4/9/23 - With Fear and Great Joy - Matthew 27:55-28:10

With Fear and Great Joy

Matthew 27:55-28:10

April 9, 2023

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=eQI3-MVWkmU

In a good news/bad news situation, some people tend to focus on the bad news.

Here’s how I remember report cards growing up: I would bring home a listing of grades and comments from my teachers.  I would bring it home.  It would not be sent to my parents by email, because I went to school before email even existed.  I generally did pretty well in school, so fairly often, I might get something like all A’s and a B.   The B might have been in art or social studies. When my parents looked at the whole report, the first thing they would say would be “What went wrong in social studies?  Why didn’t you get an A there?”  Or if I got all A’s, but if there was a comment like “Kathy does fine, but she talks too much and distracts the other students” (hypothetically speaking, that’s not like a real-life example or anything) but if that kind of comment was on the card with straight A’s,  the comment is only the part my parents would focus on.  “Hello Mom and Dad, did you see all the A’s here?  Any thing you want to say about that?”

Now my parents aren’t here to defend themselves, so I’m going to point out that this my memory of the report card ritual.  They might remember it differently.  And maybe I remember it the way I do because in a good news/bad news scenario, I also have a tendency to give more weight, more attention to the bad news.

On several occasions, Jesus delivered the same good news/bad news to his disciples. At least three times, along the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem,  he told them that he was going to Jerusalem where he would suffer and be killed. That was, of course, the very bad news.  But every time he told them that, he also said that on the third day, he would be raised from the dead. Most of them got stuck on the bad news. Most of them never even heard the good news. 

But some of them did.   Remember that there are more than twelve disciples.  There were twelve named apostles, but they were within a larger group who followed Jesus.  Remember that not all the disciples are male.   Several women started the adventure with Jesus back in Galilee.  People said “Can anything good out of Nazareth, Jesus’ home town?”  But they followed Jesus anyway.  They stuck with him through adoring crowds and hostile opposition, through nights on the road and meals by the wayside.   Matthew says that the women provided for Jesus.  Luke explains that they were his financial backers.   These women travelled with him. They were there when he said he was going to Jerusalem.  They stuck with him all the way to the cross.  They watched in agony as he suffered and died.  How did they endure it?  But that was not all.  They stayed to see his body taken down from the cross.  They watched as Joseph of Arimathea carefully wrapped it and placed in the tomb and rolled the stone in front of it. 

But even after Jesus is buried, they are not done.  They come back on Sunday morning, to see the tomb.  Please notice the way that Matthew tells the story.  Unlike in some other gospels these women are not carrying spices. As they walk, they are not asking who will roll away the heavy stone that seals the tomb.  This is because they are not coming to mourn.  They are not coming to anoint a body.  They come to the tomb because they believe the good news part of Jesus’ good news/bad news message.  They heard Jesus say that he would be raised on the third day and they believe it.

The women come to see the tomb.  The Greek word translated “to see” is theoreo.  It is the root of our word, theory.  It means to analyze or discern, to look at something for a purpose or to find out by seeing.  The women come to the tomb to find out how and when Jesus will be raised.  They come with anticipation and expectation.

They go to see resurrection.  They arrive in time to experience an earthquake.

Here’s what I understand about earthquakes. Tectonic plates are these big pieces of the earth that are always slowly moving.  When two plates rub up against each other, the pressure builds along their intersection and when that friction is resolved, it leads to a release of energy which we feel as an earthquake. That energy is often disruptive and sometimes destructive.  It can reduce magnificent buildings and re-order the landscape. 

Foreshocks are small earthquakes that happen before a big one.  Matthew describes foreshocks before the Resurrection. When Jesus enters the city on Palm Sunday, Matthew says that the whole city was shaking.  And then again on Friday, when Jesus takes his last breath, the earth shakes and rocks are split.  The tension has been building.  The tectonic plate that is the kin-dom of God is drawing closer and closer to the tectonic plate that represents the worst of humanness – our fear, our selfishness, our grasping for power, our sin. As they rub up against each other, the friction increases, the energy leaks out, the earth rumbles a warning of what is coming. 

The women are at the tomb when the Big One hits.  The earth quivers and quakes and heaves. The guards shake and fall in a dead faint. The women stand unmoved.  An angel appears and rolls away the stone and shows the women what they came to see – the body is gone.  Jesus is risen.  The angel says “Do not be afraid because Jesus has been raised.” Just like he said.  Just as you believed.

“So go tell the disciples”, the angel says, “that Jesus has been raised and is going ahead of you and will meet you in Galilee.”  The women immediately obey, leaving the tomb with fear and great joy.  With fear and great joy. 

Of course they are afraid.  They watched Jesus die an unspeakable death. That trauma and horror are never going to leave them.  They just lived through an earthquake and survived a conversation with a supernatural being. Of course the are a bit trembly. 

But how great is their joy!  Their friend and teacher is alive.  It is surreal, but true. In raising him from the dead, God has vindicated him.  He was right all along.  And they were right to trust him, to believe his message.

Fear and great joy. Fear and joy. I wonder if this is what it has always meant for then to follow Jesus. Fear of the getting a reputation as one of those irregular women who don’t stay in their place,  joy at being fully included, accepted by Jesus. Fear that it all might fall apart or turn out to be a scam. Joy with every insight gained from his teaching.  Joy at bearing witness to profound healing.  Fear when he insisted on Jerusalem. Great joy that they believed his entire good news/bad news message and he is alive.  Fear and great joy are part and parcel of the adventure they have with Jesus.

Matthew is holding up the women as model disciples. They serve Jesus.  They stick with him.  They believe him.  They demonstrate the courage that most of the male disciples lack.

Rome was strategic in its use of crucifixion. “The victim was paraded through the streets on the way to the place of torture. This perp walk to Golgotha was intended to tempt supporters to step forward to defend the victim. If anyone did, they would immediately be crucified as well.  And of course, no one did.  Would-be supporters were made to discover their cowardice.  THAT was the point. Crucifixion was intended to prevent rebellion by teaching would-be rebels that they were cowards who did not dare to defend their leader.”[1] 

The men fled Thursday night when Jesus was arrested, but the women stuck with him until he died. They watched his burial. And at dawn on the third day, with Roman soldiers guarding the tomb, they went back alone.  It was very dangerous to be associated with someone Rome had tortured to death, but they did it anyway.  This is courage of true discipleship. 

A Cheyenne proverb says “The people are never defeated until the hearts of the women are on the ground.” 

The gospel writers all agree that women were the first to bear witness to the resurrection, the ones sent to tell the men.  At the center of our faith story, is this day when the hearts of the women were not on the ground. 

And lest you suspect me of sexism, I will quickly recognize Joseph of Arimathea. The corpses of those crucified were generally left to rot, exposed to the elements and animals.  Another part of the terror and humiliation. So when Joseph steps forward to ask for Jesus’ body in order to bury him, he also risks guilt by association.  His courage is like the women’s. 

Following Jesus requires courage  -- both before and after resurrection. The women are still afraid even after they know Jesus is alive.  They feel the fear and tell their truth anyway.

If you have lost your sense of adventure with Jesus, if fear is crowding out your joy, I understand.  It is hard, probably even unreasonable, to think that we can sustain Easter morning delight 24/7.  We remember that the One we follow intimately knows the terror of Good Friday and every kind of human pain, and is present with us to share them. But if fear or loneliness or sorrow or pain is threatening our joy, then perhaps we can draw strength from the courage of Joseph and Mary Magdalene and the other Mary who acted despite their fear. 

It takes courage to live in light of resurrection.  The resurrection is disruption on a cosmic scale.  The ground has shifted under our feet. The very earth is re-arranged.  Nothing can go back to the way it was before.  You cannot have resurrection and also still have the world as it was yesterday.[2]

Life lived in light of resurrection breaks the status quo.  It looks death in the face without flinching.  It listens to women and children and others who tend to be silenced.  It redistributes power. It summons us to continue the work that Jesus started.  

Life lived in light of resurrection is courageous and free.  The resurrection is an earthquake. It changes everything. And so we live, with fear and great joy. Because Christ is Risen.  Christ is risen indeed. 

[1] Richard Swanson, https://provokingthegospel.wordpress.com/2017/04/12/a-provocation-easter-sunday-april-16-2017-matthew-281-10/

[2] William Willimon, “Easter as an Earthquake”, Pulpit Resource, April 4, 1999

3/26/23 - Can These Bones Live? - John 11:1-41; Ezekiel 37:1-14

Can These Bones Live?

John 11:1-41; Ezekiel 37:1-14

March 26, 2023

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=eQI3-MVWkmU

We heard two familiar sacred stories this morning. The story of Ezekiel’s vision in the valley of the dry bones and the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.  These are stories of hope and despair, of deep grief and loss, of weariness and struggle, stories of life and death.  Each story is rich in detail.  There is much worth exploring in each one.  As much as the Bible nerd inside me would enjoy it, I’m not doing that today.

Instead, I am focused on the question “Can these bones live?”  This is a question that people are asking in so many different ways right now. 

Can democracy survive?

How will Ukraine and Russia ever make peace?

Will the earth as we know it exist for our grandchildren?  

People are concerned for so many of our institutions – will the bones of health care live? 

What about schools?

What about churches?  

For some of us the question may be asked about our personal lives and relationships. Many people are weary. We are worn down from the years of the pandemic. There is still some life in our bones, we think, but many days we just go through the motions.

We are not the first to feel weary or despairing or half-alive.  In times like this, we may seek the wisdom passed down by those who lived before us.

Ezekiel is one of the prophets of the exile, deported to Babylon in the 6th century BCE. The dry bones in his vision 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 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 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.

In that dry valley, Ezekiel speaks to the bones and they come together.  There is bone and muscle and skin, but no life. Most of the requirements have been met.  The skeletons look like real humans again but they’re still dead.

If we were talking about an institution, the dry bones of government, for example, we might say we might say there are laws and enforcers and judges, but no life. Or if it was a church of dry bones, we might see preaching and programs and governance structure, but still no vitality.    

There is no life in the dry bones until they breathe and they do not breathe until the spirit of God fills them.  We remember that breath and spirit are the same word in Hebrew. 

It seems if you are going to come back to life, after war or tragedy, after a long deep struggle, you have to breathe.  Life is in the breath.  Life is in the spirit.  

Let’s breathe together for a minute, shall we? Take a deep breath in . . . and let it out. Life is in the breath. One more time. Breathe in, feel your lungs expand.  Know that you are alive. Life is in the spirit.  Let it out.

The dry bones are lifeless without the breath, without the spirit.  If we are feeling less than lively right now, it might be that we just need to breathe for a while.

It occurs to me that a person who has stopped breathing cannot perform CPR on themselves.  The breath of life comes from beyond them, sometimes from a human rescuer who shares oxygen with them for a time, but ultimately the breath of life comes from God.  When we feel lifeless, what we need most is the enlivening of God’s spirit. 

. . .

Let’s consider the raising of Lazarus, another one of our sacred stories. Here’s what I notice:  Lazarus is dead. The breath of life is gone.  But Jesus calls him urgently.  Jesus summons him with a command “Lazarus, come out.”  Jesus calls him to life with the power that only he has.

But after that, two more things happen.  The first is that Lazarus responds.  Lazarus rouses himself.  He has been dead for 4 days.  He has firmly settled into death.  He is comfortable in the tomb. Surely it would be easier just to stay dead, to ignore the call to life.  But Lazarus does not. With difficulty, he makes his way out of the tomb.

Jesus’ second instruction is to the people around the tomb. When Lazarus stumbles out, he is still wrapped in a shroud.  He cannot see and can barely move because, in spite of his efforts, he is still bound in the clothes of death.  Jesus tells the people “Unbind him.  Set him free.”

Can these bones live?  Ezekiel says that only God knows.  He’s got that right. Life and death are a mystery.  Life requires more than skin and bones and muscle.  Life is in the breath, the spirit which God supplies.  But it seems that God is not always the only one involved. Sometimes we who may feel dead must respond to the summons to life, even when it takes great effort.  And sometimes, it takes a community to help us escape the trappings of death.  Coming to life again is a collaborative effort. God breathes life, but we also have a part to play.

We have heard two sacred stories.  I offer one more.  May it be contemporary parable.  This is one of the good stories I promised from the transformative story-telling conference two week ago. 

Mark Yaconelli is a spiritual director, retreat leader, community activist, and storyteller. He is a creative, soulful person who has done a lot of youth ministry. This story comes from one of those youth ministry experiences.    

Several years ago, some one came up with the idea of writing a book for teenagers on the theology of the church.  They got grant funding for the project and invited 15 theologians to collaborate.  They asked Mark to serve as a consultant for the project.  He says that he’s not a theologian, but he had a reputation for understanding teenagers, so he was invited and he agreed. [1]

They all got together at the appointed time and place – fifteen theologians, academic types from across different denominations and schools, each writing a different chapter in the book Mark listened to their ideas for a while and then he said, “I just have one suggestion.  Since this book is for young people, why don’t we, you know, get some actual teenagers involved?” 

So they agreed.  Each theologian left that meeting with the assignment of finding a teenager who was willing to be their partner in this work.  They set up a series of weekend meetings over the next few months. They would meet at a hotel and have long theological conversations.  The teens were bright and engaged high schoolers. They were involved in extra-curricular stuff, but they made this project a priority.  Between meetings, they were even reading classic theology. They showed up for the weekends with backpacks full of AP Bio homework and readings from scholars like Tillich or Neibuhr.

It was one of the weekends when they were meeting in a fancy hotel, the kind often used for conventions or conference. Those hotels often have signs welcoming the various groups who are present for the weekend.  Mark noticed the name of their group on a sign, and he also noticed that a group of Southern Baptists happened to be there too.  

Saturday had gone according to plan.  It was almost over. They had a series of long serious conversations. The kids had shown up.  The theologians had shown up. Everyone had engaged with the assigned content at the right times. But energy was low.  Most of the joy had been sucked out of the process.  Everything on the planned scheduled was done, but Mark told the youth that there was one more meeting just for them.  He told them to gather in his room at 10:30 p.m.

And they did.  At 10:30 p.m., they all crowded into his room.  He told them, “Our final event for the day is a game of Capture the Flag.  You’ll see on this white board that I’ve put you into two teams. One team gets the even number floors, the other gets the odd-numbered floors. You’ll see on the board the room numbers of our theologians.  Your assignment is to capture all the theologians and take them to the lobby.  And here’s one rule  – the elevators are Switzerland, neutral territory where you can’t capture them.” 

“Also,” he said, “you might run into hotel security.  They are part of the game too.  They don’t know it though.  Do whatever they tell you, but if they ask who you are, say that you’re with the Southern Baptist group.” 

The youth set off to capture their theologians.  Mark gave them a head-start and then he took the stairs to another floor to see what was happening.  As he walked down one hallway, a door suddenly opened and the occupant of that room whispered “Stop. If you keep going that way, you will be ambushed.  Get in here quickly.” Mark said he had never seen this man before.  But he ducked into the room.  The stranger said, “I don’t know what’s going on, but I want in on it.” 

So he and the man went down to another floor, where they watched as one of the theologians clung to the sides of an open elevator.  He was shouting “This is Switzerland” while two teens pried his hands loose and captured him anyway. Over and over again, these kinds of scenes repeated themselves.  I’m sure that many people’s peace was disturbed and possibly the blame fell on a certain tribe of Baptists. 

Finally, all the theologians had been rounded up and everyone was gathered in the lobby.  It was close to midnight and the only open place was the hotel bar, which was empty. So they were able to get some tables together at the back. They ordered some munchies and soft drinks and everyone began telling their stories about being captured or resisting capture and what other people did or said and all the details of the night.  There was a lot of laughter.  Mark let that conversation go on for a long time and then he said, “This, right here, is the kingdom of God.  This is what it should feel like.  This is what you want in your book.  If you don’t have this, you don’t have the church.” 

…

Can these dry bones live?  Only God knows. The spirit is as close to us as breath.  Beloved ones, as long as God’s spirit is breathing in us, let us rise to the summons.  Thanks be to God.

[1] This is the story as I remember it from Mark’s telling at The Porch Gathering, Montreat, NC March 9-12, 2023

3/19/23 - Who Sinned? - John 9:1-41

Who Sinned?

John 9:1-41

March 19, 2023

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=w-ns4A0fFak  

The man in our story is not named.  I’m going to call him Dan for convenience, but that is not his real name. Dan knows who he is. He is an adult, able to think and act for himself.  He is the son of faithful people, church members. He does not have the gift of sight and because of this, sometimes he has to beg for coins or food or whatever someone is willing to share.  This is his life. We are not privy to his internal thoughts.  Has he made peace with his situation?  Or is he angry, depressed, sad? We don’t know. 

The people around him know who is he too. Dan was born blind.  Some of them remember when he was born.  They have watched him grow up.  Some of them may pity him or pity his parents.  Some of them may admire his ability to get from place to place, to accomplish the tasks of daily life without being able to see.

Some may know him personally and some may avoid knowing him, but everyone knows one dominant story about him.  The story they know is that his blindness is God’s will. His blindness is God’s punishment for sin.  They’re not sure whether he sinned, which he would have had to have done before he was even born, or whether his parents sinned, but they know that someone sinned.  When Jesus’ disciples ask “who sinned, this man or his parents?” they’re just asking out loud what everyone else is already wondering. 

I spent last weekend at a conference on storytelling.  Maybe that is why I am noticing at least three stories swirling around within this chapter. 

The first one is the blame story.  It is the story that the community tells.  The neighbors, the religious leaders, even Jesus’ disciples, -- they all know that someone is to blame, someone is at fault, someone is responsible for Dan’s lack of sight.

Why do we need to assign blame?  Because we understand cause and effect. If we know what caused the problem, we tell ourselves, then we can control ourselves or our lives so that we will avoid having it happen to us.  Who sinned? Who can we blame?  It’s the kind of question people ask all the time in the face of tragedy or crisis.

Who sinned that this person was killed in a car accident?

Who sinned that a gunman showed up in that movie theatre, at that middle school?

Who sinned that that person has cancer? 

Dan’s community doesn’t know exactly why Dan is blind, but they have narrowed it down.  It is either his fault or his parents. This is the blame story.

The second story is shame.  It’s not quite as obvious as blame, but it’s there.  We catch a glimpse of it in Dan’s parents.  When they are questioned by the religious leaders, they say “We don’t know.  Dan is a grown-up.  Ask him.” The gospel writer explains that they are afraid if they say what they believe to be the truth, they will be kicked out of the church, ostracized even further than they already are.  They know that people blame them for Dan’s blindness.  They accept some or all of that blame. They feel the shame of it.

This is not just a first-century phenomenon. Today’s parents face the possible narrative of shame any time their child seems different, any time the child doesn’t meet some arbitrary academic standard, or colors outside the lines, wears the wrong clothes, makes a mistake, chooses an unexpected career path or life partner – the parents may wonder “What did I do wrong?”  They feel inadequate and hope that no one else will find out. 

Dan may also be telling himself the shame story.  In a culture that blamed him for his own disability, it is likely that he would have internalized that story.  Everything wrong in his life is his fault.  There’s no point in even trying to change.  It’s just who he is and always will be. 

Under blame and shame is fear.  The blame story and the shame story are actually just two versions of the fear story.   The neighbors, the religious leaders are afraid that it might happen to them, that they might not be able to see, They’re afraid of not being able to make a living, not being able to cope with being blind. Dan and his family are afraid of being banished, excluded from communal relationships. 

And all of that fear is being laid on God.  If God causes blindness, then really God is the one to be feared, right? That’s the only explanation they know for the blindness, but they don’t really want to put it all on God.  What kind of God would strike a baby blind? The explanation has to make sense.  It has to be something they can live with.  And what they can live with is the notion that God only withholds the gift of sight from people who deserve it, people who sin in the womb or their parents. 

To me, that God seems harsh.  That God is not consistent with the God of Genesis who stoops to create humans and animals and water and trees and who delight in the goodness of that creation.  That God is not loving . . .

but that God is worthy of fear.  And fear is something we understand. Sometimes we choose the fear narrative because a fearsome God is predictable and if we can predict, we tell ourselves that we can control or avoid.  We think that being afraid keeps us safe. 

The fear narrative is powerful.  It is so much a part of our story that we often don’t realize it.  Some of us have been taught that God is fearful, that striking a human being blind is exactly the kind of punishment God might do.  That is not something I believe at all, but I know some of us do.  I would just point out that Jesus disputed that.  The disciples’ unconscious assumption was that God was, in fact, punishing Dan for someone’s sin and that Jesus’ response was very matter of fact “No, no, this is not about sin.  You are asking the wrong question.”

When bad things happen, some of us might think that it is God’s punishment.  But that is not the only way the fear story plays out.  We don’t always blame God. Sometimes the fear story plays out in the myth of scarcity. We tell ourselves that there is not enough for everyone, so we have to get ours by any means necessary.  Sometimes fear gets located in “them”, the identified boogeyman.  “They” are against “us”.   “They” are the media or the opposing political party or non-Christians or citizens of another country or drag queens.  The fear story says that if we can just control “them” or get rid of “them,” then everything will be fine. But until then, we keep telling the fear story, thinking it keeps us safe. 

Fear can be a good thing.  It reminds us to look both ways, keeping us from getting hit by a car or standing too close to a fire.  But if the fear story is the one we tell over and over again, it robs us of the joy of life.  It drags us down to the level of sheer survival. It causes us to devalue and disregard others who bear the image of God.  It is not the abundant living Jesus came to share.

There is one more storyline that develops in this chapter. It emerges from Dan, the man who was born blind.  It is his testimony. 

As Dan tells his story over and over again, his self-understanding changes.  He says,

“I was blind, but now I see.”

 “I could not do that before, but I can now.”

“I am a person who sees!”

I imagine that Dan doesn’t really have words to describe this huge change.  He may not trust at first that it is even real.  But as he keeps telling the story, he believes it a little more each time. 

As he tells the story over and over again, he also understands more and more about who Jesus is.  First, Jesus is a stranger who he cannot see, a man who touches his eyes with mud and tells him to go wash.  Then, Dan tells his story another time, to the religious authorities and this time he concludes that Jesus is a prophet.  The next time, they interrogate him, Dan says that Jesus must be from God. And finally, when he gets to see Jesus in person, he calls him Lord and he worships him.

This is not the fear story.  We might call this the courage story or the trust story.  Dan trusts his experience.  Dan trusts the new thing God is doing in him.  His story is no longer one of shame and self-blame. 

Dan believes that change is possible.  Not just for himself, but for his neighbors.  When they doubt that he is the same person, he repeats his story “yes it’s me.  I used to be blind, but now I see.” 

He believes change is possible, not just for himself, but for the leaders. “Surely this man is from God. Don’t you want to follow him?”

The clergy try to bully him “You don’t know anything, you’ve been a loser since you were born.” 

He refuses to listen to their fear story any more. He pays a price for that.  The clergy drive him out.  Losing his community is undoubtedly painful, but I suspect it is a trade he is willing to make—giving up the illusion of control for trust. 

James Baldwin was born in Harlem in 1924.  From birth, he was black and gay. There were and still are narratives of blame and shame about being black or being gay in our culture.  Baldwin knew those narratives well, but he did not let them define him. He claimed the power of defining himself.  He said many insightful things about trust and courage.  One thing he said was "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."[1]

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Jesus changes the life of this man and in the process, the man faces his fears and his life changes even more dramatically.  He trusts his own experience with Jesus.  He trusts the new thing that God is doing in him.  The more he tells that story, the more trusting and courageous he becomes.   

Friends, this is the kind of insight and vision Jesus offers, to free us from the fear that constantly whispers blame and shame, to help us lay down recrimination and scapegoating and to step forward with trust and courage. 

God is at work within us and among us.  May we receive that with trust and courage, held by the love that casts out fear.  Amen.

[1] 1962 January 14, The New York Times, Section: The New York Times Book Review, As Much Truth As One Can Bear by James Baldwin,.

3/5/2023 - How Do We Begin Again? - John 3:1-17

How Do We Begin Again?

John 3:1-17

March 5, 2023

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=O_94F2zbXCY

Earlier this week and again just a few minutes ago, I invited you to remember a time when you had to start over, in a new place, or re-learning a skill you thought you had mastered. Some feelings already identified on the Wondering Wall include loneliness, being overwhelmed, angry, frustrated, afraid. If you were able to get in touch with what that felt like, you might imagine Nicodemus with those feelings. 

Nicodemus is an important man in all the important ways of his day.  He is a Pharisee, which puts him on the liberal, progressive, side of religious leadership.  He is a member of the Sanhedrin, something like Israel’s supreme court.  He is educated and well-off.   

He comes to Jesus in some ways representing that community.  He says, “We know that you are from God.”  It is a confident opening line – not a question, but a statement of what “we know.”   He addresses Jesus as Rabbi.  Nicodemus is used to being called Rabbi himself.  At first glance, this might be a conversation between equals, between those who know the right things, those who have the right credentials.

We don’t know why Nicodemus initiates this conversation.  Is it merely curiosity?  Does he want to take on Jesus as a protégé, guiding him into the ranks of respectability?  Or is Nicodemus in the midst of a personal crisis, looking for something that his political and religious success hasn’t given him?   We don’t know, but it is to his credit that Nicodemus seeks him out.  Whatever the reason, Nicodemus takes the initiative and goes directly to Jesus.  And the conversation, which he starts out with such confidence, quickly degenerates into one that appears very confusing to him. 

Jesus keeps using expressions that have double meanings.   Jesus says “you must be anothen”   Anothen means two things at the same time.  It can mean  from above and it can mean again.  So Jesus might be saying “you must be born again” or “you must be born from above”

Nicodemus tries to stick with what he knows, so he zeroes in on the born again meaning.   That doesn’t make much sense to him – how can a grown man enter into his mother’s uterus and start all over again?  The other meaning, the idea of being born from above, might have made more sense, but it also might have meant re-arranging his categories, thinking outside his normal boxes.  It’s much easier to go on the attack, to make it seem like Jesus is being ridiculous.  

The tone of the conversation becomes a bit antagonistic. Nicodemus acts as though Jesus speaking nonsense.  Jesus responds with mild insult.  Did you catch Jesus’ line in the youth video “Aren’t you a teacher? Why don’t you know this?” 

Well done, Spencer, that was a perfect delivery. 

Jesus invites Nicodemus to be born anew, to begin again, and Nicodemus resists. He has lived through a lot of life.  He knows what he knows, about God, about human beings, about how to do church and life. He does not want to start over.  If he attempts it, he may be lonely, overwhelmed, angry, frustrated or afraid. 

Nicodemus seems to be utterly sincere about his faith and at the same time, he is complacent about his knowledge of God and God’s will.  That’s why Jesus’ barb is so well-placed.  “Aren’t you a teacher? Why don’t you know this?” 

Nicodemus is a teacher and he does know things.  But he is comfortable in what he knows.  And that should give us pause.  We who have lived a lot of life, who have jumped through a lot of hoops to establish ourselves. We who are at home in this sanctuary.

One scholar says “We are meant to identify with Nicodemus. We, like Nicodemus are religious people who tend to be overconfident in our faith based religious knowledge. Like Nicodemus, we can become confined by the established beliefs, by certainty and then we are not prepared to hear what is really new in the revelation of Jesus. Nicodemus is not a figure of the past. He lives in the heart of every believer who is tempted to settle down in the secure religious wisdom of the establishment and therefore resist the challenges and joys of ongoing revelation and a God who is always doing something new.”[1]   

Opening ourselves to the new thing that God is doing, beginning again just when we had gotten the hang of it – we tend to resist that. But sometimes, God’s Spirit blows through with the force of a tornado and changes the landscape. 

As one of my colleagues puts it, “The Spirit isn't going to let you stay where you are. Someday you will have a new experience. Someday something will happen in your life. Someday your world will change. Someday, maybe, your world will fall apart. Mine has a time or two. Then, what you believe now maybe won't be adequate to put your world back together again. That is when some people are ready for the Spirit to renew their lives. Up to then it couldn't have happened, wouldn't have happened. But now things have changed, they have changed, and for the first time, they are ready.”[2]  

It seems like Nicodemus is not quite ready for the change Jesus suggests.  He seems to walk away from this conversation unconvinced or at least unsure of his future with Jesus.   Maybe it takes a while for him to understand.  Maybe his world falls apart and he puts it back together in a new way.  We don’t get to know the details. 

But we do know that Nicodemus comes back into Jesus’ life.  One time is in the middle of John’s gospel when Jesus is in trouble with the authorities.  When the Sanhedrin talks about him, trying to figure out how they should arrest him, Nicodemus speaks up for Jesus, saying that they should hear Jesus out before making a decision.  Jesus doesn’t get arrested that time.  And then after Jesus dies on the cross, it is Nicodemus who brings 100 pounds of spices and wraps the body in linen with the help of Joseph of Arimathea and together they bury him.  I wonder if that extraordinary amount of spices is an indication of Nicodemus’ regret that he hadn’t started over, in a more visible way, while Jesus was still alive.

How do we begin again? That is the million dollar question, isn’t it?  How do we start over when the world has fallen apart? Or how and why do we begin again when we’re comfortable with the life we have?  

The conversation with Nicodemus comes to an end with what is probably the most often quoted verse in the Bible “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” 

Belief is a central concept here.  Belief in Jesus leads to salvation.  The conversation with Nicodemus seems to have been about belief – beliefs about being born a first time and a second time, beliefs about the wind, and how God works. It seems to have been a mostly intellectual conversation. But this is one of those times when Jesus’ words have layers of meaning.

In John 3:16, the Greek word translated believes could just as accurately be translated as trusts.  Does this sound different to you? “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who trusts in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” I think it does.  

Jesus wants Nicodemus not just to believe with his mind, but to trust with his heart.  If beginning again is full of fear and loneliness and frustration, Jesus wants Nicodemus to trust that it will be worth it. Jesus is inviting Nicodemus, and us, to let ourselves be carried along by God’s Spirit into a life we did not expect or design.

The way to begin again, I think, has a lot more to do responding to the spontaneous guidance of the Spirit than with careful, methodical planning.  It has more to do with heart than head.  It’s more about surrender than certainty.  We can begin again when our trust outweighs our fear, when we choose active, ongoing relationship with God over caution or complacency. 

“What would it mean for us to understand that we are born of the Spirit? Most of us think we know who God is, who God calls us to be, what God wants us to do. What if we were to stop telling God what we know, to recognize that God is bigger than our naming of God, and to listen for God's Word to sweep over us without direction from us. What if we did not hold back but allowed the wind to take us to places not on our agenda? What would happen to us if we listened for God to call forth from us that which we did not recognize as being possible?[3]

Friends, things have changed. It has not been easy, but we have changed. I think that maybe, out of necessity or desperation, we are poised to trust more deeply than before.    May we lean into the wind of God’s spirit and unfurl ourselves into the grace of beginning again.   

 [1]Sandra Schneiders, Written That You May Believe:  Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel (Chestnut Ridge, PA;  The Crossroad Publishing, 2003).

[2] Rev. Fred Kane in his sermon, “Nick at Night” posted to the Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary list-serv, February 15, 2008

[3] Rev. Dr. Laura Mendenhall  in her sermon “Born of the Wind”  http://day1.org/677-born_of_the_wind

2/26/2023 - Who Will You Listen To? - Genesis 3:1-13a

Who Will You Listen To?

Genesis 3:1-13a

February 26, 2023

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=kq55tAL4fvw

The Bible stories we’re exploring this Lent are full of questions. Many of them are about people who bring questions to Jesus. Some of them are stories we return to again and again because the questions that human beings share haven’t changed much across the centuries. Our theme for the season is Seeking: Honest Questions for Deeper Faith.  In other words, we are going to encounter some questions every week.

It seems appropriate, then, to start by thinking about how we approach questions.  There are some people who need permission to ask questions. This is not necessarily true of the vocal majority of us at Emmanuel.  Most of us are actually kind of fond of questioning each other or ourselves.  We are comfortable questioning accepted doctrines or standard interpretations of the Bible. In fact, if someone tries to suppress questions or to provide answers we think are too glib, they are likely to trigger our Oppositional Defiant Baptist Disorder. But some of us may need permission or enough time and space to ask our questions and that is OK.

We begin with the question “Who will you listen to?” Where will you get reliable information?  What are the messages you choose to receive?  Do they come from elders or teachers or healers? Are they the voices of friends or politicians or salespeople? There are messages coming our way all the time and we have to discern who to listen to.

When the world began, it seems that there were fewer voices clamoring for attention. The first voice, of course, was God’s. From God,  the man and woman had heard a purpose – to till and keep the garden.  They had heard permission – to eat freely from the trees in the garden.  And they had heard a prohibition –not to eat from the tree of knowledge. Just three things to keep track of – purpose, permission and prohibition.[1]

However, there is another voice that makes itself heard. It is the voice of the serpent. We should notice that, in this story, the devil is not mentioned.  In the Garden of Eden, apparently snakes can talk.  Perhaps in the Garden of Eden, all animals can talk. 

Anyway, ultimately it is the snake’s voice that the man and woman choose to listen to.  We often say it is the devil, but the Bible does not say that.  When this story was being told around campfires, when this story was being written down, the story of the devil as a fallen angel had not been told. When this story was being told around campfires and written down, what might have existed was the idea of the satan who later became identified with Satan who later became identified with the devil. In Hebrew, satan means accuser or adversary.  In the time that this story comes from, the satan, the adversary, is a heavenly being who sometimes walks the earth with instructions from God.  In this story, it is not Satan who speaks to the woman, it is the snake.  We need to read the story on its own terms.

God says “Don’t eat of the tree of knowledge or you will die.”

The snake says, “Did God really say that?”

The woman says, “Yes.”
The crafty snake says, “Go ahead. Eat it. You won’t die.”

The woman listens to the snake.  She eats the fruit.  She gives some to the man and he eats it.

It turns out that the snake told the truth, partly.  Like all good misinformation campaigns, there is some truth in the lie.  The truth is that they do not die a physical death.  But God told the truth as well, something died.  We might call it the death of their naïve innocence.[2]  They learn that not every voice is to be trusted.  They learn that a life of wisdom requires the ability to discern.

When they eat the fruit, they do not die; instead they see more clearly.  But it turns that seeing more clearly wasn’t really a blessings.  Something does die:  the joy of unselfconsciousness.[3]  That is when they realize that they are naked and vulnerable. 

The relationship with God changes.  The next time God comes to the garden, they hide because they are naked and afraid. Their nakedness is not news to God.  They’ve been naked the entire time and it was never an issue until now. But now they are afraid.  Now they have done the one thing God asked them not to and the relationship is altered.

I have some questions about this story.  I want to know why they don’t talk to God after they hear from the snake, before they eat the fruit.  Whey don’t they ask for more information about the tree of knowledge? And my other question is this --  if the garden is such a good place, full of harmony and wholeness, why does it have such a dangerous tree in the first place? 

My bigger concerns are about how this story has been interpreted, how it has been deeply woven into some of the first messages that we receive about God and ourselves.

This ancient story was used by Christian theologians in support of an idea called original sin.  That idea came from St. Augustine some 300 years after Jesus.  The doctrine of original sin says that when Adam ate the fruit in disobedience to God, that was the first sin.  And when he did that, something changed in his body.  That change is genetic, something that gets passed down in human DNA to every generation since Adam. All the way to you and me.  We are born sinful because of Adam and Eve.  That’s the prevailing popular message of this story. 

I want to push back on that a little. Actually a lot.   I find it interesting that this doctrine of original sin relies on a story in which the word sin does not occur.  There are several words for sin in Hebrew.  None are used in the Bible until Cain murders Abel outside the garden.[4]  This story is not central to a Biblical understanding of sin.  The Hebrew Bible does not reference it at all.  Neither does Jesus.

You know the Calvin and Hobbes comics, right? Calvin is the 6-year-old boy.  Hobbes is his stuffed tiger.  In one of the comic strips, Calvin asks

 “Do you think that babies are born sinful? 

That they come into the world as sinners?”

Hobbes the tiger replies

 “No, I think they’re just quick studies.” 

I’m going to agree with Hobbes on this nature/nurture question. We are not born sinful, but we quickly learn to get our way, even if it means hurting others. People are not perfect, but they are not irrevocably flawed either. I am not denying the existence of sin, not by any means, but I do want to hear this story on its own terms.

The Bible says that after they ate the fruit and knew that they were naked, God made clothes for them. And after that, they left the garden.  Disobedience has consequences.  It changes the nature of their relationship with God, with each other, with the creation. But it does not sever the relationship. God leaves the garden and stays with them.    

The message of original sin is that humans are fundamentally broken, that we are predisposed to sin which separates us from God forever.  But the story says that we are made in God’s image.  The story is placed at the beginning of a long story of God’s continuing relationship with human beings.  The story says that we have a purpose and permission to do many things.  If we read the whole story on its own terms, it suggests that humans have the capacity for both good and evil. 

Instead of using this story long ago to focus on a doctrine of original sin, we might have created a doctrine of original relationship or original blessing.  Many contemporary theologians are doing just that. 

Danielle Shroyer is one of them. She says “Sin is not the primary thing that is true about us.  Before we are anything else, we made in God’s image . . . Before scripture tells us anything else about ourselves, it tells us we are good. . . When we ground ourselves in the fact that God created us good, we are capable of confronting all the other things that are true about us, even the difficult things. . . . Original blessing is the stubborn assertion not that we are perfect, but that we are loved.” [5]

The questions in the bulletin went out by e-mail earlier this week.  In response to the question about where you hear messages of destruction and despair, one of you said that in your head there is a voice that says “I’m not good enough.” Thank you, whoever you are, for setting the bar for honest and meaningful responses.  

This voice that says “I am not good enough”  is a voice that many of us carry around inside of us.  It is a destructive voice with a harmful message.  Many things give power to the voice – the way we are raised, the value our culture puts on productivity or beauty, our early experiences of success or failure.  But certainly one source of power is the toxic theology of original sin which is nowhere to be found in this story. We are not fundamentally flawed.  We are fundamentally blessed.

To the question about where you find messages of wholeness and hope, one of you, maybe the same person wrote, “any kind of affirmation from anyone pulls me back to connection with what is real.” 

Again thank you to this person for this response.  You should have been the one to preach today. 

Affirmation – “creation is good and even very good,” God says.  Connection – “let us make humans in our image,” God says.   Affirmation and connection are part of God’s good creation.

Original blessing, original relationship, is the most powerful and central part of our identity. As Danielle Shroyer says

“Original blessing means realizing your sin is not the most important thing about you, even if the world—or the church – makes you feel like it is.”[6]

The snake says humans are not enough; we need to do more, to be more.

God says humans have divine purpose, humans have limits, but most importantly, humans are made in God’s image and loved as we are.

The snake says humans are not enough; we need to do more, to be more.

God says we have divine purpose and limits, but most importantly, humans are made in God’s image and loved as we are.

Who will you listen to?

[1] This description of purpose, permission and prohibition comes from Walter Brueggemann, Genesis: Interpretation A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, (Atlanta:  John Knox Press, 1982), p.45

[2] Danielle Shroyer, in her commentary on this text for A Sanctified Art’s sermon planning guide in the resource Seeking:  Honest Questions for Deeper Faith

[3] https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-02/sunday-march-13-2011

[4] Kathleen M. O’Connor, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary: Genesis 1-25A, (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, 2018)  p. 62

[5] Danielle Shroyer, Original Blessing:  Putting Sin in its Rightful Place, )Minneapolis:  Augsburg Fortress Press, 2016), p. 32.

[6] Shrover, Original Blessing,  p. 24

2/19/2023 - Foolish Wisdom - 1 Corinthians 1:17-31

Foolish Wisdom

I Corinthians 1: 17-31

February 19, 2023

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

First, let’s talk about the ancient city of Corinth.  Corinth was on a narrow strip of land with sea on both sides.  It was inland with two port cities as a first line of defense, one to the north and one to the east.  By the first century, it was a commercial hub.  Goods for sale arrived by ship and were carried across the Corinthian isthmus to be put on ships on the other side. Many of them made their way into Corinthian markets, and Corinth exported bronze and pottery and earthenware.  It had first been a Greek city, but was largely destroyed in a war with the Romans in 146 BCE. Augustus Caesar rebuilt it as a Roman city about 80 years before Paul arrived.  He repopulated the city with eager, upwardly- mobile persons who emigrated from other parts of the empire.  By the time of Paul, Corinth was functioning as a regional capital, competing even with Athens.  Corinth hosted the Isthmian games, every two years. It was an ambitious city full of ambitious people.

Paul planted a church in Corinth in about 50 AD.  If the city had a certain reputation, so did the church.  A letter written a full generation after Paul’s time notes that the Corinthian Christians continue to “engage in partisan strife.”[1]  The term “Battling Baptists” had not yet been invented, but otherwise, it would have been apt. 

One of the purposes of Paul’s letter is to urge reconciliation and promote unity among the various factions.  Here at the beginning, he appeals to them to stand together because of their common understanding of the cross. 

There are some church nerds among us – you know who you are.  For you especially, I want to note that this Sunday is the last Sunday before Lent begins. It marks the end of the season after Epiphany.  It is called Transfiguration Sunday.  Being church nerds, you know that Epiphany means appearing or revealing.  In this season, we celebrate the ways that God appears, the parts of God that are revealed in Jesus the Christ.  For those who follow the lectionary, the season of Epiphany always begins with the story of the magi who follow the star to find an infant or a toddler Jesus and they worship him.  For those who follow the lectionary, the season ends on this Sunday with the story of Jesus’ transfiguration.  That’s the time that Jesus took three of his closest disciples up on a mountain with him and while they were there, Jesus started glowing, even his clothes became shiny white.  Then the prophets Moses and Elijah appeared and Jesus was talking to them.  That’s the arc of the season of Epiphany, from Jesus as a vulnerable baby born to humble peasant parents to Jesus as an adult who is so close to God that he shines while having ordinary conversation with Moses and Elijah who died hundreds of years earlier.    

The story of the Transfiguration is important, but I am not convinced it is important enough to have its own day every year.  This passage from the letter to the Corinthians reveals as much about God in Jesus as the Transfiguration does, to my way of thinking, but it doesn’t get the same air time in the lectionary.  So, I invite you to let the image of Jesus shining on the mountaintop rest in the back of your brain for a minute as we focus on Paul’s words about the foolishness of the cross.

Paul is writing to the Christians in Corinth.  They are as upwardly mobile and ambitious as the other citizens of their city.  They want status and power. 

Power played by the same rules then as now.  You knew you had power if you were winning. You knew you were winning if you had the most toys or the largest bank account or the most friends in high places.  You had power if there were people below you in the pecking order and if they were a little afraid of you. 

Paul reminds them that the gospel’s power does not work like human competition.  God’s strength is found in weakness, in vulnerability. Paul wants them to know where their true worth resides.  He wants them to remember where their true power comes from: a mangled human body, suffering so unjustly, tortured to death, the incomprehensible love of Christ displayed on the cross. 

This is deeply unsettling.  It is scandalous to some, utter foolishness to others. 

“This is not a message geared to win friends or influence people.  The cross was a lousy marketing tool in the first-century and remains so in the twenty-first century.” [2]

The Corinthian Christians seem to be embarrassed, scandalized to be associated with the cross.  They want to gloss over that part of the story, just leave it out. They want somehow to tap into the power of resurrection without understanding that you have to die to get there.

We may have a hard time getting why the cross is so offensive because crucifixion doesn’t happen in the same way any more. Crucifixion was capital punishment for disreputable individuals or groups like rebellious slaves or insurrectionists.  It was a public death intended to degrade and humiliate and torture.  It was a warning to anyone who dared to threaten the imperial social order that they might be next.  It was distasteful to speak of in polite company.  We know this, but it is hard for us to feel the emotional impact that they did.

A few years ago, a church in Florida put it into a statement that might help us see the cross with twenty-first century eyes. On the sign in front of their church was this sentence “We worship a man of color murdered by keepers of the law.” 

That’s jarring, isn’t it? 

“We worship a man of color murdered by keepers of the law.”

When you put it like that, in our context, it helps me see Jesus within a marginalized group, enduring public scrutiny for every thing he does from how he washes his hands to who he eats with to how he celebrates national holidays.  It helps me see Jesus killed without justification by those in authority, mostly just because they could.

The church put that statement on their sign a couple of years ago.  It was intended as a statement of faith in protest against police brutality directed at people of color. It was intended as a reminder that Jesus was not white.  The “keepers of the law” that they intended to reference were the Romans, who valued Roman lives above others and thus exerted dominant power over non-Romans.  The sign drew a lot of response, both supportive and critical.  The critics pointed out that “keepers of the law” has historically been construed to mean the Jewish people.  It has been used to foster hatred toward Jewish people by blaming them for Jesus’ death.  The church leaders heard that and immediately took down the sign.  They issued a public retraction and apology on social media.  They said “We are horrified to think that our sign could in anyway be used to foster more death-dealing hatred toward those who are Jewish. We should have taken more care with our wording. We apologize whole-heartedly for any harm our message has caused.”[3]

It is very hard to talk about power without tripping up.  It can be very hard to stand with the marginalized and not fall into the trap of using our power in ways that cause further damage.

This is the foolishness of the cross.  That God, who is supremely powerful, surrenders everything– Jesus does not use force or clever rhetoric to escape.  He doesn’t encourage his followers to mount an insurrection. He doesn’t even try to justify himself, to talk his way out of it.   He just dies, an unspeakably awful death. 

What power can this possibly have? And yet, in the foolish wisdom of God, it does. The message of the cross is that God thinks people and the creation are so good, so beautiful, so precious that our redemption is worth dying for.[4]

It reveals the paradox of God’s foolishness over human wisdom.  “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;” Paul writes.

Jesus taught about this foolishness all the time – the reign of God he proclaimed was a place where the last were first, where leaders were servants, where neighbors and enemies were loved.  But people didn’t really get it then and we still don’t really get it. 

How many times in history have we witnessed the power of non-violence as a way to solve conflict?  Ghandi in India, the civil rights movement in the United States, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Singing Revolution in Estonia.  And yet, how often we jump to war?   This week, it will have been one year since Russia invaded Ukraine. Whenever it ends, it will take decades to rebuild and some in both countries will never recover from the trauma.  If there is a declared winner, their victory will be offset by the destruction it required.

How long will this nation continue to trust in the power of guns to keep us safe? I’ve lost track of the mass shooting events that occurred in just the last week.  One was on Monday at Michigan State. Two students on that campus had survived other mass shootings. Did you know that?  One lived through a high school shooting near Detroit just 14 months ago.  The other, Jackie Matthews,  survived Sandy Hook as a 6th-grader in 2012.   "I am 21 years old and this is the second mass shooting that I have now lived through," she said.[5]

Our culture definitely doesn’t get it.  We who are Christians struggle with it, but I want to encourage us to stay in the struggle. 

If you still have that picture of Jesus on the mountaintop in your brain, take a look at it again. That story is foreshadows the rest of the story.  We hear it just before Lent in anticipation of the journey to the cross.  It suggests that what is coming – the suffering and death of Jesus may at first appear as an unthinkable, desecrating defeat, but it’s actually a step toward a dramatic, subversive victory.  Jesus will go down from the mountaintop to venture into the shadows of death – precisely in order to overcome death forever.  And when he does, we shall see that resurrection power shining like he shines on the mountain now. 

What is revealed in the cross is that God is in Christ redeeming the world, reconciling the world to God’s own self.   This is mystery, which we just begin to grasp.  It happens through the paradoxical power of God and not human wisdom.  What we can contribute, probably all we can contribute,  is to resolve with Paul, to know Christ and him crucified, to keep ourselves receptive and responsive to the power of suffering, foolish love.  May it be so for you and for me. Amen.

[1] J. Paul Sampley, New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume X, (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 2002),  p. 775.

[2] Richard Carlson https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-in-lent-2/commentary-on-1-corinthians-118-25-2

[3] https://www.facebook.com/goodsamaritanchurchpinellaspark/posts/we-worship-a-man-of-color-murdered-by-keepers-of-the-law/3065120376866849/

[4] Douglas John Hall, The Cross in Our Context:  Jesus and the Suffering World, (Minneapolis:  Augsburg Fortress Press, 2003), p. 24.

[5] https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2023/02/14/michigan-state-univeristy-shooting-student-jackie-matthews-sandy-hook-newtown-tiktok/69902925007/

2/12/23 - L'Chaim - Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Matthew 5:21-37

L'Chaim

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

Matthew 5:21-37

February 12, 2023; Emmanuel Baptist Church

A very old funeral prayer says “in the midst of life, we are in death.”[1]  Death has seemed particularly close recently.  Since Monday, we have watched the news from the earthquakes Turkey and Syria where the death toll is now approaching 30,000. Across the twelve years that I've been your pastor, I have led funerals at the rate of 0 to 2 per year.  One year, there were three and that felt like a lot.  However, in the last three months, we have lost 4 church members to death.  Some of you have told me that in addition to those 4 Emmanuelites, you are grieving for several other friends or family members.

This week, I learned of the deaths of two pastors.  One of them, Karen, didn’t show up for worship on January 29.  When members of her congregation went to the parsonage to check on her, they found her unconscious.  She lingered a little while in the hospital and then died on Thursday at age 59.  Another pastor died quite unexpectedly on Wednesday.  David was just 40 and leaves two young sons and his wife who is also a pastor. These were active American Baptist pastors.  While I did not know them personally, all across my network of friends and colleagues I see those who are deeply grieving for them. In the midst of life, we are in death.  If death has come close for you, please know that it is OK and right to grieve, OK and right to lament, OK and right to be sad and to talk about it.  All of these are healthy and necessary responses.  In the midst of life, we are in death.

Often when someone dies, we reflect on their life, their joys and disappointments, their passions and accomplishments and strongest relationships.  And sometimes when we do that, it makes us wonder about our own life and how we are living it and what might be said about us at our funeral.

In our reading from Deuteronomy, Moses is approaching his own death.  He led God’s people out of slavery and for years afterwards.  The Exodus will become one of the key identifying moments in Israel’s history.  His leadership has been unparalleled, but it seems like he still has things to say, wisdom to share before he departs.  Our reading comes near the end of his farewell speech.  The speech goes on for 26 chapters. I’m sure there’s other important stuff in it, but this part is surely worth remembering – “I have set before you life and death . . . Choose life so that you and your descendants may live . . .”

Moses is saying farewell to a people who did not personally experience the Exodus.  Because they did not live under the oppression of Egypt, they may not value the freedom that is theirs, they may take for granted God’s presence and blessing in their lives.  And so, Moses goes on and on reminding them of their history, imploring them to keep on loving God with all their heart and soul and mind.

He is calling them to obedience, but this is not a blind obedience to a list of moral do’s and don’t.  In earlier chapters, he asked them to listen with all their hearts.  Listening that way involves careful discernment. The path that is life-giving may not be immediately apparent. Sometimes, especially perhaps in moments of crisis, we rely on the spiritual formation that has taken shape in us over our lifetime.  We listen to God in our selves, at our core, and seek to live out that word, for the transformation of our lives and those around us.  When it works that way, we are choosing life.

But it doesn’t always work like that, does it?  Sometimes our baggage gets in the way.  Sometimes we don’t pause to listen, but act impulsively. Sometimes our pain or anger or disappointment or fear is greater than our desire to listen.  Sometimes we are just living life as it comes along and we make choices, fall into patterns without even realizing it. 

“The choices are not usually labeled ‘life’ and ‘death’.  Most of our decisions do not seem important, but life and death are before us every day.  We choose death when we ignore God and choose anything inferior. Death is a slow process of giving ourselves to what does not matter.”[2]

That great sentence is from Rev. Brett Younger, who is currently pastor at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn. “Death is a slow process of giving ourselves to what does not matter.” 

By extension, then, to choose life is to give ourselves to what does matter. Choosing to do that over and over again.  When put that way, it may start to sound like  choosing life requires total dedication to some great cause, becoming activists and living our lives on the front lines of social change.  Some of us do that, but most of us don’t.  We have other responsibilities – showing up for work, keeping the household running, paying the bills, and being a good neighbor, we can barely manage that. 

But that’s all right, because that is what Moses was really talking about. And for that matter, so was Jesus. What we read today is a part of the Sermon on the Mount.  Some parts of that sermon are really beautiful, like the beatitudes for example. This part is not my favorite.  It sounds kind of like Jesus is wagging his finger at the crowd, telling them not to do stuff stuff they already know not to do. 

In fact, Jesus is quoting the law of Moses, isn’t he?  “Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not swear falsely.” 

Jesus is talking about rules and laws in order to get to something deeper, to get to what really matters.  Like Moses, Jesus is asking us to listen with our whole hearts, to discern how to choose life.

“Do not murder.”  That’s a baseline.  We know that. We have no intention of breaking that commandment. But Jesus says, choose life and take it deeper. One commentator says, “Coexisting without killing each other is not enough. Agreeing not to commit homicide is essential and lovely, but what about all the other ways we human beings “kill” our relationships through resentment, rage, unforgiveness, and spite?  . . . Don’t we inflict soul-killing violence on each other through our words?  Our silences?  Our refusal to extend and receive forgiveness?  What good is it if we, God’s children, technically spare each other’s lives, and yet commit unspeakable acts of murder through a refusal to love?[3] 

“Do not commit adultery.”  Again that’s a baseline. But choose life and take it deeper.  Cherish your spouse.  Cherish other people’s spouses by recognizing the boundaries of faithfulness. Refuse to objectify other people in any way.

Tell the truth.  Let your yes by yes and your no be no.  Jesus is creating a community in which the default assumption is that people tell each other the truth.  People keep their promises.  And so people trust each other. 

These practices are the ways that we choose life, as individuals and as a community. These are the ways, in the midst of every day life, that we give ourselves to what matters.

Michael Jinkins, is a former president of Louisville Presbyterian Seminary.  His book, Called To Be Human, is a collection of letters to his adult children.  In one he writes, “The purpose of Christian faith is for us to become human. I’ll put it even more bluntly Christians believe that God became flesh and dwelt among us. And I do not for a moment think that God went to all the trouble of incarnation - let alone the trouble of being crucified, just to make us religious. God became human to make human beings out of us.”[4]

Jesus does not come to help us escape this world in its brokenness, sin, and suffering. He comes to help us live more fully in it. He comes to help us choose life by protecting the relationships that make us more fully human.

Life and death are before us every day.  So friends, let us choose life. Let us give ourselves to what matters.  Only you can discern what that means for you today and tomorrow and the next day.  But I’d like to close with some suggestions from Brett Younger, the pastor in Brooklyn I mentioned earlier.   He offers a long list of ways to choose life. Here are just some of them. 

“Walk around the block.

Turn off the television. 

Get together with your friends.

Invite a stranger to lunch or dinner.

Clean out a drawer. Read a book of poetry.  Quit doing what is not worth your time. 

Do something so that someone else will not have to. 

Stop arguing.

Apologize to someone, even if it was mostly his fault. Forgive someone, even if she does not deserve it.

Have patience. 

Stop having patience when it is time to tell the truth. 

Figure our what you hope for and live with that hope. 

Delight in God’s good gifts.

Believe that God loves you.” [5]

In the midst of life, we are in death. 

Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.  Amen.

[1] The Book of Common Prayer, 1662, Burial of the Dead

[2] Brett Younger in Feasting on the Word Year A, Volume 1, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010),  p. 341.

[3] Debie Thomas  https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2525-but-i-say-to-you

[4] Michael Jinkins, Called to Be Human: Letters to My Children on Living a Christian Life (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009) p. 9.

[5] Brett Younger in Feasting on the Word Year A, Volume 1, p. 343.

1/29/23 - Before and After - Matthew 4:12-23

Before and After

Matthew 4:12-23

Emmanuel Baptist Church

January 29, 2023; Rev. Kathy Donley

A long time ago,  I first learned this story in Sunday School.  As a child, I understood this story in a particular way.  I understood the disciples to be impulsive.  I thought that this was the very first time that Simon, Andrew, James and John had ever encountered Jesus. That Jesus was so charismatic, so compelling that the very first time they ever saw him, all he had to say was “Follow me” and they immediately dropped what they were doing and walked away from their livelihoods no questions asked.

It could have happened that way.  For a long time, I thought that this was their very first meeting and that the disciples made a life-changing decision in an instant. 

Now, I tend to think differently. Now, I suspect that Jesus had been hanging out on the shore of the lake and in other places where people gathered. I suspect that he had been listening to the news of the day and people’s reaction to it and their concerns about their own lives and families.  I expect that Jesus had been systematically sharing ideas about who he was and who God is.  I expect that by the time Simon and Andrew and James and John dropped their nets, they had a pretty good idea that following Jesus was going to be risky and adventuresome, but also purposeful and important.

This is the pivotal moment, the point that divides what came before with what came after. Before, they were fishermen.  After, they were followers of Jesus.  Before, they might have been identified primarily in relationship to family members  -- Simon and Andrew were brothers. We know that Simon was married, probably the others were too.  James and John were identified with their father Zebedee.  But that was before.  After this, they are identified in relationship to Jesus.  After this, they are his students, his apprentices. 

Jesus has had his own before and after moments.  Before and after he was baptized. Before and after he spent 40 days in the wilderness.  And before he called the disciples, he left Nazareth. Nazareth was the place he had grown up, the place where his mother and siblings still were. Matthew writes, “Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum.”

Up to that point, he had been a carpenter, the oldest son, who was responsible for the care of his younger siblings and for his mother, Mary, who appears to be a widow now. But then, one day, he walked away from that.  He left the carpentry business, abandoned the security of a regular income, deserted his responsibilities to his family. Before he was a carpenter. Before he was Mary’s son.  After he is a Teacher.  After he is a Healer. After he is also a trouble-maker, a disturber of the peace, and a revolutionary.

Jesus calls people to follow him, to abandon what they were doing, and go where he leads.  They leave behind what is known and familiar.  They leave what is precious and loved, in order to be part of what Jesus is doing.  And what Jesus asks of them is something he himself has already done.

Friends, sometimes we don’t see the Before and After until later.  We don’t see it in the moment, but later we look back and say “that was when everything changed.  The new step I took, the habit I broke, that one decision, was the pivot point.”

As a congregation, we are deciding how to follow Jesus.  Again.  And some of us may be figuring that out again as individuals.  It is not a decision you make just once. You make it over and over again, as circumstances change. God calls us in the context of our particular lives. 

The Greek verb for “follow” (akaloutheo) is found eighty-seven times in the Gospels. Following Jesus is a dominant theme in the New Testament. We talk about it a lot.  But it seems sometimes that we have tamed it down. Some would say that we have substituted believing in Christ for actually following Jesus.  Believing in Christ lets us answer doctrinal questions, to say that we believe that Jesus was the Son of God, to affirm that Jesus lived and died and rose again a long time ago.  Believing in Christ allows us to theorize and to wonder at how salvation works, how the death and resurrection of Jesus reconciles us to God.  Believing in Christ is good – don’t hear me saying otherwise.  But sometimes it becomes an intellectual exercise, something that keeps us at an arms length from actually following Jesus. Following Jesus means stepping out and doing something, usually something risky.

Ernest T. Campbell was a Presbyterian minister.  He was senior pastor at Riverside Church in New York in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, a great preacher and wise teacher.  He said that “the aim is not to imitate Christ, but to follow Christ – that is to situate ourselves in history as Jesus did. [Jesus] wants us to live our history, not his; to love our enemies, not his: to see our signs of the Kingdom, not his.” [1]

There are defining moments in our lives that we recognize after the fact.  Those moments happen, I believe, when internal and external realities create a certain pressure or open a new opportunity. 

This moment has been coming in stages for Jesus. From the time of his baptism and possibly before, he knows that he has a mission. In the wilderness, he struggled with temptations to pursue the mission in other ways and overcame them.  Those are some of his internal realities.  But now, Matthew tells us, that John the Baptist has been publicly executed. John’s death creates an external opportunity for Jesus.  It is at that point, that he leaves his former life in Nazareth and moves to Galilee.

We aren’t privy to the internal thoughts of the disciples.  But we do know that the fishing industry was in crisis.  Herod Antipas has basically taken it over, commercializing it for his own profit and export.  Simon, Andrew, James and John “could no longer cast their nets freely from the shore.  They could no longer own a boat or beach a catch without being taxed.  They probably had to sell what they caught to Antipas’ factories.”[2] The cost of getting a fishing license, the taxes they would have to pay, and the rates that they would be paid for their fish, would all be determined by sources higher up than they. 

This is their reality.  The family business, which has been their work for generations, is in danger.  Unless something changes, it will not likely provide enough to sustain the same way of life for their children and grandchildren.  And then, Jesus comes along, inviting them to something new, something risky and unknown, but something that offers its own kind of hope.   

Those who followed Jesus in ancient Palestine followed from within their context.  I don’t think the disciples impulsively dropped their nets the first time they met Jesus.  I think they knew enough about who Jesus was to understand the risk and the opportunity he was offering.  I think they  chose to follow as an act of faith in God. 

I agree with Ernest T Campbell.  The aim in following Jesus is to situate ourselves in our history, to attend to our reality, as Jesus did in his.  There are many facets of our current history we could attend to. In some conversations we are attending to the systemic racism of our time.  In others, we consider the threat of climate change and the lack of affordable housing in Albany. All of those things and many more should affect how we follow Jesus.  But today, I want to focus on two pieces of our church context.  Here are just two parallels that I see between the scripture and our lives.

One external reality is that we are living in a time of great cultural shift about religion.  There used to be great social pressure to be part of a church. Whether or not you were actually following Jesus, spending an hour or two in a church building on Sunday morning was a normal thing to do.  And many people actually did follow Jesus that way.  But in this moment now, there is little social pressure to be in church.  Many people have some very good reasons, actually, to be somewhere else on Sunday mornings. 

Unless something changes, church as we have known it will not be enough to sustain the faith lives of the children and grandchildren of our current faith community.  We have to find ways that we all can follow Jesus in twenty-first century America, which may be as different from the 19th and 20th centuries as it is from first century Palestine.

One internal reality is that we are a small congregation in a large needy building.  The building is familiar and precious, like the fishermen’s boats and nets were to them.  In this building, for generations, people have affirmed their honest belief in Christ.  But the question that we must face is how to follow Jesus now.  What if Jesus is calling us to occupy just a small part of the building?  What if Jesus is calling us to allow others to take on responsibility for renovation and deciding what rooms are used for what purposes?  What if Jesus is asking us to follow him right out of the building? To leave it, just like the disciples left  their nets and followed him. These are the questions and possible opportunities in front of us.

Friends, you have been adventurous and faithful in following Jesus as individuals and as a congregation.  We have had many Before and After moments.  One example would be Before the pews were removed and After.  Before this church was called Emmanuel Baptist, it was Pearl Street Baptist Church.  That was a long ago Before and After. 

More recently, in 2020, we were in the lectionary year of Matthew, the same as we are now. On the Sunday that we read this same story in worship, we used the same bulletin cover that we’re using today. You might notice the quote from Joseph Campbell  “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”[3] 

When I put that on the bulletin in January 2020, I had no notion of what was already happening, a virus was spreading that would wreck all our plans for the rest of the year and beyond.  But I’m pointing this out to remind us that the conversations about following Jesus and seizing opportunities for radical change are not new.  We have been engaged in this work for a while.  Like every other congregation in the world, we have been changed by the pandemic, but we are not starting from scratch.  One of my colleagues recently said to me, “If any church is ready for the tasks ahead of us coming out of Covid, it is Emmanuel.  You’ve been preparing for this moment for years.”

“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”  Jesus is still calling us to be part of his mission, to risk, to discern carefully not impulsively,  and then to boldly step out in faith, following him even when we don’t know where we are going.  May it be so for you and for me.  Amen.

[1] Ernest T. Campbell, “Are You Following Jesus or Believing in Christ?” August 1981 sermon as quoted by the Rev. Victoria G. Curtiss in her January 2011 sermon “More than Just Tagging Along” https://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2011/012311_8am.html

[2] John Dominic Crossan, God and Empire:  Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now, (New York:  HarperOne,, 2008), p. 122

[3] Reflections on the Art of Living:  A Joseph Campbell Companion, Diane K. Osbon, ed, (New York:  HarperCollins, 1991), p. 8.

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1/22/23 - Dr. Anthony Malone preaching

This week Dr. Anthony Malone led us in worship along with several other folks. The service made ample use of Godly play themes, testimony about the social lives of small mammals. Check out the funky arrangement of "What a Friend We have in Jesus" played by Michael Clement, at 04:28.

https://youtu.be/XWxm5r2EtZo

1/15/23 - Think Big! - Isaiah 49:1-7

Think Big!

Isaiah 49:1-7

Emmanuel Baptist Church

January 15, 2023; Rev. Kathy Donley

Photo by Yohann Lc on Unsplash

In high school and college, history was often taught to me with names and dates. On a test, for example, I might have been asked for the starting and ending dates of a certain war.

It is good to know something about the timeline of history, when things started and ended, what big events came before others in human history. 

But having lived through a lot of history now, I realize that it is not necessarily easy to say when something starts and stops.  A war might technically begin only after several acts of aggression have occurred.  Or it might officially end when a peace treaty is signed, but that doesn’t mean that people immediately stop thinking of the other side as enemies. 

I used to think that there was an influenza epidemic in 1918.  Now I know that it continued in waves through the spring of 1920. And you may have heard about the Covid-19 pandemic.  Is it over yet?  Depends on who you ask. 

The people in the time of Isaiah 49 have a number of parallels with us.  They’re living through the end of something and trying to get on with something new or maybe just back to normal. I have never preached on this passage from Isaiah before and I was surprised at how very timely this ancient word seems. 

The book of Isaiah is long. In it we find very beautiful poetry.  We often hear some of that in Christmas readings and in Handel’s Messiah.  In it we also find hard words about God’s anger at corruption and exploitation of the poor, and the coming destruction of Israel and Judah by military powers. It is a complicated book. 

The book of Isaiah includes events that span a couple of centuries.  The prophet Isaiah, introduced in the opening chapter as the son of Amoz, was active in Jerusalem throughout most of the second half of the eighth century before Jesus.  That Isaiah is directly associated with the first 39 chapters. But most scholars believe that the rest of the book was written almost two centuries later, written by people who kept the truth of Isaiah’s message alive.  The book of Isaiah spans the long period before, during and just after the exile. 

You remember that Babylon was a world power in the early sixth century.  During that time, Babylon conquered Judah and took many of its citizens back to Babylon as captives. A generation or two later, Persia became more powerful than Babylon and the ruler of Persian allowed the captives to go home.  Our reading, from chapter 49, probably reflects that time when the people had just returned to Judah.  Or maybe they are still in Babylon, needing to be convinced to return to their homeland, because living in Babylon has now become normal. Is captivity over yet?  It depends on who you ask. 

The prophet has been serving God for a long time.  He or she believes that they were created for this ministry.  But now, they are mightily discouraged.  Verse 4 says “I have labored in vain.  I have spent my strength for nothing.”

The work no longer brings joy.  It feels meaningless. The servant is exhausted and feels defeated.  If we could interview the one who is speaking in Isaiah 49 and also interview those who are part of the Great Resignation, those who abandoned their former jobs during the waves of Covid, I suspect we might hear some common themes.  One of those themes might be despair.

John Claypool was a Baptist pastor who later became an Episcopal priest. In his early days, as a Baptist, he served in Louisville, Kentucky.  There, in 1960, he was involved in the civil-rights movement.  One time, he went to a meeting between white and black clergy which was held at a local synagogue. The meeting grew quite tense, and eventually the black clergy stormed out in anger, accusing the white ministers of not having enough courage to face the opposition. What began as a “hopeful endeavor,” John says, “ended in total frustration.”

John turned to his friend, the rabbi who was hosting the meeting, and said, “I think it is hopeless. This problem is so old, so deep, so many-faceted, there is simply  no way out of it.”

His friend, at that time in his 70’s and with a lot of experience in pastoral ministry, took his younger colleague into his study where the two of them sat down.  The rabbi said, “I need to tell you something, young man. To the [Jewish person], there is only one unforgivable sin, and that is the sin of despair. Humanly speaking, despair is presumptuous. It is saying something about the future that we have no right to say because we have not been there yet and do not know enough. Think of the times you have been surprised in the past as you looked at a certain situation and deemed it hopeless. Then, lo and behold, forces that you did not even realize existed broke in and changed everything. We do not know enough to embrace the absolutism of despair and, theologically speaking, despair is downright heretical. If God can create the things that are from the things that are not, and even make dead things come back to life, who are we to set limits on what that kind of potency may yet do?”[1]

It is OK to be weary.  Jesus got weary. It is OK to be uncertain. It is OK not to know what to do. It is OK, even good, to stop and pray, to pause and rest and discern before taking action.  It is OK to grieve. In fact, Walter Brueggemann says that grieving is the first step towards hope. Unless we break through the numbness of simply accepting things as they are and see that they not OK, then we can’t imagine an alternative.  “Despairing people” Brueggemann says, “do not anticipate or receive newness.” [2]

We can be weary or uncertain or grieving, but, it seems that what we cannot do is to allow ourselves to wallow in despair. As the rabbi said, we have not been to the future, and we do not know enough. 

But the speaker in verse 4 is kind of wallowing.  We can imagine that first wave of Judeans returning from exile. It was the dream of their parents and grandparents to go home again, a dream passed down to them.  A chance to be free, for life to be as it should be, for things to be normal.

We can imagine that they arrive in Judah to find the temple and the city still mostly in ruins, with no real infrastructure, looking nothing like the stories their ancestors had told. This is not what they expected, not what they wanted.  Captivity should be over, but it seems like they’ve just exchanged one bad situation for another.  They are exhausted. They are uncertain.  They are grieving and very close to despair. 

It is not clear whether we should understand verse 4 as being spoken by one leader or expressing the voice of the nation.  It is not clear because in verse 3 we read God saying, “You are my servant, Israel”.  Some manuscripts include the word “Israel” there and some do not.  The question of who is speaking is one which the scholars spend a lot of time debating.  I appreciate those who say it is both the faithful individual and the obedient community.[3]

The crucial thing is God’s response.   When the individual or the community throws up their hands, saying that all their efforts were for nothing, we might expect words of comfort and encouragement.  We might think that God would understand that the human beings are overwhelmed and adjust expectations accordingly.  Maybe by sending more help.  Maybe by reducing the size of the task, giving them a smaller piece of the work.  But that is not what happens.

Instead, God says “What you’ve been about is too light a thing,” What God says is “It is too tiny a thing (merely) to be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, to restore the remnant of Israel.  I make you a light to the nations that that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”[4]

God does not diminish the demands on her tired servants, but renews the original calling and also adds to it.  God does not say, “You poor things, you’ve been through so much.  Let me take some of the load off of you.”  Instead, God doubles-down.  Now it is not enough to focus on only on themselves, God “shakes [them] out of their lethargy by giving them the largest task they could ever conceive, nothing less than divine responsibility for the entire world.”[5]

They think that their job is to return from exile, to get back to the way things were before.  That would be no small feat, but what God has in mind is so much bigger.   It is a new path, a new way.  And it is also the return of an even older idea.  Centuries earlier, God had blessed Abraham’s faithfulness and had said that through Abraham’s descendants the whole world would be blessed.

Friends, this is the text I was wrestling with this week.  At the same time this week, I was part of a team conversation with our consultant Joy Skjegstad.  We were anticipating her visit her on January 29 and the discernment we are engaging about what God is calling us to do. 

We always read scripture from within a particular context and that was my context this week.  So, it makes me wonder whether our focus has been too small, or whether, at least, my focus has been too small.  This is one of those times when the individual voice and the community voice may need to be clarified.

I wonder if just getting back to the ways things used to be is too light a thing for us?

I wonder if God has a larger task for us, perhaps as large a being a light to the nations?

I wonder if, in light of present circumstances, we are being summoned to a recommissioning, a new calling to an ancient vision?

I wonder. 

I cannot say with confidence that this is the word of God for us that we should directly apply.  There are other texts that we might choose – like the parables about the value of small things like mustard seeds and single sheep, like the saying that where two or three are gathered, Jesus is among them. I don’t know yet, whether our calling is to something large or small, but I wonder.

What I do know is that God still has work to do with us.  It is not too little a thing in which we are engaged here, and we must not despair.  As Brian McLaren says, “Despair is boring and uncreative, and to succumb to it is to empower it.” [6] Or as Lutheran scholar Paul Hanson says, “Despair is precisely the enemy that can destroy the future.” [7]

God’s task of saving the world is invested not in superhumans but in normal, faltering flesh and blood, people like you and me.  We stand in a long line of faltering flesh and blood prophets, apostles, martyrs, and saints, faithful servants who have brought glory to God. God is still beckoning us to follow, to play our part in building up the kingdom. May we attend to the whisper of God’s Spirit which enlivens our hope.  Amen.

[1] John R. Claypool, The Hopeful Heart, (New York:  Church Publishing, 2017),  p 19

[2] Walter Bruggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 2nd Edition, (Minneapolis:  Augbsurg Fortress Press, 2001),  p. 60.

[3] Paul Hanson, Isaiah 40-66  Interpretation Series, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989), p. 128

[4] Translation by John C. Holbert in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year A, Volume 1 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Carolyn Sharp, Editors,  (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2019),   p.180

[5] John C. Holbert in Connections, p. 180

[6] Brian D. McLaren, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises and a Revolution of Hope  (Nashville:  Thomas Nelson, 2007), p. 168. 

[7] Paul Hanson, Isaiah 40-66,  p. 104.

1/8/23 - From Generation to Generation: We Keep Seeking - Matthew 2:1-23

From Generation to Generation: We Keep Seeking

Matthew 2:1-23

January 8, 2023

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

Image: The Golden Pilgrimage by Carmelle Beaugelin

©A Sanctified Art LLC  sanctifiedart.org

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://youtu.be/WkHcvI05gsA

It is a new year.  The ball dropped in Times Square.  The calendar has turned. We’re getting used to putting 2023 on the few physical checks that we write. And right on schedule, there’s yet another new Covid variant.  It’s a new year and most of us are still seeking what we sought last year. Peace of heart and mind.  A sense of meaning and purpose.  Safety and maybe even happiness for ourselves and our loved ones.  Justice in the world and shalom for all of creation. 

It is a new year, but violence, brokenness, cruelty and prejudice are still status quo.  Many of us have come to accept that. We don’t really expect any significant changes in that regard this year.  Many of us are jaded or realistic, depending on how you frame it.  But nevertheless, we would welcome change if it came.  And some of us are still actively trying to be the change we wish to see.  One way or another, most of us are still seeking

Fortunately for us, at the turning of the year, the church calendar offers the Feast of the Epiphany.  The English word Epiphany comes from a Greek word which means appearing or revealing. What celebrate at Epiphany is the God who appears, the God who is revealed to the magi.

Epiphany does not mean “seeking”, but the story reminds us that sometimes God is found most particularly by those who seek.

The magi are the most obvious seekers in this story.  They are the outsiders. They represent a different culture, a different language, a different religion, but they show up in Matthew’s gospel as some of the very first people to worship Jesus. As the Rev. Kathryn Matthews writes, “It's deeply moving to hear of these foreigners traveling a long, hard way because they had an inkling – just an inkling – of something very important unfolding in a distant land. Something inside them must have been restless, or upset, or hungry for understanding; despite the reputation of "the East" as the place of wisdom and learning, there was something they still needed to find.”[1]

The magi moved out of their comfort zone. Comfort zone used to be a buzz word, a way to challenge others or ourselves to take important risks. But it assumes a certain level of privilege.  It takes for granted that we mostly get to live where we are comfortable and we can choose to move in and out of that place.  When someone says to step out of the comfort zone, it’s a challenge we can accept or reject. The way this story is told, the magi apparently accepted it.

But often what moves us into uncomfortable zones is not something we choose.  It might be an unexpected diagnosis, the loss of a job or vocation, fresh or long-term grief, retirement, an act of violence, chronic illness or the deterioration of a primary relationship.  It is something that threatens us.  Our choice may be to hunker down with what we’ve always done, what we’ve always known, or to seek a deeper understanding and risk changing everything. 

The magi are seekers.  But they are not the only ones.

Once he becomes aware of Jesus’ existence, King Herod also seeks him.  Herod the Great was a fearful man. I mean both that he was afraid and that he created fear in others.  He executed his favorite wife, his brother-in-law and two of his sons because he suspected they wanted his crown.  He was so unpopular with his subjects that he thought they would celebrate when he died, so he left an order that on the day of his death, political prisoners throughout the land should be killed.  That way, he thought he guaranteed that everyone would be in mourning.  This order was not followed, by the way. [2]

Herod seeks the baby Jesus, not to worship him, but to kill him.  Every Christmas, we hear Luke’s story about Jesus’ birth, but Matthew’s story is much more stark. In Matthew’s version, no shepherds come to wonder at this baby,  and no heavenly choir sings.  “It is set in the turbulence and terror of a violent history.  Tyrants kill children and families flee in the middle of the night.”[3]

The magi seek with courage and openness and respond with worship and wonder. Herod seeks with fear and rage and attempts to control and destroy that which he finds threatening.

Mary and Joseph are also seekers. They move into the uncomfortable zone by circumstances they did not choose. They seek safety in the place where their ancestors had been enslaved.  Perhaps that is evidence that things do change. The foreign, former enemy country is now safer than their homeland.  And even after Herod dies, even when it seems safe to return home, they learn that Herod’s son is ruling in Judea, so they re-route again, this time to Nazareth in Galilee.   

It doesn’t take much imagination to see the family fleeing Bethlehem in a hurry. The baby is crying, Mary is exhausted. Joseph’s heart beats faster every time he sees a soldier.  After a complicated, difficult journey, they find some kind of refuge in Egypt which lasts for a while.  But as happens to migrants today, they want to go home or the host country decides they are no longer welcome and then they move and move again, always looking for safety and peace, just a clear space in which to live. 

What we see here is a God entering human life with those who suffer and are afraid, with those whose lives and very existence are shaped by people with power who have little concern for the consequences of their actions.  This is the deep grief, heartbreak and terror into which Jesus was born and still arrives. 

This world in which, Jesus was born, is the one in which we are still seeking.  We read this story as seekers ourselves, looking for peace of heart and mind.  A sense of meaning and purpose.  Safety and maybe even happiness for ourselves and our loved ones.  Justice in the world and shalom for all of creation.

How do we seek? With openness and courage, wonder and hope?  Or with fear and attempts to control, grasping the little power we think have?

We often say that we seek to find where God is at work in the world so that we can join that work.  Sometimes I find it hard to do that.  It is hard to see an overarching purpose or the universe bending toward justice in the mist of my to-do lists and deadlines. But I wonder – what if we put this another way? What if, instead of asking where is God at work, we might say “where is beauty?”  I wonder if we might ask that in a way that leads us to practice looking for beauty regularly. 

Sure I mean we might practice attending to the beauty in sunrise or sunset or snow falling. But also, to see the beauty of a child or adult learning to read or a teenager finding their voice or a hungry person being fed or the beauty of an ordered home or a tidy desk (I’m told that’s a thing for some people.)

I wonder if we could press this further, once we have some practice, maybe we might compare our task lists, our routines to see if our daily and weekly priorities align with giving attention to that which is beautiful?  And if they don’t, perhaps we will choose to re-align them.

At the end of their seeking, the magi respond to Jesus with wonder and awe.  I’m hoping to revive a sense of that for myself this year. I’m helped by the writing of Cole Arthur Riley.  Let me share with you some of her thoughts from a chapter on Wonder in her book, This Here Flesh.

She writes, “I think awe is an exercise, both a doing and a being.  It is a spiritual muscle of our humanity that we can only keep from atrophying if we exercise it habitually.  I sit in the clearing . . .listening to the song of the barn swallows mix with the sound of cars speeding by.  I watch the milk current through me tea and the little leaves dance free from their pouch.  I linger in my mirror and don’t look away. . . . Awe is not a lens through which to see the world, but our sole path to seeing.  Any other lens is not a lens but a veil.  And I’ve come to believe that our beholding – seeing the veils of this world peeled back again and again, if only for a moment – is no small form of salvation.[4]  

She goes on, “When I speak of wonder, I mean the practice of beholding the beautiful. Beholding the majestic – the snow-capped Himalayas, the sun setting on the seas – but also the perfectly mundane – that soap bubble reflecting your kitchen, the oxidized underbelly of that stainless steel pain.  More than the grand beauties of our lives, wonder is about having the presence to pay attention to the common place. It could be said that to find beauty in the ordinary is a deeper exercise than climbing to the mountaintop.”

Near the end of the chapter, she includes a few more sentences which I’m going to be mulling over and working on for a while.  She writes, “To be a human who resembles the divine is to become responsible for the beautiful, for its observance, its protection and its creation  It is a challenge to believe that this right is ours.”[5]

To be made in God’s image, she says, is to attend to beauty, to protect it and create it. 

In the year that lies ahead of us, may we seek the good – love and justice, peace, and safety for ourselves and all of creation.  May we seek with openness and courage, even that which might irrevocably change us.  And in our seeking, may we attend to beauty and practice wonder. Thanks be to God.

[1] http://www.ucc.org/weekly_seeds_consumed_by_the_fire_of_a_star

[2] R. Alan Culpepper,  in Feasting on the Word Year A, Volume 1, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010), p. 167

[3] R. Alan Culpepper, Feasting on the Word, p. 169

[4] Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh, (New York:  Convergent Books, 2022), p 31

[5]Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh, p. 40

12/24/22 - From Generation to Generation: We Tell This Story - Luke 2: 1-20

From Generation to Generation:

We Tell This Story

Luke 2: 1-20

Emmanuel Baptist Church; December 24, 2022

Image: How God Shows Up  by Rev. Lisle Gwynn Garrity, sanctifiedart.org

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://youtu.be/D6k-mDP0BG0

When Mary learned that she was going to give birth to the Son of God,  she sang the song we call the Magnificat.  “My soul magnifies the Lord,” she sang. “For the Mighty One has done great things . . . God’s mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.”   For the last month, we have immersed ourselves in this theme, recalling the ways our lives and histories, actions and faith are interconnected and woven together from one generation to the next to the next. 

As the youth have reminded us, this story, of a baby born to redeem the world, speaks to the deepest parts of us. Humans have been telling and re-telling this story in all  kinds of places, across cultures and contexts, in times of plenty and hardship, in war zones and peace time, in hospital rooms and in front of family Christmas trees, for centuries. I invite you to settle in for a few minutes as we remember some of those contexts together.

A thousand years ago, the world was a very different place. Since the vast majority of people did not read or write, Biblical stories were often told in pictures which were preserved in stained glass windows. According to legend, in 1223, Francis of Assisi told the story of Jesus’ birth by creating the first nativity scene with hay and an ox and donkey and a manger in a cave in an Italian village. He invited villagers to gaze on the scene while he preached about the babe in Bethlehem.

 Skipping ahead to the early 1800’s, the twelve years of the Napoleonic wars had decimated the political and social infrastructures across Europe. 1816 was an especially cold year with widespread crop failure and famine.  Pastor Joseph Mohr was serving a congregation in Austria that was poverty-stricken, hungry and traumatized. So he wrote the story in song, to convey the hope that there was still a God who cared.  The next year, he transferred to St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf.  Just before Christmas, he asked his friend Franz Gruber to set his verses to music.  On Christmas Eve, 1818, the two friends sang Silent Night together for the first time in public, accompanied on guitar.

Another hundred years passed.  Another war was underway.   People had thought it would be over quickly, but six months into World War I, the winter had set in and the Western Front stretched hundreds of miles. Countless soldiers were living in misery in the trenches and tens of thousands had already died.   

On Christmas, they remembered this story in a profound way.  At various places along the 400-mile front, soldiers crossed into the No Man’s Land between trenches and met their enemies, unarmed.  They exchanged food and gifts, sang carols and played soccer together. 

German Lieutenant Zehmisch of the 134 Saxons Infantry, described a pick-up soccer game in his diary, “Eventually the English brought a soccer ball from their trenches, and pretty soon a lively game ensued,” he wrote. “How marvelously wonderful, yet how strange it was. The English officers felt the same way about it. Thus Christmas, the celebration of Love, managed to bring mortal enemies together as friends for a time.”[1]

The Great Depression was another time when the story of Emmanuel, God with us, was told by people who especially needed to remember it.  On Christmas Eve, 1931, construction workers building the Rockefeller Center Complex in New York City were grateful to be employed at that time when jobs were scarce. They decided to pool their money to buy a Christmas tree to lift their own spirits and others. They decorated a 20-foot-balsam fir with handmade garland and strings of cranberries and a few tin cans.  The foreman set up a table near the tree where the workers lined up to receive their paychecks.

You might remember with me that in 2016 a ceasefire allowed Christians in Syria to gather on Christmas Eve for the first time in 5 years. With great joy, they met in a bombed out church to tell the story of the baby born to bring peace.  Tonight, they tell the story again, although the conflict continues and many face intolerable hardships.

Two years ago, a pandemic changed the world and Christmas Eve was different from anything any of us had ever known.  But still, we gathered. Worshipping from our homes, but connected by Zoom, we could see each other in the gallery screen.  Each little box represented a household with its own stories.  There were the faithful who never miss a worship service and the newcomers who had only recently discovered this church.  In one window, maybe, was the ninety-year-old who had quit using her computer 5 years earlier but who had taught herself how to get on Zoom in order to gather with her faith community.  Maybe there were some families who had cleaned out every closet and drawer and repainted every possible room in the preceding months and were now pretty tired of being in the house together all the time.  There were grandparents separated from grandchildren and people who lived alone keenly bearing the weight of isolation.  Family members and friends showed up from different time zones and different weather zones.

Each of us, in our spaces lit a candle and sang Silent Night, reminding ourselves and each other of the light of Christ that shines in the darkness. In one household, maybe, two young siblings turned on the LED candles that the church had distributed and they held them where they could see the world through them, a kind of science experiment. In another place, maybe, a child held a candle flame in one hand and a page of Silent Night lyrics in the other and tried to see how close the two could get to each other before the paper caught fire. 

We gathered, in the midst of real-life, to hear the story again and to tell it for the next generation. And we are here again tonight, for the same reason. We are aware that we are not the same people who gathered two years ago. We have changed in many ways.  We are mourning loved ones who have died.  We celebrate the babies who have been born among us.  From generation to generation, we tell this story which speaks to the deepest parts of us.

And we are not alone, all over the world tonight, Christians are telling this story. In Myanmar, Karen and Karenni and other ethnic-minority Christians are remembering it in the jungles and refugee camps where they have fled to escape bombings, mortars, and drones.

At the US/Mexico border, the story is being told by Pastor Abraham Barberi and Team Brownsville as they distribute rice and beans and blankets to cold migrants in Matamoros and Reynosa, Mexico.

And in Ukraine, where the destruction is incomprehensible, and thousands are without heat, electricity and water.  One Ukrainian woman said, “the essence of this holiday [is] when we celebrate the birth of Hope that humanity received through Jesus Christ. Hope is what Ukrainians need as air during these dark times. Light will overcome Darkness.”[2]

 The Rev. Meredith Miller is a pastor who has celebrated Christmas for decades.   She says this “Christmas is not here to offer a four-week escape from the pain of the world with a paper-thin layer of twinkle lights.  . . . Christmas is not offering us the chance to escape the ache of life through piles of presents.  Christmas is God saying “Yes this pain is too much.  Yes it is too sad. Yes, the ache is too great.  Hang on.  I’ll come carry it with you.”[3]

We tell this story of a extraordinary baby born to ordinary people. A baby who would grow up to to bring love close, because “this is how God shows up – in a child who cries, in hands that hold, in human flesh, in life and death.  Each year, we tell this story because it is raw with joy, pain and all the complexities of being human.”[4]

This is how God chooses to be known by us, in the messiness and pain of life, as one who is right there with us, sharing it all -- flesh and blood, joy and suffering, boredom and excitement, courage and fear.  This, beloved ones, is the good news, for all of us and for everyone, that God’s great love has been born among us. No matter how your story is unfolding, may you find that this truth holds space for you.  Thanks be to God.

[1] https://www.history.com/news/christmas-truce-1914-world-war-i-soldier-accounts

[2] https://www.facebook.com/maia.mikhaluk

[3] https://www.instagram.com/p/CW3GLAVlcLY/?hl=en

[4] Lisle Gwynn Garrity, artisti’s statement about How God Comes, sanctifiedart.org

12/18/22 - From Generation to Generation: We See God In Each Other - Luke 1:39-58

From Generation to Generation:

We See God In Each Other

Luke 1:39-58       

December 18, 2022

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

Image:  The Golden Cradle by Carmelle Beaugelin

A Sanctified Art LLC| sanctifiedart.org.

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://youtu.be/gbsBA-0v9VI

It happens fairly often.  Someone will be talking to me about a decision they’re making, like whether to accept a certain job offer or go back to school.   They may be conflicted about the right approach in a delicate situation, wondering if they should be supportive and understanding or practice tough love.  They will say to me, “I just wish God will tell me plainly what I’m supposed to do.  I want to do God’s will.  I’ve prayed about it, but I’m still not sure.”  What they want is a direct communication from God, some kind of unmistakable sign.  They think if they get it, they’ll be confident in their course of action.

The last time we saw Mary, she was receiving that unmistakable sign.  It doesn’t get any more direct than having a one-on-one visit from Gabriel.  In most of the art I’ve seen, angels look like beautiful, shiny people with two wings.   But that’s not exactly how the Bible describes them. In Isaiah’s vision, angels have 6 wings.  They use two of the wings to fly and two more like clothing, for modesty’s sake and the last two wings cover their faces, which makes me wonder what those faces look like.  Ezekiel depicts angels  with gleaming brass hooves for feet and with the faces of four animals – a lion, an ox, an eagle and a human.  And Luke, describes the angels who sing to the shepherds on Christmas as an army. We aren’t told what Gabriel looks like, but I’m willing to bet his appearance is not calming.  Mary gets the explicit communication from God that so many people in my experience say they want, and then as soon as she has it, she seeks a human to help her process it.

As soon as the angel is gone, it seems, Mary runs for the hills. Luke says “with haste”.  The newly pregnant teenager heads for her relative Elizabeth whom Gabriel told her was also pregnant. It’s a journey of 80 or 90 miles.

“Travel for other than culturally expected reasons was often considered deviant behavior.  While travel to visit family was considered legitimate, the report of Mary traveling alone into the ‘hill country’ is highly unusual and improper.”[1]  From this we understand the urgency of Mary’s quest. Mary has heard from God.  Now she needs the confirmation of a human being 

She is barely over the threshold when Elizabeth  affirms what the angel said.  Now,  Elizabeth was not visited by an angel.   If she was told anything about Mary’s situation before Mary showed up at her door, Luke has not told us that.   But somehow she knows. Luke says the Holy Spirit reveals it to her. Elizabeth sees God at work in Mary and affirms what the angel told her. She addresses her as “the mother of my Lord” and praises her for believing what the angel said.

We see God in each other.  We often have a hard time claiming for ourselves the image of God that we bear.  We are too humble or conflicted or too aware of our failures. We may be unaware of the most powerful truth about ourselves. But those around us can see  and name it

In This Here Flesh, Cole Arthur Riley, writes  “We need other people to see our own faces – to bear witness to their beauty and truth.  God has made it so that I can never truly know myself apart from another person.  I cannot trust myself to describe the curve of my nose because I’ve never seen it. I want someone to bear witness to my face, that we could behold the image of God in one another and believe it on one another’s behalf.”[2]

We see God in each other.  Others see God in us.   Because of Elizabeth’s blessing, Mary believes more strongly. Because of Elizabeth’s blessing, she takes another step towards living into her calling.  She sings her song saying “My soul rejoices because God has done great things. From now on, all generations will call me blessed.” 

This is a moment of acceptance and confirmation and blessing.  It provides clarity of purpose and steadiness for Mary.   

Moments when we see God in others or when we accept God within ourselves because of others are often tender and warm like this.  But not always.

Over the last year, I can remember two distinct times when someone took great care to speak the truth in love to me. In each case, the person very gently shared that I had failed who they needed me to be. In one case, I had said something without understanding how my words would be received and instead of being uplifting, they were wounding.  In the other, I had simply failed to show up, not been present when I was needed.

No one likes being told that they’ve let someone else down.  I felt exposed and vulnerable. But I also recognized the other person’s choice to be vulnerable with me, their courage in risking that I might respond with anger or defensiveness.  They took that risk in order to give me a chance to make amends and restore relationship. I am grateful for that.  I believe that it is often in moments of shared vulnerability that we glimpse the face of God in each other. 

Bearing the image of God is a gift and a responsibility.  Others may see God in us in ways we never know. And we may be strengthened by what we see in others, even perhaps in strangers and often in those in close relationship.

Tex Sample taught at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City for 32 years.  He taught and wrote about church and culture.  He sought out and got to know people from all different walks of life.  He is a wonderful storyteller.  I only got to hear him speak in person one time. That was at a conference about 26 years ago, when I was new to ministry and he was close to the age I am now. But he made a lasting impression on me.  You could say that I saw the image of God in him.  For that reason, I want to let you hear him for yourself in this video, even though the quality is not great. 

[Video in which Tex Sample  tells the story of a woman of German Lutheran heritage who had suffered a serious stroke.  She was unable to form many words, but could make sounds. She communicated to a visitor that she wanted him to sing. Because it was close to Christmas and because he knew she knew German, he sang Stille Nacht. She joined in and they spent the rest of the evening singing her back to life. Tex ends by saying “Someone has said that a friend is that person who knows your song and when you forget it, or can’t sing it, they sing it for your and they sing you back into life.”[3]]

“A friend is that person who knows your song and when you forget it, they sing it for you and they sing you back into life.” 

John O’Donohue was an Irish theologian and poet who revived the lost art of blessing.  He says that humans are distant from a place of wholeness, but that blessing can awaken and restore it.

He writes, “We never see the script of our lives; nor do we know what is coming toward us, or why our life takes on this particular shape or sequence. . . .

Our longing for the eternal kindles our imagination to bless. Regardless of how we configure the eternal, the human heart continues to dream of a state of wholeness, a place where everything comes together, where loss will be made good, where blindness will transform into vision, where damage will be made whole, where the clenched question will open in the house of surprise, where the travails of life’s journey will enjoy a homecoming. To invoke a blessing is to call some of that wholeness upon a person now.”[4]

To invoke a blessing is to call some of that wholeness upon a person now.  Beloved ones, we see God in each other.  Believe it or not, others see God in us.  We have the power and authority, even the responsibility, to bless each other.  We are blessed and we bless.  Thanks be to God.

[1] Bruce Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, 2nd edition (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2003), p.229

[2] Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh, (New York:  Convergent Books, 2022), p. 81

[3] video “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht” from Tex Mix:  Stories of Earthly Mysticism with Tex Sample, published by livingthequestions.com, 2008

[4] John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us,  (New York:  Doubleday, 2008) p. 199

12/11/22 - From Generation to Generation: We Can Choose A Better Way - Matthew 1:18-25

From Generation to Generation:

We Can Choose A Better Way

Matthew 1:18-25

December 11, 2022

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

 Image:  The Courageous Choice by Rev. Lisle Gwynn Garrity ©A Sanctified Art LLC sanctifiedart.org

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://youtu.be/2qGMmGGiVy0

Last Sunday, we remembered the time Gabriel came to Mary to ask her to bear God’s Son. We remembered that she was afraid and that she said yes anyway.  That is a familiar story to us.  We know it so well that it may get in our way when we read today’s text.  You see, Matthew doesn’t seem to know that story.  Joseph certainly doesn’t know it.

What Joseph knows, somehow, is that Mary is pregnant.  We don’t know how Joseph knows this.  Maybe he noticed the morning sickness and figured it out.  Maybe she told him, but if she did, she didn’t tell him the part about a visit from an angel.  She didn’t tell him the part about where she was faithful to him and was pregnant any way. Don’t you wish someone had been a fly on the wall to record that scene for us?  But that is not the story Matthew tells.

What Matthew tells us is that Mary is pregnant and Joseph knows it. And he knows that he is not the father. They are betrothed, which is more like being married than being engaged.  To be betrothed is to be married but not yet living together. The only way to get out of a betrothal is by dying or divorcing.

Apparently Joseph wants out. He is undoubtedly hurt, probably feeling duped, humiliated, betrayed, and angry.  But Joseph is righteous.  He is honorable.  He wants to do the right thing for himself and for Mary, despite his personal pain. And so, Matthew says, that Joseph was unwilling to expose her to public disgrace and planned to divorce her quietly.  

To divorce her quietly means not asking his best friend for advice about the situation.  It means not going down to the pub and having a good cry in his beer with whomever happens to be there to listen.  It means not telling his mother or his sisters so that they can each tell their best friends.  It means simply going to the rabbi and signing the paperwork without giving any reason for his actions. 

Think about this for a minute.  What might have happened if Joseph had carried through with this plan?  Well, for one thing, people who didn’t the truth might have jumped to conclusions.  Believing Joseph to be the father, they might have assumed that he was the jerk for abandoning her and their child.  For his part, Joseph probably thought that he was just making a way for Mary to marry someone she actually wanted to be with.  Maybe he loved her that much.  Matthew says that he was a stand-up guy, the kind who would do that.

Joseph  has already made a good choice.  He is already doing a good thing, the best thing he can think of,  when the angel comes to him in a dream and invites him to do something even better.

Maybe, until the dream, he thought there were only two options – divorce her publicly and ruin her reputation and get back at her for humiliating him, or divorce her quietly.  Those were the only possibilities, so he chose the most honorable one.  But the angel said “do not be afraid” and presented him with a third possibility.  He can choose an even better way. 

Gareth Higgins grew up in Belfast, Ireland during The Troubles, that conflict over whether Northern Ireland would remain part of Great Britain or gain the independence to unite with the Republic of Ireland.  It was a period of about 30 years characterized by street fighting, sensational bombings, roadblocks, and imprisonment without trial.

Gareth says that when he was growing up, you didn’t know who to trust.  “Everyday activities like opening doors, turning a car-ignition key, going to a movie or having a conversation with a stranger were fraught with suspicion. Would the cinema be evacuated because of a bomb under a car outside? Would the stranger be one of those lovely friends you hadn’t met you or would they tell other strangers things about you that could get you killed? Were your loved ones dead or just stuck in traffic?”[1]

There were two competing narratives that shaped his childhood.  The dominant story was that you had to choose a side -- either support for Great Britain or for Irish re-unification.  Whichever side you chose, you knew that the “other side” had caused the conflict in the first place and that your side was merely defending itself.

That was the prevailing story.  Pick a side and do the best you can because nobody knows how to fix this. 

But, there was another story too. It was a story of people who refused the options presented to them and looked for a better way.  Gareth says, “Many people were willing to let go of the old certainties about winning and create communities of beautiful, life-giving ambiguity rather than the superficial gratification of being right.  People were allowing their imaginations to be funded by the heart, the mind, and experimentation rather than dogma.  People were refusing to use violence to get what they wanted and were caring for the suffering and the bereaved. People were initiating conversations with their political opponents, including those who might harm them, and moving into neighborhoods where they didn't 'belong' in order to show that everyone belongs. People were laying aside vengeance in favor of cooperation."[2]

We can choose a better way. Joseph models that for us.  Choosing a better way requires a desire to do the right thing and time to step back from the immediate context, to consider all parties involved.  It involves imagination, like that which can operate in dreams.  In the Biblical world, dreams were often the place where God communicated with people.  “Dreams are the way God frees us and rebirths us and pushes us into new life.”[3]  

A visionary like Joseph or Dr. King might take a dream and work to make it true, while others shrug it off and get back to “real life” in the light of day.  This might be what Frederick Buechner called the “dark side of Christmas” – that God comes to us in such a way that we can always say no.  “God comes to us in the hungry [wo]man we do not have to feed, comes to us in the lonely man we do not have to comfort, comes to us in all the desperate human need of people everywhere that we are always free to turn our backs upon.” [4]

God comes and waits for a response. An angel whispers to us in a dream, or some other equally unlikely being persuades us not to be afraid, not to walk away, but to find the even better way, the unimagined possibility, the quiet, courageous, creative option waiting to be born. 

Joseph makes a quiet decision that, at first, seems like it only affects him and his family, but it will ripple for generations. Jesus’ life and Mary’s would have turned out very differently otherwise. Mary also made a choice that affected the future. I often wonder how many women before her refused the offer that Gabriel made.

You are probably familiar with the Iroquois concept of seven generation thinking.  It calls us to consider the effects of our actions on our descendants to the next seven generations.  An interesting twist on that idea is to put ourselves in the middle of the seven generations, reflecting on the life spans before and after ours.   The idea is that an individual might have personal/material contact with someone 90 years older than they are and that person might have personal/material contact with someone 90 years old than they. The focus then becomes a timespan of 180 years before and after any individual life.  We are born into a continuous ribbon of generations, with the past 180 years as an immediate presence in our lives.[5]

Just for grins, I went back 180 years to see what kinds of things were happening then.  I learned that in 1842, unions and the right to strike were ruled legal in the United States and that inhaled anesthesia was used for the first time. 

In 1870, (152 years ago), a man named Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company.  Perhaps you’ve heard of him.  

In 1872, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened in New York City and in November of that year, a woman named Susan B. Anthony cast a ballot in an election.  Because it was illegal for women to vote, she was arrested.  At her trial, she was fined $100 which she never paid. And also in 1872,  despite enduring a stroke and the death of two of his daughters, Louis Pasteur created the first laboratory-produced vaccine. 

Each of these long-ago actions and so many others continue to bear fruit in the now. That may give us some appreciation that our choices will echo past our own short lifespans.  Our dreams, our imagining what is possible,  are ways that God frees us and rebirths us and calls us into new life. 

One more example.  The place we now call Yellowstone became a national park in 1872, (150 years ago). There is a campaign going on right now to celebrate and preserve the park for future generations.  People who make a donation of $1500 or more will receive a free annual park pass for this year and also one valid in 2172, which is 150 years from now.[6]  That pass will surely become a family heirloom passed through the generations until the birth of a descendant who can use it. 

I love the creativity behind that campaign.  It makes me wonder what choices we are making as the Body of Christ now, that will impact the faith of people who come 150 years after us.

God comes to us in ways that we can refuse . . . or accept.  God comes and waits for a response. We can believe the dream that Emmanuel is with us, that God is still being born among us.

Barbara Brown Taylor summarizes it this way, “The heart of this story is about a just man who wakes up one day to find his life wrecked: his wife pregnant, his trust betrayed, his name ruined, his future revoked. It is about a righteous man who surveys a mess he has had absolutely nothing to do with and decides to believe that God is present in it.”[7]

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

[1]Gareth Higgins, How Not to Be Afraid:  Seven Ways to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying, (Minneapolis:  Broadleaf Books, 2021).  p. 26

[2] Higgins,  p. 27

[3] Susan R. Andrews, “Pastoral Perspective: Matthew 1:18-25,” Feasting on the Gospels: Matthew, Volume 1, Chapters 1-13, Cynthia A. Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, editors, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013).

[4] Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark, (New York:  HarperCollins, 1969),  p. 14

[5] https://www.ecoresolution.earth/resources/seven-generation-thinking

[6] https://www.yellowstone.org/inheritance-pass/

[7] Barbara Brown Taylor, “Believing the Impossible” in Gospel Medicine, (Lanham, Maryland:  Cowley Publications, 1995), p,157

12/4/22 - From Generation to Generation: God Meets Us in Our Fear - Luke 1:26-38

From Generation to Generation:

God Meets Us in Our Fear   

Luke 1:26-38

December 4, 2022 

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

Image:  Mary’s Golden Annunciation by Carmelle Beaugelin

©A Sanctified Art LLC sanctifiedart.org

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

Of course Mary was afraid.  To begin with, an angel had just appeared out of nowhere. She was startled like you are when someone suddenly speaks from a dark corner of the room that you thought was empty.   But this was not like the momentary jolt you get which fades as soon as you recognize that unseen person.  This was an angel, who kept being there, no matter how many times she blinked or wiped her eyes.  Of course she was afraid.  Her heart was racing.  Adrenaline was pumping.  Maybe she thought to run or to stand super still and pretend nothing unusual was happening. Nothing at all.

But something was happening.  Gabriel was talking - - To her. Her life had not necessarily been easy before he appeared.  Mary is a poor young woman in a small village in one of the farthest corners of the Empire.  Her homeland is under the control of Rome.  Living under occupation tends to increase everyone’s anxiety.  Mary undoubtedly has the worries of any bride-to-be in her time – will the wedding celebration uphold her family’s honor and that of Joseph’s family? Will she and Joseph do well as married couple?  Is he as kind and protective as she believes him to be?  

Mary knows the popular folk tale about a jealous angel who visited on a bride’s wedding night and killed the groom.  It’s just a story, isn’t it?  But now an actual angel has shown up. Maybe there is more to the story than she knew.  Maybe something evil is threatening her marriage.[1]

And even though Gabriel says not to be afraid, she is, and the rest of his message only amps up her fears.  She is afraid of the reaction of her family.  Joseph will never believe this.  She doesn’t even believe it.  She is afraid of the scandal that will spread when everyone else realizes she is pregnant.  Nazareth is a small place, home to maybe 150-200 people.  It is impossible to keep a secret in a place like that. She might be stoned for adultery.  Joseph might abandon her.  And if he doesn’t, she might die in childbirth. And maybe, later, when Gabriel is gone, she will start to be afraid to bring a baby into the poor and violent world in which she lives. 

Mary is afraid.  We all carry a mental image of Mary.  Maybe for some of us, that image is of the serene, wise one who simply says “let it be.”  Some of us may remember her as the one who jump-started Jesus’ ministry, getting him to turn water into wine for some family friends.  Others may think of her in anguish as her son dies on the cross. But here, the first time we meet her, Luke says that she is “perplexed” or “greatly troubled” at Gabriel’s words.  Other appropriate translations are agitated, confused and terrified. If we are to understand Mary, we must not minimize the intensity of her fear. She is very afraid, and with good reason.

I recently discovered a young woman named Cole Arthur Riley. She serves as the spiritual teacher in residence with Cornell University’s Office of Spirituality and Meaning Making.   She is a writer and poet, the creator of a resource called Black Liturgies, which she describes as a project that seeks to integrate the truths of dignity, lament, rage, justice and rest into written prayers. In her book This Here Flesh, she reflects on the stories of her grandmother and father and what their lives revealed to her about life and faith.  This book is one of the best gifts of this season to me. 

In her chapter on fear, she writes “I’m told the most frequent command from God in the Bible is  Do not fear.  Some have interpreted this as an indictment on those who are afraid, as if to say fear signifies a less robust faith.  This offends me, God is not criticizing us for being afraid in a world haunted by so many terrors and traumas. … I hear Don’t be afraid and hope that it is not a command not to fear, but rather the nurturing voice of a God drawing near to our trembling. I hear those words and imagine God in all tenderness cradling her creation against her breast.”[2]

When Mary hears the angel’s words Do not be afraid, perhaps she recognizes the voice of God drawing near to her trembling.   Gabriel says “The Lord is with you.”

How does she know that is true?  How does she know that God is with her?  How do we know it? 

Sometimes we don’t. Not for sure. The very idea, the calling to which we are being summoned may be preposterous, even to us. Like Mary we may be perplexed, deeply troubled or terrified.  Like Mary, we may have questions.  “How can this be?”  she asked the angel.   

We may have to feel the fear and do it anyway.  We may know on a deep level,  that God is with us, in spite of the facts on the surface. Sometimes, along with the fear, there is another energy, a conviction, an internal urgency that it really is God prompting us.

Speaking of a time when she needed her father’s help to get through a very scary situation, Cole Arthur Riley writes “I didn’t conquer a fear.  I rose to meet it. This is rare in me.”[3] 

And sometimes we know that it is God because there is confirmation along the way.  For Mary, confirmation comes from Elizabeth.  We’ll return to that part of the story in a couple of weeks. But I want to recognize that confirmation may come in the form of another person who joins us or who strongly supports us. It might come in the form of providential timing or opportunities opening that didn’t exist earlier. Sometimes we recognize God in the confirmation we receive only as we rise to meet the fear.

Finally, this story might suggest that we know God is with us when it is not all about us.  When the summons is not something that will bring wealth or popularity, not something that makes our lives easier or more secure. We can more readily trust God’s presence when the calling is to embody, to make real, the goodness of God for the well-being of others and ourselves.

Somehow, Gabriel’s message gets through to Mary, past her wildly beating heart, through the worries piling up in her mind. Without receiving any clear answers to her question, without knowing what will happen next, she rises to meet her fear and says “ Here am I, the servant of the Lord.”  It is a profound moment.

“We without God, cannot and God without us, will not.” 

Augustine of Hippo first said something like that and others have adapted it.  “We without God, cannot and God without us, will not.”  It means that God has chosen to share power with human beings, to work with and through people who are willing to participate in God’s reign on earth.  God comes to us, to call us to faithfulness, to love and compassion and generosity.  God comes and asks us to be brave, to release our tight grip on certainty, and security, and to risk ourselves, in trust and faith.

Cole Arthur Riley writes “I believe fear has the holy potential to draw out awe in us.  To lead us into deeper patterns of protection and trust.  To mold us into people engaged in the unknown, capable of making mystery of it instead of terror.” [4]  

We are all afraid, you and me. But we can rise to meet our fear and God will meet us there also, to draw out awe and wonder, to mold us into people engaged in the mystery of the unknown.  Here we are, servants of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

[1] Alan Culpepper, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 51

[2] Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh, (New York:  Convergent Books, 2022),  pp 83-84.

[3] This Here Flesh, p. 84

[4] This Here Flesh, p. 86

11/27/22 - From Generation to Generation: There's Room for Every Story - Matthew 1:1-17

From Generation to Generation:

There’s Room for Every Story

Matthew 1:1-17

November 27, 2022

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

Image:  Genealogy of Christ by Rev. Lauren Wright Pittman

©A Sanctified Art LLC sanctifiedart.org

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://youtu.be/t5gGGdtZwxs

My part of the Donley family, which included my grandparents, their five sons and spouses and their children used to gather for Thanksgiving in mid-October.  We did it then because my grandparents spent the winter in Florida and they left their home in Illinois by November 1.  When I was growing up, that October weekend included a family cider-making project.  Downed apples were harvested from a local orchard and we spent all day washing apples and running them through a cider press.  By nightfall, every household had 4 or 5 gallons of cider to take home. One time I asked my grandfather how they came to own the cider press. He said to me, “Your grandmother thought she would enjoy it.  She asks for so little that I wanted to get it for her.” 

He was speaking about my grandmother who had gone to work in the local Motorola factory assembling radios during World War II. She raised her children through the Great Depression. Later those sons would pick buckets of wild blackberries which she made into jam to sell to earn the money to show their cows at the state fair.  She was a frugal, resourceful woman.

I once told Jim the story of how my grandfather bought the cider press for my grandmother. Every so often, if I mention something that might be nice to have, Jim will say “You ask for so little. We should get that.” Of course, Jim is being ironic.  My life experiences are very different from my grandmother’s and my wish list has been quite long in comparison.

The cider-making days were over long before Jim joined the family, but he knows that story.  And he keeps it alive by quoting my grandfather to me every now and then.   We undoubtedly all have stories like that.  A tradition, a memory, an heirloom,  a family rule that started in a previous generation. 

Matthew’s version of Jesus’ family tree is full of all kinds of stories. Stories about cowardice and courage, about people who were so well-behaved that they barely made history, stories of heartache and betrayal and resilience and faithfulness.

We see the expected patterns, like when the eldest son carries the line forward, and surprises, when it is the second-born (Jacob) or even the fourth-born (Judah) who becomes God’s primary covenantal partner. A big surprise is the inclusion of five women in this time when the fathers and grandfathers were considered the only ones who mattered.

Each of these women has a remarkable story to tell.  Many were Gentiles who came to play an important role in Jewish history.  If you’ve been at Emmanuel for a while, you might remember that one year, we spent all four weeks of Advent remembering Ruth’s story.  Another year, we spent the time with the other women named in Jesus’ family tree. Most were connected to some scandal or impropriety, which was not usually their doing.  Each was resilient and resourceful, surviving and even thriving in a world where they held little power.

Some actions have consequences that bear on generations far into the future.  Joseph who ended up in Egypt because his brothers hated him, became the Pharoah’s right-hand man.  He exploited the disaster of a 7-year famine to enrich the Pharoah and make the people of Egypt into slaves.  In Genesis 47, we read “All the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe upon them; and the land became Pharaoh’s. As for the people, he made slaves of them from one end of Egypt to the other.”  In tragic irony, the next book of the Bible, Exodus, opens with Joseph’s own descendants having been made slaves in Egypt.[1]

If we delve into the family tree, we see that God is at work in the particularity of  individual lives and also in a bigger pattern across history.  God makes a way for a baby named Moses to survive the genocidal intentions of one Pharaoh.  Then God delivers God’s people from another Pharoah through the leadership of the adult Moses in the Exodus.

Pharaohs and kings are powerful, but not strong enough to thwart God’s purposes.  Babylon was ultimately no threat to God’s intentions, and Matthew wants to say to his readers fourteen generations later, that Rome will not prevail either.[2] 

The last man named in Jesus’ family tree is Joseph.  The  ancestral line is traced through his side of the family, which is another kind of surprise, because Matthew will insist that Mary had not known Joseph in any physical way when she became pregnant with Jesus.  One scholar suggests that the entire genealogy is a “parody of pedigree,” [3] that Matthew is poking fun at the ways human beings find meaning in knowing who our ancestors were and continuing to identify with our heroes and against our enemies.  Our history is important, but it is not destiny.   The inclusion of Joseph is a reminder that kinship is not just biological.  It encourages us to dig deeper into the complexities and contradictions of human existence.  Our lineage includes all those who nurture and confront us, protect us and change us.[4] This message will be especially important to the new community that Jesus is forming, the community that will require allegiance to him over loyalty to fathers and mothers and siblings.

The genealogy underscores, over and over again, that Jesus is born into the human family with all of our triumphs and trials, all of our plans and good intentions and best efforts and disappointments and shameful memories. If we read closer, it also reveals the very nature of God.  God is the one who, time and time again, welcomes outsiders, redeems scoundrels and schemers, honors those who pursue justice, and invites siblings to be reconciled.

Today, the church year begins again.  We receive again the stories and scriptures and traditions of faith that have come down to us from generation to generation. The work of God is always unfolding in each of us, in this historical time and place, and there is room for every story.  If you come to this season with the wide-eyed wonder of a child on Christmas Eve or the cynicism of a skeptic who has experienced too many years of human interactions, you belong here. If you come burdened by the consequences of history, fighting for justice or shamed by trauma, there is a place for you. Whether you are joyful or grieving or faking it ‘til you make it, God is at work for your good.  This Advent, may we remember that we belong to a story etched into the wrinkles of time, to generations that have come before us and will come after, a story of a love that will not let us go.  Amen.

[1] Bert Newton, Bible Study:  Parody and Subversion in Matthew’s Gospel,

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bible-study-parody-and-subversion-in-matthews-gospel/id1500071636

[2] Warren Carter, Matthew and Empire: Initial Explorations (Harrisburg, PA : Trinity Press International, 2001)  p. 162

[3] Bert Newton, Bible Study:  Parody and Subversion in Matthew’s Gospel,

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bible-study-parody-and-subversion-in-matthews-gospel/id1500071636

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

11/20/22 - Reign of Christ - Jeremiah 23:1-6; Colossians 1:15-20

Reign of Christ

Jeremiah 23:1-6

Colossians 1:15-20

November 20, 2022

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

Image:  6th century mosaic Transfiguration in Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy.

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

“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep”

When the prophets say “woe”, it is never a good sign.  “Woe”  means “look out”. It means that someone has some ‘splaining to do.  It means what went around is gonna come around. 

“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of God’s pasture,” Jeremiah proclaims.

The Bible loves to refer to people as sheep. So when it says shepherd, it usually means a person who is charged with caring for people.   Sometimes it means pastors. There church traditions which refer to their ministers as under-shepherds, because Jesus is the Good Shepherd.  And sometimes, I have heard you refer to members of Emmanuel as part of the flock, which picks up the same idea.  We might legitimately read “woe to the pastors who destroy and scatter God’s sheep”  These are terrifying words.  Trust me, that is not a reading that I take lightly. 

In Jeremiah’s time, the term shepherd was most often a reference to the king.  It was a reminder for those who ruled Israel, that they were to care for the people as a shepherd cares for the flock, guiding them to restful pastures, leading them to clear water, not ruling by the sword or punitive laws.  In the previous chapter, Jeremiah had delivered some specific expectations from God to the king:

“Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place.” (Jeremiah 22:3)

Those expectations were not met.  Our reading today is the word from God that comes after the king was inattentive, preoccupied with his own well-being and ignoring the most vulnerable under his care.  Which is when Jeremiah speaks up to say “Woe.”  What is coming for Israel is the Babylonian invasion and exile.  Woe be unto the leaders who have brought this on their people by caring more about their own wealth and power than the common good.

This Sunday is the last Sunday of the church year.  Next week, is the first Sunday of Advent which is the start of the church year.  In the Christian traditions which pay attention to these things, today is called Reign of Christ Sunday.

Reign of Christ Sunday is less than a hundred years old. It was established by Pope Pius in 1925.  That was when the world was still reeling from the bloodshed of WWI. It was a time of rising nationalism and fascism as Mussolini, Stalin, Franco and Hitler came into leadership. In 1925, 40,000 members of the Klan marched in Washington using their “America First” slogan.  Pope Pius wanted to re-establish the kingdom of Christ with peace in Christ and so he created this liturgical event to refocus on Jesus and away from unquestioning loyalty to earthly powers.  Some of us might consider that and see that history is repeating itself 100 years later. Or we might look back to Jeremiah and see that it has been repeating itself for centuries. 

While pronouncing the woes on the bad shepherds,  Jeremiah also conveys hope to the sheep. God is on the side of those who suffer because of bad leadership.  God will gather the flock.  Not acting through a human agent this time, God will be the shepherd to bring them home from exile. Only after they are safely returned, will new human shepherds be established.  Then kings will do what shepherds are supposed to do.  A second promise is that God has not abandoned the house of David.  A new king will come who will reign with righteousness and justice and peace for the good of all.[1]

Five hundred years later, some first century Jewish persons came to understand that this righteousness was embodied in Jesus of Nazareth. It is the reign of Jesus the Christ that will bring peace and healing and well-being to all. Jesus the Christ is the one who demands our highest allegiance. 

The letter to the Colossians tells us that Jesus is the exact image of the invisible God, and that in Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Jesus is not a stand-in, not an understudy for God.  Jesus is not cardboard cut-out of God.  All the fullness of God dwells in Jesus. The visible Jesus shows us the invisible God.  That is mystery which we can only begin to articulate.

Sometimes, before or after funerals, people talk to me about mystery.    It happened this week. Someone who attended Sally’s funeral, told me about an experience they witnessed when someone was near death.  Before the person died, the onlooker thought they were seeing a hallucination or confusion from an unclear mind. After the person died, they re-interpreted it and wondered whether the one who was dying was able to see into another reality.  They aren’t sure, but are keeping an open mind about that possibility.

Colossians tells us that in Christ God is at work in the world, in the whole universe, and that we need to open our eyes, our minds to the vast mystery.  It encourages our trust in the goodness of a reality that we cannot see, the image of the invisible God.

Paul piles up the words to try to communicate the enormity of God’s work in Jesus the Christ.  “In him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible, and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers.”

In Christ, all things hold together.  As the Rev. Fred Anderson says, “This tells us that this world is not under the control of national leaders, thirsty for power, or weapons of mass destruction--nuclear or otherwise--nor those crazed with a religious zeal . . . What holds this world together is not the survival of the fittest nor the unending cycle of violence since Cain and Abel acted out in the various theaters of hatred in today's world, nor even the continuing biological cycle of birth, life, death, decay and re-birth that we see in nature. What holds this world together is the power--the life force--of the One who created and redeemed it and who in sovereignty over it all continues to hold it together. The cosmos belongs to the Cosmic Christ and will not be wrested from him; in him all things hold together”[2]

There is a pattern to New Testament poems about Christ.  They usually speak of his pre-existence, then his time on earth, and then his return to heaven.    We would expect the center of this to be his death on the cross or his resurrection, but instead of that, right in the middle this one says “Christ is the head of the body, the church.”[3]   The church, for all its weakness and struggles and even sin, is where Christ is now present on earth.

This is another way that history repeats.  In the time of the prophets, God took action for God’s people, but then shared the power of leadership with future shepherds.   In the unfolding story of God’s work throughout history . . . God creates and restores on our behalf, but always God gives the work back to us to carry forward.”

You and I are called to manifest that reign of Christ in our lives, seeking reconciliation where there is alienation, healing where there is brokenness.  We know there is profound brokenness in God’s good creation.  We know that the task of human beings is to till and to keep the creation.  We are made in God’s image.  God has given us responsibility for our own lives and for the care of God’s good creation.  God has high hopes for us, high expectations of us, and Christ, the firstborn from creation and the firstborn from the dead, is our sovereign. 

This is mystery and poetry and more of my words are not going to make it any clearer.  So, let me turn back to poetry and the words of Brian Walsh, as he reflects on Colossians:

“In the face of a culture of death
a world of killing fields
a world of the walking dead
Christ is at the head of the resurrection parade
transforming our tears of betrayal into tears of joy
giving us dancing shoes for the resurrection party
And this glittering joker
who has danced in the dragon's jaws of death
now dances with a dance that is full
of nothing less than the fullness of God
this is the dance of the new creation
this is the dance of life out of death
and in this dance all that was broken
all that was estranged
all that was alienated
all that was dislocated and disconnected
is reconciled
comes home
is healed
and is made whole
everything
all things
whatever you can imagine
visible and invisible
mountains and atoms
outer space, urban space, and cyberspace
every inch of creation
every dimension of our lives
all things are reconciled in him
And it all happens on a cross
it all happens at a state execution
where the governor did not commute the sentence
it all happens at the hands of the empire
that has captivated our imaginations
it all happens through blood
not through a power grab by the sovereign one
it all happens in embraced pain
for the sake of others
it all happens on a cross
arms outstretched in embrace
and this is the image of the invisible God
this is the body of Christ. [4]

Thanks be to God.

[1] Walter Brueggemann, A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming, (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmanns, 1998).  p 206-207

[2] Rev. Dr. Fred Anderson, http://day1.org/1074-image_of_the_invisiblesermon at www.day1.net, November 25, 2007

[3] Ben Witherington,  The Letters to Philemon, the Colossians, and the Ephesians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on the Captivity Epistles (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmanns, 2007)  p 132

[4] Sylvia Keesmat and Brian Walsh, Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire, (Downers Grove, IL:  InterVarsity Press, 2004). pp 88-89

11/13/22 - Glimpses of God's Dream - Luke 21:5-19; Isaiah 65:17-25

Glimpses of God’s Dream

Luke 21:5-19, Isaiah 65:17-25

November 13, 2022

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

Image:  Hope George Frederick Watts, 1897

Blind Hope is seated on a globe, playing on a lyre which has all its strings broken except one.  She bends her head to listen to the faint music.

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

In the days of the Babylonian invasion in ancient Israel, houses were destroyed, crops were burnt as part of the enemy’s scorched earth policy and many people died before their time because of the war and the hunger and disease that followed.  Others were carried off into captivity.

In the days of the Russian invasion in contemporary Ukraine, houses and buildings were destroyed in nightly bombings.  Crops were burnt as part of a scorched earth policy.  People died before their time.  Others were taken away, tortured, disappeared. 

Have you seen what has happened in Kherson, Ukaine?  The headline in yesterday’s New York Times read Amid Joy in Kherson, a Humanitarian Disaster Looms. After 8 months of occupation, the Russians have withdrawn.  The Ukrainian people are partying in the streets, dancing to the light of headlights and flashlights. They have endured and they are jubilant. 

But there is no water, no electricity, no internet or cell phone service.  Homes and buildings have been reduced to rubble.  Medicine and food are in short supply. Land mines must be found and removed.  Pretty soon, the Ukrainians’ joy  may give way to despair. Future generations will likely still be dealing with the fall-out from this war.

That situation offers a snapshot into today’s scriptures.  Isaiah is speaking to the grandchildren of those who suffered during the Babylonian conquest in Israel.  They are the ones who have to unite  a country divided by war, the ones who have to rebuild infrastructure and cope with generational trauma and poverty.  And in the gospel, Jesus is speaking to those who will soon see the destruction of Jerusalem by the occupying Roman army. By the time, Luke’s gospel is written down, Jesus’ words are being circulated among those who have seen the temple reduced to rubble, many of whom have scattered in fear for their lives.

Can you imagine quoting Jesus to the people of Kherson right now?

“When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified” 

Do not be terrified?  -- Too late.  They passed that stage a long time ago. 

Can we imagine Isaiah speaking of idyllic peace to the ancient Israelites?  One scholar describes the scene this way. “‘But, [Isaiah],’ we can hear the people complain, ‘how can we know that justice and peace will be restored when all we see is the victory of our adversaries while we continue to suffer humiliation and defeat? When you [tell us that] ‘The former things shall not be remembered or come to mind’, [are you seeing] something that we fail to see?’” 

In response to that question, the scholar continues, “we can picture the prophet [Isaiah] closing his eyes, quietly reflecting, and then, after a period of silence, replying with poetry”[1] 

for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,  

   and its people   as a delight.

I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people;
   no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,  

   or the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it
   an infant that lives but a few days,
   or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;

for one who dies at a hundred years

   will be considered a  youth,  

and one who falls short of a hundred

   will be considered accursed. 

They shall build houses and inhabit them;
   they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
   they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, 

   and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

Isaiah gives them glimpses of God’s dream, the sight of a healed future on its way.  Glimpses of the new thing that God is creating:  a deep well-being, a pervasive peace that the imagination-exhausted, hope-depleted people will have difficulty trusting and seeing for themselves.

Some of us are also running low on hope and imagination. We read Jesus’ words  “Nation will rise again nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes,  . famines, plagues . . .”

Yes, Jesus, we know.  We got that part.  When do we get to the good stuff, the healing and peace? 

Have you noticed that Jesus almost never answers “when” questions?  The disciples ask when Jesus return or when kingdom would be restored to Israel and Jesus says “only God knows.”

When the walls come tumbling down, Jesus says “do not be terrified.”  When the world as you know it seems to be ending, “do not be terrified.”  What an unhelpful, almost useless piece of advice. If you’re not afraid, you might not be paying attention.

But you know, being afraid is not really working.  The fear-mongering and misinformation campaigns are dividing families and countries, escalating already tense relationships into actual violence, and changing the economy.  Perhaps you’ve heard that in the new Twitter-verse where truth is entirely optional, a fake pharmaceutical account announced that insulin would be free from now on which led to the stock of the real pharmaceutical company immediately dropping by 5%.[2] 

What we are seeing all over the world is the resurgence of authoritarianism by governments and self-appointed militias and even church leaders. This worldview suggests that some exceptional, extraordinary individuals are willing to make the tough calls that ordinary folks are too afraid to face.  It is the worldview that conspiracy theories feed on. Jesus warns us that some like this will come in his name – “don’t be led astray” he says. 

Tara Isabella Burton is a 30-something best-selling novelist and a Christian.  In the current issue of The Hedgehog Review, she writes about the counter-narrative of hope.  She suggests that we might be better off understanding ourselves as ordinary people whose lives are entwined with one another.  Hope doesn’t sell newspapers or win political campaigns like fear does.  Burton writes, “There is nothing very sexy about hope. Certainly, there is nothing sexy about grace. The idea that we might be redeemed by an act of love—a wordless affirmation of something beyond the paradigms through which we are capable of understanding ourselves—is, well, a little mawkish, a bit cringe.”[3] 

Isaiah says that God is creating a new heavens and a new earth.  God is creating with flawed materials. “This is not creation out of nothing; this is creation out of the chaos of human endeavors, of ruined environments and everything in between.” [4] The glimpse of the world that God desires is so counter-cultural.  If only it could take hold among the conspiracy theorists. 

A church historian, who is a friend and former teacher of mine, says that the radical love of Jesus has always been a part of Christianity. It is too integral to Jesus’ teaching to be extinguished, but he says it has always operated at the margins of our faith.  We have compromised it and watered it down, so that we could fight against our enemies instead of praying for them. So that we could excite crowds and grow churches. So that we could win the doctrinal or political or denominational battles.  He says “the clear teaching of Jesus has suffered the death of a thousand qualifications.”[5]

So let us be clear about the clear teaching of Jesus in this passage.  Our calling in this moment is to keep dreaming God’s dream, to hold out for wholeness in a fragmented world, to be strong and courageous truth-tellers.   

 “Do not be terrified,” Jesus says, “when the earth shakes, and nations make war, and imposters preach alluring gospels of fear, resentment, and hatred.  Don’t give in to despair. Don’t capitalize on chaos.  Don’t neglect to bear witness.  God is not where people often say God is. God doesn’t fear-monger.  God doesn't sensationalize.  God doesn’t thrive on human dread.”  

“So avoid hasty, knee-jerk judgments.  Be perceptive, not pious.  Imaginative, not immature.  Make peace, choose hope, cultivate patience, and incarnate love as the world reels and changes.”  

“Expect things to get hard.  And then expect them to get harder.  Endure even when they do.  Know that God is near, no matter what the world looks or feels like.  Speak the truth, trusting that God’s Spirit is alive and present in our acts of bearing witness.  Be faithful until the end” [6] because, as Grandma and Little Man say, “God is always, always, always love.”

[1] Paul Hanson, Isaiah 40–66: Interpretation Series,  Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2012) p. 185

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2022/11/12/fake-eli-lilly-twitter-account-claims-insulin-is-free-stock-falls-43/?sh=6944c4d441a3

[3] https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/hope-itself/articles/on-hope-and-holy-fools

[4] Nelson Rivera in Feasting on the Word Year C, Volume 4, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors,  (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010) p. 292

[5] Alan Bean, The Gospel of Universal Compassion, November 9, 2022 at baptistnews.com

[6] For these powerful words, I am grateful to Debie Thomas at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2451-by-your-endurance

11/6/22 - Alive to God - Luke 20:27-38

Alive to God

Luke 20:27-38

November 6, 2022

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=AkPiQ46T5ZQ

The Sadducees don’t really care what Jesus thinks about resurrection.  They don’t believe in it.  Full stop.  Their holy book was the Torah – the first five books of our Bible – which contains no mention of resurrection.  Resurrection was just absurd.  They didn’t want to hear Jesus’ deep thoughts on the subject.  It was a question intended to trap him.

The question starts with the concept of Levirate marriage. Levir is a Latin word for brother-in-law.  Men’s status in ancient Israel depended on producing heirs.  If a man died without an heir, it was like he never existed.  So if a man died before he had a son, his brother would marry his widow and the first son of their union was considered the dead man’s heir. The Sadducees come to Jesus with a hypothetical scenario in which a woman was married in turn by seven brothers who each died without leaving any children.  They ask whose wife the woman will be in the after life.  They take this practice of Levirate marriage to the extreme to show how absurd they think resurrection is. 

This is the third in a series of public, trick questions posed by the authorities who want to put Jesus to death.  Jesus doesn’t fall into the trap.  He answers the question so skillfully that some of them even praise his answer.  And after this, they ask no more questions.  

What Jesus tells the Sadducees is that their categories are too small.  They cannot begin to entertain the idea of resurrection because they are not willing to imagine the possibility of an existence that is radically different from what they currently know. Jesus cannot answer their question because marriage is not a meaningful category in the resurrection 

Jesus rarely speaks of the after-life in the gospels.  He tells a parable about a rich man and Lazarus.  He says to the thief next to him on the cross that they will both be in Paradise together on that very day.  And he calls himself the resurrection and the life when speaking to Martha after her brother died.  It’s remarkably little to go on, even though some Christians may claim to know details about the “furnishings of heaven and the temperature of hell and the guest list of both places” as Reinhold Niebuhr once said.[1]

We might wish for more, but we will take what we can get.  Resurrection mostly remains a mystery but there are at least two important hints about it in Jesus’ answer.   He says that people do not marry in the age to come.  A man’s earthly status depended on leaving an heir.  A woman’s earthly status depended on being attached to a man.  None of that will matter in the age to come. 

As scholar Karoline Lewis puts it “it seems that the Kingdom of God has something more in mind than the patriarchy which imprisons women [and men] now.  Women will not continue to be property.  Women will not continue to be owned.”[2]  In the fullness of God’s reign, God’s children are not bound or restricted by sex, sexuality, gender, power, status, marriage, or childbearing.

For those who have lived through violent or abusive marriages, the idea that in the resurrection we will neither marry nor be given in marriage may come as liberating good news.  But for others, who have established faithful, loving and fulfilling partnerships, the idea that such marriages will end may be unthinkable.[3] It is very hard for us, like the Sadducees, to think beyond the categories we already know.

A woman was with her mother in the hospital. As her mother lay dying, the woman tried to reassure her. 

She said, “Mom, in heaven, everyone we love is there.” 

But her mother corrected her, saying “No, in heaven, I will love everyone who is there.” [4]

Do you hear the mother’s wisdom?  It is not that the ones we already love are in heaven.  It is that when we reach heaven, we know how to love anyone who is there.

I believe that in the age to come, we will love in ways too deep and compelling to understand now.  Jesus’ first hint is that the world to come is not merely a continuation of the best of this one.

A second hint comes when Jesus points out that when Moses encountered God at the burning bush, God said “I AM the God the Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob.”  Jesus interprets this in present tense.  God is saying “I am their God now.” Not “I was their God when they were alive.”  God is their God in the present tense because they are still alive to God.  The relationship with God does not end when this body dies. 

As the apostle Paul will write later “Nothing shall separate us from the love of God.”  Not even death. 

Resurrection is not just an abstract doctrine.  Questions about resurrection are deeply personal, relational and meaningful.  They are part of the wrenching pain of grief when someone we love dies and the fear that we may experience when we contemplate dying ourselves. These are questions which we cannot answer from reason or experience alone.

Death and resurrection are mystery.  Many spiritual writers use birth as a way to think about death.  That is the essence of a wonderful story Henri Nouwen told about twins having a conversation in the womb.

The sister said to her brother, “I believe there is life after birth.”  

Her brother protested vehemently. “No, no, this is all there is. This is a dark and cozy place, and we have nothing else to do but cling to the cord that feeds us.”

 The little girl insisted, “There must be something else, a place with light where there is freedom to move” She could not convince her twin brother.

After some silence, the sister said hesitantly, “I have something else to say and I'm afraid you won't believe that, either, but I think there is a mother!”

He shouted, “What are you talking about? I have never seen a mother and neither have you. Who put that idea into your head? This place is all we have . . . ."

The sister was quite overwhelmed. But she couldn't let go of her thought, and finally she said, “Don't you feel these squeezes every once in a while? They're quite unpleasant and sometimes even painful.”

“Yes,” he answered. “What's special about that”

“Well,” the sister said, “I think that these squeezes are there to get us ready for another place, much more beautiful than this, where we will see our mother face-to-face. Don't you think that's exciting?” [5]

If we can imagine birth as a transition between one kind of existence and another, might we also imagine death in a similar way?  Just as the infant in the womb has no categories with which to understand life after birth, we have no idea what happens when the body dies.

Henri Nouwen said “We can live as if this life were all we had, as if death were absurd and we better not talk about it, or we can choose . . . to trust that death is the painful but blessed passage that will bring us face to face with our God.” [6]

Jesus did not teach much about death and resurrection with words, but he taught it with his actions. He kept on living his calling, kept on proclaiming the reign of God, until, not long after this, the earthly powers couldn’t take it any more and they killed him.  Or we might say that Jesus entrusted his own life and death to the God of Abraham and Sarah.   

And then, he became the resurrection. He returned in a body that people identified as his by its scars.  They recognized him in his mannerisms, that particular way he had of breaking bread and of carrying on heart-stirring conversations.   “He ate fish, broke bread, cooked breakfast. He also walked through locked doors and vanished while people were looking right at him. He was the same, but he was different, and because he was both, our futures may turn out to be as astounding as his.”[7] 

Resurrection is not about our worthiness, but the power of God’s faithfulness and unspeakable love.  God is God of the living, for all are alive to God.  Thanks be to God.

[1] Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Volume 2: Human Destiny,(Hoboken: NJ, 1980)  p. 294

[2] Karoline Lewis at https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/who-says-theres-no-resurrection

[3] Alan Culpepper, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 1995), pp. 389-90.

[4] Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace:  A Vocabulary of Grace (New York:  Riverhead Books, 1998), p 367

[5] Henri Nouwen, Our Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying and Caring (New York:  HarperCollins, 1994),  pp 19-20

[6] Henri Nouwen, Our Greatest Gift, p.20

[7] Barbara Brown Taylor, “God of the Living” in Home By Another Way (Boston:  Cowley Publications, 1997) p. 207

10/30/22 - Holy Currencies: Time, Place and Gracious Leadership - Mark 10:42-45; Hebrews 10:23-25

Holy Currencies: Time, Place and Gracious Leadership

Mark 10:42-45, Hebrews 10:23-25

October 30, 2022

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/kaUveMQ_t0Q

About sixteen years ago, I was a pastor without a church. I had resigned from the church I was serving and didn’t get another job. We continued to live in the same town, but I had no work to do out in the public world.  I lost my vocation and my worshipping community and almost all my social relationships all at the same time.  We started attending a church across town.  There we found a weekly Sunday School class. It was a rag-tag group of parents and single adults, of people barely making ends meet and high income households. The group included both a psychiatrist and a person with active schizophrenia – and no, they were not in a doctor/patient relationship.  That weekly class become a lifeline for me and not only for me.  One man, who was in the midst of a painful divorce said to me “this is the best part of my whole week.”  

We who are church people may take for granted the privilege of gathering with our faith community every week. 

But if we do so, we risk undervaluing the currencies of time and place that flow through our ministry.  We risk “neglecting to meet together” and therefore losing opportunities to provoke one another to love and good deeds.  The currency of time and place is so foundational that we may not give it much thought until something changes, as it did in 2020 when we suddenly could not gather in person on a weekly basis.  Or when the boilers fail or the tower starts leaking and we wonder how long this building can continue to shelter us.

The currency of place refers to the property and the building from which we operate. The currency of time refers to all the paid and volunteer time that staff and members offer to the church in ministry.

Like that man in the midst of divorce, like me as a newly unemployed person, new people often come to us in the midst of some life crisis. Because we maintain a regular time and place to meet, they can seek companionship and support among us, without needing to disclose anything about their current situation until they choose. And of course, long time members also show up to give and receive mutual support, to engage in worship, and to serve in a variety of ministries.  The currency of time and place extends beyond us to folks we will never meet like the senior citizens who benefit from the lobbying of Statewide Senior Action or those who find employment through the services of Pathstone or the hundreds of households who visit the food pantry every week.  Renting our building to non-profits is one of the ways that we seek to maximize the currency of this place.

Today, we reach end of our focus on holy currencies.  In 2009, Eric H.F. Law, an Episcopal priest and educator, was working with a variety of churches.  Over half were struggling with financial concerns, which might have been no surprise during the precarious economy of the times.  But other congregations didn’t seem to have those sustainability concerns.  They had energy and were attracting new members.  These churches often described their ministry as “missional,” which meant their focus was outward, not just on their own members and their congregation’s survival.  They directed time and attention to developing people rather than programs.  They were clear about being authentic and relational, and sharing authority. The struggling churches wanted some of that; they didn’t want to worry about money.

At first Law was at a loss on how to help with money issues.  He was not an economist, nor accountant, nor stewardship officer.[1]  But looking closely at what he did know, he saw that even in tough economic times and with very little seed money, his consulting business – the Kaleidoscope Institute - had increased its annual budget by 700% over 4 years.  Without charging set fees, they had graciously received contributions at whatever rate individuals or church organizations felt they could pay in exchange for leadership training and resources.  Law noticed that other currencies were being exchanged to create abundance: gracious leadership, wellness, relationship, truth, time and place, as well as money.  He named it a Cycle of Blessings.

You may jump into this cycle at any point.  You may remember that as we began this month, I shared the story of my colleague who formed the S’more Club out of a deep need for sustaining relationships.  The currency of relationship begins with our primary relationship to Jesus and his command that we love one another.  The currency of truth flows from healthy relationships where there is enough trust to share experiences that may differ from the dominant narrative.  That kind of truth-telling supports wellness because naming injustice and hurtful realities may result in reconciliation, healing and forgiveness. Wellness has to do with deliberate restorative practices like sabbath and it flows into our practices around money.  Money pays for the upkeep on this building so that we may gather at given times.  Money also pays for staff salaries as well as for opportunities to strengthen the gracious leadership of our lay folks and the cycle of blessings spins again. 

Jesus’ most clear understanding of leadership may be summed up in the few verses we heard from Mark’s gospel.  He was on his way to Jerusalem for the last time when James and John pulled him aside to ask a favor. When Jesus arrives, when he becomes a celebrity, when he has the power they think he deserves, they want first dibs on the places of honor beside him. They seem to think that Jesus is just going to take over the customary ways of leading.  He is going to become king or president or CEO and put his people in place.  The only difference will be that the good guys, i.e. the Jesus team, will be in charge.

But Jesus says it doesn’t work like that. Real leaders are those who serve like Jesus does. If you read carefully, you might get the impression that even in heaven, Jesus is going to be on the wait staff.  The good seats are not his to give.  He doesn’t even have one himself.  Even in the fullness of his glory, he will be asking “May I help you?  Shall I bring another chair or put another leaf in the table so that everyone can be served.” 

Barbara Brown Taylor says that Jesus “is not pretending to be a servant until the time comes for him to whip off his disguise and climb onto his throne; he is a servant through and through.”[2]

“Gracious leadership, in imitation of Jesus, is true service for the good of all.  It has to do with building relationships and empowering others.  It is about love and humility and curiosity before judgment.”[3] It is about using the skills and tools and processes to build gracious environments for mutually respectful relationships where the truth can be spoken and heard.  It is also about sharing authority and being willing to follow another’s lead.  “A leader does not lead all the time; neither does the follower always follow.”[4] A teacher is sometimes a learner and learners often also have something to teach.”

Most of you know that Dr. Ralph Elliott died last Sunday.  Dr. Elliott was pastor here in the late 60’s and early 70’s.  He was a leader in many ways, someone who held to his convictions despite public opposition.  Many of you have spoken to me about his pastoral presence and his care for you.  His funeral was led by Elmo and Cheryl, two pastors that he mentored. Both of them served as associate pastors during his time at North Shore Baptist Church in Chicago.  Elmo said that North Shore was his first place of service after seminary and that he learned much from Ralph. Cheryl spoke about Ralph’s empowering of her as he advocated for women in ministry, which was not so common in those days.  She also shared a story of an incident where she asked for a Sunday off to be with family.  At first Ralph declined, saying that she was needed in worship that day, but then two days later, he called her back and said that he had put his work above family too often and that she was right to order her life differently.  He gave her the time off. Sometimes a learner is a teacher. Gracious leaders have the humility to change their minds.

This summer, I met a young adult from another Christian tradition in another country.  In her home country, there is a great respect for the wisdom of elders and people are not ordained until they have served for a long time. In her tradition, only ordained persons may preside at communion or perform baptisms.  And so, the tradition about leadership place limits on the ways that she can serve. She says that there are many people in remote areas who wish to be baptized, but those who are authorized to baptize are older and not well enough to travel into those places.  Some are waiting two years or more for someone to come and baptize them.  Meanwhile, young leaders who could more easily make the difficult journey to those remote areas would love to be of service, but are not allowed.  As an outsider, I hesitate to question this practice, but she is challenging her  tradition from within.

I mention it because it makes me wonder what obstacles we may be putting in the way of some who would serve among us, obstacles of privilege or tradition which are hard for us to recognize. I want to think about that with you.

I also want to affirm the gracious leadership of so many here at Emmanuel.  We are blessed with folks who serve graciously with humility in a multitude of ways, often in behind-the-scenes ways that are essential to our well-being but for which there is no public recognition.  This weekend, Emmanuel’s servant leaders made possible Joy’s visit with us.  Joy’s presence led to a series of truth-telling events.  Some of you have participated or will participate in a group where you are invited to share your experience with Emmanuel in the past, your engagement in our present and your wonderings about the future.  You have already or will speak your truth in those sessions.

On Friday, various community leaders participated in similar sessions about the Albany. They spoke truth about homelessness, the needs of young people and seniors, about mental health and hunger, about a housing crisis and people’s yearning for a place to be themselves in relationship to God. 

These events depend on the circulation of the currency of truth and of relationship – our relationships with one another and with individuals and organizations beyond the church.  Our goal in these conversations is to articulate the mission and ministry that God is calling us to in this time, so that we will experience wellness as the holy currencies flow and circulate within and among us – and so that we may continue to experience and share with others the abundance of life and fullness of joy that God desires for us. Thanks be to God.

[1] Eric H.F. Law, Holy Currencies: Six Blessings for Sustainable Missional Ministries (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2013), p. 2

[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Trickle-Up Effect”  in Bread of Angels  (Boston:  Cowley Publications, 1997), p.44.

[3] Lynn Carman Bodden in her sermon  Answering the Call delivered at First Reformed Church, Schenectady, NY on June 26, 2022

[4] Holy Currencies, p. 94