Wadhams United Church of Christ
2569 County Route 10, Wadhams, NY 12993
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Sermon by Steve Smith          Order of Service 
September 14 , 2008,     Of Pigs and Lipstick

The excitement was running pretty high at last weekend’s Tipton County Pork Festival, being held just outside of Kokomo, Indiana. The fair got underway with the much-anticipated opening of the pork chop tent, where you could buy a corn-fed Midwestern pork chop for four bucks, or make a meal out of it for seven-fifty. Some of the young women entered in the Miss Tipton County Pork Festival Queen Pageant were primping and preening in preparation for the big night, while others were practicing the strutting and posturing required of the proper pageant participant. The local newspaper reporter was there to interview the nervous participants, while the food editor was no doubt lingering inside the pork chop tent.
Across the midway and down the lane a piece, in the livestock pavilions, there was a different kind of excitement brewing. Pigs from all over Tipton County had been dragged kicking and squealing from the fair comforts of their sties to be hauled in for their annual appearance at the fair. They were, after all, the guests of honor at the pork festival, and no country fair would be complete without handing out ribbons for the finest looking pig in the county. So these pigs had been hosed down and scrubbed up, with some of the more competitive owners bathing their pigs in milk, because it gave their hides a creamy satin sheen.
It was after the ribbons were handed out, however, that the real fun began. Some few years ago, a pig owner had decided to make the festival a bit more festive, and had dressed one of his hogs up in a tuxedo, complete with evening hat and walking cane. Not to be outdone, one of his neighbors had responded the following year by dressing one of her sows up in an evening gown, with a resplendent hat and a comely corsage taped to her leg. In order to keep things from getting completely out of hand, the festival committee decided to have a separate costume contest in the years to come.
This year, one of the contestants came dressed as a cowhand, another one was decked out rather tastefully or tastelessly (depending on your viewpoint) as a butcher chart, and a few of the others were done up to resemble some high-profile politicians who shall remain nameless. This is where it gets interesting. Unbeknownst to the unsuspecting fairgoers, John McCain and Barack Obama put in surprise appearances in order to garner some votes in a tightly fought election year. Since there wasn’t anything else going on that afternoon, the fair officials decided to make them honorary judges in Miss Piggy’s Pretty Porker Pageant, since they always had a crowd down there. To their credit, the two candidates took it all in good fun, even to the point of crowning the winner. Where it started to go wrong was in the photo shoot after the contest.
As you know, there is no politician alive who can say no to a good (or even a bad) photo op. So there they were, cheek to jowl as it were, getting their faces lined up for the flashing lights, when the sow made her move. She had been made up as a beauty queen, complete with a wig, a winner’s sash, and of course, enough makeup to make Tammy Faye blush. Right square in the middle of her snout were two of the most luscious pig lips you would ever want to lay eyes on, and no beauty queen contestant would be complete without some eye-catching lipstick layered on those beauts. The local press had a field day with the ensuing results, with candid shots of the pig trying to plant a smacker on Obama’s face.
The embarrassed owner tried in vain to explain that the poor pig was just trying to get the lipstick off its snout, but by then the hoots and hog-calls were echoing all over Tipton County. Obama, meanwhile, was trying to shake loose of the affectionate pig, and McCain was rolling in the aisles, shaking hands as he went. In fact, it’s this episode that Obama was trying to play down earlier this week when he made his unfortunate remarks about “putting lipstick on a pig”. He was simply trying to make light of a publicity stunt that had gone badly. But as you all know by now, the media has forgotten all about the pork festival in order to focus our attention on how Obama was supposedly alluding to McCain’s female running mate, Sarah Palin.
McCain’s criticism of Obama’s supposed sexism seems misplaced to me, seeing as how he once used the same “putting lipstick on a pig” phrase to describe something that Hilary Clinton did. While my cynicism about the political process continues to seethe and simmer, it seems to me to be a symptom of a larger issue in our culture, where we want to dismiss and demonize people who disagree with us. This trend is not limited to the political arena, of course. I have witnessed the same spectacle in the hallowed halls where church meetings are held, and even moreso at the annual meetings of denominational groups.
There is a great gulf today between liberals and conservatives, with each side demanding that you not only disagree with but disdain the other as (at best) crazy or (at worst) evil. Skeptics raise a haunting specter of wild-eyed fanatics running and ruining the world with their extremist religious views, while faith groups want their faithful members to believe that the secularists will soon take over the world and outlaw their freedom to practice religion.
We have come to a cultural moment, writes Timothy Keller in his book The Reason for God, in which both skeptics and believers feel their existence is threatened because both skepticism and religious faith are on the rise in significant, powerful ways. A few generations ago, people pretty much inherited their religious faith rather than choosing it. As one of our old time members reminisces, “When Sunday morning came around, you didn’t ask what you were doing or where you were going. You knew that you were going to church.” And unlike the spiritual pilgrims of my generation who wander from church to church, you knew which church you were going to.
“Today, though, the mainline Protestant churches of cultural, inherited faith are aging and losing members rapidly,” continues Keller. “People are opting instead for a nonreligious life, for a non-institutional and personally constructed spirituality, or for orthodox high-commitment religious groups that expect members to have a conversion experience. Therefore the population is paradoxically growing both more religious and less religious at once. Because doubt and belief are each on the rise, our political and public discourse on matters of faith and morality has become deadlocked and deeply divided.” Those words certainly ring true for me.
While seniors on fixed incomes are wondering how they’re going to pay their medical bills, plus the skyrocketing prescription costs, and heating bills threatening a thirty percent increase in a single season, our prospective leaders are squabbling over putting lipstick on a pig. While the housing market spiraled toward the brink of collapse, record numbers of average Americans were uninsured for health care, and oil companies made bigger profits than we ever dreamed possible, our national leaders were dragged squealing from the fair comforts of their plush Washington offices for another break in business as usual.
I for one find that deeply disturbing on many different levels, not least of which is the moral level. The prophets of the Old Testament had harsh words for the kings of their day who squandered their resources on selfish projects, while the poor and oppressed suffered needlessly because of royal neglect. By that standard, most of our modern politicians would be immoral. The culture wars have taken their toll, even as the negative campaigns of our day feed the cynicism of idealists like me. “Emotions and rhetoric are intense, even hysterical,” writes Keller. “We don’t reason with the other side; we only denounce,” and, I might add, we look for another way to attack them.
I don’t believe that I’m alone when I say that I have grown weary of their antics. I’m tired of listening to people say they are going to change the world, only to embrace the tactics that have tainted generations of political and religious leaders. I’d rather vote for a pig in a beauty pageant than to validate our current process of electing our leaders by punching the ballot on election day. The temptation is strong to withdraw into the safe confines of apathy, to give up on the notion of transformation, to give in to the cynical notion that humanity is incapable of humane dialogue where our disagreements make us more humble and more capable of hearing each other’s concerns. Is there a way forward through this impasse?
I believe there is a way forward, and interestingly enough, some of the steps we need to take can be found in our Old Testament narrative. You’ll notice that neither God nor Moses advocated mass hysteria when their Exodus got caught in the impasse between the water and the advancing Egyptian army intent on destroying them. As hard as it may be, we need to turn away from the modern advocates of mass hysteria. The second thing you will notice is that Moses steadfastly refused to buy into the cynical negativity being expressed by his advisors. “What, there weren’t enough graves in Egypt that you should bring us out here to die?” One of them said, with more than a little sarcasm in his voice. “We should just turn around and go back where we came from.”
Instead, God’s advice was simply to be still, and to give God a chance to be God. This is extremely hard for the skeptic to do, because they have already been through one or more episodes when God failed to anything when the armies or the waves of life came crashing through, leaving a path of pain and destruction. It’s also hard for the believer to do, because we’re not accustomed to sitting around and doing nothing while life falls apart around us. Former believers are scattered among the ranks of the non-religious and the bitter skeptics because destructive storms and encroaching armies weren’t part of the wonderful plan they had been led to believe that God had for them.
But instead of being gridlocked on the highway to safety with a massive hurricane moving in behind us, the suggestion is that we continue to refine and redefine our understanding of who God is and who we are in the midst of life’s critical moments. Instead of abandoning God and embracing our hysteria or our negativity, there may well be another path that will take us to a completely different place in our spiritual journey. It will require us to pay attention to our fears and doubts, but not to embrace them so completely that we give in to hysteria and complete pessimism.
Instead, what would happen if we were to admit to ourselves that both liberalism and conservatism are on the rise, along with skepticism and religious belief? If we could take that simple step, we could eliminate the self-talk that is rampant, namely that our camp will soon be extinct, overrun by the opposition. Nothing like that is imminently possible. If we stopped saying such things to ourselves it might make everyone more civil and generous toward opposing views.
And on a personal level, what would happen if we were to examine our fears and doubts to see what they might have to say about our faith, and what it is that we truly need in seasons of distress? Those very doubts might prove to be our pathway through the parted seas. They might be our motivation to move forward toward a very different future than the pessimistic one we’re envisioning now. That’s worth pondering, don’t you think? That’s what I’d like to do over the next few weeks, is spend some time looking at that possibility.

Order of Service     September 14, 2008          Back to Sermon
"NC" refers to The New Century Hymnal, The Pilgrim Press (1995)

Welcome, Announcements & Prayer Requests
A Prayer for Peace NC #574 (verse 3)
Opening Prayer
Leader: God of redemption and rescue, part the waters that overwhelm us.
People: Save us from the floods of worry and confusion that would keep us from following your paths.
Leader: Show us your powerful hand, that we might live as people of powerful hope.
People: Help us live as people who not only follow you, but who lead others into your grace.
Leader: Let us live in you, always and everywhere.
People: Let your life and light shine through us, always and everywhere.
Leader: Accept our prayers and praise, God of power and love, and bless our time together.
Hymn NC #12           I Sing The Mighty Power Of God
Responsive Prayer
Leader: Merciful God, hear our prayers. We come to this holy place with different needs.
People: Some of us are wrestling with problems that threaten to overwhelm us; some of us are crying out for healing, for relevance, for refuge.
Leader: Some of us are hungering for what you alone, O Lord, can provide. In this time and in this place, meet us here face to face.
People: Today our hearts cry out for those who have been battered by the pounding waves and destructive winds of Hurricanes Ike and Gustav.
Leader:  May they know that you are with them in all their brokenness and pain. May they experience your love and hope and healing through the help that comes to them through others.
People: We thank you for the people who are  rushing to their aid. Give them stamina and a sense of your peace, that they may pass that peace on to those they help.
Leader:  We lift up our souls, and those of our loved ones, to you, O God, for your goodness heals our ills, and your forgiveness is sweeter than honey.
People: We lift up our souls to you, O God, for your steadfast love strengthens all who call on you.
Leader: Give ear to our prayers, O Lord. Listen to our cries of supplication, for you alone can hear us; you alone can mend our hurts and bind our wounds.
People: Give us your grace, Lord, that we may offer all that we have and all that we are to honor you.
Pastoral Prayer, Lord’s Prayer
Hymn NC #407                      How Firm A Foundation
Psalm 69:1-3, 13-19, Exodus 14:1-14, Rom. 13:8-14
Sermon         “Of Pigs and Lipstick”

Offering, Doxology, Dedication
Hymn NC #300                               Jesus Shall Reign
Benediction
Leader: Guide our steps, Shepherding God. Direct   us into the promise of your salvation.
People: Let us live as people of the promise, that we may be generous friends and faithful followers of Christ.

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