2/28/21 - Holy Vessels: It Takes a Community - Matthew 8:5-13

Holy Vessels:  It Takes a Community

Matthew 8:5-13

February 28, 2021

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

Note:  A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://youtu.be/ywjMMQw3MGc

Jesus grew up in Nazareth, but in adulthood, he relocated to Capernaum.  Both towns are in the region called Galilee. It would have taken about 4 days of walking from Nazareth to get to Capernaum, which is further north on the sea of Galilee.  Jesus settles in Capernaum at the beginning of his public ministry.  By the time of today’s story, he is established and well known.

He has a reputation as a healer, which is why the centurion comes to him.   In one sense, the centurion has high status.  He commands 100 soldiers of the occupying power. But the centurion does not pull rank.  He does not command Jesus.  Instead, he appeals to him respectfully.  He addresses him as Lord – which is the word that he would use for those above him in the hierarchy, particularly for the emperor. This is the same word used by the man with leprosy we read about last week.   

In his own world, the centurion has power, but he is on the margins of Jesus’ faith community because he is a foreigner and an enemy.  The primary actors in this story are Jesus and the centurion, but multiple communities are represented – communities formed around identities like Gentiles and Jews, soldiers and civilians, and social classes like centurions or servants.

The centurion has a lot of power when he is centered in his own community, but this story centers on the Jewish faith community in Capernaum, where he is on the margins.  He has power in the Roman authority, but he is powerless against the suffering of his servant.  That desperate need brings him to Jesus, setting up an unusual intersection between their communities.

Jesus response is “I will come”  There is no punctuation in the Greek.  Jesus might be announcing his intention – I will come and cure him!  Or he might be expressing his reluctance  -- I will come and cure him?  Jesus understood his primary mission to be within his own Jewish community and this story is set early in that ministry.  By the time Matthew’s gospel is written down, Gentiles are an integral part of the faith, but their inclusion was a growing edge for decades. 

The centurion’s response to Jesus’ question or statement is “ “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed.”

“I am not worthy” 

The centurion knows the boundaries.  Jews and Gentiles do not socialize in each other’s homes.  They do not eat together.  He would not presume that Jesus would come to his house.

But by the time this encounter is over, Jesus has re-interpreted it as a breaking down of boundaries on many levels.  He says that this man is an exemplar of faith and that it is that kind of faith which will overcome the current separations.  In days to come, Jesus says, people will come from the east and west and sit at table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.  The community of table fellowship in the kingdom of God will be wide and long.  The centurion’s response is heard in every celebration of the Mass in Catholic churches. Just before receiving communion the people say  “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my soul will be healed.”  The only change is the word “soul” instead of “servant.”  The prayer is a recognition that we are all powerless, that we are all broken and that all of us rely on God’s grace.

I have to wonder what it might have meant for the centurion if he had welcomed Jesus under his unworthy roof? [1] On how many more levels might healing have happened?

The centurion was not seeking healing for himself, but for his servant.  He is a person used to giving orders.  By his own admission, he sends subordinates to do his errands.  But not this time.  This one is significant enough that he gets involved.  He goes to Jesus himself.  He leverages his position to act as an advocate for his servant who is almost without capacity to speak or act for himself.  His community functions on orders and rank and authority, so he draws on what he knows about that to explain to Jesus what he thinks Jesus can do.  And, for that, Jesus praises his faith. His faith.

You might remember a book called Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam.  Published in 2000, it documented the ways that Americans had become increasingly disconnected from family, friends and neighbors over the preceding decades. The title illustration was that more Americans were bowling than ever before, but they were not bowling in leagues. 

About ten years later, Robert Putnam wrote another book, this time with co-author David Campbell. This one was called  American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. 

One of their major findings was that people who are active in religious communities are better neighbors.  They are more likely to work on community projects, more likely to give to secular and religious causes, more like to give blood, more likely to let a stranger cut in front of them in line.

What surprised them was that being a good neighbor seemed to have nothing to do with theology.  It was not associated with the content or strength of their ideas about God.  The behaviors related to being a good neighbor did not depend on whether people believed in salvation by faith or salvation by deeds, or what denomination they affiliated with.  It did depend on how many friends they had in church and how closely integrated they were in their congregation.  [2]

We are shaped by our community of faith and our community has the power to shape other individuals and other communities.   This is surely why one of the enduring symbols of our faith is the table where, as Jesus said, they will come from the east and the west, from across economic and geographic and religious and vocational boundaries to form a new community which feasts together. 

Do you remember the last thing you did out in the world before the pandemic lock-down? The last time I ate in a restaurant was in Brownsville, Texas.   It was the last night that we were all together there – those of us who had gone to the border from the Albany area.  That was my last mask-less, public gathering with friends.  We went to the border to be part of whatever healing might be possible.  We went to see for ourselves how to be better advocates.  And then we came home to another world, and truthfully I have felt almost paralyzed on this issue since we got home.  The group that sent us, Capital District Border Watch has continued to meet, to encourage each other, to take some actions, but I think I have only managed to attend one Zoom meeting since I got home.  I have read a few of the stories coming out of the camp in Matamoros and some articles on immigration policy, but mostly I have scrolled right past.  A year ago, I would have read every word, but I have not had the mental or emotional bandwidth to even attempt it. 

While I was stuck in that lethargy, asylum-seekers in Matamoros were stuck too.  They were trapped on the southern side of the border by the Remain in Mexico policy that kept them unable to cross, and then stuck there when the border was even more firmly closed because of the coronavirus. 

That camp, which recently numbered about 1200 people, contained communities.  Communities of hope and mutual support in spite of everything.  Among them was a community of advocates. Team Brownsville was formed in 2018 by a group of retired educators who wanted to be good neighbors to those waiting across the border. They began by serving meals and getting to know people.  As more and more people arrived, the needs grew and so did Team Brownsville’s efforts. 

They set up a weekly school for children. They partnered with World Central Kitchen to coordinate volunteers to make and serve hundreds of meals.  They did all they could to make camp life more bearable at the same time as they were advocating for a change in policy and a restoration of the asylum process. They continued to do that work for the last year, in the midst of a global pandemic, during drenching rains that swept away many tent homes and possessions, during the coldest winter storm in a hundred years.  They persevered.

And this week, something changed. This week, the US government started processing asylum seekers, allowing them to cross the border and to go to family members and waiting sponsors across the country.  And the communities of suffering and perseverance are becoming communities of joy. 

Andrea Rudnik, one of the leaders of Team Brownsville, has organized deliveries and taken supplies into the camp a couple of times a week.  She was  the official greeter for migrants allowed to cross on Friday. “I was actually the first volunteer, humanitarian person who saw them and their eyes just lit up like ‘we know you. We know you,'” she said.  These pictures were taken in the white tents where families first come when they enter.  Andrea hosted these families over night at her house as they prepared to go to their own families on the east coast. She said, “such joy and excitement for our brothers and sisters who have waited so long.” [3]

Another volunteer said that she hadn’t shed a tear since her first day, but her eyes were red-rimmed as she greeted migrants at the bus station.  She said, “It’s such an emotional moment for every single one of them. Just seeing them for so long suffering so much. Hopeful and yet desperate and now it’s happened. The doors opened wide and they’re walking through with their head held high,” she said. “God hears the cry of God’s people.”

We have mentioned to each other that during the last year, it has been hard to grieve together, to comfort each other we would normally do.  I notice also that it has been hard to celebrate and rejoice together.  Our joy is muted, but thanks be to God for stories like these.  Stories of liberation and healing and the possible of new community. Thanks be to God.

[1] Wm. Lloyd Allen, in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year C, Volume 3 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Editors, ,  (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2019), p. 49

[2] From an interview with Robert Putnam at https://faithandleadership.com/robert-d-putnam-americas-grace

[3] https://www.borderreport.com/hot-topics/immigration/looking-back-volunteers-who-stuck-by-asylum-seekers-in-mexico-take-moment-to-rejoice/?fbclid=IwAR1F8cvMRjsE3Sbn3EMLKliYk2bfJI-LwzddZP8RMTupSqPFqBVPHi4SHMo

2/21/21 - Holy Vessels: Moved and Stretched - Matthew 8:1-4, 16-17

Holy Vessels:  Moved and Stretched

Matthew 8:1-4, 16-17

February 21, 2021

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

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

 I have seen people with leprosy.  It was not uncommon in my childhood home in Ghana.  Hansen’s disease affects the nerves.  People cannot feel pain or heat or cold, and so they are prone serious injury. The people I saw tended to be missing limbs or fingers or toes, not because of the disease, but because of injuries sustained when their bodies did not warn them of the danger.  Hansen’s Disease is what we think of when the word leprosy is used in our time.

But that is not what the Biblical people meant by the word.  In the Bible, leprosy was a broad category for any number of eruptions of the skin.  They did not know about germs, but they did understand that some things were contagious.  So whether you had hives or the chicken pox, the treatment was the same – separation and isolation until your skin was clear again. 

If a blemish or a rash suddenly appeared on your body, you were at risk of being labelled “unclean.”   To be unclean meant you were a public health risk.  You were required to keep your distance from your family and friends, to live outside the community for an undetermined amount of time. Imagine how frightening it would be – to receive a life-altering diagnosis with no idea what the course of the disease might be.  You might know people who got this diagnosis and left and were never seen again.  You might know others whose rash cleared up in a week.  How frightened you might be as you wondered about your future. 

I wonder if you have ever woken up in the last year with a cough or an unusual headache or feeling that your sense of taste was off and wondered whether it was a sign of a life-altering diagnosis.  Maybe you tried to shrug it, to tell yourself not to worry, that it would go away on its own, but still you worried until it did. I imagine people in Bible times did that too.  They did not tell anyone about a skin blemish at first.  They kept it covered up, telling themselves not to worry, that it would go away on its own. 

Over time, the public health issues around leprosy became political and religious issues. There was an idea that if you had leprosy, it was a sign of God’s displeasure. So, once you had the label, even if you recovered, it was hard for people to feel safe with you, because there was still some suspicion that you were a bad person.  Blaming the person who is sick for their illness is something that we still do.  We are frightened by diseases that we do not understand and so we manage our fear with blame.  When Covid stories began to hit the news, some of the first people I talked with were people who had been allies of those who suffered with HIV/AIDS in the 1980’s and 90’s.  This pandemic triggered memories of how badly those patients had been treated and also some fears that we might respond similarly this time. 

Because we understand germs and disease in ways that ancient people did not, we might have thought that we were past the point of making disease a political issue.  The hue and cry about wearing masks and staying home, the heated protests about infringing on rights and the virus being a hoax – all of that suggests that we are not.  That gives us a new window of understanding leprosy in Jesus’ day.  Like Covid, like other diseases which we fear, it had implications for health and religion and politics. 

Probably the worst part about it was the isolation.  One day you lived with your family, in your community, doing your job as a fisher or shepherd or carpenter, the next you were alone, out in the countryside, hoping that your family would leave some food out somewhere for you.  Totally isolated. 

Chronic loneliness increases the odds of an early death by about 20%. [1] The stress hormones that come from feeling socially isolated can have as serious an impact on our bodies as smoking or obesity. In 2017, the British government appointed a minister for loneliness.[2]   People in our culture and others were already dangerously lonely before the pandemic. Now, some have endured months without being touched by another human being.  Some may be literally dying of loneliness.

All of those things that swirl around Covid for us were swirling around the man with leprosy.   He was not a statistic.  He represented neither a surge in leprosy cases nor a flattening of the curve. He was just a man, someone’s son or brother, perhaps someone’s father, who was desperately ill and lonely.  He did not want to be a political or theological illustration.  He just wanted his life back. 

Maybe it is an indication of his political leanings that he doesn’t socially isolate.  He does not keep his distance, but goes right up to Jesus and kneels in front of him.  Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with his politics, but with his faith in Jesus.   “If you choose, you can make me clean.”  That’s what he says.  “If you choose, you can make me clean.”  So much poignancy, so much yearning, so much desperate hope is wrapped up in that sentence.

This same story is found in the Gospel of Mark, but Mark provides a detail that Matthew does not.  Mark says that Jesus is moved with pity.  He heals the man with compassion.  We can understand that.  Jesus embodies love and compassion.  He feels for the man and heals him.  But interestingly, not all of the manuscripts say that.  In some of the oldest manuscripts, the word for pity or compassion is not there.  Instead it says that Jesus is moved with anger. Anger at whom?  At what?  Anger at disease which diminishes life. Anger at fear which is sometimes stronger than love.  Anger at a social system which could not care for this man but instead left him excluded, isolated and marginalized and told him it must be his own fault. 

I know some people who have recently lost loved ones to Covid.  They told me about their deep sorrow because they truly loved the one who died. They shared their hard anger at the misinformation and not complying with protocols and lack of trust in medical science which put their loved ones in a place of vulnerability and risk.  Jesus could easily have been angry and compassionate at the same time. 

The man says “if you choose, you can make me clean.” Jesus stretches out his hand, Matthew says.  The first thing he does is to touch him.  The man who has not had human contact in a very long time.  That act alone is healing. That act alone undoes a little bit of loneliness.  It counter-acts a little bit of the isolation.

Moved with compassion and anger, Jesus stretches out his hand and says, “I do choose.  Be made clean.”  And the leprosy disappears.

Theological Paul Tillich says, “Sometimes a wave of light breaks into our darkness and it is as if a voice were saying: ‘You are accepted . . . sometimes it happens that we receive the power to say ‘yes’ to ourselves, that peace enters into us and makes us whole, that self-hate, and self-contempt disappear and that our self is reunited with itself.”[3]

We should understand that when Jesus heals this man, when he heals anyone, it creates a sense of wholeness on multiple levels. There is restoration of the physical body, and restoration of one’s self with itself,  and restoration to community. Jesus’ healing enables life to go on in all its fullness.  This is what we will see repeatedly in the stories of healing we are exploring this Lent.

But for some of us, this healing also triggers one of those difficult questions.  Here, we are told that Jesus chooses to heal.  We know many times when healing was prayed for, with as much trust and hope as the leper showed, but it did not happen.  And so, we might ask, if Jesus can choose to heal, does Jesus also, on occasion, choose not to?  This is a good question, a honest question.  Maybe it is a question we will come back to in future weeks.  What I note today is the last verses of our reading.  Vs 16 and 17 read, “they brought to him many who were possessed with demons; and he cast out the spirits with a word, and cured all who were sick. This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah, “He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.”  Over and over and over again, the gospels tell us about Jesus engaging in healing. What this suggests to me is that, whenever he could, Jesus chose to heal.  That healing, with compassion and anger, restoring to wholeness of body, mind and spirit are inextricably bound up with his ministry and mission.

In Traveling Mercies, which is one of her older books, Anne Lamott wrote, “Broken things have been on my mind recently and in the lives of people I love. Our wonderful friend Ken died of AIDS—not long after, my friend, Mimi, began to die after a long struggle with a rare blood disease . . Our preacher, Veronica, said recently that this is life’s nature: that lives and hearts get broken, those of people we love, those of people we’ll never meet. She said that the world sometimes feels like the waiting room of the emergency ward and that we who are more or less OK for now, need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room until the healer comes. You sit with people, she said, you bring them juice and graham crackers.”[4]

“You take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people.” Friends, some of us are the more wounded people right now.  So be tender with yourselves.  Some of us are the more wounded people right now.  So be tender with each other.  Know that God’s great desire for us is shalom – well-being and peace and wholeness in every possible sense. And so, we join our spirits with God’s spirit to pray for healing, restoration and peace.

[1] John T Cacioppo and William Patrick, Loneliness:  Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008),  p. 5

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/world/europe/uk-britain-loneliness.html

[3] Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations, (London:  Penguin Books, 1963)  pp. 162-163

[4] Anne Lamott  Traveling Mercies, (New York:  Random House, 1999), p. 106

2/17/21 - Ash Wednesday Service

A recording of our Ash Wednesday Service is available here: https://youtu.be/Upfg5DpNrn8

Clicking on the “Show More” below the video will open a copy of the bulletin time-indexed in case you simply want to hear one reading or piece of music again.

2/14/21 - With Authority - Mark 1:21-28

With Authority

Mark 1:21-28

February 14, 2021

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

Image:  Christ Preaching at Capernaum

Maurycy Gottlieb, circa 1878-79

Note:  A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://youtu.be/GRarupM44lM

Perhaps you’ve been to a stand-up comedy show when a heckler interrupted or a politician’s stump speech when a protester demanded attention.  Maybe you haven’t been there in person but you may have seen clips of times when it was a big enough deal to make the news.  When that happens, there is a different kind of energy in the crowd.  People get nervous and excited.  Some will internally side with the heckler, some with the comedian. For some it is just part of the entertainment, but others will be uncomfortable until the tension is resolved.  Imagine that kind of disruption in church.  Maybe you don’t have to imagine. Maybe you were there.  It has happened in some minor ways during worship at Emmanuel.  Usually when I was at the lectern.  It was unexpected and perhaps distressing to some of us.  We all kind of held our collective breath waiting for the interruption to end and worship to continue. 

We can imagine Jesus at the lectern in Capernaum.  Perhaps he has been speaking for 30 minutes or just for 5, but then the unnamed man yells out, disrupting everything. That feel of discomfort, of nervous energy, of waiting to see who will get the upper hand sets up the tension in this scene.

As people with a scientific worldview, we don’t quite know what to do with this story.  We often apply contemporary categories to the man with the unclean spirit, suggesting that he might have schizophrenia or some other illness. Unlike first-century Palestinians, we don’t generally think in the category of demon possession, and so we want to reduce this story to categories that we understand.

Fred Craddock was a pastor and seminary professor of the last century who said, “we have not, by the announcement that we do not believe in demons, reduced one whit the amount of personal and corporate evil in the world. The names of the enemies have been changed, but the battles still rage.”[1]

Whether or not we believe in individual demons, we can faithfully enter into this story if we understand it as a struggle between good and evil.  The demonic is that which distorts God’s good purposes.  Perhaps it is not such much a personal being as patterns of behavior and ways of thinking that distort our sense of reality.  I appreciate the ways that Thomas Troeger describes it in the hymn we sang earlier – doubts that stir the heart to panic, fears distorting reason’s sight, guilt that makes our loving frantic, dreams that cloud the soul with fright.[2]

The man in Capernaum is in the grip of something -- doubts or fears or guilt -- and Jesus delivers him from that.  On one level, this is a story of individual healing. But it is more than that. This is an exorcism, a confrontation between competing authorities. 

Scholar Ched Myers describes it as a symbolic action which carries weight and meaning beyond the individual level. Symbolic actions are significant because of the context in which they occur.  A monk nails a list up on a church door. A woman sits down on a bus.  Those actions matter on an individual level, but also on a much larger scale.

Jesus is in the middle of teaching. Mark has already said that the people are amazed at how Jesus teaches – with authority.  Interestingly, not a word of what he was teaching is reported here.  But something stirs up the man, so that he yells out “What do you have to do with us?”  which is more literally translated “what do we have in common?” 

“Why are you meddling, Jesus?  What business is it of yours?”

“Stay in your lane, Jesus.”

The content of Jesus’ teaching is pushing someone’s buttons.  It is challenging someone or something in that church.  I’m using the word “church” on purpose, because if I say synagogue, then we might be tempted to think this phenomena happens only in other traditions, not in our own.  And that would be to keep Jesus’ authority at a safe distance.  So in the church, Jesus is teaching and what he says is a challenge to the religious leaders.   We know that they are the target of the symbolic action because they are the only other named authority in the story. 

Ched Myers says that Jesus’ symbolic acts were powerful not because they challenged the laws of nature [with miraculous healing] but because they challenged the very structures of social existence.[3]  If you were near the top of the social order, you perceived Jesus as destructive and deviant.  If you were near the bottom, you perceived him as liberating.

And lest we still think that this happens only in other traditions, I remember some conversations from my seminary days.  With some regularity, the question of pastoral authority would be raised.  The question might be framed “do pastors have special authority because we are called by God or because we are ordained?”  Or it might be a conversation about how careful pastors should be about what they say and do because they wear their authority like a cape and any missteps might sully it.  What I remember is that the male students were always very invested in the details of these conversations while the women tended to resist the very idea of a hierarchy in which pastors were a step above everyone else.  I always appreciated the position of Fred Craddock who wrote a very influential book about preaching.  It was entitled As One without Authority.  As One Without Authority. Part of the premise of that book is that effective preaching enables people to hear the voice of Jesus as authoritative in their own hearts and minds, that pastors’ only claim to authority is in the same Jesus available to all. Jesus is the true authority.

A few years ago, the current president of my seminary delivered a graduation speech in which he challenged those future pastors to go and preach as ones with authority.  That current president was a student when I was.  Decades later, we still approach the question from very different points of view.

The demons attempt to name Jesus as a way to control him.  Jesus silences them.  Silencing our demons may be necessary so that we can hear the true authority in our lives.

Sometimes the demons are the voices in our heads.  I don’t mean the kind of voices that might accompany mental illness. I mean the messages that we have absorbed over our lifetimes. They might be mantras from parents or grandparents.  You might hear the voice of a favorite teacher or an honest critic who told you the truth.  Many of your voices are in my head, along with those from other congregations.  I know some of your favorite theological soap boxes, the things you think someone else really needs to hear, and something I said in a sermon once that you objected to.  I have a lot of voices in my head.  I expect you do too.  Silencing those voices allows us to hear the true authority in our lives. 

In her book Pastrix, Nadia Bolz-Weber explains it this way, “Before we do anything wrong and before we do anything right, God has named and claimed us as God's own. But almost immediately, other things try to tell us who we are and to whom we belong: capitalism, the weight-loss industrial complex, our parents, kids at school—they all have a go at telling us who we are. But only God can do that. Everything else is temptation. Maybe demons are defined as anything other than God that tries to tell us who we are.”[4]

I am fascinated that Mark tells us more about how Jesus taught than what he said. I suspect that Little Man’s Grandma is right when she said that Jesus just taught some simple truths about life and love.  But the way that he taught enabled people to hear them in transformative ways, ways that challenged them and challenged the status quo.  That was what amazed and astounded the people who heard him.

The African-American teacher and preacher Howard Thurman said it this way “There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have.  And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”[5] . . .  If you cannot hear it, you will spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.  Knowing how committed Thurman was to following Jesus, it is not a stretch to understand that the sound of the genuine for him was the voice of Jesus resonating with authority in his life.

There are so many claims to authority these days;  so many potential voices to attend to, so many alternate realities which prey on doubts and fears, which disturb our peace with distortions and subversions of God’s good purposes. With all of that swirling around us, it is imperative that we listen for the only true authority in our lives, that we silence all other voices except that of Jesus.

Listen, listen to the truest guide we will ever have. Know that before all else, God has claimed us and loved us. Trust that voice to comfort and challenge, to heal, to transform.  Amen.

[1] Fred B. Craddock, Luke, Interpretation series (Louisville:  John Knox Press, 1990), p. 66

[2] Silence! Frenzied, Unclean Spirit  lyrics by Thomas H. Troeger, 1984  Oxford University Press ©1986

[3] Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man (Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis Books, 1988, 2008), pp 147-148

[4] Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful, Faith of a Sinner and Saint (New York:  Jericho Books, 2013), pp 138-139

[5] From Howard Thurman's 1980 commencement address at Spelman College. 

1/31/21 - Following - Mark 1:14-20

Following

Mark 1:14-20

January 31, 2021

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://youtu.be/C5nNZGqZE7c

“Every three years all people should forget whatever they have learned about Jesus and begin the study all over again.”[1] So said Robert McAfee Brown, a Presbyterian theologian and professor of the last century.  He was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship and studied at Oxford. Later he was a professor at Union Seminary and Stanford and the Pacific School of Religion.  Academic learning was obviously a high value, but even so, he said that people should forget whatever they have learned about Jesus and start all over again every three years.

It is not easy to unlearn what we think we know.  It is not easy to hear a Bible story as familiar as Jesus calling his first disciples with fresh ears.  But I encourage us to try to do it today.

There is an urgency to Mark’s narrative.  His favorite word is “immediately”.  Jesus’ ministry begins in the aftermath of the arrest of John the Baptist. It an uneasy, troubled time.  The risks of making religious-political waves are all too evident, but this is the time when Jesus calls and the time when the disciples follow.

The first ones Jesus calls are fishermen.  They represent an independent artisan class.  They are an economic step above the day laborers whom they could afford to hire.  They are also brothers. They represent households, extended families who depend on their fishing to sustain life.  Simon, Andrew, James and John are not people with nothing to lose, but rather the opposite. There is a definite personal cost to following Jesus. Simon and Andrew drop their nets, the tools of their trade.  James and John abandon their father. This call is urgent and disruptive, a radical break with business as usual. 

Jesus literally says to them “come behind me.”  The word for behind (opiso) can be a spatial term, to stand or walk behind someone. It can be a temporal term, to come at a time after something else. It can also be a status term, behind or under in terms of rank or importance. [2]

Discipleship can require all of these meanings, but the idea that Jesus comes first in importance is evident right away.  They leave everything to follow him.

“Come behind me,” Jesus says, “ and I will teach you to fish for people.”

We hear those familiar words and we know what they mean – right?  We’ve heard those words repeated in song and story more times than we can begin to count. We know that to fish for people means to save their souls, to be involved in evangelism, in sharing the good news.  Some of us, in some streams of Christian tradition, emphatically know that is what fishing for people means.

Some of us know that it means something else.  We know that the fish hook is a Biblical symbol of judgment, especially God’s judgment on the rich and the powerful in the time of the prophets.  To fish for people means to be involved in the struggle against power and privilege, to join Jesus on the side of love and justice.  Some of us, in some streams of the Christian tradition emphatically know that is what fishing for people means.

The interpretation that we prefer, that we know to be truest, depends a lot on what we first learned and who taught us. Probably we learned that first interpretation so well that we’ve never even heard the other one.  Which is why Robert Brown said that we should forget what we know and start over again every three years. 

In the 2,000 years since Jesus walked along the Sea of Galilee, his followers have divided and re-divided into so many camps, each claiming to know what Jesus really meant in this verse or that story. But what if, what if, both meanings are true?  What if to fish for people means to struggle for love and justice AND to share the gospel evangelistically?  What if it means to be concerned about someone’s well-being in the eternal sense AND also in the here and now?

It turns out that, according to scholar Robert Smith,  “in the ancient world fishing was a metaphor for two distinct activities: judgment and teaching. Fishing for people meant bringing them to justice by dragging them out of their hiding places and setting them before the judge at the end of the world. And fishing was also used of teaching people, of the process of leading them from ignorance to wisdom.[3]

We don’t have to choose between interpretations.  Jesus could easily have intended both meanings and probably did. 

As I said, there is an urgency in Mark’s tone, things are changing quickly, the time to join God’s action in the world is now. That answers the “when” question, but not the “how”.  James and John dropped their nets and literally walked behind Jesus. That is not an option for us, so how do we respond to his call?

Jesus first words in this gospel are “repent and believe the good news.”  Repent and believe are present tense imperative verbs, which implies continued or repeated actions.  “Keep on repenting.”  “Keep on believing”.  These are not actions that we do once and we’re done.   Rather, following Jesus means that we keep changing, keep trusting.  That is part of the adventure. Imagine a child’s game of “Follow the Leader” in which the leader’s actions never varied.  How boring would that be?  Never let it be said that Jesus was boring. 

Sometime in the 1990’s the Anglican bishop Mark Dyer suggested that great changes happen in cycles, saying that “every 500 years, the church feels compelled to hold a giant rummage sale.”  Phyllis Tickle quoted him in her book a few years later and it became a popular way to think about the dramatic changes happening in our time.[4] It is a concept we have talked about often here at Emmanuel.

We know that change is imminent and necessary. We know that following Jesus takes different forms in different times and places, but we have been sorting through our stuff for a while now, trying to decide what is precious and what is junk, perhaps holding on to our favorite things even though they’re broken or missing pieces, or, to tell the truth, they don’t even work anymore. 

Meanwhile, we also know that people are desperate to receive the good news of Jesus with meaning and beauty. They want an encounter on the shoreline, something that comes in the midst of regular life, that has an impact on everything from that time forward. By and large, the people I’m thinking of are not finding that in church as we know it.  We know that because of the growth of the category of Dones – those who have been wounded or broken by the church and will never return – and the increasing number of those who proudly call themselves Spiritual but not Religious.  I have seen this most closely at the Wild Goose Festival – people of all ages whose passion for Jesus is undeniable, but whose support for the business-as-usual church is underwhelming at best.  They show up at the festival in droves to be with others who have the same yearning.

We have seen the signs. We have known that change was needed.  Perhaps we might even have acknowledged a call to something different, something as radical as quitting fishing was for James and John. But the call was muffled.

Maybe it was muffled by our setttledness.  We know how to do church well -- even when our pastor goes on sabbatical, even when we suspend our bylaws, even when we have to worship on Zoom. We are good at this.  I’ve been ordained for a quarter of a century now.  I don’t know how that happened, but I finally feel like I might know a thing or two about leading a church.  And you do too.  So, its hard to imagine that Jesus might be asking us to give up that way of life, a way of life which connects and which sustains so many households.  (But he did ask it of James and John.)

Maybe the call was muffled by our busyness. Even our church busyness. Maybe we were doing so much for Jesus that we couldn’t really hear the call to drop those nets and come after him. But the pandemic stopped that. We  are in a different place as a church than we were a year ago.

It is not a fun place, not a comfortable place, but it is a quieter place,  Maybe it is a place from which we can hear a new call or perhaps I should say a place from which we can follow more purposefully.  We have dropped many things in the last year.  Let us not be too hasty in picking them all up again. 

Truthfully I think the call was muffled because we knew we should do something, but we didn’t know what that something was.  We still don’t know, in any kind of specific way.  But we have identified a direction, a model to explore, in the Fresh Expressions movement.  It is an exciting, scary, destabilizing and quite possibly joyful movement of the Holy Spirit that may offer some of us a new way to follow Jesus.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please check the announcements about the retreat at the end of February and talk to me about it.

Finally I want to say that following Jesus might be boring, on occasion, but it shouldn’t be on a regular basis.  It entails obedience and trust, but if our following is characterized by duty and drudgery,  we may have lost our way. 

Anne Lamott says “I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We’re here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don’t have time to carry grudges; you don’t have time to cling to the need to be right.”

What if we understood the call from Jesus as an invitation to get rid of baggage – personal and institutional, an invitation to laugh and to love, to let go of old wrongs and participate in healing?  If we understand it that way, could we follow?  Would we?

[1] Robert McAfee Brown, The Bible Speaks to You, p. 87

[2] Brian Stoffregen at http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/mark1x14.htm

[3] Robert H. Smith, Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament: Matthew, (Minneapolis:  Augsburg/Fortress Press, 1989), p. 72

[4] Phyllis Tickle, The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why, (Grand Rapids:  Baker Books, 2008), p. 16/

1/10/21 - Ripped Open - Mark 1:4-11

Ripped Open

Mark 1:4-11

January 10, 2021

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

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

I don’t know where it is any more, but at one time, I had a button that said “Ordain women or stop baptizing them.”  If we take seriously the concept of the priesthood of all believers, then baptism is ordination to ministry. 

It is hard to talk about Jesus’ baptism without talking about our baptisms.  It is also important, I think, for us to understand a distinction between what his baptism meant and what ours does.  Christians practice baptism because Jesus told us to and because the early church did.  But at least some folks in the earliest churches practiced John’s baptism, a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  One Christian community Ephesus was still using John’s baptism when Paul arrived.  We know this because the book of Acts informs us that he had to instruct them on baptizing people in the name of Jesus.  John’s baptism was an act of renewal, part of his work to prepare people for the coming Messiah.  Christian baptism is a ritual that signifies our desire to follow that Messiah, whom we believe to be Jesus of Nazareth.  But Jesus was not baptized in preparation for his own arrival, and Jesus was not baptized as a Christian.  Jesus’ baptism was a singular event.  We follow him in baptism, but before we can begin to understand what that means for us, let us reflect on what it meant for him. 

So, as I was saying, baptism is ordination to ministry.  That is true for us, but also first true for Jesus.  Baptism becomes a pivotal point in his life and identity.  All four gospels tell us that Jesus was baptized by John.  And in each gospel, it is the launching point for his adult ministry. 

We hear Mark’s version of the story today.  If your pastor preaches from the lectionary this year, then most of the gospel readings will be from the book of Mark.  But not even I can tell you what your pastor is likely to do this year.  However, since we’re starting off with Mark, I might remind us that Mark does not have a birth story.  Mark doesn’t tell us anything about Mary and Joseph being betrothed or going to Bethlehem or fleeing to Egypt.  He doesn’t mention angelic announcements to shepherds or visits by wise men. 

We are just a few verses into his book when Jesus of Nazareth walks onto the scene and without saying a word, gets dunked in the Jordan.   Mark’s gospel is the shortest, probably because he leaves out some details we would like to know.  Like whether Jesus and John had already met or why Jesus came to be baptized or what they said to each other before, during and after.

Mark doesn’t tell us those things.  He relies heavily on context and symbols to convey meaning. This happens out in the wilderness, symbolic of the wanderings of the people of Israel after the Exodus.  It happens in the River Jordan, which for Israelites, is like Plymouth Rock for us.  It is a place of origins that shapes identity.   Walter Brueggemann suggests that “Jesus takes upon himself the whole story of Israel.  He relives the memory of Israel.  As Israel begins by going into the waters of Exodus, being at risk and trusting only God, as Israel wades through the waters of the Jordan to enter a whole new life in the land of Canaan, so Jesus relives the Exodus of Israel and relives Israel’s entry into the land of promise.  In this way, he begins again the story of Israel as the faithful people of God.  This is indeed a new beginning, and Jesus takes his place as the initiator of a whole new history of faithfulness to God in the world.”[1]

Mark doesn’t offer a lot of details, which makes us attend carefully to the ones he does.  When Matthew and Luke describe Jesus’ baptism, they say that the heavens opened.  Opened – it’s the same word for opening a gift or opening a door or opening your mouth.  A fairly simple word.  But Mark says that the heavens were Schizomai, which means ripped open.  Schizomai means to rip, to rend, to tear apart in a way that cannot be put back together again.  It is violent and dramatic.

It would also remind Mark’s Jewish audience of Isaiah 64 where the prophet pleaded for God’s intervention, saying, O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, to make your name known to your adversaries, and make the nations might tremble at your presence, working unexpected miracles such as no one has ever seen before.

When things get really bad, some of us might look to the heavens and ask God to rip them open, to make a dramatic entrance and set things right, like Isaiah did.  Mark is offering another clue that Jesus is the Messiah, the fulfillment of Israel’s ancient longing.

Schizomai – to rip apart so that it cannot be put back together again.  Mark only uses this word one other time.  That is when the curtain is the temple is torn from top to bottom when Jesus dies on the cross, When Jesus bursts on the scene and when he leaves it – the world is changed in ways that cannot be undone.

Jesus’ baptism by John is awkward for the gospel writers.  If Jesus is baptized by John, it implies that he is subordinate to John, but John proclaimed that he wasn’t worthy to undo Jesus’ sandals.  If Jesus participates in a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, it implies that he needs to be forgiven for sin.  Theologians have spent many hours and much ink on these questions. I am not going to spend much time on them today.

But there is a thought that appeals to those of us who understand sin as corporate as well as individual, those of us who are concerned about systemic evil.  One scholar suggests that Jesus’ baptism was a genuine act of repentance.  “As such it ends his participation in the structures and values of society.  It concludes his involvement in the moral order into which he was born.”[2]  In this way of thinking, Jesus’ baptism is a new creation which repudiates the old order of things.  

That might just be a different way of saying that Jesus was sinless.  But it is not an option available to the rest of us. Our baptism does not confer sinlessness.  We are not able to entirely repudiate our cultural systems.  It is another way in which Jesus’ baptism is a singular one-time event.

When Jesus comes up out of the water, Mark says that he sees the heavens ripped open.  There is an implication that only Jesus sees it, that only Jesus understands what is happening at the time.  That is a theme of Mark, of Jesus’ identity being secret and only being revealed to those with eyes to see, those willing to believe.  That is part of our role.  Following Jesus in baptism means choosing to believe that Jesus is who he said he was, to see in his life and teachings what is not always readily apparent. 

Much later, when James and John asked for seats of honor in Jesus’ kingdom, Jesus asked them if they could be baptized with the baptism he was baptized with.  He was referring to his death on the cross.  This is also potentially our role, to say with our baptism that we will be loyal to Jesus even if it means death.

Sara Miles preached at a FOCUS service a few years ago.  Many of you heard her and have read her books. In her book Take This Bread, she talks about the events that led to her baptism.  You might remember that she was instrumental in establishing a food pantry within the sanctuary of her church in San Francisco.  One day, a young girl at the food pantry wandered off and ended up near the baptismal font.  When Sara met her there, the girl asked “Is this the water God puts on you to make you safe?”[3] 

That is such a wonderfully age-appropriate understanding.  Having that foundation of trust in God will serve her well.  But as adults we must understand that the waters of baptism are anything but safe.

Baptist preacher Brett Younger says, “Jesus does not die of old age.  He dies because he takes his baptism seriously.  When Jesus cried on the cross, ‘it is finished’ it was his baptism that was complete.”[4]

In a sermon from 2003, the incomparable Walter Brueggemann offered some words that resonate with me especially in light of the events of this week.  He said,

“You do know, do you not, that these are dangerous times in in the world, when hate and war and greed and ambition are about to destroy us all with our commitments to consumerism and militarism, when the world is being reshaped according to the sweep of violence.  And you do know, do you not, that this is a dangerous time in the church because the church is so settled in its conventions of being liberal or in its conventions of being conservative, so sure of itself and so shut down without energy that it tends to become irrelevant in our society.” [5]

That describes our time.  It describes Jesus’ time.  It probably describes most times and cultures.  But Brueggemann also said something else.  He said, “But do you know that there is in the world church a vibrant new recovery of baptism, a fresh awareness that God’s own presence does come among us to invite us to new vulnerability and new power for new obedience in the world.”

This, I think, is the calling of Jesus and the need of our time, a new vulnerability, a new kind of power, for a new obedience. 

May the Spirit of God be poured out on us, immersing us, baptizing us in power and love and vulnerability.  Come O Holy Spirit come.  Amen.

[1] Walter Brueggemann, “A Baptism About Which They Never Told Us” in The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann, Vol 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox, 2015), p. 32.

[2] H. Waetjen as quoted by Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man (Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis Books, 1988, 2008), p. 129

[3] Sara Miles, Take This Bread, (New York:  Ballentine Books, 2007), p. 236

[4] Brett Younger, “Being Baptized” in Lectionary Homiletics, January 11, 2015

[5] Walter Brueggemann, p. 35

1/3/21 - Some Thoughts at the Turning of the Year - Luke 2:22-40

Some Thoughts at the Turning of the Year

Luke 2:22-40

January 3, 2021

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://youtu.be/nyB1dzw3IdQ

What if around this time last year someone had told us that 2020 was going to be the most unusual year of our lives?  What would we have done with that information?  Would we have believed them? Or might we have thought that it was the kind of thing people sometimes say when they want to sound wise?

What does Mary think when old man Simeon, a stranger to her, takes her baby and says “I can die now.  I’ve held the hope of the world in my arms.”  When he tells her that a sword will pierce her soul, what exactly is she supposed to be with that information?  We could think that after the angel Gabriel made his announcement and after the shepherds showed up, she might just take Simeon’s proclamation in stride, but Luke tells us that she and Joseph are amazed. 

I suspect they believe Simeon and Anna.   I mean, what brand-new parents don’t believe every good word uttered about their child? But I suspect they believe because of what has already happened – with the angels and the shepherds.  I suspect they believe because of who Anna and Simeon are, because of the conviction with which they speak. 

Somehow Anna and Simeon recognize this baby for who he is.  They have been waiting a long time for him. Every year, during Advent, churches talk about waiting for Jesus to be born. We pay lip-service to the idea that waiting is an important spiritual discipline, but this year, we have all learned how hard and heavy, how boring and lonely, waiting really is.  The poet John Milton said, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”  Standing and waiting has been the vocation of Anna and Simeon for decades.

I wonder why they are expecting a baby. I wonder why they don’t hang out in the youth or young adult area of the Temple, listening to the conversations, wondering about the passion in that voice or the edgy theology in that one.  Somehow they know.  Somehow after a lifetime of prayer and waiting and paying attention, they just know.

I have a couple of books of pictures of Jesus.  One is a collection of the ways that Jesus has been portrayed by artists through history.  The other is a book of photographs of people named Hesus, taken by photographer Sean Hawkey. These are men and women who are called by the name of Jesus, but the world mostly does not recognize anything special about them.  In fact, what many of them have in common with Jesus is that they are rejected by the rich and powerful, seen as trouble-makers.  So, I just have to wonder again, how it was that Simeon and Anna knew who Jesus was.    I have to wonder again how many times Jesus be right in front of me and I might be clueless.

* * *

I asked you this week to think of an older person in your life who taught you something important.  Or someone you remember because they were patient and waited a long time for a dream to come true.  I heard from many of you and I appreciate all of your stories.  Many of you told me about a parent or a parent-in-law.  Some got good advice from a mentor or a boss. You named people who were passionate about a cause, people who kept on advocating for justice.

I was reminded of three people who were finally able to marry their true love at mid-life or later.  You named Roy, Elisabeth, Audrey, Jennie and Lillian and Carl among the Annas and Simeons of Emmanuel.  They inspired you with their good humor and steadfastness and faith, even in hard times, especially in hard times.  They kept you going because they kept showing up, showing up for church, showing up for other people, showing up for life. 

What older people often know better than younger people is about change.  The oldest people among us have seen incredible change across their lifetimes.  Change in their own families and communities, change in technology and political systems.  We are fortunate that Emmanuel has been enlivened with those who embrace the opportunities for transformation and growth to be found in every stage of their personal and spiritual lives. We can be grateful and lean on the courage and sense of adventure of our companions on this journey.

* * *

I notice one more thing about Simeon – he knew the balance of holding on and letting go.  He had held on, waiting to see the Messiah for decades, but now when he has the baby Jesus in his arms, he says “Let your servant now depart in peace . . . for my eyes have seen thy salvation.”  This is the prayer offered every evening in monasteries around the world.  A prayer of relinquishment, of acceptance. Simeon has a sense of completeness and is willing to let go.  He might have asked for more time, more time to stay connected to Mary and Joseph, more time to see this child grow up.  He has held on this long, why not longer?  But the wisdom he offers us is in knowing when to let go. 

We have let go of many things this year. Perhaps we will be required to let go of even more in 2021. Who can say?  We have also held on to much.  We have held to our faith in Jesus as Lord.  We have held to the discipline of gathering together.  Your church leaders have endured, continuing to guide and care for this congregation.    And beyond that, the vision committee has done the faithful work of discernment, pondering together what is essential to hold onto and what we need to let go, as we seek to follow Jesus, to recognize Jesus among our neighbors.

Friends,  at the turning of the year, I am aware that many of us are weary.  We may be ready for 2020 to end, but we do not carry much excitement for a new year.    The fatigue of the last 9 months has accumulated.  The stress of isolation is taking its toll. 

More than ever, we know that we are all in this together.  And so, I encourage us to remember the wisdom of Anna and Simeon, who endured and knew the joy of faithful waiting.  I encourage us to lean on the Simeons and Annas among us, some of blessed memory, some as close as the telephone.  Recognize that perhaps you are the current Simeon, the contemporary Anna for someone else. Hold on, beloved ones, even if the waiting seems endless. Because they also serve who only stand and wait. 

Thanks be to God.  Amen.