Pray, Learn, Engagage

I took two days off this week because I’m still working on the skill of planning for the Sabbath. I find that I really struggle without a routine and yet, at the same time, I’ve really struggled to get into a routine as a pastor. On the one hand, that’s a delightful part of the job: you never know exactly what each day will hold. On the other hand, that’s the overwhelming thing about the job: you never know exactly what each day will hold. Will today be the day that you engage in a soul-filling conversation about where we see love in the world or will today be the day when you find out, via an obituary emailed to you, that a member of your congregation died weeks ago and no one in the family contacted you? Will today be the day that you get to make a real connection with someone through your words or your actions or will today be the day that someone calls you to tell you that you should quit your job? There’s no way to know.

And yet, it is possible to get into a routine, a routine that feeds you and keeps you rested so that you’re ready to take on anything the day holds. I know it must be possible to get into that kind of a routine, because I’ve seen other pastors do it. But that beautiful routine of honoring a Sabbath day and keeping it holy, planning your work schedule around your rest times… I’m not there yet. And so, instead of my practice dictating my rest times, my body did instead, and I rested from writing for the past two days.

This is not to say that I didn’t think about the prompts for these three of the #30DaysofAntiRacism. I did pray about how I could speak up about injustice this week, but I believe that this writing endeavor, along with other work I’m already doing, might be all that I can manage in this moment. I have learned more about my local elections, but that has been a discipline of mine since I graduated from college. I actually enjoy doing candidate research, but this year, since I’ve been involved in local activism, I haven’t had to do as much because I’ve been interacting with local officials a lot more than I ever have before. Honestly and truly, I can’t recommend local activism enough.

Because, in the process of good local activism, you’ll find yourself caught up in a cycle of doing these three prompts over and over again. You’ll consider, and as a person of faith, you’ll pray about, what you need to do, you’ll learn the local landscape and see how your action fits within it, then you’ll engage in the action, which often involves difficult conversations. Then, once the action is complete, you’ll pray about what you need to do, you’ll learn, and you’ll do it, and the cycle begins again. I might not have a Sabbath routine, but I know this routine well. Think, prepare, do, pray, learn, act, these cycles of analysis, planning, and implementing, they’re what enable us to move forward.

And best of all, when you’re doing this world in a community, when you’re working alongside others to think, prepare, do, and think again, you have ample opportunity to mess up. You have the chance to, in the gracious community of others who want change as much as you do, stumble in any of these steps and learn from others around you. You have the chance to fall short, to apologize, repent, and make restitution, and to forge deeper relationships because you’ve done that work together. If you want to grow as a person, or at least learn about yourself, find a local cause and fight for it.

I mean, in theory, that’s what Christianity is all about. It’s about seeing the vision of the Reign of God as revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, who we call Christ, and coming together to do all that we can to live into that vision. We should always be praying, learning, and acting, and we should always be doing this in community with others who are here to pray, learn, and act with us, who are here to share their wisdom and to learn from us, here to pick us up when we fall and build deep relationships as we all struggle forward. By faithfully engaging in this cycle of praying, learning, and acting, we should be growing into the image of Christ, or at least learning the growing that we still have to do. Christianity, lived out in this joyful dance of praying, learning, acting, praying, learning, acting, praying, learning, acting, should be the work of a lifetime as we follow Christ ever more closely and love our God and our neighbors ever more deeply.

I know that so often, we make our faith and our practices this pretentious list of do’s and don’t’s, but believe me when I say that that kind of list-making is soul-killing. You will never be anti-racist enough if being anti-racist means abiding by an ever-growing list of rules that you have to follow in order to not be racist. You will never be good enough or just enough or strong enough or wise enough by creating and following rules, because goodness, justice, strength, wisdom, love, all of these things are more fluid than that. The only way to engage in these things, to grow these things, is to step into the dance.

So go. Pray. Learn. Engage. Think. Plan. Act. Learn how to dance.

(And learn that resting is a part of dancing too.)

Pigs

A sermon for Sunday, September 6, 2020, based on Matthew 8:28-34.

The_Miracle_of_the_Gadarene_Swine_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Would you pray with me?

God whose love extends to places we don’t yet know, thank you for bringing us together in this time and place. By your Spirit, make your presence known here today. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

You know, sometimes we don’t realize how ridiculous the stories we tell sound to people who haven’t heard them before. Our stories are our stories and most of the time, we’ve told them over and over again, so they don’t phase us anymore. Like, take for example the time that I stabbed a pitchfork right through my toe. If you grimaced, that’s the normal reaction. But I just go about my day being like, “Oh, yeah, when I was in seventh grade, I accidentally stabbed a pitchfork in my toe while we were spreading mulch as a church fundraiser. I didn’t even notice that I’d done it until I went to go walk to the car and noticed that I couldn’t move my left foot. I’ve got a cute little scar, though!”

Sometimes, we don’t recognize how bonkers our stories sound.

And I think that’s the case with our passage from Matthew this morning. Maybe you’re like me and most of your “read the bible in a year” challenges end in Matthew, so you’ve read this passage before and you just scroll on past, like, “Yeah, yeah, demoniacs, pigs, sea, I got this. NEXT!” Or maybe you’ve seen the same passages in Mark and Luke and you’re just a little numb to the details. Or maybe you know that the Resurrection is how this whole story ends and you think, “Sure, it’s cool that Jesus cast out some demons, but have you heard about how he DEFEATED DEATH??” Whatever it is, I think most of us gloss over our story today.

Which is a shame, because our story this morning has a fair amount of shock value, when we learn to read it right. So let me give you some background. As we've learned before, Matthew likes to arrange stories or teachings by theme, and this story is no exception. After Jesus finishes the Sermon on the Mount, he comes down the mountain and immediately performs several miracles and healings: cleansing a man with leprosy, healing the centurion's servant, healing many at Peter’s mother-in-law’s house, and calming the storm as he and his disciples cross the Sea of Galilee.

It’s important to notice that he crosses the Sea of Galilee. Before, when he was preaching and healing in Galilee, he was traveling through towns west of the Sea of Galilee, places like Capernaum. According to tradition, he preached the Sermon on the Mount somewhere northwest of the Sea of Galilee, though we’ll likely never know for sure. But as we read in scripture, he crosses the Sea of Galilee and ends up somewhere southeast of the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis, or the Ten Cities. And here, he runs into a herd of pigs.

There are two important clues here, two things that tell us something about the people who live east of the Sea of Galilee.

Judea.jpg

The first in the name Decapolis. It’s Greek. And the second is in the fact that there are pigs. As some of you may know, pork isn’t kosher. In fact, pigs are unclean under Jewish law, so this tells us that the people living here aren’t Jewish. Jesus has left the neighborhood.

Now, we usually gloss over the fact that Jesus isn’t surrounded by his fellow Jewish people, because we think that everybody loves Jesus and so it shouldn’t matter who he’s hanging out with. But it mattered to the people to the people in the story. Jesus, who isn’t from around here, came into town, and the first thing he does is drive a large herd of swine into the sea. Of course they’re going to want this outsider to leave. We miss this fact when we read through this story without context. Jesus, early in his ministry, coming off of a powerful sermon and several successful healings, decides to take his message to a new region, but he gets in over his head and almost right away heads back to Galilee. We think of this exorcism as a miracle, as a good thing, but it frightens the people in the Decapolis.

But more than that context that we gloss over, we somehow just accept that Jesus DROVE THOUSANDS OF PIGS INTO THE SEA. This is the bonkers part of the story, the story that should cause us to pause. THOUSANDS OF PIGS. DROWNING IN A LAKE. And you know what? Matthew’s doesn’t even carry the whole meaning that it does when Mark tells the story. In fact, the way the whole story is told in Mark is even more remarkable than Matthew. So let’s flip over to Mark, chapter 5, one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, and read the story there.

“They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. 2 And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. 3 He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain; 4 for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. 6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him; 7 and he shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” 8 For he had said to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” 9 Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” 10 He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11 Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; 12 and the unclean spirits begged him, “Send us into the swine; let us enter them.” 13 So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea.

14 The swineherds ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came to see what it was that had happened. 15 They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion; and they were afraid. 16 Those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine reported it. 17 Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood. 18 As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by demons begged him that he might be with him. 19 But Jesus refused, and said to him, “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.” 20 And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed.”

Different story, right? At least, there’s a lot more detail in Mark. Twenty verses verses the six we find in Matthew. But the bones of the story are still the same: Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee, comes to a place, either Gerasa or Gadara, they’re both in the Decapolis, though Gadara is closer to the Sea of Galilee. One, or two, fierce and strong demons are possessing one, or two, men. The demons know that Jesus is the Son of God and beg to be cast into this herd of pigs nearby, the demons drive the whole herd into the water, and the swineherds go and tell everyone about it.

But the differences are important. What’s maybe the biggest difference between the story in Mark and the story in Matthew? I’d say it’s the inclusion of Legion.

We have such heart-wrenching details about the man who was possessed by Legion. He lived among the dead. He was so strong that no one could restrain him, but with all that strength, he only hurt himself. Imagine this man, the horror he must have gone through. Day and night he’s howling from the pain he’s in. No one can approach him. No one can care for him. He’s in a constant state of torture.

And how different this man is after Jesus comes to town! The people find him sitting with Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind. He begs Jesus to let him come back across the sea with him, but Jesus restores him to his community instead and throughout the Decapolis, people are amazed at what Jesus can do, all because Jesus banished the legion from him.

Not only is the story of the man possessed by Legion powerful, but the name Legion itself is powerful. Everyone in the Decapolis who heard the word legion would immediately think of the Roman legion, the thousands of Roman soldiers who were deployed to the area. The Decapolis was fully governed by Rome, part of the Roman buffer zone in the region. The whole region was possessed by a legion, so strong that no one could restrain it.

It’s no wonder, then, that the people wanted Jesus to leave after he exorcised a legion of demons and sent them into pigs. If word got around to the actual legion, to any powerful Romans, they’d see it as an act of insurrection, or at the very least, an insult to Rome. A lot has changed in the two thousand years since the Gospels, but calling the soldiers of the police state pigs is not one of them. Jesus, in Mark’s version of the story, is an outside instigator threatening the boys in red, to say nothing of the property he destroyed by sending the pigs into the sea.

So in Mark’s gospel, we have this powerful story of Jesus setting a man free, a story rich with revolutionary overtones. But we don’t have that in Matthew’s gospel. There’s no mention of Legion at all. In fact, just before this story in Matthew’s gospel, as we mentioned before, Jesus heals a centurion’s, a Roman soldier’s servant. Very different symbolism. Very different message. Instead of implying that the Roman legions should be abolished, Matthew’s gospel focuses on the fact that Roman soldiers are people too, with complex lives and people who matter to them.

So what’s happening? Why these differences in how the story is told?

Well, as we learn in biblical studies, Mark’s gospel was probably written first, in a time when Judea was in more turmoil, when it felt like maybe the uprising and instability in the area would actually topple Roman rule. The Temple in Jerusalem might not have been destroyed yet; scholars aren’t sure. But either way, there is a lot more anti-Rome sentiment in Mark’s gospel.

Matthew’s gospel, though, is written a little later, after it’s clear that Rome isn’t going anywhere. Though the gospel is still life-changing, still world-shaking, it can’t take shots at Rome like Mark’s gospel did. The community Matthew is writing for is worried about losing their lives at the hands of Rome, so we get this different version of the story, one without the revolutionary overtones. We get this story that says maybe we can live with the Roman legion.

Now, there’s an important lesson here, as we engage with both of these stories and notice how extraordinary they are in their own right. It’s easy to say that because Mark’s gospel came first, it’s a more authentic picture of Jesus, and so we should follow it. It’s equally as easy to say that the version in Matthew’s gospel is a more refined version, and so we should give that more weight. I say that it’s easy to say these things because drawing those differences in the two stories makes it easy for us to choose one over the other, depending on what we already believe. If we already believe that Jesus came to teach us how to live peaceably with the status quo, Matthew’s gospel makes that argument for us, albeit with some incidental property damage. If we believe, though, that Jesus came to set the captives and the oppressors free by radically ending oppression, Mark’s our man. No matter how much we want the Bible to comforting or challenging, the fact is that it’s both.

That’s the lesson I want us to take away from this tale of two exorcisms: both of these stories are gospel. Both Jesus the revolutionary we find in Mark and Jesus the equal-opportunity healer we find in Matthew are gospel truth, different pictures of Jesus meant to speak to different communities in different situations. One stands strong and one shows finesse. But it’s our task, anytime we come to scripture, to do the hard work of understanding all of the wisdom Jesus has to offer us and listening close to the Spirit to discern how to apply this wisdom in our lives. We have to let ourselves be surprised again by these stories, so that Jesus’ example can change us.

Because there will be times in our lives when following Jesus will be revolutionary, and there will be times in our lives where following Jesus will be a little more measured. Our task is not to immediately know what to do but to listen to the Spirit’s calling and go where we are led, trusting that no matter where the Spirit leads us, we will always be led in the way of love.

Amen.  

Diverse Leadership

Let’s touch on Reconstruction quickly. As a Southerner, I learned in school that Reconstruction was a truly trying time for the South. We weren’t allowed to govern ourselves, there were greedy carpetbaggers everywhere, and the economic devastation of the Civil War added insult into injury. Somehow, someway, the South struggled onward until the Gilded Age, when we shifted to learning about railroads, oil barons, and the Wizard of Oz. Or, at least, that’s my recollection from AP US History, and I’ll have you know that I got a 5 on that AP exam. I wrote a delightful essay on colonial New England, if I remember rightly.

I have to admit that, even now, I have a gap in my knowledge when it comes to the time between the Civil War and World War I. US History is hazy when there’s not a war to clarify things, but luckily, we have a memorable war at least every couple of decades (Spanish-American war notwithstanding). Still, that doesn’t help with the years between 1865 and 1914, so here’s a quick Crash Course video on Reconstruction:

Turns out that the story I remember from history isn’t exactly quite right.

That’s okay, though, because it explains why the first Black US Senator was elected in 1870 and the first Black governor was elected in 1872, a full hundred years before I would have expected either of these things. Without Reconstruction, I would have been baffled by this graph from a report on African Americans in Congress:

20200122_RL30378_images_99198ada1b3d5026b741b893f254c57272664ae0.png

For reference, the 41st Congress was gavelled in in 1869, the 57th in 1901, and the 71st in 1929. Reconstruction officially ended in 1877, after the election of 1876 was disputed and they had to come up with a compromise to get Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House.

So if Reconstruction ended in 1877, why was there still a Black man serving in Congress as late as 1901 (George Henry White of North Carolina’s 2nd congressional district, what what)? Well, Reconstruction had lasting impacts and it took a while for legislatures in the South to begin to pass the Jim Crow laws, which would eventually effectively disenfranchise the Black men who got the vote with the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870. The Klan did its work in the late 1800s, but the Klan did have to work. Its mere existence didn’t immediately end the effects of Reconstruction. And after White left Congress, it would be 1973 before a Black person went to Congress from a state in the former Confederacy (Barbara Jordan of Texas’ 18th). And let’s be honest, in terms of holding elected office, we’re still celebrating Black firsts today.

So, what does all this have to do with GCORR’s task for today, supporting diverse leadership? Well, it’s an illustration that I hope we’ll apply to our churches, our schools, our organizations, and our workplaces in addition to those we elect to office. If we call for diverse leadership at any level, we white people had better be will to back up every single BIPOC leader who is put in place, because there will be backlash to it, even today. White supremacy is everywhere, as we’ve discussed before, and each attempt to dismantle it, however small, has consequences.

Think about Reconstruction. White Southerners hated it, clearly. They hated it enough that they were willing to rewrite the history of the era while they transformed the history of the next through violence and voter suppression. But white northerners got tired of it too. It was too much work to continue to fight for the rights of Black folk in the South and without radical pressure pushing to keep Black people in office where they can make decisions on behalf of their people, white people used every tool in the book to vote them out and keep them out for seventy years.

Of course we should call for racial equity among our leaders. I don’t want to discourage that. But I do want us to be aware of what we’re asking those BIPOC leaders to be and to do and to support them while they do their work. As the third pastor who is a woman at one of my churches, I still feel push back against my leadership, and we’ve been ordaining women since 1968. Can you imagine how much harder it would be to be a Black person leading white people in any capacity?

Anyway, here are the voter guides from the NAACP: https://naacp.org/resources/state-voter-guides/

Food Insecurity

Once, while out supporting the protests in my community, a gentleman came up to us to ask what we were protesting and why. I watched as the person he approached first, a passionate high school student, explained the history of the monument and why we believe it should be moved, paying attention to his body language as they talked. When the man who approached us started waving his arms around, I walked over to see if I could help calm the situation down. We ended up having a good conversation, except for when I brought up white supremacy and he said, “White supremacy? Where? Give me one example of white supremacy today.”

I have to admit, I was flabbergasted.

Because once you know to look for it, white supremacy is EVERYWHERE. Again, I don’t mean people in white hoods parading down our streets. I mean something a lot more pernicious and enduring than those blatant public displays, though of course things like that do still happen. No, I mean all of the foundational ways in which white supremacy is baked into nearly everything we do in this country. If you’re a book reader or listener, Stamped From the Beginning is free on Spotify right now and Kendi will walk you through the origin of white supremacy and racist thought, how it has morphed over the centuries, and how we experience it today. Or read or listen to An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, for how the white European colonialist mindset has wreaked havoc on Indigenous peoples, and still does to this day. And believe me, once you know to look for it, it’s there.

By white supremacy, of course, I mean the very basic idea that white people are the best people. Now, I know that sounds ridiculous and childish and, because it’s childish, not nefarious at all, but white supremacy is one of the most powerful forces in the United States. White supremacy is what justified the slaughter and genocide of the Indigenous population of the land that would become the United States. White supremacy is what justified the slave trade and the life-long and cross-generational enslavement of Africans. White supremacy is the battle that must be fought even after the treaties are signed and the slave chains are broken, because white supremacy insists that white people are smarter, more talented, and more cultured, inherently, than people of any other color. White supremacy says that Black and Brown people are just lazy and that’s why they don’t make enough money to pay for food for their families. White supremacy says if they just looked and acted more like white people, if they just worked a little harder, these people would be more than capable of providing for their families.

Of course, white supremacy has also stripped people of generational wealth (see: genocide and mass enslavement above), dismantled thriving Black communities when they did build wealth for themselves (see: the Tulsa massacre and the building of the Durham freeway, among others), concentrated wealth among white people (see: the GI Bill and redlining), and still to this day makes it harder for BIPOCs to get an education, to be hired at jobs, and to work at those jobs. This is, of course, to say nothing of mass incarceration, which I bet we’ll get to in another post this month.

This, my white friends, is what I need you to understand, as we ask you to donate or volunteer at food banks and pantries that serve BIPOCs. These people don’t need your pity or your white guilt. They don’t need you to look down on them for their lot in life. While in this particular moment, yes, they might need help getting food on the table, what they also need is for us white people to realize that the system is rigged against them. Always has been. It was designed that way. Genocide and perpetual enslavement are such grave sins that we had to reorder the world in order to justify them and that reordering doesn’t just undo itself. We have to do that, and we have to do it faster than we’ve been, because it is starving our siblings. It is killing them in the streets. If we don’t help them in their fight to dismantle the systems our ancestors put in place, we have their blood on our hands too.

Anyway, in the meantime, help us feed people.

IMG_20200321_102220364.jpg

You can donate to the food pantry at my church by clicking here and giving to Whittier United Methodist Church in Whittier, NC, part of the Smoky Mountain District, with me, Jo Schonewolf, serving as pastor. Make sure to put “Grace House Food Pantry” in the description. We serve anyone who comes and though the majority of the people are white, we have a fair number of Indigenous people (mostly Cherokee) and Latino people who we serve, along with a few multiracial families. You can also give to MANNA, a part of Feeding America, who gives food around the Asheville area, including my communities. Or, if you’re around Sylva, you can help Reconcile Sylva collect non-perishable goods for our food drive between now and September 18th. Contact me for details!

Screenshot_20200901-163604.png

"Intercultural" Conversations

So, a funny thing about today’s prompt from GCORR: intercultural and anti-racist are not the same thing. They may overlap, for sure, but when engaging in anti-racist work in the United States, you should be first and foremost concerned about anti-racism.

This is not a world-ending critique, of course, just a call for us to intentionally choose what we’re focusing on. This moment in the United States is, first and foremost, focused on confronting personal and systemic anti-Black racism, wherever it may be found. If we’re doing good intersectional work, the benefits of our work will reach beyond anti-Black racism, but to call people to intercultural work is a different thing entirely. Reading a book by a white Canadian or French or English author is intercultural work, but it’s not anti-racist work and honestly, my fellow white people, what we need right now is to do anti-racist work.

I’ve also felt very, very convicted by a tweet I saw months ago which said something to the effect of, “Black people are asking for change and white people join a book club.” This is not to say that education isn’t important, of course. This is not to say that white people shouldn’t read a book before asking a BIPOC friend of theirs questions about race. But we need to meet the moment we’re in, and as much as that moment has shifted since May, the moment still asks for us to put more than just our reading list on the table.

So, follow GCORR’s suggestion today if you’re just now dipping your feet into the waters of anti=racist work. It’s not a bad suggestion. Just don’t let yourself off the hook. Reading The Help or Love in the Time of Cholera isn’t doing anti-racist work. Jump into a reading group that’s going to tackle something a little more weighty.

In fact, if people are interested, I would love to re-read Beloved by Toni Morrison as the weather, hopefully, turns colder. You can surely grab a used copy somewhere. But don’t let GCORR’s suggestion today send you into a land of white comfort where we all read White Fragility and reflect on how fragile we indeed are, while surrounded with the metaphorical bubble wrap of other white people. Push yourself to dig into something deeper.

Or, you know, take this opportunity to evaluate your friend group. If your friends all look pretty much like you, think about why that is. Because it is possible for “intercultural” conversations to be a part of your everyday life, and not in a soul-crushing way. Today, me and a friend of mine navigated together the sometime fraught waters of finding a tattoo parlor with a tolerable level of racism. Tonight, my partner and I will continue to talk about the racial dynamics in academia, because that’s a primary concern in his career. Now, hear me: I’m not telling you to go out and get a Black friend or a Latinx partner. I’m not saying I’m a better person because I have friends with different amounts of melanin than I do. Each and every friend I have who isn’t white can tell you that I still stumble, despite my commitment to doing anti-racist work. But your relationships are worth thinking about, and I encourage you to think about them.

In the meantime, I have two conversation-based pieces of content for you to interact with, in case you haven’t found your group today. The first is Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man.

And the second is Conversations with People who Hate Me:

Conversations-With-People-Who-Hate-Me-Square-Logo.png

Check out the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, or by going here.

A Brief History of Personal Racism/Anti-racism

Before I start, let me invite you to think about your own racial autobiography. The GCORR has this checklist to get you thinking, but I’d also recommend reading through Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack if you haven’t before, or watching Peggy McIntosh’s TED talk, if that’s more your speed. Do both, though. It can be really, really helpful to realize the amount of diversity you’ve been exposed to over the course of your life and, if you’re white, to recognize how your privilege plays into that.

To the surprise of everyone I talk to, I’m from Caldwell County, North Carolina. People are surprised because they don’t think I have enough of an accent to come from furniture country deep in the foothills, but believe me, I know how to pronounce Appalachian and I have just as much of an aversion to final g’s when I speak as the rest of us do. But being from the particular end of Caldwell County that I’m from, growing up in the 90’s and 00’s, I didn’t have much experience with people of other races until I went to college.

This isn’t to say that I only knew white people. In sixth grade, when we were practicing filling out the student information section on our End of Grade tests, I remember balking at the idea that anyone in my class would have to fill in a bubble other than Caucasian. I insisted that my two Asian classmates were white. I can’t for the life of me remember what my teacher said in response, but honestly, sixth grade was the first time I realized that not everyone in the world was white. I had traveled around the Sun twelve times before I understood that race was a thing.

Now, again, this was the early 2000s. We were very big on being colorblind back then, very insistent that if we just declared everyone equal, they would be. I mean, we had achieved MLK’s dream, hadn’t we? And I kept that viewpoint for most of my middle school, high school, and, let’s be honest, college years. The two Black people in my graduating class were brothers, but sandwiched in between them during graduation was my so-white-she-gets-freckles-in-the-sun friend, Jessie. We laughed about it. We didn’t talk about how all the Hispanic kids hung out together or how we had a “redneck hall” that was exactly as white as you expected it to be. I lived in a meritocratic world, so to me, for much of my early life, talent was what mattered. Race was just a secondary characteristic, as far as I was concerned.

But it was a whole other world at Carolina. Suddenly, I had Black and Brown friends from band or from class. My core friendships were still white, but I had a Jewish friend and I had Black friends that I could say hello to when we walked past each other on the quad, so I felt very, very worldly by the end of my first year.

Actually, let’s back up. I need to talk about Camp Joy.

Camp Joy was a non-denominational (so, Southern Baptist) Christian overnight camp that I worked at for eight weeks each summer, starting the summer after freshman year of high school. The camp director, after my first summer, was Black, and his mixed race family worked on camp staff, which was great, because we had a diverse group of kids who came to camp each week. For many campers, camp was free, or at a reduced rate, because a plurality if not a majority of the campers were recommended to the camp through DSS. I will forever and always be so deeply torn about my experience with Camp Joy.

109_504399283363_6188_n.jpg

On the one hand, these summers have been a perpetual blessing in my life. I keep up with former campers and with fellow camp counselors on facebook and I am often so, so proud of the people we have become. My leadership skills, my gifts and graces for ministry, all of these things were first truly recognized at this camp. And while I remained oblivious to the racial dynamics at play at camp, I learned a bit about Black culture during my time at Camp Joy and I truly and deeply value the way my world expanded while I was at camp. On the other hand, the Purity Movement was EVERYWHERE at camp. I learned that the only thing I ever had to be ashamed about [as a white girl] was my body and the way it caused boys and men to sin, and that is a difficult thing to unlearn.

So at Carolina, I went from summer camp friendships with mostly lower class Black and Brown people to friendships with Black and Brown people who were smart enough and lucky enough to make it into UNC. My experience with Black culture shifted. Instead of being stubbornly who they were, which is how most of my campers and fellow counselors experienced their Blackness, most of my Black friends in college would code switch. (If that’s a new term for you, NPR has a podcast by the same name for you to binge.) Again, I fell into that myth of meritocracy. We’re all the same if we’re at the same ability level now. Your background doesn’t impact who you are. All that matters is what you’re doing now.

It was 2011 before the bubble of this worldview burst for me. I was working at another summer camp, this time at the planetarium, and one of my fellow camp staff pulled me aside. We had been trading off dealing with a kindergarten camper who needed a little more attention than most, due to his tendency to get a little bitey with other campers, and I had followed her lead in talking to him. “Now, Mr. Paige,” I said, sitting down with him just as she had done. “I know I’m not talkin’ to you again about how we can’t be bitin’ our friends, right?” After a few minutes minutes of talking and a few more minutes of quiet time away from the group, I sent him back to his room and we went on with the rest of our day, answering calls on the walkies and floating from camp session to camp session.

Now, I hadn’t thought twice about what I did, with my coworker sitting behind the main camp desk and listening the whole time. In fact, I felt a little bit of pride, having picked up a new, effective disciplinary style. There was no more biting for the rest of the day. But, as my coworker explained to me after the pickup line had ebbed down to a trickle, the problem was that my fellow camp staffer was Black and I had mimicked her method, right down to the accent and mannerisms. It was cultural appropriation at best, but really, it was mocking. It took me years to pick apart why, but this, really, was the first time that I was called out on something racist that I’d done, simply because I didn’t think that race mattered.

Now, I spent years in that uncomfortable space, realizing that race does, in fact matter, and that claiming that you don’t see race is actually just something that white people get to do that has no real impact on the world, without really know what to do with this information. I started to learn that you didn’t have to put on a Klan hood in order to do something racist and that I had implicit biases. All of this was happening on a personal level as we re-elected our first Black president and as the Black Lives Matter movement began on a national level, and it was also happening when something very particular was taking over the internet: tumblr.

I found tumblr because of Welcome to Night Vale, and that was particularly fortuitous, because if it had been through the Harry Potter or Supernatural fandoms, I would have seen more slash fics and less POC/LGBTQIA educational posts. I learned that I need to diversify my timelines and the other media I consumed. I learned the word woke (ah, 2014) and I learned that there were so. many. ways. to discriminate against others, even without intending to. I did a ton of informal learning just by listening to people on the internet who had different life experiences from me, especially different racial experiences.

My more formal education about race came during seminary, when I went to Wesley in Washington, DC, in the fall of 2016. I mean, I knew enough about racial dynamics to recommend that my Science and Religion program at Edinburgh incorporate more thinkers of color (because BOY, if you want to see a bunch of white men talk about philosophy and religion, you can’t do much better than studying Science and Religion as a field—and I thought physics was bad!), but outside of that, I had no real tools for learning going further in my learning.

At Wesley, though, I had more Black classmates and professors than I had ever had in my life. I’ll never forget having Dr. Beverly Mitchell for my introduction to philosophy for theology class, a class I resented having to take since I had already taken Philosophy of Time and thought that that should count. Dr. Mitchell taught me about questioning the philosophy that I took for granted, how to read theologians generously but not without critique, and how to notice all of the ideas at play. Anti-racist work was woven throughout each of these lessons. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I learned from my classmates, really listening to their experiences for the first time. I read and read and read so many thinkers who were not white, who didn’t have anything like my background. I absorbed all of this information, feeling like a sponge, not knowing that it was actually a lifeline. Engaging with Black and Brown people’s words, thoughts, sermons, music, art of all kinds, experiences, all of it kept me human. I learned so much about being like Jesus just by being around people who were not like me. I learned, too, to see how so many of the systems that have shepherded me through my life, including the church, were built with racism in mind. What had been a self-righteous awareness that race existed grew into a complex understanding that the past and present of race and racism in this country alone was an immense thing to grapple with, but grapple with it I must. I’m glad to be past seminary in many ways, but I’m so grateful for this astounding work of learning and reshaping God did within me during these years, years when it would have been so easy to disengage from the hurts of others and retreat to places of quiet, white comfort.

In the year and couple months since seminary, I’ve continued to grow, continued to hone my understanding of racism in this world. I’ve struggled with how to teach others, how to share this life-giving information with others. I’ve felt myself called over and over again to compassion for Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, called to guide others on the journey from comfortable white colorblindness to something more like the truth. I long for a world where we can celebrate the joy that comes from glorious diversity that humanity contains, and though the dominance of white supremacy dampens that joy, it’s never completely gone. The Maker of All Things made us to be different from one another not so that we would forever be in conflict, but so that we might learn to recognize holiness outside of ourselves. There is holiness bursting through everywhere in this world and where there is holiness, there is joy. I hold out hope that we’ll all be able to see it and live into it one day.

I invite y’all to think through your own racial autobiography. There’s so much that I’ve left out here: Black authors that have changed my life, the march in DC where the pain, strength, and hope of Indigenous people crept into my heart and made a home, friends who have been patient with me and struggled with me, my trip to South Africa, settling into my Appalachian heritage while also learning that my experience is such a narrow slice of it. I’m sure your stories are just as complex, but sit down and start thinking about what your story is anyway. Reflection, in the right amount, is good for the soul.

Thirty Days

I can remember being in elementary school and showing one of my friends a story I was working on. It was probably about a princess who could both rule and fight, because I watched Star Wars a lot when I was little and my takeaway was that if you can be anything in this life, be Princess Leia. Or maybe it was a ghost story. I really loved the idea of ghosts righting wrongs in the world after this one, and I’m an October baby. Spooky is in my stars. But whatever it was, what I remember most from showing this story to my friend was her saying, “You wrote this?”

I remember the same reaction from some of the other counselors at the Christian summer camp I worked at when I showed them another piece of writing of mine. I can’t think of what it was, exactly, but I remember them pouring over it as a group, binder laid open on the meeting room table, and that same question of surprise coming from them. “You wrote this?”

This is not to say that my writing has always been superb or praiseworthy. I did, after all, get a 2.5 on the North Carolina Writing Test in 4th grade, the lowest scored you can get and still pass. The prompt told us to describe our favorite birthday and if I, a little white girl whose father still had a full time job with benefits, struggled to describe my favorite birthday, I can only imagine the fictions some of my classmates had to invent. I got points taken off because I kept repeating, “It was great,” but, like, we had a party at a putt putt course, which is now a Wendy’s and a gas station, and I got to be the director of my own Samantha the American Girl Doll play, which, in general, was great. I don’t know what else they wanted from me. It was a dull prompt.

I’ve also found my urge to write quashed over the past few years as I’ve come to terms with the church, the Purity Movement, and the spiritual harm it caused. No amount of surprised delight at my writing could lift me out of those depths.

See, I used to keep dense prayer journals, ones I’d write in daily with all my thoughts and hopes and dreams, my deep confessions and my honest questions. This was my primary spiritual discipline, the main way I connected with God. I would write and write until my hand cramped, memorizing the names on my prayer lists as I wrote out prayers for them daily. So much of my spiritual growth was done in these prayer journals, and I kept the practice up all the way from high school into my sophomore year of college.

Then, it was blogging. I wrote out all of my college angst about what to be and how to go be it. My fiction wasn’t ever very good, though I did NaNoWriMo year after year, but my blog posts, essentially stream-of-conscious essays focused around a singular topic, got a fair amount of approval when I shared them on facebook. I kept the blog up for years, shifting spaces here and there, and by the end, I had a few hundred people reading what I wrote. I held out a secret love for my writing and secret hopes that the right person would read it and launch my writing career. I wasn’t sure what genre I’d write in, specifically, but since most of the affirmation I received was from church people, I assumed that God had given me a gift and that, if I just continued to use this gift, good things would come of it.

As I entered grad school, though, my classwork took up most of the mental energy I had, along with some depression and anxiety. On top of that, I found myself in a new church setting, something different than any church I had been in before. There wasn’t a choir for me to sing in or an instrumental ensemble for me to play in. My efforts to get involved in the ministries I was used to participating in were largely ignored. And the church had split from the Church of Scotland over gay marriage. One of the first sermons I heard was about the nature of biblical marriage and God’s grand plan of fruitfulness in marriage.

I am truly thankful for those of you who are unfamiliar with those evangelical buzzwords. I’ll explain it all another time, but suffice it to say, I had, for the first time in my life, found myself in a church environment that was openly opposed to what I believed. Not just, “Oh, Carl didn’t nail the sermon this week,” but “Holy hell, I can’t believe this man is saying this.”

I don’t mean to paint a picture that I had never doubted or questioned my faith before. I had done a fair amount of tearing things apart and putting them back together as a physics and astronomy major and then informal science educator working in the Bible Belt. But I had always felt like church was home and that no matter how much I was wrestling with God, I would be surrounded by people who loved and cared for me, people who welcomed me and supported me. It was clear to me that this church wasn’t that.

Now, the cracks in my trust in the church had been there before I started going to this church, and this church wasn’t the one to break me wide open, but I know that the ground started to shake underneath me during the year I attended there. And it’s hard to put pen to paper as the ground shakes underneath you.

The full story of my unraveling soul is perhaps one for another time, but suffice to say, once I got out of the habit of writing, I couldn’t convince myself that I was good enough to come back, not routinely. As I finished one masters and started working on another, I also start digging into the painful places in my heart, places where evangelicalism and the Purity Movement had cut into me and left my wounds to fester. When your sense of worthiness is tied to your sense of physical purity, which is tied to your relationship with God, to which you have tied your ability to write, well, your blog gets a little dusty.

With the help of therapy and some antidepressants, though, I feel like I’m putting myself back together, better than I was before. I hope, and sometimes pray, that this is solid foundation I’ve been longing for. I’m tired all the way down to my bones from all this instability. And as I put myself back together, I’ve found myself dream of little stories once again, planning posts in my head, and aching for the keyboard under my fingers. I hope it’s time to start again.

So, in a fashion that you, dear reader, will come to know is distinctly mine, I’ve decided to jump back into the swing of things by committing to writing a post each day, no matter how long or short, for the month of September, following the United Methodist Church’s General Commission on Religion and Race’s 30 Days of Anti-Racism calendar. I’ve been doing a fair amount of anti-racist work in these past few months, but I know in my heart that I need to set aside time to reflect on it too. It’s just a part of being white in these days: listening, learning, doing, reflecting, all in a perpetual loop. This loop is important for most things in our lives, but in this time of increasing racial consciousness, it’s especially important now.

So count this for September 1, no matter how late it’s published. I’ve committed to prayer and I’ve committed to action, and we’ll go from there.

How about y’all? How do you feel God is calling to you in this time? What anti-racist work lies ahead of you? Has the church been holding you back or propelling you forward?

Do Not Be Deceived

A sermon for Sunday, August 30, 2020

Would you pray with me?

God whose love reaches out to both the foolish and the wise, thank you for bringing us to this time and this place. By your Spirit, make your presence known among us here and now. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

So I used to work for Morehead Planetarium and Science Center in Chapel Hill, as most of you know, and while I was there, I wrote, managed, and taught science summer camps, among other things. And it was always so fun, getting to see all of the LEGO projects at the end of the week or hearing kids identify the bugs they saw in the botanical gardens or seeing a kid’s face light up when they understood something for the first time. But it was a challenge, too, because there are some concepts that are just hard to communicate. Take atmospheric density, for example. Our atmosphere is made of mostly nitrogen, with some oxygen and carbon dioxide, and other things, and even though it’s a thin, thin layer of gases surrounding the Earth, it’s much thicker, than, say, Mars’ atmosphere. Plus, Mars’ atmosphere has a much different composition. It’s 95% carbon dioxide. That matters when you’re trying to land robots on Mars and it also matters when you’re teaching a camp about space robots.

So I found this demonstration where you give the kids these beans and you assign say that, like, the kidney beans are nitrogen and the lentils are carbon dioxide and navy beans are oxygen and you have them guess the ratios and then you show them the real ratios and it makes this esoteric thing tangible for the kids. They get that the atmospheres are made of different things. But me, thinking that I would be the cool camp curricula editor, decided that we should use jelly beans instead of regular beans. That way, the kids would be excited about learning because they could also eat the science. Plus, I scheduled this activity for right before the afternoon break, so they could run off all that sugar.

I thought this was all brilliant planning and I was pretty pleased. I went to order the supplies for camp, I did the math and I tallied up how many jelly beans I would need, and I bulk ordered them online, because I was ordering for, like, fifteen camp sessions that would do this activity. And you know how sometimes, it’s hard to tell what it is you’re ordering when you’re ordering stuff online or in a catalog? Sometimes, things aren’t exactly what they look like? Well, turns out, I calculated that I needed twenty bags of each color of jelly beans, which was true, but when I clicked on the picture of a bag of jelly beans, I instead ended up ordering twenty pounds of jelly beans. The delivery man insisted on helping me move the boxes from the delivery bay to my office.

Yeah, not my finest hour.

I bet they still have bags of red, green, yellow, and blue jelly beans floating around the outreach office to this day.

But stuff like this happens all the time, right? There’s a little bit of misleading advertising, or even false advertising, and suddenly, you’ve got a problem on your hands. You’ve got to slow down, pay attention, maybe even read some reviews, or you’ll end up swimming in jelly beans.

Now, this is a silly example, but I think it points to a larger truth, a truth that Jesus’ followers were wrestling with. There were a lot of voices speaking out in Jesus’ day, telling people what to believe and what to do. We know that many people were listening to John the Baptist before they were listening to Jesus. We know a lot of people were listening to the Pharisees and Sadducees. And the reason John the Baptist and others questioned whether Jesus was the Messiah is that there were a lot of Messiahs around in those days, each one with different hopes and dreams and plans and teachings. People then were hearing a lot of different messages, just as we are today. And in the cacophony of different voices and choices, it’s hard to know which one is right.

Which is why Jesus tells his followers to pay attention and read the reviews, as it were, because otherwise, they’ll end up in some trouble.

Now, this is at the very end of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has spent a lot of time teaching over the past few chapters of Matthew, culminating in his message of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” which we read last week. But then he adds in this little addendum about wolves in sheep’s clothing and knowing trees by their fruits and how not everyone who says, “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven. Instead, Jesus says, be doers of his teachings and not hearers only. Hearing Jesus’ words but not acting on them is like building a house on sand. The firm foundation of the followers of Jesus is acting on Jesus’ teachings.

This is something I appreciate so much about Jesus, because I think it shows us that Jesus understands how we humans work and accounts for that. We love something that grabs our attention and Jesus here is grabbing our attention. He’s speaking to some of our deepest hurts and deepest concerns and is telling us that there’s a better way to live. I mean, I hang on every word of the Sermon on the Mount because it offers me something new and exciting each time I turn to it. These words flood into my spirit, washing away the things that don’t matter, that things that aren’t eternal, the things that don’t shape me to be more like Jesus, and I love that feeling, that renewal, that newness I feel in my spirit. The word of God makes us new and I don’t know about the rest of you, but in times like these, I long to be made new.

But it’s not enough to hear or say words that make us feel like new. The words are an important part of it, sure, but anyone can say something that feels renewing, that feels good. It’s the actions that matter. It’s the fruits that matter. You can call on the name of Jesus all day long, but if you’re not doing what he told you to do, you’re building your house on shifting sands.

And what does Jesus tell us to do?

Jesus tells us to be salt for the earth and light for the world. Jesus tells us to be righteous, in the ways that matter. Jesus tells us not to insult our family in Christ, but to reconcile with one another as quickly as we can. Jesus tells us to see others as human beings and to care for them, not discard them, to keep our promises, to love our enemies so that they too might be renewed, to be complete in love, to do all that we do for God, to serve only God, to trust God, to treasure eternal things, and in all things, to love others as you would be loved; that is, to love others as God loves them.

Paul continues in this same vein in our passage from Romans 12 this morning. Let your love be genuine. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with mutual affection. Rejoice in hope. Show hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you. Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Leave room for God’s work. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Do these things, and you’re solid. The storms of this world will rage about you, but they will come and they will go, and you will stand firm, because the word that goes out from the Lord does not return empty. If you hear Jesus’ teachings and if you act on them, you can trust that you have been planted deep into the soil by the One who taught gardens how to grow. Follow Jesus and you are rooted. You will bloom.

And, by the same token, if you’re looking to discern which voices in this world to listen to, this list is it. Pay attention to what the voices say—do they sound like Jesus? Watch their actions—do they do the things that Jesus calls us to do? Read the reviews, pay attention to their fruits—do they show things like patience, perseverance, hope, goodness, justice? Do they love others? Can you see the fruits of their love? Because we humans, we’ve got plenty in common. We were all made by the same Creator. And while we might bloom in an abundance of different ways and at different rates, growing a variety of different fruit, all our good fruit has a fundamental trait in common: love.

Friends, we are not living through easy times, and what we give our time and treasure to, what we pay attention to, has a much bigger impact than accidentally ordering eighty pounds of jelly beans. It is so important, maybe now more than ever, to pay attention to the reviews, to read the fine print, to think about what people are saying, and to know people by their fruits. Our decisions must be based in love, love that produces real, good fruit. Otherwise, we’re going to watch the ground slip away beneath us.

Now, I’m not saying that this is easy. I’m not saying that following Jesus won’t cost us anything. But on the day when we come to stand before Jesus, I don’t want to be a stranger. I want Jesus to know that I listened to all he said and I did my best to follow him.

And I’m sure you want to do the same.

Amen.

Seeing Clearly

A sermon for Sunday, August 23, 2020

Would you pray with me?

God who loves us all, thank you for bringing us together in this time and this place. By your Spirit, make your presences known among us here today. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

You know, we mountain people are storytellers. It’s just a part of our culture up here in these hills. I think that comes to some of us from those first Scotch-Irish Americans, because I’ve never known a Scot or an Irishman who could resist telling a tale when the opportunity was presented to them, but I also think that there’s something about these mountains that is ancient, something that’s held in the stories we tell. After all, these mountains, the Appalachian Mountain chain, they’re the same mountains that are in the highlands in Scotland. The islands we know as Ireland and the United Kingdom today were once the northernmost part of the mighty Appalachians, back when they towered over Pangea. The Cherokee and the other people who live up in these mountains have these same storytelling tendencies. It’s a deep part of who we are, a kinship that we share.

And at the same time, I think we’ve all experienced people in our lives whose stories go on a little longer than we’d like. We respect them, of course. We honor them, of course. But we’d also like for them to get to the end just a little bit quicker, to sum up what they’re saying, to get right to the heart of the matter. We can all only take so much storytelling in one sitting.

Jesus, too, was a storyteller. Storytelling is a deep part of Jewish tradition too. But as for us, here in the twenty-first century, reading Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount here in Matthew, starting our third chapter of Jesus’ teachings, we might be ready for Jesus to get to the point already. We’ve heard the beatitudes, we’ve heard teachings about the law, we’ve heard teachings about adultery, we’ve heard about loving our enemies, we’ve heard about praying and fasting and almsgiving, we’ve heard about worrying. If you’re reading from a red-letter Bible, the pages have been redder than an NC State fan during football season. Well, during a normal football season. My point is, I think we’re all ready for Jesus to wrap it up.

Which is maybe part of the reason that one of the most famous verses found in the New Testament is at the end of our scripture reading for today. Jesus, bless his heart, gets to the point. “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” – Matthew 7:12, for those of you who went to bible camp.

Now, later, in Matthew 22, Jesus will say this again, worded a little differently. Then, he’ll say, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” because all the law and the prophets hang on the two commandments to love God will all that you are and to love your neighbor as yourself. This is, I would say, Jesus’ core message. Everything else he has said or will say is an explanation of these laws of love. This is the lens through which we see the rest of scripture clearly.

So let’s start back with these verses at the beginning of chapter 7 with this lens, with these laws of love in mind. “Judge not that ye be not judged.” Boy, am I guilty of pulling that verse out of context, because I use this verse to avoid conflict and to avoid upsetting the status quo all the time. I’ll say things like, “Hey, listen, I’m not judging you. You do you” or “Well, I can’t know what’s in their hearts, so it’s not for me to judge.”

And on one level, that’s a fantastic reading of what Jesus has to say here, especially for those of us who have known Christians who do pass judgement on others unthinkingly. Many of us know the harm that other judgmental Christians have caused ourselves or others. We do a lot of good by not judging others as we ourselves have been judged in the past. But I think we need to look at the first six verses of this chapter all together, as we’ve done with other sections of the Sermon on the Mount, to get at what Jesus means here.

Jesus tells us not to judge because the way we judge others will be applied back to us. The measure we give out will be the measure we receive. And if we’re complaining about the speck in someone else’s eye without noticing the log in our own, we’re being hypocritical. We’re not doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. Jesus is not prohibiting us from seeing the actions of others and drawing conclusions; Jesus is telling us not to hold others to a different standard than we would hold ourselves. So before we draw conclusions about anyone else, we have to draw conclusions about ourselves.

This is where those laws of love become key, and we see a key part of those laws of love reflected in verses 7-11. “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask!”

See, we all love imperfectly, incompletely, much of the time through no fault of our own. Our parents, our friends, our partners, even when they tried their best, couldn’t love us perfectly and so we haven’t ever learned how to do it, though, in some amazing, profound, holy moments in our lives, we get pretty darn close. And this isn’t a judgement. It just is what it is. All of us, every one of us, loves imperfectly.

And yet, Jesus reminds us, we do still know some things. We know not to give a child a stone when asked for bread, or a snake when asked for fish. We get it, sometimes. But you know who gets it all the time? God. Because God is love. God can’t help but be perfectly loving. That’s who God is.

So it’s our task to learn how to love more completely, more perfectly. It’s our task to learn from God how to love our partners, our family, our friends, our neighbors, our enemies, more completely. And the more complete way to love others is to be honest about ourselves and how we ourselves love incompletely before we turn to teach others about the ways that they’re loving others incompletely.

But we also have to understand where they’re at, too, before we offer our love, however incomplete, to them. That, I think is, the wisdom of verse 6, which, on the face of it, sounds harsh. “Do not give what is holy to dogs and do not throw your pearls before swine.” Uh, Jesus, I could be wrong here, but I’m pretty sure that calling others dogs and swine is, like, the least loving you could be.

What Jesus means, though, I think, is that there are those who are not ready for the love that you want to show them. They’re not ready for those amazing, profound, holy moments of nearly perfect love. They don’t know what to do with that. They have been shaped by the world in such a way that they’re not ready to receive love, not yet. And you can love them and love them until the cows come home, but it’s like throwing pearls before feral hogs. They don’t know the goodness they’ve been given, and they can’t know, not until they’ve grown a little more.

This is complicated, I know. It seems straightforward to do unto others as you would have them do unto to you, to love others as you love yourself, but the fact of the matter is, we’re all still learning how to love. We’re learning how to love ourselves the way God loves us.

Because, again, we haven’t been taught how to love completely. We’ve been taught that love looks like making someone else happy, and while that’s part of it, it’s not all of it. We’ve been taught that love looks like making someone comfortable, and while that’s part of it, it’s not all of it. We’ve been taught that love looks like sharing wisdom with those who are still learning and while that’s part of it, that’s not all of it. Love is a fluid, active thing. Love looks like all of these things, yes, because we all need happiness and comfort and wisdom, but love also looks like self-reflection. Love looks like thinking before you speak. Love looks like learning. Love looks like listening. And as anyone who has done any teaching or parenting in any form known, love also looks like correcting. Love looks like explaining the consequences of our actions. Love looks like showing others how to love. Love, sometimes, when we’ve put in the work of learning and self-reflection, looks like holding others up to a standard they’re not used to yet in order to show them how to be more loving. Love, sometimes, looks less extravagant than we expect, because sometimes love looks like holding back until the person we want to love is ready for it. Love is all of these things and more.

In the end, then, I guess I’m happy that Jesus is a bit of a storyteller. I’m glad that Jesus understands what our ancestors who have lived and loved up in these hills understood, and what we understand today. I’m thankful that it takes Jesus a while to get to his point. Loving others more fully, more completely, looks different at different times and with different people and Jesus has been weaving us small tales of wisdom of what love looks like in different situations throughout the Sermon on the Mount.

And yet, we know that no matter how hard it can seem to learn to love others completely, all we have to do is ask. All we have to do is search. All we have to do is knock. God is waiting to give us the good gifts of wisdom whenever we ask for them.

So go, as Jesus calls us to go, and love as completely as you can. Search your heart before you invite others to do the same. Seek to understand where others are as you offer your love to them. And known that in all things, you are held in the arms of our loving Parent in Heaven, who longs for us to love others as we are loved, and is more than ready to pick us up when we fall and give us grace for where we come up short.

Amen.

Mammon

A sermon for Sunday, August 16, 2020

Would you pray with me?

God of all good gifts, thank you for bringing us to this time and this place. By your Spirit, make your presence known among us. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

I’m sure y’all all remember the Family Circus cartoons that used to run in the paper. Maybe they still do—I haven’t looked at the comics section in a long time. But I remember one Family Circus comic where the mother is standing at the check-out counter of a department store, fixing to pay, while one of the kids holds up a toy that they want her to buy for them. And the caption says, “It’s okay! You don’t have to pay for it, you can just write a check for it!”

I suppose kids today say, “It’s okay! Just use a credit card!”

But I bring up this cartoon because I think that this was the first time I realized that money was a real, important thing, and that money matters. I can’t tell you exactly how old I was when I saw this cartoon, but I can’t have been older than eight or nine. And somehow, seeing money, or the lack thereof, as the punchline to a comic made me realize that if you wanted things in this world, you needed to have money to get them.

See, I didn’t grow up particularly wealthy, but I also didn’t grow up dirt poor. Sure, we were on food stamps for several years there, and my parents have told me, now that I’m grown, that a couple of Christmases were rough, but we owned a house and we had support from family members and the church we went to. We got by, and so our money, or lack thereof, didn’t really stick out to me. But I knew, before the age of 10, that money mattered to others.

And, as much as we might be uncomfortable admitting it, money mattered to Jesus too. The only thing that Jesus talks about more than money is the kingdom of God, making money the second most common topic for Jesus to teach about.

So what does Jesus think about money? Well, this passage is a good place to start answering that question. The first thing he tells us is not to store up treasures for ourselves here on earth, because the treasures of this earth don’t last. They can be taken from us. They’re subject to rot and ruin.

And Jesus doesn’t want us storing up treasures here because he knows that where our treasure is, there our heart will be also. There’s no two ways about it. If your treasure is stored here on earth, that’s where your heart is. Our hearts follow our treasure.

Now, that is a hard word from Jesus for us in the United States today, because it is so different from what we hear from the world around us. We get the message that the pursuit of treasure here on earth is good, blessed, or holy, even, as long as we stay humble. We can have all the money in the world, but if we’re humble, we’re good.

That’s simply not what Jesus tells us here. Jesus says that where our treasure is, our heart is. The message we get from the world around us tricks us and traps us, leading us to think that we can pursue money and wealth and possessions here on this earth without any consequence to our souls, to our connection to others, or to our connection to God. But Jesus is firm in saying that’s not true. You can’t serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and wealth.

Now, the word that Jesus uses there for wealth has a long and storied history. It’s Mammon. It’s a Greek translation of an Aramaic word that comes from a root that word originally meant, “that which you rely on, other than God.” Jesus here is telling us that serving wealth is the same thing as worshiping idols, the same thing as abandoning God for the things of this world, and so you’d think that we as Christians would learn that we should stay away from striving for wealth. But Christians have, over the years, wrestled with Mammon over and over again because, well, we can see Mammon, but we can’t always see God.

Because where is God when, in the middle of a pandemic when people are losing their jobs and potentially their homes, the billionaires of the world have gotten richer? Where is God when the stock market is doing fine but people have to let their loved ones be buried in unmarked graves because they can’t afford funeral costs? Where is God when we have enough money to grow enough food to feed the world, but there are still hungry and starving adults and children around the world? Where is God when we as a nation have the ability to send people to the Moon but not to a quality hospital? Where is God when the rich get richer and the poor get poorer?

So, we turn to Mammon, because we can see Mammon doing work in the world. After all, Mammon made the billionaires. Mammon drives the stock market. Mammon guides hospital and pharmaceutical executives. Mammon chooses the food we grow and how we process and package it. Mammon has given plenty of people in this world more money that they could spend in a million lifetimes. Mammon gets things done. Mammon will keep us safe.

And once you know to look for Mammon, you can see it everywhere. Mammon is right and left and up and down our politics. Mammon is in our schools, in the jobs we tell our children to strive for, in the way we think about others. Mammon is in the property we own, in the decisions we make, in the pride we have in ourselves. Mammon is even in our churches, in our denominations, in the making of the Bibles we read. There is no way around it and no escape from it.

That leaves us believing that Jesus is calling us to an impossible task. How can we serve only God when we live in a world that is dominated by Mammon? You can’t exist in this world without money. Money matters! Well, let me invite you to jump to the end of our passage for this morning, before Mammon envelops our hearts once again and makes us believe that we can never have enough without it. Jesus tells us, “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Jesus isn’t saying that money doesn’t matter. Jesus knows the reality we live in. We have to have enough to get by and God knows what we need. Jesus isn’t telling us to ignore the realities of this world. He’s telling us to put our trust in God, not in money. Our first question in life shouldn’t be, “Is there money enough to do this?”, it should be, “Does this please God?”

Imagine how different our lives, our world, would be if we asked ourselves this question first and foremost. Does what we do please God? Is what we’re doing kingdom-seeking?

And I mean that in a really real, really direct way. I know that I’ve heard sermons in the past on this passage that are about reducing our stress and doing random acts of kindness and things like that, which is all well and good, and I know that I’ve heard sermons about the kingdom of heaven as the world after this one, which has some merit too, but I don’t think Jesus is talking about just these things. I think Jesus is calling us to think about everything we do, everything we participate in, on this earth and to ask ourselves, “Does this please God? Does this seek the kingdom of God?” Because, as we know, Mammon is a part of everything in our lives, from our homes to our schools to our politics to our churches. Wealth, money, guides so much of what we do. What would it look like if instead of being guided by money, we actively chose to be guided by God? What if we chose to act like people who knew that they would be provided for, as long as we were seeking the kingdom of God? What if that guided the careers we encouraged people to pursue or the way we voted? What if we chose to move forward loving people extravagantly, in every circumstance, saying, “It’s okay! God’s got this!”?

Because that’s what it means to ask if something pleases God. That’s what it means to ask if something seeks the kingdom of God. We know that our God is love and we know that our God is at work in this world. What Jesus is calling to do here is to seek out love where it can be found and elevate it. Jesus is calling us to think about everything we do, everything we’re involved in, and to seek to make it more loving, and to set it aside if we can’t.

Because that’s what it means to seek out the kingdom of God first. That’s what it means to serve God instead of Mammon. It means in everything we do, to the best of our ability, seeking to love people extravagantly, without worrying about how to pay for it. There are so, so many people in this world today who need our love, in any way we can give it. That’s the work that Jesus calls us to, today. And we have to start doing that, today.

After all, today’s trouble is enough for today.

Amen.

Showing Off

A sermon for Sunday, August 9, 2020

Would you pray with me?

God who is with us wherever we are, thank you for bringing us together in this time and place. By your Spirit, make your presence known here today. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

You know, the way I know that the Sermon on the Mount is still working on my heart is that every week when I go to preach on a new section of it, I feel the need to confess something. Jesus is still out here, using the same words he used two thousand years ago, to shape our hearts and minds so that we can be more like him, amen?

I remember hearing this passage in Matthew as a teenager and thinking that I needed to start praying in my closet if I was serious about being a Christian, so I went into the closet in my room, cleared out a space on the floor, wrote a couple of Bible verses in pencil on the wall, and started to pray. To be honest, this was not the most effective way to pray for me, since, whenever God and I have a conversation, I tend to gesticulate and I kept on banging my hands on the walls, but I kept it up for a quite a while, because I thought it was what you had to do.

Then, one week, in Bible study, we were talking about prayer and I proudly proclaimed that I go pray in my closet. The high school girls’ Bible study leader, Mary Nelson, bless her heart, said that I was being very scriptural but also asked if there was a reason why I would choose to hide in a closet to pray. Sensing that I needed to fill out my story a little more, I said that I had to go to my closet to pray because my house was SO LOUD all the time, I couldn’t find another quiet space for prayer. This was, unfortunately, a lie, because my older brother stayed in his room reading all the time and my little brother was either outside with friends or playing video games, but I stuck to it, because I didn’t want anyone to think I was weird. This is one of those stories that I will remember out of the blue and cringe a little. Yeah, in the end, it was just an awkward high school and no, no harm was done, but for someone who prided herself on being the smartest kid in class, I totally missed the point that Jesus is making here.

And I’ve found that to be true with several of my clergy friends. We were set on this path toward pastoral ministry because we were good at church. We were the smartest kids in Sunday School, the most devoted volunteers at the homeless shelter, the presidents of the youth group, the soloists in the church choir. We were shining stars of church and it turns out, if you shine bright enough at church, someone somewhere will give you a copy of The Christian as Minister and tell you that you should think about going to seminary.

But being good at church didn’t necessarily mean we were good at understanding what Jesus was saying. Sometimes, being good at church made us completely misunderstand what Jesus was saying, because Jesus tells us, in passages like this, to do everything for God, but being good at church sometimes, maybe even often, meant doing things for the approval of others.

Not that I haven’t heard several sermons in my life about doing good in secret, but it’s a little bit of a Catch-22 for the over-achieving kid. How can we show people how good we are at doing good in secret when we have to keep things secret? How can we get our gold star or our “Secret Do-Gooder” badge if we can’t tell anyone about the good we’re doing? And how does this line up with what we read last week, where Jesus told us not to hide our lights under a bushel and to be salt for the earth and shining city on the hill? Should we shine our lights or should we pray in secret? Is our faith public or personal?

This is a perennial question for us Christians, one that we’ve tried to answer over and over again, and one that we’ve wrestled with over the history of the United States. I should know. I’m descended from Increase Mather, father of Cotton Mather, both of whom were Puritan ministers involved in the Salem Witch Trials, a perfect example of faith lived out loud gone wrong. But both before and after the Puritans, the question of how we live out our faith as Christians has plagued us, and still does to this day.

I think it’s important to notice that here, in this passage, Jesus is talking about what we today call spiritual practices or spiritual disciplines, things like giving, praying, and fasting. Spiritual disciplines are like exercising for your soul, helping you grow spiritual muscle. The more we do this spiritual exercise, the more we show fruits of the Spirit. Giving can grow love, joy, kindness and goodness within us. Praying grows peace, faithfulness, and gentleness. Fasting can grow patience and self-control. We do these things because, as we encounter God more and more often, we see that we want to be like God and practicing these disciplines helps us be more like God. We do these disciplines because we want to, because we have hearts that long to be close to God but also hearts that need a little help getting there.

So it makes sense that Jesus would tell us to do these things in secret, because these things are not for the world; they’re for God. Giving to those who need it is not for other people to see; it’s for God, who Jesus tells us is in the least of these. Praying is not for other people to hear; it’s for God, who delights in coming close to us. Fasting is not for others; it’s for God, who can speak more easily to our hearts in times of emptiness. These disciplines that Jesus lists here, these common practices of faithful people in Jesus’ day, they were meant to grow a connection between us and God. The world doesn’t need to be involved in that.

And if the world is involved in these things that are best left between us and God, we run the risk of being performative, what Jesus later calls being white-washed tombs. Jesus spends so much time talking about these disciplines, I think, because we are so susceptible to being performative. It seems simpler and more rewarding to look like you’re doing what God tells you to do. It’s easier to get affirmation when someone sees you doing God than to trust in the affirmation that comes from God.

But here’s the thing: we already have all the affirmation we need from God. We are each beloved children of the one who makes us, saves us, and sustains us. We know where we stand with God. Nothing can change that and one else’s opinion matters.

And that frees us to make mistakes on our Christian journeys. It frees us to grow in generosity, being able to give freely to whoever needs it, without anyone judging what we give. It frees us to make mistakes in prayer, to change our minds in prayer, to not know what to pray for, exactly, and to be ourselves when we come to God in prayer. It frees us to have a relationship with God that is just between us and God, something that’s precious and holy and growing and changing. When we trust that God will give us what we need, including the affirmation we need, we don’t have to seek that approval elsewhere. We don’t try to receive what we need for life from other people. We receive it from God our life-giver.

That’s the knowledge and wisdom that I didn’t have in high school, and I’d bet it’s part of the wisdom that the people Jesus was criticizing were missing too. When we get our affirmation and support solely from other people, we’ve already received all they can give. When we get our affirmation and support from God, we receive gifts that last throughout this life and into the next.

And when we rest in God, when we practice these spiritual disciplines for God and God alone, then we are filled with what we need to go out into the world and do the good works God has set out before us. It’s not that our faith is entirely public or private; it’s that our faith is both. God calls for us to love God in secret, but that love was never meant to stay secret. It was meant to grow and grow and grow, until we can’t help but shine with it, give light to others with it, preserve the earth with it, and flavor the world with it.

So go. Seek out God in the quiet spaces where no one else is watching. But don’t stay there forever, because God wants to grow you bigger than that.

Amen.

Salt and Light

A sermon for Sunday, August 2, 2020

Would you pray with me?

God who is light and breath and being, thank you for bringing us together today. By your Spirit, make your presence known among us in this place. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

You know, we talked a little about images in midweek worship this week, and how Jesus is fantastic at using them. The passage was the one about the kingdom of God being like a mustard seed, and how, even though it starts off tiny, it spreads and grows until it’s so big, birds can make their nests in its shade. That mustard seed image sticks with us, doesn’t it?

And part of why it sticks with us, I think, is because it feels so comforting. The mustard seed image shows us that small things, tiny things, can make a world of difference. I mean, the world that God wants to build, an entire world, is contained in something so small as a mustard seed. And if the world God wants to build can be something that small, then maybe we can be a part of it, no matter how small. We have so many other obligations weighing on us, and we feel so helpless sometimes, but God takes the small things that we can give and makes them grow bigger than we could ever hope for. All of that hope and comfort is nestled into the image of this tiny mustard seed. It’s powerful.

I think our text for this morning, from earlier in the gospel of Matthew, sticks with us for the same reason, because in it, Jesus again uses images to capture our imagination, images of tiny things with a huge impact. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. I mean, salt crystals can be tiny, and photons, the particles that make up light, don’t even have mass. They’re weightless.

And yet, we all know the power of light. And if any of you have had to go on a heart-healthy diet, you know what a big deal salt, or the lack thereof, can be.

So, right from the top, we can take heart in Jesus’ words this morning. Every little bit that we can do helps, and each of us, no matter how small or insignificant we might feel from time to time, no matter how powerless, each of us are salt and light and these are not insignificant things. Small things make a big difference.

And I think, actually, that Jesus gives us two images here that show us two different paths of discipleship, two different ways of following his teachings. And I think that if we recognize that there are these two different ways of following Jesus and that we can each embody what Jesus is calling us to do in different ways, we’ll be better able to talk to each other and to other Christians in the days and weeks and months ahead. Some of us gravitate toward being salt and some of us gravitate toward being light, but Jesus proclaims to us, the gathered body of Christ, that we are both, and that is a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere.

So. Let’s think about salt first. You are the salt of the earth. What does it mean to call someone “the salt of the earth”? I’ve grown to think of someone who is the salt of the earth as being kind, compassionate, reliable, solid, and wise, someone who’s always there and always ready to show someone a kindness or mercy. This is, actually, what I think of when I think of a good person. Someone who’s grounded, who can take everything in stride and who is always working for the good of those around them. I think of someone who has endured much in this life but all they’ve endured has made them kinder and more understanding, rather than bitter and closed off. In my deepest heart of hearts, I want to be a salt of the earth kind of person. I want to feel grounded someplace and I want to give all that I can out of compassion and mercy. Many of you are already the salt of the earth and here you are, preserving and flavoring this community of Whittier and beyond.

Jesus tells us that we are the salt of the earth, but then he says something interesting: “But if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?” Now, you and I both know that salt on its own doesn’t go bad. I’ve looked into this time and time again, but we don’t have a clear answer for what Jesus was referring to here. It might be that salt that was gathered from the nearby Dead Sea and the surrounding regions was sometimes mixed with other things and so wasn’t truly salty. And if salt doesn’t have its salty flavor, what can salt it? If salt isn’t salt, it’s worthless.

I think there’s another meaning we can draw out here, as those who are called salt of the earth, and that is that we are that which gives the world its flavor, and if we lose our flavor, we’re done for. If we each lose our uniqueness, that which makes us us, we can no longer be the salt of the earth. God in God’s wisdom has made us each with a beautiful, delightful diversity of attributes, shaped and formed by our life on this earth, and to stifle those good things is to deprive the world of its flavor. Revel in being who you were made to be, because in being who you are, you flavor the world. It's another way of being grounded, I think. When you know deep down in your bones who you are, when you have an unshakeable sense of self, and know that you are loved by God because of and not despite of who you are, then you are unshakeable. When you’re grounded like that, you are the salt of the earth. When you know who you are, all of the insecurity and worry and fretfulness gets set aside and you can, indeed, be the person who is kind, compassionate, reliable, solid, and wise. When you are who you are, just as God made you, you’re bedrock, an unshakeable place. You can be a preservative and you can give out flavor, all at the same time. You’re the salt of the earth.

Now, let’s look at light. What does it mean to be the light of the world? I’m tempted to think of someone who lights up your day, who just makes the world a better place in your day-to-day life, and I’m sure we can all think of someone like that in your world. But I get the sense from the later verses that Jesus is talking about something wider-reaching. Jesus, I think, is talking about the light of the world as light that shows the way for the world, light that shines on good actions so that the world can see them and follow. I think of someone like John Lewis, who never flinched from fighting the good fight. If we can follow him, marching toward a more just world and dancing when the march could wait just a minute, we too can be the light of the world, and people will give glory to God for the way we shined. Then, as Isaiah says, our light shall break forth like the dawn, and our healing shall spring up quickly. Our vindicator shall go before us and the glory of the LORD shall be our rear guard.

Do you feel the tension there, between being salt and being light? One is being grounded in who you are, in doing what you do to the best of your ability, preserving the earth and giving it its flavor. The other is letting what you do escape from you, becoming radiant, and giving hope to the world through your light. One is about how Jesus changes your life at home and one is about how Jesus changes your life in the world. The sense I’ve gotten over our past year together is that y’all are more comfortable being salt and I am more comfortable being light.

And yet, Jesus tells us that we are both of these things. By God’s grace, the Spirit is already at work in us to make sure that we don’t lose our saltiness nor shield our light. We might be more comfortable as salt or light, but still, we are both, and we must be both.

Because think again of what it means to be perfect, what we talked about last week. It means to be complete, fulfilled, just as Jesus promises to complete or fulfill the law. Jesus is calling us to be fully ourselves, to be both grounded and vibrant. Not an iota will pass from the law, Jesus tells us, and neither will one iota of us pass away. We are salt and light, these tiny things that change the world. We are the humble, mourning, meek, and those who are thirsty for righteousness, as the beatitudes name us. We are also the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted, those who hear Isaiah’s call to God’s chosen fast, to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke. To be complete as Jesus was complete, to be perfect as our Parent in heaven is perfect, we must be both of these things.

So, my friends, continue to be salty, as I grow in my saltiness. I will continue to shine as you all begin to light those extra lamps in your houses, until we are that bright city on the hill we dream of being. And throughout all our work, we will rest in the Spirit, knowing that what Jesus speaks, the Spirit enacts. Even in us, these tiny grains of salt, these tiny photons of light. Jesus is doing wonders with us, just as we are now. Imagine what Jesus has yet to do, if we can answer his call.

Be salt. Be light. Be complete.

Amen.

Perfect

A sermon for Sunday, July 26, 2020

Would you pray with me?

God who knows each of us and calls us by name, thank you for bringing us to this time and this place. By your Spirit, make your presence known among us here today. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

I have to admit, though it likely won’t surprise anyone here, that I have, throughout my life, been haunted by our last verse from the gospel of Matthew this morning. I know you know it. “Be ye perfect therefore as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” I just never seemed to be able to be perfect. Once, in fifth grade, I got 99 questions right on a multiplication test, and I cried because I didn’t get a hundred. I don’t care to count the number of paper towels I’ve cleaned up from public bathroom floors and sinks, washing my hands afterwards, but somehow, still, there are always more. And let’s not even talk about the time at the sixth grade science fair when I routinely said tongue dispensers instead of tongue depressors or in eighth grade when I said die-sentry instead of dysentery in a speech in front of the entire Soil and Water Conservation Committee. Y’all, it was rough.

But of course, we all know that nobody’s perfect. We all make mistakes. We’re not God. So what does Jesus mean by, Be ye perfect? What superhuman feat is Jesus asking from us now?

Well, as I said last week, I think that in this section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is showing us how to think about the highest ideals of Christian life. Again, this is by no means the only place that Jesus teaches us about the way to live our lives, as I know y’all know, but I take this chapter of the Sermon on the Mount as a couple of examples about the way we can think about the life that Jesus of Nazareth, our Christ, is calling us to live, and the greatest example of that is his call for us to be perfect. It hinges on what the word “perfect” means. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

Let’s start by looking at the first four verses in our passage this morning, verses 38-42. The piece of context that we miss here is that “An eye for an eye” is actually a law, going back to the code of Hammurabi, an ancient set of Mesopotamian laws from nearly 2000 before Jesus’ birth, which the Jewish scriptures adapt into their laws, and then continue to adapt and interpret over the centuries. The law “an eye for an eye” is actually a de-escalation of violence, as far as ancient laws are concerned. It means that someone in power can’t overreact against a slight done by another. It’s not “a head for an eye,” it’s “an eye for an eye.” It’s a law of equal retribution. It’s actually the basis behind some of our legal thought today, but instead of an eye for an eye, we ask, “How much money should the aggressor have to pay for an eye replacement?” Actually, in Jesus’ day, in the Second Temple Period, this same type of system, money instead of physical retribution, was already taking shape.

So Jesus here is talking with the law, with justice, in mind. When someone hits you across the right cheek, offer them the other. In Jesus’ day, if you hit someone on the left cheek would mean backhanding them or hitting them with your unclean hand. Hitting someone’s left cheek would do them a great dishonor, but it would be an escalation of violence. Anyone who let their anger get the better of them in this way would bring dishonor on themselves.

It’s the same idea with the coat and the cloak. The coat mentioned here is really something more like a shirt, a lower-cost item that could be replaced or even done without, but cloaks are expensive. If you were travelling and couldn’t find a place to stay, your cloak was your shelter.

Suing for someone’s cloak was actually illegal in Jesus’ day, since it would deprive the poorest among them of their only shelter. So if, when sued for your shirt, you handed someone your cloak too, and they accepted it, they would bring dishonor on themselves.

And the same again with the “go one more mile.” Roman soldiers could, under Roman law, requisition anyone to carry a burden of up to twenty pounds for about a mile. Going the second mile would bring dishonor on the soldier who let you do it. It’s a way of protesting the law by exposing its injustice. With each of these examples, Jesus tells his followers to be exemplary in the face of violence and legal injustice, because your actions will show the injustice for what it really is.

Which is why he follows these teachings up with verse 44: “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”. This is the wisdom that underlies the previous teachings. We don’t go the extra mile because we want to enrage or shame our enemies or those who hurt or oppress us. We do it because we love them.

Now, love here is that agape love we Christians hear so much about. It’s the unconditional, unending, persistent love that God has for each of us. It’s the love that we so often experience as grace. It’s the love that creates us, saves us, and sustains us. It’s the love that holds us tight, just as we are, and the love that never lets us go, never stops seeking us out, even when we ourselves have strayed. It’s the love that wakes up our conscience, the love that speaks to us in a still small voice, calling us to do better because we know better. It’s the love that stays with us all our days and the love that will bear us home when our days come to an end.

So it’s clear that agape love is not passive love. It is not love that lays down in the face of wrong. It’s love that goes the extra mile whenever there’s injustice. It doesn’t do that for its own sake. It does it for the sake of the one committing injustice.

See, if we love our enemies, we want the best for them, and that means that we can’t let them remain abusers and oppressors. When you abuse someone else, when you oppress someone else, there’s something fundamental that breaks inside you, just like something fundamental broke in Cain when he killed Abel. And healing from that break can be the work of a lifetime. But, as we all know, admitting you have a problem is the first step to healing. If you don’t know there’s a problem, you don’t know that you need to seek out help.

So Jesus tells us to go that extra mile for the Roman solider. It will, we pray, wake them up to the reality of the injustice of the law. Give away your cloak to those who sue you for your shirt. It will, we pray, wake them up to the reality of the injustice of their suit. Turn the other cheek to someone who hits you. It will, we pray, wake them up to the reality of the injustice of their violence. We pray, we pray, we pray for our enemies to wake up, so that we can both heal.

Because Jesus here understands the deep truth that the rest of us forget over and over again. We cannot be free until all of us are free. It’s all of us or none of us. Or, to use later Christian language, Christ is the head of the body, the firstborn, the first to enter into the fullness of life that is promised to all of us, but all of humanity is the body of Christ. If we leave anyone behind, we are incomplete.

This is what Jesus means when he says perfect. The Greek word is τέλειοι, meaning mature, full-grown, having reached your goal or purpose, or complete. It’s not about memorizing your multiplication tables or being tidy or knowing how to pronounce every word. We will all make mistakes like that. No, being perfect, as our Parent in heaven is perfect, means being perfect, being complete, in love. We are complete when we can love our enemies, and those we look down on, just the same as we love our siblings. We are perfect when we realize that without each other, we are incomplete.

This is hard. Believe me, I know it. It is so much easier to write off others as lost causes, to proclaim that they are beyond saving. (And sometimes it’s easier to believe that about ourselves, but that’s another sermon.) It is so much easier to let fear overpower us, the fear of what we might have to give up in order to love one another, and let that stop us from actually loving one another. It is so much easier to stay divided instead of doing the work of repenting, forgiving, restoring, and reconciling, because that work is hard.

And it’s hard because we, too, can be Christ’s enemy. I know that I have been the Roman soldier, asking for too much from someone who is struggling because it’s allowed under the law. I know that I have been the accuser, asking unjustly for an apology or a repayment that I was not due. I know that I have been the one to strike another, standing there with my hand ready for the backslap. I know that I have, even unknowingly, been on the side of the oppressor and it has only been through the deep love of my Black siblings, my Latinx siblings, my Native siblings, my LGBTQIA siblings, my siblings with a disability, my siblings in poverty, and my siblings struggling with mental health and addiction that I have in turn learned how to love them better and in so doing become more complete. The love of those who we have considered enemies heals us.

It’s so hard to do this work of love from either end, especially now, when there’s a pandemic, when everything feels so tense and uncertain, when we can’t receive the normal comfort we would from our families, whether they be the families we grew up with, the families we’ve formed, or our church family. Every day exhausts us with its challenges and real, palpable worries, especially those who are caregivers and peacemakers by nature, those who long deep in their hearts for conflict to cease and get eaten up from the inside out when it won’t. I know. I feel this way too. It is a hard thing for Jesus to ask this of us, always, but especially now.

But my friends, my friends, I promise that we can do this hard thing, and I don’t promise this under my own authority. This is a promise that comes from Jesus himself, the one who sent us the Holy Spirit, our advocate and comforter, the one who goes alongside us and strengthens us to do this hard thing. You are always, always, wrapped up in the arms of Almighty God and there is nothing that can change that. For who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. We are always surrounded and supported by the love of God that will not let us go.

So go out and love. Love those who love you, freely, as best as you can, because you are loved by God. Go out and love those who you usually ignore or disregard, freely, as best as you can, because you are loved by God. Go out and love your enemies, freely, as best as you can, because you are loved by God. Go out and let others love you, freely, as best as they can, because God can and will change our lives through the love of others, and know that in all of these attempts at love, God’s grace will come rushing in to fill the gaps that we cannot bridge. Stand surrounded and grounded in the love of Jesus our Savior, knowing that no matter how difficult the conversation, how painful the lesson, how frightening the prospect, we can love and be loved by our enemies, and that love will heal this hurting world.

In fact, in the end, love will make it perfect.

Amen.

Highest Ideals

A sermon for Sunday, July 19, 2020

Would you pray with me?

God who loves us all, body and soul, thank you for gathering us together. By your Spirit, make your presence known to us. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer.

Some of you may know this, but I imagine most of you don’t: in the United Methodist Church, part of what you have to do in order to be ordained is to submit anywhere between 40 to 60 pages of paperwork, not counting the manuscript for a 15-30 minute sermon. Don’t worry, I’m not going to keep you here for a 30-minute sermon. But I bring this up because our passage from the gospel of Matthew this morning has me thinking about one of the questions in the ordination paperwork. In the paperwork, we’re asked to reflect on how we live out our call to dedicate ourselves to the highest ideals of the Christian life. This passage makes me think of that question.

Not that I think Jesus talks about the highest ideals of Christian life only in these verses. This is early on in the Sermon on the Mount, some of the earliest teachings in his ministry in the gospel of Matthew, and Jesus doesn’t stop teaching in this gospel. But the passage today is on the way to his first full explanation of the highest ideals of Christian life and we’ll talk about that next week. This week, though, I think Jesus is giving us a glimpse into how to live into some of the highest ideals in Christian life, how to live with one another and with God, and he does it in a very Jesus-y way.

So let’s jump in with the first three verses. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.”

Oof, Jesus. At first glance, this is harsh. Where is the “they’ll know you are Christians by your love” in these verses? I mean, many of us have felt heart-palpitating attraction for another human being. Should we all be popping out our eyeballs?

Well, first, I think we need to remember that Jesus was a good teacher and a good preacher and he knew how to use something called hyperbole to get his point across. I think we can trust that the man who heals the blind is not asking his followers to blind themselves. So setting the hyperbole aside, Jesus is drawing a line here, a line that he expects his disciples, the ones he’s called close to him in order to hear this Sermon on the Mount, to pay attention to. And that line has something to do with the word “lust” in verse 28.

The Greek word here is ἐπιθυμέω (epithomeho), I desire, I lust after, I covet, which comes from the root word θυμός (thomos), meaning an outburst of passion or wrath. It means rage. So Jesus here is not talking about that little fluttering you get when someone you’re attracted to walks by. Jesus is talking about looking at someone and wanting to possess them, violently if necessary. Jesus is telling us that it is better for you to cut off your hand than to take someone else’s body without their consent. If you’re going to be my follower, Jesus tells his young disciples, you can’t let the darkness of lust, this desire-turned-into-anger, live inside you.

Okay, fair enough, Jesus. We can get behind that message. But then he moves on to a harder teaching in verses 31-32: “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

Now, what you need to know and what I’m sure you know is that the situation in Jesus’ day is different than it is today. Women were considered men’s property. And so even though women ran the household (our word economics comes from the Greek word οἰκονομία, meaning household management, rooted in women’s work), even though they managed everything in the home, they typically didn’t own anything for themselves and they certainly didn’t have a say in what happened in their marriages. A woman’s husband could divorce her for something as simple as not preparing food the way he liked, and if he divorced her, she was left bereft, essentially a widow with no hope of remarriage; or, if she did marry again, she was likely to be treated like a bargain-basement wife, easily picked up and easily disposed of.

You also need to know that the writer of the gospel of Matthew, just like the writer of the gospel of Luke, is careful in how they arrange the teachings of Jesus. Usually, teachings with a similar theme are grouped together, building on one another. If the first teaching is a warning about possessing a woman in the wrong way, this second teaching is about dismissing a woman in the wrong way. You cannot possess a woman violently and you cannot get rid of a woman just because you’re done with her. Adultery, as Jesus is teaching it, is not simply about sleeping around in your marriage or calling into question the paternity of your children, as it might have been understood in times past. Jesus here is doing something that rabbis frequently do: he’s getting at what’s behind the rule, looking for the iceberg of wisdom that lies underneath the tip sticking out, which is the text of the rule. Adultery is, as Jesus teaches us, at its heart, about how we treat one another in our relationships. That is the truth that undergirds the commandment, that holds it up.

And that’s what has me thinking about ordination paperwork and the call for pastors to dedicate ourselves to the highest ideals of the Christian life. It’s not enough to know all the rules and follow them. No, to dedicate ourselves to the highest ideals of the Christian life, we have to know the truth that holds up the rules. The highest ideal of Christian life when it comes to adultery is not, “I don’t cheat on my spouse;” instead, it’s “I treat the person I’m in a relationship with with the respect, honor, and consideration they deserve as a beloved child of God.” Jesus, with these two teachings, is calling us to a much higher standard than the plain text of the law, and not just pastors either. Jesus is beckoning all us Christians, married or not, in a relationship or not, onward and upward, to meet the plain meaning of “Thou shalt not commit adultery” and to go beyond it.

So, then, where does that leave us with our last four verses this morning? “Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.” What does Jesus mean here? How does this fit?

Well, he is harkening back to another one of the big ten: Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain. But we misunderstand that commandment all the time. We think it means that we have to substitute goshdarnit instead of that other word, otherwise we’ll be struck by lightning. But what the commandment truly means is, “Don’t do something in God’s name that God didn’t tell you to do.” Don’t say, “By God, I’m going to steal them blind,” when you know that God has nothing to do with your thievery. That’s taking the Lord’s name in vain.

And so, “in ancient times,” as Jesus says, the rule was, Hey, you can swear by God, just make sure you’re going out and doing the righteous thing and keep your vows as you do it. A fine enough law, but as we see when we read the history of the kings of Israel and the prophets, all the way up to Jesus’ time (and to ours too, if we’re honest), there were plenty of people swearing sweeping, violent vows before God and slaughtering people in order to keep them. Instead of all of that, Jesus says, don’t swear by anything at all. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Anything more than that is not of God. These vows that people swear in the name of the Lord, they’re just breaking the commandment, so let’s do away with vow-making altogether. I will not have my followers making vows of vengeance or violence, not when I’m about to preach about turning the other cheek. No more with “By God, I’m going to…” because, unless you’ve checked with God first, you can’t know whether God is going to approve of what you’re about to swear to.

God likely didn’t intend for women to be seen as property, as was common in Jesus’ day, to be taken when wanted and discarded when not. Surely, God didn’t intend that, when God made the man and the woman in the garden and gave the woman the spark of creation and the joy of curiosity. Surely God would not make a beautiful creation and intend for it to be taken advantage of. And so, just as you must respect those who you partner with on this earth, so you must respect God. Don’t swear in God’s name as if you speak for God. Let your yes be yes and your no be no and in all things, turn to God and listen for wisdom and discernment from the Spirit.

And that, my friends, is where we will have to leave the highest ideals of Christian life for this week, though if you want to read ahead to next week or ponder it on your own, as we’ve pondered this morning, we’ll be tackling Matthew 5:38-48 next week. But let me send you forth, from sitting at Jesus’ feet into the world that needs Jesus now more than ever, encouraging you to live up to the ideals we’ve uncovered today: hold each person you encounter as precious, neither using nor discarding them, but valuing them deeply, especially your romantic and life partners, and do the same for God, neither using God as a tool to support what you want to do nor discarding God when God becomes inconvenient, but in all things, turning to listen to the One who made you, saved you, and sustains you still.

Amen.

Dealing With Conflict

A sermon for Sunday, July 12, 2020

Would you pray with me?

God whose Word is with us always, thank you for gathering us together. By your Spirit, make your presence known among us. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

As I’m sure you’ve seen from the pictures of our garden out back at Whittier UMC and all the other flower beds and gardens around, it is a growing season, with some early fruits of that growth already showing. For the church, too, this is a growing season. We continue to be in what we call Ordinary Time, the long summer of the church, which lasts from Pentecost until Advent. Though the rhythms of our Christian story, starting in Advent, then Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, all the way to Pentecost, are important for us to live and relive each year, this Ordinary Time is the dedicated time for us to focus on our growth as followers of Jesus Christ. And I think the Christians who’ve gone before us show a lot of wisdom in making this growing season the longest season in our Christian calendar. We all need that time to unfold and stretch, to dig deeper roots and to blossom.

In this growing season, we’ll continue to focus on listening to Jesus’ teachings in the gospel of Matthew. My hope is that each of us will be able to find again the Jesus who first called us to follow him and allow these teachings of Jesus to work on us as we grow in discipleship. I think I speak for all of us when I say that the world we live in sorely needs disciples of Jesus right now.

Now, Jesus is a great teacher. Sometimes, he offers us words of comfort, sayings that build us up and remind us of the beloved place God has for each of us in God’s heart. Sometimes, he nudges us, giving us just a little bit of wisdom that we can chew on throughout the week and learn how to apply to our own lives. And sometimes, he gives us words that cut right into us and challenge us, teachings that aren’t comfortable but will help us grow to be more like him.

Our scripture this week is, I think, the last of those. I know that I feel convicted as I read these words from the Sermon on the Mount and from later on in Matthew. He is teaching us how we are to resolve conflict between one another and how to handle disagreements. It’s such practical teaching, yet it is rooted in the enduring word of God, and so, of course, it challenges us. And in case we’re tempted to dismiss what Jesus has to say, remember that Matthew is the only gospel to use the word “church.” These teachings, as preserved in Matthew, are meant to speak directly to those first Christian gatherings that we would recognize as churches. They’re aimed specifically at how we are to interact with one another.

And remember, too, that the words from Matthew 5 are a part of the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus drew out his disciples from the crowds that followed him from all around Galilee, Judea, and even beyond the Jordan, and offered them the more difficult teachings that the crowd wasn’t ready for yet. In these teachings we’re focused on today, Jesus is calling us to rise above the worldly way of doing things. So he begins by affirming that what he’s teaching is rooted in the word of God, and that the word of God is fulfilled in him. Just Isaiah 55 and Psalm 65 remind us that the word of God goes out into the world and does not return empty, Jesus affirms that the law and the prophets aren’t abolished, but made complete in what he’s teaching. Jesus understands the spirit behind the commandments and calls us to understand them more fully.

He comes out strong with his first teaching of the fullness of the law. You have heard it said, “You shall not murder,” but Jesus tells us that not murdering is the low bar to jump over. If you are angry with a sibling in Christ or if you insult a sibling in Christ, you’ll have to answer to judgement just the same as if you murder. Jesus takes conflict seriously. So seriously, in fact, that before you can give your offering to God, you are to resolve any dispute you have with your siblings in Christ. That has stuck with me ever since I first read it. Before I can connect fully to God, I must restore my connections with my family in Christ. How many of us would need to take a week or two off of church if we followed this teaching of Jesus? Or how quickly would we come to the table and talk to one another if we truly believed Jesus’ teaching that before we can come to God, we must make things right with one another?

Now, I don’t mean to offer this as a stumbling block to any of us. As Paul says in Romans 8, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. This doesn’t mean that we won’t ever give into the temptation unresolved anger with one another, but it means that the Spirit is constantly working in us, calling us toward repentance and reconciliation. Being angry or having a fight with a sibling in Christ doesn’t mean that we’re kicked out of the church and separated from God. It means that the Spirit will always be with us, guiding us toward what we need to do in order to restore our relationships with one another.

In our second teaching today, from Matthew 18, Jesus gives us the blueprint for how we are to handle conflict with one another. First, we are to go directly to the person who has wronged us, who has sinned against us, to use Jesus’ language, and explain to them how they have wronged us, remembering always that this person is just as beloved in the eyes of God as we ourselves are. If that person is able to hear you and begin that rhythm of repentance we talked about a few weeks ago, the matter is resolved. You’re good. If they don’t hear you, though, it’s time to bring in a few others from the church and try again. It might be that having witnesses will encourage the person who has wronged you to listen to you and take your words more seriously.

Again, the goal isn’t to gang up on someone or to bully them into doing what you want. The goal is correction, knowing the belovedness of the other, repentance, and the restoration of relationship between siblings in Christ. If they don’t hear you then, bring the matter to the whole church. If the whole church isn’t able to convince them of the harm they’ve done, you’ve done all you can. It’s up to the Holy Spirit to work on that person’s heart until they’re able to realize what they’ve done and to turn away from the harm they’ve caused.

Now, here’s the piece that we miss in this conversation. It’s something that was so clear to Jesus and his disciples at the time that it went without saying, but we’ve forgotten it over time. In Jewish practice, forgiveness is always tied to repentance and restitution. When Peter says to Jesus, “How often do I have to forgive?” and Jesus says, “Seventy times seven,” meaning, “As many times as it takes,” Peter is referring to forgiving someone who’s repented and made the right steps toward making things better. For Jesus and Peter, it goes without saying that someone asking for forgiveness would have done the work needed to make things right. It’s in that case, when someone has repented and done all they can to make up for the harm they caused, when Jesus calls us to forgive.

What difficult words Jesus has for us in these teachings! When we have wronged somebody, we are called to the hard, hard work of understanding what we’ve done wrong, truly apologizing for it, doing the best we can to make it right, and committing to not doing that again. If someone has wronged us, we are called to do hard work of seeing that person as beloved and calling them to repentance. We cannot ignore the cracks in our fellowship that come with disputes. We must resolve them.

And we are to practice this in our churches because it’s even harder to this out in the rest of the world. As Christians, we’re called to always be thoughtful about what we’re doing and what we’ve done, always ready to repent when we learn that we’ve done something harmful and always ready to learn a better way. In theory, this way of resolving conflict should come naturally to us, though in many churches, we’re out of practice. But this kind of reflection and humility isn’t taught in the rest of the world. In the rest of the world, the strongest argument or loudest voice or most powerful person wins in any conflict, without any care for who is hurt in the process.

But my friends, if we follow Jesus, we can’t be like the rest of the world.

And so, this week, I invite you to practice what Jesus teaches us, even if you’re uncomfortable doing it at first. If you come into conflict with someone, remember that they are a beloved child of God, just as you are, and try to resolve the conflict as soon as you can, one-on-one. We don’t often take that first step, but it usually does the trick. And if it doesn’t, reach out for help. We’re never alone when we’re trying to make things right. If we take this step, we can be peacemakers. And if we’re peacemakers, Jesus tells us, we’re blessed.

Go and be blessed this week, my friends. Amen.

God Has Blessed America

A sermon for Sunday, July 5, 2020

Would you pray with me?

God whose love dwells within all creation, thank you for gathering us together. Make your presence known among us. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

I will ask your forgiveness at the beginning of this sermon, because I will speak first as a citizen of the United States and not first as a Christian. I have to admit, I’ve cried more than once this week singing along with “America the Beautiful.” They have been deep, cleansing tears, tears that come from a place of love and longing. This hymn has grown dearer to me throughout each of my nearly 32 years as a citizen of these United States of America. In recent years, the choruses of each verse have become the prayer of my heart for my country. “America! America! God mend thine every flaw… May God thy gold refine… God shed His grace on thee and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea!”

God, I love the land I live on. It is gorgeous here. What astounding beauty our country is built upon! My soul is stirred by our mountains and soothed by our oceans. This land is full of soaring trees and rolling plains, rushing rivers and creek beds full of life. I am astonished by our cities and I feel at home in our towns. I am amazed and grateful that this is my home.

Yesterday, we celebrated Independence Day, and I had been longing for the promise of that day, the promise of freedom, for a long time. I long for a time when we truly “hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Knowing “that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”

And yet, these former colonies have continued to struggle, even today, to live up to the ideals presented in the Declaration of Independence, whose signing we celebrated yesterday. We have struggled to be the America that we dream of being, the America that our hymns sing about. We have struggled to form a government that secures life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all. We have the vision of liberty and justice for all, but that vision remains out of reach.

In a way, our struggle to be America is much like our individual struggle to be Christians, to be as Christ-like as we long to be. We are like Paul in our epistle reading from Romans this morning. We know what is good and yet it is not the good we want to do but the evil we do not want to do that we do.

Still, Jesus calls our struggle blessed. He says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Our hearts are in the right place. I truly believe that. I believe that each of you, listening this morning, is one of the ones that Jesus calls blessed here. I believe that there are many in the United States who are blessed in this way. We hunger, we thirst for the goodness of God to be spread all around us, throughout this land that we love and within all of the people who live here with us. I do believe our founders hear the prophetic cry of freedom and took to revolution because of it.

And I do believe that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled.

But I also know that we’re not there yet.

And that’s what makes this moment in the United States such a frustrating and frightening time. We are on the precipice of something more like the kingdom of God. We’ve gone through an apocalypse, and I don’t mean to throw that word around lightly. Apocalypse comes the Greek word meaning uncover. I think a great uncovering has happened for many of us in the United States in the past few months. We have seen how vulnerable so many in our country are in times of sickness and unemployment. We have seen how the deep hurts of our history have followed us to today, from slaughter of people who the Declaration of Independence called “merciless Indian savages” to the compromise of counting Black enslaved people as three-fifths of a human. We are seeing, maybe more clearly than we have ever have before, how deep our hunger and thirst for righteousness is, and how much work is ahead of us before we’ll be filled.

But I trust that we will be filled. I trust Jesus when he tells us that the poor in spirit, the lost and downtrodden, are blessed with the kingdom of heaven. I trust Jesus when he tells us that those who mourn will be comforted, that the meek are blessed, that the merciful are blessed, that the pure in heart will see God, that peacemakers, the ones who seek the true, full peace of God, which is not an absence of tension but the presence of justice, that peacemakers will be called children of God.

My friends, my fellow children of God, I believe that we are blessed with these blessings Jesus gives out in the Sermon on the Mount, but I think we all know that these are uncomfortable blessings. They are the uncomfortable blessings for those who know what goodness is but find themselves unable to do all that goodness asks of us. They are the blessings of those who grow through struggling toward something better, toward a world that looks more like the kingdom of heaven. May we all keep in our hearts the vision of what America can be as we go through these coming months. May we all count these uncomfortable blessings as our own, knowing that God is working good in us and through us with these blessings.

I invite you to let the words of Langston Hughes in Let America Be America Again work on you this day. He casts for us a vision of what America can be, but is not yet. So let me send you to his words with this benediction, “A non-traditional Blessing,” popularly adapted from a prayer written by Sister Anna Rose Ruhland:

My friends, may God bless each of us and all of us with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts.

May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that we may work for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, hunger, and war, so that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that we can do what others claim cannot be done, to bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Repentance

A sermon for Sunday, June 28, 2020

Would you pray with me?  

God who calls us all to repentance and the wholeness found only in you, thank you for gathering us together. Make your presence known among us. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.  

Before I begin the sermon, I want to take a moment, for the people who just watch the sermon, to let everyone know that due to the governor’s extension of phase 2, we won’t be meeting for in-person indoor worship until July 19th at the earliest. With cases on the rise in our part of the state, we’re following the bishop’s recommendation on this. I know that many of us are impatient to get back together, but the unfortunate reality is that gathering for indoor worship is one of the riskiest things that we can do and I don’t want to take the chance until the risk level is much lower.  

That said, we are doing in-person midweek worship in the fellowship hall on Wednesdays at 6pm, since that’s usually a smaller gathering. If you’d like more information about that, let me know. And if you are interested in trying outdoor worship, I’m open to seeing what we can do. We’ll keep offering online worship like this regardless until there’s a vaccine and it’s safe for all to come back to worship, so no matter what, you’ll have some opportunity to gather with us.  

In the meantime, I’d love it if we could gather with others to go through the full worship services we’ve been posting and create some house churches during this time. You’ll still need to be careful and maintain physical distancing, but even gathering with a few others can help us maintain that sense of community that we’ve been missing.  

That said, we as Whittier United Methodist Church are still out here being the church. Grace House is still operating, Gloria’s got two outreach fundraisers going on at her shop. Kay and Lynn have been helping her sanitize donations as they come in and Anthony even built her a plexiglass shield for the cash register. As I’m recording this on Thursday, Tony and Chris are working in the garden and Rita’s mowing the lawn.

Photo by Chris Espelage

Photo by Chris Espelage

Tesi and Alice Ann have been taking care of our roses and helping out in the garden too. Peggy and Eilene stopped by the church to pick up their Upper Rooms and Sam and Tonia have been coming to midweek worship. Carrol’s been going to Sunday School with Bryson City UMC and came to midweek worship, and we’ve even had a visitor stop by our online midweek worship—my friend Isaac from high school. Kathy Wiggins has been popping in to midweek worship and virtual coffee hour to say hello and offer some kindness and grace. Cathy Dunlap has been keeping up with our finances and we’re truly grateful for all the work she’s been doing. Pam Cope has been making sure we have all the supplies we need for reopening. Cozette called me the other day to let me know how she’s been doing—she’s one of the ones without internet that I’ve been sending sermons to. I’ve heard from many of you, like Sarah Malpass, that you’re checking in with one another and I’m glad that you’re still building whatever community you can in this time. As much as we all miss worshipping together in our sanctuary, we’re doing a pretty good job of proving the old axiom, the church is not the building.  

And so, let’s turn our attention to someone who never went to worship in a church building: Jesus. We pick up with his story in the gospel of Matthew right where we left off. He’s just come through his time of temptation in the desert and now, he’s beginning his ministry. Now, we don’t live in first-century Judea, so all these place names mean nothing to us. It’s important to Matthew’s gospel, though, and so let’s take a minute to learn the places.  

From Introducing the New Testament: A Historical, Literary, and Theological Survey, by Mark Allan Powell.

From Introducing the New Testament: A Historical, Literary, and Theological Survey, by Mark Allan Powell.

Galilee is up here in the north of Judea. This is where Nazareth is, about halfway between the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean Sea, and here’s where Capernaum is, up at the top of the Sea of Galilee. Galilee is surrounded by Phoenicia to the north (where we get phonics from), Syria and Decapolis on the other side of the Jordan River, and Samaria, where the Samaritans live, to the South. This is why we have so many stories about Jesus interacting with Samaritans: Anytime he goes to Jerusalem from Galilee, he’s got to cross through Samaria.  

Now, John was baptizing way down here, in the Jordan down by Jericho near Jerusalem. The wilderness that John was living in and that Jesus went up into is down here in the southern part of Judea. That’s why it says that Jesus withdrew to Galilee when John was arrested. Tensions are high down near Jerusalem, with the arrest of John the Baptist. Jesus starts his ministry away from that mess.  

See, John had been challenging the religious leaders in Jerusalem and Herod, the ruler in the land. The leaders were nervous. There could be riots or even a full-scale revolt against Rome. It had happened before. And we hear people asking John if he’s the Messiah who’s to come, if he’s the one who’s going to start a new revolt, a new war, and overthrow Rome. It is both a spiritual and political act for Jesus to get baptized by John and for John to proclaim that Jesus is the one who he’s been preparing the way for. The people are looking for someone to bring change to their lives. They thought that maybe it was John, but John says it was Jesus.  

Jesus diffuses that situation by leaving the area around Jerusalem, but he doesn’t lay down the cause. He begins preaching just what John did: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”  

I want to return to this idea of repentance in a minute, but let’s see what he does next. Since he’s in Capernaum, he’s right by the Sea of Galilee and on the lake, he sees some fishermen: Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, and James and his brother John, the sons of Zebedee. We won’t get a full list of the twelve disciples yet, but we hear the story of these four being called. They’re fishermen but Jesus wants to make them fishers of men. What I want you to hear in that is that when you decide to follow Jesus, you don’t give up everything of who you are. In your life before Jesus, you’ve built up skills and hopes and desires and in many cases, those are good and given by God. Peter, Andrew, James, and John all know how to bring in fish. Jesus wants them to use their skills to bring in people.  

And even though his home is in Capernaum, Jesus travels throughout Galilee, preaching the good news of repentance and the coming kingdom and healing people: people with all sorts of sicknesses, even demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he cures them. Great crowds follow him, some from Galilee, some from the Decapolis, which is right nearby, but some all the way from Jerusalem and other places in Judea, and some from the lands across the Jordan.

From Introducing the New Testament: A Historical, Literary, and Theological Survey, by Mark Allan Powell.

From Introducing the New Testament: A Historical, Literary, and Theological Survey, by Mark Allan Powell.

Jesus left the movement near Jerusalem, but the movement came to hear him and to be healed by him, and so, they followed him.  

I think the movement and progression that we see here is key. John is down by Jericho and Jerusalem, down by Israel’s capital, testifying to the change that needs to happen in Israel and stirring up trouble doing it. People start to get hopeful. The people in power are noticing them. Maybe things will change. 

But then John gets arrested and the best person to take over the movement doesn’t push things in Jerusalem but heads back out to the countryside. The people still want change, and the ones who believe that Jesus can bring it are willing to go away from the places of power in order to seek it.  

And Jesus chooses not to do what John did, at least not yet. Jesus chooses to leave the stirring up for later. For now, at the beginning of his ministry, he focuses on preaching and healing.  

Now, this is the Jesus that I fell in love with. This Jesus, who has heard the cry of the people around him, who went to be baptized by John because he knew that things had to change. This Jesus, who chooses not to try to take power from political authorities but instead turns to teaching and healing. This Jesus, who knows that change has to happen at every level and everywhere, otherwise change will not last. This Jesus, who has such compassion for the people he encounters and such passion for the well-being of the people he hasn’t met yet.  

And so this wonderful, compassionate Jesus, starts off by telling us to repent. Now, I know repentance is a touchy subject for many of us, because we have only ever had repentance forced on us, and the repentance forced on us was filled with shame and guilt. But repentance is a part of our lives as Christians and it’s time that we reclaim it. So much of our healing and learning and growth begins with repentance, and that’s, I think, why Jesus starts his ministry with the same message as John.  

Repentance, when it’s done right, is a healthy thing, even if it’s painful sometimes. Repentance means understanding that you have done something harmful, feeling true regret and sadness because of that harm, and deciding to turn away from that harm. Repentance is something we must do over an over again in our lives as we understand God, ourselves, and others better. It’s a key part of what we Methodists call sanctification, becoming more holy, becoming more like Christ. As we live and move and breathe in this world, we’re impacted by the harmful things in it, many times through no fault of our own. Repentance is our way of clearing away harm, so that we can grow ever more like the one who brings healing instead of harm: Jesus.  

As we become used to a rhythm of repentance, of looking at ourselves, seeing what is harmful, and choosing to no longer do harm, we become better followers of Jesus. We become more humble, quicker to listen and learn, and more willing to offer ourselves as living sacrifices to God and to others through acts of service and kindness. We will, eventually, become more willing to do everything we can, including speaking out and taking action, when harm is done to others. I truly think our growth as disciples of Jesus Christ who long to be a part of this world’s transformation into something more like the kingdom of heaven begins in a rhythm of repentance. It’s why repentance and healing are so closely tied in Jesus’ ministry here in Galilee and beyond.  

Now, there’s much within ourselves that this rhythm of repentance can heal and in particular, we see right now that our broken racial relations here in the US are in need of healing. This, of course, happens at all levels, but we know that it must happen in our hearts too. Understanding the harm that we white people do to people of color, even without knowing we do it, is our first step in repentance. If we fully understand, we will feel that regret and sadness that will drive us to turn away from the harm we do. It’s not a one-time act of repentance. It is a daily rhythm as we work to heal the harm that white supremacy has done. In order to help us with that, I’ll be starting a small group that will meet here at the church to help us understand our role in the healing that’s needed. If you’re interested in starting this rhythm of repentance with me, let me know.  

Of course, there are more than just broken racial relations to repent of and to work on healing. We all have interpersonal broken relationships that could be healed by the rhythm of repentance. We have other biases, too, that we could learn to examine and repent of. The Spirit works within us when we practice repentance. The Spirit prods us into new understandings, comforts us in our sorrow, and strengthens us as we resolve to do differently. There’s a reason that the word spirit is connected to the word breath: the Spirit is constantly working within us, just as our breath is. If we work at it, if we find ourselves caught up in the healing rhythm of repentance, we’ll find this way of healing as natural to us as breath. It’s the work of a lifetime, but I believe that we can do it.  

Friends, we have covered a lot of ground today, from Jericho to Capernaum. We’ve followed Jesus from temptation to repentance and we trust that Jesus offers us healing too in this time. Don’t be scared of what Jesus has to teach us; after all, he calls you too, because the goodness inside you, the skills you already have, are precious and wonderful and necessary for the kingdom. Hear his words and let them work in you this week: Repent, for a light has dawned on us and the kingdom of heaven and all its goodness has drawn near.  

Amen. 

In the Desert

A sermon for Sunday, June 21, 2020

Would you pray with me?

God who knows our every temptation, thank you for gathering us together in this moment. Make your presence known among us. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

On Friday, our country celebrated Juneteenth. This year marked the 115th anniversary of June 19, 1865, when the last enslaved people in the South, living in Texas, received word of the Emancipation Proclamation and the freedom it granted them. It’s a holiday that I myself didn’t learn about until a few years ago and it brought joy to my heart to see the day so widely recognized. It felt like the world is breaking open, in the best possible way.

I say “breaking open” because, for many of us, that’s what’s happening. The world is breaking open and as the cracks widen, we’re beginning to see things we haven’t seen before. Sometimes, the breaking open of things is beautiful, like when you crack a geode open to see the gems inside.

Other times, it’s like tearing open a wall in an old house to find deadly mold growing everywhere. It’s frightening. It’s worrying. And it requires action. But in the midst of this breaking open, there’s still cause to give thanks. After all, once we know about the mold, we can do something about it.

We have a similar experience when we break open scripture. Some passages are exciting, giving us something bright and new to admire and ponder and receive joy from. But some passages aren’t, like our reading from Genesis today. Abraham banishes his first son, Ishmael, and Ishmael’s mother, Hagar, into the desert. This isn’t something we want to look at. This isn’t something we want to pay attention to. We want to hear the story of Abraham looking up at the stars and receiving God’s promise. We want to hear the story of Sarah laughing at the idea of having a child in her old age. We want to think about God’s faithfulness, which overcomes all obstacles.

But scripture doesn’t let us look away from Ishmael and Hagar in the desert. We can’t look away because God doesn’t look away. God sees Hagar and Ishmael in the desert. He sees this enslaved woman and her child, the child her master put within her, and God is faithful to her too. In the psalm, we hear echoes of Hagar and we are again reminded that we can’t look away from Abraham’s sin and the consequences of his actions, because God sees those in sorrow and desperation. God hears them and answers them. If we are striving to be more like Jesus, more like the Son of God, we have to do as God does. We have to look where God looks, even if we don’t want to.

With this backdrop in mind, let’s turn our attention to someone else in the desert: Jesus. We read the story of Jesus’ temptation in the desert back on the first Sunday of March, on the first Sunday of Lent. That feels like at least three years ago, though, so here’s a quick summary, in case you skipped the scripture videos:

• Jesus gets baptized by John the Baptizer.

• He’s led up into the wilderness by the Spirit and fasts for 40 days.

• The tempter tempts him with bread, angels, and power.

• Jesus beats the tempter and angels show up to wait on him.

And we love this story, right? We love this righteous, brilliant, strong Jesus, armed with scripture and standing up to the devil. It’s clear who’s wrong and who’s right. None of that complicated stuff that we have with the Abraham-Hagar-Ishmael mess.

It might be enough to know that Jesus, at the beginning of his ministry, was tempted and beat the temptation. That’s all that the gospel of Mark says. Mark 1:12 and 13 read, “And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him” and that’s it. Jesus is tempted, just like us, but Jesus can beat it, and because we are united with Jesus, as Paul reminds us in Romans, we can beat it too. Bada-bing, bada-boom, sermon done. But Matthew and Luke seem to think that what Jesus was tempted with matters, because they both tell a much fuller story, so let’s look at those temptations.

First, Matthew makes a point to say that Jesus was famished, and so that would explain why the tempter would offer up bread first. “If you are the son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread,” the tempter says, and Jesus says, “One does not live by bread alone but by every word that come from the mouth of God.”

It’s a quippy response, but it’s also a resonant one. The tempter wants Jesus to offer some proof that he’s the son of God and offers up an easy opportunity: just turn some stones into bread. You’re hungry. You may as well. Meet your own needs and show off your power. But Jesus doesn’t need that bread to prove to anyone that he’s the son of God: he’s just heard for himself that he is God’s beloved son, from God’s mouth to his ears at his baptism. And that knowledge is enough to fill him up. He’s got God’s words. He doesn’t need anything else. The world will scream its needs at you, as I’m sure Jesus’ belly screamed at him, but the world’s needs don’t change who you are. You are a beloved child of God.

Next, it’s a trip to the temple mount in Jerusalem, the pinnacle of the temple. Again, the tempter says, “If you are the Son of God,” but this time, there’s a new way for Jesus to prove himself, not to the tempter, but to everyone. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.” Everyone will see the angels as they come down to save you. Everyone in Jerusalem will know who you are. Start your ministry off with a miracle, Jesus. Get their attention right from the beginning.

And goodness, isn’t that tempting? What would we give if we could get the attention of the world, get their ears, and let them know the transforming love of Jesus? And in this scenario, it costs nothing! God has already promised to bear us up—the tempter even points to scripture to make the point. All Jesus has to do is jump, and he’ll be given a megaphone that no one can ignore. For that kind of benefit, I have to admit, I would hesitate on that ledge.

Jesus, as always, is better than me, and he reiterates his first point and answers scripture with scripture. Again, God has already answered the question. Jesus is God’s son. Jesus doesn’t need to test it. The saying is true and worthy of all acceptance. The world’s attention doesn’t change who you are. You are a beloved child of God.

The tempter saves the best for last, and, though Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts differ on the order of temptations, I like Matthew’s better. Atop a very high mountain, the tempter shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor and promises them to Jesus. The tempter, essentially, promises to do Jesus’ job for him. Because we know that at the end of all things, at the name of Jesus every head will bow. In the end, the astounding, unfathomable love of God reigns over all the earth. In this moment, the tempter offers Jesus the easy way out. No long ministry. No suffering. You can skip over all the pain and worry and struggle and strife.

Now, notice what happened this time. No more doubting whether or not Jesus is the son of God. This time, the tempter wants Jesus to doubt God. Doesn’t matter if you’re the beloved son of God if there’s someone out there more powerful than God.

And that’s the lie. That’s the lie Jesus has been wrestling with this whole time. The lie is that there is somehow another way besides God’s way, that there is somehow an easier way than God’s way, that there is somehow a better way than God’s way.

Don’t we all want to believe that? Aren’t we all tempted by that? There has to be an easier way than this, we tell ourselves. There has to be some way where we can both follow God and rest comfortably all our days. Isn’t that what Psalm 23 tells us?

And isn’t that what we all long for right now? There must be some way to both hear the suffering of Hagar and honor the legacy of Abraham. Or, to put it in contemporary terms, there must be some way to hear and respond to the suffering of Black people in these United States without confronting and continuing to confront how white people benefited from their suffering. In these times of tumult, doesn’t God promise us comfort?

How tempting it is to bow to the comfort of white supremacy instead of following God’s way.

But, if we are following Jesus, we can’t help but love and worship God and God alone. And God, as scripture tells us over and over again, from Genesis to the psalms to the gospels to Revelation, hears the cry of the suffering and enslaved. God has always been on the side of the oppressed, even if we haven’t.

And hear me when I say this: even if you haven’t always been on the side of the oppressed, you are still a beloved child of God. Abraham still inherited the promise, even though he dismissed Hagar. No matter what the devil says, you are loved, deeply and wholly, and nothing in this world can change that. But we must learn from the example of Abraham. He and Sarah doubted that God would be able to fulfill God’s promise, and so Sarah told Abraham to impregnate Hagar, whether Hagar wanted it or not, in order to make God’s promise happen. Then, when God was faithful, as God has always promised to be, Sarah dismissed Hagar and Ishmael. She banished the reminder of her doubt and her shame. How often have we done the same.

My ancestors did not trust that God would provide enough for us all. They chose to enslave or benefit from the enslavement of people stolen from their homes in Africa, transported in horrifying conditions across the Atlantic, and made to work without pay or hope of freedom, in harsh conditions, so that white people could remain comfortable. And even when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, it took two and a half years for the news of their freedom to reach enslaved people in Texas on June 19th, 1865. The war would have to be won before enslaved people in parts of Maryland and Virginia were completely and finally freed. And even after that, my ancestors would continue to benefit from and participate in laws and systems designed to keep freed Black people down.

Believe me, I want to bow down to the tempter. I want there to be an easy way to fix this. I don’t want pain, nor do I want to cause others pain. But my friends, there is no way but God’s way. There is no easy way. We have to look at our history, our past and our present, as God sees it, which is through the eyes of the oppressed. As tempting as it is, we white people have to go through the pain of this moment and many other moments besides. After this moment, there must still be a reckoning for our Indigenous, Latinx, migrant, and poor neighbors. This moment is not our last moment of pain.

But my friends, we must follow the example of Jesus. We must say that there is no way other than God’s way. We must trust that we are God’s beloved children, because God has already spoken it, and that God will not abandon us as we do this work, because God has spoken that too. If we reject the easy path, the tempter’s path, and if we choose to confront the pain rather than to let it pass us by, God has promised to be with us. And angels will be with us. Angels like James Weldon Johnson, Sojourner Truth, Richard Allen, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, James Baldwin, Fannie Lou Hamer, Bayard Rustin, Marsha P. Johnson, Toni Morrison, Angela Davis, James Cone, Zora Neale Hurston, Katie Cannon, Jacquelyn Grant, Renita Weems, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou, Octavia Butler, Michelle Alexander, Angie Thomas, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Ibrahim Kendi. Angels like the Charleston 9: Rev. Dr. Clem Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Rev. Sharonda Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Myra Thompson, Depayne Middelton-Doctor, and Rev. Daniel Simmons. If we follow the way of Jesus, we will be surrounded by these saints and martyrs, these faithful beloved of God, and we will find God’s way forward, even though it may be difficult for us.

My friends, beloved children of God, we are in the desert, in the middle of temptation. Let us live the lives Christ calls us to live.

Amen.

Are You the One?

A sermon for Sunday, June 14, 2020

Would you pray with me?

God, our burden is heavy, but you have promised us a light yoke. Draw us together in this moment and draw us to you. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Church, I confess, I was not prepared for this. I was not prepared for this pandemic. I was not prepared for this moment in our nation’s history. On top of all of this, I was not prepared for preaching this summer.

This week, I erased the white board in my office, with all of the worship planning I had done for January to July. I erased the weekend off for my friend’s wedding, now postponed until the fall. I erased the next weekend, the half marathon in DC. I erased the dates for General Conference, which will now happen in 2021, and the dates for Annual Conference, which will be condensed into one day in the fall. I erased my plans for digging into Genesis texts over these next few weeks. The world is a different place than it was when I planned these months of worship, when June seemed so far away. I’m in a different place that I was in January. The slate needed to be cleaned.

FB_IMG_1592252483377 (1).jpg

But erasing that board left me with a blank slate and I’ve been thinking all week about how to fill it. I’m a lectionary preacher, as you know, which means that I tend to follow the church calendar and the schedule of texts known as the Revised Common Lectionary. I do this because the lectionary holds the wisdom of centuries and sometimes, when I don’t know what to say, the lectionary brings before me the right text for such a time as this. But as I looked over the lectionary texts for this summer and into the fall, this season we know as ordinary time, in these days that are anything but ordinary, I found myself struggling. While there were texts that appealed, they jumped between testaments and genres and timelines. I struggled to make order out of the chaos, and what little order I could make left my soul tired. I needed something else.

What I’ve figured out over this past week is that what I need is Jesus. That’s what rang through my spirit as I listened to Ahnnalise’s sermon last week. I need Jesus. I need to hear from the one who went to the cross to save me and the one who abides with us all still, the one who walked through the chaos of his day offering healing and hope, challenge and comfort. I need a good, long season sitting at Jesus’ feet and listening to all he has to say.

Because I have the same question that John the Baptizer had in the passage that Ahnnalise preached from. “Are you the one? Are you the one we’ve been waiting for? Or is there another?”

Or, let’s put it another way. Over and over again, we call Jesus our savior. Is he the one who can save us again now?

It’s genuinely a question. Can Jesus save us now? Does Jesus have anything to say for the world we live in now? Is he the Messiah, the Savior, we’ve all been waiting on, to get us through these hard times?

I’ve sat with the Baptizer’s question all week. It could be that there’s someone else that we should be listening and looking to right now, someone who builds off of what Jesus says and speaks to our current moment. It could be that we should turn to the prophets or to Paul or to the psalms. There are other voices to hear in our time. I’ve searched around and listened and done my best to find some place to point us toward.

And yet, I keep coming back to Jesus. Jesus, whose every sentence in the Sermon on the Mount challenges our hearts. Jesus, who speaks in parables that return new wisdom each time we read them. Jesus, who pours healing from his lips from the instant he begins preaching. Jesus, who can’t help but bring good news to the poor. Jesus, a savior born into a world longing for a Messiah, a world full of people crying out for salvation from oppression. Yes, I think Jesus is the one we’ve been waiting on.

See, many of us today miss the point of John’s question, because we don’t live in first-century Roman-occupied Palestine. But what I think we’ve seen over the past few months is that our world has more in common with Jesus’ than we thought before. Sickness is all around us, and we fear it. Many physicians have been working as hard as they can, but it is hard to find healing in the land.

And the people are restless, just as they were in Jesus’ day. In Jesus’ day, Rome ruled, but Rome was not just. Rome enforced the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome, by killing anyone who stood up to them and taxing everyone else deeper into poverty. Weapons and wealth ran the world in Jesus’ day, and the religious authorities knew it. While the poor and the sick languished under Roman rule, they had to pay another tax at the temple, to get right with God. And God have pity on anyone who tried to disrupt Rome or the Temple.

Because less than a hundred years before Jesus, a Roman general named Pompey laid siege to Jerusalem, desecrated the Temple, and installed Roman rule over Judea. No rebellions, no war. Just taxes and poverty, sickness and violence. And so you have a people longing, crying out for freedom, crying out for a messiah, crying out for a savior, someone who stop the tyranny and the deaths of the police state they were living under.

See, that’s why John the Baptizer was arrested. Because he challenged Herod, Rome’s puppet governor, and he challenged the religious elite. He started stirring things up. He made people believe that the world didn’t have to be the way it was. He gave people hope. And now, he’s turning to Jesus, to see if Jesus can make good on his promise of hope.

And Jesus says yes. Jesus says, “Look what I’m doing! See what is happening! John, if you can’t believe that I am the one, I don’t know what to tell you!

“But… I’m not exactly the one you think I am. I am here for those who are heavy burdened. I am here for those who are weighted down. I am here for those who don’t know where else to go. I love them, with all my being. Come to me, you who are weary, and I will give you rest.”

See, John, John didn’t promise rest. John didn’t speak with peace on his mind. John and Judas and all the disciples, they wanted some who could rise up against Rome. They wanted someone who could win. They wanted someone who could stand toe to toe with the powers of this world. But Jesus… Jesus is going to be someone different. Jesus has different ideas. Jesus doesn’t just want to upend the world we live in and free us from the sin in it, Jesus wants to bring about the reign of God, a new creation. All things made new. I think that if we walk with Jesus for these next few months, if we listen to what he has to say, I think we’ll be different too. Because I think now, more than ever, we need our savior.

In the middle of the pain we’re all living through, we need Jesus.

In the middle of all of the disunity and upending this world has to offer, we need Jesus.

In the middle of the hate and anger and vitriol that we have learned to swim in each and every day, we need Jesus.

Honestly? You can have everything else.

Just give me Jesus.

Just give me my savior.

Amen.