Here’s a sermon I’m working on for Quest this weekend. Eguene Cho is on sabbatical this summer and he’s asked an long string of subs to come in and speak on “something from your heart.” This is the rough draft of the first half.

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I love Bono. I realize that I am getting old. And that this love of a 44 year old rock star may sound vaguely pathetic to anyone under 30. My best friend, her dad is a musician, and he still buys tickets to Rolling Stones concerts, which I secretly think is so pathetic. But here I am, adoring a band whose debut came out in the 80’s. I mean come on, that’s two decades ago. But Bono is timeless. I have this on good authority because…my kids like him, and they are six and four years old. In fact, they sort of think he personally knew Jesus and walked around with him writing songs. I pastor a neo-monastic order which meets in my house, and my kids don’t go to Sunday school, so left to their own devices, they come up with all sorts of things – like how Bono knew Jesus. I thought I should fix this a little so I signed them up for VBS, two weeks of it, hoping they’d learn “Jesus Loves Me” and “This little light of mine” and stuff. Well, one day, we were walking up to the VBS at this very nice, kindly Episcopalian church, and we were, as usual, late, so all the kids were in their classrooms, and the windows are of course wide open. Eden and Cate both decided this was a good time to sing, because, you know, singing is something you do at VBS. So they both start singing at the top of their lungs. “I’m a MOLE digging in a HOLE digging up my SOUL now going down Ex-Ca-Va-Tion.” Catie even did the “woo hoo’s.” So I guess if the generation of ‘00 and later can dig U2, maybe Bono’s not so passé after all. Either way, cool or passé, I think he’s the biggest prophet around, even if he does wear bug eye glass and black leather jackets.

This past Spring, Bono spoke to a group of people in Berlin. As usual, his topic was the AIDS crisis in Africa. He told this story about how he and the band had been in Berlin just days after the wall came down. They got off the plane and joined this parade. Only everyone was very dour and depressed. They thought the Berliners would be celebrating in the streets. They couldn’t figure it out. Then they finally realized that they were on the wrong side of the issue. They were in the parade of people who were bummed about the wall coming down. They were marching around with the communists! Bono described it as “being on the wrong side of history.” They meant to be in a different place. Bono says that we have to get on right side of history. He says that right now, we will be remembered for three things. “…the war against terror; the internet; and I promise you, how we let an entire continent burst into flames, while we stood around with watering cans.” We have to get that to change.

Now as I’ve mentioned I love Bono. And I cannot get over this one fact that he taught me: 6,500 people a day die in sub Saharan Africa from AIDS. Three times the death toll in 9/11. Everyday. So I signed up with DATA and I write letters to members of congress and I send checks. I want to go to Africa, to Mozambique where this lady I know of runs an orphanage and a dozen kids will jump on you the minute you enter the room because they are so starved for touch. But Paul forbids it. He knows I will come home with a beautiful child who is so, so sick. And he knows I will not bear up under that in the long run. That my health will crack, and my children will suffer, and my marriage will fall apart. But I desperately, desperately want to have something bigger than a watering can. Maybe I could have one of those helicopters that scoop up water from a lake…or a fire truck…or at least a green garden hose. (Bringing a child home would be my garden hose.) But really, all I have is a watering can, tin and shiny with a soft-fall ‘feels just like rain’ spout. That’s all I’ve got, this watering can, this child’s toy, and it just doesn’t feel like much.

Now the thing I’d like us to chew on a bit today, isn’t actually about Bono, or AIDS or international debt or how our drug companies interact with dying people in Africa. (Though I would like you to go to DATA and get involved.) What I’d like to talk to you today is how the church maybe got on the wrong side of history. And how we have to get back. And how we can use our watering cans to do that. …

(to be continued)