From yesterday's sermon at Highlands Presbyterian Church

The last several weeks, the lectionary has focused on lepers and the response of Jesus to them. Why so much emphasis on lepers? There have always been lepers and lepers will always be among us. Jesus wanted us to know how lepers are created and how his followers are supposed to respond to them.

Mark 1:40-45   A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity,^* Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ Immediately the leprosy^* left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus^* could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

The Bible Jesus read was clear. This man, this leper was unclean and unwelcome by Biblical rules…he was violating the scriptural. Jesus was not unaware of that…he knew the rules, he had read the book…he could quote line and verse as well as the next rabbi.

In the 5^th Chapter of Numbers Jesus read that “The LORD said to Moses, "Command the people of Israel that they put out of the camp every leper, and every one having a discharge, and every one that is unclean through contact with the dead; you shall put out both male and female, putting them outside the camp, that they may not defile their camp, in the midst of which I dwell." And the people of Israel did so, and drove them outside the camp; as the LORD said to Moses, so the people of Israel did.”

In the 13^th Chapter of Leviticus Jesus read the rules, “Then the priest shall examine him, and if the diseased swelling is reddish-white on his bald head or on his bald forehead, like the appearance of leprosy in the skin of the body, he is a leprous man, he is unclean; the priest must pronounce him unclean; his disease is on his head.  "The leper who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry “Unclean, unclean.” He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean; he shall dwell alone in a habitation outside the camp.”

Lepers were unclean and unwelcome. They were not permitted to come into houses of worship, could not get work, and were ostracized by family and friends.

Put yourself in the leper’s shoes. You are one-day enjoying life as a member of the community and then you see it. Actually your wife or husband sees it first. There was a small red patch on your skin. And then another. You began to feel soreness. It became more and more painful, the number of spots grew. You prayed and prayed it would go away; you covered the spots when you went into public.

But eventually, you could no longer hide who you had become. It was not your fault. You did nothing to bring this on, but the spots had become too many and too large to hide. Everyone could see that by the rules of the church, you had become unclean…and unwelcome.

You are now taking great risk in walking these streets. The scripture has taught everyone that you are not clean, the Bible and men of God all agree…you are to be ostracized. 

But here he is…taking the risk of death by stoning, in his despair…approaching a rabbi. And this rabbi, Jesus, is also violating the clear and certain words of the Bible. God had commanded the people of Israel to marginalize lepers, to exile them and not to touch them.

The luck of the draw is a term we use to describe the force that seems to operate for good or ill in a person's life, events that seem random in shaping our circumstances and opportunities. It’s the luck of the draw that made this man a leper. Through no fault of his own, he acquired this loathsome disease. He didn’t ask for it, didn’t want it, but here he was a leper. The luck of the draw works two ways, for good and for ill.

It’s the luck of the draw that determined I would be a white heterosexual male American Christian living in a world that gives great benefits to white heterosexual male American Christians. Nothing I did, nothing I earned or deserved. Just the luck of the draw.

Isn’t the luck of the draw a precarious, unfair way to determine opportunities and outcomes in life? Actually…it is an unchristian way to determine a person’s value. And that is what this story is all about. It was not the luck of the draw that put that leper in the path of that rabbi on that morning. It was a God who wanted to make clear that a strict reading od the Bible should never lead to hate and marginalization of any of God’s people.

Consider this for a moment. How much does my life change if any one, just one of those descriptors change?

If instead of being a white heterosexual male American Christian…let’s say I drew a different card and was instead a Native American heterosexual male Christian. One change in the cards produces a life so different from the one I was given. Suddenly I find myself on a Reservation like Wind River. I am likely unemployed, living in a shack with no running water, a part of a violent culture where a teenage male is may be more likely to become an addict or be murdered than to graduate from high school.

Again…what if any one of those other descriptors of my life was different? …If instead of being a white heterosexual male American Christian…I was a white homosexual male American Christian…what would the rabbis or priests or preachers say about me then? Or a white heterosexual female American Christian…or a white heterosexual male American Muslim? Or a gay Christian searching for a faith community in which to worship the God of his creation?

The odds that day were that any leper looking for help from a religious leader would find one who would have him stoned. He was lucky…he ran into the only one who would not! It was the luck of the draw that brought this leper into the path of this special rabbi. Other lepers were on the streets that day looking for help. Other lepers encountered other rabbis. For each it was the luck of the draw.

Imagine this story differently. What if instead of Jesus, the leper had met someone else, a person from the Temple, a person well read in the Scripture, someone who knew the law, knew what was called “the word of God? What if the leper had met a priest or a scribe instead of Jesus?

But…that darned Jesus is always getting in our way. What are we to do with Jesus? He is just fine when he stays on that cross or ascends into heaven but he won’t stay there…here he is walking our streets, violating the law, the scripture some want enforced. Doggone it Jesus, the Bible says what it means and it means what it says.

And here Jesus is…setting a fine example. Here he is talking to one the Bible says God says is unclean. Worse yet, Jesus touches him. Why? He must know better. The Bible prohibits it. What ever are we going to do with this Jesus?

What if…we followed him?

You see, that’s why they call this “the Gospel” or “the Good News.” Jesus changed the conversation. 2000 years later there weren’t supposed to be lepers and others rendered unclean by people of God. When Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one come to God but by me” he was not saying you have to be a Christian to be saved. Jesus was saying that like him, we must reach out and touch those the community deems untouchable. We cannot claim to be followers of Jesus unless the lepers of our time are comfortable coming to be among us.

With Jesus, it’s not supposed to be the luck of the draw. It’s not supposed to depend on the color of your skin, your sexual orientation, income level, gender or how you come to understand God. It’s not supposed to depend on whether you happen to run into the right rabbi or preacher on the day you need God the most.

This week, I want to ask you as brothers and sisters in Christ to go out of your own circle, go on a leper hunt, find a leper and touch them, speak to them kindly as people of God and followers of Jesus. That is the way, the truth and the life. AMEN

The state has no legitimate interest in denying marriage equality!

America is on the verge of giving marriage equality to gays and lesbians, a victory for both the Gospel and the U.S. Constitution. Praise God and Thomas Jefferson.

The responses to the Ninth Circuit’s decision on Proposition 8 were predictable. “Liberal, unelected judges” are attacking traditional marriage, screamed one of the presidential candidates.

The LDS Church, a Proposition 8 supporter, responded to the Deseret News, "California voters have twice determined in a general election that marriage should be recognized as only between a man and a woman," Church spokesman Scott Trotter said in the statement. "We have always had that view. Courts should not alter that definition, especially when the people of California have spoken so clearly on the subject."

In this case the right at stake is the right to marry whom you choose. Would the critics have targeted those “liberal, unelected judges” if it had been another “right.” What if Massachusetts voters passed a referendum banning handguns? Gun rights advocates would have been up in arms. They’d expect judges to rule voters cannot pass unconstitutional measures.

And they’d be right.

This isn’t the first time voters’ emotions have been inflamed enough to pass ballot measures violating the constitution and judges have been asked to preserve the constitution against the pitchfork crowd. Colorado voters passed one preventing communities from providing homosexuals with "minority status, quota preferences, protected status or claim of discrimination.”

The Supreme Court ruled the voters couldn’t do that. In Romer vs. Evans, the Court ruled neither governments nor voters have any legitimate interest in denying rights to people based on their sexual preference.

There is nothing new about state and local governments (and sometimes voters) trying to deprive one group of people or another of certain rights. They always have their reasons. The reasons most opponents advance for denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples are narrowly religious in nature. They talk about “traditional” or “Biblical” marriage, the purpose of procreation and the historic nature of marriages between one man and one woman.

The ruling says, "Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently. There was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted.”

Just as Southern views of blacks were not upheld as “legitimate” reasons to prevent them from voting, your views of the nature of someone else’s marriage is not a legitimate cause to deny that right.

Prop 8 "serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples," Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote in the opinion.

It doesn’t matter whether an unconstitutional law is passed by the city council, the legislature or the voters. Using voters instead of legislators to deny rights does not elevate the result above the US Constitution.

Opponents of marriage equality should understand that lawmakers in a free society cannot use their or your religious beliefs to prop up any law they want to enact. When they do, the “unelected judges” have little choice but to strike it down. In a free society, the courts stand between us and those who would deny us our rights.

Religious beliefs on this issue are not uniform. Many believers think the institution of marriage is best served by allowing people who are in loving relationships to marry regardless of their sexual orientation. We believe the hallmarks of a good marriage, e.g. love, honesty, loyalty, commitment, devotion, all are as much a part of a same-sex marriage as one between a man and a woman.

The Courts teach that if same-sex marriage violates your religious beliefs, take the case to the congregation of your church, not to the halls of our legislature or the public ballot.

Remember when voters feared Bishops would give orders to the President?

I’ve been watching the debate over the federal regulations on insurance coverage for women’s health and think it may be a good time to dust off John Kennedy’s analysis of the line between political responsibilities and religious doctrine. In 1960 America wanted assurances its president would not take orders from religious leaders. Many of those running today seem quite comfortable with doing so.

The following is a large portion of the speech Kennedy gave to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960.

“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

“For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew— or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

“Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end; where all men and all churches are treated as equal; where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice; where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind; and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

“That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of presidency in which I believe — a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group, nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation, or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

“I would not look with favor upon a president working to subvert the First Amendment's guarantees of religious liberty. Nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so. And neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test — even by indirection — for it. If they disagree with that safeguard, they should be out openly working to repeal it.

“I want a chief executive whose public acts are responsible to all groups and obligated to none; who can attend any ceremony, service or dinner his office may appropriately require of him; and whose fulfillment of his presidential oath is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation.

“This is the kind of America I believe in, and this is the kind I fought for in the South Pacific, and the kind my brother died for in Europe. No one suggested then that we may have a "divided loyalty," that we did "not believe in liberty," or that we belonged to a disloyal group that threatened the "freedoms for which our forefathers died."

“And in fact ,this is the kind of America for which our forefathers died, when they fled here to escape religious test oaths that denied office to members of less favored churches; when they fought for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom; and when they fought at the shrine I visited today, the Alamo. For side by side with Bowie and Crockett died McCafferty and Bailey and Carey. But no one knows whether they were Catholic or not, for there was no religious test at the Alamo.

“I ask you tonight to follow in that tradition, to judge me on the basis of my record of 14 years in Congress, on my declared stands against an ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial schools, and against any boycott of the public schools (which I have attended myself)— instead of judging me on the basis of these pamphlets and publications we all have seen that carefully select quotations out of context from the statements of Catholic church leaders, usually in other countries, frequently in other centuries, and always omitting, of course, the statement of the American Bishops in 1948, which strongly endorsed church-state separation, and which more nearly reflects the views of almost every American Catholic.

“I do not consider these other quotations binding upon my public acts. Why should you? But let me say, with respect to other countries, that I am wholly opposed to the state being used by any religious group, Catholic or Protestant, to compel, prohibit, or persecute the free exercise of any other religion. And I hope that you and I condemn with equal fervor those nations which deny their presidency to Protestants, and those which deny it to Catholics. And rather than cite the misdeeds of those who differ, I would cite the record of the Catholic Church in such nations as Ireland and France, and the independence of such statesmen as Adenauer and De Gaulle.

“But let me stress again that these are my views. For contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me.

“Whatever issue may come before me as president — on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject — I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.

“But if the time should ever come — and I do not concede any conflict to be even remotely possible — when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same.

“But I do not intend to apologize for these views to my critics of either Catholic or Protestant faith, nor do I intend to disavow either my views or my church in order to win this election.

“If I should lose on the real issues, I shall return to my seat in the Senate, satisfied that I had tried my best and was fairly judged. But if this election is decided on the basis that 40 million Americans lost their chance of being president on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser — in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics around the world, in the eyes of history, and in the eyes of our own people.

“But if, on the other hand, I should win the election, then I shall devote every effort of mind and spirit to fulfilling the oath of the presidency — practically identical, I might add, to the oath I have taken for 14 years in the Congress. For without reservation, I can "solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, so help me God.”

Transcript courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

You get what you pray for!

You reap what you sow. The chickens have come home to roost. You get what you pray for. It all is the same. The Republican Party has spent four years demonizing Obama. They decided that their political agenda was more important than the success of the nation.They have created an environment where their followers hate the President and all he stands for. Racism? I don't know but I do know it has been an irrational hate.

NOW unless you are a candidate who is willing to say the most vile things about Obama, e.g. he is a an unpatriotic Muslim who wants to turn the nation over to socialism...you can't be elected. And so so candidates like Huntsman are gone and this is what they have left. Good luck with that. The chickens HAVE come home to roost.

You have gotten what you prayed for. And so have the rest of us.

UW needs to control tuition costs

President Obama has hit on something that should not go unnoticed by the Governor and the members of the legislature even if the Trustees at the University of Wyoming fail to get the message. "So let me put colleges and universities on notice,” said the President in the State of the Union message, “If you can't stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down."

Governors, legislators and the University of Wyoming have ignored this issue. Obama is right to call out the colleges on this. Governor Mead and the Joint Appropriations Committee should call out UW who, the day before Obama’s speech, announced they’d be asking for yet another tuition increase this year. Since 2000, UW has hiked tuition with regularity and at a rate exceeding inflation.

Students and their parents have been taught to accept tuition increases as the reality of life. A college education should not cost so much as it does. If we are going to compete in the global economy we need a far better educated work force. We need well-educated people. They need college to be affordable. Second, this is one cause of the growing disparity between the wealthy and the middle class. Wealthy families are unaffected by tuition increases. Middle class families, on the other hand, are already squeezed hard. When tuition becomes as unaffordable as it has in recent years, their children must borrow the money.

Student loans topped 100 billion dollars last year and will exceed a trillion this year. Americans now owe more on student loans than on credit cards. The enormous cost of a college education means a young person must take on a debt that will make him and her an indentured servant for years to come. That means young adults will be unable to buy cars, houses or other goods that help the economy grow while they are paying off these tuition loans.

It’s not just tuition. The cost of textbooks is a scandal that has gone unnoticed by University officials. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently investigated. The GAO concluded the high cost of textbooks was unwarranted. They found college textbook prices have risen at twice the rate of inflation since the 1980s, averaging 6% per year. New editions with minimal alterations are released unnecessarily. A flap with a CD or a DVD is added. Students with the third edition are unable to sell back their expensive books because this semester there is an even higher priced 4^th edition. Meanwhile, publishers make it difficult or impossible for students to take advantage of lower prices on international markets.

Significantly, the GAO also found there is a lack of concern or knowledge of these issues on campus. In other words, the University doesn’t care. It all pays the same. Here’s hoping the President makes good on this threat so that interest in the administrative building at UW grows.

Why wait for the feds? State government leaders should take action. Article 7, Section 16 of Wyoming’s Constitution provides that an education at the University of Wyoming must be “as nearly free as possible.” Admittedly those are rather vague words. However “as nearly free as possible” must have meant something to the founders who wrote those words. If state officials can’t understand the meaning, perhaps it’s time for a good lawyer to ask the courts to do so.

The Legislature should suspend any further tuition increases until the University reports back with recommendations on reforms they can make to comply with the State Constitution.  There are some smart people up there who could figure out how to tie tuition rates to affordability, graduation and the ability of grads to get a job.

Requiring UW to explore the use of technology, revised course requirements and teaching techniques as well as budget priorities would yield alternatives to pricing a lot of young people out of an affordable education.