Citizens of a City Often Dimly Seen
Matthew 5:13-16
June 20, 2021
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Guest Preacher - Rev. Jerrod Hugenot
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbmFWOO3y5U
I’ve Been Meaning to Ask: Where Do We Go From Here?
Ruth 1:1-22
June 20, 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://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DBUxxyAnIQ
In the first church where I served as pastor, there were a number of WWII veterans. I learned things from them that I never got in history classes in school. For example, I learned some of the impact on their families. I heard the stories about the fathers who were complete strangers to their two- and three-year old children. I heard that it took a long time for the children to get over their fears of the strange men now living in their homes. In history classes, I had learned the years when the war officially began and ended. In reality, the war ended in different times for different people as they took up life without combat again.
Juneteenth observances are another example of how there are not always clear demarcations between war and peace, between enslavement and liberation, between then and now. There is a process, an unfolding transition as we navigate the space between Before and After. That is the space in which we find ourselves right now.
I was in a Stewart’s shop this week. I don’t think I have been in one for more than a year. It was also the first time I walked into any store without a face mask. No one else was wearing one either. The man who went in ahead of me held the door open behind him and we came very close to each other on the threshold. Two years ago, if I had entered a store and found everyone wearing masks, I would probably have thought I had walked in on a robbery. But this week, when no one was wearing masks, I thought how strange that was and just for a minute, I felt a little unsafe.
We are in the space between Before and After and the question “where do we go from here” is present at all kinds of levels.
Naomi is in that space. In the Before, she might have been happy, or at least content, living with her husband, raising two sons in a foreign country. But then her husband died. Before she was a wife. After she is a widow. Within the next 10 years, she lost first one son and then the other. Before she was a mother. After? . . . After, she doesn’t know what she is. She has daughters-in-law and no way to provide for them. After she is childless and old and far from home, living in a foreign country with no access to any safety net. Before, she was Naomi, which means Pleasant. After, she says, “call me Mara” which means Bitter.
We meet Naomi at the end of her life in Moab. But the whole story is really about how she and Ruth get from that place of defeat and hopeless to a new beginning. The four chapters of the book of Ruth are the story of the transition, the space between Before and After.
It is a great story, quite possibly my favorite in the Hebrew Bible. If you haven’t read it in a while, you might want to do that this afternoon. It won’t take long.
What I want to hold up from that story today are Ruth’s faithfulness and courage. As we navigate this space, coming out of pandemic into whatever is ahead of us, I want to be personally faithful and courageous, and I hope we as a church will strive to be faithful and courageous too.
For the last 4 Sundays, I’ve been asking you open-ended questions and you have been great about responding, giving us a little way to listen to each other as those have been shared each week. This week, I asked a multiple choice question. I asked you to pick your love language from a list of 5. And that question, the one where you had ready-made answers, that one was the trickiest of them all. When I asked this question, I thought that maybe the answers would reveal that many of us have the same preferred love language. I thought that would be an interesting finding. Or I thought it might reveal that we are all over the place in terms of what conveys love to us most effectively. That would also have been an interesting finding. What I did not expect was that you would take apart the question. But that’s what many of you did.
You didn’t like having to pick just one answer. You explained that what conveys love to you is different in different contexts. You mentioned ways that you had been disappointed or deceived by the use of one or more of the love languages in the past and so you didn’t trust them anymore. My take-away is that love can be received by the same person in different ways in different contexts, and that there is no easy one-size-fits all. As some young people in my life used to say, “Duh, M’am”. It’s a Captain Obvious finding, but especially significant in this moment.
Strong relationships adapt for context. Loving people pay attention to the wants and needs of this moment as well as what came before. They bend and flex and understand that After may require loving actions that are very different from those needed Before.
Where do we go from here? Rev. Brooks-Johnson spoke about learning new languages. During the last year, some of us have been learning a new language about church. We are learning to talk about the inherited church or the gathered church which is the term to describe Emmanuel as it exists now, which is a good and precious thing. And we are learning to speak of the sent church, the fresh expression of church in this time. We use a different love language to speak to those in the fresh expression of church because one size doesn’t fit all and context matters.
Let me give you a real-life example. In another church in another state, as the lockdown of pandemic was lifting, the leaders reached out to every household. They checked in to see how people were doing and if and when they might return to worship. They heard one repeated message from a number of households, especially households with young children. These were all households that had been strongly engaged and active in church life Before the pandemic. But now, in the After, the adults in these households said that they had stepped away from church during the pandemic, that they had gone on with their lives without it, and they didn’t miss it. They don’t plan to return. One of my colleagues shared that last week.
The pandemic experience has revealed many things and this is one of them. Multiple generations of people had stepped away from church before the pandemic. This is not new. But perhaps this time, we can see it with new eyes. Perhaps what can be different this time is our faithful and courageous response.
When Naomi tries to tell her daughter-in-law that she is done, that her engagement with them is over, Ruth says “OK, but I’m here for you anyway.” Ruth does not insist that Naomi stay in the place where Ruth is at home, but instead Ruth accompanies Naomi to a foreign land. Ruth steps out of her own comfort zone to go where Naomi wants to be. In the process, Ruth will learn the customs and culture of another people. That adaptation, that accompaniment, that bending and flexing of relationship, is the love language that Ruth offers to Naomi.
We may also hear that some have left our gathering and are not coming back. And we may also realize that we had missed the opportunity for relationship with many others in the Before. I wonder, instead of being distressed or anxious for ourselves, can we imagine the language that we might speak to send the message “We’re here for you anyway?” Can we step out of the places where we are at home to learn customs and cultures of others? Can we do this with faithfulness and courage for Jesus’ sake?
This, I believe, is one answer to our question – Where do we go from here? We keep on speaking the language of love. Love is expansive and adaptive. It contains all the ways that we communicated God’s love in the Before AND it recognizes that we may need new ways to communicate for new relationships. One size doesn’t fit all.
I am not the only one offering this answer. About 25 of you responded to the Pastoral Relations Committee survey this month. That was a fantastic response – thank you. In answer to the question about future priorities, you spoke over and over again about looking outward. Some of you mentioned Fresh Expressions specifically. What all of that means, we don’t know yet. It is still unfolding, but this is a conversation we will intentionally pursue in the next weeks and months.
Another priority you identified on that survey was justice. You spoke of ministry with the poor and concerns about gun violence and racism. Again, I would hold up Ruth as a story that is interwoven with justice. Ruth is bold, audacious even, as she works the system to get what she and Naomi need. If you only read one chapter this afternoon, read chapter 3 and allow yourself to see how bold and scandalous Ruth’s actions are.
One of our answers to “where do we go from here?” is that we continue pursuing justice. For the next 5 years, and beyond, we have committed ourselves to becoming an anti-racist community. This will mean listening carefully to each other, probably confronting hard truths about ourselves. It will mean understanding how the systems of white supremacy work in our culture and in our church, seeing the weight of oppression and evil in those systems (just like Ruth did) and working to defeat them. There is no simple Before and After to racism, but we have accepted the task of resistance as long as we live in this time where not everyone is free.
Where do we go from here? We go together, together, to seek relationship with those who are here and those who we might yet join. We go with faithfulness to Christ who is with us and ahead of us. We go forward together with courage . . . and all for the sake of love. Thanks be to God.
I’ve Been Meaning to Ask: What Do You Need?
Job 2:11-13, 2 Timothy4:9-18
June 13, 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://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n99dTGk8gf0
Bec is a friend I met at the Wild Goose Festival a few years ago. She describes herself as a Bapticostal misfit. Most of you would like her -- in small doses, maybe -- but you would like her.
Her primary ministry is with people experiencing homelessness in Atlanta. Her organization offers temporary shelter as well as several paths to permanent housing. A few weeks ago, she shared an incident that spoke to me about this question of needs and whose needs get served and how and by whom. She gave permission to relay this story in her own words.
Bec said, “I asked a pastor not to hand out food and tents in front of my building onetime.
The look on his face.
Charlie had had a heart attack in the dorm, and the guest service aid called 911. They were in route.”
“Imagine twenty people experiencing homelessness waiting for showers, some of whom have been working with outreach workers to find housing solutions, and then a church pulls up, pops up a table, starts talking about “Gawd,” and getting saved while handing out $40 tents.”
“Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches tossed at people, who will later throw those sandwiches on the sidewalk for the pigeons and cat sized rats.”
“Then the crack dealers and the pimps come out to work the crowd while this here preacher with his megaphone is out here talking about an eternal hell. Little plastic bags containing magic rocks and cash go through the crowd by the dope boys in the all-white Nikes, while Preacher Bob is convinced his oration skills are swaying the crowd towards salvation.”
“I walked up to him in humility and asked him to leave because the pop up revival is in the fire lane, and ole Charlie had a heart attack in the veterans dorm. I gave him my card and asked that he call me later to talk about figuring out a different way to work together. I kindly explained how we could partner together to provide restrooms and a dignified way to serve with those experiencing homelessness.”
“He then told me he was led by the holy spirit and had personally studied the WERD for 35 years, and he had this ministry TO THA HOMELESS for 12 years and no tattooed jezebel was going to stop him from saving the homeless. He was SENT by Gawd.”
“I gave him a closed-mouth smile, said nothing except ‘EMS is on the way and you’re in the fire lane.’ I was unable to persuade him to leave. But the blaring fire truck got his attention.”[1] End of story.
Now, if we were to have a conversation here and now about this incident and talk about what was done poorly, what could have been better, you would probably say things like Bec said. Bec’s own take-aways were these:
1) Think through what you want to do before coming from the suburbs into the city with your great “knowledge” This parachuting ministry doesn’t change people’s lives, but often disrupts their progress.
2) Come in humility, find out where and what God is doing.
And she said,
3) People experiencing homelessness often know God deeper than I do, and I have 8 years of advanced theological education. Never assume someone is homeless because they don’t know God. These are the children of God.
Many of you have had experiences like this one, where a person with good intentions made a situation worse instead of better. We might enjoy chalking up the many examples of what not to do, because this time it was so obvious, but I offer it as a reminder. It is much, much harder to recognize the same mistakes when we make them. And we do make them. Sometimes we make up our own minds that we know what someone else needs. Coincidentally, it often something that we have to give. Sometimes we fail to ask people what they need. Sometimes we refuse to be taught by those who are closer to the situation. I appreciate Bec’s counsel to come in humility, to find out where and what God is already doing.
That is something Job’s friends get right. At least at the beginning of the story. Job is in the midst of real trauma. His children have died; his health has been stripped away; his livelihood is gone. Any one of those by itself would be devastating. Job’s pain is immense. Three of his friends show up. They tear their clothes, they put dirt on their heads – which are ways of recognizing his grief and entering into it. And they sit with him in silence for days. They honor the weight of his trauma. They do not to fix it. Job himself needs time to figure out what he needs, and his friends just offer their presence as a gift of support.
Later on, as we know, they start theologizing, they fill the silence with their speculations about why he is suffering and how to fix it. That is not their best moment.
Sometimes, we do not know what we need, and the most loving thing another person can do is to sit with us and let us figure it out.
Sometimes, we have figured it out, and the hard part is sharing that out loud. Your responses to this week’s second question bore that out. One of you said this week that you changed the question to “if only I could ask for help”. Others spoke of intense stress, of feeling defeated, of not wanting to admit ignorance, of waiting too long to reach out. Recognizing that we might need help and being willing to ask for it or accept it are not necessarily the same thing.
That’s why I find the passage from 2 Timothy so compelling. Paul is in a Roman prison. He is awaiting trial, which he suspects is going to end in his death. He tells Timothy, “Do your best to come to me soon. Bring my cloak and the books and the parchments.” He is cold and lonely. Prison is monotonous. It will take Timothy some weeks or months to do what Paul asks and Paul desperately hopes to see him one last time. Paul says “Come before winter.” Come while you still can. Come now or never.
Can you hear the anguish? Paul names his needs, very specifically, and he names them to his protégé, Timothy. At one time, their relationship might have only flowed in the other direction, with Timothy relying on Paul. But now Paul is wise enough to open himself in this way.
Over the last few months, our sister Elaine has been helping me understand some of this. And she has graciously given me permission to share that with you. Elaine is ill. Many of us have been concerned and wanted to do something.
I have learned that sometimes, people want to help, but we are afraid of overstepping, of being a bother, and so after we have shown up for a while, instead of filling the silence with empty words like Job’s friends, we just wander away and our friend may feel abandoned.
I didn’t want to do that, so I kind of become a pest. At various times, over the last few months, I would imagine that I knew what Elaine needed, so I would call and offer.
“Elaine, you’re coming home from the hospital. Do you want me to sleep on your couch tonight?”
“Elaine, do you need a ride here or there?”
“What about groceries?”
Elaine would always very graciously thank me and very graciously decline my offers. But eventually we came to an agreement. We agreed that I would not pester her with what I thought she needed and in return, she would let me know what she actually needed. Now here’s the really important part – Elaine has kept her part of the deal.
She actually asks for help when she needs it. One time it was a ride. One time, it was soup. One time, she called me up and said, “Kathy, I have run out of water glasses. I don’t know what has happened to them, but if visitors come, I have to serve them water or iced tea in a mug. I could really use some plain old drinking glasses.”
And so, we met that need. I say “we” because I want you to understand that I am not doing this by myself. Elaine tells me what is needed and then I turn around and I ask for your help meeting the need. On that occasion, I got the glasses and one of you delivered them. On another occasion, some of you prepared food and I was the delivery person.
Elaine acknowledged that I would never have guessed that she needed those glasses without her telling me. It was something only she could name. And some people might have thought it was too small to mention. But Elaine kept our agreement and I so appreciate it.
You are a compassionate, caring congregation. Most of you are willing to do something for someone else at a moment’s notice. We are also a congregation that lives and moves within a culture that prizes self-sufficiency. Acknowledging that we need help, that we are overwhelmed or stressed out, that there is something we cannot do for ourselves right now, that requires a kind of humility that many of us are still learning. Elaine is modelling that for us. Would you join me in thanking her?
This way of being with one another is incarnational. We ask what do you need? We ask it of ourselves and of each other. We come together and bear witness to each other’s existence, our struggles and needs and we spend time together. As our hymn says, “Will you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you? Pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant too.”
Amen.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/rebeccadawncranford/posts/10100882651552178
I’ve Been Meaning to Ask: Where Does It Hurt?
1 Samuel 1:1-18
June 6, 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/6MEqzTz7ezY
It happened every year. They packed up the family and went to celebrate Thanksgiving. At Shiloh, they went to church where their food was cooked. Some of it was burned up on purpose. That was God’s part. A certain portion went to the priest. The rest was to be enjoyed by the family over the next two days. So when they sat around the table, Elkanah carved the roast that was theirs to share. The tradition in the land was that the oldest son got two helpings, but Elkanah did not keep that tradition. His tradition was to give two helpings to Hannah, who had no sons at all. He made no secret that Hannah was his favorite wife. That understandably angered Peninnah, his not-favorite, other wife.
Year after year, they packed up the family and celebrated Thanksgiving. Year after year, Elkanah carved the roast and gave twice as much to Hannah as to Peninnah. That made Peninnah feel hurt and rejected, so she took it out on Hannah by taunting her. Then Hannah would get upset and lose her appetite for the holiday meal. And Elkanah, in his clueless way, would say “Why are you so upset, Hannah?”
Hannah is a childless woman in a time and place where bearing sons is the total measure of her worth and honor. Elkanah loves her, but he doesn’t seem to understand the depths of her pain and despair. His efforts to help only make things worse.
This pattern goes on, year after year, until Hannah just cannot take it any longer. She leaves the table and goes to the temple to pour her heart out to God.
You probably remember other Biblical women who suffered with infertility. Women like Sarah and Rebekah. In their case, it was Abraham and Isaac, their husbands, who prayed and pleaded with God for a child. But in this story, it is Hannah herself who goes directly to God. It says “she was deeply distressed and she wept bitterly.”
She was broken-hearted and telling God about it. Perhaps she rocked back and forth, perhaps she paced. Either her lips moved in silent prayer, or Eli the priest was hard of hearing and couldn’t hear the words she said. He also did not expect to find a woman praying there. He jumped to the conclusion that she was drunk and told her to stop making a spectacle of herself.
Her pain is mocked by her sister-wife, diminished by her husband and invalidated by her spiritual leader. Perhaps something like that has happened to you. These are the things that teach us to hid our pain, to be ashamed of it. We may even start to believe that it is wrong to feel what we feel and we bury it deeper, which of course, does not heal anything.
Hannah’s pain and hurt is long-lasting. It is about one thing – infertility -- and also about many other things which have become part of its complexity. The writer of 1 Samuel devotes 18 verses to describing her hurt, so I invite us to sit with that for a bit, to recognize that this should be a place where we don’t have to pretend that everything is fine. This is a place where we can be real with each other.
. . .
Many of you will remember Leymah Gbowee. Several years ago we watched the film Pray the Devil Back to Hell. It was about the nonviolent movement of women who played a pivotal role in ending Liberia’s devastating, 14-year-long civil war. Leymah Gbowee was a key leader of that movement.
Leymah was the fourth of five daughters. Her name, Leymah means “what about me?” as in “why can’t I conceive a son?”[1] Her name suggests, what her memoir bears out, that there was pain and hurt in her family of origin.
Then when she was 17, her country went to war with itself. She personally endured much of the suffering inherent in war – the terror of enemy soldiers on her street, bullets through her living room, fleeing with her children to a refugee camp. She also managed to get some education during those years and she became a social worker, specializing in trauma counseling.
She became an organizer, organizing women whose voices were never heard in public arenas or private spaces where decisions were made, but who were always the victims of displacement, rape, starvation and other war crimes.
When she met with women, she would write the word NONSENSE on the chalkboard and then cross out the prefix NON. She told that women “Everything we will say in here makes sense. So don’t be afraid to talk. Say what is true for you”
In her book, Mighty Be Our Powers, she describes travelling to a camp for internally displaced people. In an outdoor shelter, fifty women gathered to share their experiences during the war. She called this exercise “Shedding the Weight” because it encouraged the women to divest themselves of the emotional burdens they were carrying. Listening to women unburden themselves was always hard, but on this one day, there were so many stories of violence and shame and grief, so many sobs and wails, that she reached a point where she didn’t think she could take any more.
“We can just stop,” she said. “It’s okay.”
Then a very old woman rose up on her walking stick, “Don’t let us stop!” she said. “The UN brings us food and shelter and clothes, but what you’ve brought is much more valuable. You’ve come to hear the stories from our bellies. Stories that no one else asks us about. Please, don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.”[2]
That old woman understood the power of being heard, of sharing your story, of having your pain acknowledged and validated.
That is the power that was healing for Hannah. After she poured out her hurt and pain to God, after Eli the priest finally respectfully acknowledged her, and prayed for her, the text says that she went home and ate and drank and was no longer sad.
There are two pivotal points in Hannah’s story. The first one is in verse 9, when she has carried her shame and despair as long as she can, the text says “Hannah rose.” After they had eaten and drunk at Shiloh, Hannah rose and presented herself before the Lord.
Hannah rose. She did not give up. She did not bury herself in bitterness or continue to lash out at Elkanah and Peninnah. Hannah rose. She got up and took action. With vulnerability and courage, she bears her whole story, her whole self to God.
Rev. James Forbes, former pastor at the Riverside Church, preached a now famous sermon called Hannah Rose. [3] In it, he suggested that anyone looking for a name for a daughter might choose that one – Hannah Rose – for what Hannah did in her hour of distress. There are at least twenty women who bear that name now, including his own grand-daughter.
The first turning point in this story is Hannah’s ability to rise and speak her truth. The second turning point happens in the encounter with Eli. Hurt is shared. Pain is acknowledged. And there is healing.
Where does it hurt? Beloved ones, for some of us, it is an act of faith and real courage to answer that. It requires trust that God is listening, that God cares.
When we stop to name what breaks our hearts, as some of us did this week, we get a glimpse of all that God is holding for us. We see the enormity and the depth of the pain in our families and neighborhoods, in our country and across the world. When we bear witness to the pain of others, when we listen with openness and acceptance, we share their suffering. And sometimes, we may be an instrument of peace and healing. It is one way that we follow the Christ who gives rest to those carrying heavy burdens and binds up the brokenhearted. Thanks be to God.
[1] Leymah Gbowee, with Carol Mithers, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer and Sex Changed a Nation at War, (New York, Beast Books, 2011), p. 9
[2] Mighty Be Our Powers, p.121
I’ve Been Meaning to Ask: Where Are You From?
Genesis 2:4-15; John 1:35-51
May 30, 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/s3Z9cm5jTw4
I have seen a couple of articles recently about how to drive a car. These articles are not aimed at brand-new drivers. They are intended for people who are out of practice because they mostly stayed home during the pandemic.
They are out of practice and they need to remember habits that used to come without conscious thought. Just like those drivers who are returning to the road, some of us are out of practice. We are a bit rusty on relationships with others. We kept our distance for more than a year and, now, we might need to remember a few things. So what I have to say today is not likely going to be new information. It is intended to help us re-member, to re-connect, with that part within ourselves that is curious and relational, and to reconnect with each other.
“Where are you from?” has often felt like a loaded question to me. I knew lots of people who had a simple answer. They were from one place – a single town or a region. It was always complicated for me. And usually the person asking me didn’t want to the complicated answer. They wanted a simple answer that would help them quickly size me up. I got this question a lot when I went to Texas for college. At that time, my simplest answer was “Chicago.” Most of the time, when I gave that answer, one of two things would happen. They would say to me “You’re from Chicago? Say Wisconsin.” So that they could do their impression of a Midwestern accent.
Or they would say, “Hey, I know someone from Chicago. Do you know so-and-so?’ And I would always look at them rather incredulously. Did they really not know that the odds were about one in three million that I would know the same person they knew in all of Chicago?
You see I wasn’t from Texas and while there were many other out-of-state students, we were seriously outnumbered by the Texans. When someone asked where you were from, they expected an answer with a place that they knew. If your answer was Paris or Pittsburg, the assumption was that you meant the towns by those names within Texas, not the ones in France or Pennsylvania. If you weren’t from Texas, they were sometimes at a loss for where to go in the conversation.
Where are you from can be a good relationship building question. It can mean “tell me about where you grew up” or “tell me about the place you live now”. It can mean “help me to understand where you’re coming from, what life experiences have you had that shape your ideas and attitudes now.” Or it can send a message that you’re not from around here and you don’t belong. The question can be used to make someone feel like an outsider.
We already know this. I am just helping us to remember.
In the passage that Pattie read for us, the titles for Jesus pile up. He is called Lamb of God, Rabbi, Messiah, the fulfillment of scripture and the guy from Nazareth. Each of the would-be disciples has some preconceptions about who Jesus is. This is part of John’s way of setting up his story about Jesus. Those titles and categories will be expanded or transformed or redefined by Jesus as the story unfolds, but this is also a reminder about human nature. We are not always comfortable with the unknown, and sometimes we rush to label people, to put them in categories as a way of overcoming our own anxiety.
It is interesting to see how Jesus dealt with this. Dr. Raj Nadella suggests that the term Rabbi does not really capture Jesus’ true identity in John’s gospel. Two of them ask where Jesus is staying, where he hangs out, and instead of answering him directly, Jesus says “come and see.” Jesus invites them to his place so that they can understand him more fully. He does not get bent out of shape because of their labels. He remains open to relationship.
As people get to know Jesus, they want to introduce him to others. Philip invites Nathanael to meet him, mentioning Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth. Nazareth was a small village, so insignificant that it is not mentioned one time in the entire Old Testament nor in Josephus' list of Galilean towns.[1] One scholar claims that Nathanael is from Cana,[2] which is a town not far from Nazareth. When Nathanael sneers “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” we may be seeing some rivalry between two neighboring villages. Whatever the reason for Nathanael’s skepticism, Philip doesn’t argue with him. He just extends the invitation to come and see. And Nathanael does.
Sometimes, we at Emmanuel have been very good at introducing others to Jesus, very good at sharing our faith. We have asked where are you from? in carefully curious ways. We have listened and welcomed people who offered all kinds of answers --
I am from right down the street.
I am from another country.
I live I poverty.
I live in a middle class neighborhood.
I am gay or straight or single or divorced.
I come from a more liberal stream of Christianity or politics. I come from a more conservative stream of Christianity or politics.
I want to be in relationship with you, but I’m hoping I don’t have to give up who I am in order to have that relationship. Sometimes we have done well with that.
And then, sometimes, we have not. Sometimes, we have allowed our preconceptions and assumptions about others to shut down real relationship before it ever began. Sometimes, we have been satisfied with the relationships we already have here, and been unwilling to invest the time and energy in new ones. Sometimes, we have busied ourselves with the tasks of church – of running meetings or setting up potlucks or teaching Sunday School or writing a sermon – and we have failed to be available to people who were just trying to come and see Jesus for themselves.
I say this as an introvert who doesn’t always want to be with people. I say it as one who has sometimes stayed safely behind the tasks and programs of church instead of venturing out with caring curiosity. I also say it as someone who has desperately needed to be received with care, to be known as myself. And I say it, as a pastor who has often been required to invest my time and energy into relationship with people I would not have sought out, people I would not have chosen. And my life is infinitely richer because of it.
I am not telling you anything new. I am just reminding us of what we already know.
Sarah Culberson is a woman who set out to answer the question “where am I from” for herself. That journey led to some unexpected places. The story is best heard in her own words. https://youtu.be/Ie_m_eBevUI
There are so many parallels between her story and our theme. She had preconceptions about her biological father, which she consciously had to set aside. She had to consider his life and circumstances before she could even start to look for him. Then he invited her to Sierra Leone. Maybe he even said “come and see” and she did. I loved the description of her welcome – being given a dress that showed she belonged, hearing the song “we are preparing for Sarah”, knowing that she didn’t have to do anything, just showing up was enough. It’s a great story.
I’m thinking about some other parallels. I’m thinking about times when you or I were received without reservation and what grace that was. I’m thinking about people who have shown up here among us and they have felt profoundly welcomed, almost as if we had been preparing just for them. And I’m thinking about people who are asking “can anything good come out of the church?” Some of them are skeptical, but curious, they might just come and see, if we would make the effort to invite them and to hang out together.
Over the last year, we have remembered some of the truths of Genesis 2, the passage we heard at the beginning of worship. That text describes the creation as a living organism, where the earth and inhabitants are inextricably joined to one another, where they depend on one another, and require one another for flourishing life.[3] The lethality of an invisible virus that spread across the entire world has reminded us of our interdependence. The isolation of pandemic has taught us how vital it is to be with other people. Some people are wondering in new ways about where we are all from, about the responsibility we have to each other.
That is the other parallel I heard in Sarah Culberson’s story. She showed up and was profoundly welcomed just as she was. But it didn’t end there. Receiving hospitality led to responsibility. Finding her people meant sharing their difficulties as well as their joys. And it also meant telling the story to a wider and wider audience, so that individuals could recognize the truth in it and respond to it in their own contexts.
Friends, that is a parable isn’t it? The kingdom of God is like the woman who was brave enough to ask where am I from and gracious enough to set aside her preconceptions about her father to meet him on his own terms. The kingdom of God is like the woman who went on a journey to an unknown, foreign place and was welcomed home with singing. It is like the one who receives hospitality and takes on responsibility in an ever-widening circle of grace, because we are created for curiosity and vitality and mutuality and relationship.
It can be like that for you and for me. Come and see.
[1] https://www.progressiveinvolvement.com/progressive_involvement/2018/01/epiphany-2-john-1-43-51.html
[2] Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John, Anchor Bible Commentary, Volume I (Garden City, NY: DoubleDay, 1966), p. 82.
[3] Kathleen M. O’Connor, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary: Genesis 1-25A, (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, 2018) p. 57.
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
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/
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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.