5/7/23 - Unfold: Claiming New Possibilities - Matthew 16:13-20

Unfold:  Claiming New Possibilities

Matthew 16:13-20

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

May 7, 2023

Image by Alfred Schrock on Unsplash.com

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1u3bAItrzE

You may remember that I attended a storytelling conference back in March.  I heard something there that has stuck with me.  What I heard was this “You never know when a story is over, especially if you’re in it.”[1] 

That sentence came back to me this week.  I thought about it for Peter.  His name was Simon when Jesus called him from his fishing.  But then one day, Simon shared this important insight about who Jesus was, and Jesus renamed him Peter, which means rock.  On this day, Jesus said that Peter was the rock on whom Jesus was going to depend. Maybe, with that name change, Peter thought that he had arrived, that this was the truest truth about who he was.  It was certainly a better image than the recent one that the others were still giving him a hard time about.  You remember that time when he had tried to walk on the water to Jesus and succeeded for a minute, but then sank like a stone when his fears got the best of him.

Jesus says that he is going to build the church on Peter the rock. That’s a high point, but then almost immediately, Peter gets it wrong again.  Jesus tells the disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, and Peter vigorously argues against it.  That time, instead of calling him the reliable rock, Jesus calls him Satan.  On the night that Jesus was arrested, Peter swore that he would never ever desert him.  Within a few hours, he had insisted three times that he didn’t know him at all.  Peter was living a story in progress.  It kept changing.  If he had introduced himself that day outside Caesarea Philippi, he might have said “Just call me the Rock.”  If he had told his story on Good Friday, he might have identified himself as a deserter of Jesus, or as a former fisherman who was going back to the trade.  But Peter’s beautiful, complicated story wasn’t over.  Because resurrection came and with it, another chance to follow Jesus in a new way, to become the leader that Jesus anticipated he was. Peter’s transformation unfolded over a long time.

You never know when a story is over, especially if you’re in it.  I learned that firsthand recently. 

In 2002, I was serving a church in rural Illinois.  It was my first solo pastorate.  I had been there about three years when I found myself in conversation with a search committee from a church in another Baptist denomination in Canada.  I was interested in that church.  They were interested in me.  We both thought that God might be calling us together, so we kept talking.  After a couple of phone interviews, Jim and I went up and met with the committee in person.  We saw the city and had a private tour of the empty church building.  We attended worship on Sunday morning, incognito, looking just like ordinary first-time visitors.    That was in October. 

In January, the committee invited our whole family to spend several days getting to know the church and letting them get to know me.  This is the process called candidating.  I was there as the search committee’s final candidate for the position of pastor. 

There was a full schedule.  On Friday night, we went ice skating outdoors with our families and youth.  I concentrated on not falling in case being the American who couldn’t skate would rule me out as a pastor.  On Saturday morning, I met one-on-one with members of the staff.  On Saturday afternoon, I went to someone’s home and talked with individuals in a kind of speed-dating style.  Every ten minutes or so, the person in the chair to my left would move and another person would occupy the chair while I was chatting with the person on my right and then when I turned to the person on my left, the chair on the right would be vacated and another conversation partner would be seated.  I don’t even remember all the groups and events.  On Sunday morning, I preached, which felt like a test, because it was, but as soon as I gave the benediction, members of the staff and search committee were hastening to tell me that I had passed. 

From the sanctuary, we went to the fellowship hall for lunch.  And after lunch, there was another scheduled event.  This was an open mic, question and answer time with me in the hot seat. I responded for about 40 minutes and then came the one that changed everything.  Canada was, at that time, just beginning to consider legalizing same sex marriage.  The earnest young man who took the microphone wanted to know how I would respond if that happened, would I perform such a wedding? 

My first response was to acknowledge the difficulty of finding unity on this question.  Because I had met a lot of people over that weekend, I knew that there was a lot of theological diversity in the congregation.  And so, I said that no matter how I answered the question, some people were going to disagree with me.  And the question I asked them to keep in mind was whether they could work with a pastor with whom they disagreed on this issue, especially since they were already in disagreement with each other.  Then I outlined my own conviction that all persons are made in the image of God and are to be welcomed and affirmed and fully included within the body of Christ regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity or several other categories.

That was the end of my candidacy.  The Q & A ended shortly and within 15 minutes, there were outraged calls to pastors of other churches in the region and to the denominational staff.  I learned later that the rumors about me and my own sexual identity spread across hundreds of miles.  The church did vote to call me, but at least 15% of the congregation voted against it.  The denomination brought me back to Canada a few weeks later to make sure that they had understood my position correctly and when they confirmed that they had, they refused to recognize my ordination.  With the mushy vote from the congregation and the denomination’s labeling of me as a heretic, the church did not extend a call to me, which I agreed was wise. 

It was wise, but also painful.  I was quite disappointed. This was a progressive Baptist church with an exciting urban ministry.  I had been in conversation with them for more than 6 months when everything fell apart.  I had believed that God was calling us together.  Over the next few weeks, I received phone calls and letters from members of the search committee who were also in deep distress.  I felt responsible for their pain as well as my own. 

Within a few months, I resigned from the church where I was serving. Depressed and discouraged, I told myself that I was done with professional ministry. We moved to a new state where Jim got a teaching job, and I was a stay-at-home Mom.  We joined a church.  I was a person in the pew.  After several months, the pastor told me that he had been hoping to add an associate pastor to the staff and would I consider the role?   I accepted the invitation and served that church and another one before ending up as your pastor here in 2010. 

You never know when a story is over, especially if you’re in it.

Two years ago, we began the 5-year anti-racism project called Thrive with the Alliance of Baptists.    Imagine my surprise when I learned that one of the 26 Thrive congregations is the church in Canada where I candidated so many years ago.  Two weeks ago, I went to the Gathering of the Alliance in Atlanta.  The event was well designed with lots of good and provocative content.  I’ll be sharing some links to recordings on EBC Announce this week.  But the best part of the gathering for me was that I got to make a new friend. When we weren’t in workshops or worship, Jim and I hung out with J, one of the pastors currently serving that Canadian church. 

J told me that when he candidated 15 years ago, the church did the Q&A process differently because of what they called “the Kathy incident”.   He said that it took about 7 years for the church to heal from the wounds created by the church’s internal conflict and their conflict with the denomination, but it did heal. One of the things he celebrates now is the number of trans teenagers who find a safe, welcoming, nurturing place to belong within the church’s youth ministry.

Another celebration is that just a few months ago, that church and about a dozen others in the area joined a group of Baptists based in another part of Canada because they are now fully on board with the conviction that God’s love is to be extended to everyone.  They took that step to be proactive.  They anticipate that they will be expelled from their home denomination this summer.  Emmanuel knows something about that pain, so I invite you to hold them in prayer over that.  J has watched his church heal and change and grow over the last decades.  He says that it all began with that Q&A time which I experienced as disastrous. 

You never know when a story is over, especially if you’re in it.

Gareth Higgins writes “We’re all living a story-in-progress.  Our identities are formed and re-formed through the way we construct and revise the story; the version we tell ourselves, the version we tell others, the version we fear is true, and the version we hope for.”[2] 

I have told the story about the time we didn’t move to Canada to a few of you, but mostly I haven’t shared it.  I thought it was over.  Frankly, I actively tried to put it behind me.  I only just learned a version of the story that has unfolded with a different, more hopeful ending, twenty years later.   

I am realizing, once again, that transformation takes time and patience.  It requires us to keep showing up, to being open to re-framing or re-telling the story or receiving someone else’s version of it. It means examining our favorite stories to see if they are still helpful and true. It means being open to surprise -- accepting that God’s possibilities may come in ways we never imagined, expanding our notion of who we are in this world. 

Friends, you never know when a story is over, especially if you’re in it.  Thanks be to God for this good news.

[1] Gareth Higgins, How Not to Be Afraid:  Seven Ways to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying, (Minneapolis:  Broadleaf Books, 2021), p 65.

[2] Gareth Higgins, How Not to Be Afraid, p. 64

4/30/23 - Open: Into the Light - Luke 24: 13-35

Open:  Into the Light

Luke 24: 13-35

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

April 30, 2023

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3EHUuQoNT8

Today’s reading takes place on the evening of the first Easter.  We celebrated Easter a few weeks ago.  It may be that a lot has happened in your life since then, but I expect you remember the gist of the story.  You might not remember the details of Luke’s telling of the Easter story.  In Luke’s version, the women go to the tomb and find it empty.  Two angels appear to them.  They say that the tomb is empty because  Jesus has been raised from the dead.  The women run from the tomb to tell the rest of the disciples.  The male disciples think this is nonsense, although Peter does go to the tomb to see it for himself. 

In Luke’s version, no one sees the risen Jesus on Easter morning.  All anyone knows is that the tomb is empty and the women supposedly had a conversation with an angel, but you know how women are.  They tend to tell outlandish stories or to imagine things.  By the afternoon, there are rumors and speculation and the testimony of the women.  That’s pretty much the same situation that you and I and millions of others find ourselves in two thousand years later.  We were not there.  We cannot cross-examine the women.  We cannot go to see the tomb like Peter did.  We have to decide about the truth of Easter without those things.  Perhaps that is why this story about the road to Emmaus is so well-loved.  It is an Easter story we can relate to. 

On that first Easter afternoon, Cleopas and another disciple get out of Jerusalem.  They head for Emmaus, which Luke says, is about 7 miles away.  Maybe they’re going home.  Maybe it’s just far enough away to feel safe.   It probably takes a couple of hours to walk 7 miles.  So, they talk.  Walking and talking is a way to process some of what has happened – the trauma of the crucifixion, their profound grief over Jesus’ death, the incredible story the women are telling.  It’s a LOT.

The conversation is deep and thoughtful.  Luke’s implication is that the disciples talk familiarly with each other.  They don’t have to stop and explain the background.  They can probably speak in abbreviations, but this is not simple chatting.  They are trying to understand, examining all the available evidence.  They are analyzing everything.  When Jesus approaches, he asks them about the words they are “throwing back and forth.”[1]  It is important that we grasp how hard they are trying to understand.

They walk and they talk.  It’s what you do when you’re grieving, when you’ve lost something precious.  It’s what you do when you’re bewildered.  It’s what you do when you don’t know what to do, but you need to do something.

Archeologists have never located this Emmaus which was 7 miles from Jerusalem, but you’ve probably walked towards it before.    Barbara Brown Taylor says, “It is the road you walk when your team has lost, your candidate has been defeated, your loved one has died—the long road back to the empty house, the piles of unopened mail, to life as usual, if life can ever be usual again.” [2]

The grief is heavy. The disappointment is crushing. When the stranger, who turns out to be Jesus, walks beside them, they say “We had hoped.” 

“We had hoped Jesus would be the Messiah we imagined. We had hoped that he would overthrow Rome and liberate us and return our county to its former glory.”

“We had hoped” is what people say when their hopes have collapsed. 

We had hoped it wasn’t cancer. 

We had hoped the marriage counseling would work.

We had hoped that our children would live in a more peaceful, more just, world than we did.

We had hoped for elected leaders who would unite us for the common good.

We had hoped that people would return to church in record numbers when the pandemic ended.  Or at least that our resilient church would come out stronger.

We had hoped that the endowment would sustain the building for another fifty years.

We had hoped that things might change. We were wrong.

On that road to Emmaus, the disciples are coming to terms with profound loss. And then, finally they realize that the stranger is Jesus. They are overjoyed that he is alive. But I expect that their disappointment is also still there.

Jesus is still not the Messiah they thought he would be.  And he is never going to be. Whatever comes next, they still have to live under Roman occupation.

It takes 10-14 days for a butterfly to fully form inside a chrysalis, and then the casing splits open and the new creature must begin to emerge.  The butterfly can't say, “Whoops, I am not quite ready!” Once the chrysalis splits open, it is time to start emerging.

There is no unhearing the truth the disciples learned on the road to Emmaus. After meeting Jesus again, there is just no going back to being fishermen who live simple, uncomplicated lives. There is no going back to that close-knit group that kept company with the teacher and healer Jesus.  Jesus has defeated death. He is not just their rabbi anymore. Jesus is Lord.

We humans experience change as loss.  Even if it is a good change, a necessary change, we are likely to grieve.  When our daughter Molly was about 5, she had a red jacket. It had a hood and blue trim and pockets and she loved it. But she outgrew it. She wore it until the sleeves didn’t reach to her wrists and it was hard to snap.  One day I told her that we were going shopping for a new jacket.  First she said that she didn’t want to, she didn’t need a new jacket. When I insisted, she said “OK, but the new jacket needs to be red with blue trim and a hood and pockets.” 

And I kept that jacket all these years, because change is loss for parents too. 

The disciples cannot go back. They have to live in the now.

We cannot go back.  We have to live in our now.  If what you are feeling is loss, if what you are feeling is keen disappointment, if what you are feeling is grief, then you are not alone.  It is right to acknowledge what has been lost, even to mourn for it, and then to emerge into what is now.

Here's what I notice about the Emmaus road story. The disciples are trying hard to understand. They are examining all the evidence, throwing words back and forth, wanting to know what to do next.  Their intellects are fully engaged.

And then Jesus comes along. He listens to what they are telling each other and then he reminds them of other stuff they also know.  He walks them through familiar Bible stories.  Finally, he breaks bread.  He shares a meal with them in the familiar ways and they recognize him.

Jesus walks along an ordinary road with ordinary people. He doesn’t go to the Temple. He doesn’t show up at Pilate’s palace or thumb his nose at King Herod. “The risen Christ comes to those who are trying to follow, trying to love him, trying to be his people, trying to remember.  He doesn’t come as proof to power but skeptical unbelievers. He comes to his friends, to those who know him, and it is his gift to them.”[3]

The disciples have all the information they need, but they don’t put it together until Jesus walks beside them. And when they do, it is more than an intellectual exercise.  Later they say that their hearts burned within them.

Frederick Buechner wrote "Sacred moments, the moments of miracle, are often everyday moments, the moments which, if we do not look with more than our eyes or listen with more than our ears, reveal only...a garden, a stranger coming down the road behind us, a meal like any other meal. But if we look with our hearts, if we listen with our being and imagination...what we may see is Jesus himself.[4]

Friends, we have emerged into a new reality.  We cannot go back to life as it was before.  If we try to dwell in the past or if we are too fearful of the future, we may abandon the opportunity to be alive in Christ in the now that is now. 

As another pastor has said, “The past can haunt us; the future is filled with unknowns; and yet today is the only day we most surely have. The church is not a museum which protects the teachings and memory of Jesus.  The church is the people who recognize that Jesus is alive and active, on the journey with us, in what we already know, and in whatever change comes next. 

As we walk this road together, talking about all the things that have come to pass, participating in the business of living, let us keep our eyes and our hearts open.  We may just glimpse a stranger catching up to us.   When that happens, may we recognize the Christ who is present with us now and always. Amen.

[1] https://provokingthegospel.wordpress.com/2017/04/25/a-provocation-the-third-sunday-of-easter-april-30-2017-luke-2413-35/

[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, “Blessed Brokenness”  in Gospel Medicine, (Lanham, Maryland:  Cowley Publications, 1995), pp 20-21

[3] John Buchanan in his sermon “Remember” https://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/1999/041899.html

[4] Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat, (San Francisco : Harper & Row, 1985), pp. 87-88

4/16/23 - Coming Out: Leaving Comfortable Places - Hebrews 11:1-3

Coming Out:  Leaving Comfortable Places

Hebrews 11:1-3

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Albany, NY

April 16, 2023

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUwSm3AAu-A    

At the Executive Team meeting this week, we were talking about today’s congregational meeting, about the important decisions to be made regarding the future that God is calling us into. People are feeling a certain urgency about taking decisive action soon and I applaud that.  On Tuesday night, I heard some comments that I’ve heard several times recently.  People who have been part of Emmanuel for a long time know that this is not the first time we have wrestled with some of the same questions over the last several decades. In the comments I’m hearing recently, there is an acknowledgment that this time the outcome will likely be different, the discernment about what God is to do with our energy and resources and building may lead us in a radically new direction from before.  I recognize that truth of that and also I want to be sure to point out that those who came before us were faithful in their own times.  If with God’s help, we choose something that Emmanuel did not choose 10 years ago or 25 years ago or 50 years ago,  it does not mean that we were wrong in those previous decisions.  Those congregations, which overlap with the present congregation, were faithful in their own time as we must be in ours. 

This conversation keeps coming around again because attending to the future that God is luring us into is an ever present part of our faith journey.  An early version of the conversation in this church happened in 1868. 

The church was only about 34 years old then.  With the rest of the nation, they had suffered through the difficult years of the Civil War.  Many young people had left Albany to fight in that war.  Baptisms had declined.  Church membership had fallen off.  The neighborhood was changing and businesses were encroaching on the church property.  So in January 1868, the church called a meeting to consider their future. At that meeting, a committee was formed to investigate these options – 1) merging with another Baptist church in the city and/or 2) finding out how much they could sell their building for and 3) whether they could purchase property to relocate into a new house of worship. [1]

Does that sound familiar?  The decision was made to move up from Pearl Street to our current location and to change the church name from Pearl Street Baptist Church to Emmanuel Baptist Church. This building was dedicated in 1871.   To those Exec team members who said we have had this conversation before,  I wonder if you knew how right you were.

Our Scripture reading was short today, and probably familiar to many of us. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Our predecessors at Emmanuel had hope for the future.  At a difficult time, they stepped out in faith to create something unforeseen.  They could never have imagined what would unfold in history or the varieties of ministries in this place that happened over the next 150 years.  They surely didn’t anticipate that automobiles would become commonplace or they would have secured land for a parking lot! 

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

In his Cotton Patch version, Clarence Jordan translates that verse like this “Now faith is the turning of dreams into deeds; it is betting your life on the unseen realities.” 

The author of the book of Hebrews spends the rest of chapter 11, reminding us of faithful people in the past. 

By faith Abraham and Sarah obeyed when they were called to go to a place that they were to receive as an inheritance; and they set out, not knowing where they was going.  They are now linked with not one, but three major world religions.   What an unseen reality. 

By faith, Moses refused to be identified as the son of the Pharoah’s daughter.  He left the safety and protection of the palace choosing to identify with the oppressed Hebrew people instead.  He could not have anticipated that he would be the one to lead them out of Egypt.

By the end of chapter 11, the author has called to mind several named and unnamed faithful people who stepped out in faith and bet their lives on unseen realities. 

Two thousand years later, the roll call of the courageous faithful is exponentially longer.   We might add  . . .

By faith, the desert fathers and mothers went to the wilderness to follow Jesus in prayer and contemplation because the Emperor Constantine had embraced Christianity and the church was getting cozy with Empire. 

By faith, Francis of Assissi abandoned his father’s wealth and took on a life of poverty and kissed a person with leprosy, starting a whole new kind of Christian ministry

By faith, Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery and then returned to the south 13 times to lead others to freedom. 

By faith, countless people whose names are lost to history served God and cared for their neighbors, spoke truth to power, sought justice and loved their enemies.  They lived their lives on “the settled conviction that the unseen God is real and that this God continues to uphold this world and commune with God’s people.”[2]

I would like to remember 10 more names on that roll call today.  The names are Tamer Page, Betsey Burke, Catherine Gordon, Margaret Jones, and Eleanor Penry. Joshua Burke, Salem Dutcher, John Gray, William Penry, and Charles Boyington.  Does anyone recognize those names?  By faith these five women and five men, were led to form the First Baptist Society in the City of Albany.  That was in 1810.  I have jumped back even further into Emmanuel church history.

One year later,  those ten people had doubled in size to a congregation of 21 and the First Baptist Church of Albany was born. Five different pastors served First Baptist in its first 16 years.  That is a lot of turnover in leadership and it did not grow as desired.  But the congregation persevered faithfully and then Dr. Bartholomew Welch was called pastor.  Dr. Welch seems to have been a powerful preacher and charismatic leader.  The church steadily increased in numbers and in influence in the city.  By 1833, there were 327 members and they began to consider planting another Baptist church.  Dr. Welch said that the church felt that they had passed from “the most perplexing embarrassments and the lowest state of depression to their present state of comparative ease and prosperity’ in just a few years.  They also believed that they had an obligation to live to the glory of God and not rest in that relative ease and prosperity.

Like the butterfly, they would have to leave the cocoon in order to fly.  As our gathering song says, they were being called out of their comfortable space to meet Jesus in a more difficult place.

As First Baptist discerned their future, they unanimously agreed that God expected them to plant another church.   But no one was willing to make the personal sacrifice, to give up the comfort and familiarity of their current church, in order to do this work  Everyone thought that someone should go plant this new church, just not them.  Writing about this 100 years later, the then pastor said “At the divine call, everyone meekly and submissively answered, “Lord, here am I; send him.”

Eventually, they came up with a new plan: a majority of the church members would stay at its current location with its debt-free building and its strong reputation in the community, but Dr. Welch, the dynamic and visionary pastor, and some members of the church would be released to form a new church.  It took about a year to secure a property and build the new church building.  Then the church clerk again collected the names of those who felt called by God to plant the new church.  This time, there were 123 volunteers.   Some in leadership were alarmed that so many were leaving.  More than a third of the congregation and the beloved pastor  went to plant the second church.

Probably everyone involved was uncomfortable with this scenario. First Baptist had to continue doing faithful ministry despite the loss of the pastor and his family, three deacons and their families and many active workers among those who went to the new church.  Those who stayed did so with courageous obedience.

And the new church, had to start over, a new ministry in a new place, with a worshipping congregation about 1/3 the size they were used to. They probably missed their old mortgage-free building and their friends at First Baptist.  Maybe they missed singing in the choir or the way the light came in through the windows at certain times.  But, by faith they set out to make God’s dream real with their deeds.  The new church they planted was Pearl Street Baptist.  They could not have foreseen that in another 30 years, it would move again and become Emmanuel Baptist Church.  If they had not acted as they did, you and I would not be here today. 

Living by faith means letting ourselves trust that the future may be different from the present and that will be OK.  We are ever-emerging spiritual creatures and change is part of growth.  Coming out as individuals and as a church from what we have known into a new identity may be filled with anxiety and unknowing and lots of questions.  But I hope that you are encouraged, as I am, by the examples set by those who came before us both in ancient Biblical times and within our more recent faith family. 

I discovered this week that I have only preached on this passage once before.  That was on my very first Sunday as your pastor in 2010. Anticipating the future ahead of us at that time, I said “We don’t know yet what our time together will bring, what adventures and unimagined possibilities for joy will be ours.  Getting to this day has not been without cost for either of us, but I have a persistent belief that it will be worth it.  In fact, I’m betting my life on that unseen reality.”

I am still betting my life on that unseen reality.  I hope you are too. 

[1] Historical information in this sermon gleaned from Emmanuel Baptist Church Albany Centennial 1834-1934 and Bi-centennial History of Albany: History of the County of Albany, NY from 1609-1886, Vol. 2, by George Rogers Howell

[2] Joshua W. Jipp in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year C, Volume 3 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Editors,  (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2019), p. 227

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