3/1/20 - Roll Down Justice: Inseparable Love - Romans 8:31-39

Roll Down Justice: Inseparable Love

Romans 8:31-39

Emmanuel Baptist Church

March 1, 2020; Rev. Kathy Donley

My first panic attack happened as a side effect of an anti-malaria medicine. It triggered all the fight-or- flight mechanisms. My heart pounded, my blood pressure shot up, adrenaline coursed through my body. Everything in me shouted “Danger, danger, get out of here!” But I was on a plane 30,000 feet up, somewhere over the Atlantic, on my way to Africa. There was no way to escape, nowhere to run. For the next week, over and over again, my body continued to tell me it was afraid as the drug worked its way deeper into my system.

What I learned on that trip was how irrational fear can be. My body was completely afraid. But my eyes and ears told my brain that there was no threat. So, the conscious part of my brain was constantly trying to convince the other parts to stand down on the adrenaline and heart pumping stuff. On one level, I knew I was completely safe. On another level, it felt like I was being chased by a grizzly and running for my life.

Before that trip, I loved to fly. I loved to travel. By the time I reached home, I had panicked on planes and in cars and in hotel rooms and I wasn’t sure I could ever travel again. In fact, the fear lasted for the next decade. It become strongly associated with those triggers. One time, I had to get off a plane which was already ready for take-off, and then I just quit flying altogether. And my poor family had to talk me into staying in our hotel room on several vacations.

I’m saying all this because I want you to believe me when I say that I respect the power of fear. I am not the only one in this room who suffers with panic attacks or other major anxiety issues. That struggle is real and often requires an invisible kind of courage to get through the day. If it is your struggle, please recognize your own bravery.

Our focus in this Lenten season is justice, the justice that God desires for the world. We often think of justice as retribution. Someone hurts us, so we hurt them back and call it even. That’s retributive justice. But the kind of justice most often described in the Bible is distributive justice. It seems that God is concerned that resources are fairly distributed, so that everyone has enough of what they need.

I suggest that fear is one of the major reasons that we have so much injustice. We often refuse to share land or water or money or space at the decision-making table because we are afraid that there isn’t enough and if we voluntarily share some of the pie, then we will be the ones who won’t get what we need. When those with resources refuse to share, those in need tend to retaliate, sometimes taking what they need by force. That leads to war. War is destructive and makes people even more afraid and the cycle of injustice driven by fear becomes even more entrenched.

Fear is powerful, and as I said earlier, fear is often irrational. Let’s say I live in a world where marbles are everything. I have 1,000 marbles. I only actually need 100 marbles. Experts have done all the research in the world that I live in and 100 marbles is more than any one person needs. There’s even a safety margin built in. If I lose a few of my marbles, I will still have enough. There are other people who only have 5 marbles. They will die without some of mine. I feel sorry for them, but as long as I’m controlled by my fear, no one will be able to convince me that I’ll be safe if I give away some of my marbles. I am perpetuating injustice, not because I want to be mean or selfish, but because I am afraid. And my fear is so powerful that it blocks what the rest of my brain wants me to know, that I am perfectly safe with 100 marbles.

We live in a world that often works like that. Into that reality, we hear these words from Paul to the Romans “If God is for us, who is against us? . . . For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The great theologian Paul Tillich thought these were among the most powerful words ever written. He says, “Their sound is able to grasp human souls in desperate situations. In my own experience they have proved to be stronger than the sound of exploding shells, of weeping at open graves, of the sighs of the sick, of the moaning of the dying. They are stronger than the self-accusation of those who are in despair about themselves and they prevail over the permanent whisper of anxiety in the depth our being. [1]

“The permanent whisper of anxiety in the depth of our being” – that phrase sums up so much.

I have a friend who often says “you can’t fix stupid.” It seems to me that you can’t fix fear. At least you can’t fix it with the facts. But what Paul is saying is that love casts out fear. If fear is irrational, the best remedy will not depend on logic. So, it is a very good thing that the love of God is above and beyond all human categories. It transcends rational and irrational. It does not depend on the facts at hand or our worthiness or whether or not we have all our marbles. It is a force all its own.

I picture God’s love like a boundless ocean. Every experience with God enables me to trust that love a little bit more. As I relax and let myself float on that love, I release a little bit of fear and take on a little bit more courage. And then it happens again, and I find myself held and supported by this power, and I release more fear and become more courageous. I think that some people get to the place where they are no longer afraid of pain, of persecution or public ridicule or even of death, because they come to sense the strength and power of God’s love and they know it is enough. It is all they will ever need.

For most of us, fear is still powerful though, isn’t it? And that’s not altogether bad. Fear is what warns us when we’re too close to the fire and about to be burned. Fear has us stepping back from the edge when we’re mountain climbing. Fear may save us from our own stupidity and for some of us, that requires a super power. So, for good reason, most of us don’t relinquish our fears all at once.

I so appreciated D’s willingness to share his story with us today. He first shared it with me a couple of weeks ago. D was in pain before the surgery. Pain makes us afraid, for sure. And surgery is a big deal. But then he had conversation with his surgeon. She spent enough time with D that he understood what was going on in his body and why having the surgery was a good decision. He gained confidence in her and in his decision and that left him at peace before the surgery. By the time of our conversation a few days afterwards, he said that he realized that he been in God’s hands the whole time. What I heard was D articulating a deeper understanding of what it is to be held in God’s loving care. Nothing can separate him from that love.

And here’s the other part. I have known D long enough to know that public speaking is not his thing. Stepping up to the microphone this morning was a brave thing to do. Love casts out fear. The more deeply we know the love of God, the more courageous we dare to be.

And because not everything is logical, sometimes the more courageous we can be, the more we will experience the love of God. Karim Sulayman is a Lebanese-American who was feeling particularly afraid a couple of years ago. But instead of giving in to that fear, he courageously went out and asked strangers to be brave with him. This is how it happened:

Karim Sulayman “I Trust You” https://vimeo.com/193125533

What if we could go through life exhibiting that kind of trust? I don’t mean wearing a sign and a blindfold, but just allowing God’s love to empower our courage as live our lives.

Imagine that we could step out every day in the radical trust that nothing, nothing, nothing can separate us from God’s love. Without fear, we will share open-heartedly, and our courageous love will cast out fear for others. Love and courage will build on each other. The more we love, the less fearful we are, and the more open-handed we will be with everything. Trusting that we are all held safely, securely in God’s hands, we share whatever is needed -- compassion and care and water and food and money and space at the table. And within that love and trust, God delights as justice comes rolling down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Amen.

[1] Paul Tillich, The New Being, chapter 7, cited here https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/the-new-being.pdf

2/23/20 - Transformational - Matthew 5:38-48

Transformational

Matthew 5:38-48

Emmanuel Baptist Church

February 23, 2020; Rev. Kathy Donley

I read a sermon this week called The Most Important Passage in the Bible.[1] It was about these verses from Matthew and the preacher was seriously arguing that they are the most important verses in the whole Bible. Consider how many other important things are in the Bible – Resurrection is just one that comes to mind. I am not ready to say this is the most important passage in the Bible, but I agree that it ranks right up there near the top.

We remember that Jesus is speaking to the peasants, the working class people of Palestine. Last Sunday, I talked about how powerless they seemed in the face of the Roman occupation, and yet Jesus told them to keep on being God’s covenant people in spite of that. What he does in this passage is to help them find a power that they might not have realized they had, to exert some influence that could alter or even transform the situation.

Matthew writes, “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek . . .” In Jesus’ time, your left hand was used for personal hygiene and since, there wasn't always a lot of water to wash with, it wasn't used for anything else. Using your left hand in public was a huge no-no. Now, in order for someone to strike you on the right cheek with their right hand, they would have to use with the back of their hand. This is the type of blow that a superior deals to an inferior -- in that culture, a master to a slave, a husband to a wife. It is a way of putting the subordinate back in their place. It was intend to humiliate a person.

The person who back-hands you expects you to submit to them, to accept your place in the pecking order. But if, instead of submitting, you turn your face so that they must strike your left cheek, you have just signaled something very different. You have asserted your equality as a human being. Now they have a choice – to hit you with a closed fist or an open palm on your left cheek. That is the kind of blow dealt to a worthy opponent and it may just make them stop and think.

Jesus is speaking to people who whose lives are burdened with systematic oppression. They may think their only choices are to submit or to retaliate. He offers a third way, which is resistance without violence. He offers them strategies, ways to take initiative which might transform the situation.

In the second example, he says that if someone sues you for your coat; give him your cloak as well. In his day, people wore just two pieces of clothing – underclothes and outer clothes. The coat was a person’s outer garment. It was often also their blanket at night. Sometimes it was the only thing a poor person had to put down as collateral on a loan.

Jesus’ audience is made up of poor people. They know that if they’re dragged into court for indebtedness, that the law is on the side of the wealthy. And Jesus says in that situation, when they take away your outer garment, give them your undergarment too. Jesus says “strip naked in the courtroom.” Nakedness was taboo in Israel, but the shame was upon those who caused or viewed the nakedness, not on the naked person.

Some of you will remember the film called “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” which we showed here a few years ago. It told the story of the end of the civil war in Liberia which happened because women who wanted peace went to the leaders who were not bringing it about. The women went to the place where they were gathered and surrounded them. Then they threatened to take off their clothes if the men did not immediately negotiate a peace agreement. That, along with other non-violent measures, brought peace to Libera because in that culture, seeing the naked person is shameful.

Jesus’ final example is about the Roman soldier. The Roman soldier could legally force anyone to carry his 70-pound pack for one mile, but just for one mile. Jesus is saying “when you come to that mile marker, you keep going.” That turns the tables on the soldier. He is no longer in charge because you are willingly carrying the pack, but you are violating military law. What if his centurion finds out? Now the situation is changed and there is the possibility of an unexpected outcome.

Jesus is not saying that the mistreated people should should put up with the abuse. Turning the other cheek is not about being a doormat, but about holding up a mirror to offensive behavior. It is a way of treating enemies with respect -- because it assumes that if they knew what they were doing was wrong they would try to change it. Loving our enemies is hard work; it means campaigning and struggling with them so that they give up their hate and become reconciled.

Jesus’ examples were from his time and culture. Initiatives that have the power to transform will also be dependent on the their context. Non-violent resistors have to be creative, adaptors, but the principles can work in any culture.

They can work in one-on-one encounters. In Cleveland one night, 21-year-old Shaquille got off the bus at 3 in the morning, coming home from his night shift, when he was faced by an attacker with a drawn gun. The attacker demanded that Shaquille give him everything he had. Shaquille gave him his wallet and his phone and began praying aloud for him. The man struck him with the gun. Shaquille continued to pray for him. The attacker paced back and forth and started talking about why he was doing this. It was his first robbery. He had no job and needed money. The robber stopped and said, “Man, keep your stuff. I’m sorry for this. You were the wrong type of person to do this to.” [2]

Transforming initiatives can also be part of larger scale social change movements. Like the Liberian peace process I mentioned, or Montgomery Bus boycott or lunch counter sit-ins. Even in a beauty pageant. During the swimsuit portion of the 2017 Miss Peru Pageant, each contestant was expected to recite her physical measurements. Instead, each one of them stepped up to the microphone, stated her name and the town she represented and delivered a statistical fact about violence experienced by women in the past few years.[3] Peru has the second highest rate of violence against women in Latin America. It was an interesting juxtaposition, holding up an internal mirror at an event which many would say objectifies women and forcing those who were there for entertainment to consider how the objectification of women is wrapped up in violence.

Some of us might appreciate these examples, and still be skeptical that non-violent resistance, no matter how creative, will actually prevail over real evil. Well, of course, it doesn’t always work, but, then again, neither does armed conflict.

There is now compelling research to confirm that nonviolence has more power to shape world politics than armed violent resistance. Erica Chenoweth is a political scientist at Harvard. She looked at hundreds of campaigns over the last century and found that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent ones. They led to political change 53% of the time as compared to 26% for violent protests. [4]

She also found that it requires about 3.5% of the population to be actively engaged in the nonviolent campaign in order to be effective. “There weren’t any campaigns that had failed after they had achieved 3.5% participation during a peak event,” she said.[5]

That seems incredible to me. And hopeful. It reinforces that preacher’s notion that this might just be the most important passage in the Bible. Jesus of Nazareth was so far ahead of his time.

Reading through the Sermon on the Mount this month, I have been struck by how well it builds upon itself. In the first part, the beatitudes, I picked up the notion of honor. Jesus credited his listeners as “honorable” even though they were pretty far down on the honor-shame hierarchy of their day. Then he encouraged them to express themselves in lives of faithfulness, to be salt and light, in a time and place where they felt completely powerless. And then here, he equips them with strategies to regain honor and assert a power they didn’t know they had.

Going back the beatitudes, verse 4 says “Honorable are those who mourn.” The English usually finishes, “for they shall be comforted.” But the Greek expression, parakaleo, doesn’t refer to the kind of comfort offered with hugs and hand-holding. Instead, it is the kind of comfort that calls the mourner out of immobility into action. The same expression, parakaleo can refer to calling a witness in court.[6] A better understanding of that verse might be “Honorable are those who mourn for they shall bear witness with their truth.”

I think of Holocaust survivors who carry deep trauma and are bearing witness. One is Sylvia Ruth Gutmann. Her family were already refugees, fleeing Nazi Germany when she was born. She was separated from her parents in a camp in Vichy, France. They were taken to Auschwitz. Sylvia and her sister survived in hiding. They came to the USA when she was seven. When she tried to tell her classmates her story, she was silenced by the teacher who called her a liar. At age 55, on the verge of suicide, she finally received therapy for the trauma she carried for so long. Now at age 80, she tells her story widely. What she repeats to every audience is this: “This is personal for me. What is happening at the border today is shocking and eerily similar to what happened in Nazi Germany. I am every immigrant child.” She says “We cannot be indifferent. We cannot look away. We must stop this horror. We must band together and demand that children never be separated from loved ones, not for one more day.”[7]

Honorable are those who mourn, for they shall bear witness.

Today Japanese Americans are protesting the detention of immigrants at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. It is located in an industrial area, where other construction is prohibited because it sits within a toxic sludge field and Superfund site. The facility holds up to 1,500 immigrants and is notorious for its inhumane conditions.

Twenty minutes away, is a place that was called the Puyallup Assembly Center. It was the place to which more than 7,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly transferred by army troops almost 80 years ago. Today’s protestors include survivors and their descendants.

Paul Tomita was three years old when his family spent 14 months in captivity in US internment camps. He says, “You don’t see people with blonde hair and blue eyes in these [modern detention] camps. No, you see brown people, you see Black people. You see people of color, just like you saw when we were in camps,” Tomita said. “Just like what happened to us, you see laws and policies being put into place to discount people and their humanity. They don’t want us to work together and see these parallels, but we do.”

Homer Yasui was a teenager in California when his family was forced into the largest internment camp. At age 95, he is in Tacoma today and he says, “[I speak out] because 78 years ago, my people were being loudly and viciously denounced as being ‘disloyal’ by the press, the U.S. government, politicians, and the American people in general. Almost nobody stood up for us,” Homer said. “Quiet Americans were the enablers that allowed the atrocity of the so-called evacuation to happen. I learned something from that. So now I am going to stand up for immigrants and people of Islamic faith who have been viciously and wrongfully attacked as being criminals, rapists, and terrorists. If I can do it, so can others.”[8]

Honorable are those who mourn, for they shall bear witness. Honorable are those who heed their witness and take transformational actions because of it.

Dr. King preached at the National Cathedral in Washington on March 31, 1968. In what would be his final sermon, he said, “It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. . . I believe today that there is a need for all people of goodwill to come with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "We ain’t goin’ study war no more." [9]

May it be so. Even now, Lord, may it be so. Amen.

[1] https://theologyandpeace.com/2017/02/19/the-most-important-passage-in-the-bible/

[2] As told by Victoria Curtiss in her sermon “Jesus’ Third Way” https://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2017/021917_8am.html?print=true

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-41827062

[4] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world

[5] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world

[6] Richard Swanson, Provoking the Gospel of Matthew: A Storytellers’ Commentary, Year A (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2007) , p.96.

[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qs1zBEd7wE&t=4s&fbclid=IwAR28ZjlPbVLcW-kMF29rlWyycpzOUc9kZTu5JXqAucubF8UJOlO87hC18oY

[8] https://www.ourprism.org/1920731?fbclid=IwAR1IpEa6A79N4CPYR02GiEYMuwKaN8Nwlw_POiuHBe0agi90LRH3FYwyKOQ

[9] https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/publications/knock-midnight-inspiration-great-sermons-reverend-martin-luther-king-jr-10

2/16/20 - Salty - Matthew 5:13-20

Salty

Matthew 5:13-20

Emmanuel Baptist Church

February 16, 2020; Rev. Kathy Donley

Over the last several months, I have had a number of conversations with people, inside and outside this church, who are discouraged. A lot of them say the same thing. They say they feel powerless. Powerless in the face of an addiction or other disease, powerless to communicate meaningfully with an estranged loved one, powerless to get what they need for their children, powerless in a political system where the voices of those with money and status carry more weight than the votes of citizens. Some of us in this room have always recognized our relative lack of power. For others, it has been a rude awakening.

The good news I share today is that Jesus has something to say to the powerless, or at least to those who believe themselves to be powerless.

Last Sunday, we heard the beatitudes. I suggested that in that list of blessings, Jesus was bestowing honor on the kinds of people that never got any honor in first century Palestine, namely the poor, the downtrodden, the ridiculed. Today’s reading comes right after the beatitudes. Jesus is still addressing the same crowd, the same people who followed him from Capernaum, the crowd that seeks his healing and hangs on his teaching.

This crowd represents the people of Israel under occupation. The land has been under Gentile control since the return from Babylon generations earlier, with Rome being the latest and current enemy in charge. As Jesus launches his ministry, the political tension is increasing. By the time Matthew writes his gospel a few decades later, Jerusalem and the Temple will have been destroyed after a 7-month siege of the city. Without the Temple, Judaism as it had been for centuries will cease to exist. Within the crowd around Jesus, and among Matthew’s first readers, there is an acute sense of an impending end to everything.

On a daily basis, we hear warnings about the coming end of democracy in America and about the threat of climate change to end human existence on this planet. Most of us are very aware that institutional Christianity is undergoing massive upheaval. The structures that have become normal over the last 500 years may soon go the way of Temple-based Judaism. And so, it seems that our context has much in common with the context of Jesus’ first audience, more than we might expect.

In last week’s reading, Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek.” In those beatitudes, he was not suggesting that people should become poor or meek or in mourning. He was not setting some goal for them to achieve, but he was blessing them for who they already were. Similarly, when he says, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world,” he is describing who they already are. In this foundational sermon, Jesus is challenging the people of Israel to be who they are, the people of Israel – God’s covenant people.[1]

Way, way back, when God first made covenant with Abraham, it was said that Israel was blessed to be a blessing to the rest of the world. Generations later, the language evolved so that Isaiah spoke of Israel as the servant in whom God’s glory is seen, the light to which other nations will be drawn. When Jesus says “you are the light of the world” he is drawing on that tradition, that identity.

The most important function of light is to illuminate what is. It is not for the light to be seen, but to allow other things to be seen. In a positive sense, the light brings good things into view. Jesus says to let your light shine so that people will glorify God because of your actions. What he doesn’t mention directly here is that light also shines on the bad. It brings evil out of the shadows so that it can be recognized for what it is.

To the people of Israel and to us, Jesus is saying “Be who you are. Be God’s people. Be the light that you are. Shine to bring glory to God. Shine to expose evil.”

He also says that we are the salt of the earth. Salt is associated with seasoning and preserving. In Biblical times, it was also often connected to sacrifice. It is a small thing of great value. Salt is essential for life. If added correctly as a seasoning, it enhances flavor, bringing out what is already there, only more so. Salty people, then, add zest and make the world more savory.

It sounds peculiar when Jesus speaks about salt losing its taste. Salt in antiquity was not as pure as what is in our saltshakers. It’s taste could be lost by being overwhelmed or mixed with large quantities of other materials. In English, we read verse 13 “if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?” But in Greek it literally says “If salt becomes foolish, then how can its saltiness be restored?” It is a warning against being so overwhelmed, so compromised, so unfaithful, that no transforming work is done.[2]

I’m hearing it today as a warning to those of us who are feeling outnumbered, overpowered and over- looked. We cannot become foolish about our mission. Our mission is to be faithful, not to be powerful. We cannot let discouragement dim our light or rob us of our saltiness.

As Frederick Buechner wrote, “Be the light of the world, [Jesus] says. Where there are dark places, be the light especially there. Be the salt of the earth. Bring out the true flavor of what it is to be alive truly. Be truly alive. Be life-givers to others. . . that’s what loving each other means.” [3]

Some of us are discouraged because we feel powerless. It is a new, uncomfortable feeling for some of us. For others, it is not necessarily new, but we are worn down by it anyway. How do you suppose these Galilean peasants felt? How much power could they exert? They couldn’t vote or influence the government in any way. To Rome, they were just labor, human capital, to be exploited for Rome’s purposes. They weren’t educated. Most of them couldn’t read. They didn’t have the credentials to engage the religious leaders, the movers and shakers of the day. And yet, Jesus told them just to be who they were – salt and light.

Here's the thing I don’t like – the metaphors of salt and light suggest slow, incremental change. That is not what I want. I have a list of things that need fixing now, right now. You probably do too. When I felt more in control, more powerful, I thought that I could affect change quickly. But now I see that slow change and small transformations were the things Jesus talked about most of the time. Things like almost invisible yeast making the bread rise, one loaf at a time, or seeds hidden in the earth, growing to harvest over a season. That was how he encouraged the powerless ones in his day. By any objective measure, you and I still have more power than the folks he was speaking to. Whether we feel powerful or not, we can still be who we are – God’s people in this place. We can still be who we are, the light of the world called to shine in glory to God, to cast a spotlight on evil. We can still be salty, adding zest to the lives of those God calls us to love.

For more than 30 years, the Rev. Fuad Bahnan served a small Presbyterian congregation in the overwhelmingly Muslim area of West Beirut. In 1983, during Arab-Israeli fighting, the Israeli army invaded Lebanon. No one knew how far they would go, but the members of Bahnan’s church believed that the Israelis would take Beirut and then try to starve out any Palestinian fighters still in the city. So, the church leadership decided to stockpile food for the siege to come. Then it happened. The Israeli army cut off West Beirut, and no one could enter or leave and no food was allowed in.

The church leaders met to make arrangements for distributing the food they had gathered and stored. At the meeting, the elders weighed two very different proposals. Proposal #1: the food would be distributed first to members of the congregation, then, as supplies permitted, to other Christians in West Beirut, and if any was left, to Muslims. Proposal #2: the food would be distributed to Muslims first, then to non-member Christians, and lastly, if there was any remaining, to members of their church. “It was extravagantly kind and altogether counter-intuitive,” someone said later.

Reverend Bahnan said that the meeting lasted six hours. It finally ended when an older, deeply respected and usually quiet member of the governing board stood up. She said, ‘If we don’t demonstrate the love of Christ in this place, who will?’ The second motion passed. The food was distributed first to Muslims, then to other Christians, and then to members of their own church. When the Lebanese pastor told the story some twenty years later, he added two footnotes. First, he said that the Muslim community of Beirut was still talking about what their church did. Second, he said that there was actually enough food for everyone. He described it as a modern day “loaves and fishes.”[4]

Keep on shining, you light of the world, to demonstrate the love of Christ in this place and wherever you are. Oh yeah, and pass the salt to season those loaves and fishes.

Let me leave you today with some words from the Rev. Shannon Kershner. She’s the pastor at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. She preached on this text just last Sunday. She said:

“It is past time to stop flying under the radar, mainline church. Rather, it is time to be loudly kind, to be obnoxiously compassionate, to be irritatingly loving. To say no to the corrosive power of contempt and to answer hatred with the strength of love. To stand up for each other. To refuse to return evil for evil and to say why that is. To have good courage and to proclaim that often. To be the strongly flavored salt we are and the beautifully bright light we are, not only on Sundays when we are all together, but even more importantly in all of those other quiet, normal times and places in our lives during the week. For being salt and light is not just what we are called to do. It is who we are.” [5]

Being salt and light is not just what we are called to do. It is who we are. Thanks be to God!

[1] Edwin Chr. Van Driel quoting N.T. Wright, in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 1, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010) p. 335.

[2] Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, (Maryknoll, NY: Obis Books, 2000), p. 138

[3] Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), p. 150.

[4] Michael Lindvall in his sermon “Kind or Right?” preached at Brick Presbyterian Church on June 12 2016.

[5] The Rev. Shannon Kershner, in her sermon “Adding and Shining” https://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2020/020920.html

2/9/20 - Honorable - Micah 6:1-8; Matthew 5:1-12

Honorable

Micah 6:1-8; Matthew 5:1-12

Emmanuel Baptist Church

February 9, 2020; Rev. Kathy Donley

Image: Migrant Mother photo by Dorothea Lange 1936

The book of Micah is 6 chapters long and it is almost entirely about the coming destruction of Jerusalem which God is allowing because of corrupt leadership. If someone required me to recite Micah from memory, I might be able to stammer through the passage about turning swords into plowshares, which is virtually identical in the book of Isaiah, or the verse we hear at Christmas that says “But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel,” or Micah 6:8 which many of you could say with me “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with your God.”

Some of you would claim Micah 6:8 as a summary of your faith. It’s a good one, for sure. I find it interesting that such a significant verse comes to us from a book of the Bible we rarely read the rest of.

Walter Brueggemann says “It is now agreed among a growing number of scholars that Micah is the voice of the village peasant against the rapacious power of the state. . .. the peasants watched carefully the growing and shameless power of the Jerusalem government. That urban-scientific-military-industrial establishment had usurped the well-being of the little people . . . So, Micah raises the justice question with reference to that social development, the growing power of the urban state.” Brueggemann continues, “It is worth noting here as always, the justice question is raised from below, not from above. It is implausible that anyone in the Jerusalem circles would raise the justice question, because they are preoccupied with questions of prosperity and security. And they do not notice the cost of prosperity and security imposed on the voiceless peasants.”[1]

Micah is the voice of the village peasant, Brueggemann says, the voice raised from below. The voice that was largely unheeded at the time, but the voice which somehow still speaks to us from across almost 3 centuries.

The reading from Micah 6 probably gets paired with the reading of the Beatitudes because of the common themes of justice and kindness and humility. But the two texts, separated by 800 years, also share a focus on the voice from below.

“Much of the power of the Beatitudes depends on where you are sitting when you hear them.”[2] Barbara Brown Taylor says, “They sound different from on top than they do from underneath. They sound different up front than they do in the back. Up front with the religious satisfied and self-assured, they sound pretty confrontational. Where is your hunger and thirst, you well-fed Christians? Where is your spiritual poverty? Where are bones of your soul showing through your clothes, and why aren’t your handkerchiefs soaked with tears?”

“But,” she continues “way in the back, with the victims, the dreamers, the pushovers and the fools, the Beatitudes sound completely different. Shh, they say, dry your tears, little ones. The whole earth belongs to you, though someone else still holds the keys. It won’t be long now. Heaven’s gates are opening wide for you, and the first face you see shall be the face of God.”[3]

The Beatitudes are the very first part of Jesus’ first recorded public teaching in Matthew’s gospel. And so, we might see these verses as a kind of introduction or preamble, in which Jesus is laying out his foundational understanding of who God is and who God’s people are.

The Sermon on the Mount is our label for Matthew chapters 5-7. It is probably some of the most familiar of Jesus’ teaching for Christians and non-Christians. Being familiar with something doesn’t always mean understanding it. Sometimes when something is very familiar, we think we understand more of it than we do. I think the Beatitudes often get dropped into a mental box called “Bible poetry” which is stuff that sounds nice, but maybe not as strong as it should to our ears.

The Beatitudes come from a foreign culture, a culture that has a different foundation from ours. The foundation of our culture is equal rights, equal worth for all human beings. I realize that we often do not live up to our ideals. I am well aware that people are treated differently in our legal system, in our public square, even in the shopping mall, because of the way they dress or talk, because of their professional status or relative wealth or poverty, because of the color of their skin. That may be how it is, but it is not how we think it should be.

On the other hand, people in Jesus’ culture did think it should be like that. His was an honor-shame culture. In this kind of culture, you were born into a certain status, with its level of honor or shame. Honor was a fundamental value. There was a limited amount of honor in the world and the only way you could get more honor, was by gaining it from someone else who then experienced an increase in shame. There was no concept that everyone started out with equal worth. Rather, you started with the amount of honor ascribed to your family at birth and there was no expectation that you could do much to change that.

Those with honor were born into good families. They had a good reputation in the town square. The honorable were those who owned large estates, the elected officials who made the rules, those who spoke and required others to listen, those who could enforce their will. So, honor belonged to and was used by those who were already powerful, important and wealthy. Shame belonged to the powerless, the unimportant, the poor and those who lose status. Since honor started at birth, and God determined which family you are born into, there was a perception that those with honor were pleasing to God while those with shame were not.

If we can begin to understand that context, then we will take the beatitudes out of the box of pretty Bible poetry and understand them as radically counter-cultural. In our translations, the beatitudes say “blessed are those who . . .” but a better translation is “honored are those. . .”

What Jesus does in this sermon is to turn everything upside down. “You think that the world turns on honor,” he says. “You think that God is pleased with the important and powerful. Not so. God is, in fact, most pleased with, the poor, the downtrodden, the ridiculed.” Jesus is speaking to those who inhabit the bottom of the honor-shame hierarchy and he blesses them with honor, freely bestowed by God. The radical idea is that they don’t have to earn more honor. They don’t have to do something to shame someone else and thereby gain honor for themselves. God’s blessing is already given to them. It is already all over the place, just not where they expect it to be.

The power of the Beatitudes depends on where you sit when you hear them. I wonder how we hear them this week after witnessing our political celebrities in the impeachment trial. The closest thing we get to honor-shame in our culture are celebrities. They seem to have an extra portion of honor just for their roles as politicians or athletes or entertainers. And currently, it seems very hard for any sense of shame to diminish their status.

Republicans and Democrats both thought the impeachment process was a sham, although for different reasons. So, I suggest that this week, all of us might be in a place to hear the beatitudes more like the crowd around Jesus, as besieged and bewildered people, people who wonder what they have done to deserve the oppression that they are living under, people who wonder where God is.

I wonder if we can hear Jesus, like Micah before him, as the voice of the peasant against injustice. The voice proclaiming that we non-celebrities matter to God, that justice matters to God, that we are honorable when we seek justice and love kindness and walk humbly with God. Isn’t it amazing that these words are still radically counter-cultural?

The Rev. William Willimon, now retired, was for many years the Campus pastor at Duke University. The campus fraternities didn’t have great reputations. The University required each one to have a certain number of programs each year to give them at least some semblance of respectability, (what we might also call “honor”) and, in the hope that someone might learn something.

One of the fraternities invited Willimon, the campus pastor, to do a program. He was to come to the frat-house and give a lecture on “Moral Character and College.” Willimon thought to himself, “I can’t believe these guys are dumb enough to invite an old guy like me to talk to young men like them on character.” Willimon has been described as brilliant, articulate, with a powerful personality, and when he wants to be, can be very blunt and intimidating. Those boys had probably never been to chapel service and did not know what they were in for.

On the appointed evening, Willimon went to their house and knocked on the door. The door opened and he was greeted by a young boy about nine or ten years old. “What is a kid doing over here at this time of night?” Willimon wondered. Surely, he thought, there should be rules against children even being at a place like that at any time of day.

“They are waiting for you in the common room,” the boy said politely. They went back to the common room and there all the young men were gathered, glumly waiting for the presentation.

Willimon says he then hammered away at the boys for an hour about the failures of their generation. He talked about morality and character and responsibility and faith, and how fraternity houses like that one gave little evidence of any of those things. When he finished his talk, he asked if there were any questions. There was dead silence. So, he thanked them for the honor of inviting him there, and headed out. As one young man walked him to the door, Willimon overhead him say to the little boy, “You go and get ready for bed. I’ll be back to tuck you in and read you a story.”

When they got outside, the fraternity boy lit a cigarette, took a long drag on it, and thanked the pastor for coming out. “Let me ask you,” Willimon said, “Who is that kid and what is he doing here?”

“Oh, that’s Donny,” said the young man. “Our fraternity is part of the Big Brother program in Durham. We met Donny that way. His mom is on cocaine and having a tough time. Sometimes it gets so bad that she can’t care for him. So, we told Donny to call us up when he needs us. Then we go over, pick him up, and he stays with us until it’s okay to go home. We take him to school, and we buy him his clothes, books, and stuff like that.”

Willimon stood there dumbfounded. He said, “That’s amazing. I take back everything I said in there about you guys being bad and irresponsible.”

“I tell you what’s amazing,” said the college boy as he took another drag on his cigarette, “what’s amazing is that God would pick a guy like me to do something this good for somebody else.”[4]

The peasants of ancient Jerusalem,

Micah the obscure prophet,

Jesus the beloved,

Duke frat boys . . . and you . . . and me,

doing justice,

loving kindness,

honored by God.

It is kind of amazing.

Thanks be to God.

[1] Walter Brueggemann, Sharon Park &Thomas H. Groom To Act Justly, Love Tenderly, Walk Humbly, (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), p. 7.

[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine (Lanham, Maryland: Cowley Publications, 1995), p, 147.

[3] Taylor, pp. 147-148.

[4] William Willimon, Pulpit Resource, Jan 2006, p.19

1/26/20 - Abandoning - Isaiah 9:1-4; Matthew 4:12-23

Abandoning

Isaiah 9:1-4; Matthew 4:12-23

January 26, 2020

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

I have to be a Bible nerd. I don’t know any other way to begin this sermon. It all started early this week, when I read Matthew 4:14. In the New Revised Standard version, it says “He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali.” The He is Jesus. First, there are 4 places named here. I recognized the names because I’ve read the Bible on other occasions, but I don’t know why they are significant or where they are in relationship to each other. So, I made a note to look them up.

But before I could do that, I read a translation note about the verb – the verb that said “Jesus left.” Jesus left Nazareth and went somewhere else. Well, that seemed pretty straightforward. Does that verb “left” imply anything to you about Jesus’ mood or his attitude? To me it just means that he moves from place to another. He might be happy or sad, angry or scared or excited. The word “left” doesn’t tell me anything. But then I read this note which said “left is too mild a translation. It means something closer to abandoned.” So, then I looked it up in a Greek dictionary and discovered it means to leave behind, to desert, forsake, abandon. Now, if I had read “Jesus abandoned Nazareth, he forsook Nazareth, he deserted Nazareth” the first time through, I would have taken notice.

I was a little bit irked that the translators chose such a mild way to express what must have been a decisive action.

By this point I was wondering what happened before this, what did I miss by jumping into the story right here? I’ll spare you the rest of the play-by-play on my personal Bible study and just tell you what I learned.

Two weeks ago, we read from Matthew 3, with people going out to John to be baptized in the Jordan River. Jesus went from Galilee to be baptized. You will remember that our story ended when Jesus came up out of the water and the voice proclaimed him God’s Beloved. Between that story and this one, Jesus spent forty days in the Judean wilderness where he was tempted by the devil. Then, today, then we picked up with verse 13 which says, “Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee.”

Again, with the verbs – what does it mean that he withdrew to Galilee?” The Greek word there is often translated “to go back, to return, to depart”. It can also mean “to leave with the sense of taking refuge from danger.” So, what does it mean here? Is Jesus simply returning to Galilee? That’s where he was before being baptized, before going into the wilderness. It would kind of make sense for him to go home sometime, wouldn’t it? And if he is, in fact, withdrawing in the sense of fleeing from danger – what danger is there where he is?

He is in Judea, possibly near Jerusalem, which is a center of political and religious power. Perhaps the implication is that he is in danger because of that power. Before Matthew’s story is over, Jesus will be crucified from Jerusalem. But that doesn’t quite make sense here, because it says “when Jesus heard that John had been arrested.” You see John the Baptist was arrested by Herod Antipas. And Matthew’s readers would know that Herod Antipas was also going to execute John. So, the danger in the story right now seems to be Herod Antipas. And guess what? Herod Antipas is not the ruler in Judea. Herod Antipas is the ruler in Galilee.

So, if the translators chose the word “withdrew” to suggest that Jesus is moving to a safer place, well that isn’t really borne out by the context. If anything, Jesus seems to be moving into a place of more danger. But now we see that Jesus doesn’t actually go home, because we’ve arrived at verse 14, where we began, which says “He abandoned Nazareth”

Nazareth is Jesus’ hometown. To say that Jesus is abandoning Nazareth is to say that he is forsaking his childhood home, his mother, his family.

When he heard that John had been imprisoned, Jesus abandoned Nazareth and set up a new home in Capernaum. Matthew adds, “in Capernaum, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali”. We heard those place names in the reading from Isaiah earlier. They are old names.

Every once in a while, today, I come across a map of the United States labelled with names I don’t recognize. They are usually places I do know but with the names given to them by Native American peoples. What Matthew is doing is similar to that. He is using the names of the land as it was divided into territories for the twelve tribes of Israel. Centuries ago, this area was assigned by Joshua to the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali.

Seven hundred years earlier, Isaiah had also written about Zebulun and Naphtali. They were among the first tribes from the northern kingdom carried away into captivity by the Assyrians. The names of these tribes and territories were lost to conscious memory. No one uses these place names in Jesus’ time. Except for Matthew.

“Galilee of the Gentiles” had been ruled by the Assyrian Empire. In Jesus’ day, it is under the thumb of the Roman Empire. Matthew links those who are currently living under Roman domination with those who had seen the devastation of the Assyrian conquest. Matthew is locating Jesus in the ancient promised land, the land over which God has sovereignty, although it appears that Rome is in control.

Jesus returns to Galilee, abandons Nazareth and makes a new home in a small fishing village called Capernaum. Under the rule of Antipas, life has become very hard here. After extracting everything he could from the fertile agricultural areas, Antipas turned his attention to the inland lake, called the Sea of Galilee, commercializing it for maximum profit and export.

“The peasant fishermen could no longer cast their nets freely from the shore. They could no longer own a boat or beach a catch without being taxed. They probably had to sell what they caught to Antipas’ factories.”[1] The cost of getting a fishing license, the taxes they would have to pay, and the rates that they would be paid for their fish, would all be determined by sources higher up than they. This is a system where the rich get richer and the poor become more and more impoverished.

This is the place where Jesus goes after he abandons Nazareth. “He locates himself among the marginal, with the ruled, not the rulers, with the powerless and exploited not the powerful.”[2]

This is where he proclaims the same thing that John had “Repent, for the Basileia of heaven has come near.” We usually read that as “kingdom of heaven” and by now, for many of us that’s just a churchy word. But what if we recognized that Jesus is saying “The Empire of Heaven has come near.” “God’s Empire is here.” Basileia can mean that.

That is what Jesus is saying. After hearing that John has been arrested, Jesus does not withdraw to safety. Instead, he moves to a place of greater danger. He does not return to Nazareth and his family. He abandons that familiar security. Instead, he locates himself with those who are bearing the burnt of imperial greed. In the face of the bad news of the Roman empire, he announces the arrival of God’s empire. This is the picture of a person on a mission, acting with the full courage of his convictions. I so did not get that on my first reading earlier this week.

Finally, I see Jesus’ courageous determination, and then almost immediately I see his vulnerable side. Having forsaken all that was known and familiar in Nazareth, he sets out to create a new community. For his mission to succeed, other people will have to be involved, but also, I think the human Jesus needs companions. He needs others to join him on a personal level.

He finds Simon and Andrew on the shore. They leave their nets to follow him. He finds James and John in their boat. They leave their father and the family business to follow him. Just like Jesus left Nazareth, they leave their familiar lives behind. The Greek verb is not the same as the one for leaving Nazareth. But the meaning is. They release their nets, they forsake their father, they lay aside their former lives to follow Jesus. I am struck that what Jesus asks of them is what he has already done—the abandoning of something precious to take on this mission.

This mission -- the mission to proclaim good news in the face of bad news. To announce the empire of God in the midst of the empire of Rome. To speak up and speak out when empire is bringing its power to bear to silence you. To live deeply and boldly despite the threat of violence and death. To live out the good news while surrounded by bad news.

OK Friends, here is the point of all that Bible nerd stuff: Jesus calls us to that very same mission. We still live under empire. We are still surrounded by bad news. Our calling is to abandon, to release, to forsake whatever keeps us from fulfilling this mission -- to live out the good news, deeply and boldly, to speak up and speak out, to proclaim and embody the good news in the midst of bad.

The Talmud is a collection of teachings of ancient rabbis. It tells of a rabbi who was asked what questions a Jewish person would have to answer at the Last Judgment. Would God ask? First, the rabbi thought of the obvious things: Were you honest in business? Did you seek wisdom? Did you keep the commandments? Then a question about the Messiah came into his mind that surprised the rabbi himself. God will ask “Did you hope for my Messiah?”[3]

Today I wonder, is that not the question Christians will be asked? “Did you hope for Jesus? Did you long for the empire of heaven Christ proclaimed? Did you put your faith in Christ, even when you thought about giving up? Did you live in Christ’s light?”

Beloved ones, let us abandon all else and give ourselves to this task. May we proclaim and embody the good news in the midst of bad news. May we be God’s people believing in God’s power to bring light into the darkness. Amen.

[1] John Dominic Crossan, God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now, (New York: HarperOne, 2008), p. 122

[2] Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, (Maryknoll, NY: Obis Books, 2000), p. 114.

[3] Brett Younger in Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew, Volume 1, Cynthia Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2013) p. 61.

1/19/20 - Looking - Isaiah 49:1-7; John 1:29-42

Looking

Isaiah 49:1-7; John 1:29-42

January 19, 2020

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

Most of us are familiar with the name Garrison Keillor. His radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, was surprisingly popular in a world where visual story-telling through film and television has reigned for decades. Several years ago, in one of his books, he said,

I tell stories on the radio about Lake Wobegon and its God-fearing, egalitarian inhabitants, and though I find a grandeur in this, I feel that, at 61, I am still in search of what I was looking for when I was 18. What I really want is a long conversation with Grandpa and Grandma Denham who came over from Glasgow in 1906 with their six kids . . . and settled in a big frame house on Longfellow Avenue. Grandpa was a railroad clerk who wore black high-top shoes and white shirts with silk armbands and spoke with a Scottish burr, so “girls” came out “gettles.” He never drove a car or attended a movie or read a novel. I want to know why they came here, what they were looking for—the truth, not a children’s fable—and if I have found it, maybe I can stop looking.[1]

Keillor was probably so successful in the world of radio because his stories were so descriptive of ordinary human life. One week, the narrative might have included examples of someone trying to break a world record and outdo everyone else as well as people pitching together for the common good, of someone learning to dance and someone else refusing to try. He told stories that almost everyone could connect with. Don’t we also connect with the idea that we are looking for something -- something important, something foundational, something that explains our lives and grounds us and helps us find purpose and meaning. It is our search at age 18 and 61 and beyond.

Jesus seems to understand that Andrew and the other disciple are on that same search. After John the Baptist identifies Jesus, they follow him. Jesus turns to them and says “what do you want?”

"What do you want?" It seems like a straightforward question, but this is John’s gospel. We have to remember that this gospel is written with multiple layers of meaning. Jesus' question works at one level to start the conversation going, -- “What do you want?” means “how can I help you?” But at another level, Jesus is asking them, "What do you want to get out of life? What are you really looking for?"

They answer him with another question – “where are you staying?” At one level, they're just asking Jesus what motel he's using while he's in town. At another level, they're asking how he lives, what gives his life meaning, what makes him feel alive. The Greek word translated staying can also mean: dwelling, lodging, resting, settling, enduring, persevering, being steadfast, continuing and abiding.

Suddenly, we see this is a conversation about relationship. Jesus is inviting them to settle in with him, to persevere, to be steadfast with him. On their last night together, he will say “Abide in me as I abide in you”.

But they don’t know any of that yet. All they know right now is that they are being drawn to Jesus. He invites them to come and see and they do.

That’s how it began. The disciples accepted Jesus’ invitation, but of course they did not know that it would become a 3-year journey with him. They did not know that it would change the things they saw and they way they saw them for the rest of their lives.

True story: When Michael May was three years old, he lost his sight in a chemical explosion. He lost one eye entirely and the other was completely blind. But then, 40 years later, with advances in medical technology, he agreed to an experimental procedure to try to restore sight to his remaining eye. It worked. He could see the color of flowers. He could see the mountains where he had learned to ski without using his eyes. But what he couldn’t do was recognize complex shapes and objects, like the faces of his children, his wife and friends. He described a cube as a square with extra lines. He could not translate a picture on paper into an object with 3-dimensions.

The neuroscientists that treated him concluded that vision is something that has to be learned. Vision is more than sight, because what is seen has to be interpreted before it makes sense. Discussing his own amazing recovery, Michael May said, “I will never be fluent visually, but I get better the more I work at it.” [2]

I suggest that when Jesus invited people to “come and see”, he was inviting them to learn visual fluency. The journey they shared was one in which he taught them to interpret through his eyes. For example, there was a time when they saw children as a bother, a nuisance, to be shooed away from the important and busy Jesus. But Jesus welcomed them and saw them as the entry to the kingdom of God. Or the time when they jumped to the conclusion that the blind man on the road from Jericho should be quiet, but Jesus saw his yelling as evidence of his strong faith. Their cultural lens taught them that women were second class, but again and again, Jesus helped them see women as leaders, women as theologians, women as fellow travelers on this journey. Jesus kept calling them to visual fluency, to practice interpreting and re-interpreting what they saw in the way that he would see it.

At Wednesday’s Bible study, our illustrious leader Marilyn posed a question that made me stop and wonder. She asked, “What words, habits or actions help you stay connected to your call?”

That’s a very good question. I encourage you to think about it too -- what words, habits or actions help you stay connected to your call?

Eventually I came up with two answers. The one that came easily was music. Music helps me stay connected. This answer I shared in Bible study. The previous day I had been discouraged. I had seen too many stories too close together about human suffering and injustice. Compassion fatigue was setting in. I was feeling overwhelmed. I found a song on YouTube. I don’t remember what it was right now, but it was a song I know that usually makes me feel better. But then, when that song ended, YouTube immediately served up another song. The second song is one I also know, but hadn’t heard in a while. The second song is called Ella’s Song, sung by Sweet Honey in the Rock.[3] It is named for Ella Baker. Ella Baker was an important human rights activist whose career spanned five decades. She did many things, but she is well known for mentoring young leaders through the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. One of her mentees was a young woman named Rosa Parks. The lyrics to Ella’s Song are quotations from her teachings, and the chorus says, “We who believe in freedom cannot rest. We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.” And there it was, music helping me stay connected to my call. I’m pretty sure a lot of you would say that as well. Music, of all different kinds, is the language of our souls.

I kept mulling over that question “What words, habits or actions help you stay connected to your call?” A few days later, I realized a second answer. This one took a little longer. It starts with a sermon that I preached last April. In that sermon, I shared with you what I was hearing about Homestead, Florida. I talked about Joshua Rubin and some people who were going there from all over the country to bear witness and protest. I told that same story to some pastor friends in our weekly Bible study. And one of those pastors said, “so, when are you going to Homestead?” I didn’t have any plans to go until she asked me that. And then suddenly, I did.

It happened again last month. Some people in the Border Watch group had been talking about going to Brownsville/Matamoros. I had heard their conversations, but I told myself that this was not my trip. I have been to Mexico twice in the last 4 years, and I went to Homestead and I did not need to go this time. But then, the subject came up again and someone turned to me and said “Are you going?” I kind of stammered my way through a non-answer, but now it appears that I’ll be on my way to Texas in March.

So, my second answer is that one habit which helps me stay connected to my call is listening to questions, questions that haven’t occurred to me and questions that I think I’ve already answered.

Before I came to Emmanuel, I had the sad privilege of helping a church close out its ministry. For almost all of its 160 years, this church had lived in the country. But at about year 145, they had the vision to buy 10 acres closer to town. They held church picnics on the property, but never developed it. Until they got very brave and took out a loan to build a new church building. By this time, the city had grown out and that 10 acres was in a growing neighborhood, with houses still being built and new people moving in. The new church sat directly across from the grade school with the most diversity in town. My daughter went to that school. So did all of the children of the international graduate students at the university. At least forty different languages were spoken in the homes of those students.

The possibilities for ministry in that neighborhood were amazing. The church members were good, faithful people. They wanted to grow. They wanted to be good neighbors. They had taken the risk of moving away from the location and building that had nurtured their ministry for so long. But they could not manage the visual fluency they needed. They could see the new location, but only in the ways they had seen the old one. Their words and habits and actions did not help them stay connected to this new call from God. Instead, they chose to cling to their old patterns. As a result, they pushed away the new folks who came to check out the new church in the neighborhood. After three years in the new building, they could no longer pay the bills and they closed.

That’s a hard story, but I tell it because it underscores the importance of that question –what words, actions or habits help you and me stay connected to our call? I hope you will take some time to answer that for yourself and share your thoughts with each other.

This is the kind of question the visioning committee is going to consider as we work together in the next year. We have sensed a call to something new. Our reading from Isaiah today reflects a call to something bigger than God’s servant had imagined. The servant had to adjust his thinking, to refocus his vision, to change his mind and make room for God’s big idea. I suggest that we are standing in a very similar place, that’s God’s next idea for us is big and will require some change of heart and mind and habits. And we will need to support each other to get through that together.

Because we who believe in freedom,

we who believe in justice,

we who believe in the powerful love of God incarnate in the person of Jesus,

we who believe in freedom, cannot rest,

cannot rest until it comes. Amen.

[1] Garrison Keillor, Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America (New York: Penguin Group, 2004), p. 203

[2] https://billingsgazette.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/blind-man-s-restored-vision-gives-new-insight-into-nature/article_dcbc35a7-4296-5e3c-9eff-37dfecb2590f.html

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6Uus--gFrc

1/12/20 - Beloved - Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17

Beloved

Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17

January 12, 2020

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

Our theme for this season is “Who Are You?” We are keeping that question in mind as we read the scripture passages for the next few weeks. Much of what we will read in Matthew’s gospel will be from the Sermon on the Mount, a great collection of Jesus’ teachings to his followers. But today, we have Jesus’ baptism. Baptism is a central mark of Christian identity. Almost every group of Christians practices baptism in some way. And those of us who identify as Baptists proclaim the significance we place on baptism every time we name ourselves. It is unfortunate that Christians have divided into camps, sometime highly combative camps, about the correct mode or theology of baptism. The ecumenical movement of the last fifty-plus years has helped and we are less combative about those questions now, I think. I hope so. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could find more of our identity in being Christian, in following Jesus, than in our denominational labels? So, as much as I might love a good church fight about who is right on the questions of how and when and why to perform baptisms, that is not where this sermon is headed.

Ruth read two passages to give us context. I just want to focus on one verse in each passage. First, from Isaiah 42 verse1, where God says, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.”

Much scholarly ink has been used debating Isaiah’s understanding of the identity of this servant – was it the nation of Israel or a portion of it? Was it a particular leader who would emerge after the Exile? Whatever Isaiah might have thought, as Christians looked back, they realized how well these words described Jesus. The one who in whom God delighted and in whom God’s Spirit dwelt. Because of that Spirit, Jesus was able to execute justice.

The second verse I’m focused on is Matthew 3:17. It reads, “And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Hear those words – God’s Delight, Beloved, Well-pleased. Those are the most important words for this day. If you don’t hear anything else, hear them. Hold onto them. Claim them.

A crowd of people has gathered at the river. It’s kind of a muddy river and people are milling around on the riverbank and wading out in it to be baptized. And there, in the middle of the crowd, is Jesus of Nazareth. He does not do anything to distinguish himself from any other sinner in need of repentance. He risks guilt by association. He’s not back in Jerusalem with the respectable people but out in the wilderness with the wild man John, with the people who have been tainted by their contact with outsiders, with those revolutionaries and outlaws, with those who desperately need something to change in their lives. In other words, in his baptism, he thoroughly identifies with all of humanity, with all people. Barbara Brown Taylor says “It has never been [Jesus’s] style to shout directions to us from a safe place of his own. He has always led from within our midst, joining us in the water, in the mud, in the skin, to show us how it is done.”[1]

And God is well-pleased. “This is my Beloved.”

In her book, Searching for Sunday, Rachel Held Evans writes, “Jesus did not begin to be loved at the moment of his baptism, nor did he cease to be loved when his baptism became a memory. Baptism simply named the reality of his existing and unending belovedness.”[2]

Unending belovedness is so very hard for us to grasp. See, what I’m saying is that Jesus identifies with us so that we can dare to identity with him, as Beloved ones, as God’s own children.

That day, when as Jesus comes up out of the water, the Holy Spirit shows up, in some kind of tangible form, something that people can observe, and God claims Jesus as God’s own. This is the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, the inauguration of his calling. This is the point when Jesus knows that he is held by the power of love. And it forms his life. Sharing that love, serving as a vessel of that love, becomes his purpose, his passion, his life’s mission. In his baptism Jesus identified with humanity. Through our baptisms, we identify with him. We begin to know that we are held by the same unending love that held Jesus.

Theologian Henri Nouwen wrote “Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing - sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death - can take that love away.”[3] God becomes incarnate to share everything with us. The more deeply we believe that, the more fully we live within God’s unconditional love, the less fearful we will be and the more joy we will know. If that sounds familiar, it might be because I said it on Christmas Eve. I’m saying it again because it is still true and still hard for us to take in.

God’s Delight, Beloved, Well pleased.

We are enough. More than that, we are God’s delight. God wants to do wonderful things for and through us. To bring joy and justice and strong, powerful love.

Dr. Bill Leonard was one of my seminary professors. He taught church history with passion, but more importantly he modelled following Jesus no matter what. He tells this story about his daughter’s baptism, “Our daughter, Stephanie, is a person with special needs, learning and motor skill disabilities. Concepts do not come easily for her. Because of that I supposed that she might never receive baptism since she cannot meet all the conceptual pre-requisites demanded by many Baptists. You see, she does not understand the substitutionary theory of the atonement or the historical critical method of biblical studies the way the rest of us do. But on the third Sunday in December, 1991, on the way home from church, Stephanie, age 16, announced to her mother and me, "I think it’s time for me to be baptized." We talked about it and she was resolved, so we went to see our pastor, and he was everything a pastor should be for such a moment. He did not speak to her of what she had to KNOW, but what she wished to BE. "If you receive baptism, Stephanie," he said, "you are saying that you want to be a follower of Jesus. Do you want that?" She said yes and we prayed together.

And on Christmas Eve, Stephanie entered the baptistery of the Crescent Hill Baptist Church, Louisville, the same baptistery where her father had taken the spill years before. "Profess your faith," the pastor said. "Jesus is Lord," Stephanie replied. And under she went in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in the presence of a congregation that had nurtured her to faith throughout her 16 years.

Dr. Leonard continues, “We are all special needs persons, you and I. In some of us, it is just more public than in others. Not one of us can ever conceptualize enough to make us worthy of God's grace. If pressed, I must admit that I know more about sin and salvation, doctrine and dogma, than my daughter ever will. But I am not certain that such knowledge makes me any closer to grace than she was on that Christmas Eve.”[4]

God’s Delight, Beloved, Well pleased.

Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and nothing can take that love away.

Some of us may remember the movie Weapons of the Spirit. We watched it together one Sunday in Lent a couple of years ago. It told the story of the people of Le Chambon, France who sheltered and protected 3500 Jewish people and 1500 other refugees during the occupation of France in the Holocaust.

Many of those who were saved were children. One of the children who survived was Renée Kann. She was just a young child during the war. Her experience had been so traumatic that she put most of it out of her mind. The story of the courage and resistance of the people of Le Chambon was not well known, but then in 1989, Renée Kann came across an article in the New York Times about the Weapons of the Spirit movie. She said to her husband, “There is a film being made about a town where I think I might have spent some time.” So, they went to see it together.

A woman named Madeline Dreyfus was responsible for getting about 100 of those children to safety. At one point in the movie, Madeline Dreyfus appears. She is asked about a notebook that she kept. It was a place where she kept track of all the children she had hidden and where, which was quite risky. Anyway, Renée said, “she opens this notebook on the screen and I saw my sister’s name and my name and our address and my sister’s date of birth and [the movie] goes on and she turns pages and my name appears again. And I let out a scream. I have never in my life screamed like that.”

It was an incredible turning point for her. She said, “That’s the first time I realized that I had not been part of something shameful but a part of something extraordinarily beautiful and worthy.”[5]

She was precious, worthy of care and love, protection and rescue.

God’s delight, Beloved, well pleased.

Let me invite us now to stay right here, with these words. Allow them to sink deeply into you, believe them, trust them, know their truth and their power. You might want to close your eyes and sit comfortably. Allow your body to rest easily on your chair. Relax

Imagine that you are in an empty room. A little way in front of you is a rocking chair. It is rocking and you can see someone is in it. You walk towards the chair, slowly.

Then you see that the chair holds a grandmother. She is beautiful and wise. The love she carries fills the room. It is powerful, like a physical force surrounding her and you. Feel that love.

The grandmother beckons and you climb onto the grandmother’s lap. You are just the right size for her lap. Her strong arms wrap around you. You are being held, comfortably and securely.

Your breathing slows and deepens. You release tension, anxiety, fear, worry. They all slip away. All that matters right now is being here, on God’s lap.

You allow yourself to be held, to be rocked, you simply breathe in God’s fierce love, knowing that you are precious, worthy of love and care and protection.

Breathing in and out . . . God’s fierce love … you are still, at peace. . . and you listen for what God is saying to you . . .

Did you hear that? God says “you are my delight. You are my beloved. With you I am well pleased.”

Carefully now, you climb down from God’s lap and start moving away from the rocking chair. But you know that you may return again to this place whenever you need to. . .

[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, Mixed Blessings, (Boston: Cowley Publications, 1998), p. 59-60

[2] Rachel Held Evans, Searching For Sunday: Loving, Leaving and Finding the Church, (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2015) pp. 14-15

[3] Henri Nouwen, You Are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living (New York: Convergent Books, 2017) p. 169

[4] The Rev. Dr. Bill Leonard, in his sermon The River, https://day1.org/weekly-broadcast/5d9b820ef71918cdf2002c33/view

[5] https://wagingnonviolence.org/podcast/city-of-refuge-part-9/

1/5/20 - Arise, Shine - Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12

Arise, Shine

Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12

January 5, 2020

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

We have been reading portions from Isaiah for the last month. You remember that the book of Isaiah is a collection of writings to several generations of Israelites. We are near the end of the book. This part is addressed to those who have returned from exile in Babylon. Or, more correctly, to those who left the land of Babylon in which they were born in captivity, to return to the land of their parents and grandparents. Their return was anticipated as an occasion of great rejoicing, but the reality has been different. Those who were brave and strong enough to make the journey discovered a ruined Jerusalem, populated by the descendants of those who had not been exiled, barely eking out a living. Resettling the land involved a series of obstacles including poverty and famine. So, when the prophet said, “Arise, shine, for your light has come” the people might not have believed he was really talking to them.

But, in fact, he was. This is a plea to set aside their weariness, their despair, to renew their strength for the task at hand. Many of us are weary. Many of us are soul-sick, concerned to our core about the looming devastation of our planet, the indifference to the plight of other creatures, the intentional infliction of cruelty and suffering by humans onto other humans, the spiraling escalation of violence and enmity, bringing us perhaps to the brink of yet another war. If I were to suggest that Isaiah might be talking to us, would we believe it? Would I believe it?

I confess that I am weary and then I wonder about the people of Syria, locked in calamitous civil war for the last 8 years. Weary does not begin to describe it. Is this a word for them? Or is this a word for Palestinians who have been resisting the loss of their land and identity for longer than I have been alive? Or for indigenous people across the globe being assassinated as they engage in struggles to sustain water and forests and life for us all. Or for farmers in Honduras forced to leave their homes and land after 5 consecutive years of drought? Is this a word for them? Is this the year when things will change? Is it their time to rise? Is it ours? I do not know. It may be as hard for us to imagine that the light of God might come to us as it was for Isaiah’s listeners. It was probably equally difficult for Matthew’s hearers to imagine that it could happen in the time of the Roman empire.

In his book, Theology of Hope, German theologian Jürgen Moltmann said that sin is often fundamentally understood as pride, when humans want to be like God. But, he says that is only one side of it. He writes, “The other side of pride is hopelessness, resignation, inertia, melancholy. . . Temptation consists not so much of the titanic desire to be as God, but in weakness, timidity, weariness, not wanting to be what God requires of us”.[1]

The late Peter Gomes was a professor at Harvard Divinity School and minister at Harvard’s memorial church. In a sermon for New Year’s Day, he said, “It is very difficult to tear ourselves away from Bethlehem. There is a time to lay down one’s cares and duties and run to Bethlehem and the manger, a time to follow the star . . . a time to flee for refuge from the troubles of the world. There is also a time to return, to begin where we left off . . . for we have come from an encounter with the world of the possible in the midst of the impossible. We have seen God and survived to tell the tale, moving about not knowing that our faces shine with the encounter, bearing the mark of the encounter forever and marveling in the darkest night of the soul at that wondrous star-filled night.”[2]

Gomes is remembering Jacob who wrestled with God and lived to tell the story. He is recalling that when Moses met God on Mt Sinai, his face was shining and he didn’t know it. Encounter with God transforms us in ways we don’t expect or even recognize. “Rise, shine, your light has come,” says Isaiah. We’re not sure he is talking to us. Maybe he is not. Maybe this word is not for us just now. Regardless of whether or not this is a word from the Lord for us in this moment, it is our time to be faithful. It is our time to resist the temptation to weakness, timidity and weariness, our time to return to where we left off. But how?

Looking carefully at the story in Matthew 2, we might notice two things, two things to remember and hold onto as we pick up where we left off and continue into this new year.

We might notice that the Messiah enters the world and the world does not change. Brutality is still in charge after Jesus’ birth as much as it was before. Jesus and his family will flee from Herod’s violence.

Scholar Richard Swanson says, “Matthew knows that refugee stories often tell us of desperate midnight escapes. Matthew knows that sometimes even parents and children get separated in the dark and never again find each other. Because Matthew listens, he tells a story of messiah that does not pretend that the world is pretty and calm. God is with us in the bodies of refugees. God is with us in the corpses lying in the street. God is with us in the desperate midnight escape. And in each case, God is with us, not because everything turns out alright in the end. God is with us precisely because it does not turn out alright.”[3]

That’s one thing to hold onto.

A second thing we might notice are the actions of the magi. It says that upon entering the house, they knelt down and paid him homage. Paying homage to Jesus Christ is the dominant, recurring theme of this narrative. The phrase occurs at the beginning, the middle, and the end of the story (verses 2, 8, and 11). The Greek word there was commonly used to describe the custom of prostrating one’s self at the feet of a ruler. To kneel or lie down in front of someone, is an act of humble devotion and deference.[4]

The magi do not immediately present their gifts. The first thing they do is pay him homage. Only after this act of worship, only after giving themselves completely to Christ, do they present their material treasures. Preaching professor Thomas Troeger believes that the order of their actions—homage first and gifts second—is significant. Gift giving can be a way of controlling others. If the first thing the magi did was present their gifts, they may have appeared to be in command of the situation. There they would stand with precious goods in their outstretched hands. They would appear like rulers presenting treasures to each other on a state occasion while meeting in the middle of a ceremonial room, each of them on their feet and facing the other in order to assert their equality. But that is not what the magi do. They first express their relationship to Christ as humble, devoted servants, physically kneeling. First homage. First worship. First giving of themselves utterly and completely to Christ. Then their material gifts.[5]

Paying homage to Jesus means offering our entire selves. It means surrendering to what God requires of us. It means that we give ourselves without any sense that we can control God or use God’s name to bless our purposes and schemes. It might mean that we wait, longer than we would choose, for our time to rise and shine.

But we wait and we worship, because the one we worship is Emmanuel, God-with-us. Not the conquering hero, but the refugee seeking shelter, the parent separated from the child. In fact, God in Jesus is with us as victim of our anger, our vengeance. This is the one to whom we pay homage.

Alan Paton is the author who wrote Cry, the Beloved Country about the system of apartheid in his home of South Africa. Once, he gave guest lectures at Harvard. In the question and answer time afterwards, a woman stood up and asked, “Given all that you have said and we have heard, are you optimistic about the future of your country?”

Paton paused and then scowled and then said, “Madam, I am not optimistic, but I remain hopeful.”[6]

Voltaire said optimism was “the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong.” Hope is something different. Hope is knowing that God is working on a grander scale than we can see. Hope is worshipping the One who is with us, in spite of the fact that not everything turns out alright. Hope is trusting that God is with us precisely because it does not turn out alright.

Beloved ones, let us not give in to our weariness, but let us remain hopeful. Amen.

[1] Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and Implications of a Christian Eschatology (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), p. 22

[2] Peter Gomes, Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living (New York: Harper Collins, 1998), p. 24

[3] https://provokingthegospel.wordpress.com/2016/12/26/a-provocation-1st-sunday-after-christmas-january-1-2017-matthew-213-23/

[4] Thomas H. Troeger, in Feasting on the Word Year A, Volume 1, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010), p. 215

[5] Troeger, Feasting on the Word, p. 217.

[6] Peter Gomes, The Scandalous Gospel: What’s So Good about the Good News? (New York: HarperOne, 2008), p. 210

12/24/19 - Glimpse of Holy - Isaiah 52:7-10; Luke 2:1-20

Glimpse of Holy

Isaiah 52:7-10; Luke 2:1-20

December 24, 2019

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

I had the silly idea that I would find time to read a novel this Advent. That didn’t happen, but I’ll take it on my Christmas road trip. The novel, called Plainsong, is about ordinary life in a small Colorado town. One plotline follows 17-year-old Victoria, who is alone and pregnant. Maggie Jones, the schoolteacher has taken her in temporarily. One day Maggie drives out to the ranch of Raymond and Harold, who are elderly brothers and farmers.

Let me read the next little bit:

"I came out here to ask you a favor," she said to them.

"That’s so?" Harold said. "What is it?"

"There is a girl I know who needs some help," Maggie said. "She’s a good girl but she’s gotten into trouble. I think you might be able to help her. I would like you to consider it and let me know."

"What’s wrong with her?" Harold said. "She need a donation of money?"

"No, she needs a lot more than that."

"What sort of trouble is she in?" Raymond said.

"She’s seventeen. She’s four months pregnant and she doesn’t have a husband."

"Well, yeah," Harold said. "I reckon that could amount to trouble."

Maggie explains that the girl’s father abandoned the family years ago, her mother won’t have her in the house, . . . and the father of her child doesn’t want anything to do with her.

"All right then," Harold said. "You got our attention. You say you don’t want money. What do you want?"

She sipped her coffee . . . looked at the two old brothers . . . . "I want something improbable," she said. "That’s what I want. I want you to think about taking this girl in. Of letting her live with you."

They stared at her.

. . .

After a long silence, Harold says, "Let’s get back to the money part. Money’d be a lot easier."

"Yes," she said. "It would. But not nearly as much fun."[1]

Tonight we celebrate the God who came to live with us. Surely there were easier ways for God to redeem the creation, to fix us, to reconcile the world to God’s own self. Declining anything easier, God chose to enter human existence like one of us and I strongly suspect it was for the sheer joy of it.

When the time came, Mary gave birth to her son. Jesus came into the world as each of us did. His birth involved labor and pain and blood and fear and longing and love and the bonding of parents and child.

In Jesus of Nazareth, God became a particular person, with a specific combination of all the gifts and limitations that one individual bears. Becoming human meant that something new happened in the life of God. God experienced the heights and depths of human existence and all the ordinariness and boredom too.

God become flesh and dwelt among us, as John’s gospel says. Babies can do nothing for themselves. They are entirely dependent on adults to provide and protect and care for them. God entered into the vulnerability that we all share. Becoming flesh – can we think about that reality for just a minute? Flesh is the beauty of a child at play and a couple in love on their wedding day. Flesh makes possible the thrill of ski-jumping or putting a masterpiece onto canvas or scuba diving or singing your heart out on stage or in the shower. Being enfleshed also involves the possibility of injury and disease and weakness, the reality of wrinkles and slowing down and needing more help than you once did. When God becomes flesh, God is repeating, even more emphatically, what God said at the time of creation “It is good. It is very good.”

My friends at Gilead Church in Chicago spent a good bit of time thinking about incarnation this year. One of their affirmations is that “All bodies are beautiful and all bodies are sacred.” They say, “We believe in a God whose love was made known by taking on a body, and what we do with our bodies can still reveal the God of love.” To illustrate this, they made a calendar with pictures of bodies, bodies of church members, sacred, beautiful bodies. They called it Word and Flesh. It honors all bodies and the stories we hold in them.[2]

God becomes incarnate to show us how very much we are loved. You may have seen this nativity scene. It’s at the Claremont United Methodist Church in Claremont, California. It depicts Mary, Joseph and Jesus as separated and caged, reflecting the plight of immigrants and asylum seekers on our southern border. It has been controversial, but this church has made statements with their nativity scenes before. They have also portrayed Joseph and Mary as people experiencing homelessness, and as war refugees in bombed-out Iraq. One year Mary was depicted as a poor woman arrested for giving birth in a bus shelter.[3]

I suppose these are controversial because they are seen as political and not religious – but have you counted how many political leaders and contexts are mentioned in Luke 2? Jesus was political. Enfleshed life is political. Maybe the controversy is because they are so specific. Except that every human life is specific. To portray the Holy Family suffering in these ways is to proclaim that all families are holy and that God has entered deeply and fully into the world in order to reconcile us to God’s own self.

Joy to the world – that’s our theme. Theologian Henri Nouwen wrote “Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing - sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death - can take that love away.”[4] God becomes incarnate to share everything with us. The more deeply we believe that, the more fully we live within God’s unconditional love, the less fearful we will be and the more joy we will know.

Jesus, on the final night of his life, knowing that he was hours away from betrayal and death, shared a last meal with his friends, probably surprised them with these words, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.”

God comes into the world to show how much we are loved. The love of Christ casts out fear. And we carry that love within us. Just as the human Jesus was vulnerable, at the mercy of human beings, so are we also vulnerable and dependent on the love and strength of each other. We align ourselves with Jesus who shared real life with real humans -- laughter and songs and stories and physical pain and tears and regrets and deep sorrow. We draw upon what we know to make connections with others who are also deeply loved by God. Then, God becomes incarnate in us. We become the Body of Christ.

The song we’ve been singing this season says “as we look to one another, a glimpse of holy we might see.” I think that joy happens when we catch a glimpse of the holy.

Two weeks ago, I went to visit our sister E in hospice. She was not having a good day. She struggled valiantly through a brain made foggy by pain meds. Certain words just would not come, like the words “mountain climber” which were essential to a story she was telling. But she said your name, Michael, without hesitation. She started to share something, stopped herself and said, “Don’t tell Michael.” So I promised I would not. Then she said, “I used to play the organ in our other church, because it didn’t have pedals.”

I said, “ Michael would love to know that. Why can’t I tell him?” She looked at me for a long time and then it seemed that she concluded that in the current circumstances, there was no longer any danger that Michael would ask her to be a substitute organist, and she said, “OK.”

In addition to being confused, she was also very agitated. She was worried about something that existed only in her mind and the rest of us could say nothing to ease it. Trying to distract her, I told her that I had been listening to Christmas carols on my drive from Albany and I wondered if she had a favorite carol. She was silent again for so long that I thought I needed to offer her some suggestions or change the subject, but then she quickly blurted out “O Come All Ye Faithful”. Her niece, J, started singing it. I joined in and just kept watching E’s face. She was mouthing the words “O come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant . . .” Maybe she was even singing very softly. She met my gaze steadily. Pretty soon she was crying and I was crying, but we kept singing. She was absolutely not confused or agitated. It was a moment of joy, just a glimpse of holy.

“Mary brought forth her firstborn son and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.”

And the voice of an angel, a messenger from God announced: “Behold! Good news of great joy for all the people.”

Beloved ones, Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Thanks be to God.

[1] Kent Haruf, Plainsong, (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), pp 107-110

[2] https://www.gileadchicago.org/2020-calendar/word-and-flesh

[3] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-13/nativity-scene-cage-refugees-claremont-column?fbclid=IwAR07INqI2uJaaExC-jc86YLarPx6nmlisuGyvrPpAer10KWwJngB9GjONNs

[4] Henri Nouwen, You Are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living (New York: Convergent Books, 2017) p. 169

12/22/19 - Courage and Serenity - Isaiah 7:10-16; Matthew 1:18-25

Courage and Serenity

Isaiah 7:10-16; Matthew 1:18-25

December 22, 2019

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

With Christmas just 3 days away, we finally get to hear about the birth of Jesus. Matthew’s version is kind of under-stated on the details of the birth itself. We will hear more about those on Christmas Eve from Luke. Today, we just get part of the lead-in from Joseph’s point of view. I know, I know, this is the story some of us have been waiting for all month, but first, we need to go back about 700 years to Isaiah. Isaiah is the prophet that Matthew quotes in verse 23. Matthew is writing as a Jewish person to other Jewish people who know their history. We do not know that history and so this one verse has been tripping up Christians for hundreds of years.

Isaiah the prophet lived in Jerusalem during the 700’s BCE. Much of the first part of the book is about the destruction which is coming because of the people’s sin and disobedience. Matthew quotes from chapter 7, in which Isaiah is addressing King Ahaz, who is the ruler of Judah. Two neighboring countries have joined forces and are trying to take over Judah. They want to take Ahaz’s throne away. Of course, King Ahaz is frightened by this. His dilemma is whether to align himself with a third party or to trust in God for deliverance. God sends Isaiah to Ahaz to reassure him that his enemies will not succeed. And God even says that since Ahaz is so reluctant to take him at his word, that he should ask for a sign from God that this is true.

Ahaz replies “I will not ask; I will not put the LORD to the test.” This is a show of false piety. “Actually, what the king means is that he is so little used to asking God anything at all that he is fearful that YHWH will say nothing to him by way of response.”[1]

Since Ahaz refuses to ask for a sign, Isaiah provides one. Isaiah says “Look, a young woman is with child and is about to give birth to a son. Let her name him Immanuel.” Isaiah says that by the time the child named Immanuel can choose between bad and good, the two kings Ahaz is currently worried about will be history.

Now, Isaiah is not talking about Jesus. I know that this is how it is traditionally interpreted – thanks in large part to Matthew’s quotation – but that is not quite right. Isaiah says that a young woman is already pregnant. She is pregnant in his time, 700 years before Mary carries Jesus. Isaiah is not predicting Jesus’ birth. He is also not talking about a virgin birth. Isaiah is talking about a young woman having a baby, full stop. And there are translation issues between the Hebrew of Isaiah’s time and the Greek of Matthew’s. I don’t want to get into those details right now, but if you want the technical explanation, ask me during coffee hour.

So, if Isaiah is not talking about Jesus in the first place, then why does Matthew quote him to talk about Jesus? Remember that Matthew is writing to Jewish people who already believe that Jesus is the Messiah. He is not trying to convince them of that, as much as he is describing how well Jesus embodies Messiahship, how much he is in continuity with their faith tradition.

Matthew and his audience do not believe that Isaiah was predicting Jesus’ birth, but there are important parallels between the two stories. When Isaiah addresses King Ahaz, he calls him “House of David.” “When Matthew quotes Isaiah, he alerts his audience that God is once again raising up a ruler from the line of David to deliver God’s people. He is appealing to them to trust in the God who has always been faithful, even in the midst of sin and judgment.”[2]

God’s promise to Ahaz was fulfilled. His enemies did not prevail. That sign was true in Isaiah’s day and so, Matthew is applying that truthfulness to the story he is telling about Jesus. Incidentally, we notice that Mary’s son is not actually named Emmanuel, which means God-with-us, but Jesus, which is related to the Hebrew word Joshua and means Savior. Jesus, the “new deliverer represents not only God’s presence, but also God’s solution for the problem [of sin] which had led [Judah] into conquest and exile in the first place.”[3]

Today, I notice one more connection between these two stories, and that is the issue of trust. Ahaz was unwilling to trust God, not even enough to ask for a sign. The story that Matthew is telling in the very first chapter of his gospel seems to hinge on trust. Joseph’s trust in Mary, his trust in God, perhaps even his trust in himself. So, now, finally, let us look at that story.

The story is familiar to most of us. Joseph and Mary are betrothed. Betrothal was legally binding, in a way that contemporary engagements are not. To break a betrothal required a divorce. Mary is pregnant. Joseph is not the father. The penalty for adultery is stoning, or at least public shaming. Matthew tells us that Joseph is righteous, and that he wants to keep things quiet, to divorce Mary as privately as possible, to help her avoid disgrace. Scholar and pre-eminent preacher Fred Craddock said, “When he decides to protect Mary from humiliation and punishment, he does so contrary to the law, and he does so because he is just (righteous).”[4] The traditional interpretation is that Joseph is working hard to do the right thing, which is to protect Mary, even though it violates the law, and righteous people generally keep the law. But then the angel comes to him in a dream and tells him not to be afraid, but to continue with his plans to marry Mary. And he does, because that is the most righteous action in the circumstances.

This is an interpretation we have heard often. It is familiar and persuasive. It might even be the best interpretation. But I read another possibility this week which is worth considering. This one depends on how we understand the last part of verse 18 which says “but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” We, the readers, know that this child is from the Holy Spirit, but does Joseph know that? It says “she was found to be with child”. Found by whom? I think whether Joseph knows or not is ambiguous. One commentator believes that Matthew is saying that Joseph knows about the Spirit’s involvement from the outset, and that unfaithfulness is not the reason he wants a quiet divorce.

“If Joseph thinks Mary has betrayed him, we might expect the angel in his dream to say, ‘do not be angry’ or ‘do not be heartbroken’ – [instead of] ‘do not be afraid to marry her.’ And on the other hand, in many scriptural stories, being afraid is indeed the first human response to divine presence, so it would make sense if Joseph’s first reaction to Mary’s divine-and-human pregnancy was fear. From this angle, we shouldn’t translate the angel’s message to him as, Hey, the child is from the Holy Spirit, not another man, so don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife..., but rather: Hey, don’t let the fact that the child is from the Holy Spirit make you afraid to take Mary as your wife…’”[5]

That’s an interesting angle, isn’t it? If Joseph is not afraid that Mary has been unfaithful, what might he be afraid of? Perhaps he is afraid of getting in God’s way, of messing up what God is doing. Maybe he feels unworthy of being the stepfather of God’s child. Perhaps he is simply unnerved and bewildered and downright afraid that God has come so unimaginably, intimately near. [6]

I’m intrigued by this new-to-me interpretation. It puts Joseph in a parallel position to Mary, being given a choice about whether he will accept the role God is inviting him to step into or if he will let his fear control the decision.

Whichever interpretation you prefer, either way it seems to come down to trust. Will Joseph trust Mary’s faithfulness? Will Joseph choose to trust that God is really speaking in his dream or will he claim that it was just a nightmare from the anchovies on his pizza right before bed? Will Joseph trust himself to welcome this child, to name him and raise him as his son? Will he add his lifelong support to Mary’s courageous yes?

The issue of trust is an important link between Isaiah and Matthew. Matthew’s appeal to the Hebrew scriptures is a reminder that God is trustworthy, even when humans are not. Matthew has also just finished listing all of Jesus’ ancestors. That long list of names would have triggered memories of God’s faithfulness and of those ancestors who accepted a call from God to do the unexpected. In other Advent seasons, we have noted that Matthew includes 4 women ancestors, each of whom is associated with some scandal, not usually of her own making. He is setting up the expectation that Mary and Joseph’s apparent scandal will be used by God for God’s purposes just as those were.

Joseph wrestles with his options. He wants to do the right thing, the best thing. It makes me think of the well-known prayer written by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in the 1930’s. Often called the Serenity Prayer, it simply says, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Serenity is another word for peace. This could be called the peace prayer. It also speaks of the courage necessary for change, and so it could be called the courage prayer. Of course, this prayer wasn’t circulating in first century Judea, so Joseph wasn’t saying these particular words. But surely, it reflects his quandary. What could be changed about his situation? What must be accepted? Where was the wisdom?

In his dream, the first words the angel says are “do not be afraid.” It’s what angels always say, isn’t it? It seems that wisdom is found in trust, that peace and courage are the result of not giving in to fear. Roy Bennett has a collection of inspirational sayings. One of them is “Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.”

“Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.”[7]

That is what Joseph does. Facing the fear of potential disgrace and shame and scandal, the total messiness of human life, Joseph is led by God’s dream, of strong love in the midst of harsh realities, of serenity fueled by trust. He chooses to trust that Mary is faithful, that the angel is really speaking to him. He believes in a baby named Savior who comes as a sign of God’s presence, Emmanuel. This is the path of wisdom and courage and peace that leads to joy. May it be so for you and me. Amen.

[1] John Holbert at https://www.patheos.com/progressive-christian/2013/12/young-woman-bears-john-holbert-12-16-2013

[2] Sharon Dowyd in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year A, Volume 1 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Carolyn Sharp, Editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2019), p. 51.

[3] Sharon Dowyd, p. 51

[4] https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2010-11/sunday-december-19-2010

[5] Courageous Love: SALT’s Lectionary Commentary for Advent Week 4, https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2019/12/16/courageous-love-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-advent-week-four

[6] Courageous Love

[7] Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart, Amazon Digital Services, 2016.

12/15/19 - Hopes and Fears of All the Years - Isaiah 35:1-10; Luke 1:46b-55

Hopes and Fears of All the Years

Isaiah 35:1-10

Luke 1:46b-55

December 15, 2019

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

Note: Photo credit to Chayene Rafaela, image at https://unsplash.com/photos/FIEc0HdCfZs

Many of us have either heard Handel’s Messiah performed so often or sung it ourselves that it may be impossible to read Isaiah without creating musical echoes in our minds. The reading from Isaiah 35 is one of those. It is a poem of joy and restoration, of homecoming and celebration. The song almost bursts off the page.

What is not so musical are most of the events described in the previous chapters. It is the time in history when the Assyrian Empire was on the rise. As it gained power and influence, it took over smaller nations on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, including Israel. The first part of the book of Isaiah offers images of doom, destruction and slaughter. There is anger, violence, catastrophe, much of which is attributed to God’s fury at the nations for their disobedience and injustice.

Scholars believe that what is now the book of Isaiah is a compilation of material from two or three different times in history. First Isaiah, chapters 1-39, is the time of the Assyrian empire’s subjugation of Israel, eventually taking the people into exile in Assyria. Second Isaiah, chapters 40-55, shifts its focus to the southern kingdom of Judah which was also taken into exile, not in Assyria, but in Babylon. This was 100 years later when Babylon had replaced Assyria as the dominant empire. Second Isaiah offers hope to those living in exile that they will return home soon. Some scholars refer to chapters 56-66 as Third Isaiah and see it addressed to a third group, those who have finally returned and are doing the hard work of reconstruction.

The point is that chapter 35 is out of place. It describes return from an exile that hasn’t happened yet, that won’t even begin for another 100 years. In chapter 34 we read, “The streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch, and her soil into sulfur; her land shall become burning pitch…Thorns shall grow over its strongholds, nettles and thistles in its fortresses.” Then, without a break and without explanation, Isaiah 35 interrupts devastation and despair:

“The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad. The desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing…

Lutheran minister Barbara Lundblad says, “This poem comes too early. Who moved it? Some things even our best scholarship cannot explain. The Spirit hovered over the text and over the scribes: “Put it here,” breathed the Spirit, “before anyone is ready. Interrupt the narrative of despair.” So here it is: a word that couldn’t wait until it might make more sense.[1]

A word that can’t wait until it makes more sense. How we need such words! When we seem surrounded by sadness and sighing and devastation, when the pronouncements of those in authority are unjust and cruel and illogical, when children’s desperate pleas for help before they die are considered unworthy, when what is proclaimed into microphones or tweeted into cyberspace is the exact opposite of truth, how we need a word like this, a word out of order, a word that interrupts despair, a word that can’t wait for a better time.

Such words are spoken by prophets. Scholar Patricia Tull says that the vision of Isaiah 35 is for the future “when justice and only justice inhabits the road” and also for right now, “when we carry the insistent vision of what is meant to be.”[2] The word that is out of place interrupts the narrative of despair and insists that a different future is possible.

Sojourner Truth was a brilliant and indomitable enslaved woman who could neither read nor write but who was passionate about ending unjust slavery and second-class treatment of women – a word out of order in her time. At the end of one of her antislavery talks in Ohio, a man came up to her and said, “Old woman, do you think that your talk about slavery does any good? Do you suppose people care what you say? Why, I don't care anymore for your talk than I do for the bite of a flea.”

“Perhaps not,” she answered, “but, the Lord willing, I'll keep you scratching.” [3]

The word from Isaiah says “strengthen the weak hands, make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are afraid, ‘be strong, do not fear.’” Yes, beloved ones, this is a word we need today.

“Do not be afraid” is what the angel said to Mary, announcing news that would turn her world, and ours, upside down.

Of course, Mary was afraid. Even before the angels’ news, her life was hard. She was a poor adolescent girl in a village on the outskirts of the Roman Empire. Her best hope would be to marry someone who could provide for her. Her highest aspirations were probably to bear children who lived, to have enough to feed and clothe them, and to live long enough to see her grandchildren. Her fears were those of poor people everywhere: poverty, hunger, sickness, violence, widowhood and death.

And then the angel said that she would have a special baby. Didn’t her hands go weak, didn’t her knees tremble? Didn’t the adrenaline rush through her system? What would Joseph say? What would her family do? Would she be stoned to death for adultery? Would she die in childbirth? Who was she, to be singled out, chosen for this?

In spite of her very reasonable fears, she said yes, yes to the choice of God, yes to a different future than she would ever have imagined, yes to the possibility of joy.

And then, she goes to see Elizabeth, because the angel tells her that Elizabeth is also pregnant. She goes to find companionship and community, to offer strength for Elizabeth’s weak hands and find a steadying of her own trembling knees. There on Elizabeth’s doorstep, she bursts into song, the song we call Magnificat because that’s how it begins in Latin. It’s a song of justice, where the hungry are full and those who abuse their power are brought low, and the oppressed and abused are raised up. She sings of faithfulness and restoration and liberation.

It is a word out of order, a song that can’t wait for a better time. It is improbable that these earth-shattering words would come from a young peasant girl who held no power or authority in the world, but here they are.

A couple of years ago, Pope Francis did a TED talk. Here is some of what he said,

“Hope is the door that opens onto the future. Hope is a humble, hidden seed of life that, with time, will develop into a large tree. . . . And it can do so much, because a tiny flicker of light that feeds on hope is enough to shatter the shield of darkness. A single individual is enough for hope to exist.”

“And that individual can be you. And then there will be another "you," and another "you," and it turns into an "us." And so, does hope begin when we have an "us?" No. Hope began with one "you." When there is an "us," there begins a revolution. … The future is in the hands of those people who recognise the other as ‘you’ and themselves as part of an ‘us.’ ” [4]

Hope begins here with one individual, with Mary of Nazareth who says yes. But Mary also recognizes herself as part of an ‘us’. She sings that God’s mercy is great towards those who fear God from one generation to the next. She locates herself as someone who has been taught the faith from the older generation. At this point of potential crisis, this defining moment in her personal life and in the life of the world, she speaks from within her faith tradition. She speaks for herself, yes, but her words are echoes of the prophets’ proclamations and the prayers of ancient grandmothers, and so she speaks for all of us.

One of the most succinct poetic lines of all the Christmas carols is from O Little Town of Bethlehem where it says “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”

That sums up the arrival of the Messiah. It also sums up Mary’s song. She is singing of the old hopes and fears of Isaiah’s Israel under Assyrian subjugation and of her own Israel occupied by Rome, the hopes and fears of all who have ever sung that Christmas carol, your hopes and mine, the highest hopes and deepest fears of human beings, passed from one generation to the next.

Mary of Nazareth is one individual who makes a place for hope to exist, long enough for an “us” to form, long enough to join God’s revolution where justice and only justice inhabits the road. Mary’s song is good news because it enables us to know where to align ourselves, our time, talents and resources. It is good news for us because we do not have to rectify all that is broken, because God is present and active, carrying out redemption. It is good news of hope in seemingly hopeless situations.

In their book on Protestant perspectives on Mary, Beverly Gaventa and Cynthia Rigby say this, “Mary is who we are. She is a person of faith who does not always understand but who seeks to put her trust in God. She is one who is blessed not because she sins less or has keener insights into the things of God. She is instead blessed, as we are, because she is called by God to participate in the work of God . . . To call Mary blessed is to recognize the blessedness of ordinary people who are called to participate in that which is extraordinary.”[5]

The Christmas song “Mary, Did you Know?” questions what it was like to be the mother of God incarnate and anticipates the events of Jesus’ life. Jennifer Henry is the director of KAIROS, an ecumenical social justice organization in Toronto. She has written alternative lyrics to that song, asking if Mary imagined the impact of her song on future generations. I invite us to listen carefully to these lyrics and respond in turn, with the words that will appear on the screen.

TL: Mary did you know,

that your ancient words would still leap off our pages?

Mary did you know,

that your spirit song would echo through the ages?

GS: Did you know

that your holy cry would be subversive word,

that the tyrants would be trembling when they know your truth is heard?

Mary did you know, that your lullaby

would stir your own Child’s passion?

RS: Mary did you know,

that your song inspires the work of liberation?

Did you know that your Jubilee

is hope within the heart of all who dream of justice,
who yearn for it to start?

*Congregation:

The truth will teach,

the drum will sound, healing for the pain
The poor will rise, the rich will fall. Hope will live again

KM: Mary did you know,

that we hear your voice for the healing of the nations?

Mary did you know,
your unsettling cry can help renew creation?

*Congregation:

Do you know, that we need your faith,

the confidence of you,
May the God that you believe in, be so true.[6]

Beloved ones, the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom, for the Mighty One has done great things. Therefore, strengthen the weak hands, make firm the feeble knees, Be strong, do not fear. The Lord is come. Amen.

[1] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1941

[2] Patricia Tull, Isaiah 1-39 (Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys Publishing, 2010), p. 519

[3] https://www.childrensdefense.org/child-watch-columns/health/2013/we-must-never-give-up/

[4] Pope Francis in a TED Talk, 2017 http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2017/documents/papa-francesco_20170426_videomessaggio-ted-2017.html

[5] Beverly Roberts Gaventa and Cynthia Rigby, Blessed One: Protestant Perspectives on Mary. (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2002), p. 5.

[6] https://holytrinity.to/author/jennifer-henry/

12/8/19 - Reclaiming Repentance - Isaiah 11:1-10; Matthew 3:1-12

Reclaiming Repentance

Isaiah 11:1-10

Matthew 3:1-12

December 8, 2019

Emmanuel Baptist Church, Rev. Kathy Donley

When we think of John the Baptist at Christmas, we might imagine a baby about three months older than his cousin Jesus, the pride and joy of his aged parents, Elizabeth and Zechariah. But if we think of John the Baptist at Advent, it is always the thirty-something, unshaven, street preacher in the wilderness, the one coming to public awareness just a little ahead of Jesus. Luke is the only gospel that mentions the circumstances of his birth. In Matthew, he bursts onto the scene as a fully formed prophet.

He is in the wilderness. In Israel’s history, the wilderness is the place of spiritual formation. It is where their ancestors spent years after the Exodus, learning how to be God’s people. The wilderness is therefore a sacred place, a formative, liminal space. In the first century, travel was dangerous and considered deviant behavior, unless there was a good reason, like holidays, visiting family or business. The wilderness was a deviant destination as well, because it was beyond the structure provided by cities and towns. It was the place where wild animals and demons lived.[1]

John wears rough clothing – a garment of camel’s hair tied with a leather belt – and eats wild food – honey and locusts. That is pretty much the standard picture of John the Baptist in Advent. But before John, that was the standard description of the prophet Elijah. For centuries, people have been expecting God to send a Messiah, someone who will put things right and restore Israel to its former glory. One of the signs that the Messiah’s time is near, is the return of Elijah. So, when John dresses and acts in a way to call Elijah to mind, he conveys a message before he ever opens his mouth.

John the Baptist invokes the memory of Elijah as signal that all that Israel has been living toward, the best of its faith and tradition, their deepest hope is about to come to fruition. The Rev. Tom Long suggests that it “would be as if Abraham Lincoln should suddenly reappear to speak to Congress, or if Dr. King should return to lead a civil rights march. . . . When one who represents the very spirit of the movement appears, the air bristles with the possibility for renewal.”[2]

John’s message is “repent”. We are not surprised. That’s what we expect street preachers to say. If you grew up in certain streams of Christianity, like I did, your first association with that word “repent” might be with judgment. Because of that some of us think that “repent” means “be sorry or else”. And because it’s a Bible word, a church word, it means to be really, really sorry or else the wrath of God is going to come down like a ton of bricks.

But really, to repent means to change. Repentance means to change direction, to turn around, to start over. One theologian says “to repent is not to feel bad, but to think differently and therefore to act differently.”[3] Repentance is the kind of change that happens when we realize that the way we are headed is not going to get us to the vision of wholeness and peace that God intends.

So John is out in the middle of nowhere saying “Look, the kingdom of heaven is arriving! Turn around or you’ll miss it!”

Looking like Elijah, he reminds them of the best of their prophetic traditions and he gets up their hopes about a Messiah and so, they break social norms and flock out into the wilderness to hear him. His popularity suggests that there is a yearning, a deep hunger for a spiritual truth that they haven’t found in the safety of Jerusalem or the towns around the Jordan. It is perhaps a need so intense that they are willing to brave the deviant, dangerous wilderness to find it.

Matthew says that many Pharisees and Sadducees were coming out with all the others. They represent the religious and political elites from Jerusalem. To embrace John’s proclamation would mean an about-turn; it would involve embracing a new world-view. For these pillars of society, it would mean turning their backs on everything in which they have been participating and from which they have been benefitting.[4]

And so, I notice that Matthew says “many” of them are coming out. I wonder if they have the same yearning for something deeper, the same need to find God beyond the institution that they serve.

This gets my attention because the Pharisees and Sadducees are politically involved religious leaders – I guess if I need to find myself in this text, that’s the shoe that fits best. Also, because this scene, as described by Matthew, seems to capture a moment of crisis for institutional religion and for political leaders, a moment being felt by the general population. Perhaps the world experiences a lot of those moments, but certainly I think it describes our own time as well.

As I was beginning sabbatical last spring, the news was breaking of the death of Rachel Held Evans, at age 37. Rachel was a best-selling author and speaker who wrote about faith and doubt in our current moment. On her blog, she described how her understanding of God had changed and how she could no longer be part of the church which had nurtured her for so long. What she wrote resonated. She heard back from her readers. One said she had left her church because she was banned from serving in their feeding ministry after she wrote a letter to the editor supporting marriage equality. Another left after being molested by a minister while the congregation refused to take action. One father of a newborn daughter said, “I don’t want her to ever know that God, the God we grew up with, the one the church at large preaches. I don’t want her to grow up with the crap we did. I want her to know God, but not that God. Never ever that God.” And an anonymous pastor said, “I go to church because I’m paid to be there. I’m scared to tell anyone that, deep down, I’m not sure I believe in God.” [5]

I wonder if those people pouring out into the wilderness were anything like those today who are leaving church or never entering it in the first place.

I’ve read the rest of Matthew’s gospel. I know that the Sadducees and the Pharisees are going to oppose Jesus. They’re going to get him killed. So, of course, they’re the ones who need to repent. It is so easy to see when others need to change. But since it is the most likely place for me to find myself in this text – might that suggest that maybe I, as a church leader, am one who needs to change? I raised that question at a clergy Bible study this week. The first response of the other pastors was to define the religious elites of our day – predictably the first targets were the pastors of mega churches and the evangelicals who seem to have aligned themselves with political power. Conveniently, no one in the room thought that any of us were among today’s religious elites, so we were off the hook. But I’m still wondering about that.

Something else about the Pharisees and Sadducees – they’re usually on opposite sides of political issues and religious questions. “They represent different classes, different institutional loyalties, different intellectual traditions, different theological heritages.”[6] Think fundamentalists and mainline Christians, Republicans and Democrats, Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. So why would they be coming together for baptism?

It turns out that the phrase “coming for baptism” can also mean “coming against baptism”.[7] The same preposition can mean both “for” and “against” especially “if the feelings are of a hostile nature”. John’s reaction to the presence of these religious leaders certainly indicates hostility. It seems likely that they have come to oppose John’s baptism and to persuade others not to participate. These intense rivals, these most unlikely partners, are united by one thing – their shared resistance to the coming kingdom of heaven.

One scholar writes “This is a lesson worth remembering in a church and world divided into different parties. We are so busy vilifying our enemies that we seldom see the ways in which we have become comrades in hostility to God’s kingdom. We imagine that our enemies are also God’s, never recognizing that both we and those we oppose may be equally distant from God’s kingdom (and equally close.) . . . Perhaps the church is in such a state because each is committed to its own party’s victory rather than the reign of God.”[8]

You and I are all too familiar with churches and denominations divided into factions, vilifying each other, winning or losing our skirmishes, while the world looks on and shrugs or walks away, seeing no evidence of God’s reign among us. “Comrades in hostility to God’s kingdom” is a powerful, apt description.

This sermon is not sounding very joyful or loving, is it? You may also be thinking that it isn’t even truthful. You might be thinking that Emmanuel is not like those churches abandoned by Rachel Held Evans’ readers. We are actually not like the leaders John condemned – those who upheld and oppressive social structures to their own benefit. I know that you are a generous and compassionate congregation, that you support each other in joy and in suffering, that you reach out with gifts of money and time and energy to express the love of Christ to strangers in tangible ways. I know that you do justice and love kindness and seek to walk humbly with God. I really do know that.

But I keep picturing that crowd moving further away from the big church in downtown Jerusalem, going out to the margins, to stand on the bank of the river and listen to an unknown, uncredentialed, unconventional preacher. I imagine them embodying a mass yearning for meaning, an eagerness to receive the Spirit of God who is on the move again. I see them and I blink and the image comes into new focus and I’m aware of so many today with a similar yearning, the same deep need to connect with the Divine.

And I have to admit that the institution of church, as it exists now, seems divided and broken. Maybe in some places, it is actively hostile to God’s purposes. Maybe in others, it is just increasingly indifferent and irrelevant to them. For years, there have been voices, in the wilderness and the not-so-wild places, calling out for repentance, for change, Rachel Held Evans among them. And to your credit, Emmanuel, you have been listening. You have sought ways to bring the best of our faith and tradition to bear, to share the gospel meaningfully in this current moment. Next month, a new Vision Committee is forming, to explore what God is calling us to, how to turn to realign our communal life with Christ’s life. I am excited about this, but also, I’m a bit apprehensive. I’m hoping that we will be open to real repentance, but if we are, that means that I might have to change. I’ve been ordained for 24 years this month. I feel like I’m just starting to get the hang of this pastor thing and the thought that something new might be required, well that’s a little scary.

But friends, this is where love and joy finally come in. Love because it is the most powerful force there is. Love is the energy that motivates change and sustains us when it is harder than anticipated. Love is the power that allows for failure and forgiveness and second chances and trying again. Stock up on love, because if we engage in real repentance, together, we are going to need it.

And then alongside it, comes joy. It is the joy of vocation, of being used for a purpose. I always think of Frederick Buechner’s saying that “the place God calls you to is the place where your deepest gladness and the world’s deepest hunger meet.” That intersection is called joy.

Love and joy. “Beloved ones, look, the kingdom of heaven is arriving! Turn around or you’ll miss it!”

[1] Bruce Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, 2nd edition, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), p. 31

[2] Tom Long, Matthew: Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997 ) p. 26

[3] John Howard Yoder, The Original Revolution (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1971), p. 31

[4] Raj Nadella in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year A, Volume 1 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Carolyn Sharp, Editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2019), p. 29.

[5]Rachel Held Evans, Searching For Sunday: Loving, Leaving and Finding the Church, (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2015) p. 82-83

[6] Timothy A. Beach-Verhey in Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew, Volume 1, Cynthia Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2013) p. 40.

[7] Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, (Maryknoll, NY: Obis Books, 2000), p. 96

[8] Timothy A, Beach-Verhey, in Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew, p. 42

12/1/19 - Hope for the Long Haul - Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14

Hope for the Long Haul

Isaiah 2:1-5 Romans 13:11-14

December 1, 2019

Emmanuel Baptist Church, Rev. Kathy Donley

The architects of Advent and Christmas lived in the northern hemisphere.  They did not choose to celebrate Jesus’ birthday in the midst of winter because of any evidence that Jesus was born in December.  They chose to celebrate it then because other people in northern latitudes had already figured out that long dark winters needed an infusion of light and cheer if they were to be endured.  Those ancient peoples knew that hope was essential to the survival of the human spirit.

Most of our hymns are written by people who live in the northern hemisphere and so they reflect the same worldview.  I appreciate the lyrics that we sang in our second hymn “In deepest night, Christ’s coming shall be, when all the world is despairing.”   “When all the world is despairing” . . .  many of us have deep concerns about the all the world right now.  We could easily name places and people and animals and ecosystems in every part of the planet that are in danger from violence and greed and cruelty and indifference.  We are aware of the potential for despair.  But if the ancient people could hope for the return of the sun, with no understanding of the solar system, then we, who have the gift of the gospel, have so much more reason for hope, and for joy which is strong and loving and fearless.

Isaiah wrote in the midst of war.  The people who heard his message had no good reason to hope for peace, no expectation to believe that the weapons of war would ever be transformed into tools for the community.  Yet, they yearned for the promised transformation when God’s reign will be established for all to see.   It is a deep hope which persists despite all evidence to the contrary.  Someone must have believed Isaiah, because they preserved his message.

The Christians in Rome had expected Jesus’ imminent return, but as the years passed and the older generations began to die, they might have thought their hope was misplaced.   Paul himself believed that Christ would return in his lifetime.   That did not happen, but theologically Paul was not wrong.  “He was right to believe that every moment in time is rich with divine possibility.  He was right to urge his readers to “wake up from sleep” – to pay attention and be alert to the imminent inbreaking of eternity.”[1]

We, who live on this side of resurrection, live in the anticipation of the next thing God will do.  Confident that history’s final outcome is safely in God’s hands, we have hope for the long haul. Despite what is happening at the moment, a day of justice and kindness and mercy is coming.

Hope is perhaps better caught than taught.  When we are tempted to despair, we may lean on the hopeful strength of others.  So, today, let me simply offer three images of hope.

Most of us are angry and heartbroken over the situation at our southern border.  The militarization of that border, the systematic separation of asylum-seeking families, the detention of children for profit occurring simultaneously with the deportation of some parents, and now the remain in Mexico protocols – these all seem to be actions of a government impervious to its own citizens’ demands for compassion and justice.  It would be easy to lose hope, but we cannot, especially because those right in the thick of it have not.

There are many volunteers on both sides of the border.  They work to relieve the suffering of those stuck in refuge camps waiting to cross and of those who make it through the detention process and are released with little information and very few resources. The fact that individuals are banding together and stepping up to attempt to meet needs that governments are choosing to ignore – that right there is evidence of persistent hope.

But here’s the image from the border that I’m loving right now.  It is people playing on see-saws that transect the border. It finally happened in July, but the two artists who put it in place had been working on it for a decade.  They designed the pink steel beams which were installed through a part of the border fence that separates Juárez, Mexico, and a desolate area of Sunland Park, New Mexico.  They asked for permission, but never received an answer. Finally, they decided that it was not illegal and they just did it.  It was only in place for about 45 minutes, but both US Border Patrol and Mexican soldiers came by to observe.

Teeter-totters can symbolize issues of inequality, of balances, of separation. Using one can also speak to sharing, community, and collaboration. There is give and take.  The actions that take place on one side have a direct consequence on the other.  The pink color was chosen because in Juárez, it is used to remember women who have died from violence since the early 1990’s.[2]

The children and adults bobbing up and down on them probably didn’t think about all that stuff though. For them, it was a rare moment of shared play with people from the other side. And for those looking on at the time, or in video, it is a moment of resistance, a point that celebrates the humanity of people of all nationalities, an image of childlike joy infused with hope. 

The second image of hope comes from our sister E.  E is dying.  She is quite upfront about that.  E lived almost all of her 88 years on the same street.  She grew up in the house her parents built and then, when she married, they built their own house two doors down. But she is dying in a nursing home an hour from her lifelong home and most of her friends.  That distresses me, but if she is distressed, she doesn’t show it.   That is just part of the courage with which she faces this final chapter in her life. 

Every evening, when the nursing home staff put her to bed, they slide a foam wedge under her.  It’s a way of treating her bedsores.  The wedge keeps her facing in one direction.  She asks them to place it so that she faces the interior of the room.  Then, after shift change, sometime in the middle of the night, the new staff will come to check on her.  They will help her to turn over and replace the wedge so that she is facing the window.  She has told me several times that she asked for this.  She says that she often cannot sleep in the wee hours.  She asks to be facing the window because, if she cannot sleep, she wants to watch the sky as it gradually, imperceptibly gets lighter and lighter, until the full dawn comes with the sunrise.  E knows that she is dying.  She is weak and doesn’t feel well most days.  And yet, she positions herself to see the sunrise.  She inspires me and makes me hope that when my time comes, I will meet it with courage like hers.    

Hope in the image of a see-saw and a sunrise, and one more image of hope for today.

In the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, there was a bakery owned by a man named Yankel.  Yankel survived the Holocaust.  He once said, “You know why it is that I’m alive today? I was a kid, just a teenager at the time. We were on the train, in a boxcar, being taken to Auschwitz. Night came and it was freezing, deathly cold, in that boxcar.

The Germans would leave the cars on the side of the tracks overnight, sometimes for days on end without any food, and of course, no blankets to keep us warm,” he said. “Sitting next to me was an older Jew – this beloved elderly Jew - from my hometown I recognized, but I had never seen him like this. He was shivering from head to toe, and looked terrible. So I wrapped my arms around him and began rubbing him, to warm him up. I rubbed his arms, his legs, his face, his neck. I begged him to hang on. All night long; I kept the man warm this way. I was tired, I was freezing cold myself, my fingers were numb, but I didn’t stop rubbing the heat on to this man’s body. Hours and hours went by this way. Finally, night passed, morning came, and the sun began to shine. There was some warmth in the cabin, and then I looked around the car to see some of the others in the car. To my horror, all I could see were frozen bodies, and all I could hear was a deathly silence.

Nobody else in that cabin made it through the night – they died from the frost. Only two people survived: the old man and me… The old man survived because somebody kept him warm; I survived because I was warming somebody else…”[3]

Three images from different times, different places.  One thing they have in common is that they involve action. Each situation has its own swirl of ideas and feelings, but the hope comes through most strongly because it is enacted.

To live in hope is to act on it, to throw ourselves relentlessly into the struggle for the realization of that hope.  The more we trust the God of the future, the more we will be awake to the present.  German theologian Jurgen Moltmann wrote, “faith, when it develops into hope, causes not rest, but unrest, not patience but impatience.  It does not calm the unquiet heart but is itself the unquiet heart in us.  Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it.” [4]

John Lewis often says, “Make good trouble.”  Hopeful people are troublemakers in the world, the hope that is within us is our source of joy, energy, courage and life itself. May it be so for you and for me.  Amen.

[1] Joanna Adams, in Feasting on the Word Year A, Volume 1, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010), p. 15.

[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/pink-seesaws-at-the-border-wall-showed-that-play-is-a-form-of-protest?fbclid=IwAR1svrxf2x-OTDWb-zFH0c9lS5zVkYeoIysuUg8L_cJi51pURZl2Q4Vf01M

[3] http://kippahdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/yankel.pdf

[4] Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope:  On the Ground and Implications of a Christian Eschatology (New York:  Harper and Row, 1967), p. 21



11/24/19 - Doxology - Psalm 100; Philippians 4:4-9

Doxology

Psalm 100, Philippians 4:4-9         

November 24, 2019

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

The Rev. Tom Gordon was a hospice chaplain in Edinburgh, Scotland for decades.  He had end-of-life conversations with countless men and women, but one in particular stands out.  An elderly man said he served as a sailor in the Second World War on ships in the North Sea. Through his tears, he shared an event that had haunted him throughout his life. He had been on shore-leave before his ship was due to sail. Two days before he was expected to join his ship in the Orkney Islands, he fell ill and was told by the doctor that he was unfit to travel. During his recuperation, word came that his ship had been sunk and only a handful of sailors survived. In between wiping his eyes he asked two questions. First, he asked: Why was I spared when others died? He had wrestled with this question for years and concluded that it was random chance. God had not spared him while condemning others. His second question was the one that still rocked his soul. He asked: Have I been thankful enough for the life I’ve been given? He knew that if not for a timely, microscopic virus, he most likely would have never survived his early twenties. He would have never experienced a million things he encountered over his long life. As the end approached, he wondered if he had sufficiently expressed his gratitude for the many extra years he had been given.[1]

People who live through an event in which most others die often experience survivor’s guilt. It can be a heavy burden.  I appreciate that this sailor mostly chose to turn his survival into an occasion for gratitude.

Gratitude for surviving adversity, gratitude for getting through a hard time and experiencing a lessening in the level of difficulty – this is not an unusual reaction.   This week, we remember our national story of Thanksgiving.  Those who had endured their first brutal New England winter and had been taught how to cultivate food and fish in local waters by the indigenous people rejoiced when they had crops to sustain them through the next winter. The story says that they expressed their gratitude to the Native Americans who assisted them as they celebrated together in October 1621.

There is also another American Thanksgiving story.  Instead of British pilgrims, this one involves Spanish explorers. In 1598, the last conquistador, Juan de Oñate led an expedition from Mexico northward.  His party included 500 people and 7,000 head of livestock.  It was a 50-day march which included seven consecutive days of rain followed by extremely dry weather. They ran out of food and water five days before reaching the Rio Grande, whose water saved them.  After recuperating for 10 days, Oñate ordered a day of thanksgiving for their survival.  The event included a feast, supplied with game by the Spaniards and with fish by the local people. A member of the expedition wrote of the original celebration, "We built a great bonfire and roasted the meat and fish, and then all sat down to a repast the like of which we had never enjoyed before. . .We were happy that our trials were over; "[2]  The site of that Thanksgiving is now the city of El Paso, Texas.

Gratitude for deliverance and survival and an end to hardship seems to be a kind of universal human response.  But if we have been spared that kind of difficulty, it may be harder for us to practice gratitude.  We may fail to notice so many good things because we haven’t recently been deprived.  Some of us don’t appreciate clean water coming from our faucets because we haven’t recently had to walk miles to the river to haul it or we haven’t had to fight with our government for years to get it lead-free. Some of us throw away food that went bad in the refrigerator before it could be eaten without much thought for the absurd daily abundance that makes that possible. 

Maybe I’m just preaching to myself here, but I think there is an underlying truth about gratitude and noticing.  What we are accustomed to, we don’t notice and what we don’t notice, we won’t be grateful for.

In the letter to the Philippian church, Paul says to pray with supplication and thanksgiving.  Supplication suggests humility.  Thanksgiving suggests gratitude. Paul is prescribing a spiritual practice – regularly asking God for what we need with humility and with gratitude. The fruit of this practice seems to be joy and peace. 

The setting of Psalm 100 is often assumed to be that of a company of worshippers in front of the gates to the sanctuary, being summoned to enter a service of thanksgiving to God. Praise, thanksgiving, gratitude – the people of Israel were regularly called to these practices, to remember God’s steadfast love. 

Some of us have been through hardship and we have come out with gratitude.  Others of us have learned to practice giving thanks as spiritual discipline.  And some of us would like to do this better. In practical ways, we would like gratitude to be a bigger part of our days. (Hold that thought for a moment.)

You’ve probably heard of the author Kurt Vonnegut.  His best-known novel Slaughterhouse Five came from his experience as a POW in World War II. He was incarcerated in a miserable slaughterhouse five stories beneath street level during the Allied firebombing of Dresden. He and a few other prisoners emerged safely the next day to survey the utter devastation. That had a profound influence on his writing which expressed a deep appreciation for the gift of human life and the uniqueness of each person.

In his later years, Vonnegut often spoke on college campuses.  In a presentation at the University of Wisconsin, he told the audience about his late Uncle Alex. He described his uncle as a graduate of Harvard who was an honest life insurance salesman in the Midwest. He was well-read and wise, and his principal complaint about people was that they so seldom noticed when they were happy. Vonnegut said, “So when we were doing something such as drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, and talking lazily about this and that, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt and exclaim, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’”

Vonnegut said to the college students, “Please notice when you are happy and exclaim or murmur or at least think to yourself: “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

Then he asked the students if they ever had a teacher who made them happier to be alive than they previously

believed possible. Nearly every student’s hand shot up. Vonnegut said, “Please say the name of that teacher out loud to someone sitting near you.” For a few moments the room was a cacophony of names. When the din of all those voices died down, he said, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”[3]

How very much there is to be grateful for – fresh air to breathe, clean water, a landscape of beauty with mountains on the horizon, stories that inspire, antibiotics, friends who lend courage and comfort, laughter, music, prophets who gave their lives to bring a better world for others, sunrises and starlight, the moon on snow.  So much beauty and goodness all around.

Yet, what we are accustomed to, we don’t notice and what we don’t notice, we won’t be grateful for.

Perhaps if we want gratitude to be a bigger part of our lives, then we can start by making a habit of noticing.  We are about to enter what is for many, the busiest month of the year.  It coincides with the season of Advent and this year, at Emmanuel, our focus will be on Joy.  But it often happens that we rush through the season preoccupied and overscheduled.  In our busyness, we fail to notice the goodness, the surprises, the moments of wonder, which could bring joy, and we miss it.  So here is an invitation for this moment, today, before we plunge into that season.

I invite you to pause right now and consider what you want to notice. There are index cards in the baskets at the ends of the rows.  Would you please start passing those? As it comes to you, take a couple of index cards and a pen if you need one. 

Most of us have lived through a December or two.  We have an idea of what events or activities are likely to be part of our schedules.  Think about that for a minute and note for yourself what you want to be sure to be present for. I don’t mean just physically present, but what do you want to be so fully engaged in that you might have reason to say to yourself “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”  We’re going to take some silence and think about that for a bit.  If you choose, you might take one of those index cards and write down those thoughts about what you want to pay attention to this Advent.  Another way to phrase this question is what are you looking forward to?  What are you excited about?  I encourage you to be as specific as you can. If it’s a party, what about that party is exciting to you? If it’s an outdoor activity, name the sights or sounds or feeling of the activity.  Gratitude is specific, so anticipation can be specific too.  We’re going to keep silence together and do this for 5 minutes. Then I’ll call us back together.

* * *

During our closing hymn, we will pass offering plates.  I invite you to place your index card in the offering plate, as a step toward increasing the intentional practice of gratitude.  If you share your card in the plate, I will attempt to compile a list of all our intentions and get them into the newsletter which is going out this week. That will be a way to remind ourselves to practice gratitude and choose joy for the season.    You don’t need to put your name on your card, but please try to write clearly so I can read it to reproduce it.  You are welcome to use as many index cards as you need if you want to keep a copy for yourself and put one into the plate.

I’d like to close with one more reading of Psalm 100. This translation is the work of the professor with whom I studied the Psalms, Dr. Marvin Tate.[4]

A psalm for thanksgiving.

Raise a shout to Yahweh, all the earth!

Serve Yahweh with gladness;

Come before him with joyful songs.

Acknowledge that Yahweh, he is God.

He made us, and we are indeed

His people and the flock he shepherds.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving,

His courts with praise;

Give thanks to him, and bless his name!

For Yahweh is good; his loyal-love is forever,

And to generation after generation is his faithfulness.

Amen.

[1] . Tom Gordon, “Gratitude,” Look Well to this Day, (Glasgow, Scotland: Wild Goose Publications, 2014), p.234.

[2] https://texasalmanac.com/topics/history/timeline/first-thanksgiving

[3] John Buchanan, “This Our Hymn of Grateful Praise,” November 18, 2007. http://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2007/111807.html

[4] Marvin E. Tate, Word Biblical Commentary: Psalms 51-100, (Dallas:  Word Books, 1990), pp 532-533.

11/17/19 - Small Acts of Courage - Luke 21:5-19; Isaiah 65:17-25

Small Acts of Courage

Luke 21:5-19

Isaiah 65:17-25

November 17, 2019

Emmanuel Baptist Church, Rev. Kathy Donley

The reading from Luke takes place in the last week of Jesus’ life. He makes the outlandish claim that the temple will be destroyed. The temple is one of the wonders of the ancient world. It is Herod the Great’s massive building project, begun before Jesus was born, an enlargement and renovation of the temple built after the return from Exile some five hundred years earlier.  Herod’s Temple is still under construction in Jesus’ time.  The first century historian Josephus described the temple like this: “The sacred edifice itself . . .was approached by a flight of twelve steps. The façade was of equal height and breadth, each being a hundred cubits [that’s about 150 feet], . . . The first gate. had no doors, displaying unexcluded the void expanse of heaven; . . . the exterior of the building wanted nothing that could astound either mind or eye.  For being covered on all sides with massive plates of gold, the sun was no sooner up that it radiated so fiery a flash that persons straining to look at it were compelled to avert their eyes, as from the solar rays.”[1]

Those within earshot were likely incredulous at Jesus’ prediction that the temple will cease to exist.  It is not just an impressive building.  It is the place where God and humans meet.  One scholar says that the temple is “the moral center of the universe, the source from which holiness and a terrifying justice radiate.”[2]    We are familiar with the destruction of buildings by dynamite or bombs, but imagine the loss of meaning if, say, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington were to be no more. Or the White House.  Jesus’s words are alarming and unreal to those who hear them.

But by the time Luke writes his gospel, the beauty of the Temple is only a memory.  Luke is probably writing about 55 years after Jesus, about 15 years after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.  Luke’s audience likely pricks up their ears to hear what Jesus will say next.  You see, they are living through massive upheaval.  Trusted institutions have collapsed. Religions have to invent or re-invent themselves to survive.  The political landscape is a turmoil.  Jews and Christians from Jerusalem have scattered as refugees all over the known world. Add in the earthquake at Pompei and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and it seems that the world is really and truly coming apart.  Those who are reading Luke’s gospel then must be hanging on every word. 

I often try to avoid this kind of text because it seems to belong to end-of-the-world, doomsday preachers, but this year, I’m resonating with Luke’s first audience. 

Religious institutions collapsing while some religious leaders support the status quo – check. 

Political landscape in turmoil – check.

Refugees scattered all over the world – check. 

Glaciers melting, songbirds going extinct, clearcutting of the Amazon, raging fires in Australia, flooding in Venice, the world really and truly coming apart – check. 

Jesus warns of impending doom, but not for the purpose of alarming people.  What he offers is a path of hope and trust in the midst of destruction and great difficulty. 

This week many of us saw the movie Witness at Tornillo.  It is about the activism of Joshua Rubin and those who joined him to protest the separation of families and the detention of children and teenagers. On a chain-link fence near the facility in Tornillo Texas, groups of protestors had mounted signs which said things like “free them” and “let my people go”.  The authorities did not like these signs and eventually got them removed, using the pretext of a law against advertising. Joshua was there when county employees came to take them down.  He talked to the employees, reading each sign out loud to them, explaining that one in particular had been created by a group of children who put it where the children being bussed in to the detention center could read it.  He pointed out that it was hand-made and kind of fragile.  The employee who took it down gave it to Josh for safe-keeping.  Ultimately, they gave all of the signs to him, clearly disobeying their own bosses in doing so.  Joshua described this disobedience as a small act of courage. 

For the people of Luke’s time, these words of Jesus strengthen their faith and enable their own small (and large) acts of courage.  Perhaps they can do the same for us.

When the people in the Temple ask about the destruction that is coming, Jesus’ first warning is about leaders who will come in his name and claim to have the answers.  Jesus says not to follow them.  Such people are still among us. This warning is still necessary.

Then Jesus says “do not be terrified.”  We have often remarked that the angels always say “Do not be afraid” as a standard greeting.  I’m struck that Jesus amps it up here and says “do not be terrified.”  And its just like when the angels say it – what comes next is actually terrifying.  Jesus speaks of persecution, betrayal by friends and family, arrest, imprisonment, even death.  These are real possibilities for his followers in the first century and in every century.

Baptist scholar Alan Culpepper says,

“Following Jesus always exposes the faithful to opposition from the authorities. If in every generation, there are those whose religion is simply a form of escapism into the fantasy of futurism, every generation has also had its courageous and prophetic visionaries who devoted themselves completely to Jesus’ call to create community, oppose injustice, work for peace, and make a place for the excluded.  Every generation, therefore, is called back to the teachings of Jesus by the examples of those who have suffered persecution and hardship . . .”[3]

If Jesus is offering spiritual resources to cope with adversity and hardship, what should we make of verses 16 and 18?

Verse 16 says “they will put some you to death,” but then verse 18 promises “not a hair of your head will perish.”  If both of these statements are to be true, then Jesus’ reference must be to something deeper and greater than physical death. His meaning seems to hinge on verse 19.

Verse 19 can be translated “By your endurance you will gain your souls.”  Many in Luke’s audience will die as martyrs, beginning with Stephen stoned to death in the book of Acts. For them, these words indicate that faithfulness to death will lead to life eternal.

Verse 19 may also be accurately translated “in your endurance, you will save your lives.”  We remember that the Jewish people of this time did not have a robust concept of the afterlife.  The Greek word Luke uses here would have been stand-in for the Hebrew word nephesh which means self or life.  It refers to the essence of a person which is inextricably bound up with the body.  It is not the Greek concept of an immortal soul which endures beyond the death of the body. 

And so, if we read, “in your endurance, you will save your lives” what we understand is that Jesus is saying, when you are faithful to me, you are also true to yourself.  By standing fast, you maintain your integrity. You hold onto what makes you you and gives your life meaning.

Faithfulness to Jesus will save your soul and your life.  Both translations are true.  Faithfulness to the gospel has resulted in death in every generation, even now.  We could easily name so many contemporary martyrs.  I think of MJ Sharp, the 34-year-old Mennonite man, who was building peace in the Congo.  Over the course of several years, he and his team had persuaded about 1600 people to lay down their weapons, which had an impact on some 23,000 family members.[4]  He was shot to death in two years ago, while investigating the use of child soldiers by a militia group and governmental massacres of unarmed civilians.  One of his long-time friends said “I felt he just had a strong sense of duty and commitment, probably fueled by Menno[nite] life, intrigue about complex situations, and didn’t mind the edge of danger,” she said. “Which means, if all of us travel along what makes us truly come alive, who knows where we’ll be? Not necessarily in the DRC, but definitely standing in our own God-given power and brilliance.”[5]

I think of Sister Dorothy Stang, a Catholic nun who spent her life among the poor in Brazil.  Her ministry included advocating for peasant farmers and against the deforestation of the Amazon. Her work was opposed by the powerful.  In spite of death threats, in spite of the knowledge of a bounty on her head, she did not stop.  In 2005, as two gunmen approached her on a dirt road, she took her Bible from her bag and began to read the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice.”  The gunmen listened and then, when she was done, they aimed their pistols and killed her.[6]

Christians are still persecuted for their faith, or more accurately for what they do because of their faith.   By their endurance, Dorothy and MJ and countless others gave their lives but gained their souls.

You might notice that these two examples involve political actions.  It is not often that practicing your faith in private gets you killed. True persecution happens when your faith compels courageous actions which make a difference.  Let’s not diminish the deaths of the faithful by claiming persecution because someone wishes you Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas.

American Christians are not typically at risk for the kind of persecution that ends in death. But there are still consequences for following Jesus  I think of Diana Butler Bass whose brother has not spoken to her since she spoke out against white nationalism after the events in Charlottesville, Virginia.[7]  I think of people who risk symbolic arrest to call attention to injustice and of those who serve time in prison because they obey the dictates of conscience rather than unjust laws. 

I just heard about a man named Doug Stephens.  As a federal employee, it was his job to interview asylum seekers and then send them back to Mexico under the current protocols.  He did five interviews and then refused to do any more. Knowing that it would cost him his job, he told his supervisor that he would not be part of implementing this immoral policy.  He said, “You’re literally sending people back to be raped and killed. That’s what this is.” [8] When disciplinary proceedings were begun against him, he decided to resign, but first he drafted a memo outlining why he believes the Remain in Mexico policy violates the law.    He sent it to everyone in the San Francisco Citizenship and Immigration office as well as agency supervisors, his union and a U.S. Senator. He lost his job, but remained true to himself.  He gained his life. 

Some of us are terrified, or at least anxious, about the state of the world, the status of our democracy, the precarious position of the church. Some of us are heartbroken and outraged.   And we have been feeling this way for a long while.  In times like ours, Jesus offers very practical counsel.  He says to stand firm and testify.  Testify – speak the truth. Opening our mouths, letting the truth come out in love and power, that’s one small act of courage we can attempt in this time.

In forced retirement, in 1970, Maggie Kuhn founded the Grey Panthers, an organization that worked to end age discrimination and to provide care for the elderly.  I love the way she echoed Jesus’ words. She said, “Leave safety behind. Put your body on the line.  Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind – even if your voice shakes.  When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say.  Well-aimed slingshots can topple giants.” 

Beloved ones, this week, this very week, may we commit small acts of courage. Look for an opportunity to testify.  An opportunity to save your soul, a chance to gain your life. Let us speak the truth, even if our voice shakes.  Amen.

[1] Josephus, The Jewish War, 5:207-208, 222, trans. H. St. J. Thackeray, LCL (Cambridge, MA; Harvard University Press, 1928), 263, 269.

[2] Jon D. Levenson, “The Temple and the World,” The Journal of Religion 64 (1984); 298

[3] Alan Culpepper, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 1995), pp 402-403.

[4] https://themennonite.org/daily-news/one-year-later-mj-sharps-parents-reflect/

[5] http://mennoworld.org/2017/03/29/news/sharp-pursued-peace-around-the-globe/

[6] https://www.deseret.com/indepth/2019/11/12/20950149/amazon-rainforest-nun-protect-war-anapu-brazil-deforestation-vanishing-jungle-class-blood-war-death

[7] https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/20/opinions/god-of-love-had-a-really-bad-week-bass/index.html

[8] https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-11-15/asylum-officers-revolt-against-trump-policies-they-say-are-immoral-illegal

11/10/19 - Coming Up Short - Luke 19:1-10

Coming Up Short

Luke 19:1-10

November 10, 2019

Emmanuel Baptist Church, Rev. Kathy Donley

You never know what a pastor’s kid will hear and remember. Both of my children have strong connections to the story of Zacchaeus.  Erin remembers that she loved to sing the song about Zacchaeus, the wee little man.  Every once in a while, she’ll ask me when I’m preaching about Zacchaeus again.   Molly remembers a detail from a sermon I preached at least 15 years ago.  That detail is found is verse 3 which says, “He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature.”  The word “he” appears three times in that sentence.  The last “he” refers to the short person, but there is nothing to tell us whether it means Zacchaeus or Jesus.  You see, the rest of the story works equally well regardless of who is short.  If Zacchaeus is short, he can’t see Jesus because of the crowd.  But if Jesus is short, he can’t be seen because of the crowd around him. It works either way.  Molly heard that throw-away detail in a sermon once and for some reason, it delighted her and continues to do so.

The question of who was shorter – Jesus or Zacchaeus – doesn’t seem very important. It’s not. But I bring it up to point out how very well we think we know this story.   What if we have it all wrong and we should be singing about the wee little man Jesus? I wonder if there might be other things in the story, more important things, that we also have understood incorrectly. 

By way of introduction, Luke tells us Zacchaeus’ name, his occupation and that he is rich.  His name means “clean” or “innocent”.  Perhaps we could pause to wonder whether his name is accurate or ironic, but the next two descriptors “rich” and “tax collector” quickly consume our attention.

Jesus passing through Jericho, on the last trip he will ever make to Jerusalem. Zacchaeus is the last individual with whom he will have a one-on-one encounter before Jerusalem.  The rich have not been presented favorably in Luke’s account of Jesus’ ministry.  “Jesus pronounced woes on the rich [in the Sermon on the Plain].  God called a rich famer a fool and required his soul of him.  The rich man went to Hades while Lazarus [the beggar] went to the bosom of Abraham and Jesus observed how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.” [1]  There is no reason to suspect that Zacchaeus will fare any better than the rich people who came before him.

On the other hand, he is a tax collector.  We have heard about Jesus and tax collectors before.  We know that Jesus was unpopular with the clergy of his day because he associated with them.  Levi, the former tax collector, was among his twelve disciples.

So, Zacchaeus is rich and a tax collector which makes it harder for us to predict which way the action will go. How will Jesus respond to him?

The common stereotype about rich tax collectors is that they are greedy and dishonest and you can’t believe anything

they say. Walter Brueggemann describes tax collectors as revenue men for the Roman Empire.  He says, “The purpose of that empire, like every empire, whether Babylon among the Jews, Rome in the time of Jesus, or the US empire . . .is to coercively extract wealth for the sake of the center.  Zacchaeus served such a regime. . . Zacchaeus was an agent of the violence of the empire.” [2]

When we think of tax collectors today, we might picture an IRS agent, someone wearing business clothes and good with a calculator. If that person is auditing us, we might be nervous around them, but we probably would not immediately jump to the conclusion that they are corrupt and greedy and not to be trusted. As long as we think of Zacchaeus like an IRS agent, we will have a hard time understanding the intensity of this story. 

We probably need to look elsewhere for a contemporary parallel. If, as Brueggemann says, Zacchaeus was an agent of the violence of the empire, then who embodies that role today? Is there a category, an occupation that we associate with corruption and dishonesty and greed, persons who carry out the violence of the empire?  I thought about this for a while. I came up with two possibilities. By now, you know my biases, so it might not surprise you to hear that I thought of Border Patrol agents and the owners of private prisons.  You might have other ideas.  You can feel free to tell me why I’m wrong later.  For now, let’s hold onto the image of Zacchaeus as a Border Patrol agent.  BP agents are generally unpopular in our culture right now.  Jim and I toured part of the San Diego/Tijuana border with BP Agents who told us how hard it is to identify their occupation to strangers.  One of them said, “We are not the monsters people think we are.”  The suicide rate among BP agents is higher than other branches of law enforcement which is higher than the general population.   Family members of BP agents report very high levels of stress in working for an agency which overlooks the humanity of the agents.[3] That sounds to me suspiciously like empire looking out for itself.

So, if you would humor me for the moment, imagine Zacchaeus in a Border Patrol uniform.  Imagine that the crowd in Jericho includes citizens and descendants of immigrants and perhaps even some undocumented folks who are following Jesus.  Everything is going fine until Jesus stops and looks up into that sycamore tree.  Down comes Zacchaeus and Jesus invites himself to his house.  Jesus will bring honor to whatever house he enters. By inviting himself to Zacchaeus’ home, he gives him an opportunity to be recognized prominently before the whole community.  The implication of table fellowship is that Jesus accepts him as someone who shares his values. 

And now we understand why the crowd grumbles.  What are they supposed to do?  They want to be with Jesus, sure, but they can’t pretend the Border Patrol agent shares their values.  To go to his house is to imply that they are like him, corrupt, greedy, exploitative, violent.   Someone like him is not supposed to respond to Jesus, anyway, not genuinely.  Surely, this is just another PR stunt. Why doesn’t Jesus see that?

Maybe some people are secretly hoping that Jesus does see that. Maybe they think that Jesus is going to publicly put him in his place – wouldn’t that be delicious? 

If so, they are even more dismayed at what comes next.  Zacchaeus acts as though he belongs with Jesus.  Of course, Jesus would choose to go to his house. Zach is aware of what the people think of him, of course, so he takes the opportunity to tell them about himself.  He says it to Jesus, but everyone can hear. In verse 8, he says “Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.”  The verbs in that sentence are in present tense.  He is describing what he already does, not something he is going to start doing from this point on. 

But that’s not how we usually hear the story.  Just as we usually assume that Zacchaeus is the short one, we usually assume that this is a story about his repentance, that as a result of this encounter with Jesus, he is going to start making restitution. That’s the traditional interpretation.  It’s influence is so strong that most translations make the verbs future tense “half of my goods I will give to the poor; I will pay back four times.”  Translators call this a future present tense.  This is the only place in all of scripture where they claim to find this verb tense.[4]  I suspect that their interpretation of the story is influencing their translation, instead of the other way around. 

If we can allow ourselves to challenge the traditional interpretation, then maybe we can take Zacchaeus at his word, which Jesus seems to do.  And then we can recognize that this is not a conversion story, but a healing story.

I say this is a healing story because of what happens next.  After Zach describes his customary practice, Jesus says, “Today salvation has come to this house.”  And he calls Zacchaeus a “son of Abraham”. Earlier, Jesus had healed a woman in the synagogue, a woman who had been bent over for 18 years.  When he did that, he called her a “daughter of Abraham.”   Her illness had kept her isolated from her people, her community.  Her healing restored her to that community, the sons and daughters of Abraham.

Similarly, Jesus is restoring Zacchaeus to the community which has rejected him.  They have accepted all the stereotypes about him without question. They think they know who he is. “Rich tax collector” tells them everything they need to know until Jesus replaces that with “Son of Abraham.” Which means “one of you”.  Someone just like you, who shares your values, who is generous and cares for the poor.  If I am still imagining Zacchaeus as the BP agent, then instead of “Son of Abraham” I might hear Jesus say “Child of God.”

Jesus’s announced mission is to seek and to save the lost.  He has told stories about the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost sons.  Zacchaeus is lost to his own people until Jesus calls him down out of the tree.

Who comes up short in this story?  Not Zacchaeus.  Not Jesus.  If anyone comes up short, it’s the townspeople whose ability to love is stunted by their prejudice and preconceptions about who Zacchaeus is and who they will allow him to be. 

This is a story about opportunities for salvation and healing, for Zacchaeus and also for the people of Jericho.  That is the intensity of this story which still resonates, in a time when we are so polarized, so quick to judge each other, so quick to assume we know all about someone because of their occupation or political affiliation or a comment on social media or which church they do or don’t attend.  Maybe we can see that one way that Jesus goes about saving us, restoring us, healing us, is by seeking to destroy all of our stereotypes, all of our carefully set up and well-crafted assumptions about “those people” too.[5]

What did the people of Jericho do?  Did they welcome Zacchaeus into their midst or did they cling to their resentments of the past?  The Bible doesn’t tell us.  It leaves it open, asking the same question of us – will salvation and healing come to our house as it has come to the house of Zacchaeus?  Or will we stop short of the fullness of love Jesus intends?

[1] Alan Culpepper, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 357

[2] Walter Brueggemann, “Vision that Trumps Violence” in The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann, Vol 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox, 2015), p. 235.

[3] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/border-patrol-suicide-rate-spikes/

[4] https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=1556

[5] Shannon Kershner in her sermon “Jesus Makes Things Complicated” http://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2016/031316.html

11/3/19 - It's a Wonder-full Life: Practicing Gratitude - Acts 4:32-35

Practicing Gratitude 

Acts 4: 32-35

November 3, 2019

Emmanuel Baptist Church, Rev. Kathy Donley

The Rev. Brett Younger is a Baptist pastor now serving a church in Brooklyn. He went to my alma mater, Baylor University, although we were not there at the same time.  

In his first year there, when Parents Weekend came around, a letter went out to all students explaining that there would be a picnic on the quadrangle on Friday, except for those whose parents were not coming.  Those orphan students were to go to the cafeteria as usual. Brett’s parents lived in Ohio and they weren’t coming to Texas for the weekend. Neither were his roommates’s parents.  They thought it was hugely unfair to be left out of the picnic. So, they decided to go anyway.  But, by the time they got in line for fried chicken, they were terrified that the kitchen workers were about to catch them.  Brett said, “I imagined a woman in a hairnet shouting, ‘where are your parents?  Your parents aren’t here.  Security.’”

“So I decided to outsmart them.  Just before I was given a drumstick, I shouted to no one at all, ‘Mom, I’ll be right there.’  That is when the most surprising thing happened.  A woman I had never met shouted back, ‘I’m over here, son.’” 

What would possess a stranger to claim him as her son?  She turned out to be another student suspiciously there without her parents.  Her name was Ashley.   Brett and Ashley have been friends for decades now. For all that time, he has been calling her “Mom” and she has been calling him “Son.” [1]

There are probably many reasons why their friendship has endured, but I think a big factor in its beginning was gratitude. Gratitude for another person who gets your sense of humor and shares your willingness to break social norms.  The kind of gratitude that comes from a shared experience can be a powerful bond.

The early Christian community was bound together by their shared experience of the risen Christ.  At the start of his ministry, Jesus’s personal mission statement was a quote from Isaiah which began, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.”  As Jesus’ followers continued his mission, the most dramatic sign of resurrection power was a community in which there was not a single needy person. The transformation bought to the world, brought to their own lives by the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, drew from them a response of wonder and awe and gratitude.  They created a community of sharing.  Their faith in God was characterized by boldness and mutual generosity.

Last week, I spent a lot of time talking about what happened in Gander, Newfoundland on September 11, 2001.  I talked about how the residents of that area provided extravagant hospitality for thousands of people who were stranded at the local airport when US airspace was closed. Every need – for food, shelter, medication, access to e-mail and telephones – every need you can imagine, was provided for, at absolutely no cost to the recipients.  We can only imagine how grateful the plane people were.  Of course they said thank you at the time.   They also expressed it in many other ways.  When they made it home, they sent back gifts and notes and money.  One of the first notes to arrive was a fax, sent by Werner Kolb after he reached his home in the Netherlands. He said, “It is not possible for me to tell you how I felt during my stay with you.  Only once was I treated in a similar way. This was when I was a child. I was liberated in Holland in 1945.  You wonderful Canadians have not changed.” [2] Some plane people formed lasting friendships with local folks and returned to the area for frequent visits.  One organization said thank you for the use of a school’s computers by entirely replacing and upgrading the school’s computer lab.  On one departing plane, the passengers who knew that the local high school drop-out rate was high, agreed to set up a scholarship fund.  Every adult on the plane signed a pledge form to donate.  By the time they landed, they had $15,000 towards a fund which is now called the Lewisporte Area Flight 15 Scholarship Fund. It is now worth over $2 million and has provided almost 300 college scholarships.[3]

Gratitude is powerful.  You should know that Emmanuel evokes gratitude. Some of the best God-moments I experience are when gratitude for this congregation is expressed to me.  It’s one of the privileges of being pastor.  Sometimes I receive the gratitude of strangers, like the time the Fellowship Fund paid for work boots so a man could get a paying job.  Or when a newcomer thanked me, with tears in her eyes, for the worship experience on a Sunday morning. She was thanking me for my words in the sermon, but also for some very specific acts of hospitality that some of you had extended.  Gratitude is not just limited to strangers and newcomers.  I also regularly hear it from long-time members who are going through a particularly hard time and are grateful, in ways that cannot be easily expressed or  measured, for the support and care you offer.  When we receive sincere gratitude, especially from someone who cannot pay us in any other way, especially from someone who really needed what we shared, it is its own reward. It can transform us into people who want to do more for others because receiving gratitude is so powerful.

Gratitude is also transformative when we are the ones who offer it.  John was the senior pastor in a church where I served as associate.  Every time we celebrated the Lord’s Supper, after the elements had been distributed, he would lift the cup and say “Drink and remember and be thankful.”

Every time, I would hear that part “be thankful”   and it would hit me in all the wrong ways. Internally, I would think “Well, I can’t just make myself be thankful.  That’s not how it works.  John shouldn’t say that like it’s a command.” And by the time I finished my internal conversation, communion would be over and I would have basically missed the moment. Back then, I thought that gratitude could only occur spontaneously, when the circumstances were right. But I have come to realize that thankfulness can be learned. We can choose gratitude by focusing on the good gifts around us, instead of primarily attending to the hard things.  We can practice being gratitude. 

In her book, Grateful, Diana Butler Bass writes:  If you choose ingratitude, I cannot help you. But most of us do not willingly say, "I have decided to live my life free from thanksgiving.” . . . Even at ungrateful moments, we feel the tug toward something else. But it can be hard to get there. Ingratitude often results from misunderstanding the nature of thanks, failing to see the larger picture of our lives, or forgetting to nurture a spirit of gratefulness. . . .But when, if even for a little while, we choose gratefulness, that choice builds on itself and begins to create a spiral of appreciation. The first choice . . . sets up the next choice, and the next, and the next one beyond that. To choose gratitude is not an act of dogged determination. To choose gratitude is to hear an inner urging toward thanks, to be aware of the grace in life, and to respond. For whatever reason, we turn and reply to an invitation for a deeper, better life.”[4]

It turns out that we can “be thankful” on command if we practice it.  And the more we practice it, the more natural it will become.

In this season, we have sought to cultivate wonder in our worship because wonder can lead to appreciation which can lead to gratitude.  We have taken a look at the larger picture of our lives, examining the messages we’ve absorbed about money and responsibility and scarcity and enough.  We’ve attended to scripture passages which encourage us to put our trust in God, to seek the things which are ultimate, rather than the illusory security of wealth and possessions.  Our intention is to become more joyful, less anxious and more generous with our time and energy and money.  Our goal is to let our faith shape and even transform our economics. 

Today we come to an annual milestone in this faith community.  Today we make a commitment of our financial resources for the next year.  It’s a commitment we make to God’s work in the world through the mission and ministry of this church. 

We do this every year. Some of us respond out of duty or maybe even guilt.  We give because someone taught us we should.  We give a certain percentage of our income because it seems like the responsible thing to do. On the other hand, every year, some of us give out of gratitude. We give in thankfulness for the good gifts in our lives. We give with a sense of wonder about what God has done and what God might yet do within us and among us. Now, when the pledges are received, when the financial people crunch the numbers, the $100 given from guilt looks just like the $100 given with gratitude.  It all goes into the budget the same.  But I think there is a difference. The difference is that the gift given with gratitude is more satisfying.  The difference is that the gift given with gratitude brings more joy to the giver.  So, beloved ones, may God transform our guilt and fear and duty into awe-inspired wonder and gratitude so that we may give with joy. Amen.

[1] Brett Younger in his sermon “Living with the Spirit”  published at goodpreacher.com, April 20, 2011

[2] Jim DeFede, The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland, New York:  HarperCollins, 2002, p. 221

[3] https://www.recordcourier.com/news/local/9-11-survivor-shares-experience-of-landing-in-newfoundland/

[4] Excerpted from Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks.  Copyright © by Diana Butler Bass. Published by HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Excerpt found here: https://day1.org/articles/5d9b820ef71918cdf2004236/diana_butler_bass_choosing_gratitude_as_a_way_of_life

10/27/19 - It's a Wonder-full Life: The Good Life - 1 Timothy 6:17-19

The Good Life

I Timothy 6:17-19

October 27, 2019

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

“Take hold of the true life,” this letter says.  A few verses earlier, it said “take hold of the eternal life to which you were called.”  This passage is not about a futuristic goal.  It is not about a heavenly existence after we die. This passage is about how people who follow Jesus are to relate to other people and to money and possessions in the here and now.

The Greek word that is translated “take hold” means “take hold of, grasp, catch, sometimes with violence.”[1]  This passage is about seizing the true life, the best life here on earth.

The Harper Collins Dictionary describes the good life as “living in comfort and luxury with few problems or worries.”  The good life as the world understands it, the pursuit of ease and pleasure, is not the true life, the best life understood by the author of this letter.  As one scholar reflects, “Living the good life and living a good life pull in opposite directions.  One cannot serve both God and wealth.”[2]

Living a good life seems to begin with putting one’s trust in God and allowing that trust to shape everything else, including our attitudes towards money and possessions.  Many of those in the early church were materially poor. Those who were rich were strongly encouraged to share.  Sharing is at the heart of our faith.  It is the demonstration of the self-denial Jesus described when he said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up the cross and follow me.”  The mission and ministry that Jesus left in the hands of his disciples depends on the financial resources of those willing to share them.  So, we read that those who have wealth  “are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous and ready to share.”

Every once in a while there is a human experience or interaction that captures my imagination.  Every once in a while, we humans get it right and the kingdom of God among us becomes bold and visible, and the rest of us bear witness to the life that is really life.

I’m thinking today of what happened in Gander, Newfoundland in September 2001.  Many of you know this story.  I’ve been talking about it recently with some of you.[3]  Whether you hear it today for the first time or it is already very familiar, I invite you to listen to it as a parable, a real-life application of the instructions in this letter, about grasping the life that is truly life.

On September 11, 2001, after three commercial airlines had been turned into weapons of mass destruction, American air space was abruptly closed. Flights were cancelled all over the world. But hundreds of planes were still in the air bound for airports across the nation.  Those flights had to be diverted.  Many planes landed in unanticipated places. They landed in several Canadian cities.  Thirty-eight planes were making routine flights from places like London and Paris, Dublin and Stuttgart to places like Houston, New York, Charlotte and Nashville when they were ordered to land in Gander, Newfoundland.  There was so much fear and anguish that day.  Fear could have driven everything that came next, but it didn’t.

The planes landed and parked on the tarmac with some 6700 passengers on board.  That’s almost as many people as live in Gander.   At first, they thought that US airspace would re-open soon, so no one was allowed to get off. Everyone stayed on the planes on the runways.  Imagine that reality.  You’ve already been on the plane for hours flying over the ocean and now you’ve landed in an unknown place for reasons that no one is telling you and they won’t let you off the plane. For hours.  When they finally did let people off, each plane deboarded in order. Some folks were trapped on their planes for almost a day.  For claustrophobic people, that’s your worst nightmare come true. And for  people addicted to nicotine too.  One of the first things ways that Gander cared for the passengers was by emptying the pharmacies of all the nicotine gum and ferrying it out to the planes.

The fear must have been palpable.  People feeling trapped on the planes.  People at the airport wondering just exactly who was out there on the runway. No one knew how many more terrorists might still be part of the plot for the day. What if they were on these planes? After they landed, at first five of the 38 planes didn’t respond to hails from the control tower.  What if they weren’t responding because something terrible was happening on those planes? Fear could have ruled the day, but it didn’t.

What happened instead is that the people of Gander and several other towns recognized that the people on the planes were going to need lots and lots of help.  By the time the passengers were allowed off the planes, Gander had mobilized to provide for them. They closed all high schools, meeting halls, lodges, and any other large gathering places. They converted all these facilities to mass lodging areas for all the stranded travelers. The local radio station ran public service announcements asking for donation of food, spare bedding, extra clothes, anything the passengers might need.  At the community center, the line of cars stretched for two miles as people brought sheets and blankets and pillows from this homes. Nothing was labelled with the owner’s names.  Later a passenger asked a local woman how people would ever get their own sheets and towels back.  The woman said, “It doesn’t matter.”

The town’s bus drivers were on strike, in the middle of negotiations with city officials.  But, when they learned that almost 7,000 people had to be transported from the airport to various shelters within a 40-mile area, they put down their picket signs and got behind the wheels of the buses. 

On those planes were people from about 100 countries.  They included those who didn’t speak English and people who needed a Kosher kitchen and two children who had been on their way to Disney World through the Make-A-Wish foundation. There were parents bringing home a daughter they had just adopted from Kazakhstan, who were also anxious to get home to where the grandparents and older sibling were waiting. There were people of Middle Eastern origins who was as angry and outraged by the attacks as everyone else.  The passengers came from all walks of life, spanning the spectrum of religious and political outlooks.  They included the frantic parents of a NYC firefighter, whose whereabouts were unknown for the duration of their time in Gander, and a man from London and a woman from Houston who fell in love in Gander and got married the next year, and a gay couple who worried about whether a small town in Canada would welcome them.  It did. 

The people of Gander cooked. A lot. Grocery store shelves went bare. The town’s hockey ring became the world’s largest refrigerator.  Pharmacists worked overtime to fill prescriptions for passengers whose medicines were stuck on the planes in their checked luggage. Elderly passengers and others were offered beds in private homes. Some home owners did laundry all night long and left their doors unlocked with an open invitation to plane people to come in and take showers. A family that lived across from a 24-hour urgent care took in a woman who was 33-weeks pregnant.  Everyone who needed it had access to computers for e-mail and telephones to call home and tell loved ones they were safe.   The details of how the town responded to meet the physical and emotional and spiritual needs of all these guests go on and on. 

I’m sure the people of Gander are like people everywhere.  They can be cranky and self-centered, guided by greed or ambition or fear, but when the need arose, they rose above all of that. For a few very intense days, they recognized and attended to what really mattered. They offered compassion and hospitality, generosity and care.  For those few intense days, they took hold of the life that really is life. They were, in the words of our letter, “rich in good works, generous and ready to share.”

Every once in a while, we humans get it right and the kingdom of God among us becomes bold and visible.  It happens here too.  It happened last month when you heard about 3 Karen families who lost their homes and everything else in a fire.  You gave $1500 plus clothing and furniture and household goods to help them start again. It happened last week, when together we celebrated the life of Audrey Ford with laughter and tears and wonderful music and a feast shared with friends.  It happens in big and small ways in what we do as individuals and what we do as a community. 

Hospitality, compassion, generosity—these are words that describe the people of Gander and Emmanuel. It is who we are and who we want to be.   The true value of our wealth is not to accumulate possessions so we can live in luxury with no worries.  But if we have wealth, it can enable generosity.  As we said last week, our hearts and our treasure go together.  As we look out at the world, as our hearts go out to the needs of the world, we can direct our treasure to follow.

This community of faith wants what God wants for the world. We want kindness and justice and sharing of resources so that everyone has enough.  We seek to embody Christ in this place, among these people.   We don’t do it perfectly, not by a long shot.  But we are practicing to get it right. 

This week you should receive a letter in advance of Pledge Sunday next week.  If you think you are not on the mailing list and you want to be, please drop your address into the offering plate or call the church office tomorrow.  This is the time of year when we ask ourselves to make a financial commitment for the next year.  It’s a commitment we make to God.  We don’t give to support the budget. We give to God, through the ministry and mission of this church, because within this congregation, we experience the fullness of the love of God.  In this congregation, we find a place to stand, trusting in God more than any of the other trappings of the good life the world supposedly offers.  This body of faith helps us to identify a courageous vision fueled by love and not by fear.  And so we will become rich in good deeds, generous and ready to share, so that we may take hold of what really matters and seize the life that truly is life.  Amen.

[1] Stephanie Mar Smith in Feasting on the Word Year C, Volume 4, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors,  (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010) p. 110.

[2] Tom Long,  Matthew: Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 1997 ) p. 75.

[3] The summary of the events at Gander related in this sermon are based on my reading of The Day the World Came to Town:  9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede, published by HarperCollins, New York, 2002.

10/20/19 - It's a Wonder-full Life: Treasure - Matthew 6:19-24

It’s a Wonder-full Life:  Treasure

Matthew 6:19-24 

October 20, 2019

Emmanuel Baptist Church, Rev. Kathy Donley

Where your treasure is, Jesus says,  there will your heart also be.  Where you put your money, that’s what you will value.  If you buy an expensive piece of furniture, for example, you will value it, take care of it, protect it. I remember a formal sitting room in a friend’s house where we teenagers were not allowed.  The carpet was not to be walked on, the furniture not to be sat upon – at least not by us. I expect that my friend’s parents put more money into furnishing that room that they had into the basement where we hung out, and it showed.

They treasured that room as place to entertain adult company.  There is nothing wrong with taking good care of your possessions.  Nothing wrong with having some things that get saved for special occasions or furniture that teenagers are not invited to use.   I’m not making a moral judgment, but only trying to apply this saying, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”  When you have invested hard-earned money in something, then you care for it.  Whatever your put your money into, your heart will follow. 

This is one of those sayings that can work in the opposite direction too.   If we turn it around so that it says “Where your heart is, there will your treasure be also,” it is also true.  I think of collectors.  Someone who loves art or guitars or cars or books. It doesn’t have to be a high end collection, but if you love something, you generally end up putting money into it. And often, if you have one of the things you love, you buy another one and another one.  (Don’t ask me how many feminist theology books I own.) Where your heart is, there will your treasure be. 

Here is a literal translation of verses 19-20  “Do not treasure up treasures on earth where moth and eaters  can consume and thieves can dig through and steal. Rather treasure up treasure in heaven where these things cannot happen.”[1]

“Treasure up treasures…”Treasure is used as a noun and a verb.  To treasure something is to value it, to consider it precious and valuable, to love it.  And, of course, as a noun, treasure is something that is valued or protected or loved.

Jesus is saying that human beings are always going to treasure treasures, but not all treasures are equally worthy.  Earthly treasures are temporary. They can be eaten by moths or rust or mold.  They can be broken or stolen.

We know this. None of us in this room loves money for its own sake. We don’t love the paper and ink of dollar bills or even of $100 dollar bills.  What we value about money is what it can purchase.  Money can buy necessities, to keep us alive. Money can buy luxuries, things that make life more fun, more enjoyable. Money, given away, can provide unimagined possibilities for someone else.  Our conflicts with money are generally about how to use it well, and that is a question of what to treasure.

Middle-class and upper-class people are taught certain ideas about money. We’re taught that responsible people store up money for the future. We save for retirement or for children to go to college or for some unforeseen crisis.  All of which are good things, right?  But remember, where your treasure is, there’s your heart.  So, if you have a retirement fund or a college fund or a rainy day fund, your heart is there too. 

Richistan is a book written about 12 years ago. In it, the Wall Street Journal columnist Robert Frank studied the lives of ultra-rich Americans.   He interviewed them and learned that many of them were highly anxious, so much so that they had formed self-help support groups.  When he pressed them about the source of their anxiety, he learned that these multimillionaires and billionaires couldn’t sleep at night because they were worried, worried about running out of money. [2]

In one study, these ultra-rich people were asked “how much money would you need to feel financially secure?”  The results were very interesting.  Those worth $1 million said they needed 2.4 million. Those worth $1.5 million said they needed $3 million.  Those worth $10 million said they needed $18 million to feel secure. In every category, the answer was always about twice as much as they had. [3]

It is probably easy for us to think that these millionaires and billionaires are treasuring the wrong treasures. Easy for us to think that they have lost touch with reality. But, are we ordinary folks so very different from them?  Haven’t most of us thought, at one time or another,  that we would feel secure if we had just a little more?  If there were just a little more in the rainy day fund, we would breathe easier. If there were just a little more put away for retirement, we wouldn’t worry so much.

Some of you have learned to be content with whatever you have, and good for you, but for those of us who haven’t learned that yet, it often seems that our heart follows our money.  If we want to change something about our money, then perhaps the key is in changing our heart.

Changing hearts is super hard work.  Jesus was all about that transformation, so what he says here is pivotal. He says, “The eye is the lamp of the body.”  Today, we would say that the eye receives light, but in the ancient world, they thought the eye was like a lamp, an instrument that projects light onto objects so that they may be seen.[4]

All of that suggests to me that the way to change hearts, including our own, is to change what we look at, to change our vision.  Presbyterian minister Tom Long says that the decision about which treasures to treasure is a question of vision and freedom. He says, “If a person see life as a gift from God, a bountiful outpouring of God’s providence, then that person is free to hold possessions with a light grasp and to be generous towards others.  On the other hand, if life is seen as a competitive struggle between winners and losers over limited resources, then one  [will be captive] to that struggle.[5]

Our vision, our outlook on life in general, affects our heart, but so does the specific stuff we look at.

Sometimes we have been looking at the same things for so long that we no longer recognize how they affect us.  I remember a woman whose husband was seriously ill. Her life was a daily round of caring for him.  Then one day, her parents asked for help with an urgent matter. She wanted to help them, but she was caught up attending to her husband, and so she told her parents she could not help.  Later, after the crisis had passed, she realized that, at the time her parents needed here, her husband was in the hospital.  He was being well cared for. She could have left for a few hours to tend to her parents. In the midst of it, she couldn’t see it, but later she said it was obvious.  And she felt she had let her parents down when they needed her.

This is often how we make decisions about our time and our money. We are trying to do the best thing, but our tendency to see just what is right in front of us or what we have been attending to or what is familiar, that is the tendency that makes it hard to change our hearts.

If we really want to follow Jesus, in the matter of treasure, then I suggest, we have to take steps to change what we see.  If we can change what we see, then our heart may change and our treasure will follow our heart.

For some of us, this shift in perspective has happened on mission trips. Seeing other people’s realities has helped us look at our own in a new light. For others of us, it has happened in crisis.  A health crisis, a relationship crisis, a financial crisis – a major event that interrupted life as usual and helped us see with more clarity than ever before what was really most important. Some of us were blessed with parents or mentors who taught us from a young age about how to treasure what was truly important.

For different reasons, some of you have found ways to align your financial practices with your deepest values.  On a regular basis, in at least some arena of life, you lead with heart and let the treasure follow. 

Oseola McCarty was an African American woman from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She left school after the sixth grade to care for a sick relative and she never went back. For seventy-five years, she washed and ironed and folded the laundry of the bankers, lawyers and doctors in town.  She earned just pennies, but she tried to save what she could and eventually she started a little savings account.  She lived a simple life.  Her earthly treasures were few.  *She lived in a modest house just blocks from the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi. She did not get an air conditioner until she was well into her 80’sand then she only turned it on when she had company. She never owned a car.  She walked a mile each way to and from the grocery store. She went to the Friendship Baptist Church every Sunday, carrying a Bible held together with Scotch tape. When she was 87, Oseola retired.

In 1995, the development office of the University of Southern Mississippi received a phone call from a local bank. The bank had a check for the university from Oseola McCarty for $150,000. No one at the university had ever heard of Oseola McCarty.  She had never set foot on campus.  This washerwoman who had never been to high school, let alone college, gave away sixty percent of her life savings she had for a scholarship fund for minority students.  (She also gave 10% of her net worth to her church, by the way.)  

You’ve probably heard that story.  It made national news. She was invited to the White House and received an honorary degree from Harvard. Today I’m wondering what Oseola saw.  What did her life illumine for her? She saw people who had much more money than she did. Did she pay attention to what they treasured and whether those treasures increased their joy and love?  She had ample opportunity to notice disparities between rich and poor, between those with the opportunity for education and those who lacked it. It seems like her heart was with those who didn’t have that opportunity, and her treasure followed her heart.   

Shortly before she died, someone asked why she did not spend her hard-earned money on herself.  She smiled and said, “I am spending it on myself.” [6] 

Beloved ones, may we wonder at God’s gift of life so that we live in the freedom that enables generosity and our treasure resides with our hearts. Amen.

[1] Ben Witherington, Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary: Matthew, (Macon, Georgia: Smyth and Helwys Publishing, 2006), p. 149.

[2] Robert Frank, Richistan:  A Journey through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich (New York:  Crown Publishers, 2007), p. 203-218

[3] Robert Frank, Richistan, p. 50

[4] Eugene Boring,  New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. VII, Matthew,  (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 210.

[5] Tom Long,  Matthew: Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 1997 ) p 74.

[6] As told by Wallace W. Bubar in Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew, Volume 1, Cynthia Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, editors, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2013)   p. 138.

10/13/19 - It's a Wonder-full Life: Looking Back - Matthew 22:15-22

It’s a Wonder-full Life:  Looking Back

Matthew 22:15-22 

October 13, 2019

Emmanuel Baptist Church, Rev. Kathy Donley

What does a coin tell us about who we are?  If you pull out any American money you happen to be carrying, you might see that it says “In God we trust.”  I wonder how often we notice that.  When I stop to think about it, it seems strange for money to be the medium that carries that message. 

I heard about someone who was challenged by his pastor to make the sign of the cross in marker on his most frequently used credit card.   He did that and then, he said for the next several months, it was nearly impossible to buy something and not ask himself whether his purchase aligned with his faith.  As we move through this worship series on money and meaning, some of us might try that exercise too.

But I mention it because if having a cross on a credit card would make us more self-reflective, I wonder what meaning there is in having the motto “in God we trust” on our money.  This week I learned that the phrase was first added to coins  in 1863, at the urging of a Baptist pastor from Pennsylvania. At least part of the motivation then was to declare the God was on the Union side of the Civil War.   Mark Twain said “it always sounds well  -- In God We Trust. I don’t believe it would sound any better if it were true.” He said the slogan would be more truthful if it designated the paper it was written on as ‘the god we trust in’.[1]

Then in 1956, Congress declared “In God we trust” to be our national motto.  After that, the words appeared on paper money.  At that time, the motivation was to distinguish the USA from godless communists during the Cold War.

So, if I have it right, then, this motto appears on our money more as a statement about power, especially political power, than about theology.  And I tend to think that Mark Twain is right, that American’s trust in money is right up there with our trust in God.

We are not the first to intertwine money and politics and theology.  That’s the crux of the scene with Jesus in our gospel reading. Some Herodians and some Pharisees try to trap Jesus with this question about money. The Herodians and the Pharisees are political opponents. The Herodians support the reign of the Herod family, which ruled Israel under the over-arching reign of the Emperor.  To support Herod was to support Rome and the tax.  The Pharisees are the liberal religious leaders of their day.  They are committed to the idea that every person could faithfully observe the traditional religious practices that were part of the covenant with God.  This intense religious practice enhances Jewish cultural identity and is in its own way, also a form of resistance to Rome.  The Herodians and the Pharisees do not agree on almost anything, but apparently they do agree that Jesus is a threat.  So they ask him “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

Jesus responds by asking them for a coin. What does a coin tell them about who they are?  Having to pay the tax to Rome is a painful reminder that they are occupied by a foreign power who worshipped false gods. The tax could only be paid with Roman coins, which are also pieces of propaganda. Most of the coins contain an image of the emperor proclaiming him to be divine. [2]

The silver denarius, represents a day’s wages for a laborer.  One side of the coin proclaims the Emperor Tiberius as a "son of the divine August," while the other side honors him as the "Pontifex Maximus" or "chief priest" of Roman religion. The two sides of the coin confer absolute religious and civil authority on Tiberius.

The Herodians and the Pharisees don’t care what Jesus really thinks about paying the tax. If he says “Yes, it is lawful,” he will be seen as a traitor to his people, and lose the respect of many of his followers.  If he says, “No, it is not lawful”  he will give the Romans reason to arrest him.  They think they have him right where they want him—either answer will work to their advantage.

Only Jesus does not say “yes” or “no”.  His answer might be his best-know sound bite,  “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”  The coin bears Caesar’s image – therefore it is Caesar’s, so give it to him.  But then what belongs to God? The answer must be whatever bears God’s image. Genesis affirms that humans are made in the image of God – therefore human beings belong to God. Jesus’ response challenges his questioners about where their deepest allegiance lies.  Jesus’ answer is a soundbite for the ages because it recognizes the moral ambiguity that permeates human existence.

In the first century context, this particular tax was a tribute paid to support the occupation of Israel. The Jewish people had to financially support their own oppression.  It’s a moral question about what to do money.  Jesus’ answer is a clue that financial decisions are always moral decisions. 

In our context, as consumers we make choices about where and what to buy, how much to spend, how much to save.  We can make the effort to purchase clothes and shoes not produced in sweatshops, but it does require effort. We can choose to pay more for products that are manufactured and packaged in ways that care for the earth and natural resources.  If we have financial investments, rendering to God involves knowing the practices of the corporations that our money supports. 

The more we think about this, the more we recognize that everything belongs to God.  If we take seriously the idea of giving to God that which belongs to God, we are required to reckon with how all-encompassing that category is.[3] 

Politics, money and religion are all jumbled together in this teaching of Jesus.  Politics, money and religion are all things many of us have been taught not to talk about, although I think it is more socially acceptable now to talk about politics and religion than about money.

We do tend to talk about money with our families.  Or to be more accurate, we tend to learn about money within our families, but sometimes what we’re taught is not to talk about it.  That is one of many messages we might absorb.

Proverbs says “Train up a child in the way she should go, and when she is old, she will not depart from it.”  This verse is often quoted as a positive – teach your children well so they will live well.  It is a true saying and it is also true in a negative direction. The things we learn in childhood, for good or bad, are not easily unlearned.  Because money is often a taboo subject, it seems that we often learn about it at home or we absorb messages from the wider culture.

Messages like:

Money doesn’t grow on trees.

Always save for a rainy day.

A fool and his money are soon parted.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

You can never be too rich. More is always better.

How much money you make determines your self-worth.

If you have money, God has blessed you.

If you don’t have enough money, you’ve sinned or you don’t have enough faith.

Many of these messages might be offered from a place of love and concern.  They are intended as guidelines for living well, but they have a shadow side.  Sometimes we internalize good messages in ways that

only the shadow side is evident.  For example, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” can easily establish itself as inherent distrust of other people’s generosity.  Or “always save for a rainy day” might create such fear that the other shoe is about to drop that we would hoard our money and refuse to spend it in ways that might actually create joy in our own lives or for other people.

Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart and soul and mind.  We are to be all in, loving God with everything we’ve got.  Loving God with heart, soul and mind means examining the money messages we live by, even critiquing the money messages that came from those we love.  It means reckoning with the morality of our financial decisions.  It means rejecting practices that don’t enhance our love of God or neighbor and embracing those that do.   

When Lynn Twist was the director of the Hunger Project, she went to an African-American church in Harlem to make an appeal for a project in Africa. She said it was raining and there were buckets all around the room to catch the water leaking through the ceiling.  She knew that the people in this church did not have much to give. When it came time to ask for donations, her palms were sweating and she began to perspire all over wondering if it was the right thing to do. She went ahead and made the request, and the room was absolutely silent.

After what seemed like a long, long time, a woman named Gertrude stood up. In her late sixties or early seventies, she had gray hair and when she stood up she was tall, thin, and proud.
She said, “I ain’t got no checkbook. I ain’t got no credit cards. To me, money is a lot like water. For some folks it rushes through their life like a raging river, but the money comes through my life like a small trickle. But I want to pass it on in a way that does the best good for the most folks. I see that as my right and as my responsibility. It’s also my joy. I have $50 in my purse that I earned from doing a white woman’s wash and I want to give it to you.” [4]

I love that Gertrude understands the use of money as a right and responsibility, but also as joy.   Using the money that flows into her possession in ways that do the most good.  That is her joy. 

All that we are and all that we have and all that we hope to be belongs to God.  We have been imprinted with the image of God. The ways we spend our money, our time, our resources, our life energy, all impact the ways we bear that image.  So beloved ones, this week, may we bear the image and share the joy. Laugh. Dance. Love. Help. Breathe the cool fall air and wonder at the beauty around us. Critically examine one money message you live by.  Spend money to bring joy.   Make a child giggle. Have a long talk with someone – really listen to them and enjoy their company.  Give money to ease someone’s pain. Keep giving to God all that is God’s. Amen.

[1] William E. Phillips, Mark Twain's Religion. (Macon, GA:  Mercer University Press, 2003), p. 157.

[2] Brian Stoffregen at http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt22x15.htm

[3] Matthew Skinner, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/christian-economics0matthew-22-15-22_b_1006128

[4] Lynne Twist “Money is a Lot Like Water”  http://www.awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=2096