5/5/24 - Worthy - John 18:33-37; Revelation 5:6-14

Worthy

John 18:33-37

Revelation 5:6-14

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

May 5, 2024

 

Image:  Crozier Head with Lamb of God, 13th century Italian or Sicilian, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Medieval Collection

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TORxSrtTwmY

 

Those of us who participated in the Civil Rights Pilgrimage in February read and heard important words at every stop.  One of the sentences that stuck with several of us came from Joanne Bland.  As she talked about people who died during the Civil Rights Movement, she said, “You will hear it said that they gave their lives for this cause, but that is wrong.”  She said, “They did not give their lives.  Their lives were taken from them.”

Similarly, you might have noticed a difference when some people described George Floyd as having been killed and others said that he was murdered. 

There is a way of telling the story that accents the injustice connected with certain deaths.  The gospels are emphatic that Jesus’ death is an injustice that never should have happened.  “Jesus is innocent, falsely accused.  . . . Those who execute him are indifferent to truth, captive to evil, and motivated by expediency and power.  It is wrong for him to die.” [1]

The book of Revelation is a letter to 7 churches made up of poor and marginalized folks trying to survive, resist and refuse assimilation into the Roman empire.[2]  The intent is to help these early Christians hold on to their faith, to recognize and anticipate the exploitation and oppression of empire.

John, the writer of Revelation, John uses the word slaughter to describe the violence of Rome.  There is the violence of military conquests, the violence of economic injustice which leads to death from food shortages and famines that accompany war.  John repeats the words slaughter and blood to emphasize Rome’s M.O.  Rome slaughters.[3] 

John makes it clear.  Jesus did not just die.  Jesus was not simply killed.  Jesus was slaughtered.  He was murdered.  He died a violent, unjust death at the hands of empire.

In today’s reading, John has a vision of heaven.  He sees a scroll which is completely sealed.  Seven is a Biblical number of perfection.  The scroll is perfectly sealed.   The scroll represents the future. It contains answers to all the questions.  But it is sealed and there is no one qualified to open it.

So John weeps.  If no one can open the scroll, then it seems there will be no end to the suffering of his people, no answers to all their why questions, no coming of God’s reign on earth as it is in heaven.  John weeps.  But then someone says, “There is one who is worthy.”  It is the Lion of Judah. 

John turns to see the entrance of the powerful Lion, the great warrior that has conquered, the only one who can break the seals to open the scroll. John looks toward the throne, ready to bow before the fierce Lion, the one who will bring God’s terrible truth and justice, but there on the throne is not a Lion, but a Lamb.

The slaughtered Lamb, is the one, the only one, worthy to open the scroll.  We were expecting a Lion, but we see a Lamb. The Lamb is worthy to open the seals, unlocking the meaning of the mysteries of the universe, because the Lamb was murdered.  “The Lamb worthy to reveal God’s future for the world is himself a victim of violence.”[4]

The Lamb is worthy.

When the President makes an entrance today, the band plays “Hail to the Chief!” and the crowd stands. When the Roman emperor appeared in public, the crowds were trained to shout “Worthy! Worthy! Worthy is the emperor.” [5]

The truth is that the murdered Lamb, Jesus,  is worthy, not the emperor.  The courageous Lamb overcomes evil by refusing to adopt its methods.  Remember what Jesus said to Pilate “My kingdom is not of this world.  “If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over”. In other words, Jesus was saying “I don’t play by your rules.  I don’t return violence for violence, evil for evil.”

The slaughtered Lamb has the power, no matter what the emperor claims.  Empire killed the Lamb and the Lamb came back.  Jesus creates a new political order by breaking the stranglehold of sin and death.  That empowers a new community to live courageously, trusting that God’s reign of nonviolence and peace through justice will ultimately prevail.  The Lamb is worthy.

Wes Howard-Brock is a writer and peacemaker and educator. In one of his books, he describes two religions present within the Bible, a religion of empire and a religion of creation. Each religion has its own theology, practice and liturgy.

The religion of empire is concerned with protecting its power by casting suspicion on the other, destroying enemies and stockpiling resources for the few, even it if means the rest go hungry. The second religion, the religion of creation is grounded in an economy of gift, set on making strangers into neighbors, and laying the ground work for love of all:  enemies, strangers, neighbors and even the non-human world. [6]

The religion of empire and the religion of creation are both attested in the Bible. God, repeatedly and relentlessly confronts the unjust, violent religion of empire with non-violence and justice.  We humans, especially when we are hurt or threatened, tend to slip into the ways of empire.  We forsake the power of the Lamb.

There are so many examples of Christians embracing empire, the very danger that Revelation warns against. One story comes from Argentina during the years when a military junta ruled by abducting, torturing and killing thousands. One woman was arrested and interrogated for two nights under humiliating conditions. She was blindfolded and questioned by a group of men unknown to her.  At one point, she said, “I am a Christian”  One of the men laughed at her and said, “Why are you telling us that? I am too.”  He took her hand and put it on his chest where a cross was hanging; then he gave her the cross to hold and mocked her for her belief a commitment to the poor was part of her identity as a Christian.  She was deeply shocked that he could claim the cross for himself in service of “national security.”   This is the way of empire – to turn the symbol of suffering love and solidarity into an instrument of domination. [7]  Before you dismiss that story as irrelevant to us in our time and place, consider the use of burning crosses as threat and intimidation.  Consider the rise of Christian nationalism and the support that Christian Zionism gives to genocide in the Middle East.

This week the United Methodist Church changed their minds.  They voted overwhelmingly to delete the language that claims that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.  They affirmed marriage as a sacred covenant between two people of consenting age. They struck down a ban on queer clergy.  Great was the rejoicing! 

Even as my Facebook was flooded with United Methodist rainbows and the faces of people who have been advocating for this justice for over 40 years, I thought about those not present, those whose lives and personhood had been diminished and crushed by this exclusion.

I thought of my friend Cindy who was a United Methodist pastor, until she took the courageous step of telling the truth about herself to her congregation. She did so intentionally, knowing that it would lead to church discipline, knowing that she would face a church trial and likely be forced to leave.  She was.  She now serves as pastor in another denomination.

On the day in 2016, she said,  “I have been an ordained UMC pastor for 25 years. At last, I am choosing to serve in that role with full authenticity, as my genuine self, a woman who loves and shares my life with another woman.”

It is ironic that the faith she learned in that denomination is what empowered her to speak this truth.  She said, “It’s soul-crushing to speak to my congregation each week about God’s love for them as they are, while being unable to speak of my own God-given identity, my loving relationship, and much of my day-to-day life. I do this not only for myself, but for my partner, for my daughter, for all those who are excluded, and for the good of the church.”[8] 

Another colleague, a rabbi,  also remembered Cindy this week. In a Facebook post, he said that “she went through hell for what is right and ended up on her feet and dragging a Church she doesn’t even belong to anymore behind her. History will probably not remember her role in all this, but it was not insignificant.”  Cindy understands the power of the Lamb. I lift her up today as an example of the ways that we who follow Jesus have to identify with the victims of violence and testify to the systems of oppression in our own imperial context, even when that context is the church.

The Rev. Peter Storey is a Methodist Pastor from South Africa who was deeply involved in dismantling apartheid and rebuilding the country afterward.  He served as chaplain to Nelson Mandela and others on Robben Island and spent decades working against racism with Desmond Tutu.  After he retired as a bishop in South Africa, he taught at Duke Divinity School.  He has made about 50 trips to the United States since the 1960’s and preached in over 100 cities.  On a visit about a year ago, he offered a warning to American churches about Christian Nationalism.  He urged us to re-examine what it means to be the Body of Christ. He said to remember that we know the end of the story.  Even though evil and corruption and violence feels overwhelming and insurmountable, we know the power of the murdered and resurrected Lamb.   Decades ago, he had to ask himself what it meant to follow Jesus in apartheid South Africa.  He said he developed 4 principles for himself which he offered to us now. 

 

1)    Tell the truth without fear.  He said you have to be a truth teller.  You have to be willing to suffer the anger of the system, retaliation from the authorities, and the loss of church members. 

2)    Bind up the broken.  Make every effort to enter into the lives of those around you who are suffering most. Imitate Jesus who journeyed with the pain of others.

3)    Live the alternative to empire.  Build a community that reflects God’s dream of inclusion and radical welcome.

4)    Join Jesus in the energy for change in your country.  The church must get rid of its triumphalism and its arrogance. The suggestion that we are the only people that God is using to change the world is nonsense. In fact, half the time God has to abandon us because we are so useless and use other methods. We should very humbly seek a place among other people of faith, of other faiths, of no faith, of different approaches, who seek justice.[9]

 

Beloved ones, this is my prayer for us, that we may know the ferocious gentle power of the Lamb and that we may endure with faithfulness.  Amen.

 

 


[1] S. Mark Heim, Saved from Sacrifice:  A Theology of the Cross, (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 2006),  p 107

[2] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-of-easter-3/commentary-on-revelation-79-17-9 

[3] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/all-saints-sunday/commentary-on-revelation-79-17-10  Anna Bowden

[4] J. Nelson Kraybill, Apocalypse and Allegiance:  Worship, Politics and Devotion in the Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids:  Brazos Press, 2010), p. 98

[5] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-easter-3/commentary-on-revelation-511-14-2

[6] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-of-easter-3/commentary-on-revelation-511-14-5

[7] Dorothee Soelle, Theology for Skeptics: Thinking about God, ( Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 1995),  pp 124-125

[8] http://www.kansascity.com/living/religion/article53739145.html#storylink=cpy

[9] https://faithandleadership.com/peter-storey-the-church-here-the-world-or-itself

4/28/24 - God in Pain - Isaiah 53:7-9; Hebrews 4:14-16

God in Pain

Isaiah 53:7-9; Hebrews 4:14-16

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

April 28, 2024

 

Image: Image  Fear Not: I Got You by Margo Humphrey, 2013

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4aZdiQNIrg

Two weeks ago, Jim and I had the great privilege of hearing the Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb speak at the Alliance of Baptists gathering.  Dr. Raheb is a Palestinian theologian.  He served as pastor of the Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem for 30 years.  He is the founder and president of Dar al-Kalima University which is the first and only university in Palestine focused on the arts and cultural heritage.  

Dr. Raheb describes his homeland this way  “The people of Palestine have been occupied, crushed, and oppressed by one empire the other.  It is a distinct and unique challenge to be placed in a buffer zone that’s often a war zone.  It is tough to see one’s country as a perpetual battlefield, to see it divided and torn apart. . .  It is not easy to live in Palestine and survive physically and, even more, psychologically and emotionally.  But this is the context in which the people of Palestine have repeatedly found themselves.  This is the context in which the Bible was written.  And it is the context Palestinians face today.”[1]  

In 2003, the Church of Sweden held an international art exhibition called The Christ of the World.  As a demonstration that the gospel crosses borders and ethnicities, they intended to display art from all over the world, and they wanted to include paintings from Palestine.  At the time that submissions were to be made, Israel had imposed a 24-hour lockdown on Bethlehem, so it was challenging, but they persevered.  In his book, The Cross in Contexts, Dr. Raheb reports that 60% of the artists who participated were Muslim.  That did not surprise him, because over half of the student body is Muslim. 

What did surprise him was that all but one of the Muslim students had submitted a picture of the crucified Christ, while only one Christian had chosen that theme. Islam understands Jesus as a prophet, but teaches that he was not crucified. The cross in any form is usually deliberately avoided by Muslim people.  These artists might have safely chosen to paint the nativity or any other event from Jesus life.  Dr. Raheb concluded that Christ on the cross best represented the context in which they were living.  He writes “In a God sharing their bitter destiny, they find strength, comfort and power.  . . It is the suffering and crucified Christ that can best speak to us, an occupied nation, in our suffering.  It is he who can best tell our story to the world.  Palestinian identity is best described by the cross.” [2]

I am continuing on a theme that I started at the beginning of this month, exploring the meaning of the cross two thousand years after Resurrection. Today, I am focused on the cross as the ultimate expression of God’s solidarity with humanity.  I am interested in the power of Jesus becoming like we are, as Hebrews says, “in every respect.” 

There’s a well-known incident related by the professor and activist and Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel.  In his book, Night, he writes, “ The SS hanged two Jewish men and a youth in front of the whole camp. The men died quickly, but the death throes of the youth lasted for half an hour. ‘Where is God? Where is he?’ someone asked behind me. As the youth still hung in torment for a long time, I heard the man call again, ‘Where is God now?’ And I heard a voice in myself answer: ‘Where is he? He is here. He is hanging here on this gallows…’”

That may sound to us like a distinctly Christian interpretation, but it is also consistent with long-time rabbinic teachings that God suffers on behalf of humans.

One of the primary ways that I understand the cross is from the work of German theologian, Jurgen Moltmann.  As he dies, Jesus cries out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”  Moltmann says that Jesus, the son, suffers being abandoned by God and dying.  And simultaneously, God the parent, suffers the death of a child.  Jesus enters so completely into human experience that something new happens in the life of God.  A new kind of suffering and grief is born out of love for human beings.

Moltmann and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, both German citizens, were profoundly shaped by World War II.  Moltmann survived. Bonhoeffer did not.  Writing from prison, Bonhoeffer said, “The same God who is with us is the God who forsakes us.  The same God who makes us to live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before who we stand continually.  Before God, and with God, we live without God.  God consents to be pushed out in the world and onto the cross; God is weak and powerless in the world and in precisely this way, and only so, is at our side and helps us.” [3]

On the cross, Jesus is God-forsaken.  God enters into the very depths of our pain, even into solidarity with us when we feel that God has abandoned us. This Trinitarian lens offers us a different understanding of the cross, one that is not transactional or substitutionary.  It is not Jesus enduring a punishment that we deserve, but Jesus taking on human suffering in the most profound outpouring of love.  

It is important to note that Jesus does not die of natural causes, at a ripe old age, but the violent death of the criminal on the cross.  Moltmann says, “Jesus takes upon himself the eternal death of the godless and the godforsaken, so that all the godless and the godforsaken can experience communion with him.”[4]

Suffering is part of human existence. Everyone endures it, and, in putting on human flesh, Jesus chose to enter fully into it. 

German theologian Dorothee Soelle reminds us that “the cross is not something religious – it is a terrible, bloody reality.”  She writes, “[the cross] stands for the small girl who was sexually abused by her father and lives many years in the silence of denial. The cross means the merciless violence which people carry out on people, the strong on the weak, rich on the poor...men on women...caretakers on the sick, the powerful on the powerless.... It surrounds us, penetrates our lives. And if we deny it, then we begin not really to see ourselves correctly.”[5]

This solidarity is understood particularly well by those within oppressed groups, those who routinely suffer the kind of unjust and violent death suffered by Jesus.  Those of us who enjoy the privilege of systems that work mostly in our favor may learn much from them.

Enslaved people in this country seized on this power of the cross.  Eminent black theologian James Cone said that “Christ crucified empowered them to believe that they would not be defeated by the troubles of this world, no matter how great and painful their suffering. . . Black ministers preached about Jesus’ death more than any other theme because they saw in Jesus’ suffering and persecution a parallel to their own encounter with slavery, segregation, and the lynching tree.”[6]

Mitri Raheb says that “the climax of the New Testament could not have been anything else but God on the cross.  Palestine was the unexpected place for God’s self-revelation.  And that meant that defeat in the face of empire, was not an ultimate defeat. For it enabled the people of Palestine to survive all defeats. It made the defeat lose its teeth, death lose its sting, and empire lose its victory. It ensured that empires were incapable of celebrating their victories, because while they crushed the people they occupied, they weren't able to crush their spirit. It helped them not surrender after each defeat, but to pick themselves up and start over again.” [7]

Contemporary black theologian Kelly Brown Douglas echoes this.  She writes, “Maintaining the connection between the cross and the empty tomb is essential to the meaning of the resurrection itself.  It grounds the resurrection in history.  It makes clear that the evil that God overcomes is historical, that is, that God really defeats that power of this world.   . . . It is the connection between the cross and resurrection that has enabled black people to know that God, as revealed in Jesus, intimately understands their suffering and pain.  It also lets them know that God can and will overcome it.”[8] 

Somehow, paradoxically, the God who suffers, the one who is god-forsaken and powerless, brings a powerful hope.

Friends, this sermon has been theologically dense, more like a seminary lecture than a sermon, rightfully speaking.  These are ideas which I find profound and hopeful, and truly life-giving, but I have not done justice to them.  I hope that I have perhaps enlivened our imaginations. 

I believe that one of our tasks in understanding the cross is to recognize when and where crucifixion is happening in our time.  If we perceive the similarities between the cross and the lynching tree, then perhaps we can also see that black and brown bodies suffering the repeated violence within our criminal legal system are also being crucified.  Perhaps we can see the migrants and refugees who are dying because of systematic denials of safety and shelter and recognize them as crucified people.  Or when we consider Gaza and the continued oppression of the Palestinian people, may we recognize the cross once again.  Wherever we recognize it, may we follow Christ in embracing the path of solidarity. And thanks be to God who understands and has overcome the power of this world.  Amen.

 

 


[1] Mitri Raheb and Suzanne Watts Henderson, The Cross in Contexts:  Suffering and Redemption in Palestine, (Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis Books, 1995), p. 16

[2] Mitri Raheb and Suzanne Watts Henderson, The Cross in Contexts, p. 20

[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, trans. Isabel Best, Lisa E. Dahill, Reinhard Krauss, and Nancy Lukens.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol I, ed  Christian Gremmels, Eberhard Bethge, and Renate Bethge, with Ilse Todt (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2010) p. 478-479.

[4] Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (San Francisco:  HarperCollins, 1991), p. 276

[5] Dorothee Soelle, Theology for Skeptics: Thinking about God, ( Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 1995), p 101

[6] James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, New York:  Orbis Books, 2013),  p 2, 75

[7] https://www.mitriraheb.org/en/article/1487339798

[8] Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God.

( Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2015),  p. 187

4/7/24 - God’s Vulnerability - Philippians 2:5-11

God’s Vulnerability

Philippians 2:5-11

Emmanuel Baptist Church

April 7, 2024

Image:  Entry into the City by John August Swanson

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRuY9awx0AE

 

Christ is Risen!  Christ is Risen indeed!  Here we are, just one week from Easter.  Did you spend the last seven days working out the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus?  If you have it all figured out, then, sorry, this sermon is not for you. 

I wonder what the disciples were thinking one week later.  I wonder how all the pieces came together for them, how they would explain it to us if we could hear it in their own words.

I also wonder how we understand it or even what we think the possibilities are. There are so many aspects we could focus on.  Competing or contrasting ideas exist alongside each other and we probably carry them around without too much internal distress.  But there is one way of interpreting the death and resurrection of Jesus that has dominated Western Christianity for the last thousand years.  It is so pervasive that even if we don’t personally hold this theology, it will inform the way we hear hymn lyrics or understand scripture. 

I’m talking about something called penal substitutionary atonement.  Those words almost never get strung together in ordinary conversation, but you are undoubtedly familiar with the concept.  The idea is that God is so pure and holy that God cannot abide human sin.  Sin is offensive to God. It creates a gulf, a n insurmountable distance between God and human beings.  God is incapable of forgiving sin without sacrifice; the distance cannot be overcome without the shedding of blood. That’s how this theory goes. Therefore, God sends Jesus to the world in order that the sinless Jesus will be killed. That appeases God’s need for a sacrifice and enables the forgiveness of sin.  

We are a mixed crowd here.  Some of us endorse this understanding.  It works for us.  We would say it is life-giving.  For others here, this does not work.  It does not fit with our other deep understandings of God. And when abused, it has been used to justify violence in the name of God.  Some of us are somewhere in the middle.  We may find this understanding problematic, but we don’t really know of an alternative. 

Most of you already know that I no longer find substitutionary atonement the best way to think about the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Most of the time, I would rather speak about what I am for rather than what I am against.  But because this concept is so pervasive, everything else gets filtered through it.  I am calling attention to it because it is the lens we often look through without even being aware of it. 

This understanding was first articulated about one thousand years after Jesus.  It was amplified by the Protestant reformers and has dominated the Western Christian world for the last millennium.  But still, I wonder, what did the disciples think a week after the first Easter?  Or a year or two later?  How did they put the pieces together?

Some of the earliest Christian writings we have are Paul’s letters.  The letter to the Philippians was probably written between 55 and 65 AD.  That’s before any of the gospels were written.  And in this letter, scholars believe, Paul quotes one of the earliest Christian hymns, something that existed before he began to write. 

This hymn says that Jesus is God, full stop.  Jesus is not subservient to God, not less than God.  Jesus is co-equal with the God who created the world and the God who led the Hebrews out of Egypt.  The Jesus God has the same power and is the same being as that One.  But the Jesus God does not hold onto that power.  They do not claim the use of that power. Instead, the Jesus God becomes human.  The Jesus God takes on human fragility.  On their own initiative,

the Jesus God crosses the distance between us.   The Jesus God does not keep themselves separate from the presence of sin to preserve their holiness, but enters into the brokenness, even becoming susceptible to temptation to sin themselves. 

So far, so good. We’re probably comfortable with that interpretation. Then comes verses 7-8 which read “and being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death -- even death on a cross.” We read the word “obedient”, and the substitutionary atonement lens filters the meaning for us.  We read the word “obedient” and our notions of hierarchy kick in.  We interpret this to mean that Jesus is obedient to God who requires his death.

But this very early Christian understanding of the cross does not mention sin or salvation or forgiveness.  If we read the text without that lens, on its own terms, we might understand that Jesus is being obedient to the laws that govern human existence.  He does not throw off his human form and take on his God form in order to escape death, because no other human being has that option.   One scholar says “Finding himself in human form, this Jesus, who had been in the form of God, humbles himself to obey all the aspects of being human: to be in only one place at one time, to submit to the law of gravity, to fall asleep after an exhausting day, to hunger for food, to desire companionship, to become embedded in the systemic forces of the day, and yes, to be mortal.”[1]

In another letter, the one to the church in Corinth, Paul wrote, “For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.”  If we think back to the story of Adam and Eve, we might recognize that they were not content with being human.  The serpent told them that if they ate from the forbidden tree, they would become like god.  They did eat from it, and the story says, this is how death came into the world.  For Adam and Eve, death was the result of disobedience, of striving to be like god. But  for Christ, death was the result of his obedience in identifying totally with the human condition.

“Therefore, God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name.” The hymn describes resurrection as exultation.  “To give someone a name is to give them status and power.  The name bestowed on Jesus is ‘the name that is above every name’, which is clearly the name of God.”[2]   The resurrection is vindication. It reveals that Jesus was God all along. 

This hymn may be the earliest surviving Christian statement about the cross.   It reveals a meaning to be found not only in Jesus’ death but in his lifelong act of giving up the privilege of being in the form of God.” [3]  Perhaps, if we let it, it can speak to the human need to be saved from the addiction to power, from our captivity to hierarchies and oppressive systems of status and self-worth, from our striving for control and domination of each other and creation.  I hope to explore that more in a future sermon. 

For today, I have one last point: in the resurrection, Jesus is exalted, restored to the place where he started, which reveals that Jesus is God all along.  Jesus does not grasp for equality with God because that grasping is not in God’s nature.  Jesus does not stand apart, maintaining a holy distance from creation because that is not who God is.  Jesus does not embody a God who is consumed with fury at human sin, who requires sacrifice for forgiveness.  Jesus embodies a God who eats and drinks and laughs and has a good time with humans, aka sinners.  Just as Jesus has been God all along, so also God has been Jesus all along.  “God enters the depths of our vulnerabilities because vulnerability is inherent to the nature of our God.”[4]

Presbyterian theologian William Greenway offers a compelling picture. He writes, “If a single image could capture the character of God in [Genesis], it would be a gracious bow.  All of God’s acts, blessings, and delights in creating are for others.  In the Hebrew scripture, this is typical of God, who is intimately concerned with justice, peace and the flourishing of all creatures, [the One] who is ‘on high’ but never remote, who is ‘over all’ but faithfully and dramatically invested in life on earth.”[5]   

Greenway concludes, “This is love -- that God was, is and always will be Immanuel, God with us and for us.  Every creature is bowing to the Three-in-One who bowed first and still bows. . . . This is a stunning, joyous, inspiring vision.”[6]

This message about the cross is foolishness to some, but for us, may it be the power of God.  Amen.

 


[1] F. Timothy Moore, “Giving up privilege: A sermon on Pihlippians 2:5-11, Review & Expositor, Vol 118, 2021  pp 118-123   https://doi.org/10.1177/00346373211002109

[2] Morna D. Hooker, New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 11, (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 2000), p. 510

[3] F. Timothy Moore, Giving up privilege:  A sermon on Philippians 2:5-11

[4] Willie James Jennings, in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year B, Volume 2 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Carolyn Sharp Editors, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2020), p. 127.

[5] William Greenway in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds (Louisville, Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011) p. 112

[6] Greenway, p 114.

3/31/24 - Now What? - Mark 16:1-8

Now What?

Mark 16:1-8

March 31, 2024

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

 

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICdWObijd3s

 

If you were here on Thursday night, you heard the end of the story of Jesus’ death.  If you weren’t here, that’s OK, you’ll get this quickly. You heard that a man named Joseph got permission from the Roman governor to take Jesus’ body and bury it in a new tomb.   Mark tells us that the women watched while that happened. So they know where to go on Sunday morning. 

But let’s stick with Joseph for a minute. Mark describes him as being from a place called Arimathea and a member of the council.  Every Jewish town had a council, which was the religious and political leadership. But the suggestion is that Joseph is a member of the council in Jerusalem, that body that convinced the Roman authorities to crucify him. That subtly implicates Joseph in Jesus’ death.  Mark also describes him as a person who was waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God.  He is pious and earnest, but as Mark tells the story, Joseph is not a disciple of Jesus.  (Mark’s details are different from those in John’s gospel, by the way.)

Some time earlier, when John the Baptist was executed, his disciples were courageous enough to go to Herod Antipas and ask for his body which they buried.  Jesus’ disciples do not have that courage. Joseph is protected by his status and privilege, so he asks. 

People executed by crucifixion were not generally buried.  Decomposing at the mercy of the elements and scavenging animals was the very last bit of humiliation and degradation that went with crucifixion. So, perhaps Joseph is performing an act of mercy, to spare Jesus and his family that.  Or perhaps he wants Jesus dead and buried, conveniently out of sight.  In any case, the burial is hurried.  Joseph buys a linen cloth, wraps it around the body and puts the body into the rock hewn tomb. He does not attend to any of the usual burial rites. He does not wash or anoint the body. The women observe, but they do not assist.  This is more evidence that Joseph is not a disciple. 

This is why the women are going to the tomb on Sunday morning, to wash Jesus’ body and anoint it with spices, to give Jesus the dignity of a proper burial.

These women are not from Jerusalem. They are outsiders.  They are women. They don’t have the protection of any kind of privilege.   They have followed Jesus from Galilee, where Mark says, they used to provide for him. They have been partners in Jesus’ ministry, but silent ones because Mark has not mentioned them, them, until now. 

Watching Jesus’ slow suffering death would have been a terrifying agony.  They have been traumatized. They’re still feeling that on the way to the tomb. But maybe, they are also starting to feel a tiny bit of relief.  They can tell each other that Jesus is no longer suffering, no longer in pain. And they’re relieved of the tension that had been mounting every time he predicted his death.  Now instead of being powerless bystanders, watching him die, they can something.  They can care for his body and settle into the grief process.  Death is awful, but it is known.  They can do this.  They will do this together.

But we know that’s not what happens. The tomb is empty. There is no body to tend.  Some guy is there and he tells them that Jesus is alive and has gone back to Galilee.  He says that they should go get the disciples and tell them Jesus will meet them all back at home. It is not what they’re expecting. They’re amazed and terrified.  They cannot deal with it.  They are afraid, so instead of telling the disciples, they say nothing to nobody.  

Fred Craddock says, “This is no way to run a resurrection.”[1]

The male disciples failed Jesus in chapter 14.  They all fled when he was arrested. The women stick around longer, then they fail to share the message of resurrection.  Mark’s gospel has the most disappointing ending.

Mark knows more. He writes years after the first Easter. He surely knows about Pentecost, about how the first church forms within the Temple in Jerusalem and spreads out from there.  He is probably writing to a Christian community in Rome because the gospel has spread that far.  He knows more, but he chooses to tell the story from within the point of view of the very first witnesses to Resurrection.  They have to decide what to do with this news. And so do we.

They want closure.  They want relief from the anxiety of following Jesus, the emotional stretching of caring for people all the time, the financial pressures of paying the bills, because these women were Jesus’ benefactors. Being a disciple is sometimes exhausting. If Jesus is dead, they can come to terms with it and get on with their regular lives.

But if resurrection is true, they won’t get relief. They won’t get closure. If resurrection is true  -- and that’s still a big IF -- then they have to reset their own expectations.  If resurrection is true, the mission goes on.  If resurrection is true, then what now? They have to begin again.  They don’t even know what that means yet, so they don’t any anything to anyone.

That’s how Mark ends the story.  He doesn’t tell us what happens next which leaves many of us with the women at the tomb, wondering how to begin again. Lots of people were uncomfortable with this ending.  They agreed with Craddock – that’s no way to run a resurrection, no way to end the story.  So beginning as early as the second century, they wrote their own endings, to tidy things up, to offer closure. There are not one but two re-writes included in most Bibles after verse 8. The style of the Greek and the vocabulary tells us that they were not written by Mark.

If we stick with Mark’s actual ending, we may be caught between faith and fear, standing at the intersection of “I believe” and “I am afraid”

As in, “I believe that the way of Jesus has nurtured me and thousands of people before me, and I am afraid that my children and grandchildren will not find faith.”

“I believe that the presentation of the gospel has always changed as necessary to meet the needs of a new time or people, and I am afraid of change.”

“I believe that God is a God of second and third chances, always ready to forgive, to restore, to redeem, and I am afraid that I have used up all of mine.”

Rev. Julie Pennington Russell is pastor of First Baptist Church in Washington D.C. Years ago, she was a pastor in Texas, where she had a friend – a rugged, burly, brilliant guy that Julie said reminded her of the Marlborough Man. He studied at a prestigious university in the Eastern U.S. some years ago, and then he moved to Texas to work on his doctorate. But somewhere along the way he became addicted to cocaine. He tumbled into a dark hole. He lost his family, lost his place in graduate school, lost big pieces of himself. But somehow he washed up on the shores of a good church. And the people of that church put their arms around that man and slowly he started to heal, and eventually, miraculously, even reunited with his wife and children.

Julie and her husband, Tim, had this man and his wife in their home for dinner and the man began to talk about where his life was going. “I want to believe,” he said, “that my best days aren’t behind me, and that my life can still count, can still make a difference for God.” He sat at their table with his head in his hands. “I just can’t help but feel like I’ve blown all of my best chances,” he said. That’s when his wife, whom Julie describes as a “wonderful, Texas flower- child kind of woman,” reached over and took his hands and said, “Baby, you’ve got to take your sticky fingers off that steering wheel. If God could yank Jesus out of a grave, I figure he can make something beautiful out of busted parts.”

Julie says “I tell you what, if I live a hundred and ten years, I don’t expect to hear the gospel better articulated than that.”[2]

Mark knows more than he tells.  What he surely knows is that Jesus’ disciples, the discouraged, frightened, traumatized men and women found the courage to begin again. Eventually, they shared the news of resurrection.  They were transformed into brave, hopeful, loving bearers of good news who literally put their lives on the line for the same mission Jesus had, the dream of God’s reign on earth. Somehow, Jesus was alive.  Somehow, resurrection destroyed the fear and power of death.  They trusted resurrection, even without understanding it, and they began again.

This is the way life always is.  It changes without our permission, without our understanding. We learn to crawl and then to walk by doing it. You don’t even know what your profession is until you’ve been in it a while. We don’t understand what love is, or courage, until we’ve practiced it for years.   As the poet says “We make the road by walking it.”

Or, to put it another way,  “you have to keep going.” This is the advice shared in the wonderful children’s book, Finding Winnie – an origin story of “Winnie the Pooh.”  Before the popular and plush fictional character ever developed, there was an actual bear. In 1914, Harry Colebourn, a Canadian veterinarian who was on his way to tend horses in World War I, rescued a baby bear. Naming the bear after his hometown of Winnipeg, he called her “Winnie.” In the book, Colebourn’s great-granddaughter narrates the story of a remarkable friendship and a remarkable journey – across continents, through war and conflict, and after the war to the London Zoo, where eventually Winnie the bear made another new friend: a real life boy named Christopher Robin. Reflecting on the twists and turns that led this baby bear to inspire a timeless children’s character, the book says this: “You never know when one story ends and another begins. That’s why you have to keep going.”[3]

I think that Mark would agree, “You never know when one story ends and another begins.”  Jesus’ story does not end on the cross.  Our story does not end in fearful silence at an empty tomb.  The dream of God’s reign is not over. Because love is stronger than death and .  . . .Christ is Risen.  Christ is risen indeed.

 

 

[1] Fred B. Craddock, “And They Said Nothing to Anyone” The Collected Sermons of Fred B. Craddock, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011), p. 138

[2] “Our First Calling” on Day1 (September 7, 2008) https://day1.org/weeklybroadcast/5d9b820ef71918cdf200269d/our_first_calling

[3]Lindsay Mattick,  Finding Winnie:  The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear (New York:  Little Brown & Company, 2015).

3/24/24 - Palm Sunday - We Love a Parade/The Parade Must Go On - John 12:1-19

Cover Image:  Through the Palms  by Rev. Lauren Wright Pittman  | 

Inspired by John 12:1-19 | Hand-carved block printed with oil-based ink 

The Call to Worship and Prayer of Confession by the Rev. Sarah Speed                      A Sanctified Art LLC | sanctifiedart.org

The Lord’s Prayer is from A New Zealand Prayer Book, 

The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtU2iL13HOw

3/17/24 - We Would See Jesus - John 12:20-33

We Would See Jesus

John 12:20-33

March 17, 2024

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

 

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3bU1vJS-yQ

 

There’s a cardinal rule of story-telling.  This rule also applies to mime and to preaching, probably to all kinds of public speaking and performance.  The basic  rule is that you close every door you open.  You finish the story.  You don’t leave the audience hanging on an incomplete detail.  If you open a door, you close it.  If you say “I’m going to tell you three things” and then you only provide two, you have broken the rule.

The author of John’s gospel breaks that simple rule and it has been bugging me all week. John introduces some nameless characters.  He calls them Greeks, which is to say that they are not Jewish like the rest of Jesus’ disciples. They are outsiders. This incident happens just after Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on what we now call Palm Sunday.  That created a spectacle that led the authorities to throw up their hands and say “There’s nothing we can do.  Look, the whole world has gone after him.”  These Greeks are part of the world that seems to be clamoring after Jesus.

These unknown strangers find Philip and tell him that they wish to see Jesus. Like almost everything in John’s gospel, this has two meanings.  It means that they want an introduction.  It can also mean that they want to become disciples. Philip is one of the disciples with a Greek name which might be why the strangers seek him out. So, they ask to see Jesus, but Philip does not take them directly to him. Instead, he goes to consult his brother Andrew.  And then, Philip and Andrew go together to Jesus.  That’s where John leaves us hanging.  He never says whether these Greek guys get to meet Jesus or not. 

Maybe Philip and Andrew are suspicious of these strangers. What if they just want backstage passes to Jesus’ donkey show, or worse, what if they are spies sent by the authorities.  Maybe there’s a language barrier.  Maybe they’re tired of sharing Jesus with the crowd.  Or maybe, even though John doesn’t say so, they do bring the strangers with them and the Greeks are standing right there with everyone else when Jesus makes his next speech.

If they are there, what an introduction!  There’s no small talk, no social niceties.  No “Good to meet you, where are you from?” Jesus just launches into a life and death conversation.  He’s talking about his own imminent death, but he’s just cryptic enough that the newcomers might not follow.  This could be one more reason that the Philip and Andrew hesitated, because they know that Jesus is likely to say stuff like this and scare people off.

There was not a single one of Jesus’ disciples, friends, or family who wanted to see Jesus crucified.

Jesus keeps saying it is going to happen and they keep resisting it.  Theirs is a visceral, immediate, bodily response.   Maybe it is similar to the kind of reaction a person has when facing a difficult surgery or being told they need to undergo a painful procedure in order to get a diagnosis. Is the pain worth the gain?  Is there really no other way?  Are they willing to risk their life in order to save it?

“We wish to see Jesus” the strangers say.  Those of us who have been inside the church for a long time don’t understand how hard this is.  We don’t appreciate the incredible effort that it takes for someone to enter a church space looking for Jesus.  There are a few people among us who have done that here in the last few years.  They have screwed up their courage and crossed the threshold into this insider space where they didn’t know the roles, didn’t know a soul. Perhaps they were risking their life to save it, and Emmanuel is richer for it. 

“We wish to see Jesus” is inscribed on pulpits all over the world. Not out front for all the worshippers, but back here where just the preacher sees it. No pressure, preacher, but show us Jesus. No pressure, but this is not about you. No pressure, but remember what we’re here for.

Sometimes, preachers need the reminder.  Because sometimes preachers just want to preach our favorite easy stories.  Sometimes we want to proclaim the safe stuff that we know everyone already agrees with. 

And sometimes, congregations need the reminder that the reason we come together, again and again, is to see Jesus, to be formed and reformed.  We often want to see the peacemaker Jesus, to know the healer Jesus, but in this case, it is Jesus the disrupter, Jesus the change-agent, Jesus the trouble-maker who demands to be heard.

What happens next is life and death. What happens next will change everything for those who identify as Jesus’ disciples.  As he is crucified, their physical lives will be in danger. They may be found guilty by association. Rome will have no qualms about executing a few more rebels. 

After the resurrection, their entire world will be transformed. They upend their routines. They re-orient their lives and those of family and friends, subverting everyone’s expectations.

They abandon their livelihoods.  After this they are no longer fishermen or tax collectors, but church leaders, wandering evangelists, non-profit service providers who make sure that widows and orphans get fed.

After this their religious world changes.  They used to worship on the Sabbath and maybe make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the big festivals when they could afford it.  But after resurrection, they will worship on the seventh day and the first day.  Instead of being ordinary people in the center of their mainline religion, they will become leaders of an unauthorized minority operating on the fringes. 

If you want to live, really live, sometimes you have to learn to give your life away.  That is what Jesus is saying when he talks about a grain of wheat dying. If you want to live, really live, sometimes you have to learn to give your life away. 

No one wants to hear that.  No disciple or friend or family member wanted Jesus to be crucified.  They resist it, refuse to think about it, fight against it with everything they have. Even when it is happening, when the guards come to arrest Jesus in the garden, Peter draws a sword to fight back. 

And we’re not so very different on this side of history, are we?  We’d like to change the subject.  Don’t talk to us about death, Jesus. Don’t require us to change. You already did that for us, remember? You died so that we could have eternal life. That’s the safe, feel-good gospel.  Let’s focus on that. No more talk about following you to the cross, please.

The incomparable Barbara Brown Taylor says “it is hard to preach the gospel to people who are scared to death of dying.” [1]

Jesus was talking life and death. 

And I’m still wondering if the Greeks ever got to Jesus. I’m still wondering if Philip and Andrew were so caught up in managing expectations and softening the blow and resisting the coming change that they never even risked the introduction.

If you want to live, really live, sometimes you have to learn to give your life away.

 


[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, “Learning to Fall” in Always a Guest: Speaking on Faith Far From Home, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2020), p. 215

3/10/24 - Are We Doing Good To Others, For Others, or With Others? - Ephesians 2:1-10 - Rev. Jim Ketcham

Are We Doing Good To Others, For Others, or With Others?

March 10, 2024

Ephesians 2:8-9

Emmanuel Baptist Church of Albany; Rev. Jim Ketcham

Cover Image:  Light Wave  by Rev. Lisle Gwynn Garrity; Inspired by John 3:14-21 | Acrylic painting with gold leaf on canvas

The call to worship and prayer of confession by the Rev. Sarah Speed                      A Sanctified Art LLC | sanctifiedart.org

The Lord’s Prayer is from A New Zealand Prayer Book,  The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia

 Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQyOUkezt80

 

Scene One: A classroom at Chicago Theological Seminary

 

New Testament Professor Dr. Robin Scroggs was discussing the focus on grace in Ephesians – perhaps even on the passage we read this morning.

Sometimes we do good TO others, Dr Scroggs explained, such as when a church sets up a youth mission trip to an impoverished area of the world without considering the difficulties and expenses of finding sleeping quarters, dining quarters, food and cooks and cleaners.

Sometimes the local hosts who are ostensibly the recipients of our largesse, have to make up a project for our earnest “missionaries” to do. It can take a lot of time and money to host people who are oblivious to the hidden costs of the “gifts” they bring.

We all want to be doing good deeds FOR others, but too often we are deciding what’s good for others and when we provide it, we wonder why no one is acclaiming us as their savior.

If we’re only trying to earn brownie points in heaven, or avoid punishment in Hell, that’s doing good TO people, using them for our benefit while patting ourselves on the back.

As the writer of Ephesians says, “by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not the result of works.”

Dr Scroggs ended by suggesting the best way of doing good is to do good with others, in partnership with others, in a mutual relationship. Our mission work can only become transformational if we are willing to transform ourselves in light of the gift of salvation we have already been given.

If we’re keeping score of exactly how much we’ve given, if we are giving only because we fear punishment, we’ll end up anxious, exhausted and miserable. And eventually anxiety, exhaustion and misery will appear to be the primary “gifts” we are offering the world.

We don't give because we “have to.” We don’t give because we “need to.”  Truly accepting the freely given gift of salvation produces joy and generosity and creativity -- and truly transformational encounters.

 

Scene 2: Classroom at Bethel College near St Paul, MN 

I am Interim Minister UBC in Minneapolis. I am invited to attend, like my predecessor, a class on types/styles theology. I am to be the sole presenter of liberal theology for this class at a conservative school founded by the General Conference of Regular Baptists

I began with the Hebrew prophets and their focus on justice for widows and orphans and the poor.

I spoke about how Jesus bent or broke many of the “rules” of his religion and the Roman Empire

I spoke about the abolitionist movement in the 19th Century, the Social Gospel Movement at the turn of the 20th century and the way liberal Christians brought their faith in a loving God to the ecumenical movement of the mid-20th century, followed by the civil rights, women’s rights, anti-war, and welcoming and affirming movements.

Just as I finished, a student in the front row shot up her hand and blurted out “I just want to know one thing. Do you believe in Hell?”

I said I did not.

She gasped - “Well, if there’s no Hell, why should anyone work so hard to be a good Christian??”

I replied, “If you practice your faith only to avoid punishment, that’s a hell of a reason to be a Christian!”

About a month later, I ran into the professor in the grocery store. “You know,” he said, “my students are still discussing your presentation.”

With a grin, I replied, “Isn’t that every lecturer’s dream?

Salvation is the gift of God, not the result of works.

 

Scene Three: A Town in Eastern TN 

About 20 years ago, my wife Jan was invited to fly down to have an interview with a company based in the eastern end of TN, near the border with Virginia.

I thought it might be sensible to check out the local church situation to see where we might find a church home if Jan did get this job. I found many Baptist churches, of course, but they all seemed to be Southern Baptist or independent congregations. There were also several churches pronouncing themselves to be “non-denominational.”

I don’t mean to pick on churches, but I believe they are representative of all too many churches the world over.

A surprising number of churches had what they called a “Plan of Salvation” on their websites.  These ranged in size from 3 or 4 paragraphs to 3+ pages, single spaced.

Mostly these consisted of a series of theological propositions, things a believer would have to believe to be saved: the Bible is inerrant and/or infallible. The Bible is literally true; six days of creation, virgin birth, all the miracles are real, etc., etc.

The scripture verses they cited leaned heavily on books like Deuteronomy and Leviticus and the Epistles. But almost none of them chose our verses from this morning.

There was nothing about how one should behave in light of one’s salvation, it was all about what one should “believe.”

The more I read these “Plans of Salvation,” I wanted to write one of my own. In my head, my plan of salvation read something like:

“It’s a gift, freely given. You cannot plan to earn it or embellish it. Say thank you. Now get out of your head and go feed the hungry, clothe the naked and liberate the captive, showing ALL of them the same grace and generosity you have already been shown!” End of ‘plan!’

That’s the plan I hear in today’s reading from Ephesians.

This past week, as I worked on this homily, I looked up the current websites of several churches in that same area to see what had changed, if anything, about their “Plan of Salvation.”

None of the current sites I looked at used that term, but they always listed something about how one can achieve salvation. It was the same stuff under a different heading.

“Hell is real. Everyone deserves death, with no hope of escaping eternal punishment, without a personal relationship with Jesus.”

The only “essential parts of the gospel are the substitutionary death of Jesus and his bodily resurrection.” Is that what Jesus taught?

“The Bible is infallible and inerrant in every detail, including history, science and grammar.” Funny, the Bible itself never makes such a claim.

There was nothing, nothing at all, about what Jesus did. Or his parables. There were only a few quotes about “God the father,” and “believe in me.”

Again, I don’t mean to pick on these particular churches. But if they are representative of many churches, and I know they are, is it any wonder the group of people who want nothing to do with church is growing faster than any denomination?

Christianity has very little to do with what we believe. It has everything to do with how we behave. “Love your neighbor as yourself" is not about a belief. It is about how we treat each other – and ourselves.

 

“By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”

May we learn to give out of our joy and thanks, and not out of pride or obligation.

AMEN.

2/25/24 - Called to Listen - Mark 8:31-38

Mark 8:31-38

Called to Listen

February 25, 2024

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

 

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap30hs_kksQ

 

Frederick Buechner says to pay attention to your tears because God often speaks through them. Many of us on the Civil Rights Pilgrimage wept unexpectedly at various moments this week. Even those of us who didn’t actually shed tears felt very strong emotions like grief, anger, despair and hope. Please talk with the pilgrims today and next Sunday.  They might be a little shy to bring it up, so you might give them an opening by asking what was most moving for them.

The most unexpected tears in my week happened at a museum in Birmingham. Among other things, this museum tells the story of the children’s marches for desegregation and of the physical beatings, dogs and fire hoses inflicted on children.  As horrific as that was, it didn’t make me cry.

What made me tear up was one name.  This name kept appearing as I made my way through the museum. The name is Fred Shuttlesworth.  Rev. Shuttlesworth was the pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham from 1953-1961.   That church was the headquarters of  a group called the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, which was formed after the state of Alabama outlawed the NAACP.  The protest movement launched from this church challenged segregation in every arena in Birmingham and inspired people across the world.

Rev. Shuttlesworth was a chapel speaker at my seminary in the 1990’s and I did not know who he was.  I think the shame of that ignorance may have contributed to my tears. 

Bethel Baptist Church was a black church in a black neighborhood in fiercely segregated Birmingham. In 1963, they reached out to 16th Street Baptist Church downtown. 16th Street was a large and prominent church located just blocks from City Hall and the commercial district.  It was the center of the Black Community, serving as church and social center and lecture hall.   Famous people like Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Dubois and Paul Robeson were among the guest lecturers or performers.

When Fred Shuttlesworth wanted to invite Dr. King and the Southern Leadership Conference to come to Birmingham, 16th Street was the logical gathering place, but some church leaders and members resisted. They did not want to link themselves with the civil rights movement. They did not want to attract any more attention from the white authorities than they already had.

That’s an echo from Jesus’ conversation with Peter.  When Jesus tells the disciples about the suffering he will face at the hands of the religious and civil authorities, not for doing anything wrong, but for speaking truth and advocating for the marginalized, Peter pulls him aside and says, “Don’t talk like that Jesus.  Don’t take unnecessary risks.  Keep your head down. The Romans don’t even have to know what you’re doing.” 

That’s human nature, isn’t it?  To protect ourselves, to want to live our lives as normally and as trouble-free as possible. 

We heard similar concerns in Selma. The gathering places for the movement were churches.  Looking back on history, we might assume that connection came easily, but we would be wrong.   The churches often actively resisted.  “Don’t bring that kind of attention to us. We don’t need that trouble.”   

That’s what they said at first at Brown Chapel and at First Baptist in Selma.  When the police chased peaceful marchers off the Edmund Pettus bridge, they ran after them into the sanctuaries of those two churches and continued beating them there.

That’s what they said at first at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.  Five months after they hosted Dr. King, the Klan placed a bomb which exploded in the building on a Sunday morning killing four little girls and leaving a community traumatized.  The people were right.  The consequences were severe.

But Jesus rebuked Peter for focusing on the wrong things.  Jesus said “If you want to follow me, take up your cross.”  The cross had only one meaning in the Roman empire.  It meant a painful, torturous execution.  Fear of the cross was the way that Rome maintained its power. 

On Thursday, we went to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.  It remembers more than 4,400 black people killed in racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950.  One of our pilgrims said “This was systemic terrorism.”   In Jesus’ day, crucifixion was state-sponsored terrorism, designed to keep occupied Israel under control.  Lynching served a similar function.  Perhaps it was not officially state-sponsored everywhere, but unofficially it was, because the government did not do anything to prosecute those murders.

When Jesus said, “take up your cross and follow me” in 19th century language, he was saying “if you follow me, chances are good you will be lynched.”

The churches were hesitant and fearful but they did it anyway. They came to understand, as the earliest Christians had, that when you pursue the Kingdom of God, even at the cost of your own life, you work on shattering the power of Empire.[1]

After I found myself welling up in the museum, I wanted a closer connection to Fred Shuttlesworth.  A few pilgrims cut their lunch time short and went with me to Bethel Baptist Church.  There we learned the details about one of the three times the church was bombed.

The sign that we read out loud together said this “On Christmas Evening 1956, Rev Fred Shuttlesworth was sitting in the bedroom of the parsonage reading his Bible when a bomb exploded in the yard. The house foundations were blown away and the structure collapsed instantly.  Neighbors who rushed to the scene presumed Rev. Shuttlesworth had been crushed. Soon a crowd gathered and angry voices began shouting for retaliation.  Slowly out of the rubble and confusion, Rev. Shuttlesworth emerged. He assured the crowd that he was unharmed and urged them to return peacefully to their homes. Later he said that at the moment of the explosion he felt an overwhelming sense of peace and assurance that his life would be saved to continue his work.” 

He said to a policeman “you go back and tell your Klan brethren if God could keep me through this, then I’m here for the duration.”

The next year, he was savagely beaten by a white mob when he tried to register his children to attend an all-white school. That was three years after Brown vs. Board of Education had ruled segregation schools were unconstitutional. The year after that Bethel Baptist Church was bombed again. 

Some might argue that the church was doing political work, not spiritual ministry, but Baptist scholar Alan Culpepper says, “Taking up the cross means being at work where God is at work in the world to relieve suffering and injustice, to rescue the weak, and to bring peace and justice to bear in the human community.”[2]

This is the call of Jesus that still sounds for us.  “ Lose the normal life you had planned for yourself.  Discover with others the life that God intends for us and for all people. Take up your cross . . . follow me and get lynched.”

For, Jesus says,  those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

Beloved ones, . . . you with ears, . . .  listen . . . and take courage.  Amen.

 

 

[1] Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man, p 247.

[2] Alan Culpepper, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary: Mark, (Macon, GA:  Smyth and Helwys Publishing, 2007), p. 288

2/18/24 - On the Edge of the Inside - Mark 1:9-15 - Mike Asbury, Guest Preacher

On the Edge of the Inside  

Mark 1:9-15

February 18, 2024

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Mike Asbury

 

 Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI5R7vgQLJs

Cover Image:  I Delight in You by Rev. Lisle Gwynn Garrity

Inspired by Mark 1:9-15 | Digital Painting with collage

The call to worship and prayer of confession by the Rev. Sarah Speed,  A Sanctified Art LLC | sanctifiedart.org

The Lord’s Prayer is from A New Zealand Prayer Book, The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia

 

In the year 1181, a son was born to a wealthy Italian father, Pietro di Bernadone dei Moriconi, a silk merchant, and to a French mother, Pica di Boulemont.  As a boy and young man, he lived a life of pleasure and leisure, a life newly found among the burgeoning class of entrepreneurs in Europe, with their new economic and political challenge to the landed aristocracy.  This class of newly rich wanted to gain control of the political and economic systems, and they were willing to spill blood to attain it.   Cities were at war with other cities, when this son, a young man named Francis, of his city of Assisi, went to war against the city Perugia.  At the stern encouragement of his father Pietro, Francis went looking for the plunder and romance of war.  Nonetheless, Francis had misgivings about such an accumulation of worldly power and wealth, while he witnessed the lower economic classes bear the cost of greed by the wealthy. In opposition to his father, and encouraged by his mother, he began to question his conscience about the injustice of human greed.  Then on one momentous occasion, he met a suffering leper on the road, dismounted his horse and kissed this leper.   His life and his heart changed forever.  He knew joy for the first time in his life, was moved in his purpose, from controlling at the center of worldly affairs, to living on the “edge of the inside” of his world, to serve those with simple human needs, dropping all pretense from living in greed, shifting to meet human need.  He called for repentance and belief in the Good News of God’s love.  He lived in the wilderness, among beggars, as a beggar.  He found others to follow in this religious life, not an endowed life as a bishop in a comfortable palace, nor as a parish priest in a cottage, nor even as a monk in a monastery, rather he lived among the ordinary ones, the “minores”, the lesser ones, the beggars, suffering in poverty, and yet finding joy from God, on the “edge of the inside” of his religion. 

Living on the “edge of the inside” of his world and of his religion, Francis was becoming like John the Baptist and Jesus, in today’s gospel, two otherwise very ordinary men, separated from the center of “society”, away from the false constraints of religion, family life, neighborhoods, politics and a greedy economy.  As with John and Jesus, Francis often found criticism that he was not facing “reality”, however “reality” was defined, yet they and he, lived in love and joy, while sharing the sorrows and burdens of those poor in spirit and in possessions. They each lived in wholeness, by first being broken. 

*****************************

In today’s gospel, within only 7 short verses, Mark reports of three unconventional events from the life of Jesus:

1. Jesus was initiated into Judaism with an odd baptism performed by his cousin John, not within the center of religious life, but in the wilderness.

2. Jesus was comforted by angels, after wild attacks by Satan, the Accuser

3. Jesus proclaimed God’s nearness by calling to repent, as did John before prison.

AND in all this...His Father DELIGHTS!!     

AGAIN AND AGAIN, HIS FATHER DELIGHTS

Therefore...Joy lives within John, Jesus and Francis!

 

John’s challenging message prepared us for repentance AGAIN in Christ Jesus. Today, in part due to John the Baptist, we are disciples of John’s wild eyed and wonderful cousin from Nazareth, Jesus, the son of Mary and Joseph.

These two men were told by many that they lived outside of “reality”, away from the center of power and wealth.  Yet we know.... by faith .... that they lived in a true and greater reality, yes, close to being on the outside ...so they were always within REACH... of those outside of wholeness,  ..They touched those in brokenness.... and... they were protected and empowered at the “edge of the inside” by God’s Holy love in Christ. 

Their lives included both challenges and comfort from God. 

·       Where is God challenging and comforting you today?

·       How do we challenge false worldly power?

·       How do we comfort the broken, the sufferer? 

To answer these central questions, as followers of Christ...and in his footsteps along with all those that have walked ahead of us, we must always begin at the same place....you guessed it...AT THE EDGE of the INSIDE by repenting of our own sins, not someone else’s, whether during lent ...or any day of any week. 

 

Here’s a few ideas how we might repent:

·       May we simply admit we are without the answers to life, since we don’t even know the right questions;

·       May we take time to empty our mind, and listen to another, in our shared emptiness, instead of spouting a self-centered reply to someone with different life experiences;

·       May we claim our absence of compassion for those less privileged, so we may then together identify with each other’s brokenness;

·       May we speak truth to false power, while still coming up empty handed, recognizing that God has claimed us, we have not claimed God; God has found us, we have not found God; so that those in positions of false worldly power may know.... we are the sons and daughters of the Most-High, coming only in love, as we live and move and breathe on the “edge of the inside”, yet next to the outside, prepared to reach out and serve

·       finally, I remain in prayer today with our Emmanuel Baptist family honoring the Christ centered, civil rights advocates from Georgia and Alabama and from across our nation.

My friends, God lives, not at the center of worldly power, not within possessions or shiny objects or historic buildings or even bold oratorical messages.... God lives among the poor of spirit, among the weak and lost, God lives here today, regardless of your burdens, your separation from centers of worldly power and control!  

God continues to shower all of us with love and power from on high, in spite of ourselves.

*********************************

I have told you of my vows in the Order of Ecumenical Franciscans.   Listen now to these words from my fellow Franciscan, Brother John Michael of Rutland, VT, explaining how and why we follow our Father Francis of Assisi and we aim to love as he did, in the footsteps of Jesus, following the footsteps of John the Baptist:

“We exist to provoke the conscience of the church and the world both through our unashamed proclamation of a Loving God and our fearless demonstration of that love to our neighbors. We are called to be so small that we could never make a difference, and so foolish that we are bound to [barely] make a dent. We are called to be hopeful in the mud puddles, joyful in the pouring rain, and grounded in God when all hell breaks loose. We are here to volunteer to be taken next. We are here to let others have the megaphone and we will skip to the margins of the crowd to put ourselves between harm and our neighbors. We are here to love each other without shame and to trust that our Spirit-Chosen family is a testimony to the powers that would splinter us into struggling households. We are here to be as wildly and unreasonably in love with God, as God already is with us.”

May this be so for us today, and every day, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit...AGAIN AND AGAIN, here, on the “edge of the inside”.

2/11/24 - On the Mountain - Mark 9:2-9

On the Mountain

Mark 9:2-9

February 11, 2024

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

 

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLZshuEBS9c

 

We come to the end of the Epiphany season today.  Our worship theme has been “Wandering Heart” and we have wandered widely from one gospel to another, tracing some of the story of Simon, also known as Peter.  Because of last Sunday’s FOCUS service, it has been two weeks since we heard about Peter, so let’s do a very quick review.  We started with an incident on the Lake of Galilee. Simon and some other local fishermen had fishing all night with nothing to show for it. The next morning, Jesus had asked to use one of their boats as a floating stage so that he could teach the crowds standing on the shore.  Afterwards, he told Simon to go back out fishing.  Simon was reluctant because he had fished all night and caught nothing, but he did it anyway. And then he caught so many fish, it almost broke his nets. His first reaction was awe.  He told Jesus to get away from him, because he, Simon, was sinful.  But then, when Jesus invited all of them to follow him, Simon dropped his nets and did so.

The next week, we wandered to the incident where Jesus commanded the disciples to get in a boat without him and row for the other side.  But then he came walking toward them in the midst of a storm and they didn’t recognize him.  We recalled how Simon chose to get out of the boat and walk towards Jesus, sinking after just a few steps. I suggested that I think it is somewhat of a toss-up about whether he was being brave or stupid, but that Jesus stuck with Simon and kept him safe regardless. 

Two weeks ago, it was the identity question – Who do you say that I am?  Kathy Moore offered a sermon that asked who we are and who Jesus is to us.  In that story, Simon seems as confident as he ever is about anything.  He says to Jesus “you are the Messiah.” “You are the Christ.”  Jesus answers “I’m changing your name to Peter, the rock solid one on which I will build my church.”  

This is the push and pull of Peter’s relationship with Jesus.  One minute its “get away from me Jesus.”  The next it is Peter abandoning the family business to be with him.  One day it is walking on the water and sinking when he sees the waves. The next it is being so sure, so insightful that Jesus gives him a new name which is the Rock.

And then we come to today’s story.  Leaving the rest of the disciples, Jesus takes Peter and James and John up on a mountain. On the mountain, something spectacular happens.  Something that is really hard to put into words, unless you were there, and even then.  They know the story of Moses going up a mountain to talk with God.  We know that story too.  We know that it is dangerous to see God face-to-face, dangerous and deadly.  So when Moses went up the mountain, he only saw God’s back, and even then, the glory of God scorched him.  When he came back down, his skin was shining and he had to cover up so as not to frighten anyone.

That same glory appears on this mountain.  God lets all God’s glory loose in Jesus, making hm one big light, shining from every pore, dazzling in his brightness. 

Barbara Brown Taylor says  “The . . .word for what happened to Moses and Jesus is transfiguration – another word we rarely use outside of church vocabulary. While people who knew them both very well watched, they were changed into beings of light, as if their skin had become transparent for a moment and what had been inside them all along shone through for everyone to see.”[1] 

Sometimes, God shows up in ways we cannot deny.  Halfway between Jesus’ baptism and his resurrection, something is revealed. In this moment, Peter, James and John see who Jesus really is. Not all is as it seems on the surface; there is a hidden glory waiting to be revealed for those who will see and believe. 

It is not enough that Jesus turns into a human light bulb; Moses and Elijah also appear.  What are we supposed to make of that?  One standard interpretation is that they represent the Law and the Prophets, the ways that God has revealed God’s self in the past.  The presence of Moses and Elijah puts Jesus in a context of continuity with religious tradition. 

We might also remember that Moses and Elijah each encountered God on a mountain at a crucial point of discouragement.  For Moses, it was after the people made a golden calf to worship and he got so angry that he broke the tablets on which God had inscribed the law, so that Moses had to go back up the mountain and ask God for forgiveness, again. For Elijah, it was that time when he ran for his life with Queen Jezebel pursuing him.  When he could run no longer, he hid in a cave on the mountain and God found him there. 

Moses and Elijah each beheld God on a mountain at a crucial moment, a moment of fear and discouragement, an experience which the disciples are now sharing. What happens for Moses and Elijah, is that God sends them back into the struggle.

Peter doesn’t pick up on that clue right away.  He wants to prolong this experience.  He says “let’s build some booths.” It’s a reference to a the Feast of Booths, a week-long religious festival which recalled the wandering in the wilderness.  Peter is saying, “Let’s stay up here together for at least a week.”

Verse 6 immediately follows.  It reads “He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.”   Who is the He being referred to in that verse?  It might be Peter.  It might an explanation that Peter blurts out the thing about building booths because they are all terrified and he doesn’t know what to say.  That would be on brand for Peter. But the He might also be Jesus.  Jesus doesn’t know how to respond because he knows that he is shining and the disciples are terrified.

A voice from the cloud takes over. It is the voice heard at his baptism and it says “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” 

Now you have seen who he really is.  Now you know that he is the glory of God covered with skin  -- listen!  Listen to him.

Six days earlier, Jesus had told them something they didn’t want to hear.  Six days before this, Jesus told them that he was going to be rejected and killed and be raised from the dead.  They did not want to hear that.  In fact, Peter had pulled him aside to tell him not to say things like that. But Jesus had insisted and now the voice from the cloud makes the same demand – “Listen! 

He told you what is coming.

Believe him.

Listen and follow.

Listen and go. 

You can’t stay here. 

Get back into the struggle.” 

 

Sometimes God shows up in ways we cannot deny.  Sometimes we have an experience with God we can’t easily share with others.  We call that  a mystical experience.  Now, I have just done what you probably shouldn’t do with mystical experiences.  I have examined it, taken it apart, trying to make sense of it on a logical level.  Mystical experiences aren’t intended for that kind of analysis . . . but since I’m in this far already . . . here is my take-away:

There may be moments of spectacular awareness of the presence of God, but they are not ours to initiate; they are not ours to prolong, and not every one gets them.

These moments are not ours to initiate – Jesus took the disciples up on the mountain.  They did that often and only had this experience once.  And they had no expectation that it would happen until it did.

These moments are not ours to prolong.  We cannot extend the God-moment.  More likely than not, we will sent back into the struggle, back out on mission.

Not every one gets them.  There were at least 12 people following Jesus around Galilee and often more than that.  Only three people were privileged to have this experience.  Everyone else kept listening and following without the benefit of it. I am not a mystic.  I do not have these experiences.  I try to lean hard into the mysticism of others.

And Peter?  Peter keeps wandering.  Even after this, he will fall asleep in Gethsemane. Even after this, when Jesus is arrested, he will deny that he even knows who Jesus is.

On the way back down the mountain, Jesus tells the three of them “Don’t speak of this until after Easter.”  It won’t make any sense.  You won’t begin to understand it until then.  And maybe not even then.

This is my other take-away.  This journey takes a lifetime.  Even Peter, the Rock, wanders.  Even Peter, who has what seems like one revelatory, faith-confirming moment after another, has his doubts and fear.  At no point does Peter have it made.  His understanding is always limited.  But somehow, he keeps showing up.  He keeps failing to read the room, keeps leaping before he looks, keeps being stupid or courageous – sometimes it is hard to tell the difference. He keeps yearning.  He keeps exploring.  He keeps following, in spite of the cost, because he is one of the imperfect people whom God claims and calls. 

Just like you and me.

Just like you and me. 

Thanks be to God.

 

 

[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, “Glory Doors”, in Bread of Angels, (Boston: Cowley Publications, 1997),  p. 6

 

1/21/24 - When We Cannot Walk on Water - Matthew 14:22-33; January 21, 2024

When We Cannot Walk on Water  

Matthew 14:22-33

January 21, 2024

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

 

 Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn5VwNzHmQE

Image:  Lorenzo Veneziano, Christ Rescuing Peter from Drowning. 1370 Staatliche Museen, Berlin

 

There are so many ways to read this old familiar story. First, we might jump in as twenty-first century people.   If we do that, our default may be to call into question whether this really happened.  Everyone knows that you can’t walk on water, unless it is frozen, and if it were frozen, then the disciples could not have been sailing a boat across it.  So, some contemporary people read this story and immediately dismiss it as un-factual and therefore untrue.

But some contemporary readers are not bothered by those details.  They understand that a story can be true on another level. So when they read it, they comprehend that the story is about storms.  Storms might be weather-related with thunder and lighting and rain and wind as in this story.  Or storms might be a metaphor for difficult times in life.  Whatever this story means, maybe it can be applied to something like a health crisis or a relationship challenge or a job loss or grief or any other time when circumstances have rocked your boat and knocked you down and the waves of fear and uncertainty keep rolling over you.

Not caring whether Jesus really walked on water, these readers focus on the message which they think is about having  faith in the midst of a storm. Often, their take-away is that Peter just didn’t have quite enough faith. He jumped out of the boat full of confidence, but then then he noticed the wind and became afraid and started to sink. “But if he would have stuck with it”, they say, “he would have walked on the water all the way to Jesus.”  When the story is read this way, it too easily becomes a guilt-trip for ourselves or for other people.

Sometimes, the message sounds like this:  Peter could have walked on water if he had only believed. So if you just have enough faith, then your marriage will be happy.  Or if you just believe hard enough, you will be healed. . . or your children will be safe. . . or you will overcome whatever storm is currently about to knock you off your feet.

You could read it that way. Many a sermon has been preached around that premise.

Nadia Bolz-Weber has a great response to that.  She says, “this approach . . means that a) the chaos of my life is still terrifying and b) now I also have to feel bad for not being able to transcend it through a sufficient amount of faith and self-esteem.”[1]

If we are currently afraid and doubting in the midst of a storm, then that reading may do more harm than good. 

Another approach – you might read from the perspective of someone who understands the Sea of Galilee.  Local tour guides apparently will tell you that wind storms spring up suddenly and frequently.  This is a typical part of the region’s weather. [2] 

As experienced fishermen, the disciples would surely have been used to this. This is a strong storm, battering the boat as they row into the wind, but it is not the storm that scares them. They only become afraid when Jesus comes towards them.  They are afraid because they don’t recognize him.  They think he is a ghost.  This is Jesus, their friend, their amazing teacher.  They spend the better part of every day with him – why don’t they recognize him? 

To be fair, the disciples have had quite a day. First, they had received news that John the Baptist had been executed. John who had baptized Jesus not so long ago.  John, whose disciples had brought word to Jesus when John was in prison.  The news that John had been beheaded would have been terrifying and grievous.   But they hadn’t been given any time to mourn or process, because there was a crowd of needy people and Jesus spent the day teaching and healing them.  And then, when they finally thought they might get to call it a day, Jesus had insisted on feeding everyone.  They had been pressed into picnic set up and clean up for a few thousand people.  Pushing down their grief and terror about John – now we call that compartmentalization – they must have been completely astonished to find themselves playing a role in this miraculous feeding. 

And again, they find themselves with questions and thoughts that need to be explored with their community and with Jesus.

But, do they get that opportunity now?  Absolutely not, because Jesus makes them get into a boat without him.  He commands them to go to the other side of the lake.   The way their day has gone, maybe they are not surprised when the winds start up and the whitecaps form.  They have been rowing hard into the wind and are still far from shore.  When Jesus comes walking toward them on the water, they are physically and emotionally spent.   It’s not really that surprising that they don’t recognize him.

What is it that keeps any of us from recognizing God’s presence among us?  Could it be anxiety or confusion?  Are we emotionally overloaded, pre-occupied with worry or distress or grief?   Are we physically spent from living life too fast – the to-do list, maintaining home life and church life in ways that deplete rather than sustain.  Are we overwhelmed with responsibility and caring for others, like the disciples who had to put the needs of 5,000 people ahead of their own?  Have we pushed out all sense of wonder and possibility so that when God shows up, we don’t recognize them and we are afraid? 

Where does fear lead us?

I don’t know about you, but sometimes, when I am afraid, I do something stupid– like getting out of the boat in the middle of the lake.  Author and minister Debi Thomas says “Nowhere in the Gospels are we called to prove our faith (or test God’s character) by taking pointless risks that threaten our lives.  Nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus teach that bad things happen to us because we’re too chicken to earn God’s protective care.”[3]

Sometimes, in our fear, we call out to God for help.  Jesus helps Peter do what Peter asks – to walk on the water to him. “Jesus does not demand that Peter get out of the boat, but he seems as interested as anyone else to see how the venture will end.”[4]  Even when Peter fails, he doesn’t drown, because Jesus rescues him.   Perhaps this is how our faith develops, how we start to recognize God’s presence, in the tension between doubt and trust, between we know and what we don’t, between sinking and swimming. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew all about the real dangers of courageous faith.  In The Cost of Discipleship, he wrote  “Peter had to leave the ship and risk his life on the sea in order to know both his own weakness and the almighty power of his Lord.  If Peter had not taken the risk, he would never have learned the meaning of faith.”[5]

There is a third way we might read this story. We could see it through the eyes of Matthew’s post Easter community.  If the storm is the metaphor that 21st century people recognize, the first century Christians would have immediately understood the symbolism of the boat.  For Matthew’s first readers, the boat, on the water with the disciples inside it, is an image of the church on mission in the world.  Matthew says that Jesus made the disciples get in the boat and go without him to the other side.  “This, then, is a story about the community of faith commanded by Jesus to sail off without his physical presence.  It is a story about the church in every age.

We’re all together in the same boat, and finding it hard going. We’ve been rowing all night, but the wind is against us, the waves are battering and the shore is still a long ways off.  We have less and less hope, and more and more doubt about ever really getting there. 

In this story, Jesus is not in the boat with the disciples.  And is this true also of us, more than we realize?  Are we, like them, a lot of the time just sailing by our own wits and wiles?  Relying on our skill sets and past experience to get us through.  Doing over and over what got us through storms in the past ?” [6]  

What takes Peter out of the boat?  Is it his fear or his courage?  That’s the question for me.  If the boat as symbol of the church, is Peter abandoning ship because the external forces against it are too strong?  Is he leaving because the chaos and hostility are just too much?  Or is he leaving the boat to be closer to Jesus?  Is he stepping out on faith in order to be more like Jesus?

I agree with Debi Thomas.  We are not called to prove our faith with pointless risks.  But sometimes we are called to leave the safety of our tribe, our church, our comfort zone to go where Jesus is.  We remember that when Jesus said “take up your cross and follow me,” that was not a call to a safe and convenient life.

One final thing I notice is that Jesus neither praises nor scolds the disciples who stay in the boat.  We have not explored this story from their point of view. Matthew doesn’t really offer it to us.  But I’m sure they have opinions about what Peter did.  Maybe some of them wanted to join him.  Maybe some thought he was a total fool or even disobedient because Jesus had put them into the boat in the first place.   Maybe they were angry at him for abandoning his post and endangering them all further. 

Even when we are in the same boat, we are not in the same place on our spiritual journeys.  For some of us, the most faithful thing to do is to stay inside the boat. Others needs to test the waters, to see what happens when they test the waters. But what Jesus says to all of us. What Jesus says to everyone in the boat or out of the boat or about to go over the side,  is this  “Take heart, it is I.  Do not be afraid.” 

Take heart, friends. Trust that God who brought us this far will be with us all the way to the far shore, even when we can’t see them or don’t recognize them.  Take heart –reach for deep for the courage that comes from leading and living and loving with your heart.  Trust and doubt and trust again, even in the storm, even thought we have been rowing all night.  Trust and doubt and trust again even when we are foolish or afraid.  Even when the sea is so great and our boat is so small, take heart, all the way to the far shore.

 

[1] https://thecorners.substack.com/p/the-case-against-wwjd-bracelets

[2] Karoline Lewis, https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/when-we-cant-walk-on-water

[3] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2709-out-on-the-water

[4] Lance Pape, in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year A, Volume 3 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Carolyn Sharp Editors, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2020), p. 225.

[5] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship,  rev. ed,  trans. R.H. Fuller (New York:  Macmillan, 1959), p. 53.

[6] I am greatly indebted to the Rev. Brian Donst, for this sermonic angle and his succinct phrasing.  http://food4fifty.blogspot.com/2023/08/welcoming-jesus-as-he-is-not-as-we.html

 

1/7/24 - Those Who Dream Will Not Keep Silent - Luke 2:22-40

Those Who Dream Will Not Keep Silent

Luke 2:22-40

January 7, 2024

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

 

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU-Adtgb5nI

 

Anna and Simeon are doubters.  They have to be. Luke tells us about one particular day when they seem full of faith and confidence, but that’s just one day.  I have to believe that they had other days, different days.  We don’t know Simeon’s age,  but he is always pictured as old.  At some earlier point, he received a word from God that he would not die until he saw the Messiah.  He might have received that word at 20 and now be in his 30’s.  But, on this day, he says “I can die now because I have seen God’s salvation.” And that suggests he is old enough to be close to death. But think about it. If you had become convinced that you were going to see the Messiah in your lifetime, could you really sustain that belief every day?  Wouldn’t there be times of doubt?  Especially when you witness, as Simeon did, the violence being visited on his country, the religious and political factions among his people.  Perhaps he has lost a beloved spouse or been alienated from his children.  Maybe he deals with chronic pain. We don’t know any of the details that make up his life, but I expect that he has the same kinds of worries and hardships that all people face. And that’s why I say he has to have his doubts. 

Anna has been a widow for most of her eighty-four years. Widows are dependent on other people’s charity.  They are often poor and treated unjustly. Anna knows suffering. She is from the university of life, the school of hard knocks. She’s among the company of those who suffer in this world and among those who create space in their hearts to pray. I do not know any praying person who does not also sometimes doubt. 

Fred Buechner said  “Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don't have any doubts, you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”[1]

I’m belaboring this point because sometimes we separate ourselves from people in the Bible. Sometimes we think that we could never be like them, never speak or act as boldly as they did, because we see them as totally confident and faithful and we know that we are not. So I want to remind us that what we see is one extraordinary day which has probably been a long time in coming.   Anna and Simeon are able to speak and act as they do because they have lived through the cycles of doubt and trust many, many times. 

When Simeon and Anna became aware of Jesus’ presence in the temple, they could not keep silent. They were compelled to speak up. God’s dreams were not for them alone.  Like them, we should not keep silent, but keep speaking and acting to share God’s dream.

Doug Pagitt was the founding pastor of a church in Minneapolis called Solomon’s Porch. That church went out of existence last year at age 23.  Doug was also a leader in the Emerging Church Movement.  That movement and the example of Solomon’s Porch were formative for thousands of Christians and church leaders of my generation. 

Before Doug got involved in that movement, he was considered a highly successful pastor. He served as youth minister at nationally known church running a very large youth ministry. And then he worked for a private foundation where his job was to find the next generation of church leaders and his funding for that was virtually unlimited.  But there came a day when he realized that a voice inside him was saying that there was a different kind of church world he wanted to see happen.  Some might call that a dream. So he left his fully-funded job and set off to plant a church without any money and little support. In a recent interview, he said “you know one of the things that happens when you do something like this and that other people consider to be brave or heroic, often in the moment it doesn't feel that way.  It’s not a self-narrative of I'm being brave. It’s normally a sense of “I don't have another choice right now.”   I was serious enough about my Christian spirituality and my vocation to say “there is not a future for me that I see as preferable inside this [church] world.” [2] He was compelled to speak and to act, to share God’s dream as he understood it with people who were not receiving it.

This week, I had the incredible privilege to be part of an interfaith group, Christians, Muslims and Jews together, who were lobbying for a ceasefire in Gaza.  I was in the presence of some extraordinary people who were compelled to speak up.  There was an Israeli woman whose grandparents and other family members were killed by Nazis in Poland during the Holocaust.  Her father narrowly survived at age 11.   She recognizes genocide when she sees it.  She had her 9-month-old baby with her. She said that she cannot look at her own child without seeing the images of Palestinian children being killed and she cannot keep silent. She was articulate and persistent and kept speaking even when her voice shook with emotion.

I heard the testimony of a woman from Gaza who has lived here for decades.  On October 21, sixteen members of her immediate family in Gaza were killed by an airstrike.  Sixteen people. All at once, she lost her mother, her brother, her sister-in-law, two nephews, the losses go on and on.   There are some members of the family still alive, she thinks, but she doesn’t know where they are and can’t contact them. She weeps every day.  Her husband has also lost family members. They say that they have to speak up, to plead for the bombs and the killing to stop,  for the sake of those who are still alive. 

I heard from first generation Palestinian- Americans, US citizens who believe that they do no matter, that no one who looks like them is valued in this country, which is their homeland.  Even so, they cannot keep silent.  This was not their first meeting with this elected official.  They keep raising their voices, even though they often think no one cares, no one is listening.

I wonder how many people heard Anna and Simeon in the temple that day?  It probably would have been easy to dismiss them.  They were strangers, old people, probably talking nonsense.    I wonder how it was that Simeon got to hold baby Jesus. Most new parents don’t hand over their newborns to strangers in crowded public places.  Did he just grab the baby from Mary’s arms?  Or did Mary recognize something important was happening?  I don’t know.   But someone listened. Someone was paying attention or else we wouldn’t know the story. 

The Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie said, “Stories matter. [Multiple] stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.”[3]

God’s dream of shalom, of intense pervasive well-being for all creation, is not for us alone.   We must share it.  We must tell our stories about Jesus, about ourselves, about the world we live in.   There is a time to speak and also a time to keep silent so that we can listen to others. When we lobbied earlier this week, the meeting scheduled for 30 minutes lasted 45 minutes.  And in all of that time, I spoke for less than a minute, just to introduce myself.  My default, you might have noticed, is to talk, but what I might have said did not compare to the stories and voices that needed to be heard.

Friends, we live in a time of great change, a time when one world is dying and another is struggling to be born.  That may make us fearful.  It may increase our doubts.  But we cannot lose hope.  We must keep dreaming.  On the threshold of this new year, this is my prayer for myself and for all of us – that we will speak up when necessary, for ourselves and on behalf of others to share God’s dream,  and that we will also be silent to hear the stories of strangers and friends who “dare to seek to dream God’s reign anew.”

May it be so for me and for you. Amen.

 


[1] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, (New York:  HarperCollins, 1973), p 20.

[2] https://trippfuller.com/2023/12/18/doug-pagitt-the-emerging-church-the-end-of-solomons-porch/

[3] TED Talk:  The Danger of a Single Story, https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en