5/24/20 - Generation to Generation - Psalm 145

Generation to Generation

Psalm 145

Emmanuel Baptist Church

May 24, 2020; Rev. Jerrod H. Hugenot

A recording of the service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://youtu.be/FwQTotrecLA

In some Christian churches, I could ask this question: What is the chief end of man [humanity]? Many in the congregation reply: “To glorify God and enjoy God forever.”

How did they know this? Thanks to catechism.

While we Baptists might associate the word catechism more with Catholicism, a number of Protestant traditions use catechism as well, particularly in the Reformed traditions, especially Presbyterians and Lutherans. Catechism sets up a series of questions and answers for Christians to learn the vocabulary of faith and the beliefs central to Christianity. The question about “the chief end of humanity,” our identity and destiny, appears as Question #1 in some catechisms.

So, why is this brief handful of fourteen words considered so great, so central to what it means to be Christian? To give God due praise and glory means that no other shall receive your faithfulness and dedication. God alone receives our praise and glory, and our understanding of life cannot be without a sense of humility that we exist not for ourselves. Such a faith is unflinching in its theism (i.e. there is a God) and its willingness to say that we give our trust and allegiance to God alone.

In the midst of our lives, such talk may sound too lofty or worse, detached from the life we know. To say that humanity’s very reason for being, our reason for being is to praise God is even difficult. We typically struggle with questions of life, trying to sort out the puzzles and the pain of human existence however the plain-spoken words of this question and answer ought to cause some troubling in your soul. Such thinking calls our bluff and asks us to think about what we really mean when we say we are believers. Is this conversation this morning a “nice thought” meant as a Sunday morning listening yet lost in the shuffle of the other six days of the week, or does this question illumine the faith of Christianity, with its way of discipleship that asks very hard questions of us?

Answering with “to glorify God and enjoy God forever” is harder than just learning and repeating these words. To live it out means you commit to living out faith daily. Somehow, in the whirlwind of family and deadlines, in the midst of the headlines of the world and the headlines of your little corner of the world, such belief is a tall order. How does one learn such a way of life? And more to the point, can you risk life by living that way?

In the midst of the world, in the great times of trial, the praise of God can take place in every season of life, and it is indeed fitting for us to do so. Giving praise to God is in part a realization that our lives twist and turn, and often without much warning, yet we still recognize the goodness that God intends for the world, even when we cannot see much of it ourselves.

Christians believe that in the end, whether it is our own or that of this world, God shall have the last word. God shall make all things well. As Augustine said, restless hearts will find their rest in God. To give praise to God, even in the midst of your worst days, understands our lives so much differently, cast not to the winds, but in loving trust of the One who has made us.

Appropriately, the 145th Psalm raises up a long liturgy of praise. Of all the psalms, many of which call us to praise, this one begins with a self-description. Rather than perhaps “a psalm of David” common for many psalms, the superscription, or title, is simply tehillah, or in English: “Praise.” The psalmist just leaves it at that: “this one…it is praise.” To understand this psalm, you need not look any further than this one word: “praise.”

Down the centuries, a rabbinical tradition arose, stating, “Every [person] who repeats the Tehillah [praise] of David thrice a day may be sure [they are] a child of the world to come” (cited Mays, Psalms, Interpretation, 1994, p. 437). Reading this psalm, measuring its words with your heart and mind, is offered as a good word, one that guides you through this life, helping you know your identity against all the other claims of the world to tell you who you are. One could rail against rote (indeed, catechism is often criticized as rote faith), yet in the repetition, if you look closely, you shall find a rhythm worth taking up in your own life. In reading this psalm in times of sorrow, in times of joy, in the midst of disaster and when going to bed after a ho-hum day, this psalm keeps turning us back to our reason for being.

In the midst of this psalm, we find the same wisdom that prompted the later Christian observation that the chief end of humanity is to glorify God and enjoy God forever. The life we live ought to be a life of praise, yet not one that is trite or errs on the side of living faith as if it is “magic” (if I pray or live a certain way, I’ll get a free pass from the unpredictable part of human existence). This sort of praise is meant for those who have diplomas from the School of Hard Knocks. The psalms reflect ancient Israel’s own story, shaped as much by pathos as praise, as much about lament as hope. And in the midst of the collection, we are offered a psalm that points to the life we know as well as the life to come.

We have a holy calling to be involved in the education and upbringing of each child and youth in our congregations. After all, we did not learn the ways of faith alone. We too are the product of the investment and love of generations who have gone on before us. In turn, we share the faith, and hopefully take it very, very seriously as a key investment in what it means to be a congregation. Each of us is responsible for sharing faith and helping our children and youth know that life may be complex, life may even get deeply sorrowful, yet there is a world to come that is worth living and a great calling to live this life fully. This is not just the work of Sunday school teachers. This is not just the work of a Christian education board. This is not just the work of a pastor. It is the responsibility of each one of us to be invested in children, whether just learning to walk, or starting to bridge across the stages of life. You have the wonderful challenge of “being there” for our kids!

I remember very well the witness of grown-ups who made the faith come alive. Teaching a Sunday School class, helping train me to be an usher, welcoming my voice (going through puberty even) into the choir, asking good questions and acknowledging me in the room as the young kid, the moody teenager, the young adult (with the assurance of knowing all things despite knowing very little). I was blessed by those who remembered their faith was not just “theirs” to have, but to share and kindle anew a spark, a flame and a love of God made known through Jesus Christ.

We did not use catechism, so “to glorify God and enjoy God forever” did not get communicated by a standardized teaching. Yet it was there, so when I read what other Christians were taught, I could agree with the good word it imparted. I had seen it lived out in the lives of the church folk who helped raise me up in the faith. I could savor the words of “glorifying and enjoying God forever” as words of faith, not only passed down to me but kept by me as words that anchor me. And today, I share the faith with you through my preaching and through our connections together through the American Baptist tradition and our ministry together as fellow American Baptists in upstate New York.

Sometimes, people will pick up on the fact I do not sound like I’m from the Northeast. (This accent is not from the Bronx nor is it from Maine, so I do “sound funny” pretty much at the outset of talking aloud to folks out here.) The question gets asked, “How did somebody from Kansas get out here?” (I have a suspicion I would be believed if I casually said it was due to a tornado and some winged monkeys.)

To answer that question is not about “jobs” or “opportunities.” I begin not with a roadmap or some GPS directions. I share that I am here thanks to first learning of the faith from a little Methodist church in a rural Kansas farming community. Later on, my family joined the local American Baptist church, especially for myself and my dad that day in 1984 through confession of faith, profession of Christ as Lord and going fully into the waters of baptism. How I wound up here today is a long journey that is still unfolding, still being discovered, somewhat on my own and somewhat on the way along with the gathered people called “Church.” Without a doubt, I can look back at that history thus far and say, “Praise be to God!” And I know I’m simply joining the rest of the choir, generations present, down the centuries of the past and with those who I hope will hear this sermon today and decide to join along this journey of faith!

Wherever we go in our lives, no matter how our lives play out in one time or another during the seasons of life, we are best known not as people with a list of successes or failures to our name. We are a people who know where we are going and what we should be doing in the times in between. We are a people called to a singular way of life, to praise God now and forevermore.

5/17/20 - Christ's Power - Our Power - Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53

Christ’s Power ~ Our Power

Ephesians 1:15-23, Luke 24:44-53

Emmanuel Baptist Church

May 17, 2020; Rev. Kathy Donley

A recording of the service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWBUzi6RvHI&t=2640s

Christ’s Power

Cassandra read the passage from Ephesians beautifully. In those 8 verses, she read 4 complex sentences. In the Greek, all of that is one long convoluted sentence. Paul is piling up phrases on top of each other to try to describe something almost incomprehensible. He speaks about resurrection which offers immeasurable hope and rich inheritance and great power. Great power -- that one is very hard to understand, as Naughty Racoon demonstrated.

At Christmas, we often talk about Jesus who abandoned his power as God to become human, to take on flesh and live with us. Here, what Paul is describing is the power of incarnation in the other direction. Jesus, the human one, has been raised to sovereignty, “far above all rule and authority and dominion, not only in this age, but in the age to come.” In Jesus of Nazareth, God came to earth, and now, in Jesus, a Human One resides in heaven. One scholar says “Humanity may have forfeited its magnificence, but in Jesus the Messiah, it is restored, renewed. . . we see Jesus, the one who reveals both God and our true humanity, the glorious destiny that fits our good creation. We see Jesus, the new humanity.”[1]

Barbara Brown Taylor makes it a bit easier for me to understand. She says, “What we share with [Jesus] – that fullness of his in which we take part – is the strenuous mystery of our mixed parentage. We are God’s own children, through our blood kinship with Christ. We are also the children of Adam and Eve, with a hereditary craving for forbidden fruit salad. Frisk us and you will find two passports on our persons – one says that we are citizen of heaven, the other insists we are taxpayers on earth.”

“What Paul asks us to believe,” she continues, “is that our two-ness has already been healed in our oneness in Christ – not that it will be healed, but that it already has been healed – even if we cannot feel it yet. . .”[2]

Paul prays that with the eyes of our hearts we will begin to see, to perceive, to grasp, the vast richness of our inheritance as God’s children and to live into that wholeness which has already occurred.

Waiting

My last Sunday with you in the Emmanuel sanctuary was on March 8. That was the last Sunday that many of us were there. On March 15, I was away and I’m told that about 20 of you were present sitting in chairs spaced apart. By March 22, we were worshipping via Zoom. Those major upheavals took place very quickly. As soon as we began to get our minds around one fact about the virus, there would be new information to incorporate.

The way that Luke tells the story of Easter, the upheaval is even faster. Jesus’ friends wake up on Easter Sunday in deep grief and fear. It is the third day since they witnessed the trauma and horror of resurrection. They are still coming to terms with that, when the women discover the empty tomb and are told by angels that Jesus has risen from the dead. Peter verifies the empty tomb but he and the other men think that the women’s story is ridiculous. Then two disciples walk to Emmaus and on the way, they encounter a stranger who turns out to be Jesus. They come all the way back to Jerusalem to inform the others, only to be told that the others already know and that Peter has also seen him. Then suddenly Jesus is among them. He eats a piece of fish, as if to demonstrate that he is not a ghost. He goes out and they follow him the two miles to Bethany. He blesses them and ascends into heaven.

How could they even begin to process those events? The day began with the worst kind of sorrow and ended with incomprehensible joy, but somehow Jesus is gone again. How did they experience that incredible roller coaster of emotions? How would they make sense of any of it?

Before leaving, Jesus tells them to stay here until they are clothed with power. Stay here means to stay in Jerusalem. They are from Galilee. They just went to Jerusalem for the holiday, but now Jesus says, “Stay here, where things are not so familiar, maybe not so comfortable. Stay here until . . .”

Jesus doesn’t tell them how long it will be. He doesn’t tell them how they will know when the power comes. Just “stay here until . . .” It turned out to be 50 days. Fifty days until the Holy Spirit came in power on Pentecost. But they did not know how long it would be – a week? A month? A year?

New York has been on Pause for about 56 days now. And we still don’t know how long we’ll have to stay here. I have a new appreciation for the Jesus’ wisdom and the disciple’s obedience. Waiting in place gave them time to process, time to incorporate the massive upheaval of Easter. They needed that time, the being together in the Temple, the season of waiting with ambiguity season because Pentecost was going to be another life-changing event.

Denise Levertov was a fascinating American poet of the last century who often wrote about faith. One of her poems about Jesus’ Ascension is called Suspended. She imagines trying to hold on to God’s garment. She writes

I had grasped God's garment in the void
but my hand slipped
on the rich silk of it.
The 'everlasting arms' my sister liked to remember
must have upheld my leaden weight
from falling, even so,
for though I claw at empty air and feel
nothing, no embrace,
I have not

plummeted.[3]

“I have not plummeted” she says. Those are words I am holding on right now. Things seem unstable and ambiguous. The upheaval of this time is huge but we have not plummeted. By God’s grace, we are facing the challenge, we are not despairing. Like the disciples, we are staying here, until . . .

Our Power

Jesus tells the disciple, “stay here until you are clothed with power.” Paul prays that we may know the power that raised Jesus from the dead.

Power is hard to talk about. For some of us is it a negative word. It makes us think of abuse or violence and we want no part of that. If we do construe it positively, many of us still tend to under-estimate the power of God in us at the best of times. And right now, we feel somewhat powerless, our strength diminished by fear of the virus and the political polarization that makes enemies out of those who need most to work together for the common good.

We just sang “Goodness is Stronger than Evil”. Those words were written by Archbishop Desmond Tutu shortly after the official end of apartheid in South Africa. At the time he was the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which took upon itself the task of telling the truth about the atrocities of the past so that the country could heal. If you don’t know Desmond Tutu’s personal story, look him up on the internet this afternoon. The forces of racism and poverty and persecution waged against him for much of his life and yet, with the eyes of his heart he continually proclaimed “goodness is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate.”

I read a remarkable sermon by one of Desmond Tutu’s colleagues this week. Peter Storey was a white South African, a Methodist minister in Johannesburg and Soweto during the decades of struggle against apartheid. The sermon I read was one he delivered to the South African Council of Churches in May 1981, just after Bishop Tutu had been arrested and his passport confiscated. In this sermon, Peter Storey spoke about the Jesus who was enthroned far above all government and authority. He called on his listeners to follow that Jesus and to bear witness to his truths. He told them that, as Jesus followers, they were a sign of hope in a divided land.

This was a very public gathering. There was no doubt that what he said would be known by the government. And yet, he clearly and deliberately described the injustice and abuse he saw. Listen to these words: “Our task is to continue to reveal these truths too for what they are. Call us unpatriotic if you will, but we want not part of a patriotism that hides that nations’ disease when that disease is hurting people, hounding people, and breaking people each day.” And later on, he said, “there are deeper and more subtle pressures that bring suspicion and division among us: a readiness to write someone off because his or her view of the struggle is different from my own; the quick labeling of people in destructive ways; a willingness to trade the eternal truth of the Gospel for some fashionable ideology of change.”[4]

Those words sound volatile. They still ring true in our context. Imagine the courage it took to speak them to the oppressors in his government, not just once, but over and over again. What strength he had, to remain clear to his convictions that Jesus is Lord. And what we know, from this vantage point, is that history was on his side. The struggle was long and terrible, but when he proclaimed that apartheid was doomed, he was right. That is the power of the gospel. That is the power that raised Christ from death to the right hand of God.

That same power is at work in us and around us, in so many ways. More than I can name, but here are a few.

The South End Children’s Café serves the children in Albany’s South End. In recent weeks, they have adapted their program to work in this time of social distancing. Every week, they are delivering groceries to provide 5 meals each for 500 children and their families. Last week, they put out the word that supplies were running low. They shared a list of needed items and asked people to make donations yesterday afternoon. The response was overwhelming. They needed a dedicated police officer to manage the line of cars waiting to drop off. One of my friends who volunteers there said, “I started crying when I saw the police officer directing traffic and the volume of food and supplies that were donated. It’s been pretty easy to get discouraged with everything we are seeing and reading, so this was much needed!” That is resurrection power.

Our church and so many others have creatively adapted. Few of us love streaming worship or Zoom gatherings, but we keep showing up, to be here for each other, to see the hope of our calling with the eyes of our hearts. We keep praying for our neighbors and loving our enemies through the power of Christ

I keep hearing from people who are looking to donate their stimulus checks in the best possible ways. I keep hearing that mostly from you. You want to give away money for groceries and medicine and shelter and electricity and all the things desperately needed by those who are especially struggling right now.

Beloved ones, that is compassion and generosity and hope. That is power. The power of Christ raised from the dead who fills all in all, whose fullness and power have spilled over into us. Thanks be to God.

[1] Allen Verhey and Joseph S. Harvard, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible – Ephesians, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011), p. 61

[2] Barbara Brown Taylor “He Who Fills All in All” in Home By Another Way (Boston: Cowley Publications, 1997) p.139.

[3] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/poemsandprayers/630-denise-levertov-suspended

[4] Peter Storey With God in the Crucible: Preaching Costly Discipleship (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), p 46.

5/10/20 - Can I Get a Witness - Acts 7:55-60

Can I Get a Witness

Acts 7:55-60

Emmanuel Baptist Church

May 10, 2020; Rev. Kathy Donley

A recording of the service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-FfoTRaun8&t=1415s

Stephen is known as the first Christian martyr because he died for his faith, but in Greek, the word “martyr” actually means “witness.” It didn’t start out meaning someone who died for their faith (although getting killed for what you believe is pretty strong testimony). It just referred to someone who was willing to speak of what they knew to be true.

Some form of the word martyr occurs three times in Acts chapters 6-7. We heard the end of the story of Stephen. His story began when he was one of the leaders chosen to oversee food distribution. It seems that the early church had something like a food pantry. Some widows were being overlooked in the distribution, so the apostles asked for responsible leaders to take charge and make it right. One of the requirements they had was that the ones chosen had to be of good repute. The Greek for that is martyroumenous. A literal translation is “well-attested” or “well-witnessed.” Stephen’s good reputation is based on what other people have witnessed about him.[1]

So Stephen became a deacon, which means server. The church in Jerusalem was growing and Stephen became known not only for his food pantry skills, but for his wise and spirit-filled preaching. There was opposition to him which eventually took the form of false witnesses, mártys , which is found in verse 6:13. They lied about him, charging him with blasphemy which was serious enough to get the attention of the authorities.

What we didn’t read is a very long and pretty harsh sermon that Stephen delivered at his hearing. It seems that he was representing himself at trial. He did not make a good lawyer; he didn’t even address the charges against him. Instead he re-told the story of his people and reminded them of their long history of ignoring the prophets, including both Moses and Jesus. That’s when the mob turned on him and killed him. And we see that word mártys one more time in verse 58 where it says that the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.

That word witness jumped out at me. In the last year I have joined two groups that called themselves witnesses -- the group that went to Homestead Florida to observe whatever they could about the conditions and treatment of asylum-seeking youth being detained there, and the group in Brownsville Texas who gathered to pay attention to what was happening on both sides of the US/Mexico border there.

What I learned from those experiences is that bearing witness has an effect on those of us who do the observing. In watching and listening and paying attention, we learn things which make a deep impression. We see faces and body language and hear words and tone of voice and what is happening becomes more personal and more important to us because we are there to bear witness and we can tell the story of what we know. Even when we could do nothing to change the situation, there was a power in simply watching.

I also learned that another power of bearing witness is that it can change the actions of those being observed. Witnesses at Homestead noticed that the staff were provided with baseball caps against the hot sun in Florida but that the teens were not. They pointed this out to the press. Within a few days, the witnesses observed that all the teens had been issued hats as well.

There were witnesses, observers at Stephen’s death. That’s how we know the story, right? Someone saw the expression of wonder on Stephen’s face when he described that he was looking into heaven. Some heard him committing his spirit to God and uttering other words very similar to those Jesus said on the cross “do not hold this sin against them.” Some witnesses were there to see and hear and record the story for future generations, like us.

I asked you this week about what you are bearing witness to. You are seeing that the virus is disproportionately affecting people of color and those in nursing homes, you see those in prisons and immigrant detention unprotected from it, you are noticing continuing racial violence, you mentioned the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia as just one example; you are bearing witness to political decisions like more stimulus money going to large businesses than small ones and proposed cuts to educational funding in the NY State budget and the continuing deportation flights which are now sending covid-positive people to Guatemala and Honduras; you recognize that in places you were already concerned about, the suffering is on-going and getting even less attention, places like the Northern Triangle and Venezuela and Yemen.

You are also bearing witness to wonder – the beauty of the return of spring flowers and birds, acts of kindness and creativity, communities rallying together to feed children and recognizing the self-sacrifice of those on the front lines in health-care and driving buses or cleaning subways. Some of us bore witness this week to one who is living her final days with the same strength and grace and humor with which she has lived the rest of her life.

It was intriguing to me that some of you described actions as a way that you are bearing witness. You said that you are giving money to food pantries and groups like Doctors Without Borders which are providing essential services. You are delivering food to people you know and supporting the CROP Walk.

In many different ways, we are bearing witness. To some of us, who are used to being actively engaged in the world, it feels like we are side-lined. Whatever we are doing, it doesn’t feel like enough. I want to encourage us to believe that bearing witness is a faithful act, an act that God may use in ways we cannot yet imagine.

On that day when Stephen was obedient all the way to death, there were witnesses. One of the witnesses was a young Saul of Tarsus. He saw what was happening and on that day, he approved. But later, he had his own encounter with the Risen Christ. Without him, we would not have one-third of the New Testament and the history of the church would be altogether different. Saul bore witness to someone giving his life for his convictions. Can you imagine that he ever forgot that? Saul became Paul who was known for his boldness in witnessing to Jesus. Undoubtedly, Stephen served as a model for Paul, who later wrote, “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

Friends, I suggest that we do not know what will come of this time. What effect will it have on children? How is it forming young adults – those who expected to walk across a stage to receive a high school or college diploma this month? How is it shaping Emmanuel and other churches in becoming more flexible and intentional about defining the ministries that really matter?

When this pandemic first began, it stirred in many people memories of the AIDS outbreak in the 1980’s. The consuming fear of an unknown virus, the suffering and death, the pointing of fingers and casting blame, the ducking of responsibility by political leaders – all that sounded familiar.

During that terrible time, the Rev. Tom Long went to South Africa and met a young Johannesburg doctor whose specialty was AIDS. He worked in a dingy inner-city hospitality where the beds of AIDS patients spilled out of the wards and lined the corridors. The doctor said, “The numbers are growing at a fearful rate; in some areas, over half the population is infected and we don’t have enough to help them. We don’t have the medicine, the beds, the staff, the knowledge.”

Rev. Long asked “What keeps you going?”
The doctor spoke quietly, hesitantly, “My faith.” He looked out the window. He said, “I am holding on to the possibility of hope.”[2]

He was keenly aware of the suffering and death all around him, but he bore witness to the hope that God would act to create a redemption not already there in the present moment.

Beloved ones, keep bearing witness to all that is. Know that it is an act of faithfulness. Keep speaking of what you know to be true. Trusting in resurrection, keep holding on to the possibility of hope through Christ, our Risen Lord. Amen.

[1] J. Bradley Chance, Acts: Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary, (Macon: Smyth and Helwys, 2007), p. 104

[2] Tom Long, “When Half Spent Was the Night: Preaching Hope in the New Millennium,” Journal for Preachers, Easter 1999, p. 19

5/3/20 - Breaking Bread - Luke 24:13-35

Breaking Bread

Luke 24:13-35

Emmanuel Baptist Church

May 3, 2020; Rev. Kathy Donley

Image: Kitchen Scene with Supper at Emmaus by Pieter Cornelisz va Rijck, 1605

A recording of the service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://youtu.be/5zXqiheG2Bc

Once, when I was serving a church in Indiana, I went on a weekend retreat about 40 minutes from where we lived. There were several other groups using the common dining hall. I had just put away my dishes and was walking back to join my group, when I found myself hugging a woman I hadn’t seen in 10 years.

Grace was a friend from seminary. We had lost touch after graduation. It was a complete shock and a wonderful surprise to run into her. I learned that she was also serving a church in Indiana. After that, we stayed connected. We lived about 90 minutes apart, but every couple of months, we would each drive halfway and meet at a restaurant, where we would talk about our work and our families. Then I moved to New York. Meeting halfway for lunch didn’t work anymore. But Grace had another idea. So in those first months that I was here, when I didn’t really know anyone, we would set a date, and I would call Grace at lunchtime. I would sit out on the front steps of Emmanuel with my lunch and my phone, and we would talk about our work and our families. And even though I couldn’t see her face, the sound of her voice reminded me of the way that she tilted her chin and the way she held her fork and the particular expression that she always had when she leaned in to say “Kathy, tell me how it is with your soul.”

So much happens around meals. The gospels record over 20 instances of Jesus at meals. He had a reputation as a lively dinner guest. His detractors called him a glutton and a drunkard. Over meals, he deepened friendships and made some enemies, he told stories and challenged assumptions.

The meal in today’s story comes at the end. The set-up for the meal is a journey. It is on the long walk to Emmaus that two of Jesus’ disciples encounter a stranger. He doesn’t seem to know anything about what is happening in the world. The disciples react like we might if someone showed up and got very close to us and asked why so many stores are closed and what’s with the face masks?

The disciples don’t recognize Jesus as he walks along with them. Luke says that their eyes keep them from recognizing him. They have a perception problem.

Maybe you have perception problems lately. I have quarantine brain. I’ve learned to read texts and e-mails at least twice because my eyes are not picking up all the words. I’ve learned to ask Jim to repeat himself because I don’t remember what he just said. There’s nothing really wrong with my ears or my eyes or my brain, but the situation we find ourselves in has altered some of my perceptions.

The disciples were in the midst of sorrow and bewilderment and fear. The tomb was empty. Just that morning the women had told them that Jesus was alive. They were perplexed by this news. Whatever it might mean, it was a let-down. It didn’t fit with what they had believed about Jesus the Messiah. Their sorrow and disappointment is summed up in three words – we had hoped. “We had hoped Jesus was the one to redeem Israel,” they say. Its in the past tense. They are no longer hoping. Their sorrow and disappointment cloud their perceptions and they do not recognize Jesus. He is a stranger who seems completely outside their lives.

But then he tells a story. The kind of story that can happen at a meal or on a journey. A long family story, the kind that might begin “when your great-grandmother was just a little girl . . .”

Jesus tells a long, long story, a story that begins with Moses and ends with the events of the last few days. He tells their story back to them. Their family story, their faith story. But he reframes it so that it becomes bigger and deeper and richer. “When Jesus tells the story . . .he grounds it in memory, in tradition, in history, in Scripture. He helps the travelers comprehend their place in a narrative that long precedes them, a narrative big enough to hold their disappointment without being defeated by it. When Jesus tells the story, the death of the Messiah finds its place in a sweeping, cosmic arc of redemption, hope, and divine love that spans the centuries. When Jesus tells the story, the hearts of his listeners burn.”[1]

By the time he is done with that story, their journey is over. The stranger is going on, but they ask him to stay with them. The one thing they get right all day is extending hospitality. What if the disciples had not greeted the stranger on the road? What if they had not listened to his stories? What if they had let him go on his way? They might have missed this sacred encounter.

A Dutch artist known for his large kitchen scenes entitled this drawing, “Kitchen Scene with Supper at Emmaus”.[2] It shows a busy kitchen in a wealthy household in the 17th century. The title of the drawing with the word Emmaus is the only clue that we should look very carefully. The people in this kitchen are intent on many tasks. The disciples also undoubtedly had things to do at the end of their trip. But something prompted them to ask Jesus to stay. Holy moments, encounters with God can be elusive. Sometimes they can be happening in the room where we are without our notice. Have you found it yet? The Emmaus part of this picture?

For those on the phones, let me describe the picture. There are about 10 people in the main part of the kitchen which is quite large. There are three hunting dogs and a mother dog with pups which a girl is playing with. One woman is peeling carrots. Another is tending a fire. I can see a dead rabbit and a goose waiting to be skinned and plucked. There are also live chickens. A man with an ax is leaving; his companion seems to be chatting with a woman instead of coming with him. The scene is busy and I imagine noisy. But at the very back of the picture there are a couple of steps leading up to a smaller room and in that room, we can see three people sitting around a table, apparently oblivious to the bustle of the kitchen. The suggestion of this picture is that God comes to us in the midst of the ordinary, that perhaps “every meal has the potential of being an event in which hospitality and table fellowship can become sacred occasions.”[3]

Jesus takes the bread, the regular bread that is part of their meal. He blesses and breaks it and gives it, as he had done when he fed 5,000 people, and probably at the supper table in the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus, and when they celebrated the Passover. Suddenly, they recognize him in the breaking of the bread and everything falls into place because of that long story he told on the road.

Extending hospitality to a stranger, they recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread and realize that God was with them all along. This forms the pattern of early Christian worship: two or more gather together, they tell stories that recall Jesus’ presence, reflect on scripture and break bread together. [4] What has evolved into our church communion celebrations began when believers gathered in homes on the first day of the week to enjoy an ordinary meal together. Rachel Held Evans says, “They remembered Jesus with food, stories, laughter, tears, debate, discussion and cleanup. . . . According to church historians, the focus of these early communion services was not on Jesus’ death, but rather on Jesus’ friendship, his presence made palpable among his followers by the tastes, sounds and smells he loved.” [5]

The story of Emmaus reminds us that God meets us in the guise of the stranger, at the most unlikely moments. And God meets us in the most ordinary moments. God meets us in the text we receive from a lonely friend, in the patience we struggle to find when stir-crazy children and adults are in the same house all day long, and also in the silence of an empty apartment. God might meet you in the neighbor who waves when you walk your dog or the person who rings up your groceries behind a plastic shield. God can meet us in a phone call lunch with a friend and in a breakfast worship gathering shared across Zoom.

God meets us at the most unlikely moments and in the most ordinary moments. If your ordinary moments are also your most unlikely moments right now, then hear the good news: your story, with all of its moments, is part of a bigger, deeper, richer story of divine love and hope and redemption, and God is meeting you there. Thanks be to God.

[1] Debi Thomas in her essay But We Had Hoped at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2616-but-we-had-hoped

[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Cornelisz._van_Rijck_-_Kitchen_Scene_with_the_Supper_at_Emmaus_-_WGA19497.jpg

[3] Alan Culpepper, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), pp 480.

[4]Sharon H. Ringe, Luke: The Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995), p.287.

[5] Rachel Held Evans, Searching For Sunday: Loving, Leaving and Finding the Church, (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2015) pp. 125

4/26/20 - Reflections on John 10:1-11

Reflections on John 10:1-11

Emmanuel Baptist Church

April 26, 2020; Rev. Kathy Donley

Photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apse_interior_and_triumphal_arch_-_Sant%27Apollinare_in_Classe_-_Ravenna_2016.jpg © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / CC BY-SA 4.0

A recording of the service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://youtu.be/12sBoIDKpJU

The Sheep

From their earliest days, the people of Israel were nomadic herders. The tasks and patterns of tending animals shaped their lives on a daily and seasonal basis. Sheep were a primary life source, providing a staple food supply and raw materials for clothing and shelter. In the Bible sheep often become a metaphor for people. There are many comparisons made between people and sheep, but an important one is the sense that, for all their faults, sheep were highly valued.

Shepherding is still a way of life in many places, with its own wisdom and tools and language. For example, Arabic has an array of unique words to categorize sheep by age and fertility and the season in which they were born and by color, including “white sheep, black sheep, black sheep with white spots, white sheep with black face and neck, brown-faced with white nose sheep, brown-and-white-spotted-faced sheep, grey headed sheep.”[1]

Sheep are a prey animal with very few natural defenses. They stick together to protect each other. When one runs from perceived danger, they all run. When separated from their flock, they can become stressed. Once a sheep knows it is lost, it will often hide under a bush or rock and begin quivering and bleating. The shepherd must locate it quickly before a predator does. When found, it may be too traumatized to walk and must be carried back to the flock.[2] Sheep are communal beings. We are keenly aware just now of how much humans also need to share a common life, and how stressful separation is.

We are often told how dumb sheep are. I have certainly witnessed humans acting very dumb this week. Maybe you have too. It is worth noting that sheep have the ability to remember faces, not only faces of other sheep, but all faces, for years and years. And as Jesus said, they know the voice of their shepherd.

During some riots in Palestine in the 1930’s, a village near Haifa was punished by having its sheep and cattle sequestered by the government. Individuals were allowed to redeem their possessions at a fixed price. Among them was an orphan shepherd boy whose six or eight sheep and goats were all he had in the world. Somehow he obtained the money for their redemption. He went to the big enclosure where the animals were penned, offering his money to the British sergeant in charge. The man told him he was welcome to that number of animals, but ridiculed the idea that he could possibly pick out his “little flock” from among the hundreds which had been confiscated. The little shepherd just gave his call on his shepherd’s pipe and “his own” separated from the rest of the animals and trotted out after him.[3]

The Shepherd

If you go into almost any Christian church today, you will find a cross or a crucifix. The cross has become a universal symbol for our faith, but it wasn’t always that way. For hundreds of years, Christians embraced the symbols of the Good Shepherd, the fish and the vine. These are images found in the art in the Roman catacombs in the first four centuries after Jesus. The image of the Good Shepherd suggested the recovery of the lost sheep, the tender care and protection, the green pastures and still waters, the self-sacrifice: in word and image, the whole picture of a Savior.[4]

Art from the oldest existing church buildings, dating from the fourth and fifth centuries echoes that from the catacombs. In those times, Christians focused not on the cross and not on the empty tomb, but on Jesus very much alive in the world. They believed that in his death and resurrection, Jesus had re-opened paradise. Paradise was not limited to a heavenly realm, but it was first and foremost this world, permeated and blessed by the Spirit of God. It was on the earth – in the craggy landscapes, the orchards, the clear night skies and the teeming waters of the Mediterranean.[5]

One Anglican scholar says that the religion of these first Christians was the religion of the Good Shepherd. “The kindness, the courage, the grace, the love, the beauty of the Good Shepherd was to them the Prayer Book and Creeds and Canons, all in one. They looked on that figure, and it conveyed to them all that they wanted.”

Psalm 23 is beloved and familiar, a frequent reading at funerals when it conveys comfort, peace and tranquility. However, it’s primary intent is to convey life and vitality. The images of green pastures and still waters and right paths are about food and drink and safety. “God restoreth my soul” is a beautifully poetic way of saying “God keeps me alive.”

In John’s gospel, Jesus says that the shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. He goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. In many places, flocks of sheep are driven from behind, but in Palestine, even today, the shepherd leads from the front. And some sheep always stay near the shepherd and are his special favorites. He calls them by names like “Split Ear, Short Tail, Bright Eye, Angel, Lazy and Black Spot”[6]

The shepherd leads the sheep to graze in green pastures which are farther and farther away as the season progresses. Alone in the open spaces, they might face any number of threats, including thieves, wild animals, sudden blinding dust storms, water shortages and loose rocks. The sheep are entirely dependent on the shepherd for guidance and protection. The rod is not a walking stick, but a weapon to protect from enemies. It was also held horizontally at the entrance to the sheepfold, just high enough for each sheep to pass under it one at a time, allowing the shepherd to count the sheep, because every single one matters.

According to Walter Brueggemann, “the term shepherd is political in the Bible. It means king, sovereign, lord, authority, the one who directs, the one to whom I am answerable.”[7] To declare “The Lord is my shepherd” is to declare absolute loyalty to God and the intention to live under God’s reign.

Ezekiel was one of the prophets who bore witness to the failure of earthly kings. Because those king-shepherds tended to themselves instead of the sheep, and because the flock was being plundered by human enemies, God took on the role. In Ezekiel 34, God says, “I will feed them with good pasture, and upon the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on fat pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the crippled, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will watch over; I will feed them in justice.”

When Jesus says “I AM the Good Shepherd” he identifies with this God of ancient Israel, a source of deep security in a dangerous world.

As we share some silence together, I invite you to reflect on these ideas.

The sheep know the shepherd’s voice. What other voices are clamoring for your attention? How do you practice listening for the voice of God? How do you recognize it when you hear it?

Or you might think about Jesus’s death and resurrection as a re-opening of Paradise on earth. How do you appreciate and care for and live purposefully in this world which is permeated and blessed by the Spirit of God?

Let us center ourselves, allowing all that has been shared so far to be part of our thoughts, but seeking what God would have us attend to. We will simply be still together for a few minutes.

The Gate

Jesus says “I AM the Good Shepherd.” In late summer and early fall, the shepherd leads the sheep farther from home each day to find good grazing. Eventually, they must spend the night in the open country. In the evening, the sheep are led into an round, roughly built enclosure with no roof or door. Once the sheep are safely inside, the only vulnerable spot is the opening which is just wide enough for the shepherd’s body.

The shepherd will sleep across entrance, putting his body between the sheep and any danger. Jesus is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.

Jesus also says, “I AM the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.” Anna Carter Florence, Professor of Preaching and Worship at Columbia Seminary, describes it this way:

We go out and we come in even when we are saved. The gate marks a place to rest and a place to graze. The rhythm of in and out is necessary to life because the green pastures are outside the gate; a sheep that flat out refuses to go out will die. Likewise, a sheep that flat-out refuses to go in, when the call comes, may soon be lost in the night. So the gate is part of life and key to life, but not because it keeps us out or in. It simply marks the boundary between what we are to do in each space. The secret of saving the life of a sheep is to know when it is time to go out and when it is time to come back in. The point is to listen to the voice of the shepherd—the voice you recognize above all others—and follow that call.[8]

We cannot live our lives in the sheepfold. It may be safe there, but we need the pasture, the still waters, the green grass that lies beyond. To move in and out through the I AM gate means to live a life that is abundant in freedom and sustenance.

The shepherd calls us by name, tends, protects, and has gone ahead of us. May we together, continue to lean into the day when the Shepherd’s voice is the only voice we hear and the Good Shepherd is the only one we follow into life abundant.

[1] Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Gospel of John, (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1998) p.182

[2]Kenneth E. Bailey, The Good Shepherd: A Thousand-Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament, (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2014), p. 45

[3] Bailey p. 42, quoting Eric F.F. Bishop Jesus of Palestine (London: Lutterworht, 1955), pp 297-298.

[4] Bailey, p.21

[5] Rita Nakashima Brock, Rebecca Ann Parker, Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire, (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008), p. xv

[6] Bailey, p. 217

[7]Walter Bruegggemann, “Trusting in the Water-Food-Oil Supply” in The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann, Vol 1, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011), p. 112

[8] Anna Carter Florence, Preaching the Lesson John 10:1-10, Lectionary Homiletics, April 13, 2008, p. 15

4/19/20 - Trusting Resurrection - John 20:19-29

Trusting Resurrection

John 20:19-29

Emmanuel Baptist Church

April 19, 2020; Rev. Kathy Donley

A recording of the service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://youtu.be/SGmd93Lusu0.

Ask people about the disciple named Thomas and they will likely say, “Oh, you mean Doubting Thomas? ” Even though the word doubt doesn’t appear anywhere in the story when you read it in the Greek.

Thomas gets dubbed The Doubter as if that title distinguishes him from the rest of Jesus’ followers, as if what he does is different from any of the others. Remember back to last week. As John tells the story, Mary Magdalene saw the empty tomb first. Then she fetched Peter and the mysteriously unnamed Beloved Disciple. When the Beloved Disciple went inside the tomb and saw the graveclothes, he believed. One scholar suggests that Lazarus might be the Beloved Disciple, because Lazarus knows something about God interrupting the death and burial process. But Peter doesn’t believe then and neither does May. Mary only comes to believe when Jesus calls her by name and she recognizes him for herself.

Then, Mary goes and reports to the others that Jesus is alive, that she has seen him and touched him and talked with him. But that same night, they are hiding in a locked room. They are afraid. I suppose they could be afraid because they believe the resurrection. That is a life-altering reality with its own kind of fear.

But, I think the implication is that they are fearful because they don’t yet believe resurrection. That only changes after they see Jesus for themselves. It seems that hearing the Beloved Disciple’s experience and Mary’s experience was not compelling for them. They only valued their own experience.

Thomas missed all this. He wasn’t at the empty tomb. He wasn’t with the others on that evening when Jesus appeared. And so, he is the one who gets called The Doubter, but none of them believed without first-hand experiences.

Eugene Peterson is a pastor and author, now retired. You might know him as the creator of the Message Bible. He says, “It is not easy to convey a sense of wonder, let alone resurrection wonder, to another. It’s the very nature of wonder to catch us off guard, to circumvent expectations and assumptions. Wonder can’t be packaged, and it can’t be worked up. It requires some sense of being there and some sense of engagement.[1]

None of us here received first-hand experiences of Jesus’ resurrection. So how did we come to believe? In Peterson’s terms, how did we get the sense of being there and being engaged?

Most us came to believe in Jesus when we were children. Before we learned to question, before we formed critical thinking skills, before we became skeptics, this belief and trust was formed. Many of us also went through a time later when that belief had to be re-examined and re-formed.

Often, the faith that developed from that re-examination process was different from what came earlier, but the later form was built on the earlier form, which began when we were very young, perhaps when wonder and trust came more easily.

Now that is not true for all of us. Some of us became Christians, that is we put our trust in Jesus, as adults. I am always fascinated by hearing those stories. For me, people who come to faith in adulthood really are those that Jesus describes then he says ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

When Thomas finally does see Jesus, Jesus invites him to see his wounded hands, to touch his side. And Jesus says to him “Do not be unbelieving but believing.” In many translations, it reads “do not doubt, but believe,” but as I said earlier, the word ‘doubt’ is not there in Greek.

In contemporary English, the word “believe” has come to mean something that we regard as true in an intellectual sense, but Jesus is asking more than that of Thomas.

In medieval English, to believe meant to prize, treasure or hold dear and it came from the same root as the word for love. To believe meant to give your heart.[2]

We might also translate Jesus’ words as “do not be faithless, but faith-full”. Jesus is asking Thomas for his confidence, his loyalty, his heart.

An Ohio grandfather was driving through Pennsylvania Dutch Country with his 7-year-old grandson. When they passed an Amish horse and buggy, the grandson was curious.

“Why do they use horses instead of cars?” he asked.

His grandfather explained that the Amish don’t believe in automobiles.

After a few minutes, the boy said, “But can’t they see them?”

Of course Amish people can see cars. They believe that cars exist, but they trust horses, they put their confidence in horses.

Diana Butler Bass says, “the point isn’t that you believe in the resurrection. Any fool can believe in a resurrection from the dead. The point is that you trust in the resurrection. And that’s much, much harder to do.”

What Jesus asks of Thomas, and of us, is not that we weigh the evidence and make an intellectual choice to believe. Jesus is asking that we actively place our trust in the Risen One.

I think about some time in the future when we will be told that it is safe to leave our homes, to go out and about in the world. When that word comes, we may believe it or not. We will know how much we trust it when we are willing to take off our masks, when we have the confidence to let another person get closer than 6 feet, when we are comfortable going into a restaurant or a movie theater. When we take concrete actions based on what we believe -- that is faith.

Fleming Rutledge is an Episcopal priest. In one of her Easter sermons, she wondered why so few people are usually in church on the Sunday after Easter as compared with Easter Day. She said, “As I thought about this, it occurred to me that the reason people don’t come back on the Sunday after Easter is that they don’t really believe that anything unusual has taken place. Something nice, maybe; something cheerful and uplifting; but not an honest-to-God resurrection from the dead.”[3]

Well, today is the Sunday after Easter and we are here. So perhaps we do believe that something unusual took place. Maybe we do trust in the resurrection.

I’m coming to a new respect for Jesus’ first followers, those who were faithful, those who put their confidence in resurrection. They had a before and after experience. Before Jesus, life was ordinary, normal, even good. They were fishermen or they studied with John the Baptist or they were women of means. That was before. And then there was after. After learning from Jesus, after his crucifixion and resurrection. After – life could be different. But it didn’t have to be. They could have pretended that nothing unusual had happened. They could have retreated in fear, gone back to being normal, but they didn’t.

A number of people are talking now about our before and after. Before pandemic, before lockdown and after.

Sonya Renee Taylor is a poet and activist who focuses on issues like racial justice, police brutality and mental health. In the last week or so, she said this, “We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment.”

Some people love that statement. Some find it depressing. I happen to agree with a lot of it. I found myself wondering if others agreed. I wondered if those who wanted to stitch a new garment, to live in different ways after pandemic would find each other and find ways to do so. I thought about how hard that might be, because I expect a whole lot of people will just want life to go back to normal, to what it was before. Even if it means greed, exhaustion, extraction, hoarding and hatred, a lot of people will choose that, I think, because change is fearful and hard. And with so many other people choosing to go back to normal, how hard will it be for a few to live as if something else, something new is possible?

That is what Jesus’ first followers did. They lived into something new, something radically unheard of. There weren’t many of them. And there was enormous pressure to go back to the ordinary before. There still is. They did not just believe the resurrection. They trusted it, trusted it enough to be changed by it, to live differently afterwards. They gave their hearts to Jesus. They committed themselves to the Risen One.

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

[1] Eugene Peterson, Living the Resurrection: The Risen Christ in Everyday Life (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2006), p.13

[2] Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion: The End of the Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening (New York: HarperCollins, 2012). p. 117

[3] Fleming Rutledge, The Undoing of Death: Sermons for Holy Week and Easter (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2002) p.300

4/12/20 - Small Easter - John 20:1-18

Small Easter

John 20:1-18

Emmanuel Baptist Church

April 12, 2020; Rev. Kathy Donley

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

I hope you can see the ever-flowing stream of justice behind me. You remember it from the sanctuary, right? On the first two Sundays in Lent, we started adding to it. If we had kept on, it would have been so full, it would have cascaded down the wall. It would have flowed out beyond where the lectern usually stands. We were just getting started when we had to stop, because of disease, because of death and the fear of death.

Disease, death and the fear of death is occupying a lot of energy these days. There are no sports, no arts and entertainment, no in-person events of any kind to be covered by journalists, and so every day we get reports on what work death has done over-night. What are the latest safety recommendations? Who has been newly diagnosed with covid-19? Who has died? How many have died?

In one of those reports a week ago, I learned that three medical residents in New York City have died. Most of you know that our daughter is a medical resident. You might think this news makes me more concerned for her. It doesn’t actually make me more fearful. But it brings the grief very close. I can easily imagine young people, bright, compassionate, committed young adults who have worked hard and delayed gratification to get through college and then med school. Their families have supported them and missed them on holidays when they had to work or study. They reached the milestone of graduation a year or two ago. And what celebrations they had. Now as residents, they were finally getting to do what they’d been trained for, what they had wanted to do for so long. They were just getting started . . . and now their lives are over. Their families lives are shattered. The grief -- I imagine it sharp and cutting like a knife. And simultaneously heavy and dull and suffocating. Their parents must be inconsolable.

That sharp pain, that suffocating weight of sorrow, that inconsolability -- all that could also describe Mary Magdalene as she arrives at the tomb. Mary is in the cemetery to be as close as possible to the now lifeless body of Jesus. She is there to see if her memories of him are more vivid there. She is there to weep and curse and be angry. She is there to grieve.

Only she can’t really do that, because the grave has been desecrated. They have taken Jesus’ body and she doesn’t know where. Two angels speak to her. It doesn’t seem to register that they are angels. And then gardener asks who she is looking for. She repeats the story that she has been telling everyone—why isn’t anyone getting it? –If he knows where Jesus is, would he please, please just tell her.

Then the gardener says her name “Mary”. That’s all it takes. We remember what Jesus said before: “[The shepherd] calls his own sheep by name … they know his voice.” It is not the gardener. It is Jesus. Mary turns and says “Rabbouni” which means teacher.

Mr. Wiechern was my high school physics teacher. He took us out into the long hallways to play with Slinkys while he explained how light was like a wave. He got up on his hands and knees on a lab table to knock over a bottle with his nose. Then he asked for volunteers to try. The boys had a much harder time than the girls, which provided the perfect opportunity to explain the concept of center of gravity. Mr. Wiechern is one of a handful of teachers to whom I wrote a note of appreciation years after I left high school.

There’s a scene near the end of the movie Dead Poet’s Society where devoted students stand on their desks in protest of the firing of their beloved teacher played by Robin Williams. I am fortunate that I can name several teachers for whom I would stand on my desk. I hope that you have a list like that too. At its best, the relationship between teacher and student is one of discovery and trust and even intimacy. There’s a viral photo of a teacher who heard that a student was getting very frustrated trying to learn math at home. So he took a big white board and stood outside her house and worked the problems with her. Last week, one of my friends posted a picture of his 8-year-old daughter. She’s wearing headphones and connected to a her teacher via Zoom. She has the biggest smile on her face. Her father said it was the happiest he had seen her in days.

When Mary recognizes Jesus, she says Rabbouni. It is a an emphatic form of rabbi, which also means teacher. Rabbouni means “my teacher” or “master teacher” or “beloved teacher”. It conveys great respect and deep affection.

“Rabbouni,” she breathes, with so much caught up in that one word. Jesus is her beloved teacher, the one who taught her so much, the one who changed her life.

She doesn’t even entertain the notion that resurrection is a possibility until he calls her name. It only becomes real when it is close and personal. And then, she goes to hug him – wouldn’t you? Aren’t there people you haven’t been able to see in weeks now? People you want to hug for a good long time whenever you finally get to? The grief is gone and Mary is ecstatic, but within moments she is told she has to let him go.

“Do not cling to me,” Jesus says. How much would that hurt? There’s a clip going around of a doctor dressed in surgical scrubs. His young son is running towards him and the man hollers for him to stop, as the man himself is backing away. It seems that the father is keeping his son at a safe distance. But you can see the confusion and hurt on the son’s face and then on the father’s face too. I bet Mary looked like that. I wonder if Jesus did too.

“Do not cling to me,” Jesus says. Mary can touch him. They don’t have to be physically isolated, but she can’t hold on. She can’t try to contain or confine or control Jesus.[1]

Jesus has something yet left to teach her – which is that things are not the same. There were probably some things she was in the middle of, something like our ever-flowing stream, that got set aside, put on hold when Jesus died, but now Jesus is alive and she wants to pick up where they left off. Except they can’t. Resurrection has changed everything. Life will not go on as it was before.

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor says that Jesus “was not on his way back to her and the others. He was on his way to God , and he was taking the whole world with him. . . The thing we cannot do,” she says, “is to hold onto him. Instead, we must let him take us where he is going . . . into the white hot presence of God, who is not behind us but ahead of us, every step of the way.”[2]

That sounds really big. It sounds like the kind of thing a preacher might say on a big Easter Sunday, but Easter feels kind of small this year. None of us gathered for Easter sunrise in Capital Park. No one got up super early to put the coffee on and cook for the Easter breakfast. We’re not in the sanctuary, which would be beautiful with white banners and Easter lilies. There’s no glorious live music to compensate for weaknesses in the preaching.

It feels like a small Easter, but here’s the thing: the first Easter wasn’t big either. Maybe it was for Jesus. Maybe for Mary. But for most people. It wasn’t headline news. It was a small story that trickled out gradually.

Two people encounter each other. They exchange two words—“Mary” and “Rabbouni”. It’s a small, short story. But it packs a wallop.

It is a story about desolation and ecstasy wrapped up immeasurably close to one another. It is learning from the best Teacher that resurrection is not about things being the way we want them to be. It’s not about getting back to normal. That would make for a very small Easter indeed.[3] It is about the deep truth that what looks like the worst thing doesn’t have the last word. Death and the fear of death cannot . . . do not . . . will not have the last word.

If Easter feels small to you this year, you are not alone. But take courage, the first Easter was even smaller, and it was enough to change the world. Enough to change the world, for Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed.

[1] Gail O’Day in Frances Taylor Gench, Encounters with Jesus: Studies in the Gospel of John (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2007) p.132

[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Unnatural Truth” in Home By Another Way (Boston: Cowley Publications, 1997) p.111

[3] I’m grateful to Joanna Harader and her musings about a Small Easter which coincided with mine this week – only hers began in 2012. https://spaciousfaith.com/2016/03/21/small-easter/

4/9/20 - Jesus in Gethsemane and Other Reflections - Matthew 26:36-44

Jesus in Gethsemane and Other Reflections

Matthew 26:36-44

Emmanuel Baptist Church

April 9, 2020; Rev. Kathy Donley

These reflections were offered across a Maundy Thursday service. Interspersed with them were congregational hymns, instrumental music, choir anthems, and spoken prayers. A recording of that worship service may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16t5U6wvuJc&feature=youtu.be

Jesus in Gethsemane

Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem. Weeks earlier, he had decided to leave relative safety of his home in Galilee and go to Jerusalem for the Passover. His disciples had pleaded with him not to go, but his mind was made up. It was necessary, a part of his mission to continue proclaiming the reign of God despite the pressure of friends and adversaries, to continue to speak his truth, even speaking truth to power in the form of political and religious authorities.

Things have escalated quickly this week. From his carefully staged entrance to the city, to turning over the tables in the temple, to the daily confrontations which are intended to entrap Jesus into blasphemy or treason, the stress has mounted. He set his face toward Jerusalem, knowing that it was dangerous. But had he held out hope that somehow, he would be delivered, that it would not cost him his life? Even now, he wonders, is it possible that this cup will pass? Could it be that laying down his precious life will not be required?

He has shared the holiday meal with his closest friends, the people with whom he has shared so much over the last years. This very night, he has washed their feet. This very night, suspicion and competition have again crept into their ranks, as some wondered who would betray him and some pledged their undying loyalty.

This is perhaps the loneliest, saddest, most poignant moment of all – as Judas was leading a mob through the night with torches and spears and swords to arrest him, Jesus and his friends walked to a garden called Gethsemane. Peter, James and John went further into the garden. And then the most remarkable, most human thing began to happen. Jesus became agitated and grieved. It is a powerfully intimate moment of self-disclosure. Jesus honors his closest friends by sharing his truest feelings. “I am deeply grieved, even to death. “Remain here and stay awake with me.” “Don’t leave me now. I need you. . .. I need you to be here for me and with me.” This is a man baring his soul, a man who is about to be tortured and killed and knows it. This is a human being doing what human beings do in moments like that, reaching out to other human beings, to dear ones and friends. “Be there. Stay with me.”[1]

His friends are not there for him and he continues to pour out his heart to God. He pleads “Help me . . . save me . . . rescue me” over and over until he summons the spiritual strength to say “Not my will, but yours be done.” Even now, in the midst of the most dire circumstances, Jesus trusts God.

In Jesus, God took on human form, becoming like us in all ways. We see that so clearly in his grief in the garden. Jesus became as we are so that we might become like he is. The desperation, the fervency of his prayer is common to human beings across time and geography and culture. For the next few minutes, let us consider together some examples of prayers offered in places of devastation or desperation or hard decision. After each short reflection, there will be response in the form of instrumental or vocal music or spoken prayer.

Christmas Eve in Aleppo

Syria has been at war now for 9 years. I can no longer think of Syria apart from the images of vulnerable children. As the first part of Matthew’s gospel says, “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

In December 2016, there was a temporary ceasefire in Aleppo. On Christmas Eve, Christians all over the city returned to church for the first time in 5 years. The congregation of St. Elias gathered in a ruined cathedral with the roof gone from bombings and open to the sky and the snow. They created a nativity scene from materials they scavenged in the rubble. Those who built it said, “We are using whatever debris we can find to symbolize the triumph of life over death.”[2] They did not choose the cross or the empty tomb, but the manger.

Perhaps they did so because “When the fullness of time came, the time for the Word to be incarnated, God did not choose Rome or Athens for Christ to be born at; He chose occupied Bethlehem. He chose to be one of those oppressed; He chose to be one of those terrorized. When the fullness of time came, God so loved this world with all its ugliness and did not shy away from it. God chose to encounter this world with all its might and terror. He chose to challenge Herod with the face of an innocent child. God did not leave this world to its misery and pain but embraced it with both hands and pulled it to his heart.” [3]

Tijuana

On one of my last days in Tijuana, we walked a dusty road alongside a wall of assorted pieces of cast-off lumber intermittently secured with padlocks. Slowly, I realized that people lived within these structures. These were their front gates, locked because everyone was off at work in maquiladoras, foreign factories in Tijuana, Mexico. They might make $5 per day for a 12-hour shift on an assembly line where they have to ask permission to use the bathroom. In this neighborhood, as in another one-third of Tijuana, there is no water or sewer system. It costs $10 per week to have water delivered via truck. In more wealthy Tijuana neighborhoods, it costs $10 per month. The poor pay four times as much for the same service. This neighborhood runs alongside the freeway which means car exhaust and traffic noise, but also easier access to transportation. Workers who live in other areas may face a 2-hour daily commute plus more hours spent waiting for the bus. The cost of being poor is extracted in money and time.

I began to notice personal touches – a splash of color here, a salvaged front door there. At one entrance was a hard-to-read, hand-lettered sign in Spanish. My companion at that moment was Nasteho, a 22-year-old, Somali-American Muslim woman who speaks and reads Spanish. I asked her what the sign said. On her first attempt, she translated the sign as “I am always here, at the end of the world.”

My heavy heart sank further in recognition of the despair that might lead someone to post such a message on their door. Nasteho found this Spanish different from Spanish she had encountered elsewhere. Unsure that her translation was accurate, she consulted a third member of group, Luz, a Colombian theologian whose first language is Spanish. Luz translated the sign “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”

Then I recognized the words of Jesus, the One who moved into the human neighborhood, the One whose words have been passed from generation to generation, in hundreds of languages, to provide comfort and hope. In this Tijuana neighborhood, they were passed from a Mexican factory worker to a Somali-American Muslim, to a Colombian pastor, and then to me, a white American Christian who has never endured poverty and is illiterate in Spanish. They brought tears to my eyes and a lift to my heart. Here, I saw desperation and suffering and injustice and trauma, but also resilience and hope and generosity and faith, even until the end of the world.

New York City

The cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City is one of the largest Gothic cathedrals in the world. At 121 years old now, it was standing during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Imagine all the people who have passed through its doors, those who have been nurtured in faith -- baptized or married or buried here. Numerous funerals have been held in this place, including those of Eleanor Roosevelt, James Baldwin, Duke Ellington and Jim Henson.

This cathedral has chairs, not pews. Earlier this week, the chairs were stacked and the transformation began. This Holy Week the church is becoming a coronavirus hospital. Nine climate controlled medical tents capable of holding at least 200 patients have been set up inside. The Rev. Clifton Daniel, dean of the cathedral said, “In the history and tradition of the church and following the example of Jesus, cathedrals have long served as places of refuge and healing in times of plague and community crisis. So, this is not outside the experience of being a cathedral, it is just new to us.”

Two hours upriver from the City, we are all too aware of the devastation being wrought there. And so, we join our prayers to those who have prayed in this situation through the ages -- please pray aloud with me, these words from the Book of Common Prayer.

Keep watch, dear Lord,

with those who work, or watch, or weep this night,

and give your angels charge over those who sleep.

Tend the sick, Lord Christ;

give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering,

pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love's sake. Amen.

Bonhoeffer in Prison

Two days after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, a lecturer at Berlin University named Dietrich Bonhoeffer, took to the radio and denounced the Nazi the leadership principle that was merely a synonym for dictatorship. Bonhoeffer’s broadcast was cut off before he could finish. Shortly after that, he moved to London to serve a German congregation there. Then in 1939, he went to New York City at the invitation of Union Seminary. The plan was for him to stay, to safely sit out the war. Other Germans theologians did so. Karl Barth stayed in Switzerland, Paul Tillich in Chicago.

As soon as Bonhoeffer stepped off the ship and onto the harbor at New York City, he knew he did not belong there. Despite strong pressures from his friends to stay in the United States. He wrote to Reinhold Niebuhr: “I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people ... Christians in Germany will have to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose but I cannot make that choice from security.”

In Germany, he ran an underground seminary for the confessing church and became part of the resistance. He was arrested and held in military prison for a year and a half, then transferred to Buchenwald and finally to Flossenburg concentration camp. Under orders from Hitler, he was executed there on April 9, 1945, 75 years ago today, just two weeks before US soldiers liberated the camp. He was led away from the final church service he conducted there. His last words were “This is the end – for me, the beginning of life.”

Earlier in prison, he wrote “God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. . .. Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering.” [4]

[1] The Rev. John Buchanan, in his sermon “Disappointed” https://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2008/030208.html

[2] http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/222629

[3] Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb, in his Christmas Eve sermon 2016 at Christmas Lutheran Church, Bethlehem, Palestine, https://www.mitriraheb.org/en/article/1484299023

[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, Eberhard Bethge, ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953), pp. 360-361

4/5/20 - Love and Courage - Matthew 21:1-13

Love and Courage

Matthew 21:1-13

Emmanuel Baptist Church

April 5, 2020; Rev. Kathy Donley

Note: Image is by Wilhelm Morgner 1891-1917. Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.

A picture went around social media this week. It’s of a WWII soldier carrying a small donkey on his back. The caption explains that the soldiers are walking through a mine field and if the donkey was allowed to wander as it pleased, it would likely step on a mine and get everyone killed. So the soldier’s job is to control the donkey, in this case, by carrying it. The soldiers have to go out, to do their jobs, but it is safer for everyone if the donkey and other civilians stay home.

Those of us practicing social isolation are frightened and angry at the donkeys who seem to have no awareness and are running out as they please in a minefield, or perhaps I should say “germ-field”.

Jesus’ followers are probably similarly frightened and angry with Jesus because he has resolutely made his way to Jerusalem. For the last five chapters Jesus has been telling them that he is going to Jerusalem where he will be executed. They protested, but his mind is made up. They think that the most loving thing Jesus can do is stay at home in Galilee, where he is safe and they are safe.

They think they need to control Jesus before he gets them all killed. Weeks earlier, Jesus decided to leave Galilee, the region with small villages and a big lake, an area relatively far from the centers of power. He could have stayed in Galilee and lived out a normal life, doing the honorable work of carpentry and teaching in the synagogue as an edgy young rabbi. But he made the risky decision to go south, to Jerusalem at the time of Passover.

This is the beginning of the week in Jesus’ life we call Holy. Other weeks were also holy. But in this week, we see the greatest concentration of love and courage as Jesus’ commitment to his God-given mission is tested over and over again. What we will see is that there are always choices to be made about going out and staying in. Jesus goes to Jerusalem, over the protests of the disciples, but he doesn’t always risk himself. By day, he goes to the Temple, but at night he retreats to the town of Bethany. It is a place where he is safer, where he can relax in the comfort of his friends Mary and Martha and Lazarus.

I point that out because many of us are weighing our daily decisions in terms of love and courage. Some of us have jobs that are essential for the well-being of others. The most loving thing we can do is to leave our families at home and go to work. Others of us really need to stay at home, even though we are bored and possibly claustrophobic. Staying put may feel like doing nothing and the idea of not accomplishing something, not checking off some project on a to-do list bothers us. But staying put may be the most strongly loving thing we can do. And sometimes there is a middle ground. We go out, briefly, maintaining our distance with disinfectant wipes at the ready, to pick up a prescription or deliver groceries to the front porch of a neighbor who seems at more risk than we are.

Jesus could have stayed in Galilee, but he didn’t. He made the trip to Jerusalem to put his body on the front line, to get personally involved.

Before Jesus got there, the air of Jerusalem would have been thick with excitement because of the festival. The Passover celebrated the liberation of the people from slavery centuries earlier. It was a volatile time, since they were celebrating liberation while under Roman occupation. The Romans were so wary that they increased the normal number of troops in the city, and the governor himself, a man by the name of Pontius Pilate, moved inland from his headquarters in Caesarea to Jerusalem during Passover.

The trip to Jerusalem from Galilee took 3-5 days of walking, which is how Jesus always traveled. So when he decided to ride a donkey into the capital city, he was making a statement.

When people saw Jesus on the donkey, they would have understood immediately. They didn’t need Matthew to quote the prophet Zechariah like he does for our benefit. Zechariah 9:9 says “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, . . .” The word translated as triumphant really means “righteous”. The king described here has a focus not on military power, but on justice.

New Testament scholar AJ Levine says, “Zechariah speaks of a king who does not lord it over others, but who takes his place with those who are suffering. Zechariah speaks of a king who is righteous rather than violent. Zechariah speaks about a king who is strong in faith, not armed to the teeth.”[1]

Jesus rides a donkey, while on the other side of the city, Pilate enters at the head of a procession, on a war horse. Jesus drives a tractor. Pilate is in a tank. Jesus doesn’t attempt to hide among the throngs of pilgrims. He makes a point to stand out. This is one of the most politically explosive acts of his ministry and he is all in.

We are rightfully wary when religion and politics start to mix. Our Baptist ancestors championed the practice of faith that was free from political control for good reason. But we also know that Jesus’ ministry was political, that he challenged those with power who used it to exploit and oppress the powerless. This parade of his is an unmistakable challenge to Caesar, to Empire. As he has done in so many other contexts, he is showing what true power looks like. In the reign of God, which Jesus inaugurates, there is no grasping for status, no competition, no concern for personal gain. Instead, there is solidarity with the suffering and concern for the well-being of all.

The American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said that “when we talk about love we have to become mature or we will become sentimental. Basically love means . . . being responsible, responsibility to our family, toward our civilization, and now by the pressures of history, toward the universe of humankind which includes our enemies”[2]

Mature love is responsible. Jesus challenges the political authorities because they are not loving, not responsible. On a daily basis, you and I are watching political leaders exercise their authority. It is pretty plain to see who is grasping for status, who is in it for personal gain, and who is acting for the good of all.

You have, no doubt, heard the story of Brett Crozier, the Captain of a navy aircraft carrier who repeatedly asked his superiors for help in dealing with the virus outbreak on his ship. When he got no response, he sent an e-mail to a wider network of officers. That letter was leaked to the media and he was fired. Even those who fired him agree that his motivation was the health and well-being of his sailors. He is 50 years old and the future of his Naval career is in serious question. Responsible love sometimes requires the courage to do the right thing no matter the personal cost.

Jesus walks the road to Jerusalem, knowing that the road might lead to the cross. God doesn’t stay at a safe distance but gets personally involved in a messy, political, dangerous event.

Our friend Dan Buttry is retired from his role as Global Peacemaker, but still actively engaged as a disciple of Jesus. This week he said, “ ‘God is on the throne,’ some people say. Well, yes, but I don't find that particularly helpful. Makes me want to yell at heaven, "Get off your seat and do something!" And that's where another part of our theology comes in. God isn't on the throne only, but is in the streets, in the grocery stores, in the locked-down homes, in the hospital emergency rooms and in the isolation rooms. God is in the crowded slums where "social distancing" is worthy of a sarcastic laugh. God is in the neighbor doing the shopping for a needy friend or family.

The whole meaning of "Emmanuel" is "God is with us." That's what gives so many of us hope and courage and even laughter amid the anxiety and tears. I don't find "meaning" in this scourge, but I do find goodness, beauty, and grace rising up again and again with rebellious determination and grit, and I find God amid that rising as instigator and renewed energy.”[3]

The crowd yells “Hosanna” which does not mean “Hooray”. It means “Save us”. We cry to the God who is with us to save us from sin, from irresponsible power, from selfishness, but also to save us from fear, pain, despair, and oppression. The story of this week that we’re entering is that Jesus does save us. Jesus saves us, paradoxically, through his suffering and vulnerability, through his resolute courage and the strength of love.

Jesus will carry his own cross. He will walk steadily up the hill to his death. He will face it all in love, strong love for his friends, strong love for his people; strong love for God. All praise be to him. Amen.

[1] Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus, copyright © 2018 by Amy-Jill Levine, pp 28-29.

[2] Reinhold Niebuhr, Justice and Mercy, edited by Ursula M. Niebuhr (New York: Harper and Row, 1976, p. 35

[3] Daniel Buttry, on his Facebook page, April 4, 2020

3/29/20 - Out of the Depths - Psalm 100

Out of the Depths

Psalm 130

Emmanuel Baptist Church

March 29, 2020; Rev. Kathy Donley

One time a mother was waiting for her 8-year-old daughter to come home. The daughter was late, and the mother was getting worried. Finally, the daughter came home and her mother asked her why she was late. The girl said that she had been at her friend’s house and the friend’s doll had broken. Her mother said, “oh, did you stay to help her fix the doll?” The girl said, “No, the doll could not be fixed. I had to stay and help her cry.”

The little girl was wise. Some things cannot be fixed, and the best response is to recognize that and share the heaviness of it together.

“Out of the depths I cry to you O Lord”. That’s how the psalmist describes it. The depths are deep dark waters, the recurrent symbol for chaos among the ancient Hebrew people. This psalm comes to us across millennia from people whose lives were nothing like ours and yet, we also know what it means to cry from the depths. It is that universal human experience of despair and lostness. The deep dark waters could refer to the nearness and threat of death, or a spiritual abyss into which the mind and heart have fallen, or the hostility and danger of enemies or a terrible and overwhelming fear.[1] The depths are a place where resources have been exhausted and the way forward is unclear. Spiraling down into anxiety and despair, the psalmist cries “God, help!”

We should note that this is an expression of faith, the faith that God is present and that God will act. Otherwise, what would be the point of calling out ?

The next verses give us a little more context. We don’t have details, but the psalmist is seeking forgiveness for sin and brokenness, seeking a restoration to wholeness. When we’re in the depths, we realize that we are powerless to extricate ourselves from our predicament. At such times, where can we go but to the Lord?

We’re in the midst of a pandemic. It may be that science and good sense may break the grip of this disease, if our leaders and the general public will listen and act accordingly. We are crying out to God with our fears about our loved ones getting sick, about the loss of jobs, about how the bills will be paid. Those are good prayers, but we cry from the depths about even bigger things. About the fear that weaves its way into every conversation, that threatens to suffocate us, that impairs our ability to make good decisions. About the selfishness of hoarding toilet paper or Tylenol or protective masks. About the racist assaults on Asian Americans as if the virus has a nationality, as if physically attacking people is an acceptable response at any time. These are the kinds of spiritual issues for which we call from the depths, “God help us.”

We pray, like the psalmist because things are not right, not as God intends them to be. We pray because God is the only one who can deliver us. One scholar says, “Those in the Bible who live their lives in relation to God are those who move back and forth between petition and praise, between supplication for God’s help and thanksgiving for the hope that comes.” And so, even from the depths, the psalmist is proclaiming the steadfast love of God.

Two weeks ago, I was in Matamoros, Mexico, in an encampment of asylum seekers. The needs are so great there. It is not safe. The people who fled from their home countries have sometimes been chased and found by the abusers that they were fleeing. These precious people who have for months been living in tents are vulnerable to violent crimes, to disease, and to despair. They need safety and a way to earn a living and place to nurture children.

On Friday night, I was standing just inside a large tent where dinner was being served to about 1000 asylum seekers.

And in the moment when I slipped out my phone and snapped this picture, all was peaceful. The child is washing his hands with soap and water provided for that very purpose. These are people who live between petition and praise, between pleading for what they need and giving sincere thanks for every small gift that is granted.

Psychotherapist Miriam Greenspan works with people in the midst of grief and fear and despair. One of her goals to help them understand “the close relationship between individual heartbreak and the broken-heartedness of the world.”[2] She believes this is important for healing. In this photo, which is becoming one of my favorites, I get an inkling of that. My heart is broken, for so many of us who are afraid, for health care providers who are putting themselves on the front lines every day, for some of my friends whose children have underlying health concerns and whose parents are at risk because of their age.

And I think of the broken-heartedness of the world represented in the faces I saw in that dining tent – the man with his arm in a sling and a friendly smile, the family with three generations around a table, the fierce 9-year-old girl who knew the rules about the water station and could only speak Spanish while I, the supposed adult in charge did not know the rules, and could not understand her explanation. They are stuck on the border of a country that is refusing to even hear their stories. They cry to God from the depths. Their broken-heartedness is the result of sin, not their sin, but the sins of nationalism and racism and violence and greed and exploitation.

We cry from the depths, but for the psalmist, for those at the border, and for us, God does not always act immediately. The psalm says

“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, more than those who watch for the morning”.

Those who watch for the morning might be the town watchmen who act as guardians at night so that others can sleep in safety and rise refreshed. Or it might refer to wartime sentinels who keeps lookout for the approaching enemy who might attack at first light. The image is one of vigilance and active waiting.[3]

Waiting is the hard part. Waiting means living with uncertainty.

Is it morning yet?

Are we safe yet?

How long will we be in lock-down?

How long until we flatten the curve?

Are we almost there?

How bad will it get before it gets better?

How long until dawn?

My soul waits for the Lord, more than those who watch for the morning.

The word “to wait” in Hebrew can also mean “to hope”. In our uncertainty about the corona virus, about friends and loved ones, about many things, we wait and hope.

The people in Matamoros are waiting for the Lord. They wait. They cry out, from the depths, believing that God is present and will act. In spite of so much that is broken, so much that is fearful, so much that is desperately wrong, they wait with hope. If they can do so, how can we do anything less?

My soul waits for the Lord,

more than those who watch for the morning.

O Israel, O beloved ones, hope in the Lord, For with the Lord there is steadfast love and great power to redeem. Amen.

[1] Patrick D. Miller, Interpreting the Psalms, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), p. 139

[2] Miriam Greenspan, Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear and Despair (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2003), p. xiv

[3] http://hwallace.unitingchurch.org.au/WebOTcomments/LentA/Lent5APsalm130.html

3/22/20 - The Spirituality of Quarantine - Matthew 4:1-11

The Spirituality of Quarantine

Matthew 4:1-11

Emmanuel Baptist Church

March 22, 2020; Rev. Kathy Donley

For the last two years, we have been trying to simplify our church life. We scaled down our governance structure. We wanted to be doing what was most important and not just perpetuating practices that didn’t serve us well any more. Coordinating Council and Exec Team have had a LOT of conversations about how to accomplish this. One idea came to us through the American Baptist Mission Summit, which several of you attended last summer when I was on sabbatical. It was suggested that we might try what another church did. For one year, I think it was, this church stopped all of their programming, all of their activities, except for Sunday morning worship. They quit having choir practice and business meetings and Bible study and youth group and Men’s and Women’s luncheons. They held on to just two things – weekly worship and a Friday night group that shared a meal and studied the parables together. That was it.

After a year of that simpler communal life, they emerged with a clearer vision of what was essential for their faith community, what God was calling them to be in this time. KM heard that story in a session that she attended at Biennial and shared it with us. We kicked it around a little bit, but ultimately it seemed that not enough people thought we should try it. We couldn’t see our way clear to stopping all the things that we were doing.

But that was then . . . and this is now. Now it seems that, ready or not, like it or not, we are doing what that church did. We did not choose this, but we have an opportunity to live in a radically different way for a season and to see what we can learn from it.

There are some parallels between our situation and that of the Christians in the fourth century. “It was a time when faithful Christians started leaving the cities for the deserts of Egypt and Syria. They lived alone in small dwellings they called cells. The movement gained momentum when the Emperor Constantine converted and Christians were no longer targets of persecution. These desert fathers and mothers were trying to preserve their faith from corruption. They saw the life of the Empire as a kind of infection, highly contagious and dangerous to those who wanted to follow in the way of Jesus. So, they placed themselves in quarantine, away from the influence of Roman life. They practiced solitude as a way of getting back to a pure sense of what it meant to be a people of faith. From this perspective and distance, they saw themselves and the world more clearly.”[1]

That description comes from my friend Vince Amlin who is calling it “the spirituality of quarantine” right now. In other times, we would probably call this the spiritual discipline of solitude. Those early Christians didn’t make it up. In much of scripture, the wilderness was a place of encounter and discovery, a place where God could be found and where identity and vocation might be revealed. Throughout his earthly ministry, Jesus practiced solitude. When the crowds pressed in on him, he responded with compassion, teaching, healing and feeding them, but over and over again, the gospels say that he withdrew to a lonely place to pray. Perhaps the best example is in the story we just read. Before launching his public ministry, Jesus spent 40 days alone in the desert. Mark’s version of this story includes the fact that he was with the wild animals.

All alone, in the heat of the day and the chill of the night, with wild animals, for 40 days. That would be challenging for most of us. Most of us would have taken along food and a camping stove. Most of us would need to speak to another human being before a week went by. Most of us would be afraid. At some point, our decision-making capabilities would not be very strong. And so, when the temptations came, it would be easier to just give in. In a longer sermon, I might have more to say about those temptations. Today, it seems to me that they are mostly about Jesus needing to exercise control over his situation. To feed his own hunger, to prove that he had some power, to demonstrate that the dangers in the desert weren’t really all that dangerous to him.

What we see here is the human Jesus wrestling with the limits of humanity. Our temptations most often come when we are tired or hungry or afraid. And we often respond by attempting to exercise control. That’s what happened in all the stores this week. We may not be able to contain the virus, but by gum, we can try to have enough toilet paper.

As the seriousness of the pandemic was becoming known, someone told me that he felt completely powerless without a vaccine or a known treatment. I sympathized, but I also thought that only recently have humans thought we could control so many things.

Donleys are particularly susceptible to ear infections. My brother and I got them repeatedly as children. So did my father. My father got them every winter of his life growing up before penicillin was developed. He has scars behind his ears from surgery for mastoiditis. His baby sister died from it. Because my brother and I had antibiotics, we never had the same sense of fear about those infections that my father and his siblings did, but we are only one generation removed from that time.

We are facing a pandemic and the fear is real and legitimate. Many of the daily activities that usually keep us busy and distracted aren’t available to us right now. For some of us, life has become too quiet. For others, there is too much family togetherness. And for many, the suspension of work has meant the suspension of income. All of that can be frightening. I won’t attempt to talk anyone out of your fear, but I do want to remind us that over and over and over again, the message of scripture is “do not be afraid.” I want to encourage us to hold on to our courage and confidence so that we can continue to offer hope and compassion to each other.

This season we have the opportunity to practice the spirituality of quarantine. In our solitude, let us resist the temptation to grasp for the illusion of control. Instead may we seek to live into the reality of our own powerlessness. “There are things we cannot change, cannot fix, cannot solve or predict; but instead of fear, we can learn the peace that comes from an openness to God’s care, God’s presence and God’s good purposes.” [2]

Solitude does not have to mean loneliness. Please let us love our neighbors by staying inside and not spreading the virus, but also by reaching out, not with our hands, but with our hearts and our words. We are a mostly a congregation of introverts. Maybe one good thing we can learn this Lent is how to use the telephone again. Look around and notice who is here and who is not. Tomorrow or Tuesday, call someone who is not here. Just let them know they were missed. Remember that the most apostolic duty of all is to keep one another’s courage up.

In other Lenten seasons, I have invoked the image of wilderness metaphorically. I have done it for good reason, but it often felt contrived to speak of wilderness when we were surrounded by busy abundance. This year it does not. This year the uncharted territory and the unknowns of wilderness seem to capture so much of our lived experience. It seems that we might know the deepest Lent ever if we can stay present to it. We have an opportunity to live in a radically different way for a season and to see what we can learn from it. I hope we will.

[1] As described by the Rev. Vince Amlin in his sermon on March 15, 2020 at Bethany UCC, Chicago https://www.facebook.com/BethanyChicagoUCC/videos/495939834646726/

[2] Brian Donst, in a sermon for March 22 shared to the Midrash list

3/15/20 - Roll Down Justice: Conviction - Isaiah 58:6-12

Roll Down Justice: Conviction

Isaiah 58:6-12

Rev. Lynn Carman Bodden, guest preacher

Emmanuel Baptist Church

March 15, 2020

INTRODUCTION to Isaiah 58.6-12

That the prophet Isaiah engages in a debate about the participation of the faithful in ritual worship versus in faith-filled living proves that this wrestling is nearly as old as the hills. During a high holy season like Lent (which I know you as Baptists are not as given to – I heard all those “alleluias!”), it’s an important conversation to engage, because some of us feel pressed to engage in religious ritual like more regular attendance in church, or particular times and styles of prayer, or specifically designated sacrificial giving, or even fasting. The challenge is that we don’t always know why we are taking on these practices. It’s what good Christians are supposed to do, perhaps. Or it’s what will focus us on the God we know in Christ, we hope. Or maybe it will just provide a framework of discipline we believe will strengthen us to face into the storms of life that surround us.

And it is exactly this kind of reasoning that Isaiah takes on, like a house afire!

Speaking to an audience in the early sixth century BCE, a band of people recently returned from exile in Babylon to a Jerusalem still in rubble, Isaiah wants to challenge religious practices which are transactional: that if we do certain activities – pray, fast, give – then God will notice and offer us something in return – encouragement, protection, salvation. It doesn’t work that way, exclaims the prophet, whether with a loud growl or a disappointed hiss. Fasting and prayer and giving are not about building up brownie points with the Holy One. They are not pursuits we engage to get ourselves noticed, by God or by anyone else. They are not, when it comes down to is, about US. (Thomas W. Currie, FotW, C Ash Wednesday)

The people of the One God are not to live as their Canaanite neighbors who expect that if they fast, their gods to perform certain functions for them. (Andrew Foster Conners, FotW, A Advent 5) Instead, the prophet proclaims, religious practices can lead us from the isolation of personal salvation into relationship with the world around us. Our worship faithfully, creatively, genuinely offered will change us, open us, lead us to recognize where God is at work around us and then inspire and embolden us to join in.

As you listen to our reading from Isaiah this morning, hear how often the prophet challenges us personally: to share our bread, to open our homes, to offer cover and care to those within our reach, to take responsibility, do our part, to free the oppressed and to foster clear and constructive communication. As we live into and move with a bit more of the grace God has shown us, we will notice the Light. The power of the living God in, around and through us, will be unmistakable. Restoration will be tangible and visible.

Hear now to the words of the prophet Isaiah, as powerful and true now as they were generations ago. How do they speak to us in these days of Covid 19 “as shelves empty, markets tank, leaders dither, and old people die in a day.” (Mary Luti, Daily Devotional, 14.March 2020) Listen and be moved.

Readings: Isaiah 58.6-12

If any of us were put on trial today for being followers of Christ, would there be enough evidence in our lives to convict us?

Maybe you have heard this question before. Or perhaps today it’s being asked of you for the first time. Consider well: if you were standing trial this very day, is there enough evidence in your life to convict you of being faithful to what you say you believe?

If you are at all like me, you might take a quick look back at however many years you’ve claimed to be a believer and think: well, I was nice to people – most of the time. I went to church. I gave what I could. I prayed and did bible study. I helped out in a feeding program, brought canned goods when asked, took my old clothes to the clothing closet or the rummage sale, and occasionally gave a few bucks to a person on the street. I stopped using Styrofoam long ago, and started walking or using my bike or public transportation more often. I marched for peace and cast my votes for justice. I participated in difficult conversations about white privilege. I welcomed the full participation and equal rights of GLBTQIA people in the life of my church and society at large. So, yes, I think my neighbors considered me a good Christian. I think I’m guilty as charged.

The follow-up then might be: then why – if you, Lynn, and this church with its good people, and those across the street and down the hill and over the river and across this nation and throughout the world can be convicted of following Jesus, why is there still so much craziness and rancor? Where is the light of God’s love shining? Where is the evidence of restoration? In whom are healing and liberation made manifest? Where are light and liberation, restoration and rebuilding visible, tangible?

Lots of years ago, as I was getting to know the man who would become my husband, I was touched by the life of the Catholic Worker community. Peter was living in Waterbury, CT in a Catholic Worker house of hospitality, run by Tom and Monica Cornell. As you may know, the Catholic Worker was founded in 1933 by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, who lived among the least and the lost and the most vulnerable in New York City, feeding the hungry, taking the homeless in, offering clothing and care. The motto of the Catholic Worker, as I came to understand it, was: If you see something that needs doing, do it – whether it pays or not, and no matter the cost to you. Don’t just pray and hope – get your hands dirty. Jump in.

The most costly thing then as now was to see the humanity in someone whose life situation was so different from one’s own, to see that humanity in its illness, its grit and grime, its misfortune and weakness, its unlove-ability and to love it anyway – up close and personal. It was to advocate that others would see that humanity as well. It still does. It means standing with and standing up for immigrants, like Kathy is doing right now, welcoming the mentally ill and advocating for proper services, seeing the poor as human beings in need and living in ways that create sharing by all so there is scarcity for none. It means loving enemies. It isn’t always safe. It can feel tedious and painful rather than rewarding. It certainly raises eyebrows among those in polite society, even in churches. But in otherwise dismal and despairing and broken lives, it really is true that the light shines and a little healing is apparent, because of the conviction of some to be where Christ would be, among the people and in the places on the edges.

Two stories that resound with God’s conviction about true worship, the first related by Andrew Foster Conners in the commentary Feasting on the Word. One year during Holy Week, a few Christians from well-endowed congregations in a major metropolitan area spent a night with homeless friends on the street. They were looking for the suffering Christ in the lives of those who spend their days and nights suffering from hunger, disease, and rejection. It was a chilly night, and rain rolled in close to midnight. Looking for shelter, the handful of travelers felt fortunate to come upon a church holding an all-night prayer vigil. The leader of the group was a pastor of one of the most respected churches in the city. As she stepped through the outer doors of the church, a security guard stopped her. She explained that she and the rest of their group were Christians. They had no place to stay and were wet and miserable, and would like to rest and pray. Enticed by the lighted warmth of the sanctuary, she had forgotten that her wet, matted hair and disheveled clothing left her looking like just another homeless person from the street. The security guard was friendly, but explained in brutal honesty, "I was hired to keep homeless people like you out." (FotW, A Advent 5)

The second story appeared in the most recent issue of The Christian Century. Last year at about this time in Laredo, TX, which is 200+ miles up the southern border to the west from Brownsville where Kathy is now, a local pastor noticed an escalation of Central American asylum-seekers crossing the nearby border. Lorenzo Ortiz began to invite these people, hundreds of them – men, women and children, to stay at Iglesia Bautista Emanuel. According to Amy Frykholm’s article, “there were people sleeping behind the altar and under the pews” – that is they were until the church people began to object at the takeover of their church. So Pastor Ortiz took them to his home, as many as 140 at a time, where they slept in tents and cots in the yard and in the house. And when the flow of migrants stopped rather suddenly, Pastor Ortiz began to drive daily across the border to take food and to the tent cities to help them get supplies, and to offer transportation for their appointments with the US authorities (The Christian Century, March 11, 2020, p. 10-11)

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” If we want to be convicted, perhaps not at the border, perhaps not on a rainy night among the homeless, but in our neighborhoods, our city in a time of Covid 19, our nation in days of confusion and rancor, where will we hear God calling us to be at work? And how in these days of fasting and prayer will we respond? May the love of God roll down through us.

Amen.

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/