5/23/21 - Dare to Dance Again: With Spirit - Ezekiel 37:1-14

Dare to Dance Again:  With Spirit

Ezekiel 37:1-14

May 23, 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/PK2g8vMzkqs

Every year, bodies of migrants wash up on the shores of the Mediterranean, in Libya, Turkey, Algeria and Greece. 

Every year, human remains are found in the harsh terrain along the US/Mexico border.  More than 6700 bodies have been found there since 2000, probably only a fraction of the actual number who have died from thirst or heat or hyperthermia while trying to cross the border. [1] The bodies of migrants are often reduced to dry bones before they are found. 

The migrants are mostly nameless, but we are starting to know the names, so many names, of black and brown people who are killed during encounters with police – at routine traffic stops or walking down the street or sleeping in their own beds. 

The crematoriums in India are overwhelmed by victims of the coronavirus.  The bodies are literally piling up.  In the United States, estimates of the death toll range from 600,000 to 900,000.   I try, but I cannot imagine that number of bodies, that amount of death.

We are perhaps not very far from Ezekiel’s valley of the dry bones. Ezekiel is one of the prophets of the exile, deported to Babylon in the 6th century BCE. The dry bones he sees are of soldiers slaughtered in battle, left unburied, to be ravaged by birds and beasts.  In his vision, Ezekiel walks around among the very dry, very many, bones.  The bones would evoke memories – of the siege of Jerusalem, with family and friends trapped inside the city, unable to conduct normal life, dying of hunger and disease.  They would surface memories of the destruction of the Temple and of the forced march to Babylon where he is now, among the exiles. And so the dry bones come to represent not just the actual dead, but the living dead.  The dry bones represent those living in exile, those who might as well be dead because they have no future and no hope.

African American theologian and preacher Luke Powery notes that we often link the Holy Spirit with celebration and joy and ecstatic moments.  But Ezekiel was brought out by the Spirit and set down in the middle of a valley and it was full of bones.  Sometimes, the Spirit leads us to valleys of dry bones.  Sometimes the Spirit leads towards places of contamination and death.  Sometimes the Spirit forces us to confront reality.  Powery says “This is holy honesty in the face of existential hell.”[2]

In her book Learning to Walk in the Dark, author and priest Barbara Brown Taylor tells the story of being in Florida, at a time when the loggerhead turtles were laying their eggs.  One evening, when the tide was out, she watched a huge turtle heave herself up on the beach to dig her nest and empty her eggs into it.  Afraid of disturbing the event, Taylor quickly and quietly walked away.  The next morning she returned to the beach to see if she could find the spot where the eggs were hidden.  What she found instead were sea turtle tracks heading in the wrong direction.  Instead of moving back into the sea, the loggerhead turtle had wandered into the dunes, the hot, dry, sandy dunes.  Taylor eventually found the turtle a little ways inland, exhausted, all but baked in the sun, head and flippers covered with sand.  She poured the water from her water bottle over the creature and then left to notify the beach ranger.

The ranger soon arrived in a Jeep to rescue the turtle.  He flipped the loggerhead on her back, wrapped two chains around her front legs, and then hooked the chain to the trailer hitch.  Taylor watched horrified as the ranger then took off in the Jeep.   The turtle’s body was yanked forward with such thrust that her mouth filled with sand.  Her neck was bent so far back Taylor feared it might break.  The ranger continued over the dunes and down onto the beach. 

There he unhooked the turtle at the edge of the water and turned her right side up.  The loggerhead laid motionless in the surf, water lapping at her body, washing the dry sand away.  As another wave broke over, the turtle lifted her head and moved her back legs.  Soon other waves crashed over her and brought her slowly back to life.  Finally one of the waves completely overcame the turtle, making her light enough to find a foothold and push off the beach, returning safely to the ocean.

Taylor writes that watching the turtle swim away and remembering the horrible scene of the turtle being dragged through the dunes, she learned something -- that  “It is sometimes hard to tell whether you are being killed or saved by the hands that turn your life upside down.”[3]

It is sometimes hard to tell whether you are being killed or saved by what has turned your life upside down. 

There, in the silent and terrifying valley of bones, God asks Ezekiel “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel’s answer “O God, you know” is delightfully ambiguous.[4]  He could be saying “That’s your call, God.  You hold life and death in your hands.” 

Or he could be saying  “No way, they are all the way dead, and you know it.”

Can these bones live, Ezekiel? 

O God, you know.

Then prophecy to the bones, Ezekiel.

Ezekiel does as God commands and the bones rattle.  Ezekiel continues to speak and skeletons reassemble themselves.  Muscle and skin covers them, but there is no spirit, no breath.  Without the breath of God, they remain lifeless

Call the breath, Ezekiel. 

Call the wind from the four directions

Ezekiel does.  The air stirs, a gentle breeze at first, and then a persistent current of air, relentlessly present, blowing away the chaff, inflating lungs, rousing the dead.  The ruach, that wind/spirit/breath of God which enlivens and awakens is present with power.

The book of Ezekiel is full of visions and almost every one of them is dated.  The scripture records when in Ezekiel’s life it occurred, but not this one. Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel has observed that this one bears no date, because every generation needs to hear in its own time that these bones can live again.[5] The valley of the dry bones happens over and over again at the intersection of human weakness and divine power. 

Every generation needs to hear in its own time.  This is our moment, our time to know that these bones can live again.   Ruach blows where she will.  Beyond the confines of the church, the Spirit is active in new visions of justice and liberation.  In the movement for Black Lives, in campaigns for environmental justice, and in tenacious resistance to oppression in places like Myanmar and Gaza, we witness the fierce love the Spirit has for this troubled world.[6]

Within the church, Ruach blows where she will.  Did you hear the voice of Pastor Megan Argabrite in the visual meditation, the video with the fire dancer?  She said, “The spirit is not done creating.  We are not done becoming. . . . We are not who we once were and we are not who we shall be.”[7]

Remember that loggerhead turtle stranded and almost dead in the hot sun?  The pandemic has dragged us through times and place not of our own choosing.  Friends, there is great anxiety within churches across the country these days.    A significant number of pastors have re-evaluated their vocation.  Many have left the ministry, including one of my friends. Some have taken early retirement, including one of my friends.  Many church members have drifted away and there is fear that they will not return.  We have lost many of the routines, the structures, the familiar ways of being together in faith.  Can these bones live again?

It is sometimes hard to tell whether we are being killed or saved by what has turned life upside down.  But I believe that these bones can live again.  And not just live, but thrive.  I believe that this is our Pentecost moment.  The Spirit has blown away the chaff, the dullness, the church systems and structures that may have become lifeless, dry bones.   The gentle breeze of God is gathering strength, blowing persistently, awakening life, renewing our hope, summoning us to the radical good news of Jesus with new power and boldness.

“The spirit is not done creating.  We are not done becoming. . . . We are not who we once were – thanks be to God –

 and we are not yet who we shall be.”

Beloved ones, now hear the word of the Lord:

dem bones, dem bones gonna rise again!

[1] https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2018/11/06/migrants-US-Mexico-caravan-elections-Trump-water-desert

[2] Luke A. Powery, in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year B, Volume 2 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Carolyn Sharp, editors,  (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2020), p. 330

[3] Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning To Walk in the Dark, (New York:  HarperCollins, 2014), p. 66-67   Note: some liberty was taken in the re-telling of this story; I found it first in another source purportedly quoting the original

[4] John Holbert https://www.patheos.com/progressive-christian/2015/05/we-rattling-bones-john-c-holbert-05-15-2015

[5] Elie Wiesel, “Ezekiel” in Congregation:  Contemporary Writers Read the Jewish Bible, ed.  David Rosenberg (San Diego:  Harcourt Brace Jovanaovich, 1987), p. 186

[6] Wendy Farley in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year B, Volume 2 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Carolyn Sharp, editors,  (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2020), p.315

[7] https://youtu.be/OeCfuC_2ds4

5/16/21 - Dare to Dance Again: The Absence/Presence Rhythm - Acts 1:1-11

Dare to Dance Again:  The Absence/Presence Rhythm

Acts 1:1-11

May 16, 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/hR-JvU0iBpI

At one time in church history, Ascension was a high, holy day, equal in importance to Christmas and Easter.  Ascension always falls 40 days after Easter which means that it always lands on a Thursday.  Just as we gather for worship on Christmas Eve, no matter what day of the week it is, earlier Christians would have gathered to celebrate the Feast of the Ascension on that same Thursday every year.  Now, most Christian traditions move the observance to Sunday, if they attend to it at all. 

The fact that it was once so prominent in the calendar makes me think that a smart preacher will approach today’s sermon like she would on Christmas or Easter.  Which is to say that I know my words will be inadequate in the face of mystery, but I will try to say something anyway.

In one Amish community even today, Ascension is more significant than Easter, but not nearly so festive.  A Protestant pastor asked an Amish bishop if they celebrated the day with a worship service, with a potluck meal, with communion? “No,” he responded. “We don’t really think of the day as a celebration at all, but more like a time of mourning.”   Recalling Jesus’ parable about the time when the bridegroom is taken away and the people fast,  he said “It’s a time for lament because that’s when we remember that Jesus left us behind—that’s when he left us here.” There is no feasting, only fasting.[1]

The Ascension acknowledges loss.  Jesus no longer dwells in physical form among those who love him.  Where there was once a flesh and blood presence, there is now only absence.  We usually perceive absence as loss and therefore something painful.

In the words of Barbara Brown Taylor, “Absence is the arm flung across the bed in the middle of the night, the empty space where a beloved sleeper once lay.  Absence is the child’s room now empty and hung with silence and dust.  Absence is the overgrown lot where the old house once stood, the house in which people laughed and thought their love would last forever.”[2]

Absence can be painful.  It can also be valuable in revealing what is precious.  Many of us carry within us the voices of departed loved ones.  Every once in a while, sometimes regularly, messages accumulated across a lifetime come to us. Phrases like  “money doesn’t grow on trees” or

“Leftie loosie, rightie tightie” or

“I don’t care who wins as long it’s the Cubs” or

 “I am proud of you.”

We hear their voices within us or we notice that we do something the way they did it.  Their habits become ours.  And so, the absent one becomes keenly present in a paradoxical way. 

Adam and Eve, and therefore all human beings, were created in the image of God to be in relationship with God.  The incarnation,  Jesus in human flesh on earth, was the next step in God’s process of uniting with humans. The Ascension acknowledges the loss of the physical Jesus from the earth, but it celebrates the presence of Jesus at the right hand of God.    It is the culmination – “now there is ‘one of us’ where we all shall be, where from the very beginning of creation we were intended to be.” [3]

There are some people, some preachers and theologians,  who attempt to magnify God by denigrating humans.  The Bible speaks differently, proclaiming that we are made in God’s image, a little lower than the angels.  Theologian Justo Gonzalez writes, “if the one who sits at the right hand of God, is ‘one of us’, that is a human being, then every human being is worthy of the highest respect.  Not only we Christians, but every human being, is like the one who already sits at the right hand of God.”[4]

At Christmas, we attend to the mystery that is God coming to earth in human form.  At Ascension, we can attend to the mystery that is a human going to heaven in God form.  (Or something kind of like that.  I told you that my words would be inadequate.)

As Jesus ascends, the disciples gaze upwards and the angels ask “Why are you standing here starting up into heaven?”  The Franciscan priest Richard Rohr observes, “most of Christianity has been doing just that, straining to find the historical Jesus ‘up there.’  Where did he go?  We’ve been obsessed with the question because we think the universe is divided into separate levels – heaven and earth.  But,” Rhor says, “It is one universe and everything within it is transmuted and transformed by the glory of God.  The whole point of the incarnation and risen body is that Christ is here – and always was!  But now we have a story that allows us to imagine it just might be true.”[5]

Let’s step back for a minute and see this story in its context.  We heard it from the beginning of the book of Acts today, but it is also found at the end of the Gospel of Luke. Acts is the sequel to the gospel of Luke and the Ascension is the hinge between them.  Acts 1:1 says that the first book was all about what Jesus began to do and to teach.  That was only the beginning of the ministry.  The gospel contained the acts of Jesus in the flesh and the second book, the Acts of the Apostles, tells the next part of the history, the ways that Jesus’s work goes on beyond his physical embodied presence.

I’m running out of words again, so let me try with a picture.  This is diagram is the work of Richard Rohr.  It is an attempt to show our growing, evolving understanding of God. At the top of the hourglass are expansive ideas of God, probably too big for the human mind to grasp.

At the very center of this diagram is Jesus, the human being. The one we call Jesus existed before the beginning of the creation as part of the Trinity.  Jesus of Nazareth became the Christ, the Annointed One, in his death and resurrection.  The Risen Christ is Jesus, but bigger and beyond Jesus’ individual form and lifetime. Richard Rohr says that that “the Risen Christ is Jesus released from all space/time restrictions.  He is beyond space, beyond time.  He includes all of the spiritual and the physical world, reconciled within himself.”[6]

The physical Jesus no longer dwells among us, but he lives in us through his teachings and the habits of his which we have adopted as our own.  The physical Jesus was limited to first century Palestine, but the Holy Spirit is present in all times and places.  The physical Jesus was continually inviting his disciples to join him on mission.  And here, at the time of the Ascension, he does that one last time, saying “You shall be my witnesses to the ends of the earth.”  They will pick up the story, the story which begins to be told in the Acts of the Apostles, the story of the work of the Spirit carried out by human beings.  That is the story that you and I are invited into, the epic story which we are already part of, as the hands and feet of Jesus. 

Many of you know much more about opera than I do.  You probably know the history of Puccini’s Turandot.  Puccini is the composer of La Boheme and Madame Butterfly. In 1922, he was suffering with cancer, but still working on his opera Turandot. Many people urged him to rest, thinking that he couldn't possibly finish it anyway. When his illness worsened Puccini wrote to his students, "If I don't finish Turandot I want you to finish it for me".   Then came the fateful day in 1924 when Puccini went to Brussels for treatment. He died a few days later.

In 1926, the world premiere was performed in the opera house in Italy. It was directed by Puccini's student, Arturo Toscanini. Everything went beautifully until the orchestra reached the point where Puccini was forced to put down his pen.

Toscanini stopped the music, put down his baton, turned to the audience and said, "Here the opera ends, because at this point the maestro died".  The curtain was slowly lowered and the audience departed, lamenting the absence of the composer.

The next night, the performance began at the top again, but this time, when it reached the place where Puccini died, the music continued, because another composer had picked up where he left off and finished the work.

We might say that it is a work that will never be fully finished, as others in subsequent generations have also written and continue to write new endings.

Jesus said, “greater things than I have done, you will do.”  We are his students.  He has trusted us to carry on his work, to embody his teachings, to be together, the Body of Christ, in Jerusalem, and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.  Thanks be to God. Amen.

[1] https://www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/may-10-ascension-lord-luke-2444-53

[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine (Lanham, Maryland:  Cowley Publications, 1995), p, 76.

[3] Justo Gonzalez, Luke in the Belief Commentary Series, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010), p.281

[4] Justo L. Gonazalez, Acts:  The Gospel of the Spirit (Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis Books, 2001).p. 26

[5] Richard Rohr  https://cac.org/heaven-earth-one-2016-10-27/

[6] Richard Rohr  https://cac.org/heaven-earth-one-2016-10-27/

5/9/21 - Dare to Dance Again: As I Have Loved You - John 15:9-17

Dare to Dance Again:  As I Have Loved You

John 15:9-17 

May 9, 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/AuVx3YWfKD4

The Rev. David Read was born and raised in Scotland, but he was the senior pastor of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City for more than 30 years.  His autobiography is called God Was in the Laughter.  In it, he talks about growing up in Scotland and his Aunt Belle, his most  religious relative, who looked like Queen Victoria. “It was difficult to avoid God in her home,” he said, and it wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience. “Morning and evening prayers, endless church services to be endured.” God, he says, was formidable, to be regarded with awe if not outright fear. The Christianity he knew was very serious business. He quotes a Christopher Marley novel in which a character says about Presbyterians and their religion, “It don’t prevent them from committing all the sins there is, but it keeps them from getting any fun out of it”[1]

Our faith can be serious business, even if we don’t approach it like Aunt Belle.  And life can be serious. It has felt especially heavy for more than a year. And yet, there is joy, exuberant joy, throughout the Bible.  In the call to worship, we heard from Psalm 98,  Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth; break forth into joyous song . . . Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills sing together for joy!

It was Jesus’ last Passover with his disciples and he sensed that.  For about a week, he has been interacting with his adversaries in Jerusalem during the day, but withdrawing from the city to a safer place at night.  The sense of danger, the stress, has been ratcheting up.  At the point of our reading from John 15, he has told the group that one of them will betray him. It is a very serious time, a heart-wrenching time, but it is also when Jesus speaks profoundly about joy.  

“I am telling you these things so that your joy may be complete, so that it may be full,”  Jesus says.  “This is my commandment that you love another as I have loved you.”

Philip Yancy wrote about this.  He said,

Not long ago I received in the mail a postcard from a friend that had on it only six words, "I am the one Jesus loves." I smiled when I saw the return address, for my strange friend excels at these pious slogans. When I called him, though, he told me the slogan came from the author and speaker Brennan Manning. At a seminar, Manning referred to Jesus' closest friend on earth identified in the Gospels as "the one Jesus loved." Manning said, "If John were to be asked, 'What is your primary identity in life?' he would not reply, 'I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist,' but rather, 'I am the one Jesus loves.'"

What would it mean if we could claim that as our primary identity in life – I am the one Jesus loves? 

Brennan Manning also tells the story of an Irish priest who goes out for a walk and  sees an old peasant kneeling by the side of the road, praying. Impressed, the priest says to the man, "You must be very close to God." The peasant looks up from his prayers, thinks a moment, and then smiles, "Yes, God’s very fond of me."[2]

Love one another as I have loved you.  Those who are loved are themselves able to love. We understand this intellectually.   Those who are loved have a capacity for love, an energy from which to draw on.  But what if we could really believe “I am someone Jesus loves.”  What if we could internalize that and trust it deeply? If you hear nothing else today, try to hear this “You are someone Jesus loves.  God is very fond of you.”

Love one another as I have loved you.  As they sat around the Passover table, what memories might those words have evoked? Jesus had loved them in the daily routine, walking, talking, sharing meals, telling stories.  Jesus had loved them in the high moments like walking on water and feeding the 5,000.  He had loved them in the hard times, like when Peter’s mother-in-law was sick, when Lazarus was dead, when controversy swirled around them.  He had loved them enough to confront their lack of understanding, to encourage them on the occasions when they could not heal like he had, enough to call them away from their day jobs to join his mission,

His love for them was a comprehensive kind of love. He calls it friendship.  He says that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Jesus has loved them in the ordinary and now he is prepared to love them in the extraordinary, by literally giving his life for them. 

Love one another as I have loved you.  I call you friends.  If you want to be my friends, then be friends with others. 

The philosopher Aristotle lived 300 years before Jesus. Artistotle described three kinds of friendship. Some people are our friends because they are useful to us; they allow us to make business connections or get into a particular social group. Other friendships are pleasurable; we cultivate these because we enjoy them. But the third kind of friendship—the best kind—is for the sake of friendship itself. . we become friends with those whose lives we seek to emulate.

Aristotle said that “a friend is another self.” Friends form each other in the moral life, taking on each other's characteristics —both good and bad. We are known by the company we keep; in fact, we are very likely to become the company we keep.

These friendships are the most formative: a true friend who loves as God loves will, in time, teach us how to love as God loves.

Thus, when Jesus says "You are my friends if you do what I command you," he is not simply offering a useful or pleasurable friendship to those who have done his bidding. He is describing the kind of deep friendship that Aristotle calls the best kind. We are called into this kind of relationship with Jesus and, thereby, with God. The theologian Thomas Aquinas took up this idea explicitly—suggesting that part of the goal of the Christian life was to become "friends with God." Through this friendship, we hope to take on God's characteristics as our own—

and to love one another as God loves us.[3]

Jesus did not come to give us a list of rules to keep us safe from an angry God.  He came to call us into friendship with God.

Love one another as I have loved you.  I call you friends.  If you want to be my friends, then be friends with others.  Do love for others as I have done love for you.

It sounds all serious again. And heavy.  And maybe not so joyful.  It is not an easy calling, that is for sure.

And yet, several times, Jesus repeats “abide in my love.”  Remain in my love.  Live  and dwell in my love.  Endure, continue, last in my love. Jesus’ love is our example, but also our source.  It is where we live and move, within the most abundant and inexhaustible love in existence.  It is our rhythm, our dance, where we begin and end and begin again

“Abide in my love.” 

“Love one another as I have loved you.”

“Abide in my love.” 

Anne is a colleague, a priest in the Church of England, in Britain.  One Friday afternoon, she hosted a visit to church for a class of seven-year-olds from a nearby school.  They discovered all sorts of interesting things about the church and had a lot to talk about.  There was one little boy in the class with special needs. He sees the world in completely different way and it is not always easy to know what is going on in his mind.

As he left the church at the end of the visit, he turned to Anne with a thoughtful expression on his face.  She wondered what was going to come out.  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘you’re beginning to look a bit like God.’ 

Anne said, “I have no idea what he meant – probably just that I was looking very, very old . . .and dressed in a white robe on that occasion. But I love the phrase anyway and it gave me a lot to think about.  Wouldn’t it be good if people could look at us and think that we really were beginning to look a bit like God; that we were more loving, more forgiving, more joyful, more disturbed by injustice, more courageous about doing something about it.  If that is going to happen, it will only be because we are abiding in love, and therefore abiding in God.”

Friends,  you are someone God loves.  God is very fond of you.

“I have said these things to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full,” Jesus said.

Thanks be to God.

[1] God Was in the Laughter: The Autobiography of David Haxton Carswell Read (New York: Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, 2005) p. 14, 17

[2] Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), pp. 68-69

[3] David S.Cunningham in Feasting on the Word Year B, Volume 2, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors,  (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2008), p. 500

5/2/21 - Dare to Dance Again: Guide My Steps - Acts 8:26-40

Dare to Dance Again:  Guide My Steps

Acts 8:26-40

May 2, 2021

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

Image:  Painting by Wensces Cortez, inside the Migrant Outreach Center, Nogales, Sonora, Mexico

The figures in the mural are all migrants who passed through the dining room at some point.

Note:  A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://youtu.be/bTV9-B3OxUY

I have to wonder what part of Philip’s life experience prepared him for that day on the deserted road.  Was it his time as a deacon at First Church in Jerusalem? That was when he had to deal with people in conflict, making sure that the widows’ needs were met fairly without preferential treatment because of ethnic background.  Was it his identity as a Hellenist – one of those Jewish people who had relocated to Israel after living somewhere else in the Empire?  His accent and his tendency to speak Greek, his first language, always gave him away among the Jewish people who spoke Aramaic, those who had been born and raised in Palestine. 

Maybe it was that he was part of a growing, but still young, religious movement.  He was used to being in the minority in some other ways; maybe being pushed to the edges of social respectability because of his faith didn’t distress him too much.  But he had been distressed by the persecution that broke out in Jerusalem, enough that he had fled that city, along with many others.  He ended up in Samaria. 

In Samaria, he had risen to the kind of responsibility held by the apostles in Jerusalem. In Samaria, he was an evangelist, a bold preacher and a healer.  Maybe, by this time, he was less surprised by the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Maybe he was so in the habit of relying on God’s guidance that the appearance of an angel telling him to take the road out of town seemed like an ordinary thing.

I also have to wonder what part of the Ethiopian’s life experience prepared him for that day on the deserted road.  He was not an immigrant like Phillip, but a foreign visitor.  He might have been Jewish, one of those who lived far from Israel or he might have been a God-fearing Gentile.  Luke, the author of Acts, does not really make that clear.  He was from Ethiopia, which is the part of the world now known as Sudan. One common stereotype against his people at the time was that they had a dog as a king. Another was that some regions bred human monstrosities – people without noses or tongues.[1]  He was travelling through a country where the inhabitants held those kinds of racist ideas about his people.  I have to wonder how he felt about that and what role that played in his encounter with Philip that day.

The Ethiopian is also a eunuch. In contemporary language, he is gender non-conforming.  For not measuring up to the Roman ideals of masculinity and strength, for being something other than the gender assigned at birth, he would have faced scorn and derision and abuse.    

What prepared him for that day on the deserted road? Luke calls it a wilderness road, but that road didn’t go through a literal desert at that point.  Maybe Luke wants to remind us that important spiritual events happen in wilderness and this is such a place.  Or maybe because it is deserted, off the beaten path, the two men are able to come together in a way that they wouldn’t have on a busy highway. 

The Ethiopian has travelled hundreds of miles, many through actual wilderness, on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, earnestly seeking God.  He is on his way home from that.  Whatever happened there is surely in the background of this encounter. 

We don’t know the details of his time in Jerusalem. Deuteronomy 23:1 says “no one whose testicles are crushed shall be admitted into the congregation of the Lord.”  This prohibition clearly applies to the Ethiopian eunuch.  But there was a Court of Gentiles in the Temple which had not existed at the time that Deuteronomy was written, so perhaps he might have been admitted that far.  The Court of the Gentiles was the noisy place where the money changers and the temple vendors were.  It was further out than the court of women.  A place that was in, but not fully in.  A marginal place. A place we might call “welcoming, but not affirming.”

What is he feeling now, on his way home?  Does he feel closer to God, after being excluded or maybe just grudgingly tolerated by the religious community?  Or is he in theological crisis? 

He seems to be still earnestly seeking a way to know God.

He is reading from Isaiah 53.  It is a description of God’s servant who suffers humiliation and injustice and death.  It is a passage that Philip would have connected with Jesus.  The Ethiopian does not understand it, but it seems to resonate. “Perhaps it calls to him because it reflects some of the complexities of his own life, his own religious, sexual and racial differences, his own vulnerability.”[2]

The Scripture speaks to him.  It finds him where he is, and on this occasion, God has also provided Philip to act as interpreter and guide.  I have to wonder about their conversation.  I have to wonder if the Ethiopian shared the details of his own experiences of suffering, perhaps even of his exclusion from the Temple.  I have to wonder if Philip talked about his identity as an immigrant and the power of God he had experienced.  I think about how human conversations go and how we seek common ground, and how many points of connections these two might have found quickly.  I have to believe that the Spirit who brought them together moved between them in ways that were healing and transformational for both. 

If the Ethiopian did experience rejection in Jerusalem, Philip might have referred back to Deuteronomy as an explanation or a defense. “Well, you know what the Bible says about people like you.”  

Or he might have taken the scroll of Isaiah and rolled it forward just a little to chapter 56 where he would have read “Do not let the foreigner joined to the LORD say, “The LORD will surely separate me from his people”; and do not let the eunuch say, “I am just a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”

Deuteronomy says eunuchs are not welcome.  But Isaiah places them within God’s house, with a name better than son or daughter. Two passages of Scripture, seemingly with equal authority.  But they are also contradictory. They must be read in dialogue with each other And they are by no means the only passages which conflict with each other.

So, we dance with Scripture and with the Spirit to order our steps.  We listen to each other.  We learn from each other – from the immigrant and the foreigner and the cultural insider, from the experiences of women and men and non-binary persons.  We listen for how Scripture speaks to those who read passages for the very first time and to those who understand it in wide context.  We teach and we are taught.

This story is usually understood as the Ethiopian’s conversion, but I have to wonder about the ways it transformed Philip too. The guidance of the Spirit is unmistakable in the story, after the fact.  But it may not always be in the moment.  I sense that Philip was able to follow the Spirit’s guidance because he had courageously started doing that some time ago. With time and discipline, he had come to trust that invisible power, those internal promptings, to put himself at God’s disposal as witness for the gospel, to take the lonely road, to speak to strangers. 

Because of that, he is there to hear the Ethiopian’s poignant question – “What is to prevent me from being baptized?”  This man has a history of being prevented from all kinds of things, from having children, from exercising power in his own right, from being fully accepted in many ways. 

So, he asks “What is to prevent me?”  “What is to prevent me from belonging to the family of God?  What is to prevent me from being welcomed as Christ’s own?  What is to prevent me from full participation in the risen life and community of Jesus?  What is to prevent me from breaking down the entrenched barriers, fences, walls, and obstacles that have kept me at an agonizing arm’s length from the God I yearn for?  What is to prevent me from becoming, not merely a hearer of the Good News, but an integral part of the Good News of resurrection?”[3]

Friends, please know that these questions have not gone away.  They persist in the lives of young and old, in the hearts of those in the center and those at the margins.  There are still so many who resonate with the stories of the Bible, which they may not fully understand, so many who are earnestly seeking God, in spite of the barriers and obstacles, many of which have been created by the institutional church and well-meaning Christians.

“What is to prevent me?” the Ethiopian asks. The answer is nothing, absolutely nothing. 

As theologian Debie Thomas says, “In the post-resurrection world, in the world where the Spirit of God moves where and how she will, drawing all of creation to herself, in the world where the Word lives to defeat death, alienation, isolation, and fear, there is nothing to prevent a beloved image-bearer of God from entering into the fullness of Christ’s salvation.  Nothing whatsoever.”[4]

Beloved ones, we are Easter people.  We trust that God in Christ is reconciling the world   – the broken, desperate, violent and yearning world – to God’s own self.   So, then, may we find the courage to take the lonely road, to listen to strangers. May we learn and teach and offer radical welcome, again and again and again.  May we join the dance, allowing scripture and the Spirit to guide our steps.  Amen.

 [1] [1] J. Bradley Chance, Acts: Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary, (Macon:  Smyth and Helwys, 2007), p. 136

[2] Debie Thomas in When All Are Welcome https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2995-when-all-are-welcome

[3] Debie Thomas in When All Are Welcome https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2995-when-all-are-welcome

[4] Debie Thomas in When All Are Welcome https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2995-when-all-are-welcome

4/25/21 - Climate Migration: How Should the Church Respond? - Genesis 41:53 - 42:5; Luke 9:51-58 - guest preacher Rev. Dr. Leah Shade

On 4/25/2021, Emmanuel Baptist Church joined for a joint Zoom worship service with Westminster Presbyterian Church. Our guest preacher was the Rev. Dr. Leah Shade.

The sermon Dr. Shade preached can be read here: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/ecopreacher/2021/04/climate-migration-how-should-church-respond/

A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://youtu.be/NMgVe3mNwjM

4/18/21 - Dare to Dance Again; Dancing with Doubts - Luke 24:36b-48; 1 John 3:1-2

Dare to Dance Again:  Dancing With Doubts

Luke 24:36b-48, I John 3:1-2

April 18, 2021

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

Image: Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival 2017, photo by Ahmad Odeh at unsplash.com

Note:  A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://youtu.be/SZie_p2R3EE

I have not been watching the Derek Chauvin trial in Minnesota this week.  I am aware that it is happening, as I expect you are.  Every once in a while, one nugget of information, one piece of testimony, has made it into my news feed, and that has been enough for me.  The trial is extremely important, but I have avoided hearing the details.  I have avoided re-living the last 10 excruciating minutes of George Floyd’s life, precisely because they were excruciating. 

One thing that did make it into my awareness was the testimony of the pulmonary expert who said that George Floyd attempted to breathe through his fingers and his knuckles.  Well, more precisely that he tried to use them to lift his body and expand his chest to get more air.  He died from lack of oxygen.  You probably know that that is the final cause of death in crucifixion.  It is a brutal, exhausting way to die. The end finally comes when the person being crucified can no longer lift their chest to get air.

During Holy Week, several theologians discussed the seven last words of George Floyd.[1]  His final utterances offer many parallels with the final words of Jesus.   Which is not to suggest that Floyd is some kind of savior, but to note the  profound similarities of lynchings by the state across time.

I have mostly avoided knowing these things.  I have intentionally avoided knowing them as an act of self-protection. 

Jesus’ disciples did not have that luxury.  They had been drawn into the horrors of the crucifixion.  In that place called Golgatha, they could not look away as surely as the bystanders on 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis could not look away from what played out before them. 

If you think I’m repeating myself, if you think I might have mentioned something about the trauma of the disciples last week or the week before, you are correct.  The lectionary readings this season ricochet from one gospel to the next.  We read from Mark and then John and now Luke all wrestling with the same events. 

Ched Myers is an activist theologian.  He wrote a brilliant commentary on Mark’s gospel thirty years ago, which I read in seminary.  It is still my go-to commentary on Mark.  He lives a life of radical discipleship and teaches others to do the same.  This sermon is largely inspired by his thoughts on the Lukan passage.[2]

Myers says that after Resurrection, the disciples have to reckon with Jesus’ mutilated body.  He calls it “the traumatic somatic.”  The traumatic somatic.  All of the events of Good Friday culminating in Jesus’ execution were traumatic.  They were also somatic, meaning that they involved a body, that flesh and blood suffered great pain And then, every time Jesus appears after his resurrection, the traumatic somatic repeats. The sight of his body reminds them of the trauma of crucifixion.

Last week, we remembered the story of Thomas who needed to see Jesus’ wounds for himself. In this week’s passage, the disciples are afraid at first that Jesus is a ghost.  Jesus points out that unlike ghosts, he has hands and feet.  And then, the person that they have shared countless meals with says, “do you have anything to eat?”  I like to imagine Jesus saying that with a joking tone, trying to break the tension with humor, “Hey friends, I haven’t eaten since Thursday night, remember. Can you help a guy out?”  Then he eats a piece of fish, further evidence that he is not a ghost. 

When Jesus first appears, the disciples are afraid.  In the New RSV, verse 37 says they were startled and terrified.  Myers translates it “terrified and awestruck”.  His translation work is revealing.  The first adjective “terrified” is only used one other time in the New Testament.  Luke 21:9 says “when you hear of wars and upheavals, do not be terrified; these things are inevitable.”  The intention of Roman crucifixion was terrorism – to terrify its subjects into submission.  Luke is saying that violence is inevitable under empire, especially for those who speak truth against it. 

The second kind of fear displayed by the disciples is the kind of awe that comes from being in the presence of God.  So they are terrified and awestruck.  They are caught between the fear of Roman terrorism which they can plainly see in the scars left on Jesus’ body and the dawning awareness that they are in the presence of One who has been raised from the dead. 

Myers says, “On the one hand, they cower before the handiwork of imperial terrorism, imprinted on the body of Jesus. On the other hand, they reel before the prospect that somehow Rome has not had the last word, that the divine conspiracy for life has burst the straightjacket of imperial death-dealing. Jesus, the executed rebel, is back and ready to continue organizing the movement.”

Then verse 41 says, “in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering . . .”  Joy, wonder, doubt.  Such a rush of conflicting emotions.  Wanting so much to believe, amazed, hopeful, joyful and yet still unsure, doubting. 

Madeleine L’Engle was a much loved Christian author and speaker. Her best known book was probably A Wrinkle in Time. One time someone asked her if she really and truly believed in God with no doubts at all. Her answer was “I really and truly believe in God with all kinds of doubts.”[3]

Perhaps that captures the situation for the early disciples and also for us – we can believe with all our doubts.

How does that happen?  For the disciples who are still struggling, it says Jesus opens their minds.  That word “open” is used more than once in this chapter.  He opens their minds to understand how the scriptures applied to his suffering and death and resurrection.  He invites them to a new understanding, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the trauma they have endured.  He invites them to open minds, softened hearts and expanding imaginations.  When you have never encountered Resurrection before, or any time we are unsure of our next steps, cultivating an open mind is a good place to start. 

But before he opens the scriptures, Jesus calls attention to his hands and feet.  He asks for food.  The resurrected body is centered.  The disciples are invited to see and touch the flesh violated by empire and to attend to its bodily needs.  This brings Ched Myers to a conclusion that I find compelling.  He says, “This, I would argue is the central invitation of resurrection faith; to embrace the traumatic somatic;  . . .to embrace the beat-up bodies of marginalized people and degraded places around our earth. . . to join the resurrection as insurrection. . . .[because] Our world is still riddled with terrorism both official and ad hoc.”

Beyond the trial in Minnesota last week, we could list multiple mass shootings, the ongoing military actions against civilians in Myanmar.  We could lift up institutional racism, poverty and white supremacy as pillars of contemporary terrorism.  The list goes on and on, because our world is indeed still riddled with terrorism.

Like the disciples, perhaps we too are caught between terror and awe, between an all too real awareness of physical fears and a spiritual knowledge of the presence of God.  To which one will we give our allegiance—to the power of violence and death over life that fills our news feeds?  Or to the biblical God’s power of irrepressible life over death? 

This is the question of Easter, the question of resurrection. Which is greater in our lives – the power of death or the power of life?  That is the question --  if we are afraid, if we struggle, if we have been traumatized or are grieving, the question to all of us who long to live as God’s Easter people in a still broken and terrified world. 

Beloved ones, We are children of God, what we will become has not been revealed. Let us cultivate open minds, tender hearts and expansive imaginations. With every single one of our doubts, let us deeply and truly believe in God’s irrepressible power of life.    Amen.

[1]Here is one good example:  https://atlantadailyworld.com/2021/04/11/commentary-the-seven-last-words-of-george-floyd/

[2] Ched Myers “Jesus’ risen mutilated body”  The Christian Century, September 3, 2019 https://www.christiancentury.org/article/critical-essay/jesus-risen-mutilated-body

[3] Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet (New York:  HarperCollins, 1972), p. 63

4/11/21 - Dare to Dance Again: Dancing Together - John 20:19-31; Acts 4:32-35

Dare to Dance Again:  Dancing Together

John 20:19-31, Acts 4:32-35

April 11, 2021

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

Image:  Christ Dancing on the Sea of Galilee

Heimo Christian Haikala, 1999

Note:  A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://youtu.be/udK3_SWSJo8

It was Easter Sunday night, according to John. It was Easter Sunday night, but the disciples were still afraid.  Mary Magdalene had spread the word about Resurrection.  She had relayed the story that she had seen the Risen Lord.  If you’re remembering last week where the women said nothing to nobody, well, that’s how Mark tells it. But John says that early on Easter Sunday morning, Jesus talked with Mary and Mary told the others.  But that night, they were in hiding together, behind locked doors.  I don’t blame them.  They had seen how quickly a cheering crowd can become a mob.  They had witnessed the betrayal of Jesus by someone in the inner circle.  The sights and sounds and terrible details of a crucifixion were now seared into memory, part of their nightmares and daytime terrors.  Even though, they wanted to believe Mary, they were still afraid. 

So when Jesus came to them that Sunday night, they were in hiding.  It says that they rejoiced when they saw him. And then, the next Sunday night, they were back in the same place, with the doors locked again.  It doesn’t say that they were in hiding the next week.  It doesn’t mention fear. But I wonder.  How long does it take for the visceral fear of crucifixion to fade?  What’s the average interval for a human being to come to terms with a Resurrection? 

If you have become used to staying away from the crowds, fearful of being out in public, how and when do you pick up your life again?  That question resonates in new ways this year. 

Eventually, the disciples left that house with the locked doors.  Eventually they went out. They went back to the crowded, busy Temple.  Some returned to Galilee. Some put on their traveling clothes and criss-crossed the Empire. They went from huddling behind locked doors to founding a religious movement that engaged other people in exponential numbers.

“What would you do if you were not afraid?”  That’s a popular question in some circles.  An entire sermon could be devoted just to that.  Obviously, fear can be a good thing.  Fear can warn us of real danger.  Fear can keep us alive. 

But fear can also keep us from living fully.  Jesus was afraid. We see that in the Garden of Gethsemane.  But he didn’t allow that to keep him from his mission.  So, perhaps the question is not “what would you do if you were not afraid?”  Perhaps the better question is “what will you do in spite of your fear?” 

The Bible is not very explicit about how Jesus’ first followers overcame their fears.  What I find in our texts this morning are not nearly enough details, but maybe enough hints to get us started.

First we might notice that when Jesus appears, the disciples don’t recognize him right away.  And Thomas doesn’t recognize him right away a week later.    This is a hint that when Jesus shows up in our lives, we may not recognize him. When Jesus appears, as the person who makes us uncomfortable; when Jesus appears, with a task that seems beyond our ability; when Jesus appears, in the midst of our doubts and fears, we may not recognize him.

Jesus appears to the group of disciples, and a week later to Thomas, who needed his own first-hand experience.  Thomas gets two clues to Jesus’ identity.  Jesus speaks peace to him and he lets Thomas see and touch the wounds of his execution.  Serene Jones is the president of Union Seminary in New York City.  She writes, “When God comes, we will recognize God’s presence in those moments when peace is offered, in those moments when life’s most brutal violence is honestly acknowledged, and when in the midst of this bracing honesty, we realize that we are not alone, but have, in fact, been always, already found.” [1]

Thomas and the others recognize Jesus by his peace and by his wounds.  This presence of God is honest about how much there is to be afraid of, but claims peace in spite of it.   There is a power in that. 

A second hint – after they recognize him, it says that Jesus breathes on them.  These days, we try very hard not to breathe on each other, not to share in that way.  We understand shared breath, especially right now, as a negative power, but they understand it as a positive one.  When Jesus breathes on them, it evokes Genesis 2 where God breathes life into the first human being.  Jesus breathes on them and says “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  We remember that breath and spirit are the same word.  Jesus’s breath is the Spirit of God, the same spirit which filled the lungs and gave life to the first human being.

The second hint about how Jesus’ first followers moved beyond their fears is this – they shared the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus.  This goes right to the heart of our seasonal theme.  It’s the Greek word perichoresis.  Perichoresis – you probably use that word every week. It is one way early theologians described the relationship between the three persons of the Trinity.  If we break it down, we have peri – which means around or about, as in perimeter.  And we have choresis – which means to move, to give way, to make room.  It is related to our word choreography.  Perichoresis is the idea that God is fundamentally Being in Relationship. God, whom we might describe as Creator, Son and Spirit, is continually making room, moving about.  The Creator makes room for the Son. The Son moves about the Spirit in a divine dance of mutuality and love and joy.  Perichoresis means dance. 

Meister Eckhart, a theologian from the Middle Ages said,

“Do you want to know what goes on in the core of the Trinity? I will tell you. In the core of the Trinity the Father laughs and gives birth to the Son. The Son laughs back at the Father and gives birth to the Spirit. The whole Trinity laughs and gives birth to us.”[2]

When Jesus breathes the Spirit onto the disciples, he invites them into that divine relationship, that eternal dance of joy and laughter. 

How do we come out from behind locked doors?  Where do we find courage in spite of our fears?  We just step out on the dance floor with the Trinity,  recognizing the power of God’s Spirit in us, as close as our very breath.

That word perichoresis is very helpful to me. The dance goes on and on. God moves around and makes way for God’s own self and for us, both in simple steps and elaborate patterns we may not even be aware of.

Church historians can look back at the patterns now, but in those early days, people simply moved as the Spirit led them. So the book of Acts reports that they worshipped in the Temple and broke bread in their homes.  Out in the world they were about Jesus’ work together and at other times, they shared meals in each other’s homes.  The dance wove through every aspect of their lives. 

Which brings me to the last hint.  Our reading describes great unity among the believers. It says that they share everything they had with each other and there was not a needy person among them.  What strikes me is that in order for needs to be met, needs have to be known.  In order for needs to be known, they have to be shared.  The person who needs something has to speak up.  Like Thomas did.  Thomas said, “I need to see and touch Jesus for myself.”  And Jesus met his need.  It doesn’t always happen that way.  Some times others cannot or will not meet our needs, but sometimes what is necessary is finding the courage to make the need known. Especially to a community of faith, a community dancing in the Spirit.

A few weeks ago, Daniel and Lisa had to fly on an airplane. Air travel mostly seems to be happening on an urgent basis, but they needed to go visit a loved one.  So they did.  On the return flight, they hit turbulence, really bad turbulence.  Daniel said it was that kind that makes you close your eyes and collapse into yourself and get really quiet.  There was a teenager sitting in their row.  They were strangers.  They had not yet said anything to each other.  In the midst of this turbulence, he said very intensely, “I need you to talk to me right now.  I have terrible anxiety and this is my first time to ever fly alone, and this turbulence is messing with me.  I need you to talk to me right now.” 

So they started talking.  Lisa introduced herself and her husband.  She said, “we are going to be your best friends for the next 90 minutes!  We are so proud of you for telling us what you need! That took a lot of courage and we’d be proud of our own kids for taking the risk you took. We’re all going to be okay, and we’re here for you, so just tell us what you need.”

They talked for the rest of the flight.  They learned that Braden is 16 and that he plays the guitar, ukelele and piano. And that he’d just finished recording his first album.[3]

Daniel said that the conversation with Braden was holy ground, one of the most beautiful things he had been part of in a long time.  But it only happened because Braden took the risk of being honest and let his need be known.

I’m not sure who needs to hear that today, but it is the story that I could not shake this week.  What I know is that many of us are used to handling things ourselves.  We don’t like to be a nuisance or to inconvenience others.  We don’t want to be seen as weak or incompetent or stupid.  All of those things may keep us from simply letting our needs be known. 

What I know is that most of us believe that God has called us to help others.  We’re pretty good at that sometimes.  We usually like to give help more than to receive it.  But I wonder.  In dance terms, it seems like always being the giver is like always taking the lead and the beauty of the dance is that there is leading and following.  The beauty of perichoresis is that God the Redeemer makes room for God the Spirit who moves around God the Creator and the dance of joy goes on and on. 

Maybe you need to find the courage to name your needs.  Maybe you need to find the courage to respond to someone else’s needs.  I pray that together we will find the holy ground where honesty and peace prevail.  I hope that we take a deep breath and join the dance.  Amen.

[1] Serene Jones in Feasting on the Word Year B, Volume 2, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors,  (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2008), p. 404.

[2] Matthew Fox, Meditations with Meister Eckhart, (Rochester, VT:  Bear and Company, 1983 p. 129.

[3] https://www.facebook.com/daniel.grothe.14/posts/874576660049238

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