4/4/21 - Only the Beginning - Mark 16:1-8

Only the Beginning 

Mark 16:1-8

April 4, 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/W0hRfT1ZkLg

Once upon a time there was a church that lost the last page of its constitution and bylaws.  Now the last page was important, because it had the instructions for how to make changes to the bylaws in the future. They looked everywhere for many years, but that last page was not to be found.  So finally, the long-time members, those who thought they remembered what that last page had said, they got together and wrote a new last page.  (For those who might not know, that church’s initials were EBC.)

Once upon a time, someone named Mark wrote down the story of Jesus and when people read that story, they knew that a page was missing.  The story was epic, apocalyptic even.   The kind of story that ends with a great scene of life and death, of victory and defeat, but that page was missing.  They knew it was missing because the page they had, in their language stopped in the middle of a sentence like this -- “the women said nothing to anyone; they were afraid for …”  In English, it might sound like “They did not say nothing to nobody.”[1] 

So, the people looked for the missing last page of that story for many years and when it could not be found, different people in different places wrote what they thought were some better endings.  If you look in your Bible, you will see them.  But the more I read it, the more I am convinced that Mark ended at verse 8 and he did it on purpose.

Do you remember Easter last year?  At that point we had been in pandemic mode for about a month.  We had been changing our behavior, staying home if we were not essential workers, being hyper-vigilant about handwashing and sanitizing. We weren’t wearing masks yet, because at that time, all personal protective equipment was reserved for healthcare workers who, in many cases, did not have enough.  It was hard to grasp the reality of what was happening.  We thought/hoped it would all be over soon.  I’ve mentioned before that several of my colleagues thought that they could simply delay Easter services and have a wonderful Easter celebration when we returned to in-person worship in a few weeks.  But here we still are a year later. 

Maybe we can give the women at the tomb a break.  Still traumatized from seeing the violent torturous death of Jesus, they could not cope with the prospect of an empty tomb and the bizarre message they were told to deliver.  So, they said nothing to nobody.  Not at first anyway.  They must have said something at some point or we would not know this story.  But on that first Easter, it would have been hard to grasp what was real.  So, no I don’t think we’re missing a last page.  I think Mark is likely accurately describing the shock, the numbness, the fear, the unreality, the silence of that day.

And then there’s the context in which Mark is writing.  It’s about 40 years later. He’s probably writing from a small Christian community in Galilee.  The story of Jesus has been carried across the Roman empire, but Christians are still a misunderstood minority.  And for the last four years, Jerusalem has been under siege by the Roman army. The siege ended with the temple being burned down and thousands of people slaughtered.  Many of those who escaped Jerusalem may have fled to Galilee, to Mark’s own community, traumatized, defeated and in despair. 

It feels like failure. Again.  It feels like when the disciples fell asleep when Jesus was praying in Gethsemane.  Like when Judas betrayed him and Peter denied him and they all ran away.  Like when the women, who stayed near the longest, went to the tomb and said nothing to nobody.  Mark’s gospel seems to end in failure.

The novelist John Updike once gave a talk in New York City on religious themes in his fiction. During the Q&A afterwards, someone asked, “Mr. Updike, which is your favorite gospel?”

Without hesitation, Updike responded, “Luke! Luke tells the best stories.”  And then the thought for a minute and added, “Yes, Luke is my favorite, but I trust most the Gospel of Mark.  It was the earliest Gospel and it’s the gospel least prone to wishful thinking.” [2]

Mark does not engage in wishful thinking.  He does not sugar-coat the pain and suffering and even failure of those who followed Jesus.  But, if he does end this story this way on purpose, then what is his intention? 

The women are given a message for the disciples – to go to Galilee where Jesus has gone ahead of them.   “Mark means to leaves us to wrestle with whether or not the women overcame their fear in order to proclaim the new beginning in Galilee.”[3] He does not give us a happy, tidy ending in order to compel us to wrestle with our own fears about joining Jesus on mission. 

Brian Blount is Professor of New Testament and President at Union Seminary in Virginia.  He describes Jesus’ mission as one of invasion. Invasion is different from rescue.  In a rescue, the goal is to secure the hostage or prisoner and quickly retreat to a safe location, with minimal engagement with the enemy. In contrast, the objective of an invasion is to meet and engage all the opposing forces until the entire region is an occupied safe zone.   The Biblical narrative describes two ages -- a present age is controlled by forces hostile to God, and a future one where God’s will pervade.  But when Jesus is baptized, the heavens are torn open and God’s future invades the present.  The Holy Spirit descends on Jesus.  Invaded by the Spirit, Jesus then invades the lives of his disciples, demonstrating God’s power to transform the present age.[4]

Blount says that it is inevitable that Jesus will suffer because he is ushering in God’s reign.  The cosmic forces arrayed against God can be expected to put up a fight.  Therefore, if Jesus is to succeed in his task, if he is to carry through with his mission on behalf of God’s kingdom, he will necessarily encounter satanic, cosmic resistance.”[5]  Ultimately all of that resistance and opposition culminates in Jesus’ death.  The crucifixion is the result of the invasion, not the invasion itself. 

The crucifixion is the result of the invasion, not the invasion itself.  This is important.  It goes to the very heart of what we believe.  Let me say it again as directly as I can.  Jesus is God’s non-violent, invasive strike force of one.  His mission is to transform the world into a safe zone, a place where God’s shalom reigns for everyone.  For the love of the world, even love of the cosmos, God sent Jesus on this mission.  The mission is dangerous because the forces that oppose God are many and powerful.  But the goal of the mission is strong love, deep safety, powerful peace for the world.  The goal of the mission is not Jesus’ death.  However, death is the price that Jesus is willing to pay.  The crucifixion is the result of the invasion, not the invasion itself. 

The disciples are to go to Galilee where Jesus has gone ahead.  Back to Galilee.  Where it all began.    The place where he first announced the kingdom, taught the crowds, healed the sick and shared meals with Jews and Gentiles alike. 

The disciples, including you and me as readers of Mark’s gospel, are called to continue Jesus’ mission of invasion which brings flashes of God’s future into the present.  Mark doesn’t sugarcoat it – Jesus’ mission brought him into conflict with the powers of this world and those who take up the cross and follow him will also be in conflict. 

My colleague Stan Duncan tells of an experience he had in Guatemala some years ago.  He was high up in the mountains, staying with a Wycliffe Bible translator.  He noticed a framed photo over his desk.  It was a picture of about twenty young children standing together. They all had their hands sticking straight out at their sides. Stan asked him what that was all about.

He took the picture down and said, “See that little black line off to the far right?” Stan could barely make out what appeared to be a stick jutting into the picture from off camera.

The man said “That is the end of a rifle. The children were in front of about a dozen army soldiers.  The soldiers were threatening the children as a warning to their parents to stay in line, not to be agitators.”  

Stan said, “Why are the children’s arms out like that?’

The man said it was a custom among many of the Indigenous Quiché Indians who were Christians. They believe that when they are in pain or in fear, they can stick out their arms and they will be folded into the form of Jesus on the cross. And for a moment their individual pain, which can be sharp and personal, is taken up into human pain, global pain, cosmic pain, God’s pain. When God suffers with you, you don’t suffer alone and the pain is shared.

Those children and their parents had a profound internal sense of what it means to follow Jesus.  Jesus calls his disciples to take up the cross and follow.  “The cross represents the pain that comes as a result of life-affirming behavior modelled after the ministry of Jesus.”[6]  Life -affirming, invasive behavior that claims God’s power to transform here and now. 

Mark’s gospel ends with an invitation to go to Galilee, where Jesus has gone on ahead. To carry on where he left off.  At the end Mark sends us back to start again in Galilee.  He sends us back to verse 1 which says “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Resurrection is the sign that suffering will someday truly end, but it’s not yet the end. It is only the beginning.    The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the news that God’s future is still breaking into our present life and time. The beginning of strong love, deep safety, and powerful peace for the world. Thanks be to God, for Christ is risen.  Christ is risen indeed.

[1] Fred B. Craddock, “And the Witnesses Said Nothing” The Collected Sermons of Fred B. Craddock, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011), p. 136

[2] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2009/01/30/january-27-2009-john-updike-1932-2009/2078/

[3] Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man (Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis Books, 1988, 2008), p. 401

[4] Brian Blount, Invasion of the Dead: Preaching Resurrection, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2014)   pp 84-86.

[5] Blount, p 91.

[6] Raquel a. St. Clair, Call and Consequences:  A Womanist Reading of Mark (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2008), p.139

3/28/21 - Holy, Wholly - Matthew 9:1-8; Matthew 21:1-11

Holy, Wholly

Matthew 9:1-8; 21:1-11

March 28, 2021

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

Image: Palm Sunday by Evans Yegon, at www.TrueAfricanArt.com

Note:  A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://youtu.be/brW9-FLqb9M

Very often, first century people drew a direct line between sin and sickness. For them, physical health was directly related to spiritual health. It followed that if you were a little bit sick, then you had probably been a little bit sinful.  And if you were very sick, then you had sinned a lot.  If you were so sick that you were flat on your back, unable to walk and had to be carried, then you were probably one of the worst sinners around. 

That is the context when some friends bring a paralyzed man to Jesus.  Most of the onlookers probably think that man is bad news, maybe that he doesn’t even deserve to be healed. 

Jesus sees the man and says “Take heart.  Your sins are forgiven.”  It kind of makes sense that he would say that.  The people understand sin and physical suffering to be so intertwined that forgiveness is going to seem like a necessary part in the healing process. 

As soon as Jesus says “your sins are forgiven,” the authorities say “Blasphemy!  Only God can forgive sins.” And Jesus says, “You are so right!  And so that you may understand that God is at work in this place, I say to this man, ‘Take up and your mat and walk!’” 

And he does.

Just before that, Jesus raises the question of whether it is harder to forgive sins or perform physical healing.  This is kind of a rhetorical question.  Physical healing requires external observable proof, so it is harder in that sense, but forgiving sins is more controversial.  It is what gets Jesus into trouble.

Many other humans were healers, but only God could forgive sins. So, it would have been easier for Jesus if he had just stuck to physical healing.  It would also have been easier for Jesus to stay out of the public eye, to avoid the confrontations that led to the cross, but Jesus’s way was the way of faithfulness and obedience, not the way of ease. [1]

So, this time, he presses the point.  He does not simply say “Your faith has made you well” as he has in other cases, but he names a link between healing and forgiveness.

Jesus is concerned with human suffering on all levels.  What we see here is not simply the forgiveness of one person’s sins, but a symbolic act that demonstrates that Jesus is empowered by God to overcome everything that corrupts human existence and to usher in a new era of human wholeness.[2]

The first century people often drew a direct line between sin and suffering, between behavior and sickness.  We do too.  We know the dangers of smoking, of poor nutrition, of inadequate exercise.  Sometimes, that leads us to a place of blaming those who are ill for their own illness.  But the line is not usually so direct.  We are careful not to suggest that physical illness is divine punishment for wrong-doing.

So, we need to speak about this carefully, but also to recognize that there are connections between our spiritual and physical and social health. There are links between our thoughts, our internal narratives and our behaviors, and correspondingly between our actions and the sense of wholeness and shalom we find in our lives. 

This is the only story in Matthew’s gospel which suggests a link between sin and illness, a connection between healing and forgiveness.  It may be instructive for us to also notice that before Jesus forgives his sins, he notices their faith.  Not the faith of the individual man but the faith of his companions who carry him.  And so, the community is involved. In this story which is the only one to make a link between sin and illness, there is also a link to the faith of a community. In Matthew’s gospel there is a sense that forgiveness is practiced and lived out in community. 

I want to suggest that our spiritual health is bound up with our physical health, and that Jesus intends wholeness in every aspect of our lives.  The best way I know to understand this is in an example from humans acting in community.   So, I have a long story to share.  Please bear with me.

You remember Maya Angelou. She was a poet and writer and civil rights activist.  Incredible person with incredible stories.  She lived on the East Coast but got to be good friends with a man in California.  One time when she was out there, she called him up on the phone.  They were catching up on their lives.

He had recently been in Europe, dealing with some issues related to American soldiers stationed there.  She said, “How did it go?”

He said, "The black troops have a particularly hard time because they are black and there aren't many blacks around. But our boys, also..."

She said, "What did you say?"

He repeated himself “The black troops have a particularly hard time because they are black and there aren't many blacks around. But our boys, also..."

 and again, she said, “what did you say?” 

The third time, he heard himself and he said, “This is the most awful thing I have ever done.  I can’t continue this conversation.  I have to hang up.”  He couldn’t believe that in conversation with Maya Angelou, he had talked about black soldiers as others and referred to the white ones as “ours.”  

But Maya Angelou said, “No, don’t hang up. We need to talk about this, because this is what racial prejudice is, a deeply ingrained sense of difference between our boys and them.”

So, they agreed to meet for more conversation.  But when she tried to get ahold of him after that, to set up a meeting, he didn’t take her calls and didn’t return her messages and the whole thing fizzled out. 

Fifteen years went by.  She went back to the Bay Area for another conference.  At the end of one session, she was asked about racism and she said that story, about that relationship which had fizzled out.  The next day, she addressed the audience again.  She said, “Remember yesterday when I said that story?  Well, as I was leaving, a man in the audience stood up and said, “Here I am.” 

It was the man she had been talking about. As she said that, the man himself again rose up, a small, white, Episcopal clergyman as it turned out. He walked up to the platform and threw his arms around Maya Angelou and she around him. They embraced one another and they wept. 

Frederick Buechner happened to be there.  He said that it was one of the most moving moments he had ever been a part of. He said it was moving because it put on display not only racial barriers, but so many different kinds of barriers that separate human beings -- fear, mistrust, misunderstanding, anger, loneliness, the inability to communicate with each other, even those we love the most and are closest to.[3]

We are all susceptible to those barriers, all caught by insidious forces that are beyond our control or comprehension.  That Episcopal priest caught himself saying “our boys” but not until the third time he said it. 

I say this is insidious because we don’t seem to be able to learn from previous generations.  We seem to be caught in the same cycles of fear and violence and separation.  You undoubtedly saw the same story that I did yesterday.  About the arrest of George Representative Park Cannon who dared to call attention to the suppression of black voters in her state. She repeatedly knocked on the door of the Governor as he signed the 98-page bill.  She disturbed the peace, calling attention to what was happening.  You probably saw, as I did, that within that chamber were 6 white men witnessing the signing while behind them on the wall was a picture of a historic plantation where more than 300 people were enslaved. [4] Many are saying that this is simply the latest version of Jim Crow. It certainly feels like a cycle that has been seen before. 

Some might say that racism is a social sickness that starts with the sin of prejudice or not loving your neighbor as yourself.  That is one way to look at it. But there are ties to physical illness as well. A recent study found that white people live, on average, 5 years longer than black people.  The average white person is more likely to have health insurance, flexible work conditions, a nearby grocery store and a less polluted neighborhood.[5]  Can we see a direct line between sin and sickness now? 

That is the nature of sin and sickness – they are both part of the human condition, part of our fallenness.  Generation after generation, we are unable to free ourselves from their grip. This is why when Jesus parades into Jerusalem, the people cry out “Hosanna” which means “Save us.”

Jesus claims the authority to forgive sins, but more importantly he owns his authority as One empowered by God to defeat everything that corrupts human existence, to usher in a new era of human wholeness.  You and I need that every bit as much as the man lying on the mat in Capernaum.  This is why rely on Jesus for liberation and healing. This is why we live as those who are forgiven and those who extend that same forgiveness to those around us.

This is why, on Palm Sunday, we continue to cry out “Hosanna – Save us”.  May it be so for you and for me.  Amen.

[1] Brian P. Stoffregen at http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/mark2x1.htm

[2] Walter T. Wilson, Healing in the Gospel of Matthew, (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2014), p. 148

[3]https://day1.org/articles/5d9b820ef71918cdf2003ceb/in_honor_of_maya_angelou

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/27/georgia-governor-painting-slave-plantation-voting-bill-signing

[5] German Lopez, The Black-white life expectancy gap grew in 2020 — but it can be reversed, Vox, February 24, 2021 https://www.vox.com/22285868/black-white-life-expectancy-gap-covid-19-health

3/21/21 - We Need a Miracle - Matthew 8:18-27 - guest preacher, Dr. Kathleen Moore

We Need a Miracle

Kathleen E. Moore

March 21, 2021

A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl4WCxq604M

It always seems to me to be unfair to the disciples, to rebuke them for lack of faith.  Who hasn’t cried out for help, who hasn’t felt all alone when the worst appears to be happening?  Who hasn’t felt that sense of abandonment when you have no control over something frightful that is happening?  Fear, sure. Panic, well that’s not the best thing in an emergency, I agree. But it’s understandable.  When we are confronted by a threat that is a lot bigger than we are, and if we are not actually panicking, we try to reach out for something bigger than ourselves, something more powerful than ourselves, to save us.  And that’s what happens in this story.    The disciples’ complaints may sound whiny, but I hear them as that first Anne Lamott prayer : “HELP !”. 

What is revealed to them in the miracle is a power of cosmic proportions, which surprises even them. 

In the past year we have been confronted by the storm of a pandemic whose immediate cause of course is a virus around 100 nm in size.  The size, the proportion of the pandemic-- in effect its causes-- are large and small;  a globally-connected humanity, probable (inappropriate) dealings with animals, including loss of natural habitat for many species, people not taking basic precautionary measures, and above all inadequate care for those who are most vulnerable. 

All over the planet people cried, “help !” And an amazing —to me, miraculous— thing happened.  Human ingenuity —God-given ingenuity and cosmic force of will —brought us vaccines in an unimaginably short period of time. 

So too for climate change:  “We need a miracle” – in the way the calming of the sea was a miracle.  But how do we summon a miracle ?  We have to prepare ourselves, call upon our best selves—not the ego-driven, over-achieving, profit-centered selves we can be, but the best we can be. Maybe we need to repent of the practices and prejudices that have created some of the storms we are facing. 

Maybe it means working together with what we have to make things better, to work on restoring balance in creation, all of it.  Koala bears and hummingbirds and pollinators of all kinds.  It involves a fundamental shift in how we view Creation :  As the theologian Thomas Berry said, we must move from seeing nature as  “a collection of objects, to a communion of subjects”, or seeing Creation as composed of our “kin”, as Robin Wall Kimmerer likes to say. 

The storm of climate change is one of extraordinary proportions too.  Of course it has its origin in human causes…

Here is an apple – if you could shrink the Earth and its atmosphere (the troposphere, the layer closest to the Earth, and the part of it we live i)  to the size of an apple, the atmosphere would be thinner than the skin on the apple.  Eight billion people are using this apple-skin-thin layer to discharge our waste. 

[Slides here]

1.     [Earth as “blue marble”]. Barbara Brown Taylor recently wrote:  “If I could change one word in the New Testament, the one I would change is “world,” because somehow or another that word has come to mean the world of people. When I hear Christians use it, some use it as shorthand for the fallen creation, while others use it as the opposite of the church. The world is something we are in but not of, a doomed way station on our way to somewhere else. If I could change it, I would leave it untranslated, since the Greek word kosmos works fine—better than fine, really, since it sets the word free from human bondage. Listen and see what you think:

2.     [Hubble telescope photo of stars] “For God so loved the kosmos that he gave his only Son…” (John 3:16)

                   “I am the light of the kosmos” (John 9:5)

                  “You are the light of the kosmos” (Mt 5:14)

       “Go into all the kosmos and proclaim the good news to the whole creation”. (Mk 16:15)” [1]

3.     [photo of California wildfire] We are aware of one consequence of climate change:  increased drought and more intense and large wildfires in areas that were already prone to such fires.  As you know, we are already seeing this.  We see it in the news: each year there are records set for size and intensity of wildfires in certain areas. 

4.     [photo of woman carrying child in flooded street] In other areas, flooding is more extreme and more common than it was, threatening lives, livelihoods, and whole nations.  This photo of a woman and her child is from East Jakarta, in flooding of the Sunter River.

5.     [ photosof Avon, NC]  Closer to home, here is a town on the outer banks of North Carolina—Avon--, which rising sea levels threaten to wipe out altogether.  This caught my eye this week, because we used to visit family in this town, when they had a vacation home there.  Many times, we fished from that fishing pier in the photo on the right. [2]

6.     [Flooding in Berne, NY] Closer still to home, this is the flooding that occurred with Hurricane Irene—a storm made more intense by climate change, when it came to Berne.  The floods destroyed the bridge, the Agway in the photo on the lower left, and took away a friend’s garage, pictured on the right. 

7.     [photos of solar installations] Solutions to the climate crisis include mitigation of the causes, by transitioning to renewable energy, and getting away from fossil fuels.   all over the planet people are making a transition to more sustainable energy from renewable sources.  There is also a move to regenerative agriculture, which protects or restores soil fertility with careful management of animal herds and crops, and more sustainable living generally.  Renewables are now the lowest-cost form of electricity in many places and the amount of added wind and solar generation capacity has been outstripping other forms ofnew electric generation for a few years now . 

8.     [photo of Indonesian family taking tea in flooded living room] Everywhere, some form of adaptation to climate change must occur.  In some cases,  adaptation to climate change means just putting up with regular flooding, as this family does, while they take their afternoon tea break. 

9.     [photo of blue whale tail in the Indian Ocean] Even amidst accelerated species extinctions globally there is good news;  some new species are being discovered, and some new groups of existing species are showing up-–like this clan of blue whales that was just found in the Indian Ocean.  These whales have unique songs, of which people were unaware, previously.[3]

What do we do when we are confronted with problems of such a grand scale ? It is tempting to give up hope.   As climate scientist and evangelical Christian Katharine Hayhoe said in a recently published essay:

“As humans, our emotional bandwidth is limited. That’s why, long term, we need hope, not fear, if we are to solve this problem…

Without hope, there is no reason to continue. So where do I look for this hope? Not to my science, but to my faith. “For God has not given us a spirit of fear,” the apostle Paul tells Timothy, “but of power,” to act; “of love,” to have compassion—for those who are different from us, those whom we perceive as standing in our way, and most of all, those who are already suffering today; and “of a sound mind,” which enables us to make decisions informed by the reality of what is happening in the world around us (2 Tim. 1: 7). “[4]

What I’m trying to convey here is that there is both URGENCY to deal with the climate crisis, and our collective CAPABILITY, if we call upon God so we use our highest and best gifts. 

I don’t mean to pose science and engineering as an idol—far from it.  Those things are going to help but we need more than that. 

I used to say, “it’s an engineering problem—there is an engineering solution” But for the disciples in the boat, as for us, when the storm strikes, we need Jesus.  Maybe We need Jesus in order to use our best aptitude to come up with solutions. Or maybe we need Jesus-thinking, Jesus-power to understand how not to create certain problems in the first place.  If we really loved our neighbor, how many of our environmental problems--whether water or air pollution, objectifying and exploiting nature instead of honoring the Creation God loves, thinking of Earth as human property instead of understanding Earth as part of the cosmos God loves--how much of that would be avoided by that change in understanding?

Solutions:  There is hope.

There are three categories for the solutions to the climate crisis:

            Mitigation:  renewable sources of energy, regenerative agriculture, God-given human intelligence.   

            Adaptation:  people are learning to live more sustainably, finding ways to cope with rising sea levels, and rising temperatures. 

            Activism:  more and more indigenous people in particular are using their voices to oppose the exploitation of Creation for profit and with consequent damage to their water supplies and to the climate.  Their voices are increasingly being heard; for example, Deb Haaland,  the new Secretary of the Interior is a Native American. 

These are signs of hope for me. 

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times this week, environmental writer Margaret Renki said,

“Much about this issue can still be contentious, but nobody, neither Republican nor Democrat wants to breathe polluted air or drink polluted water. Nobody wants to lose the insects that pollinate their crops or the birds that sing in their trees. Nobody wants to watch their forests go up in flames or their beaches wash away or their fellow human beings lose their homes and their livelihoods. We are a big-brained, big-hearted species, and we are finally waking up. And that’s what gives me the most hope of all. “[5]

Friends, our boat is swamping.  We need a miracle.  Let us remember to turn to the One whose cosmos it is, turn from our wasteful ways and use our God-given abilities to heal this. 

 [1] Taylor, Barbara Brown, 2020.  “Always a Guest:  Speaking of Faith Far from Home” Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville. 

[2] Flavelle, C.  2021.  “Tiny town, Big Decision: What Are We Willing to Pay to Fight the Rising Sea?” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/14/climate/outer-banks-tax-climate-change.html?searchResultPosition=1

[3] Wu, J. K. 2020.  “A New Population of Blue Whales Was Discovered Hiding in the Indian Ocean”.  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/science/blue-whales-indian-ocean.html?searchResultPosition=2

[4] Hayhoe, Katharine, 2019.  The Imperative of Hope.  in “Rooted and Rising: Voices of Courage in a Time of Climate Crisis” , L.D. Shade and M. Bullitt-Jonas, eds.  Rowman and Littlefield, NY

[5] Renki, Margaret, 2021.  “Yes, America there is (some) hope for the environment”.  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/15/opinion/environment-climate-technology.html?referringSource=articleShare

3/14/21 - Holy Vessels: Vitality - Matthew 9:18-26

Holy Vessels:  Vitality 

Matthew 9:18-26

March 14, 2021

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

Image by Tatiana Kanevskaya

 A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://youtu.be/S8p0fFCkI_0

Jim and Memphis and I try to go for a walk most days.  We alternate between two parks, depending on how icy or muddy each is likely to be.  We are mask-wearers, but we don’t generally wear them when we walk in the open air and when we aren’t likely to come within 10 feet of another person.  So, last week, I was a little ahead of Jim and Memphis on the path.  A man was coming towards me with his mask firmly in place.  As I got closer, I stepped off the side of the path so that I would be even further apart from him as we passed.  When he reached me, he seemed to speed up and he turned his head away completely away so that there was no possibility that we might breathe any of the same air. 

It left me wondering.  I wondered about the new behaviors we have adopted in the last year.  I wondered about what it might be like in a few months when things change again, when we reach herd immunity or when our public activity levels are more like February 2020.  I wonder how hard if there are things that we used to do as a matter of course that we will have to make an effort to recover.  I wonder, if after a year of keeping our distance from friends and strangers, we will have to remember how to make eye contact and greet each other?  What other skills might we need to recover? 

The woman in our story from Matthew had been suffering for 12 years.  I wonder how her life had changed over that period of time.  Maybe thirteen years earlier, she was healthy and energetic.  Maybe thirteen years earlier, she had no idea how much her life would change.  But then 12 years ago, she started bleeding, and her vitality started to slowly ebb away.  With reduced oxygen and iron in her systems, her energy began to wane, so she had to quit doing some things.  She probably saw a doctor and thought that it there would be a remedy.  She would get back to normal soon.  But she didn’t.  In fact, it got worse. As the years went by, her range of activities narrowed, focused down to those which were strictly necessary. 

The people around her may have forgotten the other things she used to do.  She may have forgotten them herself as she dealt with what was right in front of her.  Maybe she used to host dinner parties.  Or teach folk dancing.  Maybe she used to play with her grandchildren and take vegetables to market from her garden.  Maybe there are a lot of things she used to do that she doesn’t any more. 

People say that the pandemic has changed things, but also that is has revealed things.   For those with eyes to see, it has shown resilience and persistence, as well as self-centeredness. We have witnessed people caring for their neighbors and delivering groceries and setting up car parades for birthday celebrations.  We have also seen the ugliness of fear --  like fights over the last rolls of toilet paper on the shelves a year ago.  The pandemic has shown us, more clearly than ever, the wide disparities between people of different races and classes when it comes to health and accessing health care.

During the last year, all across the country, thousands of churches like ours stepped up to learn new technology so that we could stay connected.  The pandemic revealed the future which we’ve been anticipating for a while now.

The lockdown of pandemic has also provided time and space for reflection, for taking stock of where we are and how we got here. I wonder about this woman whose life has been shaped by her disease for all those years.  I think about how that usually happens gradually.  Except in years of world-wide pandemic, the shifts that we make from on year to the next are gradual, but over time, they add up.  So, I’ve tried to remember the person I was 25 years ago, the newly minted pastor. 

I wonder if I might recover some of my early zest and vitality by taking stock of where I have narrowed my focus, where I stopped engaging in certain activities. 

Twenty-five years ago, I was a youth minister and a campus minister.  I hung out with college students and got to be part of all their important struggles over decisions about vocation and identity and faith.  I did lock-ins with teenagers.  I took them on mission trips and even a ski trip when I was 6 months pregnant. I look at my bookshelves now and I see an entire shelf of books on preaching, another shelf of theology, but only 3 books on youth ministry.  My focus narrowed.  Preaching meant buying books on preaching, which led to more of them.  Way led on to way.  Gradually, I quit doing some things that I used to.  I realize that I cannot be all things to all people, but I also wonder what liveliness, what vitality I lost with that shift of focus.

I think about churches who have given up many activities over the last year.   We have definitely felt that loss.  But I wonder if we can allow it to reveal other ways in which our focus narrowed long before 2020.

Protestant churches in our culture can be grouped into two major categories.  In one category, we find churches whose primary activities center on personal piety.  These are churches that stress individual sin and a personal relationship with Jesus.  They focus on evangelism and saving the lost and daily acts of devotion. They spend a lot of time reading the words of Paul.  They measure success in terms of the numbers of people baptized and attending worship and church programs.

In another category, we find churches whose primary activities center on acts of love and mercy.  They are concerned with systemic sin, with social justice.  They focus on understanding suffering and root causes, so that they can enter into solidarity with those who suffer.  They engage in ministries of direct service and advocacy.  They spend a lot of time with the Biblical prophets, including Jesus.  They measure success in the numbers of people fed or housed or clothed or acts of legislation passed. 

Over time, it seems to me, that churches become more and more established in one or the other of these camps.  The older our churches get, the more narrow the focus.  We forget that we used to engage in a much wider range of activities.  Churches in each camp have lost vitality.  Our spiritual muscles have atrophied as we gradually stopped engaging in the fullness of the good news of Jesus.  Churches in both camps have become increasingly irrelevant to the wider world.

For twelve years, the woman suffered, and her vitality ebbed away.    People around her may have forgotten what she used to be like, and maybe she even forgot sometimes herself.  But she didn’t forget entirely. Matthew says that she thought to herself “If I only touch Jesus’ cloak, I will be made well.” 

The story of her life was not over.  Change and transformation were possible.  A renewed liveliness and vitality could still be hers.  So, she reached out for Jesus’ power.   But before she did that, Matthew tells us what she was thinking. 

For us as individuals, and for us as a church, this seems to be critical.  For the last few years, we have been having internal conversations about who we are as a church.  During the last year, as the Vision Committee has done its work, as the Exec Team has met, as we each have thought about what has been most important spiritually through the pandemic, we have taken stock, each in our own ways.  We have told ourselves and each other some things.  

What might be most important right now is the story we are telling. Sometimes we act as though our circumstances shape us, as though our past and our present determine the future.  But this story suggests something else.  It suggests that way we narrate our lives shapes what they become. 

The stories that we tell ourselves, about how we are and who we have been  -- the ways that we understand and describe our circumstances can be more powerful than the circumstances themselves.  The ways we narrate our lives shapes what they become.  “If we can change our stories, then we can change our lives. . . . If we can change our stories, then we can change our lives.” [1]

Telling the story of our former vitality, remembering the height and depth and breadth and width, all the fullness of the good news may be the key to our transformation and healing.  It may be what empowers us to reach out to Jesus for healing and wholeness, for a waking from sleep.

She said to herself,

“If I only touch Jesus’ cloak, . . .

“If I stretch myself,

if I put myself within reach,

if I go where the crowd is,

if I am willing to take a chance again,

if I do what I thought I couldn’t do any more, . . .

I will be healed.

And Jesus said “Take heart, your faith has made you well.” 

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

[1] This idea is presented in more expansive fashion by therapist Lori Gottlieb in her  TED Talk https://www.ted.com/talks/lori_gottlieb_how_changing_your_story_can_change_your_life?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

3/7/21 - Holy Vessels: Stories - Matthew 9:27-33

Holy Vessels:  Stories

Matthew 9:27-33

March 7, 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/JPaW-vDugHk

This week the estate of Dr. Seuss announced that it will no longer publish six  of his five dozen books. They said that the decision was made because these books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.  Some have lauded the decision for its sensitivity to racial and gender issues. Some see it as one more example of cancel culture.  And others, in good capitalistic fashion, sought to make a quick buck by selling their old copies at exorbitant prices on second-hand sites. 

For me, it is another reminder that words matter, that stories have power, that even made-up stories in picture books have power to shape us.  It is a reminder that how we hear stories, or even whether we hear certain stories, depends on who tells them  and how they are conveyed to us or how they are suppressed.

Matthew records more healing stories than any other gospel.  Each of these accounts was first told as a complete story on its own.  Matthew incorporated them into his gospel within the framework of his theology.[1]    This season, we are working our way through this section of Matthew which focuses on Jesus’ deeds of power. We are intentionally looking through the lens of healing and wellness to find ways to strengthen our own spiritual and physical and mental health.

While we are using that lens, I think it is important to remember that one result of Jesus’ healing was inclusion.  Living with an illness or disability meant that people were left on the margins. Their healing meant that they were restored to community.  What we see in these stories is a reflection of the culture in which they originated. People with disabilities in first century Palestine were not agitating for inclusion as people with disabilities, but pleading for Jesus to make their disabilities go away. And Jesus is not presented as making room for them or as honoring them just as they are.  We need to recognize that this is a cultural limitation.  Otherwise it may subtly reinforce the idea that God is cannot be glorified in a disability, but only when it is overcome.[2]

Today we heard about two men who were blind and one who was demon-possessed and mute.  What I find most interesting is not the healing themselves, but the aftermath. After Jesus heals the blind men, he orders them not to tell anyone, but verse 31 says “But they went away and spread the news about him throughout that district.”

He tells them not to tell, but they do it anyway. 

I read that this week and glossed over it.  At first, it did not really strike me as that important.  Without stopping to think about it, my brain put it into a category labelled “messianic secret”.  “Messianic secret” is a term used by Biblical scholars.  It refers to the idea that Jesus’ reputation as a wonder worker is expanding, revealing his identity as the Messiah, even while he keeps telling people to keep quiet.  This is especially obvious in Mark’s gospel.  Markan scholars have spent a lot of time and ink debating how much of the secrecy came from Jesus and how much was a literary device employed by Mark.  I learned about that decades ago in seminary.  So when I came to it in this story, I mentally filed it into that category and kept reading.

But later in the week, I realized what I had done.  Instead of trying to listen to Matthew’s story, instead of trying to hear what the blind men might say for themselves, I listened first to the scholars.  Now scholars have their rightful place.  Their voices are worthy of my attention, but I gave them so much priority that they muffled the other voices. I wonder how often I give more weight to the experts instead of to individuals telling their own stories?  

Looking and listening more carefully now, I notice that Matthew says that they followed Jesus as he went from place to place. “Following” is Matthew’s word for discipleship.  In the brief exchange before the healing, they express insight into who he is, calling him “Son of David.” They confess their faith in him, saying explicitly that they believe he can do what they ask.  And then they regain their sight.  Despite knowing who he is, despite their faith in him,

despite the gift of sight that he provides, despite all of that, they do not obey his only request.[3]  Ordered not to tell, they go out and do it anyway.

Why do they disobey?  What is it about their experience that cannot be suppressed?

Now I’m asking questions not directly answered in this text.  So, the answers that I hear are more speculative. 

Why do they disobey?  Perhaps because now people are listening to them.  I mentioned that they would have been excluded because of their blindness and now, they are invited into the conversation.  Telling their story, despite Jesus’ orders, is part of accepting the invitation to belong. 

Transformation has occurred.  People know them.  People know that they can see, when they couldn’t before.  How can they possibly answer other people’s questions without telling their story? 

And joy, surely there is joy.  I know people who have had cataract surgery.  They were functioning all right before, but afterwards, they talk about how vivid the colors are.  They didn’t even know what they had been missing, but the new colors and sharper details set off joy and wonder.

Why do the men tell their story?  Belonging, transformation, and joy.  All of these are part of their healing, part of their truth.  Telling that truth is bound up with their healing.  What has happened is life-changing and they cannot keep silent.

Instead of asking why they speak their truth, we might ask why Jesus doesn’t want them to.  One answer is that they addressed him as “Son of David” which is a politically charged term.  The more that people talk about Jesus, the more scrutiny he will be under from the authorities.  The truth that these men tell may be healing and liberating for them, but it is dangerous for Jesus. 

We see this at the end of the second story.  After Jesus heals someone believed to be possessed by a demon, after his healing gives the man his voice back, the religious leaders say that he casts out demons because he is also demonic.  It is a charge that Jesus will continue to face, a charge that will follow him to the cross.

The contrasts here are between those who believe and those who scoff, between those who see Jesus’ power as Godly and those who claim it is demonic. [4]   The truth may be liberating and healing for those who dare to tell it, but it may also be dangerous and threatening for those who want it suppressed.

Twenty-two-year-old Amanda Gorman delivered a powerful poem at the inauguration in January.  Afterwards, she made the rounds on talk shows.  Among other things, she shared that she has speech and processing disorders which she has coped with through deliberate use of language. This is her truth, part of the story she shares, a story which has been empowering to others who similarly struggle with speech and language.

Then on Friday, she told another truth. She said that a security guard tailed her as she walked home.  He said “you look suspicious” and demanded to know if she lived there.  She showed her keys and buzzed herself into her building. The guard left without apology.  Amanda said, “This is the reality of black girls:  one day you’re called an icon, the next day, a threat.” [5]

The responses have been predictable.  Many hear her truth and believe.  Others scoff.  Some say that she just wanted more attention, denying her reality, which seems to me like an obvious attempt at suppression. 

In a follow-up tweet, Amanda said, “in a sense [the guard] was right. I am a threat: a threat to injustice, to inequality, to ignorance. Anyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is an obvious and fatal danger to the powers that be.”

Speaking our truth, telling our story may be bound up with our own healing. Telling the truth, perhaps over and over again, may be the only way that we will hear it, that the wider world will come to hear it, the only way that the prevailing powers will be reckoned with.    Hearing the truth that you and I offer from our own experience may even further someone else’s healing. 

I was talking with one of you this week, about how much meanness there is. Ultimately, what we agreed that in the midst of so much meanness, it is incredibly important to be kind. In a world where 40% of us are coping with mental health or substance abuse issues, in a time when three-quarters of young adults face that struggle,[6] it is incredibly important to be kind.  Sometimes kindness is simply listening and hearing another person’s truth.  Sometimes kindness is creating an alternative space where that truth is honored.  Sometimes it is in recognizing that such a space already exists within the reign of God.

Presbyterian minister and teacher Robert McAfee Brown related this story from his own life.  Let me simply read it to you:

It is my first communion service after ordination. It is taking place on the after gun turret of a U.S. Navy destroyer during World War II, and I am there because I am a Navy chaplain. There is only room for three communicants at a time to come forward and receive the elements. The first three to respond to the invitation are a lieutenant commander, captain of the vessel; a fireman’s apprentice, about as low as one can be in the ordinary naval hierarchy; and a steward’s mate, who, because he is black, is not even included in the normal naval hierarchy; all blacks can do in the then Jim Crow Navy is wait on the tables where the white officers eat.

An officer, a white enlisted man, a black enlisted man—day by day they eat in separate mess halls. There are no circumstances in which they could eat together at a Navy table. But at the Lord’s Table, not even Navy regulations can dictate who eats with whom. For this one moment—as is true during no other moments on shipboard—they are equals, and they are at the same table.[7]

That communion experience was a liberation, a transformation, an opportunity to see the world beyond the false identities offered by status and power and tradition.  This is the healing that can come with truth telling. This is the healing that Jesus offers – a healing of transformation, reconciliation and joy.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

[1] Eugene Boring,  New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. VII, Matthew,  (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 245.

[2] Walter T. Wilson, Healing in the Gospel of Matthew, (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2014),  p. 233

[3] Warren Carter,  Matthew and the Margins:  A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, (Maryknoll, NY:  Obis Books, 2000) p. 229

[4] Cynthia Campbell in Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew, Volume 1, Cynthia Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, editors, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2013)   p. 247

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/us/amanda-gorman-security-guard.html

[6] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/11/23/covid-pandemic-rise-suicides/

[7] Robert McAfee Brown, Spirituality and Liberation, (Louisville:  Westminster Press, 1988)  pp 142-143.

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.

12/24/20 - Christmas Eve Worship: Emmanuel, God With Us - Isaiah 52:7-10; Luke 2:1-7; Luke 2:8-20

A recording of this worship service is available here: https://youtu.be/6BjRYvjMhMw

12/20/20 - Advent 4 - I Believe in Love: Daring Right Relationship - Matthew 1:18-25

I Believe in Love:  Daring Right Relationship

Matthew 1:18-25

December 20, 2020

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/DBUzIdSjLrY

We have had some memorable Advent seasons together.  Of course Advent 2020 is going to be in its own category, but I am thinking about non-pandemic years.  You might remember the time that the Advent candles were lit with a sparkler.  Or the year that the children found feathers in Little Man’s room. They were obviously feathers from angel’s wings – evidence of the presence of the angels we kept talking about that year. Two memories from last year are the living Advent wreath performed weekly by our Youth and the stars over our heads in the sanctuary.

One of my favorites was back in 2012. That was the year that we had a custom-made backdrop of Bethlehem that stood against the wall behind the communion table. Designed by Jean and painted by several volunteers, it reflected Bethlehem in three time frames – that of Ruth and Jesus and our own time. That season we read the book of Ruth, one chapter each Sunday.  Ruth was  a foreigner, a Moabite.  I spent a good bit of time those first Sundays going over all the reasons why Israelites didn’t usually associate with Moabites, about the enmity between them.  I remember overhearing someone in coffee hour who was wondering out loud what was going to happen with Ruth.  She didn’t know the story and was absolutely not expecting that Ruth would become the 29 times great grandmother of Jesus.  That was going to come as a big surprise in the next week’s sermon. I was very tickled to overhear that little tidbit.

Today, I told Hank he could skip the genealogy that Matthew starts his gospel with.  It’s a lot of names, many of whom we don’t recognize, but those of you who were in 2012 will remember that Ruth is in there.  That is remarkable, because in Biblical times and even more recently, women’s names are not always recorded.  In Biblical times, the family tree was definitely traced through the men.  Matthew mostly sticks to that pattern, which is why it is noticeable when he breaks it. 

 In the line of Jesus’s ancestors, he names four women. There’s Tamar who put herself in the path of her father-in-law Judah so that he would initiate an intimate relationship.  That was because he had otherwise refused to provide for her as widows were to be provided for. 

Rahab ran a brothel in Jericho.  Joshua sent two spies into the city and they ended up at Rahab’s place – go figure. When soldiers came looking for the spies, Rahab hid them, lied to the soldiers, and helped them escape the next night.  In return, the Israelites protected her household when they captured Jericho.  Rahab ended up marrying one of them.

Ruth, was an immigrant from Moab, who lived in Bethlehem with Naomi, her Israelite mother-in-law.  Naomi urged Ruth to meet the wealthy Boaz on the threshing floor after dark. The end of that story was a baby named Obed, who was King David’s grandfather.

And then there is the woman that Matthew doesn’t name.  He calls her the “wife of Uriah.” We know her as Bathsheba.  But she was Uriah’s wife when King David treated her like she was his, and then arranged for the murder of her husband. 

These are the women that Matthew goes out of his way to identify among Jesus’ ancestors. The bumper sticker that says “well-behaved women rarely make history” seems true here, except that it is mostly not the women’s behavior that brings them notoriety. 

Baylor professor Beverly Roberts Gaventa says that “each of these women in some way threatens the status quo, and each is in turn threatened by the status quo. For example, [Bathsheba] threatens David with her report that she is pregnant, and he in turn threatens her by bringing about the death of her husband.”[1]

Then Matthew adds Mary’s name to the end of the genealogy.  If we are paying attention, we might wonder what it is that Mary has in common with the other women.  And we might notice that Mary’s pregnancy threatens Joseph’s honor and that his initial decision, to quietly divorce her, threatens her well-being and that of the child she carries.[2] 

Mary has already said yes to the angel.  She has a calling, a vocation from God.  But what if Joseph doesn’t understand, doesn’t believe. What if Joseph doesn’t say yes to his own calling? 

Joseph is a law-abiding person. He knows what the law requires – an investigation, public inquiry.  The law exists to protect everyone, to keep evil out of the community.  And Joseph respects the law.  But Joseph must also be a person of compassion and mercy, because his instinct not to launch an investigation which will humiliate her, but instead to quietly divorce her.  This seems the right thing to do.

Until he has a dream in which he is told to marry Mary.   That challenges tradition. It requires him to go against his understanding of what is right and moral and just. Maybe he tells himself that it’s just a dream. Not to be taken seriously.  Maybe it was his subconscious trying to give him an out, but really, that can’t be the right thing to do, can it?

One scholar says that Joseph builds a response of love in a world of law and tradition.[3]  That, it seems to me, is a challenge we all face.  What is the loving response?  How do we know?  Sometimes what is easiest is to pull out the rule book, to lean on tradition, on the way we’ve always done it, on the counsel of our friends.  But easiest is not always right, is it?  Often, the more loving action is more difficult.  And often part of the difficulty is in finding the wisdom to know when to stick with tradition and when to depart from it.

Walter Brueggemann says “God will recruit as necessary from the human cast in order to reorder human history.” [4]

That is still happening.  You and I are still being called to discern wisdom, to allow love to take precedence traditions and conventions.

Every day for the last few months, Jim and I have gone past a house in our neighborhood on our walk.  One day, we noticed a Black Lives Matter sign in the front yard.  The next day, another sign appeared. This one said “Blue Lives Matter.”  It was slightly larger.  But the Black Lives sign was still there.  So that was interesting.  The convention of our time is that people on the opposing sides of political issues cannot work together, cannot compromise on anything.  To do so is to give in, to cede power.  And it’s not just a matter of personal power, the argument goes.  Each side thinks that other side’s policies and positions will destroy the country. With that kind of danger at play, the most loving thing to do is to hold one’s own ground.

So we were intrigued by this house with the competing signs in the same yard. We speculated about who might live in it. One day we saw a car with Florida plates in the driveway.  We created a scenario in which grandma owned the house, but lived in Florida.  We decided that the house was occupied by two cousins. In our made-up world, these cousins lived together while in college because it was cost-effective, but they each held fast to their political views. That was the story we spun for ourselves, until a couple of weeks ago. Then, Jim saw the people who really live there.  They look like a middle-aged couple, a husband and wife who are probably empty-nesters.  That was not what we were expecting. How could two rational adults stay married, and live together when they obviously have such opposing political views?  Don’t they know that Black Lives matter and Blue Lives matter folks are supposed to be enemies? Don’t they understand what’s at stake? 

As far as I know, their signs are both still up, buried under the snow now.  I don’t know how they do it, but I’d like to think that love has found a way. 

Another story.  You might have heard this one before. It was a game of college softball.  The Central Washington Wildcats and the Western Oregon Wolves were in the last game before their division playoffs.  Sara Tucholsky stepped up to bat and she hit it out of the park.  She was a senior and had never hit a home run before.  The two runners on base ran across home plate and Sara should have been right behind them.

But Sara’s knee buckled as she pivoted towards first base.  Her ACL was torn.  She was in great pain, lying on the ground, unable to stand.  The rules are that she had to round the bases, touching each one on the way, or her run would not count.  Her teammates were not allowed to help.  It looked like her first home run was not going to count.

But then, Mallory Holtmann asked a question.  Mallory played for the other team.  Mallory knew that Sara’s teammates could not help her, but Mallory asked the umpires if there was a penalty for assistance from her opponents.  There was not. 

So Mallory and her teammate Liz Wallace picked Sara up and carried her around the bases, lowering her to touch each base.  Sara crossed home plate and was credited with her 3-run home run, the last and only one of her career. [5]

The convention is that you play by the rules and if someone gets hurt, they’re out. That’s the breaks.  But Mallory had other ideas.  Mallory believed that winning isn’t everything. She set aside that tradition to act in love on behalf of her opponent.

Now these two stories I’ve offered are kind of ordinary, aren’t they?  No one’s life was saved, no great evil was overcome.  But they might be closer to our everyday lives.  God might ask us some of us to make a big choice, a life-altering decision like Joseph’s or Mary’s.  But God might also ask for smaller ones, something in an ongoing relationship or in an unexpected turn of events.  God will recruit as necessary.  You and I are part of salvation history.

What the Bible teaches, what the story of Mary and Joseph teaches, hopefully what our own experience teaches, is that God still recruits ordinary people like you and me to bring about God’s purpose, to build a response of love in a world of law and tradition and even hostility. We believe in God’s strong love, even when, even when we don’t feel it. Amen.

[1] Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Cynthia Rigby, eds, Blessed, One: Protestant Perspectives on Mary, (Louisville, Westminster/John Knox Press, 2002),  p. 51

[2] Blessed One, p 52

[3] John Shea, On Earth as It Is in Heaven Year A (Collegeville, MN:  Liturgical Press, 2004), p. 44

[4] Walter Bruggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy, (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2012),  p. 172

[5]https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/sports/baseball/30vecsey.html

12/13/20 - Advent 3 - I Believe in God: Ode to Joy - Luke 1:26-56

I Believe in God:  Ode to Joy

Luke 1:26-56

December 13, 2020

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/LGVr7omMaCQ

Mary was perplexed.  More perplexed than fearful, it seems, at least at first, at the angel’s announcement.  That’s what Luke says.  But I think stunned might be better.  Or astonished, dumb-founded, gob-smacked.

It just doesn’t really make sense. She has done all the right things.  Her parents are respectable. She is respectable. She is betrothed to Joseph who is honorable.  How can this be happening?

But then as the implications begin to sink in, she understands why the angel began, as they always do, with “do not be afraid.”  She imagines what her mother will say, what Joseph will think, and she is terrified.  She is about to leave her parents’ home to go to Joseph’s home, which was frightening enough, but now this. Will she survive the scandal? Will she survive child-birth? 

Despite the questions flooding her being, to Gabriel, she says “Let it be.” To God’s messenger, she says “yes.”  This story is so familiar that it no longer astounds us.  We see Mary as merely obedient, just doing what is required of her.  But we should recognize her courage. We should applaud her heroism. 

Mary’s yes to Gabriel is very costly.  She says yes to a scandalous pregnancy, to the possibility of death by stoning or in childbirth.  But the cost will not end when she delivers a healthy baby and lays him in a feeding trough.  When her son grows up, people will say that he is out of his mind, possessed by the devil. They will call him a trouble-maker, a drunkard, someone who hangs with the wrong crowd.  He will suffer torture and death which Mary will have to watch and be helpless to prevent. 

Writing from prison before his execution by the Nazis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “There remains an experience of incomparable value. We have for once learnt to see the great events of history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless . . . – in short, from the perspective of those who suffer.” [1] The story of Mary and of Jesus can teach us to see history from below.

She is courageous, but she needs support, which she seeks by taking the journey to see Elizabeth, her older relative.  Perhaps that is what Gabriel has in mind by telling her that Elizabeth is also pregnant. 

“Two women in a land under brutal occupation learn that they are pregnant. One is unmarried and knows that bearing a child will expose her to rejection and judgement, perhaps even violence, from her community. The other has been childless for years, and has probably been shamed and scorned because of it. Though this child will be welcome nothing can wipe out those years of anguish. And neither child will survive long enough to care for their parents in old age, in any case. Both will have been brutally executed by their mid-thirties, victims of the political and religious suspicions and hatreds of their time. . . . In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is born amidst the chaos of a Roman census, a forced mass migration demanded by Caesar with no apparent thought of the human cost involved. He is telling us that this will be a story set in a world where rulers with great power do  what they want and the ‘little people’ just don’t matter.”[2]

You know that way back in March, I was in Matamoros, Mexico.  I showed you pictures of the migrant camp there, the site of another mass migration, this one forced by poverty and violence.  It is a place inhabited by those with little power and little value in the eyes of the authorities.  In October, a baby was born there. I expect that many babies have been born there, but I heard about this one. Consuela, an asylum-seeker from Guatemala, went into labor very quickly. The baby came so fast that there was no time to get her to a hospital.  She gave birth near the river, tended by other women in the camp. The baby was born so quickly that she hit her head, but reports were that she was fine.  I think about Consuela and her baby and I wonder at her courage. I wonder kind of future she dares to dream of for her child.  If I were in her place,  I would not get my hopes very high.

But Mary did, and Elisabeth too.  They believed that the children they carried would bring a new future. Elisabeth pronounces Mary blessed which was just the kind of encouragement she needed to break into song. 

Her song is called the Magnificat because that’s the first word of it in Latin.  “My soul magnifies the Lord” she says. 

Mary sings.  I wonder if she danced too. There’s a video circulating in cyberspace right now of a young girl dancing.  She is about 4 years old.  She is standing on a couch which is backed up to a picture window.  She is watching out the window for the letter carrier.  This is the routine that has developed for the last several months.  Every day, she watches for the mailman.  Every day, as he walks up the sidewalk, she dances.  And he does too.  In the video that has gone viral, you can see him through the picture window.  He carries the mail to her front porch and dances while he does it.  He goes back out the same way, dancing.  He imitates her moves and she imitates his.  And the neighbors look on and laugh.  This very small thing has become a daily source of joy for the whole street.[3] I wonder what we don’t see.  I wonder what the mailman struggles with personally, what stresses he is carrying.  I wonder if some days, it takes a bit of courage to dance with this child.

Mary sang and maybe she danced too.  She was joyfully courageous, with her song of yearning and hope and peace and justice.  She sings of a God who enters our world from below, of one who does not accept the world’s power arrangements.  This is a song of revolution on the lips of a peasant girl.  If it wasn’t so familiar to us, it might astound us.

When Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, he left Mary’s song in Latin.  The German princes who support and protected Luther in his struggles took a dim view of the social and political implications of the Magnificat, with its reversal of social structures.  Not wanting to  lose his friends in high places, Luther thought it best just to leave the Magnificat in Latin.[4]

But those with less power, the outcasts, those who suffer, have continued to read it anyway.  Ernesto Cardenal recorded Bible studies held within a community of campesinos, farmers and fisherfolk who lived around Lake Nicaragua in the 1970’s.  As they read Mary’s song, one said, “It’s not the rich, but the poor who need liberation.”  Another answered “The rich and the poor will be liberated.  Us poor people are going to be liberated from the rich.  The rich are going to be liberated from themselves, that is from their wealth.  Because they’re more slaves than we are.”[5] 

What Mary imagines, what she trusts God for, is the liberation of everyone, the setting free from sin and bondage and despair. 

I have told you before about my seminary professor who was in Berlin in 1989 when the wall came down.  He described for us the peaceful protests that led up to that event. For several months, people gathered around the St. Nikolai church in Leipzig.  This is a place where Bach composed so many of his cantatas, like the sample we heard from the choir today.  The people gathered to pray and sing at St. Nikolai church, more and more each week, until the day when they numbered more than 70,000 people.  They spilled out into the streets with their prayers and candles, singing songs of hope and protest until their singing shook the powers of their nation and the authorities did not know how to respond.

One American pastor who visited a few months after the fall of the wall asked why this movement had not been crushed like so many before it.  The answer came that the police had no contingency plan for song and prayer, no counter-measures against praying and singing.     

We might think that song and prayer are too small for the weight of the worries we carry, insignificant against the fear and stress and even hostility we may be facing.  We might think that the few of us who come together to sing and pray each week are a small thing in the face of the worries we carry, the fear and stress we are all bearing right now.   Or we might join Mary’s song. 

It's a song that has been sung for generations.  It was and still is heard when the monastics sing Ubi Caritas  -- where love is, there is God. 

It’s heard every summer when campers gather around the bonfire and sing Kum Ba Yah.  And when children or protesters sing This Little Light of Mine. 

When they sang Verdi’s Requiem in the concentration camp, or Ode to Joy in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship,  when Sweet Honey in the Rock sings “We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes” --  that’s Mary’s song to a different tune.

When Christians sing Joy to the World every Christmas, we’re singing Mary’s song all over again. 

Each successive generation must find its tune in their own time.  Including us– we also must find the way to sing this song, to know that God is begotten in us.   It is the melody of faith rising yet again, offering defiant and courageous hope to a weary world.  Thanks be to God.  Amen. 

[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, (New York:  Touchstone, 1953) p. 17

[2] The Rev Anne LeBas in her sermon “The Power of One”  http://sealpeterandpaulsermons.blogspot.com/2012/12/advent-4-power-of-one.html

[3] https://youtu.be/RTWA3GN3od8

[4] John Buchanan, “Revolutionary Words”  The Christian Century, December 12, 2012

[5]Quoted by Kimberly Bracken Long in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 1, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2008) p. 95.

12/6/20 - Advent 2 - I Believe in Light: Illuminating Peace - Isaiah 9:2-7; John 1:1-18

I Believe in Light:  Illuminating Peace

Isaiah 9:2-7, John 1:1-18

December 6, 2020

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/ftpzWKQ3LXM

Australia was hit hard by the coronavirus, but they employed very strict lockdown measures.  In October, one of my friends there, told me that they were not allowed to travel more than 3 miles from home.  The state borders were closed and all kinds of things were cancelled.  But, now they have flattened the curve and shops are open and people are allowed to gather in limited numbers.  It is also the beginning of their summer.  One of their department stores has launched an ad campaign that seems to sum up what so many people are feeling this year.  Their slogan is “Bigger than Christmas”  The commercial is just a bit over the top.

https://youtu.be/B5NmhtqGg04

Christmas is already a bg thing – but if more is better, then why not bring on something Bigger than Christmas. 

I was in a mall last week, for the first time in months.  Yes, I wore my mask, kept my distance from other shoppers and didn’t stay long.  But I noticed a sign in a store window.  It said “We need Christmas so hard this year.”  I tend to agree.  2020 has been grueling and we need everything Christmas could possibly offer. 

The intent of the sign at the mall and the Australian ad campaign is undoubtedly to suggest that we need the merchandise they’re selling, as if that is Christmas, as if having the right gift under the tree on Christmas morning will make up for the very real losses and death and grief and hardship of this year.  I agree that we do need Christmas so hard this year.  We need Christmas so hard every year, although we might not recognize it as readily in other years. 

But Christmas is already Bigger than Christmas.  Christmas is already so much more. 

John understands that.  The gospel writer includes John the Baptist in his story of Jesus, but he doesn’t really begin there and he doesn’t begin with Bethlehem.  He begins, at the beginning, at the beginning of creation, at the beginning of time on earth.  So, yeah, the story John is telling is bigger than Christmas as we know it.

John says: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

Genesis reads:  In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

The author of John’s gospel wants us to hear the connection.  The story of Jesus is not an isolated event.  It is connected to the beginning of everything.  God has held the world from the beginning and has not let go.  Divine love was and is and shall be.

John uses symbol very compellingly. His writing influenced the first Christian theologians. One of the early heresies, in the fourth century, was the idea that Jesus was not equal with God.  In a little while we will sing “O Come All Ye Faithful”.  Notice verse 2 when we get there.  “True God from True God, light from light eternal”  -- that is the orthodox position, as summed up in the Nicene Creed, based on the opening to John’s gospel.  His writing and the theology that evolved from it continues to shape our thinking even now. And so, it is important to note that we do not have to embrace the dualism that might be found here. 

“The light shines in the darkness”  is so very familiar. We might easily absorb from it a sense that light is always good and dark is always bad.  In the racist culture in which we live, darkness is associated with black and light is associated with white.  It is not a far stretch from that to the same association being imposed on people, so that black people are imagined as evil and white people are imagined as good. It pervades our language and metaphors  -- pure as the snow, black as sin.   I am not suggesting that we should quit reading John’s gospel.  I am suggesting that we should read it critically, as the first theologians did, and be careful with the language that we derive from it.

So, on one level John is describing something very abstract, the Word of God which was God, the creative power, the organizing wisdom of creation. It is a big, lofty idea. 

But then, John declares, the Word became flesh.  This is another dualism. In John’s day, many would have said that flesh was bad and spirit was good. But John says the Word became flesh, God became human and lived among us.  That’s when the lofty idea gets close and personal. 

Barbara Brown Taylor says, “Our bodies remain God’s best way of getting to us. . . . However differently you and I may conceive the world, God, or one another, physical reality is something we can usually agree on. When the temperature drops below 32 degrees, I am as cold as whoever happens to be standing next to me. When I see someone run into a piece of furniture, catching the corner of a table right in the thigh, my own thigh hurts in that same exact place. . . .When I watch a perfect stranger open her mouth for a bite of Key lime pie at my favorite Mexican restaurant, my mouth starts watering without my permission.  Wearing skin brings us into communion with all these other embodied souls.”[1]

God came into the world with skin on to be with us, to know firsthand our joy and suffering, to love, to grieve and even to die.  The incarnation, God becoming flesh, has shown us a different way of seeing life and living in the world--that the creation is good, that the world we live in is good, that our bodies are good,  This is the Christmas we need so hard.

But it is even bigger than that.  John also says “to all who received him, he gave power to become children of God”.  Jesus became what we are, so that we might be what he is – born of God. This is bigger than Christmas, even Christmas in Australia.

The letter of I John says “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” 

In the sermon on the mount, Jesus said “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” 

The children of God are the peacemakers, the ones who let their lights shine for justice, the ones who embody love with skin on, so that we behold the glory of God.  The glory of God is not an impossibly bright light. It is loving your neighbor. It is praying for your enemy.  It is offering mercy, waging peace. 

In April, Luciana Lira got a call from her student’s mother.  Ms. Lira teaches second grade and English as a new language in Connecticut.  Zully was the mother of one of her students.  Zully and her husband Marvin are asylum-seekers from Guatemala. 

Zully called from the emergency room.  She was sick with Covid.  She was also 8 months pregnant and she was so sick that the baby was going to be delivered early by C-section.  Zully asked Ms. Lira to contact her husband and explain the situation to him in his own language, which she did. 

The baby was born five weeks early and healthy.   He went into the NICU as his mother went onto a ventilator, and fought for her life for the next several weeks. 

Marvin listed Ms. Lira as the family’s emergency contact.  When the baby was ready to be released, they asked Ms. Lira if she would take him, because by that time, the father and older brother had both tested positive for the coronavirus. 

And she did.  She was working from home, teaching her students remotely, but she and her husband and her own son embraced this baby, meeting all the needs of a newborn for the first six weeks of his life.  She kept in touch with the family, including the grandmother in Guatemala. Someone asked if she was a relative.  She had only known the family since the beginning of the school year.  She said, “I am just a teacher.”[2]  Others might say she was love with skin on. 

This is the Christmas we need so hard this year, and every year. 

Years before his anti-Nazi activities led Dietrich Bonhoeffer to imprisonment and death, he said this “Jesus Christ, God himself speaks to us from every human being; the other person, this enigmatic, impenetrable You, is God’s claim on us; indeed it is the holy God in the person we encounter.  . . . ‘Christ walks the earth as long as there are people, as your neighbor, as the person through whom Christ summons you, addresses you, makes claims on you.  ... Christ is at the door; he lives in the form of those around us. Will you close the door or open it for him?’[3]

It's bigger than Christmas.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God.  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. To all who received him, he gave power to become children of God, peacemakers. And we have seen his glory, full of grace and truth. Thanks be to God.

[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World:  A Geography of Faith  (New York:  HarperCollins, 2009)  pp. 35–37, 42.

[2] https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/ct-teacher-cares-for-students-newborn-brother-as-family-recovers-from-covid-19/2404318/

[3]Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Isabel Best, ed, (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2012), p. 11.

11/29/20 - Advent 1 - I Believe: Hope for Tomorrow - Isaiah 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-15

I Believe:  Hope for Tomorrow

Isaiah 40:1-11, Mark 1:1-15

November 29, 2020

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/DswlOSgglNA

If you want to get to Bethlehem, you have to start with John the Baptist.  The gospel writers all tell the story of Jesus in their own ways, but everyone of them seems to think that there is no way to get to Bethlehem without a detour to the Jordan River where John is baptizing.  Even Mark who doesn’t say anything about Bethlehem or Jesus’ birth, starts with John the Baptist. So every year, on our way to the baby born in Bethlehem, we start with the adult John the Baptizer preparing the way for the grown-up Jesus. 

We begin the church year today, we begin our journey to the manger, but this is not our first time.  We know the whole story. Beginnings make us think about endings.  Do you remember how Mark’s gospel ends?  After finding the empty tomb, Mark says, the women “said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.” 

It was such an unsatisfactory ending that two different endings were added by later editors.  But before they were added, there was the message from the angel at the tomb who said to the women “Go tell his disciples that Jesus is going ahead of you to Galilee, there you will see him.”   

Jesus has gone ahead to Galilee.  Galilee is where it all began.  The place where he taught the crowds, healed the sick and called his disciples. It was predominantly poor, not a center of power, but a place where ordinary people lived and struggled to survive.

Mark’s gospel ends abruptly, in fear and silence, or maybe mystery and wonder. The end sends us back to the beginning -- the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God.  Perhaps Mark is suggesting that the story doesn’t end with resurrection, but cycles around and around, and moves forward through time up to now.

Mark’s gospel begins out in the middle of nowhere. Not in church, not in the capital city, not in the middle of the business district.  It is not a place where God is expected. Mark’s gospel ends with silence and fear. Instead of a tidy conclusion or tying up of loose ends, Mark offers radical disorientation.[1]  

This may be a good word for us now, in the tenth month of a world-wide pandemic. A good word for the beginning of  an Advent season and a story which we think we know already, a good word for a time in which so many of our certainties are being questioned.

Mark wrote his gospel close to 70 AD.   It was a time of war, brought on by revolt against Rome.  Jerusalem was under siege. Israel’s citizens were divided. Some thought God was raising up leaders who would throw off the oppressors.  Others claimed that submission to Rome’s authority would was the only way to peace and security.  Between the news of heavy-handed soldiers and fear of extremist guerillas, everyone was anxious.  The price of oil, olive oil that is, was skyrocketing. Tensions were high in villages where Jews and Gentiles lived side by side.  Families fractured along political lines. [2]

Into that context, Mark proclaims “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God.”  Mark begins with John, but John is deeply connected to the past.  Just as Mark’s beginning reverberates to the future, it also brings echoes from the past.  John goes to the Jordan, which is a reminder from long-ago when the people crossed that river as they entered the promised land.  He calls the people out into the wilderness, which might remind them of the wilderness of Sinai where God provided manna and quail and water and guidance for 40 years. Or it might bring to mind the desert highway on which God led their ancestors home from exile. 

John is adapting, anticipating the new in the midst of the old. He trusts that God will redeem humanity from suffering, evil and injustice because of the ways God has done so in the past. 

Out in the middle of nowhere, John preaches a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  Repentance means change. Change of mind, change of heart, change of behavior.  It is a radical turning. Humans normally avoid this kind of thing.  It usually involves giving up things we like, things in which we find pleasure or comfort or security. Repentance has become an uncomfortable word, often associated with guilt or shame.  But crowds were going out to John, out to the middle of nowhere. They were seriously willing to change their routine in order to get in on the good news. 

They might have hunkered down, simply tried to grit their teeth and hang on for however long Roman occupation endured, but instead these crowds were anticipating the arrival of the Messiah, preparing themselves for what would come next. John tells them the hard truth – like it or not, change is going to come.

Some of us are hunkering down, just enduring the break in our routine because of pandemic.  The last months have revealed many things we might not wish to look at – racial and economic disparities, lack of access to health care, dehumanizing immigration policies, the consequences of not trusting science, the effects of party loyalty over the common good.    I wonder if we can see the disruption in our lives, not as a time to be endured, but as a call to repentance, an invitation to change.

I wonder if we can hope for more than returning to normal, but instead prepare ourselves for a shifted landscape in which God is active in new ways to redeem us from suffering, evil and injustice. I wonder.

John the Baptist appears in the wilderness, wearing the clothes and eating the diet of a wild man.  We might picture him like a street preacher with a megaphone.  We might hear him shouting, maybe in the accent of a TV evangelist.

But that is not exactly how Mark introduces him.  Mark focuses our attention on the time of Isaiah, six hundred years earlier. There were similarities with John’s time – It was Babylon, instead of Rome, who devastated Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple.  But it was still the people of Israel who were longing for peace in their homeland as they suffered under enemy hands.  The people who said “by the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.”

Mark compares John the Baptist to the prophet Isaiah.  He quotes from Isaiah 40 which begins “Comfort, O comfort my people,” says God.  “Speak tenderly.” 

What if John is not shouting at all?  What if John is speaking tenderly?  What if we heard John’s message, not as scolding, not as yelling?  What if we heard it as gentle truth-telling, as tender comfort?  What if his message is one of hope and joy that something wonderful is about to happen?

God’s movement is often abrupt and unsettling.  It can be radically disorienting, coming as a whisper rather than a shout.  Sometimes really good news comes only with a honest, hard look at the landscape of our lives.  And sometimes that truth is tender and comforting.

Speak tenderly, God says to Isaiah. Be gentle with people in pain.  Listen to each other, especially when you are in the midst of trauma.   Comfort, comfort my people, says God.

The story is told that during the Blitz in World War II Britain, when the city was strafed and bombed, many children were evacuated to the country, but some remained in London and many of those were orphans. Some were sheltered in a Jesuit order of brothers, who noticed the children had trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, night after night. When the children were being put to bed one night, one of the brothers guessed the children’s problem was that they were anxious because of uncertainty in their lives, and gave each child a small piece of bread, saying something like this – “Hold on to your piece of bread while you are sleeping. Remember  when you woke up this morning, we fed you and took care of you. When you wake up tomorrow, and we will be here for you. Let the bread remind you of this. Good night, children.” And the children slept.[3]

Friends, take comfort. God took care of us when we woke this morning and God-with-us, Emmanuel will be present when we wake tomorrow. 

The good news of Jesus which we have been sharing for centuries encompasses life and death, suffering and joy, despair and hope.  It is a story that enters ordinary life at moments when we are lost and when we are found.  It embraces honest lament and songs of joy.  It is a story told by fearful people and faithful people – and often, we are the same people.

Frederick Buechner says it this way, “Then at last we see what hope is and where it comes from, hope as the driving power and outermost edge of faith. Hope stands up to its knees in the past and keeps its eyes on the future. There has never been a time past when God wasn't with us as the strength beyond our strength, the wisdom beyond our wisdom, as whatever it is in our hearts--whether we believe in God or not--that keeps us human enough at least to get by despite everything in our lives that tends to wither the heart and make us less than human. To remember the past is to see that we are here today by grace, that we have survived as a gift. . . . because we remember, we have this high and holy hope, that what Christ has done, Christ will continue to do, that what God has begun in us and our world, God will in unimaginable ways bring to fullness and fruition.”[4]

Beloved ones, we begin again, the start of the church year, the journey to a manger. We begin again, standing up to our knees in the past, with our eyes on the future, waiting tenderly, with hope.  Amen. 

[1] Karoline Lewis, Beginnings and Endings, at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-mark-11-8

[2] Christopher R. Hutson in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 1, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2008) p. 44.

[3] Dennis Linn, Sheila Linn, Matthew Linn Sleeping With Bread:  Holding What Gives You Life (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1985), p. 1

[4] Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember, (New York:  HarperCollins, 1984) pp.11-12.

11/22/20 - Remember to Remember - Deuteronomy 8:7-18

Remember to Remember

Deuteronomy 8:7-18

November 22, 2020

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

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

Every Tuesday, I get together with some pastors for Bible study and conversation.  We’ve been doing this for 3 or 4 years now. We’ve learned each other’s stories.  When John the Baptist comes up in the lectionary, a certain one of us is undoubtedly going to mention a particularly compelling statue of him in Italy.  When we talk about the wedding at Cana, another one is going to remember a funny incident at a wedding in a former church.  I used to get impatient with hearing the same stories over and over again. Until the day I offered what I thought was a rather insightful comment and one of my colleagues looked at me and said, “I’ve heard you say that before.”  That was when I realized that I had become one of those preachers who repeats herself and doesn’t even realize it.  We all remember certain things and what we remember, we remind ourselves about on a regular basis.  That’s not a bad thing, especially if we remember important stuff.

The book of Deuteronomy is concerned with remembering to remember the important stuff.  As the people enter the land, as they leave behind the hardship of wilderness, Moses wants them to make sure they do not forget the Lord who brought them to where they are. 

There’s a story about an old man, who every week, walked from his house down to the ocean, carrying a bucket of shrimp.  He would walk to the end of the pier, reach in his bucket, and feed the seagulls.  Slowly, silently, he distributed the contents of his bucket, every Friday evening, while the sun slipped over the horizon. 

His name was Eddie Rickenbacker, the most decorated WWI fighter pilot.  In 1942, during WWII, President Roosevelt dispatched Eddie with a special message to General MacArthur in the Pacific theatre.  The B-17 in which Captain Rickenbacker was flying got lost, ran out of fuel and ditched in the sea. 

The crew of eight made it into life rafts and began a long and desperate fight to survive the sun, sharks banging on the bottom of the raft, waves, but most of all hunger.  They ran out of food on day three.

On day eight, when it seemed the end had come and there was no hope, and they had prayed what they thought were their last prayers together, Captain Rickenbacker, in the raft, was dozing with his cap over his eyes.  He felt something.  A bird had landed on his head.  He thought if he could catch it, they might survive.  He caught it.  And they ate it.  And used its intestines for bait and caught fish.  The capture of that seagull gave them enough hope and strength and fortitude that seven of the eight men survived the 24 days adrift in their rafts. 

The story of old Eddie Rickenbacker feeding the seagulls in his neighborhood every Friday has been told countless times. While there is some disputing whether Rickenbacker actually fed gulls every Friday, the story of the plane being ditched in the Pacific, the seagull alighting on his head, and his capture, Rickenbacker himself recounted in his autobiography. [1]

It is a story of gratitude. It is a story of careful, intentional remembering. Feeding the seagulls is a ritual way to say thank you, to remember and not to take life for granted.   

The book of Deuteronomy is so concerned with remembering that it describes several rituals, which when performed correctly, would keep the faith memories alive.  After harvest each year, each farmer was to bring a certain portion of the harvest and offer it to God. And every time, he was to tell the story, “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. Then Pharoah treated us harshly. We cried out to God who delivered us with a mighty hand and brought us to this good place.”  You brought the offering and you told the story.  It was a ritual of remembering and thanksgiving. 

We have a national ritual of remembering. More than one actually, because if you are native, you tell the story differently.  But the story of those descended from immigrants recalls that 102 pilgrims set out from England in 1620.  Sixty-five days later, after storms and sea-sickness and miserably cramped quarters and a burial at sea and a birth on board and the rescue of a man swept overboard, they sighted land.  The winter in New England was more harsh than anything they had ever experienced.  Every family lost someone; a child, a parent, a grandparent.  Thanks to friendly native Americans, they learned to plant and fertilize. By harvest time, they knew they could survive another winter on the corn, squash, beans, peas, and barley. And so, still grieving their losses, they set aside a day for thanksgiving.  Every year, in schools and churches, on greeting cards and commercials, their story is told and we remember. 

The spiritual leader Joan Chittister says that Thanksgiving was instituted only after the pilgrims had withstood great sacrifice and difficult living. She writes, “it was not a feast of baubles.  It was a recognition of the glory of survival.” And then she asks a question that I find particularly poignant. She says, “What have you survived this year that is worth your gratitude?  Forget all the fixtures and gadgets and extras in which you’re steeped.  Give thanks for the real riches of life, the things that make you what you are deep down.”[2]

“What have you survived this year that is worth your gratitude?”  When 2020 is over, when, please God, pandemic is over, what do you want to remember to remember?  What is worth your gratitude?

That video that we saw during the children’s time was made by David Steindl-Rast.  He is an American Benedictine monk who was born in Austria.  At 94, after a deeply intensive spiritual life, he knows a few things about gratitude.  He said, “The root of joy is gratefulness… it is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.”[3]  That might sound backwards.  We might think that something happens to make us joyful and then gratitude follows.  But I think there is a truth here.  It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.  The more we remember with gratitude, the more thankful we will feel, which will lead to more contentment and more joy in our lives. 

Deuteronomy reminds the people, when your life gets easier, do not forget the Lord.  Do not take things for granted.  Some of us tell ourselves that often – count your blessings, don’t take them for granted.  But we forget, don’t we? We take electricity for granted, until we lose power for a day or four.  We take for granted, being able to come and go freely, gathering for worship and for holidays, hugging those we love, until the threat of disease takes away those possibilities.  Sometimes we realize what we have only when it is threatened or absent.  Deuteronomy says to avoid that, set out to remember, remember on purpose, remember with ritual.  Or as our own Hannah said, “Know what you have and be glad about it.”

We have rituals to help us remember and be grateful.   An annual Thanksgiving celebration is one.  So is sharing communion every month and weekly worship and singing.  Many people know more theology from their hymnals than from their Bibles.  Songs get into our heads and hearts and stay there.  This is a singing congregation – even on Zoom. We sing and remember and are grateful every week.  Every year at this time, we engage in the rituals of making a budget and offering our pledges.  I suppose that some of us may do that out of a sense of duty or maybe even guilt, but how much more joyful it is, when it comes from a place of gratitude. 

Many years ago, Joan Chittister attended an international conference in Asia on the status of women.  Most of the participants were women she describes as “well-funded activist types or official observers. They were all there to professionally analyze various women’s issues around the world, especially of the needs of women in developing countries.  At the gathering, these professional women called for more education for girls, more equality through government legislation, more birth control training, better health-care programs, and most importantly more participation of women at all levels of the political process.

As the conference was drawing to a close, a leader of one of the small group workshops, passed a piece of paper around and asked everyone to share her e-mail address so that they could all stay in contact and support one another in their work. One of the participants; a woman named Rose, was a Kenyan pastor of a Presbyterian church in Africa. When the sheet of paper came to her, she simply filled in her name and passed it on. The woman next to Rose passed the paper back to her and pointed out that she had neglected to put her email address on the form. Rose answered quietly:  “I don’t have email where I am.  It is too expensive for us.”

When Sister Joan and her colleague were getting into a cab to leave, her colleague said that she couldn’t leave without first seeing Rose. She asked Sister Joan to wait and rushed back into the hotel saying that she had promised to give something to Rose.  Later as they were waiting to check in for their flight, Sister Joan asked her colleague, what she had given to Rose. Her friend answered that she had given Rose her credit card.

“Your credit card? Why in heaven’s name would you give Rose your credit card?”

Her friend answered quietly, “So she can pay for her email every month.” [4]

E-mail is another thing we might take for granted. And generosity is another way to act out gratitude.

Beloved ones, may we remember the Lord our God who is gracious and loving and abounding in kindness.  May we remember on purpose, may we remember with gratitude, the kind of gratitude that expresses it self with joy and generosity.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

[1] The Rev. Don Lincoln in his sermon How Are You?  November 24,2019 at Westminster Presbyterian Church, West Chester, PA

[2] Joan D. Chittister, The Psalms: Meditations for Every Day of the Year (New York:  Crossroad Publishing Company, 1996), p. 126.

[3] Brother David Stenidl-Rast, OSB, http://www.gratefulness.org

[4] Rowan Williams and Joan Chittister, For All That Has Been, Thanks (Norwich, UK:  Canterbury Press, 2010) pp. 20-22

11/15/20 - With a Grateful Heart - Luke 17:11-19

With a Grateful Heart

Luke 17:11-19

November 15, 2020

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

 Image:  James Tissot The Healing of Ten Lepers

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

Let’s start at the end this time, shall we?  “Your faith has made you well.”  That’s the last line of today’s story.  Jesus tells the man “your faith has made you well”  or “your faith has saved you,” depending on which translation you read. The verb sozo means both to heal or make well and to rescue from danger or destruction.  In a theological sense, it can mean to grant salvation from sin.

“Your faith has healed you and saved you” is what Jesus says to the tenth man, the one who used to have leprosy but doesn’t any more.  He says it to the one who came back to say thank you, the only one who did that.  The man has demonstrated his faith with his gratitude.  Jesus’ words suggest that there is a close relationship between faith and gratitude and that there is something life-giving about gratitude. [1]

There is a good bit of empirical evidence for the relationship between gratitude and healing. You can find it on the internet.  Let me describe just one study

In 2015, researchers at UC-San Diego and the University of Stirling in Scotland, looked at 186 people who had stage B heart failure.  Using psychological tests to measure gratitude, they found that higher gratitude scores were associated with better mood, higher quality sleep and less inflammation.

They asked one group to keep a gratitude journal for eight weeks.  Every day they were to write down three things they were thankful for.  The control group was not asked to do that. They just kept living their normal lives.  Both groups continued receiving the same clinical care.  What they found was that the group who kept the gratitude journals had significant reductions in inflammation and improved heart rate variability. The control group did not show those improvements.

Dr. Paul Mills, one of the lead investigators said “It seems that a more grateful heart is indeed a more healthy heart, and that gratitude journaling is an easy way to support cardiac health.”[2]  Who knew?

It turns out that saying “thank you” matters.  That is often understood as the message of this story in Luke’s gospel.  It often gets reduced to an object lesson in which the nine other men are the examples of what not to do.  I’m not very fond of this story and I think maybe that is because of the way that interpreters have treated the nine.   

When Jesus first encounters these men, Luke says “keeping their distance, they called out to him,”  Keeping their distance – that jumped out at me, reading this in 2020. Keeping their distance – I wonder if it was six feet or maybe more.  They kept their distance because they have leprosy, which could be any of a number of skin diseases in that time. They have leprosy which frightened many people.  They didn’t know about germs, but they knew enough to suspect that some things were contagious and so, people with leprosy had to keep their distance.

These 10 men were rule-keepers.  They kept the rule that protected the rest of the community from getting their illness. That’s a good thing.  And they had some compassion.  Ordinarily Jews and Samaritans didn’t have anything to do with each other.  They were cultural enemies.  But this group includes one Samaritan. The nine must realize how very isolated he would be, being a Samaritan with leprosy and so they allow him to join them, giving him the benefit of safety in numbers.  That’s a good thing too.  I’m pointing this out because, again, I think that we who read this story are not always kind to the nine.

The ten men with leprosy call out to Jesus.  Jesus tells them to go show themselves to the priest.  The priest is the one who can certify them as leprosy-negative.  They obey Jesus.  They head down the road and somewhere along the way, they discover that their skin is clear; they have been healed.  Almost all of them keep on going to the priest. Because that’s what Jesus told them to do.  Because that’s what the rules say – the priest is the one with the authority to let them go back to their families and their jobs and their lives.  Jesus told them to go.  As they were going, they were healed – that’s probably a good indication that they should follow the rest of Jesus’ instructions and continue going all the way to the priest.

I don’t think it is fair to say that they are not grateful.  We don’t know that.  We only know that they don’t express that gratitude to Jesus.

But, as Paul Duke writes, “one of them drops back, stops, turns around. Something wilder than compliance comes into his mind. He is a new man, and that calls for a new voice. He runs back, ‘praising God with a loud voice,’ then falls at the feet of Jesus, pouring out the gladness of his thanks. It isn’t a tidy little thank-you speech but a stammering babble and a puddle of tears in the dust. It has been said that praise is ‘the jazz factor’ of faith. This man’s freedom has found its voice and is having its proper play at Jesus’ feet. Praise is love improvising its answer to Love.” [3]

This time he doesn’t have to keep his distance.  This time, he falls at Jesus’ feet and his joy cannot be contained.

Monday was one of those 70 degree days.  You remember, we had several of them in a row.  On Monday, I met a friend at the Normanskill Preserve. I had never been there before.  It was a perfect day to encounter it for the first time.  Gail and I walked and talked for a couple of hours.  We had seen each other only once since March and there was a lot to catch up on. At bedtime, I realized that I was feeling especially contented.  I was feeling like I had just finished a really good book or like someone had given me a gift that was just what I wanted. I became aware that I was feeling like that and I wondered why.  It took me a bit to realize that the feeling came because I had been writing in my gratitude journal. I had had a good day, for sure, but I felt it the most when I expressed my gratitude.

If gratitude is good for us and if it makes us feel good, then why don’t more of us do it more often?  (Maybe you all do.  Maybe I am just preaching to myself here.  Or just to those of us who are like the nine men who kept on going to the priest.)

What keeps us from expressing gratitude? 

1.     Sometimes we don’t recognize the gifts we have received.  We don’t perceive grace when it happens. We think that the daily blessings of our lives are normal.  Nothing to write home about.  Nothing to give particular thanks for.

2.    Sometimes we think we deserve what we have.  We worked hard for it.  We put in the hours and sweat equity.  We studied and practiced and developed our talents.  The only one to thank would be ourselves.

3.    Sometimes we forget. Life keeps happening.  We do what is required or pragmatic.  We keep following the instructions on the to-do list.  We are grateful, but we rarely stop to express it.

A recent study by the Templeton Foundation found that 90% of Americans think that gratitude is important, but only 52% of women and 44% of men express their gratitude on a regular basis.  There is a gap between what we say we believe about gratitude and how we act on it.  Those statistics are a bit higher for religious people with 65% expressing gratitude regularly. [4]  So, again I realize that many of you are probably in that category.

What I am learning is that feeling gratitude is good, but expressing it has even more power.  Saying thank you out loud to another human being, taking the time to reflect on it and write it down, paying it forward – all of these are part of the discipline of gratitude.  Like so many other disciplines, the more that we practice it, the more natural and spontaneous it can become.  Paul Duke described it as the jazz factor of faith – praise is love improvising its answer to God’s love. What I know about jazz musicians is that they can improvise only because they have mastered the foundations.  Choosing gratitude and expressing it are among of the basic foundations of Christian faith.   

I am not fond of this story because of the way interpreters have treated the nine.  That’s probably because I’m a rule-follower, an instruction-reader.  Even after all these years of life and ministry,  I rarely feel the freedom to improvise.  

Which is probably why I appreciate Barbara Brown Taylor’s reflection.  She thinks that she is like the nine.  She thinks that most of her congregation are also like those who follow Jesus’ instructions faithfully, but are still missing something. 

Taylor says, “ ‘Where are the nine’ Jesus asks, but I know where they are. ‘Where is the tenth leper?’ That is what I want to know. Where is the one who followed his heart instead of his instructions, who accepted his life as a gift and gave it back again, whose thanksgiving rose up from somewhere so deep inside him that it turned him around, changed his direction, led him to Jesus, made him well?’

“Where are the nine?? Where is the tenth?! Where is the disorderly one who failed to go along with the crowd,  the impulsive one who fell on his face in the dirt, the fanatical one who loved God so much that obedience was beside the point? Where did that one go? Not that I am likely to go after him. It is safer here with the nine—we know the rules and who does what. We are the ones upon whom the institution depends. But the missing one, the one who turned back, or was turned away, or turned against—where did he go? Who is he, and whom is he with, and what does he know that we do not know? Where are the nine? We are here, right here. But where, for the love of God, is the tenth?”[5]

Beloved ones, let us give thanks.  Thanks for the world, for each other, for grace in Jesus Christ, for daily gifts, large and small.  Let us improvise our answer to God’s love with a gratitude so deep that it makes us well. Amen.

[1] John Buchanan in Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 4, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010) p. 169.

[2] https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2015/04/grateful-heart

[3]  Paul Duke “Down the Road and Back,” The Christian Century, September 27, 1995

[4] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_grateful_are_americans

[5] Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life, (Cambridge:  Cowley Publications, 1993),  pp. 112-113

11/8/20 - In All Circumstances? - 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

In All Circumstances?

November 8, 2020

I Thessalonians 5:16-18

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/QQ_FIEo3wPk

I guess there are some Christians who think that you should thank God for everything.  Thank God for the friend who helps you when you need it, for the rain that waters your garden, for the places of beauty in your day.  But for these Christians, it also means expressing gratitude for a flat tire or a lost job or the onset of disease. Now I’m not sure where that theology comes from, but I suspect that some of it might have to do with how they understand the short reading we heard from I Thessalonians where Paul says  “rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.”

Trying to honor God and be faithful to Scripture, sometimes people feel that they are supposed to give thanks for misfortune, for poverty or war or disease. It doesn’t feel right.  It doesn’t make sense, but maybe they chalk it up to being a spiritual mystery, one of those things beyond our understanding, and so they say thanks for things they really are not thankful for and hope that God will honor their attempt.

The letter to the Thessalonians is the very earliest part of the New Testament. Written only about 20 years after Jesus, it contains Paul’s instructions about how to live out a faithful life in response to the good news. The community at Thessalonika was a newly formed church who believed that Jesus would return during their lifetime. Only now some of their number had died before Jesus came back, and that was distressing. They also suffered persecution and the hardship of being out of step with their culture in order to be in step with the gospel.  All of that is to say, that life was no easier for them than it is for us, and yet, to them, Paul wrote “give thanks in all circumstances.”

In all circumstances.  Did you catch that?  In English and in Greek, the verse says to give thanks in everything, but not for everything, not because of everything.  We are not asked to give thanks for violence or poverty or abuse or disease, but to give thanks in the midst of those situations, in spite of them.

I’m thankful right now, for scholars who pay attention to details like adjectives.  The difference in meaning between in and for is pretty big here.

So I am grateful. Understanding that I am not required to be thankful for bad things does make Paul’s instructions more attainable. It does . . . but understanding that I could give thanks in the midst of hard things instead of giving thanks for them, does not mean that it is always easy to do so.   

Robert Emmons is a professor of psychology at UC Davis.  He has been studying gratitude for decades. He says that is important to make a distinction between feeling grateful and being grateful.  He writes “being grateful is a choice, a prevailing attitude that endures and is relatively immune to the gains and losses that flow in and out of our lives.” [1] 

The spiritual discipline of gratitude means choosing to see the good, to find the blessing that we can be thankful for, regardless of how we feel.  One way to do that might be to intentionally look at the situation differently, to change our perspective.  This public service announcement from the Foundation For a Better Life demonstrates.  The boy speaks very quickly at first.  He says “I’m the greatest hitter in the world.”

https://www.passiton.com/inspirational-stories-tv-spots/99-the-greatest

“I’m the great pitcher in the world” That is what Wendell Berry might call “being joyful though you have considered all the facts.”

The writer of the Book of Habakkuk says this:  “Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines, though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.”  (Habakkuk 3:17-18).

Habakkuk looks at the facts of his situation and says “Hallelujah” anyway.  It seems that being grateful, or at minimum expressing gratitude, is something we can do without feeling grateful.  And in fact, naming something that we appreciate may trigger the feelings of gratitude.  Exercising the muscle of gratitude may seem like just going through the motions, but going through the motions may, in fact, help us to give thanks in very difficult circumstances. 

The first person killed in a hate crime after September 11 was a man named Balbir Singh Sodhi. He was shot standing in front of his gas station in Arizona. He was shot because he was wearing a turban.  He was a Sikh.  For Sikhs, the turban is a symbol of a commitment to serving others, but his murderer saw anyone with a similar head-covering as an enemy terrorist. 

At that time, Valarie Kaur was a young adult on her way to becoming an academic.  September 11 and the events afterwards changed her vocational path.  She became an activist; now she is nationally known. Balbir Singh Sodhi was a family friend. She felt called to respond and so she made her way to Arizona with a video camera.  The stories of the suffering of Sikhs and Muslims in America were not being told on the national news. So with her camera, Valarie asked his widow, Joginder Kaur, what she would like to say to the American people. 

What would we choose to express in such circumstances?  Maybe anger, righteous, justifiable anger.  Or blame, a demand for justice.  Maybe just raw grief.

When Valarie asked “what do you want to say to the American people?”  Jogindar Kaur said “Thank you.  Tell them ‘thank you.’  3,000 Americans came to my husband’s memorial.  They did not know me, but they wept with me. Tell them ‘thank you.’[2] 

Her response does not strike me as naïve optimism.  She did not deny the pain and grief or reality of her loss at all, but in the midst of that loss, she was able to find one good thing.  She strikes me as someone who has exercised spiritual muscles toward maturity.

Sometimes, in crisis, we discover things that matter and we are grateful.  And sometimes, the fact that we are grateful becomes a way we cope with the crisis.  This, I think, is why Paul summarizes it so succinctly for the Thessalonians – “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”  One scholar suggests that for whatever reason, thanksgiving did not come easily to the Thessalonians and that they have a particular need to develop the practice..[3] 

Perhaps knowing of their crises, Paul especially wants them to develop the resilience that may come with gratitude. 

It is that same impulse that led the Executive Team to lift up gratitude as an emphasis for this season.  Earlier this fall, as we anticipated this time of the year when we usually focus on financial stewardship, your church leaders talked about their gratitude, their gratitude for the ways our faith community has stayed connected, for the ways you have kept up with your financial and relational commitments.  Most of you received a letter this week.  It came from Judy as moderator, expressing the church’s gratitude for you and inviting you to express your gratitude in the form of a financial commitment for 2021.  If you didn’t receive that letter yet, please contact the church office if it doesn’t arrive in the next day or two.

The purpose of the letter is to enable a tangible ritual of thanksgiving.  One of the ways we express our thanks to God is in our tithes and offerings.  But our other very real purpose of this emphasis  on gratitude is the same as the apostle Paul’s – to remind us of ways to form our lives around the good news of Jesus, to cultivate spiritual disciplines that press us towards maturity, and to develop practices that build resilience in times of crisis.  

The best way I know to encourage gratitude is with stories.  The last one for today is one I’ve told before, but not in several years.  It has a different resonance for me this year in the midst of pandemic.  Perhaps it will for you as well. 

In 1637, all of Europe was at war. The  Thirty Years War  was a terrible time.  There was a walled city called Eilenburg in Germany and thousands of refugees came there seeking safety.  Then the plague came. Soon thousands upon thousands of children and teenagers and men and women were dying. At this time, a 51-year-old pastor named Martin Rinkart, was serving a Lutheran Church in Eilenburg.  In one year, more than 4,000 people died, including Martin’s own wife.  At one point, he was the only pastor remaining in that city – one had moved to a safer place and Martin performed the funerals of the other two.  So, in the midst of his own grief and trauma, Martin was conducting 40-50 funerals a day.

To his congregation he said, “We must lean on God’s presence. We must be the presence of Jesus for one another. We must have the sustaining presence of the spirit to guide us or we will not survive.” And in this time when thousands of people were dying every day, Martin Rinkart wrote a prayer of gratitude which he taught to his children.  We know that prayer as the hymn “Now Thank We All Our God.”  Let us sing it now, as our own way of giving thanks in all circumstances.

[1] https://www.dailygood.org/story/532/how-gratitude-can-help-you-through-hard-times-robert-emmons/

[2] https://youtu.be/5ErKrSyUpEo

[3] Abraham J. Malherbe, The Letters to the Thessalonians, Anchor Bible vol. 32B (New York:  Doubleday, 2000), p. 330.