Proper 16b.06                                                       August 27, 2006

The refrain of my favorite Lyle Lovett song begins,

        “That’s right, you’re not from Texas.”
That line means there are some things,
        which people who are not from Texas
                 just cannot be expected to understand.

Our problem today is that I am from Texas,
        but I am a long way from Texas,
        and I have been away from Texas
                 for a long time.
So I cannot be sure whether today’s illustrative story
        will make sense to your or not.

If not, just chalk it off as a Texas thing.
The first point one has to understand
         is that Texas is not so much a state as a religion.

It has sacred places, like the battlefield of San Jacinto;
         sacred persons like Emily West, the Mary Magdalene
                  and Mata Hari of our glorious revolution;
and it has sacred stories

         – the most sacred of which is that of the 13 day siege
                  of the Mission Alamo in San Antonio de Bexar.

In recent years, journals by a Mexican soldier
         have told us more facts about the Alamo,
         and have contradicted our story in some details.
We all know that some of the legends are just legends
         embellished by Walt Disney.

But the basic facts, all true Texans believe.
And these basic facts are not contradicted by any evidence,
         only by the cynicism of faithless historians from other states.

So, even if in moments of weakness and confusion,
         I might wonder about the virgin birth,
I do believe that on the third night of March, 1836,
         while artillery was being fired against the walls,
         and the Mexican band was playing the notorious Deguello,
         signifying the order to take no prisoners,
         on that night in the mission courtyard,
         Lt. Colonel William Barret Travis drew a line in the sand
                    with his sword.
I do believe that 178 men stepped across that line.
Having lived my first 18 years in Bowie County,
         I do believe that the 179th man, James Bowie of Louisiana,
         too ill to walk, was carried on a stretcher across that line.

And I do believe that Louis Moses Rose, the man who told this story,
         said, “Sorry guys, I have a family to support.”
So he did not walk over the line,
         but climbed over the wall instead.

I believe all that – and no pinko Harvard historian
         is going to tell me any different.

In our Old Testament lesson,
         Joshua, the general of Israel, draws a line in the sand
                   much as Colonel Travis did at the Alamo.
Joshua challenges the people to choose their gods.
He does not make a sales pitch for his God.
In fact, he warns people not to covenant with his God lightly.
But he does insist that they take their stand
         on one side of the line or the other.

This question of drawing lines in the sand
         makes life difficult in our day.
A substantial portion of the human race
         is positively phobic about drawing any lines whatsoever.
Call it relativism, nihilism, or celebrating diversity,
     there are those who regard all questions of truth, justice, and morality
         to be purely subjective.
Everyone does what is right in his own eyes,
         as the Book of Judges puts it.

On the other side are those who are positively
         addicted to line-drawing.
A substantial portion of the human race,
         the fundamentalist faction,
         are eager to draw lines in the sand their righteous conscience
                  over any difference of opinion that comes along.
And so humanity is fragmented into smaller and smaller little enclaves
         defined by ever more narrow and ever more stringent
                  litmus tests of belonging.

Such is the world in which we are called to be the Church.
The Church’s first job is to draw some lines in a society
         where lines have disappeared and people are apt to lose their way.

The Church’s second job is to erase lines drawn in the sand
         to separate people who could learn and grow
         if they would just sit in the same room
                          and listen to each other
                  with open hearts and open minds.

Let’s take, for example, the controversial issues
         of gay ordination and blessing same sex unions.
I have talked with people on both sides of those issues for years,
         and I have found good-hearted, sincere people
                  on both sides.

Maybe one side is right and one side is wrong.
Or maybe there is some right and some wrong on both sides.
But one thing is clear, the Church was not founded
         on a belief about these issues.
The Church is not defined by a belief about these issues.

The Church is founded on faith in God’s love
         made manifest in Jesus Christ.
And when either side places it’s opinion above that faith,
         then it is departing from our identity and our mission.

So that’s the kind of line we are here to erase.
Shared faith in God’s love creates a space in which people
         of differing views about all sorts of issues,
         can talk, disagree, and remain family.

But there are situations where the very essence of faith is challenged.
There are times we are called to pull out our sword
        and draw a line in the sand.
For example, when the Westboro Baptist Church takes its homophobia
        to the point of proclaiming that God is a God of hate,
        and when they insist that God hates all sorts of folks
                  who aren’t like them,
        then it is time for real Christians to draw a line in the sand.

To say someone shouldn’t be ordained is one thing.
To say God hates a fellow human being is another thing entirely.
And we have to call that teaching by its true names

        – bigotry, heresy, apostasy, and blasphemy.
It is intolerable to espouse hatred in the name of Christ.

There are matters like racial reconciliation
        and the eradication of extreme poverty
        that are so clearly within the Gospel mandate
                  that the Church has to draw a line in the sand.

The sin of the Church in our time
        is in our line-drawing.
We have, to paraphrase the old form of confession,
        drawn the lines we ought not to have drawn
        and failed to draw the lines we ought to have drawn.

We have drawn lines to appeal to segments of society,
        to conform to the prejudices of the culture.
We have drawn lines based on polls and marketing.
The Christian line is the call of Christ
        to feed the hungry and befriend the outcast,
        to heal the sick and liberate the oppressed.

You may be wondering if I am just offering my own preferences
        as to which lines ought to be drawn and which ones, not.
I am as apt as anyone to do that.
But that isn’t what I’m doing today.

We have a way of going about this.
To define the core of our faith,
        we look at the Creeds, the prayers of our liturgy,
        and, above all, the example of Jesus.

If we take the whole Bible and claim to give each verse
        the same weight, it just won’t work.
There are too many contradictions.
One could take the Bible in hundreds of different directions,
        and people have done just that.

But the Creeds and the prayers bring Scripture into focus.
And the example of Jesus is our touchstone of truth,
        our plum line of justice,
                 and our portrait of the virtuous life.
That’s what Peter means in our Gospel lesson
        when he calls Jesus “the Holy One of God.”

This Jesus who feeds the hungry, forgives the sinners,
        and befriends the least acceptable people
                 is not just the teacher.
He is the teaching, the rule of faith.
He is our line in the sand.

The earliest form of the Creed was only three words long.
It went like this: “Jesus is Lord.//
Joshua said,

         “. . . . Choose this day who you will serve,
                  but, as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

                                                                                   Amen.