Sermons at St. John’s Presbyterian Church

2727 College Avenue Berkeley, California 94705
(510) 845-6830 

Truth and Honesty

Transcribed from the sermon preached August 12, 2012 

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor


Scripture Readings: Ephesians 4:25 - 5:2 John 6:35-51

 Put away, put off, toss it out, good bye, adios, get rid of falsehood, angry words, stealing, evil talk, bitterness, wrath, wrangling, slander and malice, says Paul. Let us all speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.
After a long, hard dirty day, there is nothing like a hot shower and a fresh change of clothes. One of my favorite pictures from the Youth Sequoia trip is of Letti, Gema and Karen sitting on the back of the van smiling and feeling good, after having come back from showering and changing clothes. To start the day we had hiked 4 miles to a waterfall and back. Then, for the second half of the day we hauled a load of mulch to spread it around baby saplings. We finished the day hot, sweaty and covered with dust. Our clothes were filthy.
We have all had days when we got muddy or dirty working outside. But it doesn’t even have to be that kind of dirty. Maybe you work in a hospital, or have been moving from office to airport to plain to airport to taxi. Or perhaps you have had a stressful business day, where you were hustling and bustling and wheeling and dealing. Maybe there was conflict or competition or anxiety or grief floating around and sticking to your clothes and skin like dust on a trail. I would rather have a pair of work boots on at the end of the day than a pair of dress shoes and colored socks. In the powerful movie Michael Clayton, a lawyer for a chemical company finally cracks after he meets a young woman who is a part of a family, which has been harmed by the deadly weed killer of the company he has defended for a decade – in part by withholding evidence. He strips down naked in the deposition, no longer willing to play his part, no longer willing to wear those dirty clothes.
But either way when you get home your dogs are tired. You are hungry but first things first. You sit down, take off those shoes and socks with the rest of your clothes, sit down in a warm bath or take a shower. Ahhh! You get out feeling relieved, fresh…squeeeky clean as my mom used to say. And you even wash behind your ears.
Now imagine picking back up those old dirty clothes, the underwear, pants, shirt, socks, shoes and whatever else, and putting them back on over our newly cleaned body.
That is the image Paul gives us this morning. Early Christians, upon receiving baptism, were given a new white robe, to symbolize their putting on the garment of Christ. We have been cleansed by the grace of Christ through baptism and sealed by the Holy Spirit says Paul, so don’t go putting back on those old clothes. Put it off Paul says.
If we are to believe reality TV, or the current state of political polarization and propaganda, or much of popular music, then we are expected to lie, cheat, steal and slander to gain as much power and pleasure for ourselves as possible. Slander and cheating are supposed to be our standard issue uniform, our bread and butter, but at the end of the day they leave us feeling dirty and empty.
But if we are Christians, if we know the cleansing love and grace of Christ, we are to put off those clothes and not put them back on. We are to eat the bread that will end our hunger.
Now our issues are not just out there, with the media and politicians, we have had our own issues; our own families can get as hot and dirty as anywhere. A sister makes a move to take more than her fair share of the inheritance. A stepmother and daughter find themselves in competition. A child grows up and becomes an expert on pushing our buttons, even risking harm or failure for themselves, just so we won’t get the satisfaction of taking credit for their success or maybe it is the other way around – our parents don’t support us in our independence because they want to take credit for taking care of us. A father is mean or abusive and the family conspires to keep it a secret. Whether it is something out in the world or in our intimate community, our fight or flight response is triggered, we fear for our survival on some level, and we are tempted to lash out, to take from or undermine others.
The Sept 2012 issue of Surfer Magazine is about fear. Jaimal Yogis, author of The Fear Project, explains in layman’s terms how the brain deals with fear and anxiety. “It turns out that you have a lizard and a rocket scientist in there,” he says. The lizard is the most ancient part – literally hundreds of millions of years old – deep down near the top of your spinal chord. This is where your instincts and emotions largely stem from.” (little footnote: the emotion of love and compassion come from higher up. Love and reason evolve together. He means mainly emotions like fear, lust, anger.) “…The amygdala is often dubbed your “fear center because it tells your body to pump out adrenaline and cortisol (a stress hormone), giving you a feeling of being amped, scared,” (or anxious).
“The rocket scientist is your pre-frontal cortex, near your forehead. It’s the part of you that makes you human. Other mammals have a pre-frontal cortex too but ours got really big and allows us to plan for the future, make origami, split atoms, and build surfboards.
“The cortex is nifty, but the lizard is the Jedi. It’s fast, so fast, you don’t notice it work. Think about the last time a friend startled you. You jumped before you had time to think of who it might be. “ The lizard gives you reflex that helps you survive, but it can also make you freeze or under perform. “That’s not actually the lizard’s fault,” says Yogis. “The lizard’s super-fast fear response can trigger the rocket scientist into worrying and trying to over-control” a situation.
The lizard can trigger worry in the rocket scientist, but the rocket scientist can also trigger the lizard. The rocket scientist can dream up situations that trigger the lizard and then your body. “I could just sit here and think of Scarlet Johansson and get, uh, stoked, “ he says. Or we could think of situations where we have been threatened in the past, surfing massive waves, or threatening encounters with certain people, or 9/11, and we trigger our fight or flight response. We can reason ourselves into being unreasonable and unloving. We can reason ourselves into thinking we need to lash out in anger, cheat, or lie or slander in order to survive. We see this response when soldiers spring upon Jesus and the disciples in the garden. Peter, in a lizard-fast reaction whips out his sword and cut off a soldiers ear. Jesus says, “Put your sword away.”
What Paul is saying is that love gives us courage like Jesus, and the ability to overrule the lizard. He doesn’t say we can shut down the lizard, he doesn’t say don’t get angry, for he realizes there are things in life that will make us angry. “26Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27and do not make room for the devil.” Don’t let devilish reason lock you into lizard mode day and night.
How many times has someone we are close to pushed our buttons and we respond to defend or prove our innocence or worth, or we flee, however we flee, into sex, or work, or food, or shopping or drink, or to Nevada without thinking? Then later we kick ourselves for getting suckered back into putting on those same old clothes, into doing and saying something that probably made things worse, and certainly didn’t leave us feeling less hurt, more innocent and worthy. Rabbi Friedman in Generation to Generation notes that when people realize that trying to resolve a conflict or relationship issue the same way over and over again hasn’t worked, it is amazing how many of us think that the solution is to try the same thing even harder, rather than to change our approach altogether. Paul is advocating a different approach.
29Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.” So we are to stop, and not react out of anger, fear or anxiety or lust, but to stop and think from love, from the love that we have seen and felt displayed for us in Christ, so that with the power of the Holy Spirit, not only are do we build up ourselves, but the community of which we are a part is built up too.
It is not that anger, or words, or drink, or sex, or power, or food, or shopping, or business are inherently bad or evil, the problem comes when we use them in reaction to fear or nervousness, to cover a hole in our self-esteem or worthiness.
We try back on those same old dirty clothes and expect to feel clean. Put off those old clothes and put on the grace of Christ, says Paul. We can eat that meal over and over and it will not fill us up. But35Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
Regardless of where we have been in our lives, regardless of how dirty we find ourselves when we come in, regardless of how we may have lashed out in anger or been dishonest to ourselves and others, the truth is that God’s cleansing grace gives us a new start. Together let us put off those old clothes, and put on the garment of Christ. Let us stop grasping after those foods that leave us feeling empty, and let us share the bread of heaven, where we will no longer be hungry, where we will no longer thirst.