3/8/20 - Roll Down Justice: Christ is Our Peace - Psalm 13; Ephesians 2:13-20

Roll Down Justice: Christ is Our Peace

Psalm 13

Ephesians 2:13-20

Emmanuel Baptist Church

March 8, 2020; Rev. Kathy Donley

Psalm 13 is a psalm of lament. It is a prayer for when the bottom drops out. It is a prayer for when your hopes have been crushed and then raised and then crushed again until you cry out, “How long? How long, O Lord?”

It is a prayer many will pray today. Perhaps some of us have heard about the newly released UN Report which studied attitudes towards women in 70 countries, including the United States. It found that almost 90% of the men and women in those countries have some specific biases against women.[1] On this International Women’s Day, some are saying “How long? How long, O Lord?”

This week we saw again the dashing of hopes that this would be the year when a woman would appear on the ballot for president of the United States. I read about a 60-year-old man who was sure that a woman would be elected this time. That man was confident, but his own mother was skeptical. She, of course, turned out to be right. She has been saying “How long, O Lord” for longer than he has. And after this week, she is still saying it.

If the Psalter is the hymnbook of ancient people, then these are the sad, angry, protest songs. Significantly, these songs are addressed directly to God, because only God can change this situation. Emmanuel Katongole, Professor of Peace Studies at Notre Dame, said, “Lament is not a cry into a void. Lament is a cry directed to God. It is the cry of those who see the truth of the world’s deep wounds and the cost of seeking peace. It is the prayer of those who are deeply disturbed by the way things are.” [2]

If we are seekers of justice, lament will be the soundtrack of our lives. If we are Christians, we live between the now and the not-yet. We live in the now of brokenness with the knowledge that God was in Christ reconciling the world. The fullness of that reconciliation has not yet been realized. So we live between times. We live with protest on our lips, but with hope in our hearts awaiting transformation, because we trust that God’s lovingkindness will have the final word.

Just like we do, the early Christians in Ephesus struggled with transformation. They wanted to be God’s faithful people, but their imaginations were limited by long-standing divisions. So there was conflict in the community between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. There was a wall of hostility between them. This wall began as a physical wall, a stone wall in the Jerusalem Temple that stood about five feet tall. Gentiles were allowed into the temple, but they were not permitted to go beyond this wall. Signs warned that non-Jews could be put to death for going further. [3]

If this letter was written after the destruction of the temple, then the literal wall was gone, but the people were still separated by mutual hostility. Maybe it is part of being human. Maybe it is part of the brokenness of creation, but we seem to be so very good at building walls and maintaining them. They give us identity and help us feel safe, among our own kind, whether we define that category on the basis of race or religion or gender or national origin.

The literal wall separating Jews and Gentiles is gone and Paul says, even more importantly, Christ has created peace. This passage is one of my all-time favorites and so incredibly important. “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is the hostility between us.”

Christ has broken down the wall. I love that Mark Miller’s song repeats that so emphatically, because it seems to be something we lose sight of so very often.

Last night there was a send-off for the Albany delegation going to the border this week. Each person going was asked to share something about why they’re going. One woman spoke about work she had done in Guatemala near the end of its civil war and how the brutality of those years continued even after peace was declared, so that those who are now arriving at our southern border represent the next generation suffering from that same hostility. Two Jewish women each spoke eloquently about the parallels between the Holocaust and now, and how they see that “Never again is now.”

I am keenly aware that we are headed to a place where another literal wall of hostility has been built to separate us and them. I learned recently that on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, the people of Berlin gave President Trump one of the wall’s remaining sections. It weighs 2.7 tons. This was no small gift. The President did not accept the gift, but it still made its way here. It now stands in a park in Los Angeles. This letter is inscribed on it:

Dear President Trump,

This is an original piece of the Berlin Wall. For 28 years, it separated east and west, families, and friends. It divided not only Berlin and Germany, but the whole world. Too many people died trying to cross it—their only crime being their desire to be free. Today the world celebrates the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Germany is united again, and only a few scattered pieces remind us that no wall lasts forever. For decades, the United States played a major role in bringing this wall down. From John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, the Presidents of the USA fought against it. We would like to give you one of the last pieces of the failed Berlin Wall to commemorate the United States’ dedication to building a world without walls.[4]

Humans are so very good at building and maintaining the walls of hostility. History repeats itself and the lament goes up again, “How long, O Lord?”

We could spend a great deal of time listing all the walls that we humans have built preserve our identity, to keep ourselves safe, walls of hostility which cause suffering and death and enmity. We could recognize that Christians have been just as guilty of that wall-building, perhaps even more egregiously because sometimes we did it in Christ’s name. The litany of affirmation and celebration we shared a few moments ago could easily be rewritten as a confession of the many ways we get it wrong.

We do often get it wrong, but sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we submit to Christ’s peace. We recognize the one new humanity he has created. And justice rolls down.

One Sunday in the 1940’s, a young woman invited her boyfriend to go to church with her. Both of them were African American, but the church they attended that day was all white and right in the heart of segregated America. The young man waited in the pews while the congregation went forward to receive communion. He was anxious because everyone was drinking from the same chalice. He had never seen black people and white people drink from the same water fountain, much less the same cup. He kept watching his girlfriend. She received the bread and waited for the cup. Finally, the priest lowered it to her lips and said, what he had said to the others, “The blood of Christ, shed for you.” The man decided that any church where black and white people drank from the same cup had discovered something powerful, something he wanted to be a part of. That boyfriend and girlfriend stayed together and got married. In time, they had a son they named Michael. We know him as the Rev. Michael Curry, He is the presiding bishop of the Episcopal church in the USA.[5]

Sometimes the church gets it right. We teach that people should do what God calls them to do, no matter how hard it is. And our children hear us and believe us. And little girls grow up and hear the call of God to ordained ministry and we pursue it, no matter how hard it is.

We sing “Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in God’s sight.” And when white Christian nationalism rears its ugly head, sometimes, we remember that song and recognize it for what it is – white supremacy with nothing Christ-like about it at all.

We say “Jesus loves you” early and often to babies in the nursery and children of all ages and grown-ups. We preach the love of Christ who went to the cross for you and for me and for the world, the Christ who is our peace. And then, sometimes, in spite of other hurtful messages of exclusion, LGBT people know that the church is wrong and Jesus really is love and they show up at the table, as if they had a rightful place, which they certainly do.

There were ways for Gentiles to draw near, to be included within the people of God in ancient Palestine. There were requirements, hoops to jump through, ways to change one’s identity from Gentile to Jew. The radical thing that Paul says in this letter is that because of Jesus, there is peace with God, peace between Jew and Gentile, a new reality. The Gentiles are now included in God’s promises to Israel, but they do not and need not act like Jews. They are accepted as they are. People on the other side of the wall do not have to become like us. Nor do we have to become like them. Christ has broken down the wall. We are all part of the new reality he has created.

Our government has declared new immigration policy in which the asylum process has been virtually eliminated. They call it expedited removal. There are other laws by other names which make it possible to send people to countries that are not their home countries. Several days a week right now, people are being deported by the planeload, principally to Honduras and Guatemala, the places of violence and corruption and death that thousands of others are fleeing.

Witnesses regularly go to the Brownsville airport to see these deportation flights with their own eyes and hearts and to lament, what one Jewish man calls “the boxcars in the sky.” The human cargo of these planes are brought in on buses. A few weeks ago, the witnesses arrived before dawn ahead of the buses. Like they have done elsewhere, they waved red paper hearts and shouted “We love you” and “no estan solos, You are not alone.” They got remarkably close to the buses so that they could not fail to be heard.

It was dark inside the buses. The people were handcuffed and would be put into shackles before boarding the plane -- hostility expressed in cold hard metal. But the witnesses did everything they could to tear down the wall between them. Heartbroken, they sang and cried and waved their hearts. And then one man, or maybe he was just a boy, somehow managed to pry open a small window at the back of one bus. And he said something. What would you say in that situation? What could be said? The witnesses strained to listen. “Muchas Gracias” he said. “Thank you.”

For a flicker of time, the wall of hostility wavered. For an all too brief moment, there was human connection and perhaps a smidgen of peace.

It is not enough. Not nearly enough.

And so we cry “how long, O Lord, how long?”

We who seek justice must live with protest on our lips, but with hope in our hearts trusting that God’s lovingkindness will have the final word. Because Christ has broken down the wall.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/mar/05/nine-out-of-10-people-found-to-be-biased-against-women

[2] Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice, Reconciling All Things:A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2008), p. 78

[3] Allen Verhey and Joseph S. Harvard, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible – Ephesians, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011), pp. 97-98

[4] https://lapca.org/wall-against-walls-finds-a-home-at-la-plaza/?fbclid=IwAR0Wy1SEBbtFYZydT_469XlfQBLoMNgCWzfDLokjwDUHuQSYddCFB6nJ038

[5] Rachel Held Evans, Searching For Sunday: Loving, Leaving and Finding the Church, (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2015) pp. 150-151

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