FAMOUS KANSANS
It is official: the State of Kansas will induct into the
Kansas Hall of Fame several famous Kansans.
James Naismith, the inventor of the game of basketball, the 1970’s rock
band Kansas, and the First Colored
Infantry Regiment are the 2013 class.
Also inducted will be the Menningers.
The official ceremony will be on June 21 at Washburn University. The museum containing this information is at
the Great Overland Station in North Topeka.
Another is not really from planet earth. He grew up in the made-up town of Smallville,
Kansas and his name is Superman, or Clark Kent.
I am not kidding. Check it out in
the paper. He is a comic book superhero
is said to have arrived from Krypton and live in Kansas, the son of Jonathan
and Martha Kent. His birth parents sent
him to this planet because Krypton was going to end, due to mining the
core. According to the Kansas Hall of
Fame, the creator of the superhero wanted him to grow up with the values needed
to use these superpowers for the good of all.
The creators said that to have such powers and not have super values
would be very dangerous.
A new Superman movie is out this weekend is doing well. I have heard that the new movie is largely a
return to old Superman who displays his Kansas values. I hope to see it sometime soon.
I will have to tell you that I have personal connection with
the band, Kansas. No, I was not a rock
star in an earlier life, though I did have Rock Star hair down to my
shoulders. The reason I am connected is
that I did a wedding for one of the band members. And, I did enjoy greatly a class at
Menninger’s when it was in Topeka and I performed a wedding here in Manhattan,
at which most of the Menninger Family attended.
Superman is part of the golden age of Superheroes. Spiderman, Avengers, the X-Men are all about
50 years old. Batman goes back to 1939,
Captain America 1941, Wonder Woman 1941, and Superman back to 1938. The May Issue of the AARP magazine states
that they are all now on Social Security…just kidding.
JESUS CAME TO SAVE US
It is a starting time to being thinking about the Old
Testament text and another New Testament text for today:
“The light came to his own people, and his own people didn’t
recognize him, and his own people didn’t welcome him. But those who did welcome him, those who
believed in his name, he authorized to become God’s children, born not from
blood nor from human desire or passion but born from God. The Word became flesh and made his home among
us. We have seen his glory, glory like
that of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” John 1:11-14
SUPERMAN FANTASY COPIES THE JESUS STORY IN SOME RESPECTS
Several times I have thought of the similarities between
Jesus and this made up story of Superman.
And to make it all line up there is a new Superman movie out, a PG one
called the Man of Steel. Christopher
Reeves will not be in it but a new actor will.
The character, Clark Kent, struggles with the reality of who he is and
what he alone can do. He will have to
use his superpowers if the world is to be saved.
Jor-El is Superman’s real father: “You will give the people
an ideal to strive towards. They will
race after you; they will stumble and fall.
But in time they will join you in the sun. In time you will help them accomplish
wonders.”
But to do so, he will have to suffer extreme personal
sacrifice. In a way is like the story of
Jesus….a son sent from a far away place to.
It is a father’s love and purpose which propel him in his purpose. Superman gives up all to come and to live
with a people needing a new way.
Superman is nurtured by adoptive parents and learns to stand for
justice. So clearly we have some
parallels on how a parent’s love can work for good. The self-giving love of a parent gives
children faith, hope, and love. Yet,
Superman is fantasy. Jesus Christ is the
greatest reality of all; Jesus is the one who became our Savior. The Jesus story is the reality of God in our
midst.
Kids have childhood heroes.
I grew up hearing stories about Elijah and David in the Old
Testament. They were really great until
Superman came along. When I put Superman
and King David together, Superman is going to win. But kids love to have dreams of superpowers
of their own with which to do great things.
And it is good to want to fight the battle for truth and justice.
Superman was invented with powers: faster than a speeding
bullet, stronger than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings at a single
bound.
I have used the Tex Sample story but I want to fit it in
again. He tells a story of a 6-year-old
who learns for the first time that Jesus went through a great deal of
suffering. He knew about the cross, but
for the first time, he was caught in thought about it. He was in a Sunday School class and wanted to
share an idea with his teacher. He had
just watched an old Roy Rogers movie on television. When he finally got the teachers attention,
he almost shouted: “If Roy Rogers had been there the s.o.b.s couldn’t have done
that!” Roy Rogers was a much better hero
than some of the current ones. Roy is
much better because he shoots the gun out of the bad guy’s hands. Today’s violence means that the hero does
terrible things to them. Today’s heroes
shoot the bad guys, and then throw them into machines, and on and on.
WE TAKE GOD’S STORY AND MAKE IT INTO OUR STORY
The boy makes the same mistake we make: we take God’s story
and make it the same as our story. He
and we take the story of a nonviolent savior who has at his disposal, according
to scriptures, a legion of angels should he summons them, but asks for no such
violent rescue. He faces the torture and
death on the cross peaceably. He does
not take up the sword. Yet, as our
stained glass proclaims, Christ gives the victory. We know the One we follow has won—not with a
sword, but with a towel, putting himself at the compassionate service of
others, even his enemy the betrayer.
WE NEED TO TAKE OUR STORY AND MAKE SURE IT FITS GOD’S STORY
Our lives are shaped by stories. Stories work on us. They change us. There are many stories that we live out that
we have no choice over. We have a first
language. I speak American and I did not
know how much that affected by life until I lived in France.
We must get the God story right because it is the most
important story. It is more important
than the story of any nation. It get it
wrong when we place God’s story in another story and attempt to make God’s
story fit our idol. Hitler did it…he
made it seem that doing away with the Jews was God’s plan all along.
And it very important how we “get” the story and even more
careful how we “do” the story. Children
first get the story by watching and imitating parents; what parents do, kids
do. Kids at first have little clue “why”
it is important…they just know it is because their parents think it is. Then, comes the heroes, like David as he took
care of Goliath. The story gets
interesting because we want to be like the heroes. But when I got to Superman, then David did
not look as good. Then we go into a rule
of right or wrong period: you have to have the right beliefs. Here there are ironclad ways and you have to
have them right. The more mature faith
is one of guiding values or principles that guide our ways of responsible
freedom.
WHAT STORY IS WORKING THROUGH YOU?
One of the best questions of all time is: What
story is working through you? There
are many times when we need to step back from the stories which shape us and
take a good look at them from the God story.
For example, I truly believe that God is at work in other religions of
the world. I believe that God created
and is saving the world and God will finally bring it to completion. Nothing can keep God out of every part of the
world; including all kinds of faiths.
For this reason the church needs to listen to the views of others.
“Get up, eat some food, and be cheerful,” Jezebel tells
Ahab. “I will give you the vineyard of
Naboth. Using letters with forged
signatures, she commands other leaders to murder Naboth and get the King’s
favorite wish. Jezebel killed people
without having to see them killed and Ahab got what he wanted without even
knowing about the plot.
This is a story about violence and killing. In this Bible story it was Jezebel who
ordered it but was Ahab who was asked, “Have you killed and also taken
possession?” He profited greatly from
the murder. I read this story and I know
that I am part of the whole global struggle…that combines politics and
economics.
We must find a way of changing things without violence. In today’s world, violence is what fosters
revenge and vengeance unfolds and multiplies in the world. Ahab had powers and he used them for his own
benefit. Ahab leads me to think about
the world and how God wants me to get the story right.
Ahab confessed and opened up to a new way of life—to live
without illusions, to mourn with victims near and far away, to pray God’s grace
to interrupt our cycles of violence and to free us from war.
On November 1, 1991, an alienated Chinese post-graduate
student at the University of Iowa shot and killed five University of Iowa
people and himself. At Thanksgiving
later that same month, three women widowed by the shooting of their professor-spouses
cooked dinner for a crowd of fifty Chinese students. Think of how easy it would have been for
these three women to have taken a racist turn and blame a whole people
collectively. Instead they chose two of
our guiding values: hospitality and compassion and they changed one small part
of the world.
To live God’s story we need to faithfully keep up our
guiding values. This is a never- ending
battle against human selfishness. We
need to practice them and practice them.
They will help us silence the desire to use our powers for our own
benefit. This is how we find Christ
among us, and the Holy Spirit at work.
