2/16/25 - Call the Demon by Name - Mark 5:1-10

Call the Demon by Name

Mark 5:1-10

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

February 16, 2025

Image:  Koenig, Peter. Casting Out Evil Spirits, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville,

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHgJn3StDXI

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation about baptism with a friend.  This person was raised as a Christian, but is now active in a non-Christian faith.  They had recently attended the baptism of a friend’s child and were horrified that it still included an exorcism of the Devil.   In many churches, the baptismal service contains these questions:
Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?

Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?

When my friend referred to an exorcism of the Devil, I think they must have been referencing those questions.   

Like the person who is appalled by contemporary people speaking of the Devil as a real thing, we may have difficulty knowing what to do with the notion of the demons in this incident from Mark’s gospel.   We will get to that.

Jesus and the disciples have crossed the sea of Galilee into Gentile territory. The crossing was rough.  A bad storm with strong winds had stirred up the waves, and the disciples, many experienced fishermen among them, had been afraid that their boat would sink.  But Jesus had rebuked the wind and the waves until it was calm. 

As soon as they step on shore, they encounter a storm of a different kind. A man comes out to meet them. He comes out from the tombs, which are in caves, occurring in the hillside.  He is used to being in the shadows, hiding, existing in this place between life and death.  He looks like someone experiencing homelessness, someone who hasn’t bathed or eaten or had a real conversation with another living person very often. 

He shouts Jesus’ name “Son of the Most High God.”  So far, in Mark’s gospel, it is only demons who know Jesus’ real identity.   Jesus had recognized the demon first.  Before the man spoke, Jesus had called the demon to come out.  Now that the demon, or the man, has named him, Jesus asks for his name.

The demons answer for the man.  We don’t know his real name.  All the identity he has left is the very thing that has robbed him of his health and sanity, destroyed his connection with his community, and made him a danger to himself and others. Speaking with the man’s voice, the demons say “My name is Legion, for we are many.”

If we take the story at face value, it seems to mean that there are a lot of demons inside this poor guy.  We don’t think we have much firsthand experience with demons, so we may read this as a crude first-century explanation for mental illness or we put the entire incident in the literary category of fantasy.  But let’s stick with it for a bit longer.

Jesus is just the latest person to confront this uncontrollable force.  The man has a consistent record of attacking again and again. Every effort at control has failed.  The violence erupts again, and the cycle repeats itself.  Again.  Despite best efforts.  When the village restrains him, he breaks their chains, wrenches open their shackles and no one has the strength to subdue him any more. [1]

“My name is Legion, for we are many.” “Legion” is no proper name, it just is a way of saying: “The opponent you face is big beyond counting, and persistent beyond your patience.”[2]  

A legion is the largest unit of Roman soldiers, about 5,000 soldiers.  It is an indication of the quantity of this man’s suffering.  The sources of his brokenness are myriad.  The assault on his mind, soul, and body is multi-pronged; it comes from many sources braided together.[3]

On one level, we can read this as the story of one person’s healing which can set him on a path to address all the other issues in his life.

But we might notice that the unclean spirit does not ask to be sent out of the man, it asks Jesus “not to send them out of the country.”  And then, we might understand that this is not really a story about an individual man, but about a representative character meant to stand for the country or the people of Israel.[4]

The demon identifies itself as Legion, which is to say the Roman army, which was in fact in possession of Israel. 

Obery Hendricks writes, “Mark’s veiled description of his country has having gone wild with self-destruction corresponds to the reality of his situation. . . . Israel was best by an unclean spirit that expressed itself through a number of extreme social pathologies.  The crime rate was so high that Josephus said it looked like the country had been ravaged by a war.  The numerous matter-of-fact refences in the Gospels to insanity, lameness, depression, abject dejection, bands of robbers, disposed farmers, enslaved debt defaulters, diseased beggars, disrupted menstrual cycles (which are often the result of extreme social tensions and anxiety) and revolutionary upheavals depict a society that in many ways appeared to be coming apart at the seams.”[5]

The village has identified the man as the problem.  He howls at all hours.  He lurks in the graveyard, frightening anyone who needs to go there.  He harms himself.  They have done everything they can think of, but they feel powerless to help him or themselves.  He is a menace.

But Jesus demands the demon’s name. The name of the problem is Legion, which immediately implies the army.  The underlying evil is not homelessness or mental illness, but the exploitation and mistreatment by their rulers. The impact of the Empire was so pervasive and so all encompassing that it stripped the man of his humanity and that pattern was repeating itself over and over again across the land.  

Jesus calls the demon by name to free people from self-blame or scapegoating and to help them identify the real source of evil.  It is an uncontrollable force.  It attacks again and again.  Every effort at control has failed.  The violence erupts.  The cycle repeats. No one has the will to combat it any more.

That kind of sounds like gun violence or racism or toxic masculinity, poverty, homophobia, ableism, any of the ‘isms.  They wear us down and we feel powerless against them and may accept the status quo.  

The letter to the Ephesians says “Our struggle is not against the enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Eph. 6:12)

The Biblical writers understood the dehumanizing systems which run our world.

William Stringfellow was a theologian and civil rights activist who took seriously the Bible’s warnings about principalities and powers.  A White graduate of Harvard Law School, he moved to a tenement house in Harlem in 1956 to live alongside and represent poor Black and Puerto Rican clients. He was also active in the Episcopal Church, fighting for the ordination of women and against the church’s longstanding homophobia.

Perhaps his most influential book was An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land. I tried to read it this week. There’s too much to share, but let me offer just a few of his ideas.

According to the Bible, the principalities are legion in species, number, variety and name...They are designated by such titles as powers, virtues, thrones, authorities, dominions, demons, princes, strongholds, lords, angels, gods, elements, spirits…

Stringfellow says, “And if some of these seem quaint, transposed into contemporary language, they lose quaintness and the principalities become recognizable and all too familiar: they include all institutions, all ideologies, all images, all movements, all causes, all corporations, all bureaucracies, all traditions, all methods and routines, all conglomerates, all races, all nations, all idols. Thus, the Pentagon or the Ford Motor Company or Harvard University or the Diners Club or the Olympics or the Methodist Church or the Teamsters Union are principalities. So are capitalism, astrology, the Puritan work ethic, science and scientism, white supremacy, patriotism, plus many, many more. The principalities and powers are legion.”[6]

He argues that the most powerful people seem most susceptible to the power of death.  “There is unleashed among the principalities in this society,” he writes,

 “a ruthless, self-proliferating, all-consuming institutional process which assaults, dispirits, defeats, and destroys human life even among, and primarily among, those persons in positions of institutional leadership.[7]

Jesus banished the demons and restored the man’s dignity and humanity.  He was clothed and in his right mind. 

Stringfellow says that we resist death by living humanly.  For him, Christian ethics is less about being right than about being a sign of life in the midst of death, to keep on being a human being in the midst of the chaos and evil around us. He calls that spiritual warfare.  It consists of small, even symbolic, daily acts of resistance subversion within systems to protest the dehumanizing effects of living with the principalities and powers.

Elmer Bendiner was a WW2 B-17 navigator. In the thick of the war against the Nazis, one of the most incredible stories unfolded. Bendiner explains: “Our B-17 was barraged by flak from Nazi antiaircraft guns. That was not unusual, but on this particular occasion, our gas tanks were hit. Later, as I reflected on the miracle of a twenty-millimeter shell piercing the fuel tank without touching off an explosion, our pilot, Bohn Fawkes, told me it was not quite that simple. On the morning following the raid, Bohn had gone down to ask our crew chief for that shell as a souvenir of unbelievable luck. The crew chief told Bohn that not just one shell but eleven had been found in the gas tanks–eleven unexploded shells where only one was sufficient to blast us out of the sky. It was as if the sea had been parted for us.

It seemed like a miracle.  After the war, Bendiner learned that when the unexploded shells were opened, there was no explosive charge inside.  They were all empty and harmless.  Except for one. It contained a carefully rolled piece of paper. On it was a scrawl in Czech.  Translated, the note said, “This is all we can do for you now.”   At least one prisoner of war forced to work in a munitions plant in Czechoslovakia was engaged in small acts of resistance.[8]

Living humanly means living within what you know to be true, refusing to accept the lies that the authorities want you to believe.  It means calling the demon by name. 

Friends we know a bigger story than this one incident in Jesus’ life.  Here, he cast out the demon, defeating the power of death that was crushing this man’s life.  We also know that Jesus went on to defeat the power of death forever in resurrection.  If we believe that, we become even more threatening to the powers, because their threat of death loses its hold over us, depriving our adversaries of that system of control.   

Stringfellow says that the threat of death holds no fear for the confessing community and therefore puts us outside the systems of control which threaten us because the worst they can do is kill us.

In the chaos of the world right now, we can call the demon by name.  Jesus offers us the opportunity to name and challenge the madness in the world around us instead of accommodating ourselves to it.  In Jesus, we can claim an identity of resistance which says that we will not be bound by our loyalties or our compulsions or by the status quo or our fears, even our fears of death.  Thanks be to God.

 

 

[1] Richard Swanson, https://provokingthegospel.wordpress.com/2016/06/10/a-provocation-fifth-sunday-after-pentecost-luke-826-39/

[2] Swanson

[3] Debie Thomas, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2259-legion

[4] Obery Hendricks, The Politics of Jesus:  Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus’ Teachings and How They have Been Corrupted,  (New York: Doubleday, 2006),  p p 145-46.

[5] Hendricks, p 146

[6] William Stringfellow, An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land,  chapter 3, excerpted here https://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2014/01/an-ethic-for-christians-and-other_23.html

[7] As quoted by Mac Loftin in The Christian Century, February 5, 2025

https://www.christiancentury.org/print/pdf/node/43877

[8] recounted by Elmir Bendiner in his book The Fall of the Fortresses, retold here https://greglewisinfo.com/2020/04/18/the-b-17-saved-by-a-miracle/

2/2/25 - Joint FOCUS Winter Worship - A Voice to the Voiceless - Jeremiah 7:1-7; Mark 11:15-19

A Voice for the Voiceless

Jeremiah 7:1-7, Mark 11:15-19

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

February 2, 2025 FOCUS Winter Worship

 

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

Tony Campolo died in November at age 89.  He was one of the prophets of our time and some of us are proud that he was a Baptist.  A very long time ago, when I was a student, he came to my college, and he began his presentation the way he was beginning his speeches on college campuses all over the world at that time.  He said:  

I have three things I’d like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a [bleep] (Only he actually said the word I’m bleeping because he was braver than me and because there weren’t children in his audience.] Then he would go on to say “What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact that I said [bleep] than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.

The nervous laughter of the audience verified the truth of what he was saying. Tony was good at reminding us that the church often majors on minor things and ignores what is really of major importance.  We have been correctly taught that Jesus calls us to love, but sometimes we have incorrectly internalized that love means being polite or nice or never creating a scene.

Jesus didn’t seem to have that confusion.  He was willing to confront those in power, willing to speak his mind, willing to break social norms at dinner parties as a demonstration of love.  The scene that he created that day in the temple is recorded in all four gospels.  It is so familiar that perhaps it has lost some of its edge.

Several times recently, I’ve been with people who expressed powerlessness.  Some were concerned about the decline of the church.  Despite their hard work of many years, churches continue to struggle for existence and many close.  Others are dismayed by the polarization of our civic life, feeling like there is no way to effect change for the common good. 

I have to think that Jesus of Nazareth shared some of those feelings at least some of the time.  He was working hard, constantly traveling and talking to people, addressing their needs, helping them understand the movement he was leading.

At the beginning of his ministry, in his first skirmish with religious authorities, Jesus said that a house divided against itself cannot stand.  That house is the political system of his time in which a covenant based on justice and mercy was being betrayed by a political economy of exploitation.  In that same skirmish, Jesus also said “no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man”.  Scholar Ched Myers suggests that Jesus’ entire ministry is been about binding the strong man, i.e. Satan or the forces of evil.  This is what Jesus has been about.  He has many apprentices and large crowds come out to learn from him.  The movement is growing, but it probably doesn’t feel like much change is actually happening. 

So Jesus decides to confront evil directly in the center of power. He goes to Jerusalem over the protests of those who love him and fear for his safety. 

He goes to the Temple.  It is probably impossible to overstate how important the Temple was, how sacred it was, to ordinary, faithful Jewish people.  This Temple was built by King Herod to inspire awe and to intimidate. Herod had been Rome’s puppet king.  Under his rule, the Temple had become the center of local collaboration with Rome.  The temple authorities come from Jerusalem’s elite wealthy families. They are the educated scribes and priests.  They are the Temple’s bankers.   They are maintaining their power and privilege by supporting the domination of Rome in the name of religion.  

In the Temple, Jesus drives out the buyers and sellers.  We need to understand that commercial activity was an entirely normal part of any religion in Jesus’ time.   Two thousand years later, we read into the text a concern for the noise and smells that we think are disruptive to prayer and worship.  That is not Jesus’ concern.  He is protesting the ruling-class interests which are in control of this marketplace. [1]

He singles out two stations – the money changers and the dove sellers.  The Temple is a religious institution, but also inherently an economic one. The money taken in by these activities is going to the Temple treasury, to support the ruling class which is colluding with Rome.  The dove sellers are singled out because doves are the sacrifice required of the poor and the ritually unclean.  Jesus attacks the concrete mechanisms of oppression which exploited those on the lowest socioeconomic levels to benefit those at the highest levels.[2]

 Jesus was not against the Temple as such, not against his own religion. He was protesting, from within, a religion that had forgotten its purpose.  He was taking a public stand against a faith system that offered religious cover for political violence.

Did you catch that? He was protesting a faith system that offered religious cover for political violence. 

One of the people Jesus quotes is the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah had also stood in the temple, an earlier version of it, and delivered an ultimatum from God that the temple would be destroyed unless they stopped exploiting the poor.  We should heed that warning – Christianity is being destroyed from within by collusion with the ultra-wealthy, the white supremacists and Christian nationalists. When our faith is publicly aligned with causes antithetical to Jesus, we should not be surprised that the church declines.

Jesus is angry.  This is not a spontaneous temper-tantrum. This is a deliberate, carefully planned action.  We are not always comfortable with the thought that Jesus got mad.  It would be so much easier to follow the Jesus who is always polite to everyone, who never questions economic, political, or religious systems.

We don’t always know what to do with our own anger.  We are angry at economic systems that do not provide living wages to full-time workers.  We are angry at the systematic disenfranchisement of black and brown voters. We are angry at the attempts to erase the existence of trans and queer folk.  We are angry at the lies perpetuated by those in power who benefit when the poor believe them. 

But some of us have become convinced that being angry is not loving. Jesus’ own life demonstrates that is not true.  In her widely influential essay, “The Power of Anger in the Work of Love,” Beverly Harrison wrote: “suppressed anger robs us of the power to love, the power to act.” . . . “Anger is not the opposite of love. It is a sign that we know all is not well in the world around us . . . where anger rises, there the energy to act is present.” [3]

Jesus was angry.  Maybe he felt some of the frustration and powerlessness that you and I do.  Nevertheless, he took action. He dug down to his core understanding of God, to the fundamentals of a covenant that demanded faith-filled care for the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner. And then, as just one person against the Empire, he spoke up as a voice for the voiceless.  He acted up for the cause of justice. 

Was it worth it?  Did anything change as a result of his actions?  Well, Mark says that after that, the authorities kept looking for a way to kill him.  We know that story.  But what else?  Did he make any difference? 

Mark reports that he did not allow anyone to carry anything through the Temple that day.  The Temple covered 33 square acres.  It seems unlikely that one person could have shut down all business in that vast space.

Biblical scholar Obery Hendricks says “How could Jesus have halted commerce on so large a scale, except that other pilgrims and worshippers were empowered and inspired to stand with him?”[4]  He believes  that seeing Jesus do what he did, hearing him speak their own feelings out loud, gave them the courage to do what they would not ever have imagined themselves doing and they joined in the protest.  What Jesus did was to share his anger and power.  The power to love.  The power to act. What Jesus did that day is told by all four evangelists. It changed the lives of Jesus’ followers and still does.

Friends, I recognize that multiple political views and election districts are represented in this room. We don’t all support the same party or vote for the same candidates.  My appeal is not being made on the basis of that.  Nor is it on the basis of our citizenship or immigration status.  I am appealing to our common commitment to follow Jesus, which is our highest allegiance for those of us who share that, and to our common ministry as FOCUS churches.  Just a few minutes ago, we read the FOCUS covenant together.  We promised to provide a ministry of presence, support and advocacy for victims of society’s injustice and neglect and to speak the truth in places of power on behalf of the powerless because it is a demonstration of the gospel.  That covenant is not a partisan reaction to current politics.  It is decades old and reflects our core understanding of who God is and who we are called to be.

St. Augustine was a long-ago follower of Jesus.  He said, "Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are Anger and Courage: Anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.” 

Friends, may we be full of hope – both angry and courageous, following Jesus who channeled his anger for the work of love.  Amen.


[1] Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man, (Maryknoll, New York:  Orbis Books, 2008), p. 300

[2] Myers, p. 301

[3] Beverly W. Harrison (1981), ‘The Power of Anger in the Work of  Love’ in Union Seminary Quarterly Review, vol. xxxvi, pp. 41-57

 [4] Obery Hendricks, The Politics of Jesus:  Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus’ Teachings and How They have Been Corrupted,  (New York: Doubleday, 2006),  p. 124

 

1/26/25 - Treat the People's Needs as Holy - Luke 11:1-4; Matthew 6:9-13

Treat the People’s Needs as Holy

Luke 11:1-4, Matthew 6:9-13

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

January 26, 2024

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGeB7LBnNIk

Dr. Molly Marshall was my theology professor.   I took a lot of notes in her classes, but one thing she said was so troubling to me that I used to turn back to it.  She said that prayer was the purest form of theology, that whether we pray or not and how we pray is the most accurate reflection of what we really believe. 

Jesus’ disciples say “Lord, teach us to pray.”   The faithful Jewish person of that time prayed three times a day and Jesus’ disciples were in that category.  They were quite familiar with prayer already.  What they wanted to know was what to pray for. Just as John the Baptist had taught his disciples a distinctive prayer, Jesus disciples wanted to know what they were asking God to help them accomplish under Jesus’ leadership.  

We have two versions of the prayer that Jesus taught.  The variations between Luke and Matthew may imply he shared different version on different occasions.  It most likely reflects something they heard him pray often, rather than being a one-time delivery.   We should note that the language of the prayer is “our” or “us” or “we” not “me” and “mine”.  This is not a private prayer, but corporate.  An individual might pray in this way, and should, but this is not strictly personal prayer.

The prayer of Jesus has a simple structure.  There are two petitions that focus on God and three petitions about human need.

The English word “hallow” means to make holy, to make sacred, to set someone or something apart.  Roman state religions required that only Casear’s name be hallowed, but this prayer affirms the holiness of God above Casear. When put combination with “your kingdom come, your will be done” the person praying is pleading with God to hallow God’s own status as God.  It is a prayer that God will demonstrate God’s holiness, by revealing himself to be sovereign by manifesting judgment or mercy.

By law, only Casear’s name is to be honored like this.  But Jesus’ only allegiance is to God.  Only God is sovereign.  Keep in mind that the early Christians would have prayed like this in the ruins of the Temple not just during occupation but outright war with Rome. To have been overheard would have been treasonous. Later manuscripts of Matthew’s gospel include the ending “thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.”  This is a very dangerous, political prayer.

Friends, full disclosure, today and for the next few Sundays, I am intentionally looking at Jesus’ words and actions through a political lens.  If you’ve been paying attention for the last 14 years, you know that’s not a new thing for me.  But right now, in the midst of incredible turmoil and division, at a time when our new jerk responses are often framed by which political party we adhere to and who we voted for, it seems most appropriate that we ground ourselves in the politics of Jesus.  It is helpful to me to remember that Jesus did not live in a representative democracy.  Neither did first disciples nor many generations of the first Christians. They did not enjoy freedom of religion or a way to compel their government to act with justice.  But still, they lived faithfully, seeking to be part of God’s kingdom on earth.  Regardless of what is happening around us, to believe that God is sovereign and that we can be a demonstration plot for God’s reign here and now, is still an option available to us.

Back to the prayer. It continues with three petitions for human needs – for bread, for forgiveness, for escape from trial.

Daily bread – Bread was the staple of the diet.  Every meal included bread. Jesus fed people and urged others to do the same.  Daily bread recalls manna in the wilderness, where every person’s need for food was met in the same way regardless of their finances or social standing.  This petition is also a prayer against the injustice of the day where the haves get more without regard for the needs of those who are hungry. For some of us, who are not at any risk of starving, this prayer could mean: Help us to let go of fear about not having enough. Help us to be satisfied with what is sufficient for today. Help us to share out of our abundance and our need.

The second petition is very interesting. Matthew records “forgive us our debts” while Luke seeks forgiveness of sins.  In Aramaic, there is one word which means both debts and sins.  That word does not exist in Greek, so in translating, Matthew chose debts and Luke chose sins. 

The cycle of debt in first century Israel was devastating to the people.  When the Romans conquered the region, they claimed they owned all the land and promptly started charging people rent.  People who had been farming their own land found themselves burdened with debt.  Debt was a way in which the conquerors continued to afflict the conquered. [1] 

Forgiving the debts of others also meant refusing to participate in the ways of the conqueror. It is consistent with Jesus’ declaration of his mission in light of the practices of Jubilee when debts were forgiven and slaves set free and land returned to the original owners.   Both Matthew and Luke use the same word for forgiveness.  It also means release.  It is the same word we heard last week when Jesus read from Isaiah about release to the captives and setting free the oppressed.  Release us from our debts as we release others from what they owe us.  It is a petition for release from the obligation of monetary debt and other kinds of captivity or enslavement, even captivity to sin. 

And do not bring us to the time of trial.  How you interpret this may depend on your theology, whether you believe that

God sets up tests for human beings to pass.  I don’t believe that.  In the original context, it is probably a prayer that the community would be spared trials before various secular authorities in which some Christians were being imprisoned or executed for their faith.  It is a prayer for strength to resist the temptation to serve Caesar out of fear or expediency, and that temptation is just as present in our context as it was then.

I’m using Obery Hendricks’ book, The Politics of Jesus, as a primary resource for this sermon series.  He writes, “Jesus treated the people and their needs as holy by healing their bodies, their souls and their psyches . . . .  He traveled incessantly to raise the people’s consciousness that the present order sinned against the justice of God because it sinned against their well-being.”[2]

Prayer is the purest form of theology, my professor said.  How we pray, what we pray for, reveals what we believe about God.  I have also come to believe that praying in the same ways over time shapes us.  Jesus taught us to pray that everyone has enough to eat every day.  That everyone is free from economic exploitation and violence.  That everyone is delivered from whatever captivity they are in whether from unjust government or addiction or poverty or systemic oppression or their own sin.  If we pray this and mean it, it will shape our actions.  It will form in us the sense of “we” and “us” and “our” until we recognize the holiness of all human need, not just our own.  It will remind us that we serve God best by loving each other. 

Those who live with more awareness of their dependence on G od often understand this in ways that those of us with means do not. There are so many instances of this. Here’s just one example.  There is a slum on the outskirts of Kampala, Uganda. Those fortunate enough to have a job perform the back-breaking work of strip-mining rocks for construction.  The men mine large boulders and rocks, while the women break the rocks into gravel using hand-held tools.  In 2005, these women earned $1.20 per day.  That was the year that Hurricane Katrina wrought such destruction.  These women heard about that.  Two hundred of them broke rocks for weeks and then donated $900 of their wages to help people displaced by Katrina.  One of them said that those who are suffering “belong to us.  They are our people.  Their problems are our problems.  Their children are like our children.”  [3]

This is what it means to treat all the people’s real needs as holy. 

I cannot end this sermon without mentioning what we all bore witness to this week.  At a prayer service for the unity of the nation, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington Marianne Budde lifted up the needs of real people. https://youtu.be/xwwaEuDeqM8?si=PeE32A4fGUI45z7K

She was asking for mercy from the Empire.  The Empire does not hallow the name of God and is not inclined to mercy.  The stark contrast between the ways of Jesus and the ways of Empire are on full display once again.  May we be found faithful to the one God who is sovereign over all. 

This week, I discovered a version of Jesus’ prayer from a Christian community in Central America.  Let me close with it:

Our Father who is in us here on earth.
Holy is your name in the hungry
who share their bread and their song.
Your kingdom come which is a generous land
which flows with milk and honey.
Let us do your will standing up
when all are sitting down
and raising our voice when all are silent.
You’re giving us our daily bread
in the song of the bird and the miracle of the corn.
Forgive us for keeping silent in the face of injustice
and for burying our dreams,
for not sharing bread and wine,
love and the land, among us, now.
Don’t let us fall into the temptation
of shutting the door through fear,
of resigning ourselves to hunger and injustice,
of taking up the same arms as the enemy,
but deliver us from evil.
Give us the perseverance and the solidarity
to look for love,
even if the path has not yet been trodden,
even if we fall.
So we shall have known your kingdom,
which is being built forever and forever.[4]
Amen.

 

 

[1] https://www.progressiveinvolvement.com/progressive_involvement/2010/07/lectionary-blogging-luke-11111.html

 [2] Obery Hendricks, The Politics of Jesus:  Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus’ Teachings and How They have Been Corrupted,  (New York: Doubleday, 2006),  p. 108

[3] https://www.sunnyskyz.com/blog/2494/Women-In-Uganda-Sent-900-To-Katrina-Victims-In-2005-They-Earned-1-20-A-Day

[4] Janet Morley, Bread of Tomorrow: Praying with the World’s Poor, (London: SPCK Publishing, 1992).

1/5/25 – Practices for This New Year – Luke 2:21-38

Making Room

Luke 2:21-38

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

January 5, 2025

 

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEC0a6k31-I

On Christmas Eve, we heard the familiar story of Jesus’ birth which begins “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.”

Luke places the birth of Jesus in a certain political reality.  Mary and Joseph and Jesus live under Roman occupation.  The empire has a real and profound effect on their lives, even on the circumstances in which Jesus is born.  I think about all the babies born in the Ukraine in the nearly 3 years since the Russian invasion.  I think about all the babies born in Palestine since the Hamas attack in October 2023. Babies and parents in war zones, lands of occupation.  I imagine contemporary Ukranian Annas and Palestinian Simeons who wonder what life will be for the babies they see. I imagine that as the oldest generation welcomes these infants, they may hope that each one will grow up to live in peace or to wage lasting peace. They likely also fear for too many who will suffer because of the powers at work in the worlds into which they have just been born. 

Jesus’ life is shaped by Roman occupation, but not only by that. It is also shaped by his parents’ faith and faithfulness. The cultural struggle evident throughout Jesus’ life is a battle for identity of his people.  On one side is their identity as God’s covenant people, people who are obedient to the practices of justice and mercy and lovingkindness.  On the other side is an identity as a subjugated people who must submit to the ways of Empire, to the practices of power that dominates and oppresses.  It is a real and hard struggle. What the Emperor wants, the Emperor usually gets.  How can an ordinary person be faithful in these circumstances?

What we see in this chapter of Luke is that Mary and Joseph meet the requirements of Empire.  They go to Bethlehem as decreed.  But they are also obedient to God. They go to the Temple on the eighth day of Jesus’ life because they are part of a covenant community. This ritual of naming celebrates Jesus’ birth, introduces him to the covenant community, and recognizes that, in some inscrutable way, God’s promises are being fulfilled.  It honors Mary and Joseph’s deepest awareness and commitments.[1]  The ritual becomes an expression of the identity they are claiming.  It connects them to the past. This is the same ceremony that their parents and grandparents engaged.  And the blessings of Anna and Simeon connect them to the future, their descendants in an ongoing covenant community.  We might understand their ritual as an act of resistance, a small demonstration of faith despite the brutality of occupation.

Even those of us who don’t think of ourselves as traditional probably have a few rituals that we sustain or which sustain us.  Traditions related to family celebrations or milestone events or holidays. My family usually puts up a Christmas Tree as early as we can in the season so that we can enjoy it for a long time. 

Every year, I recognize a number of ornaments with a connection to Emmanuel. I’ll just mention three.  This one was a gift from Liselle last year.  It is a world with the word Peace on it.  This year, it resonates for me with our theme of a weary world rejoicing.  Two others are related to each other.   This heart says “Love wins”.  It was a gift from Ellen in 2018.  That same year, this star came from Michael.  Our Advent/Christmas theme that year was Testify to Love.  If you don’t remember that theme, you might remember it as the year that we carried a burning sparkler across the sanctuary to light the Advent candles while certain trustees looked on with apprehension every week. The ritual of a Christmas tree with ornaments is a way that links memory and meaning and identity and those links are strengthened every year as the ritual is enacted again.

When I was in Northern Ireland this summer, I became aware of the nuances of the English language and its variations across the world.  Something clicked for me with the phrase Do you mind?  In my American world, Do you mind? is most often associated with asking someone’s permission for a small courtesy.  Do you mind if I sit down?  Do you mind if I smoke?  In that context, do you mind? becomes do you care?

In Northern Ireland, do you mind? has a double meaning.  Just like here, it can mean do you care?  But there it also can referring to bringing something to mind, as in do you mind the year of that great blizzard? Or Do you mind the name of those cousins in Belfast? So it means both do you care? and do you remember?

Ritual can evoke that double meaning.  Ritual enables us to remember and to care. 

Jesus grew into adulthood in a culture where Jewish nationalism vied with Roman nationalism and with Jewish identity as God’s covenant people. We live in a similar moment.  Christian nationalism and white supremacy are deeply embedded in our culture, and consciously or unconsciously, part of our own identity struggle.  We are citizens of the global Empire of our time and we must reckon with what it means to be faithful in these circumstances.  We are weary of the fractious politics we have endured in recent decades.  Many of us are seriously concerned about what might be ahead of us this year.

In such times, it happens that weary people are sometimes sustained by rituals and intentional practices.  I want to invite us to be proactive as we launch ourselves into this new year.  Consider the rhythm of your life.  Where are the times and places where you might develop a ritual that reinforces your deepest commitments? What is a new or old practice that you might sustain?

The most meaningful practices will be the ones you create for yourself.  Let me offer a few suggestions to spark your imagination.  Consider a monthly practice – read 5 psalms every day.  There are 150 psalms. In most months, reading 5 per day will bring back to the beginning by the start of the next month. Similarly, there are prayer books designed for 31 days. 

A weekly practice – Sabbath, which is about resting and balance.  Honor the Sabbath with worship, but also by changing the pattern of one day in seven. Consider how to spend that day – perhaps it is a day to fast from media or social media, or a day to light candles and invite some friends over.  Perhaps you might devote time to reading something special only on that day. My intention for this year is to seek more wisdom from people of color, people who have engaged this struggle in ways that my privilege has insulated me from. In the bulletin, there is an excerpt by Howard Thurman as an example.  Work for social justice is necessary, but regular rest is essential to provide physical and spiritual nurture for the long haul.

Tricia Hersey is the founder of The Nap Ministry.  She maintains that rest is anything that connects body and soul.  She writes “My rest as a Black woman in America suffering from generational exhaustion and racial trauma always was a political refusal and social justice uprising within my body.  I took to rest and naps and slowing down as a way to save my life, resist the systems telling me to do more and most importantly, as a remembrance to my Ancestors who had their Dream Space stolen from them.  This is about more than naps.”[2]

Consider a daily practice – if you bathe or shower daily, consider a ritual of re-affirming your baptism.  As the water flows over you, remember your commitment to follow Jesus in all the ways your life requires.  And also remember that you are beloved in God’s sight.  Spend a minute or two every day in the shower or in the mirror saying out loud “I am baptized.  I am beloved.”

I will be very interested in hearing the new and old rituals that you choose to practice across the next weeks and months.    

When the Communists took over Russia in the last century, one ritual of the Orthodox Church took on surprising power. Until that time, you might have thought that the purpose of the Orthodox Church was to underwrite the rule of the Czars. There was very little sense that the church engaged with politics or economics.  When the Communists took power, here was a church that might have seemed peculiarly ill-suited to challenge the status quo.

There was one Russian Orthodox habit, however, that brought the church out of the church. Before the celebration of Communion, the priest was expected to go to the porch of the church and ring a hand-bell. That bell was to tell the people in the village that Communion was beginning. The early Communist regime outlawed the ringing of the hand-bell as part of its anti-religious campaign. Orthodox priests are unfailingly traditionalist by nature, and they just continued to stand on the porch, ringing their little bells, asserting their deepest commitment, finding it impossible to do otherwise.  The state reacted by jailing and slaughtering priests by the thousands. By refusing to give up the ringing of the bell, Orthodox Christians confronted its nation's rulers with a determination that they had not know they had.[3]

Beloved ones, I would like to find a bell to ring.  In the year that stretches ahead of us, I intend to engage in pro-active prayer practices and rituals that honor God and my own deepest commitments.  I hope that you will join me in rhythms that strengthen our faith and witness, that ground us in God’s abiding love and sustain us with joy even though we have considered all the facts.  May we remember and care.  Amen.

 

 

[1] Alan Culpepper, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 75.

[2] https://thenapministry.wordpress.com/

[3] Stanley Hauerwas, Pulpit Resource, January- March, 2003, p. 8

12/24/24 – Christmas Eve – Making Room – Isaiah 9:2-7; Luke 2:1-20

Making Room

Isaiah 9:2-7; Luke 2:1-20

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

December 24, 2024

 

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41gwl0lFgpY

In a few days, our family will gather at Jim’s parents’ home.   We’re not a large family, so there has always been plenty of space, enough that everyone had their own bed.  But the whole family is going to be there this year, some of the adult grandchildren now with partners in tow.  For the first time ever, we had to think about making room for everyone.  For the first time ever, one of the adult grandchildren will be sleeping on an air mattress in what they used to call the playroom.  That kind of thing is happening in many places tonight, someone is sleeping on an air mattress or a sofa bed or in their childhood bunkbed, because someone else already claimed the guest room. 

When Judah read the first part of the story tonight, you might have heard a word that surprised you – the word “guest room” in the Bible story.   We are used to hearing that Mary laid her baby in the manger because there was no room for them in the “inn.” But tonight, we heard there was no room in the “guest room” because a few recent Bible translators have dared to tread on years of traditions of Christmas pageants with innkeepers and no vacancy signs. 

There is a word for “inn” in Greek.  It is the word that Luke uses in the parable about the Samaritan who helped the man on the road to Jericho.  The Samaritan bandaged his wounds and took him to an inn and paid the innkeeper to look after him. That story uses a Greek word that means an inn.

But Luke uses a different word here.  The word here is kataluma. The one other time that kataluma occurs in Luke’s gospel is when Jesus sends his disciples to find a place to celebrate the Passover.   Preparing for what we now call the Last Supper, Jesus told them to ask the homeowner for the use of the kataluma, the upper room or the guest room. The kataluma was an extra room, added on top of a house for the purpose of providing space for guests. 

In the first century, Palestinian homes usually had two main areas – one large room used for cooking, eating and sleeping.  We might call this the living room. The second area, usually down a few steps, was a night shelter for animals and a day room for people. Into this lower level, the family cow, donkey and a few sheep were brought each night.  In the morning, the animals were taken out into a courtyard, the area was cleaned and the house was ready for the day. 

In these homes, mangers were built into the floor of the main room. If a cow or donkey got hungry at night, it could stand and reach the food on the floor of the living room.  So, when a first century person heard this story about the baby  being laid in a manger, they would immediately have understood that Jesus was not in a barn or a stable, but in the living room.  If they thought to themselves, but “why not the guest room?” that it is answered immediately.  The guest room was already taken.[1]

So, Jesus was not born in the stable of some cold, impersonal one star hotel but rather in the living room of a home where aging aunts cousins, and other relatives may have doted on the new baby. God was welcomed into a world with room for Mary and Joseph, into a family, with rituals and holiday traditions, and all the quirks and characters that our families have.

That is what we celebrate tonight, that God came to share out humanness, our pain, our fear, our hopes and joys, and our love. God arrived as vulnerable and weak as any of us. Jesus lived and dwelt among us. God made room for us.

I want to invite M to join me up here. M is 7 years old. Several weeks ago, M called me with some questions. It is a pastor’s privilege to get to make room for the theological questions whenever they occur. We spent almost half an hour on the phone. M had so many good questions and some of her own good answers. I’m still thinking about a lot of them. M is willing to share just a few of them with us tonight. She started with questions about Jesus’ crucifixion, like:

M:  Did the people who killed Jesus get arrested and go to jail for doing that? Why didn’t Jesus just run away? Did Jesus come back to life?  Did he transform or something?

Kathy: She didn’t make it easy for me.  M would ask a question.  I would try to answer.  She would say “Uh huh” and then fire off another one.  And then, in a few minutes, she would circle back to an answer I had offered to a previous question and provide her own comments on that.  For example, I talked about Jesus being God and also being God’s son.  That Jesus could be both of those at the same time didn’t faze her.  But when she circled back, she asked:

M:  You said that there is God who is the parent and Jesus who is the son.  Is there anyone else in Jesus’ family? 

See what I mean about good questions and comments?  I took that opening to talk about the Holy Spirit who we might think of as a kind of sister in Jesus’s family.  Got to get an understanding of the Trinity in at an early age.  But then she circled back to the question that I’m thinking about now. When M had asked me why Jesus was killed, I said that Jesus came from God to teach people how to love each other, how to love their neighbors and their enemies and how to be kinder. When M circled back, she asked:

M:  After Jesus died, were people more loving?  Did they learn to be kinder to each other? 

Kathy: M, that great question is one that I am still thinking about tonight.   Thank you for sharing this conversation with all of us.

M:  You’re welcome. 

Behind M’s questions I heard “Was it worth it?  All that God went through to become human, to live with us as one of us, to be executed and then raised from death – did it make a difference?  Did people learn to love?  Are we kinder as a result of all that?

My first reaction was to think about all the wars being waged, all the atrocities being committed, all the petty cruelties and systemic injustices we inflict on each other – and I might have said “No, people still have not learned to love like Jesus taught.” 

But you can’t really say that to a 7-year-old, can you?  So, I said that we are still learning and that is why we keep remembering Jesus’s teachings and telling them again and again to each other, because it is not always easy to love our family or our neighbors or especially our enemies.

But then, I thought about those who have followed Jesus across the millennia. I thought about how the Jesus movement spread in the first century and how the first Christians were known by the love they had for each other.  I remember how they broke through one cultural boundary after another, caring for foreign widows, making room for the poor, accepting the leadership of those from within and also from outside their religious tradition.  I remember people whose faith compelled them to start schools or reform prisons or abolish slavery or shelter refugees because they believed so fervently in Jesus’ teachings.  And I realize that people have learned to love like Jesus loves and we are also still learning. 

I also recalled one last story about making room for each other.  You might know it already, but maybe it’s ok to re-tell a familiar story on Christmas Eve.  The events of this story happened in 2008.  They happened to Naomi Shihab Nye. Naomi is a Palestinian-American poet and novelist. She grew up in Missouri, Jerusalem and Texas. Today she makes her home in San Antonio. 

Naomi says Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been delayed by four hours, I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.”

Well, one pauses these days.

Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. “Help," said the flight agent. “Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly in Arabic. The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, “No, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just later, who is picking you up? Let’s call him.”

We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—from her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they were covered with powdered sugar, too

. . . .

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies.

Naomi concludes, “This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.”[2]

Christmas reminds us that the promised peace on earth comes as we learn to love one another. We make room for weary or frightened travelers.  We make room for those who are exuberant and overly loud in the center and also for those who insist on withdrawing just beyond the perimeter.  We make room for a child’s eager questions, for a young adult’s cynicism and for a senior with the weary wisdom of their years. We make room for family and strangers, for neighbors and for enemies. We make room for each other, in all the ways and places we find ourselves, because this is good news of great joy for everyone. Thanks be to God.  


[1] Kenneth Baily, https://pres-outlook.org/2006/12/the-manger-and-the-inn-a-middle-eastern-view-of-the-birth-story-of-jesus/

[2] Naomi Shihab Nye, “Gate A-4” from Honeybee. Copyright © 2008 by Naomi Shihab Nye.

 

12/15/24 - Allowing Ourselves to be Amazed - Luke 1:57-66

Allowing Ourselves to be Amazed

Luke 1:57-66

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

December 15, 2024

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGM0WmiQL0o

 

Jim started seminary ahead of me.  By his last year, I was hurrying to catch up.  My final semester, I was taking a ridiculous course load and doing an internship as a hospital chaplain and working a part-time job selling housewares at Sears.  By the middle of that semester, I was exhausted. Coming home from class or work, I immediately crashed on the couch.  I didn’t turn in a single paper on time. I went to the campus clinic and was tested for anemia.  When that test was normal, I began to think I was clinically depressed.  I was not sad, but oh so very tired. 

Finally, I took an at-home pregnancy test.  It was positive, but I couldn’t believe it was right.  I made an appointment with a friend’s obstetrician just to make sure.  I was not expecting to be pregnant and had no idea how far along I might be.  The doctor set up to listen for a baby’s heartbeat.  As she put the gel on my abdomen, she carefully explained that the baby had to be a certain number of weeks old before we would hear a heartbeat.  I knew that she was trying to reassure me, so I wouldn’t be concerned if we didn’t hear anything.  But I lay on the table thinking, “There’s not going to be a heartbeat, because there’s no baby.  I’m not pregnant.”  But then, almost immediately, the sound came through loud and clear. It was amazing. The tears started rolling down my face.  And this doctor, whom I had just met 10 minutes earlier, had no idea whether I was happy or sad about the pregnancy.  But she said, “Do you have someone with you?”  When I said that Jim was in the waiting room, she went to get him and then brought him in and started all over so that we could both hear baby Molly’s heart together.  And it was just as amazing the second time.

I really wonder what it was like for Elizabeth to be pregnant for the first time so close to the end of her expected lifespan.  How long was it, how many explanations did she rule out, before she truly believed she was pregnant?  And how incredible, how amazing, was it to feel the baby’s first kick?  Or his second, or third?

She stays at home with a silent husband for the first 6 months.  Imagine how many things she thinks about ---

·       whether Zechariah is ever going to speak again

·       what their friends and neighbors are going to think

·       how surreal, ridiculous and incredibly joyful it is to be preparing for a baby finally, now,

·       when the baby grows up, what parent-teacher conferences are going to be like; the teachers are always going to assume she and Zech are the grandparents, not the parents  

·       if she will even survive – will this birth be her death?

 

Elizabeth does survive.  Both she and baby John seem to thrive, in fact. On the eighth day of John’s life, friends and relatives gather, to celebrate and rejoice with the family.  Between Zechariah’s inability to speak and Elizabeth’s isolation, the pregnancy was kept on the down-low, so now the excitement is running high.  

The crowd expects the baby to be named after his father.  So much that they argue with Elizabeth when she announces that his name is John. This is in obedience to what the angel Gabriel announced, although the crowd does not know that.  They go to Zechariah expecting him to back them up, but Zechariah writes that his name is John. At that, the mood of the crowd shifts from dissention to amazement. Suddenly, Zechariah can speak again.  After 9 months of silence, the first words he utters are praise to God.  Amazement turns to awe. Luke writes “Fear came over all their neighbors and all these things were talked about through the entire hill country of Judea.”  They wondered what the baby would grow up to be.  They know that they have witnessed something important, but do not know exactly what it is or what its consequences will be. [1]

Awe can be an antidote to weariness. Especially for those of us who are jaded by too much consumerism and the capitalism of too many Christmases. Scientists say that the experience of awe is essential to our well-being. It slows our heart rate, deepens breathing, relieves digestion.  It can also silence the negative self-critical voices in our heads, disrupting our preoccupation with self and opening us to wider experiences.[2]

If you are weary, I invite you to cultivate awe this week.  Allow yourself to be amazed.  Closely examine a pinecone. Notice your family members – how quirky or funny or helpful or inventive or reliable they are.  Enjoy dish-soap bubbles while washing pots and pans or recognize the deep memories evoked by your favorite Christmas carol. Maybe some of your weariness will slip away in the presence of awe and gratitude.

A year ago, Jim and I were on a cruise with my Dad and brother to Greece and Turkey.  By the time we got to Istanbul, Jim had Covid, so he was simply staying in the room sleeping and fighting his fever.   The port excursion required too much walking for my Dad, so he also stayed on board.  My brother, Roger, and I got on the bus together.  We were going a lot of places that day, but the most important stop for me would be the Hagia Sophia.  The Hagia Sophia was built as a Christian church. For a thousand years, it was the world’s largest cathedral and the seat of the Patriach of Constantinople, the Eastern church’s counterpart to the Vatican.  Later it was converted to a mosque and then to a museum and most recently, back to being a mosque again. 

This is a place that I knew about from church history classes as the site of the schism between the Eastern and Western Church.  It was a place that had captured my imagination a long time ago.  As we rode the bus through Istanbul, it suddenly struck me that I was going to be there, at the Hagia Sophia.  It seemed incredible.  It was nothing I had ever planned or expected.  It happened only because my Dad chose and financed this particular trip.  And when I realized that, again, my response was tears.  Because Jim was sick and I might have been also, I was wearing a face mask.  The tears and the mask made me sniffle.  Roger was already nervous that he might get Covid, so I had to explain to him that I wasn’t sick, I was just crying because I was so amazed that I was actually going to the Hagia Sophia.  How could that be?  Who was I to have that privilege?

Elizabeth was amazed by what was happening to her.  When Mary arrived, she said, “who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”  It is a wonderful part of this story that Elizabeth and Zechariah allowed themselves to be joyfully surprised, to be awe-struck at what God was doing in their lives.  Remember that Zechariah’s first reaction was “We’re too old.”  Their on-going response might have been fear – “now the neighbors will gossip more than ever” or “Elizabeth may die.”    It might have been anger – “this is a lot to ask of us right now, God.  Your timing is lousy.”   Their response might have been weariness – “we already get up in the night for our own trips to the bathroom; we don’t have the energy for feeding and diaper changes. How are we going to keep up with him when he’s an active three-year-old?”

God is asking a lot of them.  And they choose to respond, not with fear or anger or weariness, but with delight and awe.    

Luke says that Elizabeth and Zechariah are “advanced in years”.  I think that might be a reasonable description of Emmanuel at 190 years old.  The boiler gave up the ghost last month. I think it was the third boiler that died in my time here.  I could be wrong about that. I’ve kind of lost count.  Last week, Tom was in the building three or four times a day, checking vital signs, ahem, I mean taking temperatures, at various locations, for fear the pipes might freeze.  The building is old. 

Our average age is mature.  We have worn out a generation of grandparents who taught Sunday School decades longer than they expected to.  Other church leaders keep looking over their shoulders for a younger generation to take the reins, but with few notable exceptions, that generation isn’t here.  It seems fair to say that Emmanuel is “advanced in years.”

I hope you will stay and participate in the congregational meeting following worship today.  Everyone here is welcome. As far as I know, Gabriel is not planning to put in an appearance. No promises though.  The Building Team has some important news to share, but I don’t think that they are going to announce that Emmanuel is expecting. Not in those words anyway.

A few weeks ago, I described a new thing that God is doing in our time.  I suggested the analogy of a cell phone church, in contrast to a landline church.  I do want to explore that idea more with you.  But today, because of this text, I’m using another analogy.  Today, I’m wondering if we might actually begin to see ourselves as being called to give birth to what will grow up to be a new church, something we can’t really imagine.  Could Emmanuel Baptist Church be pregnant? That really would be asking a lot of us at our advanced age, wouldn’t it? 

A final memory of awe in my life.  Maybe I was about 12. We were driving around the area where my father grew up. We went past the country church that he and his brothers and parents had attended.  Behind it was a tree, a tree that towered over the church.  It was even taller than the steeple.  My Dad said that my grandmother had planted that tree when he was a child. And I grappled with how long ago that had been and all that might have happened since and marveled that the tree was still standing and I was there to see it.  “To plant a tree is to believe in tomorrow” as someone has said.

Elizabeth and Zechariah bring John into the world, but they are old.  They do not live to see his adult ministry.  They never know that huge crowds go out to the wilderness to hear John preach and be baptized by him.  They only trust, from the prophecy of Gabriel, that he will be part of the astonishing new thing that God is doing.  God chose them, old and faithful and ordinary people for this wild and ridiculous and joyful task. 

Emmanuel, we are faithful, ordinary people, also advanced in years.  What if the call to gestation and pregnancy and new birth is also our call?  How wild and ridiculous and joyful would that be for us? We may be fearful.  We may be angry.  We may be old and weary.  But what if, what if, we could lean into awe?  What if we say Hallelujah anyway, and just allow ourselves to be amazed? 

 


[1] Justo Gonzalez, Luke in the Belief Commentary Series, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010), p. 28.

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/03/well/live/awe-wonder-dacher-keltner.html

12/1/24 - Acknowledging our Weariness - Luke 1:1-23

Acknowledging our Weariness

Luke 1:1-23

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

December 1, 2024

 Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98cE3VookDY

There is a book by Dr. Seuss that is sometimes read to children and parents on the last day of preschool and often given as a gift to high school or college graduates. The book is Oh, The Places You’ll Go. You are probably familiar with it.  You may remember one area which is described as the most useless place, and that is the Waiting Place.

Dr. Seuss’s narrator says, “The Waiting Place (is) for people just waiting. Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or a No or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting. Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for Friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil, or a Better Break or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls, or Another Chance. Everyone is just waiting.”

Advent is the Waiting Place of the church year.  It is the season when we anticipate and wait for the birth of the baby Jesus.  It is also the season when we await the second coming, that time when all is fulfilled and God’s justice and love reign on earth as fully as they do in heaven.  Advent is a structured 4-week season with a predictable emphasis on waiting, but of course we know that we can be thrust into a posture of waiting at any time, without warning and without knowing if or when or how the waiting will end.

The story of waiting in Luke’s gospel begins with fulfillment.  Zechariah the priest has been waiting for his whole adult life for his turn to make the afternoon incense offering.  It is the greatest privilege of his office.  A priest can only do it once in a lifetime and some never get the opportunity.

Zechariah is old.  He has been waiting for this for a long time.  Just like he and his wife Elizabeth have waited a long time, a lifetime, for a child.  

In the ancient near East, a woman’s God-given role was to bear and raise children.  Their understanding of biology led them to believe that if a couple couldn’t conceive, it was always the woman’s fault.  And it was believed to be a sign that God was displeased.  So, a woman who couldn’t bear children was a considered disgrace to herself and her husband.    But Zechariah and Elizabeth are described as “righteous” and “blameless” to tell us that their childlessness is not a punishment from God.

Let us take a moment to recognize that infertility is still a source of great pain for women and men. Let us say out loud that whether a person has children or not, whether by choice or circumstance, it is not a requirement for full participation in this story or in God’s story more generally.  People are whole and beloved by God regardless of whether or not they reproduce.

Zechariah was probably not expecting to be chosen for special service in the Temple.  Just like he probably no longer expects to become a father. It is a constant heartache and a disgrace he tries to shield Elizabeth from, but it is also settled reality.  The dream has died. Zechariah has stopped waiting for an answer to that prayer.  In his weariness, he no longer hopes for much, no longer expects anything. 

If you are joyful this season, if you are full of hope and energy and living your best life, then celebrate that and we will celebrate with you.  We will lean into your joy. 

But I know, you know, that many of us are weary.  We are weary because of our age, because our physical bodies are letting us down.  We are weary of propaganda and disinformation.  We are weary because we have tried hard to make the right decisions and act for the good of others and we are still waiting to see the fruit of those labors.  We are weary because we have faced the same routine, honored the same traditions for years, and seemingly watched nothing change.  We had expectations which were never met and we are weary with disappointment.[1]

Zechariah is so weary that he cannot hear the good news delivered by the angel Gabriel.  He cannot risk believing it.  Zechariah wants assurances.  He wants certainty.  He is not going to set himself up for disappointment again. 

Brené Brown is a researcher and storyteller who studies courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. She writes, “There are too many people in the world today who decide to live disappointed rather than risk feeling disappointment. This can take the shape of numbing, foreboding joy, being cynical or critical, or just never really fully engaging.”[2]

People choose to lower their expectations, living with a status quo of disappointment rather than letting themselves hope for more and not get it.  Brené Brown calls this foreboding joy.  It is the experience of joy immediately followed by worry or dread about losing the joy.  

Shirley Caesar sings a gospel song which says “This joy that I have, the world didn’t give to me and the world can’t take it away.”  Austin Channing Brown is a Black author and speaker who describes a spirituality in the Black community born of hardship and joy.  She says that this phrase, “the world didn’t give to me and the world can’t take it away” is a staunch declaration that if the world will take from her, it will only do so once, not twice.  It cannot have both tragedy and her joy.

She writes, “After generations of horrific oppression, after a cen­tury of second-class citizenship, after a host of atrocities from colonization to genocide and all manner of horrors, we have learned that the only thing white supremacy would love more than taking our lives is for the lives we have to be diminished, less than human, filled with despair, containing only fear. But our community has learned that even the darkest depths of human evil cannot snuff out our experi­ence of joy – of laughter and love, of good food and good conversation, of family legacy and hope for the future, of creative endeavor and the pursuit of justice.”

She continues “In the words of poet Toi Derricotte, ‘Joy is an act of re­sistance,’ and so we will lean into that joy, knowing that our humanity demands that we fully partake of this magical ex­perience.”[3]

Those of us who are fearful that we may be in for a long

weary season that may last some years, especially those of us who are White may want to learn from our black siblings this resilience of joy. 

Zechariah does not lean into joy.  In the weariness of prolonged disappointment, he cannot take yes for an answer.  He wants evidence, proof of the angel’s promise.  Instead he is rendered mute, unable to speak.  I know some folks who think it would be just right if what happened to Zechariah happened to every man who starts pontificating about women’s reproductive issues.  We tend to think that Zechariah’s silence is a punishment for his lack of imagination and disbelief.  But maybe it isn’t. 

I was riding a bus to an airport recently when two strangers struck up a conversation with each other.  It quickly became political.  Fortunately for them, they had supported the same candidates in the recent election.  Unfortunately for me, they were not the candidates I had supported.  I tried not to listen, but they were loud.  For close to an hour, they listed all the wonderful things about their candidate and what he is going to accomplish.  Every once in a while, they got in a dig at the opposition – how worthless they are, how ridiculous their supporters are.  Nothing they said was new.  I wasn’t sure why they needed to say it to each other – complete strangers, on a public bus.  Many of us use words and logic as a way of asserting control over our lives.  But words and logic only take us so far. We keep repeating ourselves to those who already agree with us or arguing again with those who disagree. And we are so very weary of it all. 

What if Zechariah’s silence was not punishment, but a healing for his weariness, as Barbara Brown Taylor suggests, “the angel’s gift to him—an enforced sabbatical, a gestation period of his own during which the seeds of hope were sown again in his hushed soul.” [4]

At the top of my favorite Christmas carols list is It Came Upon a Midnight Clear which was written in the wake of the Mexican-American war and at a time of personal hardship for the author. Verse four says, “O ye, beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low, who toil all along the climbing way with painful steps and slow, look now for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing.  O rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.”         

What if, this Advent, we acknowledge that we are weary, if we are, and we name what causes our weariness.  But what if, at the same time, we also acknowledge that joy is resistance.  For some of us, that might mean being sure to laugh out loud every day.  For others, it may mean singing in the shower or dancing with abandon in the kitchen. But for those of us who are weary like Zechariah, I wonder if we might seek a season of silence, a quiet season in which we simply watch for the subtle signs of God at work?   Perhaps if we quiet ourselves, “we can listen to what God is saying and try to hear where God is still-speaking in our lives and in the world. Maybe it’s there we can hear the things that matter most: like the promise that we are loved, that God’s creation is good, that justice is our calling, and grace is our gift.[5]  And perhaps joy will creep in as we rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.

 

 

[1] This paragraph adapted from the Sanctified Art commentary for this season written by Rev. Cecelia D. Armstrong

[2] Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience (New Yok:  Random House, 2021) pp. 121-122

[3] This Joy I Have by Austin Channing Brown in You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience – an anthology, edited by Tarana Burke and Brené Brown Excerpted at

https://www.net-a-porter.com/en-us/porter/article-194d8acece1a5511/lifestyle/culture/you-are-your-best-thing

[4] Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Silence of Angels” in Bread of Angels, Boston:  Cowley Publications, 1997),  p. 93-94

[5] Rev. Jenny Gleichauf in her sermon on the same passage at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Racine, WI on 26 November 2023.

11/24/24 - Towards a Vision for Emmanuel Baptist Church in Three Pieces

Towards a Vision for

Emmanuel Baptist Church in Three pieces

November 24, 2024; 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=Ous5pBm_nFA

I’m sharing today what I had expected to share last Sunday.  Instead of preaching the final sermon on Acts, I will offer my own perspective on the moment where Emmanuel is in history and my glimpse of a future to which God might be calling us.  This is only my viewpoint, and it is subject to change as we continue to discern together. Today’s sermon will be longer than usual – prepare yourselves.   

Piece #1

Like the New Testament world in the first century and the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, we are living through a time of great disruption and change. The Reformation was a theological revolution, but it did not happen in isolation.  It had the impact that it did, in large part because of the technological and political revolutions that were happening at the same time.  The invention of the printing press contributed greatly to the spreading of ideas and information across Europe.  The Reformation was not one event in one place, but several different religious leaders sharing similar ideas across Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Britain and it lasted for a period of years.  Millions of Christians left Catholic churches to join Protestant ones.  Beautiful churches and monasteries were stripped of their art and treasures and destroyed or left to fall into ruin. 

Parallels with our time are numerous – sweeping changes have happened or are happening in our world.  Church participation in Europe and the United States/Canada has steadily declined for decades.  Church buildings are being repurposed as restaurants, apartment buildings, art galleries, or abandoned to fall into ruin.  In another era, we might have said that an individual church had simply come to the end of its life cycle.  But there is a bigger pattern at work.  It is not just individual churches that are dying.  What we are seeing is a large-scale shift from one form of Christianity to another.  What was effective in previous generations is not working now.  It is not that we are doing something wrong.  We are doing something that was right for another time.   

If we do not grasp the bigger picture, we may be tempted to believe that if we simply engage our current ministry harder or smarter, EBC will grow and thrive again.  If we do understand that big picture, then there are two potential outcomes for Emmanuel Baptist Church.  One outcome is that we will die.    We will grieve together, dispose of the assets under NY Religious Corporation Law, hold a final worship service, and cease to be.  Death is not the worst thing that can happen to people who believe in resurrection. 

But there is another possible outcome.  The other possibility is that we could intentionally seek to join or even co-create the new thing that God is doing in our time.  We might become midwives of grace and help bring into the world the new expression of the kingdom of God, the new life that is waiting to be born.   

Piece #2

To state the obvious:  Change is hard.  We resist it.  We like things that are familiar.  We really don’t like change that is forced on us.  The Covid pandemic was hard for so many reasons, but one was how much everything changed overnight and how little control we had over any of it.   

Let’s consider a different change.  It’s something that we’ve all lived through, but it has been more gradual and for most of us, more acceptable.  I’m thinking about the evolution of the telephone.  One of the rules in my household growing up was not to stretch the cord of the phone too far.  Do you remember those very long coiled phone cords?  There was a 25-foot-long cord that connected the handset of the phone to the part where the dial was. (Remember rotary dials?)  You could wander all over our small kitchen with that long cord, but my Dad had a thing about not stretching it so far that the coils got messed up.   

So, I’m thinking about phones.  I’m thinking about landlines and cell phones.  Some of us still have a landline phone in our homes.  Many of us do not.  Almost all of us have a cell phone.  Many of us have made a choice in recent years to only have one phone and in almost every case, the decision was for our one phone to be a cell phone. 

Twenty years ago, only about 5% of Americans opted for just a cell phone.  Now more than seventy-five percent of Americans live in homes without landlines.[1]  

I’m not debating the pros and cons of landlines vs cell phones. I’m just noting that in the last 20 years, a huge change has occurred in the ways people use phones.  We have definitely experienced it as consumers.  But what if you were in the landline business? It is hard to stop doing what was successful for such a long time.  If you were in the landline business 20 or 30 years ago, and you did not adapt and get into the cell phone business, you went out of business.        

My contention is that for the last 100-200 years, the church has been operating like a landline business.  It worked very well for a long time.  But sometime, probably in the last two generations, things changed.  The church did not recognize that new context and continued to deliver landlines when what was needed were cellphones.   

Right now, EBC is still functioning almost exclusively in a landline world.  Clinging to familiar patterns of Sunday morning worship and Sunday School with the dear people we already know and love, is like continuing to use the landline phone with its coiled cord.  That strategy is already putting us out of business. 

If we want to renew our active participation in the new thing God is doing now, then we need to launch ourselves into a new form of Christian community, a culturally relevant form that engages hearts and minds and makes disciples of Jesus.  I’m going to refer to that as being a cellphone church.

Let me say that again, for the purposes of this conversation, being a cell phone church means becoming a new kind of Christian community, a culturally relevant form that engages hearts and minds and makes disciples of Jesus.

Piece #3

What might a cellphone church look like?  In other words, what is the picture of a vital faith community that engages hearts and minds and makes disciples of Jesus in the twenty-first century?  This is the heart of the question that we have been asking for many years, and most recently in our work with Arlen Vernava.  We have tried to imagine this together, in several group processes over the last decade.  All of those conversations were important.  So far, none of them have led to a distinct clarity of vision.

You and I value the wisdom and creativity of this community.  We hear the Spirit in the voices of each other.  Because of that, I have leaned into our group processes with high hopes. Maybe in doing so, I have not exercised the kind of leadership you needed from your pastor, the kind of leadership that maybe these times require.  Maybe what would be helpful now is a word from someone who is committed to serving God among you, someone who loves you and wants the best for you and from you.

What is the picture of a vital faith community that engages hearts and minds and makes disciples of Jesus in the twenty-first century? Let me describe what I see, with the hope that you might imagine something similar.  Or on the other hand, you might envision something very different.  If so, that would allow us as a community to discern between contrasting options. 

The twenty-first century Christian faith community is highly contextual.  That means that it looks different in different places. In one place, the community meets in a gay bar and belts out pop music instead of hymns.  Another one meets outdoors every week for a hike and prayerful conversation under the trees.  And a third one gathers to serve the poor more often than they gather for worship. 

What is the context of Emmanuel?  We are urban and want to stay in the city.  We want to make a difference, to be a blessing to our neighborhood and the wider world.  We are committed to social justice, particularly in the arenas of human sexuality, racism, immigration and environmental stewardship.  We tend to make every meeting into a meal and we sometimes speak as though we personally invented the church potluck.  We place a high value on creativity, inclusive participation and lively, growing faith.

Our version of the cell phone church could look like:

A weekly gathering at round tables, possibly on a Saturday or Sunday evening.  The community gathers to share a meal which is prepared and served by many hands with different crews taking on the responsibility each week and with roles for newcomers every week.  The meal is simple, but delicious and prepared with love. Because we value inclusivity, there are options for vegetarians and those with special dietary needs, to the best of our ability. The meal is necessary, but it is not the primary goal of the gathering.  The cooks and dishwashers come from within the community and participate fully in the entire gathering. 

This gathering is the primary way we nurture disciples of Jesus. Some might call it Dinner Church.  I would call it relational evangelism or relational discipleship.  The method relies on relationship and structured conversation.  After everyone has been served, someone will set up the conversation for that evening.  The set-up might include the re-telling of a Bible story or it might be a personal experience in combination with a teaching of Jesus.  On a given evening, the leader might be the pastor or a lay person.  After the leader has spoken, the conversation will evolve at each table as it needs to. At some tables, it may become something like a deep dive into the Bible story.  Others may be entrusted with a personal crisis that one of the participants brings to the group.  The design might include seating children and youth at particular tables for adult-led age-appropriate conversations.  Or maybe there are multi-generational exchanges.

The table time concludes with all the tables joining together for a closing prayer and benediction.  The evening ends with clearing tables and washing dishes with different crews in rotation and roles for first-time folks to join in.

The work of this gathering is to be fully present to each other so that we can attune to the moving of the Spirit among us. It is loosely structured, but there is an overall plan for the set-up from week to week.  Attention is paid to the major themes of Jesus’ teaching and the seasons of the church year and to individual needs for spiritual growth. 

This is the primary gathering time for this faith community.  As we begin, this may be the only kind of gathering, but other kinds of gatherings will need to be added.  Other gatherings might include opportunities for service or weekly discipleship classes offered with varying content and time frames to meet needs of disciples at various stages of growth. 

Where might this community gather?  It gathers in a right-sized building within downtown Albany, a place where we can engage our urban neighbors.  We need an accessible space with parking.  I envision two primary needs – 1) a highly functional kitchen and dining space and a 2) larger, more formal gathering space.

The dining space needs good acoustics, an easy-to-use, reliable sound system and a projection screen with plug-and-play technology.  We also need a second space that would function as a larger, more formal area for special events like weddings and funerals and wider community functions. We might choose to do baptisms outdoors, eliminating the need for a baptistery.  None of this needs to look like a traditional church.  We should give some care to design so that beauty and symbol are incorporated in ways that do not trigger survivors of religious trauma.

How does this community grow?  It grows by relationship.  Emmanuel shows up and is fully present with each other, newcomers and long-time members alike.  We create a culture of presence and engagement.  We do not retreat into our introverted selves or our laptop screens or the busyness of wearing some church hat.  We speak the truth that we know.  We take personal responsibility for talking about the Jesus we believe to be worth knowing, because the average 21st century American does not know what we know, and they are not going to randomly pick up the Bible or watch a documentary about Jesus and then come knocking on our door.  Most of us don’t know how to talk about our faith naturally because 1) we reject the 20th century models of evangelism which created the religious trauma that we’re now dealing with and 2) the landline church never really required this of us.  So, the 21st century church must meet contemporary disciples where we are and help us grow as evangelists. This community also grows by sustained, effective, targeted advertising which is another skill we will need to develop.

Whew . . . I have said a whole lot at once and over Zoom.  Thank you for staying with me.  

 

A brief recap:

Christianity is undergoing large-scale change before our eyes.   We have been pursuing mission and ministry in ways that have ceased to be effective.  Emmanuel may yet thrive if we recognize that and seek to join the new thing that God is doing in our time.  One possible way of engaging hearts and minds and making disciples in 21st century Albany is a model of relational evangelism centered around a weekly meal and structured conversation.

This is not a formal proposal.  I am offering my thoughts in the hopes that they might crystallize some of yours. I’d like to take about 5 more minutes now for people to offer questions, responses, objections.  I recognize that many of us need to go away and think about stuff before we’re ready to speak.  The Vision Team is meeting today and we all understand that we need more opportunities for continued discussion.  Let me invite anyone who wishes to speak now, to do so succinctly, knowing that there will be more opportunities in the future.

 

 

1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/10/10/who-still-has-landline-phone/75569063007/

 

11/3/24 - Christian Community:  A Matter of Life and Death - Acts 4:32-5:11

Christian Community:  A Matter of Life and Death

Acts 4:32-5:11

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

November 3, 2024 

Image:  Ten of the dancing saints at St. Gregory of Nyssa Church, San Francisco, CA: William Byrd, Desmond Mpilo Tutu, Alexandrian Washerwoman, Thomas Aquinas, Dante Alighieri, Manche Masemola, Isaiah, The Kangxi Emperor, Roland Allen, John Coltrane

 

 Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9zorSYSVC8

This is a terrible story that Angela read for us, a terrifying story. What kind of people were they in Jerusalem that they kept this story alive long enough for Luke to write it down?  This is an awful story.  That might be why it is not included in the 3-year lectionary.  What kind of pastor chooses this story for Pledge Sunday?  You are asking such astute questions today.  I’ll try to circle back to them.

First, I want to remind us about last Sunday’s lectio divina.  The text was about the time when Paul and Silas were in prison and there was an earthquake which shook open the cells and the shackles of the prisoners. The jailer assumed that everyone had escaped and was ready to take his own life, but Paul called out “We are all here.”  In the Zoom chat, there was quite a discussion about that phrase we are all here.  Who is the all in that sentence?  In last week’s discussion, someone said “Rich, poor, differently abled, believers and not believers.”  In the Jerusalem church, we might add “social elites and those on the margins, those with citizenship and those without, Hellenists and Hebrews.”

 We are all here.

This growing community gathers a diversity of people.  Chapter 2 refers to 3,000 people being baptized with another 5,000 being added in chapter 4.  It is a large community that builds its life around the story of Jesus, the breaking of bread, fellowship and prayers.   The whole of this expanding community, Luke says, is of one heart and mind.  They are characterized by their incredible unity; their unwavering agreement on belief and purpose and mutual care.

A common theme in the many speeches or sermons in the book of Acts is to trace the history of God and God’s people right up through the resurrection of Jesus.  In these speeches, the apostles bear witness to God’s intention across millennia to form a people, a people sometimes called peculiar, a people who will be in relationship to God and each other in ways that will be a blessing to the whole world.  The apostles understand themselves to be at the dawn of a new era, a key place, in God’s work.  They are inviting others to join that community which is defined by new loyalties and a new story.  “God is at work to create a new people who are not to be defined by the old categories of race, language, gender, or social class, but a people united in witness to the resurrection. . .”[1]

We are all here.

And people cannot join fast enough.  In this community, they live cooperatively, not competitively.  They figure out how to worship and fellowship together, across barriers of culture and language. They show up for each other.  They are generous with their time and finances.  “There was not a needy person among them” Luke says.  That is a reference to Deuteronomy, to the expectations God set forth when the people first moved into the Promised Land.  From ancient times, God’s desire was for abundance and generosity so that no one would ever be in need. The promise of Deuteronomy is being fulfilled.  This is evidence of the arrival of the reign of God which has always been characterized by love, peace, abundance and justice. [2]

There was not a needy person among them because the people with means shared with those without. This faith community is concerned with practical and concrete everyday stuff as well as big theological ideas.  Lutheran scholar Matthew Skinner writes, Salvation includes “relinquishing one’s real and perceived advantages and entering into true solidarity with others.” [3] 

A few weeks ago, we read the story of Saul’s conversion. We noted that in Acts, conversion is about “crossing boundaries and barriers and reaching a whole new way of seeing and understanding life.”[4]  This is what is happening in Jerusalem. Thousands of people are crossing boundaries to break into a new understanding of how to live life. This pattern repeats itself over and over.  And the community keeps welcoming and including and teaching the newcomers. We are all here.

Imagine with me the rate of change.  Hundreds of individuals are changing their minds and habits.  Some are abandoning family or giving up social standing to do so.  The community leaders are reaching more and more people. The community is developing ways to nurture faith and strengthen new habits and share abundance. Can you imagine the number of meetings necessary for that?  Next week, they have to do it all again with the current folks and add in more.  They are all about changed and changing lives, about sustaining those changes and inviting others to share in changed life.”[5]

As you know, Emmanuel is engaged in an intense process of discerning our purpose. Sometimes, people get tired of the process and they say things like “I wish someone would just tell me what to do and I would do it.” Maybe you don’t feel that way, but I have heard that sentiment on occasion.  So, this week, when I read a sentence that started with “the core purpose of the church is . . .” I gave it my full attention. The sentence was in a book entitled Called to Be Church.  It was written by two people – Anthony Robinson,  a United Church of Christ pastor who has written a dozen books and now coaches congregations, and Robert Wall, a United Methodist New Testament scholar and retired seminary professor.  You might want to know about those credentials as you hear the rest.

Together, they say, “The core purpose of the church is to be a community that sustains continuous change and transformation as we grow in the likeness of Christ and image of God.”[6] 

The purpose of the church is to keep changing? Changing ourselves, changing the world? It has been a very long time since I’ve heard anything like that. I confess that for most of my vocational life, it has felt like the purpose of the church is to pass on the faith to the next generation, just as it was received from the previous one, carefully preserved and unchanged. 

“The core purpose of the church is to be a community that sustains continuous change and transformation as we grow in the likeness of Christ and image of God.”  Tuck that away to mull on more later.

So, what we see in Jerusalem is a church that is having an impact.  Centered around a story of abundance and liberation, they are challenging their culture in life-giving ways.  They are united in heart and soul and there is not a needy person among them, because people who have property make a practice of selling it and giving the proceeds to the church to distribute to those who need it.  Willie James Jennings says that these followers of Jesus released themselves to one another, making themselves responsible for and accountable to one another.  “Money here will be used to destroy what money normally is used to create:  distance and boundaries between people. . . Jesus will join us and he will use whatever we have to make the joining possible. . .  Too often, in our reading of this story our view is clouded by the spectacular giving and we miss the spectacular joining.  Now these followers of Jesus will become the bridge between uneven wealth and resources, uneven hope and uneven life.”[7]  We are all here.

That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?  People are even changing their financial habits.  They’re managing their wealth, not for their own benefit or for their heirs, but for the strangers who keep joining the church.  Barnabas is just one example of someone who sells property and gives all the money to the apostles.

This is where the story gets awful.  Maybe Ananias and Sapphira are jealous of the attention that Barnabas receives.  Maybe they want to be admired as he is.  So, they scheme together to sell land and hand over the proceeds, except that they agree to keep some of the money for themselves.  They each lie about it and they each immediately fall down dead.  The story is terrifying because there is no forgiveness, no mercy.  The offense is not that they kept some of the money.  Peter tells Ananias that it was his property. He was free to keep it.  He was free to sell it and give away only a portion of the selling price.  The offense is that they lied about what they gave to the apostles. They faked their commitment. They lied to the community.  They lied to God. 

We get it.  They did a very bad thing.  But the punishment should fit the crime.  The death penalty for one lie?  That’s over the top.  Where is the God of mercy and forgiveness that this community is always talking about? 

What kind of people were they in Jerusalem that they kept this terrifying story alive?  Who clings to such a story with its image of a quick-tempered, no-second-chances-for-you God? Who thinks or hopes that God acts like this? One scholar writes, “Maybe angry people do.  Or threatened people. Or fearful people.  Not people suffering from merely any kind of fear – maybe these people fear losing what is truly life-giving to them.  Maybe . . .people afraid of losing a community capable of embodying the best things, such as God’s own commitment to them.” [8]

Maybe fearful people tell this story.  They tell it not to warn that God is vindictive, but to plead “This new, one-of-a kind community is vulnerable.  Don’t hurt it.” [9]

What kind of pastor chooses this text on Pledge Sunday? 

Maybe a pastor who hears the deep longing for a flourishing faith community.  A pastor who is aware that we are fearful.  We do not want to lose what has been life-giving.  We are frightened and protective of the vulnerable Emmanuel church. Many of us are convinced that if our location changes, if our ministry changes, we will lose something life-giving, we will lose our community and the embodiment of God’s commitment to us. 

I hope that we can hear what was essential to the early church, what is probably most essential for us:  being of one heart and mind, together in purpose and trust and mutual care.  Today we offer financial pledges, our gifts to God in support of this community because it is here, among these saints, that we are most keenly aware of God’s presence and call and nurture. Our financial support is important, but it is part of a deeper, wider, all-encompassing commitment to God and to each other.  We embrace the change and transformation of the next year together. 

We are all here. 

 

 

[1] Anthony B. Robinson and Robert W. Wall, Called to Be Church: The Book of Acts for a New Day, (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 2006), p. 79

[2] Justo L. Gonazalez, Acts: The Gospel of the Spirit (Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis Books, 2001) p. 77.

[3] Matthew L. Skinner, Intrusive God, Disruptive Gospel:  Encountering the Divine in the Book of Acts, (Grand Rapids, Brazos Press, 2015), p 32.

[4] Anthony B. Robinson and Robert W. Wall, Called to Be Church, p. 141

[5] Anthony B. Robinson and Robert W. Wall, Called to Be Church, p. 80

[6] Anthony B. Robinson and Robert W. Wall, Called to Be Church, pp. 80-81

[7] Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2017), p 50.

[8] Skinner, Intrusive God, p. 36

[9] Skinner, Intrusive God, p 37

10/20/24 - Conversion - Acts 9:1-20

Conversion 

Acts 9:1-20 

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

October 20, 2024 

Photo by Ronaldo de Oliveira on Unsplash Used under Unsplash license

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

Last Sunday, we read together from Acts 17, where the apostle Paul was preaching to the Gentiles in Athens.  Today, we back up to a time when he was called Saul, a time when he held to a rigid boundary between Jews and Gentiles, with his body and soul planted firmly on the Jewish side of that boundary. 

The very first time Saul was mentioned was in chapter 7, when he guarded the coats of those who stoned Stephen to death.  After Stephen’s death, the persecution got so bad that the new disciples fled from Jerusalem.  You remember the church in Antioch which came about in part because of this great scattering. 

Saul is no longer content with just driving the believers out of Jerusalem.  He tries to pursue them all the way to Damascus, which is more than 100 miles from Jerusalem.  The story begins with Saul breathing threats and murder, but that is a mild translation.  It would be more accurate to say that Saul is snorting.  He is riled up. 

Saul has the authority to take life through imprisonment or execution.  Biblical scholar and theologian Willie James Jennings says, “No one is more dangerous than one with the power to take life and who has already mind and sight set on those who are [perceived to be] a threat.  Such a person is a closed circle relying on the inner coherence of their own logic.” [1]

“Such a person is a closed circle relying on the inner coherence of their own logic.” What a great way to describe an echo chamber.  Perhaps you know some individuals who are stuck in an echo chamber. It often seems that no appeals to logic or facts will change their mind.  We are familiar with this phenomenon.  We see it politically – the other party is the enemy.  We see it in the church where one faith stream is pitted against another.  Protestants against Catholics, mainliners against Evangelicals.  We plant body and soul firmly on our side of the boundary. 

This is more than difference of theology or worship style.  Saul is downright dangerous. It takes a blinding light and a disembodied voice and three days of an intense spiritual experience to change him.  His reversal is amazing.  He goes from fully sighted to being blind.  From being a person on a clear self-appointed mission to someone who has to wait for days in order to learn what to do next.  He starts out intending to lead captives back to Jerusalem and ends up being the one led into Damascus by others.  By the end, his position is flipped.  Instead of persecuting the followers of the Way, he joins them.  We might call this a conversion. Ananias is a disciple who lives in Damascus.  He knows who Saul is. He knows that Saul is the dangerous enemy.  Ananias does not readily accept God’s instruction to go to him, to help him.  Saul kills people like him.  Ananias needs some reassurance that the risk he will take is really what God wants.  But he becomes convinced and he does what God asks.  The Bible does not say that he acts without fear.  His hands may shake as he lays them on Saul, whom he calls brother, but he still does it. We might also call Ananias’ experience a conversion. 

We will come back to Saul and Ananias.  First, let me introduce you to two people I met this summer.  They were born on opposite sides of a great divide.  This divide was so intense that people were regularly killed or imprisoned by people on the other side.  Everyone knew who the enemies were. I’m speaking of Northern Ireland where it may be easiest to describe the two sides as Catholic and Protestant, although it is more nuanced than that.

Tom was Catholic and he also served as General Secretary of Sinn Fein for several years.  Lesley was on the other side.  She is a Presbyterian minister.  Tom and Lesley and a few others met secretly to work for peace because it was dangerous.  No one trusted the enemy.  If you trusted the enemy, then you were a traitor.  Lesley was serving her first church.  If the church had discovered her role in the peace talks, she would likely have lost her job, possibly her ordination. She was ordained about 7 years before me. I cannot imagine summoning that kind of courage in my first call.  She had been warned against those people from childhood, the people with whom she was now sharing homemade pizza because they couldn’t meet in a restaurant or pub.   Tom had suffered legal discrimination and imprisonment by the folks on Lesley’s side when he was a young adult.  He had every reason to be angry, to hate her and her kind.  Somehow, they allowed their minds to be changed.  They were converted to the cause of peace.  Their meetings were part of the background that led to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, ending about 30 years of violent conflict. 

We had the privilege of hearing some of their stories one holy afternoon in Belfast.  You could tell that their shared risks developed into an incredible friendship.  Lesley is still ordained in the Presbyterian church. Tom is still an Irish Republican, but he no longer identifies as Catholic or even as Christian.  Near the end, Lesley told my favorite story.  She said that not long ago, she had been ill for a long time.  While she recuperated at home, many people came to see her.  Lots of her Presbyterian colleagues, some church members, family and friends dropped in to encourage her with food and good wishes.  Of all the many people who came over the weeks of her illness, Tom, the non-Christian, was the only one who sat down, pulled out a Bible and read scripture to her.  To have changed your mind so completely about who the enemy is or how you are to relate to them – I would call that a conversion. 

Many of us are not really comfortable talking about conversion in the religious sense.  Mainline Christians have largely subscribed to the notion that if you steadily nurture a person within the faith, they will naturally and consistently identify as Christian, so conversion is never necessary.  Other Christian streams have emphasized the importance of an individual commitment to follow Jesus, a pivotal moment.  Many of those conversions involve turning away from addiction or sleeping around or gambling or some other immorality.  The stories include lines like “I was a complete loser until I found Jesus.  Jesus saved me from all the bad things I was into.” 

Neither one of these approaches really works in America today.  Generations of people have neither been nurtured in faith nor made a personal decision to follow the way of Jesus. [2]  We need to rethink the whole notion of conversion.

Rev. Anthony Robinson writes that in Acts, conversion is not primarily a moral turnaround.  “Conversion means crossing boundaries and barriers and reaching a whole new way of seeing and understanding life.  It is more about putting an end to ignorance than to immorality.”[3]

Saul and Ananias, Tom and Lesley each experienced conversion.  They crossed boundaries and barriers and reached a whole new way of understanding life.  They took calculated risks and gained an expanded vision of what is real and what is possible. 

When Saul fell to the ground on the Damascus Road, he heard the voice say “Why are you persecuting me?”  He could not imagine at first that it was God’s voice.  He was not persecuting God.  He was serving God. . . or that was his sincere intent. 

“Why are you hurting me?”  God asks. Saul’s conversion begins with that question.  African-American theologian Willie James Jennings writes “In our world, this genre of question flows most often out of the mouths of the poor and women and children.  The question casts light on the currencies of death that we incessantly traffic in, and it has no good answers.   . . . But now”, Jennings writes, “ this is God’s question.  It belongs to God.  It belongs with God.” [4]

I wonder if we could ever hear that question directed at us.  I wonder if we might be the ones in need of conversion.  It is hard for me to ask that, hard to imagine how it might be true. 

It is always easier to see the speck in someone else’s eye, so let me tell you about another church.  This church only uses a small part of their large building. They are sincerely concerned about social justice, have been active on major issues for many years.  Not long ago, they were asked to make their building available for asylum seekers.  They are politically supportive of that idea.  The request was that about 24 asylum seekers would shelter overnight in the church for a month.  They would shower and eat meals elsewhere.  Cots and blankets would be provided.  The guests would arrive in the evening and leave by 7 the next morning.  The church was on board with this idea.  The guests could have free reign of the second floor rooms that the church wasn’t using anyway. 

But then the fire marshall noticed that the second floor rooms only had one exit.  That was not safe.  However, he pointed out,  the rooms on the first floor all had two exits.  There were enough first floor rooms to accommodate the needs of all 24 asylum seekers who would be leaving by 7:00 every morning.  But one church member said, “One of those rooms is the toddler’s room.  You know how much children hate other people touching their stuff. They can’t use that room.”  Someone else said, “One of the rooms is the lounge where we have coffee hour.  They can’t use that room, even though they’ll be long gone by the time of coffee hour.”  And so, the church may close their doors to those folks and this opportunity.  

It’s not hard for me to hear God saying to them, “Why are you hurting me?”  It is more difficult to allow myself to hear that question directed at me and possibly at us.  Surely God isn’t asking us that, right?  We are faithful and sincere – but so was Saul. We know the Bible and we understand how church works – but then again, so did Saul.  We want nothing more than for everyone to know the deep love of God.  We want nothing more than to see more people in church on Sundays.  It is outrageous and offensive even to suggest that we might be hurting God,  I know, but what if we are? 

Could you and I be hurting God when we insist on offering the good news only wrapped up in the forms that we’re familiar with?

There’s a loneliness epidemic in our world.  Can we be converted to the idea that God is among the lonely and despairing, calling us to abandon our comfort and security within these walls and learn how to befriend strangers?

Could we be hurting God when we assume that the spiritual practices, the forms of worship and discipleship, which have been vital and life-shaping for us will also be so for the next generations, and therefore must be defended and maintained for all time?

Instead of staying firmly within the boundaries of what has been, of what we were born into, could we entertain a conversion of our imagination? Is it possible that the Spirit is beckoning to us, urging us across boundaries and barriers to a new way of being and doing?  A path that is only being revealed along the way as we start doing it.

This is the power of conversion – crossing boundaries, changing minds, increasing understanding, and taking action leads to an expanded, bold vision of what is real and what is possible.  May God make it so for you and for me.  Amen.

 

 

 

[1] [1] Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2017), p. 90

[2] Anthony B. Robinson and Robert W. Wall, Called to Be Church: The Book of Acts for a New Day, (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 2006), p. 140

[3] Robinson and Wall, p. 141

[4] Willie James Jennings, p 91