lo those many years ago, did so so that their religion have relevance and meaning in today’s world. The subsequent breaks and splits that have typified Protestantism ever since have sought to restore integrity to the church. Doesn’t this sound a bit familiar?

The reformation was the time to say, the snake handling isn’t enough any more. The arguing over minutia isn’t enough anymore. Parlor games are entertaining, but we demand something more meaningful from our leaders. We need a radical break, said the reformers. The old institution no longer fits in our understanding.

This morning, I want us to consider what it means to be reformed in the midst of snake-handlers. And I want us to consider the implications and the results of such a reformation.

Many of the reformations sought to make the church like unto the early church. The early church was a persecuted minority in the midst of the huge, powerful Roman Empire. The church met in secret because their message was too radical for the powers that be. If they were to tell what they really believed, they were crucified as insurrectionists or imprisoned with no rights. The book of Revelation is a stinging indictment of the deification of empire and the worship of the emperor who makes believe he’s God and dupes the masses into believing it, too. In the midst of this, the early church held all of their goods in common, held onto each other for dear life and tried to live as Jesus taught them. They were suspicious of snake-handlers. And they saw right through them. They knew where authority came from and they sacrificed to that God, not the god of empire.

Our reformation might hearken back to this model. I certainly resonate with a lot of it, especially their passion. But nowadays, we are a lot closer to the empire than the early church was. We exercise much more power and influence. Maybe our reformation does not go back to the persecuted outsider church, but a church that is relevant and contemporary and can speak to present issues. How does that work?

I have three ways that we can offer a contemporary reformation of ourselves.

Ask the right questions, offer hope and be part of the solution.

What are the right questions?

Why do we believe in the snake-handlers?

Why do we look at polls to determine our decisions?

Why are people weary?

Why do people hate us with enough fury to destroy us?

Why are people apathetic and cynical?

Tracy Chapman wrote a song a number of years ago called Why?:

“Why do the babies starve
When there's enough food to feed the world
Why when there're so many of us
Are there people still alone
Why are the missiles called peace keepers
When they're aimed to kill
Why is a woman still not safe
When she's in her home

Love is hate
War is peace
No is yes
And we're all free

But somebody's gonna have to answer
The time is coming soon
Admidst all these questions and contradictions
There're some who seek the truth

But somebody's gonna have to answer
The time is coming soon
When the blind remove their blinders
And the speechless speak the truth”

We don’t get to answer the important questions until we have asked them.

So once we have asked the questions, we need to offer some hope. That’s the second part of a relevant reformation.

Moses and Aaron asked why are my people slaves? Their hopeful offering was “let my people go.”

How do we offer hope?

It starts by asking the right questions.

It helps by grafting us on to an image of God that is a uniting force setting people free instead of incurring bloodshed.

We sacrifice to a God who offers freedom where there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female for we are all one in Christ Jesus.

We hold on to each other and say that we are not alone.

We hold our leaders accountable for their actions.

Feminist activist Starhawk wrote this week that we must be the wind. “We need to be the force that politicians have to respond to. It¹s useless complaining about (a candidate’s) positions or about how frustrating it is to not have a viable candidate that can really raise the issues of the war and globalization. We need to raise those issues, as we have been, and continue to raise them so strongly and loudly that they cannot be ignored. Regardless of who is elected, we need to build the base and the movement that can shift the political currents away from the…shoals of empire back to the harbor of real democracy.” (from an e-mail article entitled “Be the Wind”)

We have power in this country. We use it all the time. Knowing that power and feeling that power offers hope to a people in need.

Finally, we are part of the solution.

Will Campbell was quoted in an article in Baptists Today: "Unless worship takes people out of the church and into the street to where the people of God are hurting and suffering, it has no meaning. Church isn't about gathering and mouthing off every Sunday morning. Just to repeat God's words Sunday after Sunday and go on about our business and not take some action to improve the lot of God's people is absurd."

When we go to the polls on Tuesday, we take those tentative steps out of bondage. It is the stuff of freedom. We may or may not like the result, but it cannot be done unless we give freedom a chance. When all of the snake-handling is done, we still need to take a step in the right direction.

We need to put people to work.

We need to offer solutions to the questions that we so dutifully ask.

We need to live into our hope.

Jane Parker Huber wrote a hymn that speaks to this:

“Live into hope of captives freed, of sight regained the end of greed

the oppressed shall be the first to see the year of God’s own jubilee.

Live into hope the blind shall see with insight and with clarity,

Removing shades of pride and fear—A vision of our God brought near.

Live into hope of liberty, the right to speak, the right to be,

The right to have one’s daily bread, to hear God’s vision and thus be fed.

Live into hope of captives freed from chains of fear or want or greed.

God now proclaims our full release to faith and hope and joy and peace.”

Regardless of who you vote for, let them hear from you.

I find great encouragement by the turnout and the passion of this election. Now if we can just get all the votes counted and the voters can actually exercise their rights, we will certainly have something to celebrate. And we will also have work to do. We still need to ask the hard questions. We still need to offer hope and we will still need to be part of the solution. That’s what the church is about. That is what we are about. And without the church, we might let cynicism and despair win.

In the end, it is about our faithfulness and our passion. That’s what really makes the difference. That’s what makes reform real. It helps us to see through and past the snake handling. It helps us focus on the goal of a people free from bondage who are about to envision a new kind of world. That’s what makes me excited today.

So, ask the right questions. Offer hope. Be part of the solutions. And don’t be duped by the snake-handlers.